“It is, indeed, unfortunate for her, because if her love is unreciprocated she will languish and die.”
“What do you mean?” asked Harper sharply, and with a touch of indignation. “Surely you would not counsel me to be dishonourable to my wife?”
“God forbid. You misjudge me if you think so. I speak pityingly of Haidee. It is no fault of yours if she has made you the star that must henceforth be her only light. What I have told you are facts, and you may live to prove them so!”
Harper did not reply. His companion’s words had set him pondering. There was silence between the two men, as if they had exhausted the subject, and none other suggested itself to them. The short twilight had faded over the land, the dark robe of night had fallen. It was moonless, even the stars were few, for the queen of night appeared in sullen humour. There were heavy masses of clouds drifting through the heavens, and fitful gusts of wind seemed to presage a storm. The boughs of the overhanging palms rustled savagely, and the child-like cry of the flying foxes sounded weirdly. There was that in the air which told that nature meant war. And sitting there with the many strange sounds around them, and only the glimmer of the stars to relieve the otherwise perfect darkness, what wonder that these two men should dream even as they watched and waited.
Martin had bowed his head in his hands again. Possibly his nerves had not recovered from the shock of the awful fiery storm that had swept over his head but a short time before; and he felt, even as he had said, that he was a waif. Like unto the lonely mariner who rises to the surface after his ship has gone down into the depths beneath him, and as he gazes mournfully around, he sees nothing but the wild waters, which in their savage cruelty had beaten the lives out of friends and companions, but left him, his destiny not being yet completed—left him for some strange purpose.
Harper was gazing upward—upward to where those jewels of the night glittered. He had fixed his eye upon one brighter than the rest. Martin’s words seemed to ring in his ears—“It is no fault of yours if she has made you the star that must henceforth be her only light.” And that star appeared to him, not as a star, but as Haidee’s face, with its many changing expressions. Her eyes, wonderful in their shifting lights, seemed to burn into his very soul. And a deep and true pity for this beautiful woman took possession of him; poets have said that “pity is akin to love.” If no barrier had stood between him and her, what course would he have pursued? was a question that suggested itself to him. Martin had spoken of the mysterious laws of affinity; they were problems too abstruse to be dwelt upon then. But Harper knew that they existed; he felt that they did. How could he alter them? Could he stay the motes from dancing in the sunbeam? He might shut out the beam, but the motes would still be there. So with this woman; though he might fly from her to the farthest ends of the earth, her haunting presence would still be with him. He knew that; but why should it be so? He dare not answer the question; for when an answer would have shaped itself in his brain, there came up another face and stood between him and Haidee’s. It was his wife’s face. He saw it as it appeared on the night when he left Meerut on his journey to Delhi—full of sorrow, anxiety, and terror on his account; and he remembered how she clung to him, hung around his neck, and would not let him go until—remembering she was a soldier’s wife—she released him with a blessing, and bade him go where duty called. And as he remembered this he put up a silent prayer to the Great Reader of the secrets of all hearts that he might be strengthened in his purpose, and never swerve from the narrow way of duty and honour.
The dreams of the dreamers were broken. The visionary was displaced by the reality, and Haidee stood before them. She had come up so stealthily that they had not heard her approach. Nor would they have been conscious that she was there if she had not spoken, for the darkness revealed nothing, and even the stars were getting fewer as the clouds gathered.
“Are you ready?” she asked, in a low tone.
“Yes, yes,” they both answered, springing from their seats, and waking once more to a sense of their true position.