Chapter VIII

"Love leaps higher with her lambent flame
Than Art can pile the faggots."
E. B. BROWNING.

The seventh of March in the year of grace 189- stands out as a red-letter day in the annals of the house of Sinclair. For on that day Sir Nevil--long tacitly written down failure and renegade from historic traditions--made triumphal entry into the kingdom of his choice. Not the type of kingdom precisely befitting a Sinclair. But, before the day was out, Jane, Lady Roscoe, could perceive that her brother stood on the threshold of a unique success. And success is the golden calf of the West; worshipped indiscriminately whether it spring from an inspired group of pictures or a patent hair-wash.

All practical arrangements for the private view had been made by Cuthbert Broome, that Sinclair might not be obliged to leave his wife, or bring her to town a moment sooner than need be. It was Broome also who offered house-room to Sir Lakshman, Martino, and Leseppes; Nevil and Lilamani feeling bound--sore against their will--to accept the dutiful invitation of Jane. On such an occasion, her brother's rightful place was in Grosvenor Square. Mr. Broome, whose unwarrantable offer to "rent" the Beeches still rankled, was welcome to do all the rest. The which he did. A small gallery in Leicester Square had been chartered; Ramayāna pamphlets printed, and invitation cards dispatched to a picked number of artists, art-critics, relations, and friends, bidding them to the said Gallery, where Sir Nevil and Lady Sinclair would be At Home, from three to five.

They were At Home there now. Eighty or so of London's social and intellectual elite sauntered, paused or sat about in groups; the low-toned murmur of talk merged in the subdued harmonies of an invisible string band. Those who had ears to hear discerned in the music--carefully chosen by Nevil himself--a subtle fitness to the epic drama present before their eyes: a drama that evolved from the heart of a nation not yet arrived at self-consciousness; and for near two thousand years has retained its power to mould the characters and ideals of a race still unpractical enough to set soul before body, heart before head.

Straight out of the thin, fugitive spring sunshine and keen wind, the unresting clamour of London streets, they had stepped, these complex men and women of the West, into an atmosphere charged with the idealism and the passion, the subtlety and barbaric simplicity of the ancient East. Individuals, egoists, products in varying degree of the modern competitive struggle for existence, they found themselves drawn into the core of India's greatest love-story, builded upon a twofold ideal of duty, fulfilled to the uttermost; of the Queen to her lord; of the King to his people. For although no magic of line and colour could portray the mutual recrimination, the spiritual tragedy of the aftermath, Lilamani had recounted it in the pamphlet, writ by herself, in her own quaintly characteristic English; desiring, above all, that none might miss the typical Eastern culmination, wherein every silent hour of Sita's undeserved banishment speaks, louder than words, the wife's acquiescence in her husband's will.

Along the western wall were ranged six full-size panel pictures, the more arresting for their simplicity, for the entire subordination of effective superfluities to one supreme idea--the proving, through ordeal upon ordeal, of a pure and noble soul.

One only, of all the six, held more than two figures; and in each--whatever its outstanding qualities of emotion, workmanship, colour--the eye rested inevitably on Sita's face. Sita regally arrayed, pleading for her rightful share in the fulfilling of the old King's vow: Sita (Princess no longer) in primitive coat of bark, stepping with subdued elation through Dandak forest; Rāma, the path-finder, going before; Lakshman, soul of chivalry, following after. Sita, alone in the forest hut, amber-robed and lotus-crowned, awaiting the brothers' return; all her listening, longing soul in her eyes, while the stealthy ash-smeared figure creeps near through the dusk. Sita, terror-struck, yet fighting for dear life, in the ogre-king's embrace. Sita prostrate in the fiend-haunted garden, "a pool with all her lilies dead": and at the last Sita, revived in heart and hope, bestowing on the monkey-general her token of unsullied wifehood--the jewel that was her father's wedding-gift.

In these six scenes, linked together by Lilamani's printed record one phase of the Epic stood revealed; while upon the eastern wall three larger and fuller canvases portrayed the culmination of Sita's proving after the defeat and death of Ravān. In these three scenes--poignant, terrible, triumphal--played out against the living background of Rāma's victorious army, Nevil Sinclair proved himself master of the more complex grouping, the larger theme, while yet the queenly, appealing figure of Sita remained supreme. Here, too, the subdued colouring of the earlier pictures gave place to an appropriate effulgence of barbaric splendour, an orchestration of regal harmonies, red and purple and gold.

