Chapter XV

"O king, thy kingdom who from thee can wrest?
What Fate shall dare uncrown thee from this breast;
O god-born lover,--whom my love doth gird
And armour with impregnable delight
Of Hope's triumphant, keen, flame-carven sword?"
SAROJINI NAIDU.

And of her, who looked shyly for his return, what record through those days of waiting; of quickened breath and fluttering pulse?

While Sinclair, with the restless energy that is the hallmark of the male throughout creation, sought distraction in movement from the fever of longing, Lilamani went softly down the days of her appointed week, accepting it with all the fundamental woman's capacity for still endurance and folded wings. While Sinclair looked without, she looked within; marvelling, now at her own daring, now at her unworthiness--unrepentant rebel as she was. The wonder of it all, the miracle of unlooked-for escape from those grey studies dazzled heart and brain, as Sir Lakshman had said. It was as if enclosing walls had crumbled at a touch, setting her in a blaze of sunlight, that warmed and cheered and--above all--gave promise of womanhood made perfect through renewal of life. Yet it demanded no small venture of faith to go forward, irrevocably, along this unknown, if alluring, way of the heart. Like all ways leading to the next-door House of Life it must needs have ups and downs; stones also, it might be--and shadows.

The first of these--a mere cloudlet--blurred already her clear sky of dawning. It had hurt her inexpressibly to realize that her lover had taken for granted the unconsecrate marriage by law; that their difference of religion affected him little, if at all. Tactfully and delicately as her father had broken the truth to her, there had been need of much silent wrestling and praying to induce the conviction that she could endure all things sooner than face the blank of life without him. To such fullness of knowledge she had attained in those first bewildering days of his absence: and, recognizing this, gloried, woman-like, in the wisdom of that dear father, who was her "Wise Man, Truth-named"; father and Guru in one.

As for that other, chosen lord of her life--not yet to be named, even in thought--her Eastern woman's instinct of worship, and skill in glossing over flaws, convinced her finally that his ready acceptance of mere legal marriage had arisen from reluctance to suggest the supreme renunciation on her part that a religious ceremony would involve. And through her secret pain and shrinking ran the one gold thread of consolation that, loyalty at least would be permitted to the faith of her country and her ancestors; excommunicate though she would be from the rites, feastings, and sacrifices that absorb more than half the Hindu woman's life. These she had learnt to regard as garments of religion; and Sir Lakshman assured her that the gods, not being man-made like priests, would surely not reject sacrifice and incense of the soul. So he believed; while yet he prayed--with human inconsistency--that if fatherly love had led him into "benevolent falsehood," his lapse from accuracy might not be visited on her.

And she--having wrestled and overcome--quietly set about preparing herself for the great consecration, in much the same spirit as a novice might prepare for the veil. True, in her case no stricter retirement would follow upon betrothal: yet could not a few months of freedom dispel that instinct for purdah, so deeply ingrained in the soul of her race, that the word has become a synonym for family honour, modesty, prestige. Of the customary prelude--the colourful pageant of sacrifice, feastings, and gift-bringings--she could have none. Greater need therefore, to her mind, for personal purifying by prayer, fasting, and meditation, that body might become subordinate to spirit; even as she, Life-bringer, would become subordinate to him, Life-giver, when the days were accomplished that she should be his. Symbolism, always symbolism. It is the Hindu woman's breath of being. For where complexities of outer life are denied, the soul must live by thought and feeling, or die outright.

But East and West agree at least in this, that a good deed is twice itself when the right hand knows not what the left hand doeth. So did Lilamani, quite simply and instinctively, devote the night to her spiritual preparation; reducing sleep to a minimum, and in reserving only the first hour of the morning and the last hour of light for reading, or meditation, alone in her House of Gods.

In addition to translations of her own sacred books, she renewed her acquaintance with the Holy Book of her lover's country, choosing her favourite Gospel of John and St. Paul's dissertations on wifely submission and womanly modesty; finding in both, as always, fresh confirmation of her father's teaching, that the light of the one great Unseen dwelling behind the veil of the seen shines alike through all forms of doctrine and worship.

