_ PHASE III. PISGAH HEIGHTS
CHAPTER IX
"Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;
* * * * *
And if I turn from but one sin, I turn
Unto a smile of thine."
--ALICE MEYNELL.
For Roy himself, no less than Aruna, the passing of those golden October weeks had been an experience as beautiful as it was unique. The very beauty and bewilderment of it had blinded him, at first, to the underlying danger for himself and her. Bewilderment sprang from an eerie sense--vivid to the verge of illusion--that his mother was with him again in the person of Aruna:--a fancy enhanced by the fact that his entire knowledge of Indian womanhood--the turns of thought and phrase, the charm, at once sensuous and spiritual--was linked indissolubly with her. And the perilous charm had penetrated insidiously deeper than he knew. By the time he realised what was happening, the spell was upon him; his will held captive in silken meshes he had not the heart to snap.
As often as not, in that early stage, he craved sight and sound of her simply because she wore a sari and carried her head and moved her hands just so; because her mere presence stirred him with a thrill that blended exquisite pleasure, exquisite pain. There were times he would contrive to be alone in the room with her; not talking; not even looking at her--because her face disturbed the illusion; simply letting the feel of her presence ease that inner ache--subdued, not stilled--for the mother who had remained more vitally one with him than nine mothers in ten are able, or willing, to remain with their grown-up sons.
Thea Leigh, watching unobtrusively, had caught a glimpse of the strange dual influence at work in him. She had occasionally seen him with his mother; and had gleaned some idea of their unique relation; partly from Lance, partly from her intimate link with her own Theo, half a world away; nearly eighteen now, and eager to join up before all was over. So her troubled scrutiny was tempered with a measure of understanding. Roy had always attracted her. And now, unmothered--the wound not yet healed--she metaphorically gathered him to her heart; would have done so physically without hesitation; but that Vincent had his dear and foolish qualms about her promiscuous capacity for affection. But Aruna was her ewe lamb of the moment; and not even Roy must be allowed to make things harder for her than they were already....
So, after scouting the Delhi idea as preposterous, she suddenly perceived there might be virtue in it--for Aruna. Possibly it would glorify him in her eyes; but it would remove the fatal charm of his presence; give her a chance to pull up before things had gone too far. Whereat, being Thea, she spun round unashamedly, to Roy's secret amusement and relief. All the Desmond in her rose to the adventure of it. A risk, of course; but there must be no question of failure; and success would justify all. She was entirely at his service; discussed details by the hour; put him 'on to Vinx' for coaching in the general situation--underground sedition; reformers, true and false; telling arguments for the reclaiming of Dyan Singh.
To crown all--between genuine relief and genuine affection--she impulsively kissed him on departure under Vincent's very eyes.
"Just only to give you my blessing!" she explained, laughing and blushing like a girl at her own audacity. "Words are the stupidest clumsy things. I'm sure life would be happier and less complicated if we only had the sense to kiss more and talk less----!"
This--in the presence of Aruna and her husband and her six-year-old son!
Roy, deeply moved and a little overcome, nodded assent, while Vincent took her by the arms and gently removed her from further temptation.
"Where
you'd be, Madam, if talking was rationed----!"
"I'd take it out in kissing--
Sir!" she retorted unabashed; while Aruna glanced a little wistfully at Roy, who was fondling Terry and talking nonsense to Vernon. For the boy adored him and was on the brink of tears.
But if he seemed unheeding, he was by no means unaware. He was fighting his own battle in his own way; incidentally, he hoped, helping the girl to fight hers. For he had shaken himself almost free of his delicious yet disturbing illusion, only to be confronted by a more profoundly disturbing reality. Loyal to his promise, tacitly given, he had simply not connected her with the idea of marriage. The queer thrill of her presence was for him quite another affair. Not until that night of wandering in the moonlight had it struck him, with a faint shock, that she might be mistaking his friendliness for--something more. That contact with her had come at a critical moment for himself, was a detail he failed to realise. Beyond the sudden bewildering sensations that prompted his headlong proposal to Tara, he had not felt seriously perturbed by girl or woman; and, in the past four years, life had been filled to overflowing with other things----
That he should love Aruna, deeply and dearly, seemed as simple and natural, as loving Tara. But to fall in love was a risk he had no right to run, either for himself or her. Yet the risk had been run before he awoke to the fact. And the events and emotions of Dewali night had drawn them irresistibly, dangerously close together. For the racial ferment had been strong in him, as in her. And the darkness, the subtle influence of his Indian dress--her tears--her danger! How could any man, frankly loving her, not be carried a little out of himself? That overmastering impulse to kiss her had startlingly revealed the true forces at work.
