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

sofa by the window, alternately drank from the glass which Father Romney had placed beside him, and cursed. He cursed in his own tongue with a fluency and guttural violence which seem to give the lie to his ghastly face, and the wide bandage across his breast. Once he shook his fist, but at whom was not clear, and Father Romney, who had been busy tearing up some white linen, gently intervened.

"You will make yourself worse," he said reproachfully. "Lie quiet and try not to worry. What must be will be."

"Infernal fatalist!" Heilig muttered. Nevertheless, his hands dropped to his side, and he contented himself with frowning at the tall white-clad figure seated beneath the lamplight. "Am I dying?" he asked abruptly. Father Romney looked up and a faint smile flashed over his tired face.

"It does not sound like it," he observed, "but I cannot guarantee anything unless you do as you are told. That chest wound may give trouble."

"Ha!" Heilig heaved up his broad shoulders. "Had but the accursed dolt hit me on my head I should not lie thus. My head he is thick like a sheep he would not have felt it. Fool, utter fool that I am."

"If Kolruna exists to-morrow it will be because you are less a fool than most of the inhabitants," Father Romney remarked.

"You think my interfering a proof of sense? I am not so sure. But that is not the trouble." He rolled his massive head impatiently from side to side. "Father, beware of young men with poetic temperaments and headstrong tempers above all, keep them from the women-folk. They are more dangerous than fire-brands in a hay-rick, more unmanageable--" He stopped apparently for lack of a simile and pointed to the window. "Draw the curtain!" he commanded imperatively. "I will not be shut up like a rat in a trap."

"Is it safe?" Father Romney questioned.

"I know not, and I do not care. I will see the hills. What hour is it?"

"On twelve."

Heilig lifted himself on his elbow.

"In a few minutes they will throw the first torch," he muttered; " and in half an hour Sarasvati, daughter of Brahma, will have entered Nirvana."

Father Romney pulled aside the curtains and stared out into the darkness. His haggard face was white with pity.

"It sounds too impossible too awful," he said. "Why should they do it? it is against themselves."

"Siva is dead," Heilig answered. "He has died so the priests say because the Foreigner has desecrated his altar and his wife. That alone is enough to drive a half -starved fanatic people to madness. For the rest they haf revived an old custom the widow follows her lord on the funeral pyre, and then the trouble will begin."

"And Hurst knows?"

"Yes, a thousand curses. I told him I did not realise and now he has gone to save her to his death. Ha! you saw that?"

Against the pitchy blackness a streak of fire shot up, then died down to a sullen glow which burnt high above the line of the horizon like a monster star. Father Romney involuntarily clasped the crucifix to his breast.

"Dear God!" he whispered.

Heilig fell back. He was grinding his teeth, and Romney, turning suddenly, saw that a single angry tear rolled down the German's cheek.

"She was beautiful," Heilig muttered thickly; "beautiful yes, and good, like the living spirit of her religion freed from the f oulness and dross of human fancy. I lufed her not as a woman, but as an inspiration. And now they haf killed her as they will kill him." He groaned. "I lufed him too he was not as the others, not clever like them, but with genius the genius of imagination, of intuition. It had been crushed and warped, but II would haf brought it back to life. Do you believe me? Read the chapters he has written in our great book haf they not the divine fire, haf they not inspiration? Now it is too late too late--"

"With God it is never too late," Father Romney returned.

"Ha, you believe in miracles? I cannot. But perhaps it is Divine Wisdom, working through character, which brings the end now. What could haf become of either of these two lost ones? The world has no place for them."

The sound of firing interrupted him. Father Romney came back from the window. He held his head with a serene dignity. "The fighting has begun," he said. "If the defence fails we shall be amongst the last to suffer."

"But we shall not haf long to wait," Heilig answered. He held out his square hand and took the priest's long thin one, and pressed it. "I could not wish to die in better company," he said. "It is a grand seal on our friendship, Romney. I am proud of it. I haf lufed you much. You haf understood my Wagner as no one else in this forsaken hole, and though you are a churchman you haf understood the human heart. See you you die with a heathen, but with a heathen who has lufed beauty and goodness in all things, even in religion. Think you not if your God exists and is worth anything that He will receive me?"

"If my God exists He will receive you among the first," Romney answered.

Heilig gave a hoarse, unsteady laugh.

"Assuredly, had you lived you would haf been excommunicated," he said. "Listen, the firing has ceased. What is that? It sounds like the wind."

"Like hundreds of running footsteps," the priest answered. He had turned back to the window, and again his hand tightened upon the silver crucifix. "Heilig," he said joyfully, "thank God, the rains have come at last, our prayers are answered God has heard us."

"Too late! What is that?"

"A dark, flying mass it is coming towards us. Heilig, commend your soul to God."

But the German had struggled to his feet, and, with a revolver in hand, swayed forward.

