Chapter V

"Her strength with weakness is overlaid,
Meek compliances veil her might,
Him she stays by whom she is stayed."
"True Woman."--C. ROSSETTI.

They spent a long evening in their balcony, watched over by the wistful stars. There was much to talk of now that she knew all: and their happiness, snatched from the verge of extinction, had a new depth and consciousness, that is the guerdon of pain shared and conquered.

So far as might be, Nevil expounded Jane, and the remoteness of her view-point from his own; an assurance that was balm to the hurt soul of his wife. He bade her, for his sake, forget those unjust, ugly words that the writer would surely regret when she knew his Lilamani. But she answered truthfully that were impossible. She could only promise not to let them poison her thoughts or embitter her spirit. And he knew of old the value of her given word.

Her love-song, with its musical cadences, at once delighted him and wrung his heart. That Jane's unvarnished candour should have struck sharp on that impassioned outpouring, infuriated him afresh. But she should not have the satisfaction of provoking him to a retort. Silence would at once annoy her and convince her that, for him, the subject was outside the pale of discussion. In the meantime, with the dear dark head against his shoulder, the cool clinging hand at rest within his own, he would fain forget the existence of Jane and all her works. The high encompassing heavens, the passionate jubilance of nightingales, thrilling up through the dark, weaned him from thought of trivial things; stirred within the body of his manhood, the pulse of the Divine....

When it came to "good night," they whispered that the enchantment was not broken, after all: whispered it, lest the Gods hear and snatch away the precious thing.

But it seemed that the Gods were sleeping, or on a journey. For three unclouded days they rowed and read and painted at will. Sita and Ravān emerged from their background of hut and forest. Sita, more especially, grew in beauty and power with each fresh sitting; nor did Nevil Sinclair guess how much he owed to his wife's trick of identifying herself so innately with Rāma's queen that a sense of approaching tragedy weighed upon her heart; while, in her misty imagining, That Terrible stood for Jane Roscoe and her two-edged sword.

Three unclouded days: and upon the fourth day, fell a bolt from the blue.

Breakfast was not long over. Lilamani sat on Sita's stool, ready for the morning's work, and her husband stood at his easel, when there came a telegram from England that took all the healthy colour out of Nevil Sinclair's face.

"My God!" he groaned under his breath; then, sinking into a chair beside the writing-table, pressed a hand over his eyes.

The flimsy, yellowish paper slipped unheeded to the floor and lay there, harmless-looking as a dead leaf, till Lilamani, treading softly, picked it up and read the curt summons twice over, in a stunned bewilderment, before the sense penetrated--and the pain.

"Father has had a stroke. Serious. Come immediately."

What a "stroke" might mean, she did not know. But two facts were plain: grave illness, and Nevil's instant departure--with or without her? Which would it be? For answer, she had only the leaping hammer-strokes of her heart.

A second or two she stood, while all things seemed smitten into a sudden unnatural silence. Then, softlier still, she drew near her husband.

Feeling her nearness, he looked up; and she saw the brave blue of his eyes veiled in tears. The pang that smote her was not all grief: it was the birth-pang of that mother-tenderness which is the diviner half of woman's love for man. To the Eastern wife it is impermissible till actual motherhood add a cubit to her stature; and, with a thrill at her own presumption, Lilamani Sinclair slipped a hand round her husband's head, drawing it close into the softness of her breast and cradling it there, as though he were indeed her son.

"The dear old man. Always such a tower of strength," Nevil said at last, without looking up. "When Jane wrote that he was not quite himself, one never thought--of _this_. God knows I've been a disappointing son to him. But I felt sure--if only he could see you---- Well, there's hope still----" He drew himself up, brushing the mist from his lashes. "Time's everything. I'll wire to Jane and we must start to-night."

"We?" The word was little more than a breath; and her eyes, quick with love's clairvoyance, dwelt on his. "Were you really meaning----? Is it not better--in such time of trouble--not to make more...?"

