The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
adoration ran through his senses. She looked back at him steadily. With
a passionate thankfulness, he regained those moments of communion when
she had knelt before him at the altar and they had been one in worship
and understanding.
"You are very happy, Anne?" he said gently.
"Very happy."
"I am glad. I wanted to see what a true marriage can mean----" He
hesitated. There was something that he had come to tell her. It
sickened him, and yet it pleased him, as he knew it would please her.
"Miss Fersen and Mr. Barclay were married this afternoon," he said.
She looked up. The sun had gone down behind the high trees in the
compound, and the room was full of fast-deepening shadows. They were in
her eyes, and he could not read their expression.
"You married them, Owen?"
He heard the subdued reproach in her voice.
"I couldn't help myself. What power had I to refuse? But I confess I
hated it. It seemed horrible to me--as though I had taken part in an
ugly farce. It was quite private--no one knew about it. The banns have
been up sometime."
Her lips were set in a hard line.
"Perhaps they were ashamed," she said. "I only hope they will leave
Gaya. It is terrible to have them here. I think she wanted to get hold
of Tristram. Wasn't she with him that day at Heerut?"
She spoke carelessly. He wondered if she knew or only guessed.
"Yes--she went out to see the festival."
"She would like that kind of thing--she is that sort of woman." A spark
of passion flashed in her quiet voice. "I always distrusted her. Don't
you remember, Owen?"
He nodded. He remembered everything that had ever passed between them.
He knew that he could not forget. He did not want to. He hugged his
sorrowful happiness close to him. He loved her intensely and purely.
He knew that no other human love could ever come into his life, and
there was no evil in the knowledge.
It had grown so dark that their faces were white ghostly blanks. A
native servant brought in a lighted lamp and set it noiselessly at the
far end of the room. Meredith got up slowly.
"I must be clearing," he said. "It's done me good to be with you.
You've always understood so wonderfully, Anne."
"I wish I could help you," she answered.
"You have helped me."
Their hands met in a long clasp.
Tristram rode up through the shaggy, unkempt avenue. It was still light
enough outside for his amazingness to be apparent to the two standing
together on the verandah. He wore his helmet at the back of his tawny,
unkempt hair. Three days' stubble was on his chin. He was collarless,
and his soiled shirt gaped at the neck. His long legs were out of the
stirrups, and dangled absurdly along Arabella's sides. Arabella had
grown, if anything, a little leaner and she exhibited her favourite
mannerism of trailing her nose when tired of things in general, and
camping-out in particular. They were a wonderful pair.
Tristram sang as he rode. His soft, rather hoarse baritone struggled
with a translation of the melody that was running through his brain. It
failed, and he knew it, but he continued to sing. He had been three
days in the open--three days skirting the grey, sombre-flowing river,
ploughing through harsh jungle grass and following rough tracts through
forests where life lurked and rustled and fled with a hundred distinct,
familiar footfalls. For three nights he had camped under the stars. He
had seen the moon rise like a silver lamp held aloft by a giant peering
down on a sleeping, pigmy land. He had sat under the council-tree and
smoked his pipe and listened to the grumbles of the headman, the latest
scandal, and many an old legend. He had scolded and bullied and laughed
and triumphed. He had touched life again, and regained his grip and his
clear vision.
He laughed as he swung himself out of his saddle.
"You didn't expect me, did you?" he asked gaily.
Anne ran down to meet him. She kissed at first rapturously and then
with a little shudder of irrepressible disgust.
"Oh, Tris, a beard again! And you smell horrid--of horses and--and
natives and things--you look a perfect sight. What have you been
doing?"
"Not washing, anyhow. You remember that bath I had just before I went?
Well, it was my last. Been too busy for such foibles of an effete
generation. Hullo, Meredith. Glad to see you. Not going, are you?"
"I must; I've been here hours."
"Anne was jolly glad of your company, I expect. I'm coming round some
day to give you the benefit of my medical genius. I believe I know more
about things than a lot of your high-brow Calcutta folk."
"I don't fancy even you can do much," Meredith replied. "I'm a bad job.
But it's good of you all the same. Good night."
"Good night."
Anne would have watched till the white-clad figure had disappeared, but
Tristram put his arm about her and drew her into the room. He was
momentarily serious.
"Poor old Meredith!" he muttered. "They have messed him up. It must be
almost unbearable."
She drew herself gently away from him. The feel of his arm, with its
ripple of steel muscle, had been wont to thrill her. Tonight he jarred
on some raw susceptibility; his strength repelled rather than fascinated
her senses.
"I don't think Owen feels about it like that," she said. "It's not awful
to him. He recognizes it as a cross which he is glad to bear."
He shrugged his big shoulders with good-humoured impatience.
"Why should one be glad to bear crosses? It's that sort of spirit which
makes crosses possible. Our business is to get rid of them--to blot out
the very memory of such a thing----"
"A holy symbol!" she interjected eagerly.