"God will look after my soul, without my commendation," he growled, "and if He is worthy of His creature He will like me all the better for giving a good account of myself. Stand back, Romney; I haf no grudge against these poor devils but if I must die will haf my money's worth."

The next instant he had fired, but apparently without effect. The shadow which he had seen gliding up the verandah steps took the definite outline of a man who stumbled to Heilig's feet, and lay there panting with exhaustion. No one followed him. The sound of hurrying feet died away in the distance. Silence enveloped them, unbroken save by the steady splash of the rain upon the parched and arid ground.

Father Romney bent down and touched the crouching figure on the shoulder.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "What has happened? '

The half-naked native raised himself upon his elbow, and held out an imploring hand.

"Shoot not, Sahib," he gasped faintly. "It is I thy servant I have come back to the Sahib."

"Ha, come back, haf you?" Heilig laughed and reeled to his couch, where he lay for a moment groaning for breath. "That means that you haf been beaten," he said; " otherwise you would only haf come back to murder me. What has happened, you black scoundrel?"

"A wonder!" the Sudra answered, breaking into his own tongue with the volubility of hysterical excitement. "Lord Sahib, this night has the last Avatar appeared before us even Vishnu, mounted on a white horse, who rushed down upon us amidst fire and thunder. And in that moment the heavens opened and the rain flooded down upon us. The funeral fires died out. Then knew we that we had done evil and our strength was gone."

"And Sarasvati thy goddess what has happened?" The native lifted his dark, terrified face from the ground and pointed back to the hills, which now stood out dimly in the light of coming dawn."

"The fires have gone out," he whispered. "The shrine stands empty Vishnu has taken the goddess with him into his paradise. We shall see her no more."

"It is thy punishment." Heilig turned his suffering eyes with a significant glance to the priest. "Tell the fellow to be gone at once back to his work," he said faintly. "I must not see his face again to-day."

Romney repeated the order, and, with a profound salaam, the native glided back on to the verandah and from thence into the grey twilight. For a long minute the two men listened intently to the drop of the rain and the soft stirring of awakened nature. Beyond these sounds it seemed to them that they heard a footfall, slow, dragging, and intermittent.

"God has performed a miracle," Romney said under his breath.

"A miracle of heroic human character," Heilig retorted. He raised himself with a stifled groan upon his elbow, and peered into the morn daylight which had begun to creep over the drenched garden. "See that the door is locked, and that no one is watching," he ordered; and then, in a hoarse triumphant whisper, "David thank God!"

The lamp on the low table still burned. Its yellow reflection mingled with the ghostly grey of morning and fell on David Hurst's face as he staggered into the room. He made no answer to the Professor's greeting. He knelt down and gently disburdened himself of the slender figure which he had borne in his arms. The dark head rested wearily against his shoulder. He motioned to the Professor.

"One of your pillows!" he demanded briefly.

Heilig threw him one.

"And pull the curtains," he added.

Romney obeyed. The daylight was now shut out. By the light of the lamp the three men looked down on the peaceful woman's face and then at each other.

"You saved her?" Heilig asked in a whisper.

"Yes."

"How?"

"They had lit the pyre when I reached the temple. I was on Colonel Chichester's white charger, and I fancy I looked more like a devil than a man I felt more like one. I charged at them, I hadn't any plan, you understand. I was just frantic. It seems frenzy was hi the air, and I set fire to it. I rode down half a dozen of them, cursing at them like a fiend, and at that moment it began to rain. That was too much for them. They turned tail and fled. The rest was easy enough. I made a rush through the flames, which had subsided almost instantly, and managed to escape with her without much damage. Unfortunately my horse had bolted. I had to make my way back on foot, keeping out of the road for fear some of the runaways should discover me a pretty difficult business."

"Is she hurt?"

"I think not -- only overcome by fatigue and alarm."

Romney bent down, scrutinising the unconscious face with the shy reverence of a child.

"She is very beautiful," he said wonderingly.

Heilig uttered a strong Teutonic curse.

"She is very wet," he retorted. "Get her some wine and some dry clothes--" He stopped, overtaken by the impossibility of his own suggestion. "David," he said slowly and emphatically, "you haf the talent common to genius that of getting yourself and others into difficulties. What are we going to do? There is not a woman on the premises."

"Fetch the wine first," Hurst answered. "When she has recovered we shall be able to get together something or other. You have a collection of Indian shawls they will do to replace these wet ones."

"You haf at least resource," Heilig admitted grimly. "And afterwards?"

With a gentleness which contrasted strangely with his stern blood-stained face Hurst lowered Sarasvati's head upon the pillow and for a moment bent over her in silence, carefully smoothing the black dank hair from her face and chafing the small hands between his own. She lay there like a princess out of some Eastern fairy-tale. All the gorgeous insignia of her divinity had been massed upon her on the occasion of her martyrdom. The emeralds which he remembered clustered about her forehead, and about her waist gleamed the rope of rough-cut rubies. On the slender fingers were rings of priceless