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

in India. There is scarcely a possibility of failure if we act together. We are a hundred to one, and we are armed."

"And the first act?" The Bengalee leant forward eagerly.

"Will be the assassination of the Viceroy. Ghose has the bombs ready, and five proved men will be placed along the route so that he cannot escape. At the same hour in England an attempt on the life of the Prime Minister a more dangerous and difficult matter; but it is essential to prove our strength and determination to ourselves and to our enemies."

The Bengalee lawyer passed his nervous hand over his mouth.

"Has he consented?" he asked, with a glance towards the door of the adjoining room.

"How should he do otherwise? He has, at most, a few months to live, and gladly chooses the patriot's death."

"Is there any hope that we shall receive assistance from our friends over here?"

The Brahman's lips twisted scornfully.

"A few Socialist papers may offer 'sympathy' for our aims, which they do not even understand. They fancy we believe in their dog's creed of equality, and it is better that we should appear to conform. Afterwards, when the battle is won by our own means, the power will return to the ruling castes, and remain there."

The Bengalee lifted his eyes. For a brief, significant moment of silence the two men measured each other. Then, as though deferring an inevitable hour of reckoning, the Brahman turned to Rama Pal.

"You have heard the general outline of our plans," he said. "The details are in reliable hands and have been carefully considered. In eight weeks the war of independence will have begun it behoves us, therefore, to weigh every suggestion. We have learnt to trust you, Rama Pal, and Nana Balagi has spoken of your reinstatement into our caste. Prove yourself worthy, and it shall surely be done."

Rama Pal bowed his head.

"My suggestion concerns only a detail," he said; "but over details the greatest projects have come to ruin. You say rightly that if we hold together we are irresistible; but we have never held together, and that threatens us now. We need a rallying cry which will appeal to all alike. Patriotism? Patriotism is as yet the watchword of the few. What do the common people, without whom we cannot hope for victory, know of patriotism? For generations they have been ground under heel by aliens, and their own soil has become foreign to them. Call them by a name which will arouse their fanaticism, and the lowest Sudra may become a hero."

"By what name, since patriotism is dead?"

"Faith remains."

"In what God? Has not faith died also beneath the hand of the oppressor?"

"Amongst us surely in the hearts of the people it still glows. One great call and the ember will burst to a consuming flame."

The Brahman smiled with mingled bitterness and satire.

"In the name of what God, I ask you? Has not each village its own god,whom each other village denies?"

"There is one goddess in whom all India believes to-day. This generation has seen her with their own eyes, and with their own eyes saw her caught up to heaven in the midst of flames. Pilgrims have carried her name from end to end of India. Legends have woven themselves around her. There is no heart which does not stir at the name ' Sarasvati.' " .;

"Sarasvati?" There was a murmur, half of amusement, half of incredulity. Rama Pal sprang to his feet with a fiery gesture which was like the outbreak of a long-suppressed passion.

"You laugh?" he cried. "I tell you that that night at Kolruna, if she had spoken the words which had been put into her mouth, no earthly power could have saved the Englishmen. And I tell you that, if she were to appear again in the temple and call our people to arms in her name, the miracle would spread over India like a fire over dry stubble. No hand that could hold a sword would hang idle. The Englishmen and the traitor princes would be blotted out. Do not think that I dream. At the heart of our country there is a force which we dare not neglect a weapon which we must use before the accursed ones have blunted it--"

"You are right," the Brahman interrupted, "but you forget one thing the daughter of Brahma, as she is called, has become an Englishwoman. She has followed an English husband. Our power over her is at an end." Rama Pal leant across the table.

"In three days I will bring her to you," he said.

"By force? that is too dangerous. It is not our policy to create suspicion."

"I do not speak of force. She shall come to you of her own free will of her own free will pronounce the great call to the country of her birth."

There was a stir of smothered excitement. The Brahman's eyes had narrowed.

"You promise much," he said.

"No more than I can perform."

"Her husband this David Hurst will follow her if need be, to India."

"That is as I wish it. We shall meet."

"And then?"

The outcaste's face grew stiff once more perfectly impassive.

"Then a debt will be paid," he said simply.

BOOK IV_CHAPTER II (THE PARTING OF THE WAYS)

 

"AND so it's good-bye for a few months," Diana Chichester said. "Shall I greet India for you, Sarasvati? Is there anything I can bring you when I come back?"

Sarasvati turned her head a little. She was huddled together in an arm-chair by the fireside, and the reflections deepened the shadows beneath her eyes, and on the hollows of her cheeks.

