The pink flush mounted to Aglaia's face.
'Please forgive me,' she said softly. 'And'—hesitating—
'Yes, dear—go on!'
'She is lovely. I think I shall love her, even though you do like her best.'
'Best!' echoed Tom, smiling. 'Now you are a little goose! Don't you know, Aglaia, that there are different kinds of loving! I love you as my child—my little friend.'
'And Grace?' said Aglaia. 'Isn't she your friend too?'
'She is my friend, and something more. At least, I hope so. You know we may have more friends than one.'
'Yes,' said Aglaia doubtfully. But she added under her breath, 'There is only one best.'
Leaving Grace to come to herself in the hands of her friends, we will follow the young rajah to his rooms, where several people were waiting to have audience of him. He despatched the business which they brought to him with his usual clear-sightedness and rapidity, received the congratulations of the Resident, who had come up to see him, and of the two young officers whom he had so happily rescued, appointed a session for the following day, in open court, to try the cases, and read the petitions which had been accumulating during his absence, promised to attend later a supper which the Resident had prepared in his honour, and then, being left at last to the ministrations of Hoosanee and Ganesh, he turned to the letters and papers heaped high upon his table. Before turning them over he stopped to think. Up to this he had been too busy to reflect. All day long, ever since he touched the boundaries of the State, a vague sense of wonder had been present in his mind. He was trying now to puzzle it out. When, two months ago, he left Gumilcund secretly, when he camped out in the forest waiting for news from Dost Ali Khan, he had felt like an escaped prisoner. Now, having fulfilled his mission, and returned to the bondage which he had remembered as so galling, he found, to his surprise, that it was bondage no longer. He had left Gumilcund as a prison; he returned to it as a home. And it was not that he had lost his love for England. On the contrary, he had never loved England more: he had never felt prouder of his connection with her. Some day, if his life was spared, he hoped to revisit his early home, and to see his mother and the friends of his youth. But he belonged to India, not to England. A few weeks ago, it would have given him keen pain to say this even to himself. It would have been a renunciation such as he could scarcely have had strength to face. Now he did not find that any effort was needed. The wonder to him was that he had not recognised it before.
Hoosanee and Ganesh were chattering busily, as they made preparations for his toilet and his tea. Their voices came to him like the distant buzzing of bees; but the sounds warned him that he must not give much more time to thought. He was turning over the papers mechanically. They were spread out on a beautiful table of marble inlaid with precious stones. Above it swung a gold lamp of delicate workmanship. He wondered a little at the familiarity of these things, at the sense of coming back to his own—he who had only enjoyed them for so short a time! The papers did not seem to be of the first importance. There were belated news-sheets—circulars—petitions; answers sent to inquiries of his own by Indian civil and military officers, some of which he put by for more careful perusal on the following day, and two or three letters from private friends. He was about to turn away from his hasty inspection, and to give himself over into the hands of Hoosanee, when at the very bottom of the pile, a bulky letter, different in appearance from any of the others, drew his notice. As he took it up his heart began to beat strangely. He held it up to the light. It was addressed in his mother's handwriting—the delicate, flowing penmanship he knew so well; what made it so peculiarly remarkable to him was not only its size and weight; but that, for the first time since he took up his position, his mother had addressed him by his Indian name and title.
He looked at the date, went through a brief calculation, and then sank down upon his seat, feeling, for the moment, sick and faint. The letter was an answer to that written at Lucknow, in which he had begged so earnestly to be told his true position. Trembling from head to foot, he put it within his vest. How he passed through that evening with all its formalities—how, carrying about with him the consciousness of this letter which he had not yet dared to open, he talked and laughed and jested, and told the tale of his adventures, and independently ofit—it, that might change his whole life—entered into engagements and appointments, and made plans for the future—how, when the long evening of festivities was over, he found strength to go quietly to his room, and, dismissing Hoosanee, to sit down under the swinging lamp and open it, he never quite knew. But it was done at last, and that was his last moment of weakness. The four closely written sheets, in which his poor mother told the secret that had made the joy and the torment of her life, he read to the end without wavering. When he got up from their perusal, his face was perfectly pale, but his eyes glistened strangely.
For a few moments he paced the room. He went to the marble lattice, and, leaning his head against it, let the soft and fragrant air blow in upon his closed eyelids and burning forehead. He looked back upon his room—the room where Byrajee Pirtha Raj had breathed his last—the sculptured pillars, the inlaid pavement, and the fretted roof. He turned to the window again, and looked out upon the solemn Indian night—the still earth—the dark trees with their ink-black shadows—the piercing radiance of silver stars winning its way through the finely-wrought marble. His mind was strangely upset. It was as if a revolution, in the conduct of which his own will had neither place nor power, were being wrought within him. And for this moment, at least, emotion was as passive as will. If he had any feeling, it was a sense of satisfaction that the mystery of the past was solved. He knew now to whom he belonged—knew that it was through no caprice of an eccentric stranger, but by the will of the Divine, which, from the beginning, had shaped his course for this end, that he had been called to his present position. Whether he was sorry or glad, uplifted or humiliated, would be for to-morrow to determine. To-night he had no more force left, even to feel.
And so he threw off his festive garments, extinguished the lamps, stretched himself out on the couch which for the first time since he had occupied it seemed to belong to him; and Sleep, the nursing-mother of wearied human souls, received him presently into her keeping.
While the rajah sleeps, I must tell very briefly the story that his letter contained. To do so, it will be necessary to go far back into the past. Not only those early years which were so much of a puzzle to Mrs. Gregory's friends, but the years that preceded them, must be touched upon if we wish to understand how she and her son stood, and of what nature was the confession which his passionate entreaties had drawn from her. I have already said that she belonged to an honourable and distinguished family, well-known in early Anglo-Indian records. General Sir Anthony Bracebridge, her grandfather, who began as a subaltern in one of the Company's regiments and worked his way up to a high command and the honour of knighthood, went to India in the days when home-leave was an almost unknown privilege, and when English ladies had not yet begun to make India a field for the display of their talents and accomplishments. Yet upon him, as upon others, came the season when a 'young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.' He was more fortunate than most of his comrades, in that, through a romantic adventure, he won the favour of an Indian family of power, wealth, and high lineage. It happened that the daughter of a rajah, concerning whose beauty and magnificence the wildest rumours were afloat, was on her way to the sacred bathing-ghat, where she was accustomed to offer up her morning prayers, when her escort was attacked by a body of men belonging to a neighbouring rajah. This person had asked her hand in marriage, and been refused. Burning with fury at the insult offered to him, he had determined to seize her by force. So he might have done, for, after a fierce conflict, the escort of the maiden was nearly overpowered; but, as fate would have it, Captain Bracebridge and a few English troopers were passing through the town. These, as was natural, threw themselves into the mêlée, the maiden was rescued, and the Englishmen, being full of chivalrous ardour, refused to leave her until they had seen her safely within the gates of her father's palace.
That Captain Bracebridge should have won for himself the everlasting gratitude of the maiden's father for this gallant deed of arms was not wonderful. But what did seem strange to those who knew the manners of the times was that he was presently adopted by the whole household as a friend. After a decent interval, during which he gained an influence, so extraordinary as to be attributed by many of their own people to magic, over the minds of the rajah and his brothers, he married with her father's consent, and according to English rites, the beautiful girl whom he had so gallantly defended from peril and outrage.
