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

signal from Heaven that their hope is blessed. The gods are silent but thou, divine daughter"

"Divine?" She drew herself up, her hands raised above her head in a movement of inarticulate despair. "Thou knowest that I am human. In all the world there is no divinity."

"Thou art divine!" he broke in with a fierce elation. "Thou art a goddess, a living symbol of an Idea an Ideal. We who have lost our faith in graven images will worship thee and obey thee as the personification of what is most divine in us. Throw aside for ever this base earthliness, Sarasvati, my sister. Become that which thou wast born and made to be the inspiration, the salvation of thy country."

She stared at him through the increasing darkness, half-hypnotised.

"How to what end?" she whispered.

"To the end that India shall be free and the blotch of shameful slavery washed away in the blood of her oppressors--"

"I cannot!" she wailed. "I cannot! Is not my husband of their race?"

"Not thy husband thy betrayer. Or hast thou still love for the man who has dragged thee down into shame and sorrow?"

She faced his furious scorn with a piteous humility.

"I cannot otherwise am I not but a woman?"

Somewhere in the quiet house a door was banged sharply to. Kama Pal started and listened. His impassivity had returned and his Oriental eloquence changed to a sharp, business-like precision.

"To-night thy husband attends a theatrical performance in aid of Indian charity," he said in a low voice. "Thou wilt accompany him. I shall be close at hand. With thy handkerchief thou wilt give me a signal. To-morrow, at daybreak, I shall await thee with a carriage at the corner of the street. By evening we shall be on our way to Calcutta." He raised his hand in solemn warning. "Should the signal not be given I swear to you that I shall shoot Sir David down like a dog this very night or, if he escapes me, I will not rest till my debt is paid. I swear it thou knowest that I swear not vainly." He turned and crept noiselessly to the door. "Nor think to betray me," he added. "Sir David is already marked, and when I fail a dozen will take my place. To-night or to-morrow. The end will be the same."

He was gone. She took a stumbling step towards the door as though to follow him, then swayed and subsided slowly on her knees beside the cradle. The minutes passed, and she did not move. The twilight deepened to night and only the reflections on the ceiling and the red glow of the fire broke through the gathering gloom. Unconsciously her hand began to feel over the silken quilt which covered the child's quiet form, instinctively she sought for the one living comfort that was left her, and instead touched something that was cold cold, and harder than stone.

Yet another minute passed. Realisation, like a pale light breaking through a mist, came to her slowly. Then she started up, her hands searching in feverish silence through the darkness, and suddenly she moaned and stood still, arrested by the frightful, annihilating thing which she had touched. She did not cry out after that. Her conception of life, half-childish, halfmystic as it was, left her crushed and helpless before these grim realities of death and dishonour. All reasoning, almost all feeling, sank engulfed in a chaos of hideous, formless suffering. Not for her were the consolations of religion nor the stoic behests of intellect.

Religion, as much as drifted back to her in that moment, was to her a vague, shifting substance to which it was vain to hold out hands of supplication; and death itself, that last refuge, opened out before her eyes an endless vista of future lives filled with the same agony in lower, meaner forms. Even now her child's soul, tainted with the dishonour of its birth, had passed on into some foul body, to begin the frightful cycle of its transmigrations. For it and for her Nirvana, that state of contemplative, measureless peace, was lost, and out of her numb despair there arose a fierce, sombre resentment against the forces which dragged her from her divine state. A smouldering hatred burnt up among the ashes of her grief a hatred that scarcely knew itself nor its object, but called out to the unknown powers a passionate vindication of its own existence. Wronged, betrayed beyond all measure, she beat wildly against her invisible taunters, seeking vengeance, above all escape.

She rose, shivering in every limb, and crept nearer to the fire. Escape? Was there none? In the days when evil dreams had risen before her had not she had the power to lift herself above them into endless spaces of peace and silence? Her bewildered brain sought after the sacred formulas, her lips formed them but no change came to her. The dreams, shaped as dead children, as men and women who mocked and threatened her, as cold, dank mists and yellow darkness, closed her in and suddenly, like some tortured, frenzied animal, she screamed aloud.

"Sarasvati!"

The door had opened. A flood of light fell upon her, and, as though awaking from some awful trance, she turned a little and saw David Hurst standing in the doorway. He was in evening dress and his square broad-shouldered figure stood up massively against the bright background.

"Sarasvati!" he repeated, "I thought I heard you call. Are you there?"

"I am here." He switched on the red shaded lights over the mantelpiece and she saw his face.

"I came to say good-bye," he said. "The carriage is waiting. I wish I hadn't to go, but I've promised. Good-night, my wife."

