The Great Amulet

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And with a sigh Lenox yielded himself to the ecstasy of her touch.

Their talk grew fitful, and fragmentary; intimate lover's talk,
interspersed with luminous pauses, that were but hidden channels of
speech; till Quita felt the walls within walls giving way under her
'magic,' and knew that she had reached the shy, inmost heart of the man
at last. That enchanted hour lifted them beyond the ardours of
passion, to the mastery of spirit; to a passing revelation of the
eternal beauty underlying earth's tragedies and complexities: and both
were conscious of an exalted strength.

The harsh clanging of the police gong, twelve times repeated, brought
them back to the iron facts of life. With a murmur of reluctance they
rose; and Lenox escorted his wife to the door of her room.

"Shall I let down your 'chick' for you?" he asked.

"Please."

He untied the strings that held it up. Then, as the curtain fell
between them and the lamplit room, Quita turned, and with a gesture all
tenderness, laid both arms round his neck.

"I shall never forget to-night, Eldred," she whispered, "even if we
live to be cross prosaic old people together. You may go to the other
end of the world, now, and stay there as long as you like! I am sure
of you; and I feel in every fibre of me that we are going to win
through in the end."

CHAPTER XXV.

"In a hundred ages of the gods I could not tell thee of the glory of
Himachal. As the dew is dried up by the sun, so are the sins of
mankind, by the glory of Himachal."--_From the Hindu_.

That night Eldred Lenox slept long, and dreamlessly; and awoke with new
life throbbing in his veins. The three uneventful days that followed
were among the happiest in his life; and on the fourth, before sunset,
the two women set out, in hospital doolies, on their primitive journey
to Sheik Budeen.

Honor had protested, almost to tears, at being compelled to spend a
fortnight with her heart in two places, and her body in a third! But
Desmond, reinforced by John Meredith, had held his own; promising to
escort her to the barren Rock of Refuge, whose only virtue was its
elevation; and, by arranging a relay of ponies along the route, gallop
back in time for 'orderly room' next morning. "Which is more than nine
husbands out of ten would do for a headstrong wife!" Meredith had
concluded, stroking her flushed cheek: and thus the matter had been
settled.

Lenox and Quita spent the last afternoon together in their own
bungalow, at her suggestion. The officious chowkidar unearthed two
punkah coolies for the occasion: and the planning of their future home,
a picnic tea served on Eldred's writing-table, and practical
considerations in respect of furniture and house linen--though Quita
had small inherent regard for either!--helped, more or less, to obscure
the thought of separation. Before leaving the bungalow, she won
through the dreaded last injunctions and kisses without ignominious
collapse, since Lenox was to ride out for a few miles beside the
doolie; and they parted finally with brave words, and a prolonged
hand-clasp that left her fingers tingling for a good five minutes
afterwards.

Quita never forgot that journey. Its weird fascination, clashing with
the ache of parting, stamped every detail indelibly upon her
memory;--the vast, featureless plain, empty as a widow's heart; the
lavish moonlight poured out upon it like water, flowing unhindered to
the naked spurs of the frontier hills, whose huge shoulders, peaks, and
escarpments blotted out the stars along the western horizon; the
occasional appearance of wild-looking Waziri militia-men, from the
chain of outposts along the foothills, who had been warned to keep up a
sharp look-out along the road: no villages; no trees; no sound or
movement anywhere, save the distorted shadows and rythmical grunting of
her doolie-bearers, the soft shuffling of their feet, and the click of
hoofs, as Desmond rode at a foot's pace beside his wife, or
dismounting, walked and talked with her, his bridle slung over his arm.

The suggestion of tenderness and companionship in their low tones
seemed to accentuate the lifeless desolation through which they moved,
the blankness and uncertainty of the anxious months ahead. Possibly
something of this occurred to Desmond; for after the first few miles he
deserted his wife now and again, and walked by Quita; exorcising the
spirit of self-torment that haunts the imaginative, as he of all men
best knew how to do.

Finally, lulled by the movement of the doolie, she fell asleep; and
awoke to find herself in a changed world; a world of rough-cut volcanic
rock and boulder, piled up on either hand in fantastic disarray; a
world of white light and sharp black shadows; of mystery, and terror,
and uncanny beauty. It was as if she had been transported back to the
morning of Time, when the earth giants wrenched up the mountains, and
pelted one another in pure sport: and as she flung back the loose flap
of her doolie to get a wider view of it all, Desmond trotted up to her.

