I. A. R. Wylie

“ Nehal Singh, who had paced forward to the foot of the throne, turned and looked back.
"Ambition I have had," he answered, "energy I have had. Like my thoughts, they have beaten themselves weary against the bars of their cage. What would you have me do?" He strode back to the door, and, pulling aside the curtain, let the full dazzling sunshine pour in upon them. "See out there!" he cried. "Is it not a sight to bring peace to the soul of the poet and the dreamer? But for the warrior? Can he draw his sword against flowers and trees?" ”

“ To be a benefactor to his people and to all mankind, to be the first pioneer of his race in the search after civilization and culture—these had been the dreams of his hitherto wasted life, only he had never recognized them, never understood whither the restless impulses were driving him. It had needed the pure soul of a good woman to unlock the best from his own; it had needed the genius of a clear brain to harness the untrained faculties to some definite aim. The soul of a woman had come and had planted upon him the purity of her high ideal ”

“ That would be one thing more to fight against. We have come to India to sweep away its prejudices; let us first sweep away our own. We have come to bring freedom; let us first make ourselves free. It will be a good battle, but it will not darken my life, Lois. Do you think opposition and struggle could darken my life? Surely you know me better. Do but stand at my side, and there will be no darkness. I am not a boy. I am a man who sees before him long years of labor, and who needs the one woman who can help him. Is our cathedral forgotten? I do not believe it. You are not the woman to forget. ”

“ We are not the less prepared now. It is not for us I am speaking, but for you. Your day as Rajah is over—your claim to rule in India void. I offer you instead your father's name, your father's people, your father's heritage. The other road—well, you have trodden it, you know it. You must choose. Your mother chose—twenty-five years ago, in the same hour of crisis, blinded by the same bitterness. She chose to tear the bonds of love and duty; she ignored the true voice of her instinct. It broke her heart. The same crisis stands to-night before you, her son. What will you do—Steven Caruthers? ”

“ You say my friendship has been a great deal to you. What else is friendship but the sanest, most lasting, and noblest part of love? What surer basis was ever the union between a man and woman built upon? I know what you would say—it has come too soon. You have only just pulled yourself up from a hard blow, and you feel that you must have time to right yourself and all the hopes that were bowled over with you. My dear, I understand that—God knows, I understand too well—but have pity on me. ”

“ Like a middle-aged woman who comes suddenly upon a hoard of long since forgotten toys, and feels an emotion half pitying, half regretful, so Beatrice Cary displayed to her companion things that for years had lain forsaken and neglected in the background of her mind. The dust lay thick upon them—and yet they were well enough. They would have been beautiful, had she believed in them, but, like the toys, they had lost the glamour and illusionary light in which her youth and imagination had bathed them.
"Our highest ideal of a man we call a gentleman," she said slowly. ”

“ After all, it had been pity—or remorse—not love.
Thus three weeks passed. The Colonel had spent the day with him discussing the future, arranging for the transference of Lois' fortune into his unwilling hands, and now, toward nightfall, he was once more alone, wearied in body and soul. For the first time since his surrender his sense of quiet and release from an immense burden was gone. He was still alone. He felt now that he would always be alone, for there was but one who could fill the blank in his life. And she had not come. He did not and could not blame her. ”

“ It is I who have kept thee spotless and undefiled, Nehal Singh, thou alone of all thy race and of all thy caste! The shadow of the Unbeliever has never crossed thy man's face, his food thy lips, nor has his hand touched thy man's hand. Thou art the chosen of Brahma, and when the hour striketh and the Holy War proclaimed from east to west and from north to south, then it shall be thy sword—"
Nehal Singh held up his hand with a gesture of command.
"Thou also art a dreamer," he said firmly. "Thy heart is full of an old hatred and an old injury. ”

“ Carmichael still pretended to be absorbed in her pinafore, but the revolver lay on the table, ready to hand, and there was a look in the steady eyes which boded ill for the first enemy who should confront her. Lois and Beatrice continued their fruitless task.
A woman's courage is the supreme victory of mind over matter. It is no easy thing for a hero to sit still and helpless while death rattles his bullet fingers against the walls and screams in voices of hate and fury from a distance which every minute diminishes. ”

“ It is the revolt of a fanatic, warlike nation led by a man. They call him God. His godhead does not matter to us. As a god we have no need to fear him; but as a man and a born leader of men, with hatred and revenge as an incentive, armed with unlimited power, he is an enemy not to be held at bay by a handful of Gurkhas and not to be conquered by a regiment."
His words had their quiet, fatal significance. Colonel Carmichael and Stafford looked at each other. Hitherto they had faced the situation coolly enough, with their eternal national optimism and self-confidence. ”

“ But Beatrice went her way undeterred. From Stafford's bungalow she drove to the Travers'. The place was little more than an ill-cared-for shanty, the garden overgrown with weeds, the rooms damp, ill-aired and badly furnished, its reputation for misfortune phenomenal. Travers had taken it as the only bungalow to be had for such a short period as he intended to stay in Marut, and Lois had made no objection. Her energy and determined striving after everything that was graceful and beautiful was systematically crushed out of sight. She never protested, never laid any difficulties in Travers' path. ”

