FOOTNOTES:
[18] Dress of honour.
CHAPTER XIV.
"Yet shall I bear in my heart this honour of the burden of pain—this gift of thine."—Rabindranath Tagore
It was the last day of the year; the last moon of the year, almost at her zenith. Of all the Christmas guests Lance alone remained; and Thea had promised him before leaving, a moonlight vision of Amber, the Sleeping Beauty of Rajasthán. The event had been delayed till now, partly because they waited on the moon; partly because they did not want it to be a promiscuous affair.
To Thea's lively imagination—and to Roy's no less—Amber was more than a mere city of ghosts and marble halls. It was a symbol of Rajput womanhood—strong and beautiful, withdrawn from the clamour of the market-place, given over to her dreams and her gods. For though kings have deserted Amber, the gods remain. There is still life in her temples and the blood of sacrifice on her altar stones. Therefore she must not be approached in the spirit of the tourist. And, emphatically, she must not be approached in a motor-car; at least so far as Thea's guests were concerned. Of course one knew she was approached by irreverent cars; also by tourists—unspeakable ones, who made contemptible jokes about 'a slump in house property.' But for these vandalisms Thea Leigh was not responsible.
Her young ones, including Captain Martin, would ride; but, because of Arúna, she and Vincent must submit to the barouche. So transparent was the girl's pleasure at being included, that Thea's heart failed her—knowing what she knew.
Roy and Lance had ridden on ahead; out through the fortified gates into the open desert, strewn with tumbled fragments of the glory that was Rajasthán. There, where courtiers had intrigued and flattered, crows held conference. On the crumbling arch of a doorway, that opened into emptiness, a vulture brooded, heavy with feeding on those who had died for lack of food. Knee-deep in the Mán Sagar Lake, grey cranes sought their meat from God; every tint and curve of them repeated in the quiet water. And there, beside a ruined shrine, two dead cactus bushes, with their stiff distorted limbs, made Roy think suddenly of two dead Germans he had come upon once—killed so swiftly that they still retained, in death, the ghastly semblance of life. Why the devil couldn't a man be rid of them? Dead Germans were not 'in the bond.'...
"Buck up, Lance," he said abruptly; for Desmond, who saw no ghosts, was keenly interested. "Let's quit this place of skulls and empty eye-sockets. Amber's dead; but not utterly decayed."
He knew. He had ridden out alone one morning, in the light of paling stars, to watch the dawn steal down through the valley and greet the sleeping city that would never wake again—half hoping to recapture the miracle of Chitor. But Amber did not enshrine the soul of his mother's race. And the dawn had proved merely a dawn. Moonlight, with its eerie enchantment, would be oven more beautiful and fitting; but the pleasure of anticipation was shadowed by his resolve.
He had spoken of it only to Thea; asking her, when tea was over, to give him a chance:—and now he was heartily wishing he had chosen any other place and time than this....
The brisk canter to the foothills was a relief. Thence the road climbed, between low, reddish-grey spurs, to the narrow pass, barred by a formidable gate, that swung open at command, with a screech of rusty hinges, as if in querulous protest against intrusion.
Another gateway,—and yet another: then they were through the triple wall that guards the dead city from the invader who will never come, while both races honour the pact that alone saved desperate, stubborn Rajputana from extinction.
Up on the heights, it was still day; but in the valley it was almost evening. And there—among deepening shadows and tumbled fragments of hills—lay Amber: her palace and temples and broken houses crowding round their sacred Lake, like Queens and their handmaids round the shield of a dead King.
Descending at a foot's pace, the chill of emptiness and of oncoming twilight seemed to close like icy fingers on Roy's heart; though the death of Amber was as nothing to the death of Chitor—the warrior-queen, ravished and violently slain by Akbar's legions. Amber had, as it were, died peacefully in her sleep. But there remained the all-pervading silence and emptiness:—her sorrowful houses, cleft from roof to roadway; no longer homes of men, but of the rock-pigeon, the peacock, and the wild boar; stones of her crumbling arches thrust apart by roots of acacia and neem; her streets choked with cactus and brushwood; her beauty—disfigured but not erased—reflected in the unchanging mirror of the Lake.
If Roy and Lance had talked little before, they talked less now. From the Lake-side they rode up, by stone pathways, to the Palace of stone and marble, set upon a jutting rock and commanding the whole valley. There, in the quadrangle, they left the horses with their grooms, who were skilled in cutting corners and had trotted most of the way.
Close to the gate stood a temple of fretted marble—neither ruined nor deserted; for within were the priests of Kali, and the faint, sickly smell of blood. Daybreak after daybreak, for centuries, the severed head of a goat had been set before her, the warm blood offered in a bronze bowl....
"Pah! Beastly!" muttered Lance. "I'd sooner have no religion at all."
Roy smiled at him, sidelong—and said nothing. It was beastly: but it matched the rest. It was in keeping with the dusky rooms, all damp-incrusted, the narrow passages and screens of marble tracery; the cloistered hanging garden, beyond the women's rooms, their baths chiselled out of naked rock. And the beastliness was off-set by the beauty of inlay and carving and colour; by the splendour of bronze gates and marble pillars, and slabs of carven granite that served as balustrade to the terraced roof, where daylight still lingered and azure-necked peacocks strutted, serenely immune.
Seated on a carven slab, they looked downward into the heart of desolation; upward, at creeping battlements and a little temple of Shiva printed sharply on the light-filled sky.
"Can't you feel the ghosts of them all round you?" whispered Roy.
