THE RIDDLE GROWS
In these days of the diffusion of the products of trade and the
benefits doubtful and otherwise of civilization, when the Amir of
Afghanistan has a piano, and the Grand Llama of Thibet a bicycle, it
must not shock the reader to know that Elizabeth travelled up the
Khyber Pass in the company of her father and the Commander-in-Chief
in a motor-car. That military hero who had danced three-quarters of
the night with the young ladies of Peshawar, not singling out any one
for his favours, but cutting up his heart into a large number of small
pieces, and giving one to each, was delighted to find there was yet
another charming maiden whom he had not yet seen, and, rolling his
jolly sides with laughter, supposed that there had been a conspiracy
among the beauties of Peshawar to keep the fairest of them all out of
the ballroom. Gallantry and excessive animal spirits are apt to be
rather disgusting in elderly and obese persons, but the vitality of
this amiable old warrior was so genuine in its boyishness that the
primmest of the sex that he so indiscriminately adored were disarmed
by his monstrous flatteries. But when our party had passed the fort of
Jamrud that guards the Indian end of the historic road, and entered on
the defile which from immemorial days has been the coveted key that has
locked and unlocked the treasure of India, each yard of which has been
bought and paid for in blood, Sir Henry's gallant loquacity was abated,
and the magic of the most historic highway in the world cast its spell
on him.
Elizabeth had hardly slept last night, but that which had kept her
still and wakeful during the dark hours had been so strong a stimulus
to her mind, that morning saw no haggard cheeks and drooping eyelids,
but an alert and fresh-coloured face. That strange sudden death of
the white-haired traveller had not in the least shocked or terrified
her, for her whole soul was full of the discovery of how wonderful and
beautiful a thing is death to one who has lived, and who, like this
aged Brahmin, had looked upon it not as a cold hand that locks the
gates of the sepulchre, but as a friend who opens a door into a fuller
life, an ampler perception. Hitherto she had never looked on death,
and in so far as she thought of it at all, viewed it as a remote and
cruel contingency, horrible to contemplate and best forgotten. She
had no idea that it could be like _that,_ that calm moment of healing
that had not distorted the peace and the joy on the old man's face,
but had merely wiped off, as if it had been some travel-stain, some
superficial blur, the weariness and the age that had a moment before
overlaid it. She found, too, that she had no horror at the touch of
the lifeless shell, and had helped the servants to move the body. But
before she had called for assistance she had sat a minute or two alone
with the body, the face of which was calmer and more serene than the
flooding moonlight that illuminated it, and had kissed, in a sort of
inexplicable reverence and tenderness, the lined forehead.
And all night long that face had remained with her. If she shut
her eyes it hovered before her in the darkness of her closed lids,
answering the question she did not know how to frame. Triumph,
conviction, certainty, attainment was the response. She could not doubt
that this death by the wayside of but one of the teeming millions, and
that one so aged, so stricken, was a royal entry from an ante-chamber
into a throne-room. She had seen a soul attain; the dead smiling face
no less than the last words which the triumphant lips had spoken
assured her of it. All his life he had sought, knowing what he sought;
as yet she but felt the conviction that there was something to seek.
For a while, however, all this sank out of sight in her mind, as if
she had dropped treasure into a well. It was there safe, and when she
dredged for it she would find it again, but for the present, as they
wound upwards on the narrow road, the magic of the way enchained her.
Barer and more precipitous rose the barren hill-sides of neutral native
territory, between which wound the narrow riband of the English road.