"Greet the sun and the sky for me," she said weakly. "And bring me back no, no bring me back nothing."

"Good-bye, then. And God bless you."

A wan smile passed over the parched and colourless lips.

"I thank you. Will you not say good-bye to my son?"

"Of course I will." Diana crossed to the cradle which stood near the window and bent over it. She saw a sleeping child, whose dark features were already stamped with a terrible, unchildlike knowledge of suffering. Despite the difference of years, she was reminded of a man's face as she had once seen it in the mysterious half-light of an Indian night. In miniature, there were the same features the same look of inarticulate pain only the skin was darker, and the curved line of the mouth was foreign to her memory. This was David Hurst's son the heir to power and a noble English name. She kissed the veined forehead, and a tear fell on the closed eyelids.

"When I come back he will be quite grown up," she said, with an unsteady laugh. "How proud you will be of him!"

"Proud? Oh no, my son is going to die."

Diana Chichester started. The quiet words had expressed a thought which she had not dared even to formulate. She turned round schooling herself to an expression of indignant protest.

"How do you come to think of such a thing?" she exclaimed. "The worst is over the doctor said so."

"The doctor does not know. But I know. He is my son. It is well so."

Diana smothered an exclamation.

"Well so?" she echoed. "What do you mean?"

"Yes." Sarasvati's thin hand dropped apathetically in her lap. "It is well so." Then, with a sudden change of tone: "Did not Lady Salby tell you I have ruined David's life? all his hopes?"

Diana came back to the fireside. Her brows were knitted.

"No," she said. "She would not have dared, because it is not true. It was you who saved David at the elections he has told you so a hundred times."

"Yes, yes, he tells me so; but Lady Salby tells me the truth too not as you would do, but in her own way. And I have understood. I saved him; but it was by a chance by a chance that easily might not have come, and that will never come again." An expression of sudden, complete exhaustion passed over her features. "Oh yes, it is well that my son should die. He must not suffer and in this world there is no place for him. Good-bye, Diana, you have been very good to me."

"Don't dear! It's been so terribly little--"

Impulsively the Englishwoman knelt down, clasping the almost powerless hands in her own. She felt oppressed by a prescience of disaster; the atmosphere, in spite of the damp cold which hung about the corners of the great square room, stifled her. The rattle and roar of the traffic outside came to her ears like the threatening rumble of distant thunder. Had she done wrong? Was there anything in all this dumb misery which could be laid at her door?

"It has been terribly little," she repeated brokenly. "Sometimes I feel that it has been worse than nothing that it would have been better that I had never come into your life."

Sarasvati freed her hand and laid it gently on Diana's shoulder. A light had crept into the dark suffering eyes which was very tender, almost compassionate.

"You have asked your God to bless me," she said in her low tired voice, "and I too would bless you, beautiful Englishwoman. But I have lost God. Should I find Him once again I will ask Him to surround you and him you love in all the warmth of His sunshine. I will ask Him to thank you as I thank you for your love and pity. Remember that always that I blessed you."

Diana stumbled to her feet. She could not bear the steady gaze of those eyes. They seemed to penetrate to the secret which she would have given her life to hide. They threw their light into the darkest places of her heart and forced her to look on and see that which was concealed there.

"Sarasvati!" she cried out.

And suddenly a pair of thin, weak arms was thrown about her neck, and for a long minute the two women held each other in an embrace which bridged every gulf. Race, prejudice, the inheritance of generations, dropped below the horizon of their lives. In that last moment of farewell they rose triumphant above the mists of human blindness, and recognised in each other the humanity common to them both.

"Remember! "Sarasvati whispered. "Promise to remember!"

"I promise! "Diana answered brokenly.

And thus they parted. Diana Chichester stumbled down the wide staircase, past Hurst's library. She knew that he was there only a door separated them and it was perhaps the last chance she would have of seeing him for many years; yet she crept on her way stealthily, like a thief who fears detection. Then the door was violently opened, and through the gloom he saw and recognised her.

"Diana!" he exclaimed. She came back mechanically, against her will, and they looked at each other for a moment in unsmiling silence. "I did not know you were in the house," he went on.

"I have come to say good-bye."

"But not to me, as it seems." He motioned her to pass him into the room. "Surely we have the right to say good-bye to each other," he said with a short, unsteady laugh.

She did not answer him. He did not invite her to sit down, nor did it occur to her to do so. The feeling of suffocation had become torturing. The dismal London