The Daughter of Brahma | Page 9

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 had gone. It had been as though the sculptor had swiftly cast his work in bronze and left it there without regard for the worth or beauty of his creation. Only the eyes had betrayed that the boy still listened. They had never flinched nor left the stern, white face opposite them, and in their piercing blackness there had been a dumb, bewildered agony.
But he had lain quite still until Mrs. Hurst had gone back into her room, and then he had fallen silently forward on his face. He did not cry only every now and then a tremor passed through him, so convulsive and violent that it shook the frail little body like a vessel in the teeth of a terrific storm. Even that was not for long. Presently horse's hoofs sounded once more on the gravelled avenue and he struggled to his feet. His eyes were dry, but what little childishness there had been in his face was gone stamped out and it was a tired old man that stumbled out from amidst the bushes. A girl, mounted on