PROLOGUE

'A dream and a forgetting. Is our life that? The sages who have searched into the past and future say that it is even so. A dream—another dream; a beginning—an ending; a beginning again—an ending again; in all the world no halt for the trembling spirit until the dizzy height be reached. And that—when will it be? I accept not the priceless boon alone. Ye Holy Ones, who have been my companions from my boyhood, whose wills have wrought upon my will, whose bodiless voices have counselled me, ye know what is in my heart. If I had separated myself from my kind, from the children who depend upon me for their daily bread, I might now have attained to the goal of my spiritual desire; instead of going forth upon this weary flight I might have been basking in the light of knowledge, as the Divine—nay, the very Divine myself. But it cannot be. For their sakes I must begin again.'

Slowly and brokenly the words fell upon the silence. He who spoke them—a man but a few hours ago in the full pride and glory of life—was dying. Early that morning he had gone out as was his wont from his palace, he had ridden over fields which he had redeemed from the wilderness, he had visited the fair markets that his munificence had opened; he had gone on foot, as he had often done before, through the crowded streets of the city he governed, when the hand of an assassin struck him down. The blow was dealt before the eyes of the loyal throngs that pressed round their rajah; yet the miscreant who did the foul deed made no effort to escape.

'He is a Feringhee,' he muttered as (the wounded prince having forbidden violence) the people led the assassin to prison. 'He is a Feringhee. He will take away from us our religion and customs, and give us foreigners to rule over us.'

Weeping and moaning, the attendants of the rajah had dressed his wound with such cool unguents as they could procure on the instant, and, while some carried him to his palace, others went in hot haste for the European doctor at the Residency. He let them do what they would, knowing that the doing would ease their pain; but, for himself, he was well aware that the end of his life, as master of these good people and lord of loyal Gumilcund, had come.

When everything that skill and care could devise had been done he begged his attendants to leave him. He wished to be alone.

He had been brought back to his palace at mid-day, and now the evening was drawing on. The golden light of the westering sun stole in through perforated marble lattices, and lay in patches on the white pavement, and made the water that flowed tinkling through, a trough in the centre of the apartment shine like rubies and sapphires. The Arabian carpet on which, propped up with cushions, the rajah lay, had been drawn by his request close to this trough, and his long brown fingers played aimlessly with the water. As he lay, his lower limbs covered with shawls of the richest Oriental workmanship, and the upper part of his body wrapped in a padded cloak of silk embroideries, exhausted as he was with suffering, the peculiar dignity and beauty of his appearance must have struck anyone who saw him for the first time. It was a grand face, finely wrought, noble in form and expression. Those who looked upon it loved it.

The jewelled turban, which he was never more to wear, lay beside the rajah on his pillow, and close at hand was a lacquered tray, containing a gold cup, an alabaster casket, and a silver bell.

The words given above, only a few out of many, were spoken aloud. The effort of thinking was too great for the strength so swiftly ebbing away. Smiling sadly, the rajah put out his hand for the gold cup. He reached it, but he could not raise it to his lips, whereupon he touched the silver bell. While the sound was still vibrating through the air, one of the many dusky forms that were thronging the doorway stood before him.

'Hoosanee,' he said, 'call Chunder Singh.'

Swift and silent as the shadow that sweeps across a ripe corn-field were the feet of the servant. But he had not far to go. In less than a minute a man, slender, but of commanding stature, dressed in snowy white, and wearing a red turban, stood, with head humbly bowed and eyes so dim with tears that he could scarcely see, before the rajah.

'My master wants me at last,' he said, an accent of reproach in his voice.

'I am tired. Give me to drink,' said the rajah.

Chunder Singh raised his head and put the golden cup to his lips. He drank, and the death-like languor left his eyes. 'That is enough. I am stronger,' he said.

'I would it were the elixir of life,' murmured Chunder Singh, who was weeping bitterly.

'Your words bring back the past,' said the rajah, his lips parting in a sad smile. 'The Elixir of Life! Long ago, when we were boys together, how diligently we sought for it, Chunder, poring over the ancient Arabic manuscripts! We were to drink of it and live, age after age, age after age. We were to bring our grey experience to the use and service of the nations. We were to mould a new world, where righteousness would be the law and happiness—happiness, instead of misery—the common lot.'

