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

"Take care, David."

He touched the mare sharply with the whip, so that she bounded forward over the smooth white road.

"You wouldn't like me to take care," he said.

"You're beginning to know me, David."

"I know my mother."

"I'm not like your mother. If I were your mother--" She stopped suddenly, and a wave of colour mounted to the roots of her fair hair.

"Well?" Hurst questioned.

"I would take care of you," she said.

He laughed again, and for the first time she caught a note of the old bitterness.

"I have learnt to take care of myself."

"Just for that reason," she retorted.

After that a long silence fell between them. The hard lines about Hurst's mouth had relaxed. He scarcely knew it, but the presence of the woman beside him gave him a new sense of rest and content. He turned to her presently with a smile that lent his strength a joyousness that it had hitherto lacked.

"I can't tell you how thankful I am you have come, Di," he said. "Sarasvati wants you needs you."

"Tell me about her," she pleaded gently.

He did not answer at once. She was watching him, and she thought that his face had saddened; but it was possible that the growing dusk had thrown a shadow over his features.

"It's rather hard to tell you anything, Di," he began at last. "It has been wonderful to see how she has grown into everything learnt our ways, our language, and our thoughts. Though I've ' gone over,' as you call it, I'm not much of a believer; but sometimes I've felt I should like to go on my knees to a Creator who has made something so noble, and simple, and pure. It is as though God had made one being whom He had kept * unspotted from the world.' ' His voice had deepened and softened with rare feeling, and Diana looked straight ahead, knowing that his face betrayed more than she had a right to see. "But that's the tragedy of it all," he went on with a short sigh. "She isn't of this world; she only understands it as a spirit might understand it, and she cannot really live in it or with it any more than a spirit could do. And I'm of the world, Di partly at least. Circumstance has thrust me into life, and one side of my own character. And she can't follow me she tried, but it was beyond her power. So it grows lonelier and lonelier for her, and there is no one to help. Sometimes I wish I had conquered the temptation to take my share in the world's work it comes between us."

"But you are happy in your new life, David."

"Yes," he answered simply and directly. "I have at last found the work which I have been appointed to do, and that alone is something for which any man might be grateful. And besides that I have Sarasvati. I love her as I love my books, my music, and my dreams if I did not love her the best part of myself would be dead. But I am worried, Di. She stands so much alone in this cold, grey country of ours like a princess out of a fairy story in an ugly world of realities." He gave a little rueful smile, "And I am not a fairy prince."

They swung into the long avenue, and the darkness hid them from each other. The lamps on the dogcart threw a yellow reflection on the white snow, and through the trees the lights of the Court flashed like bright will-o'-the-wisps. Hurst stretched out his free hand and drew the rug more closely over Diana's knee.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"I don't know; very likely. David, tell me: what are they like the other people here, I mean?"

"Typical," he answered trenchantly. "Honest but prejudiced to the last degree. For the sake of my name they have managed to swallow my peculiari- ties, and they are making a loyal fight for me every one of them. But " he hesitated.

"I understand," she said quietly. "I've had letters, David, and, if you want to know the truth that's why I've come. Kolruna or Steeple Hampton, it's all the same a foreigner is an outsider a native is an outcaste. I am sorry, David. It sounds brutal, but you and I had better be open with each other, and I know you are brave enough and indifferent enough to bear it. I know that Sarasvati stands quite alone."

"Quite alone," he answered, and she saw that he drew himself up straighter. "They've patronised her so long as their curiosity lasted and now they ignore her. Perhaps it is best so. She could not understand them nor they her. I think you will understand her, Di. You don't form your opinions, as most of our race do, by rules."

She flushed again, as though his confidence pleased her.

"No, you and I are both rather exceptions," she said. "It is scarcely a matter of self -congratulation, though. The world was not made for exceptions, and the majority takes good care that the minority gets badly jolted. Never mind, David; genius and lunacy are both on our side."

He laughed, and a moment later drew rein before the stone steps of the Court.

"Sarasvati will be waiting for us," he said.

But the house was oddly quiet as they entered it.

"Her ladyship is in the drawing-room," the butler answered in reply to Hurst's question. "She has been expecting you since four o'clock, Sir David."

The man's tone was such as he might have adopted when speaking of a child. It expressed a kindly, almost affectionate and very respectful forbearance. Once it had been supercilious; but that had been at the beginning.

Hurst glanced at his watch.

