Mrs. Le Marchant went up to the tumbled heap by the table, and put her little white-gloved hand on its shoulder.
“Richard!” she said in a trembling voice, “Richard, don’t stay here. Do come away, upstairs, anywhere.”
She broke off, and the young sub., somewhat distressed, tried what he could do. He put his wholesome strong young arm round the disgraceful bundle before him, and said cheerily, “Hullo, Captain! I say, get out of this, you know! You mustn’t go to sleep here, they want to lay the supper. Get up, there’s a good fellow!”
The bundle stirred and raised itself. A red face showed above a crumpled dress-shirt; two bloodshot eyes opened slowly, and the individual, understood to be an officer and a gentleman, made a vaguely threatening movement of his arms.
“Richard!” murmured his wife again earnestly, “do come upstairs; you are not well, you know. I can easily say you are not well if you will only come upstairs and go to bed. Richard, do come!
He looked at her stupidly and laughed. She touched his arm entreatingly.
“Richard!” she said, “don’t let the Annesleys see you like this!”
With a sudden oath and a savage movement of his body, he clenched his big fist and struck straight out at her white pleading face, — a brutal blow that stretched her on the ground senseless. In one second the Maharajah had sprung upon him and pinned him by the throat. Down on the floor he rolled him and knelt upon him, his long, brown, lithe fingers clutching at the thick bull-neck in such a masterly manner that the young subaltern, overcome with confusion and terror, rushed into the ball-room for the Colonel and brought him forth in frantic haste, explaining in a few incoherent words the whole extraordinary situation. The Colonel proved himself a man of action. Flinging himself upon the Maharajah he dragged him away from the prostrate body of Le Marchant.
“Don’t you see he’s drunk?” he exclaimed. “You can’t fight a man who is unable to defend himself. You are neither a coward nor a murderer; you must let him be.” Then, seeing Mrs. Le Marchant where she lay senseless, he addressed the pale-faced young subaltern: “Fetch Mrs. Annesley.”
The Maharajah stood mute and breathless, with folded arms and flashing eyes. Captain Le Marchant was, with many unsavoury oaths, endeavouring to pick himself up from the ground. The Colonel surveyed the erect proud figure of the Indian potentate with a look in which military resolve was blended with a good deal of respect.
“Your Highness is my guest,” he said calmly, “and I must apologise for laying hands roughly upon you. But you cannot quarrel with a drunkard; the thing is manifestly impossible.”
“He has killed his wife!” exclaimed the Maharajah fiercely.
“I think not; but even if he has, that is not your Highness’s affair. You have no right to defend an English lady from even the blows of her own lawful husband. Pardon me! You, like myself, are a subject of the Empress; these things are known to you without further explanation.”
The Maharajah was silent and immovable for a moment. Then with a slight, haughty bow, he left the room. As he went, he glanced back once, a world of pent-up agony and yearning in his eyes. Mrs. Annesley had hurried in, and was compassionately raising her friend Idreana from the floor, and all that he seemed to see in the air, as he made his way out, was a small pale face, and a scarlet flower.
The affair soon got wind, and the ball that evening came to a hasty and rather disastrous conclusion. Idreana was carried to her room still unconscious; Captain Le Marchant was given an apartment on the other side of the house, where he could swear to his heart’s content, and sleep off his brandy potations; and when the morning broke, it found them all more or less haggard and anxious. It was the day of the Maharajah’s departure, however, for which Colonel Annesley was secretly thankful, though ‘Lolly’ was in despair that his visit should have had such an untoward termination. Captain Le Marchant woke up sober and furious. He had been attacked by an ‘Indian beast,’ he said, and he would shake his ‘dirty life’ out of him. He was still soliloquising in this fashion when Colonel Annesley entered his room.
“Captain Le Marchant, your wife is very ill.”
Captain Le Marchant growled something unintelligible.
