THE HERMIT DOCTOR OF GAYA (continued 6)

He saw the curl of her lips. It was an answer straight from those past generations stronger than all reason.

"We must stamp out our sins—not foster them. And that woman—do you expect me to meet her—the Rajah's mistress—this man's bought property——"

"Anne!" A sick horror surged up within him—horror of his own passionate anger—horror in some dim way mingled with a vicarious shame. He turned away from her. But the instinctive chivalry which prompted the action was unnecessary. She held her ground with the resolution of justification. "Anne, you're speaking recklessly. I know that what you say is not true. And even if it were—I can't judge other people—it's not in me—I feel no right in me to judge. There's only one distinction I can make between men and women—the happy and the unhappy, the blessed and the cursed——"

"The good and the evil," she interrupted stonily. "There is only one morality, Tristram——"

He drew himself to his full and splendid height. The red sunlight glowed on his impassioned face, in his blazing eyes. For an instant he forgot her—became free, breathing in the glory of his faith.

"—That ye love one another," he exclaimed with happy triumph. Her eyes sank. For that instant her instinct told her that she could not touch him—that he had passed beyond her reach. But, behind their lids, her eyes were bright with a bitter resentment.

"Do you love Sigrid Fersen, Tris? People said you did——"

He came slowly back—down to the level, arid country where he was to live his life. He stared down into her white face. "Do you, Tris?"

He caught her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. Her eyes were sullen and unhappy. Their unhappiness shattered his anger, changing it to a burning remorse and pity.

"You're my wife. There can be no other woman for me but you. That's my little fragment of morality. Isn't that enough?"

"You stand up for her——" she persisted, with a sudden break in her hard voice. She put up her hands, clinging to him. "Oh, Tris, you make me afraid——" she cried miserably. "I couldn't bear to lose you——"

He held her with a desperate tenderness. He had groped his way to the source of her outburst, and the dawning knowledge threw a pitiless light into his own heart. All the antagonism had gone. In the moment's revulsion he saw her as justified.

"If it was because I loved her, I shouldn't fight for her," he said hoarsely. "Don't you understand—it's not only her—it's Barclay, too—it's everyone. I'd trample on every feeling I had for your sake—but not on my religion—don't you understand?" He knew she could not, that the word "religion" had rung like blasphemy in her ears. But she leant against him, crying wearily like a tired child.

"And this is our home-coming, Tris!"

"It makes a mockery of all my promises!" he answered sadly. "What shall I do to make you happy again, little Anne?"

She bent and kissed his hand. "Oh, Tris, if we could only go away from here—from Gaya—somewhere where we should get away from everyone-everyone who makes me afraid—couldn't we? We could start afresh with no one to come between us——?"

It had grown very dark. Though she was watching him again, she could not read his expression. And he was looking past her, straight into the vision which she had called up before him. But it was a vision of all that had been. He saw the old landmarks—the river and the long, broken roads, the camping-place beneath the trees, the familiar faces whose solemn trustfulness he had fought for with his best years, with all the ardour of his youth. He saw the dreams he had dreamed—the hours tight packed with action, with all the glory of battle and victory. And now to begin again—to cut new paths through the waste tracts, to call up fresh springs of faith and hope from desert ground. He felt himself suddenly old and very tired.

"It should be easy enough," he said gently. "I could get a new district—I'm not popular and they've just left me here—but they'd do that for me, I daresay. Yes, we will go away and start again, Anne."

She was silent for a moment. She was breathing quietly and contentedly. In a flash of knowledge which he despised and hated, he knew that they had fought together and that she had won.

"You're so good, Tris, so good to me. Sometimes we don't quite understand each other. But we're husband and wife, and that's all that really matters, isn't it?"

He nodded. The tiredness stupefied him, bewildered him. He fancied he saw something white glide in among the trees—a slender figure that moved like a very spirit of Life. He fancied there was music in the stillness—afar off, intoxicating.

"All that matters, Anne——"

CHAPTER III

MRS. BOUCICAULT CALLS THE TUNE

The male-nurse had put the carefully shaded lamp on the table behind the bed and gone off to take an unobtrusive share in the festivities. Colonel Armstrong had lent the regimental band for the occasion, and what with the music and the superabundance of champagne and the pliability of the native character, the male-nurse recognized golden opportunities for a break in the tedium of his duties. Possibly he was quite justified. It was a dull business nursing a patient who could not even curse at you. Moreover, there was nothing to do. What could be done for a log that lay day in, day out, staring sightlessly up at the white ceiling, whose every desire, if desire still lived behind that appalling silence, had to be guessed at?

So the male-nurse threw a professional glance round the scene of his activities, noted the perfection of orderliness, and went his way.

Boucicault continued to stare upwards. The shadows were massed against the ceiling like sultry, motionless clouds. They loomed over the withering body stretched out beneath them in the rigidity of death, their stifling intensity loaded with an overpowering perfume. There were flowers everywhere—on the table, at the foot of the bed, on the chest of drawers, on the shelves, lighting the room's barren simplicity with fierce, burning colour. Their vividness seemed a part of the music that came light-footed into the sombre hush—an echo of the murmuring voices, the merry jangle of harness, the patter of naked feet, the clink of glasses. The room was like a white-cliffed, deserted island in the midst of a moonlit, tossing ocean of life. The wave slapped the walls, and rolled back from them as from something alien and repellent.

Or again, but for those eyes staring up at the ceiling, the place might have been a death-chamber. There was the same orderliness, the same white silence, the many flowers. And the long, shrivelled body outlined on the bed was quieter than any living thing.

A voice broke from the distant murmur and came nearer. It was a woman's voice, rather strained and high-pitched. Something white and shimmering fluttered against the darkness on the verandah.

"I'm sure it's awfully nice of you, Tristram. He'll be so pleased. I usually go in, but this evening I was too busy. Don't stay too long——"

The eyes distended and then closed. Perhaps the brain behind them became conscious of a vital change in the stillness, for a moment later they opened again and rested full and direct on the man standing at the foot of the bed. They stared at each other dumbly. The eyes became ironic and cruel in their knowledge of power. But, as the man moved and came nearer, they followed him, showing the whites like those of a sick animal.

Tristram sat down on the edge of the bed. The light from behind the bed drifted on to his face. He looked weary and composed, and there was no trace of discomfort under that watching enmity.

"I had to come, Boucicault," he said quietly. "It got on my nerves—the thought of your being alone like this. You may not want to see me, but, on the other hand, it may give you some satisfaction. I don't carry my secret very well, do I?" He spoke without bitterness or sarcasm, and the eyes gleamed. "And then there are things I have to talk to you about," he added.

The regimental band glided into a Viennese waltz, and the intoxicating measure came swaying through the silence. The eyes winced, and then steadied angrily, scornfully. Tristram stretched out his hand and touched the coverlet. There was something groping and passionately seeking in the movement—an articulate appeal.

"Boucicault—it's rotten perhaps to come and preach—don't let it eat into you—all this. Don't judge harshly. I'm not speaking of myself, you know that. I'm thinking of your wife. You lie there dumb and helpless—I don't know what's going on in your mind. I can't understand. Well, it's like that with most of us. Words and actions don't matter much. We just hide behind them. But if we could get down to the motive of each other's cruelty, there would be neither hatred nor condemnation—at the worst, pity." He was silent an instant, his strong hands clasped between his knees. He had spoken sadly and with a certain abstraction and unconsciousness of his hearer, which lent his appeal force and took from it all hint of patronage and mockery. "I say all this because you must think a great deal—lying there—a great deal of the past. For your own peace, it would be better to judge gently a woman you must have cared for. Sometimes, behind our worst frivolity, there is a great bitterness——"

The eyes sneered. Tristram met their ferocious gibe unflinchingly.

"That is one thing I had to say. And then—there's Anne. When I asked her to be my wife, I didn't know what you would feel about our marriage and I didn't care very much. You had made her pretty wretched, and I didn't consider at the time that what had happened between us made any difference. You had been considerably less than a father to her—and besides, you were knocked out. I understand Sir Gilbert treated you like a brave man and was quite honest with you. He doesn't believe in your recovery—nor do I—chiefly because I've done everything for you that science can do—and failed." He paused again. His sentences had been clipped and hard, the words almost brutal. But his attitude was not that of a strong man talking down from the height of his strength and well-being to a broken victim. The eyes under the straight fair brows revealed pitilessly what lay behind the dogged jaw, the composed and resolute exposition. There can be no sentimentality between suffering and suffering, only equality.

"But there was one thing I hadn't understood," he said, "and that was Anne's love for you. Frankly, I thought she would be freer, happier without you. But I was mistaken. It didn't matter that you'd made her wretched. She only remembered that you were her father, the Bagh Sahib, the fine soldier who had done great things. She cared intensely, and all this—this sort of life smashed her up. If she ran away from it, it was because she felt it as an insult to you—a deliberate cruelty. She just ate her heart out about it. When I realized how matters were there was only one thing on earth I wanted to do, and that was to come along and give her every mortal thing I could to make her happy—you included—everything she'd missed. It seemed to me pitiable to consider your feelings or any conventional notions of—of propriety, as I suppose you'd call it. She needed some one to look after her—some one who cared. Well, I cared. Now that I have the right, I shall live for her as far as one human being can live for another. It is my most passionate hope to make her happy. I don't know whether I shall succeed—that's another matter. I shall do my best."

