Far to Seek | Page 3

his mother had answered with her dignified unruffled
sweetness--that made her so beautifully different from ordinary people,
who got red and excited and made foolish faces: "He will not agree. He
shares my believing that children are in love with life. It is their first
love. Pity to crush it too soon; putting their minds in tight boxes with
no chink for Nature to creep in. If they first find knowledge by their
young life-love, afterwards, they will perhaps give up their life-love to
gain it."
Roy could not follow all that; but the music of the words, matched with
the music of his mother's voice, convinced him that her victory over
horrid interfering Aunt Jane was complete. And it was comforting to
know that his father agreed about not putting their minds in tight boxes.
For Aunt Jane's drastic prescription alarmed him. Of course school
would have to come some day; but his was not the temperament that
hankers for it at an early age. As to a moral backbone--whatever sort of
an affliction that might be--if it meant growing up ugly and
'disagreeable,' like Aunt Jane or the Aunt Jane cousins, he fervently
hoped he would never have one--or Tara either....
But on this particular morning he feared no manner of bogey--not even
school or a moral backbone--because the bluebells were alight under
his beeches--hundreds and hundreds of them--and 'really truly' summer
had come back at last!
Roy knew it the moment he sprang out of bed and stood barefoot on the
warm patch of carpet near the window, stretching his slim shapely body,
instinctively responsive to the sun's caress. No less instinctive was his
profound conviction that nothing possibly could go wrong on a day like
this.

In the first place it meant lessons under their favourite tree. In the
second, it was history and poetry day; and Roy's delight in both made
them hardly seem lessons at all. He thought it very clever of his mother,
having them together. The depth of her wisdom he did not yet discern.
She allowed them within reason, to choose their own poems: and Roy,
exploring her bookcase, had lighted on Shelley's 'Cloud'--the musical
flow of words, the more entrancing because only half understood. He
had straightway learnt the first three verses for a surprise. He crooned
them now, his head flung back a little, his gaze intent on a gossamer
film that floated just above the pine tops--'still as a brooding dove.'...
Standing there, in full sunlight--the modelling of his young limbs
veiled, yet not hidden, by his silk night-suit; the carriage of head and
shoulders betraying innate pride of race--he looked, on every count, no
unworthy heir to the House of Sinclair and its simple honourable
traditions: one that might conceivably live to challenge family
prejudices and qualms. The thick dark hair, ruffled from sleep, was his
mother's; and hers the semi-opaque ivory tint of his skin. The clean-cut
forehead and nose, the blue-grey eyes, with the lurking smile in them,
were Nevil Sinclair's own. In him, at least, it would seem that love was
justified of her children.
But of family features, as of family qualms, he was, as yet, radiantly
unaware. Snatching his towel, he scampered barefoot down the passage
to the nursery bathroom, where the tap was already running.
Fifteen minutes later, dressed, but hatless and still barefoot, he was
racing over the vast dew-drenched lawn, leaving a trail of grey-green
smudges on its silvered surface, chanting the opening lines of Shelley's
'Cloud' to breakfast-hunting birds.

CHAPTER II.
"Those first affections, Those shadowy recollections,... Are yet the
fountain-light of all our day; Are yet the master-light of all our seeing."
--WORDSWORTH.

The blue rug under Roy's beech-tree was splashed with freckles of
sunshine; freckles that were never still, because a fussy little wind kept
swaying the top-most branches, where the youngest beech-leaves
flickered, like golden-green butterflies bewitched by some malicious
fairy, so that they could never fly into the sky till summer was over,
and all the leaf butterflies in the world would be free to scamper with
the wind.
That was Roy's foolish fancy as he lay full length, to the obvious
detriment of his moral backbone--chin cupped in the hollow of his
hands. Close beside him lay Prince, his golden retriever; so close that
he could feel the dog's warm body through his thin shirt. At the foot of
the tree, in a nest of pale cushions, sat his mother, in her apple-blossom
sari and a silk dress like the lining of a shell. No jewels in the morning,
except the star that fastened her sari on one shoulder and a slender gold
bangle--never removed--the wedding-ring of her own land. The boy,
mutely adoring, could, in some dim way, feel the harmony of those