Part 20

They sat down in the fresh grass, talking softly and only a little, fearing to disturb the sleeping spirit of the place. Tristram unpacked his basket and produced the day's provisions, over which they laughed subduedly. It appeared that he was cook as well as doctor, and she made wry faces over the probable ingredients of his dough-cakes. For her humour had lost its keenness and had become very young and a little tremulous. He responded loyally and easily. There was no constraint between them, no sense of trouble. They were comrades together, responding light-heartedly to the appeal of the sunlight, and the flowers burning brightly in the cool shadows. They did not know as yet that their real life lay beneath the surface of that easy comradeship in a great stillness where their own voices did not penetrate.

But that stillness mastered them at last, flowing quietly and mightily over their broken, careless talk. The sunlight, falling aslant through the trees touched the green stem of a high palm and began its upward journey. Tristram watched it. He had slipped lower down the bank, where he could see his own bulk shadowed darkly in the water and the pale, ghostly reflection of the woman behind him. At first, he had lain full length on his elbow looking at her frankly, fearlessly, as she sat above him, her hands clasped about her knees, her fair small head bent a little from the light, so that her eyes seemed dark and more serious than her lips. Now he had turned away from her and watched the passing of the sunbeam. A kind of panic had gripped him. The time was passing. He had begun to realize dimly that what they had set out to do was impossible—a defiance of the law of life. A day cannot be set apart from its fellows either for joy or sorrow. It is bound up with them by whatever menace or promise they hold, and the menace of yesterday and tomorrow touched him like the breath of a chill wind.

He pointed out on to the water and saw that his hand shook. His pulses had begun to beat heavily, thickly.

"The lotus-flower has gone," he said.

"It is dead. It's so long ago—it seems only yesterday to us. Do you remember asking me if I wanted it? You were glad because I let it live out its life."

"How did you know that?"

"I knew that you loved living things."

"Isn't that a love common to us all?"

She gave a short laugh out of which the joyful irresponsibility had died.

"Men love ideas—the fetishes of their intellects. Or they love their cabbage-patch, or their country. Life and humanity are nothing to the majority. But you cared—for everything." It was a long time before she spoke again, and then her voice had changed. It sounded languid—indifferent. "It must be terrible to kill," she said.

He stirred, drawing himself up.

"The unforgettable sin," he said.

"Unforgettable? Have you ever known any one who had killed—?"

"Yes. It was worse than killing. He smashed his man—crippled him for life."

"Perhaps he didn't care."

"He cared desperately. He thought of life as I do—"

She laughed again.

"Another Tolstoyan! Well, he was punished, I suppose."

"Oh, yes, he was punished. Not by the law. He had no belief in that Fetish of Justice—an eye for an eye. His life was of value—to another. Of what use would it have been to have smashed it with the rest? He found the only way to make good the damage he had done—and he took it."

He spoke firmly, as a man does who has fought through to a clear issue. He heard her move—he fancied that she had held out her hand as though to touch him, and that her hand had dropped.

"Perhaps he was mistaken," she said. "Some one once said to me there is a curse on us—that we are damned to destroy. Perhaps the life he took was justly taken—perhaps it was a bad, valueless life—"

He turned impetuously, with an intensity of feeling far removed from his previous impersonal deliberation.

"You can't tell," he said. "That's the ghastly part of it—you can't tell. You find a piece of broken glass on your road. You grind it under foot or throw it away and think you've done your fellow creatures a service. And then a child comes along crying for its lost treasure. It doesn't matter that you were justified. The thing had its value, after all, and you smashed it. You hurt someone—"

"Some one is always hurt," she interrupted.

A mist of passionate introspection passed from his eyes, and he saw her face—very pale, with a blue shadow about the lips. He started, almost touching her.

"You're ill—tired—!" he stammered.

"A little—it was the heat and the crowd—"

He looked at the light on the green stem of the palm, as though to a warning hand. It had reached the end of its journey and had grown dim. He got up, holding himself desperately erect. "It's the end of the Feast," he said, "the end of our day."

But she shook her head broodingly.

"You can't tell that either—only the gods know the end, Tristram Sahib."

