The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 55

"Is the Colonel there? I can't see clearly. Colonel, I want you to hear what I have to say."

Colonel Carmichael turned.

"This is no time," he said sternly, "and it is too late for atonement.

Our account with this world is closed."

"It need not be. Colonel--in the name of those whose lives lie in your hands, I beg of you to listen to me."

There was a moment's hesitating silence. Travers' glazed eyes were fixed on the elder man's face with a hypnotizing power. The Colonel drew nearer--reluctantly knelt down.

"Be quick then!" he said.

Travers nodded. His head was thrown back against Beatrice's shoulder.

With fumbling, trembling fingers he drew a plain gold ring from his pocket and thrust it into the Colonel's hand.

"Look at that!" he whispered. "Look at the inscription."

Carmichael turned to the feeble light. No one spoke or moved. They watched him and waited with a reasonless, breathless suspense.

"My G.o.d!" he whispered, "How did you come by this?"

Travers drew himself upright. The shadows of death were banished in that last moment; his voice was clear and steady as he answered.

"Listen," he said. "I will tell you--and then act before it is too late!"

CHAPTER XI

IN THE HOUR OF NEED

Nehal Singh pulled aside the curtains over the window and stepped out on to the balcony. The air in the great silent room behind him stifled him, and even the night breeze, as it touched his cheeks, seemed to burn with fever. He stood there motionless, his arms folded, gazing fixedly into the half-darkness. A pale, watery moonlight cast an unearthly shimmer over the shadowy world before him, brightened every here and there by the will-o'-the-wisp fire points which marked the presence of the camped thousands waiting silently for his word. Only one spot--it seemed like a black stain--remained in absolute gloom, and it was thither the Rajah's eyes were turned. Every night he had come to the same place to watch it. Every night he had tortured himself with the thought of all it contained.

For he knew now, with the clear certainty of a man who has searched down to the bottom of his soul, that in that silent area his whole life, his one hope of happiness was bound up, and waited, with those who were fighting stubbornly, heroically, against the end--its destruction beneath his own sword. He was fighting against himself.

With his own hands he was tearing down that which seemed an inseparable, incorporate part of himself. Anger and contempt were dead. In their place the old love had rekindled and grown brighter before the sight of a courage, dignified and silent, which had held back the tide of furious fanaticism and thwarted his own despair. He had seen, with eyes which burned with an indescribable emotion, a regiment of wearied, weakened men, led by a man he had once despised, burst through the densest squares of his own soldiers; he had heard their cheers as they had clasped hands with the defenders; he had looked aghast into his own heart, afire with admiration, aching with a strange, broken-hearted grat.i.tude to G.o.d who had made such men. It was in vain that, lashing himself with the knowledge of his own weakness and of his disloyalty to those who followed him, he had flung himself against the defenses of the little garrison.

Day after day they drove him back, fighting hand to hand in the earthworks they had thrown up in a few hours of miraculous labor. He fought against them like a man possessed of an unquenchable hatred; but at night, when he was at last alone, he had slipped out on to his balcony and held out his hands toward them in an unspeakable wordless greeting. Once more they had become for him the world's Great People, the giants of his boyhood's imagination, the heroes of his man's ideal. At the point of the sword they had proved the truth of Nicholson's proud boast, and hour by hour the man who had turned from them in a moment of bitter disillusion saw the temple he had once built to their honor rise from its ashes in new and greater splendor.

Thus two weeks had pa.s.sed, and to-night was to see the end. Nehal knew that, brave though they were, they could do no more. They had no water, and his forces hugged them in on every side. One last attack and it would be over--Marut would be cleared from the enemy, his victory complete. His victory! It was his own ruin he was preparing, the certain destruction of that which seemed linked invisibly but surely to his own fate. And, knowing that, he knew also that there was no turning back for him, no retreat. His word was given. His people, the people who claimed him by the right of blood, clamored for him to lead them as he had sworn. It made no difference if on the path he had chosen he trampled on every hope, every wish, every rooted instinct.

There was no turning back. He knew it--the knowledge that his own words bound him came to him with pitiless finality as he stood there watching the silent, lightless stretch which was soon to be the scene of a last tragic struggle; and if indeed there are such things as tears of blood, they rose to his eyes now.

With lips compressed in an agony he could neither a.n.a.lyze nor conquer, he turned slowly back into the dimly lighted room. Two torches burned on either side of the throne and threw unsteady shadows among the glittering pillars. They lit up his face and revealed it as that of a man who has cast his youth behind him for ever. Only a few months had pa.s.sed since he had sat there with Travers in the full noon of his hope and enthusiasm. He remembered the scene with a clearness which was a fresh torture. The hopes that had been built up in that hour lay shattered, the woman for whom they had been built was lost. He thought of her now as he always thought of her, as he knew he would think of her to the end. For this love, save that it had grown and deepened into a wider understanding, had remained unchanged. As there had been cowards and tricksters among his heroes, so in that one woman evil and good had stood side by side and fought out their battle. And the good had won--had won because he alone of all men had believed in it. He believed in it still--in the same measure as he had learned to love her--with a deeper understanding of temptation and failure. It was the one triumph in the midst of seeming ruin, the one firm rock in the raging torrent of his fate, beaten as it was between the contending streams of desire and duty. She was indeed lost to him, but not as in the first hour of his shaken trust. He had regained his memory of her as a good woman, striving upward and onward; and already he had invested her with the glory of those whom death has already claimed from us.

