The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
"My dear, can't you see? We live at the opposite poles of things--he,
the unbelieving Christian, I, the believing Pagan. Look at his
life--look at mine. Look at this room--these things. You have a
_flair_ for what is precious and beautiful--can't you see?"
Mary Compton continued to balance the spoon. Her bright hazel eyes were
fixed thoughtfully on the other's face.
"Yes, I see. And I love you, Sigrid, as Gaya does, without caring who
or what you are, or what you mean to do with us. But just sometimes I'm
afraid--sometimes I think it would have been more merciful to have let
us go on our own old, stodgy way."
"You mean--him? He sought me out. I believe he brought me here. There
are more things in heaven and earth, Mary, than are dreamed of in your
philosophy. And even if that weren't true--he knew as well as I did what
I was--what I wanted---adventure, knowledge of the finest and the best
in life and in men--a last splendid hour--he would not have denied it
me."
The last words had sunk below the whisper of their brief conversation,
and Mary Compton did not hear them. Very skilfully she forced the opiate
between the unconscious man's lips.
"At any rate, we're a nice couple of nurses chattering over poor
Tristram's head. Will you watch for a little? Mrs. Smithers and I will
relieve you."
"If you want him to live leave us alone. I shall not sleep tonight."
"In those clothes?"
She glanced down at her quaint, gold-brocaded dress.
"Yes. He loves beautiful things."
"He may think he is in Paradise and you an angel," rather satirically.
"Or perhaps men so near death see clearer----"
Mary Compton sighed and bent and kissed her.
"Good night, then. If there is any change, send for us. Ayeshi is at
the door."
"Goodnight."
Now the last sound was gone. Even the man's shallow, irregular
breathing became for the moment quieter, as though peace had crept into
his troubled oblivion. Sigrid sat motionless at his side. The light
touched her with a dim brilliance; it dwelt on the smooth gold hair, on
the gold of her dress, on the rich living whiteness of her arms and
shoulders. She shone subduedly like an image on an altar-shrine--an
image of life and of life's splendour faced with the shadow of death.
Presently Tristram stirred and muttered to himself. The words were at
first thick, indistinguishable, but suddenly he roused himself. She
caught sentences, rapid, fever-stricken--the incoherent risings from the
depths of the man's soul. It was his credo--a fragment of that faith of
which Ayeshi had spoken, perhaps never before formulated, now poured in
a molten stream of delirious sincerity.
"I believe in all things living--I believe in beauty--I believe in the
goodness of men and in their immortality. I believe in the immortality
of the flowers, of the trees, of the grass in the wind--I believe in God
who is all things, who is myself and her. I believe in the sacredness
of all life----" An intolerable agony crept into his voice. He
repeated the last phrase on a rising inflection. "Oh, God, I believe in
the sacredness of life----"
She bent over him. She laid her hand on his forehead and suddenly his
eyes opened. They rested full on her face, but she knew, for all their
extraordinary brilliance, that they did not see her. It was not to her
that he spoke, but to the vision of her. "You must go, you
too--everything. A man who has broken faith--there is a curse on us--an
awful curse. We kill what we love--we kill what is holy,
unfathomable--every day of our lives--for pleasure, because we must.
We're doomed to destroy. We try not to--we try to save--but the curse
is on us--the curse of Cain----" His voice had dropped; it broke now
with a groan and the brief glimpse of coherent thought was over. He
began to mutter again--isolated words, a name, constantly a name. Still
she remained bent over him. Her small face had lost colour, and
something of its aloof pity. She was breathing quickly, through parted
lips.
"Tristram!" she whispered.
He raised one burning hand and pushed her back.
"No--not now--you must go--for pity's sake. I've carried you
here--here--so long--through the burning days--since that night. You
don't know--no other woman--there had been fancies--the flowers by the
waterside--the lotus there in the shadows---the lizard in the long
grass--you were the golden corn swaying in the wind, the flowers--the
stars, the mountains, the slender trees in the storm--great ships sailed
down the river--you came in and out of their ghosts flying over the
water--I watched you till dawn--you were the dawn--dancing over the
world's grey roofs--you were nature, life, God----" He raised himself
on his elbow in a frenzied ecstasy. She put her arm round his shoulders
trying to force him back. In a minute his voice had changed--grew dry
and harsh and imperative. "Separate the living from the dead--no
flinching--it's a miracle, this life--a mystery--sacred--fan the
flames--the dead, too, are sacred--fire is pure--now it is
over--finished--I can sleep--" He sat upright, head thrown back as one
awaiting thirstily release, then lifted his arms high up in a gesture of
despair. "The colours--down--down in the dust--a blow straight in the
face of God--the goal missed--in a minute--oh! God!--if I cared
less----"
He fell back exhausted, broken, his breathing so hushed that for a
moment she believed that it had ceased for ever. She still held him, her
arm crushed under his great shoulders, and she called him by name,
recklessly. He turned over a little on his side.
