The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
Barclay have with a woman he scarcely knew? She could not avoid the
question. Then came a silence infinitely worse than the voices--it was
so sudden and prolonged.
Mary Compton became almost panic-stricken in her effort to escape from
the fascination of that silence. She turned her attention to Mrs.
Smithers, who had deserted her tea and gone back to her figures.
"Are you drawing patterns?" she asked hurriedly. Mrs. Smithers shook her
head.
"Sums," she explained. "Never could do them even in me board-school
days, and that's some time ago. Are you any good?"
"I wrestle with accounts once a week--not successfully. But that's not
the fault of my arithmetic. It's Archie's pay. Can I help?"
Mrs. Smithers sat back and folded her hands.
"What I'm trying to find out," she began, "is, what income would one
have if one had two thousand pounds?"
"It depends on the rate of interest."
"What rate of interest can one have?"
"Well, three-and-a-half per cent. if you're rich, and five per cent. if
you're poor. If one hasn't much, it's a case of sink or swim."
"Let's split the difference--say, four per cent. Here--you can have the
pencil----"
Mrs. Compton laughed.
"I can manage that in my head. Eighty pounds would be about your
income."
"Lawks a-mercy!" said Mrs. Smithers under her breath. She brooded over
this information for a minute, in which her companion became aware that
Sigrid was speaking again--very quietly. If she had spoken angrily Mary
Compton would not have felt her heart beating against her ribs in an
absurd, horrible excitement. "It's amazing what a little a lot of money
is," Mrs. Smithers philosophized gloomily. "I've done a powerful lot of
saving, and two thousand pounds seems a powerful lot to have saved, but
what's eighty pounds a year? A mere drop in an ocean. One couldn't keep
oneself in boots and shoes with it."
Mrs. Compton stared. Mrs. Smithers's elastic-sided foot-gear did not
suggest eighty pounds' expenditure, or anything like it.
"No--I suppose not," she ventured.
"And two thousand pounds, for that matter," Mrs. Smithers continued,
with increased contempt. "What's the good of that? One couldn't live
decently for six months on it."
"I could," Mrs. Compton assured her with a smouldering twinkle in her
bright eyes; "but, of course, I'm different. I say, Smithy, are you
going on the bust--painting Gaya red and that sort of thing? Do include
me in the invitation if you are. I'd just love to do something
outrageous." But Mrs. Smithers remained coldly unresponsive, and she
got up with a sigh of discomfort. "Well, I'm off. I can't stand that
man's voice, and I don't want to see him again. Tell Sigrid I've been,
and implore her to come round to dinner. Archie and I are bored stiff
with each other." She paused on the edge of the verandah, driving the
point of her parasol in between the flags and becoming violently slangy.
"I say, Smithy dear, you know I look upon you as a sort of guardian
angel to Sigrid. I just wanted to say--if there's anything wrong--any
one who's in need of a kicking or--or anything of that kind--or, in
fact, if Sigrid wants a body-guard physically or otherwise--just drop us
the wink. Archie and I are on."
She was blushing hotly. Mrs. Smithers cleared her throat.
"I shall certainly drop you the wink," she said, in her best manner.
Mrs. Compton nodded, opened her parasol, and set out to face the stretch
of hot road back to her own bungalow.
Ten minutes later the door between the two rooms opened. Mrs. Smithers
did not so much as look at Barclay, her only intimation that she
recognized his passing being a sudden stiffening of her long back.
Barclay bowed to her, still very calm and unchallenging, and went out.
Mrs. Smithers waited until she heard the crunch of wheels fade along the
drive, and then sailed indignantly into the next room. She was
trembling a little and desperately anxious to appear merely angry.
"I can't think how you did it, Sigrid. There was Mrs. Compton wanting
to see you, and instead you talked and talked to that nasty half-caste.
I was ashamed--I was really--"
She stopped, at the end of artificial fury, but still trembling. Sigrid
stood by her writing-table. A long beam of evening sunshine rested
lightly and lovingly on her. In her delicate shaded gown, her slender
body tensely still and living, she looked like a huge butterfly, wings
half-spread, poised for flight. Her head was bent a little, and she
still held Barclay's letter in her hands.
"I'm sorry, Smithy. It was important. It seems there's a kind of
matrimonial epidemic in Gaya. He has asked me to marry him."
Mrs. Smithers burst into loud and uncontrolled laughter.
"I shouldn't have thought it would have taken you all that time to give
him his answer--the creature----"
"I didn't give him an answer. I didn't know--I've got to think things
over."
"Sigrid----"
It grew very still. Mrs. Smithers's withered hands fluttered up to her
breast and rested there in a helpless weakness. Sigrid began to tear
the letter across and across.
"Why are you so upset, Smithy? After all, it's just what we
planned--just what you wanted. He's rich--very rich. He was explaining
to me how rich. And I need money--a great deal of it--to live and die
beautifully----"
"Sigrid!" The cry snapped the palsy which had laid itself on Mrs.
