_ PHASE III. PISGAH HEIGHTS
CHAPTER XVI
"So let him journey through his earthly day:
'Mid hustling spirits go his self-found way;
Find torture, bliss, in every forward stride--
He, every moment, still unsatisfied."
--FAUST.
Next morning, very early, he was closeted with Roy, sitting on the edge of his bed; cautiously, circumstantially, telling him all. Roy, as he listened, was half repelled, half impressed by the sheer impetus of the thing; and again he felt--as once or twice in Delhi--what centuries apart they were, though related, and almost of an age.
"This will be only between you and me, Roy--for always," Dyan concluded gravely. "Not because I have any shame for killing that snake; but--as I said ... because of Aruna----"
"Trust me," said Roy. "Amber Lake and I don't blab. There'll be a nine days' mystery over his disappearance. Then his lot will set up some other tin god--and promptly forget all about him."
"Let us follow their example, in that at least!" Grim humour nickered in Dyan's eyes, as he extracted a cigarette from the proffered case. "You gave me my chance. I have taken it--like a Rajput. Now we have other things to do."
Roy smiled. "That's about the size of it--from your sane, barbaric standpoint! I'm fairly besieged with other things to do. As soon as this blooming ankle allows me to hobble, I'm keen to get at some of the thoughtful elements in Calcutta and Bombay; educated Indian men and women, who honestly believe that India is moving towards a national unity that will transcend all antagonism of race and creed. I can't see it myself; but I've an open mind. Then, I think, Udaipur--'last, loneliest, loveliest, apart'--to knock my novel into shape before I go North. And
you----?" He pensively took stock of his volcanic cousin. "Sure you're safe not to erupt again?"
"Safe as houses--thanks to you. That doesn't mean I can be orthodox Hindu and work for the orthodox Jaipur Raj. I would like to join 'Servants of India' Society; and work for the Mother among those who accept British connection as India's God-given destiny. In no other way will I work again--to 'make her a widow.' Also, I thought perhaps----" he hesitated, averting his eyes--"to take vows of celibacy----"
"
Dyan!" Roy could not repress his astonishment. He had almost forgotten that side of things. Right or wrong--a tribute to Tara indeed! It jerked him uncomfortably; almost annoyed him.
"Unfair on Grandfather," he said with decision. "For every reason, you ought to marry--an enlightened wife. Think--of Aruna."
"I
do think of her. It is
she who ought to marry."
The emphasis was not lost on Roy:--and it hurt. Last night's poignant scene was intimately with him still. "I'm afraid you won't persuade her to," he said in a contained voice.
"I am quite aware of
that. And the reason--even a blind man could not fail to see."
They looked straight at one another for a long moment. Roy did not swerve from the implied accusation.
"Well, it's no fault of mine, Dyan," he said, recalling Aruna's confession that tacitly freed him from blame. "
She understands--there's a bigger thing between us than our mere selves. Whatever I'm free to do for her, I'll gladly do--always. It was chiefly to ease her poor heart that I risked the Delhi adventure. I felt I had lost the link with
you."
"Not surprising." Dyan smoked for a few minutes in silence. He was clearly moved by the fine frankness of Roy's attitude. "All the same," he said at last, "it was not quite broken. You have given me new life; and because you did it--for her, I swear to you, as long as she needs me, I will not fail her." He held out his hand. Roy's closed on it hard.
"Later in the morning I will come back and see her," Dyan added, in a changed voice--and went out.
* * * * *
Later in the morning, Roy himself was allowed to see her. With the help of his stick he limped to her verandah balcony, where she lay in a long chair, with cushions and rugs, the poor arm in a sling. Thea was with her. She had heard as much of last night's doings as any one would ever know. So she felt justified in letting the poor dears have half an hour together.
Her withdrawal was tactfully achieved; but there followed an awkward silence. For the space of several minutes it seemed that neither of the 'poor dears' knew quite what to make of their privilege, though they were appreciating it from their hearts.
