“I want to sit in a deep forest,” said Kautilya, “and feel the rain on my face.” So, they went furtively and separately down the long lanes of men, stepping softly as those who would escape wild beasts in a wilderness. They met in the Art Gallery beside the lake and walked here and there like strangers, and yet happily and deliciously conscious of each other. At last, by elaborate accident, they sat down together before a great red dream of sun and sky and air and rolling, tossing waters.
Then they went out and climbed on a bus and happened in the same seat and rode wordlessly north. At Evanston they took the electric train and fared further north. Kautilya slipped off her skirt and was in knickerbockers. Matthew slung his knapsack and blankets on his shoulders. The gray clouds rolled in dark arrows on the lake, and at last they sat alone in the dim forest, huddled beneath a mighty elm, and the rain drifted into their faces. They spent the night under the scowling sky with music of soft waters in their ears, At midnight Kautilya turned and nestled and spoke:
“I stopped in London on my way to India, ostensibly for last-minute shopping, but in reality to explore a new world. In that week in the trenches I had met a new India—fierce, young, insurgent souls irreverent toward royalty and white Europe, preaching independence and self-rule for India. They affronted and scared and yet attracted me. They were different from the Indians I knew and more in some respects like the young Europeans I had learned to know. Yet they were never European. I sensed in them revolution—the change long due in Asia. I had one or two addresses, and in London I sought out some of the men whom I had nursed and helped for a month. They knew nothing of my rank and history. They received me gladly as a comrade and assumed my sympathy and knowledge of their revolutionary propaganda. Ten days I went to school to them and emerged transformed. I was not converted, but my eyes and ears were open.
“I was nineteen when I returned to India and found the arrangements for my English wedding far advanced. My people were troubled and silent. The land was brooding. Only the English were busy and blithe. New native regiments appeared with native line officers. New fortifications, new cities, new taxes were planned. New cheap English goods were pouring in, and the looms and hands of the native workers were idle. The trail of death, leading from the far World War, marched through the land and into China, and thence came the noise of upheaval, while from Russia came secret messages and emissaries.
“The four years of my absence had been years of change and turmoil; years when this native buffer state, breasted against Russia and China and in the path of the projected new English empire in Tibet and secured to English power by the marriage of two children, maimed dolls in the thin white hand of the commissioner, was seething with intrigue.
“My own people were split into factions and divided counsels. After all I was a woman, and in strict law a widow. As such I had no rights of succession. On the other hand, I was the last of a long and royal line. I was the only obstacle between native rule and absorption by England in Sindrabad, and the only hope of independence in Bwodpur. I was the foremost living symbol of home rule in all India. The struggle shook the foundations of our politics and religion, but finally, contrary to all precedent, I had been secretly confirmed as reigning Maharanee after the death of my father. Everything now depended on my marriage, which the most reactionary of my subjects saw was inevitable if my twelve million subjects were to maintain their independence against England.
“Immediately I was the center of fierce struggle: England determined to marry me to an English nobleman; young India determined to rally around me, to strip me of wealth, power, and prerogatives, and to set up here in India the first independent state.
“My phantom prince, poor puppet in the hands of England, I soon saw had probably been murdered by the Indian fanatics of Swaraj, whom then I hated, although I realized that perhaps Englishmen with ulterior motives had egged them on. Two suitors for my hand and power came forward—a fierce and ugly old rajah from the hills who represented the Indians’ determination for self-rule under the form of monarchy, and a handsome devil from the lowlands, tool and ape of England: I hated them both. I could see why in desperation my family had consented to my marriage with Fortescue-Dodd.
“I looked about me and realized my wealth and power from my twelve million subjects and from the pathway of my kingdom between India and China. Widowed even before I was a wife, bearing all the Indian contempt for widowhood; child with the heavy burden of womanhood and royal power, I was like to be torn in two not only by the rising determination of young India to be free of Europe and all hereditary power, but also by the equal determination of England to keep and guard her Indian empire.
“I looked on India with new and frightened eyes. I saw degradation in the cringing of the people, starvation and poverty in my own jewels and wealth, tyranny and ignorance in the absolute rule of my fathers, harsh dogmatism in the transformed word of the great and gentle Buddha and the eternal revelation of Brahma.”
“But,” cried Matthew, “was there no one to guide and advise this poor child of nineteen?”
“Not at first. My natural advisers were fighting against those who threatened my throne, and young India alone was fighting England. I called my family in counsel. Boldly I took the side of young India against England and called the young, educated Indians together, many of them cousins and kinsmen, and offered the weight of my wealth and power to forward their aims. The result was miraculous. Some of my old and reactionary kinsmen stood apart, but they did not actively oppose us. Some very few of the most radical of the advocates of Swaraj refused to cooperate with royalty on any terms. But I gathered a great bloc of young trained men and women. Long we planned and contrived and finally with united strength turned on England.