He paused. 'Dreams!' said Chunder Singh. 'Yet I wish now that they might return.'

'Dreams!' echoed the rajah. 'We know—you and I—that we are deathless. What need of elixirs for us? Though I seem to die—though to-morrow you will take out this body and burn it—the chain of existence has not run out to its limit. I remain.'

'But not with us—not with us!' cried Chunder Singh, flinging himself down with his face to the marble pavement.

He was aroused from his paroxysm of grief by the voice of the rajah. 'You are mistaken. Rise and sit beside me, and I will tell you what will make your heart leap with joy.'

Then Chunder Singh rose and dried his eyes, and the rajah spoke. 'There was a moment when I thought that this death would be my last; that when I left the prison of this mortal body I should go forth into the liberty of unconditioned existence; for I have lived as a sage. By day and by night, at the ordered hours, I have meditated upon the sacred books. I have conquered appetite and passion, and have worked for the sake of others, looking not for reward. Is this true, Chunder Singh?'

'It is true, my lord.'

'I know that it is true, and I know that the door into the highest heaven stands open. But,' in a low and broken voice, 'I may not enter in.'

'Why will my lord say so?'

'I say what I know, what the Invisible Ones have revealed to me. It is two years now since they spoke to me of this. "Brother," they said, "the door stands open. Enter in." I bowed down with my face to the ground. "And my people," I said, "they will enter in with me?" "Nay," said the Holy Ones; "have they lived as you have done?" And I said, "They will." And the Holy Ones answered, "Who will teach them when you have gone? There is no communion between gods and men." Then I trembled, and my knees smote together. "There will rise up others," I said, "like-minded with us; and these will teach them." And they said, "So it may be; yet who knoweth aught of that which is to come?" "Promise me," I said, "that they shall be led into the path that I have trodden." But to my prayer no answer was vouchsafed. After that, Brother Chunder, many days went by. Morning, noon, and night I thought of my people, humbly beseeching the Invisible Ones to grant me the assurance of their final emancipation; but the heavens were as brass over my head, and my words as empty air. But one night, when I was

musing, I heard a voice that I had never heard before. "Sacrifice," it said, "is the salt of devotion." As I pondered what this might mean there fell upon me suddenly great awe, and a horror of darkness enveloped me. More days and nights passed over me, and then I spoke again. "It is enough," I said, "I will return again to the dark forest of conditioned existence, and my people shall live." Then at last the Invisible Ones spoke clearly. "So be it," they said. "For your brothers' sakes you shall go through another incarnation, and a body is ready."'

Here Chunder Singh trembled.

'Be still,' said the rajah, laying a long brown hand upon his arm. 'Hear me to the end; for I have still stranger things to tell. Across the sea, in the land from which my father's father came, there lives a youth, to whom I desire to send you. He thinks himself wholly of the West; but our blood runs in his veins. Into him it is decreed that I shall enter, that, through him, I may return to my people and city. Listen, Brother Chunder, and consider carefully what I shall say to you. When these eyes are closed, and you have carried out this body to the burning, you must go to the land where my father's father lived; you must find that youth of our race; you must be faithful to him as you have been faithful to me.'

'But how shall I know him when I see him?' said Chunder Singh.

'You will know him by this, that he is my heir. My last will and testament is in England, in the hands of our agent, with whom you have often communicated by letter. He, if you present the credentials that I leave with you, will give you all the information you require. Understand, Chunder, while the youth is in England, amongst the friends of his boyhood, I do not desire that you shall press yourself upon him. When he has—as I know he will—made up his mind to become one of us, then you will wait upon and help him. Will you?'

'My lord, thou knowest,' cried the poor fellow, weeping. 'Of what value is Chunder's life to him now, save as he can carry out the wishes of his master?'

The rajah smiled. 'That is well,' he said, 'I am satisfied. This,' laying his hand on the alabaster casket, 'I give to you. It contains gold and English notes, and my secret instructions. Strike the bell three times!'

