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

"You hold your tongue you!" the woman interrupted crisply. She had her brawny arms round Sarasvati's half-fainting figure, and her voice was gruff as she turned to the men behind her. "I take it you're with me, boys!" she said. "She's a straight 'un and she's done her man a better turn than she knows. What d'ye all say to a rouser for 'er and 'im we owes it 'em. A man's a man, and politics be blowed. Now then make it a good 'un, boys!"

They cheered as whole-heartedly as they might have all too easily cursed and Sarasvati's eyes opened. To her failing senses it seemed that the roughfaced men were rushing down upon her to destroy her and that death was near. Instinctively she freed herself from the protecting arms as though to face the coming end alone, and in that moment the crowd broke asunder, giving way to a recklessly driven dogcart. The cheering died into a murmur of recognition.

"It's Sir David 'imself," went from mouth to mouth.

Hurst took no notice of them. His searching glance had encountered Rama Pal's tall, upright figure, and during a scarcely perceptible pause the two men confronted each other over the heads of the crowd. Then Hurst's eyes dropped to Sarasvati's face beneath the light of the lanterns. In that moment no voice or movement was audible. Subdued and awestruck they scarcely knew by what the mine-hands waited for the Unionist candidate to speak. It seemed his great opportunity, half a dozen words from the man whom they had cursed at half an hour before, and they would have taken his horse out of the shafts and borne him home in triumph.

But he said nothing his stern face and utter indifference to them impressed them more deeply with the truth of all that had gone before than any eloquence could have done. He sprang from the driving seat, tossing the reins to the groom, and, elbowing his way to Sarasvati's side, caught her in his arms. She clung blindly to him, and, without a word, he bore her back to the dog-cart, and lifted her on to the seat beside his own. Then he swung his horse round in the middle of the road, scattering the crowd to right 3,nd left, and a minute later the silent, bewildered meeting was left behind.

All through that drive Hurst did not speak. His jaw was hard set, his eyes fixed on the darkness ahead, and the lines about his mouth had deepened to furrows. As they passed beneath the lamp which marked the village boundary he glanced down into Sarasvati's face. She was leaning with her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed in a stupor of cold and terror, her lips a little parted as though with a half -uttered cry. A kind of bitter compassion relaxed Hurst's features. He slipped the whip into its socket and drew his wife into the shelter of his arm. Thus he held her until Hurst Court was reached, and when he looked at her again he saw that the terror had gone out of her face and that she had passed into a peaceful oblivion.

OUT of the darkness shadows began to arise vague indefinite forms, shapeless figures flitted silently against the blank background, then shapes which each instant grew clearer and brighter, more familiar. She watohed them as from afar off, like some lost spirit viewing the passing of an old, loved world. White-robed priests, tall, majestic pillars reaching upwards to the azure dome, minarets bathed in golden sunshine, and about all a lulling healing warmth, rich with the perfume of the flowers. She held out invisible hands in wordless greeting to this world, which sank beneath her in a haze of dreams whilst she rose upwards, borne by an unknown power, into a limitless space where there was no light, no darkness, no substance, no consciousness, no existence. And out of the silence a voice reached her, breaking like a storm into the emptiness, and called her "Sarasvati daughter of Brahma," and seized and dragged her down, faster and faster, through an icy, merciless wind which cut deep into her soul and aroused her to a dull, numb sense of pain. "Sarasvati daughter of Brahma! "The voice passed into silence all passed all save the pain and the bitter, penetrating cold. She opened her eyes. As a prisoner awakes from dreams of freedom to find the drear daylight creeping through the barred window, so Sarasvati awoke to

291 the reality of the four walls of the low-ceilinged bedroom, to the melancholy grey twilight which hung ghost-like about the ponderous mahogany furniture. She drew a quick, shuddering breath, and the dank air which not even the blazing wood fire could warm was like a knife piercing through her lungs. She lifted herself weakly on her elbow and immediately a hand pressed her gently back among the pillows. She turned her head and saw that Diana Chichester was seated on a low chair by her side.

"Where am I?" she asked in a whisper. "What has happened?"

"Nothing has happened nothing serious. You fainted, and now you must just lie quite quiet and wait."

"For what have I to wait?" She read the answer in the Englishwoman's grave and tender eyes, and she lay still watching the shadows which the firelight threw on to the drab-coloured walls. "Will it be soon?" she asked tonelessly.

