The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
of"---- He caught himself up. "And I have friends in all the villages,
and my animals and my work."
"I know your work is wonderful--the noblest work in the world." She
spoke with a grave, youthful wisdom. "But the loneliness must remain
all the same, Major Tristram."
He was silent for a moment, and then shook himself as though freeing
himself from a burden.
"It can't be helped," he said. "No one can share it with me."
"Many people would be proud and glad to share it," she answered. She
held her head high, and there was a fervent simplicity in her low voice
which raised the impulsive words above suspicion. He turned to her with
warm eyes.
"Thank you," he said. "I don't think it's true, and I shan't ever put
it to the test--but it's good hearing."
He turned the pony neatly into the gates of the Boucicaults' bungalow
and drove up the shady avenue to the porch. A syce ran out to meet them
and caught the reins, and a minute later Anne Boucicault had been lifted
gently to the ground. "And we've chattered so much," Tristram remarked
shamefacedly, "that I don't even know your mother's symptoms."
She made no answer, indeed did not seem to have heard him. She had lost
all her vigour, all her faintly self-opinionated eagerness. As they
stood together in the entrance hall she seemed just cowed and broken, a
white, frightened little ghost.
"My mother's in here," she said, scarcely above a whisper. She held the
door open for him, and he went past her into a room so carefully
darkened that for a moment he hesitated blindly on the threshold. Then
a sound guided him. It was the sound of some one crying. Not
passionately, not desperately, but with a terrible monotony. Then one
salient feature detached itself from the shadows--a wicker chair drawn
up by the curtained window, and beside it, huddled together, with her
face buried in her arms, the figure of a woman. She wore some loose,
dark-coloured garment, and was so small and still that she would have
seemed scarcely living, but for the jerking sobs. Tristram checked the
girl's anxious movement and went forward alone. He knelt down by the
piteous heap and put his hand on her arm, and remained thus for a full
minute. He did not speak to her, and she seemed unconscious of his
presence. The sobbing went on unbrokenly. Then he picked her up
quietly and effortlessly, and placed her in the chair, dexterously
slipping a silk cushion behind her head.
"Mrs. Boucicault!" She did not answer. Her eyes were closed. Her
small, white face under the mop of fair hair, fast turning grey, was
puckered like a child's. Her little hands gripped the arms of her
chair. From her place near the door, Anne watched with a frightened
wonder. "Mrs. Boucicault!" Tristram repeated quietly. Her eyes opened
then. They were tearless and very bright. She stared straight ahead,
her under-lip between her white teeth, and began to rock herself
backwards and forwards. She was still sobbing. Tristram knelt again and
took one of her hands and held it between his own. She looked down
then--first at her hand, as though it puzzled her, and then at him.
Suddenly, violently, she freed herself and tore open the heavily
embroidered kimono. Her shoulders were bare. On the right shoulder was
a black swollen stain bigger than a man's hand.
"Look!" she said.
Anne Boucicault caught her breath with a vague, vicarious shame. She
saw that Tristram had moved very slightly. His square jaws looked ugly
against the dim light of the window.
"Get hot water and bandages," he commanded. "Linen will do--and
ointment--anything greasy." As she slipped from the room he drew the
kimono gently over the poor lacerated shoulder. "You've had a nasty
accident, Mrs. Boucicault," he said, levelly.
"It was no accident." Her sobs had stopped. Her voice sounded like the
rasp of steel against steel. "_He_ did it--my husband. It's not the
first time, Major Tristram. It won't be the last. He'll kill me--and
he'll kill her." She nodded towards the door. The words poured from
her as though released from a long restraint, but she was coldly,
violently coherent. "Yes--he'll kill her--slowly, by inches. He'll
break her. She'll go under fast. She's not like me--I'm wiry--she's
hard, but she'll snap. For all her prayers and her church and her God,
she'll go under." Something contemptuous and angry crept into her face.
"Anne's cowed already. And it's not only us. His men--they tried to
shoot him. Did you hear?"
He nodded.
"Yes."
Her eyes blazed.
"Oh, I wish to God they'd done it!" she burst out, from between clenched
teeth. "Oh, why didn't they? He's goaded them enough. One of these
days they'll murder us all for his sake. He's a devil. He's made life
a hell. He likes to make suffering. He likes to see us wince. Oh, if
he were only dead!" Suddenly the tense mask of hatred broke up into
piteous lines of helpless misery. Two great tears rolled unheeded down
her white cheeks. "Anne talked about bearing our cross, and prayer, and
God's will," she went on chokingly. "But I want to be happy, Major
Tristram, I want to be happy."
"You have an absolute right to happiness," he answered. "You've got to
be happy, Mrs. Boucicault. I'm going to see to it."
She dropped back wearily among her cushions. Her grey eyes, now pale
and faded-looking, rested on his face with a childish questioning.
"You talk as though--as though you could."
"Well, I can do something--I promise you. Close your eyes."
She closed them at once, and he took his handkerchief and brushed the
tears from her cheeks. Then he resumed his kneeling position, her hand
in his, soothing it much as he had soothed the frightened, broken-winged
bird. Once she sighed deeply, as if released from some stifling weight,
and thereafter her breathing sounded quiet and regular. By the time Anne
Boucicault returned, her mother had dropped into a heavy sleep.