The marriage, so the story goes, proved perfectly happy; but the bliss was of brief duration. After little more than two years of wedlock, Captain Bracebridge's Indian wife died, leaving a son behind her. On this son the father poured out the most devoted affection. He is said to have been a rarely beautiful creature; but all his affinities were with his mother's race. Notwithstanding this, it was his father's wish to bring him up as an English gentleman. I think one of his favourite schemes was through this boy, on whom a large fortune had been settled by his Indian relatives, to re-establish the fortunes of the Bracebridge family, and restore the ancient glories of their ancestral seat. But it was not to be. For although the boy was intellectually gifted, drinking in learning and science with an eagerness that surprised his teachers, he was not the stuff of which the ordinary English gentleman is made. He was too dreamy, too sensitive and far too strange a being to make any sort of a success in society. Recalled to India, where General Bracebridge had, by this time, made both money and renown, he found that in the proud little official world, of which he was expected to form a part, he was even more of an alien than in England, and at last, stung by slights, some of them fancied and some of them real, he announced his determination of giving up his English citizenship altogether, and knitting himself to his mother's race and family.
It may almost be said that Gumilcund owed its birth to this determination. The estate on which that flourishing little city now stands was, about this time, bequeathed to him by one of his grand-uncles, and he was in the enjoyment of the vast fortune settled upon him by his grandfather. Part of this money he spent in building Gumilcund, while the energy and political talent that had found no scope amongst his father's people, were devoted to the task of organising it.
General Bracebridge, in the meantime, indemnified himself for his disappointment by entering into a second marriage, which, the world said, was far more satisfactory than the first. In course of time a second son was born to him; but he never lost his deep love for the first, and as long as he lived, the Rajah of Gumilcund, who had, in course of time, married and, in his turn, become a father, was a frequent and welcome visitor at his house.
There Mrs. Gregory, his grandchild, then a lovely little girl six or seven years old, met her Indian cousin, who was just verging upon manhood. He was handsome, gracious, and noble, and she loved him as little children love their first hero. She was sent to England to school, and returned, after ten long years of absence, with her cousin's image fresh in her mind. Her grandfather was dead then, and the intimacy between the English and Indian branches of the house of Bracebridge was not so close as it had been. Nevertheless the cousins, who had thought of one another kindly all these years, met and loved.
Colonel Bracebridge was absent on a frontier war. His wife was dead. The simple, inexperienced English girl was left very much to her own devices. After a ball, at which the Indian rajah had been the stateliest figure, she was persuaded to enter into a clandestine marriage. But, though feeling had carried her away for a time, her instincts of prudence and propriety were too strong to be altogether fought down, even by love. She left her husband, who would fain have persuaded her to give up all for him, and travelled under the escort of faithful servants to the station where her father was in command. To him she confessed what she had done, entreating his consent to celebrate publicly the marriage into which she had entered in secret. A terrible scene followed, for Colonel Bracebridge was of those who considered the admixture of alien blood in a family a disgrace and a sin. He told his daughter harshly that her marriage was no marriage, and threatened her with the loss not only of his protection, but of the good word of every friend she possessed, if she would not promise him never to see her so-called husband again.
For many days she held out; but the strong will and passionate, overbearing temper of her father, reinforced by depressing tales from him and others of how, if she persisted in her folly, she would be shut up in a zenana, and as much cut off from the world as a nun in a convent, prevailed at last. She was only sixteen, too young to take a line of her own, or to do battle with those she was trained to obey; and, doubtless, she was not capable then, nor ever would have been, of that strong and perfect love which holds firm and faithful through all the storms of destiny and shocks of change. Moved by her father, she wrote a letter to the rajah, reproaching him for the advantage he had taken of her inexperience, and a few weeks later she was prevailed upon to marry Captain Gregory, having first told him the whole story and assured him that she could never love him. As a fact she came to love him dearly, both on account of the sacrifices he had made for her, and for his own sake. As for her little son, whom in the vain hope that he would be a Bracebridge and nothing else, she called 'Tom,' he was born in wedlock, and only a very few knew that he was not the true son of Captain Gregory.
When the rajah awoke the following morning he was conscious of a curious novelty, not only in the world about him, but in his own relations towards it. Deep down in his heart was a tremulous feeling of anxiety and incertitude that might presently become pain; but, for the moment, and floating buoyantly on the surface of his being, there was a sense of completeness and satisfaction such as he had never known before.
The first thought—rapturous as the saint's vision of Paradise—which leapt to his heart was that Grace was under his roof. His roof—he repeated the words with a pleasant emphasis on the pronoun, for it had brought him back to the revelation of the previous night.
His—yes, his—in a new sense. The State—the city—the palace—the servants who had attended upon him with such marvellous fidelity—the councillors, by whom he had been inducted into the duties of his position, and to whose wisdom and disinterestedness he owed it that he had been able to leave the task of government, which had become irksome to him, and to rescue and bring back in triumph the English girl, so much dearer to him than life—all these were his! His father—how warmly his heart thrilled to the name!—the great man, who up to this had been an enigma to him—a mysterious and disturbing element in his life—had given them to him: had prepared many of them for him most likely, with a view to the difficulties and dangers that he foresaw would beset him. This was the entrancing thought which glorified that strange awakening. The sensation was as that of one who steps out of a wilderness into a well-ordered home.
True the story was somewhat of a tangle to him still. There had been a moment—an awful moment—during its perusal when the blood had rushed like fire to his brain, and he had held back his breath in terror of what he might have to know. But it had passed. Byrajee Pirtha Raj was no stranger to him. Through his works; through the strange yet always noble inspirations that had surged to his soul when he was, as he still firmly believed, holding commune with him; through the impression of himself he had left upon his friends and contemporaries, all of whom looked upon him as something more than a man, the young rajah had learned to know his father; and his mother's story, which, through all its penitence and self-accusation, hinted dimly at a great wrong done to her, did not stagger him, as it might otherwise have done. Wrong there had been, and grievous mistake and misconception; but he was passionately convinced that his father had meant no evil. To him the marriage-rite, whatever it had been, through which he had knit the fortunes of the woman he loved to his own, had been true and holy and perfect.
So Tom said to himself, and it may be as well to say here that his instincts were true. His mother had not told, and, indeed, being young then to the ways of the world, she did not herself understand all the circumstances that had led up to the step which she afterwards so bitterly deplored. As a fact, partly through her own folly and inexperience, and partly through the mischievous devices of one of her friends, she had been thrown, after that memorable ball, into an extremely compromising situation, and it was no less to shield her honour than to gratify his own ardent love that her chivalrous cousin had proposed the hasty marriage and carried it through. He honestly believed then that her father, when he came to know everything, would give to their union joyfully the seal of his approval.
He was, as we know, undeceived; and it was to save her from the pain of a final breach with her race and nation that he had bowed silently to her decision to leave him. It was for her sake that he had not disputed the validity of her marriage with Captain Gregory. For her sake—ah! was it for her sake, or was it for the sake of Gumilcund, of India, of the high policy which he so consistently and courageously pursued—that he had allowed his son and successor to grow up away from him and in a distant land? This, with many another secret which Tom would have given everything he possessed to know, had died with the dead rajah. But his son knew enough to give to his life a new spring of gladness—a new soul of order. For now the war of contending impulses that had bewildered him was over. His present grew naturally out of his past, and formed, in its turn, a fitting prelude to the deeper harmonies of the future.
