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

"In that case I shall be delighted if you would take my place meanwhile. Sir David should be here in a minute. My name is Langley, and I am in some measure Sir David's friend."

"Langley his party leader?" The stranger glanced keenly into the astute face beside him. "Ha, yes, he wrote to me about you. He even advised me to address myself to you. My name is Heilig, Professor Heilig, late of the Leipziger University."

"The Hindu expert? I am delighted to meet you." Langley held out nis hand. "My young supporter has often spoken of you as the inspirer of his most able pamphlets on the Indian Question. I congratulate you on your scholar. He will make his way in his own way."

Both men laughed, but a flush of satisfaction had darkened the German's forehead.

"Yes, I discovered him," he admitted proudly. "I knew what was in him. Does he do well indeed?"

"He gives every promise of going far," was the cordial answer. "He is already what is commonly called an ' Indian Light.' I have reason to believe he will bring about a great reformation in our methods of handling the educated Hindu masses."

"And his wife?" Heilig interrupted almost roughly.

The politician passed his hand over his chin. The question appeared to trouble him.

"There we are on more difficult ground, my dear sir. You know Lady Hurst?"

"I was present at her marriage."

"And, if I judge correctly, you are desirous of ascertaining how she has influenced her husband's career?" was the shrewd interrogation.

"You judge correctly," Heilig admitted, though with a slight contraction of the brows.

"If you wish me to be frank I must confess that Lady Hurst's influence has been unfavourable. Du reste, the fact is an open secret. It is true that she is supposed to have helped in the election some rather clap-trap appeal to public sentimentality, I believe but that kind of thing does not go down with the middle classes, and, in spite of his ability, Hurst only got his seat by a narrow majority. You know, perhaps, how much we unhappy politicians owe to the social standing of our feminine supporters, and Lady Hurst is, frankly, impossible in her present position."

"Why?" Heilig blazed out so suddenly and violently that a few bystanders turned to look at him.

Langley shrugged his shoulders.

"My dear Professor, as a student of racial differences, you must be able to answer your own question," he said. Heilig made no answer to this. The band had struck up some patriotic air, and Langley opened the door. "If you would take a seat we should be out of the crush, and I should be delighted to hear a little of your news," he said courteously. "You come from the scene of action."

Heilig jerked his head over his shoulder.

"The scene of preparation," he retorted.

"Do you mean--" "I mean that following an historical example, you fiddle your cheap tunes and the earth is being mined under your feet."

Langley smiled.

"That is Hurst's old theme," he said philosophically. "I allow myself to believe, however, that old England is safe enough for the present. I beg your pardon? Did you speak?"

For Heilig, whose keen eyes had continued to search the crowd, had started slightly, and his powerful hands had clenched themselves with a movement of suppressed excitement. He turned, however, smilingly to his companion.

"I? No, I haf not spoken. But I saw an old acquaintance, whom I did not think to meet here. You say old England is safe enough? Oh yes, you are quite right very safe! "He gave a short, sardonic laugh. "You would be surprised if this whole grand erection blew up under your feet, would you not? but I would not be surprised at all. Ach du lieber Gattt--"

The exclamation had evidently burst from him in spite of himself, and Langley turned with a slight gesture of impatience. Hurst's friend was, without question, a somewhat troublesome and turbulent guest, and Langley was relieved to see Hurst himself wending his way towards them. But Heilig's face had grown colourless.

"Is that what you haf made of her?" he said, and his voice was like an angry growl. "No, I thank you, I will not meet him yet. I have had a shock I go. Tell Hurst that I will come again." And, before the puzzled politician could intervene, the Professor had made his escape, elbowing his way to the back of the crowd with more energy than his obstacles appreciated. From his point of vantage on the steps leading up to the second tier, he saw Hurst and his wife ap* proach the box which he had just vacated. Lady Hurst clung to her husband's arm. Had it not been for her dress and complexion, Heilig would not have recognised her. This Sarasvati? this haggard, withered Hindu woman, the daughter of Brahma, the lovely child of the lotus-flowers and warm sunshine and blue skies? He cursed aloud, and his neighbours, who had stopped for a moment in their listless chatter to stare at the new exotic arrival, turned and stared at him with the same expression of cold, half-insolent surprise. But Heilig had forgotten his surroundings. His eyes burnt with pity, and resentment made his rugged face almost savage. For an instant before the door of the box closed upon her Sarasvati turned, and Heilig fancied that her hunted, terrified glance had encountered him, and the possibility gave him a grim consolation. In reality Sarasvati had seen nothing. In vain she had striven to focus her onind on particular objects. Her eyes were blurred, she was dimly conscious of massed brilliant colouring broken by marring patches of black; a smudged impression of white faces all turned to her with that one familiar expression of cold animosity imprinted itself on her numbed brain. Even when she sat huddled hi her seat in the front of the box the same impression remained. This pageant of a cultured nation's wealth and refinement translated itself, to her, into a raw, ruthless brutality directed against her existence. This world of delirious dreams, conceived in the brain of a humanity that had lost touch with its God, stood like a black wall between her and the light. She had felt its restless stirring in the past she had fled from it up into the heights of silence, but it had followed her, it had dragged her down into its fever-swamps, it had shut her in and now was stifling her in its self-conceived shadows of false ideals, false humanity, false faith. She crept back among the curtains of her box, but her eyes continued to wander sightlessly over the packed rows of men and women.

David Hurst was seated close beside her. His arm rested on the back of her chair, and he was speaking in an undertone to the other occupants of the box. A tall, elegant woman, the wife of Hurst's leader, sat opposite him and nodded an occasional assent, whilst her passionless English eyes passed from Sarasvati to the brightly lit stage, and on to crowded stalls immediately beneath. Sarasvati felt the significance of the glance, though she had not heard the whispered comment to a friend in a neighbouring box.

"Yes that's Lady Hurst. Terrible, isn't it? A youthful folly, of course such a pity! Not even beautiful. A very nice man clever too would make his way--"

A blaze of music put an end to the colloquy. A woman in pink tights with a Union Jack in either hand and a crown of ostrich feathers nodding from the summit of false curls had strutted on to the stage, and in a loud, strident voice broke into a thinly tuned topical song. Sarasvati shrank back into the shadow. Frightful physical sickness crept over her. She felt filthy hands seize her and drag her down into the mud the dreams had become degrading, horrible nightmares.

"Good old England is the top dog yet!" shouted the singer, and at the end of each verse a round of self-satisfied applause greeted her as she swaggered round the stage, the flags fluttering triumphantly over each fat shoulder. And suddenly the sickness passed, and, like the turning-point in some violent disease, a hatred, primitive in its ferocity, burnt up in Sarasvati's tortured breast. For this painted, vulgar harridan she had been slighted and despised by the men and women who now roared and clapped their applause; for this blatant vanity, called patriotism, her country groaned in the dust of subjection. For this she had sacrificed her beauty, her faith, the peace of her temple for this, that she might belong to this crowd, to this great people who cheered the degradation of their own greatness. The excuses and explanation whioh might have satisfied another mind failed her. The veneer of European culture crumbled. She was the Oriental now seeing with the Oriental's eye, suffering with the Oriental's intense sensitiveness, burning with the Oriental's inherited stealthy passions of hatred and revenge.

She leant forward, and for the first time the purpose for which she had come rose out of the chaos of her sensations. She saw Rama Pal's face lifted to hers. He was seated in the third row of the stalls and an empty space, scarcely two yards' wide, separated them. She could see the white of his eyes, the hand hidden significantly in the pocket of his coat. His face was quiet, expressionless, and yet, as their eyes met, she read his message. Here, in this vast concourse, she was no longer alone. In this dark-faced man was the active embodiment of her own emotions. A sign from her and the sullen, rising tide of racial hatred would find its outlet in one swift, annihilating act. She was past all thought. The sting of a hundred petty injuries and the aching wound of her dishonour and betrayal crushed out everything but that one thirst for a deadly retaliation. She turned her head a little, instinctively seeking a last glimpse of the man who, in the next few minutes, would pay the last great penalty.

David Hurst was leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the stage. The black brows were contracted, and the line about the mouth was bitter, proudly contemptuous. And, with an illuminating flash, she understood. He too suffered. Whatever evil he had done her he was not one of these laughing, jeering, triumphant demons who were hounding her to her destruction. He turned and met her glance, and the disgust and pain which lay half-hidden behind his softened expression of tenderness aroused in her the memory of all that had been with a terrible, laming pity.

"In a few hours all this will be over," he whispered. "To-morrow we shall leave all this behind us we shall be free thank God."

To-morrow? In a few minutes! Two vast primitive passions of love and hatred, equal in strength, equal in justification, mastered her. Revenge yes, but not against him not against him, for she loved him; but against the pitiless, grinding machine which had made him too its instrument. A primeval woman now, unmodified by civilisation, she turned to him with one great all-comprehending, all-forgiving tenderness. As in the golden sun-lit temple-shrines, so here also he was the man who had led her to the highest pinnacle of life's grand mountain-range of passions, and thus he remained for her, indissolubly, a very part of her own being. Love demanded of her that she should save him from the quiet waiting death beneath, and hatred clamoured for its satisfaction. She bent forward with her hand over the edge of the box, and something white fluttered down through the darkness.

"You have dropped something, Sarasvati," Hurst whispered.

She nodded. Rama PaPs hand had slipped from his pocket and he was staring impassively at the stage where the patriot in tights, at the salute, proclaimed the triumphant refrain for the last time

"Good old England--"

"Yes,"