The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
conventionalists, bread-and-butter priests, preying on each other,
trampling on each other, pushing always forward in pretended knowledge
of the Force that drives them.
But, to the man standing at Tristram's side, it was just a tiresome
business. He was a captain in the native regiment, and was there with a
handful of men to keep order if order could be kept.
"I daresay there'll be a shindy by nightfall," he remarked. "There
always is. Can't think why we put up with it. We shall have a Holy
Place on every inch of the river if we go on encouraging them like
this."
"I suppose they've got to have a religion," Tristram observed absently.
"Well, I wish they'd have a nice, quiet, Sunday-go-to-meeting one like
mine. Besides, it doesn't mean anything to them. It's just their way
of taking a summer holiday."
Tristram laughed and turned away.
"Oh, well, if there are any bones broken, you'll know where to find me.
And keep your eye on Meredith. His religion isn't the quiet,
unobtrusive kind you favour."
"Good old Meredith!" the other man rejoined comfortably.
Tristram made his way along the fringe of the procession back to his own
quarters. When he closed the door he shut out the light and dust, but
not the noise, and for that he was conscious of a vague thankfulness.
The quiet of the place had begun to haunt him. Rather than help him
forget, it reminded him of what was no longer there. He was always
looking round involuntarily for Wickie, peering into his favourite
hiding-place in the shadow, as though the bright brown eyes would have
to answer his appeal, with their solemn, impudent contemplation. Or he
would rap out an order to Ayeshi--and catch himself up only to realize
the heaviness of the silence which answered him.
And there were other things that troubled him--the carved chair where
Sigrid Fersen had sat and looked at him with her disturbing eyes. At
the time, she had seemed unreal, a vivid day-dream, a white glowing
figure of his fancy, and now she was there always, dominating his
consciousness. The place where the picture of the dancer had stood was
empty, too, yet he saw her--the radiant head, with its crown of
vine-leaves, thrown back, the mouth a little open, as though even in
that moment of deliberate pose she breathed the ecstasy of living. That
was what mattered, what made her most wonderful, and the poise of her
body, stereotyped enough and within the compass of a ballet girl, a
thing of Supreme Art.
He turned resolutely away from the empty place, allowing the tumult from
without to pour over his vision of her, and went to his day's work. A
subdivision of his little kitchen formed a combined laboratory and
chemist's shop, and he set about cleaning his instruments, tidying up
the bottles, noting failing supplies. That had been Ayeshi's job. He
thought of Ayeshi as he dipped the instruments into the sterilizer,
wondering vaguely what he was doing, what he thought. Ayeshi, he knew,
had found Boucicault and Wickie's body, and probably had buried the
latter out of sight. He had shielded Tristram. Probably, too, he now
sweated in the Calcutta University with bitter thoughts of a man who had
prated so much of life and half-killed a fellow-creature for the sake of
a dog. The idea did not hurt Tristram. He ached for the comradeship of
the mysterious, romantic boy, but he had no sentimental reverence for
himself. He had never realized that he had ever been so much as an
ideal--idealizing in his own life too ardently to consider himself at
all.
He hummed as he worked. To others, the tune might have been
unrecognizable, for at the best of times his voice had an uneven
quality, and in singing it escaped control altogether. But in his brain
the melody ran smoothly and beautifully. In the midst of it, he heard
the latch of the door fall, and went out with his sleeves rolled up to
meet the newcomer.
The door was wide open and framed her as she stood with her back to the
sun-flooded village street, smiling at him.
"I heard you singing," she said, with subdued mockery. "It was
irresistible."
He strove to answer her, denying the savage, joyous leap of his pulses.
A kind of stupid deliberation settled on his brain. He found himself
wondering whether she had removed her helmet because she knew the light
would be shining on her hair.
"Did you come all the way from Gaya to listen?" he asked at last, with a
brief laugh.
"No, I came for the fulfilment of a promise," she answered. "For my day
out."
"It was a bad--an impossible day to choose."
"It was my last day."
He was silent for an instant. He had tried to adjust his tone to hers
and had failed. Now he ceased to try. He spoke roughly, rather
brutally.
"Then you're leaving Gaya?"
"I don't know--perhaps. It all depends. At any rate, this was my last
chance."
"I don't know how on earth you got here."
"On horseback. I've put my steed with Arabella. You don't mind?"
"It's not safe for you here--on a day like this."
She smiled again, and for the first time he realized something new in
her amusement--a kind of repressed earnestness.
"I'm not afraid. Do you want me to go away?"
"No--you don't know how glad----" He broke off painfully, but she did
not look at him or seem to notice that he had faltered. She bent down
and put something which she had been carrying to the ground. It was a
round yellow something which unrolled itself and developed four short
legs, a stumpy tail, a sharp little head peering out of a mass of
fluffiness, and a strenuous, defiant yap.
"I don't know what it is," Sigrid said gravely. "Perhaps God does--I
don't think any one else could even guess. But I thought you'd like
it."
"I don't understand," he said gently. He picked the little creature up
and rubbed its black nose against his cheek. Then, looking at it, he
burst into a big roar of real amusement. "My word, what an absurdity!"
