Part 19

Tristram stood on the outskirts of the village and watched them come down through the glory of the sunrise. They rolled past him in a cloud of dust and a blare of harsh-throated instruments and the rattle of native drums. The bright morning rays picked out a hundred glints of colour from among them—here, a gay woman's chudder, there a rich puggri, or the glitter of gold ornaments, carried secretly and at great risk through the long journey, or the saffron robe of a holy man. All the stages of growth and decay were there—Youth restraining its steps to the halting measure of age, rags and tatters and gaudy finery, gentle, mysterious-eyed women, lithe-limbed boys and half-naked, pot-bellied babies rolling bow-legged at their parents' side, comic as young puppies. Last of all, grey-bearded and scarcely human, a fakir crawling on hands and knees through the rising dust. So his oath bound him. Years ago, he had started out on this pilgrimage. Now the end was in sight. He glanced up as he passed, but his face was without expression. Perhaps in those years he had reached his goal—indifference, Nirvana, where there is neither desire nor hope, pain nor happiness.

An odd misery laid hold of Tristram as he watched them. It was a pageant of life, all humanity struggling on through the heat and turmoil of years, driven by a secret, fathomless impulse, obeying the behests of self-created gods, seeking a self-created goal out of the desperate need of their hearts. And tricksters and men of God, fanatics, conventionalists, bread-and-butter priests, preying on each other, trampling on each other, pushing always forward in pretended knowledge of the Force that drives them.

But, to the man standing at Tristram's side, it was just a tiresome business. He was a captain in the native regiment, and was there with a handful of men to keep order if order could be kept.

"I daresay there'll be a shindy by nightfall," he remarked. "There always is. Can't think why we put up with it. We shall have a Holy Place on every inch of the river if we go on encouraging them like this."

"I suppose they've got to have a religion," Tristram observed absently.

"Well, I wish they'd have a nice, quiet, Sunday-go-to-meeting one like mine. Besides, it doesn't mean anything to them. It's just their way of taking a summer holiday."

Tristram laughed and turned away.

"Oh, well, if there are any bones broken, you'll know where to find me. And keep your eye on Meredith. His religion isn't the quiet, unobtrusive kind you favour."

"Good old Meredith!" the other man rejoined comfortably.

Tristram made his way along the fringe of the procession back to his own quarters. When he closed the door he shut out the light and dust, but not the noise, and for that he was conscious of a vague thankfulness. The quiet of the place had begun to haunt him. Rather than help him forget, it reminded him of what was no longer there. He was always looking round involuntarily for Wickie, peering into his favourite hiding-place in the shadow, as though the bright brown eyes would have to answer his appeal, with their solemn, impudent contemplation. Or he would rap out an order to Ayeshi—and catch himself up only to realize the heaviness of the silence which answered him.

And there were other things that troubled him—the carved chair where Sigrid Fersen had sat and looked at him with her disturbing eyes. At the time, she had seemed unreal, a vivid day-dream, a white glowing figure of his fancy, and now she was there always, dominating his consciousness. The place where the picture of the dancer had stood was empty, too, yet he saw her—the radiant head, with its crown of vine-leaves, thrown back, the mouth a little open, as though even in that moment of deliberate pose she breathed the ecstasy of living. That was what mattered, what made her most wonderful, and the poise of her body, stereotyped enough and within the compass of a ballet girl, a thing of Supreme Art.

He turned resolutely away from the empty place, allowing the tumult from without to pour over his vision of her, and went to his day's work. A subdivision of his little kitchen formed a combined laboratory and chemist's shop, and he set about cleaning his instruments, tidying up the bottles, noting failing supplies. That had been Ayeshi's job. He thought of Ayeshi as he dipped the instruments into the sterilizer, wondering vaguely what he was doing, what he thought. Ayeshi, he knew, had found Boucicault and Wickie's body, and probably had buried the latter out of sight. He had shielded Tristram. Probably, too, he now sweated in the Calcutta University with bitter thoughts of a man who had prated so much of life and half-killed a fellow-creature for the sake of a dog. The idea did not hurt Tristram. He ached for the comradeship of the mysterious, romantic boy, but he had no sentimental reverence for himself. He had never realized that he had ever been so much as an ideal—idealizing in his own life too ardently to consider himself at all.

