BREAKING THE BARRIER
The Colonel's dinner-party was Beatrice's first great triumph in the face
of her enemies. They were all there and all armed to the teeth with spite
and envy. There was, for instance, Mrs. Berry with her marriageable if
somewhat plain daughter, and many more women besides to whom the beautiful
girl was of necessity an unforgivable opponent. The more the men laughed
at her quick and occasionally rather pointed observations, the more an
obvious admiration shone out of their criticisms, the more determined the
hatred became. Among themselves they had already fulfilled Travers'
prophecy and had christened her "the Adventuress" for no other reason than
that she was a woman with the same ambitions as themselves, but better
accoutred for success. Truly, she had made no bid for their favor,
choosing to stand alone and without their support; but even had she done
so it would have been useless. She wore an enemy's color in her face, and
keen, pitiless eyes had already probed into the innermost depths of her
plans and found them dangerous.
In the middle of the dinner the Colonel broke the news that the whole of
the English community had been invited by the Rajah to a reception in the
palace grounds. He made the announcement with evident reluctance, and
Beatrice was conscious that Stafford, who sat beside her, stiffened and
frowned. The sense of opposition and disapproval on the part of the man
whom she had set out to conquer put her on her metal, and with the verve
and _sang-froid_ of a woman too sure of her own power to know fear, she
related her adventure in the temple. Her hearers listened, according to
their sex, with amusement, curiosity and pious horror. Some were
unreservedly delighted, others--such as the Colonel and
Stafford--struggled between a certain admiration for her and a decided
disapproval of her action and its results. Yet Stafford at least was a
soldier before he was a conventionalist, and her bold, well-played comedy
in the temple of Vishnu, told simply, but with fire and energy, could not
fail to stir to flame the embers of his own daring. From that time he
ceased to rivet his attention to the other end of the table, where Lois
was sitting, and Beatrice was conscious that she had won the first move in
the great game which she had set herself to play. The next day the whole
Station was made aware of the startling change in the Rajah's attitude and
the means by which it had been brought about, but no one, not even those
who were disposed to judge the matter in its most serious light, guessed
what passed within the palace previous to the sending out of the now
famous invitation. For the greater part of the English community the whole
thing was rather a bad joke, with the Rajah for its victim. That a pretty
woman should have unbarred the gates which no other force, diplomacy or
cunning had been able to stir was a matter for light, somewhat
contemptuous laughter. Rajah Nehal Singh was nicknamed the Impressionable
Swain. He and Beatrice Cary were linked together either in good-natured
chaff or malicious earnest, and curiosity, thanks to the dullness of the
season, strained itself in expectation.
Thus, beyond the marble gates the world laughed, and inside Life and Death
had faced each other and for a moment hung in the balance.
It was toward the cool of the evening. Behar Asor and the prince paced
slowly backward and forward in the chief entrance hall of the palace,
plunged in a conversation which was to mark a final stage in their
relationship toward each other. Both knew it, and on both faces was
written the same determination--a determination curiously tempered and
moulded by the character of the man himself. On Behar Asor's furrowed,
withered face it was resolve, armed with treachery and all the hundred and
one weapons of oriental cunning. Nehal Singh's head was lifted in calm,
unshakable confidence. He had no need of weapons. He had seen his destiny,
and the obstacle which would be thrown in his path would, with equal
certainty, be thrown out of it. He felt himself extraordinarily strong.
His very surroundings seemed to fortify him with their splendor. Other
parts of the palace bore the grievous traces of a past devastating
race-hatred; crumbling pillars, images whose jeweled eyes had been made
dark and lifeless by robber hands; broken pavements, defaced carvings--all
these pointed to a period in human life which was gone for ever, a period
of mad fanaticism and passionate clinging to the Old in defiance of the
New. Here the New was triumphant. Hands still living had raised the mighty
golden dome; the fountain whose waters bubbled up from the Sacred Tank
within the temple was his own creation. The whole place became a sort of
outward and visible sign of the New Life, New Era, which was opening out
before him, and the old man at his side was nothing more than a relic, a
piece of clinging wreckage. Yesterday he had been a wise man whose
judgment and guidance was a thing to be considered.
