Books: The Native Born

I >> I. A. R. Wylie >> The Native Born

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"Now I understand. Thank you."

"As to the Rajah, I think you had better let him run before things go
too far. I'm afraid he has got one or two silly ideas in his head. You
had better make your engagement public."

"Thank you." She looked perfectly calm and collected. The red had died
out of her cheeks and left them their pale rose, which not even the
hottest Indian sun had been able to wither. Still, her tone had
something in it which startled even the self-possessed Travers.

"By Jove!" he began, "are you angry--?"

She passed over the question before he had time to finish it.

"I am going into the garden to look for my mother," she said. "The
band is just beginning. _Au revoir_."

Travers watched her curiously and admiringly as she walked across the
parquetry flooring to the door. It requires a good deal of
self-possession and carriage to walk gracefully under the scrutiny of
critical eyes, and this self-possession and carriage were the final
clauses to Beatrice's claim to physical perfection. There was a
natural dignity in her bearing and an absolute balance in all her
movements which Travers had never seen before combined in one woman.
At first sight an observer called her pretty, and then, as one by one
the perfect details unfolded themselves to a closer criticism,
beautiful. He was never disappointed, and even the most carping and
envious of Marut's female contingent had failed to find her vulnerable
point. So they had turned with more success to her character, and
proceeded there with their work of destruction. Her beauty they left
unquestioned.

Travers often asked himself--and asked himself especially on this
afternoon--why, apart from practical considerations, he had not fallen
in love with her instead of Lois. He liked beautiful women, as he
liked all beautiful things, and Lois had no real pretensions to
beauty. Was it, perhaps, as he had said, that her honesty and genuine
heart-goodness had drawn him to her? Of course he had pretended that
it was so. He knew that, in company with all true women, she was
susceptible to that form of flattery where other compliments merely
disgusted, and he had made good use of his knowledge. He had often
laughed to himself at the feminine craze for salvaging lost souls, but
he had never taken it seriously, not even with Lois. Was there any
truth in the assertions that he had made to her, more than he knew?
The idea amused him immensely, and also drew his attention back to his
previous conversation with Beatrice Cary. He shook his head
whimsically in the direction she had taken.

"I don't care what you say," he thought, "you are getting a
conscience. Now, I wonder whom you caught it from? Not from me, I'll
be bound."

He laughed out loud, and shaking himself up from his half-lounging
attitude against the window casement, he proceeded to follow in
Beatrice's footsteps. At the door he was met by three men--the Rajah,
Stafford, and a new-comer whom he did not recognize and for the moment
scarcely noticed. He had a quick and sympathetic intelligence, which
was trained to read straight through men's eyes into their minds, and
in an instant he had classed and compared, not without a pang of real
if very objective regret, the two familiar faces and their
expressions. Gloom and sunshine jostled each other.

On the one hand, Nehal Singh had never looked better than he did then.
The old film of dreamy contemplation was gone from his eyes, which
flashed with energy and purpose; the face was thinner and in places
lined; the figure, always upright, had become more muscular. From a
merely handsome man he had developed into a striking personality,
released from the bonds of an enforced inactivity and an objectless
destiny. By just so much Stafford had altered for the worse. His
character was too strong and rigid to allow an absolute breakdown. He
still carried himself well; to all intents and purposes, as far as his
duty was concerned, he was as hard-working and conscientious as he had
ever been, but no strength of will had been able to hinder the change
in his face and expression. He looked years older. There was grey
mixed with the dark brown of his hair; the eyes were hollow and
lightless; the cheeks had painfully sunken in. A friend returning
after a two months' absence would have said that he had gone through a
sharp and very dangerous illness; but Marut, who knew that he had not
been ill, wondered exceedingly.

They wondered all the more because, though nothing was known for
certain, they suspected a rupture in the relations between Stafford
and the Carmichael family, and Beatrice was recognized as the
undoubtable cause. Her engagement with Stafford had been kept secret,
but the Marut world had its ideas and was puzzled to distraction as to
why he seemed to shun her society and had become morose and taciturn.
"It is his conscience," said the busybodies, whose inexperience on the
subject of conscience excused the mistaken diagnosis. Travers knew
better. He felt no sort of regret, but he was rather sorry for
Stafford and sometimes Stafford felt his unspoken sympathy and shrank
from it.