It was the first of these three--the meeting of husband and wife before two assembled hosts--that drew and held the elite of the art world among Sinclair's guests. Here, murmurs of criticism, or appreciation, died into the higher tribute of silence; and here again--for all the fine portrayal of Rāma's mute denunciation and Lakshman's pain, the tense expectancy of waiting hosts--it was the figure of Sita, royally dight in crimson robe and wreath, that stirred heart and imagination and checked the futilities of speech. Unveiled for the first time,--proud yet visibly shrinking--she stood, one woman alone in a world of men, with eyes for none but Rāma; and in those eyes the dawning of a tragic recognition that here was no kingly welcome, but insult such as no true Indian wife could endure and live.

"Believe it or not, _mon ami_, that one canvas alone would suffice." It was the voice of Leseppes, low and confidential, in Sir Nevil Sinclair's ear; and grasping his arm, the great man drew him away from the charmed circle of silence. "Did I not tell you--I, myself? I am not one that looks through tinted glasses. What I said in Cadenabbia--you remember? 'You shall stir the blood even of those colossal Philistines, your own countrymen.' See them now before that picture--even those that have all the dictionary of art in their finger-ends. Proof enough that you have moved something bigger than the brain. Your father-in-law is satisfied, h'n?"

"Yes. Oh, yes."

The restraint of the Englishman was strong upon Nevil in this his hour of atonement for the locust-eaten years; and the Frenchman as much elate with his own perspicacity as his pupil's justification thereof.

"_Bein_! How else? To me it seems that within this hundred feet or so of space you have presented the very essence of that India to which you owe your inspiration, together with your wife."

And it was so. The critical eye of the Frenchman saw plainly that here was no mere triumph of anecdotal art, scorned by an impressionistic age. Sinclair had imbibed the spirit of the Ramayāna through the spirit of his wife. In these his pictures, as in the Epic itself, the story, with all its subtle analysis of motive, its barbaric opulence of colour, served as background, merely, for the proving and revealing of a woman's soul, triumphant in purity and renunciation: twin kernels of the Hindu faith.

Not the pictures alone, nor the haunting minor music, but the whole long room, was imbued with the glow and glamour of the East. Costly rugs and hangings, quaintly carven chairs inlaid with ivory, on the temporary dais where Lady Sinclair received her guests, had come over from India with Sir Lakshman, that the harmony of the subject and setting might be complete. By Lilamani's wish gold was everywhere the prevailing colour: and she herself--in the midst of sober black coats and the half tones of early spring--flashed like a living ray of sunlight: all gold, from veiled head to shining feet; save for the aquamarines on her breast, and the gleam of sapphire and emerald in the minutely-jewelled border of a _sari_ the most regal she had ever worn.

For the sake of Nevil and that dear father, from whose keen insight little could be hid, she had made a last determined effort to shake off the paralysing listlessness that clouded her clear spirit and hung like a weight upon her limbs. In a measure will had triumphed. But the strain and the supervening excitement had taken their toll of her; so had three days in London, though no longer an ochreous nightmare of lost souls.

To-day her heart veered between overwhelming shyness and overwhelming pride. The unnatural brightness of her eyes, the dusky glow in her cheeks, illumined her like a lamp. Yet Sir Lakshman, listening courteously to Lord Roscoe's polished turns of phrase, found eyes and mind wandering incessantly to the small regal figure in the throne-like chair. For him, no passing illumination could gloss over the fact that she was thinner. The fine lines of nostrils, nose, and brow were just perceptibly sharpened, and purplish brown shadows ringed her eyes. Was she well? Was she happy? Or had this notable young Englishman, with the acquisitive instinct of his race, taken all--devotion, inspiration, fame--and given little in return? To such questions her lightly-closed lips would vouchsafe him no answer. That he knew. In eleven months of marriage his child had become woman, and he must needs accept the veil between. None the less, before returning to India, he would make very sure----.

"It is remarkable--most remarkable, in a poem of that era, the mingling of purely epic and barbaric qualities with an insight, a psychological subtlety peculiarly modern----" Lord Roscoe's well-bred voice at his ear reminded him that now was not the moment for anxious brooding over the daughter of his heart.

For the moment she sat alone, glad of a brief respite even from the friendly volubilities of Martino, who had gone off, on compulsion, with two brother-artists to give his opinion on a disputed point. For an hour and more she had endured an unceasing flow of small talk, compliments, bewildering intellectualities and genuine enthusiasm that set her head buzzing and left her hands uncomfortably cold. Here, in this vast, seething London, always agape for some new thing, was no sign of Bramleigh's nervous shrinking from the unorthodox, the unusual. Artists, art-critics, minor planets of the social system, all were eager for more than a passing word or two with the living Sita, who, until quite lately had been "a genuine _purdahnashin_." Glad for Nevil's sake, she had yet found this avalanche of appreciation a little overpowering. It had left her small chance of talk with her real friends, whose joy in Nevil's achievement almost equalled her own.