Roy found himself too persistently aware of the arm that had been broken to save him; of the new bond between them, signed and sealed by that one unforgettable kiss.
As for Aruna--while pain anchored her body to earth, her unstable heart swayed disconcertingly from heights of rarefied content, to depths of shyness. Things she had said and done, on that far-away hillside, seemed unbelievable, remembered in her familiar balcony with a daylight mind: and fear lest he might be 'thinking it that way too' increased shyness tenfold. Yet it was she who spoke first, after all.
"Oh, it makes me angry ... to see you--like that," she said, indicating his ankle with a faint movement of her hand.
Roy quietly took possession of the hand and pressed it to his lips.
"How do you suppose
I feel, seeing
you like that!" Words and act dispelled her foolish fears. "Did you sleep? Does it hurt much?"
"Only if I forget and try to move. But what matter? Every time it hurts, I feel proud because that feeble arm was able to push you out of the way."
"You've every right to feel proud. You nearly knocked me over!"
A mischievous smile crept into her eyes. "I am afraid ... I was very rude!"
"That's
one way of putting it!" His grave tenderness warmed her like sunshine. He leaned nearer; his hand grasped the arm of her long chair. "You were a very wonderful Aruna last night. And--you are going to be more wonderful still. Working with Dyan, you are going to help make my dream come true--of India finding herself again by her own genius, along her own lines----"
He had struck the right note. Her face lit up as he had hoped to see it. "Oh, Roy--can I really----? Will Dyan help? Will he
let me----"
"Of course he will. And I'll be helping too--in my own fashion. We'll never lose touch, Aruna; though India's your destiny and England's mine. Never say again you have no true country. Like me, you have two countries--one very dear; one supreme. I'm afraid there are terrible days coming out here. And in those days every one of you who honestly loves England--every one of
us who honestly loves India--will count in the scale ..."
He paused; and she drew a deep breath. "Oh--how you
see things! It is you who are wonderful, Roy. I can think and feel the big things in my heart. But for doing them--I am, after all, only a woman...."
"An
Indian woman," he emphasised, his eyes on hers. "I know--and you know--what that means. You have not yet bartered away your magical influence for a mess of pottage. Because of one Indian woman--supreme for me; and now ... because of another, they all have a special claim on my heart. If India has not gone too far down the wrong road, it is by the
true Swadeshi spirit of her women she may yet be saved.
They, at any rate, don't reckon progress by counting factory chimneys or seats on councils. And every seed--good or bad--is sown first in the home. Get at the women, Aruna--the home ones--and tell them that. It's not only
my dream; it was--my mother's. You don't know how she loved and believed in you all. I think she never
quite understood the other kind. The longer she lived among them, the more she craved for all of you to remain true women--in the full sense, not the narrow one----"
He had never yet spoken so frankly and freely of that dear lost mother; and Aruna knew it for the highest compliment he could pay her. Truly his generous heart was giving her all that his jealous household gods would permit....
Thea--stepping softly through the inner room--caught a sentence or two; caught a glimpse of Roy's finely-cut profile; of Aruna's eyes intent on his face; and she smiled very tenderly to herself. It was so exactly like Roy; and such constancy of devotion went straight to her mother-heart. So too--with a sharper pang--did the love hunger in Aruna's eyes.
The puzzle of these increasing race complications----! The tragedy and the pity of it...!
* * * * *
Lance travelled North that night with a mind at ease. Roy had assured him that the moment his ankle permitted he would leave Jaipur and 'give the bee in his bonnet an airing' elsewhere. That assurance proved easier to give than to act upon, when the moment came. The Jaipur Residency had come to seem almost like home. And the magnet of home drew all that was Eastern in Roy. It was the British blood in his veins that drove him afield. Though India was his objective, England was the impelling force. His true home seemed hundreds of miles away, in more senses than one. His union with Rajputana--set with the seal of that sacred and beautiful experience at Chitor--seemed, in his present mood, the more vital of the two.
