The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
surged closer, holding up its hands to it in greeting. Their lifted
faces showed neither reverence, nor fear, nor hope, but a kind of frenzy
seeking its outlet.
Slowly, triumphantly, the image rocked on its way towards the river, a
spot of sullen fire on the breast of an ever-changing sea of colour.
Like a dangerous backwash, the mob closed in, sweeping it forward and
leaving behind a sudden relaxation--a breaking-up of the sea into a
hundred drifting particles. It was the passing of a mad dream. The sun
blazed on to the peaceful bustle. The note of frenzy died down. The
old fakir had crawled on his knees into the shade and held out his
wooden bowl, bleating monotonously.
"Alakh! Alakh!"
A merchant came out from his hiding-place in a cowshed and exhibited his
wares. The hovel opposite revealed itself as a cook-shop, where the
hungry could buy pulse-puffs and dough-cakes and sweets of a hundred
kinds. A sherbet-seller pitched his tent a few doors lower down and
clinked his coloured glasses alluringly. An ascetic, with the face of a
mediaeval saint, sold gilt-papered corks from champagne bottles as
sacred charms of marvellous efficacy.
Sigrid Fersen looked up into her companion's face and they both laughed,
scarcely knowing why, but swept away by a childish pleasure in the
swiftness of the change, in the naive _volte face_ of these simple folk,
who a minute before had trampled upon each other in a paroxysm of
religious frenzy and now wandered wide-eyed and eager amidst all these
bewildering fascinations.
And perhaps, as the deep secret source of their pleasure, was the
knowledge that the day was young and wholly theirs.
"I want to buy something," she said gaily. "Why should we be superior?
It's our feast, too. And who knows if their values are not as good as
ours? if their faith in champagne corks isn't as effective as our
superstitious belief in the mysterious horrors compounded by an
honourable Dakktar Sahib!" She shot him a demure, malicious glance.
"Come, I am going to buy recklessly!"
A bright-eyed boy beckoned them to the tray behind which he watched
cross-legged and eager, like a handsome, bewitching spider. It was not
in vain that he had bright eyes or that he sold wares dear to the hearts
of women. The merchant in cheap stuffs from Manchester, and even the
sherbet-seller, watched him sourly as the soft-footed, timid women
hovered about him pricing his coveted treasures.
Now he looked up, showing his white teeth in a smile of innocent
welcome.
"Gifts for the Mem-Sahib--and gifts for him whom Mem-Sahib loves."
Sigrid knelt down in the dust beside his tray, and rummaged through the
medley of his stock. Ear-rings, bracelets, amulets, glass beads, vulgar
trophies of Western taste--paste diamond brooches stuck on cardboard and
labelled rolled gold--these last displayed with almost passionate pride,
and here and there a scornfully suppressed relic of days when Manchester
and Birmingham were not. Tristram stood beside her and watched her. He
had the feeling that all this had happened before, years ago, and that
this companionship of a day was just a link in a long, unbroken chain of
days. It was so simple, so natural. He felt no constraint, scarcely any
excitement, just an all-pervading peace. They had always known each
other, always shared their days, their thoughts, and desires. He did
not think about it. It filled his senses with a well-being, a rare and
exquisite content.
She gave an exclamation and held up something in the palm of her little
hand. He took it from her. It was a bracelet made of seven threads of
seven different colours and bound with a silver clasp. The boy-merchant
shrugged scornfully.
"It is nothing--nothing, Mem-Sahib."
"Do you remember?" she asked.
He nodded--not looking at her now.
"The Rani Kurnavati----"
"Yes--that night when we sat by the moonlight and Ayeshi told us her
story----" She laid an extravagant sum on the tray. "There, that is
all I want."
The amazed merchant gasped his blessings after her. She walked on,
threading her way through the aimless crowd, inspecting her purchase
with a thoughtful pleasure.
"I wanted to give it you," Tristram protested, aggrievedly.
"And I didn't want you to," she retorted. "You have given me enough,
Major Tristram."
Her solemn reversion to his title amused him. He watched her smilingly
as she snapped the bracelet about her wrist.
"What have I given you?"
"The cup. Have you forgotten? I was so miserable because I forgot to
thank you. I'd never been remorseful in my life before, but I was
remorseful about that."
"I'm sorry. Remorse is ghastly. And I hadn't expected thanks."
"You didn't expect to live. Ought I to give the cup back?"
"No."
"But your mother----?"
"I have told her," he said gravely.
They reached the confines of the village. The high grass had been
trampled down under the passing of a monstrous animal. Through the
dazzling blaze of sunlight they could see a black mass swarming along
the banks, a huge, writhing octopus whose tentacles groped towards the
temple with greedy, hurrying persistency. And in the midst of it, like
a restless, menacing eye, the Triumvirate flashed backwards and forwards
in evil, delirious triumph.
"They're bringing up their offerings now," Tristram said, rather grimly.
"The Snake God and his retinue will have food enough for months to come.