“You conducted yourself disgracefully last night,” went on the Colonel. “I am glad you do not belong to my regiment. As a soldier, I am ashamed of you; as a gentleman, I find you insufferable. You — an English officer — to strike your wife! Good God! what a cowardly act! and what humiliation to us all to think that the Maharajah witnessed it! A nice impression to give him of our social civilisation! He nearly killed you, by the way; it is fortunate I came in at the moment I did, otherwise he would have done so. He is leaving this morning, and he has asked me to tell you that he wishes to see you before his departure.”
“I sha’n’t comply with his wish, then,” retorted Le Marchant; “I’ll see him damned first!”
“I’ll see you damned, if you don’t!” said the Colonel, with sudden heat and vehemence. “If you refuse to go to him it looks as if you were afraid of him, and, by Jove sir! no British officer shall play the coward twice where I am!”
Captain Le Marchant stared, then looked down slightly disconcerted, and pulled his long moustaches.
“Very well,” he muttered crossly. “Where is he?”
“In his own rooms, and alone,” replied the Colonel meaningly. “I may as well tell you that he wishes to apologise.”
“Oh!” and Le Marchant laughed. “That alters the case entirely. Rather funny to see him eating humble pie! I’ll go at once.”
And out he sauntered, whistling carelessly.
“Cad!” commented Colonel Annesley, under his breath. “That poor child Idreana and her ‘ideals’! Now, Laura never had any ideals, she says, and that is how she has managed to put up with me.”
This idea served him as a favourable theme for meditation, and he went to have a smoke and think it out. Meanwhile, Captain Le Marchant rapped at the door of the Maharajah’s apartment.
A servant admitted him, and without a word ushered him into a small interior chamber, where at an open window, looking out on a fair garden below, sat the Maharajah himself. Dismissing his attendant by a sign, he turned his head towards Le Marchant, in acknowledgment of his presence, but made no further salutation or movement to rise. And now, for the first time since his last night’s brandy debauch, the Captain began to be ashamed of himself. Fidgety and embarrassed, he felt singularly unable to hold himself with any dignity or display the jaunty air of indifferent ease he desired to assume. He looked about for a chair to sit down on: there was not one in the room save that on which the Maharajah was himself enthroned. And the composed sovereignty of the Maharajah’s attitude, the terrible steadfastness of the Maharajah’s eyes, which regarded him with a look wherein hatred, contempt, reproach and wonder were all combined in one dark and piercing flash, began to be distinctly trying to the not over-steady nerves of this particular officer and gentleman. He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, and studied the pattern of the floor, finding the atmosphere suddenly warmer than usual. Two minutes, perhaps, passed like this in uncomfortable stillness; then the Maharajah spoke.
“Captain Le Marchant,” he said, in low, but very clear accents, “I regret that I attacked you last night when you were unable to defend yourself. Men of my race and caste do not drink, hence we are not always able to realise the degradation of drunkenness in others. I understand that I was wrong. I therefore apologise.”
Captain Le Marchant moistened his dry lips and bowed stiffly. The Maharajah went on, still in the same even voice:
“Do you demand further satisfaction, or do you accept this apology?”
The Captain raised his head and endeavoured to look magnanimous, but only succeeded in looking foolish. He cleared his throat and twirled one end of his tawny moustache.
“I accept it,” he said, and his voice was husky and uncertain.
The Maharajah’s burning glance swept over him like ligh
tning, and a faint, contemptuous smile rested on the proud mouth.
“I wish you to comprehend me perfectly, Captain Le Marchant,” he went on. “If I could fight you now that you are capable of fighting, hand to hand, man to man, I would do it! I am ready for it at this moment! It would give me the keenest joy!” His brown hands clenched, his chest heaved. Anon he resumed: “But I cannot. The lady whose cause I would defend, whose sorrows move me to indignation, is your wife; you can do what you will with her — it is your law. I, at any rate, have no right to protect her!”
A shuddering sigh broke from him. Le Marchant stared amazed. A new light dawned upon his mind — a sudden conviction that moved his coarse and flippant nature to a sense of malicious amusement. And now in his excitement the Maharajah rose, fiercely gripping with both hands the carved ivory arm-rests of his chair.