But between Yesterday and Today there is occasionally a long night in
which much may happen. A life may go out, a life may come in; a devil may
become a saint, or a saint a devil; a man may swing from one pole of
opinion to another, and this last is perhaps the easiest of all. For it
does not require much to change a man's standpoint. A very little thing
will make him turn on his heel and look at a piece of the landscape which
he has hitherto chosen to ignore or despise, and probably acknowledge that
it is finer than his hitherto obstinately retained outlook. A very little
thing--like Columbus' egg--if one only knew just what it was! The little
thing in Nehal Singh's life had been a woman's face. It shone between him
and his old gods; it smiled at him from amidst the shadows of his
imagination, beckoning him unceasingly to follow. And he was
following--with the reckless speed of a man who had been kept inactive too
long at the starting point of life.
"I am weary of all that has hitherto been," he told Behar Asor. "My palace
has become a prison from which I must free myself. The very air I breathe
is heavy with sleep and dreams. It suffocates me. I must have life--here
and without."
"I understand thee too well," came the answer from compressed lips. "The
curse is on thee. Thou wilt go among my enemies, and it is I, with my
mistaken wisdom, who have opened thy path to them. It was I who taught
thee their tongue, their knowledge, their law, that when the time came
thou shouldst stand before them more than their equal. This is my
punishment."
"It is no punishment. It is the will of God."
"The will of God!" The old man threw up his hands with a wild laugh that
echoed among the pillars. "It is the will of the devil, who has been my
curse and shall be thine! Ay, ay, look not at me! It is true. Thinkest
thou that I have brought thee up in solitude without cause? Thinkest thou
that I have hidden thee like a miser his treasure, in the dark, unseen
places, for a whim? Son, I have suffered as I pray thou mayst not have to
suffer, and I have within my heart a serpent of hatred whose sting I would
thou couldst feel." He paused, biting his lip as though the pain he
described was actual and physical. "Go not among the Unbelievers!" he
continued vigorously. "Let not their shadow defile thee! For their breath
is poison, and in their eyes is a deadly flame--or if thou goest, let it
be with steeled breast and in thy right hand a sword of vengeance!"
"I can not," Nehal Singh answered impatiently. "Nor do I believe what thou
sayest. This people is surely brave and good. I know, for I have read--"
"Read!" the old man interrupted, with another burst of stormy laughter.
"What is it to read? To see with the eyes and feel with the body--that
alone can bring true wisdom. And I have seen and felt! Callest thou a
people 'good' who drink our hospitality and spit upon us--who hail us
with their unclean right hand and steal our honor with their left?"
Nehal Singh stopped short.
"What meanest thou?" he demanded.
"I have a meaning!" was the stern answer. "I will tell thee now what I
have never told thee before--I will tell thee of a young man who, like
thyself, was fearless, impetuous, a lover of the new and strange, who went
out into the world, and welcomed the White People as a deliverer and
friend. I will tell thee how he flung down caste and prejudice to welcome
them, drank in their Thought and Culture, trembled on the brink of their
Religion. Already the path had been broken for him. His mother's sister
had married out of her race--an Englishman--I know not how it came
about--and their child followed in her steps. I will tell thee how the
young man came to know this cousin and her husband, also an Unbeliever.
How often these two became his guests I will not tell thee. He took
pleasure in their presence, partly for his mother's sake, partly because
the white race had become dear to him. They brought others with them, and
among them an English officer. Hear now further.
"This young man had one wife, following the English custom--one wife more
beautiful than her sisters, whom he loved as a man loves but once in life.
In his madness, in spite of warnings of his priests, he gave her the
freedom almost of an English-woman. Wheresoever he went she followed him;
with her at his right hand he received his English guests; it was she who
sang to them--" He ground his teeth in a sudden outburst of rage. "Mad,
mad was I! Mad to trust a woman, and to trust the stranger! Son, the night
came when my wife sang no more to me, and the stranger's shadow ceased to
darken my threshold. Three years I sought them--three years; then one
night she came back to me. He had cast her from him. She lay dead at my
feet." His voice shook. "In vain I sought justice. There is no justice for
such things among the White People--not for themselves and not for us. I
drew my sword and in hatred and scorn as deep as my love and reverence had
been high, I slew my way to the false devil who had betrayed me. Him I
slew--and his pale wife I--"
"Who was this man?" Nehal Singh asked heavily.
