The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 47

"It's all over," he said. "We can do nothing more for him, and we must leave him. Come, Lois."

His stern command roused her from her stupor of half-incredulous sorrow. Gently she laid the lifeless head upon the cushions which Beatrice had brought, and crossed the hands over the quiet breast.

This time she fought in vain against the blinding tears. They fell on the face of the dead man, and, moved by an irresistible impulse, she bent once more and kissed him.

"G.o.d bless you, John!" Then she rose and faced her husband. "I can not help it," she said. "He is dead."

Travers said nothing. He was clinging to the verandah, and his face was grey. Outside the noise and confusion had increased. They could hear yells and imprecations, and a stone whizzed through the trees, falling a few feet short of where the little party stood. Colonel Carmichael shook Travers by the arm.

"Don't stand there like that!" he said, his voice rough with contempt.

"It can't be helped, and I dare say we shan't any of us be much better off by to-morrow. I have a patrol outside waiting to take the ladies over to my bungalow. Mrs. Cary and Mrs. Berry are already there. There isn't a moment to be lost. Rouse yourself and look to Lois. I will escort Miss Cary." He turned to Beatrice with a stiff bow. "The enemy must at least find us united."

"The enemy!" exclaimed Beatrice sharply.

"The Rajah is our enemy," was the bitter answer. "You and Travers best know why."

The two women exchanged one brief glance. Lois crossed the intervening s.p.a.ce and took her husband's arm.

"Archibald," she said, slowly and emphatically, "if this trouble has anything to do with the mine, it would be well to let the Rajah know that we also take our share. There must be no suspicion that--that we have not acted honorably or have shirked our responsibilities."

He stared at her with dull, listless eyes.

"What do you mean, Lois? He knows I haven't a bra.s.s cent."

"But I have. And of course my money must go to refund those whom you have unintentionally ruined."

That roused him. He flung her on one side, with a desperate, goaded curse.

"Your money! How dare you! It's not your money. Half of it is mine. I settled it on you."

"If it is yours, I will give it back to you. You will use it as I say.

If not, I shall use it for you."

Colonel Carmichael had reached the garden. He turned now, and there was a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.

"That's spoken like an honorable woman, Lois!" he said. "G.o.d bless you for it. But it's too late. Nicholson has already gone to Nehal Singh.

If he fails, there won't be any time to explain. Come on, or we shall have to fight our way through."

He hurried on through the garden, Beatrice at his side. Husband and wife stood an instant alone, the body of poor Stafford between them.

Lois' face was grave and contemptuous.

"I do not know what you have done," she said--"I do not understand what part you played in John's life or in mine, nor how far you are innocent or guilty of bringing about all this misfortune--but I know this much--we shall take our share of trouble."

"Lois, you are my wife! You have no right to go against me."

"I have the right where my honor--where your honor--is concerned. I have the right to refuse to commit an act of gross injustice." She glanced down once more at the quiet face of the man who had held so persistently upon her life and heart, and her firmly compressed lips trembled. "Oh, Archie, was it worth while--just for a little bit of gain? Was it worth while? We might all have been so happy!"

He said nothing. His rage had sunk into a sullen, dogged defiance. The roar of voices beyond the compound suddenly subsided. They heard the Colonel's voice issuing a sharp command and the thud of grounded rifles.

"We must go," she said.

He followed her down the steps, his face painfully averted from the figure that lay motionless upon the ground. The world is but a reflection of ourselves. The sunshine is sad or joyful according to our moods. We read threats and promises in the smiles of others as our own heart is hopeful or distrusting. And for Travers, with the bloodstained hand, the poor lifeless body of his enemy had become the towering shadow of an approaching Nemesis.

CHAPTER VII

IN THE TEMPLE OF VISHNU

Nicholson rode his horse slowly through the crowd of dark, threatening faces. He did not hurry or show any sign of impatience, anger or fear.

In his left hand he carried a riding-whip, but he made no use of it except as an encouragement to his well-trained charger, whose nose and broad breast forced a pa.s.sage, like a ship through the waves of a turbulent sea, and otherwise he was absolutely unarmed. A spectator ignorant of the truth might have taken him for an officer riding out on some ordinary duty, so little did the weight and seriousness of his real errand appear written on the strong face beneath the shadow of the helmet.

There was no opposition to his progress. His keen eyes noticed as he pa.s.sed out of the residential quarter that, on the contrary, the crowd formed a sort of disordered escort which surged restlessly but silently about him. One man even laid hold upon his hanging bridle and led the horse through the less dense pa.s.sages; but the action was not a friendly one, and though no threats were uttered, Nicholson read a pa.s.sionate bitterness and distrust upon the faces that thrust themselves across his path or sprang up unexpectedly at his knee. For the most part they were men well known to him by sight. They belonged to working caste whose circles had supplied Nehal Singh with his best workmen, though here and there Nicholson caught sight of the turbaned head of a small merchant or the naked body of a yogi.

It was a significant fact that the worst of Marut's population--the beggars, thieves and vagrants--was mostly lacking. These men were the hope upon which Nehal Singh had built his Utopia, the industrious, intelligent minority, and these were they whom he was now calling about him by the power of personality and superst.i.tion. Nicholson knew enough of the Hindu character to be well aware that it was not the loss of employment nor of their small savings which had brought them together and put their knives in their hands ready to strike. The Hindu accepts misfortune with the languid stoicism of the fatalist; injury and wrong rarely rouse him, especially, as in this case, when it comes too indirectly for him to trace the real injurer. But to touch his religion is to touch the innermost sanctuary of his being, where are stored the hidden fires of fanatic energy, hatred and reckless courage. And Nehal Singh was their religion, their Messiah, the Avatar for whose coming their whole nation waited. Hitherto he had led them in peace, and they had followed, though other influences had been at work.

