The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
after the fashion of English royalties on their own domains, had sought
to act the part of benefactor in Heerut and had been repulsed. At
another time the incident might have caused Meredith a faint amusement,
but now he could feel nothing. The desolation of rain and grey,
lightless sky pressed down upon him like a stupefying burden. He went
on thinking of Anne, wondering dully how it was he knew so well that he
would never see her again. He thought of Tristram and pitied him. In
that hour he forgot creed and principle. He saw, perhaps for the first
time, humanity as one in suffering.
Two beggars slunk through the mud towards him. They were almost naked.
The water ran in streams off their glistening brown skins and matted
their beards into black masks. They came up, one to Meredith, one to
the Rajah, whining for alms. Meredith threw his man a coin. He did it
mechanically. The Rajah burst into a fresh stream of curses. He was
very wet--very angry. He had been called "swineherd" by his own people
and the name rankled like a poisoned dart in his quivering flesh. He
spurred his horse at the whimpering mendicant.
"Get out of my way, you vermin----"
Something happened. Meredith, still weighed down by his own thoughts,
was only conscious of a coming change. He half turned to his companion,
and as he did so one of the natives sprang past him. It was the leap of
a tiger, straight at Rasaldu's throat. A gleam of white light streaked
through the greyness--a muffled scream ended suddenly by a choking,
sickening groan.
Rasaldu pitched headlong from the saddle. His foot caught in the
stirrup. The startled animal swung round and bolted, dragging its rider
face-downwards through the mud--a mere inanimate, shapeless bundle.
So much Meredith saw. He tried to think--to act. But he was like a
sleeper waking slowly--too slowly--from a narcotic. Instinctively he
turned to meet his own danger. He never saw it. It came noiselessly
and quite painlessly. It was like a stupendous stroke of lightning
severing the earth under his feet. It sent him spinning through aeons
of memory and feeling into nothing.
*CHAPTER XI*
*FREEDOM*
A covered bullock-wagon which for the last two hours had been struggling
with the morass leading up from the valley came to a standstill outside
the gates of the Barclays' compound. The driver lifted a flap of the
canvas covering, and a woman crawled out and clambered stiffly to the
ground. She stood for a moment in the steam of the panting and sweating
bullocks counting money into the brown calloused palm extended to her in
greedy persistence.
"No, I shan't want you going back," she said, in answer to his half
diffident, half insolent question. "I've come to stop." She gave a
little, high-pitched laugh, and, gathering up her untidy skirts, went
through the open gates.
A syce, holding a lady's saddle-horse, waited at the bottom of the
verandah steps. He stared stolidly at the intruder. He did not know
her, and he knew everyone in Gaya. He had also the unerring instinct of
his race and class which discounted the superficial Europeanism of her
dress and its common gaudiness. He knew her for what she was, and made
a gesture of detention as she passed.
"What you want, missy?" he asked in English, and with a mocking flash of
his white teeth. "Missy not go in there."
She turned her head. The expression on her dark, mobile features was
composite of dignity and nervousness.
"I want Barclay Sahib," she said. "Is he here?"
"Meester Barclay gone away," the man retorted, using the English prefix
deliberately. "Meester Barclay gone away many weeks."
"Where has he gone?"
"Not know, missy."
She stood irresolute, looking at the saddled horse. At first it seemed
to convey no significance to her. Then suddenly she flushed up.
"I must see some one who does know," she explained. "Who lives here?"
"The Mem-Sahib, missy."
"Who is the Mem-Sahib?"
The syce made no answer. He stroked the velvet nose of his charge and
the stranger became aware from his attitude that they were no longer
alone. She turned sharply, and the woman standing at the head of the
steps immediately behind her returned her stare with a faint smile.
"Do you want Mr. Barclay?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, I do." The Eurasian hesitated. The fair-haired fragile-looking
woman in the dark riding-habit seemed to frighten her.
"I've come all the way from Calcutta," she stammered.
"That's a long way. I'm sorry--Mr. Barclay is away--has been away for
many weeks. I don't even know where he is. If you would tell me your
name----"
The woman caught her breath audibly. Her dark, uneasy eyes had a
smouldering look in them--a look that was somehow primitive in its
sombre, gathering suspicion.
"My name's Barclay--Marie Barclay," she flashed out.
"Ah, Mr. Barclay's sister?"
"No, his wife." She flung the words down with the defiance of an animal
that is afraid of its own temerity. Her head, with its over-adorned hat,
was thrown back truculently, but her lips quivered. "I'm his wife," she
repeated.
Sigrid had been pale when she came out. Now a faint delicate colour
tinged her cheeks, bringing life and energy to her listless
transparency. She put her ungloved hand to her face with a little
familiar gesture of surprise and thought--but to Marie Barclay it
expressed mockery.
"It's true," she burst out. "I can prove it----"
"I'm sure you can--only not here. It's so wet. Purga, you can walk
Astora for a little. Won't you come in--Mrs. Barclay?"
She gave her visitor no opportunity to answer, but led the way to the
library where Mrs. Smithers, with ruffled grey hair and a face of care
and perpetual perplexity, sat beneath the marble Venus knitting a pair
of mittens which no human being was ever likely to wear.
"Smithy, this lady has come all the way from Calcutta. She's Mrs.
