A STRANGE JOURNEY
Afterwards Tom Gregory looked back upon this journey as one of the strangest experiences of his strange and chequered life. As regards outward events there is little to record. Bâl Narîn knew every step of the way. The soldiers, servants, camp-followers, and coolies, of whom the cavalcade consisted, were so well up in their duties, and so hopeful of large reward from the rajah, that they worked with all the regularity and much more than the intelligence of machines. Even the heavens seemed to smile upon the intrepid travellers, for there could be no doubt that the air was less pestilential than is usual at this season, while there were none of those sweeping storms of rain that, in late summer and early autumn, will sometimes make the roads of the Terai impassable.
They travelled quietly, so as not to fatigue Grace and Kit, and it took them three days to work across the jungle from the robbers' path, where Bâl Narîn had found the first traces of the fugitives, to the Maharajah's Road.
This, of course, was the most difficult and dangerous part of the journey, but they accomplished it safely. There was no talk of fever now, no grumbling about the denseness of the jungle and the fatigue of the way. Bâl Narîn issued the orders for each day, and they were obeyed with joyful alacrity. It would almost seem as if the gladness that had taken possession of the camp since Grace and Kit were found had given it strength and tone. But for all this, and in spite of the kind and gracious face he showed to his followers, the young rajah carried about with him an aching heart. His hope and dream had not been fulfilled. He had saved his love from the last extremity; but for what had he saved her? Sometimes when he saw the wandering horror in her eyes, when he listened to the broken words of pain, which for his sake she tried to repress, when, with a trouble which almost unmanned him, he realised that so it must be as long as she lived, he would say to himself ruefully, that for her it would have been better if in the trance in which he found her in the hut, her gentle spirit had winged its flight from earth.
But these were his worst moments. The best times were when, as Kit expressed it, Grace was 'somewhere else.' Then, but for the curious expression of her eyes, the haunting pain that seemed always to be lying in wait for her, she was so quiet and peaceful, so much the Grace of the dear old days, that he could venture to hope for her restoration to health of body and peace of mind.
He would lengthen out these times of mental aberration. When she called to him by some name out of the past, he would answer to it. Patiently he would work himself into the spirit of her dream, so that he might live and act in it. With an ingenuity born of love, he would keep out of her sight, as much as possible, everything that would remind her of the present. Kit was not allowed to come near her while the dream lasted. The servants were kept in the background. Of everything strange that she saw about her, there would be some ingenious explanation. Thus the meal under the shadow of a tree was a picnic; and the jungle was an English wood, and the tent was a cottage in which they had taken shelter from heat or storm, he and she together, and the others—Lady Elton and Mrs. Gregory, and Lady Winter and the fine Sir Reginald, and the girls—these were all behind them and would presently come up. So in the hours of tranquillity, which his love made for her, she gained marvellously in health and strength; but Tom had an uneasy feeling that the spectre of pain and horror which she carried about with her was not destroyed, and that some day it would assert its presence dangerously. The fact was, that Grace lacked the robust individualism which enables the majority of people, and especially of women, to exult over their own exceptional good fortune. She could not feel herself a favourite of heaven; she could not, as she would say pathetically, be grateful. That thought of the others, the ill-doers as well as those who had suffered wrong, haunted her perpetually. She saw them in her dreams. They seemed to be holding out their hands to her. Whenever she was not wandering in the past, her heart was full of a new and incomprehensible anguish.
A little diversion, which had a beneficial effect upon her mind, was created by their meeting with Hoosanee. It was in a great sâal-forest, when they were travelling pleasantly along an easy road, under a fine canopy made by overarching trees, that the rajah's faithful servant, who had made up his mind that no such fugitives as those he was seeking could have crossed Sisagarhi, came up with them.
He came in late in the evening, when the cavalcade had halted as it did habitually between sunset and moonrise. The blow on the hillside had done for him what his master had hoped from it. The fever that had begun to work in his blood had gone, and his power and energy had returned. The meeting between him and the rajah was rather that of intimate friends than of master and servant. When Hoosanee heard that the object of the expedition had been fulfilled, that the fair and gracious maiden whom they had travelled so far, and on his part so hopelessly, to seek was actually in camp, he cried like a child. 'Master! Master!' he sobbed, the tears rolling down his face. 'Who will dare to tell me now that the gods do not fight on our side? Ah! if some miracle would take us straight to the gates of our own town! How proudly we shall enter! It will be better even than the night when first the Rajah Sahib passed through our streets and the people saluted him as Rama, their prince and hero——'
'That remains to be proved, Hoosanee,' said Tom, smiling. 'Remember that I have offended the people of Gumilcund grievously. I doubt whether they will accept me as their rajah now. But I am sure that, for the love of those who have gone, they will admit me for a time. And I have been mindful of their interests while I was away. Is it not strange, Hoosanee,' he went on dreamily, 'now I have fulfilled my task the love of my people and my work has come back to me? The voice that was silent so long spoke to me again last night. I am one of you, my friend, as I was before. You are so near to me that you will understand this. But we must not be surprised if the others do not.'
'They will: they will. Chunder Singh knows. Chunder Singh is the friend of his Excellency. There is no fear,' said Hoosanee joyfully.