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

pity and tenderness. She stood there looking down at the man in the grass with her subdued smile, and he stared back at her. Then presently she spoke: "How do you do, Major Tristram? My name is Fersen--Sigrid Fersen." "I know," he answered. His own voice seemed to break a spell, for he shot up as though she had struck him, his hand flying to the neck of his graceless, unbuttoned collarless shirt. "I beg your pardon--I'm awfully sorry--I'd been asleep--and day-dreaming--I thought you were just--not real----" "A sort of concrete vision?" she suggested. "It sounds absurd, of course, but it wasn't an ordinary sleep. In fact, barring today, I don't know when I slept last. That makes a man queer----" "Obviously." Her enigmatic kindly smile was like sunshine on her demure gravity. "For instance, you said 'I know' when I introduced myself." The blood welled up under the man's brown skin, and she went on lightly. "I saw you half an hour ago. The shade tempted me--I was hot and tired. Fortunately I came quietly. You had just come out of the water and stood there like a young Beethoven--'this kiss to the whole world----'" "I felt like that," he stammered. "It just expresses it--only----" "Of course I went away at once," she said. "I felt you would be disconcerted if you knew--possibly very shocked. You may be now for all I know." He looked down at his right hand, and then, as though it annoyed him, thrust it into his pocket. "No," he said, "I'm not." "I didn't think you would be." She led her horse down to the water, and, with accustomed fingers, unfastened the bit. "Please sit down again, Major Tristram." He obeyed her instantly, and with his big hands clasped about his knees watched her as she came towards him. The blood was still dark in his face. "I'm wondering how you knew me," he said abruptly. "Gaya described you." He burst out into a big laugh. "My word! Did Gaya tell you I usually went about with nothing on or in these evil-smelling rags?" "It is enough that I recognized you," she said primly. She added, as an after-thought: "They didn't tell me you were so beautiful." "Me--beautiful?" "As far as your figure goes." "And my face?" She looked at him whimsically. "No, not exactly." She slipped down into the long grass beside him with an effortless, unconscious grace. "We're rather like each other," she went on, "both of us--how shall I say?--plain, and both of us quite lovely in our way. A perfect body is worth more than a perfect nose." "Yes," he agreed. His voice sounded suddenly thick and tired and he looked away from her. "You're not alone, are you?" he asked. "I have been. I've a faithful syce waiting at the bridge-head five miles up. He wouldn't come any farther. Perhaps----" She studied his hard-set profile with amused eyes. "Perhaps you're wishing I hadn't burst in upon you, or perhaps you share Gaya's dismay." "Was Gaya dismayed?" "Very. One or two are still. They thought I was an adventuress, partly on account of the Rajah and partly on account of my profession. And they were quite right." The laughter died out of her. Her voice sounded grave and eager. "I am an adventuress. I can't conceive myself being anything else. To live is to explore an unknown country, with every day a step forward. Some people shrink from it and cringe at home, and when they're taken by the scruff of the neck and flung out they're frightened and helpless. I'm not like that--you're not. Even my art was an adventure--the greatest. Every bar of music, every step, every inspiration that came to me, was like a mountain peak scaled and a new vista into a new country. Do you understand?" He turned to her, his sunken, red-rimmed eyes warm with a generous, almost passionate sympathy. "I can understand your feeling like that--I do too, in my way, especially out here. Out here nothing lasts. Every day brings change--the very trees and flowers and fields and forests--I don't know how it is--one says good-night to them and in the morning it's as though new friends had taken their place--people whom one had to study and wonder at--and then----" He turned away from her again and stared down at his strong hands--"anything can happen--the most wonderful, impossible things----" She did not answer him. When she spoke again it was after a long silence and more lightly. "I don't believe you're an official at all," she said. "You don't talk like one. You haven't asked me what business I have here or tell me that I am a danger to myself and a nuisance to everyone else. Why haven't you?" "I forgot," he answered quietly. "For one thing, I knew you were not afraid, and people who are not afraid have nothing to fear. And besides that, the infection is over in Heerut. The poor beggars are either underground or isolated miles away. I did that 'on my own,' and I expect there'll be lots of trouble about it." "You've had a bad time." "Yes," he said simply. "Mrs. Compton told me. I was immensely interested, and made up my mind to call on you. The 'lone fight' has always thrilled me. I don't care whether the fighter is a murderer or a hero so long as he fights against odds." He laughed. "Well, I'm not a criminal or a hero," he said. "You can't tell. We're all potentially one or the other--or both." He seemed on the verge of protest, but, looking at her, dropped to silence. She leant forward, her chin in the palm of her hand, and he saw that she smiled to herself, her eyes intent on the shadowy water. "Doesn't Brahma sleep in the heart of that lotus-flower, Major Tristram?" "He did once--so they say. And it is the lotus-flower which encloses our world. When the pink-tipped petals open then it is dawn with us." He hesitated, and then added with a shy