Then with the quaint incongruity that belongs to transition, her study of St. Paul would culminate in a form of prayer to Sarasvati, Goddess of Wisdom: "She who, robed in white, sets far all ignorance. She who abides with the Creator, may she abide with me----"; or Mai Lakshmi, Goddess of Fortune, would be entreated to make her a wife not less perfect in devotion and mighty in renunciation than Sita, the ideal woman of Hindu legend, and heroine of India's great Epic the Ramayāna. Even from dim days of childhood, Rāma's unsullied queen had reigned supreme in Lilamani's heart--had been, as it were, her chosen patron saint, upon whose character she must strive to model her own. It is in this fashion that India's two great Epics have become so closely inwoven with her national life and religion. To be called by her father his little Sita Dévi, had been, and still was, Lilamani's crowning reward for an act of self-suppression, or a day well spent; so now it was Sita who dwelt constantly in her thoughts during her hours of secret vigil.

But the fasting, not to be foregone, could by no means be achieved in secret. Her father she could trust to see without seeing, and say no word. Not so Audrey, who was bound in honour to protest on the score of her own private godling--Health; and the girl shrank from speech on the subject, with one who could not be expected to understand. She supposed that even the unveiled bride of the West could not approach so great an event without some form of sanctification. But to her, the subject seemed too intimate for discussion.

With the smiling _insouciance_ of one who does quite the ordinary thing, she drank tea at breakfast, milk at lunch, and ate no food till after sundown. Even then her meal was of the lightest; and to Audrey's anxious remonstrance she answered with sweet reasonableness: "Why must I eat--if not hungry?"

Had not Audrey been herself in love with the prospective bridegroom, it is possible she would have jarred the Eastern girl, by attributing this to his absence. For, while we of the West profess to hold love sacred, there remains the paradox that we hold it also fair game for the most inept form of humour, aptly called "chaff." Happily, Audrey's lips were sealed: but a repetition of no breakfast and no lunch brought the direct question Lilamani dreaded. She gave the direct answer, briefly as might be, with eyes downcast and cheeks that burned; while Audrey, unversed in certain phases of Indian life, realized, as never yet, that this poetic, passionate child, deeply imbued with the primitive woman-soul of the East, could never have been hers to mould and make into a student of medicine, a pioneer of the brain. In that realization she could, and did, forgive Nevil much; though her own disappointment was none the less keen.

"You are thinking me a too much foolish Lilamani?" the soft voice ended on a note of pleading. "But with us--it is custom. Father understands."

And Audrey recognized by now the finality of that last. She could only counteract it by a tentative appeal to vanity, quite against her principles. But of late these had been tumbling about her like a house of cards.

"No, dear, I've never thought you foolish," she said with unwonted gentleness. "Only remember you are marrying--an Englishman, who won't understand such things. He will come back expecting to find the same beautiful bright-eyed Lilamani. But if you starve you won't sleep; and where will your bright eyes be then? Do what you think right. But I advise you to eat and sleep normally the last two days; or the very joy of it all may upset you, and make you ill. Not pleasant for him; and as _I_'ve done my best to get you strong, it would be sad to go away and leave you more or less of a wreck----"

"Leave me? But Audrey--why that?"

Her dark eyes echoed the question, in pained surprise; and Audrey looked deep into them before answering. She had her own confession to make.

"Dear child, what else?" she asked, forcing a smile. "No more studies after next Saturday; so no more need of me. I met a friend in Cannes yesterday, who is stopping at Mentone. She wants me to go over and see her; and I thought of leaving on Friday----"

"So soon? Leaving your Lilamani, for always?"

Audrey Hammond's arm went round the girl's slender shoulders.

"Do you really mind as much as all that?" she asked.

Tears welled up into the great brown eyes. Caresses from Audrey were rare enough to make both feel a little shy of them; and Lilamani looked down again, choking back her "foolishness."

"How could I not mind?" said she. "It is all through you--this wonderful thing. But it will not be yet! Father said so. And--I was hoping----"

She hesitated; and Audrey caught her breath. "What were you hoping, child?"

"If only--you could come too, for a little time--and teach me, that I should not feel so strange for that lonely fashion--of English marriage. Oh, are you angry? I didn't mean..."

For Audrey had looked up sharply, white to the lips. "Lilamani, that's impossible. You don't understand." Then seeing a quiver of pain on the sensitive face, she added more quietly, "Is it only that you are afraid of the strangeness, or--that you want me a little too?"

"It is half--I am afraid; and half, I am greedy, wanting you too. But if that is wrong, then I must not make storms in the tea-cup, like you say. Only when I am trying to think it all, my mind comes quite in a fog. No mother-in-law to teach new-made wife. No brothers and sisters--of him. No women-peoples for companion or for home-duties----" She smiled a little wistfully, shaking her head.

