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Title: Far to Seek
       A Romance of England and India

Author: Maud Diver

Release Date: April 25, 2005 [EBook #15704]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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FAR TO SEEK

A Romance of England and India

BY
MAUD DIVER

AUTHOR OF 'CAPTAIN DESMOND, V.C.,' 'LILÁMANI,'
'DESMOND'S DAUGHTER,' ETC.

                        "I am athirst for far-away things.
     My soul goes out in longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance....
     O Far-to-Seek! O the keen call of thy flute...!"
                                 --RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

     "His hidden meaning dwells in our endeavours;
      Our valours are our best gods."
                                --JOHN FLETCHER.

William Blackwood & Sons Ltd.

Edinburgh and London

       *       *       *       *       *

     _TO
     MY BLUE BIRD,

     BRINGER OF HAPPINESS TO MYSELF
     AND OTHERS,

     I DEDICATE THIS IDYLL OF
     A MOTHER AND SON.

                         M.D._

       *       *       *       *       *

       "The dawn sleeps behind the shadowy hills,
       The stars hold their breath, counting the hours....
     There is only your own pair of wings and the pathless sky,
     Bird, oh my Bird, listen to me--do not close your wings."
                                   --RABINDRANATH TAGORE.




AUTHOR'S NOTE.


As part of my book is set in Lahore, at the time of the outbreak, in
April 1919, I wish to state clearly that, while the main events are true
to fact, the characters concerned, both English and Indian, are purely
imaginary. At the same time, the opinions expressed by my Indian
characters on the present outlook are all based on the written or spoken
opinions of actual Indians--loyal or disaffected, as the case may be.

There were no serious British casualties in Lahore, though there were
many elsewhere. I have imagined one locally, for purposes of my story.
In all other respects I have kept close to recorded facts.

                                               M.D.





CONTENTS.


                                          PAGE

PHASE   I. THE GLORY AND THE DREAM          1

PHASE  II. THE VISIONARY GLEAM             65

PHASE III. PISGAH HEIGHTS                 135

PHASE  IV. DUST OF THE ACTUAL             283

PHASE   V. A STAR IN DARKNESS              417




PHASE I.

THE GLORY AND THE DREAM





CHAPTER I.

     "Thou art the sky, and thou art the nest as well."
                                        --Tagore.


By the shimmer of blue under the beeches Roy knew that summer--"really
truly summer!"--had come back at last. And summer meant picnics and
strawberries and out-of-door lessons, and the lovely hot smell of
pine-needles in the pine-wood, and the lovelier cool smell of moss
cushions in the beech-wood--home of squirrels and birds and bluebells;
unfailing wonderland of discovery and adventure.

Roy was an imaginative creature, isolated a little by the fact of being
three and a half years older than Christine, and "miles older" than
Jerry and George, mere babies, for whom the magic word adventure held no
meaning at all.

Luckily, there was Tara, from the black-and-white house: Tara, who
shared his lessons and, in spite of the drawback of being a girl, had
long ago won her way into his private world of knight-errantry and
romance. Tara was eight years and five weeks old; quite a reasonable age
in the eyes of Roy, whose full name was Nevil Le Roy Sinclair, and who
would be nine in June. With the exception of grown-ups, who didn't
count, there was no one older than nine in his immediate neighbourhood.
Tara came nearest: but _she_ wouldn't be nine till next year; and by
that time, he would be ten. The point was, she couldn't catch him up if
she tried ever so.

It was Tara's mother, Lady Despard, who had the happy idea of sharing
lessons, that would otherwise be rather a lonely affair for both. But it
was Roy's mother who had the still happier idea of teaching them
herself. Tara's mother joined in now and then; but Roy's mother--who
loved it beyond everything--secured the lion's share. And Roy was old
enough by now to be proudly aware of his own good fortune. Most other
children of his acquaintance were afflicted with tiresome governesses,
who wore ugly jackets and hats, who said "Don't drink with your mouth
full," and "Don't argue the point!"--Roy's favourite sin--and always
told you to "Look in the dictionary" when you found a scrumptious new
word and wanted to hear all about it. The dictionary, indeed! Roy
privately regarded it as one of the many mean evasions to which
grown-ups were addicted.

His ripe experience on the subject was gleaned partly from neighbouring
families, partly from infrequent visits to "Aunt Jane"--whom he hated
with a deep unreasoned hate--and "Uncle George," who had a kind, stupid
face, but anyhow tried to be funny and made futile bids for favour with
pen-knives and half-crowns. Possibly it was these uncongenial visits
that quickened in him very early the consciousness that his own
beautiful home was, in some special way, different from other boys'
homes, and his mother--in a still more special way--different from other
boys' mothers....

And that proud conviction was no mere myth born of his young adoration.
In all the County, perhaps in all the Kingdom, there could be found no
mother in the least like Lilámani Sinclair, descendant of Rajput chiefs
and wife of an English Baronet, who, in the face of formidable barriers,
had dared to accept all risks and follow the promptings of his heart.
One of these days there would dawn on Roy the knowledge that he was the
child of a unique romance, of a mutual love and courage that had run the
gauntlet of prejudices and antagonisms, of fightings without and fears
within; yet, in the end, had triumphed as they triumph who will not
admit defeat. All this initial blending of ecstasy and pain, of
spiritual striving and mastery, had gone to the making of Roy, who in
the fulness of time would realise--perhaps with pride, perhaps with
secret trouble and misgiving--the high and complex heritage that was
his.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile he only knew that he was fearfully happy, especially in summer
time; that his father--who had smiling eyes and loved messing with
paints like a boy--was kinder than anyone else's, so long as you didn't
tell bad fibs or meddle with his brushes; that his idolised mother, in
her soft coloured silks and saris, her bangles and silver shoes, was the
"very most beautiful" being in the whole world. And Roy's response to
the appeal of beauty was abnormally quick and keen. It could hardly be
otherwise with the son of these two. He loved, with a fervour beyond his
years, the clear pale oval of his mother's face; the coils of her dark
hair, seen always through a film of softest muslin--moon-yellow or
apple-blossom pink, or deep dark blue like the sky out of his window at
night spangled with stars. He loved the glimmer of her jewels, the sheen
and feel of her wonderful Indian silks, that seemed to smell like the
big sandalwood box in the drawing-room. And beyond everything he loved
her smile and the touch of her hand, and her voice that could charm away
all nightmare terrors, all questionings and rebellions, of his excitable
brain.

Yet, in outward bearing, he was not a sentimental boy. The Sinclairs did
not run to sentiment; and the blood of two virile races--English and
Rajput--was mingled in his veins. Already his budding masculinity bade
him keep the feelings of 'that other Roy' locked in the most secret
corner of his heart. Only his mother, and sometimes Tara, caught a
glimpse of him now and then. Lady Sinclair, herself, never guessed that,
in the vivid imaginations of both children, she herself was the
ever-varying incarnation of the fairy princesses and Rajputni heroines
of her own tales. Their appetite for these was insatiable; and her store
of them seemed never ending: folk tales of East and West; true tales of
Crusaders, of Arthur and his knights; of Rajput Kings and Queens, in the
far-off days when Rajasthán--a word like a trumpet call--was holding her
desert cities against hordes of invaders, and heroes scorned to die in
their beds. Much of it all was frankly beyond them; but the colour and
the movement, the atmosphere of heroism and high endeavour quickened
imagination and fellow-feeling, and left an impress on both children
that would not pass with the years.

To their great good fortune, these tales and talks were a part of her
simple, individual plan of education. An even greater good fortune--in
their eyes--was her instinctive response to the seasons. She shared to
the full their clear conviction that schoolroom lessons and a radiant
day of summer were a glaring misfit; and she trimmed her sails, or
rather her time-table, accordingly.

"Sentimental folly and thoroughly demoralising," was the verdict of Aunt
Jane, overheard by Roy, who was not supposed to understand. "They will
grow up without an inch of moral backbone. And you can't say I didn't
warn you. Lady Despard's a crank, of course; but Nevil is a fool to
allow it. Goodness knows _he_ was bad enough, though he was reared on
the good old lines. And you are not giving his son a chance. The sooner
the boy's packed off to school the better. I shall tell him so."

And his mother had answered with her dignified unruffled sweetness--that
made her so beautifully different from ordinary people, who got red and
excited and made foolish faces: "He will not agree. He shares my
believing that children are in love with life. It is their first love.
Pity to crush it too soon; putting their minds in tight boxes with no
chink for Nature to creep in. If they first find knowledge by their
young life-love, afterwards, they will perhaps give up their life-love
to gain it."

Roy could not follow all that; but the music of the words, matched with
the music of his mother's voice, convinced him that her victory over
horrid interfering Aunt Jane was complete. And it was comforting to know
that his father agreed about not putting their minds in tight boxes. For
Aunt Jane's drastic prescription alarmed him. Of course school would
have to come some day; but his was not the temperament that hankers for
it at an early age. As to a moral backbone--whatever sort of an
affliction that might be--if it meant growing up ugly and
'disagreeable,' like Aunt Jane or the Aunt Jane cousins, he fervently
hoped he would never have one--or Tara either....

But on this particular morning he feared no manner of bogey--not even
school or a moral backbone--because the bluebells were alight under his
beeches--hundreds and hundreds of them--and 'really truly' summer had
come back at last!

Roy knew it the moment he sprang out of bed and stood barefoot on the
warm patch of carpet near the window, stretching his slim shapely body,
instinctively responsive to the sun's caress. No less instinctive was
his profound conviction that nothing possibly could go wrong on a day
like this.

In the first place it meant lessons under their favourite tree. In the
second, it was history and poetry day; and Roy's delight in both made
them hardly seem lessons at all. He thought it very clever of his
mother, having them together. The depth of her wisdom he did not yet
discern. She allowed them within reason, to choose their own poems: and
Roy, exploring her bookcase, had lighted on Shelley's 'Cloud'--the
musical flow of words, the more entrancing because only half understood.
He had straightway learnt the first three verses for a surprise. He
crooned them now, his head flung back a little, his gaze intent on a
gossamer film that floated just above the pine tops--'still as a
brooding dove.'...

Standing there, in full sunlight--the modelling of his young limbs
veiled, yet not hidden, by his silk night-suit; the carriage of head and
shoulders betraying innate pride of race--he looked, on every count, no
unworthy heir to the House of Sinclair and its simple honourable
traditions: one that might conceivably live to challenge family
prejudices and qualms. The thick dark hair, ruffled from sleep, was his
mother's; and hers the semi-opaque ivory tint of his skin. The clean-cut
forehead and nose, the blue-grey eyes, with the lurking smile in them,
were Nevil Sinclair's own. In him, at least, it would seem that love was
justified of her children.

But of family features, as of family qualms, he was, as yet, radiantly
unaware. Snatching his towel, he scampered barefoot down the passage to
the nursery bathroom, where the tap was already running.

Fifteen minutes later, dressed, but hatless and still barefoot, he was
racing over the vast dew-drenched lawn, leaving a trail of grey-green
smudges on its silvered surface, chanting the opening lines of Shelley's
'Cloud' to breakfast-hunting birds.




CHAPTER II.


                  "Those first affections,
          Those shadowy recollections,...
     Are yet the fountain-light of all our day;
     Are yet the master-light of all our seeing."
                                   --WORDSWORTH.


The blue rug under Roy's beech-tree was splashed with freckles of
sunshine; freckles that were never still, because a fussy little wind
kept swaying the top-most branches, where the youngest beech-leaves
flickered, like golden-green butterflies bewitched by some malicious
fairy, so that they could never fly into the sky till summer was over,
and all the leaf butterflies in the world would be free to scamper with
the wind.

That was Roy's foolish fancy as he lay full length, to the obvious
detriment of his moral backbone--chin cupped in the hollow of his hands.
Close beside him lay Prince, his golden retriever; so close that he
could feel the dog's warm body through his thin shirt. At the foot of
the tree, in a nest of pale cushions, sat his mother, in her
apple-blossom sari and a silk dress like the lining of a shell. No
jewels in the morning, except the star that fastened her sari on one
shoulder and a slender gold bangle--never removed--the wedding-ring of
her own land. The boy, mutely adoring, could, in some dim way, feel the
harmony of those pale tones with the olive skin, faintly aglow, and the
delicate arch of her eyebrows poised like outspread wings above the
brown, limpid depths of her eyes. He could not tell that she was still
little more than a girl; barely eight-and-twenty. For him she was
ageless:--protector and playfellow, essence of all that was most real,
yet most magical, in the home that was his world. Unknown to him, the
Eastern mother in her was evoking, already, the Eastern spirit of
worship in her son.

Very close to her nestled Tara, a vivid, eager slip of a girl, with
wild-rose petals in her cheeks and blue hyacinths in her eyes and
sunbeams tangled in her hair, that rippled to her waist in a mass almost
too abundant for the small head and elfin face it framed. In
temperament, she suggested a flame rather than a flower, this singularly
vital child. She loved and she hated, she played and she quarrelled with
an intensity, a singleness of aim, surprising and a little disquieting
in a creature not yet nine. She was the despair of nurses and had never
crossed swords with a governess, which was a merciful escape--for the
governess. Juvenile fiction and fairy tales she frankly scorned. Legends
of Asgard and Arthur, the virile tales of Rajputana and her warrior
chiefs, she drank in as the earth drinks dew. Roy had a secret weakness
for a happy ending--in his own phrase, "a beautiful marry." Tara's rebel
spirit rose to tragedy as a flame leaps to the stars; and there was no
lack of high tragedy in the records of Chitor--Queen of cities--thrice
sacked by Moslem invaders; deserted at last, and left in ruins--a sacred
relic of great days gone by.

This morning Rajputana held the field. Lilámani, with a thrill in her
low voice, was half reading, half telling the adventures of Prithvi Raj
(King of the Earth) and his Amazon Princess, Tara--the Star of Bednore:
verily a star among women for beauty, wisdom, and courage. Many princes
were rivals for her hand; but none would she call "lord" save the man
who restored to her father the Kingdom snatched from him by an Afghan
marauder. "On the faith of a Rajput, _I_ will restore it," said Prithvi
Raj. So, in the faith of a Rajputni, she married him:--and together, by
a daring device, they fulfilled her vow.

Here, indeed, was Roy's 'beautiful marry,' fit prelude for the tale of
that heroic pair. For in life--Lilámani told them--marriage is the
beginning, not the end. That is only for fairy tales.

And close against her shoulder, listening entranced, sat the child Tara,
with her wild-flower face and the flickering star in her heart--a
creature born out of time into an unromantic world; hands clasped round
her upraised knees, her wide eyes gazing past the bluebells and the
beech-leaves at some fanciful inner vision of it all; lost in it, as Roy
was lost in contemplation of his Mother's face....

And this unorthodox fashion of imbibing knowledge in the very lap of the
Earth Mother, was Lilámani Sinclair's impracticable idea of 'giving
lessons'! Shades of Aunt Jane! Of governess and copy-books and rulers!

Happily for all three, Lady Roscoe never desecrated their paradise in
the flesh. She was aware that her very regrettable sister-in-law had
'queer notions' and had flatly refused to engage a governess of high
qualifications chosen by herself; but the half was not told her. It
never is told to those who condemn on principle what they cannot
understand. At their coming all the little private gateways into the
delectable Garden of Intimacy shut with a gentle, decisive click. So it
was with Jane Roscoe, as worthy and unlikeable a woman as ever organised
a household to perfection and alienated every member of her family.

The trouble was that she could not rest satisfied with this achievement.
She was afflicted with a vehement desire--she called it a sense of
duty--to organise the homes of her less capable relations. If they
resented, they were written down ungrateful. And Nevil's ingratitude had
become a byword. For Nevil Sinclair was that unaccountable,
uncomfortable thing--an artist; which is to say he was no true Sinclair,
but the son of his mother whose name he bore. No one, not even Jane, had
succeeded in organising him--nor ever would.

So Lilámani carried on, unmolested, her miniature attempt at the forest
school of an earlier day. Her simple programme included a good deal more
than tales of heroism and adventure. This morning there had been
rhythmical exercises, a lively interlude of 'sums without slates' and
their poems--a great moment for Roy. Only by a superhuman effort he had
kept his treasure locked inside him for two whole days. And his mother's
surprise was genuine: not the acted surprise of grown-ups, that was so
patent and so irritating and made them look so silly. The smile in her
eyes as she listened had sent a warm tingly feeling all through him, as
if the spring sunshine itself ran in his veins. Naturally he could not
express it so; but he felt it so. And now, as he lay looking and
listening, he felt it still. The wonder of her face and her voice, and
all the many wonders that made her so beautiful, had hitherto been as
much a part of him as the air he breathed. But this morning, in some dim
way, things were different--and he could not tell why....

His own puzzled thoughts and her face and her voice became entangled
with the chivalrous story of Prithvi Raj holding court in his hill
fortress with Tara--fit wife for a hero, since she could ride and fling
a lance and bend a bow with the best of them. When Roy caught him up, he
was in the midst of a great battle with his uncle, who had broken out in
rebellion against the old Rana of Chitor.

"All day long they were fighting, and all night long they were lying
awake beside great watch-fires, waiting till there came dawn to fight
again...."

His mother was telling, not reading now. He knew it at once from the
change in her tone.

"And when evening came, what did Prithvi Raj? He was carelessly
strolling over to the enemy's camp, carelessly walking into his Uncle's
tent to ask if he is well, in spite of many wounds. And his uncle, full
of surprise, made answer: 'Quite well, my child, since I have the
pleasure to see you.' And when he heard that Prithvi had come even
before eating any dinner, he gave orders for food: and they two, who
were all day seeking each other's life, sat there together eating from
one plate.

"'In the morning we will end our battle, Uncle,' said Prithvi Raj, when
time came to go.

"'Very well, child, come early,' said Surájmul.

"So Prithvi Raj came early and put his Uncle's whole army to flight. But
that was not enough. He must be driven from the kingdom. So when Prithvi
heard that broken army was hiding in the depths of a mighty forest,
there he went with his bravest horsemen, and suddenly, on a dark night,
sprang into their midst. Then there was great shouting and fighting; and
soon they came together, uncle and nephew, striking at each other, yet
never hating, though they must make battle because of Chitor and the
Kingdom of Mewar.

"To none would Suráj yield, but only to Prithvi, bravest of the brave.
So suddenly in a loud voice he cried--'Stay the fight, nephew. If I am
killed, no great matter. But if _you_ are killed, what will become of
Chitor? I would bear shame for ever.'

"By those generous words he made submission greater than victory. Uncle
and nephew embraced, heart to heart, and all those who had been fighting
each other sat down together in peace, because Surájmul, true Rajput,
could not bring harm, even in anger, upon the sacred city of Chitor."

She paused--her eyes on Roy, who had lost his own puzzling sensations in
the clash of the fight and its chivalrous climax.

"Oh, I love it," he said. "Is that all?"

"No, there is more."

"Is it sad?"

She shook her head at him--smiling.

"Yes, Roy. It is sad."

He wrinkled his forehead.

"Oh dear! I like it to end the nice way."

"But I am not making tales, Sonling. I am telling history."

Tara's head nudged her shoulder. "_Go_ on--please," she murmured,
resenting interruptions.

So Lilámani--still looking at Roy--told how Prithvi Raj went on his last
quest to Mount Abu, to punish the chief, who had married his sister and
was ill-treating her.

"In answer to her cry he went; and climbing her palace walls in the
night, he gave sharp punishment to that undeserving prince. But when
penance was over, his noble nature was ready, like before, to embrace
and be friends. Only that mean one, not able to kill him in battle, put
poison in the sweets he gave at parting and Prithvi ate them, thinking
no harm. So when he came on the hill near his palace the evil work was
done. Helpless he, the all-conqueror, sent word to Tara that he might
see her before death. But even that could not be. And she, loyal wife,
had only one thought in her heart. 'Can the blossom live when the tree
is cut down?' Calm, without tears, she bade his weeping warriors build
up the funeral pyre, putting the torch with her own hand. Then, before
them all, she climbed on that couch of fire and went through the leaping
scorching flames to meet her lord----"

The low clear voice fell silent--and the silence stayed. The vague
thrill of a tragedy they could hardly grasp laid a spell upon the
children. It made Roy feel as he did in Church, when the deepest notes
of the organ quivered through him; and it brought a lump in his throat,
which must be manfully swallowed down on account of being a boy....

And suddenly the spell was broken by the voice of Roger the footman, who
had approached noiselessly along the mossy track.

"If you please, m'lady, Sir Nevil sent word as Lord and Lady Roscoe 'ave
arrived unexpected; and if convenient, can you come in?"

They all started visibly and their dream-world of desert and rose-red
mountains and battle-fields and leaping flames shivered like a
soap-bubble at the touch of a careless hand.

Lilámani rose, gentle and dignified. "Thank you, Roger. Tell Sir Nevil I
am coming."

Roy suppressed a groan. The mere mention of Aunt Jane made one feel
vaguely guilty. To his nimble fancy it was almost as if her very person
had invaded their sanctuary, in her neat hard coat and skirt and her
neat hard summer hat with its one fierce wing, that, disdaining the
tenderness of curves, seemed to stab the air, as her eyes so often
seemed to stab Roy's hyper-sensitive brain.

"Oh dear!" he sighed. "Will they stop for lunch?"

"I expect so."

He wrinkled his nose in a wicked grimace.

"Bad boy!" said Lilámani's lips, but her eyes said other things. He
knew, and she knew that he knew how, in her heart, she shared his innate
antagonism. Was it not of her own bestowing--a heritage of certain
memories--ineffaceable, unforgiveable--during her early days of
marriage? But in spite of that mutual knowledge, Roy was never allowed
to speak disrespectfully of his formidable aunt.

"You can stay out and play till half-past twelve, not one minute later,"
she said--and left them to their own delectable devices.

Roy had been promoted to a silver watch on his eighth birthday, so he
could be relied on; and he still enjoyed a private sense of importance
when the fact was recognised.

Left alone they had only to pick up the threads of their game; a sort of
interminable serial story, in which they lived and moved and had their
being. But first Tara--in her own person--had a piece of news to impart.
Hunching up her knees, she tilted back her head till it touched the
satin-grey hole of the tree and all her hair lay shimmering against it
like a stream of pale sunshine.

"What do you think?" she nodded at Roy with her elfin smile. "We've got
a Boy-on-a-visit and his mother, from India. They came last night. He's
rather a large boy."

"Is he nine?" Roy asked, standing up very straight and slim, a defensive
gleam in his eye.

"He's ten and a half. And he looks bigger'n that. He goes to school. And
he's been quite a lot in India."

"Not my India."

"I don't know. He called it 'Mballa. That letter I brought from Mummy
was asking if she could bring them for tea."

"Well, I don't want him for tea. I don't like your Boy-on-a-visit. I'll
tell Mummy."

"Oh, Roy--you mustn't." She made reproachful eyes at him. "Coz then _I_
couldn't come. And he's quite nice--only rather lumpy. And you can't not
like someb'dy you've never seen."

"_I_ can, I often do." The possibility had only just occurred to him. He
saw it as a distinction and made the most of it. "Course if you're going
to make a fuss----"

Tara's eyes opened wider still. "Oh, Roy, you _are_----! 'Tisn't me
that's making fusses."

Though Roy knew nothing as yet about woman and the last word, he
instinctively took refuge in the masculine dignity that spurns descent
to the dusty arena when it feels defeat in the air.

"Girls don't never fuss--do they?" he queried suavely. "Let's get on
with the Game and not bother about your Boy-of-ten."

"And a half," Tara insisted tactlessly, with her sweetest smile. But
when Roy chose to be impassive pin-pricks were thrown away on him.

"Where'd we stop?" he mused, ignoring her remark. "Oh--I know. The
Knight was going forth to quest the Elephant with golden tusks for the
High Tower Princess who wanted them in her crown. Why _do_ Princesses
always want what the knights can't find?"

Tara's feminine intuition leaped at a solution.

"I 'spec it's just to show off they are Princesses and to keep the
Knights from bothering round.--So away he went and the Princess climbed
up to her highest tower and waved her lily hand----"

In the same breath she, Tara, sprang to her feet and swung herself
astride a downward sweeping branch just above Roy's head. There she
perched like a slim blue flower, dangling her tan-stockinged legs and
shaking her hair at him like golden rain. She was in one of her impish
moods; reaction, perhaps,--though she knew it not--from the high tragedy
of that other Tara, her namesake, and the great greatest-possible
grandmother of her adored 'Aunt Lila.' Suddenly a fresh impulse seized
her. Clutching her bough, she leaned down and lightly ruffled his hair.

He started and looked reproachful. "Don't rumple me. I'm going."

"You needn't, if you don't want to," she cooed caressingly. "_I_'m going
to the tipmost top to see out over the world. And the Princess doesn't
care a bean about the Golden Tusks--truly."

"She's jolly pleased with the knight that finds them," said Roy with a
deeper wisdom than he knew. "And you can't be stopped off quests that
way. Come on, Prince."

At a bend in the mossy path, he looked back and she waved her lily hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

To be alone in the deep of the wood in bluebell time was, for Roy, a
sensation by itself. In a moment, you stepped through some unseen door
straight into fairy-land--or was it a looking-glass world? For here the
sky lay all around your feet in a shimmer of bluebells: and high
overhead were domes of cool green light, where the sun came flickering
and filtering through millions of leaves. Always, as far as he could
remember, the magical feeling had been there. But this morning it came
over him in a queer way. This morning--though he could not quite make it
out--there was the Roy that felt and the Roy that knew he felt, just as
there had suddenly been when he was watching his mother's face. And this
magical world was his kingdom. In some far-off time, it would all be his
very own. That uplifting thought eclipsed every other....

Lost in one of his dreaming moods, he wandered on and on, with Prince at
his heels. He forgot all about Tara and his knighthood and his quest;
till suddenly--where the trees fell apart--his eye was arrested by twin
shafts of sunlight that struck downward through the green gloom.

He caught his breath and stood still. "I've _found_ them! The Golden
Tusks!" he murmured ecstatically.

The pity was he couldn't carry them back with him as trophies. He could
only watch them fascinated, wondering how you could explain what you
didn't understand yourself. All he knew was that they made him feel
'dazzled inside,' and he wanted to watch them more.

It was beautiful out in the open with the sunshine pouring down and a
big lazy white cloud tangled in tree-tops. So he flung himself on the
moss, hands under his head, and lay there, Prince beside him, looking
up, up into the far blue, listening to the swish and rustle of the wind
talking secrets to the leaves, and all the tiny mysterious noises that
make up the silence of a wood in summer.

And again he forgot about Tara and the Game and the silver watch that
made him reliable. He simply lay there in a trance-like stillness, that
was not of the West, absorbing it all, with his eyes and his dazzled
brain and with every sentient nerve in his body. And again--as when his
mother smiled her praise--the Spring sunshine itself seemed to flow
through his veins....

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly he came alive and sat upright. Something was happening. The
Golden Tusks had disappeared, and the domes of cool green light and the
far blue sky and the lazy white cloud. Under the beeches it was almost
twilight--a creepy twilight, as if a giant had blown out the sun. Was it
really evening? Had he been asleep? Only his watch could answer that,
and never had he loved it more dearly. No--it was daytime. Twenty past
twelve--and he would be late----

A long rumbling growl, that seemed to shudder through the wood, so
startled him that it set little hammers beating all over his body. Then
the wind grew angrier--not whispering secrets now, but tearing at the
tree-tops and lashing the branches this way and that. And every minute
the wood grew darker, and the sky overhead was darkest of all--the
colour of spilled ink. And there was Tara--his forgotten
Princess--waiting for him in her high tower; or perhaps she had given up
waiting and gone home.

"Come on, Prince," he said, "we must run!"

The sound of his own voice was vaguely comforting: but the moment he
began to run, he felt as if some one--or Something--was running after
him. He knew there was nothing. He knew it was babyish. But what could
you do if your legs were in a fearful hurry of their own accord?
Besides, Tara was waiting. Somehow Tara seemed the point of safety. He
didn't believe she was ever afraid----

All in a moment the eerie darkness quivered and broke into startling
light. Twigs and leaves and bluebell spears and tiny patterns of moss
seemed to leap at him and vanish as he ran: and two minutes after, high
above the agitated tree-tops, the thunder spoke. No mere growl now; but
crash on crash that seemed to be tearing the sky in two and set the
little hammers inside him beating faster than ever.

He had often watched storms from a window: but to be out in the very
middle of one all alone was an adventure of the first magnitude. The
grandeur and terror of it clutched at his heart and thrilled along his
nerves as the thunder went rumbling and grumbling off to the other end
of the world, leaving the wood so quiet and still that the little
hammers inside seemed almost as loud as the plop-plop of the first big
raindrops on the leaves. But, in spite of secret tremors, he wanted
tremendously to hear the thunder speak again. The childish feeling of
pursuit was gone. His legs that had been in such a fearful hurry, came
to a sudden standstill; and he discovered, to his immense surprise, that
he was back again----

There lay the rug and the cushions under the downward sweeping branches
with their cascades of bright new leaves. No sign of Tara--and the heavy
drops came faster, though they hardly amounted to a shower.

Flinging down bow and arrows, he ran under the tree and peered up into a
maze of silver grey and young green. Still no sign.

"Tara!" he called. "Are you there?"

"'Course I am." Her disembodied voice had a ring of triumph. "I'm at the
tipmost top. It's rather shaky, but scrumshous. Come up--quick!"

Craning his neck he could just see one leg and the edge of her frock.
Temptation tugged at him; but he could not bear to disobey his
mother--not because it was naughty, but it was her.

"I can't--now," he called back. "It's late and it's raining. You _must_
come down."

"I will--if you come up."

"I tell you, I can't!"

"Only one little minute, Roy. The storm's rolling away. I can see miles
and miles--to Farthest End."

Temptation tugged harder. You couldn't carry on an argument with one tan
shoe and stocking and a flutter of blue frock, and he wanted badly to
tell about the Golden Tusks. Should he go on alone, or should he climb
up and fetch her----?

The answer to that came from the top of the tree. A crack, a rustle and
a shriek from Tara, who seemed to be coming down faster than she cared
about.

Another shriek. "Oh, Roy! I'm stuck! Do come!"

Stuck! She was dangling from the end of a jagged bough that had caught
in her skirt as she fell. There she hung ignominiously--his High Tower
Princess--her hair floating like seaweed, her hands clutching at the
nearest branches that were too pliable for support. If her skirt should
tear, or the bough should break----

"_Keep_ stuck!" he commanded superfluously; and like a squirrel he sped
up the great beech, its every foothold as familiar to him as the ground
he walked on.

But to release her skirt and give her a hand he must trust himself on
the jagged bough, hoping it would bear the double weight. It looked
rather a dead one, and its sharp end was sticking through a hole in
Tara's frock. He set foot on it cautiously and proffered a hand.

"Now--catch hold!" he said.

Agile as he, she swung herself up somehow and clutched at him with both
hands. The half-dead bough, resenting these gymnastics, cracked
ominously. There was a gasp, a scuffle. Roy hung on valiantly, dragging
her nearer for a firmer foothold.

And suddenly down below Prince began to bark--a deep, booming note of
welcome.

"Hullo, Roy!" It was his father's voice. "Are you murdering Tara up
there? Come out of it!"

Roy, having lost his footing, was in no position to look down--or to
disobey: and they proceeded to come out of it, with rather more haste
than dignity.

Roy, swinging from a high branch for his final jump--a bit of pure
bravado because he felt nervous inside--discovered, with mingled terror
and joy, that his vagrant foot had narrowly shaved Aunt Jane's neat hard
summer hat: Aunt Jane--of all people--at such a moment, when you
couldn't properly explain. He half wished he _had_ kicked the fierce
little feather and broken its back----

He was on the ground now, shaking hands with her, his sensitive
clean-cut face a mask of mere politeness: and Tara was standing by
him--a jagged hole in her blue frock, a scratch across her cheek, and
her hair ribbon gone--looking suspiciously as if he had been trying to
murder her instead of doing her a knightly service.

She couldn't help it, of course. But still--it was a distinct score for
Aunt Jane, who, as usual, went straight to the point.

"You nearly kicked my head just now. A little gentleman would
apologise."

He did apologise--not with the best grace.

"My turn next," his father struck in. "What the dickens were you up
to--tearing slices out of my finest tree!" His twinkly eyes were almost
grave and his voice was almost stern. ("Just because of Aunt Jane!"
thought Roy.)

Aloud he said: "I'm awfully sorry, Daddy. It was only ... Tara got in a
muddle. I had to help her."

The twinkle came back to his father's eyes.

"The woman tempted me!" was all he said; and Roy, hopelessly mystified,
wondered how he could possibly know. It was very clever of him. But Aunt
Jane seemed shocked.

"Nevil, be quiet!" she commanded in a crisp undertone; and Roy, simply
hating her, pulled out his watch.

"We've got to hurry, Daddy. Mother said 'not later than half-past.' And
it is later."

"Scoot, then. She'll be anxious because of the storm."

But though Roy, grasping Tara's hand, faithfully hurried ahead because
of mother, he managed to keep just within earshot; and he listened
shamelessly, because of Aunt Jane. You couldn't trust her. She didn't
play fair. She would bite you behind your back. That's the kind of woman
she was.

And this is what he heard.

"Nevil, it's perfectly disgraceful. Letting them run wild like that;
damaging the trees and scaring the birds."

She meant the pheasants of course. No other winged beings were sacred in
her eyes.

"Sorry, old girl. But they appear to survive it." (The cool good-humour
of his father's tone was balm to Roy's heart.) "And frankly, with us, if
it's a case of the children or the birds, the children win, hands down."

Aunt Jane snorted. You could call it nothing else. It was a sound
peculiarly her own, and it implied unutterable things. Roy would have
gloried had he known what a score for his father was that delicately
implied identity with his wife.

But the snort was no admission of defeat.

"In _my_ opinion--if it counts for anything," she persisted, "this
harum-scarum state of things is quite as bad for the children as for the
birds. I suppose you _have_ a glimmering concern for the boy's future,
as heir to the old place?"

Nevil Sinclair chuckled.

"By Jove! That's quite a bright idea. Really, Jane, you've a positive
flair for the obvious."

(Roy hugely wanted to know what a "flair for the obvious" might be. His
eager brain pounced on new words as a dog pounces on a bone.)

"I wish I could say the same for you," Lady Roscoe retorted unabashed.
"The obvious, in this case--though you can't or won't see it--is that
the boy is thoroughly spoilt, and in September he ought to go to school.
You couldn't do better than Coombe Friars."

His father said something quickly in a low tone and he couldn't catch
Aunt Jane's next remark. Evidently he was to hear no more. What he had
heard was bad enough.

"I don't care. I jolly well won't," he said between his teeth--which
looked as if Aunt Jane was not quite wrong about the spoiling.

"No, don't," said Tara, who had also listened without shame. And they
hurried on in earnest.

"Tara," Roy whispered, suddenly recalling his quest. "I _found_ the
Golden Tusks. I'll tell it you after."

"Oh, Roy, you are a wonder!" She gave his hand a convulsive squeeze and
they broke into a run.

The "bits of blue" had spread half over the sky. The thunder still
grumbled to itself at intervals and a sharp little shower whipped out of
a passing cloud. Then the sun flashed through it and the shadows crept
round the great twin beeches on the lawn--and the day was as lovely as
ever again.

And yet--for Roy, it was not the same loveliness. Aunt Jane's repeated
threat of school brooded over his sensitive spirit, like the
thundercloud in the wood that was the colour of spilled ink. And the
Boy-of-ten--a potential enemy--was coming to tea....

Yet this morning he had felt so beautifully sure that nothing could go
wrong on a day like this! It was his first lesson, and not by any means
his last, that Fate--unmoved by 'light of smiles or tears'--is no
respecter of profound convictions or of beautiful days.




CHAPTER III.

     "Man am I grown; a man's work I must do."
                                   --TENNYSON.


Tara was right. The Boy-of-ten (Roy persistently ignored the half) was
rather a large boy: also rather lumpy. He had little eyes and freckles
and what Christine called a "turnip nose." He wore a very new school
blazer and real cricket trousers, with a flannel shirt and school tie
that gave Roy's tussore shirt and soft brown bow almost a girlish air.
Something in his manner and the way he aired his school slang, made
Roy--who never shone with strangers--feel "miles younger," which did not
help to put him at ease.

His name was Joe Bradley. He had been in India till he was nearly eight;
and he talked about India, as he talked about school, in a rather
important voice, as befitted the only person present who knew anything
of either.

Roy was quite convinced he knew nothing at all about Rajputana or Chitor
or Prithvi Raj or the sacred peacocks of Jaipur. But somehow he could
not make himself talk about these things simply for "show off," because
a strange boy, with bad manners, was putting on airs.

Besides, he never much wanted to talk when he was eating, though he
could not have explained why. So he devoted his attention chiefly to a
plate of chocolate cakes, leaving the Boy-of-ten conversationally in
command of the field.

He was full of a recent cricket match, and his talk bristled with such
unknown phrases as "square leg," "cover point" and "caught out." But for
some reason--pure perversity perhaps--they stirred in Roy no flicker of
curiosity, like his father's "flair for the obvious." He didn't know
what they meant--and he didn't care, which was not the least like Roy.
Tara, who owned big brothers, seemed to know all about it, or looked as
if she did; and to show you didn't understand what a girl understood,
would be the last indignity.

When the cricket show-off was finished, Joe talked India and ragged
Tara, in a big-brotherly way, ignored Christine, as if five and a half
simply didn't count. That roused Roy; and by way of tacit rebuke, he
bestowed such marked attention on his small sister, that Christine (who
adored him, and was feeling miserably shy) sparkled like a dewdrop when
the sun flashes out.

She was a tiny creature, exquisitely proportioned; fair, like her
father, yet in essence a replica of her mother, with the same wing-like
brows and dark limpid eyes. Dimly jealous of Tara, she was the only one
of the three who relished the presence of the intruder and wished
strange boys oftener came to tea.

Millicent, the nursery-maid, presided. She was tall and smiling and
obviously a lady. She watched and listened and said little during the
meal.

Once, in the course of it, Lilámani came in and hovered round them,
filling Roy's tea-cup, spreading Christine's honey--extra thick. Her
Eastern birthright of service, her joy in waiting on those she loved,
had survived ten years of English marriage, and would survive ten more.
It was as much an essential part of her as the rhythm of her pulses and
the blood in her veins.

She was no longer the apple-blossom vision of the morning. She wore her
mother-o'-pearl sari with its narrow gold border. Her dress, that was
the colour of a dove's wing, shimmered changefully as she moved, and her
aquamarine pendant gleamed like drops of sea water on its silver chain.

Roy loved her in the mother-o'-pearl mood best of all; and he saw, with
a throb of pride, how the important Boy-from-India seemed too absorbed
in watching her even to show off. She did not stay many minutes and she
said very little. She was still, by preference, quiet during a meal; and
it gave her a secret thrill of pleasure to see the habit of her own race
reappearing as an instinct in Roy. So, with merely a word or two, she
just smiled at them and gave them things and patted their heads. And
when she was gone, Roy felt better. The scales had swung even again.
What was a school blazer and twenty runs at cricket, compared with the
glory of having a mother like that?

But if tea was not much fun, after tea was worse.

They were told to run and play in the garden; and obediently they ran
out, dog and all. But what _could_ you play at with a superior being who
had made twenty runs not out, in a House Match--whatever that might be?
They showed him their ring-doves and their rabbits; but he didn't even
pretend to be interested, though Tara did her best, because it was she
who had brought this infliction on Roy.

"How about the summer-house?" she suggested, hopefully. For the
summer-house locker contained an assortment of old tennis-bats, mallets
and balls, that might prove more stimulating than rabbits and doves. Roy
offered no objection; so they straggled across a corner of the lawn to a
narrower strip behind the tall yew hedge.

The grown-ups were gathered under the twin beeches; and away at the far
end of the lawn Roy's mother and Tara's mother were strolling up and
down in the sun.

Again Roy noticed how Joe Bradley stared: and as they rounded the corner
of the hedge he remarked suddenly "I say! There's that swagger ayah of
yours walking with Lady Despard. She's jolly smart, for an ayah. Did you
bring her from India? You never said you'd been there."

Roy started and went hot all over. "Well, I _have_--just on a visit. And
she's _not_ an ayah. She's my Mummy!"

Joe Bradley opened his mouth as well as his eyes, which made him look
plainer than ever.

"Golly! what a tale! White people don't have ayahs for Mothers--not in
my India. I s'pose your Pater married her out there?"

"He didn't. And I tell you she's _not_ an ayah."

Roy's low voice quivered with anger. It was as if ten thousand little
flames had come alight inside him. But you had to try and be polite to
visitors; so he added with a virtuous effort: "She's a really and truly
Princess--so there!"

But that unspeakable boy, instead of being impressed, laughed in the
rudest way.

"Don't excite, you silly kid. I'm not as green as you are. Besides--who
cares----?"

It flashed on Roy, through the blur of his bewildered rage, that perhaps
the Boy-from-India was jealous. He tried to speak. Something clutched at
his throat; but instinct told him he had a pair of hands....

To the utter amazement of Tara, and of the enemy, he silently sprang at
the bigger boy; grabbed him unscientifically by the knot of his superior
neck-tie and hit out, with more fury than precision, at cheeks and eyes
and nose----

For a few exciting seconds he had it all his own way. Then the
enemy--recovered from the first shock of surprise--spluttered wrathfully
and hit out in return. He had weight in his favour. He tried to bend Roy
backwards; and failing began to kick viciously wherever he could get at
him. It hurt rather badly and made Roy angrier than ever. In a white
heat of rage, he shook and pummelled, regardless of choking sounds and
fingers clutching at his hair....

Tara, half excited and half frightened, could only grab Prince's collar,
to keep him from rushing into the fray; and when Joe started kicking, it
was all she could do not to let him go. But she knew Athol--her dearest
brother--would say it wasn't fair play. So she tugged, and Prince
tugged; while the boys, fiercely silent, rocked to and fro; and
Christine sobbed piteously--"He's hurting Roy--he's _killing_ Roy!"

Tara, fully occupied with Prince, could only jerk out: "Don't be a baby,
Chris. Roy's all right. He loves it." Which Christine simply didn't
believe. There was blood on his tussore shirt. It mightn't be his, but
still----

It made even Tara feel rather sick; and when a young gardener appeared
on the scene she called out: "Oh, Mudford, do stop them--or something'll
happen."

But Mudford--British to the bone--would do nothing of the kind. He saw
at once that Roy was getting the better of an opponent nearly twice his
weight; and setting down his barrow he shamelessly applauded his young
master.

By now, the enemy's nose was bleeding freely and spoiling the brand-new
blazer. He gasped and spluttered: "Drop it, you little beast!" But Roy,
fired by Mudford's applause, only hit out harder.

"'Pologise--'pologise! Say she isn't!"

His forward jerk on the words took Joe unawares. The edge of the lawn
tripped him up and they rolled on the grass, Joe undermost in a close
embrace----

And at that critical moment there came strolling round the corner of the
hedge a group of grown-ups--Sir Nevil Sinclair with Mrs Bradley, Lady
Roscoe, Lady Despard and Roy's godfather, the distinguished novelist,
Cuthbert Broome.

Mudford and his barrow departed; and Tara looked appealingly at her
mother.

Roy--intent on the prostrate foe--suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder
and heard his father's voice say sharply: "Get up, Roy, and explain
yourself!"

They got up, both of them--and stood there, looking shy and stupefied
and very much the worse for wear:--hair ruffled, faces discoloured,
shirts torn open. One of Roy's stockings was slipping down; and, in the
midst of his confused sensations, he heard the excited voice of Mrs
Bradley urgently demanding to know what her "poor dear boy" could have
done to be treated like that.

No one seemed to answer her; and the poor dear boy was too busy
comforting his nose to take much interest in the proceedings.

Lady Despard (you could tell at a glance she was Tara's mother) was on
her knees comforting Christine; and as Roy's senses cleared, he saw with
a throb of relief that his mother was not there. But Aunt Jane was--and
Uncle Cuthbert----

He seemed to stand there panting and aching in an endless silence, full
of eyes. He did not know that his father was giving him a few seconds to
recover himself.

Then: "What do you mean by it, Roy?" he asked; and this time his voice
was really stern. It hurt more than the bruises. "Gentlemen don't hammer
their guests." This was an unexpected blow. And it wasn't fair. How
could he explain before "all those"? His cheeks were burning, his head
was aching; and tears, that must not be allowed to fall, were pricking
like needles under his lids.

It was Tara who spoke--still clutching Prince, lest he overwhelm Roy and
upset his hardly maintained dignity.

"Joe made him angry--he _did_," she thrust in with feminine
officiousness; and was checked by her mother's warning finger.

Mrs Bradley--long and thin and beaky--bore down upon her battered son,
who edged away sullenly from proffered caresses.

Sir Nevil, not daring to meet the humorous eye of Cuthbert Broome--still
contemplated the dishevelled dignity of his own small son--half puzzled,
half vexed.

"You've done it now, Roy. Say you're sorry," he prompted; his voice a
shade less stern than he intended.

Roy shook his head.

"It's him to say--not me."

"Did he begin it?"

"No."

"Of course he didn't," snapped the injured mother. "He's been properly
brought up," which was not exactly polite, but she was beside
herself--simply an irate mother-creature, all beak and ruffled feathers.
"You deserve to be whipped. You've hurt him badly."

"Oh, dry up, mother," Joe murmured behind his sanguinary handkerchief,
edging still further away from maternal fussings and possible catechism.

Nevil Sinclair saw clearly that his son would neither apologise nor
explain. At heart he suspected young Bradley, if only on account of his
insufferable mother, but the laws of hospitality must be upheld.

"Go to your own room, Roy," he said with creditable severity, "and stay
there till I come."

Roy gave him one look--mutely reproachful. Then--to every one's surprise
and Tara's delight--he walked straight up to the Enemy.

"I _did_ hammer hardest. 'Pologise!"

The older boy mumbled something suspiciously like the fatal word: a
suspicion confirmed by Roy's next remark: "I'm sorry your blazer's
spoilt. But you made me."

And the elders, watching with amused approbation, had no inkling that
the words were spoken not by Roy Sinclair but by Prithvi Raj.

The Enemy, twice humbled, answered nothing; and Roy,--his dignity
unimpaired by such trifles as a lump on his cheek, a dishevelled tie and
one stocking curled lovingly round his ankle--walked leisurely away,
with never a glance in the direction of the "grown-ups," who had no
concern whatever with this--the most important event of his life----

Tara--torn between wrath and admiration--watched him go. In her eyes he
was a hero, a victim of injustice and the density of grown-ups.

She promptly released Prince, who bounded after his master. She wanted
to go too. It was all her fault, bringing that horrid boy to tea. She
did hope Roy would explain things properly. But boys were stupid
sometimes and she wanted to make sure. While her mother was tactfully
suggesting a homeward move, she slipped up to Sir Nevil and insinuated a
small hand into his.

"Uncle Nevil, _do_ believe," she whispered urgently. "Truly it isn't
fair----"

His quick frown warned her to say no more; but the pressure of his hand
comforted her a little.

All the same she hated going home. She hated 'that putrid boy'--a
forbidden adjective; but what else _could_ you call him? She was glad he
would be gone the day after to-morrow. She was even more glad his nose
was bleeding and his eye bunged up and his important blazer all
bloodied. Girl though she was, there ran a fiercer strain in her than in
Roy.

As they moved off, she had an inspiration. She was given that way.

"Mummy darling," she said in her small clear voice, "mayn't I stay back
a little and play with Chris. She's _so_ unhappy. Alice could fetch
me--couldn't she? Please."

The innocent request was underlined by an unmistakable glance through
her lashes at Joe. She wanted him to hear; and she didn't care if he
understood--him and his beaky mother! Clearly her own Mummy understood.
She was nibbling her lips, trying not to smile.

"Very well, dear," she said. "I'll send Alice at half-past six. Run
along."

Tara gave her hand a grateful little squeeze--and ran.

She would have hated the "beaky mother" worse than ever could she have
heard her remark to Lady Despard, when they were alone.

"Really, a most obstinate, ungoverned child. His mother, of course--a
very pretty creature--but what can you expect? Natives always ruin
boys."

Lady Despard--Lilámani Sinclair's earliest champion and friend--could be
trusted to deal effectually with a remark of that quality.

As for Tara--once "the creatures" were out of sight they were extinct.
All the embryo mother in her was centred on Roy. It was a shame sending
him to his room, like a naughty boy, when he was really a champion, a
King-Arthur's-Knight. But if only he properly explained, Uncle Nevil
would surely understand----

And suddenly there sprang a dilemma. How could Roy make himself repeat
to Uncle Nevil the rude remarks of that abominable boy? And if not--how
was he going to properly explain----?




CHAPTER IV.

     "What a great day came and passed;
     Unknown then, but known at last."
                    --ALICE MEYNELL.


That very problem was puzzling Roy as he lay on his bed, with Prince's
head against his shoulder, aching a a good deal, exulting at thought of
his new-born knighthood, wondering how long he was to be treated like a
sinner,--and, through it all, simply longing for his mother....

It was the conscious craving for her sympathy, her applause, that
awakened him to his dilemma.

He had championed her with all his might against that lumpy
Boy-of-ten,--who kicked in the meanest way; and he couldn't explain why,
so she couldn't know ever. The memory of those insulting words hurt him
so that he shrank from repeating them to anyone--least of all to her.
Yet how could he see her and feel her and not tell her everything? She
would surely ask--she would want to know--and then--when he tried to
think beyond that point he felt simply lost.

It was an _impasse_ none the less tragic because he was only nine. To
tell her every little thing was as simple a necessity of life as eating
or sleeping; and--till this bewildering moment--as much a matter of
course. For Lilámani Sinclair, with her Eastern mother-genius, had
forged between herself and her first-born a link woven of the tenderest,
most subtle fibres of heart and spirit; a link so vital, yet so
unassertive, that it bid fair to stand the strain of absence, the test
of time. So close a link with any human heart, while it makes for
beauty, makes also for pain and perplexity,--as Roy was just realising
to his dismay.

At the sound of footsteps he sat up, suddenly very much aware of his
unheroic dishevelment. He tugged at the fallen stocking and made hasty
dabs at his hair. But it was only Esther the housemaid with an envelope
on a tray. Envelopes, however, were always mysterious and exciting.

His name was scribbled on this one in Tara's hand; and as Esther
retreated he opened it, wondering....

It contained a half-sheet of note-paper, and between the folds lay a
circle of narrow blue ribbon plaited in three strands. But only two of
the strands were ribbon; the third was a tress of her gleaming hair. Roy
gazed at it a moment, lost in admiration, still wondering; then he
glanced at Tara's letter--not scrawled, but written with laboured
neatness and precision.

     "DEAR ROY,--It was splendid. You are Prithvi Raj. I am
     sending you the bangel like Aunt Lila told us. It can't be gold or
     jewels. But I pulled the ribbin out of my petticote and put in sum
     of my hair to make it spangly. So now you are Braselet Bound
     Brother. Don't forget. From TARA."

     "I hope you aren't hurting much. Do splain to Uncle Nevil properly
     and come down soon. I am hear playing with Chris. TARA."

Roy sat looking from the letter to the bangle with a distinctly pleasant
kind of mixed-up feeling inside. He was so surprised, so comforted, so
elated by this tribute from his High Tower Princess, who was an exacting
person in the matter of heroes. Now--besides being a Knight and a
champion he was Bracelet-Bound Brother as well.

Only the other day his mother had told them a tale about this old custom
of bracelet-sending in Rajputana:--how, on a certain holy day, any
woman--married or not married--may send her bracelet token to any man.
If he accepts it, and sends in return an embroidered bodice, he becomes
from that hour her bracelet brother, vowed to her service, like a
Christian Knight in the days of chivalry. The bracelet may be of gold or
jewels or even of silk interwoven with spangles--like Tara's impromptu
token. The two who are bracelet-bound might possibly never meet face to
face. Yet she, who sends, may ask of him who accepts, any service she
pleases; and he may not deny it--even though it involve the risk of his
life.

The ancient custom, she told them, still holds good, though it has
declined in use, like all things chivalrous, in an age deafened by the
clamour of industrial strife; an age grown blind to the beauty of
service, that, in defiance of "progress," still remains the keynote of
an Indian woman's life.

So these privileged children had heard much of it, through the medium of
Lilámani's Indian tales; and this particular one had made a deeper
impression on Tara than on Roy; perhaps because the budding woman in her
relished the power of choice and command it conferred on her own sex.
Certainly no thought of possible future commands dawned on Roy. It was
her pride in his achievement, so characteristically expressed that
flattered his incipient masculine vanity and added a cubit to his
stature. He knew now what he meant to be when he grew up. Not a painter,
or a soldier or a gardener--but a Bracelet-Bound Brother....

Gingerly, almost shyly, he slipped over his hand the deftly woven,
trifle of ribbon and gleaming hair. As the first glow of pleasure
subsided, there sprang the instinctive thought--"Won't Mummy be
pleased!" And straightway he was caught afresh in the toils of his
dilemma--How could he possibly explain----?

What was she doing? Why didn't she come----?

There----! His ear caught far-off footsteps--too heavy for hers. He
slipped off the Bracelet, folded it in Tara's letter and tucked it away
inside his shirt.

Hurriedly--a little nervously--he tied his brown bow and got upon his
feet, just as the door opened and his father came in.

"_Well_, Roy!" he said, and for a few seconds he steadily regarded his
small son with eyes that tried very hard to be grave and judicial.
Scoldings and assertions of authority were not in his line: and the tug
at his heart-strings was peculiarly strong in the case of Roy. Fair
himself, as the boy was dark, their intrinsic likeness of form and
feature was yet so striking that there were moments--as now--when it
gave Nevil Sinclair an eerie sense of looking into his own eyes,--which
was awkward, as he had come steeled for chastisement, if needs must,
though his every instinct revolted from the mutual indignity. He had
only once inflicted it on Roy for open defiance in one of his stormy
ebullitions of temper; and, at this moment, he did not seem to see a
humble penitent before him.

"What have you got to say for yourself?" he went on, hoping the pause
had been impressive; strongly suspecting it had been nothing of the
kind. "Gentlemen, as I told you, don't hammer their guests. It was
rather a bad hammering, to judge from his handkerchief. And you don't
look particularly sorry about it either."

"I'm not--not one littlest bit."

This was disconcerting; but Nevil held his ground.

"Then I suppose I've got to whack you. If boys aren't sorry for their
sins, it's the only way."

Roy's eyelids flickered a little.

"You better not," he said with the same impersonal air of conviction.
"You see, it wouldn't make me sorry. And you don't hurt badly. Not half
as much as Joe did. He was mean. He kicked. I wouldn't have stopped, all
the same--if _you_ hadn't come."

The note of reproach was more disconcerting than ever.

"Well, if whacking's no use, what am I to do with you? Shut you up here
till bedtime--eh?"

Roy considered that dismal proposition, with his eyes on the summer
world outside.

"Well--you can if you like. But it wouldn't be fair." A pause. "You
don't know what a horrid boy he was, Daddy. _You'd_ have hit him
harder--even if he _was_ a guest."

"I wonder!" Nevil fatally admitted. "Of course it would all depend on
the provocation."

"What's 'provication'?"