"You are going." She passed her feeble hand over her forehead. "Yes I remember to-night." He watched her in silence, vaguely alarmed. And suddenly she came towards him on tip-toe, as in the days of her lost beauty, her fingers to her lips, a curious, painful laughter in her eyes. Lithe, graceful, almost feline, she crept up to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders. "Take me with you," she whispered. "Take me with you. I am so tired of the darkness I want the light and music and people--"

He looked down at her. She had spoken rapidly, mechanically, and fever burnt in her hollow cheeks.

"The child," he began; " is it safe for you to leave him, dear?"

She laughed a low, toneless little laugh.

"Oh, he is so much better. He sleeps. I have sat and watched over him, and he has not cried or stirred. Now the nurse can care for him. Let me come?"

He bent and kissed her tenderly with a grave solicitude.

"As you wish it, you shall come," he said. "Henceforth you must be always with me, Sarasvati. I want you. The shadows have come between us a little of late. We will put them out of our lives and go back into our own world."

"Yes, back into our own world," she repeated monotonously. "But to-night for the last time we will go together."

Still he hesitated, oppressed by he knew not what. There was something in the quiet room which was like a breath of cold, dank air, causing him a keen physical discomfort. He looked about him, and his eyes encountered the white painted cradle.

"Let us say good-night to our son," he said.

But she clung to him with the same wild laughter in her eyes.

"Oh no, you must not look at him, or touch him. He is asleep. You must not wake him. It is well that he sleeps. The doctor said so did he not? And he sleeps so softly. Come go gently."

Hurst allowed himself to be drawn unresisting to the door. He dared not protest. There was something frenzied in her bearing that warned him.

"We will send the nurse to him," he said.

She nodded and looked back over her shoulder.

"Oh yes, we will send the nurse to him. How well he sleeps! He has not heard us. Good-night come, my husband come quickly come quickly--"

She closed the door, and, ghost-like, glided noiselessly before him down the corridor.

BOOK IV_CHAPTER IV (THE CHOICE)

THE Belvedere had opened its doors to charitable enterprise. The famine and plague-stricken in far-off India had aroused the elegant English world to a sense of their solemn responsibility as citizens of the Empire, and, beside the usual Mansion House Fund, it had been decided to organise an immense entertainment, the proceeds of which should be devoted to the sufferers. Altruism had become rife. The management of the Belvedere had presented their building free of all charge; for the evening, various music-hall turns had offered their services and Society had pledged its support. Consequently, the event promised to be a brilliant one, and no doubt, had they known of the sacrifices being brought in their behalf, the distant recipients would have felt their lot more tolerable.

Cabinet ministers, so-called Indian authorities, M.P.'s, with their wives, a sprinkling of the nobility, and a mighty gathering of that resplendent and proud clan whose resplendency is based on bottled pickles and meat extracts and other such useful commodities, and whose pride is legitimised by " connections " amongst the latter-day peerage such were the chief ingredients of the crowd that swarmed about the Belvedere's handsomely decorated couloirs. The women were gorgeously dressed, probably no other feminine assembly in the world could have boasted of having spent as much money on its attire; and their partners had groomed themselves with such blind obedience to the prevailing masculine fashion that their appearance was disconcertingly uniform.

In the whole theatre there was probably only one man who had dared to defy the latest sartorial edict. He blocked up the narrow gangway which led to the lower boxes, and the cut of his evening clothes, together with his whole massively uncompromising appearance, caused one or two immaculate representatives of the jeunesse doree to regard him with a not wholly unjustified suspicion. In dress, in bearing, and above all in expression, he discorded with his surroundings. Among the delicately built men whose thin, clean-shaven faces portrayed a weary amusement he stood out like an ungainly Titan, his arms folded, his bearded chin lifted in an attitude of unconscious aggression.

More than one woman glanced at him, but less with suspicion as with a certain unreasoned interest. For women instinctively recognise strength, and in that atmosphere of effete pleasure-seeking the outsider exhaled an energy which was actually uncomfortable. None of the attendants, however much inclined to do so, cared to question his right to be present, and it was left to an elderly, distinguished-looking man to touch him on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, will you let me pass? This is my box."

The stranger started round.

"Yours? Ha! I was told that Sir David Hurst--"

"Sir David is sharing the box with my party," was the suave explanation. "Might I ask if you are one of his guests?" "Guests? Good Heavens no! "The stranger's manner expressed impatience. "I only arrived from India a couple of hours ago. But I am his friend, and I haf a wish to see him."

The owner of the box considered the intruder with an awakened interest. The obvious retort that this was neither the time nor place for the proposed meeting did