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The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People

by I. A. R. Wylie · English · Gutenberg #7940 · 609,107 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People

Author: I. A. R. Wylie


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7940]
                Most recently updated: March 7, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7940

Credits: Produced by Elizabeth Trapaga, S. R. Ellison, William A. Pifer-Foote, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATIVE BORN; OR, THE RAJAH'S PEOPLE ***




Produced by Elizabeth Trapaga, S. R. Ellison, William A.
Pifer-Foote, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team










[Illustration: "Miss Cary has consented to become my wife."]




 THE NATIVE BORN

       or

THE RAJAH'S PEOPLE


       by

  I. A. R. WYLIE

      1910



with Illustrations by

JOHN NEWTON HOWITT




PREFACE


In earlier days a preface to a novel with no direct historical source
always seemed to me somewhat out of place, since I believed that the
author could be indebted solely to his own imagination. I have learned,
however, that even in a novel _pur sang_ it is possible to owe much to
others, and I now take the opportunity which the despised preface offers
to pay my debt--inadequately it is true--to Mr. Hughes Massie, whose
enthusiastic help in the launching of this, my first serious literary
effort, I shall always hold in grateful remembrance.

I. A. R. W.

May 9th, 1910




CONTENTS


BOOK I

CHAPTER
   I WHICH IS A PROLOGUE
  II THE DANCING IS RESUMED
 III NEHAL SINGH
  IV CIRCE
   V ARCHIBALD TRAVERS PLAYS BRIDGE
  VI BREAKING THE BARRIER
 VII THE SECOND GENERATION
VIII THE IDEAL
  IX CHECKED
   X AT THE GATES OF A GREAT PEOPLE
  XI WITHIN THE GATES
 XII THE WHITE HAND
XIII THE ROAD CLEAR
 XIV IN WHICH MANY THINGS ARE BROKEN
  XV THE GREAT HEALER
 XVI FATE
XVII FALSE LIGHT


BOOK II

   I BUILDING THE CATHEDRAL
  II CATASTROPHE
 III A FAREWELL
  IV STAFFORD INTERVENES
   V MURDER
  VI CLEARING AWAY THE RUBBISH
 VII IN THE TEMPLE OF VISHNU
VIII FACE TO FACE
  IX HALF-LIGHT
   X TRAVERS
  XI IN THE HOUR OF NEED
 XII HIS OWN PEOPLE
XIII ENVOI




THE NATIVE BORN





BOOK I




CHAPTER I

WHICH IS A PROLOGUE


The woman lying huddled on the couch turned her face to the wall and
covered it with her hands in a burst of uncontrollable horror.

"Oh, that dreadful light!" she moaned. "If it would only go out! It will
send me mad. Oh, if it would only go out--only go out!"

Her companion made no immediate answer. She stood by the wall, her
shoulders slightly hunched, her hands clasped before her in an attitude of
fixed, sullen defiance. What her features expressed it was impossible to
tell, since they were hidden by the deep shadow in which she had taken up
her position. The rest of the apartment was lit with a grey, ghostly
light, the reflection from the courtyard, in part visible through the open
doorway, and which lay bathed in all the brilliancy of a full Indian moon.

"When the light goes out, it will mean that the end has come," she said at
last. "Do you know that, Christine?"

"Yes, I know it," the other answered piteously; "but that's what I
want--the end. I am not afraid to die. I know Harry will be there. He will
not let it be too hard for me. It's the suspense I can not bear. The
suspense is worse than death. I have died a dozen times tonight, and
suffered as I am sure God will not let us suffer."

Margaret Caruthers bent over the cowering figure with the sympathy which
education provides when the heart fails to perform its office. There was,
indeed, little tenderness in the hand which passed lightly over Christine
Stafford's feverish forehead.

"You give God credit for a good deal," she said indifferently. "If the
light troubles you, shall I shut the door?"

Christine sprang half upright.

"No!" she cried sharply. "No! I should still see it. Even when I cover my
face--so--I can still see it flickering. And then there is the darkness,
and in the darkness, faces--little John's face. Oh, my little fellow, what
will become of you!" She began to cry softly, but no longer with fear.
Love and pity had struggled up out of the chaos of her despair, rising
above even the mighty instinct of self-preservation. Margaret's hand
ceased from its mechanical act of consolation.

"Be thankful that he is not here," she said.

"I am thankful--but the thought of him makes death harder. It will hurt
him so."

"No one is indispensable in this world."

Christine turned her haggard, tear-stained face to the moonlight.

"How hard you are!" she said wonderingly. "You, too, have your little girl
to think of, but even with the end so close--even knowing that we shall
never see our loved ones again--you are still hard."

"I have no loved ones, and life has taught me to be hard. Why should death
soften me?" was the cold answer. Both women relapsed into silence. Always
strangers to each other, a common danger had not served to break down the
barrier between them. Christine now lay quiet and calm, her hands clasped,
her lips moving slightly, as though in prayer. Her companion had resumed
her former position against the wall, her eyes fixed on the open doorway,
beyond which the grey lake of moonlight spread itself into the shadow of
the walls. In the distance a single point of fire flickered uneasily,
winking like an evil, threatening eye. So long as it winked at them, so
long their lives were safe. With its extermination they knew must come
their own. Hitherto, save for the murmur of the two voices, a profound
hush had weighed ominously in the heavy air. Now suddenly a cry went up,
pitched on a high note and descending by semitones, like a dying wind,
into a moan. It was caught up instantly and repeated so close that it
seemed to the two women to have sprung from the very ground beneath their
feet. Christine started up.

"Oh, my God!" she muttered. "Oh, my God!" She was trembling from head to
foot, but the other gave no sign of either fear or interest. There
followed a brief pause, in which the imagination might have conjured up
unseen forces gathering themselves together for a final onslaught. It came
at last, like a cry, suddenly, amidst a wild outburst of yells, screams,
and the intermittent crack of revolvers fired at close quarters.
Pandemonium had been let loose on the other side of the silver lake, but
the silver lake itself remained placid and untroubled. Only the red eye
winked more vigorously, as though its warning had become more imperative.

Christine Stafford clung to a pair of unresponsive hands, which yielded
with an almost speaking reluctance to her embrace.

"You think there is no hope?" she pleaded. "None? You know what Harry
said. If the regiment got back in time--"

"The regiment will not get back in time," Margaret Caruthers interrupted.
"There are ten men guarding the gate against Heaven knows how many
thousand. Do you expect a miracle? No, no. We are a people who dance best
at the edge of a crater, and if a few, like ourselves, get swallowed up
now and again, it can not be helped. It is the penalty."

"If only Harry would come!" Christine moaned, heedless of this cold
philosophy. "But he will keep his promise, won't he? He won't let us fall
into those cruel hands? You remember what happened at Calcutta--"

"Hush! Don't frighten yourself and me!" exclaimed Margaret impatiently.
"Does it comfort you to hold my hand? Well, hold it, then. How strange you
are! I thought you weren't afraid."

"I shan't be when the time comes--but it's so very lonely. Don't you feel
it? Are you made of stone?"

Margaret Caruthers set her teeth hard.

"I would to God I were!" she said. All at once she wrenched her hand free
and pointed with it. Her arm, stretched out into the light, had a curious,
ghostly effect. "Look!" she cried.

The red eye winked rapidly in succession, once, twice, three times, and
then closed--this time for ever. An instant later two dark spots darted
out into the brightly lighted space and came at headlong pace toward them.
Christine sprang to her feet, and the two women clung to each other,
obeying for that one moment the instinct which can bind devil to saint.
But it was an English voice which greeted them from the now darkened
doorway.

"It's all over!" Steven Caruthers said, entering with his companion and
slamming the door sharply to. "We have five minutes more. Mackay has
promised to keep them off just so long. Stafford, see to your wife!" He
spoke brutally, in a voice choked with dust and pain. The room was now in
pitch darkness. Harry Stafford felt his way across, his arms outstretched.

"Christine!" he called.

She came to him at once, with a step as firm and steady as a man's.

"Harry!" she cried, her voice ringing with an almost incredulous joy. "Oh,
my darling!"

He caught her to him and felt how calm her pulse had become.

"Are you afraid, my wife?"

"Not now. I am so happy!"

He knew, strange though it seemed, that this was true and natural, because
her love was stronger than life or the fear of death.

"Do you trust me absolutely, Christine?"

"Absolutely!"

"Give me both your hands--in my one hand--so. Kiss me, sweetheart."

In the same instant that his lips touched hers he lifted his right
disengaged hand, and something icy-cold brushed past her temple. She clung
to him.

"Not yet, Harry! Not yet! Oh, don't think I don't understand. I do, and I
am glad. If things had gone differently the time must have come when one
of us would have been left lonely. Now, we are going together. What does
it matter if it is a little sooner than we hoped? Only, not yet--just one
minute! We have time. Do not let us waste it. Let us kneel down and say
'Our Father,' and then--for little John--" Her voice broke.
"Afterward--when you think fit, husband, I shall be ready."

He put his arm about her, and they knelt down side by side at the little
couch. Christine prayed aloud, and he followed her, his deeper voice
hushed to a whisper.

The two other occupants of the room did not heed them. They, too, had
found each other. At her husband's entrance Margaret Caruthers had crept
back to the wall and had remained there motionless, not answering to his
sharp, imperative call. He groped around the room, and when at length his
hands touched her face, both drew back as one total stranger from another.

"Why did you not answer?" he asked hoarsely. "Are you not aware that any
moment may be our last?"

"Yes," she said.

"I have something I wish to say to you, Margaret, before the time comes."

"I am listening."

"I wish to say if at any period in our unfortunate married life I have
done you wrong, I am sorry."

She made no answer.

"I ask your forgiveness."

"I forgive you."

The sound of firing outside had grown fainter, the shrieks louder, more
exultant, mingling like an unearthly savage chorus with the hushed voices
By the couch.

--"Thy will be done--" prayed Christine valiantly.

Margaret Caruthers lifted her head and laughed.

"Don't laugh!" her husband burst out. "Pray now, if you have ever prayed
in your life. You have need of prayers." He lifted his arm as he spoke;
but, as though she guessed his intention, she sprang out of his reach.

"No!" she said, in a voice concentrated with passion. "I am not going to
die like that. Stafford can shoot his wife down like a piece of blind
cattle if he thinks fit--but not you. I won't die by your hand, Steven. I
hate you too much."

"Hush!" he exclaimed. "The account between us is settled."

"Do you think I can begin to love you just because we are both about to
die?"

"You are my wife," he answered, grasping her by the wrists. "There are
things worse than death, and from them I shall shield you, whether you
will or not."

"Is it not enough that you have taken my life once?" she retorted.

"What do you mean? How dare you say that!"

"I say it because it is true. I have never lived--never. You killed me
years ago--all that was best in me. Save your soul from a second murder."

"If you live, do you know what may lie before you?"

"You talk of things 'worse than death.' What shame, what misery could be
worse than the years spent at your side?"

"You are mad, Margaret. I shall pay no attention to you. I must save you
against your will."

All through the hurried dialogue neither had spoken above a whisper. Even
in that moment they obeyed the habit of a lifetime, hiding hatred and
bitterness beneath a mask of apparent calm. Without a sound, but with a
frantic strength, Margaret wrenched herself free.

"Leave me to my own fate!" she demanded, in the same passionate undertone.
"You have ceased to be responsible for me."

He made one last effort to hold her. In the same instant the firing ceased
altogether. There followed the roar and crash of bursting timber, the
pattering of naked feet, the fanatic yells drawing every second nearer.

"Margaret!" he cried wildly, holding out his revolver in the darkness.
"If not at my hands, then at your own. Save yourself--"

"I shall save myself, have no fear!" she answered, with a bitter,
terrible laugh.

From the couch Christine Stafford's voice rose peacefully:

"Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!"

Another voice answered, "Amen!" There was the report of a revolver and a
sudden, startling stillness. It lasted only a breathing space. Furious
shoulders hurled themselves against the frail, weakly barred door. It
cracked, bulged inward, with a bursting, tearing sound, yielded. The
moonlight flooded into the little room, throwing up into bold relief the
three upright figures and the little heap that knelt motionless by the
couch.

The crowd of savage faces hesitated, faltering an instant before the
sahibs who yesterday had been their lords and masters. Then the sahibs
fired. It was all that was needed. The room filled. There was one stifled
groan--no more than that. No cry for mercy, no whining.

Little by little the room emptied again. The cries and bloodthirsty
screams of triumphant vengeance died slowly in the distance, the grey
moonlight resumed its peaceful sovereignty. Only here and there were
dark stains its silver could not wash away.




CHAPTER II

THE DANCING IS RESUMED.


"Oh, I love India--adore it, simply!" Mrs. Cary exclaimed, in the tone of
a person who, usually self-controlled, finds himself overwhelmed by the
force of his own enthusiasm. "There is something so mystic, so enthralling
about it, don't you think? I always feel as though I were wandering
through a chapter of the _Arabian Nights_ full of gorgeous princes,
wicked robbers, genii, or whatever you call them. Isn't it so with you,
Mrs. Carmichael?"

Her hostess, a thin, alert little woman with a bony, weather-beaten face,
cast an anxious glance at the rest of her guests scattered about the
garden.

"There aren't any robbers about here--except my cook," she said
prosaically. "My husband wouldn't allow such a thing in his department,
and in mine he is no good at all. As for the princes, we don't see
anything of the only one this region boasts of. He may be gorgeous, but I
really can not say for certain."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Cary, with a placid smile. "You have been in fairyland too
long, dear Mrs. Carmichael. That's what's the matter with you. You are
beginning to look upon it as a very ordinary, everyday place. If you only
knew what it is to come to it with a virgin heart and mind-thirsting for
impressions, as it were. That is how we feel, do we not, Beatrice?" She
half turned to the girl standing at her side, as though seeking to draw
her into the conversation.

"It is indeed new for _me_," the latter answered shortly, and with slight
emphasis on the personal pronoun.

"I was about to remark that this is scarcely your first visit to India,"
Mrs. Carmichael put in. "I understood that your late husband had a
government appointment somewhere in the South?"

Mrs. Cary's heavy face flushed, though whether with heat or annoyance it
was not easy to judge.

"Of course--a very excellent appointment, too--but the place and the
people!" She became confidential and her voice sank, though beyond
her daughter there was no one within hearing. "Between you and me,
Mrs. Carmichael, the people were _dreadful_. You know, I am not
snobbish--indeed I must confess to quite democratic tendencies, which
my family always greatly deplores--but I really couldn't stand the
people. I had to go back to England with Beatrice. The place was filled
with subordinate railway officials. Don't you hate subordinates, dear
Mrs. Carmichael?"

Mrs. Carmichael stared, during which process her eyes happened to fall
on Beatrice Cary's half-averted face. She was surprised to find that
the somewhat thin lips were smiling--though not agreeably.

"I really don't know what you mean by 'subordinates,'" Mrs. Carmichael
said, in her uncompromising way. "Most people are subordinates at some
time or other. My husband was a lieutenant once. I don't remember
objecting to him. At any rate," she continued hastily, as though to cut
the conversation short, "I hope you will like the people here."

"I'm sure I shall. A military circle is always so delightful. That is what
I said to Beatrice when I felt that I must revisit the scene of my girlish
days. 'We must go somewhere where there is military.' Of course, we might
have gone to Simla--I have influential friends there, you know--but I
wanted my girl to see a real bit of genuine India, and Simla is _so_
modern. Really a great pity, I think. I am so passionately fond of color
and picturesqueness--comfort is nothing to me. As my husband used to say,
'Oh, Mary, you are always putting your artistic feelings before material
necessities.' Poor fellow, he used to miss his creature comforts
sometimes, I fear."

Her laugh, painfully resembling a giggle, interrupted her own garrulity,
which was finally put to an end by a fresh arrival. A slight,
daintily-clad figure had detached itself from a group of guests and came
running toward them. Mrs. Carmichael's deeply lined, somewhat severe face
lighted up.

"That is my husband's ward, Lois Caruthers," she said. "She has been with
me all her life, practically. As you are so fond of genuine India, you
must let her show you over the place. She knows all the dirtiest, and I
suppose most interesting corners, with their exact history."

"Delightful!" murmured Mrs. Cary, with a gracious nod of her plumed
headgear. Nevertheless, she studied the small figure and animated features
of the new-comer with a critical severity not altogether in accordance
with her next remark, uttered, apparently under pressure of the same
irresistible enthusiasm, in an audible side whisper: "What a sweet
face--so piquant!"

An adjective is a pliable weapon, and, in the hands of a woman, can be
made to mean anything under the sun. Mrs. Cary's "piquant"--pronounced
in a manner that was neither French nor English, but a startling mixture
of both--had a background to it of charitable patronage. It was meant,
without doubt, to be a varnished edition of "plain," perhaps even "ugly,"
though Lois Caruthers deserved neither insinuation. Possibly too small in
build, she was yet graceful, and there was a lithe, elastic energy in her
movements which drew attention to her even among more imposing figures.
Possibly, also, she was too dark for the English ideal. Her black hair and
large brown eyes, together with the unrelieved pallor of her complexion,
gave her appearance something that was exotic but not unpleasing. _Enfin,_
as most people admitted, she had her charm; and her moods, which ranged
from the most light-hearted gaiety to the deepest gravity, could be
equally irresistible. She was light-hearted enough now, however, as she
smiled from one to the other, including mother and daughter in her
friendly greeting, though as yet both were strangers to her.

"I have come to fetch you, Aunt Harriet," she said, addressing Mrs.
Carmichael. "Mr. Travers has got some great scheme on hand which he will
only disclose in your presence. We are all gasping with curiosity. Will
you please come?"

Mrs. Carmichael nodded.

"I will come at once," she said. "I'm sure it's only one of Mr. Travers'
breakneck schemes, but they are always amusing to listen to. Lois, come
and be introduced. My adopted niece--Mrs. Cary--Miss Cary."

They shook hands.

"Lois, when there is time, I want you to do the honors of Marut. Miss Cary
especially has as yet seen nothing, and there is a great deal of interest.
You know--" turning to her visitors--"Marut is supposed to have been the
hotbed of the last rising."

"Indeed!" murmured Mrs. Cary vaguely. "How delightful!"

Lois Caruthers laughed, not without a shadow of bitterness.

"It was hardly delightful at the time, I should imagine," she observed.
"But what there is to see I shall be very glad to show you. Will any day
suit you?"

"Oh, yes, any day," Beatrice Cary assented, speaking almost for the first
time. "I have nothing to do here from morning to night."

"That will soon change," Lois said, walking by her side. "I am always
busy, either playing tennis, or riding, or getting up some entertainment.
The difficulty is to find time to rest."

"You must be a very much sought-after person," Beatrice observed, in the
tone of a person who is making a graceful compliment. The hint of irony,
however, was unmistakable.

"I am not more sought after than any one else," Lois returned, unruffled.
"Every one has to help in the work of frivolity."

"I shall be rather out of it, then," Beatrice said coolly. "I am not
amusing."

"It is quite sufficient to be willing, good-natured and good-humored,"
Lois answered.

They had by this time reached the group under the trees, where Mrs.
Carmichael and her companion had already arrived, under the escort of
a tall, stoutly built man, who was talking and apparently explaining
with great vigor. As Lois entered the circle, he glanced up and smiled
at her, revealing a handsome, cheerful face, singularly fresh-colored
in comparison with the deep tan of the other men.

"That is Mr. Travers," Lois explained. "He is a bank director or
something in Madras, and has been on a long business visit north.
He is awfully clever and popular, and gets up everything."

"Rich, I suppose?"

Lois glanced up at her companion. The beautiful profile and the tone
of the remark seemed incongruous.

"I don't know," she said rather abruptly. "He has four polo ponies.
Nobody else has more than two."

"Do you calculate wealth by polo ponies, then?"

Lois laughed.

"Yes, we do pretty well," she said--"that is, when we bother about such
things at all. Most people are poor, and if they aren't, they have to live
beyond their income, so it comes to the same in the end."

"Everybody looks cheerful enough," Beatrice Cary observed. "I always
thought poverty and worry went together."

"Who is that talking about poverty and worry?" asked a voice behind them.
"Is it you, Miss Caruthers? If so, I shall arraign you as a disturber of
the peace. Who wants to be bothered with the memory of his empty purse on
such a lovely day?"

Lois turned with a smile to the new-comer.

"No, I am innocent, Captain Stafford," she said. "It was Miss Cary who
brought up the terms you object to."

"Well, won't you introduce me, then, so that I can express my displeasure
direct to the culprit?"

The ceremony of introduction was gone through, on Beatrice Cary's side
with a sudden change of manner. Hitherto cold, indifferent, slightly
supercilious, she now relaxed into a gentleness that was almost appealing.

"This is a new world for me," she said, looking up into Captain Stafford's
amused face, "and I have so many questions to ask that I am afraid of
turning into a mark of interrogation, or--as you said--a disturber of
the peace."

