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

fog which hung about the room stung her eyes and throat, and seemed to distort the ponderous furniture into shapeless and threatening shadows. Even Hurst had changed. He had gone to the mantelpiece, and, with his lame foot on the fender, was staring sightlessly in front of him. It seemed to Diana that he had grown bigger, and that there was a brutal force in the set of his square shoulders and in the lines of his dark face.

"You start to-morrow?" he began abruptly, without looking at her.

"Yes, to-morrow. I am travelling with Mrs. Jameson, who is rejoining her husband at Calcutta."

"I am glad that you will not be alone. You are going in the midst of some danger, if Heilig says true. There is mischief brewing out there."

She nodded.

"I am rather glad glad that I shall be in the midst of it, I mean. The inactivity tires me I feel that I need danger, even privation. The life of a woman in London is like the constant whirl of a wheel in mid-air it goes on, but it brings you nowhere, and sooner or later the purposeless motion sends you mad, or turns you into a chattering fool." She clenched her hands with an involuntary movement of impatience. ' Yes I am glad to be going," she said between her teeth.

He lifted his eyes to her face.

"I can understand that so well I wish to God I was going into the midst of a fight."

4 You, David!" she forgot her momentary flash of anger hi an instinctive alarm. "You have your work and your fighting here," she said with a forced cheerfulness. "My uncle told me that the Prime Minister as well as your own leader has congratulated you publicly on your maiden speech, and who knows that it will not be the seed which will grow to a great reform in our treatment of our Indian subjects?"

"It may be the seed," he returned, "but I shall not watch its growth." "Why not?"

"Because in a few weeks my career as a Member of Parliament will have come to an end."

"David!"

He turned a little, his back to the fire, his elbows supported on the mantelshelf.

"Yes, it's been a mere flash in the pan," he said steadily, "I often remind myself of a bad rocket that splutters and kicks before it is induced to go off, and then, after an ineffectual exhibition, comes down like a stick. There are many of my kind, Di, and it's no use being bitter about it."

"How dare you!" she broke in with a fierce gesture. "How dare you, David?"

The gloomy eyes lit up with a momentary gleam of satirical amusement.

"Dare, Diana? Has one not the right to say the truth at least about oneself?"

"You have not the right to throw unjust taunts at yourself or any one," she retorted quickly. "Every taunt is aimed at somebody's faith."

"Who believes in me?" he broke in.

"I do."

He threw back his head so that his eyes escaped hers. He had grown very pale, and the knuckles of his clenched fists were white as polished ivory.

"Thank you," he said, "but, as I have said it can't be helped, Di, and my little outbreak just now was only a weak, spiteful kick at fate. You see, the doctor was here yesterday. The child--" he passed his hand over the thick black hair with a movement that belied the quiet, matter-of-fact voice. "There isn't much hope indeed, none. He never was fit and now the climate has broken the little vitality he had. That has to be faced; then there is Sarasvati herself. Dr. Meadows warned me that she must either be taken back to her own country or go south. England is killing her."

Diana's eyes rested blindly on the book whose leaves she had begun to turn over in an increasing fever of uneasiness. She dared not look at the man opposite her. He had spoken with a dangerous, unnatural indifference which warned her at what degree of repression his emotions were being held, and presently he went on in the same level tone.

"You understand what that means. Even if I would, I couldn't let her go alone. And so there is no choice. I shall resign my seat as soon as I decently can, and then then that'll be the last of dear old England and my feeble endeavours to render her a service. I expect it is better as it is."

"David!" she broke out. She looked up at him now with eyes dim with tears. "Oh, David it's too sad. I want to comfort you but I can't. There is nothing that I that any one can do. That is the awful, hopeless part of it. If one could only give a few years of one's life in payment "She stopped abruptly. She had seen the dark flush spread over his drawn face and suddenly the abyss yawned between them, and she knew that another moment, another impulsive word, and the disaster would be there. She drew herself up, her fine brows unconsciously contracted. "But one can't," she went on. "And words are almost an insult. I know that you will be strong enough. You will find your place yet, David, and my faith will be justified. Good-bye."

He ignored her tremblingly outstretched hand. He did not leave his place, but the violence which quivered beneath the surface seemed to take hold of her. She felt herself weaken a kind of faintness crept over her limbs, and only by a supreme effort of the will did she retain her outward composure.

"Good-bye, David," she repeated.

