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

crowd. Like a boiling torrent that has been freed suddenly from its rocky boundary, the pilgrims had spread out over the brow of the hill, swerving together again as they passed through the mighty Gopura, and in the solemn majesty of the night even the chant of the yogis had died to silence. Hurst came on slowly. His strength, born in the heat of battle, forsook him now and his heart beat faster with an emotion which was half -painful, half -joyous. It seemed to him that, with that sudden change from the blackness of the jungle to this holy twilight, a miracle had taken place in his own life. He was not the man who had wrested success from an unwilling fortune. He was not the man who had sacrificed a Dream to an ambition. He was David Hurst, the outcaste, who came now to see, for the last time, the hidden treasure of his own soul. He passed beneath the arch of the Gopura. Before him lay the slumbering silver surface of the sacred pool, and in the midst the red reflection of the beacon which burnt from the highest pillar gleamed out of the water.

The multitude had poured down towards the sanctuary, and Hurst followed without resistance, knowing that now fate alone had hold upon the threads of the future. The doors of the sanctuary stood open. Those who went in came not out again, and, armed with Heilig's knowledge, Hurst felt no wonder. He allowed himself to be caught once more in the mighty stream which, narrowing as it reached the low building, poured through with irresistible force. Then Hurst saw with his own eyes. The stone floor had disappeared, and massive stone steps led down into the sombre depths.

"Sarasvati! Sarasvati!"

The shout seemed to come from the heart of the earth, and those fighting with grim fanatic tenacity for a place upon the steps caught up the cry and plunged recklessly into the darkness. In the hideous melee of the descent Hurst kept his foothold. Half carried by the crush on either side he passed helplessly over the mangled bodies of those who had fallen beneath the juggernaut of human fury. Their last feeble groans seemed to him louder than the shouting of the multitude, for he was strangely calm now, and the madness had gone out of his blood.

"Sarasvati! Sarasvati!"

The bottom of the steps was reached at last. For a moment Hurst and those hi the foremost ranks were swept forward by the onrush from behind, then, as though at some given signal, the swerving, struggling mass dropped to their knees, and a silence as of death hung in the sultry atmosphere. Half hidden by a pillar against which he had been thrown in the final struggle, Hurst alone remained standing. Dazed, sickened, and half blinded by the blood which trickled from his forehead, he was at first only conscious of a moving, tangible darkness, then, little by little, as his vision cleared, the Buried Temple arose from out of the mist of legend and became an immense reality, a stupendous realisation of his childhood's wildest dreams. Tall, slender pillars, carved with the history of the nine Avatars and lit at their base by the light of innumerable torches, lifted their graceful capitols to the dome which, invisible yet imaginable, shrouded itself in perpetual night. Shadows deepening from violet to the sable hung in the side aisles and hid behind their veil the dimly outlined figures of the temple servants, and down the nave one long flood of delicate light poured from the altar.

All this Hurst saw, though to his knowledge his eyes never left the glittering splendour which rose star-like against the firmament of darkness. Throne or altar he could give it no name. He realised only the figure which sat between the jewelled arms, the dark head, crowned with one string of priceless rubies, resting half proudly, half wearily against the high back of the golden chair. Beneath, a white-robed priest fed the altar-fires with incense, and a man crouching on the lowest step of the dais hid his face as though in worship.

"The Daughter of Brahma is in her temple!"

The priests' chanting tones vibrated through the silence, and, like an echo thrown back a thousand-fold, the kneeling worshippers took up the triumphant announcement and repeated it till it rose in sonorous waves of passion into the vaulted heights of the temple. Then the tide, checked for a moment, rolled forward and its black waves beat against the altar-steps.

Hurst, shielding his face from the blinding light, looked up. He had fought his way to the foremost rank, and not half a dozen feet separated him from that strange, motionless figure upon the altar. He saw the face and a cry, lost in the tumult, broke from his lips. The divine, flower-like loveliness had gone; gone too were the white robes which had once enclosed her in emblematic purity. The scarlet cloth, encrusted with rubies, which revealed the slender dignity of her frame, the heavy blood-red gems weighing down the hands clasped loosely about the carved arms of the throne, the unsheathed sword glittering at her feet all seemed but a sinister reflection of the eyes which stared out over the heads of the kneeling crowd. Cruelty, devilish, insatiable, yet not without a certain awful majesty, lay in that sombre, inscrutable gaze. The lips of the once lovely mouth were parted, but no longer in the old tender, breathless longing.

To Hurst's tortured imagination it seemed that the spirit of a dying faith, grand, beautiful in its mystic aspiration, had passed away with the Sarasvati of his dreams, and that with this withered, terrible beauty rose the personification of a soulless devilworship a religion that had lost its hold on God. Better that she should have died better that the flames of her destiny should have carried her to the Nirvana of her prayers, than that she should have become this through him and through his race.

Above him the priest's voice rang out like the full note of an organ.

