_ PHASE IV. DUST OF THE ACTUAL
CHAPTER II
"Which is the more perilous, to meet the temptings of Eve,
or to pique her?"--GEORGE MEREDITH.
Of course he reached the Lawrence Hall egregiously late, to find the afternoon dancing, that Lahore prescribes three times a week, in full swing.
The lofty pillared Hall--an aristocrat among Station Clubs--was more crowded than usual. Half the polished floor was uncovered; the rest carpeted and furnished, for lookers-on. Here Mrs Elton still diffused her exuberant air of patronage; sailing majestically from group to group of her recent guests, and looking more than life size in lavender satin besprinkled with old lace.
Roy hurried past, lest she discover him; and, from the security of an arched alcove, scanned the more interesting half of the Hall. There went little Mrs Hunter-Ranyard, a fluffy pussy-cat person, with soft eyes and soft manners--and claws. She was one of those disconnected wives whom he was beginning to recognise as a feature of the country: unobtrusively owned by a dyspeptic-looking Divisional Judge; hospitable and lively, and an infallible authority on other people's private affairs. Like too many modern Anglo-Indians, she prided herself on keeping airily apart from the country of her exile. Natives gave her 'the creeps.' Useless to argue. Her retort was unvarying and unanswerable. "East is East--and I'm
not. It's a country of horrors, under a thin layer of tinsel. Don't talk to
me----!" Lance Desmond had achieved fame among the subalterns by christening her the Banter-Wrangle; but he liked her well enough, on the whole, to hope she would never find him out.
She whirled past now, on the arm of Talbot Hayes, senior Assistant Commissioner; an exceedingly superior person who shared her views about 'the country.' Catching Roy's eye, she feigned exaggerated surprise and fluttered a friendly hand.
His response was automatic. He had just discovered Miss Arden--with Lance, of course--looking supreme in a moon-coloured gown with a dull gold sash carelessly knotted on one side. Her graceful hat was of gold tissue, unadorned. Near the edge of the brim lay one yellow rose; and a rope of amber beads hung well below her waist.
Roy--son of Lilamani--had an artist's eye for details of dress, for harmony of tone and line, which this girl probably achieved by mere feminine instinct. The fool he was, to have come so late. When they stopped, he would catch her and plead for an extra, at least.
Meantime, a pity to waste this one; and there was poor little Miss Delawny sitting out, as usual, in her skimpy pink frock and black hat, trying so hard not to look forlorn that he felt sorry for her. She was tacitly barred by most of the men because she was 'cafe au lait';--a delicate allusion to the precise amount of Indian blood in her veins.
He had not, so far, come across many specimens of these pathetic half-and-halfs, who seemed to inhabit a racial No-Man's-Land. But Lahore was full of them; minor officials in the Railway and the Post Office; living, more or less, in a substratum of their own kind. He gathered that they were regarded as a 'problem' by the thoughtful few, and simply turned down by the rest. He felt an acute sympathy for them: also--in hidden depths--a vague distaste. Most of those he had encountered were so obviously of no particular caste, in either country's estimate of the word, that he had never associated them with himself. He saw himself, rather, as of double caste; a fusion of the best in both races. The writer of that wonderful letter had said he was different; and presumably she knew. Whether the average Anglo-Indian would see any difference, he had not the remotest idea; and, so far, he had scarcely given the matter a thought.
Here, however, it was thrust upon his attention; nor had he failed to notice that Lance never mentioned the Jaipur cousins except when they were alone:--whether by chance or design, he did not choose to ask. And if either of the other fellows had noticed his mother's photograph, or felt a glimmer of curiosity, no word had been said.
After all, what concern was it of these chance-met folk? He was nothing to them; and to him they were mainly a pleasant change from the absorbing business of his novel and the problems of India in transition.
And the poor little girl in the skimpy frock was an unconscious fragment of that problem. Too pathetic to see how she tried not to look round hopefully whenever masculine footsteps came her way. Why shouldn't he give her a pleasant surprise?
She succeeded, this time, in not looking round; so the surprise came off to his satisfaction. She was nervous and unpractised, and he constantly found her feet where they had no business to be. But sooner than hurt her feelings, he piloted her twice round the room before stopping; and found himself next to Mrs Hunter-Ranyard, who 'snuggled up' to him (the phrase was Barnard's) and proffered consolation after her kind.
"Bad boy! You missed the cream of the afternoon, but you're not
quite too late. I'm free for the next."
