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

meeting. The man who had failed signally on the arid road of lifeless knowledge began to feel the stirring of that power which, through imagination and intuition, touches the hearts and minds of men. The room was in complete darkness when he entered, and until he had switched on the light he believed himself alone. Then he saw her crouching by the window, and called her by name, and she turned and came haltingly towards him. Her face was pinched and haggard, and for the first time it struck him how strange and lost she looked against the background of English modernity.

"Forgive me," she said humbly. "I think I have slept. The snow crept into here and here." She pressed her hand to her head and heart. "It froze me."

For a moment Hurst was conscious of a curious process of readjustment. He had been in the world, in the thick of a real and desperate struggle, and he came back to a shadowy, peaceful existence, to a woman who, compared with the concrete actualities of the last hour, appeared more like some lovely dream. He closed his eyes. By sheer force of will he drew himself back into the atmosphere to which she belonged, and when he looked at her again the readjustment was complete. She was once more everything to him, the world nothing.

"Sarasvati," he said. "You have been all alone you have been frightened?"

"A little," she answered, and clung to him. "But I am safe now, quite safe." But terror and pain sounded in her unsteady voice, and a deep remorse, a sudden self -disgust, changed the whole course of his thought.

"Shall I give it up?" he whispered. "What do I care for anything but you? Shall I give it up? Shall we go away from here together away from every one? Sarasvati, my wife--" He did not feel the struggle that passed through her. The intuition which is given to those who live in solitude and introspection had already been blunted in him. When she looked up he only saw that her face was grave and calm.

"No," she said, and then again, more earnestly, "no."

He kissed her, and a sense of relief crept slowly over him.

"I have good news for you," he went on suddenly. "The best news possible. Can you think what it is ?"

"She is coming," she answered, without hesitation.

He frowned down at her, taken aback, vaguely uneasy. "Diana Chichester is coming to England," he said. "How did you know?"

"I saw it in your face," she said. A tired, wavering smile crossed her lips. "Send for her," she whispered. "Send for her. I need her,"

BOOK III_CHAPTER V (THE TRUTH-SEEKER)

 

THE Rev. James Anderson sat at his writing-table and prepared his Sunday sermon. He had chosen the text: "Little children, love one another." In view of the high political feeling which was raging through Steeple Hampton, changing the usually torpid inhabitants into venomous, if ponderous, partisans, his choice was singularly appropriate. For the first time for many years he felt again life flowing into his words. He forgot that they would be addressed to rows of heavy-faced Christians who would either fall asleep after the preliminary prayer or carp at the length or brevity of his sermon. He forgot the bitter disappointments which had changed the passionate zealot into a tired, white-headed old man who went about his duty with machine-like punctuality. The text, with its loving simplicity, stirred him to the depths of his gentle character, and the words that he wrote were warm with that love for humanity which had been humanity's best weapon against him. Then, in the middle of a triumphant peroration, the door opened and admitted the red face of his maid-of-allwork, an important person of small attainments and smaller intellect.

"If you please, sir, there's a lady to see ye'," she said.

The vicar ran his fingers through his disordered hair and gave a reluctant glance at his unfinished manuscript. Routine had him in its grip again, and inspiration took instantly to flight.

"Did she give her name?" he asked and ran over in his mind which of the village's many benefactresses was most likely to disturb his peace at this hour.

"She said Lady 'Urst," the girl returned in accents which suggested considerable doubt.

"Show her in at once."

The vicar rose as his visitor entered. He had not seen Sarasvati since that first day, and the legends which circulated round her mysterious personality filled him with distrust. In the first moment he hardly recognised her. She was wrapped in costly sables, and the small face was pinched with cold and so wan-looking that the vicar forgot all other considerations.

"My dear Lady Hurst," he said warmly, but there stopped short. The small change which custom had taught him to dole out to his women parishioners failed here. He felt that she would not understand them, that they would be as out of place as she was in the prim little study. He waited awkwardly for her to break the silence.

"I want to speak to you," she said in a quick, breathless way. "Lady Salby sent me to you."

"Lady Salby?" he echoed, offering her a chair by the fire. "Well, it does not matter who it was as long as you have come. Won't you take off your coat?"