It was very early. The dawn was just breaking in the eastern heavens. Through the pierced marble lattices came the golden light, tracing, with its airy pencil, soft patterns of light and shade on the roof and wall. The morning air, burdened with delicate odours of tropical lilies and Cape jessamine and heliotrope and late-flowering roses, stole in rejoicingly. Then came sounds of awakening in the palace. The chowkedars, or night-watchmen, cried out to one another, and gave up their posts to the bearers and chuprassies. The royal peacock, perched on the garden wall, shook out his jewelled fan to the sun and screamed in discordant tones his welcome to the morning. Innumerable doves, of old time pensioners of the palace, swept past the marble lattices, with a whirr and flutter of soft grey wings, to take toll from the heaps of yellow grain piled up in the outer court. The stir of the city, the lowing of kine, the rumble of wheels, the cries of those who bought and sold, the ring of metal, wrought painfully into forms of use and beauty, the monotonous beat of hammers—these, with the thousand indistinguishable sounds of a multitude in busy movement, fell, softened by distance, on the young rajah's ears. His heart swelled as he listened, and his eyes were dim with a sudden rush of tears. All the strangeness, all the wonder, all the curious tangle of conflicting passions and fates had brought him hither—he, in his weakness and inexperience—to be the ruler of this people. Yes; and the strangest part of it was that he felt in himself a fitness for the work he was called upon to do.
He remembered his boyish choice of a profession. If he could not be amongst those who, by their thought and genius, build up the destinies of men and nations, he would, he said, build houses for them to dwell in, and temples where they could worship. He had entered upon the lower task; suddenly and unexpectedly he had been called to the higher. What did it mean? Had he really the constructive power, of which, in his boyish ignorance, he had boasted? And if so—ah! if so—how was he to use it?
As these thoughts succeeded one another through his mind, they took gradually a wider range. Beyond his own narrow individuality, beyond the little city and the busy crowd, they wandered, till, as in a vision, he seemed to see the truth at which as yet he had but dimly guessed. He did not stand alone. He was one in a chain. Purposes, strongly linked together, had been passed on from hand to hand, each in turn strengthening them with its own formative will, till at last in their cumulative force they should be powerful enough to move the world. He saw now that it was not for her own sake, nor even for the sakes of those who dwelt within her walls, that Gumilcund had grown up from the desert and taken a place amongst the cities of the world. She was to be an example—a living type of what might be, on a large scale and everywhere, when wealth and science and the white heat of enthusiasm—that heat in which self perishes—are brought together and allowed unchecked to exercise their influence upon the life and destiny of nations. They—his predecessors—had been able to do no more than give the sign. The prejudices of their friends of the West, and the circumstances of their own lives, narrowed down to the small issues of an Asiatic society, had tied their hands. To him—a child of the West in a truer sense than they could ever have been—belonged the larger life. Had he the strength and wisdom to use it as he should? He would at least try. And then his thoughts flew to Grace—his white dove—his darling. She had the wisdom that he lacked. She had more than wisdom. She had heroism, and the passion of self-renunciation and deep spiritual insight, which, however we may imagine of ourselves, are better understood and more widely appreciated in the East than in the West. Grace! But would she—could she—help him? His mind strayed back over the past few days, blissful for all their suffering, and his lips parted in a smile of hope. She had said she loved him. The sweet confession, true, he knew, as she was true, was still ringing in his ears. Would she, then, do what his mother could not? Would she give up country and race and come to him? Would she live here in Gumilcund, letting the beautiful radiance of her woman's life shine through and overcome the mists of custom, and the harsh and cruel caste-prejudices, which have separated Hinduism from the rest of the world and made of its votaries a people apart? That was the question which the next few days must decide.
There rose a vision before him, as he thought. He seemed to see in imagination how his hand, in passing on the sacred trust, might impress a new form upon it. His predecessors had founded a State and built a city. He might mould a society. His thoughts, having reached this stage, were becoming incoherent and wild, when Hoosanee, who had heard him stirring, came in with his morning meal. Hoosanee looked superb. He was dressed in snowy white, while a turban of pale gold, in the front of which glittered a small diamond star, given to him long ago by Byrajee Pirtha Raj, surrounded his dusky brows and fell in voluminous folds to his waist.
'Why, Hoosanee,' said Tom, raising himself on his elbow, 'how gorgeous you are this morning! You look much more of a prince than I do.'
'My master must remember that he is not in the jungle,' said Hoosanee, his dark face flushing with pleasure.
'And the gay dress is the sign of the joyful heart,' said Tom. 'Well! I think you are right. Have you any news for me?'
'Yes, Excellency. I have seen my sister, Sumbaten, and the little baba, Aglaia. Grace Sahib slept well last night, and she is sleeping still.'
'Thank heaven!' said Tom fervently. 'I hope they will not awake her. And the other ladies, Hoosanee——'
'There is one who would have speech of your Excellency. I met her in the house in the garden, where the mem sahibs take choto hasari. She asked me many questions. The last time we saw her, Sahib,' said Hoosanee, a smile overspreading his face, 'it was the work of the rajah's servant to put questions to her.'
'Ah! poor Mrs. Lyster! And admirably you did it!' said Tom, laughing. 'I wonder, by the bye, if she thinks you artful still.'
'She spoke to me with kindness, Sahib.'
'They have told her what a hero you are, Hoosanee. Well! get my bath ready, and give me my things! No one from outside will come in yet. I will meet the ladies in the summer-house.'
All of them but Grace were there—Lucy, looking a little pale after the excitement of the night before, and Mrs. Durant, with Kit pressed close by her side, and Mrs. Lyster, who wore her Indian dress with a strange shyness, and Aglaia, all smiles and gladness, and little Dick and his mother.
When they saw the rajah, who was dressed as an Indian of rank, coming along the path that led to their retreat, they rose from the table and went out to meet him. Aglaia and little Dick were first. They ran into his arms, and he caught them both up joyfully, glad, perhaps, to hide his slight embarrassment in the warmth of the children's boisterous welcome. 'Oh! how lovely everything is!' said Aglaia rapturously. 'You won't go away again, Daddy Tom?'
'Not till I take you back to England with me, Aglaia.' And then he turned to the other ladies, a boyish flush on his face, which exercise and exposure to the sun had bronzed almost to the native hue.
'It is too bad of you to disturb yourselves,' he said. 'I should not have come so early, only I thought that, as you were taking breakfast out-of-doors, you would give me a corner at the table.'
'Of course we will,' cried Lucy. 'It's such a rapture to see any one. Mrs. Lyster was just wishing——'
'Never mind what I wished. Let me speak for myself, Lucy,' said Mrs. Lyster, advancing and looking at the rajah shyly. 'Mr. Gregory——'
Tom smiled. 'So you have found me out at last, my dear old friend,' he said, shaking her cordially by the hand. 'I am cleverer than you. Dark as it was the other night, I found you out at once——
'And yet you said nothing?'
'Ah! I was burning to speak, but I dared not. Our safety and yours depended on the fidelity with which I was able to play my part. I had to be the Indian rajah, and nothing else. A word in English might have lost us. But my happiness in knowing that it was you whom we had helped was none the less, I can assure you. And your companions—how are they?'
'So well, poor boys, that they are burning to be on the move! The Resident can scarcely keep them quiet. It was a happy Providence that brought you our way.'
