Read Ebook: Far to Seek A Romance of England and India by Diver Maud

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Ebook has 2673 lines and 149415 words, and 54 pages

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THE GLORY AND THE DREAM

"Thou art the sky, and thou art the nest as well." --Tagore.

Roy was an imaginative creature, isolated a little by the fact of being three and a half years older than Christine, and "miles older" than Jerry and George, mere babies, for whom the magic word adventure held no meaning at all.

It was Tara's mother, Lady Despard, who had the happy idea of sharing lessons, that would otherwise be rather a lonely affair for both. But it was Roy's mother who had the still happier idea of teaching them herself. Tara's mother joined in now and then; but Roy's mother--who loved it beyond everything--secured the lion's share. And Roy was old enough by now to be proudly aware of his own good fortune. Most other children of his acquaintance were afflicted with tiresome governesses, who wore ugly jackets and hats, who said "Don't drink with your mouth full," and "Don't argue the point!"--Roy's favourite sin--and always told you to "Look in the dictionary" when you found a scrumptious new word and wanted to hear all about it. The dictionary, indeed! Roy privately regarded it as one of the many mean evasions to which grown-ups were addicted.

His ripe experience on the subject was gleaned partly from neighbouring families, partly from infrequent visits to "Aunt Jane"--whom he hated with a deep unreasoned hate--and "Uncle George," who had a kind, stupid face, but anyhow tried to be funny and made futile bids for favour with pen-knives and half-crowns. Possibly it was these uncongenial visits that quickened in him very early the consciousness that his own beautiful home was, in some special way, different from other boys' homes, and his mother--in a still more special way--different from other boys' mothers....

And that proud conviction was no mere myth born of his young adoration. In all the County, perhaps in all the Kingdom, there could be found no mother in the least like Lil?mani Sinclair, descendant of Rajput chiefs and wife of an English Baronet, who, in the face of formidable barriers, had dared to accept all risks and follow the promptings of his heart. One of these days there would dawn on Roy the knowledge that he was the child of a unique romance, of a mutual love and courage that had run the gauntlet of prejudices and antagonisms, of fightings without and fears within; yet, in the end, had triumphed as they triumph who will not admit defeat. All this initial blending of ecstasy and pain, of spiritual striving and mastery, had gone to the making of Roy, who in the fulness of time would realise--perhaps with pride, perhaps with secret trouble and misgiving--the high and complex heritage that was his.

Meanwhile he only knew that he was fearfully happy, especially in summer time; that his father--who had smiling eyes and loved messing with paints like a boy--was kinder than anyone else's, so long as you didn't tell bad fibs or meddle with his brushes; that his idolised mother, in her soft coloured silks and saris, her bangles and silver shoes, was the "very most beautiful" being in the whole world. And Roy's response to the appeal of beauty was abnormally quick and keen. It could hardly be otherwise with the son of these two. He loved, with a fervour beyond his years, the clear pale oval of his mother's face; the coils of her dark hair, seen always through a film of softest muslin--moon-yellow or apple-blossom pink, or deep dark blue like the sky out of his window at night spangled with stars. He loved the glimmer of her jewels, the sheen and feel of her wonderful Indian silks, that seemed to smell like the big sandalwood box in the drawing-room. And beyond everything he loved her smile and the touch of her hand, and her voice that could charm away all nightmare terrors, all questionings and rebellions, of his excitable brain.

Yet, in outward bearing, he was not a sentimental boy. The Sinclairs did not run to sentiment; and the blood of two virile races--English and Rajput--was mingled in his veins. Already his budding masculinity bade him keep the feelings of 'that other Roy' locked in the most secret corner of his heart. Only his mother, and sometimes Tara, caught a glimpse of him now and then. Lady Sinclair, herself, never guessed that, in the vivid imaginations of both children, she herself was the ever-varying incarnation of the fairy princesses and Rajputni heroines of her own tales. Their appetite for these was insatiable; and her store of them seemed never ending: folk tales of East and West; true tales of Crusaders, of Arthur and his knights; of Rajput Kings and Queens, in the far-off days when Rajasth?n--a word like a trumpet call--was holding her desert cities against hordes of invaders, and heroes scorned to die in their beds. Much of it all was frankly beyond them; but the colour and the movement, the atmosphere of heroism and high endeavour quickened imagination and fellow-feeling, and left an impress on both children that would not pass with the years.

