"One made out of the better part of earth,
A man born as at sunrise."
--SWINBURNE.
It was all over--the strenuous joy of planning and preparing. Christmas
itself was over. From the adjacent borders of British India, five lonely
ones had been gathered in. There was Mr Mayne, Commissioner of Delhi,
Vincent's old friend of Kohat days, unmarried and alone in camp with a
stray Settlement Officer, whose wife and children were at Home. There
was Mr Bourne--in the Canals--large-boned and cadaverous, with a
sardonic gleam in his eye. Rumour said there had once been a wife and a
friend; now there remained only work and the whisky bottle; and he was
overdoing both. To him Thea devoted herself and her fiddle with
particular zest. The other two lonelies--a Mr and Mrs Nair--were medical
missionaries, fighting the influenza scourge in the Delhi area;
drastically disinfected--because of the babies; more than thankful for a
brief respite from their daily diet of tragedy, and from labours
Hercules' self would not have disdained. For all that, they had needed a
good deal of pressing. They had 'no clothes.' They were very shy. But
Thea had insisted; so they came--clothed chiefly in shyness and
gratitude, which made them shyer than ever.
Roy, still new to Anglo-India, was amazed at the way these haphazard
humans were thawed into a passing intimacy by the sunshine of Thea's
personality. For himself, it was the nearest approach to the real thing
that he had known since that dear and dreamlike Christmas of 1916. It
warmed his heart, and renewed the well-spring of careless happiness that
had gone from him utterly since the blow fell; gone, so he believed,
for ever.
Something of this she divined--and was glad. Yet her exigent heart was
not altogether at ease. His reaction to Lance, though unmistakable, fell
short of her confident expectation. He was still squandering far too
much time on the other two. Sometimes she felt almost angry with him:
jealous--for Lance. She knew how deeply he cared underneath; because she
too was a Desmond. And Desmonds could not care by halves.
This morning, for instance, the wretch was out riding with Dyán; and
there was Lance, alone in the drawing-room strumming the accompaniments
of things they would play to-night: just a wandering succession of
chords in a minor key; but he had his father's gift of touch, that no
training can impart, and the same trick of playing pensively to himself,
almost as if he were thinking aloud. It was five years since she had
seen her father; and those pensive chords brought sudden tears to her
eyes.
What did Lance mean by it--mooning about the piano like that? Had he
fallen in love? That was one of the few questions she did not dare ask
him. But here was her chance to 'put in a word' about Roy.
So she strolled into the drawing-room and leaned over the grand piano.
His smile acknowledged her presence, and his pensive chords went
wandering softly away into the bass.
"Idiot--what _are_ you doing?" she asked briskly, because the music was
creeping down her spine. "Talking to yourself?"
"More or less."
"Well--give over. I'm here. And it's a bad habit."
He shook his head, and went wandering on. "In this form I find it
soothing and companionable."
"Well, you oughtn't to be needing either at Christmas time under _my_
roof, with Roy here and all--if he'd only behave. Sometimes I want to
shake him----"
"Why--what's the matter with Roy?"--That innocent query checked her rush
of protest in mid career. Had he not even noticed? Men were the
queerest, dearest things!----"He looks awfully fit. Better all round.
He's pulling up. _You_ never saw him--you don't realise----"
"But, my dear boy, do _you_ realise that he's getting rather badly
bitten with all this--Indian problems and Indian cousins----"
Lance nodded. "I've been afraid of that. But one can't say much."
"I can't. I was counting on you as the God-given antidote. And there he
is, still fooling round with Dyán, when _you've_ come all this way ...
It makes me wild. It isn't _fair_----"
Her genuine distress moved Lance to cease strumming and bestow a
friendly pat on her hand. "Don't be giving yourself headaches and
heartaches over Roy and me, darlint. We're going strong, thanks very
much! It would take an earthquake to throw us out of step. If he chose
to chuck his boots at me, I wouldn't trouble--except to return the trees
if they were handy! Strikes me women don't yet begin to understand the
noble art of friendship----"
"_Which_ is a libel--but let that pass! Besides--hasn't it struck you?