"No, thank God, I can't," said practical Lance, taking out a cigarette. But a rustle of falling stones made him start—the merest fraction. "Perhaps smoke'll keep 'em off—like mosquitoes!" he added hopefully.
But Roy paid no heed. He was looking down into the hollow shell of that which had been Amber. Not a human sound anywhere; nor any stir of life, but the soft ceaseless kuru-kooing doves, that nested and mated in those dusky inner rooms, where Queens had mated with Kings.
"'Thou hast made of a city an heap, of a defencéd city a ruin ...Their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there,'" he quoted softly; adding after a pause, "Mother had a great weakness for old Isaiah. She used to say he and the minor prophets knew all about Rajasthán. The owls of Amber are blue pigeons. But I hope she's spared the satyrs."
"Globe-trotters!" suggested Lance.
"Or 'Piffers' devoid of reverence!" retorted Roy. "Hullo! Here come the others."
Footsteps and voices in the quadrangle waked hollow echoes as when a stone drops into a well. Presently they sounded on the stairs near by: Flossie's rather boisterous laugh; Martin chaffing her in his husky tones.
"Great sport! Let's rent it off H.H. and gather 'em all in from the highways and hedges for a masked fancy ball!"
Roy stood up and squared his shoulders. "Satyrs dancing, with a vengeance!" said he; but the gleam of Arúna's sari smote him silent. A band seemed to tighten round his heart....
Before tea was over, peacocks and pigeons had gone to roost among the trees that shadowed the Lake; and the light behind the hills had passed swiftly from gold to flame-colour, from flame-colour to rose. For the sun, that had already departed in effect, was now setting in fact.
"Hush—it's coming," murmured Thea:—and it came.
Hollow thuds, quickening to a vibrant roar, swelled up from the temple in the courtyard below. The Brahmins were beating the great tom-tom before Kali's Shrine.
It was the signal. It startlingly waked the dead city to discordant life. Groanings and howlings and clashings, as of Tophet, were echoed and re-echoed from every temple, every shrine; an orgy of demoniac sounds; blurred in transit through the empty rooms beneath; pierced at intervals by the undulating wail of ram's horns; the two reiterate notes wandering, like lost souls, through a confused blare of cymbals and bagpipes and all kinds of music.
Flossie, with a bewitching grimace at Martin, clapped both hands over her ears. Roy—standing by the balustrade with Arúna—was aware of an answering echo somewhere in subconscious depths, as the discords rose and fell above the throbbing undernote of the drum. It was as if the claimant voices of the East cried out to the blood in his veins: 'You are of us—do what you will; go where you will.' And all the while his eyes never left Arúna's half-averted face.
Sudden and clear from the heights came a ringing peal of bells, as it were the voices of angels answering the wail of devils in torment. It was from the little Shrine of Shiva close against the ramparts, etched in outline, above the dark of the hills.
Arúna turned and looked up at him. "Too beautiful!" she whispered.
He nodded, and flung out an arm. "Look there!"
Low and immense—pale in the pallor of the eastern sky—the moon hung poised above massed shadows, like a wraith escaped from the city of death. Moment by moment, she drew light from the vanished sun. Moment by moment, under their watching eyes, she conjured the formless dark into a new heaven, a new earth....
"Would you be afraid—to stroll round a little ... with me?" he asked.
"Afraid? I would love it—if Thea will allow." This time she did not look up.
Vincent and Thea were sitting a little farther along the balustrade; Lance beside them, imbibing tales of Rajasthán. Flossie and her Captain had already disappeared.
"I'm going to be frankly a Goth and flash my electric torch into holes and corners," Lance announced as the other two came up. "I bar being intimidated by ghosts."
"We're not going to be intimidated either," said Roy, addressing himself to Thea. "And I guarantee not to let Arúna be spirited away."
Vincent shot a look at his wife. "Don't wander too far," said he.
"And don't hang about too long," she added. "It'll be cold going home."
Though he was standing close to her, she could say no more. But, under cover of the dusk, her hand found his and closed on it hard.
The characteristic impulse heartened him amazingly, as he followed Arúna down the ghostly stairway, through marble cloisters into the hanging garden, misted with moonlight, fragrant with orange trees.
And now there was more than Thea's hand-clasp to uphold him. Gradually there dawned on him a faint yet sure intimation of his mother's presence, of her tenderly approving love—dim to his brain, yet as sensible to his spirit as light and warmth to his body.
It did not last many moments; but—as in all contact with her—the clear after-certainty remained....
Exactly what he intended to say he did not know even now. To speak the cruel truth, yet by some means to soften the edge of it, seemed almost impossible. But nerved by this vivid, exalted sense of her nearness, the right moment, the right words could be trusted to come of themselves....
And Arúna, walking beside him in a hushed expectancy, was remembering that other night, so strangely far away, when they had walked alone under the same moon, and assurance of his love had so possessed her, that she had very nearly broken her little chirágh. And to-night—how different! Her very love for him, though the same, was not quite the same. It seemed to depend not at all on nearness or response. Starved of both, it had grown not less, but more.
From a primitive passion it had become a rarefied emotional atmosphere in which she lived and moved. And this garden of eerie lights and shadows was saturated with it; thronged, to her fancy, with ghosts of dead passions and intrigues, of dead Queens, in whom the twin flames of love and courage could be quenched only by flames of the funeral pyre. Their blood ran in her veins—and in his too. That closeness of belonging none could snatch from her. About the other, she was growing woefully uncertain, as day followed day, and still no word. Was there trouble after all! Would he speak to-night...?