Even here in the hotel, with studies for home-duties and one "woman-person" to replace the small colony of relations--by blood and marriage--she had missed, at times, the cloistered seclusion and intricate etiquette and deference to the claims of others that are the key-notes of Hindu home-life; and Audrey, recognizing this, felt the more anxious as to the outcome of Nevil's daring leap in the dark. But for Lilamani's sake at least she would do her best to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain.

"You will have women-peoples in time, dear," said she. "If you manage to make friends. But, though the Englishman denounces purdah, he has his own variation of it. If an Indian wife may not go abroad, your joint-family system gives you a little world of life under your own roof. The English wife has her world of people outside; but in the home her husband, if he loves her, wants her for himself, especially in the first few years. You see, with us marriage is a much personal affair. An English husband wants more than a mother for his sons. He wants a woman companion, specially devoted to him."

Lilamani nodded pensively, though still with puzzled brows.

"Yes. That I have come to know a little, from your novel stories. It is beautiful; and--I must learn. But sometimes, I am thinking--with us it is even more beautiful; to become, by sacredness of bond, even from childhood, so truthfully one that both are almost seeming to forget each other, in welfare of family. Only in their secret hearts they carry the light."

Moved beyond her wont, Audrey Hammond drew the girl closer and kissed her forehead.

"Well, child, whatever happens, I believe you will always carry your light," said she; and Lilamani, shyly, in the midst of her blushes:

"Perhaps one day--you also----

"No, no. I'm not the type."

A hint of bitterness in her tone saddened the girl, who was herself so essentially "the type," primal yet eternal, that inspires, through the ages, the worshipful love of men.

"Is it that you really like better the way of the brain?" she hazarded gently, surprised and pleased at such intimate talk with Audrey, the inaccessible. "Or--have you no father to make arrangement--to give dowry?"

A smile, half-amused, half-wistful lightened Audrey's gravity. "No, I have no father. And if I had, he would not 'make arrangement'! We English think we believe in marriage. But we believe still more in personal freedom; and our women are left to shift for themselves. As for the compulsory dowry--in that matter we might very well take a lesson from India. If English fathers were bound to provide for their daughters, the Woman Question might be less acute than it is."

"Woman Question? What is that?"

"Happy little ignoramus! It's a disease of modern civilization. A riddle without an answer; and I'm a part of it. But don't trouble your pretty head about me, dear. After all, the life I've chosen gives me a kind of satisfaction it could never give you. When my leave is up, I shall go back to Hyderabad; and perhaps find another brave girl among your women-folk to help me with my work."

"Yes, yes--there are so many in these nowadays, eager for way of the brain. You will surely find a much more commonsense Lilamani, not so troubled by ugly words."

"But, never, I think, one with such a talent for creeping into other people's hearts!" Audrey answered with so rare a tenderness that--for the first time, in months of close intercourse--the girl's arms went round her in a young spontaneous caress.

"Please not quite leave me," she whispered. "Since I was coming from India, you have been for me like--like Mataji; and I can't forget you ever."

That was Audrey Hammond's good minute; though Lilamani guessed it not; a reward quite other than she looked for, as is the way of rewards; the gain through loss, in which it is so difficult to believe till the heart responds to its touch. Persistence along the stormy paths of study would have ended in alienation; but one touch of nature, shared unconsciously, though decreeing separation, drew them closer than either could have believed three weeks ago.

Thus, illumined by the white joy of a closer understanding, the days slipped peacefully by. Audrey made no further protest; though her medical conscience pricked her at sight of paling cheeks and darkly-shadowed eyes. But when Friday brought the parting, she pleaded once more for normal meals, these last two days, if only on account of someone, never directly named between them: and Lilamani, feeling not a little unstrung by recent austerities, could not say her nay. Mrs. Despard had gladly undertaken to "mother" her during Audrey's absence; but so soon as dates were fixed she would write, and Audrey must come back. Audrey would. She promised. And so an end.

Lilamani had meant to sleep that night, having given her word. But habit prevailed; and she lay, acutely awake, with sealed lids, counting the hours, that seemed to elongate, like stretched elastic, as they neared the dawn. Then she slept heavily; and Sir Lakshman, who guessed at the week's programme, allowed her to sleep till noon.

It was tea-time--thronged tables under the white, wide awning proclaimed the fact--when a much-travelled motor drew up at the foot of the hotel steps. Broome grasped the wheel--having refused to trust the life of an invaluable parent to the hands of an accepted lover; and Sir Lakshman met them in the deserted hall.

"I may go up and claim her?" Sinclair demanded eagerly, when Broome had passed on.

"You may. That is her wish."

"And yours, I hope?"