Major Tristram got up noiselessly, and motioned the girl to follow him.
His movements were curiously light and noiseless, and brought no shadow
of change on the sleeper's face.
"It's better that she should sleep," he said quietly. "I shall come in
again tonight before I leave. I doubt if she wakes before then."
They went out together. On the mat the ubiquitous Wickie lay extended
in a state of dusty misery. He rolled over as Tristram appeared,
displaying much humility and a blood-stained paw. Tristram picked him
up and hugged him. "You're not a dog--you're an ass, Wickie," he
declared. "And I'll wager you consider yourself a martyr into the
bargain, you assassin of innocent bulbuls. What do you suppose I'm
going to do with you--carry you, I suppose?" He turned a wry, laughing
face to his companion.
"Well, I'll be off now, anyhow," he said. "You'll see me tonight.
Good-bye till then--and don't worry her or yourself."
She took his extended hand.
"Thank you. I thought it would be so terrible--for any one to know how
things are with us. I haven't minded you a bit."
"I'm awfully glad."
He took up his impromptu bird's-nest from its place of safety in an
empty fern-pot. The contents chirped defiance and terror, and Tristram
looked up smiling. He saw then that Anne Boucicault's eyes were fixed
on something beyond him, and that they were wide and stupid-looking with
dread. He turned. A man stood in the sunlit verandah. Against the
golden background he bulked huge and threatening, his features and
whatever expression they bore blotted out by shadow. The switch which
he carried beat an irritable tattoo against his riding-boots.
Tristram nodded a greeting.
"Good evening, Colonel."
"Good evening, Major." He bowed satirically and crossed the threshold.
"This is a pleasant surprise. I understood you were out camping."
"I have been for the last two months. I am off again tonight."
"Then my daughter and I are indeed fortunate to catch this glimpse of
you." He came farther into the shade, half turning to fling his helmet
and whip on to a table. The light fell on his profile, revealing the
livid skin, the brutal line of the jaw. "To what are we indebted,
Major?"
"I came professionally," Tristram answered.
"On Anne's behalf, I suppose?"
"No, for Mrs. Boucicault." He scrutinized the elder man deliberately.
"Perhaps I could do something for you, Colonel. You're not looking
well. You ought to take a year's leave."
Colonel Boucicault allowed a moment to elapse before he answered. He
had the tensely vicious look of a hard drinker who is never drunk, and
whose jangling nerves are always writhing under restraint. Finally, he
seemed to take a stronger hold over himself. He laughed out, shortly.
"Thanks, I'm very well. I'll last the regiment another year or two--to
its infinite satisfaction, no doubt. As to Mrs. Boucicault, your visit
was kind but unnecessary. There's nothing wrong in that quarter but
feminine hysteria."
"I don't think so," Tristram returned. He had coloured slowly to the
roots of his ruddy hair, but his voice was even quieter. "I take a
serious view of the case. I have ordered Mrs. Boucicault an immediate
return to England."
There was another break. The two men eyed each other squarely.
"That is an absurd proposition which I cannot sanction," Boucicault said
in the same tone of violent self-restraint.
"I'm afraid you'll have to, Colonel."
The antagonism, whose note had sounded even in their greeting of each
other, now rang out clearly. Boucicault's big hands twitched at his
sides.
"Surely, Major, that is scarcely fitting language----" he began.
"I don't care a damn for what's fitting," Tristram broke in. "Mrs.
Boucicault's going to England with Anne. If she doesn't, I'll have you
hounded out of the army even if I get hounded out myself in the doing of
it. That's my bargain."
"By God, Major----" Boucicault took a step nearer.
By reason of his heavy build, he seemed to tower over the younger man.
His eyes were bloodshot in their inflamed rims; his whole body quivered.
"You'd better get out of here," he stammered thickly. "And take my
advice--keep clear of this place--keep out of my way."
"Thanks." Tristram tucked Wickie more securely under one arm. "I'll be
round this evening," he added.
He ignored the threatening gesture, and went leisurely down the steps
and along the drive. At the gates he stopped, drawing his breath with a
quick, deep relief.
Across the roadway, the stems of the trees stood out black and straight
as the pillars of a great temple, whose red-gold lamp had been lowered
from the dome and now sank swiftly into an extinguishing pool of shadow.
A breeze rustled coolly overhead, brushing away the sweet, heavy incense
of many flowers and bringing the first warning of nightfall. A belated
finch fluttered amidst the dense foliage, and then all was still again.
Tristram remained motionless, apparently plunged in his own thoughts,
for he started when a hand touched his arm and turned almost angrily.
Anne Boucicault stood beside him. She was breathless, her lips were
parted, and the wind had blown the dark, curly hair from her white
forehead, adding impulse and eagerness to her staid girlishness.
"I had to come," she panted, "to--to thank you. And then--you mustn't
keep your promise. You mustn't come--it isn't safe----"
He shook his head. His eyes, after the first glance, had gone back to
the fading light.
"I shouldn't hurt your father," he said, gravely.
"But you----!" she exclaimed. "No one knows what he might do to you."
"I don't think that matters," he returned, still in the same rather
absent tone. "Anyway, if he's mad, he's not a fool. You mustn't
worry."
She lingered. Her hand rested tremblingly on his arm.