"And I--go back to Michael?"

"Yes. For six months you will be free to travel, paint--what you will; and for six months I shall have my mountains to grapple with." Again the light sprang to his eyes. "By the end of that time we shall know once for all how much we are ready to forego for the sake of spending our lives together. That is the ultimate test of a big thing, Quita--what one will give up for it. Marriage is a big thing; and if ours is built on the right foundations, it will stand the test. Now, I shall have a good deal to see to this evening, and I think you had better go to bed early. You look tired."

"I am tired." She realised suddenly that all the spring had gone out of her. "When do you leave?"

"To-morrow, most likely. You had better write to Michael."

"Very well. I suppose--one will be able to write to _you_?"

"Yes. Now and then. But for a great part of the time I shall be beyond the reach of posts."

Though his surface hardness had melted, his voice had an impersonal note that crushed her, making her feel as if she were dealing with a cosmic force, rather than a human being;--one of his own detestable mountains, for instance. But for that, it is conceivable that there might have been something approaching a 'scene'; that she might have obeyed her unreasoning impulse to plead with him, and exhort him not to push his test of her to such pitiless lengths. As it was, she sank into a chair without answering; and he turned towards the study with a new lift of his head, a new elasticity of step that struck at her heart.

For, in truth, until he read that summons from Simla he had scarcely known how irresistibly the old free life drew him; how the white silence of the mountains called to him as friend calls friend; and the whole heart of him answered, 'I come.' 'As the dew is dried up by the sun, so are the sins of mankind by the glory of Himachal.' The words of the old Hindoo worshipper sprang to his brain, and for him they were no fanciful imagery, but a radiant truth. Six months of the Himalayas, six months of freedom from brain work, and headache, and strain,--for though loyalty denied it, the past month had been a strain,--would suffice to break the power of the hideous thing that was sapping his manhood; to dispel the great black something that shadowed his mind and spirit--to set him on his feet again, a free man.

But since he had kept the deeper source of his trouble secret from Quita, she did not hold the key to the deeper source of his joy. And now, lying back in his chair, her eyes closed, violet shadows showing beneath the black line of her lashes, she saw herself, momentarily, as a trivial thing--a mere tangle of nerves, perversity, and egotism--flung aside without hesitation, perhaps even with relief, at the first call of the larger life, the larger loyalty. Two tears stole out on to her lashes, and slipped down her check. Mere concessions to overwrought feeling, and she knew it; knew, in the depths of her, that she was no triviality, but a woman into whose hands power had been given; the power of things primeval that are the mainspring of life.

For Quita also had her secret--at once mysterious and disturbing; since to your highly-strung woman motherhood rarely comes as a matter of course--a secret that brought home to her, with a force as quiet and compelling as her husband himself, the awful sense of the human bond.

He had told her she was free to choose; to take him or leave him as she saw fit. But the dice were loaded. They were bound to one another now by a far stronger power than mere law; by the power of action and consequence, which transcends all laws.

She had guessed the truth, and rebelled against it, on that day when Honor had unwittingly spoken the right word at the right moment, as those who believe in Divine transmission through human agency are apt to do. She had faced and accepted it during Eldred's absence; but had not found courage since his return to put it into words; had, in fact, with the revival of inspiration, thrust the knowledge aside, and deliberately tried to forget.

Now it came back upon her, unrebuked; and while she lay thinking over all that had pa.s.sed between them, one insistent question repeated itself in her brain, "Can I tell him? Shall I tell him before he goes?" And after much debating, she decided on silence. In the first place, he would be saved anxiety if he should not return in time; and in the second place--though this consideration stood undeniably first with her--she preferred that he, at least, should believe in the fiction of their freedom; that nothing should weigh with him, or draw him back to her but his unalterable need of herself. How far her secret was her own to hide or reveal, how far she had any right to withhold such knowledge from the man on the eve of a perilous undertaking,--the man to whom insight told her it would mean immeasurably much,--were questions that simply did not enter her mind.

The artist's egotism, and the woman's love of dominion, left no room for fine-drawn scruples of the kind. Never till to-night had she realised how the mountains claimed and held him; and in her sudden fear of losing him, either through misadventure or through the reawakening of the explorer in him, she lost sight of the original point at issue; of the fact that it was her own work, not his, which had threatened to stand between them.

An hour later she went into the study, where Lenox, his brow furrowed into deep lines, bent over an outspread map. A glance showed her that already in spirit he was miles away from her, planning the exploration of pa.s.ses and glaciers guessed at in former journeyings, engrossed, mind and heard, in the possibilities ahead.

She came and stood beside him. "I am going now, Eldred," she said, a touch of listlessness in her tone.

He looked up and nodded. "That's right. You do look rather f.a.gged this evening."

"Only a headache," she answered, flushing and avoiding his eyes. "I shall be all right if I sleep well."

"Do you ever sleep badly?" he asked, with the quick sympathy of the sufferer.

"Oh dear, no." She hesitated. "Are you coming?"

"Yes--later."

Still she stood irresolute. Caresses had become rare between them of late; and now pride as well as shyness checked her natural impulse. In turning away, she allowed her left hand to swing outward, ever so little, merely by way of experiment. "He won't see it," she told herself. And, as if in mute denial, his own hand met and grasped it, close and hard.

On the threshold she paused and looked back. He was miles away again, hopelessly out of reach. A sudden thought seized her, tempted her.

Half a dozen words would suffice to snap the chain that held him; to bring her into his arms. Yet now it seemed impossible to speak them, even if she would; and she went out, leaving him in undisturbed possession of his maps and his mountains.