They had reached a dark doorway, and he was trying the handle. It opened inwards.
"I'm keen to go a little way up the hillside," he said, forcing himself to break a silence that was growing oppressive. "To get a sight of the Palace with the moon full on it. We'll be cautious—not go too far."
"I am ready to go anywhere," she answered; and the fervour of that simple statement told him she was not thinking of hillsides any more than he was—at the back of his mind.
Silence was unkinder than speech; and as they passed out into the open, he scanned the near prospect for a convenient spot. Not far above them a fragment of ruined wall, overhung by trees, ended in a broken arch; its lingering keystone threatened by a bird-borne acacia. A fallen slab of stone, half under it, offered a not too distant seat. Slab and arch were in full light; the space beyond, engulfed in shadow.
Far up the hillside a jackal laughed. Across the valley another answered it. A monkey swung from a branch on to the slab, and sat there engaged in his toilet—a very imp of darkness.
"Not be-creeped—are you?" Roy asked.
"Just the littlest bit! Nice kind of creeps. I feel quite safe—with you."
The path was rough in parts. Once she stumbled and his hand closed lightly on her arm under the cloak. She felt safe with him—and he must turn and smite her——!
At their approach, the monkey fled with a gibbering squeak: and Roy loosened his hold. Between them and the lake loomed the noble bulk of the palace; roof-terraces and façades bathed in silver, splashed with indigo shadow; but for them—mere man and woman—its imperishable strength and beauty had suddenly become a very little thing. They scarcely noticed it even.
"There—sit," Roy said softly, and she obeyed.
Her smile mutely invited him; but he could not trust himself—yet. He might have known the moonlight would go to his head.
"Arúna—my dear——" he plunged without preamble. "I took you away from them all because—well—we can't pretend any more ... you and I. It's fate—and there we are. I love you—dearly—truly. But...."
How could one go on?
"Oh, Roy!"
Her lifted gaze, her low impassioned cry told all; and before that too clear revealing his hard-won resolution quailed.
"No—not that. I don't deserve it," he broke out, lashing himself and startling her. "I've been a rank coward—letting things drift. But honestly I hadn't the conceit—we were cousins ... it seemed natural. And now ... this!"
A stupid catch in his throat arrested him. She sat motionless; never a word.
Impulsively he dropped on one knee, to be nearer, yet not too near. "Arúna—I don't know how to say it. The fact is ... they were afraid, at Home, if I came out here, I might—it might ... Well, just what's come to us," he blurted out in desperation. "And Mother told me frankly—it mustn't be, twice running ... like that." Her stillness dismayed him. "Dear," he urged tenderly, "you see their difficulty—you understand?"
"I am trying—to understand." Her voice was small and contained. The courage and control of it unsteadied him more than any passionate protest. Yet he hurried on in the same low tone.
"Of course, I ought to have thought. But, as I say, it seemed natural.... Only—on Dewáli night——"
She caught her breath. "Yes—Dewáli night. Mai Lakshmi knew. Why did you not say it then?"
"Well ... so soon—I wasn't sure ... I hoped going away might give us both a chance. It seemed the best I could do," he pleaded. "And—there was Dyán. I'm not vamping up excuses, Arúna. If you hate me for hurting you so——"
"Roy—you shall not say it!" she cried, roused at last. "Could I hate ... the heart in my own body!"
"Better for us both perhaps if you could!" he jerked out, rising abruptly, not daring to let the full force of her confession sink in. "But—because of my father, I promised. No getting over that."
She was silent:—a silence more moving, more compelling than speech. Was she wondering—had he not promised...? Was he certain himself? Near enough to swear by; and the impulse to comfort her was overwhelming.
"If—if things had been different, Arúna," he added with grave tenderness, "of course I would be asking you now ... to be my wife."
At that, the tension of her control seemed to snap; and hiding her face, she sat there shaken all through with muffled, broken-hearted sobs.
"Don't—oh, don't!" he cried low, his own nerves quivering with her pain.
"How can I not" she wailed, battling with fresh sobs. "Because of your Indian mother—I hoped.... But for me—England-returned—no hope anywhere: no true country now; no true belief; no true home; everything divided in two; only my heart—not divided. And that you cannot have, even if you would——"
Tears threatened again. It was all he could do not to take her in his arms.
"If—if they would only leave me alone," she went on, clenching her small hands to steady herself. "But impossible to change all the laws of our religion for one worthless me. They will insist I shall marry—even Dyán; and I cannot—I cannot——!"
Suddenly there sprang an inspiration, born of despair, of the chance and the hour and the grave tenderness of his assurance. No time for shrinking or doubt. Almost in speaking she was on her feet; her cloak—that had come unlinked—dropped from her shoulders, leaving her a slim strip of pallor, like a ray of light escaped from clouds.
"Roy—Dilkusha!" Involuntarily her hands went out to him. "If it is true ... you are caring—and if I must not belong to you, there is a way you can belong to me without trouble for any one. If—if we make pledge of betrothal ... for this one night, if you hold me this one hour ... I am safe. For me that pledge would be sacred—as marriage, because I am still Hindu. Perhaps I am punished for far-away sins—not worthy to be wife and mother; but, by my pledge, I can remain always Swami Bakht—worshipper of my lord ... a widow in my heart."
And Roy stood before her—motionless; stirred all through by the thrill of her exalted passion, of her strange appeal. The pathos—the nobility of it—swept him a little off his feet. It seemed as if, till to-night, he had scarcely known her. The Eastern in him said, 'Accept.' The Englishman demurred—'Unfair on her.'
