Far to Seek | Page 4

pale tones with the olive skin, faintly aglow, and the delicate arch of
her eyebrows poised like outspread wings above the brown, limpid
depths of her eyes. He could not tell that she was still little more than a
girl; barely eight-and-twenty. For him she was ageless:--protector and
playfellow, essence of all that was most real, yet most magical, in the
home that was his world. Unknown to him, the Eastern mother in her
was evoking, already, the Eastern spirit of worship in her son.
Very close to her nestled Tara, a vivid, eager slip of a girl, with
wild-rose petals in her cheeks and blue hyacinths in her eyes and
sunbeams tangled in her hair, that rippled to her waist in a mass almost
too abundant for the small head and elfin face it framed. In
temperament, she suggested a flame rather than a flower, this singularly
vital child. She loved and she hated, she played and she quarrelled with
an intensity, a singleness of aim, surprising and a little disquieting in a
creature not yet nine. She was the despair of nurses and had never
crossed swords with a governess, which was a merciful escape--for the
governess. Juvenile fiction and fairy tales she frankly scorned. Legends
of Asgard and Arthur, the virile tales of Rajputana and her warrior
chiefs, she drank in as the earth drinks dew. Roy had a secret weakness

for a happy ending--in his own phrase, "a beautiful marry." Tara's rebel
spirit rose to tragedy as a flame leaps to the stars; and there was no lack
of high tragedy in the records of Chitor--Queen of cities--thrice sacked
by Moslem invaders; deserted at last, and left in ruins--a sacred relic of
great days gone by.
This morning Rajputana held the field. Lilámani, with a thrill in her
low voice, was half reading, half telling the adventures of Prithvi Raj
(King of the Earth) and his Amazon Princess, Tara--the Star of Bednore:
verily a star among women for beauty, wisdom, and courage. Many
princes were rivals for her hand; but none would she call "lord" save
the man who restored to her father the Kingdom snatched from him by
an Afghan marauder. "On the faith of a Rajput, I will restore it," said
Prithvi Raj. So, in the faith of a Rajputni, she married him:--and
together, by a daring device, they fulfilled her vow.
Here, indeed, was Roy's 'beautiful marry,' fit prelude for the tale of that
heroic pair. For in life--Lilámani told them--marriage is the beginning,
not the end. That is only for fairy tales.
And close against her shoulder, listening entranced, sat the child Tara,
with her wild-flower face and the flickering star in her heart--a creature
born out of time into an unromantic world; hands clasped round her
upraised knees, her wide eyes gazing past the bluebells and the
beech-leaves at some fanciful inner vision of it all; lost in it, as Roy
was lost in contemplation of his Mother's face....
And this unorthodox fashion of imbibing knowledge in the very lap of
the Earth Mother, was Lilámani Sinclair's impracticable idea of 'giving
lessons'! Shades of Aunt Jane! Of governess and copy-books and
rulers!
Happily for all three, Lady Roscoe never desecrated their paradise in
the flesh. She was aware that her very regrettable sister-in-law had
'queer notions' and had flatly refused to engage a governess of high
qualifications chosen by herself; but the half was not told her. It never
is told to those who condemn on principle what they cannot understand.
At their coming all the little private gateways into the delectable

Garden of Intimacy shut with a gentle, decisive click. So it was with
Jane Roscoe, as worthy and unlikeable a woman as ever organised a
household to perfection and alienated every member of her family.
The trouble was that she could not rest satisfied with this achievement.
She was afflicted with a vehement desire--she called it a sense of
duty--to organise the homes of her less capable relations. If they
resented, they were written down ungrateful. And Nevil's ingratitude
had become a byword. For Nevil Sinclair was that unaccountable,
uncomfortable thing--an artist; which is to say he was no true Sinclair,
but the son of his mother whose name he bore. No one, not even Jane,
had succeeded in organising him--nor ever would.
So Lilámani carried on, unmolested, her miniature attempt at the forest
school of an earlier day. Her simple programme included a good deal
more than tales of heroism and adventure. This morning there had been
rhythmical exercises, a lively interlude of 'sums without slates' and
their poems--a great moment for Roy. Only by a superhuman effort he
had kept his treasure locked inside him for two whole days. And his
mother's surprise was genuine: not the acted surprise