The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India

"Hard? Tris, surely it's right to be hard sometimes? One can't be lenient towards what's wrong. And it is wrong to be cruel, and our duty is towards the sick and sorrowful, no matter what they've done. Don't you think so?" "Yes," he answered thoughtfully. "Perhaps our only duty." She shook her head. "Our first duty is to God." Then, with a quick movement that was an instant's reversion to her girlhood, she slipped her hand into his, pressing it, and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. "Tris, that sounded as though I were criticizing. I didn't mean it. You're so good-natured and tender-hearted--perhaps too forgiving. But at the bottom we think and feel the same about things, I know. Only you're too good for me." "Don't let's talk about our respective goodness," he implored lightly. "We shall quarrel. Let's go and prospect for your rose-garden instead." They went down the steps together, her hands linked over his arm, and followed the path of sunlight through the wilderness of wild-growing flowers and high luxuriant trees which Gaya perhaps deliberately had left untouched. "We shall have to make it trim and neat," Anne said, sighing. "My roses will never grow in all this shadow. Besides, it's so untidy. Those big palms ought to be cut down, too, don't you think?" She always appealed to him differently, yet as though his agreement was an assured thing. He looked up, catching a line of azure between the foliage. It seemed to him that for an instant he breathed the scented virgin air of the forests, that soon night would be creeping in stealthily between the slender trunks of the trees and that he would lie full length by the camp-fire and watch the distant beacons flame up in the violet darkness. It was a picture flashed from his memory, perhaps in contrast to those smooth, cool, civilized days among the hills. He closed his eyes to it. "You must have things as you like them, dear," he said. "I want you to have everything--everything that makes you happy." "Really? Do you mean it?" There was a breathless eagerness in her voice, no mere acknowledgment. He paused an instant and looked down into her earnest face. In a vague, instinctive way she had often resented his eyes--or rather the something which their clouded introspection held from her. Now she thrilled under them. They were clear, intensely, fiercely living. "Yes, I do mean it," he said passionately. "Anne--if I thought you happy, I should be content. If I knew of anything that would give you only a moment's pleasure, I wouldn't rest till I brought it you. I want you to be happy--more than I can say." She flushed girlishly. "Do you love me so much as all that, Tris?" "Isn't that proof?" he asked back. "You are very, very good to me." Still she held her ground, watching him with her strange mingling of diffidence and conscious power. "Tris--I do want something awfully--something that will make me perfectly content----" He smiled. "Then it's yours, if a poor Major can squeeze it out of his official fortune." "I want my father here--with us." She saw no change in him, and yet, absorbed as she was in her own appeal, she felt the sudden check in his breathing, the tightening of the muscles under her hand. She became reasonlessly frightened. "Tris, is it too much to ask?" He turned and continued to walk on. "No--I meant what I said just now. Only--I don't understand, Anne--in the old days--before the accident--you were so afraid of him. You dreaded him--I think you hated him----" "Don't!" she interrupted. "You can't think how it hurts to be reminded of all that. Yes, he frightened me. He made us all unhappy. Now he is helpless--broken. Sometimes, looking back, it seems to me that we were to blame--that perhaps mother was not the wife for him--that she didn't understand----" He crushed back the exclamation that had risen to his lips. He dared not admit even to himself that it had been one of bitter impatience. "That doesn't seem quite fair, Anne. He may have been ill, mad, if you like. It's the best one can say." "He was considered a fine soldier," she returned, rather primly. "His men worshipped him." "You live in the past, dear," he persisted. Something had risen between them, a pulsing, quick-breathing irritation. She pressed his arm. "You don't understand," she said forgivingly. "No, perhaps not." They had reached the gates of the compound, and, arrested by sounds whose thrill for ever outlives familiarity, they stood still, their faces turned to the open high-road. Amidst the rattle of drums, and the shrill call of the fifes, the regiment slogged its way sullenly back to the barracks. The dust rose in silver columns under the tramping feet. The red sun, lying already westwards, fell aslant the dark, brooding faces and made a quivering stream of fire of the fixed bayonets. The new Colonel rode at the head of the column, chatting with his Adjutant. He had a resolute serenity about him, an unimaginative contentment. Tristram, saluting, knew that for him there was no significance in that fiery line winding its way up the hill in black silence--no hint of the future. Only the common, daily routine. He heard Anne's voice at his side, broken and piteous. "Oh, if only father were there--at the head of his men--if we could only bring him back----" "I can't do that," he answered gently. "If I could, I would. I never realized how much you cared. It's taught me a lot about life--your caring. But if you think he wishes it--he must come to us, whatever it may cost." She smiled at him through her tears. "I know he would wish it. Mother is cruel to him--I know she feels cruelly. He will be happy with us. He will get to understand that we both care--oh, Tristram, I can't thank you enough. I promise