Books: The Native Born

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

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After a moment's thoughtful silence he changed the subject and began
pointing out to her the improvements he had brought about in the
native dwellings. Even Beatrice, who had seen little of the old
conditions, felt that the change was almost incredible. A
conservative, indolent and superstitious people had within a few
months been transferred from loathsome dirt and squalor into a "model
village" such as an English workman might have envied. Nehal Singh
showed her the houses at the end of the Bazaar which belonged to the
chief men, or those responsible to him for the cleanliness and order
of the community. Small, prettily planted gardens separated one low
dwelling from the other, and each bore its stamp of individuality, as
though the owner had tried by some new and quaint device to outdo his
neighbor.

"Of course," Nehal Singh explained to her, as they turned homeward,
"there are men with whom nothing can be done. They have spent their
lives as beggars, and can not work now even if they would. For such I
have made provision, although they, too, have been given small tasks
to keep them from appearing beggars. But they are the last of their
kind. There shall in future be no idlers in Marut. From thenceforward
every man shall work honestly and faithfully for his daily bread, and
I will see that he has no need to starve. The mine will employ the
strongest, and then, later, Travers and I intend to revive the various
industries suited to the people's taste and talent."

"You have already done a great deal," she said, moved to real
admiration. "I tremble to think what it has cost you." As she spoke,
the hidden irony in her casually spoken words came home to her, and
she felt the old fear clutch at her heart.

"I have given the best I have--myself," he answered gravely. "Of
material wealth I have only retained what is beautiful; for beauty
must not be sold to be given as bread among the poor. That would be a
crime--as though one would sell Heaven for earth. Travers wished me to
sell the old jeweled statues and relics, but I would not. They belong
to my people, and one day, when they have learned to see and
understand, they will thank me that I have kept the splendors intact
for them."

"You are wise," she said thoughtfully--"wiser than Travers and many
others."

"In my first enthusiasm, I meant to sell everything, and live as the
poorest of them all," he went on; "but I soon saw that that was wrong.
The man into whose hands wealth is given has a great task set him. He
has a power denied to others. He can collect and preserve all that is
beautiful in art and nature--not for himself, but for those who
otherwise would never see anything but what is poor and squalid and
commonplace. True, he must also strive to alleviate the sufferings of
their bodies, so that their minds may be free to enjoy; but he must
not sacrifice the higher for the lower task--that would surely be the
work of what you call a Philistine. And his higher task is to feed
their souls with all that is lovely and stainless. Has not the Master
said, 'A man shall not live by bread alone'? Is it not true? And
again, I have read: 'What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?' And is not the man who sits, fed and
clothed, in a low, flat, level world of mud-huts in danger, of
forgetting that there were ever such wonders as the minarets of a
high, Heaven-aspiring temple? Will he not grow to think that there is
nothing more beautiful than a mud-hut, nothing more to be desired than
his daily bread? I have thought of all this, and I have preserved my
palace and everything that it contains. I have preserved it for my
people. It shall be for them a goal and encouragement, a voice
speaking to them day by day from the high towers: 'See what the hands
of thy fathers have created! Thou people in the low dwellings, arise
and do greater things still, for the great and beautiful is nearest
God'!"

He stopped abruptly, shaken by his own passionate enthusiasm. His fine
head raised, his eyes flashing, his hand extended, he could have stood
for the statue of some inspired prophet.

"You are a modern Buddha," she said, smiling faintly. Inwardly she was
comparing him to Mr. Berry--Mr. Berry, whose highest ideal in life was
to bring everything down to a nice, shabby, orthodox level.

Nehal Singh's hand dropped to his side and he looked at her earnestly.

"That is what they say," he answered. "My people say that I am the
tenth Avatar. But I am not. I am only a man--scarcely so much. A few
months ago I was no more than a beggar in the Bazaar, an idler and a
dreamer. If I have thrown aside my false dreams and come out as an
untried worker into the light of truth, it is because I have been led
by God--through you."

Every trace of color fled from her face, and the clear eyes which met
his from beneath the broad helmet distended as though at some sudden
shock. In the course of their earnest but impersonal conversation she
had almost forgotten what was to come. This was the end of the ride,
this was the to-morrow, the inevitable to-morrow of those who
procrastinate with the inevitable.

