Chapter 34

"Shall I cool desire By looking at those lovely eyes of hers, That passionate love prefers To his own brand, for setting hearts on fire." --EDMUND GOSSE.

But neither the work he loved, nor his budding intimacy with Miss Arden, deterred him from accepting a week-end invitation from the Maharajah of Kapurthala--the friendly, hospitable ruler of a neighbouring Sikh State. The Colonel was going, and Lance, and half a dozen other good sportsmen. They set out on Thursday, the military holiday, in a state of high good-humour with themselves and their host; to return on Sunday evening, renewed in body and mind by the pursuit of pig and the spirit of Shikar, that keeps a man sane and virile, and tempers the insidious effect, on the white races, of life and work in the climate of India. It draws men away from the rather cramping station atmosphere. It sets their feet in a large room. And in this case it did not fail to dispel the light cloud that had hovered between Lance and Roy since the day of the wedding.

In the friendly rivalries of sport, it was possible to forget woman complications; even to feel it a trifle derogatory that one should be so ignominiously at the mercy of the thing. Thus Roy, indulging in a spasmodic declaration of independence; glorying in the virile excitement of pig-sticking, and the triumph of getting first spear.

But returning on Saturday, from a day after snipe and teal, he found himself instinctively allotting the pick of his 'bag' to Miss Arden; just a complimentary attention; the sort of thing she would appreciate. Having refused a ride with her because of this outing, it seemed the least he could do.

Apparently the same strikingly original idea had occurred to Lance; and by the merest fluke they found one another out. To Roy's relief, Lance greeted the embarrassing discovery with a gust of laughter.

"I say--this won't do. You give over. It's too much of a joke. Besides--cheek on your part."

Though he spoke lightly, the hint of command in his tone promptly put Roy on the defensive.

"Rot! Why shouldn't I? But--the _two_ of them...! A bit overwhelming!" And suddenly he remembered his declaration of independence. "After all--why should either of us? Can't we let be, just for four days? Look here, Lance. You give over too. Don't send yours. And I won't send mine."

Lance--having considered that inspired proposal--turned a speculative eye on Roy.

"Lord, what a kid you are, still!"

"Well, I mean it. Out here, we're clear of all that. Over there, the women call the tune--we dance. Sport's the God-given antidote! Though it won't be so much longer--the way things are going. We shall soon have 'em after pig and on the polo ground----"

"God forbid!" It came out with such fervour that Roy laughed.

"He doesn't--that's the trouble! He gives us all the rope we want. And the women may be trusted to take every available inch. I'm not sure there isn't a grain of wisdom in the Eastern plan; keeping them, so to speak, in a separate compartment. Once you open a chink, they flow in and swamp everything."

Up went Lance's eyebrows. "That--from you?" And Roy made haste to add: "I wasn't thinking of mothers and sisters; but the kind you play round with ... before you marry. They've a big pull out here. Very good fun of course. And if a man's keen on marrying----"

"Aren't you keen?" Lance cut in with a quick look.

"N-no. Not just yet, anyway. It's a plunge. And I'm too full up with other things.--But what about the birds?"

"Oh, we'll let be--as you sagely suggest!"

And they did.

More pig-sticking next morning, with two tuskers for trophies; and thereafter, they travelled reluctantly back to harness, by an afternoon train, feeling--without exception--healthier, happier men.

None of them, perhaps, was more conscious of that inner renewal than Lance and Roy. The incident of the game seemed in some way to have cleared the air between them; and throughout the return journey, both were in the maddest spirits, keeping the whole carriage in an uproar. Afterwards, driving homeward, Roy registered a resolve to spend more of his time on masculine society and the novel; less of it dancing and fooling about in Lahore....

* * * * *

A vision of his table, with its inviting disarray, and the picture of his mother for presiding genius, gave his heart a lift. He promised himself a week of uninterrupted evenings, alone with Terry and his thronging thoughts; when the whole house was still and the reading-lamp made a magic circle of light in the surrounding gloom....

Meantime, there were letters: one from his father, one from Jeffers; and beneath them a too familiar envelope.

