The Native Born | Page 9

My
father was his greatest friend, and the terrible fact that he came too late
to save him has saddened his whole life."
Stafford looked down at her. The light from a lantern which Mrs.
Carmichael, with great dexterity, had fixed among some overhanging
branches, fell on the dark features, now composed and thoughtful. She
met his glance in silence, with large eyes that had taken into their
depths something of the surrounding shadow. He had never felt so
strongly before the peculiarity of her fascination--perhaps because he
had never seen her in a setting which seemed so entirely a part of
herself. The distant music, the hum of voices, and that strange charm
which permeates an Indian nightfall--above all, the ruined bungalow
with its shattered door and silent memories--these things, with their
sharp contrasts of laughter and tragedy, had formed themselves into a
background which belonged to her, so that she and they seemed
inseparable.
"Oh, Lois, little girl!" Stafford said gently. "I have always thought of
you as standing alone, different from everything and everybody, a
stranger from another world, irresistible, incomprehensible. I have just
understood that you are part and parcel of it all, child of the sun and
flowers and mysteries and wonders. It is I who am the stranger!"
"Hush!" she said, in a voice of curious pain. "Hush! Let us go back. We
must dance--whether we will or not."
He followed her without protest. The very rustle of her muslin skirts
over the fallen leaves made for his ears a new and fantastic music.
Close behind them wandered the two captains, Webb and Saunders,
arm in arm. At the entrance to Colonel Carmichael's Memorial Webb

stopped, and, striking a match against the door, proceeded to light his
cigar. The tiny flame lit up for an instant the languid patrician features.
"A cigar is one's only comfort in a dull affair like this," he remarked, as
they resumed their leisurely promenade. "Awful wine, wasn't it?"
"Awful. The Colonel is beginning to put on the curb--or his lady. It's
the same thing."
"It will be better when the club comes into existence," said Webb,
blowing consolatory clouds of smoke into the quiet air.
"It is to be hoped so. Spunky devil, that Travers. Wonder how he means
to do the trick. He knows how to pick out a pretty partner, anyhow."
"That Cary girl? Yes. Wait till the heat has dried her up, though. She'll
be a scarecrow, like the rest of them. By the way, what were her
people?"
"Heaven knows--something in the D.P.W., I believe. The mother was
dressed in the queerest kit."
"I heard her talking about 'the gentlemen,'" remarked Webb, laughing,
as they went up the steps of the bungalow together.
The Memorial was once more left to its shadows and silence. At the
edge of the compound a group of natives peered through the fencing,
watching and listening. Their dark faces expressed neither hatred nor
admiration, nor sorrow, nor pleasure--at most, a dull wonder.
When they were tired of watching, they passed noiselessly on their
way.
CHAPTER III
NEHAL SINGH
The Royal apartment was prepared for the suffocating midday heat.

Heavy hangings had been pulled across the door which led on to the
balcony, and only at one small aperture the sunshine ventured to pierce
through and dance its golden reflection hither and thither over the
marble floor. The rest was hidden in the semi-obscurity of a starlit
night, which, like a transparent veil, half conceals and half reveals an
untold richness and splendor.
At either side slender Moorish pillars rose to the lofty ceiling, and from
their capitals winking points of light shimmered through the shadows.
Fantastic designs sprang into sudden prominence on the walls, shifting
with the shifting of the sunshine, and at the far end, raised by steps
from the level of the floor, stood a throne, alone marked out against the
darkness by its bejeweled splendor. Of other furniture there was no
trace. To the left a divan formed of silken cushions had been built up
for temporary use, and on this, stretched full length on his side, lay an
old man whose furrowed visage appeared doubly dark and sinister
beneath the dead white of his turban. His head was half supported on a
pillow, and thus at his ease he watched with unblinking, unflagging
attention the tall, slight figure by the doorway.
It was the Rajah himself who had let in the one point of daylight. It fell
full upon his face and set into a brilliant blaze the single diamond on
the nervous, muscular hand which held the curtain aside. Apparently he
had forgotten his companion, and indeed everything save the scene on
which his eyes rested. Beneath the balcony, like steps to a mighty altar,
broad