She had frankly explained matters to her beloved Lilámani as they strolled together on the lawn, while Roy was enlightening Joe on the farther side of the yew hedge.
His championship had moved her more profoundly than she dared let him see without revealing all she knew. For the same reason, she could not show Nevil her full appreciation of his tact and delicacy. How useless—trying to hide his thoughts—he ought to know by now: but how beautiful—how endearing!
That she, who had boldly defied all gods and godlings, all claims of caste and family, should have reaped so rich a harvest——! For her—high priestess of the inner life—that was the miracle of miracles: scarcely less so to-day than in that crowning hour when she had placed, her first man-child in the arms of her husband—still, at heart, lord of her being. For the tale of her inner life might almost be told in two words—she loved.
Even now—so many years after—she thrilled to remember how, in that one magical moment, without nearness or speech or touch, the floating strands of their destinies had become so miraculously entangled, that neither gods nor godlings, nor household despots of East or West, had power to sever them. From one swift pencil sketch, stolen without leave—he sitting on the path below, she dreaming on the Hotel balcony above—had blossomed the twin flower of their love: the deeper revealing of marriage—its living texture woven of joy and pain; and the wonder of their after-life together—a wonder that, to her ardent, sensitive spirit, still seemed new every morning, like the coming of the sun. A poet in essence, she shared with all true poets that sense of eternal freshness in familiar things that, perhaps, more than any other gift of God, keeps the bloom on every phase and every relation of life. By her temperament of genius, she had quickened in her husband the flickering spark that might else have been smothered under opposing influences. Each, in a quite unusual degree, had fulfilled the life of the other, and so wrought harmony from conflicting elements of race and religion that seemed fated to wreck their brave adventure. To gain all, they had risked all: and events had amazingly justified them.
Within a year of his ill-considered marriage Sir Nevil had astonished all who knew him with the unique Exhibition of the now famous Ramayána pictures, inspired by his wife: a series of arresting canvases, setting forth the story of India's great epic, her confession of faith in the two supreme loyalties—of the Queen to her husband, of the King to his people. His daring venture had proved successful beyond hope. Artistic and critical London had hailed him as a newcomer of promise, amounting to genius: and Lilámani Sinclair, daughter of Rajputs, had only escaped becoming the craze of the moment by her precipitate withdrawal to Antibes, where she had come within an ace of losing all, largely through the malign influence of Jane—her evil genius during those wonderful, difficult, early months of marriage.
Nevil had returned to find himself a man of note; a prophet, even in his own county, where feathers had been ruffled a little by his erratic proceedings. Hence a discreetly changed attitude in the neighbourhood, when Lilámani, barely nineteen, had presented her husband with a son.
But—for all the gracious condescension of the elderly, and the frank curiosity of the young—only a discerning few had made any real headway with this attractive, oddly disconcerting child of another continent; this creature of queer reserves and aloofness and passionate pride of race. The friendliest were baffled by her incomprehensible lack of social instinct, the fruit of India's purdah system. Loyal wives and mothers who 'adored' their children—yet spent most of their day in pursuit of other interests—were nonplussed by her complete absorption in the joys and sanctities of home. Yet, in course of time, her patent simplicity and sincerity had disarmed prejudice. The least perceptive could not choose but see that she was genuinely, intrinsically different, not merely in the matter of iridescent silks and saris, but in the very colour of her soul.
Not that they would have expressed it so. To talk about the soul and its colour savoured of being psychic or morbid—which Heaven forbid! The soul of the right-minded Bramleigh matron was a neutral-tinted, decently veiled phantom, officially recognised morning and evening, also on Sundays, but by no means permitted to interfere with the realities of life.
The soul of Lilámani Sinclair—tremulous, passionate and aspiring—was a living flame, that lighted her thoughts, her prayers, her desires; and burned with clearer intensity because her religion had been stripped of all feastings and forms and ceremonies by a marriage that set her for ever outside caste. The inner Reality—free of earth-born mists and clouds—none could take from her.
God manifest through Nature, the Divine Mother, must surely accept her incense and sacrifice of the spirit, since no other was permitted. Her father had given her that assurance; and to it she clung, as a child in a crowd clings confidingly to the one familiar hand.
She was none the less eager to glean all she could assimilate of the religion to which her husband conformed, but in which, it seemed, he did not ardently believe. Her secret pangs on this score had been eased a little by later knowledge that it was he who shielded her from tacit pressure to make the change of faith expected of her by certain members of his family. Jane—out of regard for his wishes—had refrained from frontal attacks; but more than one flank movement had been executed by means of the Vicar (a second cousin) and of Aunt Julia—a mild elder Sinclair, addicted to foreign missions.
She had not told Nevil of these tentative fishings for her soul, lest they annoy him and he put a final veto on them. Being well versed in their Holy Book, she wanted to try and fathom their strange illogical way of believing. The Christianity of Christ she could accept. It was a faith of the heart and the life. But its crystallised forms and dogmas proved a stumbling-block to this embarrassing slip of a Hindu girl, who calmly reminded the Reverend Jeffrey Sale that the creed of his Church had not really been inspired by Christ, but dictated by Constantine and the Council of Nicea; who wanted to know why, in so great a religion, was there no true worship of woman—no recognising, in the creative principle, the Divine Motherhood of God? Finally, she had scandalised them both by quarrelling with their exclusive belief in one single instance, through endless ages, of the All-embracing, and All-creating revealed in terms of human life. Was not that same idea a part of her own religion—a world-wide doctrine of Indo-Aryan origin? Was every other revealing false, except that one made to an unbelieving race only two thousand years ago? To her—unregenerate but not unbelieving—the message of Krishna seemed to strike a deeper note of promise. "Wherever irreligion prevails and true religion declines, there I manifest myself in a human form to establish righteousness and to destroy evil."
So she questioned and argued, in no spirit of irreverence, but simply with the logic of her race, and the sweet reasonableness that is a vital element of the Hindu faith at its best. But, after that final confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the field. And Lilámani, flung back on the God within, had evolved a private creed of her own;—shedding the husks of Christian dogmas and the grosser superstitions of her own faith, and weaving together the mystical elements that are the life-blood of all religious beliefs.
For the lamps are many, but the flame is one. …
Not till the consummation of motherhood had lifted her status—in her own eyes at least—did she venture to speak intimately with Nevil on this vital matter. Though debarred from sharing of sacred ceremonies, she could still aspire to be true Sahardamini—'spiritual helpmate.' But to that end he also must co-operate; he must feel the deeper need. …
For many weeks after the coming of Roy she had hesitated, before she found courage to adventure farther into the misty region of his faith or unfaith, in things not seen.
"If I am bothering you with troublesome questions—forgive. But, in our Indian way of marriage, it is taught that without sharing spiritual life there cannot arrive true union," she had explained, not without secret tremors lest she fail to evoke full response. And what such failure would mean, for her, she could hardly expect him to understand.
But—by the blessing