"Wait! "His voice shook, then steadied to a monotonous level, "There is something I want to ask you before you go, Diana. It is quite likely that we shall not see each other for many years probably not again, and I have the right to take some little consolation with me some token of our friendship. You said at Ashley that you respected me more than any other man. Did you mean that, or was it said out of pity to console me?"

"No," she said. "I said it because it was true."

One step nearer ^and yet she could not have lied under these searching, desperate eyes.

"Why do you respect me now? In Kolruna you despised me. I have not changed."

"You have changed and I have changed. You have awakened to the possession of your own powers, and I have suffered. Then I was blind in conceit, my young arrogance. I saw in you only another of those others whom I despised men who looked upon their sport and the opinion of their conventional world as their only end in life. From the moment that you dared to marry as you did I knew that I had misjudged you. But it was too late."

"Too late!"

In one vivid flash she saw how he had interpreted her words. Panic, fear of herself and him, seized upon her, and yet, with a last effort she turned towards the door.

"Good-bye--David--"

He lurched forward. She felt rather than saw him pass her, and when she looked up he barred her way, his face bloodless, his eyes savage and distraught. "Diana!" he said between his teeth. "You can't go no not if to stay were my own damnation--"

She recoiled, struggling to free her hands from his wild clasp. The disaster was there, sweeping down before them both like a terrible, black, annihilating flood. And in that crisis she regained her strength. She looked him steadily, significantly in the face.

"Is your or my damnation the worst evil?" she said.

He stared at her. Unconsciously his hands released her, and fell to his side. The madness in his face burnt down to an ashy calm.

"Have you forgotten the compact on which we built our friendship?" she persisted.

He understood her then. The tense muscles relaxed. He turned away, and, limping to the table, sank down, his head supported on his hand. In the long, unbroken silence that followed she watched him with a tenderness free from all fear, all remorse. The storm had broken over them, and they had battled through victoriously. The waves which had threatened to engulf them had borne them to a barren safety, and here for one short breathing-space they were free to face each other and in the sanctity of farewell acknowledge the truth which filled their lives.

"David!" she said, scarcely above a whisper. He stirred, but did not lift his face.

"Have I forfeited your friendship too?" he asked brokenly.

"No, my dear one. How should you? It was and is my fault. No, let me speak, David. Were we other than we are I would not dare say what I am going to say. If we regulated our conduct by human law, which we are sometimes pleased to call the law of God, it wouldn't be safe. It's not in either of us to care much for the one or believe in the other, and if that was the only barrier between us we should be over it in a minute. But there is something else ourselves. We're rather alike in that, David we set up our own standards, and we have to keep to them. If we sought our happiness at the cost of another of some one whom we love and have sworn to protect then we should be deliberately denying our own characters, and the punishment would be inevitable. At the same time one thing I believe myself free to do and that is to part from you with the truth outspoken between us. I love you, David."

He half rose, but she motioned him back with a movement of such dignity that he sank down again, watching her in fascinated silence.

"I know that the world would blame me for telling you so," she went on, "but the world is hypocritical, and the world is not my judge. I am not ashamed of caring for you as I do and if I feel remorse gnawing at my heart it is not because I have learnt to love you, but because I have learnt to love you too late. I understand now in my arrogant, childish blindness I would not look below the surface of your disabilities I would not see that in you was the thing for which I had searched vainly in others. I let you go and it was granted to another and worthier to do what it would have been my glory to do to set you free and waken you to your own strength. It is my punishment, and that I do not bear it alone makes it worse. I have not only hurt myself, but you and her. That is the curse that I shall carry with me always."

He rose slowly to his feet. The haggard face which he turned to her was illuminated by a high resignation.

"No curse rests on you, Di," he said quietly. "You have not hurt me, at least I have hurt myself. I am just an unsatisfactory character I think, perhaps, a little like my father. We both wanted success, and we went against ourselves to win it. But it wasn't for the sake of success itself. There was, for both of us, some one to whom it was to have been a kind of offering. My father tried to bring it to my mother and I to you."

"David!" she interposed sadly, "did you think that it was only outward success I cared for?"

He passed his hand wearily over his forehead.

"I don't think I thought much about it at all, Di. I have only just realised that it was for you that I have worked and fought as I have done. You see, I have been brought to look at things from that point of view success has been the only standard I have ever been judged by and instinctively I have always striven to clear myself from your contempt. I didn't know that it was love for you that made the