Arúna----"
"My God!" His hands dropped with a crash on the keyboard. Then, in a low
swift rush: "Thea, you don't _mean_ it--you're pulling my leg."
"Bible-oath I'm not. It's too safely tucked under the piano!"
"My God!" he repeated softly, ignoring her incurable frivolity. "Has he
_said_ anything?"
"No. But it's plain they're both smitten more or less."
"Smitten be damned."
"Lance! I won't have Arúna insulted. Let me tell you she's charming and
cultivated; much better company than Floss. And I love her like a
daughter----"
"Would you have her marry _Roy_?" he flung out wrathfully.
"Of course not. But still----"
"_Me_--perhaps?" he queried with such fine scorn that she burst out
laughing.
"You priceless gem! You are _the_ unadulterated Anglo-Indian!"
"Well--what _else_ would I be? What else are you, by the same token?"
"Not adulterated," she denied stoutly. "Perhaps a wee bit less
'prejudiced.' The awful result, I suppose, of failing to keep myself
scrupulously detached from my surroundings. Besides, you couldn't be
married twenty years to that Vinx and not widen out a bit. Of course I'm
quite aware that widening out has its insidious dangers and limitation
its heroic virtues--Hush! Don't fly into a rage. _You're_ not limited,
old boy. You loved--Lady Sinclair."
"I adored her," Lance said very low; and his fingers strayed over the
keys again. "_But_--she was an accomplished fact. And--she was one in
many thousands. She's gone now, though. And there's poor Sir Nevil----"
He rose abruptly and strode over to the fireplace. "Tell you what, Thea.
If the bee in Roy's bonnet is buzzing to _that_ tune, some one's got to
stop it----"
"That's my point!" She swung round confronting him. "Why not whisk him
back to the Punjab? It does seem the only way----"
Lance nodded again. "Now you talk sense. Mind, I don't believe he'll
come. Roy's a tougher customer than he looks to the naked eye. But I'll
have a shot at it to-night. If needs must, I'll tell him why. I can
swallow half a regiment of his Dyáns; but not--the other thing. I hope
you find us intact in the morning!"
She flew to him and kissed him with fervour; and she was still in his
arms, when Roy strolled casually into the room.
* * * * *
There were only three outsiders that night: the State Engineer and two
British officers in the Maharajah's employ. But they sat down sixteen to
dinner; and, very shortly after, came three others in the persons of
Dyán and Sir Lakshman Singh, with his distinguished friend Mahomed
Inayat Khan, from Hyderabad. Nothing Thea enjoyed better than getting a
mixed batch of men together and hearing them talk--especially shop; for
then she knew their hearts were in it. They were happy.
And to-night, her chance assortment was amazingly varied, even for
India:--Army, 'Political,' Civil; P.W.D. and Native States; New India,
in the person of Dyán; and not least, the 'medical mish' pair; an
element rich in mute inglorious heroism, as the villagers and 'depressed
classes' of India know. She took keen delight in the racial interplay of
thought and argument, with Roy, as it were, for bridge-builder between.
How he would relish the idea! He seemed very much in the vein this
evening, especially since his grandfather arrived. He was clearly making
an impression on Mr Mayne and Inayat Khan; and a needle-prick of remorse
touched her heart. For Arúna, annexed by Captain Martin's subaltern, was
watching him too, when she fancied no one was looking; and Lance,
attentively silent, was probably laying deep plans for his capture. A
wicked shame--but still...!
As a matter of fact, Lance, too, was troubled with faint compunction. He
had never seen Roy in this kind of company, nor in this particular vein.
And, reluctantly, he admitted that it did seem rather a waste of his
mentally reviving vigour hauling him back to the common round of tennis
and dances and polo--yes, even sacred polo--when he was so dead keen on
this infernal agitation business, and seemed to know such a deuce of a
lot about it all.
Lance himself knew far too little; and was anxious to hear more, for the
intimate, practical reason that he was not quite happy about his Sikh
troop. The Pathan lot were all right. But the Sikhs--his pride and
joy--were being 'got at' by those devils in the City. And, if these men
could be believed, 'things' were going to be very much worse; not only
'down country,' but also in the Punjab, India's sure shield against the
invader. To a Desmond, the mere suggestion of the Punjab turning traitor
was as if one impugned the courage of his father or the honour of his
mother; so curiously personal is India's hold upon the hearts of
Englishmen who come under her spell.