Smithers's tongue. She came out of her weakness strong and fierce and
outraged. It did not matter that her "h's" flew to the winds. There
was nothing comic in her as she stood there, stemming the disaster with
her utter disbelief. "You can't mean it--it would be a wicked, wicked
thing. It would be a crime--a dirty crime--you'd be selling
yourself--yes, I shall say it, Sigrid. I've stood by you through thick
and thin, I 'ave; I've been like a dog that's never questioned, never
thought if what you did was right or wrong--I've licked your hand
through everything--but you'd be no better than--than a woman on the
streets----"
"Be silent!"
"I won't. This isn't what we planned. It's different. I'll fight you,
Sigrid. I'll fight you every inch. I've got my share in you--I won't
'ave it spoiled and moiled. I won't." She paused an instant, drawing
her breath deep and strong. "I'd kill 'im first," she said, between her
teeth.
Sigrid half turned. Her face looked small and white, as though
something withering had passed over it. The wry, unsteady smile at the
corners of her blue-shadowed lips was like light on something dead.
"Not if I didn't wish it, Smithy. I daresay I shan't do it--I don't
know yet; but, in any case, you can't get away--you'll lick my hand, as
you call it, to the very end."
They eyed each other like enemies, battling will against will. The old
woman wavered piteously.
"Sigrid, my dear--'ave pity--just because it's true--because I can't
fight you--because I belong to you--'ave pity on yourself. Don't do it,
my dear, don't do it, Sigrid. I've got a bit of money saved. You can
'ave it--every penny of it. I don't want it. It's your money--what
you've given me. An old woman like me doesn't want much. Take it,
Sigrid; it'll keep you for a bit, until--until----"
"It won't do, Smithy--I want money--a great deal of money. It costs so
much to live magnificently--" She spoke with great slowness and
deliberation. Suddenly she turned. There was a kind of panic in her
eyes. "Life's not got to be too strong for me--I've got to go on as I
will--stick to me!"
A wave of delicate, youthful colour swept up into Mrs. Smithers's
cheeks. Her whole life, lived selflessly, loyally, in another's
splendour culminated in this moment--in this appeal. She held out her
arms, holding the half-yielding half-defiant figure in an embrace which
challenged heaven and earth.
"As though I shouldn't" she muttered fiercely. "My dear, as though I
shouldn't----"
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*THE FEAST OF SIVA*
They came, so it seemed, from all the corners of India--from the east
and west, north and south--thin streams of life trickling across the
fields and down the mountain sides, till they converged in a broad,
sluggish river which poured ceaselessly, irresistibly towards the place
of its dreams and prayers. They had appeared miraculously, as though at
a signal they had sprung up on the edge of the horizon and began their
pilgrimage, as a conquering army bears down from all sides on a helpless
citadel. But in reality they knew nothing of each other, and there was
no order in their advance. Some had come from the neighbouring
villages, some from villages hundreds of miles away. Some had packed up
with wife, child, and household gods the night before--some many months
ago. They had come over the mountains, down lonely passes, through wild
tracts of country where dangerous and desperate marauders, man and
beast, preyed on their defencelessness. They had borne hunger and thirst
and much sickness. Many of them had dropped by the way. But there had
been no lamentation, no turning back. They had no interest in each
other. Humanity, brotherhood, a common faith--these things were without
meaning for them. Yet, where danger threatened, little groups had
herded together, driven by fear and instinct rooted deep in the
trackless jungle of humanity's beginnings. They knew no pity. A pilgrim
died by the roadside, and they looked at him indifferently, as at a
commonplace, and he himself watched them pass with patient, unexpectant
resignation. Suffering and death were part of the scheme of things.
They lived under the shadow of a Juggernaut, and today it was this man's
turn to go under, tomorrow another's. They had no hope and no clear
faith. Their imaginations could not conjure up much to hope for--a
child perhaps, the fulfilment of a curse against a neighbour, sufficient
harvest--and there were so many gods. And yet they came, mile after
mile, footsore and hungry, gravely or passionately intent on a mystic
goal whose significance they could not formulate even to themselves.
The gods knew, and the priests perhaps; but the gods were silent in
these days, and the priests kept their counsel.
Tristram stood on the outskirts of the village and watched them come
down through the glory of the sunrise. They rolled past him in a cloud
of dust and a blare of harsh-throated instruments and the rattle of
native drums. The bright morning rays picked out a hundred glints of
colour from among them--here, a gay woman's _chudder_, there a rich
_puggri_, or the glitter of gold ornaments, carried secretly and at
great risk through the long journey, or the saffron robe of a holy man.
All the stages of growth and decay were there--Youth restraining its
steps to the halting measure of age, rags and tatters and gaudy finery,
gentle, mysterious-eyed women, lithe-limbed boys and half-naked,
pot-bellied babies rolling bow-legged at their parents' side, comic as
young puppies. Last of all, grey-bearded and scarcely human, a fakir
crawling on hands and knees through the rising dust. So his oath bound
him. Years ago, he had started out on this pilgrimage. Now the end was
in sight. He glanced up as he passed, but his face was without
expression. Perhaps in those years he had reached his
goal--indifference, Nirvana, where there is neither desire nor hope,
pain nor happiness.
An odd misery laid hold of Tristram as he watched them. It was a pageant
of life, all humanity struggling on through the heat and turmoil of
years, driven by a secret, fathomless impulse, obeying the behests of
self-created gods, seeking a self-created goal out of the desperate need
of their hearts. And tricksters and men of God, fanatics,