"But Lilamani!" He gathered her close. "How on earth can I leave you here--alone?"

"'Can' is always making a way, when there is 'must'!" she answered, smiling bravely. She had seen a ghost of indecision in his eyes, had heard it in his tone.

"But there's no 'must,'" he persisted, love and chivalry conquering his suspicion that she spoke truth. "You're my wife; and I'm proud of the fact. Even Jane couldn't be otherwise than decent to you--at a time like this. As for the dear old man--he needn't know till he's fit to see you himself. And if---- There's no 'if.' And there's no 'must' either--is there--now I've made things clear?"

He was talking valiantly against his own conviction. She saw it too clearly: saw that, for all his dread of parting, her presence now at Bramleigh Beeches would but serve to pile anxiety upon anxiety, pain on pain for the husband who was her all.

"Perhaps not 'must,'" she admitted wistfully. "Yet still--because of your father ... better to go alone. Also for me--it is too soon--meeting Lady Roscoe--after that letter----"

"You're right. It _is_ too soon!" He spoke with sudden heat. "Too soon for me, if it comes to that. But this is no time for squabbling; and of course--if you're not there.... I believe you're right, little wife. Better have the wrench now than risk spoiling everything by taking you home at the wrong moment. But you shan't be left alone. I'll wire to your father. Lucky he's in Paris. Shall I ask him if he can come at once, or take you along to join him?"

"No--not that!" She shrank from so complete a break. "Tell him 'Come soon.' He will. Somehow, he will. For his Lilamani."

"But at soonest he can't be here before to-morrow night. Twenty-four hours. You--who have never been alone in your life! I should be haunted by the thought of you...."

"No--oh no. You must believe I am brave Lilamani for your sake. Signor Martino and his sister will be kind; and in the evening time I will write you longest letter you ever had!"

Smiling, he pressed her hands between his own. Then they must needs forget themselves and each other in telegrams, time-tables, and flying orders; hateful, merciful trivialities that thrust themselves in between the anguished heart and the too nimble imagination, the terrible second self that stands outside the picture--watching, pitying, recording, and so intensifying emotion.

The telegrams written, Barnes must be told. Barnes was Sinclair's valet; faithful, but of late, mildly remonstrant. He received the news from home with a decorous air of sympathy due to any trouble that shadowed the prospective owner of Bramleigh Beeches, even if he had "married beneath him, in a manner of speaking." Mrs. Sinclair's taste for cookery was suspicious--to say the least; and--he wondered, discreetly, how much they knew "at home." Well--he would soon find out now: and, on the whole, though that there Miss Juliet was a "taking piece, and pretty well up on the balcony-trick," he could do with a few weeks' return to British Bass and an honest cut off the Sunday joint.

In the meantime, he advertised his sympathy by an elaborate lightness of tread and a voice pitched half a tone lower than usual. Discovering that the journey was to be a single affair, he patted himself on the back for "a knowing bird." It was a hole-and-corner business. He had suspicioned as much from the first. Peculiar, when you came to think of it; but there hadn't bin no letters with the Bramleigh postmark addressed to Mrs. Nevil Sinclair so far as he knew. The young master wasn't quite such a fool as that amounted to. Trust him. A courtesy marriage: he, Horatio Barnes, would have took his Bible oath; only that the lady's father was obviously "in it"--whatever "it" might be. But then--Lord love you!--when it come to heathens, however well-turned out, there was always dark possibilities in lurk; as he had gleaned from certain of the young master's books. For Barnes was a bit of a scholard in his own esteem. He had read of Japanese and Burmese marriages, in which parents were quite agreeable to a temporary arrangement. The notion occurred to him now: and he chuckled inwardly at his own astuteness. You never knew when an odd bit of reading might nip in handy. At all events--mum was the word. A bat in daylight could see as much. And mum it should be for him till the lay of the land seemed to justify speech: which he didn't go for to suppose it would.

