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

There was a brief silence. Mr. Eliot's flaccid face was livid not wholly with fear. He was remembering an incident fourteen years before, when he derided the temple and its goddess as myths and patronised the dark, ugly boy as a fantastic liar. The man's selferected edifice was crumbling fast. Mrs. Hurst bent a little forward, and her eyes held her son's with their victorious confidence.

"You will prevent it?" she said quietly.

"I shall do my best, mother."

"Then you must not waste time. Good-bye." She put her arms round his neck and kissed him for the first time since his marriage. "You are like your father, David," she went on. They were her last words to him, but they bridged the gulf of years. He stood and looked at her a moment, grim, resolute, yet with an expression in his eyes that she remembered, then turned and limped to the door.

"Good-bye, Diana," he said. Her hand held the curtain as though to prevent him from passing, but he saw that it trembled. He smiled at her, the onesided, half wistful smile of the old days. "I think it's more than a mere form to-night," he said.

She gave him her hand then, and he held it silently.

"Is it only to save us?" she asked, scarcely above a whisper. "Why do you ask?"

"Because then it would be a useless sacrifice of life. You can do nothing."

"I believe I can."

"I shall not let you run the risk." She met his frowning eyes with quiet resolution. "I have that right. I, at least, have no ambition to satisfy."

"There is another reason," he said. He freed his hand, and on the fourth finger she saw the dull gleam of a ring. "Sarasvati left that behind," he went on. "I am going to give it back to her. She sacrificed faith and happiness and people to follow me, and she believes I have betrayed her. You understand at whatever cost I must give it back?"

"Yes I understand."

"If I fail I shall not return," he went on rapidly. "In that case trust yourself to Hatherway."

He had her hand again now, and her eyes answered him.

"I too shall go my own way to the end, David."

"I know you are brave."

"I am trying to be worthy of your faith in me."

He hesitated.

"If only I were more sure of things I would say, ' God keep you! '"

"Say it, David. One day we shall be sure. And I know all that you mean."

"God keep you, then."

He was gone. She groped across the room to the verandah and stood there staring out into the darkness. A red fire burnt from the summit of the hills. It seemed to her the warning signal of the Death that the lonely man had gone to meet, and she too faced it steadily, her hands folded on the verandah rail, her face lifted to the sky. But no prayer passed her lips.

Hers was too strong a nature to change faith in the hour of danger. Nevertheless, that night, guided by her own love, Diana Chichester, the sceptic, set out on the true quest of God.

Behind her in the little room all was quiet. Mr. Eliot had gone back to his duty, and Mrs. Hurst sat huddled amongst her pillows, her gaze fixed ahead as though she saw something only visible to herself. There was a little arrogant smile about the thin, tightly compressed lips and the eyes under the black brows were keen and vigilant, denying all knowledge of the coming shadow. Presently, when the curtains moved again, she drew herself up with a stern mustering of her strength.

"Judge?" she said, half questioningly, half angrily.

He came lurching across the room, a bottle in one hand, a tray with a glass in the other. His clothes were saturated with mud that had resisted all attempts at removal, but his hands were scrupulously clean.

"Sorry, Jean," he said. "Chichester Mrs. Chichester told me you wouldn't mind old friend and unusual circumstances. Must celebrate dear old David's return you know. Brought you the water you asked for a bit late, Jean always a bit late, eh? But it's good, fresh water." He poured out a glassful, spilling some on the floor, and she watched him with frowning impatience.

"Give it to the others," she said. "I don't want it."

The hand with the glass wavered.

"You don't want it Jean?"

"I mean I don't need it as badly as the others. I have not long to live. It was only a whim of mine.*'

"Ah a whim." He leant against the foot of the couch, watching her with a curious, twisted smile on 25 his blotched face. "I tell you what, Jean," he began thickly. "You don't need to think of the others. You're not taking it from them. It's my property and a little present to you, so to speak. Drink a little just to please me."

Suddenly her expression changed.

"You went down to the river?" she said, under her breath.

"What? River? Yes, nice stroll. Nice cool evening--"

"Don't lie to me, Geoffrey! Give me that glass!"

He obeyed, and she drank avidly. When she looked at him again he had dropped down on the edge of the couch.

"It's good water," she said. "I feel better."

"That's first class." The light that dawned over his face made him seem almost young. "First class, Jean after thirty-two years to have been of use that's something to be grateful for eh--"

She caught his arm.

"Geoffrey, what is it?"

He had slipped slowly to his knees his hand groped over the sheet.