"Wickie understood," he whispered. "Wickie knew I couldn't help it--but
my mother--don't let her know--not yet. She's old--so old--one long
sacrifice--and now to have failed----"
"She shan't know--I promise--I promise----"
He did not, could not have heard. His head tossed restlessly on the
pillow. The collar of his shirt was open, and she caught a glimpse of a
red swollen line across his chest. She drew her breath quickly--staring
at it.
"You must go back, Sigrid--you must. You are not a dream--not now.
Back up on to the mountain-top--to your golden palaces--where there is
no meanness--no poverty--no sin--you could not go with me where I am
going----"
She knelt beside him, holding, him with all her strength, his head
pressed against her bare shoulder.
"I am going with you, Tristram Sahib--tonight at least I'll go with you
wherever you go--tonight. I'll try your way of loving and dying--just
this one night, Tristram."
There was a blue, unfamiliar shadow about her lips. The room with its
dim treasures was no longer part of her. She had lost her serenity, her
easy detachment. Not the triumphant quality of her power. This man was
dying--not of the body, but of the soul. She could feel him sinking,
and she went down with him--down into the vortex of his unknown
struggle, fighting as she had danced and lived, with her whole will,
with all the splendid vitalness of her being.
And his eyes, glazing already, were turned to her and saw her. They
became peaceful--content. Whatever message she had willed to pierce the
dense cloud of delirium had reached him. He sighed, and lay still in
her arms.
Presently she saw that his eyes were closed. A faint moisture glistened
on his smooth forehead, and the wild muttering passed into the quiet of
an exhausted slumber.
Still she did not move.
The night sank into deeper darkness and stillness. The hours crept on
their way, monstrous, heavy-footed. She measured her breathing to his,
she held him in arms that had lost all feeling. The shadow about her
lips crept over her whole face, blotting out its youth.
The dawn came at last, creeping in between the parted curtains, mixing
pallidly with the dying lamplight. The rich embroideries and the
glittering curios faded, the high carved chair by the dressing-table
became spectral, unreal.
Ayeshi entered noiselessly, passing like a ghost to the quiet bedside.
Tristram had turned over, his face to the coming day, his head resting
in the curve of his arm. So Ayeshi had often seen him--by the
camp-fire, after the day's work.
And beneath, on the great tiger-skin, huddled and still, a golden-clad,
incongruous figure, which even in that moment retained something
imperious, conquering, exultant.
Ayeshi bent down and touched the pale, disordered hair. He leant across
and kissed the man's unconscious hand--lightly, as if it had been a
sleeping child's.
Then, noiselessly as he had come, glided across the room to the open
window and thence out into the morning.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*TRISTRAM CHOOSES HIS ROAD*
Dr. Martin from Lucknow had made his examination, and now he sat
opposite to the woman on whose husband he was about to pass sentence,
and told her the truth with all the delicacy at his command. He was a
civilian with a considerable practice among women, and a corresponding
belief in his understanding of the sex. But he did not understand Mrs.
Boucicault. Possibly the long journey, partly on horse-back, partly on
a bone-racking bullock-wagon, had upset his nerve and that nice balance
of mind which made a correct analysis possible. He had felt oddly and
ridiculously sickened by the man whose bedside he had just left. There
was something revolting in that great hulk of over-developed,
ill-conditioned strength, inert and helpless, without power of speech or
motion, with nothing living in it but the eyes. Dr. Martin had seen a
great many ugly sights in his career, but nothing uglier than those
desperately living eyes in the dead body.
Now the wife sat opposite him and smiled at him--a slow, unending smile
which might have pointed to a mind deranged by grief if she had not been
so eminently practical and calm. She was dressed girlishly in white,
with a red rose stuck gaily in her belt. The grey fluffy hair had been
carefully yet loosely dressed, and there was a faint tinge of artificial
colour on her cheeks. Her restless fingers glittered with valuable
rings. It was still early in the day, and Dr. Martin had pronounced a
sentence which was practically one of death, and he felt that the whole
situation was horrid--a kind of _danse macabre_. The only person who
gave him the remotest sensation of preserved decency was the daughter.
She sat apart from her mother with her head bowed, her hands tight
clasped in her lap, and he had seen a tear fall. He thought her rather
pretty and feminine. With the rapid, constructive reasoning of his sex,
he placed her in the catalogue of good daughters of adoring fathers and
heartless mothers.
"And so," said Mrs. Boucicault, summing up, "you don't think that there
is much hope. He may live a long time of course--but like that--quite
conscious, but helpless. On the other hand, the end might come
suddenly. Isn't that what you mean?"
Dr. Martin fidgeted. He felt tact was wasted on her.
"Those are the two extremes of the case," he admitted. "But there are
intermediary possibilities. He might get back a certain amount of
activity--speech, for instance. It all depends on the treatment. All
that I can advise for the present is that he should not be worried or
alarmed. Get him a long leave--don't talk of retirement--keep him here,
at any rate, for the present. That's the best you can do."
"It is what I intended," Mrs. Boucicault returned deliberately.
Again the little doctor felt himself vaguely upset. It was as though
just as he was bowling smoothly along a familiar road, some one came and
madly jolted him into an uncomfortable rut. He clung obstinately to his
course.
"I can't say how I sympathize with you," he said. "No one can