He got up and stood at his full height. The evening regimentals which he wore did not become him. They looked indefinably grotesque on his bigness—like a child's toy uniform on a grown man. The short Eton coat exaggerated the breadth of his shoulders, the black trousers the narrowness of his hips, the length of limb. The gold and red clashed with his tawny hair and the rugged, weather-tanned features. He needed a background of forest, of action, of stern living. His body needed the freedom of rough clothing.

"Anne wants you to live with us," he said. "That is what I have come to tell you. If you both would be happier, I should be glad, too. There is a great deal I might be able to do to make things more tolerable for you—at least, I should try. I have given up my quarters at Heerut. It is for you to decide."

The eyes sparkled. It seemed to Tristram that they were blazing with satiric laughter. He had a reasonless, overwhelming sense of near disaster. "Give me some sign, Boucicault. If you consent, close your eyes or——"

Slowly, as if weighed down by disuse, the withered arm lying on the sheet lifted itself from the elbow. It remained upright for an instant, throwing a sinister shadow on the wall, seeming to point upwards with menacing significance, then sank slowly to its place. The eyes were mad with exultation.

Tristram was back to the bedside at one stride. He laid his fingers on the savagely beating pulse. With rapid, skilful movements, he began to test the muscles and nerve of the now motionless arm. He was breathing quickly. The weariness, the painful deliberation had gone from him. He was himself again—the fighter on the vast field of suffering, the physician glorying in the greatest of all triumphs.

"By God, Boucicault, you don't know what that may mean! It's what we'd hoped for. Look here—can you do it again?"

The arm remained inert, the eyes were, momentarily veiled and insignificant. "How long have you been able to do that?" He was still busy with his examination and scarcely troubled about an answer. He had plunged back into a world where there were no passions or conflicts, but only huge immutable laws, no personal desires or unreal dreams, but only facts, unending chains of cause and effect, a thousand paths converging on one great end. It was not till he had made every experiment complete that he remembered. He looked up. The eyes were turned into their corners, resting on his face. Their exaggerated expanse of white gave them a look like that of a vicious dog. They did not move save when Tristram lifted himself slowly from his half-kneeling position, and then they followed him with a malicious fixity. The rest of the face was dead—a crumbling mask—but the life in those eyes was inextinguishable, titanic in its will to continuation.

He had to escape from them. He went over to the wide-open balcony and stood there with his back turned, staring out into the darkness. For a moment, his brain refused to face this reckoning with the future. He listened to the music which poured through the scented stillness like the drowsy, delicious murmur of running water. A man and a woman came down the pathway which led from the front of the bungalow. He could hear their voices—the man's deep-pitched and earnest, the woman's silvery and ironic. The light from a Chinese lantern shining softly among the branches drew a subdued gleam from the gold on the man's collar, from the woman's white, uncovered shoulders. Suddenly the man bent down, and they stood together through a tense, suffocating moment of silence. Then the woman spoke again—breathlessly, the ironic lightness gone.

Tristram drew back. He felt as though he had been drawn out into the night's delirious sweetness; as though in defiance of that silent, menacing figure his pulses had leapt forward, his blood had clamoured for the fulfilment of its elemental demand on all this wealth of living. He was young still—young in his purity of feeling—young in the unsatisfied forces of desire. Youth flung itself on him with its imperative behests—now when he reeled under the knowledge of its passing. For it was over. He reasoned clearly enough through this storm of primitive emotion. Boucicault would live. He might come back into life—he, Tristram, would bring him back to life. It was the task which his creed set him—not the creed of his profession but the deeper, sterner creed of his blood.

And what if his blood lied, what if his creed were a mad, senseless paradox? Was not the happiness of the majority the only good, its preservation the only morality? This man had set himself against the law. In a ghostly, tragic procession, those whom he had hunted out of their rightful heritage passed before Tristram's memory—young officers, those six men in the full glory of manhood standing in the barrack yard, their backs to the wall, their faces to their brothers, and the death which was to be dealt out to them; Eleanor Boucicault grey-cheeked and wild-eyed pursuing the phantom promises of life; Anne, cowed and broken, haunted now by a remorseful treacherous memory; a death-stricken little mongrel dog, most harmless, most pitiable of all, with glazed eyes, seeking to understand the black mystery of human cruelty.

Tristram put his hand to the stiff military collar as though it choked him. The foundations on which he had built his life were crumbling under his feet. Was he to give this criminal mind the power to act, to drag his escaped and maimed victims back into the net of his authority, to add others to that pitiable procession? Tristram recognized the issues with an appalling clearness. His trained intellect grappled with them with the same stern impartiality of judgment as he would have used in tracking the source of a disease. With regard to himself, he discarded all false sentiment. As men judge, the blow he had struck had been unfortunate but just. Was he to heap an outrageous punishment upon himself, upon Anne, upon an old woman who had known no happiness save her joy in him? Would it not be a strong and logical following out of his sincere belief if he made no effort to fan this evil flame to life?

As yet he was not conscious of any direct temptation. He was only facing the issues—weighing one life against another, as it had happened a hundred times in his professional career.

He turned slowly and came back into the room. The eyes followed him, but their malicious knowledge no longer reached him. The fight was not now between himself and this man, but between two fundamental and opposite conceptions of life. There was a little table at the foot of the bed, crowded with the paraphernalia of sickness. He stopped before it, because its interest offered a fresh delay, and idly picked up one of the glass-stoppered bottles. He opened it and smelt its contents. The faint, sickly perfume flashed its significance to his brain.

Men were given the power to kill——

He looked up. The eyes burning in that white mask were on his hands. Their expression had changed—had become more horrible. It was the very spirit of fear and triumphant evil.

Tristram put the bottle back in its place. He came and stood by the bed.

"I don't want you to hope too much, Boucicault," he said, coolly and professionally. "In the best of cases, it will be a long job. I shall come tomorrow and go over you again and see what's to be done. If Sir Gilbert is still in the land, we'll have him over. And you must do all you can to help us. As to me—I quite realize I have landed myself in an impasse from which there is no possible escape. I don't know what Anne will feel or think. But she'll be so thankful to get you back, the cost won't matter. At any rate, I shall not speak of all this again to you. My business with you is to give you back to life. The afterwards is my concern. Good night, Boucicault."

As he had spoken, his eyes on the mask of bitterness and hatred, something rushed over him. It was like the melting of a frozen stream under the first warm sunshine. It seemed to him that he had looked straight down through those eyes into the very heart of human misery, and had understood. He remembered his own words: "There is only one distinction between men—the unhappy and the happy, the cursed and the blessed." They blazed now with a real significance. Men were pitchforked into this world with distorted bodies or distorted souls—what did it matter which? They deserved neither hatred nor condemnation—they were the awful mystery of humanity, the visible symbol of the curse under which humanity totters. "Here, but for a wild incalculable chance, go I, Tristram."

He bent down and laid his hand on Boucicault's arm. He did not stop to think whether or not his touch might be repugnant to the other man. He acted out of an imperative instinct.

"You mustn't worry," he said gently, and almost gaily. "You'll live to do for me yet, Boucicault! Good night again."

The eyes closed as though they had burnt themselves out. Tristram moved quietly to the verandah. He had a sudden sense of freedom, of physical relief, which was like an awakening from a suffocating nightmare. He went down the steps into the garden. It was then, as he stood there listening to the music and the distant voices, that he saw Sigrid Fersen come towards him. His eyes could not have recognized her face, for it was dark and she was moving quickly, like a pale mysterious light, through the shadow of the trees. But he knew her. Was it her step—the lithe, familiar motion of her body—or something deep-hidden within himself which irresistibly went out to her? He could not have told. He waited for her. She came on unseeingly to the edge of the faint reflection from Boucicault's room, and then stood still, staring at him. Her small, white face had an aghast look. He tried to speak to her and could not. His throat hurt him.

He knew now that he had never known her, never, even in his dreams of her, realized her potentialities. He knew that she had deliberately thrown down her weapons to meet him in the stern simplicity of his life. She had been too proud, too self-assured perhaps to fear to show herself to him physically at her least. Now he saw her at her highest—the priceless, polished stone in a rare and exquisite setting.

A languorous breath of night-wind ruffled the smooth gold of her hair and lifted the flimsy scarf from her shoulders. It fluttered out behind her like a pale mist. He saw the single string of pearls at her neck. He fancied he could see the passionate life beating beneath them. And through all her brilliancy, her burning vitality, there was a strain of quaint Victorianism, a demure elfishness—like the inter-weaving of a minuet with the riot of a bacchanal.

He could not have spoken to her, and at last a smile dawned at the corners of her mouth. He knew that she had been afraid, and it flashed upon him that in the bitterest moment she would retain her humour, her zest of life.

"You quite frightened me, Major Tristram," she said. "I have never seen you in uniform before."

"Does it become me?" he heard himself ask back.

"No. You look as though you were rather stifled by so much magnificence. And you've never seen me in full gala either, have you?"

"No."

"It suits me, doesn't it? That's the difference between us. I'm in my natural element. Will you take me back, Major Tristram? I came out for a breath of fresh air and to escape Mrs. Boucicault. Mrs. Boucicault asked me to dance. I think she fancied it would be a good method of rehabilitating me in the eyes of outraged Gaya. But I didn't want to. What's the use of marrying if you have to go on working for your living?"

