The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People

by I. A. R. Wylie

CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT HEALER

"Yes, it's a fine building," Travers said, looking about him with an expression of satisfaction. "The Rajah hasn't spared the paint in any way. You see, it was all native work, so he killed two birds with one stone—pleased us and gave the aborigines a job. He has gone quite mad on reforms, poor fellow!" He laughed, not in the least contemptuously, but with a faint pity. "And it's all your doing, Miss Beatrice," he went on, turning to her with an elaborate bow. "You should be very proud of your work."

She looked him straight in the face. They were in the new ballroom of the clubhouse which the Rajah of Marut had just opened. In the adjacent tearoom she heard voices raised in gay discussion, but for the moment they were quite alone.

"You give me more credit in the matter than I deserve," she said. "Is that generosity on your part, or—are you shirking your share of the responsibility?"

"I—shirk my share of the responsibility!" he exclaimed with a good-tempered lifting of the eyebrows. "My dear lady, have you ever known me to do such a thing?"

She smiled rather sarcastically.

"No, Mr. Travers, but I own that the idea does not seem to me wholly impossible."

"And even if you were right, why should I in this particular case 'shirk the responsibility,' as you put it? Surely it is not responsibility we have incurred, but gratitude."

She walked by his side over to the open windows which looked out on to the as yet uncultivated and barren gardens.

"The question is this," she said at last: "Does the superficial gratitude of a crowd in any way compensate for the fact that, in order to obtain it, a whole life's happiness has been incidentally sacrificed?"

"I know to whom you are alluding," he said, looking earnestly at her, "although, as a matter of fact, the two things have nothing to do with each other, except in your imagination. You mean Lois. Yes, of course she has had a hard time. Who doesn't? But it's rubbish to talk of a 'life's happiness.' In the first place, there isn't such a thing—nothing lasts so long as a lifetime, I assure you. In the second, Lois has not sustained any real loss—not any which I can not make good to her."

"Do you imagine yourself so all-sufficient?" she asked.

"I have confidence in my own powers," he admitted. "That is the first condition of success. I believe that in a few hours I shall have Lois on the road to recovery."

"I do not in the least understand your methods," Beatrice said, "but they have hitherto been so eminently successful that I suppose I ought not to question them. I hope for the best. I really was rather sorry for Lois—especially as she behaved so well."

"Are you starting a conscience, Miss Beatrice?" Travers asked gaily. "I rather suspect you. It would be such a typically feminine proceeding."

"There you are quite wrong," she answered, with a shade of annoyance in her cool voice. "A conscience is an appendage which I discarded a good many years ago as the luxury of respectability. As you know, and as any woman at the Station would tell you, I am not respectable."

"Whence this anxiety, then?"

"It is purely a practical one. You talk of gratitude—do you really think anyone is grateful to me for—this?" She waved her hand toward the lofty, handsomely decorated room before her. "Why, I doubt if anyone remembers that I had anything to do with it. But every one suspects me of having bewitched Stafford into becoming a deserter—thanks to Mrs. Carmichael's tongue—and every one feels a just and holy indignation. I doubt whether they really care a rap about poor Lois, and indeed I could accuse one or two of a certain satisfaction; but the matter has given them a new whip with which to beat us out of Marut."

"But you will not be beaten out of Marut," Travers said, a smile passing over his fresh face. "You have got a far too firm footing. The woman who has bagged the finest catch in the Station has nothing more to fear."

"You mean Captain Stafford?"

"I do."

"Then, if you have no objection, we will leave that subject alone."

"By all means, if you wish it," he agreed, somewhat taken aback. "But, between friends, you know, one does not need to be so delicate."

Her hands played idly with the handle of her silk parasol.

"It is not a matter of delicacy," she said, "—at least, not altogether. It would be rather silly to begin with that sort of thing at my time of life, wouldn't it? But—you don't know for certain that I shall marry Captain Stafford."

"My dear lady! You have accepted him!" Travers exclaimed.

She looked at him, her clear hazel eyes flashing with momentary fun.

"It is very bad policy to rely upon what a woman says further back than twenty-four hours," she warned him.

For once he remained serious.

"That may be true, but it is sometimes necessary to warn her that first thoughts are best."

"Now, what do you mean?"

He folded his arms over his broad chest.

"Miss Beatrice," he said, appearing to ignore her question, "do you remember some time ago my telling you that we were like two partners at a game of bridge?"

"I remember very well."

"Well, we are still partners, though the game is nearing its end. As a rule I am for straight, aboveboard play, but there are moments when a man is strongly tempted to cheat."

"Haven't we cheated all through?" she inquired, with a one-sided smile.

"By no means. We have finessed, that's all. Just at present I feel impelled to—well, give you a hint under the table."

"Why?"

"Miss Beatrice, more or less I stand in the position of a skilled and rich player who has tempted a less wealthy partner into a doubtful game. If my plans fail, I can look after myself; but I shouldn't like to get you in a mess. If I give you a hint, will you keep counsel?"

"I suppose I must."

"Well, then, it's just this. Your mother has invested the greater part of her money in the Marut Company. I did not want her to—I'll say that for myself—but she has the speculating craze, and nothing would stop her. Of course the mine will be an immense success—but if it isn't, I should like to see you, as my partner, well out of reach of the results."

"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.