The instant alertness, over a new word, brought back the smile to
Nevil's eyes.

"It means--saying or doing something bad enough to make it right for you
to be angry."

"Well, it was bad enough. It was"--a portentous pause--"about Mummy."

"About Mummy?" The sharp change in his father's tone was at once
startling and comforting. "Look here, Roy. No more mysteries. This is
my affair as much as yours. Come here."

Pulling a bedside chair near the window, he sat down and drew Roy close
to him, taking his shoulders between his hands.

"Now then, old boy, tell me just exactly what happened--as man to man."

The appeal was irresistible. But--how could he----? The very change in
his father's manner made the telling at once more difficult and more
urgent.

"Daddy--it hurts too much. I don't know how to say it----" he faltered,
and the blood tingled in his cheeks.

If Nevil Sinclair was not a stern father, neither was he a very
demonstrative one. Even his closest relations were tinged with something
of the artist's detachment, and innate respect for the individual even
in embryo. But at sight of Roy's distress and delicacy of feeling, his
heart melted in him. Without a word, he slipped an arm round the boy's
shoulder and drew him closer still.

"That better, eh? You've got to pull it through, somehow," he said
gently, so holding him that Roy could, if he chose, nestle against him.
He did choose. It might be babyish; but he hated telling: and it was a
wee bit easier with his face hidden. So, in broken phrases and in a
small voice that quivered with anger revived--he told.

While he was telling, his father said nothing; and when it was over, he
still said nothing. He seemed to be looking out of the window, and Roy
felt him draw one big breath.

"Have you got to whack me--now, Daddy?" he asked, still in his small
voice.

His father's hand closed on his arm. "No. You were right, Roy," he said.
"I would have hit harder. Ill-mannered little beast! All the same----"

A pause. He, no less than Roy, found speech difficult. He had fancied
himself, by now, inured to this kind of jar--so frequent in the early
years of his daringly unconventional marriage. It seemed he was
mistaken. He had been vaguely on edge all the afternoon. What young Joe
had rudely blurted out, Mrs Bradley's manner had tacitly expressed. He
had succeeded in smothering his own sensations, only to be confronted
with the effect of it all on Roy--who must somehow be made to
understand.

"The fact is, old man," he went on, trying to speak in his normal voice,
"young Bradley and a good many of his betters spend years in India
without coming to know very much about the real people over there.
You'll understand why when you're older. They all have Indians for
servants, and they see Indians working in shops and villages, just like
plenty of our people do here. But they don't often meet many of the
other sort--like Mummy and Grandfather and Uncle Rama--except sometimes
in England. And then--they make stupid mistakes--just because they don't
know better. But they needn't be rude about it, like Joe; and I'm glad
you punched him--hard."

"So'm I. Fearfully glad." He stood upright now, his head erect:--proud
of his father's approval, and being treated as "man to man." "But,
Daddy--what are we going to do ... about Mummy? I _do_ want her to know
... it was for her. But I _couldn't_ tell--what Joe said. Could you?"

Nevil shook his head.

"Then--what?"

"You leave it to me, Roy. I'll make things clear without repeating Joe's
rude remarks. She'd have been up before this; but _I_ had to see you
first--because of the whacking!" His eye twinkled. "She's longing to get
at your bruises----"

"Oh nev' mind my bruises. They're all right now."

"And beautiful to behold!" He lightly touched the lump on Roy's cheek.
"I'd let her dab them, though. Women love fussing over us when we're
hurt--especially if we've been fighting for them!"

"Yes--they do," Roy agreed gravely; and to his surprise, his father drew
him close and kissed his forehead.

       *       *       *       *       *

His mother did not keep him waiting long. First the quick flutter of her
footsteps; then the door gently opened--and she flew to him, her sari
blowing out in beautiful curves. Then he was in her arms, gathered into
her silken softness and the faint scent of sandalwood; while her lips,
light as butterfly wings, caressed the bruise on his cheek.

"Oh, what a bad, wicked Sonling!" she murmured, gathering him close.

He loved her upside-down fashion of praise and endearment; never
guessing its Eastern significance--to avert the watchfulness of jealous
gods swift to spy out our dearest treasures, that hinder detachment, and
snatch them from us. "Such a big rude boy--and you tried to kill him
only because he did not understand your queer kind of mother! That you
will find often, Roy; because it is not custom. Everywhere it is the
same. For some kind of people not to be like custom is much worse than
not to be good. And that boy has a mother too much like custom. Not
surprising if he didn't understand."

"I made him though--I did," Roy exulted shamelessly, marvelling at his
father's cleverness, wondering how much he had told. "I hammered hard.
And I'm not sorry a bit. Nor Daddy isn't either."

For answer she gave him a convulsive little squeeze--and felt the
crackle of paper under his shirt. "Something hidden there! What is it,
Sonling?" she asked with laughing eyes: and suddenly shyness overwhelmed
him. For the moment he had forgotten his treasure; and now he was
wondering if he could show it--even to her.

"It is Tara--I think it's rather a secret----" he began.

"But I may see?" Then as he still hesitated, she added with grave
tenderness: "Only if you are wishing it, son of my heart. To-day--you
are a man."

From his father that recognition had been sufficiently uplifting. And
now--from her...! The subtle flattery of it and the deeper prompting of
his own heart demolished his budding attempt at reserve.

"I am--truly," he said: and she, sitting where his father had sat,
unfolded Tara's letter--and the bangle lay revealed.

Roy had not guessed how surprised she would be--and how pleased! She
gave a little quick gasp and murmured something he could not catch. Then
she looked at him with shining eyes, and her voice had its low serious
note that stirred him like music.

"Now--you are Bracelet-Bound, my son. So young!"

Roy felt a throb of pride. It was clearly a fine thing to be.

"Must I give a 'broidered bodice'?"

"I will broider a bodice--the most beautiful; and you shall give it.
Remember, Roy, it is not a little matter. It is for always."

"Even when I'm a grown-up man?"

"Yes, even then. If she shall ask from you any service, you must not
refuse--ever."

Roy wrinkled his forehead. He had forgotten that part of it. Tara might
ask anything. You couldn't tell with girls. He had a moment of
apprehension.

"But, Mummy, I don't think--Tara didn't mean all that. It's only--our
sort of game of play----"

Unerringly she read his thoughts, and shook her head at him with smiling
eyes, as when he made naughty faces about Aunt Jane.

"Too sacred thing for only game of play, Roy. By keeping the bracelet,
you are bound." Her smile deepened. "You were not afraid of the big rude
boy. Yet you are just _so_ much afraid--for Tara." She indicated the
amount with the rose-pink tip of her smallest finger. "Tara--almost like
sister--would never ask anything that could be wrong to do."

At this gentle rebuke he flushed and held his head a shade higher.

"I'm not afraid, Mummy. And I will keep the bracelet--and I _am_ bound."

"That is my brave son."

"She said--I am Prithvi Raj."

"She said true." Her hand caressed his hair. "Now you can run down and
tell you are forgiven."

"You too, Mummy?"

"In a little time. Not just now. But see----" Her brows flew up. "I was
coming to mend your poor bruises!"

"I haven't got any bruises."

The engaging touch of swagger delighted her. A man to-day--in very deed.
Her gaze dwelt upon him. It was as if she looked through the eyes of
her husband into the heart of her son.

Gravely she entered into his mood.

"That is good. Then we will just make you tidy--and one littlest dab for
this not-bruise on your cheek."

So much he graciously permitted: then he ran off to receive the ovation
awaiting him from Tara and Chris.




CHAPTER V.

     "Thy bosom is endearéd with all hearts,
      For there reigns love, and all love's loving parts."
                                         --SHAKSPERE.

     "Women are not only deities of the household fire, but the flame of
     the soul itself."--RABINDRANATH TAGORE.


Left to herself, Lilámani moved back to the window with her innate,
deliberate grace. There she sat down again, very still, resting her
cheek on her hand; drinking in the serenity, the translucent stillness
of clear green spaces robed in early evening light, like a bride arrayed
for the coming of her lord. The higher tree-tops were haloed with glory.
Young leaves of beeches and poplars gleamed like minted gold; and on the
lawn, the great twin beeches cast a stealthily encroaching continent of
shadow. Among the shrubs, under her window, birds were trilling out
their ecstasy of welcome to the sun, in his Hour of Union with
Earth--the Divine Mother, of whom every human mother is, in Eastern
eyes, a part, a symbol, however imperfect.

Yet, beneath her carven tranquillity, heart and spirit were deeply
stirred. For all Nevil's skill in editing the tale of Roy's
championship, she had read his hidden thoughts as unerringly as she had
divined Mrs Bradley's curiosity and faint hostility beneath the veneer
of good manners, not yet imparted to her son.

Helen Despard--wife of a retired Lieut.-Governor--had scores of
Anglo-Indian friends; but not all of them shared her enthusiasm for
India,--her sympathetic understanding of its peoples. Lilámani had too
soon discovered that the ardent declaration, "I love India," was apt to
mean merely that the speaker loved riding and dancing and sunshine and
vast spaces, with 'the real India' for a dim effective background. And
by now, she could almost tell at a glance which were the right and which
the wrong kind of Anglo-Indian, so far as she and Nevil were concerned.
It was not like Helen to inflict the wrong kind on her; but it had all
been Mrs Bradley's doing. She had been tactlessly insistent in her
demand to see the beautiful old garden and the famous artist-Baronet,
who had so boldly flouted tradition. Helen's lame excuses had been
airily dismissed, and the discourtesy of a point-blank refusal was
beyond her.

She had frankly explained matters to her beloved Lilámani as they
strolled together on the lawn, while Roy was enlightening Joe on the
farther side of the yew hedge.

His championship had moved her more profoundly than she dared let him
see without revealing all she knew. For the same reason, she could not
show Nevil her full appreciation of his tact and delicacy. How
useless--trying to hide his thoughts--he ought to know by now: but how
beautiful--how endearing!

That she, who had boldly defied all gods and godlings, all claims of
caste and family, should have reaped so rich a harvest----! For
her--high priestess of the inner life--that was the miracle of miracles:
scarcely less so to-day than in that crowning hour when she had placed,
her first man-child in the arms of her husband--still, at heart, lord of
her being. For the tale of her inner life might almost be told in two
words--she loved.

Even now--so many years after--she thrilled to remember how, in that one
magical moment, without nearness or speech or touch, the floating
strands of their destinies had become so miraculously entangled, that
neither gods nor godlings, nor household despots of East or West, had
power to sever them. From one swift pencil sketch, stolen without
leave--he sitting on the path below, she dreaming on the Hotel balcony
above--had blossomed the twin flower of their love: the deeper revealing
of marriage--its living texture woven of joy and pain; and the wonder of
their after-life together--a wonder that, to her ardent, sensitive
spirit, still seemed new every morning, like the coming of the sun. A
poet in essence, she shared with all true poets that sense of eternal
freshness in familiar things that, perhaps, more than any other gift of
God, keeps the bloom on every phase and every relation of life. By her
temperament of genius, she had quickened in her husband the flickering
spark that might else have been smothered under opposing influences.
Each, in a quite unusual degree, had fulfilled the life of the other,
and so wrought harmony from conflicting elements of race and religion
that seemed fated to wreck their brave adventure. To gain all, they had
risked all: and events had amazingly justified them.

Within a year of his ill-considered marriage Sir Nevil had astonished
all who knew him with the unique Exhibition of the now famous Ramayána
pictures, inspired by his wife: a series of arresting canvases, setting
forth the story of India's great epic, her confession of faith in the
two supreme loyalties--of the Queen to her husband, of the King to his
people. His daring venture had proved successful beyond hope. Artistic
and critical London had hailed him as a newcomer of promise, amounting
to genius: and Lilámani Sinclair, daughter of Rajputs, had only escaped
becoming the craze of the moment by her precipitate withdrawal to
Antibes, where she had come within an ace of losing all, largely through
the malign influence of Jane--her evil genius during those wonderful,
difficult, early months of marriage.

Nevil had returned to find himself a man of note; a prophet, even in his
own county, where feathers had been ruffled a little by his erratic
proceedings. Hence a discreetly changed attitude in the neighbourhood,
when Lilámani, barely nineteen, had presented her husband with a son.

But--for all the gracious condescension of the elderly, and the frank
curiosity of the young--only a discerning few had made any real headway
with this attractive, oddly disconcerting child of another continent;
this creature of queer reserves and aloofness and passionate pride of
race. The friendliest were baffled by her incomprehensible lack of
social instinct, the fruit of India's purdah system. Loyal wives and
mothers who 'adored' their children--yet spent most of their day in
pursuit of other interests--were nonplussed by her complete absorption
in the joys and sanctities of home. Yet, in course of time, her patent
simplicity and sincerity had disarmed prejudice. The least perceptive
could not choose but see that she was genuinely, intrinsically
different, not merely in the matter of iridescent silks and saris, but
in the very colour of her soul.

Not that they would have expressed it so. To talk about the soul and its
colour savoured of being psychic or morbid--which Heaven forbid! The
soul of the right-minded Bramleigh matron was a neutral-tinted, decently
veiled phantom, officially recognised morning and evening, also on
Sundays, but by no means permitted to interfere with the realities of
life.

The soul of Lilámani Sinclair--tremulous, passionate and aspiring--was a
living flame, that lighted her thoughts, her prayers, her desires; and
burned with clearer intensity because her religion had been stripped of
all feastings and forms and ceremonies by a marriage that set her for
ever outside caste. The inner Reality--free of earth-born mists and
clouds--none could take from her.

God manifest through Nature, the Divine Mother, must surely accept her
incense and sacrifice of the spirit, since no other was permitted. Her
father had given her that assurance; and to it she clung, as a child in
a crowd clings confidingly to the one familiar hand.

She was none the less eager to glean all she could assimilate of the
religion to which her husband conformed, but in which, it seemed, he did
not ardently believe. Her secret pangs on this score had been eased a
little by later knowledge that it was he who shielded her from tacit
pressure to make the change of faith expected of her by certain members
of his family. Jane--out of regard for his wishes--had refrained from
frontal attacks; but more than one flank movement had been executed by
means of the Vicar (a second cousin) and of Aunt Julia--a mild elder
Sinclair, addicted to foreign missions.

She had not told Nevil of these tentative fishings for her soul, lest
they annoy him and he put a final veto on them. Being well versed in
their Holy Book, she wanted to try and fathom their strange illogical
way of believing. The Christianity of Christ she could accept. It was a
faith of the heart and the life. But its crystallised forms and dogmas
proved a stumbling-block to this embarrassing slip of a Hindu girl, who
calmly reminded the Reverend Jeffrey Sale that the creed of his Church
had not really been inspired by Christ, but dictated by Constantine and
the Council of Nicea; who wanted to know why, in so great a religion,
was there no true worship of woman--no recognising, in the creative
principle, the Divine Motherhood of God? Finally, she had scandalised
them both by quarrelling with their exclusive belief in one single
instance, through endless ages, of the All-embracing, and All-creating
revealed in terms of human life. Was not that same idea a part of her
own religion--a world-wide doctrine of Indo-Aryan origin? Was every
other revealing false, except that one made to an unbelieving race only
two thousand years ago? To her--unregenerate but not unbelieving--the
message of Krishna seemed to strike a deeper note of promise. "Wherever
irreligion prevails and true religion declines, there I manifest myself
in a human form to establish righteousness and to destroy evil."

So she questioned and argued, in no spirit of irreverence, but simply
with the logic of her race, and the sweet reasonableness that is a vital
element of the Hindu faith at its best. But, after that final
confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the
field. And Lilámani, flung back on the God within, had evolved a private
creed of her own;--shedding the husks of Christian dogmas and the
grosser superstitions of her own faith, and weaving together the
mystical elements that are the life-blood of all religious beliefs.

For the lamps are many, but the flame is one....

       *       *       *       *       *

Not till the consummation of motherhood had lifted her status--in her
own eyes at least--did she venture to speak intimately with Nevil on
this vital matter. Though debarred from sharing of sacred ceremonies,
she could still aspire to be true _Sahardamini_--'spiritual helpmate.'
But to that end he also must co-operate; he must feel the deeper
need....

For many weeks after the coming of Roy she had hesitated, before she
found courage to adventure farther into the misty region of his faith
or unfaith, in things not seen.

"If I am bothering you with troublesome questions--forgive. But, in our
Indian way of marriage, it is taught that without sharing spiritual life
there cannot arrive true union," she had explained, not without secret
tremors lest she fail to evoke full response. And what such failure
would mean, for her, she could hardly expect him to understand.

But--by the blessing of Sarasvati, Giver of Wisdom--she had succeeded,
beyond hope, in dispelling the shy reluctance of his race to talk of the
'big little things.' Even to-day she could recall the thrill of that
moment:--he, kneeling beside the great chair in his studio--their
sanctuary; she holding the warm bundle of new life against her breast.

In one long look his eyes had answered her. "Nothing _short_ of 'true
union' will satisfy me," he had said with a quiet seriousness more
impressive than any lovers' fervour. "God knows if I'm worthy to enter
your inner shrine. But unwilling--never. In the 'big little things' you
are pre-eminent. I am simply your extra child--mother of my son."

That tribute was her charter of wifehood. It linked love with life; it
set her, once for all, beyond the lurking fear of Jane; and gave her
courage to face the promised visit to India, when Roy was six months
old, to present him to his grandfather, Sir Lakshman Singh.

They had stayed nearly a year; a wonderful year of increasing knowledge,
of fuller awakening ... and yet!

The ache of anticipation had been too poignant. The foolish half-hope
that Mátaji might relent and sanctify this first grandchild with her
blessing, was--in the nature of things Oriental--foredoomed to failure.
And not till she found herself back among sights and sounds hauntingly
familiar, did she fully awake to the changes wrought in her by marriage
with one of another race. For, if she had profoundly affected Nevil's
personality, he had no less profoundly influenced her sense of values
both in art and life.

She had also to reckon with the insidious process of idealising the
absent. Indian to the core, she was deeply imbued with the higher tenets
of Hindu philosophy--that lofty spiritual fabric woven of moonlight and
mysticism, of logic and dreams. But the new Lilámani, of Nevil's making,
could not shut her eyes to debasing forms of worship, to subterranean
caverns of gross superstition, and lurking demons of cruelty and
despair. While Nevil was imbibing impressions of Indian Art, Lilámani
was secretly weighing and probing the Indian spirit that inspired it;
sifting the grain from the chaff--a process closely linked with her
personal life; because, for India, religion and life are one.

But no shadow had clouded the joy of reunion with her father; for both
were adepts in the fine art of loving, the touchstone of every human
relation. And in talk with him she could straighten out her tangle of
impressions, her secret doubts and fears.

Also there had been Rama, elder brother, studying at college and loving
as ever to the sister transformed into English-wife--yet sister still.
And there had been fuller revelation of the wonders of India, in their
travels northward, even to the Himalayas, abode of Shiva, where Nevil
must go to escape the heat and paint more pictures--always more
pictures. Travelling did not suit her. She was too innately a creature
of shrines and sanctities. And in India--home of her spirit--there
seemed no true home for her any more....

       *       *       *       *       *

Five years later, when Roy was six and Christine two and a half, they
had been tempted to repeat their visit, even in the teeth of stern
protests from Jane, who regarded the least contact with India as fatal
to the children they had been misguided enough to bring into the world.
That second time, things had been easier; and there had been the added
delight of Roy's eager interest; his increasing devotion to the
grandfather, whose pride and joy in him rivalled her own.

"In this little man we have the hope of England and India!" he would
say, only half in joke. "With East and West in his soul--the best of
each--he will cast out the devils of conflict and suspicion and draw the
two into closer understanding of one another."

And, in secret, Lilámani dreamed and prayed that some day ... possibly
... who could tell----?

Yet, still there had persisted the sense of a widening gulf between her
and her own people, leaving her doubtful if she ever wanted to see India
again. The spiritual link would be there always; for the rest--was she
not wife of Nevil, mother of Roy? Ungrateful to grieve if a price must
be paid for such supreme good fortune.

For herself she paid it willingly. But--must Roy pay also? And in what
fashion? How could she fail to imbue him with the finest ideals of her
race? But how if the magnet of India proved too strong----? To hold the
scales even was a hard task for human frailty. And the time of her
absolute dominion was so swiftly slipping away from her. Always, in the
back of her mind, loomed the dread shadow of school; and her Eastern
soul could not accept it without a struggle. Only yesterday, Nevil had
spoken of it again--no doubt because Jane made trouble--saying too long
delay would be unfair for Roy. So it must be not later than September
next year. Just only fifteen months! Nevil had told her, laughing, it
would not banish him to another planet. But it would plunge him into a
world apart--utterly foreign to her. Of its dangers, its ideals, its
mysterious influences, she knew herself abysmally ignorant. She must
read. She must try and understand. She must believe Nevil knew
best--she, who had not enough knowledge and too much love. But she was
upheld by no sustaining faith in this English fashion of school, with
its decree of too early separation from the supreme influences of mother
and father--and home....

       *       *       *       *       *

Later on, that evening, when she knelt by Roy's bed for good-night talk
and prayer, his arms round her neck, his cool cheek against hers, the
rebellion she could not altogether stifle surged up in her afresh. But
she said not a word.

It was Roy who spoke, as if he had read her heart.

"Mummy, Aunt Jane's been talking to Daddy again about school. Oh, I do
_hate_ her!" (This in fervent parenthesis.)

She only tightened her hold and felt a small quiver run through him.

"Will it be fearfully soon? Has Daddy told you?"

"Yes, my darling. But not too fearfully soon, because he knows I don't
wish that."

"When?"

"Not till next year, in the autumn. September."

"Oh, you good--_goodest_ Mummy!"

He clutched her in an ecstasy of relief. For him a year's respite was a
lifetime. For her it would pass like a watch in the night.




CHAPTER VI.

     "Thou knowest how, alike, to give and take gentleness in due season
     ... the noble temper of thy sires shineth forth in thee."--PINDAR.


It was a clear mild Sunday afternoon of November;--pale sunlight, pale
sky, long films of laminated cloud. From the base of orange-tawny
cliffs, the sands swept out with the tide, shining like rippled silk,
where the sea had uncovered them; and sunlight was spilled in pools and
tiny furrows: the sea itself grey-green and very still, with streaks and
blotches of purple shadow flung by no visible cloud. The beauty and the
mystery of them fascinated Roy, who was irresistibly attracted by the
thing he could not understand.

He was sitting alone, near the edge of a wooded cliff; troubles
forgotten for the moment; imbibing it all....

His fifteen months of reprieve had flown faster than anyone could have
believed. It was over--everything was over. No more lessons with Tara
under their beech-tree. No more happy hours in the studio, exploring the
mysteries of 'maths' and Homer, of form and colour, with his father, who
seemed to know the 'Why' of everything. Worse than all--no more Mummy,
to make the whole world beautiful with the colours of her saris and the
loveliness and the dearness of her face, and her laugh and her voice.

It was all over. He was at school: not Coombe Friars, decreed by Aunt
Jane; but St Rupert's, because the Head was an artist friend of his
father, and would take a personal interest in Roy.

But the Head, however kind, was a distant being; and the boys, who could
not exactly be called kind, hemmed him in on every side. His shy
sensitive spirit shrank fastidiously from the strange faces and bodies
that herded round him, at meals, at bedtime, in the schoolroom, on the
playground; some curious and friendly; others curious and hostile:--a
very nightmare of boys, who would not let him be. And the more they
hemmed him in, the more he felt utterly, miserably alone.

As the endless weeks dragged on, there were interesting, even exciting
moments--when you hardly felt the ache. But other times--evenings and
Sundays--it came back sharper than ever. And in the course of those
weeks he had learnt a number of things not included in the school
curriculum. He had learnt that it was better to clench your teeth and
not cry out when your ears were tweaked or your arm twisted, or an
unexpected pin stuck into the soft part of your leg. But, inside him,
there burned a fire of rage and hate unsuspected by his tormentors. It
was not so much the pain, as the fact that they seemed to enjoy hurting
him, that he could neither understand nor forgive.

And by now he felt more than half ashamed of those early letters to his
mother, pouring out his misery of loneliness and longing; of frantic
threats to run away or jump off the cliff, that had so strangely failed
to soften his father's heart. It seemed, he knew all about it. He had
been through it himself. But Mummy did not know; so she got upset. And
Mummy must not be upset, whatever happened to Roy, who was advised to
'shut his teeth and play the man' and he would feel the happier for it.
That hard counsel had done more than hurt and shame him. It had steadied
him at the moment when he needed it most. He _had_ somehow managed to
shut his teeth and play the man; and he _was_ the happier for it
already.

So his faith in the father who wouldn't have Mummy upset, had increased
ten-fold: and the letter he had nearly torn into little bits was
treasured, like a talisman, in his letter-case--Tara's parting gift.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was on the Sunday of the frantic threats that he had wandered off
alone and discovered the little wood on the cliff in all its autumn
glory. It was a very ordinary wood of mixed trees with a group of tall
pines at one end. But for Roy any wood was a place of enchantment; and
this one had trees all leaning one way, with an air of crouching and
hurrying that made them seem almost alive; and the moment they closed on
him he was back in his old familiar world of fancy, where nothing that
happened in houses mattered at all....

Strolling on, careless and content, he had reached a gap where the trees
fell apart, framing blue deeps and distances of sea and sky. For some
reason they looked more blue, more beautiful so framed than seen from
the open shore; and there--sitting alone at the edge of all things, he
had felt strangely comforted; had resolved to keep his discovery a
profound secret; and to come there every Sunday for 'sanctuary'; to
think stories, or write poetry--a very private joy.

And this afternoon was the loveliest of all. If only the sheltering
leaves would not fall so fast!

He had been sitting a long time, pencil in hand, waiting for words to
come; when suddenly there came instead the very sounds he had fled
from--the talk and laughter of boys.

They seemed horribly close, right under the jutting cliff; and their
laughter and volleys of chaff had the jeering note he knew too well.
Presently his ear caught a high-pitched voice of defiance, that broke
off and fell to whimpering--a sound that made Roy's heart beat in quick
jerks. He could not catch what they were saying, nor see what they were
doing. He did not want to see. He hated them all.

Listening--yet dreading to hear--he recognised the voice of Bennet Ma.,
known--strictly out of earshot--as Scab Major. Is any school, at any
period, quite free of the type? It sounded more like a rough than an
ill-natured rag; but the whimpering unseen victim seemed to have no kick
in him: and Roy could only sit there wondering helplessly what people
were made of who found it amusing to hurt and frighten other people, who
had done them no harm....

And now the voice of Scab Major rang out distinctly: "After _that_
exhibition, he'll jolly well salaam to the lot of us, turn about. If
he's never learnt, we'll show him how."

The word salaam enlightened Roy. Yesterday there had been a buzz of
curiosity over the belated arrival of a new boy--an
Indian--weedy-looking and noticeably dark, with a sullen mouth and
shifty eyes. Roy, though keenly interested, had not felt drawn to him;
and a new self-protective shrinking had withheld him from proferring
advances that might only embroil them both. He had never imagined the
boy's colour would tell against him. Was _that_ what it meant--making
him salaam?

At the bare suspicion, shrinking gave place to rage. Beasts, they were!
If only he could take a flying leap on to them, or roll a few stones
down and scare them out of their wits. But he could not stir without
giving away his secret. And while he hesitated, his eye absently
followed a moving speck far off on the shining sand.

It was a boy on a bicycle--hatless, head in air, sitting very erect.
There was only one boy at St Rupert's who carried his head that way and
sat his bicycle just so. From the first Roy had watched him covertly,
with devout admiration; longing to know him, too shy to ask his name.
But so far the godlike one, surrounded by friends, had hardly seemed
aware of his existence.

Swiftly he came nearer; and with a sudden leap of his pulses, Roy knew
he had seen----

Springing off his bicycle, he flung himself into the little group of
tormentors, hitting out vigorously right and left. Sheer surprise and
the fury of his onslaught gave him the advantage; and the guilty
consciences of the less aggressive were his allies....

This was not cruelty, but championship: and Roy, determined to see all,
lay flat on his front--danger of discovery forgotten--grabbing the edge
of the cliff, that curved inward, exulting in the triumph of the
deliverer and the scattering of the foe.

Bennet Major, one of the first to break away, saw and seized the
prostrate bicycle. At that Roy lost his head; leaned perilously over and
shouted a warning, "Hi! Look out!"

But the Scab was off like the wind: and the rest, startled by a voice
from nowhere, hurriedly followed suit.

Roy, raising himself on his hands, gave a convulsive wriggle of
joy--that changed midway, into a backward jerk ... too late!

The crumbling edge was giving way under his hands, under his body. No
time for terror. His jerk gave the finishing touch....

Down he went--over and over; his Sunday hat bouncing gaily on before;
nothing to clutch anywhere; but by good luck, no stones----

The thought flashed through him, "I'm killed!" And five seconds later he
rolled--breathless and sputtering--to the feet of the two remaining
boys, who had sprung back just in time to escape the dusty avalanche.

There he lay--shaken and stupefied--his eyes and mouth full of sand; and
his pockets and boots and the inside of his shirt. Nothing seemed to be
broken. And he wasn't killed!

Some one was flicking the sand from his face; and he opened his eyes to
find the deliverer kneeling beside him, amazed and concerned.

"I say, that was a pretty average tumble! What sort of a lark were you
up to? Are you hurt?"

"Only bumped a bit," Roy panted, still out of breath. "I spec' it
startled you. I'm sorry."

The bareheaded one laughed. "You startled the Scab's minions a jolly
sight more. Cleared the course! And a rare good riddance--eh,
Chandranath?"

To that friendly appeal the Indian boy vouchsafed a muttered assent. He
stood a little apart, looking sullen, irresolute, and thoroughly
uncomfortable, the marks of tears still on his face.

"Thanks veree much. I am going now," he blurted out abruptly; and Roy
felt quite cross with him. Pity had evaporated. But the other boy's
good-humour seemed unassailable.

"If you're not in a frantic hurry, we can go back together."

Chandranath shook his head. "I don't wish--to go back. I would
rather--be by myself."

"As you please. Those cads won't bother you again."

"If they do--I will _kill_ them."

He made that surprising announcement in a fierce whisper. It was the
voice of another race.

And the English boy's answer was equally true to type. "Right you are.
Give me fair warning and I'll lend a hand."

Chandranath stared blankly. "But--they are of _your_ country," he said;
and turning, walked off in the opposite direction.

"A queer fish," Roy's new friend remarked. "Quite out of water here.
Awfully stupid sending him to an English school."

"Why?" asked Roy. He was sitting up and dusting himself generally.

"Oh, because----" the boy frowned pensively at the horizon. "That takes
some explaining, if you don't know India."

"D'_you_ know India?" Roy could not keep the eagerness out of his tone.

"Rather. I was born there. North-West Frontier. My name's Desmond. We
all belong there. I was out till seven and a half, and I'll go back like
a bird directly I'm through with Marlborough."

He spoke very quietly; but under the quietness Roy guessed there was
purpose--there was fire. This boy knew exactly what he meant to do in
his grown-up life--that large, vague word crowded with exciting
possibilities. He stood there, straight as an arrow, looking out to sea;
and straight as an arrow he would make for his target when school and
college let go their hold. Something of this Roy dimly apprehended: and
his interest was tinged with envy. If they all 'belonged,' were they
Indians, he wondered; and decided not, because of Desmond's coppery
brown hair. He wanted to understand--to hear more. He almost forgot he
was at school.

"We belong too----" he ventured shyly; and Desmond turned with a
kindling eye.

"Good egg! What Province?"

"Rajputana."

"Oh--miles away. Which service?"

Roy looked puzzled. "I--don't know You see--it's my mother--that
belongs. My grandfather's a Minister in a big Native State out there."

"Oh--I say!"

There was a shadow of change in his tone. His direct look was a little
embarrassing. He seemed to be considering Roy in a new light.

"I--I wouldn't have thought it," he said; and added a shade too
quickly: "_We_ don't belong--that way. We're all Anglo-Indians--Frontier
Force." (Clearly a fine thing to be, thought Roy, mystified, but
impressed.) "Is your father in the Political?"

More conundrums! But, warmed by Desmond's friendliness, Roy grew bolder.

"No. He hates politics. He's just--just a gentleman."

Desmond burst out laughing.

"Top hole! He couldn't do better than that. But--if your mother--he must
have been in India?"

"Afterwards--they went. I've been too. He found Mother in France. He
painted her. He's a rather famous painter."

"What name?"

"Sinclair."

"Oh, I've heard of him.--And your people are always at home. Lucky
beggar!" He was silent a moment watching Roy unlace his boot. Then he
asked suddenly, in a voice that tried to sound casual: "I say--have you
told any of the other boys--about India--and your Mother?"

"No--why? Is there any harm?" Roy was on the defensive at once.

"Well--no. With the right sort, it wouldn't make a scrap of difference.
But you can see what some of 'em are like--Bennet Ma. and his crew.
Making a dead set at that poor blighter, just because he isn't their
colour----"

Roy started. "Was it only because of _that_?" he asked with emphasis.

"'Course it was. Plain as a pike-staff. I suppose they'd bullied him
into cheeking them. And they were hacking him on to his knees--forcing
him to salaam." Twin sparks sprang alight in his eyes. "That sort of
thing--makes me feel like a kettle on the boil. Wish I'd _had_ a boiling
kettle to empty over Bennet."

"So do I--the mean Scab! And he's pinched your bicycle."

"No fear! You bet we'll find it round the corner. He wouldn't have the
spunk to go right off with it. But look here--what I mean is"--hesitant,
yet resolute, he harked back to the main point--"if any of that lot
came to know--about India and--your mother, well--they're proper
skunks, some of them. They might say things that would make _you_ feel
like a kettle on the boil."

"If they did--I would kill them."

Roy stated the fact with quiet deliberation, and without noticing that
he had repeated the very words of the vanished victim.

This time Desmond did not treat it as a joke.

"'Course you would," he agreed gravely. "And that sort of shindy's no
good for the school. So I thought--better give you the tip----"

"I--see," Roy said in a low voice, without looking up. He did not see;
but he began dimly to guess at a so far unknown and unsuspected state of
mind.

Desmond sat silent while he shook the sand out of his boots. Then he
remarked in an easier tone: "Quite sure there's no damage?"

Roy, now on his feet, found his left leg uncomfortably stiff--and said
so.

"Bad luck! We must walk it off. I'll knead it first, if you like. I've
seen them do it on the Border."

His unskilled manipulation hurt a good deal; but Roy, overcome with
gratitude, gave no sign.

When it was over they set out for their homeward tramp, and found the
bicycle, as Desmond had prophesied. He refused to ride on; and Roy
limped beside him, feeling absurdly elated. The godlike one had come to
earth indeed! Only the remark about his mother still rankled; but he
felt shy of returning to the subject. The change in Desmond's manner had
puzzled him. Roy glanced admiringly at his profile--the straight nose,
the long mouth that smiled so readily, the resolute chin, a little in
the air. A clear case of love at sight, schoolboy love; a passing phase
of human efflorescence; yet, in passing, it will sometimes leave a mark
for life. Roy, instinctively a hero-worshipper, registered a new
ambition--to become Desmond's friend.

Presently, as if aware of his thought, Desmond spoke.

"I say, Sinclair, how old are you? You seem less of a kid than most of
the new lot."

"I'm ten and a half," said Roy, wishing it was eleven.

"Bit late for starting. I'm twelve. Going on to Marlborough next year."

Roy felt crushed. In a year he would be gone! Still--there were three
more terms: and _he_ would go on to Marlborough too. He would insist.

"Does Scab Ma. bother you much?" Desmond asked with a friendly twinkle.

"Now and then--nothing to fuss about."

Roy's nonchalance, though plucky, was not quite convincing.

"Righto! I'll head him off. He isn't keen to knock up against me." A
pause. "How about sitting down my way at meals? You don't look awfully
gay at your end."

"I'm not. It would be ripping."

"Good. We'll hang together, eh? Because of India; because we both
belong--in a different way. And we'll stick up for that miserable little
devil Chandranath."

"Yes--we will." (The glory of that 'we.') "All the same,--I don't much
like the look of him"

"No more don't I. He's the wrong 'ját.' He won't stay long--you'll see.
But still--he shan't be bullied by Scabs, because he's not the same
colour outside. You see that sort of thing in India too. My father's
fearfully down on it, because it makes more bad blood than anything;
I've heard him say that it's just the blighters who buck about the
superior race who do all the damage with their inferior manners. Rather
neat--eh?"

Roy glowed. "Your father must be a splendid sort. Is he a soldier?"

"Rath_er_! He's a V.C. He got it saving a Jemadar--a Native Officer."

Roy caught his breath.

"I would awfully like to hear how----"

Desmond told him how....

It was a wonderful walk. By the end of it Roy no longer felt a lonely
atom in a strange world. He had found something better than his
Sanctuary--he had found a friend.

Looking back, long afterwards, he recognised that Sunday as the
turning-point....

Later in the evening he poured it all out to his mother in four
closely-written sheets.

But not a word about herself, or Desmond's friendly warning, which
still puzzled him. He worried over it a little before he fell asleep. It
was the very first hint--given, in all friendliness--that the mere fact
of having an Indian mother might go against you, in some people's eyes.
Not the right ones, of course; but still--in the nature of things,--he
couldn't make it out. That would come later.

At the time its only effect was to deepen his private satisfaction at
having hammered Joe Bradley; to quicken his attitude of championship
towards his mother and towards India, till ultimately the glow of his
fervent devotion fused them both into one dominant idea.




CHAPTER VII.

     "He it is--the innermost one who awakens my being with his deep
     hidden touches."--TAGORE.


Lilámani read and re-read that letter curled among her cushions in the
deep window-seat of the studio, a tower room with tall windows looking
north, over jagged pine tops, to the open moor.

And while she read, Nevil stood at his easel, seizing and recording, the
unconscious grace of her pose, the rapt stillness of her face. He was
never weary of painting her--never quite satisfied with the result;
always within an ace of achieving the one perfect picture that should
immortalise a gleam from her inner uncaptured loveliness--the essence of
personality that eternally foils the sense, while it sways the spirit.
Impossible, of course. One might as well try and catch the fragrance of
a rose, the bloom of an April dawn, or any other fragment of the world's
unseizable beauty But there remained the joy of pursuing--and pursuing,
not achieving, is the salt of life.

Something in her pose, her absorption--lips just parted, shadow of
lashes on her cheek, primrose-pale sari against the green velvet
curtain--had fired him, lit a spark of inspiration....

If he made a decent thing of it, Roy should have it for a companion to
the Antibes pastel: her two aspects--wife of Nevil; mother of Roy. Later
on, the boy would understand. His star stood higher than usual, just
then. For Nevil had detested writing that letter of rebuke; had not
dared show it to his wife; and Roy had taken it like a man. No more
lamentations, so far. Certainly not on this occasion, judging by her
rapt look, her complete absorption that gave him the chance of catching
her unawares.

For, in truth, she was unaware; lost to everything but the joy of
contact with her son. The pang of parting had been dulled to a hidden
ache; but always the blank was there, however amply filled with other
claims on heart and spirit. A larger schoolroom now: and Nevil, with his
new Eastern picture on hand, making constant demands on her--as
usual--in the initial stages; till the subject of the moment eclipsed
everything, every one--sometimes even herself. Her early twinges of
jealousy, during that phase, rarely troubled her now. As wife and
mother, she better understood the dual allegiance--the twofold strain of
the creative process, whether in spirit or flesh. Now she knew that,
when art seemed most exclusively to claim him, his need was greater, not
less, for her woman's gift of self-effacing tenderness, of personal
physical service. And through deeper love, came clearer insight. She saw
Nevil--the artist--as a veritable Yogi, impelled to ceaseless striving
for mastery of himself, his atmosphere, his medium: saw her wifely love
and service as the life-giving impetus without which he might flag and
never reach the heights.

Women of wide social and intellectual activities might raise perplexed
eyebrows over her secluded life, still instinct with the 'spirit of
purdah.' She found the daily pattern of it woven with threads so richly
varied that to cherish a hidden grief seemed base ingratitude. Yet
always--at the back of things--lurked her foolish mother-anxieties, her
deep unuttered longing. And letters were cold comfort. In the first few
weeks she had come to dread opening them. Always the bitter cry of
loneliness and longing for home. What was it Nevil had said to make so
surprising a change? Craving to know, she feared to ask; and more than
suspected that he blessed her for refraining.

And now came this long, exultant letter, written in the first flush of
his great discovery----

And as she read on, she became aware of a new sensation. This was
another kind of Roy. On the first page he was pouring out his heart in
careless unformed phrases. By the end of the second, his tale had hold
of him; he was enjoying--perhaps unaware--the exercise of a
newly-awakened gift. And, looking up, at last, to share it with Nevil,
she caught him in the act of tracing a curve of her sari in mid-air.

With a playful movement--pure Eastern--she drew it half over her face.

"Oh, Nevil--you wicked! I never guessed----"

"That was the beauty of it. I make my salaams to Roy! What's he been up
to that it takes four sheets to confess?"

"Not confessing. Telling a tale. It will surprise you."

"Let's have a look."

She gave him the letter; and while he read it, she intently watched his
face. "The boy'll write--I shouldn't wonder," was his verdict, handing
back her treasure, with an odd half-smile in his eyes.

"And you were hoping--he would paint?" she said, answering his thought.

"Yes, but--scarcely expecting. Sons are a perverse generation. I'm glad
he's tumbled on his feet and found a pal."

"Yes. It is good."

"We'll invite young Desmond here and inspect him, eh?"

"Yes--we will."

He was silent a moment, considering her profile--humanly, not
artistically. "Jealous, is she? The hundredth part of a fraction?"

"Just so much!" she admitted in her small voice. "But underneath--I am
glad. A fine fellow. We will ask him--later."

The projected invitation proved superfluous. Roy's next letter informed
them that after Christmas Desmond was coming for ten whole days. He had
promised.

He kept his promise. After Christmas he came and saw--and conquered. At
first they were all inclined to be secretly critical of the new element
that looked as if it had come to stay. For Roy's discreetly repressed
admiration was clear as print to those who could read him like an open
page. And, on the whole, it was not surprising, as they were gradually
persuaded to admit. There was more in Lance Desmond than mere grace and
good looks, manliness and a ready humour. In him two remarkable
personalities were blended with a peculiarly happy result.

They discovered, incidentally, his wonderful gift of music. "Got it off
my mother," was his modest disclaimer. "She and my sister are simply
top-hole. We do lots of it together."

His intelligent delight in pictures and books commended him to Nevil;
but, at twelve and a half, skating, tramping, and hockey matches held
the field. Sometimes--when it was skating--Tara and Chris went with
them. But they made it clear, quite unaggressively, that the real point
was to go alone.

Day after day, from her window, Lilámani watched them go, across the
radiant sweep of snow-covered lawn; and, for the first time, where Roy
was concerned, she knew the prick of jealousy,--a foretaste of the day
when her love would no longer fill his life. Ashamed of her own
weakness, she kept it hid--or fancied she did so; but the little
stabbing ache persisted, in spite of shame and stoic resolves.

Tara and Christine also knew the horrid pang; but they knew neither
shame not stoic resolves. Roy mustn't suspect, of course; but they told
each other, in strictest confidence, that they hated Desmond; firmly
believing they spoke the truth. So it was particularly vexatious to find
that the moment he favoured them with the most casual attention, they
were at his feet.

But that was their own private affair. Whether they resented, or whether
they adored, the boys remained entirely unconcerned, entirely absorbed
in each other. It was Desmond's opinion of them that mattered supremely
to Roy; in particular--Desmond's opinion of his mother. After those
first puzzling remarks and silences, Roy had held his peace; had not
even shown Desmond her picture. His invitation accepted, he had simply
waited, in transcendent faith, for the moment of revelation. And now he
had his reward. After a prelude of mutual embarrassment, Lance had
succumbed frankly to Lady Sinclair's unexpected charm and her shy
irresistible overtures to friendship:--so frankly, that he was able,
now, to hint at his earlier perplexity.

He had seen no Indian women, he explained, except in bazaars or in
service; so he couldn't quite understand, until his own mother made
things clearer to him and recommended him to go and see for himself. Now
he had seen--and succumbed: and Roy's very private triumph was
unalloyed. Second only to that triumph, the really important outcome of
their glorious Ten Days was that, with Desmond's help, Roy fought the
battle of going on to Marlborough when he was twelve--and won....

It was horrid leaving them all again; but it did make a wonderful
difference knowing there was Desmond at the other end; and together they
would champion that doubtfully grateful victim--Chandranath. Their zeal
proved superfluous. Chandranath never reappeared at St Rupert's. Perhaps
his people had arrived at Desmond's conclusion, that he was not the
right "ját" for an English school. In any case, his disappearance was a
relief--and Roy promptly forgot all about him.

Years later--many years later--he was to remember.

       *       *       *       *       *

After St Rupert's--Marlborough:--and just at first he hated it, as he
had hated St Rupert's, though in a different fashion. Here it was not so
much the longing for home, as a vague yet deepening sense that, in some
vital way--not yet fully understood--he was different from his fellows
But once he reached the haven of Desmond's study, the good days began in
earnest. He could read and dream along his own lines. He could scribble
verse or prose, when he ought to have been preparing quite other things;
and the results, good or bad, went straight to his mother.

Needless to say, she found them all radiant with promise; here and there
a flicker of the divine spark: and, throughout the years of transition,
the locked and treasured book that held them was the sheet-anchor to
which she clung, till the new Roy should be forged out of the
backslidings and renewals incidental to that time of stress and
becoming. What matter their young imperfections, when--for her--it was
as if Roy's spirit reached out across the dividing distance and touched
her own. In the days when he seemed most withdrawn, that dear illusion
was her secret bread.

And all the while, subconsciously, she was drawing nearer to the given
moment of religious surrender that would complete the spiritual link
with husband and children. As the babies grew older, she saw, with
increasing clearness, the increasing difficulty of her position.
Frankly, she had tried not to see it. Her free spirit, having reached
the Reality that transcends all forms, shrank from returning to the
dogmas, the limitations of a definite creed. In her eyes, it seemed a
step backward. Belief in a personal God, above and beyond the Universe,
was reckoned by her own faith a primitive conception; a stage on the way
to that ultima Thule where the soul of man perceives its own inherent
divinity, and the knower becomes the Known, as notes become music, as
the river becomes the sea. It was this that troubled her logical mind
and delayed decision.

But the final deciding factor--though he knew it not--was Roy. By reason
of her own share in him, religion would probably mean more to him than
to Nevil. For his sake--for the sake of Christine and Tara and the
babies, fast sprouting into boys--she felt at last irresistibly
constrained to accept, with certain mental reservations, the tenets of
her husband's creed; and so qualify herself to share with them all its
outward and visible forms, as already she shared its inward and
spiritual grace.

The conviction sprang from no mere sentimental impulse. It was the
unhurried work of years. So--when there arose the question of Roy's
confirmation, and Tara's, at the same Easter-tide, conviction blossomed
into decision, as simply and naturally as the bud of a flower opens to
the sun. That is the supreme virtue of changes not imposed from without.
When the given moment came--the inner resolve was there.

Quite simply she spoke of it to Nevil, one evening over the studio fire.
And behold a surprise awaited her. She had rarely seen him more deeply
moved. From the time of Roy's coming, he told her, he had cherished the
hidden hope.

"Yet too seldom you have spoken of such things--why?" she asked, moved
in her turn and amazed.

"Because from the first I made up my mind I would not have it, except
in your own way and in your own time. I knew the essence of it was in
you. For the rest--I preferred to wait till you were ready--Sita Devi."

"Nevil--lord of me!" She slipped to her knees beside him. "I _am_ ready.
But oh, you wicked, how _could_ I know that all the time you were caring
that much in your secret heart."

He gathered her close and said not a word.

So the great matter was settled, with no outward fuss or formalities.
She would be baptized before Roy came home for the Easter holidays and
his confirmation.

"But not here--not Mr Sale," she pleaded. "Let us go away quietly to
London--we two. Let it be in that great Church, where first the thought
was born in my heart that some day ... this might be."

He could refuse her nothing. Jeffrey might feel aggrieved when he knew.
But after all--this was their own affair. Time enough afterwards to let
in the world and its thronging notes of exclamation.

Roy was told when he came home. For imparting such intimate news, she
craved the response of his living self. And if Nevil's satisfaction
struck a deeper note, it was simply that Roy was very young and had
always included her Hindu-ness in the natural order of things.

Wonderful days! Preparing the children, with Helen's help; preparing
herself, in the quiet of her "House of Gods"--a tiny room above the
studio--in much the same spirit as she had prepared for the great
consecration of marriage, with vigil and meditation and unobtrusive
fasting--noted by Nevil, though he said no word.

Crowning wonder of all, that golden Easter morning of her first
Communion with Roy and Tara, with Nevil and Helen:--unfolding of heart
and spirit, of leaf and blossom; dual miracle of a world new made....


END OF PHASE I.




PHASE II.

THE VISIONARY GLEAM





CHAPTER I.

     "Youth is lifted on Wings of his strong hope and soaring valour;
     for his thoughts are above riches."--PINDAR.


Oxford on a clear, still evening of June: silver reaches of Isis and
Cher; meadows pied with moon daisies and clover, and the rose madder
bloom of ripe grasses; the trill of unseen birds tuning up for evensong;
the passing and repassing of boats and canoes and punts, gay with
cushions and summer frocks; all bathed in the level radiance that steals
over earth like a presence in the last hours of a summer day....

Oxford--shrine of the oldest creeds and the newest fads--given over, for
one hilarious week, to the yearly invasion of mothers and sisters and
cousins, and girls that were neither; especially girls that were
neither....

Two of the punts, clearly containing one party, kept close enough
together for the occupants to exchange sallies of wit, or any blissful
foolishness in keeping with the blissfully foolish mood of a moonlight
picnic up the river in 'Commem.'

Roy Sinclair's party boasted the distinction of including one mother,
Lady Despard; and one grandfather, Cuthbert Broome; and Roy himself--a
slender, virile figure in flannels, and New College tie--was poling the
first punt.

As in boyhood, so now, his bearing and features were Nevil incarnate.
But to the shrewd eye of Broome the last seemed subtly overlaid with the
spirit of the East--a brooding stillness wrought from the clash of
opposing forces within. When he laughed and talked it vanished. When he
fell silent, and drifted away from his surroundings, it reappeared.

It was precisely this hidden quality, so finely balanced, that
intrigued the brain of the novelist, as distinct from the heart of the
godfather. Which was the real Roy? Which would prove the decisive factor
at the critical corners of his destiny? To what heights would it carry
him--into what abyss might it plunge him--that gleam from the ancient
soul of things? Would India--and his young glorification of India--be,
for him, a spark of inspiration or a stone of stumbling?

Broome had not seen much of the boy, intimately, since the New Year; and
he did not need spectacles to discern some inner ferment at work. Roy
was more talkative and less communicative than usual; and Broome let him
talk, reading between the lines. He knew to a nicety the moment when a
chance question will kill confidence--or evoke it. He suspected one of
those critical corners. He also suspected one of those Indian cousins of
his: delightful, both of them; but still....

The question remained, which was it--the girl or the boy?

The girl, Arúna--student at Somerville College--was reclining among vast
blue and pink cushions in the bows, pensively twirling a Japanese
parasol, one arm flung round the shoulders of her companion--a
fellow-student; fair and stolid and good-humoured. Broome summed her up
mentally: "Tactless but trustworthy. Anglo-Saxon to the last button on
her ready-made Shantung coat and the blunted toe of her white sučde
shoe."

Arúna--in plain English, Dawn--was quite arrestingly otherwise. Not
beautiful, like Lilámani, nor quite so fair of skin; but what the face
lacked in symmetry was redeemed by lively play of expression, piquante
tilt of nose and chin, large eyes, velvet-dark like brown pansies. The
modelling of the face--its breadth and roundness and upturned
aspect--gave it a pansy-like air. Over her simple summer frock of
carnation pink she wore a paler sari flecked with gold; and two ropes of
coral beads enhanced the deeper coral of her full lower lip. Not yet
eighteen, she was studying "pedagogy" for the benefit of her less
adventurous sisters in Jaipur.

Clearly a factor to be reckoned with, this creature of girlish laughter
and high purpose; a woman to the tips of her polished finger nails. Yet
Broome had by no means decided that it _was_ the girl----

After Desmond--Dyán Singh: each, in his turn and type, own brother to
Roy's complex soul. Broome--in no insular spirit--preferred the earlier
influence. But Desmond had sped like an arrow to the Border, where his
eldest brother commanded their father's old regiment; and Dyán
Singh--handsome and fiery, young India at its best--reigned in his
stead. The two were of the same college. Dyán, twelve months younger,
looked the older by a year or more. Face and form bore the Rajput stamp
of virility, of a racial pride, verging on arrogance; and the Rajput
insignia of breeding--noticeably small hands and feet.

He was poling the second punt with less skill and assurance than Roy.
His attention was palpably distracted by a vision of Tara among the
cushions in the bows; an arm linked through her mother's, as though
defending her against the implication of being older than any one else,
or in the least degree out of it because of that trifling
detail--tacitly admitted, while hotly denied; which was Tara all over.

Certainly Lady Despard still looked amazingly young; still emanated the
vital charm she had transmitted to her child. And Tara at twenty, in
soft butter-coloured frock with roses in her hat, was a vision alluring
enough to distract any young man from concentration on a punt pole.
Vivid, eager and venturesome, singularly free from the bane of
self-consciousness; not least among her graces--and rare enough to be
notable--was the grace of her chivalrous affection for the older
generation. In Tara's eyes, girls who patronised their mothers and
tolerated their fathers were anathema. It was a trait certain to impress
Roy's Rajput cousin; and Broome wondered whether Helen was alive to the
disturbing possibility; whether, for all her genuine love of the East,
she would acquiesce....

Only the other day, it seemed, he and she had sat together among the
rocks of the dear old Cap, listening to Nevil's amazing news. She it was
who had championed his choice of a bride: and Lilámani had justified her
championship to the full. But then--Lilámani was one in many thousands;
and this affair would be the other way about:--Tara, the apple of their
eye; Tara, with her wild-flower face and her temperament of clear
flame----?

How sharply they tugged at his middle-aged heart, these casual and
opinionated young things, with their follies and fanaticisms, their
Jacob's ladders hitched perilously to the stars; with their triumphs and
failures and disillusions all ahead of them; airily impervious to
proffered help and advice from those who would agonise to serve them if
they could....

A jarring bump in the small of his back cut short his flagrantly
Victorian musings. Dyán's punt was the offender; and Dyán himself,
clutching the pole that had betrayed him, was almost pitched into the
river.

His achievement was greeted by a shout of laughter, and an ironic
"Played indeed!" from Cuthbert Gordon--Broome's grandson. Roy, tumbled
from some starry dream of his own, flashed out imperiously: "Look alive,
you blithering idiot. 'Who are you a-shoving'?"

The Rajput's face darkened; but before he could retort, Tara had risen
and stepped swiftly to his side. Her fingers closed on the pole; and she
smiled straight into his clouded eyes.

"Let _me_, please. I'm sick of lazing and fearfully keen. And I can't
allow my Mother to be drownded by anyone _but_ me. I'd be obliged to
murder the other body, which would be awkward--for us both!"