Something had wrapped itself about their senses. They had talked of impersonal things and—save for that one break of his—without emotion. But the emotion had been there, below the surface, crushed out of sight by an effort of the will which left them no physical consciousness. It walled them within themselves as the trees and dense foliage walled them in from the heat and tumult.

Thus the storm broke on them without warning. It had risen little by little with the dull boom of an angry sea. They had heard nothing. But there had been a silence so tense, so prolonged that they looked at each other, wondering, waiting, though they did not know it, for the scream that ripped through, tearing down the barriers of their unconsciousness, forcing a breach through which the full fury of the sound bore down upon them.

Sigrid had risen instantly to her feet.

"Tarantella!" she breathed. "Tarantella!"

He did not wait to speak. He pushed through the undergrowth, not knowing that she had followed him. On the fringe of the coppice he turned and found her at his elbow.

"Something's happened," he said briefly. "We can't stay here—we've got to get back to the village—"

She nodded. A minute before she had looked ill, almost broken. Now the colour burnt in her cheek, she held herself lightly, strongly, and her eyes shone as they swept the scene before them.

"Shall we get through?"

"I don't know—I don't know what's happened. It may be nothing—"

"You don't believe that yourself. It is something. Anyhow, we've got to try for it—"

The fear was in him, not in her. Even then, striding at her side, bracing himself for whatever lay before them, he wondered at her, thrilled at the joyous adventurousness in her. Her head was erect and she was smiling faintly. The howling of the frantic, demented mob which swept backwards and forwards across the plain did not seem to touch her. He felt how, with the coolness of a general, she was measuring the distances, their chances. He saw the tightening of her lips and that she had measured rightly.

"If it's us they're mad with, it will be a close finish," she said, with a low laugh.

He scarcely heard her. He was watching the men and women who overtook them and ran past. Their faces were unknown to him. They looked back at him—with the wild-eyed curiosity of animals. As yet it was only curiosity. They were as ignorant as himself as to the passion which had broken through the crust of restraint and now raged in a mad whirlpool between the temple and the river. But the infection of frenzy was upon them. They muttered as they ran past—broken sentences in a dialect which he could not understand. They were pilgrims from distant provinces. He knew that they were in the majority and that he could have no hold over them. They would sweep the rest with them—even his own people.

The sprawling mass of life which had hugged the bank of the river turned and rolled back. In an instant, it had blocked the narrow passage on which he had based his hope of escape. He could see the golden effigy swaying madly above the crowd like a bright, sinister barque on a black, raging sea, now flung back, now forward, but still drawing steadily nearer. Through the wild uproar of voices the dull thud of a drum persisted. It was as though in that frenzied movement there was a purpose—a blind, demented will to an end.

He stopped short.

"We can't go on—it's too late—we must make a dash back and try for the bridge—"

"It is too late," she answered simply.

He saw then what she had seen. They were cut off. From left and right, the streams of hurrying men and women converged upon them, sweeping them forward as an Atlantic roller tosses driftwood on its crest. For an instant they were separated. He fought his way savagely back to her side, and caught her to him with the roughness of panic.

She looked up at him, smiling tranquilly, inscrutably. "Afraid, Tristram?"

"Yes—horribly—hideously—if I had lost you—"

"You didn't. I'm not afraid."

"I can't forgive myself—"

"Why should you? I am very happy."

"We must keep together. Give me your hand."

She gave it him. He remembered how it had lain in his once before, how the splendid vitality and strength of it had thrilled him. It thrilled him now, it burnt like fire through his nerves. They stood facing each other, holding their ground, swept into a moment's oblivion of all else but themselves. There was exultation in that grave, brief contemplation. The panic had died out of the man's eyes. He no longer pitied her or feared for her. He felt the joy of their new, fierce comradeship.

"If it were only myself—I could be glad—"

"Be glad!" she cried back. "Isn't it worth it?"

A wave of frantic humanity forced them forward. They held together. He heard her laugh—the eager, triumphant laugh of men in the glory of battle. "No one can separate us now!" she said.

"No one!" he answered gladly.

