Chapter 2

He looked down at her again suddenly and searchingly; but her clear eyes never flinched from his. They were pleading and a little troubled, but wholly unafraid.

"Perhaps you won't believe me," she said. "You'll think you know best. But Rosa Mundi wasn't bad always--not at the beginning. Her dancing began when she was young--oh, younger than I am. It was a dreadful uphill fight. She had a mother then--a mother she adored. Did you ever have a mother like that, I wonder? Perhaps it isn't the same with men, but there are some women who would gladly die for their mothers. And--and Rosa Mundi felt like that. A time came when her mother was dying of a slow disease, and she needed things--many things. Rosa Mundi wasn't a success then. She hadn't had her chance. But there was a man--a man with money and influence--who was willing to offer it to her--at--at--a price. She was dancing for chance coppers outside a San Francisco saloon when first he made his offer. She--refused."

Rosemary's soft eyes were suddenly lowered. She did not look like a child any longer, but a being sexless, yet very pitiful--an angel about to weep.

Courteney watched her, for he could not turn away.

Almost under her breath, she went on: "A few days later her mother began to suffer--oh, terribly. There was no money, no one to help. She went again and danced at the saloon entrance. He--the man--was there. She danced till she was tired out. And then--and then--she was hungry, too--she fainted." The low voice sank a little lower. "When she came to herself, she was in his keeping. He was very kind to her--too kind. Her strength was gone, and--and temptation is harder to resist when one is physically weak too. When she went back to her mother she had accepted--his--offer. From that night her fortune was made."

Two tears gathered on the dark lashes and hung there till she put up a quick hand and brushed them away.

The man's face was curiously softened; he looked as if he desired to dry those tears himself.

Without looking up she continued. "The mother died--very, very soon. Life is like that. Often one pays--in vain. There is no bargaining with death. But at least she never knew. That was Rosa Mundi's only comfort. There was no turning back for her then. And she was so desolate, so lonely, nothing seemed to matter.

"She went from triumph to triumph. She carried all before her. He took her to New York, and she conquered there. They strewed her path with roses. They almost worshipped her. She tried to think she was happy, but she was not--even then. They came around her in crowds. They made love to her. She was young, and their homage was like a coloured ball to her. She tossed it to and fro, and played with it. But she made game of it all. They were nothing to her--nothing, till one day there came to her a boy--no, he was past his boyhood--a young man--rich, well-born, and honourable. And he--he loved her, and offered her--marriage. No one had ever offered her that before. Can you realize--but no, you are a man!--what it meant to her? It meant shelter and peace and freedom. It meant honour and kindness, and the chance to be good. Perhaps you think she would not care for that. But you do not know her. Rosa Mundi was meant to be good. She hungered for goodness. She was tired--so tired of the gaudy vanities of life, so--so--what is the word--so nauseated with the cheap and the bad. Are you sorry for her, I wonder? Can you picture her, longing--oh, longing--for what she calls respectability? And then--this chance, this offer of deliverance! It meant giving up her career, of course. It meant changing her whole life. It meant sacrifice--the sort of sacrifice that you ought to be able to understand--for she loved her dancing and her triumphs, just as you love your public--the people who read your books and love you for their sake. That is different, isn't it, from the people who follow you about and want to stare at you just because you are prosperous and popular? The people who really appreciate your art--those are the people you would not disappoint for all the world. They make up a vast friendship that is very precious, and it would be a sacrifice--a big--sacrifice--to give it up. That is the sort of sacrifice that marriage meant to Rosa Mundi. And though she wanted marriage--and she wanted to be good--she hesitated."

There was a little pause. Randal Courteney was no longer dissembling his interest. He had laid his pipe aside, and was watching with unvarying intentness the downcast childish face. He asked no questions. There was something in the low-spoken words that held him silent. Perhaps he feared to probe too deep.

In a few moments she went on, gathering up a little handful of the shining shingle, and slowly sifting it through her fingers as though in search of something precious.