"It's less alarming than it looks," he reassured her. "We have only
turned off into the Paizu Pass. It's a nasty dangerous bit of road;
but our own men are on ahead, so we're safe enough. We shall be
climbing the hill directly; and I'll be uncommonly glad of my _chota
hazri_."

"You deserve it, you poor fellow! But it sounds an anachronism! I
can't believe that anything so commonplace as a bungalow, with servants
and tea and toast, exists within a hundred miles of this primeval
nakedness."

But in the fulness of time, bungalow, tea, and servants were all
forthcoming: and between three and four of the morning their fantastic
journey culminated in a prosaic meal of eggs and buttered toast. When
it was over Quita vanished, leaving Desmond alone with his wife; and
before moonset he was speeding back along the road they had come;
covering the fifty miles at a hand-gallop, in something less than five
hours.

A fortnight later two very unwilling grass-widows were rescued by
Lenox, who had secured his sick leave; and who escorted them from Dera
Ishmael as far as Lahore, where he left them to go on into the mountain
region beyond Kashmir.

Hillmen have a saying, 'Who goes to the hills goes to his mother'; and
Eldred Lenox, a hillman both by love and lineage, confirmed it for the
hundredth time, as he pushed his way upward, by leisurely enchanting
stages, from the steaming Punjab, through the great natural gateway of
the Baramullah Pass, a towering defile, thunderous with full-fed
torrents and waterfalls, into the familiar Valley, . . a very sanctuary
of peace; its terraced slopes splashed with the vivid green of
rice-fields, the russet and gold of ripe orchards and cornlands; up
through Srinagar, 'the City of the Sun,' of carved and gilded temples,
thronged waterways, and flat house-tops blazoned with flowers; and yet
again upward, by ways well known to him, into the hidden mysteries of
the mountains massed about the valleys; a mighty conclave of immortals
brooding in majestic meditation; shrouded at this season by dazzling
continents of cloud; and plunging green arms to the rivers and lakes,
that gleamed like molten silver under a pale sky.

To know a character rightly it should be seen in its natural element;
and the Lenox of the Himalayas was by no means the same man as the
Lenox of the Plains. All his latent energy and vigour blossomed out
like flowers at the first whisper of spring. 'The glory of Himachal'
drew and penetrated and inspired him like nothing else on earth.

Here he tracked and brought down oonyal, markhor, and the great
mountain sheep; explored on a small scale, because the fever of going
was upon him; and slept as a man only sleeps when he is living close to
the heart of Nature. Here, also,--fortified by solitude, by the
uplifting sense of things awful and divine which is the gift of great
mountains to those who love them,--he fought doggedly and
systematically against a craving that persisted in spite of improved
health. For the tyranny of opium is as tenacious as it is deadly; and
the habit of five years is not to be broken in as many weeks. But the
man who wills to conquer evil has God and Nature fighting on his side:
and in the teeth of several flagrant lapses, Lenox made steady progress.

In Srinagar he bought a bottle of chlorodyne; and two days later flung
it down the _khud_. When his store of drugged tobacco ran out, he
replaced it by a brand in which an innocuous admixture of opium just
sufficed to produce the faint fragrance that he loved. The black fits
of melancholy, which were native to his temperament, and which, in the
past five years, had threatened to dominate him permanently, evaporated
like morning fogs before the sun as the certainty grew in him that he
must prevail: and Quita, who had done most of the harm, made
unconscious reparation by letters whose consummate faith in the final
issue was stimulating as the mountain air itself.

By October he was back at Dera Ishmael Khan;--a renewed man, bronzed
and vigorous, the shadow gone from his eyes; testing his achievement
and finding that it held good; bending all his energies to the task of
fitting up a home for his wife; a task whereof Honor usurped as large a
share as he would permit. Then, towards the end of the month, he wrote
to Quita: "Come. We are ready, and waiting for you,--the house,
Zyarulla, Brutus, and your impatient husband, who will pick you up at
Lahore."

And on the last day of October, more than six years after their hasty
wedding, Eldred and Quita Lenox entered upon their married life.

"Have you forgotten, darling, the nonsense I talked that day about the
House, and the Enchanted Palace?" she asked, as they stood together on
their first evening in the drawing-room, whose every detail he had
planned with elaborate care.