"I don't see anything holy in it. It's a symbol of man's cruelty to
man. If I believed in a devil, I should say he created it and put the
idea into our poor heads that it was a thing to be cherished." He
chuckled. "Well, I shall have a shot at lightening Meredith's cross
whether he likes it or not, though he doesn't deserve it----"
"Why not?" she asked. He was moving about the room, evidently searching
for his lost pipe. She watched him coldly. She had been very happy
only a little time ago--very peaceful, very conscious of her own soul.
It was as though a dishevelled giant had burst into her world, pulling
it about her ears, trampling on her treasures. She loved him, but she
was not blind. She saw, almost for the first time, that he was vitally
of the earth. "Why not?" she repeated.
"Because through him lives were lost and endangered."
"Sigrid Fersen, for instance?"
The little sneer did not reach him. Having failed in his search, he
produced a briar of disgraceful antiquity from the depths of a trouser
pocket. He began to fill it with a lover's tenderness.
"Lots of decent fellows I knew were trampled to death on that particular
afternoon," he said simply. "Some of them had saved my life."
"You saved Meredith," she put in loyally. She wanted to be just to
him--to admire him, to stifle that feeling of intolerant disgust.
He laughed.
"Why, yes, I suppose I did. It was an inspiration. I just shouted at
them that he had the sunstroke and didn't know what he was talking
about----"
"Tris!"
"It was the best way. I had to fight like mad as it was. I didn't want
to have to kill any of my people." He stretched himself out on the long
chair and held out his hand. "You don't mind if I rest a bit before I
wash up? I've been ten hours in the saddle. Don't be cross. Of course,
I didn't mean that about Meredith. He did what he thought was right,
and so it was right. I'd do anything I could for him."
She gave him her hand and sat down on the edge of the chair beside him.
She had herself well under control now. She spoke gently and almost
affectionately.
"You could help him if you wanted to, Tris."
"Well, I do want to. Tell me how."
She bent her head, stroking the brown hand on her knee. She did not know
that she was stroking it. The action was purely instinctive.
"You could use your influence for him with the natives."
His vivid blue eyes rested rather anxiously on her face. He sat up a
little and drew her restlessly caressing hand into a strong grip.
"I couldn't do that, Anne."
"Not even for me?"
"I'd do most things for you--chuck my work even. But as long as it is my
work, I've got to do it as I think right."
"Isn't it right to help people to be better and happier?"
"Of course. Only it doesn't seem to me that smashing their faith is
going to help them."
"We can give them a better faith----"
He shook his head.
"Not till we've lived it ourselves."
She got up abruptly and moved away from him. She felt as though a chasm
had opened at her feet. Or had it always been there? Had she been
blinded by her girlish worship of his strength and almost feminine
gentleness? She did not know. She felt a physical nausea creep over
her.
"You promised to make me happy. You don't when you talk like that."
He thought a moment.
"I do want to make you happy, Anne. It's not an exaggeration to say I'd
give my life for you. But--I was thinking it over whilst I was alone
out there--happiness isn't a thing you see in a shop window and buy for
a price. You have to have it in yourself if you're going to give it to
others. I shouldn't be happy if I pretended to be any one else but
myself. I should stifle and have no power to make you happy. I can't
humbug--I don't want you to, either. We've both got to be free, or it's
the end of everything." He waited a moment, watching her. "Anne, do
you know whom I've seen?" he asked, with a complete change of tone.
"No."
"Sir Gilbert Foster. I heard that he was tiger-hunting this way, and I
tracked him down. I wanted to see him and tell him about some
favourable symptoms I have noticed in your father's condition. Also I
wanted to make a suggestion. Well, he agrees with me. It means an
operation--a pretty dangerous one. I wanted him to perform it, but he
can't. He's got a Conference somewhere or other. He thinks I'm the man
to go ahead with it."
She turned swiftly, suspiciously. She saw the flame under the fine
brows--perhaps glimpsed how deep and passionate was his desire for her
happiness, how eagerly he had planned this moment. She came back to him
and knelt down, her trembling hands on his shoulders.
"Tris--does that mean--he might get well?"
"He might. It's a fighting chance."
"Oh, Tris--if it were only true----!"
He smiled gravely down at her.
"You'd pay any price for it to be true, Anne?"
"Any price!" she answered joyfully.
He put his arm round her.
"We'll do our level best, dear."
They remained silent for many minutes. She half crouched, half lay with
her head against his shoulder. Her antipathy had died down. He was
again the strong and perfect hero of her fancies. She loved him. The
arm curved about her shoulder was again a thrilling force. She looked
down tenderly at the slender, powerful wrist. Then she laughed.
"Tris, why do you wear that silly, common bracelet? It's cheap, and so
unmanly."
She felt his body grow suddenly tense. He answered without effort,
almost lightly.
"It was a great gift--a gift of friendship."
"From whom?"
"A friend."
She drew herself up. At no time was a sense of humour strong in her.
She resented his lightness.
"You might tell me----"
"I can't."
"Is it a secret?"
"I suppose so--yes."
"Husband and wife ought not to have secrets from one another."
He laughed.
"Oughtn't they? Why not?"
"They're one."
His eyes darkened. He saw that the anger was mounting in her and strove
to silence it. But an immense weariness lamed him. All the life and
hope which he had gathered to himself out there on those wild fastnesses