'And Grace?' said Aglaia. 'Isn't she your friend too?'
'She is my friend, and something more. At least, I hope so. You know we may have more friends than one.'
'Yes,' said Aglaia doubtfully. But she added under her breath, 'There is only one best.'
[CHAPTER XLVIII]
A LETTER FROM ENGLAND
Leaving Grace to come to herself in the hands of her friends, we will follow the young rajah to his rooms, where several people were waiting to have audience of him. He despatched the business which they brought to him with his usual clear-sightedness and rapidity, received the congratulations of the Resident, who had come up to see him, and of the two young officers whom he had so happily rescued, appointed a session for the following day, in open court, to try the cases, and read the petitions which had been accumulating during his absence, promised to attend later a supper which the Resident had prepared in his honour, and then, being left at last to the ministrations of Hoosanee and Ganesh, he turned to the letters and papers heaped high upon his table. Before turning them over he stopped to think. Up to this he had been too busy to reflect. All day long, ever since he touched the boundaries of the State, a vague sense of wonder had been present in his mind. He was trying now to puzzle it out. When, two months ago, he left Gumilcund secretly, when he camped out in the forest waiting for news from Dost Ali Khan, he had felt like an escaped prisoner. Now, having fulfilled his mission, and returned to the bondage which he had remembered as so galling, he found, to his surprise, that it was bondage no longer. He had left Gumilcund as a prison; he returned to it as a home. And it was not that he had lost his love for England. On the contrary, he had never loved England more: he had never felt prouder of his connection with her. Some day, if his life was spared, he hoped to revisit his early home, and to see his mother and the friends of his youth. But he belonged to India, not to England. A few weeks ago, it would have given him keen pain to say this even to himself. It would have been a renunciation such as he could scarcely have had strength to face. Now he did not find that any effort was needed. The wonder to him was that he had not recognised it before.
Hoosanee and Ganesh were chattering busily, as they made preparations for his toilet and his tea. Their voices came to him like the distant buzzing of bees; but the sounds warned him that he must not give much more time to thought. He was turning over the papers mechanically. They were spread out on a beautiful table of marble inlaid with precious stones. Above it swung a gold lamp of delicate workmanship. He wondered a little at the familiarity of these things, at the sense of coming back to his own—he who had only enjoyed them for so short a time! The papers did not seem to be of the first importance. There were belated news-sheets—circulars—petitions; answers sent to inquiries of his own by Indian civil and military officers, some of which he put by for more careful perusal on the following day, and two or three letters from private friends. He was about to turn away from his hasty inspection, and to give himself over into the hands of Hoosanee, when at the very bottom of the pile, a bulky letter, different in appearance from any of the others, drew his notice. As he took it up his heart began to beat strangely. He held it up to the light. It was addressed in his mother's handwriting—the delicate, flowing penmanship he knew so well; what made it so peculiarly remarkable to him was not only its size and weight; but that, for the first time since he took up his position, his mother had addressed him by his Indian name and title.
He looked at the date, went through a brief calculation, and then sank down upon his seat, feeling, for the moment, sick and faint. The letter was an answer to that written at Lucknow, in which he had begged so earnestly to be told his true position. Trembling from head to foot, he put it within his vest. How he passed through that evening with all its formalities—how, carrying about with him the consciousness of this letter which he had not yet dared to open, he talked and laughed and jested, and told the tale of his adventures, and independently of it—it, that might change his whole life—entered into engagements and appointments, and made plans for the future—how, when the long evening of festivities was over, he found strength to go quietly to his room, and, dismissing Hoosanee, to sit down under the swinging lamp and open it, he never quite knew. But it was done at last, and that was his last moment of weakness. The four closely written sheets, in which his poor mother told the secret that had made the joy and the torment of her life, he read to the end without wavering. When he got up from their perusal, his face was perfectly pale, but his eyes glistened strangely.
For a few moments he paced the room. He went to the marble lattice, and, leaning his head against it, let the soft and fragrant air blow in upon his closed eyelids and burning forehead. He looked back upon his room—the room where Byrajee Pirtha Raj had breathed his last—the sculptured pillars, the inlaid pavement, and the fretted roof. He turned to the window again, and looked out upon the solemn Indian night—the still earth—the dark trees with their ink-black shadows—the piercing radiance of silver stars winning its way through the finely-wrought marble. His mind was strangely upset. It was as if a revolution, in the conduct of which his own will had neither place nor power, were being wrought within him. And for this moment, at least, emotion was as passive as will. If he had any feeling, it was a sense of satisfaction that the mystery of the past was solved. He knew now to whom he belonged—knew that it was through no caprice of an eccentric stranger, but by the will of the Divine, which, from the beginning, had shaped his course for this end, that he had been called to his present position. Whether he was sorry or glad, uplifted or humiliated, would be for to-morrow to determine. To-night he had no more force left, even to feel.