The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 5

"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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 t.i.tle, 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 pa.s.sion 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 att.i.tude of absolute despair.

"I am accursed!" he said.

With a smothered sigh, Nehal Singh mounted the steps and seated himself.

In his att.i.tude 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 peac.o.c.ks' 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 pa.s.sive oriental acceptance of the inevitable, which did not, however, exclude an undercurrent of bitter brooding and contempt.

Some time pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 l8--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 friends.h.i.+p with his European neighbors, proclaimed a Holy War, ma.s.sacred 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 pa.s.sed 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 wors.h.i.+pers 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 pa.s.sed soundlessly over his lips came from a soul that wors.h.i.+ped in fiery earnestness and truth. A minute pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d cared only for his soul: