"Well, if you _will_ be obstinate, it's my duty to open your eyes; or,

of course, I wouldn't talk so to an unmarried girl. There's another

thing--any doctor will tell you--a particular form of consumption

carries off half the wretched children of these mixed marriages. A

mercy, perhaps; but think of it----! Your own! And you know perfectly

well the moral deterioration----"

"There's none of that about _Roy_." Rose grew warmer still. "And _you_

know perfectly well most of it comes from the circumstances, the stigma,

the type of parent. But you can say what you please. I'm of age. I love

him. I intend to marry him."

"Well, you won't do it from _my_ house. I wash my hands of the whole

affair."

She rose, upon her ultimatum, a-quiver with righteous anger, even to the

realistic cherries in her hat. The girl rose also, outwardly composed,

inwardly dismayed.

"Thank you. Now I know where I stand. And _you_ won't say a word to Roy.

You _mustn't_--really----" She almost pleaded. "He worships his mother

in quite the old-fashioned way. He simply couldn't see--the other point

of view. Besides--he's ill ... unhappy. Whatever _your_ attitude forces

one to say, can only be said by me."

"I don't take orders from my own daughter," Mrs Elton retorted

ungraciously. She was in no humour for bargaining or dictation. "But I'm

sure _I've_ no wish to talk to him. I'll give you a week or ten days to

make your plans. But whenever you have him here, I shall be out. And if

you come to your senses--you can let me know."

On that she departed, leaving Rose feeling battered and shaken, and

horribly uncertain what--in the face of that bombshell--she intended to

do: she, who had made Lance suffer cruelly, and evoked a tragic

situation between him and Roy, largely in order to avoid a clash that

would have been as nothing compared with this...!

Her sensations were in a whirl. But somehow--she _must_ pull it through.

Home life was becoming intolerable. And--for several cogent reasons--she

wanted Roy. If need be, she would tell him, diplomatically; dissociating

herself from her mother's attitude.

And yet--her mother had said things that would stick; hateful things,

that might be true....

Decidedly, she could not write him a long letter: only enough to bring

him back to her in a relenting mood. Sitting down again, she unearthed

from her black-and-silver bag a fountain pen and half a sheet of paper.

"MY DARLING ROY" (she wrote),--

"Your letter _did_ hurt--badly. Perhaps I deserved it. All I can

say till we meet, is--forgive me, if you can, because of Lance.

It's rather odd--though you _are_ my lover, and I suppose you do

care still--I can think of no stronger appeal than that. He cared

so for us both, in his big splendid way. Can't we stand by each

other?

"You ask me to make allowances. Will you be generous, and do the

same on a larger scale for your sincerely loving (and not

altogether worthless)

ROSE?"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: Government by order.]

CHAPTER XII.

"She had a step that walked unheard,

It made the stones like grass;

Yet that light step had crushed a heart

As light as that step was."

--W.H. DAVIES.

At last, Roy was actually coming. The critical moment was upon them; and

Rose sat alone in the drawing-room awaiting him.

Her mother was out; had arranged to be out for the evening also. The

strain between them still continued; and it told most on Rose. The

cat-like element in her loved comfort; and an undercurrent of clash was

peculiarly irritating in her present sore, uncertain state of heart.

Weeks of it, she knew, would scarcely leave a dent on her mother's

leathern temperament. When it came to a tug the tougher nature scored,

which was one reason why she had so skilfully avoided tugs hitherto.

True, she was of age; and her father's small legacy gave her a measure

of independence. But how could one set about getting married in the face

of open opposition? And--how keep the truth from Roy? Or tone it down,

so that he would not go off at a tangent straightaway?

Assuredly the Fates had conspired to strip her headlong romance of its

gilded trappings. But her moment for marriage had come. She was sick to

death of the Anglo-Indian round--from the unattached standpoint, at

least. Roy fascinated her as few men had done; and she had been

deliberately trying to ignore the effect of her mother's brutal

frankness. Their coming together again, in these changed conditions,

would be the ultimate test. Such a chasm of distance seemed to yawn

between that tender parting in her boudoir and this critical

reunion--in another world....

Sounds of arrival brought her to her feet; but she checked the natural

impulse to welcome him in the verandah. Her innate sense of drama shrank

from possible awkwardness, a false step, at the start.

And now he appeared in the doorway--very straight and slim in his grey

suit, with the sorrowful black band on his arm.

"Rose!" he cried--and stood gazing at her, pulses hammering, brain

dizzy. The mere sight of her brought back too vividly the memory of

those April days that he had been resolutely shutting out of his mind.

His pause--the shock of his changed aspect--held her motionless also. He

looked older, more sallow; his sensitive mouth compressed; no lurking

gleam in his eyes. He seemed actually less good-looking than she

remembered; for anguish is no beautifier.

So standing, they mutely confronted the change in themselves--in each

other; then Rose swept forward, both hands held out.

"Roy--my darling--_what_ you must have been through! Can you--will

you--in spite of all----?"

Next moment, in his silent, vehement fashion, he was straining her to

him; kissing her eyes, her hair, her lips; not in simple lover's

ecstasy, but in a fervour of repressed passion, touched with tragedy,

with pain....

Then he held her from him, to refresh his tired eyes with the sheer

beauty of her; and was struck at once by the absence of colour; the wide

black sash, the black velvet round her throat and hair.

He touched the velvet, looking his question. She nodded, drawing in her

lip to steady it.

"I felt--I must. You don't mind?"

"_Mind_----?--Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever really _mind_ things

any more."

His face worked. That queer dizziness took him again. With an incoherent

apology, he sat down rather abruptly, and leaned forward, his head

between his hands, hiding the emotion he could not altogether control.

Rose stood beside him, feeling helpless and vaguely aggrieved. He had

just got back to her, after a two weeks' parting, and he sat there lost

in an access of grief that left her quite out of account. Inadvertently

there flashed the thought, "Whatever Lance might have suffered, he would

not succumb." It startled her. She had never so compared them before....

Then, looking down at his bowed head, compunction seized her, and

tenderness, that rarely entered into her feeling for men. She could

think of nothing to say that would not sound idiotically commonplace. So

she laid her hand on his hair, and moved it caressingly now and then.

She felt a tremor go through him. He half withdrew his head, checked

himself, and capturing her hand, pressed it to his lips, that were hot

and feverish.

"Roy--what is it? What went wrong?" she asked softly.

He looked up now with a fair imitation of a smile. "Just--an old memory.

It was dear of you. Ungracious of me."--Pain and perplexity went from

her. She slipped to her knees beside him, and his arm enclosed her.

"Sorry to behave like this. But I'm not very fit. And--seeing you,

brought it all back so sharply! It's been--a bit of a strain, this last

week. A letter from Thea--brave, of course; but broken utterly. The

wedding too: and that beast of a journey fairly finished me."

She leaned closer, comforting him by the feel of her nearness. Then her

practical brain suggested needs more pedestrian, none the less

essential.

"Dearest--you're simply exhausted. How about tea--or a peg?"

He pleaded for a peg, if permissible. She fetched it herself; made tea;

plied him with sandwiches and sugared cakes, for which he still retained

his boyish weakness.

But talking proved difficult. There were uncomfortable gaps. In their

first uplifted moment all had seemed well. Love-making was simple,

elemental, satisfying. Beyond the initial glamour and passion of

courtship they had scarcely adventured, when the fabric of their world

was shattered by the startling events of those four days. Both were

realising--as they stepped cautiously among the fragments--that, for all

their surface intimacy, they were still strangers underneath.

Roy took refuge in talk about Lahore; the high tribute paid to the

conduct of all troops--British and Indian--and police, under peculiarly

exasperating circumstances, the C.O.'s conviction that unless sterner

measures were taken--and adhered to--there would be more outbreaks, at

shorter intervals, better organised....

He hoped her charming air of interest was genuine, but felt by no means

sure. And all the while, he was craving to know what she had to say for

herself; yet doubting whether he could stand the lightest touch on his

open wound. Lance had begged him not to hurt her. Had it ever occurred

to that devout lover how sharply she might hurt him?

Tea and a restful hour in an arm-chair eased the strain a little. Then

Rose suggested the garden, knowing him susceptible to the large healing

influences of earth and sky; also with diplomatic intent to draw him

away from the house before her mother's meteoric visitation.

And she was only just in time. The rattle of rickshaw wheels came up the

main path two minutes after they had turned out of it towards a

favourite nook, which she had strangely grown to love in the last two

weeks.

"Poor darling! You've just missed Mother!" She condoled with him,

smiling sidelong under her lashes; and she almost blessed her maternal

enemy for bringing back the familiar gleam into his eyes.

"Bad luck! Ought we to go in again?"

"Gracious, no. She's only tearing home to change for an early dinner at

Penshurst and the theatre. Anyway, please note, you're immune from the

formalities. We're going to have a peaceful time, quite independent of

Simla rushings. Just ourselves to ourselves."

"Good."

It was an asset with men--second only to her beauty--this gift for

creating a restful atmosphere.

Her nook, in an angle above the narrow path, was a grassy bank, looking

across crumpled ranges--velvet-soft in the level light--to the still

purity of the snows.

"Rather nice, isn't it?" she said. "I'm not given to mooning out of

doors; but I've spent several evenings here ... lately."

"It's sanctuary," Roy murmured; but his sigh was tinged with

apprehension. Flinging off his hat, he reclined full length on the

gentle slope, hands under his head, and let the healing rays flow into

the deeps of his troubled being.

Rose sat upright beside him, her fingers locked loosely round one raised

knee. She was troubled too, and quite at a loss how to begin.

"So you've not been going out much?" he asked, after a prolonged pause.

"No--how could I--with you, so unhappy, down there--and...."--She

deliberately met his eyes; and the look in them impelled her to ask:

"_What_ is it, Roy--lurking in your mind?"

"Am I--to be frank?"

She shivered. "It sounds--rather chilly. But I suppose we'd better take

our cold plunge--and get it over!"

"Well"--he hesitated palpably. "It was only a natural wonder--if you

care ... all that ... now he's gone, how could you deliberately hurt him

so--while he lived?"

She drew in her lip. It was going to be more unsteadying than she had

foreseen.

"How _can_ a woman explain to a man the simple fact that she is

incurably--perhaps unforgivably--a woman?"

"I don't know. I hoped you could--up to a point," said Roy, looking away

to the snows and remembering, suddenly, _that_ was where he ought to be

now--with Lance--always Lance: no other thought or presence seemed vital

to him, these days. Yet Rose remained beautiful and desirable--and

clearly she loved him.

"It doesn't make things easier, you know," she was saying, in her cool,

low voice, "to feel you are patently regretting events that, unhappily,

did hurt--him; but also--gave me to you...."

Her beauty, her evident pain, penetrated the settled misery that

enveloped him like an atmosphere.

"Darling--forgive me!" He reached out, pulling her hands apart, and his

fingers closed hard on hers. "I'm only trying--clumsily--to

understand...."

"And goodness knows I'm willing to help you," she sighed, returning his

pressure. "But--I'm afraid the little I can say for myself won't do much

to regild my halo--if there's any of it left! I gather you aren't very

well up in women, or girls, Roy?"

"No--I'm not. Perhaps it makes me seem to you a bit of a fool?"

"Quite the reverse. It's all along been a part of your charm."

"My--charm?"

There was more of tenderness than amusement in her low laugh.

"Precisely! If you didn't possess--_some_ magnetic quality, could I have

been drawn away from a man--like Lance, when I'd nearly made up my

mind--to face the music."

For answer, he kissed her captured hand.

Then: "Roy, if it doesn't hurt too much," she urged, "will you tell me

first--just--what Lance said?"

It would hurt, horridly. But it was as well she should know; and not a

word need he withhold. Could there be a finer tribute to his friend? It

was his own share in their last unforgettable talk that could not be

reproduced.

"Yes--I'll tell you," he said. And, his half-closed eyes resting on the

sunlit hills, he told her, in a voice from which all feeling was

carefully expunged. Only so could he achieve the telling; and she

listened without interruption, for which he felt grateful,

exceedingly....

