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

In the vague light the new bridge looked like some monstrous dragon, its body spanning the half-empty river-bed, its thick-set limbs planted stolidly in the sluggish water. It needed no more than a ceremony for it to be complete. Yet Barclay turned up to the old bridge. In view of its approaching demolition it had been neglected and part of the wooden rail had been broken down, making the crossing at nightfall a matter of some danger. Barclay chose it and rode across with slack rein. On the other side he dismounted and tethered his horse and went on on foot through the trackless jungle grass. When he stood still he could catch no sound, neither the thud of hoofs nor the faintest movement. The high grass, as it yielded to his body, rustled and cracked deafeningly in his ears. His own breathing sounded like the loud panting of a hunted animal. The temple lay sullen and dark and silent in the black shadow of the jungle. Barclay reached the gateway. The obscurity was here so dense that his instinct alone guided him. He went forward deliberately, noisily, sensing the hands that waited for him, the eyes that watched him. Then he struck a light. The next instant that for which he waited came, and, though he had waited for it, its swiftness and deadliness drove a scream from his lips--a scream that was smothered to a choking groan almost at its birth. He stumbled and fell, his hands twisted behind him, his unprotected face grazing the stones. He felt hot breath on his neck, the cut of a cord round his wrists. Gagged and helpless, he was jerked back to his knees and a dark lantern flashed its eye on to his bleeding face. Beyond the dazzling circle he could see forms no more than shadows painted dimly against the dense blackness of the temple walls. Nearest to the light, Vahana's wild, expressionless eyes glittered with the cold lustre of a serpent's; but, as he grew accustomed to the light, Barclay recognized other faces, two headmen from neighbouring villages, a handful of priests wearing the Triple Cord on their shoulders, five non-commissioned officers from the native regiment. They crowded round him in a silent circle which contracted like a steel trap. But Barclay seemed neither to fear nor heed them. He threw back his head and looked up into Ayeshi's face. Then he drew himself together as a man does who knows that life and death hover in the balance. "So you were a spy after all, Mr. Barclay?" Ayeshi said in English. "No, Rajah, your servant," was the swift answer. The fine nostrils distended with a deep-drawn breath. "Do you know who I am, then?" "I know that you are Ayeshi, the son of Ram Alla, who was deposed and driven into exile by the English. I know that you were saved by a few faithful who feared to breathe the secret even to you. I know that you have borne willingly a stigma which is another's. I know that you have starved and suffered and learned in the gutters of Calcutta that an unworthy English Sahib should go unpunished." Ayeshi lifted his hand imperatively. "How have you learnt these things?" "I have ears in every village, Rajah." "Why did you follow me?" "I have a wish to serve you." "You are English----" "English!" Barclay laughed. "Yes, I have English blood in my veins. I am the son of the old Tristram Sahib who seduced my mother and brought about her death, who hunted down my brothers and our father's servants and shot them from the cannon's mouth, who gave honourable life to Tristram Sahib, the wealthy and happy and honoured, who gave life to me, an outcaste----" "Yet a night ago you sat and ate with these, thy people----" "That also is true. I fought for their friendship, Rajah, I grovelled for it. I schemed for it. I would have sold you and all these, my brothers, if they would have made me one of them. But they would not. They have chosen, not I. Last night, Rasaldu, the swineherd's son, would not sit at table with me. That was the end." "You have an English wife." Barclay laughed again. "Who sold herself to me for a high price, who would rather die ten deaths than be a wife to me, who loves Tristram Sahib----" He broke off and jerked his head towards the intently watching Sadhu. "Vahana here knows something of what I say. Let him testify for me." The shadowy, unreal circle of faces turned for an instant. Vahana bowed his head in assent. "I have told you the truth," Barclay went on. "The best and the worst. I have risked life to tell it you. I knew what might await me here--a knife in the dark perhaps without a word spoken--and yet I had to come. Life can be more bitter than death. A man cannot live alone as I have done--there comes a time when his soul cries for his people." They looked at him silently, without pity. The agony in his hoarse voice did not touch them. For them also he was the Pariah--the outcaste. He read their answer in their eyes and turned back to Ayeshi with a burst of passion. "Take me--claim me--make me one of you! I have power--I have money--I can do for you what no other man could do. Either you must kill me or make me one of your blood. I know too much. There is no other way out for either of us." Ayeshi did not move or speak. One of the two priests crept closer, avoiding Barclay's shadow. "What can you do for us?" he whispered. "You know very well, O Heera Singh! The drought is on us. The crops will fail. Is there a man in your village who does not owe all that he has to me? What if I make our Lord Ayeshi their deliverer--if he should free them from me? And I have money. Is all that nothing?" The priest was silent, fingering his sacred cord with eager fingers. But Ayeshi knelt down and looked full into the Eurasian's face. "You said that you would have betrayed us