The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 6

"Oh, Lord Brahma, Creator, hear me! Thou who madest me knowest whither I came and whither I go; but I, who am as the wind that bloweth as thou listeth, as a flower that springeth up in the night and unseen fadeth in the midday heat, I know not thy purpose nor the end for which I am. Lord Brahma, teach me, for my soul panteth after knowledge. Show me the path which I must tread, for I am weary with dreams. Teach me to serve my people--be it hand in hand with the Stranger and his G.o.ds, be it alone.

Teach me to act, and that right soon; for my childhood days are spent and my man's arm heavy with idleness. Send me forth--but not alone--not alone, Lord Brahma, for I am heart-sick of loneliness. Give me my comrade, my comrade who shall be more to me than--"

He stopped and, obeying an impulse stronger than himself, lifted his face to the idol. It had vanished. In its place stood a woman.

At another and cooler moment, with a mind filled with other thoughts, with a heart untroubled by new and all-powerful emotions, he would have known her, if only from hearsay, for what she was. But with that pa.s.sionate prayer upon his lips, she was for him the answer, a divine recognition of his need and of his lately recognized loneliness.

Tall, slender, with a pale, transparent complexion, touched like a young rose with the faintest color, dark, grave eyes and hair that seemed a part of the obscured G.o.d, whose pure lines, though foreign, harmonized in every detail with the cla.s.sic beauty of her surroundings, she stood and watched him, as he watched her, in perfect silence.

"Lakshmi!" he murmured at last; and, as though the one word had broken a charm which held them both paralyzed, she smiled, and the smile lit up the Madonna face and made it as human as it had seemed divine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Lakshmi!" he murmured at last.]

"Forgive me," she began, speaking in English, "I am afraid I have disturbed you, but--" She paused, apparently confused by the directness of his gaze. The faint pink upon her cheek deepened.

"Who are you?" he demanded in his own tongue.

Her look of non-comprehension steadied him, at least outwardly, though it did not check the fierce, painful beating of his pulses. He repeated the question in pure though hesitating English.

"I am an Englishwoman," she answered at once, "and have lost my way. For hours--it seems hours, at any rate--I have been wandering hither and thither, trying to find my party, with whom I was enjoying an excursion.

By some chance I came across this temple, and hoped to meet some one who might help me. You see, I am a stranger in this part of the world. I--I hope I have done no wrong?"

She looked at him pleadingly, but he ignored her question. It never occurred to him to doubt her explanation, or wonder at the unlikeliness of the chance which should have led her through the intricate paths to this hallowed spot.

"You are English?" he echoed. The fever in his blood was subsiding, but, like some great crisis, it was leaving him changed. It had swept him out of the world of languorous, enchanted dreams into a world of not less enchanted reality.

"I fear I am presumptuous," she began again; "but are you not the Rajah?

If so, I am certain you must be very, very angry. For the Rajah--so I have been told--does not love the English."

She smiled again, meeting his unwavering gaze with a frank good-humor which for him was more wonderful even than her beauty. No woman--and for that matter, no man--had ever dared to look him in the eyes with such a laughing, fearless challenge.

"Yes, I am the Rajah," he answered. Then, after a pause, he added with great simplicity, "You are very beautiful."

She laughed outright, and the laugh, which rang like the peal of a silver bell through the vaulted chamber, filled him with a sudden sense of her danger. She stood with her back turned indifferently on the golden image, an Unbeliever whose shod feet were defiling the sacred precincts, an object, then, for hatred and revenge--not for him, truly. In his eyes she was still an emissary from Brahma, and thus in herself half sacred; but he knew well enough that such would not be the opinion of the few fierce priests who wors.h.i.+ped in the temple.

"You are not safe here," he said, with an energy which was new to him.

"Come!"

He led her hurriedly out of the sanctuary into the great entrance hall.

There he slackened speed and waited until she reached his side.

"For a foreigner it is not safe to enter the temple," he explained. "Had any one but myself found you, I could not answer for the consequences."

"They would have harmed me?"

"It is possible."

"That would have been terrible!" she said, glancing at him with eyes that expressed rather a daring courage than fear.

"Most terrible," he a.s.sented earnestly.

"Yet--you also, Your Highness, you have also the same reasons for anger.

My intrusion, innocent though it was, must have been equally offensive to you."

"No," he said. "That is quite different."

He offered no further explanation, and together they pa.s.sed out of the two immense gopuras into the evening suns.h.i.+ne.

"I will bring you to the gates which lead on to the highroad," he went on.

"Thence one of my servants will conduct you back to the town, where I trust you will find your friends."

"You are most good," she answered gratefully.

They walked side by side between the high walls of cypress and palm. The path was a narrow one, and once his hand brushed lightly against hers. The touch sent a flood of fire through his young veins. He drew back with a courtesy which surprised himself. He had never been taught that courtesy toward a woman could ever be required of him. Of women he had heard little save that they were inferior, in intellect and judgment no more than slaves, and his curiosity had at once been satiated. He sought things above him--those beneath him excited no more than indifference. But this woman was neither an inferior nor a slave. Her free, erect carriage, steadfast, fearless eyes proclaimed the equal. So much his instinct taught him in those brief moments, and his eager curiosity concerning her grew and deepened. Every now and again his gaze sought her face, drinking in with an almost pa.s.sionate thirst the fine detail of her profile, compared to which his dreams were poor and lifeless. Once it chanced that she also glanced at him, and that they looked at each other for less than a breathing s.p.a.ce full in the eyes.

"I fear you are angry, Your Highness," she said earnestly. "I must have offended against your laws even more than I know."

"Why do you think I am angry?" he asked.

"You have scarcely spoken."

"Forgive me! That is no sign of anger. I am still overcome with the strangeness of it all. You are the first English person I have ever met."

She stood still, with an exclamation of surprise.

"Is that possible? I thought all Indian princes mixed with English people.

Many, indeed, go to England to be educated--"

"So I have heard," he broke in, with a faint haughtiness. "I am not one of them."

"Yet you speak the language so perfectly!" she said.

A gleam of naive pleasure shone out of his dark eyes.

"I am glad you think so. My--one of my ministers taught me."

They walked on again. Here and there she stopped to look at some curious plant--always a little in advance of him--so that he had opportunity to study the hundred things about her which confirmed his wondering, increasing admiration. Slight as she was, there was yet a gracefully controlled strength in every movement. In his own mind, poor as it necessarily was in comparisons, he compared her to a young doe he had once startled from its resting-place. There was the same fragile beauty, the same grace, the same high-strung energy. In nothing was she like the women painted for him by his father's hand--things for idle, sensuous pleasure, never for serious action.

Plunged in a happy confusion of thought, he had once more relapsed into silence, from which she startled him with a question evidently connected with their previous conversation.

"And so you have lived all your life in this lovely garden?" she said, looking up at him with a grave wonder in her eyes.

"All my life," he answered.

"You have never seen anything of the world?"

"Never." He felt the pity in her tone, and added, with a shamefacedness curiously in contrast with his former hauteur: "But I have read much."

"That is not the same thing," she returned. "No book could make you understand how wonderful and beautiful things are."