Far to Seek Part 71

She felt a tremor go through him. He half withdrew his head, checked himself, and capturing her hand, pressed it to his lips, that were hot and feverish.

"Roy--what is it? What went wrong?" she asked softly.

He looked up now with a fair imitation of a smile. "Just--an old memory.

It was dear of you. Ungracious of me."--Pain and perplexity went from her. She slipped to her knees beside him, and his arm enclosed her.

"Sorry to behave like this. But I'm not very fit. And--seeing you, brought it all back so sharply! It's been--a bit of a strain, this last week. A letter from Thea--brave, of course; but broken utterly. The wedding too: and that beast of a journey fairly finished me."

She leaned closer, comforting him by the feel of her nearness. Then her practical brain suggested needs more pedestrian, none the less essential.

"Dearest--you're simply exhausted. How about tea--or a peg?"

He pleaded for a peg, if permissible. She fetched it herself; made tea; plied him with sandwiches and sugared cakes, for which he still retained his boyish weakness.

But talking proved difficult. There were uncomfortable gaps. In their first uplifted moment all had seemed well. Love-making was simple, elemental, satisfying. Beyond the initial glamour and pa.s.sion of courtship they had scarcely adventured, when the fabric of their world was shattered by the startling events of those four days. Both were realising--as they stepped cautiously among the fragments--that, for all their surface intimacy, they were still strangers underneath.

Roy took refuge in talk about Lah.o.r.e; the high tribute paid to the conduct of all troops--British and Indian--and police, under peculiarly exasperating circ.u.mstances, the C.O.'s conviction that unless sterner measures were taken--and adhered to--there would be more outbreaks, at shorter intervals, better organised....

He hoped her charming air of interest was genuine, but felt by no means sure. And all the while, he was craving to know what she had to say for herself; yet doubting whether he could stand the lightest touch on his open wound. Lance had begged him not to hurt her. Had it ever occurred to that devout lover how sharply she might hurt him?

Tea and a restful hour in an arm-chair eased the strain a little. Then Rose suggested the garden, knowing him susceptible to the large healing influences of earth and sky; also with diplomatic intent to draw him away from the house before her mother's meteoric visitation.

And she was only just in time. The rattle of rickshaw wheels came up the main path two minutes after they had turned out of it towards a favourite nook, which she had strangely grown to love in the last two weeks.

"Poor darling! You've just missed Mother!" She condoled with him, smiling sidelong under her lashes; and she almost blessed her maternal enemy for bringing back the familiar gleam into his eyes.

"Bad luck! Ought we to go in again?"

"Gracious, no. She's only tearing home to change for an early dinner at Penshurst and the theatre. Anyway, please note, you're immune from the formalities. We're going to have a peaceful time, quite independent of Simla rushings. Just ourselves to ourselves."

"Good."

It was an a.s.set with men--second only to her beauty--this gift for creating a restful atmosphere.

Her nook, in an angle above the narrow path, was a gra.s.sy bank, looking across crumpled ranges--velvet-soft in the level light--to the still purity of the snows.

"Rather nice, isn't it?" she said. "I'm not given to mooning out of doors; but I've spent several evenings here ... lately."

"It's sanctuary," Roy murmured; but his sigh was tinged with apprehension. Flinging off his hat, he reclined full length on the gentle slope, hands under his head, and let the healing rays flow into the deeps of his troubled being.

Rose sat upright beside him, her fingers locked loosely round one raised knee. She was troubled too, and quite at a loss how to begin.

"So you've not been going out much?" he asked, after a prolonged pause.

"No--how could I--with you, so unhappy, down there--and...."--She deliberately met his eyes; and the look in them impelled her to ask: "_What_ is it, Roy--lurking in your mind?"

"Am I--to be frank?"

She shivered. "It sounds--rather chilly. But I suppose we'd better take our cold plunge--and get it over!"

"Well"--he hesitated palpably. "It was only a natural wonder--if you care ... all that ... now he's gone, how could you deliberately hurt him so--while he lived?"