'Happy for me,' said Tom feelingly. 'Do you know that you gave us the clue we wanted? My artful servant,' he smiled——
'Now,' broke in Mrs. Lyster, with Irish impetuosity, 'that is really too bad of you. You heard what I said.'
'I said to myself then that I would make you laugh about it later,' said Tom. 'But come into the summer-house. Oh!' as she continued to look at him questioningly, 'I will tell you all about it presently. I am not so much of an imposition as you imagine.'
He turned to the others, and gave them a cheerful good-morning. It was such a meal as he had often shared in the verandahs of English bungalows. A silver urn, over which Mrs. Durant presided, steamed at one end of the table, where tea and coffee were being made in the most approved English fashion, and white bread, cakes hot from the oven, platters of snowy rice, scrambled eggs and curried fowl were being laid out daintily by the well-trained attendants.
'How delightful this is!' said Tom. 'It seems like coming home. No, no, Mrs. Durant,' as she handed him a cup of tea. 'I am not so much of a prince as all that. Help the others first! It is too much happiness to have my friends here to wait upon. What!' looking back at the face of one of the attendants.
The man grinned from ear to ear, showing a row of perfect teeth. 'Excellency, the little Sahib would have it so!' he said in broken Hindoostani.
'So you and Bâl Narîn are inseparables, are you?' said Tom to Kit. 'What will you do when he goes back to Nepaul?'
'He mustn't go,' said Kit stoutly. 'You want a shikari here.'
'To hunt the jackal. We have no other wild animals in Gumilcund, Kit.'
'Then we must import some,' said the child gravely. 'Two or three elephants, and a tiger or so, and a few head of sambre. That would be enough. In a few years there'd be a lot, and we'd have no end of fun.'
Tom laughed, and turned to Mrs. Durant.
'What do you say to your son?' he said. 'Haven't his travels made quite a man of him?'
'I don't know about that,' said Mrs. Durant, who was watching her little boy with fascinated eyes. 'But I know he is more of a darling than ever.'
Here Kit, not wishing to be seized and kissed in the presence of Bâl Narîn, edged away from his mother and made a remark in a low voice to Aglaia about the general jolliness of things. He wanted to know furthermore what she generally did after breakfast, and proposed a little turn in the town, offering to take the greatest care of her.
Lucy overheard him, and burst into a fit of laughter. Then she sprang up and said she would see whether Grace was awake, and might she take any message from his Excellency the rajah?
His Excellency's colour rose after a very boyish fashion, which made the ladies feel friendly towards him, when Lucy asked him this question.
'No, no,' he blurted out—'that is, I daresay I shall see her myself presently. But if I may, I will wait to hear your report.'
Lucy went off, smiling to herself over the pretty little romance, which gave life a fillip that had been sadly lacking to it of late.
After a few moments, during which Tom, who was extraordinarily agitated, had left the little company at the breakfast-table and strolled to meet her, she came tripping back. He watched her face, which was a very mobile one. It was serious, not sad; and this, he thought, augured well.
'How is your cousin?' he said, as quietly as he could.
'I can't quite tell yet,' answered Lucy. 'But she knows where she is, and she knows me, which I don't think she did last night.'
'You will keep her quiet?' said Tom wistfully. He was half regretting the days of travel, when she depended upon him for everything.
'Yes; I think so. Sumbaten will take in her breakfast. She asked if we had seen you,' said Lucy, with an enchanting smile.
'And you told her I was here?'
'Oh, yes! I told her, and she just smiled, as if she was glad to hear we were so much honoured, and said that she hoped she would see you a little later. She was very eager about news from Meerut.'
'You have heard lately?'
'Yes; I had a long letter from Trixy—do you know Trixy, by the bye?'
'Do I know Trixy?' said Tom, his face lighting up. 'I should rather think so! She is one of my best friends and dearest enemies, if you can understand the anomaly. Would it be indiscreet to ask what she wrote to you?'
'Not in the least, Sir Paladin,' said Lucy, laughing, while, for the third time that morning, Tom felt the dark flush mounting to his face. 'She writes that Meerut is waking up. But I dare say you will have heard that already. The private news is that General Elton—my uncle, you know—is in his element, helping to restore order in the district, and that my poor dear aunt is distracted with anxiety to come on here at once.'
'I wish she could come,' said Tom. 'I have written to ask if it could be managed.'
'Oh, have you?' cried Lucy, the slightly artificial tone that had been apparent in her manner giving place to the most genuine eagerness. 'And do you think she will be able to come?'
'It will depend very much upon herself and General Elton. Personally, I don't think there would be any risk if she was properly attended. You would be glad to see her?'
'Glad!' cried Lucy, clasping her hands. 'I should be simply wild! And Grace—dearest Grace!—I believe it would do her more good than anything else. I sat beside her bed half the night, poor darling! Not that I was afraid of anything, you know; but that it was so delightful—such a rest and happiness—just to feast my eyes upon her. She spoke in her sleep once, and I bent over her to catch her words. "Take it away, mother," she said, "take it away! I can't bear it!" I moved her pillow and she half-opened her eyes and smiled. But a little later she cried out again, and there was fear in her voice—fear and horror—"Mother is dead!" she said. "Mother is dead, or she would come." I whispered to her that she was not dead—that she was coming; and then my poor darling smiled again, and lay quite still, looking as beautiful as an angel.'
Lucy's eyes were full of tears, and her voice was husky long before she came to the end of her little story. As for Tom, he could not so much as answer her. And so they stood silent for a few moments, he looking down absently into the basin of water, by whose marble brim they had stopped to have their little talk.
It was embarrassing to Lucy, and she began again presently, moving as she spoke towards the door of the pavilion in the garden. 'We get such longings out here for the home faces,' she said, with a plaintive little smile. 'And in England we don't care. Sometimes we are stupid enough to think we would as soon be without them. At Nowgong, you know, I was getting perfectly ill with my longing to see some of them. And mother and father, who are at Lucknow, heard of it, and Grace was staying with them, having a first-rate time of it too! and she left everything and came to me. She is an angel! an angel!' said little Lucy tremulously. 'If anything happened to her it would break my heart. But it will be all right as soon as Aunt Grace comes.'
'Yes, yes, all right! Thank you for saying so,' said Tom hoarsely. He held out his hand. 'You will take care of her meanwhile, Lucy?'
She pressed it warmly. 'Take care of her! Of course I will, as much as I can.'
'And if there is anything she wants—anything you think would be better changed, you will let me know. You see'—blushing and fidgeting—'I am a novice about all these things. I don't really know what ladies want.'
'Then your imagination is better than most people's knowledge,' said Lucy, laughing. 'I have never seen anything like the arrangements of this place——'
But here Tom was called away. It was the hour when he had arranged to meet the chief men of the city in his private hall of audience, and Hoosanee had come, at his request, to remind him of the promise.
The rajah went away with his heart vibrating sorrowfully; but in the business of the day, which claimed his full attention, he regained the serenity and even, in some degree, the exaltation of the morning.
There was much to be done. From the hour of the forenoon, when he left the ladies in the garden-pavilion, until the sun was sinking behind the low hills that shut in the city to the west, he had not an hour to spare.
He carried out literally the programme which he had laid down for himself when he received his mother's letter. In the inner council and in the open court he proclaimed to the people that his instincts and theirs had not deceived them. He was the true son of Byrajee Pirtha Raj, and their ruler by right of succession.