laugh, "Shall I fetch it for you?" "No, why spoil it? It is loveliest where it is." "Yes, I know--but if you had wished it----" He broke off. "Somehow I'm glad you didn't," he said almost inaudibly. The quiet rose up between them. It was like a mist, veiling them from each other with a drowsy peace. When she spoke again her voice sounded gay but subdued. "Major Tristram, I'm disappointed--I meant to drop on like a bombshell--and here you sit next me as though it was the sort of thing you had done all your life. You don't even bother to talk to me. Do you think we were married in our last pilgrimage?" The man turned his head away from her. "Anything seems possible, here," he answered. "Even hunger," she suggested gravely. "Hunger?" The dreamy unreality which had sunk upon them dissolved, letting through the light of every-day facts. She laughed at him. "_I'm_ hungry. I haven't eaten anything since dawn, and I didn't bring food because Mrs. Compton said you practically lived here. I was sure--after the first skirmish--that you'd ask me to tea." He was on his feet now--less with eagerness than with a half-angry consternation. "Mrs. Compton misled you----" he began hotly. "She didn't--she didn't know I was coming. Are you going to let me starve?" "I _do_ live here," he went on stammeringly, "but in a native hovel like the rest of them. I can't take you there." "Why not?" Her eyes were mocking, her lips pursed into a demure, ironic challenge. "Don't you want to?" "It's not that----" His opposition collapsed and he faltered like a boy. "Only--well, I daresay you know what they call me--Tristram the Hermit. It's because I've had to live alone so much. No one comes out here. I've got accustomed to it. I'm like a miser with my loneliness." "Then I had better go," she said gravely. "No--not now. I want you to come. You'll understand better----" He bridled her horse and brought it to her. For a moment they looked at each other with a steadiness in which there was a vague antagonism. Then the man stooped, hiding his face, and placed his hands for her to mount. She scarcely seemed to touch them. He looked up into her small face, flushed now with an eager colour. "You are lighter than the leaf on the wind," he said. She laughed, but her laugh was more meditative than gay. "And you, Major Tristram, are a poet in the wilderness," she answered. *CHAPTER VI* *BROKEN SANCTUARY* He walked beside her, his hand light on her bridle, and silently they made their way through the long grass, along the banks of the grey, wide flowing river, past the temple, and into the empty village streets. Only once did she speak to him, bending slightly towards him in her saddle. "I have been wondering what your name is," she said, "your other name. I've been trying to fit you with one." "Tristram," he said. "Tristram Tristram?" He nodded, and she repeated the name thoughtfully under her breath. "That's a curious repetition----" "Yes, my mother liked it. It's the only thing we've ever quarrelled about. I tell her she suffered from lack of imagination, and that she took a mean advantage over my helplessness. What could anybody expect of a Tristram Tristram?" "And yet it suits you somehow." "I'm not flattered," he answered laughing. The magic sunlight had gone and the low thatched huts were grey and sordid in the rising tide of shadow. Here and there a golden patch lingered palely, and the council-tree at the cross-roads blazed in the full flood from the west. "This is my home," Tristram said. The hut from the outside was not different from its fellows, save for the big windows that had been cut in the mud wall. The rough wooden doors stood open. Sigrid Fersen slipped out of her saddle and for a moment he barred her path. "You won't let me go forward to prepare the way?" he asked. "No--I want to see what you are like, Major Tristram." "It's as though I made you a confession," he said unevenly. "I am woman enough to want to hear it." He stood aside and she passed through the low doorway. At other times the contrast to the foetid street outside must have been overwhelming, but even now the dwelling's cool monastic purity arrested her on the threshold. A curtained doorway appeared to lead into a second apartment. There was scarcely any furniture--a chair, a table, a couple of Persian rugs on the uneven floor, a pile of cushions heaped into a divan against the wall. Nothing on the walls. Yet the old, exquisitely shaded rugs were probably priceless, and all the art and mysterious symbolism of India had gone into the carving of the great chair whose high back was Brahma the Creator and whose wide arms were pictured with strange fantasies of the Avatars. As her eyes grew accustomed to the twilight the woman saw beyond this dignity to details that brought a sudden laugh to her lips. A yellow ball that looked like a spotted St. Bernard pup rolled yelping off the cushions, displaying its teeth and a bandaged paw, and thereby rousing its bedfellow--a common English tabby, who stretched itself, threw an offhand curse at its disturber, then advanced arching its back and purring stormily. Sigrid bent down to stroke him, but he passed on with the crushing disdain of his race and rubbed himself against Tristram's leg. "That's Tim," Tristram explained. "He has a wife, but she's probably out hunting. To tell the truth, she does most of the work. There were half a dozen kittens, but they died, worse luck. Couldn't stand the heat." "Anything else?" "Wickie isn't here. And Arabella. Laid up, both of them." "And pray what is Wickie and what is Arabella?" she persisted. "_I_ call Wickie a dog and Arabella a horse," he answered solemnly, "but I'm told the matter is open to dispute. Wickie's boarding out with Miss