“They speak of you losing yourself in India for months and months. Do you think I have missed all that you have found, Routledge-san, when you were lost to men? I know something of what India means to you, her submission and her famines, and the hundreds of little Warren Hastings’ trooping over her, from Lahore to Pondicherry, brooding of pounds and power! Why, to me you have placed it clear as Carlyle with his reverberating thunders of fifty years ago. Here is England, sitting dull-eyed among her flesh-pots, and yonder is India—drained. You did not say it in direct words, Routledge-san, but you made me see the provinces of India scattered about like the shells of insects in a spider’s web, and this London—the darkened lair of the watching eyes.... Oh, I have seen all that you mean, Routledge-san, but more—the bigger, finer things than national relations.... You have gone into the silent places to meditate, and to me you have brought back the images of the silence—big, chaste things, like our bravest man. There is good and there is hope in the world which holds such men and such things—and because of you I have kept my optimism. I seem to have a perfect torrent of talk, but I have been so much alone to think—and you are going away. I want you to know that you and the things you have brought to me are bigger—than London and the world.... When I speak with you—I seem to have known you always.... And then you are going away—with a burden in your heart, which no act of yours put there.... Why is it, Routledge-san, that one’s bravest man must suffer such deluges of evil?”
“Noreen, you are resistless,” he murmured. “It is life——”
She pressed her face to the pane, tried thoughtlessly to brush away the blurring rain on the outside. With a quick, savage return of pain, she realized how near they were to Charing Cross.
“I haven’t told you—all that I mean yet, Routledge-san!” she whispered feverishly. “You met some adversary last night and conquered. You are weak and hurt—but you have won.... I cannot quite understand, but the sentence ringing in my brain is this: ‘The young grain is springing on the field of Waterloo.’... I met my adversary in the night—and I have won, too. When I think of you—it rushes over me like a tidal wave—to fight London and the world for you; but I have my work here. It must be done cleanly and without a cry. My father needs me. The best is gone from him already—and I must treasure the rest; but it will not be always.... And when my work is finished in Cheer Street, Routledge-san, I shall cross the world to find you!”
He felt it hard to breathe in the desolation. A desire full-formed and upstanding, in spite of the mockery of it, vanquished him for a moment. It was to keep on with her—riding, journeying, sailing—with her, through the gates of Charing Cross, to Southampton, New York, San Francisco, Yokohama, Nagasaki, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Calcutta—up the Ganges to its source in the Hills, and there among the mystic people of his heart, to dwell with her, adoring in the stillness of starlight, in the morning glow.
“I shall be nameless, and a wanderer——”
“And my bravest man!... This is not unwomanly, Routledge-san. This is farewell. The girl is torn from me—and the woman speaks her heart.... No one but you could understand. Always I have been strange.... I cannot leave it unsaid. I shall come to find you when I am free! It is not—not that I shall ask you to marry me. It is not that—but to be with you! I think—I think that you are so noble that my being a woman would not complicate.... Routledge-san! It is Charing Cross!”
Swiftly she drew tiny scissors from a pocket-case, snipped from her temple a lock of hair, tied it with a strand of its own, and thrust it into his hand.
It was light, living, warm like a bird in his palm. Her last words intoned through his dreams for many days:
“Remember, I am Noreen Cardinegh—who believes in you always—before all men—for all time. And I, too, must be brave and enduring until my work is done—and I may cross the world to find you!”