Eyes of India

[Gervé Baronti]

Chapter I

Outward Bound

There have been moments—if the sentinel,
Lowering his halberd to salute the Queen,
Had flung it brutally and clasped my knees—
I would have stooped and kissed him with my soul.
—Browning

Cynthia Conway, stretched on a deck chair, studied the passengers who sat with her at the captain’s table. They were the only Europeans on board. The ship was crowded with Indians, Chinese and Persians.

There sat the elderly lady with her twin daughters; the three were engaged in a vaudeville sketch on an Eastern circuit, the middle-aged missionary honeymooners, the wife of the hotel proprietor in the States, the poet, and that other gentleman and his wife.

The twins were trying little snatches of songs, no doubt preparatory to entertaining the elite of Singapore. They were lank flat-chested English girls.

The mother sat back now watching their antics and drinking the inevitable gin. Cynthia had marveled at her capacity last night at dinner.

The missionary honeymooners were half hidden by the life boat, but Cynthia could see them quietly holding hands and watching the sea. How they sickened her—this middle-aged pair. She could not understand the “Indian Summer” of love, the mild St. Martin days of affection. Perhaps this was because she hated the Autumn. The summer’s decrepit desire decked out in gorgeous raiment, she called it. It reminded her of a woman who adorns her finished youth in a mellowed light. She looked down at one of her slender hands as it lay on her dark sports-skirt. It had felt the contact of much burning pressure. She knew it would never rest in the cool autumn fingers of apathy.

The wife of the hotel proprietor was the fluffly ruffly sort. Cynthia had put her head over the edge of her upper berth that morning and watched with much pleasure as this little person created herself for the day. How fascinating to watch a dainty and pretty woman at work! It is like watching an artist at his canvas. At first there is but dull grey outline, then colours blend together, grow and live, until some gorgeous thing blossoms right before the eyes. Now the little lady, wrapped in a fleecy scarf, was talking to the poet with pretty bird-like affectation.

Cynthia shifted her position to look at that man who sat a little way from the others. His wife, beside him, knitted herself into some grey yarn. He was looking at the ocean but he was not seeing it. Cynthia would have given much to have shared the scene which was passing before those deep-set eyes. He had been in her thoughts since she had first seen him at the hotel in Hong Kong. She was pleased and troubled when she found him on the boat. Had Cynthia known it, she was but vaguely voicing the question that most persons asked themselves when meeting George Quaren for the first time. What is it about this man? Many who hated him and some who loved him had found the answer in the course of acquaintance.

Back in the old days, the little school boy on the Cornish Coast was dubbed “Airedale Quaren” by his childhood friends, because of the ludicrous contrast between his spiky reddish eyebrows and his stiff brown hair. Many of them had felt the force of his anger delivered hastily by steel-tempered muscles. Others remembered the old dog whose paw was put in splints when it was broken under the wagon. They remembered the boy whose coat served as a bed for old Rex, and who never neglected to carry food to the injured one although it meant a walk of more than two miles, and an hour gone for play.

At the University, where he really distinguished himself in sports and broke even with his studies, he was always referred to as “The Airedale.”

When he went to old Assam to try his luck as a tea planter he was “The Airedale” to all who knew him. But it never occurred to these later men that the contrast between the thorny shelter of those piercing eyes and that unmanageable hair had caused Quaren’s strange christening as a boy.

To them he was the man who had given up dope after five years of slavery. They had seen the old malarial swamp blossom with tea under this man’s will. They had seen the leopard fall under the thrust of an ancient bayonet—a wall ornament—when this man was attacked unawares in his own verandah. All this they had seen and known, and to them there was but one name for this man—“The Airedale.”

Quaren had married his father’s ward. He could not resist the last words of the old country rector—“Marry poor Laura, George, she can never face the world alone.” His father had asked no promise but he knew he spoke truly. Laura Enston was the last person in the world to be thrown on her own resources.

When the elder Quaren had been a missionary in India he had promised Sirus Enston—who died in his arms—that he would be a father to the baby Laura. Sirus Enston had been a ne’er-do-well who was pulled out of the mire for a year and upheld by a woman’s love. She passed in giving him the baby daughter, and he lost his footing again.

This was about thirty-five years ago. Laura Enston had been reared in the usual English rectory by the kind old rector and his wife. Two years after his wife’s departure the rector had followed her to the long rest, leaving Laura penniless in the hands of his son.

She was a mere inert thing of various languors. Her interests were centered in herself. She was pale and narrow without one sensational memory. Her mind, what she had of it, was entirely focussed upon the trivial emptiness which engrosses those of her kind. She might have been the result of her training, or she might have been smirched with a polluted inheritance—such as she was, Quaren married her. She knew he never could love her, but she accepted him quietly as such women always take the sacrifice or contempt of men.

He had lived with the native women of Assam before he had married her. He had known the streets where the red lantern glimmers on the dim balcony, but today he stood with a great glorious passion intact—for he had never loved.

Cynthia was passing, in imagination, a delicate modeling tool over his features. What a head! she was thinking, and what a perfect line the jaw makes. There is strength there—a little too much if he were opposed in anything. Perhaps he is forty, and perhaps he is nowhere near it. As she was curving the line of the nostril into his upper lip he turned suddenly and looked at her. She was unprepared for those eyes that gleamed under the spiky brows—those eyes that in one intense glance had thrown her poise to the winds and flung her naked before him. No feeling of anger touched her. She felt exultant, as if she lived in all her being. This man should confess his love in the wilderness, where he was one with the elements round him. She could not think of him in cities. He must be out there where the beasts prowled—the other beasts—misunderstood as he was.

*  *  *

In writing to Leon of Cynthia, Babs Livingstone had said—“She has gone to India as she threatened. I am sorry the old uncle left her that small fortune—small, but enough to enable her to chase round the world—for really, she has talent. Her last bust, ordered by some library in New Jersey, is splendid. You should see it! Of course she may work in India. She says she will have a studio in Calcutta and all that sort of thing—but I know Cyn, when the wolf is leashed far enough from the door. Even when he comes right up to the door and puts his head in, she is never startled as the rest of us. The fragments of life do not interest her. What matters the detail, however beautiful? She will wrap herself in the whole flaming fabric and stand alone in the storm.

“Who have we now to take her place?” No one, you know this as well as I do. I sketched her one day when she was in my studio. It was soon after she threatened to leave us. I tried to get some of that witchery on a bit of canvas I have painted so much obvious prettiness—the pink and white cow-eyed stuff, called by admirers the ‘velvety-eyed,’ I am sick of it—and I tried to catch the other. I laugh now when I think of my foolishness. Imagine trying to get the charm that is Cyn Conway on canvas! Think of anchoring radiant femininity in so much space. It is not that intense hair that swirls about her form like a cloud—it is not those old old twilight eyes—it is not those ankles, the most perfect I know—it is none of these things. It is the spirit of enigmatic femininity throwing itself on all the world in a glad challenge.

“The great moments of life are on the edge of the precipice.” It is there she awaits the incomplete enigma, and feels the surge of possibilities, while she reaches out firm hands to push Peace over the brink.

“‘You are never the same for two hours on end,’ I said to her when she came to say good-bye.

“‘Of course not, dear,’ she threw back at me, ‘I am not the same person today that I was five years ago—not even one year ago—really we change entirely each year, every one of us. All our desires—our looks—everything about us changes constantly. You know you liked those women of yesterday, and she of tomorrow will not shock you by becoming respectable.’

“Well, she is gone, and I have only my old sketch . . . which I shall not finish.”

Chapter II

Distant Lights

“The Bargain Counter of the East” was like the painting of a fire,—mostly high light. The colours were so gorgeous they fairly blinded one. Tall trees flung their huge red and yellow blossoms against an indigo sky. Dark green cocoa-nut palms with long spiked fronds tinkled in the breeze like Japanese windbells. The harbour was a blue jewel flecked with white, set in glittering gold sand. The roads were of red clay and over all dazzling white sun-light.

The Hotel was built on three sides of a grassy court where flower bordered walks coiled and wound in pretty design. It was a two-storied affair, and each suite opened into a plant-trimmed verandah.

Cynthia and the fluffy lady were installed on the first floor. “The rooms are ordinary enough,” Cynthia wrote Babs,—“but I wish you could see the bath tub. It is like a great round Pompeian vase with carvings of dancing ladies. It stands full of cold water all the time. If you wish hot water a boy brings it to you in a small tin tub. When I stand on the marble floor and throw water over myself from a big dipper and watch it run off in the drains round the room, and know that it empties just outside on the ground, I feel like some ancient maid to whom the bath was a luxurious pagan rite. I can see dusky waiting-women holding towels and whatever passed for soap in those old days.”

The ship was to remain in port for two days, and Cynthia and her cabin mate had decided to stay at the hotel, and get, as the fluffy lady expressed it, “something besides Irish Stew and things that taste of bilge-water.”

The poet, whose home was in that colourful city, had asked the Airedale and his wife to visit him during the two days. They had accepted. He had planned a little dinner for the evening to which Cynthia and the fluffy lady were invited. “But come early,” he had told them, “while the light is still good for you must see my orchids.”

The poet had a hobby. Every poet should have a hobby: it would save such wear and tear of spirit all around. His hobby was orchids, and on his estate he had over two hundred varieties.

The fluffy lady was poising her hat on her pretty hennaed coiffure. She would tilt it over one ear, bring it well down over her face, push it back, pull it off and make little stabs at it with her fingers to adjust the ribbon or the flowers a little differently, then place it on her head again, all the while making bird-like movements before the mirror. Cynthia watched her from the depths of a huge chintz-covered chair. She loved the parade of creams and powders strewn across the dresser, the perfumes in their frosty glass bottles, the silver or ivory-backed brushes and combs, and all the little deceits that assist Beauty to perform, frequently, her too arduous task.

She gave little time to her own toilet, not because she did not wish to appear well, but she had no interest in the trifling conquest, and no desire to outshine. She was the devourer of Beauty wherever she found it, totally indifferent as to who or what furnished it.

She was one with all warm expressions of life. The sun’s fierce light, the compelling scent of red flowers, the fire’s vitality that would escape in the mounting flame, the magic authority of silence, the mystic dirge of the wind, the desire that illumines passion, the hot strength of huge wrath—all these lent Cynthia something of their glory—and the result was that terrific magnetism that blazed through any adornment. It was no knowledge of this force that made her hasty with her toilet; but she had always been aware that the simple costume, adjusted quickly, did as well for her as the complex arrangements for her friends. Every woman knows her good and bad points if she will be honest with herself. Rouge and powder she used if she wished, but she was no slave to these accessories, and would not have made a week-end party miserable for her friends if she had forgotten her traveling bag and left it on the train.

The fluffy lady between jabs at the hat directed questions to her—such questions as are uppermost in the minds of fluffy ladies.

“Are you engaged? I don’t see how you have escaped so long.”

“I am not engaged,” Cynthia told her calmly, “and I intend to escape for the rest of my life.”

“But surely you believe in marriage?”

“For you, my dear, and for anyone who wishes it.”

“Have you never been in love?”

“Oh, yes, many times.”

“It could not have been love—not really.”

“I wonder,” said Cynthia slowly—she was back on the ship watching a man who did not belong in cities.

“I love my husband,” lisped the fluffy lady; “he is so kind, and he gives me everything I want.”

“I am sure he does,” thought Cynthia. She knew the wants of such women.

Further revelations were cut short by the arrival of the poet, in a large green motor car. The fluffy lady rushed into the verandah after giving the hat a last tilt into the position which revealed the short curls on her right temple.

He held her hand a bit longer than was necessary. These two had lost no time on the ship.

“How cool you look,” he said, giving his hand to Cynthia who had joined them.

“I love the heat,” she admitted, “and I shall never wear dark glasses or heavy topees. I like to feel the sun.”

The fluffy lady by this time had folded herself on the seat of the motor car. Cynthia climbed in without hat or wrap as the poet seated himself at the wheel. The gayly dressed Malay chauffeur seemed to be taken along, as the Chinese say, only for “look-see.”

The drive was charming. The way took them through the Botanical Garden. It was once the jungle home of monkeys. The government had taken it over a few years ago, cleared it, and put it in charge of forestry and botanical experts. It is one of the fairest sights in that fairest of tropical cities.

They passed many rubber estates where young rubber trees were planted among the palms. From a rocky cliff the sea looked lazy and blue in the distance.

Finally, they turned into a driveway that seemed to be literally lined with orchid-houses.

“Let us get out here,” said the poet.

Cynthia’s hand was grasped by the Airedale as she stepped out of the car. He had evidently been waiting for them at the end of the driveway.

“How lovely! Oh how lovely!” she exclaimed, indicating the view with a wide gesture of her arms.

“Yes, it is fine, but a little too made. . . . Nature has yielded too much to whim,” Quaren said to her.

She looked up at him, the slant rays of the sun touched his wiry brows giving strange glints to the red-brown eyes. . . . How much would he yield to whim or anything else?

“Here we are,” called the poet turning into the largest orchid-house. Cynthia had always loved the orchid more than other flowers, but like most people of the home countries she was familiar only with terrestrial varieties. Here, the orchid was epiphytic, and the lovely parasites coiled around tree or plant to live on stolen nutriment. “A parasite justifies its right to existence by such beauty,” she thought.

What green thing would not be willing and glad to give up its sustenance to feel the arms of these delicate dream flowers clinging to its body? Orchids of lavender gauze, dusted with gold, clung to tall trees. A crimson flower, called the Crown, looked down on a small shrub which supported it. Great white butterflies with painted wings twined round bare, gnarled trunks. The terrestrial ones smiled from pieces of plain board or leaned from pots. There were amber, gold blue, green and pink in their colours. One was silver, touched with brown spots.

Just as his guests were moving away, the poet took down a board on which rested a fairy’s brooch, a tiny yellow star with pale blue edges and one mite of a ruby in the center.

“This orchid,” he said, “has not been named yet. I am going to call it the Fallinopsis Gracia.” He stammered over the Christian name of the fluffy lady.

“How shall I ever live up to such an honour,” she exclaimed trying to manage a blush for the occasion.

The Airedale was looking at Cynthia across a table of ferns. Once more that feeling of exposure possessed her. . . . Here was one, who, if he ever gave a woman something to bear her name, would hardly give an orchid. . . .

The poet explained, as they walked up the palm-trimmed driveway, that the smaller houses were for potting and nursing the flowers. He had some wonderful specimens from Borneo, but they were not quite ready to be seen yet.

Mrs. Quaren was in the verandah fidgeting with a large yellow cat.

“Is he not handsome, Miss Conway?” she asked as Cynthia came up the steps,—“look at the size of his paws” (holding one up for inspection), “he has five toes.” Cynthia smiled and shook the extended paw of the cat instead of the hand of Mrs. Quaren.

The bungalow was very plainly the abode of a man. It had no woman to toss it up artistically. It had that tiresomely clean, antiseptic look which only several Japanese servants, taken from their own country and left to themselves, can give a place. On the stairs a very much polished gold Buddha rested against carved ebony panelling. The panelling was evidently put there to enhance his glare and shameful cleanliness. Cynthia thought the rugs might be lovely some time, when they had faded a bit. The furniture was expensive, massive and abundant.

When the fluffy lady had removed her hat in the poet’s bedroom she found Cynthia and the Airedale mixing drinks on the verandah.

“Have something?” said the Airedale, passing her a glass of misty yellow liquid.

“No, thank you, I never touch alcohol.”—-This with a giggle—her full stop to most remarks.

“Some people do not,” said the Airedale indifferently.

Dinner proved to be a marvelous affair. The table was dressed with three table cloths,—lace on top of lace, with a great bunch of orchids in the center. Cynthia marvelled at the genius of the cook as she saw potato bridges, sherbet roses resting on green leaves, old moats of some chocolate mixture, and for a final masterpiece, a dessert, an unknown delicacy in the form of a cottage with tiny lights inside.

After dinner they sat in the verandah and watched the stars form themselves into a crown for the head of a distant hill. A jackal screeched a few times in the jungle below, then kindly gave way to the soft contralto song of a night bird.

It was late when the poet ordered his motor car and drove Cynthia and the fluffy lady back to the hotel. The night was glorious. Hundreds of intoxicating tropical perfumes came to them from the flower-bordered roads as they spun along.

“I have a present for you,” he said to Cynthia as he bade her good-night. “May I bring it, or I should say her, to the boat in the morning?”

“Her! You are not asking me to adopt a child?” laughed Cynthia.

“In a way I am, but I know you will love each other.” And he left her wondering.

Chapter III

A Window in Calcutta

Cynthia sat alone in her drawing-room, which also served as studio, half buried in a huge chair. Bits of wet clay were sticking to her fingers as she held them away from the old apron whose embroidery of paint and clay could not have been injured by the contact. She was contemplating with dreamy satisfaction the half finished bust on the table.

What a face! It rested on the slender column of the neck like some vivid tropical flower on its stalk. The eyes held the mystery and appeal of the East, but there was that about the curve of the lips which belied the brooding calm of the eyes.

Those lips could condemn, and condemn quickly. They could order death, and return instantly to their quiet smile. There was something in the face that suggested Regulus giving himself to Carthaginian tortures rather than betray Rome. This man would be just, whether it meant life or death. It was not a face to play with, and people were wise who treated its owner frankly.

Mahomet Khan had not asked Cynthia to make his bust—but he had consented to “sit” when she told him that she really must “do” him.

The room was almost in shadow now. The light outside was failing, and Cynthia did act care to order lights. She went out on the balcony that had been given over to Gwendolyn Ermyntrude. Miss Gwendolyn was a monkey. Cynthia thought her pathetic, for she had just stopped short of being human. She was the poet’s gift. He had prophesied truly when he said, “you will love each other.” Cynthia loved the mischievous little creature who would cuddle down on her shoulder, put two hairy arms about her neck and croon soft jungle ditties.

Below in the street, the Indian boys sang their evening songs, naked feet shuffled past making a soft pat-pat on the stones, the weary buffalo dragged his empty wagon home after the day’s labour, from somewhere came the weird plaintive note of the sitar. Innumerable dogs barked. From afar shrilled the melancholy wail of the jackal that preludes the Eastern night.

Gwendolyn from a position on the railing studied two white owls that poked their comical flat faces over the edge of the roof. The sinister bats flew past describing great circles, intent upon nothing but the evening exercise after their day of sleep.

On the balcony, praise be to Allah, reigned Peace. Cynthia took Gwendolyn in her lap and gave herself up to dreams.

It was an evening like this, on the Bay of Bengal . . . how well she remembered it! She had stood for a long minute with her head on a man’s breast. She had heard his voice, thickened by emotion, gasping, “I love you, wonder woman, I love you.” She had felt his kisses on her hair, her lips, her eyes, while all feeling departed from her but joy, and the knowledge of why she lived. “I want you in my jungle,” he had said,—“in my jungle beyond the boundary.” She remembered the light that had gleamed in his red-brown eyes under their thatch of thorny brows, brows that caught the edge of the fading light, making them appear more shaggy than ever. She remembered how she had felt when she had struggled free. . . . She had been grasped in the bare hands of truth, and the sudden relinquishing had left her dizzy.

She thought of Babs’ supreme belief in fatalism, and how she always said that destiny marched us along by the hand whither she would. Tonight she seemed to see Babs smiling in that cryptic way of hers and saying, “Am I not right? Is there not some strange occult force which stands at the rudder of our lives steering us this way and that without consulting us?”

Perhaps Babs was right, and her own belief in free will was built on the foundation of egotism. For Cynthia, while she was a ray from the sun of happiness, and nature’s unspoiled child, was brushed by the wings of Egotism, from which touch, however delicate, no artist has ever escaped.

Jealousy and envy were unknown to her, nor would she set herself above others, but she was sure of the resources within her.

She tried to think of love sustained without illusions of any sort, elemental love such as Nature threw into chaos to create a world. Somewhere she had read that each emotional experience must carry that within itself which will sustain it to the end; otherwise we get nothing in full. She felt this was true as her mind travelled to Mahomet Khan.

The prudery and falsehood that make women say that they never give a thought to any man but their husband or lover, Cynthia would not tolerate. Conventionality, restraint, cowardice, or a fine desire not to cause pain, keep men and women physically true to each other—but old Mother Nature dictates the wandering thoughts, and were she not forestalled by artificiality, would never leave one long without a mate.

When she wants a flower she does not throw one seed on the ground, but flings many broadcast throughout the garden. Her word is abundance while ours must be conformity. However, we must be true to her, and after going far afield in pursuit of sterile dreams we come back to her knees and whisper into her ear the futility of our chase.

Cynthia was one of Nature’s favourites, whom that kind old Mother caressed with loving hands. Had she not stood one night in a moonlit compound and watched the fine delicate hands of the East stroking the cloudy hair of the West, while the spirit of the tropics threw herself back on her scented fetters, her scarlet lips parted in ecstasy?

After deciding that house-keeping was out of the question until she learned the ways of the country, Cynthia had started out to look for a place to board. One half of Calcutta keeps boarders, and the other half takes paying guests. She was a paying guest at present at a place offering “a refined atmosphere and tennis.” “I can manage the latter,” she wrote Babs, “but the former may prove too rarefied.”

Before she located she used to trot round alone looking for furnished apartments. One day the old chatelaine of a very handsome chateau collared her as she was getting into the lift to inspect the upper regions.

“Can you furnish references?” she asked.

“Madam,” said Cynthia impishly, “there is not a soul in the world who would give me a reference for anything.” The chatelaine looked at her with real concern and said that while she was very sorry, a reference was necessary.

The lady who had taken her in and offered her the atmosphere, did so, she told her husband later, “because of the young lady’s quiet appearance.”

Cynthia thought she was going to refuse when she saw Gwendolyn, but Cynthia explained that Gwen was a lady who never gave any trouble. So the comfortable rooms on the top floor overlooking the Maidan had come into Cynthia’s temporary possession.

She had a Bearer who was devotion itself. He was a Pathan from the hill-tribes and had never before worked for a woman. The average Pathan does not respect women, but when his finer nature is appealed to he becomes a willing slave. However, he must become a willing slave, for there is a natural dignity about these handsome hill-men that is as much a part of them as their turbans. Tourists, who rush through India and write books on “Indian Customs,” with their return ticket evident in each chapter, say much that is derogatory of the Indian servant. The fact is, there is no servant in the world who will take such a decent interest in his master or mistress if he is treated like a human being.

Mullan, the Bearer, brought Cynthia’s meals in a tiffin-carrier from a nearby boarding house, as the house of atmosphere did not supply meals. Each evening he took Gwendolyn for a walk on the Maidan. This alone was sufficient testimony of his devotion to Cynthia, for the Pathan never drags animals about.

The hostess came in occasionally to tell Cynthia who was who, and to enlighten her with regard to the income of certain people—their social standing—their love affairs—their scandals, etc. How illuminating a refined atmosphere is!

The Indians came to her door selling everything under the sun. She let them all in to display their wares on the floor.

During the heat of the day the feminine element of the city takes the siesta. It is impossible to go out in the hot sun so she would sit on the verandah with Gwendolyn and read, or model under the punka in her drawing-room.

In the evening when it was cooler she went out to drive.

The drive round the European city interested her. Everything grew there. The foliage was a tangled profusion of colours. The architecture the sort usually seen in the tropics—plaster, stucco, cement, stone—and everything colour-washed. The high arched windows, many verandahs, and open appearance of the houses, added greatly to their charm. There was always a tennis-court, when the compound furnished sufficient room, and driveways bordered with potted plants.

The homes of the wealthy Indians scattered here and there in the native city—or located outside of the city—never lost their charm for her. She liked to turn into a tiny alley leading from some vile smelling street, stumble over cows, beggars, lepers, and heaps of rubbish, and find at the end of the path the imposing home of some wealthy rajah.

The Indian city is a place of horrors—mostly, she informed Babs by letter. It has a few bright spots. Dirty, smelly, half-clothed humanity huddle in filthy stalls on streets a few yards wide. Many of the stalls are shops where fly-bitten meat hangs, or grain and rice in large open baskets is covered with the dirt from the street. Cows walk past and help themselves to anything in the shops. The cow takes advantage of her sacred position here. Piles of refuse cover the street everywhere, where pariah dogs and crows swoop down and scatter in all directions what they cannot eat. Children, naked save for silver anklets, roam the streets at all hours. Lepers sit in rows exposing the stumps where their hands and feet once were. Professional beggars and poor twisted deformed things follow one about wailing for alms. Women with babies slung across their hips, and women with great weights on their heads, pass, looking hopelessly at the Europeans.

To Cynthia it was an awful picture. Mahomet Khan told her that she would get used to it and that she must not judge it now as she looked at it with Occidental eyes. ‘When I think of those poor people, those poor skeletons with just the skin drawn over them, getting but half enough to eat, I cannot sleep nights,” she told him. “The missionaries are out here by the hundreds, sending home their reports telling of the many souls they have ‘saved’—but does salvation put any more food in the stomachs or any more clothes on the backs of these poor devils? Much charity is dispensed, but will that form of patronage ever give them a chance?”.

Mahomet Khan did not answer her question. Inwardly he commented, “This Western flower has much to learn.”

Chapter IV

“To Love but One”

The dining-room of The Southern Cross Hotel was crowded with all types of humanity. Most nations were represented. Latins, Jews, Russians, all the races of India, and American tourists made a splendid picture, in which glistening flesh, light from eyes, flashing jewels, and colourful costumes were subdued to wavering harmony under a soft light that was most becoming.

His Majesty’s soldiers talked of sport and sipped the inevitable “peg”. That strange hidden brilliancy of the Russians flamed up under the sorcery of their surroundings. Americans discussed their latest purchase bought that day in the bazaar—something more to be added to their heaps of “curios”.

The advertisers who establish themselves for a period of years in the East were doing their best to proclaim their husbands’ positions. There are those who say that the foreign women living in the East are parasites:—that they do nothing but go from one so-called pleasure to the other. This is a wrong idea. If business-men coming to the East would study the women they would not need to lose time, in trying to discover from clumsy sources, the standing of the men. These women do all that is expected of them. Why speak of them with contempt?

At a table sat a lady whose pearl-woven head edifice must have tired her neck, yet she was true to the work she had set herself. At another table the sumptuous curves and heavy clusters of jewelled grapes in the hair, proclaimed a daughter of old Bagdad. A non-resident in flame-coloured velvet with a frankly-painted smile looked with envy at the rich fruit of the vine. A much be-ringed middle-aged woman surrounded by boys who had lately arrived, beamed upon the admiration extended vicariously to hubby.

Cynthia felt that she had seen the whole comedy and tragedy of life as she sat in a shadowed corner with Mahomet Khan. She had met a number of the advertisers at teas but they gave her very cool glances as they passed her table. The fact was, they did not approve of her and had very little to do with her after the first rush of forming her acquaintance and making their decision, for—tell it not in Gath—she entertained Indians at her flat, and went about in public with them! There is nothing like a reputation a bit “shady” to deliver one from boredom. Such an asset is sometimes sought by the extremely clever who would rest!

Cynthia let her thoughts drift from the huge room to dwell on the ugliness of Mahomet’s father’s “palace”, which she had seen for the first time that day. With the exception of certain rooms the “palace was thrown open to the public as a museum.” Cynthia had often signified her desire to visit the place. Mahomet had not wished to take her; but today, having overcome all his objections, they had motored out there.

The moment Cynthia glimpsed the interior she understood why he had not wished to take her. A boy had conducted them hastily through the marble monstrosity. She was glad of the haste, for a detailed study of what it contained would have sent one in search of mental treatment. One or two paintings by old masters tried to apologize for their surroundings, while pounds of paint flung recklessly on great sheets of canvas frowned their lofty contempt for economy—a few good statues closed their eyes while they rubbed shoulders with imitation bronze and painted wooden shamelessness. Lights, encased in bushels of cut crystals, swung from ceilings. In one room a statue of Queen Victoria almost pushed its head through the roof to accommodate its huge proportions.

Cynthia wondered about this hideous statue as she watched the graceful hands of the man before her, gently busy with the table implements. She wished to make up in some way for having unconsciously hurt his pride, which was a little whimsical but very Eastern. She knew that if Mahomet had his way this “palace-museum” would not be visited by the public.

Mahomet was a Rajput. His family had entered this interesting race in the days of the Muhammedan conquest. No race in India is so proud. The Rajput cares only for military pursuits, and those who are not Zamindars have not inherited the racial respect.

Mahomet had inherited great wealth from his family; which gave him the advantages of foreign education and the wherewithal to live as he chose. He had not been mastered by foreign education but had taken what he wished from that source. It had not remodeled him as it does so many Easterns. He retained the quaint speech of his people and his intense love of home. His ancestral estates were in Abu in the lovely Aravalli Hills—but his father had come to Calcutta and taken unto himself a “palace.” The “art” and general atmosphere of this latter abode had driven the son out on his own, and he had a residence near Calcutta, which for luxurious taste rivalled most of the palaces of India.

“Let us go up to my flat,” said Cynthia, getting up from the table and drawing a misty blue scarf about her shoulders. “It is much cooler in my verandah, and I would like to show you how your bust is getting on.”

Downstairs, Mahomet helped her into his motor. She sank down on the purple cushions while he placed himself a little apart. There was that in his attitude towards her which was always tinged with reverence. At times it was pathetic. She watched him a moment in silence then extended one slender hand whose fingers closed about his own.

“What a lovely night!” she said. “Look at the moon . . . in India it has a tinge of green. I love to get out from flashy places and feel the beauty of the night about me.”

“The moon is young now, and she goes to bed early. Love born at this time lasts forever,” he said, rather to himself than to her.

In Cynthia’s drawing room confusion reigned. Gwendolyn had taken off her chain, the buckle of which was loose, and had wandered, at her own sweet will about the place. She had torn many books, spilled a bottle of ink over some papers on the desk and broken many small ornaments.

Mahomet’s bust remained intact on the table.

“You see she respects your work,” he said as he helped Cynthia to chase that frisky young person about the room with the hope of capturing her.

When he saw that this was useless, he hade Cynthia desist, and seating himself on the floor he pretended to take something out of his pocket and eat it. In a short time Miss Gwendolyn was sitting on his lap, fishing in his pocket with one tiny hand.

He slipped the chain on her which Cynthia passed him, and in another moment the unruly young lady was again anchored in the verandah.

“Did you notice how she came to me when I ignored her?” he asked. “It is the eternal feminine—the same in all species.”

“Do you think that the higher female cares most for the man who ignores her—let me say, for the man who treats her as his possession?” asked Cynthia.

“If by the higher female you mean the average woman, I must say, yes,” he replied.

“Does not the blessed Koran say in the sixty-first sura—‘And make they a female to be the offspring of God, one who is brought up among trinkets, and is contentious without reason?’ And again in the sixtieth sura—‘And before them have we set a barrier, and behind them a barrier, and we have shrouded them in a veil so that they shall not see: and alike is it to them if thou warn them or warn them not, they will not believe’—and this we should accept, praise be to Allah.”

“But do you accept it?” she was looking straight into his eyes. He smiled, answering slowly:

“There are exceptions to all things,—generally, I accept our teaching.”

What a gulf lies between our training and our belief, thought Cynthia, looking from him to his bust on the table and realizing that she must do that work all over again.

“There is much that I like in your country,” he went on; “but to an Eastern mind the freedom of the women is degrading. They go half naked to their entertainments so all may enjoy their beauty. Even the servants can look upon them with desire. They go to the bathing beach with their future husbands who wish to appraise their coming property. They know not the value of mystery and the careful protection that keeps the treasure from all but her lord.”

“Are you married?” asked Cynthia.

Had Mahomet been an ordinary “believer” he would have ignored the question or answered anything he wished. But in many respects he was not like his people, and above all things in the world he desired to be truthful to Cynthia.

“No, I have never been married,” he told her. “Wives were selected for me when I was young: you know, Allah, blessed be his name, allows us four. I did not accept them nor the women chosen for my harem. True, I have known many women, but I have paid them out of hand, requesting them to leave me at once. Bought women sicken me. For some years I have known no woman. I have learned that much of the talk of ‘necessity’ is base falsehood. It is in my soul to love but one woman, Oh flower of the West, and for her I wait. I wait until she comes to me of her own desire—but I do not wait apparently ignoring, as a moment ago I awaited Gwendolyn. The torture I suffer; I pray Allah to grant me strength to endure. In this I am not as my people. I would tear the stars from the heavens, if it were possible, to fashion jewels for the woman I await—I would shatter all the rose petals for her scented bed—only perfumed air should touch her—no base-born servant might look at her for I would be her slave. If Allah grant me not this woman I shall die accursed, for I shall leave no son.”

He dropped on his knees beside her chair taking her hand; he was trembling.

“You understand me, woman of the West—you understand?” He hardly knew the world about him. The moment was too big. It pleaded for him with violent concentration. His head drooped.

To Cynthia it seemed that the silent siege lasted for hours.

He rose, clutching his hands and reeling with emotion. For a moment he looked at Cynthia, then turned with that panther-like movement so characteristic of him. She saw the heavy curtains close behind him.

*  *  *

She went out on the verandah with Gwendolyn who was entertaining her usual company, the two white owls. Their round faces and huge eyes looked uncanny in the moonlight. In the distance jackals were howling. The moon and stars covered all the sadness on the old brown breast of the country. In that amber light one forgot what the merciless sun would expose in the morning. Down below in the street an occasional sleepy driver urged on his weary bullocks—across on the Maidan poor homeless humanity slept on the ground. Once in a while a wakeful one would sit up and sing a plaintive little night song, for Indian music must have its proper setting. There are songs for the morning, songs for noon, songs for sunset, songs for the night, and occupational songs.

As a child Cynthia never liked to hear what she called a twilight song sung in the morning. Later she knew that music, “that art of idleness and open air” should have its proper moment always. It soothed her when borne softly from a distance—across long stretches of silence.

Her heart ached for Mahomet. She wished she could care for him in that way. She knew it was not the difference in races. That would have meant nothing could she have loved him. The word that whispers in the heart of a woman she had heard . . . . but not tonight. She saw a man standing at the edge of the jungle, as she imagined it, his red brown eyes turned towards her a little sadly. . . .

Chapter V

A Garden in Assam

Molly, the old elephant, was teaching her son the proper behaviour of elephants. He, like small boys and most young male creatures had ideas of his own. To-day his lesson was in sliding.

People whose acquaintance with elephants is slight do not know that they sit down and slide a hill when they come to it as their legs are not designed for steep descent. When the hill is nice and loomy, as the Assam cudd, this feat is a thing of joy—as the son discovered with his first slide.

No impish youngster sliding down the smooth alleys at the circus, or bumping the bumps at summer resorts, ever enjoyed this exhilarating sensation more than Molly’s son enjoyed his cudd-sliding. Molly did it once to show him how it was done—then stood at the bottom and called to him to follow.

Down he sat, and down he slid. How he loved it! Molly knew that one slide was enough to teach him—but like the small boy he could not get enough of the fun. Up he climbed and down he slid again. He repeated this sport until he resembled perpetual motion. A joyful grey figure was either going up or coming down the cudd without a break in the rhythm. Molly was very angry. At first she stood in the middle of the field and threatened him. When she found that this was useless she sat down and began to sulk.

The Airedale, standing in his verandah, smiled as he watched Molly. “How respectable you have grown,” he was saying, as if she could hear him. “You have forgotten those early days when you first came in from the jungle. God! You were a wild huzzy then.”

He was thinking of the day she had chased him, before he had trained her. Piece by piece he had thrown off his clothing, and wild elephant-like, she had stopped to trample everything that was thrown before her. He gained a few moments on her terrific speed with each article. When he arrived at the bungalow, and rushed into the sitting room, he was wearing a singlet.

He never could forget the fright and the screams of his wife and a lady, who was visiting her, as they dashed from the room. Now alone in his verandah, he threw his head back and laughed as he thought of it.

There was nothing in the Airedale’s character that leaned on vulgarity; neither could he tolerate mock modesty. He knew that his wife would have preferred to have had him trampled under the elephant rather than to have outraged the tenets of her training.

The other woman, taking her colour from his wife, had rushed from the room screaming because she was expected to do so.

Both these good women had seen the Indians wearing much less clothing, not once, but hundreds of times, and they had managed to behave calmly. There was nothing in their curriculum forbidding the exposure of dark skin. White bodies, however, must be hidden by drapery, for there was something about them which was shockingly indecent!

Now Molly, like most persons who get into a rut, was ultra-respectable. She had had three children, two of whom had gone to the elephant heaven, leaving only the hill-sliding son.

The bungalow was built in a veritable tea-garden. With the exception of the cleared field in which Molly sulked, acres and acres of tea, shaded by gentle acacia-trees reached out on all sides to the edge of the jungle. Backgrounding the jungle to the North rose the snow-capped Tibetan Hills, their jagged peaks gnawing the cold Tibetan sky. Beyond them mysterious valleys slept, untroubled by the curious stranger. Few can endure the hardships that take the gilt from the charm of Tibet, in whose valleys the holy Llama meditates, unmolested by the wild asses and antelopes and the refractory sheep.

Out of the silence floated the sing-song voices of the tea-coolies as they plucked the tender leaves from the plants. Young goats frisked amongst the bushes. Kembel, the wolf-dog, barked occasionally. Poor Kembel! It was said that her mother was a jackal and her father a wolf, but out of kindness they called her a dog. Never but once had she shown the mean traits of either parent. On that occasion the Airedale was teaching her that thieving was not permitted about the place. With a snarl she had fastened her long teeth in his arm. She knew that she would never repeat such a thing and had settled down to quiet obedience.

On the papaw-tree a hoolock waved his long black arms and chattered in the sheer joy of living. Sometimes he came into the verandah to play with the tiger cubs. The cubs were four months old now, and it would soon be time for them to go back to the jungle.

Birds sang and insects droned a lazy accompaniment to the scented breeze that rustled through the jungle to this South.

The Airedale noted all these things from the verandah. He loved this jungle home. The tranquillity of it soothed his stormy soul. Its dangers fired his imagination. He felt something strangely in common with the huge tigers that prowled through the compound at night and stared with their gold-green eyes through the grated windows. Even the snakes he did not kill wantonly, but gave “the poor devils” as he called them, a chance to get out of his way.

Out of the bungalow, or when he was alone, he was happy. He knew that the crowd of the outside world rushed madly along doing everything at random. Under the stress of passionate loneliness they choose each other blindly. Once he had worked out in the world and had been almost slain by the pity it generated. He had trained himself to stern trials and to love loneliness. He had learned that great things come from yearning. One could usually trace the very birth of a great man’s glory back to loneliness, he believed.

Thinking nothing important but contentment, he had drawn on the resources within him and adjusted his energy for its pursuit. He was contented—so he fiercely insisted.

There were times when he longed for a companion . . . longed for that splendid completion which is the right of all. He knew how one life could illumine his. He had seen a companion as he glimpsed across the world.

Every advance he had tried to make in Faith,—that faith that he felt in the back of his mind should yield to his yearning, was assailed by something. Sometimes it was by storms that beat against his reason. Sometimes it was by voices that mocked him. He could accomplish much in his loneliness, but for that he needed—perhaps the illumination which had signalled to him across space.

That morning at breakfast he had asked Laura why she did not write to Miss Conway and ask her to visit them.

“You seem to care for that woman,” she said, “you mention her so frequently.”

“I do care for her,” he admitted.

This was her cue to launch into the subjects that enervated him. He would neglect her for other women, she who had always done her duty by him. Had she not lived in this hole of a jungle to please him?—where she could not get anything to wear, or ever go to anything. Had she not nursed him when he had the fever? She did not expect love, she knew better than that—but he had not even gratitude. Now he was thinking of another woman whom he wanted to flaunt in her face, to show his contempt for her.

He had taken up his topee and left the bungalow. This was always the finale to these tirades. To reason with her would have been worse than useless, so he always left her, wondering at her commonness.

When she was alone she fell to thinking of Cynthia. Yes, she would write to her. She would have that woman in her house; and then he would see just what she was like out in the jungle where there was nothing to do. She would show him that this woman out in the wilds without hair-dressers and manicure-women would be nothing but a discontented restless creature who would get on his nerves.

That night she wrote to Cynthia telling her that Assam was beautiful at that time of the year, and urging her to visit them as they would “just love” to have her.

Chapter VI

Moon-Flower

A riot flourished in the North end of the city. It began with the Muhammedans’ decision to hold a big convention to discuss grievances against the government. They had invited prominent maulvis from all over India to be present and speak.

The Government realized that feeling would run high and there might be a serious breach of peace, for the conference was to be followed immediately by the observance of certain of their religious holidays, which had always been attended with more or less violence against both Hindus and police. So the government informed the Muhammedans that the meetings were not to be held.

Immediately feeling arose, and, fired by the eloquent maulvis, the lower class Muhammedans started en masse for Government House to protest. Being halted by the special reserves of police rushed to the scene, the crowd grew angry and unmanageable and rioting started.

Brickbats, sticks and stones supplemented by a few knives were their only weapons. But they were as hundreds to one, compared with the police.

Many Hindus, Muhammedans, and a few Europeans were killed or wounded. At once the badmashes took this opportunity to loot and sack houses and shops. The riots spread all over the Indian city, and all shops with valuables were closed.

The soldiers in the fort were called out, as well as the Indian Defence Force, and for days and nights they patrolled the city, making hundreds of arrests.

Thousands of coolies under cover of the mêlée struck from various mills and started out in a body.

Mahomet had telephoned to Cynthia that morning and asked her to keep away from the Indian city. He knew her love of adventure, and her desire to see everything in the East in a moment. She was like most persons who come to the East for the first time—eager to let not a day pass without having enjoyed some new thrill.

She had questioned him about the riot and he had given her briefly the particulars already referred to.

“How interesting!” she exclaimed over the telephone when he had finished.

“Perhaps,” he called back; “but please keep away from that end of the city for some days yet.”

Having hung up, she sat for a few moments wondering what she might be missing.

“Oh Gwendolyn,” she said (that young person was sitting on the table. She had many privileges when Cynthia was at home to watch her) “let us flip up an anna to see whether we go, or whether I go, you will not mind dear, will you? If it is heads, I go. If it is tails, I shall stay at home and work on the bust.”

She took an anna from a small chain purse on the table, a trinket which Gwendolyn had had her eye on ever since she had taken up her present position. She flung the coin in the air and held out her hand to catch it.

“Oh, Gwen, it is heads! It is heads!” she exclaimed, hugging her furry pet.

“Sorry I must put you back in the verandah—why can’t you behave?”

A moment later a very venturesome Cynthia was speeding towards the North end of the city as fast as a ramshackle old gharri could take her. But venturesome young ladies, as well as “the best laid plans,” are often doomed to disappointment.

When she arrived at the entrance to the Indian city she found heavy ropes barring her way. She would have crawled under them only for the formidable appearance of the police stationed every few feet along their length.

“How disgusting,” she wailed to the gharri wallah who was too used to riots to evidence the least excitement. She got out of the gharri and walked over to the rope, at least she could stand at the outer edge.

Intent on seeing all that she could beyond the barrier, she did not notice that several young “badmashes” had slipped out from somewhere and had taken possession of her gharri and driven off, heedless of the protests of the old gharri wallah whom they threatened to throw out if he did not keep quiet.

When she realized that the gharri had deserted her, she decided to call a taxi. What experiences are born of a small decision! This being her day for experience, she would not return home.

The toss of an anna had sent her on the quest of adventure. She was to have it—but not in the North end of the city. She walked a few blocks and hailed a taxi. She had in her pocket the address of a young lady whose bust she intended to model. This young lady belonged to the oldest profession. Cynthia had seen her one night in a cafe and had been immediately arrested by a face which might have belonged to the tragic muse. She could not take her eyes from this face that was a page from a dark history.

She had spoken to the girl, who had resented her a little at first, only to fall later under that charm which appealed to all but the quasi-virtuous. Cynthia got her address and her promise to sit for her bust.

It was this address which she passed the Bengali taxi driver.

She remembered later that he had looked at her in a strange manner, but at the moment she thought nothing of it.

They had proceeded but a short distance when he turned and asked her if she could direct him to the place.

“No,” she said, “you must find it. I supposed taxi drivers knew everything about the city.”

“I am quite sure it is not in the city,” he said. “It must be on the road to the Palm Gardens.”

After this information he turned the motor into a banyan-shaded road and increased the speed. Leaving this restful shade, they fairly flew through the flat, sun-washed country. Cynthia was enjoying the exhilaration of whirling through the air, when the speed slackened and the motor turned into a driveway.

“This is the place,” the driver informed her.

A handsome white marble building stood in the most artistic compound she had seen in India. There were two tanks filled with lotus and several statues on handsomely carved pedestals. Banyans flung their rambling shade over tangled masses of flowers.

Cynthia wondered how “Iris” managed to surround herself with such elegance.

A uniformed servant at the door told her that the Memsahib was at home, as he ushered her into a room that might have belonged to some princess of the Arabian Nights.

Lamps on long chains hung from the ceiling, casting a soft violet light on the splendour beneath. Heavy silk curtains were drawn over the windows effectively shutting out the daylight. Divans, piled with silken cushions, stood on Persian rugs of exquisite beauty. Small tables were covered with gold and pearl ornaments. From a huge bronze incense burner on the floor coiled smoke in delicate misty spirals. On a low table of polished onyx a hookah of crystal and coloured glass seemed to have been hastily discarded. It was filled, she noticed, and she imagined the smoker had just left it.

She seated herself on one of the divans which stood against the heavy silk curtains. What manner of life did “Iris” lead? What manner of clients could make such luxury possible. She recalled the girl she had seen in the cafe, the simple dress, the plain hat.

Her reverie was ended by the sudden entrance of a man. He was a fat Bengali. He was neither large nor stout; he was simply fat. She noticed that he locked the door and put the key in his belt. She knew she had been trapped, that the driver had deliberately brought her—for a price, no doubt.