To their great good fortune, these tales and talks were a part of her simple, individual plan of education. An even greater good fortune--in their eyes--was her instinctive response to the seasons. She shared to the full their clear conviction that schoolroom lessons and a radiant day of summer were a glaring misfit; and she trimmed her sails, or rather her time-table, accordingly.

And his mother had answered with her dignified unruffled sweetness--that made her so beautifully different from ordinary people, who got red and excited and made foolish faces: "He will not agree. He shares my believing that children are in love with life. It is their first love. Pity to crush it too soon; putting their minds in tight boxes with no chink for Nature to creep in. If they first find knowledge by their young life-love, afterwards, they will perhaps give up their life-love to gain it."

Roy could not follow all that; but the music of the words, matched with the music of his mother's voice, convinced him that her victory over horrid interfering Aunt Jane was complete. And it was comforting to know that his father agreed about not putting their minds in tight boxes. For Aunt Jane's drastic prescription alarmed him. Of course school would have to come some day; but his was not the temperament that hankers for it at an early age. As to a moral backbone--whatever sort of an affliction that might be--if it meant growing up ugly and 'disagreeable,' like Aunt Jane or the Aunt Jane cousins, he fervently hoped he would never have one--or Tara either....

But on this particular morning he feared no manner of bogey--not even school or a moral backbone--because the bluebells were alight under his beeches--hundreds and hundreds of them--and 'really truly' summer had come back at last!

Roy knew it the moment he sprang out of bed and stood barefoot on the warm patch of carpet near the window, stretching his slim shapely body, instinctively responsive to the sun's caress. No less instinctive was his profound conviction that nothing possibly could go wrong on a day like this.

In the first place it meant lessons under their favourite tree. In the second, it was history and poetry day; and Roy's delight in both made them hardly seem lessons at all. He thought it very clever of his mother, having them together. The depth of her wisdom he did not yet discern. She allowed them within reason, to choose their own poems: and Roy, exploring her bookcase, had lighted on Shelley's 'Cloud'--the musical flow of words, the more entrancing because only half understood. He had straightway learnt the first three verses for a surprise. He crooned them now, his head flung back a little, his gaze intent on a gossamer film that floated just above the pine tops--'still as a brooding dove.'...

Standing there, in full sunlight--the modelling of his young limbs veiled, yet not hidden, by his silk night-suit; the carriage of head and shoulders betraying innate pride of race--he looked, on every count, no unworthy heir to the House of Sinclair and its simple honourable traditions: one that might conceivably live to challenge family prejudices and qualms. The thick dark hair, ruffled from sleep, was his mother's; and hers the semi-opaque ivory tint of his skin. The clean-cut forehead and nose, the blue-grey eyes, with the lurking smile in them, were Nevil Sinclair's own. In him, at least, it would seem that love was justified of her children.

But of family features, as of family qualms, he was, as yet, radiantly unaware. Snatching his towel, he scampered barefoot down the passage to the nursery bathroom, where the tap was already running.

Fifteen minutes later, dressed, but hatless and still barefoot, he was racing over the vast dew-drenched lawn, leaving a trail of grey-green smudges on its silvered surface, chanting the opening lines of Shelley's 'Cloud' to breakfast-hunting birds.

"Those first affections, Those shadowy recollections,... Are yet the fountain-light of all our day; Are yet the master-light of all our seeing." --WORDSWORTH.

The blue rug under Roy's beech-tree was splashed with freckles of sunshine; freckles that were never still, because a fussy little wind kept swaying the top-most branches, where the youngest beech-leaves flickered, like golden-green butterflies bewitched by some malicious fairy, so that they could never fly into the sky till summer was over, and all the leaf butterflies in the world would be free to scamper with the wind.

