The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 18

"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 suns.h.i.+ne, and in her hand she held a ma.s.s 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 encompa.s.sed 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--G.o.d 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed before the eventful evening arrived toward which more than one looked forward with eager antic.i.p.ation--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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 const.i.tution, 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."