She lingered long over her undressing; and when it was over could not bring herself to put out the lamp; but lay, waiting and listening for his coming. Then, as the night slipped away and the silence became a burden, a dead weight upon brain and heart, the old haunting dread of those days in Dalhousie came back upon her, and she shivered. The Pagan in her leaned too readily to superst.i.tious fancy, and her dread shaped itself finally in a definite thought. "If he comes to me now, I know I shall conquer the mountains in the end. But if he doesn't come, they will be too strong for me. They will take him from me for good."

And he did not come; till one of the morning, when he found her fast asleep, the lamp still burning beside her.

[1] At once.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

"Ledge by ledge outbroke new marvels, now minute, and now immense: Earth's most exquisite disclosure, heaven's own G.o.d in evidence!"

--Browning.

"Sahib, dinner is ready."

"I also am ready. More than ready!" Lenox answered, a twinkle in his eyes.

Zyarulla responded by a gleam of teeth as he followed his master to the camp fire of roots and scrub, on whose summit 'dinner' was served steaming hot; a delectable ma.s.s of mutton and rice; eaten straight from the copper cooking vessel, lest the ice-bound breath of the mountains freeze it before it could reach its destination. The fire itself was small, and gave out little heat: for in the heart of the glaciers, sixteen hundred feet up, fuel is scarce, and even more precious than food.

The five human forms, crouching close to it, had been Lenox's sole companions through three months of hardship and danger, sweetened by the exhilaration of conquering such difficulties as brace a man's nerve and fort.i.tude to the utmost. Four of them were Gurkhas,--a Havildar and three men; short, st.u.r.dy hill folk of the Mongol type, with the spirits of schoolboys and the grit of heroes. The fifth was a Pathan from Desmond's regiment, told off to act as orderly and surveyor; a man of immovable gravity, who shared but two qualities with the thick-headed, stout-hearted little soldiers from Nepal:--courage of the first order, and devotion to the British officer, for whom any one of them would have laid down his life, if need be; not as a matter of sentiment or heroism, but simply as a matter of course. The Gurkhas had, in fact, settled it among themselves before starting, that if any harm came to the Sahib none of them were to disgrace the name of the regiment by returning without their leader.

Now, as he neared the fire, looking bigger and broader than usual in his sheep-skin coat and Balaklava cap,--his jaw and throat protected by a beard black as his hair,--all five stood up to receive him: and the quivering light showed that they also were m.u.f.fled to the eyes.

"It is a _burra khana_[1] to-night, Hazur," the Havildar informed him with a chuckle; his slits of eyes vanishing as his teeth flashed out.

"In a treeless country, the castor-oil is a big plant! And the cook, having three handfuls of flour to spare, hath made us three _chupattis_; one for your Honour, and one to be broken up among ourselves."

"No, no, Havildar; fair play," Lenox answered, smiling. "We will divide the three."

But seeing that insistence would damp their childish spirit of festivity, he accepted Benjamin's portion; and satisfied his conscience by sharing it with Brutus, the inevitable, who snuggled contentedly under a corner of his poshteen, and thanked his stars he was not as other dogs, a mere loafer round clubs and cantonments. It was bad to be cold and hungry; to plunge shoulder-deep through snow, and slither across hideous slopes of ice; but it was uplifting to share your master's dinner and your master's bed; and there are few things more sustaining than a sense of one's own importance in the general scheme of things!

The fire was their mess-table, round which they dined together, to save time and trouble in cooking; and also because community of hardship and danger links men to one another with hooks of steel; dispels all minor distinctions of colour and creed; reveals the Potter's raw material underlying all.

And while they so sat, enjoying their one-course dinner as no gourmet ever enjoyed a city feast, night and frost crept stealthily, almost visibly, over the stupendous snow-peaks and pinnacles of opaque ice that towered on all sides, breathing out cold; and contemplating, as if in silent amazement, these atoms of 'valiant dust' who dared and were beaten back, and dared again; who day by day pushed farther into their white sanctuary of silence, in search of a pa.s.s whose existence was guessed at rather than known. At sunset there had been a brief burst of colour,--green and opal and rose; but by now the mountains shimmered grey and hard as steel under the tremulous fire of the stars; and every moment the grip of frost tightened upon half-melted glacier, upon man and beast. For behind the little group of servants, who sat apart, enjoying their own meal in their own fashion, stood twelve apathetic Kashmiri ponies,--unconsidered martyrs to man's l.u.s.t of achievement,--who endured to the full the miseries of mountaineering, and reaped none of its rewards.

Dinner over, the fire must be allowed to die down. A pipe over the embers, and a sheep-skin bag shared with Brutus, was the evening's unvarying programme on this detached expedition into the hidden core of things; tents and lesser luxuries having been left with the heavy baggage in charge of two Gurkhas at the foot of the pa.s.s.

While Lenox sat smoking, and encouraging the fire to keep alive as long as might be, his men vied with one another in discovering sheltered corners for the night. The Havildar was in high spirits after his morsel of chupatti, washed down with a mouthful of rum; and the laughter of his comrades echoed strangely among the ghostly peaks.

"You seem to be in great form, Chundra Sen," Lenox called out at last.

"What's the joke now?"

"We are seeking soft stones to sleep on, Hazur; and betting, like the _Sahiblog_, which of us shall find the softest!" [Transcriber's note: the "o" in "_Sahiblog_" is o-macron, Unicode U+014D.]

Lenox joined in the laugh that greeted this sally,

"Good men," he said. "Hope you find a few! First-rate joke of yours, Havildar."

"By ill fortune, it was not I who made it, Hazur! But an officer Sahib, up in Kabul; one who knew that it is good to laugh even when the knife is at the throat." And the search went forward with renewed zest.