"My dear——" he said—"I can refuse you nothing. But—is it right? You should marry——"
"Don't trouble your mind for me," she murmured; and her eyes never left his face. "If I keep out of purdah, becoming Brahmo Samaj ... perhaps——" She drew in her full lower lip to steady it. "But the marriage of arrangement—I cannot. I have read too many English books, thought too many English thoughts. And I know in here"—one clenched hand smote her breast—"that now I could not give my body and life to any man, unless heart and mind are given too. And for me.... Must I tell all? It is not only these few weeks. It is years and years...." Her voice broke.
"Arúna! Dearest one——"
He opened his arms to her—and she was on his breast. Close and tenderly he held her, putting a strong constraint on himself lest her ecstasy of surrender should bear down all his defences. To fail her like this was a bitter thing: and as her arms stole up round his neck, he instinctively tightened his hold. So yielding she was, so unsubstantial....
And suddenly a rush of memory wafted him from the moonlit hillside to the drawing-room at Home. It was his mother he held against his breast:—the silken draperies, the clinging arms, the yielding softness, the unyielding courage at the core....
So vivid, so poignant was the lightning gleam of illusion, that when it passed he felt dizzy, as if his body had been swept in the wake of his spirit, a thousand leagues and back: dizzy, yet, in some mysterious fashion, reinforced—assured....
He knew now that his defences would hold....
And Arúna, utterly at rest in his arms, knew it also. He loved her—oh yes, truly—as much as he said and more; but instinct told her there lacked ... just something; something that would have set him—and her—on fire, and perhaps have made renunciation unthinkable. Her acute, instinctive sense of it, hurt like the edge of a knife pressed on her heart; yet just enabled her to bear the unbearable. Had it been ...that way, to lose him were utter loss. This way—there would be no losing. What she had now, she would keep—whether his bodily presence were with her or no——
Next minute, she dropped from the heights. Fire ran in her veins. His lips were on her forehead.
"The seal of betrothal," he whispered. "My brave Arúna——"
Without a word she put up her face like a child; but it was very woman who yielded her lips to his....
For her, in that supreme moment, the years that were past and the years that were to come seemed gathered into a burnt-offering—laid on his shrine. For her, that long kiss held much of passion—confessed yet transcended; more of sacredness, inexpressible, because it would never come again—with him or any other man. She vowed it silently to her own heart....
Again far up the hillside a jackal laughed; another and another—as if in derision. She shivered; and he loosed his hold, still keeping an arm round her. To-night they were betrothed. He owed her all he had the right to give.
"Your cloak. You'll catch your death...." He stopped short—and flung up his head. "What was that? There—again—in those trees——"
"Some monkey perhaps," she whispered, startled by his look and tone.
"Hush—listen!" His grip tightened and they stood rigidly still, Roy straining every nerve to locate those stealthy sounds. They were almost under the arch; strong mellow light on one side, nethermost darkness on the other. And from all sides the large unheeded night seemed to close in on them—threatening, full of hidden danger.
Presently the sounds came again, unmistakably nearer; faint rustlings and creakings, then a distinct crumbling, as of loosened earth and stones. The shadowy plumes of acacia that crowned the arch stirred perceptibly, though no breeze was abroad:—and not the acacia only. To Arúna's excited fancy it seemed that the loose upper stones of the arch itself moved ever so slightly. But was it fancy? No—there again——!
And before the truth dawned on Roy, she had pushed him with all her force, so vehemently that he stumbled backward and let go of her.
Before he recovered himself, down crashed two large stones and a shower of small ones—on Arúna, not on him. With a stifled scream she tottered and fell, knocking her head against the slab of rock.
Instantly he was on his knees beside her; stanching the cut on her forehead, binding it with his handkerchief; consumed with rage and concern;—rage at himself and the dastardly intruder,—no monkey, that was certain.
His quick ear caught the stealthy rustling again, lower down; and, yes—unmistakably—a human sound, like a stifled exclamation of dismay.
"Arúna—I must get at that devil," he whispered. "Does your head feel better? Dare I leave you a moment?"
"Yes—oh yes," she whispered back. "Nothing will harm me. Only take care—please take care."
Hastily he made a pillow of his overcoat and covered her with the cloak; then, stooping down, he kissed her fervently—and was gone.
CHAPTER XV.
| "Then was I rapt away by the impulse, one |
| Immeasurable ... wave of a need |
| To abolish that detested life." |
| —Browning. |
Lithe and noiseless as a cat, Roy crept through the archway into outer darkness. It was hateful leaving Arúna; but rage at her hurt and the primitive instinct of pursuit were not to be denied. And she might have been killed. And she had done it for him:—coals of fire, indeed! Also, the others would be getting anxious. Let him only catch that mysterious skulker, and he could shout across to the Palace roof. They would hear.
Close under the wall he waited, all the scout in him alert. The cautious rustlings drew stealthily nearer; ceased, for a few tantalising seconds; then, out of the massed shadows, there crept a moving shadow.
Roy's spring was calculated to a nicety; but the thing swerved sharply and fled up the rough hillside. There followed a ghostly chase, unreal as a nightmare, lit up by the moon's deceptive brilliance; the earth, an unstable welter of light and darkness, shifting under his feet.
The fleeing shade was agile; and plainly familiar with the ground. Baulked, and lured steadily farther from Arúna, all the Rajput flamed in Roy. During those mad moments he was capable of murdering the unknown with his hands....