When it was over he merely moved his head and looked up at her; and she

returned his look, her eyes heavy with tears. Mutually their fingers

tightened.

"Thank you," she said. "It makes me ... ashamed, but it makes me proud."

"It made _me_ angry and bewildered," said Roy. "If you really were ...

coming his way, what the devil did _I_ do to upset it all? Of course I

admired you; and I was interested--on his account. But--I had no

thought--I was absorbed in other things----"

She nodded slowly, not looking at him. "Quite so. And I suppose--being

me--I didn't choose that a man should dance with me, ride with me,

obviously admire me, and yet remain absorbed in other things. And--being

you--of course it never struck you that, for my kind of girl, your

provocatively casual attitude almost amounted to a challenge.

Besides--as I said--you were charming; you were different. Perhaps--if

I'd felt a shade less sure--of Lance, if he'd had the wit even to

_seem_ keen on some one else ... he might have saved himself. As it

was--you were irresistible."

She heard him grit his teeth; and turned with swift compunction.

"My poor Roy! Am I jarring you badly? I suppose, if I talked till

midnight, I'd never succeed in making a man like you understand how

purely instinctive it all is. Analysed, like this, it sounds

cold-blooded. But, it's just--second nature. He--Lance--understood up to

a point. That's why he was aggressive that day: oh--furiously angry; all

because of you. The pair you are! He said if I fooled you, and didn't

play fair, he'd back out, or insist on a _pucca_ engagement.

And--yes--it did have the wrong effect. It made me wonder--if I _could_

marry a man, however splendid, who owned such exacting standards and

such a hot temper. And there were you--an unknown quantity, with the

Banter-Wrangle discreetly in pursuit. A supreme inducement in

itself!--Yes, distinctly, that afternoon was a turning-point. Just Lance

losing his temper, and you coolly forgetting an arrangement with me----"

She paused, looking back over it all; felt Roy's hold slacken and

unobtrusively withdrew her hand.

"Soon after Kapurthala, he was angry again. And that time, I'm afraid I

reminded him that our engagement was only 'on' conditionally; that if he

started worrying at me, it would soon be unconditionally off----"

"So it _should_ have been!" Roy jerked up on to his elbow, and

confronted her with challenging directness. "Once you could speak like

that, feel like that, you'd no _right_ to keep him hanging on--hoping

when there was practically no hope. It wasn't playing the game----"

This time she kept her eyes averted, and a slow colour invaded her face.

There was a point beyond which feminine frankness could not go. She

could not--would not--tell this unflatteringly critical lover of hers

that it was not in her nature to let the one man go till she felt

morally sure of the other.

Roy had only a profile view of her warm cheek, her sensitive nostril

a-quiver, her lip drawn in. And when she spoke, it was in the tense,

passionate tone of that evening at Anarkalli.

"Oh yes--it's easy work sitting in judgment on other people. I told you

I hadn't much of a case--I asked you to make allowances. You clearly

can't. _He_ asked you--not to hurt me. You clearly feel you must.

Yet--in justice to you both--I'm doing what I can. I've never before

condescended to explain myself--almost excuse myself--to _any_ man; and

I certainly never shall again. It strikes me you'd better apply your own

indictment ... to your own case. If _you_ can think and feel ... as you

seem to do, better face the fact and be done with it----"

But Roy, startled and penitent, was sitting upright by now; and, when

she would have risen, he seized her, crushing her to him, would she or

no. In her pain and anger she more than ever drew him. In his utter

heart-loneliness, he more than ever needed her. And the reminder of

Lance crowned all.

"My darling--don't go off at a tangent, that way," he implored her, his

lips against her hair. "For me--it's a sacred bond. It can't be snapped

in a fit of temper--like a bit of knotted thread. I'll accept ... what I

can't see clear. We'll stand by each other, as you said. Learn one

another--Rose...! My dearest girl--_don't_----!"

He strained her closer, in mingled bewilderment and distress. For

Rose--who trod lightly on the hearts of men, Rose--the serene and

self-assured--was sobbing brokenly in his arms....

Before the end of the evening, they were more or less themselves again;

the threatened storm averted; the trouble patched up and summarily

dismissed, as only lovers can dismiss a cloud that intrudes upon their

heaven of blue.

CHAPTER XIII.

"Le pire douleur est de ne pas, pleurer ce qu'on a perdu."

--DE COULEVAIN.

But as days passed, both grew increasingly aware of the patch; and both

very carefully concealed the fact. They spent a week of peaceful

seclusion from Simla and her restless activities. Roy scarcely set eyes

on Mrs Elton; but--Rose having skilfully prepared the ground--he merely

gave her credit for her mother's unusual display of tact.

Neither was in the vein for dances or tennis parties. They rode out to

Mashobra and Fagu. They spent long days, picnicking in the Glen. Roy

discovered, with satisfaction, that Rose had a weakness for being read

to and a fair taste in literature, so long as it was not poetry. He also

discovered--with a twinge of dismay--that if they were many hours

together, he found reading easier than talking.

On the whole, they spent a week that should, by rights, have been ideal

for new-made lovers; yet, at heart, both felt vaguely troubled and

disillusioned.

Pain and parting and harsh realities seemed to have rubbed the bloom off

their exotic romance. And for Rose the trouble struck deep. She had

deliberately willed to put aside her own innate shrinking from the

Indian strain in Roy. But she reckoned without the haunting effect of

her mother's plain speaking. At first she had flatly ignored it; then

she fortified her secret qualms by devising a practical plan for getting

away to a friend in Kashmir. There was a sister in Simla going to join

her. They could travel together. Roy could follow on. And there they two

could be quietly married without fuss or audible comment from their

talkative little world.

It was not precisely her idea of the manner in which she--Rose

Arden--should be given in marriage. But the main point was that--if she

could help it--her mother should not score in the matter of Roy. _Could_

she help it? That was the question persistently knocking at her heart.

And she was only a degree less troubled by the perverse revival of her

feeling for Lance. Vanished--his hold on her deeper nature seemed

mysteriously to strengthen. Memories crowded in, unbidden, of their

golden time together just before Roy appeared on the scene; till she

almost arrived at blaming her deliberately chosen lover for having come

between them and landed her in her present distracting position. For now

it was the ghost of Lance that threatened to come between her and Roy;

and the irony of it cut her to the quick. If she had dealt unfairly by

these two men, whose standards were leagues above her own, she was not,

it seemed, to escape her share of suffering....

For Roy's heart also knew the chill of secret disillusion. The ardour

and thrill of his courtship seemed fatally to have suffered eclipse.

When they were together, the lure of her was potent still. It was in the

gaps between that he felt irked, more and more, by incipient criticism.

In the course of that first talk, she had unwittingly stripped herself

of the glamour that was more than half her charm; and at bottom his

Eastern subconsciousness was jarred by her casual attitude to the

sanctities of the man and woman relation, as instilled into him by his

mother. When he quarrelled with her treatment of Lance, she saw it

merely as a rather exaggerated concern for his friend. There was that in

it, of course; but there was more.

Yet undeniably Desmond's urgent plea influenced his own effort to ignore

the still small voice within him, that protested against the whole

affair. At another time he would have taken it for a clear intimation

from his mother; but she seemed to have lost, or deserted him, these

days. All he could firmly hold on to, at present, was his loyalty to

Lance, his duty to Rose; and both seemed to point in the same

direction.

It struck him as strange that she did not mention the wedding; and she

had been so full of it that very first evening. Once, when he casually

asked if any fixtures were decided on yet, she had smiled and answered,

"No; not yet." And some other topic had intervened.

It was only a degree less strange that she spoke so often of Lance,

without attempting to disguise her admiration--and something more. And

in himself--strangest of all--this surprising manifestation stirred no

flicker of jealousy. It seemed a link, rather, drawing, them nearer

together. She frankly encouraged talk of their school-days that involved

fresh revealings of Lance at every turn: talk that was anodyne or

anguish according to his mood.

She also encouraged him to unearth his deserted novel and read her the

opening chapters. In Lahore, he had longed for that moment; now he

feared lest it too sharply emphasise their inner apartness. For the

Indian atmosphere was strong in the book; and the Indian atmosphere

jarred. The effect of the riots had merely been repressed. It still

simmered underneath.

Only once she had broken out on the subject; and had been distinctly

restive when he demurred at the injustice of sweeping indictments

against the whole country, because a handful of extremists were trying

to wreck the ship. Personally he blamed England for virtually assisting

in the process. It had come near to an altercation--very rare event with

Rose; and it had left Roy feeling more unsettled than ever.

A few readings of his novel made him feel more uncomfortable still. Like

all true artists, he listened, as he read, with the mind of his

audience; and intuitively, he felt her antagonism to the Indian element

in his characters, his writing, his theme.

For three days he persisted. Then he gave it up.

They were sitting in their nook; Rose leaning back, her eyes half

closed, gazing across the valley. In the middle of a flagrantly Indian

chapter, he broke off: determined to take it lightly; not to make a

grievance of it: equally determined she should hear no more.

For a few seconds she did not realise. Then she turned and looked up at

him. "Well----? Is that all?"

"Yes. That's all--so far as you're concerned!"

Her brows went up in the old beguiling way. He felt her trying to hide

her thought, and held up a warning finger.

"Now, don't put it on! Frankly--isn't she relieved? Hasn't she borne the

infliction like a saint?"

The blood stirred visibly under her pallor. "It was _not_ an infliction.

Your writing's wonderful. Quite uncanny--the way you get inside people

and things. If there's more--go on."

"There's a lot more. But I'm not going on--even at her Majesty's express

command!--Look here, Rose ... let be." He suddenly changed his tone. "I

can feel how it bothers you. So--why pretend...?"

She looked down; twisting her opal ring, making the delicate colours

flash and change.

"It's a pity--isn't it?"--she seemed to muse aloud--"that more than half

of life is made up of pretending. It becomes rather a delicate

problem--fixing boundary lines. I _do_ admire your gift, Roy. And you're

so intensely human. But I confess, I--I _am_ jerked by parts of your

theme. Doesn't all this animosity and open vilification affect your own

feeling about--things, the least bit?"

"Yes. It does. Only--not in your way. It makes me unhappy, because the

real India--snowed under with specious talk and bitter invective--has

less chance now than ever of being understood by those who can't see

below the surface."

"Me--for instance?"

He sighed. "Oh, scores and scores of you, here and at Home. And scores

of others, who have far less excuse. That's why one feels bound to do

what one can...."

His thoughts on that score went too deep for utterance.

But Rose was engaged in her own purely personal deliberations.

"You might want to come out again ... afterwards?"

"Yes--I should hope to. Besides ... there are my cousins...."

"Indian ones----?"

"Yes. Very clever. Very charming. Rose ... you've been six years in

India. Have you ever met, in a friendly way, a cultivated, well-born

Indian--man or woman?"

"N-no. Not worth mentioning."

"And ... you haven't wanted to?"

He felt her shrink from the direct question.

"Why press the point, Roy? It needn't make any real difference--need

it--between you and me?"

Her counter-question was still more direct, more searching.

"Perhaps not--now," he said. "It might ... make a lot ...

afterwards----"

At that critical juncture their talk was interrupted by a peon with a

note that required immediate attention: and Roy, left alone, felt

increasingly disillusioned and dismayed.

Later on, to his relief, Rose suggested a ride. She seemed suddenly in a

more elusive mood than he had experienced since their engagement. She

did not refer again to his novel, or to the thorny topic of India; and

their parting embrace was chilled by a shadow of constraint.

"_How_ would it be--afterwards?" he wondered, riding back to the Club,

at a foot's pace, feeling tired and feverish and gravely puzzled as to

whether it might not--on all counts--be the greater wrong to make a

fetish of a bond so rashly forged.

To-day, very distinctly he was aware of the inner tug he had been trying

to ignore. And to-day it was more imperative; less easily stilled. Could

it be ... veritably, his mother, trying to reach him--and failing, for

the first time?