All the way along it, within communicable distance from each other, the
sentries of the Khyber Rifles guarded the pass, to give safe conduct
to the caravan that came with carpets and dried fruits and incense
from the unknown country beyond, and to that which, with the products
of civilization, oil and sheet iron and calico, passed from the plain
into the mountains of Afghanistan. They overtook and passed the
caravan that had rested last night at the entrance to the pass, going
westwards; six hundred camels, bearded and with soft, padding steps,
carried the amorphous mass of merchandise. Some were gentle beasts,
mild-eyed and depressed, others were muzzled with rope and foamed at
the mouth. Myriad were the types of those who drove them; there were
pale-faced boys with flaxen hair; there were hawk-nosed eager Pathans
of the type so familiar to Elizabeth in the parades of her father's
regiment, snub-nosed Mongolians, Thibetans, with their high cheek-bones
and wide-lipped mouths, and of them all there was not one in whose face
this morning Elizabeth did not see signs of some secret quest, some
unconjecturable search. One perhaps desired money, one an end to this
mounting road; one was hungry, another thirsty, but behind all these
superficial needs she read into each face a desire, a quest. Often, as
if in answer to her eager glance, she received a questioning stare,
as if the gazer sought from her some signal that he was waiting for.
All nature that morning had a question on its lips for Elizabeth, and
an answer if she could but interpret it. The grey climbing hill-sides
already aquiver in the hot sun seemed ready to tell her why they stood
there broad-flanked and menacing. The brook that came cool and bubbling
from below a rock by the wayside, fringing its course with cresses
and feathery grass, had learned in the darkness of the earth, in the
sub-terrestrial caves from which it sprang, the reason of its going.
Scattered by the roadside here and there were Afghan villages, and at
the mouths of excavated dwellings in the hill-side stood the wild-eyed
native folk who were born and lived and loved and fought and murdered,
maybe, all in obedience to some law of being that caused the aloe to
shoot up in erect strong stem and blossom, and that lit the fires of
victory in the eyes of the dying Brahmin. All seemed ready to tell her
the answer could she but frame her question.
Like an obsession this sense of revelation ready to show itself to
her, could she but put herself on the plane of thought where it lay,
besieged her all day, and as they returned to the caravanserai at
the foot of the pass as the sun, declining behind the western hills,
turned them for a moment into glowing amber, it seemed to elude her
but by a hair's-breadth. There all was ready for the reception of the
caravan that had marched through the pass into India that day; the
sellers of bread were pulling out of their circular ovens excavated
in the ground the flat cakes of unleavened bread, the brass samovars
hissed at the booths of the tea-sellers, and cauldrons of hot soup
boiled and bubbled. Already the van of the wayfarers was entering the
guarded gates that were pierced in the mud walls, and the camels, weary
with the long stage, bent their unwieldy joints and lay down for their
drivers to strip off their load. Some were too tired to eat, and,
resting their queer prehistoric heads on their bended forelegs, closed
their long-lashed eyes and slept. Others, hungry and restless, foamed
and lathered and snapped greedily at the mounds of dried fodder that
their drivers placed before them. Tired men got their bowls of soup or
tea from the stalls, and, leaning against the sides of their beasts,
ate their supper, and wrapping their heads in their dusty gay-coloured
shawls, slept by their sleeping animals. Others, inclined for a chat,
collected round the shops of the provision-sellers against the wall of
the serai, and smoked and talked when their supper was done; others,
three or four clubbing together, lit fires of the brushwood they had
gathered during the day, and cooked their own food at cheaper rate
than obtained in the stores. Ponies nickered and twitched at their
heel-ropes, the sharp, pungent smell of the wood fires and the wreaths
of aromatic smoke drifted slowly along the sluggish currents of the
almost windless air, and gradually the empty space of the serai became
a mosaic of sleeping men and beasts. The hills that the sunset had
turned into molten tawny gold grew dark again with the gathering
night, and in the depth of the velvet vault above the wheeling stars
grew large.
And behind all the various forms of life, behind the molten hills,
behind the sky, behind the limbs of the bearded camels, behind the
chatter and smoke of the provision booths, there lurked, so it seemed
to Elizabeth, one impulse, one energy common to all. In her head lay
some remembered melody of Schumann, that seemed to beat to the same
indwelling rhythms to which the stars pulsated.