Suddenly, blessedly, the thing stumbled and dropped to its knees. With the spring of a panther, he was on it, his angers at its throat, pinning it to earth. The choking cry moved him not at all:—and suddenly the moonlight showed him the face of Chandranath, mingled hate and terror in the starting eyes....
Amazed beyond measure, he unconsciously relaxed his grip. "You—is it?—you devil!"
There was no answer. Chandranath had had the wit to wriggle almost clear of him;—almost, not quite. Roy's pounce was worthy of his Rajput ancestors; and next moment they were locked in a silent, purposeful embrace....
But Roy's brain was cooler now. Sanity had returned. He could still have choked the life out of the man, without compunction. But he did not choose to embroil himself, or his people, on account of anything so contemptible as the creature that was writhing and scratching in his grasp. He simply wanted to secure him and hand him over to the Jaipur authorities, who had several scores up against him.
But Chandranath, though not skilled, had the ready cunning of the lesser breeds. With a swift unexpected move, he tripped Roy up so that he nearly fell backward; and, in a supreme effort to keep his balance, unconsciously loosened his hold. This time, Chandranath slipped free of him; and, in the act, pushed him so violently that he staggered and came down among sharp broken stones with one foot twisted under him. When he would have sprung up, a stab of pain in his ankle told him he was done for....
The sheer ignominy of it enraged him; and he was still further enraged by the proceedings of the victor, who sprang nimbly out of reach on to a fragment of buttressed wall, whence he let fly a string of abusive epithets nicely calculated to touch up Roy's pride and temper and goad him to helpless fury.
But if his ankle was crippled, his brain was not. While Chandranath indulged his pent-up spite, Roy was feeling stealthily, purposefully, in the semi-darkness, for the sharpest chunk of stone he could lay hands on; a chunk warranted to hurt badly, if nothing more. The strip of shadow against the sky made an admirable target; and Roy's move, when it came, was swift, his aim unerring.
Somewhere about the head or shoulders it took effect: a yell of rage and pain assured him of that, as his target vanished on the far side of the wall.
Had he jumped or fallen? And what did the damage amount to? Roy would have given a good deal to know; but he had neither time nor power to investigate. Nothing for it but to crawl back, and shout to Arúna, when he got within hail.
It was an undignified performance. His twisted ankle stabbed like a knife, and never failed to claim acquaintance with every obstacle in its path. Presently, to his immense relief, the darkness ahead was raked by a restless light, zigzagging like a giant glow-worm.
"Lance—ahoy!" he shouted.
"Righto!" Lance sang out; and the glow-worm waggled a welcome.
Another shout from the Palace roof, answered in concert; and the mad, bad dream was over. He was back in the world of realities; on his feet again—one foot, to be exact—supported by Desmond's arm; pouring out his tale.
Lance already knew part of it. He had found Arúna and was hurrying on to find Roy. "Your cousin's got the pluck of a Rajput," he concluded. "But she seems a bit damaged. The left arm's broken, I'm afraid."
Roy cursed freely. "Wish to God I could make sure if I've sent that skunk to blazes."
"Just as well you can't, perhaps. If your shot took effect, he won't be off in a hurry. The police can nip out when we get back."
"Look here—keep it dark till I've seen Dyán. If Chandranath's nabbed, he'll want to be in it. Only fair!"
Lance chuckled. "What an unholy pair you are!—By the way, I fancy Martin's pulled it off with Miss Flossie. I tumbled across them in the hanging garden. You left that door open. Gave me the tip you might be out on the loose."
Desmond's surmise proved correct. Arúna's left arm was broken above the elbow: a simple fracture, but it hurt a good deal. Thea, in charge of 'the wounded,' eased them both as best she could, during the long drive home. But Arúna, still in her exalted mood, counted mere pain a little thing, when Roy, under cover of the cloak, found her cold right hand and cherished it in his warm one nearly all the way.
No one paid much heed to Martin and Flossie, who felt privately annoyed with 'the native cousin' for putting her nose out of joint. Defrauded of her due importance, she told her complacent lover they must 'save up the news till to-morrow.' Meantime, they rode, very much at leisure, behind the barouche;—and no one troubled about them at all.
Lance and Vincent, having cantered on ahead, called in for Miss Hammond and left word at Sir Lakshman's house that Arúna had met with a slight accident; and would he and her brother come out to the Residency after dinner?
Before the meal was over, they arrived. Miss Hammond was upstairs attending to Arúna; and Sir Lakshman joined them without ceremony, leaving Dyán alone with Roy, who was nursing his ankle in an arm-chair near the drawing-room fire.
In ten minutes of intimate talk he heard the essential facts, with reservations; and Roy had never felt more closely akin to him than on that evening. Rajput chivalry is no mere tradition. It is vital and active as ever it was. Insult or injury to a woman is sternly avenged; and the offender is lucky if he escapes the extreme penalty. Roy frankly hoped he had inflicted it himself. But for Dyán surmise was not enough. He would not eat nor sleep till he had left his own mark on the man who had come near killing his sister—most sacred being to him, who had neither wife nor mother.
"The delicate attention was meant for me, you know," Roy reminded him; simply from a British impulse to give the devil his due.
