The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 14

"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 demiG.o.ds?" 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 circ.u.mstances can bring such virtues to light, and hitherto the circ.u.mstances 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 a.s.sented, "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 ma.s.sive 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 h.o.a.rd 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sented, 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 pa.s.sed 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.s."

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 G.o.d reigned in the center from a ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sionless 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. All that has been kept secret from me."

"How do you know I have a G.o.d?" she demanded sharply.