Far to Seek Part 19

"Sit, little woman." He drew her down to the window-seat, keeping an arm round her. "The relief it is to feel I can talk it all over with you freely. Where the d.i.c.kens would we be, Roy and I, without our interpreter? And she does it all unbeknownst; like a Brownie. I _have_ been worrying lately. The boy's clean gone on his blessed idea. No reasoning with him; and the modern father doesn't venture to command!

It's as much as his place is worth! Yet _we_ see the hidden dangers clearer than he can. Wouldn't it be wiser to apply the curb discreetly before he slips off into an atmosphere where all the influences will tug one way?"

It was the sane masculine wisdom of the West. But hers--that was feminine and of the East--went deeper.

"Perhaps it is mother-weakness," she said, leaning against him and looking away at a purple cloud that hung low over the moor. "But it seems to me, by putting on the curb, you keep only his body from those influences. They would tug all the stronger in his soul. Not healthy and alive with joy of action, but cramped up and aching, like your legs when there is no room to stretch them. Then there would come impatience, turning his heart more to India, more away from you. Father had that kind of thwarting when young--so I know. Dearest one, am I too foolish?"

"You are my Wisest of Wise.--Is there more?"

"Yes. It is this. Perhaps, through being young and eager, he will make mistakes; wander too far. But even if he should wander to farthest end, all influence will _not_ tug one way. He will carry in his heart the star of you and the star of me. These will s.h.i.+ne brighter if he knows how we longed--for ourselves--to keep him here; yet, for himself, we let him go. I have remembered always one line of poetry you showed me at Como. 'To take by leaving, To hold by letting go.' That is true truth for many things. But for parents truest of all."

High counsel indeed! Good to hear; hard to act upon. Nevil Sinclair--knowing they would act upon it--let out an involuntary sigh and tightened his hold of the gentle, adoring woman, whose spirit towered so far above his own.

"Lilamani--you've won," he said, after a perceptible pause. "You deserve to win--and Roy will bless you. It's the high privilege of Mothers, I suppose, to conjure the moon out of heaven for their sons."

"Sometimes, by doing so, they nearly break their hearts," she answered very low.

He stooped and kissed her. "Keep yours intact--for me. I shall need it."

Her fingers closed convulsively on his--"England will seem sort of empty--without Roy. Is he dead keen on going this autumn?"

"Yes--I am afraid. A little because of young impatience. A little because he is troubled over Dyan; and he has much influence. There are so many now in India dragged two ways."

Nevil sighed again. "Bless the boy! It's an undeniable risk. And what the family will say to our Midsummer madness, G.o.d knows! Jane can be trusted to make the deuce of a row. And we can't even smooth matters by telling her of our private precaution----"

"No--not one little _word_."

Lilamani sat upright, a gleam of primitive hate in her eyes.

Nevil smiled, in spite of secret dismay. "You implacable little sinner!

Can't you ever forgive her like a Christian?"

"No--not ever." The tense quiet of her tone carried conviction. "Not only far-off things, I can never forget--nearly killing me and--and Roy.

But because she is always stabbing at me with sharp words and ugly thoughts. She cannot ever forgive that I am here--that I make you happy, which she could not believe. She is angry to be put in the wrong by mere Hindu wife----" She paused in her vehement rush of speech: saw the look in Nevil's face that recalled an earlier day; and anger vanished like a light blown out. "King of me--I am sorry. Only--it is true. And _she_ is Christian born. But I--down in my deepest places I am still--Rajputni.

Just the same as after twenty-three years of English wife, I am still in my heart--like the 'Queen who stood erect!'"

On the word she rose and confronted him, smiling into his troubled eyes; grace of girlhood and dignity of womanhood adorably mingled in her pose.

"Who was she?" Nevil asked, willingly lured from thoughts of Jane.

"Careless one! Have you forgotten the story of my Wonder-Woman--how a King, loving his Queen with all his soul, bowed himself in ecstasy, and 'took the dust off her feet' in presence of other wives who, from jealousy, cried: 'Shameless one, lift up the hands of the King to your head.' But the Queen stood erect, smiling gladly. 'Not so: for both feet and head are my Lord's. Can I have aught that is mine?'"

The swiftness of transition, the laughing tenderness of her eyes so moved him--and so potent in her was the magical essence of womanhood--that he, Sir Nevil Sinclair, Baronet, of Bramleigh Beeches, came near to taking the dust of her feet in very deed.

CHAPTER VI.

"Qui n'accepte pas le regret, n'accepte pas la vie."

Nevil's fears were justified to the full. Lady Roscoe was one of those exasperating people of whom one can predict, almost to a word, a look, what their att.i.tude will be on any given occasion. So Nevil, who s.h.i.+rked a "scene"--above all when conducted by Jane--put off telling her the unwelcome news as long as he dared, without running the dire risk of its reaching her "round the corner."

Meantime he was fortified and cheered by a letter from Cuthbert Broome--a shrewd, practical letter amounting to a sober confession of faith in Roy the embryo writer, as in Roy the budding man.