"I know not. His name has passed from me. But the hate remains. For with
that act of treachery he drew back the veil from my blind eyes, and I saw
that they were all as he--bad, cruel, hypocrites--"
"Not all--not all!" Nehal Singh interrupted. He stopped by the splashing
fountain and gazed dreamily into the clear waters. His own face he saw
there--and another which was neither bad, cruel, nor hypocritical, but
wholly beautiful. "Not all," he repeated. "You judge by one man. There
are others, and it is those I will see and know, and--"
"I would rather see thee dead at my feet!"
"My father, I will judge them as I find them,"
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. Do not cross me again."
The old man, who had shrunk back, gasping and staring, against the marble
basin, pulled himself painfully upright.
"Ay, I did wrong," he said. "With my old hands I tried to forestall the
sword of Fate. For, mark me, the hour will come when thou wilt curse
thyself that thou didst stay my knife!"
He tottered slowly away, vanishing like a curious twisted shadow amidst
the deeper shadows of the columns.
Nehal Singh watched him till he was out of sight, and then, snapping the
dagger across his knee, flung the pieces into the water. They lay there,
at the bottom of the marble basin, sparkling and twinkling in the
sunshine. When he looked in, trying to conjure up once more the beautiful
face, it was always the dagger he saw. It was always the dagger he saw
when the memory of that short, violent scene came back to him--and it
came back often, springing up out of his subconscious self like an evil,
slinking shade that could never be wholly brought to rest. Yet he went on
resolutely. One barrier had given way--one more remained, and he flung
himself against it with a reckless determination which would have overcome
any resistance. But there was none. The old priest who had been his guide
and teacher welcomed him as he had always done, seated cross-legged at the
edge of the Sacred Tank, motionless, rigid, like some handsome bronze
statue of Buddha, whose eyes alone spoke of a fierce flowing life within.
He bowed his head once in return to Nehal's greeting, but as he began to
speak he interrupted him, and in a low, chanting voice uttered the last
words he was ever heard to address to any living creature:
"Speak not to me, Son of the Night and Day, for the Spirit of the Holy Yog
is on me, and his tongue speaketh through my lips. Behold, mine eyes see
with his into the wells of the future--my heart stands still for fear of
the things that are to be. I see a Holy Temple and hear the ring of
Accursed Footsteps. I see a young man at daybreak, beautiful, strong and
upright, and I see him stand beneath the high sun like a blade of withered
grass. I see him go forth in the morning with laughter on his lips, and at
nightfall his eyes run blood. A voice calleth him from the thicket, and
wheresoever the voice calleth him he goeth. He standeth on the banks of
Holy Ganges, and behold! the waters burst from their course and pour
westward to the ocean. Behold, then shall he draw his sword against his
people, and from that hour he shall serve them and become theirs. Then
shall the doors of the temple be closed for ever, and the lips of Vishnu
silent. Go forth, son of the Evening and Morning Star! That which is to be
shall be till the stream of the Future ceaseth to flow from the mouth of
Heaven!"
Nehal Singh listened to this strange, disjointed prophecy in perfect
silence, his eyes following the fierce stare of the old Brahman into the
oily waters of the Sacred Pool. Amidst the hundred reflections from the
temple he seemed to see each separate picture as the monotonous voice
called it up before his mind, and always it was his own face which
shimmered among the shadowy minarets, and always it was a familiar voice
calling him through the ages which whispered to him from the trembling
leaves of the Bo-Tree as it hung its branches down to the water's edge.
"Tell me more, for thy words have drawn the veil closer about the future!"
His pleading received no response. The priest remained motionless,
passive, indifferent, seemingly plunged in an ecstatic contemplation; and
from that moment his lips were closed, and he passed his once loved pupil
with eyes that seemed fixed far ahead on a world visible only to himself.
Neither in his words or manner had there been any anger or reproach, but a
perfect resignation which walled him off from every human emotion, and
Nehal Singh went his way, conscious that the world lay before him and that
he was free. The great dividing wall had turned to air, and he had passed
through, satisfied but not a little troubled, as a man is who finds that
he has struck at shadows.
Afterward he told himself that the walls had always been shadows, the
links that bound him always mere ghostly hindrances, part of the vague
dreams that had filled his life and bound his horizon. Now that was all
over. The more perfect reality lay before him and was his. The dim figures
of his childhood's imagination gave place to definite forms. And each bore
the same face, each face the same grave goodness--that of the woman
destined for him by Heaven.