Roy, fairly cornered, could only bow and smile his acceptance. And after his arduous prelude, Mrs Ranyard's dancing was an effortless delight--if only she would not spoil it by her unceasing ripple of talk. His lack of response troubled her no whit. She was bubbling over with caustic comment on Mrs Elton's latest adventure in matrimony.
"She's a mighty hunter, before the Lord! She marked down poor Hilton last cold weather," cooed the silken voice in Roy's inattentive ear. "Of course you know he's one of our coming men! And I've a shrewd idea he
was intended for Rose. But in Miss Rose the matchmaker has met her match! She's clever--that girl; and she's reduced the tactics of non-resistance to a fine art. I don't believe she ever stands up to her mother. She smiles and smiles--and goes her own way. She likes playing with soldiers; partly because they're good company; partly, I'll swear, because she knows it keeps her mother on tenter-hooks. But when it comes to business, she'll choose as shrewdly----"
Roy stopped dancing and confronted her, half laughing, half irate. "If you're keen on talking--let's talk. I can't do both." He stated the fact politely, but with decision. "And--frankly, I hate hearing a girl pulled to pieces, just because she's charming and good-looking and----"
"Oh, my
dear boy," she interrupted unfailingly--sweet solicitude in her lifted gaze. "
Did I trample on your chivalrous toes? Or is it----?"
"No, it
isn't." He resented the barefaced implication. "Naturally--I admire her----"
"Oh, naturally! You can't help yourselves, any of you! She's 'sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad.' No use looking daggers! It's a fact. I don't say she flirts outrageously--like I do! She simply expects homage--and gets it. She expects men to fall in love with her--and they topple over like ninepins. Sometimes--when I'm feeling magnanimous--I catch a ninepin as it falls! Look at her now, with that R.E. boy--plainly in the toils!"
Roy declined to look. If she was trying to put him off Miss Arden, she was on the wrong tack. Besides--he wanted to dance.
"One more turn?" he suggested, nipping a fresh outbreak in the bud. "But, please--no talking."
She laughed and shook her fan at him. "Epicure!" But after all, it was an indirect compliment to her dancing: and for the space of two minutes, she held her peace.
Throughout the brief pause, she rippled on, with negligible interludes; but not till they re-entered the Hall did she revert to the theme that had so exasperated Roy. There she espied Desmond, standing under an archway, staring straight before him, apparently lost in thought.
She indicated him, discreetly, with her fan. "The Happy Warrior (that's my private name for him) seems to have something on his mind. Can he have proposed--at last? I confess I'm curious. But of course
you know all about it, Mr Sinclair. Don't tell
me!"
"I won't!" said Roy gravely. "You probably know more than I do."
"But I thought you were such
intimate friends? How superbly masculine!"
"Well--he is."
"Oh, he is! He's so firmly planted on his feet that he tacitly invites one to tilt at him! I confess I've already tried my hand--and failed. So it soothes my vanity to observe that even the Rose of Sharon isn't visibly upsetting his balance. Frankly, I'm more than a little intrigued over that affair. It seems to have reached a certain point and stuck there. At one time--I thought----"
Her thought remained unuttered. Roy was patently not attending. Miss Arden and the 'R.E. boy' had just entered the Hall.
"Don't let me keep you," she added sweetly. "It's evident
she's the next!"
Roy collected himself with a jerk. "You're wiser than I am! I've not asked her yet."
"Then you can save yourself the trouble and go on dancing with me! She's always booked up ahead----"
Her blue eyes challenged him laughingly; but he caught the undernote of rivalry. For half a second the scales hung even between courtesy and inclination; then, from the tail of his eye, he saw Hayes bearing down upon the other pair. That decided him. He had conceived an unreasoning dislike of Talbot Hayes.
"I'm awfully sorry," he said politely. "But--I sent word I was coming in for the dancing; and----"
"Oh, go along then and get your fingers burnt, as you deserve. But never say
I didn't try and save them!"
Roy laughed. "They aren't in any danger, thanks very much!"
Just as he reached Miss Arden, the R.E. boy left her, and Lance, forsaking his pillar, strolled casually to her side.
She greeted Roy with a faint lift of her brows.
"Was I unspeakable----? I apologise," he said impulsively; and her smile absolved him.
"You were wiser than you knew. You escaped an infliction. It was insufferably dull. We all smiled and smiled, till there were 'miles and miles of smiles'; and we were all bored to extinction! Ask Major Desmond!"
