CHAPTER XVIII

*

*THE FEAST OF SIVA*

They came, so it seemed, from all the corners of India--from the east and west, north and south--thin streams of life trickling across the fields and down the mountain sides, till they converged in a broad, sluggish river which poured ceaselessly, irresistibly towards the place of its dreams and prayers. They had appeared miraculously, as though at a signal they had sprung up on the edge of the horizon and began their pilgrimage, as a conquering army bears down from all sides on a helpless citadel. But in reality they knew nothing of each other, and there was no order in their advance. Some had come from the neighbouring villages, some from villages hundreds of miles away. Some had packed up with wife, child, and household gods the night before--some many months ago. They had come over the mountains, down lonely passes, through wild tracts of country where dangerous and desperate marauders, man and beast, preyed on their defencelessness. They had borne hunger and thirst and much sickness. Many of them had dropped by the way. But there had been no lamentation, no turning back. They had no interest in each other. Humanity, brotherhood, a common faith--these things were without meaning for them. Yet, where danger threatened, little groups had herded together, driven by fear and instinct rooted deep in the trackless jungle of humanity's beginnings. They knew no pity. A pilgrim died by the roadside, and they looked at him indifferently, as at a commonplace, and he himself watched them pass with patient, unexpectant resignation. Suffering and death were part of the scheme of things. They lived under the shadow of a Juggernaut, and today it was this man's turn to go under, tomorrow another's. They had no hope and no clear faith. Their imaginations could not conjure up much to hope for--a child perhaps, the fulfilment of a curse against a neighbour, sufficient harvest--and there were so many gods. And yet they came, mile after mile, footsore and hungry, gravely or passionately intent on a mystic goal whose significance they could not formulate even to themselves. The gods knew, and the priests perhaps; but the gods were silent in these days, and the priests kept their counsel.

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.

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.

The hot colour raced through her pallor. She looked back to his face. His eyes had dropped to the knife which she still held--they met hers now and blazed back her fierce and sombre admiration. They remained thus watching each other through a moment of shaken silence. Then he lurched forward, dropping down on the chair by the table, sprawling like a man overtaken by a sudden exhaustion, his bleeding hands clenched before him.

"I am sick--sick of bloodshed!" he muttered.

She laid the knife quietly on the table and stood looking down at his bent head.

"Meredith----" she began.

He threw back his shoulders with a bitter laugh.

"Did you ever know of any one who set out to sacrifice himself and who didn't sacrifice everyone else first? Meredith's safe--but my people--my poor people--they didn't mean any harm--they saved us--you and me. Even though one of our kind had spat in the face of their religion--they didn't forget. You don't know what it meant to them to be so calm and loyal in all that frenzy. Then--then the troops came from Gaya. There was a stampede--no one meant to hurt any one--but they went under--dozens of them--stamped out of recognition--old Seetul and Lalloo's little son, whom I nursed once----" He broke off with a harsh, dry sob. She knelt down beside him. She drew his head down to her shoulder, soothing him like a child.

"Tristram--you mustn't mind so. Things happen like that. We don't mean to harm each other--we don't realize or we can't help ourselves. Some one has to go under. We're always trampling on some one. It can't be helped. The crowd is too great--we have to fight for ourselves first. We were made like that----"

He made no answer. He leant against her with closed eyes. The hurricane of galloping hoofs rolled past. She kissed him lightly, tenderly--"Tristram----"

His eyes opened. Their faces were quite close. Their gaze became fixed, intoxicated, deepening in intensity till it seemed as though they held each other, were drawn closer and closer in an embrace of fire which burnt out every intervening thought and consciousness. Suddenly, violently, he sprang up, pushing her from him, and lurched towards the door.

"I've got--to--see after things--there'll be an escort for you at the bridge-head--later--I'll keep guard outside----"

She also had risen as swift and soundless as a panther. She stood by the table upright and exultant, a point of light shining in her eyes.

"Stay here--here with me. If you go, it is because you're afraid----"

"Afraid----?" He swung round, his hand still on the door. "Of whom?"

"Of me--of yourself. You promised to be honest with me. This was to be our day of days for which no one should demand reckoning. It is not ended yet. You were honest once. That was when you thought we were going to be killed. Then you dared to own to what I know already--that you belonged to me--as I perhaps belong to you--to our fate--a fate neither of us can escape, Tristram----"

He remained motionless; she could see the rise and fall of his great chest.

"It isn't wise to be honest," he said thickly. "I'm afraid, if you like--afraid of myself. You'd better let me go."

"Back to your dreams? But they're gone. You were just a grown-up boy, playing with a fancy. Now you are a man and I am a woman. We've got to deal with the reality now."

"That's true." He came slowly towards her, reeling a little in his stride. "I want you--body and soul."

"I know--you told me----"

"When----?"

"The night you lay unconscious in my arms."

He put up his hand to his throat, as though something suffocated him.

"You had better let me go," he repeated doggedly. "We're both thrown out of our course. At my best, I'm not much--I've learnt that--if I resist--things it's because I don't care. And tonight----"

"You do care."

"Yes," he said, between his teeth.

"Why should we resist what is the most splendid thing in us?"

"Splendid?" he echoed. "My--my dreams were splendid. As you say--they've gone. And the reality--can there be any reality between us--between a divinely gifted woman and the loutish fool who dreams about her? If I'd thought so--I'd have gone away--but it seemed to me that you were just kind and pitying--amused even--and I dared go on. And it is impossible--we belong to different worlds--life isn't the same thing to either of us."

"We stand on different peaks of the same mountain range," she answered wistfully. "There is the same sun and sky and stars for us both. It seemed to me that we could have watched the sun rise together."

