"And you are peculiarly well fitted to a.s.sist them, I admit--if Father's willing to bear the cost of your trip. It's a compact between us. The snare of your A1 dinner shall not have been laid in vain!"

They sat on together for more than an hour. Then Broome departed, leaving Roy to dream--in a blue mist of tobacco smoke--the opal-tinted ego-centric dreams of one-and-twenty.

And to-night one dream eclipsed them all.

For years the germ of it had lived in him like a seed in darkness--growing with him as he grew. All incidents and impressions that struck deep had served to vitalise it: that early championship of his mother; her tales of Rajputana; his friendship with Desmond and Dyan; and, not least, his father's Ramayana pictures in the long gallery at home, that had seized his imagination in very early days, when their appeal was simply to his innate sense of colour, and the reiterate wonder and beauty of his mother's face in those moving scenes from the story of Sita--India's crown of womanhood....

Then there was the vivid memory of a room in his grandfather's house; the stately old man, with his deep voice, speaking words that he only came to understand years after; and the look in his mother's eyes, as she clapped her hands without sound, in the young fashion he loved....

And Chandranath--another glimpse of India; the ugly side ...And stories from Tod's 'Rajasthan'--that grim and stirring panorama of romance and chivalry, of cruelty and cunning; orgies of slaughter and miracles of high-hearted devotion....

Barbaric; utterly foreign to life, as he had lived it, those tales of ancient India most strangely awakened in him a vague, thrilling sense of familiarity ... He _knew_...! Most clearly he knew the spirit that fired them all, when Akbar's legions broke, wave on wave, against the mighty rock-fortress of Chitor--far-famed capital of Mewar, thrice sacked by Islam and deserted by her royal house; so that only the ghost of her glory remains--a protest, a challenge, an inspiration....

Sometimes he dreamed it all, with amazing vividness. And in the dreams there was always the feeling that he knew ...It was a very queer, very exciting sensation. He had spoken of it to no one but his mother and Tara; except once at Marlborough, when he had been moved to try whether Lance would understand.

Priceless old Desmond! It had been killing to watch his face--interested, sceptical, faintly alarmed, when he discovered that it was not an elaborate attempt to pull his leg. By way of rea.s.suring him, Roy had confessed it was a family failing. When things went wrong his mother nearly always knew: and sometimes she came to him, in dreams that were not exactly dreams. What harm?

Desmond, puzzled and sceptical, was not prepared to hazard an opinion.

If Roy was made that way, of course he couldn't help it. And Roy, half indignant, had declared he wouldn't for worlds be made any other way....

To-night, by some freak of memory, it all came back to him through the dream-inducing haze of tobacco smoke. And there, on his writing-table, stood a full-length photograph of Lance in Punjab cavalry uniform.

Soldiering on the Indian Border, fulfilling himself in his own splendid fashion, he was clearly in his element; attached to his father's old regiment, with Paul for second-in-command; proud of his strapping Sikhs and Pathans; watched over, revered and implicitly obeyed by the sons of men who had served with his father--men for whom the mere name Desmond was a talisman. For that is India's way.

And here was he, Roy, still at his old trick of scribbling poems and dreaming dreams. For a fleeting moment, Desmond was out of the picture; but when time was ripe he would be in it again. The link between them was indestructible--elemental. Poet and Warrior; the eternal complements. In the Rig Veda[2] both are one; both _Agni Kula_--'born of fire'; no fulness of life for the one without the other.

The years dominated by Desmond had been supreme. They had left school together, when Roy was seventeen; and, at the time, their parting had seemed like the end of everything. Yet, very soon after, he had found himself in the thick of fresh delights--a wander-year in Italy, Greece, the Mediterranean, with the parents and Christine----

And now, here he was, nearing the end of the Oxford interlude--dominated by Dyan and India; and, not least, by Oxford herself, who counts her lovers by the million; holds them for the s.p.a.ce of three or four years and sets her impress for life on their minds and hearts. For all his dreamings and scribblings, he had played hard and worked hard. In the course of reading for Greats, he had imbibed large draughts of the cla.s.sics; had browsed widely on later literature, East and West; won the Newcastle, and filled a vellum-bound volume--his mother's gift--with verse and sketches in prose, some of which had appeared in the more exclusive weeklies. He had also picked up Hindustani from Dyan, and looked forward to tackling Sanskrit. In the Schools, he had taken a First in Mods; and, with reasonable luck, hoped for a First in the Finals. Once again, parting would be a wrench, but India glowed like a planet on the horizon; and he fully intended to make that interlude the pick of them all....

What novels he would write! Not modern impressionist stuff; not mean streets and the photographic touch. No--his adventuring soul, with its tinge of Eastern mysticism, craved colour and warmth and light;--not the mere trappings of romance, but the essence of it that imparts a deeper sense of the significance and mystery of life; that probes to the mainsprings of personality, the veiled yet vital world of spiritual adventure ... Pain and conflict; powers of evil, of doubt and indecision:--no evading these. But in any imaginative work he essayed, beauty must be the prevailing element--if only as a star in darkness.

