Far to Seek Part 48

"An _Indian_ woman," he emphasised, his eyes on hers. "I know--and you know--what that means. You have not yet bartered away your magical influence for a mess of pottage. Because of one Indian woman--supreme for me; and now ... because of another, they all have a special claim on my heart. If India has not gone too far down the wrong road, it is by the _true_ Swadeshi spirit of her women she may yet be saved. _They_, at any rate, don't reckon progress by counting factory chimneys or seats on councils. And every seed--good or bad--is sown first in the home. Get at the women, Aruna--the home ones--and tell them that. It's not only _my_ dream; it was--my mother's. You don't know how she loved and believed in you all. I think she never _quite_ understood the other kind. The longer she lived among them, the more she craved for all of you to remain true women--in the full sense, not the narrow one----"

He had never yet spoken so frankly and freely of that dear lost mother; and Aruna knew it for the highest compliment he could pay her. Truly his generous heart was giving her all that his jealous household G.o.ds would permit....

Thea--stepping softly through the inner room--caught a sentence or two; caught a glimpse of Roy's finely-cut profile; of Aruna's eyes intent on his face; and she smiled very tenderly to herself. It was so exactly like Roy; and such constancy of devotion went straight to her mother-heart. So too--with a sharper pang--did the love hunger in Aruna's eyes.

The puzzle of these increasing race complications----! The tragedy and the pity of it...!

Lance travelled North that night with a mind at ease. Roy had a.s.sured him that the moment his ankle permitted he would leave Jaipur and 'give the bee in his bonnet an airing' elsewhere. That a.s.surance proved easier to give than to act upon, when the moment came. The Jaipur Residency had come to seem almost like home. And the magnet of home drew all that was Eastern in Roy. It was the British blood in his veins that drove him afield. Though India was his objective, England was the impelling force.

His true home seemed hundreds of miles away, in more senses than one.

His union with Rajputana--set with the seal of that sacred and beautiful experience at Chitor--seemed, in his present mood, the more vital of the two.

And there was Lance up in the Punjab--a magnet as strong as any, when the masculine element prevailed. Yet again, some inner irresistible impulse obliged him to break away from them all. It was one of those inevitable moments when the dual forces within pulled two ways; when he felt envious exceedingly of Lance Desmond's sane and single-minded att.i.tude towards men and things. One couldn't picture Lance a prey to the ignominious sensation that half of him wanted to go one way and half of him another way. At this juncture, half of himself felt a confounded fool for not going back to the Punjab and enjoying a friendly sociable cold weather among his father's people. The other half felt impelled to probe deeper into the complexities of changing India, to confirm and impart his belief that the destinies of England and India were one and indivisible. After all, India stood where she did to-day by virtue of what England had made her. He refused to believe that even the insidious disintegrating process of democracy could dissolve--in a brief fever of unrest--links forged and welded in the course of a hundred years.

In that case, argued his practical half, why this absurd inner sense of responsibility for great issues over which he could have no shadow of control? What was the earthly use of it--this large window in his soul, opening on to the world's complexities and conflicts; not allowing him to say comfortably, 'They are not.' His opal-tinted dreams of interpreting East to West had suffered a change of complexion since Oxford days. His large vague aspirations of service had narrowed down, inevitably, to a few definite personal issues. Action involves limitation--as the picture involves the frame. Dreams must descend to earth--or remain unfruitful. It might be a little, or a great matter, that he had managed to set two human fragments of changing India on the right path--so far as he could discern it. The fruits of that modest beginning only the years could reveal....

Then there was this precious novel simmering at the back of things; his increasing desire to get away alone with the ghostly company that haunted his brain. As the mother-to-be feels the new life mysteriously moving within her, so he began to feel within him the first stirrings of his own creative power. Already his poems and essays had raised expectations and secured attention for other things he wanted to say.

And there seemed no end to them. He had hardly yet begun his mental adventures. Pressing forward, through sense, to the limitless regions of mind and spirit, new vistas would open, new paths lure him on....

That first bewildering, intoxicating sense of power is good--while it lasts; none the less, because, in the nature of things, it is foredoomed to disillusion--greater or less, according to the authenticity of the G.o.d within.

Whatever the outcome for Roy, that pa.s.sing exaltation eased appreciably the pang of parting from them all. And it was responsible for a happy inspiration. Rummaging among his papers, on the eve of departure, he came upon the sketch of India that he had written in Delhi and refrained from sending to Aruna. Intrinsically it was hers; inspired by her.

Also--intrinsically it was good: and straightway he decided she should have it for a parting gift.

Beautifully copied out, and tied up with carnation-pink ribbons, he reserved it for their last few moments together. She was still such a child in some ways. The small surprise of his gift might ease the pang of parting. It was a woman's thought. But the woman-strain of tenderness was strong in Roy, as in all true artists.