"You won't ask questions long," he answered, with a wise shake of the
head. "Nobody does. Wherever English people go they take their whole
paraphernalia with them; and you will find that, with a few superficial
differences, Marut is no more or less than a snug little English suburb.
A little more freedom of intercourse--a little less Philistinism,
perhaps--but the foundations are the same. As to India itself, one soon
learns to forget all about it."

He then turned to Lois, who was intent on watching Mr. Travers.

"You weren't on the race-course this morning," he said in an undertone.
"I missed you. Why did you not come?"

"I couldn't," she said. "There was too much to be done. We are rather
short of servants just now, for reasons--well, that, according to you,
ought not to be mentioned on a fine day."

He laughed, but not as he had hitherto done. There was another tone in
his voice, warmer, more confidential. It attracted Beatrice Cary's
attention, and she looked curiously from Lois to the man beside her.
About thirty-five, with a passably good figure, irregular, if honest,
features, and an expression usually somewhat grave, he made no pretensions
to any exterior advantage. He could apparently be gay, as now, but his
gaiety did not conceal the fact that it was unusual. Altogether, he had
nothing about him which appealed to her, but Beatrice Cary was inclined
to resent Lois' obvious intimacy with him as something which accentuated
her own isolation.

"Can you make out what Mr. Travers is saying?" Lois asked, turning
suddenly to her. "I can't hear a word, and I'm sure it's awfully
interesting. Captain Stafford, do you know?"

"I can guess," he answered, half smiling. "When Travers has a suggestion
to make, it usually means that some one has to stump up."

There was a general laugh. Travers looked around.

"Some one has accused me falsely," he declared. "I have a prophetic sense
of injury."

"On the contrary, that is what I am suffering from," Stafford retorted.
"Since hearing that you have a new scheme, I have been hastily reckoning
how many weeks' leave I shall have to sacrifice to pay for it."

Travers shook his head.

"As usual--wrong, my dear Captain," he said. "My scheme has two parts. The
first part is known to you all, though for the benefit of weak memories, I
will repeat it. Ladies and gentlemen, in this Station we have the honor of
being protected from the malice of the aborigine by two noble regiments.
We count, moreover, at least thirty of the fair sex and forty
miscellaneous persons, such as miserable civilians like myself, and
children. Hitherto, we have been content to meet at odd times and odd
places. When hospitality has run dry, we have resorted to a shed-like
structure dignified with the name of club. Personally, I call it a
disgrace, which should at once be rectified."

"I have already contributed my mite!" protested a young subaltern from the
British regiment.

"I know; so has everybody. With strenuous efforts I have collected the sum
of five hundred rupees. That won't do. We require at least four times that
sum. Consequently, we must have a patron."

"The second part of your programme concerns the patron, then?" Captain
Webb inquired, with an aspect of considerable relief. "Not yourself, by
any chance?"

"Certainly not. If I had any noble inclinations of that sort I should have
discovered them a long time ago. No, I content myself with taking the part
of a fairy godmother."

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Stafford put in. "What is the fairy godmother
going to do for us? Produce a club-house, a patron, or a cucumber?"

"A patron, and one, my dear fellow, whom I should have entirely overlooked
had it not been for you."

"For me!"

"It was you who made the discovery that the present Rajah is not, as we
thought, an imbecilic youth, but a man of many parts and splendidly
adapted to our requirements."

"I protest!" broke in Stafford, with unusual earnestness. "It was by pure
chance that, in an audience with the Maharajah Scindia, the late regent of
Marut, I got to hear that his whilom ward was both intelligent and
cultured. I believe it was a slip on his part, and, seeing that Rajah
Nehal Singh has shunned all English intercourse, I can not see that there
is any likelihood of his adapting himself or his purse to your plans."

"Oh, bosh!" exclaimed Travers impatiently. "You are too cautious,
Stafford. Other rajahs interest themselves in social matters--why not this
one? He is fabulously rich, I understand, and a little gentle handling
should easily bring him around."

There was a chorus of bravos, in which only one or two did not join. One
was Colonel Carmichael, who stood a little apart, pulling his thin grey
moustache in the nervous, anxious way peculiar to him, his kindly face
overshadowed.

"On principle," he began, after the first applause had died down, "I am
against the suggestion. Of course, I have no deciding voice in the matter,
but I confess that the idea has not my approval. I know very well that, as
you say, other native princes have proved themselves useful and valuable
acquisitions to English society. In some cases it may be well enough,
though in no case does it seem to me right to accept hospitality from a
man to whom we only grant an apparent equality. In this particular case I
consider the idea--well, repulsive."

"May I ask why, Colonel?" Travers asked sharply.

"By all means. Because less than a quarter of a century ago the father of
the man from whom you are seeking gifts slaughtered by treachery hundreds
of our own people."

An uncomfortable, uneasy silence followed. Captain Stafford and Lois
exchanged a quick glance of understanding.

"I know of at least two people who will agree with me," continued the
Colonel, who had intercepted and possibly anticipated the glance.

"You are right, Colonel," Stafford said. "I bear no malice, and any idea
of revenge seems to me foolish. As far as I know, the present Rajah is all
that can be desired, but I protest against a suggestion--and what is
worse, a practice, which must inevitably lower our dignity in the eyes of
those we are supposed to govern."

The awkward silence continued for a moment, no one caring to express a
contrary opinion, though a contrary opinion undoubtedly existed.

Beatrice looked up at Captain Webb, who happened to be standing at her
side. Her acquaintance with him dated only from an hour back, but an
uncontrollable irritation made her voice her opinions to him.

"I think all that sort of thing rather overstrained and unnecessary," she
said. "Your chief business is to get the best out of life, and quixotic
people who worry about the means are rather a nuisance, don't you think?"

Captain Webb's bored features lighted up with a faint amusement.

"O, Lor', you mustn't say that sort of thing to me, Miss Cary!" he said in
a subdued aside. "Superior officer, you know! If you want an index to my
feelings, study my countenance." He pretended to smother a gigantic yawn,
and Beatrice's cool, unchecked laughter broke the constraint.

Travers look around with a return of his old good-humor.

"Well," he said, "I have two votes against my plans, but, with due
respect to those two, who are, perhaps, unduly influenced by unfortunate
circumstances, I feel that it is only just that the others should be
given a voice in the matter. Do you agree, Colonel?"

Colonel Carmichael had by this time regained his placid, gentle manner.

"Certainly," he agreed, without hesitation.

"Hands up, then, for letting Rajah Nehal Singh go his way in peace!"

Three hands went up--Colonel Carmichael's, Stafford's and Lois'. Beatrice
glanced at the latter with a smile that expressed what it was meant to
express--a supercilious amusement. Her indifference was rapidly taking
another and more decided character.

"Hands up for drawing the bashful youth into Circe's circle!" called
Travers, now thoroughly elated. A forest of hands went up. Captain Webb
and his bosom comrade, Captain Saunders, who, for diplomatic reasons had
remained neutral, exchanged grins. "You see," Travers said, turning with
deferential politeness to the Colonel, "the day is against you."

"The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders!" quoted the Colonel
good-humoredly.

"The next question is, on whose shoulders shall the task of beguilement
fall?" Travers went on, glancing at Stafford. "I suppose you, O, wise
young judge--?"

"It is out of the question," Stafford answered at once. "I consider I have
done enough damage already."

"What about your serpent's tongue, Travers?" suggested Webb. "When I think
of the follies you have tempted me to commit, I feel that you should be
unanimously elected."

Travers bowed his acknowledgments with mock gravity.

"Since there are no other candidates, I accept the onerous task," he said,
"but I can not go about it single-handed. The serpent's tongue may be
mine, but I lack, I fear, the grace and personal charm necessary for
complete conquest. I need the help of Circe, herself." His bright,
bird-like eye passed over the laughing group, resting on Lois an instant
with an expression of woebegone regret. Beatrice Cary was the next in
line, and his search went no farther than her flushed, eager face. "Ah!"
he exclaimed, "I have found the enchantress herself! Miss----" He
hesitated, for an instant unaccountably shaken out of his debonair
self-possession. Webb sprang to the rescue with a formal introduction, and
Travers proceeded, if not entirely with his old equanimity. "I beg your
pardon, Miss Cary," he apologized. "Your face is, strangely enough, so
familiar to me that I took you for an old acquaintance--perhaps, indeed,
you are, if in our modern days Circe finds it necessary to travel
incognito."

Beatrice joined in the general amusement, her unusually large and
beautiful eyes bright with elation.

"May I claim your assistance?" Travers went on. "Instinct tells me that we
shall be irresistible."

"Willingly," Beatrice responded, "though I can not imagine how I can help
you."

"Leave that to me," he said, offering her his arm. "My plans are
Napoleonic in their depth and magnitude. If you will allow me to unfold
them to you before the dancing begins--?"

She smiled her assent, and walked at his side toward the Colonel's
bungalow. On their way they passed Mrs. Cary, who, strangely enough, did
not respond to the half-triumphant glance which her daughter cast at her.
She turned hastily aside.

"Mr. Travers is no doubt--" she began, in a confidential undertone; but
her companion, Mrs. Carmichael, had taken the opportunity and vanished.

The light-hearted, superficial discussion, with its scarcely felt
undercurrent of tragic reminiscence, had lasted through the swift sunset,
and already dusk was beginning to throw its long shadows over the gaily
dressed figures that streamed up toward the bungalow.

On the outskirts of the garden lights were springing up in quick
succession, thanks to the industry of Mrs. Carmichael, who hurried from
one Chinese lantern to the other, breathless but determined. The task was
doubtless an ignominious one for an Anglo-Indian lady of position, but
Mrs. Carmichael, who acted as a sort of counterbalance to her husband's
extravagant hospitality, cared not at all. England, half-pay and all its
attendant horrors, loomed in the near future, and economy had to be
practised somehow.

Of the late group only Lois and John Stafford remained. They had not
spoken, but, as though obeying a mutual understanding, both remained
quietly waiting till they were alone.

"Shall we walk about a little?" he asked at last. "I missed our morning
ride so much. It has put my whole day out of joint, and I want something
to put it straight again. Do you mind, or would you rather dance? I see
they have begun."

"No," she said. "I would rather be quiet for a few minutes. Somehow I have
lost the taste for that sort of thing to-night."

"I also," he responded.

They walked silently side by side along the well-kept path, each immersed
in his own thoughts and soothed by the knowledge that their friendship had
reached a height where silence is permitted--becomes even the purest form
of expression. At the bottom of the compound they reached a large,
low-built building, evidently once a dwelling-place, overgrown with wild
plants and half in ruins, whose dim outlines stood out against the
darkening background of trees and sky. The door stood open, and must
indeed have stood open for many years, for the broken hinges were rusty
and seemed to be clinging to the torn woodwork only by the strength of
undisturbed custom.

Stafford came to a halt.

"That is where--" he began, and then abruptly left his sentence
unfinished.

"Yes," she said, "it is here. I don't think, as long as we live in India,
that my guardian will ever have it touched. He calls it the Memorial. My
father was his greatest friend, and the terrible fact that he came too
late to save him has saddened his whole life."

Stafford looked down at her. The light from a lantern which Mrs.
Carmichael, with great dexterity, had fixed among some overhanging
branches, fell on the dark features, now composed and thoughtful. She met
his glance in silence, with large eyes that had taken into their depths
something of the surrounding shadow. He had never felt so strongly before
the peculiarity of her fascination--perhaps because he had never seen her
in a setting which seemed so entirely a part of herself. The distant
music, the hum of voices, and that strange charm which permeates an Indian
nightfall--above all, the ruined bungalow with its shattered door and
silent memories--these things, with their sharp contrasts of laughter and
tragedy, had formed themselves into a background which belonged to her, so
that she and they seemed inseparable.

"Oh, Lois, little girl!" Stafford said gently. "I have always thought of
you as standing alone, different from everything and everybody, a stranger
from another world, irresistible, incomprehensible. I have just understood
that you are part and parcel of it all, child of the sun and flowers and
mysteries and wonders. It is I who am the stranger!"

"Hush!" she said, in a voice of curious pain. "Hush! Let us go back. We
must dance--whether we will or not."

He followed her without protest. The very rustle of her muslin skirts over
the fallen leaves made for his ears a new and fantastic music.

Close behind them wandered the two captains, Webb and Saunders, arm in
arm. At the entrance to Colonel Carmichael's Memorial Webb stopped, and,
striking a match against the door, proceeded to light his cigar. The tiny
flame lit up for an instant the languid patrician features.

"A cigar is one's only comfort in a dull affair like this," he remarked,
as they resumed their leisurely promenade. "Awful wine, wasn't it?"

"Awful. The Colonel is beginning to put on the curb--or his lady. It's the
same thing."

"It will be better when the club comes into existence," said Webb, blowing
consolatory clouds of smoke into the quiet air.

"It is to be hoped so. Spunky devil, that Travers. Wonder how he means to
do the trick. He knows how to pick out a pretty partner, anyhow."

"That Cary girl? Yes. Wait till the heat has dried her up, though. She'll
be a scarecrow, like the rest of them. By the way, what were her people?"

"Heaven knows--something in the D.P.W., I believe. The mother was dressed
in the queerest kit."

"I heard her talking about 'the gentlemen,'" remarked Webb, laughing, as
they went up the steps of the bungalow together.

The Memorial was once more left to its shadows and silence. At the edge of
the compound a group of natives peered through the fencing, watching and
listening. Their dark faces expressed neither hatred nor admiration, nor
sorrow, nor pleasure--at most, a dull wonder.

When they were tired of watching, they passed noiselessly on their way.




CHAPTER III

NEHAL SINGH


The Royal apartment was prepared for the suffocating midday heat. Heavy
hangings had been pulled across the door which led on to the balcony, and
only at one small aperture the sunshine ventured to pierce through and
dance its golden reflection hither and thither over the marble floor. The
rest was hidden in the semi-obscurity of a starlit night, which, like a
transparent veil, half conceals and half reveals an untold richness and
splendor.

At either side slender Moorish pillars rose to the lofty ceiling, and from
their capitals winking points of light shimmered through the shadows.
Fantastic designs sprang into sudden prominence on the walls, shifting
with the shifting of the sunshine, and at the far end, raised by steps
from the level of the floor, stood a throne, alone marked out against the
darkness by its bejeweled splendor. Of other furniture there was no
trace. To the left a divan formed of silken cushions had been built up for
temporary use, and on this, stretched full length on his side, lay an old
man whose furrowed visage appeared doubly dark and sinister beneath the
dead white of his turban. His head was half supported on a pillow, and
thus at his ease he watched with unblinking, unflagging attention the
tall, slight figure by the doorway.

It was the Rajah himself who had let in the one point of daylight. It fell
full upon his face and set into a brilliant blaze the single diamond on
the nervous, muscular hand which held the curtain aside. Apparently he had
forgotten his companion, and indeed everything save the scene on which his
eyes rested. Beneath the balcony, like steps to a mighty altar, broad and
beautiful terraces descended in stately gradations to a paradise of rare
exotic flowers, whose heavy perfume came drifting up on the calm air to
the very windows of the palace. This lovely chaos extended for about a
mile and then ended abruptly. As though cultivated nature had suddenly
broken loose from her artificial bounds, a dark jungle-forest rose up side
by side with the flowers and well-kept walks, and like a black stain
spread itself into the distance, swallowing up hill and valley until the
eye lost itself in the haze of the horizon. Within a few hundred yards of
the palace a ruined Hindu temple lifted its dome and crumbling towers into
the intense blue of the sky. And on garden, jungle, and temple alike the
scorching midday sun blazed down with pitiless impartiality.

For an hour the Rajah had remained watching the unchanging scene, scarcely
for an instant shifting his own position. One hand rested on his hip, the
other held back the curtain and supported him in a half-leaning attitude
of dreamy indolence. Against the intensified darkness of the room behind
him his features stood out with the distinctness of a finely cut cameo. A
man of about twenty-five years, he yet seemed younger, thanks, perhaps, to
his expression, which was extraordinarily untroubled.

Thought, poetic and philosophic, but never tempestuous, sat in the dark,
well-shaped eyes and high, intellectual forehead. Humor, sorrow, care,
anxiety and doubt, the children of a strenuous life, had left his face
singularly unscarred with their characteristic lines. For the rest, beyond
that he was unusually fair, he represented in bearing and in feature a
Hindu prince of high caste and noble lineage. Between him and the old man
upon the divan there was no apparent resemblance. The latter was
considerably darker, and lacked both the refinement of feature and dignity
of expression which distinguished the younger man. Nevertheless, when he
spoke it was in the tone of familiarity, almost of paternal authority.

"Art thou not weary, my son?" he asked abruptly. "For an hour thou hast
neither moved nor spoken. Tell me with what thy thoughts are concerned. I
would fain know, and thy face has told me nothing."

Nehal Singh let the curtain fall back into its place, and the yellow patch
of sunshine upon the marble faded. He looked at his companion steadfastly,
but with eyes that saw nothing.

"My thoughts!" he repeated, in a low, musical voice. "My thoughts are
valueless. They are like caged birds which have beaten their wings against
the bars of their cage and now sit on their golden perches and dream of
the world beyond." He laughed gently. "No, my father. You, who have seen
the world, would mock at them as dim, unreal reflections of a reality
which you have touched and handled. For me they are beautiful enough."

The old man lifted himself on his elbow.

"Thinkest thou never of thyself?" he asked. "In thy dreams hast thou never
seen thine own form rise at the call of thy waiting people?"

"My waiting people!" Nehal Singh repeated, with a smile and a faint
lifting of the eyebrows. "No people wait for me, my father. So much I have
learned. I bear a title, a tract of land acknowledges my rule--but a
people! No, like my title, like my power, like myself, so is the people
that thou sayest await me--a dream, my father, a dream!" He spoke gravely,
without sadness, the same gentle, wistful smile playing about his lips.

The other sank back with a groan.

"The All-Highest pity me!" he exclaimed bitterly. "A child of blood and
battle, without energy, without ambition!"

Nehal Singh, who had paced forward to the foot of the throne, turned and
looked back.

"Ambition I have had," he answered, "energy I have had. Like my thoughts,
they have beaten themselves weary against the bars of their cage. What
would you have me do?" He strode back to the door, and, pulling aside the
curtain, let the full dazzling sunshine pour in upon them. "See out
there!" he cried. "Is it not a sight to bring peace to the soul of the
poet and the dreamer? But for the warrior? Can he draw his sword against
flowers and trees?"

The old man smiled coldly, but not without satisfaction.

"There is a world that awaiteth thee beyond," he said.

"A world of which I know nothing."

"The time cometh."

Nehal Singh studied the wrinkled face with a new intentness.

"Hitherto thou hast always held a barrier between the world and me," he
said. "When the call to the Durbar came, it was thou who bade me say I was
ill. When the Feringhi sought my presence, it was thou who held fast my
door, first with one excuse, then with another. And now? I do not
understand thee."

Behar Asor struggled up into a sitting posture, his features rendered more
malignant by a glow of fierce triumph.

"Ay, the barrier has been there!" he cried. "It is I who have held it
erect all these years when they thought me dead and powerless. It is I who
have kept thee spotless and undefiled, Nehal Singh, thou alone of all thy
race and of all thy caste! The shadow of the Unbeliever has never crossed
thy man's face, his food thy lips, nor has his hand touched thy man's
hand. Thou art the chosen of Brahma, and when the hour striketh and the
Holy War proclaimed from east to west and from north to south, then it
shall be _thy_ sword--"

Nehal Singh held up his hand with a gesture of command.

"Thou also art a dreamer," he said firmly. "Thy heart is full of an old
hatred and an old injury. My heart is free from both. Seest thou, my
father, there were years when thy words called up some echo in me. Thou
toldest me of the Feringhi, of the bloody battles thou foughtest against
them because they had wronged thee; how, after Fortune had smiled faintly,
thou wert driven into exile, and I, thy son, bereft of all save pomp and
title, placed upon thy empty throne. These things made my blood boil. In
those days I thought and planned for the great hour when I should seek
revenge for thee and for myself. That is all past."

"Why all past?" Behar Asor demanded.

"Because the truth drifted in to me from the outer world. I saw that
everywhere there was peace such as my land, even after thy account, has
rarely known. Law and order reigned where there had been plundering and
devastation, prosperity where there had been endless famine. More than
this, I saw that in every conflict, whether between beast and beast or man
and man, it was always the strongest and wisest that conquered. The
triumph of the fool and weakling is but a short one, nor is the rule of
crime and wickedness of long duration. Why, then, should I throw myself
against a people who have brought my people prosperity, and who have
proved themselves in peace and war our masters in courage and wisdom?"

Behar Asor struggled up, galvanized by a storm of passion which shook his
fragile frame from head to foot.

"Thou art still no more than an ignorant boy," he exclaimed. "What knowest
thou of these things?"

"I have read of Englishmen whose deeds outrival the legends of Krishna,"
Nehal Singh answered thoughtfully. "They fought in your time, my father.
Thou knowest them better than I."