At sight of it, he felt a faint tug inside him; as it were a whispered reminder that, away at Kapurthala, he had been about as free as a bird with a string round its leg. He resented the aptness of that degrading simile. It was a new sensation; and he did not relish it. The few women he intimately loved had counted for so much in his life that he scarcely realised his abysmal ignorance of the power that is in woman--the mere opposite of man; the implicit challenge, the potent lure. Partly from temperament, partly from principle, he had kept more or less clear of 'all that'. Now, weaponless, he had rashly entered the lists.

He opened Miss Arden's note feeling antagonistic. But its friendliness disarmed him. She hoped they had enjoyed themselves immensely and slain enough creatures to satisfy their primitive instincts. And her mother hoped Mr Sinclair would dine with them on Wednesday evening: quite a small affair.

His first impulse was to refuse; but her allusion to the slain creatures touched up his conscience. To cap the omission by refusing her invitation might annoy her. No sense in that. So he decided to accept; and sat down to enjoy his home letters at leisure.

Lance, it transpired, had not been asked. He and Barnard were the favoured ones,--and, on the appointed evening, they drove in together. Roy had been writing nearly all day. He had reached a point in his chapter at which a break was distracting. Yet here he was, driving Barnard to Lahore, cursing his luck, and--yes--trying to ignore a flutter of anticipation in the region of his heart....

As far as mere lust of the eye went--and it went a good way with Roy--he had his reward the moment he entered Mrs Elton's overloaded drawing-room. Rose Arden excelled herself in evening dress. The carriage of her head, the curve of her throat, and the admirable line from ear to shoulder made a picture supremely satisfying to his artist's eye.

Her negligible bodice was a filmy affair--ivory white with glints of gold. Her gauzy gold wedding-sash, swathed round her hips, fell in a fringed knot below her knee. Filmy sleeves floated from her shoulders, leaving the arms bare and unadorned, except for one gold bangle, high up--the latest note from Home. For the rest, her rope of amber beads and long earrings only a few tones lighter than her astonishing hazel eyes.

Face to face with her beauty, and her discreetly veiled pleasure at sight of him, he could not be ungracious enough to curse his luck. But his satisfaction cooled at sight of Talbot Hayes by the mantelpiece, inclining his polished angularity to catch some confidential tit-bit from little Mrs Hunter-Ranyard. Of course that fellow would take her in. He, Roy, had no official position now; and without it one was negligible in Anglo-India. Besides, Mrs Elton openly favoured Talbot Hayes. Failing Rose, there were two more prospective brides at Home--twins; and Hayes was fatally endowed with all the surface symptoms of the 'coming man': the supple alertness and self-assurance; the instinct for the right thing; and--supreme asset in these days--a studious detachment from the people and the country. In consequence, needless to say, he remained obstinately sceptical as regards the rising storm.

Very early, Roy had put out feelers to discover how much he understood or cared; and Hayes had blandly assured him: "Bengal may bluster and the D.C. may pessimise, but you can take it from me, there will be no serious upheaval in the North. If ever these people are fools enough to manoeuvre us out of India, so much the worse for them; so much the better for us. It's a beastly country."

Nevertheless Roy observed that he appeared to extract out of the beastly country every available ounce of enjoyment. In affable moments, he could even manage to forget his career--and unbend. He was unbending now.

A few paces off, the dyspeptic Judge was discussing 'the situation' with his host--a large unwieldy man, so nervous of his own bulk and unready wit that only the discerning few discovered the sensitive, friendly spirit very completely hidden under a bushel. Roy, who had liked him at sight, felt vaguely sorry for him. He seemed a fish out of water in his own home; overwhelmed by the florid, assured personality of his wife.

They were the last, of course; nearly five minutes late. Trust Roy. Only four other guests; Dr Ethel Wemyss, M.B., lively and clever and new to the country; Major and Mrs Garten of the Sikhs, with a stolid good-humoured daughter, who unfailingly wore the same frock and the same disarming smile.