He walked silently beside her. He did not know this woman with the hard voice—he felt that she did not want him to know her. Her hand rested lightly on his arm. He looked at it. It was like alabaster on the red sleeve. "We're going to be married shortly," she went on. "Mr. Meredith is trying to refuse his services. He doesn't approve. He wants us to leave Gaya. It's so absurdly Christian, isn't it? My husband's business will be in Gaya and I like the place——" They had turned the curve of the path and came within sight of the softly-lit garden. They could see shadows of the dancers gliding through Mrs. Boucicault's rooms to the rhythm of the latest American distortion. Little groups had gathered round the tables on the verandah and there was much laughter and the subdued clinking of glasses. The Chinese lanterns shone like bright warm eyes amid the trees.

Sigrid stood still an instant. He heard her draw a deep, unsteady breath. "How gay it all is—fairy-like! One can scarcely believe that there is such a thing as reality. Perhaps there isn't. Mrs. Boucicault is a daring hostess. It requires nerve to dance with a dead husband in the house."

It occurred to him then to tell her what he had just discovered. He held back. He was afraid of troubling the surface of their relationship. They did not know one another. The man and woman who had faced each other that night in Heerut belonged to a different life. They were shadows—or had become shadows.

"By the way, Major Tristram, what has happened to the Wickie Memorial? Is he still among the living?"

"He lives and rejoices in the name of Richard," he answered lightly.

"Do you sometimes let him out of the compound?" she asked.

He did not answer her at once. Her voice had sounded casual enough, and yet he knew that there had been something deliberate in her words—a deliberate desire to hurt, to thrust down through his seeming tranquillity to a raw and open wound.

"How did you know?" he asked curtly.

"I don't know—I guessed."

"My wife doesn't like animals about the place," he said steadily. "I do what I can for the little chap. You see, in Heerut it was different—and I don't live at Heerut now."

"Of course not. You have become so civilized." They had reached the verandah steps and she turned to him with a laugh. "So civilized. The old landmarks have gone—the beard, the disreputable clothes, the wild-man-o'-the-wood's hair—and heaven knows what else! Is there anything left of the Dakktar Sahib, or is he smothered under the respectability of Major Tristram?" Her eyes ran over him—mockingly. He raised his right hand—he could not have told why. It was at once a movement of pain and self-defence. Then he saw that her eyes were on his wrist. "I'm sorry——" she said, gently. "I am intolerable. There are things one must believe in or perish—Forgive me. And, for a wedding-present, will you give Richard back to me? I think he would be happier."

He nodded. He had the feeling that therewith something for which he had fought had been finally surrendered. He followed her silently up the steps. At the top they were met by Anne. She went up to her husband and put her hand on his arm. She did not look at Sigrid, and the deliberateness of her disregard betrayed how keenly she felt the other's presence. Her obstinate mouth was compressed and unsmiling.

"I have been wanting you, Tris," she said sharply. "Where have you been?"

"With your father," he answered. "I'm sorry. I did not know you were looking for me."

"You might have told me——" Her voice sounded pettish and breathless. "I should have come with you. And you haven't danced with me once."

He laughed. He felt rather than saw that Sigrid had turned away and joined one of the parties of the verandah. He heard Radcliffe offer her his place and the sulky deference in the boy's voice. It gave him a sudden knowledge of the fight she was waging.

"I can't dance—not even as well as a polar-bear," he said. "You've married a loutish barbarian, Anne."

"Your barbarism seems to appeal to some people," she flashed back. He knew then that she had listened. But he could feel no resentment. She looked ill and almost old. Her home-made evening dress did not become her, and the Indian sun had begun to drain the colour from her cheeks. As though remorse-stricken, she pressed his arm, looking up at him pathetically. "Tris, I didn't mean to be cross and horrid. I wanted to go home with you——"

"Weren't you enjoying yourself?" he asked.

"I couldn't—Tris, don't you see——?"

He looked past her into the brightly-lit rooms where a few couples were still dancing. He saw then what it was that had driven her out to seek him. Mrs. Boucicault danced the tango with Barclay. They were both conspicuous. Barclay was the only man in civilian dress, and, thanks to Rasaldû's angry absence, his deeper isolation was made more manifest. But he danced well—perhaps too well. Mrs. Boucicault gave a fierce little laugh of pleasure as he guided her swiftly across the room. She herself was an outrageous figure in her youthful, almost childish dress, high at the neck and loaded with jewellery. Her fluffy grey hair looked tossed and disordered, her cheeks were painted. But as she suddenly broke off and came towards them leaning on Barclay's arm, Tristram saw that there was nothing artificial in her shining eyes.

"Now, what do you think of me, Tristram?" she exclaimed. "Isn't there life in me yet? Don't you admire me?"

He felt Anne shrink closer to him. He bowed gravely.

"With all my heart," he answered.

"Oh, it's been splendid! I've been chasing the years and catching them up. Mr. Barclay dances so wonderfully, Anne: you should try your step with his——"

Barclay made a little movement forward. He only glanced at Anne. His eyes fixed themselves on Tristram's face.

"I haven't the pleasure," he said, in his soft mincing way. "Perhaps you'd introduce me to your wife, Tristram——"

"I don't care whom I dance with as long as our steps match," Mrs. Boucicault continued, with reckless ecstasy.

There was a moment's silence. Barclay had heard. His eyes narrowed a little and his nostrils dilated with his quick breathing. Tristram turned to Anne. She stared straight up at him. Her face was sallow and pinched-looking.

"Will you please take me home, Tris?"

She slipped her arm through his and turned to go. Barclay held his ground. His lips were trembling. The little vein of success that he had had with Mrs. Boucicault had intoxicated him, but many things had happened that evening. It was as Mrs. Bosanquet had said—Gaya was fighting to the last ditch.

"I don't think Mrs. Tristram understands," he said huskily. "We're sort of relations, aren't we? Won't you do the brotherly, Tristram?"

He had not meant to say it. It was the look on Anne's face which had goaded him—the hundred petty pin-pricks which he had endured patiently, the sudden realization of the impossible gulf between him and the tall standing uniformed figure before him.

Anne gave a little laugh. It was tremulous and disgusted.

"I really think we'd better go, Tris."

"I'm not drunk," Barclay said. "It's true. You'd better ask him. Captain Tristram was my father right enough——" He swung round. "Why don't you own up to it, damn you——?" he burst out.

The little group nearest him turned to look at him. He was only conscious of Tristram and Sigrid. The latter had half-risen from her place. He saw her face as a white blank. Some one came and touched him on the arm. That was what he wanted—to come to grips with them, to choke them with some of the humiliation that was like dry dust in his throat.

"Look here, Barclay——"

"It's perfectly true," Tristram said suddenly. "Mr. Barclay is my half-brother. I understood that he did not wish it known—or I should have acknowledged the relationship before. I do so now."

There was a silence. He had spoken simply and very naturally. It was as though a bomb had been thrown into the room and he had picked it up and proved it an empty shell. Still more, it was as though a child had burst out with some weighty, wonderful secret and had been met by cool, indifferent laughter. The whole situation seemed to have lost point—become tiresome and ridiculous. The man who had interfered drew back, muttering an apology. Mrs. Boucicault laughed.

"How silly it all is!" she said, half to herself. "What does it matter?"

But Barclay turned and crossed the crowded verandah and stumbled down the steps. Afterwards he ran like a madman. He had not seen Tristram's detaining hand. He thought he heard some one laugh, and the sound was like the cut of a whip on an open sore. He ran till his breath jarred from him in aching sobs. He ran till the last light had vanished among the trees, till there was no sound but his own tortured breathing. Then he stood still swaying on his feet, his hands pressed to his wet face.

He remained thus many minutes. Then he walked on. He was hatless and coatless. As he turned into the gates of his own compound, a light fell on his face and it showed piteously wild and stupid-looking, like that of a hunted animal.

Something moved in the shadow of a tree and came out and stood in his path. Barclay jerked to a standstill. He passed his hand over his eyes.

"Who the devil are you?" he muttered.

"Ayeshi. I've been here waiting for you."

Barclay gave a little unsteady laugh.

"I don't know you. You're not Ayeshi. Ayeshi's gone to the devil. You'd better clear out——" Then he was silent, staring at the face which turned itself deliberately to the light. "Good God!" he muttered.

"Vahana sent me to you. I've not tasted food for a week. I didn't dare go to the villages. They're still hunting for me. Are you going to give me up?"

"Where have you been?"

"Calcutta."

"What did you do there?"

"I learnt things."

"What things?"

"I learnt that I had been a fool. Hatred, too——"

"You mixed with the students?"

"Yes."

"What else——?"

"I know who I am."

Both had spoken in English, and each accent had its own quality. Barclay peered into Ayeshi's face. He was breathing, quickly, with a smothered excitement.

"You're ill, aren't you?"

"I am dying."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know yet. Are you going to give me up?"

Barclay looked back over his shoulder into the darkness. He was shivering.

"No," he said. "I'll not give you up—not to them."

He made a sign, and they went up towards the bungalow, keeping to the shadow of the trees.

CHAPTER IV

ANNE MAKES A DISCOVERY

Anne had given a little tea-party. A tea-party was a favourite function of hers. Mrs. Bosanquet, fond of developing her ideas, set it down to a tendency inherited from the suburban days when Anne had played hymns on a pianola. Anne liked tea-parties because they were inexpensive, and sober. She liked to be quiet and to talk gently and seriously. Gaya had other ideas of amusement, but came nevertheless and sat on the cool verandah and talked gently and seriously, till there was no character in the station that was not in ribbons. And this was not because they were venomous, but because they were bored and their Anglo-Saxon bodies yearned for violent exercise.

