AT THE GATES OF A GREAT PEOPLE
Although Travers lost no time in setting to work on the task of
calling a new and suitable club-house into existence, he realized
immediately that, do what he would, he could not hope for completion
before the lapse of a considerable time, and this period of waiting
did not suit his plans. Already on the day after the Rajah's reception
he had arranged for a return of hospitality which was to take place in
his own grounds and to be on an unusually magnificent scale. The
European population of Marut shrugged its shoulders as it saw the
preparations, and observed that if Travers had been as generous in the
first place there would never have been any need to have sought for
support from a foreign quarter--at which criticism Travers merely
smiled. The club-house was, after all, only a means to a very much
more important end of his own.
Rajah Nehal Singh of course accepted the invitation sent him, and
scarcely a week passed before the eventful evening arrived toward
which more than one looked forward with eager anticipation--not least
Mrs. Cary, who saw in every large entertainment a fresh opportunity
for Beatrice to carry out her own particular campaign. It was
therefore, as Mrs. Cary angrily declared, a fresh dispensation of an
unfriendly Providence that on the very same day Beatrice fell ill.
What malady had her in its clutches was more than her distracted and
aggrieved mother could say. She sat before her writing-table, playing
idly with a curiously cut stone, and appeared the picture of health.
Yet she was ill--she repeated it obstinately and without variation a
dozen times in response to Mrs. Cary's persistent protests.
"You don't _look_ ill," Mrs. Cary exclaimed in exasperation as,
arrayed in her newest wonder from Paris, she came to say good-by. "I
can't think what's the matter with you, and you won't explain. Have
you got a pain anywhere?--Have you a headache? For goodness' sake, say
something, child!"
Beatrice looked at her mother calmly, and a curious mixture of
bitterness and amusement crept into her expression as her eyes
wandered over the bulk in mauve satin to the red face with the
indignant little eyes.
"What do you want me to say?" she asked. "I can't explain pains I
haven't got."
"If you haven't got any pains, then you aren't ill."
Beatrice laughed.
"That shows how ignorant you are of the human constitution, my dear
mother," she said. "The worst illnesses are painless--at least, in
your sense of the word."
"I am not so ignorant as not to know one thing--and that is you are
simply shamming!" burst out the elder woman, with a vicious tug at her
straining gloves. "Shamming just to aggravate me, too! You do it to
spite me. You are a bad daughter--"
Beatrice turned round so sharply that Mrs. Cary broke off in the
middle of her abuse with a gasp.
"I do nothing to aggravate or spite you," Beatrice said, with a calm
which her eyes belied. "I have never gone against you in the whole
course of my life. What have I done since we have been here but play
an obedient fiddle to Mr. Travers' will, in order that your position
might not be endangered--"
"_Our_ position," interposed Mrs. Cary hurriedly.
"No, _your_ position. There may have been a time when I cared, too,
but I don't now. I have ceased caring for anything. To suit Mr.
Travers, I have fooled, and continue to fool, a man who has never
harmed me in his life. I move heaven and earth to come between two
people for whom alone in this whole place, I have a glimmer of
respect."
"Respect!" jeered Mrs. Cary.
"Yes, respect--not much, I confess, but still enough to have made me
leave them alone if I had had the chance. Lois has been kind to me. I
happen to know that, little as she likes me, she is about the only one
in the Station who keeps her tongue from slander and--the truth. As
for John Stafford, if he is a narrow-minded bigot, he is at least a
man, and that is something to appreciate."
"That is just what I think!" Mrs. Cary said conciliatingly. "And
therefore he is the very husband for you, dear child."
"You think so, not because he is a man, but because he has a position
in which it would suit you excellently to have a son-in-law. Well, I
have promised to do my best, though I am convinced it is too late."
"There is no official engagement between them," Mrs. Cary said
hopefully, "and you know your power, Beaty. He already likes you more
than enough, and what with Mr. Travers on the other side--All the
same," she continued, becoming suddenly petulant, "it's too bad of you
to throw away a chance like this."
Beatrice covered her face with her hand with a gesture of complete
weariness.
"I have promised to do my best," she reiterated. "Let me do it my own
way. I can not go to-night--I feel I can not. If I went, it would
only be a failure. Let me for once be judge of what is best."
Her mother sighed resignedly.
"Very well. I suppose I can't force you. You can be as obstinate as a
mule when you choose. I only hope you won't live to regret it. Good
night."
