Roy would marry Tara in September; and in November they three would go out together. There were bad days coming out there; but, as Roy had once said, every man and woman of goodwill--British or Indian--would count in the scale, were it only a grain here, a grain there. The insignificance of the human unit--a mere fragment of star-dust on sidereal shores--is off-set by the incalculable significance of the individual in the history of man's efforts to be more than man. In that faith these two could not be found wanting; debtors as they were to the genius, devotion, and high courage of one fragile woman, who had lived little more than half her allotted span.
They at least would not give up hope of the lasting unity vital to both races, because political errors and poisonous influences and tragic events had roused a mutual spirit of bitterness difficult to quell....
Conceivably, it _might_ touch the imagination of their India--Rajputana (Roy was chary, now, of the all-embracing word), that an Englishman should so love an Indian woman as to immortalise her memory in a form peculiar to the East. For a Christian Lilamani, neither temple, nor tomb, but the vision of a waste city rebuilded--the city whose name was written on her heart. In their uplifted moment, it seemed not quite unthinkable.
"And it's India's imagination we have most of us signally failed to touch--if not done a good deal to quench," said Roy, his eyes brooding on a bank of purple-grey cloud, his own imagination astir....
It was his turn now to catch a flitting inspiration on the wing.
Would it be utterly impossible----? Could they spend a wander-year in Rajputana--the cities, the desert, the Aravallis: his father painting--he writing? The result--a combined book, dedicated to her memory; an attempt to achieve something in the nature of interpretation--his arrogant dream of Oxford days; a vindication of his young faith in the arts as the true medium of mutual understanding. In any case, it would be a unique achievement. And they would feel they had contributed their mite of goodwill, had followed 'the gleam.'...
"Besides--out there, other chances might crop up. Thea, Grandfather, Dyan.... And Tara would be in in it all, heart and soul," he concluded--remembering, with a twinge, a certain talk with Rose. "And it would do _you_ all the good on earth--which isn't the least of its virtues, in my eyes!"
The look on his father's face was reward enough--for the moment.
"Well done, Roy," said Sir Nevil very quietly. "That year in Rajputana shall be my wedding present--to you two----"
Later on the 'inspired plan' was expounded to Tara--with amplifications.
She had merely run home--escorted, of course, through the perils of the wood--to impart her great news and bring her mother back to lunch, which Roy persistently called 'tiffin.' Food disposed of, they stepped straight out of the house into a world of their own--the world of their 'Game-without-an-End'; the rose garden, the wood, the regal splendours of the moor, gleaming and glooming under shadows of drifting cloud: on and on, in a golden haze of content, talking, endlessly talking....
The reserve and infrequency of their letters had left whole tracts, outer and inner, unexplored. Here, thought Roy--in his mother's beautiful phrase--was 'the comrade of body and spirit' that his subconsciousness had been seeking all along: while he looked over the heads of one and another, lured by the far, yet emotionally susceptible to the near. Once--unbidden--the thought intruded: "How different! How unutterably different!"
Reading aloud to Tara would seem pure waste of her; except when it came to the novel, of which he had told her next to nothing, so far....
And Tara carried her happiness proudly, like a banner. The deliciousness of being loved; the intoxication of it, after the last spark of hope had been quenched by that excruciating engagement! Her volcanic heart held a capacity for happiness as tremendous as her capacity for daring and suffering. But the first had so long eluded her, that now she dared scarcely let herself go.
She listened half incredulous, wholly entranced, while Roy drew rapid word-pictures of the cities they would see together--Udaipur, Chitor, Ajmir; and, not least, Komulmir, the hill fortress crowned with the 'cloud-palace' of Prithvi Raj and that distant Tara, her namesake.
Together, they would seek out the little shrine--Roy knew all about it--near the Temple of the Mother of the Gods, that held the mingled ashes of those great lovers who were pleasant in their lives and in death were not divided....
It was much later on, in the evening, when they sat alone near the twin beeches, under a new-lighted moon, that Roy at last managed to speak of Rose. In the dimness it was easier, though difficult at best. But all day he had been aware of Tara longing to hear; unable to ask; too sensitive on his account; too proud on her own.