Chunder Singh obeyed. On the instant the marble pavement round the rajah's couch was thronged with the figures of men in white and coloured garments, whose weeping and lamentation filled the air of the apartment.

But when the rajah lifted his hand there was silence. Then every one of them fell down with their faces to the ground. In a voice that faltered with weakness he bade them rise and listen to his last words. They obeyed him trembling. 'Listen, my children!' he said. 'It is the will of the Supreme, who doeth as He listeth in the heavens above and in the earth beneath, that I should leave you for a season; but when the times are fulfilled I will return. Until I come the elders of the city, Chunder Singh and Lutfullah and the others'—he looked smilingly from one to another—'will rule you under the English Resident, whom I have seen to-day, and to whom you will refer in case of difficulty. I call you all to witness that to my faithful minister, Chunder Singh, I give this casket with everything it contains. Hoosanee, my bearer, will take the gold cup out of which I drink, and the diamond star in my turban. To him and all of you there are legacies of which you will hear in the proper time and place. It is my desire that the palace be kept as it is

till your lord's return. The treasury is in the hands of the Resident, and he will give you your pay. My faithful servants, farewell! Thank you for your service. I can say no more. As you love me, I beseech you to withdraw quietly.'

Stifled sobs followed the rajah's words, but not a single word was spoken. One by one, with lingering looks of love, they left the apartment. At last there were none left but Chunder Singh, his foster-brother, and Hoosanee, his bearer. He looked with yearning affection from one to the other, said feebly, 'Chunder will tell my Hoosanee,' and fell back dead.

CHAPTER I

THE HEIR

In a little green box by the banks of the silver Thames, far from the busy haunts of men and commerce, yet near enough to a busy little county town not to be altogether cut off from the society of their fellows, there lived at the time of the death of the Rajah of Gumilcund, known amongst his Indian contemporaries as Byrajee Pirtha Raj, a widow and her son. They were English. The widow was of middle age. She had been handsome, and she was still comely and pleasant to look upon. The son had just turned his twenty-first year.

The two were somewhat of an enigma to their neighbours, one of whom—the well-known Lady Winter—used to say that the good folks of Surbiton and Kingston ought to be thankful to the Gregorys, without whose eccentricities they would not have had anything to talk about.

Now, it was very well that Mrs. Gregory did not hear this kind speech, for, however she may have affected her neighbours, it is very certain that she had not the least desire to be eccentric. And indeed the peculiarity which set all these busy tongues wagging had more to do with her son than with herself. His appearance, to begin with—how did he come to be so curiously, so abnormally, different from his mother? No one seeing them together could have imagined that they were closely related. She was one of those large, fair women—placid in temper and gentle in manner—who develop naturally out of the lily-white blonde of poetry and romance when she is foolish enough to step across the boundary that divides youth from middle age. He had the lithe figure, the olive skin, and the dark melting eyes that are supposed to belong to the great southern races.

The observant said there was something more. They said that the boy's expression of face divided him more completely from his mother than its colour and form. I am speaking now of his childish years. They say—I did not myself know him in these days—that there was a wonderful stillness, a curious, unchildlike spirituality about him; that he looked now and then as if his little soul were in the presence of visions which made the things of earth strange to him. This was noticed once to his mother by a garrulous neighbour, and the anger with which she received the remark was remembered long after in the neighbourhood. As a fact, the poor woman, placid as she seemed, had her own strongly-marked ideals. When her infant was born, and she called him Tom—a name which the neighbours said did not suit him in the least—she had visions of him in the future as a fair-haired, white-skinned Anglo-Saxon athlete, a cricketing and footballing hero, winning the plaudits of the crowd and provoking the envy of meaner mortals by his magnificent feats. Nature, however, had other views for the lad.

