Читать книгу The Great Amulet - Diver Maud - Страница 9

Table of Contents

"Flower o' the clove,

All the Latin I construe is 'Amo, I love'!"

—Browning.

Quita drew rein and sat motionless for several seconds, looking straight before her.

"I wonder … I wonder very much," she mused, "exactly what one may infer from all that. Either he has superb self-control, or I have been wiped off the slate altogether. Most probably the latter."

Then she moved forward slowly, in a state of mind so complicated that, for all her skill in self-analysis, she could not unravel her own sensations. She only knew that she felt jarred through and through, and in a mood to give way to her most dare-devil impulses. But happily for her, no egregious piece of folly was ready to hand at the moment.

Her appearance in India was itself the outcome of an impulse generated by the arrival of two cheques, whose united figures took away her breath; and confirmed by the fact that Michael's relations with the inevitable woman of the moment threatened serious complications—for the woman. For Michael himself serious complications seemed out of all question. Frank Pagan though he was, he lacked, in a peculiar degree, the needful leavening of common clay. Love, as he knew it, was not inevitably based on passion. It was his imagination rather than his heart that took fire, and only under the influence of a dominant emotion did he appear to be capable of the highest achievement. Briefly, he was in love with Love, with that elixir of the heart that stirs the pulses, and quickens inspiration. The object loved stood second. But, so long as the enchantment held, so long as no new impression caught and whirled him in another direction, he honestly believed her to be supreme.

Hence complications, many and embarrassing, which went far to interpret Quita's inconsequent flittings from one continental town to another. For, although the younger by eighteen months, she was many years older in thought and character than her irresponsible brother; and in all matters of moment she took, and was expected to take, the lead.

The key to a perplexing character may often be found in the idiosyncrasies of its nearest and dearest; and this reversal of the natural order of things explained much in Quita that appeared difficile and contradictory; explained also her instant gravitation to Lenox, in whom she divined a supply of moral force, and the masculine spirit of protection, both strangely undeveloped in the brother she so devoutly loved. And if at times the uncongenial task of conscience-keeper, and general financier, coupled with complexities, arising from her own false position, had proved something of a strain upon her, Michael had never yet discovered the fact. She understood and shared enough of his Pagan spirit to accept his emotional aids to self-expression at their true value. Do what he might, she could not find it in her heart to be angry with him for long. He carried his fine crop of failings with a cheerfulness and assurance so engaging, that it seemed almost ungracious to be aware of them.

But there were moments when the woman in her rebelled, even to remonstrance, with small result; and when, at length, the arrival of two cheques coincided with Michael's announcement that a certain enamoured Countess obviously expected him to free her from the tyranny of an unloved husband, Quita had laughingly suggested India as an inviting means of escape from entanglements present and to come.

Half a night of meditation had sufficed to set her on the rock of decision. There were possibilities about India not to be named, even to her own heart. There were also empty spaces where white women would be scarce, and where Michael must learn to work without the spur of a fictitious stimulant.

Before the week was out, behold them ploughing through the Mediterranean, leaving the misguided Countess to pacify a suspicious husband. A summer in Kashmir, and a winter in a deserted Himalayan station, had confirmed Quita in the wisdom of their flight; and now her own unnamed possibility had been sprung upon her so suddenly, so strangely, that it took away her breath, and left her as yet neither glad nor sorry, but profoundly disturbed.

Arrived at her own turning, she relieved her feelings a little by getting Yorick at a canter up the twisted scrap of a path that climbed to a wooden doll's house, christened by a poetical Hindu landlord, the "Crow's Nest." Perched on an impossible-looking slope of gravel and granite, eight thousand feet above the Punjab, it seemed only to be saved from falling headlong by an eight-foot ledge of earth, which Quita spoke of proudly as her "garden," and which actually boasted two strips of border aglow with early summer flowers. Here she found her sais squatting on his heels; and springing from the saddle, dismissed Yorick without his customary lump of sugar.

