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

He screamed. Again and again. The jungle--the whole world, _his_ world, shrinking about him till it was no bigger than his own brain, echoed with his screams. *CHAPTER XVI* *TOWARDS MORNING* The rain had ceased. A soft wind blowing from the north swept the low-hanging clouds into the fantastic, tattered fragments, between which a thin moonlight poured down on to the desolation of waters. All that had been had been washed out as though a child's sponge had passed over a slate covered with the laborious work of a life. Fields and villages, rich pastures, homesteads, bridges, each of them some man's dream and ambition, lay under that smooth, glittering surface awaiting their resurrection at the hands of a patient humanity. It was by this first break of light that Tristram saw the way over which they had still to travel. He sat motionless and upright, scanning the seeming limitless expanse, and perhaps in that moment some dim, unformed appeal went up from him to the Unknown which steels the hearts of men to supreme effort. And, swift on the heels of that brief intercession, there followed an aching pity for the faithful comrade whose share in the coming struggle was so much greater than his own, whose purpose in it was no more than to serve him with the last breath of her life. He stroked her ungainly neck, striving to break down the barrier between living things which made his remorse and pity powerless. She answered gallantly with the grand courage of her kind, and the water rose about them. It was a nightmare redreamed, save that now the first violence of the storm had spent itself. The wreckage had gone its way, and the flood's polished bosom shone bare and empty under the wane and glow of light. There was no landmark left by which they could guide their course. The jungle-clad mountains were mingled with the clouds. The temple shrouded itself in the shadow of the jungle. They could but drift with the currents, fighting their way across, hoping--Tristram himself scarcely knew for what. For who could have lived in that deluge, what escape was possible? Yet he carried with him a belief born of despair, a serenity such as men feel for whom there is no choice, no second possibility. Something black drifted past him. He could not recognize it, and in a moment it was gone. They were now in midstream, where the rush of the water swept over Arabella's desperately uplifted head. It was then, the moon sailing out unveiled into the open sky, that he saw other black shapes and knew them for what they were. They were the bodies of men--not of isolated victims, of villagers and field labourers trapped separately or even in small communities by the swift disaster. They were many hundreds. They had died together, and death had not separated them. Like driftwood, they had been swept into entangled, shapeless piles of floating horror. "Sahib! Sahib!" The cry came faintly across the racing waters. Tristram, waking from the lethargy of abandoned hope, turned Arabella's head sharply upstream. She responded. It was as though in those years of comradeship she had become a part of himself, obeying the same law, acknowledging the same creed. It was as though she recognized a familiar message in that appeal to her last strength, as though her blinded eyes had seen what Tristram saw. It was little enough to accomplish--and yet so much. Ten feet to go before that agonized, appealing figure, a hurrying blot on the silver pathway, would be swept irrevocably past and beyond hope. It could be done. Arabella lifted herself breast high out of the water. She was young again. All the fire of her mixed ancestry blazed up for the supreme effort. Five feet--three----. It was done. Tristram stretched out his hand. It was gripped and held with the tenacity of despair. Arabella went down under the double burden--rose again superbly. "Ayeshi----!" "Sahib--I knew that you--would come--she--is--safe--the jungle---path--behind--the Temple----" "Hold on, Ayeshi----" "No--Sahib----" For an instant their faces were almost on a level. The brightening moonlight was in Ayeshi's eyes--full of a passionate worship. "Humuyan came--too--late--not you, Sahib----" He tried to wrench his hand free. Tristram cursed bitterly at him. "You try to let go--you dare try it--damn you, boy, do you think I'm going to let you go--now--don't play the Rajah with me here----" They were being swept faster and faster downstream. Arabella was dying under him. He did not know it. He could not have unclasped his hand. No reason could have mastered the love in him, or denied the love which illuminated the face lifted to his out of the black waters. "Sahib--forgive----" "Fool's talk--I don't know the word--hold on, d'you hear? I'll get you out of it. You shall go scot free--only hold on--Ayeshi----" They fought each other, hand clasped in hand, eye to eye. No two enemies, spurred on by the bitterest hatred, could have fought more grimly. Tristram laughed. "I'm stronger than you--always was----" Something flashed up in the light. "Ayeshi----!" he gasped. A faint smile dawned on the native's face. "Greater love hath no man----" The knife fell with maniacal strength. Tristram closed his eyes. No fear, but a sheer incredulous horror lamed all power of self-defence. The second of suspense passed. Nothing--only now there was no weight on the hand still clasped in his, only Arabella again breasted the torrent with the energy of release from a killing burden. "Ayeshi----!" No answer--only that mute, blood-stained hand--grown powerless--and one more figure floating to join its brothers on the great, silver-flooded field. Two