A week before, Tristram had set out for a brief round of the nearest villages, and the tea-party was a method of filling in a few hours of his absence. Anne detested his absences, and gradually he had reduced the camping-out days to the least possible number. She had never pleaded with him. Her pressure had been almost imperceptible but persistent.

Gaya had accepted her invitation to the last available man. They had had a vague idea that they were thereby "backing up" the poor old Hermit, whom they vaguely pitied. Only two people in Gaya had been ignored, and it was on their account that Mrs. Bosanquet and the two Comptons lingered after the rest of the company had excused itself homewards. Mrs. Bosanquet sat on one side of the prim, muslin-frocked figure and Mary Compton on the other. Archibald Compton took up his place on the verandah step and smoked innumerable cigarettes. Knowing the probable trend of events, he felt wretchedly uncomfortable.

Anne chatted about her servants. She did not quite approve of Mrs. Bosanquet, who was too irresponsible for her size and years. On the other hand, she was the Judge's wife, and what she did not know about native cooks was not worth knowing. So Anne related her woes, and in the very midst of them Mrs. Bosanquet blundered in with her attack, for all the world like a squadron of cavalry through a picnic.

"You know, Anne, you're not playing the game," she said. "That's my feeling about it. You're setting a bad example. We can't go on like this. It's our duty to hang together—not to build nasty little coteries and cliques. We're not living in London, where there's plenty of room for everybody's morals. We've got to put up with each other and pretend we like it. I do my share, you must do yours——"

Mrs. Compton nodded decided agreement. Her husband hunted for his cigarette-case.

"Them's my sentiments," he declared vulgarly.

Anne had started a little. Now she looked from one to the other and finally at the unhappy Archibald. Her lips curled.

"Of course, I know whom you mean," she said; "but I didn't think you would take that point of view, Captain Compton. I thought men were so strict about that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing?" Mrs. Compton asked, elbowing her husband from the field of discussion, where he was not likely to distinguish himself.

Anne's smile persisted. She was not in the least angry, though the war-signals had been in the other's eyes from the outset. She was prepared to discuss the question reasonably and gently. She felt a queer, suppressed little exultation throbbing beneath her reasonableness.

"Colour," she said.

Both Compton and Mrs. Bosanquet grimaced involuntarily. But Mary Compton was too accustomed to her advanced position to feel any particular smart.

"You mean, because Mr. Barclay has native blood?" she asked. "It's ridiculous. Of course, we none of us like it. We don't even like him. But he's going to marry one of us——"

"Not one of us," Anne interposed with a quick, upward flash of the grave eyes.

"One of our blood," Mary Compton persisted. "And—and, speaking for Archie and myself—one of our friends. We can't have them ostracized by half the station like this. The scene the other evening was intolerable, and it would never have taken place if you had behaved reasonably. You don't involve your heavenly salvation by bowing to a man."

Her fiery temper, which had been severely tested during the last week, had taken the bit between its teeth during her expostulation, and the knowledge that she was now at a disadvantage did not help her to recover it. Anne's mouth hardened. The memory of that scene still rankled.

"One has to draw the line somewhere," she said.

"I daresay. Still, it would have been wiser not to have drawn the line at one's husband's brother."

"He is not Tristram's brother." Her voice quivered, and Mary Compton had the satisfaction of seeing the tears rise to the brown eyes. "They're no relation—no legal relation. These dreadful things happen—but one doesn't acknowledge them or talk about them. It was absurd and unkind of Tris to have behaved as he did. He has such ridiculous notions. Anyhow, just because it's true, it's all the more impossible for us to have anything to do with him—or his wife. Surely you can see that, Mary." She paused, and then added: "Everyone else does, you know."

It was true. Mary Compton acknowledged it to herself with an angry, sinking heart. Sigrid had not been strong enough—not strong enough, certainly, to balance the consternation, the uneasy sense of insulted tradition which had punished Barclay's outburst. Mary Compton looked gloomily at Tristram's wife, and wondered if it was only a sense of outraged propriety which gave her naturally girlish face that expression of old and set resolution.

Archibald Compton created a merciful diversion.

"It's a rotten business," he said, in his drawling way; "and I can tell you one thing—it's not going to be settled quite so easily as some of you people think. Barclay isn't just an ordinary, feckless Eurasian. He's not going to be snubbed for nothing. He's got Tristram blood in him. I believe he's got a touch of the devil, too—which Tristram senior may or may not have had—and a lot of dangerous explosive stuff in his head which might go off any minute. We've seen that. And I'll tell you something more—some natives are jolly touchy about that sort of thing. I've no doubt Tristram senior got the knife for his little escapade, and a grudge dies hard. Besides, this fellow has an awful hold over the natives. They've pretty well mortgaged their souls to him. He can make himself jolly awkward if he chooses." It was the longest, most dogmatic utterance Compton had ever been guilty of, and he got up and groped for his helmet on the chair behind him. "I guess we'd better be clearing, old lady," he said awkwardly.

His wife forgot to reprove him. She felt a glow of passionate affection mingle with her general indignation.

"I'm sure we deserve whatever happens to us," she said. "We're the pettiest, meanest lot of God-forsaken, benighted idiots that ever made the word 'humanity' ridiculous. Anyhow, I shall do what I can. You can all come to our dinner or you can stay away. I've asked Sigrid and Mr. Barclay, and they've accepted. It's in their honour. So now you know."

She looked at Mrs. Bosanquet, and the latter lady got up with a fat sigh of resignation.

"Oh, I suppose I shall come," she said, "and George, of course. It seems to be his luck, poor dear, always to be on the wrong side."

Anne said good-bye to them with her composed little smile. It was amazing how self-possessed, how deliberate she had become in those few months of married life. It was as though her character had been kept deliberately in flux until her mate had been chosen, and had then settled into hard, predestined lines. After the routed deputation had waved its farewell, she went back into the drawing-room and began to rearrange her wedding presents for about the fourth time. They never quite satisfied her. Gaya had divided its treasures in the true Christian spirit. The family that had two silver candlesticks gave one, and so on, and the result was distressing for any one with a sense of symmetry. She sang softly to herself as she worked, and when she came across the Dresden shepherdess she put it in a drawer and turned the key on it with a quiet satisfaction. After that, she found an old foul-smelling pipe hidden behind a vase. She smiled at it affectionately, disapprovingly, as at a child's broken toy, and placed it in the waste-paper basket. Then she rang the little silver-tongued bell and a soft-footed servant slid into the room, and, in obedience to her slight gesture, the waste-paper basket and its doomed contents disappeared.

It was at that moment that she noticed the shadow of a man on the verandah. His back was to the light, and at the first glance she did not recognize him. Nor did he make any movement to recall her memory. He stood there looking at her.

"Why—Owen!" she said. "Owen!"

She ran to him with a joyful relaxation of her staidness, both hands outstretched. He waited for her to come up to him. There was something at once proud and humble in that deliberate waiting. He held his head well up like a soldier, challenging nothing, fearing nothing.

It was the first time that they had met since the day when he had seen her off on her way to Trichy. Between then and now there had been the Feast of Siva and her marriage. She looked up at him, her hands in his quiet grasp.

One side of his face had no resemblance to the other. It had been smashed and mended into a grotesque hideousness—into a leering distortion. The eye was completely closed. The whole face looked like a divided mask—one half human, the other devilish. It was intensely, cruelly pitiable.

Anne neither winced nor changed colour. She looked up at him steadily.

"Dear Owen!" she said. "Dear Owen!"

The one half of his poor twisted mouth smiled.

"I've been hesitating outside for about an hour—listening to your voices. I didn't like to come in—I was afraid of startling you. I suppose you knew—but one can talk about things one can't face."

He lisped a little, but the lisp could not weaken his simple, unconscious dignity.

"You should have come before," she answered. "I have thought so much of you."

"I couldn't come. It took a long time to tinker me up, and then I tried to go back to my work. It's been rather difficult. The poor beggars think I've got the evil eye or something."

She made him sit down in Tristram's long wicker chair and sent for fresh tea. There was a gentle solicitude in all her movements that was very touching. When she came near him to bring him his cup, he saw there were tears on her lashes.

"Anne—it's awfully sweet of you to be so sorry."

She smiled at him with unsteady lips.

"I don't think I am sorry. It isn't a matter to be sorry about—one can only be very proud."

A boyish flush crept into his cheek.

"There's nothing to be proud of either. I thought perhaps you'd be angry, as the others were."

"Don't you know me better than that? Were the others angry?"

"All of them, pretty well. They talked about the risk. Tristram said I'd endangered their lives."

She considered a moment.

"It isn't like Tristram to be afraid," she said.

"Not for himself. My word, no. He came into the thick of that scrum like a lion. You know how big he is. He seemed to grow a lot bigger. He fairly picked me up by the scruff of the neck and hauled me out over their heads. How he managed, I don't know. It was a marvellously brave thing to have done." He laughed. "I've had a kind of hero-worship for him ever since," he added shyly.

"You don't need to have. What you did was just as brave. It was throwing yourself single-handed against all the forces of evil. I was proud, Owen. It made me feel that some of us are still ready to prove our faith at whatever cost. It was as though one of the old martyrs had come back to shame our indifference, our wicked toleration. It gave me new hope——"

The colour glowed vividly in her cheeks. He glanced at her, and then turned away again, revealing the distorted profile. There was a moment's crowded silence. She could see his hands working nervously on the arm of his chair.

