| "Why did'st thou promise such a beauteous day, |
| To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way, |
| Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke!" |
| —Shakspere. |
And away up in Simla, Rose Arden was enduring her own minor form of purgatory. The news of Lance Desmond's sudden death had startled and saddened her; had pierced through her surface serenity to the deep places of a nature that was not altogether shallow under its veneer of egotism and coquetry.
On a morning, near the end of April, she sat alone in the garden under deodar boughs tasselled with tips of young green. In a border, beyond the lawn, spring flowers were awake; the bank was starred with white violets and wild-strawberry blossoms; and through a gap in the ilex trees beyond, she had a vision of far hills and flashing snow-peaks, blue-white in the sun, cobalt in shadow. Overhead, among the higher branches, a bird was trilling out an ecstatic love-song.
But the year's renewal, the familiar flutter of Simla's awakening, sharpened, rather, that new ache at her heart; the haunting, incredible thought that down there, in the stifling dusty plains, Lance Desmond lay dead in the springtime of his splendid manhood; dead of his own generous impulse to save Roy from hurt.
Since the news came, she had avoided sociabilities and, unobtrusively, worn no colours. Foolish and fatuous, was it? Perhaps. She only knew that—Lance being gone—she could not make no difference in her daily round, whatever others might think or say.
And the mere fact of his being gone seemed strangely to revive the memory of his love for her, of her own genuine, if inadequate, response. For she had been more nearly in love with him than with any of his predecessors (and there had been several), who had been admitted to the privileged intimacies of the half-accepted lover. More: he had commanded her admiration; and she had not been woman could she have held out indefinitely against his passionate, whole-hearted devotion.
After months of patient wooing—and he by nature impatient—he had insisted that matters be settled, one way or the other, before he went on leave; and she had almost reached the point of decision, when Roy, with his careless charm and challenging detachment, appeared on the scene....
And now—Lance was gone; Roy was hers; Bramleigh Beeches and a prospective title were hers; but still....
The shock of Roy's revelation had upset her a good deal more than she dared let him guess. And the effect did not pass—in spite of determined efforts to be unaware of it. She knew, now, that her vaunted tolerance sprang chiefly from having ignored the whole subject. Half-castes she instinctively despised. For India and the Indians she had little real sympathy; and the rising tide of unrest, the increasing antagonism, had sharpened her negative attitude to a positive dislike and distrust, acutely intensified since that evening at Anarkalli, when the sight of Lance and her stepfather, sitting there at the mercy of any chance-flung missile, had stirred the slumbering passion in her to fury. For one bewildering moment she had scarcely been able to endure Roy's touch or look, because he was even remotely linked with those creatures, who mouthed and yelled and would have murdered them all without compunction.
The impression of those few nerve-wracking days had struck deep. Yet, in spite of all, Roy's hold on her was strong; the stronger perhaps because she had been aware of his inner resistance, and had never felt quite sure of him. She did not feel fundamentally sure of him, even now. His letters had been few and brief; heart-broken, naturally; yet scarcely the letters of an ardent lover. The longest of the four had given her a poignant picture of Lance's funeral; almost as if he knew, and had written with intent to hurt her. In addition to half the British officers of the station, the cemetery had been thronged with the men of his squadron, Sikhs and Pathans—a form of homage very rare in India. Many of them had cried like children; and for himself, Roy confessed, it had broken him all to bits. He hardly knew how to write of it; but he felt she would care to know.