Books: The Native Born
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I. A. R. Wylie >> The Native Born
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His eyes wandered instinctively toward the woman on the couch.
"Yes, you were quite right." He went to the curtained doorway, where
he found Mrs. Carmichael waiting for him, a quaint figure enough with
her sleeves rolled back, her skirts tucked up above her ankles, the
revolver stuck brigand-wise in her belt.
"I'm coming with you," she said coolly. "I can shoot as straight as
most of you, and a good deal better than George. I might be of some
use."
"You would be of use anywhere," he returned sincerely, "but, if I may
say so, you will be of more use here. Your courage will help the
others. As for us, we have fifty of my Gurkhas, and they will do all
that can be done. I will let you know what is happening. At present
you are safest here."
She sighed.
"Very well. And if any one is hurt, send him around. I have plenty of
bandages."
"Yes, of course."
It was a merely formal offer and acceptance. Both knew that it would
be scarcely worth while to bandage men already in their full health
and strength marked out for death. Nicholson went out, closing the
door after him, and once more an absolute stoic silence fell upon the
little company. In moments of crisis, it is the strict adherence to
the habits of a lifetime which keeps the mind clear and the nerve
firm. Lois went on quietly preparing some sandwiches, which in all
probability would never be eaten, and Mrs. Carmichael resigned martial
occupation for the cutting-out of a baby's pinafore for an East-end
child whom she had under her special patronage. But her mind was
active and, stern, self-opinionated martinet that she was, she could
not altogether crush the regrets that swarmed up in this last
reckoning up of her life's activity. Better had her charity and
interest been centered on the dirty little children whom she had
indignantly tolerated on her compound! Better for them all would it
have been had each one of them sought to win the love and respect of
the subject race! Then, perhaps, they would not have been deserted in
this last hour of peril.
Mrs. Carmichael glanced at Beatrice Cary with a fresh pricking of
conscience. What, after all, had she done to deserve the chief
condemnation? She had played with fire. Had they not all played with
fire? She had looked upon a native as a toy fit to play with, to break
and throw away. Did they not all, behind their seeming tolerance and
Christian principles, hide an equal depreciation? Was she even as bad
as some? How many men revealed to their syces their darkest moods,
their lowest passions? How many women were to their ayahs subjects for
contemptuous Bazaar gossip. They were all to blame, and this was the
harvest, the punishment for the neglect of a heavy responsibility. The
thought that she had been unjust was iron through Mrs. Carmichael's
soul, for above all things she prided herself on her fairness. She
pushed her work away and went over to Beatrice's side. Mrs. Cary's
head still rested against the aching shoulder, and Mrs. Carmichael
made a sign to let her improvize a cushion substitute. Beatrice shook
her head.
"No, thank you," she whispered, glancing down at the flushed, sleeping
face. "We have done each other so little real service that I am glad
to be able to do even this much. I don't suppose it will be for long.
How quiet everything is!"
Mrs. Carmichael looked at the clock on the writing-table.
"It is not yet midnight," she said. "Probably the Rajah is keeping his
promise." Her expression relaxed a little. "Don't tire yourself," she
added bruskly to Mrs. Berry, who had been fanning the unconscious
woman's face with an improvized paper fan. "I don't think she feels
the heat."
The missionary's wife continued her good work with redoubled energy.
It was perhaps one of the few really unselfish things which she had
ever done in the course of a pious but fundamentally selfish life, and
it gave her pleasure and courage. The knowledge that some one was
weaker than herself and needed her was new strength to her new-born
heroism.
"It is so frightfully hot," she said half apologetically. "Why isn't
the punkah-man at work?"
"The 'punkah-man' has bolted with the rest of them," Mrs. Carmichael
answered. "I dare say I could work it, though I have never tried."
"It is hardly worth while to begin now," Beatrice observed, and this
simple acknowledgment that the end was at hand received no
contradiction.
Once again the silence was unbroken, save for the soft swish of the
fan and Mrs. Cary's heavy, irregular breathing. Yet the five women who
in the full swing of their life had been diametrically opposed to one
another were now united in a common sympathy. Death, far more than a
leveler of class, is the melting-pot into which are thrown all
antagonisms, all violent discords of character. The one great fact
overshadows everything, and the petty stumbling-blocks of daily life
are forgotten. More than that still--it is the supreme moment in man's
existence when the innermost treasures or unsuspected hells are
revealed beyond all denial. And in these five women, hidden in two
cases at least beneath a mass of meanness, selfishness and
indifference, there lay an unusual power of self-sacrifice and pity.
