The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
made a devilish fine fight; if it hadn't been for my mahout I mightn't
be here now. Sorry to have kept you waiting."
"Not a bit of it," Compton assured him in his languid, incoherent way.
"Seems a special sort of affair. Anything up?"
Compton stroked his little moustache. There were times when the Rajah's
Anglo-Saxon brevity jarred on him. Moreover, for other reasons, he felt
disinclined to be communicative.
"No--nothing special," he said.
"All right. I'm ready."
For all his apparent good-humour, Rasaldu was in a sulky mood. The
tiger-hunt had been the expression of an incoherent rage and sense of
unforgivable humiliation which Gaya had found amusing and not at all
serious. But to Rasaldu the whole matter had been serious. He had
dispensed European hospitality the while retaining an entirely Oriental
mentality. Sigrid Fersen had been in part his guest. Her marriage was
therefore an insult and a gibe. She had made fun of him. In his own
language, "she had made a fool of him." And he was not given either to
forgetting or forgiving.
And now a fresh slight had been put on him. They had gone in without
him. They had deprived him of that sense of grandiose arrival which was
the most pleasing part of any entertainment. It made him, at least for
a moment, the person of paramount importance.
His round face was therefore creased with sulkiness as he reached his
place at the Comptons' table. Not even the beauty and promise of the
display soothed him. Mary Compton had borrowed and been within an ace
of stealing in order to produce a result which would soften the
bitterest opposition. But she had counted without the Oriental
character. Rasaldu merely bowed in her direction, then, before seating
himself, he looked round, making the most of his moment.
Barclay sat immediately opposite him in the centre of the table, with
Sigrid on his right hand. Outwardly he had borne himself coolly enough,
accepting his conspicuous place of honour with an air of rather insolent
ease. But below the surface the whole man had been tense, agonized,
quivering with memories of past humiliations. In every glance, in every
word, he read the disparagement which his instinct knew was still in
arms against him. He had won. He could look down the length of the
table and tell himself that these people were here to meet him, to do
him honour. He could remember the hour when his hostess had left him
standing in the dust of her cart-wheels. He could look at Tristram and
recall that twilight scene by the temple. Best of all, there was the
woman beside him. He could turn to her white, quiet face with the memory
of a night when these two had watched him slink out before them like a
beaten dog.
Yes, he had won. He had broken through the invisible barrier of their
caste. He had fought his way into their citadel, and yet----! It was
as though he had grasped at shadows and they had eluded him. He knew
that he had never been further from them--never more the stranger and
pariah. The English blood in him arose against him in triumph. It
showed him what otherwise might have remained hidden--what Rasaldu could
never have seen--the hearts of these people, their splendid isolation,
the impregnable aloofness, their blank denial of himself. As he sat
there listening to their quiet, self-certain intercourse, the bandages
which he had wrapped about his bleeding pride were ripped off and with
them every trace of healing. The sweat stood out on his dark forehead.
He hated them. He desired them. He wanted to spit in these serene,
immaculate faces. He would have grovelled to them for one word of
fellowship. He had as yet scarcely touched the wine before him, but his
blood was in an uproar, warring against itself.
Then suddenly he looked up at Rasaldu across the table, staring at him.
Perhaps that silent, deadly exchange lasted no more than a second or
two, yet the unbridled ferocity of it rested like a chilling hand on
those nearest and passed on down the table so that the last murmur sank
into an appalled quiet. Something tigerish had leapt up in the breasts
of both men. On the one side the Oriental, wounded in every
susceptibility, threw off the mask of English breeding; on the other,
the English blood, fevered by the maternal heritage, boiled under the
insult of those eyes, broke from its own frail bondage of self-control,
and by a mad paradox became native blood, native hatred.
The seconds passed. Then Rasaldu, with an insolent little movement of
the shoulders, bent down to Colonel Armstrong on his right and spoke to
him in an undertone. The unhappy Colonel listened, tugging painfully at
his moustache. Mrs. Compton had half-risen, but Barclay forestalled
her. He got up, leaning across towards Rasaldu.
"What's the matter with you?" he said.
Rasaldu's thick lips curled. He looked at Sigrid with the bloodshot,
hating eyes of a thwarted animal.
"I don't eat with half-castes," he said.
Barclay seized his glass and threw the contents full into the Rajah's
distorted face.
"You swineherd upstart!" he gasped thickly. Then, with a glance that
swept the table, he turned and strode out of the room.
The silence continued. No uproar could have been more terrible than its
unendingness. The Rajah stood there quite still, his mouth open, the
wine trickling from his face on to the immaculate shirt-front--a
ridiculous, sinister figure. Mrs. Compton tried to master her voice, to
say something, but it was as though a gag stifled her. She saw Sigrid
get up--very slowly.
She stood there looking round her--and then across at Tristram. He made
a movement as though he would have risen, but she lifted her hand
slightly, imperatively, and he sank back, not looking at her. Her lips
were a little parted with an odd, pathetic little smile. It seemed, as
she stood here, that she was trying, not to speak, but to grope her way
to some thought, to some answer.
