Far to Seek Part 80

"Who shall allot the praise, and guess What part is yours--what part is ours?"

--ALICE MEYNELL.

"Perhaps a dreamer's day will come ... when judgment will be p.r.o.nounced on all the wise men, who always prophesied evil--and were always right."--JOHAN BOJER.

Two hours later Roy and his father sat together in the cushioned window seat of the studio, smoking industriously; not troubling to say much--though there was much to be said--because the mist of constraint that brooded between them yesterday had been blown clean away by Roy's news.

If it had not given Sir Nevil 'the surprise of his life,' it had given him the deepest, most abiding gratification he had known since his inner light had gone out, with the pa.s.sing of her who had been his inspiration and his all. Dear though his children were to him, they had remained secondary, always. Roy came nearest--as his heir, and as the one in whom her spirit most clearly lived again. Since she went, he had longed for the boy; but remembering her plea on that summer day of decision--her mountain-top of philosophy, 'to take by leaving, to hold by letting go'--he had studiously refrained from pressing Roy's return. Now, at a word from Tara, he had sped home in the hot season; and--hard on the heels of a mysteriously broken engagement--had claimed her at sight.

Yesterday their sense of strangeness had made silence feel uncomfortable. Now that they slipped back into the old intimacy, it felt companionable. Yet neither was thinking directly of the other. Each was thinking of the woman he loved.

By chance their eyes encountered in a friendly smile, and Roy spoke.

"Daddums--you've come alive! I believe you're _almost_ as happy over it--as I am?"

"You're not far out. You see"--his eyes grew graver--"I'm feeling ...

Mother's share, too. Did you ever realise...?"

"Partly. Not all--till just now. Tara told me."

There was a pause. Then Sir Nevil looked full at his son.

"Roy--_I've_ got something to tell you--to show you ... if you can detach your mind for an hour----?"

"Why, of course. _What_ is it--where?"

He looked round the room. Instinctively, he knew it concerned his mother.

"Not here. Upstairs--in her House of G.o.ds." He saw Roy flinch. "If _I_ can bear it, old boy, you can. And there's a reason--you'll understand."

The little room above the studio had been sacred to Lilamani ever since her home-coming as a bride of eighteen; sacred to her prayers and meditations; to the sandalwood casket that held her 'private G.o.d'; for the Indian wife has always one G.o.d chosen for special worship--not to be named to any one, even her husband. And although a Christian Lilamani had discontinued that form of devotion, the tiny blue image of the Baby-G.o.d, Krishna, had been a sacred treasure always, shown, on rare occasions only, to Roy. To enter that room was to enter her soul. And Roy, shrinking apart, felt himself unworthy--because of Rose.

On the threshold there met him the faint scent of sandalwood that pervaded her. For there, in an alcove, stood Krishna's casket. In larger boxes, lined with sandalwood, her many-tinted silks and saris lay lovingly folded. Another casket held her jewels, and arranged on a row of shelves stood her dainty array of shoes--gold and silver and pale brocades: an intimate touch that pierced his heart.

Near the Krishna alcove, hung a portrait he had not seen: a thing of fragile, almost unearthly beauty, painted when her husband came home--and realised....

An aching lump in Roy's throat cut like a knife; but his father's remark put him on his mettle. And, the next instant, he saw....

"_Dad!_" he breathed, in awed amazement.

For there, on the small round table stood a model in dull red clay: unmistakably, unbelievably--the rock fortress of Chitor: the walls scarped and bastioned; Khumba Rana's tower; and the City itself--no ruin, but a miniature presentment of Chitor, as she might have been in her day of ancient glory, as Roy had been dimly aware of her in the course of his own amazing ride. Temples, palaces, huddled houses--not detailed, but skilfully suggested--stirred the old thrill in his veins, the old certainty that he knew....

"Well----?" asked Sir Nevil, whose eyes had not left his face.