"We have been looking all over the place for you, Travers," he said,
after the first greeting had been exchanged. "Nicholson arrived here
last night, and he has already been on a tour of inspection. He wants
to know the man who has built the modern settlement."

Travers turned to the new-comer and held out his hand.

"Glad to meet you," he said cordially; "but please don't run off with
the idea that I have anything to do with the innovations. I am no more
than the artisan. The Rajah is the moving spirit."

Nehal Singh's expression protested.

"If money is the moving power, you may be right," he said; "but if, as I
think, the conception is everything, then the credit is wholly yours."

"You have been the energizing spirit," Travers retorted.

"Well, we will divide the honors. And, after all, it does not matter
in the least who has done it, so long as it is done."

"Well spoken!" Adam Nicholson said. "If that's your principle, I'm not
surprised at the marvels you have brought about."

Nehal Singh turned to the speaker.

"You think the changes are for the good?" he asked eagerly.

"Without a doubt. The new Bazaar is a model for Indian civilization."

"And the mine?"

"Excuse me--is that part of the reform? I understood that it was
merely a speculation."

The prince's brows contracted with surprise.

"It is part of the reform. I wish to give my people a settled
industry. There is no idea of--personal gain."

"I see. Well, I don't know about that yet. I haven't looked into the
matter; I must to-morrow--that is, no, I won't. You know,"--with a
movement of good-tempered impatience--"I've been sent here on a
rest-cure, and I'm not to bother about anything. Please remind me now
and again. I always forget."

Stafford smiled grimly.

"You don't look as though you knew what rest is," he said.

Travers, who stood a little on one side, felt there was some truth in
the criticism. During the brief conversation between Nehal Singh and
Nicholson he had had ample opportunity to study the two men and to
glean the esthetic pleasure which all beauty gave him. Both
represented the best type of their respective races, and, curiously
enough, this perfection seemed to obliterate the differences. Travers
could not help thinking, as he glanced from one to the other, that,
had it not been for the dress, it would have been difficult to decide
who was the native prince and who the officer. Nehal Singh's high
forehead and clean-cut features might have been those of a European,
and his complexion, if anything, was fairer than that of the sunburnt
man opposite him. It was doubtful, too, which of the two faces was the
more striking. Travers felt himself irresistibly drawn to the
new-comer. The bold, aquiline nose, the determined mouth under the
close-cut moustache, the broad forehead with the white line where the
military helmet had protected from the sun, the black hair prematurely
sprinkled with grey--these, together with the well-built figure, made
him seem worthy of the record of heroism and ability with which his
name was associated.

"If you want a rest, your only hope is with the ladies," Travers said,
as he turned with Nicholson toward the garden. "They are the only
people who haven't got mines and industrial progress on the brain. Are
you prepared to be lionized, by the way? We are all so heartily sick
of one another that a new arrival is bound to be pursued to death."

"I don't care so long as I get in some decent tennis and polo,"
Nicholson answered cheerfully. "Not that I've starved in that respect.
I got my men up at the Fort into splendid form. We made our net and
racquets ourselves, and rolled out some sort of a court. It was
immense fun, though the racquets weren't all you might have wished,
and the court had a most disconcerting surface." He laughed heartily
at his recollections, and Travers laughed with him.

"No wonder the men worshiped you," he said, and then saw that the
remark had been a mistake.

"They didn't worship me," was the sharp answer. "That sort of thing is
all rubbish. They respected me, and I respected them--that's all."

"It seems to me a good deal," Travers observed.

"It is a good deal, in one sense," Nicholson returned. "It is the only
condition under which native and European can work in unity."

Nehal Singh and Stafford were walking a little ahead, and Travers
thought he saw the Rajah hesitate as though about to join the
conversation. Almost immediately, however, Nicholson changed the
subject.

"I've had no time to look up my old friends," he said to Travers.
"Perhaps you could tell me something about them. Colonel Carmichael
is, of course, still here. I had a few words with him this afternoon.
Do you know if that little girl, Lois Caruthers, is with him, or has
she gone back to England?"

"No, she is still in Marut."

