Chapter II

"Heaven's own screen
Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow;
Closely withheld, as all things most unseen--
The wave-bowered pearl, the heart-shaped seal of green
That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow."
ROSSETTI.

The morrow brought its own fresh ordeal to the new Lady Sinclair; added its own quota to the discovery, each day enforced more clearly, that married life with Nevil, the rising artist, was one thing, and married life with Sir Nevil Sinclair of Bramleigh Beeches, in the stronghold of his fathers, was very much another.

Tea-time found Lilamani in the large hall presiding at the gate-leg table over a bewildering array of Crown Derby tea-cups, and a purring silver urn that carried its banner of steam. More girlishly demure than ever she seemed, in dead-white dress and _sari_ bordered with palest grey; more "impossible" than ever also, in the opinion of the elders, who had made an honest effort to "draw her out" by talking of India before the kettle arrived. Sir Robert, mildly pompous and impersonal, had enlarged on the climate and the sport; Lord Roscoe contributed a few polished and paralysing questions on India's premier Native State; while Lady Margaret and Aunt Julia embarked hopefully on the field of missionary endeavour. A barren field, in this case.

Not that Lilamani's answers were other than intelligent and polite. But these Western elders, inured by now to the airy self-assurance of their own young, felt checked and a little chilled by lowered lids and deferential murmurs; not realising that this was her idea of correct behaviour to the more venerable members of a husband's family.

The arrival of the kettle had been a welcome relief to all. But soon there would be other talk to make; fresh strangers to encounter. Nevil and Christina had driven out to meet the new-comers; rank Bohemians both; peculiarly distasteful to Jane. Morna and her father, after a short turn with Lilamani, had wandered on through the burnished glories of the beech-wood. George and Phil had gone for a ride. There had been a slight coolness between them all the morning, much of which George had contrived to spend in Lilamani's neighbourhood. But fresh air and exercise readjusted things; and on their return, the drive being empty, he had lifted his _fiancée_ out of the saddle and kissed her soundly, on the lips.

"Oh--George!" she murmured, as he released her. But he had turned aside and was opening the front door.

It was George's way of making love. Little of tenderness in speech or tone; only an occasional kiss, half passionate, half shamefaced, when heart or senses were stirred. Phillippa did not altogether approve. But she wanted George--for several reasons; and one could not accept a man piecemeal.

It was not so easy to accept his instant gravitation to the "harem child" on entering the hall. Mere masculine instinct, she assured herself; and bore Nevil a grudge for giving him a chance to gratify it. But he had not gratified it for many minutes before wheels and a stir outside announced Nevil and his friends.

Lilamani braced herself for renewed "inspection"; and her young vanity craved the more distinctive setting of mother-o'-pearl or almond-blossom _sari_; the golden gleam or armlets, belt and shoes. She wearied of this eternal white and grey. Its insipidity seemed to infect her soul; its----

"Lilamani--here is Miss de Winton."

Nevil's voice roused her. She started; smiled obediently, and held out her hand. It was retained for a second or more while its owner regarded her leisurely out of long, level-lidded eyes.

"This is a great moment, Lady Sinclair," said Leslie de Winton in a full contralto as leisurely as her gaze. "I've been counting the days and the hours ever since the invite came. I've known this Nevil of yours"--she grasped his arm--"how many years is it, old boy?"

He shrugged and laughed. "I'm weak at arithmetic! And I've lived a lifetime this summer."

"Well--we'll say a lifetime then!" Her eyes seemed reluctant to leave his face. "'We were boys together,' like Mr. and Mrs. Alphonso Browne! And I couldn't induce myself to believe in Nevil's _wife_ till I'd seen her in the flesh."

Lilamani had no immediate answer at command. Something in the look and tone of this mere stranger--little more than Audrey's age--who laid hands on her man and called him "old boy" fired her with a hot rush of anger. But she kept her gaze steady, lest hesitation be deemed shyness, and a delicate shade of sarcasm lurked in her question: "Perhaps you are a little more able for believing it now?"

Miss de Winton, vaguely aware of something amiss, turned it off with a laugh. "Why, yes. Very much so! But even now, I can't manage to believe in those pictures! The Nevil _I_ know could never have achieved the amount; let alone the unique subject." Again her eyes dwelt upon him with their odd look of veiled power. "It seems that I am here to meet a new Nevil as well as a new wife! But I beg your pardon, Noll"---this to Norris. "It's your turn now. Once _I_ get into the middle of the stage I'm rather apt to stay there unless some one kindly pushes me aside!"

Still unhurried, she moved on her way, shaking hands and talking in the strong, deliberate voice that was almost a drawl; while Lilamani, only half appeased, must endure the scrutiny of eyes the more embarrassing that they were masculine, prominent and boldly appreciative, under rough, irritable brows. But for Norris the drawing-room and the tea-table were unfamiliar mediums--"not being a placard-painter," was his own explanation; and he had no platitudes at command.