She drew in her lip. It was going to be more unsteadying than she had foreseen.

"How _can_ a woman explain to a man the simple fact that she is incurably--perhaps unforgivably--a woman?"

"I don't know. I hoped you could--up to a point," said Roy, looking away to the snows and remembering, suddenly, _that_ was where he ought to be now--with Lance--always Lance: no other thought or presence seemed vital to him, these days. Yet Rose remained beautiful and desirable--and clearly she loved him.

"It doesn't make things easier, you know," she was saying, in her cool, low voice, "to feel you are patently regretting events that, unhappily, did hurt--him; but also--gave me to you...."

Her beauty, her evident pain, penetrated the settled misery that enveloped him like an atmosphere.

"Darling--forgive me!" He reached out, pulling her hands apart, and his fingers closed hard on hers. "I'm only trying--clumsily--to understand...."

"And goodness knows I'm willing to help you," she sighed, returning his pressure. "But--I'm afraid the little I can say for myself won't do much to regild my halo--if there's any of it left! I gather you aren't very well up in women, or girls, Roy?"

"No--I'm not. Perhaps it makes me seem to you a bit of a fool?"

"Quite the reverse. It's all along been a part of your charm."

"My--charm?"

There was more of tenderness than amus.e.m.e.nt in her low laugh.

"Precisely! If you didn't possess--_some_ magnetic quality, could I have been drawn away from a man--like Lance, when I'd nearly made up my mind--to face the music."

For answer, he kissed her captured hand.

Then: "Roy, if it doesn't hurt too much," she urged, "will you tell me first--just--what Lance said?"

It would hurt, horridly. But it was as well she should know; and not a word need he withhold. Could there be a finer tribute to his friend? It was his own share in their last unforgettable talk that could not be reproduced.

"Yes--I'll tell you," he said. And, his half-closed eyes resting on the sunlit hills, he told her, in a voice from which all feeling was carefully expunged. Only so could he achieve the telling; and she listened without interruption, for which he felt grateful, exceedingly....

When it was over he merely moved his head and looked up at her; and she returned his look, her eyes heavy with tears. Mutually their fingers tightened.

"Thank you," she said. "It makes me ... ashamed, but it makes me proud."

"It made _me_ angry and bewildered," said Roy. "If you really were ...

coming his way, what the devil did _I_ do to upset it all? Of course I admired you; and I was interested--on his account. But--I had no thought--I was absorbed in other things----"

She nodded slowly, not looking at him. "Quite so. And I suppose--being me--I didn't choose that a man should dance with me, ride with me, obviously admire me, and yet remain absorbed in other things. And--being you--of course it never struck you that, for my kind of girl, your provocatively casual att.i.tude almost amounted to a challenge.

Besides--as I said--you were charming; you were different. Perhaps--if I'd felt a shade less sure--of Lance, if he'd had the wit even to _seem_ keen on some one else ... he might have saved himself. As it was--you were irresistible."

She heard him grit his teeth; and turned with swift compunction.

"My poor Roy! Am I jarring you badly? I suppose, if I talked till midnight, I'd never succeed in making a man like you understand how purely instinctive it all is. a.n.a.lysed, like this, it sounds cold-blooded. But, it's just--second nature. He--Lance--understood up to a point. That's why he was aggressive that day: oh--furiously angry; all because of you. The pair you are! He said if I fooled you, and didn't play fair, he'd back out, or insist on a _pucca_ engagement.

And--yes--it did have the wrong effect. It made me wonder--if I _could_ marry a man, however splendid, who owned such exacting standards and such a hot temper. And there were you--an unknown quant.i.ty, with the Banter-Wrangle discreetly in pursuit. A supreme inducement in itself!--Yes, distinctly, that afternoon was a turning-point. Just Lance losing his temper, and you coolly forgetting an arrangement with me----"

She paused, looking back over it all; felt Roy's hold slacken and un.o.btrusively withdrew her hand.