"Daughter of Heaven, behold thy people. Long have they waited for thee, Sarasvati, and despair has eaten at their courage and bent their necks in Shameful submission. With anguish have they seen thy altar deserted, thy faith rooted out from the heart of their children. Anarchy, faithlessness, discord, have been sown by thy enemies, and no man has risen to hold their hand. But thou hast returned, and the weak arm grows strong, and the fearful heart bold. Speak, Sarasvati! Thou art from Heaven, and thy curse shall destroy the strongest foe, thy blessing shall make the dullest blade sharp as a scythe."

"My curse is on them."

Hurst lifted his head. Motionless, with that same hungry cruelty about the curved mouth, she stared out into the darkness. Pitiless as fate, her voice had sounded in the tense stillness.

"See the sword lies at my feet. Shall it be with the sword?"

"It shall be with the sword."

"In the blood of the oppressors shall the sins of thy people be washed out?"

"In the blood of the oppressors."

"Sarasvati! Sarasvati!"

The tempest of fanatic passion, lulled for a moment by that still, passionless voice, broke out afresh. Hurst felt it rise up behind him like a demonic force, and his eyes, drawn irresistibly from the living idol, encountered the worshippers who still crouched at the foot of the altar. Hellish in its triumph, its revengeful ecstasy, tragic in its unconscious suffering, Rama Pal's face was raised now to the light. He smiled, but in the sunken eyes there was that prescience of death which is never without its pathos, its terrible appeal. And between his brows was the mark of Vishnu. Hurst sprang to his feet. He tore the disguising turban from his head and leapt on to the first step of the altar.

"Sarasvati! Sarasvati!" he called imperatively, as one crying to a sleeper. "Sarasvati!"

As a still sombre pool is broken into a hundred lights by the first ray of the rising sun, so the ruthless hatred in the once lovely face broke and passed, changing from the innocent wonder of an awakened child to an immeasurable tenderness. Slowly, as though lifted from a stupor by some power outside herself, she rose, her arms outstretched in a movement of blind seeking, her eyes still turned to the shadows.

"Sarasvati! "Hurst repeated. "Look at me recognise me for the sake of all that was and is between us Sarasvati, my wife--"

He had spoken in English, consciously, purposely. A silence, appalling in its suddenness, had fallen on the paralysed multitude behind him. Rama Pal had also risen, and Hurst felt his presence like an overshadowing destiny. He felt the full significance of the slow, waiting smile which had dawned over the dark features, but he had lost the knowledge of fear. He had weighed the material against the ideal, and the material had been found wanting. The mere facts of life and death had become insignificant. To regain her, to save her from the damnation of a hideous cruelty, to restore to her the treasures of her faith in him and hi the divine origin of herself and of all life that alone remained to him as a last and crowning ambition.

"The Lord Sahib has given his life to no purpose," Rama Pal said gently. "The Daughter of Brahma knows him not."

Hurst brushed aside the interruption with the decision of a man who knows the very seconds are numbered for him.

"Sarasvati," he cried in her own tongue, "if I have wronged thee I am ready to bear the punishment. But I have not dishonoured thee. Thou art my wife no man shall take that from me all I am I am through thy love and mine. Sarasvati, believe! I have given my life that thou shouldst believe."

Her eyes met his at last. He felt the recognition pass through her like an energising fire. Then suddenly she smiled, no longer with the old, childlike diffidence, but with the majestic tenderness of a woman.

"My beloved--I believe--my beloved--see, the shadows pass--"

In that moment Rama Pal caught up the unsheathed weapon lying at the foot of the altar. Hurst saw the movement, and held out his arms in last appeal.

"Sarasvati take back thy faith--thy divinity-- but believe love is more worthy of thee than hate. Daughter of Brahma we also are of God! Shall divine life, struggling back to its source be destroyed by thy hand in thy name?"

"There shall be no life destroyed in my name." And her voice was full of a gentle wonder.

He knew then that the spell was broken, and that the evil had gone out of her. He turned, and, with a steadfastness free from either hatred or despair, awaited the end. He had witnessed the resurrection for which he had paid the price, and he was content that the end should come. It was an instant of blurred impressions, unconsciously gathered as his last of earth a sea of faces grown suddenly still, a darkness through which death glided down on a silver streak of light. He wondered that it came so easily. He wondered too at the shadow which flitted between him and that narrow, descending flash, and at the scream, shrill with terror and agonised incredulity, which broke the stillness. Then, when the shadow passed, he understood. Death had not come to him.

Sarasvati lay quite quiet, her head thrown back against the topmost step of the altar, one arm flung across her breast as though in an involuntary movement of protection. The string of rubies which had bound her forehead had snapped, and the red stones glittered on the marble like luminous drops of blood. Hurst saw her and the man who knelt beside her as in a hideous fantasy of the brain. He tried to push the kneeling figure on one side, but the finality of all that had come to pass lamed his strength, and a minute after it was