That thought prompted the test question--if _she_ were alive, how would

he feel about bringing Rose home as daughter-in-law, as mother of her

grandson ... the gift of gifts? If she were alive, could Rose herself

have faced the conjunction? And to him she was still verily alive--or

had been, till his infatuate passion had blinded him to everything but

one face, one form, one desire.

That night there came to him--on the verge of sleep--the old thrilling

sensation that she was there--yearning to him across an impassable

barrier. And this time he knew--with a bitter certainty--that the

barrier was within himself. Every nerve in him craved--as he had not

craved this long while--the unmistakable _sense_ of her that seemed gone

past recall. Desperately, he strained every faculty to penetrate the

resistant medium that withheld her from him--in vain.

Wearied out, with disappointment and futile effort, he fell

asleep--praying for a dream visitation to revive his shaken faith. None

came; and conviction seized him that none would come, until....

One could not, simultaneously, live on intimate terms with earth and

heaven. And Rose was earth in its most alluring guise. More: she had

awakened in him sensations and needs that, at the moment, she alone

could satisfy. But if it amounted to a choice; for him, there could be

no question....

* * * * *

Next day and the day after, a sharp return of fever kept him in bed: and

a touch of his father in him tempted him to write, sooner than face the

strain of a final scene. But moral cowardice was not among his failings;

also unquestionably--if irrationally--he wanted to see her, to hold her

in his arms once again....

On the third morning he sent her a note saying he was better; he would

be round for tea; and received a verbal answer. Miss Sahib sent her

salaam. She would be at home.

So, about half-past three, he rode out to the house on Elysium Hill,

wondering how--and, at moments, whether--he was going to pull it

through....

Her smile of welcome almost unmanned him. He simply did not feel fit for

the strain. It would be so much easier and more restful to yield to her

spell.

"I'm so sorry. Idiotic of me," was all he said; and went forward to take

her in his arms.

But she, without a word, laid both hands on him, holding him back.

"_Rose!_ What's the matter?" he cried, genuinely upset. Nothing

undermines a resolve like finding it forestalled.

"Simply--it's all over. We're beaten, Roy," she said in a queer,

repressed voice. "We can't go on with this. And--you know it."

"But--darling!" He took her by the arms.

"No ... _no_!" The passionate protest was addressed to herself as much

as to him. "Listen, Roy. I've never hated saying anything more--but it's

true. You said, last time,--'Why pretend?' And that struck home. I knew

I had been pretending hard--because I wanted to--for more than a week.

You made me realise ... one couldn't go on at it all one's married

life.--But, my dear, what a wretch I am! You're not fit...."

"Oh, I'm just wobbly ... stupid," he muttered, half dazed, as she

pressed him down into a corner of the Chesterfield.

"Poor old boy. When you've had some tea, you'll be able to face things."

He said nothing; merely leaned back against the cushion and closed his

eyes--part of him rebelling furiously against her quiet yet summary

proceedings--while she attended to the sputtering kettle.

How prosaic, after all, are even the great moments of life! They had

been ardent lovers. They had come to the parting of the ways. But a

kettle on the boil would wait for no man; and, till the body was served,

the troubles of the heart must stand aside.

She drew the table nearer to him; carefully poured out tea; carefully

avoided his eyes. And--in the intervals between her mechanical

occupations--she told him as much of the truth as she felt he could bear

to hear, or she to speak. Among other things, unavoidably, she explained

how--and through whom--her mother had come to know about their

reservation----

"_That_ young sweep!" Roy muttered, so suddenly half-alert and fierce

that amused tenderness tripped up her studied composure.

"You'd go for him now, just the same, I believe!"

"I would--and a bit extra. Because--of you."

She sighed. "Oh yes, it was a _mauvais quart d'heure_ of the first

order. And coming on the top of your crushing letter----"

He captured her hand. Their eyes met--and softened.

"No, Roy," she said, gently but inexorably releasing her fingers. "We've

got to keep our heads to-day, somehow."

"Has yours so completely taken command of affairs?"

"I'm afraid--it has."

"Yet--you stood up to your mother?"

"Oh, I did--as I've never done yet. But afterwards I realised--it was

only skin deep. She said ... things I can't repeat; but equally ... I

can't forget; things about ... possible children...."

The blood flamed in Roy's sallow face. "Confound her! What does _she_

know about possible children?"

"More than I do, I suppose," Rose admitted, with a pathetic half smile.

"Anyway, after that, she refused to countenance the engagement--the

wedding----"

Roy sat suddenly forward, scorn and anger in his eyes.

"_Refused_----! After the infernal fuss she made over me, because my

father happened to have a title and a garden. And now----" his hand

closed on the edge of the table. "I'm considered a pariah--am I?--simply

on account of my lovely little mother--the guardian angel of us all!"

His blaze of wrath, his low passionate tone, startled her to silence. He

had spoken so seldom of his mother since the first occasion,

that--although she knew--she had far from plumbed the height and depth

of his worship. And instinctively she thought, 'I should have been

jealous into the bargain.'

But Roy had room just then for one consideration only.

"Here have I been coming to her house on sufferance ... polluting her

precious drawing-room, while she's been avoiding me as if I was a leper,

all because I'm the son of a sainted woman, whose shoe she wouldn't have

been worthy ... oh, I beg your pardon----" He checked himself sharply.

"After all--she's _your_ mother."

Rose felt her cheeks growing uncomfortably warm. "I did warn you, in

Lahore, some people felt ... that way."

"Well, I never dreamed they would _behave_ that way. It's not as if I'd

been born and reared in India and might claim relations in her

compound."

"My dear--one can't make her see the difference," Rose urged

desperately.

"Well, I _won't_ stay any longer in her house. I won't eat her food----"

He pushed aside his plate so impatiently that Rose felt almost angry.

But she saw his hand tremble; and covered it with her own.

"Roy--my dear! You're ill; and you're being rather exaggerated over

things----"

"Well, you put me in such a false position. You ought to have told me."

She winced at that and let fall her hand.

"That's all one's reward for trying to save you from jars when you were

knocked up and unhappy. And I told you ... I defied her ... I ... I

would have married you...."

He looked at her, and his heart contracted sharply.

"Poor Rose--poor darling!" He was his normal self again. "What a beast

of a time you must have had! But--how _did_ you propose to accomplish

it----?"

She told him, haltingly, of the Kashmir plan; and he listened, half

incredulous, leaning back again; thinking: "She's plucky; but still, all

she troubled about really was to save her face."

And she, noting his impatient frown, was thinking: "He's like a

sensitive plant charged with gunpowder. Is it the touchiness of----?"

"I'm afraid I'd have kicked at that." His voice broke in upon her

thought. "Such a hole-and-corner business. Hardly fair on my father...."

"Well, there's no question of it now," she reminded him, with a touch of

asperity. "I've told you--the whole thing's defunct. Later--we'll be

glad, perhaps, that I discovered in time that part of me could not be

coerced--by the other part, which still wants you as much as ever. We

should have been landed in disaster--soon or late. Better soon--before

the roots have struck too deep. But you're so furiously angry with the

_reason_--that you seem almost to forget ... the fact."

His eyes brooded on her, full of pain and the old, half-unwilling

infatuation. He could not so hurt her pride as to confess that their

discovery had been mutual. Let her glean what satisfaction she could

from having taken the lead--first and last. Part of him, also, still

wanted her; though in the depths, he felt a glimmer of relief that the

thing was done--and by her.

"No," he said, "I don't forget the fact. But--the reason cuts deep. I

want to know----" he hesitated--"is all this ... antipathy you can't get

over--you and your mother--the ordinary average attitude? Or is it ...

exceptionally acute?"

She drew in her lip. Why _would_ he force her to hurt him more? For they

had got beyond polite evasion. Clearly he wanted the truth.

"Mother's is acute," she said, not looking at him. "Mine--I'm afraid--is

... the ordinary average feeling against it. The exception would be to

find a girl--especially out here--who could honestly ... get over

it----"

"_Unless_--she cared in the real big way," Roy interposed; his own pain

goading him to an unfair hit at her. "To be blunt, I suppose it's the

case--of Lance over again. You've found ... you don't love me

enough----?"

"And _you_----?" she struck back, turning on him the cool deliberate

look of early days. "Do _you_ love me enough? Do you care--as he did?"

"No--not as he did. I've cared blindly, passionately--somehow we didn't

seem to meet on any other plane. In fact, it ... it was realising how

magnificently Lance cared ... and how little you seemed able to

appreciate the fact, that made me feel--as I did, down there. In a

sense, he's been barring the way ... ever since...."

"_Roy!_ How strange!" She faced him now, the mask of repression flung

aside. "It's been the same--with me!"

"With _you_?"

"Yes. Ever since I heard ... he was gone, he has haunted me to

distraction. I've seemed to see him and feel him in quite a different

way."

"Good Lord!" Roy murmured--incredulous, amazed. "Human beings _are_ the

queerest things. If only ... you'd felt like that ... sooner----?"

"Yes--if only I had----!" she lamented frankly, looking straight before

her.

"I'm glad--you told me," said her unaccountable lover.

"I nearly--didn't. But when you said that, I felt it might--ease things.

And that was his great wish--wasn't it?--to ease things ... for us both.

Oh--was there ever any one ... _quite_ like him?"

Tears stood in her eyes, and Roy contemplating her--seeing, for the

first time, something beyond her beauty--felt drawn to her in an

altogether new way; and sitting there they talked of him quietly, like

friends, rather than lovers on the verge of parting for good.

As real to them, almost, as themselves, was the spirit of the man who

had loved both more greatly than they were capable of loving one

another; who, in life, had refused to stand between them; yet, in death,

had subtly thrust them apart....

Then there came a pause. They remembered....

"We're rather a strange pair--of lovers," she murmured shakily. "I feel,

now, as if I can't bear letting you go. And yet ... it wouldn't

last.--Dearest, _will_ you be sensible ... and finish your tea?"

"No. It would choke me," he said with smothered passion. "If I've got to

go--I'm going."

He stood up, bracing his shoulders. She stood up also, confronting him.

Neither could see the other's face quite clear.

Then: "Only six weeks!" she said very low. "Roy--we ought to be ashamed

of ourselves."

"I am--heartily," he confessed. "I was never more so."

She was looking down now, twisting her ring. "I'm afraid ... I'm not

talented in that line. Somehow ... except for Lance, I can't regret it."

She slid the ring over her knuckle.

"Oh, _keep_ the beastly thing!" he flung out in an access of pain. "Or

throw it down the khud. I said it would bring bad luck."

She sighed. "All the same--poor thing! It's too lovely...."

"Well then, don't wear it; but keep it"--his tone changed--"as a

reminder. We have been something to one another ... if it couldn't be

everything."

Her eyes were still lowered, her lips not quite steady.

"You've been ... very near it to me. Yet--it seemed, the more ... I

cared, the less I could get over ... that. And I felt as if

you--wouldn't get over.. Lance."

"My God! It's been a bitter, contrary business all round! I can't bear

hurting you. And--the talk and all that----" She nodded. For her that

was not the least bitter part of it all. "And you----? Oh, Lord--will

it be Hayes to the fore again?"

"_No!_" Reproach underlay her vehemence. "Mother may rage. I shall go

with Dolly Smyth to Kashmir.--And you----?"

"Oh, I'll go out to Narkhanda."

"Alone? But you're ill. You want looking after."

"Can't be helped. Azim Khan's a treasure. And really I don't care a damn

what comes to me."

"Oh, but _I_ do----!"

It was a cry from her heart. The strain of repression snapped. She

swayed, just perceptibly----

In a moment his arms were round her; and they clung together a long

while, in the only complete form of nearness they had known....

For Roy, that last passionate kiss was dead-sea fruit. For Rose, it was

her moment of completest surrender to an elemental force she had

deliberately played with only to find herself the sport of it at

last....

When it was over--all was over. Words were impertinent. He held her

hands close, a moment, looking into her tear-filled eyes. Then he took

up hat and stick and stumbled blindly down the verandah steps....

* * * * *

Back in his bachelor room at the Club, he realised that fever was on him

again: his eyeballs burning; little hammers beating all over his head.