The Bengali seated himself on a divan strewn with cushions that rose up round his fat body like great bubbles.

“Mem-sahib honours me,” he began. “My poor home is entirely at her disposal. Her slightest wish, it will give me pleasure to execute.”

“You had better let me go at once,” said Cynthia; she managed to keep out of her face the fear that was consuming her. “Do you imagine, you fiend, that you can detain a European woman in this manner? Open the door at once I tell you.”

This availed her nothing. The man simply salaamed.

“If mem-sahib will make her charming self comfortable we will have tea, and then we can talk. I have much to say that will interest the mem-sahib.”

He rang a bell, at which a servant appeared with a tea tray. The servant unlocked the door, set the tray down hastily and withdrew almost immediately, locking the door after him.

“Your servants are well trained,” said Cynthia.

“Yes, with money one can do anything,” he said, watching the effect of his words. He had heard of women who cared nothing for money—but he had never met them, of this he was quite certain. Being a true Eastern he believed that there was no door that would not open to the magic clink of gold.

There were but two cups of tea on the tray. No tea service, not even spoons accompanied them. He placed the onyx table, from which he had taken the hookah, before Cynthia, and on it one of the cups.

“Mem-sahib will join me?” he said returning to the silken bubbles with the other cup.

“I will exchange cups with you,” said Cynthia, extending her cup towards him.

“There is no difference in the cups, your tea is getting cold, mem-sahib.”

“So that is what you would do? you beast!”

“The mem-sahib is very beautiful,” he said ignoring her anger. “She is like the pink heart of the lotus, like the pale jasmine when the moon touches it. Her satin skin, which I shall know better in a few moments, is the pearl lining of an emptied shell.”

He was used to the soft languorous women of India who offered no opposition when the gold bracelets were placed on the table and the strings of pearls dangled before their eyes. He knew that jewels would not tempt the frail flower before him, and like all things that resisted him, he desired her doubly.

He came and stood before her, his sensual face wearing a look of triumph.

“Here you are, moon-flower and here you shall remain. You shall be my chief love for many days. I shall break you to my will—yes, if it means the whip on your rose-petal skin,—I shall break you. Those blue shadows shall deepen beneath your eyes as I feast on pleasure. I like your resistance daughter of the North—but you shall obey me—and even as you yield I will kiss the dust from your little feet for I will love you while moons wax and wane.”

He raised her hand, but before he could kiss it, he dropped it suddenly. From the compound came a low wailing sound like the startled cry of a young jackal or some young animal in distress. It gained in volume until it became a shrill cry bearing terror to its hearers.

The man went back to his seat. He smiled. To one seeing him for the first time his face was the imperturbable mask of the East—but Cynthia, now somewhat accustomed to the assumed placidity of the Indian, detected in his eyes a look of fear.

He bent over the hookah to adjust the disgusting ball of tobacco and some sticky fluid which the Indians smoke in the clay bowl of these pipes.

Quick as a flash a hand shot out from the curtains behind the divan on which Cynthia was sitting. Something white fell into her lap. It was all so sudden. A hand had flashed over her shoulder with lightning-like rapidity, yet there had been no sound however slight behind the curtains.

Did she imagine it—her mind was wrought to such a pitch by fright which she was trying to conceal—No, there was a tiny scrap of paper in her lap. Holding her purse over it she managed to unfold it, then she turned the purse round with the paper on the back. He, watching her, thought she was nervously toying with the purse. She read in a cramped hand, evidently not used to writing English:—“Behind Krishna’s picture, one small button: press it, Allah is great.”

Was this another trap? No doubt; but nothing could be worse than looking at that devilish face before her. He was quietly puffing away at the hookah. He could afford to be patient—was not paradise within his grasp?

Cynthia had noticed Krishna’s picture, as in fact she had studied every detail of the room. There he was as a chubby baby resting on a lotus leaf. There was no furniture before the picture, in about three steps she could reach it. As she was measuring the distance in her mind the wailing sounded again—nearer this time, it seemed to fill the room. The Bengali had ceased smoking. His head was bent forward. She noticed that his hands were clinched tightly.

In a moment she had thrown Krishna’s picture from the wall and pressed the button. A door opened which closed immediately after her. She found herself in a narrow passage. She rushed blindly through the darkness of what she imagined was a stone tunnel. Her nerves were ready to snap when she saw something white and misty before her. Her hand was grasped and a woman’s voice said, “Hurry, hurry, I will lead you.”

On they rushed, the misty figure moving like a wraith.

She saw a glimmer of light ahead and in another moment they entered a tomb.

Daylight filtered through the high windows of the tomb and she discovered that the misty white was a girl’s sari and its wearer possessed such beauty as she had dreamed, but had never seen before.

“Who are you,” she exclaimed, forgetting for the moment the danger. Beauty was her ruling passion and she could no more ignore its call than the slave who bows helplessly before the summons of his dream-filled drug.

“You are Persian, are you not?” she said as the girl opened the creaky old door letting in the blessed sun-light.

“Never mind who I am,—go! Go at once; he may follow at any moment. He does not know that I have a key to this tomb. Go!!”

“What will happen to you if he learns that you have helped me?” The girl raised two fatalistic eyes to the hot blue sky and murmured “maktoob” as the rusty door closed and Cynthia found herself alone in the sunlight.

*  *  *

She found a gharri after walking a short distance, and told the gharri wallah to take her home.

Home! That word meant something; even if it represented in this case a flat in a boarding house. Cynthia was weary. The wind had been taken out of her venturesome sails and she wanted to rest.

Mahomet was in the verandah with Gwendolyn when she arrived. She had told her friends, the few who were blessed with that title, to go in and wait for her, if she happened to be out when they called. When she intended to be gone for sometime she left word with the hostess. Otherwise, her friends knew that if they waited a short time she would be sure to turn up.

She was glad to see Mahomet. She wanted to throw her tired fluttering spirit against his strength.

“What has happened?” he said as she greeted him with a wan smile. There is no misleading the East even when she appears to believe some tale manufactured for her benefit.

“Well, the riot was denied me by a few hundred yards of rope, so this being my day for adventure I had to find something else.” And Cynthia launched into the story of her forced visit to the house near the Palm Garden. She omitted nothing. She even imitated the gestures of the fat one; but when she came to the girl she was swept away by her own description, as was frequently the case with her when she tried to recall certain beauty and set it glowingly before her.

“Do you know her?—is she Persian?”—she seemed to have forgotten the horrors of the first part of the tale. Not so Mahomet. Round his mouth crept a look which was not pleasant to see. His lips were muttering something in a language Cynthia had never heard. Finally he answered her question. His voice seemed to come from a distance.

“Yes, I know about her. She is Egyptian. She was stolen for him by one of his agents in Egypt. I have never seen her, for naturally she wears the boorka in the street; but I have heard that her beauty is such as one rarely sees. She is never alone. Spies follow her when she leaves the house, otherwise I suppose she would escape.

“The wailing such as you heard is done by one of his spies, who warns him in this manner, when he sees the police approaching. He is watched by special police, as he is a seditionist, and the government has heard of his plots against it.

“However, I imagine that the particular wailing which you heard today was done by the Egyptian woman. The Muhammedans are also watching him, for they know of his abductions of many of their women.

“He is very closely guarded. His agents are everywhere. The chauffeur who took you there was one of his agents.

“Now you must rest. You look fairly ‘done up,’ as they say in your country.” He rose abruptly, held Cynthia’s hand for a moment and was gone.

Chapter VII

The Way of the East

Amanreh, the Egyptian girl, sat on the mat singing a love song. She accompanied herself on the vina. Never did the old poet Mu’ Tamid’s words pass through sweeter lips:

“Go not, beloved and cruel; I have not strength
To say farewell to thee, thou canst not go!
Behold the fountain of my tears at length
Consumed away, and I have sorrowed so
That in the dry wells of those barren eyes
No more, no more, thy treasured image lies.

Alas, what love is this that burns like fire?
Look thou, my body is a useless thing,
So worn it is, so wasted with desire,
I am grown lean with love; the new days bring
Only new pains that sap the blood of me,
Because of thee, beloved, because of thee!”

“Her voice is lovely. Is it not?” Cynthia questioned Iris, who had come that afternoon to pose for her bust.

“Yes, but her song makes me sick. I hate this love stuff.”

“You do not care for love?” Amanreh asked, her eyes wide with curiosity.

“There is no such thing, only in books and silly songs,” Iris answered tugging nervously at her belt. Her eyes had become hard. Behind them the old battle raged furiously.

Amanreh had been brought to Cynthia’s place that day by a missionary woman who had access to the house by the Palm Gardens. No doubt the lord of the mansion feared to draw unnecessary comment upon himself by refusing to admit the missionaries into the house of his women. Consequently a certain Mrs. Flagg, whom he considered innocuous, was allowed to enter whenever she chose, and to take any woman out with her, it being understood that she would allow the woman to meet no man. With the exception of Amanreh and one other, the women seldom took advantage of the airing.

Mrs. Flagg was very fond of the beautiful Egyptian and consequently took her to the mission home.

Cynthia had spoken to her hostess about the house by the Palm Gardens, and of the exquisite beauty of the Egyptian girl, whereupon the hostess told of her friend Mrs. Flagg, who visited most of the zenanas in the city.

An introduction was arranged at which Mrs. Flagg had promised to bring the girl to Cynthia.

*  *  *

This was not the girl’s first visit. On several previous occasions Mrs. Flagg had brought her to Cynthia’s rooms for an hour or two.

Once Cynthia had suggested escape to her. She had refused assistance in the matter.

“It would be useless,” she said. Then followed the tale of the spies who carried out the Bengali’s slightest wish.

The ramifications of his agents, his sources of informations, etc. “The only person who is not spied upon is Mrs. Flagg,” she had said. “That is why I can come here sometimes. Only death will release me,” she confided, “—his death or mine.”

Cynthia wished to make the girl’s bust; but while she had not refused to “sit,” she had always put it off with—“another time, please, Miss Conway—another time.”

The girl’s beauty recurred to her often when she was alone—its purity, its perfection, the eyes that seemed to encounter a peace unseen by others. . . . Was it the belief in Fate that placed calm in those dark pools? Cynthia felt a pride in the girl’s beauty, almost as if she had created it. This feeling she could not explain, but she had felt it before, when confronted with unusual beauty. She wished to thank some unknown force for the exultation allowed her.

She had not tried again to visit Iris. “Do come to me whenever you can,” she had written the unfortunate girl.

Cynthia had tried to model her head, but had twice destroyed the efforts. “You change so, Iris. I think I have you, then the next time I see you, you are entirely different,” Cynthia complained.

Iris cared nothing about having her bust made. She enjoyed being with Cynthia. It gave her fleeting glimpses of the life she dreamed of, and had missed.

Cynthia loved to look from Amanreh to Iris and see the two extremes of beauty.

“Well, dear, won’t you tell us why you hate love?” Cynthia placed a cup of tea on the small table before Iris, then sat down on a huge floor pillow at the girl’s feet and waited. She knew it would depend upon the mood of her fair visitor whether she walked out at once, or began to talk.

“I do not hate love,” she began. Today, caprice led her to talk. “I say love does not exist.”

“Why are you so sure of its non-existence?” Cynthia took her hand and smiled up to her.

Amanreh folded her feet up under her and leaned forward. Allah had brought her to a strange pass—but she had never doubted the existence of love.

“Well, perhaps I should say that it does not exist for my kind,” Iris drew her hand away fiercely. “Do you know anything about my kind?” she demanded.

“Naturally I do,” Cynthia heard her answer trickle out. How it limped! She felt foolish.

“Yes. You know what people say—what is written in books and all that nonsense, but to know my life one must live it. Listen!” Cynthia felt the girl’s eyes burning her. “I tell you, you know nothing about such a life as mine. Nothing you have heard or read could give an insight to it. At the rescue-homes, girls invent things to make the life sound less harsh. I will not do that; I prefer to say nothing.”

“How did you happen to enter this life in the first place?” Cynthia asked. She felt impotent, balked.

Iris laughed brassily. “I suppose you would call it the old story. I knew a young chap, a college student, he talked the usual rot to me about love and marriage,—but the marriage was to come sometime later. He stole some money from his grandmother, and he talked me into running away with him. We lived together for a while, but when the money was gone, he would not work. I had to earn a living for the two of us. But I couldn’t make both ends meet on the little pittance I earned. He pushed me down to this and took the profit.

“One day—oh the horror of it!—the hell of it!—I found that I was sharing my body with a stranger. I told the beast I was pregnant. He laughed. ‘What did you expect?’ he said. He made me crazy mad. I wanted to kill him. When I thought of having his dirty child I wanted to commit suicide.”

“Oh you strange Christian!” In Amanreh’s exclamation the Muhammedan East had forever spoken to the West. Children were the gift of Allah—his greatest gift. Why question? Allah’s followers stood firm in their wholesome sensuality. Does not one gather the lotus without questioning the pool?

Iris turned to the Egyptian. She finished a sarcastic laugh then snapped! “I suppose you would be pleased to have a child by a man you hated?”

“A child must always be welcomed. Allah knows best when he chooses a woman for his gift.”

Iris listened with contempt, then she looked helplessly at Cynthia. “What she says may be all very well for Indians, but it is different with us.”

“Yes, it is different with us,” Cynthia began, her voice was unsteady; there was despair in it, “that is why the East cannot understand us, and why we fail to understand the East.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” Iris turned again to Amanreh, “that if you lived with a man you hated you would not mind having his child?”

“I live in the house of a man I hate,” she said. (For all the emotion in her voice she might have said “This is a pleasant day.”) “We do not choose our men,” she continued. “We accept the choice of our parents. A child always comes as a blessing. Allah loves us and sends us happiness with the child.”

“Have you any children?” asked Iris.

“No. I was stolen by the man in whose house I live. His harem is very large. I have not been called yet, praise be to Allah.”

“And if you are called?”

“’Tis useless to resist.”

“Are your women thrown out in the street when the man becomes tired?”

“No. We pass to the house prepared for old women. If we have borne sons we have special consideration.”

“Then you really know but one man?”

“If we knew others we would know the poison too. I speak of the women of the harem. Others of us, perhaps the more fortunate, are given into what you call prostitution.”

“Why do you call them the more fortunate?” Cynthia asked. She was trying to get in the current with the Egyptian.

“Because they have more freedom. If they have any courage at all they can choose their men.”

“But you see how such freedom has worked out with Iris.”

“She thought she was bad—and then she was bad.”

“Prostitutes are always bad. We are outcasts,” said Iris.

“Have you never cared for a man—even a little?”

Iris shook her head. “Oh, what is the use?” she exclaimed. “Can’t you see it is different with us? We have no homes to retire to when men cease to care for us. We must feed the body that deals us such blows. Once I decided not to feed my body. I would let it rot. That would be my revenge; but man frustrated it. One came to me with kind words and new promises. I went to live with him. His kindness eased some of the old hurt. It was here in India. He died of cholera six months ago. I shall not say that life would have been different had he lived—for man is man.”

Amanreh could not understand this Western viewpoint. “I could not accept a religion that teaches you to hate children unless you are married.” There was a quiet tolerance in the Eastern voice. “You hide away somewhere to have them, and you call it disgrace! Or you kill them, the way you said,—what was that word?”

“Don’t you believe in right and wrong?” Iris looked her astonishment. Across her mind something was beginning to dawn. Through a haze she crept after the reasoning of the East.

“Oh, yes,” lilted the calm voice, “but I do not believe in false things. No bird is a lie, no grass, no sea or land, no man or woman, nothing that is in the world. But sometimes we get strange ideas; and they are lies, and we know it; but we tell the world they are true. That is when we are wicked.”

Cynthia got down on the mat beside Amanreh. She put her arm about the girl and kissed her. The kiss was loaded with gratitude. This gentle Egyptian had pulled a feather off the bird of truth and she held it in her hand and turned it about considering it calmly. Mrs. Flagg would try to wrench it from her; but the girl would hold on tightly. Above the things of the world as they were stood Allah, the arbiter of fate. Her spirit soared with him and took comfort. Why find fault with the things of the world? They were as they were.

She had been stolen by a beast. Was she unhappy in his household, or did she simply wait quietly, knowing that great was the goodness of Allah? If her body was “called” while she waited, what did that signify? Nothing that would make her accept degradation, nothing that would rob her of her self-respect. The East could detach her soul from her body while the carnal battle raged. Even when she stepped aside from love and used her body as a money-making asset, she claimed respect for the merchandise as a matter of course.

A child might seem a great misfortune and halt one’s career—but Allah knew best. The East gave no time to wailing about her lost sisters. Her “subjugated” woman looked Nature between the eyes and read her intentions. She slimed no one, and she pitied those who slimed themselves in her name. The East did not wantonly muddy the white flowers which Nature placed before the shrine of sex. Why should the West fill the hands of the East with dirt to fling upon the floral offering? The West brought her glad tidings of emancipation and peace, but what did she demand in return? The mind of the East in which to sow her false doctrine,—a doctrine which taught that life was polluted at its source, a doctrine which threw rubbish in the fountain head.

Iris was a product of this doctrine, and her life was a daily curse that she struggled under. Women of the East gave their bodies to be trampled by men. Women of the West trampled upon their own souls while they howled their independence to the stars. It was not by defaming Nature that the West could woo the East.

Cynthia thought of the house near the Palm Gardens. This girl had saved her by wailing. Was it her body that the girl had saved? No. It was not. The girl knew her anguish of spirit, and her heart went out in compassion to the ideas of the West.

She shook off Cynthia’s arm and took up her vina again. Iris watched her perfect fingers on the strings as one fascinated. She had toppled over the edifice of self-contempt which Iris had erected.

Mrs. Flagg came to take her away. “How quickly the time has passed today,” she said rising. She slipped her feet into her little upturned slippers and adjusted her boorka.

“What an awful thing to wear,” said Iris to the two eyes showing through the white case.

“Yes, it is very hot; but one gets used to it.”

“Some day all these things will pass,” said Mrs. Flagg. “When our gospel comes to enlighten these poor people.”

Cynthia wondered what the mind under the boorka was thinking.

“When shall I bring her again?” said the good lady pulling the portière aside for Amanreh to pass.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you.” Cynthia had been so interested that other things had passed from her mind. “I am going to Assam for a while.”

The white case stepped back into the room.

“Assam,” said Mrs. Flagg, her slate-coloured eyes filled with pity. “That is all jungle—and wickedness.”

“I shall love the jungle,” said Cynthia.

“Yes, it is nice for a while,” Mrs. Flagg admitted, “but all the foreign men up there live with native women. Our society has made the least progress there of any place in India.”

Cynthia had no wish to discuss morals with Mrs. Flagg. That lady, seeing that no further remark was forthcoming, pulled the curtain to one side and followed Amanreh into the corridor. The Egyptian did not say good-bye. Cynthia loved the girl’s quaint ways.

She saw them from Gwendolyn’s window, and she stroked the little monkey as she watched. They crossed the street and walked under the trees on the edge of the Maidan. They made a strange picture, the white case, and the dilapidated blue cotton costume of the missionary.

Iris picked up her hat from the table. “I am going now,” she said getting up. “I wanted to wait until they got started, for I gathered, from the remarks of your handsome friend, that she might be watched, and I knew it would do her no good to be seen with me.”

Another time Cynthia might have said, “I am sorry you feel that it is necessary to consider such things,” but today she knew that Iris simply wished to save Amanreh the trouble of making any explanation that might get Mrs. Flagg or herself into trouble. There was something buoyant in Iris’ manner now—something that was not there when she came.

Cynthia kissed her good-bye. “Some day we may get to that bust again,” she said, “and in the meantime . . . head up. It’s the future that counts.”

Chapter VIII

Fruit of the Soul

The gold of evening was beginning to brush the sky. The breeze that always awakes at sunset was whispering to the palm trees. From dense groves birds twittered impudently or sang tenderly their flute-like melodies.

Long ago in the noisy land of her childhood Cynthia had dreamed of this land of silence, of palm trees, of silvered pools, of amber sunsets, of dawns of flaming red, and of ruined temples that stood on the edge of night-blue forests.

She loved the burning sun, the honey-coloured moon, the strips of barren country that blent into exquisite fertility, the river beds, dry as the desert, where cows were pastured to munch the wiry grass; and most of all, she loved the songs of this land of mystery and the throbbing of the tom-toms in the night.

The slow old train had almost arrived at the little jungle station where the Airedale was to meet her. She had enjoyed every moment of the three days’ journey through this land of enchantment.

When she received Mrs. Quaren’s letter she told herself that she would not go, knowing all the time that she would; knowing the force that was pulling her to Assam was stronger than her own will.

What others had asked, would be wrested from her. She was the sort that kindled great fires.

She had heard small-souled women prate of mental interests, of spiritual affinities, and she had seen them hail men and slay the lover within them, heaping ashes on the corpse.

She had watched cold eyes extinguish the fire in men while the owners of the eyes with books and pictures made excursions into Passion. The giant is not created in man by prudery or cowardice, she averred; it is the child of some reckless happiness that mounts to the stars on the wings of its glorious heritage.

The chatter that hastily condemns, knows nothing of the soul’s longing—a longing so vast that the spaces cannot hold it. It knows nothing of a heart emptiness that cries its anguish to the world and is answered only by the echo hurled back upon its misery.

It knows nothing of that psychic power descending upon man which forces him to reach out and grasp the passing woman. It is not desire; it is reaching for the great abstraction which woman for the moment represents.

Cynthia felt her soul to be an instrument on which was being played some tremendous music that she had no means of interpreting. She seemed to be standing looking on the world,—looking on the confusion and loving it, loving all the creatures gathered into chaos . . . loving not one more than another—but loving all tremendously.

This, had she known it, was the birth of love, the fruit of the soul as the Hindus call it. She had never loved when she had singled out objects for the bestowal of her affection—but today when she could not differentiate—she loved.

At such moments women should conceive if they would produce greatness!

Later she would imagine that she had narrowed her force down to one object—but such would not be the case, for love is the stuff of life, it is life, and it lives by glad distribution.

A thousand sparks may kindle this flame. They are emanations from the force that has many names.

The train had stopped at a small jungle station. A moment of pink dusk precedes the Eastern night and it was wrapping all the landscape in a soft lambent rose-glow.

Cynthia saw the Airedale standing beside a motor car. She waved to him from the window. With a bound he was on the train. He picked up her luggage and left the train without a word. She followed. They got into the car.

“We shall now put out to sea,” he remarked, calling her attention to the wretched condition of the roads. She laughed. The roads meant nothing to her. She was with him.

She studied his face in the pink light. How shaggy he looked! His eyebrows seemed more bristly than ever, and his eyes to have receded deeper under them.

She was glad he did not trouble her with useless questions. She loved this eloquent silence, which seemed to be loaded with speech—for her.

The lights were beginning to shine forth from the little shops scattered along the only street the place boasted of.

The shops in Assam are different from those in any other part of India. There are fewer things for sale, and the dreamy shop-keepers are perfectly indifferent as to whether they sell their wares or not. Every bazaar has its opium shop. These shops are an exception and show none of the usual inertia of the place. Each little shop is continuously filled with customers, and the opium seller is always busy weighing out his white powder.

The Airedale explained to Cynthia that the little shops they were passing would be open all night to sell opium to the Indians.

“Have you ever used opium?” she said.

“Yes, for five years,” he replied.

“And you were able to give it up? I thought such a thing was impossible.” Her eyes were searching his, and even in the dusk he could see their startled expression.

“I gave it up,” he said simply. “That was eight years ago.”

Cynthia was right. Few men could have done this. The planters knew the fiend of those days, a picturesque curse, at one moment sullen, at another riding like the devil through the jungle,—a reckless catapult that stopped at—but one thing—he never lost his basic manhood.

They had left the little street far in the distance and were plunging through the heart of the jungle.

Cynthia was wild with excitement. Every few minutes she clapped her hands in sheer delight, murmuring, “Oh, what splendid darkness! I can feel it!”

The stars seemed to have gathered in groups over the forest. She had never seen them huddle so before.

“I am glad the moon does not get up early tonight,” she said. “I want it to be dark—dark.”

He stopped the motor car. With the strength that is rooted in patience, but to blossom in achievement, he had waited. He had not complained when he thought life was mocking him. When he dared fate to decide against him he had locked his lips and waited.

Suddenly he took the girl in his arms with the passion of a storm that beats down upon the earth to slay all perfectly. He crushed her slight form against his heart, groaning, as he kissed her almost to insensibility.

At that moment he was one with the animals that surrounded him in the shadows—one with the untameable spirit of the jungle—one with all huge elemental forces. “God! How I have wanted you,” he exclaimed with a fierceness that was terrifying. “I have longed for you as the desert-bound long for the sea—and tonight I have you—I have you, woman of my dreams.”

Cynthia felt as if all her former life had been shattered, and that life new and radiant started from the moment.

He had started the motor again. She felt the mysterious perfume of the jungle beating against her face. She sat quietly beside him. She did not speak. She could not. Words would splinter the rapture between them.

By the gentle movement of the car she knew that they were now on good roads.

“The tea garden roads,” he explained. “The planters build their own roads.”

Ahead she saw a lighted bungalow. The light from its windows seemed to be swallowed by immediate darkness.

When they entered the gates she could see that it rested on high pillars. “Your house is on quite a perch,” she said laughingly.

“All the houses in Assam are raised,” he said, “otherwise the tigers and leopards might become too sociable.”

“How thrilling! Do they really come right up to the houses?”

“Yes, and look in at the windows when they are in a curious mood,” he answered, leading her to the long flight of stairs, and following her up to the verandah.

The door opened into the sitting-room, drawing-room, living-room, whatever one wished to call it. It answered all purposes. It was comfortably furnished with rattan chairs and sofas.

The skins of many animals were strewn about the floor, and on the walls were swords, strange looking knives, and iron and brass ornaments from Tibet.

There was something about the room that lacked permanency, as if its occupants had hastily thrown down their belongings and would as hastily pick them up.

From another room Mrs. Quaren approached to meet Cynthia. “I am so glad you could visit us now, Miss Conway. Of course it is very dull here, but you may enjoy it for a while.”

Did Cynthia imagine it, or were the last words emphasized . . . “for a while?” Did she mean to warn her in time that her visit must not last long?

She would not allow her happiness, born in the jungle, to be overshadowed by anything.

“I think it must be wonderful to live up here away from all imitation. Everything is so real—has such a first-ness about it—if you know what I mean—I scarcely know myself. But Nature is so unspoiled, so unused. You know her as she is, and as few people are privileged to know her.”

“Yes—?” answered the woman, who discovered too late that there were many things unknown to her philosophy, “but the acquaintance usually palls on one very soon.”

“What a fool I have been,” she was thinking to herself, as she studied Cynthia’s rebellious hair and knew that it was innocent of curlers, hot tongs, or any of the first aids to beauty which she had laid out on her own dresser. And that laughing face could be dorined or not, as it suited the mood of its owner.

So this was the girl she had invited to the jungle to punish by the lack of hairdressers and beauty specialists! Be it on her own head!

*  *  *

The dining-room was prettily decorated with plumed-grass and red-bronze leaves from the jungle. There was little furniture in the room. On the walls hung strange looking straw and leather ornaments. They were made by the wild tribes from beyond the Tibetan Hills.

The Airedale knew several tribes and had mastered some of their weird language.

Once in the old days, before his wife came out, when he was living with a native woman, he had been on quite familiar terms with the Chilikatas. He knew many of the habits of this tribe, and always tried to be on hand when any member had his hair cut,—a bit of tonsorial decoration which took place about once a year. The victim in the case seated himself on the ground while the barber placed a stick of wood under his lank tresses and chopped them off with an axe.

Dinner was served by certain of the coolies who had been recruited from the tea gardens and promoted to the position of cooks, bearers, kitmutgars, etc. They had been instructed by the Airedale in the days before his wife had joined him, and now they were as efficient as any house-servants in Calcutta.

The meal was simple. There was something indefinably unpleasant cast over the occasion by Mrs. Quaren. Cynthia repeated to herself the words he had whispered in the jungle—to intoxicate herself with their beauty. He sat there not heeding his wife. This woman was not sad. She was dead. Thirty-five years ago they had braced this intruder to resist life. They had been successful. It passed to one side of her and she saw not even the shadow cast by its flight.

They had coffee and cigarettes in the verandah. Mrs. Quaren made a feeble attempt at conversation, then lapsed into silence finding she could only elicit a preoccupied yes or no from Cynthia or the Airedale.

The moon had risen and was dripping silver spray over the snow-crowned hills. Strips of lacy cloud hung low over the tea-gardens where the blossoms were drinking the night-dew. All was still save for the crunch of padded feet.

The voice of the unclaimed jungle whispered to Cynthia of nights to come—rare mid-nights of star-drenched fragrance and dream-music, nights when the spirit of the jungle showered all on her elect.

*  *  *

Most women have nights that stand out in memory—nights when happiness or grief hold sleep at bay.

Cynthia, within her mosquito net, wide-eyed from an intense joy, was experiencing one of these never-to-be-forgotten nights.

Love had charged down upon her like an overwhelming force. She knew this man to be the true mate of herself. He was her complement. No mistake of youth, no cowardly cloak thrown on would-be duty could interfere with the plan of the gods. She thought of his wife, the woman who shared his home. She had taken nothing from her. She could not deprive her of what she had never possessed. When a woman really loves she can consider no small compromise. She would go to that woman on her knees, if she could understand. She would lift up her eyes that held her spirit illumined with a great love.

She would say, “Oh, friend, physical love can bring nothing in itself” (here she drew upon the Airedale’s confidences), “but it may open the door to all—and you have stood with your back to the door, your arms outstretched across it, not wishing to turn the key.”

She knew in her heart that she could never speak to this woman. No two women have ever met on the summit of Truth to discuss life unflinchingly.

She was not sorry for this woman. Her heart ached for a blind world. But she hugged the warmth of her happiness to her and her heart sang a glad song of gratitude as she listened to the voice of the jungle calling clearly across the night.

Chapter IX

“There Is One, Oh Allah!”

A Muhammedan parade was passing. Some of the fanatics beat their breasts with such fury that the blood spurted out and covered their hands. They were insensible to the pain, however, and went on intoning a sentence from the Koran over and over again. Banners of the richest Persian colours were tacked to poles that were topped with silver hands with one finger pointing upward.

The city had been a weird sight every night during the Mohorrum. From a distance it looked as if the entire place was burning. The Muhammedans carry luk in their processions, which are made by tying rags to sticks and setting fire to them. Imagine thousands of almost nude black men waving these burning rags about their heads and bellowing in maddened religious frenzy! It is a terrifying sight. Through the glare and smoke you see the shiny black bodies dancing to the mournful wail of the takara. The marchers will halt at times and make a circle around the kusti, who writhe in a way that seems impossible. You wonder if you are dreaming or really watching human forms. Then along come the taxies made of thin wood and paper and borne on stout poles. Some of these are very elaborate, showing that much time and money have been spent in their construction. They contain mud, which has been taken from the tanks, or bathing places, and which represents the remains of the prophet.

The Baquar ’Id, which is based on the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac, was having its yearly fling. The Muhammedan Abraham was called upon to sacrifice that which he held most dear. Like the Old Testament Abraham he decided to offer his son. The son, fearful that his father might falter at the last moment, and taking his colour from the story of the bible, insisted upon his eyes being bandaged. While he was thus blinded, the Angel Gabriel substituted a ram for the son.

The modern Muhammedan must sacrifice the animal which he holds most dear. If he cannot get a camel (he prefers one) he will sacrifice a goat or a sheep, sometimes cows are killed, but this is seldom now, as the Hindus asked British intercession against it. Like all other natives of India, the average Muhammedan is very poor, so it is necessary for several families to pool their money and buy an animal. When this is done a member of each family officiates at the sacrifice. The animal must be placed with its head towards Mecca. Its front legs are bandaged together. The sacrificer stands at the right of the victim and must plunge the knife into the throat with such force that the animal dies at once. A fat animal should be sacrificed if possible, for it will later carry one over the Sirat.

Thus the Muhammedans were observing the death of Husan and Husain, the Abraham and Isaac of their religion.

*  *  *

Mahomet Khan stood beside a white she-camel. In his hand glittered a long knife. He was not the quiet man we have seen before. He was the fanatic of the Baquar ’Id.

Talkidin looked up at him with wondering eyes. Great had been the rejoicing in his house when she was born. There are two events at which the Muhammedan rejoices exceedingly, the birth of a son and the birth of a white she-camel. Talkidin was the one-humped or water camel. There was no finer camel in all India. She had been kept for this great day. She had never worked, and she had never been mated. Consequently, she had never known the indignity of letting her milk down to he-camels on the long tramp when there is no water for many days. She would pass as a sacrifice to Allah, blessed be his name, and great would be her privilege.

Mahomet felt the keen edge of his knife with his thumbnail. On his knees now, with his face towards Mecca, he asked the help of Allah.

“I have waited, Oh Allah, for my star of the night, with her body of ivory and her eyes like sapphires,—she who incarnates all dreams of beauty, my garden of pleasure, my rose of the desert, my flower, in whose veins the moon-mist trickles. Oh, forgive me my sterile hours. Now I would eat the fruit of her bosom. I would drink the wine of her soul. My flesh would melt with her flesh and merge into one. She was born of sea-foam and star-shine. Ripe fruit is her mouth. Her flesh is like the honeycomb. I would feel her heart throbbing against mine while my soul becomes saturated with her virginal fragrance. Oh Allah, guide her hand to draw her curtains and call me . . . faintly with her jasmine breath. Oh Merciful, I have known no woman for many moons. I faint of longing. Oh, send her to me ere I die—and may your blessing fall upon her and render her fruitful. Unbeliever she is now—but send her to me, Oh Great One, and she will worship in the house of her husband.

“There is one, Oh, Allah, who would tear the blossom from its stalk. Give my mind strength, and ere this young moon fulfills her youth, one dog shall enter hell.”

He had risen to his feet, his hands outstretched to the setting sun, as he murmured the verse from the Koran which precedes sacrifice:

“Then cried we unto him, O Abraham,
Now hast thou satisfied the vision.
Lo, thus do we recompense the righteous.
This was indeed a clear trial,
And we ransomed his son with a costly victim,
And we left for him among posterity,
Peace be on Abraham!”

After this verse, he delivered the Abu Lahab. His voice had become electric. Each word left the battery of his lips like a jet of flame:

“Let the hands of Beeneji perish, and let himself perish!
His wealth and his gains shall avail him not.
Burned shall he be at the fiery flame,
And his wife laden with the fire-wood,—
On her neck a rope of twisted palm-fibre.”

He bowed his head three times to the setting sun. His fanatical eyes looked straight into the red-gold glare. He raised his knife on high for a second,—then like a flash it descended and entered the throat of Talkidin. She died immediately—the most honored of her kind.

The white, deceitful lady-moon of India was passing through a compound and touching with pale silver-tipped fingers the bougainvillaea, the jasmine, the roses, crimson, pink and white. Poinsettias, throbbing with passion, winced beneath her caress. She heard the confidences of mated birds and the soft lullaby of the palms.

A man sat under the sinjib tree. Was he sitting there to catch its message? Perhaps it would tell him how to bring her back, for the sinjib tree grants the desire of lovers.

He caught up the silvery leaves that had fallen to the ground and crushed them in his hands. He touched his forehead with them . . . then he threw himself forward on the ground clutching the grass and groaning in agony.

A figure came from behind a banyan tree and stood over the sufferer. He had watched this silent suffering for days . . . he had watched and wondered. The sufferer neglected his books, his horses, his camels—all but Talkidin, and she, praise be to Allah, had died the greatest of all deaths that morning. Only a brown monkey had the sufferer noticed for two moons, and he called it a strange name, and talked to it about a woman. Surely some sorrow had come to rest in the household.

“Master, the ground is damp, and the night gets cool. I have placed food in thy bedroom. The sun has set many hours ago and the fast is long since over. Come, Master, and partake of food.”

The sufferer raised himself to a sitting posture and spoke like one in a dream. “You have been faithful, Oh Abdul, since Allah first sent you to me.” The other bowed, touching his forehead. “There is work to be done, Abdul, in the house near the Palm Gardens. One swine has too long polluted Allah’s fair earth, and the mighty patience becomes exhausted. There is an Egyptian girl who returns to her people—remember, she returns to her people.”

The faithful one raised his arms to the star-filled sky. “Blessed be Allah and Mahomet, his prophet. Glorious one, thy wish is the wish of thy servant, who kisses the dust from thy feet.”

Chapter X

The Airedale Explains

Cynthia was walking along one of the dusty roads of Assam. She was alone save for the hoolock. Several days ago she had lured him from his tree with nuts and sweets, and now they were fast friends. She had told him about Gwendolyn Ermyntrude who was visiting Mahomet. He had listened politely. Now he was skipping ahead or lagging behind. Occasionally he climbed a tree and tossed down blossoms and twigs.

It was the week of Fagwa, as the Assamese call the feast of the holi. A weird celebration it is. Kama, the god of physical love, who is really the Indian Eros, is cremated with much ceremony.

The story goes that one day while one of the gods was praying, this god of love came along and tried to lure him from his devotions. When he had completed his puja he finished off his would-be seducer by cremating him. The people celebrate the occasion by squirting red liquid at each other and by smearing their faces with a purplish-red grease paint. The last days of the feast are devoted to profanity and vile talk. Leaving out the vile talk, Cynthia wondered if a religion that provides once a year for the release of a certain amount of profanity had not something in its favour.

She was in the hands of a strange mood. She knew her old moods so well—those moods of inducements: the mood that induced work, the mood that induced play, the colourful moods, too, she knew them all—-the mood that painted new gold in the sunset, the deep blue midnight mood, and the mood of the waning moon.

Was this a mood that touched her today with rough fingers? Was it a new force or something awake after a long sleep? Whatever it was it had the power of authority. Its message swept across her consciousness with the vitality of fierce sunlight. She saw clearly. “I want all—all,” she told herself. “It is better to know nothing than to know half. I want to venture on forbidden ground. Give me my happiness before the multitude. I will have no foolish makeshift. The commands of the dead sound hollow in the present. The commands of the living shout into oblivion. Give me my portion of life untarnished by falsehood.”

She thought of the useless suffering of strong women—suffering that the world likes to sing about. Were they strong? She knew the fruitlessness of each aspiration, as they braced themselves after each failure. Where was it all leading them?

Weak women everywhere were happy, because they knew how to accept. Their needs were fulfilled because they did not resist. What more could they expect of life than what they needed?

The satisfaction in resistance, if indeed if were satisfaction, left one miserable and exhausted. What did it amount to—this unknown good in unknown time? She needed love. She needed to lie in his arms. She would reach out and take that which belonged to her.

She looked up at the great trees, the trees of his jungle. How steadfast they were, yet how responsive to all that was sent to them—to all their gifts. They did not question if they should tremble to the passion in the voice of the wind, if they should let the sun caress them with hot hands, if they should feel against their bodies the warm moisture from the clouds. They accepted all with glad thanksgiving. How wise they were! If they resisted, they would wither and die. Not long ago they had spoken to her in a storm. She would never forget what they said:—“See how we bend to the glorious fury of the tempest? We meet it with outstretched arms, we clasp it to our hearts, we enter into it with every fibre of us, for it is life magnificent.”

Long rows of coolies were toiling over the tea bushes on the cleared side of the road. Pieces of pink or white cotton were twisted about the lower parts of their bodies, leaving the upper portions exposed to the sun. What thoughtless joy they found in existence! What pagan delight in hot sun and blue sky!

What was that beyond this joyous picture on the edge of the lower jungle? A man stood with a whip uplifted. Now he was bringing it down on the gleaming back of a crouching figure. Cynthia could feel the stinging sensation on her own skin.

She hurried across the tea garden, tearing her frock on the bushes and caring nothing for the looks cast at her by the coolies.

They could not understand her haste. It would never have occurred to them that she was rushing for the whip, intent only upon snatching it from the man who wielded it.

Some things they understand; the language of the whip was one. Why should any one interfere with that which spoke to their meagre intelligence? When all went well the sahib was quiet. When work was not done properly he became angry and struck them. What would be more simple!

Cynthia snatched the whip from his hand. “How dare you beat a human being? What manner of man are you to strike one who cannot fight back?” Her breath was hissing through her lips, and her eyes were dilated with reproach.

He turned and looked at her. It was annihilating—his deadly calm. The moments stretched out, and yet he did not speak. Finally he turned and walked away from her towards the jungle.

Intuitively she knew she had been wrong. She did not question why or how, a dreadful mistake had been made, that was all she was sure of. She followed, calling after him.

He stood and waited until she had overtaken him, then quietly he took her arm—and led her into the jungle. She was glad of the night-like shade of the great trees, for she felt exhausted.

“Cyn,” he began; his voice sounded weary like the voice of patience that has become tired. “I thought you understood me. I thought that we could dispense with the trifling explanations couples make to each other and which degrade both. I never try to justify myself in the eyes of another. I let people think what they will of me—but once, just once, I shall try to reinstate myself in the eyes of one I love,—one whom I thought loved me, but whom I have learned, does not love me yet.

“I know these coolies who work for me, let me say with me, for we have worked together since we cleared the old swamp and made it into the garden you see today.

“The coolies are children. If they do their work well, they are rewarded. If they steal and fight and make trouble, they are punished. It is all they know. You may have heard the nonsense about appealing to their better nature. In the large, they have no better nature. I have known cases, few perhaps, where the better nature was there waiting to be appealed to. You may be sure I have never slighted such development when I have found it. There must be a master here, and I occupy that position. The coolie you saw me beating had been beating his wife, who is sick; in fact she had a child but two days ago.”

“Forgive me, I knew I was wrong the moment I had spoken; please forgive me.” There were tears in her eyes.

“There is no question of forgiving or not forgiving between us. You need no forgiveness, you simply thought that you were doing right. I did not explain to you because I wanted to hear the ‘Oh, forgive me, let us be friends again,’ of the feeble-minded. I helped you over something you did not understand, as I would guide your feet over a difficult path where I knew the lurking dangers, unnoticed by you.”

“Only you, you adorable Airedale, would ever accuse a woman of being feeble-minded, because she asked forgiveness.”

She was raking leaves together with the end of the whip. The laughter had crept back into her eyes and they were shining up at him.

“I did not mean to say feeble-minded, Cyn, dear. I meant feeble, only the minded slipped out somehow. Was it not a bit feeble to snatch my whip and berate me like any silly girl would have done?”

“I shall not say yes, it was, and let you win the day,” she said sitting down under a tree and patting the ground . . . an invitation for him to seat himself. He flung himself at full length beside her.

“I said I would speak once. I have spoken. I shall not go on with explanations. All my married life trifling explanations have been expected of me. I have not honored the expectation. You and I must trust each other or finish. I ask you to decide.”

What amazing depths she was reaching. She knew he could give greatly, and greatly withhold. The need of him flamed within her. The best of her was in his hands to crush or cherish. The essence of femininity was reaching out to the pro-male.

Let the world prate about the man who is tender because he is fifty per cent female,—or ten per cent—the amount is decided by the analyst—let science write lengthy apologies for the intermediate specimens we see about,—saying that pure masculinity is out of date—down in her heart of hearts woman longs for the ultra-male,—be she spinster, the craving mother, or the suffragette.

The soul of man was speaking to the soul of woman, and Cynthia was listening intently.

He caught up her hand and kissed it. She pulled his head down on her lap and stroked the stubborn hair.

“Trust you, I could never do anything else; but there is much I do not understand yet. When I saw you with the whip, I snatched it, without thinking. When I first watched you line the coolies up and force them to take quinine, I thought you were cruel. I did not stop to think that these gardens were recently malarial swamp. The other day you stopped the gramophone and remarked that the coolies, while they had very little understanding, might not care to listen to high jinks in the house, while they worked like the devil in the sun. Today, when I saw you with the whip, I thought (not at the moment, I admit) what a strange contradiction can this be the man who stopped the gramophone? I know that you are never inconsistent. The basic justice within you is always the same, though it may express itself in many ways. You would reach out and take me—but you would justify the act.”

“I am going to take you, and keep you forever”—his red-brown eyes were sparks from a violent fire.

“Ruins—ruins between man and woman cannot be restored. They must build anew. And we, you and I, darling, shall build greatly. My married life was started with a ruin. All the material was crumbling and rotten. There was not one strong piece to begin a new structure.

“Splendid foundations shall hold up my new life. The cellar of (what will people say) and the framework of convention cannot hold the higher structure of my new building. All my materials are to be new and strong. People may say that they will not do because they are unseasoned and untried;—but I know their strength, wonder woman.”

“When do you start to build?” she asked.

He had risen and had pulled her up by the hands. Now he took her in his arms. “Whenever you will help me, for we are co-architects, girl of my heart.”

He noticed how tired she looked as he held her in his arms. He kissed the shadows under her eyes.

“Your face is bruised with thinking, darling,” he said, as he released her. “Do not worry any more today about whips and quinine and gramophones.”

“The sun is taking a last look round before he turns in. Let us go back to the bungalow.”

The road was no longer a white glaring line. It stretched out invitingly. This was a country of sudden changes. Night was almost stepping on the heels of day in her hurry to arrive. She always entered Assam in rose-pink, which she changed later for purple, scented by pale flowers that withheld their perfume from the day. She was trailing her rose-pink over the distant hills and the near jungle.

“What is that rambling old building with a red roof?” asked Cynthia, pointing to an institution-looking structure whose compound had eaten far into the jungle in a huge clearing.

“That is the Home for the half-caste children of the planters. They are sent there when they are very young. The planters pay a certain sum for the support of each child—if they are a decent sort. I have known planters who have never paid an anna, but have sent several children to that place.”

Cynthia dreaded the information that she knew would be forthcoming.

“Yes,” he said, looking at her as if she had asked the question, “I have three children there.”

“Why did you not keep them at home?”

