The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
it in blood and sweat if needs must. When I've money enough to buy up
Gaya, Gaya will accept me fast enough."
Tristram shook his head.
"You said just now that we behaved as though we were playing a big
game," he said. "You may be right. And good sportsmen can't be
bought."
"Can't they? Well, we'll see. Meantime, if there's a word of sincerity
in all you've said, either come in with me or keep out of my way. I can
make you a rich man, Tristram; don't forget that."
"You're asking me to visit the sins of your father and mine on to
thousands of these luckless people."
"Put it that way if you like. I'm going forward, whatever you do."
"Then I shall fight you with every atom of influence and power I have."
Barclay tore at his horse's mouth, dragging the animal round on its
haunches so that he faced Tristram. Both men were breathing heavily as
though the struggle between them had become a physical one. Barclay
thrilled with a savage satisfaction as he saw that the man before him
was as shaken as himself, black-browed, hot-eyed, with a mouth set like
a vice behind the short beard.
"Then I'll smash you, Tristram--I've got reason enough to hate you
without that--you've got everything--now I'll smash you--I can and I
will----"
Suddenly Tristram's face relaxed. He broke into a big unaffected laugh.
"We're like two villains out of old Adelphi melodrama," he said. "We've
made each other unacceptable offers and threatened each other, and now I
suppose it's to be a fight to the finish."
Barclay nodded. The laugh had been more bitter than a blow. He turned
his head away so that Tristram should not see the treacherous weakness
of his mouth. Then with a muttered exclamation that was half a curse,
half a sob of ungovernable passion, he gave his trembling mare her head
and galloped recklessly back the way he had come.
Tristram looked after him until Arabella, of her own accord, resumed her
patient amble towards Heerut. The darkness began its race over the
plain and swept up the little shadows of the field workers as a wave
sweeps up driftwood. They came together silently; in a weary, dejected
stream resumed their trudge along the rough tracts, bearing Tristram on
his gaunt steed in their midst like the high effigy of a god. Thus they
brought him to the doors of his hut and there left him, each man
creeping in the same ghostly silence to his own hovel.
Owen Meredith was seated at Tristram's carved table, reading by the
light of an oil-lamp. Tristram had seen the reflection beneath the
ill-fitting doorway, but first had settled Arabella for the night,
talking cheerily to her and lingering over his task as though
deliberately avoiding the moment when he should meet his unknown
visitor. Now seeing Meredith, his face expressed something akin to
relief. The two men greeted each other quietly, sincerely, but without
effusion. They were men of equal moral rank but of a different
spiritual race. They respected each other, but real intimacy was not
possible between them.
"I thought you wouldn't mind my dropping in on you like this," Meredith
said. "I've been doing a round of the villages, and it was too late to
go on. Besides, I was dog-tired. I daresay that's my real reason." He
closed his pocket Bible as he spoke and laid his hand on it. He had not
spoken the whole truth, but of that fact he was not even dimly
conscious. He told himself that it was only right to look in on this
lonely man. Tristram nodded absently.
"I'm jolly glad to see you. I've got a shakedown for visitors. You
won't mind eating off one plate, will you?"
"Thankful to eat anything."
"That's good." He began to rummage in his little kitchen at the back of
the hut and returned presently with the plate and some preserves. "It's
not much," he apologized ruefully. "I always forget about food until
I'm hungry. And then I want to kick myself."
"I expect we'll manage. You're all alone now."
"Yes. No indoor patients. It's quite queer not having a paw or a wing
to bandage up."
"You've never found poor Wickie."
The man seemed to shrink a little.
"No. I guess if the next life allows it, he's not far off, poor old
chap. He wouldn't be happy in Paradise without me."
Meredith winced. It was the more painful to him because Tristram was
obviously quite serious. To Meredith he seemed like a big,
unconsciously blasphemous child.
"And Ayeshi--you must miss him, too."
"Yes." The answer sounded curt, but Meredith persisted. He had the
feeling that, though Gaya's suspicions had been kept quiet for
Tristram's sake, the latter knew more than he betrayed.
"It was rather queer of him, the way he went off in the middle of your
illness. You thought he was so devoted."
"He was." Tristram spread out an old newspaper over the table. "You
got the Rajah to subscribe for his education. Well, I suppose he's gone
to be educated. It's what you wanted."
"I didn't expect him to go when he did."
"He had good reason. I trust Ayeshi. But what your education will make
of him Heaven knows. A rotten, dissatisfied little clerk in a
Government office, I suppose. A hundred years ago he would have been a
king."
Meredith sighed wearily.
"I know you resented my interference. I've got to do what I can in my
own way, Tristram."
"I know. But I wish you'd make Christians of our own people first. If
you did that thoroughly, you'd find my villagers would come of
themselves. They hear a lot about Christianity. They don't see much of
it."
Meredith's eyes flashed in answer. He leant forward across the table
with his hand clenched on the black-bound Bible.