“If I could buy your wife from you,” he said, his mellow voice quivering with passion, “and save her from another such outrage upon her as that which I witnessed last night, I would give you half my possessions! If I could steal her from you without shame to her or to me, I should be ‘uncivilised’ enough to do it! Of course you know what this means, and you can make scorn of me if you choose. I am powerless to prevent you. We are a conquered race, and you English despise us. I will not say that we do not merit your contempt — we have allowed ourselves to be kept down under the yoke of evil custom and barbarous superstition for countless ages, and we have never truly discovered our own intellectual force. Perhaps we shall discover it some day — who knows? Yours is a great nation, but men such as you disgrace it. You buy our Indian women, and neglect and ill-treat your own. This I cannot understand. But I waste words. I have made you an apology which you have accepted; so much being clear between us, I ask you one thing before we part for ever — give me your word as a man that the scene of last night shall never be repeated; that you will cherish your wife with the tenderness she merits, and never give her further cause to regret having married you. I have no right to appeal to you, I know, but for once forget this — forget the difference of race and creed between us, and as man to man before the Eternal, give me your promise!”
He spoke with eloquence and earnestness, and as he concluded stretched out his hands with a gesture of entreaty. But Captain Le Marchant was now himself again. He realised the situation completely, and felt he was the master of it. He folded his arms and looked the Maharajah full in the face.
“Your request is most extraordinary,” he said coldly and with a haughty stare. “I can promise nothing of the kind — to you!”
The Maharajah advanced a step towards him.
“You are a Christian?” he demanded.
Le Marchant bent his head in stiff assent.
“I am often told that Christianity is the one true faith,” said the Maharajah with impressive slowness, “the one pure creed. I also have a creed — not Christian. But in my creed there are oaths which bind. Is there nothing in yours which can bind you?”
The Captain smiled superciliously, and flicked a little dust off his coat.
“Nothing!” he replied.
With a stifled cry of indignation the Maharajah suddenly drew a dagger from his belt. Poising it aloft he made one tigerish spring forward; then, as swiftly as he had advanced, he drew back, and flung the glittering weapon harmlessly on the ground. Pale and breathless he fixed his glowing eyes full on the startled Captain, who at sight of the lifted sharp steel had recoiled, and pointed imperiously to the door.
“Go!” he said.
And without another word, another look, Le Marchant went.
Two hours later the Maharajah and his suite had departed, with many courteous farewells to Colonel and Mrs. Annesley, and profuse thanks for all the hospitality enjoyed. No special message of any sort was left by the Indian prince for Mrs. Le Marchant beyond a formally expressed regret at her continued indisposition. Nothing ambiguous was said or even hinted, and the ‘society’ that circled round the brilliant ‘Lolly’ was speedily left to itself to discuss the events of the past evening in the usual way that society does discuss things everywhere, propounding utterly erroneous suppositions and arriving at totally wrong conclusions. All the gossips, however, were unanimously correct in observing that ‘Lolly’ herself was singularly silent and subdued, and that what was still more wonderful was, that she appeared to have grown suddenly fond of her husband the Colonel.
That same night, on the shining flat roof of his own palace, a roof which resembled a broad open terrace decked with creepers and flowers, after the style of the ancient Babylonian ‘hanging gardens,’ the Maharajah sat alone. Above him the dense blue of the sky arched itself like a dome, pierced through by the golden fire-ball of the Indian moon that sailed slowly along her course with a lazy, languid movement, suggesting voluptuous idleness and sleep. Close by him a great telescope was set up, man’s peephole of inquiry at worlds inscrutable; but he did not turn to consult this, the favourite companion of his studies, as was his nightly habitude. He reclined restfully in a low chair, the shield-shape back of which was carved curiously, and studded here and there with turquoise, on which now and again the moon-rays flashed with a greenish-white glitter. His attitude was one of calm meditation; his eyes dreamily watched the solemn splendour of the midnight heavens. The diamond clasp of his turban scintillated in the moonlight like a stray star fallen out of the clear ether, and the priceless ruby, set as a ring on his right hand, glowed warmly with the hue of blood. He was thinking deeply, and his thoughts were of love, thoughts widely different from those of most men on the same subject.