“My wife would not have them, and it would be difficult for them, too. No one would associate with them.”

“The people who are responsible for them should associate with them——” There was the passion in her voice that fights for the downtrodden. Never had he loved her as at that moment. “Where is their mother?” she continued.

“I have given her some land about five miles from here. She has a small house and a certain amount of money each month. She is happy. She does not wish anything more. I drop in to see her every week,—although, I must say that it is not done, as the planters’ wives would say. Just now she is ill, poor Tara. She refused the European doctor I sent her and called in the witch-doctor who gave her some devilish mixture of cow-dung and leaves.

“These people are very superstitious. They believe in charms, love potions, dances to remove the devil from their bodies and homes, and all sorts of nonsense.”

“Poor woman,” said Cynthia. “She may believe in nonsense, she may be happy, which I doubt, but she is a mother robbed of her children—-because a cowardly custom votes down with responsibility! Can you salve your conscience by paying a few rupees to that institution?” She was pointing with an accusing finger to the red-roofed building. “If the public were not so ready to subscribe to such Homes, it would be necessary for men to think twice before forming certain temporary contracts.”

“Cyn, darling, it would be foolish for us to discuss the poor old threadbare sex problem, for that is what it amounts to in this case.”

“Sex is blamed for everything,” she said, heatedly. “This is no question of sex. It is shirking the result of an act that I object to. Our acts are frequently instigated by other things beside sex.”

He drew her arm within his. “Would you have those children live with us if you were my wife?” he asked.

“I would insist upon them living with us, and if the fools would not visit us, well—so much the better.”

He lifted her off her feet high into the air, then lowered her slowly at arms’ length. “Wonder woman, you are driving me mad. We must start our paradise at once.” And he knew in his soul that what he had yearned for so long was standing beside him in the dusty road.

*  *  *

Mrs. Quaren and Rev. Banks, the young curate, were chatting over their tea.

The drawing-room seemed filled with something fateful, as if words that had just been uttered lurked everywhere. They might have been sad or angry words. They projected troubled vibrations in all directions.

When Mrs. Quaren introduced the curate to Cynthia she seemed to say: “This is the woman.”

Cynthia saw a pale, restless man with a narrow brow. His manner was diffident. He proclaimed malnutrition in his childhood, and a cramped consciousness in adult life.

“Mrs. Quaren has been telling me that you are a sculptress,” he said, looking beyond Cynthia to the Airedale.

“Mrs. Quaren is truly kind, I try to model a little.”

“Have you done anything since you came to the East?”

“Yes, I have made the bust of a Muhammedan gentleman. It does not exactly suit me, and some time I shall try again with the same model. I have seen many faces I would like to model since I came to India. There is one young lady I must do. I have never seen such a face before. It is as if all but tragedy had been taken out of the face, and yet tragedy had left it beautiful in a splendid way. It is the face of a lovely martyr.”

“A girl, you say? Is she young? Is it not strange?”

“She is young. She is a prostitute,” answered Cynthia.

He settled down in his chair as if she had flung something at him, a startled “Oh!” escaping from his thin lips.

The Airedale was looking at her, touching her with the magnetism of his eager eyes. She felt stimulated.

“I never see you at the church, Mr. Quaren.” The curate had recovered and was making another attempt at conversation.

“No, I never go,” the Airedale answered.

“I cannot persuade the planters to attend. Many of the wives come, I am happy to say.”

“You know the way we live here in this part of the world, Banks! Our early life is spent with the native women. Then we marry. Can we take unto ourselves religion at the moment that we take a wife?”

“When you take a wife and give up the native women you show a desire for something better.”

“No, you are mistaken. We simply have arrived at the place financially when we can support a wife properly. Do you not know how small the wages are which the young planter receives? He must plug along for several years barely keeping his head above water. An Indian woman can live nicely on about ten rupees a month.”

“Don’t you think that sometimes it may be the desire for a regular life that tempts the planters to marry, rather than the financial security?”

“The average planter leaves some girl at home waiting, while he comes out here to make good. He always intends to marry her some day.”

“Well, when he marries her and settles down why should he not attend church?”

“On the other hand, why should he?”

The Rev. Banks had not expected this question. He cast about in his mind for an answer such as the Airedale would appreciate. He could think of nothing. All his old stock phrases and “ready to wear” answers would be turned aside by this man. He said nothing.

The Airedale continued. “The world is full of hypocrites, unconscious and otherwise. I must feel right about the thing I do, Banks. I cannot explain any better than that.”

“I try to follow you, Mr. Quaren. I think it will be a matter of time. Next Sunday I shall talk about death, for after all we must be ready to meet it—ready for the reckoning.”

“The reckoning, you say—death flourished in the world long before the existence of man, but the importance given to it only came with the appearance of man. Is it not unscientific to imagine these after-results foisted into the law of evolution?”

“Perhaps, but could not the Hebrews have developed them from the contemplation of dreams?”

“I cannot say. I am less interested in life after death than in life here and now. The promise of a life hereafter which cannot be backed up by anything is rather thin compensation for the extinction of the only life we know anything about.”

Laura always shuddered when she thought how the old rector’s divine teaching had been wasted upon his son.

The curate had turned again to Cynthia.

“Miss Conway, would you care to visit the Home for half-caste children with me one day?”

“I would love to visit the Home. I am most interested in those poor children who should be living with their fathers.”

He winced. Right here the Rev. Banks registered a vow that this was the last time he would ever direct a question to this young woman. “She is a most impossible person,” he told himself.

He got up, straightened himself awkwardly, and took his hat from the table.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Quaren,” he said. “So I may leave the Thursday evening supper entirely in your hands? Thank you so much.”

He bowed to Cynthia and shook hands with the Airedale.

Mrs. Quaren stepped into the verandah with him.

Chapter X

A Bengali Passes

Beeneji lay on a silken carpet of Khorasan. A little boy, dressed as a girl, fanned him with a knot of peacock feathers. The room was redolent with the perfume on his hair and the strong scent of the oily unguents that had been rubbed into his yellow skin. His face had been done up with cosmetics and dyes. His henna-tinted hands, which a servant had just manicured, rested on soft cushions. His whole body was charged with sensuality.

“Beda, call the eunuchs to bring the silver.”

“They wait at the door, my lord.”

“Then open it, thou son of an owl, and bid them enter.”

Three eunuchs entered bearing silver on a scale.

“Thou hast weighed the silver?” asked Beeneji.

“Yes, my lord, and it is heavy as thou wishes,” answered one of the eunuchs.

“Then go fling it to the poor, in the faces of those who say that I no longer worship Shiv-jee.”

“We touch thy feet with our foreheads,” said the eunuchs, salaaming as they backed from his presence through the heavily wadded curtains of gold cloth.

“Why do they bellow, those pariah dogs without? Since the day that Shiv-jee created me from the sweat of his godly brow I have flung silver to the beggars? What more do they want, the fools who listen to a woman’s prattle? Know they not that women swear anything when they love or hate. My zenanna is filled, thanks to Shiv-jee, and think they I know not woman? Let them listen to the tales if it pleases them. Naught in all the hells can stop a woman’s tongue.”

“My lord speaks truly,” murmured Beda.

“I speak not to thee, sheep’s head. I converse but to myself; but draw near, Beda, and tell me, am I good to look upon today?”

“My lord is as fine as a great king’s dream of beauty.”

“Leave me, child, and send Zirda to me.”

The curtains parted to admit a stranger.

“Who art thou, for I know thee not?” asked Beeneji, indolently regarding the man before him.

“Oh, great one, I am the budlee of thy faithful Zirda, whose wife died but yesterday. He would not trouble thy noble rest to tell thee of a woman’s passing, but came in all haste to me and bade me hasten to thy side, while he arranged the funeral.”

“Tis well, man. Thou dost know thy office?”

“Yes, my lord, thy Zirda left instructions.”

“Let me hear, then, if thou knowest what I have at this hour.”

“My lord has now the aphrodisiacal powder, for it is large and expectant, the zenanna of my lord.”

“Well said, my man. Thou art indeed a worthy budlee.

Thou hast the powder with thee?”

“Yes, lord, weighed and ready for thy taking.”

He produced from his sash a small glass bottle and passed it to Beeneji, who took a gold spoon from the carpet beside him and poured the powder into it.

“Thou mayst leave me now, man—but one moment. What is thy name?”

“My unworthy name, my lord, is Abdul.”

“I like it not; ’tis the name of a pig-hater.”

“My lord shall call me as he likes. I curse the name that doth offend his noble ears.”

“Go now, thy name can stand. What matters it to me?”

“I take the dust from thy feet, Oh, Brahmin-born,” said Abdul leaving.

Once outside the curtain he clinched his hands and spat in the direction of the room he had just left. “Snake of an unbeliever,” he hissed, “thou wilt not coil thy slimy length about this world much longer. Cursed be thee and all thy descendants to the end of time. ’Tis well I fooled the wily Zirda. He listened and believed me, and came to me when he would lie drunken for a week. He may take the palm juice for many moons—the common son of a vulture! He dares not take the hemp;—the alcohol and opium are good enough for such carrion. He will weigh no more white powder, praise be to Allah.”

Beeneji had gone to the black room of his favourite. Amber lights cast a soft glow over its strange darkness. Black polished furniture was scattered here and there on the black marble floor. Huge skins of black lynx lent a bit of barbarity to what might otherwise have passed for the tomb of a princess. The white Persian cat stretched at full length on a black silk-covered divan but gave the room an added sombreness by his glowing contrast. In huge braziers incense fumed. A long ebony chest stood against the wall. Its lid was thrown back. Within, resting on velvet trays, were necklaces of rubies and emeralds, long ropes of pink and black pearls, bracelets of jade, coral, agate, girdles of turquoises and diamonds, anklets of gold, silver, and mother of pearl, some set with jasper and large opals; pendants of lapis lazuli and topaz, long earrings, shaped like bells or hoops, studded with gems of many colours, and weirdly carved ornaments for the hair.

The chest resembled the entrance to Aladdin’s cave.

Halima in a black net sari, shot with silver and weighted with flowers, reclined on a long strip of mauve-coloured kid. Her skin was burnished with saffron powder and gold dust. In spite of Aladdin’s cave she wore no jewels. On her little feet, sandals of delicately wrought mother of pearl testified to the skill of her lord’s jeweler. A gold-framed mirror of exquisite design rested beside her on the floor. Red stain had been added to the yellow powder on her cheeks. Her eyelids were heavily tinted with kohl.

Physical age had never touched her, but there was something about her wild little face that spoke of too much world-wisdom. Strange ghosts watched from her eyes. She had the beauty of a gorgeous poisonous flower. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet she was prepared for the sensual appetite.

She had been listening to the tales of an old deformed woman, who got up and slouched from the room when her lord entered. Today, resentment lay in her dark eyes.

“Art thou not happy, love, of my heart?” asked Beeneji, coiling himself on a long black cushion. “Nor pain not; pleasure hast scarred thy face, but this day the shadow of some thwarted caprice rests there. But speak, my Halima, and all thy desires shalt be fulfilled.”

“All, my lord?”

“All that seems good for the veiled woman of her master. There is some pleasure thou wouldst choose, daughter of the rose?”

“I tire of pleasure. The jangling of fringes, the clink of gold, the pearl-woven saris, but weary me. I am weary of thy caresses on my body and thy love words at my ear. I would have one of the right marriages with my kin and finish my life in some small village.”

“Come, come, Halima, thou art no widow. Thou art my chosen. Dost thou forget that my manhood hast slept within thy loins for nine long months? Thy son is fairer than all my children, and my most beloved.”

“My son hath gone from me. I know him not.”

“He returns to thee when his suckling is completed. His nurse is brave, and hast the best of health.”

“All thou sayest may be true—but I would be with my kin in some far village. Thou hast not called Amanreh to thyself for many days.”

“That Egyptian doth not please me. She wraps herself in the green of Islam and spurns my love.”

“She spurns thy love, my lord, but ’tis not that which annoys thee. Her spirit leaves her body to search the heavens, and thou dost fear her kind. Her flower-face and body lie dead upon the roof while her spirit sails the skies. One night I watched her inhale the rose until she slept. Then she didst not breathe but was still—still, like the marble figure on tomb. Thou knowest not where her spirit goes, and thou dost fear the vengeance of the gods. She took the Western lily through the tomb, and this is known to me.”

“Hush, rosebud, thou cackles as all women do, but I would see thee dance. Thy body doth please me, and thy chatter wastes time. Up and dance! I would see thine eyes ringed with fatigue. I would feel the thudding of thine heart beneath mine own.”

Slowly she rose,—a slender black lily with silver petals. As a gust of wind sweeps the face of the ocean, her body, stirred by hatred, swayed mechanically to the movements of the dance. Her eyes blazed with anger. There was something terrible in the way she started her dance. Her voice rose and her arms shot out in an uncontrollable outburst of hysteria. With serpentine movements she danced over to the cave of jewels. With a frenzied gesture she lifted an armful of the gleaming things, her feet keeping time to her mad mood. One by one she flung them on the marble floor. They fell like splintering glass about her. Her little pearl sandals ground the costly trinkets in a ruthless mirth that was awful to behold. She coiled the golden serpent of her body and sprang for another armful. Diamonds, emeralds and rubies rained from her fingers. She had gone mad.

The misty veils slipped from her shoulders. The ribbon and beads that she wore fell to the floor. Her creamy skin shone brilliantly in the darkness of the room. She dropped petal after petal from the stalk of herself until only her mad fragrance remained to intoxicate the watching man.

His eyes were dilated and blazing. His body quivered from head to foot. He sprang towards her with an awful cry. He took her in his arms and bore her to the couch covering her bare breasts with kisses. His breath was coming in a wheezing sound. His eyes looked bloodshot. His fat body was a raging fire as he dropped her on the couch.

She was looking at him. What was the matter? Little sprays of foam appeared on his lips. He tore at his breast.

“Call my man!” he gasped, as he fell forward on the floor.

Halima flung the silver-shot sari about her form and rushed screaming from the room.

Abdul entered. He went over to the prostrate form of Beeneji. He felt under his chudda to see if his heart had ceased to beat. It had. He left the room quietly and sent a servant for the doctor.

“Where is Amanreh?” asked Abdul. The old deformed woman looked up from the floor on which she was sitting and pointed one crooked finger to the ceiling.

“On the roof,” she grunted. “Always on the roof.”

Abdul climbed the two staircases. As he neared the top of the second he heard the cooing of pigeons, blent with the voice of a girl.

Amanreh adjusted her boorka quickly as she saw the man approach—but not before he had caught a glimpse of the beauty which he had heard vague stories about in the bazaar.

“Daughter of Egypt, I have come for thee,” he said.

“Who art thou, man?” she asked, startled. Her confidences with the pigeons had never before been interrupted.

“I am the servant of Mahomet Khan, and he bids me take thee to him.”

“Mahomet Khan?” She repeated the name slowly. “I have heard of that man many times. Is he as good as one is told?”

“He is many times better, as Allah knows.”

“What wouldst he with me, Oh man?”

“He would send thee to thy people, for knowest thou not, that Beeneji lies dead below?”

“Great is the goodness of Allah,” she whispered. “And man, with thee be peace.”

He wondered why she had shown no surprise at the death of her master.

“Man, how didst he die, this Brahmin?”

“Once each day he takes of the white powder, daughter of Egypt.”

“Yes, yes, I know that is his custom.”

“Today he took too much.”

“But man, that was ever weighed for him by Zirda.”

“I took Zirda’s place today. I was his budlee. My hand shakes, as thou canst see; I am no longer young.”

“Man, I come with thee wherever thou takest me, for thou art one of Allah’s chosen. Beeneji hast died as he lived. ’Tis meet that he hath passed in orgie.”

*  *  *

The foreign doctor examined the body of Beeneji. He pushed back the heavy eye-lids and studied the foam now stiffening on the lips. “Strange, I never knew that he had heart trouble,” he was thinking. “He was becoming too fat and he would not exercise, nor forego any of his luxuries. One cannot do that in this climate, even if one is born here. There will come a time—there will come a time—”

Chapter XII

The Wrath of Siva

“It is the wrath of Siva. Rudra, the Destroyer, heard my vow as a child in the temple and will not hear my prayers now. Were I immolated on the red altar, Siva would still turn from me. Oh gentle mem-sahib, I have sinned-against our gods.”

“Hush, hush, Tara,” said Cynthia to the wailing woman. “Your pains will come back if you excite yourself so. You should have seen the doctor that Quaren Sahib sent to you. This witch doctor cannot cure you.”

“No one can cure me, mem-sahib—I am dying. No member of my family can come to me, for I have sinned against my caste.” She raised her hands to the caste mark on her forehead. “I wear my caste mark; I can do no more.

“I was a temple girl, I was dedicated to the god. Listen, and do not blame me. My mother loved me, although I was a girl child. I was more lovely than all her children. If any one noticed me my mother would say: ‘She is a ram, a pig,’ or, ‘she is deformed and will be deaf.’ All this was said to keep the evil eye from me, for my mother wanted to keep me for the god. When I was eight I was taken to the temple where Siva, six-armed, with the sword and trident, waited for his worshippers. How cold the temple seemed! I was put to bed and a chota Rajah impersonated the god. Do you listen, Mem-sahib?”

“Yes, Tara,” said Cynthia; “and if it please you, tell me all.”

“Many Europeans think,” the weak voice continued, “that the girls they take outside owe nothing to the temples. But the priest collects from all of our profession if he can. I was allowed to wander where I could, for I could charm man’s senses as no other of the girls. I made much money, but I took it all to Siva. I served only the men of my caste until I met Quaren Sahib. He told me many things. He said that what was sanctioned by Siva was wrong and wicked. I believed him, because his words were kind. I know now that he spoke not truly, for is not the vengeance of Siva upon me? I went to the house of Quaren Sahib, and I was so happy at first, Mem-sahib. He was poor in those days, and his bungalow was not much larger than this house of mine.

“Two boys were born. They were sent to the Home. You know about the Home here?” Cynthia nodded. “I prayed for great happiness. It came to me. I had a girl child. She was beautiful with dark eyes and plump limbs. I gave her to Siva in my prayers. I thought he would forgive me for leaving the temple if little Zirita were married to the god. I never told Quaren Sahib, but every day I went to the temple and promised her to Siva. My sister, who came here from Lingam, told the Sahib what I meant to do, and in three days he sent Zirita to the Home.

“When she was a year old I tried to steal her, but she was always watched. I wept for many days. I gave candles and ghee to Siva, but he would not hear me. I got very sick and begged to see Zirita. The Sahib brought her for an hour, but held her in his arms all the time. I thought I would go mad, Mem-sahib.

“One day a yogi came. He could float in the air and sleep a long time beneath the earth. He told me that he would turn away the wrath of Siva for two hundred rupees. I stole them from the money that was to pay the coolies. The Sahib thought a coolie had stolen them, and was going to beat him. I admitted what I had done. The Sahib beat the yogi instead and after that everything was worse. The yogi sent the wrath of all the gods upon me.

“The next year the Sahib sent me here. He went home because his father was sick. He married his Mem-sahib. He told them at the Home that I could see the boys, but not to let me see Zirita. When he came back I saw him very seldom. This last year, he comes to see me once a week. I wish he would not come at all, for it makes Siva angry when he comes.

“He has always given me money, and I have never had to want.”

“But do you not care for him, Tara? Remember, he is Zirita’s father.” There were tears in Cynthia’s eyes.

“Mem-sahib, you do not understand. He offended Siva when he kept Zirita from the temple.

“I saw his Mem-sahib once. I was sick and had fallen in the road. The Sahib helped me up; the Mem-sahib was very angry. ‘So you handle that creature of yours in my very presence,’ she said. I was very unhappy. Of course Quaren Mem-sahib does not understand. She thinks I am a common tea-garden coolie. She does not know that I am married to a god.”

Her last words trailed off in a groan. She clutched her abdomen in agony.

“Oh Siva! Siva! Rudra! hear me. I tried to bring Zirita to you; forgive me before I die.”

Great beads of perspiration covered her forehead. Cynthia knelt beside the rope bed on which she was lying.

“Listen, Tara,” she said, “I will do all I can for your children. Zirita is too old to go to the temple now. I will think of something else for her. I will send the boys to the college in Calcutta when they are ready. Will you trust me, Tara?”

“Mem-Sahib, you have a diva’s face. You belong to one of the heavens. Before I had a dream I thought you were like all other Mem-sahibs; but in the dream you were standing with the gods and a great light was over your head. The kind spirits sent me the dream to tell me that you are one of the chosen. Will you stay with me, Mem-sahib, until I go?”

“I shall never leave you,” said Cynthia, stroking the wasted hands.

“Please keep the Sahib away from me, Mem-sahib; he offends the gods.”

“All shall be as you desire, Tara; and now will you try to sleep for a little? I will give you a spoonful of my medicine. You will take it, dear?”

Tara opened her mouth and swallowed the liquid without a word. She folded her hands, closed her eyes, and tried to obey.

Cynthia drew a chair over to the window and watched the sun preparing to set behind the white-robed Tibetan Hills. The room was very bare. No doubt the Airedale had supplied Tara with money enough to furnish it properly—but the woman had ideas of her own.

The rope bed on which she lay, two chairs and one picture were the only things the room could boast of.

The slanting rays of the sun were lighting the picture. There was Siva, coloured most flamboyantly, catching the Ganges in his hair, for that sacred River had its source in heaven and if it had descended in one mighty torrent it would have bored through the earth and been lost in Patala the home of the snake people.

Cynthia was feeling the sharp edges of a portion of truth. She was turning it about in her mind this way and that. She loved Tara because Quaren had once chosen her, as she would have loved his wife, could she have understood.

What a will o’ the wisp this brotherly love was! It always blazed up in the distance to tantalize. Some got nearer to it than others but it was always elusive in the end.

The bonds of flesh,—what were they? The bonds of spirit,—what were they?

She thought of the great interpreters of the God idea, Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Mahomet, they gave out the impressions that took birth in their senses. They all had their followers. The interpreters followed the interpreters and linked themselves in creeds with so many orders each. New creeds would be born, old creeds would die, all down the ages. People would hate or love each other according to law, claiming forever that they worshipped God.

The sun had long since set. Night had entered the jungle. Little fires sprang up here and there to frighten the tawny prowler who might come too close.

How beautiful the night was! “Go your way, old world of contradictions,” murmured Cynthia. “There is the magic of the stars and the music loosed by the wind. There are rose-garlands of thoughts to festoon the glory of Nature, there are dreams to create enchanted gardens. . . . Go your way, old world of contradictions!”

A cry pierced the room. It stabbed her heart.

“Mem-sahib, Mem-sahib, diva, come, come, I die. Shiva-jee forgive, forgive. I tried to get Zirita—I tried, I tried—”

Cynthia’s arms were about the wasted figure. Tears were coursing down her face.

“Siva forgives you, Tara,” she whispered. “Trust the diva of your dreams, she knows.”

Tara opened her eyes. Great peace had settled in their depths.

“Diva, you know I must not die in bed.”

“You shall die on the ground,” said Cynthia lifting the poor woman, whom the ravages of the dreaded intestinal trouble had reduced to a mere skeleton.

Out into the jungle Cynthia bore her and placed her on the ground. One second her eyes sought Cynthia’s, then with a moan, she turned on her side, flung out her arms and was still.

Cynthia bent over the motionless figure. The yellow moonlight tore the branches of the trees apart and looked down at them.

Joy of a sort budded in the soul of Cynthia as she whispered the last farewell to one at rest. “Sail through the beauty of the night, Tara, far from this world of contradictions. Catch up your dreams again, and watch your diva amongst the gods of your fathers.”

Chapter XIII

The Old and Obvious Enigma

Bamboos creaked in the jungle—the jungle that always crept up close in the moonlight. The acacia and peepul trees had drawn over their parallel beauty a white elusiveness and looked like shrouded figures. In the compound, the almond-blossoms drunken with the night-dew, swayed unsteadily and spilled their perfume on the breeze.

The Airedale, stretched on cushions in the verandah, blew smoke-rings and reached for his dreams. He thought of Tara and her recent funeral. It hurt him that she had not sent for him before she died. Poor woman! Her last thoughts were of the god and the daughter who had been kept from the temple marriage by the order of her father. His wonder-woman had told him of Tara’s last moments. His wife had been angry because his guest, as she called Cynthia, had nursed the native woman.

His wife—there she was to be reckoned with. There she stood with the rest of her kind,—a long line of women who held their skirts away from the Taras of the world. These women would always condemn the unfortunate whose frail body goes down under the primitive storm, that they may rest in shelter from the red gale. He thought of a day when man would walk erect through the storm, his hand held in the power-warm fingers of grown woman. The women of flesh only,—they were strewn everywhere about him. The planters’ wives, whose fair-weather boats came into safe harbour; the teachers,—proper women, who taught the Sahibs’ children,—flesh, all flesh, what did they know of life? They expected marriage. Their expectations ended there. Children, prosperity, poverty, stagnation, all followed in the wake of marriage. But if they thought of these things it was as they thought of death,—something remote and not to be contemplated. They concentrated on marriage; and their mothers concentrated on marriage for them. If there were other things, never mind,—get the man! Step on unprotected sisters to get him if necessary—but be respectable!

There was the moon, and there was his wonder-woman. Moon and woman—always linked together in Hindu legends. How the sweet radiance of his wonder-woman illumined everything! What a magic soul she had! Each thing she touched with the bright wand of it were better for the contact. And she touched all things,—all that did not slink away and hide.

He looked across the verandah to the hammock where she slept—or did she sleep? She was very quiet. Perhaps she too were dreaming, those wakeful dreams that one can piece together in sequence.

She stirred. She felt him looking at her, so she sat up.

“Well, dear,” she said. “I knew you were far away, and I did not wish to call you back.”

“I thought you were sleeping, Cyn.”

“No, I was watching you and thinking of Tara.”

“Poor Tara,” he said. “The thought of what she has just passed through first filled me with wrath against the infliction called life.”

“You mean death?”

“Yes, dear.”

“I am coming over to sit beside you on one of those cushions,” said Cynthia getting out of the hammock; “and you must tell me just what you mean, for it seems rather vague to me.” She seated herself on a cushion beside him. He put his arm round her. Her head rested against his shoulder.

“I believe I told you that I used to work out in the world, as I call it, before I came here?” he began.

“You said something about it, but I can never picture you in cities.”

“I was in a factory for two years studying machinery. That was my first venture after the University. One of the superintendents thought I would do well outside, selling the machines. He suggested it to me. I was keen on seeing the world at that time, so I accepted the offer. The machines were for tea cleaning and drying. You have seen some of them in our drying houses here. A Dane invented a new machine shortly after I joined the firm. On paper it seemed to revolutionize tea-drying. My firm was interested. It put up the money to make one of the things and to try it out. The directors asked me to take it to a garden and watch it in operation. I brought it here to Assam.”

“Did it justify their expectations?”

“It was an awful fizzle. At its first demonstration the planters thought I was balmy. There is only one planter left who was here at that time. He jokes about it yet.

“The moment I saw this jungle,” he continued, “I knew that I could never rest away from it. I started negotiations at once to come here as a planter. Two years later I came out as an under-assistant; but how I digress! I started to tell you about the infliction.”

He pushed her hair off her forehead and kissed her. There was a strange reverence in his manner. What a blessed reality she was after years of dream-stuff!

“I await the infliction,” she said dramatically. He laughed, and went on.

“Once in Glasgow, where I went to sell the machines, I fell in with a strange crowd—men and women who absorbed alcohol like sponges and then started to fight. Many of them were factory-workers whom I deliberately cultivated. One night they gave a dance at an old barny hall outside the city. I was invited. In about two hours every one was drunk and quarrelsome. A chap tried to hit me on the head with a beer mug, because I disagreed with something he said. I left in disgust.

“When I got back to the hotel I began to think about them, collectively at first, then certain individuals would pass before my mind. I remembered a gesture here, a curse there. Snatches of low songs came back to me. In a flash I saw them all dead. Their little lives had passed into the great unknown. Their starved hearts and starved bodies were still—one more offering to inevitable cruelty. I wanted to rush back and say I loved every one of them. We are all victims together of this infliction.

“Since then I have looked at things differently. I know how futile are the efforts of those who would blind us. Think of all the fine souls in the world, who out of love, or because of a misplaced faith, deceive us about the infliction.”

“What a gloomy thought!”

“Perhaps, dear, but what difference does it make—anything that anyone thinks or does? The great sadness awaits us all, together with the huge uncertainty. When you realize that every one is weighted with sorrow at the end you cannot grudge him his little moment of pleasure. Let him get it in his own way.”

“Don’t you believe there is something following?”

“Who knows: and if there is, the entrance to it is hedged with misery.”

“You are not up-to-date, dear Airedale. One must have a penchant for occultism of some sort today. Occult thinkers and societies are springing up like mushrooms. Every other person one meets has had a ‘message’ or something. I have a friend in New York who has had ‘splendid demonstrations’ with automatic writing. She has received valuable information through the hand.”

“If that sort of thing gives your friend any pleasure she should go on with it. All the messages she can get will not minimize the sorrow of her exit.”

“Can you not imagine one dying without feeling sorrow at his exit?”

“Yes, dear. I can imagine many wishing to go, but that does not alter the fact that the whole scheme is cruel.”

“Perhaps nothing is cruel if we could know.”

“But we cannot know, and I am not good at guessing, and the other fellow’s guess may not be right. There is no getting away from it, Cyn, the finish is a blur.”

“What a pessimist you are!”

“No, I am not. We are all condemned to death—but I do not pander to the law by allowing my mind to dwell upon the sentence. Were I a pessimist I would look upon life through the eyes of Schopenhauer and consider life an unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of nonexistence.”

“Surely this old land of mystery and mysticism, where sadhus squat in the forest and meditate for weeks and months on the future life, has said something to you.”

“It has, dear. It has told me that the sadhu is frequently insincere, and that his religion is mostly sorcery.”

“Well, here we are, and we must make the best of it.”

“Just so, darling. Because we cannot see beyond is no reason why we should not use every moment of the time until our name is read. We can get much happiness here, and some of us can leave that behind which will help those who are coming. I put all my faith in humanity.”

“Future humanity does not interest me half so much as you and I,” she traced his shaggy eyebrows with her finger. “I have something to tell you tonight.”

“Out with it, dream-girl.”

“I am going back to Calcutta tomorrow.”

He tightened his arms about her. “Must you go, dear?”

“Yes. I have been here far too long already. There are reasons——”

“I will let you go on one condition.”

“Well?”

“That you will visit my gardens with me in South India.”

“What will you tell your wife?”

“That you will travel with me, of course.”

“She will object.”

“Naturally. She has objected to everything I have ever done.”

“Would it not hurt her too much?”

He raised her head and held it so as to look directly into her eyes.

“Cynthia,” his voice was not quite steady, “you would not have me play a double-fisted game?”

“You misunderstand me, dear.” Her head rested again on his shoulder. “I mean, would it not be better if we did not see each other again.”

“No conventional school-girl could have said it better than that, Cyn. Why don’t you continue and say you must put me out of your mind, Mr. Quaren, and I will pray that I may be allowed to forget you, and all the rest of the claptrap which is used on such occasions?

“Say that I gave you up and never should see you again,—what good would that do my wife? Say that I kept my body here in this place with her, while my heart and soul were with you,—what good would that do her?”

“I have always brought warmth and enthusiasm to my work,” she said. There were tears in her voice. “Now I should bring them to my love—but when the time has actually come to make a decision, I cannot. Please understand, darling. I bolstered my mind one night with the thought that I was taking nothing from her that she ever possessed—but now, right at this moment, all seems to have changed.”

He had risen. He put his hands in his pockets and stood looking down at her.

“What do you think you are robbing her of at this moment?” His voice was weak like the voice of one who had just passed through paroxysms of pain—“my love that she never possessed?”

“When a woman thinks that she is losing her husband, she sees things in a different light,” she said—her voice broke.

“In the light of pique or calculation frequently. There is nothing between us, Cynthia. There is, as I have already told you, not even a sex complication. She married me for an economic reason. I shall always take care of her. She does not love me. She hates this jungle. She would leave it tomorrow if she could. Once I thought of giving up the gardens and going to Europe with her for the sake of peace. When we talked it over she said I wished to reduce her to poverty. Many times she has begged me to allow her to live alone in Europe. I have thought of it, but you know how one day drifts past like another in the jungle, and final decisions are not made until something comes along and demands them. She has often told me that it was cruel of me to keep her here. Let me put the question to her, dear. Let me ask her which would please her more, to stay with me, when I love you, or go to Europe, as she has always wished.”

“If you told her you loved me she might consider it right to leave you.”

“This is not necessary between us,” he said fiercely. His head grew dizzy—there was she—his dream-woman—his, by right of honesty—was she slipping into the mist that was settling over the jungle—

“If my wife were dead you would come to me reassured by a tomb. You—”

“Stop!” Cynthia had risen and was standing beside him. “Ask your wife the question; I shall leave tomorrow.” She staggered towards him and fell into his arms. She seemed to crumple up like some flower that had been struck by the storm.

He carried her over and laid her in the hammock. He stooped and kissed her cool lips. “Darling, lie here and rest. We will say no more about this tonight.” He left her alone. Soon she heard the chug-chug of the motor, and she knew that he was going over to the Hunters’ bungalow to bring Laura home.

Laura had spent most of the evenings out at the other planters’ bungalows since Cynthia arrived. When she learned that proximity could not disillusion the Airedale where that woman was concerned, and that Cynthia loved the jungle (a pose, she felt sure), she took up the role of the neglected wife and made much of it.

The whir of the motor grew faint in the distance. Cynthia lay in the hammock and thought of the women who return to their husbands after passionate scenes with their sweethearts—how they passed quickly from the fierce emotion to the well-ordered quiet of their homes.

They were received by all for they managed with caution. She could never join their ranks. Then there were the women who took all and gave nothing, as the stone takes the sunlight. She thought of the despotism of a god who lays down laws that kill spiritual initiative—no, it was not God—she knew it was not—it was the false interpretation.

Who could restrict the soul’s energy? Flesh had brought all things upon itself—

Questions came to her like fluttering birds. Thoughts piled up in her mind. They must wait. She could not think. Only one thing was sure—her love for this man.

Chapter XIV

Beating Wings

Little clouds kept obscuring the Airedale’s senses as he drove back from the station. He did not think of it as driving home—home—not the bungalow; home was this far-reaching jungle.

Cynthia was on her way to Calcutta, and he was going back to Laura. Everything was wrong. He would speak to Laura at once. It was best to get it over with.

He found her in the verandah knitting. Why did she knit so much?—if she would only stop knitting. She never read anything. Her mind was always turned in on itself. Her thin sand-coloured hair was drawn back tightly. Her eyes were rimmed. They seemed to suggest loss of sleep or constant squinting in the sun. Her mouth looked tremulous and weak, ready for sobbing or pouting. He had always known her ugliness, but today it seemed emphasized.

He knew what she would answer when his story burst from him. He heard the long procession of whining words marching across his mind. He took a chair near hers. She looked up at him. Her red-rimmed suspicious eyes questioned.

“Miss Conway got away all right?” she asked, to indicate the subject of conversation rather than to express interest in the departure.

“Yes. She will have a hot trip down. The train was stifling.”

“The night train would have been much better.”

“Not for her. She loves the beauty of the jungle.”

“She is welcome to it, so far as I am concerned.”

“You know it is about time for me to leave for the southern gardens.”

“Yes. I suppose you will see your friend on the way, as you must go by Calcutta.”

“I have asked her to visit the gardens with me.”

“What do you mean!” The click of the knitting needles stopped suddenly.

“I mean just that, Laura. I have asked her to accompany me.”

“I did not know that she was your mistress.”

“She is not my mistress,” Quaren answered with great patience.

“Then how did you dare ask her such a question?”

“I asked her because I love her, and because she loves me.”

“A good woman never loves a married man.”

“Am I a married man?”

“I cannot understand your question. Surely our marriage was legal.”

“So far as the law goes, we are man and wife.”

“Is it my fault that only the law is satisfied?”

“Laura! You know why we married, and it is needless to remind you that there has never been any love between us.”

“Just the same, we are married. The State and the church know us to be bound. If you wished that—I cannot put it into words—you should have mentioned it.”

“I never wished it.”

“No, you wish to do things in sin.”

“If I had wished only what you are afraid to name I would have taken it. There are plenty of women for the purpose. You know that when I gave Tara up and married you I stopped all that.”

“So you say.”

“Would you have been willing to sacrifice yourself to me if I had asked it?”

“I have always been willing to do my duty.”

“You would have considered it your duty to surrender yourself in exchange for a roof and a few necessities?”

“Hundreds of women do not love their husbands; but they submit to their duty.”

“So women occupy the position of prostitutes in their husbands’ homes?”

The click of the needles was heard again. Her head was bent over her work. Loose ends of hair grazed the back of her neck. Her will tried desperately to approach something—he had had a Christian training—yet his statement was such as a Muhammedan would make.

“I have asked another woman to travel with me because I love her,”—yes he had said that. What had this woman done to him? She never should have had her in the house. She had no decency. Had she not nursed a native woman who had borne three children in disgrace! What had Mrs. Hunter meant the other day when she spoke of women who bewitched men——

“Has this woman promised to go to the southern gardens with you?” she asked.

“No. I told her that I would tell you all, and she wished you to decide.”

“The impertinence!” Laura laughed her brittle laugh.

“Not at all. I told her that my heart and soul were with her; but if you wished, my body would remain with you.”

“You have just said that you must visit the south.”

“You know what I mean, Laura.”

“I suppose if I decide to hold you she will still travel with you! You will invent something that will ease your conscience.”

“I could not travel with her if there were any restrictions.”

“You dare to say this to me?”

“It is the truth, Laura. I love Cynthia Conway as a man loves a woman.”

“The idea of free love disgusts me. I do not see how you can consider such a thing. What would happen if all the men we know were to suddenly decide that they must have another woman?”

“I am not in love with an idea. I am in love with a woman. You may give it any name you like. I am not blazing a trail for others to follow. I want my mate, the woman who is mine.”

“She can never marry you unless I am willing to divorce you.”

“She does not care to marry me.”

“She is even worse than I thought.”

Quaren shook his head hopelessly.

“What you think of her cannot matter.”

“So she wishes me to decide?” Laura was silent a moment. “Before I decide I would like to ask you if you have made any plans about,—well about the disposal of myself—in case I consented to let you go?”

“Have you not lived with me long enough to know that I never plan concerning you?”

“Do you want me to stay in this beastly, God-forsaken jungle while you chase about with her?”

“No, not if you wish to leave it.”

“Have I ever wished to do anything else?”

“Not that you have ever communicated to me.”

“Suppose I go to Europe?”

“Do you wish to go?”

“Well, in any case you are going south, and I told you the last time that I would never stay here alone again.”

“Perhaps you would like to invite someone to visit you?”

“I would never ask anybody to come to this hole.”

“You do not care to exchange one jungle for another.”

“I do not.”

“Let me tell you all the story. I intend, if you decide to release me, to visit Benares and Delhi with Miss Conway before going south.”

“If I comply with your wish I do not care where you take that woman.”

“Do you comply?”

“Let me ask you a few more questions.”

“As many as you like.”

“Do you wish to cast me off? You know my circumstances.”

“How can you ask me that question?” The Airedale got to his feet and paced the room.

“You seem so strange, so suddenly changed that the question seems to me to be in keeping with the rest of the conversation. What I cannot understand is that you ask me to release you. It is not like you. You would go without my consent if you thought you were right.”

“As I said before, Miss Conway will abide by your decision.”

“Will you be good enough to tell me just what I may expect from you in the future?”

“Anything within my power.”

“You do not ask me to divorce you?”

“That shall be as you wish. Divorced or not I shall always maintain you.”

“Your friend may try to influence you against it.”

“You do not know Miss Conway at all.”

“Perhaps you do not. If I had listened to such an arrangement, as you are considering with her, would you ever have married me?”

“There could never have been anything between us. We did not love each other.”

“I do not mean that. If I had consented to being supported by you without marriage would you have married me?”

“No. You know what our life has been, Laura.”

“I would have done my duty had you spoken.”

“We will not speak of that now.”

“Do you intend to return here with her?”

“She loves this northern jungle as I do.”

“If you love her, surely you would not submit her to the scorn of the planters’ wives.”

“I would not submit her to their friendship.”

“When are you leaving for the south?”

“The last of next week.”

“I shall consider what you have asked me to do, and I will let you know my decision in a day or two.”

“Thank you, Laura.”

He watched her pass into the sitting-room. He wondered about her. What did she feel? Her concern had been for her own future. A wise man had said that woman misleads by her contradictions. She had not used her usual method. There had been no tears. Her words were the same, for she was always under traditional pressure. Would she surprise him in a day or two? She might fall into the old current at once and return weeping.

Kembel came up the steps and put her head against his knee. She looked up at him sorrowfully. “Poor old Kembel.” He stroked her wolf-like muzzle. “You miss her too, don’t you?” Kembel had been allowed many privileges while Cynthia was there, and the seldom-bestowed devotion of this wild wolf-dog had leaped to her.

Into the cold grey of Laura’s mind crept curious thoughts. She was dazed at first, but gradually the clouds lifted from her consciousness. Hatred that had fluttered near her, flew on. Vice clung tenaciously to men. They could not shake it off. It was useless to expect them to consider their duty while what they wanted was purchasable one way or another.

She could not live with him after what he had said—but could she let him go to this other woman in sin? She would pray with all the force of her soul. She must be shown what to do. It must be revealed to her in some way. Had she been divinely appointed to obstruct this imminent crime? It would be useless to talk to the woman—an abandoned creature of her type.

Perhaps she could do some good in Europe. Was that the high intention? Was that what God wished her to do? After all she was not her brother’s keeper. She must account for her own life, not the life of another. Had she put temptation in his way by asking the woman to visit them? She was answering for her sin now. No, that could not be. Whatever happens is for the best. She was being directed to Europe. There was work for her there.

She raised her eyes. They held a rapt expression. They took in her immediate surroundings.

Chapter XV

The Will of Allah

No service desecrated the lonely dignity of the old church at Bandel. The tangible silence sympathized. A light reached through the red and blue panes of the high window and touched the head of the virgin. On the other side of the altar St. Joseph was lost in shadow.

Cynthia and Mahomet had motored out to this old sun-baked place on the Hooghly River where ships had called in the old days before Calcutta was born. With the coming of the new harbour further down the river, it had fallen into a tranced condition and nothing had roused it since.

No church had ever made such an impression upon Cynthia. The great monuments of Europe were but show places—but this abode of silence filled her with an inexpressible yearning. Mahomet waited for her outside. He would not enter the church. Just inside the gate a huge banyan tree offered cool shelter. There he waited. The church was at the other end of the compound, but Cynthia knew that he did not wish to invade the Christian precincts. She had smiled and passed on alone.

She left the church and went into the annex where the monks once lived in their little cells. Sometime in its history the place had been a monastery. A shaft of light from each cell rayed the floor and made an odd lighting for the dark passage. In a small room at the end of the passage a purple-draped casket held a wax figure of Christ, red paint streaked across the forehead and hands to make the story of the crucifixion hideously and physically realistic. She turned from the image with a feeling of disgust, wondering if those who placed it there could comprehend the lofty tortures of soul. She passed out through the archway, where the lamp which warned the mariners in the old days, still hung before the Madonna.

Mahomet was praying, his face towards the setting sun. What a strange picture he made in the Christian compound! She walked towards him slowly, seated herself under the old rambling tree, and waited. Could anything be more graceful than his cool slenderness as he swayed with rhythmic abandon in his petition to Allah. Today he wore European dress. She would have had him otherwise attired, but nothing could spoil the vague harmony that existed between him and his possession. Like a gorgeous bird or a brilliant flower he decorated the place he rested.

He rose and came to her, a dream in his eyes, lingering from the late prayer.

“Did the old church please you?” he asked.

“Yes and no.” Her answer seemed to come from far away. He looked wistfully at the gate.

“Let us go,” she said, getting up. “Can’t we send the motor on a little distance and walk for a while? I love this amber dusk.”

He called the order to the chauffeur, and they walked down the old peepul-bordered road.

“Have you ever seen anything more lovely than India when she is drenched by this rain of gold sunbeams?” she asked, more to the golden haze about her than to her companion.

“By Allah, I have!”

The hot words struck her like a blow. She drew her wandering mind back through the amber mist and leashed it close to the man beside her. She was new to his land, but deep down in the self of her she knew that this Indian love was like the wind of the hurricane and swifter than the raging tempest. He had told her that a woman must come to him of her own free will. She knew he meant it. Never by word or act would he force himself upon her. She must hurt him, must hurt him cruelly, and all the more because the love that consumed him was built upon a foundation of abstemiousness. She recalled the story of his strange youth—how he refused to deteriorate his body and senses. He held himself for the great day when he could sink himself in love. What super-passion! She felt like bowing before it as she would before God. Ordinary men were forever flinging remnants of their souls before a flickering glow—but here was a man who would cast his full surrender into the hot flame that leapt high on the white pyre.

“What a splendid view of the river from that bank,” she said, pointing to a sloping green patch visible through the plumed grass. “Let us sit there for a while. I do not feel like going home just yet.”

They turned off the road and were hidden for a moment by the tall grass.

For a little time they sat silently watching the river.

“Shall you remain in Calcutta for some time and take up your work again?” he asked her.

“I have no idea how long I shall stay here. I cannot work now. I cannot use my mind nor my hands since I returned. I sit for hours in the verandah watching Gwendolyn climbing about, and yet I do not see her.”

He turned his long eyes upon her searchingly. “Is it that you are not happy?” he asked.

“There are moments when I am intoxicated with happiness. Then again I question all but one thing.”

“And that is?” He had spoken without thinking, quickly he added: “Do you care to tell me?”

“I am in love with a married man.”