Mechanically, he picked up two letters that lay awaiting him: one from

his father, one from Jeffers, congratulating him, in rather guarded

phrases, on his engagement to Miss Arden.

It was the last straw.

END OF PHASE IV.

PHASE V.

A STAR IN DARKNESS

CHAPTER I.

"Thou art with life

Too closely woven, nerve with nerve intwined;

Service still craving service, love for love ...

Nor yet thy human task is done."

--R.L.S.

In the verandah of Narkhanda dák bungalow Roy lay alone, languidly at

ease, assisted by rugs and pillows and a Madeira cane lounge at an

invalid angle; walls and arches splashed with sunshine; and a table

beside him littered with convalescent accessories. There were home

papers; there were books; there was fruit and a syphon, cut lemons and

crushed ice--everything thoughtfulness could suggest set within easy

reach. But the nameless depression of convalescence hung heavy on his

spirit and his limbs.

He was thirsty; he was lonely; he was mentally hungry in a negative kind

of way. Yet it simply did not seem worth the trivial effort of will to

decide whether he wanted to pick up a book or an orange or to press the

syphon handle. So he lay there, inert, impassive, staring across the

valley at the snows--peak beyond soaring peak, ethereal in the level

light.

The beauty of them, the pellucid clearness and stillness of early

evening, stirred no answering echo within him. His brain was travelling

back over a timeless interval; wandering uncertainly among sensations,

apparitions, and dreams, presumably of semi-delirium: for Lance was in

them and his mother and Rose and Dyán, saying and doing impossible

things....

And in clearer intervals, there hovered the bearded face of Azim Khan,

pressing upon his refractory Sahib this infallible medicine, that

'chikken bráth' or jelly. And occasionally there was another bearded

face: vaguely familiar, though he could not put a name to it.

Between them the two had brought out a doctor from Simla. He remembered

a sharp altercation over that. He wanted no confounded doctor messing

round. But Azim Khan, for love of his master, had flatly defied orders:

and the forbidden doctor had appeared--involving further exhausting

argument. For on no account would Roy be moved back to Simla. Azim Khan

understood his ways and his needs. He was damned if he would have any

one else near him.

And this time he had prevailed. For the doctor, who happened to be a

wise man, knew when acquiescence was medically sounder than insistence.

There had, however, been a brief intrusion of a strange woman, in cap

and apron, who had made a nuisance of herself over food and washing, and

was infernally in the way. When the fever abated, she melted into the

landscape; and Roy had just enough of his old spirit left in him to

murmur, '_Shahbash!_' in a husky voice: and Azim Khan, inflated with

pride, became more autocratic than ever.

The other bearded face had resolved itself into the Delhi Sikh, Jiwán

Singh. He had been on a tramp among the Hills, combating insidious

Home-Rule fairy-tales among the villagers: and finding the Sahib very

ill, had stayed on to help.

This morning they had told him it was the third of June:--barely three

weeks since that strange, poignant parting with Rose. Not seven weeks

since the infinitely more poignant and terrible parting with Lance. Yet,

as his mind stirred unwillingly, picking up threads, he seemed to be

looking back across a measureless gulf into another life....

"The Sahib has slept? His countenance has been more favourable since

these few days?"

It was the voice of Jiwán Singh; and the man himself followed it--taut

and wiry, instinct with a degree of energy and purpose almost irritating

to one who was feeling emptied of both; aimless as a jelly-fish stranded

by the tide.

"Not smoking, _Hazúr_? Has that scoundrel Azim Khan forgotten the

cigarettes?"

Roy unearthed his case, and held it up, smiling.

"The scoundrel forgets nothing," said he, knowing very well how the two

of them had vied with one another in forestalling his needs. "Sit down,

my friend--and tell me news. I am too lazy to read." He touched an

unopened 'Civil and Military Gazette.' "Too lazy even to cast out the

devil of laziness. But very ready to listen. Are things all quiet now?

Any more tamashas?"

"Only a very little one across the frontier," said the Sikh with his

grim smile: and proceeded to explain that the Indian Government had

lately become entangled in a sort of a war with Afghanistan; a rather

'_kutcha bandobast_'[37] in Jiwán Singh's estimation; and not quite up

to time; but a war, for all that.

"You mean----" asked Roy, his numbed interest faintly astir, "that it

was to have been part of the same game as the trouble down there?"

"God has given me ears--and wits, _Hazúr_," was the cautious answer.

"_That_ would be _pukka bundobast_,[38] for war and trouble to come at

one stroke in the hot season, when so many of the white soldier-_lóg_

are in the Hills. Does your Honour suppose that merely by _chance_ the

Amir read in his paper of riots in India, and said in his heart, 'Wah!

Now is the time for lighting little fires along the Border'?"

"N-no--I don't suppose----"

"Does your Honour suppose Hindus and Moslems--outside a highly educated

few--are truly falling on each other's necks, without one thought of

political motive?"

"No, my friend--I do not suppose."

"Yet these things are said openly among our people: and too few, now,

have courage to speak their thought. For it is the loyal who

suffer--_shurrum ki bhát_![39] Is it surprising, _Hazúr_, if we, who

distrust this new madness, begin to ask ourselves, 'Has the British Raj

lost the will--or the power--of former days to protect friends and smite

enemies'? If the noisy few clamouring for _Swaráj_ make India once more

a battlefield, _your_ people can go. We Sikhs must remain, with Pathans

and Afghans--as of old--hammering at our doors----"

At sight of the young Englishman's pained frown, he checked his

expansive mood. "To the Sahib I can freely speak the thoughts of my

heart; but this is not talk to make a sick man well. God is merciful.

Before all is lost--the British Raj may yet arise with power, as in the

great days...."

But his talk, if unpalatable, was more tonic than he knew; because Roy's

love for India went deeper than he knew. The justice of Jiwán Singh's

reproach; the hint at tragic severance of the two countries mingled

within him, waked him effectually from semi-torpor; and the process was

as painful as the tingling renewal of life in a frozen limb. By timely

courage, on the spot, the threat to India had been staved off: but it

was there still--sinister, unsleeping, virtually unchecked.

'Scotched--not killed.' The voice of Lance sounded too clearly in Roy's

brain; and the more intimate pain, deadened a little by illness, struck

at his heart like a sword....

* * * * *

Within a week, care and feeding and inimitable air, straight from the

snowfields, had made him, physically, a new man. Mentally, it had

brought him face to face with actualities, and the staggering question,

'What next'?

At the back of his mind he had been dreading it, evading it, because it

would force him to look deep into his own heart; and to make decisions,

when the effort of making them was anathema, beclouded as he was by the

depression that still brooded over him like a fog. The doctor had

prescribed a tonic and a whiff of Simla frivolity; but Roy paid no heed.

He knew his malady was mainly of the heart and the spirit. The true

curative touch could only come from some arrowy shaft that would pierce

to the core of one or the other.

This morning, by way of reasserting his normal self, he had risen very

early with intent to walk out and spend the day at Baghi dák bungalow,

ten miles on. Taking things easily, he believed it could be done. He

would look through his manuscript; try and pick up threads. Suráj could

follow later; and he would ride home over the pass in the cool of the

evening.

He set out under a clear heaven, misted with the promise of heat: the

air rather ominously still. But the thread of a path winding through

the dimness and vastness of Narkhanda Forest was ice-cool with the

breath of night. Pines, ilex, and deodars clung miraculously to a

hillside of massive rock, that jutted above him at

intervals--threatening, immense; and often, on the _khud_ side, dropped

abruptly into nothingness. When the road curved outward, splashes of

sunlight patterned it; and intermittent gaps revealed the flash of

snow-peaks, incredibly serene and far.

Normally the scene--the desolate grandeur of it--would have intoxicated

Roy. But the stranger he was carrying about with him, and called by his

own name, reacted in quite another fashion to the shadowed majesty of

looming rocks and forest aisles. The immensity of it dwarfed one mere

suffering man to the dimensions of a pebble on the path. And the pebble

had the advantage of insensibility. The stillness and chillness made him

feel overwhelmingly alone. A sudden craving for Lance grew almost

intolerable....

But Lance was gone. Paul, with his bride, had vanished from human ken;

Rose, a shattered illusion, gone too. Better so--of course; though,

intermittently, the man she had roused in him still ached for the sight

and feel of her. She gave a distinct thrill to life: and, if he could

not forgive her, neither could he instantly forget her.

Still less could he forget the significance of the shock she had dealt

him on their day of parting. Patently she loved him, in her passionate,

egotistical fashion--as he had never loved her; patently she had

combated her shrinking in defiance of her mother: and yet...!

Rage as he might, his Rajput pride, and pride in his Rajput heritage,

were wounded to the quick. If all English girls felt that way, he would

see them further, before he would propose to another one, or 'confess'

to his adored Mother, as if she were a family skeleton or a secret vice.

Instantly there sprang the thought of Arúna--her adoration, her exalted

passion; Arúna, whom he might have loved, yet was constrained to put

aside because of his English heritage; only to find himself put aside by

an English girl on account of his Indian blood. A pleasant predicament

for a man who must needs marry in common duty to his father and

himself.

And what of Tara? Was it possible...? Could that be the meaning of her

final desperate, 'I _can't_ do it, Roy--even for you'! Was it

conceivable--she who loved his mother to the point of worship? Still

smarting from his recent rebuff, he simply could not tell. Thea and

Lance loved her too; yet, in Lance especially, he had been aware of a

tacit tendency to ignore the Indian connection.

The whole complication touched him too nearly, hurt and bewildered him

too bitterly, for cool consideration. He only saw that which had been

his pride converted into a reproach, a two-edged sword barring the way

to marriage: and in the bitterness of his heart he found it hard to

forgive his parents--mainly his father--for putting him in so cruel a

position, with no word of warning to soften the blow.

Perhaps people felt differently in England. If so, India was no place

for him. How blatantly juvenile--to his clouded, tormented brain--seemed

his arrogant dreams of Oxford days! What could such as he do for her, in

this time of tragic upheaval. And how could all the Indias he had

seen--not to mention the many he had not seen--be jumbled together under

that one misleading name? That was the root fallacy of dreamers and

'reformers.' They spoke of her as one, when in truth she was

many--bewilderingly many. The semblance of unity sprang mainly from

England's unparalleled achievement--her Pax Britannica, that held the

scales even between rival chiefs and races and creeds; that had wrought,

in miniature, the very inter-racial stability which Europe had vainly

fought and striven to achieve. Yet now, some malign power seemed

constraining her, in the name of progress, to undo the work of her own

hands....

All his thronging thoughts were tinged with the gloom of his unhopeful

mood; and his body sagged with his sagging spirit. Before he had walked

four miles, his legs refused to carry him any farther.

He had emerged into the open, into full view of the vastness beyond.

Naked rock and stone, jewelled with moss and young green, fell straight

from the path's edge; and one ragged pine, springing from a group of

boulders, was roughly stencilled on blue distances empurpled with

shadows of thunderous cloud.

A flattened boulder proved irresistible; and Roy sat down, leaning his

head against the trunk, sniffing luxuriously--whiffs of resin and

sun-warmed pine-needles. Oh, to be at home, in his own beech-wood! But

the journey in this weather would be purgatorial. Meantime, there was

his walk; and he decided, prosaically, to fortify himself with a slab of

chocolate. Instead--still more prosaically, he fell sound asleep....

But sleep, in an unnatural position, begets dreams. And Roy dreamed of

Lance; of that last awful day when he raved incessantly of Rose. But in

the dream he was conscious; and before his distracted gaze Roy held Rose

in his arms; craving her, yet hating her; because she clung to him,

heedless of entreaties from Lance, and would not be shaken off....

In a frantic effort to free himself, he woke--with the anguish of his

loss fresh upon him--to find the sky heavily overcast, the

breathlessness of imminent storm in the air. Away to the North there

were blue spaces, sun-splashed leagues of snow. But from the South and

West rolled up the big battalions--heralds of the monsoon.

He concluded apathetically that Baghi was 'off.' He was in for a

drenching. Lucky he had brought his burberry....

