"My G.o.d!" His hands dropped with a crash on the keyboard. Then, in a low swift rush: "Thea, you don't _mean_ it--you're pulling my leg."

"Bible-oath I'm not. It's too safely tucked under the piano!"

"My G.o.d!" he repeated softly, ignoring her incurable frivolity. "Has he _said_ anything?"

"No. But it's plain they're both smitten more or less."

"Smitten be d.a.m.ned."

"Lance! I won't have Aruna insulted. Let me tell you she's charming and cultivated; much better company than Floss. And I love her like a daughter----"

"Would you have her marry _Roy_?" he flung out wrathfully.

"Of course not. But still----"

"_Me_--perhaps?" he queried with such fine scorn that she burst out laughing.

"You priceless gem! You are _the_ unadulterated Anglo-Indian!"

"Well--what _else_ would I be? What else are you, by the same token?"

"Not adulterated," she denied stoutly. "Perhaps a wee bit less 'prejudiced.' The awful result, I suppose, of failing to keep myself scrupulously detached from my surroundings. Besides, you couldn't be married twenty years to that Vinx and not widen out a bit. Of course I'm quite aware that widening out has its insidious dangers and limitation its heroic virtues--Hush! Don't fly into a rage. _You're_ not limited, old boy. You loved--Lady Sinclair."

"I adored her," Lance said very low; and his fingers strayed over the keys again. "_But_--she was an accomplished fact. And--she was one in many thousands. She's gone now, though. And there's poor Sir Nevil----"

He rose abruptly and strode over to the fireplace. "Tell you what, Thea.

If the bee in Roy's bonnet is buzzing to _that_ tune, some one's got to stop it----"

"That's my point!" She swung round confronting him. "Why not whisk him back to the Punjab? It does seem the only way----"

Lance nodded again. "Now you talk sense. Mind, I don't believe he'll come. Roy's a tougher customer than he looks to the naked eye. But I'll have a shot at it to-night. If needs must, I'll tell him why. I can swallow half a regiment of his Dyans; but not--the other thing. I hope you find us intact in the morning!"

She flew to him and kissed him with fervour; and she was still in his arms, when Roy strolled casually into the room.

There were only three outsiders that night: the State Engineer and two British officers in the Maharajah's employ. But they sat down sixteen to dinner; and, very shortly after, came three others in the persons of Dyan and Sir Lakshman Singh, with his distinguished friend Mahomed Inayat Khan, from Hyderabad. Nothing Thea enjoyed better than getting a mixed batch of men together and hearing them talk--especially shop; for then she knew their hearts were in it. They were happy.

And to-night, her chance a.s.sortment was amazingly varied, even for India:--Army, 'Political,' Civil; P.W.D. and Native States; New India, in the person of Dyan; and not least, the 'medical mish' pair; an element rich in mute inglorious heroism, as the villagers and 'depressed cla.s.ses' of India know. She took keen delight in the racial interplay of thought and argument, with Roy, as it were, for bridge-builder between.

How he would relish the idea! He seemed very much in the vein this evening, especially since his grandfather arrived. He was clearly making an impression on Mr Mayne and Inayat Khan; and a needle-p.r.i.c.k of remorse touched her heart. For Aruna, annexed by Captain Martin's subaltern, was watching him too, when she fancied no one was looking; and Lance, attentively silent, was probably laying deep plans for his capture. A wicked shame--but still...!

As a matter of fact, Lance, too, was troubled with faint compunction. He had never seen Roy in this kind of company, nor in this particular vein.

And, reluctantly, he admitted that it did seem rather a waste of his mentally reviving vigour hauling him back to the common round of tennis and dances and polo--yes, even sacred polo--when he was so dead keen on this infernal agitation business, and seemed to know such a deuce of a lot about it all.

Lance himself knew far too little; and was anxious to hear more, for the intimate, practical reason that he was not quite happy about his Sikh troop. The Pathan lot were all right. But the Sikhs--his pride and joy--were being 'got at' by those devils in the City. And, if these men could be believed, 'things' were going to be very much worse; not only 'down country,' but also in the Punjab, India's sure shield against the invader. To a Desmond, the mere suggestion of the Punjab turning traitor was as if one impugned the courage of his father or the honour of his mother; so curiously personal is India's hold upon the hearts of Englishmen who come under her spell.

So Lance listened intently, if a little anxiously, to all that Thea's 'mixed biscuits' had to say on that absorbing subject. For to-night shop held the field: if that could be called shop, which vitally concerned the fate of England and India, and of British dominion in the East.

Agitation against the sane measures embodied in the Rowlatt Bills was already astir, like bubbles round a pot before it boils. And Inayat Khan had come straight from Bombay, where the National Congress had rejected with scorn the latest palliative from Home; had demanded the release of all revolutionaries, and wholesale repeal of laws against sedition. Here was shop sufficiently ominous to overshadow all other topics: and there was no _gene_, no constraint. The Englishmen could talk freely in the presence of cultured Indians who stood for Jaipur and Hyderabad, since both States were loyal to the core.

Dyan, like Lance, spoke little and pondered much on the talk of these men, whose straight speech and thoughts were refreshing as their own sea breezes after the fumes of rhetoric, the fog of false values that had bemused his brain these three years. Strange how all the ugliness and pain of hate had shrivelled away; how he could even shake hands, untroubled, with that 'imperialistic bureaucrat' the Commissioner of Delhi, whom he might have been told off, any day, to 'remove from this mortal coil.' Strange to sit there, over against him, while he puffed his cigar and talked, without fear, of increasing antagonism, increasing danger to himself and his kind.

"There's no sense in disguising the unpalatable truth that New India hates us," said he in his gruff, deliberate voice. "Present company excepted, I hope!"

