The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
Even Elgar! No, no, I couldn't." She went out past Mrs. Smithers on to
the verandah and there lingered for a moment. "Look at the sunshine!"
she said dreamily. "That, at least, is always the same for the just and
the unjust, the happy and the unhappy. Doesn't that console you?"
Mrs. Smithers shook her head.
"It isn't the same. It's an awful thing here. They say if it goes on
beating down like that it will mean thousands and thousands of deaths.
It's cruel. But, such as it is, it don't come inside this place,
Sigrid. It beats down on the road out there, but it don't touch us.
We're walled in--the Lord knows by what--but we're walled in."
Sigrid took her lace parasol and went down the steps to the wide avenue
which swept round in a semicircle to the road. She still moved with her
smooth, tigerish elasticity, but she herself was conscious of an
overwhelming fatigue. It was as Smithy said--the spirit of the place
had triumphed. Little by little it had overpowered the garish,
incongruous splendours with which Barclay had sought to change its
character. The life and gaiety which he had schemed for had never
crossed the threshold, and now he no longer fought, but in sullen
acquiescence watched gloom and decay rise like a sombre tide over its
old ground. The place was moribund. The people in it moved softly and
spoke instinctively in hushed voices as though somewhere in those empty
rooms some one lay dead.
Sigrid reached the compound gates. It was still early in the morning,
but the heat burnt down on the white road with the reflected fierceness
of a near and monstrous fire. The air was thick and tasted metallic. A
bullock-wagon toiled up towards Gaya, came to an exhausted halt, and
then, in response to listless imprecations, creaked heavily on its way.
The mingled sweat and dust lay in ridges on the animals' heaving flanks
and scored the dark faces which were turned for a moment in Sigrid's
direction. Man and brute were curiously allied in that blank and yet
piteous stare. It was as though both visaged suffering and visaged it
dumbly, patiently, accepting it as the decree of life.
Then all was still again.
A man on horseback turned the bend of the road and came at a lumbering
walk down-hill towards the bungalow. She stood and watched him and an
odd, unsteady smile of recognition played with the corners of her lips.
No other man in Gaya rode such a lank, spindle-legged mare, no other man
cut so quaint a figure, no other man could have worn those clothes and
borne himself so bravely. For, despite that touch of the grotesque,
there was something splendid and royal about him, something in his
bigness, in the grand lines of his body, in his freedom and
unconsciousness that made him physically kin to those giants whose
fearless, joyous living glimmers through history and legend--to the
Siegfrieds and the Beowulfs and the Parsifals, men of the forest and the
mountain, who drank deep of life at its source and died on heights which
our day has forgotten.
He carried a yellow-haired dog under one arm and an ordinary covered
wicker basket was tied to his saddle, and despite his efforts jolted
somewhat to the plaintive protests of a cat's mewing.
She would have turned and avoided him, but the bigness of him had held
her riveted too long. He drew rein and swung himself to the ground
beside her.
"I've brought you Richard," he said simply. He did not offer her his
hand or greet her, although they had not spoken to each other for many
weeks. He seemed to sweep all ceremony aside.
"I ought to have brought him before--I promised, didn't I?--but somehow
I couldn't. It was like a slight to Wickie. He's had a rotten time
though, poor chap. You'll make it up to him, I know."
She patted the mongrel's distrustful snout. The man's proximity shook
her composure so that she seized eagerly on the first thought that came
to her.
"What other passengers have you on board?" she said, with a little nod
towards the heaving and mysteriously creaking basket at his saddle.
"My tabbies," he said solemnly. "They've got rather obstreperous since
we've been civilized. My wife doesn't like them running about after me,
so they had to be shut up, poor beggars, and there's nothing like
shutting people up for bringing the devil out of them. Now I'm taking
them with me to Heerut." He smiled a little. "I'm going back to the
wilderness," he said.
He took off his helmet and ran his hand through the thick, tawny hair
with a gesture like that of a sleeper freeing himself from the clouds of
an evil dream. The light striking through the branches of the
mohwa-tree lit up his face, and, looking up at him and reading all that
the last months had wrought, she felt a pang of angry pity. If this was
Siegfried, then it was not the Siegfried of Bruennhilde's fiery
mountain, but the man of the Rhine Valley, Gudruna's man, fettered by
civilization and weakened by its trickery and dishonesty. Had he also
drunk of the cup of forgetfulness, she wondered? Had he lost his vision
of the fire-girded rocks above where he had won his manhood? A flicker
of the old mockery shone in her eyes.
"You don't look very well, Major Tristram," she said.
He shook his head.
"Oh, I'm well enough--physically at any rate." He laid his hand on his
heart with a rueful laugh. "I've got a sort of spiritual indigestion
though--it's this life--it doesn't suit me or my tabbies. It's too neat
and tidy. I'm like that what's-his-name person who had to put his hand
to his mother earth to keep strong. I need to be doing and fighting,
struggling for existence in my mother wilderness to keep decent. Well,
I shall have enough of that out there. Unless the drought breaks soon
we're going to have more trouble. The unhappy folk in the village are
beginning to die off like flies, and when the famine comes----?" He
shrugged his shoulders.
"You don't look fit for such work," she exclaimed bitterly.