After all that, what could he do, but sharply apply the curb and remove himself--for a time--in the devout hope that 'things' had not gone too far? He had not the assurance to suppose she was already in love with him; but patently the possibility was there.
So--like Thea--he had come to see the Delhi inspiration in a new and surprising light. Setting forth in search of Dyan, he was, in effect, running away from himself--and Aruna, no less. If not actually in love, he very soon would be--did he dare to let himself go.
And why not--why
not? The old unreasoning rebellion stirred in him afresh. His mother being gone, temptation tugged the harder. Home, without the Indian element, was almost unthinkable. If only he could take back Aruna! But for him there could be no 'if.' He had tacitly given his word--to
her. And in any case there was his father--the Sinclair heritage--So all his fine dreams of helping Aruna amounted to this--that it was he who might be driven, in the end, to hurt her more than any of them. Life that looked such a straight-ahead business for most people, seemed to bristle with pitfalls and obstacles for him; all on account of the double heritage that was at once his pride, his inspiration, and his stone of stumbling.
* * * * *
Endless wakeful hours of the night journey were peopled with thoughts and visions of Aruna--her pansy face and velvet-soft eyes, now flashing delicate raillery, now lifted in troubled appeal. A rainbow creature--that was the charm of her. Not beautiful--he thanked his stars; since his weakness for beauty amounted to a snare, but attractive--perilously so. For, in her case, the very element that drew him was the barrier that held them apart. The irony of it!
Was she lying awake too, poor child--missing him a little? Would she marry an Indian--ever? Would she turn her back on India--even for him? Unanswerable questions hemmed her in. Could she even answer them herself? Too well he understood how the scales of her nature hung balanced between conflicting influences. As he was, racially, so was she, spiritually, a divided being; yet, in spite of waverings, Rajputni at the core, with all that word implies to those who know. If she lacked his mother's high sustained courage, her flashes of spirit shone out the brighter for her lapses into womanly weakness--as in that poignant moment by the tank, which had so nearly upset his own equilibrium. Vividly recalling that moment, it hurt him to realise that weeks might pass before he could see her again. No denying he wanted her; felt lost without her. The coveted Delhi adventure seemed suddenly a very lonely affair; not even a clear inner sense of his mother's presence to bear him company. No dreams lately; no faint mystical intimation of her nearness, since the wonderful hour with his grandfather. Only in the form of that strange and lovely illusion had she seemed vitally near him since he left Chitor.
Graceless ingratitude--that 'only.' For now, looking back, he clearly saw how the beauty and bewilderment of that early phase--so mysteriously blending Aruna with herself--had held his emotions in cheek, lifted them, purified them; had saved him, for all he knew, from surrender to an overwhelming passion that might conceivably have swept everything before it. Pure fantasy--perhaps. But he felt no inclination to argue out the unarguable. He preferred simply unquestioningly to believe that, under God, he owed his salvation to her. And after all--take it spiritually or psychologically--that was in effect the truth....
Towards morning, utter weariness lulled him into a troubled sleep--not for long. He awoke, chilled and heavy-eyed, to find the unheeded loveliness of a lemon-yellow dawn stealing over the blank immensity of earth and sky.
In a moment he was up, stretching cramped limbs, thanking goodness for a carriage to himself, leaning out and drinking huge draughts of crisp clean air, fragrant with the ghost of a whiff of wood smoke--the inimitable air of a Punjab autumn morning. _