boatmen, guiding their flat-bottomed craft between the ruined hovels of Heerut, saw him as he waded waist-deep through the receding flood. The brightening dawn was on his face, but they did not recognize him till he called them by name. Then silently they paddled towards him and dragged him to safety. They were old men, palsied with the horrors of that night. There was no thought of rebellion left in them. They could only whisper incoherently, like frightened children, looking up into his face as at something at once loved and terrible. "Dakktar Sahib--Dakktar Sahib!" He became slowly conscious of them and of their piteousness. "There's nothing to fear," he said compassionately. "I'm not a spirit--my horse brought me across--just got me into my depth, poor girl--I've been wading about--till morning." He composed himself with a stern effort. "Row me to my place--will you?" But they shook their heads. "Gone, Dakktar Sahib, gone." His face was grey--stiff-looking. "Still, row me--to where it was." They obeyed him. Here and there a wall remained, or a half roof balanced on a few battered, shapeless heaps of mud. A carcase of a sacred bull floated backwards and forwards between two ruins, with a grotesque semblance of life. At the cross-roads the council-tree trailed its leaves sadly in the still water. But where the Dakktar Sahib's hut had been there was nothing. He bowed his face upon his hands. The men stared at him blankly, themselves too stupefied by loss for either pity or understanding. The minutes flowed past in mournful, stately silence. At last Tristram drew himself up. His eyes were calm--warm with a hardly won knowledge--and the awfulness had gone from him. "Row me to the path behind the Temple. "Dakktar Sahib----" they muttered. "I shall not ask you to follow me," he said, gently. They rowed out of Heerut towards the rising ground of the jungle mountains. The fiery wheel of the sun rose behind Gaya and the temple shone like a black opal in the morning glow. As they drew nearer Tristram's eyes sought out the great window of the _sikhara_. His thoughts were vague, unformed, still and serene as the water flowing peacefully over the plain. Through that window Vishnu watched for his beloved rising amidst her golden-haired dawn-maidens. "It is here, Sahib." They looked at him and now it was with awe--a kind of dumb protest, but he smiled at them, shaking his head. "There is nothing to fear. Wait for me." "Sahib--the curse." "There is no curse," he said, with the same gentleness. He waded through the water to the place they indicated and pushed aside the tangled bashes. The hidden path lay before him, leading steeply upwards. He went on. He was climbing from gloom and shadow into light. He knew now neither doubt nor fear. A great serenity possessed him. There could be no curse. Strange flowers clustered at the roots of the stark, straight-standing trees--but they were not evil. There was sound--a rustling and crackling among the branches-a frightened scurrying of some wild creature startled from its lair--familiar loved sounds of living things. A warm, consoling radiance sank down between the stems of the trees as light pours down through a cathedral window upon the stately pillars. Up--steadily upwards, up into a higher, purer air, with a strange heart-beating of foreknowledge. And then at last the end--a wide clearing on the mountain-summit, and on a high altar, not Siva, but a golden Lakshmi, her face, beatific in its serene sweetness, turned towards the rising sun. Vahana squatted in her shadow, his half-naked body bowed over something so still, so huddled that Tristram faltered for an instant. Then he went forward and Vahana, seeing him unrecognizingly, pointed down with a shaking finger of derision. It was Barclay. His piteous face, lifted to the peace of the clear sky, was swollen and bloated almost out of recognition. But he bore no trace of violence. Vahana shook with a senile laughter. A fangless adder unwound itself from about his wrist, and he held it to the dead man's staring eyes, gibing at him. "There are no snakes--there are no snakes." But Tristram had gone on. He had seen her. Like a pale lotus-flower cast up by the waters, she lay stretched in the short grass which grew about the foot of the altar, her fair, dishevelled head pillowed on her arm in an attitude of happy weariness. He knelt down beside her. The moment's dread was gone. He saw the faint colour in her cheeks. Her breath came gently, smoothly as a child's. He dared not touch her. Her peace was holy to him. But as though his nearness pierced like sunlight into the calm depths of her dreams, she stirred, her lips moved, shaping the shadow of his name. He drew her into the warmth and comfort of his arms. So it had been once before; but now there was no fear, no pain, or conflict. "Tristram--I waited for you. I was so tired. I fell asleep. But I was not afraid. There was nothing to fear--nothing. I knew that you would come." She smiled wistfully--tenderly. "Bracelet-brother!" He found no answer. He pointed out eastwards. Above the desolate plain the sun climbed up in majesty towards a splendid promise of atonement. One day the fields would bear their harvest, men would build their houses upon the ruins--there would be a new bridge across the river, wiser and stronger. The shadow of a curse was lifted. They knelt together, hand in hand, watching, awestruck, at peace. Vahana, too, was still. He, too, watched and waited, his mad, hate-filled eyes growing dim in the clearer light of reconciliation. THE END * * * * * * * * _*A Selection from the Catalogue of*_* G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS*