Yet she was merely remarking, with a small sigh, "You can't think how refreshing it is to get a little real talk sometimes with a cultivated man who is neither a soldier nor a civilian. Even in a big station, we're so boxed in with 'shop' and personalities. The men are luckier.

They can escape now and then; shake off the women as one shakes off burrs----!"

Another glance here; half sceptical, wholly captivating.

"It's easier said than done," admitted Roy, recalling his own partial failure.

"Charming of you to confess it! Dare I confess that I've found the Hall and the tennis rather flat these few days--without imperilling your phenomenal modesty?"

"I think you dare." It was he who looked full at her now. "My modesty badly needs bucking up--this evening."

Her feigned surprise was delicately done. "What a shame! Who's been snubbing you? Our clever M.B.?"

"Not at all. You've got the initials wrong."

"_Did_ it hurt your feelings--as much as all that?" She dropped the flimsy pretence and her eyes proffered apology.

"Well--you invited me."

"And mother invited Mr Hayes! The fact is--he's been rather in evidence these few days. And one can't flick _him_ off like an ordinary mortal.

He's a 'coming man'!" She folded hands and lips and looked deliciously demure. "All the same--it _was_ unkind. You were so unhappy at dinner. I could feel it all that way off. Be magnanimous and come for a ride to-morrow--do."

And Roy--the detached, the disillusioned--accepted with alacrity.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Washerman.]

[Footnote 20: Dusters.]

[Footnote 21: Gardener.]

[Footnote 22: Bad characters.]

CHAPTER IV.

"For every power, a man pays toll in a corresponding weakness; and probably the artist pays heaviest of all."--M.P. WILLc.o.c.kS.

It was the morning of the great Gymkhana, to be followed by the Bachelors' Ball. For Lah.o.r.e's unfailing social energy was not yet spent; though Depot troops had gone to the Hills, and the leave season was open, releasing a fortunate few; leaving the rest to fretful or stoical endurance of the stealthy, stoking-up process of a Punjab hot-weather.

And the true inwardness of those three words must be burned into body and brain, season after season, to be even remotely understood.

Already earth and air were full of whispered warnings. Roses and sweet-peas were fading. Social life was virtually suspended between twelve and two, the 'calling hours' of the cold weather; and at sunset the tree-crickets shrilled louder than ever--careless heralds of doom.

Human tempers were shorter; and even the night did not now bring unfailing relief.

Roy had been sleeping badly again; partly the heat, partly the clash of sensations within him. This morning, after hours of tossing and dozing and dreaming--not the right kind of dreams at all,--he was up and out before sunrise, forsaking the bed that betrayed him for the saddle that never failed to bring a measure of respite from the fever of body and mind that was stultifying, insidiously, his reason and his will.

Still immersed in his novel, he had come up to Lah.o.r.e heart-free, purpose-free; vaguely aware that virtue had gone out of him; looking forward to a few weeks of careless enjoyment, between spells of work; and above all, to the 'high old time' he and Lance would have together beyond Kashmir. Women and marriage were simply not in the picture. His att.i.tude to that inevitable event was, on his own confession--'not yet.'

Possibly, when he got Home, he might discover it was Tara, after all. It would need some courage to propose again. For the memory of that juvenile fiasco still p.r.i.c.ked his sensitive pride. A touch of the Rajput came out there. Letters from Serbia seemed to dawdle unconscionably by the way. But, in leisurely course, he had received an answer to his screed about Dyan and the quest; a letter alive with all he loved best in her--enthusiasm, humour, vivid sympathy, deepened and enlarged by experiences that could not yet be told. But Tara was far and Miss Arden was near; and, in the mysterious workings of s.e.x magnetism, mere propinquity too often prevails.

And all the others seemed farther still. They wrote regularly, affectionately. Yet their letters--especially his father's--seemed to tell precious little of the things he really wanted to know. Perhaps his own had been more reserved than he realised. There had been so much at Jaipur and Delhi that he could not very well enlarge upon. No use worrying the dear old man; and she, who had linked them, unfailingly, was now seldom mentioned between them.

