_ PHASE IV. DUST OF THE ACTUAL
CHAPTER VI
"Blood and brain and spirit, three--
Join for true felicity.
Are they parted, then expect
Someone sailing will be wrecked."
--GEORGE MEREDITH.
On the night after the Gymkhana the great little world of Lahore was again disporting itself, with unabated vigour, in the pillared ballroom of the Lawrence Hall. They could tell tales worth inditing, those pillars and galleries that have witnessed all the major festivities of Punjab Anglo-India--its loves and jealousies and high-hearted courage--from the day of crinolines and whiskers, to this day of the tooth-brush moustache, the retiring skirts and still more retiring bodices of after-war economy. And there are those who believe they will witness the revelry of Anglo-Indian generations yet to be.
Had Lance Desmond shared Roy's gift for visions, he might have seen, in spirit, the ghosts of his mother and father, in the pride of their youth, and that first legendary girl-wife, of whom Thea had once told him all she knew, and whose grave he had seen in Kohat cemetery with a queer mingling of pity and resentment in his heart. There should have been no one except his own splendid mother--first, last, and all the time.
But Lance, though no scoffer, had small intimacy with ghosts; and Roy's frequented other regions; nor was he in the frame of mind to induce spiritual visitations. Soul and body were enmeshed, as in a network of sunbeams, holding him close to earth.
For weeks part of him had been fighting, subconsciously, against the compelling power that is woman; now, consciously, he was alive to it, swept along by it, as by a tidal wave. Since that amazing moment at the prize-giving, all his repressed ferment had welled up and overflowed; and when an imaginative, emotional nature loses grip on the reins, the pace is apt to be headlong, the course perilous....
He had dined at the Eltons'--a lively party; chaff and laughter and champagne; and Miss Arden--after yesterday's graciousness--in a tantalising, elusive mood. But he had his dances secure--six out of twenty, not to mention the cotillon, after supper, which they were to lead. She was wearing what he called her 'Undine frock'--a clinging affair, fringed profusely with silver and palest green, that suggested to his fancy Undine emerging from the stream in a dripping garment of water-weeds. Her arms and shoulders emerged from it a little too noticeably for his taste; but to-night his critical brain was in abeyance.
Look where he would, talk to whom he would, he was persistently, distractingly aware of her; and she could not elude him the whole evening long....
* * * * *
Supper was over. The cotillon itself was almost over; the maypole figure adding a flutter of bright ribbons to the array of flags and bunting, evening dresses, and uniforms. Twice, in the earlier figures, she had chosen him; but this time, the chance issue of pairing by colours gave her to Desmond. Roy saw a curious look pass between them. Then Lance put his arm round her, and they danced without a break.
When it was over, Roy went in search of iced coffee. In a few seconds those two appeared on the same errand, and merged themselves in a lively group. Roy, irresistibly, followed suit; and when the music struck up, Lance handed her over with a formal bow.
"Your partner, I think, old man. Thanks for the loan," he said; and his smile was for Roy as he turned and walked leisurely away.
Roy looked after him, feeling pained and puzzled; the more so, because Lance clearly had the whip-hand. It was she who seemed the less assured of the two; and he caught himself wishing he possessed the power so to upset her equanimity. Was it even remotely possible that--she cared seriously, and Lance would not...?
"Brown studies aren't permitted in ballrooms, Mr Sinclair!" she rallied him in her gentlest voice--and Lance was forgotten. "Come and tie an extra big choc. on to my fishing-rod."
Roy disapproved of the chocolate figure, as derogatory to masculine dignity. Six brief-skirted, briefer-bodiced girls stood on chairs, each dangling a chocolate cream from a fishing-rod of bamboo and coloured ribbon. Before them, on six cushions, knelt six men; heads tilted back, bobbing this way and that, at the caprice of the angler; occasionally losing balance, and half toppling over amid shouts and cheers.
How did that kind of fooling strike the '
kits' and the Indian bandsman up aloft, wondered Roy. A pity they never gave a thought to that side of the picture. He determined not to be drawn in. Lance, he noticed, studiously refrained. Miss Arden--having tantalised three aspirants--was looking round for a fourth victim. Their eyes met--and he was done for....
Directly his knee touched the cushion, the recoil came sharply--too late. And she--as if aware of his reluctance--played him mercilessly, smiling down on him with her astonishing hazel eyes....
Roy's patience and temper gave out. Tingling with mortification, he rose and walked away, to be greeted with a volley of good-natured chaff.
He was followed by Lister, 'the R.E. boy,' who at once secured the elusive bait, clearly by favour rather than skill. The rest had already paired. The band struck up; and Roy, partnerless, stood looking on, the film of the East over his face masking the clash of forces within. The fool he was to have given way! And
this--before them all--after yesterday...!
