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

David you've got to be everything. You will bear the name alone. Thank God, it came when it did." He did not explain what he meant perhaps he felt an explanation unnecessary. Throughout he had spoken in quick, broken sentences, a prey to an excitement which bore more the stamp of hope than sorrow, and now he stopped altogether. He had seen Hurst's face and his jaw dropped. "David, what the devil is the matter? Are you laughing?" "I beg your pardon, my dear Judge but fate is sometimes very amusing, even in her grimmest moments."

"I don't understand. David you're not going to bear a grudge I mean you've got to stand by her. She has suffered, and, however bitter you may feel, you haven't the right to draw back now when the chance is given you both to come together."

Hurst interrupted him with a curt gesture.

"I have the right; but, as it happens, there is no question of right. Have you ever heard, Judge, that there is a 'too late' in life?"

But the older man made no answer.

A carriage had driven up to the steps of the verandah, and he turned and saw that Mrs. Hurst stood on the threshold. Her son had seen her also, but he made no move to greet her. He drew back from the judge as though intentionally isolating himself and there was a brief painful silence. Professor Heilig had been aroused by the sound of voices; he lifted himself on his elbow, and looked from one face to the other with the intentness of a man conscious that he is witnessing a drama whose course lies beneath the surface, and when he saw Diana Chichester standing in the background he gave vent to a sound that was half a groan and half a laugh.

Mrs. Hurst came slowly forward. She was still in evening dress, but a black cloak had been flung about her shoulders, giving her an appearance of profound mourning which harmonised tragically with her face. For the first time in his life, David Hurst confronted the woman who had hidden behind the mask of immovable indifference. Grief, deep-rooted and corroding, had been steadily at work throughout these years of seeming placid comfort and content. He saw it now in the lines which in a single night of selfabandonment had drawn themselves about the unsteady mouth; he saw it, above all, in the eyes, heavily shadowed and dim with the long-checked tears which now, in the hour of weakness, could not flow. For him there was something terrible, inexpressibly repugnant in this collapse of her strength and will. She laid her hand on his arm, and he held himself rigid. He did not look at her, but at the door of the adjoining room.

"David " she began uncertainly, "we have come to see if you were safe. I could not speak to you last night, but I saw that you were hurt. I hope it is nothing serious!"

"I think not," he answered " a mere flesh-wound. I believe there is now no cause for alarm."

Her brows contracted. He felt that she was fighting desperately.

"You did a very courageous thing," she said in the same stilted way "a thing which any Hurst might be proud of. I am very glad. I feel that the name is in safe hands. It is my only comfort." She stopped. What she had said was at once a confession and an apology, and very pitiful. Her son did not answer, and she went on falteringly; "You have heard the news? You know that soon you will be the only one left?"

"Yes," he said. Still he did not look at her, and, aroused by his expression, she turned in the direction in which he was gazing. The door of the next room had been quietly opened, and a woman stood on the threshold. She wore the gorgeous costume of a highcaste Hindu, and, though her features were noble and beautiful, even judged by European standards, Mrs. Hurst saw that they were unmistakably Oriental. Possibly she saw more than that, for she recoiled, and for an instant the two women studied each other in startled, antagonistic silence, arrested by the knowledge that their ways had crossed.

"Who is this?" Mrs. Hurst demanded. Her whole tone had changed it rang with an almost frantic apprehension.

David Hurst pushed past her and took the newcomer by the hand.

"This is my wife, mother," he said.

Judge Hamilton uttered an irrepressible oath. Then there was again silence. Involuntarily Diana took a step forward. Her eyes never left Hurst's face, but they expressed neither horror nor disgust only a deep, critical interest.

"Since when?" Mrs. Hurst asked.

"Since this morning."

"By whom were you married?"

"By Father Romney."

"You have become a Roman Catholic?"

"Yes, have you any objection to make?"

"None." She met his stern, significant challenge unfalteringly, apparently unmoved. "You are free, and always have been free," she said. Then she turned with a blind movement which betrayed her. "Judge give me your arm . David and I have nothing more to say to each other, and it is late. We must be getting home."

The judge obeyed her. His face was fallow, and he did not raise his eyes from the ground. David Hurst drew his wife closer to him. It was a movement symbolical of their future life. The Rubicon was crossed, and they stood alone. Yet it was at that moment that Diana Chichester came to him.

"You are a man, David," she said, "a brave man. Remember the promise I made you. I shall keep it."

"Thank you," he answered.

They looked each other in the eyes for the first time perhaps with a full recognition of each other's worth. Then Diana's lips twitched with a dawning humour.

