Chapter XII

"He which observes the wind shall hardly sow;
He which regards the clouds shall hardly reap,
Risk all, who all would gain: and blindly. Be it so."
FRANCIS THOMPSON.

There were at least four people in the Hotel du Cap who slept very ill that Friday night, and welcomed the smile of morning with the peculiar gratitude of those who have been at odds with their pillow through the small hours.

Perhaps, of the four, Audrey Hammond had the worst of it. A sense of being shut out from the confidence of those, who in a peculiar sense belonged to her, added poignancy to suspense; and, by the time Annette's knock gladdened her ears, all she asked was certain knowledge--good or bad.

The maid handed her a note. She paused a moment to steady herself before opening it; then she read the few lines writ in pencil--and knew the worst.

"DEAR AUDREY,--I slept too little in the night, and this morning I will stay in my room alone. You will hear from father all that came to me yesterday, still too wonderful to believe. It will make you sad. Perhaps angry. But I am hoping you will understand that heart must come before head when it is a woman. And please forgive, if you can, your stupid and disappointing, but so grateful,

"LILAMANI."

She read the note twice over, tears clutching at her throat. But she would not suffer them to fall, though such kindly rain would have been her best medicine of healing just then. Strange how all jealousy, all thought of the man seemed suddenly eclipsed by the pain of losing this "stupid and disappointing" Lilamani, whose heart must come before her head. Instinctively her latent motherhood had gone out to this unmothered child, whom Nevil--with characteristic disregard of complex issues--must have asked to be his wife. But what of Sir Lakshman? Could even Lilamani persuade him to countenance such madness? With Audrey dressing was always a rapid operation: but this morning she broke her record.

Sir Lakshman stood awaiting her, composed and courteous as usual, but with creases of worry on his brow. Her own mask of cheerful practical interest did credit to her powers of self-control.

"Lilamani sent me a line," she remarked, pouring coffee and milk into Sir Lakshman's cup. "The child slept badly and won't hurry up. She says you have news for me. Is it--Nevil?"

"Yes. He wishes to marry her."

"And--can you bring yourself to consent?"

At that direct attack, composure deserted him.

"Miss Hammond, situated as she is--can I bring myself to refuse?"

Audrey considered the question while helping herself to honey.

"That complicates matters," she admitted grudgingly. "It is disappointing that the study of medicine is so little to her taste. Yet--I suppose you would hardly let her marry into a family that might refuse to receive her as one of themselves?"

"Is it likely?" the man asked sharply.

"Well--possible, from what I know of Sir George Sinclair and Lady Roscoe. Arrogance, and narrow prejudice, you will say. But you have to remember that many intelligent and cultivated people, who have had no connection with India, would not see much difference between an Englishman's marriage with an Indian girl of good breeding, like Lilamani, or--say--with a superior ayah."

The fighting gleam in Sir Lakshman's eye told her the shot had gone home.

"It is precisely about this that I must speak to Mr. Sinclair," said he, and the fighting note was in his voice.

"Oh, you can trust Nevil to make light of family disapproval! But it will be no light matter for Lilamani. And, for them--well, Nevil is the eldest son. It is only natural they should think ... of his children."

"Believe me--I think of them also. In India marriage is for that purpose. Yet consider, for her sake, if I refuse--what then? Stumbling-blocks at every turn," he muttered, frowning. "I have been breaking my shins against them all night long. I have sent word I will see Mr. Sinclair. And, at all events, I send him away for a week. Then--we shall see."

"A week! Poor Nevil!"

"Yes. I can enter in his feelings. But she is worth waiting for."

With which conclusion he fell back upon silence. Plainly his pride of caste and of fatherhood were up in arms--which was well, from Audrey's point of view.

The instant breakfast was over she made haste to be gone. If she knew anything of Nevil that message would bring him upstairs three steps at a time; and she prayed to be spared from meeting him as she ran down.

To-day her _kismet_ was kinder. She was safe in the little olive wood near the tennis-courts when Nevil Sinclair sped along the passage to the corner sitting-room, marshalling arguments that might convince the man who had power to crush or crown him with a word. Rather odd, having a Hindu for a father-in-law, he reflected; and hardly knew whether he relished the idea. Still--Sir Lakshman was the father of Lilamani, and in many respects far above the average semi-Anglicized Asiatic. His enlightenment was not a mere matter of Bond Street suits, slang phrases and a motor-car. He was of the very few who assimilate the spirit of culture with its forms; and without question he had passed on the lighted torch to his child.

