Chapter IX

"O greying of my dawn, suspiring into rose: O grey veils of dusk, that obscure the tender flushing of my dawn!"--FIONA McLEOD.

At a small deal table, set across the oval window of her third-floor bedroom, Audrey Hammond sat writing. It was the selfsame corner room where they had all drunk tea with Signor Martino in the far-off beginning of things. And now--only four days ago, they had been shocked and saddened by a letter from Broome announcing his death. It transpired that sooner than miss Nevil's hour of triumph, he had come straight from a sick-bed, in defiance of doctor and sister. And within two weeks the most murderous month in the English calendar had done its work.

To-day, on the deal table that had once been sticky with his paints, Audrey Hammond's books and papers, and a photo or two, were set out with mathematical neatness. Her hand moved steadily over the ruled page. The lines of her intent face had been graven deeper by a year's leave that had brought her little of holiday or enjoyment, much of struggle and pain. She had believed the pain dead and buried, the emotion that caused it atrophied by stern disregard of its existence, until she met Sir Nevil Sinclair and his wife at Antibes Station a week ago. The night or two at Bramleigh had not been achieved: and on that day of arrival she had discovered, as do all who suffer, that though love and pain be buried never so deep, they die hard--if they ever die at all. For are they not twin seeds of the tree of life? And a seed, though it come not to fruition, remains, for an incredible time, a vital spark in darkness.

Three days from now, the s.s. _Arabia_, outward bound, was due to leave Marseilles, with Sir Lakshman and Audrey Hammond on board. Only three days. On the whole, Audrey would be glad when they were over; still more glad to take up regular work again. She was at work now, completing an article on nerve crises for a semi-scientific magazine; her fair hair neatly coiled and brushed back as of old, a deep furrow of concentration between her brows. She wore a blue flannel dressing-gown and her bare feet were thrust into slippers. For it was early, very early: a dawn of lucent stillness was stealing over Golfe Juan after a night of sudden tempestuous wind and rain. A last lowering mass of storm-cloud low in the east threw all the bay into gloom. The near hills above Cannes loomed purple-violet. Yet, away in the north, day triumphed on far-off ice-fields and glimmering peaks.

But Audrey Hammond's eyes looked inward rather than outward. The storm had banished sleep and left her at the mercy of importunate thoughts: importunate, because--when not definitely in harness--they were apt to fall back upon those two; the sole human beings who had ever deeply and lastingly disturbed her equipoise, or, in her own phrase, knocked her off her centre.

Lilamani, wife and budding woman, was still for her "the child" of an earlier day; lovable and gently intractable as ever behind her delicate, impenetrable veil of reserve. This last Audrey understood. She knew enough of the Hindu wife not to expect the sort of confidences that might have been bestowed upon her by an English girl-wife of nineteen. On the whole she was thankful to be spared. But she was not altogether happy about Lilamani; and she suspected that Sir Lakshman was not happy either. More than once he had asked her searching questions about lungs and nerves; and Audrey, being honest by nature, had not quite succeeded in setting his heart at rest. As regards individual suitability and devotion the marriage was a manifest success; manifest enough to humble the pride of the girl who, in secret, had believed herself the more fitting mate for this man of her own race. But in Lilamani's case the secondary considerations of family and country counted for much. How had she fared with Lady Roscoe, and her large, yet, in a sense, narrow circle of sporting and political friends? What of the neighbours round Bramleigh, and her position as mistress of a great house?

Little could be gleaned from Lilamani. She grew restive under questioning, and Audrey drew her own conclusions. In the matter of her health, this doctor-woman had less need to rely on question. Her quick medical sense detected incipient lung trouble and nerves overstrung either from repression or strain; and conscience urged her to speak a word of warning to Nevil before the last day. No easy task, even for one who had scaled the steeps of stoicism. And yet another vital discovery made speech more difficult still.

Lilamani's shadowed eyes, slightly sharpened features, and her fainting fit on the night of arrival, indicated a hope that would probably readjust altogether her state of body and mind. She wondered whether the child realized things yet; wondered still more what, precisely, was Nevil's attitude toward this, the crux of intermarriage between East and West. She approached Lilamani's husband discreetly, even in thought. Since she could not think of him dispassionately her scrupulous conscience bade her refrain from thinking of him at all. But on this particular point she had always held strong opinions common to the majority of her race. Her own feelings apart, this, the inevitable consequence, had been her main argument against the marriage: and, at the time of the engagement, it had seemed to her quite in keeping with Nevil, as she knew him, to snatch impetuously at the desire of his heart, without looking--or perhaps without choosing to look--the more complex issues frankly in the face.

