The Daughter of Brahma, I. A. R. Wylie [carter reed txt] 📗

quarter to-day, and I feared something had happened."

"Something always happen," Heilig answered grimly, "but unless somebody gets murdered no one notices it."

His keen eyes rested on his friend's weary face.

"You haf had trouble?" he decided.

Father Romney smiled faintly.

"A little. I had brought some fresh bandages to a poor Pariah woman who had cut her arm, and a rabble set on me. It was a little affair a few stones no more."

"H'm! Herr Eliot's followers, no doubt," Heilig muttered. He pushed the proffered cup of tea aside.

"Bah! no, I cannot drink. I am sick to death." He flung himself down at the piano and played two violent chords, and then sat, with his hands resting on the keys, scowling in front of him.

Hurst and Father Romney exchanged a smile, and Hurst stepped out into the balcony, knowing by experience what course Heilig's wrath would take. Presently the Professor began to play. His hot rage still burned, and he burst into the Funeral March in the Gotterddmmerung with a fire and force which rang with a double strength in the languid Oriental atmosphere. Hurst leant with his elbows on the verandah rails and listened. His eyes were fixed on the far-off hills, but between them and him Titanic statues of great heroes rose and crossed before his vision, seeming to call to action. They passed. Heilig, soothed and inspired by his own music, struck the first note to Isolde's love death. All the tenderness and all the divine aspiration of the immortal song drifted out to the motionless listener. The infinite resignation of the opening bars, the rising breathless longing which, as it sweeps heavenwards, halts for a moment to gather strength, came to him in some strange way as a revelation of himself. Stranger still, it mingled with the memories of a woman and of a dimly lighted shrine, and, as the great crescendo died away to silence, he saw her face touched with the first rays of the rising sun. And he knew then that the memory of her had been woven into his life.

He turned, conscious that he was no longer alone, and found Father Romney at his side. The priest laid his hand gently on his arm.

"Forgive me," he said. "I have been watching you. It seemed to me that you had changed. Is it so?"

"Changed? I do not understand you."

"Again, forgive me but last night you frightened me. Your face frightened me. It was hard and reckless, like that of a man who has not only lost God but himself. To-night you are different. I am no longer afraid for you."

Hurst looked into the eager, emaciated face and smiled.

"Why do you trouble yourself about me? I am not of your faith. I have no faith."

"But you are human, like myself. How can we take no interest in each other, have no sympathy and pity for each other, when we bear the same burdens, and carry in us the shadow of a final inevitable tragedy which we must bear alone? What is a creed compared to that 1"

Hurst grasped the extended hand.

"You are more generous than most of those who preach in your Master's name," he said, "and you are right. Last night I seemed to have lost everything that I could ever have hoped for success, love, the applause of those among whom I live. I had set my heart on them, and when they failed I had nothing in me to fall back on, no faith, no ideals, not even a poor dream. To-night it is all different. I know there are other things in life than those for which I struggled. They chained me weighed me down. But I have set myself free I no longer desire or need them."

"Perhaps, then, they will come to you," the priest said quietly.

Hurst did not hear him. With a curt farewell he passed down the steps into the garden and limped towards the high-road. His own words repeated themselves in his brain with a triumphant persistency. "I have set myself free," he had said, and had therein proclaimed to himself his own emancipation. The people amongst whom he had been born, whose love and approbation he had striven for, had discarded him as useless he now discarded them. In this hour he flung aside finally the ideals and ambitions to which they had pointed him and stretched out his arms to a world which was his own by right of conquest. He looked towards the hills and knew that the barrier between them was yielding. They had opened to him their secrets, and the dream of his childhood came back to him as a living, splendid reality.

"Sarasvati Daughter of Brahma!" he said aloud, and stood there motionless, with his face turned to the distant outline, until twilight became night.

BOOK II_CHAPTER V (TWO PEOPLE INTERFERE)

IT happened shortly afterwards that the Professor's prophecy was fulfilled, and the grim spectre of famine stalked the parched and barren valleys of the Deccan. In Kolruna, as elsewhere, the European inhabitants watched the enemy's progress with an active alarm which was counterbalanced by the fatalistic resignation of the inevitable sufferers. The natives prayed to their gods for a monsoon which never came, and the English officials prepared themselves for the consequences hard and unremitting labour, with the curse of the population as thank-offering. Even Kolruna's native regiment shared in the general activity. Large stores of rice had been smuggled secretly into the town and lay under Colonel Chichester's protection, in anticipation of the day when relief should be doled out to the famine-stricken. Colonel Chichester had himself advised the measure. He knew something of Indian famines, and moreover there were rumours that the gods had declared that the presence of the cow-killing, wine-drinking foreigner was the cause of the monsoon's non-appearance. "After that," as the brisk little soldier expressed it, "you might expect the band to play at any minute."

