The Daughter of Brahma | Page 8

who attacked a cobra that it found in my room. It hadn't a chance, and was killed for its daring, but I respected the little animal. I can't respect my son. I know I am hurting you. I am sorry. You say I am cruel, but it is life that is cruel, not I. But we have had enough of theorising. I cannot convince you or you me. Our theories are our characters, and we cannot change either the one or the other, especially at our time of life. And now I want your help."
The judge bowed without speaking.
"David must go to a school in England. As I have said, I do not want to accompany him, and I have no one to help me in my choice. My brother is an Etonian, and would want him to follow in his steps; but that is out of the question. All our family have been at Eton, and David would suffer in the comparison. Besides, he is not strong enough. He must go to some private place where there will be some maternal soul to mother him. Do you know of anything suitable?"
"Do you take me for one of the 'unfit'?" the judge asked, with a wry smile. "As it happens, I am from Winchester."
"I know. Any one can see that. I only thought, in your wider experience--"
"I have a brother who interests himself in educational matters. He might advise me. Shall I write to him?"
"I should be immensely grateful. I want the matter decided as soon as possible. Mrs. Chichester is taking her youngest daughter, Diana, to England after Christmas, and has promised to let David accompany her. He will be in good hands. In the holidays he will stay with my brother. I should have preferred it to be otherwise, but their meeting is inevitable. You will really help me?"
"I will do all I can." He was silent a moment. "And afterwards?"
"You mean when he has left school? That is something which only time can decide. His lameness excludes an army career; he is not clever enough for either the Indian Civil or any of the other services. The choice in our family is limited. Perhaps he will have developed some harmless hobby and end as a country gentleman. He will have money enough. You see, I am conscious of my responsibility. But we have been serious long enough, and you haven't even had your tea. I have been too absorbed in myself to be hospitable." She turned towards the neglected tea-table, but he held but his hand.
"Don't bother--I mean not about me. I don't want anything. I only came to see you, and now I must be off. I have any amount of work and--"
She looked up at him and smiled, and he stopped short. This time the smile was in her eyes, and the change lent her face a startling fascination. No man or woman had ever seen it without feeling that, in some mysterious way, she had laid her hand on an innermost and unsuspected chord in their being and consciously played upon it. The judge was no exception. He crimsoned like a boy.
"It is unsafe to trust even one's best friend," she said. "I have shown you myself and I have made you hate me."
It was not the first time she had used the word in their conversation together,and she did not use it lightly.
The judge shook his head.
"I couldn't if I tried," he answered. "You know I couldn't."
"And yet you are the only marriageable man on the station who hasn't done me the honour to suggest that I should become his wife!" she retorted.
They looked at each other and laughed, and the tension was gone. The judge's features resumed their normal expression of bluff good-nature.
"My 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