FOOTNOTES:
[13] Holy man.
[14] Prayer.
[15] Crocodile.
CHAPTER IX.
| "Thou dost beset the path to every shrine; |
| And if I turn from but one sin, I turn |
| Unto a smile of thine." |
| —Alice Meynell. |
For Roy himself, no less than Arúna, the passing of those golden October weeks had been an experience as beautiful as it was unique. The very beauty and bewilderment of it had blinded him, at first, to the underlying danger for himself and her. Bewilderment sprang from an eerie sense—vivid to the verge of illusion—that his mother was with him again in the person of Arúna:—a fancy enhanced by the fact that his entire knowledge of Indian womanhood—the turns of thought and phrase, the charm, at once sensuous and spiritual—was linked indissolubly with her. And the perilous charm had penetrated insidiously deeper than he knew. By the time he realised what was happening, the spell was upon him; his will held captive in silken meshes he had not the heart to snap.
As often as not, in that early stage, he craved sight and sound of her simply because she wore a sari and carried her head and moved her hands just so; because her mere presence stirred him with a thrill that blended exquisite pleasure, exquisite pain. There were times he would contrive to be alone in the room with her; not talking; not even looking at her—because her face disturbed the illusion; simply letting the feel of her presence ease that inner ache—subdued, not stilled—for the mother who had remained more vitally one with him than nine mothers in ten are able, or willing, to remain with their grown-up sons.
Thea Leigh, watching unobtrusively, had caught a glimpse of the strange dual influence at work in him. She had occasionally seen him with his mother; and had gleaned some idea of their unique relation; partly from Lance, partly from her intimate link with her own Theo, half a world away; nearly eighteen now, and eager to join up before all was over. So her troubled scrutiny was tempered with a measure of understanding. Roy had always attracted her. And now, unmothered—the wound not yet healed—she metaphorically gathered him to her heart; would have done so physically without hesitation; but that Vincent had his dear and foolish qualms about her promiscuous capacity for affection. But Arúna was her ewe lamb of the moment; and not even Roy must be allowed to make things harder for her than they were already....
So, after scouting the Delhi idea as preposterous, she suddenly perceived there might be virtue in it—for Arúna. Possibly it would glorify him in her eyes; but it would remove the fatal charm of his presence; give her a chance to pull up before things had gone too far. Whereat, being Thea, she spun round unashamedly, to Roy's secret amusement and relief. All the Desmond in her rose to the adventure of it. A risk, of course; but there must be no question of failure; and success would justify all. She was entirely at his service; discussed details by the hour; put him 'on to Vinx' for coaching in the general situation—underground sedition; reformers, true and false; telling arguments for the reclaiming of Dyán Singh.
To crown all—between genuine relief and genuine affection—she impulsively kissed him on departure under Vincent's very eyes.
"Just only to give you my blessing!" she explained, laughing and blushing like a girl at her own audacity. "Words are the stupidest clumsy things. I'm sure life would be happier and less complicated if we only had the sense to kiss more and talk less——!"
This—in the presence of Arúna and her husband and her six-year-old son!
Roy, deeply moved and a little overcome, nodded assent, while Vincent took her by the arms and gently removed her from further temptation.
"Where you'd be, Madam, if talking was rationed——!"
"I'd take it out in kissing—Sir!" she retorted unabashed; while Arúna glanced a little wistfully at Roy, who was fondling Terry and talking nonsense to Vernon. For the boy adored him and was on the brink of tears.
But if he seemed unheeding, he was by no means unaware. He was fighting his own battle in his own way; incidentally, he hoped, helping the girl to fight hers. For he had shaken himself almost free of his delicious yet disturbing illusion, only to be confronted by a more profoundly disturbing reality. Loyal to his promise, tacitly given, he had simply not connected her with the idea of marriage. The queer thrill of her presence was for him quite another affair. Not until that night of wandering in the moonlight had it struck him, with a faint shock, that she might be mistaking his friendliness for—something more. That contact with her had come at a critical moment for himself, was a detail he failed to realise. Beyond the sudden bewildering sensations that prompted his headlong proposal to Tara, he had not felt seriously perturbed by girl or woman; and, in the past four years, life had been filled to overflowing with other things——
That he should love Arúna, deeply and dearly, seemed as simple and natural, as loving Tara. But to fall in love was a risk he had no right to run, either for himself or her. Yet the risk had been run before he awoke to the fact. And the events and emotions of Dewáli night had drawn them irresistibly, dangerously close together. For the racial ferment had been strong in him, as in her. And the darkness, the subtle influence of his Indian dress—her tears—her danger! How could any man, frankly loving her, not be carried a little out of himself? That overmastering impulse to kiss her had startlingly revealed the true forces at work.