So Lance listened intently, if a little anxiously, to all that Thea's
'mixed biscuits' had to say on that absorbing subject. For to-night shop
held the field: if that could be called shop, which vitally concerned
the fate of England and India, and of British dominion in the East.
Agitation against the sane measures embodied in the Rowlatt Bills was
already astir, like bubbles round a pot before it boils. And Inayat Khan
had come straight from Bombay, where the National Congress had rejected
with scorn the latest palliative from Home; had demanded the release of
all revolutionaries, and wholesale repeal of laws against sedition. Here
was shop sufficiently ominous to overshadow all other topics: and there
was no _gêne_, no constraint. The Englishmen could talk freely in the
presence of cultured Indians who stood for Jaipur and Hyderabad, since
both States were loyal to the core.
Dyán, like Lance, spoke little and pondered much on the talk of these
men, whose straight speech and thoughts were refreshing as their own sea
breezes after the fumes of rhetoric, the fog of false values that had
bemused his brain these three years. Strange how all the ugliness and
pain of hate had shrivelled away; how he could even shake hands,
untroubled, with that 'imperialistic bureaucrat' the Commissioner of
Delhi, whom he might have been told off, any day, to 'remove from this
mortal coil.' Strange to sit there, over against him, while he puffed
his cigar and talked, without fear, of increasing antagonism, increasing
danger to himself and his kind.
"There's no sense in disguising the unpalatable truth that New India
hates us," said he in his gruff, deliberate voice. "Present company
excepted, I hope!"
He gravely inclined his head towards Dyán, who responded mutely with a
flutter at his heart. Impossible! The man could not suspect----?
And the man, looking him frankly in the eyes, added: "The spirit of the
Mutiny's not extinct--and we know it, those of us that count."
Dyán simply sat dumfounded. It was Sir Lakshman who said, in his guarded
tone: "Nevertheless, sir, the bulk of our people are loyal and
peaceable. Only I fear there are some in England who do not count that
fact to their credit."
"If they ever become anything else, it won't be to _our_ credit," put in
Roy. "If we can't stand up to bluster and sedition with that moral force
at our backs, we shall deserve to go under."
"Well spoken, Roy," said his grandfather still more quietly. "Let us
hope it is not yet too late. Sadi says, 'The fountain-head of a spring
can be blocked with a stick; but in full flood, it cannot be crossed,
even on an elephant.'"
They exchanged a glance that stirred Roy's pulses and gave him
confidence to go on: "I don't believe it is too late. But what bothers
me is this--are we treating our moral force as it deserves? Are we
giving them loyalty in return for theirs--the sort they can understand?
With a dumb executive and voluble 'patriots,' persuading or
intimidating, the poor beggars haven't a dog's chance, unless we openly
stand by them; openly smite our enemies--and theirs."
He boldly addressed himself to Mayne, the sole symbol of authority
present; and the Commissioner listened, with a gleam of amused approval
in his eye.
"You're young, Mr Sinclair--which doesn't mean you're wrong! Most of us,
in our limited fashion, are trying to do what we can on those lines.
But, after spending half a lifetime in this climate, doing our utmost to
give the peasant--_and_ the devil--his due, we're apt to grow
cynical----"
"Not to mention suicidal!" grunted the slave of work and whisky. "We
Canal coolies--hardly visible to the naked eye--are adding something
like an Egypt a year to the Empire. But, bless you, England takes no
notice. Only let some underbred planter or raw subaltern bundle an
Indian out of his carriage, or a drunken Tommy kick his servant in the
spleen, and the whole British Constitution comes down about our ears!"
