"Love, the great volcano, flings
Fires of lower earth to sky;
Love, the soul-permitted, sings
Sovereignly of Me and I."
MEREDITH.
And of what were they talking, those two, down by the sea? Of what
else but the girl who agonized alone upon her bed? And Audrey, in
her degree, was agonizing also; though Sinclair was not suffered to
suspect the fact.
Her greeting had been blunt, and to the point. She was in no humour
for softening sharp outlines. "Good evening, Nevil. If you can
spare me half an hour before dinner, I would like a talk with you."
It was then that he had assented smiling.
"Delighted. My spare half-hours are of no remarkable value. Is it
anything particular?"
"Yes. It's about Lilamani--and your picture."
"Ah! What of them?"
It was then that they walked off together down the wide path, ending
in a balustrade, beyond which rough slabs of rock fell sheer to the
sea. For a moment Audrey compressed her lips; and Sinclair,
scrutinizing her profile, was puzzled and half annoyed.
"What's wrong with you, Audrey? You've not been a bit the same girl
this week. One could only suppose you were still fussing over the
picture and the studies and all the rest of it. Rather superfluous,
surely, now the thing's half done. Rather hard lines, too, if I
mayn't take such a unique chance without your making a tea-cup
tragedy out of an interlude that's pleasant enough for us all, so far
as I can see."
Audrey regarded him very straightly, without flinching.
"Pleasant for you, no doubt; and--in a sense--for her too. But if
you will give me a chance to speak, instead, of rating me unheard, I
can prove to you that the 'tea-cup tragedy'--which may be
sufficiently serious for her, poor child, is of your own making, not
mine."
"What d'you mean?" he asked sharply, genuine pain in his voice. "I
wouldn't upset her for the world."
"It's not a question of what you would do, but of what you have done."
"Do be more explicit. You're keeping me on hot plough-shares. She
seemed quite happy when I saw her just now."
"Saw her? Where?"
"Looking over the balcony, a minute before you came."
Audrey made a small sound of vexation. "I left her lying down. But
really I don't know what to do about her. When she began to grow
home-sick, I thought seeing a little more of people might do her
good. But I didn't reckon on this affair of the picture; and now she
seems quite overwrought and unstrung."
"And it pleases you to throw the blame on me?"
"It doesn't please me, Nevil." Her voice softened instinctively on
his name. "The facts speak for themselves; and it's as well you
should know them."
"Fire away, then--for God's sake."
His impatience in no wise hurried her wonted precision of speech,
while she sketched for him in outline the week's day-to-day
difficulties, ending with an expurgated edition of the final scene
that had left her baffled for the moment, and deeply disquieted as
regards possible results. To Nevil's half-knowledge the way out
appeared sufficiently plain. They had reached the balustrade, and he
brought his hand down on it with decision.
"I told you before, Audrey, she's not the type. That girl has the
temperament of genius. I suspect her verses might be worth seeing.
But as for trying to cram her brain with hygienics and physiology,
you'd both be better occupied in trying to reach the moon."
Audrey bit her lip. "I am beginning to be afraid that's true.
But--if you remember, Nevil, I told you also that these studies were
of special importance to her; and now--it seems high time to convince
you of the fact by telling you plainly what she came to England to
escape."
"Escape? What was that?"
He spoke rapidly, almost under his breath. All the laughter had gone
out of his eyes, that looked steadily seaward, and continued so to
look, while Audrey--in phrases deliberately blunt and bald--told him
the story that she hoped might disgust him a little; that must, at
least, force him to recognize that gateless barrier of race, caste,
and creed that divided him from this alluring yet antipodal child of
the East.
The story was no easy one to tell. Only a conviction that her duty
to both demanded plain speech, and a secret hope that his leaning
toward sentiment might be checked in time, gave her strength to carry
it through.
She drew an unvarnished picture of the conservative, priest-ridden
Hindu mother, who, ever since Lilamani's fourteenth year, had urged
betrothal, if not marriage, without avail. She told him of the
bridegroom--wealthy, elderly, dissolute--finally brought forward by
the Guru, to whom doubtless great gifts had been promised by the
husband-elect if the transaction were carried through with success.
She spoke of Lilamani's rebellion; of the nerve-shattering struggle
which had ended in collapse. And at that the man could control
himself no longer.