"Is it likely? Why?"

His arm was round her shoulders; and putting up one hand she touched
his face.

"Why . . because I said we would have to begin with the House. But we
seem to have reached the Enchanted Palace before starting after all?"

"By a very roundabout route," he answered, a suspicion of the old
sadness in his eyes.

"Yes; but we _have_ reached it. That's the main point, dear Pessimist;
and the commonplace House I offered you has tumbled into a dust-heap of
ruins. Don't let's build it up again, whatever else we may do in the
way of foolishness. Retrogression is the one unforgiveable sin!"

It is the instinctive cry of love in the first flush of fulfilment.
The grand impulsion of man to woman brushes aside lesser considerations
like so many flies. But Life and Temperament, standing discreetly in
the background, will have their say in the 'fateful second act' of the
human comedy before the curtain drops.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"Climb high, love high, what matter! Still . . .
Feet, feelings, must descend the hill."
--Browning.

On a certain afternoon of early March, Quita Lenox stood at her easel,
in the small room she had fitted up as a studio, palette in one hand,
long-handled brush in the other, two broken lines of irritation between
her brows.

The verandah door stood wide; and through it the breath of spring came
in to her, velvet soft, compact of a hundred nameless scents, mingled
with the paramount scent of roses. For March is India's rose month:
and in the midst of so much that is unlovely, the roses of Dera Ishmael
Khan are things to marvel at, and thank Heaven for. Quita's rambling
compound was packed with them, from the plebeian Cabbage, to the lordly
Marechal Neil. Three golden buds of the latter drooped over the white
ribbon bow at her waist: and a bowl of dark red ones stood on the
untidy table behind her.

But even the subtle-sweet influence of the day failed to sooth the
creases out of her forehead. For the panel picture on her easel would
not 'behave'; her scattered ideas refused to range themselves: and the
fount of inspiration seemed dried up within her: trifles insignificant
enough to the 'lay' mind: but for the artist, whether of pencil, or
brush, or chisel, they spell despair. All the morning she had wrestled
with the picture half defiantly, as it were against the stream. Such
work is seldom satisfactory; and since lunch she had been engaged in
blotting it all out ruthlessly, bit by bit.

The refractory creation of her spirit was a small panel in oils: a
subject picture, more or less symbolical, such as she did not often
attempt:--a broken hillside, of Himalayan character: bare blocks of
granite, dripping with recent rain, their dark corners and interstices
alight with shy wild flowers and ferns: a stone-set path zigzagging
among them, and half-way up the path, the figures of a man and woman:
the man ahead, upon a jutting ledge of rock, half turning with
down-stretched hand to draw the woman up after him, his vigorous form
backed by a sky of driving cloud. Of the woman's face, as she lifted
it to his, nothing could be seen save the outline of cheek and brow.
Her bowed shoulders and the lines of her figure expressed effort,
tinged with weariness. Below her, the topmost half of a deodar sprang
upward, a suggestion of wind in its drooping bows: and through torn
grey cloud, a sun-ray, striking across the two figures, waked coppery
gleams in the woman's dark hair, and points of brightness on drenched
rock and fern.

All these things were as yet conveyed rather than expressed: the
figures, in particular, being still little more than studies suggesting
both the strain and exhilaration of ascent. On a strip of cardboard
propped above the canvas, four lines were scribbled in pencil.

"Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn till night, my friend."

Quita read and pondered the words for the hundredth time: but the hint
of melancholy in them only increased her vague feeling of annoyance,
and the lines deepened between her brows.

It was her first serious attempt at a picture after four months of
idleness, and 'amateur scribblings'--so she designated them in her
letters to Michael; and for the time being brain and hand seemed to
have lost their cunning. She needed the stimulant of criticism, of
discussion, to oil the wheels and set the machine going afresh. If
only Michael were here, how they would have argued and squabbled, to
their souls' content, over values, and proportions and effects of light
and shade; and what a fine day's work would have sprung from it all!

"I really think I must get him down here for a week or two," she
thought. "Just to give me a fillip in the right direction."