From her too-prominent seat of honour she sought them out in the thinning crowd below. Broome on a centre seat, beaming alternately at Morna and Christina, who talked eagerly across him. Clara, in the flowing grey gown that was her own gift, nervously pleased and important, clinging to the arm of Rāma, who obviously longed to escape. Lilamani did not guess how the longing concerned Sita and a cup of tea; nor how Clara, in her foolish pride, had been chattering of two sonnets discovered in her son's rooms, that also concerned Sita, minus the cup of tea. Nevil she spied with Leslie de Winton, in the group Martino had joined, before the terrible scene of Sita's abduction; considered by some of the younger men the finest thing in the room. Lady Roscoe, on the other hand, pronounced it repulsive and unnecessary; tried not to be aware of it, and failed altogether. Look where she might, uncomfortable sensations assailed her. The "native element" jarred; and there was far too much primitive, unvarnished emotion in the air to suit her taste. It was more than satisfactory, of course, to feel that at last, by some mysterious accident, Nevil, the impossible, stood on the threshold of distinction. But satisfaction was marred by private worries; and the whole atmosphere of the place set her Philistine bristles on end. A set of vigorous hunting pictures would have been infinitely wholesomer and pleasanter, infinitely more in keeping with the name of Sinclair, than this theatrical farrago of abductions and ordeals by fire!

She had avoided the dais so far; but Lilamani caught sight of her now, in sober purple and ermine, standing with Phillippa near the Hanuman scene, deep in earnest talk that clearly did not concern the picture before them. Once or twice they glanced in the direction of George, who stood at the opposite end of the line, hands clasped behind him, gazing abstractedly at the upturned face of Sita pleading with her lord.

To Lilamani, George still seemed little more than a friendly big dog to be patted and smiled upon because he belonged to her husband; and George absorbed in a picture was a contradiction of terms. She amused herself now with speculating on the nature of his thoughts that must surely have drifted miles away. It did not occur to her that he was absorbed in no picture, but in the face and figure of a woman rendered almost living by the magic of Nevil's brush.

Possibly her thought drew him, as thought will. Certainly he turned; and seeing her alone made straight for the dais.

"Great luck catching you like this even for a minute," he said with his Sinclair directness. "I thought I should never get a look in. I'm nobody to-day!"

"How nonsense!" She smiled indulgent reproof as at a child. "You are just so much 'George' as other days!"

"But you're not a bit the same Jewel. In that ripping frock you look more than ever like a Princess out of a fairy-tale. And I tell you, that first picture's a stunning portrait. I must get old Nevil to have it photographed for my benefit. Now--do come and have a cup of tea."

"Very well."

But as she rose, behold Jane confronting them, with the militant gleam in her eyes that Lord Roscoe had learned to respect.

"One minute, George. Phil's had enough of this. She wants to exchange some books before going home."

George's scowl emphasized the likeness between brother and sister to a remarkable degree.

"And I'm one of the books she wants to exchange--eh?" he asked, with a gruff attempt at a laugh. "Phil's quite capable of facing a librarian without an escort; and I didn't suppose she'd be keen on mine to-day."

"My dear boy, don't talk nonsense. Go and call a hansom. She'll be ready in a minute."

"Oh well--if it's General Orders----! But I don't suppose she's in a mortal hurry; and I want to give Jewel some tea."

"George----!" Lady Roscoe remonstrated sharply under her breath; then checked herself and stood on guard, while two cups of tea and two sandwiches were swallowed in comfortless haste.

Lilamani, puzzled beyond measure, was thankful when George put his cup down and gripped her hand.

"Sorry I'm obliged to run off like this; and a thousand congratulations on a stunning good show. I couldn't have believed old Nevil had it in him. But he's had all the luck going, this last year."

His eyes lingered on her a moment in open defiance of Jane. Then he was gone: and, in the silence that fell, Lord Roscoe's even voice could still be heard drawing abstruse comparisons between Homer and his contemporary, Valmiki, hermit and singer, who enriched the national life of India by the story of Rāma and his Queen.

Lilamani spoke first.

"Anything gone wrong--with George?"

"Yes. He's making a fool of himself all round. But we can't talk of that here."

