Part 9 (1/2)
”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.