There was probably only one person in Kolruna or, for that matter, in India to whom the famine came in the guise of a god-send namely, Mrs. Chichester. That little woman, though she had long since exhausted the energies of her friends in countless foredoomed enterprises, was herself inexhaustible, and she viewed the prospective trouble with the delight of an incorrigible philanthropist. Within twentyfour hours of the announcement that the enemy was in the land she had formed a committee, had appointed herself President, and, as a sop to Cerberus, presented Mr. Eliot with the post of secretary. Within fortyeight hours Kolruna was faced with the fact that her "first lady " was on the eve of giving a combined subscription ball and bazaar which everybody had to attend with the option of social ostracism.

Kolruna groaned, but Mrs. Chichester explained her project with an enthusiasm worthy of the cause if not of the means. The subscriptions were to go to the relief-fund, and the idea of the bazaar was that the ladies should present articles for sale self-manufactured, stolen, or bought, Mrs. Chichester in the name of Charity, was not particular and that their husbands, or brothers, as the case might be, should buy them back at famine prices. The ladies were delighted, the masculine part of the population resigned, and Mrs. Chichester bustled along her path of triumph. She chose Mrs. Hurst's bungalow as the scene of her operations. Mrs. Hurst protested, but Mrs. Chichester, who only heard what she wanted to hear, arrived shortly afterwards with her committee, consisting of her daughter, Diana, two elderly ladies, Mr. Eliot, and the judge, and was so determined and cheerful and vague that her unwilling hostess not only had to surrender but was herself hustled into the select circle as treasurer. The judge witnessed this astonishing spectacle with a shamefaced delight.

"I was frightened out of my life when I heard we had to come here," he whispered, under cover of the general confusion. "I know how you hate fusses, and did my best; but nothing would stop her not even you."

"As though I were a sort of Juggernaut! "Mrs. Hurst laughed. "As a matter of fact, I don't really mind. It's delightful to see some one else so energetic in this heat, and I do not suppose we need do much besides listen."

"I want David," Mrs. Chichester broke in suddenly.

She had been having a sharp passage of arms with her secretary, and had won by sheer force of not listening to his answers. Mr. Eliot, unaccustomed to this method of warfare, sat heated and breathless, conscious of defeat but totally unable to trace its cause. His small dead eyes contrasted amusingly with Mrs. Chichester's big blue-grey ones, which at that moment sparkled with a harmless malice.

"I want David," she repeated. "I must have a useful young man to run errands and see that the natives don't steal things. Jean, where is David?"

"In his writing-room, I expect," Mrs. Hurst answered. "But I'm afraid he is of no use for your purposes, Elizabeth."

"Very well. Di, go and fetch him, please. Say he must come at once." She flashed back to Mr. Eliot, and her daughter, with an amused resignation, went out of the room and across the passage to the familiar library. She knocked, and, after a moment's unwilling silence, a voice answered, and she opened the door and entered.

Hurst sat at his table with his back towards her, apparently reading; but he did not turn, and a sharp "What is it, Sita I " proved that he had mistaken his visitor's identity. "It's I, David," Diana said meekly. "Can I come in for a minute?"

Hurst sprang to his feet. He was in his shirtsleeves, collarless, with ruffled hair and traces of ink on his hands; but his manner was curiously free from all embarrassment.

"Of course, Di," he said. "I didn't know who it was. Wait until I get my coat, will you?"

"Please don't bother about the coat." She pushed him back firmly into his chair. "If you fuss, I shall go away. Besides I like you better without it. I think you are one of those people who look nicest when they're dirty."

"Thank you. I didn't know I was actually dirty."

"But you are. What with your black hair and eyebrows, you look as though you had been dipped in an ink-pot." She considered him thoughtfully. "What contrasts we make!" she added, as though the fact gave her an artistic and quite impersonal satisfaction.

"Which means that you are feeling particularly fresh and clean and beautiful! I suppose you wanted a set-off, and came to me for it. Now what are you looking at?"

"This room. It was your father's?"

"Yes; I was just looking through some old papers of his."

"Oh! "Evidently she was interested, but conscious of being on dangerous ground. She smoothed her fair hair with one hand a trick of hers when not thinking of anything particular and her wide-open grey eyes wandered restlessly around as though in search of something. "I'm trying to remember what I came about," she explained. Hurst waited patiently. In some ways Diana was like her mother.

She could have fits of absent-mindedness, but, unlike her mother, she was capable of intense concentration when the occasion demanded. "You're wanted," she said with sudden remembrance. "Mother wants you for her