"I was awfully afraid," he said at last, and she knew by his voice that he was living his bad hour of fear over again. "And yet I had to go on. I had never understood how real the voice of God can be. It's easy enough to keep up the ordinary jog-trot service until the summons comes to you—then you must either obey or give up your mission. One can deceive one's conscience—not God."

"And God saved you," she said eagerly.

She said it with her eyes set on his tortured face. He nodded, and laughed whimsically.

"And with a strange instrument—a man who cursed me in all the languages for doing the devil's work."

"Tristram, you mean?" There was no amusement in Anne's eyes, but a shadow. "Poor Tristram, he just doesn't understand. He hates sacrifice—I don't think he knows what it means. He wants people to be healthy, and have plenty to eat, and lots of pleasure. He thinks that's all that matters. He doesn't understand the significance of the Cross. Perhaps he has been too happy."

Meredith did not answer. He was thinking perplexedly of the man who had lain stretched motionless across the portrait of an unknown woman. It was a glimpse of memory which never wholly faded. It blurred his conception of Tristram's happiness. Then he looked at the woman opposite him and forgot. He saw her goodness, her purity, her steadfastness of soul. He saw that she had developed. She had been a girl, she was now a woman, strong and self-reliant. A thrill of sheer adoration ran through his senses. She looked back at him steadily. With a passionate thankfulness, he regained those moments of communion when she had knelt before him at the altar and they had been one in worship and understanding.

"You are very happy, Anne?" he said gently.

"Very happy."

"I am glad. I wanted to see what a true marriage can mean——" He hesitated. There was something that he had come to tell her. It sickened him, and yet it pleased him, as he knew it would please her. "Miss Fersen and Mr. Barclay were married this afternoon," he said.

She looked up. The sun had gone down behind the high trees in the compound, and the room was full of fast-deepening shadows. They were in her eyes, and he could not read their expression.

"You married them, Owen?"

He heard the subdued reproach in her voice.

"I couldn't help myself. What power had I to refuse? But I confess I hated it. It seemed horrible to me—as though I had taken part in an ugly farce. It was quite private—no one knew about it. The banns have been up sometime."

Her lips were set in a hard line.

"Perhaps they were ashamed," she said. "I only hope they will leave Gaya. It is terrible to have them here. I think she wanted to get hold of Tristram. Wasn't she with him that day at Heerut?"

She spoke carelessly. He wondered if she knew or only guessed.

"Yes—she went out to see the festival."

"She would like that kind of thing—she is that sort of woman." A spark of passion flashed in her quiet voice. "I always distrusted her. Don't you remember, Owen?"

He nodded. He remembered everything that had ever passed between them. He knew that he could not forget. He did not want to. He hugged his sorrowful happiness close to him. He loved her intensely and purely. He knew that no other human love could ever come into his life, and there was no evil in the knowledge.

It had grown so dark that their faces were white ghostly blanks. A native servant brought in a lighted lamp and set it noiselessly at the far end of the room. Meredith got up slowly.

"I must be clearing," he said. "It's done me good to be with you. You've always understood so wonderfully, Anne."

"I wish I could help you," she answered.

"You have helped me."

Their hands met in a long clasp.

Tristram rode up through the shaggy, unkempt avenue. It was still light enough outside for his amazingness to be apparent to the two standing together on the verandah. He wore his helmet at the back of his tawny, unkempt hair. Three days' stubble was on his chin. He was collarless, and his soiled shirt gaped at the neck. His long legs were out of the stirrups, and dangled absurdly along Arabella's sides. Arabella had grown, if anything, a little leaner and she exhibited her favourite mannerism of trailing her nose when tired of things in general, and camping-out in particular. They were a wonderful pair.

Tristram sang as he rode. His soft, rather hoarse baritone struggled with a translation of the melody that was running through his brain. It failed, and he knew it, but he continued to sing. He had been three days in the open—three days skirting the grey, sombre-flowing river, ploughing through harsh jungle grass and following rough tracts through forests where life lurked and rustled and fled with a hundred distinct, familiar footfalls. For three nights he had camped under the stars. He had seen the moon rise like a silver lamp held aloft by a giant peering down on a sleeping, pigmy land. He had sat under the council-tree and smoked his pipe and listened to the grumbles of the headman, the latest scandal, and many an old legend. He had scolded and bullied and laughed and triumphed. He had touched life again, and regained his grip and his clear vision.

He laughed as he swung himself out of his saddle.

"You didn't expect me, did you?" he asked gaily.

Anne ran down to meet him. She kissed at first rapturously and then with a little shudder of irrepressible disgust.

"Oh, Tris, a beard again! And you smell horrid—of horses and—and natives and things—you look a perfect sight. What have you been doing?"

"Not washing, anyhow. You remember that bath I had just before I went? Well, it was my last. Been too busy for such foibles of an effete generation. Hullo, Meredith. Glad to see you. Not going, are you?"

"I must; I've been here hours."

"Anne was jolly glad of your company, I expect. I'm coming round some day to give you the benefit of my medical genius. I believe I know more about things than a lot of your high-brow Calcutta folk."

"I don't fancy even you can do much," Meredith replied. "I'm a bad job. But it's good of you all the same. Good night."

"Good night."

Anne would have watched till the white-clad figure had disappeared, but Tristram put his arm about her and drew her into the room. He was momentarily serious.

"Poor old Meredith!" he muttered. "They have messed him up. It must be almost unbearable."

She drew herself gently away from him. The feel of his arm, with its ripple of steel muscle, had been wont to thrill her. Tonight he jarred on some raw susceptibility; his strength repelled rather than fascinated her senses.

"I don't think Owen feels about it like that," she said. "It's not awful to him. He recognizes it as a cross which he is glad to bear."

He shrugged his big shoulders with good-humoured impatience.

"Why should one be glad to bear crosses? It's that sort of spirit which makes crosses possible. Our business is to get rid of them—to blot out the very memory of such a thing——"

"A holy symbol!" she interjected eagerly.

"I don't see anything holy in it. It's a symbol of man's cruelty to man. If I believed in a devil, I should say he created it and put the idea into our poor heads that it was a thing to be cherished." He chuckled. "Well, I shall have a shot at lightening Meredith's cross whether he likes it or not, though he doesn't deserve it——"

"Why not?" she asked. He was moving about the room, evidently searching for his lost pipe. She watched him coldly. She had been very happy only a little time ago—very peaceful, very conscious of her own soul. It was as though a dishevelled giant had burst into her world, pulling it about her ears, trampling on her treasures. She loved him, but she was not blind. She saw, almost for the first time, that he was vitally of the earth. "Why not?" she repeated.

"Because through him lives were lost and endangered."

"Sigrid Fersen, for instance?"

The little sneer did not reach him. Having failed in his search, he produced a briar of disgraceful antiquity from the depths of a trouser pocket. He began to fill it with a lover's tenderness.

"Lots of decent fellows I knew were trampled to death on that particular afternoon," he said simply. "Some of them had saved my life."

"You saved Meredith," she put in loyally. She wanted to be just to him—to admire him, to stifle that feeling of intolerant disgust.

He laughed.

"Why, yes, I suppose I did. It was an inspiration. I just shouted at them that he had the sunstroke and didn't know what he was talking about——"

"Tris!"

"It was the best way. I had to fight like mad as it was. I didn't want to have to kill any of my people." He stretched himself out on the long chair and held out his hand. "You don't mind if I rest a bit before I wash up? I've been ten hours in the saddle. Don't be cross. Of course, I didn't mean that about Meredith. He did what he thought was right, and so it was right. I'd do anything I could for him."

She gave him her hand and sat down on the edge of the chair beside him. She had herself well under control now. She spoke gently and almost affectionately.

"You could help him if you wanted to, Tris."

"Well, I do want to. Tell me how."

She bent her head, stroking the brown hand on her knee. She did not know that she was stroking it. The action was purely instinctive.

"You could use your influence for him with the natives."

His vivid blue eyes rested rather anxiously on her face. He sat up a little and drew her restlessly caressing hand into a strong grip.

"I couldn't do that, Anne."

"Not even for me?"

"I'd do most things for you—chuck my work even. But as long as it is my work, I've got to do it as I think right."

"Isn't it right to help people to be better and happier?"

"Of course. Only it doesn't seem to me that smashing their faith is going to help them."

"We can give them a better faith——"

He shook his head.

"Not till we've lived it ourselves."

She got up abruptly and moved away from him. She felt as though a chasm had opened at her feet. Or had it always been there? Had she been blinded by her girlish worship of his strength and almost feminine gentleness? She did not know. She felt a physical nausea creep over her.

"You promised to make me happy. You don't when you talk like that."

He thought a moment.

"I do want to make you happy, Anne. It's not an exaggeration to say I'd give my life for you. But—I was thinking it over whilst I was alone out there—happiness isn't a thing you see in a shop window and buy for a price. You have to have it in yourself if you're going to give it to others. I shouldn't be happy if I pretended to be any one else but myself. I should stifle and have no power to make you happy. I can't humbug—I don't want you to, either. We've both got to be free, or it's the end of everything." He waited a moment, watching her. "Anne, do you know whom I've seen?" he asked, with a complete change of tone.

"No."