Death was drawing near to them all, and their one thought was how to
make his coming easier for the other. When the silence grew
unbearable, it was Mrs. Carmichael who had the courage to break it
with a trivial criticism respecting the manner in which Lois was
making the sandwiches.
"You should put the butter on before you cut them," she said tartly,
"and as little as possible. I'm quite sure it has gone rancid, and
then George won't touch them. He is so fussy about the butter."
Mrs. Berry looked up. The perspiration of physical fear stood on her
cold forehead, but her roused will-power fought heroically and
conquered.
"And, please, would you mind making one or two without butter?" she
said. "Percy says all Indian butter is bad. Of course, it's only an
idea of his, but men are such faddy creatures, don't you think?"
"They wouldn't be men if they weren't--" Mrs. Carmichael had begun,
when she broke off, and the scissors that had been snipping their way
steadily through the rough linen jagged and dropped on the table. She
picked them up immediately and went on with an impatient exclamation
at her own carelessness. But the involuntary start had coincided with
a loud report from outside in the darkness, and a smothered scream.
Lois put down her knife.
"Won't you come and help me?" she said to Beatrice. "Your mother will
not notice that you have gone."
Beatrice nodded, and letting the heavy head sink back among the
cushions, came over to Lois' side.
"How brave you are!" she said in a whisper. "You seem so cool and
collected, just as though you believed your sandwiches would ever be
eaten!"
"I am not braver than you are. Look how steady your hand is--much
steadier than mine."
Beatrice held out her white hand and studied it thoughtfully.
"I am not afraid," she said, "but not because I am brave. There is no
room for fear, that is all." She paused an instant, and then suddenly
the hand fell on Lois'. The two women looked at each other. "Lois, I
am so sorry."
"For me?"
"For you and every one. I have hurt so many. It has all been my fault.
I would give ten lives if I had them to see the harm undone. But that
isn't possible. Oh, Lois, there is surely nothing worse than helpless
remorse!"
The hand within her own tightened in its clasp.
"Is it ever helpless, though?"
"I can't give the dead life--I can't give back a man's faith, can I?"
The light of understanding deepened in Lois' eyes.
"Beatrice--I believe I know!"
"Yes, I see you do. Do you despise me? What does it matter if you do?
It has been my fear of the world and its opinion that helped to lead
me wrong. Isn't it a just punishment? I have ruined both our lives.
Lois, I couldn't help hearing what Captain Nicholson said to you. It
explained what you said to me about building on the ruins of the past.
That was what he did--he built a beautiful palace on me--and I wrecked
it. I failed him."
"Have you really failed him?"
"Lois, I don't know--I am beginning to believe not. But it is too
late. I meant to clear away the rubbish--and build. But there is no
time."
"You have done your best."
"Oh, if I could only save him, Lois! He was the first man I had ever
met whom I trusted, the first to trust me. I owe him everything, the
little that is good in me. It had to come to life when he believed in
it so implicitly. And he owes me ruin, outward and inward ruin."
Lois made no answer. With a warm, impulsive gesture she put her arms
about the taller woman's neck and, drawing the beautiful face down to
her own, kissed her. Beatrice responded, and thus a friendship was
sealed--not for life but for death, whose grim cordon was with every
moment being drawn closer about them.
The sound of firing had now grown incessant. One report followed
another at swift, irregular intervals, and each sounded like a clap of
thunder in the silent room. Mrs. Cary stirred uneasily in her sleep, a
low, scarcely audible groan escaped the parted lips, as though even in
her dreams she was being pursued by fear's pitiless phantom. Her
self-appointed nurse continued to fan her with the energy of despair,
the poor livid face twitching at every fresh threatening sound. Mrs.
Carmichael still pretended to be absorbed in her pinafore, but the
revolver lay on the table, ready to hand, and there was a look in the
steady eyes which boded ill for the first enemy who should confront
her. Lois and Beatrice continued their fruitless task.