Sir James and Lady Despard were dining, to honour the event: and if Sir James had needed 'squaring' no one heard of it. Jeffers had arrived, large and genial--his thatch of hair thinned a little and white as driven snow. Healths had been drunk. It was long since the Beeches had known so hilarious a meal. Yet the graceless pair had made haste to escape, and blessed Lady Despard for remaining with the men.
Tara was leaning back in a low chair; Roy on a floor cushion, very close; a hand slipped behind her, his cheek against her arm; yet, in a deeper sense, she wanted him closer still. Surely he knew....
He did know.
"Tara--my loveliest--shall I tell you?" he asked suddenly. "Are you badly wanting to hear?"
"Craving to," she confessed. "It's like a bit of blank space inside me.
And I don't want blank spaces--about you. It's the house swept and garnished that attracts the seven devils. And one of my devils is jealousy! I've hated her _so_, poor thing. I can't hate her more, whatever you tell----"
"Try hating her less," suggested Roy.
"Try and make me!" she challenged him. "Are you--half afraid? Were you ... fearfully smitten?"
"Wonderful Tara! 'Smitten' is the very word." He looked up at her moonlit face, its appealing charm, its mingling of delicacy and strength. "I would never dream of saying I was 'smitten'--with _you_."
For reward, her lips caressed his hair. "What a Roy you are--with your words! Tell me--tell from the beginning."
And from the beginning he told her: first in broken, spasmodic sentences, with breaks and jars; then more fluently, more unreservedly, as he felt her leaning closer--more and more understanding; more and more forgiving, where understanding faltered, where gaps came--on account of Lance, and of pain that went too deep for words. She had endured her own share of that. She knew....
When all had been said, it was she who could not speak; and he gathered her to him, kissing with a passion of tenderness her wet lashes, her trembling lips----
At last: "Beloved--_has_ the blank space gone?" he asked. "Are you content now?"
"Content! I'm lifted to the skies."
"To the tipmost top of them?" he queried in her ear; and mutely she clung to him, returning his kisses, with the confidence of a child, with the intensity of a woman....
All too soon it was over--their one mere day: the walk back through the wood--never more enchanted than on a night of full moon: Tara, dropped from the skies, lost to everything but the sound of Roy's voice in the darkness, deep and soft, like the voice of her own heart heard in a dream. It seemed incredible that there would be to-morrow--and to-morrow--and to-morrow, world without end....
Back in the garden, Jeffers--a miracle of tact--wandered away to commune with an idea, leaving father and son alone together.
Sir Nevil offered Roy a cigarette, and they sat down in two of the six empty chairs near the beeches and smoked steadily without exchanging a remark.
But this time they were thinking of one woman. For at parting Tara had said again, "It's all been her doing--first and last." And Roy--with every faculty sensitised to catch ethereal vibrations above and below the human octave--divined that identical thought in his father's silence. Her doing indeed! None of them--not even his father--knew it better than himself.
And now, while he sat there utterly still in the midst of stillness--no stir in the tree-tops, no movement anywhere but the restless glow of Broome's cigar--the inexpressible sense of her stole in upon him, flooding his spirit like a distillation from the summer night. Moment by moment the impression deepened and glowed within him. Never, since that morning at Chitor, had it so uplifted and fulfilled him....
Surely, now, his father could feel it too? Deliberately he set himself to transmit, if might be, the thrill of her nearness--the intimacy, the intensity of it.
Then, craving certainty, he put out a hand and touched his father's knee.
"Dad," the word was a mere breath. "Can you feel...? She is here."
His father's hand closed sharply on his own.
For one measureless moment they sat so. Then the sense of her presence faded as a light dies out. The garden was empty. The restless red planet was moving towards them.
On a mutual impulse they rose. Once again, as in her shrine, they exchanged a steadfast look. And Roy had his answer.
He slipped a possessive hand through his father's arm; and without a word, they walked back into the house....
_Parkstone, February_ 1920.
_Parkstone, March_ 27, 1921.
THE END.