The Daughter of Brahma - I. A. R. Wylie (ereader iphone .TXT) 📗

marry, then?" Hatherway demanded. He was watching her eagerly, and saw a reflective frown gather on her brows, but no dreaded sign of embarrassment.

"If ever I meet a man whose personality completes my own and who dares to live his own life, I will marry him provided he asks me," she said.

"' Dares to live his own life '?" Hatherway echoed. "What do you mean, dear? Do I not live my own life?"

She shook her head in her decided way.

"You live the life of your kind," she said. "In your work, amusements, manners, dress, ambitions everything you jog-trot behind custom, and if you had an idea different from that of your fellows you would be ashamed of it and suppress it at once. The ideal of the average man is the hall-marked mediocrity, and I am mediocre enough myself to be heartily sick of the virtue."

Dick Hatherway flushed under the energy of her scorn, and suddenly, as was her wont, she repented. "You must not mind anything I say, Dick," she said kindly. "I don't know why, but I am always rude to people when they propose to me I suppose, because I hate hurting them."

"That sounds as if it was an every-day occurrence," he said, taking a rueful satisfaction from the possibility.

"It isn't, though!" she retorted. "I have only experienced one other, and to this hour I can't make out whether even that was genuine."

"I wonder who it was!" he meditated.

"You would never guess. And in the meantime, whilst you are trying, we might go down the garden. The heat is stifling, and somehow the music and the people make it worse."

He offered her his arm. Her determined friendliness helped him to master his pain and disappointment, and though it was obvious that what was his first tragedy was to her little more than an episode, already half forgotten, he took comfort. Honest love is often blessed with the confidence of virtue, and Hatherway was intensely honest. Moreover, without being conceited, he knew that he was what Kolruna called " a brilliant match," and as it is constitutionally hard for any man to realise that he is not wanted, it was for the popular young officer almost an impossibility. Nevertheless he was sufficiently depressed to find conversation difficult, and they reached the gates of the compound almost in silence.

The crowd of native watchers had increased. By the light of the two lanterns on either side of the entrance they caught what might have been a glimpse out of Dante's Inferno a sea of faces, hollow-cheeked and wild-eyed, which flashed for an instant into the yellow circle, then vanished into the darkness, giving place to others, different of feature, but alike in their expression of fanatic exaltation. And with all this unresting confusion of movement there was scarcely a sound. The music from the marquee alone provided a mocking, incongruous accompaniment. Involuntarily, Hatherway stopped short.

"I don't think we had better let them see us," he said. "I don't much like the look of them. The famine has begun to pinch, and they seem to be excited about something or other. Let us go back."

"I am not afraid," she said.

"But I am for you," he retorted. "Besides, our appearance might irritate them, and we haven't the right to run the risk, if only for the sake of the others."

She yielded at once to his better judgment, and they were about to retrace their steps when Hatherway himself hesitated, arrested by a sound at once familiar and, in the peculiar stillness of their immediate surroundings, alarming. Diana glanced into his face.

"What was that?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"I don't know," he answered. "Some fool or other has let off a squib, or something." He tried to hurry her pace, but she hung back resolutely.

"Dick, you're not telling the truth. That was a pistol-shot, and I can hear horse's hoofs at the gallop--"

"Come!" he commanded with the sharpness of controlled anxiety.

But she wrenched her arm free and faced about* The beat of hoofs was now distinctly audible, and suddenly, as though caught in the grip of a whirlpool, the shifting crowd on the high-road swirled round, then broke and flung itself back on either side. An instant later a horseman burst recklessly through their midst, and, turning into the gateway, drew rein with a sharpness which brought the animal to its haunches.

"Who is there? What! Diana, you! Hatherway?"

Diana Chichester ran to the horse's side, and laid her hand on the saddle, looking up into the rider's face.

"David!" she exclaimed.

He was scarcely recognisable. He had lost his helmet, and the black hair lay clotted in blood and dust on his forehead. His eyes stared down at her, and then passed on to Hatherway with a glance of sombre comprehension.

"Go back to the bungalow," he said curtly. "Hatherway, where is Colonel Chichester?"

"In the marquee."

"Go and fetch him. Say it is of the utmost importance."

Hatherway raised his eyebrows. Like most men on the station, he was inclined, if quite unconsciously, to question Hurst's right to exist. An order from him was intolerable.

"I think you had better go yourself, my dear fellow," he said coolly.

"Very well, I will."

Hurst urged his horse forward. The movement was so sudden that Diana Chichester was nearly thrown to the ground, and, with a curse, Hatherway caught her and for an instant held her.

"The boor!" he said between his teeth.

Diana freed herself.

"I'm not sure that the epithet does not apply elsewhere," she said sharply. "Didn't you see that he was wounded? Come."

They reached the entrance of the marquee only a moment after Hurst had swung himself to the ground. But he did not look at them. He thrust aside the intervening servant and reeled rather than walked into the crowded tent. A dance had just ended. A gorgeous picture of bright uniforms and gay dresses spread itself before him, and he stood there an instant unnoticed. Then Mrs. Chichester, who passed close to him, saw him and uttered a smothered scream. A hundred eyes were turned in his direction. He paid them no heed. He had caught sight of the colonel, and went straight across the floor, his spurs jingling softly in the sudden complete silence. Involuntarily the dancers drew back from him. He was covered in dust, and the blood of the wound on his forehead had begun to trickle slowly down his cheek. Moreover, there was something resolute and ruthless in the carriage of his square shoulders which seemed to thrust aside all interference.

"I am sorry to interrupt, Colonel Chichester," he said in an undertone, "but I must speak to you at once."

The little soldier twisted the end of his moustache. In the first moment he had been inclined to share what was no doubt the general opinion namely, that Hurst was the worse for drink. He had heard enough ugly rumours to make the supposition justifiable; but the sight of blood was for him more eloquent than his suspicion.

"What is it?" he asked. "If there is any trouble we might as well hear it at once."

"The native quarter has broken out," Hurst answered. "Some spy must have betrayed the existence of the reserve-stores, and the priests have done the rest. About a thousand armed men surround Kolruna, and they are only waiting for the signal from the hill-temple to begin the attack."

"How do you know?" Chichester demanded.

"Professor Heilig, disguised as a yogi, was present at a meeting of the leaders. He was discovered and barely escaped with his life. He managed to reach his own bungalow, where I happened to be waiting for him, and lies there at present, badly wounded."

The colonel glanced sharply round him. There were white faces in the group which had gathered about Hurst, and one woman, new to Indian life, had uttered a little hysterical scream. The colonel's own face was blank. That same morning his regiment had gone into camp five miles outside Kolruna, and he himself had only come over for the evening. The fact was known to everybody present.

"A message must be sent at once--" he began.

"You will find that next to impossible. Your bungalow is surrounded. The rebels have chosen their moment--"

The colonel interrupted with an oath, and a low murmur of alarm passed from those immediately in the vicinity to the farthest corner of the tent.

"The regiment is on its way," Hurst finished calmly.

"Who gave the alarm?"

Hurst bowed.

"You? You said it was next to impossible--"

Hurst shrugged his shoulders.

"Damn it, sir," said the colonel vigorously, "I'm proud of you!" He held out his hand, but Hurst seemed not to see it or to hear the wave of applause which spread around him.

"As far as I know, nothing will be done before midnight," he said. "Then unless it can be prevented a beacon will be lighted on the hill and the attack begun. But I hope by that time the regiment will have arrived. At any rate, I thought it best to warn you, so that, in case of the worst happening, you would be at least prepared."

Chichester nodded. His eyes were bright with the joy of battle.

"Gentlemen, I should be glad if you would join me for a few minutes in my bungalow," he said loudly. "Whilst we are making our arrangements, the ladies will keep up the appearances. There must be no sign that we are afraid. The music can begin again." He gave a sign to the band-master, and the strains of the latest Viennese valse broke the straining silence. David Hurst touched the colonel on the arm.

"I should be grateful to you if you would lend me your horse," he said.

"My horse! What the devil for?"

Hurst's mouth was grim and set.

"My beast is done for, and I have a long way to go," he said.

"David, my good fellow, are you mad? You are wounded, and--"

"It is nothing --but it is imperative that I should go back. Have I your permission?"

"Yes but in Heaven's name, wait--"

"I have not a moment to lose."

He turned on his heel and confronted Hatherway. That young officer's face was flushed with excitement and honest regret. He, too, held out his hand.

"I owe you an apology, Hurst," he said, "and I beg of you let me go for you wherever you have to go. I am fresh and unhurt, and--"

David Hurst pushed him gently on one side.

"What I have to do I must do myself," he said.

He went back the way he had come, and again, though there were many in that crowd of men and women who would have been glad to give him a sign of their gratitude, no one spoke to him or held him back. His utter indifference to them held them paralysed. At the door he passed his mother. She stood almost in his path, a proud, erect figure, yet her too he ignored, and, as he limped out into the darkness, she turned and caught Judge Hamilton by the arm.

"What is it?" she asked sharply. "What has he done?"

"I fancy he has saved Kolruna," said the judge.

"Where has he gone?"

"God knows," was the answer.

She looked at him, and for the first time in her life saw that his face was bitter with reproach.

BOOK II_CHAPTER VIII (THE EIGHTS OF FREEDOM)

PROFESSOR HEILIG lying on his