"I--I have done nothing," she said, striving to hush down the rising
tide of suffocating emotion.

"Yes, it is nothing. I know it is nothing, but it may still become
something," he answered. "Or is it not already something? Is it not
something that you have led me to the feet of the Great Teacher? Is it
not something that I am awake and standing on the threshold of a new
Earth and Heaven, as yet blinded by the light, but with every day
gaining courage and strength to go forward? Do not say that this is
nothing--you to whom I owe all that I am and ever shall be!"

She threw back her fair head. Now was the time to call to her aid all
her cynicism, all the shallow, heartless skepticism which had hitherto
ruled her character. Now was the time to laugh and to throw into this
man's face what she had been glad and satisfied to throw into the
faces of a dozen other men--the biting acid of her mockery. But she
could not laugh--she could not laugh at this man. Her tongue cleaved
to the roof of her mouth, her throat seemed thick with a suffocating
dust, so that she could make no sound.

"God forgive me if I have boasted of my own progress," he went on
earnestly. "I know too well how much of the long road I have still to
travel. It could not be otherwise. I can not reach in a few months
what men have attained who have always lived in the light of truth.
But I have hope. I carry in my heart your image and the ideal you have
set me--the ideal of your race."

Then speech was given her.

"Cast that ideal out!" she said wildly and recklessly. "It is too low
for you. You have passed it. You never needed it. Choose your own
ideal, and forget me--forget us all. We can teach you nothing." She
caught her breath as though she would have called back her own words.
They were not the words she had meant to speak. They did not sound
like her own. They had been put in her mouth by a force within her
whose existence had been revealed to her, as a hidden volcanic
mountain is revealed, by a sudden fierce upheaval, which threw off all
the old rubbish loading the surface of her nature. It was only a
momentary upheaval. The next minute she was trying to save herself
behind the old flippant subterfuges. "I am talking nonsense!" she
exclaimed, with a short angry laugh.

"Then it is not true what you said?" He had urged his horse close to
hers, and she could almost feel the intensity with which his eyes were
fixed upon her face. That gaze stifled her laughter, drove her deeper
into the danger she was striving to escape.

"Yes, it is true!" she answered between her teeth.

His strong hand rested upon hers and held it with a gentleness which
paralyzed her strength.

"If it is true, then the time has come!" he said. "The hour has struck
which God ordained for us both. Beatrice, I may tell you now what you
have surely known since the day we stood together before the altar--I
love you. You are the first and last woman in my world." His voice
pierced through to her senses through waves of roaring, confusing
sound. Her heart beat till it became unbearable torture. "Do you
remember that second evening?" he went on. "The priest tried to stop
you at the gate of the sanctuary, but I spoke to him, and he let you
pass. You asked me what I had said, but I would not tell you--not
then. Now I may: 'This is the woman whom God has given me--'"

She flung his hand violently from her.

"You must not say that!" she cried, with desperate resolution. "You
must not say that sort of thing--to me."

"Why should I not? I love you."

"You must not love me. I--I am to be Captain Stafford's wife."

"Beatrice!" His cry of incredulous pain drove her to frantic measures.

"It is true. I swear it."

Then it was all over. He made no protest. He rode by her side as
though he had been turned to stone, rigidly upright, his hand hanging
lifeless at his side, his face expressionless. She felt that she had
struck right at his life's vitality--that she had killed him. Yet it
was not remorse that blinded her till the white road became a
shimmering blur--it was a frightful personal pain which was hers and
hers alone. Neither spoke. They passed a crowd of natives returning to
the Bazaar. They salaamed, but Nehal Singh made no response, as was
his wont. He did not seem to see them. Mechanically he guided his
horse through the bowing crowd. The silence became unbearable. She had
flippantly told herself that as long as he did not make a "scene" she
would be satisfied. He had not made a "scene." From the moment that
she had made her final declaration he had not spoken, and now she was
praying that he would say something to her--anything, she did not care
what, only not that terrible accusatory silence. At last, in
desperation, she began to make it up with him as she had planned--in
an incoherent, helpless way.

"I have hurt you," she stammered. "Forgive me--I did not mean to. It
has all been a cruel mistake. I looked upon you as a friend. How could
I tell that you meant more than that? If I have deceived you, I can
only ask you with all my heart to forgive me."

