Part 11

He got up and straightened out her poor body and covered her with her rags, and went on towards the village.

It was night now. A smouldering fire from behind the first hut threw up a sullen glow against which the low, ramshackle building stood out spectrely. Tristram passed it, and a gust of foetid wind goaded the flames to a sudden brilliance, so that he saw upon what it was they fed themselves. A gaunt, naked figure crouched near the hideous embers, and, turning as though to see whence the wind came, saw the Englishman, and leapt up, wild-eyed, and fled, shrieking, into the black fastness of the village.

Now the silence was gone, and in its place there were whisperings and the pattering of naked feet. A woman's scream came from afar off. Tristram stumbled over a body which neither moved nor cried out. He stood still, knowing that he was no longer alone. The eye of the electric torch which he carried flashed through the pitch darkness and rested upon distorted faces, turned to him in an agony of dread. And behind them, through the yellow haze, he caught a glimpse of bodies heaped together in the gutter, of cowering figures, faces hidden against the mud walls, of gaping doors, blacker than the pervading gloom, and threatening a nameless horror. He himself stood out in the dim light, tall and white and spectral. He moved, and the faces bowed before him like the heads of corn in the wind, and a voice went up wailing, piteous:

"Oh, Siva, it is the end—the end—"

The man whom he had seen crouching by the fire leapt suddenly out at him, and he felt the cold breath of steel against his cheek. He warded off the blow, and the madman came on again and again, and each time he defended himself patiently and without aggression. The circle of faces closed in. His light was out, but he could feel how the air about him grew hot and stifling. They waited—stupidly, hungrily, with a frenzied lust of death. If he fell—though they believed him God—still it would be the end.

Even then he did not strike out. The last time, the delirious fanatic stumbled and went crashing to the ground. Tristram bent over him, turning his light on to the foam-flecked old face.

"He'll come round all right," he said calmly. "But we've got to get him shut up somewhere before he does damage. Help me, some of you."

His voice sounded loud and clear amidst their low, formless whisperings, but they did not move, and he picked the old man up as though he had been a child. "Make way there!" he commanded.

They let him pass, but on the threshold of the hut he came to a halt, arrested by a stench which was like a blow, staggering his senses. With his free hand, he sent the light darting about the corners of the hut, and then turned and came quickly out. There was nothing to be done. Death, most hideous, had leered at him in triumph from a dozen frozen distortions of the human body.

For one moment, as he stood there, choking down his physical sickness, he may have known the agony of helplessness and isolation. But only for a moment. He looked round, noting the gradual relaxation of the fear-drawn faces about him.

"It's a pretty bad go," he said cheerfully, "and what your headman was doing not to let us know before I can't think. However, we'll make the best of it. Two of you go and pile up that fire I saw as I came in. And I want at least five who aren't stiff with funk to carry these poor devils out. There's not got to be a body left in this village by daybreak. We'll get the rest out into the air where they can breathe, and I'll soak you and the place in carbolic." They still hesitated, and deliberately he turned the light on to his own face.

"Bless you, I'm not Siva. I'm the Dakktar Sahib—sent by the great English Raj to put you all straight. But, by the Lord, if you don't do what I tell you in a brace of shakes, Siva will be a joke by comparison."

The panic broke. The old headman crept out and cringed before him, offering excuses. Tristram waved him on one side.

"Get on with it!" he said, between his teeth.

He went from hut to hut, directing, ordering, disinfecting, patient and imperturbable, infinitely gentle. And all night soft-footed processions with their grim burdens made their way out to the monstrous funeral pyre which grew higher and higher. All that night and all through the burning, blinding day to another night, and beyond that again, Tristram drove Death back step by step from his mauled and helpless victims, bringing peace into a hell of suffering. Three nights and three days. And on the fourth night he reeled back to the encampment beneath the trees and dropped down with his face in the long grass, and lay there inert as death itself.

And for three days and nights again Ayeshi sat beside him, tending him and listening to the muttered reiteration of a woman's name.

CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH FORTUNE PLEASES TO JEST

The Rajah Rasaldu was in his element. By sheer force of merit, he occupied the stage to the almost complete exclusion of every other player. Gaya hung on his movements, gasped—as much as Gaya ever gasped—over the reckless twists and turns of his wonderful ponies, and applauded the grace and apparent ease with which he broke the defence and sent the ball spinning between the posts. For, strange to relate, Rasaldu could play polo. Flabby and unheroic as he was on all other occasions, once in the saddle, he developed into an iron-wristed, cool-headed strategist. What was more, he played for his side and not for himself. Men who went into the game disparaging his fatuous conceit and equally fatuous humility, loved him after the first ten minutes of brilliant, unselfish play, and the glow of affection usually lasted for twenty-four hours after he had won for his side. Then they tolerated him again until the next challenge came along.

Rasaldu revelled like a child in Gaya's good graces. There was something almost winning in his wide smile of pleasure, as after the first chukka he came over to the select group under the awning and received feminine Gaya's congratulations. Had he not played such a daring game he would have cut rather a comic figure. His riding-clothes, taken in juxtaposition with his dark chubby face, were wonderfully and terribly English, and his brown boots, very new and very brown, shone almost too beautifully. Between him and the turbaned soldiery crowded against the ropes there was a gulf of false Europeanism of which the latter seemed curiously conscious. They alone had not applauded, him in his bold assault on the enemy, and they stared at him now with an expressionlessness which, translated, equalled distrust and contempt.

Meantime, Rasaldu chatted with the volubility of success and self-confidence. He chose to address himself chiefly to Mary Compton, but from time to time his moist brown eyes shot an eager glance at Sigrid Fersen, seeking her smile, a meed of well-earned admiration. He was a little afraid of her. She was not in the least beautiful, and she undoubtedly owed her position in Gaya to his generous patronage, facts which of themselves should have sustained him in her presence. But the quiet, imperious self-belief with which she had silenced alike criticism and opposition and compelled rigid Gaya to accept her and her standards, shook Rasaldu's self-complacency. It was for that very reason, and also because Gaya had mysteriously collapsed before her, that Rasaldu hovered about her with the helpless and protesting infatuation of a moth for a naked light.

And now today there was added to this emotion the heat and intoxication of his own prowess, and the consciousness that, if she was not beautiful, she possessed something much more vital than beauty—the mysterious force of temperament which through all time has made plain women more dangerous, more powerful in the destiny of nations than women endowed with all physical perfection. Rasaldu had no talent for analysing temperaments, but he could analyse certain obvious factors in her charm—the pale gold hair, the perfect skin, unprotected by powder, the svelte, tiger-like grace and strength of her reposing body. Above all, he could analyse clothes. Gaya's women-folk, none too well blessed with money, lived in London's last year's creations and the clumsy imitations of the native tailors. But this simple white dress of some clinging, shimmering material, unknown to Gaya, and this simple straw hat almost unadorned, came from Paris. Rasaldu, who knew his Paris, knew that much. And, as a man worships a token from his native soil, so he worshipped Sigrid Fersen.

And presently he ventured to address her directly.

"Now you have seen what is best in India!" he said.

"The Rajah Rasaldu playing polo?" she asked, smilingly.

"You are unkind, Mademoiselle," he answered, with the hurt sensitiveness of a snubbed child.

"I did not mean to be unkind. There are so many wonderful things in India, Rajah, that I hesitated a moment to endorse your opinion. Still—yes, it was a fine sight. You should always play polo, Rajah. It suits you better than feting prima ballerinas in London restaurants."

He looked at her and saw that she was serious, and her seriousness mitigated the dubiousness of her compliment. He would have preferred it in the reversed sense, but he had to take what was offered him.

"I was not really alluding to myself at all," he said, naively, "but to the game. The game's the thing."

"Yes—and the man who plays it," she answered. She was smiling faintly, and he indulged in a flattered self-consciousness until he realized that the smile was a reminiscent one, and that she was looking through him to some invisible picture of her thoughts. Whereupon, Rasaldu hastily reverted to Mrs. Compton, whom also he feared, but in a lesser degree. Her tongue was sharp, but at least she did not attract him, and consequently her powers of offence were of a less painful order.