That was Roy's foolish fancy as he lay full length, to the obvious detriment of his moral backbone--chin cupped in the hollow of his hands. Close beside him lay Prince, his golden retriever; so close that he could feel the dog's warm body through his thin shirt. At the foot of the tree, in a nest of pale cushions, sat his mother, in her apple-blossom sari and a silk dress like the lining of a shell. No jewels in the morning, except the star that fastened her sari on one shoulder and a slender gold bangle--never removed--the wedding-ring of her own land. The boy, mutely adoring, could, in some dim way, feel the harmony of those pale tones with the olive skin, faintly aglow, and the delicate arch of her eyebrows poised like outspread wings above the brown, limpid depths of her eyes. He could not tell that she was still little more than a girl; barely eight-and-twenty. For him she was ageless:--protector and playfellow, essence of all that was most real, yet most magical, in the home that was his world. Unknown to him, the Eastern mother in her was evoking, already, the Eastern spirit of worship in her son.

Very close to her nestled Tara, a vivid, eager slip of a girl, with wild-rose petals in her cheeks and blue hyacinths in her eyes and sunbeams tangled in her hair, that rippled to her waist in a mass almost too abundant for the small head and elfin face it framed. In temperament, she suggested a flame rather than a flower, this singularly vital child. She loved and she hated, she played and she quarrelled with an intensity, a singleness of aim, surprising and a little disquieting in a creature not yet nine. She was the despair of nurses and had never crossed swords with a governess, which was a merciful escape--for the governess. Juvenile fiction and fairy tales she frankly scorned. Legends of Asgard and Arthur, the virile tales of Rajputana and her warrior chiefs, she drank in as the earth drinks dew. Roy had a secret weakness for a happy ending--in his own phrase, "a beautiful marry." Tara's rebel spirit rose to tragedy as a flame leaps to the stars; and there was no lack of high tragedy in the records of Chitor--Queen of cities--thrice sacked by Moslem invaders; deserted at last, and left in ruins--a sacred relic of great days gone by.

Here, indeed, was Roy's 'beautiful marry,' fit prelude for the tale of that heroic pair. For in life--Lil?mani told them--marriage is the beginning, not the end. That is only for fairy tales.

And close against her shoulder, listening entranced, sat the child Tara, with her wild-flower face and the flickering star in her heart--a creature born out of time into an unromantic world; hands clasped round her upraised knees, her wide eyes gazing past the bluebells and the beech-leaves at some fanciful inner vision of it all; lost in it, as Roy was lost in contemplation of his Mother's face....

And this unorthodox fashion of imbibing knowledge in the very lap of the Earth Mother, was Lil?mani Sinclair's impracticable idea of 'giving lessons'! Shades of Aunt Jane! Of governess and copy-books and rulers!

Happily for all three, Lady Roscoe never desecrated their paradise in the flesh. She was aware that her very regrettable sister-in-law had 'queer notions' and had flatly refused to engage a governess of high qualifications chosen by herself; but the half was not told her. It never is told to those who condemn on principle what they cannot understand. At their coming all the little private gateways into the delectable Garden of Intimacy shut with a gentle, decisive click. So it was with Jane Roscoe, as worthy and unlikeable a woman as ever organised a household to perfection and alienated every member of her family.

The trouble was that she could not rest satisfied with this achievement. She was afflicted with a vehement desire--she called it a sense of duty--to organise the homes of her less capable relations. If they resented, they were written down ungrateful. And Nevil's ingratitude had become a byword. For Nevil Sinclair was that unaccountable, uncomfortable thing--an artist; which is to say he was no true Sinclair, but the son of his mother whose name he bore. No one, not even Jane, had succeeded in organising him--nor ever would.

