Far to Seek Part 53

Her mother, meantime, had tacked sail and was probing him, indirectly, about his reasons for remaining in India. Was he going in for politics, or the life of a country gentleman in his beautiful home? Her remarks implied that she took him for the eldest son. And Roy, who had not been attending, realised with a jar that, in vulgar parlance, he was being discreetly pumped. Whereat, politely but decisively, he sheered off and stuck to his partner till the meal was over.

The men seemed to linger interminably over their wine and cigars. But he managed to engage the D.C. on the one subject that put shyness to flight--the problems of changing India. With more than twenty years of work and observation behind him, he saw the widening gulf between rulers and ruled as an almost equal disaster for both. He knew, none better, all that had been achieved, in his own Province alone, for the peasant and the loyal landowner. He had made many friends among the Indians of his district; and from these he had received repeated warnings of widespread, organised rebellion. Yet he was helpless; tied hand and foot in yards of red tape....

It was not the first time that Roy had enjoyed a talk with him; a sense of doors opening on to larger s.p.a.ces. But this evening restlessness nagged at him; and at the first hint of a move he was on his feet, determined to forestall Hayes.

He succeeded; and Miss Arden welcomed him with the lift of her brows that he was growing to watch for when they met. It seemed to imply a certain intimacy.

"Very brown and vigorous, you're looking. Was it--great fun?"

"It was topping," he answered with simple fervour. "Rare sport.

Everything in style."

"And no leisure to miss partners left lamenting? I hope our stars shone the brighter, glorified by distance?"

Her eyes challenged him with smiling deliberation. His own met them full; and a little tingling shock ran through him, as at the touch of an electric needle.

"_Some_ stars are dazzling enough at close quarters," he said boldly.

"But surely--'distance lends enchantment'----?"

"It depends a good deal on the view!"

At that moment, up came Hayes, with his ineffable air of giving a cachet to any one he honoured with his favour. And Miss Arden hailed him, as if they had not met for a week.

Thus encouraged, of course he clung like a limpet; and reverted to some subject they had been discussing, tacitly isolating Roy.

For a few exasperating moments, he stood his ground, counting on bridge to remove the limpet. But when Hayes refused a pressing invitation to join Mrs Ranyard's table, Roy gave it up, and deliberately walked away.

Only Mr Elton remained sitting near the fireplace. His look of undisguised pleasure, at Roy's approach, atoned for a good deal; and they renewed their talk where it had broken off. Roy almost forgot he was speaking to a senior official; freely expressed his own thoughts; and even ventured to comment on the strange detachment of Anglo-Indians, in general, from a land full of such vast and varied interests, lying at their very doors.

"Perhaps--I misjudge them," he added with the unfailing touch of modesty that was not least among his charms. "But to me it sometimes seems as if a curtain hung between their eyes and India. And--it's catching. In some subtle way this little concentrated world, within a world, seems to draw one's receptiveness away from it all. Is that very sweeping, sir?"

A smile dawned in Mr Elton's rather mournful eyes. "In a sense--it's painfully true. But the fact is--Anglo-Indian life can't be fairly judged from the outside. It has to be lived before its insidiousness can be suspected." He moistened his lips and caressed his chin with a large, sensitive hand. "Happily--there are a good many exceptions."

"If I wasn't talking to one of them, sir--I wouldn't have ventured!"

said Roy; and the friendly smile deepened.

"All the same," Elton went on, "there are those who a.s.sert that it is half the secret of our success; that India conquered the conquerors, who lived _with_ her and so lost their virility. Yet in our earlier days, when the personal touch was a reality, we _did_ achieve a better relation all round. Of course the present state of affairs is the inevitable fruit of our whole system. By the Anglicising process, we have spread all over India a vast layer of minor officials some six million persons deep! Consider, my dear young man, the significance of those figures. We reduce the European staff. We increase the drudgery of their office work--and we wonder why the Sahib and the peasant are no longer personal friends----!"

Stirred by his subject, and warmed by Roy's intelligent interest, the man's nervous tricks disappeared. He spoke eagerly, earnestly, as to an equal in experience; a compliment Roy would have been quicker to appreciate had not half his attention been centred on that exasperating pair, who had retired to a cushioned alcove and looked like remaining there for good.

What the devil had the girl invited him for? If she wished to disillusion him, she was succeeding to admiration. If she fancied he was one of her infernal ninepins, she was very much mistaken. And all the while he found himself growing steadily more distracted, more insistently conscious of her....

Voices and laughter heralded an influx of bridge players; Mrs Ranyard, with Barnard, Miss Garten, and Dr Wemyss. A table of three women and one man did not suit the little lady's taste.

"We're a very scratch lot. And we want fresh blood!" she announced carnivorously, as the pair in the alcove rose and came forward.