A woman's courage is the supreme victory of mind over matter. It is no
easy thing for a hero to sit still and helpless while death rattles
his bullet fingers against the walls and screams in voices of hate and
fury from a distance which every minute diminishes. For a woman
burdened with the disability of a high-strung nervous system, it is a
martyrdom. Yet these women, brought up on the froth of an enervating,
pleasure-seeking society, held out--held out with a martyr's courage
and constancy--against the torture of inactivity, of an imagination
which penetrated the sheltering walls out into the night where fifty
men writhed in a death-struggle with hundreds--saw every bleeding
wound, heard every smothered moan of pain, felt already the cold iron
pierce their own breasts. The hours passed, and they did not yield.
They had ceased from their incongruous tasks, and stood and waited,
wordless and tearless.
As the first grey lights of dawn crept into the stifling room they
heard footsteps hurrying across the adjacent room, and each drew
herself upright to meet the end. Mrs. Carmichael's hand tightened over
the revolver, but it was only Mr. Berry who entered. The little
missionary, a shy, society-shunning man, noted for doing more harm
than good among the natives by his zealous bigotry and ignorance of
their prejudices, stood revealed in a new light. His face was grimed
with dirt and powder, his clothes disordered, his weak eyes bright
with the fire of battle.
"Do not be afraid," he said quickly. "There is no immediate danger. I
have only been sent to warn you to be ready to leave the bungalow. The
front wall is shot-riddled, and the place may become indefensible at
any moment. When that time comes, you must slip out to the old
bungalow. Nicholson believes he can hold out there."
"My husband--?" interrupted Mrs. Carmichael.
"Your husband is safe. In fact, all three were well when I left. If I
wasn't against such things, I should say it was a splendid fight--and
every man a hero. The Rajah--"
"The Rajah--?"
Mr. Berry looked in stern surprise at the pale face of the speaker.
"The Rajah has a charmed life," he said somberly. "He is always in the
front of his men--we can recognize him by his dress and figure--he is
always within range, but we can't hit him. Not that I ought to wish
his death, though it's our only chance." He put his hands distractedly
to his head. "Heaven knows, it's too hard for a Christian man! Every
time I see an enemy fall, I rejoice--and then I remember that it is my
brother--" He stopped, the expression on his face of profound trouble
giving way to active alarm. "Hush! Some one is coming!"
A second time the door opened, and Travers rushed in. Lois saw his
face, and something in her recoiled in sick disgust. Fear, an almost
imbecilic fear, was written on the wide-open, staring eyes, and the
hand that held the revolver trembled like that of an old man.
"Quick--out by the back way!" he stammered incoherently. "I will lock
the door--so. That will keep them off a minute. They are bound to look
for us here first. Nicholson is retiring with his men--they are going
to have a try to bring down the Rajah. It's our one chance. It may
frighten the devils--they think he's a god. I believe he is, curse
him!" All the time, he had been piling furniture against the door with
a mad and feverish energy. "Help me! Help me!" he screamed. "Why don't
you help? Do you want to be killed like sheep?"
Lois drew him back by the arm.
"You are wasting time," she said firmly. "Come with us! Why, you are
hurt!"
He looked at the thin stream which trickled down the soiled white of
his coat. A silly smile flickered over his big face.
"Oh, yes, a scratch. I hardly feel it. It isn't anything. It can't be
anything. There's nothing vital thereabouts, is there, Berry?"
The missionary shrugged his shoulders. He had flung open the glass
doors which led on to the verandah, and the brightening dawn flooded
in upon them.
"Come and help me carry this poor lady," he said. "We have not a
minute to lose."
Travers tried to obey, but he had no strength, and the other thrust
him impatiently on one side.
"Mrs. Carmichael, you are a strong woman," he appealed. Between them
they managed to bring Mrs. Cary's heavy, unconscious frame down the
steps. It was a nerve-trying task, for their progress was of necessity
a slow one, and the sound of the desperate fighting seemed to surround
them on every side. It was with a feeling of intense relief that the
little party saw Nicholson appear from amidst the trees and run toward
them.
"That's right!" he cried. "Only be quick! They are at us on all sides
now, but my men are keeping them off until you are out of the
bungalow. The old ruin at the back of the garden is our last stand.
Carmichael is there already with a detachment, and is keeping off a
rear attack. I shall remain here."
"Alone?" Berry asked anxiously.
"Yes. I believe they will ransack the bungalow first. When they come,
the Rajah is sure to be at their head, and--well, it's going to be
diamond cut diamond between us two when we meet. I know the beggars
and their superstition. If I get in the first shot, they will bolt. If
_he_ does--"
"You are going to shoot him down like a rat in a trap!" Beatrice burst
out passionately.