His essential masculinity stood confounded; blind to the instinct of the essential coquette--allurement by flight. He resolved to take no part in the final figure--the mirror and handkerchief; would not even look at her, lest she catch his eye.
Her choice fell on Hayes; and Roy--elaborately indifferent--carried Lance off to the buffet for champagne cup. It was a thirsty evening; a relief to be quit of the ballroom and get a breath of masculine fresh air. The fencing-bout and its aftermath had consciously quickened his feeling for Lance. In the fury of that fight they seemed to have worked off the hidden friction of the past few weeks that had dimmed the steady radiance of their friendship. It was as if a storm-cloud had burst and the sun shone out again.
They said nothing intimate, nothing worthy of note. They were simply content.
Yet, when music struck up, Roy was in a fever to be with her again.
Her welcoming smile revived his reckless mood. "Ours--
this time, anyway," he said, in an odd repressed voice.
"Yes--ours."
Her answering look vanquished him utterly. As his arm encircled her, he fancied she leaned ever so little towards him, as if admitting that she too felt the thrill of coming together again. Fancy or no, it was like a lighted match dropped in a powder magazine....
For Roy that single valse, out of scores they had danced together, was an experience by itself.
While the music plays, a man encircles one woman and another, from habit, without a flicker of emotion. But to-night volcanic forces in Roy were rising like champagne when the cork begins to move. Never had he been so disturbingly aware that he was holding her in his arms; that he wanted tremendously to go on holding her when the music stopped. To this danger-point he had been brought by the unconscious effect of delicate approaches and strategic retreats. And the man who has most firmly kept the cork on his emotions is often the most unaccountable when it flies off....
The music ceased. They were merely partners again. He led her out into starry darkness, velvet soft; very quiet and contained to the outer eye; inwardly, of a sudden, afraid of himself, still more afraid of the serenely beautiful girl at his side.
He knew perfectly well what he wanted to do; but not at all what he wanted to say. For him, as his mother's son, marriage had a sacredness, an apartness from random emotions, however overwhelming; and it went against the grain to approach that supreme subject in his present fine confusion of heart and body and brain.
They wandered on a little. Like himself, she seemed smitten dumb; and with every moment of silence, he became more acutely aware of her. He had discovered that this was one of her most potent spells. Never for long could a man be unaware of her, of the fact that she was before everything--a woman.
In a sense--how different!--it had been the same with Aruna. But with Aruna it was primitive, instinctive. This exotic flower of Western girlhood wielded her power with conscious, consummate skill....
Near a seat well away from the Hall she stopped. "We don't want any more exercise, do we?" she said softly.
"I've had enough for the present," he answered. And they sat down.
Silence again. He didn't know what to say to her. He only craved overwhelmingly to take her in his arms. Had she a glimmering idea--sitting there, so close ... so alluring...?
And suddenly, to his immense relief, she spoke.
"It was splendid. A pity it's over. That's the litany of Anglo-India. It's over. Change the scene. Shuffle the puppets--and begin again. I've been doing it for six years----"
"And--it doesn't pall?" His voice sounded quite natural, quite composed, which was also a relief.
"Pall?--You try it!" For the first time he detected a faint note of bitterness. "But still--a cotillon's a cotillon!"--She seemed to pull herself together.--"There's an exciting element in it that keeps its freshness. And I flatter myself we carried it through brilliantly--you and I." The pause before the linked pronouns gave him an odd little thrill. "But--what put you off ... at the end?"
Her amazing directness took him aback. "I--oh, well--I thought ... one way and another, you'd been having enough of me."
"That's not true!" She glanced at him sidelong. "You were vexed because I chose the Lister boy. And he was all over himself, poor dear! As a matter of fact, I'd meant to have you. If you'd only looked at me ...! But you stared fiercely the other way. However, perhaps we've been flagrant enough for to-night----"
"Flagrant--have we?"
Daring, passionate words thronged his brain; and through his inner turmoil, he heard her answer lightly: "Don't ask me! Ask the Banter-Wrangle. She knows to an inch the degrees of flagrance officially permitted to the attached and the unattached! You see, in India, we're allowed ... a certain latitude."
"Yes--I've noticed. It's a pity...." Words simply would not come, on this theme of all others. Was she indirectly ... telling him ...?