He hummed as he worked. To others, the tune might have been unrecognizable, for at the best of times his voice had an uneven quality, and in singing it escaped control altogether. But in his brain the melody ran smoothly and beautifully. In the midst of it, he heard the latch of the door fall, and went out with his sleeves rolled up to meet the newcomer.

The door was wide open and framed her as she stood with her back to the sun-flooded village street, smiling at him.

"I heard you singing," she said, with subdued mockery. "It was irresistible."

He strove to answer her, denying the savage, joyous leap of his pulses. A kind of stupid deliberation settled on his brain. He found himself wondering whether she had removed her helmet because she knew the light would be shining on her hair.

"Did you come all the way from Gaya to listen?" he asked at last, with a brief laugh.

"No, I came for the fulfilment of a promise," she answered. "For my day out."

"It was a bad—an impossible day to choose."

"It was my last day."

He was silent for an instant. He had tried to adjust his tone to hers and had failed. Now he ceased to try. He spoke roughly, rather brutally.

"Then you're leaving Gaya?"

"I don't know—perhaps. It all depends. At any rate, this was my last chance."

"I don't know how on earth you got here."

"On horseback. I've put my steed with Arabella. You don't mind?"

"It's not safe for you here—on a day like this."

She smiled again, and for the first time he realized something new in her amusement—a kind of repressed earnestness.

"I'm not afraid. Do you want me to go away?"

"No—you don't know how glad—" He broke off painfully, but she did not look at him or seem to notice that he had faltered. She bent down and put something which she had been carrying to the ground. It was a round yellow something which unrolled itself and developed four short legs, a stumpy tail, a sharp little head peering out of a mass of fluffiness, and a strenuous, defiant yap.

"I don't know what it is," Sigrid said gravely. "Perhaps God does—I don't think any one else could even guess. But I thought you'd like it."

"I don't understand," he said gently. He picked the little creature up and rubbed its black nose against his cheek. Then, looking at it, he burst into a big roar of real amusement. "My word, what an absurdity!"

"Yes, isn't it? And utterly forsaken. Mr. Radcliffe found it somewhere with a rope and a brickbat round its neck. That's why I thought you'd like it. At first, I meant to get you something first-rate—a thoroughbred with a pedigree—and then I thought you'd like this better. You see, it's a sort of memorial to Wickie. You know what people do when some one dies whom they love—they build something or endow something—something the dead person would like. Well, I think Wickie would like you to adopt that puppy."

He looked at her. There was a real tenderness in her eyes as they met his. He fancied that her lips were not quite steady.

"If you say so, it must be so," he said. "Wickie loved you. You knew all about him."

"We knew all about each other." She hesitated and then asked, "You'll keep my puppy?"

"Rather! It's been horribly lonely—I've wanted someone to give my scraps to—"

"The best bits! Oh, I know you, Tristram Sahib!"

They both laughed. And suddenly the constraint between them had gone. He busied himself eagerly, preparing Wickie's old sleeping quarters, filling the tin feeding-plate with recklessly collected puppy dainties.

"Wickie'll be jolly glad," he said, in his boyish way. "He'd hate me to be lonely. And it's been lonely without him."

"Yes, I know." She went and stood by his table, playing idly with the letters which lay heaped upon it. "And there's something I want to ask in return—a sort of farewell gift. Make this a real day for us both—give me a good time—humour me. Let us be real with each other—sincere, just as we really are and feel. A sort of feast of honesty and fellowship. Will you?"

He stood beside her, looking down at her from his great height.

"Our day of days?"

"The day of our lives."

He flushed deeply under his tan, but he met her eyes steadily. A subtle change had come into his feeling for her. He could not have explained it—it was an odd sense of quiet nearness, of understanding. And she, too, seemed different. At other times she had been in earnest, but not as now. There had always been that curious detachment in her, as though she stood apart and laughed at life and herself. Now for a moment, at least, she had ceased to be an onlooker.

"Very well—we'll make each other a present," he said. "A day off from the world—something we won't account for to anybody." All at once he became recklessly happy. "I'll go and collect food," he said. "The pup can stay here and play locum tenens."

He came back presently from the kitchen. His sleeves were still rolled up, but he carried a basket under one arm and wore his helmet rakishly at the back of his head. Seeing him, the gravity passed like a mist from her eyes.

"Oh, you caricature of Hercules!" she jeered at him. "Tell me, have you ever worn decent clothes in your life?"