Thus Horatio Barnes, moving like Agag, between the portmanteau and the chest of drawers: while Nevil Sinclair, stunned and miserable, gave not a moment's thought to the inferences a valet might draw from his latest move. He only saw that Lilamani was right; astonishingly, beautifully right, as she was apt to be in matters seemingly outside her ken. By some instinct of the spirit, that took the place of worldly wisdom, she had seen more instantly than he the impossibility of arriving at such a crisis with an unacknowledged wife, in the face of Jane's unacknowledged letter. For himself, eyes and judgment had been blinded by grief, by chivalrous consideration, and the natural desire that he had of her.

And how long would he be gone? Neither dared approach that question till Sir Lakshman's answering telegram forced them back upon a topic too painful for gratuitous talk. When it came, Nevil--still pale and shaken--was mechanically swallowing a biscuit and a glass of sherry, while they talked in the jerky, unnatural manner of those about to part; carefully avoiding each other's eyes. Only yesterday, at tea-time, they had been behaving like two children; she, perched lightly on his knee; and he, insisting that she should "bless" each cake he ate by daintily biting off a corner herself. Only yesterday! It seemed a week away. Now he swallowed unblessed morsels without tasting them, and handed Sir Lakshman's answer to his wife.

"He'll be with you this time to-morrow. Thank God for that much," he said without looking at her, while he fumbled at the clasp of his cigarette case. "I suppose--I hope to goodness he can stay--till I come back."

"How soon is that?" she whispered, folding the paper into diminishing parallelograms with minute care. "One week--or two?"

"Impossible to tell, little wife." He had lighted his cigarette now and coming nearer laid a sustaining hand on her shoulder. "Everything depends--on him. But you may trust me to come straight back to you the first moment I honestly can."

"Yes--yes. But so long as they are needing you--please stay..."

At this point they were interrupted by Agag with another telegram from the stationmaster at Lucerne; and once more the hateful, merciful actualities cleft them apart. Sinclair blessed his wife's tearless composure even while he marvelled at it in one so young, and withal so passionate, as he had discovered her to be. But the Eastern temperament is a thing of extremes. Either it will beat the breast and wail unrestrainedly upon the least provocation, or it will endure to the utmost with a stoicism almost sublime. Much hangs on caste. In Lilamani Sinclair, inherited instinct forbade the indignity of uncontrolled outcry or lament; and his pain, his need of small services, eclipsed all thought of--afterwards.

But there came the dread inevitable moment when the last label was writ, the last key turned in its lock, and they two stood alone in her shrine, dumbly, acutely aware that here was an end--not of their love, but of that sublimited phase of it that comes once only, and by no means to all.

To Nevil came also a sudden unreasoning fear of the lake. It was too soon to leave her--too soon. True, her madness was past; yet, in their after-talk, he had discerned at the heart of it, a deep, underlying idea that at once lifted it above a mere desperate impulse and made it the more liable to recur. The oppressive sense of Death's imminence, of life's instability, that was upon him, quickened his dread.

"Lilamani," he said hoarsely, gripping her two hands with a force that was pain, "I _can't_ leave you alone here, even for one night, unless you promise me, by whatever you hold most sacred, not to let--that madness of yours come back. Think of me--of the Sita pictures, of--of Jane, if the Devil tempts you to imagine that I could ever--oh, it's impossible! But give me your sacred word, and drive the ugly fear out of my heart----"

"Lord of my life," she answered, a thrill of passion in her low tone, "I promise ... by most sacred thing of all ... that gift I shall one day give you----"

A faint tremor here: and he--with an inarticulate sound--gathered her into his arms; held her so, for one measureless moment; then, whispering "God keep you, little wife," drew her down and out into their sun-filled garden.

The waiting boat received him. He waved as it pushed off. She waved back, achieving a smile. Then--he was gone; gone into the vague, unknown world of actualities: and for many minutes she stood where he had left her, straining to keep his boat in view through the mist that gathered in her eyes.