This time she did not give her daughter the usual perfunctory and
barely tolerated kiss. At the bottom of her torpid, selfish soul she
was bitterly hurt and disappointed, as those people always are who
have hurt and disappointed others their whole lives, and only a
glimmer of hope that Beatrice's determination might have softened made
her hesitate at the door and glance back. Beatrice sat just as she had
sat the whole evening, in an attitude of moody thought, her fingers
still playing with the blood-red ruby, and Mrs. Cary went out,
slamming the door violently after her.
In consequence of her long and futile appeal, Mrs. Cary had made
herself very late, and when she entered the large marquee which
Travers had had erected in his garden she found that all the guests
had arrived, including Rajah Nehal Singh himself. He stood facing the
entrance, and she felt, with a consoling sense of spiteful triumph,
how his glance hurried past her, seeking the figure which no doubt
above all else had tempted him thither.
The senior lady, Mrs. Carmichael, was at his side, and as Mrs. Cary in
duty bound went up to pay her respects, she added satisfaction to
satisfaction by relating loudly that her daughter had a slight
headache which she had not thought it worth while to increase by a
form of entertainment which, between you and me, dear Mrs. Carmichael,
bad taste as it no doubt is, has no attractions for Beatrice. Now,
anything outdoor, and nothing will keep her from it! She turned to
Stafford, who was standing with Lois close at hand. "That reminds me
to tell you, Captain, how tremendously my daughter enjoyed her ride
with you yesterday. If you promise not to get conceited, I will tell
you what she said."
"I promise!" he said, with a mock gravity which concealed a very real
amusement.
"She said that in her opinion there wasn't a better horseman in Marut,
and that it was more pleasure to ride with you than any one else. Now,
are you keeping your promise?" She tapped him playfully on the arm.
Stafford bowed, looking what he felt, hot and uncomfortable. There are
some people who have the knack of making others ashamed of them and of
themselves. Mrs. Cary was just such a person.
"It was very kind of Miss Cary to say so," Stafford said stiffly. "I
am afraid her praise is not justified."
All this time Nehal Singh had been standing at Mrs. Cary's elbow, and
she had persistently ignored him. Deeper than her reverence for any
form of title was her wounded conviction that he had once laughed at
her and made her ridiculous, and to this injury was added the insult
that it came from a man whom, as an Englishwoman, she had the
privilege of "tolerating." A true parvenu, she had quickly learned to
suspect and despise the credentials of other intruders.
He turned away from her and for the first time there was something
hesitating and troubled in his manner. Hitherto there had been songs
and music for his entertainment; it was now the turn of the Europeans
to follow their usual form of pleasure, yet they looked at one another
questioningly. It was the custom of the chief guest of the evening to
open the dancing, but this could hardly be expected of a native prince
who was as yet ignorant of such things and who must still be bound and
fettered by caste and religion.
The pause of uncertainty lasted only a moment, but for those at least
whose eyes were open, it was a moment symbolical of a great
loneliness. In the midst of a gay and crowded world of people, linked
together by a common tie of blood, Nehal Singh stood isolated. He did
not know it, but it was that loneliness which cast a transitory chill
upon his enthusiasm and made him draw himself stiffly upright and face
the hundred questioning eyes with a new hauteur. An instant and it was
gone--that illuminating flash vanished, like a line drawn across a
quicksand, beneath the surface, never to be seen again, perhaps never
even to be remembered.
Stafford led Lois out into the center, and one pair after another
followed his example. With Travers still at his side, the Rajah drew
back from the now crowded floor of dancers, and watched the scene with
glistening, eager eyes, happy at last to be in the midst of them--the
Great People of the world. It was a brilliant scene, for Travers had
spared nothing. The sides of the marquee banked with flowers, the
music, the brilliant dresses and uniforms, were all calculated to
impress a mind as yet curiously unspoiled by the pomp and magnificence
of the East. They impressed Nehal Singh deeply; his mind was filled
with a wonder and pleasure which did something toward soothing the
first bitter disappointment that the evening had brought him.
But above all else, he wondered at himself and the rapidity of the
fate which in two short weeks had swept him out of his solitude into
the very vortex of a world unknown to him save through his books. He
asked himself what power it was that had flung aside caste, religion,
education, like a child's sandcastle before the onrush of a mighty
tide. Caste, religion, hatred of the foreigner, these things had been
sown deep into him, had been fostered and trained like precious
plants, and now they were dead at the first contact with European
ideas. They were gone as though they had never been. He had made no
resistance. He had drifted with the stream, regardless of the
entreating, threatening hands held out to him; yielding to a divine
power stronger than himself, stronger far than the implanted
principles of his life.