"Your train was very late, Di," he observed. "Let us go and find her."

Diana followed him up the broad, old-fashioned staircase to the familiar drawing-room; but there, too, all was quiet, and no light burned save that of the log-fire whose red reflections danced silently about the quiet corners, and Hurst drew back disappointed.

"She is not here," he said, and his voice sounded uneasy. Diana laid her hand on his arm.

"She is here," she whispered. "Come very quietly."

She led him on tip-toe to the fire-side, and then he saw her. She lay on the white hearthrug, half supported against the low arm-chair, her bare arm curved behind her head, her face turned from the light. Her free hand had dropped limply into her lap and the gems in her strange, barbaric rings caught the red glow into their facets and reflected it back in a hundred changing colours. She wore a white sevi, heavily embroidered with gold, and all her jewels. Like a tired princess, weary of waiting for a belated prince, she lay there with closed eyes, the long lashes resting like shadows on the olive cheeks, a faint, pathetic smile, suggestive of tears, hovering about the tender mouth.

Diana Chichester knelt down. Something ached in her throat. It was all too beautiful too impossible. Here, in this commonplace English drawing-room, haunted with the shades of honourable but stiff and unromantic Englishwomen, this child of Eastern splendour had no place. The fire-light and the coming night-shades alone brought her understanding. They bore her like a jewel in a natural and perfect setting, but in a minute an artificial glare and to-morrow the daylight would destroy it, and all the loveliness be lost in glaring, pitiless disharmony. Diana Chichester saw all this and suffered both as a woman capable of passionate sympathies and as an artist who sees a work of art destroyed by ruthless, clumsy Philistinism. She looked up and knew that Hurst suffered with her. His eyes were fixed on the sleeper, and there was a world of tenderness, of reverence and pity, written on his pale, composed features.

"'Such things as dreams are made of,'" he quoted under his breath.

She nodded, and suddenly he bent towards her.

"Di," he whispered. "Will you help me help me to keep her?"

Her eyes met his in full and loyal understanding.

"I give you my second promise," she said.

She stretched out her hand to him over the quiet sleeper and he clasped it. It seemed to them both that in that moment a sacred compact had been made between them. When they looked at Sarasvati again they saw that the peace had gone out of her face and that she was awake.

DIANA CHICHESTER sat in the library and read aloud. In the adjoining room a low murmur played an accompaniment to her own clear melodious voice, and once or twice she lifted her head a little, as though against her will she listened. Sarasvati lay on the sofa, close to the fire, and watched her. There was a gentle, wistful interest written on her face which seemed to have little to do with the subject-matter of their book, and when Diana suddenly looked up, troubled perhaps by the steady gaze, she met the dark eyes with an amused protest not quite free from embarrassment.

"You are not listening," she said. "I should be inclined to think that you never listen, only that you say things days afterwards which show that you paid more attention than I did. Have you two minds?" "A mind and a heart," Sarasvati answered, smiling faintly. "My mind listens to your words, my heart to your voice."

"And what does my voice tell you?"

"All that you are and all that you never say." Diana closed her book, and, coming over to the sofa, sat down on the edge by Sarasvati's side.

"That is mysterious," she said, "as mysterious as yourself. All that I am! Why, that is more than I know. What am I, Sarasvati?"

"Very brave, very strong. Outside you are cold and hard as polished steel, and inside the fires burn burn till almost they consume you. I see them sometimes in your eyes and sometimes I hear them in your voice; but your voice is like a tiger's, fierce and quick and tender. On your love a man might build his citadel and be safe indeed." She had spoken dreamily, her eyes half closed, and now, as though overcome by a sudden weariness, her voice died away into silence.

For a moment Diana Chichester made no answer, her mind less occupied by what she had heard as by what she saw. In the full afternoon light which drifted in between the heavy certains, David Hurst's wife looked strangely, painfully altered. The exquisite, rounded outlines of her features had sharpened, there was something pinched and wan about her cheeks that reminded Diana of faces that she had seen in the Bazaar at Kolruna the pathetic, tragic faces of the child-widows and of the older women who were learning to accept their slavery, but with that resignation which demands youth and loveliness in payment. Vaguely alarmed, Diana took Sarasvati's hand between her own and held it with an involuntary, unformed desire to protect and comfort. Sarasvati's eyes opened.

"Are you cold?" Diana asked.

"Yes, very cold."