But Nevil, as she knew him then, had seemed little like to develop so swiftly into the restrained and purposeful Nevil of to-day. The fact that a year of marriage had wrought more perceptible change in the man than in the girl-wife eleven years his junior was, for Audrey, the most unique and interesting factor in the whole situation. It had been natural to wonder what would be the effect on Lilamani of marriage with an Englishman and close contact with the ways of the West; and lo, it was he who had taken colour from her. His hyper-civilized brain and soul appeared to have acquired not inspiration only, but a new grip on all things, from contact with the elemental strength and passion underlying her surface pliability. Would Nevil, man and artist, have so developed, so triumphantly found himself, after a year of marriage with her--Audrey? On that inadmissible question she sternly slammed the door; and fell back upon her former wonderings. Did the child realize----? And did he----?

One thing was certain. For all her devotion, she had something very much on her mind. Something that concerned her husband; and, in her present state, brooding was the worst of evils. She would be certain to exaggerate trifles, to distort simple facts. If only she would speak----! Invariably Audrey's thoughts came back full circle upon that paralysing "if"----

And, unguessed by her, the same refrain was, at that very hour, disturbing the mind of Sir Lakshman Singh, who sat sipping his early cup of tea by the open French windows of his first-floor room. Far better even than Audrey Hammond did he understand and appreciate the wifely loyalties and reticences of his child. But he argued that her case was exceptional, that his own responsibility, in regard to the great experiment, privileged him to fuller assurance than he had yet received that she had not bought her heart's desire at too great a price. Finally, he knew that he could not leave her again indefinitely till his doubts had been set at rest. Not her reserve alone, but her manner of evading question, drove him to mistaken inferences, which might have been dispelled by more open speech.

This brief reunion, so ardently longed for, had proved singularly disappointing on the whole. He had spent ten days at Bramleigh and five in London; had spoken little and noted much that gave him food for anxious thought. In spite of immense satisfaction at her vital share in Nevil's success, and his frank recognition thereof, the father's heart--jealous for his child's happiness--foreknew the dangers inherent in overgenerous draughts of the headiest wine on earth; the fatal human tendency to lose sight of the giver in the gift. And when sons came to them--how would it fare with her then? Would the brave words spoken in the glow of desire hold good in face of concrete facts? Nevil was an excellent fellow and singularly wide-minded: not a doubt of it. Yet Sir Lakshman wondered very much.

But when all was said the one imperative anxiety overshadowed every other--her health. Too well he knew the heavy toll paid by his race for the doubtful privilege of culture; the tale of promising young lives cut short by the treacherous grey winters of the West. Her small dry cough and smiling listlessness pierced his heart. They worried Miss Hammond too. That was plain. Something more radical was needed than two or three months on the Continent. A winter in India might very well work wonders. She need not come to Hyderabad. He would mention it to Nevil. If need were, he would insist.

Soothed by the prospect of definite action, he emptied his teacup and lit a cigarette. Most certainly he must find or make opportunity for a frank talk with his son-in-law before the day was out.

Lilamani came down looking a shade more fragile than usual. She had slept badly, she said, on account of the storm; and Sir Lakshman had a moment of quiet unreasoning annoyance as he glanced from her dusky pallor and shadowed eyes to her husband's clear-skinned virile face. Health has, at times, a knack of appearing unsympathetic, even when it is not. For, though Sir Lakshman did not guess it, Nevil's secret anxiety matched his own.

In the middle of breakfast he was called down to the telephone. An artist cousin of Martino's, passing through Nice, begged him to come over for the day. He accepted; and returning to Sir Lakshman's sitting-room, announced his intention and his train. The Indian mentally relegated his straight talk to the after-dinner hour; a propitious hour, when the dinner is likely to be a good one; and the faintest possible shadow clouded Lilamani's face. Her wakeful night had culminated in a decision; and she too must wait till evening for a chance of speech.

"You don't mind my running away, do you, dear?" Nevil asked later when they had a moment alone. "If you lie down this morning, you may get back some of the sleep you lost. And you've no lack of good company for this afternoon. I don't doubt Sir Lakshman's blessing me for giving him a clear field!"

"Yes. That is possible!" she answered lightly, though her smile had the shadow of constraint that had troubled him for a week or more.

Questions as to what was wrong produced the invariable answer: "Not anything," and immediate change of subject. Some fanciful bogey no doubt; and he had decided not to worry her till sea and sunshine had more nearly wrought their perfect work. "Go for a drive out Esterelle way, you two," he suggested.

"Yes. That I would like--better than all."

But the lost sleep was not recaptured: and when Sir Lakshman unwittingly echoed Nevil's suggestion--in the hope of a confidential talk, that should determine the tone of to-night's arraignment--she baffled him by including Audrey in the plan. It was not the first time she had eluded him thus, since coming to Antibes; and whether she did it of set purpose he could never tell. For once he attempted protest.

"I was not meaning Miss Hammond. Do you want her specially to-day?"

Her grave smile hinted at reproach. "Not more than other days. Only--think how unkind, Father mine, leaving her in the cold. And she would so much enjoy to come."

