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

"I will do all I can." He was silent a moment. "And afterwards?"

"You mean when he has left school? That is something which only time can decide. His lameness excludes an army career; he is not clever enough for either the Indian Civil or any of the other services. The choice in our family is limited. Perhaps he will have developed some harmless hobby and end as a country gentleman. He will have money enough. You see, I am conscious of my responsibility. But we have been serious long enough, and you haven't even had your tea. I have been too absorbed in myself to be hospitable." She turned towards the neglected tea-table, but he held but his hand.

"Don't bother--I mean not about me. I don't want anything. I only came to see you, and now I must be off. I have any amount of work and--"

She looked up at him and smiled, and he stopped short. This time the smile was in her eyes, and the change lent her face a startling fascination. No man or woman had ever seen it without feeling that, in some mysterious way, she had laid her hand on an innermost and unsuspected chord in their being and consciously played upon it. The judge was no exception. He crimsoned like a boy.

"It is unsafe to trust even one's best friend," she said. "I have shown you myself and I have made you hate me."

It was not the first time she had used the word in their conversation together,and she did not use it lightly.

The judge shook his head.

"I couldn't if I tried," he answered. "You know I couldn't."

"And yet you are the only marriageable man on the station who hasn't done me the honour to suggest that I should become his wife!" she retorted.

They looked at each other and laughed, and the tension was gone. The judge's features resumed their normal expression of bluff good-nature.

"My position doesn't allow for such calls on my store of popularity," he said. "It's bad enough to have the natives potting at one at intervals, but if the subalterns started things would get too hot even for me." He threw back his shoulders. "All the same, I won't have any tea. I'm upset, and you have upset me, and the best thing I can do is to get Sarah Jane to jolt me for a quarter of an hour. I shall then be too sorry for myself to be sorry for anybody else. You understand? You forgive me?"

"You are sorry for David?" she asked, taking his outstretched hand with the smile still in her eyes.

"Yes, I am. I can't help it. It must be rough luck to fail a woman like you. And the fact that it isn't his fault doesn't make it better. If he had been what you expected--well, he would have been a lucky dog. As it is--"

"As it is?" she interrogated as he broke off.

"He isn't."

"I shall do my duty," she answered.

"Hum, that's precious little in this world," he retorted. He went out on to the verandah and beckoned to the syce. "All the same, I shall do what I can for the little chap," he went on. "I at least shan't be able to forget that he is your son--hullo, what was that?"

She looked at him in astonishment.

"What is the matter? Did you hear anything?"

"I thought I did a sort of cry. This heat makes one's nerves hum. Well, good-bye. I'm grateful to you for telling me all that. It has upset me, but I'm glad. Poor little chap!"

She watched him swing himself on to Sarah Jane's patient back and canter down the short avenue which led into the high-road. At the gate he turned in his saddle and saluted her and she waved back. But her eyes had passed beyond him to the plain and the distant hills, and the smile which had lingered in their depths vanished wholly.

MRS. HURST believed herself alone, and for a long time she stood motionless on the verandah watching the sky change from intense blue to gold and from gold to crimson. Across the broad path a clump of bushes threw cool shadows over the long grasses and offered a pleasant resting-place, but she never looked in their direction. Nothing no instinct warned her. And presently, just as the sun began to sink in an apotheosis of fiery glory behind the hills, she turned with a proud, almost challenging movement and re-entered the bungalow. Then the grasses rustled and moved as though a breath of wind had passed over them, and again all was still.

But a boy lay there with his face buried in his arms. He had been there all the afternoon, his chin supported in the palm of his hand, watching her. Not for a moment had his eyes left her face, and there was something in their expression which was almost painful an intense, unchildish understanding, at first full of tenderness and awe-struck worship, and afterwards terrible by reason of its completeness. Nobody could have said that he formed a "pretty picture," and there was no denying that he was ugly. He had ain there like a grotesque little brown fawn, and watched, the black, curly hair hanging in disorder over the low forehead, the dark, penetrating eyes staring out from heavy, overhanging eyebrows. The eyes were, indeed, the only possible points of interest in a sallow little face, which was neither pleasing nor even redeemed by the natural charm of youth. And yet it was expressive enough. As he had watched, it had been as though a skilled but unseen sculptor were at work, silently and scarcely perceptibly remodelling the clay beneath his fingers.