The Deputy Commissioner's wife permitted herself few military intimates. But she had come in touch with Mrs Garten over a _dhobi's_[19] chit and a recipe for pumelo gin. Both women were consumedly Anglo-Indian. All their values were social;--pay, promotion, prestige. All their lamentations pitched in the same key:--everything dearer, servants 'impossible,' hospitality extinct, with every one saving and scraping to get Home. Both were deeply versed in bazaar prices and the sins of native servants. Hence, in due course, a friendship (according to Mrs Ranyard) 'broad based on _jharrons_[20] and charcoal and kerosene'!

The two were lifting up their voices in unison over the mysterious shortage of kerosene (that arch-sinner Mool Chand said none was coming into the country) when dinner was announced; and Talbot Hayes--inevitably--offered his arm to Miss Arden.

Roy, consigned to Dr Wemyss, could only pray heaven for the next best thing--Miss Arden on his left. Instead, amazedly, he found himself promoted to a seat beside her mother, who still further amazed him by treating him to a much larger share of her attention than the law of the dinner-table prescribed. Her talk, in the main, was local and personal; and Roy simply let it flow; his eyes flagrantly straying down the table towards Miss Arden and Hayes, who seemed very intimate this evening.

Suddenly he found himself talking about Home. It began with gardens. Mrs Elton had a passion for them, as her _mális_[21] knew to their cost; and the other day a friend had told her that somebody said Mr Sinclair had a lovely place at Home, with a _wonderful_ old garden----?

Mr Sinclair admitted as much, with masculine brevity.

Undeterred, she drew out the sentimental stop:--the charm of a _real_ old English garden! Out here, one only used the word by courtesy. Laborites, of course, were specially favoured; but do what one would, it was never _quite_ the same thing--was it...?

Not quite, Roy agreed amicably--and wondered what the joke was down there. He supposed Miss Arden must have had some say in the geography of the table....

Her mother, meantime, had tacked sail and was probing him, indirectly, about his reasons for remaining in India. Was he going in for politics, or the life of a country gentleman in his beautiful home? Her remarks implied that she took him for the eldest son. And Roy, who had not been attending, realised with a jar that, in vulgar parlance, he was being discreetly pumped. Whereat, politely but decisively, he sheered off and stuck to his partner till the meal was over.

The men seemed to linger interminably over their wine and cigars. But he managed to engage the D.C. on the one subject that put shyness to flight--the problems of changing India. With more than twenty years of work and observation behind him, he saw the widening gulf between rulers and ruled as an almost equal disaster for both. He knew, none better, all that had been achieved, in his own Province alone, for the peasant and the loyal landowner. He had made many friends among the Indians of his district; and from these he had received repeated warnings of widespread, organised rebellion. Yet he was helpless; tied hand and foot in yards of red tape....

It was not the first time that Roy had enjoyed a talk with him; a sense of doors opening on to larger spaces. But this evening restlessness nagged at him; and at the first hint of a move he was on his feet, determined to forestall Hayes.

He succeeded; and Miss Arden welcomed him with the lift of her brows that he was growing to watch for when they met. It seemed to imply a certain intimacy.

"Very brown and vigorous, you're looking. Was it--great fun?"

"It was topping," he answered with simple fervour. "Rare sport. Everything in style."

"And no leisure to miss partners left lamenting? I hope our stars shone the brighter, glorified by distance?"

Her eyes challenged him with smiling deliberation. His own met them full; and a little tingling shock ran through him, as at the touch of an electric needle.

"_Some_ stars are dazzling enough at close quarters," he said boldly.

"But surely--'distance lends enchantment'----?"

"It depends a good deal on the view!"

At that moment, up came Hayes, with his ineffable air of giving a cachet to any one he honoured with his favour. And Miss Arden hailed him, as if they had not met for a week.

Thus encouraged, of course he clung like a limpet; and reverted to some subject they had been discussing, tacitly isolating Roy.

For a few exasperating moments, he stood his ground, counting on bridge to remove the limpet. But when Hayes refused a pressing invitation to join Mrs Ranyard's table, Roy gave it up, and deliberately walked away.

Only Mr Elton remained sitting near the fireplace. His look of undisguised pleasure, at Roy's approach, atoned for a good deal; and they renewed their talk where it had broken off. Roy almost forgot he was speaking to a senior official; freely expressed his own thoughts; and even ventured to comment on the strange detachment of Anglo-Indians, in general, from a land full of such vast and varied interests, lying at their very doors.