"That's good. When I was a young lieutenant, she and I were great
pals. Of course she is grown-up now, but I always think of her as my
wild little comrade who led me into the most hairbreadth adventures."
He smiled to himself, and Travers, looking sharply at him, felt that
there was a wealth of memories behind the pleasant grey eyes.

"Things change," he said sententiously.

"Do they? Well, perhaps; though the change, I find, lies usually in
oneself, and I never change. Is she married?"

"No--not yet."

He saw that Nicholson was on the point of answering, asking another
question, and he went on hurriedly:

"She is not here this afternoon. If you are anxious to meet her, how
would it be if I ran over to the Colonel's bungalow and persuaded her
to come? I dare say I could manage it."

"Excellent, if you wouldn't mind. Or I might go myself. We shall have
any amount to say to each other."

There was a scarcely noticeable pause before Travers answered:

"I think it would be better if I went. I know a short cut, and could
get there and back with Miss Caruthers in half an hour. Would you mind
telling the Colonel what I have done?"

"Certainly. In the meantime, I'll have a talk with the Rajah about
this mining business. He seems to have an exceptional individuality,
and--"

"Remember the doctor!" Travers warned him.

"Oh, yes, thanks! I forgot again. By the way, when you see Lois--Miss
Caruthers--tell her for me, the cathedral still lacks the chief spire,
but otherwise is getting on very nicely."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"No, but I dare say she will. Good-by."

Travers borrowed a buggy from one of the other guests, and started
impetuously on his self-imposed errand. He had lied about the short
cut, and about the half-hour. He would have lied up to the hilt if it
had been required of him, because his instinct--that instinct which
had saved him untold times from blundering--warned him that danger was
at hand. It told him that it was now or never, and the realization
filled him with a reckless resolve which was ready to ride down all
principles and honor. He was still sufficiently master of himself to
hide the storm; it showed itself only in so far that, when he stood
before Lois, he seemed more moved and agitated than she had ever seen
him. She had just returned from a long and lonely ride, and was about
to retire to change her white habit, when he came upon her in the
entrance hall. Had he not found her himself, she would have refused to
see him, for she dreaded his message. She felt that he had come to
urge her attendance at the opening ceremony, and old fondness for
social pleasures of that kind had given place to dislike. It was the
only change that sorrow had wrought upon her character. Otherwise she
was the same as she had always been. For one week she had suffered
something like despair, and then the brave spirit in her despised
itself for its weakness, and set to work on the rebuilding of her life
on new foundations. To all appearances, she had succeeded admirably in
her task. There was no drooping hopelessness in her attitude toward
the world. And if beneath the surface there lay hidden the dangerous
flaw of purposelessness, no one knew--at least, so she believed.

To her surprise, Travers made no mention of the subject she dreaded.
He took her hand in his, and led her into the shady drawing-room. She
made no attempt to protest, nor did she offer him any formal greeting.
She was oppressed and hypnotized by the conviction that a crisis was
about to break over her head which no power of hers could avert. He
did not let her hand go. He still held it between his own as they
stood opposite each other, and she felt that he was trembling.

"Lois," he said, "Lois, don't think me mad. There are limits to a
man's endurance. I have held out so long that I can hold out no
longer. I have come because I must speak to you alone. Will you let
me?"

She knew now what was coming, and she made a gentle effort to free
herself.

"Mr. Travers, will you think me very conceited if I say that I know
what you have come to tell me?" she said, with an earnestness which
did not conceal her anxiety. "Will you forgive me if I ask you not to
tell me? It would be hard to have to spoil our friendship. It has been
a great deal to me."

"Does that mean that you don't care?"

"I did not say that. As proof that I do care I will give you my whole
confidence, I will be absolutely honest with you. Will you think me
very low-spirited if I tell you that a man still holds a place in my
life--a man who cares nothing for me? I ought to forget him--my pride
should make it possible, and yet I can not, and somehow I do not think
I ever shall."

"Isn't that rather a hard punishment for him, Lois?"

"For him?"

"I, too, will be honest. I know whom you mean and I ask you--does
Stafford look a happy man? He looks like a man weighed down by a heavy
burden. I believe that burden is the knowledge that he has sinned
against you, that in his heedlessness, folly, what you will, he has
spoiled your life. Until he feels that you have regained your
happiness he will never be able to find his own."