"Tcha!" Dyán's thumb and finger snapped like a toy pistol. "No law-courts talk for me. You were so close together. He took the risk. By Indra, he won't take any more such risks if I get at him! You said we would not see him here. But no doubt he has been hanging round Amber, making what mischief he can. He must have heard your party was coming, and got sneaking round for a chance to score off you. Young Ramanund, priest of Kali's shrine, is one of those he has made his tool, the way he made me. If he is in Amber, I shall find him. You can take your oath on that." He stood up, straight and virile, instinct with purpose as a drawn sword. "I am going now, Roy. But not one word to any soul. Grandfather and Arúna only need to know I am trying to find who toppled those stones. I shall not succeed. That is all:—except for you and me. Bijli, Son of Lightning, will take me full gallop to Amber. First thing in the morning, I will come—and make my report."
"But look here—Lance knows——"
"Well, your Lance can suppose he got away. We could trust him, I don't doubt. But what is known to more than two, will in time be known to a hundred. For myself, I don't trouble. Among Rajputs the penalty would be slight. But this thing must be kept between you and me—because of Arúna."
Roy held out his hand. Dyán's fingers closed on it like taut strips of steel. Unmistakably the real Dyán Singh had shed the husks of scholarship and politics and come into his own again.
"I wouldn't care to have those at my throat!" remarked Roy, pensively considering the streaks on his own hand.
"Some Germans didn't care for it—in France," said Dyán coolly. "But now——" He scowled at his offending left arm. "I hope—very soon ... never mind. No more talking ... poison gas!" And with a flash of white teeth—he was gone.
Roy, left staring into the fire, followed him in imagination, speeding through the silent city out into the region of skulls and eye-sockets—a flying shadow in the moonlight with murder in its heart....
Within an hour, that flying shadow was outside the gateway of Amber, startling the doorkeepers from sleep; murder, not only in its heart, but tucked securely in its belt. No 'law-courts talk' for one of his breed; no nice adjustment of penalty to offence; no concern as to possible consequences. The Rajput, with his blood up, is daring to the point of recklessness; deaf to puerile promptings of prudence or mercy; a sword, seeking its victim; insatiate till the thrust has gone home.
And, in justice to Dyán Singh, it should be added that there was more than Arúna in his mind. There was India—increasingly at the mercy of Chandranath and his kind. The very blindness of his earlier obsession had intensified the effect of his awakening. Roy's devoted daring, his grandfather's mellow wisdom, had worked in his fiery soul more profoundly than they knew: and his act of revenge was also, in his eyes, an act of expiation. At the bidding of Chandranath, or another, he would unhesitatingly have flung a bomb at the Commissioner of Delhi—the sane, strong man whose words and bearing had so impressed him on the few occasions they had met at the Residency. By what law of God or man, then, should he hesitate to grind the head of this snake under his heel?
One-handed though he was, he would not strike from behind. The son of a jackal should know who struck him. He should taste fear, before he tasted death. And then—the Lake, that would never give up its secret or its dead. Siri Chandranath would disappear from his world, like a stone flung into a river; and India would be a cleaner place without him.
He knew himself hampered, if it came to a struggle. But—tcha! the man was a coward. Let the gods but deliver his victim into that one purposeful hand of his—and the end was sure.
Near the Palace, he deserted Bijli, Son of Lightning; tethered him securely and spoke a few words in his ear, while the devoted creature nuzzled against him, as who should say, 'What need of speech between me and thee'? Then—following Roy's directions—he made his way cautiously up the hillside, where the arch showed clear in the moon. If Chandranath had been injured or stupefied, he would probably not have gone far.
His surmise proved correct. His stealthy approach well-timed. The guardian gods of Amber, it seemed, were on his side. For there, on the fallen slab, crouched a shadow, bowed forward; its head in its hands.
"Must have been stunned," he thought. Patently the gods were with him. Had he been an Englishman, the man's hurt would probably have baulked him of his purpose. But Dyán Singh, Rajput, was not hampered by the sportman's code of morals. He was frankly out to kill. His brain worked swiftly, instinctively: and swift action followed....
Out of the sheltering shadow he leapt, as the cheetah leaps on its prey: the long knife gripped securely in his teeth. Before Chandranath came to his senses, the steel-spring grasp was on his throat, stifling the yell of terror at Roy's supposed return....
The tussle was short and silent. Within three minutes Dyán had his man down; arms and body pinioned between his powerful knees, that his one available hand might be free to strike. Then, in a low fierce rush, he spoke: "Yes—it is I—Dyán Singh. You told me often—strike, for the Mother. 'Who kills the body kills naught.' I strike for the Mother now."
Once—twice—the knife struck deep; and the writhing thing between his knees was still.
He did not altogether relish the weird journey down to the shore of the Lake; or the too close proximity of the limp burden slung over his shoulder. But his imagination did not run riot, like Roy's: and no qualms of conscience perturbed his soul. He had avenged, tenfold, Arúna's injury. He had expiated, in drastic fashion, his own aberration from sanity. It was enough.
The soft 'plop' and splash of the falling body, well weighted with stones, was music to his ear. Beyond that musical murmur, the Lake would utter no sound....
CHAPTER XVI.
| "So let him journey through his earthly day: |
| 'Mid hustling spirits go his self-found way; |
| Find torture, bliss, in every forward stride— |
| He, every moment, still unsatisfied." |
| —Faust. |
Next morning, very early, he was closeted with Roy, sitting on the edge of his bed; cautiously, circumstantially, telling him all. Roy, as he listened, was half repelled, half impressed by the sheer impetus of the thing; and again he felt—as once or twice in Delhi—what centuries apart they were, though related, and almost of an age.