"Miss Despard--there is no danger----" he muttered--impervious to
humour; and--as if by chance--one of his hands half covered hers.

"Let go," she commanded, so low that no one else knew she had spoken; so
sternly that Dyán's fingers unclosed as if they had touched fire.

"Now, don't fuss. Go and sit down," she added, in her lighter vein.
"You've done your share. And you're jolly grateful to me, really. But
too proud to own it!"

"_Not_ too proud to obey you," he muttered.

She saw the words rather than heard them; and he turned away without
daring to meet her eyes.

It all passed in a few seconds, but it left him tingling with repressed
rage. He had made a fool of himself in her eyes; had probably given away
his secret to the whole party. After all, what matter? He could not
much longer have kept it hidden. By the touch of hands and his daring
words he had practically told her....

As he settled himself, her clear voice rang out: "Wake up, Roy! I'll
race you to the backwater."

They raced to the backwater; and Tara won by half a length, amid cheers
from the men.

"Well, you see, I _had_ to let you," Roy explained, as she confronted
him, flushed with triumph. "Seemed a shame to cut you out. Not as if you
were a giddy suffragette!"

"_Qui s'excuse--s'accuse!_" she retorted. "Anyway--_I'm_ the winner."

"Right you are. The way of girls was ever so. No matter what line you
take, it's safe to be the wrong one."

"Hark at the Cynic!" jeered young Cuthbert. "Were you forty on the 9th,
or was it forty-five?"

Roy grinned. "Good old Cuthers! Don't exhaust yourself trying to be
funny! Fish out the drinks. We've earned them, haven't we--High Tower
Princess?" The last, confidentially, for Tara's ear alone.

And Dyán, seeing the smile in her eyes, felt jealousy pierce him like a
red-hot wire.

The supper, provided by Roy and Dyán, was no scratch wayside meal, but
an ambrosial affair:--salmon mayonnaise, ready mixed; glazed joints of
chicken; strawberries and cream; lordly chocolate boxes; sparkling
moselle--and syphons for the abstemious.

It was a lively meal: Roy, dropped from the clouds, the film of the East
gone from his face, was simply Nevil again; even as young Cuthbert, with
his large build and thatch of tawny hair, was a juvenile edition of
Broome. And the older man, watching them, bandying chaff with them,
renewed his youth for one careless golden hour.

The punts were ranged alongside; and they all ate together, English and
Indian. No irksome caste rules on this side of the water; no hint of
condescension in the friendly attitude of young Oxford. Nothing to jar
the over-sensibility of young India--prone to suspect slight where no
thought of it exists; too often, also, treated to exhibitions of
ill-bred arrogance that undo in an hour the harmonising work of years.

Dyán sat by Tara, anticipating her lightest need; courage rising by
leaps and bounds. Arúna, from her nest of cushions, exchanged lively
sallies with Roy. Petted by a college full of friendly English girls,
she had very soon lost what little shyness she ever possessed. Now and
again, when his eyes challenged hers, she would veil them and watch him
surreptitiously; one moment approving his masculine grace; the next,
boldly asking herself: "Does he see how I am wearing the favourite
sari--and how my coral beads make my lips look red?" And again: "Why do
they make foolish talk of a gulf between East and West?"

To that profound question came no answer in words; only in hidden
stirrings, that she preferred to ignore. Both brother and sister had
persuaded themselves that talk of a gulf was exaggerated by unfriendly
spirits. They, at all events, having built their bridge, took its
stability for granted. Children of an emotional race, it sufficed to
discover that they loved the cool green freshness of England, the
careless kindly freedom of her life and ways; the hum of her restless,
smoky, all-embracing London; her miles and miles of books and pictures.
Above everything they loved Oxford, where all were brothers in
spirit--with a proper sense of difference between the brothers of one's
own college and the mere outsider:--Oxford, at this particular hour of
this particular June evening. And at this actual moment, they loved
salmon mayonnaise and crushed strawberries fully as much as any other
manifestation of the delectable land.

And down in subconscious depths--untroubled by the play of surface
emotions--burned their passionate, unreasoned love of India that any
chance breath might rekindle to a flame.

Presently, as the sun drew down to earth, trees and meadows swam in a
golden haze. Arrows of gold, stealing through alders and willows,
conjured mere leaves into discs of pure green light. Clouds of pollen
brightened to dust of gold. In the near haze midges flickered; and,
black against the brightness, swallows wheeled and dipped, uttering thin
cries in the ecstasy of their evening flight.

On the two punts in the backwater a great peace descended after the
hilarity of their feast. Clouds of cigarette smoke kept midges at bay.
In the deepening stillness small sounds asserted themselves--piping of
gnats, the trill of happy birds, snatches of disembodied laughter and
talk from other parties in other punts, somewhere out of sight....

Only Arúna did not smoke; and Emily Barnard, her fanatic devotee,
retired with her to the bank, where they made a lazy pretence of
"washing up." But Arúna's eyes _would_ stray toward the recumbent figure
of Roy, when she fancied Emmie was not looking. And Emmie--who could see
very well without looking--wished him at the bottom of the river.

Propped on an elbow, he lay among Arúna's cushions, his senses stirred
by the faint carnation scent she used, enlarging on his latest
enthusiasm--Rabindranath Tagore, the first of India's poet-saints to
challenge the ethics of the withdrawn life. When the mood was on, the
veil of reserve swept aside, he could pour out his ardours, his
protests, his theories, in an eloquent rush of words. And
Arúna--absently wiping spoons and forks--listened entranced. He seemed
to be addressing no one in particular; but as often as not his gaze
rested on Broome, as though he were indirectly conveying to him thoughts
he felt shy of airing when they were alone.

A pause in the flow of his talk left a space of silence into which the
encompassing peace and radiance stole like an inflowing tide. None loved
better than Roy the ghostly music of silence; but to-night his brain was
filled with the music of words--not his own.

"Just listen to this," he said, without preamble. His eyes took on their
far-away look; his voice dropped a tone.

"The night is night of mid-May; the breeze is the breeze of the South.

"From my heart comes out and dances the image of my Desire.

"The gleaming vision flits on.

"I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me astray.

"I seek what I cannot get; I get what I do not seek."

To that shining fragment of truth and beauty, his audience paid the
fitting tribute of silence; and his gaze--returning to earth--caught, in
Tara's eyes, a reflection of his exalted mood. Dyán saw it also; and
once more that red-hot wire pierced his heart.

It passed in a second; and Roy was speaking again--not to Tara, but to
her mother.

"Is there any poet, East or West, who can _quite_ so exquisitely capture
the essence of a mood, hold it lightly, like a fluttering bird, and as
lightly let it go?"

Lady Despard smiled approval at the simile. "In that one," she said, "he
has captured more than a mood--the very essence of life.--Have you met
him?"

"Yes, once--after a lecture. We had a talk--I'll never forget. There's
wonderful stuff in the new volume. I know most of it by heart."

"Spare us, good Lord," muttered Cuthbert--neither prejudiced nor
perverse, but British to the core. "If you start again, I'll retaliate
with Job and the Psalms!"

Roy retorted with the stump of an extinct cigarette. It smote the
offender between the eyebrows, leaving a caste-mark of warm ash to
attest the accuracy of his aim.

"Bull's eye!" Tara scored softly; and Roy, turning on his elbow,
appealed to Broome. "Jeffers, please extinguish him!" ("Jeffers" being a
corruption of G.F., alias Godfather).

Broome laughed. "I had a hazy notion he was your show candidate for the
Indian Civil!"

"He's supposed to be. That's the scandal of it. A mighty lot of interest
he's cultivating in the people and the country he aspires to
administer."

"High art and sloppy sentiment are not in the bond," Cuthbert retorted,
with a wink at Dyán Singh.

That roused Lady Despard. "Insight and sympathy _must_ be in the bond,
unless England and India are to drift apart altogether. The Indian
Civilian should be caught early, like the sailor, and trained on the
spot. Exams make character a side issue. And one might almost say
there's no _other_ issue in the Indian services."

Cuthbert nodded. "Glorious farce, isn't it? They simply cram us like
Christmas turkeys. Efficiency's the war-cry, these enlightened days."

"Too _much_ efficiency," Dyán struck in, with a kindling eye. "Already
turning our ancient cities into nightmares like Manchester and
Birmingham, killing the true sense of beauty, giving us instead the
poison of money and luxury worship. And what result? Just now, when the
West at last begins to notice our genius of colour and design--even to
learn from it--we find it slipping out of our own fingers. Nearly all
the homes of the English educated are like caricatures of your
villas--the worst kind. Yet there are still many on both sides who wish
to make life--not so ugly, to escape a little from gross superstition of
_facts_----"

"Hear, hear!" Broome applauded him. "But I'm afraid, my dear boy, the
Time Spirit is out to make tradesmen and politicians of us all. Thank
God, the soul of a race lives in its books, its philosophy and art."

"Very well then"--Roy was the speaker,--"the obvious remedy lies in
getting the souls of both races into closer touch--philosophy, art, and
all that--eh, Jeffers? That's what we're after--Dyán and I--on the lines
of that society Dad belongs to."

Broome looked thoughtfully from one to the other. "A tall order," said
he.

"A vision splendid!" said Lady Despard.

Roy leaned eagerly towards her. "_You_ don't sneer at dreams, Aunt
Helen."

"Nor do I, my son. Dreamers are our strictly unpaid torch-bearers. They
light the path for us; and we murmur 'Poor fools!' with a kind of
sneaking self-satisfaction, when they come a cropper."

"'Which I 'ope it won't 'appen to me!'" quoted Roy, cheered by Lady
Despard's approval. "Anyway, we're keen to speed up the better
understanding move--on the principle that Art unites and politics
divide."

"Very pithy--and approximately true! May I be allowed to proffer a sound
working maxim for youth on the war-path? 'Freedom and courage in
thought--obedience in act.' When I say obedience, I don't mean slavish
conformity. When I say freedom, I don't mean licence. Only the bond are
free."

"Jeffers, you're a Daniel! I'll pinch that pearl of wisdom! But what
about democracy--Cuthers' pet panacea? Isn't it making for
_dis_obedience in act--rebellion; and enslavement in thought--every man
reared on the same catch-words, minted with the same hall-mark?"

That roused the much-enduring British Lion--in the person of Cuthbert
Gordon.

"Confound you, Roy! This is a picnic, not a bally Union debate. You
can't argue for nuts; and when you start spouting you're the limit. But
two can play at that game!" He flourished a half-empty syphon of
lemonade, threatening the handle with a very square thumb.

"Fire away, old bean." Roy opened his mouth by way of invitation.
Cuthbert promptly pressed the trigger--and missed his mark.

There was a small shriek from Tara and from the girls on the bank: then
the opponents proceeded to deal with one another in earnest....

Dyán soon lost interest when India was not the theme; and, as the elders
fell into an undercurrent of talk, his eyes sought Tara's face. Her
answering smile spurred him to a bold move; and he leaned towards her,
over the edge of the boat. "Miss Despard," he said under his breath,
"won't you come for a stroll in the field?--Do."

She shook her head. "I'm too lazy! We've had enough exercise. And
there's the walk home."

Her refusal jarred him; but desire overruled pride. "You couldn't call
it exercise. Do come."

"Truly--I'm tired," she insisted gently, looking away from him towards
her mother.

It was Lady Despard's boast that she could listen to three conversations
at once; but even Tara was surprised when she casually put out a hand
and patted her knee. "Wise child. Better keep quiet till we start home."

The hand was not removed. Tara covered it with her own, and further
maddened the discomfited Dyán by saying, with her very kindest smile:
"I'm so sorry. Don't be vexed."

Vexed! The bloodless word was insult piled on injury. All the pride and
passion of his race flamed in him. Without answering her smile or her
plea, he drew abruptly away from her; stepped out of the punt and went
for his stroll alone.




CHAPTER II.

     "Who knows what days I answer for to-day...?
     Thoughts yet unripe in me, I bend one way...."
                                       --ALICE MEYNELL.


While Broome and Lady Despard were concerned over indications of a
critical corner for Roy, there was none--save perhaps Arúna--to be
concerned for the dilemma of Dyán Singh, Rajput--half savage, half
chivalrous gentleman; idealist in the grain; lover of England and India;
and now--fiercely, consumedly--lover of Tara Despard, with her Indian
name and her pearl-white English skin and the benign sunshine of England
in her hair.

It is the danger-point for the young Indian overseas, unused to free
intercourse with women other than his own; saddled, very often, with a
girl-wife in the background--the last by no means a matter of course in
these enlightened days. In Dyán Singh's case the safeguard was lacking.
His mother being dead, he had held his own against a rigidly
conventional grandmother, and insisted on delaying the inevitable till
his education was complete. Waxing bolder still, he had demanded the
same respite for Arúna; a far more serious affair. For months they had
waged a battle of tongues and temper and tears, with
Mátaji--high-priestess of the Inside--with the family matchmaker and the
family _guru_, whom to offend was the unforgiveable sin. Had he not
power to call down upon an entire household the curse of the gods?

More than once Arúna had been goaded to the brink of surrender; till her
brother grew impatient and spurned her as a weakling. Yet her ordeal had
been sharper than his own. For him, mere moral suasion and threats of
ostracism. For her, the immemorial methods of the Inside; forbidden by
Sir Lakshman, but secretly applied, when flagrant obstinacy demanded
drastic measures. So neither Dyán nor his grandfather had suspected that
Arúna, for days together, had suffered the torment of Tantalus--food set
before her so mercilessly peppered that a morsel would raise blisters on
her lips and tongue; water steeped in salt; the touch of the
'fire-stick' applied where her skin was tenderest; not to mention the
more subtle torment of jibes and threats and vile insinuations that
suffused her with shame and rage. A word to the menfolk, threatened
Mátaji, and worse would befall. If _men_ cared nothing for family
honour, the women must vindicate it in their own fashion. For the two
were doing their duty, up to their lights. Only the knowledge that Dyán
was fighting her battle, as well as his own, had kept the girl unbroken
in spirit, even when her body cried out for respite at any price....

All this she had confided to him when, at last, they were safe on the
great ship, with miles of turbulent water between them and the ruthless
dominion of _dastúr_. That confession--with its unconscious revealing of
the Rajput spirit hidden in her laughter-loving heart--had drawn them
into closest union and filled Dyán with self-reproach. Small wonder if
Oxford seemed to both a paradise of knowledge and of friendly freedom.
Small wonder if they believed that, in one bold leap, they had bridged
the gulf between East and West.

At Bramleigh Beeches, Lilámani--who knew all without telling--had
welcomed them with open arms: and Lady Despard no less. It was here that
Dyán met Tara, who had 'no use' for colleges--and, in the course of a
few vacation visits, the damage had been done.

At first he had felt startled, even a little dismayed. English education
and delayed marriage had involved no dream of a possible English wife.
With the Indian Civil in view, he had hoped to meet some girl student of
his own race, sufficiently advanced to remain outside purdah and to
realise that a modern Indian husband might crave companionship from his
wife no less than motherhood, worship, and service.

And now ... _this_----!

Striding across the field, in the glimmer of a moon just beginning to
take colour, he alternately raged at her light rebuff, and applauded her
maidenly hesitation. As a Hindu and a man of breeding, his natural
instinct had been to approach her parents; but he knew enough of modern
youth, by now, to realise that English parents were a side issue in
these little affairs. For himself, the primitive lover flamed in him. He
wanted to kneel and worship her. In the same breath, he wanted simply to
possess her, would she or no....

And in saner moods, uncertainty racked him. What did they amount to, her
smiles and flashes of sympathy, her kind, cousinly ways? What did Roy's
cousinly kindness amount to, with Arúna? If in India they suffered from
too much restriction, it dawned on him that in England trouble might
arise from too much freedom. Always, by some cause, there would be
suffering. The gods would see to it. But not through loss of her--he
mutely implored them. Any way but that!

Everything hung on the walk home. Those two must have finished their
sparring match by now....

They had. Roy was on the bank, helping Arúna pack the basket; and
Cuthbert in possession of Tara--not for long.

He was called upon to punt back; and at the boat-house, where a taxi
removed the elders and the picnic impedimenta, he essayed a futile
manoeuvre to recapture Tara and saddle Dyán with the solid Emily.
Failing, he consoled himself by keeping in touch with Arúna and Roy.

Dyán patently delayed starting, patently lagged behind. Unskilled and
desperately in earnest, he could not lead up to his moment. He was
laboriously framing the essential words when Tara scattered them with a
light remark, rallying him on his snail's pace.

"You _would_ go for that stroll; and you strolled so violently----!"

"Because my heart in me was raging--aching, violently!" he blurted out
with such unexpected vehemence, that she started and stepped back a
pace.

"Of course I knew--there must be difficulties--so I have been waiting
and hoping ..." An idiotic catch in his throat brought a sudden hot
wave of self-consciousness. He flung out both hands. "Tara----!"

Instinctively, she drew her own out of reach. A ghost of a shiver ran
through her. "No--no. I don't ... I never have.... If I've misled you,
I'm ever so sorry."

"If you are sorry--_give me hope_," his voice, his eyes implored her.
"You come so near--then you draw back; like offering a thirsty man a cup
of water he must not drink. Give me only a little time--a little
chance----"

She shook her head. "Please believe me. I'm _not_ the wavering kind. I'm
keen to go on being friends--because of Roy. But, truthfully, it's no
use hoping for anything more--ever."

Her patent sincerity, the sweet seriousness of her face, carried
conviction. And conviction turned his ardour to bitterness.

"Why no use--_ever_?" he flung out, maddened by her emphasis on the
word.

"I suppose--because I know my own mind."

"No. Because--_I_ am Indian." His voice was changed and harsh. "We are
all British subjects--oh yes--when convenient! But the door is opened
only--so far. If we make bold to ask for the best, it is slammed in our
faces."

"Dyán Singh, if I have hurt you, it was quite unintentional. You know
that. But now, _with_ intention, you are hurting me." Her dignity and
gentleness, the justice of her reproof, smote him silent; and she went
on: "You forget, it is the same among your own people. Aunt Lila was
cast out--for always. With an English girl that could never be."

Too distraught for argument, he harked back to the personal issue. "With
_you_ there would be no need. I would live altogether like an
Englishman----"

"Oh, _stop_!" she broke out desperately. "Don't start all over
again----"

"Look alive, you two slackers," shouted Roy, from the far corner of the
road. "I'm responsible for keeping the team together."

"Coming!" called Tara, and turned on Dyán a final glance of appeal. "I'm
_sorry_ from the bottom of my heart. I can't say more."--And setting
the pace, she hurried forward.

For the fraction of a second, he hesitated. An overmastering impulse
seized him to walk off in the opposite direction. His eager love for
them all had suddenly turned to gall. But pride forbade. He would not
for the world have them guess at his rebuff--not even Arúna....

       *       *       *       *       *

He slept little that night; and it was not Dyán Singh of New College who
awoke next morning. It was Dyán Singh, Rajput, Descendant of the Sun.
Yet the foolish round of life must go on as if no vital change had come
to pass.

That afternoon, he was going with Roy to a select drawing-room meeting.
A certain Mr Ramji Lal had been asked to read a paper on the revival of
Indian arts and crafts. Dyán had been looking forward to it keenly; but
now, sore and miserable as he was--all sense of purpose and direction
gone--he felt out of tune with the whole thing.

He would have been thankful to cry off. Roy, however, must not suspect
the truth--Roy, who himself might be the stumbling-block. The suspicion
stung like a scorpion; though it soothed a little his hurt pride of
race.

Embittered and antagonistic, he listened only with half his mind to his
own countryman's impassioned appeal for renewal of the true Swadeshi[1]
spirit in India; renewal of her own innate artistic culture, her faith
in the creative power of thought and ideas. That spirit--said the
speaker--has no war-cries, no shoutings in the market-place. It is a way
of looking at life. Its true genesis and inspiration is in the home.
Like flame, newly-lit, it needs cherishing. Instead, it is in danger of
being stamped out by false Swadeshi--an imitation product of the West;
noisy and political, crying out for more factories, more councils;
caring nothing for true Indian traditions of art and life. It will not
buy goods from Birmingham and Manchester; but it will create Birmingham
and Manchester in India. In effect, it is the age-old argument whether
the greatness of a nation comes from the dominion of men or
machinery....

For all this, Dyán had cared intensely twenty-four hours ago. Now it
seemed little better than a rhapsody of fine phrases--'sounding brass
and tinkling cymbals.'

Could the mere word of a woman so swiftly and violently transform the
mind of a man? His innate masculinity resented the idea. It succumbed,
nevertheless. He was too deeply hurt in his pride and his passionate
heart to think or feel sanely while the wound was still so fresh. He was
scarcely stirred even by the allusion to Rajputana in Mr Ramji Lal's
peroration.

"I ask you to consider, in conclusion--my dear and honoured English
friends--the words of a veteran lover of India, who is also a son of
England. It was his conviction--it is also mine--that 'the still living
art of India, the still living chivalry of Rajputana, the still living
religion of the Hindus, are the only three points on which there is any
possibility of regenerating the national life of India--the India of the
Hindus....'"

Very fine; doubtless very true; but what use--after all--their eternal
talk? By blowing volumes of air from their lungs, did they shift the
mountains of difficulty one single inch?

More talk followed; tea and attentions that would have flattered him
yesterday. To-day it all passed clean over his head. They were ready
enough to pamper him, like a lap-dog, these good ladies; forgetting he
was a man, with a man's heart and brain, making demand for something
more than carefully chosen sugar-plums.

He had never been so thankful to get away from that hospitable house,
where he had imagined himself so happy....

They were out in the street again, striding back to New College:
Roy--not yet alive to the change in him--full of it all; talking
nineteen to the dozen. But Dyán's urgent heart spoke louder than his
cousin's voice. And all the while he kept wondering consumedly--_Was_ it
Roy?

He could not bring himself to ask outright. The answer would madden him
either way. And Goodness--or Badness--knew he was miserable enough:
hurt, angry with Fate, with England, even with Tara--lovely and
unattainable! She had spoilt everything: his relation with her, with her
people, with Roy. She had quenched his zeal for their joint crusade. All
the same, he would hold Roy to the India plan; since there was just a
chance--and it would take him away from her. He hated himself for the
thought; but jealousy, in the East, is a consuming fire....

Roy's monologue ceased abruptly. "Your innings, old chap, I think!" he
said. "You're mum as a fish this afternoon. I noticed it in there--I
thought you'd have lots to say to Ramji Lal."

Dyán frowned. He could not for long play at pretences with Roy.

"Those ladies did all the saying. They would not have liked it at all if
I had spoken my true thought,"--he paused and added deliberately--"that
we are all cracking our skulls against stone walls."

"My dear chap----!" Roy stared in frank bewilderment. "What's gone
wrong? Your liver touched up? Too much salmon mayonnaise and cream?"

His light tone goaded Dyán to exasperation. "Quite likely," he retorted,
a sneer lurking in his tone. "Plenty of mayonnaise and cream, for all
parties. But when we make bold to ask for more satisfying things, we
find 'No Indians need apply.'"

"But--my good Dyán----!"

"Well--it's true. Suppose I wish to promote that closer union we all
chatter about by marrying an English girl--what then?"

Up went Roy's eyebrows. "Are _you_ after an English wife?"

"I am submitting a case--that might easily occur." He spoke with a touch
of irritation; and fearing self-betrayal, swerved from the main issue.
"Would _you_ marry an Indian girl?"

"I believe so. If I was keen. I'm not at all sure, though, if it's
sound--in principle--mixing such opposite strains. And in your
case--hypothetical, I suppose----?"

Dyán's grunt confessed nothing and denied nothing.

"Well--from what one hears, an English wife, out there, might make a bit
of complication, if you get the 'Civil.'"

Dyán started. "I shan't go up for it. I've changed my mind."

"Good Lord! And you've been sweating all this time."

Dyán's smile was tinged with bitterness.

"Well--one lives and learns. I can make good use of my knowledge without
turning myself into an imitation Englishman. An Indian wife might make
equal difficulty. So--with all my zeal--I am between two grindstones. My
father joined the Civil. He was keen. He did well. But--no promotion;
and little friendliness, except from very few. I believe he was never
happy. I believe--it killed him. I was cherishing a hope that, now,
things might be better. But I am beginning to see--I may be wrong. Safer
to see it in time----"

Roy looked genuinely distressed. "Poor old Dyán. Perhaps you're right. I
don't know much about British India. But it does seem hard lines--and
bad policy--to choke off men like you."

"Yes. They might consider _that_ more, if they heard some of our
fire-eaters. One was at me last week. He gave the British ten years to
survive. Said their lot could raise a revolution to-morrow if they had
money--a trifle of five millions! He was swearing the Indian princes are
not loyal, in spite of talk and subscriptions; that the Army will join
whichever side gives best pay. We who _are_ loyal need _some_
encouragement--some recognition. We are only human----!"

"Rather. But _you_ won't go back on our little show, old chap. Just when
I'm dead keen--laying my plans for India----"

He took hold of Dyán's upper arm and gave it a friendly shake.

"No, I'll stick to that. But are you sure you can work it--with your
people? If _you_ back out, I swear, by the sin of the sack of Chitor,
I'll join the beastly crowd who are learning to make bombs in Berlin."

At that--the most solemn oath that can pass the lips of a Rajput--Roy
looked startled. Then he laughed.

"'Commem' seems to have disagreed with you all round! But I won't be
intimidated. Likewise--I won't back out. I intend opening diplomatic
conversations with Jeffers to-night. Recherché dinner for two in my
room. All his little weaknesses! He'd be a strong ally. Wish me luck."

Dyán wished him luck in a rather perfunctory tone, considering his
vehemence of a moment earlier. All the fire seemed suddenly to have gone
out of him.

They had just entered the college gate; and a few yards ahead, they
caught sight of Lady Despard and Tara--the girl's hand linked through
her mother's arm.

"Oh, I clean forgot," remarked Roy. "I said they could look in."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Own country.]




CHAPTER III.

     "It is the spirit of the quest which helps. I am the slave of this
     spirit of the quest."--KABIR.


Roy's recherché little dinner proved an unqualified success. With sole
and chicken sauté, with trifle and savoury, he mutely pleaded his cause;
feeling vaguely guilty, the while, of belittling his childhood's idol,
whom he increasingly admired and loved. But this India business was
tremendously important, and the dear old boy would never suspect----

Roy watched him savouring the chicken and peas; discussing the decay of
falling in love, its reasons and remedies; and thought, for the
hundredth time, what a splendid old boy he was; so big and breezy,
nothing bookish or newspapery about him. Quite a masterpiece of
modelling, on Nature's part; the breadth and bulk of him; the massive
head, with its thatch of tawny-grey hair that retreated up the sides of
his forehead, making corners; the nose, rugged and full of character;
the beard and the sea-blue eyes that gave him the sailor aspect Roy had
so loved in nursery days. Now he appraised it consciously, with the
artist's eye. A vigorous bust of his godfather was his acknowledged
masterpiece, so far, in the modelling line, which he preferred to brush
or pencil. But first and foremost, literature claimed him: poetry,
essays, and the despised novel--truest and most plastic medium for
interpreting man to man and race to race: the most entirely obvious
medium, thought Roy, for promoting the cause he had at heart.

Though his brain was overflowing with the one subject, he was reserving
it diplomatically for the more intimate atmosphere of port wine, coffee
and cigars. Meantime they always had plenty to talk about, these two.
Broome held the unorthodox view that he probably had quite as much to
learn from the young as they from him; and at the moment, the question
whether Roy should take up literature in earnest was very much to the
fore.

Once or twice during a pause, he caught the shrewd blue eye watching him
from under shaggy brows; but each kept his own counsel till the scout
had removed all superfluities. Then Broome chose a cigar, sniffed it,
and beheaded it.

"My particular weakness!" he remarked pensively, while Roy filled his
glass. "What an attentive godson it is! And after this intriguing
prelude--what of the main plot? India?"

Under a glance as direct as the question Roy reddened furiously. The
'dear old boy' had done more than suspect; he had seen through the whole
show--the indignity of all others that youth can least abide.

At sight of his crestfallen countenance, Broome laughed outright. "Bear
up, old man! Don't grudge me a fraction of the wits I live by. Weren't
you trying to give me an inkling yesterday?"

Roy nodded, mollified a little. But his self-confidence wilted under the
false start. "How about arm-chairs?" he remarked tentatively, very much
engaged with a cigarette.

They removed their coffee-cups, and sipped once or twice in silence.
"I'm waiting," said Broome, encouragement in his tone.

But Roy still hesitated. "You see----" he temporised, "I'm so fearfully
keen, I feel shy of gassing about it. Might seem to you mere soppy
sentiment."

Broome's sailor eyes twinkled. "You pay me the compliment, my son, of
treating me as if I were a fellow-undergrad! It's only the 'teens and
the twenties of this very new century that are so mortally afraid of
sentiment--the main factor in human happiness. If you had _not_ a strong
sentiment for India, you would be unworthy of your mother. You want to
go out there--is that the rub?"

"Yes. With Dyán."

"In what capacity?"

"A lover and a learner. Also--by way of--a budding author. I was hoping
you might back me up with a few commissions for my preliminary stuff."

"You selected your godfather with unerring foresight! And preliminaries
over--a book, or books, would be the end in view?"

"Yes--and other things. Whatever one can do--in a small way--to inspire
a friendlier feeling all round; a clearer conviction that the destinies
of England and India are humanly bound up together. I'm sure those
cursed politics are responsible for most of the friction. It's art and
literature, the emotional and spiritual forces that draw men together,
isn't it, Jeffers? _You_ know that----"

He leaned forward, warming to his subject; the false start forgotten;
shyness dispelled....

And, once started, none was more skilful than Broome in luring him on to
fuller, unconscious self-revealing. He knew very well that, on this
topic, and on many others, Roy could enlarge more freely to him than to
his father. Youth is made that way. In his opinion, it was all to the
good that Roy should aspire to use his double heritage, for the
legitimate and noble purpose of interpreting--as far as might be--East
to West, and West to East: not least, because he would probably learn a
good deal more than he was qualified to teach. It was in the process of
qualifying himself, by closer acquaintance with India, that the lurking
danger reared its head. But some outlet there must be for the Eastern
spirit in him; and his early efforts pointed clearly to literary
expression, if Broome knew anything of the creative gift. Himself a
devotee, he agreed with Lafcadio Hearne that 'a man may do quite as
great a service to his country by writing a book as by winning a
battle'; and just so much of these thoughts as seemed fit he imparted to
Roy, who--in response to the last--glowed visibly.

"Priceless old Jeffers! I knew I could reckon on you to back me up--and
buck me up! Of course one will be hugely encouraged by the bleating of
the practical crowd--Aunt Jane and Co. '_Why_ waste your time writing
silly novels?' And if you try to explain that novels _have_ a real
function, they merely think _you've_ got a swelled head."

"Never mind, Roy. 'The quest is a noble one and the hope great.' And we
scribblers have our glorious compensations. As for Aunt Jane----" He
looked very straight at her nephew--and winked deliberately.

"Oh, of course--she's _the_ unlimited limit," Roy agreed without shame.
"I suppose if Dad plays up, she'll give him hell?"

"Good measure, pressed down.--By the way--have you spoken to _him_ yet
of all this----?"

"No. Mother probably guesses. But you're the first. I made sure _you'd_
understand----"

"You feel doubtful--about Father?"

"M-yes. I don't quite know why."

Broome was silent a moment. "After all--it's natural. Put yourself in
his place, Roy.--He sees India taking a stronger hold of you each year.
He knows you've a deal of your mother and grandfather in your make-up.
He may very well be afraid of the magnet proving too strong at close
quarters. And I suspect he's jealous--for England. He'd like to see your
soul centred on Bramleigh Beeches: and I more than suspect they'd both
prefer to keep you nearer home."

Roy looked distressed. "Hard lines. I hadn't got to that yet. But it
wouldn't be for always. And--there's George and Jerry sprouting up."

"I gather that George and Jerry are not precisely--Roy----"

"Jeffers--you old sinner! I can't flatter myself----!"

"Don't be blatantly British, Roy! You can flatter yourself--you know as
well as I do!"

"I know it's undiplomatic to contradict my elders!" countered Roy,
lunging after pipe and pouch.

"Especially convenient godfathers, with press connections?"

Roy fronted him squarely, laughter lurking in his eyes. "Are you _going_
to be convenient--that's the rub! _Will_ you give Dad a notion I may
turn out something decent when I've scraped up some crumbs of
knowledge----?"

Broome leaned forward and laid a large reassuring hand on his knee.
"Trust me to pull it off, old man--provided Mother approves. We couldn't
press it against _her_ wish--either of us."

"No--we couldn't." There was a new gravity in Roy's tone. "As I said,
she probably knows all about it. That's her way. She understandeth one's
thoughts long before." The last in a lower tone--his eyes dwelling on
her portrait above the mantelpiece: the one in the studio window-seat.

And Broome thought: "With all his brains, the man's hardly astir in him
yet; and the boy's still in love with her. This notion may be an
unconscious outlet. A healthy one--if Nevil can be got to see it that
way."

After a perceptible pause, he said quietly: "Remember, Roy, just because
she's unique, she can't be taken as representative. She naturally stands
for India in your eyes. But no country can produce beings of her quality
by the score----"

"I suppose not." Roy reluctantly shifted his gaze. "But she does
represent what's best in the Indian spirit: the spirit that people over
here might take more pains to understand."

"And you are peculiarly well fitted to assist them, I admit--if Father's
willing to bear the cost of your trip. It's a compact between us. The
snare of your A1 dinner shall not have been laid in vain!"

They sat on together for more than an hour. Then Broome departed,
leaving Roy to dream--in a blue mist of tobacco smoke--the opal-tinted
ego-centric dreams of one-and-twenty.

       *       *       *       *       *

And to-night one dream eclipsed them all.

For years the germ of it had lived in him like a seed in
darkness--growing with him as he grew. All incidents and impressions
that struck deep had served to vitalise it: that early championship of
his mother; her tales of Rajputana; his friendship with Desmond and
Dyán; and, not least, his father's Ramayána pictures in the long gallery
at home, that had seized his imagination in very early days, when their
appeal was simply to his innate sense of colour, and the reiterate
wonder and beauty of his mother's face in those moving scenes from the
story of Sita--India's crown of womanhood....

Then there was the vivid memory of a room in his grandfather's house;
the stately old man, with his deep voice, speaking words that he only
came to understand years after; and the look in his mother's eyes, as
she clapped her hands without sound, in the young fashion he loved....

And Chandranath--another glimpse of India; the ugly side ...And stories
from Tod's 'Rajasthán'--that grim and stirring panorama of romance and
chivalry, of cruelty and cunning; orgies of slaughter and miracles of
high-hearted devotion....

Barbaric; utterly foreign to life, as he had lived it, those tales of
ancient India most strangely awakened in him a vague, thrilling sense of
familiarity ... He _knew_...! Most clearly he knew the spirit that fired
them all, when Akbar's legions broke, wave on wave, against the mighty
rock-fortress of Chitor--far-famed capital of Mewar, thrice sacked by
Islam and deserted by her royal house; so that only the ghost of her
glory remains--a protest, a challenge, an inspiration....

Sometimes he dreamed it all, with amazing vividness. And in the dreams
there was always the feeling that he knew ...It was a very queer, very
exciting sensation. He had spoken of it to no one but his mother and
Tara; except once at Marlborough, when he had been moved to try whether
Lance would understand.

Priceless old Desmond! It had been killing to watch his
face--interested, sceptical, faintly alarmed, when he discovered that it
was not an elaborate attempt to pull his leg. By way of reassuring him,
Roy had confessed it was a family failing. When things went wrong his
mother nearly always knew: and sometimes she came to him, in dreams that
were not exactly dreams. What harm?

Desmond, puzzled and sceptical, was not prepared to hazard an opinion.
If Roy was made that way, of course he couldn't help it. And Roy, half
indignant, had declared he wouldn't for worlds be made any other way....

To-night, by some freak of memory, it all came back to him through the
dream-inducing haze of tobacco smoke. And there, on his writing-table,
stood a full-length photograph of Lance in Punjab cavalry uniform.
Soldiering on the Indian Border, fulfilling himself in his own splendid
fashion, he was clearly in his element; attached to his father's old
regiment, with Paul for second-in-command; proud of his strapping Sikhs
and Pathans; watched over, revered and implicitly obeyed by the sons of
men who had served with his father--men for whom the mere name Desmond
was a talisman. For that is India's way.

And here was he, Roy, still at his old trick of scribbling poems and
dreaming dreams. For a fleeting moment, Desmond was out of the picture;
but when time was ripe he would be in it again. The link between them
was indestructible--elemental. Poet and Warrior; the eternal
complements. In the Rig Veda[2] both are one; both _Agni Kula_--'born of
fire'; no fulness of life for the one without the other.

The years dominated by Desmond had been supreme. They had left school
together, when Roy was seventeen; and, at the time, their parting had
seemed like the end of everything. Yet, very soon after, he had found
himself in the thick of fresh delights--a wander-year in Italy, Greece,
the Mediterranean, with the parents and Christine----

And now, here he was, nearing the end of the Oxford interlude--dominated
by Dyán and India; and, not least, by Oxford herself, who counts her
lovers by the million; holds them for the space of three or four years
and sets her impress for life on their minds and hearts. For all his
dreamings and scribblings, he had played hard and worked hard. In the
course of reading for Greats, he had imbibed large draughts of the
classics; had browsed widely on later literature, East and West; won the
Newcastle, and filled a vellum-bound volume--his mother's gift--with
verse and sketches in prose, some of which had appeared in the more
exclusive weeklies. He had also picked up Hindustani from Dyán, and
looked forward to tackling Sanskrit. In the Schools, he had taken a
First in Mods; and, with reasonable luck, hoped for a First in the
Finals. Once again, parting would be a wrench, but India glowed like a
planet on the horizon; and he fully intended to make that interlude the
pick of them all....

What novels he would write! Not modern impressionist stuff; not mean
streets and the photographic touch. No--his adventuring soul, with its
tinge of Eastern mysticism, craved colour and warmth and light;--not the
mere trappings of romance, but the essence of it that imparts a deeper
sense of the significance and mystery of life; that probes to the
mainsprings of personality, the veiled yet vital world of spiritual
adventure ... Pain and conflict; powers of evil, of doubt and
indecision:--no evading these. But in any imaginative work he essayed,
beauty must be the prevailing element--if only as a star in darkness.
And nowadays Beauty had become almost suspect. Cleverness, cynicism, sex
and sensation--all had their votaries and their vogue. Mere Beauty, like
Cinderella, was left sitting among the ashes of the past; and
Roy--prince or no--was her devout lover.

To the son of Nevil and Lilámani, her clear call could never seem either
a puritanical snare of the flesh or a delusion of the senses; but
rather, a grace of the spirit, the joy of things seen detached from
self-interest: the visible proof that love, not power, is the last word
of Creation. Happily for him, its outward form and inward essence had
been his daily bread ever since he had first consciously looked upon his
mother's face, consciously delighted in his father's pictures. They
lived it, those two: and the life lived transcends argument.

At this uplifted moment--whatever might come later--he blessed them for
his double heritage; for the perfect accord between them that inspired
his hope of ultimate harmony between England and India, in spite of
barriers and complexities and fomenters of discord; a harmony that could
never arrive by veiled condescension out of servile imitation. Intimacy
with Dyán and his mother had made that quite clear. Each must honestly
will to understand the other; each holding fast the essence of
individuality, while respecting in the other precisely those baffling
qualities that strengthen their union and make it vital to the welfare
of both. Instinctively he pictured them as man and woman; and on general
lines the analogy seemed to hold good. He had yet to discover that
analogies are often deceptive things; peculiarly so, in this case,
since India is many, not one. Yet there lurked a germ of truth in his
seedling idea: and he was at the age when ideas and tremendous impulses
stir in the blood like sap in spring-time; an age to be a reformer, a
fanatic or a sensualist.

Too often, alas, before the years bring power of adjustment, the live
spark of enthusiasm is extinct....

To-night it burned in Roy with a steady flame. If only he could enthuse
his father----!

He supposed he would go in any case: but he lacked the rebel instinct of
modern youth. He wanted to share, to impart his hidden treasure; not to
argue the bloom off it. And his father seemed tacitly to discourage
rhapsodies over Indian literature and art. You couldn't say he was not
keen: only the least little bit unresponsive to outbursts of keenness in
his son; so that Roy never felt quite at ease on the subject. If only he
could walk into the room now, while Roy's brain was seething with it
all, high on the upward curve of a wave....

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Ancient Hindu Scriptures.]




CHAPTER IV.

     "You could humble at your feet the proudest heads in the world. But
     it is your loved ones ... whom you choose to worship. Therefore I
     worship you."
                                       --RABINDRANATH TAGORE.


Roy, after due consideration, decided that he would speak first to his
father--the one doubtful element in the home circle. But habit and the
obsession of the moment proved too strong, when his mother came to 'tuck
him up,' as she had never failed to do since nursery days.

Seated on the edge of his bed, in the shaded light, she looked like some
rare, pale moth in her moon-coloured sari flecked and bordered with
gold; amber earrings and a rope of amber beads--his own gift; first
fruits of poetic earnings. The years between had simply ripened and
embellished her; rounded a little the oval of her cheek; lent an added
dignity to her grace of bearing and enriched her wisdom of the heart.

It was as he supposed. She had understood his thoughts long before. He
flung out his hand--a fine, nervous hand--and laid it on her knee.

"You're a miracle. I believe you know all about it."

"I believe--I do," she answered, letting her own hand rest on his;
moving her fingers, now and then, in the ghost of a caress:--an
endearing way she had. "You are wishing--to go out there?"

"Yes. I simply must. _You_ understand?"

She inclined her head and, for a moment, veiled her eyes. "I am proud.
But you cannot understand how difficult ... for us ... letting you go.
And Dad...."

She paused.

"You think he'll hate it--want to keep me here?"

"My darling--'hate' is too strong. He cares very much for all that makes
friendship between England and India. But--is it wonder if he cares more
for his own son? You will speak to him soon?"

"To-morrow. Unless--a word or two, first, from you----"

"No, not that!" She smiled at his old boyish faith in her. "Better to
keep me outside. You see--I _am_ India. So I am already too much in it
that way."

"You are in it up to the hilt!" he declared with sudden fervour:
and--his tongue unloosed--he poured out to her a measure of his pent up
feeling; how they had inspired him--she and his father; how he naturally
hoped they would back him up; and a good deal more that was for her
private ear alone....

Her immense capacity for listening, her eloquent silence and gentle
flashes of raillery, her occasional caress--all were balm to him in his
electrical mood.

Were ever two beings quite so perfectly in tune----?

Could he possibly leave her? Could he face the final wrench?

When at last she stooped to kiss him, the faint clear whiff of
sandalwood waked a hundred memories; and he held her close a long time,
her cheek against his hair.

"Bad boy! Let me go," she pleaded; and, with phenomenal obedience, he
unclasped his hands.

"See if you _can_ go now!"

It was his old childish game. The moment she stirred, his hands were
locked again.

"Son of my heart--I must!"

"One more kiss then--for luck!"

So she kissed him, for luck, and left him to his midnight browsings....

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning she sat among her cushions in the studio, ostensibly
reading a long letter from her father. Actually, her mind was intent on
Nevil, who stood at his easel absorbed in fragmentary studies for a new
picture--flying draperies; a man's face cleverly fore-shortened.

Though nearing fifty, he looked more like five-and-thirty; his face
singularly free of lines; his fair hair scarcely showing the intrusion
of grey. To her he seemed perennially young; and dearer than ever--if
that could be--as the years mellowed and deepened the love on which they
had boldly staked everything that counted most for them both. Yet, for
all her skill in divination, she could not tell precisely how he would
take the things Roy had to say; nor whether Roy himself would say them
in just the right way. With Nevil, so much depended on that.

Till this morning, she had scarcely realised how unobtrusively she had
been, as it were, their connecting link in all difficult or delicate
matters, where their natures were not quite in tune. But now, Roy being
a man, they must come to terms in their own fashion....

At the first far-off sound of his step on the stairs, she rose and came
over to the easel, and stood there a few moments--fascinated always by
the swift sure strokes.

"Good--eh?" he asked, smiling into her serious eyes.

She nodded. "Quite evident--you are in the mood!" Her fingers lightly
caressed the back of his hand. "I will come back later. _Such_ a tray of
vases waiting for me in the drawing-room!"

As Roy entered, she passed him and they exchanged a smile. Her eyes,
mutely blessing him, besought him not to let his eager tongue run away
with itself. Then she went out, leaving them together--the two who were
her world.

Down in the drawing-room, roses and sweet-peas, cut by Christine--her
fairy daughter--lay ready to hand. Between them they filled the lofty
room with fragrance and harmonies of delicate colour. Then Christine
flew to her beloved piano; and Lilámani wandered away to her no less
beloved rose-garden. Body and mind were restless. She could settle to
nothing till she knew what had passed between Nevil and Roy. His boyish
confidences and adorations of the night before had filled her cup to
overflowing. She felt glad and proud that her first-born should have set
his heart on the high project of trying to promote deeper sympathy
between his father's great country and her own people, in this time of
dangerous antagonism and unrest.

But beneath her pride and gladness, stirred a fear lest the scales she
had tried to hold even, should be inclining to tilt the wrong way. For
duty to his father's house was paramount. Too strong a leaning towards
India--no matter for what high purpose--would still be a tilt the wrong
way. She had seen the same fear lurking in Nevil's heart also; and now,
unerringly, she divined the cause of that hidden trouble which baffled
Roy. Nevil feared that--if Roy went to India--history might repeat
itself. She admitted the danger was real; and she knew his fear implied
no reflection on herself or her country. Best of all, she knew
that--because of his chivalrous loyalty that had never failed her--he
would not speak of it, even to his son.

Clearly then, if Roy insisted on going to India, and if a word of
warning must be spoken to ease Nevil's mind, only one person in the
world could speak it--herself. For all her sensitive shrinking she could
not, at this critical turning-point, stand outside. She was "in it"--as
Roy dramatically assured her--up to the hilt....

Time passed--and he did not come. Troubled, she wandered back towards
the house; caught sight of him, lonely and abstracted, pacing the lawn:
saw him stop near the great twin beeches--that embowered a hammock,
chairs and rugs--and disappear inside. Then she knew her moment had
come....

She found him prone in the hammock: not even smoking: staring up into
the cool green dome, fretted with graceful convolutions of trunk and
branches. One lightly clenched hand hung over the edge. Attitude and
abstraction alike suggested a listless dejection that sharply caught at
her heart.

He started at sight of her. "Blessed little Mummy--no hiding from
_you_!"

He flung out his left hand. She took it and laid it against her cheek: a
form of caress all her own.

"Were you wishing to hide? I was waiting among the roses, to show you
the new sweet-peas."

"And I never came. Proper beast I am! And sprawling here----" He swung
his long legs over the side and stood up, tall and straight--taller than
Nevil--smiling down at her. "I wasn't exactly hiding. I was shirking--a
little bit. But now you've found me, you won't escape!"

Pressing down the edge of the hammock, he half lifted her into it and
settled her among the cushions, deftly tucking in her silks and muslins.

"Comfy?" he asked, surveying her, with Nevil's own smile in his eyes.

"Comfy," she sighed, wishing discreet warnings at the bottom of the sea.
Just to be foolish with him--the bliss of it! To chime in with his
moods, his enthusiasms, his nonsense--she asked nothing better of life,
when he came home. "Very clever, Sonling. But no,"--she lifted a
finger--"that won't do. You are twenty-one. Too big for the small name
now. So far away up there!"

"If I shot up as high as a lamp-post, my heart would still be down
there--at your feet."

He said it lightly--that was the Englishman. But he said it--that was
the Rajput. And she knew not which she loved the best. Strange to love
two such opposites with equal fervour.

She blew him a kiss from her finger-tips. "Very well. We will not be
unkind to the small name and throw him on the rubbish-heap. But now sit,
please--Sonling. You have been talking--you and Dad? Not any decision?
Is he not wishing you should--work for India?"

"Mummy, I don't know." He secured a chair and sat down facing her. "He
insists that I'm officially free to kick over the traces, that he's not
the kind of father who 'thunders vetos from the family hearthrug!'"

Lilámani smiled very tenderly at that so characteristic touch; but she
said nothing. And Roy went on: "All the same, I gathered that he's
distinctly not keen on my going out there. So--what the devil am I to
do? He rubbed it in that I'm full young, and no hurry--but I feel
there's something else at the back of his mind."

He paused--and she could hesitate no longer.

"Yes, Roy--there is something else----"

"Then _why_ can't he speak out?"

"Not to be so impatient," she rebuked him gently. "It is because he so
beautifully remains--my lover, he cannot put in words--any thought that
might give----" She flung out an appealing hand. "Oh, Roy--can you not
guess the trouble? He is afraid--for your marriage----"

"My marriage!" It was clear he did not yet grasp the truth. "Really,
Mummy, that's a trifle previous. I'm not even thinking of marriage."

"No, Stupid One! But out there you might come to think of it! No man can
tell when Kama, godling of the arrows, will throw magic dust in his
eyes. You might meet other cousins--like Arúna, and there would come
trouble, because"--she faced him steadily and he saw the veiled blush
creep into her cheeks--"that kind of marriage--for you--must not be."

Now he understood; and, for all her high resolve, she thrilled at the
swift flash of anger in his eyes.

"Who says--it must not be?" he demanded with a touch of heat. "Aunt
Jane--confound her! When I do marry, it will be to please myself--not
_her_!"

"Oh, hush, Roy--and listen! You run away too fast. It is not Aunt
Jane--it is _I_ who am saying must not, because I know--the difficult
thought in Dad's heart. And I know it is right----"

"Why is it right?" He was up in arms again. Obstinate--but how
lovable!--"Why mayn't I have the same luck as he had--if it comes my
way? I've never met a girl or woman that could hold a candle to you for
all-round loveliness. And it's the East that gives you--inside and
out--a quality, a bloom--unseizable--like moonlight----"

"But, my darling! You make me blush!" She drew her sari across her face,
hiding, under a veil of lightness, her joy at his outspoken praise.

"Well, you made me say it. And I'm not sentimentalising. I'm telling a
home truth!"

His vehemence was guarantee of that. Very gently he drew back the sari
and looked deep into her eyes.

"Why should we only tell the ugly ones, like Aunt Jane? Anyway, I've
told you my truest one now--and I'm not ashamed of it."

"No need. It is a jewel I will treasure in my heart."

She dropped the veil of lightness, giving him sincerity for sincerity as
he deserved. "But--Ancient one, have you seen so many girls and women in
your long life----?"

"I've seen a pretty good mixture of all sorts--Oxford, London, and round
here," he insisted unabashed. "And I've had my wits about me. Of course
they're most of them jolly and straight. Good fellows in fact; talking
our slang; playing our games. No harm, of course. But it kills the
charm of contrast--the supreme charm. They understand _that_ in India
better than we do here."

The truth of that last Lilámani could not deny. Too clearly she saw in
the violent upheaval of Western womanhood the hidden germs of tragedy,
for women themselves, for the race.

"You are right, Roy," she said, smiling into his serious face. "From
our--from Hindu point of view, greatest richness of life come from
greatest possible difference between men and women. And most of all it
is so in Rajputana. But over here...." She sighed, a small shivering
sigh. The puzzle and pain of it went too deep with her. "All this
screaming and snatching and scratching for wrong kind of things hurts my
heart; because--I am woman and they are women--desecrating that in us
which is a symbol of God. Nature made women for ministering to Life and
Love. Are they not believing, or not caring, that by struggling to
imitate man (while saying with their lips how they despise him!) they
are losing their own secret, beautiful differences, so important for
happiness--for the race. But marriage in the West seems more for
convenience of lovers than for the race----"

"Yet your son, though he _is_ of the West--must not consider his own
inclination or convenience----"

"My son," she interposed, gently inflexible, "because he is _also_ of
the East, must consider this matter of the race; must try and think it
with his father's mind."

"All the same--making such a point of it seems like an insult--to
you----"

"No, Roy. _Not_ to say that----" The flash in her eyes, that was almost
anger, startled and impressed him more than any spoken word. "No thought
that ever came in your father's mind could be--like insult to me. Oh, my
dear, have you not sense to know that for an old English family like
his, with roots down deep in English soil and history, it is not good
that mixture of race should come twice over in two generations. To
you--our kind of marriage appears a simple affair. You see only how
close we are now, in love and understanding. You cannot imagine all the
difficulties that went before. We know them--and we are proud, because
they became like dust under our feet. Only to you--Dilkusha, I could
tell ... a little, if you wish--for helping you to understand."

"Please tell," he said, and his hand closed on hers.

So, leaning back among her cushions--speaking very simply in the low
voice that was music to his ears--she told....

       *       *       *       *       *

The telling--fragmentary, yet vivid--lasted less than half an hour. But
in that half-hour Roy gleaned a jewel of memory that the years would not
dim. The very words would remain....

For Lilámani--wandering backward in fancy through the Garden of
Remembrance--revealed more than she realised of the man she loved and of
her own passionate spirit, compact of fire and dew, the sublimated
essence of the Eastern woman at her best.

Yet in spite of that revealing--or rather because of it--rebellion
stirred afresh. And, as if divining his thoughts, she impulsively raised
her hand. "Now, Roy, you must promise. Only so, I can speak to Dad and
rest his mind."

Seizing her hand, he kissed it fervently.

"Darling--after all that, a mere promise would be a fatuous superfluity.
If you say 'No Indian wife,' that's enough for me. I suppose I must rest
content with the high privilege of possessing an Indian mother."

Her radiant surprise was a beautiful thing to see. Leaning forward, she
took his head in her hands and kissed him between his eyebrows where the
caste-mark should be.

"Must it be October--so soon?" she asked.

He told her of Dyán, and she sighed. "Poor Dyán! I wonder? It is so
difficult--even with the best kind--this mixing of English education and
Indian life. I hope it will make no harm for those two----"

Then they started, almost like lovers; for the drooping branches rustled
and Tara stood before them--a very vision of June; in her straight frock
of Delphinium blue; one shell-pink rose in her hat and its counterpart
in her waist-belt. Canvas shoes and tennis-racquet betrayed her fell
design on Roy.

"Am I despritly superfluous?" she queried, smiling from one to the
other.

"Quite too despritly," Roy assured her with emphasis.

She wrinkled her nose at him, so far as its delicate aquiline would
permit. "Speak for yourself, spoilt boy!"

But she favoured him with her left hand, which he retained, while she
stooped over the hammock and kissed Lilámani on both cheeks. Then she
stood up and gently disengaged her hand.

"Christine's to blame. She guessed you were here. I came over in hopes
of tennis. It's just perfect. Not too hot."

"Still more perfect in here, lazing with Mummy," said graceless Roy.

"I disown you, I am ashamed!" Lilámani rebuked him only half in jest.
"No more lazing now. I have done with you. Only you have to get me out
of this."

They got her out, between them; fussed over her and laughed at her; and
then went off together for Roy's racquet.

She stood in the silvery sunlight watching them till they disappeared
round the corner of the house. Not surprising that Nevil said--"No
hurry!" If he would only wait...! He was still too young, too much in
love with India--with herself. Yet, had he already begun inditing
sonnets, even to the most acceptable eyebrow, her perverse heart would
doubtless have known the prick of jealousy--as in Desmond's day.