"Yes--mine also. Since she is trusting you from her heart, I am agreeing to trust you also, with biggest proof father can give."

"Thank God you see it that way, sir----" They were nearing the lift now. "My thanks to you I can only prove--through her."

"That is how I look for you to prove them," the other answered almost sternly, his hand upon the doors.

"I'll do my utmost. On my honour, I will. And--I may see her alone? It's our way, you know."

"Yes. But it is her wish that first there should be some small formality of giving. With us betrothal is not mere personal promise; but religious ceremony. It is, in fact, true marriage, sanctifying union--if consummated or no--through all lives to come. This it will mean for her. Therefore she is wishing that first I make my gift, joining your hands, in our own fashion; then, conforming to your custom, I leave her with you."

On that understanding they went up together, and along the passage to the corner room; Sir Lakshman ahead, Nevil following, his thumb and finger at the waistcoat pocket where two rings were nestling--merely to assure himself they were there.

Then the door opened and he had the desire of his eyes....

Alone upon the hearthrug she stood, her drooping head turned from the door, _sari_ drawn forward, as of old, half hiding her face, restless fingers shifting her bangles up and down the bare slenderness of her arms. There were more bangles than usual--in honour of his coming; delicate trifles of jade and glass and gold. Above the soft silk under-robe of palest green, shot through with golden light, was wound and draped a _sari_, quite new to Nevil, of true deep indigo, like the night sky, gold-bordered and flecked with golden stars. No shoes upon the small feet, slender and shapely as her hands; silk stockings only, green like her skirt, and anklets of gold; the first he had seen. For she had learnt the unfitness of wearing them over English shoes.

Very still she stood, and from the whole of her, from curved instep to veiled head, emanated the peculiarly Eastern mingling of demure aloofness with a delicately direct appeal to the senses and the heart. Possibly some instinct had impelled her, before it was too late, to bid him remember the gulf between; and he, who had drawn so close to her in spirit, since that day of mutual revealing, was arrested by a sudden sense of strangeness, of the veil down-dropt between them, as at first.

All the week long he had been picturing over and over this moment of vision: the first glance, the first words, the first rapture of reunion: nor was he analytical enough to realize how the very intensity of anticipation robs reality of its due. For the space of a heart-beat or two, he saw this marriage as through the eyes of Jane: and for that space--he was afraid.

Then--hearing them enter--she turned with an audible catch in her breath, and fear fled, stricken and shamefaced, once for all.

Framed in the dusk of the _sari_ her beauty shone out with a moon-like pallor that intensified the red of her lips, as the faint shadows, left by sleepless nights, intensified the deeps of her eyes, when they flashed a smile at him for greeting. Four rows of pearls made a gleaming collar round her throat; and beneath it on a fine chain one great diamond shone out, five-pointed, like a star. Clearly she no more dreamed of speaking at such a moment than an English bride would dream of bidding her groom good morning at the altar rails. If her wedding must perforce be an affair of registration, she could, and did, impart to this simple ceremony of giving her own deep sense of the moment's sanctity; while Nevil Sinclair, touched to the heart, was thankful to defer speech till he could have her to himself.

And now her head was bowed again; for Sir Lakshman had taken her hand, joining it with her lover's, and enclosing them in both his own.

"Nevil Sinclair," he said with simple dignity, looking the Englishman in the eyes, "I, Lakshman Singh, give you this most priceless daughter of mine, confiding that you will cherish and protect her through your whole life; and in fervent belief that she will fulfil to you all duties of wifehood with loyal and loving heart. Give both hands, Lilamani, in token that nothing is kept back."

Both hands she gave him, and Sinclair, bereft of words, could only press them to his lips; while Sir Lakshman conferring a mute benediction on his daughter's head, went quietly out, leaving them alone.

For a space they stood so, in a throbbing silence, that enfolded them like a spell of enchantment, difficult to break. Then very softly, Sinclair spoke her name.

"Lilamani."

For answer came her passionate murmur: "Live for ever, my Lord and my King."

The sheer unexpectedness of it unloosed his tongue.

"Beloved! You shame me to earth!" he cried in genuine distress. "I'm no fit subject for a woman's worship. Yours less than any."

Smiling, though without looking up, she shook her small wise head.

"That is no matter at all. In my country--husband of every true woman is even as her God."

"It's not so in mine, by any means," he answered drawing her close, yet restraining himself because of the delicate tremor that ran through her.

"No? How pity! The woman is losing so much----" the right to serve and worship and the glory of it, that was her Eastern view. "But with me you will permit----? You could not prevent----!"