Nobody spoke to her or tried to stop her. But at that moment she
belonged to them, was one of them--for the last time. Sheer futility
lamed all movement, all expression of what they felt. It was as though
a frail, beautiful ship had broken from its moorings in a great tempest
and they stood there and watched it drift out seawards beyond the reach
of their voices, of their help or pity.
Only Mrs. Bosanquet cried openly--the tears rolling down her fat cheeks.
Sigrid went out through the silence. She found Barclay already in the
driving seat of his dog-cart and without a word clambered up beside him.
He glanced at her and brought the whip down savagely across the horse's
head. The animal did not need the blow. It felt the madness in the
man's hand and broke into a wild gallop. They swung through the
compound gates out on to the white moonlit road. For an instant they
seemed to hover in mid-air, and then, with a grinding jar, the off-wheel
came back on to the ground and they raced on, down through the black
belt of the palm-trees and out again into the silver road, pursued by
their own frantic shadows.
Only once did Barclay speak, and then it was to himself between clenched
teeth:
"Now I know," he whispered. "Now I can see clear."
She did not answer. She sat very still, gazing steadily ahead into the
half-light which ran before them, and encircled them with odd,
treacherous shapes, so that now there seemed a barrier where there was
none, and now a clear road where suddenly it curved and dipped. He
drove well. Once the horse shied violently at an overhanging branch,
and with a turn of his wrist he brought the animal to a baulked,
fretting submission. Sigrid gave a short laugh, and he glanced sideways
at her. Perhaps in that moment a grim admiration one for the other rose
between them. At least neither had shown fear.
A syce, drowsing on the steps of the old bungalow, ran out to meet them
and caught the restive, sweating animal by the head. Barclay threw him
an order in Hindustani and then, without a glance at his companion, led
the way to the room where the amazing Venus held her lamp. He crossed
straight over to the wide-open windows and pulled the curtains to.
The door behind Sigrid closed softly.
Still Barclay did not look at her. He opened a cigarette box with a
theatrical affectation of deliberation, but when he struck a match she
saw that his hand shook. The tiny flame near to his face betrayed new,
ugly lines cut deep about the mouth and nostrils.
"I'll tell you something queer," he said, glancing up over the lighted
match. "Tristram Senior was murdered in this room--just here, where I'm
standing. There's a stain under the carpet. The place is supposed to
be haunted."
She lifted her eyebrows. Her eyes were very steady and watchful.
"Yes?" she queried.
"He was murdered by my mother's husband. You see, he had betrayed her.
It was a sort of insult to my people." The match went out almost at his
finger-tips. He threw it away. "Strange how things happen, isn't it?"
She made no answer. Her cloak had slipped from her bare shoulders and
she put her hand up and drew it back, holding it across her breast. He
began to move restlessly about the room.
"And now Tristram Junior is in love with my wife."
"You do not know----"
"Oh, I know well enough, I've seen it. What was--is. I imagine a man
doesn't forget you for that puling little saint. How he must wince! Or
have you told him? Well, you'll have something else to tell
him--tomorrow."
"We made a bargain," she said sharply.
"A bargain! What have you done of your share?"
"All that lay in my power."
He gave a wretched laugh.
"This evening, for instance? Well--it's finished, do you hear? I've
done with the whole thing. I gave them and you a last chance. Now I'm
going my own way--and you're my wife. I've got that right left."
"You've no right but what I choose to give you."
"You'll choose--you've got to--you're helpless." He paused, choking.
He threw the half-burnt cigarette on the floor and ground it under his
heel. "There's no one in this place that's going to bother about either
of us. Tristram won't play _deus ex machina_ this time--you and I--we're
going to have this out alone."
He saw her glance towards the door. "It's locked. You can scream to
your heart's content. Your Smithy may hear, but she won't help. The
servants have their orders. Besides--what right has any one to
interfere. You're my wife. You swore before the altar----" He stopped
again. Like an animal lashing itself to fury, he strode towards her and
then turned and came back, his face swollen and quivering. His words
came in a broken torrent of passion. "There's--there's a sort of
compensation--in things--my mother's body was found out there in the
well--she was good enough for an hour's sport--a native--what did it
matter?--a sort of superior toy for an Englishman's pleasure-and the
result--a half-caste, a mincing, feckless muddle of two races--let him
rot in some stuffy Eurasian quarter and drink himself to death. If he
dares rise--if he dares come among us--if he dares aspire to one of our
blood--then spew upon him--roll him in the dust--kick him out--let him
feel the whip like the misbegotten hound he is. As to our
womankind--hands off, or heaven help him----"
"I understand," she threw in breathlessly. "I am to be your revenge--on
them--on your brother----"
He turned back to her, staring at her. Then he burst into a laugh.
"Revenge? Oh, I don't know--nothing perhaps so--so high-flown as that.
After all--they'd hardly know, would they? It's--it's a sort of
instinct--to get level--in one way or another. Besides--I want you----"
He measured her with a savage deliberation. "My God--it's natural