She did enjoy it; more than Sir Lakshman, who left conversation mainly to the women, and carried on a vigorous argument with Nevil in his own mind.

After tea Lilamani slipped quietly away without a word to either: and, as sunset drew on, Sir Lakshman wandered out alone to the rocky headland, raging inwardly against the invisible Something that debarred him from heart to heart communion with his Jewel of Delight. The very name he so loved seemed a mockery now, in view of her pale cheeks and trouble-haunted eyes. Enforced repression, and a sense of being baffled at every turn, stirred the primitive passions that burn beneath the surface impassivity of the Rajput, and wrought him to a mood of mind ill-befitting the delicate task of approaching an Englishman on the subject of his wife.

But mere movement and the nameless influences of the hour were not without effect; and he decided to make the round of the Cap before going back to his room, where he hoped to find a vanished Lilamani awaiting him in the dusk. He had intended that she should share his stroll, and enjoy with him, as of old, the evening pageantry of sea and sky. But the Gods were against him every way; and their glory manifest in the heavens mocked him rather than consoled. He walked on, bathed in it, while the chill wind of doubt blew through his heart. Could it be that he had done wrong in granting her the thing she craved? If so, well--it was conceivable that he might forgive himself; but never the man who had tempted him to her undoing.

He had reached the Cap now. Fretted and caressed by the darkening waters, it lay before him empty of the usual sunset strollers, who were over at Cannes waging a Lenten Battle of Flowers. No threat to-night of coming storm. The wind was sinking with the sun, and all the west one still, clear lake of gold barred with flakes and strands of dusky purple cloud. Deeper purple still, the carven headland of the Esterelles brooded darkly between a bronze-green sea and a molten sky. Beautiful past question: yet without her vivid, peculiar joy in it all, mere beauty seemed to lack significance.

Suddenly Sir Lakshman stood still. He was not alone after all.

Some distance ahead of him, under the lee of a myrtle bush, sat a dark figure, huddled together, as if the head rested on the hands. But the arms were not visible. Their owner was cloaked and hooded. The father's heart quickened, as he moved a step or two nearer. Then he knew. She had come out after all; and had preferred to come alone. A trifling detail; yet it hurt the man as she had never hurt him yet.

At the sound of his step she sprang up so swiftly that he hurried forward, half-fearing she would evade him even now.

"Lilamani--my child!" he cried, slipping an arm round her. "What has come over you that you should run away like this, deserting your old father when so few days are left for being together? Why shut the door of your heart against me--unless that you are unhappy----?"

"No--not that, Father mine. Only some foolishness--through not being well. But you must please believe--whatever comes, your Lilamani is happy--happy----"

And by way of confirming her statement she fell sobbing on his breast.

For a few minutes he soothed her without speech. But the doubt and trouble that seethed in him could no longer be repressed.

"A strange fashion of happiness, Light of my Life. I know you would not speak lies to me. Yet neither will you speak all the truth. You would not even drive alone with me to-day, when I so greatly wished----"

"To-morrow, dearest--to-morrow," she assured him, choking back her sobs. "We will ride on the sea, like old times. You and I only. Nevil will understand. Then we shall talk more freely of--of some things----"

"And why not to-night?" he asked, increasingly bewildered.

She shook her head without lifting it. "Please not ask. Please understand."

The old childish formula smote him, and he held her closer.

"Take me back now," she pleaded; and still supporting her, he led her along the path. "Not any more Lilamani-talk," she commanded, smiling. But the doors being once opened the trouble of his mind must out.

"Do you imagine one moment I shall make criticism or discussion of your husband?" said he, quietly disregarding her behest. "Am I not Hindu also, and you the daughter of my begetting? But I cannot return to India, seeing you in this state, and knowing my child of the sun must again endure the grey cold of English autumn and winter, so fatal for our race." He felt the small irrepressible shiver and went rapidly on: "No daughter of Rajputs will cry out for trifles. But, from my own heart, I know it is telling on you more than you will confess. So much was changed by the sudden death of Sir George. That I understand. Also success and many friends will make Nevil more inclined for living in England than before. But I shall suggest that he must bring you to India, where he can make further study of Eastern subjects on the spot----"

"No, not say that," she broke in with such decision that he came to a standstill and looked searchingly in her face. "Lilamani--what is your reason? More mysteries? Or is it possible--you do not wish----?"

"Oh, Father--Father!" In the mingled reproach and longing of that cry from her heart, he had all the answer he desired. But she added swiftly, lest he take self-justification for consent. "We have spoken of that already; and he says not possible. Too far. Too much money, I think--he does not wish----"

"Leave all to me, child. There is duty of husband to wife, as of wife to her lord; more especially in the West. Leave it to me."

His decision outmatched her own; and she, between secret longing and innate instinct of submission to the masculine note of command, said no more.