She was standing near the fire in her own sitting-room, wearing the pink dress and sari, her arm still in a sling. Last words, those desperate inanities--buffers between the heart and its own emotion--are difficult things to bring off in any case; peculiarly difficult for these two, with that unreal, yet intensely actual, bond between them; and Roy felt more than grateful to the inspiration that gave him something definite to say.

Instantly her eyes were on it--wondering ... guessing....

"It's a little thing I wrote in Delhi," he said simply. "I couldn't send it to Jeffers. It seemed--to belong to you. So I thought----" He proffered it, feeling absurdly shy of it--and of her.

"Oh--but it is too much!" Holding it with her sling hand, she opened it with the other and devoured it eagerly under his watching eyes. By the changes that flitted across her face, by the tremor of her lips and her hands, as she pressed it to her heart, he knew he could have given her no dearer treasure than that fragment of himself. And because he knew it, he felt tongue-tied; tempted beyond measure to kiss her once again.

If she divined his thought, she kept her lashes lowered and gave no sign.

He hoped she knew....

But before either could break the spell of silence that held them, Thea returned; and their moment--their idyll--was over....

END OF PHASE III.

PHASE IV.

DUST OF THE ACTUAL

CHAPTER I.

"It's no use trying to keep out of things. The moment they want to put you in--you're in. The moment you're born, you're done for."--HUGH WALPOLE.

The middle of March found Roy back in the Punjab, sharing a ramshackle bungalow with Lance and two of his brother officers; good fellows, both, in their diametrically opposite fashions; but superfluous--from Roy's point of view. When he wanted a quiet 'confab' with Lance, one or both were sure to come strolling in and hang round, jerking out aimless remarks. When he wanted a still quieter 'confab' with his maturing novel, their voices and footsteps echoed too clearly in the verandahs and the scantily furnished rooms. But did he venture to grumble at these minor drawbacks, Lance would declare he was demoralised by floating loose in an Earthly Paradise and becoming a mere appendage to a pencil.

There was a measure of truth in the last. As a matter of fact, after two months of uninterrupted work at Udaipur, Roy had unwarily hinted at a risk of becoming embedded in his too congenial surroundings;--and that careless admission had sealed his fate.

Lance Desmond, with his pointed phrase, had virtually dug him out of his chosen retreat; had written temptingly of the 'last of the polo,' of prime pig-sticking at Kapurthala, of the big Gymkhana that was to wind up the season:--a rare chance for Roy to exhibit his horsemanship. And again, in more serious mood, he had written of increasing anxiety over his Sikhs with that 'infernal agitation business' on the increase, and an unbridled native press shouting sedition from the house-tops. A nice state of chaos India was coming to! He hoped to goodness they wouldn't be swindled out of their leave; but Roy had better 'roll up' soon, so as to be on the spot, in case of ructions; not packed away in cotton-wool down there.

A few letters in this vein had effectually rent the veil of illusion that shielded Roy from aggressive actualities. In Udaipur there had been no hysterical press; no sedition flaunting on the house-tops. One hadn't arrived at the twentieth century, even. Except for a flourishing hospital, a few hideous modern interiors, and a Resident--who was very good friends with Vinx--one stepped straight back into the leisurely, colourful, frankly brutal life of the middle ages. And Roy had fallen a willing victim to the charms of Udaipur:--her white palaces, white temples, and white landing-stages, flanked with marble elephants, embosomed in wooded hills, and reflected in the blue untroubled depths of the Pichola Lake. Immersed in his novel, he had not known a dull or lonely hour in that enchanted backwater of Rajasthan.

His large vague plans for getting in touch with the thoughtful elements of Calcutta and Bombay had yielded to the stronger magnetism of beauty and art. Like his father, he hated politics; and Westernised India is nothing if not political. It was a true instinct that warned him to keep clear of that muddy stream, and render his mite of service to India in the exercise of his individual gift. That would be in accord with one of his mother's wise and tender sayings: (his memory was jewelled with them) "Look always first at your own gifts. They are sign-posts, pointing the road to your true line of service." Could he but immortalise the measure of her spirit that was in him, that were true service to India--and more than India. There are men created for action.

There are men created to inspire action. And the world has equal need of both.

He had things to say on paper that would take him all his time; and Udaipur had metaphorically opened her arms to him. The Resident and his wife had been more than kind. He had his books; his cool, lofty rooms in the Guest House; his own private boat on the Lake; and freedom to go his own unfettered way at all hours of the day or night. There the simmering novel had begun to move with a life of its own; and while that state of being endured, nothing else mattered much in earth or heaven.

For seven weeks he had worked at it without interruption; and for seven weeks he had been happy: companioned by the vivid creatures of his brain; and, better still, by a quickened undersense of his mother's vital share in the 'blossom and fruit of his life.' The danger of becoming embedded had been no myth: and at the back of his brain there had lurked a superst.i.tious reluctance to break the spell.