Her father was standing alone beside her; a little way off the genial
Commander-in-Chief was tasting the soup that bubbled in the tin-plated
cauldrons, pronouncing it excellent, and bidding his aide-de-camp,
a slim young, weary Englishman, translate his verdict of it to the
gratified booth-keeper. Some word of the identity of this great
boisterous hedonist had been passed about the serai, but the tired
drovers of the caravan paid little heed. And yet, here incarnate, was
the figure-head of the English power that guaranteed their safe journey
through the turbulent lands of the frontier, and that would avenge with
wicked little spitting guns and a troop of khaki-clad soldiers any
raid that the ungoverned tribe might make. But Sir Henry, in spite of
this, roused but little attention; the tired drovers slept; those who
were more alert were but employed with jokes and snatches of song round
the samovars and soup-cauldrons. The hills and the stars attended as
little; everything and everybody was intent on his own inward calls,
just as last night the Brahmin who lay by the wayside had no need of
food, and but thought of the finding of that for which all his years
had searched.
And then Elizabeth's questing soul suddenly gave up the pursuit of a
hidden cause, and felt content with the obvious explanation. She took
her father's arm.
"Oh, daddy, I've had such a lovely day!" she said. "What heaps of
different things there are in the world, and what heaps of different
businesses. And it all makes such a jumbled incoherent whole! In half
an hour we shall be back home again, and it will be time to dress,
and mamma will tell us all she has done to-day. After dinner I will
play the piano to you till you snore, and as soon as you snore I shall
wake you up again and make you write to Aunt Julia to say when I shall
arrive at Heathmoor."
He pressed her hand as it lay in the crook of his arm.
"It is a less tragic view than that of last night," he said.
"I know. At this moment I don't mind the least about going to England.
I'm--I'm going to take things as they come."
Elizabeth paused a moment, as with the vividness of ocular
hallucination the Brahmin's face once more swam before her eyes.
"But that doesn't mean I am not going to be serious," she said. "I want
'richly to enjoy.' Doesn't that come in the Bible somewhere? I expect
there are many routes that arrive at the same place."
To anybody unacquainted with the sum of Elizabeth's musings that day,
this was necessarily a cryptic speech. It grew more cryptic yet.
"Perhaps drink leads the drunkard there," she said, "and music the
musician. Doesn't one develop, daddy, through one's passions, and not
through one's renunciations? I can't see how starving your desires can
possibly help one."
"My dear, there are desires and desires," he said.
"And where do they all come from? Surely from the search."
He was silent a moment, and at that moment anything short of
enthusiastic acceptance of her illumination was a coldness, a hand of
ice to Elizabeth.
"Daddy, you don't understand," she said. "As long as we want, it
doesn't much matter what we want. Isn't it half the battle to be eager?"
He shook his head.
"Again I should talk nonsense if I agreed with you," he said.
"Eagerness is a sword, my dear; but it is not armour."
"I don't want armour," she said quickly. "I am not afraid of being
hurt."
"Ah, don't get hurt, my darling!" he said.
"Not I. And if I do get hurt, daddy, I shall come crying to you, and
you will have to comfort me. Oh, oh--look at all those tired men, with
no beds to lie on, and no pillows and no tooth powder or sponges! Don't
you envy them? They will wake up in the morning, and find _themselves_
there, and, after all, nothing else can matter. I don't want to be
bothered with possessions. I want to be----" Elizabeth suddenly broke
off, interrupting her speech and thought alike.
"Daddy, that darling Sir Henry has had soup, and now he is eating
unleavened cakes, and a peculiarly murderous-looking Pathan is tempting
him with a pomegranate. Do stop him; he is dining with us in an hour's
time, and mamma will be so vexed if he doesn't eat the most enormous
dinner."
Colonel Fanshawe, with Elizabeth still on his arm, stepped over a
couple of sleeping prostrate forms.
"Yes, we will go to him," he said, "and you shall tell me more about
the simple life afterwards. It is getting late."
Sir Henry had just cracked a pomegranate in his enormous beefy hands.
"God bless me!" he was saying. "I never saw anything look so good.
Fanshawe, be kind enough to tell this man in your best Pushtoo, that
there's a fortune in pomegranates. Why, it's quite delicious; never
tasted such a fine fruit."
Colonel Fanshawe made some amiable equivalent of all this in Pushtoo,
and spoke to Sir Henry again.