The others had already hurried on. With a gentle force he urged her to
follow them.
"Or be shot down myself," he said. "Leave me to do my duty as I think
best."
She met his grave eyes defiantly, but perhaps some instinct told her
that he was risking his life for a poor chance--for their last chance,
for without a word she turned away, apparently in the direction which
her companions had already taken.
As soon as she was out of sight, Nicholson recharged his smoking
revolver, and stood there quietly waiting. His trained ear heard the
firing in front of the bungalow cease. He knew then that his men were
retiring to join Colonel Carmichael, and that he stood alone, the last
barrier between death and those he loved. The sound of triumphant
shouting drew nearer; he heard the wrenching and tearing of doors
crashing down before an impetuous onslaught, the cling of steel, a
howl of sudden satisfaction. His hand tightened upon his revolver; he
stood ready to meet his enemy single-handed, to fight out the duel
between man and man. But no one came. A bewildering silence had
followed upon the last bloodthirsty cry. It was as though the hand of
death had fallen and with one annihilating blow beaten down the
approaching horde in the high tide of their victory. But of the two
this strange stillness was the more terrible. It penetrated to the
little waiting group in the old bungalow and filled them with the
chill horror of the unknown. Something had happened--that they felt.
Lois crept to the doorway and peered out into the gathering daylight.
Here and there, half hidden behind the shelter of the trees, she could
see the khaki-clad figures of the Gurkhas, some kneeling, some
standing, their rifles raised to their dark faces, waiting like
statues for the enemy that never came. A dead, petrified world, the
only living thing the sunshine, which played in peaceful indifference
upon the scene of an old and a new tragedy! Lois thought of her
mother. By the power of an overwrought imagination she looked back
through a quarter of a century to a day of which this present was a
strange and horrible repetition. For a moment she lived her mother's
life, lived through the hours of torturing doubt and fear, and when a
stifled cry called her back to the reality and forced her to turn from
the sunlight to the dark room, it was as though the dead had risen, as
though her dreams had taken substance. She saw pale faces staring at
her; she saw on the rusty truckle-bed a figure which rose up and held
out frantic, desperate arms toward her. But it was no dream--no
phantom. Mrs. Cary, wild-eyed and distraught, struggled to rise to her
feet and come toward her.
"Where is Beatrice?" she cried hysterically. "Where is Beatrice? I
dreamed she was dead!--It isn't true! Say it isn't true!"
Lois hurried back. In the confusion of their retreat she had lost
sight of Beatrice, and now a cold fear froze her blood. She called her
name, adding her voice to the half-delirious mother's appeal; but
there was no answer, and as she prepared to leave the shelter of the
bungalow to go in search of the lost girl, a pair of strong hands
grasped her by the shoulders and forced her back.
"Lois, stand back! They are coming!"
Colonel Carmichael thrust her behind him, and an instant later she
heard the report of his revolver. There was no answering volley. A
dark, scantily-clad figure sprang through the trees, waving one hand
as though in imperative appeal.
"Don't fire--don't fire! It's me!"
The Colonel's still smoking revolver sank, and the supposed native
swayed toward him, only to sink a few yards farther on to the ground.
Carmichael ran to his side and lifted the fainting head against his
shoulder.
"Good God, Geoffries! Don't say I've hit you! How on earth was I to
know!"
"That's all right, Colonel. Only winded--don't you know--never hurried
so much in life. Have been in the midst of the beggars--just managed
to slip through. O Lor', give me something to drink, will you?"
Colonel Carmichael put his flask to the parched and broken lips.
"Thanks, that's better. We got your message, and are coming on like
fun. The regiment's only an hour off. You never saw Saunders in such a
fluster--it's his first big job, you know." He took another deep
draft, and wiped his mouth with the corner of his ragged tunic. "I
say--don't look at me, Miss Lois. I'm not fit to be seen." He laughed
hoarsely. "These clothes weren't made in Bond Street, and Webb assured
me that the fewer I had the more genuine I looked. I say, Colonel,
this is a lively business!"
Colonel Carmichael nodded as he helped the gasping and exhausted man
into the bungalow.
"Too lively to be talked about," he said. "I doubt if the regiment
isn't going to add itself to the general disaster."
"Oh, rot!" was the young officer's forgetful lapse into disrespect.
