Samuel Johnson - "Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Life of John of Barneveld, 1609 14"

John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1598 99"

Thomas Hardy - "Life's Little Ironies and a Few Crusted Characters"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Native Born

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




His eyes were riveted on her face, but for that moment he did not see
her. He did not see the tears that glistened on her cheeks. He was
looking straight through the long vista of the past, right back to the
first hours of his memory, when he had wandered alone amidst strange
faces, a ruler in a palace which had never ceased to be his prison, an
exile whose home lay only in strange, fantastic dreams. And in this
final moment he seemed to stand high above the past, and ever swifter
and surer to trace through every incident of his life one same guiding
power. Through the snares of Behar Singh's hate-filled temptations it
had led onward; it had borne him to the temple--to the feet of the
woman he was to love through every torture of bitter deception; it had
swept him on a wave of impulse beyond his prison walls out into a
world which he at last hailed as his; and now, in the hour of fiercest
despair, of deepest loss, it was drawing him surely and swiftly
homeward. The past vanished. He saw again the face lifted to his--he
saw the tears--the Colonel's hand outstretched, waiting to clasp his
own. He heard the title that she gave him as a man hears a
long-forgotten watchword.

"You are English, Steven. You are English--you belong to us!"

He unfastened the sword at his side. For a moment he held it as though
in farewell. But there was no grief on his face as he laid the jeweled
weapon in the Colonel's hand.

"I have chosen," he said. "I can not go against my people."




CHAPTER XIII

ENVOI


With the surrender of one man the great Marut rising came to an end.
It had been built up by him and on him, and with him it collapsed. As
the news reached the armed thousands encamped about the ruined
Station, consternation fell upon them. There was no attempt at
organization or resistance. They believed simply that Heaven had
turned against them and Vishnu joined hands with the Englishman, and
they waited to hear no more. What had seemed an overwhelming force
melted away as though it had been a shadow, and in the jungle,
slinking along the lightless highways, or huddling in the lonely
hovels outside Marut, the remnant of Behar Singh's great army hid from
the hand of the destroyer. They had followed their god, and their god
had deserted them. All hope was lost, and with the fatalism of their
race they flung their weapons from them as they fled.

Pending the decision of the Government, Nehal Singh, now Steven
Caruthers, was held prisoner in the club-house he had built two years
before. Part of the returned regiment was encamped about the
surrounding gardens, in order to prevent all attempt at rescue, but
the precaution was a mere formality. Visitors came constantly. There
was not a man in all the Station who was not anxious to help bury the
past and to hold out the hand of friendship to one whom at the bottom
of their hearts they had once wronged and slighted. Among them
Carmichael and Nicholson were the chief. They passed many hours of
each day with him, and worked steadily and enthusiastically for his
pardon and release. He was touched and grateful, but beneath his
gratitude there still lurked the demon of unrest. She had not
come--the one being for whom he waited--she had sent no word. He knew
that her mother lay dying--above all things he knew that on the great
day of the attack she had stood resolutely between him and death--but
nothing, no explanation or assurance, calmed the hidden trouble of his
mind. After all, it had been pity--or remorse--not love.

Thus three weeks passed. The Colonel had spent the day with him
discussing the future, arranging for the transference of Lois' fortune
into his unwilling hands, and now, toward nightfall, he was once more
alone, wearied in body and soul. For the first time since his
surrender his sense of quiet and release from an immense burden was
gone. He was still alone. He felt now that he would always be alone,
for there was but one who could fill the blank in his life. And she
had not come. He did not and could not blame her. Who was he that a
woman should join her lot to his? An Englishman truly, but one over
whose birth and youth there hung a shadow, perhaps a curse such as had
darkened his mother's life and the life of all those in whose veins
there flows an alien blood. She must not even think that any link from
the past bound her. She must be free--quite free to choose. Wearily he
seated himself at his table and took his pen.

"You have been the great guiding light of my life," he wrote to her.
"You will always be, because I can not learn to forget. But for you it
would be easier and better to forget. You will be happier--" And then
he heard the door open, and she stood before him. The words that he
had meant to write rushed to his lips, but no further. Moved by a
common impulse, they advanced to meet each other, and the next moment
she was in his arms. Neither spoke. It seemed as though, once face to
face, there could be no doubts, no misunderstandings between them.
Their love was wordless, but it had spoken in a silence more eloquent,
more complete than words could ever have been.

