The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 35

She started. The start was almost a violent one, and her hands fell limply in her lap.

"You are going back to Marut?" she said. "For ever?"

He smiled, but his eyes avoided hers.

"Not for ever, I hope. I am sick of pen-work, and want to get back to the front among my men. There is a company of sepoys to be stationed at Marut, and they have given me the command. It's a good post, though of course I would rather be at the frontier, where there's something doing. At any rate, I must get away from Madras as soon as possible."

"Yes," she said absently, "no doubt it is best."

She went on st.i.tching as though nothing had happened, but her hands trembled, and once she threw back her head as though fighting down a strong emotion. But he had ceased to watch her. He was leaning a little forward, one elbow resting on his knee, his eyes fixed steadfastly in front of him.

"Can I be the bearer of any messages?" he asked at last.

"No, thank you. I write regularly. Or--yes, you might tell them that you left me well and happy. That will please them. Will you be so kind?"

"Will it be kind to give a message which is not quite true?--I mean,"

he added hastily, "you do not seem strong."

"Oh, I am strong enough. I do not think I shall ever be ill."

Another long and painful silence intervened. There was no sound, save Lois' thread as it was drawn through the thick material. Nicholson drew out his watch.

"You mustn't think me rude, Mrs. Travers," he said, with an abrupt return to his old formality, "but I have any amount of work to do before I leave, and among other things I wanted to see your husband on business. He told me the other day that he had some shares in the Marut Company going, and said if I would care for them--"

Her work dropped from her hand to the floor. She stared at him with a face whiter than the linen she had been st.i.tching.

"But you are not going to buy them?" she asked sharply. Something in her tone forced him to meet her eyes.

"Oh, I don't know. Why not? I'm a poor business man, and your husband always seems to come off well in his ventures. Without being in the least a speculator, I should be glad to make a little money." He smiled. "I have another craze on, you see--a gun this time--and it requires capital to complete. So I thought--"

She leaned forward. One small hand lay clenched on the table between them, and there was a force and energy in her att.i.tude which arrested his startled attention.

"I think you are mistaken, Captain Nicholson," she said. "My husband has no shares to sell."

"But yesterday he told me that he had!"

"Yes, yesterday, no doubt. But he heard to-day from the Rajah. I think, if you do not mind waiting, he will tell you himself that what I say is true."

For a second they looked straight at each other without speaking.

Neither was conscious of any clear thought, but both knew that in that breathing s.p.a.ce they had exchanged a signal from those hidden chambers which men unlock only in brief moments of silent crisis. The crisis had come in spite of a year's defiant struggle. It had broken down the barrier of trivial commonplaces behind which they had always sought shelter; it had rushed over them in a flash, like a sudden tidal wave, scorning their painfully erected defenses, driving them helplessly before it. It had no apparent cause, save that in that moment of alarm she had looked at him with her soul unguarded, and he, overwhelmed by that silent revelation, had allowed his own sternly repressed secret to flash back its breathless message. Nicholson was the first to regain his self-control. He bent down and, picking up her work, restored it gently to her hands.

"You must go on with your sewing," he said. "I like seeing you work.

It completes the picture of a--home--"

"Yes," she interrupted, in a rough, broken voice. "It is a perfect picture, is it not? Just so, as it is--only, of course--" she laughed as he had never heard her laugh before--"of course it's only a tableau--it isn't real."

Once more her head was bent over her work. He saw how with every st.i.tch she was fighting stubbornly for calm--fighting with all the dogged desperation of a high-minded woman who sees herself trembling at the edge of a bottomless abyss. He knew now for certain that her apparent happiness was a sham and an heroic lie--that she knew what he knew of Travers' outside life, and suffered with the intensity which honor must suffer when linked with dishonor. He saw, with a soldier's instinctive admiration, that she was holding her ground against the fierce and unexpected attack of an overwhelming enemy, and that he, who had his own battle to fight, must hold out to her a helping, strengthening comrade's hand.

"Lois!" he said quietly. "Lois!"

She went on working. The name had been a test of her strength, and she had borne it. He knew that he could go on with what he had to say.