Certainly he appeared a father-in-law of whom no man need feel ashamed as he rose to greet the bold young Englishman, who was displaying one of the essential qualities of his race in his readiness to take a risk and face the consequences: a quality that breeds great mistakes, and, by the same token, great achievements also.

"Good morning, Sir Lakshman. Glad to get your message," Sinclair said, with a valiant show of assurance. Then, irresistibly, his glance travelled towards the balcony.

"No, she is not there," Sir Lakshman said, smiling, yet with a touch of constraint. He had not been prepared for sudden recrudescence of the keen primeval antagonism that for the moment made further speech difficult. His passing awkwardness gave Sinclair courage, and unloosed his tongue.

"I believe I did wrong in speaking first to your daughter, Sir Lakshman," said he, plunging valiantly into the heart of the matter. "And I apologize. Frankly, though, I don't regret it. If I had come to you first, you would probably have sent me about my business."

"That is possible." Sir Lakshman smiled more kindly. In the face of such manly straight-speaking how should antagonism hold its own?

"But now that I have spoken, for God's sake don't say you can't trust her to me!" Nevil cried out; his assurance changed to sudden fear.

"Sit down, Mr. Sinclair," said the Indian, laying a hand on the young man's shoulder and gently pushing him into the arm-chair. "It is of this that we must speak. You come to me asking the greatest gift one man can make to another. Well--I have strong prejudice in favour of your country; and to yourself I took great liking on that first evening, when you drove in your thin end of wedge. Yet I hesitated very much even then. Better, perhaps, for all--had I refused."

"Can you honestly think that, sir, seeing how she is placed?"

"Honestly--perhaps not. But now, if I hesitate still more, do me justice to believe it is not from doubt of trusting her to you, but because such trusting would involve many difficulties over which you can have no control."

"Yes--yes. That's the pith of the problem," Nevil admitted with a frankness that raised him many degrees in the Hindu's esteem. "I hardly slept last night for thinking of it all. It seems she must pay a big price for the privilege of accepting a worthless chap like me. But she's willing to pay it. That I know--since yesterday. And I suppose you know it too?"

"Without a doubt. She is pure Hindu woman in her capacity for sacrifice of self. But her eyes are dazzled. They cannot see all it will mean. And her great loss makes greater responsibility for you."

Nevil nodded feelingly. He stood at the cross-roads now with a vengeance. But the last vestige of hesitation had been burnt up by the flame within.

"That's true enough," said he. "And responsibility's new to me. Audrey would tell you I don't know the meaning of the word. But I do know that in these few weeks, your daughter has awakened more than my heart. Isn't my picture proof of that? And can I do more than give you my word of honour to make her happiness my first consideration? I admit there are difficulties I can't control. But there are still a good few that I have power to soften. In the first place, we could live mainly abroad. The climate and the general atmosphere would suit her better than England--don't you think?"

"Yes; much better. But what about your people? Your career?"

"My career--if I achieve such a thing--was decided on Thursday, by Martino's verdict on my picture. No more amateur work for me after that. So, in any case, remaining abroad gives me a double advantage. Better scope for study, and escape from family friction at close quarters."

Sir Lakshman suppressed a sigh. "You are claiming heavy price for your gift, Mr. Sinclair. For you the substance. For me the shadow. And I am to understand there would be even more 'family friction' as you say, if I permit this marriage?"

Nevil hesitated, tugging at his moustache; and for a second or so they confronted each other in silence, these two, who so deeply and diversely loved the girl to whom the murmur of their voices through the wall came as the sound of an unresting sea, that had power to float or to capsize her rosy-sailed bark of life.

"I have the right to expect frankness from you," the Indian began, and Nevil broke in eagerly--fearful of what might follow:

"You shall have it, sir; only ... such things are not easily said. I'm afraid my people would be as much against the marriage as against the artistry. But--I'm my own master; and their annoyance would blow over. I promise you I would not take her home until I made sure they would give her the right sort of greeting."

"That is well. I should demand it. Yet there is always possibility it might not 'blow over'; and anyway, from my point of view it is most distasteful to think of letting daughter of mine marry in a family that will look on her as what you call--_mésalliance_. It is true what Miss Hammond said this morning. They would probably have no knowledge of caste distinction. They would think you have demeaned yourself----"

"They may think what they thundering well please!" Nevil flashed out, goaded by suspense.