"Yes, isn't it? And utterly forsaken. Mr. Radcliffe found it somewhere
with a rope and a brickbat round its neck. That's why I thought you'd
like it. At first, I meant to get you something first-rate--a
thoroughbred with a pedigree--and then I thought you'd like this better.
You see, it's a sort of memorial to Wickie. You know what people do
when some one dies whom they love--they build something or endow
something--something the dead person would like. Well, I think Wickie
would like you to adopt that puppy."
He looked at her. There was a real tenderness in her eyes as they met
his. He fancied that her lips were not quite steady.
"If you say so, it must be so," he said. "Wickie loved you. You knew
all about him."
"We knew all about each other." She hesitated and then asked, "You'll
keep my puppy?"
"Rather! It's been horribly lonely--I've wanted someone to give my
scraps to----"
"The best bits! Oh, I know you, Tristram Sahib!"
They both laughed. And suddenly the constraint between them had gone.
He busied himself eagerly, preparing Wickie's old sleeping quarters,
filling the tin feeding-plate with recklessly collected puppy dainties.
"Wickie'll be jolly glad," he said, in his boyish way. "He'd hate me to
be lonely. And it's been lonely without him."
"Yes, I know." She went and stood by his table, playing idly with the
letters which lay heaped upon it. "And there's something I want to ask
in return--a sort of farewell gift. Make this a real day for us
both--give me a good time--humour me. Let us be real with each
other--sincere, just as we really are and feel. A sort of feast of
honesty and fellowship. Will you?"
He stood beside her, looking down at her from his great height.
"Our day of days?"
"The day of our lives."
He flushed deeply under his tan, but he met her eyes steadily. A subtle
change had come into his feeling for her. He could not have explained
it--it was an odd sense of quiet nearness, of understanding. And she,
too, seemed different. At other times she had been in earnest, but not
as now. There had always been that curious detachment in her, as though
she stood apart and laughed at life and herself. Now for a moment, at
least, she had ceased to be an onlooker.
"Very well--we'll make each other a present," he said. "A day off from
the world--something we won't account for to anybody." All at once he
became recklessly happy. "I'll go and collect food," he said. "The pup
can stay here and play _locum tenens_."
He came back presently from the kitchen. His sleeves were still rolled
up, but he carried a basket under one arm and wore his helmet rakishly
at the back of his head. Seeing him, the gravity passed like a mist from
her eyes.
"Oh, you caricature of Hercules!" she jeered at him. "Tell me, have you
ever worn decent clothes in your life?"
"Sometimes. I have to squeeze into regimentals on occasions--or into a
frock-coat. You wouldn't know me--I look a regular freak."
"H'm! and what do you think you look like now?"
"Ariel shouldn't mock at Caliban," he retorted gaily.
"Even when Caliban throws Ariel's portrait out of the window." She
pointed to the empty place on the table. "Have I sunk so far below your
thought of me, Major Tristram?"
He became serious in a moment, but without embarrassment. She had a
sudden pleasure in him as he came and stood beside her--in his bigness,
in his sheer unconsciousness of himself and his strength. She felt
oddly compassionate, too--the awestruck compassion of a Bruennhilde for
a young Siegfried.
"No," he said. "But I was a boy, at least, in thought and feeling--and
you were a boy's dream. Now I am a man and you are a reality. It would
have been an impertinence of me to have kept you."
She shook her head.
"There's more in it than that, Tristram Sahib."
"Yes," he assented gravely. "A great deal more."
They remained together an instant, looking down at the empty place as
though it held a secret significance for them both; then Tristram turned
to the door and made a little grandiloquent bow of introduction. His
eyes had lost their seriousness and laughed at her. "Behold, the day
awaits us!" he said.
They went out side by side into the glowing morning. The stream of
pilgrims had grown denser and filled the street, beating up against the
mud huts on either side and spilling over into the open doorways. And
there was a thrill and fever in the air which gathered force, as at the
cross-roads one stream poured into another and swirled and eddied in the
effort to break a passage. Shrieks and cries, the beating of drums, the
harsh calls of the mendicants, the tramping of thousands of feet, the
swirl of dust which could not rise for the pressure of the struggling
bodies--a mad whirl of sound and colour. Tristram turned to the woman
beside him.
"Do you mind--can you face it?"
She laughed a little, with a repressed exultation.
"This is the tarantella as I danced it--the beginning before the madness
comes--the rising of the tide. Can't you feel it beating in your
blood?"
A fresh band, headed by a swaying banner, pushed its way through the
leaderless crowd, and after that, carried on the shoulders of four
sweating, staggering men, the image of the Triumvirate.
The sun poured down over the roofs and glittered fierily on the three
faces of the god. They had been gilded afresh for the occasion, and the
hand which had laboured at their features had not failed in its simple
craftsmanship. Benevolence, cruelty, and an unutterable serenity stared
over the heads of the tossing multitude. The idol swayed from side to
side in its passage, and, as it caught the rays of the sun, gleamed with
a living, sinister brightness. There were wreaths of faded flowers on
the base of the altar, and there was white dust everywhere. The crowd