Far to Seek Part 7

The engaging touch of swagger delighted her. A man to-day--in very deed.

Her gaze dwelt upon him. It was as if she looked through the eyes of her husband into the heart of her son.

Gravely she entered into his mood.

"That is good. Then we will just make you tidy--and one littlest dab for this not-bruise on your cheek."

So much he graciously permitted: then he ran off to receive the ovation awaiting him from Tara and Chris.

CHAPTER V.

"Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts, For there reigns love, and all love's loving parts."

--SHAKSPERE.

"Women are not only deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself."--RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

Left to herself, Lilamani moved back to the window with her innate, deliberate grace. There she sat down again, very still, resting her cheek on her hand; drinking in the serenity, the translucent stillness of clear green s.p.a.ces robed in early evening light, like a bride arrayed for the coming of her lord. The higher tree-tops were haloed with glory.

Young leaves of beeches and poplars gleamed like minted gold; and on the lawn, the great twin beeches cast a stealthily encroaching continent of shadow. Among the shrubs, under her window, birds were trilling out their ecstasy of welcome to the sun, in his Hour of Union with Earth--the Divine Mother, of whom every human mother is, in Eastern eyes, a part, a symbol, however imperfect.

Yet, beneath her carven tranquillity, heart and spirit were deeply stirred. For all Nevil's skill in editing the tale of Roy's championship, she had read his hidden thoughts as unerringly as she had divined Mrs Bradley's curiosity and faint hostility beneath the veneer of good manners, not yet imparted to her son.

Helen Despard--wife of a retired Lieut.-Governor--had scores of Anglo-Indian friends; but not all of them shared her enthusiasm for India,--her sympathetic understanding of its peoples. Lilamani had too soon discovered that the ardent declaration, "I love India," was apt to mean merely that the speaker loved riding and dancing and sunshine and vast s.p.a.ces, with 'the real India' for a dim effective background. And by now, she could almost tell at a glance which were the right and which the wrong kind of Anglo-Indian, so far as she and Nevil were concerned.

It was not like Helen to inflict the wrong kind on her; but it had all been Mrs Bradley's doing. She had been tactlessly insistent in her demand to see the beautiful old garden and the famous artist-Baronet, who had so boldly flouted tradition. Helen's lame excuses had been airily dismissed, and the discourtesy of a point-blank refusal was beyond her.

She had frankly explained matters to her beloved Lilamani as they strolled together on the lawn, while Roy was enlightening Joe on the farther side of the yew hedge.

His championship had moved her more profoundly than she dared let him see without revealing all she knew. For the same reason, she could not show Nevil her full appreciation of his tact and delicacy. How useless--trying to hide his thoughts--he ought to know by now: but how beautiful--how endearing!

That she, who had boldly defied all G.o.ds and G.o.dlings, all claims of caste and family, should have reaped so rich a harvest----! For her--high priestess of the inner life--that was the miracle of miracles: scarcely less so to-day than in that crowning hour when she had placed, her first man-child in the arms of her husband--still, at heart, lord of her being. For the tale of her inner life might almost be told in two words--she loved.

Even now--so many years after--she thrilled to remember how, in that one magical moment, without nearness or speech or touch, the floating strands of their destinies had become so miraculously entangled, that neither G.o.ds nor G.o.dlings, nor household despots of East or West, had power to sever them. From one swift pencil sketch, stolen without leave--he sitting on the path below, she dreaming on the Hotel balcony above--had blossomed the twin flower of their love: the deeper revealing of marriage--its living texture woven of joy and pain; and the wonder of their after-life together--a wonder that, to her ardent, sensitive spirit, still seemed new every morning, like the coming of the sun. A poet in essence, she shared with all true poets that sense of eternal freshness in familiar things that, perhaps, more than any other gift of G.o.d, keeps the bloom on every phase and every relation of life. By her temperament of genius, she had quickened in her husband the flickering spark that might else have been smothered under opposing influences.

Each, in a quite unusual degree, had fulfilled the life of the other, and so wrought harmony from conflicting elements of race and religion that seemed fated to wreck their brave adventure. To gain all, they had risked all: and events had amazingly justified them.

Within a year of his ill-considered marriage Sir Nevil had astonished all who knew him with the unique Exhibition of the now famous Ramayana pictures, inspired by his wife: a series of arresting canvases, setting forth the story of India's great epic, her confession of faith in the two supreme loyalties--of the Queen to her husband, of the King to his people. His daring venture had proved successful beyond hope. Artistic and critical London had hailed him as a newcomer of promise, amounting to genius: and Lilamani Sinclair, daughter of Rajputs, had only escaped becoming the craze of the moment by her precipitate withdrawal to Antibes, where she had come within an ace of losing all, largely through the malign influence of Jane--her evil genius during those wonderful, difficult, early months of marriage.

