“Well?”
“Give the word! Let us at least get in touch with safety!”
“For myself, no. For you, yes! I have been weak with you, dear. I have let my selfish pleasure in having you near me overcome my sense of duty—that, and my faithless fear that you would not be properly provided for. I think, too, that I have never quite induced myself to trust natives sufficiently—even native gentlemen. You shall go, Rosemary. You shall go as soon as I can get word to Mahommed Gunga's man. Call that old woman in.”
“Father, I will not go without you, and you know it! My place is with you, and I have quite made up my mind. If you stay, I stay! My presence here has saved your life a hundred times over. No, I don't mean just when you were ill; I mean that they dare not lay a finger on me! They know that a nation which respects their women would strike hard and swiftly to avenge a woman of its own! If I were to go away and leave you they would poison you or stab you within a day, and then hold a mock trial and hang some innocent or other to blind the British Government. I would be a murderess if I left you here alone! Come! Come away!”
He shook his head. “It was wrong of me to ever bring you here,” he said sadly. “But I did not know—I would never have believed.” Then wrath took hold of him—the awful, cold anger of the Puritan that hates evil as a concrete thing, to be ripped apart with steel. “God's wrath shall burst on Howrah!” he declared. “Sodom and Gomorrah were no worse! Remember what befell them!”
“Remember Lot!” said Rosemary. “Come away!”
“Lot stayed on to the last, and tried to warn them! I will warn the Resident! Here, give me my writing things—where are they?”
He pushed her aside, none too gently, for the fire of a Covenanter's anger was blazing in his eyes.
“There are forty thousand British soldiers standing still, and wrong—black, shameful wrong—is being done! For a matter of gold—for fear of the cost in filthy lucre—they refrain from hurling wrong-doers in the dust! For the sake of dishonorable peace they leave these native states to misgovern themselves and stink to high heaven! Will God allow what they do? The shame and the sin is on England's head! Her statesmen shut their eyes and cry 'Peace, peace!' where there is no peace. Her queen sits idle on the throne while widows burn, screaming, in the flames of superstitious priests. Men tell her, 'All is well; there is British rule in India!' They are too busy robbing widows in the Isle of Skye to lend an ear to the cries of India's widows! Corruption—superstition—murder—lies—black wrong—black selfishness—all growing rank beneath the shadow of the British rule—how long will God let that last?”
He was pacing up and down like a caged lion, not looking at Rosemary, not speaking to her—speaking to himself, and giving rein to all the rankling rage at wrong that wrong had nurtured in him since his boyhood. She knelt still by the chair, her eyes following him as he raged up and down the matted floor. She pitied him more than she did India.