Yet he did not stir. A ton weight seemed to hang on his limbs, his

spirit, his heart. He simply sat there, in a carven stillness, staring

down, down, into abysmal depths....

And startlingly, sharply, the temptation assailed him. The tug of it was

almost physical.... How simple to yield--to cut his many tangles at one

stroke!

In that jaundiced moment he saw himself a failure foreordained; debarred

from marriage by evils supposed to spring from the dual strain in him;

his cherished hopes of closer union between the two countries he loved

threatened with shipwreck by an England complacently experimental, an

India at war with the British connection and with her many selves. He

seemed fated to bring unhappiness on those he cared for--Arúna, Lance,

even Rose. And what of his father--if he failed to marry? He hadn't even

the grit to finish his wretched novel....

He rose at last, mechanically, and moved forward to the unrailed edge of

all things. The magnetism of the depths drew him. The fatalistic strain

in his blood drew him....

He stood--though he did not know it--as his mother had once stood,

hovering on the verge; his own life--that she bore within her--hanging

in the balance. From the fatal tilt, she had been saved by the voice of

her husband--the voice of the West. And now, at Roy's critical moment,

it was the voice of the West--of Lance--that sounded in his brain:

"Don't fret your heart out, Roy. Carry on."

Having carried on, somehow, through four years of war, he knew precisely

how much of casual, dogged pluck was enshrined in that soldierly phrase.

It struck the note of courage and command. It was Lance incarnate. It

steadied him, automatically, at a crisis when his shaken nerves might

not have responded to any abstract ethical appeal. He closed his eyes a

moment to collect himself; swayed, the merest fraction--then

deliberately stepped back a pace....

The danger had passed.

Through his lids he felt the glare of lightning: the first flash of the

storm.

And as the heel of his retreating boot came firmly down on the path

behind, there rose an injured yelp that jerked him very completely out

of the clouds.

"Poor Terry--poor old man!" he murmured, caressing the faithful

creature; always too close by, always getting trodden on--the common

guerdon of the faithful. And the whimsical thought intruded, "If I'd

gone over, the good little beggar would have jumped after me. Not fair

play."

The fact that Terry had been saved from involuntary suicide seemed

somehow the more important consideration of the two.

A rumbling growl overhead reminded him that there were other

considerations--urgent ones.

"You're not hurt, you little hypocrite. Come on. We must leg it."

And they legged it to some purpose; Terry--idiotically

vociferous--leaping on before....

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: Crude arrangement.]

[Footnote 38: Sound arrangement.]

[Footnote 39: Shameful talk.]

CHAPTER II.

"I seek what I cannot get;

I get what I do not seek."

--RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

Then the storm broke in earnest....

Crash on flash, crash on flash--at ever-lessening intervals--the

tearless heavens raged and clattered round his unprotected head. Thunder

toppled about him like falling timber stacks. Fiery serpents darted all

ways at once among black boughs that swayed and moaned funereally. The

gloom of the forest enhanced the weird magnificence of it all: and

Roy--who had just been within an ace of flinging away his life--felt

irrationally anxious on account of thronging trees and the absence of

rain.

He had recovered sufficiently to chuckle at the ignominious anti-climax.

But, as usual, it was the creepsomeness rather than the danger that got

on his nerves and forced his legs to hurry of their own accord....

In the deep of a gloomy indent, the thought assailed him--"Why do I know

it all so well? Where...? When...?"

An inner flash lit the dim recesses of memory. Of course--it was that

other day of summer, in the far beginning of things; the day of the

Golden Tusks and the gloom and the growling thunder; his legs, as now,

in a fearful hurry of their own accord; and Tara waiting for him--his

High-Tower Princess. With a pang he recalled how she had seemed the

point of safety--because she was never afraid.

No Tara waiting now. No point of safety, except a very prosaic dák

bungalow and good old Azim, who would fuss like the devil if rain came

on and he got a wetting.

Ah--here it was, at last! Buckets of it. Lashing his face, running down

his neck, saturating him below his flapping burberry. Buffeted

mercilessly, he broke into a trot. Thunder and lightning were less

virulent now; and he found himself actually enjoying it all.

Tired----? Not a bit. The miasma of depression seemed blown clean away

by the horseplay of the elements. He had been within an ace of taking

unwarranted liberties with Nature. Now she retaliated by taking

liberties with him; and her buffeting proved a finer restorative than

all the drugs in creation. Electricity, her 'fierce angel of the air,'

set every nerve tingling. A queer sensation: but it was _life_. And he

had been feeling more than half dead....

Azim Khan, however--being innocent of 'nerves'--took quite another view

of the matter.

Arrived at the point of safety, Roy found a log fire burning; and a

brazier alight under a contrivance like a huge cane hen-coop, for drying

his clothes. Vainly protesting, he was made to change every garment; was

installed by the fire, with steaming brandy-and-water at his elbow, and

lemons and sugar--and letters ... quite a little pile of them.

"_Belaiti dák, Hazúr_,"[40] Azim Khan superfluously informed him, with

an air of personal pride in the whole _bundobast_--including the timely

arrival of the English mail.

There were parcels also--a biggish one, from his father; another from

Jeffers, obviously a book. And suddenly it dawned on him--this must be

the tenth of June. Yesterday was his twenty-sixth birthday; and he had

never thought of it; never realised the date! But _they_ had thought of

it weeks ahead: while he--graceless and ungrateful--had deemed himself

half forgotten.

He ran the envelopes through his fingers--Tiny, Tara. (His heart jerked.

Was it congratulations? He had never felt he could write of it to her.)

Arúna; a black-edged one from Thea; and--his heart jerked in quite

another fashion--Rose!

Amazing! What did it mean? She wasn't--going back on things...?

Curiosity--sharpened by a prick of fear--impelled him to open her letter

first. And the moment he had read the opening line, compunction smote

him.

"Roy--my Dear, I couldn't help remembering the ninth. So I feel I

must write and wish you 'many happy returns' of it--happier than

this one--with all my heart. I have worried over you a good deal.

For I'm sure you must have been ill. Do go home soon and be

properly taken care of, by your own people. I'm going in the autumn

with my friend, Mrs Hilton. Some day you will surely find a wife

worthier of you than I would have been. When your good day comes,

let me know and I'll do the same by you. Good luck to you

always.--ROSE."

Roy slipped the note into his pocket and sat staring at the fire, deeply

moved. A vision of her--too alluring for comfort--was flashed upon his

brain. She was confoundedly attractive. She had no end of good points:

but ... with a very big B....

His gaze rested absently on the parcel from his father. What the deuce

could it be? To the imaginative, an unopened parcel never quite loses

its intriguing air of mystery. The shape suggested a picture. His

mother...?

With a luxury of deliberation he cut the strings; removed wrapper after

wrapper to the last layer of tissue....

Then he drew a great breath--and sat spellbound; gazing--endlessly

gazing--at Tara's face:--the wild roses in her cheeks faded a little;

the glory of her hair undimmed; the familiar way it rippled back from

her low, wide brow; a hint of hidden pain about the sensitive lips and

in the hyacinth blue of her eyes. Only his father could have wrought a

vision so appealingly alive. And the effect on Roy was instantaneous ...

overwhelming....

Tara--dearest and loveliest! Of course it was her--always had been, down

in the uttermost depths. The treasure he had been far to seek had

blossomed beside him since the beginning of things: and he, with his

eyes always on the horizon, had missed the one incomparable flower at

his feet....

_Had_ he missed it? Had there ever been a chance? What, precisely, had

she meant by her young, vehement refusal of him? And--if it were not the

dreaded reason--was there still hope? Would she ever understand ... ever

forgive ... the inglorious episode of Rose? If, at heart, he could plead

the excuse of Adam, he could not plead it to her.

Reverently he took that miracle of a picture between his hands and set

it on the broad mantelpiece, that distance might quicken the illusion of

life.

Then the spell was on him again. Her sweetness and light seemed to

illumine the unbeautiful room. Of a truth he knew, now, what it meant to

love and be in love with every faculty of soul and body; knew it for a

miracle of renewal, the elixir of life. And--the light of that knowledge

revealed how secondary a part of it was the craving with which he had

craved possession of Rose. Steeped in poetry as he was, there stole into

his mind a fragment of Tagore--'She who had ever remained in the depths

of my being, in the twilight of gleams and glimpses ... I have roamed

from country to country, keeping her in the core of my heart.'

All the jangle of jarred nerves and shaken faith; all the confusion of

shattered hopes and ideals would resolve itself into coherence at

last--if only ... if only----!

And dropping suddenly from the clouds, he remembered his letters ...

_her_ letter.

A sealed envelope had fallen unheeded from his father's parcel: but it

was hers he seized--and half hesitated to open. What if she were

announcing her own engagement to some infernal fellow at home? There

must be scores and scores of them....

His hand was not quite steady as he unfolded the two sheets that bore

his father's crest and the home stamp, 'Bramleigh Beeches.'

"My Dear Roy (he read),

"_Many_ happy returns of June the Ninth. It was one of our great

days--wasn't it?--once upon a time. All your best and dearest

wishes we are wishing for you--over here. And of course I've heard

your tremendous news; though you never wrote and told me--why? You

say she is beautiful. I hope she is a lot more besides. You would

need a lot more, Roy, unless you've changed very much from the boy

I used to know.

"It is _cruel_ having to write--in the same breath--about Lance.

From the splendid boy he was, one can guess the man he became. To

me it seems almost like half of you gone. And I'm sure it must seem

so to you--my _poor_ Roy. I don't wonder you felt bad about the way

of it; but it was the essence of him--that kind of thing. A verse

of Charles Sorley keeps on in my head ever since I heard it:--

'Surely we knew it long before;

Knew all along that he was made

For a swift radiant morning; for

A sacrificing swift night shade.'

"I _can't_ write all I feel about it. Besides, I'm hoping your pain

may be eased a little now; and I don't want to wake it up again.

"But not even these two big things--not even your Birthday--are my

reallest reason for writing this particular letter to my

Bracelet-Bound Brother. _Do_ you remember? Have you kept it, Roy?

Does it still mean anything to you? It does to me--though I've

never mentioned it and never asked any service of you. _But_--I'm

going to, now. Not for myself. Don't be afraid! It's for Uncle

Nevil--and I ask it in Aunt Lilámani's name.

"Roy, when I came home, the change in him made me miserable. He's

never really got over losing her. And you've been sort of lost

too--for the time being. I can see how he's wearing his heart out

with wanting you: though I don't suppose he has ever said so. And

you--out there, probably thinking he doesn't miss you a mite. I

_know_ you--and your ways. Also I know him--which is my ragged

shred of excuse for rushing in where an angel would probably think

better of it!

"He has been an angel to me ever since I got back; and it seems to

cheer him up when I run round here. So I do--pretty often. But I'm

not Roy! And perhaps you'll forgive my bold demand, when I tell you

Aunt Jane's looming--positively _looming_! She's becoming a perfect

ogre of sisterly solicitude. As he won't go to London, she's

threatening to cheer him up by making the dear Beeches her

headquarters after the season! And he--poor darling--with not

enough spirit in him to kick against the pricks. If _you_ were

coming, he would have an excuse. Alone--he's helpless in her

conscientious talons!

"If _that_ won't bring you, nothing will--not even my bracelet

command.

"I _know_ the journey in June will be a nightmare. And you won't

like leaving Indian friends or Miss Arden. But think--here he is

alone, wanting what only you can give him. And the bangle I sent

you That Day--_if_ you've kept it--gives me the right to say

'Come--_quickly_.' It may be a wrench. But I promise you won't

regret it. Wire, if you can.

"Always your loving

TARA."

By the time he had finished reading that so characteristic and endearing

letter his plans were cut and dried. Her irresistible appeal--and the no

less irresistible urge within him--left no room for the deliberations of

his sensitive complex nature. It flung open all the floodgates of

memory; set every nerve aching for Home--and Tara, late discovered; but

not too late, he passionately prayed....

The nightmare journey had no terrors for him now. In every sense he was

'hers to command.'

