The Great Amulet Part 9

"I would rather not talk for the present, if you don't mind. It would jar somehow. I daresay you understand what I mean."

He was many leagues removed from understanding: but he obeyed in silence, wondering at himself, no less than at her. And straightway Quita forgot all about him, in the mere rapture of looking, and of feeling in every fibre the incommunicable thrill of dawn.

A pa.s.sionate n.o.bility, freedom, and power breathed from the wide scene.

Already a pearly glimmer pulsed along the east; already the mountains were awake and aware. Peak beyond peak, range beyond range, a shadowy pageant of purple and grey, they swept upwards to the far horizon, where the still wonder of the snows shone pale and pure against the dovelike tones of the sky. Away across the valley, where night still brooded, Kalatope ridge, serrated and majestic of outline, made a ma.s.sive incident of shadow amid the tenderer tints around. The great hushed world seemed holding its breath in expectation of a miracle--the unconsidered miracle of dawn.

A Himalayan dawn is brief, as it is beautiful. One after one, the snow-peaks pa.s.sed from the pallor of death to the glow of life. Then, sudden as an inspiration, the full splendour of morning broke, sublime as the eternity from which it came. Rapier-like shafts of light pierced the purple lengths of shadows that engulfed the valley.

Threading their way through fir and deodar and pine, they flung all their radiant length across a rock-studded carpet of fir-needles and moss, and rested, like a caress, upon Quita's face and figure.

At last, with a long breath of satisfaction, she forced her sun-dazzled eyes and mind back to earth; only to discover that Garth had risen and was standing at her side. The man had seen and studied her in many moods. But never in one so exalted, so self-forgetful, as the present; and to the varied new experiences of the morning was added a wholesome sense of his own unworthiness to lay a hand upon her. In that illumined moment he was vouchsafed a glimpse into the temple of Love; a temple he had desecrated and defiled time and again; whose holy of holies he had never entered, nor ever could.

"Does it really mean as much as all that to you?" he asked, still watching her, with unusual concentration.

She nodded, and a soft light gleamed in her eyes. "Yes--as much as that, and more--infinitely more. One's cramped mind and heart seem to need expanding to take it all in."

Garth's smile lacked its habitual touch of cynicism.

"I am afraid even sunrise on Dynkund in your company has no power to lift me to such flights of ecstasy."

"I never supposed it had, you poor fellow! I wouldn't change souls with you for half a kingdom. Nearly every day of my life I thank the goodness and the grace that dowered me with the spirit of an artist.

Think what a heritage it is to be eternally interested in a world full of people who seem to be eternally bored!"

"I suppose you include me in that n.o.ble army of martyrs?"

"Decidedly. It is one of your worst faults."

"At least I never commit it in your presence."

She laughed, and lifted her shoulders.

"At least you know how to flatter a woman! But, for goodness' sake, don't let's talk trivialities in the face of these stupendous mountains."

"And why not? In my opinion, the trivialities of a human being are worth more than the grandeur of a mountain, any day. But, seriously, Miss Maurice--if you can be serious with me for five minutes--does all this, and the Art in which you live and breathe, so satisfy you that you feel no need for the far better things a man might have to offer you?"

She frowned, and looked with sudden intentness at a distant, abject in the valley.

"Yes--seriously--it does. What is more, it seems to me that most men set too high a value on what they have to offer a woman, and that a good many of us are better off without it."

Garth set his teeth, and did not answer at once. That his first genuine attempt at a proposal of marriage should be thus cavalierly nipped in the bud was disconcerting, to say the least of it.

"But not you--of all women," he protested, incredulously. "Are you quite sure you understand what I mean? Won't you give me a chance to explain----?"

Her low laughter maddened him.

"Oh, no--please have mercy on me! Explanations are the root of all evil! If only people had not such a pa.s.sion for explaining themselves, there would be fifty per cent fewer misunderstandings in the world.

Don't you know the delightful story of a zealous mother reading the Bible to her boy, and explaining profusely to bring it within the scope of his small mind, and when she asked him, anxiously, 'Are you quite sure you understand it all, darling?' he answered, with the heavenly frankness of childhood, 'Yes, beautifully, mummy--except when you explain.' That's my feeling exactly; so we'll skip the explanations, if you don't mind."

He stifled an oath, and flung his half-smoked cigar down the khud.

