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

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.

"Oh dear!" he sighed. "Will they stop for lunch?"

"I expect so."

He wrinkled his nose in a wicked grimace.

"Bad boy!" said Lil?mani's lips, but her eyes said other things. He knew, and she knew that he knew how, in her heart, she shared his innate antagonism. Was it not of her own bestowing--a heritage of certain memories--ineffaceable, unforgiveable--during her early days of marriage? But in spite of that mutual knowledge, Roy was never allowed to speak disrespectfully of his formidable aunt.

"You can stay out and play till half-past twelve, not one minute later," she said--and left them to their own delectable devices.

Roy had been promoted to a silver watch on his eighth birthday, so he could be relied on; and he still enjoyed a private sense of importance when the fact was recognised.

Left alone they had only to pick up the threads of their game; a sort of interminable serial story, in which they lived and moved and had their being. But first Tara--in her own person--had a piece of news to impart. Hunching up her knees, she tilted back her head till it touched the satin-grey hole of the tree and all her hair lay shimmering against it like a stream of pale sunshine.

"What do you think?" she nodded at Roy with her elfin smile. "We've got a Boy-on-a-visit and his mother, from India. They came last night. He's rather a large boy."

"Is he nine?" Roy asked, standing up very straight and slim, a defensive gleam in his eye.

"He's ten and a half. And he looks bigger'n that. He goes to school. And he's been quite a lot in India."

"Not my India."

"I don't know. He called it 'Mballa. That letter I brought from Mummy was asking if she could bring them for tea."

"Well, I don't want him for tea. I don't like your Boy-on-a-visit. I'll tell Mummy."

Though Roy knew nothing as yet about woman and the last word, he instinctively took refuge in the masculine dignity that spurns descent to the dusty arena when it feels defeat in the air.

"Girls don't never fuss--do they?" he queried suavely. "Let's get on with the Game and not bother about your Boy-of-ten."

"And a half," Tara insisted tactlessly, with her sweetest smile. But when Roy chose to be impassive pin-pricks were thrown away on him.

Tara's feminine intuition leaped at a solution.

In the same breath she, Tara, sprang to her feet and swung herself astride a downward sweeping branch just above Roy's head. There she perched like a slim blue flower, dangling her tan-stockinged legs and shaking her hair at him like golden rain. She was in one of her impish moods; reaction, perhaps,--though she knew it not--from the high tragedy of that other Tara, her namesake, and the great greatest-possible grandmother of her adored 'Aunt Lila.' Suddenly a fresh impulse seized her. Clutching her bough, she leaned down and lightly ruffled his hair.

He started and looked reproachful. "Don't rumple me. I'm going."

"She's jolly pleased with the knight that finds them," said Roy with a deeper wisdom than he knew. "And you can't be stopped off quests that way. Come on, Prince."

At a bend in the mossy path, he looked back and she waved her lily hand.

To be alone in the deep of the wood in bluebell time was, for Roy, a sensation by itself. In a moment, you stepped through some unseen door straight into fairy-land--or was it a looking-glass world? For here the sky lay all around your feet in a shimmer of bluebells: and high overhead were domes of cool green light, where the sun came flickering and filtering through millions of leaves. Always, as far as he could remember, the magical feeling had been there. But this morning it came over him in a queer way. This morning--though he could not quite make it out--there was the Roy that felt and the Roy that knew he felt, just as there had suddenly been when he was watching his mother's face. And this magical world was his kingdom. In some far-off time, it would all be his very own. That uplifting thought eclipsed every other....

Lost in one of his dreaming moods, he wandered on and on, with Prince at his heels. He forgot all about Tara and his knighthood and his quest; till suddenly--where the trees fell apart--his eye was arrested by twin shafts of sunlight that struck downward through the green gloom.

The pity was he couldn't carry them back with him as trophies. He could only watch them fascinated, wondering how you could explain what you didn't understand yourself. All he knew was that they made him feel 'dazzled inside,' and he wanted to watch them more.