Nehal Singh started from his painful reverie, conscious that some one had entered the room and was watching him. He turned and saw his chief captain standing respectfully before him, and, though it was a man he liked and trusted, it seemed to him that the gaunt, soldierly figure had taken on the form of an ugly, threatening destiny.

"All is ready, Great Prince," the native said, salaaming. "Every man is at his post. We do but await thy orders."

Nehal did not answer. His hands clasped and unclasped themselves in the last agony of hesitation. The moment had come, the inevitable and irretrievable moment which had loomed so long upon his horizon. Even now he hardly knew what it was to bring him. The forces warring in his blood were locked in a death struggle. At last he nodded and his lips moved.

"It is well. In half an hour--I will come to them. In half an hour--the attack will begin."

"Sahib--is it good to wait? The dawn cometh, and with the dawn--"

Nehal Singh lifted his hand peremptorily.

"In half an hour," he repeated.

The man salaamed and was gone. Nehal Singh stood there like a pillar of stone. It was over. In half an hour! And yet, at the bottom of his heart, he knew that he had delayed--purposely, but to no end but his own increased suffering. With a sigh of impatience he turned, and in the same instant became once more aware that he was not alone.

For a moment he perceived nothing save the shadows and the unsteady flickering of the yellow torchlight. Then his vision cleared and he saw and understood, and an exclamation burst from his horrified lips.

It was a woman who stood out against the darkness, her body clothed in rags, the hair, grey and thin, hanging unkempt about her shoulders, the face turned to his that of some being risen from a tomb. There seemed to be no flesh upon the high cheek-bones nor upon the hands that were stretched toward him; only the eyes were alive with an unquenchable fire which burned upon him with a power that was unearthly. She staggered a few steps and then sank slowly to his feet, her hands still outstretched. He knelt down and supported the sinking head upon his shoulder.

"Who art thou?" he whispered in Hindustani. "Where hast thou come from? Tell me thy history."

A look of intense pain pa.s.sed over her features. Slowly and with a great effort her lips parted.

"I am English--let me speak in English. I have only a few minutes--I am dying."

He looked about him, seeking something with which to moisten her dry lips, but she clung to him with an incredible strength.

"No, no, I must speak with you. Up to now I have lived in an awful nightmare--amidst ghastly phantoms who pursued and tortured me. But when I heard your voice--when I heard you give that order, I awoke.

The dreams vanished, I heard and understood--and remembered!" She drew herself upright and, for a moment spoke with a penetrating clearness.

"Not in half an hour--never! Withdraw that order! If you go against them you are accursed. Lay down your arms! You must--you know you must! You dare not--" She clung to his arm and her eyes seemed to burn their way into his very soul. "I tell you--to turn traitor is to inherit an endless h.e.l.l--"

"A traitor!" he echoed. Something clutched at his heart, a sort of numb suspense which became electrified as he saw a new expression flash into her face.

"Yes, a traitor!" she whispered. "That was what I was. I was English--yes, English in spite of all, but in my bitterness I turned from my people. I let myself be taken alive. I would not share the fate of those who had once been dear to me. My whole life has been the punishment. They tortured me and then came the dreams--the awful, hideous dreams. I was always looking for you, always calling for you.

And they laughed and mocked at me. Only one man did not laugh--" her voice grew doubtful and hesitating, as though she were groping in the shadows of her memory. "He did not laugh. He promised to help me but he never came again--and I died--yes, I died--but I saw your face, I heard your voice--and I came back from death--to save you!" Once more her vision cleared and her voice grew steadier. "Go back to them! They are your friends. If you do not go, you will break your heart--as mine is broken. Swear to me--you must, because--"

He bent closer to her to catch every sound that fell from her lips.

His pulses were beating with a suffocating violence. Somewhere a veil was lifting. It was as if the sunlight were at last breaking through a mist of strange dreams, strange longings, strange forebodings. The confused voices that had called to him throughout his life grew clearer.

"Because--?" he whispered.

But she did not answer. Her head was thrown back. Her open eyes were fixed intently on his face. Suddenly she smiled. It was a smile that chilled his blood with its hideous distortion. And yet behind it lurked the possibility of a long-lost beauty and sweetness.

"Steven!" she whispered. "Steven!"

Closer and closer she drew his face to hers. Her icy lips rested on his cheek. Pity and a strange, as yet unformed, foreboding made him accept that dying caress and speak to her with an urgent, pleading gentleness.

"You have something to tell me," he murmured, "something I must know.

Tell me before it is too late."

But her eyes had closed and she did not answer him.

"Rouse yourself!" he insisted. "Rouse yourself!" It seemed to him that she smiled. Her face had undergone a change. It was younger, and in the flickering light his imagination brightened it with the glories whose dim traces still touched the haggard, emaciated features. One last time her eyes opened and she looked at him. The frenzy of despair was gone. He felt that she was looking beyond him to a future he could not see.