"This will be only between you and me, Roy—for always," Dyán concluded gravely. "Not because I have any shame for killing that snake; but—as I said ... because of Arúna——"
"Trust me," said Roy. "Amber Lake and I don't blab. There'll be a nine days' mystery over his disappearance. Then his lot will set up some other tin god—and promptly forget all about him."
"Let us follow their example, in that at least!" Grim humour nickered in Dyán's eyes, as he extracted a cigarette from the proffered case. "You gave me my chance. I have taken it—like a Rajput. Now we have other things to do."
Roy smiled. "That's about the size of it—from your sane, barbaric standpoint! I'm fairly besieged with other things to do. As soon as this blooming ankle allows me to hobble, I'm keen to get at some of the thoughtful elements in Calcutta and Bombay; educated Indian men and women, who honestly believe that India is moving towards a national unity that will transcend all antagonism of race and creed. I can't see it myself; but I've an open mind. Then, I think, Udaipur—'last, loneliest, loveliest, apart'—to knock my novel into shape before I go North. And you——?" He pensively took stock of his volcanic cousin. "Sure you're safe not to erupt again?"
"Safe as houses—thanks to you. That doesn't mean I can be orthodox Hindu and work for the orthodox Jaipur Raj. I would like to join 'Servants of India' Society; and work for the Mother among those who accept British connection as India's God-given destiny. In no other way will I work again—to 'make her a widow.' Also, I thought perhaps——" he hesitated, averting his eyes—"to take vows of celibacy——"
"Dyán!" Roy could not repress his astonishment. He had almost forgotten that side of things. Right or wrong—a tribute to Tara indeed! It jerked him uncomfortably; almost annoyed him.
"Unfair on Grandfather," he said with decision. "For every reason, you ought to marry—an enlightened wife. Think—of Arúna."
"I do think of her. It is she who ought to marry."
The emphasis was not lost on Roy:—and it hurt. Last night's poignant scene was intimately with him still. "I'm afraid you won't persuade her to," he said in a contained voice.
"I am quite aware of that. And the reason—even a blind man could not fail to see."
They looked straight at one another for a long moment. Roy did not swerve from the implied accusation.
"Well, it's no fault of mine, Dyán," he said, recalling Arúna's confession that tacitly freed him from blame. "She understands—there's a bigger thing between us than our mere selves. Whatever I'm free to do for her, I'll gladly do—always. It was chiefly to ease her poor heart that I risked the Delhi adventure. I felt I had lost the link with you."
"Not surprising." Dyán smoked for a few minutes in silence. He was clearly moved by the fine frankness of Roy's attitude. "All the same," he said at last, "it was not quite broken. You have given me new life; and because you did it—for her, I swear to you, as long as she needs me, I will not fail her." He held out his hand. Roy's closed on it hard.
"Later in the morning I will come back and see her," Dyán added, in a changed voice—and went out.
Later in the morning, Roy himself was allowed to see her. With the help of his stick he limped to her verandah balcony, where she lay in a long chair, with cushions and rugs, the poor arm in a sling. Thea was with her. She had heard as much of last night's doings as any one would ever know. So she felt justified in letting the poor dears have half an hour together.
Her withdrawal was tactfully achieved; but there followed an awkward silence. For the space of several minutes it seemed that neither of the 'poor dears' knew quite what to make of their privilege, though they were appreciating it from their hearts.
Roy found himself too persistently aware of the arm that had been broken to save him; of the new bond between them, signed and sealed by that one unforgettable kiss.
As for Arúna—while pain anchored her body to earth, her unstable heart swayed disconcertingly from heights of rarefied content, to depths of shyness. Things she had said and done, on that far-away hillside, seemed unbelievable, remembered in her familiar balcony with a daylight mind: and fear lest he might be 'thinking it that way too' increased shyness tenfold. Yet it was she who spoke first, after all.
"Oh, it makes me angry ... to see you—like that," she said, indicating his ankle with a faint movement of her hand.
Roy quietly took possession of the hand and pressed it to his lips.
"How do you suppose I feel, seeing you like that!" Words and act dispelled her foolish fears. "Did you sleep? Does it hurt much?"
"Only if I forget and try to move. But what matter? Every time it hurts, I feel proud because that feeble arm was able to push you out of the way."
"You've every right to feel proud. You nearly knocked me over!"
A mischievous smile crept into her eyes. "I am afraid ... I was very rude!"
"That's one way of putting it!" His grave tenderness warmed her like sunshine. He leaned nearer; his hand grasped the arm of her long chair. "You were a very wonderful Arúna last night. And—you are going to be more wonderful still. Working with Dyán, you are going to help make my dream come true—of India finding herself again by her own genius, along her own lines——"
He had struck the right note. Her face lit up as he had hoped to see it. "Oh, Roy—can I really——? Will Dyán help? Will he let me——"
"Of course he will. And I'll be helping too—in my own fashion. We'll never lose touch, Arúna; though India's your destiny and England's mine. Never say again you have no true country. Like me, you have two countries—one very dear; one supreme. I'm afraid there are terrible days coming out here. And in those days every one of you who honestly loves England—every one of us who honestly loves India—will count in the scale ..."
He paused; and she drew a deep breath. "Oh—how you see things! It is you who are wonderful, Roy. I can think and feel the big things in my heart. But for doing them—I am, after all, only a woman...."