And nowadays Beauty had become almost suspect. Cleverness, cynicism, s.e.x and sensation--all had their votaries and their vogue. Mere Beauty, like Cinderella, was left sitting among the ashes of the past; and Roy--prince or no--was her devout lover.

To the son of Nevil and Lilamani, her clear call could never seem either a puritanical snare of the flesh or a delusion of the senses; but rather, a grace of the spirit, the joy of things seen detached from self-interest: the visible proof that love, not power, is the last word of Creation. Happily for him, its outward form and inward essence had been his daily bread ever since he had first consciously looked upon his mother's face, consciously delighted in his father's pictures. They lived it, those two: and the life lived transcends argument.

At this uplifted moment--whatever might come later--he blessed them for his double heritage; for the perfect accord between them that inspired his hope of ultimate harmony between England and India, in spite of barriers and complexities and fomenters of discord; a harmony that could never arrive by veiled condescension out of servile imitation. Intimacy with Dyan and his mother had made that quite clear. Each must honestly will to understand the other; each holding fast the essence of individuality, while respecting in the other precisely those baffling qualities that strengthen their union and make it vital to the welfare of both. Instinctively he pictured them as man and woman; and on general lines the a.n.a.logy seemed to hold good. He had yet to discover that a.n.a.logies are often deceptive things; peculiarly so, in this case, since India is many, not one. Yet there lurked a germ of truth in his seedling idea: and he was at the age when ideas and tremendous impulses stir in the blood like sap in spring-time; an age to be a reformer, a fanatic or a sensualist.

Too often, alas, before the years bring power of adjustment, the live spark of enthusiasm is extinct....

To-night it burned in Roy with a steady flame. If only he could enthuse his father----!

He supposed he would go in any case: but he lacked the rebel instinct of modern youth. He wanted to share, to impart his hidden treasure; not to argue the bloom off it. And his father seemed tacitly to discourage rhapsodies over Indian literature and art. You couldn't say he was not keen: only the least little bit unresponsive to outbursts of keenness in his son; so that Roy never felt quite at ease on the subject. If only he could walk into the room now, while Roy's brain was seething with it all, high on the upward curve of a wave....

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Ancient Hindu Scriptures.]

CHAPTER IV.

"You could humble at your feet the proudest heads in the world. But it is your loved ones ... whom you choose to worship. Therefore I worship you."

--RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

Roy, after due consideration, decided that he would speak first to his father--the one doubtful element in the home circle. But habit and the obsession of the moment proved too strong, when his mother came to 'tuck him up,' as she had never failed to do since nursery days.

Seated on the edge of his bed, in the shaded light, she looked like some rare, pale moth in her moon-coloured sari flecked and bordered with gold; amber earrings and a rope of amber beads--his own gift; first fruits of poetic earnings. The years between had simply ripened and embellished her; rounded a little the oval of her cheek; lent an added dignity to her grace of bearing and enriched her wisdom of the heart.

It was as he supposed. She had understood his thoughts long before. He flung out his hand--a fine, nervous hand--and laid it on her knee.

"You're a miracle. I believe you know all about it."

"I believe--I do," she answered, letting her own hand rest on his; moving her fingers, now and then, in the ghost of a caress:--an endearing way she had. "You are wishing--to go out there?"

"Yes. I simply must. _You_ understand?"

She inclined her head and, for a moment, veiled her eyes. "I am proud.

But you cannot understand how difficult ... for us ... letting you go.

And Dad...."

She paused.

"You think he'll hate it--want to keep me here?"

"My darling--'hate' is too strong. He cares very much for all that makes friendship between England and India. But--is it wonder if he cares more for his own son? You will speak to him soon?"

"To-morrow. Unless--a word or two, first, from you----"

"No, not that!" She smiled at his old boyish faith in her. "Better to keep me outside. You see--I _am_ India. So I am already too much in it that way."

"You are in it up to the hilt!" he declared with sudden fervour: and--his tongue unloosed--he poured out to her a measure of his pent up feeling; how they had inspired him--she and his father; how he naturally hoped they would back him up; and a good deal more that was for her private ear alone....

Her immense capacity for listening, her eloquent silence and gentle flashes of raillery, her occasional caress--all were balm to him in his electrical mood.

Were ever two beings quite so perfectly in tune----?

Could he possibly leave her? Could he face the final wrench?

When at last she stooped to kiss him, the faint clear whiff of sandalwood waked a hundred memories; and he held her close a long time, her cheek against his hair.

"Bad boy! Let me go," she pleaded; and, with phenomenal obedience, he unclasped his hands.

"See if you _can_ go now!"

It was his old childish game. The moment she stirred, his hands were locked again.