"Very true, sir--very true!" Inayat Khan leaned forward. His teeth
gleamed in the dark of his beard. His large firm-featured face abounded
in good sense and good humour. "How shall a man see justly if he holds
the telescope wrong way round, as too many do over there. It also
remains true, however, that the manners of certain Anglo-Indians create
a lot of bad feeling. Your so-called reforms do not interest the masses
or touch their imagination. But the boot of the low-class European
touches their backs and their pride and hardens their hearts. That is
only human nature. In the East a few gold grains of courtesy touch the
heart more than a _khillat_[18] of political hotch-potch. I
myself--though it is getting dangerous to say so!--am frankly opposed to
this uncontrolled passion for reform. When all have done their duty in
this great struggle, why such undignified clamour for rewards, which are
now being flung back in the giver's teeth. It has become a vicious
circle. It was British policy in the first place--not so?--that stirred
up this superficial ferment; and now it grows alarming, it is doctored
with larger doses of the same medicine. We Indians who know how little
the bulk of India has really changed, could laugh at the tamasha of
Western fancy-dress, in small matters; but time for laughing has gone
by. Time has come for saying firmly--all rights and aspirations will be
granted, stopping _short_ of actual government--otherwise----!"
He flung up his hands, looked round at the listening faces, and realised
how completely he had let himself go. "Forgive me, Colonel. I fear I am
talking too much," he said in a changed tone.
"Indeed no," Colonel Leigh assured him warmly. "In these difficult days,
loyal and courageous friends like yourself are worth their weight in
gold mohurs!"
Visibly flattered, the Moslem surveyed his own bulky person with a
twinkle of amusement. "If value should go by weight, Inayat Khan would
be worth a king's ransom! But I assure you, Colonel, your country has
many hundreds of friends like myself all over India, if only she would
seek them out and give them encouragement--as Mr Sinclair said--instead
of wasting it on volubles, who will never cease making trouble till
India is in a blaze."
As the man's patent sincerity had warmed the hearts of his hearers, so
the pointed truth of that last pricked them sharply and probed deep. For
they knew themselves powerless; mere atoms of the whirling dust-cloud,
raised, in passing, by the chariot-wheels of Progress--or perdition?
The younger men rose briskly, as if to shake off some physical
discomfort. Dyán--very much aware of Arúna and the subaltern--approached
them with a friendly remark. Roy and Lance said, "Play up, Thea! Your
innings," almost in a breath--and crooked little fingers.
Thea needed no second bidding. While the men talked, an insidious
depression had stolen over her spirit--and brooded there, light and
formless as a river mist. Half an hour with her fiddle, and Lance at his
best, completely charmed it away. But the creepiness of it had been very
real: and the memory remained.
* * * * *
When all the others had dispersed, she lingered over the fire with Roy,
while Lance, at the piano, with diplomatic intent, drifted into his
friend's favourite Nocturne--the Twelfth; that inimitable rendering of a
mood, hushed yet exalted, soaring yet brooding, 'the sky and the nest as
well.' The two near the fire knew every bar by heart, but as the liquid
notes stole out into the room, their fitful talk stopped dead.
Lance was playing superbly, giving every note its true value; the
cadence rising and falling like waves of a still sea; softer and softer;
till the last note faded away, ghostlike--a sigh rather than a sound.
Roy remained motionless, one elbow on the mantelpiece. Thea's lashes
were wet with the tears of rarefied emotion--tears that neither prick
nor burn. The silence itself seemed part of the music; a silence it were
desecration to break. Without a word to Roy, she crossed the room;
kissed Lance good-night; clung a moment to his hands that had woven the
spell, smiling her thanks, her praise; and slipped away, leaving the two
together.
Roy subsided into a chair. Lance came over to the fire and stood there
warming his hands.
It was a minute or two before Roy looked up and nodded his
acknowledgments.
"You're a magician, old chap. You play that thing a damn sight too
well."
He did not add that his friend's music had called up a vision of the
Home drawing-room, clear in every detail; Lance at the piano--his last
week-end from Sandhurst--playing the 'thing' by request; himself
lounging on the hearthrug, his head against his mother's knee; the very
feel of her silk skirt against his cheek, of her fingers on his hair....
Nor did he add that the vision had spurred his reluctant spirit to a
resolve.
The more practical soul of Lance Desmond had already dropped back to
earth, as a lark drops after pouring out its heart in the blue. In spite
of concern for Roy, he was thinking again of his Sikhs.
