The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
catastrophe we human beings were afflicted with--ill-health--and that I
was prepared to master in my own way. But now----"
Mrs. Smithers picked up her pencil and tapped the table with a judicial
air of summing up.
"You're out of sorts, Sigrid. Look at things straight. Two years ago we
started off on a wild-goose chase. I knew it was a wild-goose chase,
but you had to be humoured and so I just let you run. Besides, you had
a grain of horse-sense in you. If you couldn't find what you wanted in
those two years, you'd take the next best thing. Well, you haven't
found it----"
"How do you know? What about the Rajah?"
"Sigrid--your mind wants a good spring-cleaning. It's full of cobwebs
and horrors----"
"Or Major Tristram?"
Mrs. Smithers seized upon her mittens and folded them up into a tight
ball and smacked them viciously down on the table.
"Of course, you're in love with him, the poor benighted, footling ninny.
That's the whole trouble."
"And you're dying for me to marry him. That's why you're always
insulting him."
She moved away from Mrs. Smithers's side and stood at the open window
looking out on to the garden, her hand to her cheek in her favourite
attitude of meditation. "Yes, I am in love with him in a superficial
sort of way. It's his absurdity, his unreality, his utterly impossible
conception of life. And his love of me. Just as absurd as the rest of
him. A fantasia. Two years' worship of a woman he saw dancing for ten
minutes before a vulgar, gaping, unseeing mob! Think of it. It's sheer
worship, Smithy. He sees something miraculous--divine in me. That's the
wonderful part of him. He's right. He's gone right through me to what
is divine--my art. He saw me dance--he was just a country-bumpkin who
didn't know Beethoven from Bizet--and he didn't worry about my beauty or
the shape of my limbs, or wonder whether my pearls were real or who gave
them to me. He saw God in me. I knew that when I found my photograph
on his table. In a kind of flash. It wasn't a silly, stage-door
infatuation. It was real--a perfect understanding." She threw out her
arms with a gesture of freedom, of spiritual expansion. "Oh, it tasted
good, that understanding. I couldn't have done less than love him." She
seemed to sink into a deep, brooding contentment, and Mrs. Smithers did
not move or speak. "But I shan't marry him. I am not young any longer.
I have built my house and have lived in it too long. I need space and
splendour, magnificence. I should stifle in his hovel. I am no
sensualist. I belong to the best of the old Greeks. No vulgar display
of wealth, no ugliness of poverty--but absolute Beauty--that's my
religion--the most austere religion of the world. He understands, but
he cannot follow. He doesn't know it, but he has chosen the road of the
Galilean--not the Galilean of the Cross, but the simple man who loved
the sparrows and the lilies--and I follow Diana and Apollo----" She
broke off with a sigh and turned away. "So that's the end of that. We
shall pack our trunks, and one day it will be just an episode. But
today--don't let any one worry me today, Smithy. There's some one coming
up the drive now. Tell them I'm ill--anything--only don't let them
worry me----"
She touched the old cheek with her lips, and then soundlessly, like a
flash of pale light, had vanished.
Mrs. Smithers unfolded her mittens and put them on. Apparently unmoved,
she was about to resume her offensive against her enemy, when Mary
Compton made her appearance on the balcony. Whereupon Mrs. Smithers
postponed her attack in order to settle first with the intruder. Her
manner, however, was almost gracious. She liked Mrs. Compton. She
liked her especially this afternoon because she was wearing one of
Sigrid's frocks--by no means an old one--which Mrs. Smithers had altered
with her own hands. This detail formed an unbreakable link of affection
and fraternity.
Mrs. Compton did not wait for an invitation. She dropped into the
nearest chair, discarded her garden hat, and flung her parasol on the
floor, proceeding thereafter to ruffle her grey-threaded curly hair with
an exasperated hand.
"Oh, the heat! Smithy, for pity's sake, don't tell me I've faced it for
nothing. Sigrid's in?"
"She's in, Mrs. Compton, but she's not at home."
"Not even for me?"
"Not for a living soul."
"She's--she's not ill?"
"Not that I know of." She shot a glance at Mrs. Compton's crestfallen
countenance, and relaxed her official attitude. "You can have a cup of
tea if you like."
Mrs. Compton laughed.
"Well, it's a poor substitute, but I'll take it. I should expire on
your doorstep if you didn't give me something to revive me. I met that
brute of a Barclay on the road and he offered me a lift. The mere
thought of it will keep me on the frazzle for days. I only hope he
isn't coming here."
"He'd better not," Mrs. Smithers observed, with grim significance.
There was a moment's silence, and then she jerked her head in the
direction of the curtained doorway. "It's the heat," she explained.
"It's just wearing her to ribbons. The Lord be praised, we shall be
going back to civilization soon."
Mrs. Compton sat bolt upright, red with consternation.
"She's not going back to England?"
"I hope so, I'm sure."
"It's--it's an engagement, I suppose?"
"H'm, a sort of one."
"Smithy--and it's just as though she only arrived yesterday. What shall
I do? Everything will be nothing without her. What did she come for?
Just to make us all hate each other, just to show us what a silly,
colourless world we live in? Smithy, this means a divorce for me. I
shall desert Archie. I shall live at stage-doors and spend my fortune
on front seats in the pit. I shall see her dance at last----"
The very poignant feeling which underlay her desperate humour touched
Mrs. Smithers to the quick. At all times she was inclined to treat
facetiousness seriously, most of life's jokes having been made at her
expense, and she saw more of Mary Compton's grief than the latter knew.
