The Daughter of Brahma | Page 7

will carry on the traditions of our family. My brother wrote to me and suggested that he and David should be educated together."
"An admirable idea."
She did not move, but he felt that she had shrunk inwardly as though from the touch of fire.
"You think so? But there is one thing which you must take into consideration. I am ashamed of my son."
"Jean--Mrs. Hurst!"
"Do not force me to repeat what I have said. It is not pleasant for me to say or for you to hear, and you know I am not given to speaking lightly. Look me straight in the face, old friend. Forget all silly, sentimental, maternal feeling, and answer as you would answer a stranger. What is my son?"
The judge's face was scarlet, but he rose valiantly to the challenge.
"A decent little chap not like the others, I know--delicate, nervous, a bit of a dreamer, but a thorough upright fellow a--"
"Don't! You will be calling him a gentleman next. And you are not being honest. You say he is not like the others. That is true. You say he is delicate--he is a weakling. You say he is a dreamer--he is merely stupid. You say he is nervous--he is a coward. He is ugly into the bargain, and a cripple. I hate my son."
The judge almost bounded from his chair. He put his hand to his collar as though he were choking.
"Mrs. Hurst sometimes you you are rather terrible."
"No, I am merely sincere. Perhaps that comes to the same thing in this world."
The judge nodded. "Yes, I think it does sometimes."
"You blame me. You think me wicked and heartless. Perhaps I am according to the modern code of sentimentalities. But we our family has never cared much for that kind of thing. We have Spartan blood in our veins. Only the fittest can survive among us. Instinctively we cast out everything that is weak and useless. You cannot blame us for that instinct, any more than you can blame David for being as he is. It is just the destiny of our characters if you like to put it in that way." She paused, and then went on quietly. "At the bottom we are not very different from the rest of our fellow-creatures. You are looking aghast at me because I have dared to express a general but unaccepted truth. You all shrink instinctively from every form of deformity, and, if the Spartan method of dealing with such cases is out of fashion it is simply because you have become cowards and look upon life no matter how worthless and debased, as the highest good."
"But hatred!" The judge broke in as though it had been the last word she had spoken. His goodnatured face was still white with distress, but she was not looking at him. She held herself, if possible, more erect, and her voice became sonorous with strongly repressed feeling.
"I hate my son with the same right as that with which I should hate him if he were burdened with some hideous moral vice. The one thing is as much an infirmity as the other. I hate him as I might hate a friend on whom I had built my life and who had betrayed my trust. I gave my soul for my son. On the night that my husband was murdered I killed myself, everything in me, in order that he might live. I meant that he should not suffer through my weakness. You understand me? He was not to be handicapped through any fault of mine. I meant him to carry on the traditions of our family and the race as my husband would have done. He was to be a strong man who would serve his country, perhaps a great man, but at least strong. As it is, he is nothing, and can be nothing." She got up and stood stately and immovable, with her white face still turned to the light. "I have hoped against hope for twelve years," she went on quietly, "but it would be absurd to deceive myself any longer. I must face the truth. I have brought into the world one of those mediocrities for which the world has no use. Fortunately, I am rich enough to take the burden upon my own shoulders. But David must go to England."
The judge scarcely seemed to be listening.
"You are unjust," he burst out, "and your theories are are--I don't know what they are but it's all infernally cruel. You don't know what is in him yet. And, after all, you are responsible. He is your son and he loves you--"
"Love does not necessarily beget love not in me. Where I love I must respect yes, one can respect a child. I have respected a dog. I once had a foxterrier