Instead she suddenly knew the first insidious prick of middle age; felt
dazed, for a mere moment, by the careless radiance of their youth; to
them an unconsidered thing: but to those who feel it relentlessly
slipping through their fingers ...

Her small fine hands clenched in unconscious response to her thought.
She was nearing forty. In her own land she would be reckoned almost an
old woman. But some magic in the air and way of life in this cool green
England seemed to keep age at bay: and there remained within a
flame-like youth of the spirit--not so easy, even for the Arch-Thief to
steal away....




CHAPTER V.

     "The bow saith to the arrow, 'Thy freedom is mine.'"
                                 --RABINDRANATH TAGORE.


And while Lilámani reasoned with the son--whose twofold nature they had
themselves bestowed and inspired--Nevil was pacing his shrine of all the
harmonies, heart and brain disturbed, as they had not been for years.

Out of the troubled waters of family friction and delicate adjustments,
this adventurous pair had slid into a haven of peace and mutual
understanding. And now behold, fresh portent of trouble arising from the
dual strain in Roy--the focal point of their life and love.

Turning in his stride, his eye encountered a head and shoulders portrait
of his father, Sir George Sinclair: an honest, bluff, unimaginative
face: yet suddenly, arrestingly, it commanded his attention. Checking
his walk, he stood regarding it: and his heart went out to the kindly
old man in a quite unusual wave of sympathetic understanding. He saw
himself--the "damned unsatisfactory son," Bohemian and dilettante,
frankly at odds with the Sinclair tradition--now standing, more or less,
in that father's shoes; his heart centred on the old place and on the
boy for whom he held it in trust; and the irony of it twisted his lips
into a rueful smile. By his own over-concentration on Roy, and his
secret dread of the Indian obsession, he could gauge what his own father
must have suffered in an aggravated form, blind as he was to any point
of view save his own. And there was Roy--like himself in the twenties,
but how much more purposeful!--drawn irresistibly by the lure of the
horizon; a lure bristling with dangers the more insidious because they
sprang from the blood in his veins.

Yet a word of warning, spoken at the wrong moment, in the wrong tone,
might be disastrously misunderstood; and the distracting sense of being
purely responsible for his own trouble, stung him to renewed irritation.
All capacity for work had been dispelled by that vexatiously engaging
son of his, with his heart in India and his head among the stars....

Weary of pacing, he took out his pipe and sat down in the window-seat to
fill it. He was interrupted by the sound of an unmistakable footstep;
and the response of his whole being justified to admiration Lilámani's
assurance that his hidden trouble implied no lightest reflection on
herself. Lilámani and irritation simply could not co-exist within him;
and he was on his feet when she opened the door.

She did not come forward at once. Pushing it shut with both hands, she
stood so--a hovering question in her eyes. It recalled, with a tender
pang, the earlier days of worshipful aloofness, when only by special
invitation would she intimately approach her lord.

That she might guess his thought he held out his arms. "Come
along--English wife!"

It had been their private password. But her small teeth imprisoned her
lip.

"No--King of me--Indian wife: making too much trouble again!"

"Lilámani! How dare you! Come here."

His attempt at sternness took effect. In one swift rush--sari blown
backward--she came: and he, smitten with self-reproach, folded her
close; while she clung to him in mute passionate response.

"Beloved," she whispered. "Not to worry any more in your secret heart. I
told--he understands."

"Roy----? My darling! But _what_----?" His incoherence was a shameless
admission of relief. "You couldn't--you haven't told him----?"

"Nevil, I have told him all. I saw lately this trouble in your thoughts:
and to-day it came in my mind that only I could speak--could give
command that--one kind of marriage must _not_ be."

He drew her closer, and she suppressed a small sigh.

"Wasn't the boy angry?"

"Only at first--on account of me. He is--so very darling, so
worshipping--his foolish little Mother."

"A weakness he shares with his father," Nevil assured her: and in that
whispered confession she had her reward. For after twenty-three years of
marriage, the note of loverly extravagance is as rare as the note of the
cuckoo in July.

"Sit, little woman." He drew her down to the window-seat, keeping an arm
round her. "The relief it is to feel I can talk it all over with you
freely. Where the dickens would we be, Roy and I, without our
interpreter? And she does it all unbeknownst; like a Brownie. I _have_
been worrying lately. The boy's clean gone on his blessed idea. No
reasoning with him; and the modern father doesn't venture to command!
It's as much as his place is worth! Yet _we_ see the hidden dangers
clearer than he can. Wouldn't it be wiser to apply the curb discreetly
before he slips off into an atmosphere where all the influences will tug
one way?"

It was the sane masculine wisdom of the West. But hers--that was
feminine and of the East--went deeper.

"Perhaps it is mother-weakness," she said, leaning against him and
looking away at a purple cloud that hung low over the moor. "But it
seems to me, by putting on the curb, you keep only his body from those
influences. They would tug all the stronger in his soul. Not healthy and
alive with joy of action, but cramped up and aching, like your legs when
there is no room to stretch them. Then there would come impatience,
turning his heart more to India, more away from you. Father had that
kind of thwarting when young--so I know. Dearest one, am I too foolish?"

"You are my Wisest of Wise.--Is there more?"

"Yes. It is this. Perhaps, through being young and eager, he will make
mistakes; wander too far. But even if he should wander to farthest end,
all influence will _not_ tug one way. He will carry in his heart the
star of you and the star of me. These will shine brighter if he knows
how we longed--for ourselves--to keep him here; yet, for himself, we let
him go. I have remembered always one line of poetry you showed me at
Como. 'To take by leaving, To hold by letting go.' That is true truth
for many things. But for parents truest of all."

High counsel indeed! Good to hear; hard to act upon. Nevil
Sinclair--knowing they would act upon it--let out an involuntary sigh
and tightened his hold of the gentle, adoring woman, whose spirit
towered so far above his own.

"Lilámani--you've won," he said, after a perceptible pause. "You deserve
to win--and Roy will bless you. It's the high privilege of Mothers, I
suppose, to conjure the moon out of heaven for their sons."

"Sometimes, by doing so, they nearly break their hearts," she answered
very low.

He stooped and kissed her. "Keep yours intact--for me. I shall need it."
Her fingers closed convulsively on his--"England will seem sort of
empty--without Roy. Is he dead keen on going this autumn?"

"Yes--I am afraid. A little because of young impatience. A little
because he is troubled over Dyán; and he has much influence. There are
so many now in India dragged two ways."

Nevil sighed again. "Bless the boy! It's an undeniable risk. And what
the family will say to our Midsummer madness, God knows! Jane can be
trusted to make the deuce of a row. And we can't even smooth matters by
telling her of our private precaution----"

"No--not one little _word_."

Lilámani sat upright, a gleam of primitive hate in her eyes.

Nevil smiled, in spite of secret dismay. "You implacable little sinner!
Can't you ever forgive her like a Christian?"

"No--not ever." The tense quiet of her tone carried conviction. "Not
only far-off things, I can never forget--nearly killing me and--and Roy.
But because she is always stabbing at me with sharp words and ugly
thoughts. She cannot ever forgive that I am here--that I make you happy,
which she could not believe. She is angry to be put in the wrong by mere
Hindu wife----" She paused in her vehement rush of speech: saw the look
in Nevil's face that recalled an earlier day; and anger vanished like a
light blown out. "King of me--I am sorry. Only--it is true. And _she_ is
Christian born. But I--down in my deepest places I am still--Rajputni.
Just the same as after twenty-three years of English wife, I am still in
my heart--like the 'Queen who stood erect!'"

On the word she rose and confronted him, smiling into his troubled eyes;
grace of girlhood and dignity of womanhood adorably mingled in her pose.

"Who was she?" Nevil asked, willingly lured from thoughts of Jane.

"Careless one! Have you forgotten the story of my Wonder-Woman--how a
King, loving his Queen with all his soul, bowed himself in ecstasy, and
'took the dust off her feet' in presence of other wives who, from
jealousy, cried: 'Shameless one, lift up the hands of the King to your
head.' But the Queen stood erect, smiling gladly. 'Not so: for both feet
and head are my Lord's. Can I have aught that is mine?'"

The swiftness of transition, the laughing tenderness of her eyes so
moved him--and so potent in her was the magical essence of
womanhood--that he, Sir Nevil Sinclair, Baronet, of Bramleigh Beeches,
came near to taking the dust of her feet in very deed.





CHAPTER VI.

     "Qui n'accepte pas le regret, n'accepte pas la vie."


Nevil's fears were justified to the full. Lady Roscoe was one of those
exasperating people of whom one can predict, almost to a word, a look,
what their attitude will be on any given occasion. So Nevil, who shirked
a "scene"--above all when conducted by Jane--put off telling her the
unwelcome news as long as he dared, without running the dire risk of its
reaching her "round the corner."

Meantime he was fortified and cheered by a letter from Cuthbert
Broome--a shrewd, practical letter amounting to a sober confession of
faith in Roy the embryo writer, as in Roy the budding man.

"I don't minimise the risk," he concluded, with his accustomed frankness
(no relation to the engaging candour that dances a war-dance on other
people's toes), "but, on broad lines, I hereby record my conviction that
the son of you two and the grandson of Sir Lakshman Singh can be trusted
to go far--to keep his head as well as his feet, even in slippery
places. He is eager for knowledge, for work along his own lines. If you
dam up this strong current, it may find other outlets, possibly less
desirable. I came on a jewel the other day. As it's distinctly
applicable, I pass it on.

"'The sole wisdom for man or boy who is haunted with the hovering of
unseen wings, with the scent of unseen roses, and the subtle enticement
of melodies unheard, is _work_. If he follow any of these, they vanish.
If he work, they will come unsought ..."

"Well, when Roy goes out, I undertake to provide him with work that will
keep his brain alert and his pen busy. That's my proposed contribution
to his start in life; and--though I say it!--not to be despised. Tell
him I'll bear down upon the Beeches the first available week-end, and
talk both your heads off!--Yours ever, C.B."

"After _that_," was Nevil's heroic conclusion, "Jane can say what she
damn well pleases."

He broke the news to her forthwith--by post; the usual expedient of
those who shirk "scenes." He furthermore took the precaution to add that
the matter was finally settled.

She replied next morning--by wire. "Cannot understand. Coming down at
once."

And, in record time, on the wings of her new travelling car--she came.

As head of the Sinclair clan--in years and worldly wisdom at least--she
could do no less. From her point of view, it was Nevil's clear duty to
discourage the Indian strain in the boy, as far as that sentimental,
headstrong wife of his would permit. But Nevil's sense of duty needed
constant galvanising, lest it die of inanition. It was her sacred
mission in life to galvanise it, especially in the matter of Roy; and no
one should ever say _she_ shirked a disagreeable obligation. It may
safely be added that no one ever did!

Nevil--who would have given a good deal to be elsewhere--awaited her in
the library: and at the first shock of their encountering glances, he
stiffened all through. He was apt to be restive under advice, and
rebellious under dictation; facts none knew better than Jane, who throve
on advice and dictation--given, not received! She still affected the
neat hard coat and skirt and the neat hard summer hat that had so
distressed the awakening beauty-sense of nine-year-old Roy: only, in
place of the fierce wing there uprose in majesty a severely wired bow.
Jane was so unvarying, outside and in; a worse failing, almost, in the
eyes of this hopelessly artistic household, than her talent for
pouncing, or advising or making up other people's minds.

But to-day, as she glanced round the familiar room, her sigh--half
anger, half bitterness of heart--was genuine. She did care intensely, in
her own way, for the brother whom she hectored without mercy. And he
too cared--in his own way--more than he chose to reveal. But their love
was a dumb thing, rooted in ancestral mysteries. Their surface clash of
temperament was more loquacious.

"I suppose we're fairly safe from interruption?" she asked, with ominous
emphasis; and Nevil gravely indicated the largest leather chair.

"I believe the others are out," he said, half sitting on the edge of the
writing-table and proceeding to light a cigarette. "But, upon my soul, I
don't know _why_ you put yourself out to come down all this way when I
told you plainly everything was fixed up."

"You thought I'd swallow that--and keep my mouth shut?" she retorted,
bristling visibly. "_I'm_ no fool, Nevil, if _you_ are. I _told_ you how
it would be, when you went out in '99. You wouldn't listen then. Perhaps
you'll at least have the sense to listen _now_?"

Nevil shrugged. "As you've come all this way for the satisfaction of
airing your views--I've not much choice in the matter."

And the latitude, thus casually given, she took in full measure. For
twenty minutes, by the clock, she aired her views in a stream of
vigorous colloquial English, lapsing into ready-made phrases of
melodrama, common to the normally inexpressive, in moments of
excitement....

To the familiar tuning-up process, Nevil listened unmoved. But his anger
rose with her rising eloquence:--the unwilling anger of a cool man, more
formidable than mere temper.

Such fine distinctions, however, were unknown to Jane. If you were in a
temper, you were in a temper. That was flat. And she rather wanted to
rouse Nevil's. Heated opposition would stiffen her own....

"India of all countries in the world!" she culminated--a desperate note
invading her wrath. "The one place where he should _not_ be allowed to
sow his wild oats--if the modern anćmic young man has enough red blood
in his veins--for that sort of thing. And it's your obvious duty to be
quite frank with him on the subject. If you had an ounce of common-sense
in your make-up, you'd see it for yourself. But I always say the clever
people are the biggest fools. And Roy's in the same boat--being your
son. No ballast. All in the clouds. _That's_ the fruits of Lil's fancy
education. And you can't say I didn't warn you. What he needs is
discipline--a tight hand. Why not one of the Services? If he gets bitten
with India--at his age, it's quite on the cards that he may go turning
Hindu--or even repeat _your_ folly----"

She paused, simply for lack of breath--and became suddenly alive to the
set stillness of her brother's face.

"_My_ folly--as you are pleased to call it," he said with concentrated
scorn, "has incidentally made our name famous, and cleared the old place
of mortgage. For that reason alone, you might have the grace to refrain
from insulting my wife."

She flung up her head, like a horse at a touch of the curb.

"Oh, if it's an insult to speak the simple truth, I'm _quite_ out of it.
I never could call spades agricultural instruments: and I can't start
new habits at my time of life. I don't deny you've made a good thing out
of your pictures. But no one in their senses _could_ call your marriage
an act of wisdom."

Nevil winced visibly. "I married for the only defensible reason," he
said, in a low controlled voice. "And events have more than justified
me."

"Possibly--so far as _you're_ concerned. But you can't get over the fact
that--even if Roy marries the best blood of England--his son may revert
to type. Dr Simons tells me----"

"_Will_ you hold your tongue!" Nevil blazed out, in a white fury. "I'll
thank you _not_ to discuss my affairs--or Roy's--with your damned
Doctor. And the subject's barred between us--as you're very well aware."

She blenched at the force and fire of his unexpected onslaught, never
dreaming how deeply her thrust had gone home.

"Goodness knows it's as painful for me as it is for you----"

"I didn't say it was painful. I said it was barred."

"Well, you goad me into it, with your unspeakable folly; too much under
Lil's thumb to check Roy, even for his own good. For heaven's sake,
Nevil, put your foot down firmly, for once, and reverse your crazy
decision."

He gave her a long, direct look. "Sorry to disappoint, after all the
trouble you've taken," he said in a level tone, "but I've already told
you the matter's settled. My foot is down on that as firmly as even
_you_ could wish."

"You _mean_ it?" she gasped, too incredulous for wrath.

"I mean it."

"Yet you see the danger?"

"I see the danger."

The fact that he would not condescend to lie to her eased a little her
bitter sense of defeat.

She rose awkwardly--all of a piece.

"Then I have no more to say. I wash my hands of you all. Until you come
to your senses, I don't cross this threshold again."

In spite of the threadbare phrases, genuine pain vibrated in her tone.

"Don't rant, old thing. You know you'll never keep it up," Nevil urged
more gently than he had spoken yet.

But anger still dominated pain.

"When _I_ say a thing, I mean it," she retorted stiffly, "as you will
find to your cost." Without troubling to answer, he lunged for the door
handle; but she waved him aside. "All humbug--playing at
politeness--when you've spurned my advice."

"As you please." He stood back for her to pass. "Sorry it's upset you
so. But we'll see you here again--when you've got over it."

"The _boy_ would have got over it in no time," she flung back at him
from the threshold. "Mark my words, disaster will come of it. Then
perhaps you'll admit I was right."

He felt no call to argue that point. She was gone.... And she had
carefully refrained from slamming the door. Somehow that trifling act of
restraint impressed him with a sense of finality oddly lacking in her
dramatic asseveration.

He stood a few moments staring at the polished oak panels. Then he
turned back and sat down in the chair she had occupied; and all the
inner tension of the last hour went suddenly, completely to pieces....

It was the penalty of his artist nature, this sharp nervous reaction
from strain; and with it came crowding back all the insidious doubts and
anxieties that even Lilámani's wisdom had not entirely charmed away. He
felt torn at the moment between anger with Roy for causing all this
pother; and anger with Jane, who, for all her lack of tenderness and
tact, was right--up to a point. It was just Family Herald heroics about
"not crossing the threshold." At least--rather to his surprise--he found
himself half hoping it was. Roy and Lilámani could frankly detest
her--and there an end. Nevil--in spite of unforgiveable interludes--was
liable to be tripped up by the fact that, after all, she was his sister;
and her aggression was proof that, in her own queer fashion, she loved
him. Half the trouble was that the love of each for the other took
precisely the form that other could least appreciate or understand: no
uncommon dilemma in family life. At all events, he had achieved his
declaration of independence. And he had not failed to evoke the "deuce
of a row."

With a sigh of smothered exasperation, he leaned forward and hid his
face in his hands....

The door opened softly. He started and looked up. It was Roy--in
flannels and blazer, his dark hair slightly ruffled: considered
dispassionately (and Nevil believed he so considered him) a singularly
individual and attractive figure of youth.

At the look in his father's face, he hesitated, wrinkling his brows in a
way that recalled his mother.

"Anything wrong, Daddums? I'm fearfully sorry. I came for a book. Is
it"--still further hesitation--"Aunt Jane?"

"Why? Have you seen her?" Nevil asked sharply.

"Yes. Was it a meteoric visitation? As I came up the path, she was
getting into her car.--And she cut me dead!" He seemed more amused than
impressed. Then the truth dawned on him. "Dad--_have_ you been telling
her? _Is_ she 'as frantic as a skit'?"

Their favourite Hardy quotation moved Nevil to a smile. "She's
angry--naturally--because she wasn't consulted," he said (a happy idea).
"And--well, she doesn't understand."

"'Course she doesn't. Can she ever?" retorted impertinent youth. "She
lacks the supreme faculty--imagination." Which was disrespectful, but
unanswerable.

Nevil had long ago recognised the futility of rebuke in the matter of
"Aunt Jane"; and it was a relief to find the boy took it that way. So he
smiled, merely--or fancied he did. But Roy was quick-sighted; and his
first impression had dismayed him.

No hesitation now. He came forward and laid a hand on his father's
shoulder. "Dads, don't get worrying over me--out there," he said with
shy tenderness that was balm after the lacerating scene Nevil had just
passed through. "That'll be all right. Mother explained--beautifully."

But louder than Roy's comfortable assurance sounded within him the
parting threat of Jane: "Disaster will come of it. _Then_ perhaps you'll
admit I was right." It shook the foundations of courage. He simply could
not stand up to the conjunction of disaster--and Roy. With an effort he
freed himself of the insidious thing,--and just then, to his immense
surprise, Roy stooped and kissed the top of his head.

"Confound Aunt Jane! She's been bludgeoning you. And you _are_ worrying.
You mustn't--I tell you. Bad for your work. Look here"--a portentous
pause. "Shall I chuck it--for the present, anyhow?"

The parental attitude of the modern child has its touching aspect. Nevil
looked up to see if Roy were chaffing; and there smote him the queer
illusion (rarer now, but not extinct) of looking into his own eyes.

Roy had spoken on impulse--a noble impulse. But he patently meant what
he said, this boy stigmatised by Jane as "all in the clouds," and
needing a "tight hand." Here was one of those "whimsical and perilous
moments of daily life" that pass in a breath; light as thistledown,
heavy with complex issues. To Nevil it seemed as if the gods, with
ironical gesture, handed him the wish of his heart, saying: "It is
yours--if you are fool enough to take it." Stress of thought so warred
in him that he came to himself with a fear of having hurt the boy by
ungracious silence.

The pause, in fact, had been so brief that Roy had only just become
aware that his cherished dream was actually trembling in the
balance--when Nevil stood up and faced him, flatly defying Jane and
Olympian irony.

"My dear old boy, you shall _not_ chuck it," he said with smiling
decision. "I've never believed in the older generation being a drag on
the wheel. And now it's my turn, I must play up. What's life worth
without a spice of risk? I took my own--a big one--family or no----"

He broke off--and Roy filled the gap. "You mean--marrying Mother?"

"Yes--just that," he admitted frankly. "The greatest bit of luck in my
life. She shared the risk--a bigger one for her. And I'm damned if we'll
cheat you of yours. There's a hidden key somewhere that most of us have
to find. Yours may be in India--who knows?"

He spoke rapidly, as if anxious to convince himself no less than the
boy. And he had his reward.

"Dad--you're simply stunning--you two," Roy said quietly, but with clear
conviction.

At that moment the purring of the gong vibrated through the house, and
he slipped a hand through his father's arm. "That reminds me--I'm
_starving_ hungry! If they're still out, let's be bold, and propitiate
the teapot on our own!"

Lady Roscoe was, after all, a benefactor in her own despite. Her
meteoric visitation had drawn these two closer together than they had
been since schoolroom days.




CHAPTER VII

     "Ce que nous quittons c'est une partie de nous męme. II faut mourir
     ŕ une vie, pour entrer dans une autre."--ANATOLE FRANCE.


After all, human perversity decreed it should be Roy himself who shrank
most acutely from the wrench of parting, when it loomed near enough to
bring him down from Pisgah heights to the dust of the actual.

Dyán was overjoyed, of course, and untroubled by qualms. Towards the end
of July, he and Arúna came for a brief visit. His excuses for its
brevity struck Roy as a trifle 'thin'; but Dyán kept his secret and paid
Tara Despard the compliment of taking her answer as final.

It was during his visit that Roy suffered the first incipient qualms;
the first sharp contact with practical details:--date of sailing,
details of outfit, the need for engaging a passage betimes. As regards
his destination, matters were simplified by the fact that the new
Resident of Jaipur, Colonel Vincent Leigh, C.S.I., D.S.O., very
considerately happened to be the husband of Desmond's delightful sister
Thea. The schoolboy link between Lance and Roy had created a lasting
friendship between their respective families; and it was General Sir
Theo Desmond--now retired--who had invited Roy, in the name of his
'Twin,' to start with an unlimited visit to the Leighs; the sort of
casual elastic visit that no one would dream of proposing outside
India,--unless it were Ireland, of an earlier, happier day. The prospect
was a secret consolation to Roy. It was also a secret jar to find he
needed every ounce of consolation available.

Very carefully he hid his ignominious frame of mind--even from his
mother; though she probably suspected it and would not fail to
understand. What, precisely, would life be worth without that dear,
daily intimacy--life uncoloured by the rainbow-tinted charm of her
gentle, passionate, humorous, delicately-poised personality? Relations
of such rare quality exact their own pitiless price; and the woman
influence would always be, for Roy--as for most men of genuine gifts and
high purpose--his danger point or salvation. The dim and distant
prospect of parting was thinkable--though perturbing. But all this talk
of steamers and outfits startlingly illumined the fact that in October
he was actually going--to the other end of the earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

With Dyán's departure, realisation pounced upon his heart and brain.
Vaguely, and quite unjustly, he felt as if his cousin were in some way
to blame; and for the moment, he was not sorry to be rid of him.
Partings over, he went off for a lone prowl--hatless, as usual--to quiet
his jangling sensations and tell that inner, irresolute Roy not to be a
treble-distilled fool....

Nothing like the open moor to clear away cobwebs. The sweeps of heady
colour and blue distances could be trusted to revive the winged impulse
that lured him irresistibly away from the tangible and assured. Is there
no hidden link--he wondered--between the wander-instinct of the
home-loving Scot and the vast spaces of moor and sky that lie about him
in his infancy...?

But first he must traverse the enchanted green gloom of his beech-wood,
memory-haunted at every turn. Under his favourite tree, a wooden cross,
carved by Tara and himself, marked the grave of Prince, dead these three
years of sheer old age. And at sight of it there sprang to memory that
unforgotten day of May,--the fight with Joe; Tara's bracelet, still
treasured in his letter-case, even as Tara treasured the "broidered
bodice," in a lavender-scented sachet, set apart from mere blouses and
scarves....

And again that troublesome voice within urged--"What an utter fool you
are--running away from them all."

To him had fallen the privilege of knowing family life at its best--the
finest and happiest on earth; and he could not escape the price
exacted, when the call comes to act and decide and suffer alone.
Associations that grow up with us are more or less taken for granted
while their roots lie deep in the heart. Only when the threat of parting
disturbs the delicate fibres, their depth and tenacity are revealed. And
so it was with Roy. Hurrying through his wood of knightly adventures he
felt besieged, in spirit, by the many loves that had hitherto simply
been a part of his life; yet to-day pressed urgently, individually, upon
his consciousness, his heart....

And over against them was the counter-pull of deep ancestral stirrings;
large vague forces of the outer world; the sense of ferment everywhere;
of storm-clouds on the greater horizon, big with dramas that might rock
the spheres....

All these challenging forces seemed to dwarf his juvenile agitations;
even to arraign his own beautiful surroundings as almost too peaceful,
too perfect. Life could not be altogether made up of goodness and
sweetness and poetry and philosophy. Somewhere--remote, unseen,
implacable--there must lurk strong things, big things, perhaps inimical
things, waiting to pounce on him, to be tackled and overcome. Anyhow
there could be no question, after all his vapourings, of playing the
fool and backing out----

He was on the ridge now; clear space all about him, heather underfoot;
his stride keeping pace with the march of his thoughts. Risks...? Of
course there were risks. He recognised that more frankly now; and the
talk with his mother had revealed a big one that had not so much as
occurred to him. For Broome was right. Concentration on her had, in a
sense, delayed his emotional development; had kept him--for all his
artistry and his First in Greats--very much a boy at heart. Certainly,
Arúna's grace and gaiety had struck him more consciously during this
last visit. No denying, the Eastern element had its perilous
fascination. And the Eastern element was barred. As for Tara--sister and
friend and High Tower Princess in one--she was as much a part of home as
his mother and Christine. He had simply not seen her yet as a budding
woman. He had, in fact, been too deeply absorbed in Oxford and writing
and his dream, and the general deliciousness of life, to challenge the
future definitely, except in the matter of going to India, somewhen,
somehow....

Lost in the swirl of his thoughts and the exhilaration of light and
colour, he forgot all about tea-time....

It was after five when, at last, he swung round the yew hedge on to the
long lawn; and there, at the far end, was Tara, evidently sent out to
find him. She was wearing her delphinium frock and the big blue hat with
its single La France rose. She walked pensively, her head bowed; and, in
that moment, by some trick of sense or spirit, he saw her vividly, as
she was. He saw the grace of her young slenderness, the wild-flower
colouring, the delicate aquiline of her nose that revealed breeding and
character; the mouth that even in repose seemed to quiver with
sensibility. And he thought: "Good Lord! How lovely she is!"

Of course he had known it always--at the back of his mind. The odd thing
was, he had never thought it, in so many words, before. And from the
thought sprang an inspiration. If only _she_ could come out with
them--for a time, at least. So imbued was he with a sense of their
brother and sister relation, that the idea seemed as natural as if it
had concerned Christine. He had certainly been aware, the last year or
so, of a gossamer veil dropped between them. He attributed this to mere
grown-up-ness; but it made him feel appreciably shy at thought of
broaching his brilliant idea.

She raised her head at that point; saw him, and waved a commanding hand.
Impelled by eagerness, he condescended to hurry.

"Casual demon--what _have_ you been up to?" she greeted him with mock
severity.

"Prowling on the ridge. It was gorgeous up there," he answered, noticing
in detail the curve of her eyelid and thick dark lashes.

"Well, tea's half cold and most of it eaten; and Aunt Lila seemed
wondering a little. So I offered to go and unearth you."

"How could you tell?"

A dimple dipped in one cheek. "I couldn't! I was going to the wood, on
chance. Come along."

"No hurry. If tea's half cold, it can wait a bit longer." He drew a
breath, nerving himself; then: "Tara--I've got a proposal to make."

"Roy!" Her lips quivered, just perceptibly, and were still.

"Well, it's this. Wouldn't it be splendid if _you_ came along out--with
us three?"

"Roy!" It was a changed intonation. "That's _not_ a subject for a
practical joke."

"But I'm in earnest. High Tower Princess, wouldn't you love to come?"

"Of course I would." Was it his fancy, or did the blood stir ever so
little in her cheeks? "But it's utterly, crazily impossible. The sort of
thing only _you_ would suggest. So please let be--and come along in."

"Not till you promise. I'm dead set on this. And I'm going to have it
out with you."

"Well, you won't have _me_ out with you--if you talk till midnight."

"Why not?"

Her smile had its delicious tremulous quality. "Were you twenty-one last
birthday--or twelve? If you think you'll be lonely, ask for Christine.
She's your sister--I'm not!"

The emphasis and faint inflection of the last words had their intended
effect. Roy's face fell. "O-oh, I see. But you've always been my sort of
sister. Thea would understand. And nowadays girls do all sorts of
things."

"Yes--they do!" Tara agreed demurely. "They scratch faces and burn down
beautiful harmless houses. But they don't happen to belong to mother.
Roy--it's what I said--crazily--utterly---- If it wasn't, d'you suppose
I'd say No?"

Then Roy knew he was beaten. Also he knew she was right and that he had
been an impulsive fool--depressing convictions both. For a moment he
stood nonplussed while Tara fingered a long chain he had given her, and
absently studied a daisy-plant that had dared to invade the oldest,
loveliest lawn in that part of the country.

But Roy was little used to being thwarted--by home elements, at least:
and when an idea seized him he could be pertinacious, even to the point
of folly. He was determined Tara should come with him. And Tara wanted
to come. Add her permanent dearness and her newly-found loveliness, and
there sprang from the conjunction a second inspiration, even bolder than
the first.

"Tara--dear," he ventured, in a changed tone that halted between
tenderness and appeal. "I'm going to say--something tremendous."

She deserted the daisy and faced him, blue eyes wide; her tell-tale
lower lip drawn in.

"Would it be--quite so 'crazily--utterly'--if ... well, if we were
engaged?"

The tremendous word was out; and the effect on her was unmistakable.
Colour stirred visibly in her face. She straightened herself with an air
that seemed physically to increase the distance between them.

"Really, Roy--have you _quite_ lost your senses to-day?"

He looked--and felt--crestfallen. "But, Tara," he urged, "it's such a
supreme idea. Wouldn't you--think of it, ever? We'd fit like a pair of
gloves. Mummy would love it--extravagantly. And we've been kind
of--caring all these years. At least"--sudden doubt assailed him--"I
suppose you _do_ care still--a little bit?"

"Silly boy! Of course I--care ... a lot."

That was more like the Tara he knew. "Very well. _Why_ accuse me of
incipient lunacy? I care, too. Always have done. Think how topping it
would be, you and I together, exploring all the wonderland of our Game
and Mummy's tales--Udaipur, Amber, Chitor, perhaps the shrine of the
real Tara----"

Still demurely distant, she thought "how topping it would be"; and the
thought kept her silent so long that he grew impatient.

"High Tower Princess--do give over. Your grown-up airs are awfully
sweet--but not to the point. You are coming? It'll spoil everything now,
if you don't."

She shook her head with a small wise smile that seemed to push him away
from her, gently yet inexorably; to make him feel little more than a
schoolboy confronted by a woman; very young in her new shyness and
dignity, but still--a woman.

"No, Roy--I'm not coming. It's--dear of you to want me. But I can't--for
lots of reasons. So please understand, once for all. And don't fuss."

"But you said--you cared," Roy murmured blankly.

"Of course I do. Only--there's caring--and caring ... since you make me
say it. You must know that by now. Anyway, I know we simply can't get
married just because we're very fond of each other and it would please
'Mummy' and be convenient for India."

Roy sighed portentously. He found himself feeling younger and younger
with every smiling, reasonable word she uttered. It was all so unlike
his eager, fiery Tara that perplexity tempered a little his genuine
dismay.

"I s'pose you're right," he grudgingly admitted. "But I'm fearfully
disappointed."

"You are now. You won't be afterwards. It's not marrying time for
you--yet. You've lots of big things to do first. Go out to India and do
them. Then--when the time really comes, you'll understand--and you'll be
grateful to me--for understanding now. There, what a lecture! But the
point is--we can't: and I won't be badgered about it. _I'm_ going back
to tea; and if you don't come, I'll have to tell Aunt Lila--why?"

He sighed. "I'll probably tell her myself to-night. Would you mind?"

"N-no, she'll understand."

"Bet she won't."

"She will. You're not the only person the darling understands, though
you _are_ her spoilt boy."

She swung round on that impetuous little speech, more like her normal
self; and her going was so swift that Roy had some ado to keep pace with
her. He had still more ado to unravel his own tangle of thought and
emotion. A few clear points emerged from a chaos of sensations, like
mountain peaks out of a mist. He knew she was all of a sudden
distractingly lovely; that her charm and obstinacy combined had
thoroughly churned him up; that all the same, she was right about his
unreadiness for marrying now; that he hoped she didn't utterly despise
him; that he hated the idea of leaving her more than ever....

Her pace, perhaps intentionally, made talk difficult; and he still had a
lot to say.

"Tara--why _are_ you sprinting like this?" he broke out, reproachfully.
"Are you angry with me?"

She vouchsafed him a small smile.

"Not yet. But I soon will be, if you don't take care. And I'm dangerous
in a temper!"

"Don't I know that? I once had a scratch that didn't heal for a month.
But do walk slower. You're not chucking me--for good--eh?"

She slowed down a little, perforce; needing her breath for this new and
hopelessly intractable Roy.

"Really, I've never known you ask so many foolish questions in one hour
before. You must have drunk some potion up on the moor! Have you
forgotten you're my Bracelet-bound Brother?"

"But that doesn't bar--the other thing. It's not one of the Prayer-book
affinities! I say, Tara--you might promise to think it over. If you
can't do that much, I won't believe you care a bean about me, for all
you say----"

Her blue eyes flashed at that--genuine fire; and she stood still again,
confronting him.

"Roy--be _quiet_! You make me furious. I want to slap you. First you
suggest a perfectly crazy plan; then you worry me into a temper by
behaving like a spoilt boy, who won't take 'No' for an answer."

Roy straightened himself sharply. "I'm not spoilt--and I'm not a boy.
I'm a man."

"Well then, try and _behave_ like one."

The moment her impulsive retort was spoken, she saw how sharply she had
hurt him, and, with a swift softening of her expressive face, she flung
out a hand. He held it hard. And suddenly she leaned nearer; her lips
tremulous; her eyes melting into a half smile.

"Roy--darling," she murmured, barely above her breath. "You are
really--a little bit of all three. That's part of your deliciousness and
troublesomeness. And it's not your fault--the spoiling. We've all
helped. I've been as bad as the others. But this time--please believe--I
simply, utterly can't--even for you."

Words went from him. He could only cling to her hand.

But with a deft movement she freed herself--and fled round the corner of
the house; leaving him in a state of confusion worse confounded, to seek
his mother and the outraged teapot--alone.

He found her, companioned by the ruins of tea, in the depths of her
great arm-chair; eyes and fingers intent on a square of elaborate
embroidery; thoughts astray with her unpunctual son.

Bramleigh Beeches drawing-room--as recreated by Sir Nevil Sinclair for
his Indian bride--was a setting worthy of its mistress: lofty and
spacious, light filled by three tall French windows, long gold curtains
shot through with bronze; gold and cream colour the prevailing tone;
ivory, brass, and bronze the prevailing incidentals, mainly Indian; and
flowers in profusion--roses, lilies, sweet-peas. Yet, in the midst of it
all, the spirit of Lilámani Sinclair was restless, lacking the son, of
whom, too soon, both she and her home would be bereft----

At the sound of his step she looked up.

"Wicked one! What came to you?"

Impossible to hide from her the disarray of his emotions. So he spoke
the simple truth.

"Tara came to me----! I'd been prowling on the moor, and forgetting the
time. I met her on the lawn----"

"Yes--where is she?--And you----?"

He caught the note of apprehension. Next moment he was kneeling by her
chair, confessing all.

"Mummy, I've just asked her--to marry me. And she simply ... won't hear
of it. I thought it would be so lovely, going out together--that it
would please you so----"

The smile in her eyes recalled Tara's own. "Did you say it that way--to
her, my darling?"

"No--not exactly. Naturally I did mention you--and India. She admits
she's fond of me. Yet she got quite angry. I can't make her out."

A faintly aggrieved note in his voice, implied expectation of sympathy.
To his inexpressible surprise she said pensively, as if to herself:
"Such a wise Tara!"

"Well, _I_ don't see where the wisdom comes in," he muttered a trifle
disconcerted.

"Not yet, son of my heart. Some day perhaps when your eyes are not too
dazzled from the many-coloured sparkle of youth--of yourself--you will
see--many surprises. You are not yet ready for a wife, Roy. Your heart
is reaching out to far-away things. That--_she_ has been woman enough to
guess."

"Perhaps, I'm not so sure. She seemed--not a bit like herself, part of
the time." He looked pensively at a slim vase overflowing with sprays of
blush rambler, that, for some reason, evoked a tantalising vision of the
girl who had so suddenly blossomed into a woman; and his shy, lurking
thought found utterance: "I've been wondering, Mummy, is it ... can she
be--in love with somebody else? Do you think she is?"

Lilámani shook her head at him. "That is a man's question! Hard to tell.
At this kind of age, when girls have so much character--like my
Tara--they have a natural instinct for hiding the thoughts of their
hearts." She dropped her needlework now and lightly took his head
between her hands, looking deep into his eyes. "Do you think _you_ are
yet--in love with her, Roy? Honest answer."

The touch of her hands stirred him all through. The question in her eyes
probed deep.

"Honest answer, Mummy--I'm blest if I know," he said slowly. "I don't
think I've ever been so near it before; beyond thrills at dances ... and
all that. She somehow churned me up just now and made me want her
tremendously. But I truly hadn't thought of it--that way, before. And--I
did feel it might ease you and Dad about ... the other thing, if I went
out fixed up."

She drew his head to her and kissed him, then let her hands fall in her
lap. "Wonderful Sonling! Indeed it _would_ ease me and please me--if
coming from the true motive. Only remember, so long as you are thinking
first of me, you can be sure That Other has not yet arrived."

"But I shall always think first of you," he declared, catching at her
hands. "There's no one like you. There never will be."

"No--not like, but different--in clearness and nearness. Love is one big
impulse, but many forms. Like white light made from many colours. No
rival for me, That Other; but daughter-in-law--best gift a son can bring
to his father's house. Just now there is room inside you only for one
big thing--India."

"And you----"

"But I am India."

"Sublimated essence of it, according to Jeffers."

"Jeffers says many foolish things!" But she did not disguise her
pleasure.

"I've noticed occasional flashes of wisdom!--But, I say, Motherling,
what price tea?"

"Tea?" She feigned exaggerated surprise. "I thought you were much too
far in the clouds!"

"On the contrary. I'm simply famished!"

And forthwith he fell upon a plate of sugar cakes; while she rang for
the fresh teapot, so often in requisition for 'Mr Roy.'




CHAPTER VIII.

     "Comfort, content, delight, the ages' slow-bought gain,
      They shrivelled in a night. Only ourselves remain
      To face the naked days in silent fortitude.
      Through perils and dismays renewed and re-renewed."
                                          --KIPLING.


Nevil was up in town on business; not returning till next day. The
papers were seething with rumours; but the majority of everyday people,
immersed in their all-important affairs, continued cheerfully to hope
against hope. Sir Nevil Sinclair was not of these; but he kept his worst
qualms to himself. Neither his wife nor his son were keen newspaper
readers; which, in his opinion, was just as well.

Certainly it did not occur to Lilámani that any trouble in Europe could
invade the sanctities of her home, or affect the shining destiny of Roy.
That he was destined to shine, her mother's heart knew beyond all doubt.
And round that knowledge, like an aura, glimmered a dreamlike hope that
perhaps his shining might some day, in some way, strengthen the bond
between Nevil's people and her own. For the problem of India's changing
relation to England lay intimately near her heart. Her poetic brain saw
England always as "husband of India"; while misguided or malicious
meddlers--who would "make the Mother a widow"--were fancifully
incorporated in the person of Jane. And, in this matter of India, Roy
had triumphed over Jane:--surely good omens, for bigger things:--for at
heart she was still susceptible to omens; more so than she cared to
admit. Crazy mother-arrogance, Nevil would say. But she seemed to feel
the spirit of his grandfather at work in Roy; and well she knew that the
old man's wisdom would guide and temper his young zeal. Beyond that, no
human eyes could see; only the too-human heart of a mother could dream
and hope....

Long ago her father had told her that nations had always been renewed by
individuals; that India--aristocratic to the deeps of her Brahmin-ridden
soul--would never acknowledge the crowd's unstable sway. For her it must
always be the _man_--ruler, soldier, or saint.

Not that she had breathed a word of her 'arrogance' to Nevil, or even to
Roy. Nor had she shown to either a certain letter from a distinguished
Indian woman; pure Indian by birth; also by birth a Christian; her
sympathy with East and West as evenly poised as Lilámani's own. The
letter lived in a slim blue bag, lovingly embroidered. Lilámani--foolish
and fanciful--wore it like a talisman, next her heart; and at night
slipped it under her pillow with her gold watch and wisp of scented
lawn.

To-night, being alone, and her mind very full of Roy, she drew it out
and re-read it for the hundredth time; lingering, as always, on its
arresting finale.

"I have seen much and grieved more over the problem of the Eurasian, as
multiplied in our beloved country--the fruit, most often, of promiscuous
unions between low-caste types on both sides, with sense of stigma added
to drag them lower still. But where the crossing is of highest caste--as
with you and your 'Nevil'--I can see no stigma; perhaps even spiritual
gain to your children. For I love both countries with my whole heart.
And to my love God has given the vision that India may some day be saved
by the son of just such a union as your own. He will have the strength
of his handicap; the soul of the East; the forceful mind and character
of the West. He will bring to the task of uniting them such twofold love
and understanding that the world must needs take infection. What if the
ultimate meaning of British occupation of India be just this--that the
successor of Buddha should be a man born of high-caste, high-minded
British and Indian parents; a fusion of the finest that East and West
can give. That vision may inspire you in your first flush of happy
motherhood. So I feel impelled to pass it on ..."

Such a vision--whether fantasy or prophecy--could not fail to stir
Lilámani Sinclair's Eastern heart to its depths. But she shrank from
sceptical comment; and sceptical Nevil would surely be. As for Roy,
intuition warned her it was too heady an idea to implant in his ardent
brain. So she treasured it secretly, and read it at intervals, and
prayed that, some day, it might be fulfilled--if not through her, then
through some other Lilámani, who should find courage to link her life
with England. Above all, she prayed he who should achieve India's
renewal might spring from Rajasthán....

In the midst of her thinking and praying, she fell sound asleep--to
dream of Roy tossed out of reach on the waves of some large vague
upheaval. The 'how' and 'why' of it all eluded her. Only the vivid
impression remained....

       *       *       *       *       *

And before the week was out, an upheaval, actual and terrible, burst
upon a startled, unheeding world; a world lulled into a false sense of
security; and too strenuously engaged in rushing headlong round a
centrifugal point called 'progress,' to concern itself with a mythical
peril across the North Sea.

But at the first clear note of danger, devotees of pleasure and progress
and the franchise were transformed, as by magic, into a crowd of
bewildered, curious and resentful human beings, who had suddenly lost
their bearings; who snatched at newspapers; confided in perfect
strangers; protested that a European War was unspeakable, unthinkable,
and all the while could speak and think of nothing else....

It was the nightmare terror of earthquake, when the solid ground
underfoot turns traitor. And it shook even the stoutest nerves in the
opening weeks of the Great War, destined to shatter their dear and
familiar world for months, years, decades perhaps....

But underlying all the froth and fume of the earlier restlessness, of
the later fear and futility, the strong, kindly, imperturbable heart of
the land still beat, sanely--if inconspicuously--in the home life of her
cottages and her great country houses. Twentieth-century England could
not be called degenerate while she counted among her hidden treasures
homes of such charm and culture and mutual confidence as those that
produced the Grenfells, the Charltons, a Lord Elcho, an Edward Tennant
and a Charles Sorley--to pick a few names at random from that galaxy of
'golden boys' who ungrudgingly gave their lives--for what?

The answer to that staggering question is not yet. But the splendour of
their gift remains: a splendour no after-failure can tarnish or dim ...

To the inmates of Bramleigh Beeches--Nevil excepted--the crash came with
startling abruptness; dwarfing all personal problems, heart-searchings
and high decisions. Even Lady Roscoe forgot Family Herald heroics, and
'crossed the threshold' without comment from Nevil or herself. The
weightiest matters became suddenly trivial beside the tremendous
questions that hovered in every mind and on every tongue: 'Can We hold
Them?' 'Can They invade Us?' 'Can it be true--this whispered horror,
that rumoured disaster?' And the test question--most tremendous of all,
for the mere unit--'Where do _I_ come in?'

Nevil came in automatically through years of casual connection with the
Artists' Rifles. He was a Colonel by now; and would join up as a matter
of course--to his wife's secret amazement and far from secret pride.
Without an ounce of the soldier in him, he acted on instinct like most
Englishmen; not troubling to analyse motives; simply in the spirit of
_Noblesse oblige_; or, in the more casual modern equivalent--'one just
does.'

Roy--poet and dreamer--became electrically alive to his double heritage
of the soldier spirit. From age to age the primeval link between poet
and warrior is reaffirmed in time of war: and the Rajput in him
recognised only one way of fighting worthy the name--the triune
conjunction of man and horse and sword. Disillusion, strange and
terrible, awaited him on that score: and as for India--what need of his
young activities, when the whole Empire was being welded into one
resistant mass by the triple hammer-strokes of a common danger, a common
enemy, a common aim?

It was perhaps this sense of a clear call in an age of intellectual
ferment, of sex problems and political friction, that sent so many
unlikely types of manhood straight as arrows to that universal
target--the Front. The War offered a high and practical outlet for their
dumb idealism; to their realism, it offered the 'terrific verities of
fatigue, suffering, bodily danger--beloved life and staggering death.'

For Roy, Cavalry was a matter of course. In the saddle, even Jane could
find no fault with him; little guessing that, in his genius for
horsemanship, he was Rajput to the marrow. His compact, nervous make,
strong thigh and light hand, marked him as the inevitable centaur; and
he had already gained a measure of distinction in the cavalry arm of the
Officers' Training Corps. But a great wish to keep in touch with his
father led him to fall in with Sir Nevil's suggestion that he should
start in the Artists' Rifles and apply for a transfer later on--when one
could see more clearly how this terrific business was likely to develop.
George and Jerry--aged fifteen and sixteen and a half--raged at their
own futile juvenility--which, in happier circumstances, nothing would
have induced them to admit. Jerry--a gay and reckless being--had fell
designs on the Flying Corps, the very first moment he could 'wangle it.'
George--the truest Sinclair of them all--sagely voted for the Navy,
because it took you young. But no one heeded them very much. They were
all too absorbed in newspapers and their own immediate plans.

And Lilámani, also, found her niche, when the King's stirring
proclamation announced the coming of Indian troops. There was to be a
camp on the estate. Later on, there would be convalescents. Meantime,
there was wholesale need of 'comforts' to occupy her and Helen and
Christine.

Tara's soaring ambition would carry her farther afield. Her spirit of
flame--that rose instinctively to tragic issues and heroic
demands--could be at peace nowhere but in the splendid, terrible,
unorganised thick of it all. Without making any ado, she proposed to get
there in the shortest possible time; and, in the shortest possible time,
by sheer concentration and hard work, she achieved her desire. Before
Roy left England, before her best-loved brother--a man of brilliant
promise--had finished learning to fly, she was driving her car in
Belgium, besieged in Antwerp, doing and enduring terrible things ...

After Tara, Nevil--for the Artists' Rifles were early in the field.
After Nevil, Roy--his exchange effected--very slim and soldierly in
cavalry uniform; his grey-blue eyes, with the lurking gleam in them,
more than ever noticeable in his sunburnt face.

The last day, the last hour were at once sad and glad beyond belief; so
that Lilámani's coward heart was thankful for urgent trifles that helped
to divert attention from the waiting shadow. Even to-day, as always,
dress and sari were instinctively chosen to express her mood:--the
mother-of-pearl mood; iridescence of glad and sad: glad to give; yet
aching to keep. Daughter of Rajputs though she was, she had her moment
of very human shrinking when the sharp actuality of parting was upon
them; when he held her so close and long that she felt as if the
tightened cord round her heart must snap--and there an end....

But, by some miracle, some power not her own, courage held; though, when
he released her, she was half blinded with tears.

Her last words--entirely like herself though they were--surprised him.

"Son of my heart--live for ever," she whispered, laying light hands on
his breast. "And when you go into the battle, always keep strongly in
your mind that They must _not_ win, because no sacred or beautiful thing
would be left clean from their touch. And when you go into the battle
always remember--Chitor."

"It is _you_ I shall always remember--looking like this," he answered
under his breath. But he never forgot her injunctions; and through years
of fighting, he obeyed them to the letter....

       *       *       *       *       *

That was in April, after Neuve Chapelle, when even optimists admitted
that the War might last a year.

At Christmas time he came home on short leave--a changed Roy; his skin
browner; his sensitive lips more closely set under the shadow line of
his moustache; the fibre of body and spirit hardened, without loss of
fineness or flexibility. Livelier on the surface, he was graver, more
reticent, underneath--even with her. By the look in his eyes she knew he
had seen things that could never be put into words. Some of them she too
had seen, through his mind; so close was the spiritual link between
them. In that respect at least, he was beautifully, unaffectedly the
same....

Nevil was home too, for that wonderful Christmas; and Tara, changed
also, in her own vivid way; frank and friendly with Roy; though the
grown-up veil between them was seldom lifted now. For the War held them
both in its unrelaxing grip; satisfied, in terrible and tremendous
fashion, the hidden desire--not uncommon in young things, though
concealed like a vice--to suffer for others. Everything else, for the
time being, seemed a side issue. Personal affairs could wait....

When it came to letting Nevil and Roy go again, after their brief,
beautiful interlude together, Lilámani discovered how those fifteen
months of ceaseless anxiety and ceaseless service had shaken her nerve.
Gladness of giving could now scarce hold its own against dread of
losing; till she felt as if her heart must break under the strain. It
did not break, however. It endured--as the hearts of a million mothers
and wives have endured in all ages--to breaking-point ... and beyond.
The immensity of the whole world's anguish at once crushed and upheld
her, making her individual pain seem almost a little thing----

They left her. And the War went on--disastrously, gloriously,
stubbornly, inconclusively; would go on, it seemed, to the end of Time.
One came to feel as if life free from the shadow of War had never been.
As if it would never be again----


END OF PHASE II.




PHASE III.

PISGAH HEIGHTS







CHAPTER I.

     "No receipt openeth the heart, but a true friend."--FRANCIS
     BACON.


As early as 1819 there had been a Desmond in India; a
soldier-administrator of mark, in his day. During the Sikh Wars there
had been a Desmond in the Punjab; and at the time of the Great Mutiny
there was a Punjab Cavalry Desmond at Kohat; a notable fighter, with a
flowing beard and an easy-going uniform that would not commend itself to
the modern military eye. In the year of the second Afghan War, there was
yet another Desmond at Kohat; one that earned the cross 'For Valour,'
married the daughter of Sir John Meredith, and rose to high distinction.
Later still, in the year of grace 1918, his two sons were stationed
there, in the self-same Punjab Cavalry Regiment. There was also by now,
a certain bungalow in Kohat known as 'Desmond's bungalow,' occupied at
present by Colonel Paul Desmond, now in Command.

That is no uncommon story in India. She has laid her spell on certain
families; and they have followed one another through the generations, as
homing birds follow in line across the sunset sky. And their name
becomes a legend that passes from father to son; because India does not
forget. There is perhaps nothing quite like it in the tale of any other
land. It makes for continuity; for a fine tradition of service and
devotion; a tradition that will not be broken till agitators and
theorists make an end of Britain in India. But that day is not yet; and
the best elements of both races still believe it will never be.

Certainly neither Paul nor Lance Desmond, riding home together from
kit inspection, on a morning of early September, entertained the
dimmest idea of a break with the family tradition. Lance, at
seven-and-twenty--spare and soldierly, alive to the finger-tips--was his
father in replica, even to the V.C. after his name, which he had
'snaffled out of the War,' together with a Croix de Guerre and a
brevet-Majority. Though Cavalry had been at a discount in France,
Mesopotamia and Palestine had given the Regiment its chance--with fever
and dysentery and all the plagues of Egypt thrown in to keep things
going.

It was in the process of filling up his woeful gaps that Colonel Desmond
had applied for Roy Sinclair, and so fulfilled the desire of his
brother's heart: also, incidentally, Roy's craving to serve with Indian
Cavalry. To that end, his knowledge of the language, his horsemanship,
his daring and resource in scout work, had stood him in good stead.
Paul--who scarcely knew him at the time--very soon discovered that he
had secured an asset for the Regiment--the great Fetish, that claimed
his paramount allegiance, and began to look like claiming it for life.

"He's just John over again," Lady Desmond would say, referring to a
brother who had served the great Fetish from subaltern to Colonel and
left his name on a cross in Kohat cemetery.

Certainly, in form and feature, Paul was very much a Meredith:--the
coppery tone of his hair, the straight nose and steadfast grey-blue
eyes, the height and breadth and suggestion of power in reserve. It was
one of the most serious problems of his life to keep his big frame under
weight for polo, without impairing his immense capacity for work. Apart
from this important detail, he was singularly unaware of his striking
personal appearance, except when others chaffed him about his look of
Lord Kitchener, and were usually snubbed for their pains; though, at
heart, he was inordinately proud of the fact. He had only one quarrel
with the hero of his boyhood;--the decree that officially extinguished
the Frontier Force; though the spirit of it survives, and will survive,
for decades to come. Like his brother, he had 'snaffled' a few
decorations out of the War: but to be in Command of the Regiment, with
Lance in charge of his pet squadron, was better than all.

The strong bond of affection between these two--first and last of a
family of six--was enhanced by their very unlikeness. Lance had the élan
of a torrent; Paul the stillness and depth of a mountain lake. Lance was
a rapier; Paul a claymore--slow to smite, formidable when roused. Both
were natural leaders of men; both, it need hardly be added, 'Piffers'[3]
in the grain. They had only returned in March from active service, with
the Regiment very much the worse for wear; heartily sorry to be out of
the biggest show on record; yet heartily glad to be back in India, a
sadly changing India though it was.

Two urgent questions were troubling the mind of Lance as they rode at a
foot's pace up the slope leading to the Blue Bungalow. Would the board
of doctors, at that moment 'sitting' on Roy, give him another chance?
Would the impending reliefs condemn them to a 'down-country' station?
For they had only been posted to Kohat till these came out.

