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

He turned and left the room as quietly as he had come. A kind of mental weariness shielded him from the remorse which had been stealthily creeping over him, keeping measure with the fading of her image from his mind. He realised that to-day is inevitably the child of yesterday, and that this disease had not come upon him suddenly but subtly and imperceptibly. Or was it a disease? Was it not rather the awakening of his abilities, stunted by discouragement and his own diffidence, the natural desire to enter the world's lists and leave the unreal world of dreams behind him? The dreams had been a temporary refuge a phase of his development and she who belonged to them, who was a stranger to the world, had been a stepping-stone to what? to whom? He shut his mind sternly against the answer. Stronger than either remorse or love was the sense of his responsibility. He owed her his life and that she should have to the last hour. To-day was to see the end of his brief part upon the world's stage. To-morrow the waters would close over him and her, and life narrow down to the old dimensions.

He faced it calmly, resignedly, and Mr. Smith, who waited for him in the hall, was struck by something new in his manner, a certain aloofness, as though what was to come was for him already a part of the past. The two men took their places in the carriage, and for a long time the loquacious little agent hesitated to break the silence. He had intuition enough to know that this man beside him, young and inexperienced politician though he was, had passed out of his control. Presently he ventured to ask if Lady Hurst was doing well, and, receiving a courteous affirmative, he grew bolder.

"Any number of the Ashley folk have been inquiring after her ladyship," he said. "One of the pit hands as dirty a fellow as you can fancy came after me this morning and told me he had changed his ticket. It had struck him that a man who had a wife like that must be worth more than a ranting demagogue with a black liar to back him."

Hurst glanced at the clean-shaven face, suspecting a clumsy consolation.

"Well, that will be one vote anyhow," he said, smiling. "I'm afraid, though, that yesterday has settled my fate."

Mr. Smith raised one eyebrow.

"One never knows," he said. "Of course, Lord Salby is against you and a lot of high dignitaries are sitting on the fence too shocked to get down, bless you but still, a good knock-out blow appeals to the dear B.P. almost as much as a bit of romance, and they got both yesterday. No, one never knows." "What do you mean?" Hurst demanded.

"Just what I said," Mr. Smith retorted, taking a revengeful satisfaction in being mysterious. "One never knows."

They reached the outskirts of Great Hampton. On the way they had passed a long, straggling procession of dog-carts, brakes and drays gaily beribboned with the colours of the three candidates and packed with vociferous partisans, to whose cheers and good-natured "boos "Hurst had responded with the same smiling equanimity. Here he unconsciously stiffened and set his teeth. The crowds which filled the narrow streets of the old-fashioned town were in another and less good-tempered mood, and he knew it. He felt the atmosphere of excitement and aroused passions and the proximity of that intangible force which makes a gathering of respectable citizens into an unmanageable, brutal mob. Here the jeering was sharpened to animosity and the cheering to an answering and defiant war-cry.

From the walls where usually innocent advertisements announced the superlative virtues of soaps and baking-powders, gaudy and satirical posters strove to reach the buried intelligence of the electors by means of flamboyant appeals and crisply assertive phrases. Hurst sought out his own with a boyish curiosity which custom had not staled. He knew that, by comparison, they were not effective " too gentlemanly," Mr. Smith had styled them and yet he was glad that he had kept to his own way and his own methods. It was his one consolation in defeat that he had fought with his own weapons and that they had been clean.

At the corner of the High Street a little knot of women mine-hands judging from their appearance cheered him, and the gust of shrill, harsh voices whipped the blood for the first time into Hurst's cheeks. Mr. Smith, who saw the change, suppressed a chuckle.

"Not quite so indifferent after all, my dear sir," he thought, and then added aloud: "They like you, Sir David politics apart. You're young and a trifle Byronic, shall I say? and you appeal to the women. There's nothing women of all classes like better than a figure round which they can weave a romance. The sterner and blacker and more indifferent you look, the more they'll love you. At the bottom of her heart a woman loathes a lady's man."

Hurst nodded inattentively to this piece of wisdom. The carriage had broken through the crowd and now drew up smartly against the kerb. Here also a decided cheer greeted him and he yielded to a transitory sensation of success, which died down suddenly and completed as he entered the committee-room. On the faces of his official supporters he read the unmistakable presages of disaster, and there were more absentees than he cared to count. Squire Morell came forward to meet him, his florid face expressive of that cheerful melancholy which laments somebody else's misfortunes.

"The great day come at last!" he said as they shook hands. "Hope for the best, Sir David, but our news isn't of the brightest. There's been a lot of falling off since yesterday. I'm afraid Lord Salby has eh refused his support." The last sentence was spoken in an undertone.

Hurst answered aloud.

"I did not wish or expect him to do otherwise," he said.