Nevil had returned to find himself a man of note; a prophet, even in his own county, where feathers had been ruffled a little by his erratic proceedings. Hence a discreetly changed att.i.tude in the neighbourhood, when Lilamani, barely nineteen, had presented her husband with a son.

But--for all the gracious condescension of the elderly, and the frank curiosity of the young--only a discerning few had made any real headway with this attractive, oddly disconcerting child of another continent; this creature of queer reserves and aloofness and pa.s.sionate pride of race. The friendliest were baffled by her incomprehensible lack of social instinct, the fruit of India's purdah system. Loyal wives and mothers who 'adored' their children--yet spent most of their day in pursuit of other interests--were nonplussed by her complete absorption in the joys and sanct.i.ties of home. Yet, in course of time, her patent simplicity and sincerity had disarmed prejudice. The least perceptive could not choose but see that she was genuinely, intrinsically different, not merely in the matter of iridescent silks and saris, but in the very colour of her soul.

Not that they would have expressed it so. To talk about the soul and its colour savoured of being psychic or morbid--which Heaven forbid! The soul of the right-minded Bramleigh matron was a neutral-tinted, decently veiled phantom, officially recognised morning and evening, also on Sundays, but by no means permitted to interfere with the realities of life.

The soul of Lilamani Sinclair--tremulous, pa.s.sionate and aspiring--was a living flame, that lighted her thoughts, her prayers, her desires; and burned with clearer intensity because her religion had been stripped of all feastings and forms and ceremonies by a marriage that set her for ever outside caste. The inner Reality--free of earth-born mists and clouds--none could take from her.

G.o.d manifest through Nature, the Divine Mother, must surely accept her incense and sacrifice of the spirit, since no other was permitted. Her father had given her that a.s.surance; and to it she clung, as a child in a crowd clings confidingly to the one familiar hand.

She was none the less eager to glean all she could a.s.similate of the religion to which her husband conformed, but in which, it seemed, he did not ardently believe. Her secret pangs on this score had been eased a little by later knowledge that it was he who shielded her from tacit pressure to make the change of faith expected of her by certain members of his family. Jane--out of regard for his wishes--had refrained from frontal attacks; but more than one flank movement had been executed by means of the Vicar (a second cousin) and of Aunt Julia--a mild elder Sinclair, addicted to foreign missions.

She had not told Nevil of these tentative fishings for her soul, lest they annoy him and he put a final veto on them. Being well versed in their Holy Book, she wanted to try and fathom their strange illogical way of believing. The Christianity of Christ she could accept. It was a faith of the heart and the life. But its crystallised forms and dogmas proved a stumbling-block to this embarra.s.sing slip of a Hindu girl, who calmly reminded the Reverend Jeffrey Sale that the creed of his Church had not really been inspired by Christ, but dictated by Constantine and the Council of Nicea; who wanted to know why, in so great a religion, was there no true worship of woman--no recognising, in the creative principle, the Divine Motherhood of G.o.d? Finally, she had scandalised them both by quarrelling with their exclusive belief in one single instance, through endless ages, of the All-embracing, and All-creating revealed in terms of human life. Was not that same idea a part of her own religion--a world-wide doctrine of Indo-Aryan origin? Was every other revealing false, except that one made to an unbelieving race only two thousand years ago? To her--unregenerate but not unbelieving--the message of Krishna seemed to strike a deeper note of promise. "Wherever irreligion prevails and true religion declines, there I manifest myself in a human form to establish righteousness and to destroy evil."

So she questioned and argued, in no spirit of irreverence, but simply with the logic of her race, and the sweet reasonableness that is a vital element of the Hindu faith at its best. But, after that final confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the field. And Lilamani, flung back on the G.o.d within, had evolved a private creed of her own;--shedding the husks of Christian dogmas and the grosser superst.i.tions of her own faith, and weaving together the mystical elements that are the life-blood of all religious beliefs.

For the lamps are many, but the flame is one....

Not till the consummation of motherhood had lifted her status--in her own eyes at least--did she venture to speak intimately with Nevil on this vital matter. Though debarred from sharing of sacred ceremonies, she could still aspire to be true _Sahardamini_--'spiritual helpmate.'

But to that end he also must co-operate; he must feel the deeper need....

For many weeks after the coming of Roy she had hesitated, before she found courage to adventure farther into the misty region of his faith or unfaith, in things not seen.

"If I am bothering you with troublesome questions--forgive. But, in our Indian way of marriage, it is taught that without sharing spiritual life there cannot arrive true union," she had explained, not without secret tremors lest she fail to evoke full response. And what such failure would mean, for her, she could hardly expect him to understand.