So there grew up in Roy a disconsolate feeling that none of them cared very much whether he came Home or not. Jerry--after three years in a German prison--was a nervous wreck; still undergoing treatment; humanly lost, for the time being. Tiny was absorbed in her husband and an even Tinier baby, called Nevil Le Roy, after himself. Tara was not yet home; but coming before long, because Aunt Helen had broken down, between war work and the shock of Atholl's death.

A queer thing--separation, mused Roy, as Suraj slowed down to a walk and the glare of morning flamed along the sky. There were they--and here was he: close relations, in effect; almost strangers in fact. There was more between him and them than several hundred miles of sea. There was the bottomless gulf of the War; the gulf of his bitter grief and the slow climb up from the depths to Pisgah heights of revelation. Impossible to communicate--even had he willed--those inner, vital experiences at Chitor and Jaipur. And he had certainly neither will nor power to enlarge on his present turmoil of heart and mind.

Since his ride with Rose Arden, after the dinner-party, things seemed to have taken a new turn. Their relation was no longer tentative. She seemed tacitly to regard him as her chosen cavalier; and he, as tacitly, fell in with the arrangement. No denying he felt flattered a little; subjugated increasingly by a spell he could neither a.n.a.lyse nor resist, because he had known nothing quite like it before. He was, in truth, paying the penalty for those rare and beautiful years of early manhood inspired by worship of his mother. For every virtue, every gift, the G.o.ds exact a price. And he was paying it now. Deep down within him, something tugged against that potent spell. Yet increasingly it prevailed and lured him from his work. The vivid beings of his brain were fading into bloodless unrealities; in which state he could do nothing with them. Yet Broome's encouragement, and his father's critical appreciation of fragments lately sent Home, had fired him to fulfil--more than fulfil--their expectations. And now--here he was tripped up again by his all-too-human capacity for emotion--as at Jaipur.

The comparison jerked him. The two experiences, like the two women, had almost nothing in common. The charm of Aruna--with its Eastern mingling of the sensuous and spiritual--was a charm he intimately understood. It combined a touch of the earth with a rarefied touch of the stars. In Rose Arden, so far, he had discovered no touch of the stars. She suggested, rather, a day in early summer, when warmth and fragrance and colour permeate soul and body; keeping them delectably in thrall; wooing the brain from irksome queries--why, whence, whither?

By now, the sheer fascination of her had entered in and saturated his being to a degree that he vaguely resented. Always one face, one voice, intruding on him unsought. No respite from thought of her, from desire of her; the exquisite intolerable ache, at times, when she was present with him; the still more intolerable ache when she was not.

The fluidity of his own dual nature, and recoil from the Aruna temptation, inclined him peculiarly to idealise the clear-eyed, self-poised Western qualities so diversely personified in Lance and this compelling girl. Yet emphatically he did not love her. He knew the great reality too well to delude himself on that score. Were these the authentic signs of falling 'in love'? If so--in spite of rapturous moments--it was a confoundedly uncomfortable state of being....

Where was she leading him--this beautiful, distracting girl, who said so little, yet whose smiles and silences implied so much? There was no forwardness or free-and-easiness about her; yet instinctively he recognised her as the active agent in the whole affair. Twice, lately, he had resolved not to go near her again; and both times he had failed ignominiously--he who prided himself on control of unruly emotions...!

Had Lance, he wondered, made the same resolve and managed to keep it--being Lance? Or was the Gymkhana momentarily the stronger magnet of the two? He and Paul, with a Major in the Monmouths, were chief organisers; and much practice was afoot at tent-pegging, bare-back horsemanship, and the like. For a week Lance had scarcely been into Lah.o.r.e. When Roy pressed him, he said it was getting too hot for afternoon dancing. But as he still affected far more violent forms of exercise, that excuse was not particularly convincing.

By way of retort, he had rallied Roy on overdoing the tame-cat touch and neglecting the important novel. And Roy--wincing at the truth of that friendly flick--had replied no less truthfully: "Well, if it hangs fire, old chap, you're the sinner. _You_ dug me out of Paradise by twitting me with becoming an appendage to a pencil! Another month at Udaipur would have nearly pulled me through it--in the rough, at least."

