The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
He looked at the light on the green stem of the palm, as though to a
warning hand. It had reached the end of its journey and had grown dim.
He got up, holding himself desperately erect. "It's the end of the
Feast," he said, "the end of our day."
But she shook her head broodingly.
"You can't tell that either--only the gods know the end, Tristram
Sahib."
* * * * *
Something had wrapped itself about their senses. They had talked of
impersonal things and--save for that one break of his--without emotion.
But the emotion had been there, below the surface, crushed out of sight
by an effort of the will which left them no physical consciousness. It
walled them within themselves as the trees and dense foliage walled them
in from the heat and tumult.
Thus the storm broke on them without warning. It had risen little by
little with the dull boom of an angry sea. They had heard nothing. But
there had been a silence so tense, so prolonged that they looked at each
other, wondering, waiting, though they did not know it, for the scream
that ripped through, tearing down the barriers of their unconsciousness,
forcing a breach through which the full fury of the sound bore down upon
them.
Sigrid had risen instantly to her feet.
"Tarantella!" she breathed. "Tarantella!"
He did not wait to speak. He pushed through the undergrowth, not
knowing that she had followed him. On the fringe of the coppice he
turned and found her at his elbow.
"Something's happened," he said briefly. "We can't stay here--we've got
to get back to the village----"
She nodded. A minute before she had looked ill, almost broken. Now the
colour burnt in her cheek, she held herself lightly, strongly, and her
eyes shone as they swept the scene before them.
"Shall we get through?"
"I don't know--I don't know what's happened. It may be nothing----"
"You don't believe that yourself. It is something. Anyhow, we've got to
try for it----"
The fear was in him, not in her. Even then, striding at her side,
bracing himself for whatever lay before them, he wondered at her,
thrilled at the joyous adventurousness in her. Her head was erect and
she was smiling faintly. The howling of the frantic, demented mob which
swept backwards and forwards across the plain did not seem to touch her.
He felt how, with the coolness of a general, she was measuring the
distances, their chances. He saw the tightening of her lips and that
she had measured rightly.
"If it's us they're mad with, it will be a close finish," she said, with
a low laugh.
He scarcely heard her. He was watching the men and women who overtook
them and ran past. Their faces were unknown to him. They looked back
at him---with the wild-eyed curiosity of animals. As yet it was only
curiosity. They were as ignorant as himself as to the passion which had
broken through the crust of restraint and now raged in a mad whirlpool
between the temple and the river. But the infection of frenzy was upon
them. They muttered as they ran past--broken sentences in a dialect
which he could not understand. They were pilgrims from distant
provinces. He knew that they were in the majority and that he could
have no hold over them. They would sweep the rest with them--even his
own people.
The sprawling mass of life which had hugged the bank of the river turned
and rolled back. In an instant, it had blocked the narrow passage on
which he had based his hope of escape. He could see the golden effigy
swaying madly above the crowd like a bright, sinister barque on a black,
raging sea, now flung back, now forward, but still drawing steadily
nearer. Through the wild uproar of voices the dull thud of a drum
persisted. It was as though in that frenzied movement there was a
purpose--a blind, demented will to an end.
He stopped short.
"We can't go on--it's too late--we must make a dash back and try for the
bridge----"
"It is too late," she answered simply.
He saw then what she had seen. They were cut off. From left and right,
the streams of hurrying men and women converged upon them, sweeping them
forward as an Atlantic roller tosses driftwood on its crest. For an
instant they were separated. He fought his way savagely back to her
side, and caught her to him with the roughness of panic.
She looked up at him, smiling tranquilly, inscrutably. "Afraid,
Tristram?"
"Yes--horribly--hideously--if I had lost you----"
"You didn't. I'm not afraid."
"I can't forgive myself----"
"Why should you? I am very happy."
"We must keep together. Give me your hand."
She gave it him. He remembered how it had lain in his once before, how
the splendid vitality and strength of it had thrilled him. It thrilled
him now, it burnt like fire through his nerves. They stood facing each
other, holding their ground, swept into a moment's oblivion of all else
but themselves. There was exultation in that grave, brief
contemplation. The panic had died out of the man's eyes. He no longer
pitied her or feared for her. He felt the joy of their new, fierce
comradeship.
"If it were only myself--I could be glad----"
"Be glad!" she cried back. "Isn't it worth it?"
A wave of frantic humanity forced them forward. They held together. He
heard her laugh--the eager, triumphant laugh of men in the glory of
battle. "No one can separate us now!" she said.
"No one!" he answered gladly.
He knew it was true. Nothing, so it seemed to him, could break the
steel link of their hands. But he had grown calmer. He had got to save
her. The instinct which damns the weak acceptance of annihilation burnt
up clearly in him. He gave ground to the force behind him, keeping his
feet with the utmost exertion of his strength, striving to force a
passage towards the village. It was a vain effort. Faces were turned
to him. He read their expression. The mere curiosity had become
distrust--a furtive antagonism as yet unarmed with purpose. A fakir,
wild-eyed, bespattered with filth, his emaciated arms flung up in
imprecation, leered up at him.
