The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
*THE PRICE PAID*
Mrs. Boucicault and her daughter sat on either side of the wide-open
windows and avoided each other's eyes. It was the first time that they
had been alone together for many months, and they found nothing to say.
Had they been total strangers they could have discussed the situation
with sympathy, but they were bound together, and to the man on whose
return from death to life they waited, by too many ugly memories for any
superficial intercourse. They were like galley-slaves, hating each
other and the bonds that manacled them to an intolerable intimacy.
There was a faint, sickening taste of ether in the hot air. It seemed
to permeate everything, and to Anne, who knew nothing of the surgical
side of illness, it conveyed a suggestion of mysterious suffering and
horror. It affected her with the same physical and purely instinctive
fear which assails most human beings in their first contact with death.
It was not so much the thing that was happening as the grim, immaculate
ceremonial surrounding it which terrified her. She would have been glad
to have been alone, and in her heart she denied her mother the right to
be present. But convention and decorum were on Mrs. Boucicault's side
and against such opponents Anne felt herself powerless to make a stand.
Once she glanced quickly across at her companion and saw how cruelly the
daylight treated the small face now that it was without its persistent
animation. Neither paint nor powder could conceal the livid pallor
beneath the painful slackening of all the facial muscles. Only the mouth
retained its straight, unbreakable resolution.
"One can't live as she does without paying for it," Anne thought, and
did not acknowledge the little glow of righteous satisfaction which
passed over her. Instead she went back mentally to the man lying
unconscious at the other side of the bungalow and to her own life.
For all her painful anxiety she felt strangely content. She had the
elevated serenity of one who has passed through tribulation to a
well-earned happiness. For she had been very unhappy in her life.
There were the days of "misunderstanding" with her father, the days in
"Trichy" when she had faced the alternatives of a penniless and
ill-prepared attack on the unknown world or an ignominious return to a
life her whole soul condemned; there were days, even since her marriage,
when she realized that the man she had worshipped was not wholly worthy
of worship, that in many ways he had fallen below the standard which she
set him.
But of late these things had sunk into the background. God had been very
good. She had longed so much for a child, and that was to be given to
her. That fact alone poured like sunshine over all the past. It seemed
to her that with the beginning of that hope everything had combined
together to make her happy. Her father was to be made well and strong
again. Sigrid Fersen, save where a very few were concerned, had dropped
out of Gaya's life into a grey seclusion, and with her the man whom she
had sought to drag up the heights of her meretricious popularity. And,
best of all, that very morning, when so much hung in the balance, she
had regained her love, her humble, possessive adoration of her husband.
He had seemed so big, so strong and invincible. The fire in his steady,
absorbed eyes had thrilled her, the touch of his hand had given her a
passionate, child-like confidence.
"I know that you won't fail," she had whispered. "God bless you, Tris."
"I'm sure He will," he had answered, smiling. And though perhaps there
was something in that familiar phrase which jarred on her, still it
could not weaken her joy in him or her faith in her own blessing.
"Yes, God had been very good----"
"I think it is over," Mrs. Boucicault said suddenly. "I can hear some
one coming----"
Both women rose instinctively to their feet and turned towards the door.
Anne's heart throbbed painfully. As Dr. Martin entered she felt a
sudden weakness overcome her so that she could hardly stand. The doctor
had discarded his white overalls, but he brought in with him a deeper
tinge of that nauseating odour. Through a mist she heard him talking,
and even in that moment she was conscious of a bitter resentment. He
was speaking to her mother.
"Yes--wonderfully successful, Mrs. Boucicault. To tell you the truth I
had no idea the I.M.S. concealed such a talent for the knife.
Remarkable hand--almost inspired, one might say. Major Tristram can set
up in Harley Street any day. Of course we're not out of the wood yet.
We can't hope to see much change in your husband for some weeks. Shock
and all that, you know. There was a lot more trouble than we suspected.
Old trouble which must have caused a good deal of--eh--mental unrest."
He rubbed his chin as though on the point of some further information.
"Well, I daresay Tristram will go into details. He wants me to stop in
Gaya till we know better where we are, and I shall try and arrange to.
Very interesting case--very. Hullo, here's Major Tristram himself."
With a little cry of joy Anne turned to run to her husband, but as she
saw the man who entered her purpose faltered. She was not given to
analysis, and the change in him, because it was not entirely physical,
eluded her. And it frightened her. It was as though all her instinctive
fears had taken shape in him. He looked exhausted to the point of
breakdown, but that she had seen before, and it was not that which had
brought her to a standstill. It was something behind the white stillness
of his face the passionless detachment, the Nirvana which, had she but
known it, comes to men who have passed through a vast spiritual crisis.
"Tris!" she whispered.
She came to him at last and he put his arm round her.
"It's all right," he said simply. His eyes were on Mrs. Boucicault.
"Your husband will live," he said. "He may get well."
She nodded, twisting the rings round her thin fingers.
"How long will it take before he is strong again?"
"A few months perhaps."
"Then I--I have that much time left me."
