The Daughter of Brahma by I. A. R. Wylie (to read list txt) 📕

things? They laugh and they play their mad games, and the devil goes past with a lighted torch in one hand and a powder-cask under the other arm. Ha, do you laugh? I tell you that these half-clothed fanatics are as powder, and he who led them a devil. One day he will wave the torch, and then then you will not laugh, my young friend."

"I am not laughing," David said.

His interest was aroused, not only by the words, but by the face of the man beside him. In spite of the growing obscurity and the disguise of a heavy beard, David could still distinguish the stranger's powerfully intellectual features the high forehead, the aquiline nose, the eyes deep-set under overhanging brows. He was badly, and even slovenly dressed, in a duck suit of doubtful cut, but his bearing, at once aggressive and dignified, silenced criticism. Quite suddenly he threw open the gate.

"I go," he said. "I haf wasted an afternoon, and that is enough. Greet me your mother, Mr. Hurst. Tell her that I haf seen her son and that he will do. He is not a fool. Good evening."

"Wait!" David Hurst came out into the road beside him. "You are Professor Heilig?" he asked. "I am, my young friend. And you, I take it, are my secretary to be."

"Yes, but I don't know how you recognised me or what reason I should have given you to suppose that I will do. Hitherto I have proved myself useless in every profession, and, beyond a smattering of Hindustani, know next to nothing. It is only right that you should understand that at the beginning."

The German burst into a loud, deep-chested laugh.

"But, my young friend, your mother told me all I wanted to know. She was most explicit. When I heard that you had failed in your exams. I said in my heart, 'There is hope for that young man,' and when I heard that you played neither polo nor tennis, I said, 'There is more than hope,' and when I heard that you had seen what I believed only I had seen, and that they had laughed -- why, then, I wrote to you. Dear God in heaven! what do I want with clever men or sporting men? I want a man with an immortal soul, who can see and feel below the surface over which these others go galloping in their thick-hided ignorance. Bah! yes, they do their work, but it is not my work. I need none of them. Come to me to-morrow, and we will begin. Good night."

David Hurst walked quickly at his side.

"You say there are things which only you and I have seen," he said. "What things?"

Heilig stopped and pointed one square finger to the hills.

"You know," he said and his voice vibrated. "You haf not forgotten. They laughed at you as fools laugh at the truth, but you knew, and you haf come back. Sarasvati the daughter of the gods--you haf seen her as I haf never seen her--as child. And one day you shall see her as I know her--as woman. Then we will write books together on all we haf seen of the hidden wonders of a great religion and a great people. And then our friends over there will laugh and say that such things are no more in India. But we shall not heed them, for we are sufficient unto ourselves and need neither them nor their praise. What we haf seen is ours."

He strode on, and Hurst let him go. The last words rang in his ears like the proclamation of a new life, like an appeal to something in him which, years before, would have answered in passionate gratitude. "What we haf seen is ours." He knew that in that brief sentence lay a proud independence, the noble self-sufficiency of a character freed from all the trammels of the world's judgment. But he was not free. What he had seen was not his not now. The world in which he struggled for his place had taken his greatest possession from him and thrown it back as an idle fancy, a faded unreality without worth.

And he too had ceased to believe, and the treasurehouse of his inner life stood deserted.

BOOK II_CHAPTER II (THE PROSELYTE) ELIOT led the way into the third class-room of the missionary school-house. It was a pleasant enough apartment, but not particularly commodious, and his visitors who crowded in after him had some difficulty in arranging themselves along the mud walls without treading on his scholars. The scholars, for their part, sat on their heels in nicely regulated rows and stared about them with the alert curiosity of so many monkeys. Their ages varied probably from seven to ten, and they were clad with marked attention to European ideas of decency; but the matter of their morning ceremony of purification was more doubtful, and Mrs. Chichester sniffed questioningly.

"My youngest," Mr. Eliot said, with an introductory wave of the hand. "All baptized, my lord."

My lord the bishop adjusted his glasses.

"Very nice very admirable," he said benignly. "You have done wonders I shall not forget to mention your work when I return home." He smiled at the rows of dark, unsmiling faces, and his glance passed on to the tall figure of a young man standing beside the teacher's table. "And this?" he inquired tentatively. Mr. Eliot's shiny features brightened with conscious triumph.

"My right hand," he explained. "One of my first proselytes, my lord, baptized into the faith as Rama 6 81 Pal; has passed his examinations brilliantly in Calcutta, and is soon going to England to study for the law. A very encouraging case, my lord."

"Indeed, yes," my lord agreed. He drew nearer and nodded a kindly greeting.