It was beautiful out in the open with the sunshine pouring down and a big lazy white cloud tangled in tree-tops. So he flung himself on the moss, hands under his head, and lay there, Prince beside him, looking up, up into the far blue, listening to the swish and rustle of the wind talking secrets to the leaves, and all the tiny mysterious noises that make up the silence of a wood in summer.

And again he forgot about Tara and the Game and the silver watch that made him reliable. He simply lay there in a trance-like stillness, that was not of the West, absorbing it all, with his eyes and his dazzled brain and with every sentient nerve in his body. And again--as when his mother smiled her praise--the Spring sunshine itself seemed to flow through his veins....

A long rumbling growl, that seemed to shudder through the wood, so startled him that it set little hammers beating all over his body. Then the wind grew angrier--not whispering secrets now, but tearing at the tree-tops and lashing the branches this way and that. And every minute the wood grew darker, and the sky overhead was darkest of all--the colour of spilled ink. And there was Tara--his forgotten Princess--waiting for him in her high tower; or perhaps she had given up waiting and gone home.

"Come on, Prince," he said, "we must run!"

All in a moment the eerie darkness quivered and broke into startling light. Twigs and leaves and bluebell spears and tiny patterns of moss seemed to leap at him and vanish as he ran: and two minutes after, high above the agitated tree-tops, the thunder spoke. No mere growl now; but crash on crash that seemed to be tearing the sky in two and set the little hammers inside him beating faster than ever.

There lay the rug and the cushions under the downward sweeping branches with their cascades of bright new leaves. No sign of Tara--and the heavy drops came faster, though they hardly amounted to a shower.

Flinging down bow and arrows, he ran under the tree and peered up into a maze of silver grey and young green. Still no sign.

"Tara!" he called. "Are you there?"

"'Course I am." Her disembodied voice had a ring of triumph. "I'm at the tipmost top. It's rather shaky, but scrumshous. Come up--quick!"

Craning his neck he could just see one leg and the edge of her frock. Temptation tugged at him; but he could not bear to disobey his mother--not because it was naughty, but it was her.

"I will--if you come up."

"I tell you, I can't!"

"Only one little minute, Roy. The storm's rolling away. I can see miles and miles--to Farthest End."

The answer to that came from the top of the tree. A crack, a rustle and a shriek from Tara, who seemed to be coming down faster than she cared about.

Another shriek. "Oh, Roy! I'm stuck! Do come!"

But to release her skirt and give her a hand he must trust himself on the jagged bough, hoping it would bear the double weight. It looked rather a dead one, and its sharp end was sticking through a hole in Tara's frock. He set foot on it cautiously and proffered a hand.

"Now--catch hold!" he said.

Agile as he, she swung herself up somehow and clutched at him with both hands. The half-dead bough, resenting these gymnastics, cracked ominously. There was a gasp, a scuffle. Roy hung on valiantly, dragging her nearer for a firmer foothold.

And suddenly down below Prince began to bark--a deep, booming note of welcome.

"Hullo, Roy!" It was his father's voice. "Are you murdering Tara up there? Come out of it!"

Roy, having lost his footing, was in no position to look down--or to disobey: and they proceeded to come out of it, with rather more haste than dignity.

He was on the ground now, shaking hands with her, his sensitive clean-cut face a mask of mere politeness: and Tara was standing by him--a jagged hole in her blue frock, a scratch across her cheek, and her hair ribbon gone--looking suspiciously as if he had been trying to murder her instead of doing her a knightly service.

She couldn't help it, of course. But still--it was a distinct score for Aunt Jane, who, as usual, went straight to the point.

"You nearly kicked my head just now. A little gentleman would apologise."

He did apologise--not with the best grace.

"My turn next," his father struck in. "What the dickens were you up to--tearing slices out of my finest tree!" His twinkly eyes were almost grave and his voice was almost stern.

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