The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 53

"No," he said slowly.

She held out her hands to him.

"Oh, Nehal, turn back while there is yet time! For my sake, for yours, for us all, turn back from a b.l.o.o.d.y, cruel revenge. The power is yours. Be generous. If we have wronged you, we have suffered and are ready to atone. _I_ am ready to atone. I _can_ atone, because I love you. I have spoken the truth to you. I have laid my soul bare to you as I have done to no other being. Won't you trust me?"

His eyes met hers with a somber, hopeless significance which cut her to the heart.

"I can't," he said. "I can't. That is what you have taught me--to distrust you--and every one."

She stood silent now, paralyzed by the finality of his words and gesture. It was as though the shadow of her heartless folly had risen before her and become an iron wall of unrelenting, measured retribution against which she beat herself in vain. He lifted his head higher, seeming to gather together his shaken powers of self-control.

"I can not trust you," he said again, "nor can I turn back. But there is one thing from the past which can not be changed. I love you. It seems that must remain through all my life. And because of that love I must save you from the death that awaits your countrymen." He smiled in faint self-contempt. "It is not for your sake that I shall save you; it is because I am too great a coward, and can not face the thought that anything so horrible should come near you." He turned to two native soldiers behind him and gave an order. When he faced Beatrice again he saw that she held a revolver in her hand.

"You do not understand," she said. "You say you mean to save me, but that is not in your power. It is in your power to save us all, but not one alone. I know what my people have resolved to do. There are weak, frightened women among them, but not one of them will fall into your hands alive. Whatever happens, I shall share their fate."

Though her tone was quiet and free from all bravado, he knew that she was not boasting. He knew, too, that she was desperate.

"You can not force me to kill you," he said sternly.

"I think it possible," she answered. She was breathing quickly, and her eyes were bright with a reckless, feverish excitement. But the hand that held the revolver pointed at the men behind him was steady--steadier than his own.

Nehal Singh motioned back the two natives who had advanced at his order.

"You play a dangerous game," he said, "and, as before, your strength lies in my weakness--in my folly. But this time you can not win. My word is given--to my people."

"I shall not plead with you," she returned steadily, "and you may be sure I shall not waver. I am not afraid to die. I had hoped to atone for all the wrong that has been done you with my love for you, Nehal.

I had hoped that then you would turn away from this madness and become once more our friend. To this end I have not hesitated to trample on my dignity and pride. I have not spared myself. But you will not listen, you are determined to go on, and I"--she caught her breath sharply--"surely you can understand? I love you, and you have made yourself the enemy of my country. Death is the easiest, the kindest solution to it all."

Nehal Singh's brows knitted themselves in the anguish of a man who finds himself thwarted by his own nature. He tried not to believe her, and indeed, in all her words, though they had rung like music, his ear, tuned to suspicion, had heard the mocking undercurrent of laughter. She had laughed at him secretly through all those months when he had offered up to her the incense of an absolute faith, an unshared devotion. Even now she might be laughing at him, playing on that in him which nothing could destroy or conceal--his love for her.

And yet--! Behind him he heard the uneasy stir of impatient feet, the hushed clash of arms. He stood between her and a certain, terrible death. One word from him, and it would be over--his path clear. But he could not speak that word. Treacherous and cruel as she had been, the halo of her first glory still hung about her. He saw her as he had first seen her--the golden image of pure womanhood--and, strange, unreasoning contradiction of the human heart, beneath the ashes of his old faith a new fire had kindled and with every moment burned more brightly. Unquenchable trust fought out a death struggle with distrust, and in that conflict her words recurred to him with poignant significance: "Death is the easiest, the kindest solution to it all."

For him also there seemed no other escape. He pointed to the revolver.

"For whom is that?" he asked.

"I do not know--but I will make them kill me."

"Why do you not shoot me, then?" he demanded, between despair and bitterness. "That would save you all. If I fell, they would turn and fly. They think I am Vishnu. Haven't you thought of that? I am in your power. Why don't you make yourself the benefactress of your country?

Why don't you shoot her enemy?"

She made no answer, but her eyes met his steadily and calmly. He turned away, groaning. In vain he fought against it, in vain stung himself to action by the memory of all that she had done to him. His love remained triumphant. In that supreme moment his faith burst through the darkness, and again he believed in her, believed in her against reason, against the world, against the ineffaceable past, and against himself. And it was too late. He no longer stood alone. His word was given.

"Have pity on me!" he said, once more facing her. "Let me save you!"

"I should despise myself, and you would despise me--even more than you do now. I can not do less than share the fate of those whose lives my folly has jeopardized."

"At least go back to them--do not stay here. Beatrice, for G.o.d's sake!--I can not turn back. You have made me suffer enough--." He stood before her now as an incoherent pleader, and her heart burned with an exultation in which the thought of life and death played no part. She knew that he still loved her. It seemed for the moment all that mattered.

"I can not," she said.

"Beatrice, do not deceive yourself. Though my life is nothing to me--though I would give it a dozen times to save you--I can not do otherwise than go on. I may be weak, but I shall be stronger than my weakness. My word is given!"

He spoke with the tempestuous energy of despair. The minutes were pa.s.sing with terrible swiftness, and any moment the sea behind him might burst its dam and sweep her and him to destruction. Already in the distance he heard the dull clamour of voices raised in angry remonstrance at the delay. Only those immediately about him were held in awed silence by the power of his personality. Again Beatrice shook her head. She stood in the doorway which opened out into the garden where the besieged had taken refuge. There was no other way. He advanced toward her. Instantly she raised her revolver and pointed it at the first man behind him.