After all that, what could he do, but sharply apply the curb and remove himself—for a time—in the devout hope that 'things' had not gone too far? He had not the assurance to suppose she was already in love with him; but patently the possibility was there.
So—like Thea—he had come to see the Delhi inspiration in a new and surprising light. Setting forth in search of Dyán, he was, in effect, running away from himself—and Arúna, no less. If not actually in love, he very soon would be—did he dare to let himself go.
And why not—why not? The old unreasoning rebellion stirred in him afresh. His mother being gone, temptation tugged the harder. Home, without the Indian element, was almost unthinkable. If only he could take back Arúna! But for him there could be no 'if.' He had tacitly given his word—to her. And in any case there was his father—the Sinclair heritage—So all his fine dreams of helping Arúna amounted to this—that it was he who might be driven, in the end, to hurt her more than any of them. Life that looked such a straight-ahead business for most people, seemed to bristle with pitfalls and obstacles for him; all on account of the double heritage that was at once his pride, his inspiration, and his stone of stumbling.
Endless wakeful hours of the night journey were peopled with thoughts and visions of Arúna—her pansy face and velvet-soft eyes, now flashing delicate raillery, now lifted in troubled appeal. A rainbow creature—that was the charm of her. Not beautiful—he thanked his stars; since his weakness for beauty amounted to a snare, but attractive—perilously so. For, in her case, the very element that drew him was the barrier that held them apart. The irony of it!
Was she lying awake too, poor child—missing him a little? Would she marry an Indian—ever? Would she turn her back on India—even for him? Unanswerable questions hemmed her in. Could she even answer them herself? Too well he understood how the scales of her nature hung balanced between conflicting influences. As he was, racially, so was she, spiritually, a divided being; yet, in spite of waverings, Rajputni at the core, with all that word implies to those who know. If she lacked his mother's high sustained courage, her flashes of spirit shone out the brighter for her lapses into womanly weakness—as in that poignant moment by the tank, which had so nearly upset his own equilibrium. Vividly recalling that moment, it hurt him to realise that weeks might pass before he could see her again. No denying he wanted her; felt lost without her. The coveted Delhi adventure seemed suddenly a very lonely affair; not even a clear inner sense of his mother's presence to bear him company. No dreams lately; no faint mystical intimation of her nearness, since the wonderful hour with his grandfather. Only in the form of that strange and lovely illusion had she seemed vitally near him since he left Chitor.
Graceless ingratitude—that 'only.' For now, looking back, he clearly saw how the beauty and bewilderment of that early phase—so mysteriously blending Arúna with herself—had held his emotions in cheek, lifted them, purified them; had saved him, for all he knew, from surrender to an overwhelming passion that might conceivably have swept everything before it. Pure fantasy—perhaps. But he felt no inclination to argue out the unarguable. He preferred simply unquestioningly to believe that, under God, he owed his salvation to her. And after all—take it spiritually or psychologically—that was in effect the truth....
Towards morning, utter weariness lulled him into a troubled sleep—not for long. He awoke, chilled and heavy-eyed, to find the unheeded loveliness of a lemon-yellow dawn stealing over the blank immensity of earth and sky.
In a moment he was up, stretching cramped limbs, thanking goodness for a carriage to himself, leaning out and drinking huge draughts of crisp clean air, fragrant with the ghost of a whiff of wood smoke—the inimitable air of a Punjab autumn morning.
CHAPTER X.
"The tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things....
The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison."—St James iii 5-8.
Roy spent ten days in Delhi—lodging with one Krishna Lal, a jewel merchant of high standing, well known to Sir Lakshman—and never a word or a sight of Dyán Singh. The need for constant precautions hampered him not a little; but if the needle he sought was in this particular haystack, he would find it yet.
Meanwhile, at every turn he was imbibing first impressions, a sufficiently enthralling occupation—in Delhi, of all places on earth: Delhi, mistress of many victors; very woman, in that she yields to conquer; and after centuries of romance and tragedy, remains, in essence, unconquered still. The old saying, 'Who holds Delhi, holds India,' has its dark counterpart in the unwritten belief that no alien ruler, enthroned at Delhi, shall endure. Hence the dismay of many loyal Indians when the British Government deserted Calcutta for the Queen of the North. And here, already, were her endless, secretive byways rivalling Calcutta suburbs as hornet-nests of sedition and intrigue.
Roy was to grow painfully familiar with these before his search ended. But the city's pandemonium of composite noises and composite smells was offset by the splendid remnants of Imperial Delhi:—the Pearl Mosque, a dream in marble, dazzling against the blue: inlaid columns of the Dewan-i-Khas—every leaf wrought in jade or malachite, every petal a precious stone; swelling domes and rose-pink minarets of the Jumna Musjid rising superbly from a network of narrow streets and shabby toppling houses. For, in India, the sordid and stately rub shoulders with sublime disregard for effect. In the cool aloofness of tombs and temples, or among crumbling fragments of them on the plain, or away beyond the battered Kashmir Gate—ground sacred to heroic memories—he could wander at will for hours, isolated in body and spirit, yet strangely content....
And there was yet a third Delhi, hard by these two; yet curiously aloof: official, Anglo-Indian Delhi, of bungalows and clubs and painfully new Government buildings. Little scope here for imaginative excursions, but much scope for thought in the queer sensation, that beset him, of seeing his father's people, as it were, through his mother's eyes.
New as he was to Anglo-Indian life, these glimpses from the outskirts were sufficiently illuminating. Once he was present in the crowd at a big Gymkhana; and more than once he strolled through the Club gardens where social Delhi pursued tennis-balls and shuttle-cocks—gravely, as if life hung on the issue; or gaily, with gusts of laughter and chaff, often noisier than need be. And he saw them all, now, from a new angle of vision. Discreetly aloof, he observed, in passing, the complete free-and-easiness of the modern maiden with her modern cavalier; personalities flying; likewise legs and arms; a banter-wrangle interlude over a tennis-racquet; flight and pursuit of the offending maiden, punctuated with shrieks, culminating in collapse and undignified surrender: while a pair of club peons—also discreetly aloof—exchanged remarks whose import would have enraged the unsuspecting pair. Roy knew very well they never gave the matter a thought. They were simply 'rotting' in the approved style of to-day. But, seen from the Eastern standpoint, the trivial incident troubled him. It recalled a chance remark of his grandfather's: "With only a little more decorum and seriousness in their way of life out here, they could do far more to promote good understanding socially between us all, than by making premature 'reforms' or tilting at barriers arising from opposite kinds of civilisation."
Here was matter for the novel—or novels—to be born of his errantry:—the 'fruit of his life' that she had so longed to bold in her hands. Were she only at Home now, what letters-without-end he would be pouring out to her! What letters he could have poured out to Arúna—did conscience permit.
He allowed himself two, in the course of ten days; and the spirit moved him, after long abstention, to indulge in a rambling screed to Tara telling of his quest; revealing more than he quite realised of the inner stress he was trying to ignore. The quest, he emphasised, was a private affair, confided to her only, because he knew she would understand. It hurt more than he cared to admit to feel how completely his father would not understand his present turmoil of heart and brain....
Isolated thus, with his hidden thwarted emotion, there resulted a literary blossoming, the most spontaneous and satisfying since his slow struggle up from the depths. Alone at night, and in the clear keen dawns, he wrote and wrote and wrote, as a thirsty man drinks after a desert march:—poems chiefly; sketches and impressions; his dearest theme the troubled spirit of India,—or was it the spirit of Arúna?—poised between crescent light and deepening shadow, looking for sane clear guidance—and finding none. A prose sketch, in this vein, stood out from the rest; a fragment of his soul, too intimately self-revealing for the general gaze: no uncommon dilemma for an artist, precisely when his work is most intrinsically true. Had he followed the natural urge of his heart, he would have sent it to Arúna. As it was, he decided to treasure it a little longer for himself alone.
Meantime Dyán—half forgotten—suddenly emerged. It was at a meeting—exclusively religious and philosophical; but the police had wind of it; and a friendly inspector mentioned it to Krishna Lal. The chief speaker would be a Swami of impeccable sanctity. "But if you have a sensitive palate, you will doubtless detect a spice of political powder under the jam of religion!" quoth Krishna Lal, who was a man of humour and no friend of sedition.
"Thanks for the hint," said Roy—and groaned in spirit. Meetings, at best, were the abomination of desolation; and his soul was sick of the Indian variety. For the 'silent East' is never happier than when it is talking at immense length; denouncing, inaugurating, promoting; and a prolonged dose of it stirred in Roy a positive craving for men who shot remarks at each other in 'straight-flung words and true.' But no stone must be left unturned. So he went;—guided by the friendly policeman, who knew him for a Sahib bent on some personal quest.
