The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 12

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 s.e.x, with amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionate 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. .h.i.therto chosen to ignore or despise, and probably acknowledge that it is finer than his. .h.i.therto 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 G.o.ds; 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. .h.i.therto 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 G.o.d."

"The will of G.o.d!" 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 pa.s.sed 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.ble, 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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, vanis.h.i.+ng 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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 gra.s.s. 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 s.h.i.+mmered 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, pa.s.sive, indifferent, seemingly plunged in an ecstatic contemplation; and from that moment his lips were closed, and he pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 friends.h.i.+p.

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 a.n.a.logy 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sed. 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 cla.s.sical perfection was added a strength, a force of intellect which cla.s.sical 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 n.o.ble.