"He says that his trees will bear in greater abundance than ever now,
sir. But it is rather late. I think we ought to be getting home. You
won't have more than time to eat your dinner in comfort before the
train----"
Sir Henry rejected a mass of seeds.
"Yes, yes; we'll go," he said. "Why, here's my Miss Elizabeth come to
insist. I always obey the ladies, Colonel; you obey the ladies always,
and you'll have a confoundedly pleasant time. Now, Miss Elizabeth,
quick march, is it?"
* * * * *
A sleepless day following on a dancing night, had produced in Mrs.
Fanshawe that uncertainty of temper which, when it exhibits itself in
children, is called fractiousness. The Commander-in-Chief, who dined
with them _en famille,_ had been obliged to leave in order to catch his
train before dinner was over, and in consequence the very expensive
strawberries which she had designed to form an exceptional dessert were
eaten by herself and Elizabeth, while the Colonel went to the station
to speed his parting chief. The chief also during dinner had paid,
according to her estimate of what was proper, insufficient attention
to his hostess, and more than sufficient to Elizabeth, on whom he
rained showers of robust gallantries. In addition, some vague story of
a dead man found in the garden had agitated her, while not a single
soul from the rest of the station had called to tell her how complete
was the eclipse that all other women suffered at the ball last night
in consequence of her effulgence. This was enough to start a promising
crop of grievances and gloomy forebodings in Mrs. Fanshawe's mind,
which she served up, so to speak, young, succulent, and tender like
mustard and cress. The crop was of extremely varied growth--a perfect
macedoine of mixed and bitter vegetables, among which her habitual
helplessness and childlike manner had been completely volatilized.
"I think it is no wonder," she said, "that the military future of India
gives politicians grave anxiety at home, when there is such a doddering
old goose at the head of affairs."
"Oh, mamma, it's rather a telling sort of doddering!" said Elizabeth.
"They gave him a tremendous reception at Jamrud."
"And laughed at him behind his back, I know," said Mrs. Fanshawe, with
decision. "And his conduct at dinner, too, with his absurd jokes. I
had hoped, Elizabeth, that your good sense would have enabled you to
see through them, and for my part, the most charitable explanation I
can think of is that he had had too much wine, which I am sure I hope
he will sleep off before he makes another laughing-stock of himself
at Lahore. Stuffing himself with soup and pomegranates, too, like a
school-boy at a confectioner's!"
Elizabeth forebore to suggest that a school confectioner who sold soup
and pomegranates would be a unique species of tradesman, and proceeded
to eat strawberries one by one from the dish. Her stepmother did not
often spout with vinegar, when she did the wisest thing was not to
attempt to staunch the flow, but merely wait till it ran dry. But it
appeared that her silence acted as spur sufficient.
"And as you have nothing to tell me about the pleasures of your
expedition," observed Mrs. Fanshawe, "I must be content with picturing
it to myself, as, indeed, I have been doing all day, thinking that now
you had got to Landi Kotal, and now to the other place, the name of
which I forget."
"We started at eight," began Elizabeth.
"I am quite aware of that, dear," said Mrs. Fanshawe. "I had lain awake
till then after the ball, and was just beginning to think I should get
to sleep, when I heard you laughing and calling so merrily. I only
thought, 'Now my dear ones are starting on their expedition,' nothing
more at all. Except to look out of my window, though the light hurt my
eyes, to see if you were likely to have a fine day. But, since you have
nothing to tell me----"
"Indeed, mamma, we all talked about our day at dinner," said Elizabeth.
"I should have thought you had heard enough of it."
Mrs. Fanshawe closed her eyes until Elizabeth ceased speaking, and then
went on exactly where she had left off.
"What you have been doing," she said. "I must try to entertain you with
what happened last night. The room was very hot and full, and indeed,
with Sir Henry bouncing about, there was little space for anybody else
to dance at all. Such an elephant I have never yet seen outside a
menagerie or at the Durbar, and I should not wonder if when he retired
next year, as I am told he does, Barnum offered something handsome for
him. But it would be a risky purchase; he might burst any day and cover
the place with pomegranate seeds."