A spasm of pain passed over her face.

"You mean--I stand in his way?"

"I believe so. And I am sure of one thing--for your own sake as well
as for his, you must shake off your old affection for him, and how
better than through the cultivation of a new and stronger love? My
dear little girl, you couldn't pretend that all the happy hours we
have spent together count for nothing. You say my friendship has been
a great deal to you. What else is friendship but the sanest, most
lasting, and noblest part of love? What surer basis was ever the union
between a man and woman built upon? I know what you would say--it has
come too soon. You have only just pulled yourself up from a hard blow,
and you feel that you must have time to right yourself and all the
hopes that were bowled over with you. My dear, I understand that--God
knows, I understand too well--but have pity on me. Think how I have
waited, and how time has drifted on and on for me. Must I wait the
best years of my life? Won't you let me add the whole of my love to
time's cure for healing the old wound?"

There was no pretense in his pleading, no pretense in the passion with
which his voice shook. And because it was genuine, it carried her
forward on the wave of powerful feeling toward his will.

"I do care for you," she said, with a strong effort to appear calm.
"As a friend you are very dear to me, and you are no doubt right to
class friendship so highly. But I can not pretend that I love you. I
do not love you. And a woman should love the man she marries."

He let her hands fall.

"And so you are going to let your life remain empty, little woman?"

"Empty?" she echoed.

"Yes, empty. Will it prove the strength of my love for you if I tell
you that it has given me the power to look straight into your heart?
How many times have I read there the thought: 'Of what use is it all?
My life has no object, no end or aim. No one needs me now.' Lois, one
man needs you--needs you perhaps as much as he loves you. That man is
myself. If you say you have done nothing in the world, look into the
soul that I open out to you and to you alone. There is not a generous,
honest deed or thought which has not its origin in you. For your sake
I have beaten down the devil under my feet--I have tried to live as I
meant to live before the time when I, too, found that there was no
object in it all, that no one cared whether I was good or bad. This
much have you changed in me--it has been your unconscious work. Are
you going to leave the task which surely God has left for you to
accomplish?"

He had touched the chord in her which could only give one response,
and he knew it. There lay the canker which made her energy and
cheerfulness a mere task to hide the real disease. Half unconsciously
she had loved Stafford and half unconsciously she had built her life
upon him. When he had been taken from her, the foundations had been
shaken, and she found herself crippled by a horrible sense of
emptiness and purposelessness. In England she would have flung herself
into some intellectual pursuit, as other women do who have suffered
heart shipwreck. But she was in India, and in India intellectual food
is scarce. Pleasure is the one serious occupation for the womenkind;
and though pleasure may be a good narcotic for some, for Lois it was
worse than useless. She needed one being for whom she could bring
sacrifices and endless patient devotion, and there was no one. Her two
guardians lived for her, and that was not what she hungered after with
all the thwarted energy of her soul. She wanted to work for somebody,
not to be worked for--and no one needed her, no one except this man. She
looked at him. She saw that her long silence was torture to him; she saw
that he was suffering genuinely, and her heart went out to him in pity.
Pity is a woman's invariable undoing. How many women--sometimes happy,
sometimes unhappy, according to the rulings of an inscrutable Fate--have
married, partly out of flattered vanity, but chiefly because they are
good-hearted, and labor under the mistaken conviction that a man's
happiness rests on their decision? And in this particular instance
Lois was honestly attached to Travers. She felt that to lose him would
be to lose a friend whom she could ill spare. Yet a blind instinct forced
her to a last resistance.

"I do not love you," she repeated, almost desperately.

"I do not ask for that now, because I know that it will come. I ask
you to be my lifelong friend and helper. Remember your promise, Lois!
Has not the time come when we need each other--when no one else is
left?" He took her hand again. He felt that she was won.

"If you need me--I care for you enough to try and love you as my
husband."

"Thank you, Lois!"

His inborn tact and knowledge of the human character stood him again
in good stead. He made no violent demonstration of his triumph and
happiness, thus breaking roughly into a region which as yet for him
was dangerous ground. As he had done months before, when the road to
success had seemed blocked, he lifted her hand reverently and
gratefully to his lips.

