The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 57

"And the proof of all this?"

"This ring. Take it. It was your mother's. Travers gave it to me when he made his confession. He took it from the poor mad woman at their first meeting. Look at the inscription. It bears your mother's and father's names."

"And Travers--?" The Rajah lifted his hand in a stern, threatening gesture.

"--is dead," was the grave answer. "He died an hour ago, in his wife's arms."

For a moment a profound hush hung over the great, dimly lighted hall.

The Rajah knelt down by his mother's side and gently replaced the ring upon the thin lifeless finger.

"She called herself a traitor," he said, half to himself. "A traitor to whom--to what?"

"To the strong white blood that was in her veins. In her bitterness at the real or imagined wrongs that had been done her, she turned away from the people to whom she belonged, to whom she was bound by all the ties of love and upbringing. She disobeyed the voice of her instinct.

And you, her son, you, too, have been bitter; you, too, must listen to the call of the two races to whom you are linked. Whom will you obey?

You stand at the cross-ways where you must choose--where we must either part or join hands for good and all. The road back to us is open, is still open. That is the message of peace which we have risked our lives to bring you. Rajah, Steven Caruthers--for so I now call you--I plead with you--I may plead with you, for in this hour at least I can not look upon you as an adversary, but as the son of this unfortunate woman--above all, of my friend. I plead with you the more because I owe you years of friends.h.i.+p. I am not the least to blame that you fell away from us in resentment and bitterness. I could have s.h.i.+elded you from the inevitable pitfalls that beset your path, but--G.o.d forgive me!--my prejudice blinded me and I held back. It was I who carried you away from the palace on that night when you were left, a helpless child, to the mercy of Behar Singh's enemies. Then I had pity enough--but years after I held back the hand of friends.h.i.+p which I might have offered you. Well, I am punished, twice punished, for my prejudice and blindness. Is it too late for me to make my reparation?"

He held out his hand and there was a silence of tense expectation. The Rajah's head was bowed. He did not seem to see the Colonel's movement.

"You can not think I am pleading with you to save our lives,"

Carmichael went on with grave dignity. "We have fought for them. An hour ago we were prepared to lay them down without complaint. We are not the less prepared now. It is not for us I am speaking, but for you. Your day as Rajah is over--your claim to rule in India void. I offer you instead your father's name, your father's people, your father's heritage. The other road--well, you have trodden it, you know it. You must choose. Your mother chose--twenty-five years ago, in the same hour of crisis, blinded by the same bitterness. She chose to tear the bonds of love and duty; she ignored the true voice of her instinct. It broke her heart. The same crisis stands to-night before you, her son. What will you do--Steven Caruthers?"

The Rajah lifted his head. The struggle was written in his dark, sunken eyes and on the compressed lips.

"I can not desert them," he said wearily. "They trust me--my people trust me."

"Who are your people?" was the swift question. "You must choose."

Again the same silence, the same waiting while the hand of fate seemed to hover above them in the darkness. Beatrice left her place at the dead woman's side. With a firm, proud step she came to the Rajah and took his hand in both her own. He started at her touch, and for a long minute his gaze seemed to sink itself in hers, but she never wavered.

When she spoke an immeasurable tenderness rang in her voice, a boundless understanding and sympathy.

"Steven--have you forgotten? Long ago in the old temple? Don't you remember what you told me then--how you loved and admired us? You called us the world's Great People, and when you spoke of our heroes there was something in your voice which thrilled me. Was it only your books, was it your teachers--Behar Singh--who made you feel as you did? When you came among us, what led you? The face of a woman? Was it only that? Or was it something more?--the call of a great, wonderful instinct?"