To one of those questions Colonel Desmond already knew the answer.

"I had a line from the General this morning," he remarked, after
studying his brother's profile and shrewdly gauging his thoughts.

True enough--his start betrayed him. "The General?--Reliefs?"

"Yes." A pause. "We're for--Lahore Cantonments."

"Damn!"

"I've made that inspired remark already. You needn't flatter yourself
it's original!"

"I'm not in the mood to flatter myself or any one else. I'm in a
towering rage. And if dear old Roy is to be turned down into the
bargain----!" Words failed him. He had his father's genius for making
friends; and among them all Roy Sinclair reigned supreme.

"I'm afraid he will be if I know anything of medical boards."

"Why the _devil_----?" Lance flashed out. "It's not as if A1 officers
were tumbling over each other in the service. If Roy was a Tommy they'd
jolly soon think of something better than leave and futile tonics."

Colonel Desmond smiled at the characteristic outburst.

"Certainly their tinkering isn't up to much. But I'm afraid there's more
wrong with Roy than mere doctoring can touch. Still--he doesn't seem
keen on going Home."

Lance shook his head. "Naturally--poor old chap. Feels he can't face
things, yet. It's not only the delights of Mespot that have knocked him
off his centre. It's losing--that jewel of a mother." His eyes darkened
with feeling. "You can't wonder. If anything was to happen----" He broke
off abruptly.

Paul Desmond set his teeth and was silent. In the deep of his heart, the
Regiment had one rival--and Lady Desmond knew it....

They found the bungalow empty. No sign of Roy.

"Getting round 'em," suggested Paul optimistically, and passed on into
his dufter.

Lance lit a cigar, flung himself into a verandah chair and picked up the
'Civil and Military.' He had just scanned the war telegrams when Roy
came up at a round trot.

Lance sat forward and discarded the paper. An exchange of glances
sufficed. Roy's determination to 'bluff the board' had failed.

He looked sallow in spite of sunburn; tired and disheartened; no lurking
smile in his eyes. He fondled the velvet nose of his beloved Suráj--a
graceful creature, half Arab, half Waler; and absently acknowledged the
frantic jubilations of his Irish terrier puppy, christened by Lance the
Holy Terror--Terry for short. Then he mounted the steps, subsided into
the other chair and dropped his cap and whip on the ground.

"Damn the doctors," said Lance, questions being superfluous.

That so characteristic form of sympathy moved Roy to a rueful smile.
"Obstinate devils. I bluffed 'em all I knew. Overdid it, perhaps. Anyway
they weren't impressed. They've dispensed with my valuable services.
Anćmia, mild neurasthenia, cardiac symptoms--and a few other
pusillanimous ailments. Wonder they didn't throw in housemaid's knee!
Oh, confound 'em all!" He converted a sigh into a prolonged yawn.
"Let's make merry over a peg, Lance. Doctors are exhausting to argue
with. And Cuthers always said I couldn't argue for nuts! Now then--how
about pegs?"

"A bit demoralising--at midday," Lance murmured without conviction.

"Well, I _am_ demoralised; dead--damned--done for. I'm about to be
honoured with a blooming medical certificate to that effect. As a
soldier, I'm extinct--from this time forth for evermore. You see before
you the wraith of a Might-Have-Been. After _that_ gold-medal exhibition
of inanity, kindly produce said pegs!"

Lance Desmond listened with a grave smile, and a sharp contraction of
heart, to the absurdities of this first-best friend, who for three years
had shared with him the high and horrible and ludicrous vicissitudes of
war. He knew only too well that trick of talking at random to drown some
inner stress. With every word of nonsense he uttered, Roy was implicitly
confessing how acutely he felt the blow; and to parade his own bitter
disappointment seemed an egotistical superfluity. So he merely remarked
with due gravity: "I admit you've made out an overwhelming case for
'said pegs'!" And he shouted his orders accordingly.

They filled their tumblers in silence, avoiding each other's eyes. Every
moment emphasised increasingly all that the detested verdict implied. No
more polo together. No more sharing of books and jokes and enthusiasms
and violent antipathies, to which both were prone. No more 'shoots' in
the Hills beyond Kashmir.

From the first of these they had lately returned--sick leave, in Roy's
case; and the programme was to be repeated next April, if they could
'wangle' first leave. Each knew the other was thinking of these things.
But they seemed entirely occupied in quenching their thirst, and their
disappointment, in deep draughts of sizzling ice-cool whisky-and-soda.
Moreover--ignominious, but true--when the tumblers were emptied, things
did begin to look a shade less blue. It became more possible to discuss
plans. And Desmond was feeling distinctly anxious on that score.

"You won't be shunted instanter," he remarked; and Roy smiled at the
relief in his tone.

"Next month, I suppose. We must make the most of these few weeks, old
man."

"And then--what?... Home?"

Roy did not answer at once. He was lying back again, staring out at the
respectable imitation of a lawn, at rose beds, carpeted with over-blown
mignonette, and a lone untidy tamarisk that flung a spiky shadow on the
grass. And the eye of his mind was picturing the loveliest lawn of his
acquaintance, with its noble twin beeches and a hammock slung
between--an empty casket; the jewel gone. It was picturing the
drawing-room; the restful simplicity of its cream and gold: but no dear
and lovely figure, in gold-flecked sari, lost in the great arm-chair.
Her window-seat in the studio--empty. No one in a 'mother-o'-pearl mood'
to come and tuck him up and exchange confidences, the last thing. His
father, also invalided out; his left coat sleeve half empty, where the
forearm had been removed.

"N--no," he said at last, still staring at the unblinking sunshine. "Not
Home. Not yet--anyway."

Then, having confessed, he turned and looked straight into the eyes of
his friend--the hazel-grey eyes he had so admired, as a small boy,
because of the way they darkened with anger or strong feeling. And he
admired them still. "A coward--am I? It's not a flattering conclusion.
But I suppose it's the cold truth."

"It hasn't struck _me_ that way." Desmond frankly returned his look.

"That's a mercy. But--if one's name happened to be Lance Desmond, one
would go--anyhow."

"I doubt it. The place must be simply alive--with memories. We
Anglo-Indians, jogged from pillar to post, know precious little about
homes like yours. A man--can't judge----"

"You're a generous soul, Lance!" Roy broke out with sudden warmth.
"Anyway--coward or no--I simply _can't_ face--the ordeal, yet awhile. I
believe my father will understand. After all--here I am in India, as
planned, before the Great Interruption. So--given the chance, I might as
well take it. The dear old place is mostly empty, these days--with Tiny
married and Dad's Air Force job pinning him to Town. _So_--as I remarked
before----!"

"You'll hang on out here for the present? Thank God for that much."

Desmond's pious gratitude was so fervent that they both burst out
laughing; and their laughter cleared the air of ghosts.

"Jaipur it is, I suppose, as planned. Thea will be overjoyed. Whether
Jaipur's precisely a health resort----?"

"I'm not after health resorts. I'm after knowledge--and a few other
things. Not Jaipur first, anyway. The moment I get the official order of
the boot--I'm for Chitor."

"Chitor?" Faint incredulity lurked in Desmond's tone.

"Yes--the casket that enshrines the soul of a race; buried in the wilds
of Rajasthán. Ever heard tell of it, you arrant Punjabi? Or does nothing
exist for _you_ south of Delhi?"

"Just a thing or two--not to mention Thea!"

"Of course--I beg her pardon! _She_ would appreciate Chitor."

"Rather. They went there--and Udaipur, last year. She's death on getting
Vincent transferred. And the Burra Sahibs are as wax in her hands. If
they happen to be musical, and she applies the fiddle, they haven't an
earthly----!"

Roy's eyes took on their far-away look.

"It'll be truly uplifting to see her--and hear her fiddle once more, if
she's game for an indefinite dose of my society. Anyway, there's my
grandfather----"

"Quite superfluous," Desmond interposed a shade too promptly. "If I know
Thea, she'll hang on to you for the cold weather; and ensure you a _pied
ŕ terre_ if you want to prowl round Rajputana and give the bee in your
bonnet an airing! You'll be in clover. The Residency's a sort of palace.
Not precisely Thea's ideal of bliss. She's a Piffer at heart; and her
social talents don't get much scope down there. Only half a dozen
whites; and old Vinx buried fathoms deep in ethnology, writing a book.
But, being Thea, she has pitched herself head foremost, into it all. Got
very keen on Indian women. She's mixed up in some sort of a romance now.
A girl who's been educated at home. It seems an unfailing prescription
for trouble. I rather fancy she's a cousin of yours."

Roy started. "What--Arúna?"

"She didn't mention the name. Only ructions--and Thea to the rescue!"

"Poor Arúna!--She stayed in England a goodish time, because of the
War--and Dyán. I've not heard of Dyán for an age; and I don't believe
they have either. He was knocked out in 1915. Lost his left arm. Said he
was going to study art in Calcutta.--I wonder----?" Desmond--who had
chiefly been talking to divert the current of his thoughts--noted, with
satisfaction, how his simple tactics had taken effect.

"We'll write to-morrow--eh?" said he. "Better still--happy
thought!--I'll bear down on Jaipur myself, for Christmas leave. Rare
fine pig-sticking in those parts."

The happy thought proved a masterstroke. In the discussion of plans and
projects Roy became almost his radiant self again: forgot, for one
merciful hour, that he was dead, damned, and done for--the wraith of a
'Might-Have-Been.'

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Punjab Irregular Frontier Force.]




CHAPTER II.

     "Oh, not more subtly silence strays
        Amongst the winds, between the voices...
      Than thou art present in my days.

      My silence, life returns to thee
        In all the pauses of her breath.
      And thou, wake ever, wake for me!"
                              --ALICE MEYNELL.


Some five weeks later, Roy sat alone--very completely and desolately
alone--in a whitewashed, unhomely room that everywhere bore the stamp of
dák bungalow; from the wobbly teapoy[4] at his elbow to the board of
printed rules that adorned the empty mantelpiece. The only cheering
thing in the room was the log fire that made companionable noises and
danced shadow-dances on the dingy white walls. But the optimism of the
fire was discounted by the pessimism of the lamp that seemed specially
constructed to produce a minimum of light with a maximum of smell--and
rank kerosene at that.

Dák bungalows had seemed good fun in the days of his leave, when he and
Lance made merry over their well-worn failings. But it was quite another
affair to smoke the pipe of compulsory solitude, on the outskirts of
Chitor, hundreds of miles away from Kohat and the Regiment; to feel
oneself the only living being in a succession of empty rooms--for the
servants were housed in their own little colony apart. Solitude, in the
right mood and the right place, was bread and wine to his soul; but
acute loneliness of the dák bungalow order was not in the bond. For four
years he had felt himself part of a huge incarnate purpose; intimately
part of his regiment--a closely-knit brotherhood of action. Now, the
mere fact of being an unattached human fragment oddly intensified his
feeling of isolation. With all his individuality, he was no egoist; and
very much a lover of his kind. Imbued with the spirit of the quest, yet
averse by temperament to ploughing the lonely furrow.

It had been his own choice--if you could call it so,--starting this way,
instead of in the friendly atmosphere of the Jaipur Residency. But was
there really such a thing as choice? The fact was, he had simply obeyed
an irresistible impulse,--and to-morrow he would be glad of it.
To-night, after that interminable journey, his head ached atrociously.
He felt limp as a wet dish-clout; his nerves all out of gear ... Perhaps
those confounded doctors were not such fools as they seemed. He cursed
himself for a spineless ineffectual--messing about with nerves when he
had been lucky enough to come through four years of war with his full
complement of limbs and faculties unimpaired. Two slight wounds, a
passing collapse, from utter fatigue and misery, soon after his mother's
death; a spell of chronic dysentery, during which he had somehow managed
to keep more or less fit for duty;--that was his record of physical
damage, in a War that had broken its tens of thousands for life.

But there are wounds of the mind; and the healing of them is a slow,
complex affair. Roy, with his fastidious sense of beauty, his almost
morbid shrinking from inflicted pain, had suffered acutely, where more
robust natures scarcely suffered at all. Yet it was the robust that went
to pieces--which was one of the many surprises of a War that shattered
convictions wholesale, and challenged modern man to the fiercest trial
of faith at a moment when Science had almost stripped him bare of belief
in anything outside himself.

Roy, happily for him, had not been stripped of belief; and his receptive
mind, had been ceaselessly occupied registering impressions, to be flung
off, later, in prose and verse, that _She_ might share them to the full.
A slim volume--published, at her wish, in 1916--had attracted no small
attention in the critical world. At the time, he had deprecated
premature rushings into print; but afterwards it was a blessed thing to
remember the joy he had given her that last Christmas--the very last....

On the battlefield, if there had been nerve-shattering moments, these
had their counterpart in moments when the spirit of his Rajput ancestors
lived again in him, when he knew neither shrinking nor horror nor pity:
and in moments of pure pleasure, during some quiet interlude, when larks
rained music out of the blue; when he found himself alone with the eerie
wonder of dawn over the scarred and riven fields of death; or when he
discovered his Oriental genius for scout work that had rapidly earned
him distinction and sated his love of adventure to the full.

And always, unfailingly he had obeyed his mother's parting injunction.
As a British officer, he had fought for the Empire. As Roy Sinclair--son
of Lilámani--he had fought for the sanctities of Home and
Beauty--intrinsic beauty of mind and body and soul--against hideousness
and licence and the unclean spirit that could defile the very
sanctuaries of God.

And always, when he went into battle, he remembered Chitor. Mentally, he
put on the saffron robe, insignia of 'no surrender.' To be taken
prisoner was the one fate he could not bring himself to contemplate: yet
that very fate had befallen him and Lance, in Mesopotamia--the sequel of
a daring and successful raid.

Returning, in the teeth of unexpected difficulties, they had found
themselves ambushed, with their handful of men--outnumbered, no loophole
for escape.

For three months, that seemed more like years, they had lost all sense
of personal liberty--the oxygen of the soul. They had endured misery,
semi-starvation, and occasionally other things, such as a man cannot
bring himself to speak about or consciously recall: not least, the awful
sense of being powerless--and hated. From the beginning, they had kept
their minds occupied with ingenious plans for escape, that, at times,
seemed like base desertion of their men, whom they could neither help
nor save. But when--as by a miracle--the coveted chance came, no power
on earth could have stayed them....

It had been a breathless affair, demanding all they possessed of bodily
fleetness and suppleness, of cool, yet reckless, courage. And it had
been crowned with success; the good news wired home to mothers who
waited and prayed. But Roy's nerves had suffered more severely than
Desmond's. A sharp attack of fever had completed his prostration. And it
was then, in the moment of his passing weakness, that Fate turned and
smote him with the sharpest weapon in her armoury....

He had not even heard his mother was ill. He had just received her
ecstatic response to his wire--and that very night she came to him,
vividly, as he hovered on the confines of sleep.

There she stood by his bed, in her mother-o'-pearl gown and sari; clear
in every detail; lips just parted; a hovering smile in her eyes. And
round about her a shimmering radiance, as of moonbeams, heightened her
loveliness, yet seemed to set her apart; so that he could neither touch
her nor utter a word of welcome. He could only gaze and gaze, while his
heart beat in long slow hammer-strokes, with a double throb between.

With a gesture of mute yearning her hands went out to him. She stooped
low and lower. A faint breeze seemed to flit across his forehead as if
her lips, lightly brushing it, had breathed a blessing.

Then, darkness fell abruptly--and a deep sleep....

He woke late next morning: woke to a startling, terrible certainty that
his vision had been no dream; that her very self had come to him--that
she was gone....

When the bitter truth reached him, he learnt, without surprise, that on
the night of his vision, her spirit passed....

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a sharp attack of pneumonia that gave her the _coup de grâce_.
But, in effect, the War had killed her, as it killed many another
hyper-sensitive woman, who could not become inured to horror on horror,
tragedy on tragedy, whose heart ached for the sorrows of others as if
they were her own. And her personal share had sufficiently taxed her
endurance, without added pangs for others, unseen and unknown.
George--her baby--had gone down in the Queen Mary. Jerry, too early sent
out to France, had crashed behind the German lines; and after months of
uncertainty they had heard he was alive, wounded--in German hands. Tara,
faithful to the Women's Hospital in Serbia, had been constantly in
danger, living and moving among unimaginable horrors. Nevil, threatened
with septic poisoning, had only been saved at the cost of his left
forearm. Not till he was invalided out, near the close of 1916, had he
realised--too late--that she was killing herself by inches, with work
that alone could leaven anxiety--up to a point.

But it was the shock of Roy's imprisonment and the agony of suspense
that finally stretched her nerve to breaking-point; so that the sudden
onslaught of pneumonia had slain her in the space of a week. And Roy,
knowing her too well, had guessed the truth, in spite of his father's
gallant attempt to shield him from it.

His first letter from that bereft father had been little short of a
revelation to the son, who had ventured to suppose he knew him: a rash
supposition where any human being is concerned. There had been more than
one such revelation in the scores of letters that at once uplifted and
overwhelmed him, and increased tenfold his pride in being her son. But
outshining all, and utterly unexpected, was a letter from herself,
written in those last days, when the others still hoped, against hope,
but she knew----

It had come, with his father's, in a small, gold-embroidered bag--scent
and colour and exquisite needlework all eloquent of her: and with it
came the other, her talisman since he was born. Reaching him while brain
and body still reeled under the bewildering sense of loss, it had
soothed his agony of pain and rebellion like the touch of her fingers on
his forehead; had taken the sting from death and robbed the grave of
victory....

       *       *       *       *       *

To-night, in his loneliness, he drew the slim bag out of an inner
pocket, and re-read with his eyes the words that were imprinted on his
memory.

     "ROY, SON OF MY HEART,--This is good-bye--but not
     altogether good-bye. Between you and me that word can never be
     spoken. So I am writing this, in my foolish weakness, to beg of
     you--by the love between us, too deep for words--not to let heart
     and courage be _quite_ broken because of this big sorrow. You were
     brave in battle, my Prithvi Raj. Be still more brave for me.
     Remember I am Lilámani--Jewel of Delight. _That_ I have tried to be
     in my life, for every one of you. That I wish to be always. So I
     ask you, my darling, not to make me a Jewel of Sorrow because I
     have passed into the Next Door House too soon. Though not seen, I
     will never for long be far from you. That is my faith; and you must
     share it; helping your dear father, because for him the way of
     belief is hard.

     "Never forget those beautiful words of Fouquet in which you made
     dedication of your poems to me: 'How blessed is the son to whom it
     is allowed to gladden his mother's heart with the blossom and fruit
     of his life!' And you will still gladden it, Dilkusha.[5] I will
     still share your work, though in different fashion than we hoped.
     Only keep your manhood pure and the windows of your spirit clear,
     so the Light can shine through. Then you will know if I speak
     truth, and you will not feel altogether alone.

     "Oh, Roy, I could write and write till the pen drops. My heart is
     too full, but my hand is too feeble for more. Only this, when your
     time comes for marriage, I pray you will be to your wife all that
     your splendid father has been for me--king and lover and companion
     of body and spirit. Draw nearer than ever, you two, because of your
     so beautiful love for me--unseen now, but with you always. God
     bless you. I can write no more.

                                    "Your devoted
                                             MOTHER."

The last lines wavered and ran together. In spite of her injunction,
tears _would_ come. Chill and unheeded, they slipped down his cheeks,
while he folded his treasure, and put it away with the other, that went
to his head, a little, as she had foreseen; though in the event, it had
been overshadowed by her own, than which she could have left him no
dearer legacy. In life she had been an angel of God. In death, she was
still his angel of comfort and healing. She had bidden him share her
belief; and he never _had_ felt altogether alone. Sustained by that
inner conviction, he had somehow adapted himself to the strangeness of a
life empty of her physical presence. The human being, in a world of
pain, like the insect in a world of danger, lives mainly by that same
ceaseless, unconscious miracle of adaptation. Dearly though he craved a
sight of his father and Christine, he had not asked for leave home.
There were bad moments when he wondered if he could ever bring himself
to face the ordeal. He sincerely hoped they understood. Their letters
left an impression that it was so. Jeffers obviously did.

And Tara----? Her belated letter, from the wilds of Serbia, had
revealed, in every line, that she understood only too well. For Tara,
not long before, had passed through her own ordeal--the death, in a
brilliant air fight, of her second brother Atholl, her devotee and hero
from nursery days. So when Roy's turn came, her fulness of sympathy and
understanding were outstretched like wings to shield him, if might be,
from the worst, as she had known it.

For that once, she flung aside the veil of grown-up reserves and wrote
straight from her eager passionate heart to the Bracelet-bound Brother,
unseen for years, yet linked with her by an imperishable memory; and now
linked closer still by a mutual grief.

The comfort to Roy of that spontaneous, Tara-like outpouring had been
greater than she knew--than he could ever let her know. For the old
intimacy had never been quite re-established between them since the day
of his tactless juvenile proposal--for so he saw it now. They had only
met that once, when he was home for Christmas. On the second occasion,
they had missed. Throughout the War they had corresponded fitfully; but
her letters, though affectionate and sisterly, lacked an unseizable
something that affected the tone of his response. He had been rash
enough, once, to presume on their special relation. But he was no longer
a boy; and he had his pride.

He wondered sometimes how it would be if they met again. Would he fall
in love with her? She was supreme. No one like her. But he knew now--as
she had instinctively known then--that his conviction on that score did
not amount to being in love. Conviction must be lit and warmed with the
fire of passion. And you couldn't very well fall in love across six
thousand miles of sea. Certainly none of the girls he had danced with
and ridden with since his arrival in India had affected him that way.
And for him marriage was an important consideration. Some day he
supposed it would confront him as an urgent personal issue. But there
was a tremendous lot to be done first; and girls were kittle cattle.

Unsuspected by him, the ultimate relation with his mother--while it
quickened his need for woman's enveloping tenderness and sympathy--held
his heart in leash by setting up a standard, to which the modern girl
rarely aspired, much less attained.

And now she was gone, in some strange, enthralling way, she held him
still. At rare intervals, she came again to him in dreams; or when he
hovered on the verge of sleep. Dreams, or visions--they persisted as
clearly in memory as any waking act; and unfailingly left a vivid
after-sense of having been in touch with her very self. More and more
conviction deepened in him that she still had joy in 'the blossom and
fruit of his life'; that even in death she was nearer to him than many
living mothers to their sons.

A strange experience: strangest of all, perhaps, the simplicity with
which he came to accept it as part of the natural order of things. The
intuitive brain is rarely analytical. Moreover, he had seen; he had
felt; he knew. It is the invincible argument of the mystic. Against
belief born of vivid, reiterate experience, the loquacity of logic, the
formulć of pure intellect break like waves upon a rock--and with as
little result. The intensity and persistence of Roy's experience simply
left no room for insidious whispers of doubt; nor could he have
tolerated such scepticism in others, natural though it might be, if one
had not seen, nor felt, nor known.

So he neither wrote nor spoke of it to any one. He could scarce have
kept it from Tara, the sister-child who had shared all his thoughts and
dreams; but the grown-up Tara had become too remote in every sense for
a confidence so intimate, so sacred. To his father he would fain have
confided everything, remembering her last command; but Sir Nevil's later
letters--though unfailingly sympathetic--were not calculated to evoke
filial outpourings. For the time being, he seemed to have shut himself
in with his grief. Perhaps he, of all others, had been least able to
understand Roy's failure to press for short leave home. He had said very
little on the subject. And Roy--with the instinct of sensitive natures
to take their tone from others--had also said little: too little,
perhaps. Least said may be soonest mended; but there are times when it
may widen a rift to a gulf.

In the end, he had felt impelled at least to mention his dream
experiences, and let it rest with his father whether he said any more.

And by return mail came a brief but poignant answer: "Thank you, my
dearest Boy, for telling me what you did. It is a relief to know you
have some sort of comfort--if only in dreams. You are fortunate to be so
made. After all, for purposes of comfort and guidance, one's capacity to
believe in such communion is the measure of its reality. As for me, I am
still utterly, desolately alone. Perhaps some day she will reach me in
spite of my little faith. People who resort to mediums and the automatic
writing craze are beyond me: though the temptation I understand. You may
remember a sentence of Maeterlinck----' We have to grope timidly and
make sure of every footstep, as we cross the threshold. And even when
the threshold is crossed, where shall certainty be found----? One cannot
speak of these things--the solitude is too great.' That is my own
feeling about it--at present."

The last had given Roy an impression that his solitude, however
desolating, was a sort of sanctuary, not to be shared as yet, even with
his son. And, in the face of such loneliness, it seemed almost cruel to
enlarge on his own clear sense of intimate communion with her who had
been unfailingly their Jewel of Delight.

So, by degrees--in the long months of separation from them all--his
ethereal link with her had come to feel closer and more real than his
link with those others, still in the flesh, yet strangely remote from
his inner life.

To-night--after reading both letters--that sense of nearness seemed
stronger than ever. Could it be that the magnetism of India was in the
nature of an intimation from her that for the present his work lay here?
By the hidden forces that mould men's lives, he had been drawn to the
land of heart's desire; and at home, neither his family nor his country
seemed to have any particular need of him. Whether or no India had need
of him, he assuredly had need of her. And it was the very strength of
that feeling which had given him pause.

But now, at last, he knew beyond cavil that, for all his mind--or was it
his conscience?--might haver and split straws, he had been drawn to
Rajputana, as irresistibly as if that vast desert region were the moon
and he a wavelet on the tidal shore.

With a great sigh he rose, yawned cavernously and shivered. Better get
to bed and to sleep:--a bed that didn't clank and jolt and batter your
brains to a pulp. Things would look amazingly different in the morning.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: Tripod table.]

[Footnote 5: Joy of my Heart.]




CHAPTER III.

     "Darkness and solitude shine for me:
        For life's fair outward part, are rife
      The silver noises: let them be.
        It is the very soul of life
      Listens for thee, listens for thee."
                                    --ALICE MEYNELL.


The depressingly bare, whitewashed bedroom owned a French bedstead, with
brass rails;--a welcome 'find' in a dák bungalow, especially after three
very broken nights in an Indian train. Tired to the point of
stupefaction, Roy promised himself he would sleep the clock round; eat a
three-decker Anglo-Indian breakfast, and thereafter be his own man
again. In that faith he laid his head on the least lumpy portion of the
pillow--and in less than five minutes found himself quite intolerably
wide awake.

Though the bedstead neither repudiated him, nor took liberties with his
person, ghostly clankings and vibrations still jarred his nerves and
played devil's tunes in his brain. Though he kept his eyelids severely
closed, sleep--the coveted anodyne--seemed to hover on the misty edge of
things, always just out of reach. His body was over-tired, his brain
abnormally alert. Each change of position, that was to be positively the
last, lost its virtue in the space of three minutes, till the
sheet--that was too narrow for the mattress--became ruckled into hills
and valleys and made things worse than ever. Having started like this,
he knew himself capable of keeping it up gaily till the small hours; and
to-night, of all nights----!

Even through his closed eyelids, he was still aware that his verandah
doorway framed a wide panel of moonlight--the almost incredible
moonlight of India. He had flung it open as usual and rolled up the
chick. A bedroom hermetically sealed made him feel suffocated,
imprisoned; so he must, perforce, put up with the moon; and when the
world was drowned in her radiance, sleep seemed almost a sin. But
to-night, moon or no, he craved sleep as an opium-eater craves his magic
pellets,--because he wanted to dream. It was many weeks since he last
had sight of his mother. But surely she must be near him in his
loneliness; aware, in some mysterious fashion, of the deep longing with
which he longed for sight or sense of her, to assure him that--in spite
of qualms and indecisions--he had chosen aright. Conviction grew that
directly the veil of sleep fell he would see her. It magnified his
insomnia from mere discomfort to a baffling inimical presence
withholding him from her:--till utter weariness blotted out everything;
and even as he hovered on the verge of sleep, she was there....

She was lying in her hammock under the beeches, in her apple-blossom
sari, sunlight flickering through the leaves. And he saw his own figure
moving towards her, without the least surprise, that he could see and
hear himself as another being, while still remaining inside himself.

He heard his own voice say, low and fervently, "Beloved little Mother--I
am here. Always in the battle I remembered Chitor. Now--turned out of
the battle--I have come to Chitor."

Then he was on his knees beside her; and her fingers, light as
thistledown, strayed over his hair, in the ghost of a caress that so
unfailingly stilled his excitable spirit. Without actual words, by some
miracle of interpenetration, she seemed to know all that was in his
heart--the perplexities and indecisions; the magnetism of Home and the
dread of it; the difficulty of making things clear to his father. And
the magic of her touch charmed away all inner confusions, all headache
and heartache. But when he rose impulsively, and would have taken her in
his arms--she was gone; everything was gone; ... the hammock, the
beeches, the sunbeams....

He was standing alone on a moonlit plain, blotched and streaked with
shadows of dák-jungle and date-palm; and rising out of it abruptly--as
he had seen it last night--loomed the black bulk of Chitor; the sacred,
solitary ghost of a city, linked with his happiest days of childhood and
his mother's heroic tales. The great rock was scarped and bastioned,
every line of it. The walls, ruined in parts, showed ghostly shades of
ruins beyond; and soaring high above all, Khumba Rána's nine-storied
Tower of Victory lifted a giant finger to the unheeding heavens.
Watching it, fascinated, trying in vain to make out details, he was
startlingly beset by the strangest among many strange sensations that
had visited his imaginative brain: nothing less than a revival of the
long-ago dream-feeling, the strange sense of familiarity--he knew!
Beyond all cavil, he knew every line of that looming shadow, every curve
of the hills. He knew the exact position of the old bridge over the
Gamberi river. From the spot where he stood, he could find his way
unerringly to the Padal Pol--the fortified entrance to the road of Seven
Gates;--the road that had witnessed, three times in three hundred years,
that heroic alternative to surrender, the terrible rite of Johur:--the
final down-rush of every male defender, wearing the saffron robe and
coronet of him who embraces death as a bride; the awful slaughter at the
lowest gate, where they fell, every man of them, before the victors
entered in....

The horror and savage exaltation of it all stirred, so sensibly, in his
veins that he caught himself dimly wondering--was it he, Roy Sinclair,
who stood there remembering these things--or another...?

And before that crazy question could resolve itself--behold he was lying
wide awake again in his ruckled bed, on the lumpy pillow, staring at the
wide patch of moonlight framed by his open door.

Not morning _yet_, confound it all! But the tiredness and loneliness
were clean gone. It was always so when she came to him thus. Tacitly, he
knew it, and she knew it, for a visitation. There was no delusion of
having got her back again; only the comforting assurance that she was
near him still. There was also, on this occasion, a consuming curiosity
and impatience not to be denied.

Switching on his electric torch, he consulted his watch. Nearly
half-past four--why not ...? It was no distance to the lower gate, and
only a mile of zigzag road up to the city.

Thought and action were almost simultaneous. He was out of bed, standing
in the doorway. The moon's unclouded brilliance seemed to flood his
brain; to clear it of cobwebs and dispel all desire of sleep. For he
loved the veiled spirit of night as most men love the unveiled face of
morning; and in no way, perhaps, was he more clearly of the East. In a
land where the sun slays his thousands, the moon comes triumphantly to
her own: and Roy decided, there and then, that in the glamour of her
light he would take his first look at Chitor. Whether or no it really
was his first look, he might possibly find out when he got there.

His train-basket provided him with a hurried cup of tea, biscuits and a
providential hard-boiled egg. He had no qualms about rousing Bishun
Singh to saddle Suráj, or disturbing the soldiery quartered at the
gates. His grandfather had written of him to the Maharana of Udaipur--a
cousin in the third degree: and he had leave to go in and out, during
his stay, at what hour he pleased. He would remain on the rock till
dawn; and from the ninth storey of Khumba Rána's Tower he would see the
sun rise over Chitor....

Half an hour later, he was in the saddle trotting along the empty road;
Terry, a scurrying shadow in his wake; Bishun Singh left to finish his
night's rest. Eight before him loomed the magnet that had dragged him
out of bed at this unearthly hour--the great rock-fortress, three miles
long, less than a mile broad, aptly likened to a battleship ploughing
through the disturbed sea of bush-grown hills at its base.

Riding quickly through new Chitor--a dirty little town, fast asleep--he
reached the fortified gateway: was challenged by sleepy soldiery; gave
his name and passed on--into another world; a world that grew
increasingly familiar with every hundred yards of ascent.

At one point he halted abreast of two rough monuments, graves of the
valiant pair who had fought and died, like Rajputs, in that last
terrible onslaught when the hosts of Akbar entered in, over the bodies
of eight thousand saffron-robed warriors, and made Chitor a place of
desolation for ever. One--a mere boy of sixteen--was the only son of
his house. Beside him, lance in hand, fought his widowed mother and girl
wife; and in death they were not divided. The other, Jaimul of Bednore,
was a far-away ancestor of his own mother. How often she had told him
the tale--adding proudly that, while Rajasthán endured, the names of
those two would shine clear in the firmament of time, as stars in the
firmament of space.

Through gateway after gateway--under the lee of a twenty-foot wall,
pierced for musketry,--he passed, a silent shadow. And gradually there
stole over him afresh the confused wonder of his dream,--was it he
himself who rode--or was it--that other, returning to the sacred city
after long absence? For the moment he could hardly tell. But--what
matter? The astonishing thrill of recognition was all....

Round about the seventh gateway clustered the semblance of a village;
shrouded, slumbering forms strewn around in the open;--ghosts all. The
only instant realities were himself and Suráj and Chitor, and the
silence of the sleeping earth, watched over by unsleeping stars. Within,
and about him, hovered a stirring consciousness of ancient, unchanging
India; utterly impervious to mere birds of passage from the West;
veiled, elusive, yet almost hideously real. So real, just then, to Roy,
that--for a few amazing moments--he was unaware that he rode through a
city forsaken by man. Ghosts of houses and temples slid by on either
side of him, as he spurred Suráj to a canter and made unerringly for the
main palace. There was news for the Rana--news of Akbar's army--that did
not brook delay....

Not till Suráj stopped dead--there where the Palace had once stood in
its glory--did he come to himself, as abruptly as when he waked in the
French bedstead an hour ago.

Gone was the populous city through which he had ridden in fancy; gone
the confusion of himself with that other self--how many centuries old?
But the familiar look of the palace was no dream; nor the fact that he
had instinctively made his way there at full speed. Bastioned and
sharply domed, it stood before him in clear outline; but within sides it
was hollow as a skull; a place of ghosts. Suddenly there came over him
the old childish dread of dark, that he had never quite outgrown. But
dread or no, explore it he must....

As his foot touched earth, a low hiss warned him he was trespassing, and
clutching Terry's collar, he stood rigid, while the whip-like shadow of
death writhed across a strip of moonlight--and disappeared. There was
life,--of a sort, in Chitor. So Roy trod warily as he passed from room
to room; dread of dark forgotten in the weird fascination of
foreknowledge verified without fail.

Through riven walls and roofs, moonlight streamed: its spectral
brightness intensifying every patch or streak of shadow. And there,
where Kings and Princes had held audience--watched by their womenfolk
through fretted screens--was neither roof nor walls; only a group of
marble pillars, as it were assembled in ghostly conference. The stark
silence and emptiness--not of yesterday, but of centuries--smote him
with a personal pang. From end to end of the rock it brooded; a haunting
presence,--tutelary goddess of Chitor. There is an emptiness of the open
desert, of an untrodden snowfield that lifts the soul and sets it face
to face with God; but the emptiness of a city forsaken is that of a body
with the spark of life extinct:--'the silver cord loosed, the golden
bowl broken, and the pitcher broken at the fountain ...'

Terry's sharp bark, a squawk and a scuffle of wings, made him start
violently and jarred him all through. It seemed almost profane--as if
one were in a cathedral. Calling the marauder to heel, he mounted and
rode on toward the Tower of Victory. For the moon was dipping westward;
and he must see that vast view bathed in moonlight. Then the dawn....

Once more deserting Suráj; he confronted Khumba's Tower; scatheless as
the builder's hand left it four centuries ago. Massive and arrogant, it
loomed above him; scarcely a foot of stone uncarven, so far as he could
see--exploring the four-square base of it with the aid of the moon and
his torch. Figures, in high relief, everywhere--animal, human and
divine; a riot of impossible forms, impossibly intertwined; ghoulish in
any aspect, and in moonlight hideously so:--bewildering, repellent,
frankly obscene. But even while his cultured eye rejected it all, some
infinitesimal fragment of himself knew there was symbolic meaning in
that orgy of sculpture, could one but find the key.

Up and up, round and round the inner spiral staircase he climbed, in a
creepsome darkness, invaded by moonbeams, hardly less creepsome,
admitted through window-like openings set in every face of every storey.
With each inrush of light, each flash of his torch, in deepest darkness,
those thronging figures, weirdly distorted, sprang at him afresh,
sending ignominious trickles down his spine. Walls, window slabs, door
beams--the vast building was encrusted with them from base to summit; a
nightmare of prancing, writhing, gesticulating unrest; only one still
face repeated at intervals--the Great God holding the wheel of Law....

Never had Roy more keenly appreciated the company of Terry, who, in
spite of a Celtic pedigree, was not enjoying this prolonged practical
joke.

It was relief unspeakable to emerge at last, into full light and clean
sweet morning air. For the ninth storey, under the dome, was arcaded on
all four sides and refreshingly innocent of decoration. Not a posturing
figure to be seen. Nothing but restful slabs of polished stone. There
was meaning in this also--could one catch the trend of the builder's
thought.

On a slab near an arcaded opening Roy sat gratefully down; while Terry,
bored to extinction with the whole affair, curled himself up in a
shadowed corner and went fast asleep. "Unfriendly little beast," thought
Roy; and promptly forgot his existence.

For below him, in the silvery moonlight of morning, lay Chitor; her
shattered arches and battlements, her temples and palaces dwarfed to
mere footstools for the gods. And beyond, and again beyond, lay the
naked strength and desolation of northern Rajputana--white with
poppy-fields, velvet-dark with scrub, jagged with outcrops of volcanic
rock; the gaunt warrior country, battered by centuries of struggle and
slaughter; making calamity a whetstone for courage; saying, in effect,
to friend and enemy, 'Take me or leave me. You cannot change me.'

The Border had fascinated Roy. The Himalayas had subjugated him. But
this strong unlovely region of rock and sand, of horses and swords, of
chivalry and cruelty and daring, irresistibly laid siege to his heart;
gave him the authentic sense of being one with it all.

On a day, in that summer of blessed memory, his mother had almost
promised him that, once again she would revisit India if only for the
joy of making a pilgrimage with him to Chitor. And here he sat on the
summit of Khumba Rána's Tower--alone. That was the way of life....

Gradually there stole over him a great weariness of body and spirit;
pure reaction from the uplift of his strange adventure. His lids drooped
heavily. In another moment he would have fallen sound asleep; but he
saved himself, just in time. When he craved the thing, it eluded him;
now, undesired, it assailed him. But it would never do. He might sleep
for hours. And at the back of his mind lurked a clear conviction that he
was waiting for more than the dawn....

To shake off drowsiness he rose, stretched himself, paced to and fro
several times--and did not sit down again. Folding his arms, he leaned
his shoulders against the stone embrasure; and stood so, a long while,
absorbing--with every faculty of flesh and spirit--the stillness, the
mystery, the pearl-grey light and bottomless gulfs of shadow; his mind
emptied of articulate thought ... his soul poised motionless, as it were
a bird on outspread wings....

Was it fantasy, this gradual intensifying of his uplifted mood, this
breathless stir in the region of his heart, till some vital part of him
seemed gradually withdrawn--up into the vastness and the silence...?

And suddenly, in every nerve, he knew--he was not alone. In the seeming
emptiness of the place, something, some one hovered near him. Amazed,
yet exultant, he held his breath; and an answering leap of the heart set
him tingling from head to foot.

It was more than a vague 'sense of presence.' Fused in the central
happiness that flooded him--as the moonlight flooded the desert--was an
almost startling awareness; not the mere emotional effect of music or a
poem; but sure knowledge that she was there with him in that upper room;
her disembodied tenderness yearning towards him across a barrier of
empty space that neither she nor he could traverse, for all their
nearness, for all their longing....

If Lance himself had come audibly up those endless stairs and stood
beside him, he could not have felt more certain of his presence than he
felt, at this moment, of her companionship, her unspoken assurance that
he _had_ chosen aright. He felt himself, if possible, the less real of
the two.

For that brief space, his world seemed empty of everything, every one,
but they two--so irrevocably sundered, so mysteriously united.

Could he only have sight of her to complete the marvel of it! But
although he kept his eyes on the spot whence the 'feel of her' seemed to
come, not the shadow of a shade could he see; only--was it fancy?--a
hint of brighter radiance than mere moonbeams--there, near the opposite
archway?

He dared not move a finger lest he break the spell. Yet he could not
restrain altogether the emotion that surged in him, that filled his ears
with a soft roar as of breaking waves.

"God bless you, little Mother!" he murmured, barely above his
breath--and waited; expecting he knew not what.

A ghost of a breeze passed close to him;--truly a ghost, for the night
was dead still. Almost he could have sworn that if he put out a hand he
would have touched her. But reverence withheld him, rather than fear.

And the next moment, the place was empty. He was alone....

He felt the emptiness as unmistakably as he had felt her presence. But
the pang of her going was shot through with elation that at last his
waking brain had knowledge of her--a knowledge that no man could wrest
from him, even if she never so came again. He had done her bidding. He
had kept his manhood pure and the windows of his soul clear--and,
behold, the Light _had_ shone through....

* * * *

Impossible to tell how long he stood there. In those few moments of
intensified life, time was not. The ordinary sense of his surroundings
faded. The inner sense of reality quickened in like measure; the reality
of her presence, all the more felt, because it was unseen....

When he came clearly to himself again, the moon had vanished. Eastward,
the sky was full of primrose light. It deepened and blazed; till, all in
a moment, the sun leaped from the scabbard of the hills, keen and
radiant as a drawn sword.

A full minute Roy stood there, eyes and brain blinded with brilliance.
Then he knelt down and covered his face; and so remained, a long while,
his whole being uplifted in a wordless ecstasy of thanksgiving.




CHAPTER IV.

     "The snow upon my life-bloom sits
         And sheds a dreary blight;--
      Thy spirit o'er my spirit flits,
         And crimson comes for white."
                                 --ANON.


On an unclouded afternoon of October, Roy sat alone with Thea Leigh in a
shady corner of the Residency garden, smoking and talking, feeling
blissfully at ease in body, and very much at home in spirit. After the
wrench of parting with Desmond, it was balm to be welcomed by the sister
who shared his high courage and enthusiasm for life, and who was smiling
at Roy now with the same hazel-grey eyes that both had gotten from their
father. But Thea's hair--her crown of glory--belonged exclusively to
herself. The colour of it reminded him, with a pang, of autumn beech
leaves, in his own woods. It enhanced the vivid quality of her beauty,
and added appreciably to his pleasure in watching her while she talked.

Roy had arrived that morning, in the mist-laden chill of dawn; had
enjoyed a long talk with Colonel Leigh; had made the acquaintance of
Vernon and Phyllis, aged six and four; also of Flossie Eden, a kind of
adopted daughter, aged twenty; and, tiffin being over, had announced his
intention of riding out to re-discover the rose-red wonderland of his
childish dreams--the peacocks and elephants and crocodiles and temple
bells. Thea, however, had counselled patience, threatening him with dire
disillusion, if he went seeking his wonderland at that glaringly
unpoetic time of day.

"An early cup of tea, and a ride afterwards," she prescribed, in her
best autocratic manner. "Only sunset, or the first glimmer of dawn, can
throw a spell over the municipal virtues and artistic backslidings of
Jaipur! I speak with feeling; because _I_ rushed forth untimely; and, in
the full glare of afternoon sunshine, your rose-red city looked like
nothing on earth but a fearful and wonderful collection of pink and
white birthday cakes, set out for a giants' tea-party! It seemed almost
a pity the giants had never come and eaten them up. Vinx said I was
ribald. As a matter of fact, he was simply jealous of my brilliant
metaphor! Look at him now--bored to death with me, because I'm telling
the truth!"

Colonel Leigh--a tall pensive-looking man, who talked little and
listened assiduously--met her challenge with the indulgent smile of a
husband who can be at once amused and critical and devoted: an excellent
conjunction in marriage.

"If you can stay Roy's impatience with your metaphors, I'll begin to
have some respect for them!" said he.

And she was staying Roy's impatience now, with cigarettes and coffee and
the tale of Arúna--'England-returned.' She had revealed little by
letter; an uncharacteristic touch of caution derived from her husband,
who questioned the wisdom of her bold incursion into the complexities
and jarring elements of a semi-modern Hindu household. But Thea Leigh,
daughter of Honor Desmond, was strongly imbued with the responsibility
of the ruling race. She stoutly refused to preserve, in Jaipur, the
correct official detachment of Anglo-India. More: she possessed a racial
wisdom of the heart, not to be gainsaid; as who should know better than
her husband, since it had saved him from himself. And now, having
secured Roy for half an hour, she confided to him, unreservedly, all she
could gather of the tragic tangle she was unravelling in her own
effective fashion.

"Arúna's the dearest thing," she told him--as well he knew. "And I'm
truly fond of her. But sometimes I feel helpless. They're so hard to
come at--these gentle, inscrutable Hindu women. Talk of English reserve!
However, I'm getting quite nimble at guessing and inferring; and I
gather that your splendid old grandfather is rather pathetically
helpless with that hive of hidden womenfolk and gurus. Also that the
old lady--Mátaji--is a bit of a tartar. Of course, having lost caste,
makes the poor child's home position almost impossible. Yet she flatly
refuses to go through their horrid rites of restitution. And Miss
Hammond--our lady doctor at the hospital--backs her up."

"Well played, Miss Hammond!" quoth Roy; and remembering Arúna's cheerful
letters (no word of complications), all his sympathy went out to her.
Might not he--related, yet free of grandmotherly tyranny--somehow be
able to help? Too cruel that from her happy time in England there should
spring such tragic issues. And she was not a creature made for tragedy,
but for laughter and love and 'man's delight.' Yet, in the Hindu nature
of things, this very matter of marriage was the crux of her troubles.

To the Power behind the curtain it spelt disgrace, that the eldest
grand-daughter--at the ripe age of twenty-two--should be neither wife
nor mother. It would need a very advanced suitor to overlook that
damning item. Doubtless a large dowry would be demanded by way of
compensation; and, before all, caste must be restored. While Arúna
remained obdurate, nothing could be definitely arranged; and her
grandfather had not the heart to enforce his wife's insistent demands.
But if the Indian woman's horizon be limited, her shrewdness and
intuitive knowledge are often amazing; and this formidable old
lady--skilled in the art of imposing her will on others--knew herself a
match for her husband's evasions and Arúna's flat rebellion.

She reckoned, however, without the daughter of Sir Theo Desmond, who, at
this point, took action--sudden and disconcerting.

"You see the child came regularly to my purdah parties," she explained
to Roy, who was impatient no longer, only absorbed. "Sometimes I had her
alone for reading and music; and it was heart-breaking to see her
wilting away before my eyes. So, at last, in desperation, I broke
loose--as Vinx politely puts it--and asked searching questions,
regardless of etiquette. After all, the poor lamb has no mother. And I
never disobey an impulse of the heart. I believe I was only in the
_nick_ of time. It seemed the old tartar and her widowed sister-in-law
were in touch with a possible husband. So they had given the screw a
fresh turn, assisted by the family _guru_. He had just honoured them
with a special visit, expecting to find the lost sheep regenerate and
eager for his blessing. Shocked at the tale of her obstinacy, he
announced that, unless he heard otherwise within a week, he would put a
nameless curse upon her; in which case her honourable grandmother would
not allow the poor child to eat or sleep under her honourable roof."

Roy's hand closed sharply on the arm of his chair. "Confound the fellow!
It's chiefly the mental effect they rely on. They're no fools; and even
men like Grandfather--who can't possibly believe such rot--seem
powerless to stand up against them. Does _he_ know all this?"

"It's hard to tell. They're so guarded--even the most enlightened--in
alluding to domestic matters. Without a shade of discourtesy, they
simply keep one outside. Poor Arúna was terrified at having told me.
Broke down utterly. But no idea of giving in. It's astonishing the grit
one comes upon under their surface gentleness. She said she would starve
or drown rather. _I_ said she should do nothing of the kind; that I
would speak to Sir Lakshman myself--oh, very diplomatically, of course!
Afterwards, all in a rush, came my inspiration. Some sort of secretarial
work for me would sound fairly plausible. (Did you know--I'm making a
name, in a small way, over my zeal for Indian women?) On the strength of
that, one could suggest a couple of rooms in the Residency; and she
could still keep on at the hospital with Miss Hammond, giving me certain
afternoons. It struck me as flawless--_till_ I imparted it to Vinx and
saw him tweak his left eyebrow. Of course he was convinced it 'wouldn't
do'; Sir Lakshman ... my position ... and so on. I said I proposed to
make it do--and the eyebrow twitched worse than ever. So I mildly
reminded him that _he_ had not held Arúna sobbing in his arms, and he
didn't happen to be a mother! Which was unanswerable.--And, my dear Roy,
I had a hectic week of it, manipulating Sir Lakshman and Arúna _and_ the
honourable grandmother--strictly unseen! I'm sure she's anti-English.
I've got at all the other high-borns; but I can't get at her.
However--with a bold front and a tactful tongue, I carried the day. So I
hope the holy man will transfer his potent curse to me. Naturally, the
moment I'd fixed things up, came Lance's letter about you. But I
couldn't back out. And I suppose it's all right?"

"Well, of course." Roy was troubled with no doubts on that score. "What
a family you are! I was hoping to pick up threads with Arúna."

"You shall. But you must be discreet. Jaipur isn't exactly Oxford.
Brother and cousin are almost the same word with them; but still----"

"Is she at the hospital now?" Roy cut in irrelevantly. Her insistence on
discretion--with Arúna, of all people--struck him as needless fussing
and unlike Thea. And by now he was feeling more impatient to see Arúna
than to see Jaipur.

"No. But she seemed shy of appearing at tiffin. So I said if she came
out here afterwards, she would find you and me alone. She's looked
happier and less fragile lately. Even Vinx admits the event has
justified me. But of course it's simply an emergency plan--a
transition----"

"To _what_?" Roy challenged her with surprising emphasis.

"That's my puzzle of puzzles. Perhaps you can help me solve it.
Sometimes I wonder if she knows herself, what she wants out of life....
But perhaps I haven't the key to her waverings...."

At that moment, a slight unmistakable figure stepped from the shadow of
the verandah down the shallow steps flanked with pots of begonia; moving
with the effortless grace that Roy's heart knew too well. Dress and sari
were carnation pink. Her golden shoes glittered at every step: and she
pensively twirled a square Japanese parasol--almond blossoms and
butterflies scattered abroad on silk of the frailest blue.

"_Is_ their instinct for that sort of thing unconscious, I wonder?"
murmured Thea. "You shall have half an hour with her, to pick up
threads. Help me if you can, Roy. But--_be discreet_!"

Roy scarcely heard her. He had gone suddenly very still--his gaze
riveted on Arúna. The Indian dress, the carriage of her veiled head,
the leisured grace, so sharply smote him that tears pricked his eyelids;
and, for one intoxicating moment he was wafted, in spirit, across the
chasm of the War to that dear dream-world of youth, when all distances
were blue and all the near prospect bright with the dew of the morning.
Only under a mask-like stillness could he hide that startling uprush of
emotion; and had Broome been watching him, he would have seen the subtle
film of the East steal over his face.

Thea saw only his sudden abstraction and the whitened knuckles of his
left hand. She also realised, with a faint prick of anxiety, that he had
simply not heard her remark. Was it possible--could Roy be at the back
of Arúna's waverings? Would his coming mean fresh complications? Too
distracting to be responsible for anything of that kind....

Without a word, he had risen--and went quickly forward to meet her. Thea
saw how, on his approach, all her studied composure fell away; and both,
when they joined her, looked so happy, yet so plainly discomposed, that
Thea felt ridiculously at a loss for just the right word with which to
effect a casual retreat. Responsibility for Sir Lakshman's
grand-daughter was no light matter: at least she had done well in
warning Roy. These emerging Indian girls...!

It was a positive relief to see the prosaic figure of Floss Eden, in
brief tennis skirts and shady hat, hurrying across the lawn, with her
boyish stride; racquet swinging, her round face flushed with exercise.

"I say, Aunt Thea--you're wanted _jut put_,"[6] she announced briskly.
"Verney's in one of his moods--and Mr Neill will soon be in one of his
tempers, if he isn't forcibly removed. Instead of helping with the
balls, he's been parading up and down the verandah; two tin pails, tied
on to him with string, clattering behind--making a beast of a row.
Shouting wasn't any earthly. So I rushed in and grabbed him.
'Verney--drop it! What _are_ you doing?' I said sternly; and he looked
up at me like a sainted cherub. 'Flop, don't hinder me. I'm walkin' froo
the valley of the shadow, an' goodness an' mercy are following me _all_
the days of my life.' That's the fruits of teaching the Bible to
innocents!"

Thea's laugh ended in a sigh. "I warned Miss Mills. But the creature
_is_ getting out of hand. I suppose it means he ought to go home. Mr
Neill," she explained to Roy, "is Vinx's shorthand secretary: volcanic,
but indispensable to the Great Work! So I must fly off and obliterate my
superfluous son."

Her eyes tried to impart the warning he had not heard. Useless. His
attention was centred on Arúna.

"Wonderful--isn't she?" the girl murmured, looking after her. Then
swiftly, half-shyly, she glanced up at him. "Still more wonderful that,
at last, you have come, that I am here too--only through her. She told
you?"

"Yes. A little. I want to hear more."

"Presently. I would rather push away sad things--now you are here. If
there was only Dyán too--like Oxford days. And--oh, Roy, I was bad never
writing ... about her. I did try. But so difficult.... And--you
knew----?"

"Yes--I knew," he said in a repressed voice. On that subject he could
not trust himself just yet. Every curve and fold of her sari, and the
half-seen coils of her dark hair, every movement, every quaint turn of
phrase, set his nerves vibrating with an ecstasy that was pain. For the
moment, he wanted simply to be aware of her; to hug the dear illusion
that the years between were a dream. And illusion was heightened by the
trivial fact that her appearance was identical in every detail. Was it
chance? Or had she treasured them all this time? Only she herself looked
older. Though her face kept its pansy aspect, her cheek-bones were a
shade too prominent; no veiled glow of health under her dusky skin. But
her smile could still atone for all shortcomings.

"Let's sit down," he added after a strained silence. "And tell
me--what's come to Dyán?"

She shook her head. "Oh--if we could _know_. Not much use, after all,
trying to push away sadness!" She sank into her chair and looked up at
him. "The more you push it away, the more it comes flowing in from
everywhere. Everything so broken and confused from this terrible War. At
the beginning how they said all would be made new; East and West firmly
united. But here, at home, while the best were fighting, the worst were
too busy with ugly whispers and untrue talk. Even holy men, behind the
purdah...."

"As bad as that, is it?" asked Roy, distracted from his own sensations
by the subject that lay nearest his heart. "And you think Dyán's in with
that crew?"

