One of Surajah Dowlah’s former subjects, a man whose ears the young Nabob had barbarously cut off for some offence, had recognised him in his flight, and had betrayed him to the agents of his successor. He was brought back in chains to Moorshedabad and carried before Meer Jaffier, at whose feet he flung himself, sobbing, and beseeching that his miserable life might be spared. Meer Jaffier, partly moved by his entreaties, partly restrained by regard for Colonel Clive, had shown a wish to spare him. But in Meer Jaffier’s son, young Meeram, the fallen tyrant had found a spirit as ferocious and ungovernable as his own. This boy—for he was scarcely sixteen—thirsted for his cousin’s blood, and even attempted to stab him in Meer Jaffier’s presence. Meer Jaffier, afraid of his son, had ordered the prisoner to be removed into the dungeons under a guard, and this was done. But the fury of Meeram was not to be appeased. In the dark hours of the night, unknown to his father, he had descended into the dungeon, bribed or overawed the guards, and——
They threw open the door. They held up their torches over a dark object lying on the ground. There, with a dozen red rents in the bosom of his tunic, with blood thickly soaked into the dye of his silk robe, with blood caked upon the rubies and emeralds in his turban, I saw Surajah Dowlah, dead!
For some minutes I stood still in the presence of this impressive retribution, recalling the brief but terrible career which had thus tragically ended. There lay the cruellest despot of his age, the practitioner of horrible debaucheries, the sworn enemy of the English name, who had driven us out of Bengal, and perpetrated the never-to-be-forgotten massacre in which I had been so nearly included. I was but newly come out of the presence of two of his victims, and here I beheld him cut off from light more surely than the man he had blinded, dead while the woman he had murdered still breathed. I gazed, and was satisfied. The evil desires of vengeance which had tormented me for so long were utterly extinguished. I beheld before me the justice of high Heaven, and I came away, not exulting, but awed and subdued.
I returned to Marian’s bedside, and from that time I did not leave her till the end. Occasionally she would talk to me in a low, sweet voice, calling back memories of the old town of Yarmouth and the pleasant scenes of her youth. Once she spoke to me of myself.
“I have treated you very ill, Athelstane. I knew that I could never repay you for your love, but it made me proud to have it; I liked to count upon your devotion to me, and I deceived and tempted you.”
I tried to protest, but she would have it so.
“I have been wrong in everything I did to you,” she said. “I ought never to have treated you as a friend, but as a stranger. Then you would have grown out of your foolish passion, and have forgotten me; for, believe me, Athelstane, I was not fit for you, nor you for me. Beneath your hot temper and adventurous spirit, in which you resemble your cousin, you are a very different nature. You are a Puritan at bottom, and your conscience will not let you rest except in sober, honest ways of life. It is better that you should take a wife from among your own people, one whose nature is in accord with what is deepest and best in you, and not with what is worst. Forgive me, Athelstane, and forget me, as one that crossed your life by an evil chance and wrought you only harm.”
But that, as I told her with tears, I never could do, nor would believe. And even now, when I look back across the years with calmer vision and a wiser judgment, I am still glad that I knew and loved Marian Rising, and never wish to root the memory of that wild romance out of my heart.
She spoke to me also of my cousin Rupert, saying that she had long ago forgiven—indeed, I think she never was really able to resent—his wrongs done towards her, and asking me to do the same. I assured her that I had long ago buried all remains of ill-will between us, and I promised her that I would take him back to England with me, and endeavour to make his peace with his father at Lynn.
Soon afterwards she became very weak, and, seeing that the last moment was approaching, I fetched Rupert in to her. He stood with his head bowed above the bed, his hair streaked with grey and the marks of the agony he had suffered on his face, while Marian caught hold of his hand, and, with the feeble remains of her strength, carried it to her lips and kissed it. In the doorway stood an Indian, gazing at the sight with solemn, unmoved visage. Outside we could hear the distant clash of the temple gongs in honour of some sacrifice, and through the lattices there was a glimpse of high white walls, with narrow slits of windows, shaded over by the dark-green foliage of a teak tree. Was it all real? I asked myself, or some vision which had come to me in the night, and from which I should awake to find myself abed in my own little room at home in Brandon?