Dark Princess

was perhaps not as handsome as he used to be. His face seemed a bit weather-beaten, and his hair was certainly thinner. But he had an extraordinarily strong face, interesting, intriguing. He spoke with some hesitancy, looking first at the judge, then at Sara, to whom he bowed gravely in spite of the fact that after a startled glance, she ignored him. He only glanced at Sammy. Sammy was literally snarling with his long upper lip drawn back from his tobacco-stained teeth. He almost bit through his cigar, threw it away, and brought out another, long, black, and fresh. His hand trembled as he lit it, and he blew a furious cloud of smoke.

“I did not come to answer,” said Matthew, “but simply to state my position.”

(“My God!” thought Sammy. “I’ll bet he’s got that bag of diamonds!”)

“Have you got a lawyer?” asked the judge, gruffly.

“No, and I do not need one. I merely want to say⁠—”

“What’s all this about, anyway?” snapped Sammy.

Sara sat stiff and white and looked straight past Matthew to the wall. On the wall was a smirking picture of the late President Harding. An attorney came forward.

“We are willing that the defendant make any statement he wants to. Is there a stenographer here?”

The judge hesitated and then rang impatiently. A white girl walked in languidly and sat down. She stared at the group, took note of Sara’s costume, and then turned her shoulder.

“I merely wanted to say,” said Matthew, “that the allegations in the petition are true.”

“Well, then, what are we waitin’ for?” growled Sammy.

“I ran away from my wife and lived with another woman. I did this because I loved that woman and because I hated the life I was living. I shall never go back to that life; but if by any chance Mrs. Towns⁠—my wife needs me or anything I can give or do, I am ready to be her husband again and to⁠—”

He got no further. Sara had risen from her chair.

“This is intolerable,” she said. “It is an insult, a low insult. I never want to see this, this⁠—scoundrel, again.”

“Very well, very well,” said the judge, as he proceeded to sign the decree for absolute divorce. Sara and Sammy disappeared rapidly out the door.

Matthew walked slowly home, and as he walked he read now and then bits of his last letter from Kautilya. He read almost absentmindedly, for he was meditating on that singularly contradictory feeling of disappointment which he had. One has a terrible plunge to make into some lurking pool of life. The pool disappears and leaves one dizzy upon a bank which is no longer a bank, but just arid sand.

In the midst of this inchoate feeling of disappointment, he read:

“Are we so far apart, man of God? Are we not veiling the same truth with words? All you say, I say, heaven’s darling. Say and feel, want, and want with a want fiercer than death; but, oh, Love, our bodies will fade and grow old and older, and our eyes dim, and our ears deaf, and we shall grope and totter, the shades of shadows, if we cannot survive and surmount and leave decay and death. No, no! Matthew, we live, we shall always live. Our children’s children living after us will live with us as living parts of us, as we are parts of God. God lives forever⁠—Brahma, Buddha, Mohammed, Christ⁠—all His infinite incarnations. From God we came, to God we shall return. We are eternal because we are God.”

Matthew sat down on the curb, while he waited for the car, and put his back against the hydrant, still reading:

“My beloved, ‘Love is God, Love is God and Work is His Prophet’; thus the Lord Buddha spoke.”

The street car came by. He climbed aboard and rode wearily home. He could not answer the letter. The revulsion of feeling and long thought-out decision was too great. He had drained the cup. It was not even bitter. It was nauseating. Instead of rising to a great unselfish deed of sacrifice, he had been cast out like a dog on this side and on that. He stared at Kautilya’s letter. What had she really wanted? Had she wanted Sara to take him back? Would it not have eased her own hard path and compensated for that wild deed by which she had rescued his soul? Did not her deed rightly end there with that week in heaven? Was not his day of utter renunciation at hand? And if one path had failed, were there not a thousand others? What would be more simple than walking away alone into the world of men, and working silently for the things of which he and Kautilya had dreamed?

XVII

As Matthew reached the landing of his room, four long flights up, he saw a stranger standing in the gloom. Then he noted that it was an East Indian, richly garbed and bowing low before him. Matthew stared. Why, yes! It was the younger of the two Indians of Berlin. Matthew bowed silently and bade him enter. The room looked musty and dirty, but Matthew made no excuses, merely throwing up the window and motioning his guest to a seat. But the Indian bowed again courteously and stood.

“Sir,” he said, “I bear a rescript from the Dewan and High Council of State of the Kingdom of Bwodpur, containing a command of her Royal Highness, the Maharanee, and addressed, sir, to you. Permit me to read:

“To Matthew Towns, Esquire, of Chicago

“Honored Sir:

“By virtue of the Power entrusted to us and by command of our sovereign lady, H.R.H. Kautilya, the reigning Maharanee, we hereby urge and command you to present yourself in person before the Maharanee, at her court to be holden in Prince James County, Virginia, U.S.A., at sunrise, May 1, 1927, there to learn her further pleasure.

“Given at our capital of Khumandat
this 31st day of March, 1927,
at the Maharanee’s command,

“Brabat Singh,
“Dewan.”

“March 31?”