Читать книгу Far to Seek - Diver Maud - Страница 20

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"It is the spirit of the quest which helps. I am the slave of this spirit of the quest."—Kabir.

Roy's recherché little dinner proved an unqualified success. With sole and chicken sauté, with trifle and savoury, he mutely pleaded his cause; feeling vaguely guilty, the while, of belittling his childhood's idol, whom he increasingly admired and loved. But this India business was tremendously important, and the dear old boy would never suspect——

Roy watched him savouring the chicken and peas; discussing the decay of falling in love, its reasons and remedies; and thought, for the hundredth time, what a splendid old boy he was; so big and breezy, nothing bookish or newspapery about him. Quite a masterpiece of modelling, on Nature's part; the breadth and bulk of him; the massive head, with its thatch of tawny-grey hair that retreated up the sides of his forehead, making corners; the nose, rugged and full of character; the beard and the sea-blue eyes that gave him the sailor aspect Roy had so loved in nursery days. Now he appraised it consciously, with the artist's eye. A vigorous bust of his godfather was his acknowledged masterpiece, so far, in the modelling line, which he preferred to brush or pencil. But first and foremost, literature claimed him: poetry, essays, and the despised novel—truest and most plastic medium for interpreting man to man and race to race: the most entirely obvious medium, thought Roy, for promoting the cause he had at heart.

Though his brain was overflowing with the one subject, he was reserving it diplomatically for the more intimate atmosphere of port wine, coffee and cigars. Meantime they always had plenty to talk about, these two. Broome held the unorthodox view that he probably had quite as much to learn from the young as they from him; and at the moment, the question whether Roy should take up literature in earnest was very much to the fore.

Once or twice during a pause, he caught the shrewd blue eye watching him from under shaggy brows; but each kept his own counsel till the scout had removed all superfluities. Then Broome chose a cigar, sniffed it, and beheaded it.

"My particular weakness!" he remarked pensively, while Roy filled his glass. "What an attentive godson it is! And after this intriguing prelude—what of the main plot? India?"

Under a glance as direct as the question Roy reddened furiously. The 'dear old boy' had done more than suspect; he had seen through the whole show—the indignity of all others that youth can least abide.

At sight of his crestfallen countenance, Broome laughed outright. "Bear up, old man! Don't grudge me a fraction of the wits I live by. Weren't you trying to give me an inkling yesterday?"

Roy nodded, mollified a little. But his self-confidence wilted under the false start. "How about arm-chairs?" he remarked tentatively, very much engaged with a cigarette.

They removed their coffee-cups, and sipped once or twice in silence. "I'm waiting," said Broome, encouragement in his tone.

But Roy still hesitated. "You see——" he temporised, "I'm so fearfully keen, I feel shy of gassing about it. Might seem to you mere soppy sentiment."

Broome's sailor eyes twinkled. "You pay me the compliment, my son, of treating me as if I were a fellow-undergrad! It's only the 'teens and the twenties of this very new century that are so mortally afraid of sentiment—the main factor in human happiness. If you had not a strong sentiment for India, you would be unworthy of your mother. You want to go out there—is that the rub?"

"Yes. With Dyán."

"In what capacity?"

"A lover and a learner. Also—by way of—a budding author. I was hoping you might back me up with a few commissions for my preliminary stuff."

"You selected your godfather with unerring foresight! And preliminaries over—a book, or books, would be the end in view?"

"Yes—and other things. Whatever one can do—in a small way—to inspire a friendlier feeling all round; a clearer conviction that the destinies of England and India are humanly bound up together. I'm sure those cursed politics are responsible for most of the friction. It's art and literature, the emotional and spiritual forces that draw men together, isn't it, Jeffers? You know that——"

He leaned forward, warming to his subject; the false start forgotten; shyness dispelled. …

And, once started, none was more skilful than Broome in luring him on to fuller, unconscious self-revealing. He knew very well that, on this topic, and on many others, Roy could enlarge more freely to him than to his father. Youth is made that way. In his opinion, it was all to the good that Roy should aspire to use his double heritage, for the legitimate and noble purpose of interpreting—as far as might be—East to West, and West to East: not least, because he would probably learn a good deal more than he was qualified to teach. It was in the process of qualifying himself, by closer acquaintance with India, that the lurking danger reared its head. But some outlet there must be for the Eastern spirit in him; and his early efforts pointed clearly to literary expression, if Broome knew anything of the creative gift. Himself a devotee, he agreed with Lafcadio Hearne that 'a man may do quite as great a service to his country by writing a book as by winning a battle'; and just so much of these thoughts as seemed fit he imparted to Roy, who—in response to the last—glowed visibly.

"Priceless old Jeffers! I knew I could reckon on you to back me up—and buck me up! Of course one will be hugely encouraged by the bleating of the practical crowd—Aunt Jane and Co. 'Why waste your time writing silly novels?' And if you try to explain that novels have a real function, they merely think you've got a swelled head."