"Sometimes. I have to squeeze into regimentals on occasions—or into a frock-coat. You wouldn't know me—I look a regular freak."

"H'm! and what do you think you look like now?"

"Ariel shouldn't mock at Caliban," he retorted gaily.

"Even when Caliban throws Ariel's portrait out of the window." She pointed to the empty place on the table. "Have I sunk so far below your thought of me, Major Tristram?"

He became serious in a moment, but without embarrassment. She had a sudden pleasure in him as he came and stood beside her—in his bigness, in his sheer unconsciousness of himself and his strength. She felt oddly compassionate, too—the awestruck compassion of a Bruennhilde for a young Siegfried.

"No," he said. "But I was a boy, at least, in thought and feeling—and you were a boy's dream. Now I am a man and you are a reality. It would have been an impertinence of me to have kept you."

She shook her head.

"There's more in it than that, Tristram Sahib."

"Yes," he assented gravely. "A great deal more."

They remained together an instant, looking down at the empty place as though it held a secret significance for them both; then Tristram turned to the door and made a little grandiloquent bow of introduction. His eyes had lost their seriousness and laughed at her. "Behold, the day awaits us!" he said.

They went out side by side into the glowing morning. The stream of pilgrims had grown denser and filled the street, beating up against the mud huts on either side and spilling over into the open doorways. And there was a thrill and fever in the air which gathered force, as at the cross-roads one stream poured into another and swirled and eddied in the effort to break a passage. Shrieks and cries, the beating of drums, the harsh calls of the mendicants, the tramping of thousands of feet, the swirl of dust which could not rise for the pressure of the struggling bodies—a mad whirl of sound and colour. Tristram turned to the woman beside him.

"Do you mind—can you face it?"

She laughed a little, with a repressed exultation.

"This is the tarantella as I danced it—the beginning before the madness comes—the rising of the tide. Can't you feel it beating in your blood?"

A fresh band, headed by a swaying banner, pushed its way through the leaderless crowd, and after that, carried on the shoulders of four sweating, staggering men, the image of the Triumvirate.

The sun poured down over the roofs and glittered fierily on the three faces of the god. They had been gilded afresh for the occasion, and the hand which had laboured at their features had not failed in its simple craftsmanship. Benevolence, cruelty, and an unutterable serenity stared over the heads of the tossing multitude. The idol swayed from side to side in its passage, and, as it caught the rays of the sun, gleamed with a living, sinister brightness. There were wreaths of faded flowers on the base of the altar, and there was white dust everywhere. The crowd surged closer, holding up its hands to it in greeting. Their lifted faces showed neither reverence, nor fear, nor hope, but a kind of frenzy seeking its outlet.

Slowly, triumphantly, the image rocked on its way towards the river, a spot of sullen fire on the breast of an ever-changing sea of colour. Like a dangerous backwash, the mob closed in, sweeping it forward and leaving behind a sudden relaxation—a breaking-up of the sea into a hundred drifting particles. It was the passing of a mad dream. The sun blazed on to the peaceful bustle. The note of frenzy died down. The old fakir had crawled on his knees into the shade and held out his wooden bowl, bleating monotonously.

"Alakh! Alakh!"

A merchant came out from his hiding-place in a cowshed and exhibited his wares. The hovel opposite revealed itself as a cook-shop, where the hungry could buy pulse-puffs and dough-cakes and sweets of a hundred kinds. A sherbet-seller pitched his tent a few doors lower down and clinked his coloured glasses alluringly. An ascetic, with the face of a mediaeval saint, sold gilt-papered corks from champagne bottles as sacred charms of marvellous efficacy.

Sigrid Fersen looked up into her companion's face and they both laughed, scarcely knowing why, but swept away by a childish pleasure in the swiftness of the change, in the naive volte face of these simple folk, who a minute before had trampled upon each other in a paroxysm of religious frenzy and now wandered wide-eyed and eager amidst all these bewildering fascinations.

And perhaps, as the deep secret source of their pleasure, was the knowledge that the day was young and wholly theirs.

"I want to buy something," she said gaily. "Why should we be superior? It's our feast, too. And who knows if their values are not as good as ours? if their faith in champagne corks isn't as effective as our superstitious belief in the mysterious horrors compounded by an honourable Dakktar Sahib!" She shot him a demure, malicious glance. "Come, I am going to buy recklessly!"

