CHAPTER I.

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 suède

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 anæmic 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 même. II faut mourir

à 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.

Anæmia, 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

à 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.]