you it shan't trouble you." A scarcely perceptible line deepened about his fine mouth. "Don't promise rashly, dear. And remember, I said, whatever it costs----" It became very still about them. The tramp of feet and the rattle of drums grew muffled and rumbled into silence. They could see the column wind its way up in and out of the broken avenue of trees like a monstrous glittering serpent. The dust sank back peacefully in golden particles, and with the deepening silence there came a sense of relief, of healing. The vague spirit of irritation and opposition laid itself. Tristram drank in the silence. In that subconscious self where no thought or desire is formulated, he prayed for its continuation. He held himself motionless so that no movement of his should rouse his companion from her seeming abstraction. For a moment, she had relaxed her hold of him and he shrank back into himself, into a loneliness where he seemed to draw breath, to lay down a burden which he never acknowledged, and to stretch his cramped soul in exquisite relief. The perfumed air, the golden lights and splendid purples of a brief twilight penetrated below his senses, and with light, magic fingers opened the closed doors behind which he had imprisoned all that the woman beside him could not understand, all that was repugnant to her. They came out, these ghostly figures of his fancy, and played before him. At first they had been pale and wan, but as they drew in light and air, they regained their youth and glowed with their old splendour. He watched them, fascinated. His blood began to move more swiftly. A thought shaped itself out of the depths--the thought of the nights and days out there on the fringe of the jungle--of the work that would claim him back--of life as it might still be to him. Service! that remained. He felt Anne's fingers tighten on his arm. "Look!" she said. The scorn and anger in her voice stung him. The lights grew suddenly dim and the fancies faded. He looked the way she pointed, and his pulses stood still. Two riders were coming slowly down the hill towards them. Their white-clad figures shone ghostly in the shadow of the trees. They came on, up to the gates. Tristram's pulses resumed their beating, heavily, suffocatingly. His hand went up to his helmet, and the fair-haired woman on the Arab bowed with grave indifference. The man beside her smiled, showing his white teeth. Then it was over. He heard the man's voice break on the silence--he was making some ironic comment--and then the beat of horses' hoofs at a mad gallop. Anne's eyes were on his face. "Tris, how could you!" she said bitterly. He turned and looked at her. He felt stupid and heavy, as though some one had struck him between the eyes; but even then he realized her expression, the unbreakable will showing through the mask of her femininity. "What should I have done?" he asked, and was conscious of a wry amusement. Beneath the surface their wills grappled together. She was so small, so strong. He would be so utterly beaten. "I don't know--You didn't even wait for her to bow. It's not for me to dictate--surely it wasn't necessary to know her--she's outside the pale--and that man--oh, it was sickening, horrible----!" Her voice quivered. He put his arm about her shoulders, "Did you want me to--to cut them?" he asked. "Why not? I think it would have been better to do what we must do right from the beginning. We can't _know_ them, Tris." "I must," he responded deliberately. He felt her whole body stiffen. "Why?" Her voice was very low now, subdued so as to cover its real timbre. "Why?" she repeated. "Because I have no reason not to," he returned. "A half-caste and an adventuress----" Something tortured and leashed within him leapt up flinging itself savagely against his self-control. "What is an adventuress, Anne? A woman who ventures? What better thing can any of us do?" He spoke half-jestingly, striving to ward off the issue that was to arise between them; but there was no pity in the hard eyes which she lifted for a moment to his face. "Are you going to be one of those who are prepared to sneer at our morality--at the whole prestige of our race?" she asked. Even then he marvelled at her. She had been so young, so childish. She challenged him now with a mature fixity of outlook and of character. She might have been an old woman. And he knew that it was no sudden development. It had been there always, a deep-rooted inheritance of her kind. "I cannot be other than I am," he said steadily. "As to prestige--doesn't it belong to our English greatness to shoulder our responsibilities? We're responsible to a man like Barclay. He belongs to us more than any man of our own blood. Don't you realize--he's our fault--we've flung him into his position. We've made him what he is. He had an English father--Anne, and he has a claim on me I cannot and will not ignore." He saw the curl of her lips. It was an answer straight from those past generations stronger than all reason. "We must stamp out our sins--not foster them. And that woman--do you expect me to meet her--the Rajah's mistress--this man's bought property----" "Anne!" A sick horror surged up within him--horror of his own passionate anger--horror in some dim way mingled with a vicarious shame. He turned away from her. But the instinctive chivalry which prompted the action was unnecessary. She held her ground with the resolution of justification. "Anne, you're speaking recklessly. I know that what you say is not true. And even if it were--I can't judge other people--it's not in me--I feel no right in me to judge. There's only one distinction I can make between men and women--the happy and the unhappy, the blessed and the cursed----" "The good and the evil," she interrupted stonily. "There is only one morality, Tristram----"