"Yes, we are afraid.... A pity he came back from France too soon,
because half his left arm must be cut off. Then--you heard--he went to
Calcutta?"

"Yes, I wrote at the time. He didn't answer. I haven't heard since."

She nodded. Sudden tears filled her eyes. "Always now ... no answer.
Like trying to speak with some one dead. So Grandfather fears he was not
only studying art. You know how he is too quick to catch fire. And too
easily, he might believe those men who spin words like spider's webs.
Also he was very sore losing his arm, by some small stupid chance; and
there was bitterness for that trouble ... of Tara...."

Roy started. "Lord--was it _Tara_?" Instantly there flashed a vision of
the walled lane leading to New College; Dyán's embittered mood and
bewildering change of front.... Looking back now, the thing seemed
glaringly obvious; but, through the opalescent mist of his own dreams,
he had seen Dyán in one relation only. Just as well perhaps. Even at
this distance, the idea amazed and angered him. Tara! The arrogance of
it...!

"You didn't know--never thought?... Poor Dyán!" One finger-tip furtively
intercepted a tear that was stealing down the side of her nose.

"I am _too_ silly just now," she apologised meekly. "To me, he only
spoke of it long after, when coming wounded from France. Then I saw how
the bitterness was still there, changing the noble thoughts of his
heart. That is the trouble with Dyán. First--nothing good enough for
England. But too fierce love may bring too fierce hate--if they poison
his mind with cunning words dressed up in high talk of religion----"

"How long since you heard? Have you any address?" Roy dared not
encourage her melting mood.

"Six months now." She stoically blinked back her tears. "Not any word.
Not any address, since he left Calcutta. Last week, I wrote, addressing
to the office of a paper there, because once he said that editor gave
him work. I told him all the pain in my heart. If that letter finds
him--some answer _must_ come."

"Well, if it does, I promise you this much;--I'll unearth him--somehow,
wherever he is----"

"Oh, Roy! I hoped--I knew----!" She clasped her hands to hide their
tremor, and the look in her eyes came perilously near adoration.

Roy had spoken with the cool assurance of his father's race, and without
a glimmering idea how his rash promise was going to be fulfilled. "I'll
do my level utmost, anyhow," he added more soberly. "But there's
you--your home complications----"

She turned her hands outward with the expressive gesture of her race.
"That foolish sadness we _can_ push away. What matter for anything--now?
I rest--I breathe--I am here----!" Her smile shone out, sudden and
brilliant. "Almost like England--this big green garden and children and
sound of playing tennis. Let us be young again. Let us, for a small
time, not remember that all outside is Jaipur and the desert--dusty and
hot and cruel; and dark places full of secret and terrible things. Here
we are safe. Here it is almost England!"

Her gallant appeal so moved him, and the lighter vein so charmingly
became her, that Roy humoured her mood willingly enough....

When his tea arrived, she played hostess with an alluring mixture of
shyness and happy importance, capping his lively sallies with the quick
wit of old days. And when Suráj was announced--"Oh, please--may I see
him?" she begged eagerly as a child.

Suráj graciously permitted his velvet nose to be stroked by alien
fingers, light as rose petals. Then Roy sprang into the saddle; and
Arúna stood watching him as he went--_sais_ and dog trotting to heel--a
graceful lonely figure, shadowed by her semi-transparent parasol.

At a bend in the drive, where a sentry sprang to attention, he turned
for a parting salute. Her answering gesture might or might not have been
intended for him. She at least knew all about the need for being
discreet. For, on leaving the tea-table, they had passed from the dream
of 'almost England' into the dusty actuality of Jaipur.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: Instantly.]




CHAPTER V.

     "Broadly speaking, there are two blocks of people--East and West;
     people who interfere and people who don't interfere; ... East is a
     fatalist, West is an idealist, of a clumsy sort."--STACY AUMONIER.


A mile, or less, of tree-bordered road sloped gently from the Residency
gate-posts to the walled City of Victory, backed by craggy, red-grey
spurs of the Aravalli range, hidden almost in feathery heads of banyan,
acacia, and neem--a dusty, well-ordered oasis, holding its own against
the stealthy oncoming of the desert.

North and east ran the screen of low hills with their creeping lines of
masonry; but from south and west the softly encroaching thing crept up
to the city walls, in through the gates, powdering every twig and leaf
and lattice with the fine white dust of death. Shadeless and colourless,
to the limit of vision, it rose and fell in long billowing waves; as if
some wizard, in the morning of the world, had smitten a living ocean to
lifeless sand, where nothing flourished but the camel thorn and the _ak_
plant and gaunt cactus bushes--their limbs petrified in weird
gesticulation.

But on the road itself was a sufficiency of life and colour--parrokeets
flashing from tree to tree, like emeralds made visible and vocable;
village women swathed in red and yellow veils; prancing Rajput
cavaliers, straight from the Middle Ages; ox-carts and camels--unlimited
camels, with flapping lip and scornful eye; a sluggish stream of life,
rising out of the landscape and flowing, from dawn to dusk, through the
seven Gates of Jaipur. And there, on the low spurs, beyond the walls, he
sighted the famous Tiger Fort, and the marble tomb of Jai Sing--he that
built the rose-red City; challenging the desert, as Canute the sea;
saying, in terms of stone and mortar, 'Here shall thy proud waves be
stayed!' Nearing the fortified gateway, Roy noted how every inch of flat
surface was silkily powdered, every opening silted with sand. Would it
rest with desert or city, he wondered, the ultimate victory of the last
word...?

Close against the ramparts, sand and dust were blown into a deep drift;
or was it a deserted pile of rags----? Suddenly, with a sick sensation,
he saw the rags heave and stir. Arms emerged--if you could call them
arms--belonging to pinched, shadowy faces. And from that human dust-heap
came a quavering wail, "Maharáj! Maharáj!"

"What _is_ it, Bishun Singh?" he asked sharply of the _sais_, trotting
at his stirrup.

"Only the famine, Hazúr. Not a big trouble this year, they say. But from
the villages these come crawling to the city, believing the Maharáj has
plenty, and will give."

"Does he give?"

Bishun Singh's gesture seemed to deprecate undue curiosity. "The Maharáj
is great, but the people are like flies. If their Karma is good, they
find a few handfuls; if evil--they die."

Roy said no more. That simple statement was conclusive as a dropped
stone. But, on reaching the gateway, he scattered a handful of loose
corns.

Instantly a cry went up: "He gives money for food! _Jai déa
Maharáj!_"[7] Not merely arms, but entire skeletons emerged, seething,
scrambling, with hands wasted to mere claws. A few of the boldest caught
at Roy's stirrup; whereat Bishun Singh brushed them off, as if they were
flies indeed.

Unresisting, they tottered and fell one against another, like ninepins:
and Roy, hating the man, turned sharply away. But rebuke was futile. One
could _do_ nothing. It was that which galled him. One could only pass
on; mentally brushing them aside--like Bishun Singh.

       *       *       *       *       *

Spectres vanished, however, once he and Suráj were absorbed into the
human kaleidoscope of the vast main street, paved with wide strips of
hewn stone; one half of it sun-flooded; one half in shadow. The colour
and movement; the vista of pink-washed houses speckled with white
florets; the gay muslins, the small turbans and inimitable swagger of
the Rajput-Sun-descended, re-awakened in him those gleams of ancestral
memory that had so vividly beset him at Chitor. Sights and sounds and
smells--the pungent mingling of spices and dust and animals--assailed
his senses with a vague yet poignant familiarity: fruit and corn-shops
with their pyramids of yellow and red and ochre, and the fat brown
bunnia in the midst; shops bright with brass-work and Jaipur enamel;
lattice windows, low-browed arches, glimpses into shadowed courts;
flitting figures of veiled women; humbler women, unveiled, winnowing
grain, or crowned with baskets of sacred cow-dung, stepping like
queens....

And the animals----! Extinct, almost, in modern machine-ridden cities,
here they visibly and audibly prevailed. For Asia lives intimately--if
not always mercifully--with her animals; and Roy's catholic affection
embraced them all. Horses first--a long way first. But bullocks had
their charm: the graceful trotting zebus, horns painted red and green.
And the ponderous swaying of elephants--sensitive creatures, nervous of
their own bulk, resplendently caparisoned. And there--a flash of the
jungle, among casual goats, fowls, and pariahs--went the royal cheetahs,
led on slips; walking delicately, between scarlet peons, looking for all
the world like amiable maiden ladies with blue-hooded caps tied under
their chins. In the wake of their magnificence two distended donkeys, on
parodies of legs, staggered under loads more distended still, plump
dhobies perched callously on the cruppers. Above all, Roy's eye
delighted in the jewelled sheen of peacocks, rivalling in sanctity the
real lords of Jaipur--Shiva's sacred bulls. Some milk-white and
onyx-eyed, some black and insolent, they sauntered among the open shop
fronts, levying toll and obstructing traffic--assured, arrogant,
immune....

And, at stated intervals, like wrong notes in a succession of harmonies,
there sprang wrought-iron gas-lamps fitted with electric bulbs!

So riding, he came to the heart of the city--a vast open space, where
the shops seemed brighter, the crowds gayer; and, by contrast, the human
rag and bone heaps, beggars and cripples, more terrible to behold.

Here the first ray of actual recognition flashed through the haze of
familiar sensations. For here architectural exuberance culminated in the
vast bewildering façade of the Hall of the Winds and the Palace
flaunting its royal standard--five colours blazoned on cloth of gold.
But it was not these that held Roy's gaze. It was the group of Brahmin
temples, elaborately carven, rose-red from plinth to summit, rising
through flights of crows and iridescent pigeons; their monolithic forms
clean cut against the dusty haze; their shallow steps flanked with
marble elephants, splashed with orange-yellow robes of holy men and
groups of brightly-veiled women.

At sight of them Roy instinctively drew rein;--and there, in the midst
of the shifting, drifting crowd, he sat motionless, letting the vision
sink deep into his mind, while Terry investigated a promising smell, and
Bishun Singh, wholly incurious, gossiped with a potter, from whose wheel
emerged an endless succession of _chirághs_--primitive clay lamps, with
a lip for the cotton wick. His neighbour, with equal zest, was creating
very ill-shapen clay animals, birds and fishes.

"Look, Hazúr--for the Dewáli," Bishun Singh thrust upon Roy's attention
the one matter of real moment, just then, to all right-minded Hindus.
"Only two more weeks. So they are making lamps, without number, for
houses and shops and the palace of the Maharája. Very big tamasha,
Hazúr."

He enlarged volubly on the coming festival, to this Sahib, who took such
unusual interest in the ways of India; while Roy sat silent, watching,
remembering....

Nearly nineteen years ago he had seen the Dewáli--Feast of Lights; had
been driven, sitting on his mother's knee, through a fairy city outlined
in tremulous points of flame, down to the shore of the Mán Sagar Lake,
where the lights quavered and ran together and the dead ruins came alive
with them. All night they had seemed to flicker in his fanciful brain;
and next morning-unable to think or talk of anything else--he had been
moved to dictate his very first attempt at a poem....

Suddenly, sharply, there rose above the chatter of the crowd and the
tireless clamour of crows, a scream of mingled rage and anguish that
tore at his nerves and sent a chill down his spine.

Swinging round in the saddle, he saw a spectral figure of a
woman--detached from a group of spectres, huddled ironically against
bulging sacks of grain. One shrivelled arm was lifted in denunciation;
the other pressed a shapeless bundle to her empty breasts. Obviously
little more than a girl--yet with no trace of youth in her ravaged
face--she stood erect, every bone visible, before the stall of a
bangle-seller, fat and well liking, exuding rolls of flesh above his
_dhoti_,[8] and enjoying his savoury chupattis hot and hot; entirely
impervious to unseemly ravings; entirely occupied in pursuing trickles
of _ghi_[9] with his agile tongue that none might be lost.

"That shameless one was begging a morsel of food," the toymaker
explained conversationally. "Doubtless her stomach is empty. _Wah! Wah!_
But she has no pice. And a man's food is his own...."

As he spoke a milk-white bull ambled by, plundering at will; his
privileged nose adventuring near and nearer to the savoury smell.
Promptly, with reverential eagerness, the man proffered half a fresh
chupatti to the sacred intruder.

At that the starving girl-mother lunged forward with the yell of a
hunted beast; lunged right across the path of a dapper young man in an
English suit, green turban, and patent-leather shoes.

"Peace, she-devil! Make way," he cried; and catching her wrist--that
looked as if it would snap at a touch--he flung her aside so roughly
that she staggered and fell, the child beneath her emitting a feeble
wail....

Since the days of his imprisonment, cruelty witnessed had a startling
effect on Roy. Between the moment when he sprang from the saddle, in a
blaze of fury, to the moment when he stood confronting the suave,
Anglicised Indian--riding-crop in one hand, the other supporting the
girl and her babe--his mind was a blank. The thing was done almost
before the impulse reached his brain. He wondered if he had struck the
fellow, whom he was now arraigning furiously in fluent Hindustani, and
whose sullen, shifty face was reminding him of some one--somewhere....

"Have you _no_ respect for suffering--or for women other than your own?"
he demanded, scorn undisguised in his look and tone.

The man's answering shrug was frankly contemptuous. "All you English are
mad," he said in the vernacular. "If she die not to-day, she will die
to-morrow. And already there are too many to feed--"

"She will not die to-day or to-morrow," Roy retorted with Olympian
assurance. "Courage, little mother,"--he addressed the girl--"you shall
have food, you and the sonling."

As she raised herself, clutching at his arm, he became uncomfortably
aware that her rags of clothing were probably verminous; that his
chivalrous pity was tinged with repulsion. But pity prevailed.
Supporting her to a neighbouring stall, he bought fruit, which she
devoured like a wild thing. He begged a little milk in a lotah and gave
her money for more. Half dazed, she dropped the money, emptied the small
jar almost at a gulp, and flung herself at his feet, pressing her
forehead on his dusty boot; covering him with confusion. Imperatively he
bade her get up. No result. So he stooped to enforce his command....

She had fainted.

"Help, mother--quick!" he appealed to an elder woman who hovered near
the stall, and responded, instinctively, to the note of command.

As she stooped over the girl he said in low rapid tones: "Listen! It is
an order. Give warm food to her and the child. Take her to the Burra
Sahib's compound. There she will be cared for. I will give word."

He slipped two rupees into her hand, adding: "Two more--when all is done
according to order."

"_Hai! Hai!_ The Sahib is a Son of Princes," murmured the favoured one,
reflecting shrewdly that eight annas would suffice to feed those poor
empty creatures; and gathering up her light burden she bore it away--to
Roy's unfeigned relief.

Would Thea scold him--or uphold him, he wondered,--having committed
himself. The whole thing had been so swift, so unreal, that he seemed
half a world away from the green Residency garden, with its atmosphere
of twentieth-century England, scrupulously, yet unconsciously, preserved
in a setting of sixteenth-century India. And Roy had a strain of both in
his composition.

Across the road Bishun Singh--tolerant of his Sahib's vagaries--was
still chatting with the potter; a blare of discord in a minor key
announced an approaching procession; and there, in talk with the
bangle-seller, stood the cause of these strange doings; keeping a
curious eye on the mad Englishman, but otherwise frankly unconcerned.
Again there dawned on Roy the conviction that he had seen that face
before. It was not in India. It was linked with the same sensations, in
a milder form. It would come in a moment....

It came.

Behind the slight, foppish figure, the eye of his mind saw suddenly--not
the sunlight and colour of Jaipur, but a stretch of grey-green sea,
tawny cliffs, and sandy shore ... St Rupert's! Of course, unmistakable:
the sullen mouth, the shifty eyes....

Instantly he went forward and said in English: "I say--excuse me--but is
your name Chandranath?"

The man started and stiffened. "That is no matter to you."

"Perhaps not. Only ... you're very like a boy who was one term at St
Rupert's School with me."

"Well, I _was_ at St Rupert's. A beastly hole----"

He, too, spoke English, and scanned Roy's face with narrowed eyes.
"Sinclair--is it? You tumbled down the cliff on to me--and that Desmond
fellow----?"

"Yes, I did. Lucky for you," Roy answered, stiffening in his turn. But
because of old days--because this unpromising specimen of manhood had
incidentally brought him and Desmond together, he held out his hand.
"'Fraid I lost my temper," he said casually, for form's sake. "But you
put my blood up."

Chandranath's fingers lay limply in his grasp.

"Still so sensitive----? Then better to clear out of India. I only
pushed that crazy girl aside. Englishmen knock and kick our people
without slightest compunction. Perhaps you are a tourist--or new to this
country?"

Words and manner set Roy's nerves on edge; but he had been imprudent
enough for one day. "I've spent seven months on the Frontier in a
cavalry Regiment," he said; "but I only came to Jaipur yesterday."

"Well, take my advice, Mr Sinclair, and leave these people alone. They
don't want Englishmen making pretence of sentimental fuss over them.
They like much better to be pushed--or even starved--by their own _ját_.
You may not believe it. But I belong to them. So I know."

Roy, who also 'belonged' in a measure, very nearly said so--but again
prudence prevailed. "I'm rash enough to disagree with you," he said
placably. "The question of non-interference, of letting ill
alone--because one's afraid or can't be bothered--isn't merely a race
question; it's a root question of human character. Some men can't pass
by on the other side. Right or wrong, it simply isn't arguable. It's a
matter of the individual conscience--the heart----"

"Conscience and heart--if not drastically disciplined by the logically
reasoning brain, propagate the majority of troubles that afflict
mankind," quoth Chandranath in the manner of one familiar with platform
oratory. "Are you stopping in Jaipur?"

"Yes. At the Residency. Mrs Leigh is Desmond's sister. Did you know?"

"That is curious. I did not know. Too much heart and conscience there
also. Mrs Leigh is thrusting her fingers into complicated issues of
which she is lamentably ignorant."

Roy, taken aback, nearly gave himself away--but not quite. "I gather she
acted with Sir Lakshman Singh's approval," was all he said.

Chandranath shrugged. "Sir Lakshman is an able but deluded man. His
dreams of social reform are obsolete. We of the new school adhere
patriotically to social and religious ordinances of the Mother. All we
agitate for is political independence." He unfurled the polysyllables,
like a flag; sublimely unaware of having stated a contradiction in
terms. "But your Sir Lakshman is of the old-fashioned
school--English-mad."

"And your particular friends--are sane, eh?"

The apostle of Hindu revival pensively twirled an English button of his
creditably-cut English coat.

"Yes. We are sane--thanks to more liberalising influences. Coloured dust
cannot be thrown in our eyes by bureaucratic conjuring tricks, or
imperialistic talk about prestige. To-day it is India's turn for
prestige. 'Arya for the Aryans' is the slogan of the rising generation."
He paused, blinked, and added with an ingratiating chuckle: "You will go
running away with an impression that I am metamorphosed into red-hot
revolutionary. No, thank you! I am intrinsically a man of peace!" With a
flourish he jerked out a showy gold watch. "Ah--getting late! Very
agreeable exchanging amenities with old schoolfellows. But I have an
appointment in the Palace Gardens, at the time they feed the muggers.
_That_ is a sight you should see, Mr Sinclair--when the beasts are
hungry and have not lately snapped up a washerwoman or an erring wife!"

"I'd rather be excused this evening, thanks," Roy answered, with a touch
of brusqueness. "I confess it wouldn't appeal to my sense of
humour--seeing crocodiles gorge, while women and children starve."

"That is what they call in a book I once read 'little ironies of life.'
Good fortune, at least, for the muggers! Better start to sharpen your
sense of humour, my friend. It is incomparable asset against the slings
and arrows of outrageous contingencies." This time his chuckle had an
undernote of malice; and Roy, considering him thoughtfully--from green
turban to patent-leather shoes--felt an acute desire to take him by the
scruff of his English coat and dust the Jaipur market-place with the
remnant of him.

Aloud he said coolly: "Thanks for the prescription. Are you stopping
here long?"

"Oh, I am meteoric visitant. Never very long anywhere. I come and go."

"Business--eh?"

"Yes--many kinds of business--for the Mother." He flashed a direct look
at Roy; the first since their encounter; fluttered a foppish hand--the
little finger lifted to display a square uncut emerald--and went his
way....

Roy, left standing alone in the leisurely crowd of men and animals--at
once so alien and so familiar--returned to Bishun Singh and Suráj in a
vaguely troubled frame of mind.

"Which way to the house of Sir Lakshman Singh?" he asked the maker of
chirághs, his foot in the stirrup.

Enlightened, he set off at a trot, down another vast street, all hazy in
the level light that conjured the dusty air to gold. But contact with
human anguish, naked and unashamed--as he had not seen it since the
war--and that sudden queer encounter with Chandranath, had rubbed the
bloom off delicate films of memory and artistic impressions. These were
the drop-scene, merely: negligible, when Life took the stage. He had an
exciting sense of having stepped straight into a crisis. Things were
going to happen in Jaipur.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: Victory to thee, Maharáj!]

[Footnote 8: Loin-cloth.]

[Footnote 9: Melted butter.]




CHAPTER VI.

     "God has a few of us, whom He whispers in the ear;
      The rest may reason and welcome...."
                                         --BROWNING.

     "Living still, and the more beautiful for our longing."


The house of Sir Lakshman Singh, C.S.I.--like many others in advancing
India--was a house divided against itself. And the cleavage cut deep.
The furnishing of the two rooms, in which he mainly lived, was not more
sharply sundered from that of the Inside, than was the atmosphere of his
large and vigorous mind from the twilight of ignorance and superstition
that shrouded the mind and soul of his wife. More than fifty years
ago--when young India ardently admired the West and all its works--he
had dreamed of educating his spirited girl-bride, so that the way of
companionship might gladden the way of marriage.

But too soon the spirited girl had hardened into the narrow, tyrannical
woman; her conception of the wifely state limited to the traditional
duties of motherhood and household service. Happily for Sir Lakshman,
his unusual gifts had gained him wide recognition and high service in
the State. He had schooled himself, long since, to forget his early
dreams: and if marriage had failed, fatherhood had made royal amends.
Above all, in Lilámani, daughter of flesh and spirit, he had found--had
in a measure created--the intimate companionship he craved; a woman
skilled in the fine art of loving--finest and least studied of all the
arts that enrich and beautify human life. But the gods, it seemed, were
jealous of a relation too nearly perfect for mortal man. So Rama, eldest
son, and Lilámani, beloved daughter, had been taken, while the
estranged wife was left. Remained the grandchildren, in whom centred all
his hope and pride. So far as the dividing miles and years would permit,
he had managed to keep in close touch with Roy. But the fact remained
that England had first claim on Lilámani's children; and Rama's were
tossed on the troubled waters of transition.

As for India herself--sacred Mother-land--her distraught soul seemed
more and more at the mercy of the voluble, the half-baked, the
disruptive, at home and abroad.

Himself, steeped in the threefold culture of his country--Vedantic,
Islamic, and European--he came very near the prevailing ideal of
composite Indian nationality. Yet was he not deceived. In seventy years
of life, he had seen intellectual India pass through many phases, from
ardent admiration of the West and all its works, to no less ardent
denunciation. And in these days he saw too clearly how those same
intellectuals--with catchwords, meaningless to nine-tenths of her
people--were breaking down, stone by stone, their mighty safeguard of
British administration. Useless to protest. Having ears, they heard not.
Having eyes, they saw not. The spirit of destruction seemed abroad in
all the earth. After Germany--Russia. Would it be India next? He knew
her peoples well enough to fear. He also knew them well enough to hope.
But of late, increasingly, fear had prevailed. His shrewd eye discerned,
in every direction, fresh portents of disaster--a weakened executive,
divided counsels, and violence that is the offspring of both. His own
Maharája, he thanked God, was of the old school, loyal and conservative:
his face set like a flint against the sedition-monger in print or
person. And as concessions multiplied and extremists waxed bolder, so
the need for vigilance waxed in proportion....

But to-day his mind had room for one thought only--the advent of Roy;
legacy of her, his vanished Jewel of Delight.

A message from the Residency had told of the boy's arrival, of his hope
to announce himself in person that evening; and now, on a low divan, the
old man sat awaiting him with a more profound emotion at his heart than
the mere impatience of youth. But the impassive face under the
flesh-pink turban betrayed no sign of disturbance within. The
strongly-marked nose and eyebones might have been carved in old ivory.
The snowy beard, parted in the middle, was swept up over his ears; and
the eyes were veiled. An open book lay on his knee. But he was not
reading. He was listening for the sound of hoofs, the sound of a
voice....

The two had not met for five years: and in those years the boy had
proved the warrior blood in his veins; had passed through the searching
test of a bitter loss. Together, they could speak of her--gone from
them; yet alive in their hearts for evermore. Seen or unseen, she was
the link that kept them all united, the pivot on which their lives still
turned. There had been none with whom he could talk of her since she
went....

Over his writing-table hung the original Antibes portrait--life-size;
Nevil's payment for the high privilege of painting her; a privilege how
reluctantly accorded none but himself had ever known. And behold his
reward: her ever-visible presence--the girl-child who had been
altogether his own.

Hoofs at last--and the remembered voice; deeper, more commanding; the
embroidered curtain pushed aside. Then--Roy himself, broader, browner;
his father's smile in his eyes; and, permeating all, the spirit of his
mother, clearly discernible to the man who had given it life.

He was on his feet now, an imposing figure, in loose white raiment and
purple choga. In India, he wisely discarded English dress, deeming it as
unsuitable to the country as English political machinery. Silent, he
held out his arms and folded Roy in a close embrace: then--still
silent--stood away and considered him afresh. Their mutual emotion
affected them sensibly, like the presence of a third person, making them
shy of each other, shy of themselves.

It was Sir Lakshman who spoke first. "Roy, son of my Heart's Delight, I
have waited many years for this day. It was the hidden wish of her
heart. And her spirit, though withdrawn, still works in our lives. It is
only so with those who love greatly, without base mixture of jealousy or
greed. They pass on--yet they remain; untouched by death, like the
lotus, that blooms in the water, but opens beyond its reach."

Words and tone so stirred Roy that sudden tears filled his eyes. And
through the mist of his grief, dawned a vision of his mother's face.
Blurred and tremulous, it hovered before him with a startling illusion
of life; then--he knew....

Without a word, he went over to the picture and stood before it, drowned
fathoms deep....

A slight movement behind roused him; and with an effort he turned away.
"I've not seen a big one since--since my last time at home," he said
simply. "I've only two small ones out here."

The carven face was not impassive now. "After all, Dilkusha,[10] what
matter pictures when you have--herself?"

Roy started. "It's true. I _have_--herself. How could you know?"

Five minutes later, he was sitting beside his grandfather on the deep
divan, telling him all.

Before setting out, he would not have believed it possible. But
instinctively he knew himself in touch with a quality of love that
matched his own; and the mere telling revived the marvel, the thrill of
that strange and beautiful experience at Chitor....

Sir Lakshman had neither moved nor spoken throughout. Now their eyes met
in a look of deep understanding.

"I am very proud you told me, Roy. It is not easy."

"No. I've not told any one else. I couldn't. But just now--something
seemed to draw it all out of me. I suppose--something in you----"

"Or perhaps--herself! It almost seemed--she was here with us, while you
talked."

"Perhaps--she is here still."

Their voices were lowered, as in the presence of sacred things. Never,
till now, had Roy so keenly felt his individual link with this wonderful
old man, whose blood ran in his veins.

"Grandfather," he asked after a pause, "I suppose it doesn't often
happen--that sort of thing? I suppose most common-sense people would
dismiss it all as--sheer delusion?"

The young simplicity of the question lit a smile in Sir Lakshman's eyes.

"Quite possible. All that is most beautiful in life, most real to saints
and lovers, must seem delusion to those whose hearts and spirits are
merely vassals to the body and the brain. But those who say of the soul,
'It is not,' have still to _prove_ it is not to those who have felt and
known. Also I grant--the other way about. But they speak in different
languages. Kabir says, 'I disclose my soul in what is hidden.' And
again, 'The bird is beyond seeking, yet it is most clearly visible.' For
us, that is living truth. For those others, a mere tangle of words."

"I see." Roy's gaze was riveted on the picture above the writing-table.
"You can't explain colours to the colour-blind. And I suppose
experiences like mine only come to those for whom words like that
are--living truth?"

"Yes--like yours. But there are other kinds; not always true. Because,
in this so sacred matter, clever people, without scruple, have made
capital out of the heart's natural longing; and the dividing line is dim
where falsehood ends and truth begins. So it has all come into suspicion
and contempt. Accept what is freely given, Roy. Do not be tempted to try
and snatch more."

"No--no. I wouldn't if I could." A pause. "_You_ believe it is time ...
what I feel? That she is often--very near me?"

Sir Lakshman gravely inclined his head. "As I believe in Brahma, Lord of
all."

And for both the silence that fell seemed pulsating with her unseen
presence....

When they spoke again it was of mundane things. Roy vividly described
his sensations, riding through the City; the culminating incident, and
his recognition of the offender.

"The queerest thing, running into the beggar again like that! He looks
as sulky and shifty as ever. That's how I knew."

"Sulky and shifty--and wearing English clothes?" Sir Lakshman's brows
contracted sharply. "What name did you say?"

"Chandranath, we called him."

"And you don't know his whereabouts?"

"No, I'm sorry. I didn't suppose his whereabouts mattered a damn to any
one."

The stern old Rajput smiled. It did his heart good to hear the familiar
slang phrases again. "Whether it matters a damn--as you say--depends on
whether he is the undesirable I have in mind. Quite young; but much
influence, and a bad record. Mixed up with German agents, before the
War, and the Ghadr party in California; arrested for seditious activity
and deported: but of course, on appeal, allowed to return. Always the
same tale. Always the same result. Worse mischief done. And India--the
true India--must be grateful for these mercies! Sometimes I think the
irony is too sharp between the true gifts given, unnoticed, by
Englishmen working sincerely for the good of our people, and the false
gifts proclaimed from the house-tops, filling loyal Indians with
bewilderment and fear. I have had letters from scores of these, because
I am known to believe that loyal allegiance to British government gives
India the best chance for peaceful progress she is likely to have for
many generations. And from every one comes the same cry, begging to be
saved from this crazy nightmare of Home Rule, not understood and not
desired except by those who invented it. But what appeal is possible to
those who stop their ears? And all the time, by stealthy and open means,
the poison of race-hatred is being poured into India's veins----"

"But, Grandfather--what about the War--and pulling together--and all
that?"

Sir Lakshman's smile struck Roy as one of the saddest he had ever seen.
"Four years ago, my dear Boy, we all had many radiant illusions. But
this War has dragged on too long. It is too far away. For our Princes
and warlike races it has had some reality. For the rest it means mostly
news in the papers and rumours in bazaars, high prices, and trouble
about food. No better soil for sowing evil seeds. And friends of
Germany are still working in India--remember that! While the loyal were
fighting, these were talking, plotting, hindering: and now they are
waving, like a flag, the services of others, to gain their own ends,
from which the loyal pray to be delivered! Could irony be more complete?
Indian Princes can keep some cheek on these gentlemen. But it is not
always easy. If this Chandranath should be the same man--he is here, no
doubt, for Dewáli. At sacred feasts they do most of their devil's work.
Did you speak of connection with me?"

"No. But he seemed to know about Arúna: said you were English mad."

Sir Lakshman frowned. "English mad! That is their jargon. Too narrow to
understand how I can deeply love both countries, while remaining as
jealous for all true rights of my Motherland as any hot-head who
swallows their fairy-tale of a Golden Age, and England as
Raksha--destroying demon! By help of such inventions, they have deluded
many fine young men, like my poor Dyán, who should be already married
and working to all my place. Such was my hope in sending him to Oxford.
And now--see the result ..."

On that topic he could not yet trust himself; and Roy, leaning forward
impulsively, laid a hand on his knee.

"Grandfather, I have promised Arúna--and I promise you--that somehow, I
_will_ get hold of him; and bring him back to his senses."

Sir Lakshman covered the hand with his own. "True son of Lilámani! But I
fear he may have joined some secret society; and India is a large
haystack in which to seek one human needle!"

"But Arúna has written again. She is convinced he will answer."

Sir Lakshman sighed. "Poor Arúna! I am not sure if I was altogether wise
letting her go to the Residency. But I am deeply grateful to Mrs Leigh.
India needs many more such English women. By making friends with
high-born Indian women, it is hardly too much to say they might,
together, mend more than half the blunders made by men on both sides."

Thus, skilfully, he steered clear of Arúna's problem that was linked
with matters too intimately painful for discussion with a grandson,
however dear.

So absorbed was Roy in the delight of reunion, that not till he rose to
go did he take in the details of the lofty room. Everywhere Indian
workmanship was in evidence. The pictures were old Rajput paintings;
fine examples of Vaishnava art--pure Hindu, in its mingling of restraint
and exuberance, of tenderness and fury; its hallowing of all life and
idealising of all love. Only the writing-table and swivel-chair were
frankly of the West, and certain shelves full of English books and
reviews.

"I _like_ your room," Roy announced after leisurely inspection. "But I
don't seem to remember----"

"You would be a miracle if you did! The room _you_ saw had plush
curtains, gilt mirrors and gilt furniture; in fact, the correct
'English-fashion' guest-room of the educated Indian gentleman. But of
late years I have seen how greatly we were mistaken, making imitation
England to honour our English friends. Some frankly told me how they
were disappointed to find in our houses only caricatures of middle-class
England or France. Such rooms are silent barriers to friendship:
proclaiming that East may go to the West but West cannot come to the
East."

"In a way that's true, isn't it?"

"Yes--in a way. This room, of course, is not like my inner apartments.
It is like myself, however; cultivated--but still Indian. It is my way
of preaching true Swadeshi:--Be your own self, even with English guests.
But so far I have few followers. Some are too foolishly fond of their
mirrors and chandeliers and gramophones. Some will not believe such
trifles can affect friendliness. Yet--strange, but true--too much
Anglicising of India instead of drawing us nearer, seems rather to widen
the gulf."

Roy nodded. "I've heard that. Yet most of us are so keen to be friends.
Queer, perverse things--human beings, aren't they?"

"And for that reason, more interesting than all the wonders of Earth!"
Setting both hands on Roy's shoulders he looked deeply into his eyes.
"Come and see me often, Dilkusha. It lifts my tired heart to have this
very human being so near me again."

       *       *       *       *       *

Ten minutes later, Roy was riding homeward through a changed city;
streets and hills and sky wrapped in the mystery of encroaching dusk.

South and west the sky flamed, like the heart of a fire opal, through a
veil fine as gauze--dust no longer; but the aura of Jaipur. Seen afar,
through the coloured gloom, familiar shapes took on strange outlines;
moved and swayed, mysteriously detached, in a sea of shadows, scattered,
here and there, by flames of little dinner fires along the pavements.
The brilliant shifting crowd of two hours ago seemed to have sunk into
the earth. For there is no night life in the streets of Jaipur.
Travellers had passed on and out. Merchants had stowed away their
muslins and embroideries, their vessels of brass and copper and
priceless enamels. Only the starving lay in huddled heaps as
before--ominously still; while above them vultures and eagles circled,
expectant, ink-black against the immense radiance beyond. Grey,
deepening to black, were flat roofs, cornices, minarets and massed
foliage, and the flitting shadows, with lifted tails, that careered
along the house-tops; or perched on some jutting angle, skinny elbows
crooked, absorbed in the pursuit of fleas. For sunset is the monkey's
hour, and the eerie jibbering of these imps of darkness struck a bizarre
note in the hush that shrouded the city.

Roy knew, now, why Thea had stayed his impatience; and he blessed her
sympathetic understanding. But just then--steeped in India at her most
magical hour--it was hard to believe in the Residency household; in
English dinner-tables and English detachment from the medićval medley of
splendour and squalor, of courage and cruelty and dumb endurance, of
arts and crafts and all the paraphernalia of enlightened knowledge that
was Jaipur. It seemed more like a week than a few hours since he had
turned in the saddle to salute Arúna and ridden out into another
world:--her world, which was also in a measure his own....

On and on he rode, at a foot's pace, followed by his twin shadows; past
the temples of Maha Deo, still rosy where they faced the west, still
rumbling and throbbing with muffled music; past wayside shrines, mere
alcoves for grotesque images--Shiva, Lord of Death, or Ganesh the
Elephant God--each with his scented garlands and his nickering chirágh;
past shadowy groups round the dinner fires, cooking their evening meal:
on and out through the double fortified gateways into the deserted road,
his whole being drenched in the silence and the deepening dusk.

Here, outside the city, emptiness loomed almost like a presence. Only
the trees were alive; each with its colony of peacocks and parrots and
birds of prey noisily settling to rest. The peacocks' unearthly cry, and
the far, ghostly laugh of jackals--authentic voice of India at
sundown--sent a chill down Roy's spine. For he, who had scarcely known
fear on the battlefield, was ignominiously at the mercy of imagination
and the eerie spirit of the hour.

At a flick of the reins, Suráj broke into a smart canter, willingly
enough. What were sunsets or local devils to him compared with stables
and gram?

And as they sped on, as trees on either side slid by like stealthy
ghosts, the sunset splendour died, only to rise again in a volcanic
afterglow, on which trunks and twigs and battlemented hills were printed
in daguerreotype; and desert voices were drowned in the clamour of
cicadas, grinding their knives in foolish ecstasy; and, at last, he
swerved between the friendly gate-posts of the Residency--the richer for
a spiritual adventure that could neither be imparted, nor repeated, nor
forgotten while he lived.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: Joy of my heart.]




CHAPTER VII.

     "The deepest thing in our nature is this dumb region of the heart,
     where we dwell alone with our willingnesses and unwillingnesses,
     our faiths and our fears."--WILLIAM JAMES.


Not least among the joys of Arúna's return to the freer life of the
Residency was her very own verandah balcony. Here, secure from
intrusion, she could devote the first and last hours of her day to
meditation or prayer. Oxford studies had confused a little, but not
killed, the faith of her fathers. The real trouble was that too often,
nowadays, that exigent heart of hers would intrude upon her sacred
devotions, transforming them into day-dreams, haloed with a hope the
more frankly formulated because she was of the East.

For Thea had guessed aright. Roy was the key to her waverings, her
refusals, her eager acceptance of the emergency plan:--welcome in
itself; still more welcome because it permitted her simply to await his
coming.

They had been very wonderful, those five years in England; in spite of
anxieties and disappointed hopes. But when Dyán departed and
Mesopotamia engulfed Roy, India had won the day.

How unforgettable that exalted moment of decision, one drenched and
dismal winter evening; the sudden craving for sights and sounds and
smells of her own land. How slow the swiftest steamer to the speed of
her racing thoughts! How bitter, beyond belief, the--how first faint
chill of disappointment; the pang of realising reluctantly--that, within
herself, she belonged whole-heartedly to neither world.

She had returned qualified for medical work, by experience in a College
hospital at Oxford; yet hampered by innate shrinking from the sick and
maimed, who had been too much with her in those years of war. Not less
innate was the urge of her whole being to fulfil her womanhood through
marriage rather than through work. And in the light of that discovery,
she saw her dilemma plain. Either she must hope to marry an Englishman
and break with India, like Aunt Lilámani; or accept, at the hands of the
matchmaker, an enlightened bridegroom, unseen, unknown, whose family
would overlook--at a price--her advanced age and English adventures.

Against the last, all that England and Oxford had given her rose up in
revolt ... But the discarded, subconscious Arúna was centuries older
than the half-fledged being who hovered on the rim of the nest,
distrustful of her untried wings and the pathless sky. That Arúna had,
for ally, the spirit of the ages; more formidable, if less assertive,
than the transient spirit of the age. And the fledgling Arúna knew
perfectly well that the Englishman of her alternative was,
confessedly--Roy. His mother being Indian, she innocently supposed there
would be no trouble of prejudice; no stupid talk of the gulf that she
and Dyán had set out to bridge. The fact that Dyán had failed only made
her the more anxious to succeed....

Soon after arriving, she had taken up hospital work in the women's ward,
because Miss Hammond was kind; and her educated self had need of
occupation. Her other self--deeply loving her grandfather--had urged her
to try and live at home,--so far as her unregenerate state would permit.

As out-of-caste, she had been exempt from kitchen work; debarred from
touching any food except the portion set aside for her meals, that were
eaten apart in Sir Lakshman's room--her haven of refuge. In the Inside,
she was at the mercy of women's tongues and the petty tyranny of Mátaji;
antagonistic as ever; sharpened and narrowed with age, even as her
grandfather had mellowed and grown beautiful, with the unearthly beauty
of the old, whose spirit shines visibly through the attenuated veil of
flesh. Arúna, watching him, with clearer understanding, marvelled how he
had preserved his serenity of soul through a lifetime of Mátaji's
dominion.

And the other women--relations in various degrees--took their tone from
her, if only for the sake of peace:--the widowed sister-in-law, suavely
satirical; a great-aunt, whose tongue clacked like a rice-husker; two
cousins, correctly betrothed to unseen bridegrooms, entitled to look
askance at the abandoned one, who was neither wife nor mother; and two
children of a poor relation--embryo women, who echoed the jeers of their
elders at her English friends, her obstinacy in the matter of caste and
the inevitable husband. _Hai! hai!_ At her age, what did she fear? Had
the English bewitched her with lies? Thus Peru, aged nine, jocosely
proceeding to enlighten her; egged on by giggles and high-pitched
laughter from the prospective brides. For in the zenana reticence is
not, even before children. Arúna herself had heard such talk; but for
years her early knowledge had lain dormant; while fastidiousness had
been engendered by English studies and contact with English youth.
Useless to answer. It simply meant tears or losing her temper; in which
case, Mátaji would retaliate by doctoring her food with red pepper to
sweeten her tongue.

Meanwhile, sharpened pressure in the matter of caste rites and rumours
of an actually maturing husband, had brought her very near the end of
her tether. Again Thea was right. Her brave impulse of the heart had
only been just in time. And hard upon that unbelievable good fortune
followed the news that Roy was coming.

Tremulously at first, then with quickening confidence, her happy nature
rose like a sea-bird out of troubled waters, on the wings of a secret
hope....

       *       *       *       *       *

And now he was here, under this friendly roof that sheltered her from
the tender mercies of her own kind. There were almost daily meetings,
however brief, and the after-glow of them when past; all the
well-remembered tricks of speech and manner; and the twinkle of fun in
his eyes. Lapped in an ecstasy of content, hope scarcely stirred a wing.
Enough that he was there----

Great was her joy when Mrs Leigh--after scolding him in the kindest way
over the girl mother and two more starving children, picked up
afterwards--had given her leave to take special charge of them and
lodged them with the dhobi's wife. This also brought her nearer to Roy.
And what could she ask more?

But with the approach of the Dewáli, thoughts of the future came
flocking like birds at sundown. Because, on Dewáli night, all tried
their luck in some fashion; and Mai Lakshmi's answer failed not. The men
tossed coin or dice. The maidens, at sunset, when the little wind of
evening stirred the waters, carried each her chirágh--lamp of her
life--and set it afloat on tank or stream, praying Mai Lakshmi to guide
it safe across. If the prayer was heard, omens were favourable. If the
lamp should sink, or be shattered, omens were evil. And the
centuries-old Arúna--still at the mercy of dastúr--had secretly bought
her little chirágh; secretly resolved to try her fate on the night of
nights. If the answer were unfavourable--and courage failed her--there
was always one way of escape. The water that put out her lamp would as
carelessly put out the flame of her life--in a little moment--without
pain....

A small shiver convulsed her--kneeling there in her balcony; her bare
arms resting on the balustrade. The new Arúna shrank from thought of
death. She craved the fulness of life and love--kisses and rapture and
the clinging arms of little children....

For, as she knelt in the moonlight, nominally she was invoking Mai
Lakshmi; actually she was dreaming of Roy; chiding herself for the
foolishness that had kept her from appearing at dinner; hoping he might
wonder, and perhaps think of her a little--wishing her there. And all
the while, perhaps he was simply not noticing--not caring one little
bit----!

Stung by the thought, she clenched her hands and lifted her bowed head.
Then she started--and caught her breath----

Could it be he, down there among the shadows--wandering, dreaming,
thinking of her, or making poems? She knew most of his slim volume by
heart.

More likely, he was framing bold plans to find Dyán--now the answer to
her letter had come. It was a strange unsatisfying answer; full of
affection, but too full of windy phrases that she was shrewd enough to
recognise as mere echoes from those others, who had ensnared him in a
web of words.

"Fear not for me, sister of my heart," he wrote. "Rejoice because I am
dedicated to service of the Mother, that she may be released from
political bondage and shine again in her ancient glory--no longer
exploited by foreigners, who imagine that with bricks and stones they
can lock up Veda--eternal truth! The gods have spoken. It is time. Kali
rises in the East, with her necklet of skulls--Giants of evil she has
slain. It is she who speaks through the voice of the patriot: 'Do not
wall up your vision, like frogs in a well.... Rise above the Penal Code
to the rarefied atmosphere of the Gita and consider the actions of
heroic men.'

"You ask if I still love Roy? Why not? He is of our own blood and a very
fine fellow. But I don't write now because he would not understand my
fervour of soul. So don't you take all his opinions for gospel; like my
grandfather's, they are well meant, but obsolete. If only you had
courage, Arúna-ji, to accept the enlightened husband, who might not keep
you in strict purdah, then we could work together for liberation of the
Mother. Sing _Bande Mátaram_,[11] forty thousand brothers! That is our
battle-cry. And one of those is your own fond brother--Dyán Singh."

Arúna had read and re-read that bewildering effusion till tears fell and
blotted the words. Could this be the same Dyán who had known and loved
England even as she did? His eloquence somehow failed to carry
conviction. To her, the soul of new India seemed like a book, full of
contradictions, written in many strange languages, hard to read. But
behind that tangle of words beat the heart of Dyán--the brother who was
her all.

Still no address was given. But Roy had declared the Delhi postmark
sufficient clue. Directly Dewáli was over, he would go. And, by every
right impulse, she ought to be more glad than sad. But the heart, like
the tongue, can no man tame. And sometimes his eagerness to go hurt her
a little. Was he thinking of Delhi down there--or of her----?

The shadow had turned and was moving towards her. There was a white
splash of shirt-front, the glow of a cigarette.

Suddenly his pace quickened. He had seen her. Next moment he was
standing under her balcony. His low-pitched voice came distinctly to her
ears.

"Good evening--Juliet! Quit your dreaming. Come and be sociable down
here."

Delicious tremors ran through her. Much too bold, going down in the
dark. But how to resist?

"I think--better not," she faltered, incipient surrender in her tone.
"You see--not coming down to dinner ... Mrs Leigh ..."

"Bother Mrs Leigh. I've got a ripping inspiration about Delhi---- Hurry
up. I'll be by the steps."

Then he _had_ been thinking of Delhi. But he wanted her now; and the
note of command extinguished hesitation. Slipping on a cloak, she
reached the verandah without meeting a soul. He put out a hand. Purely
on impulse she gave him her left one; and he conducted her down the
steps with mock ceremony, as if leading her out to tread a measure to
unheard strains of the viola and spinet.

Happiness ran like wine in her veins: and catching his mood she swept
him a curtsey, English fashion.

"Fit for the Queen's Drawing-room!" he applauded; and she smiled up at
him under her straight lashes. "Why didn't you appear at dinner? Is it a
whim--hiding your light under a bushel? Or do you get headaches and
heartaches working in the ward, and feel out of tune with our frivol?"

The solicitude in his tone was worth many headaches and heartaches to
hear again. But with him she could not pretend.

"No--not that!" she said, treading the grass beside him, as if it were a
moonlit cloud. "Only sometimes ... I am foolish--not inclined for so
many faces; and all the lights and the talk."

He nodded. "I know the feeling. The same strain in us, I suppose. But,
look here, about Dyán. It suddenly struck me I'd have ten times better
chance if I went as an Indian. I can talk the language to admiration.
What d'you think?"

She caught her breath. A vision of him so transformed seemed to bring
him surprisingly nearer. "How exciting! How bold!"

"Yes--but not impossible. And no end of a lark. If I could lodge with
some one who knew, I believe I could pull it through. Grandfather might
arrange that. It would give me a chance to get in among Dyán's set and
hear things. Don't breathe a word to any one. I must talk it all over
with Grandfather."

"Oh! I would love to see you turned into a Rajput," she breathed.

"You _shall_ see me. I'll come and make my salaams and ask your blessing
on my venture."

"And I will make _prasád_ for your journey!" Her unveiled eyes met his
frankly now. "A portion for Dyán too. It may speak to his heart clearer
than words."

"_Prasad_? What's that?"

"Food prepared and consecrated by touch of mother or sister or--or
nearest woman relation. And by absence of those others ... it is ... my
privilege----"

"_My_ privilege. I would not forgo it for a kingdom," Roy interposed,
such patent sincerity in the reverend quiet of his tone that she was
speechless....

For less than half an hour they strolled on that moon-enchanted lawn.
Nothing was said by either that the rest might not have heard. Yet it
was a transfigured Arúna who approached the verandah, where Thea stood
awaiting them; having come out to look for Roy and found the clue to his
prolonged meditations.

"What have you been plotting, you two?" she asked lightly when they
reached her. To Roy her eyes said: "D'you call _this_ being discreet?"
To Arúna her lips said: "Graceless one! I thought you were _purdah
nashin_ this evening!"

"So she was," Roy answered for her. "I'm the culprit. I insisted. Some
details about my Delhi trip, I wanted to talk over."

Thea wrinkled her forehead. "Roy--you mustn't. It's a crazy plan----"

"Pardon me--an inspired plan!" He drew himself up half an inch the
better to look down on her. "Nothing on earth can put me off it--except
Grandfather. And I know he'll back me up."

"In that case, I won't waste valuable verbal ammunition on you! Come
along in--We're going to have music."

But as Roy moved forward, Arúna drew back. "Please--I would rather go
to bed now. And--please, forgive, little Mother," she murmured
caressingly. For this great-hearted English woman seemed mother indeed
to her now.

For answer, Thea took her by the shoulders and kissed her on both
cheeks. "Not guilty this time, _piári_.[12] But don't do it again!"

Roy's hand closed hard on hers, but he said not a word. And she was
glad.

Alone again on her balcony, gladness rioted through all her being.
Yet--nothing had really happened. Nothing had been said.
Only--everything felt different inside. Of such are life's supreme
moments. They come without flourish of trumpets; touch the heart or the
lips with fire, and pass on....

While undressing, an impulse seized her to break her chirágh and
treasure the pieces--in memory of to-night. Why trouble Mai Lakshmi with
a question already half answered? But, lost in happy thoughts--inwoven
with delicate threads of sound from Thea's violin--she forgot all about
it, till the warmth of her cheek nestled against the cool pillow. Too
lazy and comfortable to stir, she told her foolish heart that to-morrow
morning would do quite as well.

But the light of morning dimmed, a little, her mood of exalted
assurance. Habit and superstition prevailed over that so arrogant
impulse, and the mystic chirágh of destiny was saved--for another fate.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: Hail, Mother.]

[Footnote 12: Darling.]




CHAPTER VIII.

     "The forces that fashion, the hands that mould,
        Are the winds fire-laden, the sky, the rain;--

            *       *       *       *       *

      They are gods no more, but their spells remain."
                                             --SIR ALFRED LYALL.


Dewáli night at last; and all Jaipur astir in the streets at sundown
awaiting the given moment that never quite loses its quality of
miracle....

For weeks every potter's wheel had been whirling, double tides, turning
out clay chirághs by the thousand, that none might fail of honouring Mai
Lakshmi--a compound of Minerva and Ceres,--worshipped in the living gold
of fire and the dead gold of minted coin.

And all day long there ebbed and flowed through the temple doors a
rainbow-coloured stream of worshippers; while the dust-laden air
vibrated with jangle of metal bells, wail of conches and raucous clamour
of crows. Within doors, the rattle of dice rivalled the jangle of bells.
Young or old, none failed to consult those mysterious arbiters on this
auspicious day. Houses, shops, and balconies had been swept and
plastered with fresh cow dung, in honour of Vishnu's bride; and gayest
among festal shop-fronts was the dazzling array of toys. For the Feast
of Lights is also a feast of toys in bewildering variety; in sugar, in
paper, in burnt clay; tinselled, or gorgeously painted with colours such
as never were on ox or elephant, fish or bird.

What matter? To the uncritical Eastern eye, colour is all.

And, as the day wore on, colour, and yet more colour, was spilled abroad
in the wide main streets that are an arresting feature of Jaipur. Men,
women, and children, in gala turbans and gala draperies, laughing and
talking at full pitch of their lungs; gala elephants sheathed in cloth
of gold, their trunks and foreheads patterned in divers colours; scarlet
outriders clearing a pathway through the maze of turbans that bobbed to
and fro like a bed of parrot-tulips in a wind. Crimson, agate, and
apricot, copper and flame colour, greens and yellows; every conceivable
harmony and discord; nothing to rival it anywhere, Sir Lakshman told
Roy; save perhaps in Gwalior or Mandalay.

Roy had spent most of the morning in the city, lunching with his
grandfather and imbibing large draughts of colour from an airy minaret
on the roof top. Then home to the Residency for tea, only to insist on
carrying them all back in the car--Thea, Arúna, Flossie, and the
children, who must have their share of strange sweets and toys, if only
'for luck,' the watchword of Dewáli.

As for Arúna--to-day everything in the world seemed to hang on the frail
thread of those two words. And what of to-night...?

All had been arranged in conjunction with Roy. His insistence on the
cousinly privilege of protecting her had arisen from a private
confession that she shrank from joining the orthodox group of maidens
who would go forth at sundown, to try their fate. She was other than
they were; out of purdah; out of caste; a being apart. And for most of
them it was little more than a 'game of play.' For her--but that she
kept to herself--this symbolical act of faith, this childish appeal for
a sign, was a matter of life and death. So--to her chosen angle of the
tank, she would go alone; and there--unwatched, save by Dewáli lights of
earth and heaven--she would confide her lamp to the waters and the
breeze that rippled them in the first hour of darkness.

But Roy would not hear of her wandering alone in a Dewáli crowd. In
Dyán's absence, he claimed the right to accompany her, to be somewhere
within hail. Having shed the Eastern protection of purdah, she must
accept the Western protection of escort. And straightway there sprang an
inspiration: he would wear his Indian dress, ready and waiting in every
detail, at Sir Lakshman's house. From there, he could set out unnoticed
on the Delhi adventure--which his grandfather happily approved, with
what profound heart-searchings and heart-stirrings Roy did not even
dimly guess.

At sundown the Residency party would drive through the city and finish
up at the gardens, before going on to dine at the Palace. That would be
Arúna's moment for slipping away. Roy--having slipped away in
advance--would rejoin her at a given spot. And then----?

The rest was a tremulous blur of hopes and fears and the thrill of his
presence, conjured into one of her own people....

       *       *       *       *       *

Sundown at last; and the drive, in her exalted mood, was an ecstasy no
possible after-pain or disappointment could dim. As the flaming tint of
sunset faded and shafts of amethyst struck upward into the blue,
buildings grew shadowy; immense vistas seemed to melt into the
landscape, shrouded in a veil of desert dust.

Then--the first flickering points of fire--primrose-pale, in the half
light; deepening to orange, as night rolled up out of the East, and the
little blown flames seemed to flit along of their own volition, so
skilled and swift were the invisible hands at work.