Elizabeth gave a little inward gurgle of laughter at this picturesque
phrasing. A peculiarity of Mrs. Fanshawe, and one which she shared
with many of the human race, was that, when vexed, her sense of humour
entirely deserted her, though her humour itself indulged in admirable
touches. There was, for instance, humour in her swift thumbnail sketch
of an exploding warrior in a menagerie, but her perception of her own
felicity failed to recognize it. Under these circumstances it was not
diplomatic for others to greet it; their amusement was not wanted. Mrs.
Fanshawe proceeded in her inimitable way, in a rather faint voice.
"Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday," she said. "I hope, Elizabeth, you will
be able to let me see a little of you before you bury yourself in your
trunks. I hope, too, you will keep a hand on your natural exuberance
during your voyage. You must not be carried away by such foolish
sallies and witticisms as seemed to amuse you during dinner, and make
undesirable acquaintances. There is sure to be a number of skylarking
young men on board going home, who will want to romp with any girl
handy. And be careful to dress very plainly and quietly. You will earn
in respect what you will lose in being stared at. Of course you will
chiefly sit in the ladies' saloon, especially after dark, and not
play any of those foolish games with buckets and bits of rope, which
occasion so much silly shouting and giggling, unless there are one or
two elderly women playing!"
She observed, with a shaded glance, that Elizabeth had finished the
strawberries.
"Perhaps you would pass me the strawberries, dear," she said. "They are
quite excellent."
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" began Elizabeth.
"Ah, you have eaten them all, have you? It is not of the slightest
consequence. I only wanted one or two, and no doubt I am quite as well
without them. Indeed, I am only glad that you have enjoyed them so
much, and wish for your sake there were more. Ah, here is your father
back from seeing poor Sir Henry off. Take the dish off the table,
darling, so that he shall not see we have had strawberries, for they
are his favourite fruit."
The goaded Elizabeth turned.
"Daddy," she said, "I have eaten all the strawberries, so that there
are none for you and mamma."
Mrs. Fanshawe gave her a reproachful glance.
"Really, Elizabeth!" she said. "So you are back, Bob. Did you see the
poor old man into his train? I was saying to Elizabeth that I hoped it
was only wine, but I am afraid his brain must be going. I should not
wonder if he became quite childish."
Colonel Fanshawe lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise.
"Sir Henry?" he said. "I hope neither conjecture is true, my dear. By
the way, he sent his warmest thanks to you and hoped so much that when
you went up to Simla you would stay with him a week or two. He will be
there all next month. But of course if you are afraid of his being sent
for to go to the asylum----"
Mrs. Fanshawe did not waste time over her transitions; she did not
modulate from key to key, but, without sequence of transitional chords,
put her finger firmly down on the notes she intended to play.
"My darling, how literally you take my little joke!" she said. "Dear
Sir Henry! He is like a great boy, is he not, with his jokes and high
spirits! I declare he made me feel a hundred years old. I must say
that it is very civil of him, and of course I shall go. I regard the
invitations of the Commander-in-Chief as a royal command, when one is
in India."
An unusual impulse of candour took possession of her.
"Besides," she said, "it will be much more amusing and comfortable than
at the hotel."
Elizabeth, as had now been settled, was to start for England the next
week, and since, after the visit of the Commander-in-Chief, a quiet
reaction settled down on Peshawar, Mrs. Fanshawe was at liberty to work
herself to the bone, as she herself phrased it, to make preparations
for her departure. As a matter of strict fact, her labours in this
regard were to order her _ayah_ to wash out a Thermos flask of hers,
the possession of which, she declared, would make "all the difference"
to Elizabeth's comfort on her journey down to Bombay, and to determine
to finish a woollen crochet scarf for her, which would make "all the
difference" when she was on the boat. The necessity of finishing
this--for her determination was invincible on the point--caused her to
insist on a good deal of reading aloud in the evening, which she always
enjoyed, while the breaking of the Thermos flask--quite irreplaceable
in Peshawar--by her _ayah_ gave her an excuse, which she had long been
wanting, for dismissing her, since it was quite impossible to trust
a woman who could be careless over such a treasure, and to keep a
servant whom she could not trust, was to violate one of her most sound
household laws. Under the stress of these duties it was only prudent to
rest for rather longer hours than usual after lunch, with the crochet
scarf put on a table by her sofa, in case her afternoon insomnia was
persistent, and except for lunch, she was practically invisible until
evening. Under these circumstances, though she continued to plan long
quiet days for herself and Elizabeth before the wrench of parting came,
the girl saw more than usual of her father, for, to speak frankly,
it was impossible to have the sense of seeing anybody else when Mrs.