His eyes were riveted on her face, but for that moment he did not see her. He did not see the tears that glistened on her cheeks. He was looking straight through the long vista of the past, right back to the first hours of his memory, when he had wandered alone amidst strange faces, a ruler in a palace which had never ceased to be his prison, an exile whose home lay only in strange, fantastic dreams. And in this final moment he seemed to stand high above the past, and ever swifter and surer to trace through every incident of his life one same guiding power. Through the snares of Behar Singh's hate-filled temptations it had led onward; it had borne him to the temple--to the feet of the woman he was to love through every torture of bitter deception; it had swept him on a wave of impulse beyond his prison walls out into a world which he at last hailed as his; and now, in the hour of fiercest despair, of deepest loss, it was drawing him surely and swiftly homeward. The past vanished. He saw again the face lifted to his--he saw the tears--the Colonel's hand outstretched, waiting to clasp his own. He heard the t.i.tle that she gave him as a man hears a long-forgotten watchword.

"You are English, Steven. You are English--you belong to us!"

He unfastened the sword at his side. For a moment he held it as though in farewell. But there was no grief on his face as he laid the jeweled weapon in the Colonel's hand.

"I have chosen," he said. "I can not go against my people."

CHAPTER XIII

ENVOI

With the surrender of one man the great Marut rising came to an end.

It had been built up by him and on him, and with him it collapsed. As the news reached the armed thousands encamped about the ruined Station, consternation fell upon them. There was no attempt at organization or resistance. They believed simply that Heaven had turned against them and Vishnu joined hands with the Englishman, and they waited to hear no more. What had seemed an overwhelming force melted away as though it had been a shadow, and in the jungle, slinking along the lightless highways, or huddling in the lonely hovels outside Marut, the remnant of Behar Singh's great army hid from the hand of the destroyer. They had followed their G.o.d, and their G.o.d had deserted them. All hope was lost, and with the fatalism of their race they flung their weapons from them as they fled.

Pending the decision of the Government, Nehal Singh, now Steven Caruthers, was held prisoner in the club-house he had built two years before. Part of the returned regiment was encamped about the surrounding gardens, in order to prevent all attempt at rescue, but the precaution was a mere formality. Visitors came constantly. There was not a man in all the Station who was not anxious to help bury the past and to hold out the hand of friends.h.i.+p to one whom at the bottom of their hearts they had once wronged and slighted. Among them Carmichael and Nicholson were the chief. They pa.s.sed many hours of each day with him, and worked steadily and enthusiastically for his pardon and release. He was touched and grateful, but beneath his grat.i.tude there still lurked the demon of unrest. She had not come--the one being for whom he waited--she had sent no word. He knew that her mother lay dying--above all things he knew that on the great day of the attack she had stood resolutely between him and death--but nothing, no explanation or a.s.surance, calmed the hidden trouble of his mind. After all, it had been pity--or remorse--not love.

Thus three weeks pa.s.sed. The Colonel had spent the day with him discussing the future, arranging for the transference of Lois' fortune into his unwilling hands, and now, toward nightfall, he was once more alone, wearied in body and soul. For the first time since his surrender his sense of quiet and release from an immense burden was gone. He was still alone. He felt now that he would always be alone, for there was but one who could fill the blank in his life. And she had not come. He did not and could not blame her. Who was he that a woman should join her lot to his? An Englishman truly, but one over whose birth and youth there hung a shadow, perhaps a curse such as had darkened his mother's life and the life of all those in whose veins there flows an alien blood. She must not even think that any link from the past bound her. She must be free--quite free to choose. Wearily he seated himself at his table and took his pen.

"You have been the great guiding light of my life," he wrote to her.

"You will always be, because I can not learn to forget. But for you it would be easier and better to forget. You will be happier--" And then he heard the door open, and she stood before him. The words that he had meant to write rushed to his lips, but no further. Moved by a common impulse, they advanced to meet each other, and the next moment she was in his arms. Neither spoke. It seemed as though, once face to face, there could be no doubts, no misunderstandings between them.

Their love was wordless, but it had spoken in a silence more eloquent, more complete than words could ever have been.

"I could not come before," she said, after a little. "I could not leave her. She was only at peace when I held her hand. She was very happy at the last--now it is all over."

He held her closer to him, and she clung to him, not sadly or wearily, but like a strong woman who had fought and won the thing she fought for.