From roof to roof, from balcony to balcony they ran: till vanished
Jaipur emerged from her shroud, a city transfigured: cupolas, arches,
balconies, and temples, palace of the Maharája and lofty Hall of the
Winds--every detail faultlessly traced on darkness, in delicate,
tremulous lines of fire. Only here and there illusion was shattered by
garish globes of electric light, dimming the mellow radiance of
thousands on thousands of modest chirághs.

Arúna had seen many Dewáli nights in her time; but never at a moment so
charged with conflicting emotions. Silent, absorbed, she sat by Thea in
the barouche; Roy and Vernon opposite; Phyllis on her mother's knee; the
others in the car on ahead--including a tourist of note--outriders
before and behind, clearing a pathway through the press. Vernon, jigging
on his feet, was lost in wonder. Roy, like Arúna, said little. Only Thea
kept up a low ripple of talk with her babe....

By now, not only the city was alight, but the enclosing hills, where
bonfires laughed in flame. Jewelled coronets twinkled on bastions of
the Tiger Fort. Threads of fire traced every curve and line of Jai
Singh's tomb. And on either side of the carriage, the crowd swayed and
hummed; laughing, jesting, boasting; intoxicated with the spirit of
festival, that found an echo in Arúna's heart and rioted in her veins.
To-night she felt merged in India, Eastern to the core; capable, almost,
of wondering--could she put it away from her, even at the bidding of
Roy----?

On they drove, away from crowded pavements, towards the Mán Sagar Lake,
where ruined temples and palaces dreamed and gleamed, knee deep in the
darkling water; where jackals prowled and cranes nested and muggers
dozed unheeding. At a point of vantage above the Lake, they halted and
sat there awhile in darkness--a group of silent shadows. Words did not
meet the case. Even Vernon ceased his jigging and baby Phyllis uttered
no sound: for she had fallen asleep.

Arúna, resting an elbow on the side of the carriage, sat lost in a
dream....

Suddenly, electrically, she was aware of contact with Roy's coat-sleeve.
He had leaned forward to catch a particular effect, and was probably not
aware of his trespassing arm; for he did not shift it till he had gazed
his fill. Then with a long sigh, he leaned back again. But Arúna's dream
was shattered by sensations too startingly real to be ignored....

Once, driving back, as they passed under an electric globe, she caught
his eyes on her face, and they exchanged a smile. Did he know----? Did
he ever feel--like that?

Near Sir Lakshman's house they stopped again and Roy leaned towards her.

"I'll be quick as lightning--don't stir till I come," he said--and
vanished.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some fifteen minutes later, she stood alone in the jewelled darkness,
awaiting him; her own flickering jewel held between her hands. She had
brought it with her, complete; matches and a tiny bottle of oil, stowed
in a cardboard box. Mrs Leigh--angel of goodness--had lit the wick with
her own hand--'for luck.' How Roy had made her so completely their ally,
she had no idea. But who could resist him,--after all? Waiting alone,
her courage ebbed a little; but he came quick as lightning, arrayed in a
choga of some dark material and the larger turban of the North;--so
changed, she scarcely knew him till he saluted and, with a gesture, bade
her go forward.

Through the dark archway, under a block of zenana buildings they passed:
and there lay before them the great tank patterned with quivering
threads of light. Her chosen corner was an unfrequented spot. A little
farther on, shadowy figures moved and talked.

"You see," she explained under her breath, as though they were
conspirators, "if the wind is kind, it will cut across there making the
mystical triangle; symbol of perfect knowledge--new birth. I am only
afraid it is getting a little too strong. And if anything should hinder
it from crossing, then--there is no answer. Suspense--all the time.
But--we will hope. Now, please, I must be alone. In the shadow of this
building, few will notice me. Afterwards, I will call softly. But
don't--go too far."

"Trust me. And--see here, Arúna, don't make too much of it--either way.
Mai Lakshmi's not Queen of all the Immortals----"

"Oh, hush! She is bride of Vishnu!"

Roy's smile was half amused, half tender. "Well! I hope she plays
up--royally."

And with a formal salute, he left her.

Alone, crouching near the water's edge, she held out her cockle-shell
with its blown wisp of light.

"Oh Lamp of my life, flame of my heart," she addressed it, just above
her breath, "sail safely through the wavelets and answer truly what fate
awaits me now? Will Mai Lakshmi grant the blessing I crave?"

With a gentle push, she set it afloat; then, kneeling close against the
building, deep in shadow, she covered her face and prayed, childish
incoherent prayers, for some solution of her difficult problem that
would be best, alike, for her and Roy.

But curiosity was claimant. She must see.... She must know....

Springing up, she stood near the coping, one hand on a low abutment, all
her conscious being centred on the adventuring flame that swayed and
curtsied at the caprice of the wind. The effect of her concentration was
almost hypnotic: as if her soul, deserting her still body, flickered
away there on the water; as if every threat of wind or wavelet struck at
her very life....

Footsteps passed, and voices; but the sounds scarcely reached her brain.
The wind freshened sharply; and the impact of two ripples almost
capsized her chirágh. It dipped--it vanished....

With a low sound of dismay she craned forward; lost her balance, and
would have fallen headlong ... but that masculine fingers closed on her
arm and pulled her backward--just in time.

"Roy!" she breathed, without turning her eyes from the water--for the
precious flame had reappeared. "Look, there it is--safe...!"

"But what of _you_, little sister, had not I stayed to watch the fate of
your Dewáli lamp?"

The words were spoken in the vernacular--and not in the voice of Roy.
Startled, she drew back and faced a man of less than middle height,
bare-headed, wearing the orange-pink draperies of an ascetic. In the
half dark she could just discern the colour and the necklace of carved
beads that hung almost to his waist.

"I am most grateful, _guru-ji_,"[13] she murmured demurely, also in the
vernacular; and stood so--shaken a little by her fright: unreasonably
disappointed that it was not Roy; relieved, that the providential
intruder chanced to be a holy man. "Will you not speed my brave little
lamp with your blessing?"

His smile arrested and puzzled her; and his face, more clearly seen,
lacked the unmistakable stamp of the ascetic.

"You are not less brave yourself, sister," he said, "venturing thus
boldly and alone...."

The implication annoyed her; but anxious not to be misjudged, she
answered truthfully: "I am not as those others, _guru-ji_. I
am--England-returned; still out of purdah ... out of caste."

He levelled his eyes at her with awakened interest; then: "Frankness for
frankness is fair exchange, sister. I am no _guru_; but like yourself,
England-returned; caste restored, however. Dedicated to service of the
Mother----"

It was her turn to start and scrutinise him--discreetly. "Yet you make
pretence of holiness----?"

"In the interests of the Mother," he interposed, answering the note of
reproach, "I need to mix freely among her sons--and daughters. These
clothes are passports to all, and, wearing them in her service is no
dishonour. But for my harmless disguise, I might not have ventured near
enough to save you from making a feast for the muggers--just for this
superstition of Dewáli--not cured by all the wisdom of Oxford.--Was it
Oxford?"

"Yes."

"Is it possible----?" He drew nearer. His eyes dwelt on her frankly,
almost boldly.

"Am I addressing the accomplished daughter of Ram Singh Bahádur----?"

At that she pulled her sari forward, turning away from him. His look and
tone repelled her, frightened her; yet she could not call for Roy, who
was playing his part too scrupulously well.

"Go----! Leave me!" she commanded desperately, louder than she had
spoken yet. "I am not ungrateful. But--making _pujah_[14]--I wish to be
alone----"

His chuckling laugh sent a shiver through her.

"Why these airs of the zenana with one enlightened--like yourself...?"

He broke off and retreated abruptly. For a shadowy figure had sauntered
into view.

Arúna sprang towards it--zenana airs forgotten. "Oh, Roy----!"

"Did you call, Arúna?" he asked. "Thought I heard you. This fellow
bothering you----? I'll settle him----" Turning, he said politely: "My
cousin is here, under my escort, to make _pujah, guru-ji_. She wishes to
be alone."

"Your cousin, except for my timely intrusion, would by this time be
permanently secure from interruption--in the belly of a _mugger_,"[15]
retorted the supposed ascetic--in English.

Roy started and stared. The voice was unmistakable.

"Chandranath! Masquerading as a saint? _You_ are no _guru_."

"And _you_ are no Rajput. You also appear to be masquerading--as a
lover, perhaps? Quite useless trying to fool me, Sinclair, with
play-acting--about cousins. In my capacity of _guru_ I feel compelled to
warn this accomplished young lady that her fine cavalier is only a sham
Rajput of British extraction...."

"_Sham_--curse you! I'm a genuine Seesodia--on one side----" The instant
he had spoken, he saw his folly.

"Oho--half-caste only!"

An oath and a threatening forward move, impelled the speaker to an
undignified step backward. Roy cooled a little at that. The fellow was
beneath contempt.

"I am of highest caste, English and Indian. I admit no slur in the
conjunction; and I take no insults from any man...." He made another
forward move, purely for the pleasure of seeing Chandranath jerk
backward. "If my cousin was in danger, we are grateful to you. But I
told you, she wishes to be alone. So I must ask you to move on
elsewhere."

"Oh, as to that ... I have no violent predilection for your society."

And, as he sauntered off, with an elaborate air of pleasing no one but
himself, Roy kept pace alongside--"For all the world," he thought, "like
Terry edging off an intruder. Too polite to go for him; but quite
prepared if need be!"

When they had turned the corner of the building, Chandranath fired a
parting shot. "I infer you came here fancying you can marry her, because
diluted blood of Seesodias runs in your veins. But here in India, you
will find forces too powerful militating against it."

But Roy was not to be goaded again into letting slip his self-control.
"The men of my stock, British and Rajput, are not in the habit of
discussing their womenfolk with strangers," said he--and flattered
himself he had very neatly secured the last word.

       *       *       *       *       *

As for Arúna--left alone--she leaned again on the low abutment, but the
hypnotic spell was broken: only acute anxiety remained. For the lamp of
her life had made scant progress; and now she was aware of a disturbance
in the water, little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently
there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:--unmistakably
a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand
that had seized her in the nick of time. The next--she wrung her own
together with a low, shivering cry.

For as the brute rose into fuller view, her chirágh rose with it--and so
remained; stranded high and dry somewhere near the horny shoulder;
tilted sideways, she judged from the slope of the flame; the oil, its
life-blood, trickling away. And as the mugger moved leisurely on, in the
wrong direction, breaking up the gold network of reflections, she had
her answer--or no answer. The lamp was neither wrecked nor shattered;
but it would never, now, reach the farther shore. Mai Lakshmi's face was
turned away in simple indifference, from the plea of a mere waverer
between two worlds, who ventured to set her lamp on the waters, not so
much in faith as in a mute gesture of despair....

She came very near despair, as she crouched sobbing there in the
shadow--not entirely for the fate of her lamp, but in simple reaction
from the mingled excitements and emotions of the evening ...

It was only a few minutes--though it seemed an age--before she felt
Roy's hand on her shoulder and heard his voice, troubled and tender
beneath its surface note of command.

"Arúna--what the--get up. Don't cry like that--you mustn't...."

She obeyed instinctively; and stood there, like a chidden child,
battling with her sobs.

"Where's the thing? What's happened?" he asked, seeming to disregard her
effort at control.

"There--over there. Look ... the mugger!"

"Mugger?" He sighted it. "Well, I'm--the thieving brute!" Humour lurked
in his voice--more tonic than sympathy; yet in a sense, more upsetting.
Her tragedy had its vein of the ludicrous; and at his hint of it, tears
trembled into laughter; laughter into tears. The impact unsteadied her
afresh; and she covered her face again shaken with sobs.

"Arúna--my _dear_--you mustn't, I tell you...." More tenderness now than
command.

She held her breath--pain shot through with sudden ecstasy. For in
speaking he had laid an arm round her shoulder; just supporting her with
a firm gentle grasp that sent tingling shocks along all her sensitised
nerves.

"Listen, Arúna--and don't cry," he said, low and urgently. "No answer
always leaves room for hope. And you shall have your Dyán, I promise
you. I won't come back without him. I can't say fairer than that. So
now----" his hand closed on her shoulder. "Give over--breaking your poor
heart!"

Comforted a little, she uncovered her face. "I will try. Only
to-night--I would rather--not the Palace dinner, the fireworks. I would
rather go home with Miss Mills and the children...."

"And cry your eyes out all alone. And spoil the whole evening--for us
both. No, you don't. Remember--you are Rajputni: not to be hag-ridden by
a mere chirágh and a thieving mugger. No more tears and terrors. Look me
in the face--and promise."

As usual, he was irresistible. What matter Mai Lakshmi's
indifference--since he cared so much? "Faithfully--I promise, Roy," she
said; and, for proof of courage, looked straight into his eyes--that
seemed mysteriously to hold and draw her into depths beyond depths.

For one incredible moment, his face moved a little nearer to
hers--paused, as if irresolute, and withdrew.

So brief was the instant, so slight the movement, that she almost
doubted her senses. But her inmost being knew--and ached, without
shyness or shame, for the kiss withheld....

"You've the grit--I knew it," Roy said at last, in the level voice that
had puzzled her earlier in the evening: and his hand slid from her
shoulder. "Come now--we've been too long. Thea will be wondering...."

He turned; and she moved beside him, walking in a dream.

"Did you say much, before I came?" he asked, after a pause, "to that
fellow--Chandranath?"

"I spoke a little--thinking him a _guru_----" She paused. The name woke
a chord of memory. "Chandranath," she repeated, "that is the name they
said----"

"_Who_?" Roy asked sharply, coming out of his own dream.

"Mátaji and the widowed Aunt----"

"What do they know of him?"

"How can I tell? I think it was--through our _guru_, he made offer of
marriage--for me; wishing for an educated wife. I was wondering--could
it be the same----?"

"Well, look here," he rounded on her, suddenly imperious. "If it is--you
can tell them I _won't_ have it. Grandfather would be furious. He ought
to know--and Dyán. Your menfolk don't seem to get a look in."

"Not much--with marrying arrangements. That is for women and priests.
But--for now, I am safe, with Mrs Leigh----"

"And you'll stay safe--as far as he's concerned. You see, I know the
fellow. He's the man I slanged in the City that day. Besides--at
school----"

He unfolded the tale of St Rupert's; and she listened, amazed.

"So don't worry over that," he commanded, in his kind elder-brotherly
tone. "As for your poor little chirágh, for goodness' sake don't let it
get on your nerves."

She sighed--knowing it would; yet longing to be worthy of him. It seemed
he understood, for his hand closed lightly on her arm.

"That won't do at all! If you feel quavery inside, try holding your head
an inch higher. Gesture's half the battle of life."

"Is it? I never thought----" she murmured, puzzled, but impressed. And
after that, things somehow seemed easier than she had thought possible
over there, by the tank.

Secure, under Thea's wing, she drove to the Palace, where they were
royally entertained by an unseen host, who could not join them at table
without imperilling his soul. Later on, he appeared--grey-bearded,
courtly and extensively jewelled--supported by Sir Lakshman, the prince,
and a few privileged notables; whereupon they all migrated to the
Palace roof for the grand display of fireworks--fitting climax to the
Feast of Lights.

Throughout the evening Roy was seldom absent from Arúna's side. They
said little, but his presence wrapped her round with a sense of
companionship more intimate than she had yet felt even in their happiest
times together. While rocket after rocket soared and curved and
blossomed in mid-heaven, her gaze reverted persistently to the outline
of a man's head and shoulders silhouetted against the sky....

Still later on, when he bade her good-night in the Residency
drawing-room, she moved away carrying her head like a crowned queen. It
certainly made her feel a few degrees braver than when she had crouched
in the shadows praying vain prayers--shedding vain tears....

If only one could keep it up----!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: Holy man.]

[Footnote 14: Prayer.]

[Footnote 15: Crocodile.]




CHAPTER IX.

     "Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;

            *       *       *       *       *

      And if I turn from but one sin, I turn
               Unto a smile of thine."
                                --ALICE MEYNELL.


For Roy himself, no less than Arúna, the passing of those golden October
weeks had been an experience as beautiful as it was unique. The very
beauty and bewilderment of it had blinded him, at first, to the
underlying danger for himself and her. Bewilderment sprang from an eerie
sense--vivid to the verge of illusion--that his mother was with him
again in the person of Arúna:--a fancy enhanced by the fact that his
entire knowledge of Indian womanhood--the turns of thought and phrase,
the charm, at once sensuous and spiritual--was linked indissolubly with
her. And the perilous charm had penetrated insidiously deeper than he
knew. By the time he realised what was happening, the spell was upon
him; his will held captive in silken meshes he had not the heart to
snap.

As often as not, in that early stage, he craved sight and sound of her
simply because she wore a sari and carried her head and moved her hands
just so; because her mere presence stirred him with a thrill that
blended exquisite pleasure, exquisite pain. There were times he would
contrive to be alone in the room with her; not talking; not even looking
at her--because her face disturbed the illusion; simply letting the feel
of her presence ease that inner ache--subdued, not stilled--for the
mother who had remained more vitally one with him than nine mothers in
ten are able, or willing, to remain with their grown-up sons.

Thea Leigh, watching unobtrusively, had caught a glimpse of the strange
dual influence at work in him. She had occasionally seen him with his
mother; and had gleaned some idea of their unique relation; partly from
Lance, partly from her intimate link with her own Theo, half a world
away; nearly eighteen now, and eager to join up before all was over. So
her troubled scrutiny was tempered with a measure of understanding. Roy
had always attracted her. And now, unmothered--the wound not yet
healed--she metaphorically gathered him to her heart; would have done so
physically without hesitation; but that Vincent had his dear and foolish
qualms about her promiscuous capacity for affection. But Arúna was her
ewe lamb of the moment; and not even Roy must be allowed to make things
harder for her than they were already....

So, after scouting the Delhi idea as preposterous, she suddenly
perceived there might be virtue in it--for Arúna. Possibly it would
glorify him in her eyes; but it would remove the fatal charm of his
presence; give her a chance to pull up before things had gone too far.
Whereat, being Thea, she spun round unashamedly, to Roy's secret
amusement and relief. All the Desmond in her rose to the adventure of
it. A risk, of course; but there must be no question of failure; and
success would justify all. She was entirely at his service; discussed
details by the hour; put him 'on to Vinx' for coaching in the general
situation--underground sedition; reformers, true and false; telling
arguments for the reclaiming of Dyán Singh.

To crown all--between genuine relief and genuine affection--she
impulsively kissed him on departure under Vincent's very eyes.

"Just only to give you my blessing!" she explained, laughing and
blushing like a girl at her own audacity. "Words are the stupidest
clumsy things. I'm sure life would be happier and less complicated if we
only had the sense to kiss more and talk less----!"

This--in the presence of Arúna and her husband and her six-year-old son!

Roy, deeply moved and a little overcome, nodded assent, while Vincent
took her by the arms and gently removed her from further temptation.

"Where _you'd_ be, Madam, if talking was rationed----!"

"I'd take it out in kissing--_Sir_!" she retorted unabashed; while Arúna
glanced a little wistfully at Roy, who was fondling Terry and talking
nonsense to Vernon. For the boy adored him and was on the brink of
tears.

But if he seemed unheeding, he was by no means unaware. He was fighting
his own battle in his own way; incidentally, he hoped, helping the girl
to fight hers. For he had shaken himself almost free of his delicious
yet disturbing illusion, only to be confronted by a more profoundly
disturbing reality. Loyal to his promise, tacitly given, he had simply
not connected her with the idea of marriage. The queer thrill of her
presence was for him quite another affair. Not until that night of
wandering in the moonlight had it struck him, with a faint shock, that
she might be mistaking his friendliness for--something more. That
contact with her had come at a critical moment for himself, was a detail
he failed to realise. Beyond the sudden bewildering sensations that
prompted his headlong proposal to Tara, he had not felt seriously
perturbed by girl or woman; and, in the past four years, life had been
filled to overflowing with other things----

That he should love Arúna, deeply and dearly, seemed as simple and
natural, as loving Tara. But to fall in love was a risk he had no right
to run, either for himself or her. Yet the risk had been run before he
awoke to the fact. And the events and emotions of Dewáli night had drawn
them irresistibly, dangerously close together. For the racial ferment
had been strong in him, as in her. And the darkness, the subtle
influence of his Indian dress--her tears--her danger! How could any man,
frankly loving her, not be carried a little out of himself? That
overmastering impulse to kiss her had startlingly revealed the true
forces at work.

After all that, what could he do, but sharply apply the curb and remove
himself--for a time--in the devout hope that 'things' had not gone too
far? He had not the assurance to suppose she was already in love with
him; but patently the possibility was there.

So--like Thea--he had come to see the Delhi inspiration in a new and
surprising light. Setting forth in search of Dyán, he was, in effect,
running away from himself--and Arúna, no less. If not actually in love,
he very soon would be--did he dare to let himself go.

And why not--why _not_? The old unreasoning rebellion stirred in him
afresh. His mother being gone, temptation tugged the harder. Home,
without the Indian element, was almost unthinkable. If only he could
take back Arúna! But for him there could be no 'if.' He had tacitly
given his word--to _her_. And in any case there was his father--the
Sinclair heritage--So all his fine dreams of helping Arúna amounted to
this--that it was he who might be driven, in the end, to hurt her more
than any of them. Life that looked such a straight-ahead business for
most people, seemed to bristle with pitfalls and obstacles for him; all
on account of the double heritage that was at once his pride, his
inspiration, and his stone of stumbling.

       *       *       *       *       *

Endless wakeful hours of the night journey were peopled with thoughts
and visions of Arúna--her pansy face and velvet-soft eyes, now flashing
delicate raillery, now lifted in troubled appeal. A rainbow
creature--that was the charm of her. Not beautiful--he thanked his
stars; since his weakness for beauty amounted to a snare, but
attractive--perilously so. For, in her case, the very element that drew
him was the barrier that held them apart. The irony of it!

Was she lying awake too, poor child--missing him a little? Would she
marry an Indian--ever? Would she turn her back on India--even for him?
Unanswerable questions hemmed her in. Could she even answer them
herself? Too well he understood how the scales of her nature hung
balanced between conflicting influences. As he was, racially, so was
she, spiritually, a divided being; yet, in spite of waverings, Rajputni
at the core, with all that word implies to those who know. If she lacked
his mother's high sustained courage, her flashes of spirit shone out the
brighter for her lapses into womanly weakness--as in that poignant
moment by the tank, which had so nearly upset his own equilibrium.
Vividly recalling that moment, it hurt him to realise that weeks might
pass before he could see her again. No denying he wanted her; felt lost
without her. The coveted Delhi adventure seemed suddenly a very lonely
affair; not even a clear inner sense of his mother's presence to bear
him company. No dreams lately; no faint mystical intimation of her
nearness, since the wonderful hour with his grandfather. Only in the
form of that strange and lovely illusion had she seemed vitally near him
since he left Chitor.

Graceless ingratitude--that 'only.' For now, looking back, he clearly
saw how the beauty and bewilderment of that early phase--so mysteriously
blending Arúna with herself--had held his emotions in cheek, lifted
them, purified them; had saved him, for all he knew, from surrender to
an overwhelming passion that might conceivably have swept everything
before it. Pure fantasy--perhaps. But he felt no inclination to argue
out the unarguable. He preferred simply unquestioningly to believe that,
under God, he owed his salvation to her. And after all--take it
spiritually or psychologically--that was in effect the truth....

Towards morning, utter weariness lulled him into a troubled sleep--not
for long. He awoke, chilled and heavy-eyed, to find the unheeded
loveliness of a lemon-yellow dawn stealing over the blank immensity of
earth and sky.

In a moment he was up, stretching cramped limbs, thanking goodness for a
carriage to himself, leaning out and drinking huge draughts of crisp
clean air, fragrant with the ghost of a whiff of wood smoke--the
inimitable air of a Punjab autumn morning.




CHAPTER X.

     "The tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things....

     The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly
     poison."--ST JAMES iii 5-8.


Roy spent ten days in Delhi--lodging with one Krishna Lal, a jewel
merchant of high standing, well known to Sir Lakshman--and never a word
or a sight of Dyán Singh. The need for constant precautions hampered him
not a little; but if the needle he sought was in this particular
haystack, he would find it yet.

Meanwhile, at every turn he was imbibing first impressions, a
sufficiently enthralling occupation--in Delhi, of all places on earth:
Delhi, mistress of many victors; very woman, in that she yields to
conquer; and after centuries of romance and tragedy, remains, in
essence, unconquered still. The old saying, 'Who holds Delhi, holds
India,' has its dark counterpart in the unwritten belief that no alien
ruler, enthroned at Delhi, shall endure. Hence the dismay of many loyal
Indians when the British Government deserted Calcutta for the Queen of
the North. And here, already, were her endless, secretive byways
rivalling Calcutta suburbs as hornet-nests of sedition and intrigue.

Roy was to grow painfully familiar with these before his search ended.
But the city's pandemonium of composite noises and composite smells was
offset by the splendid remnants of Imperial Delhi:--the Pearl Mosque, a
dream in marble, dazzling against the blue: inlaid columns of the
Dewan-i-Khas--every leaf wrought in jade or malachite, every petal a
precious stone; swelling domes and rose-pink minarets of the Jumna
Musjid rising superbly from a network of narrow streets and shabby
toppling houses. For, in India, the sordid and stately rub shoulders
with sublime disregard for effect. In the cool aloofness of tombs and
temples, or among crumbling fragments of them on the plain, or away
beyond the battered Kashmir Gate--ground sacred to heroic memories--he
could wander at will for hours, isolated in body and spirit, yet
strangely content....

And there was yet a third Delhi, hard by these two; yet curiously aloof:
official, Anglo-Indian Delhi, of bungalows and clubs and painfully new
Government buildings. Little scope here for imaginative excursions, but
much scope for thought in the queer sensation, that beset him, of seeing
his father's people, as it were, through his mother's eyes.

New as he was to Anglo-Indian life, these glimpses from the outskirts
were sufficiently illuminating. Once he was present in the crowd at a
big Gymkhana; and more than once he strolled through the Club gardens
where social Delhi pursued tennis-balls and shuttle-cocks--gravely, as
if life hung on the issue; or gaily, with gusts of laughter and chaff,
often noisier than need be. And he saw them all, now, from a new angle
of vision. Discreetly aloof, he observed, in passing, the complete
free-and-easiness of the modern maiden with her modern cavalier;
personalities flying; likewise legs and arms; a banter-wrangle interlude
over a tennis-racquet; flight and pursuit of the offending maiden,
punctuated with shrieks, culminating in collapse and undignified
surrender: while a pair of club peons--also discreetly aloof--exchanged
remarks whose import would have enraged the unsuspecting pair. Roy knew
very well they never gave the matter a thought. They were simply
'rotting' in the approved style of to-day. But, seen from the Eastern
standpoint, the trivial incident troubled him. It recalled a chance
remark of his grandfather's: "With only a little more decorum and
seriousness in their way of life out here, they could do far more to
promote good understanding socially between us all, than by making
premature 'reforms' or tilting at barriers arising from opposite kinds
of civilisation."

Here was matter for the novel--or novels--to be born of his
errantry:--the 'fruit of his life' that _she_ had so longed to bold in
her hands. Were she only at Home now, what letters-without-end he would
be pouring out to her! What letters he could have poured out to
Arúna--did conscience permit.

He allowed himself two, in the course of ten days; and the spirit moved
him, after long abstention, to indulge in a rambling screed to Tara
telling of his quest; revealing more than he quite realised of the inner
stress he was trying to ignore. The quest, he emphasised, was a private
affair, confided to her only, because he knew she would understand. It
hurt more than he cared to admit to feel how completely his father would
_not_ understand his present turmoil of heart and brain....

Isolated thus, with his hidden thwarted emotion, there resulted a
literary blossoming, the most spontaneous and satisfying since his slow
struggle up from the depths. Alone at night, and in the clear keen
dawns, he wrote and wrote and wrote, as a thirsty man drinks after a
desert march:--poems chiefly; sketches and impressions; his dearest
theme the troubled spirit of India,--or was it the spirit of
Arúna?--poised between crescent light and deepening shadow, looking for
sane clear guidance--and finding none. A prose sketch, in this vein,
stood out from the rest; a fragment of his soul, too intimately
self-revealing for the general gaze: no uncommon dilemma for an artist,
precisely when his work is most intrinsically true. Had he followed the
natural urge of his heart, he would have sent it to Arúna. As it was, he
decided to treasure it a little longer for himself alone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meantime Dyán--half forgotten--suddenly emerged. It was at a
meeting--exclusively religious and philosophical; but the police had
wind of it; and a friendly inspector mentioned it to Krishna Lal. The
chief speaker would be a Swami of impeccable sanctity. "But if you have
a sensitive palate, you will doubtless detect a spice of political
powder under the jam of religion!" quoth Krishna Lal, who was a man of
humour and no friend of sedition.

"Thanks for the hint," said Roy--and groaned in spirit. Meetings, at
best, were the abomination of desolation; and his soul was sick of the
Indian variety. For the 'silent East' is never happier than when it is
talking at immense length; denouncing, inaugurating, promoting; and a
prolonged dose of it stirred in Roy a positive craving for men who shot
remarks at each other in 'straight-flung words and true.' But no stone
must be left unturned. So he went;--guided by the friendly policeman,
who knew him for a Sahib bent on some personal quest.

Their search ended in a windowless inner room; packed to suffocation;
heavy with attar of rose, kerosene, and human bodies; and Roy as usual
clung to a doorway that offered occasional respite.

The Swami was already in full flow:--a wraith of a man in a
salmon-coloured garment; his eyes, deep in their sockets, gleaming like
black diamonds. And he was holding his audience spellbound:--Hindus of
every calling; students in abundance; a sprinkling of Sikhs and Dogras
from the lines. Some form of hypnotism,--was it? Perhaps. Even Roy could
not listen unmoved, when the spirit shook the frail creature like a gust
of wind and the hollow chest-notes vibrated with appeal or command. Such
men--and India is full of them--are spiritual dynamos. Who can calculate
their effect on an emotional race? And they no longer confine their
influence to things spiritual. They, too, have caught the modern disease
of politics for the million. And the supreme appeal is to youth--plastic
and impressionable, aflame with fervours of the blood that can be
conjured, by heady words, into fervours infinitely more dangerous to
themselves and their country.

In an atmosphere dense with spilled kerosene, with over-breathed air and
over-charged emotion, that appeal rang out like a trumpet blast.

"It is to youth the divine message has come in all ages; the call to
martyrdom and dedication. 'Suffer little children to come unto me,' said
the inspired Founder of Christianity. So also I say in this time of
revival, suffer the young to fling themselves into the arms of the
Mother. My sons, she cries, go back to the Vedas. You will find all
wisdom there. Reject this alien gift--however finely gilded--of a
civilisation inferior to your own. Hindu Rishis were old in wisdom when
these were still unclothed savages coloured with blue paint. Shall the
sacred Motherland be inoculated with Western poison? It is for the
young to decide--to act. Nerve your arms with valour. Bring offerings
acceptable, to the shrine of Kali Mai. Does she demand a sheep? A
buffalo? A cocoanut? Ask yourselves. The answer is written in your
hearts----"

His emaciated arms shot up and outward in a gesture the more impressive
because it was maintained. For a prolonged moment the holy one seemed to
hover above his audience--as it were an eagle poised on outspread
wings....

Roy came to himself with a start. His friend the policeman had plucked
his sleeve; and they retreated a step or two through the open door.

"The Sahib heard?" queried Mán Singh in cautious undertone.

"There's hearing--and hearing," said Roy, aware of some cryptic message
given and understood. "I take it _they_ all know what he's driving at."

"True talk. They know. But _he_ has not said. Therefore he goes in
safety when he should be picking oakum in the jail khana. They are
cunning as serpents these holy ones."

"They have the gift of tongues," said Roy. "May one ask what is Mai
Kali's special taste in sacrifices?"

The Sikh gave him an odd look. "The blood of white goats--meaning
Sahibs, Hazúr."--Roy's 'click' was Oriental to a nicety.--"'A white goat
for Kali' is an old Bengali catchword. Hark how their tongues wag. But
there is still another--much esteemed by the student-_lóg_; one who can
skilfully flavour a _pillau_[16] of learned talk, as the Swami can
flavour a pillau of religion. Where he comes, there will be trouble
afterwards, and arrests. But no Siri Chandranath. He is off making
trouble elsewhere."

"Chandranath--_here_?" Roy's heart gave a jerk, half excitement, half
apprehension.

"Your Honour has heard the man?"

"No. I'm glad of the chance."

As they entered, the second speaker stepped on to the platform....

True talk, indeed! There stood the boy who had whimpered under Scab
Major's bullying, in the dark coat and turban of the educated Indian;
his back half turned, in confidential talk with a friend, who had set a
carafe and tumbler ready to hand. The light of a wall lamp shone full on
his friend's face--clean-cut, handsome, unmistakable....

_Dyán_! Dyán--and Chandranath! It was the conjunction that confounded
Roy and tinged elation with dismay. He could hardly contain himself till
Dyán joined the audience; standing a little apart; not taking a seat.
Something in his face reminded Roy of the strained fervour in his letter
to Arúna. Carefully careless, he edged his way through the outer fringe
of the audience, and volunteered a remark or two in Hindustani.

"A full meeting, brother. Your friend speaks well?"

Dyán turned with a start. "Where are _you_ from, that you have not heard
him?" He scrutinised Roy's appearance. "A hill man----?"

Roy edged nearer and spoke in English under his breath. "Dyán--look at
me. Don't make a scene. I am Roy--from Jaipur."

In spite of the warning, Dyán drew back sharply. "_What_ are you here
for--spying?"

"No. Hoping to find you. Because--I care; and Arúna cares----"

"Better to care less and understand more," Dyán muttered brusquely. "No
time for talk now. Listen. You may learn a few things Oxford could not
teach."

The implied sneer enraged Roy; but listen he must, perforce: and in the
space of half an hour he learnt a good deal about Chandranath and the
mentality of his type.

To the outer ear, he was propounding the popular modern doctrine of
'Yoga by action.' To the inner ear he was extolling passion and
rebellion in terms of a creed that enjoins detachment from both;
inciting to political murder, under sanction of the divine dictum, 'Who
kills the body kills naught ... Thy concern is with action alone, never
with results.' And his heady flights of rhetoric, like those of the
Swami, were frankly aimed at the scores of half-fledged youths who hung
upon his utterance.

"What are the first words of the young child? What are the first words
in your own hearts?" he cried, indicating that organ with a dramatic
forefinger. "_I want_! It is the passionate cry of youth. By indomitably
uttering it, he can dislodge mountains into the sea. And in India to-day
there exist mountains necessary to be hurled into the sea!" His
significant pause was not lost on his hearers--or on Roy.
"'Many-branched and endless are the thoughts of the irresolute.' But to
him who cries ardently, '_I want_,' there is no impediment, except
paucity of courage to snatch the seductive object. Deaf to the anćmic
whisper of compunction, remembering that sin taints only the weak, he
will be translated to that dizzy eminence, where right and wrong, truth
and untruth, become as pigmies, hardly discerned by the naked eye. There
dwells Káli--the shameless and pitiless; and believing our country that
deity incarnate, _her_ needs must be our gods. 'Her image make we in
temple after temple--Bande Mátaram?'" The invocation was flung back to
him in a ragged shout. Here and there a student leapt to his feet
brandishing a clenched fist. "Compose your laudable intoxication,
brothers. I do not say, 'Be violent.' There is a necromancy of the
spirit more potent than weapons of the flesh:--the delusion of
irresistible suggestion that will conquer even truth itself...."

Abstraction piled on abstraction; perversion on perversion; and that
deluded crowd plainly swallowing it all as gospel truth----! To Roy the
whole exhibition was purely disgustful; as if the man had emptied a
dust-bin under his aristocratic nose. Once or twice he glanced covertly
at Dyán, standing beside him; at the strained intentness of his face,
the nervous clenched hand. Was this the same Dyán who had ridden and
argued and read 'Greats' with him only four years ago--this hypnotised
being who seemed to have forgotten his existence----?

Thank God! At last it was over! But while applause hummed and fluttered,
there sprang on to the platform, unannounced, a wiry keen-faced man,
with the parted beard of a Sikh.

"Brothers--I demand a hearing!" he cried aloud; "I who was formerly
hater of the British, preaching all manner of violence--I have been
three years detained in Germany; and I come back now, with my eyes
open, to say all over India--cease your fool's talk about
self-government and tossing mountains into the sea! Cease making
yourselves drunk with words and waving your Vedic flags and stand by the
British--your true friends----"

At that, cries and counter-cries drowned his voice. Books were hurled;
no other weapon being handy; and Roy noted, with amused contempt, that
Chandranath hastily disappeared from view.

The Sikh laughed in the face of their opposition. Dexterously catching a
book, he hurled it back; and once more made his strong voice heard above
the clamour. "Fools--and sheep! You may stop your ears now. In the end I
will make you hear----"

Shouted down again, he vanished through a side exit; and, in the turmoil
that followed, Roy's hand closed securely on Dyán's arm. Throughout the
stormy interlude, he had stood rigidly still: a pained, puzzled frown
contracting his brows. Yet it was plain he would have slipped away
without a word, but for Roy's detaining grasp.

"You don't go running off--now I've found you," said he good-humouredly.
"I've things to say. Come along to my place and hear them."

Dyán jerked his imprisoned arm. "Very sorry. I have--important duties."

"To-morrow night then? I'm lodging with Krishna Lal. And--look here,
_don't_ mention me to your friend the philosopher! I know more about him
than you might suppose. If you still care a damn for me--and the others,
do what I ask--and keep your mouth shut----"

Dyán's frown was hostile; but his voice was low and troubled. "For God's
sake leave me alone, Roy. Of course--I care. But that kind of caring is
carnal weakness. We, who are dedicated, must rise above such weakness,
above pity and slave-morality, giving all to the Mother----"

"Dyán--have you forgotten--_my_ mother?" Roy pressed his advantage in
the same low tone.

"No. Impossible. She was _Dévi_--Goddess; loveliest and kindest----"

"Well, in her name, I ask you--come to-morrow evening and have a talk."

Dyán was silent; then, for the first time, he looked Roy straight in the
eyes. "In her name--I will come. Now let me go."

Roy let him go. He had achieved little enough. But for a start it was
not so bad.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: An Indian dish.]




CHAPTER XI.

     "When we have fallen through storey after storey of our vanity and
     aspiration, it is then that we begin to measure the stature of our
     friends."--R.L.S.


Next evening Dyán arrived. He stayed for an hour, and did most of the
talking. But his unnatural volubility suggested disturbance deep down.

Only once Roy had a glimpse of the true Dyán, when he presented Arúna's
'_prasád_,' consecrated by her touch. In silence Dyán set it on the
table; and reverently touched, with his finger-tips, first the small
parcel, then his own forehead.

"Arúna--sister," he said on an under breath. But he would not be drawn
into talking of her, of his grandfather, or of home affairs: and his
abrupt departure left Roy with a maddening sense of frustration.

He lay awake half the night; and reached certain conclusions that atoned
for a violent headache next morning. First and best--Dyán was not a
genuine convert. All this ferment and froth did not spell reasoned
conviction. He was simply ensnared; his finer nature warped by the
'delusion of irresistible suggestion,' deadlier than any weapon of War.
His fanatical loyalty savoured of obsession. So much the better. An
obsession could be pricked like an air-ball with the right weapon at the
right moment. That, as Roy saw it, was his task:--in effect, a ghostly
duel between himself and Chandranath for the soul of Dyán Singh; and the
fate of Arúna virtually hung on the issue.

Should he succeed, Chandranath would doubtless guess at his share in
Dyán's defection; and few men care about courting the enmity of the
unscrupulous. That is the secret power behind the forces of anarchy,
above all in India, where social and spiritual boycott can virtually
slay a man without shedding of blood. For himself, Roy decided the game
was worth the candle. The question remained--how far that natural
shrinking might affect Dyán? And again--how much did he know of
Chandranath's designs on Arúna?

Roy decided to spring the truth on him next time--and note the effect.
Dyán had said he would come again one evening; and--sooner than Roy
expected--he came. Again he was abnormally voluble, as if holding his
cousin at arm's length by italicising his own fanatical fervour, till
Roy's impatience subsided into weariness and he palpably stifled a yawn.

Dyán, detecting him, stopped dead, with a pained, puzzled look that went
to Roy's heart. For he loved the real Dyán, even while he was bored to
extinction with the semi-religious verbiage that poured from him like
water from a jug.

"Awfully sorry," he apologised frankly. "But I've been over-dosed with
that sort of stuff lately; and I'm damned if I can swallow it like you
do. Yet I'm dead keen for India to have the best, all round, that she's
capable of digesting--yet. So's Grandfather. You _can't_ deny it."

Dyán frowned irritably. "Grandfather's prejudiced and old-fashioned."

"He's longer-sighted than most of your voluble friends. He doesn't
rhapsodise. He _knows_.--But I'm not old-fashioned. Nor is Arúna."

"No, poor child; only England-infatuated. She is unwise not taking this
chance of an educated husband----"

"And _such_ a husband!" Roy struck in so sharply that Dyán stared
open-mouthed.

"How the devil can _you_ know?"

"And how the devil can you _not_ know," countered Roy, "when it's your
precious paragon--Chandranath."

He scored his point clean and true. "Chandranath!" Dyán echoed blankly,
staring into the fire.

Roy said nothing; simply let the fact sink in. Then, having dealt the
blow, he proffered a crumb of consolation, "Perhaps he prefers to keep
quiet till he's pulled it off. But I warn you, if he persists, I shall
put every feasible spoke in his wheel."

Dyán faced him squarely. "You seem very intimate with our affairs. Who
told you this?"

"Arúna--herself."

"You are also very intimate--with her."

"As she has lost her brother, her natural protector, I do what I can--to
make up."

Dyán winced and stole a look at him. "Why not make up for still greater
lack--and marry her yourself?"

It was he who hit the mark this time. Roy's blood tingled; but voice and
eyes were under control.

"I've only been there a few weeks. The question has not arisen."

"Your true meaning is--it _could not arise_. They were glad enough for
her service in England; but whatever her service, or her loving, she
must not marry an Englishman, even with the blood of India in his veins.
That is our reward--both----"

It was the fierce bitter Dyán of that long ago afternoon in New College
Lane. But Roy was too angry on his own account to heed. He rose
abruptly.

"I'll trouble you not to talk like that."

Dyán rose also, confronting him. "I _must_ say what is in mind--or go.
Better accept the fact--it is useless to meet."

"I refuse to accept the fact."

"But--there it is. I only make you angry. And you imply evil of the
man--I admire."

He so plainly boggled over the words that Roy struck without hesitation.

"Dyán, tell me straight--_do_ you admire him? Would you have Arúna marry
him?"

"N--no. Impossible. There is--another kind of wife," he blurted out,
averting his eyes; but before Roy could speak, he had pulled himself
together. "However--I mustn't stay talking. Good-night."

Roy's anger--fierce but transient, always--had faded. "There are some
ties you can't break, Dyán, even with your Bande Mátaram. Come again
soon."

Impossible to resist the friendly tone. "But," he asked, "how long are
you hanging about Delhi like this?"

"As long as I choose."

"But--why?"

"To see something of you, old chap. It seems the only way--unless I can
persuade you to chuck all this poisonous vapouring, and come back to
Jaipur with me. Arúna's waiting--breaking her heart--longing to see
you...."

He knew he was rushing his fences; but the mood was on; the chance too
good to lose.

Dyán's eyes lightened a moment. Then he shook his head. "I am too much
involved."

"You _will_ come, though, in the end," Roy said quietly. "I can wait.
Sunday, is it? And we'll bar politics--as we did in the good days. Don't
you want to hear of them all at Home?"

"Sometimes--yes. But perhaps--better not. You are a fine fellow,
Roy--even to quarrel with. Good-night." They shook hands warmly.

On the threshold, Dyán turned, hesitated; then--in a hurried
murmur--asked: "_Where_ is she--what's she doing now ... Tara?"

He was obviously unaware of having used her name: and Roy, though
startled, gave no sign.

"She's still in Serbia. She's been simply splendid. Head over ears in it
all from the start."--He paused--"Shall I tell her--when I write ...
about you?"

Dyán shrugged his shoulders. "Waste of ink and paper. It would not
interest her."

"It would. I know Tara. What you are doing now would hurt her--keenly."

"Tcha!" The sharp sound expressed sheer unbelief. It also expressed
pain. "Good-night," he added, for the third time; and went out--leaving
Roy electrified; a-tingle with the hope of success at last.

Tara was not forgotten; though Dyán had been trying to pretend she
was--even to himself. Ten chances to one, she was still at the core
everything; even his present incongruous activities....

Roy paced the room; his imagination alight; his own recoil from the
conjunction, overborne by immediate concern for Dyán. Unable to forget
her--who could?--he had thrust the pain of remembering into the dark
background of his mind; and there it remained--a hard knot of soreness
and bitterness--as Arúna had said. And all that bottled-up bitterness
had been vented against England--an unconscious symbol of Tara, desired
yet withheld; while the intensity of his thwarted passion sought and
found an outlet in fervent adoration of his country visualised as woman.

Right or wrong--that was how Roy saw it. And the argument seemed
psychologically sound. Cruel to be kind, he must touch the point of
pain; draw the hidden thing into the open; and so reawaken the old Dyán,
who could arraign the new one far more effectually than could Roy
himself or another. Seized with his idea, he indulged in a more hopeful
letter to Arúna; and had scarcely patience to wait for Sunday.

       *       *       *       *       *

In leisurely course it arrived--that last Sunday of the Great War. The
Chandni Chowk was a-bubble with strange and stirring rumours; but the
day waned and the evening waned--and no Dyán appeared.

On Monday morning--still no word: but news, so tremendous, flashed half
across the world, that Dyán and his mysterious defection flickered like
a match at midday.

The War was over--virtually over. From the Vosges to the sea, not the
crack of a rifle nor the moan of a shell; only an abrupt, dramatic
silence--the end! Belief in the utter cessation of all that wonderful
and terrible activity, penetrated slowly. And as it penetrated Roy
realised, with something like dismay, that the right and natural sense
of elation simply was not. He actually felt depressed. Shrink as he
might from the jar of conflict, the sure instinct of a soldier race
warned him that hell holds no fury and earth no danger like a ruthless
enemy not decisively smitten. The psychology of it was beyond
him--shrouded in mystery.

Not till long afterwards did he know how many, in England and Prance,
had shared his bewildered feeling; how British soldiers in Belgium had
cried like children, had raged almost to the point of mutiny. But one
thing he knew--steeped as he was in the sub-strata of Eastern thought
and feeling. India would never understand. Visible, spectacular victory,
alone could impress the East: and such an impression might have
counteracted many mistakes that had gone before....

Tuesday brought no Dyán; only a scrawled note: "Sorry--too much
business. Can't come just now." _If_ one could take that at its face
value----! But it might mean anything. Had Chandranath found out--and
had Dyán not the moral courage to go his own way?

He knew by now where his cousin lodged; but had never been there. It was
in one of the oldest parts of the city; alive with political intrigue.
If Roy's nationality were suspected, 'things' might happen, and it was
clearly unfair on his father to run needless risks. But this was
different. 'Things' might be happening to Dyán.

So, after nearly a week of maddening suspense, he resolved--with all due
caution--to take his chance.

       *       *       *       *       *

A silvery twilight was ebbing from the sky when he plunged into a maze
of narrow streets and by-lanes where the stream of Eastern life flows
along immemorial channels scarcely stirred by surface eddies of
'advance.'

Threading his way through the crowd, he found the street and the
landmark he sought: a doorway, adorned with a faded wreath of marigolds,
indication of some holy presence within; and just beyond it, a
low-browed arch, almost a tunnel. It passed under balconied houses
toppling perilously forward; and as Roy entered it, a figure darkened
the other end. He could only distinguish the long dark coat and turbaned
head: but there flashed instant conviction--Chandranath!

Alert, rather than alarmed, he hurried forward, hugging the opposite
wall. At the darkest point they crossed. Roy felt the other pause,
scrutinise him--and pass on. The relief of it! And the ignominy of
suddenly feeling the old childish terror, when you had turned your back
on a dark room. It was all he could do not to break into a run....

In the open court, set round with tottering houses, a sacred neem tree
made a vast patch of shadow. Near it, a rickety staircase led up to
Dyán's roof room. Roy, mounting cautiously, knocked at the highest door.

"Are you there? It's Roy," he called softly.

A pause:--then the door flew open and Dyán stood before him, in loose
white garments; no turban; a farouche look in his eyes.

"My God--_Roy_! Crazy of you! I never thought----"

"Well, I got sick of waiting. I suppose I can come in?" Roy's impatience
was the measure of his relief.

Dyán moved back a pace, and, as Roy stepped on to the roof, he carefully
closed the door.

"Think--if you had come three minutes earlier! He only left me just
now--Chandranath."

"And passed me in the archway," added Roy with his touch of bravado.
"I've as much right to be in Delhi--and to vary my costume--as your
mysteriously potent friend. It's a free country."

"It is fast becoming--not so free." Dyán lowered his voice, as if afraid
he might be overheard. "And you don't consider the trouble it might
make--for me."

"How about the trouble you've been making for me? What's wrong?"

Dyán passed a nervous hand across his eyes and forehead. "Come in. It's
getting cold out here," he said, in a repressed voice. Roy followed him
across the roof top, with its low parapet and vault of darkening sky, up
three steps, into an arcaded room, where a log fire burned in the open
hearth. Shabby, unrelated bits of furniture gave the place a comfortless
air. On a corner table strewn with leaflets and pamphlets ("Poisoned
arrows, up to date!" thought Roy), a typewriter reared its hooded head.
The sight struck a shaft of pain through him. Arúna's Dyán--son of kings
and warriors--turning his one skilful hand to such base uses!

"What's wrong?" he repeated with emphasis. "I want a straight answer,
Dyán. I've risked something to get it."

Dyán sat down near a small table, and took his head between his hands.
"There is--so much wrong," he said, looking steadily up at Roy. "I am
feeling--like a man who wakes too suddenly after much sleepwalking."

"Since when?" asked Roy, keeping himself in hand. "What's jerked you
awake? D'you know?"

"There have been many jerks. Seeing you; Arúna's offering; this news of
the War; and something ... you mentioned last time."

"What was that ... Tara?" Roy lunged straight to the middle of the
wound.

Dyán started. "But--how----! I never said...." he stammered, visibly
shaken.

"It didn't need saying. Arúna told me--the fact; and my own wits told me
the rest. You're not honestly keen--are you?--to shorten the arm of the
British Raj and plunge India into chaos?"

"No--no." A very different Dyán, this, to the one who had poured out
stock phrases like water only a week ago.

"Isn't bitterness--about Tara, at the back of it! Face that straight.
And--if it's true, say so without false shame."

Dyán was silent a long while, staring into the fire. "Very strange. I
had no idea," he said at last. The words came slowly, as if he were
thinking aloud. "I was angry--miserable; hating you all; even--very
nearly--_her_. Then came the War; and I thought--now our countries will
become like one. I will win her by some brave action--she who is the
spirit of courage. From France, after all that praise of Indians in the
papers, I wrote again. No use. After that, I hoped by some brave action,
I might be killed. Instead, through stupid carelessness, I am only
maimed--as you see. I was foolishly angry when Indian troops were sent
away from France: and my heart became hard like a nut."--He had emerged
from his dream now and was frankly addressing Roy----"I knew, if I went
home, they would insist I should marry. Quite natural. But for me--not
thinkable. Yet I _must_ go back to India. And there, in Bombay, I heard
Chandranath speak. He was just back from deportation; and to me his
words were like leaping flames. All the fire of my passion--choked up in
me--could flow freely in service of the Mother. I became intoxicated
with the creed of my new comrades: there is neither truth nor untruth,
right nor wrong; there is only the Mother. I was filled with the joy of
dedication and unquestioning surrender. It gave me visions like opium
dreams. Both kinds of opium I have taken freely,--while walking in my
sleep. I was ready for taking life; any desperate deed. Instead--Tcha! I
have to take money, like a common dacoit, because police must be
bribed, soldiers tempted, meetings multiplied...."

"It takes more than the blood of white goats to oil the wheels of your
chariot," said Roy, very quiet, but rather grim. "And he's not the man
to do his own dirty work--eh?"

"No. He is only very clever to dress it up in fine arguments. All money
is the Mother's. Only they are thieves who selfishly hide it in banks
and safes. Those who release it for her use are deliverers ..." he broke
off with a harsh laugh. "In spite of education, we Indians are too
easily played upon, Roy. If you had not spoken--of her, I might have
swallowed--even that. Thieving--bah! Killing is man's work. There is
sanction in the Gita----"

"Sanction be damned!" Roy cut in sharply. "You might as well say
Shakespeare sanctioned theft because he wrote, 'Who steals my purse
steals trash!' The only sanction worth anything is inside you. And you
didn't seem to find it there. But let's get at the point. Did you
refuse?"

"No. Only--for the first time, I demurred; and because the need is
urgent, he became very violent--in language. It was almost a quarrel."

"Clear proof you scored! Did you mention--Arúna?"

Dyán shook his head. "If _I_ become violent, it is not only
language----"

"No. You're a _man_. And now you're awake again, I can tell you
things--but I can't stay all night."

"No. He is coming back. Only gone to Cantonments--on business."

"What sort of business?"

Dyán chewed his lip and looked uncomfortable.

"Never mind, old chap. I can see a church by daylight! He's getting at
the troops. Spreading lies about the Armistice. And after that----?"

"He is returning--about midnight, hoping to find me in a more reasonable
mind----"

"And by Jove we won't disappoint him!" cried Roy, who had seen his
God-given chance. Springing up he gripped Dyán by the shoulder. "Your
reasonable mind will take the form of scooting back with me, _jut
put_;[17] and we can slip out of Delhi by the night mail. Time's
precious. So hurry up."

But Dyán did not stir. He sat there looking so plainly staggered that
Roy burst out laughing.

"You're not half awake yet. You've messed about so long with men who
merely 'agitate' and 'inaugurate,' that you've forgotten the kind who
act first and talk afterwards. I give you ten minutes to scribble a
tender farewell. Then--we make tracks. It's all I came here for--if you
want to know. And I take it you're willing?"

Dyán sighed. "I am willing enough. But--there are many complications.
You do not know. They are organising big trouble over the Rowlatt
Bill--and other things. I have not much secret information, or my life
would probably not be worth a pin. But it is all one complicated
network, and there are too easy ways in India for social and spiritual
boycott----"

He enlarged a little; quoted cases that filled Roy with surprise and
indignation, but no way shook his resolve.

"We needn't go straight to Jaipur. Quite good fun to knock round a bit.
Throw him off the scent, till he's got over the shock. We can wire our
news; Arúna will be too happy to fret over a little delay. And you won't
be ostracised among your own people. They want you. They want your help.
Grandfather does. The best _I_ could do was to run you to earth--open
your eyes----"

"And by Indra you've _done_ it, Roy."

"You'll come then?"

"Yes, I'll come--and damn the consequences!"

The Dyán of Oxford days was visibly emerging now: a veritable awakening;
the strained look gone from his face.