She put it simply and clearly. She had meant to speak differently, she told herself. For one moment sudden unutterable agony disfigured his face, then he was again the imperturbable Muhammedan, the quiescent instrument to the will of Allah. Allah had chosen to punish him mightily—Jo soegha, so hoegha.

“Shall I understand, Western flower, that the one thing you do not question is your love for the man?” His lips twitched slightly, but he controlled his voice.

“It is the one thing in the world I am sure of.”

“Does he love you—in the same way?”

“Yes.”

The one little word was vibrant with intensity.

“Then what is there to question?”

“He has a wife—he is married,” she corrected herself.

“Does he love his wife?” A strange glint had crept into his eyes.

“No. They have never loved each other.”

“Then, it should be easy—even for a European,” he said.

She felt a twinge of anger, then she remembered that the man beside her was Muhammedan. He was trying to see the West through Eastern eyes. He would have but one love, he had said so, but behind and about him were the customs of his people.

“When a European marries a woman without love it is usually for material acquisition.” She knew he had no wish to defame the man she adored. He would know what sordid thing opposed her happiness.

“What you say is frequently all too true, but this man married a woman to shelter her.”

“To shelter her?”—he was anxious for light.

She told him the story as the Airedale had told it that night in the verandah. When she had finished he said nothing. Night was settling down over the river. The large-breasted meadows were becoming dark patches. Insects shrilled, and temple bells sobbed faintly in the distance.

They rose without speaking and plunged again into the long grass. The lights of the motor streaked across the road. They said little during the drive. Each was wrapped in a special exhaustion.

Calcutta flashed upon them with its strange night life that holds all the glamour and weariness of two worlds,—nights of mystery and passion, intrigue and death,—nights when strange rites are satisfied, nights unknown to all but the lovers of the East.

“You will come up to my flat?” she questioned his profile.

He turned and looked at her. “You want me?” he asked.

“I shall always want to see you,” she told him.

She lacked mercy or understanding, this Western flower but he would accept her invitation tonight as she wished.

Gwendolyn chattered her greeting as he entered the flat. Cushions and books were tossed about but nothing was destroyed. She had acquired a semi-respect for Cynthia’s possessions. His bust was on the table. A scarf had been thrown across it. Cynthia had looked at it several times since she returned, but she had attempted no further work on it. She drew the scarf from it now and looked at him.

“I cannot ‘do’ you,” she said. “There are faces that must be caught in the first few strokes. I missed you—it is too late.”

He folded his perfect hands and bent forward conversationally.

“I am sorry for you if you wished to ‘do’ me, as you call it; but personally, I think it is just as well.”

“I know you never cared much about it,” she admitted.

“I would never have sat to any one else,” he told her.

“It was kind of you to humour me.”

“I did not sit to humour you. I would not ignore my faith for a whim.”

“I do not understand.” Cynthia’s voice was icy.

“We Muhammedans do not like sculpture. Our religion rules it out in our mosques, and I have never cared for figures.”

Cynthia loved the dignity of the mosques, open to sun and stars, where one might pray without distraction. She saw the figure of Christ in the old church at Bandel. There it lay with the red paint streaked across it. She knew many Westernized Muhammedans whose homes groaned with the weight of marble figures and other symbols of prosperity. Mahomet belonged to the old school. What leagues stretched between them. He had hoped that she would cross them while he waited and prayed. Some day she would recall him as one does the odour of rose-wood, haunting, impalpable.

Pictures of Quaren came to her in his sharp contrast—like the lusty singer who has voice but no training. Who hurls himself through the rule-lined net, scattering discords right and left—but somehow arriving at the heart of the melody, victorious. How he justified everything in his strange way! Bits of his conversation confronted her. The thought of the drunken Scotch workmen. He loved them. He loved everyone. Mockery was not his duty—he was not a philosopher. They would condemn him for releasing Laura. They,—the little dead who pick their steps carefully through the pet niceties of convention. Their judgment meant nothing. She felt the thrill in the sheer depth of the plunge she would take.

“Do you miss Amanreh?” Mahomet was asking Gwendolyn.

“Amanreh?” Cynthia pulled the girl into her mind. “Where was she?”

What had become of her?

“Where is my lovely lady of the rescue?” she asked eagerly.

“She is living at my house now. Beeneji is dead,” he added hastily.

“I suppose Beeneji was my admirer.” She laughed. It occurred to her that she had never heard Amanreh mention the name of the Bengali.

“He was the one in the house by the Palm Gardens,” he said, thinking how foolish Western jokes could be.

“Oh, tell me all about it,” she said. Her mind was seething with interest now.

“There is nothing to tell, only that Beeneji is dead and the girl waits at my house until she can make her plans to return to Egypt.”

“Did she go to you when he died?”

“Not exactly. My old Bearer, Abdul, was there acting as budlee for Beeneji’s Bearer at the time. He brought Amanreh to my house. She had no friends here.”

“Was it not strange for your Bearer to be working for that—Hindu?”

An ugly idea was striding towards her. She looked at him, how calm he seemed—no, not that, not that, her mind was playing her a trick.

“Abdul was a friend of his Bearer,” she heard him saying. “You know how one bearer helps another, and at the time I could spare him.”

She had drifted forever beyond his confidence. A Muhammedan tells little to a woman. This one might have spoken much, reassured by her constant presence.

She tried to think of things to say. She could not. A note of weariness had entered her voice, that note which comes to one who has been trying with mind and soul to think his way along some difficult path. He finds himself exhausted. Side thoughts and words leap from him and find expression.

“I suppose it would be out of the question to make Amanreh’s bust now, even if I felt like work?” A nervous laugh trailed her words.

“She is a good Muhammedan,” he answered.

Cynthia’s mind flew back to the excuses the girl always made for putting her off. It was always “tomorrow” or “some other day,” when she had wanted to start Amanreh’s bust.

“Have you no figures on your tombs, either?” How foolish the question sounded. If he would only go. She would be so glad to see him later—if he would only go now. She could not account for the mood which had suddenly settled upon her, but she wanted to be alone. He was speaking again.

“No, we have not,” he was saying. “The Taj, the finest piece of architecture in the world, has nothing to detract from its beauty.”

“I must see it,” she told him. “Is it as handsome as they say?”

“It is a lyric.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“Yes, the race that designed it understands the lyric. The Italians should do as much for themselves,”—she was talking without interest.

“It was designed by Ustad Isa, a native of Persia,” he said, coming erect in his chair. “You must see it with someone who loves it—or you will miss it.”

“I shall love it myself, I am sure.”

“You will admire it, all do,—but will you love it?”

“Certainly I shall love it. I have longed to see it all my life.”

“Few Europeans can see it right—I had hoped—to point it out to you,” he finished lamely.

“If I cannot see it, how can you show it to me?” she asked.

He did not answer. He caught her weariness. He patted Gwendolyn a moment, then walked to the door. He turned and came back to her.

“May I ask one question, Flower of the West?”

“Do,” she said.

“Is the married man the one in Assam?”

“Yes,” she answered.

After he had gone she sat indolently watching Gwendolyn. She wondered if she might have hurt him a little less. She knew in her heart that Amanreh was the one for him. Amanreh was in his house. Somehow this fact offered her consolation. “Amanreh will never return to Egypt—to her people,” she decided. “Their Allah will not allow it.” Her thoughts were interrupted by her Bearer who brought her a telegram.

“Meet me in Benares,” it read. “Go to the hotel when you arrive. I am leaving at once. Love.”

Chapter XVI

Flaming Fires

Haroun al Raschid arranged the scene. It was from the Arabian Nights. A silent old barge seemed to float on the Ganges, so slight was the attention paid to it by the huge black-skinned rowers. It was a special night with the gods. A flight of golden stairs wound its way from the water straight up the side of the cliff to a white marble temple on which plane trees threw their lacy shadows fantastically. On and on it wound, past the temple, until it was lost in a maze of purple shadows. Thousands of small lights were placed on the stairs—a rain of stars from the shadowy depths.

Before the temple of Siva, long bamboo stalks blossomed into weird-shaped, amber-coloured lanterns. At the Monkey Temple men extolled the god and prayed for the power to wrestle. Hundreds of bodies glowed in the burning ghats, paying a glorious tribute to beauty in the night.

Over the river floated small lamps, more fallen stars, gifts to the holy mother of the Ganges. High up on balconies white-robed figures played the sitar. The plaintive cry of sadhus, the joyous tones of children, the passionate songs of boatmen, blended with the strange misery of birds and animals into something of harmony that was not music, and not quite anything else.

On the other shore a great round moon was lighting up the palace of a rajah, and making a glittering pathway across the river down which the tiny lamps raced. The old ruins at the water’s edge were kindly lost in shadow. The soft candle light and softer moonlight lent the scene a charm that was positively unearthly.

Cynthia and the Airedale were lying on the roof of an old barge. Their Bearer was below with the rowers. They were alone.

“The Indians place their last gift on the altar of beauty in the night,” he said pointing to the burning ghat. “How lovely the little fires are! They achieve something in that brief beauty that is lost in nourishing a flower for a season.”

She looked where he pointed.

“It is all enchanted tonight,” she said. “I expect to see our barge turn into a golden float propelled by fairies with gossamer wings—or to see a lovely sea-nymph rise from the river and beckon the moon down to play with the floating lamps.”

His heart exulted in the comeliness of the body she offered on the altar of love. Her head was thrown back on his arm,—her cloudy hair catching the moonlight. He caressed her with kisses, with glances, with praise, until suddenly his face became overcast. That divine wrath which brings love to the edge of hatred swept over his consciousness. Frantically he held her and took one moment of supreme oblivion.

*  *  *

They were drawn into the scene about them. One with the puja rites, one with the old worship, one with the old, old night. It was a phantom picture wonderful to behold, a scene conjured from the mystic lure of India. Substance came out of the shadows and wove itself into a love-song and mingled in the strange rites. The full moon gleamed like a burnished shield where the tiny lamps wantoned with the River. The magic of the night fell like scented hair on a girl’s white shoulders. The air that came from sun-drenched city walls, and had felt so hot to Cynthia when she first came on the boat, had cooled, having lain for a while on the River. It fluttered to her and cooled her. His kisses were cooler. He lay beside her without a word, his eyes searching the stars. From sky, river and banks love breathed its rapture into the night.

*  *  *

“The lights are off,” he said as he pressed the button just inside the door of their little sitting-room.

He went into the bedroom. Cynthia could hear him throwing his clothes about preparatory to going to bed. His shoes dropped with a little resounding sound.

“I am coming soon,” she called to him.

She pushed a chair up to the wistaria-draped window. How sweet the fragrance from the blossoms! It filled the room. She took handfuls of the flowers and scattered them about. She crushed them in short violent throbs of happiness. She had given him all her gifts—but the joy in the bestowal made her restless. She wanted to do more to ease the madness that possessed her. . . .

She must become calm. She spoke to her wayward heart and her panting breath. She gathered up all the sorrow and doubt she had ever known in her life and flung them from her. . . . Nature had knocked at so many doors trying to explain herself. Tonight she felt ashamed,—ashamed of the wrong she might have done to Life. She would kiss the feet of that shadowy conqueror.

*  *  *

She knew the Airedale was sleeping now. He had no adjustments to make. He had taken his joy in both hands, and all was right with him.

She placed her head deliberately on the back of the chair and closed her eyes. She would not disturb him yet. She would piece together her life since coming to India, to calm herself.

Mahomet flashed past with his statement that a woman must come to him of her own free will. She laughed excitedly. She saw a face leering at her in the house by the Palm Gardens. Lust was smeared all over it. How different was the other, this divine thing. There was Iris in her erotic simplicity. Nothing, in spite of what she thought, could smirch her tragic loveliness. There was the perfect Egyptian who she knew would love Mahomet,—would sigh her way to him yet; the monotoned Laura, who mouthed ineffective accusations, what was she doing now? She had left the hated jungle behind her—the hated jungle—Cynthia’s mind caught on this. She must thank it for her beloved paradox. Its silence had exposed him to himself. It had given him what he never could get from the nicely groomed, nicely clothed marionettes of commerce. There was no rattling traffic to beat out its monotone, no brick and stone monstrosities to get in the way of the sun; no tiresome artificialities to ensnare his vision and tangle his thought.

He had seen under the shell of life, and he was grateful to the great quiet. How he loved people—his humanity—the humanity he believed in. His faith reached to it—to its final emergence, and stopped there. Others pulled something from mind-built sources to cover deficiencies. He declared all was here, waiting for exposure.

She encountered his quaint self-justification. It was like the sweet waywardness of a beloved child. He would make all right with himself,—even to the extent of erecting something to lean his primitive soul upon. He had put the question of going away to his wife, but he would have gone in any case and clasped his woman to his heart. Cynthia knew this as she crumpled the blossoms; but she was safe with his completed manhood.

Beyond the open door stretched the room where he slept. The moonlight slipped in through the wistaria and crept along the floor. . . .

*  *  *

In the morning they went again to the river. Everything blazed and scorched under the white sunlight. The golden stairs were covered with sacred cows, goats, monkeys and beggars.

Priests were sitting on rafts, under wide umbrellas meditating, devotions were going on before temples. Slender dark girls waded in the water unwinding their silken saris before plunging into the green depths. Bodies were burning in the ghats, looking less picturesque in the sunlight. When nearly consumed they were thrown into the river, where coolies sifted the water through baskets for hours hoping to find pieces of jewelry that had belonged to the dead. Sometimes their efforts were rewarded, and they would hold up a piece of silver or gold, bent and misshapen by the fire. One daring coolie waded out to their boat with several of the gruesome trinkets and offered to sell them. Men and women dressed in scarlet and orange stood on verandahs high up among the trees, where they made gorgeous blots of colour against white-washed walls. Before Siva’s temple, where lovely amber flowers bloomed last night, people prayed to the god of destruction. Many of the bathers tossed marigolds (the sacred flower of the Hindus) on the water.

What an old-world charm everything had! The buildings looked thousands of years old.

“How is it the buildings here in Benares can manage to look so old?” she asked him. “I was taught that stone architecture was unknown in India before the reign of Asoka.”

“You are right,” he said, ignoring her instruction, “everything manages to look old in Benares, and pretty well worn out too, don’t you think?”

“No, dear, I do not; for instance what is that handsome old thing over there?” She pointed to the Golden Temple.

“It is dedicated to Bisheshvar, the Poison god, or Siva, as he is also called. Siva is said to have swallowed the poison when the gods churned the ocean. There are really three temples standing inside of that iron railing, dear. Look closely. One has a red tower, and the other two have towers fashioned of gold leaf over copper.”

“The expense of such gilding must have been enormous,” she ventured.

“Yes, and it was defrayed by one rajah. Just outside the temple is the famous Juan Kup, or Well of Knowledge, where, so the Hindus say, Siva resides.”

“Let us land and see it.”

“Better not get too near. The narrow alleys and streets leading to the temple are positively fetid. People and cows jostle each other in slimy profusion trying to keep from contact with the lepers who are always standing about exhibiting the stumps.”

“Look at that,” she pointed to a building some distance down the river. “Isn’t it a gem?”

“It is the Nepalese temple, and seen from here it is unusually picturesque. But a close inspection would reveal the foolishly vulgar carving on its walls.”

“I have heard of the carvings here in Benares. The curious matings of man and beast, as an Indian poet puts it.”

“You would not care to see them,” Quaren declared with an air of finality.

“Have you forgotten that I am a sculptor?” Cynthia flashed back with a little mock pride that amused him.

“Yes, I have forgotten it,” he told her. “I can only think of you. I refuse at the moment to consider any talents or gifts that you may possess except that gift of being yourself.”

“Is there anything else in Benares besides this dear Ganges and its wonderful banks?”

“Yes, there is Sarnath, the first site of old Benares, but I am not going to take you there. We must land and go back to the hotel for tiffin. After tiffin I shall tuck you in under the mosquito net and watch you sleep.”

“Why should we waste time sleeping?”

“The heat here is intense, darling. I must see that you do not become ill.”

“Is it not true that this is the sacred city, and if one dies here one goes at once to heaven?”

“Yes, that is the legend about Benares. But I am not going to let heaven have you yet.”

“This is not the ante-room to heaven,” she flung her arms about his neck and kissed him, “it is heaven.”

The Bearer looked out across the sun-stroked waters a smile twitching the corners of his mouth. These foreign Mem-sahibs did such strange things. . . .

Chapter XVII

Enchantment

They were under the net. The fragrance from the wistaria at the windows was insistent. It lingered on everything.

“You are a daylight beauty,” he told her. “How the sunshine brings you out! Artificial light is about all that women can stand after a few years in India.”

“Shall you love me when I am an electric-light beauty?” she asked him.

“You will never be that.” He seemed very positive.

“Is it your idea to ship me home soon?” She turned her head and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“My idea is to carry you back to the jungle where you have been accepted.”

“And the jungle does not accept the candle-light beauty?”

“No, that old mother finishes the job with the half-dead.” He was thinking of the strange charm of the woman beside him. There was none of the forward thrust which makes the attraction of certain women so obvious. It was something deeply buried, yet happily perceptible. It rose to meet each individual according to himself.

She pointed to a line of ants walking across the floor.

“Look, they are all going under the wardrobe. I like to watch them. They seem always to know what they are doing.”

He put his arm under her head. “You must sleep a little dear, or you will begin to feel the heat.”

“I am not in the least sleepy; excitement is rubbing my eyes open. What is the name of those lilies that the Bearer brought in? At first I thought they were lotus, but I see now that they are not. They are the loveliest things I ever saw!”

He patted her arm as one caresses a wakeful child. “I am going to tell you a story about them, and you may drop off whenever you like.”

“I am sure I shall stay awake. What sort of a story is it to be?”

“A legend of Assam, telling how the Tejimola lily received its name; but you must try to sleep.”

“Very well, proceed, Mr. Airedale.”

“Once upon a time,—all Assamese legends begin this way,” he said, beginning the quaint old folk-tale of the land he loved, “there lived a merchant who had two wives. The first wife had a daughter, Tejimola. The second had no children, and consequently was jealous of the first. The first wife died when Tejimola was a mere baby and left the poor child to the full brunt of the step-mother’s hatred. The child was dearly loved by her father, but he, like many modern husbands, was afraid of his wife. When Tejimola was about twelve years of age, the father found it necessary to make a business trip which would keep him away from home for several months. Before departing he called his wife to him and bade her be kind to the child while he was away. The wife saw her opportunity and as soon as her husband was gone she began to ill-treat the child. She had a friend in a near village, who was about to be married. It had always been Tejimola’s desire to attend marriage festivities. The step-mother, seeing in the wedding an excuse to further torture the child, made a great show on the child’s behalf. She told Tejimola that she might attend, and helped her select the costumes which she was to wear during the celebrations. Beautiful rihas, mekhelas and khonias of gold embroidery were finally decided upon. The wife made all the finery into a parcel and handed it to Tejimola, who started at once upon the journey.

“Just before she reached the house where the wedding was to take place she opened the parcel. Imagine her horror when a mouse ran out of the rihas and burnt ashes dropped from the khonias! The costumes were ruined, for the mouse had torn the dainty things into shreds. She was very frightened and began to cry aloud. The attendant who accompanied her tried in vain to console her. He managed to find at the house of a friend near by sufficient clothing for her to appear in at the wedding.

“She dreaded her return. She had reason to do so. Her step-mother was very angry and pretended to know nothing of the mouse and the ashes. She beat the child almost to death, and then dragged her to the rice-pounding machine. She told Tejimola to supply the hole continuously with rice. The poor child worked with all her might. The step-mother, apparently by accident, pressed the iron down upon the child’s right hand, crushing it completely. The heartless fiend would allow not a moment to attend to the injury, but bade Tejimola pound the rice with her left hand. The poor unfortunate tried to work with the left hand, but the step-mother brought the instrument down suddenly and crushed it also. She then told the child to use her feet, which she crushed, first one and then the other, in the same manner. Poor Tejimola was then obliged to pound with her head. Her head was likewise crushed, causing death.

“Having accomplished the child’s death, the step-mother buried her near the rice-pounding machine. Soon after a little pumpkin vine shot up from the spot and began to crawl over the bit of thatch which sheltered the machine. An old beggar woman, seeing it one day, sought the merchant’s wife and begged for a pumpkin. The wife had never been near the spot since the murder, and was not aware of the pumpkin vine.

“‘Where could I get a pumpkin, good woman? There are none on the place,’ the wife told her.

“The beggar explained that a beautiful vine crept over the thatch.

“‘Then take as many pumpkins as you like,’ said the wife.

“The delighted beggar went to the plant, but was frightened almost to death to hear a pumpkin say: ‘Do not touch me. I am Tejimola, who was crushed to death by my stepmother.’

“The beggar woman told the wife of this, and hurried off without the pumpkin. Then the wife remembered that the vine grew at the very spot where she had buried Tejimola. She uprooted the plant and threw it to the far end of the garden. Soon a lovely pummeloe tree stood on the spot where the plant had been thrown. One day some buffalo herd-boys, seeing the tempting fruit, asked the wife if they might have some.

“‘If you can find any pummeloes,’ said the wife, who had never again looked at the spot where she had thrown the plant, ‘you are welcome to them.’

“The boys ran off to the tree, but just as they were about to climb it a voice from a large fruit said: ‘Do not touch me, I am Tejimola, who was crushed to death by my step-mother.’

“The boys returned to the house and told the wife what the fruit had said. ‘That is where I threw the plant,’ she thought. She took a spade and started for the tree. After a little difficulty she succeeded in pulling it up with all its roots. She knew that she must not leave a piece of it in the ground. She threw it in the river and watched it float away. It came to rest in a little sheltered inlet. It fastened its roots in the mud, but it was not a pummeloe tree this time. A beautiful water-lily sprang from the roots.

“About a month later the merchant returning home stopped his boat near the inlet. He saw the beautiful lily. He directed one of his men to swim in and get it. When the man reached out to pluck it he was terrified to hear a voice speaking from the lily. It said: ‘Father, dear, do not pluck the flower. It is I, Tejimola, who was crushed to death by my step-mother.’ The man swam back to the boat and told the merchant what he had heard. The merchant was not astonished. He knew that his wife hated Tejimola. He brought his boat as near the lily as possible and called out:

“‘I will take some betel from my mouth (he was chewing it at the time) and I shall place it on my left hand. Then I shall take a bit of laroo and place it on my right hand. If you are Tejimola you will take the form of the salika bird and take the betel from my left hand, if you are another you will take the laroo.’

“Swiftly, from the pink heart of the lily, flew a tiny bird. A moment it circled about his head, then settled upon his left hand and began to eat the betel. The merchant brought a cage and put the bird in it.

“When he reached home he asked his wife where the child was.

“‘She has gone to her aunt,’ replied the wife.

“But the merchant by many questions extracted the truth from her. He drove her from his house. Taking his dhoti, he threw it over the cage saying: ‘If you are my child take your human form.’ In another moment Tejimola stood before him.”

*  *  *

Cynthia was sleeping. Her hair sprayed over his arm. A little flush tinted her face and neck. What a flower of a woman she was! Beauty feeds on love. Could he furnish her nutriment always? A fierce look marched across his brow. Bits of his old life slid out naked before him. He thought of Laura. Was she happy now, on her way to England? Yes, draped in grief, she hugged her fetish. Her unintelligent eyes would still probe his actions, for she would smear them with her mind’s dirt. It was unconscious puritanic dirt. . . . He should not hold such thoughts of her. She was like thousands of other good women.

Tara’s children—and his. What of them? His dream girl would keep her word.

The Bearer knocked to say that tea was ready. Was it then so late? He tried to draw his arm from beneath Cynthia’s head. The movement awakened her. She opened her eyes and smiled.

“Tea is ready, dear; shall we have it?”

“Yes, I shall get up at once.”

He placed a chair at the table for her and told the Bearer to bring in the tea. How sweet she looked with her hair in disorder!

“I am so glad that you don’t wear boudoir caps, Cyn. I hate the things.”

“I have never owned one,” she laughed. “Caps are for old ladies. I love bits of lace and mauve ribbon on white hair. I used to worry about growing old.” He laughed as she continued. “Now, I know that it is not years that indicate one’s age. Measured time was invented for keeping records. It has nothing to do with the age of persons. A year is a certain measurement whose symbol is a figure. We say a woman is forty. It is for her to decide whether or not she will accept that symbol.”

“Does she ward off the symbol with dyed hair and chin straps?”

“No, silly, dyed hair and chin straps might give a woman of forty a fifty symbol. It is decided inside. We must feel our symbol. I intend to take a smaller symbol each year. And I shall look like my symbol, for I will represent my feeling, which is my real self. Can you not see that the conventional symbol would be false if it did not represent me?”

“I can see that no symbol could ever interfere with your charm. Even the bits of lace and mauve ribbon would have their following.”

“Tell me, dear, what became of Tejimola’s left hand?” she asked ignoring his compliment.

Chapter XVIII

Dreamers in Delhi

It was a glorious day . . . blue, green and gold. Cynthia and the Airedale were visiting the old palace of Delhi. Its beauty had gripped Cynthia. She was thinking of Sha Jehan and his feminine architecture. How different it all was from the monuments of Akbar’s time. Those old Muhammedans had left their spacious dreams to tell of their character. Durable and positive their buildings looked beside the marble lyrics of Sha Jehan. One thought of big deeds or high prayer in Akbar’s structures. One entered Sha Jehan’s poems thinking of that old Emperor’s sensuous knowledge.

“I would like to have been one of his 750 wives,” said Cynthia. “Think of living in this pearly, pinky marble palace.” She looked longingly at the huge marble baths dropped into the floors where the dusky beauties once made a rite of the toilet.

“Look at that giant marble lotus-flower.” She pointed to the edge of the bath where the thing of beauty rested.

“After the ladies finished the bath they sat on that lotus while sprays of rose-water played over them, from numerous small taps hidden under the petals,” the Airedale explained. “In the old days,” he continued, “the floors were covered with Persian carpets, and the niches in the walls held ornaments of gold and silver placed skillfully to hide the purses of the ladies of the court.”

In imagination Cynthia saw the old pageant passing through the marble halls. Before a strange medley the obsequious salaamed. Poets, magistrates, gallants, philosophers, bankers, money-changers, the richest mawarus of India, debauchees, gourmets inflated by high living, favour-seeking princes from many lands, all wound in and out between the slender columns on which lapis lazuli, jade and carnelian trailed down in graceful loops.

There were women on whose saris were sewn jewels as large as birds’ eggs, and women whose gold-emblazoned scarfs peeped out under concealing cloaks. Following them came Persian women waving peacock feathers, their narrow hips swaying rhythmically.

Warriors and rulers from Cathay ambled along, their cunning eyes shifting from side to side. Next came chieftains from the desert, handsome men, as gorgeous as their steeds, their splendid eyes gleaming under their white turbans. The flat noses and gleaming teeth of Africa looked grotesque as they passed, decked out in flaming plumage like tropical birds.

On they went, the effete, the supercilious, the curious, the coarse, the delicate, the pleasure-loving, each wishing something for himself in the name of his country or his office.

Her mind evoked the palace of those days; the velvet moss-soft carpets that covered the marble floors, the canopies of rich velvet and brocade, under which cushioned sofas awaited liaisons and love; the incense burners reeking with their intoxicating fragrance. On the empty pedestals, statues with exquisite legs and arms of bronze and marble once raised jeweled lamps on high to challenge the moonlight that flooded the halls.

In the outer court, palms and daturas bent over the pool where goldfish darted under purple and rose-coloured bloom. Unnatural-looking orchids and blood-smeared hibiscus, covered the perverse fancy of slimed and scaled creatures.

From silk-draped balconies, veiled women watched the pageant and the outer court; black-skinned eunuchs fanning them the while with sprigs of peacock feathers.

*  *  *

“Those carved marble purdahs are the most perfect things I have ever seen,” said Cynthia. “I can imagine dark eyes behind them watching what the lord and master was doing in the room below. The artist who made them knew how to use Beauty.”

“That is the trouble with all art,” said Quaren, “it uses beauty. We cannot intellectualize beauty. When we feel her magic touch we grasp her violently and put her through paces. The result is that she, who will not be coerced, eludes us.”

“What do you think of when you look at that lovely purdah?” Cynthia asked.

“Of the chisel and the measuring tape.”

“No, dear, that is not possible. I cannot believe you.”

“It is true, Cyn. I long for the artist who will let beauty use him, who will take the message as she gives it to him and fling it on paper or into stone.”

“But he must help her a little. He is her interpreter. To give her magic to the world he must put it in a form that will be understood.”

Quaren smiled and shook his head.

“That is the trouble. The knocking into shape leaves the mark of the tools.”

“There have been men who have flung their tantrums about, but they have been thought mad.”

“Well, they have made a beginning. Their ears are not attuned yet. They cannot hear the voice distinctly, but they are listening.”

Cynthia thought of the dingy old studio where she had worked for hours on one line trying to make it exactly like the model which her instructor had set before her. She remembered the headaches and eye-strain after hours of sustaining attention.

“I wish you had been my teacher,” she said. “I should love to have learned from one who did not care for thoroughness.”

“But it is thoroughness I do care for.” He drew her arm through his.

“I refuse to discuss with you what you mean by thoroughness,” she murmured; “but tell me, does not this dear old palace appeal to you?”

“Yes, as a whole, it appeals to me in a way. It excites me slightly—not too much. There is enough beauty here to arouse some emotion. Beauty always speaks to the sex instinct. I do not mean to the silly preoccupation with sex, or to the begetting idea which most people think is fundamental in sex. Beauty manifests through sex emotion through the simple casual sex emotion. An emotion that artificial civilization has tried to thwart or over-emphasize because of economic or social conditions. Most things originated in the dance. The dance is sex expressing itself. Religion was danced. Pain and joy were danced. All postures were outgrowths of the sex rhythm. Those who grasp the red climax out of rhythm fail to perceive beauty.”

“Most minds rush on to climax,” she said dreamily.

“That is because our civilization is rotten. We have no aesthetic wisdom. We are all out of rhythm because we make a mystery of beauty.”

“Don’t you consider other emotions beside those of sex?”

“There is the emotion to power, that we hear so much prattling about; but beauty does not emerge there, for we worship her, and worship is in the sex rhythm.”

She thought of a night on the Ganges and of other nights—the blurred moments when love and hate were one—yes, the time that preceded them—he was right—she used all her functions. Laura with unconscious immorality would thwart beauty. Whose fault was it? Of course it was the fault of neither,—such could not be, that was all.

“Did you love Tara?” There was a puzzled look in Cynthia’s eyes.

“Yes, Tara was always a bit of lovely Indian youth. After the children came she was more child than ever. She was not my companion, certainly, but I loved her as one loves something that is always beautiful.”

Cynthia saw a face in the moonlight, scarred by anguish. She heard a voice calling to its god for forgiveness—forgiveness for deserting its religion to follow the man beside her.

“Your life in the jungle has made you different from others,” she told him, a little amazed.

“Long acquaintance with the silence always changes one’s point of view.” It was said almost cryptically.

“It has not seemed to make much difference with the other planters,” Cynthia exclaimed; “at least, not with those I have met. I imagine they were always the same card-playing, peg-drinking lot.”

“I said acquaintance, darling,” Quaren protested. “With the exception of her loneliness, most of them do not know the jungle. That is the only face she shows them. When she holds the sleeping day in her arms and croons to it of dusk-witchery, she does not make me restless. I do not feel that I must hike to some other fellow’s bungalow. I sit down and listen. Her wild song is full of curious colour. There is something wanton in it. Happy ghosts reel about. Flaming-petaled things get in the way—but it never misses a beat. It is like the tide coming in. Each wave gets a little nearer. The final one has no importance above the others. The tide does not care to see how far in it can throw the last wave. It is intent upon its rhythm.”

“Is it not strange that Nature’s manner is never monotonous?”

“I do not think it strange. She is so casual. She never makes an effort. She says to Beauty, ‘Here I am,’ and Beauty steps up and manages the show. It is as well to follow Nature’s example, get your place ready and give Beauty a quiet invitation. The trouble is we run after her and try to drag her into something.”

“She comes readily enough to some musicians. She enters right into the idea with them.”

“Does she, Cyn?” The Airedale was frankly skeptical.

“Of course! You cannot tell me that you are not carried away by great music. I am letting you get the most out of your present mood; but I must stop you somewhere.”

Quaren smiled, but he refused to stop.

“There is the so-called great music,” he declared, “but somehow it does not satisfy me any more. I feel the note-wrapping being torn off to get to the message. I would like to discern the message from the first.”

“We must lead up to the message—your rhythm idea again.”

“The message should glide up to us, getting a little nearer with each chord, until the finale leaves us wondering how it all happened unperceived. So many notes are wasted. So much is used to produce so little.”

“You are too economical, dear,” Cynthia protested.

“The last time I was in Paris, Cyn, I went to the Opera. I forget the piece, but I remember how the noise distressed me. I looked at the people about me. We were all supposed to be intoxicated by perfect sound. Mostly, the others were true to tradition. I closed my eyes and listened to just what there was, and much of it was screeching cat-gut. Here and there, Music tore out of the confusion, but the struggle left her weak, or made her frantic.”

“Perhaps you like lilting melody?”

He caught up her hand and kissed her wrist just above the glove.

“Perhaps I do not. Often it is Music rushing through the gaps to say, ‘I will be a nice girl now.’ Seriously, there is a young chap in Rome who has caught the idea of great music. Perhaps, I had better say, of beautiful music. He has captured the songs of the Roman fountains. . . . He approaches the fountain from the distance, hearing nothing else. Its voice becomes more distinct as he nears it. He halts beside it for some moments. As he leaves it, it calls to him until he can hear it no more. No noise of traffic distracts him, no bird-call interferes, he hears no human voice. Rome is ignored, all but her singing fountains.

“Once I stood alone in a Llama temple at mid-day. The monks chant their great prayer at mid-day. Something exploded in the back of my senses and I knew what great sound meant. From the brown throat of Tibet came music that never can be captured. It was the birth and death of the wind. Soft and gentle it began. It romped through gardens and tossed a woman’s hair. Shrieking profanely, it threw itself on the sea, it wrenched the clothing from the hills, then exhausted, it lay down on a valley and died. Its last sobs echoed a moment, then ail was quiet. Nothing had interfered with the mad accomplishment of its desires.”

Cynthia felt very humble of a sudden. She put her hand in Quaren’s. “I shall never feel like sculpting anything again,” she said.

How far off her studio days seemed. Where was the girl who had rubbed grimy fingers on a dirty apron and talked art to the hungry-eyed?

“You would sacrifice your career for me, dream-girl?” A smile waited at the corners of his mouth.

“Don’t be cruel. You know what love thinks of careers.”

“Does one ever really possess what one loves?”—he was talking to himself—“I want the infinite, the impossible “

He was squeezing her arm without realizing how he hurt her.

“Will kisses and caresses ever give you to me? Much as you would be mine, will I ever know you? This sweet despair mocks me. When I hold you in my arms I still long for you.”

“I think that kisses and caresses are in the rhythm, dear.” Her mood was playful now.

“Stop looking at me like that, Cyn, or I will take you in my arms, and there are a few sightseers left.”

While talking they had wandered into the small museum filled with relics of Sha Jehan’s favourite wife.

“I have always been touched by Sha Jehan’s great love for this wife,” she said, examining the tawdry ruby and diamond chess-board of the old queen.

“It is one of the most beautiful love-stories in all history, dear.”

“It is one of the most unusual,” admitted Cynthia.

“Yes. It is unfortunate that such love is not more frequent.”

“Could it occur frequently—such a love? He loved her in the same lover-like way after she had borne him fourteen children.”

“Fourteen children are not an obstruction to love, Cyn,” the Airedale laughed.

“In all but very rare cases they must be. A man knows a woman so well after fourteen children.”

“He knows her just as well after one child.” A frown fastened his wiry brows together.

“A woman can still manage a tiny bit of mystery after one child, I think.” There was a strained note in Cynthia’s voice.

They were alone now in the little museum. He took her in his arms. He felt her body tremble against him. He took her lips as he had never taken them. There was something of reverence and hope in the contact. He released her and stood a little away silently watching her. “Come, darling,” he said at last, “let us return. You must be hungry, and there is your siesta which I must insist upon.”

She walked beside him quietly and climbed into the motor.

They rode for some distance in silence. As they turned into a glaring red road she pointed to the Kutb Minar. “What is that?” she asked.

“The only thing that Hindus and Muhammedans ever made together,” he told her.

“Let us stop and see it.”

“No, dear. It is an everlasting climb to the top, and there is nothing to be seen from the base.”

In his intervals of tenderness he always treated her as if she were frail. In his blazing moments she was his companion in strength. She smiled as she thought of man,—a creature selfish from necessity. Nature might have designed it another way, but she had not designed it another way. . . . There was no escape from the trend of life. Suddenly she felt very sympathetic. Again she loved everything as she had loved that day on the Assam train.

Women were sitting about the hotel drawing-room knitting, reading and gossiping. In the verandah, those monuments of British prejudice lent their elaborate military trappings to an attractive picture composed of Eastern colour and Western force.

Heads turned as Cynthia and the Airedale passed. “Deuced good-looking girl,” a colonel remarked to the man sitting beside him.

“A fine-looking couple, right enough,” the other answered.

Chapter XIX

Cynthia Receives a Letter

The Airedale was shaving before the mirror while they waited for the breakfast, which was to be served in their room. Cynthia had thrown a yellow negligee over her nightgown and was seated on a couch at the foot of the bed. She watched his movements. Each one of them reminded her of her new position, her new life. He did not look at her. He was intent upon applying the soap to his face, and scraping it off again. She saw the play of his back muscles. Somehow it reminded her of the day she came upon him beating the coolie. What crushing strength each muscle seemed to hold. She wondered how those hard muscles played under his shirt the night he had stamped up and down the verandah and asked her if a tomb would reassure her love. Better than all, she liked his muscle in his madness. There was nothing flabby in his whimsical changeableness. Each portion of life he took completely as it was, nor thought of the portion that preceded it, nor of the portion which might follow. Somewhere for him there waited a big dream which he wandered towards by various roads, the memories of the trodden ways not interfering with the aspects of the untried, yet the end of each slipping easily into the beginning of the next, and somewhere at the end of all, stood the dream beckoning.

The Bearer brought in the breakfast-tray. She watched him place the cloth on the table and arrange the dishes.

“Are you ready, dear?” she asked. He dusted his face with powder and came over to the table.

He placed a chair for her, kissed her between the shoulders, through the opening of her low-cut wrap and took the chair opposite her.

“What delicious strawberries! They remind me of my grandmother’s farm, where, as a child, I used to spend my summer holidays.”

“Better not eat them,” Quaren warned, as she ladled some into her saucer. “Out here, especially in the hotels, one never knows if they are safe.”

“Here is one who does not care.” And she placed one luscious berry between her red lips. “Happiness makes everything safe,” she said.

“Does it?” he asked.

“Well, if it does not, it makes one not care whether or not things are safe.”

“Are you trying to deduce a true conclusion from a false premise?”

“I am interested in neither conclusion nor premise, Pan; I am simply happy—happy.”

“Dream-girl. . . . He came over to her chair and placed her head against his bare chest. She heard the beating of his heart. As her lids drooped she saw his clinched hand, a rigid line crossed it where the knuckles had whitened. It was one of his dumb moments. He released her and seated himself again. The mirth had withered in his red-brown eyes, and in its place stood the old firmness which she had come to acknowledge was the forerunner of resolve. She did not wish to hold that look with her own. It always made his face look grey and shrunken.

She got up, twisted her hair into a knot, and stuck a few hair-pins in it. The boy came in to refill the cups. This duty attended to, he withdrew, his bare feet making no sound on the stone floor.

She came back to the table.

“What time do we leave, dear?” she asked.

“At two,” he answered. “I am so sorry that it will interfere with your nap, but the later train is impossible; it stops at everybody’s door.”

“I am sorry to leave Delhi,” she murmured, stirring her second cup. “The decaying magnificence of the old moguls, the beauty of the people, the mosques where you toss your unroofed prayers up to the sun and stars; I love it all so much.”

“We can come back again some time, darling. You will enjoy the south too. It is very different but it is just as interesting.”

*  *  *

Cynthia was glad to see the Howrah station, when the Calcutta mail, over an hour late, steamed into the wide shed. The journey had been hot, and dusty. And in spite of the Bearer’s attentions, dusting off seats and shaking up pillows, she had been uncomfortable most of the way.

The usual stream of Bengalis, merchants, beggars and bejeweled and shrouded women flowed along as she climbed down from the train. Sweetmeat sellers beat the flies off their trays and called their wares in that sing-song golden voice of India. Children sat about or climbed over each other. Mothers, with huge dark eyes holding astonishment, squatted on the floor, suckling their children. A blurred haze of sunlight rushed in through every opening, and beyond the door-ways one could glimpse the whirling dust. This station picture, as she called it, always appealed to Cynthia. With the bazaar picture, it meant the real East to her.

They departed in a gharri, the taxis having disappeared with those who managed to work their way more quickly through the crowd.

“Are you coming to my rooms?” she asked him.

“No, dear.” His answer was expected. “If we were staying on here, our attitude would be quiet disregard of all remarks, but as we are leaving tomorrow afternoon—the boat sails at four—we will give people no chance to gossip about us while we are away.”

She laughed. How like him, this bit of reasoning! He loved to take the brunt of things, as he received the winds of his jungle,—full in the face.

“Let us drive up to your place,” he said, “then I will go to the hotel. We shall meet tomorrow at the jetty. Be there a little early if you can, dear.”

He would not call at the house for her. Nothing was to be left to the tongues that wag.

*  *  *

Her rooms looked cool and restful. The heavy chicks were drawn. The peacock feathers had been taken from their vase and were lying on the table. In their place someone had placed white jasmine. Unconsciously her eyes sought the verandah from which Gwendolyn always rushed to meet her. Gwendolyn was not away visiting this time. She had given the little monkey to Mahomet before going to Benares. As she stood in the darkened room she realized that she could not live there without Gwendolyn. Something was lacking. The room mourned the loss of a friend.

There was a letter on her work-bench beside Mahomet’s bust. In her bedroom she removed the traces of travel, then came back to the letter. It was from Mahomet. The handwriting moved across the envelope wearily.

“Flower of the West:—I have written my seven salaams from the Koran, but I have not drunk the ink as a charm against evil. Good and evil do not disturb me. All is the will of Allah. For three days I have celebrated the Mangni. Trays, sweetmeats and jewels have just left my compound. From my window I can see them carried down the road. In their departure I see the wish of Allah. You do not know our Mangni, Flower of other lands. You call it betrothal. At Mangni, we send presents to the bride-to-be.

“Amanreh is at my father’s house. My presents go forth to her. Soon they will send the mihndi to my house. After that there will be a feast. Small brown hands play with the tassels of my hooka—small brown hands you loved. May the peace of Allah go with you always.

“Mahomet Khan.”

The letter fell into her lap. Tears coursed down her face. Never had she dreamed of such utter resignation. There was no regret, no expectation. A man stated a change in the course of his life, a sudden change, a change due to the will of Allah. Was he happy or unhappy? He said nothing about himself. She wondered what had led up to his swift decision. Had Amanreh gone to him, as he had said a woman must? Was he doing this simply to please his father?

“Would he have married me in this manner?” Cynthia asked herself. “Would he have brought the henna to his house?”—And then as a stab came the thought once more of the gulf between them. There was his bust on the workbench. Her eyes rested on it. His beauty had always eluded her. Was it his beauty—or the charm of the inscrutable Muhammedan that defied capture?

She closed her eyes to shut out her failure. She sat very still listening to the rise and fall of life. Something fluttered near to her in the stillness. It spoke. It said: “It is not the bringing to his house of the henna which alarms you. It is not the difference in race. It is the mist from his personality arising like the perfume from the Eastern flowers that cloys your senses and leaves you dazed and a little annoyed. A moment ago you wept—but it was because he spoke of two brown hands you had loved. You still love them and you are lonely in this room without them. You love their owner more than you know—and you love Mahomet and the woman he is to marry, and most people and most things—and that is the worst and the best of you.

“Those brown hands are not playing with the tassels on his hooka now,” the voice went on; “they are patting his face. Two lighter hands smooth the brown fur of them and two dark eyes are filled with tears, and a voice cries: ‘Allah, Allah, give me strength to continue my father’s house.’”

When Cynthia opened her eyes the room was in utter darkness. “How tired I must have been to fall asleep in the chair,” she thought. As she rose, the letter fell from her lap. She picked it up and sighed as she tore it into fragments. Its answer must wait. She did not ring for lights. She passed into Gwendolyn’s verandah.

Calcutta blazed with lights. From the street came the traffic noises. On the tree beside the building the crows had settled for the night. They looked like huge black-patches amongst the green. She thought of the day when she had watched one small green bird perched alone amongst hundreds of crows on that tree. It seemed so strangely bewildered in its setting. Evidently it was lost, and it looked helplessly at its noisy companions. Her heart jumped to it in sympathy, seeing herself standing alone amongst all the people in India. That was shortly after her arrival. She smiled now as she thought of the momentary homesickness.

Someone appeared in the doorway behind her to remind her of dinner. It was the hostess.

“Yes, I shall be down in a minute,” Cynthia told her. “I must hurry and dress.” This last to cut short a torrent of questions that she knew was ready to burst the bounds of that lady’s lips.

Chapter XX

Oh Beauty, That Is Life

It was the hour of the wolf, that dreary hour between darkness and dawn when life is at its lowest ebb, and death, knowing this, stalks brazenly.

Cynthia could not sleep. The room seemed unfamiliar to her. She had given her Bearer a holiday when she went to Assam. Last night she had wired him to go to the Southern gardens. She had taken the Airedale’s Bearer to the apartment to help her pack. He was sleeping now on a rug outside her bedroom door. She opened the door and looked at him. The noise of her movements had not wakened him. He slept with the white of his eyes showing. There was something ghastly about him. She shivered, wondering if hasheesh or opium gave his eyes that gruesome look. She bent over him and shook him gently. He sat up unperturbed, and hastily adjusted his turban.