Fanshawe was present. She was obtrusive in the faint but shrill
trumpeting manner of a mosquito.
To Elizabeth, therefore, and, though loyalty prevented his ever
forming such a thought to himself, perhaps to her father, too, these
days had a recaptured charm. It was now a couple of years since her
stepmother had made the third--not shadowy--in her home; before that,
for her mother had died in her infancy, she and her father had been
inseparable companions. And in these two years Elizabeth had grown up;
from the high romantic mists of childhood, she had stepped down into
the level plains, and saw womanhood stretching out in front of her. As
was natural, that expanse had come slowly and gradually into sight,
and it was not till these few days of companionship with her father
brought back the habit of earlier years that she began to realize
how far she had travelled. She found, too, that the adequacy of the
prattling companionship of childhood no longer satisfied her; her heart
needed a more mature diet, her brain was awake and tingling with a
hundred questions and surmises such as a few days before had inspired
her wondering conjectures when she found him at work in his garden.
Then, for the first time quite consciously, she had asked herself that
momentous question as to the meaning, the principle that lay behind
all the phenomena which she had taken for granted; then, too, she had
realized that to her father the explanation lay in, or, at any rate,
was bound up with, something inherent in the prayers and hymns at
church. There to him was the finality which she had been consciously
seeking, about which for the first time she felt any real curiosity.
But she was as diffident about putting any question to him about it as
he, all these years, had been of initiating any speech on the subject.
A man's religious convictions necessarily take the colour and texture,
so to speak, of his mind, and this quiet, unassertive man was no more
in the habit of speaking about them than about his loyalty to the King
or his habits of personal cleanliness. Such subjects as these, rightly
or wrongly, are the last to find vocal expression; he would have found
it as difficult and as unnatural to speak to Elizabeth on religious
topics as to discourse on the meaning of the National Anthem, or ask
her at breakfast if she had performed her ablutions with thoroughness.
In his own case, his conduct, his work, and his immaculate appearance
bore witness to the reality of his convictions on these three respects,
and, though he shared with no mother the responsibility of parentage,
he assumed her welfare in these regards. It was not because the reality
of them was faint to him that he was reticent, it was because the
reality was a matter of instinct, deeply felt and inwardly imperative.
Throughout the reigns of various governesses, he had from time to time
reminded those ladies of his wish that a Bible lesson should inaugurate
the labours of the day, and, having thus provided for the material
of religious instruction, he believed that the child's nature would,
out of that pabulum, secrete, in the manner of well-nourished bodily
glands, the secret essences that sustained and built. But there had
resulted from this method of reticence, a symptom which should have
troubled him if he wanted confirmation of its success, for Elizabeth,
so open, so garrulous with him on all other subjects, had never spoken
to him on this one. This he set down to the same instinct that made
himself shy of speech on such subjects, namely, the inherent conviction
that does not care to discuss matters like loyalty and cleanliness. It
had never occurred to him that her silence was due to indifference, to
incuriousness, and that religious instruction was to her no more than
a part of the curriculum of the week-day church, an hour's slightly
distasteful feature of Sunday morning.
But now Elizabeth's curiosity was aroused. "The scheme of things
entire" had begun to make audible to her its first faint flute-like
call, a call that, before there has fallen on the spirit any experience
of agony, of darkness, of loneliness, is as fascinating as the music of
Pan or the voice of Sirens, and she longed to know how it sounded in
the ears of others. For herself, she was confused, bewildered by the
remote uncapturable melody, that at present only gave hints in broken
phrases to her untrained ear.
