Chapter I

"And now my cheek is warm against thy cheek;
Yet, is Love satisfied? Nay,--evermore
Thy hands are full of promise;...
Joy hath joy in store
And heaven another heaven within its skies."
J. H. COUSINS.

Every detail in the little room--save the well-grate with its plain oak mantel--breathed of India, even to the warmth and fragrance of an atmosphere charged with spices, sandalwood and attar of rose.

Over one door a Punjab _phulkari_ made a blaze of gold. Over another hung a priceless embroidered panel--green and purple cunningly inwrought. On the walls, two pictures only; one of Sir Lakshman Singh, in State dress, and an old Indian painting of the sacred three--Rama, Sita, and the devoted Lakshman--setting out, in "coats of bark," for their fourteen years of banishment. Over the mantel-piece, with its gleaming rows of _lotahs_, a square of vellum, gold bordered and lettered in gold, "There is no likeness of Him whose name is great glory. Deathless they become who, in heart and mind, know him as heart-dwelling."

For the rest, an octagonal table, bearing a sandalwood casket and the Bhagavad Gita; velvet-soft prayer-rugs on the matted floor; a native bedstead of red lacquer, and a low square stool of the same, whereon sat the guardian spirit of the place, in pearl-white robe, and _sari_ golden-edged: Lilamani Sinclair, bride of six weeks' standing. The magic circlet of gold gleamed beneath the drop of sea-water shaped like her heart; and upon her slender wrist, the wedding-bracelet of her own land. At her throat hung the promised pendant, shimmering drops of water and light; and her father's star of happiness transformed into a brooch fastened the drapery on her left shoulder; a modern innovation, worn for the first time.

Little of the West about this girl-bride beyond her ring and her English name. But even had she chosen to exchange her _sari_ for a Paris "coiffure," and her simple robe for a Paquin "creation," her doings would have bewrayed her. Crouched upon the stool before a primitive brick oven, set up under her own supervision, she was absorbed in cooking her lord's dinner; a service so sacred to the Hindu wife that a special garment of silk fibre is reserved for that function and for prayer.

Europe nominally endorses the Divine command: "He that is greatest among you let him be your servant." Asia acts upon it. In a Hindu household domestic service--as the West understands it--is not. All home duties, save the most menial, are carried out by sisters, daughters, daughters-in-law, under supervision of their ruler-in-chief--the mother; though here, as elsewhere, change is creeping in. Drudgery? She of Asia would resent the implication. Her law of life rests upon one basic principle: The highest may serve the lowest, but may accept service only from the highest.

And woman stands, spiritually, higher than man, because "she alone is capable of conquest--for others." Logically, then--and Asia is nothing if not logical--"to accept service and devotion of any is the highest honour you can pay her." That is the core of the Indian woman's credo; the lamp hidden in her heart; and by the light of it many perplexities are made plain.

But when a woman, for whom service and worship are birthright and crown of glory, mates with a man in whom the Western idea of chivalry has not been quite crushed out by the haste and pressure of an unchivalrous age, complications are born.

That the wife of Nevil Sinclair of Bramleigh Beeches should cook her husband's dinner--only his dinner, she urged, deeming the request a modest one--did not square with his British sense of fitness, Bohemian though he was. What is more, he distrusted amateur cookery; little dreaming of the talent he bade her hide under a bushel; and of which she had been too shy to speak. "What would his valet think?" he had asked, "and Broome's Italian _chef_ and the little waiting-maid?" Dread questions, for which she could find no answer. Only, beneath her wifely submission, had dwelt a faint hope that possibly, when he should see the contents of those boxes from India----!

Two weeks after their first shy home-coming these had arrived; and from out of them had come the store of simple home belongings, that had brought a sense of familiar sweetness into her new nest. Then had she laid before him the shining row of brass plates and _lotahs_, the boxes of spices, of shredded cocoanut and herbs.

"All the way from India they came for you. Must they not be used ever? Even if only sometimes for game of play?" Then, with a captivating honesty and confusion of face, she denied that last. "No, for me it is not play. With us, I have told you, worship of husband is worship of Life-force. And if food is fuel for keeping that flame alight, shall it not be sacred duty and privilege for wife to prepare it?"