“Yes, yes, Mem-sahib,” he said as he stretched and got stiffly to his feet. “Mem-sahib wishes chota hazri? It is yet very early, but I will find the kitchen and boil water for the tea.”

“No, speak softly,” she raised a finger to emphasize her command. “I wish nothing to eat. Help me to carry a trunk in here from the corridor.” She slipped off her silk mules, and bare-footed as the Bearer, she tiptoed out over the cold stones and grasped one end of the trunk. She had always hated packing, but this morning she felt the need of physical exercise. The Bearer brought her clothes from the wardrobe. She folded each garment and tossed it into the trunk. He took the dainty underwear from the drawers. He lifted each piece, as one who arranges flowers nicely places each separate stalk in the vase.

Cynthia noticed his hands. Something about them suggested Mahomet; but all Indian hands were perfect. What dispensers of fine agony! They held everything in their slender palms, yet to submit to their touch hurt in some vague way. Once she had wanted to lure their perfection into stone. She laughed a little bitterly. What snares they were, the fine statues, the poems, the pictures, the handsome buildings, the great books! Through them one tried to reach oneself. Did one ever reach the centre of oneself through such mediums. No! Love was at the centre of oneself. Great artists had died cursing life. Great lovers had left the fragrance of their passion. Passion! It had no terminal. Its first physical footsteps were but the faintest prelude to its great work. Life and Death were flaming with its colour.

The sun entered. How quickly it had arrived. This land rang the changes suddenly. She had packed everything in her bedroom. She went into her sitting-room. There was nothing she cared much for. A few gifts were scattered about,—little ornaments that had drifted to her from time to time. She stood before Mahomet’s bust. The Muhammedans were right in allowing no figures in their mosques, and none to be made in the likeness of a true believer. She would send it to him. He disliked figures—but she knew how he would accept this one. And she must answer him in some way. Not that his letter called for it, but she felt the need of replying to him. She could not write. Congratulation was as out of place as condolence. Nothing could be said at the moment. She knew that some day he would be supremely happy with the handsome Egyptian. Happier than he could ever have been if she herself had gone to him; but this was not the moment to mention it. She would never mention it. His future contained it. No prediction could weigh one way or the other with him.

She wrapped a silk scarf round the bust and wrote on a card, “From one who is going away.” She tied the card about the neck of the figure.

“Call a gharri,” she told the Bearer, “and take this to the address I have written here.” She passed him a slip of paper.

*  *  *

The boat for Madras was crowded. Cynthia was lying in her berth just before dressing for dinner. She was very tired.

“I would have taken you to the hotel with me,” the Airedale laughingly told her, “if I had known that you were going to get up before dawn to pack trunks.”

He had taken off her shoes and stockings and was rubbing her feet. He was not unconscious of their perfection. He kissed the long straight toes which shoes had never bent. “They were made for dancing,” he said; “they are filled with delicate gestures. I would like to see the joy in them escape through the dance.”

“They have danced a little,” she said, regarding them, “but they have never been able to express joy; they have been too busy keeping time with the music.”

“Humanity always tears loose from its sorrows in the dance,” he mused. “This, in itself, is high comedy.” Cynthia drew her feet away and laughed.

“How serious you look, man. Do you mean that I have some sorrow I must dance away from?”

“You would not see sorrow if she walked out before you and stood there. You are made of joy. Joy escaping from you in the dance, would be but a whiff from your personality.” She got up and looked out the cabin window. Towards the stern the sun was setting. Off the bow, the sea and sky met in a cold blue embrace. She watched the sun until it had slipped into the sea and thrown a brilliant red to the sky in passing. She looked at the cold blue, then back at the glowing crimson.

“Come here, dear,” she called. “Look that way,” she pointed a finger at the sunset, “and then this way, and tell me how you feel.”

“I feel just as I did a moment ago.” The shaggy brows met in a frown. “But naturally, I like the sunset.”

“And you like it because it is more beautiful than the blue. Beauty must be warm—hot. Cold things are never beautiful—never as beautiful as the warm things. They do not live as much.”

His hands suddenly gripped her. He pulled her towards him. She smiled at the old roughness. He bent her far back until the ribbon which held her under-bodice snapped. She stretched out both arms and clasped his neck. “Darling,” she whispered. He kissed her eyes, her mouth, her throat . . . he lifted her, then laid her upon the berth, turned and slammed out of the cabin.

“It is the warmth in me, the glow of the sunset, that he loves,” Cynthia whispered to herself. She stretched out her arms exultantly. “He turned from the cold blue to consider my flame. Oh, Beauty, that is life! Oh, Life, that is Beauty, stay with me forever. Tingle in all my veins. Intoxicate me with your divine breath, Oh life—life!”

*  *  *

From the boat, Madras looked cool and inviting. It was evening and the sea sent a fresh breeze across the sun-tortured old City. Cynthia was glad that the boat journey was ended, or would be in a moment as the boat was nearing the jetty. The feverish desire for new places had taken possession of her. She longed to explore the flat country before her and see what it contained. All the passengers were gathered on deck. It was the moment of tense expectancy which always grips the traveler immediately before the journey’s end.

Beside Cynthia stood the girl who brought her chatter from the theatre. She had married recently, and had the air of one who had stepped suddenly from acute poverty into financial security. The man responsible for the step leaned over the railing and called lustily to someone on the jetty. The girl’s face had interested Cynthia from the first moment she had seen her at the table. She was studying that face now. How was it done? How long did it take to do it? It was the most perfectly made-up face she had ever looked into. Its clever artificiality would fool all men, and many women. What an artist the girl must be! Nothing was overdone. Even the tinted lashes and brows could defy strong daylight. What patience woman had! Each morning from youth to old age she draws her picture. Each night she rubs it out. She never wearies, but brings fresh interest to each morning’s task. . . . And we praise the painter who works on one picture for a year! Like most people Cynthia met, the girl had confided in her. She had been an actress, and had given up her career to marry. There was something bruised and pathetic in the little semi-true confession that touched Cynthia.

The hotel in Madras was a musty place. They had a room on the ground floor which gave the impression of never having been thoroughly aired. An allegoric animal sprawled on the centre of the carpet. Cynthia liked its ugliness. She would remember it always. Some detail of each room she had occupied with the Airedale stamped itself on her memory. In Benares it was the wistaria-draped window. In Delhi it was an ivory elephant that stood on the mantelpiece.

“This dragon, or griffin, or whatever he is, on the mat, is my stamp in this room,” she announced, running her fingers through her heavy hair that was inclined to curl more tightly in the heat.

“Whatever are you talking about, dear? Have you had a touch of the sun?” Quaren placed one hand on her forehead and reached for her pulse with the other. “You seem all right,” he said. He looked serious. She laughed. She forced him into a chair and seated herself on his lap. “What do you mean by your stamp, Cyn?” He was looking into her laughing eyes.

“Each room that I have occupied with you stamps something on my mind—some little bit, that I shall never forget. In this room it is that crazy looking animal.” She pointed to the mat.

“What a strange girl you are,—and what a strange thing suggestion is. After this, Madras will mean to me but that damned ugly thing there.” He pushed his foot out and touched its tail.

“Let us go out on the Marina,” he suggested. “That is what the Bund is called in this place. This room is so stuffy. We can enjoy the sea breeze until dinner.” He lifted her and stood her on her feet. She seemed like a child to his splendid strength.

*  *  *

They left the road and walked down on the beach. A line of fishermen rode their slight catamarans through the breakers towards the white sand.

They seemed to come out of the red glow of the sunset. Arriving on the sand, they threw out long glistening fish from huge baskets. Old women bargained for them, and when the arrangement was mutually satisfactory, they carried away their wriggling purchases in bags. Cynthia sat on the edge of an old boat. The Airedale sat on the sand watching her, more absorbed in her pleasure than in the old familiar scene about him.

“They look like gnomes or wicked fairies that have just risen from the sea to perform some horrible rite on the shore.” She pointed to the fishermen standing against the crimson glow, with their white caste-marks painted on their foreheads. The water was trickling down their nude bodies and making little pools in the sand. Young boys offered to play in the water for backsheesh. The Airedale flung them some coins and they rushed for the sea like frolicsome seals. When they came out of the water Cynthia tried to purchase an interesting silver belt that one little chap was wearing. He would not part with it.

Dinner at the hotel was interesting. A few tired-looking Englishmen took their food mechanically,—it was dinner time, and they ate. A family of wealthy Indians displayed their jewelry and talked loudly. Madras had forgotten the days when she was Portuguese or Dutch, and simply remembered that now she was English and Indian.

At a table in the corner, Cynthia noticed the ex-actress and her husband. The girl was dressed in pale mauve net trimmed with silver beads. Her straw-coloured hair was coiled low at the nape of her neck. Two long curls hung down over her shoulders. The false curls spoiled the effect of what started to be a perfect toilet. Cynthia was surprised. She had never before seen the girl make a faux-pas with the daily picture.

They had coffee served in their own verandah. A tamarind tree threw its lacy shadow across Cynthia. She puffed her cigarette and watched the night. How sleepy everything seemed, so different from the nights of the North. She felt the call of this tired soft night. She wanted to rest with it and be still.

Chapter XXI

The Ridiculous Masculine

“Would you care to come out with me and have a look at motor cars?” said the Airedale, throwing a lump of sugar into his third cup of tea.

Cynthia sat on the edge of the bed pulling on her stockings. She had completed the daily siesta which her lover insisted upon. Her hair tumbled about her shoulders in curly profusion. The flesh of her arms and shoulders gleamed pink above her silk slip. He thought of the old proverb: “The mouth that is kissed keeps its freshness.” If her freshness had been preserved for him by past experience he would have loved her as much—but God! how he might have suffered! And why? There was no wisdom in it—it was the ridiculous masculine—the mark of the beast. The old call of the male ages—Women can share. When she shares, it is but a blow to her self-love.

“Why does the thought of looking at motor cars give you that fierce expression?” She drew her brows together and pressed her lips, in an attempt to picture his lowering countenance. “One would think that the most serious business in life confronted you.”

He did not choose to tell her then of the thought that had passed through his mind.

“I want to buy a car, dear. We can make the rest of the journey by motor. It will be much pleasanter. I want to show you some old forgotten places that the railway does not touch. When we return to the jungle I can leave the car with one of my managers in the south.”

She twisted up her hair, dressed, and put her hat on. “I am ready, dear,” she said, “but I am no judge of motor cars.”

The evening breeze which slightly cools the fevered City was coming in from the sea. It stirred the leaves and whirled the dust into little piles. It penetrated Cynthia’s muslin frock and felt cool on her skin.

“I love the trees here!” she said. “How ancient they look! That banyan there—it looks as old as the hills.”

“That is the tree which lightning never strikes—so the Indians tell us.”

“Is it true?”

“I cannot say dear. The lightning strikes almost everything out here sooner or later. That tree over there,” he nodded his head towards a tree growing by a temple across the road, “is the bo-tree, or peepul, as they call it in the north. There is a pretty legend about it.”

“Tell me,” she took his arm and snuggled up to him.

“When a woman dies in child-birth,” he began, “she becomes a restless spirit of great beauty called a chural. The chural roosts in the bo-tree and lures any passing youth to his destruction by exhausting love orgies. If he were not so overcome by her beauty and the music of her voice, he would see that her feet turn backward—the unmistakable mark of the chural.”

“Perhaps it is a pleasant death,” she looked up to his splendid height and smiled.

“It would take some of the sting out of the damned impudence, Cyn.”

She remembered the day in Assam when he had said that death was an insult, or words to that effect; when he said that each should take what he could from life, as every poor devil was due for great sorrow.

“I think my favourite tree is the tamarind; not because the devil sits in it to watch women undress,” she playfully pinched the arm she had taken, “but because of its night-like shade. One feels grateful for it out here.”

They entered a garage. The Airedale looked at several cars. “I must have a sedan,” he told the clerk. “It is the only thing for these sun-baked roads.”

He selected a car in less time, Cynthia thought, than it would have taken her to buy a hat.

“Won’t you try it?” asked the clerk.

“No,” he answered, “I have driven its likeness thousands of miles.

“Send it to the hotel in the morning.”

Outside, he asked her if she would like to walk by the sea.

“Yes,” she told him. “I want to feel the cool arms of the sea breeze. Up here one gets but a touch of his hand.”

The usual evening crowd was walking or driving on the Marina. Slender dark men in white dhoties glided past. What movement! India’s poetry lies in the gestures of her sons. They raised their long hands to brush flies away. Could the west catch the grace that was released by the act it could put colour in a pale art that reels. Girls in gold-embroidered saris, their fingers and toes stained with henna, chattered in little groups. The foreigners passed in motor cars or gharris. Seldom they walked. This lazy habit accounted for their flabby weight and lustreless skin.

Cynthia and the Airedale walked on the sand. They sat down near the old boat from which Cynthia had watched the fisherman on her first evening in Madras. Near them a young girl with a hint of Indian blood bargained with an Indian in European dress. Her body was lithe and sinewy. She wished to sell it for a few rupees. She leaned towards him in a strangely seductive pose, and twirled her fingers before his face. They walked away together. They had arrived at some mutual agreement.

“Such things sadden me if white people do them,” Cynthia said, looking after the departing couple; “but somehow with the Indians it all seems different.”

“These children of the sun have a different point of view on such matters,” he said. “Foreigners make the mistake of trying to see them through western eyes. It cannot be done. The man who has gone away with that girl thinks none the less of her.”

“Would he tolerate the life she is living if she belonged to him, if—she were his woman?”

“That would take in the right of possession. He might kill an unfaithful wife or mistress.”

“In the protection of his so-called male rights he is not so unlike the white man,” Cynthia murmured.

“Ancient instinct speaks louder than Indian history, dream-girl.”

“Do you consider the Indians very immoral?”

“Judged by their own standards, they are not immoral; judged by ours they are. We have westernized everything, sounds, odours, habits; and we think that the world should hear, smell, and do as we say. The Eastern world accepts our methods when she sees fit to do so, but the further pressure which we would put upon her will recoil upon our own heads some day. The East is long suffering.”

“I think the East takes her pleasures a little sadly,” came Cynthia’s low answer.

“She takes them as a matter of fact. They are part of the routine.”

“They can get no thrill out of sinning, for to them nothing is a sin.”

He laughed. “Do you think, Cyn, that one must feel he is doing wrong to feel thrilled?”

“I think there are many who can feel no emotion unless they are doing—well, the forbidden.”

“And you think that with the Indians, so little is forbidden life must be rather lukewarm?”

“I am glad I do not see eye to eye with them in some things.” She blushed.

He put his arm about her. “Has the sea breeze hugged you sufficiently? Do you feel cool enough now to dress in that stuffy room? We must go along tomorrow,” he continued. “You must tear yourself away from your Madras stamp, or shall I buy the carpet and take it along?”

“You could never do that,” she smiled. “It belongs in the room we occupied here. I prefer to have it in my memory.”

“You are the oldest and the youngest person I have ever known, darling,” he exclaimed. “You fill every desire of my heart.”

She could follow each light and shade of his mind. It was like thinking her own thoughts. At times she differed from him, but there were times when she differed from herself, as it were, when the thought of today changed the thought of yesterday. Always she understood him. When his mind veered suddenly from one point to the other she thought of the truth at the heart of the barometer that allows the changeless to change.

Chapter XXII

The Hall of a Hundred Pillars

It was the night of the special festival at Large Conjeveram. The temple of Ekambarah Swammi, the god of a single garment, resounded with the din of conch shells.

Cynthia and the Airedale, hand in hand, were feeling their way through the court-yard to the main entrance of the temple. The darkness was impenetrable. When they came to stone steps the Airedale would count one—two—three—his arm supporting her—until he felt the smooth flag under his feet which indicated that the descent was over. Cynthia laughed in sheer joy.

“I feel like a princess in the Arabian Nights being kidnapped by her lover,” she told him.

When they arrived at the entrance they found scarcely more light within the building. What light there was came from tiny lamps, which swung from the roof. In this weird lighting the temple resembled a huge stone cave. At the extreme end, almost lost in shadow, men prostrated themselves on the stones before the god, muttering a wild jargon that sounded, in that long cave, like the noisy misery of jungle beasts.

The priest emerged from the shadows to hang garlands of jasmine about the necks of his visitors.

“It is so dark that I cannot see the usual bugs that go with these floral offerings,” said Cynthia, glad that the Tamil priest could not understand her receipt of his gift;—“but I imagine that I can feel them crawling over my neck and up into my hair.”

“We can throw the wreaths away in a minute, dear,” he said, holding her hand more tightly.

When they were decorated, the temple din began anew the screech of the conch shells, the blast of the tiny trumpets, and the deadly monotony of near tom-toms. At a distance the temple din is like the buzzing of a huge insect, soothing to some, seldom objectionable to any; but when one stands in the midst of it, it is torment.

“I can imagine one committing a crime or running amuck after listening to this for a while,” said the Airedale.

“In ancient Greece, they were supposed to produce sweet music with the conch shells,” mused Cynthia, “but like many another art,” she went on, “it was lost with those old holiday people.”

“Thank God, they gave Pan the pipes instead of the shell,” he muttered.

The old priest approached again and started a long harangue in Tamil. The Airedale listened attentively, much to Cynthia’s surprise. When the priest finished, the Airedale answered him in the same emphatic, punctuated language.

“I had no idea you spoke Tamil,” Cynthia said, when the priest had moved away.

“I must speak it in my southern gardens.”

“It lends itself well to quarrels or commands, I should imagine, especially when it is accompanied by the conch shell.”

They felt their way back through the dark court-yard. At the gate, a Hindustani beggar waved a brass lota and called pani-do-pani-do, meaning, in this case, give me sacred water. Cynthia was glad to hear the language of the north. From the first it had seemed familiar to her, like something she had heard before.

Occasional lamps tried their best to light the narrow streets of the village, but they made little impression. The moon was new—a slim “digit” and the stars, so big in the north, seemed to have shrunken and crept well into the clouds. Incense and garlic fought with each other for first place. People threw songs and chatter into the night from dark door-ways.

A huge juggernaut car was drawn up under one of the lamps. Heavy iron chains were attached to it, by which the pilgrims dragged it through the streets, when worked up to the proper pitch of religious frenzy.

The Airedale laughed. There was the old hard sound in the laugh. She had heard it one evening in the verandah at Assam.

“The damned old sensuous farce,” he said—he seemed to be talking to himself—-“how we go in for it, under one form and another—how we shun joy to feed our senses with this beastly degeneracy.”

“Don’t you think they get joy out of it? . . . Their kind of joy?” Cynthia asked.

“Their kind perhaps,” he answered, “if joy can be abnormal and sick.”

“It may be, dear, that it is normal for us to be as we are. It may be what was intended.”

“Then we should be annihilated—and a new program set up for a new world.”

“All in good time. We must burn up the old orders with fire; we cannot obliterate them by slinging mud.”

“No one seems to be lighting the fire, Cyn.”

“Perhaps the fuel is not yet ready.”

“It is a useless subject,” he said. “One never gets anywhere with it.”

They turned in at the gate of the missionary bungalow, where they were stopping. Cynthia was glad when they had succeeded in creeping up the dingy stair-case without attracting the attention of the family. A candle burned in their room. They undressed quickly, washed their faces in the basins that stood on the makeshift table, flung the water out the window and crawled in under their net.

*  *  *

The members of the missionary family were the only Europeans in the place. Mr. Middleton had found Cynthia and the Airedale the previous night preparing to sleep in the railway station. He had asked them if they cared to go to the Mission bungalow. The Airedale introduced himself, and immediately the missionary addressed Cynthia as Mrs. Quaren. Cynthia did not attempt to contradict him. She feared that the Mission bungalow might have but one extra bed, and she knew that the scruples of the good man would interfere with the entire sleeping arrangements of his household.

When she met the family she was very glad that she had been silent. Mrs. Middleton was a mere wisp of a woman whose body was worn to a shadow with receiving the blessings of God in that hot country. They had seven children. Cynthia delighted in the woman’s fine contentment. She was happy out there in the wilderness, with the freckled-faced husband, who rested his head between two hunched-up shoulders and seemed to be always praising the Lord for the evidence of divine Providence.

To Cynthia she explained the saintliness of her husband—his unselfishness in coming to that little village to teach the Hindus the gospel.

“This is the Benares of the south,” she said; “it is one of the seven sacred places of India—so you see what we had to fight against. Ever since the old days, when it was called Kanchipuram, its very soil has been worshipped by the Hindus.”

“Do you enroll many converts?” asked Cynthia.

“It is very up-hill work,” Mrs. Middleton admitted. “I would say about twenty or twenty-five a year.”

The eldest child, a boy, was about nine years old. His father gave him lessons in arithmetic and spelling when he could take time from his duties. His mother told him romantic bits of history. It released within her something that she could not define, and gave her pleasure in entertaining the boy. These attentions of his father and mother constituted his education at the time. Next to him came twin girls. They could repeat long passages from the Bible, and sang hymns in thin voices. There were but ten months between the next two boys. They looked anaemic.

The baby and the girl following the two boys usually played together on the floor. They had no toys. They amused themselves by sticking their bare feet into coconut shells and clattering along. The noise the shells made on the stone-floor seemed to please them.

The family and guests were seated at breakfast. A slattern in a dirty sari pulled the punka. Mr. Middleton had said grace, and Cynthia felt free to attack the pommeloe which waited in appetizing pink sections on her plate.

“I believe we can see the nautch-dance in one of the temples here?” Cynthia addressed Mr. Middleton.

“The davadasi dance in the temples here?” he exclaimed, a pained look creeping into his face. Both Cynthia and Quaren realized the subject was an unfortunate one. “By watching such an indecent performance,” the missionary exclaimed, “one gives one’s sanction to it; and the Hindus consider such patronage open encouragement.”

Cynthia was sorry that she had spoken on the subject. She had no wish to hurt her host. She turned to Mrs. Middleton and began talking of the southern servants as compared with those of the north. Mrs. Middleton’s answers were monosyllabic. The conversation dragged. There was no contagion to succumb to. Each one at the table was busy with his own thoughts. After breakfast, the Airedale thanked Mr. and Mrs. Middleton.

“It was so good of you to rescue us from the railway station,” he said. “It would have been rather disconcerting to have more than half of Conjeveram drop in to watch us sleep.”

He wanted to do something for this man and woman who bravely relinquished all comfort to follow their chosen work. He knew that he could offer nothing. Later he would send something to help the work along, knowing that he did not care for the work, but desiring in even a roundabout way, to express his gratitude to these two.

He brought the motor to the door. He had refused the services of a chauffeur in Madras. The luggage was piled into the rear seat with the Bearer. Cynthia rode in front and frequently relieved him at the wheel.

The entire family gathered to say good-bye. Cynthia kissed all the children and promised to send some books to the eldest boy.

They rode along dodging the Indians who fairly swarmed in the road. Suddenly the Airedale turned the car into a narrow gully that reeked with garlic and refuse.

“Where are we going?” asked Cynthia.

“To Little Conjeveram, dream-girl, where Vishnu is worshipped under the name of Varada Rajah.”

“Why dear?”

“There are nautch-girls there, and our dear friend will never know that we gave our sanction to the dance by attending.”

“Have you seen the dance?” She reached up and rumpled his hair.

“Yes, dear, and I fear you will be disappointed—there is nothing much to it.”

The priest came to meet them in the temple-compound. He told the Airedale that he would send for girls who would dance specially. It was very early in the morning. Perhaps the Sahib did not know that the girls did not come to the temple until late in the afternoon.

The Sahib mentioned the fact that there was backsheesh for the girls who would come and dance, and a coolie was sent in haste to gather as many as possible.

Cynthia and Quaren wandered through the temple buildings while they waited.

Cynthia was looking at the carving of men in union with beasts.

“What hideous things,” she exclaimed; “they have no value, they are not even a good carving.”

“They represent a form of frenzied worship of long ago,” Quaren replied, walking past them without as much as glimpsing in their direction. “You may be interested in this carving,” he called to her. He was looking at a well-preserved relief of Krishna. The god sat on the top-most branch of a tree, holding a bundle of clothing in his hand, while women climbed up the tree or postured in beseeching attitudes at the base, their hands uplifted to the god.

“The story goes,” he said as Cynthia joined him, “that Krishna during his earthly wanderings came to a stream where a number of women were bathing. In a moment of mischief he picked up their clothes that were lying on the bank, and climbed the tree with them.”

“What a human old god he must have been!” she laughed with mock severity.

“You should say must be, dear,” he corrected, “as he comes to earth and takes bodied birth whenever he is needed.”

“The ancients who bestowed upon him such a rollicking temperament must have been a joyous people, very different from the gloomy, effete Indians one meets today, don’t you think?” Cynthia had left Krishna, and was standing under the red umbrella which the temple-worshippers use in their parades.

“They were the same lot who made those things over there.” He pointed to the carvings of men and beasts.

The nautch-girls accompanied by old hags and a ragged trumpeter, who puffed out his cheeks in the most amazing manner, were entering the compound. They went into the “Hall of a Hundred Pillars.” Cynthia and the Airedale followed.

The girls were dressed in gaudy saris with all the imitation jewelry their frail bodies could support. Their necks, breasts, hips, arms, fingers, ankles and toes were plastered with brass, strings of beads, and huge glass ornaments. Their faces were fearfully and wonderfully “made.” No doubt the old hags who arranged the folds of the girls’ saris preparatory to the dance, had been nautch-girls once. They talked rapidly to the dancers in high-pitched, unpleasant voices. Their mouths were stained with betel, and several of them had but one or two teeth.

The girls began to dance slowly, rhythmically, to the awful wailing of the trumpet and a series of grunts from the betel-dyed mouths of the hags. Soon the dance became more exciting and they started their song. The Airedale listened to the filthy Tamil words as one detached from the scene about him. One of the girls knelt before him and swayed her body from side to side. Cynthia watched her eyes. They were the eyes of a child who does as it is told. She had been dedicated to the temple, there she was—that was all.

Three of the girls stood in line and swayed their bodies in unison. Cynthia watched their hands. She was fascinated. Their long graceful fingers were dyed with yellow turmeric. Their thumbs turned back almost to the wrist then straightened up with a sweeping curve like the bobbing bud of some golden lily. Cynthia thought of the exercises, necessary from babyhood, to produce those eloquent, flexible hands.

She felt her being slip from modernity—back, back—to the days hidden behind the centuries. In this “Hall of a Hundred Pillars,” with its stone houses, its mythological animals, its stone chains—whose links were fastened together by some dead and forgotten skill—girls danced to awaken the senses. Greece was not yet—Rome was not yet—nothing blurred the mind but the juice of the grape,—and the beauty of this liquid delight was sung by a shaggy philosopher who had pitched his tent in the compound.

The trumpet shrieked three long blasts. The girls stopped dancing. The hags lit cigarettes. The priest came forward for his fee. The Airedale rose from the stone, on which he had been seated, with the air of one who was glad to get away from his present surroundings. He took some silver from his pocket and gave it to the priest. He flung a handful of coppers on the stones and laughed as the hags scrambled after the rolling coins. The girls had walked over to the motor car and were examining it, their eyes wide with astonishment. The Bearer looked their bodies over with the air of a connoisseur, then turned away. He had seen better.

Out on the main road the Airedale asked Cynthia if she had enjoyed the dance.

“Ever so much,” she answered enthusiastically. “As a dance there is not much to it—but the girls are so graceful—and—oh those hands!”

“The girls we saw today were very young,” he said, “not more than twelve or thirteen.”

“Is the song so very nasty?”

“Yes, it is uselessly nasty. It would never arouse any feeling but disgust.”

“The little girl who knelt before you—I was watching her eyes, they were the eyes of a child. Do you think she knows the meaning of the words she sings?”

“She knows the meaning of the words, but they mean nothing to her, which may be an Irish bull if you like. She is brought up to repeat them as our children are brought up to rattle off nursery rhymes.”

“But she is taken out of the temple for immoral purposes.”

“Cyn, dear,” he looked into her eyes for a long moment—“she worships her god, and gives the money to her priest.”

“Poor little things.” She felt cold in the strong sunlight.

“Tara was a temple girl, and she was sinless.” His tone was one of defense.

“Yes, darling. I know all about Tara.”

So Tara had told her all. He was not surprised. Tara had never mentioned her life to another, not even to an Indian, of that he was sure. She had told his dream-girl and his dream-girl had never mentioned it; in telling him of Tara’s death she had omitted Tara’s story. He thought of Laura. Could he have said the same about her to Cynthia—“she was sinless?” He must put her out of his mind, or he would become irritable and bad-tempered. “She is going towards death like the rest of us,” he told himself. He linked her up with the rest of humanity and felt kindly toward her. He could not isolate her without feeling her littleness. And he would have stayed with her, half awake, living a lie with half his being, if it had not been for Cynthia. All the sickly pious would have pointed to him and said: “Behold a dutiful husband!” as he rotted away, a sacrifice to hypocrisy.

“There is a rest house about forty miles from here, that I think I can make before the sun gets too hot,” he said as he increased the speed. “We can have tiffin there. An old servant stays on the place. You must rest through the heat, and we can start on again in the late afternoon.”

His voice caressed her. She felt it stroking her. In the old days she summoned illusion to her assistance. Now in blessed reality she relaxed. There were no more blotched hours. Time was smooth. She felt its soft texture as it passed her in the sun.

Chapter XXIII

Laura Suggests Divorce

Cynthia had just finished a letter to Babs—it ran: “Yes, dear, there is much truth in what you say about people wasting their talents—letting them atrophy, as you express it, but so far as I am concerned I am using whatever talents I may possess to attain certain intensities. Perhaps I may manage a classic. I could not put my desires into clay. I desired the beauty of Mahomet Khan for my work. It eluded me. I desired the grace of Indian postures—above all of hands—I was never able to capture it. You will say that I should have kept on working and success would have crowned the labour. You are wrong. I could not walk down a pathway of hopeless failures no matter what perfect stone waited at the end. That journey would not satisfy my desires. I have no desire to know that when I am dead people might point to a statue and say: ‘That is art.’ Even if I could reach the heights in art where I would be remembered—this is impossible—I still would not care to strive. I admit the greatness in the force that can analyze and portray, but this force flourishes outside of art. It stands by me while I look life in the face and choose the materials that I can handle best. You would not understand the things on my work bench. These things must be come upon by the route I have travelled. There is a package of dreams, a man’s and mine interwoven, there are days scorched by sunlight, there are nights blazing with stars, there are the jungle secrets; there is the peace taken from the tea-gardens that slope on the hillsides; all these are piled on my workbench, and as I told you, I may manage a classic, I am feeling things at their source. I am watching life open out on its stalk. If one petal drops, I shall not chase it, in order to pick it up and preserve it, for new buds are opening every moment, and I would be on hand to catch their colour and fragrance.

“I have read the book you sent me. I did not like it. It agrees with all existing orders, and consequently is not necessary. Good writing is done from the instinct of opposition. We must eliminate and find fault, or stagnate and decay. Such books as Drift are written for the mediocre, or for those who, from lack of courage, suggest quack remedies.

“You hope that some arrangement can be made with Mrs. Quaren which will allow me to marry the Airedale. How quaint of you! Think of the exultation of families who marry their daughters well,—the few words that launch the couple on the legal sea, the appraisement of the frock and presents, the false ideas of respect that cause two persons to submit to the world’s judgment, the love that could be happy only in freedom chained and humiliated. Think! Would you have me profane love? Marriage is a superstition that means little to me. Let those who care for it have it by all means, but why should I be untrue to myself?

“There have been moments—oh long ago—it seems in another life—when I thought I wanted such a thing as marriage—but that was before love tore the veils off the crumbling images that let the sun in. Since coming to India I live with the whole of myself for the first time. I have met Truth out here. I am no high priestess of any cult. I am simply a woman who is happy.

“We have a bungalow here in the Nilgeri Hills. It belongs to one of the Airedale’s foremen. He has moved out and left it to us while we are here. Tea-covered hills lie all about us. Beyond them bare mountains thrust pointed teeth into the sky. I like the jungle-country better. I miss its song and the scent it shakes on the evening breeze. Everywhere little shrines cling to the hills. The Indians never pass one without turning in to worship. It is a strange fact that these southern deities are almost exclusively female. The goddess is usually represented by some symbol. There is a shrine just outside the gate of our compound, where a pot filled with water with a mirror leaning against it, represents the goddess.

“A short distance away is the hill from which the ‘Tiger of Mysore,’ to ease his Muhammedan conscience, threw those who refused his faith into a ravine some hundreds of feet below. Fortunately his career was shortened by a British sword.

“At night from our verandah we can see the lights of the village appear, one by one. Strangely tangled music is borne up to us—the drone of the priests, and the song of the temple girls with its throbbing, monotonous accompaniment. One can almost hear the last flourish of the fingers against the drum when the song halts suddenly.

“As dawn approaches I have watched the lights leave the village, one by one, as they came. The night-songs are still, then. With the first sunlight the other life begins. I miss no moment from any of it. It all seems to belong to me I live. My life is bursting with happiness

“And now, dear girl, I must go out to my cows. It is their milking time. My servants would put water in the milk if I did not watch them. The cow is sacred, and why should her unadulterated milk be given to a non-believer? You would paint my cows if you could see them. They have the ruffled necks, such as one sees in biblical pictures, about which I have hung blue beads to keep off the evil eye.

“The Airedale bought the cows so we could have clean milk. He will give them to his men when we leave. I am impressed each day by the affection his men show him. They love him down to the last assistant.”

*  *  *

Cynthia was seated on the ground, her back propped against the acacia tree. Her floppy white hat rested on her lap. She was smoking a cigarette. The Indian sun had dyed her olive skin a deep cream colour. There was little red beneath, but there seemed to be light—something within that made it glow. Kanda, seated on a low stool, was milking one of the cows. His hair tended to white, and his face was well furrowed. About his neck he wore the linga—Siva’s phallic emblem. From the white cloth on his head, to the dust on his brown feet, he expressed pathos. Cynthia had seen him, the night before, carry rice, betel leaves, nuts, plantains and incense into the little shrine by the gate. He had touched the ground with his forehead before the pot of water with the mirror against it. She wondered what he asked of the god. He finished milking and stood up.

“Consuelo has not given much today,” said Cynthia, as she noticed the milking-pot but half full.

“No, Mem-sahib, she never gives as much as Constance. Her beads were not placed in the temple. Perhaps evil has looked upon her. Shall I burn the candle?”

“No Kanda, we will feed her more. I think it will be better.” She followed him into the kitchen and watched him pour the milk into the bottles. Such tasks never became monotonous. They fitted into her fluent passion for the life she lived.

She dressed for dinner and went into the verandah. Business had taken the Airedale to Mysore, but she expected him any moment. The evening picture stretched before her, cool and softened by the sun’s departure. The night is not so sudden in the hills. It leaves the rose-pink in the sky until it has darkened the plains. Below in the bathing ghat the Indians were taking their evening bath. Mingled with the village songs she heard the honk of the Airedale’s motor. She saw him rounding the curve. He was climbing the hill. He waved to her. She went down to the gate, where he left the motor to his man. He seemed to wear a rigid armour—like one holding himself in readiness for something.

“What is wrong, darling?” She held both his hands.

“Nothing, dream-girl, nothing at all—everything is right; I have you in my arms.” He crushed her to him and kissed her. The old light came into his eyes, his body seemed to undergo a change. He put his arm about her waist as they went into the house. In his room, he began to dress. She dismissed his Bearer and passed him things herself.

“You have been gone hours and hours,” she said as she put the buttons on his shirt. “It has been so lonely without you running in from the gardens once in a while.”

“Cyn, there are haters of joy,” he burst out, “and haters of play; there are those who would reduce life to raw chaos—but life can never be defeated. It goes on, throwing out new patterns finer and richer than the old. Let those, who will, be hag-ridden—but I will catch the blessing life tosses me, dream-girl.”

He came up behind her and grasped her as she was bending over to fold something on the bed. He lifted her in his arms and held her as if she had been a child. She felt scorched and weak under his fierce caresses.

“I love you—I love you.” His voice was wild, candescent. When he released her, she left the room and sent his Bearer in.

In the sitting-room huge white moths flew about the lamps. She piled up cushions on the sofa and sat down to wait for him. More than the usual had happened; but the usual had happened, too. He had received another letter from Laura, telling him that his soul had gone to perdition.

*  *  *

They had dinner in the verandah. The punka boy scattered the mosquitoes and moths in all directions with the punka. Cynthia laughed as she pushed her soup away into which a moth had fallen.

“I suppose we should eat inside,” said the Airedale. “Gibbs (he referred to his foreman) never got round to having this verandah screened.”

“There are just as many bugs inside, dear. The sitting-room is shrilling with them.”

The Airedale was getting ready to speak. Things had slowed down, as they do immediately before speech bursts—speech that has been lying on the mind. The boy brought out some artichokes. Cynthia stripped hers and looked out across the hills. The stars seemed to touch the highest of them.

“Laura thinks I should get a divorce and marry you.” It was out! His eyebrows drew together in quick contraction. His face usually expressed itself in this manner when something troubled him.

“Babs agrees with Laura,” said Cynthia, making a pass at a moth and missing.

“And you?” His eyes blazed under the straight line.

“I, darling? What do you mean?”

“I knew it, Cyn. I knew it!” His brows untangled. The tension melted. He bloomed. He reached his hand across the table and clasped hers. “My dream-girl always! Laura writes,” he continued, as if now he were simply relating something from which he was entirely detached, “that she will be pleased—in fact thinks she should—consent to a divorce, if I will make a financial arrangement which she considers entirely satisfactory.”

“Can any financial arrangement be any more satisfactory than the one you have with her now—and will continue to have?”

“That is not it, dear. By getting a divorce and marrying you—and incidentally agreeing to her new plan,—I would be saving my soul from hell.”

“Can she guarantee the salvation?”

“Certainly, dear.” He brought his chair over and placed it beside hers. The Bearer moved his plate. If he had chosen to eat his dinner off the piano, the Bearer would have shown no surprise. He knew his master.

“That guarantee is worth consideration,” she said. She was thinking of the woman who wished to see the man fall in the sight of love.

“Yes, and we have considered it.” He pulled her head down on his shoulder.

“Babs says that too many books have been written against marriage,” she spoke into his ear.

“The right book has not yet been written, however.”

“I have nothing against marriage.”

Cynthia lifted her head. The Bearer had brought out the ice. “But I object to thinking,” she continued, “that it can save your soul or mine from hell . . . or that our souls are in any particular need of saving. Can it be sinful to be true to oneself?”

“Of course not,” Quaren murmured. “There is still a corner in the world for a few individuals. We will live there, and ask love for enlightenment.”

Dinner over they sat in the verandah for a long time. It was too hot to go inside.

From the streets of the Lantern came the song:

Come to me, lord, for the night speeds fast,
Come while the roses and incense last.
All is but dust when the night is past.
Come . . . .

Chapter XXIV

The Fragrance of Happiness

The sitting-room had been darkened. The portiere and curtains were drawn, and the fibre hangings outside the windows had been drenched with water, in the hope that any wandering breeze might be caught in their meshes and cooled before it passed into the room. The summer was unusually hot in the hills. At the hill-station, about ten miles from the tea gardens, where the plain-dwellers herded in the summer, expecting a few months’ respite from their sunbaked homes, every one was complaining.

The aspect of the sitting-room had changed entirely. The chairs had been freshly covered with cretonne. The sofa had acquired new cushions. The broken relics of the former occupant had been packed away, and in their places were vases of flowers and dainty candle-sticks. Two sketches, gifts from Norah Best, had been hung on the wall with brass tacks. A bunch of crimson poppies was placed before an oval mirror on the large table. There was something heroic about them in the darkened room. They were like the new personality that pervaded the place.

“No one would ever recognize my old ‘digs,’” said Walter Gibbs as he handed the tea round for Cynthia, who looked, as she bent over the tea-cups, like a figure on some old porcelain.

The cloudy grey frock, caught here and there with bits of old lace, seemed to enhance the creaminess of her skin. Her hair was drawn back tightly from her face and held with a large ivory comb. Not one woman in a thousand could wear her hair so entirely off her face, thought Jimmie Best as he dropped a lump of sugar in Norah’s cup. That hair, that the Airedale called “beautifully untidy,” she had brushed into sleek order in an effort to keep cool.

The fragrance of happiness, that she always wore, reached her guests and made them forget the parched stretches of plains they had walked or ridden across to get to the bungalow.

“Bachelors seldom care what a place looks like,” said Jimmie. “You remember my dive before Norah came out. . . . But you are certainly lucky, old man,” he continued, looking up at Gibbs, who was passing cigarettes now. “Here is your place, as pretty as a picture, and before the event, too.”

“Oh,” said the Airedale, taking a light from Gibbs, “so that is it. When is your leave, Walter?”

“In two weeks, chief.”

“How time flies.” The Airedale seemed to be making a mental calculation.

“Gad has been here about five months, has he not?” he asked.

“I would say so,” answered Gibbs.

“Does he seem contented?” The Airedale included Best and Gibbs in his question.

Norah answered. “Could he ever be contented anywhere, really contented? He seems to lust after rumpuses. Nothing is too red hot for him. He fights for the natives like a hell-cat. He hates women. He never comes to the club. He usually pokes off alone somewhere. Do you know the story of that wide scar across his face?”

“He spent much time in the wilds of Africa trying to discover a new animal,” said the Airedale, wondering if the breezy Norah’s interest was as keen as her observation. “The Royal Institute tied a blue ribbon on him for something or other,” he went on. “As to the scar, perhaps an animal scratched his face.”

“Perhaps,” said Norah; “but to me it looks like a knife wound.”

“Why do you call him Gad?” asked Cynthia. “What is his name?”

“Geoffrey Allenby Dunn,” said Jimmie. “His friends have strung his initials together into that cute appellation.”

“He sounds mysterious and—untamed.”

“He is mysterious all right,” said Norah, her Irish blue eyes twinkling; “but I think he was tame once and has become wild again . . . reversion to type, no doubt.”

“Does he make no friends?” asked Cynthia.

“He is not too keen about meeting people,” Gibbs answered, glad that the conversation had veered from his approaching marriage, and willing, because of the deflection to talk about anything else. “He has three dogs and a mongoose. He lets the beastly mongoose crawl all over him. He reads a lot of stuff on zoology and hunting. He disappears once in a while with the natives for a little shikari, but I have never known him to bag anything but a hare or two. You met him at home?” This last to the Airedale.

“Yes. He told me he would like to try his hand at tea. He came on ahead. He seemed to be keen on getting out here. First I thought of telling him to wait for me in Assam, then I happened to think that we were short of men down here. I have known him since we were lads, but I had seen nothing of him for years. I was surprised when he turned up in London. He took a shot at coffee in East Africa, after he tired of his animal hunt,—so he told me.”

“Have you seen Mrs. Macomber?” Norah asked. Her question was directed to no one in particular.

Gibbs answered. “Yes, I met her the day she arrived.”

“Don’t you think she is pretty?”

“I don’t know . . . yes I suppose she is.”

“She has that weary look that fascinates me so,” said Norah. “She seems to have seen everything, and nothing has made her a victim.”

“She sounds rather dull,” said Jimmie.

“No, no,” his enthusiastic wife rattled on, “she is shadowy. She seems to vanish just when you want her to stay. That is her type, and she dresses up to it. Her trinkets are always in harmony with her frock—perhaps with her mood. Now, Miss Conway is so different,” she nodded her impish head to Cynthia. “She is so alive, so vital. You always feel as if she were holding your hands and giving you something.”

They all laughed. No one minded the rollicking Norah becoming personal. Her Irish nature was all impulse and mirth, and her little sunburnt face was all vivacity and smiles.

“I like those sketches, Norah, especially the one over the mantelpiece.” Gibbs rose as he spoke and studied the picture, his elbows on the mantelpiece. “It is that little hut just to the left of the bathing ghat—but how did you get that child to pose like that?”

“That is what I was wondering,” said the Airedale. “It is strange its mother did not grab it up, fearing your evil eye.”

“It is Bobbie,” Norah confessed without the slightest embarrassment.

“Your child?” Gibbs looked puzzled.

“Yes. I made him brown and changed him a little.”

Cynthia felt her heart go out to the tousled bunch of mischief, curled up against the cushions, and affecting for the moment a look intended to be demure, “Bobbie loved to participate with you I am sure,” she said thinking of the child with his merry blue eyes and laughing mouth exactly like his mother’s.

“I used to wonder how I could stand one” said Jimmie; “but now there is a pair of them.” He had the look of a man whose home was happy.

“Do you get much time for work now?” Gibbs asked Norah.

“I never did get much time for work: I am too busy. Those daubs are not work; they are outlets. When Bobbie gets tired of me, and I get tired of being lazy, I do something like that.” She pointed to one of the sketches. “I never had but six lessons, you know.”

“I did not know; but I suppose you could take more.”

“Not without going home, and could you imagine me going home to study art?”

“No, you are right. My imagination cannot stretch to it.”

“How do you do, Miss Conway? The heat has done me up.” It was Mrs. Ingalls, her stout body clothed in some dark material that was scarcely distinguishable from her sallow complexion. “I was just telling Harry,” she said, as her husband shook hands with Cynthia, “that this is the hottest spell we have ever had in the hills.” With an exhausted air she sat down beside Gibbs. She had covered her fingers with heavy rings, plastered ornaments on her bodice, done as much for her ears, and dangled from her wrist a huge gold mesh bag.

“And she complains of being hot,” thought Cynthia.

Harry Ingalls, a canny Scot, had married her because she had money, and, as the Airedale mentioned to Cynthia, “One must have a reason for what one does.” Ingalls pulled his chair up to the sofa where Norah leaned against the cushions.