"If I fire," she said, "not even you will be able to hold them back."

It seemed to her that she stood like a frail wall between two overwhelming forces--on the one side, Nehal with his thousands; on the other, Nicholson--alone, truly, but armed with a set and pitiless resolve. A single sentence, which had fallen upon her ears months before, rose now out of an ocean of half-forgotten memories: "Nicholson is the best shot in India," some one had said: "he never misses." And still Nehal advanced. His jaws were locked, his eyes had a red fire in them. She knew then that the hour of hesitation was over, and that in that desperate struggle she had indeed lost.

Uncontrollable words of warning rushed to her lips.

"Nehal--turn back! Turn back!"

He did not understand her. He thought she was still pleading with him.

"I can not--G.o.d have pity on us both!"

Then she too set her lips. She could not betray the last hope of that heroic handful of men and women behind her. He must go to his death--and she to hers. She fired,--whether with success or not, she never knew. In that same instant another sound broke upon their ears--the sound of distant firing, the rattle of drums and the high clear call of a trumpet. Nehal Singh swung around. She caught a glimpse of his face through the smoke, and she saw something written there which she could not understand. She only knew that his features seemed to bear a new familiarity, as though a mask had been torn from them, revealing the face of another man, of a man whom she had seen before, when and where she could not tell. She had no time to a.n.a.lyze her emotions nor the sense of violent shock which pa.s.sed over her. She heard Nehal Singh giving sharp, rapid orders in Hindustani. The room emptied. She saw him follow the retreating natives. At the door he turned and looked back at her. At no time had his love for her revealed itself more clearly than in that last glance.

"The English regiment has come to help you," he said. "Fate has intervened between us this time. May we never meet again!"

He pa.s.sed out through the shattered doorway, but she stood where he had left her, motionless, almost unconscious. It was thus Nicholson and the Colonel found her when, a moment later, they entered the room by the verandah. Colonel Carmichael's pa.s.sionate reproaches died away as he saw her face.

"You must not stop here," he said. "You have frightened us all terribly. The regiment has come and is attacking. There will be some desperate fighting. We must all stick together."

She caught Nicholson's eyes resting on her. She thought she read pity and sympathy in their steady depths, and wondered if he guessed what she had tried to do. But he said nothing, and she followed the two men blindly and indifferently back to the bungalow.

CHAPTER X

TRAVERS

They had no light. They talked in whispers, and now and again, when the darkness grew too oppressive, they stretched out groping hands and touched each other. They did this without explanation. Though none complained or spoke of fear, each needed the consolation of the other's company, and a touch was worth more than words. Mrs. Cary alone needed nothing. She lay on the rough truckle-bed and slept. Thus she had been for a week--a whole week of nerve-wrecking struggle against odds which marked hope as vain. Bullets had beaten like rain upon the walls about her, the moaning of wounded men on the other side of the hastily constructed part.i.tion mingled unceasingly with the cries of the ever-nearing enemy. And she had lain there quiet and indifferent. Martins, the regiment's doctor, had looked in once at her and had shaken his head. "In all probability she will never wake," he had said. "Perhaps it is the kindest thing that could happen to her."

And then he had gone his way to those who needed him more.

Mrs. Berry knelt by the bedside. Her hands were folded. She had been praying, but exhaustion had overcome her, and her quiet, peaceful breathing contrasted strangely with the other sounds that filled the bungalow. Mrs. Carmichael and Beatrice sat huddled close together, listening. They could do nothing--not even help the wounded men who lay so close to them. Everything was in pitch darkness, and no lights were allowed. They could not go out and help in the stern, relentless struggle that was going on about them. They bore the woman's harder lot of waiting, inactive, powerless, fighting the harder battle against uncertainty and all the horrors of the imagination.

"I am sorry the regiment has come," Mrs. Carmichael whispered. "There is no doubt they will be ma.s.sacred with the rest of us. What are a few hundreds against thousands? It is a pity. They are such fine fellows."

Her rough, tired voice had a ring of unconquerable pride in it. She was thinking of the gallant charge her husband's men had made only two weeks before; how they had broken through the wall of the enemy, and, cheering, had rushed to meet the besieged garrison. That had been a moment of rejoicing, transitory and deceptive. Then the wall closed in about them again, and they knew that they were trapped.

"Perhaps we can hold out till help comes," Beatrice said.

She tried not to be indifferent. For the sake of her companions she would gladly have felt some desire for life, but in truth it had no value for her. She could think of nothing but the evil she had done and of the atonement that had been denied her. It was to no purpose that she worked unceasingly for the wounded. The sense of responsibility never left her. Each moan, each death-sigh brought the same meaning to her ear: "You have helped to do this--this is your work."

"No help will come," Mrs. Carmichael said, shaking her head at the darkness. "When a whole province rises as this has done, it takes months to organize a sufficient force, and we shan't last out many days. I wonder what people in England are saying. How well I can see them over their breakfast cups! Oh, dear, I mustn't think of breakfast cups, or I shall lose my nerve." She laughed under her breath, and there was a long silence.

Presently the door of the bungalow opened, letting in a stream of moonlight. It was closed instantly, and soft footfalls came over the boarded floor.