And he, without waste of words, had set the seal of permission upon her lips.

"Not every day," had been his sole stipulation; "once or twice a week; or on great occasions"; thus instinctively annulling domestic comment. Intermittent ebullitions of cookery might be accepted as an Indian lady's whim.

And Lilamani, lifted far beyond thought of comment, had enjoyed her small triumph to the full. Her first curry and _pillau_, her irresistible sweets and lightly-tossed chupattis had been a revelation to Nevil, shaming his distrust; and upon the third great occasion, when she had won leave to cook all three courses of their simple meal, he had laughingly warned her that it might end in his refusing to eat a dinner prepared by any hands but her own.

"That is how it should be for true honour of the house," she had answered, smiling demurely.

And this golden 14th of June, that completed her eighteenth year and her sixth week of marriage, was a day of privilege, past question.

Six beatific weeks, sun-filled and love-enchanted, they had spent in Broome's chalet, set in a shelving cove, under the lee of a rugged hill, its balconies and verandah overlooking Como's blue stillness, now blurred with pearl-white films, now pierced by a million quivering points of light. Too still almost, it seemed to Lilamani, after the changeful majesty of her sea. Yet that very stillness, as of some harmonized Yogi purged from passion, spoke to her heart of the palm-girt lakes in her own Hyderabad; and through them, of dear, far and familiar things never again to be seen, or heard, or felt while breath remained in her body. What this completeness of severance meant to her she dared not admit even in her most secret thoughts. There were inevitable moments when the prick of remembrance intruded upon her joy. Yet each day that passed deepened her conviction that she had chosen aright; and this "lonely fashion of English marriage" proved itself not so hard to understand, after all.

But even the devotion of a new-made husband had not availed to soften the wrench of parting from that father, who had been parent, comrade and spiritual guide in one. Each smallest happening of that last unwedded week was graven upon the tablets of her heart: a week of tangled emotions, overlaid with a smiling stillness that had almost deceived Sir Lakshman himself. Once only had her self-control gone to pieces. The mail that brought her wedding-bangle and other necessaries, had brought no word to her from Mataji. How should it? Yet, with the divine inconsistency of human nature, she had hoped against hope. She could not know that all Mataji's bitterness had been vented in a vehement, incoherent letter to Sir Lakshman that had cut her husband to the heart, while it revivified all the devils of misgiving he had trampled under foot in the days following upon Nevil's declaration. Not for a kingdom would he have spoken of it to his child, who was sufficiently upset by her sole word of greeting from home.

Even Ram Singh, favourite elder brother and playmate could not write otherwise than in sorrow of an event that, at one stroke, cut every thread binding his sister to home and country. Some day, perhaps, Destiny would bring him to England. There they might meet, if her English husband would permit. Till then he would write without fail: and, in a tear-blotted postscript, Vimala--blowing her a kiss across the "black water"--promised to write also, though pens were not her favourite toys, and it was not letters she wanted, but her "dear own Lilamani" who would never come home again.

Impossible to hide from Sir Lakshman the turmoil wrought by such letters and by Mataji's tacit repudiation of her child. But at least he should not see her tears. It was on Audrey's shoulder that she had cried till the black demons of fear and disloyalty had been washed clean out of her anguished heart.

For Audrey, true to her word, had come back just before Nevil started for Paris, and had left again--upon a flawless pretext--on the eve of his return. Her going broke yet another link with India, and the pain of it was acute. But with the coming of Nevil, love's warmth and light had enveloped the girl, till the day of days, arising out the East, called on her to quit her dream Paradise and grasp the shining, implacable facts of life; to make good her irrevocable gift, and break the last link, the last link--

Something of this final pang Sir Lakshman had foreseen, and his had been the happy idea of shipping home the modest contents of her room in India, supplemented by rugs and embroideries of his own bestowing.

On that day of days Mrs. Despard had been all a mother to the tremulous girl-bride, deprived alike of mother's blessing and bridal rights. Together they had hidden away all trace of what Lilamani called her "Hindu-ness" under the hood and long cloak devised by Audrey for her first flight. A fine lace veil tied beneath her hood shielded the girl from curious eyes; and in the after-hours she had blessed that kindly veil from her heart.