"Nothing dear nothing at all une petite affaire du c&ur, as our French friends say it happens in the best families--"

"Geoffrey! "She took his face between her hands and forced him to look at her. "Geoffrey you're not going to leave me--I wanted you to see me through, old friend--"

Again the same radiance fainter this time.

"My dear I wish I could I'd go with you. The spirit's willing but the the flesh infernally weak--"

He tried to smile. Then his head dropped heavily forward, and there was silence.

When Diana turned back from the verandah she saw that Jean Hurst slept. One hand rested on the shoulder of the man huddled on the floor beside her, the other gripped the butt of the revolver. Her brows were knitted, and the white, noble head was thrown slightly back, as though in defiance of an unseen enemy.

"SARASVATI! SARASVATI!"

The cry, following on a long silence, released the restless, tossing hordes in the Bazaar from a restraining spell. Narrow, filthy streets belched out a lavastream of maddened humanity which swept across the valley, crushing aside every obstacle, trampling underfoot those who for a moment stumbled in the headlong race. Unarmed, half -naked, and strewn with ash and mire, the inspired yogis led their demon army towards the beacon which burnt upon the Temple Hill. They danced ahead, weird, fantastic figures in the ghastly luminousness of the Indian night, their matted hair streaming out over their shoulders, their thin arms raised aloft as though in constant malediction. Intermittently a scream went up into the night and a clanging gong beat out a monotonous rhythmic music to the procession's headlong progress.

Midway across the valley, there where a narrow bridge traversed the river, Hurst awaited the onrush. From where he stood he could see the lights of Kolruna, He picked out the colonel's bungalow, and the room in which he had bidden Diana Chichester a last farewell. His fancy, strangely calm in that moment, pictured her again as she had stood defiantly against the curtain then a black flood swept over the vision of her face, and, throwing up his arms, he was swung round and caught like a straw in the vortex of a whirlpool. For one agonising moment of suspense he felt his senses waver. The nauseating stench, the terrific impetus of the force which held him in its clutches, shook his strength and seemed to thrust him down into a bottomless abyss. Automatically he gripped his neighbour's shoulder. The man turned and struck out with a blind fury. Hurst felt the sting of the blow as it grazed his forehead, and the pain was a strong intoxicating wine to his reeling senses. He regained his footing, and his clenched fist fell like a sledge-hammer on the distorted face. Without a sound the man went under, and the tide swept on mercilessly in its course.

After that Hurst's consciousness passed into a mere instinct of self-preservation. His very purpose, highfixed as it was, lost its clearness in that raging storm of fanaticism. Time and distance sank into the general chaos. He was dimly aware of old landmarks, familiar and linked with a hundred tender and terrible memories. Then the dense jungle growth of the secret path closed over all, shutting out the distant peace of the stars, charging the atmosphere with foetid, suffocating heat. At intervals a torch, held aloft by some gaunt, fleshless arm, threw a streak of unsteady light down the serried lines and faces, frantic with hysterical ecstasy, starting for a moment out of the darkness like illuminated glimpses of a delirious nightmare.

Hurst fought like the rest. That madness which transforms a crowd of ordinary individuals to a single devil, animated with a devil's spirit, was in his blood, and goaded him to a superhuman effort. Others fell in that struggle, and their stifled screams mingled with the monotonous droning chant of the yogis, but he pressed on, resolutely, savagely, holding to his course, indifferent alike to his own sufferings and the sufferings of those who fought beside him.

"Sarasvati! Sarasvati!"

The cry came down the narrow cutting like a gust of wind and Hurst unconsciously repeated it. Here in this hell the name became a curse, conveying nothing to him but the idea of a diabolical force directed against his race and against civilisation. The dreaming woman among her lotus-flowers was the personification of a blood-thirsty heathenism of a religion replete with hideous cruelty and his purpose, all that had been, sank beneath the waves of a stern hatred.

Then suddenly the darkness passed. A great, involuntary sigh burst from the stifled breasts, and, looking up, Hurst saw that the stars were once more above them. And in that instant the veil of passion was lifted from his soul. Beneath that great vault of heaven, in sight of that infinity which is beyond comprehension, the desperate, ruthless struggle of the last hour became a tragic symbol. Through a tangled jungle of falsehood, bigotry, and folly, a poor humanity fought its way upwards towards God, killing and hating, only to find at the summit of their Pisgah the unfathomable mystery of the stars. And many had fallen by the wayside, many had suffered to no purpose. The ruins of a great temple rose up in stern reminder of time's passage and the finiteness of man's knowledge. The stones of the courtyard were worn away by worshippers who had passed, with their faith, into the shadows of forgotten things and in the distance new faiths, new creeds rolled on to the same end.

A momentary hush had fallen on the tumultuous