On the steps of the trellised verandah she paused, nerving herself to recount her astonishing adventure in the right tone of voice, and instinctively her brain noted every detail of the view outspread before her. The golden stillness of morning rested on hill and valley like a benediction. Green cornfields, white watercourses, granite promontories, and black patches of forest—all were bathed in warmth and light without languor. The breath of the snows was still ice-cool, and exhilarating as wine; its freshness penetrated and enhanced by the faint sweet scent of Banksia roses, that clothed the rickety woodwork in a fairy garment of green and ivory-white. Each least sound was crystal clear in the rarefied air; the quarrelling of two sparrows, the high-pitched chatter from the compound behind the cottages, the crooning of ring-doves among the pines. Butterflies, like detached flowers, fluttered in and out. A faint breeze stirred the roses, so that an occasional creamy petal fell circling to the ground.

But for the first time Quita Maurice felt out of tune with it all. A disturbing element had thrust itself into her life, deranging its perspective, altering its values. She felt badly in need of common human sympathy, and the exalted calm of these high latitudes irritated rather than soothed her.

With an impatient sigh she turned to enter the house.

The glass doors of the centre room stood open, a characteristic room, half drawing-room, half studio; furnished mainly with two large easels, painting-stools, and cane chairs, yet bearing in every detail the stamp of Quita's iridescent personality. A pianette, a violin, a litter of music, and back numbers of the 'Art Journal' occupied one corner. A revolving bookcase showed an inviting array of books. Her own canvas was hidden by draperies of dull gold silk, and beside it, on a carved stool, sprays of Banksia roses and honeysuckle soared plumelike from a vase of beaten bronze.

Before the second easel Michael stood, with his back towards her, brush and palette in hand, head critically tilted, his velveteen coat sagging a little from rounded shoulders. Absorbed in his picture, he was quite unconscious of her presence. This irritated her also to an unjustifiable extent. Her vanity had suffered recent shock, and an unreasoning longing possessed her to be cared for, to be supremely needed.

"Michel!" she cried imperatively from her post in the doorway—Michael objected strongly to the harsher pronunciation of his name; and the two seldom spoke English when alone. "Is it necessary to fire a salute before you will deign to be aware that one has come back?"

At that he turned quickly about, and treated her to a burlesque bow of apology.

"Mais non, chérie … a thousand pardons! But it is no fault of mine that you have the footfall of a bird!"

She laughed in spite of herself.

"Keep those sort of speeches for Miss Mayhew. She may possibly believe

them. It would be all the same if I had the footfall of an elephant!

Nothing short of siege-guns would distract your mind from that picture.

It has bewitched you."

"Eh bien! When it is complete it will be a masterpiece," he assured her loftily.

"No doubt! But, in the meanwhile, it may interest you to know that except for a genuine miracle, I should not be here at all."

"Mon Dieu! But what happened? Tell me."

Flinging aside palette and brushes, he caught her hands in his, and it cost her an effort to preserve her lightness of tone.

"Nothing blood-curdling, since you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch of Indian corn'!"

Maurice frowned. "Don't be gruesome, Quita."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to be. I was only quoting that uncannily clever Kipling boy at Lahore. Yorick and I were slithering over, just like the loathly Tertium Quid on the Mushobra Road; and there is plenty of Indian corn in the valley! I thought of it, all in a flash, and it wasn't enlivening, I assure you."

"That is enough," Maurice protested hastily. Tragedy oppressed him to the verge of annoyance. "But tell me—who was the knight-errant, that I may at least shake hands with him."

The blood tingled in Quita's cheeks, and she went quickly forward into the room.

"I doubt if you will want to do that when you know his name," she said.

"It was—Captain Lenox."

"Nom de Dieu! That fellow!" Michael flung out his hands with a dramatic gesture of despair. "What is he doing here, par exemple, instead of poking about among his glaciers? Now I suppose he will not rest till he has taken you from me again."

The frank selfishness of the man's first thought was so characteristic that Quita smiled. But her smile had an edge to it.