It was lightly spoken; but Lance had set his lips in a fashion Roy knew well; and said no more.

Altogether, he seemed to have retired into a sh.e.l.l out of which he refused to be drawn. They were friendly as ever, but distinctly less intimate; and Roy felt vaguely responsible, yet powerless to put things straight. For intimacy--in its essence a mutual impulse--cannot be induced to order. If one spoke of Miss Arden, or doings in Lah.o.r.e, Lance would respond without enthusiasm, and un.o.btrusively change the subject.

Roy could only infer that his interest in the girl had never gone very deep and had now fizzled out altogether. But he would have given a good deal to feel sure that the fizzling out had no connection with his own appearance on the scene. It bothered him to remember that, at first, in an odd, repressed fashion Lance had seemed unmistakably keen. But if he would persist in playing the Trappist monk, what the devil was a fellow to do?

Even over the Gymkhana programme, there had been an undercurrent of friction. Lance--in his new vein--had wanted to keep the women out of it; while Roy--in his new vein--couldn't keep at least one of them out, if he tried. In particular, both were keen about the c.o.c.kade Tournament: a glorified version of fencing on horseback: the wire masks adorned with a small coloured feather for plume. He was victor whose fencing-stick detached his opponent's feather. The prize--Bachelor's Purse--had been well subscribed for and supplemented by Gymkhana funds. So, on all accounts, it was a popular event. There were twenty-two names down; and Roy, in a romantic impulse, had proposed making a real joust of it; each knight to wear a lady's favour; a Queen of Beauty and Love to be chosen for the prize-giving, as in the days of chivalry.

Lance had rather hotly objected; and a few inveterate bachelors had backed him up. But the bulk of men are sentimental at heart; none more than the soldier. So Roy's idea had caught on, and the matter was settled. There was little doubt who would be chosen for prize-giver; and scarcely less doubt whose favour Roy would wear.

Desmond's flash of annoyance had been brief; but he had stipulated that favours should not be compulsory. If they were, he for one would 'scratch.' This time he had a larger backing; and, amid a good deal of chaff and laughter, had carried his point.

That open clash between them--slight though it was--had jarred Roy a good deal. Lance, characteristically, had ignored the whole thing.

But not even the inner jar could blunt Roy's keen antic.i.p.ation of the whole affair. Miss Arden was his partner in one of the few mixed events.

He was to wear her favour for the Tournament--a Marechal Mel rose; and, infatuated as he was, he saw it for a guarantee of victory....

In view of that intoxicating possibility, nothing else mattered inordinately, at the moment: though there reposed in his pocket a letter from Dyan--with a Delhi post-mark--giving a detailed account of serious trouble caused by the recent _hartal_:[23] all shops closed; tram-cars and gharris held up by threatening crowds; helpless pa.s.sengers forced to proceed on foot in the blazing heat and dust; troops and police violently a.s.saulted; till a few rounds of buckshot cooled the ardour of ignorant ma.s.ses, doubtless worked up to concert pitch by wandering agitators of the Chandranath persuasion.

"There were certain Swamis," he concluded, "trying to keep things peaceful. But they ought to know resistance cannot be pa.s.sive or peaceful; and excitement without understanding is a fire difficult to quench. I believe this explosion was premature; but there is lots more gunpowder lying about, only waiting for the match. I am taking Aruna into the Hills for a pilgrimage. It is possible Grandfather may come too; we are hoping to start soon after the fifteenth, if things keep quiet. Write to me, Roy, telling all you know. Lah.o.r.e is a hotbed for trouble; Amritsar, worse; but I hope your authorities are keeping well on their guard."

From all Roy heard, there seemed good reason to believe they were;--in so far as a Home policy of Government by concession would permit. But well he knew that--in the East--if the ruling power discards action for argument, and uses the sceptre for a walking-stick--things happen to men and women and children on the spot. He also knew that, to England's great good fortune, there were usually men on the spot who could be relied on, in an emergency, to think and act and dare in accordance with the high tradition of their race.

He hoped devoutly it might not come to that; but at the core of hope lurked a flicker of fear....

FOOTNOTES: