"Would he, indeed! That's all _you_ think of--though you know I've got a weak heart. And I nearly fainted--if _that's_ any interest to you! The Bradley boy doesn't know--about us. But Mrs Tait's a perfect little sieve. It'll be all over Simla to-morrow. And I was so pleased and proud----" Her voice shook. Tears threatened. "And it's so awkward--so undignified ... backing out----"

"My dear mother, I've no intention whatever of backing out."

"And I've no intention what_ever_ of having a half-caste for a son-in-law."

Rose winced at that, and drew in a steadying breath. For now, at last, the cards were on the table. She was committed to flat opposition or retreat--an impa.s.se she had skilfully avoided hitherto. But for Roy's sake she stood her ground.

"It was--rather a jar when he told me," she admitted, by way of concession. "But truly, he _is_ different--if you'll only listen, without fuming! His mother's a Rajput of the highest caste. Her father educated her almost like an English girl. She was only seventeen when she married Sir Nevil; and she lived altogether in England after that.

In everything but being her son, Roy is practically an Englishman. You can't cla.s.s him with the kind of people we a.s.sociate with--the other word out here----"

Very patiently and tactfully she put forward every redeeming argument in his favour--without avail. Mrs Elton--broadly--had the right on her side; and the G.o.ds had denied her the gift of discrimination. She saw India as a vast, confused jumble of Rajahs and _bunnias_ and servants and coolies--all steeped in varying depths of dirt and dishonesty, greed and shameless ingrat.i.tude. It did not occur to her that sharp distinctions of character, tradition, and culture underlay the more or less uniform tint of skin. And beneath her instinctive antipathy, burned furious anger with Roy for placing her, by his deceitfulness (it _must_ have been his) in the ironic position of having to repudiate the engagement she had announced with such eclat only three weeks ago....

The moment she had recovered her breath, she returned unshaken to the charge.

"That's very fine talk, my dear, for two people in love. But Roy's a half-caste: that's flat. You can't wriggle away from the d.a.m.ning fact by splitting hairs about education and breeding. Besides--_you_ only think of the man. But are you prepared for your precious first baby to be as dark as a native? It's more than likely. I know it for a fact----"

"Really, Mother! You're a trifle previous." Rose was cool no longer; a slow, unwilling blush flooded her face. Her mother had struck at her more shrewdly than she knew.

"Well, if you _will_ be obstinate, it's my duty to open your eyes; or, of course, I wouldn't talk so to an unmarried girl. There's another thing--any doctor will tell you--a particular form of consumption carries off half the wretched children of these mixed marriages. A mercy, perhaps; but think of it----! Your own! And you know perfectly well the moral deterioration----"

"There's none of that about _Roy_." Rose grew warmer still. "And _you_ know perfectly well most of it comes from the circ.u.mstances, the stigma, the type of parent. But you can say what you please. I'm of age. I love him. I intend to marry him."

"Well, you won't do it from _my_ house. I wash my hands of the whole affair."

She rose, upon her ultimatum, a-quiver with righteous anger, even to the realistic cherries in her hat. The girl rose also, outwardly composed, inwardly dismayed.

"Thank you. Now I know where I stand. And _you_ won't say a word to Roy.

You _mustn't_--really----" She almost pleaded. "He worships his mother in quite the old-fashioned way. He simply couldn't see--the other point of view. Besides--he's ill ... unhappy. Whatever _your_ att.i.tude forces one to say, can only be said by me."

"I don't take orders from my own daughter," Mrs Elton retorted ungraciously. She was in no humour for bargaining or dictation. "But I'm sure _I've_ no wish to talk to him. I'll give you a week or ten days to make your plans. But whenever you have him here, I shall be out. And if you come to your senses--you can let me know."

On that she departed, leaving Rose feeling battered and shaken, and horribly uncertain what--in the face of that bombsh.e.l.l--she intended to do: she, who had made Lance suffer cruelly, and evoked a tragic situation between him and Roy, largely in order to avoid a clash that would have been as nothing compared with this...!

Her sensations were in a whirl. But somehow--she _must_ pull it through.

Home life was becoming intolerable. And--for several cogent reasons--she wanted Roy. If need be, she would tell him, diplomatically; dissociating herself from her mother's att.i.tude.

