The Daughter of Brahma by I. A. R. Wylie (read aloud books .txt) 📖

what he had done, no regret at most a physical relief, as though some numbing pressure had been lifted from his brain. Lord Salby was leaning against the wall, his handkerchief to his cheek, and thrusting off the solicitor's committee with an impatient hand.

"And who may this blackguard be?" he asked with a forced, ironical calm.

"My name is Hurst," was the quiet answer. "And you are the blackguard not I. Were we in another country I should demand another and better satisfaction than that of merely telling you so. Let me pass!"

They made no attempt to detain him. Outside in the passage he came face to face with Diana Chichester.

"Where is Sarasvati?" he asked.

"I don't know. She disappeared quite suddenly from my side. I thought she had come to look for you."

"Perhaps she has gone home. We will follow her."

"David, but the meeting!"

"There will be no meeting," he said, between his teeth.

After that she followed him unquestioningly. Outside the carriage awaited them, but no one had seen Lady Hurst's departure. Hurst gave the order "Home," and helped Diana to her seat. "We shall overtake her," he said with curt decision. For five minutes they sat side by side in an unbroken silence. Then Diana could bear it no longer. She laid her hand on his knee.

"David," she said. "Tell me what happened?"

He looked at her sightlessly.

"He insulted her," he said. "I knocked him down. That puts an end to it all." He spoke very quietly, and turned away from her as though to watch the road. But she saw that his shoulders shook.

"David," she said, scarcely above her breath. "How much you wanted to win!"

He nodded.

"Yes I wanted to win. But it can't be helped."

Then he broke down. He buried his white face in his hands, and, though he made no sound, no movement, she felt all the violence of the silent storm that had broken over him. And in that moment all prudence, all sense of danger was lost in the desire to comfort him. She sought wildly for the means, and, being a woman, found them.

"David," she said gently, "do you remember a night at Kolruna two years ago when I told you that I despised you?"

He nodded without speaking.

"I want to tell you now that I respect that I honour you more than any man whom I have ever known," she said.

He did not look up or answer, but he caught her hand and kissed it in passionate gratitude.

BOOK III_CHAPTER VIII (THE POWER OF TRUTH)

 

LADY HURST had not gone home. She had crept out of the schoolhouse, past the little laughing and talking group of new arrivals, and had made her way quickly down the half -deserted street. She had no destination in that moment scarcely a purpose, save that of escaping from the intangible horror which pursued her. At first she felt nothing. The cold had frozen her, and numbed her capabilities of feeling. The noise had beaten against her brain without reaching her understanding, and the crowd around her had been like a tossing, tempestuous sea, flaked with white. Then, quite suddenly, half a dozen words had reached her, and had burnt themselves in her heart, and she had understood. A man standing close to her had called out, "We don't want no dirty niggers in our part," and she had looked up and found his angry, blood-shot eyes fixed on her with savage significance. For a full minute she had looked at him, bewildered, incapable of grasping the brutality of the attack, and there must have been something in her face which shamed her aggressor, for his eyes sank, and he slunk back behind his fellows.

But he had done his work. As though his words had been a releasing spell, the noise had broken into distinct sounds; she had heard the jeering laughter, the taunts coupled with her husband's name. The white flakes had become faces out of which the eyes stared at her like points of living fire, burning their way into her innermost soul. And then panic had come a desperate, headlong panic which had given no time to think or to realise what she was about to do. She had risen unnoticed, and, like a wild hunted animal, fought her way to the door, out on to the street, and, stumbling blindly over the rough cobbles, fled from the malice-laden laughter and the searching, cruel eyes of her tormentors. She had seen nothing. She passed her own carriage, and did not know it. Her inexperience, her instinctive fear of her husband's race broke through the seeming conformity and confidence which her Oriental pliability had allowed her to assume. She was alone in a strange land, amongst a people who had shrunk from her as from a leper. They had cursed her, and she had fled out into the bleak, piercing cold of their winter rather than face them. It was not only fear; something in her something altogether nameless had been wounded and trampled underfoot. Caste, religion, faith in her own divine origin had been torn from her, and yet in that moment she regained her sanctity and with it the knowledge that she had been wantonly defiled.