Their search ended in a windowless inner room; packed to suffocation; heavy with attar of rose, kerosene, and human bodies; and Roy as usual clung to a doorway that offered occasional respite.
The Swami was already in full flow:—a wraith of a man in a salmon-coloured garment; his eyes, deep in their sockets, gleaming like black diamonds. And he was holding his audience spellbound:—Hindus of every calling; students in abundance; a sprinkling of Sikhs and Dogras from the lines. Some form of hypnotism,—was it? Perhaps. Even Roy could not listen unmoved, when the spirit shook the frail creature like a gust of wind and the hollow chest-notes vibrated with appeal or command. Such men—and India is full of them—are spiritual dynamos. Who can calculate their effect on an emotional race? And they no longer confine their influence to things spiritual. They, too, have caught the modern disease of politics for the million. And the supreme appeal is to youth—plastic and impressionable, aflame with fervours of the blood that can be conjured, by heady words, into fervours infinitely more dangerous to themselves and their country.
In an atmosphere dense with spilled kerosene, with over-breathed air and over-charged emotion, that appeal rang out like a trumpet blast.
"It is to youth the divine message has come in all ages; the call to martyrdom and dedication. 'Suffer little children to come unto me,' said the inspired Founder of Christianity. So also I say in this time of revival, suffer the young to fling themselves into the arms of the Mother. My sons, she cries, go back to the Vedas. You will find all wisdom there. Reject this alien gift—however finely gilded—of a civilisation inferior to your own. Hindu Rishis were old in wisdom when these were still unclothed savages coloured with blue paint. Shall the sacred Motherland be inoculated with Western poison? It is for the young to decide—to act. Nerve your arms with valour. Bring offerings acceptable, to the shrine of Kali Mai. Does she demand a sheep? A buffalo? A cocoanut? Ask yourselves. The answer is written in your hearts——"
His emaciated arms shot up and outward in a gesture the more impressive because it was maintained. For a prolonged moment the holy one seemed to hover above his audience—as it were an eagle poised on outspread wings....
Roy came to himself with a start. His friend the policeman had plucked his sleeve; and they retreated a step or two through the open door.
"The Sahib heard?" queried Mán Singh in cautious undertone.
"There's hearing—and hearing," said Roy, aware of some cryptic message given and understood. "I take it they all know what he's driving at."
"True talk. They know. But he has not said. Therefore he goes in safety when he should be picking oakum in the jail khana. They are cunning as serpents these holy ones."
"They have the gift of tongues," said Roy. "May one ask what is Mai Kali's special taste in sacrifices?"
The Sikh gave him an odd look. "The blood of white goats—meaning Sahibs, Hazúr."—Roy's 'click' was Oriental to a nicety.—"'A white goat for Kali' is an old Bengali catchword. Hark how their tongues wag. But there is still another—much esteemed by the student-lóg; one who can skilfully flavour a pillau[16] of learned talk, as the Swami can flavour a pillau of religion. Where he comes, there will be trouble afterwards, and arrests. But no Siri Chandranath. He is off making trouble elsewhere."
"Chandranath—here?" Roy's heart gave a jerk, half excitement, half apprehension.
"Your Honour has heard the man?"
"No. I'm glad of the chance."
As they entered, the second speaker stepped on to the platform....
True talk, indeed! There stood the boy who had whimpered under Scab Major's bullying, in the dark coat and turban of the educated Indian; his back half turned, in confidential talk with a friend, who had set a carafe and tumbler ready to hand. The light of a wall lamp shone full on his friend's face—clean-cut, handsome, unmistakable....
Dyán! Dyán—and Chandranath! It was the conjunction that confounded Roy and tinged elation with dismay. He could hardly contain himself till Dyán joined the audience; standing a little apart; not taking a seat. Something in his face reminded Roy of the strained fervour in his letter to Arúna. Carefully careless, he edged his way through the outer fringe of the audience, and volunteered a remark or two in Hindustani.
"A full meeting, brother. Your friend speaks well?"
Dyán turned with a start. "Where are you from, that you have not heard him?" He scrutinised Roy's appearance. "A hill man——?"
Roy edged nearer and spoke in English under his breath. "Dyán—look at me. Don't make a scene. I am Roy—from Jaipur."
In spite of the warning, Dyán drew back sharply. "What are you here for—spying?"
"No. Hoping to find you. Because—I care; and Arúna cares——"
"Better to care less and understand more," Dyán muttered brusquely. "No time for talk now. Listen. You may learn a few things Oxford could not teach."