"You are quite right, Tristram," he said, with restrained passion. "We
have failed badly hitherto. We have acted like cowards, whispering and
murmuring of our religion as though we were half-ashamed of it. Who can
believe in cowards? This people has got to see Christianity as the
Romans saw it, apparent weakness pitted against the majority and
triumphant. They have got to see what our faith means to us. Out here
we are the early Christians. We must pass through the same ordeals, we
must pay the same price. Therein lies our only hope of salvation, for
ourselves, for these, our brethren for whose souls we are responsible to
God."
"I don't know much about their souls," Tristram returned quietly. "I'm
responsible for their bodies. It's quite enough. What do you mean to
do?"
Meredith threw back his square head. There was something vivid and
dominating about his personality at that moment which lifted mere
fanatical rhetoric to real grandeur. In some such spirit Luther might
have flung down his immortal challenge.
"Testify to my faith before Caesar, Tristram."
"And who is Caesar?"
"The people. When they go down to the river to worship their gods--at
the Feast of Siva----"
Tristram got up, pushing his food from him.
"You must be mad," he said hotly. "What should we do, civilized though
we are, if at Easter some Brahmin insulted Christ from our altar?"
Meredith met him without flinching.
"Yours is the wretched toleration of our age," he said. "There can be no
righteous toleration of lies and wickedness."
"You know what will happen? There'll be rioting--bloodshed----"
"Possibly. I believe it to be necessary. I don't shrink from it."
"That's good of you." Tristram ruffled his shock of reddish hair in a
fit of angry humour. "What the rest of your victims feel about it
doesn't matter, of course. Martyrs you'd call them. They wouldn't be
martyrs. If a horde of infuriated fanatics descend on Gaya, it will be a
slaughter stage-managed and engineered by yourself. You and your like
would be chucked out of India, and serve you right. Gaya doesn't want
to testify to its faith. I doubt if it knows what its faith is." He
stalked over to the open door with his back to Meredith. "Well, I shall
warn the authorities," he finished.
There was a silence. Meredith considered his companion with a gradual
relaxation of his intensity. He got up at last and laid his hand on
Tristram's broad shoulder. There was something shy and uncertain in his
manner, like a school-boy who has been caught in heroics.
"You won't need to inform the authorities," he said. "I dare say I'm a
pompous idiot. There won't be any slaughter. We're miles from Gaya.
Their enthusiasm won't carry them that far. They'll duck me, and
that'll be about the extent of it."
Tristram looked down at the dark eager face, and, catching the lurking
humour in Meredith's eyes, laughed.
"Oh, well, if only you and I are going to be massacred, it's of no
consequence whatever," he said. "There, man, finish your supper!"
But he himself left his food untouched. He went over to a little
roughly carved cabinet and produced a tobacco jar and an old
disreputable pipe. Meredith looked away from him, playing
absent-mindedly with the knife which formed Tristram's dinner-service.
His pulses had begun to beat faster. He was dimly aware now that he had
come to Heerut with a purpose that he had cherished secretly and
painfully for many months past.
"I suppose you've not seen Boucicault lately?" he asked suddenly.
Tristram did not answer at once. He seemed absorbed in the accurate
filling of his pipe-bowl.
"Yes," he said, at last. "I saw him today."
"Any change?"
"None. I'm beginning to be afraid there never will be."
"Poor Anne!" Meredith said, scarcely above a breath.
Tristram came over to the table and sat down on the edge. He lit his
pipe, and Meredith, alert now for every guiding sign, saw that the hand
with the match shook.
"Why 'poor Anne'? It's been ghastly, of course--but then, what was her
life like before? At least, there's no one to cow the spirit out of
her. She's free."
"You don't understand Anne. I've known her so long. Perhaps, as a
clergyman, I had a deeper insight into her mind. Boucicault terrified
her, but she loved him. It seems odd, doesn't it, but at the bottom he
was a kind of hero to her. She thought of him as he once was--Tiger
Sahib--a daring, handsome leader of men. That's what's uppermost in her
now. Everything else is forgotten and forgiven. So you can see for
yourself what she is suffering. It's the pitiableness of the man's utter
helplessness in the face of her mother's amazing attitude----"
Tristram swung himself off the table and began to pace the room with
long, impatient strides. Meredith watched him unceasingly.
"I approve of Mrs. Boucicault's attitude," Tristram said, in angry
challenge.
"A great many people do. They think she's well rid of a ruffian. But,
as I've told you, Anne loved him. She has a rare and wonderful spirit,
Tristram, and she has forgiven. Her mother's flaunted happiness and
frivolity were unbearable. She fled from it, and now she's longing for
her father. She hasn't a penny of her own. It's a ghastly situation.
The devil who did for Boucicault did for Anne."
Tristram stopped short. He was staring down at his pipe, which had gone
out.
"You're confoundedly sure of things," he said brutally. "You know her so
well. Why don't you marry her?"
"I asked her to marry me two months ago," was the answer. Meredith's
hands were clasped on the table in an attitude which, but for his level
voice and composed features, would have suggested an almost intolerable
suffering. "She wouldn't have me, Tristram."
"I don't wonder," with a rough laugh. "What woman would care to share
your life or mine?"
"You don't understand--it wasn't that. She'd be glad and proud to go
into the desert with the man she loved. I wasn't the man. That's all."
He was breathing thickly, and suddenly he got up with a gesture that