"I'm tired--that's all. I had a stiff day of it yesterday." He looked
at her with a flash of boyish enthusiasm. "Hasn't any one told you?"
"No one has told me anything," she said. "People don't rush here with
their latest gossip."
He flushed painfully.
"Oh, well, it isn't exactly gossip. It's about Boucicault."
"Boucicault?"
"Yes. You know Sir Gilbert Foster gave him up. Well, I found something
Sir Gilbert didn't--a little spot on the brain not bigger than a pin's
head. I operated yesterday, and I believe he'll get well. Isn't that a
feather in my cap?"
He looked up, smiling into the sunlight, and waited for her to speak,
until the silence became oppressive. Then he turned to her, drawn by an
instinct which the next instant he knew was justified. He caught her by
the arm, shaken from all his resolute self-possession by what her face
revealed to him.
"Sigrid--what is it--you're ill--in pain----"
But she freed herself almost violently, steadying herself, forcing the
blood back into her cheeks by a sheer effort of the will.
"It's nothing--don't fuss over me. It's the heat--nothing more----"
"Then you ought not to be out here."
She laughed defiantly.
"You're not my doctor, Major Tristram, and I won't be bullied. Besides,
you've whetted my curiosity. There now, I'm all right again. What were
you saying about Colonel Boucicault? You--you operated, and now he's
going to get well?"
"I think so." But he answered absently. He was still intent on her
face, striving to get beneath the mask. The moment's livid pallor had
gone, but she was none the less changed. Her voice, level and quiet,
had yet a new tone in it--a kind of hoarseness which he knew as a
symptom of exhaustion and pain. She turned away, trying to avoid his
eyes.
"Has he been able to speak?"
"Not yet. He is not even properly conscious. It may last some weeks."
She gave a little cynical laugh.
"I suppose some one will be glad."
"Anne--my wife."
"Ah, yes--your wife." Some new thought struck her. She turned back to
him, with a line of perplexity between her arched brows. "Aren't you
leaving him very soon?"
He hesitated, and then answered slowly:
"Dr. Martin is with him. I have to go to Heerut. It's not only my
work. I've heard that Ayeshi's somewhere in these parts, and I've got
to find him."
"What do you want with Ayeshi?" she asked, no less deliberately.
"I've got to bring him back. I only heard yesterday of the suspicion
which sent him into hiding, and, I am afraid, to the devil. The
suspicion is unwarranted. He's got to come back and be cleared."
"Poor Ayeshi!" she said under her breath.
He nodded, his eyes darkened with pain.
"He has suffered horribly and unjustly."
"Needlessly!" she corrected vehemently. "Uselessly! Who minds sacrifice
or suffering or injustice so long as the end--the purpose--is clear and
attained? It's the pitiable uselessness----" She broke off, tapping
the ground with an exasperated foot. But he had heard the tears in her
voice.
"Isn't that the horror of all suffering?" he asked, wearily--"its
apparent uselessness? We can only hope it leads somewhere."
"Oh, for pity's sake don't be platitudinous!" she burst out. "It's
almost as though I was listening to Anne talking."
"My wife!" he reminded her sharply.
"Oh, you are very loyal!" she retorted.
He was silent a moment, and then laughed, covering over his own pallor.
"It's only a sense of justice. A wife isn't responsible for the poor
qualities of her husband's brains, is she?"
"She may be responsible for his becoming a sleek prig," she said
cruelly, then, with a quick, almost girlish gesture of appeal: "Don't be
angry, Major Tristram! The heat has disagreed with me mentally and
physically. Let's talk of something else. Tell me something about your
mother."
He looked at her, puzzled, and naively pleased.
"What shall I tell you about her?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know--tell me if she is well and happy."
He bent down to stroke the dog at his feet, hiding his face.
"I believe she is. In her last letter she hoped to live to welcome us
both home----"
"Will that hope be gratified, Major Tristram?"
"I fear not," he answered unsteadily.
She was silent, looking wistfully ahead into the white sunlight.
"Ever since that day I saw her picture and heard her story I have been
interested in your mother," she said at last. "She is the sort of woman
whom one wants to be happy--whose happiness one would like to shelter to
the end."
"One can't protect another's happiness," he said. "I've learned that
much."
"I also," she said gravely.
He straightened up. His blue eyes rested on her face with a
treacherous, smouldering trouble.
"I can't help feeling that you're--you're suffering," he said. "It's
the only thing I'm quick at guessing at--if it's only physical--please
go in and--and rest----"
She shook her head. There was a tenderness in her faint smile which a
woman may feel for some big, clumsy, loving boy.
"I'm not tired. I come down here every day and watch life go past."
"Sigrid----" He faltered. "Does that mean that you are very lonely?"
"No--not very. My husband is always away now. Mrs. Boucicault and Mary
come sometimes--and even Mrs. Bosanquet. I think they all love me, but
they can't alter circumstances, and it makes them desperately unhappy.
Often I wish they wouldn't come----" She waited a moment, studying his
set features with a pitying knowledge. "I know what you're thinking,
Major Tristram. You're comparing this life with the golden palaces and
the mountain-tops, with my splendid living and splendid dying."
She burst out laughing and patted him on the arm. "Oh, my innocent
friend, don't you know us mortals better than that--don't you know how