“Is Bobbie well?” he asked her.

“Bobbie is always well, thank you. He is as vulgarly healthy as I am.”

“That is the sort of vulgarity one must admire.”

Cynthia passed him the sandwiches. “No, thank you, a smoke if I may.” Gibbs got up and gave him a cigarette and a light. Norah was taking him in from under her Irish lashes.

“What brazen blondness: strange I never noticed it before,” she was thinking. “There is no difference between his face and his hair. Even the eyes make very little difference in that whiteness; but for the little stubble the heat has brought out, he looks like a new baby.”

“Miss Conway is a beauty,” he whispered; “I don’t blame the Airedale.”

Norah’s Irish temper unfolded. Would he talk scandal to her, this big white baby? She shot across his next remark. “It is her character that is beautiful, much more beautiful than her appearance; but it is an essence, a fragrance, the poetry of her. It is not perceived by all.”

He understood the thrust. “No doubt you have had a greater opportunity to exercise your powers of perception, I have seen but little of her.”

Norah was smiling again. Now that she had taught him his lesson, she had no wish to continue in the same strain.

“We are to have a real treat at the club,” Mrs. Ingalls announced. “That Swedish artist, who is at ‘Ootie’ for her health, is coming here next week to play the violin for us. Don’t you love the violin?” she beamed on the Airedale.

“A little of it goes a long way I think.”

She looked at him in astonishment. Cynthia smiled. She remembered the day in Delhi when he expressed his views on music.

“So you are to bring some one back with you?” Ingalls shook his finger at Gibbs and gave a sly wink. Plainly Gibbs’ luck was over.

He looked about the room before answering. “Yes,” he admitted. “I was engaged before I came out.”

“I always pity the young girls who come out here to be buried,” said Mrs. Ingalls, toying with the baubles on her bodice.

“One must be buried somewhere,” Norah chimed in.

“Yes, when one is dead.”

“One is never buried until one is dead, no matter where one happens to be.”

“Do you really like it out here?”

“I love it.” Jimmy reached over and patted her head.

“And you came from that charming city of Dublin!”

“I did, and I have no desire to go back to it.” Gibbs looked gratefully at Norah.

The Bearer, having taken down the fibre shades from the outside of the windows, came into the room to raise the curtains. Streaks from the setting sun filled the room with a rose-glow. A fresh breeze blew in carrying whiffs of scent from the garden.

“We must run along, old dear,” said Norah getting up and pulling Jimmie by the coat-sleeve.

“I am off too,” said Gibbs.

“Where are you stopping now, Gibbs?” asked Ingalls.

“Norah has taken me in for the present.”

Mrs. Ingalls followed Norah to the door. “We are going along, too,” she said. “May we give you a lift?”

“No, thank you; we sent the carriage home so we would be sure to walk back. One gets too little exercise out here.”

The Airedale and Cynthia walked to the gate with them. The Ingalls left in their motor car, waving, and asking Cynthia to be sure and visit them soon. In her sudden impulsive way, Norah kissed Cynthia on the cheek and fled down the road after the two men, singing snatches of an Irish song.

“What a loveable girl Norah is! I like her better every time I see her,” said Cynthia when they were again in the house.

“I knew you would like her. She is the one woman down here who counts.”

“Well, she counts enough to make up for the others. Was Jimmie here long before she came out?”

“About two years. He spent the whole time writing letters to her. He never lived the planters’ life, no man does when he is waiting for a Norah.”

The shadows deepened in his eyes. She brought her sympathy out. She knew that he did not regret anything he had done. He consumed the hasheesh of momentary emotion. Its effect passed and he laughed.

“Mrs. Ingalls bores me to death,” he said. “I don’t know whether it is her shredded conversation or her pudgy hands.”

“Why is Walter Gibbs so reticent about his marriage, dear?”

“He was always like that, Cyn—reticent about everything. He never talks his affairs over with the other men. Do you like him, dream-girl?”

“Yes, and no.”

“He can handle the Indians better than any man I have got. They fear him.”

“Is that necessary?”

“You have seen in Assam.”

“Norah says that Gad fights for them like a hell-cat.”

“Yes, but he gets very little work out of them.”

“In the long run he may get more.”

“I have had quite a long run with these people myself, and I know that severity is the thing.”

She thought of the beatings he had given the Assam coolies. Was he beating the Indians here? Somehow she did not think so.

“Do you feed these southern coolies quinine every Saturday?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “There is just as much malaria down here. I have found no coolie lately who deserved a beating,” he added.

His naive fascination lay about him. Cynthia could not help laughing.

“Come out in the garden, dear, and watch the moon come up. She is very young now—but two days old.”

“Mahomet Khan once told me that love born at this time lasts forever.”

“How was the moon when we met?”

Cynthia raised her lips to him.

“I have forgotten,” she murmured softly.

Hand in hand they went out.

Chapter XXV

A Nurse Is Needed

“Take off your clothes and go to bed. I can’t give you anything while you are trotting around,” said Dr. Tasker to Gad, as he put his thermometer back into the case.

“What is the use of talking like that?” Gad was very irritable. “You know the brush must be cleared for new planting, and Gibbs has gone on leave, and the Airedale may return to Assam any day now.”

“Can’t help it.” The doctor’s voice was stern. “No man can clear brush with a temperature of a hundred and two.”

“If it is malaria, old thing, give me a good stiff shot of quinine.”

“I will give you quinine in any case, but I think you are in for something besides malaria this time.”

“Hell, man, I feel like malaria. I was in Africa for years; I know the feel.”

“Been vomiting, have you not?”

“Yes, but my stomach has been knocked out lately.”

“Take a look at yourself, Dunn. There is a mirror over there.”

Gad walked up to the mirror. His skin was a deep yellow, excepting where the scar stood out red and drawn. He passed his hand over his face and steadied himself against the wardrobe. He was growing weak rapidly.

“Jaundice, I suppose, curse the luck.” He sat down and began to unlace his boots. “Where do you suppose I got jaundice, doctor?”

“One never knows where one gets things out here.” The doctor was helping him remove his clothes. He got into bed.

“Now promise me that you will not try to get up while I wire to Bangalore for a nurse.”

“A nurse, do I need a nurse?” He was offering no further resistance. His breathing was becoming difficult.

The doctor pulled the sheets up over him and told the Bearer to stay with the Sahib until someone came to take care of him.

From his own house the doctor telephoned to Gibbs’ bungalow. Cynthia answered.

“No, the Airedale is not here at the moment,” she called in answer to his question; “he is in the gardens. This is Miss Conway. Can I deliver your message?”

“Thank you. Tell him that Dunn is down with black-water fever. He must have a nurse at once. Bangalore is the nearest place to get one.”

“Can I do anything in the meantime, doctor?”

“No. Please keep away, Miss Conway; it is very infectious.”

Cynthia hung up the instrument. Poor man—alone—and this dreaded disease. There was no train from Bangalore until night. The nurse could not be counted upon until the next morning. The Airedale was about two miles away—up where they were making the new clearing. It would take his runner half an hour to get there. What was to be done? Yes, that was it. She must go herself. But did she know the road? She would chance it. She wrote a note for the Airedale and put it on his plate. He would find it at tiffin time.

In less than ten minutes she was on the road, letting the engine out to its capacity and glad that speed laws were unknown in the hills. Down the first hills tore the car. She came to the bamboo forest where the lemurs boldly sat in the road and waited until vehicles were almost on top of them before they moved. It had been her habit to stop and feed them—but today she sounded the horn continuously and whizzed past them in a cloud of dust. They rushed back to their trees, swearing and wondering what was up. Out of the forest, she struck the Bangalore road. Down, down it wound. How hot the air was becoming! She took her sweater off. What a change from the hills! When she reached the plains, she looked at her watch—eleven. What a furious pace she had travelled! She slowed up a little. She could not race through the city at such a speed.

On her first visit to Bangalore she had loved the place. That city of soldiers and red colour-wash, appeared to her, she told the Airedale, as a huge canvas wet from the brush. She liked its twilight beauty, when it seemed to reach the sky and brush it with the crimson blossoms of its gul mohor. Today she was dead to its charm. Where was the hospital? There was His Majesty’s uniform strolling along. “Will you come here please?” She stopped the car. The soldier hurried to her. Her agitation impressed him.

“Where is the hospital, please—the general hospital?”

“I will go with you.” He got in beside her. “Thank goodness for quick understanding and common-sense,” she thought, as the car rushed on again.

In the hospital compound he left her. “Thank you,” she called as she ran up the stairs.

“I want a nurse for Quaren’s tea-gardens,” she said as she entered the matron’s office. That lady was bending over a ledger making some calculations. She turned to Cynthia.

“The case?”

“Blackwater fever. Can the nurse come at once? I have my car here.”

“One moment, please.”

The matron left the room. Cynthia dropped into a chair. She was very tired, her hands were trembling. She took off her hat and let the punka cool her head. “I hope she hurries,” she said half aloud. “Nurses should be ready to leave at any time. Perhaps they are—” She fell to thinking how little she knew of nurses—she had always been so well. She had taken her health for granted and never thought much about it.

“This is Miss Bailey,” said the matron entering with a woman who carried a suit-case. “She will go with you at once.”

The woman was Eurasian, and with an idea of concealing the fact, she had bleached her hair straw-colour. The eyes of India, dreaming under the yellow thatch, gave the face a startling appearance, but there was that about the perfect mouth which drew all the attention the moment the first shock was over. Excited as Cynthia was, her ruling passion flamed up. What a mouth! “I have never seen anything like it,” she told herself. She had given up trying to capture beauty, but she loved it with the soul of her.

In the car the woman spoke for the first time. “Who is the patient?”

“Mr. Dunn,” answered Cynthia.

“He is a planter, of course?”

“Yes, he has been out only a short time. He is not married. There is no one with him.”

The woman looked at Cynthia out of the corner of her eye. Cynthia felt it. She wondered if the woman thought that she meant no native woman lived with Gad. She did not know that herself. Suddenly it occurred to her that she knew nothing about Gad.

Climbing the hills, she put her sweater on again.

“How good this breeze feels,” the nurse said. “I am glad to get away from the city for awhile.”

The car seemed so slow in making the ascent. Cynthia’s reason told her that it was mounting as fast as any car could, but to her impatience it seemed loaded with lead. She made the most of every short down-grade she came to. There were the gardens at last. The little watch said three o’clock. The planters were taking their siesta. The droning of the coolies was the only sound one could hear. No animal called. No bird sang,—just that sing-song buzzing under the hot sun. She swung up the road leading to Gad’s house. The chicks were down. How cool and dark it must be inside—this glare was so dazzling. The Airedale was in the verandah.

“Darling, you have made a record run!” He drew her to him. She patted his cheek and moved away.

“Miss Bailey, this is Mr. Quaren.” The nurse seemed impressed. All that section of the country was called Quaren’s Gardens—and this was Quaren, the man whom people called the Airedale.

She bowed and murmured something about the peace of the hills after the noisy utterances of the city.

“The doctor told me to keep away because of infection, and here you are,” said Cynthia, smiling as the Airedale pulled the chick to one side for the nurse to enter.

“Your patient is here,” he said, leading the nurse to a room from which strange sounds were coming. “He is delirious,” he volunteered, by way of explanation.

Over the nurse’s shoulder Cynthia saw a scarred face in which the colour was deepening every moment. It was almost copper-coloured now. The nurse bent over the sufferer for a moment and then returned to the other room. Her manner had changed. The perfect mouth was set. The professional woman spoke.

“Where shall I change?” she asked, picking up her case.

“Here is your room.” The Airedale opened a door. She entered the room at once and closed the door.

“There is no nonsense about her,” he said, looking at the closed door.

“Certainly not about her work,” Cynthia agreed.

“We are not needed here. I think we would only be in her way. Let us go.” He took her hand and they passed through the chick.

“I shall be glad to get cool once more,” she said as she climbed into the motor, leaving the wheel to him. “I feel as if I had been baked.”

“What a darling you are, Cyn. Gad has a whole lot to thank you for. This damn black-water fever works so fast. The first paroxysm does not last so long,” he went on. “But there is relapse after relapse in most cases.”

“I had a notion that it was something awful,” she said. “I really know very little about sickness. That is the reason I rushed for the nurse, and not because I was told to keep away because of infection.”

“You look all worn out. I am going to put you to bed and tell you the story that I promised you once, if you are a good girl.” He put his arm around her and guided the car with one hand.

“About the tiger?”

“Yes.”

She was glad of his mood. It was the mood of the father loving his child. She wanted it when she was weary. She would feel the touch of its soft contours, she would watch the play of its delicate colours, its voice would whisper to her of cool green meadows where Dusk with blue-veiled arms fans tired children to sleep.

*  *  *

Peace lay bare in the room. The shutters were closed. Through the doorway came a soft breeze from the hills bringing with it the scent of mimosa. The Airedale’s chair was drawn up to Cynthia’s bed. He stroked her hand. His glance touched her tenderly. He told her the old folk tale of his jungle home.

“A tiger and crab,” he began, “met one day and discussed the advisability of living near each other. After much looking about they found a place, which was mutually suitable, and settled down. They lived in peace for some time. No wild animals would molest the crab knowing he had the tiger’s protection. When the tiger killed a deer he always divided it fairly with the crab. One day the crab told the tiger that he was tired of eating meat every day and suggested a vegetable diet. The tiger said that he would be quite willing to eat vegetables for a while. The crab then proposed that the tiger should go to the village and get some rice plants. The tiger obtained the plants while the crab ploughed the field for the planting. In due time the plants yielded rice. When the rice had been gathered the crab said: ‘We cannot eat only rice. Let us plant some vegetables also. And you, friend,’ the crab continued, ‘had better go to the village and get the plants.’ The tiger brought back corn and aubergines. When the corn was ready for reaping the crab said, ‘Friend, I will take the top and leave you the bottom.’ The tiger took the stubble without complaint. When it was time to pluck the aubergines the tiger said: ‘Friend, which will you have, the seed or the plants?’ The crab took the seed, while the plants were left for the tiger. When the division had been made the tiger invited the crab to dinner. He cooked the stubble and the plants and placed them before the crab. The crab made a pretense of eating the stuff. He never returned the compliment by asking the tiger to dine with him. The tiger felt the slight and one day he said to the crab: ‘Friend, I have never had a meal with you.’

“‘I have been thinking for a long time of asking you to dinner,’ said the crab, ‘but you know my place is so small I did not feel that I could entertain you properly. However, if you do not mind the lack of space, I would like to have you come to dinner with me tomorrow.’

“The tiger said that he would be delighted to dine with the crab. The crab boiled the rice and made a delicious curry with the corn and aubergines. When the tiger arrived the crab asked him if he would mind sitting outside, as there was really not enough room within. The tiger sat down outside. The crab carried out the curry. The tiger finished it in one mouthful. The crab grew frightened. He said to himself: ‘There is no trusting a tiger. If he is not satisfied he will think nothing of eating me,’ and he contrived a plan. ‘Friend,’ he said, ‘I am tired of carrying out the curry. Would you mind putting your tail in the doorway and I will tie the dishes to it.’ The tiger did as the crab requested, but no sooner was his tail in the crab’s house, than the crab squeezed it so hard, the tiger could not extricate it. The tiger began to roar but the crab would not let go. Fortunately, the tiger saw a farmer ploughing in a field nearby. ‘Please help me to get my tail out,’ he called. ‘I cannot,’ the farmer replied, ‘for you are a tiger, and as soon as you are free you will eat me.’ Finally, the tiger convinced him that he would not harm him. ‘If you get me out of this hole,’ he said, ‘I will bring you a deer every day.’ The farmer chopped the tail off and freed the tiger. The tiger thanked him and said: ‘I will get you a deer each day, but if you tell any one I will come and carry you away.’ The tiger kept his word and supplied the deer every day. After a time the farmer became ill and his mother called in the fortune-teller. The fortune-teller said that he would recover if a feast were given to his friends and relatives. So the tiger was asked to bring two deer instead of one.

“On the day of the feast it was found that they were short one banana leaf to serve the meat on. One of the guests went into the garden to get the leaf, and while there he saw a large pile of bones. He returned without cutting the leaf and informed the guests that the host was in the habit of eating some forbidden food, the bones of which were piled in the garden. They would not eat anything, but went out to the garden and found the story to be true. They then went to the bedside of the sick man and told him that unless he told them where the bones came from they could not touch food in his house. ‘Friends,’ he said, ‘be assured that the bones you have seen come from no food forbidden by the Shastras; but I am sorry I can tell no more. If I do a tiger will carry me off.’ The guests insisted upon hearing the full story and promised to surround him with spears and lances so that the tiger could not reach him. Overcome by their pleading, he knelt down beside the bed and told the whole story. No sooner had he finished than the tiger sprang upon him from no one knew where, and carried him off. The guests were much surprised and searched for him for some time. In the meantime the tiger carried him to the forest. As luck would have it, his stomach began to rumble. The tiger asked him:

“‘What is the matter with your stomach?’

“’When I was a little boy,’ he answered, ‘my mother gave me one hundred and fifty crabs to eat. A few came out some time ago; the remaining number are coming out now.’” The tiger, at the mention of crabs, was seized with panic.

He thought what one crab had almost done for him. What would a number do? He left the farmer and ran for his life.

“We then had to return, for our clothes had to be sent to the wash.”

“What in the world do you mean by that?” asked a sleepy voice.

“It is with that nonsensical phrase that the Assamese always end their tales, darling.”

Chapter XXVI

The Ones Who Count

“Next to Mummy and Daddy, I love you better than anybody,” Bobby told Cynthia. She was lying on a long chair in the verandah, Bobbie’s head rested on her lap. He kicked his legs into the air. His long-lashed eyes were fairly dancing with mischief. She coiled strands of his hair round her finger, bunching them into loose curls.

“Do I look like a girl?” he asked.

“Never, Bobby. You could not, even with curls.”

“I wish Mummy would cut it off. Perhaps she would, if you asked her. Will you?” He caught her hand and placed it against his cheek.

“But Mummy loves your hair, dear.”

“Let her get me a sister. She can have curls, but I am a boy.”

“Would you like a sister, Bobbie?”

“I would like some one to play with.”

Cynthia ~put her arms round him and kissed him. That was the tragedy of the planter’s child. Bungalows were far apart. Parents had no time to take the children about to play. When there was but one child it led a lonely life.

“Have you any children, Auntie Cyn?”

“Yes, darling, I have three.”

“Where are they?”

“They are in Assam.”

“Are they girls?”

“Two are boys and one is a girl.”

“Have they curls?”

“I am not quite sure.”

“Oh you funny, funny Auntie! Mummy!” Norah came out of the sitting-room where she had been busy with a durzi.

“Yes, Bobbie, what is it?”

“Auntie Cyn does not know if her children have curls.”

“Does she not? Cyn, dear, will you come in for a minute and look at my frock? It is such a rag, and I have tried to explain to that fool durzi just how to make it.” Cynthia stood Bobbie on his feet and followed Norah inside. “Look, did you ever see such a botch?” Norah took the dress from the durzi and held it up before Cynthia.

“Let me fit it on you, Norah. I think I see what is the matter.” Norah slipped off her blouse and skirt and Cynthia put the voile “creation” over her head.

“I see. It is not cut properly. One side is wider than the other.”

“Better chuck it and try again?” Norah looked disappointed.

“Oh, dear, no! Take it off. I can fix it.”

“You old dear,” said Norah, slipping out of the dress. “These tea-garden durzis never know a thing.”

Cynthia sat down and started ripping. The durzi looked helpless.

“I will cut this properly and then show you how to sew it,” she told him.

“Yes, Mem-sahib.” He sat down on the floor and crossed his legs, his eyes looking into vacancy. Norah was turning over the pages of a fashion-book.

“I wanted it like this,” she said, pointing to one of the illustrations. “I wish I could help, Cyn, but we can’t both rip at once.”

She sat down on the sofa and watched Cynthia as she bent over the work. “That old blond devil of an Ingalls was right,” was her mental comment. “She certainly is a stunner.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you were a beauty, Cyn?” she asked, punching dents in a sofa cushion.

“I have never paid much attention to remarks along that line, silly.”

“I was reminded of the fact the other day by some one.”

“Whom?”

“Ingalls.”

“I have an idea that his opinion is not worth much,” said Cynthia, smoothing out the voile on the table preparatory to recutting it.

“She is certainly not blessed with good looks,” Norah allowed, holding one end of the cloth steady for the approach of the scissors which Cynthia was using.

“She is blessed with money, though, I am told; and that makes a great appeal in some cases.”

“He hadn’t a rupee when he first came out here,” went on the breezy informant. “He picked her up in Australia, where he went on business for the Airedale. I think he must have put on plenty of side during the courtship, for you never saw such astonishment as she showed when she came out here and had a look at his ‘digs.’ Gibbs said she was for going back at once, but the Airedale sold them that garden, and she had the present house built as soon as the lumber and bricks could be hustled to the spot.”

“It looks like a quick job—at least from the outside.”

“Been inside?”

“No.”

“Going?”

“I have no idea.” Cynthia recalled the woman who had come to see her out of curiosity—that conventional creature with her spiritual vulgarity. “I make few friends, dear,” she said. “And I have you.”

“Right-o, me darlint,” and the wisp of Irish joyousness stood up and let Cynthia drape the cloth on her.

“It is quite all right now. I will baste it and give it to the old boy to sew.” Cynthia sat down with needle and thread.

The Bearer entered with a tea tray. Norah filled the cups and placed one on the sewing machine near Cynthia.

“Do stop long enough for this, dear,” she said, dropping some sugar into the cup. “Here is Bobbie’s milk.” She took a silver mug off the tray. “I wonder where he is now.” She opened the chick and called him. From somewhere in the compound he answered her:

“Coming, Mummy.” He came in looking flushed. He threw his topee on the sofa and sat under the punka. “My head is hot,” he said. “My curls are wet, Auntie Cyn.” He held one eye with his finger and winked the other one at Cynthia. “Can you wink without your finger, Auntie Cyn?”

Cynthia raised her eyes from her sewing and winked at him. He laughed and clapped his hands.

“That is just the way Uncle Gad does it, only he has a sore face. I wonder if it hurts him to wink. Mummy,” he turned to Norah, “when will Uncle Gad be better?”

“No one knows that, Bobbie. We must wait and see. Is the Airedale staying with Gad nights, Cyn?” asked Norah, taking the sewing from Cynthia and putting the cup in her hand.

“Yes. The nurse must have some sleep. We wanted to have another nurse, but some sort of epidemic has broken out in the barracks, and all the nurses that could be spared from the hospital have gone over to nurse the soldiers.”

“She needs more than sleep. She needs time off for exercise. If it were not for Bobbie—”

“Do not worry, dear. I telephoned her today about that, and I am going over tomorrow morning to relieve her.”

“I might have known you would go.”

“Have you seen much of Gad, Norah?”

“I know him—pretty well. Of course he hates women—and that puts up a barrier.”

‘Why do you suppose he hates women?”

“From some awful experience he has had with them—with one, perhaps.”

“The experience which makes men hate women has something big in it.”

“I suppose it is better than the experience which makes them despise and condemn.”

“Much better, for there is hope left.”

“Do you think he could love some day?”

“Certainly, dear, if he can hate. Hate and love grow on one tree. If we can reach the branch, we can pluck both blossoms.”

“Could you hate any one, Cyn?”

“I never have—but I can love.”

“You mean, then, that you could hate.”

“I could.”

“Now that you have reached the branch, if the love-blossom withers you would pluck the other one?”.

“The love-blossom never withers. Sometimes it is snatched from one’s hand and crushed.”

“You could hate the hand that crushes it?”

“Yes; but never the hand that could not reach the branch.” Norah had no answer to this bit of wisdom.

“And now if that durzi will get up off the floor and leave off teaching Bobbie how to do tricks with a piece of string, I will show him how to sew this thing,” Cynthia announced.

“Durzi, the Mem-sahib is ready for you now.” Cynthia placed the garment on the table and showed him how to proceed.

“Yes, yes. Mem-sahib, I can do it now.”

“It is to be hoped so,” said Cynthia, picking threads off her dress.

“You are an angel.” Norah put her arm around Cynthia and gave her a hug. “I wish you were my sister.”

“What difference would that make?”

“Well, I suppose it would not make any. You are just as good as you are.”

“Mummy, I wish you would get me a sister, and then you could cut my hair off.”

“I don’t see the connection, do you, Cyn?”

“Yes. He told me that you might cut his hair off if I asked you to. He is willing to have a tousled sister if he can be shorn.”

“It is quite an idea,” said Norah, laughing.

“Mummy, Auntie Cyn does not know if her children have curls or not.”

“So you remarked once before this afternoon,” Norah answered patiently. “Has Auntie Cyn been telling you a new fairy story?” She looked inquiringly at Cynthia.

“Were they only make-believe children?” she asked.

“No, dear, they are really truly.”

“What are you driving at, Cyn?” Norah was frankly puzzled.

“Have you not heard of the Airedale’s three children who are in the Home?”

“You mean the half——”

“Yes.”

“Cynthia!”

“I am going to take them out when I go back, and give them a chance.”

“It takes you to do a thing like that, Cyn. We are all dwarfs beside you.” She held Cynthia’s face between her hands. Tears clung to her Irish lashes. “I know why people love you, people who count,” she said. “I knew it before—but now I know it more.”

*  *  *

Walking home in the pink dusk, Cynthia thought of those whom love enthralls—-those born to be the favourites or the dupes of love. There were moments when she had been intoxicated with love. She thought of the day on the train when she was approaching Assam. Love had made her dizzy. Her mind had reeled deliciously. Such drunkenness was condemned by little men and women. They pointed fingers at it and gave it a wide berth in passing. Chance encounters with it enabled them to spew the dirt from their souls. They would befoul it with their poison. And why? Because deep down under their evil natures they envied the passion that could hurl its divinity into the maelstrom. Gad had passed out of the tropics of love into hate’s cold region. Reason could not beacon him to the temperate zone, for he had smelt the white flower of splendid madness, and its fragrance still clung to him.

She had told Norah that she could hate. She could, where she had loved intensely. It was the other side of the shield. Love never changed his name to Habit. That was Passion’s metamorphosis. There was Babs, possessed of an ambition that was but another name for despair. Her soul had none of the harmony that ruled her body. The harmony of her body was but an empty something. It forced her hands to certain tasks. She wanted the power to pass some dream into an epic and have it grow rigid and eternal. To what use was this smearing of stale passion across canvas? If life could only preserve its great heat for posterity! But it could not. The fire burnt out ere it could be handled. The dreamer tired of his dream; he sucked it dry, before he left it for others. And Babs had asked her to gather up these dried pods from her own life and leave them behind’. How selfish! How useless! Let each one have his dream, and let him exult in it while it is warm!

Chapter XXVII

Cynthia Is Alarmed

“Lie still, Carin, and stop screaming. He cannot hurt you. Oh God, my face! You fiend! Her husband? What do you mean? How did you manage to hide in my room? . . . What, Carin? . . . Money? . . . A settlement, you say? And you . . . Oh, Christ, I see it now. . . . I will claw the heart out of her lying breast. Oh, my face! . . .”

Cynthia changed the towel on Gad’s head. She took away the hot pillow and replaced it with one that had been cooling under the punka. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“I am so sorry for you,” she said.

Somewhere in his brain her words beat against a little sane thought.

“What is the matter with me? Who are you?”

“You are sick. I am Cynthia Conway.”

“Oh, yes, I have the jaundice.” The moment of sanity passed. He was delirious again.

“So her name is Conway, is it? Poor old Airedale! She will let him down. They always let a man down, damn them. What a rotten deal to give the Airedale.”

Gad’s tongue was unleashed. His words, born on wild nights of brooding, poured forth. There was something metallic and rasping in his voice. The awful silence of his lonely days was shattered. His burning eyes were fixed upon Cynthia, but he did not see her.

She went out of the room. She could do nothing for him until time for his medicine. The nurse had gone out for a walk.

The door of her room was slightly ajar. Cynthia pushed it open and walked in. There was a bunch of Mimosa on the table. The bed looked austere and narrow, like the straight line of a nun’s robe. The photograph of a young man was propped up on the dresser. It bore some resemblance to the nurse. He might be her brother. Cynthia moved closer to the dresser. No, he was not her brother. It was the Eurasian mark that had called up the resemblance, that unmistakable mark which placed the tortured ego between two worlds.

She went into the living-room. It smelt strongly of antiseptics. She was not used to the odour of sickness. Its pungent assertiveness disgusted her. Here was another room. She entered a dim doorway and looked about. The window shades were drawn and the shutters were closed. When her eyes became accustomed to the darkness a shabby collection of junk rose to meet her. Pieces of ugly furniture were piled on top of each other. An imitation leather sofa oozed its stuffing. A cheap plaster bust with a broken nose rested on a battered wash-stand. A bunch of sentimental pictures leaned against the wall. Evidently Gad had gathered up all the trash that he found scattered about the house and thrown it into this room. The furniture seemed to be tucked away with a desire to hide its infirmities, but the sentimental pictures had been flung against the wall with a ruthless hand. It was as if a voice said: “Let me see no more of this stuff about” Poor Gad! One catches the character of a person in his living-rooms, the rooms that witness his daily pleasure and misery, but it was in this forlorn store-room that Gad exposed the person he had become.

“I will find something to read,” thought Cynthia, as she re-entered the living-room. He had plenty of books. Bookcases, evidently the work of a tea-garden carpenter, lined the walls. She took down several books on animals. They did not interest her. She put them back. There were books on architecture, birds, botany. She was not in the humour for them. Hidden away, in the dust behind two large volumes, she found the “Poems of Hafiz.” She took it out and dusted it on the carpet. To read it, she sat where she could see into his room. He was asleep now. She turned the pages slowly. They had known much reading. Did he care for poetry? What was this?—marked with blue pencil:

“Wash white the pages! In no book
Love’s rule is written. Wherefore look
Not in my words for Flattery; nor dare
To claim me as thy rightful share.
Traced on my brow is Love—Fate wrote it there.”

In the last line Love was crossed out and hate was written in its place.

The book dropped into her lap. She folded her hands and stared through an opening in the chick. The gate was in her line of vision. An acacia grew beside it. Its lacy branches waved in the breeze. The road looked hot and white. Nothing seemed to be moving on it. Perhaps Gad often sat where she was now. No doubt he watched the acacia and the white road while he let himself out to hatred. If something would only bring him freedom! She wondered how old his grief was. What brought freedom to such a man? . . .

Not another woman and her love. There are men who experience the trinity but once. Love comes to them as death and birth. Sometimes religion steps in and teaches them to cherish all mankind. Frequently, the reformer is a man who was disappointed in his one great concentration.

She heard the click of the gate. The nurse was coming in. Cynthia placed her finger on her lips. The nurse pushed the chick to one side without making the least noise.

“Asleep?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Cynthia whispered back. “He has been asleep for some time.”

The nurse opened the door of her room and beckoned. She offered Cynthia a chair.

“We can talk in here,” she said; “it will not disturb him.”

“How much longer do you suppose the delirium will last?” asked Cynthia.

“Not much longer. This is his third relapse. I thought we were in for it last night; hiccoughs set in. I was asleep. Mr. Quaren called me. He knows a lot about black-water fever, so naturally he was alarmed at the hiccoughs. We had the doctor here in ten minutes. I stayed up the rest of the night.”

“He has been very delirious this morning,” said Cynthia. “I was glad when he dropped off to sleep.”

“There is nothing to worry about now, Mrs. Quaren. He would have died during the second relapse if he were not going to recover.”

“So they have not been talking to her,” thought Cynthia at being addressed as Mrs. Quaren. “Or is it because she has had no opportunity to meet them.”

“My name is Conway,” she said. “I am not Mr. Quaren’s wife.”

The Indian eyes searched her face for a moment, then continued their dream. Cynthia’s name did not interest their owner.

“Miss Conway,” the professional began, “I have just seen Mr. Quaren up at the new clearing. I understand that he was there yesterday and the day before. He stays up all night here. This should stop. The first thing you know he will be down with something himself.”

“Thank you,” said Cynthia. Gratitude rang in the two little words.

“How thoughtless I have been,” she was telling herself. “I shall come myself after this. My poor darling out in the hot sun all day, and coming over here all night. What a fool I have been. I have no brains at all.”

“I am going along now, nurse,” she said, getting up, “but I shall come back tonight.” She tiptoed out into the living-room. A glance over her shoulder told her that Gad was still sleeping.

*  *  *

The Airedale was washing, getting ready for tiffin, when she arrived at the bungalow. He did not look tired. Fatigue had made no inroads as yet on his splendid vitality. Cynthia went to him and put her arms about his neck.

“I am the most selfish old thing in the world,” she said, with her head against his khaki shirt.

“Are you? I have never noticed it.” He kissed her hair.

“Yes, and it needed a disinterested woman to call my attention to the fact.”

“If she were disinterested, why did she tell you such nonsense?”

“Because it is her profession to call people to account for their own good.”

“Who has been doing her duty now?”

“Gad’s nurse. She says that you cannot work all day and all night, too, and she is right. I should have known it.”

“I never felt so fit in my life, Cyn. That is a nurse’s line of talk. They all talk like that. They think it is expected of them. Don’t let her startle you.”

“Darling, she is right. I shall go to Gad’s tonight myself.”

“I will not hear of it, Cyn. I could not become tired if I tried. I am too happy.”

“I am just as happy as you are, so my mind is made up. Tiffin is ready. I suppose happiness has not deprived you of an appetite.”

They had tiffin inside. The verandah seemed to be lost in a white glare.

“We should be getting back to the jungle, dear,” he said when they were seated at the table.

“How can we go now?”

“That is just what I have been wondering. With Gibbs gone, and Gad sick, our escape looks rather uncertain. Jimmie is doing all he can. I cannot pile any more on him.”

“Have you heard from Assam lately?”

“Yes. I had a letter from Cooper, one of my foremen. He says that cholera has broken out in the coolie lines and there is the devil to pay.”

“What could you do if you were there?”

“Inoculate the coolies against cholera, and if they got it feed them a remedy of my own.”

“Cannot Cooper do that?”

“No. The coolies run away from him and burn candles before the cholera god.”

“Do they ever run away from you?”

“If they do, they know enough not to come back.”

“If Cooper cannot manage the situation in Assam, why not send for him to come here, and then we can leave.”

“It may come to that yet.”

The boy brought in a grilled chicken and some vegetables. Cynthia helped herself, but the Airedale waved them away.

“Let me have a little salad, Bearer, and the hard biscuits. I am not very hungry,” he said to Cynthia, by way of apology.

She looked distressed. The nurse must be right. The strain, although not apparent, must be telling on him. He ate the salad quickly and nibbled a biscuit or two. This finished, he pushed his chair back and got up.

“Cyn, darling, will you excuse me if I hustle right out again?” He bent down and kissed her.

“I suppose I must, but really I am worried about you. The sun is so hot at this time of the day.”

“That nurse has been putting notions in your head. I am a jungle wallah, dream-girl.” He knocked out his pipe, refilled it, and took up his topee.

“Allah protect you,” sang Cynthia as he slid through the chick.

*  *  *

‘He is not going to Gad’s any more to sit up nights,” Cynthia remarked to the mirror as she took the pins out of her hair. She threw on a white muslin thing without sleeves, and took off her shoes and stockings. She could never cool off, wearing shoes and stockings. Most women remove their corsets in order to be comfortable. Cynthia, not wearing such things, bared her feet. “I will sleep now,” she mused, “and then I shall be ready for tonight.” She closed the shutters and stretched out on the sofa in the drawing-room. A small coolie lying on his back on the bedroom floor pulled a drawing-room punka by a cord that was passed through a hole in the wall.

She was awakened by the Bearer coming in with the tea-tray. He drew the table up to the sofa, and filled her cup.

“The Sahib will not be home until well after sundown,” she said. “He works now while there is a ray of light.”

“Yes, Mem-sahib.”

“Give me some dinner early. I am going out.”

“Yes, Mem-sahib.” He disappeared with the noiseless footfall of his kind.

Chapter XXVIII

Colour-Blind

Gold streaked the far horizon. Night birds patched the near sky. Blue mist floated above the tea-gardens, as the huge white bells of the datura tolled the twilight hour.

Cynthia, a volume of Euripides under her arm, which she had snatched up with her hat just as she was leaving the bungalow, was climbing the hill that led to Gad’s house.

The beauty of the evening flamed about her and caused strange flowers to bloom in her garden of dreams.

A jackal slunk along in the bushes by the side of the road. She watched him and thought of people who grope along the edge of life frightened and lonely. She felt very sorry for them. They were Nature’s mistakes. At times their hearts were stirred, but they dared not come out in the open and declare themselves. There were people who lived close to each other, people big with curiosity, yet they lacked the power to discover each other’s needs. How joyless so many people were! If only some of the beauty and mystery of the perfect evening could seep into their lonely souls and gladden them!

Gad was half sitting up against two large pillows. The nurse stood over him with a bowl of soup. She was feeding him from a spoon. He looked inquiringly at Cynthia.

“This is Miss Conway, Mr. Dunn. She has come to take care of you tonight,” said the nurse in her even, sick-room tone.

“Miss Conway, let me thank you for what you have done for me. Dr. Tasker told me,” he said feebly.

“You are ever so much better this evening,” answered Cynthia, ignoring his thanks.

“Yes! There is no need to sit up with me. I can reach the medicine myself.”

“You are not as well as all that yet, Mr. Dunn,” warned the nurse, removing a pillow and changing his position to one more comfortable. Then, relenting because of the look in his eyes, she added: “Just one or two nights more and we shall leave you in peace.”

“What—a—beastly—nuisance—I—am—to—everyone,” he said, pausing after each word to gather breath for the next.

“I will give you your medicine now,” the nurse dropped some brownish liquid into a glass, “and you can sleep for four hours before we annoy you again. Tomorrow night,” she continued, “we shall not wake you to take the medicine.”

She turned the lights off and passed into the verandah with Cynthia.

“I never saw such a sudden change in anyone,” said Cynthia the moment they were alone. “This morning he was delirious and this evening he was propped up eating soup.”

“It is the way with black-water fever,” explained the nurse. “About four o’clock his temperature dropped to normal. He tried to ask me all sorts of questions. I stopped him, because he was too weak to talk. I telephoned the good news to the doctor and he came over and sat by the bedside for an hour.”

“Do you think he is out of danger now?”

“Yes, I am sure of it. The only thing he needs to guard against is catching cold after he gets up. Of course,” she further explained, “he will need rest and good feeding for a while.”

“We will take him over to our bungalow as soon as he can be moved,” Cynthia offered.

“I think he is the sort who likes to be alone.” The nurse’s observation went deep. “But for the present he must not be left to himself.”

“It will be some time before he can do any work again.” Cynthia’s statement carried a question.

“I am afraid so, Miss Conway. Black-water fever pulls one down so.”

“Mr. Quaren was talking with me today about getting a man here from Assam. There is trouble in the Assam gardens which needs Mr. Quaren’s attention. Do you think Mr. Dunn could travel?” Cynthia had a sudden idea.

“He will be able to travel pretty soon, and I think it might do him good.”

“Mr. Quaren cannot keep on as he is doing. It will kill him, and Mr. Dunn can convalesce just as well in Assam. I shall talk up the getting of the Assam man at once.”

“Mr. Quaren would take a lot of killing.” The nurse smiled. She was thinking of the Airedale’s physique. “But you are right in thinking that he cannot do the work of two men in this heat.”

Cynthia lit a cigarette and offered the nurse one. She took it and lapsed into silence on a long chair. Cynthia watched her puffing little whiffs of smoke into the darkness.

“How quickly the night penetrates everything,” she thought. Under the moonlight the nurse’s hair had lost its metallic lustre. It shimmered prettily. “Perhaps some man loves her and she is thinking of him. She has dropped the profession that she carries on her shoulders. There is something yielding about her. I wonder,” and Cynthia turned these thoughts over in her mind, “if she resents the touch of this land as most Eurasians do. How can one resent,” her mind leapt on, “these fumes of the East. How gladly I would welcome this mystic poetry, this primal joy of the jungle, this perfume of wine-dark roses, into myself.”

The nurse tossed her cigarette end over the railing and got up. “I am going to sleep now, Miss Conway,” she said. “It is not so late, but it is just as well to sleep when I can. Do not hesitate to call me if anything happens. He must have his medicine again at midnight. If he is asleep it will be necessary to wake him and see that he takes it. Good-night.”

“I will read for a while,” said Cynthia, following the nurse into the living-room and picking up Euripides. She returned to the verandah and turned up the light. She threw herself down on the chair the nurse had just vacated and opened the book at random. She read the words which the author had put into the mouth of Medea:

“Of all things that have life
And sense, we women are most wretched. First
With all our dearest treasures we must buy
A husband, and in him receive a lord.
A hardship this. A greater hardship yet
Awaits us. Here’s the question, if the lord
Prove gentle or a tyrant? If the worst,
To disunite our nuptials hurts our fame,
Nor from the husband may our sex withdraw
The plighted hand—
   If all our care
Gives us a gentle husband, one that binds
No galling yoke, happy our life indeed.
If not, death were more welcome.
   Yet will they say
We live an easy life, secure from danger
Whilst they hold the spear in battle.
Misjudging men! Thrice would I stand in arms
On the rough edge of battle, ere once bear
The pangs of child-birth.”

The words might have been written yesterday by a militant suffragette. Medea would welcome death if she could not have the husband “that binds no galling yoke.” No doubt she stood alone in her time, alone with women who bent beneath the yoke, too cowardly to damn the law and fling their defiance in the face of their captors. Sometimes women learned to love their captors, because out of the capture grew something fine. Cynthia liked the strength that dared to capture, when it was strength and not cowardice backed up by existing law. She tried to imagine Euripides; the man that stood behind the pen. What were his thoughts, the thoughts that he never wrote? What things had he conceived in love and lost in hatred? What unfulfilled dreams made him give himself to others? Did he ever strip his flesh off, and with his soul, contemplate the hidden something? After such madness, did he rush back to his flesh calling, “Let me live!” She thought of her own sleepless nights, nights of long ago when life pressed down upon her. She had fought it off with frightened hands, because, somehow, she had had a vague idea that she must. After that it had looked her steadily in the eyes, while she smiled in its face and stopped fighting. It rained no further blow on her soul; all was peace.

She turned the light off. It seemed to attract moths and mosquitoes. She fell to thinking of Assam. What would her life be like there? The Airedale had new deeds and ideas piled up in his brain awaiting the return to Assam. She would make no plans. She would take things as she found them. That scheme had worked in the south. She had called on none of the planters’ wives until they had made the advances. Some, she knew, came from curiosity, but she had met Norah, and that meant a lot. She would be very sorry to leave the romantic Norah. She compared the others with her. They had been acquaintances of a moment. She was a friend. Gad would return with them. He had been offering himself to solitude, and solitude had turned to rend him. He must be dragged from the clutches of such a mistress—at least for a while. She would talk to the Airedale about having Cooper come at once. With this thought her mind switched to the Airedale. What was he doing at this moment? No doubt he had been asleep for hours. He would not follow her in spite of his telling her he could not hear of her nursing Gad. When he arrived and found her gone he would know that she wished to do something for him, wished to make him a little gift. She knew he would accept it with grateful hands.

The night seemed to unite everything. Trees merged into trees, and hills seemed to slope into each other. All shapes blent. Nothing retained its own contour. The few palms near the verandah snapped their green fingers in the wind’s face. Somewhere in the garden a bul-bul sang. She turned the light on for a moment to look at her watch. It was eleven. An hour yet before she must wake Gad. Perhaps he was not asleep. She had been dreaming and forgetting him. She slipped off her shoes and stole into his room. She bent over the bed and listened. His regular breathing told her that he still slept. She went back for her shoes, then down into the compound. The moon shot out from behind a cloud and pointed to the lotus pool. What was beside it, something white and still? As she drew near she heard sobs coming from the white heap. An Indian woman was lying face downward in the grass. Cynthia raised her. The moonlight revealed the face of her own ayah.

“Silya, why did you come here?” she asked, supporting the girl, who seemed too weary to stand.

“Oh, Mem-sahib, I have traveled far tonight.”

“Why, Silya?”

“The story is not for thine ears, Mem-sahib.”

Cynthia sat down on the stone edge of the lotus-pool and pulled the girl down beside her.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “You are unhappy, and perhaps I can help you. Where have you been?”

“In the big temple. The temple of Siva.”

“But that is three villages from here.”

“’Tis far, Mem-sahib: but ’tis there I waved arati.”

“One can wave arati before any god. It simply keeps off the evil eye. The women wave it any day in any of the shrines here.”

“Thou speakest truly, Mem-sahib, but knowest thou that it is waved only by married women and temple girls?”

“And you are not married, Silya?”

“Oh, blame me not, Mem-sahib. I did listen to the words; they were as honey and sweet margosa leaves. They promised much, Mem-sahib.”

“Who spake them?”

“Oh lady, ’tis but the will of Siva, and my lord is gone.”

“Where has he gone?”

“Across the sea, Mem-sahib.”

“You must tell me his name at once.”

“’Twas Gibbs Sahib brought me the great gift, but now I grow unhappy.” Cynthia’s eyes filled with tears. She clutched the girl’s drooping figure.

“My mother saith the evil eye hath looked on me and all is misery in our house.”

“What are you doing here in this compound, Silya?”

“I know thou camest to nurse the sick Sahib, and I would be near thee.”

“Come up into the verandah with me; the dew is falling.”

She sat down on the floor beside Cynthia’s chair and rested her head against it.

“I wish you to answer some questions, Silya.”

“Mem-sahib has but to ask me,” Silya murmured in tones that were hopeless.

“Did you love Gibbs Sahib?”

“Yes, Mem-sahib.” Cynthia closed her hands with a fierce gesture.