"You're enough to drive a sane man distracted!" he declared hotly, and was not a little surprised at his own vehemence.

"No, no! That's exaggeration, I a.s.sure you. The strong wine of the morning has got into your head. Do be reasonable now, and keep personalities at arm's length. I detest them."

He moved away for a s.p.a.ce; then, turning on his heel, came back again.

"At least you don't object to my companions.h.i.+p?" he said, ignoring her request.

"Of course not, so long as it amuses you to bestow it upon me."

"Amuses me! G.o.d in heaven, what makes you so hopelessly detached?"

"Some radical defect in me, I suppose. The Pagan strain, perhaps, that comes out so strong in Michael. I believe I am incapable of _les grandes pa.s.sions_. But that does not prevent me from being a good friend, and a constant one, as you will find, if you care to test me in that capacity. Now you may sit down here," she patted her slab of rock invitingly, "and discourse about anything you please, except myself.

Egoist though I am, I have had enough of the subject for to-day!"

And Garth--the man of surface emotions and ready tongue--found nothing to say in answer to this kindly but inexorable dismissal of his unspoken suit. He had no choice but to accept the inevitable, and the proffered seat. But the permission to discourse about anything he pleased left him dumb, and it was Quita herself who guided their talk into a less personal channel.

"Have you had any new arrivals at the Strawberry Bank lately?" she asked, conversationally; and the question was more relevant to the tabooed topic than Garth was likely to guess. He lived close to the hotel, and dined there when he felt convivially disposed.

"Yes; two new fellows came up this week. A doctor from Mooltan and a Gunner from 'Dera Dismal,'--the Thibet man,--Lenox, who seems to be making a reputation of sorts. But he looks a wreck. Smokes like a chimney; and is apparently working himself to death; a thankless form of folly."

"Perhaps. Yet India needs a few unsparing workers--like Captain Lenox."

She spoke with studied indifference; but her fingers were busy uprooting a patch of moss.

"Oh yes, India has a healthy appet.i.te for unsparing workers! She is a grasping harridan, who demands all and offers nothing. She devours the lives of men who are foolish enough to lose their hearts to her, and wrecks their bodies by way of thanks."

Quita's lips lifted in the merest shadow of a smile. "Aren't you a little ungrateful to her? She has been fairly merciful to you!"

"I have never given her the ghost of a chance to be otherwise! I don't believe in overwork, plus the Indian climate. More men kill themselves by a happy mixture of both than the importance of their achievements justifies. I was chaffing Lenox only last night about his leaning towards that unrecognised form of suicide; and all the answer I got was that a man might die of a more degrading disease. You never by any chance get a rise out of old Lenox!"

"Do you know him well?"

"As well as it's possible to know a fellow who lives with all his shutters up. And in any case an anchorite, and a woman-hater, would never be much in my line. The symptoms appear to have developed in the last few years. Not without reason, as I happen to know."

"_What_ do you happen to know?"

The question came almost in a whisper; but Garth, who had all a woman's weakness for other people's affairs, was too intent upon his ill-gotten sc.r.a.p of gossip to observe his companion's slight change of manner.

"Why, that it's simply a case of _cherchez la femme_, as usual," he answered, lightly. "I believe it's a fact that he went so far as to marry one of these women he affects to despise, when he was on leave five years ago."

Quita started, and bit her lips. "What reason can you have for believing anything . . . so improbable?"

"My dear lady, marriage is never improbable. You women have a knack of tripping up the most unlikely subjects! In this case, I had the details from an old friend of mine. She happened to be stopping at the same hotel as Lenox at Zermatt. Then one morning he disappeared; and, as she had taken rather a fancy to him, she tried to find out what had become of him. After a good deal of questioning, it transpired that he had been seen coming out of the English church with a lady; and further inquiry revealed the fact that an officer named Lenox had been quietly married there the day before. Naturally, she scented a romance, and was keen to know more. But he seemed to have vanished outright. Then ten days later she met him on the station platform, travelling alone, and obviously down on his luck. He told her he was off to join his battery in India: nothing more. Problem: What, in the name of mystery, had he done with the lady?"

At that Quita rose abruptly, her cheeks on fire, her whole frame tense with suppressed agitation.

"Oh, stop--stop. I can't stand any more!" she protested, in a smothered voice; and at once Garth was beside her, contrite and amazed.

"Miss Maurice--what have I said to upset you so?"