It was Roy's 'good minute': and in the breathless rush that followed, he
swept Dyán along with him--unresisting, exalted, amazed----

The farewell letter was written; and Dyán's few belongings stowed into a
basket-box. Then they hurried down, through the dark courtyard into the
darker tunnel; and Roy felt unashamedly glad not to be alone. His feet
would hurry, in spite of him; and that kept him a few paces ahead.

Passing a dark alcove, he swerved instinctively--and hoped to goodness
Dyán had not seen.

Just before reaching the next one he tripped over something--taut string
or wire stretched across the passage. It should have sent him headlong
had he been less agile. As it was, he stumbled, cursed and kept his
feet.

"'Ware man-trap!" he called back to Dyán, under his breath.

Next instant, from the alcove, a shot rang out: and it was Dyán who
cursed; for the bullet had grazed his arm.

They both ran now; and made no bones about it. Roy's sensations reminded
him vividly of the night he and Lance fled from the Turks.

"We seem to have butted in and spoilt somebody's little game!" he
remarked, as they turned into a wider street and slackened speed. "How's
your arm?"

"Nothing. A mere scratch." Dyán's tone was graver. "But that's most
unusual. I can't make it out----"

"You're well quit of it all, anyhow," said Roy, and slipped a hand
through his arm.

       *       *       *       *       *

Not till they were settling down for a few hours' sleep in the night
mail, did it dawn on Roy that the little game might possibly have been
connected with himself. Chandranath had seen him in that dress before.
He had just come very near quarrelling with Dyán. If he suspected Roy's
identity, he would suspect his influence....

He frankly spoke his thought to Dyán; and found it had occurred to him
already. "Not himself, of course," he added. "The gentleman is not
partial to firearms! But suspecting--he might have arranged; hoping to
catch you coming back--the swine! Naturally after this, he will go
further than suspecting!"

"He can go to the devil--and welcome; now I've collared _you_!" said
Roy;--and slept soundly upon that satisfying achievement, through all
the rattle and clatter of the express.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: At once.]




CHAPTER XII.

     "God uses us to help each other so."
                             --BROWNING.


It was distinctly one of Roy's great moments when, at last, they four
stood together in Sir Lakshman's room: the old man, outwardly
impassive--as became a Rajput--profoundly moved in the deep places of
his heart; Arúna, in Oxford gown and sari, radiant one moment; the
next--in spite of stoic resolves--crying softly in Dyán's arms. And Roy
understood only too well. The moment he held her hand and met her
eyes--he knew. It was not only joy at Dyán's return that evoked the
veiled blush, the laugh that trembled into tears. Conceit or no conceit,
his intuition was not to be deceived.

And the conviction did not pass. It was confirmed by every day, every
hour he spent in her company. On the rare occasions, when they were
alone together, the very thing that must be religiously stifled and hid,
emanated from her like fragrance from a flower; sharply reawakening his
own temptation to respond--were it only to ease her pain. And there was
more in it than that--or very soon would be, if he hesitated much longer
to clinch matters by telling her the truth; though every nerve shrank
from the ordeal--for himself and her. Running away from oneself was
plainly a futile experiment. To have so failed with her, disheartened
him badly and dwarfed his proud achievement to an insignificant thing.

To the rest, unaware, his triumph seemed complete, his risky adventure
justified beyond cavil. They all admitted as much;--even Vincent, who
abjured superlatives and had privately taken failure for granted. Roy,
in a fit of modesty, ascribed it all to 'luck.' By the merest chance he
had caught Dyán, on his own confession, just as the first flickers of
doubt were invading his hypnotised soul; just when it began to dawn on
him that alien hands were pulling the strings. He had already begun to
feel trapped; unwilling to go forward; unable to go back; and the fact
that no inner secrets were confided to him, had galled his Rajput vanity
and pride. In the event, he was thankful enough for the supposed slight;
since it made him feel appreciably safer from the zeal of his discarded
friends.

Much of this he had confided to Roy, in fragments and jerks, on the
night of their amazing exit from Delhi; already sufficiently himself
again to puzzle frankly over that perverted Dyán; to marvel--with a
simplicity far removed from mere foolishness--"how one man can make a
magic in other men's minds so that he shall appear to them an eagle when
he is only a crow."

"That particular form of magic," Roy told him, "has made half the
history of the world. We all like to flatter ourselves we're safe from
it--till we get bitten! You've been no more of a fool than the others,
Dyán--if that's any consolation."

The offending word rankled a little. The truth of it rankled more. "By
Indra, I am no fool now. Perhaps he has discovered that already. I fancy
my letter will administer a shock. I wonder what he will do?"

"He won't 'do.' You can bank on that. He may fling vitriol over you on
paper. But you won't have the pleasure of his company at Jaipur. He left
his card on us before the Dewáli. And there's been trouble since;
leaflets circulating mysteriously; an exploded attempt to start a
seditious 'rag.' So they're on the _qui vive._ He'll count that one up
against me: but I'll manage to survive."

And Dyán, in the privacy of his heart, had felt distinctly relieved. Not
that he lacked the courage of his race; but, having seen the man for
years, as it were, through a magnifying lens, he could not, all in a
moment, see him for the thing he was:--dangerous as a snake, yet swift
as a snake to wriggle out of harm's way.

He had not been backward, however, in awakening his grandfather to
purdah manoeuvres. Strictly in private--he told his cousin--there had
been ungoverned storms of temper, ungoverned abuse of Roy, who was
suspected by 'the Inside' of knowing too much and having undue influence
with the old man. 'The Inside,' he gathered, had from early days been
jealous of the favourite daughter and all her belongings. Naturally, in
Dyán's opinion, his sister ought to marry; and the sooner the better.
Perhaps he had been unwise, after all, insisting on postponement. By now
she would have been settled in her lawful niche instead of making
trouble with this craze for hospital nursing and keeping outside caste.
Not surprising if she shrank from living at home, after all she had been
through. Better for them both, perhaps, to break frankly with orthodox
Hinduism and join the Brahma Samáj.

As Roy knew precisely how much--or rather, how little--Arúna liked
working in the wards, he suffered a pang at the pathos of her innocent
guile. And if Dyán had his own suspicions, he kept them to himself. He
also kept to himself the vitriolic outpouring which he had duly found
awaiting him at Jaipur. It contained too many lurid allusions to 'that
conceited, imperialistic half-caste cousin of yours'; and Roy might
resent the implied stigma as much as Dyán resented it for him. So he
tore up the effusion, intended for the eye of Roy, merely remarking that
it had enraged him. It was beneath contempt.

Roy would like to have seen it, all the same; for he knew himself
quicker than Dyán at reading between the lines. The beggar would not hit
back straight. But given the chance, he might try it on some other
way--witness the pistol-shot in the arcade; a side light--or a side
flash--on the pleasant sort of devil he was!

Back in the Jaipur Residency, in the garden that was 'almost England,'
back in his good familiar tweed coat and breeches, the whole Delhi
interlude seemed strangely theatrical and unreal; more like a vivid
dream than an experience in the flesh.

But there was Dyán to prove it no dream; and the perilous charm of
Arúna, that must be resisted to the best of his power....

       *       *       *       *       *

All this stir and ferment within; yet not a surface ripple disturbed
the flow of those uneventful weeks between the return of Roy and the
coming of Lance Desmond for Christmas leave.

It is thus that drama most often happens in life--a light under a
bushel; set in the midst, yet unseen. Vincent, delving in ethnological
depths, saw little or nothing outside his manuscript and maps. Floss
Eden--engrossed in her own drawing-room comedy with Captain Martin--saw
less than nothing, except that 'Mr Sinclair's other native cousin' came
too often to the house. For she turned up her assertive nose at 'native
gentlemen'; and confided to Martin her private opinion that Aunt Thea
went too far in that line. She bothered too much about other people all
round--which was true.

She had bothered a good deal more about Floss Eden, in early days, than
that young lady at all realised. And now--in the intervals of organising
Christmas presents and Christmas guests--she was bothering a good deal
over Roy, whose absence had obviously failed to clear the air.

Not that he was silent or aloof. But his gift of speech overlaid a
reticence deeper than that of the merely silent man; the kind she had
lived with and understood. Once you got past their defences, you were
unmistakably inside:--Vinx, for instance. But with Roy she was aware of
reserves within reserves, which made him the more interesting, but also
the more distracting, when one felt entitled to know the lie of the
land. For, Arúna apart, wasn't he becoming too deeply immersed in his
Indian relations--losing touch, perhaps, with those at home? Did it--or
did it not matter--that, day after day, he was strolling with Arúna,
riding with Dyán, pig-sticking and buck-hunting with the royal cheetahs
and the royal heir to the throne; or plunging neck deep in plans and
possibilities, always in connection with those two? His mail letters
were few and not bulky, as she knew from handling the contents of the
Residency mail-bag. And he very rarely spoke of them all: less than ever
of late. To her ardent nature it seemed inexplicable. Perhaps it was
just part of his peculiar 'inwardness.' She would have liked to feel
sure, however....

Vinx would say it was none of her business. But Lance would be a help.
She was counting on him to readjust the scales. Thank goodness for
Lance--giving up the Lahore 'week' and the Polo Tournament to spend
Christmas with her and Roy in the wilds of Rajputana. Just to have him
about the place again--his music, his big laugh, his radiant certainty
that, in any and every circumstance, it was a splendid thing to be
alive--would banish worries and lift her spirits sky-high. After the
still, deep waters of her beloved Vinx--whose strain of remoteness had
not been quite dispelled by marriage--and the starlit mysteries of Arúna
and the intriguing complexities of Roy, a breath of Lance would be tonic
as a breeze from the Hills. He was so clear and sure; not in flashes and
spurts, but continuously, like sunshine; because the clearness and
sureness had his whole personality behind them. And he could be counted
on to deal faithfully with Roy; perhaps lure him back to the Punjab. It
would be sad losing him; but in the distracting circumstances, a clean
cut seemed the only solution. She would just put in a word to that
effect: a weakness she had rarely been known to resist, however complete
her faith in the man of the moment.

She simply dared not think of Arúna, who trusted her. It seemed like
betrayal--no less. And yet...?




CHAPTER XIII.

     "One made out of the better part of earth,
      A man born as at sunrise."
                                  --SWINBURNE.


It was all over--the strenuous joy of planning and preparing. Christmas
itself was over. From the adjacent borders of British India, five lonely
ones had been gathered in. There was Mr Mayne, Commissioner of Delhi,
Vincent's old friend of Kohat days, unmarried and alone in camp with a
stray Settlement Officer, whose wife and children were at Home. There
was Mr Bourne--in the Canals--large-boned and cadaverous, with a
sardonic gleam in his eye. Rumour said there had once been a wife and a
friend; now there remained only work and the whisky bottle; and he was
overdoing both. To him Thea devoted herself and her fiddle with
particular zest. The other two lonelies--a Mr and Mrs Nair--were medical
missionaries, fighting the influenza scourge in the Delhi area;
drastically disinfected--because of the babies; more than thankful for a
brief respite from their daily diet of tragedy, and from labours
Hercules' self would not have disdained. For all that, they had needed a
good deal of pressing. They had 'no clothes.' They were very shy. But
Thea had insisted; so they came--clothed chiefly in shyness and
gratitude, which made them shyer than ever.

Roy, still new to Anglo-India, was amazed at the way these haphazard
humans were thawed into a passing intimacy by the sunshine of Thea's
personality. For himself, it was the nearest approach to the real thing
that he had known since that dear and dreamlike Christmas of 1916. It
warmed his heart, and renewed the well-spring of careless happiness that
had gone from him utterly since the blow fell; gone, so he believed,
for ever.

Something of this she divined--and was glad. Yet her exigent heart was
not altogether at ease. His reaction to Lance, though unmistakable, fell
short of her confident expectation. He was still squandering far too
much time on the other two. Sometimes she felt almost angry with him:
jealous--for Lance. She knew how deeply he cared underneath; because she
too was a Desmond. And Desmonds could not care by halves.

This morning, for instance, the wretch was out riding with Dyán; and
there was Lance, alone in the drawing-room strumming the accompaniments
of things they would play to-night: just a wandering succession of
chords in a minor key; but he had his father's gift of touch, that no
training can impart, and the same trick of playing pensively to himself,
almost as if he were thinking aloud. It was five years since she had
seen her father; and those pensive chords brought sudden tears to her
eyes.

What did Lance mean by it--mooning about the piano like that? Had he
fallen in love? That was one of the few questions she did not dare ask
him. But here was her chance to 'put in a word' about Roy.

So she strolled into the drawing-room and leaned over the grand piano.
His smile acknowledged her presence, and his pensive chords went
wandering softly away into the bass.

"Idiot--what _are_ you doing?" she asked briskly, because the music was
creeping down her spine. "Talking to yourself?"

"More or less."

"Well--give over. I'm here. And it's a bad habit."

He shook his head, and went wandering on. "In this form I find it
soothing and companionable."

"Well, you oughtn't to be needing either at Christmas time under _my_
roof, with Roy here and all--if he'd only behave. Sometimes I want to
shake him----"

"Why--what's the matter with Roy?"--That innocent query checked her rush
of protest in mid career. Had he not even noticed? Men were the
queerest, dearest things!----"He looks awfully fit. Better all round.
He's pulling up. _You_ never saw him--you don't realise----"

"But, my dear boy, do _you_ realise that he's getting rather badly
bitten with all this--Indian problems and Indian cousins----"

Lance nodded. "I've been afraid of that. But one can't say much."

"I can't. I was counting on you as the God-given antidote. And there he
is, still fooling round with Dyán, when _you've_ come all this way ...
It makes me wild. It isn't _fair_----"

Her genuine distress moved Lance to cease strumming and bestow a
friendly pat on her hand. "Don't be giving yourself headaches and
heartaches over Roy and me, darlint. We're going strong, thanks very
much! It would take an earthquake to throw us out of step. If he chose
to chuck his boots at me, I wouldn't trouble--except to return the trees
if they were handy! Strikes me women don't yet begin to understand the
noble art of friendship----"

"_Which_ is a libel--but let that pass! Besides--hasn't it struck you?
Arúna----"

"My God!" His hands dropped with a crash on the keyboard. Then, in a low
swift rush: "Thea, you don't _mean_ it--you're pulling my leg."

"Bible-oath I'm not. It's too safely tucked under the piano!"

"My God!" he repeated softly, ignoring her incurable frivolity. "Has he
_said_ anything?"

"No. But it's plain they're both smitten more or less."

"Smitten be damned."

"Lance! I won't have Arúna insulted. Let me tell you she's charming and
cultivated; much better company than Floss. And I love her like a
daughter----"

"Would you have her marry _Roy_?" he flung out wrathfully.

"Of course not. But still----"

"_Me_--perhaps?" he queried with such fine scorn that she burst out
laughing.

"You priceless gem! You are _the_ unadulterated Anglo-Indian!"

"Well--what _else_ would I be? What else are you, by the same token?"

"Not adulterated," she denied stoutly. "Perhaps a wee bit less
'prejudiced.' The awful result, I suppose, of failing to keep myself
scrupulously detached from my surroundings. Besides, you couldn't be
married twenty years to that Vinx and not widen out a bit. Of course I'm
quite aware that widening out has its insidious dangers and limitation
its heroic virtues--Hush! Don't fly into a rage. _You're_ not limited,
old boy. You loved--Lady Sinclair."

"I adored her," Lance said very low; and his fingers strayed over the
keys again. "_But_--she was an accomplished fact. And--she was one in
many thousands. She's gone now, though. And there's poor Sir Nevil----"

He rose abruptly and strode over to the fireplace. "Tell you what, Thea.
If the bee in Roy's bonnet is buzzing to _that_ tune, some one's got to
stop it----"

"That's my point!" She swung round confronting him. "Why not whisk him
back to the Punjab? It does seem the only way----"

Lance nodded again. "Now you talk sense. Mind, I don't believe he'll
come. Roy's a tougher customer than he looks to the naked eye. But I'll
have a shot at it to-night. If needs must, I'll tell him why. I can
swallow half a regiment of his Dyáns; but not--the other thing. I hope
you find us intact in the morning!"

She flew to him and kissed him with fervour; and she was still in his
arms, when Roy strolled casually into the room.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were only three outsiders that night: the State Engineer and two
British officers in the Maharajah's employ. But they sat down sixteen to
dinner; and, very shortly after, came three others in the persons of
Dyán and Sir Lakshman Singh, with his distinguished friend Mahomed
Inayat Khan, from Hyderabad. Nothing Thea enjoyed better than getting a
mixed batch of men together and hearing them talk--especially shop; for
then she knew their hearts were in it. They were happy.

And to-night, her chance assortment was amazingly varied, even for
India:--Army, 'Political,' Civil; P.W.D. and Native States; New India,
in the person of Dyán; and not least, the 'medical mish' pair; an
element rich in mute inglorious heroism, as the villagers and 'depressed
classes' of India know. She took keen delight in the racial interplay of
thought and argument, with Roy, as it were, for bridge-builder between.
How he would relish the idea! He seemed very much in the vein this
evening, especially since his grandfather arrived. He was clearly making
an impression on Mr Mayne and Inayat Khan; and a needle-prick of remorse
touched her heart. For Arúna, annexed by Captain Martin's subaltern, was
watching him too, when she fancied no one was looking; and Lance,
attentively silent, was probably laying deep plans for his capture. A
wicked shame--but still...!

As a matter of fact, Lance, too, was troubled with faint compunction. He
had never seen Roy in this kind of company, nor in this particular vein.
And, reluctantly, he admitted that it did seem rather a waste of his
mentally reviving vigour hauling him back to the common round of tennis
and dances and polo--yes, even sacred polo--when he was so dead keen on
this infernal agitation business, and seemed to know such a deuce of a
lot about it all.

Lance himself knew far too little; and was anxious to hear more, for the
intimate, practical reason that he was not quite happy about his Sikh
troop. The Pathan lot were all right. But the Sikhs--his pride and
joy--were being 'got at' by those devils in the City. And, if these men
could be believed, 'things' were going to be very much worse; not only
'down country,' but also in the Punjab, India's sure shield against the
invader. To a Desmond, the mere suggestion of the Punjab turning traitor
was as if one impugned the courage of his father or the honour of his
mother; so curiously personal is India's hold upon the hearts of
Englishmen who come under her spell.

So Lance listened intently, if a little anxiously, to all that Thea's
'mixed biscuits' had to say on that absorbing subject. For to-night shop
held the field: if that could be called shop, which vitally concerned
the fate of England and India, and of British dominion in the East.

Agitation against the sane measures embodied in the Rowlatt Bills was
already astir, like bubbles round a pot before it boils. And Inayat Khan
had come straight from Bombay, where the National Congress had rejected
with scorn the latest palliative from Home; had demanded the release of
all revolutionaries, and wholesale repeal of laws against sedition. Here
was shop sufficiently ominous to overshadow all other topics: and there
was no _gęne_, no constraint. The Englishmen could talk freely in the
presence of cultured Indians who stood for Jaipur and Hyderabad, since
both States were loyal to the core.

Dyán, like Lance, spoke little and pondered much on the talk of these
men, whose straight speech and thoughts were refreshing as their own sea
breezes after the fumes of rhetoric, the fog of false values that had
bemused his brain these three years. Strange how all the ugliness and
pain of hate had shrivelled away; how he could even shake hands,
untroubled, with that 'imperialistic bureaucrat' the Commissioner of
Delhi, whom he might have been told off, any day, to 'remove from this
mortal coil.' Strange to sit there, over against him, while he puffed
his cigar and talked, without fear, of increasing antagonism, increasing
danger to himself and his kind.

"There's no sense in disguising the unpalatable truth that New India
hates us," said he in his gruff, deliberate voice. "Present company
excepted, I hope!"

He gravely inclined his head towards Dyán, who responded mutely with a
flutter at his heart. Impossible! The man could not suspect----?

And the man, looking him frankly in the eyes, added: "The spirit of the
Mutiny's not extinct--and we know it, those of us that count."

Dyán simply sat dumfounded. It was Sir Lakshman who said, in his guarded
tone: "Nevertheless, sir, the bulk of our people are loyal and
peaceable. Only I fear there are some in England who do not count that
fact to their credit."

"If they ever become anything else, it won't be to _our_ credit," put in
Roy. "If we can't stand up to bluster and sedition with that moral force
at our backs, we shall deserve to go under."

"Well spoken, Roy," said his grandfather still more quietly. "Let us
hope it is not yet too late. Sadi says, 'The fountain-head of a spring
can be blocked with a stick; but in full flood, it cannot be crossed,
even on an elephant.'"

They exchanged a glance that stirred Roy's pulses and gave him
confidence to go on: "I don't believe it is too late. But what bothers
me is this--are we treating our moral force as it deserves? Are we
giving them loyalty in return for theirs--the sort they can understand?
With a dumb executive and voluble 'patriots,' persuading or
intimidating, the poor beggars haven't a dog's chance, unless we openly
stand by them; openly smite our enemies--and theirs."

He boldly addressed himself to Mayne, the sole symbol of authority
present; and the Commissioner listened, with a gleam of amused approval
in his eye.

"You're young, Mr Sinclair--which doesn't mean you're wrong! Most of us,
in our limited fashion, are trying to do what we can on those lines.
But, after spending half a lifetime in this climate, doing our utmost to
give the peasant--_and_ the devil--his due, we're apt to grow
cynical----"

"Not to mention suicidal!" grunted the slave of work and whisky. "We
Canal coolies--hardly visible to the naked eye--are adding something
like an Egypt a year to the Empire. But, bless you, England takes no
notice. Only let some underbred planter or raw subaltern bundle an
Indian out of his carriage, or a drunken Tommy kick his servant in the
spleen, and the whole British Constitution comes down about our ears!"

"Very true, sir--very true!" Inayat Khan leaned forward. His teeth
gleamed in the dark of his beard. His large firm-featured face abounded
in good sense and good humour. "How shall a man see justly if he holds
the telescope wrong way round, as too many do over there. It also
remains true, however, that the manners of certain Anglo-Indians create
a lot of bad feeling. Your so-called reforms do not interest the masses
or touch their imagination. But the boot of the low-class European
touches their backs and their pride and hardens their hearts. That is
only human nature. In the East a few gold grains of courtesy touch the
heart more than a _khillat_[18] of political hotch-potch. I
myself--though it is getting dangerous to say so!--am frankly opposed to
this uncontrolled passion for reform. When all have done their duty in
this great struggle, why such undignified clamour for rewards, which are
now being flung back in the giver's teeth. It has become a vicious
circle. It was British policy in the first place--not so?--that stirred
up this superficial ferment; and now it grows alarming, it is doctored
with larger doses of the same medicine. We Indians who know how little
the bulk of India has really changed, could laugh at the tamasha of
Western fancy-dress, in small matters; but time for laughing has gone
by. Time has come for saying firmly--all rights and aspirations will be
granted, stopping _short_ of actual government--otherwise----!"

He flung up his hands, looked round at the listening faces, and realised
how completely he had let himself go. "Forgive me, Colonel. I fear I am
talking too much," he said in a changed tone.

"Indeed no," Colonel Leigh assured him warmly. "In these difficult days,
loyal and courageous friends like yourself are worth their weight in
gold mohurs!"

Visibly flattered, the Moslem surveyed his own bulky person with a
twinkle of amusement. "If value should go by weight, Inayat Khan would
be worth a king's ransom! But I assure you, Colonel, your country has
many hundreds of friends like myself all over India, if only she would
seek them out and give them encouragement--as Mr Sinclair said--instead
of wasting it on volubles, who will never cease making trouble till
India is in a blaze."

As the man's patent sincerity had warmed the hearts of his hearers, so
the pointed truth of that last pricked them sharply and probed deep. For
they knew themselves powerless; mere atoms of the whirling dust-cloud,
raised, in passing, by the chariot-wheels of Progress--or perdition?

The younger men rose briskly, as if to shake off some physical
discomfort. Dyán--very much aware of Arúna and the subaltern--approached
them with a friendly remark. Roy and Lance said, "Play up, Thea! Your
innings," almost in a breath--and crooked little fingers.

Thea needed no second bidding. While the men talked, an insidious
depression had stolen over her spirit--and brooded there, light and
formless as a river mist. Half an hour with her fiddle, and Lance at his
best, completely charmed it away. But the creepiness of it had been very
real: and the memory remained.

       *       *       *       *       *

When all the others had dispersed, she lingered over the fire with Roy,
while Lance, at the piano, with diplomatic intent, drifted into his
friend's favourite Nocturne--the Twelfth; that inimitable rendering of a
mood, hushed yet exalted, soaring yet brooding, 'the sky and the nest as
well.' The two near the fire knew every bar by heart, but as the liquid
notes stole out into the room, their fitful talk stopped dead.

Lance was playing superbly, giving every note its true value; the
cadence rising and falling like waves of a still sea; softer and softer;
till the last note faded away, ghostlike--a sigh rather than a sound.

Roy remained motionless, one elbow on the mantelpiece. Thea's lashes
were wet with the tears of rarefied emotion--tears that neither prick
nor burn. The silence itself seemed part of the music; a silence it were
desecration to break. Without a word to Roy, she crossed the room;
kissed Lance good-night; clung a moment to his hands that had woven the
spell, smiling her thanks, her praise; and slipped away, leaving the two
together.

Roy subsided into a chair. Lance came over to the fire and stood there
warming his hands.

It was a minute or two before Roy looked up and nodded his
acknowledgments.

"You're a magician, old chap. You play that thing a damn sight too
well."

He did not add that his friend's music had called up a vision of the
Home drawing-room, clear in every detail; Lance at the piano--his last
week-end from Sandhurst--playing the 'thing' by request; himself
lounging on the hearthrug, his head against his mother's knee; the very
feel of her silk skirt against his cheek, of her fingers on his hair....
Nor did he add that the vision had spurred his reluctant spirit to a
resolve.

The more practical soul of Lance Desmond had already dropped back to
earth, as a lark drops after pouring out its heart in the blue. In spite
of concern for Roy, he was thinking again of his Sikhs.

"I suppose one can take it," he remarked thoughtfully, "that Vinx and
Mayne and that good old Moslem johnny know what they're talking about?"

Roy smiled--having jumped at the connection. "I'm afraid," he said, "one
can."

"You think big trouble is coming--organised trouble?"

"I do. That is, unless some 'strong silent man' has the pluck to put his
foot down in time, and chance the consequences to himself. Thank God,
we've another John Lawrence in the Punjab."

"And it's the Punjab that matters----"

"Especially a certain P.C. Regiment--eh?"

Lance was in arms at once:--that meant he had touched the spot. "No
flies on the Regiment. Trust Paul. It's only--I get bothered about a
Sikh here and there."

"Quite so. The blighters have taken particular pains with the Sikhs.
Realising that they'll need some fighting stuff. And Lahore's a bad
place. I expect they sneak off to meetings in the City."

"Devil a doubt of it. Mind you, I trust them implicitly. But, outside
their own line, they're credulous as children--_you_ know."

"Rather. In Delhi, I had a fair sample of it."

Another pause. It suddenly occurred to Lance that his precious Sikhs
were not supposed to be the topic of the evening. "You're quite fit
again, Roy. And those blooming fools chucked you like a cast horse----"
he broke out in a spurt of vexation. "I wish to God you were back with
your old Squadron."

And Roy said from his heart, "I wish to God I was."

"Paul misses you, though he never says much. The new lot from home are
good chaps. Full of brains and theories. But no knowledge. Can't get at
the men. You could still help unofficially in all sorts of ways.--Why
not come along back with me? Haven't you been pottering round here long
enough?"

Roy shook his head. "Thanks all the same, for the invite. Of course I'd
love it. But--I've things to do. There's a novel taking shape--and
other oddments. I've done precious little writing here. Too much
entangled with human destinies. I _must_ bury myself somewhere and get a
move on. April it is. I won't fail you."

Lance kicked an unoffending log. "Confound your old novel!"--A
portentous silence. "See here, Roy, I don't want to badger you.
But--well--if I'm to go back in moderate peace of mind, I want--certain
guarantees."

Roy lifted his eyes. Lance frankly encountered them; and there ensued
one of those intimate pauses in which the unspeakable is said.

Roy looked away. "Arúna?" He let fall the word barely above his breath.

"Just that."

"You're frightened--both of you? Oh yes--I've seen----" He fell silent,
staring into the fire. When he spoke again, it was in the same low,
detached tone. "You two needn't worry. The guarantee you're after was
given ... in July 1914 ... under the beeches ... at Home. _She_
foresaw--understood. But she couldn't foresee ... the harder tug--now
she's gone. The ... association ... and all that."

"Is it--only that?"

"It's mostly that."

To Lance Desmond, very much a man, it seemed the queerest state of
things; and he knew only a fragment of the truth.

"Look here, Roy," he urged again. "Wouldn't the Punjab really be best?
Aren't you plunging a bit too deep----? Does your father realise? Thea
feels----"

"Yes. Thea feels, bless her! But there's a thing or two she doesn't
_know_!" He lifted his head and spoke in an easier voice. "One queer
thing--it may interest you. Those few weeks of living as an Indian among
Indians--amazingly intensified all the other side of me. I never felt
keener on the Sinclair heritage and all it stands for. I never felt
keener on you two than all this time while I've been concentrating every
faculty on--the other two. Sounds odd. But it's a fact."

"Good. And does--your cousin know ... about the guarantee?"

"N--no. That's still to come."

"_When----?_"

Roy straightly returned his friend's challenging gaze. "Damn you!" he
said softly. Then, in a graver tone: "You're right. I've been shirking
it. Seemed a shame to spoil Christmas. Remains--the New Year. I fixed it
up--while you were playing that thing, to be exact."

"Did I--contribute?"

"You did--if that gives you any satisfaction!" He rose, stretched
himself and yawned ostentatiously. "My God, I wish it was over."

Desmond said nothing. If Roy loved him more for one quality than
another, it was for his admirable gift of silence.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: Dress of honour.]




CHAPTER XIV.

     "Yet shall I bear in my heart this honour of the burden of
     pain--this gift of thine."--RABINDRANATH TAGORE.


It was the last day of the year; the last moon of the year, almost at
her zenith. Of all the Christmas guests Lance alone remained; and Thea
had promised him before leaving, a moonlight vision of Amber, the
Sleeping Beauty of Rajasthán. The event had been delayed till now,
partly because they waited on the moon; partly because they did not want
it to be a promiscuous affair.

To Thea's lively imagination--and to Roy's no less--Amber was more than
a mere city of ghosts and marble halls. It was a symbol of Rajput
womanhood--strong and beautiful, withdrawn from the clamour of the
market-place, given over to her dreams and her gods. For though kings
have deserted Amber, the gods remain. There is still life in her temples
and the blood of sacrifice on her altar stones. Therefore she must not
be approached in the spirit of the tourist. And, emphatically, she must
not be approached in a motor-car; at least so far as Thea's guests were
concerned. Of course one knew she _was_ approached by irreverent cars;
also by tourists--unspeakable ones, who made contemptible jokes about 'a
slump in house property.' But for these vandalisms Thea Leigh was not
responsible.

Her young ones, including Captain Martin, would ride; but, because of
Arúna, she and Vincent must submit to the barouche. So transparent was
the girl's pleasure at being included, that Thea's heart failed
her--knowing what she knew.

Roy and Lance had ridden on ahead; out through the fortified gates into
the open desert, strewn with tumbled fragments of the glory that was
Rajasthán. There, where courtiers had intrigued and flattered, crows
held conference. On the crumbling arch of a doorway, that opened into
emptiness, a vulture brooded, heavy with feeding on those who had died
for lack of food. Knee-deep in the Mán Sagar Lake, grey cranes sought
their meat from God; every tint and curve of them repeated in the quiet
water. And there, beside a ruined shrine, two dead cactus bushes, with
their stiff distorted limbs, made Roy think suddenly of two dead Germans
he had come upon once--killed so swiftly that they still retained, in
death, the ghastly semblance of life. Why the devil couldn't a man be
rid of them? Dead Germans were not 'in the bond.'...

"Buck up, Lance," he said abruptly; for Desmond, who saw no ghosts, was
keenly interested. "Let's quit this place of skulls and empty
eye-sockets. Amber's dead; but not utterly decayed."

He knew. He had ridden out alone one morning, in the light of paling
stars, to watch the dawn steal down through the valley and greet the
sleeping city that would never wake again--half hoping to recapture the
miracle of Chitor. But Amber did not enshrine the soul of his mother's
race. And the dawn had proved merely a dawn. Moonlight, with its eerie
enchantment, would be oven more beautiful and fitting; but the pleasure
of anticipation was shadowed by his resolve.

He had spoken of it only to Thea; asking her, when tea was over, to give
him a chance:--and now he was heartily wishing he had chosen any other
place and time than this....

The brisk canter to the foothills was a relief. Thence the road climbed,
between low, reddish-grey spurs, to the narrow pass, barred by a
formidable gate, that swung open at command, with a screech of rusty
hinges, as if in querulous protest against intrusion.

Another gateway,--and yet another: then they were through the triple
wall that guards the dead city from the invader who will never come,
while both races honour the pact that alone saved desperate, stubborn
Rajputana from extinction.

Up on the heights, it was still day; but in the valley it was almost
evening. And there--among deepening shadows and tumbled fragments of
hills--lay Amber: her palace and temples and broken houses crowding
round their sacred Lake, like Queens and their handmaids round the
shield of a dead King.

Descending at a foot's pace, the chill of emptiness and of oncoming
twilight seemed to close like icy fingers on Roy's heart; though the
death of Amber was as nothing to the death of Chitor--the warrior-queen,
ravished and violently slain by Akbar's legions. Amber had, as it were,
died peacefully in her sleep. But there remained the all-pervading
silence and emptiness:--her sorrowful houses, cleft from roof to
roadway; no longer homes of men, but of the rock-pigeon, the peacock,
and the wild boar; stones of her crumbling arches thrust apart by roots
of acacia and neem; her streets choked with cactus and brushwood; her
beauty--disfigured but not erased--reflected in the unchanging mirror of
the Lake.

If Roy and Lance had talked little before, they talked less now. From
the Lake-side they rode up, by stone pathways, to the Palace of stone
and marble, set upon a jutting rock and commanding the whole valley.
There, in the quadrangle, they left the horses with their grooms, who
were skilled in cutting corners and had trotted most of the way.

Close to the gate stood a temple of fretted marble--neither ruined nor
deserted; for within were the priests of Kali, and the faint, sickly
smell of blood. Daybreak after daybreak, for centuries, the severed head
of a goat had been set before her, the warm blood offered in a bronze
bowl....

"Pah! Beastly!" muttered Lance. "I'd sooner have no religion at all."

Roy smiled at him, sidelong--and said nothing. It _was_ beastly: but it
matched the rest. It was in keeping with the dusky rooms, all
damp-incrusted, the narrow passages and screens of marble tracery; the
cloistered hanging garden, beyond the women's rooms, their baths
chiselled out of naked rock. And the beastliness was off-set by the
beauty of inlay and carving and colour; by the splendour of bronze gates
and marble pillars, and slabs of carven granite that served as
balustrade to the terraced roof, where daylight still lingered and
azure-necked peacocks strutted, serenely immune.

Seated on a carven slab, they looked downward into the heart of
desolation; upward, at creeping battlements and a little temple of Shiva
printed sharply on the light-filled sky.

"Can't you _feel_ the ghosts of them all round you?" whispered Roy.

"No, thank God, I can't," said practical Lance, taking out a cigarette.
But a rustle of falling stones made him start--the merest fraction.
"Perhaps smoke'll keep 'em off--like mosquitoes!" he added hopefully.

But Roy paid no heed. He was looking down into the hollow shell of that
which had been Amber. Not a human sound anywhere; nor any stir of life,
but the soft ceaseless kuru-kooing doves, that nested and mated in those
dusky inner rooms, where Queens had mated with Kings.

"'Thou hast made of a city an heap, of a defencéd city a ruin ...Their
houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there,
and satyrs shall dance there,'" he quoted softly; adding after a pause,
"Mother had a great weakness for old Isaiah. She used to say he and the
minor prophets knew all about Rajasthán. The owls of Amber are blue
pigeons. But I hope she's spared the satyrs."

"Globe-trotters!" suggested Lance.

"Or 'Piffers' devoid of reverence!" retorted Roy. "Hullo! Here come the
others."

Footsteps and voices in the quadrangle waked hollow echoes as when a
stone drops into a well. Presently they sounded on the stairs near by:
Flossie's rather boisterous laugh; Martin chaffing her in his husky
tones.

"Great sport! Let's rent it off H.H. and gather 'em all in from the
highways and hedges for a masked fancy ball!"

Roy stood up and squared his shoulders. "Satyrs dancing, with a
vengeance!" said he; but the gleam of Arúna's sari smote him silent. A
band seemed to tighten round his heart....

       *       *       *       *       *

Before tea was over, peacocks and pigeons had gone to roost among the
trees that shadowed the Lake; and the light behind the hills had passed
swiftly from gold to flame-colour, from flame-colour to rose. For the
sun, that had already departed in effect, was now setting in fact.

"Hush--it's coming," murmured Thea:--and it came.

Hollow thuds, quickening to a vibrant roar, swelled up from the temple
in the courtyard below. The Brahmins were beating the great tom-tom
before Kali's Shrine.

It was the signal. It startlingly waked the dead city to discordant
life. Groanings and howlings and clashings, as of Tophet, were echoed
and re-echoed from every temple, every shrine; an orgy of demoniac
sounds; blurred in transit through the empty rooms beneath; pierced at
intervals by the undulating wail of ram's horns; the two reiterate notes
wandering, like lost souls, through a confused blare of cymbals and
bagpipes and all kinds of music.

Flossie, with a bewitching grimace at Martin, clapped both hands over
her ears. Roy--standing by the balustrade with Arúna--was aware of an
answering echo somewhere in subconscious depths, as the discords rose
and fell above the throbbing undernote of the drum. It was as if the
claimant voices of the East cried out to the blood in his veins: 'You
are of us--do what you will; go where you will.' And all the while his
eyes never left Arúna's half-averted face.

Sudden and clear from the heights came a ringing peal of bells, as it
were the voices of angels answering the wail of devils in torment. It
was from the little Shrine of Shiva close against the ramparts, etched
in outline, above the dark of the hills.

Arúna turned and looked up at him. "Too beautiful!" she whispered.

He nodded, and flung out an arm. "Look there!"

Low and immense--pale in the pallor of the eastern sky--the moon hung
poised above massed shadows, like a wraith escaped from the city of
death. Moment by moment, she drew light from the vanished sun. Moment by
moment, under their watching eyes, she conjured the formless dark into a
new heaven, a new earth....

"Would you be afraid--to stroll round a little ... with me?" he asked.

"Afraid? I would love it--if Thea will allow." This time she did not
look up.

Vincent and Thea were sitting a little farther along the balustrade;
Lance beside them, imbibing tales of Rajasthán. Flossie and her Captain
had already disappeared.

"_I'm_ going to be frankly a Goth and flash my electric torch into holes
and corners," Lance announced as the other two came up. "I bar being
intimidated by ghosts."

"We're not going to be intimidated either," said Roy, addressing himself
to Thea. "And I guarantee not to let Arúna be spirited away."

Vincent shot a look at his wife. "Don't wander too far," said he.

"And don't hang about too long," she added. "It'll be cold going home."

Though he was standing close to her, she could say no more. But, under
cover of the dusk, her hand found his and closed on it hard.

The characteristic impulse heartened him amazingly, as he followed Arúna
down the ghostly stairway, through marble cloisters into the hanging
garden, misted with moonlight, fragrant with orange trees.

And now there was more than Thea's hand-clasp to uphold him. Gradually
there dawned on him a faint yet sure intimation of his mother's
presence, of her tenderly approving love--dim to his brain, yet as
sensible to his spirit as light and warmth to his body.

It did not last many moments; but--as in all contact with her--the clear
after-certainty remained....

Exactly what he intended to say he did not know even now. To speak the
cruel truth, yet by some means to soften the edge of it, seemed almost
impossible. But nerved by this vivid, exalted sense of her nearness, the
right moment, the right words could be trusted to come of themselves....

And Arúna, walking beside him in a hushed expectancy, was remembering
that other night, so strangely far away, when they had walked alone
under the same moon, and assurance of his love had so possessed her,
that she had very nearly broken her little chirágh. And to-night--how
different! Her very love for him, though the same, was not quite the
same. It seemed to depend not at all on nearness or response. Starved of
both, it had grown not less, but more.

From a primitive passion it had become a rarefied emotional atmosphere
in which she lived and moved. And this garden of eerie lights and
shadows was saturated with it; thronged, to her fancy, with ghosts of
dead passions and intrigues, of dead Queens, in whom the twin flames of
love and courage could be quenched only by flames of the funeral pyre.
Their blood ran in her veins--and in his too. _That_ closeness of
belonging none could snatch from her. About the other, she was growing
woefully uncertain, as day followed day, and still no word. Was there
trouble after all! Would he speak to-night...?

They had reached a dark doorway, and he was trying the handle. It opened
inwards.

"I'm keen to go a little way up the hillside," he said, forcing himself
to break a silence that was growing oppressive. "To get a sight of the
Palace with the moon full on it. We'll be cautious--not go too far."

"I am ready to go anywhere," she answered; and the fervour of that
simple statement told him she was not thinking of hillsides any more
than he was--at the back of his mind.

Silence was unkinder than speech; and as they passed out into the open,
he scanned the near prospect for a convenient spot. Not far above them a
fragment of ruined wall, overhung by trees, ended in a broken arch; its
lingering keystone threatened by a bird-borne acacia. A fallen slab of
stone, half under it, offered a not too distant seat. Slab and arch were
in full light; the space beyond, engulfed in shadow.

Far up the hillside a jackal laughed. Across the valley another answered
it. A monkey swung from a branch on to the slab, and sat there engaged
in his toilet--a very imp of darkness.

"Not be-creeped--are you?" Roy asked.

"Just the littlest bit! Nice kind of creeps. I feel quite safe--with
you."

The path was rough in parts. Once she stumbled and his hand closed
lightly on her arm under the cloak. She felt safe with him--and he must
turn and smite her----!

At their approach, the monkey fled with a gibbering squeak: and Roy
loosened his hold. Between them and the lake loomed the noble bulk of
the palace; roof-terraces and façades bathed in silver, splashed with
indigo shadow; but for them--mere man and woman--its imperishable
strength and beauty had suddenly become a very little thing. They
scarcely noticed it even.

"There--sit," Roy said softly, and she obeyed.

Her smile mutely invited him; but he could not trust himself--yet. He
might have known the moonlight would go to his head.

"Arúna--my dear----" he plunged without preamble. "I took you away from
them all because--well--we can't pretend any more ... you and I. It's
fate--and there we are. I love you--dearly--truly. But...."

How could one go on?

"Oh, _Roy_!"

Her lifted gaze, her low impassioned cry told all; and before that too
clear revealing his hard-won resolution quailed.

"No--not that. I don't deserve it," he broke out, lashing himself and
startling her. "I've been a rank coward--letting things drift. But
honestly I hadn't the conceit--we were cousins ... it seemed natural.
And now ... _this_!"

A stupid catch in his throat arrested him. She sat motionless; never a
word.

Impulsively he dropped on one knee, to be nearer, yet not too near.
"Arúna--I don't know how to say it. The fact is ... they were afraid, at
Home, if I came out here, I might--it might ... Well, just what's come
to us," he blurted out in desperation. "And Mother told me frankly--it
mustn't be, twice running ... like that." Her stillness dismayed him.
"Dear," he urged tenderly, "you see their difficulty--you understand?"

"I am trying--to understand." Her voice was small and contained. The
courage and control of it unsteadied him more than any passionate
protest. Yet he hurried on in the same low tone.

"Of course, I ought to have thought. But, as I say, it seemed
natural.... Only--on Dewáli night----"

She caught her breath. "Yes--Dewáli night. Mai Lakshmi knew. _Why_ did
you not say it _then_?"

"Well ... so soon--I wasn't sure ... I hoped going away might give us
both a chance. It seemed the best I could do," he pleaded. "And--there
was Dyán. I'm not vamping up excuses, Arúna. If you hate me for hurting
you so----"

"Roy--you _shall_ not say it!" she cried, roused at last. "Could I hate
... the heart in my own body!"

"Better for us both perhaps if you could!" he jerked out, rising
abruptly, not daring to let the full force of her confession sink in.
"But--because of my father, I promised. No getting over that."

She was silent:--a silence more moving, more compelling than speech. Was
she wondering--had he not promised...? Was he certain himself? Near
enough to swear by; and the impulse to comfort her was overwhelming.

"If--if things had been different, Arúna," he added with grave
tenderness, "of course I would be asking you now ... to be my wife."

At that, the tension of her control seemed to snap; and hiding her face,
she sat there shaken all through with muffled, broken-hearted sobs.

"Don't--oh, _don't_!" he cried low, his own nerves quivering with her
pain.

"How can I _not_" she wailed, battling with fresh sobs. "Because of your
Indian mother--I hoped.... But for me--England-returned--no hope
anywhere: no true country now; no true belief; no true home; everything
divided in two; only my heart--not divided. And that you cannot have,
even if you would----"

Tears threatened again. It was all he could do not to take her in his
arms.

"If--if they would only leave me alone," she went on, clenching her
small hands to steady herself. "But impossible to change all the laws of
our religion for one worthless me. They will insist I shall marry--even
Dyán; and I cannot--I _cannot_----!"

Suddenly there sprang an inspiration, born of despair, of the chance and
the hour and the grave tenderness of his assurance. No time for
shrinking or doubt. Almost in speaking she was on her feet; her
cloak--that had come unlinked--dropped from her shoulders, leaving her a
slim strip of pallor, like a ray of light escaped from clouds.

"Roy--_Dilkusha_!" Involuntarily her hands went out to him. "If it is
true ... you are caring--and if I must not belong to you, there is a way
_you_ can belong to me without trouble for any one. If--if we make
pledge of betrothal ... for this one night, if you hold me this one hour
... I am safe. For me that pledge would be sacred--as marriage, because
I am still Hindu. Perhaps I am punished for far-away sins--not worthy to
be wife and mother; but, by my pledge, I can remain always _Swami
Bakht_--worshipper of my lord ... a widow in my heart."

And Roy stood before her--motionless; stirred all through by the thrill
of her exalted passion, of her strange appeal. The pathos--the nobility
of it--swept him a little off his feet. It seemed as if, till to-night,
he had scarcely known her. The Eastern in him said, 'Accept.' The
Englishman demurred--'Unfair on her.'

"My dear----" he said--"I can refuse you nothing. But--is it right? You
_should_ marry----"

"Don't trouble your mind for me," she murmured; and her eyes never left
his face. "If I keep out of purdah, becoming Brahmo Samaj ...
perhaps----" She drew in her full lower lip to steady it. "But the
marriage of arrangement--I cannot. I have read too many English books,
thought too many English thoughts. And I know in here"--one clenched
hand smote her breast--"that now I could _not_ give my body and life to
any man, unless heart and mind are given too. And for me.... Must I tell
all? It is not only these few weeks. It is years and years...." Her
voice broke.

"Arúna! Dearest one----"

He opened his arms to her--and she was on his breast. Close and tenderly
he held her, putting a strong constraint on himself lest her ecstasy of
surrender should bear down all his defences. To fail her like this was a
bitter thing: and as her arms stole up round his neck, he instinctively
tightened his hold. So yielding she was, so unsubstantial....

And suddenly a rush of memory wafted him from the moonlit hillside to
the drawing-room at Home. It was his mother he held against his
breast:--the silken draperies, the clinging arms, the yielding softness,
the unyielding courage at the core....

So vivid, so poignant was the lightning gleam of illusion, that when it
passed he felt dizzy, as if his body had been swept in the wake of his
spirit, a thousand leagues and back: dizzy, yet, in some mysterious
fashion, reinforced--assured....

He knew now that his defences would hold....

And Arúna, utterly at rest in his arms, knew it also. He loved her--oh
yes, truly--as much as he said and more; but instinct told her there
lacked ... just something; something that would have set him--and
her--on fire, and perhaps have made renunciation unthinkable. Her acute,
instinctive sense of it, hurt like the edge of a knife pressed on her
heart; yet just enabled her to bear the unbearable. Had it been
..._that_ way, to lose him were utter loss. This way--there would be no
losing. What she had now, she would keep--whether his bodily presence
were with her or no----

Next minute, she dropped from the heights. Fire ran in her veins. His
lips were on her forehead.

"The seal of betrothal," he whispered. "My brave Arúna----"

Without a word she put up her face like a child; but it was very woman
who yielded her lips to his....

For her, in that supreme moment, the years that were past and the years
that were to come seemed gathered into a burnt-offering--laid on his
shrine. For her, that long kiss held much of passion--confessed yet
transcended; more of sacredness, inexpressible, because it would never
come again--with him or any other man. She vowed it silently to her own
heart....

Again far up the hillside a jackal laughed; another and another--as if
in derision. She shivered; and he loosed his hold, still keeping an arm
round her. To-night they were betrothed. He owed her all he had the
right to give.

"Your cloak. You'll catch your death...." He stopped short--and flung up
his head. "What was that? There--again--in those trees----"

"Some monkey perhaps," she whispered, startled by his look and tone.

"Hush--listen!" His grip tightened and they stood rigidly still, Roy
straining every nerve to locate those stealthy sounds. They were almost
under the arch; strong mellow light on one side, nethermost darkness on
the other. And from all sides the large unheeded night seemed to close
in on them--threatening, full of hidden danger.

Presently the sounds came again, unmistakably nearer; faint rustlings
and creakings, then a distinct crumbling, as of loosened earth and
stones. The shadowy plumes of acacia that crowned the arch stirred
perceptibly, though no breeze was abroad:--and not the acacia only. To
Arúna's excited fancy it seemed that the loose upper stones of the arch
itself moved ever so slightly. But _was_ it fancy? No--there again----!

And before the truth dawned on Roy, she had pushed him with all her
force, so vehemently that he stumbled backward and let go of her.

Before he recovered himself, down crashed two large stones and a shower
of small ones--on Arúna, not on him. With a stifled scream she tottered
and fell, knocking her head against the slab of rock.

Instantly he was on his knees beside her; stanching the cut on her
forehead, binding it with his handkerchief; consumed with rage and
concern;--rage at himself and the dastardly intruder,--no monkey, that
was certain.

His quick ear caught the stealthy rustling again, lower down; and,
yes--unmistakably--a human sound, like a stifled exclamation of dismay.

"Arúna--I _must_ get at that devil," he whispered. "Does your head feel
better? Dare I leave you a moment?"

"Yes--oh yes," she whispered back. "Nothing will harm me. Only take
care--please take care."

Hastily he made a pillow of his overcoat and covered her with the cloak;
then, stooping down, he kissed her fervently--and was gone.




CHAPTER XV.

     "Then was I rapt away by the impulse, one
      Immeasurable ... wave of a need
      To abolish that detested life."
                                --BROWNING.


Lithe and noiseless as a cat, Roy crept through the archway into outer
darkness. It was hateful leaving Arúna; but rage at her hurt and the
primitive instinct of pursuit were not to be denied. And she _might_
have been killed. And she had done it for him:--coals of fire, indeed!
Also, the others would be getting anxious. Let him only catch that
mysterious skulker, and he could shout across to the Palace roof. They
would hear.

Close under the wall he waited, all the scout in him alert. The cautious
rustlings drew stealthily nearer; ceased, for a few tantalising seconds;
then, out of the massed shadows, there crept a moving shadow.

Roy's spring was calculated to a nicety; but the thing swerved sharply
and fled up the rough hillside. There followed a ghostly chase, unreal
as a nightmare, lit up by the moon's deceptive brilliance; the earth, an
unstable welter of light and darkness, shifting under his feet.

The fleeing shade was agile; and plainly familiar with the ground.
Baulked, and lured steadily farther from Arúna, all the Rajput flamed in
Roy. During those mad moments he was capable of murdering the unknown
with his hands....

Suddenly, blessedly, the thing stumbled and dropped to its knees. With
the spring of a panther, he was on it, his angers at its throat, pinning
it to earth. The choking cry moved him not at all:--and suddenly the
moonlight showed him the face of Chandranath, mingled hate and terror in
the starting eyes....

Amazed beyond measure, he unconsciously relaxed his grip. "_You_--is
it?--you devil!"

There was no answer. Chandranath had had the wit to wriggle almost clear
of him;--almost, not quite. Roy's pounce was worthy of his Rajput
ancestors; and next moment they were locked in a silent, purposeful
embrace....

But Roy's brain was cooler now. Sanity had returned. He could still have
choked the life out of the man, without compunction. But he did not
choose to embroil himself, or his people, on account of anything so
contemptible as the creature that was writhing and scratching in his
grasp. He simply wanted to secure him and hand him over to the Jaipur
authorities, who had several scores up against him.

But Chandranath, though not skilled, had the ready cunning of the lesser
breeds. With a swift unexpected move, he tripped Roy up so that he
nearly fell backward; and, in a supreme effort to keep his balance,
unconsciously loosened his hold. This time, Chandranath slipped free of
him; and, in the act, pushed him so violently that he staggered and came
down among sharp broken stones with one foot twisted under him. When he
would have sprung up, a stab of pain in his ankle told him he was done
for....

The sheer ignominy of it enraged him; and he was still further enraged
by the proceedings of the victor, who sprang nimbly out of reach on to a
fragment of buttressed wall, whence he let fly a string of abusive
epithets nicely calculated to touch up Roy's pride and temper and goad
him to helpless fury.

But if his ankle was crippled, his brain was not. While Chandranath
indulged his pent-up spite, Roy was feeling stealthily, purposefully, in
the semi-darkness, for the sharpest chunk of stone he could lay hands
on; a chunk warranted to hurt badly, if nothing more. The strip of
shadow against the sky made an admirable target; and Roy's move, when it
came, was swift, his aim unerring.

Somewhere about the head or shoulders it took effect: a yell of rage and
pain assured him of that, as his target vanished on the far side of the
wall.

Had he jumped or fallen? And what did the damage amount to? Roy would
have given a good deal to know; but he had neither time nor power to
investigate. Nothing for it but to crawl back, and shout to Arúna, when
he got within hail.

It was an undignified performance. His twisted ankle stabbed like a
knife, and never failed to claim acquaintance with every obstacle in its
path. Presently, to his immense relief, the darkness ahead was raked by
a restless light, zigzagging like a giant glow-worm.

"Lance--ahoy!" he shouted.

"Righto!" Lance sang out; and the glow-worm waggled a welcome.

Another shout from the Palace roof, answered in concert; and the mad,
bad dream was over. He was back in the world of realities; on his feet
again--one foot, to be exact--supported by Desmond's arm; pouring out
his tale.

Lance already knew part of it. He had found Arúna and was hurrying on to
find Roy. "Your cousin's got the pluck of a Rajput," he concluded. "But
she seems a bit damaged. The left arm's broken, I'm afraid."

Roy cursed freely. "Wish to God I could make sure if I've sent that
skunk to blazes."

"Just as well you can't, perhaps. If your shot took effect, he won't be
off in a hurry. The police can nip out when we get back."

"Look here--keep it dark till I've seen Dyán. If Chandranath's nabbed,
he'll want to be in it. Only fair!"

Lance chuckled. "What an unholy pair you are!--By the way, I fancy
M