"An Indian woman," he emphasised, his eyes on hers. "I know—and you know—what that means. You have not yet bartered away your magical influence for a mess of pottage. Because of one Indian woman—supreme for me; and now ... because of another, they all have a special claim on my heart. If India has not gone too far down the wrong road, it is by the true Swadeshi spirit of her women she may yet be saved. They, at any rate, don't reckon progress by counting factory chimneys or seats on councils. And every seed—good or bad—is sown first in the home. Get at the women, Arúna—the home ones—and tell them that. It's not only my dream; it was—my mother's. You don't know how she loved and believed in you all. I think she never quite understood the other kind. The longer she lived among them, the more she craved for all of you to remain true women—in the full sense, not the narrow one——"
He had never yet spoken so frankly and freely of that dear lost mother; and Arúna knew it for the highest compliment he could pay her. Truly his generous heart was giving her all that his jealous household gods would permit....
Thea—stepping softly through the inner room—caught a sentence or two; caught a glimpse of Roy's finely-cut profile; of Arúna's eyes intent on his face; and she smiled very tenderly to herself. It was so exactly like Roy; and such constancy of devotion went straight to her mother-heart. So too—with a sharper pang—did the love hunger in Arúna's eyes.
The puzzle of these increasing race complications——! The tragedy and the pity of it...!
Lance travelled North that night with a mind at ease. Roy had assured him that the moment his ankle permitted he would leave Jaipur and 'give the bee in his bonnet an airing' elsewhere. That assurance proved easier to give than to act upon, when the moment came. The Jaipur Residency had come to seem almost like home. And the magnet of home drew all that was Eastern in Roy. It was the British blood in his veins that drove him afield. Though India was his objective, England was the impelling force. His true home seemed hundreds of miles away, in more senses than one. His union with Rajputana—set with the seal of that sacred and beautiful experience at Chitor—seemed, in his present mood, the more vital of the two.
And there was Lance up in the Punjab—a magnet as strong as any, when the masculine element prevailed. Yet again, some inner irresistible impulse obliged him to break away from them all. It was one of those inevitable moments when the dual forces within pulled two ways; when he felt envious exceedingly of Lance Desmond's sane and single-minded attitude towards men and things. One couldn't picture Lance a prey to the ignominious sensation that half of him wanted to go one way and half of him another way. At this juncture, half of himself felt a confounded fool for not going back to the Punjab and enjoying a friendly sociable cold weather among his father's people. The other half felt impelled to probe deeper into the complexities of changing India, to confirm and impart his belief that the destinies of England and India were one and indivisible. After all, India stood where she did to-day by virtue of what England had made her. He refused to believe that even the insidious disintegrating process of democracy could dissolve—in a brief fever of unrest—links forged and welded in the course of a hundred years.
In that case, argued his practical half, why this absurd inner sense of responsibility for great issues over which he could have no shadow of control? What was the earthly use of it—this large window in his soul, opening on to the world's complexities and conflicts; not allowing him to say comfortably, 'They are not.' His opal-tinted dreams of interpreting East to West had suffered a change of complexion since Oxford days. His large vague aspirations of service had narrowed down, inevitably, to a few definite personal issues. Action involves limitation—as the picture involves the frame. Dreams must descend to earth—or remain unfruitful. It might be a little, or a great matter, that he had managed to set two human fragments of changing India on the right path—so far as he could discern it. The fruits of that modest beginning only the years could reveal....
Then there was this precious novel simmering at the back of things; his increasing desire to get away alone with the ghostly company that haunted his brain. As the mother-to-be feels the new life mysteriously moving within her, so he began to feel within him the first stirrings of his own creative power. Already his poems and essays had raised expectations and secured attention for other things he wanted to say. And there seemed no end to them. He had hardly yet begun his mental adventures. Pressing forward, through sense, to the limitless regions of mind and spirit, new vistas would open, new paths lure him on....
That first bewildering, intoxicating sense of power is good—while it lasts; none the less, because, in the nature of things, it is foredoomed to disillusion—greater or less, according to the authenticity of the god within.
Whatever the outcome for Roy, that passing exaltation eased appreciably the pang of parting from them all. And it was responsible for a happy inspiration. Rummaging among his papers, on the eve of departure, he came upon the sketch of India that he had written in Delhi and refrained from sending to Arúna. Intrinsically it was hers; inspired by her. Also—intrinsically it was good: and straightway he decided she should have it for a parting gift.
Beautifully copied out, and tied up with carnation-pink ribbons, he reserved it for their last few moments together. She was still such a child in some ways. The small surprise of his gift might ease the pang of parting. It was a woman's thought. But the woman-strain of tenderness was strong in Roy, as in all true artists.
She was standing near the fire in her own sitting-room, wearing the pink dress and sari, her arm still in a sling. Last words, those desperate inanities—buffers between the heart and its own emotion—are difficult things to bring off in any case; peculiarly difficult for these two, with that unreal, yet intensely actual, bond between them; and Roy felt more than grateful to the inspiration that gave him something definite to say.
Instantly her eyes were on it—wondering ... guessing....
"It's a little thing I wrote in Delhi," he said simply. "I couldn't send it to Jeffers. It seemed—to belong to you. So I thought——" He proffered it, feeling absurdly shy of it—and of her.
"Oh—but it is too much!" Holding it with her sling hand, she opened it with the other and devoured it eagerly under his watching eyes. By the changes that flitted across her face, by the tremor of her lips and her hands, as she pressed it to her heart, he knew he could have given her no dearer treasure than that fragment of himself. And because he knew it, he felt tongue-tied; tempted beyond measure to kiss her once again.
If she divined his thought, she kept her lashes lowered and gave no sign.
He hoped she knew....
But before either could break the spell of silence that held them, Thea returned; and their moment—their idyll—was over....