Vividly it all came back to her, while she sat alone, in her shrine: the early start; the motor-drive to Nice; the brief, unromantic formalities, that had joined them irrevocably as any immemorial rites, or sevenfold circling of the sacred fire; and afterwards, the lifting of her veil, while he--her husband--set the ring upon her finger, the bracelet on her wrist, the sacramental kiss upon her lips. Then--the wrench of parting from Mrs. Despard, who must return to Antibes, while they three fared on to Milan in luxurious privacy; the two men, tenderly considerate, leaving her to absorb, as in a dream, the colourful beauties of Italy's coast line, till a sudden, overpowering weariness blotted out all things; and she knew no more.

Not until the following morning had she awakened fully from that blessed spell of stupor--Nature's reaction from another week of secret austerities. Dimly she had been aware of the journey's ending, of noise and flashing lights; of a glass held to her lips; then the vague thrill of her husband's arms, the cool softness of the bed that received her; the touch of hands that freed her deftly from cloak and hood, unwound her _sari_ and covered her with a quilt. By that time she was too far gone again in sleep to feel his kiss on her eyelids and on the dear, unveiled head, seen so for the first time.

Next morning she awoke in full sunlight to find herself alone on the great white bed. And while she lay wondering mistily over it all, he--Nevil--had come to her from an adjoining room; an unknown Nevil, wearing a long _choga_; his hair, damp from bathing, crisped into fugitive curls, and in his eyes a gladness beyond speech. Then only had there flashed upon her the full significance of yesterday's doings, that had stripped her of all things familiar and set her alone in an untried world with this deeply adored stranger, lord of her life in very deed.

Sir Lakshman had seen them into the train for Como, promising on his return from London to be their first visitor. But while he spoke, the inexorable engine drowned his voice; her desperate clutch upon his hand relaxed, some chord within her seemed to snap, and she lay back dazed, tearless; the rattle and clank of machinery seeming to beat upon her bared nerves.

Six weeks she had lived without him; six weeks of happiness unspeakable. Yet in one secret corner, the ache remained. Even in memory she drew a veil over that moment's anguish, softened though it was by the peculiar tenderness that Nevil Sinclair had gotten from his mother. She preferred to dwell on the journey up the Lake in the pellucid end of a May evening that conjured the grey-green water into gold. And oh! before starting--the sight and smell of the white bullocks, in Como town! Dignity and reserve alone had withheld her from open worship--there, on the cobblestone of Italy, that knew nothing of Shiva or his sacred bull.

In early spring the winding reaches of Lake Como have the grey-green tone of Italy--of olive and rock, stone cottage and pebbled paths. Here, white incidents of hotels or villas, there, black incidents of cypress, flashed like exclamation marks on some jutting headland, or grouped like sentinels about a shrine. But by now the grey was jewelled everywhere with green, enamelled brightly and delicately with every tint of every flower that blows. Only the Northward view showed a gleam of the high Alps; gods of the upper heaven untroubled by the season's ebb and flow.

At last, slipping round a fir-capped island, they had sighted their villa, set upon the water's edge like a brooding bird. And lo, at Tremezzo landing-stage, a slim white boat awaiting them, its gay little flag aflutter at the stern. In the deepening stillness, they had been rowed across to their own private oasis, where nightingales were already at even-song among the bushes, and fire-flies dipped and darted in irregular flashes like stars gone mad. Without spoken word Nevil had slipped a hand through his bride's arm, leading her in and up to the room that would be his studio. He had shut the door behind them. And they were alone.

Then, as he turned, with that in his eyes that made her heart stand still, it had come upon her afresh--the fear and the ecstasy. In one appealing look she had besought him to understand. And he had understood: most tenderly and amazingly he had understood. For in the best men, and in all true artists, there lurks some hidden touch of the woman, some impress of the mother that bore them; and it had needed just this touch in Lilamani's husband to ensure that the ecstasy should outweigh the fear; nay, drive it out for good.

