But, though unheard of outside the state, he was busy within it. I gather from hints scattered through his later writings that, as day followed day tranquilly, he entered more completely into the life of the city; and that the people—many of whom believed with Chunder Singh and Hoosanee that in this comely stranger their own rajah had returned to them—received him as one of themselves.
It was not a happy time; no period of transition can be altogether satisfactory to oneself. Being highly strung by temperament, he felt the mental strain more than others, while the complete severance with the old life affected him painfully. Up to this there had always been something to connect him with the past. Jung Bahadoor, Gambier Singh, Dinkur Rao, and the Ranee of Jhansi had all spoken to him of England. Wherever he had been he had seen English faces and heard the English tongue; here he met no one but Indians. Even the Resident was absent. Owing to the death of the late rajah, he had been on duty for some time; his health, he said, was suffering; so, after welcoming the new ruler, he had started with his family to take holiday in a hill-station.
At first Tom felt disposed to congratulate himself on this isolation. He remembered what had been said to him on board the 'Patagonia'—that between East and West a great gulf is fixed. If, as he would sometimes imagine, he was to lay the first stone of a bridge to unite them, he must learn to stand firmly on both sides. Then, too, he had little time for vain regrets. He had begun to realise the magnitude of the task that lay before him, and all the energies of his nature were bent on preparing himself for it. The language, the religion, the laws, and social customs of his new country had all to be made separate subjects of study before he could presume to say that he understood its people; while, in addition, there was the duty—peculiarly sacred to him—of finding out what the aims of his predecessors had been, and of looking for and examining any records they had left behind them.
But after those first few days, filled to the brim with hard and unremitting toil, there came a sense of want. His old feelings might be stifled, but they were not dead. A dull craving, which he could not formulate, haunted him perpetually. During the night, which was his only time of relaxation from mental labour, there would come to him vivid visions of home, from which he would awake with a sick anguish that brought tears to his eyes and throbs of pain to his heart. Like a nightmare the sense of his isolation would weigh upon him; dear faces from the past would gaze at him reproachfully, and he would stretch out his arms to them with a bitter cry. He could not—he could not let them go.
Meanwhile, with the passion born of despair, he clung to what remained to him of his past life. He had brought away with him a little English New Testament, his mother's last gift to him. In the silence of his marble chamber, when everyone in the palace was asleep but himself, he opened and read it. How different it was from the subtle philosophies into which he was painfully working his way! Could it be only that the words were familiar and therefore dear to him? Or was there indeed some sweet majestic power in them, such as is to be found nowhere else in all the world? With a trembling heart he read them over:—'He that loveth his life shall lose it.' 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' 'This is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.'
They were not new to him; from his childhood up he had been instructed in them. They were so familiar to his ears as almost to have lost their sense to his heart. But now, coming fresh to him from these other religions, they smote upon his mind with a new power and beauty.
From the utterances he turned to the record of the life, and his wonder and enchantment grew. Its purity—he had never thought of this before, for he had not seen how men build up their deities—its selfless love, its courage, its devotion; these came upon him like a revelation. More than once in these silent nights he asked himself if this might not be the secret, this the reconciling element which, after these many ages of ignorance and disunion, would blend the two continents together so that they might move forward to a new era of blessedness. But as yet he said nothing, even to Chunder Singh.
The sultry month of April ran its course; the heat continued to be terrible; but the young rajah, in his large marble-lined rooms, artificially darkened and cooled with flowing water and the spray of fountains, suffered little inconvenience from it.
He heard daily of the outside world, and what he heard was reassuring. In these latter days of April it seemed to the English in the North-west Provinces—who were for the most part as ignorant of the inner life of the people about them as the infant is of the feelings of those who dandle it in their arms—that any danger which might once have existed was over. The soldiers had been convinced by a variety of telling examples that to fight against their salt would be the height of folly; and the people, even if they were disaffected, as a few acts of incendiarism, with a sullen demeanour towards the English, seemed to indicate, could do nothing without the army.
May opened, and still they held on their way quietly, and the rajah's heir began to hope that the fanatics were silenced by hard and stubborn facts, and that the bitterness, so long foretold, had run its course. Then, like a flash of lightning flaming across the blue of a cloudless sky, came the news of the revolt at Meerut.