He gravely inclined his head towards Dyan, who responded mutely with a flutter at his heart. Impossible! The man could not suspect----?

And the man, looking him frankly in the eyes, added: "The spirit of the Mutiny's not extinct--and we know it, those of us that count."

Dyan simply sat dumfounded. It was Sir Lakshman who said, in his guarded tone: "Nevertheless, sir, the bulk of our people are loyal and peaceable. Only I fear there are some in England who do not count that fact to their credit."

"If they ever become anything else, it won't be to _our_ credit," put in Roy. "If we can't stand up to bl.u.s.ter and sedition with that moral force at our backs, we shall deserve to go under."

"Well spoken, Roy," said his grandfather still more quietly. "Let us hope it is not yet too late. Sadi says, 'The fountain-head of a spring can be blocked with a stick; but in full flood, it cannot be crossed, even on an elephant.'"

They exchanged a glance that stirred Roy's pulses and gave him confidence to go on: "I don't believe it is too late. But what bothers me is this--are we treating our moral force as it deserves? Are we giving them loyalty in return for theirs--the sort they can understand?

With a dumb executive and voluble 'patriots,' persuading or intimidating, the poor beggars haven't a dog's chance, unless we openly stand by them; openly smite our enemies--and theirs."

He boldly addressed himself to Mayne, the sole symbol of authority present; and the Commissioner listened, with a gleam of amused approval in his eye.

"You're young, Mr Sinclair--which doesn't mean you're wrong! Most of us, in our limited fashion, are trying to do what we can on those lines.

But, after spending half a lifetime in this climate, doing our utmost to give the peasant--_and_ the devil--his due, we're apt to grow cynical----"

"Not to mention suicidal!" grunted the slave of work and whisky. "We Ca.n.a.l coolies--hardly visible to the naked eye--are adding something like an Egypt a year to the Empire. But, bless you, England takes no notice. Only let some underbred planter or raw subaltern bundle an Indian out of his carriage, or a drunken Tommy kick his servant in the spleen, and the whole British Const.i.tution comes down about our ears!"

"Very true, sir--very true!" Inayat Khan leaned forward. His teeth gleamed in the dark of his beard. His large firm-featured face abounded in good sense and good humour. "How shall a man see justly if he holds the telescope wrong way round, as too many do over there. It also remains true, however, that the manners of certain Anglo-Indians create a lot of bad feeling. Your so-called reforms do not interest the ma.s.ses or touch their imagination. But the boot of the low-cla.s.s European touches their backs and their pride and hardens their hearts. That is only human nature. In the East a few gold grains of courtesy touch the heart more than a _khillat_[18] of political hotch-potch. I myself--though it is getting dangerous to say so!--am frankly opposed to this uncontrolled pa.s.sion for reform. When all have done their duty in this great struggle, why such undignified clamour for rewards, which are now being flung back in the giver's teeth. It has become a vicious circle. It was British policy in the first place--not so?--that stirred up this superficial ferment; and now it grows alarming, it is doctored with larger doses of the same medicine. We Indians who know how little the bulk of India has really changed, could laugh at the tamasha of Western fancy-dress, in small matters; but time for laughing has gone by. Time has come for saying firmly--all rights and aspirations will be granted, stopping _short_ of actual government--otherwise----!"

He flung up his hands, looked round at the listening faces, and realised how completely he had let himself go. "Forgive me, Colonel. I fear I am talking too much," he said in a changed tone.

"Indeed no," Colonel Leigh a.s.sured him warmly. "In these difficult days, loyal and courageous friends like yourself are worth their weight in gold mohurs!"

Visibly flattered, the Moslem surveyed his own bulky person with a twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt. "If value should go by weight, Inayat Khan would be worth a king's ransom! But I a.s.sure you, Colonel, your country has many hundreds of friends like myself all over India, if only she would seek them out and give them encouragement--as Mr Sinclair said--instead of wasting it on volubles, who will never cease making trouble till India is in a blaze."

As the man's patent sincerity had warmed the hearts of his hearers, so the pointed truth of that last p.r.i.c.ked them sharply and probed deep. For they knew themselves powerless; mere atoms of the whirling dust-cloud, raised, in pa.s.sing, by the chariot-wheels of Progress--or perdition?

The younger men rose briskly, as if to shake off some physical discomfort. Dyan--very much aware of Aruna and the subaltern--approached them with a friendly remark. Roy and Lance said, "Play up, Thea! Your innings," almost in a breath--and crooked little fingers.

Thea needed no second bidding. While the men talked, an insidious depression had stolen over her spirit--and brooded there, light and formless as a river mist. Half an hour with her fiddle, and Lance at his best, completely charmed it away. But the creepiness of it had been very real: and the memory remained.

When all the others had dispersed, she lingered over the fire with Roy, while Lance, at the piano, with diplomatic intent, drifted into his friend's favourite Nocturne--the Twelfth; that inimitable rendering of a mood, hushed yet exalted, soaring yet brooding, 'the sky and the nest as well.' The two near the fire knew every bar by heart, but as the liquid notes stole out into the room, their fitful talk stopped dead.

Lance was playing superbly, giving every note its true value; the cadence rising and falling like waves of a still sea; softer and softer; till the last note faded away, ghostlike--a sigh rather than a sound.

Roy remained motionless, one elbow on the mantelpiece. Thea's lashes were wet with the tears of rarefied emotion--tears that neither p.r.i.c.k nor burn. The silence itself seemed part of the music; a silence it were desecration to break. Without a word to Roy, she crossed the room; kissed Lance good-night; clung a moment to his hands that had woven the spell, smiling her thanks, her praise; and slipped away, leaving the two together.

Roy subsided into a chair. Lance came over to the fire and stood there warming his hands.