Even in this moment he still controlled them. Nicholson felt that a strong unseen hand held the crowd in that strange silence beneath which rumbled and groaned the growing storm. He had seen dark hands finger the unsheathed knives; he had seen them reluctantly fall away.

The hour had not yet come. Nehal Singh waited. For what? For him? The idea seemed absurd, and yet, as Nicholson felt himself being swept on, it took stronger hold upon his mind and his faint hope of success revived. He believed that, once face to face with the prince, he would be able to check the headlong disaster which was bearing down upon them all. They had been friends in a curious unacknowledged way. Nehal Singh would listen to him. He would be made to understand that one adventurer and one heartless woman do not make a nation; that the injury done him was far from irreparable.

A low exclamation close at hand roused him from his rapid considerations. He saw that the man who had hold of his horse's bridle had turned and with one outstretched hand was pointing over the heads of the crowd.

"Look, Sahib, look!"

Nicholson glanced in the direction indicated. They were pa.s.sing the site of the old Bazaar, now a black, scarred waste of machinery and disembowelled earth over which brooded a death-like quiet. Nicholson remembered vividly the day he had ridden there at Nehal Singh's side.

A breathless, eager humanity had worked and slaved beneath the scorching sun, redoubling every effort as the fine commanding presence of the young ruler appeared among them. Then the clank of busy machinery had mingled with the shouted orders of the English overseers, and Nehal Singh had turned to him with a grave pride and happiness.

"See what your people have taught my people," he said. "They have taught them to seek their bread from the earth and to leave their dreams. This is only the beginning. The time shall come when they shall stand shoulder to shoulder with their white brethren!"

How had the over-sanguine prophecy been fulfilled! The native at Nicholson's side pointed a finger of scorn and anger at the silent, ruined waste.

"Devil--English devil!" he said laconically, and continued on his way.

Nicholson's lips tightened. His own words came back to him with a new significance: "In a strange country no one is an exception." This Travers, this one unscrupulous fortune-hunter, heedless of everything save his own advancement, had branded them all. He had undone, with the help of a heedless woman, the work of generations of heroic, honest labor. Truly the chain of individual responsibility is a long one!

Nicholson had left Colonel Carmichael's bungalow at twelve o'clock.

The increasing crowd and Stafford's prolonged absence had urged him to instant and independent action. In the best of cases, he had little faith in the brother-officer's secret mission. Stafford was not the man to exert any influence over the native mind. He was the type of the capable and well-meaning English officer who, excellent leader in his own country, is of small use when face to face with Indian problems of character and prejudice. Nicholson had judged himself the better advocate, and having obtained the Colonel's reluctant permission, he had at once started for the royal palace. But his progress had been painfully slow, and he had made no effort to hurry.

Any sign of anxiety or excitement would have looked like fear to the suspicious, hate-filled eyes of the men who swarmed about him, and whatever else happened, they should not see an Englishman afraid. The knowledge that he rode there alone, the representative of his nation, added a greater dignity, a greater firmness to his already calm and upright bearing. It was no new situation for him--it is never an exceptional situation in a country where Englishmen are always in the minority--and it inspired him, as it had always done since his earliest lieutenant days. He knew that as he acted, looked, and spoke, so would the image of his country be stamped upon the minds of a hundred thousand and their children's children. There was no vanity, no self-importance in this conception of his duty. It was a stern, unbending acceptance of his responsibility; and as in the lonely fort upon the frontier where he had dominated, unaided, month after month, over wild, antagonistic races, so now, unarmed and unprotected, he dominated over the fanatic rabble by the pure force of a complete personality. He was to all intents and purposes their prisoner, but he rode there as their conqueror; and that most splendid triumph of all triumphs--the unseen victory of will over will--filled him with a new confidence and hope.

Yet it was three o'clock before he reached the palace gates. It seemed to him that they had deterred his progress for some unknown purpose, and the thought of those he had left behind caused him profound uneasiness. Native treachery was proverbial, and no doubt Nehal Singh felt himself justified in any conduct that seemed wise to him. In any case, there was no return. The crowd in front of Nicholson sank back like a receding tide as he rode through the open gates and then closed in behind, following in one dense stream as he proceeded slowly up the splendid avenue. He felt now that he was in the hands of destiny.

Through the trees he caught sight of the palace steps where Nehal Singh had stood the night before. No living soul moved. The whole world seemed to have concentrated itself behind him, a grim and silent force which was sweeping him onward--to what end he could not tell.

Suddenly the native who still held his horse's bridle lifted his hand as he had done before and pointed ahead.

"Look, Sahib!" he cried. "Look!"

Nicholson made no sign. He retained his easy att.i.tude, one hand loosely holding the reins, the other with the riding-whip resting negligently on his hip. There was no change in his bronzed face: his eyes took in the scene which an abrupt turn in the road revealed to him with a steadfast calm, though his pulses had begun to beat furiously. It was as though a painter with two strokes of a mighty brush had smeared the square before the temple with a great moving stain. Only one narrow white line reached up to the temple doorway. On either side, right up to the gopuras and stretching far away down the branching paths, a living ma.s.s stood and waited, their faces turned toward him. Pilgrims they might have been, but he saw in the foremost row men with their dark hands clasped over the muzzles of their rifles, and every here and there the sunlight flashed back a reflection from the cold steel at their sides. They made no sound as he rode between them; only a soft shuffling behind him told him that the human wall was closing in. He did not turn. His eyes pa.s.sed calmly over the watching faces, and the hands that played at their dagger-hilts fell away as though the piercing gaze had paralyzed them.