"Of yourself, certainly; if you are indifferent;" Sir Lakshman conceded with his imperturbable dignity. "But of her--by no means. You have to remember that although I give much respect to your country, and am inclining to consent, for Lilamani's sake, yet, if your father has his pride, I too have mine. To me it seems no more honour for her to marry with you than with any fine young fellow of her own country. She is of old Rajput family, therefore of good birth and lineage, like yourself. In fact, if you had not been her equal in that, I would never give consent. But there are other obstacles serious enough. In the first place--her religion. For the Indian woman religion is all; and marriage is a chief part of that religion. It is consecration for this life and all other lives. That is the inmost reason of _suttee_. The wife, being spiritually higher than her husband, has all power over the welfare of his soul in future incarnations; he, without her, having none. These are not matters spoken of in my country between one man and another. But only I do so because you most honestly love my child, and because Westerns so ignorantly misjudge our motives in the matter of our women; thinking we hold them in contempt, because we are giving them so little material power, which is what you peoples chiefly prize, in spite of Christian faith. But now consider--how shall there be marriage of consecration without unity of creed? See then, what loss for her, that she can have no power for the welfare of your soul."

Nevil frowned; his fingers once more at his moustache. Dimly he began to perceive the full complexity of a matter he had hoped, if not expected, to settle out of hand.

"Seems a sorry affair for her all round," he said ruefully. "I quite thought a civil marriage would meet the difficulty."

"So I was imagining. But to her, marriage unconsecrated is so distasteful that rather would she change her religion for your own, and would learn from you----"

"My dear sir, I'm afraid my faith, what there is of it, is as unorthodox and formless as the faith of most men nowadays. But hers is the biggest part of her; and if she wants a voice in the welfare of my soul, I'd almost as soon turn Hindu myself----"

Sir Lakshman raised a protesting hand.

"Put that from your mind," he said with great kindliness. "I appreciate it as proof of your feelings. But if religion means not a great deal to you, better, most certainly, to keep what you have of your own. It is want of vitality in religion that is causing so much harm in all progressive countries to-day. But you will not mend that by change of name, which also would do no good in the matter I spoke of. By this marriage she would be cut off--as she told you--from all religious rites and privileges. She can keep only the spirit of her belief. Better therefore, civil marriage, and for both to accept that in this case, as in too many others, you cannot be of one mind."

"God knows I'm willing to accept anything sooner than lose her," Nevil made answer fervently. "And if she's willing too, why shouldn't we have the courage of our convictions and make the experiment?"

Sir Lakshman had a smile of sympathetic understanding for the eager confidence of youth that is at once so enviable and so pathetic to the middle-aged.

"A big matter for experiment. You have to consider also that marriage is for more than for personal companionship. With us in India that counts perhaps for too little. But at least we do very well in recognizing that chief purpose of marriage is for continuing the race; though unhappily there are too many signs it is not so regarded among better classes of modern Europe and America. You will please not take my frankness amiss. For this is a very serious difficulty about which your father would have right to feel strongly, you being his eldest son."

Fresh confusion of face here for Nevil, who, in the ardour of personal desire, had overlooked the most obvious stumbling-block of all.

"Jove, I didn't get as far as that!" he confessed, so ruefully that the elder man's smile deepened to pure amusement. "But all the same," he added valiantly ignoring the momentary jar, "whatever my father's prejudices may be, I'd stake my life on it that--her children and your grandchildren couldn't have very much wrong with them, inside or out."

"You are more wide-minded than most men of your race," Sir Lakshman answered, plainly gratified by such wholesale loyalty to his Jewel of Delight. "Yet there is one thing not to be escaped. In spite of good blood on both sides those children must suffer the stigma of half-breed, which Nature herself is said to abhor."

Nevil winced: but his courage held good. "Why any more of a stigma than if I married a well-born Spaniard or Italian?"

"That has always been a puzzle for me, seeing that Indians are no less of Aryan stock than southern races of Europe. But fact remains that in one case there is stigma; in the other, not. Still, in my great wish to promote closer sympathy between two so fine countries as England and India I have often wondered would this be helped or hindered by occasional marriage, between best on both sides. It is very hard to tell. And, in my thinking, chief difficulty is not so much race as religion, that is the soul of a race. From idealist standpoint it seems as if such combination ought to produce fine result; if only because soul of the West is masculine and soul of the East, feminine. Yet look how unsatisfactory the mixed race created in India by such crossing----"

"In most cases, surely, the wrong kind of crossing. A marriage like ours would be quite another affair. You know that. I declare you're on our side in heart, sir: and it's you that should have the courage of your belief and give your daughter a chance to work it out."