But--by the blessing of Sarasvati, Giver of Wisdom--she had succeeded, beyond hope, in dispelling the shy reluctance of his race to talk of the 'big little things.' Even to-day she could recall the thrill of that moment:--he, kneeling beside the great chair in his studio--their sanctuary; she holding the warm bundle of new life against her breast.

In one long look his eyes had answered her. "Nothing _short_ of 'true union' will satisfy me," he had said with a quiet seriousness more impressive than any lovers' fervour. "G.o.d knows if I'm worthy to enter your inner shrine. But unwilling--never. In the 'big little things' you are pre-eminent. I am simply your extra child--mother of my son."

That tribute was her charter of wifehood. It linked love with life; it set her, once for all, beyond the lurking fear of Jane; and gave her courage to face the promised visit to India, when Roy was six months old, to present him to his grandfather, Sir Lakshman Singh.

They had stayed nearly a year; a wonderful year of increasing knowledge, of fuller awakening ... and yet!

The ache of antic.i.p.ation had been too poignant. The foolish half-hope that Mataji might relent and sanctify this first grandchild with her blessing, was--in the nature of things Oriental--foredoomed to failure.

And not till she found herself back among sights and sounds hauntingly familiar, did she fully awake to the changes wrought in her by marriage with one of another race. For, if she had profoundly affected Nevil's personality, he had no less profoundly influenced her sense of values both in art and life.

She had also to reckon with the insidious process of idealising the absent. Indian to the core, she was deeply imbued with the higher tenets of Hindu philosophy--that lofty spiritual fabric woven of moonlight and mysticism, of logic and dreams. But the new Lilamani, of Nevil's making, could not shut her eyes to debasing forms of worship, to subterranean caverns of gross superst.i.tion, and lurking demons of cruelty and despair. While Nevil was imbibing impressions of Indian Art, Lilamani was secretly weighing and probing the Indian spirit that inspired it; sifting the grain from the chaff--a process closely linked with her personal life; because, for India, religion and life are one.

But no shadow had clouded the joy of reunion with her father; for both were adepts in the fine art of loving, the touchstone of every human relation. And in talk with him she could straighten out her tangle of impressions, her secret doubts and fears.

Also there had been Rama, elder brother, studying at college and loving as ever to the sister transformed into English-wife--yet sister still.

And there had been fuller revelation of the wonders of India, in their travels northward, even to the Himalayas, abode of Shiva, where Nevil must go to escape the heat and paint more pictures--always more pictures. Travelling did not suit her. She was too innately a creature of shrines and sanct.i.ties. And in India--home of her spirit--there seemed no true home for her any more....

Five years later, when Roy was six and Christine two and a half, they had been tempted to repeat their visit, even in the teeth of stern protests from Jane, who regarded the least contact with India as fatal to the children they had been misguided enough to bring into the world.

That second time, things had been easier; and there had been the added delight of Roy's eager interest; his increasing devotion to the grandfather, whose pride and joy in him rivalled her own.

"In this little man we have the hope of England and India!" he would say, only half in joke. "With East and West in his soul--the best of each--he will cast out the devils of conflict and suspicion and draw the two into closer understanding of one another."

And, in secret, Lilamani dreamed and prayed that some day ... possibly ... who could tell----?

Yet, still there had persisted the sense of a widening gulf between her and her own people, leaving her doubtful if she ever wanted to see India again. The spiritual link would be there always; for the rest--was she not wife of Nevil, mother of Roy? Ungrateful to grieve if a price must be paid for such supreme good fortune.

For herself she paid it willingly. But--must Roy pay also? And in what fashion? How could she fail to imbue him with the finest ideals of her race? But how if the magnet of India proved too strong----? To hold the scales even was a hard task for human frailty. And the time of her absolute dominion was so swiftly slipping away from her. Always, in the back of her mind, loomed the dread shadow of school; and her Eastern soul could not accept it without a struggle. Only yesterday, Nevil had spoken of it again--no doubt because Jane made trouble--saying too long delay would be unfair for Roy. So it must be not later than September next year. Just only fifteen months! Nevil had told her, laughing, it would not banish him to another planet. But it would plunge him into a world apart--utterly foreign to her. Of its dangers, its ideals, its mysterious influences, she knew herself abysmally ignorant. She must read. She must try and understand. She must believe Nevil knew best--she, who had not enough knowledge and too much love. But she was upheld by no sustaining faith in this English fashion of school, with its decree of too early separation from the supreme influences of mother and father--and home....

Later on, that evening, when she knelt by Roy's bed for good-night talk and prayer, his arms round her neck, his cool cheek against hers, the rebellion she could not altogether stifle surged up in her afresh. But she said not a word.