She acknowledged his presence with a sidelong glance. He returned it with a quick look that told Roy he had been touched on the raw.
"As I spent most of the time talking to you--and as you've just recorded your sensations, I'd rather be excused," he said with a touch of stiffness. "Your innings, I suppose, old man?" And, with a friendly nod, he moved away.
Roy, watching him go, felt almost angry with the girl, and impetuously spoke his thought.
"Poor old Desmond! What did you give him a knock for?
He couldn't be dull, if he tried."
"N-no," she agreed, without removing her eyes from his retreating figure. "But sometimes--he can be aggressive."
"I've never noticed it."
"How long have you known him?"
"A trifle of fifteen years."
"Quite a romantic friendship?"
Roy nodded. He did not choose to discuss his feeling for Lance with this cool, compelling young woman. Yet her very coolness goaded him to add: "I suppose men see more clearly than women that--he's one in a thousand."
"I'm--not so sure----"
"Yet you snub him as if he was a tin-pot 'sub.'"
His resentment would out; but the smile in her eyes disarmed him.
"Was it as bad as that? What a pair you are! Don't worry. We know each other's little ways by now."
It was scarcely convincing; but Lance would not thank him for interfering; and the band had struck up. No sign of a partner. It seemed the luck was 'in'.
"Did Desmond give you my message?" he asked.
"No--what?"
"Only--that I hoped you'd be magnanimous.... Is there a chance----?"
Her eyes rested deliberately on his; and the last spark of resentment flickered out. "More than you deserve! But this one does happen to be free...."
"Well, we won't waste any of it," said he:--and they danced without a break, without a word, till the perfect accord of their circling and swaying ceased with the last notes of the valse.
That was the real thing, thought Roy, but felt too shy for compliments; and they merely exchanged a smile. He had felt the pleasure was mutual. Now he knew it.
Out through the portico they passed into the cool green gardens, freshly watered, exhaling a smell of moist earth and the fragrance of unnumbered roses--a very whiff of Home: bushes, standards, ramblers; and everywhere--flaunting its supremacy--the Marechal Niel; sprawling over hedges, scrambling up evergreens and falling again, in cascades of moon-yellow blossoms and glossy leaves.
Roy, keenly alive to the exquisite mingling of scent and colour and evening lights--was still more alive to the silent girl at his side, who seemed to radiate both the lure and the subtle antagonism of sex--in itself an inverted form of fascination.
They had strolled half round the empty bandstand before she remarked, in her cool, low-pitched voice: "You really are a flagrantly casual person, Mr Sinclair. I sometimes wonder--is it
quite spontaneous? Or--do you find it effective?"
Roy frankly turned and stared at her. "Effective?
What a question?"
Her smile puzzled and disconcerted him.
"Well, you've answered it with your usual pristine frankness! I see--it was not intentional."
"Why should it be?"
"Oh, if you don't know--I don't! I merely wondered--You did say definitely you would come to the reception. So of course--I expected you. Then you never turned up. And--naturally----!"
A ghost of a shrug completed the sentence.
"I'm awfully sorry. I didn't flatter myself you'd notice----" Roy said simply. There were moments when she made him feel vexatiously young. "You see--it was my novel--got me by the hair. And when that happens, I'm rather apt to let things slide. Anyway, you got the better man. And if you found
him dull, I'd have been nowhere."
She was silent a moment. Then: "I think--if you don't mind--we'll leave Major Desmond out of it," she said; adding, with a distinct change of tone: "What's the hidden charm in that common little Miss Delawny? I saw you dancing with her again to-day."
The subtle flattery of the question might have taken effect, had it not followed on her perplexing remark about Lance. As it was, he resented it.
"Why not? She's quite a nice little person."
"I daresay. But we've plenty of nice girls in our own set."
"Oh, plenty. But I rather bar set mania. I've a catholic taste in human beings!"
"And I've an ultra fastidious one!" Look and tone gave her statement a delicately personal flavour. "Besides, out here ... there are limits----"
"And I must respect them, on penalty of your displeasure?" His tone was airily defiant. "Well--make me out a list of irreproachables, and I'll work them off in rotation--between whiles!"
The implication of that last subtly made amends: and she had a taste for the minor subtleties of intercourse.
"I shall do nothing of the kind! You're perfectly graceless this evening! I suspect all that scribbling goes to your head sometimes. Sitting on Olympian heights, controlling destinies! I suppose we earthworms down below all look pretty much alike? To discriminate between mere partners--is human. To embrace them indiscriminately--divine!"
