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

Day after day he had stood before her, yet her eyes had never rested upon him with the cold, half-pitying indifference whose remembrance clung like poison to his blood. Her eyes were blank he had painted into them all the warmth of his own imagining. No more than her quiet breath passed her lips, but in his dreams she had spoken to him, and her words had filled the great emptiness of his life. He had put the thought of her waking hours if waking hours she had from him, sick with the pain of his own awakening. For he knew that then she passed out of his possession, ceased to be his creation. What she then was he did not know at best, perhaps, an ignorant Hindu child; at the worst, a woman conscious of her power, indifferent to its possible high uses.

But it was as neither of these that Hurst had seen her only as a lovely vase into which he had poured his dreams and ideals, his whole unsatisfied desire. She had belonged to him. The very water which beat against her rocky shrine separated her from the world and made her more surely his; her passivity, her very helplessness had aroused in him the knowledge of his own strength, and with that a chivalrous reverence and tenderness. And yet, beneath all there had been unrest. He felt it stirring in his blood as he stood there, his arms folded across his breast, watching her, marking with the appreciation of the instinctive artist the exquisite outlines of her features, the noble carriage of the dark head. He no longer felt the complete peace which the contemplation of her beauty had first given him. His dreams were good, but they were no more than dreams. Behind the smooth forehead there was a brain which dreamed apart from him, beneath the quiet breast a heart which beat its own peaceful measure. The vase was very fair, but it contained something more than his fancy the mystery of a human character.

For the first time the thought took definite form in his mind and with it awoke desire, a reckless, headlong need of the reality. He was weary of lighting her eyes with a warmth he had never seen, of filling the silence with a voice he had never heard. Unknown to him, his egoism faltered; the passive reflection of himself no longer satisfied all that was divine in his love clamoured for the companionship of a being equal to himself, independent of himself, and yet his own. And Reason, stunned by the sudden onrush of desire, relaxed her hold and the name was spoken which had trembled a hundred times on his lips.

"Sarasvati!" he said, scarcely above his breath.

In the absolute quiet the whisper fell like a discordant note of music. Startled, horrified by his own mad act, Hurst recoiled, and for a brief instant his shadow was thrown across the dreamer's face. He saw it, and drew back against the marble pillar of the entrance, and once more the brightening ray of sunshine flooded back into the shrine. But to Hurst's dazed eyes the fleeting darkness had wrought a miracle. The air had awakened; life beat past him on golden wings; the dreaming silence vanished like a mist dispelled by the breath of some sudden rising wind, and in the dead eyes of the woman kneeling before the altar a light had dawned more wonderful than his highest fancy had ever painted it.

He stood, leaning against the marble pillar, and watched the wonder of her awakening in scarcely conscious silence. Slowly, like the petals of a flower, her hands unfolded, then rose and laid themselves across her breast, as though in protection of some treasured secret. Many minutes passed thus, in which she seemed to be drawing her soul back from the shadowy country of her contemplation; then suddenly she turned, and the eyes, with their warmth of unutterable tenderness, rested on him in fearless greeting.

"My Lord and God!" she said in the softness of her own tongue.

"Sarasvati!" he answered tonelessly. She rose like some white spirit and came towards him, her hands outstretched, palm upwards, her face radiant with joy which seemed to him not of this earth. In that instant her divinity was a real thing, and he shrank from her. Then her hands touched him, rested on his shoulders, and all thought, all reason sank engulfed in a flood which in its immensity became passionless. He held her to him and kissed her, not wildly, but as a man thirsting in the middle of a tractless desert drinks of some unhoped-for stream of crystal water. All knowledge of himself, of her, of life, passed. For a time which seemed at once fleeting and immeasurable his innermost being flung off the shackles of mortality, and rose triumphant into a boundless space where there was no thought, no desire, scarcely consciousness. It was a state near death he knew it, and the strong life within fought and conquered. Through a thinning haze he saw her face, the closed eyes, the faintly smiling mouth, and knew that she was a mortal woman and their happiness earthly.

"Sarasvati!" he repeated.

Her eyes opened. They burned, but behind their fire was still the lingering shadows of her dreams.

"My Lord thou hast called me I am here," she said. "Long have I heard thy voice, long striven against thee. But thy need was greater than my strength and I came."

"Thou heardest me!" he stammered, in her own tongue. "It seemed that thou wert asleep, and neither saw nor knew when I came and went. Sarasvati, how long hast thou known me?"