"And you disapprove--tooth and nail?" she queried gently. "I hoped you were different. You don't know
how tired we are of eternal disapproval from people who simply know nothing--nothing----"
"But I don't disapprove," he blurted out vehemently. "It always strikes me as a rather middle-class, puritanical attitude. I only think--it's a thousand pities to take the bloom off ... the big thing--the real thing, by playing at it (you can see they do) like lawn tennis, just to pass the time----"
"Well, Heaven knows, we've
got to pass the time out here--
somehow!" she retorted, with a sudden warmth that startled him: it was so unlike her. "All very fine for people at home to turn up superior noses at us; to say we live in blinkers, that we've no intellectual pursuits, no interest in 'this wonderful country.' I confess, to some of us, India and its people are holy terrors. As for art and music and theatres--where
are they, except what we make for ourselves, in our indefatigable, amateurish way. Can't
you see--you, with your imaginative insight--that we have virtually nothing but each other? If we spent our days bowing and scraping and dining and dancing with due decorum, there'd be a boom in suicides and the people in clover at Home would placidly wonder why----?"
"But do listen. I'm not blaming--any of you," he exclaimed, distracted by her complete misreading of his mood.
"Well, you're criticising--in your heart. And your opinion's worth something--to some of us. Even if we
do occasionally--play at being in love, there's always the offchance it may turn out to be ... the real thing." She drew an audible breath and added, in her lighter vein: "You know, you're a very fair hand at it yourself--in your restrained, fakirish fashion----"
"But I don't--I'm not----" he stammered desperately. "And why d'you call me a fakir? It's not the first time. And it's not true. I believe in life--and the fulness of life."
"I'm glad. I'm not keen on fakirs. But I only meant--one can't picture you playing round, the way heaps of men do with girls ... who allow them ..."
"No. That's true. I never----"
"What--never? Or is it 'hardly ever'?"
She leaned a shade nearer, her beautiful pale face etherealised by starshine. And that infinitesimal movement, her low tone, the sheer magnetism of her, swept him from his moorings. Words low and passionate came all in a rush.
"What
are, you doing with me? Why d'you tantalise me. Whether you're there or not there, your face haunts me--your voice. It may be play for you--it isn't for me----"
"I've never said--I've never implied--it was play ... for
me----"
This time perceptibly she leaned nearer, mute confession in her look, her tone; and delicate fire ran in his veins....
Next moment his arms were round her; trembling, yet vehement; crushing her against him almost roughly. No mistaking the response of her lips; yet she never stirred; only the fingers of her right hand closed sharply on his arm. Having hold of her at last, after all that inner tumult and resistance, he could hardly let her go. Yet--strangely--even in the white heat of fervour, some detached fragment, at the core of him, seemed to be hating the whole thing, hating himself--and her----
Instantly he released her ... looked at her ... realised.... In those few tempestuous moments he had burnt his boats indeed ...
She met his eyes now, found them too eloquent, and veiled her own.
"No. You are not altogether--a fakir," she said softly.
"I'd no business. I'm sorry ..." he began, answering his own swift compunction, not her remark.
"
I'm not--unless you really mean--
you are?" Faint raillery gleamed in her eyes. "You did rather overwhelmingly take things for granted. But still ... after that...."
"Yes--after that ... if
you really mean it?"
"Well ... what do you think?"
"I simply
can't think," he confessed, with transparent honesty. "I hardly know if I'm on my head or my heels. I only know you've bewitched me. I'm infatuated--intoxicated with you. But ... if you
do care enough ... to marry me----"
"My dear--Roy--can you doubt it?"
He had never heard her voice so charged with emotion. For all answer, he held her close--with less assurance now--and kissed her again....
* * * * *
In course of time they remembered that a pause only lasts five minutes; that there were other partners.
"If we're not to be too flagrant, even for India," she said, rising with unperturbed deliberation, "I suggest we go in. Goodness knows where they've got to by now!"
He stood up also. "It matters a good deal more ... where
we've got to. I'll come over to-morrow and see ... your people...."
"No. You'll come over--and see me! We'll descend from the dream ... to the business; and have everything clear to our own satisfaction before we let in all the others. I always vowed I wouldn't accept a proposal after supper! If you're ... intoxicated, you might wake sober--disillusioned!"
"But I--I've kissed you," he stammered, suddenly overcome with shyness.
"So you have--a few times! I'm afraid we didn't keep count! I'm not really doubting either of us--Roy. But still.... Shall we say tea and a ride?"
He hesitated. "Sorry--I'm booked. I promised Lance----"
"Very well--dinner? Mother has some bridge people. Only one table. We can escape into the garden. Now--come along."
He drew a deep breath. More and more the detached part of him was realising....
They walked back rather briskly, not speaking; nor did he touch her again.
They found Lahore still dancing, sublimely unconcerned. Instinctively, Roy looked round for Lance. No sign of him in the ballroom or the card-room. And the crowded place seemed empty without him. It was queer.
Later on, he ran up against Barnard, who told him that Lance had gone home. _