“A man that hath friends must show himself friendly; and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”
Prov. xviii. 24.
That man would be a fool who pretended to misunderstand her. She would have said more, but words failed. Her labored breath betrayed her, and the light that kindles only in a woman’s eyes leaped out at him. He seemed to be wandering in a maze with a siren as guide. What magic spell surrounded him? Why had the arrival of Jahangir’s messenger forced this tacit avowal from the lips of the proudest woman in India?
If she defied the Emperor and continued the journey to Burdwán, it must be as the promised wife of Walter Mowbray, an alien in race, and one who professed a hostile faith. Never was stranger compact dreamed of. They knew little of each other, beyond the acquaintance arising from an enforced companionship of five days. They scarce had a thought in common. They were bred and reared under social conditions as wide asunder as the poles. Nature, indeed, careless of arbitrary restrictions, had fashioned them in superb comparison, for never were man and woman better mated physically than these two. But the law which parts the East from the West divided them, and, although Nur Mahal would have scorned the unseen barrier, Mowbray drew back. Assuredly, there is no knowing what his answer would have been had not another face risen before his entranced vision, and a despairing voice cried bitterly in his ears: “Oh, Ann, they have taken him!”
Yes, though far from Spanish halberds and London Tower, here was lifelong bondage chaining him with a glamour more enduring than fetters of iron. It says much for the charms of Eleanor Roe that the memory of her anguish when last their eyes met on the Thames-side quay rescued her lover now from the imminent embrace of a most potent rival.
It was no time for measured phrase. His heart rose in pity as he took Nur Mahal in his arms for an instant.
“Sweet lady,” he said, “were I not pledged to one whom I hold dear as my very soul I would abide with you in Burdwán, and my sword should defend you while my hand could use it. But no man can gainsay his fate. He can only keep his conscience clean and leave the rest to God. I came to India hoping to earn a fortune wherewith I could return to my own land and claim my love. I have failed, yet my purpose will endure until I succeed or die.”
He felt the shrinking form he held shake with a sob, and he would have striven to comfort her with some faltering prediction of future happiness had she not raised her beautiful face in wild appeal.
“I have not humbled myself in vain,” she fiercely cried. “You must not deem me unworthy because I have departed from the path ordained for my sex. I am no timid maid who nurses her woes in secret. It may be that I am incapable of feeling that which other women call love. Never was man more deserving of true and faithful wife than Sher Afghán. Yet I hated him. You are one whom I could trust and honor. Had the fates willed it we should have gone far together. Now I yield to my destiny. Go! It is ended. If I never see your face again, at least think well of me, and strive to forget that, in a moment of folly, I sacrificed my self-respect for your sake.”
And now she struggled to free herself, but, because of his true regard for her, he would not suffer her to leave him in such self-condemning mood.
“Nay, fair lady,” he murmured, “we do not part thus. I have misjudged you in the past; be it mine now to make amends. You were wedded against your will, yet who shall hold you guilty of your husband’s death? Be assured that none in all this land shall shield your high repute as I and my honest comrade, Sainton. Lead us to your State, and if Sher Afghán’s followers prove faithful to his widow’s cause, Jahangir may wreck his throne in seeking to injure you.”