The old man ground his teeth together.

"They are dead." There was a reluctant admiration in his tone.

"Nevertheless, their sons live."

"The sons inherit not always the courage of their fathers," Behar Asor
answered, with a bitter significance.

Nehal Singh had wandered back to the throne, as though drawn thither by
some irresistible attraction, and stood there motionless, his arms folded
across his breast.

"Do not blame me," he said at last. "No man can go against himself. Were
it in my power, I would do thy will. As it is, without cause or reason I
can not draw my sword against men whose fathers have made my heart beat
with sympathy and admiration."

Behar Asor sank back in an attitude of absolute despair.

"I am accursed!" he said.

With a smothered sigh, Nehal Singh mounted the steps and seated himself.
In his attitude also there was a hopelessness--not indeed the hopelessness
of a man whose plans are thwarted, but of one who is keenly conscious that
he has no plans, no goal, no purpose. As he sat there, his fine head
thrown back against the white ivory, his eyes half closed, his fingers
loosely clasping the golden peacocks' heads which formed the arms of his
throne, there was, as he had said, something dreamlike and unreal about
his whole person, intensified perhaps by the dim atmosphere and shadowy
splendor of his surroundings.

Behar Asor had ceased to watch him, but lay motionless, with his face
covered by the white mantle which he wore about his shoulders. The first
storm of angry disappointment over, he had relapsed into a passive
oriental acceptance of the inevitable, which did not, however, exclude an
undercurrent of bitter brooding and contempt.

Some time passed before either of the two men spoke. At last Behar Asor
lifted his head and glanced quickly sidewise at the figure seated on the
throne. Nehal Singh's eyes were now entirely closed and seemed to sleep.
Such a proceeding would have been excusable enough in the suffocating
heat, but the sight drove the old man into a fresh paroxysm of
indignation.

"Sleepest thou, Nehal Singh?" he demanded, in a harsh, rasping voice. "Is
it not sufficient that thou hast failed thy destiny, but in the same hour
thou must close thine eyes and dream, like a child on whose shoulders rest
no duty, no responsibility? Awake! I have more to say to thee."

Nehal Singh looked up.

"I have not slept," he said gravely, "though, as to what concerns duty and
responsibility, I might well have done so, for I have neither the one nor
the other. Speak, I pray thee. I listen."

Behar Asor remained silent a moment, biting his forefinger. There was
something in the action strongly reminiscent of a cunning, treacherous
animal.

"Thou hast laughed at thine own power," he said at last, "though I have
sworn to thee that, as in my time, so today, the swords that sleep in a
hundred thousand sheathes would awake at thy word. They sleep because thou
sleepest. Well--thou hast willed to sleep. I can not force thee, and mine
own hand has grown too feeble. But since thou hast chosen peace, remember
this, that it can last only with thy lifetime. So long thy people will be
patient. Afterward--" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.

"Thou hast more to tell me," Nehal Singh said.

"If thou wilt keep peace in thy land, see to it that thou hast children
who will carry it on for thee after thou hast passed into the shadow,"
Behar answered. "Hitherto thou hast led a strange and lonely life,
preparing as I willed for the destiny thou hast cast aside. Take now unto
thee a companion--a wife."

As though clumsy, untutored fingers which had until now tortured some fine
instrument had suddenly, perhaps by chance, perhaps by instinct, struck a
pure harmonious chord, Nehal Singh rose to his feet, his weary dreamer's
face transfigured with a new light and new energy.

"A wife!" he said under his breath. "A woman! I know nothing of women. In
all my life I have seen but two--my mother and a nautch-girl--who cringed
to me. I should not like my wife to cringe to me. Are there not such as
could be my companion, my comrade? Or are they all servile slaves?"

Behar Asor laughed shortly and contemptuously.

"They are our inferiors," he said, "hence they can not be more than
companions for our idle hours. But you will have idle hours enough, and
there would be many who would call themselves blessed to share themselves
with thee. A great alliance--"

Nehal Singh interrupted him with the old gesture of authority.

"Thou hast said enough, my father," he said. "I will think upon it. Until
then--leave me my peace."

With a slow, meditative step he went back to the curtained doorway and,
pulling aside the hangings, went out on to the balcony. It was four
o'clock, and already the heat of the day had broken. Long rays of sunlight
struck eastward across the garden and touched with their faded golden
fingers the topmost turrets of the temple. In the distance the shadows of
the jungle had advanced and, like the waves of a rising tide, seemed to
swallow up, step by step, the brightness of the prospect. Nehal Singh
descended the winding stair that led to the first terrace. Thence three
paths stretched themselves before him. He chose the central one, and with
bowed head passed between the high, half-wild, half-cultivated borders of
plants and shrubs. A faint evening breeze breathed its intangible perfume
against his cheek, and he looked up smiling.

"A woman!" he murmured dreamily. "A woman!"




CHAPTER IV

CIRCE


The dominion over which Rajah Nehal Singh exercised his partial authority
was a tract of unfruitful land extending over about two hundred square
miles and sparely inhabited by a branch of the Aryan race which through
countless generations had kept itself curiously aloof from its neighbors.
The greater number were Hindus of the strictest type, and perhaps owing to
their natural conservatism they had succeeded in keeping their religion
comparatively free from the abuses and distortions which it was forced to
undergo in other regions. Up to the year 18--the state had been to all
practical purposes independent. Its poverty and unusual integral cohesion
made it at once a dangerous enemy and an undesirable dependent, which it
was tacitly agreed to let alone until such time when action should become
imperative. That time had come under the reign of Behar Asor--then Behar
Singh. This prince, who, his followers declared, could trace his descent
from Brahma himself, unexpectedly, after he had been living in
hand-in-glove friendship with his European neighbors, proclaimed a Holy
War, massacred all foreigners within his reach, and for eighteen long
months succeeded, by means of a species of guerrilla warfare, in keeping
the invading armies at bay. Partly owing to the unflagging determination
of the English troops, partly owing also to the intense hatred with which
he was regarded by all Mohammedans, he was eventually overcome, though he
himself was never captured. It was believed that he died while fleeing
through the vast jungles with which his land was overgrown, and this idea
was strengthened by the fact that, though a large reward for his capture
was offered, nothing further had ever been heard of him.

From that time the land came under the more or less direct control of the
Government. As a concession to the population, Behar Singh's one-year-old
son was placed upon the throne under a native regency, but English
regiments were stationed at the chief towns, and a political agent resided
at the capital. Neither the regiments nor the political agent, however,
found any work for their hands to do. A calm, as unexpected as it was
complete, seemed to descend upon the whole country, and the officers who
had taken up their posts with a loaded revolver in each hand, figuratively
speaking, began very quickly to relapse instead into pig-sticking, polo
and cards.

The climate was moderate, the vegetation beautiful if unprofitable, and
the sport excellent. Thus it came about that a danger spot on the map of
the Indian Empire became a European paradise, and that to be ordered to
Marut was to become an object of envious congratulations. Not, as Mr.
Archibald Travers had with justice complained, that the reigning prince,
as in other states, took any part in the general gaiety or in any way
enhanced the agreeableness of his capital. As far as was known, no
European eyes had ever lighted on him since his childhood. Under one
excuse and another he had been kept persistently in the background, his
place being taken first by the regent and then by succeeding ministers,
until it was generally supposed that the young Rajah was either afflicted
with some loathsome disease or mentally deficient, probabilities which the
Government, with unpleasant recollections of Behar Singh's too great
intelligence, accepted with unusual readiness. There were no causes for
suspicion. The Rajah never left the precincts of his palace garden, a
piece of land whose cultivation had cost untold sums, and which, together
with the Hindu temple, was supposed to stand as the eighth wonder of the
world. Fabulous stories were told of the beauty and rarity of the
vegetation, and of the value of the jewels which were supposed to decorate
the temple and royal apartments. As there was no opportunity of confirming
or refuting the statements, they were allowed to grow unhindered.

It was in this small sphere that Nehal Singh spent his childhood, his
youth and early manhood. Of the outer world he had seen nothing, though he
had read much, his education extending over all European history and
penetrating deep into that of his own country. Nevertheless, the picture
his mind had formed had little in common with the reality--it was too
overshadowed by his own character. As a blind man may be able, through
hearsay, to describe his surroundings detail by detail and yet at the
bottom be possessed by an entirely false conception, so Nehal Singh, to
all appearances well instructed, was in reality as ignorant as a child.
The heroes whose figures peopled his imagination were too heroic, the
villains too evil, and both heroes and villains were either physically
beautiful or hideous, according to their characters.

He had no comrade against whose practical experience he might have rubbed
this distorted picture into a more truthful likeness. His only companions
had been his native instructors and the priests--men separated from him by
a gulf of years and a curious lack of sympathy which he had in vain
striven to overcome. Thus he had been intensely lonely, more lonely than
he knew, though some dawning realization crept over him on this particular
evening as he passed through the temple gates. For a moment he stood with
his hands crossed over his breast, absorbed in prayer to Brahma, the
Creator, in whose presence he was about to stand. In such an hour, amidst
the absolute stillness, under the stupendous shadows of the walls, which
had, unchanging, seen generation after generation of worshipers drift from
their altars into the deeper shades of Patala, the young prince felt the
wings of divine spirits brush close past him, bearing his prayer on unseen
hands to the very ear of the golden-faced Trinity who, from his earliest
years, had seemed to look down upon him with solemn kindness.

This evening, more perhaps than ever before, every fiber in him vibrated
beneath the touch of the holy charm, and the prayer which passed
soundlessly over his lips came from a soul that worshiped in fiery
earnestness and truth. A minute passed as he stood there, then, removing
his shoes, he stepped over the threshold and walked forward between the
gigantic granite columns which supported what was left of the dome-shaped
roof. There was no altar, no jewel, no figure cut in the hard stone that
was not known to him with all their mysterious significance. Here had been
spent all his leisure hours; here had been dreamed his wildest dreams;
beneath this column he had seen as in a vision how Vishnu took nine times
human form and a tenth time came, according to the Holy Writings, with a
winged horse of spotless white, and crowned as conqueror.

To-day these things pressed down upon him with all the weight of a
tremendous reality. With beating heart he entered at last into the Holy of
Holies and stood before the god's high altar, visible only to those of
purest caste. His head was once more bowed. He did not venture to look up
at the golden figure whose ruby eyes, he knew, stared straight through his
soul into every corner of the world and beyond into Eternity. His belief,
pure, unsoiled from contact with the world, was a power that had gone out
into the darkness and conjured thence the spirits that shrank back from
the cold prayer of the half-believer. They stood before him now--these
wonderful spirits. He believed surely that, should he dare to raise his
eyes, he would see them, definite yet formless, arising glorious out of
the cloud of golden reflection from Brahma's threefold forehead.

Thus he prayed, not kneeling, since the god cared only for his soul:

"Oh, Lord Brahma, Creator, hear me! Thou who madest me knowest whither I
came and whither I go; but I, who am as the wind that bloweth as thou
listeth, as a flower that springeth up in the night and unseen fadeth in
the midday heat, I know not thy purpose nor the end for which I am. Lord
Brahma, teach me, for my soul panteth after knowledge. Show me the path
which I must tread, for I am weary with dreams. Teach me to serve my
people--be it hand in hand with the Stranger and his gods, be it alone.
Teach me to act, and that right soon; for my childhood days are spent and
my man's arm heavy with idleness. Send me forth--but not alone--not alone,
Lord Brahma, for I am heart-sick of loneliness. Give me my comrade, my
comrade who shall be more to me than--"

He stopped and, obeying an impulse stronger than himself, lifted his face
to the idol. It had vanished. In its place stood a woman.

At another and cooler moment, with a mind filled with other thoughts, with
a heart untroubled by new and all-powerful emotions, he would have known
her, if only from hearsay, for what she was. But with that passionate
prayer upon his lips, she was for him the answer, a divine recognition of
his need and of his lately recognized loneliness.

Tall, slender, with a pale, transparent complexion, touched like a young
rose with the faintest color, dark, grave eyes and hair that seemed a part
of the obscured god, whose pure lines, though foreign, harmonized in every
detail with the classic beauty of her surroundings, she stood and watched
him, as he watched her, in perfect silence.

"Lakshmi!" he murmured at last; and, as though the one word had broken a
charm which held them both paralyzed, she smiled, and the smile lit up the
Madonna face and made it as human as it had seemed divine.

[Illustration: "Lakshmi!" he murmured at last.]

"Forgive me," she began, speaking in English, "I am afraid I have
disturbed you, but--" She paused, apparently confused by the directness of
his gaze. The faint pink upon her cheek deepened.

"Who are you?" he demanded in his own tongue.

Her look of non-comprehension steadied him, at least outwardly, though it
did not check the fierce, painful beating of his pulses. He repeated the
question in pure though hesitating English.

"I am an Englishwoman," she answered at once, "and have lost my way. For
hours--it seems hours, at any rate--I have been wandering hither and
thither, trying to find my party, with whom I was enjoying an excursion.
By some chance I came across this temple, and hoped to meet some one who
might help me. You see, I am a stranger in this part of the world. I--I
hope I have done no wrong?"

She looked at him pleadingly, but he ignored her question. It never
occurred to him to doubt her explanation, or wonder at the unlikeliness of
the chance which should have led her through the intricate paths to this
hallowed spot.

"You are English?" he echoed. The fever in his blood was subsiding, but,
like some great crisis, it was leaving him changed. It had swept him out
of the world of languorous, enchanted dreams into a world of not less
enchanted reality.

"I fear I am presumptuous," she began again; "but are you not the Rajah?
If so, I am certain you must be very, very angry. For the Rajah--so I have
been told--does not love the English."

She smiled again, meeting his unwavering gaze with a frank good-humor
which for him was more wonderful even than her beauty. No woman--and for
that matter, no man--had ever dared to look him in the eyes with such a
laughing, fearless challenge.

"Yes, I am the Rajah," he answered. Then, after a pause, he added with
great simplicity, "You are very beautiful."

She laughed outright, and the laugh, which rang like the peal of a silver
bell through the vaulted chamber, filled him with a sudden sense of her
danger. She stood with her back turned indifferently on the golden image,
an Unbeliever whose shod feet were defiling the sacred precincts, an
object, then, for hatred and revenge--not for him, truly. In his eyes she
was still an emissary from Brahma, and thus in herself half sacred; but he
knew well enough that such would not be the opinion of the few fierce
priests who worshiped in the temple.

"You are not safe here," he said, with an energy which was new to him.
"Come!"

He led her hurriedly out of the sanctuary into the great entrance hall.
There he slackened speed and waited until she reached his side.

"For a foreigner it is not safe to enter the temple," he explained. "Had
any one but myself found you, I could not answer for the consequences."

"They would have harmed me?"

"It is possible."

"That would have been terrible!" she said, glancing at him with eyes that
expressed rather a daring courage than fear.

"Most terrible," he assented earnestly.

"Yet--you also, Your Highness, you have also the same reasons for anger.
My intrusion, innocent though it was, must have been equally offensive to
you."

"No," he said. "That is quite different."

He offered no further explanation, and together they passed out of the two
immense gopuras into the evening sunshine.

"I will bring you to the gates which lead on to the highroad," he went on.
"Thence one of my servants will conduct you back to the town, where I
trust you will find your friends."

"You are most good," she answered gratefully.

They walked side by side between the high walls of cypress and palm. The
path was a narrow one, and once his hand brushed lightly against hers. The
touch sent a flood of fire through his young veins. He drew back with a
courtesy which surprised himself. He had never been taught that courtesy
toward a woman could ever be required of him. Of women he had heard little
save that they were inferior, in intellect and judgment no more than
slaves, and his curiosity had at once been satiated. He sought things
above him--those beneath him excited no more than indifference. But this
woman was neither an inferior nor a slave. Her free, erect carriage,
steadfast, fearless eyes proclaimed the equal. So much his instinct taught
him in those brief moments, and his eager curiosity concerning her grew
and deepened. Every now and again his gaze sought her face, drinking in
with an almost passionate thirst the fine detail of her profile, compared
to which his dreams were poor and lifeless. Once it chanced that she also
glanced at him, and that they looked at each other for less than a
breathing space full in the eyes.

"I fear you are angry, Your Highness," she said earnestly. "I must have
offended against your laws even more than I know."

"Why do you think I am angry?" he asked.

"You have scarcely spoken."

"Forgive me! That is no sign of anger. I am still overcome with the
strangeness of it all. You are the first English person I have ever met."

She stood still, with an exclamation of surprise.

"Is that possible? I thought all Indian princes mixed with English people.
Many, indeed, go to England to be educated--"

"So I have heard," he broke in, with a faint haughtiness. "I am not one of
them."

"Yet you speak the language so perfectly!" she said.

A gleam of naive pleasure shone out of his dark eyes.

"I am glad you think so. My--one of my ministers taught me."

They walked on again. Here and there she stopped to look at some curious
plant--always a little in advance of him--so that he had opportunity to
study the hundred things about her which confirmed his wondering,
increasing admiration. Slight as she was, there was yet a gracefully
controlled strength in every movement. In his own mind, poor as it
necessarily was in comparisons, he compared her to a young doe he had once
startled from its resting-place. There was the same fragile beauty, the
same grace, the same high-strung energy. In nothing was she like the women
painted for him by his father's hand--things for idle, sensuous pleasure,
never for serious action.

Plunged in a happy confusion of thought, he had once more relapsed into
silence, from which she startled him with a question evidently connected
with their previous conversation.

"And so you have lived all your life in this lovely garden?" she said,
looking up at him with a grave wonder in her eyes.

"All my life," he answered.

"You have never seen anything of the world?"

"Never." He felt the pity in her tone, and added, with a shamefacedness
curiously in contrast with his former hauteur: "But I have read much."

"That is not the same thing," she returned. "No book could make you
understand how wonderful and beautiful things are."

He looked at her, and for a second time their eyes met.

"You are right," he said. "Hitherto I have thought myself all-wise. I have
studied hard, and I believed there was nothing I did not know. Now I see
that there are wonders in the world of which I have never even dreamed."

Her glance wavered beneath the undisguised admiration in his eyes and
voice. Then she asked gently:

"Now that you have seen, will you not leave your hermitage? Surely it is
wrong to shut one's heart against the world in which one lives. There is
so much work to be done, so much to learn, and you have been granted power
and wealth, Your Highness. The call upon your help is greater than upon
others."

His brows knitted.

"Do you hate us so?" she asked.

"Hate you?" he repeated wonderingly. "Why should I hate you?"

"Yet, from your tone, I judged that you had kept seclusion because
intercourse with my country-people meant defilement," she said boldly.

A flush crept up under his dark skin.

"Those are things I can not explain," he said; "but they have nothing to
do with hatred. I have heard much of the English heroes. Their deeds of
daring and self-sacrifice have filled my heart with love and veneration. I
know that they are the greatest and noblest people of the earth. I love
great and noble people. I do not hate them."

"I am glad," she said.

They had reached the gates which opened out on to the highroad, and as
though by mutual consent both came to a standstill.

"Your Highness has been most good to me," she went on. "I can find my way
perfectly now. I am only puzzled to know how I should ever have lost it so
much as to have wandered into your garden."

"Some sentry must have slept," he remarked grimly.

"But you will not punish any one?"

"Whoever it was, he was only the servant of destiny, like us all," he
said. "No harm shall come to him." He paused, and then added with a slight
effort: "One of the sentries shall accompany you."

"No, no," she answered energetically. "That is not necessary. I would
rather go alone."

He pointed upward to the sky, whose blue was deepening into the violet
shades of night.

"It will be dark before you reach your destination," he said. "Are you not
afraid?"

She laughed merrily.

"Of what should I be afraid? There are no maneaters about here, as I
understand. As for men, I am prepared to encounter at least six of them.
Look!" She drew from the bosom of her dress a small revolver of exquisite
workmanship, and held it out to him. "It has all six chambers loaded," she
added.

He took the weapon, pretending to examine it; but his pulses had
recommenced their painful beating, and he saw nothing but her face.

"Are all Englishwomen so brave and beautiful?"

This time she did not laugh at the simplicity of the question.

"Come and see," she answered boldly. He said nothing, and she went on: "At
any rate, I must go now. My people will be very anxious, and I have so
much to tell them. They will envy me the privilege I have enjoyed of
seeing your wonderful gardens. I shall tell them how kind you have been to
a foolish wanderer."

"If the gardens please you, they are always open to you," he said.

She shook her head sadly.

"I am afraid it is not possible. You see, I could not come alone.
Propriety will forgive me this once, because it was an accident--a second
time, and my reputation would be gone for ever." She held out her hand
frankly. "So it must be good-by for ever!"

An instant he hesitated, torn between a deep ingrained principle and
desire. Then he took the small hand in his own.

"It will not be good-by for ever," he said. "We shall meet again."

"I should be glad. We have been quite good friends, haven't we? But you
see, you will be in a garden into which I may not enter, and I in a world
which for you is forbidden ground. I am afraid there is no hope."