"Mother!" Anne cried out. She felt Tristram's arm slip from her
shoulder. He went to Mrs. Boucicault and took her hand in his.
"He may change very much," he said.
She laughed.
"Perhaps--but it will be too late." She made a little grimace. "Well,
I have learned the value of time at any rate. Dr. Martin, come and see
me into my carriage. My daughter wants to have a good cry."
Dr. Martin offered his arm with a grave courtesy surprising in a man of
his somewhat casual temperament, and the two went down the verandah
steps talking in an undertone. Anne watched them in bitter silence.
The attitude of these two men towards the wizened, painted woman had
thrown a shadow of disgust over her happiness. They had treated her as
though she occupied the centre of their stage, accepting her flippant
cruelty without reproof, offering her an austere reverence. A scornful
comment trembled on Anne's lips, but, turning, she saw that Tristram had
dropped down in one of the chairs, his face hidden in his hands, and her
heart melted towards him. She knelt down and put her arms about his
neck.
"Tris!" she whispered. He looked up. "Tris!" she repeated on a note of
faint reproach. For she had seen that his face was wet, and tears in a
man had always seemed to her rather repulsive. "What's the matter,
dear?" she asked.
He smiled faintly.
"I am an ass, aren't I? I don't often do this sort of thing--some
things touch me horribly. Besides, I'm a bit rattled still. Those two
hours were devilish--you don't know----"
She kissed him solemnly.
"I know how splendid you are--Dr. Martin told us."
"Did he? Well, honestly, I don't believe any other man could have done
what I did today. No one else could have wanted to win so badly as I
did."
"For my sake, husband?"
"For yours and mine."
"That's sweet of you," she said gently. Her moment's irritation had
passed. She rested on his bigness, his redeeming strength and
tenderness. "I am very happy, Tristram."
"Are you?" He looked into her face eagerly. "Really happy?"
"Happier than ever in my life. So much that is wonderful has happened.
It seems to have made everything worth while. All the suffering." She
leant against him, her eyes half-closed in dreamy recollection.
"Sometimes I think it's all been for the best. It's taught us charity,
hasn't it--to be gentle in our judgment? I know I have often been hard
too. Today I could forgive even the man who caused it all."
His arm tightened about her.
"He'd be glad to hear that, Anne----"
"I could forgive." She drew herself up a little. "But I wouldn't help
him to escape his punishment, Tristram."
"You couldn't, dear. No one escapes."
"Yes, that's true, isn't it? Sooner or later they are found out. They
say criminals always return to the scenes of their crime. Mother told
me Ayeshi had been seen slinking about Heerut at night----"
"Ayeshi?" he interrupted perplexedly.
She gave a quick glance into his face.
"Yes--of course, I'd forgotten, no one's ever told you. You see, you
were so fond of Ayeshi, and you were ill, and so we arranged that we
wouldn't tell you unless--unless he was caught. Afterwards no one liked
to, and you're such an old hermit--you never hear anything. But now it
doesn't matter, does it? It was Ayeshi who tried to kill my father."
He pushed her away from him as though she had suddenly ceased to exist
for him.
"I don't understand----"
She laughed uncertainly--half-angrily.
"Why, Tris, I've just explained----"
"I understood that no one was suspected----"
"I've explained that, too, dear. I thought you would guess when you
heard that he had disappeared like that----"
He turned on her almost violently, but even she realized in that moment
that he was scarcely conscious of her. His blazing eyes had a sightless
look in them that frightened her to her feet.
"I might have known," he stammered, "but I am too big a fool--an idiotic
sentimentalist----" He steadied and looked at her straightly with
seeing eyes. "Ayeshi must have disappeared to shield me," he said. "It
was I who nearly killed your father."
Her face was at first only stupid-looking as though his words had had no
meaning--then every trace of colour ebbed from her lips. She wavered,
and he sprang to her side, and carried her to the chair which he had
just left. An intense, torturing pity swept him. She was so small, so
very fragile. He felt himself as something monstrous riding over all
her happiness. She clung to him.
"Tris--Tris--please don't say things to frighten me----"
"I've got to. Sooner or later I had to tell you. I didn't mean to be
so sudden. But it's true."
She freed herself. There was no strength in her arms, but he had felt
her whole body cower and shrink from him and he stood back from her as
though she had struck him.
"I can't--I can't believe----" she whispered.
"You must, Anne." He paused, and then went on quietly. "It was after
that time at Bjura. I was riding home as best I could with a
temperature God knows where--I don't tell you that as an excuse, but as
a sort of explanation--and I found your father torturing Wickie. I know
now that probably he was as mad and irresponsible as I was, but at the
moment I thought he was simply a devil. I intervened--I believe I
appealed to him I tried to stop him. He struck me repeatedly, but as
long as he didn't touch Wickie I didn't care. Then he ran Wickie
through with the sharp end of a bamboo stick--and I struck him. I am
very strong--and I had no self-control. It was as though all the brakes
had given way--and I struck too hard. That was how it happened, Anne."