“My own mind was clear. I was to be the visible symbol of the power of New India. With my new council I would rule until such time as I married a prince of royal blood and set my son on the throne as Maharajah of Bwodpur. But I postponed marriage. I wanted light. I wanted to hear what other dark peoples were doing and thinking beneath the dead, white light of European tyranny.
“I called a secret council of the Durbar and laid my plans before them. The splendid wedding ceremony of the proposed English alliance approached. The bridegroom and a host of officials arrived, and from the hills arrived too that ancient and ugly Rajah who was old when he sought my hand in vain seven years before and now had grandchildren older than I.
“The hosts assembled, the ceremony gorgeous in gold and ivory and jewels began: the elephants, painted and caparisoned, marching with slow, sedate, and mighty tread; the old high chariots of the rajahs, with huge wheels and marvelous gilding, drawn by great oxen; the curtained palanquins of the women; the clash of horns and drums and high treble of flutes.
“Then at the height and culmination of the ceremony and before the world of all India and in the face of its conquerors, I took my revenge on the man and nation that had dared to insult a Maharanee of Bwodpur. As Captain the Honorable Malcolm Fortescue-Dodd kneeled in silver and white to kiss my hand, the ancient Rajah from the hills stepped forward and interposed. As the eldest representative of my far-flung family, he announced that this marriage could not be. A plenary council of the chief royal families of India had been held, and it had been decided that it was beneath the dignity of India to accept as consort for a princess of the blood a man without rank or title—unless, he added, ‘this alliance was by the will and command of the Maharanee herself.’
“All the world turned toward me and listened as I answered that this marriage was neither of my will nor wish but at the command of my family. Since that command was withdrawn—
“ ‘I do not wish to marry Captain the Honorable Malcolm Fortescue-Dodd.’
“England and English India roared at the insult. There were a hundred conjectures, reasons, explanations, and then sudden silence. After all it was no time for England to take the high hand in India. So it was merely whispered in select circles that the family of Fortescue-Dodd had decided that the women of India were not fit consorts for Englishmen and that they had therefore allowed me gracefully to withdraw. But we of India knew that England was doubly determined to crush Bwodpur.
“Four years went by. Although ruling in my own right, I made that ancient Rajah my guardian and regent and thus put behind my throne all the tradition of old India. Meantime with a growing council of young, enthusiastic followers I began to transform my kingdoms. We mitigated the power of the castes and brought Bwodpur and Sindrabad nearer together. We contrived to spend the major part of the income of the state for the public welfare instead of on ourselves, as was our ancient usage. We began to establish public schools and to send scholars to foreign lands.
“Only in religion and industry were my hands tied—in religion by my own people; in industry by England. We had Hindus and Mohammedans, Buddhists of every shade, and a few more or less sincere Christians. I wanted to clean the slate and go back to the ancient simplicity of Brahma. But, ah! Who can attack the strongholds of superstition and faith!”
“Who indeed!” sighed Matthew. “Our only refuge in America is to stop going to church.”
“The church comes to us in India and seizes us. I could only invoke a truce of God to make Allah and Brahma and Buddha sit together in peace, to respect each other as equals.
“In industry my hands were tied by the English power to sell machine goods and drive our artisans from the markets. In vain I joined Mahatma Gandhi and tried to force the boycott over my land. My people were too poor and ignorant. Yet slowly we advanced and there came to us visitors from Egypt, Japan, China, and at last from Russia down across that old and secret highway of the Himalayas, hidden from the world.
“Sitting there in the white shadow of Gaurisankar we conferred with young advanced thinkers of all nations and old upholders of Indian faith and tradition. We conceived a new Empire of India, a new vast union of the darker peoples of the world.
“To further this I started on the Grand Tour of the Darker Worlds. I went secretly by way of Tibet and New China; saw Sun Yat-sen in Peking. I was three months in Japan, where the firm foundation of our organization of the darker peoples was laid. Then I spent three months in Russia, watching that astonishing experiment in a land which had suffered from tyranny beyond conception. I tried to learn its plans, and I received every assurance of its sympathy. Down by Kiev I came to Odessa and sailed the Black Sea.
“I saw the towers of Constantinople shining in the sun and stood in that great center where once Asia poured the light of her culture into the barbarism of Europe and made it a living soul. I walked around those mighty walls, where Theodosius held back the Nordic and the Hun. I went by old Skutari and its vast city of the dead; down by a slow and winding railway, three hundred and fifty miles westward to Angora. There I sat at the feet of Kemal and heard his plans. Thence overland by slow and devious ways I came through Asia Minor and Syria. Down by the Kizilirmak and the great blue waters of the Tuz Tcholli Gol; over to Kaisapieh and through the dark passes of the Anti-Taurus; then skirting the shining Mediterranean, I saw French Syria at Aleppo, Hamah, and Damascus; I saw Zion and the new Jerusalem and came into the ancient valley of the Nile and into the narrow winding streets of Cairo.”
“You have seen the world, Kautilya, the real and darker world. The world that was and is to be.”