Sigrid Fersen did not notice his dejection. She was looking at Meredith, who at that moment had entered the awning. He still wore his clerical clothes, having come straight from the little chapel, where every afternoon he held his service. It was rare that more than one person should represent the congregation. Sometimes he managed to collect a few convert school-children, but always Anne Boucicault was there, devout and trembling, her brown eyes following his every movement with the reverence of a passionate believer in the initiated and anointed priest. That hour in the day was very dear to Owen Meredith. He believed that it was a religious ecstasy which flooded him as he listened to her low voice give the responses—or at least a pure joy in their fellowship in the one faith. He had not realized how lifeless and empty his own prayers could be without the inspiration of her presence. Now a kind of fear oppressed him—a fear of himself, a doubt in his own spiritual integrity. For this afternoon, she had failed him and he had failed himself. He had held the service, according to the law which he had made for himself, sparing no detail, but his heart had been dead. Now, as he saw her, it started to life again, to the knowledge of pain. She sat beside Colonel Boucicault, and there was that in her attitude which reminded Meredith of a frightened animal cowering under the threat of the lash. All the charm of youth had been twisted out of her by some invisible, iron-handed suffering. And without that charm, she was a drab, colourless little soul, almost ugly. But Meredith did not see that she was ugly, only that she was ill and unhappy. He thought he understood. As he came and sat beside her, she shot a quick, frightened glance at him.

"Father did not wish me to come," she said, in a hurried whisper. "He was fearfully angry about some letter—"

More she could not say. And even that much would have been dangerous, had not the man beside her been sunk in a sullen, inattentive brooding. She dared say nothing of the appalling scene which had followed on the receipt of that ominous official document, and which had left them stupefied and bruised and sick. In the final phase, Boucicault had forbidden her chapel attendance, not because he disapproved, or cared, but because he knew that she wanted to escape him. And all the afternoon he kept at her side, taking an ugly delight in her wincing, broken subservience, and in the knowledge that he held her with him in his self-created atmosphere of fear and hatred.

But Meredith believed he knew more of her pallor than she even hinted at.

"I met Ayeshi on the way here," he said. "He gave me the news. Tristram is on his way back."

"Yes—?" she queried, dully.

"He has been very ill. Ayeshi has come on ahead to prepare quarters for him."

She was looking down at her hands. He could see how she fought to control their trembling.

"If only we could have put him up—but we can't—father wouldn't—oh, it is terrible to be so helpless."

"I told Ayeshi to bring him to my bungalow. I will let you know how he is—and perhaps, later on, you could help. I know what a fine little nurse you are—"

"You are very, very good, Owen—"

"I would be glad to do anything for him," he answered, without significance. Then chancing to look up, he found that Sigrid Fersen's eyes were fixed on him, and guessed that she had heard, or had wanted to hear badly. For an instant, on behalf of Anne, he hated her again, and the next he warmed towards her. She met his half-resentful stare as frankly.

"I am so thankful he is safe," she said.

Mrs. Compton thereupon chimed in.

"If anything happened to Major Tristram, I should die of a broken heart," she said, "—even if Archie divorced me for it."

She paid no attention to the laugh in which even Anne joined timidly. She was looking at Colonel Boucicault, who had shifted his position like a sleeper unpleasantly disturbed, but the remark which seemed on the edge of her compressed lips was not destined to be uttered.

At that moment a bell announced the next chukka; a stir passed round the enclosure and Mrs. Compton, who, in spirit, played a magnificent game for Gaya, forgot Boucicault and Tristram in her stern concentration on the field.

Rasaldu braced himself and turned with a smile to Sigrid. He felt more confident. In a minute she would be forced to look at him, to admire him, to acknowledge that he also "played the game."

"Wish me luck!" he begged cheerily.

"Return victorious!" she returned, in mock heroics. "For the victors, Mrs. Compton and I have prepared a mighty feast in the gardens of the dak-bungalow, and the vanquished shall sit afar off and partake only of the crumbs of our graciousness. Be not among the vanquished, O Rajah!"

"To win the place of honour, I will make a goal every five minutes, or perish," he boasted elatedly.

He swung himself on to the back of the pony which his groom held ready for him, and with a flourish trotted to his place on the field.

Boucicault awoke then completely from his black brooding. He bent forward, staring straight into Sigrid Fersen's face, his clenched teeth shown in a smile that had in its mirthless, contained fury the elements of insanity.

"You are a very great friend of Rajah Rasaldu, Miss Fersen," he said.