He turned his head and looked at her. His eyes were dull and clouded,
as though a film had been drawn across them.

"Not you have deceived me," he answered quietly. "I have deceived
myself. I thought I was following a great God-sent light. It was
nothing more than a firefly glittering through my darkness. You are
not to blame."

He was already casting contempt at the influence which she had
exercised over him; he was cutting himself free from her--as she had
desired, as was inevitable. Yet, with a foolish, senseless anger, she
sought to draw him back to her and hold him, if only by the reverence
for what had been.

"Do not despise our friendship!" she pleaded. "If it has not been what
you thought it was, has it any the less opened the gates of Heaven and
earth, as you said? What I have given you is good--the very best I had
to give. The ideal was a high one. I helped you toward it with my
friendship. Is it bad because it was only friendship--because it
couldn't be more than that? You do not know," she went on, with a
forced attempt to appear cheerful and matter-of-fact, "you do not know
how much your trust and confidence has been to me. I have been so
proud to help you. If I had ever thought it would come to this--I
would have stopped long ago."

So she lied, clinging to his respect as though it had been her
salvation. And he believed her. His face relaxed, and for the first
time she saw clearly what he was enduring.

"I do not despise our--friendship, even though it must end here," he
said. "What you have given me I shall always keep--always. I shall not
turn back because I must go on alone. Your image shall still guide me
in my life. It is not less pure and noble because I can not ever call
it my own." She heard his voice break, but he went on quietly and
gently: "I pray you may be happy with the man you love."

She had conquered. She had kept her place in his life at the same time
that she was thrusting him out of her own. He would continue
undeterred along the road on to which she had tempted him--perhaps to
his destruction--believing in her, trusting in her as no other being
had ever done or would do. This much she had snatched from the
wreckage.

They did not speak again until they reached her bungalow. Then he
dismounted and, quietly motioning the syce to one side, helped her to
the ground.

"It is for the last time," he said. "Good-by, Lakshmi!"

"Good-by!"

She could not lift her eyes to his face, but from the top of the steps
she was tempted to look back. He stood where she had left him, his
hand resting on her saddle, his head bent, and there was something in
his attitude which sent her hurrying into the house without a second
glance.

She found her mother waiting for her in her room, whither she fled to
be alone and undisturbed to fight and stamp out the pain that was
aching in her heart. Mrs. Cary, wonderfully curled and powdered,
received her daughter with unusual rapture.

"My dear!" she exclaimed, kissing Beatrice on both cheeks, "I am so
glad you have come back early! Captain Stafford is here, and has
something for you--I shouldn't be surprised if it was a ring, you
lucky child! Did I not tell you he was the very husband for you? He
has been telling me all about Lois and Travers. Everybody is quite
pleased about it. Now hurry up and make yourself pretty. Why, what's
the matter? You look so--so queer!"

Beatrice pushed past her mother and, going to the table, flung herself
down as though exhausted.

"It's nothing," she muttered. "Tell--John I can't see him. I'm
tired--ill--anything you like."

"Beaty, I won't do anything of the sort. What has happened? Is it that
horrid Rajah? Did you tell him?"

"Yes."

"And he made a scene, my poor Beaty?"

"No."

"Can't you answer me properly? Tell me what happened."

"He asked me to marry him."

Mrs. Cary first gasped, and then burst into a loud, cackling laugh.

"He asked you to marry him! That colored man! I hope you laughed in
his face?"

Beatrice turned, one clenched hand resting on the table.

"No," she said, "I did not laugh--there was nothing to laugh at. I
have kept my promise to you." Then, unexpectedly she buried her face
in her arms and burst into tears.

Mrs. Cary stood there thunderstruck, her mouth open, her eyes wide
with alarm. For one moment she was incapable of reasoning out this
catastrophe. She had never seen Beatrice cry--her tears, because of
their rarity, were as terrible as a man's, and could not be explained
away by nerves or fatigue. This was something else. Mrs. Cary crossed
the room. She laid a fat, trembling hand on her daughter's shoulder.

"Beaty, what's the matter?" she asked uneasily. "What is it? Are you
ill?--or--or--Beaty!"--a light dawning across her dull face--"good
heavens! you don't love that man?" There was no answer. After a long
moment, Mrs. Cary's hand fell to her side. "You couldn't!" she
muttered. "It wouldn't do. Think of what people would say! Our
position!" Still no answer. She turned and stumbled toward the door.
"I will tell the captain--you are ill," she said.