"I think if she had really loved the man, it wouldn't have mattered. Nothing counts like love, does it? But--you see--she didn't. She wanted to. She knew that he was clean and honourable, worthy of a good woman. He loved her, too, loved her so that he was willing to put away all her past. For she did not deceive him about that. He was willing to give her all--all she wanted. But she did not love him. She honoured him, and she felt for a time at least that love might come. He guessed that, and he did his best--all that he could think of--to get her to consent. In the end--in the end"--Rosemary paused, a tiny stone in her hand that shone like polished crystal--"she was very near to the verge of yielding, the young man had almost won, when--when something happened that altered--everything. The young man had a friend, a writer, a great man even then; he is greater now. The friend came, and he threw his whole weight into the scale against her. She felt him--the force of him--before she so much as saw him. She had broken with her lover some time before. She was free. And she determined to marry the young man who loved her--in spite of his friend. That very day it happened. The young man sent her a book written by his friend. She had begun to hate the writer, but out of curiosity she opened it and read. First a bit here, then a bit there, and at last she sat down and read it--all through."

The little shining crystal lay alone in the soft pink palm. Rosemary dwelt upon it, faintly smiling.

"She read far into the night," she said, speaking almost dreamily, as if recounting a vision conjured up in the glittering surface of the stone. "It was a free night for her. And she read on and on and on. The book gripped her; it fascinated her. It was--a great book. It was called--_Remembrance_." She drew a quick breath and went on somewhat hurriedly. "It moved her in a fashion that perhaps you would hardly realize. I have read it, and I--understand. The writing was wonderful. It brought home to her--vividly, oh, vividly--how the past may be atoned for, but never, never effaced. It hurt her--oh, it hurt her. But it did her good. It showed her how she was on the verge of taking a wrong turning, of perhaps--no, almost certainly--dragging down the man who loved her. She saw suddenly the wickedness of marrying him just to escape her own prison. She understood clearly that only love could have justified her--no other motive than that. She saw the evil of fastening her past to an honourable man whose good name and family demanded of him something better. She felt as if the writer had torn aside a veil and shown her her naked soul. And--and--though the book was a good book, and did not condemn sinners--she was shocked, she was horrified, at what it made her see."

Rosemary suddenly closed her hand upon the shining stone, and turned fully and resolutely to the man beside her.

"That night changed Rosa Mundi," she said; "changed her completely. Before it was over she wrote to the young man who loved her and told him that she could not marry him. The letter did not go till the following evening. She kept it back for a few hours--in case she repented. But--though she suffered--she did not repent. In the evening she had an engagement to dance. The young man was there--in the front row. And he brought his friend. She danced. Her dancing was superb that night. She had a passionate desire to bewitch the man who had waked her soul--as she had bewitched so many others. She had never met a man she could not conquer. She was determined to conquer him. Was it wrong? Anyway, it was human. She danced till her very heart was on fire, danced till she trod the clouds. Her audience went mad with the delight of it. They raved as if they were intoxicated. All but one man! All but one man! And he--at the end--he looked her just once in the eyes, stonily, piercingly, and went away." She uttered a sharp, choking breath. "I have nearly done," she said. "Can you guess what happened then? Perhaps you know. The man who loved her received her letter when he got back that night. And--and--she had bewitched him, remember; he--shot himself. The friend--the writer--she never saw again. But--but--Rosa Mundi has never forgotten him. She carries him in her heart--the man who taught her the meaning of life."

She ceased to speak, and suddenly, like a boy, sprang to her feet, tossing away the stone that she had treasured in her hand.

But the man was almost as quick as she. He caught her by the shoulder as he rose. "Wait!" he said. "Wait!" His voice rang hard, but there was no hardness in his eyes. "Tell me--who you are!"

She lifted her eyes to his fearlessly, without shame. "What does it matter who I am?" she said. "What does it matter? I have told you I am Rosemary. That is her name for me, and it was your book called _Remembrance_ that made her give it me."