She looked at him steadily, measuring the quality of the challenge which he had thrown down.

"Does friendship follow on acquaintance?" she questioned back. "In that case, you and I should be friends, Colonel Boucicault, for I have met you more often than the Rajah."

"Then he has marked his joy in your acquaintanceship with remarkable generosity," he retorted.

"Is generosity your translation for hospitality, Colonel Boucicault?"

"The Rajah's hospitality is well known. He gives liberally. He expects a return. And he is impressionable. There is such a thing as love at first sight, Miss Fersen."

He was watching her with a hungry anticipation, but she neither winced nor turned from him. Her calm gaze met his, and there was no change in its rather sleepy placidity. But the enigmatic smile which he remembered quivered at the corners of her mouth.

"And there is also such a thing as contempt at first sight," she remarked casually, "and that is much what I felt for you, Colonel Boucicault."

"You are an outspoken enemy," he answered, with a quick drawing in of his breath. She looked down for an instant and saw that his big, brutal-looking hands shook.

"You have remarked on my outspokenness before."

"Yes, and I even admire it. But my admiration, Miss Fersen, cannot influence my sense of duty. I am chief in command in Gaya. The social as well as the military authority rests in me. And where I see that a certain individual is lessening our prestige, corrupting our morals, or even upsetting the routine of our social life, then I have the power to expel that individual—to make Gaya and India impossible—"

"If, to speak clearly, you refer to me, Colonel Boucicault," she interrupted, "then perhaps I shall have the pleasure of travelling in the same boat with you to England."

His bloodshot eyes remained blank and stupid-looking for an instant, then lit up with an insensate fury of understanding. He stumbled to his feet.

"You—you—!" he muttered. She saw his clenched fists, and knew that, for all his position and the crowd of witnesses, he had come within an ace of striking her. She looked up at him over her shoulder and laughed.

"Keep that sort of thing for your family, Colonel Boucicault," she advised lightly.

Boucicault turned and pushed through the knot of spectators behind him. He made his way across the paddock where the ponies were being rubbed down, and out on to the high road. His orderly, seeing him, ran after him, and he turned on the man with a curse.

"Take the buggy back to the stables. I shall walk."

"And the Mem-Sahib—?"

"The Mem-Sahib can walk, too," he answered, grinning.

The man saluted, his face hard-set, his eyes meeting Boucicault's with military steadfastness. But for an instant the muscles about his mouth had quivered, betraying that there was that beneath the surface which even his native stoicism could not wholly master. And Boucicault saw and understood.

He strode on down the centre of the dusty, sun-baked road. He had drunk heavily that day, but there was more than drink fomenting in his inflamed brain. There was that letter with its bold, humbugging politeness—after so many years of service—an inquiry—certain charges—what charges?—by whom brought? He muttered aloud, dwelling on a name with a sneering hatred. Well—they should inquire—he could answer the lot. But then there was Anne cowering before him—why had God cursed him with a cowardly girl—? and that man— There had been a time when, as a mere captain, his regiment would have followed him through the gates of hell—and now—now—if he went into action tomorrow—what then? He saw the soldier's face again and re-read its significance. Strong men made enemies, and he had always had enemies, but he had also had friends in the past. They had gone. The men who had believed in him—adored him—gone. He felt himself haunted by spectres of what was and what had been. They came out of the black abyss of his soul, whirled up by ugly, incoherent passions—regret and remorse, self-loathing and self-pity twisted out of recognition and melted down to one vast, corroding hatred. Every other emotion came too late. Only hatred remained to him—the last link between him and his fellow-creatures—that and the power to hurt, to inflict suffering—as he suffered.

Thus carried forward and half-blinded by the glare which emanated more from his brain than from the blazing roadway, he left Gaya behind him. He came to a bend in the roadway where a thin belt of trees curved down towards the plain, and there stood still, arrested by an unclear recognition. At first he scarcely knew what had attracted his attention; then little by little the red haze cleared, and something within him started awake, some dormant desire as yet unnameable.

Wickie lay on the fringe of shadow, his black snout between his paws, his ears pricked, his brown eyes, showing the whites, expressive of alert curiosity. A piece of broken cord attached to his collar testified dumbly to a determined and skilful evasion of Mrs. Smithers's coercive methods of adoption.