The Vow of Silence

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1920 Original Publisher: Cassell Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: You have only just arrived in India, I understand ? Good luck to you, my boy; stick to your work. It's well worth it. And then Harold Williams was swallowed up in the crowd. He felt lost, forlorn; nowhere could he see the Cartmells or Miss Stopford, and he allowed himself to be shoved through a doorway into a corridor that was thickly carpeted and lined with flowers in pots. He stood there, humble and helpless, while from within the big room came the sound of singing. The notes thrilled through the scented air, and the melody mounted to his brain with the perfume of the flowers, and the light-hearted gaiety of the couples and groups that passed him, all so regardless of anyone but themselves -- a world of which he knew nothing, of which, he told himself defiantly, he wished to know nothing; he would almost rather be down by the river with the fakir and the crocodiles, and the cremators of the heathen dead, who at least lived in ignorance of their pitiable condition, than mingle in friendship with these so-called Christians, this heedless irresponsible throng. He edged along the corridor, caught sight ofan alcove that suggested refuge and solitude, dimly lit as it was by a lamp smothered in foliage, and he was about to plunge into the recess when he discovered that it was already occupied. A man and a woman sprang to their feet as though annoyed and surprised at the intrusion. Oh! I beg your pardon, he exclaimed, in flurried apology. All right, we were just going. The man, who was young, with bold features and a dark moustache, pushed quickly past him, and was fol...