Rama Pal answered by a slight inclination of the head. He was dressed in European clothes save for the white turban which set off in sharp relief the classic regularity of his features, and his slight, erect figure seemed to tower above the bent old man before him. Like his pupils, his face was perfectly emotionless, and his dark eyes passed over the small crowd of inspecting visitors with a quiet, unrecognising indifference.

The bishop coughed uncertainly.

"Ah judging from appearances, our young friend belongs to a higher caste than is usual among converts?" he suggested.

"belonged, thank God! "Mr. Eliot interposed, throwing a glance at the unresponsive rows of native babies. "We have no caste distinctions here, my lord. We are all brothers--"

"H'm yes, of course belonged, I should have said. Nevertheless, I fancy my supposition is correct, is it not? You see, I have some experience of the Hindu classes."

He smiled, and the dark eyes sank to the level of his face.

"I belong to no class I have no caste."

"But your family?"

"I have no family."

The answers were uttered in an emotionless monotone which did not encourage. Mr. Eliot came to the rescue.

"Our friend has had rather a peculiar history, my lord," he began, with the eagerness of a man who has a story to tell. "When he first came into my hands he was scarcely thirteen years old, and entirely ignorant of his antecedents. I might mention that he was found in a pitiable condition by Mr. Hurst, who is at this moment present. Mr. Hurst, I wonder if you remember your whilom protege?"

There was a general stir of awakened interest. Mrs. Chichester, who had been endeavouring to minimise her extreme boredom by distributing French chocolates amongst Mr. Eliot's spiritual offspring, looked up mischievously into David's face.

"Now you know why you were asked," she observed, sotto voce. "Go along and play up nicely, David."

Hurst took involuntarily a step forward. Not Mr. Eliot's appeal, but the face of the young Hindu convert had called him out from among the little crowd of wearied visitors.

"Yes, I remember very well," he said. He half stretched out his hand, then let it drop limply to his side. Rama Pal did not move, and his expression remained impassively courteous.

"Very interesting quite a romance," murmured the bishop. "An incident of that kind should bring the races closer." He repeated his benign smile and passed out of the room, Mr. Eliot and the escort at his heels.

David Hurst lingered. The infantile converts fidgeted restlessly, but the two young men studied each other in silence, comparing, possibly remembering.

"I am glad to have met you," Hurst said at last. "I have wanted to see you all these years."

"The lord Sahib honours me. I do not deserve remembrance . ' '

Hurst sought in the dark and handsome features for the sarcasm which had seemed to glimmer through the veil of Oriental humility, but Rama Pal made no sign. His bearing was irreproachable at once respectful and dignified.

"Of us two it is perhaps I who least deserve to be remembered," David returned impulsively. "You have done wonders so Mr. Eliot tells me and I have done nothing."

"Yet I owe the lord Sahib everything life and all the benefits of the Christian faith. May I one day prove my gratitude!"

He bowed his head, but this time Hurst thought he had caught a flicker of light in the unfathomable eyes, and he half turned away, baffled and disconcerted.

"I did not want you to be grateful," he said. "It was not for that I wished to see you. I have always thought of you as a kind of comrade. We went through danger together danger which no one else believes in. It seemed to me a kind of link. But perhaps the idea was all part of my imagination."

"The bond between the lord Sahib and his servant is forged in memory," was the suave answer.

Hurst said no more. The steady gaze, the unsmiling face, silenced him. He nodded curtly, hiding behind a sudden arrogance the bitterness of his disappointment, and went out into the street, where an ear-splitting outburst of shrieks, clashing of cymbals, and wailing wind-instruments had broken in upon the afternoon peace. The cause of the disturbance proved to be a religious procession composed chiefly of half-clothed Sudras who came down the narrow street at a fast trot, whirling up clouds of stifling dust and driving the little English party back against the walls of the mission house like straws before a torrent. A hideous, battered-looking idol swayed precariously on the shoulders of four of the more sober members, but not even its ludicrous ugliness or the clamour of its worshippers could detract entirely from the magic of the scene. It was all part of the surroundings, a living expression of the brilliant colouring, the combined picturesque loveliness and filth which characterised the haphazard native street.

When the procession had passed Mr. Eliot shook himself like a dog which had come out of a muddy pool.

"A festival of the new moon," he explained in a tone of apology and disapproval. "It is terrible that these things can still be. In such moments a Christian is almost overcome with discouragement."

"We must be patient and thankful that it has been granted us to help these our brethren as much as we have done," the bishop returned gravely. "We cannot hope to attain everything in a day."

Mrs. Chichester, who had overheard part of the conversation, and, according to her custom, turned it upside