"I don't want to take credit for that. I am beginning to see that I may have come out with a mistaken motive, not so much to do my little bit over the famine as to find fault with what seemed to me an autocratic mode of government. If all Indian officials were like you——"
"Like me!" Philip gave a bitter little laugh. "I may also have had my motive in doing famine work apart from the welfare of the people. We are all actuated by motives, principally selfish and private."
She finished her coffee. "Anyway," she said, rising, "I am glad we have met, though you have upset my ideas and made me feel horrid when I thought I was such an angel of mercy and reform! I am afraid I am very conceited, but it is so nice to feel superior and generous!"
He saw tears in her eyes, and he took her outstretched hand in true comradeship, ashamed of his attempt that morning to play upon her natural instincts. "Don't bother about motives," he said in friendly understanding, "go on with your blessed work. We are all doing what we can for the people of this great old country, and believe me they aren't insensible to our efforts. They know in their hearts. Some day they will stand by us and give all they can in recognition of what we have done in the past for them. The test is bound to come, and whoever gets the credit doesn't matter. The result will be our reward. The only fear is that all the drudgery and the sacrifice may be undone, go for nothing, wrecked by a clique composed of self-seekers, encouraged by those who have quite other ends to gain."
They left the tent together. He helped her into her saddle, and watched her ride off attended by the syce who would bring back the chestnut; the Honourable Dorothy Baker—born of the people, reared as an aristocrat, who had set out to patronise those among whom such an anomaly was impossible, unthinkable! How invaluable might be the zeal of her kind rightly inspired and directed in the cause of India, could they only divest themselves of the very arrogance they were so anxious to impute to the men who were guarding the safety of the brightest jewel in the crown of England....
For the next few hours Flint buried himself in papers. The heat and the dust and the flies were distracting; he found it hard to fix his mind on his work, and his thoughts wandered perversely. He remembered he had not yet written his weekly letter to his mother; it had been so difficult to write naturally after the upheaval at Rassih, he had felt such a hypocrite—allowing his parents to infer that in volunteering for famine work he had been prompted solely by a sense of duty; yet to tell them the truth was beyond him. He pictured the old people in their comfortable South Kensington home; his father always busy over local charities and municipal boards and councils. Major-General Sir Philip Flint had not shed his energy and public spirit with his retirement from Indian service. Dear old chap!—white haired, courtly, ever ready to listen when people came to him with grievances, real or imaginary; and the mater, with her large circle of old Indian friends, her bazaars, and her tea parties, and the never ending stream of visitors she was always so ready to "put up," people just arrived from India, old friends settled in the country who were intent on a week's shopping; hospitality was in her bones. She would have loved to harbour grandchildren. Philip knew how she regretted that his sister was not the wife of an Indian civilian, or an Indian Army man, though her marriage to a prominent specialist in Harley Street had been highly satisfactory, as Lady Flint admitted; of course, she would say, it was a comfort to feel that Grace was so well provided for, but Grace lived in such a different world from their own—a world composed of public people, people connected with the stage, and literature, and art, politics, the law; no dull old Generals, or members of the Indian Council, and so on for Grace! and there were no babies to come and spend the day with Granny, to be taken to the seaside, to be fussed over and spoiled.... Her great hope now, as she told him in her letters, was that Philip would marry some dear girl whose family, like his own, had served the Indian Government for generations, so that they would all understand each other and carry on the old traditions comfortably, friends in every sense. Grace's friends and in-laws were a sort of nervous terror to poor Lady Flint. What would be her feelings, questioned her son as he sat dreaming of his mother in his tent, so far away from her, could she know the truth, could she realise that her hopes of such a daughter-in-law would never be fulfilled so long as Stella Crayfield claimed his heart; and that would be for always—till he died....
The pen dropped from his fingers, he leaned back in his chair, drowsy, inert. Jacob was snoring in a corner; from without came the ceaseless murmur of the concourse awaiting his decisions, and on his table lay such piles of papers still to be examined. From sheer weariness he fell asleep and dreamed of Stella, of their hopeless love, and mingled with it all was the memory of Dorothy Baker, vigorous, purposeful, arresting. He seemed to be standing between the two girls at the base of a long flight of steps; they were urging him upward, but he felt tired, slack-limbed, heavy-hearted; he wanted to rest. The steps were so steep, high as a pyramid of Egypt; he could not see the top, it was lost in a haze of luminous light. "Go on, go on," they were saying; they were holding each other's hands, as it seemed to him conspiring to urge him forward. "Go on; they have all gone up in their turn—look! some are already at the top, some have died on the way, some have lost everything, but never mind—go on, go on...."
And he struggled, lifting his feet to the steps that were rough and burning, to find himself in the midst of a ghostly pageant. Near him was a little old man with dim tragic eyes, dressed in a blue coat and knee breeches. Where had he seen him before? There was a world of sorrow, of bitter disappointment in the small, bowed figure, so pathetic, yet breathing a spirit of wisdom and untiring tenacity. "Who are you, little old man, tell me who you are?" Philip heard himself asking. And faintly, as though borne on the hot west wind, came the whisper of a name—was it Warren Hastings? A wrinkled yellow hand was raised, pointing upward.... A few more steps; now he was pushing through a motley host all strangely garbed. Some of them held up a Cross and a Book, some displayed tokens of trade; there were women with empty arms, weeping for the husbands and the children they had lost, yet glorying in the sacrifice; and a band of people, half English half Indian, who had given their lives in the cause of their great two parents. They were lining the ladder, the stiff, steep ladder.... Someone stepped out from the crowd and laid an encouraging hand on his arm: "Go on, my boy, fight! There is nothing like fighting!" and to his horror Philip saw that the speaker's throat was cut, that he held in his hand a little penknife and a pen, just a quill pen.... Who was it? Who was it had ended his life in a moment of mad impulse, the fine brain snapping with the strain and the fervour of work and responsibility? Ah, now he remembered; it was Clive, great Clive! so noble, so strong in his influence and judgment, in his making of Indian history. Always a fighter, even from his schoolboy days.... What a pitiful end to a brave career! and yet what matter when the task had been accomplished, victories won; at least he had but sought peace and repose in his own way and at his own time. The hand that held the fatal little knife was also waving him upward, pointing to the top.... With him were others, ghosts from the past, whispering names, magical names, that lived not only in the memories of those of their own race and colour but in the hearts of the people they had served and fought for, and saved; also great fighters with dusky faces and flashing eyes, faithful supporters, fearless and fierce, without whose allegiance all the strife and the sacrifice might have been useless; one in spirit with their leaders, East and West bound together by one high aim—that of justice and right.... "Don't fail us," they chorused. "Keep going, give of your best as we did before you!" And they waved their swords and their scimitars, and the Cross, driving him upward, till at the summit he saw a speck of light that, as he climbed, grew in brilliance, took shape, and formed itself into letters of fire: Star of India."
He cried: "What can I do? I am only one of a crowd, a fly on the wheel!" The sound of his own voice wakened him; he stood up, still dazed, haunted by the fantastic dream. Jacob was snoring in the corner; hoarse voices murmured outside; a swirl of hot dust and wind shook the tent. Mechanically Flint sorted his papers, put on his hat, and went forth into the hot stillness of the evening.