"I must go now," she said quickly. "Whatever happens, I must be present when the bomb explodes on Kolruna; but, if there is anything left of me, I shall come this afternoon. You your wife will need a woman."

"I know," he said. "It's been worrying me. God bless you, Di."

"Which God?" she questioned, a trifle mockingly.

"Our God."

"Jesuit!" She laughed. "Well, perhaps you're right. Anyhow, I shall come, blessed or unblessed. Good-bye."

She did not offer him her hand, but she bent forward and kissed Sarasvati on the forehead, then turned and hurried down the verandah steps.

BOOK III_CHAPTER I (THE HOME-COMING)

 

THERE was an unusual stir in the Manor House not a great stir, for that could scarcely have been produced by anything less than an earthquake; but an unusual one in so far that nothing of that kind had been known in the sleepy precincts since the day when the squire, William Morell, J.P., had celebrated his silver wedding with Sarah, whom he was wont to describe in after-dinner speeches by the somewhat tomb-stone-like epithet of " my life's dear partner." Now, as then, the chief manifestations of excitement consisted of clean caps and aprons on the part of the servants, and the reappearance of Mrs. MorelPs London gown. This latter garment was invariably bought shortly before Christmas, when the squire and his wife paid their annual visit to the capital, and was afterwards worn with a rarity which made its appearance an event of the first magnitude. In its second year it sank to daily use, and was replaced by some latest creation, and this procedure had been faithfully followed not only by the present Mrs. Morell, but by all the Morells that had ever reigned in the ancestral home.

The squire, for his part, discarded his knee-breeches with their early-morning accompaniment of red leather slippers, and appeared in all the sombre magnificence of what he called a " town suit," enlivened, it is true, by a cheerful waistcoat and a silk tie of many colours. On this particular occasion his manner added to the general atmosphere of mild excitement. He was nervous, and inclined to be fussy; he prolonged the household prayers to an unusual length, to the manifested annoyance of the fox-terrier, who, presumably for his soul's benefit, was always forced into the ceremony; he misquoted the Bible, and declined his second cup of tea. Mrs. Morell shook her head at him.

"You should not neglect yourself like that, Will," she said. "You have a long morning in front of you, and there is nothing like tea for keeping up one's strength. Come just half a cup."

Her husband waved aside the offer.

"Sorry, my dear; I really haven't time. The train arrives at half-past ten, and the parson asked me to help him see that the children and farm-hands were at their places. Jane my boots!"

The housemaid fled on her errand, and the squire leaned back in his chair, drumming with his fingers on the corners of the table. He was a big, floridfaced man, heavily-built and long-waisted, with an habitual expression of good-natured self-importance, which was fully justified. He was the first personage in Steeple Hampton, and there is nothing quite so great as a great man in his own village.

"This reception requires considerable tact," he went on with an air of being confronted by a profound problem. "One must combine welcome with the correct degree of mourning. It would be hypocritical to pretend that the tragedy which brings him here leaves us unaffected. Harry Hurst was exceedingly popular."

"He was certainly very handsome," Mrs. Morell agreed.

At that moment her daughter entered the room, and the expression on the elder woman's face suggested a newly awakened train of thought.

"Daisy, my dear, you should have put on your new cloth dress. We cannot be sure that Sir David will not come round this afternoon. We have always been very intimate with the Hurst family." She spoke with a harmless complacency, but her daughter, a slight, somewhat angular girl in the early twenties, shrugged her shoulders, and a look of vague irritation passed over her sharp-featured face.

"I doubt very much whether David Hurst even remembers our existence," she said, helping herself to some toast. "And I am sure I do not care very much whether he does or doesn't. He struck me as being a peculiarly dull and uninteresting personage, and I do not suppose his title has altered him very much."

"My dear! "Mrs. Morell protested.

"Mother, you said yourself that he was a mannerless boor, and father called him the ugliest man he had ever set eyes on. I don't know why you should have changed your opinion." Her mouth betrayed a faint malice, and the squire cleared his throat.

"Circumstances alter opinions," he said.

"Titles do," his daughter retorted.

The squire flushed a brick-red, but he made no answer to this crisp version of the matter. He had sent his daughter to a London Art School to be educated, and she had returned with ideas of her own. He was none the less very proud of her. The ideas were a disadvantage, but then everything has its shady side, and he trusted to a prolonged period of homelife to remove this unfeminine excrescence. His wife was less philosophical.

"You shouldn't talk like that!" she said sharply. It is extremely disrespectful, and very untrue into the bargain. Really, Daisy, I sometimes think you are turning into a free-thinker, or a Socialist, or something."

The squire burst out laughing. Nothing amused him more than his " life's dear partner "