At first, as the judge had cantered up the avenue, it had been a boy's face which had peered through the long grasses not, as it has been said, pleasing, but still young, with possibilities of childish humour lurking behind the mask of weariness and ill-health. Then, as a woman had come out on to the verandah, a fire had been kindled. It had burnt brightly behind the ugly features and transformed them, making them not beautiful but pathetic, and for the first time there had dawned that expression of absolute understanding which afterwards was to become terrible. The woman's voice had floated to him on the still air; he had heard every word distinctly, and his eyes, fixed greedily on her unconscious face, had seemed to drink them straight from her lips. And then, suddenly the light had gone out. He had not moved, nor had great change come over his expression. But the life had gone. It had been as though the sculptor had swiftly cast his work in bronze and left it there without regard for the worth or beauty of his creation. Only the eyes had betrayed that the boy still listened. They had never flinched nor left the stern, white face opposite them, and in their piercing blackness there had been a dumb, bewildered agony.

But he had lain quite still until Mrs. Hurst had gone back into her room, and then he had fallen silently forward on his face. He did not cry only every now and then a tremor passed through him, so convulsive and violent that it shook the frail little body like a vessel in the teeth of a terrific storm. Even that was not for long. Presently horse's hoofs sounded once more on the gravelled avenue and he struggled to his feet. His eyes were dry, but what little childishness there had been in his face was gone stamped out and it was a tired old man that stumbled out from amidst the bushes. A girl, mounted on a tubby but energetic pony, had ridden up to the verandah, and he went hesitatingly to meet her. The movement revealed his hitherto concealed infirmity. One leg was shorter than the other and caused him to limp, not badly, but perceptibly, and his shoulders seemed too broad for the rest of his slender figure. The girl smiled and nodded.

"Hullo, David," she said.

"Hullo," he answered. His voice sounded unsteady and rough, and he held his eyes fixed on the ground. "Where's your boy?" he asked, after a moment.

She laughed.

"Oh, I don't know. I left him miles behind. He is so slow and stupid. I came to wish you a happy birthday, David."

He looked up then, as though he thought she was laughing at him.

"Thank you," he said. His face had brightened for a moment, and a faint flush showed itself in his sallow cheeks. "You look awfully jolly in that habit," he said shyly. "I like it."

"Do you?"

The fact did not seem to create a very deep impression on her, though she glanced down at herself with a sort of objective interest. The habit was of some light, khaki-coloured material, and so cut as to make her look older and taller than she really was. Moreover, she held herself very erect, and only when she had snatched off her helmet with a movement of impatience did she reveal herself as a child scarcely so old as the boy beside her.

But the contrast between them was almost startling. She was pretty, and her prettiness was of a kind that promised more in the future. Her features were small but regular, and her eyes, deep grey and almond-shaped, were unquestionably beautiful. But what distinguished her most from her companion was the youth, the health, and energy which seemed to radiate from her. Her laughter had poured out sparkling from an inexhaustible source of joyousness, and in every movement, in the very poise of the head, there was vivacity, courage, all the insignia of a strong, decided temperament.

But, as yet, her chief charm lay in her unconsciousness. She did not seem to know that she was pretty, or, if she did, the knowledge left her indifferent. Her hair, which was fair, with a decided tendency to waywardness, had become disordered; she tore off the ribbon very much as she had removed the helmet with impatience, as though the inanimate objects had personally annoyed her and tied it up again in a screw, which was vastly unbecoming. Then she shook her head, evidently to assure herself that everything was firmly in its place.

"Mother said I was to come and play with you," she remarked abruptly, "but I met Dick on the way, and we raced. I won, but it made me late. I suppose I shall have to be getting home now or they will be frightened. Anyhow, I've wished you a happy birthday, haven't I!"

"Yes--thank you." He turned his face involuntarily towards the red west. "It's nearly over now," he said, with a little twisted smile.

"Did you get nice presents?"

"Yes, mother gave me a model engine, and Major Halstone a book on the Indian Mutiny."

She laughed again.

"How funny!"

"Why funny?"

"Oh, I don't know. It just struck me you wouldn't care for those sort