Fired by the notion, she made one or two ineffectual dabs at the
woman's draperies: then, flinging down brush and palette, sank into a
deep, cushioned chair sacred to her husband, as a small table bearing
ash-tray, pipes, and a pile of corrected proofs, bore witness. She
glanced through them lazily, with softened eyes: then, as if drawn by a
magnet, her gaze returned to the picture.

"Horrid depressing thing!" the reflected. "And yet . . how attractive!
The general character of it is rather like Eldred himself. I suppose I
could produce nothing that wasn't at this stage! They are both up-hill
subjects, certainly; worth tackling; and not to be mastered in a day."

But for all that she was little used to wrestling with her art. The
touch of genius in her was of the spontaneous, rather than of the
painstaking order; and a remembered word of Michael's rose up to
disconcert her. "Succumb to your womanhood and there is an end of your
Art." Irritating man! What business had he to make random shots so
near to the truth. Yet it was not the whole truth; and hers was the
chance to prove it.

Certainly for the past six months and more, she had succumbed
unreservedly to her womanhood; had endured without a pang the temporary
eclipse of her art. What need to strive after the presentation, the
expression of life, when she had penetrated to the core of it: was
living it buoyantly, fervently, with every faculty of heart and spirit?
By nature a being of extremes, she was apt to fling all her energies in
one direction at a time: and in these last months of so-called idleness
she had been mastering the rudiments of the finest and most complex of
all arts,--the art of living in closest human relationship with 'a
creature of equal, if of unlike frailties'; an art that must be
mastered afresh, year by year: because life, as we know it, is rooted
in change; and if a husband and wife are not imperceptibly growing
towards one another, they are almost infallibly growing in the other
direction. But for the artist woman self-surrender is no natural
instinct: it is a talent to be consciously acquired, if she ever
acquire it at all: and although Quita had, in some sort, been through
the fire, she was still a novice in those 'profound and painless
lessons of love,' that can only be taught in the incomparable school of
marriage.

Meanwhile, she was learning her husband,--in his own phrase,--like a
new language; and enjoying the process, despite its undeniable
difficulty. For the man was by temperament inarticulate, and a
solitary: propensities aggravated by six years of bitterness, and
stifled passion. Let his love be never so deep and true, the spell of
isolation, the spirit that drives men into the wilderness, was as
strong in him as the need to share thought and feeling with the heart
nearest her own was in his wife. At no time could he have been classed
among the frankly unthinking men who slip into marriage as composedly
as they slip into a new suit of clothes: and at five-and-thirty, the
complete readjustment of life and habit demanded by this exquisite yet
exacting bond could not be arrived at without some degree of conscious
strain and compromise.

The past few weeks had revealed to both, more or less clearly, the 'sea
of contrarieties' through which they were called upon to steer without
capsizing; had brought them to that critical turning-point when the
first rapture of passion in possession subsides imperceptibly, into an
emotion deeper and more stable; when the insignificant outer world
resumes its normal proportions; and individuality reasserts itself,
often with disconcerting results!

Hence Quita's revived zeal to finish a picture begun and flung aside
months ago; and Eldred's unusually prompt response to a request from an
Editor friend in England for a set of articles on Tibet, whose holy of
holies had not then been unveiled and described for the benefit of
man's insatiable curiosity.

He was in his study now, finishing the first of them in time for the
homeward mail: unconsciously enjoying a return to the familiar
occupation. The writing of it had engrossed more of his mind and
leisure during the last week than Quita chose to consider quite
admissible in those early days. Her own absorption in her picture was
quite another matter, be it understood! And, in truth, she would
gladly have had him in the studio, ensconced in his own chair, and
available for argument or love-making according to her mood. Hitherto
she had resisted temptations to invade his study when she knew him to
be at work. But this afternoon a vague spirit of unrest had gotten
hold of her, making the thought of his diligence, and complacent
detachment from her, peculiarly exasperating; and before long
exasperation drove her to the door of his sanctum.

It stood ajar: and pushing it open, she went softly in. His back was
towards her, and his concentration so complete that he was not aware of
her till she stood at his elbow. Then he started and looked up with a
smothered exclamation of doubtful character.

"Hullo, my lady, I thought this was against regulations! What's up?"

She perched lightly on the arm of his chair.

"Nothing's up. I'm rather 'down,' that's all; or I wouldn't have
infringed your territorial rights! _Do_ leave off being a model of
industry, and come into the studio."

"But, my dear girl, . . why?"