"_Well!_" echoed Roy, emerging from his trance of wonder. "I'm dumfounded. A few mistakes, here and there; but--as a whole ... Dad--how in the world ... could you know?"

"I don't know. I hoped you would. I ... saw it clearly, just like that----"

"How? In a dream?"

"I suppose so. I couldn't swear, in a court of law, that I was awake. It happened--one evening, as I lay there, on her couch--remembering ...

going back over things. And suddenly, out of the darkness, blossomed--that. Asleep or awake, my mind was alert enough to seize and hold the impression, without a glimmer of surprise ... _till_ I came to, or woke up--which you will. Then my normal, sceptical self didn't know what to make of it. I've always dismissed that sort of thing as mere brain-trickery. But--a vivid, personal experience makes it ... not so easy. Of course, from reading and a few old photographs, I knew it was Chitor: and my chief concern was to record the vision in its first freshness. For three days I worked at it: only emerging now and then to s.n.a.t.c.h a meal. I began with those and that----"

He indicated a set of rough sketches and an impression in oils; a ghost of a city full of suggested beauty and mystery. "No joke, trying to model with one hand; but you wouldn't believe ... the swiftness ... the sureness ... as if my fingers knew...."

Roy could believe. Occasionally his own fingers behaved so.

"When it was done, I put it in here," his father went on, masking, with studied quietness, his elation at the effect on Roy. "I've shown it to no one--not even Aunt Helen. I couldn't write of it. I felt it would sound crazy----"

"Not to me," said Roy.

"Well, I couldn't tell that. And I've been waiting--for _you_."

"Since--when?"

"Since the third of March, this year."

Roy drew an audible breath. It was the anniversary of her pa.s.sing. "All that time! How could you----? Why didn't you----?"

"Well--_you_ know. You were obviously submerged--your novel, Udaipur, Lance.... You wouldn't have forgone all that ... if I know you, for a mere father. But you're here, at last, thank G.o.d. And--I want to know.

You've seen Chitor, as it is to-day...."

"I've seen more than that," said Roy. "I can tell you, now. I couldn't--before. Let's sit."

And sitting there, on her couch, in her House of G.o.ds, he told the story of his moonlit ride and its culmination; told it in low tones, in swift vivid phrases that came of themselves....

Throughout the telling--and for many minutes afterwards--his father sat motionless; his head on his hand, half shielding his face from view....

"I've only spoken of it to Grandfather," Roy said at last. "And with all my heart, I wish he could see ... that."

Sir Nevil looked up now, and the subdued exaltation in his eyes was wholly new to Roy.

"_I've_ gone a good way beyond wishing," he said. "But again--I was waiting for you. I want to go out there, Roy--with you two, when you're married--and see it all for myself. With care, one could take the thing along, to verify and improve it on the spot. Then--what do you say?--you and I might achieve a larger reproduction--for Grandfather: a gift to Rajputana--my source of inspiration; a tribute ... to her memory, who still lights our lives ... with the inextinguishable lamp of her spirit----"

The last words--almost inaudible--were a revelation to Roy; an illumining glimpse of the true self, that a man hides very carefully from his fellows; and shows--at supreme moments only--to 'a woman when he loves her.'

Shy of their mutual emotion, he laid a hand on his father's arm.

"You can count on me, Dad," he said in the same low tone. "Who knows--one day it might inspire the Rajputs to rebuild their Queen of Cities, in white marble, that she may rise again, immortal through the ages...."

When they stood up to leave the shrine their eyes met in a steadfast look; and there was the same thought behind it. She had given them to each other in a new way; in a fashion all her own.

For that brief s.p.a.ce, Roy had almost forgotten Tara. Now the wonder of her flashed back on him like a dazzle of sunlight after the dim sanct.i.ty of cathedral aisles.

And down in the studio it was possible to discuss practical issues of his father's inspiration--or rather his mother's; for they both felt it as such.