The two men rose also, but went on with their talk. They knew it was not their blood Mrs Ranyard was seeking. Roy kept his back turned and studiously refrained from hoping....

"If you two have _quite_ finished breaking up the Empire...?" said Miss Arden's voice at his elbow. She had approached so quietly that he started. Worse still, he knew she had seen. "I was terrified of being caught,"--she turned affectionately to her stepfather--"so I flung Mr Hayes to the wolves--and fled. You're sanctuary!"

Her fingers caressed his sleeve. Words and touch waked a smile in his mournful eyes. They seemed to understand one another, these two. To Roy she had never seemed more charming; and his own abrupt volte-face was unsteadying, to say the least of it.

"Hayes would prove a tough mouthful--even for wolves," Elton remarked pensively.

"He _would_! He's so securely lacquered over with--well--we won't be unkind. _But_--strictly between ourselves, Pater--wouldn't you love to swop him for Mr Sinclair, these days?"

"My _dear_!" Elton reproached her, nervously shifting his large hands.

"Hayes is a model--of efficiency! But--well, well--if Mr Sinclair will forgive flattery to his face--I should say he has many fine qualities for an Indian career, should he be inclined that way----"

"Thank you, sir. I'd no notion----" Roy murmured, overwhelmed, as Elton--seeing Miss Garten stranded--moved dutifully to her rescue.

Miss Arden glanced again at Roy. "_Are_ you inclining that way?"

The question took him aback.

"Me? No. Of course I'd love it--for some things."

"You're well out of it, in my opinion. It'll soon be no country for a white man. He's already little more than a futile superfluity----"

"On the contrary," Roy struck in warmly, "the Englishman--of the rightest sort, is more than ever needed in India to-day."

Her slight shrug conceded the point. "I never argue! And if you start on _that_ subject--I'm nowhere! You can save it all up for the Pater. He's rather a dear--don't you think?"

"He's splendid."

Her smile had its caressing quality. "That's the last adjective any one else would apply to him! But it's true. There's a fine streak in him--very carefully hidden away. People don't see it, because he's shy and clumsy and hasn't an ounce of push. But he understands the natives.

Loves them. Goodness knows why. And he's got the right touch. I could tell you a tale----"

"Do!" he urged. "Tales are my pet weakness."

She subsided into the empty chair and looked up invitingly. "Sit," she commanded--and he obeyed.

He was neither saying nor doing the things he had meant to say or do.

But the mere beauty of her enthralled him; the alluring grace of her pose, leaning forward a little, bare arms resting on her knees. No vivid colour anywhere except her lips. Those lips, thought Roy, were responsible for a good deal. Their flexible softness discounted more than a little the deliberation of her eyes; and to-night, her charming att.i.tude to Elton appreciably quickened his interest in her and her tale.

"It happened out in the district. I heard it from a friend." She leaned nearer and spoke in a confidential undertone. "He got news that some neighbouring town was in a ferment. Only a handful of Europeans there; an American mission; and no troops. So the 'mish' people begged him to come in and politely wave his official wand. You must be very polite to _badmashes_[22] these days, if you're a mere Sahib; or you hear of it from some little Tin G.o.d sitting safe in his office, hundreds of miles away. Well, off he went--a twenty-mile drive; found the mission in a flutter--I don't blame them--armed with rifles and revolvers; expecting-every-moment-to-be-their-next sort of thing; and the town in an uproar. Some religious tamasha. He talked like a father to the headmen; and a.s.sured the 'mish' people it would be all right.

"They begged him to stay and see them through. So he said he would sleep at the dak bungalow. 'All alone?' they asked. 'No one to guard you?'

'Quite unnecessary,' he said:--and they were simply amazed!

"It was rather hot; so he had his bed put in the garden. Then he sent for the leading men and said: 'I hear there's a disturbance going on. I don't intimate you have anything to do with it. But you are responsible; and I expect you to keep the people in hand. I'm sleeping here to-night.

If there is trouble, you can report to me. But it is for _you_ to keep order in your own town.'

"They salaamed and departed. No one came near him. And he drove off next morning, leaving those Americans, with their rifles and revolvers, more amazed than ever! I was told it made a great impression on the natives, his sleeping alone in the garden, without so much as a sentry. And the cream of it is," she added--her eyes on Elton's unheroic figure--"the man who could do that is terrified of walking across a ballroom or saying polite things to a woman!"

Distinctly, to-night, she was in a new vein, more attractive to Roy than all her feminine crafts and lures. Sitting, friendly and at ease over the fire, they discussed human idiosyncrasies--a pet subject with him.

Then, suddenly, she looked him in the eyes;--and he was aware of her again, in the old disturbing way.