"Nevertheless, we shall meet again," he repeated.

"Why are you so certain?"

He smiled dreamily.

"Nothing in this world happens without purpose," he answered. "So much my
books and eyes have taught me. We do not drift aimlessly into each other's
lives. We are borne on the breast of a strong current which flows out of
the river of Fate, and whether we meet for good or evil is according to
the will of God. But of one thing I am sure: it must be for good or evil."

For a moment she said nothing. Her face was turned away from him, and when
at last she spoke, her voice had lost something of its daring certainty.

"I hope, then, our meeting is for our good," she said.

"I feel that it is," he answered.

He led her past the bewildered, terrified sentry on to the grey, dusty
highroad. It was the first time that his feet had crossed the threshold.

"I shall watch you till you are out of sight," he said. "Good-by."

"Good-by--and thank you!"

According to his word, he stood where she had left him, his eyes fixed
immovably, like those of a bronze statue, on the slight, elastic figure,
as it hurried toward the lights of the distant Station. When at last the
purple mist had swallowed her from his sight, he looked up toward the
heavens.

Just where the mist ended and the clear sky began, the evening star rose
in its first splendor and shone through the dry atmosphere, signaling to
its fellows that night was come. One by one others followed. As time
passed, the moon in a cloud of silver lifted herself in stately progress
above the black outline of the jungle and touched with her first beams the
filigree minarets of the temple.

Nehal Singh bowed his head in prayer.

"Oh, Lord Brahma, I thank thee!"

A short-lived breath of evening air caught up the passionate murmur of his
voice and mingled it with the rustling of the Sacred Tree whose restless,
shimmering, silver leaves hung above his head. He understood their whisper
as he listened. It was the accents of the god to whom he prayed, and all
the poetic mysticism of his nature responded to the call.

"Oh, Lord Brahma, Creator, I thank thee!" he repeated; then turned, and
with head still bowed, passed back through the high marble gates.




CHAPTER V

ARCHIBALD TRAVERS PLAYS BRIDGE


The ayah put the last touches to Beatrice Cary's golden hair, drew back a
little to judge the general effect, and then handed her mistress the
handglass.

"Is that well so, missy?" she asked. "Missy look wonderful
to-night--wonderful!"

Beatrice examined herself carefully and critically, without any show of
impatience. Only a close observer would have noticed that her eyes had the
strained, concentrated look of a person whose thoughts are centered
elsewhere than on the immediate subject.

"Yes, that will do," she assented, after a moment. "You have done extra
well to-night. You can go."

"Not help missy with dress?"

"No, you can go. I shall only want you again when I come back."

The ayah fidgeted with the garments that lay scattered about the room, but
an imperative gesture hastened her exit, and she slipped silently from the
room, drawing the curtains after her.

Beatrice watched her departure in the glass, and then, turning in her
chair, looked at the languid, exhausted figure upon the couch.

"Now, if you have anything to say, mother, say it," she said. "We are
quite alone."

"I have a great deal to say," Mrs. Cary began, in a tone of extreme
injury, "and first of all, I must ask you not to interrupt me in the way
you did just now before the--the what-do-you-call-it?--the ayah. I can not
and will not stand being corrected before my own servants."

"I did not correct you," Beatrice returned coldly. "I stopped you from
making disclosures to ears which know enough English to understand more
than is good for either of us, and whose discretion is on a par with that
of our late friend, Mary Jane. It seems impossible to make you realize
that English is not a dead language."

"You are very rude to me!" Mrs. Cary protested, in high, quavering tones
that threatened tears. "Very rude! Beatrice, you ought to be ashamed--"

"I am not rude. I am only telling you the simple truth."

"Well, then, you are not respectful."

"Respectful!" The reiteration was accompanied with a laugh which
brought into use all the harsh, unpleasing notes in the girl's voice.
She turned away from her mother, and with one white elbow resting on
the dressing-table, began to play idly with the silver ornaments. "No,
I suppose I am not respectful," she went on calmly. "I think we are too
intimate for that, mother. We know each other too well, and have spoken
about things too plainly. People, I imagine, only retain the respect of
their fellow-creatures so long as they keep themselves and their projects
a haloed mystery. That isn't our case. There are no haloes or mysteries
between us, are there?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Cary declared plaintively.
"There are moments, Beatrice, when I think you talk nonsense."

"I am sure you do!" An ironical smile played an instant round the small
mouth, then she went on calmly: "Let us put our personal grievances
against each other aside, mother. _Revenons a nos moutons._ You were
saying, when I interrupted you, that you were afraid of Mr. Travers. Why?"

"Why! You know as well as I do. I recognized him at once, and the sight of
his face nearly gave me a heart stroke. Of course you remember him. He
gave evidence against your poor, dear father when--"

Beatrice Cary held up her hand.

"That is one of the advantages of having discarded the mystery and halo,"
she said. "We do not need to go into any details concerning ourselves or
the past. I know quite well to what you refer. To be quite honest, I _did_
recognize him, only I did not let him see that I did."

"And then you ask why I am afraid!"

"I fail to see what harm he can do us."

"He can tell the truth."

Beatrice Cary rose and began to slip into the white silk dress which hung
across the back of her chair.

"The truth!" she said meditatively. "That is something, mother, of which,
I fear, you and I will never rid ourselves. It has chased us out of
England and out of all possible parts of Europe; and, large though India
is, it seems already to have tracked us down. It has a good nose for
fugitives, apparently."

Mrs. Cary sat up, mopping her florid face free from tears of irritability.

"You will drive me mad one of these days!" she cried. "You laugh at
everything. You laugh even at this, though it concerns our whole future
here--"

"Excuse me for interrupting you again. I take the matter very much to
heart--so much so that there are moments when I am thoroughly weary of it,
and feel inclined to write on a large placard: 'Here standeth Beatrice
McConnel, alias Cary, daughter of the--'"

"Be silent!" broke in the elder woman furiously. "Do you really want the
whole Station to be taken into our confidence?"

"I am sorry!" with half-sincere, half-mocking contrition. "I am as bad as
you are. But, as I say, there are times when I should like to shriek the
truth in the world's face, and see what it would do. I don't think
anything could be worse than our present life."

"If you did anything of the sort, I should take poison," Mrs. Cary
declared.

"No, you wouldn't. We should move on to another continent, and try our
luck there, that's all. It's the very futility of truth-telling which
prevents me from experimenting in that direction. Perhaps, as you suggest,
Mr. Travers will take the task from my shoulders."

Mrs. Cary rose to her feet and came ponderously over to her daughter's
side. Her voice, when she spoke, was troubled with genuine emotion.

"Beatrice," she said, "I don't ask respect of you--I don't suppose it
would be any sort of good if I did. You haven't any respect in you. But at
any rate have some consideration for me. You needn't make my life worse
than it is. It's no use your saying to me, 'Give up the money, and hide
your head.' I can't. I never could hide my head, and at the bottom _I_
don't believe you could either. It's the way we are made. Ever since I was
a little child, and played about in my father's shop, I wanted people to
bow down to me and respect me. I meant that one day they should. When I
married they did--for a time at least. When the crash came, and--and all
the shame, I just ran away from it. I couldn't have done anything else.
Ever since then I have been trying to build things up elsewhere, and I had
to have money for it. You can't blame me, Beatrice. You aren't any better.
You always want to be first in your singing and your painting, you always
want the best of what's going. You always want to be admired and
successful in everything you do. You take after me in that." A note of
curious pride crept into her voice. "So it's just like this, Beatrice--I
can't live without position. I may not take poison, but I shall die all
the same if I can't play a part in the world. All I ask is that you help
me all you can. It's not much. I've been a pretty decent mother to you.
You can't say that there was ever a time when I grudged you a pretty frock
or a dance--" She stopped in her long speech, yielding to Beatrice's
irrepressible gesture of impatience.

"You needn't have gone into so much explanation," the girl said, fastening
a small diamond pendant round her white neck. "I know you and I know
myself. As to my gratitude, I am fully aware of what I owe you, and am
ready to pay. What do you want me to do?"

"Don't go against me."

"I haven't done so yet. I don't mean to. As far as I can recollect, I've
pulled us both out of as many scrapes as you have landed us into,"
Beatrice replied.

"I know. That's why I want you to do your best now."

"To do what?"

"To keep Marut tolerable for us."

"I can't prevent Mr. Travers gossiping if he wants to."

A smile flitted over Mrs. Cary's fat face, robbing it of its good-nature
and leaving it merely vulgarly cunning.

"You could if you wanted to."

"How?"

"Oh, you know! You have a way with men. You could shut his mouth."

Beatrice laughed outright.

"There are moments when you betray your origin in the most painful way,
mother," she said cruelly. "A remark like that in Mrs. Carmichael's
hearing, and we should find Marut too hot for us without any assistance
from Mr. Travers."

"I'm sorry," Mrs. Cary apologized humbly. "It slipped out. What I meant
was, that I am sure you could manage him. And you know you could,
Beatrice."

Beatrice looked at her reflection in the glass. There was little feminine
vanity in the glance--rather a cool judging and appraising, untempered
with any personal prejudice.

"I suppose I could," she admitted.

"Won't you?"

"Would it make you very happy?"

"It would be my first moment's real peace since I saw Mr. Travers at the
garden-party."

"Well, I'll do my best."

"You promise?"

"Yes, I'll promise if you want me to."

Mrs. Cary drew a deep sigh of relief.

"That's one thing about you, you keep your promises, Beatrice," she said.

"It is rather curious, under the circumstances, isn't it?" the younger
woman returned, submitting to the mother's grateful embrace with an
indifference which seemed to indicate more than an indifference--rather a
stoic, smothered antipathy. When it was over, and Mrs. Cary had once more
ensconced herself on the lounge, Beatrice shook her shoulders as though
thrusting something intensely disagreeable away from her.

"In any case, it may be too late," she said, putting the finishing touches
to her toilet. "If Mr. Travers meant to tell, he has probably done so
already. I shall be able to judge by Mrs. Carmichael's hand-shake
to-night."

"We must hope for the best," returned Mrs. Cary, with pious resignation.

The two women relapsed into silence. Beatrice hovered lightly about the
room, collecting her fan, handkerchief and gloves, every now and again
casting the same curious, unloving glance at herself in the long mirror.
Presently she went to the window and pulled aside the muslin curtain.

"Some one is driving up the avenue," she said. "It's a dog-cart. I wonder
who it is."

"A dog-cart!" Mrs. Cary repeated thoughtfully. "Now, who has a dog-cart in
Marut? Not many people, I fancy." A dull flush mounted her coarse cheeks.
"Why," she exclaimed, "I believe Mr. Travers has!"

Beatrice dropped the curtain back into its place.

"That would be a coincidence, wouldn't it?" she remarked, with a faint
irony from which her tone had never been wholly free.

A minute later the ayah entered the room.

"Travers Sahib is here," she announced. "He asks if missy drive with him
to the Colonel Sahib in his cart. Travers Sahib waiting."

Beatrice and her mother exchanged glances.

"Very well," Beatrice then said quietly. "Tell Travers Sahib I shall be
delighted. Paul need not bring round the carriage."

The ayah retired, and with an undisturbed calm Beatrice proceeded to slip
into her evening cloak.

"At any rate, he hasn't spoken yet," she said. "Fate seems to mean well
with you, mother."

"It all depends on you, Beatrice," the other returned impressively.

"Do you think so? Well, I have half-an-hour's drive before
me--tete-a-tete. I dare say I shall manage. Good night!" She patted her
mother lightly on the hand as she passed her on the way to the door.

"Good-by, my dear. Do your best, won't you?"

"Haven't I been brought up to do my best?" Beatrice answered with a laugh.

She hurried on to the verandah which faced out on the drive, the ayah
accompanying her with numerous wraps and shawls. Archibald Travers, who
had remained seated, greeted her with a cheerful wave of the whip.

"Please excuse my getting down, Miss Cary," he said. "My horse is in a
state of mind which does not allow for politeness. Can you trust yourself
to his tender care?"

"I am not in the least nervous," she answered, scrambling up to his side,
"and a drive through this lovely air is worth a few risks. I was dreading
the half-hour alone in our stuffy brougham."

"I'm glad I came, then," he said. "I heard that Mrs. Cary was ill and
could not go, but I was not sure whether you would care for it. There, are
you tucked in all right? Can we start?"

"Yes, by all means."

He cracked his whip, and immediately the impatient chestnut sprang forward
into the darkness. They swayed dangerously through the compound gates on
to the broad, straight highroad.

Beatrice laughed with excitement.

"That was splendid!" she exclaimed, pulling her cloak closer round her.
"How well you drive!"

"You seem to enjoy danger," he said, with an amused smile.

"Yes, I enjoy it," she answered, more gravely. "It is the only flavoring
which I have hitherto discovered in life. The rest is rather insipid,
don't you think?"

"You talk like a man," he said.

"I have been brought up to be independent and fight for myself," she
returned. "That sort of thing does away with the principal differences
between the sexes."

As she spoke they dashed suddenly into an avenue of high trees through
whose branches the moonlight played fantastic, uncanny shadows on the
white road. Travers' horse shied violently, and for some minutes his work
was cut out for him in pacifying the excited animal. When they were once
more bowling smoothly over the open plain, he glanced down at the girl
beside him.

She was smiling to herself.

"You have nerve!" he remarked admiringly.

"I have lots more when it is wanted," she answered, looking up at him. The
light struck full on their faces, and they could read each other's
expressions as clearly as if it had been midday.

"How much farther is it at the rate we are going?" she asked.

"Another twenty minutes."

"Another twenty minutes!" she repeated thoughtfully. "That is quite a long
time, isn't it?"

He flicked his whip across the horse's ears.

"Yes, and I'm glad," he said. "Otherwise, I shouldn't have seen much of
you. I happen to know that I am taking in Miss Caruthers to dinner, and
dinner takes up most of the evening at these functions."

"You are taking in Lois Caruthers!" she said, laughing. "I know of some
one who will be annoyed."

"Stafford, you mean?"

"And Lois herself."

He joined in her amusement.

"Yes, I suppose so."

"You have a good-natured hostess. I dare say the arrangement could be
altered if you wished it."

"But I don't. They happen to be _my_ arrangements, you see."

"Oh!" she ejaculated, somewhat taken back.

"On my left there will be Mrs. James, who, as you perhaps know, is stone
deaf," he went on calmly. "On Miss Caruthers' right will be Mr. James, who
from long custom never opens his mouth except to put something into it.
Stafford will be right at the other end of the table."

"You are malicious," she said.

"Not a bit. I only go hard for what I want, that's all." He chuckled to
himself and then went on: "I've confided to you my subtle underground
plans--why, goodness knows. I'm not usually of a confiding nature. But
really, Miss Cary, I feel as though I had known you all my life."

"We have already plotted together," she said. "Possibly that forms some
sort of link between us."

He glanced down at her, and this time, as she did not return his gaze, he
was free to study her calm, undisturbed profile.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, half under his breath, "I don't blame the young
fool for being taken in."

Her brows contracted sharply.

"Thank you. I suppose that is a compliment."

"It is meant for one. By the way, are you really sure of your success?"

"Perfectly sure."

"That's a good thing. We shall have the laugh over old Stafford and his
grandmother's ideas if it comes off. All I fear is that the youth's
impressionable mind may lose its impressions as quickly as it receives
them."

"I don't think so. He did not seem that sort."

"Besides," added Travers, with a sudden drawl, "your face is not one that
a man forgets easily, Miss Cary."

She stirred very slightly in her seat. It was the instinctive movement of
a woman bracing herself secretly for a coming shock.

"Really?"

"Yes, really. That was what I meant to tell you the other day, but there
was no fitting opportunity. I recognized you at once."

"And I you," she returned.

He whistled.

"So we recognized each other and didn't recognize each other. Rather a
queer thing, eh?"

Again there was that scarcely noticeable stiffening of her whole body.

"I see nothing queer about it. We were both taken aback, and after the
first shock we realized that to acknowledge a previous meeting was not to
either of our advantages. You were ashamed; and I--well, you can guess my
reasons."

"By Jove! You know, you really are plucky!" he burst out, with genuine
admiration.

"Thank you. You have intimated that to me already, and, as a matter of
fact, there is no question of pluck. I'm taking the bull by the horns
because I must. Mr. Travers, I can't live in the same place with you and
not know if you are going to explode the mine under our feet or not. I may
have nerve, but I haven't got nerve enough for that."

"I see. You want to know whether I am going to gossip or hold my tongue.
Is that it?"

"Yes, that's it."

"Suppose I gossip?"

"I see no reason why you should be our enemy, so I don't mind admitting to
you that it would spoil our plans."

"What may they be?"

"Firstly, to get clear of everything that has happened. We've tried to do
that in different places all over Europe, without success. Something or
somebody has always cropped up and driven us away. It was just as though
every one least concerned in the matter had made up their minds to track
us down. At last mother thought of India, and of Marut in particular. My
father held a small post somewhere about here before we left for England,
and we make out that it is tender associations and all that sort of thing.
Of course, we might be found out any day, but perhaps people are not so
curious out here, and it gives us a rest."

"Might I ask why you take all this trouble?"

"I was going to tell you. Because my mother wants what she calls
position--she wants to mix with the best. We couldn't do that in England,
for the reasons I have given you. As for me--I fulfil my destiny. I am
seeking a suitable husband."

He drew in his breath in something that was not unlike a gasp.

"My dear Miss Cary, do you know what the world--particularly the woman
world--would call you?"

"_Does_ call me, you mean? Of course. An adventuress."

"To be quite frank, you've hit it. But I don't. I call you a jolly
extraordinary and clever woman."

"Please don't pay me compliments," she said coldly. "My cleverness--if I
have any--is not more than that of any hunted animal who seeks cover where
best he can. As to my being extraordinary, I do not see that you have any
reason to call me so. You might as well say that it is extraordinary when
a weed springs up where a weed has been sown--"

"Or a flower," he interposed suavely.

She sank back in her seat, saying nothing. Her silence was a weary sort of
protest.

Travers pulled out his watch with his free hand.

"We have only five minutes more," he said. "We are splendidly up to time.
I tell you what, Miss Cary--you can eat Colonel Carmichael's dinner in
peace." She looked quickly at him. "I mean that I shall hold my tongue. I
don't know that I ever intended doing anything else. I am not responsible
to society, and in any case, no direct blame for the past can attach
itself to you. As it is, after your confidence, I give you my word that
I'll do my best to see you through here. You deserve it, and I have always
had a sneaking sympathy for the hunted fox and the much-abused weed. You
can be quite easy in your mind."

"Thank you," she said without much warmth.

"I have only one condition--" he went on, and then hesitated.

"I was waiting for that," she said.

He laughed good-naturedly.

"You know me very well already."

"I know men," she retorted.

"Well, then, I have a condition. Please don't look upon me as a sort of
blackmailer. If you don't choose to agree to the condition, you needn't. I
shan't on that account go round gossiping about your affairs. At the same
time, I expect you would rather drive a fair and square bargain with me
than be in any way in my debt."

"You are quite right," she said quickly.

"My condition is merely this: I want you, if the time and opportunity ever
present themselves, to lend me a hand with my plans. I confess privately
to you I have one or two irons in the fire up at Marut, and that it is
pretty hard work single-handed. You are a clever woman, say what you like,
and your help would be invaluable."

"In what way?"

"I will put it as short as possible. You know, Miss Cary, I am not a rich
man, but I have got some big ideas and one at least of them requires
wealth to be carried out. I have every reason to believe that considerable
mineral treasure lies buried under the native Bazaar in Marut, but I can
do nothing unless some one comes to my assistance both with authority and
money. The Rajah is the very man, if only I can get him interested in my
project. Will you help me?"

"As I have gone so far I might as well go on," she assented indifferently.

"Thanks. Then there is something else--I want to marry Lois Caruthers."

Beatrice started and looked up at him as though she thought he might be
joking. His face had indeed undergone a change, but there was something
stern, resolute, almost brutal in the hard-set profile.

"Indeed? Will that not be more difficult? There is Stafford in the way,
and Stafford--"

"Stafford must be cleared out of the way," he interrupted, with a cool
decision which his expression partly belied. "I believe she is fond of him
and he of her in a Platonic sort of fashion which might lead to marriage
and might not. He is not the danger. There is a fellow, Nicholson,
though--"

He stopped short and seemed for an instant to be plunged in his own
thoughts.

"Who is this Nicholson?" she asked curiously. "I have heard his name
constantly since I have been here. People talk of him as though he were a
demigod. Why are you afraid of him?"

"Just because of his godlike qualities," Travers explained, with a laugh.
"In earlier ages, no doubt, he would have been a god and among the natives
he is one. In reality, he is an ordinary mortal blessed with an
extraordinary influence. I believe he is a captain in some native regiment
on the frontiers and has done grand work there. I heard today that he is
coming down to Marut on leave."

"Oh--?"