He held her still, looking at her with a growing compassion in his eyes. "You are her child," he said.

She smiled. "Perhaps--spiritually. Yes, I think I am her child, such a child as she might have been if--Fate--had been kind to her--- or if she had read your book before--and not after."

He let her go slowly, almost with reluctance. "I think I should like to meet your--Rosa Mundi," he said.

Her eyes suddenly shone. "Not really? You are in earnest? But--but--- you would hurt her. You despise her."

"I am sorry for her," he said, and there was a hint of doggedness in his voice, as though he spoke against his better judgment.

The child's face had an eager look, but she seemed to be restraining herself. "I ought to tell you one thing about her first," she said. "Perhaps you will disapprove. I don't know. But it is because of you--and your revelation--that she is doing it. Rosa Mundi is going to be married. No, she is not giving up her career or anything--except her freedom. Her old lover has come back to her. She is going to marry him now. He wants her for his wife."

"Ah!" It was the man who was eager now. He spoke impulsively. "She will be happy then? She loves him?"

Rosemary looked at him with her clear, unfaltering eyes. "Oh, no," she said. "He isn't that sort of man at all. Besides, there is only one man in the world that she could care for in that way. No, she doesn't love him. But she is doing the right thing, and she is going to be good. You will not despise her any more?"

There was such anxious appeal in her eyes that he could not meet it. He turned his own away.

There fell a silence between them, and through it the long, long roar of the sea rose up--a mighty symphony of broken chords.

The man moved at last, looked down at the slight boyish figure beside him, hesitated, finally spoke. "I still think that I should like to meet Rosa Mundi," he said.

Her eyes smiled again. "And you will not despise her now," she said, her tone no longer a question.

"I think," said Randal Courteney slowly, "that I shall never despise any one again."

"Life is so difficult," said Rosemary, with the air of one who knew.

* * * * *

They were strewing the Pier with roses for Rosa Mundi's night. There were garlands of roses, festoons of roses, bouquets of roses; roses overhead, roses under foot, everywhere roses.

Summer had returned triumphant to deck the favourite's path.

Randal Courteney marked it all gravely, without contempt. It was her hour.

No word from her had reached him, but that night he would meet her face to face. Through days and nights of troubled thought, the resolve had grown within him. To-night it should bear fruit. He would not rest again until he had seen her. For his peace of mind was gone. She was about to throw herself away upon a man she did not love, and he felt that it was laid upon him to stop the sacrifice. The burden of responsibility was his. He had striven against this conviction, but it would not be denied. From the days of young Eric Baron's tragedy onward, this woman had made him as it were the star of her destiny. To repudiate the fact was useless. She had, in her ungoverned, impulsive fashion, made him surety for her soul.

The thought tormented him, but it held a strange attraction for him also. If the story were true, and it was not in him to doubt it, it touched him in a way that was wholly unusual. Popularity, adulation, had been his portion for years. But this was different, this was personal--a matter in which reputation, fame, had no part. In a different sphere she also was a star, with a host of worshippers even greater than his own. The humility of her amazed him. She had, as it were, taken her fate between her hands and laid it as an offering at his feet.

And so, on Rosa Mundi's night, he went to the great Pavilion, mingling with the crowd, determined when her triumph was over, to seek her out. There would be a good many seekers, he doubted not; but he was convinced that she would not deny him an interview.

He secured a seat in the third row, avoiding almost by instinct any more conspicuous position. He was early, and while he waited, the thought of young Eric Baron came to him--the boy's eager-face, the adoration of his eyes. He remembered how on that far-off night he had realized the hopelessness of combating his love, how he had shrugged his shoulders and relinquished the struggle. And the battle had been his even then--a bitter victory more disastrous than defeat.

He put the memory from him and thought of Rosemary--the child with the morning light in her eyes, the innocence of the morning in her soul. How tenderly she had spoken of Rosa Mundi! How sweetly she had pleaded her cause! With what amazing intuition had she understood! Something that was greater than pity welled up within him. Rosa Mundi's guardian angel had somehow reached his heart.