And there was Lance up in the Punjab--a magnet as strong as any, when the masculine element prevailed. Yet again, some inner irresistible impulse obliged him to break away from them all. It was one of those inevitable moments when the dual forces within pulled two ways; when he felt envious exceedingly of Lance Desmond's sane and single-minded attitude towards men and things. One couldn't picture Lance a prey to the ignominious sensation that half of him wanted to go one way and half of him another way. At this juncture, half of himself felt a confounded fool for not going back to the Punjab and enjoying a friendly sociable cold weather among his father's people. The other half felt impelled to probe deeper into the complexities of changing India, to confirm and impart his belief that the destinies of England and India were one and indivisible. After all, India stood where she did to-day by virtue of what England had made her. He refused to believe that even the insidious disintegrating process of democracy could dissolve--in a brief fever of unrest--links forged and welded in the course of a hundred years.
In that case, argued his practical half, why this absurd inner sense of responsibility for great issues over which he could have no shadow of control? What was the earthly use of it--this large window in his soul, opening on to the world's complexities and conflicts; not allowing him to say comfortably, 'They are not.' His opal-tinted dreams of interpreting East to West had suffered a change of complexion since Oxford days. His large vague aspirations of service had narrowed down, inevitably, to a few definite personal issues. Action involves limitation--as the picture involves the frame. Dreams must descend to earth--or remain unfruitful. It might be a little, or a great matter, that he had managed to set two human fragments of changing India on the right path--so far as he could discern it. The fruits of that modest beginning only the years could reveal....
Then there was this precious novel simmering at the back of things; his increasing desire to get away alone with the ghostly company that haunted his brain. As the mother-to-be feels the new life mysteriously moving within her, so he began to feel within him the first stirrings of his own creative power. Already his poems and essays had raised expectations and secured attention for other things he wanted to say. And there seemed no end to them. He had hardly yet begun his mental adventures. Pressing forward, through sense, to the limitless regions of mind and spirit, new vistas would open, new paths lure him on....
That first bewildering, intoxicating sense of power is good--while it lasts; none the less, because, in the nature of things, it is foredoomed to disillusion--greater or less, according to the authenticity of the god within.
Whatever the outcome for Roy, that passing exaltation eased appreciably the pang of parting from them all. And it was responsible for a happy inspiration. Rummaging among his papers, on the eve of departure, he came upon the sketch of India that he had written in Delhi and refrained from sending to Aruna. Intrinsically it was hers; inspired by her. Also--intrinsically it was good: and straightway he decided she should have it for a parting gift.
Beautifully copied out, and tied up with carnation-pink ribbons, he reserved it for their last few moments together. She was still such a child in some ways. The small surprise of his gift might ease the pang of parting. It was a woman's thought. But the woman-strain of tenderness was strong in Roy, as in all true artists.
She was standing near the fire in her own sitting-room, wearing the pink dress and sari, her arm still in a sling. Last words, those desperate inanities--buffers between the heart and its own emotion--are difficult things to bring off in any case; peculiarly difficult for these two, with that unreal, yet intensely actual, bond between them; and Roy felt more than grateful to the inspiration that gave him something definite to say.
Instantly her eyes were on it--wondering ... guessing....
"It's a little thing I wrote in Delhi," he said simply. "I couldn't send it to Jeffers. It seemed--to belong to you. So I thought----" He proffered it, feeling absurdly shy of it--and of her.
"Oh--but it is too much!" Holding it with her sling hand, she opened it with the other and devoured it eagerly under his watching eyes. By the changes that flitted across her face, by the tremor of her lips and her hands, as she pressed it to her heart, he knew he could have given her no dearer treasure than that fragment of himself. And because he knew it, he felt tongue-tied; tempted beyond measure to kiss her once again.
If she divined his thought, she kept her lashes lowered and gave no sign.
He hoped she knew....
But before either could break the spell of silence that held them, Thea returned; and their moment--their idyll--was over.... _