Lady Roscoe scrutinized her sister-in-law for a few seconds, and decided afresh that her dress was far too conspicuous for good taste; then she added in the tone of schooled friendliness Lilamani knew too well: "You're beginning to look fagged, my dear. If you want to be fresh for the dinner to-night, and fit for travelling to-morrow, you'd better come straight home in the brougham with me. All the best people have gone. Kit can very well play hostess for Nevil's artist friends, and give you a chance to lie down before you dress. I know you're glorying in it all. But be sensible, for once, and come away with me."

Command lurked beneath the conciliatory flow of words, and Lilamani--puzzled and a little reluctant--felt too tired to resist.

"I am quite ready for being sensible for once!" she said, forcing a smile. "If he is really not needing me."

"Come and ask him yourself."

"Very well." Crossing over to Sir Lakshman she touched his arm. "I am going now, Father--for a little rest."

"Very wise, my child. You look to need it," he answered, laying a hand over hers and deliberately searching her face. "We meet again soon--for this great dinner!"

And she passed on. The great dinner--given by Broome--was to be a private one at the Carlton; a gathering of choice spirits to give Nevil and his wife a hearty "send-off" and drink long life to the Ramayāna Exhibition.

They found Nevil in the thick of an argument with Martino on the link between motive and art. He commended Jane's wisdom, while privately wondering at it. Lilamani wondered also; the more so that her over-sensitized nerves divined hostility in the air. But not until they reached the drawing-room door and she turned to escape did the true inwardness of Jane's manœuvre come to light.

"Don't run away at once, Lil. I want a talk with you first," said she; and Lilamani winced, as always, at the anglicized mutilation of her name.

"I came home for rest," she objected, without her usual spirit.

"Well, I won't keep you long. But it's important. There's tea in there. One never gets any worth speaking of in a crowd like that."

Clearly resistance was useless. When Jane meant to have her way she usually had it. Nor did she waste time in beating about the bush. An arm-chair and a cup of tea were the limit of her concessions to Lilamani's weakness. Her speech was straight and plain.

"Of course it's about George. You asked what was wrong. But you must know as well as I do----"

Lilamani started, and set down her cup.

"I? How do you mean?" she asked blankly, and Jane's vexation flashed out.

"My dear innocent! I suppose you're aware that he admires you?"

The frank statement fired Lilamani's cheeks. "I know he is very kind--almost like real brother. Only sometimes he ... he troubles me with his eyes. But if you are so bad of heart to think ... because of that ... he..."

"For goodness' sake, child, give me a chance to speak. George is a gentleman and a Sinclair. I'm not suspecting him of anything more serious than a passing fascination for a new type; and that's hard enough on Phil. But she's most reasonable; most sensible. And though Nevil says I 'make friction,' I'd have let things alone if George hadn't been fool enough, yesterday, to talk airily about running over to Antibes for Easter. Phil says she told him plainly that if he went their engagement would be at an end; and they've scarcely spoken since----"

"But Jane----! How to break so sacred thing?"

Lady Roscoe waved aside the futile question.

"This isn't a treatise on racial customs. Still--you can take it from me that, in England, we've good sense enough to consider an unsuitable marriage much more disastrous than a broken engagement. But this one is not unsuitable; and it shan't be broken off if I can help it. Women may be over-plentiful. But not girls like Phil, plus five thousand a year."

Lilamani did not quite see the connection of this last. The whole subject jarred her fastidious sense of reserve; and she could not be expected to perceive that it really was rather trying, for Jane, to find this insignificant Hindu child upsetting the whole of her sacred Family.

"I hope there will come no such trouble," the Hindu child murmured, with a touch of constraint.

"Hoping's no use. I want facts. Has he mentioned this last bit of folly to you? Have you encouraged the idea? Perhaps--with your queer 'sisterly' notions, you've been asking him to come----"

"I--oh, what are you saying? What shall I, who am wife, have to do with coming and going of--other men?" She rose abruptly; pulses hammering at her temples and in her throat. "With us it is insult to make any such suggestion; and for--for other kinds of foolishness, how can _I_ help----"

"That's for you to answer. I know _I_ could"--which was true enough. "No right-minded woman fascinates men promiscuously without knowing it; and if you go on at this rate, there'll always be trouble."

