After all, human perversity decreed it should be Roy himself who shrank most acutely from the wrench of parting, when it loomed near enough to bring him down from Pisgah heights to the dust of the actual.
Dyán was overjoyed, of course, and untroubled by qualms. Towards the end of July, he and Arúna came for a brief visit. His excuses for its brevity struck Roy as a trifle 'thin'; but Dyán kept his secret and paid Tara Despard the compliment of taking her answer as final.
It was during his visit that Roy suffered the first incipient qualms; the first sharp contact with practical details:—date of sailing, details of outfit, the need for engaging a passage betimes. As regards his destination, matters were simplified by the fact that the new Resident of Jaipur, Colonel Vincent Leigh, C.S.I., D.S.O., very considerately happened to be the husband of Desmond's delightful sister Thea. The schoolboy link between Lance and Roy had created a lasting friendship between their respective families; and it was General Sir Theo Desmond—now retired—who had invited Roy, in the name of his 'Twin,' to start with an unlimited visit to the Leighs; the sort of casual elastic visit that no one would dream of proposing outside India,—unless it were Ireland, of an earlier, happier day. The prospect was a secret consolation to Roy. It was also a secret jar to find he needed every ounce of consolation available.
Very carefully he hid his ignominious frame of mind—even from his mother; though she probably suspected it and would not fail to understand. What, precisely, would life be worth without that dear, daily intimacy—life uncoloured by the rainbow-tinted charm of her gentle, passionate, humorous, delicately-poised personality? Relations of such rare quality exact their own pitiless price; and the woman influence would always be, for Roy—as for most men of genuine gifts and high purpose—his danger point or salvation. The dim and distant prospect of parting was thinkable—though perturbing. But all this talk of steamers and outfits startlingly illumined the fact that in October he was actually going—to the other end of the earth.
With Dyán's departure, realisation pounced upon his heart and brain. Vaguely, and quite unjustly, he felt as if his cousin were in some way to blame; and for the moment, he was not sorry to be rid of him. Partings over, he went off for a lone prowl—hatless, as usual—to quiet his jangling sensations and tell that inner, irresolute Roy not to be a treble-distilled fool....
Nothing like the open moor to clear away cobwebs. The sweeps of heady colour and blue distances could be trusted to revive the winged impulse that lured him irresistibly away from the tangible and assured. Is there no hidden link—he wondered—between the wander-instinct of the home-loving Scot and the vast spaces of moor and sky that lie about him in his infancy...?
But first he must traverse the enchanted green gloom of his beech-wood, memory-haunted at every turn. Under his favourite tree, a wooden cross, carved by Tara and himself, marked the grave of Prince, dead these three years of sheer old age. And at sight of it there sprang to memory that unforgotten day of May,—the fight with Joe; Tara's bracelet, still treasured in his letter-case, even as Tara treasured the "broidered bodice," in a lavender-scented sachet, set apart from mere blouses and scarves....
And again that troublesome voice within urged—"What an utter fool you are—running away from them all."
To him had fallen the privilege of knowing family life at its best—the finest and happiest on earth; and he could not escape the price exacted, when the call comes to act and decide and suffer alone. Associations that grow up with us are more or less taken for granted while their roots lie deep in the heart. Only when the threat of parting disturbs the delicate fibres, their depth and tenacity are revealed. And so it was with Roy. Hurrying through his wood of knightly adventures he felt besieged, in spirit, by the many loves that had hitherto simply been a part of his life; yet to-day pressed urgently, individually, upon his consciousness, his heart....