The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
Then a shadow fell across the sunlight patch on the worn matting, and
both women looked up. James Barclay stood on the verandah. He raised
his hand in a military salute.
"I've come for Sigrid, Mrs. Compton," he said. "She was such an
unconscionable time, and one is naturally impatient. Please forgive, if
you were discussing secrets."
His dark eyes were on Mrs. Compton's face, intent, curious, vaguely
appealing. The thrill of loathing and contempt which had passed through
her gave place to a bitter amusement. He was so wonderfully, correctly
dressed, so desperately at ease. She stared back at him, burning with
her first instinctive revolt against his presence. Then she remembered.
She glanced at Sigrid, who was still toying idly with the Dresden
shepherdess. Something in the resolute submission of that proud,
self-reliant figure set fire to all the chivalry in Mrs. Compton's
blood. She turned again. She heard herself speaking:
"We're very pleased--won't you both stay for tea? And--and I was just
saying--I'm giving a dinner next week--to celebrate--your engagement--if
it suits you----"
It was done. She felt as though she had cut through a dam, and that the
torrent was on her. She saw Sigrid look up swiftly and then glance at
the man by the window.
He bowed gravely, but she caught the triumphant flash in his eyes.
"It is very kind. We shall be delighted--this afternoon we've an
engagement, haven't we, Sigrid?"
It was all Mrs. Compton remembered clearly. Looking back on the scene,
she had a vague recollection of her own voice flowing on ceaselessly
over a seething inner conflict, of a pale face watching her, half in
pity, half in gratitude. Presently, when they had gone, she flung
herself down by Sigrid's empty chair and cried with misery and
humiliation. And, when the last tears had been shed, she picked up the
Dresden shepherdess and put her back in her place in the glass cabinet,
and turned the key with an air of locking up evil genii. Then she
thought of her husband for the first time.
"Poor old Archie!" she muttered remorsefully. "Poor Archie!"
Meantime, Barclay drove his showy cob towards the dak-bungalow.
"So you've managed it," he said. "You've really managed. You're
wonderful--even more wonderful than I thought."
She drew farther away from him.
"I have kept my part of the bargain."
He laughed.
"Which is fortunate for everyone concerned."
"Keep your part!"
He made her a little bow, his face suddenly flushed and heavy-looking.
"As much as it lies in human nature, dear lady," he answered.
*CHAPTER II*
*A HOME-COMING*
Mrs. Boucicault welcomed her daughter with the affable irresponsibility
which had become her habitual mood. She bore no grudge--not more than a
steam-roller bears towards the stones it has ground into acquiescence.
She had got what she wanted and was quite pleased that Anne should have
been equally successful. No one witnessing the warm, rather
absent-minded embrace could have guessed at a very bitter parting or at
a wedding at which the bride's family was conspicuous by its absence.
As a matter of fact, the bitterness had been on Anne's side and the
wedding had been so recklessly hurried on that Mrs. Boucicault's excuse
that she could not leave poor Richard at such short notice sounded
acceptable. Gaya knew perfectly well that the Governor-General's visit
and its attendant gaieties was the real reason, but extended a
charitable sympathy, and endeavoured to keep Anne in happy ignorance,
guessing that her understanding would be altogether of a different kind.
Mrs. Boucicault kissed Tristram on both cheeks, putting her hands on his
shoulder in order to pull herself up to the necessary altitude.
"My dears, how well you both look! Really, I believe you got married
just for a month of the hills. How I did envy you! We've been
positively baked alive. I nearly bolted, but of course your poor father
could not have been moved. It was terrible."
She began to wander about the newly furnished room in a restless,
over-excited way, giving neither the time to reply. "You must come and
admire everything. We all did our bit. I had some furniture sent from
Lucknow. Don't you like the chairs? They're a home product. Mrs.
Bosanquet gave such a lovely tea-service. My ayah smashed a cup in the
unpacking, but these accidents will happen. I hope the servants will be
all right. You both know how they steal." She led them through the
length and breadth of the bungalow, whose decoration had the charm of
haphazard good taste. As Mrs. Boucicault had said, everyone in Gaya had
taken a hand in Tristram's home and given of their best, attaining an
unconventional success. But Anne followed silently and without
expression of approval. Her natural composure of manner seemed to have
developed. She looked very well and much older. Her girlishness had
been completely swallowed up in a rather self-conscious womanhood, and
much that her girlhood had promised had been fulfilled. The line of her
mouth had stiffened. Her very clothes, well-made but severe, expressed
a character already set within definite and inelastic boundaries. Once
or twice she glanced back at her husband and her eyes were full of a
half-timorous, half-proprietary tenderness.
"Do you like it all, Tris?"
He nodded, smiling down at her.
"It's first-rate. I don't know how they managed it."
"Yes--it's quite nice. Of course, we shall have to rearrange things.
It's all so patchy, isn't it?"
He did not answer. Mrs. Boucicault came back to the drawing-room and
gave them tea. It was then, seated, facing her with her back to the
light that Anne noticed the too-vivid red of her mother's lips, the
tinge of artificial colour on the grey cheeks. Her own eyes hardened a
little.
"Is father better?" she asked coldly. "Is there any change? I asked
you to write to me, mother, but you never did."