"Set your mind at rest on that point," she said. "He is no more anxious to claim—his property, than I am to be claimed."

"Curse him! Did he dare to tell you so?"

Quita lifted her head; a spark of anger flashed in her eyes.

"You seem to forget that he is a gentleman, and—my husband." Then, recovering herself, she added more gently, "There are ways and ways of telling things, mon cher, and since I have relieved your anxiety, we need not mention him again. The subject is distasteful to me. Now, I want to see how you have got on with the masterpiece!"

She went to the easel; and Maurice, following, stood at her elbow anticipating the sweet savour of praise. For the picture was a notable bit of work, daringly simple in colouring and design, yet arresting, convincing, alive.

It represented a young girl, with the promise of womanhood on her gravely sweet lips, and in the depths of her eyes, half-sitting upon the crossed rails of the verandah. An ivory-white dress of Indian silk fell in shimmering folds to her feet. A dawn of clear amber made a tender background to the dull gold of her hair. Trailing sprays of the rose that ran riot over the house drooped towards her; and a pine branch, striking in abruptly, made an effective splash of shadow in an atmosphere palpitating with the promise of fuller light. The only intense bit of colour in the picture was the violet blue of Elsie Mayhew's eyes—eyes that looked into you and through you to some dream-world unsullied by the disconcerting realities of life, which seemed only awaiting the given moment to rush in and dispel the dream. For, as the sky gave promise of fuller light, so did the girl's spirit seem hovering on the verge of fuller knowledge.

Such at least was Quita's thought, as she stood silently appraising her brother's work; and it brought a contraction to her throat, a stinging sensation to her eyeballs.

"I congratulate you, Michel," said she softly. "You have never done anything to equal that. It is more than a portrait. It is an interpretation, or will be, when it is complete. Her hopeless little 'Button Quail' of a mother won't understand it in the least, but Colonel Mayhew will. I wonder if you know yourself how much you have put into it?"

"I know that I have put some superlative workmanship into it," he answered, looking upon the creation of his hand and brains with critical grey-green eyes, curiously out of keeping with an ill-formed and unrestrained mouth.

"Indeed you have. The thing is full of atmosphere, and your flesh tints are worthy of Perugino. You mean to give it to her?"

"Cela va sans dire. She wants it as a present for her father."

"Why not hang it first, at Home?"

"Afterwards, perhaps. If she permits."

"It is a big gift, Michel. It would fetch a high price; and we need money."

Michael shrugged his shoulders with all an artist's scorn of "the common drudge."

"Since when have you turned commercialist, petite soeur? If it is a question of starving, I can always paint another. I do not sell this one, voilà tout. If it were only mine, I would have five lines of Swinburne under it for title. They express her to perfection. Listen—

'Her flower-soft lips were meek and passionate,

For love upon them like a shadow sat,

Patient, a foreseen vision of sweet things,

A dream with eyes fast shut and plumeless wings,

That know not what man's love or life shall be.'"

On the last line his voice deepened to an impassioned tone that brought an anxious crease to Quita's forehead.

"I wonder which you are most in love with," she said on a forced note of lightness. "The girl herself, or your picture of her? Do you ever treat her to such rhapsodies in the flesh? They must be a little embarrassing for a child of twenty!"

"Your 'child of twenty' is already very much a woman, and I have the right to say to her what I please."

"Not altogether, mon ami—unless——"

But Michael dismissed criticism as serenely as he dismissed consequences. The episode of the Countess was as though it had never been.

"I have no concern with 'unless.' Such uncomfortable words are wiped out of my vocabulary. They affect me like a false note in music."

Quita laughed. "No one knows that better than I do! But speaking simply as a woman, I know also that the man who opens our eyes to the passionate side of things involves himself in a big moral responsibility. And even you cannot shelve the moralities altogether."

"Dela dépend. If the moralities hamper one's art, the shelf is the best place for them in my opinion."

