The Daughter of Brahma | Page 9

position doesn't allow for such calls on my store of popularity," he
said. "It's bad enough to have the natives potting at one at intervals, but
if the subalterns started things would get too hot even for me." He
threw back his shoulders. "All the same, I won't have any tea. I'm upset,
and you have upset me, and the best thing I can do is to get Sarah Jane
to jolt me for a quarter of an hour. I shall then be too sorry for myself to
be sorry for anybody else. You understand? You forgive me?"

"You are sorry for David?" she asked, taking his outstretched hand with
the smile still in her eyes.
"Yes, I am. I can't help it. It must be rough luck to fail a woman like
you. And the fact that it isn't his fault doesn't make it better. If he had
been what you expected--well, he would have been a lucky dog. As it
is--"
"As it is?" she interrogated as he broke off.
"He isn't."
"I shall do my duty," she answered.
"Hum, that's precious little in this world," he retorted. He went out on
to the verandah and beckoned to the syce. "All the same, I shall do
what I can for the little chap," he went on. "I at least shan't be able to
forget that he is your son--hullo, what was that?"
She looked at him in astonishment.
"What is the matter? Did you hear anything?"
"I thought I did a sort of cry. This heat makes one's nerves hum. Well,
good-bye. I'm grateful to you for telling me all that. It has upset me, but
I'm glad. Poor little chap!"
She watched him swing himself on to Sarah Jane's patient back and
canter down the short avenue which led into the high-road. At the gate
he turned in his saddle and saluted her and she waved back. But her
eyes had passed beyond him to the plain and the distant hills, and the
smile which had lingered in their depths vanished wholly.
CHAPTER III
THE SPARTAN'S SON
MRS. HURST believed herself alone, and for a long time she stood

motionless on the verandah watching the sky change from intense blue
to gold and from gold to crimson. Across the broad path a clump of
bushes threw cool shadows over the long grasses and offered a pleasant
resting-place, but she never looked in their direction. Nothing no
instinct warned her. And presently, just as the sun began to sink in an
apotheosis of fiery glory behind the hills, she turned with a proud,
almost challenging movement and re-entered the bungalow. Then the
grasses rustled and moved as though a breath of wind had passed over
them, and again all was still.
But a boy lay there with his face buried in his arms. He had been there
all the afternoon, his chin supported in the palm of his hand, watching
her. Not for a moment had his eyes left her face, and there was
something in their expression which was almost painful an intense,
unchildish understanding, at first full of tenderness and awe-struck
worship, and afterwards terrible by reason of its completeness. Nobody
could have said that he formed a "pretty picture," and there was no
denying that he was ugly. He had ain there like a grotesque little brown
fawn, and watched, the black, curly hair hanging in disorder over the
low forehead, the dark, penetrating eyes staring out from heavy,
overhanging eyebrows. The eyes were, indeed, the only possible points
of interest in a sallow little face, which was neither pleasing nor even
redeemed by the natural charm of youth. And yet it was expressive
enough. As he had watched, it had been as though a skilled but unseen
sculptor were at work, silently and scarcely perceptibly remodelling the
clay beneath his fingers.
At first, as the judge had cantered up the avenue, it had been a boy's
face which had peered through the long grasses not, as it has been said,
pleasing, but still young, with possibilities of childish humour lurking
behind the mask of weariness and ill-health. Then, as a woman had
come out on to the verandah, a fire had been kindled. It had burnt
brightly behind the ugly features and transformed them, making them
not beautiful but pathetic, and for the first time there had dawned that
expression of absolute understanding which afterwards was to become
terrible. The woman's voice had floated to him on the still air; he had
heard every word distinctly, and his eyes, fixed greedily on her

unconscious face, had seemed to drink them straight from her lips. And
then, suddenly the light had gone out. He had not moved, nor had great
change come over his expression. But the life