He knew it was true. Nothing, so it seemed to him, could break the steel link of their hands. But he had grown calmer. He had got to save her. The instinct which damns the weak acceptance of annihilation burnt up clearly in him. He gave ground to the force behind him, keeping his feet with the utmost exertion of his strength, striving to force a passage towards the village. It was a vain effort. Faces were turned to him. He read their expression. The mere curiosity had become distrust—a furtive antagonism as yet unarmed with purpose. A fakir, wild-eyed, bespattered with filth, his emaciated arms flung up in imprecation, leered up at him.

"Kill! Kill! Kill!"

It was no more than a whisper. But it passed from lip to lip. They were pushed on, the circle about them tightening in a strangling noose. For all her courage, he knew that the woman beside him was weakening. He heard her voice, strained and breathless.

"Don't let me go under—don't let me go under—"

He knew the horror that had forced the appeal from her—the terror which can change a man's heart to water—the horror of those pitiless trampling feet—of those mad mob rushes under which a human body can be stamped out of recognition. He threw one arm about her. He no longer resisted. It was better to go on—to be forgotten. But the stench of those hot, dust-laden bodies sickened him. It was the smell of hatred—of madness. It sapped his strength. It was like the breathing in of a hideous poison.

They swept on. They had reached the densest part of the crowd. Above them he could see the golden image, swaying dangerously from the shoulders of its staggering bearers. A ray of red light from the sinking sun was on the face nearest to them. Its frozen cruelty seemed to have drawn life into itself—to be sucking up a horrible vitality from the very passions to which it had given birth. To Tristram's blurred vision the eyes blazed—the mouth gaped with a grotesque lust of hatred.

It was then he saw Meredith with his shoulders to the base of the altar, his arm raised, shielding his face. A half-naked fakir sprang at him and dragged the arm down, and Tristram saw what had been done. The face was blotted out with blood. The lips were moving. In one clenched hand was an open Bible. Through the hellish pandemonium Tristram caught a single sentence:

"Father, forgive them—"

Tristram flung the man in front of him aside. He had felt the tense revival of strength in his companion like an electric current through all his nerves. They had got to stand together—to go down with the man of their race, for good or evil uphold him.

"We're coming!" Tristram shouted. "Hold on!"

Meredith turned his head in their direction. Perhaps he saw them through the veil of blood. He made a gesture urging them back, and in the same instant the man whom Tristram had flung aside revealed his face.

It was Lalloo, the money-lender.

"Dakktar Sahib!" he said.

"Damn you—let me go past—!"

The old man smiled imperturbably, shrugging his shoulders. The whisper, "The Dakktar Sahib," ran like an undercurrent of sound beneath the screams and curses of the swaying, tossing multitude. A woman spat in Meredith's disfigured face. Tristram lurched forward, but already they had lost ground. Some new force had them in its grip. They were bound in a revolving circle of which Lalloo had become the pivot. Tristram looked about him. He recognized faces which seemed to have sprung from nowhere. There was Mehr Singh, the corn-dealer, and Seetul the weaver, Peru the village ne'er-do-well—men with whom he had lived and suffered. He cursed at them in their dialect, and they regarded him stolidly. He shook Lalloo fiercely with his free hand.

"Let us get out of this—I've got to get back to my friend—do you hear. I've got to help him—do you hear, you lying, grasping old man?"

Lalloo shrugged his shoulders.

The circle rolled on. Meredith and the shining figure of the three-faced god had gone down in the black tumult. The roar of voices began to fade like thunder, rolling faintly in the distance. A breath of fresh air fanned their faces. The circle broke suddenly scattering in all directions.

Tristram still held Lalloo by the shoulder.

"You—you saved us," he stammered thickly. "You saved us—didn't you know me better than that—"

Lalloo rubbed his thin dark hands and smiled vaguely.

"What have I done, Sahib?" he said. "What have I done?" And with an amazing facility freed himself and glided into the shadow of the deserted village.

They went on, not speaking, not looking at each other, sick with the horror of that which they had left behind them. At the door of Tristram's hut a man came running towards them. It was the captain of the native regiment, cursing volubly.

"Tristram—where the devil have you been? What's happened! What set them off?"

"Meredith—preaching the love of God to Siva."

"Oh, damn the parsons!" He mopped his face in helpless exasperation. "Well, I've had a nice time of it. Men vanished into thin air. They've been queer for months—now they've gone. Anyhow, I shall have to stick to it—overawe them with my presence and all that." Even in that moment, his English good-humour prevailed. "Give us a hand, Tristram—you've influence with them. What's happened to Meredith?"