"Surely through all the ages," she answered, in the low warm notes of her voice, "and yet perchance only a little while. In Nirvana there is no time and almost had I attained Nirvana, when thou earnest and calledst to me. I heard thy voice through the great silence, and half did I struggle against thee." Once more she laid her hands upon his shoulders, and her eyes filled with a deep repentance. "My Lord I know not why I was afraid."

"Of what?" he asked gently.

"Of earth and earth's dreams." He felt her shudder as though at some ugly memory. "I too have dreamed strange, ugly visions of men's passions but then was the wisdom of the Vedas given to me, and I knew that they were but dreams which hide our unity with the Most High. Through prayer and meditation I obtained peace." She lifted her dark, fathomless eyes to his. "On earth there is no peace," she finished sadly.

He looked at her, marvelling at her pathetic wisdom.

"And I have brought thee back," he said. "I have done great wrong."

"Thou art my God," she answered with a sudden passionate gesture. "Whither thou callest I must follow all my life and love is thine."

"What dost thou know of love?" he asked her.

She turned a little, pointing out through .the open doorway to the sunlit world beyond.

"The word is written in the Vedas," she said gently. "Oft did I ponder of it, and scarcely knew its meaning. Only when the warm light fell upon me, or when the moon rose and played with the waters, I felt a strange beating at my heart, and it seemed to me that then love drew nearer. But that is long since. In Nirvana there is no love only silence and solitude." She paused, and then added under her breath, "And yet there love came to me."

He took her face between his hands and kissed her reverently, for he knew that she was showing him the mystery of a woman's heart as perhaps no woman had shown a man before.

"Tell me!" he pleaded. "How did love come?"

"As a wind breathing through my loneliness at first softly, then as a great storm which caught me up and bore me earthwards here to thy feet. At first I would not then, when I saw thy face, I knew that thou hadst need of me, and I fought no more."

"When didst thou first see my face?" he persisted.

"I know not," she answered dreamily. "For me there is no time. Almost I believe that I have always seen thee in the sunshine and in the stars and afterwards, in my solitude, I seemed to wait for thy coming as a soul waits for its hour of rebirth. Around me was clearness and silence; wishless and dreamless, I meditated on Brahma and on the one Great Truth. But a mist gathered before my sight, and in the midst I saw thy face, and out of the silence thy voice called upon me ' Sarasvati, daughter of Brahma! ' And still I strove to think on the All One and on the Sacred Word, but always thy face rose before me. And the wind grew stronger, and my soul awoke and spread its wings, and joy was given me greater than the joy of peace."

She bent her head against his shoulder and for a moment neither spoke. The sunlight poured in upon them and lit up the face of the watching god as though in warning. But David Hurst had forgotten time and place. More perfect, more wonderful than any dream of her had she revealed herself to him not as a child, nor yet as an empty-hearted woman, but as a soul that had ripened to maturity in its dreams, a being armed with a strange, unchildish wisdom, yet purer, more innocent than the flowers that lay upon her altar. And the love that she had brought him who had hitherto been loveless was as a gift straight from the hands of God.

"My beloved!" he said.

Unconsciously he used his own tongue, and she looked up at him with an untroubled question in her eyes:

"Thou speakest, and I do not understand," she said. "Who art thou? Art thou not Siva the god my husband?"

He shook his head, smiling, yet struck by a sudden pain.

"I am no god, but a mortal like thyself, Sarasvati. Behold, thy husband is neither god nor man a senseless, lifeless image. What is he to thee?"

No change came into her upturned face. That which he had feared to see scorn or disappointment was not there; only a limitless trust.

"Thou art not as those others whom I saw in my dreams," she said. "From whence comest thou?"

"From a loneliness greater than thine," he answered.

"And has love come to thee also?" she asked wistfully.

"Yes, Sarasvati. I think I have loved thee always unknown even to myself. It was my love that awakened thine."

"Then art thou surely my husband," she said with a naive confidence. She laid her hands in his and drew back a step, considering him, and he bore her scrutiny unflinchingly. For the first time in his life love looked at him and found no fault. "Thou art fairer than all men," she said simply.

"Amongst my own people I am called dark and ugly," he said, laughing. "Hast thou seen thine own face?" She shook her head.

"When thou hast seen it, thou wilt know that I am but a poor mate for thee, Sarasvati," he said.

Then, with a quick, impulsive movement, she came back to him and laid her slender arms about his neck.

"What are our bodies but shadows?" she said. "Is it not our souls that love that have found each other? Art thou not mine, as I am thine?"

"Yes," he answered. And yet, even as he held her