But Lance was Lance: no one like him. Moreover, he had known well enough that antic.i.p.ation of breakers ahead was no fanciful nightmare; but a sane corrective to the ostrich policy of those who had sown the evil seed and were trying to say of the fruit--'It is not.' Letters from Dyan, and spasmodic devouring of newspapers, kept him alive to the sinister activities of the larger world outside. News from Bombay grew steadily more disquieting:--strikes and riots, fomented by agitators, who lied shamelessly about the nature of the new Bills--; hostile crowds and insults to Englishwomen. Dyan more than hinted that if the threatened outbreak were not resolutely crushed at the start, it might prove a far-reaching affair; and Roy had not the slightest desire to find himself 'packed away in cotton-wool,' miles from the scene of action. Clearly Lance wanted him. He might be useful on the spot. And that settled the matter.

Impossible to leave so much loveliness, such large drafts of peace and leisure, without a pang; but--the wrench over--he was well content to find himself established in this ramshackle bachelor bungalow, back again with Lance and his music--very much in evidence just now--and the two superfluous good fellows, whom he liked well enough in h.o.m.oeopathic doses. Especially he liked Jack Meredith, cousin of the Desmonds;--a large and simple soul, gravely absorbed in pursuing b.a.l.l.s and tent-pegs and 'pig'; impervious to feminine lures; equally impervious to the caustic wit of his diametrical opposite, Captain James Barnard, who eased his private envy by christening him 'Don Juan.' For Meredith fatally attracted women; and Barnard--cultured, cynical, Cambridge--was as fatally susceptible to them as a trout to a May-fly; but, for some unfathomable reason they would not; and in Anglo-India a man could not hide his failures under a bushel. Lance cla.s.sified him comprehensively as 'one of the War lot'; liked him, and was sorry for him, although--perhaps because--he was 'no soldier.'

Roy also liked him; and enjoyed verbal fencing-bouts with him when the mood was on. Still he would have preferred, beyond measure, the Kohat arrangement, with the Colonel for an un.o.btrusive third.

But the Colonel, these days, had a bungalow to himself; a bungalow in process of being furnished by no means on bachelor lines. For the unbelievable had come to pa.s.s----! And the whole affair had been carried through in his own inimitable fashion, without so much as a tell-tale ripple on the surface of things. Quite un.o.btrusively, at Kohat, he had made friends with the General's daughter--a dark-haired slip of a girl, with the blood of distinguished Frontier soldiers in her veins. Quite un.o.btrusively--during Christmas week--he had laid his heart and the Regiment at her feet. Quite un.o.btrusively, he proposed to marry her in April, when the leave season opened, and carry her off to Kashmir.

"_That's_ the way it goes with _some_ people," said Lance, the first time he spoke of it; and Roy fancied he detected a wistful note in his voice.

"That's the way it'll go with you, old man," he had retorted. "I'm the one that will have to look out for squalls!"

Lance had merely smiled and said nothing:--the reception he usually accorded to personal remarks. And, at the moment, Roy thought no more of the matter.

Their first good week of polo and riding and generally fooling round together had quickened his old allegiance to Lance, his newer allegiance to the brotherhood of action. He possessed no more enviable talent than his many-sided zest for life.

Lance himself seemed in an unusually social mood. So of course Roy must submit to being bowled round in the new dog-cart and introduced to special friends, in cantonments and Lah.o.r.e, including the Deputy Commissioner's wife and good-looking eldest daughter; the best dancer in the station and an extra special friend, he gathered from Lance's best offhand manner.

Roy found her more than good-looking; beautiful, almost, with her twofold grace of carriage and feature and her low-toned harmony of colouring:--ivory-white skin, ash-blond hair and hazel eyes, clear as a Highland river; the pupils abnormally large, the short thick lashes very black, like a smudge round her lids. She was tall, in fine, and carried her beauty like a br.i.m.m.i.n.g chalice; very completely mistress of herself; and very completely detached from her florid, effusive, worldly-wise mother. Unquestionably, a young woman to be reckoned with.

But Roy did not feel disposed, just then, to reckon seriously with any young woman, however alluring. The memory of Aruna--the exquisite remoteness from everyday life of their whole relation--did not easily fade. And the creatures of his brain were still clamant, in spite of broken threads and drastic change of surroundings. Lance had presented him with a s.p.a.cious writing-table; and most days he would stick to it for hours, sooner than drive out in pursuit of tennis or afternoon dancing in Lah.o.r.e.

He was sitting at it now; flinging down a dramatic episode, roughly, rapidly, as it came. The polished surface was strewn with an untidy array of papers; the only ornaments a bit of old bra.s.s-work and two ivory elephants; a photograph of his father and a large one of his mother taken from the portrait at Jaipur. The table was set almost at right angles to his open door, and the chick rolled up. He had a weakness for being able to 'see out,' if it was only the corner of a barren 'compound' and a few dusty oleanders. He had forgotten the others; forgotten the time. All he asked, while the spate lasted, was to be left alone....