"It was Fate after all," he said, under his breath. "She meant us for each other."

She looked up at him. Though suffering, physical and mental, had drawn its ineffaceable lines upon her face, it had also added to her beauty the charm of strength and experience.

"I knew long ago that it was Fate," she answered. "Do you remember that first evening? You told me that people do not drift aimlessly into each other's lives. Even then, against my will, I felt that it was true. Afterward I was sure. I had entered into your life in a moment of frivolous recklessness, but you had entered into mine with another purpose, and I could not rid myself of you. Your hold upon me was strong. It grew stronger, do what I would, and the farce became deadly earnest."

"For me it was always deadly earnest," he said. "When I first saw you standing before the idol, it was as though a wall which had surrounded my life had been overthrown, and that you had come to be my guide and comrade in a new and unknown world."

"And then I failed you."

His eyes met hers thoughtfully.

"Did you? Now I look back, I am not sure. I had to believe you when you said you had deceived me and played with me. I had to force myself to despise you. Yet, when you confronted me in the bungalow, I felt suddenly that you needed to explain nothing. I understood."

"Did you understand that I had only deceived myself? I told myself that it was a farce played at your expense. But--Heaven knows--I believe it ceased to be a farce from the first hour I saw you. You believed in me so. No one had believed in me before--I had never believed in myself or in man, or in G.o.d, either. But I had to believe in you, and afterward--the rest came." She drew herself upright and looked him full in the dark eyes. "Steven, do you trust me?" He nodded. "As you did on that day when you told me that you owed me all that you were and ever would be?"

"As then, Beatrice."

She smiled gravely.

"You do right to trust me. You have made me worthy of your trust."

He put his arm about her shoulder, and led her gently on to the verandah. The night had fallen dark and starless. Through the black veil they saw the gleam of bivouac fires and heard the voices of men calling to one another, and the clatter of piled arms. They remained silent, after the storm and stress of the past, content to be together and at peace. They knew that the long night was over and that the dawn had broken.

When the Colonel entered they did not hear him, and without speaking he turned back and closed the door after him. In his hand he held a telegram ordering the deposition of Nehal Singh, Rajah of Marut, and the recognition, pardon and release of one Steven Caruthers, Englishman. But he crept away with the long-hoped-for message.

"Time enough," he thought. "They are happy."

And if beneath his heartfelt rejoicing there lurked the shadow of bitterness, who shall blame him? There was one dearer to him than his own child could have been, for whose wounded heart there seemed as yet no balsam. And yet, unknown to him, for her also the dawn was breaking. For even as he crept away with knitted brows, sharing her burden with her by the power of love and sympathy, she held in her hands the first herald of a happier future.

"What you have told me I accept--for now," Adam Nicholson had written.

"You are wise to travel with the Carmichaels. It will do you good. I, who was prepared to wait my whole life for you, can have patience for a little longer. I know that you suffer and as yet I may not help you.

Your pride separates us, but your pride is a little thing compared to my love. What is your birth or parentage to me? You say it would overshadow my whole life, darken my career? It might try. That would be one thing more to fight against. We have come to India to sweep away its prejudices; let us first sweep away our own. We have come to bring freedom; let us first make ourselves free. It will be a good battle, but it will not darken my life, Lois. Do you think opposition and struggle could darken my life? Surely you know me better. Do but stand at my side, and there will be no darkness. I am not a boy. I am a man who sees before him long years of labor, and who needs the one woman who can help him. Is our cathedral forgotten? I do not believe it. You are not the woman to forget. The time is not far off when we will crown our cathedral hand in hand. Only when your love dies can the barrier between us become insurmountable. If your love lives, then, as surely as there is a G.o.d in Heaven, I will come and fetch you, Lois--my wife."

And the tears that filled her eyes as she read the boldly written words were no longer the tears of grief. Her love for him had been the rock upon which her life was built. It was imperishable. She knew thus that she would not have long to wait until his coming.