The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People

by I. A. R. Wylie

"Oh, no. I only told him I should be at home as a sort of facon de parler. He only comes when he thinks I am there—admirable person—and I know you like to have old friends about. Good-by, dear."

"Good-by." She accepted his kiss listlessly, and when he had gone went back to the window.

The window had become Lois Travers' vantage-point of life. From thence she could overlook the bustling Madras square into which four streets poured their unending stream, and build her fancies about each one of the atoms as they passed unconsciously beneath her gaze. Some of the faces were well known to her. They always passed at the time when she took her sewing and sat by the window, pretending to work by the fading glow of evening light, and about each she wove a simple little story, always, or nearly always, happy. She imagined the men returning from business to their homes. If there was ever a cloud upon their brow, she smiled to think how the trouble would be brushed away by loving hands; if their step were more than usually light and elastic, her own heart grew lighter with the thought that they were hurrying back to the source of their happiness.

Lois lived on the real or imagined joys of others. She clung to her air castles in which her unknown heroes lived, building them more beautifully, fitting them out with more perfect content, as her own brick dwelling grew darker and more desolate. She felt that if ever she let go her hold on them she would lose faith in human happiness, and thus in life itself. For between Lois Travers the woman and Lois Travers the light-hearted, high-spirited girl there stretched a year's gulf. Marriage had been to her what it is more or less to all women—a Rubicon, a Book of Revelations in which girlish ideals are rarely realized, sometimes modified, more often destroyed.

Clever and pliable women, women with the "art of living" do not allow their hearts to be broken in the latter event, supposing them to have relaxed their cleverness so far as to have had ideals at all; but Lois was not clever or pliable, and her ideals had been destroyed. She had loved John Stafford, and in some inexplicable way he had failed her. She had given her life into Travers' hands in the belief that he needed her for his progress, and that in helping him her idle powers of love and devotion would not be wasted. Too late she realized—what no woman ever realizes until it is too late—that the man who needs a woman for his salvation is already far beyond her help.

Beneath Lois' light-heartedness and love of gaiety there lurked a spirit of Puritanism which had drawn her to Stafford, and now brought her into violent conflict with Travers' fundamental frivolity. In the first month of their marriage she had had to admit that she had reached the bottom of his character, and found nothing there—not so much as a deeply planted vice. He had pretended a depth of feeling which was only in part sincere, and he was too lazy to keep up a pretense when his chief object was gained. He really cared for Lois, but he had wilfully exaggerated the role she played in his life. Always good-natured and kindly, he never allowed her to ruffle or anger him. She had never seen him rough or cruel to any human being, and all these superficial virtues forced her farther from him.

A few significant incidents had revealed to her that his good nature covered a cold-blooded indifference where his own interests were vitally concerned. His apparent pliability hid a dexterity which evaded every recognized principle. In vain she exerted the influence with which he had pretended to invest her. The first effort proved that it had never really existed. It was no more in his life than the valuable ornament on his mantel-shelf—a thing to be dusted, preserved, and admired in leisure hours, never set to serious use. This last discovery, made shortly after their arrival in Madras, had broken her. From that moment she had felt herself crippled. Her life became a blank, colorless waste, all the more terrible because of the mirages with which it was lighted. The world saw the mirages: the good-looking, genial-tempered husband; the well-furnished house; all the outward symptoms of an irrefutably satisfactory and successful life.

Only one person perhaps saw deeper, and that was Nicholson. He had been ordered for a year to Madras, and thus it came about that they often met. Travers' first dislike for the officer had evaporated, and he seemed rather to insist on an increase of their intimacy, inviting Nicholson constantly to the house. And in those long evening visits Nicholson had seen what others did not see and what Lois kept hidden in her own heart. For she had told no one that the mirages were no more than mirages—that her life still lacked all the vital elements of reality and sincerity. She was proud, and not even the people in dear old Marut suspected that she was stifling in the hot Madras air and in the unhealthy atmosphere of small lies and loose principles in which Travers was so thoroughly at home. Only Nicholson's sensitive temperament felt what others neither heard nor saw.

So a year had passed, and every evening Lois sat by the window, watching the busy crowd, and building up their lives as she had once dreamed of building up her own. She scarcely thought of herself. Memories are dangerous. The present was too real to be considered, and the future too blank and hopeless.

The darkness increased. Twilight yielded to nightfall, and the yellow lights sprang up in the shops opposite her window. She heard the door open, but did not turn, thinking it was her husband unexpectedly returned.