"I'm afraid I wouldn't, if I could," he said with sudden fervour. Then, taking out the ring, that had delayed his coming a full hour, he slipped it gently on to her marriage finger. "That is my form of betrothal, Lilamani. The ring of promise."

It was a heart-shaped aquamarine, limpid as a drop of sea-water, set in brilliants: and at sight of it she caught her breath.

"Oh, but how kind! How beautiful beyond telling! Like Mrs. Despard's pendant that I must be looking at--always."

"You shall have one--soon," he told her, exulting in his power to please her every way. "But now"--she was drawn closer still--"I want something in return for my ring of promise. Something you would not give me under the arch. I've been wanting and waiting for it a whole week. Tell me I may have it now--Jewel of Delight!"

She told him. And he, taking her veiled head between his hands, set the seal of their compact first upon her down-dropped lids, and last upon her lips, claiming to the full their shy, soft passion of surrender. Then, with a low, broken sound, she withdrew them and fell sobbing on his breast.

Lightly lifting her in his arms, as if in fear that she might break on too strong pressure, he carried her to a low chair that looked upon her balcony, and away, over tree-tops to the sea. There he set her down, kneeling beside her, and whispering persuasively at her ear: "My Bride of the Rain--is it only a sun shower? Or is she broken-hearted, at having promised herself to a barbarous English husband?"

"Yes--oh yes--she is too much broken-hearted!"--laughter gleamed suddenly through her tears--"and also--too much foolish. A little, how Audrey calls 'run down,' by not sleeping a great deal, these few nights----"

"Thinking of me?"

"Yes," she answered, with truth; then veiling her eyes: "And ... how to make myself good wife in such unknown fashion, hard to understand----"

"Not so very hard. Trust me to make it easy for you, darling, once you give me the right. When is that to be, Lilamani--when? I've an ideal home all ready for you."

"A home?"

"Yes, true. That good chap Broome has offered me his villa on Lake Como for the summer. A little lone place, under a great rock, close to the water's edge, opposite Cadenabbia, in Italy, where Martino lives. Think of that: a real home, waiting for the bride. When will she come? Next week?"

"Oh no--no! How you are impatient!" She put forth a shy hand and caressed the dull gold of his hair. "Have you not spoken with father?"

"Only a word or two. I came back to claim his child. What's the delay? What must we wait for now?"

"Oh, so much; and you must please not make trouble for that. Father wishes that first I should get stronger; and I wish, from home, our Indian wedding-ring: bangle of iron, covered in gold; also--other things for this kind of other life so different to my expecting. That must mean five weeks, or six."

"A lifetime! But at least I shall be here. I shall see you."

"For two weeks--yes. After that he is thinking better for both if you go to Paris for studying, and put this troublesome Lilamani a little from your head----."

Sinclair sighed. "He's a horribly wise man, that father of yours. And does this troublesome Lilamani honestly wish to be put out of my head, even for a little?"

"No. Not for one smallest minute," she murmured, and was caught close again for reward. And again her exquisite fragility held his ardour in restraint. So yielding, so unsubstantial a creature was she, in her soft natural draperies, that it was as if he enfolded some fragrant ethereal essence of the eternal feminine rather than a woman of flesh and blood.

This he told her, in lover's language, his lips at her ear: and she--drawing herself away from him with pretty dignity: "At the same time it is truthfully a woman; and inside it ... there is fire ... of so great love that not all the waters from my beautiful sea could put out ever--ever----. That is what my _sari_ has been telling you, without speech, all this while. But your eyes are still too deaf for language of colour----"

"They're not blind anyway! They saw, and admired. What is it telling me, Lilamani, this beautiful new dress? I want to know."

"Listen then--lord of my life," she answered very softly. "With us, indigo is for constancy of love, because it is dye that nothing will remove. This green of my skirt, like young leaves, is for hope--for new life. Gold and pearls are for purity: and this"--touching the star that flashed like a prisoned sunbeam--"gift of my father, is for happiness with ... with..."

Shyness overwhelmed her.

"Nevil?" he prompted tenderly.

"Yes."

"Well then, let me hear you say it. I've been waiting--all this time."

"With us, it is not custom even when married to take the name of--beloved," she told him with averted eyes; and stooping he kissed her with sudden passion.

"Beloved's good enough for me. But still ... as the promised wife of an Englishman, it's only fair--isn't t?--that you should study our customs a little, too?"

"Yes--yes. With all my heart I am wishing it--Nevil." And at that, he kissed her again.

END OF BOOK I