He had succeeded; and that so completely as to leave her wondering, now, if she really had been afraid--ever. As for the ecstasy, it stood revealed in her eyes as she paused in the deft scraping of a carrot, arrested by the low, clear whistling that came from behind the _phulkari_ hanging over his studio door.

The key was turned in the lock--on her side; a daring act of coercion achieved, with delicious tremors, after his fourth incursion, just to see how things were going. It was the only way to ensure his getting any dinner at all, she had explained sweetly--from the other side. For the _chef_ had been given a holiday, leaving her, Lilamani, mistress of the situation. It had been her chosen birthday treat; and the simplicity of it smote her husband's heart.

For two hours he had worked contentedly, on his side of the barrier, at the new picture--"Dreaming": a bevy of Eastern girls asleep, suggested by a descriptive passage in the "Light of Asia." His month in Paris had justified to the full Sir Lakshman's decree. Immersed in his natural element, his talent had blossomed and expanded with a readiness that surprised none more than himself, and delighted none more than his girl-bride, self-dedicated high-priestess of the sacred flame.

In those first days of divine idleness, when they had lived mainly in the little white boat, it had been decided that he should make his name as a painter of Eastern subjects, having become enamoured of half a hemisphere in the person of one small woman. It was then that she had reillumined for him the familiar "Light of Asia," and pleaded for a painting of the great Prince's "pleasure-home," with its walls of pearl-shell and lace-worked stone, through which moonbeams filtered, making tender light and shade upon a group of sleeping dancers, fairest and most favoured _houris_ of the royal household.

She herself, in her loveliest _saris_, would be model for all, if he could change the faces a little "from his own imagining": and for him remained the joy of painting six sleeping Lilamanis, each in some new pose of girlish grace and beauty. Then, as the work progressed, she had written to Sir Lakshman for a full and abridged translation of the Ramayāna--Saga of princely heroism and wifely devotion, that lies nearest to India's heart. The full translation, sumptuously bound, had been her birthday gift: and thence they would cull fresh subjects for his brush when he had completed his dream of one fair woman multiplied by six.

It was nearing completion now: and while he worked lovingly at shadows of marble tracery and silver lamps that swung like censers from the dim roof, she, on her side, chopped vegetables, washed rice, and measured out spices with the ardour of a devotee and the absorption of a happy-hearted child at play. But she knew what that whistling meant. He was tired of his "Dream." He wanted reality. She wanted it too; yet she made no sign.

Then the tune broke off short, and through the curtain his voice came to her, appealing as a caress.

"Little wife! I'm tired of seeing you asleep. Come out of your shrine."

"Wait only a small time--impatient one! Or curry will spoil."

"Hang curry! I want you."

"Then no dinner. Only soup and cream pudding. Think how squash!"

"Cheese and pâté," said the curtain, clinching the argument in a fashion beneath contempt. "Come along."

She smiled enchantingly at the mixture she was tossing in the pan and hurried on with her work.

Silence for a half a minute: then the curtain spoke again.

"I say, Lilamani. Giulietta's brought the tea. Your cake, with coffee icing, and a box of fondants from Martino with a thousand compliments. There now!"

Supreme conviction in that last. He could see the delicate disdain upon her face before speech confirmed it.

"You think if I will not come--for you, I come for cakes and fondants?"

But her fingers were unfastening the brooch at her shoulder, and the _sari_ sacred to cooking was whisked off with surprising alacrity. For answer he began crooning with guileful intent her favourite song:

"'My heart, my heart is like a singing-bird,
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart, my heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are hung with thick-set fruit;
My heart, my heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles on a halcyon sea.
My heart, my heart is gladder than all these
Because my Love, my Love has come to me----'

Ah!--so you _have_ come, after all!"

The key had turned softly in the lock, and now she stood before him: a slender, iridescent vision with lids dutifully downcast, awaiting his pleasure.