He drew out his old, old letter-case--her gift--and opened it. There lay

the bracelet, folded inside her quaint, childish note; the 'ribbin' from

her 'petticote' and the gleaming strands of her hair. The sight of it

brought tears of which he felt not the least ashamed.

It also brought a vision of himself standing before his mother,

demurring at possible obligations involved in their 'game of play.' And

across the years came back to him her very words, her very look and

tone: 'Remember, Roy, it is for always. If she shall ask from you any

service, you must not refuse--ever.... By keeping the bracelet you are

bound ...'

Wire? Of course he would.

Before the day was out his message was speeding to her: "Engagement off.

Coming first possible boat. Yours to command--ROY."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: English mail.]

CHAPTER III.

"Did you not know that people hide their love,

Like a flower that seems too precious to be picked?"

--WU-TI.

Sanctuary--at last! The garden of his dreams--of the world before the

deluge--in the quiet--coloured end of a July evening; the garden vitally

inwoven with his fate--since it was responsible for the coming of Joe

Bradley and his 'beaky mother.'

Such gardens bear more than trees and flowers and fruit. Human lives and

characters are growth of their soil. With the wholesale demolishing of

boundaries and hedges, their influence may wane; and it is an

influence--like the unobtrusive influence of the gentleman--that human

nature, especially English nature, can ill afford to fling away.

Roy, poet and fighter--with the lure of the desert and the horizon in

his blood--knew himself, also, for a spiritual product of this

particular garden--of the vast lawn (not quite so vast as he

remembered), the rose-beds and the beeches in the full glory of their

incomparable leafage; all steeped in the delicate clarity of rain-washed

air--the very aura of England, as dust was the aura of Jaipur.

Dinner was over. They were sitting out on the lawn, he and his father; a

small table beside them, with glass coffee-machine and chocolates in a

silver dish; the smoke of their cigars hovering, drifting, unstirred by

any breeze. No Terry at his feet. The faithful creature--vision of

abject misery--had been carried off to eat his heart out in quarantine.

Tangled among tree-tops hung the ghost of a moon, almost full.

Somewhere, in the far quiet of the shrubberies, a nightingale was

communing with its own heart in liquid undertones; and in Roy's heart

there dwelt an iridescence of peace and pain and longing shot through

with hope----

That very morning, at an unearthly hour, he had landed in England, after

an absence of three and a half years: and precisely what that means in

the way of complex emotions, only they know who have been there. The

purgatorial journey had eclipsed expectation. Between recurrent fever

and sea-sickness, there had been days when it seemed doubtful if he

would ever reach Home at all. But a wiry constitution and the will to

live had triumphed: and, in spite of the early hour, his father had not

failed to be on the quay.

The first sight of him had given Roy a shock for which--in spite of

Tara's letter--he was unprepared. This was not the father he

remembered--humorous, unruffled, perennially young; but a man so changed

and tired-looking that he seemed almost a stranger, with his empty

coat-sleeve and hair touched with silver at the temples.

The actual moment of meeting had been difficult; the joy of it so deeply

tinged with pain that they had clung desperately to surface

commonplaces, because they were Englishmen, and could not relieve the

inner stress by falling on one another's necks.

And there had been a secret pang (for which Roy sharply reproached

himself) that Tara was not there too. Idiotic to expect it, when he knew

Sir James had gone to Scotland for fishing. But to be idiotic is the

lover's privilege; and his not phenomenal gift of patience had been

unduly strained by the letter awaiting him at Port Said.

They were coming back to-night; but he would not see her till

to-morrow....

In his pocket reposed a brief Tara-like note, bidding her 'faithful

Knight of the Bracelet' welcome Home. Vainly he delved between the lines

of her sisterly affection. Nothing could still the doubt that consumed

him, but contact with her hands, her eyes.

For that, and other reasons, the difficult meeting had been followed by

a difficult day. They had wandered through the house and garden, very

carefully veiling their emotions. They had lounged and smoked in the

studio, looking through his father's latest pictures. They had talked

of the family. Jeffers would be down to-morrow night, for the week-end;

Tiny on Tuesday with the precious Baby; Jerry, distinctly coming round,

and eager to see Roy. Even Aunt Jane sounded a shade keen. And he,

undeserving, had scarcely expected them to 'turn a hair.' Then they

discussed the Indian situation; and Roy--forgetting to be shy--raged at

finding how little those at Home had been allowed to realise, to

understand.

Not a question, so far, about his rapid on-and-off engagement, for which

mercy he was duly grateful. And of her, who dwelt in the foreground and

background of their thoughts--not a word.

It would take a little time, Roy supposed, to build their bridge across

the chasm of three and a half eventful years. You couldn't hustle a

lapsed intimacy. To-morrow things would go better, especially if....

Yet, throughout, he had been touched inexpressibly by his father's

unobtrusive tokens of pleasure and affection: and now--sitting together

with their cigars, in the last of the daylight--things felt easier.

"Dad," he said suddenly, turning his eyes from the garden to the man

beside him, who was also its spiritual product. "If I seem a bit

stupefied, it's because I'm still walking and talking in a dream;

terrified I may wake up and find it's not true! I can't, in a twinkling,

adjust the beautiful, incredible _sameness_ of all this, with the

staggering changes inside me."

His father's smile had its friendly, understanding quality.

"No hurry, Boy. All your deep roots are here. Change as much as you

please, you still remain--her son."

"Yes--that's it. The place is full of her," Roy said very low; and at

present they could not trust themselves to say more.

It had not escaped Sir Nevil's notice that the boy had avoided the

drawing-room, and had not once been under the twin beeches, his

favourite summer retreat. No hammock was slung there now.

After a considerable gap, Roy remarked carelessly: "I suppose they must

have got home by now?"

"About an hour ago, to be exact," said Sir Nevil; and Roy's involuntary

start moved him to add: "You're not running round there to-night, old

man. They'll be tired. So are you. And it's only fair I should have

first innings. I've waited a long time for it, Roy."

"_Dads!_" Roy looked at once penitent and reproachful--an engaging trick

of schoolroom days, when he felt a scolding in the air. "You never

said--you never gave me an idea."

"_You_ never sounded as if the idea would be acceptable."

"Didn't I? Letters are the devil," murmured Roy--all penitence now. "And

if it hadn't been for Tara----" He stopped awkwardly. Their eyes met,

and they smiled. "Did you know ... she wrote? And that's why I'm here?"

"Well done, Tara! I didn't know. I had dim suspicions. I also had a dim

hope that--my picture might tempt you----"

"Oh, it _would_ have--letter or no. It's an inspired thing."--He had

already written at length on that score.--"You were mightily clever--the

two of you!"

His father twinkled. "That as may be. We had the trifling advantage of

knowing our Roy!"

They sat on till all the light had ebbed from the sky and the moon had

come into her own. It was still early; but time is the least ingredient

of such a day; and Sir Nevil rose on the stroke of ten.

"You look fagged out, old boy. And the sooner you're asleep--the sooner

it will be to-morrow! A pet axiom of yours. D'you remember?"

Did he not remember?

They went upstairs together; the great house seemed oppressively empty

and silent. On the threshold of Roy's room they said good-night. There

was an instant of palpable awkwardness; then Roy--overcoming it--leaned

forward and kissed the patch of white hair on his father's temple.

"God bless you," Sir Nevil said rather huskily. "You ought to sleep

sound in there. Don't dream."

"But I love to dream," said Roy; and his father laughed.

"You're not so staggeringly changed inside! As sure as a gun, you'll be

late for breakfast!"

And he did dream. The moment his lids fell--she was there with him,

under the beeches, their sanctuary--she who all day had hovered on the

confines of his spirit, like a light, felt not seen. There were no words

between them, nor any need of words; only the ineffable peace of

understanding, of reunion....

Dream--or visitation--who could say? To him it seemed that only

afterwards sleep came--the dreamless sleep of renewal....

* * * * *

He woke egregiously early: such an awakening as he had not known for

months on end. And out there in the garden it was a miracle of a

morning: divinely clear, with the mellow clearness of England; massed

trees, brooding darkly; the lawn all silver-grey with dew; everywhere

blurred outlines and tender shadows; pure balm to eye and spirit after

the hard brilliance and contrasts of the East.

Madness to get up; yet impossible to lie there waiting. He tried it, for

what seemed an endless age: then succumbed to the inevitable.

While he was dressing, clouds drifted across the blue. A spurt of rain

whipped his open casement; threatening him in playful mood. But before

he had crept down and let himself out through one of the drawing-room

windows, the sky was clear again, with the tremulous radiance of

happiness struck sharp on months of sorrow and stress.

Striding, hatless, across the drenched lawn, and resisting the pull of

his beech-wood, he pressed on and up to the open moor; craving its

sweeps of space and colour unbosomed to the friendly sky that seemed so

much nearer earth than the passionate blue vault of India.

It was five years since he had seen heather in bloom--or was it five

decades? The sight of it recalled that other July day, when he had

tramped the length of the ridge with his head full of dreams and the

ache of parting in his heart.

To him, that far-off being seemed almost another Roy in another life.

Only--as his father had feelingly reminded him--the first Roy and the

last were alike informed by the spirit of one woman; visible then,

invisible now; yet sensibly present in every haunt she had made her own.

The house was full of her; the wood was full of her. But the pangs of

reminder he had so dreaded resolved themselves, rather, into a sense of

indescribable, ethereal reunion. He asked nothing better than that his

life and work should be fulfilled with her always: her and Tara--if she

so decreed....

Thought of Tara revived impatience, and drew his steps homeward again.

Strolling back through the wood, he came suddenly upon the open space

where he had found the Golden Tusks, and lingered there a

little--remembering the storm and the terror and the fight; Tara and her

bracelet; and the deep unrealised significance of that childish impulse,

inspired by _her_, whose was the source of all their inspirations. And

now--seventeen years afterwards, the bracelet had drawn him back to them

both; saved him, perhaps, from the unforgiveable sin of throwing up the

game.

On he walked, along the same mossy path, almost in a dream. He had found

the Tusks. His High-Tower Princess was waiting--his 'Star far-seen.'

Again, as on that day--he came unexpectedly in view of their tree:

and--wonder of wonders (or was it the most natural thing on earth?),

there was Tara herself, approaching it by another path that linked the

wood with the grounds of the black-and-white house, which was part of

the estate.

Instantly he stepped back a pace and stood still, that he might realise

her before she became aware of him:--her remembered loveliness, her new

dearness.

Loveliness was the quintessence of her. With his innate feeling for

words, he had never--even accidentally--applied it to Rose. Had she,

too, felt impatient? Was she coming over to breakfast for a 'surprise'?

At this distance, she looked not a day older than on that critical

occasion, when he had realised her for the first time; only more

fragile--a shade too fragile. It hurt him. He felt responsible. And

again, to-day--very clever of her--she was wearing a delphinium blue

frock; a shady hat that drooped half over her face. No pink rose,

however--and he was thankful. Roses had still a too baleful association.

He doubted if he could ever tolerate a Maréchal Niel again--as much on

account of Lance, as on account of the other.

Tara was wearing his flower--sweet-peas, palest pink and lavender. And,

at sight of her, every shred of doubt seemed burnt up in the clear flame

of his love for her:--no heady confusion of heart and senses, but a

rarefied intensity of both, touched with a coal from the altar of

creative life. The knowledge was like a light hand reining in his

impatience. Poet, no less than lover, he wanted to go slowly through the

golden mist....

But the moment he stirred, she heard him; saw him....

No imperious gesture, as before; but a lightning gleam of recognition,

of welcome and--something more----?

He hurried now....

Next instant, they were together, hands locked, eyes deep in eyes. The

surface sense of strangeness between them, the undersense of intimate

nearness--thrilling as it was--made speech astonishingly difficult.

"Tara," he said, just above his breath.

Her sensitive lips parted, trembled--and closed again.

"_Tara!_" he repeated, dizzily incredulous, where a moment earlier he

had been arrogantly certain. "_Is_ it true ... what your eyes are

telling me? Can you forgive ... my madness out there? Half across the

world you called to me; and I've come home to _you_ ... with every atom

of me ... I'm loving you; and I'm still ... bracelet-bound...."