His sister did not answer at once. Michael's confession of faith was not a matter to be lightly dismissed; for the simple reason that he lived up to it in so far as human inconsistency will allow any man to live up to his faith, however ignoble.

"I sometimes wonder whether one's art really does gain by that form of freedom," she said thoughtfully, "or only—one's consuming egotism."

But the suggestion was rank heresy, and Michael would have none of it.

"Really, Quita, you are as enlivening as a Lenten service! Upon my soul, I'd sooner you turned vegetarian than developed a conscience! But believe me, I am devoted to Miss Mayhew. She is enchanting. A wild rose, half-open, with the dew still on her petals. Metaphorically, I am at her feet. Does that satisfy you, ma belle?"

"It might, if I had not heard a good deal of it before. You are chronically devoted to one or other of us, my beloved Pagan! That's the root of the difficulty."

In atonement for directness of speech, she laid hands upon his shoulders, and smiled very tenderly into his face.

"I am chronically devoted to you, coeur de mon coeur," he declared in all sincerity. "That is the only form of it I have yet known."

His reward was a butterfly kiss between the eyebrows.

"Out of your own mouth you stand condemned! It is quite charming for me; and for the rest—one accepts the unavoidable! But in sober prosaic truth, Michel, Elsie Mayhew is a great deal too good for you; and that nice Engineer boy, Mr. Malcolm, is desperately in earnest about her, I have seen his whole heart in his eyes when he looks at her——"

"Mais, ma chère, what a serious derangement of his organism!" Michael broke in with irreverent laughter. "When all's said, the heart is a practical machine—even the heart of a lover, and a little of it must have been left below for pumping purposes!"

She stamped her foot in helpless irritation.

"Michel, how exasperating you are! Can't you see that I am in earnest?"

"Like my incomparable rival?" he queried unabashed. "Poor devil! I wish him no harm. Is it my fault, after all, if the lady prefers a man who is not cut out on a pattern, and filed for reference at the War Office? He is immaculate, ce cher Malcolm, from his parting to the toes of his boots. And, ma foi, he is clean—like all that redoubtable army of British officers—aggressively clean, inside and out, which one cannot always say with truth! But he has no finesse, no savoir faire where women are concerned. If he is in earnest let him try weapons more compelling than his beaux yeux. A man was not given lips and a pair of hands for eating and fighting merely; and if he cannot turn them to good account, he deserves the fate that will assuredly be his."

Quita's sigh, as she turned impatiently away, may have arisen from a passing thought of that other, who had also been remiss in putting lips and hands to their legitimate use, and had reaped disaster accordingly. She took off her helmet, as if suddenly aware of its weight, and tossed it into a chair.

"Is Miss Mayhew giving you another sitting after our sunrise picnic, on

Dynkund, to-morrow?" she asked in a changed voice.

"Yes, and I intend that she shall stay on for tiffin also."

"Then I will persuade Major Garth to follow suit, so that we may be a parti carré. And now, as it's more than half-past breakfast-time, we might begin to think about sitting down! I believe Major Garth is riding up this morning with some books I lent him, and I must get forward a little with my picture before he comes."

"His office hours seem to have become a negligible quantity lately,"

Maurice remarked casually, his eyes on Elsie's face.

"Yes, I told him so a few days ago, apparently without much effect. Major Garth is one of those men who combine a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of work with the capacity for securing good appointments, which is quite an achievement—of its kind. I suppose I must gently point out to him that now the station is waking up it would be well to consider the proprieties a little more than we have done so far; or the 'Button Quail' will be forbidding Elsie the house. She is volubly disapproving already, denounces him as a 'dangerous man' … delectable adjective! But the cackle of Quails is nothing to me. So long as the man behaves himself, and amuses me, I shall continue to see just as much of him as I think fit."

Major Garth, it may be mentioned in passing, had lately secured the coveted post of Station Staff Officer. He also had spent the winter months in Dalhousie; and he could by no means be reckoned among the men who fail with women through undue fastidiousness in regard to ways and means.