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

stared at each other. The squire's cheeks were purple; the good-natured complacency of his expression had wholly vanished.

"Good God!" he broke out. "That that Lady Hurst--why, she is a nigger--a black woman--a--a--"

The vicar held out a soothing, restraining hand, and the squire's rage burst into a new channel.

"Harris, for pity's sake tell that gaping herd of yokels to move on! Tell them Sir David is ill--any lie you like--but don't let them stand there like that. For mercy's sake do something, man!"

Either for pity's sake, or mercy's sake, or for the sake of his own skin, Mr. Harris went down the steps and Squire Morell signalled furiously to his groom to bring up the dog-cart, and, five minutes later, burst through the groups of retiring and whispering villagers like a veritable storm-god. He had not offered a seat to the vicar, and the latter trudged slowly homewards with the schoolmaster, who had maintained a frightened and horror-stricken silence.

At the gates of the Vicarage both men came to a standstill. The vicar took off his wide-brimmed hat and passed his hand over his scanty white hair.

"It's very sad," he said, "very sad."

Mr. Harris nodded energetically.

"It's more than sad," he said. "It's terrible, to think that the Hursts, who were so proud and respected, should have fallen to this! If old Sir Lawrence had known--"

The vicar interrupted his flow of indignant eloquence with a quiet gesture.

"I was thinking of poor Lady Hurst," he said mildly. "She has come among us civilised Christians God pity her!"

BOOK III_CHAPTER II (ON THE BALCONY)

HURST Court faced east; to the west its regular lines of windows stared expressionless over a wide stretch of park whose ancient trees rose proudly to the low skies, and only at rare intervals gave place to a wide roadway, which ran like a ribbon through the sea of dark olive, losing itself at last near the horizon in tangled forest. A balcony leading out of the small room which for generations had served the Lady Hursts as boudoir alone broke the monotony of the Court's grey face. Thither David Hurst conducted his wife on the evening of that first day. The sun had long since sunk behind the distant line which bound in their world, and a veil of grey, ghostlike mist, heavy with the perfumes of early autumn, sank about them.

Sarasvati leant her elbows on the stone balustrade and gazed silently before her, and the man at her side made no attempt to break in upon her thoughts. He stood with folded arms and watched her, studying the pure and noble outline of her face, comparing, dreaming. It was at this hour that she seemed to him most truly herself, yet most unreal. In the quiet and darkness the intangible something which divided her from her surroundings vanished, leaving her in strange harmony with all save humanity. Then a new expression dawned in her eyes; the half-frightened, half-questioning gaze with which she viewed the unknown world revealed to her in the short year of their marriage changed and deepened to intense thought. Then he saw her again as the goddess kneeling before the altar the serene, pure soul in touch with the infinite. Then he loved her most, with the least passion. For indeed he loved her not so much as a woman as a dream, a mysterious, scarcely material wonder which a miracle had allowed him to draw into the empty treasure-house of his life.

As a gardener watches the opening of some lovely flower, so had he watched the marvel of her development. Swiftly, yet surely, with all the powers of assimilation of her origin, she had acquired his language, a partial understanding for his world. Almost without his knowledge, she had crept into the secret places of his heart, but her own heart remained closed. He stood for ever on the threshold and knocked and for ever she answered with the limitless surrender of her whole self, and for ever he knew in her life there was a sanctuary hardly known to herself where he would never tread. And he loved her the more. For love is born of mystery, and dies when it is fed on the plain grey truth which is sometimes not quite as true as our dreams.

The darkness deepened, and still he waited patiently, allowing the hallowed evening peace to sink deep into his being; then she turned to him and lifted her face to his.

"My beloved!" she said simply.

He took the slender hand lying on the stone-work and held it and there was again silence. But it was as though the two spoken words continued to vibrate on the still air, like notes of music drawn from an instrument, by the touch of a master-hand. "Sarasvati," he said at last, "this is our home. Are you happy?"

"Yes," she answered. He felt that her whole life concentrated itself in that answer, and yet there was always that unconscious reservation. "Why do you ask me?" she said. "Do you not know the answer?"