But of this we shall see more hereafter. In the meantime it must be mentioned that the curious difference between the mother and son was not their only peculiarity. It was whispered that there was something strange—and we all know how much may lurk behind those two little words—in their past history. That Mrs. Gregory had spent several of her early years in India, where her grandfather, Sir Anthony Bracebridge, had been one of those fine old Anglo-Indian officers who by their military dash and political genius laid the foundation of the vast English empire that was then slowly growing up in the East; that her father had in his turn entered the service of the East India Company and won distinction; and that her husband, Captain Gregory, had belonged to the same order, and had been killed in one of the little wars about which no one in England knew anything;—so much everyone had heard, and this, it might have been thought, was sufficient for the most exacting of neighbourhoods. And no one, doubtless, would have asked for any more but for Mrs.

Gregory's curious reticence with regard to the past.

She was naturally an expansive and garrulous woman. Everyone knew that. She was not in the least like Lady Winter, for instance, who measured her words carefully. She loved talking and kissing, and the genial company of intimate friends. Dearest Tom, and his little smart sayings, the house, the servants, the tradespeople, her own and other people's ailments; she was ready at any time to discuss these with effusion. But let one of her acquaintances touch upon India or her early years, and her lips were sealed immediately. So marked was this, that, curious as some of her neighbours were—and those were the days when India was, to the generality of people, a land of romance and mystery—it was tacitly agreed that it should not be mentioned before her, and so by degrees the gossip died down. Mrs. Gregory was an excellent neighbour and a genial companion. She had a pretty cottage, a good-looking, dutiful son, and she gave charming tea-parties. The neighbourhood accepted her and let her past alone. The coming of General Sir Wilfrid Elton and his family to Surbiton set tongues wagging

again. Some one found out that the Eltons and Bracebridges were friends of old standing. Some one else suspected that Mrs. Gregory had not been particularly pleased when she heard they meant to settle near her, and two or three of the sensationally disposed looked forward to what they were pleased to call 'revelations.' None, however, came. The General was far too busy a person to gossip. Lady Elton, a pretty, timid, domestic woman, took to no one in the neighbourhood but Mrs. Gregory; and the girls either knew nothing, or had no inclination to tell what they knew. Our story dates from the summer of the Eltons' visit to Surbiton.

Tom Gregory, who was then just of age, had, in one respect, fulfilled the promise of his childhood. He was a handsome man for all that his beauty was not of that Anglo-Saxon type which was so dear to his mother's heart. An artist who met him one autumn day wandering by the riverside just as dusk had fallen, described himself as startled by his beauty. He attended one of Lady Winter's receptions later, and asked her in the presence of Miss Vivien Leigh, her pretty and eccentric niece, who the young Greek god of the river was. Her ladyship lifted up her eyebrows and wondered what upon earth he could mean. But Vivien smiled. 'He's met Tom Gregory in his boating flannels, aunt,' she said, in her light airy voice, which seemed always to have a ring of mockery in it. 'And do you know I think I shall keep the illustration; it's a remarkably good one. Which god, Mr. Walters—Apollo or Mars?'

'Scarcely Mars—not fierce enough; but the warlike element might develop. Educate him, Miss Vivien.'

'Mr. Walters,' said Lady Winter, holding up her finger reprovingly, 'my niece is quite naughty enough. She doesn't want any stimulating.'

I give this little scrap of gossip to show the effect which Tom produced in those days on some of the most stylish of his contemporaries. But although, not altogether, it must be confessed, to his mother's approbation, Tom had kept his remarkable appearance, he had changed in many ways from the beautiful boy who had woven golden visions in the garden by the river. He had been educated, and educated well. Acting on the advice of her friends, and chiefly of old Mr. Cherry, legal adviser of the Bracebridges for three generations, Mrs. Gregory had sent him first to a good preparatory school, then to Eton, and lastly to the University of Oxford, where he had just finished his term with credit. It was the general opinion that this elaborate and costly training, which was supposed to have eaten largely into Mrs. Gregory's slender resources, had been thrown away upon Tom, who declined to belong either to the church, the bar, or the army—the only professions which were in those days considered admissible for a gentleman. But Mrs. Gregory was satisfied. 'It has made an Englishman

of him,' she said.

This was a little puzzling to the friend to whom the remark had been made. 'Why Englishman?' she said; 'he was English before.'

'I ought to have said "gentleman,"' she answered; 'but, to my mind, the one includes the other.' She was certainly no fool, this fair, placid-faced widow.