"At what rate?" Lilamani murmured blankly; and Jane, extinguishing her with a glance: "Don't ask childish questions, but listen to me. It's not only George. There's Ronald writing sonnets to your eyebrows--or some such foolery--by way of being violently original. But Nevil's to blame for that. I'm only concerned for George. If he talks to you of coming out----'

"He will not talk," Lilamani retorted with sudden anger. "He is not like you think. Only friend. But now all that is spoilt, by your saying such things. I do not wish even to see him----"

"My dear Lil, do sit down. Heroics are futile and bad form."

Jane spoke more placably, perceiving she had gone too far. But Lilamani shook her head.

"I am tired, and do not wish to hear any more. If you have more to speak you can tell it to Nevil----"

"Nevil, indeed! much use talking to Nevil to-day about mere human beings! He'll be hopelessly in the clouds."

"Better that, than to be in such ugly kind of mud as you have pushed me in now."

"What nonsense, my dear. That's just your Eastern trick of exaggeration. I'm a practical woman of the world; years older than you; and when I see things going wrong in the family all on your account, I have every right to speak. If you were not so spoilt and so unreasonable, you would take it in good part, and Nevil need not be bothered at all. But really you two haven't an ounce of common sense between you!"

"For that I am glad and thankful from my inmost soul," Lilamani made answer with heartfelt fervour of conviction; and was gone.

Alone in her room, she pressed cold fingers against her throbbing temples and flaming cheeks. Then flinging herself on the sofa, she lay chilled and rigid with burning head; her thoughts a chaotic mingling of Epic India, Nevil's triumph and her own renewed hatred of Jane. Foolish? Perhaps. But her health was far from normal. It had been a day of strain; and That Terrible's sacrilegious hand upon her sanctities seemed more than she could endure.

At the approach of Nevil's footstep she sat upright--waiting.

From the rhythm of it she pictured him bounding up, schoolboy fashion, three steps at a time; and his face, when the door opened, confirmed her vision. Dazzled by the day's triumph he saw nothing, for the moment, but the radiant figure that throughout had been the lodestar of his eyes and mind.

"Rested already? Good!" was his cheerful greeting. Then he came quickly forward, closing the door.

"Oh, my Sita Dévi--it's been a supreme day! And I've come to lay all my laurels at the feet of the Queen. You won't allow me near you in public. Now I claim atonement to the full!"

Laughing, he knelt before her and bowed his head upon the hands that lay in her lap.

At the touch of them he started and looked up. "Darling--you're ice-cold. And your cheeks are on fire. I thought Jane took you home to rest."

"Yes. But first she was telling me cruel things--to me like insult--how I am making trouble in your family; breaking betrothal of George----"

"_You_? So that was at the bottom of her sisterly concern. I might have known! That engagement was of Jane's making. If anything goes wrong it's her look-out. You--indeed! Was she unkind?"

"No--no. Only she is not understanding how, for Hindu wife--oh, Nevil! Rather would I go back in strictest _purdah_--even from men-folk of husband's family----"

A fit of coughing shook her; and he, tenderly masterful, laid her back among the cushions, covering her with a quilt.

"You stay there and shut your eyes _and_ your mind!" he commanded, with a lightness he was far from feeling. "Leave Jane and George to me; and don't give the matter another thought. That's _hukm_--d'you hear! I want you to be at your very best to-night. Sir Lakshman seems bothered about you as it is; and we don't want fresh trouble in that quarter---- Oh, confound it all!" he broke out desperately. "She might have let you alone, to-day, of all days, that ought to have been one of unclouded happiness----"

"But King of me"--she clung to his hands--"I am happy in spite of all. Heart and spirit are singing in the air like birds. Only this stupid body, so strangely without life--like a flower faded and thrown in the dust."

"A very brilliant and beautiful flower," he said softly, and passed a slow, soothing hand over her from shoulder to ankles. "It will never be thrown in the dust while I'm alive."

Her lids fell almost before he had ceased speaking. Yet still he stood over her, watching intently.

With the swift approach of sleep the whole delicate face relaxed its tension. Lips drooped at the corners, shadows under the lashes seemed to darken; and the curve of the cheek was unmistakably less perfect than on the day he sketched it first: significant trifles to the eye of love.

A haunting remark of Broome's returned to trouble him. "Of course I know you must wait. But the deuce of it is that you can't bargain with the ghostly sisters to 'go slow' while an insignificant human completes an insignificant fragment of his life's work."

Bargain or no--there remained a fundamental reliance on the Great Unseen, strangely intensified by eleven months of union with this Hindu wife of his: and leaning above her now the man's heart breathed a broken prayer that she might not slip away from him on the threshold of achievement.

Then he went softly out, bent on speaking his mind to Jane, with a directness that for once should outrival her own.