This time her lips trembled into a smile. "And it's not one of the

Prayer-book affinities!" she reminded him, a gleam of that other Tara in

her eyes.

"No, thank God--it's not! But you haven't answered me, you know...."

"Roy, what a story! When you know I really said it first!" Her eyes were

saying it again now; and he, bereft of words, mutely held out his arms.

If she paused an instant, it was because she felt even dizzier than he.

But the power of his longing drew her like a physical force--and, as his

lips claimed hers, the terror of love and its truth caught her and swept

her from known shores into uncharted seas....

This was a Roy she scarcely knew. But her heart knew; every pulse of her

awakened womanhood knew....

Presently it became possible to think. Very gently she pushed him back a

little.

"O-oh--I never knew ... you were ... like _that_! And you've crushed my

poor sweet-peas to smithereens! Now--behave! Let me _look_ at you ...

properly, and see what India's done to you. Give me a chance!"

He gave her a chance, still keeping hold of her--to make sure she was

real.

"High-Tower Princess, are we truly US? Or is it a 'bewitchery'?" he

asked, only half in joke. "Will you go turning into a butterfly

presently----?"

"Promise I won't!" Her low laugh was not quite steady. "We're US--truly.

And we've got to Farthest-End, where your dreams come true. D'you

remember--I always said they couldn't. They were too crazy. So I don't

deserve----"

"It's _I_ that don't deserve," he broke out with sudden passion. "And to

find you under our very own tree! Have you forgotten--that day? Of

course _you_ went to the 'tipmost top; and I didn't. It's queer--isn't

it?--how _bits_ of life get printed so sharply on your brain; and great

spaces, on either side, utterly blotted out. That day's one of my bits.

Is it so clear--to you?"

"To _me_----?" She could scarcely believe he did not know....

Unashamedly, she wanted him to know. But part of him was strange to

her--thrillingly strange: which made things not quite so simple.

"Roy," she went on, after a luminous pause, twisting the top button of

his coat. "I'm going to tell you a secret. A big one. For me that Day

was ... the beginning of everything.--Hush--listen!"--Her fingers just

touched his lips. "I'm feeling--rather shy. And if you don't keep quiet,

I can't tell. Of course I always ... loved you, next to Atholl. But

after that ... after the fight, I simply ... adored you. And ... and ...

it's never left off since...."

"Tara! My loveliest!" he cried, between ecstasy and dismay; and

gathering her close again, he kissed her softly, repeatedly, murmuring

broken endearments. "And there was _I_...!"

"Yes. There were you ... with your poems and Aunt Lila and your dreams

about India--always with your head among the stars..."

"In plain English, a spoilt boy--as you once told me--wrapped up in

myself."

"No, you weren't. I won't _have_ it!" she contradicted him in her old

imperious way. "You were wrapped up in all kinds of wonderful things. So

you just ... didn't see me. You looked clean over my head. Of course it

often made me unhappy. But--it made me love you more. That's the way we

women are. It's not the men who run after us; it's the other kind...! I

expect you looked clean over poor Arúna's head. And if I asked her,

privately, she'd confess that was partly why ... and the other girl too

... if ..."

"Darling--_don't_!" he pleaded. "I'm ashamed, beyond words. I'll tell

you every atom of it truthfully ... my Tara. But this is _our_ moment. I

want more--about you.--Sit. It's full early. Then we'll go in (of course

you're coming to breakfast) and give Dad the surprise of his life....

Bother your old hat! It gets in the way. And I want to see your hair."

With a shyness new to him--and to Tara, poignantly dear--he drew out her

pins; discarded the offending hat, and took her head between his hands,

lightly caressing the thick coils that shaded from true gold to warm

delicate tones of brown.

Then he set her on the mossy seat near the trunk; and flung himself down

before her in the old way, propped on his elbows--rapt, lost in love;

divinely without self-consciousness.

"I'm _not_ looking over your head now," he said, his eyes deep in

hers:--deep and deeper, till the wild-rose flush invaded the delicate

hollows of her temples; and leaning forward she laid a hand across those

too eloquent eyes.

"Don't blind me altogether--darling. When people have been shut away

from the sun a long time----"

"But, Tara--why _were_ you...?" He removed the hand and kept hold of it.

"I begged you to come. I wanted you. Why _did_ you...?"

She shook her head, smiling half wistfully. "That's a bit of my old Roy!

But you're man enough to know--now, without telling. And I was woman

enough to know--then. At least, by instinct, I knew...."

"Then it wasn't because ... because--I'm half ... Rajput?"

"_Roy!_" But for all her surprise and reproach, intuition told him the

idea was not altogether new to her. "What made you think--of _that_?"

"Well--because it partly ... broke things off--out there. That startled

me. And when Dad's miracle of a picture woke me up with a vengeance ...

it terrified me. I began wondering.... Beloved, are you _quite_ sure

about Aunt Helen ... Sir James...?"

She paused--a mere breathing-space; her free hand caressed his hair.

(This time, he did not shift his head.) "I'm utterly sure about Mother.

You see ... she knows ... we've talked about it. We're like sisters,

almost. As for Father ... well, we're less intimate. I did fancy he

seemed the wee-est bit relieved when ... your news came...." The pain in

his eyes checked her. "My blessed one, I won't have you _daring_ to

worry about it. I'm feeling simply beyond myself with happiness and

pride. Mother will be overjoyed. She realises ... a _little_ ... what

I've been through. Of course--in our talks, she has told me frankly what

tragedies often come from mixing such 'mighty opposites.' But she said

all of you were quite exceptional. And she knows about such things. And

_she's_ the point. She can always square Father if--there's any need. So

just be quiet--inside!"

"But ... that day," he persisted, Roy-like, "_you_ didn't think of

it----?"

"Faithfully, I didn't. I only felt your heart was too full up with Aunt

Lila and India to have room enough for me. And I wanted _all_ the

room--or nothing. Vaguely, I knew it was _her_ dream. But my wicked

pride insisted it should be _your_ dream. It wasn't till long after,

that Mother told me how--from the very first--Aunt Lila had planned and

prayed, because she knew marriage might be your one big difficulty; and

she could only speak of it to Mummy. It was their great link; the idea

behind everything--the lessons and all. So you see, all the time, she

was sort of creating me ... for you. And the bitter disappointment it

must have been to her! If I'd had a glimmering ... of all that--I don't

believe I could have held out against you----"

"Then I wish to heaven you'd had a glimmering--because of her and

because of _us_. Look at all the good years we've wasted----"

"We've not--we've _not_!" she protested vehemently. "If it had happened

then, it wouldn't have come within miles--of this. You simply hadn't it

_in_ you, Roy, to give me ... all I can feel you giving me now. As for

me--well, that's for you to find out! Of course, the minute I'd done it,

I was miserable: furious with myself. For I couldn't stop ... loving

you. My heart had no shame, in spite of my important pride. Only ...

after _she_ went--and Mother told me all--something in me seemed to know

her free spirit would be near you--and bring you back to me ... somehow:

_till_ ... your news came. And--_look_! The Bracelet! I hesitated a long

time. If you hadn't been engaged, I'm not sure if I would have ventured.

But I did--and you're here. It's all been her doing, Roy, first and

last. Don't let's spoil any of it with regrets."

He could only bow his head upon her hand in mute adoration. The courage,

the crystal-clear wisdom of her--his eager Tara, who could never wait

five minutes for the particular sweet or the particular tale she craved.

Yet she had waited five years for him--and counted it a little thing. Of

a truth his mother had builded better than she knew.

"You see," Tara added softly. "There wouldn't have been ... the deeps.

And it takes the deeps to make you realise the heights----"

* * * * *

Lost in one another--in the wonder of mutual self-revealing--they were

lost, no less, to impertinent trivialities of place and time; till the

very trivial pang of hunger reminded Roy that he had been wandering for

hours without food.

"Tara--it's a come down--but I'm fairly starving!" he cried

suddenly--and consulted his watch. "Nine o'clock. The wretch I am! Dad's

final remark was, 'Sure as a gun, you'll be late for breakfast.' And it

seemed impossible. But sure as guns we _will_ be! Put on the precious

hat. We must jolly well run for it."

And taking hands, like a pair of children, they ran....

CHAPTER THE LAST.

"Who shall allot the praise, and guess

What part is yours--what part is ours?"

--ALICE MEYNELL.

"Perhaps a dreamer's day will come ... when judgment will be

pronounced on all the wise men, who always prophesied evil--and

were always right."--JOHAN BOJER.

Two hours later Roy and his father sat together in the cushioned window

seat of the studio, smoking industriously; not troubling to say

much--though there was much to be said--because the mist of constraint

that brooded between them yesterday had been blown clean away by Roy's

news.

If it had not given Sir Nevil 'the surprise of his life,' it had given

him the deepest, most abiding gratification he had known since his inner

light had gone out, with the passing of her who had been his inspiration

and his all. Dear though his children were to him, they had remained

secondary, always. Roy came nearest--as his heir, and as the one in whom

her spirit most clearly lived again. Since she went, he had longed for

the boy; but remembering her plea on that summer day of decision--her

mountain-top of philosophy, 'to take by leaving, to hold by letting

go'--he had studiously refrained from pressing Roy's return. Now, at a

word from Tara, he had sped home in the hot season; and--hard on the

heels of a mysteriously broken engagement--had claimed her at sight.

Yesterday their sense of strangeness had made silence feel

uncomfortable. Now that they slipped back into the old intimacy, it felt

companionable. Yet neither was thinking directly of the other. Each was

thinking of the woman he loved.

By chance their eyes encountered in a friendly smile, and Roy spoke.

"Daddums--you've come alive! I believe you're _almost_ as happy over

it--as I am?"

"You're not far out. You see"--his eyes grew graver--"I'm feeling ...

Mother's share, too. Did you ever realise...?"

"Partly. Not all--till just now. Tara told me."

There was a pause. Then Sir Nevil looked full at his son.

"Roy--_I've_ got something to tell you--to show you ... if you can

detach your mind for an hour----?"

"Why, of course. _What_ is it--where?"

He looked round the room. Instinctively, he knew it concerned his

mother.

"Not here. Upstairs--in her House of Gods." He saw Roy flinch. "If _I_

can bear it, old boy, you can. And there's a reason--you'll understand."

The little room above the studio had been sacred to Lilámani ever since

her home-coming as a bride of eighteen; sacred to her prayers and

meditations; to the sandalwood casket that held her 'private god'; for

the Indian wife has always one god chosen for special worship--not to be

named to any one, even her husband. And although a Christian Lilámani

had discontinued that form of devotion, the tiny blue image of the

Baby-god, Krishna, had been a sacred treasure always, shown, on rare

occasions only, to Roy. To enter that room was to enter her soul. And

Roy, shrinking apart, felt himself unworthy--because of Rose.

On the threshold there met him the faint scent of sandalwood that

pervaded her. For there, in an alcove, stood Krishna's casket. In larger

boxes, lined with sandalwood, her many-tinted silks and saris lay

lovingly folded. Another casket held her jewels, and arranged on a row

of shelves stood her dainty array of shoes--gold and silver and pale

brocades: an intimate touch that pierced his heart.

Near the Krishna alcove, hung a portrait he had not seen: a thing of

fragile, almost unearthly beauty, painted when her husband came

home--and realised....

An aching lump in Roy's throat cut like a knife; but his father's remark

put him on his mettle. And, the next instant, he saw....

"_Dad!_" he breathed, in awed amazement.

For there, on the small round table stood a model in dull red clay:

unmistakably, unbelievably--the rock fortress of Chitor: the walls

scarped and bastioned; Khumba Rána's tower; and the City itself--no

ruin, but a miniature presentment of Chitor, as she might have been in

her day of ancient glory, as Roy had been dimly aware of her in the

course of his own amazing ride. Temples, palaces, huddled houses--not

detailed, but skilfully suggested--stirred the old thrill in his veins,

the old certainty that he knew....

"Well----?" asked Sir Nevil, whose eyes had not left his face.