"He was Lois' old playfellow," Travers added pointedly.

"And so you are afraid of him?"

"All women adore heroes of that type," he remarked without mockery or
bitterness, "and when Nicholson appears I have a fair idea that Stafford
and I will have to be content with the back seats in Lois' affections. You
see, they were great friends, and moreover the Carmichaels have their
matrimonial eye on him. So it's now or never as far as I am concerned."

"And Stafford--?"

He looked down at her with a jolly laugh.

"He must find consolation elsewhere. I thought he would do for you, Miss
Cary."

"Thanks!"

"Don't be ungrateful. Rich, good position, good family, worthy character,
a trifle slow, not to say stupid--what more do you want?"

"You talk as though--"

"--As though he were being given away with a pound of tea? Well, so he is
to all intents and purposes. One can do anything with an honest,
pig-headed man like that if only one takes him the right way. He would
suit you clear down to the ground, and if you will help me I will help
you. Is that a bargain?"

They were now in sight of their destination, and he pulled his horse into
a walk.

"Well, what do you say, Miss Cary?"

He tried to look into her face, but it was turned resolutely away, and all
he could see was a grave profile which might have belonged to a much older
woman.

"Well?" he repeated.

They were entering the drive which led up to the brightly lighted bungalow
before she answered.

"It's a bargain then," she said. "I promise."

He pressed her hand with his left.

"That's all right," he said cheerily. "You won't find yourself
overburdened. The case is just this: we're partners, you and I, with some
good cards between us. Just at present it's my call, and your hand goes
down. Do you understand?"

"Pretty well," she answered.

They pulled up at the open doorway, and flinging the reins to the waiting
syce, Travers sprang to the ground.

"By the way, I believe you go in to dinner with Stafford," he remarked
casually as he helped her to alight. "I hope you will get on well
together."




CHAPTER VI

BREAKING THE BARRIER


The Colonel's dinner-party was Beatrice's first great triumph in the face
of her enemies. They were all there and all armed to the teeth with spite
and envy. There was, for instance, Mrs. Berry with her marriageable if
somewhat plain daughter, and many more women besides to whom the beautiful
girl was of necessity an unforgivable opponent. The more the men laughed
at her quick and occasionally rather pointed observations, the more an
obvious admiration shone out of their criticisms, the more determined the
hatred became. Among themselves they had already fulfilled Travers'
prophecy and had christened her "the Adventuress" for no other reason than
that she was a woman with the same ambitions as themselves, but better
accoutred for success. Truly, she had made no bid for their favor,
choosing to stand alone and without their support; but even had she done
so it would have been useless. She wore an enemy's color in her face, and
keen, pitiless eyes had already probed into the innermost depths of her
plans and found them dangerous.

In the middle of the dinner the Colonel broke the news that the whole of
the English community had been invited by the Rajah to a reception in the
palace grounds. He made the announcement with evident reluctance, and
Beatrice was conscious that Stafford, who sat beside her, stiffened and
frowned. The sense of opposition and disapproval on the part of the man
whom she had set out to conquer put her on her metal, and with the verve
and _sang-froid_ of a woman too sure of her own power to know fear, she
related her adventure in the temple. Her hearers listened, according to
their sex, with amusement, curiosity and pious horror. Some were
unreservedly delighted, others--such as the Colonel and
Stafford--struggled between a certain admiration for her and a decided
disapproval of her action and its results. Yet Stafford at least was a
soldier before he was a conventionalist, and her bold, well-played comedy
in the temple of Vishnu, told simply, but with fire and energy, could not
fail to stir to flame the embers of his own daring. From that time he
ceased to rivet his attention to the other end of the table, where Lois
was sitting, and Beatrice was conscious that she had won the first move in
the great game which she had set herself to play. The next day the whole
Station was made aware of the startling change in the Rajah's attitude and
the means by which it had been brought about, but no one, not even those
who were disposed to judge the matter in its most serious light, guessed
what passed within the palace previous to the sending out of the now
famous invitation. For the greater part of the English community the whole
thing was rather a bad joke, with the Rajah for its victim. That a pretty
woman should have unbarred the gates which no other force, diplomacy or
cunning had been able to stir was a matter for light, somewhat
contemptuous laughter. Rajah Nehal Singh was nicknamed the Impressionable
Swain. He and Beatrice Cary were linked together either in good-natured
chaff or malicious earnest, and curiosity, thanks to the dullness of the
season, strained itself in expectation.

Thus, beyond the marble gates the world laughed, and inside Life and Death
had faced each other and for a moment hung in the balance.

It was toward the cool of the evening. Behar Asor and the prince paced
slowly backward and forward in the chief entrance hall of the palace,
plunged in a conversation which was to mark a final stage in their
relationship toward each other. Both knew it, and on both faces was
written the same determination--a determination curiously tempered and
moulded by the character of the man himself. On Behar Asor's furrowed,
withered face it was resolve, armed with treachery and all the hundred and
one weapons of oriental cunning. Nehal Singh's head was lifted in calm,
unshakable confidence. He had no need of weapons. He had seen his destiny,
and the obstacle which would be thrown in his path would, with equal
certainty, be thrown out of it. He felt himself extraordinarily strong.

His very surroundings seemed to fortify him with their splendor. Other
parts of the palace bore the grievous traces of a past devastating
race-hatred; crumbling pillars, images whose jeweled eyes had been made
dark and lifeless by robber hands; broken pavements, defaced carvings--all
these pointed to a period in human life which was gone for ever, a period
of mad fanaticism and passionate clinging to the Old in defiance of the
New. Here the New was triumphant. Hands still living had raised the mighty
golden dome; the fountain whose waters bubbled up from the Sacred Tank
within the temple was his own creation. The whole place became a sort of
outward and visible sign of the New Life, New Era, which was opening out
before him, and the old man at his side was nothing more than a relic, a
piece of clinging wreckage. Yesterday he had been a wise man whose
judgment and guidance was a thing to be considered.

But between Yesterday and Today there is occasionally a long night in
which much may happen. A life may go out, a life may come in; a devil may
become a saint, or a saint a devil; a man may swing from one pole of
opinion to another, and this last is perhaps the easiest of all. For it
does not require much to change a man's standpoint. A very little thing
will make him turn on his heel and look at a piece of the landscape which
he has hitherto chosen to ignore or despise, and probably acknowledge that
it is finer than his hitherto obstinately retained outlook. A very little
thing--like Columbus' egg--if one only knew just what it was! The little
thing in Nehal Singh's life had been a woman's face. It shone between him
and his old gods; it smiled at him from amidst the shadows of his
imagination, beckoning him unceasingly to follow. And he was
following--with the reckless speed of a man who had been kept inactive too
long at the starting point of life.

"I am weary of all that has hitherto been," he told Behar Asor. "My palace
has become a prison from which I must free myself. The very air I breathe
is heavy with sleep and dreams. It suffocates me. I must have life--here
and without."

"I understand thee too well," came the answer from compressed lips. "The
curse is on thee. Thou wilt go among my enemies, and it is I, with my
mistaken wisdom, who have opened thy path to them. It was I who taught
thee their tongue, their knowledge, their law, that when the time came
thou shouldst stand before them more than their equal. This is my
punishment."

"It is no punishment. It is the will of God."

"The will of God!" The old man threw up his hands with a wild laugh that
echoed among the pillars. "It is the will of the devil, who has been my
curse and shall be thine! Ay, ay, look not at me! It is true. Thinkest
thou that I have brought thee up in solitude without cause? Thinkest thou
that I have hidden thee like a miser his treasure, in the dark, unseen
places, for a whim? Son, I have suffered as I pray thou mayst not have to
suffer, and I have within my heart a serpent of hatred whose sting I would
thou couldst feel." He paused, biting his lip as though the pain he
described was actual and physical. "Go not among the Unbelievers!" he
continued vigorously. "Let not their shadow defile thee! For their breath
is poison, and in their eyes is a deadly flame--or if thou goest, let it
be with steeled breast and in thy right hand a sword of vengeance!"

"I can not," Nehal Singh answered impatiently. "Nor do I believe what thou
sayest. This people is surely brave and good. I know, for I have read--"

"Read!" the old man interrupted, with another burst of stormy laughter.
"What is it to read? To see with the eyes and feel with the body--that
alone can bring true wisdom. And I have seen and felt! Callest thou a
people 'good' who drink our hospitality and spit upon us--who hail us
with their unclean right hand and steal our honor with their left?"

Nehal Singh stopped short.

"What meanest thou?" he demanded.

"I have a meaning!" was the stern answer. "I will tell thee now what I
have never told thee before--I will tell thee of a young man who, like
thyself, was fearless, impetuous, a lover of the new and strange, who went
out into the world, and welcomed the White People as a deliverer and
friend. I will tell thee how he flung down caste and prejudice to welcome
them, drank in their Thought and Culture, trembled on the brink of their
Religion. Already the path had been broken for him. His mother's sister
had married out of her race--an Englishman--I know not how it came
about--and their child followed in her steps. I will tell thee how the
young man came to know this cousin and her husband, also an Unbeliever.
How often these two became his guests I will not tell thee. He took
pleasure in their presence, partly for his mother's sake, partly because
the white race had become dear to him. They brought others with them, and
among them an English officer. Hear now further.

"This young man had one wife, following the English custom--one wife more
beautiful than her sisters, whom he loved as a man loves but once in life.
In his madness, in spite of warnings of his priests, he gave her the
freedom almost of an English-woman. Wheresoever he went she followed him;
with her at his right hand he received his English guests; it was she who
sang to them--" He ground his teeth in a sudden outburst of rage. "Mad,
mad was I! Mad to trust a woman, and to trust the stranger! Son, the night
came when my wife sang no more to me, and the stranger's shadow ceased to
darken my threshold. Three years I sought them--three years; then one
night she came back to me. He had cast her from him. She lay dead at my
feet." His voice shook. "In vain I sought justice. There is no justice for
such things among the White People--not for themselves and not for us. I
drew my sword and in hatred and scorn as deep as my love and reverence had
been high, I slew my way to the false devil who had betrayed me. Him I
slew--and his pale wife I--"

"Who was this man?" Nehal Singh asked heavily.

"I know not. His name has passed from me. But the hate remains. For with
that act of treachery he drew back the veil from my blind eyes, and I saw
that they were all as he--bad, cruel, hypocrites--"

"Not all--not all!" Nehal Singh interrupted. He stopped by the splashing
fountain and gazed dreamily into the clear waters. His own face he saw
there--and another which was neither bad, cruel, nor hypocritical, but
wholly beautiful. "Not all," he repeated. "You judge by one man. There
are others, and it is those I will see and know, and--"

"I would rather see thee dead at my feet!"

"My father, I will judge them as I find them,"

Nehal Singh went on imperturbably. "If they be good and noble, I will
serve and love them. If they be bad, as thou sayest--then thou shalt live
to see me do thy will."

He heard a shrill cry, and his eyes, still fixed on the water, saw a hand
that swept upward, the flash of steel falling swiftly through the
sunshine. He swung round and tore the dagger from the nerveless hand.

"Thou dost wrong, my father," he said, with unshaken calm. "To learn
treachery from treachery is a poor lesson. And thou canst not stay me.
What I will do I will do. Do not cross me again."

The old man, who had shrunk back, gasping and staring, against the marble
basin, pulled himself painfully upright.

"Ay, I did wrong," he said. "With my old hands I tried to forestall the
sword of Fate. For, mark me, the hour will come when thou wilt curse
thyself that thou didst stay my knife!"

He tottered slowly away, vanishing like a curious twisted shadow amidst
the deeper shadows of the columns.

Nehal Singh watched him till he was out of sight, and then, snapping the
dagger across his knee, flung the pieces into the water. They lay there,
at the bottom of the marble basin, sparkling and twinkling in the
sunshine. When he looked in, trying to conjure up once more the beautiful
face, it was always the dagger he saw. It was always the dagger he saw
when the memory of that short, violent scene came back to him--and it
came back often, springing up out of his subconscious self like an evil,
slinking shade that could never be wholly brought to rest. Yet he went on
resolutely. One barrier had given way--one more remained, and he flung
himself against it with a reckless determination which would have overcome
any resistance. But there was none. The old priest who had been his guide
and teacher welcomed him as he had always done, seated cross-legged at the
edge of the Sacred Tank, motionless, rigid, like some handsome bronze
statue of Buddha, whose eyes alone spoke of a fierce flowing life within.
He bowed his head once in return to Nehal's greeting, but as he began to
speak he interrupted him, and in a low, chanting voice uttered the last
words he was ever heard to address to any living creature:

"Speak not to me, Son of the Night and Day, for the Spirit of the Holy Yog
is on me, and his tongue speaketh through my lips. Behold, mine eyes see
with his into the wells of the future--my heart stands still for fear of
the things that are to be. I see a Holy Temple and hear the ring of
Accursed Footsteps. I see a young man at daybreak, beautiful, strong and
upright, and I see him stand beneath the high sun like a blade of withered
grass. I see him go forth in the morning with laughter on his lips, and at
nightfall his eyes run blood. A voice calleth him from the thicket, and
wheresoever the voice calleth him he goeth. He standeth on the banks of
Holy Ganges, and behold! the waters burst from their course and pour
westward to the ocean. Behold, then shall he draw his sword against his
people, and from that hour he shall serve them and become theirs. Then
shall the doors of the temple be closed for ever, and the lips of Vishnu
silent. Go forth, son of the Evening and Morning Star! That which is to be
shall be till the stream of the Future ceaseth to flow from the mouth of
Heaven!"

Nehal Singh listened to this strange, disjointed prophecy in perfect
silence, his eyes following the fierce stare of the old Brahman into the
oily waters of the Sacred Pool. Amidst the hundred reflections from the
temple he seemed to see each separate picture as the monotonous voice
called it up before his mind, and always it was his own face which
shimmered among the shadowy minarets, and always it was a familiar voice
calling him through the ages which whispered to him from the trembling
leaves of the Bo-Tree as it hung its branches down to the water's edge.

"Tell me more, for thy words have drawn the veil closer about the future!"

His pleading received no response. The priest remained motionless,
passive, indifferent, seemingly plunged in an ecstatic contemplation; and
from that moment his lips were closed, and he passed his once loved pupil
with eyes that seemed fixed far ahead on a world visible only to himself.
Neither in his words or manner had there been any anger or reproach, but a
perfect resignation which walled him off from every human emotion, and
Nehal Singh went his way, conscious that the world lay before him and that
he was free. The great dividing wall had turned to air, and he had passed
through, satisfied but not a little troubled, as a man is who finds that
he has struck at shadows.

Afterward he told himself that the walls had always been shadows, the
links that bound him always mere ghostly hindrances, part of the vague
dreams that had filled his life and bound his horizon. Now that was all
over. The more perfect reality lay before him and was his. The dim figures
of his childhood's imagination gave place to definite forms. And each bore
the same face, each face the same grave goodness--that of the woman
destined for him by Heaven.




CHAPTER VII

THE SECOND GENERATION


Thus it came to pass that after more than a quarter of a century the gates
of the palace were thrown open, and strange feet crossed the threshold in
apparent peace and friendship.

A crowd of memories flooded Colonel Carmichael's mind as he followed the
guide along the narrow paths. There was a difference between his last
entry and this--a difference and an analogy whose bizarre completeness
came home to him more vividly with every moment. Then, too, he had been
led, but by a dark figure whose flaming torch had sprung through the
darkness like an unearthly spirit of destruction. Then, too, he had
followed--not, as now, old and saddened--but impetuously, and behind him
had raced no crowd of laughing pleasure-seekers, but men whose bloody
swords were clasped in hands greedy for the long-deferred vengeance. He
remembered clearly what they had felt. For a year they had been held at
bay by a skill and cunning which outmatched their most heroic efforts, and
now, at last, the hour of victory was theirs. He remembered how the thirst
for revenge had died down as they stormed the marble steps. No living
being barred their course. Stillness greeted them as they poured into the
mighty hall, and a chilly awe sank down upon their red-hot rage as they
searched an emptiness which seemed to defy them. It was the Colonel
himself, then only a young captain, who had heard the piteous wailing cry
issuing from a side apartment. He had rushed in, and there a sight greeted
him which engraved itself on his memory for ever. The place was almost in
darkness, save that at the far end two torches had been lit on either side
of what seemed to be a throne--a beautiful golden chair raised from the
floor by ivory steps. Here, too, at first all had seemed death and
silence; then the cry had been repeated, and they saw that a tiny child
lay between the high carved arms and was watching them with great,
beautiful eyes. Around his neck had hung a hastily-written message:

"This is my son, Nehal Singh, whose life and heritage I intrust to my
conquerors in the name of justice and mercy."

And he had taken the boy in his arms and borne him thence as tenderly as
if he had been his own.

Since then twenty-five years had passed. The throne had been given to the
tiny heir under the tutelage of a neighboring prince, and the spirit of
forgotten things brooded over the wreck of the tempest that for over a
year had raged about Marut. But the Colonel remembered as if it had been
but yesterday. Others had forgotten the little child, but, perhaps because
he had no children of his own, the memory of the dark baby eyes had never
been banished from his mind. He caught himself wondering, not without a
touch of emotion, what sort of man had grown out of the minute being he
had rescued; but curiously enough--and typically enough of the
contrariness of human sympathy--from the moment he caught sight of the
tall figure advancing to meet him from the steps of the palace, all
kindly, gentle feelings died out of him, and his old prejudice of race
awoke. Possibly--nay, certainly--the child had had less need of sympathy
than the man, but the Colonel's heart froze toward him, and his formal
response to his host's greeting was icy with the unconquerable
consciousness of the gulf between them.

Yet, for eyes unblinded by preconceived aversion, Nehal Singh was at that
moment good to look upon. He was simply dressed in white, with no jewels
save for a great diamond in his turban, and this very simplicity threw
into strong relief his unusually well-built figure and the features to
whose almost classical perfection was added a strength, a force of
intellect which classical beauty is too often denied. Quietly and
modestly, conscious of his own worth, ignorant and inexperienced of the
world, he was utterly unaware of the stone barrier that his guests
presented to his own open-hearted welcome. For him the whole of his past
life concentrated itself on this moment when the gates of the Universe
rolled back, and he advanced to meet the representatives of its Greatest
People. He thought, in the simple, natural egoism of a man who has lived a
life cut off from others, that they would understand this and feel with
him.

What his own feelings were he hardly knew--perhaps among them, though
unrecognized, was the faintest chill of disappointment. He had had no
definite expectations, but his imagination had unconsciously been at work,
and touched with its illuminating fire the sons of the heroes whose deeds
had filled his quiet existence with romance, painting his picture of them
with colors which the reality did not justify. Certainly the little
Colonel had nothing either romantic or heroic in his appearance, and what
was good and kindly in his bronzed face was hidden behind the mask of his
racial pride.

His first words were delivered in a harsh voice, which betrayed only too
clearly his real feelings, though Nehal Singh recognized nothing but its
disagreeableness.

"Rajah Sahib, you have honored us with the wish to become acquainted with
the English people dwelling in your State," he began, "and it is therefore
my pleasure and duty to present to you the officers of the regiments--" He
stumbled awkwardly, the strangeness of the situation, the direct and
searching gaze of his host, throwing him completely out of whatever
oratory powers he possessed. It was Nehal Singh himself who saved the
situation.

"It is my pleasure to receive you," he said, in his slow, painstaking
English, "and I am honored by the readiness with which you have complied
with my desire to meet the Great People to whom my land owes so much.
Though hitherto I have lived apart from them, I am not wholly ignorant of
their greatness. I know, for my fathers and my books have shown me, that
there is no other nation so powerful nor whose sons are so noble.
Therefore I welcome you with all my heart as a brother, and if such
entertainment as I have tried to prepare for your pleasure is not to your
taste, I pray you to forgive me, for therein am I indeed ignorant."

For a few among the English party his words, spoken slowly and with a
simple sincerity, were not without their charm. Yet, little as he knew it,
he had succeeded in one short speech in touching two dangerous spots in
his relationship to his guests--his ancestry and his equality. But here
again his ignorance veiled from him what was written clearly enough on a
dozen frozen faces.

"I should be glad to be made personally acquainted with each of your
officers," he went on. "For men who serve under one flag should know each
other well."

Colonel Carmichael obeyed, thankful for any occupation which saved him the
necessity of replying; and one by one the solemn, unmoved faces came under
Nehal Singh's eager gaze, bowed, and passed on. Each resented in turn the
intense scrutiny of their host, and none guessed its cause. For them it
was the insolent stare of a colored man who had ventured to place himself
on an equality with themselves. They could not have known that he was
seeking familiar features, nor that, as one after another passed on, a
cold chill of disappointment was settling on a heart warm with
preconceived admiration and respect. They could not have known that his
unconscious presumption had hidden a real desire to find among them the
hero to whom his man's worship of courage and greatness could have been
dedicated. He was too young--and especially too young in worldly
wisdom--to realize that the outside man is not of necessity the man
himself. He merely felt, as each wooden face confronted his own, that here
was surely no Great Man, no Hero. Only when it came to the civilians his
eyes rested with some degree of satisfaction on Travers' well-knit figure
and fresh-colored face. For the first time during the whole proceedings
the prince smiled, and in turn received a smile.