The elders received the intelligence quietly. They were glad to hear him acknowledge that he belonged to them, and his explanation of the reasons that had led him to leave the city, with his well-balanced relation of the measures he had taken in his absence to strengthen the hands of the English and to secure peace to Gumilcund, gave them perfect satisfaction. But they showed no surprise and very little emotion.
Outside it was different. Here the people—the craftsmen and mechanics—the small merchants and aged householders—were gathered together; and it may be that an electric current of pent-up feeling streamed outward from them to the comely youth who stood above them with his nerves and brain on fire. Certain it is that he told his tale after a different fashion to them. In the pose of the fine figure, drawn to its full height—in the flashing eyes and dilated nostrils—above all, in the noble words, wherein he expressed his reverence for those who had gone before him, and his desire to follow in their footsteps—pride of his lineage could be plainly read. He was proud to be the son of Byrajee Pirtha Raj; he was glad at heart of the destiny that bound him, for his life, to this people. So at least they read him, and the Asiatic crowd, which is sensitive and subtle in its perception of feeling, and as responsive to sympathy as a woman or child, received his tale with demonstrations of a joy so deep and passionate that it thrilled him to the heart.
He would not allow too much time to the ebullition of feeling. His speech over, the court opened, and, for more than two hours, he sat patiently in his alcove above the pillared and porticoed court investigating the cases that were brought before him.
And next, after a hasty lunch, he ordered out Snow-queen and rode through the city, showing himself to those who had not been able to come up to the court, and inspecting the works that had been in progress since his departure.
In the course of his wanderings, he was amused to meet Aglaia and Kit walking together through the town, with Sumbaten, who looked much puzzled and a little distressed by the innovation, walking behind them.
Kit, of course, hailed him joyfully. 'We're having no end of fun,' he said. 'Isn't everything jolly?'
'Particularly jolly, I think,' answered Tom, laughing. 'But don't keep Aglaia out too late, Kit.'
Then a voice from the near distance hailed him reassuringly, and he saw that the devoted Bâl Narîn was not far from his little Sahib. Billy, in his shikari's dress, looked very much like a fish out of water. The streets of Gumilcund, which to-day were freshly swept and garlanded, were not so congenial to him as the jungle and the mountains; and the bourgeois life of ease and comfort was already beginning to pall upon his fiery soul. But, for the moment, he had constituted himself Kit's guardian, and Tom was perfectly easy about the child.
The sun had set, and that lovely rose-lilac glow, which, for a few moments of the evening, makes the skies of the East so entrancingly beautiful, was wrapping heaven and earth in its mystical radiance, when Tom, having finished his day's work, returned to the palace. A syce took Snow-queen, and he went in thoughtfully to his own rooms, wondering if he ought to ask to see Grace, or if it would be better to wait until the following day.
It may be as well to say here that, in the intervals for quiet thought which the business of the day had permitted him, he had made up his mind fully as to his course of action. There should be no repetition of the mistakes of the past. That one outpouring of heart, drawn from him by Grace's anguish of spirit, he could forgive himself. Until he had heard from General or Lady Elton, there should be nothing more of the same kind. He owed it to her, and to their mutual relations—she, a fugitive in his city, a guest in his house: he, the one to whom the honour and happiness of saving her had been granted—to set a seal on the door of his lips, for the present. He owed it to the future—to the position which it was his dearest hope and desire she might one day occupy—to do nothing in a corner, or without the consent and approval of her friends.
But none the less for his prudent resolve to hold himself in check, was his desire to see her and hear her voice.
As he was thinking about these things, Hoosanee came to meet him with a message from the English ladies. They had sent to know if his Excellency the rajah would do them the honour of joining them at their evening meal. He smiled at the punctiliousness of the invitation, answered it with a ready assent, and, about half-an-hour later, found himself on the marble staircase that led up to the pillared hall of the zenana.
A little to his surprise, he saw that the hall was empty, and he was about to throw himself down on one of the settees and wait, when a murmur of voices from the daïs, which was hidden by a screen of palms and lilies from the body of the hall, attracted his attention. He went on to the foot of the steps that led up to it, and there stopped for a moment, half paralysed with surprise. As a picture nothing could have been more beautiful and striking than the scene upon which his eyes rested. The ladies were to dine on the daïs, and the centre of its space was occupied by a table, where flowers and rich tropical fruits and sweetmeats, with sparkling glass and silver, were laid out on snowy linen. At the head of the table, on a low couch, draped with embroidered stuffs, a figure that seemed to concentrate upon itself all the light in the room was reclining. It was that of a woman, dressed in a loose robe of white and gold. Her head, from which the veil had fallen back, was propped up on a little hand, so delicate in its blue-veined transparency that the burden seemed to be too heavy for it; her pale face, overspread at this moment by a faint tinge of colour, looked out from its halo of golden hair, with the purity and stillness of a saint in a mediæval altar-piece, and her lips were moving in low, impassioned words that throbbed through the silence like a prayer. Meanwhile, at a little distance from the couch, his large hands with their curiously knotted joints clasped round his knees, and his dark, strongly-marked face lit by deep eyes which shone with a dreamy light turned meditatively towards hers, sat a figure so different that it might have been placed there for a foil.
But it was not this that made the half-unconscious watcher start and pause, and feel, for a moment, as if his senses had been playing him a trick. It was that in the difference there was a likeness. In the solemn fire that seemed to kindle these two faces, in their meditativeness, in their dreamy enthusiasm, there was something which brought them together. Vishnugupta, the proud Indian mystic, and the simple English girl who had looked the King of Terrors in the face, and, for the sake of another, had vanquished him, met that night on a common ground of sympathy.
"Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snowTogether, tempering the repugnant massWith liquid love——"
The words sprang to his mind as he gazed. He went forward, and the spell was broken. Grace looked up, gave a little start, as if she had just awoke from a dream, and held out her hand with a radiant smile of welcome.
Vishnugupta rose, bent his head with the proud humility of the Brahmin, drew his robe about his head, and, making answer neither by word nor sign to the rajah's entreaty that he would stay for a little while, passed slowly out of the apartment.
The priest had scarcely gone before there came a flutter of garments and a gay noise of laughter and voices in eager conversation from behind the screen that separated the hall and the sleeping-rooms. Then Lucy's little saucy face appeared above the palisade that bordered the daïs.
'Has he gone?' she whispered.
'Do you mean Vishnugupta?' said Tom, laughing at her mysterious expression.
'Is that his name? What a name! And oh! what a person!' cried Lucy. She ran up the steps and brought her charming little person, bewitchingly dressed in a long Indian cashmere robe, drawn in at the waist with a golden girdle, into full view. 'I was with Grace when he came in,' she said. 'I have been arranging the table, and I was arranging her. He looked at me and I withered up to nothing. But as Grace seemed to take to him and his talk like a duck to water, I just ran away and left them alone. Darling,' turning to Grace, 'what, in the name of heaven, were you talking about? He has been with you more than half an hour.'
Then the others came in, all of them looking curious. But Grace lay back with a smile on her lips, and a strange, inscrutable expression in her eyes.
'It was very good of you,' said Tom gently. 'But you must not let these people tire you. I wonder who admitted Vishnugupta.'
'Please let him come again if he likes,' said Grace. 'He does not tire me in the least. I think, do you know, he has done me good.' She smiled more naturally than Tom had seen her smile since the day when he found her in the jungle.