“It was a mighty revelation, and it culminated fittingly in Egypt, where in a great hall of the old university hung with rugs to keep out both the eavesdropper and the light, the first great congress of the darker nations met under the presidency of Zahglul Pasha. We had all gathered slowly and unobtrusively as tourists, business men, religious leaders, students, and beggars, and we met unnoticed in a city where color of skin is nothing to comment on and where strangers are all too common. We were a thousand strong, and never were Asia, Africa, and the islands represented by stronger, more experienced, and more intelligent men.
“Your people were there, Matthew, but they did not come as Negroes. There were black men who were Egyptians; there were black men who were Turks; there were black men who were Indians, but there were no black men who represented purely and simply the black race and Africa.
“Of all the things we did and planned and said in a series of meetings, I will tell you in other days. Let it suffice now to say that I came back to Europe by Naples and Paris and then went to Berlin. There I sat and planned with a small special committee, and there it was that I brought up the question of American Negroes, of whom I had heard much in Russia. The committee was almost unanimously opposed. They thought of Negroes only as slaves and half-men, and were afraid to risk their cooperation, lest they lose their own dignity and place; but they were not unwilling to let American Negroes, if they would, start some agitation or overt act. Even if it amounted to nothing, as they expected, it would at least focus attention. It would intensify feeling. It would help the coming crisis.
“But who could do this?
“The curious and beautiful accident of our meeting, after my committee had discussed and rejected the Negroes of America as little more than slaves, deeply impressed me. And in the face of strong advice, as you know, I helped you to return to America and report to me on the rumored uprising which had been revealed to me by curious and roundabout ways.
“I was not thinking of you then, Matthew, at least not consciously. I was thinking of the great Cause and I wanted information. I looked at America and tried to understand it. There was here a mystery of the art of living that the world must have in order to have time for life. I saw America and lost you. Almost, in the new intensity of my thinking, I forgot you as a physical fact. You remained only as a spirit which I recognized as part of me and part of the universe. And then suddenly the blow came, falling through open skies, and I saw you facing disgrace and death and locked for ten years in jail.
“Before I saw you, I, with most of the others except the Chinese, had thought of our goal as a substitution of the rule of dark men in the world for the rule of white, because the colored peoples were the noblest and best bred. But you said one word that night at dinner.”
“I did not say it—it was said. I opened my mouth and it was filled.”
“You remember it! It was a great word that swung back the doors of a world to me. You said that the masses of men of all races might be the best of men simply imprisoned by poverty and ignorance.
“It came to me like a great flash of new light, and you, the son of slaves, were its wonderful revelation. I determined to go to America, to study and see. I began to feel that my dream of the world based on the domination of an ancient royal race and blood might not be all right, but that as Lord Buddha said, and as we do not yet understand, humanity itself was royal.
“Then things happened so rapidly that I lost my grip and balance and sense of right and wrong. I sent you on a wild chase to almost certain death. I planned to go with you to watch and see. The secret, powerful hand of the junta sought to threaten us both and save the great cause. How singularly we fought at cross purposes! They wanted you to go and stir up any kind of wild revolt, but they wanted to keep me and themselves from any possible connection with it in thought and deed. They almost threatened you with death. They pushed you out alone. They tried to keep me from sailing. And finally you went down into the depths, dear heart, almost to the far end.” Her voice fell away, and they lay and watched the birth of the new and sun-kissed day.
All that day they wandered and talked and finally late at night came home. Kautilya was almost ready for bed when she said drowsily:
“Oh, Matthew—the little leather bag I brought—where did you put it, dear?”
“Leather bag? I saw none.”
“But it was not at the union headquarters. They said I took it with me to—to Sara’s.”
“Then you must have left it there. We carried nothing away. Nothing.”
“Oh, dear—I must have left it—what shall I do?”
“Was it valuable or just clothes?”
“It was—valuable. Very valuable, intrinsically and—in meaning.”
“I am so sorry—may I ask—?”
“Yes—it has many of the crown jewels of Bwodpur.”
“The crown jewels!”
“Yes. Some of them always travel with the heir to the throne. I have carried these since father’s death. Some of the jewels are beautiful and priceless. Others, like the great ruby, are full of legends and superstitious memory. The great ruby is by legend a drop of Buddha’s blood. It anoints the newborn Maharajah. It is worn on his turban. It closes his eyes in death.”
“Oh, Kautilya, Kautilya! We must find these things—I will go to Sara’s myself. What do you think them worth—I mean would they be worth stealing?”
“Oh, yes, they must be worth at least a hundred lakhs of rupees.”
Matthew paused, then started up.
“What—you mean—you don’t mean—a million dollars?”
“At least that—but don’t be alarmed. They are mostly too large and unusual for sale. They are insured and I have a description. Probably the bag is sitting somewhere unnoticed. Oh, I am so careless; but don’t worry. Let me write a note and call a messenger. I have faithful helpers. The bag will soon be found.”
The note was dispatched, and Kautilya was soon making a mysterious Indian dish for supper and singing softly.
Matthew was still thinking with astonishment, “The crown jewels of Bwodpur—a million dollars!”