Barclay roused himself at last.
"Look here—I didn't come here for this tomfoolery. Look at this. It was my mother's. Some one—Lalloo the Kara—told me a tale about it. Said it belonged to—to your wife. I want to know. I want to know who the devil I am. If it's true then I shall know."
Vahana glanced at the gold circlet held out towards him. The adder hissed furiously and he whistled it back to its sluggish content. But he had nodded in assent, Barclay drew his breath between his teeth.
"So that much was true. I've got to think this out. I'm not your son. I've good English blood in my veins, I've known that since I was a kid. If it was Tristram, senior——" He stopped. Vahana had lifted his head, and the change in him struck Barclay silent for a moment. Then, gathering his determination, he added rapidly, scarcely above a whisper—"whom you murdered."
But it seemed that the Fakir had not heard, or that if he had heard the words reached him only as an echo, a shadow of something terrible and actual. The change in him was indefinable. He had scarcely moved. Yet Barclay stared at him stupidly, and a moment looked round to follow the gaze of the fierce expressionless eyes. Then he, too, became silent.
A horseman rode along the river-bank. Evidently he had come some distance, for the nose of his amazingly lean, steed grazed the ground and he himself hung in the saddle. As he passed he turned his head towards the temple, but either the sun, setting with long upward striking rays behind the hills, blinded him, or the watchers were too well hidden in the shadow of the gateway. He did not see them, and, coaxing the dejected quadruped to a canter, disappeared presently in the direction of Heerut.
"Tristram Sahib by the grace of God!" Barclay muttered. "Tristram Sahib!" He repeated the name, pressing into it a restrained bitterness which suddenly burst from him in a wild incoherent deluge. "Sahib—Sahib! Good God—and what am I—with blood as good as his—his blood—Meester Barclay, eh?—damn him—damn them all. What right has he got to treat me like dirt—or any of them? What right? Aren't I one of them? Have I got to pay for their low, mean sins—their little, back-door intrigues? I'm English too—it's their law—why don't they keep to their laws, damn them——"
His voice quivered. He broke down pitiably. It was as though a garment which he held jealously about him had been torn from him and with it his manhood, his mincing, insolent, yet timorous pride. As he crouched there, the tears of mortification and rage on his cheeks he underwent a mysterious change. The over-perfect English clothes no longer disguised him. They had become grotesque.
Vahana looked at him, looked long and intently, and then at the bracelet lying between them. He touched Barclay on the arm, and with his forefinger began to write in the thick dust.
CHAPTER XVI