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

"Here, Lady Hurst." The vicar had risen also, and laid his hand on the Bible at his side. "You need seek no further." His uneasiness had passed. He felt as though a strong weapon had been thrust into his hand. But a bitter, weary disappointment passed over Sarasvati's face.

"So did Father Romney answer," she said, "and you say that he is not of your faith."

"Men distort the words of God to suit their theories," the vicar returned, and his voice had grown cold and hard.

"The words of God!" she echoed. "Are not the Vedas, the < Bhagavad Gita,' also of God?"

The vicar threw back his white head.

"No," he said. "They are the writings of false prophets."

"You know it you are sure?"

"'Ye shall know them by their fruits,' " he quoted with sudden fierceness.

"And that?" she pointed to the great square book under his hand "--that also is the word of God?"

"Yes," he said. "That is the word of God."

There was a moment's silence. The vicar was breathing fast, like a man engaged in a sharp conflict with a detested adversary, and yet, when he looked at her again, he saw that she had not fought against him. Her features had grown haggard in the desperate seeking of her mind, and his voice softened again.

"Read the words that men, inspired by God Himself, have written," he said. "Then you will find peace, Lady Hurst."

She raised her eyes to his face.

"Have patience with me," she pleaded. "I come to you out of another world. What to you is certainty is to me but one of many human dreams. Are you sure of this truth?"

"I am sure," he answered proudly.

"You can prove it to me?"

He frowned, but the feverish desire in her voice disarmed him.

"We have historical evidence, Lady Hurst," he began, hesitating on the verge of a long theological display of dates and documents, such as he was wont to dole out periodically for the waverers of Steeple Hampton. Instinct silenced him. With a sudden sinking of the heart he realised that, to this seeker, such ' facts ' would be as stones offered to a starving man. "And, above all, we have our Faith," he said, and knew that for once the phrase rang unconvincing.

She turned away from him.

"I too had faith," she said, "but it is dead."

"Because you believed in false gods, Lady Hurst."

She shook her head.

"How should I believe in your God?" she answered.

"Lady Hurst," he exclaimed, with the impatience of growing uneasiness, "do you expect God to come down from heaven to testify?"

"No," she turned round on him. "But I have read your Holy Book; I have studied it, as only those who thirst for certainty can do. I have found much that is beautiful and good, much that our own Vedas teach. And I say to you, if you would have us believe that there and there only is the Divine Truth, then you must prove it to us not in your words, for those we have, but in your lives and deeds."

"Lady Hurst!" he stammered. "We are but human if we fail--"

"Surely, if you truly believed in the Christ who taught you to 'love one another' you would not fail so utterly," she answered.

The vicar recoiled a step. The words of his sermon recurred to him. To the simple man it seemed that God had rebuked him through this woman. She drew her fur cloak closer to her, and the old look of childish appeal crept into her dark eyes.

"I have spoken as I should not have spoken," she said. "I am very ignorant of the world, but of late I have been much alone, and I have thought long over all that I have seen and heard. I have heard of Christian love, and I have seen that, because I am of another race, I stand in my husband's way, and people hate and despise me. And I came to you because it seemed to me that you might help me. For if I spoil his life I shall surely die and and if the life of my child is to be spoilt also, then it would be better that we died together."

She said it so simply, so much as though it were a natural and accepted thing, that the kindly vicar felt an uncomfortable tugging at his heart.

"You must not talk like that," he protested. "Poor disciples though we may be, we are not wholly bad. In time you will be as loved as any Lady Hurst has ever been I promise you. And then there is your husband who loves you more than the opinion of the whole world."

She nodded thoughtfully but did not answer, and the vicar came nearer and took her dark slender hand between his own white ones.

"You came to me for help, and I have failed you," he said humbly. "I am a poor, very simple man, who has toiled many years among his fellow-creatures without thought or question, and who has believed as it was given him to believe. If you had spoken to a clever man he would have convinced you better."

She shook her head.

"He would have numbed me with many words," she answered, "and you have helped me, for you have shown me kindness, But one thought I would tell to you perhaps you will remember it should another stranger come to you as I have done I think Faith is as a fragile flower which grows once in the heart, and he who plucks it can never plant it again. Will you think of it?"

"I promise you," he answered. "I will not forget."