"Never mind, Roy. 'The quest is a noble one and the hope great.' And we scribblers have our glorious compensations. As for Aunt Jane——" He looked very straight at her nephew—and winked deliberately.

"Oh, of course—she's the unlimited limit," Roy agreed without shame. "I suppose if Dad plays up, she'll give him hell?"

"Good measure, pressed down.—By the way—have you spoken to him yet of all this——?"

"No. Mother probably guesses. But you're the first. I made sure you'd understand——"

"You feel doubtful—about Father?"

"M-yes. I don't quite know why."

Broome was silent a moment. "After all—it's natural. Put yourself in his place, Roy.—He sees India taking a stronger hold of you each year. He knows you've a deal of your mother and grandfather in your make-up. He may very well be afraid of the magnet proving too strong at close quarters. And I suspect he's jealous—for England. He'd like to see your soul centred on Bramleigh Beeches: and I more than suspect they'd both prefer to keep you nearer home."

Roy looked distressed. "Hard lines. I hadn't got to that yet. But it wouldn't be for always. And—there's George and Jerry sprouting up."

"I gather that George and Jerry are not precisely—Roy——"

"Jeffers—you old sinner! I can't flatter myself——!"

"Don't be blatantly British, Roy! You can flatter yourself—you know as well as I do!"

"I know it's undiplomatic to contradict my elders!" countered Roy, lunging after pipe and pouch.

"Especially convenient godfathers, with press connections?"

Roy fronted him squarely, laughter lurking in his eyes. "Are you going to be convenient—that's the rub! Will you give Dad a notion I may turn out something decent when I've scraped up some crumbs of knowledge——?"

Broome leaned forward and laid a large reassuring hand on his knee. "Trust me to pull it off, old man—provided Mother approves. We couldn't press it against her wish—either of us."

"No—we couldn't." There was a new gravity in Roy's tone. "As I said, she probably knows all about it. That's her way. She understandeth one's thoughts long before." The last in a lower tone—his eyes dwelling on her portrait above the mantelpiece: the one in the studio window-seat.

And Broome thought: "With all his brains, the man's hardly astir in him yet; and the boy's still in love with her. This notion may be an unconscious outlet. A healthy one—if Nevil can be got to see it that way."

After a perceptible pause, he said quietly: "Remember, Roy, just because she's unique, she can't be taken as representative. She naturally stands for India in your eyes. But no country can produce beings of her quality by the score——"

"I suppose not." Roy reluctantly shifted his gaze. "But she does represent what's best in the Indian spirit: the spirit that people over here might take more pains to understand."

"And you are peculiarly well fitted to assist them, I admit—if Father's willing to bear the cost of your trip. It's a compact between us. The snare of your A1 dinner shall not have been laid in vain!"

They sat on together for more than an hour. Then Broome departed, leaving Roy to dream—in a blue mist of tobacco smoke—the opal-tinted ego-centric dreams of one-and-twenty.

And to-night one dream eclipsed them all.

For years the germ of it had lived in him like a seed in darkness—growing with him as he grew. All incidents and impressions that struck deep had served to vitalise it: that early championship of his mother; her tales of Rajputana; his friendship with Desmond and Dyán; and, not least, his father's Ramayána pictures in the long gallery at home, that had seized his imagination in very early days, when their appeal was simply to his innate sense of colour, and the reiterate wonder and beauty of his mother's face in those moving scenes from the story of Sita—India's crown of womanhood. …

Then there was the vivid memory of a room in his grandfather's house; the stately old man, with his deep voice, speaking words that he only came to understand years after; and the look in his mother's eyes, as she clapped her hands without sound, in the young fashion he loved. …

And Chandranath—another glimpse of India; the ugly side … And stories from Tod's 'Rajasthán'—that grim and stirring panorama of romance and chivalry, of cruelty and cunning; orgies of slaughter and miracles of high-hearted devotion. …

Barbaric; utterly foreign to life, as he had lived it, those tales of ancient India most strangely awakened in him a vague, thrilling sense of familiarity … He knew … ! Most clearly he knew the spirit that fired them all, when Akbar's legions broke, wave on wave, against the mighty rock-fortress of Chitor—far-famed capital of Mewar, thrice sacked by Islam and deserted by her royal house; so that only the ghost of her glory remains—a protest, a challenge, an inspiration. …

Sometimes he dreamed it all, with amazing vividness. And in the dreams there was always the feeling that he knew … It was a very queer, very exciting sensation. He had spoken of it to no one but his mother and Tara; except once at Marlborough, when he had been moved to try whether Lance would understand.

Priceless old Desmond! It had been killing to watch his face—interested, sceptical, faintly alarmed, when he discovered that it was not an elaborate attempt to pull his leg. By way of reassuring him, Roy had confessed it was a family failing. When things went wrong his mother nearly always knew: and sometimes she came to him, in dreams that were not exactly dreams. What harm?