"_Well!_" echoed Roy, emerging from his trance of wonder. "I'm

dumfounded. A few mistakes, here and there; but--as a whole ... Dad--how

in the world ... could you know?"

"I don't know. I hoped you would. I ... saw it clearly, just like

that----"

"How? In a dream?"

"I suppose so. I couldn't swear, in a court of law, that I was awake. It

happened--one evening, as I lay there, on her couch--remembering ...

going back over things. And suddenly, out of the darkness,

blossomed--that. Asleep or awake, my mind was alert enough to seize and

hold the impression, without a glimmer of surprise ... _till_ I came to,

or woke up--which you will. Then my normal, sceptical self didn't know

what to make of it. I've always dismissed that sort of thing as mere

brain-trickery. But--a vivid, personal experience makes it ... not so

easy. Of course, from reading and a few old photographs, I knew it was

Chitor: and my chief concern was to record the vision in its first

freshness. For three days I worked at it: only emerging now and then to

snatch a meal. I began with those and that----"

He indicated a set of rough sketches and an impression in oils; a ghost

of a city full of suggested beauty and mystery. "No joke, trying to

model with one hand; but you wouldn't believe ... the swiftness ... the

sureness ... as if my fingers knew...."

Roy could believe. Occasionally his own fingers behaved so.

"When it was done, I put it in here," his father went on, masking, with

studied quietness, his elation at the effect on Roy. "I've shown it to

no one--not even Aunt Helen. I couldn't write of it. I felt it would

sound crazy----"

"Not to me," said Roy.

"Well, I couldn't tell that. And I've been waiting--for _you_."

"Since--when?"

"Since the third of March, this year."

Roy drew an audible breath. It was the anniversary of her passing. "All

that time! How could you----? Why didn't you----?"

"Well--_you_ know. You were obviously submerged--your novel, Udaipur,

Lance.... You wouldn't have forgone all that ... if I know you, for a

mere father. But you're here, at last, thank God. And--I want to know.

You've seen Chitor, as it is to-day...."

"I've seen more than that," said Roy. "I can tell you, now. I

couldn't--before. Let's sit."

And sitting there, on her couch, in her House of Gods, he told the story

of his moonlit ride and its culmination; told it in low tones, in swift

vivid phrases that came of themselves....

Throughout the telling--and for many minutes afterwards--his father sat

motionless; his head on his hand, half shielding his face from view....

"I've only spoken of it to Grandfather," Roy said at last. "And with all

my heart, I wish he could see ... that."

Sir Nevil looked up now, and the subdued exaltation in his eyes was

wholly new to Roy.

"_I've_ gone a good way beyond wishing," he said. "But again--I was

waiting for you. I want to go out there, Roy--with you two, when you're

married--and see it all for myself. With care, one could take the thing

along, to verify and improve it on the spot. Then--what do you say?--you

and I might achieve a larger reproduction--for Grandfather: a gift to

Rajputana--my source of inspiration; a tribute ... to her memory, who

still lights our lives ... with the inextinguishable lamp of her

spirit----"

The last words--almost inaudible--were a revelation to Roy; an

illumining glimpse of the true self, that a man hides very carefully

from his fellows; and shows--at supreme moments only--to 'a woman when

he loves her.'

Shy of their mutual emotion, he laid a hand on his father's arm.

"You can count on me, Dad," he said in the same low tone. "Who

knows--one day it might inspire the Rajputs to rebuild their Queen of

Cities, in white marble, that she may rise again, immortal through the

ages...."

When they stood up to leave the shrine their eyes met in a steadfast

look; and there was the same thought behind it. She had given them to

each other in a new way; in a fashion all her own.

* * * * *

For that brief space, Roy had almost forgotten Tara. Now the wonder of

her flashed back on him like a dazzle of sunlight after the dim sanctity

of cathedral aisles.

And down in the studio it was possible to discuss practical issues of

his father's inspiration--or rather his mother's; for they both felt it

as such.

Roy would marry Tara in September; and in November they three would go

out together. There were bad days coming out there; but, as Roy had once

said, every man and woman of goodwill--British or Indian--would count in

the scale, were it only a grain here, a grain there. The insignificance

of the human unit--a mere fragment of star-dust on sidereal shores--is

off-set by the incalculable significance of the individual in the

history of man's efforts to be more than man. In that faith these two

could not be found wanting; debtors as they were to the genius,

devotion, and high courage of one fragile woman, who had lived little

more than half her allotted span.

They at least would not give up hope of the lasting unity vital to both

races, because political errors and poisonous influences and tragic

events had roused a mutual spirit of bitterness difficult to quell....

Conceivably, it _might_ touch the imagination of their India--Rajputana

(Roy was chary, now, of the all-embracing word), that an Englishman

should so love an Indian woman as to immortalise her memory in a form

peculiar to the East. For a Christian Lilámani, neither temple, nor

tomb, but the vision of a waste city rebuilded--the city whose name was

written on her heart. In their uplifted moment, it seemed not quite

unthinkable.

"And it's India's imagination we have most of us signally failed to

touch--if not done a good deal to quench," said Roy, his eyes brooding

on a bank of purple-grey cloud, his own imagination astir....

It was his turn now to catch a flitting inspiration on the wing.

Would it be utterly impossible----? Could they spend a wander-year in

Rajputana--the cities, the desert, the Aravallis: his father

painting--he writing? The result--a combined book, dedicated to her

memory; an attempt to achieve something in the nature of

interpretation--his arrogant dream of Oxford days; a vindication of his

young faith in the arts as the true medium of mutual understanding. In

any case, it would be a unique achievement. And they would feel they had

contributed their mite of goodwill, had followed 'the gleam.'...

"Besides--out there, other chances might crop up. Thea, Grandfather,

Dyán.... And Tara would be in in it all, heart and soul," he

concluded--remembering, with a twinge, a certain talk with Rose. "And it

would do _you_ all the good on earth--which isn't the least of its

virtues, in my eyes!"

The look on his father's face was reward enough--for the moment.

"Well done, Roy," said Sir Nevil very quietly. "That year in Rajputana

shall be my wedding present--to you two----"

* * * * *

Later on the 'inspired plan' was expounded to Tara--with amplifications.

She had merely run home--escorted, of course, through the perils of the

wood--to impart her great news and bring her mother back to lunch, which

Roy persistently called 'tiffin.' Food disposed of, they stepped

straight out of the house into a world of their own--the world of their

'Game-without-an-End'; the rose garden, the wood, the regal splendours

of the moor, gleaming and glooming under shadows of drifting cloud: on

and on, in a golden haze of content, talking, endlessly talking....

The reserve and infrequency of their letters had left whole tracts,

outer and inner, unexplored. Here, thought Roy--in his mother's

beautiful phrase--was 'the comrade of body and spirit' that his

subconsciousness had been seeking all along: while he looked over the

heads of one and another, lured by the far, yet emotionally susceptible

to the near. Once--unbidden--the thought intruded: "How different! How

unutterably different!"

Reading aloud to Tara would seem pure waste of her; except when it came

to the novel, of which he had told her next to nothing, so far....

And Tara carried her happiness proudly, like a banner. The deliciousness

of being loved; the intoxication of it, after the last spark of hope had

been quenched by that excruciating engagement! Her volcanic heart held a

capacity for happiness as tremendous as her capacity for daring and

suffering. But the first had so long eluded her, that now she dared

scarcely let herself go.

She listened half incredulous, wholly entranced, while Roy drew rapid

word-pictures of the cities they would see together--Udaipur, Chitor,

Ajmir; and, not least, Komulmir, the hill fortress crowned with the

'cloud-palace' of Prithvi Raj and that distant Tara, her namesake.

Together, they would seek out the little shrine--Roy knew all about

it--near the Temple of the Mother of the Gods, that held the mingled

ashes of those great lovers who were pleasant in their lives and in

death were not divided....

* * * * *

It was much later on, in the evening, when they sat alone near the twin

beeches, under a new-lighted moon, that Roy at last managed to speak of

Rose. In the dimness it was easier, though difficult at best. But all

day he had been aware of Tara longing to hear; unable to ask; too

sensitive on his account; too proud on her own.

Sir James and Lady Despard were dining, to honour the event: and if Sir

James had needed 'squaring' no one heard of it. Jeffers had arrived,

large and genial--his thatch of hair thinned a little and white as

driven snow. Healths had been drunk. It was long since the Beeches had

known so hilarious a meal. Yet the graceless pair had made haste to

escape, and blessed Lady Despard for remaining with the men.

Tara was leaning back in a low chair; Roy on a floor cushion, very

close; a hand slipped behind her, his cheek against her arm; yet, in a

deeper sense, she wanted him closer still. Surely he knew....

He did know.

"Tara--my loveliest--shall I tell you?" he asked suddenly. "Are you

badly wanting to hear?"

"Craving to," she confessed. "It's like a bit of blank space inside me.

And I don't want blank spaces--about you. It's the house swept and

garnished that attracts the seven devils. And one of my devils is

jealousy! I've hated her _so_, poor thing. I can't hate her more,

whatever you tell----"

"Try hating her less," suggested Roy.

"Try and make me!" she challenged him. "Are you--half afraid? Were you

... fearfully smitten?"

"Wonderful Tara! 'Smitten' is the very word." He looked up at her

moonlit face, its appealing charm, its mingling of delicacy and

strength. "I would never dream of saying I was 'smitten'--with _you_."

For reward, her lips caressed his hair. "What a Roy you are--with your

words! Tell me--tell from the beginning."

And from the beginning he told her: first in broken, spasmodic

sentences, with breaks and jars; then more fluently, more unreservedly,

as he felt her leaning closer--more and more understanding; more and

more forgiving, where understanding faltered, where gaps came--on

account of Lance, and of pain that went too deep for words. She had

endured her own share of that. She knew....

When all had been said, it was she who could not speak; and he gathered

her to him, kissing with a passion of tenderness her wet lashes, her

trembling lips----

At last: "Beloved--_has_ the blank space gone?" he asked. "Are you

content now?"

"Content! I'm lifted to the skies."

"To the tipmost top of them?" he queried in her ear; and mutely she

clung to him, returning his kisses, with the confidence of a child, with

the intensity of a woman....

* * * * *

All too soon it was over--their one mere day: the walk back through the

wood--never more enchanted than on a night of full moon: Tara, dropped

from the skies, lost to everything but the sound of Roy's voice in the

darkness, deep and soft, like the voice of her own heart heard in a

dream. It seemed incredible that there would be to-morrow--and

to-morrow--and to-morrow, world without end....

Back in the garden, Jeffers--a miracle of tact--wandered away to commune

with an idea, leaving father and son alone together.

Sir Nevil offered Roy a cigarette, and they sat down in two of the six

empty chairs near the beeches and smoked steadily without exchanging a

remark.

But this time they were thinking of one woman. For at parting Tara had

said again, "It's all been her doing--first and last." And Roy--with

every faculty sensitised to catch ethereal vibrations above and below

the human octave--divined that identical thought in his father's

silence. Her doing indeed! None of them--not even his father--knew it

better than himself.

And now, while he sat there utterly still in the midst of stillness--no

stir in the tree-tops, no movement anywhere but the restless glow of

Broome's cigar--the inexpressible sense of her stole in upon him,

flooding his spirit like a distillation from the summer night. Moment by

moment the impression deepened and glowed within him. Never, since that

morning at Chitor, had it so uplifted and fulfilled him....

Surely, now, his father could feel it too? Deliberately he set himself

to transmit, if might be, the thrill of her nearness--the intimacy, the

intensity of it.

Then, craving certainty, he put out a hand and touched his father's

knee.

"Dad," the word was a mere breath. "Can you feel...? She is here."

His father's hand closed sharply on his own.

For one measureless moment they sat so. Then the sense of her presence

faded as a light dies out. The garden was empty. The restless red planet

was moving towards them.

On a mutual impulse they rose. Once again, as in her shrine, they

exchanged a steadfast look. And Roy had his answer.

He slipped a possessive hand through his father's arm; and without a

word, they walked back into the house....

_Parkstone, February_ 1920.

_Parkstone, March_ 27, 1921.

THE END.