Having covered his small hostess with confusion by a look that comprised her from caste-mark to shoe-buckle, he announced bluntly: "Strikes me, Lady Sinclair, that you came over from India expressly to do this lucky husband of yours a double service. He's just the Fate-favoured type that would get all the plums dropped into his mouth, without any prelude of starving and agonizing such as we poor devils have to grind through first----"

"Well, you shan't starve and agonize under my roof, old chap!" Nevil interposed promptly, seeing that the speech was quite beyond his wife's power to answer.

He would fain have set her at ease by a tender word or two, a hand on her shoulder; but that he knew too well by this time how all her "Hindu-ness" shrank from the lightest revealing of their hearts before others.

"Give this ill-used pair some tea, Lilamani!" was all he could say. "Unless you'd prefer drinks and cigarettes in the studio, Norris?"

No. They voted for tea. But Miss de Winton smoked a cigarette with hers, and flicked her ash about the carpet, to Aunt Julia's amaze and Jane's unspeakable disgust.

The family dispersed more or less during the interlude; and the moment tea-drinking was over Leslie de Winton rose.

"Now then, Nevil, I'm in a most egregious hurry to be convinced of the existence of these myths!"

"You look it!" said he, surveying with a smile her lazy length, that held the same kind of power as her eyes. "You'll tear me into ribbons between you. But you're more than welcome----"

He motioned her to the door; and as they went forward, he lingered a moment to lean over his wife's chair.

"Aren't you coming too, Jewel of Delight?"

"Not now--please," she answered, and her eyes clung to his for one appealing instant.

But as soon as he was gone, she lay back and closed them, simulating weariness as a cloak for vague trouble and bewilderment of soul. Weeks of monopoly had made the studio dear and sacred almost as her shrine. It was one thing to admit Christina, who was "Nevil in a girl." But to share it with strangers--the one, too openly intimate with him; the other too likely to persecute her with his eyes, in the fashion of M. Leseppes--was more than she would willingly endure. It began to dawn upon her that this trouble of the way men looked at you must be an inevitable phase of unveiled life: a phase that made her long for the cloistered shelter of the Inside as nothing else had done yet. Even George, brother and promised husband, was not above reproach.

And to-day--fresh perturbation on her lord's account. If it were _dastur_ that the free women of England should behave with the husband of another as this bold-mannered one behaved with hers--Lilamani's, then, better a thousand times that wife should be shut away where she might not feel the poison-pricks of jealousy--fierce and primitive in this gentle creature even as her hate. But of what use to consider advantages? The unveiled life was of her own choosing; and must be accepted, good with ill.

At this point the insistent murmur of voices tangled her thread of thought. The room had fallen very still. All who remained were occupied with pen or book. Only those voices came from the fireside, where Jane and Aunt Julia discussed the recent misfortunes and follies of a poor relation, Clara by name. She lived, it seemed, at a place called Gunnersbury, where rooms were few and small; and servants either were not, or did little to earn their wages; since this Clara appeared to have "everything on her hands" from cooking to making the children's clothes, which she did badly enough, according to Jane. For there were children also in this abode of dinginess and small space. That one word enchained Lilamani's attention; and a vision of children, who were also relations, redeemed the sordid picture. One had been ill. So had Clara herself. They spoke of the ill one as "Nevil," and Lilamani's heart contracted. It was her foolish thought that no living woman, save herself, could be mother of a man-child and call his name Nevil. But the fact, though disconcerting, quickened her sympathy for one so blest yet so ill-fated. She listened eagerly. Aunt Julia was speaking now.

"Of course, dear, one _knows_ her capacity for muddling things almost amounts to genius. But then--these illnesses, with her income! And after all, she _is_ poor dear Richard's widow----"

"Which means you've been sending her another cheque. Aunt Ju, you're incorrigible!"

Disapproval lurked in Jane's half-playful remonstrance; and a hint of apology in Miss Sinclair's reply.

"Only five pounds, dear, to help her take the child to St. Leonard's. But the money has melted; and they've never been. There were difficulties----"

"There always are. There always would be, with Clara, if she had a thousand a year!" This from Jane, with her touch of asperity. "She's one of the patently unfit. And really, Aunt Ju, you make things worse by pauperizing her. She knows quite well that whenever a tight corner comes, a cheque will drop out of the sky. If she didn't, she might at least try to make some sort of provision for bad times like these."

Lady Roscoe had never troubled herself to discover by a simple sum of arithmetic what manner of provision for emergencies could be achieved by a woman of gentle birth, doomed to feed, dress, and educate four children on a bare two hundred a year. Hers was the supreme handicap of the unimaginative: utter inability to see life through other eyes than her own.