"I am not always sure," he returned thoughtfully. ' Yes, sure of your answer of you but not of the truth. This morning, when we faced the people together to-night when I feel the cold damp mists rise about us I am afraid. I remember the peace and the warm sunshine out of which I brought you--"

"Out of the loneliness, out of a long sleep full of shapeless dreams into your life into your love." She turned and laid her hands upon his shoulders. "My husband, I do not see the people who pass us; I do not feel the mist rise; about me all is warmth and sunshine I see no face but yours. I live in you I know no world but you." Her voice broke and died into a passionate silence.

He held her to him, and through the gathering gloom their eyes met in wordless communion. The mysterious bond which had come between them in that first silent meeting revealed itself again in all its strength, in all its spiritual purity. And yet he knew, even though the darkness hid the expression of her face, that there was trouble written there, the vague, haunting trouble of which he had caught glimpses in moments whose close resemblance to each other worried him. He had seen it on board ship when some trivial valse had called the pleasure-loving Anglo-Indians, homeward bound, td^ their evening business. He had seen it when some beautifully dressed English woman, leaning on the arm of her partner, had brushed past them as they sat together hidden in shadow near the prow of the vessel. He had seen it in the Corso at Rome, when inadvertently their carriage had been caught in the stream of wealth and brilliancy which flowed towards the Villa Borghese. He had felt the pain which shot through her, and, without understanding, had instinctively drawn her closer to him and had borne her quickly to some lonely spot whither the voices and laughter of men could not penetrate. To-night if unclearly he understood.

"Nevertheless, I have taken you from your dreams,' he said. "I have drawn you into a world of realities. And the realities are grim, ugly things."

"Are they indeed the realities?" she questioned thoughtfully. "To me they are still as shadows which flit between us and the light. I see them. They have faces which they turn to me they are mocking faces, full of cruel curiosity and scorn, but they do not hurt me or blind me to the light not yet not yet--"

"Sarasvati!" he exclaimed. "Am I not also a reality?"

She shook her head.

"I love you," she said almost beneath her breath, "I love you so that you have become the light itself. But it is not this I love " she laid her hand on his shoulder and passed it softly over his breast "that is the shadow, husband. I love the reality which I saw in my sleep, which called to me before your tongue uttered my name. It is not this face I see, but the face of your soul which I saw before my eyes were opened. I love you as others cannot love you, for they have never seen you. A shadow passes before them, and, behold! they cry to each other that there are more lovely shadows. But I have seen the light, and I know that it is great and strong and beautiful." "Sarasvati!" he said tenderly, "you are still not of this world. Will you never be?"

"Perhaps." She turned her head away from him, and he felt that a fault shudder passed through her. "Perhaps one day I shall have to be and then and then the light will go out."

There was a new inflection in her voice. He drew her closer to him.

"My wife, of what are you afraid?" he questioned.

"Of the shadows," she cried, and clung to him with a passion rare in her. "Now you belong to me, but one day they may claim you; you may become one of them--" she caught her breath "--then I shall have to choose."

"Between what?"

"That I cannot tell, I do not know. I only know that a choice will be put before me."

Again he felt himself carried to the border of that untra veiled country of her inner life, and, as always, an invisible, intangible barrier rose before him and barred the way. Prophetic, like some Eastern Cassandra conscious of a secret power at work in the depths of her dark soul, she stared before her and he sought no further. Only he freed himself gently from the clasp of her hands and held her so that she faced him.

"Listen," he said quietly. "You are afraid of shadows, my wife. You are afraid that, one day, I shall see them with other eyes than yours, and that I shall hunger after them. It is true, for me they are realities; the world is real and I belong to it. But, Sarasvati, I have lived in it. I know it, not as you know it, as the creation of a man's diseased, unhappy fancy, but as a great, monstrous structure, a machine grinding remorselessly on its never-ending round. It frightened me I learnt to know that I was handicapped beyond hope. I knew that all I had to offer would be flung upon the great rubbish-heap for useless, warped material. And yet I hungered after it all after the love of my fellow-creatures, after their approbation. I wanted to be one of them, to share my life with them. I was like a beggar, a whining beggar who ran from house to house offering my half -formed ideals, my timid affections, in exchange for their love. They would have none of me. They grew impatient, and I knew they despised me. But the begging had degraded me, made me into a weakling and a coward. That is the worst of begging it drags down everything, the beggar and the giver; it is like a poison which paralyses will and energy. I went on my cringing, pitiful way until, one night, I was twice stung to madness. And I found that a devil had crept into my heart and that I