The ladies had by this time arrived, and the presentations continued.
There was no change in Nehal Singh's demeanor when he stood before
Beatrice Cary--no change, at least, visible to the curious eyes that
watched. If there was any hidden meaning in his expression during the
brief instant that they looked at each other, only she herself could have
read it; and this she apparently did not do, for her face retained its
Madonna peace and dignity.

"I think Rajah Sahib and Miss Cary have already met?" remarked Travers,
who was acting as master of the ceremonies.

"Yes, we have met," Nehal Singh answered, and passed on.

If any hesitation showed itself in his manner, it was before Lois
Caruthers. A swift shade of puzzled surprise clouded his features.

"You have been a long time in India?" he asked, after the first words of
introduction. The question sounded as though he merely sought her
affirmation to something he already knew.

"Almost all my life, Rajah Sahib," she answered. Possibly it was a natural
shyness which made her voice sound troubled and nervous. She seemed to
heave a sigh of relief when he once more moved on. Yet he had impressed
her agreeably.

"Is he not handsome?" she said in an undertone to her companion, Stafford.
"I think he is quite the handsomest man I have seen, and he has the
manners of an Englishman. I wonder where he got them from."

"I don't know," Stafford returned. "These people have a wonderful trick of
picking up things. At any rate he realizes Miss Cary's curious
description--beautiful; though, with Miss Berry, I do not care for the
word as applied to a man. He seems a nice sort of fellow, too, quiet and
unaffected, and that is more to me than his good looks. It's rather a
pity."

"What is a pity?" she asked, surprised.

"Oh, well, that he is what he is. Don't look so pained. It's not only my
'narrow-hearted prejudice,' as you call it. It's more than that. I'm sorry
for the man himself. It all confirms my first opinion that it is rather
bad luck."

"Why?" she demanded obstinately.

"Don't you understand? If you had seen Webb's face when he talked about
'as a brother a brother,' you would have understood well enough. He has
been made a fool of, and sooner or later he will have his eyes roughly
opened. As I say, it seems bad luck."

"You mean he would have done better to keep to his old seclusion?" she
said thoughtfully.

"That's about it." He smiled down at her, and they suddenly forgot the
Rajah in that curious happiness of two beings who need no words to tell
them that each is understood by the other, and that a secret current of
thought and feeling flows beneath every word and touch. "Come," he went
on. "It seems that we are to have the run of the place. Shall we explore?"

She nodded a quick agreement, and they started off, thus following the
example of others of the party who had already made use of the Rajah's
suggestion that they should visit the chief and most interesting portions
of the palace. Nehal Singh himself stood alone, and thankful for his
loneliness. For the last ten minutes Colonel Carmichael and he had stood
side by side, and found no word to say to each other. The past, which
might have been a link, proved itself a barrier which neither could scale,
and presently, on some excuse, the Colonel had hurried off to join his
wife. As though guided by a sure instinct, Nehal Singh turned in the
direction where Beatrice was standing with her mother and Travers. Without
hesitation he went up to her.

"I have waited to be your guide," he said. His words sounded amusingly
decided and matter-of-course, and a smile of not very sympathetic meaning
passed over the faces of those within earshot.

"You can be sure she went a lot further than she cared to say," Mrs. Berry
whispered to her daughter. "You can see how everything was made up
beforehand. I wonder what she expects to get out of him?"

Though the remark did not reach her, Beatrice's instinct and bitter
experience supplied her with a sure key to the look that was exchanged
between the two women. She smiled gaily.

"I shall be only too pleased," she said. "What I have seen has made me
thirst for more."

"Indeed, Your Highness," Mrs. Cary broke in eagerly. "I must not forget to
thank you for the really very kind assistance you lent my reckless
daughter the other day. I do not know what would have happened to her if
it had not been for you!"

Nehal Singh looked at her with a grave wonder.

"You are her mother--?" he said, and then stopped short. The wonder was
reflected so clearly in his tone that an angry flush mounted to Mrs.
Cary's fat cheeks.

"I have that honor, Your Highness," she said acidly.

"Mrs. Cary!" Travers called from the flower-bed over which he was leaning.
"If the Rajah Sahib can spare you, do come and look at these flowers. They
are extraordinary."

With her head in the air, her plumes waving, a picture of ruffled dignity,
Mrs. Cary swayed her way in the direction indicated, and Nehal Singh and
Beatrice found themselves alone.

"Will you come with me now?" he asked. "I have still so much to show you."

She saw the look of self-satisfied "I-told-you-so" horror written on the
faces of Mrs. Berry and her friends, who stood a little farther off
whispering and nodding, and if she had felt the slightest hesitation, she
hesitated no longer.

"Lead the way, Rajah Sahib," she said coolly. "I follow."




CHAPTER VIII

THE IDEAL


On either side of them tall palm-trees raised their splendid heads high
above the shrubs and sweet-smelling plants that clustered like a
protecting wall about their feet, and as Beatrice and her companion passed
a sharp bend it seemed as though they had been suddenly cut off from the
chattering crowd behind them and had entered into a wonderful, silent
world in which they were alone.

Was it the beauty of her surroundings, or was it the man beside her, which
sent the curious, almost painful emotion through her angry heart? For she
was angry--angry with her mother, with herself and him--chiefly with him.
He had been too sure. And yet she was flattered. Also, it was a pleasure
for the first time to be with some one with whom she could drop her
weapons and have no fear. She looked up at him, and found that he was
watching her.

"It was not good-by for ever," he said. "We have met again."

Her anger suddenly subsided. His slow English, with its foreign accent,
his dark features and native dress reminded her vividly that he was of
another (implied, inferior) race, and therefore not to be judged by
ordinary standards. She gave herself up to the pleasure of the moment.

"You have overthrown destiny," she said, smiling. "You have made the
impossible possible. How was I to know all that when I prophesied we
should not meet again?"

"I have not overthrown destiny," he answered. "I have fulfilled it."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Quite sure."

She looked away from him up to the golden dome of the temple which rose
before them against the unclouded sky. Because she had thrown down her
weapons, and in the irresponsible pleasure of the moment become herself,
she acquired a power of penetration and understanding which is denied to
those who with their own hearts closed seek to know the hearts of others.

"Do you know," she said suddenly, "when Colonel Carmichael presented
himself to you, and all the others, I watched you, and I rather fancy I
read something on your face which you didn't want to show. I wonder if I
am right."

"It is possible," he answered gravely. "In this last hour I have already
begun to regret that I have never studied to control my emotions. I show
when I am surprised, disappointed, or--startled. Hitherto, there has been
no reason why I should not do so. But now that I am among my equals, it is
different."

She bit her lip, not in anger but in an almost pained surprise at this
man's ignorance of the world into which he was entering. He was not
presuming to place himself on the level with the Englishman; it seemed as
if he were inoffensively lifting the Englishman up to himself. She was
sorry for him as one is sorry for all kindly fools.

"Tell me what you read!" he begged, after a moment. "Perhaps you will know
better than I myself. I am almost sure you will."

"I read disappointment," she answered. "Was that so?"

His brows contracted slightly.

"I _was_ disappointed," he admitted, "but that was my own fault. I had
never met English people--only heard of them. What I had heard made me
imagine things which it seems have no reality."

"Did you expect demigods?" she asked.

"I do not know what I expected--but it was something different. You know
the men I have met to-day. Are they all great-hearted and brave?"

She did not laugh at the question, though there was cause enough to have
excused it.

"I can not tell you," she answered. "Only circumstances can bring such
virtues to light, and hitherto the circumstances have been lacking. All
men do not wear their heart on their sleeve," she answered, not without
malice.

He nodded.

"I am glad to hear you say that, for no doubt you are right. I am very
ignorant, I fear, and was foolish enough to expect heroes to have the face
and figure of heroes. It grieved me for a moment to find that I was the
tallest and best-looking among them. Now that you have explained, I see
that the greatness lies beneath."

This time she laughed, and laughed so heartily that he joined in with her,
though he did not know what had caused her amusement. He took pleasure in
watching her when she laughed. Her statuesque beauty yielded then to a
warm, pulsating life, which transformed her and made her seem to him more
human, more attainable. For he had never shaken off the belief that she
and a divine agency were closely linked together.

"You must not compare yourself with Englishmen," she said, when she had
recovered, "neither in face, nor stature, nor ideals. You must always
remember that we are of another race."

"And yet you fulfilled my highest ideal."

"Perhaps I am the exception," she retorted, dangerously near another
outburst. "Did all the women this afternoon fulfil your ideal?"

"No!" very decidedly.

"There! You see, then, that I am the exception. Besides, I am not a man.
Men require to be differently judged, and we have perhaps other ideals."

"That also is possible," he assented, "and I know that, because the
English are such a great people, their ideals must be very high, perhaps
higher than mine. Since I am now to go among them, I wish to know what
they consider necessary in the character of a great man.".

"That is too hard a question," she said hurriedly. "I can not describe the
national ideal to you, because I am too ignorant and have never thought
about it. You must ask some one else."

They had come to the end of the path and stood before a square opening, on
the other side of which the two massive gopuras of the temple rose in
their monumental splendor two hundred feet above them. They were still
alone. None of the sightseers seemed to have found the sacred spot, and
for a moment she stood still, awed in spite of herself.

"I should be quite content with _your_ ideal," he said gently, breaking in
upon her admiration. "I feel that it will be the highest."

"You ask of me more than I can answer."

"I beg of you!" he pleaded earnestly. "I have my reasons."

Again she bit her lip. It was too absurd, too ridiculous! That she, of all
people, who had seen into the darkest, most sordid depths of the human
character, and long since learned to look upon goodness and virtue as
exploded myths, should be set to work to draw up an ideal which she did
not and could not believe in, seemed a mockery too pitiful for laughter.
Yet something--perhaps it was a form of national pride--stung her to the
task, moreover stung her to do her best and place beyond the reach of
these dark hands a high and splendid figure of English ideals.

To help herself, she sought through the lumber-rooms of her memory, and
drew thence a hundred ideas, thoughts and conceptions which had belonged
to a short--terribly short--childhood. Like a middle-aged woman who comes
suddenly upon a hoard of long since forgotten toys, and feels an emotion
half pitying, half regretful, so Beatrice Cary displayed to her companion
things that for years had lain forsaken and neglected in the background of
her mind. The dust lay thick upon them--and yet they were well enough.
They would have been beautiful, had she believed in them, but, like the
toys, they had lost the glamour and illusionary light in which her youth
and imagination had bathed them.

"Our highest ideal of a man we call a gentleman," she said slowly. "It is
a much-abused term, but it can mean a very great deal. What his appearance
is does not so much matter--indeed, when one looks into it, it does not
matter at all, save that you will find that the ugliest face can often
give you an index to a lovely character. The chief thing that we require
of him is that he should be above all meanness and pettiness. He must be
great-thinking and great-feeling for himself and others, especially for
others. You will find that a good man is always thinking or working for
those others whose names he may not even know. Whatever power or talent he
has--however little it may be--he concentrates on some object which may
help them. It is the same with his virtues. He cultivates them because he
knows that there is not a high thought, or generous impulse, or noble deed
which does not help to lift the standard of the whole world."

"Of what virtues are you speaking?" Nehal Singh interposed.

"Oh, the usual things," she returned, with a note of cynicism breaking
through her sham enthusiasm. "Honesty, purity, generosity,
loyalty--especially loyalty. I do not think a man who is true to himself,
to his word, to his friend, and to his country can ever fall far below the
ideal." She took a deep breath. "It is a very poor description that I have
given you. I hope you have understood?"

"Yes, I have understood," he answered. "And this man--this gentleman--can
be of all nations?"

So deeply ingrained is national prejudice, even in those who profess to
regard the whole world with an equally contemptuous eye, that for an
instant she hesitated.

"Of course," she said then. "Nationality makes no difference."

They crossed over the broad square, through the gopura, into the inner
temple. Nehal Singh, who had sunk into a deep meditation, roused himself
and called to her notice many curious and beautiful things which she would
otherwise have passed by without interest. Whether it was his loving
description, or whether it was because she was calmer, she could not say,
but the place impressed her with its stately magnificence as it had not
done before.

"The ages seem to hang like ghosts in the atmosphere," she told her
companion, in a hushed undertone.

He assented, and the dreamer's look which had haunted his eyes for
twenty-five years crept back into its place.

"Who knows what unseen world surrounds us?" he said quietly.

They had already left the first court behind them and passed the Sacred
Pool, a placid, untroubled mirror for the overhanging trees and towering
minarets. There they had paused a moment, watching their own reflections
which the warm evening sunshine cast on to the smooth surface. Then they
had moved on, and now stood before the entrance of the Holy of Holies.
Beatrice drew back with a gesture of alarm. A tall, white-clad figure had
suddenly stepped out of the shadowy portal and stood erect and
threatening, one hand raised as though to forbid their entrance. Long
afterward, Beatrice remembered the withered face, and always with a
shudder of unreasonable terror.

"Do not be afraid," Nehal Singh said. "He defends the entrance against
strangers. He will let you pass."

He went up to the old priest and spoke a few words in Hindustani, which
Beatrice did not understand. Immediately the Brahman stood aside, and
though his stern, piercing gaze never left her face, she felt that by some
means or other his animosity had been disarmed.

"What did you say to him?" she asked.

Nehal Singh shook his head.

"One day I will tell you," he answered; and some instinct made her
hesitate to press the question further.

Thus they stood once more before the great golden statue, this time side
by side. The sanctuary was built in the shape of a half-circle, the high,
vaulted roof supported by slender pillars of carved black marble. There
was no other attempt at ornamentation. The three-headed figure of the god
reigned in the center from a massive altar in solitary splendor, and from
a small opening overhead a frail ray of evening light mingled its pale
yellow with the brilliant crimson flame of the Sacred Lamp which burnt
before the idol, casting an almost unearthly reflection about the
passionless chiseled features. In spite of herself, Beatrice felt that the
place was charmed, and that the charm was drawing into its ban her very
thoughts and emotions. She felt subdued, quieted. It was as she had
said--the ages seemed to hover like ghosts about them, and her hard,
worldly skepticism could make no stand against the hush and mystery of the
past. Here generation after generation, amidst danger, battle and death,
men had bowed down and poured out their hottest, most fervent prayers, and
their sincerity and faith had sanctified the ground for Christian, Brahman
and skeptic alike.

Beatrice looked at the man beside her. She had the feeling that, while she
had stood and wondered, he had been praying; and possibly she was right,
though he returned her glance immediately.

"This is a holy place," he said. "It is holiest of all for me. Here I have
spent my most solemn happy hours; here God spoke direct to me and answered
me."

It seemed quite natural that he should speak thus so openly and directly
to her of his nearest concerns. The barrier which separated them perhaps,
after all, made the intercourse between them easier and less constrained
than it would otherwise have been. They had no responsibility toward each
other. They lived in different worlds, and if for a moment they exchanged
messages, it was only for a moment. When it was over, the dividing sea
would once more roll between them, leaving no trace of their brief
intercourse.

Remembering all this, she threw off the momentary sense of trouble.

"Tell me how and when that was," she said.

"I can not tell you--not now. One day I will. One day I shall have a great
deal to tell you, and you will have a great deal to tell me. You will tell
me of your faith. I know nothing of your God. All that has been kept
secret from me."

"How do you know I have a God?" she demanded sharply.

They had passed out of the sanctuary and were walking back toward the
entrance. He half stopped and looked at her in grave surprise.

"How do I know? How, rather, is it possible that it should be otherwise?
You are too good and beautiful not to have learnt at the feet of a great
teacher."

His naivete and confidence set her once more in a state between indulgent
amusement and anger. Another man she would have laughed at straight in the
face, but this simple belief in her goodness threw her out of her usual
stride, and in the end she left him without answer, save that which he
chose to interpret from her silence.

As they reached the great doorway through the gopura, a tall figure
advanced to meet them which Beatrice at once recognized in spite of the
gathering twilight. She had been expecting this new-comer for some time,
yet his appearance disturbed her as something undesirable.

"There is a man I like," Nehal Singh remarked, with a sudden pleasure. "Is
not Travers his name? He disappointed me least of all."

"You have an excellent judgment," Beatrice returned.

If there was an undercurrent of sarcasm in her approval, Nehal Singh did
not notice it. He advanced quickly to meet Travers.

"I am glad you have found your way here," he said. "It is the most
beautiful part of all, and perhaps I should have acted as guide to my
other guests. But my first duty was here." He turned to Beatrice with a
grave inclination.

Travers laughed.

"You need be in no alarm, Rajah Sahib," he said. "We have been enjoying
ourselves immensely, and no wonder, considering all the glories that have
been laid open to us. I have seen much wealth and splendor in India, but
not as here. I feel overwhelmed."

"There is still much for you to see," Nehal Singh answered with a proud
pleasure.

Other members of the party had by this time joined them, and Beatrice
dropped back to her mother's side. The whole thing had been, as Mrs. Berry
said, arranged, but not in the way the good lady supposed, and Beatrice's
task was at an end.

Travers hastened his step imperceptibly, so that the distance between him
and the rest was increased beyond hearing distance.

"Of course," he began, with a frank confidence which fell pleasingly on
his companion's ears, "I am a business man, and a great deal of my
admiration is from a business standpoint. You will perhaps hardly
understand me when I say that my flesh simply creeps when I think of all
the wealth that lies here inactive. Wealth is power, Rajah Sahib, and in
your hand there lies a power for good or evil which dazzles the senses of
a less fortunate man."

Nehal Singh lifted his face thoughtfully toward the evening sky.

"Power for good or evil!" he echoed. "It may be that you are right. But
power is a great clumsy giant, who can accomplish nothing without the
experienced guiding brain."

"I imagine you have both, Rajah Sahib."

"Not the experience. I have led a life apart. I feel myself helpless
before the very thought of any effort in the world. Yet I should be glad
to accomplish something--to help even a little in the general progress."

"You will learn easily enough," Travers broke in, with enthusiasm. "It is
only necessary to go outside your gates to find a hundred outlets for
energy and purpose. If you traveled two days among your people, you would
come back knowing very well what awaited your power to accomplish."

"I am glad to hear you say so," Nehal returned, smiling, "for I am
ambitious."

"Ambition and power!" exclaimed Travers. "You are indeed to be envied,
Rajah Sahib!"

"What would you do in my place?" Nehal asked, after a moment, in a lighter
tone, which concealed a real and eager curiosity.

Travers shook his head.

"The greater the power the greater the responsibility," he answered. "I
couldn't say on the spur of the moment. If I were given time, no doubt I
should be able to tell you."

"I give you till our next meeting, then," Nehal said gravely.

"Our next meeting? I trust, then, Rajah Sahib that you will condescend to
be the guest of the English Station?"

Nehal turned his head to hide the flash of boyish satisfaction which shone
out of his eyes. It was that he wanted--to go among this people, from
their own hearth to judge them, and to probe down into the source of their
greatness.

"It would give me much pleasure," he answered quietly.

It was Travers' turn to hide the triumph which the willing acceptance
aroused. Nevertheless, his next words were whimsically regretful.

"Unfortunately, we have no place in which to offer you a fitting welcome,
Rajah Sahib," he said. "For a long time it has been the ambition of the
Station to build some place wherein all such festivities could be properly
celebrated. But alas!"--he shrugged his shoulders--"it is the fate of the
Anglo-Indian to work for the richness and greatness of his country and
himself remain miserably poor."

"How much money would be required?" Nehal Singh asked.

"You will no doubt be amused at the smallness of the sum--a mere four
thousand rupees--but it is just so much we have not got."

Nehal Singh smiled.

"Let me at once begin to make use of my power," he said graciously. "It
would be a pleasure to me to mark my first meeting with you by the gift of
the building you require. I place the matter in your hands, Sahib Travers.
For the time being, until I have gained my own experience, yours must be
the guiding brain."

The good-looking Englishman appeared to be considerably taken
aback--almost distressed.

"You are too generous, Rajah Sahib!" he protested. To himself he commented
on the rapidity with which this fellow had picked up the lingo of polite
society.

All further conversation was cut short by a cry of admiration from the
crowd behind them. They had reached the chief entrance to the palace, and
suddenly, as though at a given signal, every outline of the building
became marked out by countless points of light which sparkled starlike
against the darkening sky. At the same instant, the temple to their left
took form in a hundred colors, and a burst of weird music broke on the
ears of the wondering spectators. It was a strange and beautiful scene,
such as few of them had ever seen. Fairy palaces of fire seemed to hover
miraculously in the evening air, and over everything hung the curious,
indefinable charm of the mysterious East.