"I don't minimise the risk," he concluded, with his accustomed frankness (no relation to the engaging candour that dances a war-dance on other people's toes), "but, on broad lines, I hereby record my conviction that the son of you two and the grandson of Sir Lakshman Singh can be trusted to go far--to keep his head as well as his feet, even in slippery places. He is eager for knowledge, for work along his own lines. If you dam up this strong current, it may find other outlets, possibly less desirable. I came on a jewel the other day. As it's distinctly applicable, I pa.s.s it on.

"'The sole wisdom for man or boy who is haunted with the hovering of unseen wings, with the scent of unseen roses, and the subtle enticement of melodies unheard, is _work_. If he follow any of these, they vanish.

If he work, they will come unsought ..."

"Well, when Roy goes out, I undertake to provide him with work that will keep his brain alert and his pen busy. That's my proposed contribution to his start in life; and--though I say it!--not to be despised. Tell him I'll bear down upon the Beeches the first available week-end, and talk both your heads off!--Yours ever, C.B."

"After _that_," was Nevil's heroic conclusion, "Jane can say what she d.a.m.n well pleases."

He broke the news to her forthwith--by post; the usual expedient of those who s.h.i.+rk "scenes." He furthermore took the precaution to add that the matter was finally settled.

She replied next morning--by wire. "Cannot understand. Coming down at once."

And, in record time, on the wings of her new travelling car--she came.

As head of the Sinclair clan--in years and worldly wisdom at least--she could do no less. From her point of view, it was Nevil's clear duty to discourage the Indian strain in the boy, as far as that sentimental, headstrong wife of his would permit. But Nevil's sense of duty needed constant galvanising, lest it die of inanition. It was her sacred mission in life to galvanise it, especially in the matter of Roy; and no one should ever say _she_ s.h.i.+rked a disagreeable obligation. It may safely be added that no one ever did!

Nevil--who would have given a good deal to be elsewhere--awaited her in the library: and at the first shock of their encountering glances, he stiffened all through. He was apt to be restive under advice, and rebellious under dictation; facts none knew better than Jane, who throve on advice and dictation--given, not received! She still affected the neat hard coat and skirt and the neat hard summer hat that had so distressed the awakening beauty-sense of nine-year-old Roy: only, in place of the fierce wing there uprose in majesty a severely wired bow.

Jane was so unvarying, outside and in; a worse failing, almost, in the eyes of this hopelessly artistic household, than her talent for pouncing, or advising or making up other people's minds.

But to-day, as she glanced round the familiar room, her sigh--half anger, half bitterness of heart--was genuine. She did care intensely, in her own way, for the brother whom she hectored without mercy. And he too cared--in his own way--more than he chose to reveal. But their love was a dumb thing, rooted in ancestral mysteries. Their surface clash of temperament was more loquacious.

"I suppose we're fairly safe from interruption?" she asked, with ominous emphasis; and Nevil gravely indicated the largest leather chair.

"I believe the others are out," he said, half sitting on the edge of the writing-table and proceeding to light a cigarette. "But, upon my soul, I don't know _why_ you put yourself out to come down all this way when I told you plainly everything was fixed up."

"You thought I'd swallow that--and keep my mouth shut?" she retorted, bristling visibly. "_I'm_ no fool, Nevil, if _you_ are. I _told_ you how it would be, when you went out in '99. You wouldn't listen then. Perhaps you'll at least have the sense to listen _now_?"

Nevil shrugged. "As you've come all this way for the satisfaction of airing your views--I've not much choice in the matter."

And the lat.i.tude, thus casually given, she took in full measure. For twenty minutes, by the clock, she aired her views in a stream of vigorous colloquial English, lapsing into ready-made phrases of melodrama, common to the normally inexpressive, in moments of excitement....

To the familiar tuning-up process, Nevil listened unmoved. But his anger rose with her rising eloquence:--the unwilling anger of a cool man, more formidable than mere temper.

Such fine distinctions, however, were unknown to Jane. If you were in a temper, you were in a temper. That was flat. And she rather wanted to rouse Nevil's. Heated opposition would stiffen her own....

"India of all countries in the world!" she culminated--a desperate note invading her wrath. "The one place where he should _not_ be allowed to sow his wild oats--if the modern anaemic young man has enough red blood in his veins--for that sort of thing. And it's your obvious duty to be quite frank with him on the subject. If you had an ounce of common-sense in your make-up, you'd see it for yourself. But I always say the clever people are the biggest fools. And Roy's in the same boat--being your son. No ballast. All in the clouds. _That's_ the fruits of Lil's fancy education. And you can't say I didn't warn you. What he needs is discipline--a tight hand. Why not one of the Services? If he gets bitten with India--at his age, it's quite on the cards that he may go turning Hindu--or even repeat _your_ folly----"

She paused, simply for lack of breath--and became suddenly alive to the set stillness of her brother's face.

"_My_ folly--as you are pleased to call it," he said with concentrated scorn, "has incidentally made our name famous, and cleared the old place of mortgage. For that reason alone, you might have the grace to refrain from insulting my wife."

She flung up her head, like a horse at a touch of the curb.