So Lil?mani carried on, unmolested, her miniature attempt at the forest school of an earlier day. Her simple programme included a good deal more than tales of heroism and adventure. This morning there had been rhythmical exercises, a lively interlude of 'sums without slates' and their poems--a great moment for Roy. Only by a superhuman effort he had kept his treasure locked inside him for two whole days. And his mother's surprise was genuine: not the acted surprise of grown-ups, that was so patent and so irritating and made them look so silly. The smile in her eyes as she listened had sent a warm tingly feeling all through him, as if the spring sunshine itself ran in his veins. Naturally he could not express it so; but he felt it so. And now, as he lay looking and listening, he felt it still. The wonder of her face and her voice, and all the many wonders that made her so beautiful, had hitherto been as much a part of him as the air he breathed. But this morning, in some dim way, things were different--and he could not tell why....

His own puzzled thoughts and her face and her voice became entangled with the chivalrous story of Prithvi Raj holding court in his hill fortress with Tara--fit wife for a hero, since she could ride and fling a lance and bend a bow with the best of them. When Roy caught him up, he was in the midst of a great battle with his uncle, who had broken out in rebellion against the old Rana of Chitor.

"All day long they were fighting, and all night long they were lying awake beside great watch-fires, waiting till there came dawn to fight again...."

His mother was telling, not reading now. He knew it at once from the change in her tone.

"And when evening came, what did Prithvi Raj? He was carelessly strolling over to the enemy's camp, carelessly walking into his Uncle's tent to ask if he is well, in spite of many wounds. And his uncle, full of surprise, made answer: 'Quite well, my child, since I have the pleasure to see you.' And when he heard that Prithvi had come even before eating any dinner, he gave orders for food: and they two, who were all day seeking each other's life, sat there together eating from one plate.

"'In the morning we will end our battle, Uncle,' said Prithvi Raj, when time came to go.

"'Very well, child, come early,' said Sur?jmul.

"So Prithvi Raj came early and put his Uncle's whole army to flight. But that was not enough. He must be driven from the kingdom. So when Prithvi heard that broken army was hiding in the depths of a mighty forest, there he went with his bravest horsemen, and suddenly, on a dark night, sprang into their midst. Then there was great shouting and fighting; and soon they came together, uncle and nephew, striking at each other, yet never hating, though they must make battle because of Chitor and the Kingdom of Mewar.

She paused--her eyes on Roy, who had lost his own puzzling sensations in the clash of the fight and its chivalrous climax.

"Oh, I love it," he said. "Is that all?"

"No, there is more."

"Is it sad?"

She shook her head at him--smiling.

"Yes, Roy. It is sad."

He wrinkled his forehead.

"Oh dear! I like it to end the nice way."

"But I am not making tales, Sonling. I am telling history."

So Lil?mani--still looking at Roy--told how Prithvi Raj went on his last quest to Mount Abu, to punish the chief, who had married his sister and was ill-treating her.

The low clear voice fell silent--and the silence stayed. The vague thrill of a tragedy they could hardly grasp laid a spell upon the children. It made Roy feel as he did in Church, when the deepest notes of the organ quivered through him; and it brought a lump in his throat, which must be manfully swallowed down on account of being a boy....

And suddenly the spell was broken by the voice of Roger the footman, who had approached noiselessly along the mossy track.

"If you please, m'lady, Sir Nevil sent word as Lord and Lady Roscoe 'ave arrived unexpected; and if convenient, can you come in?"

They all started visibly and their dream-world of desert and rose-red mountains and battle-fields and leaping flames shivered like a soap-bubble at the touch of a careless hand.

Lil?mani rose, gentle and dignified. "Thank you, Roger. Tell Sir Nevil I am coming."

Roy suppressed a groan. The mere mention of Aunt Jane made one feel vaguely guilty. To his nimble fancy it was almost as if her very person had invaded their sanctuary, in her neat hard coat and skirt and her neat hard summer hat with its one fierce wing, that, disdaining the tenderness of curves, seemed to stab the air, as her eyes so often seemed to stab Roy's hyper-sensitive brain.

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