He led her to the door and watched her frail figure pass between the two rows of weather-beaten shrubs to the waiting carriage, and for the first time in his life the earnest propagandist knew the holy agony of doubt. At the end of the garden path two tall box-trees hid her from him so that he closed the door of the vicarage unconscious that a strange scene was being enacted almost within ear-shot of his study window. In the same moment that he had turned back, sighing, to his unfinished sermon Lady Hurst had come face to face with a stranger, who stood between her and her carriage. He was a tall, slightly built man, poorly dressed, with the collar of his overcoat turned up over his ears so that little more than a pair of black, piercing eyes were visible beneath the shabby golfcap. Sarasvati, vaguely alarmed, made an attempt to pass him, but, with singular adroitness, he slipped before her and caught her by the wrist.

"I have to speak with thee," he said in her own language.

Then she stood still, staring at him, arrested by a strange mingling of joy and fear which the familiar sounds had awakened in her.

"Who art thou?" she stammered almost inaudibly.

"Another of an unhappy race," he answered. He lifted his cap, and she recognised the dark skin, the clean-cut and noble features, marred only by a subtle suggestion of cruelty and sensuality, which were the marks of her caste.

"What wiliest thou with me?" she said.

"I would ask a question, Sarasvati, daughter of Brahma," he returned. "I would ask thee if thou hast utterly forgotten thy people and the land which gave thee birth, or whether thou hast become a willing slave of their oppressors."

Sarasvati drew back from him.

"I have not forgotten my people nor the warmth and sunshine of my country," she answered. "Nor have I become the willing slave of an oppressor. Thy words are darkness to me."

"Look at me!" he said in a low voice, which vibrated with suppressed passion. "Are not my cheeks hollow and my clothes those of a beggar? Ay, a beggar, a pariah, an outcaste have I become, though no drop of pariah blood runs in my veins, and though, were justice done, the sacred sign of Vishnu should be on my brows. Look at me, I say! The greatest princes of India have bowed before my race, and I stand before thee powerless, casteless, faithless."

"Faithless!" she echoed, as though the word had touched some deeper chord. Then, with a sudden energy, "Who has done this thing to you?"

"The man to whom you have given your life, Sarasvati!"

"It is not true!"

"It is true. I swear it by the gods whom I have forsaken and who have forsaken me. His people stole me gave me to the missionaries that they might defile me and take from me the faith of my fathers. Well, they succeeded. They taught me to despise all that I had honoured, they taught me their ways and their knowledge, they sought to drive into me their slave's religion, that I might become their slave, and then he raised his clenched fists with a movement of uncontrollable fury " then they spat upon me. They told me that, though I had become a Christian, I was not one of them. They patronised and scorned me; they called me brother and would not shake my hand; in their country they shrink from me as from a leper, and in their streets I starve my body for bread, my soul for God and the fellowship of my own people."

He stopped, panting, his features working in a con- vulsive grief, and she did not answer. She listened to him as to an inner voice, and her heart ached with pity and a numbing apprehension.

"And so is our country our Mother India," he went on fiercely, "defiled, ground under heel, disintegrated by the subtle machinations of devils, who would sap our strength by taking from us our faith, sundering our castes, tearing father from son, mother from daughter, husband from wife. And thou, also, daughter of Brahma, to whom the people looked to guide them in the great struggle of the future, thou also--"

He stopped. Unheard by either of them, a horseman had been galloping towards them over ploughed fields, and now broke through the low hedge on to the road. The carriage-horses, startled by the sudden apparition, plunged, and Sarasvati, drawing back involuntarily, found her husband at her side. He did not look at her, but swung himself to the ground and stood between her and her unknown companion. She shrank from him. There was something in his face which made him a stranger to her.

"I think you had better get in," he said quietly. "It is cold here. John, drive home by the Heath."

"Yes, Sir David."

Hurst lifted his wife lightly into the carriage and closed the door. He smiled at her through the window, but the smile was close-lipped and his eyes frightened her. She tried to speak to him to explain; but her tongue failed her, and the next instant the excited horses broke away and it was too late. The two men were left alone. They faced each other, as they had faced each other twice before in their lives. The Hindu had replaced his cap, and his attitude was impassive, almost indfferent. The Englishman studied him in icy silence, then, slipping his foot into the stirrup, swung back into the saddle.

"Rama Pal," he said, "you have come here as my enemy. Is this your gratitude?"

The Hindu bowed his head.

"This is my gratitude, Lord Sahib," he said. "I have a debt to pay to the Lord Sahib and his people. I shall never rest until my debt is paid."

He salaamed in grave mockery, and then turned and strode away in the direction of the village.