“Did you live with him at the bungalow?”

“Yes, Mem-sahib. My mother sent me there. The Sahib gave her some gold money and a cow.”

“But now she says the evil eye has looked upon you?”

“She is old, Mem-sahib, and weeps much. The Sahib’s last present didst not please her.”

“What was it?”

“Two hundred rupees.”

“Do you know that the Sahib will bring back a Mem-sahib from his country?”

“Yes, Mem-sahib. He told me.” The sobbing started again. Cynthia patted the dark plaits that were coiled about the girl’s head.

“When is your time, Silya?”

“In four moons, Mem-sahib. The wise parivrajaka foretells a boy, and much more he foretells.”

“You mean the fortune-teller?”

“Yes.”

“What else does he say?”

“That the Sahib wilt not be happy with his Mem-sahib. She shalt have no son.”

“Are you glad the child is coming?”

“How shouldst I be, Mem-sahib? A woman must always be glad when a child is coming.” It was the ageless voice of the East.

“I want you to go home now, Silya; and you must sleep. No evil eye has looked upon you.”

“Art thou sure, Mem-sahib?” she asked, rising.

“I am very sure.”

The girl walked down the pathway and passed through the gate. Cynthia heard its sharp click as it swung back into position. It was time for Gad’s medicine. He was still sleeping. She put the drops in the glass and raised his head on her arm.

“I was having such a nice dream,” he murmured. “You, Miss Conway?” as he recognized Cynthia. “Thank you very much.” She withdrew her arm.

“I am sorry to disturb your nice dream, Mr. Dunn, but I must obey orders, as people always say when they do something unpleasant.”

“I can sleep again,” he said. “In fact the difficulty is to stay awake.” He turned over on his side and put his hand under his cheek as sleepy children do. The deep copper colour was fading from his skin. Cynthia turned the light off and left him.

Back in the verandah she wondered what she could do for Silya. There was a little hut down by the devil-temple that was not occupied. It could not cost very much; she would see in a day or two. She could send the woman something every month. A small amount would seem a fortune to the poor thing. All the village would rally round her when they discovered that she could live without working. Her mother would be first to say that the god had blessed her. Cynthia knew that.

The Indians do not care to have their women mix too seriously with the Europeans, but when it is done, they shut their eyes to the consequences, if the vanishing Sahib (he usually vanishes from them into proper matrimony) leaves them provided for. Gibbs had overlooked this last expectation. Evidently he had given nothing but the gold and the cow, which the old woman could not resist, and the niggardly two hundred rupees at the end.

She thought of the planters’ bodies, washed and warmed and taken out to mischief. They knew the linen that touched them more intimately than the lives they ruined. Some day the earth would touch them as intimately as the linen. Her mind halted on this thought. There was something so sad about it all. She could see into those graves where the planters lay. Poor dead bodies—poor colour-blind things. From above the graves she heard the hideous rattling chant of the ghost that had pursued them:—“Take black while you wait for white!” A ghoulish laugh pounced upon the end of the chant. What made white more valuable than black? It was the most valuable of all colours. Not only black, but brown, yellow and red must bow before its purity. The planters could not acquire this greatest of all shades until they made ready for its reception. With a setting that could not sully its spotlessness, with every scrap of black and brown removed from their pathway, they went forward to meet the master-colour. And they could not be blamed. It had always been done. It always would be done, until some new voice called to them out of the darkness.

The whole space of heaven was blazing with stars. The moon had grown in strength, and now each tree stood out alone. The tea-bushes trailed up and down the hills, cupping their leaves for the moon-rays. What a scene! It looked like a huge painted picture. But one must not lose one’s heart to it, for its peace was an illusion. It has looked upon the horror of unfathomable pain and kept its serenity. She thought of the beauty of that early evening which she would have captured for the unhappy. What was it? More illusion. Big-limbed misery lurked under its gold and pink.

She walked home in the dawn. A fresh breeze was blowing. It felt like a breeze that had slept all night on the sea. Life was beginning in the Indian village. She had given Gad his second dose of medicine at four. When she had left his room, she met the nurse fully dressed.

“I must relieve you now, Miss Conway,” she had said. “I went to bed so early. I had a wonderful sleep. Do take a nap on the sofa in the living-room, and I will get you some breakfast later.”

She had refused. She could not sleep. Her body nagged her to action. In the fresh morning breeze life looked hopeful again. Something within her spoke of riches, of the ultimate riches of heart and soul. Life had new messages that she was making ready to deliver. How kind life had been to her. She would be grateful at least for her own favours. While wishing something for others, one cannot ignore the good that had come to one’s self. The saddest of all sad things had never been her lot. It had not been left to her imagination to build up something that would take the place of love. Her nature was founded upon happiness. She had only seen despondency in flashes.

Her face was smiling and her heart was glad when she arrived at the bungalow. All was silent about the place. She opened the bedroom door just far enough to see in. The Airedale was asleep. She took off her hat and shoes in the drawing-room, and stretched out on the couch. She was ready to sleep now, for she had straightened things out a little in her mind.

Chapter XXIX

Less than Dust

“It is not a bad little hut,” said Norah, as she ducked her head at the low door and stepped out into the road.

“There is a stove,” called Cynthia, who was still inside.

“There is always a stove, my dear; those wretched cowdung-burning things. Are you coming?”

Cynthia emerged. “Where did you say we could find this man Singh, Norah?”

“At the general shop. He owns it. He owns a lot of property in the hills.”

“Come, let us tackle him.” They got into the car and started for the village. “How much do you think I should pay for the thing?” asked Cynthia, trying to steer clear of the holes in the road.

“Not one anna over five hundred rupees.”

“There are four rooms, Norah, and quite a decent bit of land at the back.”

“Yes, I know, but it is a mud-plastered thing, and there is only the land that goes with the usual native huts—enough for a few vegetables, perhaps.”

“Well, here we are; we shall soon know.” Cynthia stopped the car before the general shop, which was also the Post Office. Rooms upstairs housed the undertaker, and beside him, not seeing anything ludicrous in the crudely-painted signs that hung one above the other, a taxidermist had established himself.

“We have just received some silk from Madras,” said the Indian, coming towards them from the shadowy rear of the shop.

“Never mind that now,” said Cynthia, stroking a cat that was lying on the counter. “I wish to talk to you about the hut down by the devil temple.”

“It is a native hut.” His eyes glittered with surprise.

“I would like to purchase it, if it is not too expensive. I understand that it is for sale.” Cunning chased the surprise from his eyes. He spread out his hands before him, palms downward. Cynthia knew the gesture. It was the prelude to the usual Indian harangue.

“My brother owned all that property by the devil temple—” he began.

“Yes, yes, but you own it now,” Norah cut in.

“I have owned it for five years.”

“What are you asking for the hut?” said Cynthia impatiently.

“This is such a sudden question, Madam.”

“Not at all. Every one knows that it is for sale. You could not sell it without someone asked the price.” The Memsahib was not to be put off. He changed his tactics.

“But, Madam, it is seldom that a European wishes to buy a native hut.” He had his reasons for not wishing to sell the place to her, and chief among them was a vision of the Airedale extending his gardens, ever extending, until in time he would own all the hill property.

“Does Mr. Quaren wish some head coolie to live there, Madam?” He brought his face near to Cynthia. Impudence spread all over it. She stepped back.

“I wish it myself. Mr. Quaren has nothing to do with it. He does not suspect my desire to have it.” At this last he smiled and rubbed his hands together. He was ready to bargain.

“Some day that property will be very valuable.” His voice was blowing across her now like a breeze. He was the affable Eastern who thinks that the next trick is in his own hand.

“What is the price?” The four words sounded irritable.

“Let me see.” He touched his forehead.

“Very well, you think about it, and while you are thinking Miss Conway can look about for something else. There are any number of native huts to be had. Come along, Cyn.” Norah started for the door. She knew the Indian, and she knew the only method to use if they were to receive an answer before sundown.

“Just a moment, Madam Best. I think we can come to some satisfactory arrangement.” He took a few steps after Norah.

“Then state your price. Miss Conway cannot stay here all day.”

“Seeing that Miss Conway wants it for herself, I shall make the price very small. I will let you have it for eight hundred, Miss Conway.”

“I will not pay that for it,” said Cynthia. “I will not go beyond five hundred. If you will take that amount you can telephone to me, otherwise the matter is closed.”

The upshot of it was that Cynthia got it for five hundred before she left. From somewhere in the shop of all professions, trades and necessities, a lawyer came who made out a deed in her name, which she put in her purse in exchange for the five hundred.

“What a tiresome old ass,” she said when they were again seated in the car.

“They are all like that, Cyn, when they have anything to sell.”

“The wonder to me is that they ever sell anything. Sometimes I think that they like the bargaining and talk as much as the money they get.”

“Never!” Norah was emphatic. “They love money. It is their real god.”

“Speaking of money, Norah, I shall send you a hundred rupees every month. Would you mind giving it to Silya?”

“Righto! She will feel like a queen with that much.”

“Do you think it will be enough for her—with the child?”

“My dear, have you any idea what the average Indian gets?—and he must support his family.”

“I know it is very little.”

“Yes, but it is enough. Before he can have any more he must be taught how to spend it, or at least how to save it properly.”

“I thought that saving was what they all were interested in.”

“Hoarding, you mean. They bury their money, if they have anything over, under the floors of their huts. They distrust banks. If any member of the family is sick, do you think that they pull the money out from where it is buried? No, indeed,” she answered herself. “They go out and beg. They pretend that they haven’t an anna.”

“Poor things, how I pity them!”

“So do I, Cyn. But what can we do with them? They are children.”

“Children they may be, but we take advantage of them in all sorts of ways. Look what our men do to their women.”

“Yes, it is shocking, but these Indian women run after the Sahibs. I have seen it myself.”

“Well, supposing they do? The Sahibs, knowing that they are children, should treat them as such. Children should not be discarded. They should be cared for.”

“The average Sahib provides something. Gibbs is a cad.”

“My dear Norah, a few rupees cannot obliterate heartache and sorrow.”

“There are women who have no heartache if the amount they receive is large enough.”

“That is true, and they are not always Indian.” Cynthia’s mind had gone back to Laura, the respectable wife, whose idea of life with the man she called her husband was confinement in a jungle. She knew that Laura was happy at last, preaching morality from a distance. She lived as she wished, and her virginity was safe.

“How can you love one wicked planter?” Norah had become roguish.

“I love them all.”

“Promiscuous.”

“They are not to blame. Imagine a man coming out here with not very much within himself that he can call upon when he is lonely. He works out in the hot gardens all day. Nights, he returns to his lonely bungalow, or he plays cards at some other fellow’s place. This program may do for the first few months. Then he becomes restless. He looks about for something else to do—and he does it.”

“What is to be done, Cyn?”

“Let men bring out the women of their own race in the first place. If they do not, and mix with these Indian women, let them stand by their guns, recognize their children and share their homes with the mothers of them.”

“Men are not paid enough to bring women out with them in the first place.”

“Then if the Indian woman is good enough to share all their hardship, she is good enough to come in for a little of their success. This idea of entering matrimony over a bridge of wrecked women, just because they are of a different colour, should not be encouraged. The trouble is that the world paves the way for marriage, but not for love. The wrong is not with the men and women themselves, but with the notions they try to live up to.”

Gad was lying on the couch in the drawing-room. Bobbie was sitting beside him on the floor.

“How did you get here?” asked Norah, pushing the child’s damp hair off his brow.

“The ayah brought me. Daddy is not coming home to tiffin, and neither is Uncle Airedale.”

“Did Daddy telephone?”

“Uncle Airedale telephoned. First he tried to telephone to Auntie Cyn.”

“Did you come over here to tell Auntie Cyn?”

“That was some of the reason, but I thought Auntie Cyn might like us to tiffin.”

“Bobbie!”

Gad laughed. Cynthia took the imp on her lap.

“You know how I love to have you and Mummy come to tiffin.”

“I told him,” one chubby finger pointed to Gad, “all about your children in Assam.”

“Did you, dear? I am so glad. Uncle Gad will see them very soon. He is going to Assam with us.”

“Are you coming back here again?” the child questioned.

“Some day, Bobbie, but not right away.”

“Not until I am a big boy?”

“I hope I shall see you again before you have grown too old to remember me.”

“I will never forget you, Auntie Cyn. I can write now. I know how to spell plenty words. I will write letters to you.”

The Bearer came in to say that tiffin was ready. In the bungalow tiffin was never delayed. It was served at one o’clock every day, no matter what happened. If there were one or several persons with Cynthia at the time, plates went on the table for all. At first, Cynthia had been greatly impressed by the resourcefulness of her servants. How they always happened to have food enough had been a mystery to her. Now she accepted it as a matter of course.

“Do not get up, Mr. Dunn,” she said, as Gad, with difficulty, was attempting to rise. “Mullan will bring you something in here.”

“Thank you, Miss Conway, but I must use my legs if I am to get any life into them. They feel like lumps of lead, and besides,” he continued, “if I am going to Assam with you, I must get the hang of myself again.”

“What do you mean, Uncle Gad?” asked Bobbie, his blue eyes distended with astonishment.

“I mean, son, that I must get acquainted with myself all over again. I have had a rest from living, and now I must begin to live again.” A pallor swept over his face, softening, for the moment, the yellow tints left by the disease. His mouth looked stern. It was a fighting mouth, but it was not without charm. Cynthia tried to imagine how it would have looked if its fight had been different.

“Coming back to life is not a pleasure for him,” Cynthia told Norah later. The Irish Norah, packed full of superstition and “presentments,” had her own notion about Gad.

The Bearer brought cold soup in cups.

“Auntie Cyn, are you having ice-cream today?” Bobbie held his soup-spoon ready, if the dessert proved uninteresting.

“Yes, Mem-sahib,” the Bearer spoke up, “there is peach ice-cream.” Down went the spoon into the saucer.

“I don’t like soup,” Bobbie announced.

“Very well, leave it,” said Norah, “but the ice-cream does not come any sooner because you refuse to eat what is before you.”

“It can come sooner,” said Cynthia, smiling into the merry eyes of the child beside her.

“No, Cyn,—please.”

Norah never gave in to him. She did not vent irritability upon him, as many women do when they lose patience with their children, but in a quiet way she insisted upon obedience.

“Mummy is right,” said Cynthia. “There is some nice curry and salad coming in a minute.”

“Are mothers always right?” Bobbie dipped his spoon in the soup and took a sip.

“They usually know what is best for little boys.”

“Do your children have ice-cream when they want it?”

“When I go back to Assam they shall have ice-cream—whenever it is good for them.”

Gad was looking at Cynthia’s head as it bent over the table. Her eyes were lowered. “The magic of this woman is not in her beauty,” he was thinking, “although that is undeniable. Nor is it in her conversation, nor yet in accomplishments. I scarcely think it is in that spirit that makes her throw convention under her feet and step on it. I believe it lies in her passion for happiness. She seems to be all one could desire in a woman. And yet, her claws are hidden somewhere. All women have claws.” A little voice tried to whisper to him, “Why not wait until you see her claws before you accuse her?” He would not listen to the voice. “They are all alike,” he told himself over and over, believing that he got some fierce satisfaction from this repetition.

After tiffin, Cynthia dumped Bobbie on her bed and pulled the net over him. “Sleep there for a while, cherub, and let the ice-cream digest,” she told him as she darkened the room.

Norah had helped Gad on to the long chair in the verandah.

“Shall I read to you, Mr. Dunn?” she asked.

“What is there to read?”

“Well, I admit there is not much. Most of the stuff around here belongs to Gibbs, and he seemed to be rather keen on detective stories and ‘the villain still pursued her’ kind of thing.”

“Cyn has a volume of Euripides and a few plays.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Best, but I do not care much for anything you have mentioned.”

“I understand that most of your reading takes the form of study.” She remembered that once when Jimmie wanted to borrow something to read he had said that Gad had nothing that was not dry as dust.

“Most of my reading is pretty heavy I suppose.” He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. He was watching a lizard on the wall.

“Don’t you ever read anything to ease up a bit?”

“Not to ease up, as you call it, but to change my thought, I read Dante’s Inferno.”

“Only the Inferno?”

“That is all. The rest of his writing does not interest me.”

Cynthia came out and suggested that Gad should sleep. She tucked a eucalyptus-stuffed cushion under his head and asked Norah to come into the drawing-room. “She always knows just what people want,” he thought. “But she is not going to charm me. I shall take good care of that, for I know women. I know what to think of their love and faith. They are all liars. I can feel their littleness all about me like ghastly worms that crawl over slimy stones. I hate their nastiness. They are forever mocking.”

*  *  *

“Thou hated descendent of a poisonous scorpion, go thee from my path,” and to emphasize his command, Kanda gave Silya a stinging slap that sent her sprawling at his feet. “With thy repellent face thou thought to hold the Sahib. Thou fool! Thine own men would not do for thee. Now thou comest to me with thy tales. Take them to the bazaar where fools like thyself may listen. May the spirit of thy accursed offspring enter into the bodies of pigs. Get thee gone, thou daughter of a vulture.”

How much longer the compliments might have continued, or what Silya’s reply would have been to them, is not known, for at the moment the vulture was credited with parenthood, Mullan came to call Silya. She got up and brushed the dust from her sari. Cynthia was waiting for her in the verandah.

Before she could be stopped, she had stooped and kissed the dust from Cynthia’s pumps. There were tears in her eyes when she raised her head. Cynthia knew that the poor girl’s condition was discussed in the compound. Men squatting over their little fires in the evening, smoking their pipes, had a new subject. It concerned a Sahib who had turned a woman out with the barest gift.

“Two hundred rupees!” They would spit on the ground and twine their fingers about the long stems of their pipes “doth she think that with two hundred rupees and a gabbing tongue she can come to us now? Siva give us a little sense.”

Had the Sahib given her enough money to stifle their greed, her condition would have been as nothing to them. They would have blessed rather than condemned her former life, for it threw ease upon their future. They could have much palmwine and tobacco, and the envy of their friends. But the Sahib was cursed with the meanness of the jackal, and the devil had sent him across the sea. The East that lies down to sleep and rises to fight, hate, and love is ever ready to forgive when the suppliant for pardon comes bearing money and gifts.

“Silya, do you know the little hut by the devil temple?” Cynthia’s eyes looked across the crouching girl to the tiny white clouds that were coming out and going into blue nothingness.

“Yes, Mem-sahib. ’Tis the hut of the baboo Singh.”

“It was, Silya; but now it belongs to you.” The girl was trying to understand.

“Mem-sahib says strange words today, and my foolish mind knows nothing of their meaning,” Cynthia took the girl’s brown hand and held it against her own. There was a smile near her mouth.

“I bought the hut from the baboo Singh. It is to be yours and the child’s. You are to live in it. Every month the Best Mem-sahib will give you a hundred rupees.”

The figure in the worn sari suddenly sank, the head touched the floor, the body became rigid. Cynthia had seen this position at the lotus pool in Gad’s compound. For several moments the girl lay as one dead. Cynthia thought of a flower that had suddenly wilted under the sun’s passion. Violent sobbing broke the silence. The girl knelt before Cynthia and touched her forehead to the floor not once, but many times.

“Mem-sahib, Ap ma-bap hai, under whose feet I am less than dust, and beside whom all are but shadows, thee my useless tongue cannot thank, for it lies dead within my mouth. From thy beauty, which is like the pink face of the lotus, I would remove my worthless body.”

Some unseen hands seemed to grasp her throat. She became strange like a bit of wild landscape sighed over by the wind.

*  *  *

“Comely art thou as the young jasmine. Happy is he who plucks thee from thy gentle stalk! ’Tis the hot sun that a few moments back didst blind my vision. I curse the sun and my blindness, for ’tis my poor self that would cherish all thy gifts,” Kanda called after her as she crossed the compound. He had been crouching below the verandah railing to listen. Silya paid no attention to him. She went at once to her mother’s house.

Chapter XXX

White Sisters and Brown

“Come in to tea this afternoon, dear. Yes, Cooper came last night.” Cynthia waited for Norah, at the other end of the wire to answer. “We are leaving in the morning—yes, I know it is sudden, but the Airedale wants to leave at once—Cooper can carry on, you know. He has been here before—before your time—knows all about the place. I have asked the Ingalls to drop in. Yes, very few left. Most of them have gone up to the ‘station’ for the summer. See you later——” Cynthia hung up the receiver.

In the bedroom, Silya packed the clothes of her adored mistress. Love for Cynthia surrounded her like an aura. It showed in every pat she gave the garments, in every glance she cast at their wearer. From the window, Cynthia watched the bougainvillaea trail its purple across the roof of the garage. A tamarind stood between it and the sun’s lust. It stretched its petals gratefully in the shade of its friend. Every night one big star rested above it.

“It is my stamp of this dear bungalow,” she murmured, “the picture I shall always see when I think of the hills.”

“Your servant did not understand, Mem-sahib.”

“I was thinking out loud, Silya.”

Cynthia took the small drawers from the dresser and sat down to arrange their contents in the tray of her trunk.

They contained odds and ends of ribbon, bits of lace and artificial flowers. Her hands kept to the task, but her mind floated away. She felt today that she understood many things. She understood Silya, her obedience to her mother from fear, her secret longing for a white man’s recognition, her present joy that moved her to tears. She understood Gibbs, his English pride, his desire to hold up the white race, at the expense of other races. There was something fine in the smirched loyalty, and something that made one’s heart ache too. She understood Gad. His strong soul had embarked upon the trackless desert of mistrust because a woman he loved had fooled him. When would men of his kind stop loving these fragile wisps of women? He had woven grief into his being—he thought it was hatred. Some day he would understand—she felt sure of this. She understood Norah, who loved her man, and who was big enough to admire what she could not compass. She left a bit of her heart with Norah for all time. She understood the Airedale, who knew his dream as it passed and dared to hail it. Every hole and corner of his life was brimming full. When he died it could be said with truth—He lived. When he stood at the crossroads, he might have chosen the avenue of Death, where the voices from each shadowy portal would have sung: “You have done well. Blessed are you in the eyes of the world.” But he had turned and faced the sun. It shone on his face. His eyes were full of its light. She sunk deep into the vision of herself, praising each little thing that kept that light steady. She understood Laura and her cherished hallucinations; she stood aloof from mortal confusion. No cry could reach her. With cold hands she let down from her height a pale goodness that fell like dry snow, and like dry snow was as easily brushed away. Such women must take the brunt of Nature’s insolence. She understood the Assam wives. They brought their white radiance to the jungle setting when all was ready. There was something corrupt in the way they wore their matrimony, something corrupt in the way they half-shut their eyes, when on their way to church they passed dark forms in the road. She understood the planters themselves. They bowed to what was expected of them. They did what they could, in the face of much clamouring. They did not see the jungle stars at night, nor the jungle sun at dawn. They reached out shaking hands to woman. They begged her to lessen their loneliness. She came to them. She was dark and yielding. She helped them to save their money that they might call to her white sisters. When the white sister heard the call the brown one faded quietly into oblivion, leaving the man and her rival to step into a measured existence, containing so much of this and that ingredient prescribed by a law that tolerates no gainsaying. She understood the will that would destroy and that which would create, the voice in the silence, the silent misery beneath the sound of cities, those who turn deaf ears, and those who listen in vain, and the pitiful defiance that makes man pull a veil over poverty. Today she felt that she understood much.

Mrs. Ingalls entered accompanied by her husband, who was mopping his perspiring blondness with a pink handkerchief, a present from his wife the last time she went on a shopping trip to Madras.

“Here we are, Miss Conway. I just had to pull him along—oh, yes I did!” This last to the husband who was protesting. “He says that it is too hot to move out of the house.” She addressed him again. “Did you leave my fan in the car? You know I will melt without it.”

Cynthia took the cushions out of a chair and asked her to sit down.

“Thank you,” she said, dropping into the chair. “I can’t bear the sight of a cushion in this weather.” Her husband took the fan from his pocket and opened it for her, then trotted over to a big roomy willow chair and settled down, intending to drop, as much as possible, out of the conversation.

“Is this not rather sudden, Miss Conway, this decision to leave tomorrow?” she asked, waving the fan, and consequently jangling her bracelets.

“Yes, rather. Mr. Cooper only arrived last night.”

“Cooper was here about three years ago,” said Ingalls. “He is a first-rate chap, but a little soft with the coolies. They will find him a change from Gibbs, all right.” A wide smile stretched his loose lips into a grimace.

“Mr. Gibbs is a driver, I believe,” said Cynthia, bending over the tea cups.

“Yes. He is like the Airedale. He gets the work done.”

“Getting work done in the hot weather has no charm for you,” said his wife pointedly.

Cynthia wondered if there were times when he felt that he had bought his ease too dearly. She gave him a cup of tea. He took it and put it on the arm of his chair.

“Some people say that hot tea cools one off,” he said.

“I have my doubts.”

“Have a peg?” Cynthia rang the bell. He cast a furtive look at his wife.

“Whisky?” She stopped fanning herself and glared at him. “You know that you cannot take whisky in the heat.”

“Bring some hot water for the tea,” said Cynthia, as the Bearer appeared. Ingalls looked at her gratefully, then leaned his head back on his chair. Conversation was a beastly bore. He would let the women chatter. When his tea cooled he might drink it, and he might not. Why wouldn’t his wife leave him at home?

“How nice and dark you look in here. I have acquired about ten new freckles on the way. I walked over.” Norah came in and shook Mrs. Ingalls’ unoccupied hand. “Let me sit on the floor, Cyn,” as Cynthia divested another chair of its cushions; “it is the only cool place.”

“Not in that pretty new frock. You look stunning today. The new freckles are not noticeable.”

“Sinner, you mean to insinuate that I had so many freckles before, you cannot distinguish the new from the old?”

“I will leave it to Mrs. Ingalls if that is what I meant. You cannot see a freckle on her, can you Mrs. Ingalls?”

“No. Her complexion has never fallen off out here. Most of us look like a wet rag after the first year.” She hitched round in her chair to face the spot that Norah, in spite of the new frock, had chosen on the floor. “I can forgive you that splendid skin, Mrs. Best,” she lamented, “but I admit I envy your figure. Do tell us how it is done.”

“It is not done at all, my dear. I come from a skinny family.” Mrs. Ingalls ignored the inheritance.

“Do you exercise much?” she asked.

“I play tennis every day.”

“In this heat?” The fan oscillated violently.

“Oh, yes. Our court is well shaded, you know. I do not mind the heat, though. It is the sun biting me that I object to.” A laugh came from the depths of the big willow chair. Mrs. Ingalls hitched about again and faced the chair.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said sharply.

“I don’t know why you should think that. I am not in the habit of going to sleep in so much n—— unless the room is still,” he finished confusedly.

“You are right, you should have remained at home. I shall not insist upon your company again, you may be sure of that.” She folded the fan with a sharp click and laid it on the table. It was at this point that the lady on the floor smiled. The smile grew to a laugh. It tinkled about the room until Cynthia and Mrs. Ingalls were forced to catch the mirth in it.

Under cover of the momentary distraction, Ingalls slipped from the room bent upon finding Gad, whom he knew was somewhere in the bungalow. What a lucky dog Gad was! He could stay away from a tea fight or anything else that he did not care to attend.

Norah, the gale over, looked at Mrs. Ingalls with a whimsical gesture of apology. Mrs. Ingalls picked up the fan again.

“It is really too hot to laugh,” she said.

Norah stretched her legs out along the floor. The laugh over, her face became cloudy. “So this is a good-bye tea, eh Cyn?” She cocked her head on one side and looked up at Cynthia.

“We go in the morning, dear; but do not talk about goodbye. We are never separated from our friends.”

“Oh, Cyn, that does not sound a bit like you. It sounds like a quotation from a goody-goody book. In a moment you will tell me that our astral bodies will meet somewhere in space. I might not like the astral, Cyn. I prefer to spend my time with the flesh one.”

“Speaking of astral communication,” Mrs. Ingalls began, “I had such a strange dream last night.” She sat up straight, rigid with mystery. “How can I stop her?” thought Cynthia. “If something would only happen now! It would never do for me to smash the cups or upset the teapot.”

“I was standing on a high mountain peak,” Mrs. Ingalls went on, “and coming up the side of the mountain was the sweetheart of my girlhood.” Cynthia looked across at Norah. “He reached out his hand to me.” Her voice tried to be impressive. “And he said, ‘Darling, how foolish we were. It is too late now, but our souls will long for each other through all eternity.’ I said, ‘We can accept the disappointments of this life, for our souls can meet sometimes on the mountain peak.’ And what do you suppose he answered?” Her eyes bulged, a trick they had when she was carried away with her subject. The loose skin of her neck sagged.

“Well, let us have it,” Norah called from the floor. Her eyes pierced Norah for a moment, then she turned to Cynthia.

“He said,” she continued, ‘Let us meet astrally on this mountain peak the first night of every new moon.’ When I woke up I was all a flutter.”

“Do you believe that your spirit leaves your body when you sleep?” asked Cynthia.

“Yes, I do. I know it was the astral self of my sweetheart that I met on the mountain.”

“I suppose the Airedale and Jimmie are still killing themselves up at the clearing,” said Norah, determined to send Mrs. Ingalls’ astral self to limbo together with her shadowy sweetheart.

“Yes. Mr. Cooper is with them,” said Cynthia. “This is the Airedale’s last day, and I know he will work up to the last moment.”

“Where is Mr. Dunn today?” asked Mrs. Ingalls. It was clear that she was interested in this man who shunned women.

“He never comes in when there is anyone here,” Cynthia answered. “You know he disliked meeting people.”

“His hatred of women seems rather absurd to me,” said the ample-breasted Mrs. Ingalls, arranging her skirt that some futurist dressmaker had let her mood into.

“He is not ready for the friendship of women yet,” said Cynthia.

“Do you think he will ever be ready for their love?” Mrs. Ingalls was bent on discovering something—if Cynthia knew it.

“I am afraid that no woman will ever ignite him with her flame again.”

Ah! that was what she wanted to know. She leaned out of her chair eagerly. Her nostrils dilated with the smell of scandal.

“So he has had an unfortunate love affair?”

“She is true to her kind, the pest,” thought an Irish mind on the floor—but a bit of Irish perversity was not going to have that last question answered. It jumped up from the floor with a quick bound and seated itself on the sofa. It shook its finger playfully at her of the fan and said:

“Come now, do you think love is ever unfortunate?”

Mrs. Ingalls, wishing that the merry Irish eyes would take themselves home, slowly delivered herself.

“Love is unfortunate when it is not reciprocated. In fact, it may spoil one’s whole life if one is disappointed in love.”

“There is always the astral chance.” Two dimples twinkled at the corners of a roguish mouth. “What a captivating scamp!” thought Cynthia. What deviltry she would kick up in New York or London!

Mrs. Ingalls was not to learn of Gad’s misfortune, or of how much good could come out of unreciprocated love, for the Airedale, Jimmie and Cooper came in bringing a new atmosphere.

“Mrs. Ingalls, you remember Mr. Cooper?” Cooper blinked in his usual bored way as the Airedale introduced him. “Mrs. Best has arrived since your time. Norah this is Mr. Cooper.” She shook hands and made a place for him on the sofa beside her. As usual when she met new people, she took him in immediately. “His head is too small for his body,” she thought, “and I don’t like the way it sets on his neck. I wish he would stop blinking. I see where Jimmy (she reached an arm round her husband’s neck, he had squatted on the floor beside the sofa), is going to have very little companionship for a while.” Aloud she said:

“Do you like the south as well as Assam?”

“Tea-gardens are tea-gardens,” he said indifferently.

“Miss Conway will not allow that. She thinks there is no place like Assam.”

“Perhaps when she has seen more of it she will not like it so much.” He seemed embarrassed. Cynthia knew what was passing in that mind, bound tightly by conventional tape. Once Laura had lived in the Airedale’s house. Now this other woman would live there. Somehow he pitied this other woman with what little feeling he could scrape together.

The other woman was thinking of the blue and gold days, the redolent nights, the jungle acoustics, where sound lived as it was born into the world—where her life had started. She turned dreamy eyes upon the Airedale. She knew he had taken up her thoughts.

“I think I will go along now,” said Mrs. Ingalls rising, “if my husband can be found.”

“I will find him. No doubt he is with Gad.” The Airedale went in search of the missing partner, wondering what the head of the house, as the planters called her, would say to him later for running away. Soon the shiny blond appeared followed by Gad.

“I suppose this is good-bye for sometime, Mrs. Ingalls,” said Gad, holding out his hand. She shook hands, but her manner was frosty. This man dared to come in at the last moment after deliberately ignoring her. What was he anyway?—a paid worker in another’s garden. He needed a lesson. What right had he to flaunt his silly grief in the face of others. She wished Cynthia a pleasant trip, and hoped that some time it might occur to her to visit the south again. Ingalls held Cynthia’s hand longer than necessary. Her beauty annoyed him, and secretly he admired her spirit.

The Airedale drew his chair up to the tea-table.

“Give me some tea, Cyn,” he said, putting two lumps of sugar into the empty cup.

“You have had three cups already.”

“I know, but I want three more.”

“What a thirst!”

She gave him the tea. “Has Gad escaped again?” she asked.

“Yes. Mrs. Ingalls is not the only one he is dodging,” said Norah, trying to pout.

The conversation switched to Assam—its tea-gardens, its jungle, its life in general—then back again to the south, the new clearing that must be planted, the new land that must be bought,—if they could get the Indians to sell. Gibbs was sending out new machinery. When he returned, Jimmy must go on holiday.

“I think you had better go to Ireland, Jimmie, and have a good rest,” said the Airedale.

“No. I think we will have a look at America this time, Norah is keen on it.”

Cynthia promised Norah letters to friends in America.

Norah and Jimmie left when the Bearer came in to open the shutters to the evening breeze.

“But don’t think you have seen the last of us,” said Norah, her arm round Cynthia. There was a hint of mist in the Irish eyes. “We shall be at the station in the morning.”

Chapter XXXI

Farewell

Silya sat on the door-step beside the tulsi plant. Her lap was full of jasmine blossoms which she was fashioning into a wreath. Kanda squatted on the ground smoking his inevitable pipe. He had anointed himself with perfume and put on the dhoti he wore when work was over. On his forehead, freshly done, was the yellow caste mark of Siva. His crafty eyes half closed over the cunning that dripped from them.

“’Tis early thou art about this morning,” said Silya without raising her eyes from her work.

“’Tis never too early to look at thee, my beloved. When the shadows fall gently along the compound, before the sun appears, when the sun stands on high in all his power, when the night spills the stars from his dark chudda, yea, there is no moment that my heart dost not faint from love of thee.”

Silya threaded her needle and pushed it through the blossoms. There was anger in her gesture. “Where is the wife of thy youth? And didst thou not take another wife six moons back?” There was fierceness in the questions—fierceness rare to an Indian woman—but did not the hut by the devil temple belong to her and was not the greatest of Mem-sahibs to send her a fortune each month?

“What art my wives but the sand beneath my feet when I stand before the glory of thine eyes?”

“Then stand not there, thou flatterer, but begone to thine house.”

Kanda changed his tactics. Why should he hurry? The hut would remain, and the money would ever be forthcoming. No man should stoop to humour a female creature—unless it be a cow. But this creature had money. That made his degradation less. Some day he would trample upon the neck of this woman, but there was work to be done first which required the soft tongue.

“Thy fair hands dost weave a garland for the Mem-sahib?” he asked. At mention of Cynthia, Silya’s attitude changed. A gentle light came into her face. Her fingers caressed the blossoms.

“Yes. This jasmine drank the dew ’ere I plucked it. See, it is fresh as the wind from the snow-mountains.” She dangled the long thread of blossoms before him. “But no flowers are sweet enough for the white neck of the Mem-sahib.”

“Why dost the Sahib take the Dunn Sahib away?”

“He is sick; canst thou not see for thyself?”

“This Cooper Sahib will take his ease, I think. Hast thou looked upon him?”

“Why shouldn’t I look upon him?”

“Thy recent fortune hast made thee careless. ’Tis true, thy money art sure from the Mem-sahib—but thou art young and comely—and all the Sahibs are not like the Gibbs Sahib, whose soul is as the soul of the jackal.”

Silya gathered up the blossoms and went into her mother’s house. “Dog!” she cried. “Even the vultures wilt not eat thy filthy body at death.” Kanda scrambled to his feet. He had not heard her last words.

Fool? He had told her a way to get more money. He would speak no more now; but some day he would bend her to his will.

*  *  *

Cynthia was going through the bungalow to see if anything had been forgotten. She entered each room and looked about. In the verandah, the Airedale was smoking a cigarette and giving Cooper some last instructions. That sustaining atmosphere came from him which Cynthia always noticed when there was new work for her to do. Last night, as she had lain on his arm, she had received this mysterious power, this strength. Some strange message came to her as he slept. Something that seemed to wrap his force about her and make her spirit strong for new experiences.

She looked at her stamp for a moment—the bougainvillaea trailing over the roof of the garage—then sat down in the bedroom to think. She ticked off one thing after another on her fingers. She had said good-bye to Constance and Consuelo, those dear cows, and she had made certain arrangements with Cooper for their future. She had sent Norah the two hats she admired. She had given Silya some furniture for the hut from Gad’s store-room. Gad knew about Silya. She had not told the Airedale. She did not intend to. It would mean getting down to the bones of the old discussion. Gibbs would be defended when there was no need of defending him. Why defend a man who had never grown up—physically? Some men never grow up physically, and others never grow up mentally. Gibbs showed the physical progress of the animal, but not of the man. That was the trouble with all the planters. They had never grown up physically. They cheated themselves by accepting an animal relief. Joy could not come from the degradation of one’s being.

Gibbs had gone home to take a woman in the world’s approved way. Another woman went to the hut by the devil temple, because she accepted the verdict of a false law. Why did the old prophets trail flesh in the dirt to pursue the spirit—when both were one? If some clean mind would only come into the world—some clean mind lodged in clean flesh—and teach the fine unity of flesh and soul!

She heard the drag of the chairs on the verandah and knew that the Airedale and Cooper had finished their talk. She brought her wandering mind back to the things before her. Yes. All had been done. Everything was ready. She went to see how Gad was progressing. He had finished his packing. His grips were strapped.

“The train leaves in about an hour,” she said. “I suppose we shall be starting soon. Don’t get too tired.”

“I feel quite fit, Miss Conway. I am so glad to go with the Airedale, and with you, of course,” he added as an after thought.

Cynthia laughed. She liked Gad. He never made any pretentions. Some thought him a man of broken nerve. She knew better.

He never talked of himself. Yet there were moments when he felt that she knew him—that she could read him back to the old days when his spirit had been imperiously aroused.

“This woman is one in a thousand,” he occasionally told himself, “but for this very reason I must not yield my decision upon women in general. This woman cannot inflame other women with her spirit. Her goodness lies deep within herself. She cannot give it to others.” There had been times since he came to the bungalow, when he found himself sneaking after her mentally, watching what she did, and hugging the knowledge of it. At such times he called a sudden halt, and with something he took to be fine determination, plunged into anything that would change his thought.

“Are you sorry to leave?” the Airedale asked. They were seated in the motor car taking a last look at the bungalow before starting.

“No. There are new experiences for us, and we go to meet them together. Look!” she smiled and pointed to the bougainvillaea. “It is my stamp of the south.”

“It is mine, too—if it is yours. It goes down in my mind with the Madras mat.”

Gad smiled. He had no idea what they meant by the Madras mat—but he caught the meaning of the bougainvillaea. What a child this woman was under her power! When this childish mood possessed her she was all child, as at other times she was all woman. She was never wedged in between emotions, wondering which side to crawl out on, like women of the soft, half tones.

“You are glad to leave.” She regarded the Airedale whimsically. He raised his wiry brows to the middle of his forehead, then brought them down quickly into a squint. Cynthia laughed. She loved his eyebrows. He was always exercising them.

“I visit my southern gardens,” he said, “but I live in the jungle.”

“We live in the jungle, you mean.”

He put his arm around the back of the seat. “Dreamgirl, we have been little together lately. That beastly clearing took such a time. In the jungle it will be different.”

Cooper was driving the car and trying to engage Gad in conversation. He succeeded so long as he chose the gardens for his subject. Gad froze when the personal element crept in. “I am glad he is going,” Cooper was thinking. “We would not hit it off together. He is as heavy as wet dough.”

Norah and Jimmie were at the station. Mullan, Cynthia’s Bearer, had attended to the luggage, and was chatting with a little group of Indians. He looked positively festive. His Muhammedan soul expanded. He was getting back to his own people. He hated the Shivites, with their caste marks painted on their foreheads, and their ingratiating ways. He wore a pugri with a gold border, one end trailing down his back.

“Look at him,” Norah nodded towards the little group of Indians in which he stood. “He cannot take that smile off. I should think his face would hurt him by this time.”

“He is going back to the call of the Muezzin,—back to his land of Allah,” said Cynthia, hooking her arm in Norah’s.

“He is not the only one who looks radiant this morning,” said Norah with a sigh. She had no emotional frugality. She was deeply sorry that Cynthia was going and she could not keep the flavour of tears out of her voice. “It is all selfishness on my part, Cyn,” she said in little jerks. “Even now I am wondering what I am going to do when you are gone. Of course I have what I had before you came. I was adjusted to it then, but now I am afraid it will seem rather empty. I attract things from life and keep them for a while—then my power over them ends, or they must pass on to something else. With you it is different. You extract things from life and keep them forever. I have Jimmie and Bobbie, and they have me. But we have got all the character out of each other, I mean we each know all the other stands for. There are new things sometimes, but one knows how the other will dispose of them in advance. Life should be series of honeymoons for women like me—women who can cheer a little, inspire a little and live a little. It is not that I shirk the responsibility that follows the glamour, but I am ineffectual.”

“You are nothing of the sort. You are romantic and Irish. Irish and romantic—those words are synonymous.” Cynthia sighed. “I am the ineffectual one,” she said. “I want to give you something, and I have nothing for you. But you must keep on following your phantoms. You will go back to chasing them again as soon as I am gone. Never sit down and say, let them pass. If you do, your life will start to leak, the real self of you will ooze out and you will become morbid and despondent. You never follow remembrance down the grey by-ways. I have watched you, and I know. You are after the sprightly phantoms, and you know that you could not keep away from pursuit of them if you tried.”

“What will I ever gain by chasing them?”

“Worlds of things. You say that each knows all about the other,—but Jimmie and Bobbie know nothing about the phantoms. You guard them jealously—you minx.”

“Any other woman would have told me that I should live for my husband and child. They would have trotted out all the hackneyed stuff that women use to comfort each other. You will tell me to chase phantoms. Cyn, if I ever meet a man like you I shall run away with him.”

Her eyes were laughing and the tears had left her voice. The fairies frolicked in the wood once more and the witchery of Ireland returned to its own.

The train stopped. Norah flung her arms round Cynthia. She kissed her several times. “There is a final one for Bobbie,” she said as Cynthia started for the train.

Beside the compartment, Silya stood with a wreath of jasmine flowers. Cynthia bent her neck. As the girl stooped to kiss Cynthia’s shoes she felt herself raised suddenly—her action arrested. Cynthia lifted the dark head and kissed the girl on the forehead beside the caste mark.

The little groups of Indians stopped their chattering. They had never seen a Mem-sahib do anything like that before. Silya became important in her village.

The train started. The occupants of the compartment called and waved good-byes to their friends on the platform.

One woman went forward to reality. Another stayed behind with her phantoms and day dreams.

Chapter XXXII

Back to Assam

“Good old Kembel.” The wolf-dog jumped around the Airedale uttering short joyful barks. She licked his hand, and would have done as much for his face, but he dodged her long tongue with a laugh.

“You are glad to see me back, old girl.” She put her paws on his shoulders and wagged her tail furiously, nosing his neck with her wolfish muzzle.

“I really believe there are tears in her eyes,” said Cynthia, delighted with the dog’s welcome.

Kembel turned to Cynthia. She had no time to notice her before. She went over to her and rubbed her nose against the hand that used to pet her—an understanding hand—a hand she had accepted before.

Gad did not exist for the dog. She never noticed him. One must win one’s way to the heart under the shaggy grey coat.

A loud noise rent the air like the sudden booming of guns.

“Thunder,—impossible.” Gad looked up at the sky unstreaked by any hint of cloud in all its blue expanse. The Airedale knew that sound. His eyes sought the edge of the jungle. With a crash that seemed to rend the trees asunder a huge form emerged from the green followed by a smaller one. Straight for the Airedale came the great body, trunk up—trumpeting.

“Molly! Molly!” exclaimed Cynthia, clasping her hands together.

The elephant crossed the compound in long strides. She saw only the Airedale. For a moment she stood before him, then she placed her trunk round his waist and raised him high into the air. Her great heart swelled with pride. Without lowering him an inch from his horizontal position, she carried him to the stairs of the bungalow and set him down as gently as a mother might place her child on the ground.

Her hill-sliding son looked on. He had been taught that emotional demonstrations were not dignified for elephants. He watched his excited parent with a smile on his face. How inconsistent one’s elders could be!

Cynthia and Gad followed the Airedale to the stairs. Into Molly’s small brown eyes came a look of recognition as Cynthia passed. Cynthia patted her trunk, but Molly had no time for anyone today but her adored master.

“We are all here but the hoolock,” said Cynthia, smiling.

“I did not have his jungle address. He will be along tomorrow,” laughed the Airedale, leading the way into the bungalow.

“What a home coming!” called Gad to his friend’s back, as the Airedale ran up the stairs before him. “What splendid friends you have here!” Gad was as near happiness as he had been since the days of his disillusionment. Some of the feel of the old days, when he had tramped through Central Africa seeking rare specimens, came back to him—days when he had spent hours studying the habits of some unknown insect. He had heard that poets were “born,” painters were “born.” but he knew that more than any, the naturalist was born. The man who will sleep on rain-soaked ground, pull the snow-blanket up over himself or share a cave with an animal loves the great outdoors. What are the old grannies, who piece second-hand information together and catalogue it for the dusty archives of some museum of natural history, to such a man?

