SEEN IN THE LIGHT OF MORNING
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.