His wonder, though he did not know it, was shared by the Englishman at
his side. Travers, accustomed as he was to look upon human theories
and principles as buyable and saleable appendages, could not suppress
a mild surprise at the rapidity with which this Hindu prince had
assimilated the ideas and mental attitude of another hemisphere.
Possibly it could be traced back to the parrot-like propensities of
all inferior races, but Travers, much as the solution appealed to him,
could not accept it. A parrot that assumes with apparent ease the ways
of his master within a fortnight, and thereby retains a striking
originality of his own, is not an ordinary parrot, and the conviction
was dawning on Travers that Nehal Singh was not an ordinary Hindu. The
unusual simplicity of his dress, which nevertheless concealed a costly
and refined taste, his firm though unpretentious bearing, the energy
with which he had overthrown what Travers guessed must have been a
fairly violent opposition on the part of his priestly advisers,
pointed to a decided, interesting and perhaps, under certain
circumstances, dangerous personality. The latter part of this
deduction had not as yet struck Travers in its full force, but so much
he at least felt that he proceeded to go warily, relying on his
diplomacy and still more on a weapon which was not the less effective
for being kept, as on this occasion, in the background.
"Rajah Sahib, this is our second meeting," he said, after a few
minutes' study of the handsome absorbed face. "I have my answer
ready."
Nehal Singh turned at once, as though he had been waiting for Travers
to broach the subject.
"You have not forgotten, then?"
"Forgotten? No; it lent itself too easily to my fancy and secret
ambition for me to forget. Doubtless, though, my answer will not
appeal to you, for it is the answer of a business man with a business
hobby of immense proportions and of the earth earthy."
"Nevertheless, tell it to me," Nehal Singh said, looking about him as
though seeking a way out of the noise and confusion. "Whatever it is,
it will interest me so long as it has one object."
"I venture to think I know that object," was Travers' mental comment
as he led the way into the second division of the marquee.
The place had been laid out as a refreshment room, with small,
prettily decorated tables, and was for the moment empty, save for a
few busy native servants. An electric globe hung from the ceiling, and
immediately beneath its brilliant light Travers came to a standstill.
He put his hand in his pocket and drew out what seemed to be a
jewel-case, which he opened and handed to the Rajah.
"Before I say anything further, I want you to look at that and give me
your opinion, Rajah Sahib," he said. "I will then proceed."
Nehal Singh took the small white stone from the case and studied it
intently. He held it to the light, and it flashed back at him a
hundred brilliant colors. He smiled with the pleasure of a
connoisseur.
"It is a diamond," he said, "a beautiful diamond. Though smaller, it
must surely equal the one I wear in my turban."
"You confirm my opinion and the opinion of all experts," Travers
answered enthusiastically, "and I will confess to you that it is that
stone which has prolonged my stay indefinitely at Marut. About a year
ago a friend of mine, an engineer, who was engaged on some government
work at the river, had occasion to make excavations about a quarter of
a mile from the Bazaar. He happened to come across this stone, and
being something of an expert, he recognized it--and held his tongue.
When he came south again to Madras, he confided hit discovery to me,
and, impressed by his story, and the stone, I sent a mining engineer
to Marut to make secret investigations. I received his report six
months ago."
Nehal Singh replaced the stone slowly in its case.
"What did he say?" he asked.
"He reported that there were sure and certain signs that the whole of
the Bazaar is built upon a diamond field of unusual proportions,
which, unlike other Indian mining enterprises, was likely to repay,
doubly repay, exploitation. I immediately came to Marut, and found
that the Bazaar was entirely your property, Rajah Sahib, and that you
were not likely to be influenced by any representations. Nevertheless
I remained, experimenting and investigating, above all hoping that
some chance would lead me in your way. Destiny, as you see, Rajah
Sahib, has spoken the approving word."
Nehal Singh sighed as he handed the case back, and the sigh expressed
a. rather weary disappointment.
"I have stones enough and wealth enough," he said. "I have no need of
more."
"It was not of you I was thinking, Rajah Sahib," Travers returned.
"Of whom, then?"