Thus it was that Captain Adam Nicholson waited patiently but in vain
for Travers' return with his old playfellow. As one by one the Rajah's
guests took their departure in order to prepare for the evening's
festivities, he gave up his last hope.

"I suppose it was too late," he thought ruefully. "Or--she was so
young, and it's many years ago--maybe she has forgotten."

It was not till long afterward that he knew how unconsciously his
first supposition had brushed past the truth.

CHAPTER XVI

FATE

Travers had correctly described the new Marut club-house as a fine
building on which the paint had been laid with a generous hand. The
original modest design had been rejected as unworthy, and Nehal Singh
had ordered the erection of a miniature copy of his own palace, the
ball-room being line for line a reproduction of the Great Hall, save
that the decorations, which in the palace were inimitable, had been
carried out with dignified simplicity, and that some necessary
modernization had been added. Gold and white predominated, where in
the original, precious stones glistened; the brackets for the torches
were transformed into small artistic lamps which had been ordered from
Madras; and from the ceiling a heavy chandelier added brilliancy to
the shaded light. The central floor had been left free for dancing,
but the slender pillars ranged on either side formed separate little
alcoves banked with flowers and plants. It was in one of these refuges
from the whirr and confusion of gay dresses and white uniforms that
Stafford took up his watch. He had arrived late, thanks to Travers,
who had detained him at his bungalow in a long and earnest
conversation. The two men had subsequently driven together to the
club, and had further been hindered on their way by a curious
accident. Just where the road passed an unprotected ravine, a native
had sprung out from some bushes and, having waved his arms wildly,
disappeared. The horse had immediately taken fright, and for a moment
the car and its occupants stood in danger of being flung headlong down
the precipice. Stafford's strength and nerve had saved the situation,
but the incident had effectually put an end to their conversation, and
now for the first time Stafford found himself alone and at liberty to
bring some order into his troubled thoughts.

He was not, as Marut supposed, a conscience-stricken man, but a man
with a diseased conscience, his sense of duty and responsibility
developed to abnormities which left him no clear judgment. He had
broken with Lois because he loved her and because there seemed no
other way of shielding her from the most terrible blow that could fall
upon any human life--judging by the only standard he knew, which was
his own. He had asked Beatrice to be his wife because it cut the last
link and because he knew--Travers had told him--that the Station had
long since coupled their names together in a way that cast a deeper
shadow about Beatrice's reputation.

"It's no one's fault, old fellow," Travers had said sympathetically.
"You meant no harm, but you were often with her, and that old fiend,
Mrs. Cary, has told every one that you 'were as good as--' And then
you know what the people are here. When they see that things are at an
end between you and Lois they will dig their knives deeper into Miss
Cary, without giving her the credit of having won her game. She is
fairly at every one's mercy here. I am sorry for Lois, but the other
is worse off, according to my lights."

Stafford had said nothing. Goaded by Travers' words and blinded by the
catastrophe which had broken upon him, he had acted without thought,
without consideration, for the first time in his life obeying the
behests of a headlong impulse. He had asked Beatrice to be his wife,
and to-night was to put the final seal upon their alliance. Again it
was Travers who had spoken the decisive word.

"A secret engagement is a piece of folly," he said, "and Miss Cary is
mad to wish it. For your sake as well as hers, everything must be
above-board. Or are you shirking?"

Stafford had made a hot retort. It was not in the scope of his
character to turn back on a road which he had marked out for himself,
and he waited now for Beatrice with the unshaken resolution of a man
who believes absolutely in himself and his own code. He waited even
with a certain impatience. Shortly before he had seen her standing at
the Rajah's side, a fair and beautiful contrast to his eastern
splendor, and, somehow, in that moment, he had understood Travers'
warning as he had not understood it before. She was to be his wife,
she was to bear his name, and it was his duty to protect her if need
be from herself. He was about to leave the alcove to go in search of
her when she pushed aside the hangings and entered. The suddenness of
her appearance and something in her expression startled him. He did
not notice how radiantly beautiful she was nor the taste and richness
of her dress. He saw only that there was a curious look of pain and
fear in her eyes which warmed his friendship and aroused in him afresh
the desire to shield her from the malice of the eyes that watched
them.

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