"Good God!" he muttered between his teeth, but without looking round;
for the which she was grateful.
"Yes, it seems incredible to us," she answered quietly. "Yet you
know next to nothing of what such a marriage would mean for a girl so
indulged by her father, so sensitive and fanciful as Lilamani; and
even I know little enough. Happily for her Sir Lakshman is as brave
as he is broadminded. But for his championship she could never have
stood out against the combined authority of family and religion. He
himself, when he called me in, was fairly desperate; or he might not
have agreed so readily to my bold suggestion. But he did agree; and
after a fresh struggle we three gained the day."
"Well done, Audrey!" he cried, looking full at her for the first time.
In spite of stern repression her heart throbbed at his praise, and
she smiled. "I'm glad you think that, Nevil. It may help you to
realize something of my feelings this week in seeing what I believe
to be her one chance of freedom slipping from under her. The
ordinary hotel-folk would probably have disturbed her very little.
But talk with men like you, Mr. Broome, and Signor Martino
over-stimulates her imagination, her emotions, which must be
subordinated to her brain and commonsense if she is to stand on her
own feet when her father and I go back to India. Surely any studies,
however uncongenial, are better than her only alternative--an
ignominious return to the arms of a dissolute, bigoted bridegroom.
Not that I think she would go. This afternoon, when I was driven to
speak of it, she said: 'I would kill myself rather.' Indian women
are like that; and I firmly believe she spoke the truth."
"Good God!" the man broke out again. "It's downright brutal that a
sensitive white-souled girl should be so tormented----" His voice
near failed him; but he steadied it, and went on: "What are you going
to do about it, Audrey? Speak to her father----?"
"I don't know. I haven't had time to think. Most likely I shall
urge her to speak to him herself. The understanding between them is
singularly perfect; and he may feel less baffled than I do by her
deplorable change of front. But it's useless for you and me to
discuss possibilities. I merely felt you ought to know; and now----"
She consulted her wrist-watch. "I must hurry back. I shall be late
for dinner. Are you coming in?"
"Not yet. You've given me too much to think about. But I'll see you
to the hotel."
"Please not. I'd rather be alone. I have a good deal to think
about, too. But it's close upon dinner-time, you know."
"Is it? Good night. You're a brick, Audrey; and I'm a worthless
good-for-nothing. Forgive me if I've made things harder for you--or
her."
To that she had no answer save: "Good night": and he, wringing her
hand, turned down the lesser pathway that winds among shrubs of
myrtle, cytisus, and olive toward that rocky promontory from which
the hotel takes its name.
Flat and tapering, free of sun and wind, with its carpet of
sea-lavender and scarlet-leaved mesembryanthemum; its cushions of
myrtle and lentisk; its grey-green clumps of aloe and fringe of
rugged white rocks--the Cap d'Antibes reaches farther out into the
Mediterranean than any other headland of Southern France. To sit
near its peak at dusk--with all the coast behind one, looking away to
the Esterelles and hidden Corsica, is almost to believe oneself on a
steadygoing vessel in mid-ocean.
As Nevil Sinclair strode rapidly toward this haven of solitude, the
fires of sunset were ebbing from a sky tenderly rippled with light
cloud, that threw into sharp relief the few outstanding features of
the Cap. Here a lone umbrella-pine made a bold smudge of sepia on
the delicate pallor beyond; there the crescent-topped outline of a
spurious Moorish archway--remnant of some forgotten folly--was bitten
out sharp and clear. Farther on, from a black mass of building and
bushes the little lighthouse reared its head; and farthest of all,
the skeleton of a dead aloe-flower, upspringing boldly from its nest
of jagged leaves, was etched as with a fine-pointed pen upon the
darkening sea.
Mechanically, the artist's eye noted every detail of the picture,
even while brain and heart seethed with such an exalted mingling of
rage and rapture as he had never known; a white heat of chivalry that
burnt up in its pure flame mere accidents of race and creed; that
bade him, at all hazards, snatch this heavenly-sweet flower of
girlhood out of the impasse for which he was in a measure responsible.
Blessed Fate that had brought her to him! Not that he might paint
her merely; but that he might save her from a degradation worse than
death. Audrey, plucky Audrey, need not trouble her head about ways
and means. He--Nevil Sinclair--would be the god out of the machine.