"Perhaps--I misjudge them," he added with the unfailing touch of modesty that was not least among his charms. "But to me it sometimes seems as if a curtain hung between their eyes and India. And--it's catching. In some subtle way this little concentrated world, within a world, seems to draw one's receptiveness away from it all. Is that very sweeping, sir?"

A smile dawned in Mr Elton's rather mournful eyes. "In a sense--it's painfully true. But the fact is--Anglo-Indian life can't be fairly judged from the outside. It has to be lived before its insidiousness can be suspected." He moistened his lips and caressed his chin with a large, sensitive hand. "Happily--there are a good many exceptions."

"If I wasn't talking to one of them, sir--I wouldn't have ventured!" said Roy; and the friendly smile deepened.

"All the same," Elton went on, "there are those who assert that it is half the secret of our success; that India conquered the conquerors, who lived _with_ her and so lost their virility. Yet in our earlier days, when the personal touch was a reality, we _did_ achieve a better relation all round. Of course the present state of affairs is the inevitable fruit of our whole system. By the Anglicising process, we have spread all over India a vast layer of minor officials some six million persons deep! Consider, my dear young man, the significance of those figures. We reduce the European staff. We increase the drudgery of their office work--and we wonder why the Sahib and the peasant are no longer personal friends----!"

Stirred by his subject, and warmed by Roy's intelligent interest, the man's nervous tricks disappeared. He spoke eagerly, earnestly, as to an equal in experience; a compliment Roy would have been quicker to appreciate had not half his attention been centred on that exasperating pair, who had retired to a cushioned alcove and looked like remaining there for good.

What the devil had the girl invited him for? If she wished to disillusion him, she was succeeding to admiration. If she fancied he was one of her infernal ninepins, she was very much mistaken. And all the while he found himself growing steadily more distracted, more insistently conscious of her....

Voices and laughter heralded an influx of bridge players; Mrs Ranyard, with Barnard, Miss Garten, and Dr Wemyss. A table of three women and one man did not suit the little lady's taste.

"We're a very scratch lot. And we want fresh blood!" she announced carnivorously, as the pair in the alcove rose and came forward.

The two men rose also, but went on with their talk. They knew it was not their blood Mrs Ranyard was seeking. Roy kept his back turned and studiously refrained from hoping....

"If you two have _quite_ finished breaking up the Empire...?" said Miss Arden's voice at his elbow. She had approached so quietly that he started. Worse still, he knew she had seen. "I was terrified of being caught,"--she turned affectionately to her stepfather--"so I flung Mr Hayes to the wolves--and fled. You're sanctuary!"

Her fingers caressed his sleeve. Words and touch waked a smile in his mournful eyes. They seemed to understand one another, these two. To Roy she had never seemed more charming; and his own abrupt volte-face was unsteadying, to say the least of it.

"Hayes would prove a tough mouthful--even for wolves," Elton remarked pensively.

"He _would_! He's so securely lacquered over with--well--we won't be unkind. _But_--strictly between ourselves, Pater--wouldn't you love to swop him for Mr Sinclair, these days?"

"My _dear_!" Elton reproached her, nervously shifting his large hands. "Hayes is a model--of efficiency! But--well, well--if Mr Sinclair will forgive flattery to his face--I should say he has many fine qualities for an Indian career, should he be inclined that way----"

"Thank you, sir. I'd no notion----" Roy murmured, overwhelmed, as Elton--seeing Miss Garten stranded--moved dutifully to her rescue.

Miss Arden glanced again at Roy. "_Are_ you inclining that way?"

The question took him aback.

"Me? No. Of course I'd love it--for some things."

"You're well out of it, in my opinion. It'll soon be no country for a white man. He's already little more than a futile superfluity----"

"On the contrary," Roy struck in warmly, "the Englishman--of the rightest sort, is more than ever needed in India to-day."

Her slight shrug conceded the point. "I never argue! And if you start on _that_ subject--I'm nowhere! You can save it all up for the Pater. He's rather a dear--don't you think?"

"He's splendid."