Barclay--Jim's wife."
Mrs. Smithers let the mittens drop into her lap, but she gave no other
sign of consternation. She was in the state of a person who has been
subjected to a vigorous course of electric treatment and has become
impervious to shocks.
"Lawks a-mercy!" she exclaimed wearily. "Well, and I'm not surprised.
It's not the last thing I expected to hear. I warrant there's a good
few of 'em about the country if we only knew."
"But this is true, Smithy--I'm sure it is, isn't it?" She turned, with
a quick gracious movement, to the woman at her side, but for a moment
the latter did not answer. Her full, rather pretty, mouth was
desperately closed to hide its trembling. Her hands were interlocked in
front of her. A strand of straight black hair straggled untidily across
her face, and she tried to toss it back with an upward jerk of her head.
It was as though she dared not unclasp her hands.
"Yes, it's true," she said at last. "I can prove it. We were
married--years ago--in Calcutta. He's kept it quiet--I know--he was
ashamed. He thought I'd pull him back. He wanted to get on so
badly--and I put up with it. I'd--I'd have put up with anything. He
said he'd send for me--afterwards--but he never did. I hadn't heard
from him for weeks. He didn't send any money--there was hardly any
left--just enough to bring me here----" she looked from one woman to
another, and there was a tortured, hunted look in her eyes that made her
violent defiance pitiable. "I didn't mean to tell--he made me
promise--but I've been so unhappy--so desperate--when I found he'd
gone--and--and you here, I lost my head--I couldn't bear it any
longer--I couldn't----"
She dropped down into the chair nearest her, her face buried in her
hands, crying wildly.
"Scoundrel!" Mrs. Smithers ejaculated on the same note of confirmed
conviction.
Sigrid stood looking down at the bowed, shaking shoulders. Her eyes were
pitying, but her mouth was a little wry, almost whimsical.
"You were quite right to tell us," she said. "It's made a great many
things clear. You needn't be frightened. I have an idea your husband
meant you to come and that he will be glad. I daresay that was why he
didn't write----"
Mrs. Barclay lifted her head, brushing the tears from her wet cheeks.
Her hat had slipped a little to one side, giving her a look of grotesque
and distraught violence.
"What are you doing here?" she asked insolently. "Who are you?"
"Nobody in particular--an interloper--it seems."
"Oh, I know better than that!" The dark face quivered into a sneer. "I
know who you are. You're the white woman he was after. I guessed right
enough. He wanted an Englishwoman." She sprang suddenly to her feet
with an almost threatening gesture. "But it was me he loved--me he
married. He didn't care for you--don't you flatter yourself--he wanted
you--just to get even--just to hurt as he'd been hurt. You're nothing
but a----"
She broke off. Sigrid had not moved or spoken, but there was that in
the still white face which checked the torrent of savage insult. Mrs.
Smithers got up. She rolled the mittens into a neat ball.
"I'm an old woman," she said, "and I hate violence. But just you mind
what you're saying, Mrs. Barclay----"
Sigrid checked her with a gesture.
"Mrs. Barclay is quite right," she said calmly. "I think she
understands her husband very well. She is only mistaken in supposing I
did not understand too. I did not know that he was married, but that is
neither here nor there. I did know that I was merely a means to an
end--as he was to me. Now that's all finished and done with." She
laughed a little. "Do you know, Mrs. Barclay, you are the second woman
in twenty-four hours who has accused me of trying to steal her husband,
and, heaven knows, in this instance, it isn't true."
Marie Barclay stared at her in sullen silence. Her passion had gone
down under fatigue and a natural racial apathy. She had struck with all
the strength she possessed, and now came the reaction of helpless tears.
"I don't know what to do," she said brokenly. "I've nowhere to go--no
one to help me."
"We're going to help you," Sigrid answered. She came and laid a gentle,
controlling hand on the other's arm. "You mustn't break down. There's
nothing to be afraid of. You don't know it, but you've done me a great
service. And now it's my turn. You'll stay here. It's your
home--everything in it is yours. There's money enough to keep you going
till he comes back. And he will come back. He'll be glad to find you
here--we were nothing to one another. Doesn't that make you happy?"
Her tone was so gay, so assured that the brimming eyes lifted to hers
lost their suspicion and hatred.
"I don't know--I don't understand--and you----"
"I shall clear out. I've no right here. We'll be your guests for
tonight and we can talk things over. Meantime, Mrs. Smithers will give
you tea, and I'll go for a last ride on your horse. I want fresh air
and a little quiet. You don't mind?"
The full lips quivered resentfully.
"You're making fun of me----"
"No--I'm in dead earnest. I've been an intruder and an unwilling thief,
and now I return my ill-gotten gains. Smithy, take care of her till I
come back. And no violence!"
Mrs. Smithers paid no heed to the injunction. She was trembling in
every limb as she followed the quickly moving figure to the verandah
steps. She clutched Sigrid's hands. Her dim old eyes were full of a
great dread.
"Sigrid--my dearest--what are you going to do?"
"Do? Nothing rash, Smithy. Did you think I might----? Don't you see
how good it is? I'm free. I'm Sigrid Fersen--I haven't got to fight
daily, hourly, for my integrity--I'm free." She drew in a deep joyous