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
It was no more than a whisper. But it passed from lip to lip. They
were pushed on, the circle about them tightening in a strangling noose.
For all her courage, he knew that the woman beside him was weakening.
He heard her voice, strained and breathless.
"Don't let me go under--don't let me go under----"
He knew the horror that had forced the appeal from her--the terror which
can change a man's heart to water--the horror of those pitiless
trampling feet--of those mad mob rushes under which a human body can be
stamped out of recognition. He threw one arm about her. He no longer
resisted. It was better to go on--to be forgotten. But the stench of
those hot, dust-laden bodies sickened him. It was the smell of
hatred--of madness. It sapped his strength. It was like the breathing
in of a hideous poison.
They swept on. They had reached the densest part of the crowd. Above
them he could see the golden image, swaying dangerously from the
shoulders of its staggering bearers. A ray of red light from the
sinking sun was on the face nearest to them. Its frozen cruelty seemed
to have drawn life into itself--to be sucking up a horrible vitality
from the very passions to which it had given birth. To Tristram's
blurred vision the eyes blazed--the mouth gaped with a grotesque lust of
hatred.
It was then he saw Meredith with his shoulders to the base of the altar,
his arm raised, shielding his face. A half-naked fakir sprang at him
and dragged the arm down, and Tristram saw what had been done. The face
was blotted out with blood. The lips were moving. In one clenched hand
was an open Bible. Through the hellish pandemonium Tristram caught a
single sentence:
"Father, forgive them----"
Tristram flung the man in front of him aside. He had felt the tense
revival of strength in his companion like an electric current through
all his nerves. They had got to stand together--to go down with the man
of their race, for good or evil uphold him.
"We're coming!" Tristram shouted. "Hold on!"
Meredith turned his head in their direction. Perhaps he saw them
through the veil of blood. He made a gesture urging them back, and in
the same instant the man whom Tristram had flung aside revealed his
face.
It was Lalloo, the money-lender.
"Dakktar Sahib!" he said.
"Damn you--let me go past----!"
The old man smiled imperturbably, shrugging his shoulders. The whisper,
"The Dakktar Sahib," ran like an undercurrent of sound beneath the
screams and curses of the swaying, tossing multitude. A woman spat in
Meredith's disfigured face. Tristram lurched forward, but already they
had lost ground. Some new force had them in its grip. They were bound
in a revolving circle of which Lalloo had become the pivot. Tristram
looked about him. He recognized faces which seemed to have sprung from
nowhere. There was Mehr Singh, the corn-dealer, and Seetul the weaver,
Peru the village ne'er-do-well--men with whom he had lived and suffered.
He cursed at them in their dialect, and they regarded him stolidly. He
shook Lalloo fiercely with his free hand.
"Let us get out of this--I've got to get back to my friend--do you hear.
I've got to help him--do you hear, you lying, grasping old man?"
Lalloo shrugged his shoulders.
The circle rolled on. Meredith and the shining figure of the
three-faced god had gone down in the black tumult. The roar of voices
began to fade like thunder, rolling faintly in the distance. A breath
of fresh air fanned their faces. The circle broke suddenly scattering
in all directions.
Tristram still held Lalloo by the shoulder.
"You--you saved us," he stammered thickly. "You saved us--didn't you
know me better than that----"
Lalloo rubbed his thin dark hands and smiled vaguely.
"What have I done, Sahib?" he said. "What have I done?" And with an
amazing facility freed himself and glided into the shadow of the
deserted village.
They went on, not speaking, not looking at each other, sick with the
horror of that which they had left behind them. At the door of
Tristram's hut a man came running towards them. It was the captain of
the native regiment, cursing volubly.
"Tristram--where the devil have you been? What's happened! What set
them off?"
"Meredith--preaching the love of God to Siva."
"Oh, damn the parsons!" He mopped his face in helpless exasperation.
"Well, I've had a nice time of it. Men vanished into thin air. They've
been queer for months--now they've gone. Anyhow, I shall have to stick
to it--overawe them with my presence and all that." Even in that
moment, his English good-humour prevailed. "Give us a hand,
Tristram--you've influence with them. What's happened to Meredith?"
"I don't know----"
"Well, we'll try and get him out. Miss Fersen, you stay quietly in
there. There's no getting away just yet. If neither of us get back,
there'll be relief from Gaya as soon as they get wind of this shindy.
Come on, Hermit!"
Tristram held open the door for her.
"You won't mind my going? I may be able to help----"
"I want you to go. I am not afraid."
"I know."
They avoided each other's eyes. For one moment at least they had
expected death--perhaps willed to die--and in that moment had dared to
live.
She went past him, closing the door after her.
Night came on. It rose blackly out of the far corners of the hut,
creeping stealthily and soundlessly up the walls, as water rises in a
closed lock. She had sat and watched it and listened to the deep,
encircling silence beyond which was sound--indefinable, subdued,
continuous. Once it had come nearer and instinctively she had sprung