Miss Sinclair, softer of heart and conscience, could only reiterate her unanswerable argument: "After all, my dear, she is poor Richard's widow."

And "Richard" having been first cousin to Sir George--though only a degree less unfit than his wife--Jane could but acquiesce, and change the subject; which spoilt everything. Lilamani wanted to hear more, or be left in peace to think of this unknown "Clara"; this woman of her husband's family, who lacked space and money, and even food, while she and Nevil were overburdened with useless servants, empty rooms and more than sufficient money to fulfil their needs. For Nevil had said little to her of his own inability to make ends meet. As head of the family, surely his duty was clear. If relations were in need or sickness, their place was at Bramleigh Beeches. That was her Eastern view. For in India organized charity is not. Each family group is more or less responsible for its own. Possibly Nevil had not heard, or did not realize. Children in the house--young children! Her woman's heart thrilled at the prospect. Rising quietly she slipped out of the room, and ran up to the Tower, that she might think things out in her shrine. But she reckoned without Nevil's quick ears and keen desire of her.

At the sound of her light step without, he opened the studio door.

"Come and join the private view, Lilamani," said he. "The pictures are as much yours as mine. And so I've told them!"

"However much you are telling it, they will never believe such foolishness!" she made answer, laughing; reluctance dispelled by his tribute.

"I'm not sure of _that_, Lady Sinclair," quoth Norris, regarding, with quickened interest, her girlish outlines of face and figure. "Personally, I'm inclined to score under the polite remark I achieved downstairs! This scene in particular, Sinclair, stamps you--places you even more than the rest." He flung a declamatory hand towards the easel, where Nevil had just set up Sita in the Asoka Garden, with its grimly suggestive background of fiends vigilant, and its foreground of delicate beauty veiled and blurred with grief, as the face of the moon by passing clouds. "No man of our school could have resisted such a chance--and the abduction gave you another--of making your thrill the wrong way round. Even a touch of bestiality wouldn't have been amiss. Degenerate or no, there's a certain chill down the spine producible by vigorous, remorseless handling of the hideous that leaves the more commonplace appeal to beauty miles behind."

For a moment, Nevil considered the matter, and his canvas; then shook his head.

"I find more than enough of ugliness and terror in both scenes," said he.

"Quite so. You're not Leseppes 'god-son' for nothing. But for all he's left his mark on your work, you've the reticence, the delicacy and mellow sanity of an older school. You're not afraid of simplicity; and it's clear you believe in beauty all along the line."

"Yes, thank God, I do." Nevil glanced involuntarily at his wife. "I hope no school or movement or 'ism' will ever tempt me into deifying the ugly and abnormal, even for the sake of your chill down the spine!"

Norris laughed. "For ever and ever. Amen! Eh? Wait till you've seen Leslie's latest. But I doff my hat to the rising apostle of sanity! I can still admire work on your lines when--and only when--it bears the clear stamp of personal vision, in addition to such notable brushwork and force of colour. Yes, my dear chap, in spite of your confounded healthiness, I believe you'll do! But as I've leave to quarrel with a thing or two--look here----"

And securing the "apostle of sanity" by the arm he launched into a tangle of minor technicalities that swept the talk far above Lilamani's head.

Leslie de Winton, noting this, drew her aside.

"Let them wrangle it out between them, Lady Sinclair," said she. "I want to hear something more about this magical Epic, that seems to have fired your husband as I've never seen him fired yet. One knew the name, of course; and Nevil has given us the bare bones of the story. What a big conglomerate thing it is! And what an uncomfortably high standard of wifehood it reveals. Thank heaven, our men don't set us on such heroic pedestals in these days! And I suppose even Indian ideals have come a shade nearer to earth in the last thousand years or so?"

Lilamani, half puzzled, half repelled, could only shake her head.

"I don't quite know your meaning about nearer to earth. Of course it is difficult, always, for those not heroine-made to climb to such a height. But Sita is still ideal for all true Indian wives to-day."

"Poor misguided souls!" The Englishwoman's genuine dismay set Lilamani smiling in spite of herself.

"Not so misguided, nor so hardship as you think," said she.

"Not hardship? My dear Lady Sinclair! To be condemned to worship a very fallible and human husband as god? _I_ should say insult would be nearer the mark!"

The daughter of Rajputs frowned.

"It is not 'condemned,' nor insult," she said, with a touch of heat. "It is by nature, by religion----"

"Then it's high time nature and religion tried a change of programme! Rare luck for you, isn't it, marrying into a saner and more reasonable state of things?"

"I? How you mean? No difference with me. I am still Hindu. You think by change of name and country the soul can change beliefs, ideals, as if like clothes."