"Because I want you. Isn't that reason enough? There'll be plenty of
time to finish grinding out dry-as-dust facts about Tibet after tea."

"I'm afraid not. I told Desmond I'd get down to the tent-pegging
early. Is it really anything important, lass?" he added, controlling
his impatience with an effort.

"Oh dear, no, not the least in the world!" She was on her feet now:
head erect: dignity incarnate. "Unless it is important to do what your
wife asks you with good grace. But I believe little illusions of that
kind are warranted not to outlast four months of marriage."

He brought his hand sharply down on the table.

"Quita, you are talking childish nonsense. Why the dickens can't you
leave me in peace till I'm through? I shan't be much longer now: and
you can lecture me on the whole duty of husbands all the evening, if
you've a mind to."

"Indeed I've not. Duty never gets a word in edgeways, while Love is
master of the house. If it ever comes to 'duty' between you and me, I
shall pack my kit and go, I promise you. It's the reality or nothing
for me.--But don't hurry your work on my account, _mon ami_," she
added, on her way to the door. "I shall probably drive over to
Honor's, and leave you in peace till dinner-time. In fact, you have my
permission to dine at mess for a change, if it would amuse you."

And as he turned quickly with remonstrance on his lips, the door closed
behind her. With a sigh that ended in a smile, he took up his pen
again: wishing her back the moment she was out of reach. For beneath
his surface equanimity, the man in him was still thrilling under the
emotion and astonishment of absolute possession; under the hallowing
sense of permanence that at once calmed and exalted the fever heat of
passion.

But Quita returned to her studio feeling more out of tune than ever.
It was her own foolish fault, of course, for interrupting him: a form
of knowledge that has never yet made for consolation. And while she
stood alone before her picture, wondering whether she really would
order the trap and go over to the Desmonds, footsteps in the verandah
heralded Honor's appearance in the doorway:--a glowing Honor, looking
remarkably young and fresh in a long, loose alpaca coat, and a shady
Leghorn in which roses nodded: the peach-bloom of health back in her
cheeks, the old buoyant stateliness in her step and carriage.

Quita flew to her with a little cry.

"Honor, you dear woman! How engaging of you to turn up, just when I
was wanting you, and feeling too lazy to go and find you."

The kiss that passed between them was a real one; not the perfunctory
peck of greeting that usurps its name. For, as flowers most exquisite
spring from strangely unpromising soil, so had those two weeks of
isolation and heart-hunger on the unloveliest hill-top of Northern
India generated an enduring friendship between these two women, so
unlike in outward seeming: a deeper thing than the facile feminine
interchange of Christian names and kisses.

"Come your ways in, you patent radiator of happiness!" And Quita would
have thrust her friend into Eldred's chair: but Honor, catching sight
of the picture, went eagerly up to it.

"My dear, how remarkable! When did you begin it?"

"Ages ago, in Dalhousie; and now I want to finish it. But the lamp of
inspiration won't burn. I'm afraid the wick's gone mouldy from disuse."

But Honor was reading the lines above the canvas.

"Ah, I see! Christina Rossetti," she said. "Quita, you must finish
this. It's going to be very good. I love that little poem."

"Yes, you would. I've always rebelled against it. But last year when
everything seemed such a struggle, the lines haunted me so, that I
tried to get rid of them by turning them into a picture; and that's the
result. Rather like Eldred and me! He's always dragging me up on to
higher ground: yet he's so divinely unconscious of it all the time."

"Dear fellow!" Honor said softly. "But _he_ hasn't done all the
lifting. You've made a new man of him, Quita."

"Have I?" Sudden seriousness shadowed her eyes. "It was the least I
could do, . . considering all things. Only . . I wish he wasn't quite
so inward; so in love with his own company."

"You'll change that, in time."

"Do you think so? I wonder."

She bent in speaking to look through three or four small canvases that
stood with their faces to the wall.

"I want to show you the pair to my Up-Hill picture. It's another
Rossetti, _Amor Mundi_; and the contrast pleases me. I've taken the
opening lines:

"'Oh where are you going, with your love-locks flowing,
On the west wind blowing, along this valley track?'
'The down-hill path is easy; come with me, an' it please ye;
We shall escape the up-hill, by never turning back.'
So they two went together, in glowing August weather,
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right . .'

There now, can't you see them going down and down . . . ?"

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