“ He threw it to the wrecked lumber on his life's road. He did not hear Stafford's farewell nor his wife's icy response. He stood there with his hand clenched on the balustrade, motionless and wordless, until the evening shadows had crept over the silent garden. In that hour he knew himself to be an old and broken man.
Many miles away a dusty, haggard-faced rider urged his weary horse over the great highroad. Danger lurked in every shadow, but he heeded nothing—was scarcely conscious of what went on about him. He, too, suffered, but no remorse mingled itself with his tight-lipped grief. ”

“ The window had become Lois Travers' vantage-point of life. From thence she could overlook the bustling Madras square into which four streets poured their unending stream, and build her fancies about each one of the atoms as they passed unconsciously beneath her gaze. Some of the faces were well known to her. They always passed at the time when she took her sewing and sat by the window, pretending to work by the fading glow of evening light, and about each she wove a simple little story, always, or nearly always, happy. She imagined the men returning from business to their homes. ”

“ Berry—Mr. Berry, whose highest ideal in life was to bring everything down to a nice, shabby, orthodox level.
Nehal Singh's hand dropped to his side and he looked at her earnestly.
"That is what they say," he answered. "My people say that I am the tenth Avatar. But I am not. I am only a man—scarcely so much. A few months ago I was no more than a beggar in the Bazaar, an idler and a dreamer. If I have thrown aside my false dreams and come out as an untried worker into the light of truth, it is because I have been led by God—through you." ”

“ Nehal Singh lifted his face thoughtfully toward the evening sky.
"Power for good or evil!" he echoed. "It may be that you are right. But power is a great clumsy giant, who can accomplish nothing without the experienced guiding brain."
"I imagine you have both, Rajah Sahib."
"Not the experience. I have led a life apart. I feel myself helpless before the very thought of any effort in the world. Yet I should be glad to accomplish something—to help even a little in the general progress."
"You will learn easily enough," Travers broke in, with enthusiasm. ”

“ More than that still—it is the supreme moment in man's existence when the innermost treasures or unsuspected hells are revealed beyond all denial. And in these five women, hidden in two cases at least beneath a mass of meanness, selfishness and indifference, there lay an unusual power of self-sacrifice and pity. Death was drawing near to them all, and their one thought was how to make his coming easier for the other. When the silence grew unbearable, it was Mrs. Carmichael who had the courage to break it with a trivial criticism respecting the manner in which Lois was making the sandwiches. ”

“ I loved them for their past, for their courage, their justice, their greatness. In my boy's mind they were the heroes of the world, and as such I worshiped them. No poison could kill my love—it seemed a part of me, the innermost part of my soul—and when for the first time I stood before them, face to face, it was as though I lived, as though I had awakened from a dream. Be patient, Englishman, for you of all others must understand that there is for me no turning back, no yielding. Great love is sister to a greater hate, respect to scorn. ”

“ She was proud, and not even the people in dear old Marut suspected that she was stifling in the hot Madras air and in the unhealthy atmosphere of small lies and loose principles in which Travers was so thoroughly at home. Only Nicholson's sensitive temperament felt what others neither heard nor saw.
So a year had passed, and every evening Lois sat by the window, watching the busy crowd, and building up their lives as she had once dreamed of building up her own. She scarcely thought of herself. Memories are dangerous. ”

“ Has not the Master said, 'A man shall not live by bread alone'? Is it not true? And again, I have read: 'What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?' And is not the man who sits, fed and clothed, in a low, flat, level world of mud-huts in danger, of forgetting that there were ever such wonders as the minarets of a high, Heaven-aspiring temple? Will he not grow to think that there is nothing more beautiful than a mud-hut, nothing more to be desired than his daily bread? I have thought of all this, and I have preserved my palace and everything that it contains. ”

“ For true happiness, true content and goodness can not be given. They must be self-won, or they are no more than hothouse plants which shrivel together in the cold blast of an east wind. Lois had sacrificed herself to bring true happiness and content and goodness into Travers' life, and had failed. She had failed all the more signally because she had never loved him. She had loved Stafford—extraordinary and terrible as it seemed to her, she still loved him. ”

“ Nehal Singh went on imperturbably. "If they be good and noble, I will serve and love them. If they be bad, as thou sayest—then thou shalt live to see me do thy will."
He heard a shrill cry, and his eyes, still fixed on the water, saw a hand that swept upward, the flash of steel falling swiftly through the sunshine. He swung round and tore the dagger from the nerveless hand.
"Thou dost wrong, my father," he said, with unshaken calm. "To learn treachery from treachery is a poor lesson. And thou canst not stay me. What I will do I will do. ”

“ Colonel Carmichael's face darkened with anger.
"Do you mean, perhaps, that—that we are not all that?" he demanded.
"Surely not all of us. How many men think that any sort of conduct is good enough to show a native? What did Behar Singh see of our honor? He was our friend until an Englishman who had eaten and drunk his hospitality repaid him by a dishonorable theft. What has Nehal Singh seen of our superiority? In spite of his father's influence, he came to us prejudiced in our favor. He saw heroes in us all, and he trusted himself blindly in our hands. ”