'Oh! if he does you good, he shall come every day, and I will thank and bless him to the end of my life,' said Tom gaily. 'But now, may we draw you up to the table? We are to have a merry evening, you know, Grace.' His voice shook a little, and, in spite of the brave effort to be cheerful, the muscles of his face contracted painfully. He could not help seeing how fragile she was.
But she took up his words at once. 'Yes, yes,' she said; 'a merry evening. Let us fancy ourselves in England, on the banks of the Thames. Thank you,' as they drew in her couch. 'I am sorry to be so troublesome. Kit, will you sit near me, and Aglaia next? No, no, Rajah Sahib; you must take the place of honour. So! We can all see you now! Has he really changed so much, Mrs. Lyster?'
'Changed! He hasn't changed at all,' cried the enthusiastic little Irishwoman. 'It's I that was the idiot not to know him. But I'll never be so silly again. I promise you that.'
'I'm not quite so sure that it was your fault, Mrs. Lyster,' said Tom aside. Mrs. Durant and Lucy were exchanging a little war of words about some disputed point of the arrangements of the evening, and Grace was talking merrily to Kit and Aglaia.
'Do you believe,' he asked abruptly, 'in the possibility of people living in two individualities?'
She paused for a moment, and then looked meditatively at Grace. 'Until just lately,' she said, 'I should have called the question an absurdity. But——'
'Please go on,' said Tom breathlessly.
'I have watched her,' whispered Mrs. Lyster. 'She is leading two lives. The priest saw it. That is what brought him to-day. Don't look at her; don't let her think you are watching her. She is very sensitive. It would be the easiest thing in the world to frighten that pretty gaiety away. Yes; she is living two lives, and——'
'Well! Don't stop——'
'It should be encouraged. It is her only chance.'
'Of what, Mrs. Lyster?'
'Of sanity and life.'
'What do you mean?' (sharply).
'Don't ask me just now. I will tell you by-and-by. But watch her. Yes—and talk—be gay! I will help you as well as I can. She is a noble creature—a heroine all impact—' said the warm-hearted little Irishwoman, 'and you arealmostworthy of her, although—' and here she pulled up and blushed violently.
'Although I'm not almost, but altogether a native,' filled in the rajah, a humorous expression crossing his face. 'Thank you for the compliment. It is no small one, Mrs. Lyster.'
'Go along with you,' she said, trying to laugh, though her face and neck were one burning red. 'I shall be speaking to you presently in my native Celtic, and telling you that you are nothing better than a gossoon.'
'Which would enchant me,' said Tom, laughing. 'Anyway'—seriously—'we sign to-night a truce and an alliance.'
'To be sure! though I don't know that I was ever at war with you,' said Mrs. Lyster.
And thereupon they threw themselves into the conversation that was going on around them.
Forgetting her own sorrows, the vivacious little Irishwoman pulled herself together, brought out her best jokes and most amusing stories, and became the life of the party. Lucy followed her lead. Mrs. Durant, the desire of whose heart had been fulfilled, had no difficulty in being lively. They drew out Kit, who made them all laugh with his funny little sayings. Even the mother of little Dick condescended to forget her own dignity and the imminence of the crisis through which she had been brought, and to enjoy herself. But long before it was over, Tom saw, to his distress, that the sudden springing up of vitality which had enabled Grace to take part in the gaiety of the others was over. She lay back on her couch white and still, turning her large blue-grey eyes from one to another as the sallies of wit and merry anecdotes flew by, and smiling now and then vaguely, as though she was making an effort to follow them, but could not quite succeed.
The poor fellow was watching her, as a mother watches a sick child. While he made a feint of listening to the talk at the table, laughing when the others laughed to give himself countenance, and occasionally launching out feebly a witticism of his own, he never lost a single expression of the face that was so unutterably dear to him. Dinner over, he crossed to where she was lying. 'Grace,' he said, in a low voice, under cover of the talk, 'what is it? You are looking worse to-day. Is all this too much for you?'
'No, no,' she answered, with a smile so gentle and patient that it thrilled him to the heart. 'And do you know, I really feel better. You must forgive me for not talking. You know' (pressing her hand to her head) 'there is something here still. It won't let me. I get confused.'
'My darling,' he began passionately, and then checked himself. 'I mustn't be too impulsive yet,' he said under his breath. 'Afterwards, Grace, afterwards——'
'Ah!' she said, with a beautiful indescribable expression. 'Lucy has written. They will know in a very short time that I am here. Perhaps some of them will come. In the meantime—' dreamily.
'In the meantime, talk or be silent, as you please. Do anything! Only get well and strong, Grace. Only get well and strong!'
'I will try,' she said plaintively. 'Sometimes—still—life seems very sweet.'
'It will not be sometimes—it will be always, when you get better,' said Tom earnestly.
But there was a pang at his heart, for all his cheerful words. For the first time, since he saw her lying insensible in the hermit's hut in the jungle, a feeling of despair swept over his young soul.
He would not—he could not—give place to it. Turning away, lest she should read it in his eyes, he met a look of sympathy from Mrs. Lyster. She was far too wise to put it into words, and he found, somewhat to his relief, that he must arouse himself, for there was more to be done.
The Resident had sent word that, with his visitors, he would call upon the ladies that evening, and Chunder Singh and Lutfullah, and several other distinguished Indians, who in the rajah's absence had been diligent in inquiries and offers of assistance, had asked permission to wait upon them also.
It had been decided that the reception should be held in the little pillared hall, which had been hung with garlands and banners for the occasion. Lucy and Mrs. Durant thought it was about time to go down. Grace was asked what she would do. Seeing Tom's wistful eyes fixed upon her, she said that she would like to be present, if she might be quiet. She had a curious dread of being alone in those days. But when she tried to rise, she found that she was too weak. Tears of vexation filled her eyes, but before they had time to fall, the rajah and Bâl Narîn, and Hoosanee and Ganesh had sprung to her couch, and it was lifted up with all its flowing draperies, as if it had been a featherweight, and carried down the steps; Grace smiling through her tears and begging them not to hurt themselves—to be sure to put her down if she was too heavy—an entreaty that made the stout Indians laugh.
'Put me a little out of everyone's way,' she had said to Tom. So he found an arbour-like corner for her, beautifully shaded with palms and tree-ferns, whence she could see everything that went on in the brilliantly-lighted hall, without being much seen herself. There he put the couch down. The Indians retired, and he stooped over her. 'Is that right, Grace?'
'Perfectly right. I shall enjoy myself looking and listening. And now, Tom, you must leave me. The Resident and the others will be here directly.'
'I suppose I must,' he said regretfully. 'I will come back again in a few moments, to see how you are.'
And so Grace lay quietly in her corner, and the anguish in her heart—the phantom that was continually rising up to mock her—was at rest for a few moments, while, like images in a dream, the busy little crowd that soon filled the hall, came and went.
The Resident and the two English officers, and Chunder Singh and Lutfullah, were brought up to speak to her. They spoke feelingly, congratulating her on her escape. She found a few simple words with which to answer them; but she could not say much, and the rajah took care that she should not be made to talk more than she liked.
How deep her gratitude was for his watchful tenderness it would be impossible to express. Once or twice, when he passed, she looked up at him with a wistful smile, and once she touched his arm lightly with her thin fingers, whispering, 'You are so good to me!'
'Good!' he echoed. 'Oh! Grace, if you only knew!'
