His attention was palpably distracted by a vision of Tara among the cushions in the bows; an arm linked through her mother's, as though defending her against the implication of being older than any one else, or in the least degree out of it because of that trifling detail--tacitly admitted, while hotly denied; which was Tara all over.

Certainly Lady Despard still looked amazingly young; still emanated the vital charm she had transmitted to her child. And Tara at twenty, in soft b.u.t.ter-coloured frock with roses in her hat, was a vision alluring enough to distract any young man from concentration on a punt pole.

Vivid, eager and venturesome, singularly free from the bane of self-consciousness; not least among her graces--and rare enough to be notable--was the grace of her chivalrous affection for the older generation. In Tara's eyes, girls who patronised their mothers and tolerated their fathers were anathema. It was a trait certain to impress Roy's Rajput cousin; and Broome wondered whether Helen was alive to the disturbing possibility; whether, for all her genuine love of the East, she would acquiesce....

Only the other day, it seemed, he and she had sat together among the rocks of the dear old Cap, listening to Nevil's amazing news. She it was who had championed his choice of a bride: and Lilamani had justified her championship to the full. But then--Lilamani was one in many thousands; and this affair would be the other way about:--Tara, the apple of their eye; Tara, with her wild-flower face and her temperament of clear flame----?

How sharply they tugged at his middle-aged heart, these casual and opinionated young things, with their follies and fanaticisms, their Jacob's ladders. .h.i.tched perilously to the stars; with their triumphs and failures and disillusions all ahead of them; airily impervious to proffered help and advice from those who would agonise to serve them if they could....

A jarring b.u.mp in the small of his back cut short his flagrantly Victorian musings. Dyan's punt was the offender; and Dyan himself, clutching the pole that had betrayed him, was almost pitched into the river.

His achievement was greeted by a shout of laughter, and an ironic "Played indeed!" from Cuthbert Gordon--Broome's grandson. Roy, tumbled from some starry dream of his own, flashed out imperiously: "Look alive, you blithering idiot. 'Who are you a-shoving'?"

The Rajput's face darkened; but before he could retort, Tara had risen and stepped swiftly to his side. Her fingers closed on the pole; and she smiled straight into his clouded eyes.

"Let _me_, please. I'm sick of lazing and fearfully keen. And I can't allow my Mother to be drownded by anyone _but_ me. I'd be obliged to murder the other body, which would be awkward--for us both!"

"Miss Despard--there is no danger----" he muttered--impervious to humour; and--as if by chance--one of his hands half covered hers.

"Let go," she commanded, so low that no one else knew she had spoken; so sternly that Dyan's fingers unclosed as if they had touched fire.

"Now, don't fuss. Go and sit down," she added, in her lighter vein.

"You've done your share. And you're jolly grateful to me, really. But too proud to own it!"

"_Not_ too proud to obey you," he muttered.

She saw the words rather than heard them; and he turned away without daring to meet her eyes.

It all pa.s.sed in a few seconds, but it left him tingling with repressed rage. He had made a fool of himself in her eyes; had probably given away his secret to the whole party. After all, what matter? He could not much longer have kept it hidden. By the touch of hands and his daring words he had practically told her....

As he settled himself, her clear voice rang out: "Wake up, Roy! I'll race you to the backwater."

They raced to the backwater; and Tara won by half a length, amid cheers from the men.

"Well, you see, I _had_ to let you," Roy explained, as she confronted him, flushed with triumph. "Seemed a shame to cut you out. Not as if you were a giddy suffragette!"

"_Qui s'excuse--s'accuse!_" she retorted. "Anyway--_I'm_ the winner."

"Right you are. The way of girls was ever so. No matter what line you take, it's safe to be the wrong one."

"Hark at the Cynic!" jeered young Cuthbert. "Were you forty on the 9th, or was it forty-five?"

Roy grinned. "Good old Cuthers! Don't exhaust yourself trying to be funny! Fish out the drinks. We've earned them, haven't we--High Tower Princess?" The last, confidentially, for Tara's ear alone.

And Dyan, seeing the smile in her eyes, felt jealousy pierce him like a red-hot wire.

The supper, provided by Roy and Dyan, was no scratch wayside meal, but an ambrosial affair:--salmon mayonnaise, ready mixed; glazed joints of chicken; strawberries and cream; lordly chocolate boxes; sparkling moselle--and syphons for the abstemious.

It was a lively meal: Roy, dropped from the clouds, the film of the East gone from his face, was simply Nevil again; even as young Cuthbert, with his large build and thatch of tawny hair, was a juvenile edition of Broome. And the older man, watching them, bandying chaff with them, renewed his youth for one careless golden hour.

The punts were ranged alongside; and they all ate together, English and Indian. No irksome caste rules on this side of the water; no hint of condescension in the friendly att.i.tude of young Oxford. Nothing to jar the over-sensibility of young India--p.r.o.ne to suspect slight where no thought of it exists; too often, also, treated to exhibitions of ill-bred arrogance that undo in an hour the harmonising work of years.