"I suppose one can take it," he remarked thoughtfully, "that Vinx and
Mayne and that good old Moslem johnny know what they're talking about?"
Roy smiled--having jumped at the connection. "I'm afraid," he said, "one
can."
"You think big trouble is coming--organised trouble?"
"I do. That is, unless some 'strong silent man' has the pluck to put his
foot down in time, and chance the consequences to himself. Thank God,
we've another John Lawrence in the Punjab."
"And it's the Punjab that matters----"
"Especially a certain P.C. Regiment--eh?"
Lance was in arms at once:--that meant he had touched the spot. "No
flies on the Regiment. Trust Paul. It's only--I get bothered about a
Sikh here and there."
"Quite so. The blighters have taken particular pains with the Sikhs.
Realising that they'll need some fighting stuff. And Lahore's a bad
place. I expect they sneak off to meetings in the City."
"Devil a doubt of it. Mind you, I trust them implicitly. But, outside
their own line, they're credulous as children--_you_ know."
"Rather. In Delhi, I had a fair sample of it."
Another pause. It suddenly occurred to Lance that his precious Sikhs
were not supposed to be the topic of the evening. "You're quite fit
again, Roy. And those blooming fools chucked you like a cast horse----"
he broke out in a spurt of vexation. "I wish to God you were back with
your old Squadron."
And Roy said from his heart, "I wish to God I was."
"Paul misses you, though he never says much. The new lot from home are
good chaps. Full of brains and theories. But no knowledge. Can't get at
the men. You could still help unofficially in all sorts of ways.--Why
not come along back with me? Haven't you been pottering round here long
enough?"
Roy shook his head. "Thanks all the same, for the invite. Of course I'd
love it. But--I've things to do. There's a novel taking shape--and
other oddments. I've done precious little writing here. Too much
entangled with human destinies. I _must_ bury myself somewhere and get a
move on. April it is. I won't fail you."
Lance kicked an unoffending log. "Confound your old novel!"--A
portentous silence. "See here, Roy, I don't want to badger you.
But--well--if I'm to go back in moderate peace of mind, I want--certain
guarantees."
Roy lifted his eyes. Lance frankly encountered them; and there ensued
one of those intimate pauses in which the unspeakable is said.
Roy looked away. "Arúna?" He let fall the word barely above his breath.
"Just that."
"You're frightened--both of you? Oh yes--I've seen----" He fell silent,
staring into the fire. When he spoke again, it was in the same low,
detached tone. "You two needn't worry. The guarantee you're after was
given ... in July 1914 ... under the beeches ... at Home. _She_
foresaw--understood. But she couldn't foresee ... the harder tug--now
she's gone. The ... association ... and all that."
"Is it--only that?"
"It's mostly that."
To Lance Desmond, very much a man, it seemed the queerest state of
things; and he knew only a fragment of the truth.
"Look here, Roy," he urged again. "Wouldn't the Punjab really be best?
Aren't you plunging a bit too deep----? Does your father realise? Thea
feels----"
"Yes. Thea feels, bless her! But there's a thing or two she doesn't
_know_!" He lifted his head and spoke in an easier voice. "One queer
thing--it may interest you. Those few weeks of living as an Indian among
Indians--amazingly intensified all the other side of me. I never felt
keener on the Sinclair heritage and all it stands for. I never felt
keener on you two than all this time while I've been concentrating every
faculty on--the other two. Sounds odd. But it's a fact."
"Good. And does--your cousin know ... about the guarantee?"
"N--no. That's still to come."
"_When----?_"
Roy straightly returned his friend's challenging gaze. "Damn you!" he
said softly. Then, in a graver tone: "You're right. I've been shirking
it. Seemed a shame to spoil Christmas. Remains--the New Year. I fixed it
up--while you were playing that thing, to be exact."
"Did I--contribute?"
"You did--if that gives you any satisfaction!" He rose, stretched
himself and yawned ostentatiously. "My God, I wish it was over."
Desmond said nothing. If Roy loved him more for one quality than
another, it was for his admirable gift of silence.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 18: Dress of honour.]