"I could not come before," she said, after a little. "I could not
leave her. She was only at peace when I held her hand. She was very
happy at the last--now it is all over."

He held her closer to him, and she clung to him, not sadly or wearily,
but like a strong woman who had fought and won the thing she fought
for.

"It was Fate after all," he said, under his breath. "She meant us for
each other."

She looked up at him. Though suffering, physical and mental, had drawn
its ineffaceable lines upon her face, it had also added to her beauty
the charm of strength and experience.

"I knew long ago that it was Fate," she answered. "Do you remember
that first evening? You told me that people do not drift aimlessly
into each other's lives. Even then, against my will, I felt that it
was true. Afterward I was sure. I had entered into your life in a
moment of frivolous recklessness, but you had entered into mine with
another purpose, and I could not rid myself of you. Your hold upon me
was strong. It grew stronger, do what I would, and the farce became
deadly earnest."

"For me it was always deadly earnest," he said. "When I first saw you
standing before the idol, it was as though a wall which had surrounded
my life had been overthrown, and that you had come to be my guide and
comrade in a new and unknown world."

"And then I failed you."

His eyes met hers thoughtfully.

"Did you? Now I look back, I am not sure. I had to believe you when
you said you had deceived me and played with me. I had to force myself
to despise you. Yet, when you confronted me in the bungalow, I felt
suddenly that you needed to explain nothing. I understood."

"Did you understand that I had only deceived myself? I told myself
that it was a farce played at your expense. But--Heaven knows--I
believe it ceased to be a farce from the first hour I saw you. You
believed in me so. No one had believed in me before--I had never
believed in myself or in man, or in God, either. But I had to believe
in you, and afterward--the rest came." She drew herself upright and
looked him full in the dark eyes. "Steven, do you trust me?" He
nodded. "As you did on that day when you told me that you owed me all
that you were and ever would be?"

"As then, Beatrice."

She smiled gravely.

"You do right to trust me. You have made me worthy of your trust."

He put his arm about her shoulder, and led her gently on to the
verandah. The night had fallen dark and starless. Through the black
veil they saw the gleam of bivouac fires and heard the voices of men
calling to one another, and the clatter of piled arms. They remained
silent, after the storm and stress of the past, content to be together
and at peace. They knew that the long night was over and that the dawn
had broken.

When the Colonel entered they did not hear him, and without speaking
he turned back and closed the door after him. In his hand he held a
telegram ordering the deposition of Nehal Singh, Rajah of Marut, and
the recognition, pardon and release of one Steven Caruthers,
Englishman. But he crept away with the long-hoped-for message.

"Time enough," he thought. "They are happy."

And if beneath his heartfelt rejoicing there lurked the shadow of
bitterness, who shall blame him? There was one dearer to him than his
own child could have been, for whose wounded heart there seemed as yet
no balsam. And yet, unknown to him, for her also the dawn was
breaking. For even as he crept away with knitted brows, sharing her
burden with her by the power of love and sympathy, she held in her
hands the first herald of a happier future.

"What you have told me I accept--for now," Adam Nicholson had written.
"You are wise to travel with the Carmichaels. It will do you good. I,
who was prepared to wait my whole life for you, can have patience for
a little longer. I know that you suffer and as yet I may not help you.
Your pride separates us, but your pride is a little thing compared to
my love. What is your birth or parentage to me? You say it would
overshadow my whole life, darken my career? It might try. That would
be one thing more to fight against. We have come to India to sweep
away its prejudices; let us first sweep away our own. We have come to
bring freedom; let us first make ourselves free. It will be a good
battle, but it will not darken my life, Lois. Do you think opposition
and struggle could darken my life? Surely you know me better. Do but
stand at my side, and there will be no darkness. I am not a boy. I am
a man who sees before him long years of labor, and who needs the one
woman who can help him. Is our cathedral forgotten? I do not believe
it. You are not the woman to forget. The time is not far off when we
will crown our cathedral hand in hand. Only when your love dies can
the barrier between us become insurmountable. If your love lives,
then, as surely as there is a God in Heaven, I will come and fetch
you, Lois--my wife."

And the tears that filled her eyes as she read the boldly written
words were no longer the tears of grief. Her love for him had been the
rock upon which her life was built. It was imperishable. She knew thus
that she would not have long to wait until his coming.

THE END