And then, for an instant, the warm colour flooded his face, and his eyes shone with a wonderful light; but, not daring to trust himself to speak, he turned away, leaving Mrs. Lyster on guard.
Meanwhile, in the hall, which had surely never seen so strange a gathering before, there was plenty of fun and good fellowship. The party at the Residency had just been reinforced by Mr. Montgomery's wife, a handsome and accomplished woman, her sister, a pretty, timid girl fresh from England, and several other ladies, who had come to Gumilcund on the Resident's invitation, leaving, in more cases than one, desolated homes behind them. There were besides the two young officers—Irish, by the bye, both of them—who had come in with Mrs. Lyster, quite well now and up to all sorts of fun. And so the evening glided on merrily. To an onlooker there might have seemed to be something pathetic about their mirth. Scarcely one of the Europeans but had some deep present anxiety to endure, or some recent loss to mourn; but they were English ladies and gentlemen, and they knew how to control themselves. For the sake of one another and their entertainer, they would not be gloomy or morose. The two young officers sang comic songs, and Mr. Montgomery, the Resident, brought out his violin and played dance-tunes which made the feet of the younger ladies twitch to be off, and brave Mrs. Lyster, who was fighting all night with a desperate longing to run away and have a good cry, talked and laughed and told travellers' tales, charming them all with her wit and vivacity. The grave Indians, who knew through what deep waters many of these poor women had passed, were surprised at their spirits. Happily for some of them, it was not kept up late. The Resident and his party, with hearty expressions of thanks and goodwill, took leave of them long before midnight, and the Indian visitors followed their example immediately. Then poor Mrs. Lyster sat down and covered her face with her hands. 'I couldn't have stood it another five minutes. Oh! do all of you think me a brute?' she cried, lifting up her haggard face.
'Don't! Don't!' cried Lucy piteously. 'You will make me cry.'
'I think you one of the bravest of women. I always did,' said Tom. 'Do you remember the storm? No one was so plucky as you.'
'Do I remember it?' said Mrs. Lyster, with a queer little smile. 'Why, it was nothing—child's play. But come, my son of Anak, pick up the couch and carry our invalid inside. Be quiet, my dear!' to Grace. 'You're not to be allowed to stir a step to-night. Carry her in, Mr. Rajah, and then take your retinue away and say good-night. We will face the terrors of the silent hours together.'
After that the days glided quietly one into the other. Every morning the rajah met his family, as he used to call the ladies and children who had found a refuge in the palace, at breakfast, in the pretty garden-pavilion. And pleasant breakfasts they were, although Grace was never present: for some one—Kit, or Aglaia, or Mrs. Lyster, or Lucy—had always something encouraging to say about her. During the day he gave himself without reserve to business and study, and cultivating useful and kindly relations with the people about him, making meanwhile such progress in the knowledge of Indian affairs, and gaining such insight into hidden depths of life and character, and into the scope and meaning of the philosophies and religions of the country, as would sometimes surprise even himself. After sunset, when the work of the day was over, he met his friends again, and they would all take their evening meal together, talking over past and present, discussing hopefully the state of affairs in the country, and exchanging the news which the mails of the day had brought in.
Sometimes Grace would join them at these dinners in the hall, and sometimes not; but she always sent him affectionate messages, of which Aglaia was generally the bearer, and he seldom spent a day without seeing her once. Later he looked back upon those early days at Gumilcund, full to the brim of joyful interests, and flooded with the light of hope, as some of the happiest in his life.
Gradually a dull pain—a terror to which he could not give a name—began to encroach upon their sweetness. Why did not Grace pick up her strength? At first her weakness was easily to be accounted for. But surely the time had come when they might look for improvement. The rest, the freedom from anxiety, and the daily companionship of her friends ought, by this time, to be taking some effect. Sometimes, when they met, he would try to cheat himself into the belief that she was better and brighter; but the absence of vital strength was a fact that, in spite of himself, pressed home to his heart. Day after day he saw the same white face, the same patient smile, the same sorrow-haunted eyes. Day after day he was the witness of efforts so pathetic that he would entreat her sometimes not to make them. 'Be patient, my beloved!' he would whisper; and all the time, in his own heart there would be a tumult of fierce impatience, a gnawing of angry pain that almost unnerved him.
But this was not all. He was conscious—they were all conscious—of a mental cloud—a veil that seemed at times to wrap her away from them.
'Grace is changed. I don't know what to make of her. But I wish—oh! I do wish—that her mother would come,' Lucy cried out one morning when Tom asked her the usual question. Mrs. Lyster gave her a warning look, but she went on. 'Yes; I can't help it. I must speak. Something ought to be done.'
'What can be done, Lucy?' said Tom, whose face had turned perfectly grey.
'Don't mind Lucy. She is speaking wildly,' said Mrs. Lyster. 'She forgets—we all forget—that there are experiences which nothing but the healing hand of time—the slow passage of the years——'
She broke down, for her voice was choked with sobs.
'I know,' said Lucy penitently. 'But, dear Mrs. Lyster, you have suffered more than any of us, and you are not so strange, so reserved.'
'My dear child, I am much older than Grace, and I have the Irish elasticity of temper, I suppose. We can laugh with the tears on our faces; and I thank God for it. And now, like a darling, run off and look after the children, and leave the rajah to me.'
Lucy hesitated for a moment, looked at them with a curious half-mutinous expression in her face, and then turned away.
The other ladies had already left the summer-house, so that Mrs. Lyster and Tom were alone.
'Thank you,' he said, looking at her with strained, eager eyes.
She shook her head sadly.
'Tell me what to do?' he cried out passionately. 'I love her. You know this already. I would give my life—my blood drawn from me painfully drop by drop—to save her a single pang. The thought of her trouble is agony to me—torture. What are we to do? Shall I send to Agra for an English doctor? I might.'
'I am afraid, my poor friend, that no doctor would do her any good. The disease lies deeper than medicine can cure.'
'What would, then? Tell me, for heaven's sake!'
'She has something on her mind,' said Mrs. Lyster doubtfully.
'I know it—I know it. A fancied trouble. If some one reasonable and wise, like you, were to talk it over with her, she might be persuaded to put it from her. Won't you try?'
'I dare not,' said Mrs. Lyster, in a broken voice.
Tom started. 'I don't understand,' he said confusedly.
'And I am afraid I can't explain,' she said. 'There is something about her—a whiteness of soul, a majesty. There, I am stumbling about as usual. In plain English, I can't get near her, and I am afraid to attempt it.'
'And yet——' began Tom.
'And yet,' filled in his companion, 'she can be bright enough sometimes. Yes; that is just what I told you before, she has her hours. And' (mysteriously) 'I will tell you a curious thing. That Brahmin, with the wild face and unpronounceable name, does her more good than anyone else. He came in yesterday, just before dinner. I was in the hall with her, and I stayed because I was curious; but of course I was not quick enough at Hindoostani to pick up all they said. You remember how calm she looked in the evening. We all remarked it. But it was so before. She is easier, brighter altogether, when she has been having one of her long wild talks with that wild man.'
'Why wild, Mrs. Lyster?'
'Why, because, so far as I can make out, they seem to be scaling heights and plunging into depths of which we poor mortals have no idea. But I will tell you one thing that struck me, his manner to her. We—well! he doesn't take any notice of us. I don't believe he sees us. He treatsherwith a reverence that, coming from a man like him, is one of the most touching things I have ever met with in all my experience. It is just as if' (in an awed tone) 'he was talking to oneon the other side.'
