He unfastened the sword at his side. For a moment he held it as though in farewell. But there was no grief on his face as he laid the jeweled weapon in the Colonel's hand.
"I have chosen," he said. "I can not go against my people."
CHAPTER XIII
ENVOI
With the surrender of one man the great Marut rising came to an end. It had been built up by him and on him, and with him it collapsed. As the news reached the armed thousands encamped about the ruined Station, consternation fell upon them. There was no attempt at organization or resistance. They believed simply that Heaven had turned against them and Vishnu joined hands with the Englishman, and they waited to hear no more. What had seemed an overwhelming force melted away as though it had been a shadow, and in the jungle, slinking along the lightless highways, or huddling in the lonely hovels outside Marut, the remnant of Behar Singh's great army hid from the hand of the destroyer. They had followed their god, and their god had deserted them. All hope was lost, and with the fatalism of their race they flung their weapons from them as they fled.
Pending the decision of the Government, Nehal Singh, now Steven Caruthers, was held prisoner in the club-house he had built two years before. Part of the returned regiment was encamped about the surrounding gardens, in order to prevent all attempt at rescue, but the precaution was a mere formality. Visitors came constantly. There was not a man in all the Station who was not anxious to help bury the past and to hold out the hand of friendship to one whom at the bottom of their hearts they had once wronged and slighted. Among them Carmichael and Nicholson were the chief. They passed many hours of each day with him, and worked steadily and enthusiastically for his pardon and release. He was touched and grateful, but beneath his gratitude there still lurked the demon of unrest. She had not come—the one being for whom he waited—she had sent no word. He knew that her mother lay dying—above all things he knew that on the great day of the attack she had stood resolutely between him and death—but nothing, no explanation or assurance, calmed the hidden trouble of his mind. After all, it had been pity—or remorse—not love.
Thus three weeks passed. The Colonel had spent the day with him discussing the future, arranging for the transference of Lois' fortune into his unwilling hands, and now, toward nightfall, he was once more alone, wearied in body and soul. For the first time since his surrender his sense of quiet and release from an immense burden was gone. He was still alone. He felt now that he would always be alone, for there was but one who could fill the blank in his life. And she had not come. He did not and could not blame her. Who was he that a woman should join her lot to his? An Englishman truly, but one over whose birth and youth there hung a shadow, perhaps a curse such as had darkened his mother's life and the life of all those in whose veins there flows an alien blood. She must not even think that any link from the past bound her. She must be free—quite free to choose. Wearily he seated himself at his table and took his pen.
"You have been the great guiding light of my life," he wrote to her. "You will always be, because I can not learn to forget. But for you it would be easier and better to forget. You will be happier—" And then he heard the door open, and she stood before him. The words that he had meant to write rushed to his lips, but no further. Moved by a common impulse, they advanced to meet each other, and the next moment she was in his arms. Neither spoke. It seemed as though, once face to face, there could be no doubts, no misunderstandings between them. Their love was wordless, but it had spoken in a silence more eloquent, more complete than words could ever have been.
"I could not come before," she said, after a little. "I could not leave her. She was only at peace when I held her hand. She was very happy at the last—now it is all over."
He held her closer to him, and she clung to him, not sadly or wearily, but like a strong woman who had fought and won the thing she fought for.