"Sir Gilbert Foster. I heard that he was tiger-hunting this way, and I tracked him down. I wanted to see him and tell him about some favourable symptoms I have noticed in your father's condition. Also I wanted to make a suggestion. Well, he agrees with me. It means an operation—a pretty dangerous one. I wanted him to perform it, but he can't. He's got a Conference somewhere or other. He thinks I'm the man to go ahead with it."

She turned swiftly, suspiciously. She saw the flame under the fine brows—perhaps glimpsed how deep and passionate was his desire for her happiness, how eagerly he had planned this moment. She came back to him and knelt down, her trembling hands on his shoulders.

"Tris—does that mean—he might get well?"

"He might. It's a fighting chance."

"Oh, Tris—if it were only true——!"

He smiled gravely down at her.

"You'd pay any price for it to be true, Anne?"

"Any price!" she answered joyfully.

He put his arm round her.

"We'll do our level best, dear."

They remained silent for many minutes. She half crouched, half lay with her head against his shoulder. Her antipathy had died down. He was again the strong and perfect hero of her fancies. She loved him. The arm curved about her shoulder was again a thrilling force. She looked down tenderly at the slender, powerful wrist. Then she laughed.

"Tris, why do you wear that silly, common bracelet? It's cheap, and so unmanly."

She felt his body grow suddenly tense. He answered without effort, almost lightly.

"It was a great gift—a gift of friendship."

"From whom?"

"A friend."

She drew herself up. At no time was a sense of humour strong in her. She resented his lightness.

"You might tell me——"

"I can't."

"Is it a secret?"

"I suppose so—yes."

"Husband and wife ought not to have secrets from one another."

He laughed.

"Oughtn't they? Why not?"

"They're one."

His eyes darkened. He saw that the anger was mounting in her and strove to silence it. But an immense weariness lamed him. All the life and hope which he had gathered to himself out there on those wild fastnesses died out of him.

"They're not, Anne—heaven forbid. Because you and I are to live together all our lives—because we care for each other, our personalities don't cease to exist. We have both our secrets—our very thoughts are secret. We can't help it. I'll wager you don't tell me everything you think about me. Do you?"

She got up slowly. She went and stood by the light, her head averted. She was very truthful. She recognized the truth of what he had said. She could not have told him then what she thought.

"I daresay—you're right. It was silly of me." But an immense desire possessed her—a primitive desire beyond her control and based on she knew not what knowledge—the desire to hurt him. "By the way, Sigrid Fersen was married this afternoon," she said.

He did not answer for a moment. She heard him re-light his pipe. The stem was evidently choked, for it drew badly and noisily.

"Well, that was to be expected," he said. "My word—I am tired—just dog-tired."

She kept her eyes averted. She was stifled by an emotion that was half shame, half anger. Presently the shame predominated. She turned to him, a word of reluctant kindness ready on her lips.

His head had fallen back among the cushions. His outstretched hand still held the pipe, which had gone out again. She saw the great muscles of his bare neck—of the half-exposed chest. His eyes were closed and he breathed deeply and smoothly like a child.

The pipe slipped from his hand and fell on the mat with a dull little thud. She crept nearer and picked it up, her lips drawn together in ungovernable disgust.

CHAPTER V

CRISIS

The Comptons had rushed into debt with their eyes open and their teeth clenched. More than one piece of valuable Sèvres had vanished from their collection and its place been filled by a judicious rearrangement of the remaining gods. Colonel Armstrong never met the Captain without dropping a hint as to the inexpediency of opposing oneself to the feelings of a touch-and-go community like Gaya. The Comptons persisted recklessly on their course. Archie Compton, no military genius, was a fine soldier, prepared to fight to the last cartridge and go down with his superior officer, colours flying.

His superior officer in this particular affair was one Mary, his wife, and the last cartridge was about to be fired at her command.

It could not be said that she faced this last encounter with perfect equanimity. Throughout the day she had felt her heart beat loudly and heavily. At the approach of the fatal hour, woman-like, she had arrayed herself in her very best, her courage trickling back to her in the measure that she discovered herself still presentable. The look of awed admiration which her husband threw her from time to time gave her strength to meet the advance-guards of the enemy forces.

Were they enemy forces or was it a capitulation? At any rate Gaya had not turned its back, and that was something to be thankful for. Mrs. Bosanquet, with George in tow, was the first to arrive—probably an intentional move on the part of that good-natured and loyal soul. She kissed Mary on both cheeks and squeezed her hand.

"Morituri te salutant," she whispered. "My dear, you have done things wonderfully. I had hardly recognized the place. What are you giving them to drink?"

"Champagne—the very best," Mary Compton replied grimly. "Twenty rupees a bottle, and unlimited supplies. I've borrowed a cook from the Prevets at Lucknow. He's supposed to be a wonder. We may pull it off."

"We may," Mrs. Bosanquet agreed. "Gaya isn't an ass. It would be a dull station without Sigrid, and it knows it. Unless anything unlucky happens they'll give in gracefully—especially after dinner. But why on earth did these two go and get married like that? It adds a kind of scandal——"

Mrs. Compton sighed.

"That man wanted it. He was finding the half and half situation too trying. They both wished it to be quiet—Sigrid especially. I think she thought we'd rather be out of it——"

"I don't wonder——" Mrs. Bosanquet began and checked herself. She was in the unfortunate position of doing something whole-heartedly of which she equally whole-heartedly disapproved.

A fresh influx of guests sent her adrift. Everybody who had a right to be considered in the first flight had been invited and had accepted. They came in with more formality than was usual with them. It was as though they recognized that the occasion was in the nature of ceremony—a kind of symbolic festival. If they swallowed Mrs. Compton's dinner it was only to be understood that they swallowed the Barclays with it. Mrs. Compton's manner, if not her actual invitation, had made that clear.

Mrs. Compton heaved a sigh of relief when Colonel Armstrong and his washed-out-looking wife made their appearance. He paid her a little old-fashioned compliment, and she understood from his manner that he had reached toleration, if not approval. Mrs. Boucicault swept both out of her path. She was radiant. Even the painted cheeks and reckless display of jewellery could not detract from the wonder of her vitality, her irrepressible joy of life. It was as though all the winds of heaven had blown in with her.

"I passed the Barclays as I came along," she said. "Mr. Barclay has such wonderful horses. He told me he has the finest polo ponies in India just eating their heads off. Won't it be splendid if we win the cup? Do look at Tristram, Mary! Doesn't he look odd in uniform? Anne, of course, loves it. She would, wouldn't she? She made that dress of hers. It's not economy. She has a sort of idea that it's wicked to be beautiful. And Anne is so good." She gave a little malicious laugh. "I don't know how she came to be my daughter."

She rambled on erratically, but Mary Compton heard her only as a vague murmur. That moment of which she had been so painfully conscious for the last week had come. She drew her breath sharply between her teeth. She had seen Sigrid—Sigrid and her husband. The little groups went on talking, but there had been a general, involuntary movement. It was not hostile. They turned towards her as they had always done, scarcely knowing that they did so, drawn by the magnetism stronger than either good-breeding or dislike. And tonight it was not easy to turn away. There was something new about her—something more arresting than either beauty or even the vivid life which had made her powerful amongst them. They could not have defined it. She was not radiant, not triumphant, not challenging. The gold hair was smoothed down on either side of the small, erect head. Her face was colourless, the mouth composed, unsmiling. The eyes were wide open and intensely bright. There was a touch of gold on the white, full-skirted dress—on the slippers, on the small, perfect feet. She was a study of a burning pallor—a white flame. Barclay came behind her. He looked proportionately dark and very handsome. The cut of his evening clothes proclaimed Bond Street. He wore a red silk button in the lapel of his coat—an order given him by King Leopold in recognition of short but effective service in the unhappy Congo. He glanced about him with a sombre distrust.

Gaya hesitated. Even a gathering of well-bred English men and women can be swept by an invisible wave of panic, and Gaya was panic-stricken, torn between a headstrong admiration and an instinctive, inherent dislike. Moreover, it was not easy to take the initiative, and the most seasoned among them wavered.

But before Sigrid and her companion could reach their hostess Tristram had left his wife's side and gone to meet her.

"I wish my bracelet-sister all happiness," he said in a low tone. He held her hand for an instant and then turned to Barclay and greeted him frankly as though nothing had ever passed between them. But Barclay's hand hung at his side. He bowed with an exaggeration that was a veiled sneer.

But the ice had been broken, if not dispersed. Others came forward, murmuring incoherencies which, they thanked heaven, no one could wait to disentangle. They tried earnestly, and they believed successfully, to include Barclay in their welcome, and they would have been surprised to learn that the most any of them accomplished was a sightless nod in his direction. Perhaps, at the bottom, they were of opinion that their resignation to his presence was enough.

But it all looked well enough from a distance, and there was colour in Mrs. Compton's cheeks as she kissed Sigrid.

"We've won," she whispered. "You've won, dear." She gave Barclay her hand with a little vacant smile. "You've got to take your wife in, Mr. Barclay," she said. "You two are the guests of the evening, and must lead the way. I'm sure we're all ready."

Then another little rush of misery and panic swamped her. She had gone over the points of precedence very carefully. It had seemed to her best and most courageous to take the bull by the horns, to drive the nail home with all her strength. The Barclays were not to slip in—they were to be the people of the evening. Gaya had got to accept them whole-heartedly and with its eyes open. Now she realized the horribleness of theories when applied to human beings. She saw that she had made a blunder and had set one person at least an almost intolerable task. Sigrid laid her hand on her husband's arm. The entrance to the dining-room was immediately opposite her—half a dozen yards away, Gaya between. It was like running the gauntlet. An almost imperceptible spasm passed over the dead-white face. For an instant Mary Compton thought she faltered. Then the two incongruous figures made their way slowly across the room.