Dyan sat by Tara, antic.i.p.ating her lightest need; courage rising by leaps and bounds. Aruna, from her nest of cushions, exchanged lively sallies with Roy. Petted by a college full of friendly English girls, she had very soon lost what little shyness she ever possessed. Now and again, when his eyes challenged hers, she would veil them and watch him surrept.i.tiously; one moment approving his masculine grace; the next, boldly asking herself: "Does he see how I am wearing the favourite sari--and how my coral beads make my lips look red?" And again: "Why do they make foolish talk of a gulf between East and West?"

To that profound question came no answer in words; only in hidden stirrings, that she preferred to ignore. Both brother and sister had persuaded themselves that talk of a gulf was exaggerated by unfriendly spirits. They, at all events, having built their bridge, took its stability for granted. Children of an emotional race, it sufficed to discover that they loved the cool green freshness of England, the careless kindly freedom of her life and ways; the hum of her restless, smoky, all-embracing London; her miles and miles of books and pictures.

Above everything they loved Oxford, where all were brothers in spirit--with a proper sense of difference between the brothers of one's own college and the mere outsider:--Oxford, at this particular hour of this particular June evening. And at this actual moment, they loved salmon mayonnaise and crushed strawberries fully as much as any other manifestation of the delectable land.

And down in subconscious depths--untroubled by the play of surface emotions--burned their pa.s.sionate, unreasoned love of India that any chance breath might rekindle to a flame.

Presently, as the sun drew down to earth, trees and meadows swam in a golden haze. Arrows of gold, stealing through alders and willows, conjured mere leaves into discs of pure green light. Clouds of pollen brightened to dust of gold. In the near haze midges flickered; and, black against the brightness, swallows wheeled and dipped, uttering thin cries in the ecstasy of their evening flight.

On the two punts in the backwater a great peace descended after the hilarity of their feast. Clouds of cigarette smoke kept midges at bay.

In the deepening stillness small sounds a.s.serted themselves--piping of gnats, the trill of happy birds, s.n.a.t.c.hes of disembodied laughter and talk from other parties in other punts, somewhere out of sight....

Only Aruna did not smoke; and Emily Barnard, her fanatic devotee, retired with her to the bank, where they made a lazy pretence of "washing up." But Aruna's eyes _would_ stray toward the rec.u.mbent figure of Roy, when she fancied Emmie was not looking. And Emmie--who could see very well without looking--wished him at the bottom of the river.

Propped on an elbow, he lay among Aruna's cushions, his senses stirred by the faint carnation scent she used, enlarging on his latest enthusiasm--Rabindranath Tagore, the first of India's poet-saints to challenge the ethics of the withdrawn life. When the mood was on, the veil of reserve swept aside, he could pour out his ardours, his protests, his theories, in an eloquent rush of words. And Aruna--absently wiping spoons and forks--listened entranced. He seemed to be addressing no one in particular; but as often as not his gaze rested on Broome, as though he were indirectly conveying to him thoughts he felt shy of airing when they were alone.

A pause in the flow of his talk left a s.p.a.ce of silence into which the encompa.s.sing peace and radiance stole like an inflowing tide. None loved better than Roy the ghostly music of silence; but to-night his brain was filled with the music of words--not his own.

"Just listen to this," he said, without preamble. His eyes took on their far-away look; his voice dropped a tone.

"The night is night of mid-May; the breeze is the breeze of the South.

"From my heart comes out and dances the image of my Desire.

"The gleaming vision flits on.

"I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me astray.

"I seek what I cannot get; I get what I do not seek."

To that shining fragment of truth and beauty, his audience paid the fitting tribute of silence; and his gaze--returning to earth--caught, in Tara's eyes, a reflection of his exalted mood. Dyan saw it also; and once more that red-hot wire pierced his heart.

It pa.s.sed in a second; and Roy was speaking again--not to Tara, but to her mother.

"Is there any poet, East or West, who can _quite_ so exquisitely capture the essence of a mood, hold it lightly, like a fluttering bird, and as lightly let it go?"

Lady Despard smiled approval at the simile. "In that one," she said, "he has captured more than a mood--the very essence of life.--Have you met him?"

"Yes, once--after a lecture. We had a talk--I'll never forget. There's wonderful stuff in the new volume. I know most of it by heart."

"Spare us, good Lord," muttered Cuthbert--neither prejudiced nor perverse, but British to the core. "If you start again, I'll retaliate with Job and the Psalms!"

Roy retorted with the stump of an extinct cigarette. It smote the offender between the eyebrows, leaving a caste-mark of warm ash to attest the accuracy of his aim.

"Bull's eye!" Tara scored softly; and Roy, turning on his elbow, appealed to Broome. "Jeffers, please extinguish him!" ("Jeffers" being a corruption of G.F., alias G.o.dfather).

Broome laughed. "I had a hazy notion he was your show candidate for the Indian Civil!"