"Tell me more, for thy words have drawn the veil closer about the future!"
His pleading received no response. The priest remained motionless, passive, indifferent, seemingly plunged in an ecstatic contemplation; and from that moment his lips were closed, and he passed his once loved pupil with eyes that seemed fixed far ahead on a world visible only to himself. Neither in his words or manner had there been any anger or reproach, but a perfect resignation which walled him off from every human emotion, and Nehal Singh went his way, conscious that the world lay before him and that he was free. The great dividing wall had turned to air, and he had passed through, satisfied but not a little troubled, as a man is who finds that he has struck at shadows.
Afterward he told himself that the walls had always been shadows, the links that bound him always mere ghostly hindrances, part of the vague dreams that had filled his life and bound his horizon. Now that was all over. The more perfect reality lay before him and was his. The dim figures of his childhood's imagination gave place to definite forms. And each bore the same face, each face the same grave goodness—that of the woman destined for him by Heaven.
CHAPTER VII
THE SECOND GENERATION
Thus it came to pass that after more than a quarter of a century the gates of the palace were thrown open, and strange feet crossed the threshold in apparent peace and friendship.
A crowd of memories flooded Colonel Carmichael's mind as he followed the guide along the narrow paths. There was a difference between his last entry and this—a difference and an analogy whose bizarre completeness came home to him more vividly with every moment. Then, too, he had been led, but by a dark figure whose flaming torch had sprung through the darkness like an unearthly spirit of destruction. Then, too, he had followed—not, as now, old and saddened—but impetuously, and behind him had raced no crowd of laughing pleasure-seekers, but men whose bloody swords were clasped in hands greedy for the long-deferred vengeance. He remembered clearly what they had felt. For a year they had been held at bay by a skill and cunning which outmatched their most heroic efforts, and now, at last, the hour of victory was theirs. He remembered how the thirst for revenge had died down as they stormed the marble steps. No living being barred their course. Stillness greeted them as they poured into the mighty hall, and a chilly awe sank down upon their red-hot rage as they searched an emptiness which seemed to defy them. It was the Colonel himself, then only a young captain, who had heard the piteous wailing cry issuing from a side apartment. He had rushed in, and there a sight greeted him which engraved itself on his memory for ever. The place was almost in darkness, save that at the far end two torches had been lit on either side of what seemed to be a throne—a beautiful golden chair raised from the floor by ivory steps. Here, too, at first all had seemed death and silence; then the cry had been repeated, and they saw that a tiny child lay between the high carved arms and was watching them with great, beautiful eyes. Around his neck had hung a hastily-written message:
"This is my son, Nehal Singh, whose life and heritage I intrust to my conquerors in the name of justice and mercy."
And he had taken the boy in his arms and borne him thence as tenderly as if he had been his own.
Since then twenty-five years had passed. The throne had been given to the tiny heir under the tutelage of a neighboring prince, and the spirit of forgotten things brooded over the wreck of the tempest that for over a year had raged about Marut. But the Colonel remembered as if it had been but yesterday. Others had forgotten the little child, but, perhaps because he had no children of his own, the memory of the dark baby eyes had never been banished from his mind. He caught himself wondering, not without a touch of emotion, what sort of man had grown out of the minute being he had rescued; but curiously enough—and typically enough of the contrariness of human sympathy—from the moment he caught sight of the tall figure advancing to meet him from the steps of the palace, all kindly, gentle feelings died out of him, and his old prejudice of race awoke. Possibly—nay, certainly—the child had had less need of sympathy than the man, but the Colonel's heart froze toward him, and his formal response to his host's greeting was icy with the unconquerable consciousness of the gulf between them.