The implied sneer enraged Roy; but listen he must, perforce: and in the space of half an hour he learnt a good deal about Chandranath and the mentality of his type.
To the outer ear, he was propounding the popular modern doctrine of 'Yoga by action.' To the inner ear he was extolling passion and rebellion in terms of a creed that enjoins detachment from both; inciting to political murder, under sanction of the divine dictum, 'Who kills the body kills naught ... Thy concern is with action alone, never with results.' And his heady flights of rhetoric, like those of the Swami, were frankly aimed at the scores of half-fledged youths who hung upon his utterance.
"What are the first words of the young child? What are the first words in your own hearts?" he cried, indicating that organ with a dramatic forefinger. "I want! It is the passionate cry of youth. By indomitably uttering it, he can dislodge mountains into the sea. And in India to-day there exist mountains necessary to be hurled into the sea!" His significant pause was not lost on his hearers—or on Roy. "'Many-branched and endless are the thoughts of the irresolute.' But to him who cries ardently, 'I want,' there is no impediment, except paucity of courage to snatch the seductive object. Deaf to the anæmic whisper of compunction, remembering that sin taints only the weak, he will be translated to that dizzy eminence, where right and wrong, truth and untruth, become as pigmies, hardly discerned by the naked eye. There dwells Káli—the shameless and pitiless; and believing our country that deity incarnate, her needs must be our gods. 'Her image make we in temple after temple—Bande Mátaram?'" The invocation was flung back to him in a ragged shout. Here and there a student leapt to his feet brandishing a clenched fist. "Compose your laudable intoxication, brothers. I do not say, 'Be violent.' There is a necromancy of the spirit more potent than weapons of the flesh:—the delusion of irresistible suggestion that will conquer even truth itself...."
Abstraction piled on abstraction; perversion on perversion; and that deluded crowd plainly swallowing it all as gospel truth——! To Roy the whole exhibition was purely disgustful; as if the man had emptied a dust-bin under his aristocratic nose. Once or twice he glanced covertly at Dyán, standing beside him; at the strained intentness of his face, the nervous clenched hand. Was this the same Dyán who had ridden and argued and read 'Greats' with him only four years ago—this hypnotised being who seemed to have forgotten his existence——?
Thank God! At last it was over! But while applause hummed and fluttered, there sprang on to the platform, unannounced, a wiry keen-faced man, with the parted beard of a Sikh.
"Brothers—I demand a hearing!" he cried aloud; "I who was formerly hater of the British, preaching all manner of violence—I have been three years detained in Germany; and I come back now, with my eyes open, to say all over India—cease your fool's talk about self-government and tossing mountains into the sea! Cease making yourselves drunk with words and waving your Vedic flags and stand by the British—your true friends——"
At that, cries and counter-cries drowned his voice. Books were hurled; no other weapon being handy; and Roy noted, with amused contempt, that Chandranath hastily disappeared from view.
The Sikh laughed in the face of their opposition. Dexterously catching a book, he hurled it back; and once more made his strong voice heard above the clamour. "Fools—and sheep! You may stop your ears now. In the end I will make you hear——"
Shouted down again, he vanished through a side exit; and, in the turmoil that followed, Roy's hand closed securely on Dyán's arm. Throughout the stormy interlude, he had stood rigidly still: a pained, puzzled frown contracting his brows. Yet it was plain he would have slipped away without a word, but for Roy's detaining grasp.
"You don't go running off—now I've found you," said he good-humouredly. "I've things to say. Come along to my place and hear them."
Dyán jerked his imprisoned arm. "Very sorry. I have—important duties."
"To-morrow night then? I'm lodging with Krishna Lal. And—look here, don't mention me to your friend the philosopher! I know more about him than you might suppose. If you still care a damn for me—and the others, do what I ask—and keep your mouth shut——"
Dyán's frown was hostile; but his voice was low and troubled. "For God's sake leave me alone, Roy. Of course—I care. But that kind of caring is carnal weakness. We, who are dedicated, must rise above such weakness, above pity and slave-morality, giving all to the Mother——"
"Dyán—have you forgotten—my mother?" Roy pressed his advantage in the same low tone.
"No. Impossible. She was Dévi—Goddess; loveliest and kindest——"
"Well, in her name, I ask you—come to-morrow evening and have a talk."
Dyán was silent; then, for the first time, he looked Roy straight in the eyes. "In her name—I will come. Now let me go."
Roy let him go. He had achieved little enough. But for a start it was not so bad.