"I don't know—"

"Well, we'll try and get him out. Miss Fersen, you stay quietly in there. There's no getting away just yet. If neither of us get back, there'll be relief from Gaya as soon as they get wind of this shindy. Come on, Hermit!"

Tristram held open the door for her.

"You won't mind my going? I may be able to help—"

"I want you to go. I am not afraid."

"I know."

They avoided each other's eyes. For one moment at least they had expected death—perhaps willed to die—and in that moment had dared to live.

She went past him, closing the door after her.

Night came on. It rose blackly out of the far corners of the hut, creeping stealthily and soundlessly up the walls, as water rises in a closed lock. She had sat and watched it and listened to the deep, encircling silence beyond which was sound—indefinable, subdued, continuous. Once it had come nearer and instinctively she had sprung up, bracing herself—then rolled back again with a thwarted, muffled murmur.

She had fed the stray pup and put it to sleep on Wickie's old bed. A disreputable, ill-bred-looking tabby had crept slyly in through the open window and had eyed the intruder with disapproving curiosity, then settled herself down as one accustomed to eccentricities. Sigrid had laughed a little at the interlude. It had seemed grotesque and humdrum, a kind of satire on that which the sound painted on the gathering darkness.

Presently it was quite dark. She got up and lit a candle, and held it high above her head. The flame threw a pale circle of light down on the surface of the still black waters which eddied round her. It gave life to an eerie procession of formless, soft-footed shadows. She watched them slide past, from darkness to darkness. Then she went back to the table and sat there with her chin in her hand, her wide eyes fixed broodingly on something far beyond the tiny pillar of light.

An hour passed. She got up and moved restlessly about the room. In the struggle, her helmet had been knocked off and her hair loosened. She let it down and smoothed its fair softness with her hands. There was no glass in the place. She took the candle to the carved table against the wall, and knelt down so that she could see a faint reflection of herself in the glass of the big photograph. She began to do her hair with fastidious, delicate carefulness. When it was done she took the photograph and held it to the light. There was a pile of letters on the table. The envelopes bore the same handwriting—strong and clear, yet not with the strength and clearness of youth. It had an indefinable affinity with the old face that looked out at her with its serene, smiling wisdom from the wooden photo-frame. She counted the letters, lingering over them, as though their touch brought her secret knowledge.

The cat, sleeping by the wall, lifted its head. A minute later, it got up, arching its back, its fur bristling, its eyes blazing in the darkness. She glanced towards it, aroused by its soft, menacing hiss of anger and fear. Then suddenly the silence around her shivered and broke. She turned and slipped into the second room. There was an old hunting-knife lying among the debris of their hastily prepared picnic. She snatched it up and ran back, placing herself against the wall with the light between her and the door.

The sound that rushed down upon her was a new thing—more terrible than the roar which had beaten persistently against the outer wall of her consciousness. It was like rain and wind and water tearing through a narrow gully. It came on swiftly, gathering speed and violence. It came with a rush down the village street—nearer and nearer—the patter of countless running feet—the gasp and groan of hard-drawn breath, stifled mutterings, the shrill scream of a woman breaking off into a choking gurgle. Nearer—in a headlong torrent—right to the closed door. She drew herself up, her lithe body tense and prepared—and it swept past. It raced on in a ceaseless torrent. She heard the jolt of a heavy body sent reeling against the walls of the hut—and a little whimpering sound that was like a child's crying. Behind the deluge there was a fresh sound—the clatter of horses' hoofs at the gallop.

The door opened and closed. She had taken an involuntary step forward to meet whatever was to come, the knife clenched in her right hand; but, as she saw Tristram, she relaxed with a short, shuddering sigh and her hand sank. He stood leaning with his shoulders against the door, staring at her. His clothes were torn and blood-stained. There was something wild and violent in his face which she had never seen before—the look of a fighter straight from a struggle in which every nerve and sinew has been put to a dire test—in which all the primitive passions of men have risen like wolf-hounds tugging at the leash. The sleeve of his shirt had been ripped to the elbow, and she saw the grand curving line of his shoulder, expressive of an immense, tutored strength.