Little by little, fear died wholly. The sense of outrage grew overmastering, and as she stopped at last, panting, in the shadow of a cottage doorway, she looked back the way she had come with eyes of scorn and passionate resentment. It was already dusk. A piercing, dank wind swept down the length of the street, and cut through her clothing'so that she drew her furs about her, and, with chattering teeth, crept instinctively to the wall. Not once had she thought of her husband, and she did not think of him now. Thought was still stunned. Like a sick man recovering slowly from some frightful bout of pain, she leant back with closed eyes and let the balm of peace pass over her deeply wounded soul. Then the door of her refuge opened, and a rough woman's voice broke in upon her silence.

"Who's there? We don't allow no loafers about here. Move on, will you?"

She made no answer. She did not even look at the speaker, but glided softly away into the darkness. The possibility that, as Lady Hurst, she might have gained the woman's respect and hospitality did not occur to her. The fact that she was Lady Hurst had passed out of her consciousness. She was Sarasvati, once daughter of Brahma, now an outcaste and a wanderer in a foreign land, and she hurried on, her unaccustomed feet tortured by the uneven cobbles, her limbs trembling with cold and exhaustion. At the corner of the village street she stopped. A band of men were coming towards her, bearing flags and red-coloured lanterns which danced lurid reflections on their faces. She turned to fly, but it was too late. They caught her up, and she was swept back against the walls of the low-built houses and carried on a few yards until the crowd came to a standstill, eddying round the cart which formed the centre of the procession. In the uncertain light she passed unnoticed. She drew her fur hood about her face, and strove desperately to find a way of escape from the dense, evil-smelling mass of humanity. But she was wedged in on every side. A rough-looking miner whom she tried to pass cursed at her though without looking at her, and she shrank back, sickened with fear and loathing.

Presently the shifting crowd broke into a cheer. A man had climbed up into the seat of the cart and seemed to be waiting for complete silence before speaking. Two lanterns, held by a couple of hollowcheeked, raggedly dressed youths, lit up his face, which, though Sarasvati did not know it, was typical enough of his class and profession. Bearded, hardfeatured, with a low, lined forehead expressive at once of energy and bigotry, eyes that, for all their fanatic enthusiasm, were without pity or human kindnesssuch was the man who waited with arrogant impatience for the applause to cease.

' You know partly what I have come to say to you to-night," he began at last in a loud, rough voice. "Not half a dozen yards from where we are standing some of our people are protesting against the lies by which our opponents are trying to win to-morrow's struggle. I have come to protest against them here, and, besides that, to fulfil the promise which I made to you at the beginning of this campaign. That is my chief object. I don't need to repeat to you the principles for which we are fighting they are written in your hearts and mine with the iron of injustice and class selfishness; but you've got to know the character of the man who is asking for your support and seeking to force it from you by the influence of the wealthy land-owners and clap-trap appeals to what he calls patriotism and loyalty. Personally, I've got no grudge against this man. Sir David Hurst is as much a stranger to me as he is to most of you, but he represents the class for which he is fighting, and it is for that reason that I'm bound to make revelations concerning him in order that you may be able to judge for yourselves, whether you are going to be ruled by such men or by men of your own blood and feeling."

He paused a moment. The crowd had been augmented considerably by the exodus from the schoolhouse, and the speaker's eyes flashed over the white sea of faces with smouldering triumph. But he continued to speak in the same tone of matter-of-fact precision.

"We know where Sir David comes from. He has been in India studying the language and the people so we are told. Well, to-night a trustworthy witness will tell you something of Sir David's genuine occupation and of the life of his kind in that unhappy country which groans under the selfish autocratic rule of our so-called humane government. We call for freedom for ourselves and for our Indian brothers across the seas. How just is our demand you shall see to-night. You're going to hear of children stolen from their parents to feed the mission-schools hypocritical lethal-houses for the murder of true national feeling and national pride. You are going to hear of brutal tyranny and of wild dissipation. One instance I'll give you myself. In the days when famine claimed thousands of unhappy Hindu victims their English rulers celebrated the occasion with feasting and dancing. Isn't that true, brother?"

He turned, fiercely appealing, to some one in the crowd, and a minute later he was joined by a man, whom Sarasvati recognised with a smothered exclamation of fear. Rama Pal stood upright at the first speaker's side. He had taken off his cap and the lantern which had been purposely lifted revealed the traces of ravaging disease and starvation on his still handsome features. As always, his face was impassive; only the eyes passed over the crowd with an expression which for his audience had no significance. They thought if they thought at all that his unaccustomed task frightened him, and cheered him with a