“England is young; India old,” said Routledge. “Many times the old can learn from the young—how to live.”
“But not how to die—and yet India has had much practice in learning how to die at the hands of the British.... We mustn’t talk about it to-day! The word famine rouses me into a savage. India famine; Irish famine; the perennial famine of the London East End!... Coming home from the wars, you must not be forced to talk about bitter things. I want to sit down and listen to you about your India—not the Cardinegh India. We always see the black visage behind India, as behind Ireland. You see the enchantment of Indian inner life—and we the squalor of the doorways. Yes, I still read the Review.... Ah, Routledge-san, your interview with the English ‘missionary-and-clubman’ in Lucknow was a delicious conception; yet back of it all there is something of horror in its humor to me. Most of all because the ‘missionary-and-clubman,’ as I saw him, under your hand, would have perceived none of the humor! He would no doubt have called it a very excellent paper—yet every line contained an insinuation of his calamitous ignorance and his infant-soul! I must repeat—what audacity for the cumbering flesh of a matter-mad people, undertaking to teach visionary India—how to look for God!”
Routledge invariably became restless when the values of his own work were discussed before him.
“By the way, Miss Noreen,” he said, “I left Bingley behind me in Calcutta——”
“He said so, but crossed India by rail and caught a ship before you at Bombay. Father and the others will be in London to-morrow. They left ship at Naples to be in time for the Army and Navy Reception to-morrow night.”
Routledge was a trifle bewildered as he followed Noreen up the stairway into the studio, and sat down by the window. The place was stripped of many things identified with her individuality, and yet it was all distinctly a part of her. Trunks and boxes were ready for the carrier, her portmanteau alone opened. Out of this she drew the tea-things, and the man watched with emotion. After the alien silence of the Orange Room and the turmoil of the Parisian streets, the studio was dear with nameless attractions. All the negatives of his mind, once crowded with pictures of Paris and civilization, had been sponged clean by India. The moments now were rushed with new impressions.... The stamp of fineness was in her dress, and to him a far-flinging import in all her words. The quick turn of her head and hand, all her movements, expressed that nice elastic finish which marks an individual from the herd. It was even as they had told him in India. Noreen Cardinegh had put on royalty in becoming a woman.
The man did not cease to be a trifle bewildered. He was charged again with the same inspiring temperament which compelled him to tell her the intimate story of Rawder, and to tell it with all his valor and tenderness. Impedimenta which the months had brought to his brain and heart were whipped away now before those same wondrous, listening eyes. Memories of her had always been the fairest architecture of his thoughts, but they were as castles in cloudland, lineaments half-lost, compared to this moment, with the living glory of Noreen Cardinegh sweeping into full possession of his life. All that had been before was dulled and undesirable; even himself, the man, Routledge, with whom he had lived so much alone.... In this splendid moment of expansion, it came to him—the world’s bright answer to his long quest for the reason of being.
“Routledge-san, I have wine and tea and biscuit, and you may smoke if you like.” She drew up a little table and chair for herself. “It will be an hour before the carrier comes for my trunks, and I want you to tell me if you have seen again—our bravest man. It’s long over a year since you left him in Hong Kong.”
“Miss Noreen——”