“Let me not hide this thing from myself,” he said half aloud. “It is a sin and it is a glory. It is a sin to love her whom I may not love if I live on to bear that guilty living love towards her, but it is a glory to love if I die, and with myself kill all my erring passion. — He — her husband — has guessed, and will most surely tell her of my folly. I saw that in his cruel face. She in her gentle nature will be grieved and pained, perchance she may be offended, and rightly, to think that I should dare to love her and live on. With this fever in my soul, this desire in my blood, my very life insults her. Dead, she will think kindly of me if she thinks at all. Moreover, love is life; without love life is death. What we shall therefore do now, my soul, is to leave this world; we shall learn the news of other worlds best so. To live on and think of her, my pearl, my white lily! — yes, let me call her so once in secret, as if she were indeed mine — to think of her in the pitiless possession of the man who is her husband, — this would drive me out of sober reason. Better to forget it and go elsewhere. Love is a mystery which God or the gods only can explain. But of this I am sure — that if a man loves once and truly, he must so love always. Custom and law and creed cannot control it, nothing can change it, nothing can pacify it, nothing can quench the fire burning here” — and he laid one hand on his breast—” except the full possession of the one beloved, and — the other alternative — death. And after death? What shall I find? Myself again with all my sorrow? or God?”
He raised his eyes with a wondering look to the bright moon and stars.
“Worlds unexplored, universes unguessed, mysteries unfathomed!” he murmured—” all vague and vast and inexplicable, yet surely full of promise. There must be Something — something behind the veil, when spirits are stripped of mortality and front each other unafraid! There must be Love — there should be Peace! God! in Thy unknown deeps of Life, let me lose myself and find — Thee!”
Still keeping the same restful, half-reclining attitude, he slowly raised his right hand, and looked thoughtfully at the ruby ring that shone there; then he deliberately placed the splendid jewel between his lips, drawing it in with the lingering delicacy of one who is tasting for the first time some rare and precious cordial. A minute or so elapsed, and he let his hand drop gently again at his side. The ruby centre of the ring was open and showed a small cavity within, a cavity now quite empty.
An hour passed and t
he Maharajah did not move. Apparently he slept, and a peaceful smile rested on his features. He might have been taken for a figure cast in bronze, he was so very still. The moon sank out of sight, and the pale pink flush of dawn began to spread softly over the horizon. Delicious puffs of fragrance arose from the thousands of flowers and scented shrubs that grew in the fairy-like gardens surrounding the palace, and presently as the morning advanced, the Maharajah’s confidential servant appeared according to his usual custom, to bring his master’s breakfast and receive his orders for the day. He approached noiselessly, and, with a look of wonder, which quickly deepened into fear, surveyed his lord. He touched his robe — there was no responsive movement of that still figure, majestic in its attitude of proud repose; he called, first softly, then loudly — there was no answer. Falling on his knees, he caught up the inert right hand and saw the ruby ring with its secret cavity open — the ring which he alone of all the household knew had contained the swiftest and deadliest of Eastern poisons. With a cry of horror he sprang up and looked wildly about him, then, realising that all help was unavailing, he fell down again at his master’s feet, and there crouching, covered his face and wept despairingly.
Not a hundred miles away a certain ‘officer and gentleman’ was playing off coarse witticisms among his fellows at the expense of ‘a petty native prince’ who had presumed to fall in love with his wife—” an English married woman, by Jove! like his confounded impudence!” — the ‘petty native prince’ himself being far beyond even the wide-reaching influence of that supreme British scorn which is levied against everything not of its own cult and country. A bright gold point like a lifted spear flashed above the eastern hills — the sun was rising — the faint murmuring of insects and the fluttering of birds’ wings stirred the warm and odorous foliage; the light swiftly broadened upwards and fell in ardent waves of heat and splendour over the palace roof and its twisted garlands of flowers, touching with tender warmth the rigid figure seated in grave kingliness beside the great telescope pointed heavenwards; all the gentle and familiar noises of waking life beginning a new day filled the air with their customary sweet monotony. But the silence of the Maharajah was complete, and never to be broken.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 924