“What has happened?” exclaimed Cynthia as the Airedale opened the door of the living-room. “Who has done it all?” She put her arm about him and rested her head on his shoulder as she looked round the room.

“Cooper attended to it for me,” he said.

“But it is your idea, I am sure.”

“Yes, carried out as nearly as possible, with what could be got from Calcutta. I am glad you like it.”

“I love it.” Her face mirrored the emotions of her heart.

In her breast, wings beat faintly.

What had he done for her? He had removed every vestige of the woman whose heart was dry—the woman who had skimmed the foam off life and mistook it for substance.

Gone were the wall ornaments, the miscellaneous chairs, the things that had been hastily thrown down by hands that were weary. The old pallid expression had left the face of the room. The wall was measured off in squares by wooden frames. In each frame an Assam coolie hat was placed. The hats had been gilded, and from the peak at their crowns hung blue tassels. A gold and blue carpet covered the floor. The old willow furniture had given place to upholstered chairs and a sofa. Cool-looking silk covers were drawn over the upholstery. A book-case in the corner waited, empty. On the mantel-piece a tall blue vase held a bunch of white roses.

“It is perfect,” said Cynthia, stepping into the dining-room, where a suite of dark polished wood was set off by the autumn tints of the walls.

Her imagination was trying to picture Laura’s room. She wondered what changes had taken place there, and yet her body held back, waiting for the urge that would send it across to Laura’s door. The Airedale caught her thought, or was it a coincidence?

“Here is your room, Gad,” he said opening Laura’s door. “No doubt you will be glad to get in there and rest.” Gad took up his bag and passed into the room.

“Come in here, darling.” The Airedale pulled Cynthia into his own bedroom. It blossomed in rose and white. Everything had been thought of, even to silver-backed brushes and combs on the dresser. A large bed covered with a mosquito net suspended from four hooks in the ceiling, stood in the centre of the room. The net made a small room about the bed, which accommodated a table and a tall floor-lamp beside it.

Cynthia put her arms about the Airedale’s neck and buried her face on his breast. She loved him—all that he was—all that he left behind or went forward to. Her world centered about him. Her future was all in his hands.

“We will be happy here, dream-girl—happy—happy.” He crushed her to him violently and kissed her lips with his old fierce gesture, bending her far back until as usual some part of her clothing snapped.

She was back in the jungle with her jungle lover—back to the creation of things—back to high, high freedom. His magic had invented her. He had started her life.

*  *  *

Dinner was over. Cynthia sat in the verandah. She could hear the servants inside clearing the things away. The servants had moved mechanically to Laura’s commands, but they were striving to please their new mistress. She had a pretty way of thanking them with a smile. No wonder the Sahib loved his new wife and had made the place all over before she came back!

They discussed the affairs of their master without the slightest hesitation. They had a knowledge of all his affairs, but they had also loyalty and secrecy outside. They had no subtle and mysterious ways of discovering things.

Often they exchanged swift glances when something was said before them, the speaker believing his words to be entirely over their heads.

“’Twas no wife she was. She was a bhut,” said the kitmutgar as he folded the table cloth.

“The Sahibs never have two wives at the same time.”

“’Twas no wife she was. She was a bhut,” said the Bearer.

“Thinkest thou she had the evil eye?”

“’Tis not for me to say, but tell me,—what didst thou see whilst they were gone?”

“I have told thee of the southern gardens before.”

“’Tis not of gardens I would hear.”

“The Sahib never left her, and much loving didst go on.”

“’Tis as I thought.” The kitmutgar poured himself a drink of whiskey from the decanter on the sideboard.

“Her skin is white as the snow on the hill-tops, and she is gentle as the young deer,” he said, gulping down the spirit.

“The Sahib places much faith in this woman,” the Bearer explained. He wished to air his knowledge gleaned in the south. “He loves her as we love Allah. Every wish of hers he answers.”

“’Tis only a woman’s wish.”

“Better thou handle thy words more carefully, for she is great in the eye of the Sahib.”

“And in mine eyes too, even though she be a woman. Much do I care for this new wife.”

Cynthia could not understand what they said. They spoke the Assam dialect. Her mind was not on servants or what they thought, but was roving in many places. A splash of gold still lingered on the margin of the jungle, defying the onrushing purple of the night. The evening star trembled in his place. The ghosts of enchantment, that reweave their spell each night in the jungle, were preparing for their work. The dusk was redolent with a perfume which the day never wore.

Cynthia’s head was dizzy from happiness. “He knows me through and through,” she told herself, “my flesh, my soul; but he does not know why I am allowed to be so happy. I do not know myself. The truth that has come to us is not the truth of others. It is a misty something which we cannot explain. We must suffer, exult, live, beside our own souls. We are clothed in a passion invisible to others. Law makes a wide detour when he passes us. He puts his fingers in his ears so that he will not hear our laughter—but following him, an old bent figure looks back over its shoulder and smiles.

“On this same verandah I came into existence. I was actually born here.” She strained the idea to her heart. “I could kneel down and kiss the boards of this spot of creation!”

She had never asked him particulars about the woman who was gone. What difference did it make? The woman lived as she chose. She was somewhere in England, well supplied with money. She would make such friends as such women make. She would write occasionally about divorce, about the shameless life lived by the Airedale, but she would go on hating the jungle, condoning the law, belittling love, and taking her pale comfort. Cynthia closed the book of Laura and opened another one.

What was Gad marching towards? He had not mixed up with the native women. He demanded no satisfaction for his body. He would never interfere with the men who called to the native women. Of this she felt sure. It was not by shouting a western notion through the jungle that men would forego this call. Other lives must come yet to adjust things.

The words of Amanreh rushed into her ears: “Oh you strange Christian,” the beautiful Egyptian had said. In those words the East had placed the gulf between herself and the West. Gad knew that the West would always accept the gifts of the East. He was too wise to berate the women for offering the gifts, or the men for accepting them. But might he not persuade the men to cherish the gift, and not toss it aside when they had acquired some prize that they had to work for? No. Gad would never make the mistake that the others did. He would not say, “Go, you men of the untamed woods, go and sit you down in your huts and read this book and know that you can live by it even down to the last word.” He might not seek to help men. His new life might unfold in another direction; but out here in the silence she knew that he would find the pathway leading to the new life.

The Airedale was still busy over the stack of papers which had accumulated during his absence. Gad had gone to bed some time ago.

Cynthia got up and walked to the railing of the verandah. The moonlight was sleeping on the roof of the Home for half-caste children. “In a few days I will get you, my children,” she murmured.

Chapter XXXIII

The Road Together

“Good-morning, Dr. Farnsworth,” said the Airedale, opening the office door of the Home and thrusting his head in. The doctor rose from his desk and stepped into the corridor.

“Haven’t seen you for some time, Mr. Quaren. You would like to look about I suppose?” he asked, looking at Cynthia. The Airedale introduced her.

“No, thank you. We won’t go through the Home this morning. There are no changes, I imagine, since I was here last.”

“No.” The doctor looked puzzled. “Money seems pretty tight whenever I want to make any changes,” he said dolefully. He stood like one begrudging his time.

The Airedale shot out at once. “I wish to take my children out of the Home, Dr. Farnsworth.”

Cynthia had never seen surprise so vividly pictured on a countenance before. “If it were another type of jaw, I think it would drop,” was her inward comment.

Ordinarily there was something of the anatomist about the doctor. He liked to pick people and things to pieces. He was forever pinning down one’s remarks as the entomologist does his beetles. The Airedale had always considered him an irritable fanatic, bent upon doing at all costs what he considered good. He would have continued his whining about money being tight, if the shock had not been too much for him.

“Please come into the office,” he said, stepping to one side for Cynthia to enter. He placed chairs for them and went back to his desk.

“Do you wish me to understand, Mr. Quaren, that you want to take your children from this Home?” he asked.

No planter had ever found fault with the place before. What could this man mean? His voice resumed its whining tone.

“I have always tried to do what I could for the unfortunate children under my care.” He looked into the Airedale’s unflinching eyes and added: “with what I have had to do with, that is. You know there are a number of children here that I don’t receive an anna for, and the excuse is not poverty. It is a disgrace I tell you.” He brought his hand down sharply upon his desk. The pupils of his greyish-blue eyes dilated.

The Airedale knew how useless it would be to discuss with him the pros and cons of his work, so again he came to the point rapidly.

“I have no desire to put my children in another Home. This place is entirely satisfactory as Homes go. I shall take the children to the bungalow to live with me.”

The doctor had heard of Laura’s decision to live in England (a decision forced upon her, according to the wives of certain planters), and the Airedale’s return from his southern gardens accompanied by a woman. Perhaps this man was more depraved than any one knew. However, he could not keep the children any longer, if the Airedale wanted them. The support of these children had always arrived. The first of every month he had received the Airedale’s cheque. No other planter was as punctual, but no other planter was as well blessed with this world’s goods. Perhaps he could strike him for a donation. Why not?

“You have never seen the boys, I believe, Mr. Quaren.” He did not wait for the Airedale to answer. “The little girl you took out once in a while to visit her mother. That was some time ago, if I remember correctly.” The Airedale nodded.

“The children have no idea who their parents are. The little girl was never enlightened during her visits, I have been led to believe.”

“That is quite true,” the Airedale answered.

“So far as the boys are concerned, they had Indian names when they came to us.” The doctor folded his arms across his chest and continued: “But we have changed the names. We frequently do this, because so many of the children have the same Indian names, and as they have only first names,” he looked witheringly at Cynthia, “it is rather confusing. We often supply Christian names.” The emphasis on the word amused her. “Your older boy is thirteen, the younger is between ten and eleven, and the girl is a little over nine.”

“Yes, I know their ages,” said the Airedale, wishing he would end the discussion and produce the children.

The informing whine went on: “The older boy we call Richard, the other we call Jack. The little girl’s name has not been changed. They have a little instruction, but you know how difficult it is to get teachers up here, especially when the salary we can offer them is so small.”

“Yes, you have had much to fight against,” the Airedale allowed.

“So much could be done if we could raise a little more money.” He stroked his hair, that was greying at the temples, and looked furtively at the Airedale.

“We can discuss that another time. I shall be glad to do what I can,” said the Airedale impatiently.

The doctor got up and rang the bell. He was indulging in a pleasant sensation comparable to a swimmer who nears the shore after a long swim. An ayah answered the summons. “Send Richard, Jack and Zirita to me,” he commanded.

The children entered and turned questioning eyes upon Cynthia and the Airedale. Richard and Zirita had the dark hair and eyes of their mother. Their skin was fair.

Cynthia saw a woman lying on the ground. She heard a voice calling to her god as a soul passed into oblivion.

She went to Jack and put her arms around him. The Airedale’s eyes looked, up at her from under the same wiry brows.

“Jack, dear,” she murmured. Tears unsteadied her voice. She waited a moment, then continued: “Jack, would you like to live with me—with us?”

His appeal was swift. One liked the child immediately. The brows contracted into the same straight line as his father’s. He took a step backward and looked at Cynthia.

Having satisfied himself regarding her, he reached out his arms. Cynthia bent down and he clasped her neck. “Yes, I want to go with you,” he said. “Are you going to take me?”

“Yes, darling.”

Cynthia took in each detail of the sturdy little figure, the curling ends of his hair, the clear-cut profile, the pale face flooded with an indomitable will. “I am going to take you, and your brother and sister,” she said, drawing him into her arms.

“My brother and sister?” the boy looked from Richard to Zirita. He was almost breathless with excitement.

“They know nothing about the relationship,” the doctor explained. “You see it is impossible for us to give the children any information about such matters.”

Zirita was sitting on the Airedale’s lap. Richard was standing beside her. “I know you,” Zirita was saying, “you used to take me out sometimes.”

“I am going to take you out now, you and your brothers, and keep you at my house.”

“We are not coming back here any more, ever?” She nestled her head against him.

“No, never. You are going to live with me always.”

“What is your name?” asked Richard. He was casting about in his mind for a clue to all that was happening.

“You may call me daddy.”

“Are you our daddy?” the three asked in unison.

Cynthia walked to the window. Her shoulders trembled. The miracle in the room was too poignant. There was magnificence at the centre of the episode. Love had writhed a bit, starved a bit, in an age of stupidity, until exasperated she has taken life by the throat and cried enough.

Something new came to the Airedale out of the years that had passed. Forces awoke, not in his mind, but down in something gloriously deep. Beside the awakening stood his dream girl—the woman—the woman who had illumined him, before whom all others seemed tepid and unavailing.

The children gathered round his chair while he explained to them that they were brothers and sister, that he was their father, that their mother was dead, and that they were to live in his house with the lady and himself.

Their eyes were wide with the wonder of it all. They hugged each other and the Airedale. Something in their consciousness had resented the monotony of the Home—something they could not define. They were taught that we all have a cross to bear, and that God loved those who bore their cross bravely. From these bits of instruction that seared their intelligence, they shrank inwardly, while they faced a life that held nothing of interest.

Zirita took Cynthia’s hand. Cynthia turned and studied the child. She possessed a strange beauty. It was the beauty destined to enthrall, to inspire ambition, to comfort, or to wreck and ruin. A satin skin of ivory colour covered a face of perfect oval. Her hair, purple-black with the shadows of night, hung down well below her waist. Her lips were small with dimples at the corners. Her nose was delicate and sensitive. Her long fringed eyes were solely of the East. No hint of the West lurked in their irresistible beauty. Her figure was lithe and supple and curved perfectly. Like a tropical flower there was something ripe and mature about her, something that mysteriously denied her years. She stood unabashed, looking up at Cynthia. There was the glamour of moonlight about her—the seduction of Eastern gardens.

As usual, Cynthia’s heart sprang to beauty. She bent down and kissed the child rapturously.

Richard stood a little apart. It was the East contemplating the sudden transports of the West. There was nothing of the tawny, sturdy Jack in Richard’s calm slenderness. There was none of his sister’s heat, which was rather the warmth of Eastern spices than of fire. Back of his eyes stood curiosity, but no hunger. “There is more of Tara in him than the other two,” Cynthia felt; “but we can win his love,” she assured herself.

The doctor watched the drama before him. Its chief role, played by the Airedale, seemed absurd to him. Why did a man wish to take his half-caste children, the relics of his past sin, into his home? This Home was to provide for such children, and give a man a chance to reinstate himself, to hold his head up before the eyes of the world, to raise a white family to inherit his name. If all the planters did likewise what would the place come to in a short time? But the other planters would never follow his lead. They had too much self-respect to inflict upon their friends their children by the native women. This man was a law unto himself. He would have to learn in time that one cannot shock all the tenets of society.

“If the children have any belongings, you can send them to the bungalow, doctor. I will see you in a few days about the other matter.” The Airedale opened the door for Cynthia and the children to pass out.

*  *  *

Cynthia had arranged the upper floor of the bungalow for the children. There were two good rooms. She had shown the coolies how to distemper the walls and arrange curtains at the windows.

Gad had helped her to select the furniture from catalogues sent from Calcutta. In fact, no one was more interested in the children’s home-coming than Gad. Hatred, that had streaked his brain with its wild delirium, was passing. He was taking up his life again, with hands that became more firm with each fresh contact.

At the end of the compound was an old office which had fallen into disuse. This he had fashioned into a schoolroom.

“The next thing is to get a teacher up here,” Cynthia told him, when he took her to the office to show her the changes he had made.

“What is the matter with me teaching them?” he asked. “I have plenty of time away from the gardens.”

Cynthia had grasped his hand that day and patted his shoulder. Her heart had been too full to answer him.

He had given up his mental fight against her. She might be the only woman in the world who was right—but she was certainly right. The seeds of worship had never been uprooted from his heart; they had been deeply buried, during his trouble, that was all. Under the sunlight of Cynthia’s nature they were sprouting again. He would have denied this if any one had suggested it to him.

In the jungle Cynthia often thought of her previous deductions concerning him. Once she had told Norah that hate and love grew on the same branch. This man had plucked both. She said that he could love again, because he could hate. Later she thought that it would not be the love of a woman that would redeem him. Now she watched a new blossom unfold on his spirit. It was not open yet. Only its outer petals curled to the light. She did not predict its colour or its fragrance. She had learned that some things are revealed only by waiting.

*  *  *

When Cynthia told the Airedale that she was ready to fulfill her promise to Tara, he had insisted upon sharing in her happiness. She was delighted. She had wondered how things would shape themselves. He might plan some form of adoption, she thought. She could not imagine how he would manage it, but she knew it would be nothing constrained, nothing false. In his plan, whatever it was, he and the children would be able to breathe spaciously.

Before his explanation to the children in the Home, her spirit exulted. He had become ineffable. She heard the authority of his soul sanctioning her future. She opened her hands to receive the work given to her. Beside this man she loved, she would go forward to a bigger life.

At the end of a long blue distance she saw Babs putting her soul into wet clay—clay that might have its tiny moment before it was swept into the rubbish heap. It could not endure beyond the life of Babs, who held it up with dead-white hands and begged, with tears in her eyes, for a fragment of praise.

“Oh go to her, angel of release,” murmured Cynthia. “Go and lead her out into the sun.”

Chapter XXXIV

The Stuff of a Man

A tiger cub rolled luxuriously on the verandah floor and pawed Cynthia’s skirt to attract attention. She took him in her lap and buried her hands in his velvet fur. Kembel looked on from the other end of the verandah, frowning disgustedly.

“Why do they call you vicious, you dear little cat?” Cynthia breathed in the cub’s ear.

He purred and licked her hand. His phosphorescent eyes looked like green fire in the moonlight. She clinched his head between her hands and shook him to and fro as one shakes a kitten. He quivered with pleasure.

“You beautiful creature, I suppose I cannot keep you very long.” He tugged at her hand and continued to purr.

“I can’t understand why his mother hasn’t come nosing about,” said Gad from the hammock.

“I believe his mother is the old man-eater that’s thinning the coolie lines,” said the Airedale, knocking out his pipe against his boot. “She took another coolie last night, and the black and white calf.”

“My dear little calf?” asked Cynthia, letting the cub slip from her lap.

“Yes, and my dear little coolie.” The Airedale pulled her ear playfully. “I never beat your calf. I am not so sure about my coolie.”

The absurdity of her grief occurred to her. She used to berate him for beating the coolies, now the passing of a calf affected her more than the passing of one whose cause she had once espoused.

“I am absurd, dear.”

He laughed. “The colour of life changes in the jungle,” he said.

“No, dear, it is not that. I am really more sorry for the coolie, although I know it will not do him the slightest good. I was out playing with the little calf yesterday, and it seemed so sudden—I could not realize it at first. Would it do any good to put this baby back into the jungle at once?” She picked the cub up and held him out to the Airedale.

“Not the slightest. When a tiger gets the taste of human blood it will have nothing else. This tiger, even if she is the cub’s mother, has not planned any elaborate revenge.”

“I believe I told you that I found the cub in the bushes by the side of the road,” said Gad. “It must have wandered a long way from its mother’s lair.”

“I must organize a hunt tomorrow night,” the Airedale remarked casually. Tiger hunts were common in the jungle. They were all in the day’s work.

“Do you use Molly for hunting?” asked Gad, sitting up in the hammock and dangling his feet.

“Sometimes. But in this case it will not be necessary. I shall tie a goat in the compound and watch.”

“Do you shoot from the verandah?”

“Yes.”

“We used to climb the trees to do that stunt when I was in Africa.”

“I have shot from the trees; but here, I can tie the goat so that her jungle highness must come into view.”

“It sounds exciting,” said Cynthia. The cub was on her lap again. He was lying on his back and she was stroking his belly.

Gad was stretched out again in the hammock. Kembel was lying beside him on the floor. She resented the petting which the cub was getting, but then, she was always with the children until they went to bed and they did not care for the cub. It was only with Molly that she had to share the children’s devotion, but Molly was a member of the family, not a usurper who would be sent back to the jungle in a few weeks.

Beyond the compound, the night evoked the music of the wild. Animals called scornfully to each other, or declared their love. An ostentatious lament like weeping rose shrilly above the deeper sounds. Birds, rocking on the trees, murmured in their sleep, or awakened too much, they joined the revelry with song. The stars winked their golden eyes and the moon paled, watching it all.

To Cynthia it recalled another night on this same verandah. On that night the man beside her had opened the door of life to her—life as she had dreamed it—life with all narrow confinement ripped away. She reached for his hand. Its strength felt good against her fingers. Neither of them spoke. Their union was perfect. It was not necessary to turn on the words. They needed no reassuring stream of conversation forever flowing between them.

Her mind drifted to the young curate. Was he still struggling against the tide of immorality? No doubt he had succeeded in getting most of the planters’ wives to listen to him. In consequence of this, the planters had been taken along to hear his words. The planters who heard him were already living the prescribed life. Their white households had emerged from the dark shadows. The new men, the men still in the shadows—they had not heard him. She thought of her first collision with him, a word and an idea had frightened him. He was a weak exponent of the shrewd cult behind him. This cult had seized upon man’s most powerful instinct and pronounced it evil. Man must ever use his primal force, and because of this, he must always be up for forgiveness. This cult existed to arrange the man’s atonement for being human. To revenge his instinct, man must starve it, or use it according to the law—the cult’s law, with forgiveness, or arrangement to utilize desire. The cult got man going and coming. Each race creates its god in its own image. She thought of the Hindu gods, covered with flowers and ghee, before whom candles were burnt and bells were rung; of Allah the god of the Muhammedans, of the fat-bellied slant-eyed gods of the Chinese and Japanese, but of them all, the white man’s god was the shrewd god.

“Have you been to the Home, Gad?” The Airedale’s question smote the thoughts of the other two.

“Yes, several times.” Gad left the hammock for a chair.

“Have you met Dr. Farnsworth?”

“Yes.”

“How do you like him?”

“He is the sort that one neither likes nor dislikes.”

Cynthia laughed and pulled the cub’s ears. He had fallen asleep while her mind pursued the curate. He awoke and started to purr.

“He is innocuous enough,” said the Airedale, taking fresh mosquito sticks from his pocket and adding them to the smudge that was dying down. “He came up here soon after the Home was opened. He has been here for years. I suppose he is up against a good deal.”

“It seems to me he could put a little more life in the show,” complained Gad. He was remembering things that the Airedale’s children had told him about the monotony of the “Home” life.

“Because of what the children are,—and what they go to, when they leave the Home—I suppose he thinks it is rather a hopeless work.”

“It is because of what they are that he considers that what they go to must be of little consequence.” A sigh escaped Gad with his words.

Cynthia heard it. She saw his face, a white blur in the darkness. Cigarette smoke curled upward from the blur. He was rebuilding his old citadel that had been stormed. He was rebuilding it with materials that she had thrown to him, but of this she gave no thought.

“My idea is to have them go to something that will be of consequence.” The Airedale’s voice rang with fine decision. “Farnsworth has asked me for a donation. I intend to comply with his request, on one condition.”

“And that is?” Cynthia turned to his outline. The moon was playing havoc with her light tonight.

“That Gad will consent to manage the funds.”

“How about my work in the gardens?” asked Gad incredulously.

“Never mind any further work in the gardens. This other work is of more importance.”

The Airedale knew his ground. He had been watching Gad for some weeks in the school-room on the compound, watching the furled character of his own children expanding under Gad’s instruction.

The three hours a day that Gad spent in the school-room were three hours of happiness. Cynthia often spoke of the light in his eyes when he came to relieve her from lessons with the children.

“Do you suppose the old boy will consent to my interference?” he asked eagerly.

“It does not entirely rest with Farnsworth,” answered the Airedale. “Of course he will have his say when he puts it up to his mission-board; but I will make the size of the donation quite attractive.”

“Do you think they will accept?”

“I see no reason why they should refuse.”

Gad had seen a reason, and he brought it out.

“They may think,” he was smiling, but the others could not see it in the dim light, “that we, the donator, and the one who represents him, may not pay the proper attention to their morals.”

The three laughed. “That may occur to them,” the Airedale pursued, “but I think we can convince them that our idea is to have efficient teachers from home, and Calcutta, come here and teach the children business and trades. The Home is not sufficiently equipped now, even for the common-school studies. The Calcutta teachers could attend to those, and when the children are ready to study something that will enable them to make a living, they can pass on to the teachers from home. The babies’ department can remain as it is, with the addition of an adequate staff of nurses.”

“You speak of passing on to higher studies. The place is already cramped. Do you mean to erect a new building?”

“Yes.”

Gad’s heart went out to the Airedale. He was always finding new traits in him to admire. He knew why he would have the children instructed sufficiently to cope with the world before he would consent to their leaving Assam. There would be no snubbing in other schools by students whose parents belonged to the elect.

“It will be an awful expense, old man.”

“Yes, but the gardens are making good. You haven’t told me yet if you like the idea,—if you will take on the work.”

“I cannot tell you how much I like the idea, and as to taking on the work, just give me a chance.”

They discussed plans for establishing the school and getting the board to consent. Cynthia listened. She knew the Airedale would not ask the other planters for an anna, She knew that they would be secretly glad of what he was doing, but would resent the plan openly. It were better, they would reason aloud, to let sleeping dogs lie. Why bring a lot of unnecessary notice upon them, when they were trying to live down a little past folly? It was hard on their wives, this notoriety—damned hard. Why were some people forever raking over old bones? The Airedale had nothing to lose. He chucked his wife to live with another woman. What could you expect?

“The boys can be taught trades and mercantile business,” the Airedale was saying, “such as can be used by boys of their class. And the girls can study nursing and designing, and journalism, perhaps. Domestic science is not a bit of good out here. We will go over there tomorrow and put this up to Farnsworth. As soon as we get an answer from the board I will send to Calcutta for an architect, and you can start rounding up the teachers.”

Cynthia put the cub down and got up. She kissed the Airedale and said good-night to Gad.

In the bedroom, she pushed back the silk curtains and looked out through the barred window. She was feverishly happy. A breeze lifted the hair off her forehead.

Her eyes bore through the darkness and sought the face of the jungle as one seeks the face of a friend. She had soared with its winds, exulted with its storms, felt the ecstatic pleasure in the mating of its birds, and tonight she had read its divinations and knew that he understood them too. She had not asked him to listen when she heard its prayer mounting skyward—its prayer for its human children. She had not asked him to do anything for the home, any more than she had requested his assistance for Tara’s children.

A short time ago Gad had wanted to tear up the rag of his life. Now the days would not be long enough for his gladness.

A thought lashed her when she thought of the new mission. It was the wall her eyes met in their vision. From people wrapped in a tight theology they must solicit a favour. These people saw the snake of humanity crawling across the earth polluting all with its senses,—senses—she had felt their gnawing hunger at times. It was only the weeds that came up in spite of starvation. The fine plant did not flourish that way. Bees carried the male element to the female plants. Lions and tigers roared in the anguish of desire. Rivers gave themselves up to the sea. Nature continued to restore herself. Were she to ignore her work and say it were vile we would slip into a void, darkness, nothing——

It was not by taking these dark children into Homes, to make way for white contracts, that their parents were redeemed. It was not by preaching abstemiousness that Nature was coerced. By reconstructing the Home, a step would be made. It was not the right step, but it was the best that could be taken.

She drifted into her first sleep, thinking of parties she would arrange for the “Home” children. She would plan picnics and gather them all into the compound. It would take away some of the prison feeling of the Home.

*  *  *

“Would you like to turn in, old man?” asked the Airedale. Gad had returned to the hammock.

“No. I am not so keen. The nights up here are too beautiful to waste them in sleeping. I often come out and sit here for hours after you and Cynthia have gone to bed. There is something that gets me in the night-music of this jungle. It is different from any I have known. In Africa, the jungle was full of treachery, but here, well, there is that too, but there is something else.”

“Can’t you sleep up here, Gad?” There was distress in the Airedale’s voice.

Gad laughed. The laugh had the timbre of old days. It was the first time the Airedale had heard it since his second meeting with Gad. It did more to assure him that his old friend was emerging from the fog than anything else could have done.

“I feel better now than I have felt for years,” said Gad tensely. “All that is past, or is passing rapidly.” The Airedale knew what he referred to. “I have got back my desire for life,” he continued. “A woman has helped me, a woman unafraid, a woman with the gift to bestow happiness.” So Gad was admitting it at last! The Airedale smiled.

“Strange,” he went on. “My life was shattered by one woman and reconstructed by another. By watching the greatness of this latter woman in her daily tasks I have learned my lesson. Before her, one lets go one’s littleness.”

Gad knelt mentally before his heroine. His nature, that always must worship, was prostrating itself before the right shrine at last.

The Airedale thought of the miracle that had taken place in a few months. Out of the slough of hatred his wonder woman had drawn Gad.

With the jungle’s night song chimed the adoration of two men who were happy.

“Let us stalk the tiger tonight,” said the Airedale after they had smoked silently for some time. “I was going to line up the coolies tomorrow night, they fight with spears; but what do you say to us tackling her alone?”

“Righto!” Gad bounded out of the hammock while the Airedale went inside to find a lantern.

Gad held the lantern while they captured a small goat at the edge of the coolie lines. They tied the goat to a tree in the compound and returned to the verandah.

Kembel sensed what was going on and frisked about ready to indulge in her strange cry, that was called barking, for want of a better name.

“Lie down here and be quiet!” The Airedale shook his fist at her to emphasize his command. She stretched out at once on the floor. She knew her master of old. There was no trifling with him when he spoke like that.

Quaren picked up the cub and put him inside, then he went to a long box, which was built under the window and took out two rifles.

Together they sat on the verandah, the rifles across their knees. They never spoke, for there is no animal whose hearing is more acute than the tiger. Hours they waited. Nothing happened. Kembel occasionally pricked up her ears, but it proved to be nothing but the rustling of leaves or a prowling jackal.

“She is not visiting us tonight,” said the Airedale, getting up at last and stretching his arms. “Don’t you feel cramped from sitting there like a blooming god in one of the temples?”

“It was not so bad,” Gad answered, getting up too, “but I would like a smoke.”

“I am turning in,” said the Airedale, putting the rifles back.

“Same here, as soon as I finish this smoke.”

*  *  *

In the morning the goat was gone.

Chapter XXXV

Victorious

Morning rushed in smiling from the jungle. Cynthia was up with the first streak of dawn. She tried each day to accomplish as much as possible before the heat descended. She looked particularly virile. There was a crispness about her manner and about her clothes.

She was reading the mail which the night-runner had brought in the previous evening. It was the Airedale’s habit to read the mail and answer it after dinner. In the morning his man brought it to her. This morning he had evidently gathered up all the papers that he found on the desk. There was a letter from Dr. Farnsworth, with the Airedale’s comments written at the end, several business letters from London and Calcutta, a short note from Jimmie Best about the southern gardens, and a pencil scribble. No doubt the Airedale had intended to throw the scribble into the wastepaper basket after he got the thoughts it contained out of his system. She remembered how restless he had been last night. She read Dr. Farnsworth’s letter first.

How the man exposed his binding! Most men by a fear, a look, a superstition exposed their limitations. He was not deaf to the call of the rupee. The eight pages of words contained the good news that the Board would consent to the splendid plan which would enable “The Home” to do so much for the poor unfortunate children. The letter went on to say that Mr. Dunn would be a helpful addition to the organization and could relieve Dr. Farnsworth in many of his duties. Cynthia smiled at this. The plan was going forward with less trouble than she had imagined.

She laughed as she read the comments at the close. Jimmie’s letter was simply tea news. She left the business letters in their envelopes and picked up the scribble. In disconnected sentences it ran:

“Self is the bridge by which we cross to eternity. It is a covered bridge and we hurry along or loiter in its shadows. There are many stopping places under the cover. These stopping places have interesting names such as Power, Will, Democracy, Self-Perfection, Magnetism, Realization of the Ideal, etc. One is amazed when one halts at Magnetism. It is there that prizes are distributed to a few chosen ones. The prizes entitle the holders to lead the procession under the cover. They do not say,—‘follow me.’ They say,—‘I stand for social evolution,—a sane economical programme.’ After their utterances they turn their backs and walk away. The procession follows. It is surprising what a small amount of magnetism will do! It can hurl nations at each other’s heads by cooing self-realization to them. Its voice, backed by the force of explosives, calls lustily down the bridge. At the sound, intellectual heroism scurries away and physical heroism limps along on the arm of duty who dons a cynical grin. Power like magnetism is for the minority, and both are used against the majority for accomplishing the purposes of the few. The few, their hands filled with victories, decide what is good for the many. It is they who make silly old ideas outlast the conditions from which they arose by calling the ancient hobbies morality. At the stopping place called self-perfection, one is told to deny the validity of man’s fundamental nature. The test of complete denial is a symptom called fear.

“This stopping place is crowded because we must move away from fixed ideas in order to advance. The majority cannot desert fixation. The heirs of old ideas stay here for the purpose of torturing each other. The destructive element is nurtured here, for the social and religious precepts ordain that man must suffer and cause suffering. Pictures are made of us at all the stopping places to show how we play the game, for we must leave something to future generations to cause them to shriek with laughter.”

The last sentence had been started and crossed out. How cynical the thoughts expressed! She knew the mood that Dr. Farnsworth’s letter had called up. She knew he had nothing against Dr. Farnsworth, for he, like the others, had been betrayed by the laws he served. He had been stripped and thrown naked before the few who see the need of pity. She thought of the treasure-hordes that flashed in the depths of her man, those great blooms of life that struggled through all that would choke them. She had helped to pull away the weeds—yes there was no denying it. Now his soul pressed close to hers in a love of labour together. They and Gad would accomplish a little, a very little. Perhaps some day the little seed they would plant would grow and flourish—perhaps more than all—it would blossom with the right colour, the right fragrance.

The children had gone into the school-room for their early lessons. Cynthia put the letters in her pocket and joined them. The three were seated at their benches. One of the tea-garden carpenters had made the school-room furniture under Gad’s direction. On Jack’s bench were bits of bark, a fungus excrescence and a few mushrooms. These bits of plant life reminded Cynthia of the morning lesson. She wanted the children to love the jungle and all that lived and grew in it. Jack responded heartily to her desire. He inherited much of the Airedale’s love of the wild. Richard and Zirita were more interested in other studies. Their minds were more Indian. They liked history, when it was picturesque and colourful, music and drawing.

Gad simplified these subjects for their young minds, and tinged them, where he could, with fairy-like colour. Arithmetic was hated by Zirita, but the boys made good progress in it.

Cynthia gave the first hour in the morning to simple botany and natural history, and the second to spelling and drawing. In the latter study Richard showed considerable talent. He confided to Cynthia, on several occasions, that he intended to make “figures and things” from stone. Cynthia wondered if teaching him what she knew of this art would placate Babs on her wasted life. She often wished that Babs could look into the school-room and see her busy modelling. If she had a message to give, these children would feel it. She knew herself to be identified with importance. None of her gifts were wasted. Her desire to bring happiness to these children would lend her hand and heart skill that was unknown to them when they had wrought with clay.

Zirita stood up, stretched her arms above her head and sat down again. Cynthia smiled at the girl’s desire to show herself off. She had found an old chrysolite girdle belonging to Cynthia and had fastened it about her hips over the peach-coloured sari she was wearing. Since leaving the “Home” she had taken a violent dislike to Indian clothes. No doubt she thought that by holding in the sari about her figure, it would look more like the European costume. Cynthia had no desire to keep the girl in Indian garments against her wishes and had sent to Calcutta for a generous supply of foreign clothes for her, but she had at the same time requested her to wear the sari for a while each day. Cynthia tried to inculcate a respect for the Indian dress, the dislike of which makes so many Eurasians appear absurd. The child had evidently borrowed some kohl from the servants and had made her eyes up with it. Her eyes were large and radiant and the kohl added nothing to their beauty.

“It is not necessary, dear,” said Cynthia, drawing her finger across her eye-lid and pointing to the girl to illustrate what she meant. “You look much better without it.” Cynthia was too wise to forbid her to use it.

She took up a bit of broken mirror from her bench and studied her eyes. She made no attempt to remove the kohl. She seemed to ponder Cynthia’s statement—-would they look better without being darkened? She put the mirror down and leaned back in her chair, her head on the side, her fingers describing graceful curves. Her postures were a delight. There was something about her movements which suggested the falling of flower-petals or the drifting of clouds. Cynthia knew what gluttony her beauty would excite outside of India. She had the loveliness of Amanreh without the latter’s charm and luminous calm.

“Jack, can you tell me what that fungus is that you have before you?” asked Cynthia, starting the lesson.

“It is a parasite, because it lives upon something else,” answered Jack.

“And the mushroom?”

“It is a false parasite.”

“Very good, dear. Now, Richard, you tell me how plants differ from animals.”

Richard stood up. His manner was most serious. “Animals develop their organs at once,” he began, as if repeating something from memory, “and plants renew themselves every year.”

“In what way do they renew themselves?”

“They form new vessels to carry their juices.”

“Do you remember the difference between the apple-tree and the oak-tree?”

“Yes. The apple-tree does not live very long because it bears such heavy loads of fruit. The oak-tree develops from each flower only one of six seeds and it is just a small acorn.”

Zirita had walked to the window. She was looking out and paying not the slightest attention to the lesson. Cynthia knew that it would be useless to insist upon her application until something happened during the lesson to catch her imagination. Like all Indian girls (she seemed entirely Indian) she had developed physically way beyond her years. Watching her, Cynthia knew why the Indian girls could marry so young. She also knew that the temple life which her mother had dreamed for her would have been entirely acceptable to this child. Cynthia studied her in wonderment as one would study a strange tropical bird. In the “Home” she would have added but one more to the dummy public. In her present environment, where personal liberty held its own, her teacher waited and hoped.

Zirita turned suddenly from the window, excitement leaping from her eyes.

“Mummy, the tiger is in the compound!” she exclaimed.

There was no fear in her voice. The two boys rushed to the window. Cynthia drew the iron grating across the door.

“Mummy, do let me run to the house and get the rifle,” said Jack, clapping his hands. “I can get over and back before she sees me.”

“And what good would it do you if you had the rifle?” asked Cynthia.

She had joined the children at the window. Jack had forgotten that his knowledge of fire-arms was nil, but he answered bravely:

“I could at least try to shoot her. She could not come at us through the bars here, even if I did not kill her.”

“You must stay where you are, dear. Not for the world would I allow you to run to the house.”

“Isn’t she handsome, Mummy? What pretty stripes she has on her sides,” said Zirita, taking Cynthia’s hand. “I wish she would come a little nearer so we could see her face.”

“She is quite near enough, darling,” said Cynthia, hugging the girl. “I hope she decides to run back to the jungle before daddy and Uncle Gad come home to breakfast.

“Look, here comes Molly!” Jack pointed to the elephant who was crossing the compound in great haste and coming straight to the school-room.

Molly put her trunk between the bars. The children patted it. She withdrew it and hurried over to the gate. The four prisoners watched her, fascinated. At the gate she raised her trunk and trumpeted. She put more volume into her call than usual. It sounded like a huge blast of steam.

“She is calling Daddy,” said Jack.

“I really believe she is,” answered Cynthia. She was as excited as the children. “I hope he does not come, however. The tiger has gone.”

“No, Mummy,” said Richard, “she is hiding behind the hedge. I have been watching her all the time.”

The trumpeting continued. It seemed to shake the jungle. Finally between the momentary lapses, when Molly stopped for breath, could be heard the furious galloping of horses.

“Daddy and Uncle Gad are coming,” the children exclaimed as with one voice.

Cynthia’s heart tightened. Jack saw how white she had grown. He put both arms around her neck.

“They come from the other direction, Mummy. They do not pass the tiger; and besides,” he added, “you know Daddy.”

Cynthia kissed the boy rapturously. Was his faith in the Airedale greater than her own? Did it need this child of his blood to remind her of the courage of the man she loved? She braced herself. She smiled. Nothing could happen to her beloved. Had he not killed tigers almost daily when he first came to the jungle? The tiger could not spring for his horse. He was coming from the other direction as Jack had said.

Molly lowered her trunk and turned towards the schoolroom. At that moment the Airedale and Gad dashed into the compound over the hedge. They did not wait for the gate. Their horses carried them right to the verandah. The Airedale leaped over the railing from his horse’s neck. Black Cloud, whom the Airedale always rode, stood perfectly still while his master made the jump. Horse and rider understood each other. It was not the first time that Black Cloud had tolerated this circus performance. Gad remained in his saddle.

The Airedale returned almost instantly with the rifles. He threw one to Gad. He saw Cynthia and the children at the window.

“The tiger is down behind the hedge, Daddy. Over that way,” Richard pointed.

“I thought that old fool would soon become fearless enough to come out in the daytime,” the Airedale shouted to the school-room window.

He tied his horse to the verandah railing and started on foot. Gad looked after him with amazement, but not to be outdone, he dismounted, tied his own horse, and followed.

The Airedale saw the beast’s magnificent head through the bushes as he approached. It was flung up in haughty scorn while with each breath the animal growled deeply. Realizing the meaning of the men, it turned and fled.

The Airedale crashed through the hedge and stood in the open. Gad followed him closely.

“Head her off to the left,” the Airedale called, “the jungle is thin to the right. We must push her that way.”

“Why don’t you fire at once?” called Cynthia from the window.

“You don’t know tigers, dream-girl,” he called back as he plunged after the fast-disappearing yellow body.

When the tiger realized that she was making for the clearing she turned suddenly. She seemed to be swallowed by the undergrowth. The Airedale had lost sight of her. At that moment the blind rage of old days took possession of him. His eyes shot fire. He would kill that beast or it would kill him if he had to follow it into the heart of the thickest jungle. He ground his teeth. The veins stood out on his forehead like whip-cords. He was the jungle pioneer again, the dare-devil of the wild.

“Look! look!” Gad shouted and raised his gun at the same moment. Through a clump of bushes not far from them a huge head was thrust. The growls that it emitted were enough to make one’s blood run cold.

Gad fired straight at the head. With a roar the beast fell over. Gad started running in the direction of the fallen queen.

“Stop for God’s sake!” the Airedale shrieked. “That tiger is not dead. Wait! She will appear again.”

They waited, but she did not appear.

“She has crouched down low and made off,” called the Airedale, his voice filled with disappointment.

They both started for the clump of bushes, their rifles ready. When they got near enough to see through the opening, through which the beast had thrust her head, the animal was crouching to spring. She was bleeding from the head and lashing her tail furiously.

The Airedale fired. He struck her between the eyes. She sprang, but being blinded her direction was wild. They closed in on either side of her and gave her their lead in quick succession. With a last low growl that seemed to stop in her throat she rolled over and lay still.

“She was a tough old customer, damn her,” said the Airedale wiping his face. “Rather strenuous exercise before breakfast, Gad.”

Gad was pulling himself together. Tiger hunting on foot was new to him, and the Airedale’s loud shriek to keep away from the tiger, after he was almost sure he had killed her, had rather unnerved him.

“The Assamese say that no tiger is dead until you cut its ears off,” said the Airedale, bending over the huge beast. “She is certainly a beauty,” he went on, digging his hands into her soft fur. “I must send the men out to skin her.” He took a knife from his pocket and cut off one of her ears.

He picked up his rifle again and they started for the school-room.

Cynthia had refused to open the door for the children until she knew that the tiger had been killed or had vanished.

Molly had stayed by the window as if she wished to lend strength by her mammoth presence.

Jack rushed to the door and pulled the bars back. “Here’s Daddy and Uncle Gad,” he shouted joyfully.

The Airedale entered and tossed the tiger’s bleeding ear into Cynthia’s lap.

“Oh!” She shrank from the bloody trophy, and then picked it up by the hair on its outer edge.

“It is for luck, dear,” said the Airedale, laughing down at her. “There is a belief here in the jungle that one carrying a tiger’s ear always accomplishes his desire.”

Cynthia got up and put her head on his breast.

“You are all right?” she questioned; “you haven’t even a scratch?”

“Not a scratch,” he said clasping her in his arms.

Gad and the children left the school-room to the jungle wallah and his woman. The red ear had dropped to the floor between them. In the same manner had the early man returned with just such a present to his mate. All the old fierceness, the jungle’s mystery, heart hunger, hatred and love had been challenged to build a character for this man.

Now he stood in the school-room of his children, his children of the wild, and clasped to his heart his living dream that had brought him reality.

His hands and heart were splendidly stained with victory.

The End

Alphabetical Glossary

Ap-ma-bap—You are my father and mother.

Badmashes—Ruffians.

Bhut—Ghost.

Boorka—Female garment worn over the head and body. Slits are made for the eyes.

Bearer—Valet.

Budlee—Substitute.

Chota hazri—Early breakfast.

Cudd—Bank.

Chilikatas—One of the wild tribes of Assam.

Chudda—Shawl.

Chota—Small.

Diva—Goddess.

Durwan—A Watchman.

Dhoti—Indian dress (male) worn as a skirt

Durzi—Tailor.

Ghee—Melted butter.

Gharri—Carriage.

Jo hoegha—so hoegha—What is to be will be.

Jungle wallah—Man of the woods.

Khonias—Assam garment (female).

Kusti—Acrobats.

Kitmutgar—Head table servant

Lota—Water jar.

Luk—Fire brands.

Mekhelas—Assam garment (female).

Maktoob—It is fate.

Mohorrum—Muhammedan holiday.

Mihndi—Henna.

Muezzin—Muhammedan prayer called at dawn.

Pani do—Give water.

Pugri—Turban.

Rihas—Assam garment (female).

Raihans—Goose.

Sirat—Bridge across hell.

Sadhus—Religious men (Hindu).

Sitar—Musical instrument.

Sari—Indian dress (female).

Takara—Musical instrument used in religious rites.

Tazias—Temporary temples.

Vina—Musical instrument.

Yoga—An Indian science.

Yogi—A student of Yoga.

Zennana—The women’s quarters.