"Lois, we had our young enthusiasms in those old days--crazes, we will call them--and of course, like all young enthusiasms, they are gone for ever. But there were other things. Sometimes we used to talk very seriously about life, do you remember? I dare say we talked nonsense for the greater part--we were very young--but we were intensely serious. We told each other what we thought life was, and what we intended to make of it. It was then we had the idea of the cathedral."

She looked up earnestly at him.

"The cathedral? Haven't you forgotten?"

"No. I never forgot it."

"I thought you had. It is all such a long time ago. When I read about you in the papers, and heard of all the wonders you had done, I was sure you must have forgotten the chatter of your fifteen-year-old playfellow. A man who spends his day as you did, in the saddle, and the night in long, anxious watches, does not have time for such ideas as we cultivated in those days."

"You are wrong, Lois. The idea is everything. It is the mainspring of a man's life. If I did anything wonderful, as you say, it was for the sake of the cathedral. There was, for instance, one night which I remember very well. A whole tribe had risen. Half my men were down with fever, and I felt--well, pretty bad. I was a bit delirious, I fancy, and in delirium very often the foundations of a man's character come uppermost. The cathedral was always in my mind. I saw your half, and it was getting on splendidly. That goaded me. I felt I had to go on, too. So I pulled myself together and went ahead. We pulled through somehow, and I have always felt that in that night I laid the chief stone."

The burning tears sprang to her eyes.

"So all that splendid work was done for the sake of our cathedral?"

"Partly, but not in the first place. Do you remember of what use our cathedral was to be in the world? It wasn't merely to be a monument to our own glory--it was to be a sheltering place for others, an example to them, an inspiration. You said once, very rightly, that if every here and there a human being made a cathedral out of his life, other people would soon get ashamed of their mud-huts, and pull them down.

They would try to build cathedrals on a bigger and n.o.bler scale than the first one, and probably would succeed. Thus the work would go on from one generation to another. It was an idea worthy to form the foundations of a man's ambition. I made it mine, as I knew you had made it yours. It strengthened me to think that every decent action was a fresh stone to the building which in the end would stand perfect--not to my glory, but to the glory of the whole human race."

He smiled, though his eyes remained serious. "As an Englishman, I can not help wishing that cathedrals should be most plentiful on English soil."

"Do you really think that one small human life can make so much difference?" she asked, rather bitterly. "I used to think so, in my self-important days, but I am beginning to believe that our little individual efforts are hopelessly lost in a sea of rubbish."

"Our youthful conceit is more justifiable than such self-disparagement,"

he answered. "I often think that humility--at any rate a certain kind--is a questionable virtue. In lessening our own value, we lessen our own responsibility, and our responsibility is tremendous. One life can make the difference of a cathedral spire in a town of low-built huts or of a snow mountain in an ugly plain. I am sure of it--and so are you. So is everybody who thinks about it. But people do not think. It is sometimes much more convenient to believe that one is too insignificant to have any responsibility. But to my mind there is not a vagabond in the street who is not directly helping on our national decay, and who might not be building up the Empire." He leaned toward her, lowering his voice. "You know I am not just talking, Lois. It is my life's principle which I lay before you--mine and yours. How long is it since we have spoken of these things? Ten years. Since then we have been building steadily at our cathedral. We must go on."

"How can we?" she answered wearily. "It is not our cathedral any more.

I thought you had forgotten, and--"

"My first day in Marut I sent a message to you--a little in fun, but with an earnest purpose. I wanted to see if you had forgotten, and I wanted you to know that I had remembered. I told you that the cathedral still lacked its chief spire."

"I never got the message. It was that day Archibald asked me to be his wife. When did you send the letter?"

"It was not a letter but a verbal message, by Travers."

"That afternoon?"

"Yes, that afternoon."

She covered her face with her hand.

"He--he must have forgotten," she said at last.

"Yes, he must have forgotten," he agreed quietly.

There was a long silence. She remained motionless, but he heard her breath being drawn in quick, painful gasps. The battle for them both was at its height. He bent forward and took the hand that lay clenched in her lap gently in his own.