A bright-eyed boy beckoned them to the tray behind which he watched cross-legged and eager, like a handsome, bewitching spider. It was not in vain that he had bright eyes or that he sold wares dear to the hearts of women. The merchant in cheap stuffs from Manchester, and even the sherbet-seller, watched him sourly as the soft-footed, timid women hovered about him pricing his coveted treasures.

Now he looked up, showing his white teeth in a smile of innocent welcome.

"Gifts for the Mem-Sahib—and gifts for him whom Mem-Sahib loves."

Sigrid knelt down in the dust beside his tray, and rummaged through the medley of his stock. Ear-rings, bracelets, amulets, glass beads, vulgar trophies of Western taste—paste diamond brooches stuck on cardboard and labelled rolled gold—these last displayed with almost passionate pride, and here and there a scornfully suppressed relic of days when Manchester and Birmingham were not. Tristram stood beside her and watched her. He had the feeling that all this had happened before, years ago, and that this companionship of a day was just a link in a long, unbroken chain of days. It was so simple, so natural. He felt no constraint, scarcely any excitement, just an all-pervading peace. They had always known each other, always shared their days, their thoughts, and desires. He did not think about it. It filled his senses with a well-being, a rare and exquisite content.

She gave an exclamation and held up something in the palm of her little hand. He took it from her. It was a bracelet made of seven threads of seven different colours and bound with a silver clasp. The boy-merchant shrugged scornfully.

"It is nothing—nothing, Mem-Sahib."

"Do you remember?" she asked.

He nodded—not looking at her now.

"The Rani Kurnavati—"

"Yes—that night when we sat by the moonlight and Ayeshi told us her story—" She laid an extravagant sum on the tray. "There, that is all I want."

The amazed merchant gasped his blessings after her. She walked on, threading her way through the aimless crowd, inspecting her purchase with a thoughtful pleasure.

"I wanted to give it you," Tristram protested, aggrievedly.

"And I didn't want you to," she retorted. "You have given me enough, Major Tristram."

Her solemn reversion to his title amused him. He watched her smilingly as she snapped the bracelet about her wrist.

"What have I given you?"

"The cup. Have you forgotten? I was so miserable because I forgot to thank you. I'd never been remorseful in my life before, but I was remorseful about that."

"I'm sorry. Remorse is ghastly. And I hadn't expected thanks."

"You didn't expect to live. Ought I to give the cup back?"

"No."

"But your mother—?"

"I have told her," he said gravely.

They reached the confines of the village. The high grass had been trampled down under the passing of a monstrous animal. Through the dazzling blaze of sunlight they could see a black mass swarming along the banks, a huge, writhing octopus whose tentacles groped towards the temple with greedy, hurrying persistency. And in the midst of it, like a restless, menacing eye, the Triumvirate flashed backwards and forwards in evil, delirious triumph.

"They're bringing up their offerings now," Tristram said, rather grimly. "The Snake God and his retinue will have food enough for months to come. It's a queer thing—no one has seen these serpents in the memory of man, and yet it's true enough that native sceptics who have ventured inside the jungle have either never returned or come out raving madmen. There is madness connected with the whole thing—a kind of delirium which we English don't understand. It's in their blood, just as it's in the blood of some families to respond to supernatural influences which others don't even feel. Anyhow, we'd better keep clear of them today."

"I have made my plan," she answered, with sedate authority.

He knew now where she was going. They made their way in silence down the length of the river, touching the monster only there where its tentacles reached up to the temple, and came at last to the green-shadowed backwater. Tristram held aside the branches of the trees for her to pass through, and their eyes met.

"Isn't this a fitting place to celebrate our day?" she asked, "—here, where a certain romantic Hermit beheld a vision and was not afraid?"

"Visions are not terrifying," he answered.

"But the reality—?"

She did not seem to expect an answer. The boughs of the trees had swung back into their place. They stood together at the edge of the water, looking down into its tangled depths, listening to the silence. Nothing had changed. It was as though time had fallen asleep, and they were still living in that first day of their meeting. The dense foliage of the trees walled them in from the heat and glare and tumult. The dull murmur that came to them from time to time seemed no more than the soughing of a rising wind. The peace of it laid itself upon their senses like a cooling hand.