“I do not know how it happened. I know that the English commissioner was transfixed with horror. This bronze boy, just as he had started home, was found in the forest, his face all blood, dead. My father was wan with anger, and, it seemed, all against the English. He did not accuse them directly of this awful deed, but he knew that the death of both these married children, the last of their line, would throw both countries into the control of England. There were wild rumors in the air of the court. In strict compliance with ancient custom, I as a widow should have died with my little bridegroom, but even the priests saw too much power for England in this, and suddenly my father summoned my English companion and sent me with her to England, while he reigned in my name in Sindrabad and in his own right in Bwodpur.
“My governess was a quiet, clear-eyed woman, with a heart full of courage and loyalty. Sometimes I thought that she and my father had loved each other and that because of the hopelessness of this affection she was suddenly sent home and I with her.
“Then came beautiful days. I loved England. I loved the work of my tutors and the intercourse with the new world that spread before me. I stayed two full years, until I was fourteen, and then again came clouds. There was a tall English boy of whom I saw much. We had ridden, run, and played together. He told me he loved me. I was glad. I did not love him, but I wanted him to love me because the other girls had sweethearts. But he was curiously fierce and gruff about it all. He wanted to seize and embrace me and I hated the touch of his hands, for after all he was not of royal blood, which then meant so much to me.
“One day he suddenly asked me to run away and marry him. I laughed.
“ ‘Yes, I mean to marry you,’ he said. ‘I am going to have you. I don’t care if you are colored.’ I gasped in amazement. He didn’t care. He, a lowborn shopman’s brat, and I, a princess born. I, ‘colored’! I wanted to strike him with my croquet mallet. I rushed away home.
“It seemed that the scales had fallen from my eyes. I understood a hundred incidents, a dozen veiled allusions and little singular happenings. I suddenly realized that these dull, loud, ugly people actually thought me inferior because my skin was browner than their bleached and roughened hides. They were condescending to me—me, whose fathers were kings a thousand years before theirs were ragpickers.
“I rushed in upon my governess. I opened my lips to rage. She stopped me gently: my father was dead in Bwodpur. I was summoned to India to marry and reign. But I did not go. The news of my father’s death came on August first, 1914. When I reached London and the India Office, August fourth the world was at war.
“There ensued a series of quick moves followed by protracted negotiations; the English explained that it would never do to start their royal charge for India in time of war. Bwodpur retorted that it would never do to have their Maharanee far away in England in time of war. The India Office delicately suggested that the presence in England of an Indian princess of high birth and influence would do much to cement the empire and win the war for civilization, and secretly they whispered that it would be unwise to send to India, when English power was weak, a person who might become a rallying center for independence.
“Bwodpur pointed out that my presence in India was precisely the thing needed to arouse a feeling favorable to England and oppose the disruptive forces of Swaraj, which were undermining native dynasties as well as imperial power.
“But after all, England had the advantage in that argument, because I was in England; and while I probably would not have been allowed to return home had I wished, official England put forth every effort to make me want to stay. At first, I was imperious and discontented, remembering that I was ‘colored.’ But official England took no notice, and with deep-laid plans and imperturbable self-possession proceeded to capture my imagination and gain my affection. England became gracious and kind. London opened its heart and arms to this dark and difficult charge. Even royalty held out a languid hand, and I was presented at court in 1916 and formally received in society.
“I did not yield easily. I sat back upon my rank. I used my wealth, When I was invited out I took the pas from Duchesses as the child of a reigning monarch. I made the county aristocracy cringe and the city snobs almost literally hold my train. All this until my poor foster mother was filled with apprehension. Slowly but surely, however, my defenses were beaten down and I capitulated.
“In the midst of war hysteria, I became the social rage, and I loved it. I forgot suspicion and intrigue. I liked the tall and calm English men, the gracious and well-mannered English women. I loved the stately servants, so efficient, without the eastern servility to which I had been born. I knew for the first time what comfort and modern luxury meant.
“I danced and knitted and nursed and studied. I spent weekends in storied castles, long days in museums and nights at theaters and concerts, until the War grew harder. Money like water flowed through my careless hands.
