The regimental band was playing a waltz and Barclay drew in his slender-limbed thoroughbred to listen. A little band of natives with a saffron-robed Sadhu in their midst coming round a bend of the white road, he drew out a gold case from his pocket and selected and lit a cigarette with an exaggerated deliberation. The procession drew on one side and the leader saluted the Sahib respectfully. Barclay took the salute with a curt, indifferent nod, but something in the episode must have changed the nature of his thoughts. He threw a glance towards the garden, walled from his view by a circle of high palms, and his black eyes were alight with a childish satisfaction. He heard voices intermingle with the music and two young men in immaculate tennis-clothes lounged out of the compound gates. They looked after the procession, and one of them laughed.
"It's nothing—you'll soon get fed up with that native stuff. When you've seen the festival at Heerut next week you won't want another dose for years—these sort of fellows with their humbugging old fakir will be pouring in till the place is like an ant-heap. Talk about self-governing India—oh, Lord!"
Barclay, a notable figure enough on his beautiful mare stood not three yards away from the speaker, yet he appeared to pass unnoticed. Neither of the two looked at him. He drove his spurs into the animal's silken sides, curbing her at the same instant with an iron hand, and set her at a nervous, tortured canter down the road. His tight mouth under the black moustache was curved with a deliberate pleasure as he felt her sweat and tremble under his mastery. He kept her at the pace for a mile through the blaze of sun which poured down upon the unsheltered plain and then, satiated, allowed her to drop to a quivering, resentful walk.
He reached the bridge-head half an hour before sunset. A D.P.W. man with a party of assistants was taking soundings for the new traffic bridge which was to link up Gaya and the administrative centre three hundred miles away with the never-ending chain of villages of which Heerut was the first and largest. He had had a bad afternoon of it with Mother Ganges, and he stared savagely at Barclay, who drew rein.
"Getting on?" the latter asked.
"Damnably. The river's never the same two days running."
Barclay showed his white teeth in a smile.
"That's her speciality. You'll never build that bridge."
"Won't I?"
"The natives have a superstition against it. No white man will ever bridge the Holy Place. This is the Holy Place, you know—the spot where the sacred serpents come down from the jungle and take refreshment." He spoke with much the indolent amusement of the two young men outside the Boucicaults' compound. He aped it deliberately, not knowing whence came his smarting satisfaction. The Englishman mopped a moist and irate forehead.