Mr. Smith coughed to cover over what he considered as unparliamentary folly, and Hurst passed on to receive the funereal hand-shakes of his remaining adherents. They hovered about him like birds of ill-omen, disheartened and disheartening, and out of their words and suppressions he read reproach not unmixed with malice. They had supported him because he headed their party, but his conduct in alienating his strongest friends had betrayed their cause, and his defeat gave them a bitter triumph.

11 After yesterday there isn't a vestige of hopeI* Mrs. Morell remarked in a stage whisper to a friend. "Lord Salby's action has turned all Ashley against us, and Lady Hurst's conduct has sent all the waverers over to the Liberal side. No one wants to vote for a candidate who uses those sort of tactics."

Hurst overheard the observation, but gave no sign. He had schooled himself to an appearance of indifference if only for his wife's sake. He went out on to the balcony and there the agent joined him. That astute and alert personage had wrapped himself in cheerful mystery.

"I'll just run across to the Town Hall and see how soon the results may be expected," he said. "You wait here, Sir David, and don't let these good folk get on your nerves more than you can help."

"I'll do my best," Hurst answered, smiling.

He remained alone on the balcony. Immediately beneath him the crowd eddied in increasing excitement and occasionally faces were raised to him in noncommittal interest. Was he or was he not the man whom in a few minutes they would cheer as victor? The tide had been against him in the last twenty-four hours, and there had been rumours of sweeping changes in the electorate. It seemed to Hurst that they eyed him with suspicion and a little pity as a more than possible failure. One face he recognised. He had never seen it otherwise than expressionless, but in that brief instant he saw it light up with a hatred, a triumph that was more tigerish than human. He stared back, steadily and calmly, but his teeth were ground together. Those dark, impassive features seemed to haunt his life; they had appeared to him at every critical moment, threatening with calamity, and he knew that now they pronounced his defeat. And still he gave no sign. He had grown very calm, and the sudden silence in the crowd beneath seemed to have its birth in his own brain.

His glance wandered aimlessly across the Square. From the balcony of the Town Hall a man in official robes was apparently giving out some notice, but the significance of his presence, like the sound of his voice, was lost to Hurst. He had ceased to think, to calculate, even to desire, and the roar of cheering which came rolling across the Square like the wave of a suddenly released flood left him unmoved. He looked about him, expecting to witness the arrival of a rival candidate, but he saw only the white sea of faces he heard only his own name. He turned unsteadily, and confronted the little crowd of dazed and puzzled supporters.

"What has happened?" he asked.

Squire Morell shook his head, and came out on to the balcony.

"What is it?" he shouted to the crowd. "What are you cheering for?"

A brawny woman raised her arm.

"Sir David you're in!" she called shrilly. "It's Ashley that's done it, and you can thank your good lady for the best turn that's ever been done you and don't you forget it--"

She was swept away in a surging sea of excited men and women, and the squire turned to the white-faced man beside him.

"It seems--" he began, clearing his throat, and torn between annoyance, bewilderment, and satisfaction, "it seems positively that you have been elected, Sir David!"

Hurst gripped the rail of the balcony.

"There is some mistake," he said with dry lips, and fought down the wild hope which had risen out of his numb resignation.

As though in answer the door of the committeeroom burst open, and Mr. Smith, red-faced and for once hi his life beside himself, elbowed his way respectlessly through the intervening group of silent and uncertain supporters.

"We've done it!" he said, endeavouring to speak with professional calm and failing signally. "We've done it, Sir David! The results are out it was Ashley that turned the tide they came over like one man, upset every one's calculations, but not mine I told you one never knew." He struggled with himself, and then, seizing Hurst's hand, shook it. "Greatest triumph of my life, Sir David! Go out and speak to 'em straight from the heart; for, by the Lord, it was the people's vote that did it a popular victory right off your and Lady Hurst's bat. Go on, sir they're shouting for you. A three hundred majority is something to be thankful for under the circumstances."

Impetuously Hurst sprang back on to the balcony. Not till now had he known how desperately he had wanted to win. The iron self-control which he had mustered to meet defeat threatened to desert him in this swift revulsion from resignation to the certainty of success. The gates to his chosen career stood open to him, and hope beckoned. His mother would hear to-morrow by cable, and Diana to-night. Diana! Diana! He wanted to stretch out his arms in immeasurable relief and gratitude. The goal was passed he had won the right to serve. The curse of failure had been taken from his life, and something new in him, a fierce joy in his own existence, a smothered fire of consuming ambition, blazed into flame. He stood for a moment looking down on the now silent, eagerly waiting crowd. He was smiling unconsciously, with a frank exultation which gave him back his youth and all the joyousness of youth. It was easy to be eloquent now easy to thank this people who had chosen him as their representative in the greatest of the world's Parliaments. They had given him some thing inestimable the right