But Mrs. Compton had seen that scarcely perceptible change. She forgot her guests. She stood there, lost in misery and helpless speculation. For what was this intolerable price paid? Was this the splendour of living for which a woman might sell herself? What silence could be worth such galling humiliation? If Sigrid had committed a crime, surely it was not in this way she would have chosen to escape?

Then Mrs. Compton, finding herself on the verge of tears, became exasperated and seized the arm of the man nearest her.

"Please—please take me in," she said imperatively.

He obeyed, perhaps aware of the nearness of disaster, and thereby the order and decorum of the evening went to the winds. Gaya, however, itself ill at ease, accepted the situation, and followed haphazard, the two forsaken and ill-assorted partners joining forces in good-natured resignation.

Only Compton himself lingered. He had excused himself to Mrs. Bosanquet, who had fallen to his lot, and whose understanding of the situation was probably more poignant than his own. As a rule, he knew what his wife let him know and saw what she pointed out to him, but not much else. He had not the vaguest idea why she had, as he expressed it, "stampeded," but he did realize, as a painstaking host, that one guest had been forgotten—and that guest a personage who would be unlikely to accept the oversight gracefully.

Compton set himself to wait, therefore, with as much patience as he could muster.

It was not till ten minutes later that Rasaldû made his appearance. Unpunctuality was with him a fetish. On this occasion his ordinary habit had been exaggerated by circumstances which he explained elaborately as he smoothed his sleek black hair before a glass.

"Only got back this afternoon—marvellous fine shooting—two tigers and a cheetah. I got the tigers myself—magnificent specimens. The biggest made a devilish fine fight; if it hadn't been for my mahout I mightn't be here now. Sorry to have kept you waiting."

"Not a bit of it," Compton assured him in his languid, incoherent way.

"Seems a special sort of affair. Anything up?"

Compton stroked his little moustache. There were times when the Rajah's Anglo-Saxon brevity jarred on him. Moreover, for other reasons, he felt disinclined to be communicative.

"No—nothing special," he said.

"All right. I'm ready."

For all his apparent good-humour, Rasaldû was in a sulky mood. The tiger-hunt had been the expression of an incoherent rage and sense of unforgivable humiliation which Gaya had found amusing and not at all serious. But to Rasaldû the whole matter had been serious. He had dispensed European hospitality the while retaining an entirely Oriental mentality. Sigrid Fersen had been in part his guest. Her marriage was therefore an insult and a gibe. She had made fun of him. In his own language, "she had made a fool of him." And he was not given either to forgetting or forgiving.

And now a fresh slight had been put on him. They had gone in without him. They had deprived him of that sense of grandiose arrival which was the most pleasing part of any entertainment. It made him, at least for a moment, the person of paramount importance.

His round face was therefore creased with sulkiness as he reached his place at the Comptons' table. Not even the beauty and promise of the display soothed him. Mary Compton had borrowed and been within an ace of stealing in order to produce a result which would soften the bitterest opposition. But she had counted without the Oriental character. Rasaldû merely bowed in her direction, then, before seating himself, he looked round, making the most of his moment.

Barclay sat immediately opposite him in the centre of the table, with Sigrid on his right hand. Outwardly he had borne himself coolly enough, accepting his conspicuous place of honour with an air of rather insolent ease. But below the surface the whole man had been tense, agonized, quivering with memories of past humiliations. In every glance, in every word, he read the disparagement which his instinct knew was still in arms against him. He had won. He could look down the length of the table and tell himself that these people were here to meet him, to do him honour. He could remember the hour when his hostess had left him standing in the dust of her cart-wheels. He could look at Tristram and recall that twilight scene by the temple. Best of all, there was the woman beside him. He could turn to her white, quiet face with the memory of a night when these two had watched him slink out before them like a beaten dog.

Yes, he had won. He had broken through the invisible barrier of their caste. He had fought his way into their citadel, and yet——! It was as though he had grasped at shadows and they had eluded him. He knew that he had never been further from them—never more the stranger and pariah. The English blood in him arose against him in triumph. It showed him what otherwise might have remained hidden—what Rasaldû could never have seen—the hearts of these people, their splendid isolation, the impregnable aloofness, their blank denial of himself. As he sat there listening to their quiet, self-certain intercourse, the bandages which he had wrapped about his bleeding pride were ripped off and with them every trace of healing. The sweat stood out on his dark forehead. He hated them. He desired them. He wanted to spit in these serene, immaculate faces. He would have grovelled to them for one word of fellowship. He had as yet scarcely touched the wine before him, but his blood was in an uproar, warring against itself.

Then suddenly he looked up at Rasaldû across the table, staring at him.

Perhaps that silent, deadly exchange lasted no more than a second or two, yet the unbridled ferocity of it rested like a chilling hand on those nearest and passed on down the table so that the last murmur sank into an appalled quiet. Something tigerish had leapt up in the breasts of both men. On the one side the Oriental, wounded in every susceptibility, threw off the mask of English breeding; on the other, the English blood, fevered by the maternal heritage, boiled under the insult of those eyes, broke from its own frail bondage of self-control, and by a mad paradox became native blood, native hatred.

The seconds passed. Then Rasaldû, with an insolent little movement of the shoulders, bent down to Colonel Armstrong on his right and spoke to him in an undertone. The unhappy Colonel listened, tugging painfully at his moustache. Mrs. Compton had half-risen, but Barclay forestalled her. He got up, leaning across towards Rasaldû.

"What's the matter with you?" he said.

Rasaldû's thick lips curled. He looked at Sigrid with the bloodshot, hating eyes of a thwarted animal.

"I don't eat with half-castes," he said.

Barclay seized his glass and threw the contents full into the Rajah's distorted face.

"You swineherd upstart!" he gasped thickly. Then, with a glance that swept the table, he turned and strode out of the room.

The silence continued. No uproar could have been more terrible than its unendingness. The Rajah stood there quite still, his mouth open, the wine trickling from his face on to the immaculate shirt-front—a ridiculous, sinister figure. Mrs. Compton tried to master her voice, to say something, but it was as though a gag stifled her. She saw Sigrid get up—very slowly.

She stood there looking round her—and then across at Tristram. He made a movement as though he would have risen, but she lifted her hand slightly, imperatively, and he sank back, not looking at her. Her lips were a little parted with an odd, pathetic little smile. It seemed, as she stood here, that she was trying, not to speak, but to grope her way to some thought, to some answer.

Nobody spoke to her or tried to stop her. But at that moment she belonged to them, was one of them—for the last time. Sheer futility lamed all movement, all expression of what they felt. It was as though a frail, beautiful ship had broken from its moorings in a great tempest and they stood there and watched it drift out seawards beyond the reach of their voices, of their help or pity.

Only Mrs. Bosanquet cried openly—the tears rolling down her fat cheeks.

Sigrid went out through the silence. She found Barclay already in the driving seat of his dog-cart and without a word clambered up beside him. He glanced at her and brought the whip down savagely across the horse's head. The animal did not need the blow. It felt the madness in the man's hand and broke into a wild gallop. They swung through the compound gates out on to the white moonlit road. For an instant they seemed to hover in mid-air, and then, with a grinding jar, the off-wheel came back on to the ground and they raced on, down through the black belt of the palm-trees and out again into the silver road, pursued by their own frantic shadows.

Only once did Barclay speak, and then it was to himself between clenched teeth:

"Now I know," he whispered. "Now I can see clear."

She did not answer. She sat very still, gazing steadily ahead into the half-light which ran before them, and encircled them with odd, treacherous shapes, so that now there seemed a barrier where there was none, and now a clear road where suddenly it curved and dipped. He drove well. Once the horse shied violently at an overhanging branch, and with a turn of his wrist he brought the animal to a baulked, fretting submission. Sigrid gave a short laugh, and he glanced sideways at her. Perhaps in that moment a grim admiration one for the other rose between them. At least neither had shown fear.

A syce, drowsing on the steps of the old bungalow, ran out to meet them and caught the restive, sweating animal by the head. Barclay threw him an order in Hindustani and then, without a glance at his companion, led the way to the room where the amazing Venus held her lamp. He crossed straight over to the wide-open windows and pulled the curtains to.

The door behind Sigrid closed softly.

Still Barclay did not look at her. He opened a cigarette box with a theatrical affectation of deliberation, but when he struck a match she saw that his hand shook. The tiny flame near to his face betrayed new, ugly lines cut deep about the mouth and nostrils.

"I'll tell you something queer," he said, glancing up over the lighted match. "Tristram Senior was murdered in this room—just here, where I'm standing. There's a stain under the carpet. The place is supposed to be haunted."

She lifted her eyebrows. Her eyes were very steady and watchful.

"Yes?" she queried.

"He was murdered by my mother's husband. You see, he had betrayed her. It was a sort of insult to my people." The match went out almost at his finger-tips. He threw it away. "Strange how things happen, isn't it?"

She made no answer. Her cloak had slipped from her bare shoulders and she put her hand up and drew it back, holding it across her breast. He began to move restlessly about the room.

"And now Tristram Junior is in love with my wife."

"You do not know——"

"Oh, I know well enough, I've seen it. What was—is. I imagine a man doesn't forget you for that puling little saint. How he must wince! Or have you told him? Well, you'll have something else to tell him—tomorrow."