"My dear, don't you do nothing silly. You wouldn't see her dance."
"In London."
"No."
"In Paris, then----"
"Not in Paris--nowhere."
"But, Smithy----"
"If she did, she'd----" Mrs. Smithers took her tongue between her
teeth. She leant across the table, her stiff old body quivering with
menace. "Don't you breathe a word--don't you let on--if you do,
I'll--I'll----"
What Mrs. Smithers would or would not have done Mrs. Compton never knew.
In a state of uncomprehending consternation, she almost welcomed the
diversion created by the entry of a frightened-looking servant.
"Mem-Sahib--if you please, Mem-Sahib----"
His announcement was also lost. He was pushed roughly aside and James
Barclay entered. At sight of his tall, perfectly clad figure Mrs.
Smithers was on her feet, and for a moment Mrs. Compton believed she
intended a personal assault--a belief which Barclay himself appeared to
share, for his attitude became more deferential though not less
resolute. He bowed gravely to his opponent, including Mrs. Compton in
the greeting. Mrs. Compton ignored him.
"I am sorry to be forced to intrude in this way," he began with a
certain dignity. "It seems to be fated that I should have to burgle my
entry. But I was practically certain that an ordinary appeal for
admission would be ignored. So I just followed on your butler's heels.
May I speak to Miss Fersen?"
Mrs. Smithers drew a deep breath of indignation.
"No, you may not. She's not seeing any one--much less you--you
blackguard----"
Mrs. Compton jumped at the sheer vigour and audacity of the attack, and
then, as she saw Barclay's face, was conscious of a pang of the
half-angry pity which he had caused her once before. A peculiar pallor
showed under his olive skin. He was no longer smiling, and his eyes had
a sick, stricken look like that of an animal badly hurt. The next minute
he was himself again, cool, resolute, without that insolence which
stamped most of his actions as weak and fundamentally diffident.
"I am sorry you think of me like that, Mrs. Smithers, but I won't argue
about it. I must see Miss Fersen----"
"Do you want me to throw you out with my own hands?"
"No, I don't," he returned, with perfect gravity. "All I ask of you is
to give Miss Fersen this letter. It was written in case she refused to
see me. It is a business matter."
Mrs. Smithers wavered, obviously nonplussed by the man's quiet
resolution. In despair, she appealed to Mrs. Compton.
"What shall I do with him?"
Mrs. Compton stared out into the garden.
"You'd better take the letter, hadn't you? It gives Sigrid a chance to
decide for herself."
"Oh, very well." She snatched the letter from Barclay's hands and made
her exit with what sounded like the challenging snort of an old
war-horse. Barclay maintained his position quietly. He made no effort
to speak to Mrs. Compton, who continued to ignore him. But, without
knowing it, his restraint began to trouble her, and she resorted to the
mannerism of stage heroes when confronted by the villain and a painful
situation. She opened a silver case on the table beside her, selected a
cigarette, and began to smoke with an insulting satisfaction. Had
Barclay offered her the lighter which she was certain he possessed, she
felt that she would have infallibly struck him; but he stood stroking
his moustache, and apparently as unconscious of her as she pretended to
be of him. The silence became intolerable. Furiously conscious that he
had beaten her on her own ground, she got up and went out on to the
balcony, only to realize with increased annoyance that she had been
beaten by a second. Mrs. Smithers had returned. She did not look at
Barclay, and addressed her message to the opposite wall.
"You can go in," she said.
He bowed, showing no sign of elation or surprise, and the door closed
behind him. Mary Compton returned, and the two women busied themselves
with the tea-things which had been brought in, paying the function more
intent interest than was usual. They were both nervous. For all Mrs.
Smithers's excessive clatter, they could hear voices, muffled and
continuous, and something in the sound paralysed their initiative.
Neither wished to listen, but they found nothing with which to cover
their compulsory attention. When Mrs. Smithers spoke at last it was
with a breathless tremulousness.
"I don't know what Sigrid did it for," she said. "She didn't want to
see any one, and now this creature comes along. Just because he met her
once at some reception he'd managed to wriggle himself into--she can be
so idiotically good-natured--it was a begging letter, I'm sure: the
nasty, cadging blackamoor."
Mrs. Compton did not respond directly. She had what, for all men say,
is a quality equally rare in both sexes, a profound reverence for the
reticences and secrets of her friends, and she wished to avoid the
confidences which might be hovering on Mrs. Smithers's unsteady lips.
"I hate meeting that man," she said, by way of an answer. "He frightens
me. I always think of him as an English sin come home to roost--a bird
of ill-omen, not necessarily bad, just foredoomed to evil. I wish he
hadn't come to Gaya."
"I wish he'd leave Sigrid alone," Mrs. Smithers muttered.
Mary Compton knew now that Barclay had been at the dak-bungalow before,
and wished she did not know. The knowledge troubled her, increasing an
inexplicable uneasiness. Something was going on in that next room.
Though she could not and would not have heard the words, the voices
persisted in attaining her consciousness. Their tone was neither angry
nor excited, but intensely earnest. Business? What business could James