for their friendship," he said. "What if they came now and offered you their hands----" "It is not in their power," was the swift and bitter answer. "They have tried--the river is too wide for them." There was silence again. The yellow light revealed figures lurking behind them, black, vaguely defined forms which glided softly up and down the temple walls. Vahana had bent down and with his claw-like finger drew a pattern in the dust. It was the sign of Swashtika. Barclay drew his breath between his teeth. He laid his hand on the rough-drawn symbol and Vahana's hand closed down on his. The priest wetted his forefinger with his tongue and touched Barclay's forehead, tracing two horizontal lines. But Barclay did not feel him. He was only conscious of that hand, cold, hard, scaly. It seemed to envelop him, to glide up his arm and to reach down and close about his heart. "One of our blood," the priest muttered, "for evil and for good we claim you one of us." But Ayeshi made a gesture of proud impatience. "There can be no evil," he said. "The worst that can come to any of us is death. And what is death but release? We who have seen our faith insulted, our gods denied, our dreams shattered--what is death to us? Each one of us has his own bitter wrong. Let him avenge it under my banner." He turned authoritatively to one of the native officers. "We have had enough of words. From henceforward there shall be nothing said which does not translate itself into action. You, Parga, what have you to tell me?" The man answered with a military salute. "All is ready, lord. We are patient. We do but await your signal." "We have planned for the twenty-fifth of this month, lord," his companion added. Ayeshi nodded. "By that time we shall have our forces on this side of the river ready. Give me the map." The map was spread out on the ground. Ayeshi traced a line down the length of the river, whispering his orders. Here and there one of the soldiers assented or offered a suggestion. The priests were silent but watchful. Their faces glistened like burnished bronze in the yellow light. But Barclay felt and realized only that hand which had rested on his. It was as though he had plunged his arm into icy water and the chill had begun to creep through his whole body. His blood had become cold and sluggish in his veins. He listened, and beyond the subdued voices he heard strange sounds--an intermittent rustling amidst the long grass, a hushed, sibilant whispering, the crack of a branch under the weight of a writhing, twisting body. He lifted his head and it seemed to him that the jungle towered over him, roofing the broken walls of the temple with its sinister shadow. Vahana watched him unceasingly. * * * * * Dawn was still afar off as Barclay rode his horse over the narrow bridge. Once on the farther bank he turned and looked back furtively. Nothing was visible. The forest-clad mountains were no more than a monstrous blot on the burnished shield, wiping out a part of its mysterious quarterings. Yet their massed blackness fascinated him. They filled him with an inexplicable horror which until now he had held partially in abeyance; but in this loneliness it became an obsessing force of panic. Something had happened to him. He sat there in the saddle, but his mind, a second vitally real consciousness, crawled through the trackless undergrowth. His ears heard strange whisperings; things unnamable slid over his limbs and wound themselves about his throat and body, driving the breath from him. He could not taunt himself with feverish imaginings. The man in the saddle might have been a shadow, a figment of the brain, but that second being struggling and gasping for life in those jungle fastnesses was a reality--himself. It was not imagination, but revelation. A sixth sense had been stabbed to consciousness. Scales had fallen from his eyes. He forced himself to ride on and in an instant the return became a heedless, panic-stricken flight before an invisible, formless enemy. Even in his own compound there was no safety, no escape from whatever hunted him. Rather in the black silence of the bungalow he recognized a new menace. He tried to master himself,--to call the sleeping syce, but his tongue was dry and thick in his mouth and refused its office. With shaking hands he tethered his horse and crawled stealthily across the verandah to the open windows of his room. He stood still on the threshold, listening. His own breathing seemed to come from the other end of the room--from some one who crouched amidst the ponderous furniture, watching him. He tried to strike a light, but the match flickered and went out and he dared not try again. He felt that no light could live in that stifling, foetid atmosphere. And the shadows which he had awakened appalled him. He stumbled blindly to the chair beneath the lamp and crouched down into it, hushing his labouring lungs, forcing himself to confront the darkness, the sweat thick and icy on his forehead. He had dared death that night and had not known fear; but this was different. It was something in himself--an awful disruption, the breaking down of some secret barrier behind which had been imprisoned untold knowledge, a horde of ghostly, inherited memories. He tried to stem them back--vainly. He--that second self--saw this stain beneath the carpet. He saw old Tristram Sahib seated where he sat--Vahana crawling out of the darkness--the uplifted weapon. He heard a woman's muffled scream--the bumping of a body falling between narrow walls--the sullen splash of water. These things were to him actual--corporeal. He turned with a shuddering gasp, burying his face in his arms, hiding from them, awaiting in palsied helplessness for the deliverance of the morning. *CHAPTER VII*