Beatrice did not move.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

BUILDING THE CATHEDRAL

The pretty little drawing-room was already in half darkness. Travers
went to the window and, leaning his shoulder lazily against the
casement, began to sort out and open the letters that had been
lying on the tea-table waiting for him.

"One from the Colonel, Lois," he said, after a moment's perusal. "No
news in particular. He is down with a touch of fever, and the whole
regiment is camping out without him. Stafford's marriage still hanging
fire. Silly girl! What's she waiting for, in the name of conscience?"

Lois looked up from her duties at the table.

"They have been engaged over a year," she said.

"As long as we have been engaged and married," he answered with an
affectionate smile. "How long is that, little woman? About eighteen
months, eh? They don't either of them seem in much of a hurry."

He went on reading, only stretching out his hand mechanically as she
brought him his second cup of tea. Lois remained at his side, her eyes
fixed thoughtfully, almost hungrily, on the torn envelope which lay on
the floor at his feet.

"Why did you call Beatrice Cary a silly girl?" she asked at last. "It
never struck me that she was silly."

"She wasn't, but she will be if she doesn't hold Stafford fast."

A shadow passed over the face still turned to the floor.

"Is Stafford--so--so desirable?"

"His money is, dear child, and the Carys may need money in the near
future."

"I thought they were rich?"

"Their money is in the mine."

"But the mine is to be successful?"

He smiled in good-natured amusement at her persistency.

"Have you ever heard of a mine that wasn't to be successful? If you
wait a moment, I will tell you the latest news. Here's a note from the
Rajah."

He tore open the large square envelope, and went on reading with the
same idle interest. "There's been an accident with the blasting," he
observed casually. "Five men killed. Our native friend is, of course,
in a fever. Has pensioned all the families. I don't know where he will
land us with his extravagances. We shall want all the money we can get
for repairing the damage. Philanthropy is becoming a sort of disease
with him. Fortunately, I am not bitten so far." He laughed, and threw
the letter to one side. "I expect I shall have to run up north to put
things straight."

"Hasn't the mine brought in enough?" Lois answered innocently.

"Enough?" He looked at her with a twinkle in his bright eyes. "Dear
girl, it hasn't paid so much as a quarter of its expenses."

"But will it ever?"

"Heaven knows--or perhaps even Heaven does not. I'm sure I don't."

"You talk so calmly about it!" she exclaimed, aghast. "Surely you are
heavily involved--and not only you, but the Rajah and the people in
Marut?"

He patted her on the cheek.

"Don't worry on that score," he assured her. "Besides, it's not my way
to sit down and cry over what can't be helped. I dare say I shall pull
through somehow."

"Yes, _you_, perhaps."

He changed color slightly under the challenge in her eyes, but his
expression remained unruffled.

"You are not exactly a very trusting wife, are you, Lois? It comes of
letting a woman have a look into business. Never mind, we won't argue
the subject all over again. I know what you think of me. There,
good-by. I must be off again. Nicholson will be around shortly. I told
him he would find me at home."

"Had you not better wait for him, then?"

"Oh, no. I only told him I should be at home as a sort of _facon de
parler_. He only comes when he thinks I am there--admirable person--and
I know you like to have old friends about. Good-by, dear."

"Good-by." She accepted his kiss listlessly, and when he had gone went
back to the window.

The window had become Lois Travers' vantage-point of life. From thence
she could overlook the bustling Madras square into which four streets
poured their unending stream, and build her fancies about each one of
the atoms as they passed unconsciously beneath her gaze. Some of the
faces were well known to her. They always passed at the time when she
took her sewing and sat by the window, pretending to work by the
fading glow of evening light, and about each she wove a simple little
story, always, or nearly always, happy. She imagined the men returning
from business to their homes. If there was ever a cloud upon their
brow, she smiled to think how the trouble would be brushed away by
loving hands; if their step were more than usually light and elastic,
her own heart grew lighter with the thought that they were hurrying
back to the source of their happiness.