People were pouring into the place. He saw that it was going to be packed. And outside, lining the whole length of the Pier, they were waiting for her too, waiting to strew her path with, roses.

Ah! she was coming! Above the wash of the sea there rose a roar of voices. They were giving her the homage of a queen. He listened to the frantic cheering, and again it was Rosa Mundi, splendid and brilliant, who filled his thoughts as she filled the thoughts of all just then.

The cheering died down, and there came a great press of people into the back of the building. The lights were lowered, but he heard the movement, the buzz of a delighted crowd.

Suddenly the orchestra burst into loud music. They were playing "Queen of the Earth," he remembered later. The curtain went up. And in a blaze of light he saw Rosa Mundi.

Something within him sprang into quivering life. Something which till that moment he had never known awoke and gripped him with a force gigantic. She was robed in shimmering, transparent gold--a queen-woman, slight indeed, dainty, fairy-like--yet magnificent. Over her head, caught in a jewelled fillet, there hung a filmy veil of gold, half revealing, half concealing, the smiling face behind. Trailing wisps of golden gossamer hung from her beautiful arms. Her feet were bound with golden sandals. And on her breast were roses--golden roses.

She was exquisite as a dream. He gazed and gazed upon her as one entranced. The tumult of acclamation that greeted her swept by him unheeded. He was conscious only of a passionate desire to fling back the golden veil that covered her and see the laughing face behind. Its elusiveness mocked him. She was like a sunbeam standing there, a flitting, quivering shaft of light, too spiritual to be grasped fully, almost too dazzling for the eye to follow.

The applause died down to a dead silence. Her audience watched her with bated breath. Her dance was a thing indescribable. Courteney could think of nothing but the flashing of morning sunlight upon running water to the silver strains of a flute that was surely piped by Pan. He could not follow the sparkling wonder of her. He felt dazed and strangely exhilarated, almost on fire with this new, fierce attraction. It was as if the very soul were being drawn out of his body. She called to him, she lured him, she bewitched him.

When he had seen her before, he had been utterly out of sympathy. He had scorned her charms, had felt an almost angry contempt for young Baron's raptures. To him she had been a snake-woman, possessed of a fascination which, to him, was monstrous and wholly incomprehensible. She had worn a strange striped dress of green--tight-fitting, hideous he had deemed it. Her face had been painted. He had been too near the stage, and she had revolted him. Her dance had certainly been wonderful, sinuous, gliding, suggestive--a perfectly conceived scheme of evil. And she had thought to entrap him with it! The very memory was repulsive even yet.

But this--ah! this was different. This thing of light and air, this dancing sunbeam, this creature of the morning, exquisite in every detail, perfectly poised, swifter than thought, yet arresting at every turn, vivid as a meteor, yet beyond all scrutiny, all ocular power of comprehension, she set every nerve in him a-quiver. She seized upon his fancy and flung it to and fro, catching a million colours in her radiant flights. She made the hot blood throb in his temples. She beat upon the door of his heart. She called back his vanished youth, the passion unassuaged of his manhood. She appealed to him directly and personally. She made him realize that he was the one man who had taught--and could teach--her the meaning of life.

Then it was over. Like a glittering crystal shattered to fragments, his dream of ecstasy collapsed. The noise around him was as the roar of thundering breakers. But he sat mute in the midst of it, as one stunned.

Someone leaned over from behind and spoke to him. He was aware of a hand upon his shoulder.

"What do you think of her?" said Ellis Grant in his ear. "Superb, isn't she? Come and see her before she appears again!"

As if compelled by some power outside himself, Courteney rose. He edged his way to the end of the row and joined the great man there. The whole house was a seething turmoil of sound.

Grant was chuckling to himself as one well pleased. In Courteney's eyes he looked stouter, more prosperous, more keenly business-like, than when he had spoken with him a few nights previously. He took Courteney by the arm and led him through a door at the side.