And yet--her mother had said things that would stick; hateful things, that might be true....

Decidedly, she could not write him a long letter: only enough to bring him back to her in a relenting mood. Sitting down again, she unearthed from her black-and-silver bag a fountain pen and half a sheet of paper.

"MY DARLING ROY" (she wrote),--

"Your letter _did_ hurt--badly. Perhaps I deserved it. All I can say till we meet, is--forgive me, if you can, because of Lance.

It's rather odd--though you _are_ my lover, and I suppose you do care still--I can think of no stronger appeal than that. He cared so for us both, in his big splendid way. Can't we stand by each other?

"You ask me to make allowances. Will you be generous, and do the same on a larger scale for your sincerely loving (and not altogether worthless)

ROSE?"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: Government by order.]

CHAPTER XII.

"She had a step that walked unheard, It made the stones like gra.s.s; Yet that light step had crushed a heart As light as that step was."

--W.H. DAVIES.

At last, Roy was actually coming. The critical moment was upon them; and Rose sat alone in the drawing-room awaiting him.

Her mother was out; had arranged to be out for the evening also. The strain between them still continued; and it told most on Rose. The cat-like element in her loved comfort; and an undercurrent of clash was peculiarly irritating in her present sore, uncertain state of heart.

Weeks of it, she knew, would scarcely leave a dent on her mother's leathern temperament. When it came to a tug the tougher nature scored, which was one reason why she had so skilfully avoided tugs. .h.i.therto.

True, she was of age; and her father's small legacy gave her a measure of independence. But how could one set about getting married in the face of open opposition? And--how keep the truth from Roy? Or tone it down, so that he would not go off at a tangent straightaway?

a.s.suredly the Fates had conspired to strip her headlong romance of its gilded trappings. But her moment for marriage had come. She was sick to death of the Anglo-Indian round--from the unattached standpoint, at least. Roy fascinated her as few men had done; and she had been deliberately trying to ignore the effect of her mother's brutal frankness. Their coming together again, in these changed conditions, would be the ultimate test. Such a chasm of distance seemed to yawn between that tender parting in her boudoir and this critical reunion--in another world....

Sounds of arrival brought her to her feet; but she checked the natural impulse to welcome him in the verandah. Her innate sense of drama shrank from possible awkwardness, a false step, at the start.

And now he appeared in the doorway--very straight and slim in his grey suit, with the sorrowful black band on his arm.

"Rose!" he cried--and stood gazing at her, pulses hammering, brain dizzy. The mere sight of her brought back too vividly the memory of those April days that he had been resolutely shutting out of his mind.

His pause--the shock of his changed aspect--held her motionless also. He looked older, more sallow; his sensitive mouth compressed; no lurking gleam in his eyes. He seemed actually less good-looking than she remembered; for anguish is no beautifier.

So standing, they mutely confronted the change in themselves--in each other; then Rose swept forward, both hands held out.

"Roy--my darling--_what_ you must have been through! Can you--will you--in spite of all----?"

Next moment, in his silent, vehement fashion, he was straining her to him; kissing her eyes, her hair, her lips; not in simple lover's ecstasy, but in a fervour of repressed pa.s.sion, touched with tragedy, with pain....

Then he held her from him, to refresh his tired eyes with the sheer beauty of her; and was struck at once by the absence of colour; the wide black sash, the black velvet round her throat and hair.

He touched the velvet, looking his question. She nodded, drawing in her lip to steady it.

"I felt--I must. You don't mind?"

"_Mind_----?--Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever really _mind_ things any more."

His face worked. That queer dizziness took him again. With an incoherent apology, he sat down rather abruptly, and leaned forward, his head between his hands, hiding the emotion he could not altogether control.

Rose stood beside him, feeling helpless and vaguely aggrieved. He had just got back to her, after a two weeks' parting, and he sat there lost in an access of grief that left her quite out of account. Inadvertently there flashed the thought, "Whatever Lance might have suffered, he would not succ.u.mb." It startled her. She had never so compared them before....

Then, looking down at his bowed head, compunction seized her, and tenderness, that rarely entered into her feeling for men. She could think of nothing to say that would not sound idiotically commonplace. So she laid her hand on his hair, and moved it caressingly now and then.