Nehal Singh turned and found Lois Caruthers standing with Stafford a
little behind him. Both their names were forgotten, but the dark eager
face of the girl attracted him and at the same time puzzled him as
something which struck a hitherto unsuspected chord in his innermost self.

"You find it well?" he asked her.

"It is most beautiful," she answered. "It is good of you, Rajah Sahib, to
give us so much pleasure."

That was all she said, but among all his memories of that evening she
remained prominent, because she had spoken sincerely, warmly,
enthusiastically. Others thanked him--the Colonel's little speech at the
end was a piece of studied rhetoric, but it left him cold where her thanks
had left him warm, almost gratefully so.

On the whole, the first meeting between the English residents of Marut and
the young native prince was classified as a success. As they drove through
the darkness, the returning guests called terse criticisms to one another
which tended to the conclusion that the whole thing had not been at all
bad, and that for the circumstances the Rajah was a remarkably
well-mannered individual.

Beatrice Cary took no part in the light-hearted exchange. Her mother had
gone off with Mrs. Carmichael in her carriage, and Travers having offered
to drive her home, she had accepted, and now sat by his side, thoughtful,
almost depressed, though she did not own it, even to herself.

Try as she would she could not throw off the constantly recurring memory
of her parting with Nehal Singh. She made fun of it and of herself, and
yet she could not laugh over it--her power of irresponsible enjoyment had
been taken suddenly from her.

"You will not now say that we shall never meet again," he had said,
pressing something into her hand. "Now you will never forget," he had
added. "It is a talisman of remembrance."

What he had given her she did not know. It lay tightly clutched in the
palm of her hand--something hard and cold which she dared not look at.

She had not even been able to remonstrate or thank him. She had been
spellbound, hypnotized.

"It really has been splendid!" she heard Travers say in her ear. "Things
went just like clockwork. Five minutes' conversation got the whole
clubhouse out of him, and what you managed in your quarter of an hour,
goodness knows. You are a clever woman and no mistake!"

"Please--don't!" she burst out irritably.

"Hullo! What's the matter? What are you so cross about?"

"I'm not cross--only tired, tired, tired and sick of it all. Do drive on!"

Far behind them a solitary figure stood on the broad steps of the palace,
amidst the dying splendors of the evening and gazed in the direction which
the merry procession had taken. A long time it had stood there,
motionless, passive, the fine husk of the soul which had wandered out into
a new world of hope and possibilities following the woman whose hand had
flung the gates wide for him to enter in.

Another figure crept out of the shadows and drew near. Twisted and bent,
it stood beside the bold, upright form and lifted its face, hate-filled,
to the pale light of the stars.

"Nehal Singh, Nehal Singh--oh, my son!"

The prince turned coldly.

"Is it thou? Hast thou a dagger in thy hand?"

"I have no dagger--would to God I had! Nehal Singh, I have seen mine
enemy's face."

"How meanest thou? Thy enemy is dead."

"Nevertheless, his face is among the living. As a servant, I crept among
the strangers, and saw him straight in the eyes. He has grown younger, but
it is he. It is the body of the son, but the soul of his father in his
eyes--and, father or son, their blood is poison to me."

Nehal Singh knit his brows.

"Knowest thou his name?"

"Ay, now I know his name. It came back to me when I saw his face. Stafford
he was called--Stafford!" He crept closer, his thin hand fell like a vise
on Nehal's arm. "Kill him!" he whispered. "Kill him--the son of thy
father's betrayer!"

Nehal Singh shook himself free.

"I can not," he answered proudly, and a warm thrill of enthusiasm rang in
his voice. "I can not. They are all my brothers. I can not take my
brother's blood."

With a moan of anger the twisted figure crept back into the shadow, and
once more Nehal Singh stood alone.

Unconsciously he had accepted and proclaimed Beatrice Cary's ideal as his
own. The hour of bloodshed was gone, mercy and justice called him in its
stead. And in that acceptance of a new era his gaze pierced through the
obscurity into a light beyond. The jungle which had bound his life was
gone; all hindrances, all gulfs of hatred and revenge, were overthrown and
bridged. The world of the Great People stood open to him, and to them he
held out the casteless hand of love and fellowship.




CHAPTER IX

CHECKED


Lois and Stafford had arrived at that stage of friendship when
conversation becomes unnecessary. They walked side by side through the
Colonel's carefully tended garden and were scarcely conscious that
they had dropped into a thoughtful silence. Yet, as though in
obedience to some unspoken agreement, their footsteps found their way
to the ruined bungalow and there paused.

As a look can be more powerfully descriptive than a word, so these
shot-riddled walls had their own eloquence. Each shot-hole, each
jagged splinter and torn hinge had its own history and added its
pathetic detail to the whole picture of that disastrous night when the
vengeance of Behar Singh had burst like a hurricane over the
defenseless land.

After a moment's hesitation Stafford stepped forward and, pushing
aside the heavy festoons of creeper which barred the doorway, passed
through into the gloomy interior.

"I should like to see the place from the inside," he explained to
Lois, who, with an uncontrollable shudder, had followed him. "One can
imagine better then how it all happened."

"I think of it all--often," she answered in a hushed voice, "and every
time I seem to see things differently. My poor mother!"

"You never knew her?" he asked.

"No, I was too young--scarcely more than a year old. Yet her loss
seems to have overshadowed my whole life."

"Was she like you?"

"Yes, I believe so. She was dark--not so dark as I am--but she was
stately and beautiful. So she has always been described to me, and so
I always seem to see her."

Stafford turned and looked about him.

"It must be almost as it was then," he said wonderingly, pointing to
the rusty truckle-bed in the corner. "And there is the broken
over-turned chair! It might have been yesterday."

She nodded.

"So my guardian found it," she said. "It had been my father's bungalow
and he never allowed it to be touched. When I came of age I gave it to
him. It seemed to belong to him, somehow. They say that it nearly
broke his heart when he found that he had come too late to save my
father. My father was his dearest, almost his only friend."

"Were they killed at once?" Stafford asked with hesitating curiosity.
"I have never known the rights of the case. It has always been a
painful subject for me--with you I don't mind."

It was the faintest allusion to a bond between them which both
silently recognized, and Lois turned away to hide the signal of
happiness which had risen to her cheeks.

"No one knows," she answered. "The bodies were never found. It was
part of Behar Singh's cruelty to hide the real fate of his victims.
For a long time people used to hope and hope that in some dungeon or
prison they would find their friends, but they never did. One can only
pray that the end was a mercifully quick one."

"And Behar Singh died in the jungle?"

"So the natives said. No one really knows," she replied.

"I wish he hadn't," Stafford said, his good-natured face darkening.
"It seems unfair that he should have caused our people to suffer so
much and we have never had the chance to pay back. Whatever made the
Government give his son the power, goodness only knows."

"The present Rajah was a baby then," she said in a tone of gentle
remonstrance. "It would have been hard to have punished him for the
sins of his father."

Nothing appeals to a man more than a woman's undiplomatic tenderness
for the whole world. Stafford looked down at Lois with a smile.

"You dear, good-hearted little girl!" he said. "And yet, blood is
blood, you know. Somehow, one can't get over it. In spite of his good
looks, it always seems to me as though I could see his father's
treachery in Nehal Singh's eyes. It made me sick to think that I was
enjoying his hospitality--it makes me feel worse that we have to
accept the club-house at his hands. Travers behaved pretty badly,
according to my ideas."

"It was mostly Miss Cary's doing," Lois objected. She liked Travers,
and was inclined to take up the cudgels on his behalf.

Stafford's eyes twinkled. On his side he had the rooted and not
unfounded masculine notion that all women are jealous of one another.

"Miss Cary is young and inexperienced and probably did not realize
what she was doing," he retorted. "From what she told me, she takes
the whole matter as a big joke, and now that the fat is in the fire
it's no use enlightening her."

Lois made no immediate answer, though she may have had her doubts on
the subject of Beatrice Cary's inexperience.

"The poor Rajah!" she said, after a pause, as Stafford walked
curiously about the room. "I could not help being sorry for him. He
seemed so eager and enthusiastic and anxious to please us, and we were
so cold and ungrateful. Tell me, does it really make so much
difference?"

He came back to her side. Something in her voice had touched him and
stirred to life a warmth of feeling which was more than that of
friendship.

"What makes so much difference?" he asked, smiling down at her small
troubled face. "What are you worrying yourself about now?"

"Oh, it has always troubled me," she answered with the impetuosity
which characterized her. "I have often worried about it. I mean," she
added, as he laughed at her incoherence, "all that race distinction.
Does it really mean so much? Will it never be bridged over?"

"Never," he said. "It can't be. It is a justified distinction and to
my mind those who ignore it are to be despised."

He had answered her question with only a part seriousness, his whole
interest concentrated on the charm of her personality. But for once
her gravity resisted the suppressed merriment in his eyes.

"Are the natives, then, so contemptible?" she asked.

"Not exactly contemptible, but inferior. They have not our culture,
and whatsoever they borrow from us is only skin-deep. Beneath the
varnish they are their elemental selves--lazy, cruel, treacherous and
unscrupulous. No, no. Each race must keep to itself. Our strength in
India depends on our exclusiveness--upon keeping ourselves apart and
above as superior beings. So long as they recognize we _are_ superior,
so long will they obey us."

"It is superiority, then, which prevents every one except professors
from taking any interest in the natives?"

"Possibly," he returned, not quite so much at his ease. "One feels a
natural repugnance, you know."

"You would never have anything to do with them?"

"Not if I could help it."

She sighed and turned away as though his gaze troubled her.

"I don't know why--it makes me sad to hear you talk like that," she
said. "It seems so terribly hard."

"It _is_ hard," he affirmed, following her out of the curious, heavy
atmosphere into the evening sunshine. "There are a great many things
in life which, as far as we know, are inevitable, so that there is no
use in worrying or thinking about them." Her more serious mood had
conquered his good spirits, and for a moment he stood at her side
looking at the disused bungalow with eyes as thoughtful as her own.
"Isn't it strange?" he went on. "Our parents came together from
different ends of the earth, doomed to die in the same spot and in the
same hour, and we children, far away in England, knowing nothing of
each other, have drifted back to the fatal place to find each other
there and to--"

"Yes," she said as he hesitated, "it is strange. I could almost think
that this bungalow had some mysterious influence over our lives."

He smiled in half confirmation of her fancy.

"It may be. But come! We have had enough gloom for one evening. Let me
gather some flowers for you before we go back."

She assented, and they followed the winding paths, stopping here and
there to cut down some of the most tempting of Mrs. Carmichael's
tenderly loved blossoms and always turning aside when they came in
sight of the Colonel's verandah. No word of tenderness had ever passed
between them, and yet they were happy to be together. It was as though
a bond united them which had grown up, silent and unseen, from the
first hour they had met, and in a quiet, peaceful way they knew that
it existed and that they loved each other.

From the verandah where she was sewing by the fading light Mrs.
Carmichael could watch their appearing and disappearing figures amidst
the trees with the satisfaction of a confirmed match-maker. She, too,
knew of this bond, and though she was a trifle impatient with the
slowness of the development, she was content to bide her time.

"I don't usually pay any attention to Station gossip," she said to her
husband, who was trying to read the newly arrived English paper, "but
for once in a way I believe there is something in it. According to my
experience, they should be engaged in less than a fortnight."

Colonel Carmichael started.

"Who? Lois and Stafford?"

"Yes, of course. Who else? Everybody looks upon it as practically
settled. Why do you look like that? You ought to be pleased. You said
yourself that you were very fond of Stafford--"

Carmichael made a quick gesture as though to stop the threatening
torrent of expostulation. He had turned crimson and his whole manner
was marked by an unusual uneasiness.

"Of course, I am fond of Stafford," he began. "I only meant--"

He was saved the trouble of explaining what he did mean by a sudden
exclamation from his wife, who had let her work fall to the ground
with a start of alarm.

"Good gracious, Mr. Travers!" she cried in her sharp way. "What a
fright you gave me! I thought you were a horrible thug or something
come to murder us all. There, how do you do!" She gave him her hand.
"Will you have a cup of tea? We have just had ours, but if you would,
I am quite ready to keep you company. Tea, as you know, is a weakness
of mine. That is why my nerves are so bad."

Travers bowed, smiling. He was rather paler than usual and the hand
which held a large bouquet of freshly cut flowers trembled as though
the shock his sudden appearance had caused Mrs. Carmichael had
recoiled on himself.

"Thank you--no," he said. "As a matter of fact, I came to bring these
for Miss Caruthers, but as she is not here I should be very grateful
if I might have a few words with you alone. I have something of
importance, which it would be perhaps better to tell you first."

"Certainly," the Colonel said, clearing his throat and settling
himself farther back in his chair. "There is no time like the
present."

Travers looked at him in troubled surprise. The elder man's tone and
attitude were those of some one confronted with a not unexpected but
unpleasant crisis.

"It concerns your ward, Colonel Carmichael," Travers said, taking the
chair offered him. "I think you must have known long ago that I cared
very dearly for her. I have come now to ask her to be my wife."

He spoke quickly and abruptly, as though to hide a powerful emotion,
and there was an instant's uncomfortable silence. Mrs. Carmichael's
head was bent over her work. She did not dislike Travers, but this
unexpected proposal upset all her plans and though it flattered her
pride in Lois, she felt disturbed and thrown out of her course.

"I think you have made a mistake, Mr. Travers," she said at last, as
her husband remained obstinately silent. "I have every reason to
believe that Lois' heart is given elsewhere. However, we have no right
to interfere--Lois must decide for herself. She is her own mistress.
What do you say, George, dear?"

The Colonel shifted his position. Evidently he was at a loss to
express himself, and his brow remained clouded.

"If it is Lois' wish, I shall put no obstacle in the way of her
happiness," he said slowly.

"Have you any personal objection, Colonel?"

"I? O, dear, no!" was the hurried answer.

There was a second silence, in which Mrs. Carmichael and Travers
exchanged baffled glances. The Colonel seemed in some unaccountable
way to have lost his nerve and, as though he felt and feared the
questioning gaze of his wife, he leaned forward so that his face was
hidden.

"Personally I have no objection at all," he repeated, as if seeking to
gain time. "Like my wife, I had other ideas on the subject, but that
has nothing to do with it. At the same time, I feel it--eh--my duty
to--eh--tell you before you go further--for your sake, and--eh--every
one's sake--certain details concerning Lois which I have not thought
necessary to give to the world in general. You understand--I consider
it my duty--only fair to yourself and Lois."

"I quite understand," Travers said. He seemed in no way surprised, and
his expression was that of a man waiting for the explanation to a
problem which had long puzzled him.

"Really, George!" expostulated Mrs. Carmichael, not without
indignation, "one would think you were about to disinter the most
horrible family skeleton. You are not to be alarmed, Mr. Travers. It
is all a little mysterious, perhaps, but nothing to make _such_ a fuss
about."

The Colonel looked up under the sting of her reproach and tried to
smile.

"I dare say my wife is right," he said. "I am rather foolish about the
matter--possibly because it is all linked together with a very painful
period of my life. Mr. Travers, my dearest friend, Steven Caruthers,
had _no_ children. The baby girl whom by his will he intrusted to my
care was not his child, nor have I ever been able to discover whose
child she really was. His will spoke of her as his adopted daughter,
who was to bear his name and in fault of any other heir to inherit
both his own and his wife's large fortune. More I can not tell you,
for I myself do not know more."

He laid an almost timid emphasis on the word "know," as though
somewhere at the back of his mind there lurked a suspicion which he
dared neither deny nor express openly, and, in spite of his attempt at
cheerfulness, his features were still disturbed and gloomy.

"You know one thing more, which you haven't mentioned," Mrs.
Carmichael said, "and that is that Lois is of good family on both
sides. Steven Caruthers told you so."

"Yes, that's true--I forgot," the Colonel assented. "He assured me
that on both sides she was of good, even high birth, and that he had
adopted her partly because he had no children of his own and partly
because of a debt of gratitude which he owed her father. It does not
seem to me that it makes much difference."

"It makes all the difference in the world, George," retorted Mrs.
Carmichael, who for some reason or another was considerably put out.
"You don't want Mr. Travers to think that Lois was picked up in the
street, do you?"

"Of course not," her husband agreed, "but then--" He broke off, and
all three relapsed into an awkward silence. Travers was the first to
speak. He had been looking out over the garden and had seen Lois'
white dress flash through the bushes.

"For my part," he began quietly, "I can not see that what you have
told me can have an influence on the matter. I love Lois. That is the
chief thing--or rather the chief thing is whether or not she can learn
to love me. Whether she is the child of a sweep or a prince, it makes
no difference to my feelings toward her."

Mrs. Carmichael held out her hand.

"Well, whatever happens, you are a man before you are a prig," she
said, "and that is something to be thankful for in these degenerate
days. Why, there is the child herself! Come here, my dear."

Lois came running up the verandah steps with Stafford close behind
her. Her eyes were full of laughter and sunshine, and in her hand she
held a mass of roses which Stafford had gathered during their ramble.

"Good-evening, Mr. Travers," she exclaimed with pleased surprise, as
he rose to greet her. "I did not expect to find you here. How grave
you all look! And what lovely flowers!"

Travers considered his bouquet with a rueful smile.

"I brought them from my garden, Miss Caruthers," he said. "They
were meant for to-night's festivity. But it seems they have come
too late--you are already well supplied."

"Flowers never come too late and one can never have too many of them!"
Lois answered gratefully. "Please bring them in here and I will put
them in water."

She led the way into the drawing-room and he followed her eagerly.
Whether it was the sight of her charm and youth, or the warm greeting
which he had read in her eyes, or the satisfied calm on Stafford's
face, Travers himself could not have told, but in that moment he lost
his usual self-possession. He was white and shaken like a man who sees
himself thrust suddenly to the brink of a chasm and knows that he must
cross or fall.

"Miss Caruthers!" he said.

She turned quickly from the flowers which she was arranging in a bowl.
The smile of pleasure which still lingered about her lips died away as
she saw his face.

"Miss Caruthers," he repeated earnestly, "it is perhaps neither wise
nor right of me to speak now, but there are moments when anything--even
the worst--is better than uncertainty, when a man can bear no more.
Forgive me--I am not eloquent and what I have to tell can be
encompassed in one word. I love you, Lois. I think you must know it,
though you can not know how great my love is. Is there any hope for
me?"

She drew her hand gently but firmly from his half-unconscious clasp.

"I am sorry--no," she said.

"Lois--I can't give up hope. Is there some one else?"

She lifted her troubled eyes to his face. He saw in their depths a
curious doubt and uncertainty.

"I do not know," she said almost to herself. "I only know that you are
not the man."

The blow had calmed him. Like a good general who has suffered a
temporary check, he gathered his forces together and prepared an
orderly retreat.

"I will not trouble you," he said gently. "I feel now that I did wrong
to disturb your peace--God knows I would never willingly cause you an
instant's sorrow--but a man who loves as I do must feed himself with
hope, however wild and unreasonable. Now I know, and whatever
happens--I hope you will be happy--I pray you will be happy. Yes,
though I am not given to uttering prayers, I pray, so dear to me is
the future which lies before you."

"I am very grateful," she said with bowed head. Something in his
broken, disjointed sentences brought the tears to her eyes and made
her voice unsteady. She knew he was suffering--she knew why, and her
heart went out to him in friendship and womanly pity.

"You need not be grateful," he answered. "It is I who have to be
grateful. In spite of it all, you do not know what good you have
brought into my life nor how you have unconsciously helped me. I shall
never be able to help you as you have helped me--and yet--will you
promise me something?"

"Anything in my power," she said faintly.

"It is not much--only this. If the time should ever come when you are
in trouble, if you should ever be in need of a true and devoted
friend, will you turn to me? Will you let me try to pay my debt of
gratitude to you?"

She lifted her head and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. Every
good woman sympathizes with those whose suffering she has
inadvertently caused, and in that moment Lois would have done anything
to alleviate Travers' pain.

"If it should ever be necessary, I will turn to you," she said gently.
"I promise you."

"Thank you!" he said, and, taking her out-stretched hand, raised it
reverently to his lips.




CHAPTER X

AT THE GATES OF A GREAT PEOPLE


Although Travers lost no time in setting to work on the task of
calling a new and suitable club-house into existence, he realized
immediately that, do what he would, he could not hope for completion
before the lapse of a considerable time, and this period of waiting
did not suit his plans. Already on the day after the Rajah's reception
he had arranged for a return of hospitality which was to take place in
his own grounds and to be on an unusually magnificent scale. The
European population of Marut shrugged its shoulders as it saw the
preparations, and observed that if Travers had been as generous in the
first place there would never have been any need to have sought for
support from a foreign quarter--at which criticism Travers merely
smiled. The club-house was, after all, only a means to a very much
more important end of his own.

Rajah Nehal Singh of course accepted the invitation sent him, and
scarcely a week passed before the eventful evening arrived toward
which more than one looked forward with eager anticipation--not least
Mrs. Cary, who saw in every large entertainment a fresh opportunity
for Beatrice to carry out her own particular campaign. It was
therefore, as Mrs. Cary angrily declared, a fresh dispensation of an
unfriendly Providence that on the very same day Beatrice fell ill.
What malady had her in its clutches was more than her distracted and
aggrieved mother could say. She sat before her writing-table, playing
idly with a curiously cut stone, and appeared the picture of health.
Yet she was ill--she repeated it obstinately and without variation a
dozen times in response to Mrs. Cary's persistent protests.

"You don't _look_ ill," Mrs. Cary exclaimed in exasperation as,
arrayed in her newest wonder from Paris, she came to say good-by. "I
can't think what's the matter with you, and you won't explain. Have
you got a pain anywhere?--Have you a headache? For goodness' sake, say
something, child!"

Beatrice looked at her mother calmly, and a curious mixture of
bitterness and amusement crept into her expression as her eyes
wandered over the bulk in mauve satin to the red face with the
indignant little eyes.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked. "I can't explain pains I
haven't got."

"If you haven't got any pains, then you aren't ill."

Beatrice laughed.

"That shows how ignorant you are of the human constitution, my dear
mother," she said. "The worst illnesses are painless--at least, in
your sense of the word."

"I am not so ignorant as not to know one thing--and that is you are
simply shamming!" burst out the elder woman, with a vicious tug at her
straining gloves. "Shamming just to aggravate me, too! You do it to
spite me. You are a bad daughter--"

Beatrice turned round so sharply that Mrs. Cary broke off in the
middle of her abuse with a gasp.

"I do nothing to aggravate or spite you," Beatrice said, with a calm
which her eyes belied. "I have never gone against you in the whole
course of my life. What have I done since we have been here but play
an obedient fiddle to Mr. Travers' will, in order that your position
might not be endangered--"

"_Our_ position," interposed Mrs. Cary hurriedly.

"No, _your_ position. There may have been a time when I cared, too,
but I don't now. I have ceased caring for anything. To suit Mr.
Travers, I have fooled, and continue to fool, a man who has never
harmed me in his life. I move heaven and earth to come between two
people for whom alone in this whole place, I have a glimmer of
respect."

"Respect!" jeered Mrs. Cary.

"Yes, respect--not much, I confess, but still enough to have made me
leave them alone if I had had the chance. Lois has been kind to me. I
happen to know that, little as she likes me, she is about the only one
in the Station who keeps her tongue from slander and--the truth. As
for John Stafford, if he is a narrow-minded bigot, he is at least a
man, and that is something to appreciate."

"That is just what I think!" Mrs. Cary said conciliatingly. "And
therefore he is the very husband for you, dear child."

"You think so, not because he is a man, but because he has a position
in which it would suit you excellently to have a son-in-law. Well, I
have promised to do my best, though I am convinced it is too late."

"There is no official engagement between them," Mrs. Cary said
hopefully, "and you know your power, Beaty. He already likes you more
than enough, and what with Mr. Travers on the other side--All the
same," she continued, becoming suddenly petulant, "it's too bad of you
to throw away a chance like this."

Beatrice covered her face with her hand with a gesture of complete
weariness.

"I have promised to do my best," she reiterated. "Let me do it my own
way. I can not go to-night--I feel I can not. If I went, it would
only be a failure. Let me for once be judge of what is best."

Her mother sighed resignedly.

"Very well. I suppose I can't force you. You can be as obstinate as a
mule when you choose. I only hope you won't live to regret it. Good
night."

This time she did not give her daughter the usual perfunctory and
barely tolerated kiss. At the bottom of her torpid, selfish soul she
was bitterly hurt and disappointed, as those people always are who
have hurt and disappointed others their whole lives, and only a
glimmer of hope that Beatrice's determination might have softened made
her hesitate at the door and glance back. Beatrice sat just as she had
sat the whole evening, in an attitude of moody thought, her fingers
still playing with the blood-red ruby, and Mrs. Cary went out,
slamming the door violently after her.

In consequence of her long and futile appeal, Mrs. Cary had made
herself very late, and when she entered the large marquee which
Travers had had erected in his garden she found that all the guests
had arrived, including Rajah Nehal Singh himself. He stood facing the
entrance, and she felt, with a consoling sense of spiteful triumph,
how his glance hurried past her, seeking the figure which no doubt
above all else had tempted him thither.

The senior lady, Mrs. Carmichael, was at his side, and as Mrs. Cary in
duty bound went up to pay her respects, she added satisfaction to
satisfaction by relating loudly that her daughter had a slight
headache which she had not thought it worth while to increase by a
form of entertainment which, between you and me, dear Mrs. Carmichael,
bad taste as it no doubt is, has no attractions for Beatrice. Now,
anything outdoor, and nothing will keep her from it! She turned to
Stafford, who was standing with Lois close at hand. "That reminds me
to tell you, Captain, how tremendously my daughter enjoyed her ride
with you yesterday. If you promise not to get conceited, I will tell
you what she said."

"I promise!" he said, with a mock gravity which concealed a very real
amusement.

"She said that in her opinion there wasn't a better horseman in Marut,
and that it was more pleasure to ride with you than any one else. Now,
are you keeping your promise?" She tapped him playfully on the arm.
Stafford bowed, looking what he felt, hot and uncomfortable. There are
some people who have the knack of making others ashamed of them and of
themselves. Mrs. Cary was just such a person.

"It was very kind of Miss Cary to say so," Stafford said stiffly. "I
am afraid her praise is not justified."

All this time Nehal Singh had been standing at Mrs. Cary's elbow, and
she had persistently ignored him. Deeper than her reverence for any
form of title was her wounded conviction that he had once laughed at
her and made her ridiculous, and to this injury was added the insult
that it came from a man whom, as an Englishwoman, she had the
privilege of "tolerating." A true parvenu, she had quickly learned to
suspect and despise the credentials of other intruders.

He turned away from her and for the first time there was something
hesitating and troubled in his manner. Hitherto there had been songs
and music for his entertainment; it was now the turn of the Europeans
to follow their usual form of pleasure, yet they looked at one another
questioningly. It was the custom of the chief guest of the evening to
open the dancing, but this could hardly be expected of a native prince
who was as yet ignorant of such things and who must still be bound and
fettered by caste and religion.

The pause of uncertainty lasted only a moment, but for those at least
whose eyes were open, it was a moment symbolical of a great
loneliness. In the midst of a gay and crowded world of people, linked
together by a common tie of blood, Nehal Singh stood isolated. He did
not know it, but it was that loneliness which cast a transitory chill
upon his enthusiasm and made him draw himself stiffly upright and face
the hundred questioning eyes with a new hauteur. An instant and it was
gone--that illuminating flash vanished, like a line drawn across a
quicksand, beneath the surface, never to be seen again, perhaps never
even to be remembered.

Stafford led Lois out into the center, and one pair after another
followed his example. With Travers still at his side, the Rajah drew
back from the now crowded floor of dancers, and watched the scene with
glistening, eager eyes, happy at last to be in the midst of them--the
Great People of the world. It was a brilliant scene, for Travers had
spared nothing. The sides of the marquee banked with flowers, the
music, the brilliant dresses and uniforms, were all calculated to
impress a mind as yet curiously unspoiled by the pomp and magnificence
of the East. They impressed Nehal Singh deeply; his mind was filled
with a wonder and pleasure which did something toward soothing the
first bitter disappointment that the evening had brought him.

But above all else, he wondered at himself and the rapidity of the
fate which in two short weeks had swept him out of his solitude into
the very vortex of a world unknown to him save through his books. He
asked himself what power it was that had flung aside caste, religion,
education, like a child's sandcastle before the onrush of a mighty
tide. Caste, religion, hatred of the foreigner, these things had been
sown deep into him, had been fostered and trained like precious
plants, and now they were dead at the first contact with European
ideas. They were gone as though they had never been. He had made no
resistance. He had drifted with the stream, regardless of the
entreating, threatening hands held out to him; yielding to a divine
power stronger than himself, stronger far than the implanted
principles of his life.

His wonder, though he did not know it, was shared by the Englishman at
his side. Travers, accustomed as he was to look upon human theories
and principles as buyable and saleable appendages, could not suppress
a mild surprise at the rapidity with which this Hindu prince had
assimilated the ideas and mental attitude of another hemisphere.
Possibly it could be traced back to the parrot-like propensities of
all inferior races, but Travers, much as the solution appealed to him,
could not accept it. A parrot that assumes with apparent ease the ways
of his master within a fortnight, and thereby retains a striking
originality of his own, is not an ordinary parrot, and the conviction
was dawning on Travers that Nehal Singh was not an ordinary Hindu. The
unusual simplicity of his dress, which nevertheless concealed a costly
and refined taste, his firm though unpretentious bearing, the energy
with which he had overthrown what Travers guessed must have been a
fairly violent opposition on the part of his priestly advisers,
pointed to a decided, interesting and perhaps, under certain
circumstances, dangerous personality. The latter part of this
deduction had not as yet struck Travers in its full force, but so much
he at least felt that he proceeded to go warily, relying on his
diplomacy and still more on a weapon which was not the less effective
for being kept, as on this occasion, in the background.

"Rajah Sahib, this is our second meeting," he said, after a few
minutes' study of the handsome absorbed face. "I have my answer
ready."

Nehal Singh turned at once, as though he had been waiting for Travers
to broach the subject.

"You have not forgotten, then?"

"Forgotten? No; it lent itself too easily to my fancy and secret
ambition for me to forget. Doubtless, though, my answer will not
appeal to you, for it is the answer of a business man with a business
hobby of immense proportions and of the earth earthy."

"Nevertheless, tell it to me," Nehal Singh said, looking about him as
though seeking a way out of the noise and confusion. "Whatever it is,
it will interest me so long as it has one object."

"I venture to think I know that object," was Travers' mental comment
as he led the way into the second division of the marquee.

The place had been laid out as a refreshment room, with small,
prettily decorated tables, and was for the moment empty, save for a
few busy native servants. An electric globe hung from the ceiling, and
immediately beneath its brilliant light Travers came to a standstill.
He put his hand in his pocket and drew out what seemed to be a
jewel-case, which he opened and handed to the Rajah.

"Before I say anything further, I want you to look at that and give me
your opinion, Rajah Sahib," he said. "I will then proceed."

Nehal Singh took the small white stone from the case and studied it
intently. He held it to the light, and it flashed back at him a
hundred brilliant colors. He smiled with the pleasure of a
connoisseur.

"It is a diamond," he said, "a beautiful diamond. Though smaller, it
must surely equal the one I wear in my turban."

"You confirm my opinion and the opinion of all experts," Travers
answered enthusiastically, "and I will confess to you that it is that
stone which has prolonged my stay indefinitely at Marut. About a year
ago a friend of mine, an engineer, who was engaged on some government
work at the river, had occasion to make excavations about a quarter of
a mile from the Bazaar. He happened to come across this stone, and
being something of an expert, he recognized it--and held his tongue.
When he came south again to Madras, he confided hit discovery to me,
and, impressed by his story, and the stone, I sent a mining engineer
to Marut to make secret investigations. I received his report six
months ago."

Nehal Singh replaced the stone slowly in its case.

"What did he say?" he asked.

"He reported that there were sure and certain signs that the whole of
the Bazaar is built upon a diamond field of unusual proportions,
which, unlike other Indian mining enterprises, was likely to repay,
doubly repay, exploitation. I immediately came to Marut, and found
that the Bazaar was entirely your property, Rajah Sahib, and that you
were not likely to be influenced by any representations. Nevertheless
I remained, experimenting and investigating, above all hoping that
some chance would lead me in your way. Destiny, as you see, Rajah
Sahib, has spoken the approving word."

Nehal Singh sighed as he handed the case back, and the sigh expressed
a. rather weary disappointment.

"I have stones enough and wealth enough," he said. "I have no need of
more."

"It was not of you I was thinking, Rajah Sahib," Travers returned.

"Of whom, then?"

"Of myself, to some extent, as becomes a business man, but also, and I
venture to assert principally, of the general welfare of your country
and people."

"I fear I do not understand you."

"And yet, Rajah Sahib, you have read, and have no doubt been able to
trace through history the source of prosperity and misfortune among
the nations. The curse of India is her overpopulation and the
inability of her people to extract from the earth sufficient means for
existence. If I may say so, the ordinary native is a dreamer who
prefers to starve on a treasure hoard rather than bestir himself to
unbury it. Lack of energy, lack of initiative, lack of opportunity,
lack also of guides have made your subjects suffering idlers whose
very existence is a curse to themselves and an unsolved problem for
others. Charity can not help them--that enervating poison has already
done enough mischief. You could fling away your whole fortune on your
state, and leave it with no improvement. The cure, if cure there be,
lies in the awakening of a sense of independence and ambition and
self-respect. Only work can do this, only work can transform them from
beggars into honorable, self-supporting members of the Empire; and the
crying misery of the present time calls upon you, Rajah Sahib, to
rouse them to their new task!"

He had spoken with an enthusiasm which grew in measure as he saw its
effect upon his hearer. For though he did not immediately respond,
Nehal Singh's face had betrayed emotions which a natural dignity was
learning to hold back from impulsive expression. He answered at last
quietly, but with an irrepressible undercurrent of eagerness.

"You speak convincingly," he said; "and though I fear you overrate the
hidden powers of activity in my people, you have made me still more
anxious for a direct answer to my question--what would you do in my
place?"

"If I had the money and the power, I would sweep the Bazaar, with all
its dirt and disease, out of existence," Travers answered
energetically. "I would build up a new native quarter outside Marut,
and enforce order and cleanliness. Where the present Bazaar stands, I
would open out a mine, and with the help of European experts encourage
the natives into the subsequent employment which would stand open to
them. In a short time a mere military Station would become the center
of native industry and commercial prosperity."

A faint skeptical smile played around Nehal Singh's mouth, but his
eyes were still profoundly grave.

"If I know my people, I fear they will revolt against such changes,"
he said. "You have described them as dreamers who prefer starvation to
effort--such they are."

"Your influence would be irresistible, Rajah Sahib."

Nehal Singh looked at Travers keenly. For the second time he had been
spoken of as a power. Was it perhaps true, as his father had said, and
this cool Englishman had said, that the thoughts and actions of more
than a million people lay at his command? If so, the twenty-five years
of his life had been wasted, and he stood far below the high standard
which had been set him. He had wandered aimlessly along a smooth path,
cut off from the world, plucking such fruits and flowers as offered
themselves within his reach, deaf to the cries of those to whom his
highest efforts should have been dedicated. He had dreamed where he
should have acted, slept where he should have watched and labored
unceasingly, yet it was not too late. He felt how his whole
dream-world shivered beneath the convulsions of his awakening
energies. The vague, futile, uneasy longings of his immaturity took
definite shape. His shackled abilities awaited only the signal to
throw off their fetters and in freedom to create good for the whole
world.

"You have shown me possibilities of which I never dreamed," he said to
Travers. "I must speak to you again, and soon, for if things are as
you say, then time enough has been wasted. But not tonight. Tomorrow I
will see you--or no, not tomorrow--the day after. I must have time to
think."

The waltz had died sentimentally into silence, and he made a gesture
indicating that he wished to return to the ball-room. Yet on the
threshold he hesitated and drew back.

"The light and confusion trouble me," he said, passing his hand over
his eyes, "and my mind is full of new thoughts. If you will permit, I
will take my leave. My servants are waiting outside, and if you will
carry my thanks to my other hosts, I should prefer to go unnoticed."

"It is as you wish, Rajah Sahib," Travers returned, "It is we who have
to thank you for partaking of our poor hospitality."

"You have given me more than hospitality," Nehal Singh interposed.
Then he lifted his hand in salute. "In two days I shall expect you."

"In two days."

Travers watched the tall, white-clad figure pass out of the brightly
lighted tent into the darkness. From beginning to end, his plans had
been crowned with unhoped-for success, and yet he was puzzled.

"I wonder why in two days?" he thought. "Why not tomorrow? I wonder if
by any chance--!" He broke off with a smothered laugh. "It is just
possible. I'll make sure and send her a line."

Then, as the band began the first bars of a second waltz, he hurried
back into the crowded room in time to forestall Stafford at Lois'
side.




CHAPTER XI

WITHIN THE GATES


Nehal Singh's servants stood with the horses outside Travers' compound
and waited. Their master did not disturb them. Glad as he was to get
away from the crowd of strangers and the dazzling lights and colors,
it still pleased him to be within hearing of the music which, softened
by the distance, exercised a melancholy yet soothing influence upon
his disturbed mind. For the dreamy peace had gone for ever--as indeed
it must be when the soul of man is roughly shaken into living,
pulsating life, and he fevered with a hundred as yet disordered hopes
and ambitions. To be a benefactor to his people and to all mankind, to
be the first pioneer of his race in the search after civilization and
culture--these had been the dreams of his hitherto wasted life, only
he had never recognized them, never understood whither the restless
impulses were driving him. It had needed the pure soul of a good woman
to unlock the best from his own; it had needed the genius of a clear
brain to harness the untrained faculties to some definite aim. The
soul of a woman had come and had planted upon him the purity of her
high ideal; the genius had already shot its first illuminating ray
into his darkness. Henceforth the watchword for them all was to be
"Forward," and Nehal Singh, standing like a white ghost in the
deserted compound, shaken by the force of his own emotions,
intoxicated by his own happiness and the shining future which spread
itself before his eyes, sent up a prayer such as rarely ascends from
earth to Heaven. To whom? Not to Brahma. His mind had burst like a
raging tide over the flood-gates of caste and creed and embraced the
whole world and the one God who has no name, no creed, no dogma, but
whom in that moment he recognized in great thanksgiving as the
Universal Father.

Thus far had Nehal Singh traveled in two short weeks--guided by a
woman who had no God and a man who had no God save his own ends. But
he did not know this. As he began to pace slowly backward and forward,
listening to the distant music, he thought of her, and measured
himself with her ideal in a humility which did not reject hope. One
day he would be able to stand before her and say, "Thus far have I
worked and striven for inner worth and for the good of my brothers. I
have kept myself pure and honest, I have cultivated in myself the best
I have, and have been inexorable against the evil. Thus much have I
attained."

Further than that triumphant moment he did not think, but he thanked
God for the ideal which had been set him--the Great People's ideal of
a man--and for the afterward which he knew must come.

Thus absorbed in his own reflections, he reached Travers' bungalow,
and a ray of light falling across his path, brought him sharply back
to the present reality. He looked up and saw that a table had been
pulled out on to the verandah, and that four officers sat round it,
playing cards by the light of a lamp. At Marut there was always a
heavy superfluity of men, and these four, doubtless weary of standing
uselessly about, had made good their escape to enjoy themselves in
their own way. Nehal Singh hesitated. He felt a strong desire to go up
and join them, to learn to know them outside the enervating, leveling
atmosphere of social intercourse where each is forced to keep his real
individuality hidden behind a wall of phrases. Now, no doubt, they
would show themselves openly to him as they were; they would admit him
into the circle of their intimate life, and teach him the secret of
the greatness which had carried their flag to the four corners of the
earth. Yet he hesitated to make his presence known. The study of the
four faces, unconscious of his scrutiny, absorbed him.

The two elder men were known to him, although their names were
forgotten. Their fair hair, regular, somewhat cold, features led him
to suppose that they were brothers. The other two were considerably
younger--they seemed to Nehal Singh almost boys, though in all
probability they were his own age. One especially interested him. He
was a good-looking young fellow, with pleasant if somewhat effeminate
features and a healthy skin bronzed with the Indian sun. He sat
directly opposite where Nehal Singh stood in the shadow, and when he
shifted his cards, as he often did in a restless, uneasy way, he gave
the unseen watcher an opportunity to study every line of his set face.

Nehal Singh wondered at his expression. The others were grave with the
gravity of indifference, but this boy had his teeth set, and something
in his eyes reminded Nehal Singh of a dog he had once seen confronted
suddenly with an infuriated rattle-snake. It was the expression of
hypnotized fear which held him back from intruding himself upon them,
and he was about to retrace his steps quietly when the man who was
seated next the balustrade turned and glanced so directly toward him
that Nehal Singh thought his presence was discovered. The officer's
next words showed, however, that his gaze had passed over Nehal
Singh's head to the brightly lighted marquee on the other side of the
compound.

"I'm glad to be out of that crush," Captain Webb said, as he lazily
gathered up his cards. "Fearfully rotten show I call it--not a pretty
girl among the lot, and a heat enough to make the devil envious! I
can't think what induced our respected Napoleon to make such a fool of
himself."

"Napoleon hasn't made a fool of himself, you can make yourself easy on
that score," Saunders retorted. "Napoleon knows on which side of the
bread his butter lies, even if you don't. When he dances attendance on
any one, you can take it on trust that the butter isn't far off. No,
no; I've a great reverence for Nappy's genius."

"It's an infernally undignified proceeding, anyhow," Webb went on.
"I'm be

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