The two were riding back one day from a horseback saunter along the
lanes among the fruit orchards. The blossom was beginning to fall, and
when a puff of wind disturbed its uncertain clinging the ground below
would be showered with snowy pear-blossom or pink with the flower of
the peach. Elizabeth, in tune with the spring, was inclined to lament
this.
"I would almost go without peaches," she said, "if that would save the
blossom from falling."
He laughed.
"Yet it would be a hard choice," he said, "to determine whether one
would look at a tree covered with blossom, instead of having dessert. I
think I should let Nature take its course, Lizzie, after all."
"Is it meant that the blossom has to fall before the fruit comes?" she
asked.
"Well, yes. To want it otherwise would be parallel to wanting girls and
boys not to grow up."
"And you do?"
"Naturally, though it is at the expense of their rosy petals." This
seemed to give Elizabeth sufficient material for a pondering silence,
which lasted a couple of minutes.
"_I_ want to grow up," she observed, "and keep all my youth as well."
He smiled at her.
"Hard, but worth attempting," he said.
"Oh ... do you mean it is possible, daddy?"
"Certainly! You can keep all of youth that is really worth having. But,
as I said, hard. For instance, you can continue to have all the glow of
enthusiasm of youth till it is time to think about--about turning in."
"Dying? I don't want ever to think about it. I think it is a perfectly
disgusting prospect. Don't you hate the idea of it, daddy?"
He let his eyes dwell on her a moment.
"I can't say that I do, Lizzie," he said. "Don't misunderstand me. I
enjoy life tremendously; I'm not in the least tired of it. But, as for
hating the idea of death, why no! You see, you see, it's only another
stage in growing up, which is a process with which, as I said, I am in
sympathy."
They were passing through a lane deeply sunk between its adjacent
fields; a cool draught flowed down it, and Elizabeth shivered.
"Oh, daddy, to be put in the cold earth!" she said. "That, anyhow, is a
quite certain accompaniment of death; there is no doubt about that. And
about the rest, who knows?"
"My dear, you don't doubt, do you?" he asked.
"I don't know that I do. One is taught; I was taught. I suppose I
believe in the arithmetic I learned, and in the geography I learned----"
She broke off suddenly as a little wind, as it were, blew across the
placid sunlit sea of her consciousness, shattering the brightnesses.
"But because I have learned a thing it does not become part of me, as
people tell me," she said. "You have to leaven a thing with love in
order to assimilate it. I've always known that those things are bone
of your bone to you, part of you, vital part of you, part that could
not be amputated. Even the fact that you have never talked to me about
them has shown that. You don't tell me that you love me, simply because
it is part of you to do so; nor do I remind you that I have ten fingers
and ten toes."
She checked her horse as they emerged from the lane into the stream of
the traffic that was passing into the native city.
"That's why we have never talked about it, daddy," she said in sudden
enlightenment. "It was too real to you, and it didn't touch me."
She had never seen him so troubled.
"Didn't touch you?" he asked. "You don't believe----"
Elizabeth laid her hand on his knee.
"Daddy dear, I believe in all things living and beautiful, and true.
Don't take it to heart--pray don't. Does--does the blossom know what
fruit is coming? But surely the fruit comes."
Swiftly, suddenly at this supreme instant of sunset, all the world was
changed; it was as if it passed into the heart of an opal. The dust
of the main road into which the two had just turned was transfigured
into mist of gold and rose; the wayfarers who passed along, plodding
home with camels and mild-eyed buffaloes, were changed into citizens of
some rainbow-kingdom. More brilliant grew the excellent opalescence,
and then all the tints of it were sucked up into one soft crimson that
flooded earth and sky. Then, as the darkness began to overlay it, it
grew dusky and yet duskier, till the incarnadined air was robbed of
its glories. But high above them northwards and eastwards flamed the
rose-coloured snows.
BOOK ONE