He held out his hand as though to touch her, and then drew back, his face drawn and hard with the bitterness of mastered passion.

"You don't know what you're saying, Sigrid," he began harshly. "Nor what you are offering me----"

"Myself," she flung in, with joyful fearlessness. "My love for you."

He began to pace the room backwards and forwards, in and out of the light, his hands clenched at his sides.

"I can't--oh, my dear--it's hideous, so hopeless." His voice shook with rough suffering. "Even if things were different--if I were cad--enough--you see, I am being desperately frank now--don't you realize what it would mean--can't you realize what you'd have to pay?"

She watched him patiently. Her first fierce energy had died down. The colour had faded from her cheeks, leaving her with a look of pathetic weariness.

"I've never bothered about the price of things. It's been a curse in my life, I daresay; I shall never be able to sink into a safe, comfortable mediocrity. I've burnt my boats too thoroughly for that. But, instead, I've had the highest and best in life. I've always dared to live to the utmost, Tristram. I wanted to be perfect in my art, and I gave my soul to it. I lived more austerely than a nun, more grandly than an empress. Men wanted to love me, but I never thought of them. There was only one thing for me then--it was like a mountain that I had sworn to climb. I climbed it. And then--then it was over. You can't understand--but I had paid the price to the last farthing. Now, before it's too late, I want the greatest, most splendid thing that perhaps a human being can pray for--the happiness of loving."

Her voice had dropped gradually, as though she had forgotten him. He stood still, frowning at her with a hopeless misery in his exhausted eyes.

"Sigrid--if I'd asked you a month ago would you have been my wife?"

She started a little, seeming to shrink from what was to come.

"No, Tristram--not then."

"And now--if things were different--if it were possible----?"

She shook her head.

"No--now least of all." She heard the sharp, painful catch in his breath. "It isn't possible--that's just it," she added wearily.

He resumed his restless pacing backwards and forwards.

"Then it was just a moment in your life you were offering me--I was to be part of a new and splendid episode----" He strode up to her and gripped her by the shoulders. "Oh--I'm not proud--you're a creature of fire and air, and I'm one of the earth. You could have walked over me and I'd have been content. And yet--I don't know. I might have cared too much. Perhaps I do care too much--but there's something besides that now. I'm not a moral or even a strong man, but there's only to be one woman in my life---the woman I marry."

"Yes," she said listlessly.

"And Anne has promised to be my wife."

She looked up at him for an instant. It grew very still.

"I might have told you that before. But it was to have been our day--with no one between us--no one to demand reckoning. I cheated myself. I'm a rotten sentimentalist, dear--and I've ended by doing something mean and low, like a thorough-paced cad. I deserve to lose--all that I have lost."

She shook her head. Something of her old detachment, a little of her demure humour, tinged with satire, shone in her eyes.

"It's almost funny--your blaming yourself. I hunted you down--and I am going to marry Mr. Barclay."

He swung round on his heel, white to the lips.

"That man----!" he burst out.

"That woman----!" she retorted cynically.

He fought desperately for self-control.

"Anne is a good woman----"

"Is she? A better human being than Barclay? Have you started to lay down the standard of values like the rest of us?"

For an instant they confronted each other as antagonists, then he made a gesture of despair, of fierce self-loathing.

"No--you're quite right. I don't judge--I can't. I seem going down-hill fast with my theories--my--my infernal humanity. I can't believe it--everything seems to have gone at once--you didn't care--it wasn't love you felt for me----"

"Aren't you glad--doesn't that relieve you of all responsibility?"

She watched him for a moment in silence. Then her face softened. He was standing against the table, his hand pressed upon it as though he held himself upright only by an effort of will. She laid her hand on his, diffidently, pityingly. "Tristram, we're both mad with pain, but don't let's hurt each other more than we must. It's no one's fault. We pick up threads in our lives carelessly and without a thought, and from day to day they weave themselves without our will into a pattern--into tragedy. That's all there is to it, Tristram." He nodded silently, and she turned away from him, sighing. "It's quite quiet now. I'll go back to Gaya, Tristram."

He went out beside her into the empty moonlit street. A black shadow lay huddled against the wall, and involuntarily he bent and touched it.

"Dead!" he muttered.

"The feast of Siva!" she said. "He who destroys!"

Her small pale face was lifted to the great silver disk above her. It seemed to his aching eyes that she was no more than a frail white ghost--a haunting spirit of the haunted moonlight.

"Sigrid----!" he whispered.

"Hush--it's no good. We've got to go on--Tristram Sahib----"

He walked beside her as she rode out of Heerut. It was very still---no sound but that of her horse's hoofs and the soft swish of the long Arab tail. They went out across the plain. The conflagration of the day had burnt itself out, leaving grey ash and a few stains on the white fields. The temple lay sinister and watchful beneath the shadow of the jungle. It was as though all life had been swept away in a deluge of destruction.

He looked up and saw how bravely she held herself.

They came within a hundred yards of the bridge-head, and she drew rein. They could hear voices and the jangle of steel. He stood close to her, touching her, feeling the warmth of her, drinking in a faint elusive perfume which was her own. His brain reeled. He was sick and faint at the nearness of the end.

Suddenly she bent down and took his hand. He felt something clasp itself about his wrist.

"I can't give you up--not altogether--I can't, Tristram. I want to keep you in my life--the dream of you--to haunt you a little--to claim you a little--in this world and the next--for good and evil--my bracelet-brother----"

She was gone. He stood there, listening to the thud of her horse's hoofs.

_*BOOK II*_

*