'Don't, don't!' cried Tom piteously. He was trembling even to the lips, which were ashy pale; but he made a feeble effort to smile. 'You come of an imaginative race, Mrs. Lyster,' he said. 'I understand that, of course. But for heaven's sake, let us have prose, not poetry! It would be too dreadful to let her slip through our fingers now! Cannothingbe done?'
'We shall know more when her mother comes,' said Mrs. Lyster. And that was all.
The young rajah went to his work that morning with a heart so full that it seemed to him as if bands of steel, growing harder and tighter every moment, were winding themselves about him, and pressing out his life. Like a mournful voice—an echo of something he had heard before, Mrs. Lyster's words repeated themselves in his brain. 'On the other side.' What if there was some strange, mystical truth in them? What if in that trance the pure, strong spirit had winged its flight to the heavenly sphere—had found its home there—and now was only kept to its earthly tabernacle by their love, and tears, and prayers? It was a terrible thought. Again and again he tried to put it away from him, but it returned unceasingly, through that long and miserable day, taking the strangest forms, as it swept through his mind. In the evening, when he went up to the hall, he half expected to hear that Grace was worse. But she was in her place, and though she was as pale and fragile as usual, she greeted him with a smile of unusual brightness.
Dinner over, he sat down by her couch. 'Grace, dearest,' he said, 'I wish you would tell me what you and Vishnugupta talk about when you are together. I am, in some sort, a protégé of his, and yet, do you know, I have never been able to draw him out, as you do?'
Grace looked up at him, an expression of childlike wonder in her eyes. 'Draw him out!' she echoed. 'I don't think I quite understand.'
'Well, then, make him talk.'
'Ah!' she said, smiling. 'But, indeed, it is quite the contrary. He has made me talk.'
'How, Grace?'
'I don't know. I think there is a power about him—a fascination. Do you remember what I told you one day when we were travelling? How I looked round me—above—below—on every side, and saw nothing but misery and pain—how I could not believe in God—could not even thank Him for saving me?'
'Yes, I remember,' said Tom.
'And after that,' she went on, 'I felt, but I couldn't speak. It was all in here—burning—burning—but no words—an awful indescribable loneliness. You were all about me, loving me, helping me, caring for me so kindly, and I was like one apart—a spirit in prison. Then I saw this Brahmin-prophet. It was the evening we came in.' She spoke rapidly, and with a curious exultation, which had the strangest effect upon her listeners—for there were two now, Mrs. Lyster having joined them. 'I saw him standing in the road—such a strange figure! It frightened poor little Kit; but I—ah! I can't tell you what it was—he looked at me, and it seemed to me as if he were looking straight down into my soul, as if he knew how I felt. And yet I did not tremble. I asked him to come and see me, and he came. He sat down there. He said nothing, not a single word; but I spoke; it was as if an angel had come down and loosened my tongue, letting the burning thoughts free.'
'Did Vishnugupta understand you?' said Tom.
'He did more than understand. He explained me to myself. Listen, my beloved, and see how overpowering—how beautiful it is. We are stretching out our hands in the darkness—looking for God—weeping because He does not answer our prayers, and He is here within us. We shall part, or we shall think that we part, but it is not so. We cannot part, we meet eternally in the bosom of the Divine. But before we can know this, and enter into His peace, the self must be slain—will—desire—love of the things that are not He. Listen again! I wondered, you know, where the evil came from—pain, misery, cruelty. I know now. These are the things to which the self will grow in its darkness. But there is hope, for in the sting is the cure. Through the evil—through the bitter pain and misery—the vision is born. The poison has a heart of healing. If there were none of this misery that revolts our ignorance, the self would go on, building its palaces about it till the Divine was shut out. As it is, we grow weary at last, and we lay ourselves down at His feet. I thought it was a dream at first; but he spoke to me again, and each time he spoke the vision became clearer. He says they have known it here for thousands of years. It has been growing and fading—growing and fading; but there were always some who held it fast, and when faith was weak, and many had gone astray, and the clue to the labyrinth was in danger of being lost, then a revealer—a God-sent teacher came.'
There was a pause. Neither of her companions spoke. Mrs. Lyster was looking out before her with bewildered eyes. If this was love-making, it was the strangest she had ever heard of. Tom had covered his face with his hands. It seemed to him that she was moving further and further away from them, and he could not speak for the sorrowful aching at his heart. Then she put out her hand, and, with a smile of the most divine compassion and love, touched his arm. 'Dearest,' she said, 'I must tell you something more. They are expecting another revealer. He will be different from any who have gone before him, for the sphere will be larger. New lights have been dawning upon the nations, and new truths, forced painfully from the silence by the higher minds, are waiting to be shown to the people. He will know all these. He will be of the West by his training, of the East by his nature. He will have the science and learning of the New World, and the self-forgetting passion of the Old. For years he will be content to learn—watching and waiting for the happy moment. Then, when he is sure of himself and sure of them, he will speak—here, in this wonderful country, which has given so many wonderful things to the world, and thousands upon thousands will follow him. This is what Vishnugupta told me, and do you know what I thought? "Our prophet is here," I thought to myself. Years upon years to come, when all this dreadful strife and sore is healed, and when I, with so many, many others, who had a part in it, are laid to rest and forgotten, he will speak the words of life, and then, perhaps,' her lips parted in a yearning smile, 'he will remember his love of old time, and these few days of love and happiness, that his love made for her, before——'
'Hush! Grace! Hush!' cried the poor boy passionately. 'It is you I want——' Mrs. Lyster turned away weeping, and he broke into a piteous entreaty that Grace would unsay her cruel words. But in a moment the words died away upon his lips, and he was gazing at her with ashy face and horror-stricken eyes. For the expression they so much dreaded—the look of fear and piteous distress—had come back into her face. In the next moment he had recovered his presence of mind, and was stooping over her to ask if she wanted anything. 'No,' she said, trying to smile. 'I am tired;' and then with white lips and eyes, whose sorrowful yearning will haunt him to the end of his days, she besought him to leave her alone.
The next day was full of business, and Tom gave himself to it with stern self-repression.
He had offered a body of guides and pioneers, picked men, as skilful with the shovel and the scaling-ladder as with the sword, to the British army, which was marching northwards to the relief of Lucknow. His offer had been accepted, and to-day they were to set off for Allahabad, where the troops were congregating. In the early morning he inspected them, and then, having given orders that they should be feasted royally at his expense in the market-place, he harangued them in the presence of a great concourse of people, and, mounted on Snow-queen, marched with them as far as the boundaries of the State.
Following as it did on an exciting evening and a heavy sleepless night, the day exhausted him, and on his return he would not press his pace. He rode back slowly, his mind, to his own comfort and relief, almost a blank, so that it was late in the evening before he reached the palace.
He had left word that he would probably be late, begging the ladies to dine without him, and as he passed into his own quarters he felt glad that he had done so, for he was able for little else but rest. Here, however, an exciting piece of news awaited him. Lady Elton had arrived. He asked how long she had been in the palace, and found that she must have entered the city by one gate as he and his men had left by another. Hoosanee, who was his informant, told him that she had arrived in a well-equipped travelling-carriage, and attended by an escort of European soldiers. These, however, had left her at the gate.