"The regiment will do for the beggars all right. They didn't expect us
so soon, I fancy. Just listen! I believe I've frightened them away
already. There isn't a sound."
Colonel Carmichael lifted his head. True enough, no living thing
seemed to move. A profound hush hung in the air, broken only by Mrs.
Cary's pitiful meanings.
"Oh, Beatrice, Beatrice, where are you?"
Geoffries turned his stained face to the Colonel's.
"Beatrice! That's Miss Cary, isn't it? Anything happened to her?"
Colonel Carmichael shrugged his shoulders with the impatience of a man
whose nerves are overstrained by anxiety.
"I don't know--we've lost her," he said. "We must do something at
once. Heaven alone knows what has happened."
No one indeed knew what had happened--not even the lonely man who
waited, revolver in hand, for the final encounter on whose issue hung
the fortunes of them all.
Only one knew, and that was Beatrice herself as she stood before the
shattered doorway of the Colonel's drawing-room, amidst the debris of
wrecked, shot-riddled furniture, face to face with Nehal Singh.
CHAPTER IX
HALF-LIGHT
Once before she had placed herself in his path, trusting to her skill,
her daring, above all, her beauty. With laughter in her heart and
cold-blooded coquetry she had chosen out the spot before the altar
where the sunlight struck burnished gold from her waving hair and lent
deeper, softening shades to her eyes. With cruel satisfaction, not
unmixed with admiration, she had seen her power successful and the
awe-struck wonder and veneration creep into his face. In the silence
and peace of the temple she had plunged reckless hands into the woven
threads of his life. Amidst the shriek of war, face to face with
death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite
the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat
its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,--another woman,
disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that
which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed and ruined.
Yet both in an instantaneous flash remembered that first meeting. The
drawn sword sank, point downward. He stood motionless in the shattered
doorway, holding out a hand which commanded, and obtained, a
petrified, waiting silence from the armed horde whose faces glared
hatred and the lust of slaughter in the narrow space behind. Whatever
had been his resolution, whatever the detestation and contempt which
had filled him, all sank now into an ocean of reborn pain.
"Why are you here?" he asked sternly. "Why have you not fled?"
"We are all here," she answered. "None of us has fled. Did you not
know that?"
He looked about him. A flash of scorn rekindled in his somber eyes.
"You are alone. Have they deserted you?"
"They do not know that I am here. I crept back of my own free will--to
speak with you, Nehal."
Both hands clasped upon his sword-hilt, erect, a proud figure of
misfortune, he stood there and studied her, half-wonderingly,
half-contemptuously. The restless forces at his back were forgotten.
They were no more to him than the pawns with which his will played
life and death. He was their god and their faith. They waited for his
word to sweep out of his path the white-faced Englishwoman who held
him checked in the full course of his victory. But he did not speak to
them, but to her, in a low voice in which scorn still trembled.
"You are here, no doubt, to intercede for those others--or for
yourself. You see, I have learned something in these two years. It is
useless. No one can stop me now."
"No one?"
He smiled, and for the first time she saw a sneer disfigure his lips.
"Not even you, Miss Cary. You have done a great deal with me--enough
perhaps to justify your wildest hopes--but you have touched the limits
of your powers and of my gullibility. Or did you think there were no
limits?"
"I do not recognize you when you talk like that!" she exclaimed.
"That is surprising, seeing that you have made me what I am," he
answered. Then he made a quick gesture of apology. "Forgive me, that
sounded like a reproach or a complaint. I make neither. That is not my
purpose."
"And yet you have the right," she said, drawing a deep breath, "you
have every right, Nehal. It does not matter what the others did to
you. I know that does not count an atom in comparison to my
responsibilities. You trusted me as you trusted no one else, and I
deceived you. So you have the right to hate me as you hate no one
else. And yet--is it not something, does it not mitigate my fault a
little, that I deceived myself far, far more than I ever deceived
you?" He raised his eyebrows. There was mockery in the movement, and
she went on, desperately resolute: "I played at loving you, Nehal. I
played a comedy with you for my own purposes. And one day it ceased to
be a comedy. I did not know it. I did not know what was driving me to
tell the truth, and reveal myself to you in the ugliest light I could.
I only knew it was something in me stronger than any other impulse of
my life. I know what it is now, and you must know, too. Can't you
understand? If it had been no more than a comedy, you must have found
me out--months ago. But you never found me out. It was _I_ who told
you what I had done and who I was--"
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