Desmond, puzzled and sceptical, was not prepared to hazard an opinion. If Roy was made that way, of course he couldn't help it. And Roy, half indignant, had declared he wouldn't for worlds be made any other way. …

To-night, by some freak of memory, it all came back to him through the dream-inducing haze of tobacco smoke. And there, on his writing-table, stood a full-length photograph of Lance in Punjab cavalry uniform. Soldiering on the Indian Border, fulfilling himself in his own splendid fashion, he was clearly in his element; attached to his father's old regiment, with Paul for second-in-command; proud of his strapping Sikhs and Pathans; watched over, revered and implicitly obeyed by the sons of men who had served with his father—men for whom the mere name Desmond was a talisman. For that is India's way.

And here was he, Roy, still at his old trick of scribbling poems and dreaming dreams. For a fleeting moment, Desmond was out of the picture; but when time was ripe he would be in it again. The link between them was indestructible—elemental. Poet and Warrior; the eternal complements. In the Rig Veda[2] both are one; both Agni Kula—'born of fire'; no fulness of life for the one without the other.

The years dominated by Desmond had been supreme. They had left school together, when Roy was seventeen; and, at the time, their parting had seemed like the end of everything. Yet, very soon after, he had found himself in the thick of fresh delights—a wander-year in Italy, Greece, the Mediterranean, with the parents and Christine——

And now, here he was, nearing the end of the Oxford interlude—dominated by Dyán and India; and, not least, by Oxford herself, who counts her lovers by the million; holds them for the space of three or four years and sets her impress for life on their minds and hearts. For all his dreamings and scribblings, he had played hard and worked hard. In the course of reading for Greats, he had imbibed large draughts of the classics; had browsed widely on later literature, East and West; won the Newcastle, and filled a vellum-bound volume—his mother's gift—with verse and sketches in prose, some of which had appeared in the more exclusive weeklies. He had also picked up Hindustani from Dyán, and looked forward to tackling Sanskrit. In the Schools, he had taken a First in Mods; and, with reasonable luck, hoped for a First in the Finals. Once again, parting would be a wrench, but India glowed like a planet on the horizon; and he fully intended to make that interlude the pick of them all. …

What novels he would write! Not modern impressionist stuff; not mean streets and the photographic touch. No—his adventuring soul, with its tinge of Eastern mysticism, craved colour and warmth and light;—not the mere trappings of romance, but the essence of it that imparts a deeper sense of the significance and mystery of life; that probes to the mainsprings of personality, the veiled yet vital world of spiritual adventure … Pain and conflict; powers of evil, of doubt and indecision:—no evading these. But in any imaginative work he essayed, beauty must be the prevailing element—if only as a star in darkness. And nowadays Beauty had become almost suspect. Cleverness, cynicism, sex and sensation—all had their votaries and their vogue. Mere Beauty, like Cinderella, was left sitting among the ashes of the past; and Roy—prince or no—was her devout lover.

To the son of Nevil and Lilámani, her clear call could never seem either a puritanical snare of the flesh or a delusion of the senses; but rather, a grace of the spirit, the joy of things seen detached from self-interest: the visible proof that love, not power, is the last word of Creation. Happily for him, its outward form and inward essence had been his daily bread ever since he had first consciously looked upon his mother's face, consciously delighted in his father's pictures. They lived it, those two: and the life lived transcends argument.

At this uplifted moment—whatever might come later—he blessed them for his double heritage; for the perfect accord between them that inspired his hope of ultimate harmony between England and India, in spite of barriers and complexities and fomenters of discord; a harmony that could never arrive by veiled condescension out of servile imitation. Intimacy with Dyán and his mother had made that quite clear. Each must honestly will to understand the other; each holding fast the essence of individuality, while respecting in the other precisely those baffling qualities that strengthen their union and make it vital to the welfare of both. Instinctively he pictured them as man and woman; and on general lines the analogy seemed to hold good. He had yet to discover that analogies are often deceptive things; peculiarly so, in this case, since India is many, not one. Yet there lurked a germ of truth in his seedling idea: and he was at the age when ideas and tremendous impulses stir in the blood like sap in spring-time; an age to be a reformer, a fanatic or a sensualist.

Too often, alas, before the years bring power of adjustment, the live spark of enthusiasm is extinct. …

To-night it burned in Roy with a steady flame. If only he could enthuse his father——!

He supposed he would go in any case: but he lacked the rebel instinct of modern youth. He wanted to share, to impart his hidden treasure; not to argue the bloom off it. And his father seemed tacitly to discourage rhapsodies over Indian literature and art. You couldn't say he was not keen: only the least little bit unresponsive to outbursts of keenness in his son; so that Roy never felt quite at ease on the subject. If only he could walk into the room now, while Roy's brain was seething with it all, high on the upward curve of a wave. …