Mrs. Boucicault helped herself daintily to cake.
"There's no change--at least, not for the better. He had Sir Gilbert
Foster here to see him. He happened to be in Lucknow, and, of course,
I've spared no effort--no expense. Sir Gilbert agreed that there was
very little hope. Sometimes I think it would be more merciful if the
end came. He is so utterly helpless. He just lies there and broods.
Even the official attempt to get at some clue with regard to the man who
attacked him doesn't seem to rouse him--and Richard was always so
anxious to get square with an enemy, wasn't he? Of course, I go and sit
with him every day and tell him our doings. It's very dull for me, but
one has to do all one can. Didn't I write? I'm so sorry. I meant to,
but we've been so busy----"
"I've no doubt," Anne interposed, with contemptuous bitterness. "Gaya
has been quite gay, I hear."
Mrs. Boucicault smiled happily.
"Yes, quite gay. And very upset into the bargain. It's like living on
an eruption or a volcano or whatever it is I mean. I suppose you've
heard, Tristram? The regiment is just seething with sedition. Poor
Richard kept the lid on wonderfully, and now he's gone we're all waiting
for the lid to come off with a bang. Colonel Armstrong is a dear, but
he's got beautiful democratic ideas, and bullies and distrusts his
equals more than any one I ever knew. So we're all waiting. And things
have been made so deliciously worse by the advent of Mr. Barclay. You've
heard of that, too? He's going to marry Sigrid Fersen in two months.
Awful, isn't it?"
Anne turned her eyes to her husband.
"It's revolting," she said. "He's the kind of man a woman of her type
would choose. The least she can do is to leave Gaya."
"She's not going to, though. The whole station is a divided camp and
armed to the teeth about it. Half of us want to cut her and half want
to swallow him for her sake. Mary Compton and Mrs. Bosanquet are for
swallowing--and so am I. I don't see why people shouldn't do as they
like."
Anne's lips curled.
"You would choose the easy way, mother."
Mrs. Boucicault shot her a glance, which was not entirely free from
malice.
"Hardly easy in this case. Think of the complications! Think of Rasaldu
going about like a comic thunder-storm! Think of our pet official snobs.
Oh, we shall live to see exciting times. More tea, Tristram?"
He shook his head and placed a half-emptied cup on the table.
Throughout Mrs. Boucicault's garrulous chatter he had been watching her
narrowly and almost as though he were listening to something beneath her
words. Now he turned and met his wife's eyes with an unflinching
directness. It seemed to check an impulsive answer. She got up
sharply.
"I'd better go and help the ayah unpack," she said. "I'll drive round
and see father tonight, mother. Let him know."
"Of course, dear. He'll be so delighted. I'll go home now and leave
you two to settle down. Tell the syce to bring round the cart, will
you, Tristram?"
On parting, she kissed them again with her new absent-minded
effusiveness and patted Anne's shoulder. "It's so nice to see you happy
at last, child. By the way, you've never asked after poor Owen--and
he's so devoted."
A faint flush crept into Anne's cheeks. For an instant, at least, her
composure wavered.
"I hadn't forgotten. How is he?"
"Dreadfully disfigured, poor fellow--and his sight affected. But he
goes on with his work just the same--like a real martyr. It's such a
pity the natives don't appreciate it. They pretend he has the evil eye,
and run away from him. Terrible, isn't it?"
"I shall have to look him up," Tristram observed.
"Do--you're so clever." She took her place in the dog-cart with the
lightness and ease of a much younger woman. Then as the syce jerked the
reins, she bent down. "Tristram, will you be coming round, too, this
evening?"
"Yes," he answered gravely.
"Well--when you've seen Richard--will you have a talk with me--a
professional talk? I believe I'm getting an Indian liver, and the
natives seem to have such a holy terror of your concoctions that I'm
sure they're effective. Will you?"
"Rather!" He laughed, though the blue eyes remained seriously intent.
"And I'll bring my deadliest blue pills with me," he promised.
As the cart swung through the compound gates Mrs. Boucicault turned her
head and looked back. Tristram waved, but Anne gave no sign. Her face
was set and hard as Tristram turned to her. He slipped his arm with a
rather shy affection through hers.
"Aren't you satisfied, dear?"
She looked up at him smiling, but perfunctorily, as a grown-up smiles at
a child, concealing her real feeling.
"Oh, so satisfied with you and the home, Tris. But I wish mother hadn't
welcomed us. She makes me sick to the heart the way she talks about
father. I don't want to hate her--and yet sometimes I can't help
myself. And I didn't want our first day here to be spoilt by hatred.
It's like a bad omen."
He was silent for a moment. Had she been looking at him she might have
seen the faint change which passed over his features. It was a change
that had come to them more than once during these two months among the
hills--a kind of troubled perplexity--of uneasiness.
"Anne, I'm not satisfied with your mother," he began suddenly. "I don't
like the look of her. I believe she's hiding something from us----"
She interrupted him with an impatient, scornful gesture.
"It's just her way. She's always imagining there's something the matter
with her. When father was almost dying, she worried the doctor about a
petty ailment of her own. I think she does it to cover the way she
behaves----"
"Aren't you a wee bit hard on her?"