"Of myself, to some extent, as becomes a business man, but also, and I
venture to assert principally, of the general welfare of your country
and people."
"I fear I do not understand you."
"And yet, Rajah Sahib, you have read, and have no doubt been able to
trace through history the source of prosperity and misfortune among
the nations. The curse of India is her overpopulation and the
inability of her people to extract from the earth sufficient means for
existence. If I may say so, the ordinary native is a dreamer who
prefers to starve on a treasure hoard rather than bestir himself to
unbury it. Lack of energy, lack of initiative, lack of opportunity,
lack also of guides have made your subjects suffering idlers whose
very existence is a curse to themselves and an unsolved problem for
others. Charity can not help them--that enervating poison has already
done enough mischief. You could fling away your whole fortune on your
state, and leave it with no improvement. The cure, if cure there be,
lies in the awakening of a sense of independence and ambition and
self-respect. Only work can do this, only work can transform them from
beggars into honorable, self-supporting members of the Empire; and the
crying misery of the present time calls upon you, Rajah Sahib, to
rouse them to their new task!"
He had spoken with an enthusiasm which grew in measure as he saw its
effect upon his hearer. For though he did not immediately respond,
Nehal Singh's face had betrayed emotions which a natural dignity was
learning to hold back from impulsive expression. He answered at last
quietly, but with an irrepressible undercurrent of eagerness.
"You speak convincingly," he said; "and though I fear you overrate the
hidden powers of activity in my people, you have made me still more
anxious for a direct answer to my question--what would you do in my
place?"
"If I had the money and the power, I would sweep the Bazaar, with all
its dirt and disease, out of existence," Travers answered
energetically. "I would build up a new native quarter outside Marut,
and enforce order and cleanliness. Where the present Bazaar stands, I
would open out a mine, and with the help of European experts encourage
the natives into the subsequent employment which would stand open to
them. In a short time a mere military Station would become the center
of native industry and commercial prosperity."
A faint skeptical smile played around Nehal Singh's mouth, but his
eyes were still profoundly grave.
"If I know my people, I fear they will revolt against such changes,"
he said. "You have described them as dreamers who prefer starvation to
effort--such they are."
"Your influence would be irresistible, Rajah Sahib."
Nehal Singh looked at Travers keenly. For the second time he had been
spoken of as a power. Was it perhaps true, as his father had said, and
this cool Englishman had said, that the thoughts and actions of more
than a million people lay at his command? If so, the twenty-five years
of his life had been wasted, and he stood far below the high standard
which had been set him. He had wandered aimlessly along a smooth path,
cut off from the world, plucking such fruits and flowers as offered
themselves within his reach, deaf to the cries of those to whom his
highest efforts should have been dedicated. He had dreamed where he
should have acted, slept where he should have watched and labored
unceasingly, yet it was not too late. He felt how his whole
dream-world shivered beneath the convulsions of his awakening
energies. The vague, futile, uneasy longings of his immaturity took
definite shape. His shackled abilities awaited only the signal to
throw off their fetters and in freedom to create good for the whole
world.
"You have shown me possibilities of which I never dreamed," he said to
Travers. "I must speak to you again, and soon, for if things are as
you say, then time enough has been wasted. But not tonight. Tomorrow I
will see you--or no, not tomorrow--the day after. I must have time to
think."
The waltz had died sentimentally into silence, and he made a gesture
indicating that he wished to return to the ball-room. Yet on the
threshold he hesitated and drew back.
"The light and confusion trouble me," he said, passing his hand over
his eyes, "and my mind is full of new thoughts. If you will permit, I
will take my leave. My servants are waiting outside, and if you will
carry my thanks to my other hosts, I should prefer to go unnoticed."
"It is as you wish, Rajah Sahib," Travers returned, "It is we who have
to thank you for partaking of our poor hospitality."
"You have given me more than hospitality," Nehal Singh interposed.
Then he lifted his hand in salute. "In two days I shall expect you."
"In two days."
Travers watched the tall, white-clad figure pass out of the brightly
lighted tent into the darkness. From beginning to end, his plans had
been crowned with unhoped-for success, and yet he was puzzled.
"I wonder why in two days?" he thought. "Why not tomorrow? I wonder if
by any chance--!" He broke off with a smothered laugh. "It is just
possible. I'll make sure and send her a line."
Then, as the band began the first bars of a second waltz, he hurried
back into the crowded room in time to forestall Stafford at Lois'
side.