Sir Lakshman shook his head. "Strange that she said much the same last night; and between both of you, it seems as if I shall be driven to it, after all. The Moslems have a proverb, true enough: 'When a man and a woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?'"

"Give 'em their way, and wish them luck!" cried Nevil, in open triumph.

"So it appears! Yet the theory-maker is not often so eager to put his theory in practice, fearing his pretty bubble might break; and no father worthy of that name is eager to make experiment with his own daughter. Also in my theory-weaving I have been checked too often by a thought that even if some of us were willing to bestow our daughters, as I mine, how should it fare with a high-caste Hindu who should ask an English father what you ask from me. Now, you--who are wide-minded--what answer to that?"

Nevil hesitated, plainly at a loss.

"There--you see!" Sir Lakshman turned out his hands in expressive Eastern fashion. "Little use of readiness on one side. It must also be on the other. And it is not."

"But--surely--there is a difference. Indians admit it, tacitly, when they speak of Western views and customs as enlightened. One, say your daughter's case, seems an advance: the other--if you'll forgive me--would be, in a measure, retrogression."

"You think that? Well--I forgive. But I do not entirely admit. I think only that for people of each country their own customs are suited best. If we seem to Westerns too much jealous for the honour of the Inside, it is partly because marriage, as I said, is for the woman a consecration to motherhood, almost like Roman taking of veil; and no Hindu would allow mother of his sons to run into such risk and temptation as English husbands permit. For them it may be well; their men having cooler blood and more restraint. Yet how often come tragedies! How often family life--chief of all sanctities--is ruined by consequence. Believe me, something can be said for both sides: and always there is risk of suffering, if not harm, from change that is not first prepared by development. In my daughter's case there has been preparation--a small measure; chiefly in hope I might one day bring her to England and lead her to wider life. Of such means as this I did not dream. Yet it might seem as if without knowledge I had most carefully prepared the path. Such mystery is in the ways of Fate."

"I believe it was ordained from the beginning--on both sides," Nevil declared, with indomitable conviction forged upon the anvil of desire. "And now may I see her, sir--and claim her promise?"

"No, not to-day," spoke the voice of inexorable calm, so maddening when the blood is on fire. "In fact--not until to-day week."

"To-day week----! Why the devil----?"

"My dear Sinclair, contain yourself."

"Was it _her_ wish?"

"The suggestion was my own; and she--in spite of her few years--has enough of wisdom to know how it is needful to consider such important question without too much disturbance of emotion, which nearness must bring. I cannot let her make so great sacrifice with dazzled eyes, even if to gain the desire of her heart. You also have to consider, with cooler mind, your own share of sacrifice. Because if it should happen that you are regretting when too late; and she came to know it--as she surely would--then by all the Gods of my fathers----!" Sir Lakshman checked himself sharply; but the set of his jaw and the sheet-lightning in his eyes spoke his thought more forcefully than words. For all his lover's egoism Nevil Sinclair recognized, beneath the schooled detachment of Eastern fatherhood, a devotion no less ardent than his own.

"I'm not a mere boy, sir. I'm close on thirty," he said quietly. "I've seen something of the world, and of women. Any chance of regret, on my side, is out of the question. Consideration for her--is another matter. It'll be a black week for me. But I'll pull through it somehow, for her sake."

"Bravely said," Sir Lakshman applauded, rising to his feet. "Better for both if you could go right away. Make some little motor expedition with your friend Broome. No?"

Nevil's relief was obvious.

"A happy thought. I'll ask him. I mayn't write a line?"

"Better not."

"And you won't over-persuade her?"

"You can trust me for that, Sinclair. I may call you so now?"

"Wish you'd make it Nevil, sir. It would sound a bit more promising."

"That I shall do with pleasure--when Lilamani gives me the right." The kindness of Sir Lakshman's smile seemed a promise in itself. "Now good-bye, and good luck for you, till this day week. You shall hear from me if you let me have address."

"Thank you, sir. You've been uncommonly good to me," Nevil answered, frankly returning the other's grasp.

Then, in a mood of sadly-chastened exaltation, he went forth in search of Cuthbert Broome.