"We made a bargain," she said sharply.

"A bargain! What have you done of your share?"

"All that lay in my power."

He gave a wretched laugh.

"This evening, for instance? Well—it's finished, do you hear? I've done with the whole thing. I gave them and you a last chance. Now I'm going my own way—and you're my wife. I've got that right left."

"You've no right but what I choose to give you."

"You'll choose—you've got to—you're helpless." He paused, choking. He threw the half-burnt cigarette on the floor and ground it under his heel. "There's no one in this place that's going to bother about either of us. Tristram won't play deus ex machinâ this time—you and I—we're going to have this out alone."

He saw her glance towards the door. "It's locked. You can scream to your heart's content. Your Smithy may hear, but she won't help. The servants have their orders. Besides—what right has any one to interfere. You're my wife. You swore before the altar——" He stopped again. Like an animal lashing itself to fury, he strode towards her and then turned and came back, his face swollen and quivering. His words came in a broken torrent of passion. "There's—there's a sort of compensation—in things—my mother's body was found out there in the well—she was good enough for an hour's sport—a native—what did it matter?—a sort of superior toy for an Englishman's pleasure-and the result—a half-caste, a mincing, feckless muddle of two races—let him rot in some stuffy Eurasian quarter and drink himself to death. If he dares rise—if he dares come among us—if he dares aspire to one of our blood—then spew upon him—roll him in the dust—kick him out—let him feel the whip like the misbegotten hound he is. As to our womankind—hands off, or heaven help him——"

"I understand," she threw in breathlessly. "I am to be your revenge—on them—on your brother——"

He turned back to her, staring at her. Then he burst into a laugh.

"Revenge? Oh, I don't know—nothing perhaps so—so high-flown as that. After all—they'd hardly know, would they? It's—it's a sort of instinct—to get level—in one way or another. Besides—I want you——" He measured her with a savage deliberation. "My God—it's natural enough." He was shaking from head to foot. Swift and soundless as a flash of light she put the table between them and stood confronting him. Her fair small head was thrown back, her mouth set in an unfaltering line. "By all means—it's useless—I've the right and the might——" Suddenly, like a tiger weary of toying with its victim, he flung himself on the table, lifting it with both hands. Then, as he did so—he stopped short—faltering.

A full minute passed whilst they remained face to face, neither moving. He drew himself slowly upright.

"Well—why don't you do it?" he asked.

"I don't want to—not unless I must."

"It would be an expensive business."

"I don't know. I've paid so much already—it might be better to go on paying——"

"To get what you set out to buy? You don't need to worry about that. I may still keep my share of the bargain. I have other plans. So you had the draw on me all the time? Who would have thought so gentle a bosom could hide so much deadliness?"

"I have always carried it," she answered simply. "It may seem theatrical—but I realized—this might happen."

He smiled ironically.

"You are very cool—very brave, Sigrid. You—you inflame my admiration. Won't you sit down? It is very early yet."

"I would rather you unlocked the door. I am tired."

"And sick with disgust? I can quite understand. You are white to the backbone." His voice shook with an uncontrollable despair. "Still, I warn you—if I open the door, I win. It is guarded. You see, I took precautions—but I don't want that. I—I have that much English blood in me—I'll fight fair."

"Very well. If there is anything you have to say——"

"Nothing—except perhaps that it is still early. I can display patience. Won't you sit down?"

"Since you wish it."

He took his place opposite her, the table still between them. It was a wide table and he could not have touched her. She rested her elbow on the polished edge, the little toy-like weapon held lightly but firmly in her lifted hand. He leant forward, his eyes on her, watchful, intent. All passion, all desire had died out of them. They were hard and cold with purpose.

"You will tire," he said softly.

"I am very strong."

"À l'outrance, then?"

She smiled faintly.

"À l'outrance."

But he had seen that flicker of amusement and winced under it.

"You think I am as absurd—as—as—I am beastly?" he asked.

"No—I couldn't think like that—at least, not at the bottom. I understand too well."

"You understand?" He stared at her hungrily. "What do you understand?"

"That you would have been glad to have acted—and felt differently."

He nodded.

"I would have been their friend—a good friend. It's too late now."

"Yes—too late. I can see that——"

It grew still between them. Once he moved suddenly, testing her, but her eyes and hand were unwavering, and he dropped back into his old position.

As the time passed blue shadows darkened her eyes and crept about her mouth. She seemed to grow smaller and paler, and a kind of wonder came into his patient watchfulness of her—an almost pitying admiration.

"Spare yourself!" he whispered.

She made no answer.

The hours passed. The man and woman became grotesquely like wax figures in their grey, pallid immobility. The lamplight began to fade. In the dusk the empty face of the Venus looked ghostly and unreal. They could hear a heavy bullock-wagon plough its way up the hill to the crack of whips and native imprecations.

Barclay rose slowly and stiffly to his feet. He went across to the window and pulled the curtains aside, letting in a flood of golden morning.

"You've won—this time," he said. "You won hours ago."

He did not look at her. He went down the verandah steps and did not turn even though he heard the thud of the revolver as it slipped from her unconscious hand.

CHAPTER VI

"OF YOUR BLOOD"

Gaya awoke the next morning depressed and rather incredulous. The daylight has a tendency to throw a chill interrogation at whatever the previous night has held either of greatness, tragedy, or passion. The blood cools to a little below the normal and the brain perceives things in their flattest, dullest colours. Indeed, until lunch-time the human constitution is too busy working up steam to produce emotion, or even to acknowledge the possibility of anything vital save the getting of the daily bread and the partaking thereof. So Gaya went lazily about its business, deferring serious consideration to a convenient future, and meantime vaguely aware of a foolish, unpleasant crack in the neat surface of its daily life which somehow would have to be patched up.

Barclay also went about his business. Beyond a certain sombre abstraction his manner gave no hint of any change. In the early morning a messenger mounted on his favourite Arab rode out on the Heerut road, and in the afternoon Lalloo, suave and impassive, made his appearance in a bullock-wagon which had performed a fifteen-mile journey over bad roads in little over three hours. The two, Lalloo and his patron, sat together in the very English library and talked subduedly until the first breath of nightfall rustled among the trees of the garden. Then Lalloo, as he had come, took his departure, nicely tingeing respect with disparagement and disparagement with respect.

Barclay himself did not set foot outside the bungalow.

At dinner he sat opposite his wife and ate whatsoever the noiseless servants placed before him. Contrary to his custom—for he had a morbid respect for all appearances he did not attempt to keep up the small talk which usually passed between them. He scarcely spoke to her, and only once looked in her direction.

Afterwards they stood for a moment together on the edge of the verandah, looking out into the quiet darkness. Here, too, custom was broken. It was the first time since their marriage that she had joined him after their ceremonious meal. A memory shot like a light through his moody silence.

"Aren't you afraid?" he asked brutally.

"No," she answered. There was no bravado—only a great physical weariness in her low voice. "I want to know what is going to happen," she said.

"Nothing."

"I thought—as I have failed so completely——"

"—that you could clear out?" He smoked for a moment in sombre consideration, then tossed his cigarette away from him. It glowed on the pathway like a tiny, watchful eye. "Of course you're free," he said finally. "I haven't any power to hold you. But if you go, then I shall be free too. The last article of our agreement will have been annulled. That's obvious, isn't it?"

"Yes—if you hold to your agreement."

"I shall." He gave a subdued laugh. "I am like Shylock, Sigrid. And you are one of those good Christians trying to cheat and possibly persecute their infidel creditor. What do you expect?"

"Just that." She waited an instant and then he felt rather than heard that she turned away from him. "That's all I wanted to ask you."

"Well——? Have you decided?"

"There was nothing to decide. I shall go on with it—whatever it is."

He heard the curtains fall. Throughout he had not looked at her. It was as though he withheld from her something which his eyes might have betrayed. When all was still again he took a book haphazard from the pompously crowded shelves and sat down beneath the light-bearing Venus to read. He sat very still, his dark eyes resting intently on a spot just above the page which was never turned.

The gold-faced clock on the table chimed ten o'clock. The thin, dulcet tones dropped into the quiet like pebbles into a still pool. They seemed to arouse the man beneath the lamplight. He got up and pulled the curtains across the windows. There was a door in the left-hand wall. It led into a room in which he kept his papers, and no one entered it but himself. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.

"You are safe now," he said in the native tongue.

Ayeshi came out slowly into the light. His eyes were dazed-looking, but rest and food had restored something of their old fire, and that very return of life accentuated the deeper change in him. It was not only the lines which disease and want had chiselled among his features. The one-time boyish beauty had been hardened and sharpened by something more subtle than physical privation. His eyes, as they grew accustomed to the light, were no longer clouded with mystic dreams, but were stern and penetrating. His very bearing was profoundly different. His dignity had been gracious and unconscious; it was now conscious and commanding.

"You have done me great service," he said in an undertone. "I shall not forget when the time comes for remembrance."

"You are rested sufficiently to go on your way?"

Ayeshi nodded. He glanced keenly into Barclay's impassive face.

"You use our tongue to me?"

Barclay shrugged his shoulders.

"Is it not mine also?"

A faint hauteur compressed the fine lips. He turned away and lifted the edge of the curtain.

"I give you great thanks, Barclay Sahib."

"I ask no thanks of you, Ayeshi. You will find a horse at the gates. But first, can there be no trust between us? Can you not tell me whither you are going and to what end?"