It's a queer thing--no one has seen these serpents in the memory of man,
and yet it's true enough that native sceptics who have ventured inside
the jungle have either never returned or come out raving madmen. There
is madness connected with the whole thing--a kind of delirium which we
English don't understand. It's in their blood, just as it's in the
blood of some families to respond to supernatural influences which
others don't even feel. Anyhow, we'd better keep clear of them today."
"I have made my plan," she answered, with sedate authority.
He knew now where she was going. They made their way in silence down
the length of the river, touching the monster only there where its
tentacles reached up to the temple, and came at last to the
green-shadowed backwater. Tristram held aside the branches of the trees
for her to pass through, and their eyes met.
"Isn't this a fitting place to celebrate our day?" she asked, "--here,
where a certain romantic Hermit beheld a vision and was not afraid?"
"Visions are not terrifying," he answered.
"But the reality----?"
She did not seem to expect an answer. The boughs of the trees had swung
back into their place. They stood together at the edge of the water,
looking down into its tangled depths, listening to the silence. Nothing
had changed. It was as though time had fallen asleep, and they were
still living in that first day of their meeting. The dense foliage of
the trees walled them in from the heat and glare and tumult. The dull
murmur that came to them from time to time seemed no more than the
soughing of a rising wind. The peace of it laid itself upon their
senses like a cooling hand.
They sat down in the fresh grass, talking softly and only a little,
fearing to disturb the sleeping spirit of the place. Tristram unpacked
his basket and produced the day's provisions, over which they laughed
subduedly. It appeared that he was cook as well as doctor, and she made
wry faces over the probable ingredients of his dough-cakes. For her
humour had lost its keenness and had become very young and a little
tremulous. He responded loyally and easily. There was no constraint
between them, no sense of trouble. They were comrades together,
responding light-heartedly to the appeal of the sunlight, and the
flowers burning brightly in the cool shadows. They did not know as yet
that their real life lay beneath the surface of that easy comradeship in
a great stillness where their own voices did not penetrate.
But that stillness mastered them at last, flowing quietly and mightily
over their broken, careless talk. The sunlight, falling aslant through
the trees touched the green stem of a high palm and began its upward
journey. Tristram watched it. He had slipped lower down the bank, where
he could see his own bulk shadowed darkly in the water and the pale,
ghostly reflection of the woman behind him. At first, he had lain full
length on his elbow looking at her frankly, fearlessly, as she sat above
him, her hands clasped about her knees, her fair small head bent a
little from the light, so that her eyes seemed dark and more serious
than her lips. Now he had turned away from her and watched the passing
of the sunbeam. A kind of panic had gripped him. The time was passing.
He had begun to realize dimly that what they had set out to do was
impossible--a defiance of the law of life. A day cannot be set apart
from its fellows either for joy or sorrow. It is bound up with them by
whatever menace or promise they hold, and the menace of yesterday and
tomorrow touched him like the breath of a chill wind.
He pointed out on to the water and saw that his hand shook. His pulses
had begun to beat heavily, thickly.
"The lotus-flower has gone," he said.
"It is dead. It's so long ago--it seems only yesterday to us. Do you
remember asking me if I wanted it? You were glad because I let it live
out its life."
"How did you know that?"
"I knew that you loved living things."
"Isn't that a love common to us all?"
She gave a short laugh out of which the joyful irresponsibility had
died.
"Men love ideas--the fetishes of their intellects. Or they love their
cabbage-patch, or their country. Life and humanity are nothing to the
majority. But you cared--for everything." It was a long time before
she spoke again, and then her voice had changed. It sounded
languid--indifferent. "It must be terrible to kill," she said.
He stirred, drawing himself up.
"The unforgettable sin," he said.
"Unforgettable? Have you ever known any one who had killed----?"
"Yes. It was worse than killing. He smashed his man--crippled him for
life."
"Perhaps he didn't care."
"He cared desperately. He thought of life as I do----"
She laughed again.
"Another Tolstoyan! Well, he was punished, I suppose."
"Oh, yes, he was punished. Not by the law. He had no belief in that
Fetish of Justice--an eye for an eye. His life was of value--to another.
Of what use would it have been to have smashed it with the rest? He
found the only way to make good the damage he had done--and he took it."
He spoke firmly, as a man does who has fought through to a clear issue.
He heard her move--he fancied that she had held out her hand as though
to touch him, and that her hand had dropped.
"Perhaps he was mistaken," she said. "Some one once said to me there is
a curse on us--that we are damned to destroy. Perhaps the life he took
was justly taken--perhaps it was a bad, valueless life----"
He turned impetuously, with an intensity of feeling far removed from his
previous impersonal deliberation.
"You can't tell," he said. "That's the ghastly part of it--you can't
tell. You find a piece of broken glass on your road. You grind it
under foot or throw it away and think you've done your fellow creatures
a service. And then a child comes along crying for its lost treasure.
It doesn't matter that you were justified. The thing had its value,
after all, and you smashed it. You hurt someone----"
"Some one is always hurt," she interrupted.
A mist of passionate introspection passed from his eyes, and he saw her
face--very pale, with a blue shadow about the lips. He started, almost
touching her.
"You're ill--tired----!" he stammered.
"A little--it was the heat and the crowd----"