At the first he had been puzzled, then increasingly charmed, this English husband, by the worshipful aloofness with which the Hindu bride approaches her lord, at least until the crown of motherhood is hers. To the Indian husband this attitude is merely a part of the immemorial nature of things: but for Nevil Sinclair, used to the casual camaraderie of the West, there were moments when it went to his head. He had to temper elation with the reminder that it was instinctive, impersonal; homage to husbandhood rather than to himself. But, enchanting though it was, he would not always have it so. She must learn his ways also. And she was learning--shyly, proudly; her woman's adaptability quickened by the impulse of love. For a heart-beat or two he watched her where she stood. Then, smiling, he indicated the tea-table.

"I angled well! You couldn't resist them--eh?"

"That is as my lord pleases!" she answered demurely, imps of laughter in her eyes; and he held out both hands.

"A shame to insult her on her birthday! Come then--English wife."

It was their private password; and straightway she obeyed its hidden command; laying light hands upon him and lifting her face for his kiss.

"The necklace of your arms," he whispered, caressing their silken softness. "D'you know Martino said one day, at the Cap, that when the _houri_ made this necklace for me I should be faithless to art; and I contradicted him flat. Was I Truth-named, Jewel of Delight?"

She nestled closer.

"Even at the first you were so clever to know your Lilamani. Now he must believe, when he sees, in one little month--how beautiful picture----!"

"To say nothing of the masterpieces we mean to paint from your Ramayāna before the summer's out."

That "we" sent a shiver of joy through her. It united her, not only with his manhood, but with the art that was his crown of manhood; the art dear to her, as to himself. Had it not brought her this--her crown of womanhood?

"About those other pictures, I have a new thought to tell. It came in my mind--God-bestowed--when making your curry----"

"My curry! You inimitable high-priestess of a brick oven! While you were chopping onions, I suppose?"

"Yes. Just exactly by that time." She assumed an adorable gravity. "It is bad to make joke of my sacred service--worthless one! I shall not tell."

"Oh, but you will."

His lips brushed hers in a fugitive caress; and the "God-bestowed" thought found utterance. She had seen, in fancy, a group of pictures, each with Sita for central figure; the whole, when complete, setting forth India's ideal of womanhood in the ascent of that gracious spirit from steep to steep of renunciation, unsullied, unafraid, even until the end.

Lilamani's whole face glowed as she warmed to her subject.

"Sita, when begging of Rāma to share banishment," she went on eagerly. "Sita, alone in forest hut when that Terrible is approaching in guise of Brahman. Sita coming out from fire of ordeal, in great God's arms. Think how splendid!"

"Jove, yes--_if_ it's possible." His ardour caught fire from hers. "Arrogant high-flying, of course. But we'll lay the scheme before Martino to-morrow and see what he thinks. You shall give us an outline idea of the story and the special scenes you want."

"Yes. Only ... Sita is like patron saint to me; like a piece of my own heart. And how difficult! When all is so big----"

"Not a bit of it. You'll manage beautifully. Think it all out when you get back to your sacred curry! And you would be my Sita? Is that it?"

"Yes, I would--oh, I would--in all things. If there came a need." She brooded on the thought with gravely luminous eyes.

"But, Lilamani, suppose I paint you, yourself, how about letting all the world see? Wouldn't you hate that?"

Her scarlet flush gave answer, and she hid her eyes a moment; then looking up again, spoke bravely. "Not--if I shall be Sita. Think how small thing for honour of your name, comparing with ordeal of fire."

"And you wouldn't stick at that either," he said, "if such barbarism still existed."

"No," she answered simply. "I am _Suttee_."

"Lilamani--what d'you mean?"

"Only--in old days, when _Suttee_ was not outside law, girl-brides would fear sometimes were they strong enough, were they worthy? Then they would make test; holding smallest finger in fire till flesh burnt from bone; or stirring with bare hand rice when boiling. And I--I have done--that last; though never I told to anyone--till now."

"You? My little one!" In a passion of protection he held her close.

"Such a small thing!" she murmured, not ill-pleased at his concern. "But now--I am glad; and perhaps a little more worthy for being Sita in your so beautiful pictures, that I long to see."

"_Our_ pictures," he corrected her in a sudden humility. "It's you that are the true artist, Lilamani--the inspired brain. Without you I should never have painted a thing worth looking at. But with you there's no limit to the insolence of my aspiration--."