This pearl of womanhood--who had awakened his talent no less than his
heart--should not die, but live--and give herself to him. For he
could win her; some inner voice assured him of that, even while he
marvelled at his own arrogance. The divine intoxication that had put
a new song in his mouth, blinded him to the hundred and one prosaic
obstacles that hovered outside the charmed circle of his dream,
biding their time. He could have shouted aloud in triumph, there
alone with the darkening sky and sea. This was something altogether
different from earlier sentimental adventures. So lightly, in his
unawakened ignorance, had he taken the name of Love in vain.
One only problem puzzled him. Why had he not discovered the truth
until to-day? From the first she had so enthralled his imagination;
so satisfied his taste for all that was rare and beautiful. Yet her
tender years, her impalpable aura of grace and purity had made her
seem a being set apart from the rough and tumble of common life; and
always absorption in his picture had stood between him and personal
thoughts of her.
But to-day in that direct contact of spirit with spirit, the divine
ray had passed between them. They had touched the electric force
that vivifies the world and hurls it spinning through the spheres.
Then, in that moment, he had first seen her as woman--the one woman,
preordained to be his own; brought to him by Fate, in the teeth of
opposing circumstances across six thousand miles of sea. Striking
sharply upon this revelation, Audrey's story--that was to have
disenchanted him--or at least checked sentimental impulses--had
wrought the very opposite effect. The rage it engendered sprang, not
from chivalry alone, but from the consuming jealousy that is
twin-brother to passion. He had scarce known how to control himself,
to hide his secret, as it must be hid till he could win speech of his
beloved alone.
And here the first prosaic obstacle reared its head. The thing
seemed impossible of achievement. But their destiny was assured; and
somehow, somewhen, it must come to pass. If matters looked too
hopeless, he could always write, or speak first to her father. But
neither alternative was to his taste. It was she to whom he should
first tell the secret, that he might watch the rose of her heart
blossom in her cheeks, that lamp of her pure spirit lighten in her
eyes....
At this point he found himself far out among the last of the broken
rocks, whitely fringed with foam. Here he sat him down, lit a cigar
and gave himself up to his fairy-tale, while the sky changed
imperceptibly from grey to indigo, the stars from silver to gold; and
the half-moon, high in the east, took on her borrowed robe of light.
Appetite rather than hunger whispered of dinner that by now must be
half over. But in his present mood he was loath to face the heat and
noise of the crowded dining-room and the penetrating eyes of Cuthbert
Broome. He would go in when it was over, and get a plate of
something from his friend the head-waiter; and avoiding the studio,
make straight for his own room. In the meantime, his cigar--while it
dulled the edge of the body's need, enhanced his mood of dreams, his
visions of a purely Bohemian life with this Jewel of Delight here in
the glowing South or among the Italian hills. Only let Martino
praise the picture he was to see to-morrow, and he, Nevil, would
devote himself in earnest to the art that, but for her, might have
withered and died in him unrecognized, unfulfilled. Henceforth her
temperament of genius would be as oil to the flame of his new-lighted
lamp. He would not take her home, or subject her to the ordeal of
family disapproval; with a throb of exultation he perceived how
completely such a marriage would exonerate him from the rôle of
politician and landed proprietor that had hung over him like the
sword of Damocles for seven unfruitful years.
And Jane?
He smiled to himself in the darkness at thought of her impotent
wrath. But his father's wrath--tinged with bitter
disappointment--was another affair altogether. For Nevil--primarily
the child of his mother--seemed to have inherited also her indelible
tenderness toward the stolid, obstinate, good-hearted man, who had so
little true affinity with either wife or son. This same tenderness
that had kept him loitering at the cross-roads, surged up in him now
and threw the first shadow across his enchanted garden of dreams....
It was close on ten when he ran up the hotel steps on to the
balcony-verandah. The hall was nearly empty, and waiters were
putting out the lights. He went straight to the restaurant,
unearthed a plate of cold tongue and a bottle of Burgundy; asked if
there were any letters, and was presented with an envelope addressed
in the square, uncompromising hand of Lady Roscoe.
"Damn," said he softly; and pocketing the missive, went upstairs.