"Let 'em yell 'emselves hoarse for a bit!" he said. "Do 'em good. Guess my 'rose of the world' isn't going to be too cheap a commodity.... Which reminds me, sir. You've cost me a thousand English pounds by coming here to-night."

"Indeed?" Courteney spoke stiffly. He felt stiff, physically stiff, as one forcibly awakened from a deep slumber.

The man beside him was still chuckling. "Yes. The little witch! Said she'd manage it somehow when I told her you weren't taking any. We had a thousand on it, and the little devil has won, outwitted us both. How in thunder did she do it? Laid a trap for you; what?"

Courteney did not answer. The stiffness was spreading. He felt as one turned to stone. Mechanically he yielded to the hand upon his arm, not speaking, scarcely thinking.

And then--almost before he knew it--he was in her presence, face to face with the golden vision that had caught and--for a space at least--had held his heart.

He bowed, still silent, still strangely bound and fettered by the compelling force.

A hand that was lithe and slender and oddly boyish came out to him. A voice that had in it sweet, lilting notes, like the voice of a laughing child, spoke his name.

"Mr. Courteney! How kind!" it said.

As from a distance he heard Grant speak. "Mr. Courteney, allow me to introduce you--my wife!"

There was a dainty movement like the flash of shimmering wings. He looked up. She had thrown back her veil.

He gazed upon her. "Rosemary!"

She looked back at him above the roses with eyes that were deeply purple--as the depths of the sea. "Yes, I am Rosemary--to my friends," she said.

Ellis Grant was laughing still, in his massive, contented way. "But to her lover," he said, "she is--and always has been--Rosa Mundi."

Then speech came back to Courteney, and strength returned. He held himself in firm restraint. He had been stricken, but he did not flinch.

"Your husband?" he said.

She indicated Grant with a careless hand. "Since yesterday," she said.

He bowed to her again, severely formal. "May I wish you joy?" he said.

There was an instant's pause, and in that instant something happened. She had not moved. Her eyes still met his own, but it was as if a veil had dropped between them suddenly. He saw the purple depths no more.

"Thank you," said Rosa Mundi, with her little girlish laugh.

* * * * *

As he strode down the Pier a few minutes later, he likened the scent of the crushed roses that strewed the way to the fumes of sacrifice--sacrifice offered at the feet of a goddess who cared for nothing sacred. Not till long after did he remember the tears that he had seen her shed.

A Debt of Honour

I

HOPE AND THE MAGICIAN

They lived in the rotten white bungalow at the end of the valley--Hope and the Magician. It stood in a neglected compound that had once been a paradise, when a certain young officer belonging to the regiment of Sikhs then stationed in Ghantala had taken it and made of it a dainty home for his English bride. Those were the days before the flood, and no one had lived there since. The native men in the valley still remembered with horror that awful night when the monsoon had burst in floods and water-spouts upon the mountains, and the bride, too terrified to remain in the bungalow, had set out in the worst fury of the storm to find her husband, who was on duty up at the cantonments. She had been drowned close to the bungalow in a ranging brown torrent which swept over what a few hours earlier had been a mere bed of glittering sand. And from that time the bungalow had been deserted, avoided of all men, a haunted place, the abode of evil spirits.

Yet it still stood in its desolation, rotting year by year. No native would approach the place. No Englishman desired it. For it was well away from the cantonments, nearer than any other European dwelling to the native village, and undeniably in the hottest corner of all the Ghantala Valley.

Perhaps its general air of desolation had also influenced the minds of possible tenants, for Ghantala was a cheerful station, and its inhabitants preferred cheerful dwelling-places. Whatever the cause, it had stood empty and forsaken for more than a dozen years.

And then had come Hope and the Magician.

Hope was a dark-haired, bright-eyed English girl, who loved riding as she loved nothing else on earth. Her twin-brother, Ronald Carteret, was the youngest subaltern in his battalion, and for his sake, she had persuaded the Magician that the Ghantala Valley was an ideal spot to live in.