Roy laughed. "Oh, if it came to embracing----"
"Even an Olympian might be a shade less catholic?" she queried with one of her looks, that stirred in Roy sensations far removed from Olympian. Random talk did not flourish in Miss Arden's company: delicately, insistently she steered it back to the focal point of interest--herself and the man of the moment.
From the circular drive they wandered on, unheeding; and when they re-entered the Hall a fresh dance had begun. Under the arch they paused. Miss Arden's glance scanned the room and reverted to Roy. The last ten minutes had appreciably advanced their intimacy.
"Shall we?" he asked, returning her look with interest. "Is the luck in again?"
Her eyes assented. He slipped an arm round her--and once more they danced....
Roy had been Olympian indeed had he not perceived the delicate flattery implied in his apparent luck. Lance had not given his message. Yet two dances were available. The inference was not without its insidious effect on a man temperamentally incapable of conceit.
The valse was nearly half over, when the least little drag on his arm so surprised him that he stopped almost opposite the main archway;--and caught sight of Lance, evidently looking for some one.
"Oh--there he is!" Miss Arden's low tone was almost flurried--for her.
"D'you want him?"
"Well--I suppose he wants me. This was his dance."
"Good Lord! What a mean shame," Roy flashed out. "Why on earth didn't you tell me? Wouldn't for the world...."
Her colour rose under his heated protest. "I never hang about for unpunctual partners. If they don't turn up in time--it's their loss."
Roy, intent on Lance, was scarcely listening. "He's seen us now. Come along. Let's explain."
It was Miss Arden who did the explaining in a manner all her own.
"Well--what became of you?" she asked, smiling in response to Desmond's look of interrogation. "As you didn't appear, I concluded you'd either forgotten or been caught in a rubber."
"Bad shots,--both," Desmond retorted with a direct look.
"I'm awfully sorry ... I hadn't a notion----" Roy began--and checked himself, perceiving that he could not say much without implicating his partner.
This time Desmond's smile had quite another quality. "You're very welcome. Carry on. Don't mind me. It's half over."
"A model of generosity!" Miss Arden applauded him. "I'm free for the next--if you'd care to have it instead."
"Thanks very much; but I'm not," Desmond answered serenely.
"The great little Banter-Wrangle--is it? You could plead a misunderstanding and bribe Mr Sinclair to save the situation!"
"Hard luck on Sinclair. But it's not Mrs Ranyard. I'm sorry----"
"Don't apologise. If you're satisfied, I am."
For all her careless tone, Roy had never seen her so nearly put out of countenance. Desmond said nothing; and for a moment--the briefest--there fell an awkward silence. Then with an air of marked graciousness she turned to Roy.
"We are generously permitted to go on, with a clear conscience!"
But for Roy the charm was broken. Her cavalier treatment of Lance annoyed him; and beneath the surface play of looks and words he had detected the flash of steel. It was some satisfaction that Lance had given as good as he received. But he felt troubled and curious. And he was likely to remain so. Lance, he very well knew, would say precisely nothing.
The girl, as if divining his thoughts, combated them with the delicately pointed weapons of her kind--and prevailed.
Again they wandered in the darkening garden and returned to find the Boston in full swing. Again Miss Arden's glance travelled casually round the room. And Roy saw her start; just enough to swear by....
Desmond was dancing with Miss Delawny----!
The frivolous comment on Roy's lips was checked by the look in his partner's eyes. Impossible not to wonder if Lance had actually been engaged; or if----?
In any case--a knock for Miss Arden's vanity. A shade too severe, perhaps; yet sympathy for her was tinged with exultation that Lance had held his own. Mrs Ranyard was right. Here was a man set firmly on his feet....
Miss Arden's voice drew his wandering attention back to herself. "We may as well finish this. Or are you also--engaged?"
Her light stress on the word held a significance he did not miss.
"To you--if you will!" he answered gallantly, hand on heart. "More than I deserve--as you said; but still----"
"It's just possible for a woman to be magnanimous!" she capped him, smiling. "And it's just possible for a man to be--the other thing! Remember that--when you get back to your eternal scribbling!"
An hour later he rode homeward with a fine confusion of sensations and impressions, doubts and desires seething in his brain. Miss Arden was delightful, but a trifle unsettling. She must not be allowed to distract him from the work he loved. _