Once in his room, he sat down by the small table that held his books,
manuscript, and painting gear. "Now for Jane's hydrostatics!" he
mused, slipping a penknife under the flap. It was her answer to his
own first letter, giving chapter and verse for his impulsive flight
abroad; and through the curt, vigorous phrases he could hear his
sister's familiar tone.
"My dear Boy,--You bolted. That's the plain truth, stripped of lame
excuses. But my party isn't coming off after all. So you can safely
take the next express home! In fact, you must come and do your duty
at the election like a man. You should have heard Lord Shandon's
inquiries after you the other night. Polite, of course--he wouldn't
be otherwise to _me_--but scathing. That I should live to hear a
brother of _mine_ called 'shirker'--even by implication! But what do
you care for our good name? So long as the sun shines and there's a
yard of blank canvas in the market, the dear old Place might go down
before the auctioneer's hammer and I might take in washing without
your turning a hair. Why I was allowed to be the eldest, and yet not
a _man_, passes my comprehension. All I can do is to try and hammer
you into the outward semblance of a Sinclair. Little enough use!
But it's my duty, and the word carries weight with _some_ of us.
"If you've an ounce of right feeling or affection for the dear old
Dad, you _ought_ to be at home this spring. I don't quite know
what's wrong with him, and he refuses to consult Dr. Ransome. He
seems just irritable and restless and out of spirits. Not like
himself, in fact. Business worries, I fancy, from something
Thornbrook said the other day about the estate. But I'm sure it
would give him a fillip to have you at the Place for a few weeks, and
to feel he had a personal stake in the election. So just pocket your
artistic selfishness, and wire 'Coming' to my town address. Don't
give yourself time to haver and change your mind. Remember I
_expect_ you. So it's _au revoir_.
"Your affectionate sister,
"JANE ROSCOE."
"Damn!" her affectionate brother remarked again--not softly this
time--flinging the sheet from him as if it burnt his fingers.
Then, rising, he paced the room in a turmoil of conflicting wrath,
indecision and dismay. Here was no shadow, but a bomb flung
ruthlessly into his enchanted garden. Jane and her exhortations went
for nothing. But the poor old man, worried and out of spirits--that
was quite another matter. The inherent impulse of tenderness tugged
at him; and, but for the tone of Jane's letter, might have overruled
"artistic selfishness," for all the chains that bound him, and his
recoil from the prospect of three or four weeks at Bramleigh Beeches
alone with Sir George in his present mood.
The first warmth of greeting over, he would probably be sworn at, and
certainly bored to extinction by the old futile effort at playing
good comrade to the father with whom he had nothing in common save
the mysterious tie of blood and their unspoken allegiance to her who
was gone. For, even when Nevil exasperated him most, the stubborn
heart of Sir George clave to the son who spoke the language of his
dead wife, and smiled upon him with her eyes. A sore point, this
last, for Jane who, in secret, sympathized acutely with the
immaculate elder brother in the parable. For her, the loyal, the
ever-present, neither fatted calf nor feasting. But for Nevil, the
defaulter----. Eyebrows and shoulders, mutely eloquent, implied the
rest.
Could she have witnessed his present perturbation, she might have
admitted a rudiment of conscience in his spiritual anatomy. Certain
it is that, in the face of such a call, his picture alone would not
have held him back. But--there remained Lilamani; her possible love
for him; and the cruel alternations between which she stood.
So half the night long he agonized and deliberated over the age-old
problem--that loses no whit of its tragedy through repetition--how
far a man is constrained to cripple the fulfilment of his own life
and love, out of respect for his father's wishes. Can filial duty
condemn a son to live unhappy that his father may die happy? All the
undiluted Nevil in his blood cried out, No, a thousand times. How,
then, if he went home immediately for a week or two and thrashed out
the whole matter with his father once for all? A few days earlier
such a step had been conceivable, if uncongenial; but now--on the eve
of his divine discovery--! No, again.
Should Lilamani prove indifferent, or marriage with an Englishman
beyond the pale of possibility, time enough then to think of fathers
and of flight. For the present two events only filled all his
horizon: Martino's verdict, and Lilamani's answer. On the morrow a
wire should speed homeward: "Immediate return impossible. Writing";
nor would he put pen to paper till his fate was sealed.