"I'm afraid I didn't think. But then--good Lord----" The incredible conclusion dawned on her. "You don't mean to tell me that Nevil is--that if Nevil were to----"

"Please not say any more," Lilamani broke in hurriedly, the hot blood surging into her face. "It is not--I am not able for discussing so sacred subject ... with strangers----"

To hide her confusion and check further speech she turned abruptly toward the window; and Leslie de Winton's sallow face changed colour. She was sorry to have trespassed on this quaint child's preserves: but irrespressible amusement narrowed her eyes. Nevil--most casual and unheroic of men, whom no one but herself had ever seemed to take quite seriously till now--

He turned at the moment, caught her smiling, and inquired innocently: "What's the joke?"

"You are!" she answered, stepping closer and lowering her voice. "You'll soon be invisible to us earth-worms--the rate you're going up. A baronet; a budding R.A.; and now I find that mere marriage has exalted you into a 'sacred subject'!"

"Oh, hang it, Les. Shut up." Nevil frowned sharply and glanced at his wife's figure in the window. "It's not me. You don't understand."

Low as he spoke, Lilamani caught the words and the "small name" that hurt her like a blow. How little it might imply she did not stay to consider. She hated its owner; and was racking her brain for a polite means of escape, when the leisurely voice remarked: "Well, so long, Nevil. It's good to be here again. I must go now and uncrumple my evening dress."

To Lilamani it seemed a miracle wrought in her favour. It did not strike her that an exchange of glances had sufficed; and that Leslie had carried off the bewildered Norris by force, to explain "the joke" in her own ribald fashion, outside. She only knew, with a lift of the heart, that they were gone. What matter how? She only stood waiting, with young intensity of expectation, for the beloved footstep, the beloved arm round her body.

And when these came, quietly, without speech, in the English fashion she had learnt to love, she turned swiftly and hid her burning face in the roughness of his coat.

He gave her a minute or so to recover herself, his left hand pressing her head against its shelter.

Then:

"You must make allowances, little one," he said, "if some of them _do_ trample unawares on your holy ground. The sanctities are out of fashion here, nowadays. But Leslie's a good sort. She meant no harm."

"Is she--cousin, that you call her by that private name?" came the muffled voice, shifting the issue in a manner so purely feminine that the man smiled and pressed her closer.

"No. She's no connection. But we're very good friends. She's bound to be here pretty often; and I want you to like her. She's a very clever artist--and quite a good sort really," he repeated, feeling the movement of negation under his hand.

Her speech confirmed it.

"'Good sort' your Lilamani doesn't know. She is horrid woman. Profane woman. Not worthy for having a husband--or--or sons--ever!"

It was her supremest malediction, as Nevil knew by now.

"Poor Leslie!" said he, and his eyes grew soft with a passing memory. "Worthy or not, the odds are against her having either--now."

He did not feel bound to add that at one time she had openly aspired to become the future Lady Sinclair. Even with the dear head against his breast he had a momentary qualm in realizing that but for a timely separation, at a critical juncture, his house of marriage would have been builded upon sand and this pearl of womanhood would never have been his. Leslie, with her strong irregular features, lithe body, and hint of power in reserve, had fascinated him mentally, to the verge of obsession. She fascinated him still. But this flower of the East, this very woman compact of fire and dew, held every fraction of him prisoner in her softly-clinging hands.

"She mustn't be a hard-judging, narrow-minded Lilamani," he reproved her in all gentleness. "And she mustn't make foolishness about the 'private name!' You didn't mind it with Audrey. She's no cousin either."

"No. Yet not the same with her. I can't tell--I feel----" She lifted her head in the effort to crystallize vague yet unerring intuitions; and Broome's voice sounded at the door.

"You there, Nevil?"

Sinclair glanced at his wife.

"Yes--yes. Him I love!" she whispered, freeing herself from his arm.

"Come on, old man," Nevil called out; adding, as the novelist entered: "Here's an honour that you dreamt not of. Lady Sinclair loves you!"

"Oh, Nevil! I didn't mean--how trouble you are!" she cried, in a pretty flutter of embarrassment; and Broome, with genuine pleasure in his eyes:

"Don't spoil such a charming confession, my dear. I heartily return the compliment."

Then, with one of those touches of the Southerner that so well became him, he lifted her hand to his lips.

"I came to say," he went on, beaming at his astonished host, "that Christina and Morna are having quite a concert in the drawing-room. My infant sings rather nicely. She's shy of performing after dinner, as yet. But I'd like you to hear her, if you've done with each other _pro tem_."

Lady Sinclair crumpled her brow over that last.

"_Pro tem_? That is what Audrey was calling something in the food."

Nevil burst out laughing. "Proteids! Not half a bad shot! Poor old Audrey's teaching didn't leave much of a mark."

"A girl to be reckoned with, though. Character enough for two!" Broome remarked with a twinkle, recalling the day of the storm. "Heard anything of her since Antibes?"

"Yes. She's in Scotland with her people. We've asked her to look us up when she comes in this direction."

He opened the door for his wife in speaking, and they went out.