How had the over-sanguine prophecy been fulfilled! The native at Nicholson's side pointed a finger of scorn and anger at the silent, ruined waste.
"Devil—English devil!" he said laconically, and continued on his way.
Nicholson's lips tightened. His own words came back to him with a new significance: "In a strange country no one is an exception." This Travers, this one unscrupulous fortune-hunter, heedless of everything save his own advancement, had branded them all. He had undone, with the help of a heedless woman, the work of generations of heroic, honest labor. Truly the chain of individual responsibility is a long one!
Nicholson had left Colonel Carmichael's bungalow at twelve o'clock. The increasing crowd and Stafford's prolonged absence had urged him to instant and independent action. In the best of cases, he had little faith in the brother-officer's secret mission. Stafford was not the man to exert any influence over the native mind. He was the type of the capable and well-meaning English officer who, excellent leader in his own country, is of small use when face to face with Indian problems of character and prejudice. Nicholson had judged himself the better advocate, and having obtained the Colonel's reluctant permission, he had at once started for the royal palace. But his progress had been painfully slow, and he had made no effort to hurry.
Any sign of anxiety or excitement would have looked like fear to the suspicious, hate-filled eyes of the men who swarmed about him, and whatever else happened, they should not see an Englishman afraid. The knowledge that he rode there alone, the representative of his nation, added a greater dignity, a greater firmness to his already calm and upright bearing. It was no new situation for him—it is never an exceptional situation in a country where Englishmen are always in the minority—and it inspired him, as it had always done since his earliest lieutenant days. He knew that as he acted, looked, and spoke, so would the image of his country be stamped upon the minds of a hundred thousand and their children's children. There was no vanity, no self-importance in this conception of his duty. It was a stern, unbending acceptance of his responsibility; and as in the lonely fort upon the frontier where he had dominated, unaided, month after month, over wild, antagonistic races, so now, unarmed and unprotected, he dominated over the fanatic rabble by the pure force of a complete personality. He was to all intents and purposes their prisoner, but he rode there as their conqueror; and that most splendid triumph of all triumphs—the unseen victory of will over will—filled him with a new confidence and hope.
Yet it was three o'clock before he reached the palace gates. It seemed to him that they had deterred his progress for some unknown purpose, and the thought of those he had left behind caused him profound uneasiness. Native treachery was proverbial, and no doubt Nehal Singh felt himself justified in any conduct that seemed wise to him. In any case, there was no return. The crowd in front of Nicholson sank back like a receding tide as he rode through the open gates and then closed in behind, following in one dense stream as he proceeded slowly up the splendid avenue. He felt now that he was in the hands of destiny. Through the trees he caught sight of the palace steps where Nehal Singh had stood the night before. No living soul moved. The whole world seemed to have concentrated itself behind him, a grim and silent force which was sweeping him onward—to what end he could not tell.
Suddenly the native who still held his horse's bridle lifted his hand as he had done before and pointed ahead.
"Look, Sahib!" he cried. "Look!"
Nicholson made no sign. He retained his easy attitude, one hand loosely holding the reins, the other with the riding-whip resting negligently on his hip. There was no change in his bronzed face: his eyes took in the scene which an abrupt turn in the road revealed to him with a steadfast calm, though his pulses had begun to beat furiously. It was as though a painter with two strokes of a mighty brush had smeared the square before the temple with a great moving stain. Only one narrow white line reached up to the temple doorway. On either side, right up to the gopuras and stretching far away down the branching paths, a living mass stood and waited, their faces turned toward him. Pilgrims they might have been, but he saw in the foremost row men with their dark hands clasped over the muzzles of their rifles, and every here and there the sunlight flashed back a reflection from the cold steel at their sides. They made no sound as he rode between them; only a soft shuffling behind him told him that the human wall was closing in. He did not turn. His eyes passed calmly over the watching faces, and the hands that played at their dagger-hilts fell away as though the piercing gaze had paralyzed them. Thus he reached the temple, where he dismounted.
No one had told him, but he well understood that this was his destination, and with a firm step passed into the inner court. For an instant the sudden change from brilliant daylight to an almost complete darkness dazzled him. He saw nothing but a moving shadow intermingled with points of fire that glowed steadily in two long rows up to the altar, where fell a single ray of golden sunshine. Helmet in hand, he moved slowly forward, every nerve strung taut with suspense. As his eyes grew accustomed to the curious half-light, he saw that the unreal shadows were men grouped on either side behind rows of torch-bearers. The red flare fell on their fixed, unmoved faces, and threw weird shadows backward and forward among the massive pillars whose capitals faded into the intensified gloom overhead. There was no other movement, no other sound save Nicholson's own footsteps, which echoed loud and threatening in that petrified silence. On the altar itself a Holy Lamp burned steadily, and behind, half obliterated by a lonely, upright figure, the great three-headed god stretched out ghost-like arms into the sunshine that descended in a narrow ladder of pure light to mingle with the altar fire.