"Very soon, dear." Diana knelt down by the bedside and drew the smooth dark head against her shoulder. "Are you afraid?" she asked.

For a minute Sarasvati did not speak. She passed her delicate hand over Diana's with a movement of caress that was indescribably pathetic hi its endeavour to console and reassure.

"Not for myself am I afraid," she said under her breath. "But for him."

"For whom, Sarasvati? For David?"

"No, not for my husband." She did not offer to explain, but presently she drew back a little, so that she could look into Diana's face. "Do you think that I shall die?" she asked timidly.

"I am sure that you will not," Diana answered, with a faint smile. "Why should you think of such a terrible thing?"

Sarasvati's eyes closed for an instant. A deep line of pain had drawn itself across the smooth forehead.

"Is it so terrible?" she said half to herself. "I wonder if it can be more terrible than life. Do you think so, Diana?"

"1 don't know no one knows," Diana answered. "I meant that it would be terrible for David and me. For you one can't tell what it would be we don't know what lies beyond."

"You do not know! "Sarasvati echoed. "Does no one know?"

"They say they know and some believe but life and death are all mysteries."

There was a little silence. Sarasvati's brows were knitted in earnest thought, and when she turned again to the fair-haired woman beside her, her face was almost severe in its profound gravity.

"You do not know who God is," she said. "David does not know, though he has tried hard to believe the teachings of his priests. The search for God has almost broken his heart. But I could have shown him the way, for I knew."

"You knew? Sarasvati, tell me what you knew."

"I knew that I was God."

Diana said nothing. She was conscious that in that short, apparently blasphemous sentence there had lain the whole majesty of a great pantheism, and in the significant past tense a piteous suggestion of irretrievable loss. And what had she to offer? The faith of her childhood a drear faith, replete with heavy dogma, illumined by a gloomy optimism and a cold-hearted charity? She herself looked back upon it with her generation's half-sorrowful, half scornful incredulity. Her own faith, vague, hard-worn, a belief in one great incomprehensible Power who conceivably might one day offer His creations a just and reasonable explanation for their existence was it not impossible to offer so little with conviction?

"Can you not win back your faith?" she said quietly.

"How should I?" came the low, despairing answer, "you who do not know have told me that my faith is a lie."

Diana Chichester rose to her feet. She had been brought suddenly and violently face to face with the tragedy of a soul, with the whole mockery of modern proselytism. "You who do not know have told me that my faith is a lie." It was an accusation against her and her kind, and against a whole system. She took Sarasvati's hand in hers and held it in a strong grasp, as though she were striving by that touch to reach the very depths of the exile's unhappy heart.

"Whatever we believe is true so long as our belief lifts us higher than ourselves," she said earnestly. "Do you think that humanity let alone God can be compassed in one religion, or that God, who has made nature in a million forms, can only show Himself with one face and under one name? Think and believe what you can; our dogma cannot make God other than He is."

Sarasvati drew herself up on her elbow. A light burnt in her eyes a light of uncertain, yet eager hope.

"And if I could believe again that God was here in my breast in you in every tree and flower in my own child and if I was wrong and God was as they taught me a far-off judge would it separate my lord from me hereafter in death?"

Her words came in broken, disjointed sentences, and in that unconscious return to the old title, Diana recognised a character and a love that beneath the surface had remained unchanged, almost untroubled by contact with the world. Diana bent down and passed her hand over the black smooth hair.

"Do you think God could be so petty?" she said simply.

Sarasvati laid her fingers on her lips.

"Hush, he is coming," she whispered. "We must say nothing of all this. We must not trouble him we must help him." She lifted her head in a listening attitude. "I helped him yesterday," she went on softly. "The chance was given me, and I went amongst them and was not afraid. Is he glad, Diana? Will he tell me that he is glad before he goes?"

"Yes," Diana answered abruptly. She searched in vain for something to say. The eyes fixed on her face seemed to plead for it, and yet she felt tonguetied by the piteous hopelessness of it all. The soothing half-truths which come easily enough to most lips were unknown to her, and she felt that every instant was bringing her nearer to self -betrayal. "I will tell David that you are awake," she said. "He will want to see you."

She slipped from the room and hurried after the footsteps which she had heard retreating to the library. Her heart ached. That which had been strongest in her her joyous self-confidence sank before the bleak prospect of the future, and, as she laid her hand on the library door she hesitated, frightened of herself and of the man she was about to face. Then she went in, quietly and resolutely.

"David," she said in