Lois lived on the real or imagined joys of others. She clung to her
air castles in which her unknown heroes lived, building them more
beautifully, fitting them out with more perfect content, as her own
brick dwelling grew darker and more desolate. She felt that if ever
she let go her hold on them she would lose faith in human happiness,
and thus in life itself. For between Lois Travers the woman and Lois
Travers the light-hearted, high-spirited girl there stretched a year's
gulf. Marriage had been to her what it is more or less to all women--a
Rubicon, a Book of Revelations in which girlish ideals are rarely
realized, sometimes modified, more often destroyed.

Clever and pliable women, women with the "art of living" do not allow
their hearts to be broken in the latter event, supposing them to have
relaxed their cleverness so far as to have had ideals at all; but
Lois was not clever or pliable, and her ideals had been destroyed. She
had loved John Stafford, and in some inexplicable way he had failed
her. She had given her life into Travers' hands in the belief that he
needed her for his progress, and that in helping him her idle powers
of love and devotion would not be wasted. Too late she realized--what
no woman ever realizes until it _is_ too late--that the man who needs
a woman for his salvation is already far beyond her help.

Beneath Lois' light-heartedness and love of gaiety there lurked a
spirit of Puritanism which had drawn her to Stafford, and now brought
her into violent conflict with Travers' fundamental frivolity. In the
first month of their marriage she had had to admit that she had
reached the bottom of his character, and found nothing there--not so
much as a deeply planted vice. He had pretended a depth of feeling
which was only in part sincere, and he was too lazy to keep up a
pretense when his chief object was gained. He really cared for Lois,
but he had wilfully exaggerated the role she played in his life.
Always good-natured and kindly, he never allowed her to ruffle or
anger him. She had never seen him rough or cruel to any human being,
and all these superficial virtues forced her farther from him.

A few significant incidents had revealed to her that his good nature
covered a cold-blooded indifference where his own interests were
vitally concerned. His apparent pliability hid a dexterity which
evaded every recognized principle. In vain she exerted the influence
with which he had pretended to invest her. The first effort proved
that it had never really existed. It was no more in his life than the
valuable ornament on his mantel-shelf--a thing to be dusted,
preserved, and admired in leisure hours, never set to serious use.
This last discovery, made shortly after their arrival in Madras, had
broken her. From that moment she had felt herself crippled. Her life
became a blank, colorless waste, all the more terrible because of the
mirages with which it was lighted. The world saw the mirages: the
good-looking, genial-tempered husband; the well-furnished house; all
the outward symptoms of an irrefutably satisfactory and successful
life.

Only one person perhaps saw deeper, and that was Nicholson. He had
been ordered for a year to Madras, and thus it came about that they
often met. Travers' first dislike for the officer had evaporated, and
he seemed rather to insist on an increase of their intimacy, inviting
Nicholson constantly to the house. And in those long evening visits
Nicholson had seen what others did not see and what Lois kept hidden
in her own heart. For she had told no one that the mirages were no
more than mirages--that her life still lacked all the vital elements
of reality and sincerity. She was proud, and not even the people in
dear old Marut suspected that she was stifling in the hot Madras air
and in the unhealthy atmosphere of small lies and loose principles in
which Travers was so thoroughly at home. Only Nicholson's sensitive
temperament felt what others neither heard nor saw.

So a year had passed, and every evening Lois sat by the window,
watching the busy crowd, and building up their lives as she had once
dreamed of building up her own. She scarcely thought of herself.
Memories are dangerous. The present was too real to be considered, and
the future too blank and hopeless.

The darkness increased. Twilight yielded to nightfall, and the yellow
lights sprang up in the shops opposite her window. She heard the door
open, but did not turn, thinking it was her husband unexpectedly
returned.

"Shall I light the lamp?" she asked.

It was not Travers who answered. A familiar voice struck on her ears,
like the memories, ringing out a dangerous response from her tired
soul.

"Forgive me, Mrs. Travers. I met your husband this afternoon, and he
told me to drop in unannounced, as he would be alone. It seems the
other way about. I am very sorry to seem so rude."

Lois rose quickly to her feet. She saw Nicholson standing in the
doorway, tall, upright, his face hidden by the shadow.

"I won't disturb you," he added, after a moment's hesitation.

The tone of formality hurt her. With a return of her old
impulsiveness, she began searching for the matches.

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