The kindly little speech was lost on her, but she seated herself and loosened her wraps with hurried fingers. The fur hood slipped back from the smooth dark hair, and the vicar caught a glimpse of the dull red of the barbaric dress beneath the cloak. The Bight disconcerted him. He felt that there was something incorrect, not to say indecent, about it, and his first distrust regained the upper hand. After all, he had lived thirty years in Steeple Hampton and he who touches pitch must necessarily soil his hands. Then a pair of dark eyes, full of childlike appeal, yet utterly unchildlike in their trouble, were lifted to his face, and he forgot that he represented the virtues of a very Christian community and became a man of much sympathy and human gentleness.

"Tell me what I can do for you," he said, and seated himself opposite her in an attitude of quiet attention. "I feel that only some difficulty could have brought you to me on such a day," he added quickly, as though fearing his words suggested a reproof.

Sarasvati nodded.

"I am sorrowfully in doubt," she said, "and you have looked kindly at me. I have not forgotten."

"I am glad," he answered; "but, my dear Lady Hurst, surely if, as you say, you are in any trouble, your husband--"

"No," she interrupted quickly and with a faint hauteur. "My husband must not know. He has much to do, much to think of; he must not know that I have been frightened."

"Frightened toy whom?" he asked.

She pressed her frail hands to her cheeks with a curious foreign movement, and did not answer. Then, with an abrupt change of expression which startled him out of his self-possession, she turned to him again.

"They say that I stand in his way," she said slowly. "They say that the people hate me because I am different from them is that true?"

The vicar caught his breath. He had never needed to think quickly, and her straight, penetrating gaze bereft him of what little presence of mind he boasted. He passed a nervous hand over his forehead. Had he been less certain of the truth, the answer would have come easier to him. As it was, uncounted, cruel criticisms occurred to him to stifle an impulsive protest.

"Then it is true?" she said.

"Lady Hurst " he began. Then suddenly he saw that her eyes had filled, and his excuses and explanations died to nothing. She held out her hands in piteous appeal.

"Is there nothing I can do? Would they indeed love me better if I dressed as they did, if I came to your church?"

The vicar suppressed a smile.

"Lady Hurst, prejudice is an ugly, obstinate monster, and not so easily overcome," he said. "You must remember that in this little English village we do not see a foreigner from'year's end to year's end, and that we are naturally inclined to look upon them with suspicion. You must have patience with us. Come to church, by all means. It will require courage on your part, but in the end you will win, I am sure of it, as soon as the people realise that you are of their faith."

She interrupted him with a troubled gesture.

"That is what I cannot understand Lady Salby told me my faith was not theirs and it stood between us."

"You are a Christian?" the vicar asked.

"Father Romney baptized me and taught me."

"Ah, a Roman Catholic? Ah--" The vicar pressed the tips of his fingers together. His gravity had increased and his expression became formal. "You see, Lady Hurst, in this part of the world we are all Protestants."

"Are not Protestants Christians?" she asked naively.

"Of course."

"And the Roman Catholics--"

The vicar cleared his throat.

"--are Christians also. You are touching on a very difficult and unhappy subject, Lady Hurst. We Christians are but human, and many errors have crept into our faith, dividing us into opposing camps. It is the same amongst all earnest seekers after the truth."

"We also have our castes," Sarasvati said thoughtfully.

The vicar's brows contracted. The comparison troubled him, and for a moment he suspected that it concealed a subtle mockery; but her face, with its expression of almost desperate intentness, banished the thought instantly from his mind.

"Caste is no name for our great Protestant Unity," he said. "We strive, as our fathers did, to attain God's truth, and we believe that, more than all others, we have found it, and, with God's help, we shall hold it in the face of those enemies who would drag us back into the ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages."

He spoke with the aroused energy of the partisan, forgetting to whom he spoke; then he saw that her eyes watched him in puzzled question, and he broke off quickly.

"Lady Hurst, forgive me. You have come amongst us too recently to understand the controversy raging around modern Faith. You must content yourself with the simple truths of religion."

"The truth?" she said. "Where is the truth?"

He looked at her sharply. Was it chance or something deeply rooted in the human character, that had brought a paraphrase of the great eternal question to this woman's lips?

"It is I who must ask you to forgive," she went on in her low voice; " but I am in trouble. There was a time when the Truth seemed so near to me, so clear and beautiful. I felt God in the sunshine, in the moon and stars here in my own breast. There was nothing on which my eyes fell but that I said, * This is God.' Worship was easy, for all was divine; even I, whom they call the daughter of Brahma. Brahma or Jehovah, Christ or Buddha what were they but names to me? rays from the one great light, utterances of the one great truth to which we belong, and to which one day we must return. But that has gone. I have listened since to many teachers, and one has said,