Her smile had its caressing quality. "That's the last adjective any one else would apply to him! But it's true. There's a fine streak in him--very carefully hidden away. People don't see it, because he's shy and clumsy and hasn't an ounce of push. But he understands the natives. Loves them. Goodness knows why. And he's got the right touch. I could tell you a tale----"

"Do!" he urged. "Tales are my pet weakness."

She subsided into the empty chair and looked up invitingly. "Sit," she commanded--and he obeyed.

He was neither saying nor doing the things he had meant to say or do. But the mere beauty of her enthralled him; the alluring grace of her pose, leaning forward a little, bare arms resting on her knees. No vivid colour anywhere except her lips. Those lips, thought Roy, were responsible for a good deal. Their flexible softness discounted more than a little the deliberation of her eyes; and to-night, her charming attitude to Elton appreciably quickened his interest in her and her tale.

"It happened out in the district. I heard it from a friend." She leaned nearer and spoke in a confidential undertone. "He got news that some neighbouring town was in a ferment. Only a handful of Europeans there; an American mission; and no troops. So the 'mish' people begged him to come in and politely wave his official wand. You must be very polite to _badmashes_[22] these days, if you're a mere Sahib; or you hear of it from some little Tin God sitting safe in his office, hundreds of miles away. Well, off he went--a twenty-mile drive; found the mission in a flutter--I don't blame them--armed with rifles and revolvers; expecting-every-moment-to-be-their-next sort of thing; and the town in an uproar. Some religious tamasha. He talked like a father to the headmen; and assured the 'mish' people it would be all right.

"They begged him to stay and see them through. So he said he would sleep at the dák bungalow. 'All alone?' they asked. 'No one to guard you?' 'Quite unnecessary,' he said:--and they were simply amazed!

"It was rather hot; so he had his bed put in the garden. Then he sent for the leading men and said: 'I hear there's a disturbance going on. I don't intimate you have anything to do with it. But you are responsible; and I expect you to keep the people in hand. I'm sleeping here to-night. If there is trouble, you can report to me. But it is for _you_ to keep order in your own town.'

"They salaamed and departed. No one came near him. And he drove off next morning, leaving those Americans, with their rifles and revolvers, more amazed than ever! I was told it made a great impression on the natives, his sleeping alone in the garden, without so much as a sentry. And the cream of it is," she added--her eyes on Elton's unheroic figure--"the man who could do that is terrified of walking across a ballroom or saying polite things to a woman!"

Distinctly, to-night, she was in a new vein, more attractive to Roy than all her feminine crafts and lures. Sitting, friendly and at ease over the fire, they discussed human idiosyncrasies--a pet subject with him.

Then, suddenly, she looked him in the eyes;--and he was aware of her again, in the old disturbing way.

Yet she was merely remarking, with a small sigh, "You can't think how refreshing it is to get a little real talk sometimes with a cultivated man who is neither a soldier nor a civilian. Even in a big station, we're so boxed in with 'shop' and personalities. The men are luckier. They can escape now and then; shake off the women as one shakes off burrs----!"

Another glance here; half sceptical, wholly captivating.

"It's easier said than done," admitted Roy, recalling his own partial failure.

"Charming of you to confess it! Dare I confess that I've found the Hall and the tennis rather flat these few days--without imperilling your phenomenal modesty?"

"I think you dare." It was he who looked full at her now. "My modesty badly needs bucking up--this evening."

Her feigned surprise was delicately done. "What a shame! Who's been snubbing you? Our clever M.B.?"

"Not at all. You've got the initials wrong."

"_Did_ it hurt your feelings--as much as all that?" She dropped the flimsy pretence and her eyes proffered apology.

"Well--you invited me."

"And mother invited Mr Hayes! The fact is--he's been rather in evidence these few days. And one can't flick _him_ off like an ordinary mortal. He's a 'coming man'!" She folded hands and lips and looked deliciously demure. "All the same--it _was_ unkind. You were so unhappy at dinner. I could feel it all that way off. Be magnanimous and come for a ride to-morrow--do."

And Roy--the detached, the disillusioned--accepted with alacrity.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Washerman.]

[Footnote 20: Dusters.]

[Footnote 21: Gardener.]

[Footnote 22: Bad characters.]