Her eyes sparkled.
"That gem of an Arab? May I, really? I always thought you were a man in a hundred; and now I know it! That's a bargain, then. Things have been deadly insipid the last two days. But I have something to live for now!"
Garth received her announcement with open dismay. He suspected Desmond's influence: and, in his zeal to dissuade her, ventured on a mild tone of authority, with disastrous results.
"Well, I shan't have a comfortable moment till the thing is safely over," he concluded unwisely: and she tossed an indignant head.
"Am I such a despicable horseman?" she demanded haughtily. "CaptainDesmond doesn't find me so, I assure you."
And indeed, after an hour of assiduous instruction, Desmond had frankly expressed his approval both of her aptness and daring.
When Lenox heard the news on Friday morning, he heartily wished he had decided on a second day's shooting.
Anxiety apart, the knowledge that the woman he loved could thus make a public exhibition of herself for the amusement of a very mixed crowd, set the fastidious, old-world temper of the man on edge. For all that he was in his place, well before the appointed time: and from the first crack of polo-stick on ball his eyes never left his wife's flushed face and lightly swaying figure.
The polo ground, occupying the centre of the glade, was ringed about by a crowd as varied and gay in colouring as a bed of mixed tulips in spring. Even the open tent, where the English spectators were gathered, showed a prevailing lightness and brightness of tint. On the farther side of the tent, the Depot band gave out a cheerful blare of sound; and a June sun beamed complacently over all.
For the first twenty minutes the serio-comic game went forward merrily: the women playing in desperate earnest; the men making broad farce out of their ludicrous handicap.
Quita, who had elected to play Diamond first and fourth, was restrained at the outset by the fact that she was handling a priceless pony. But, with the opening of the thirdchukkur, increasing self-confidence, coupled with the pace and keenness of Bathurst's 'Unlimited Loo,' fired her venturesome spirit: and she flung herself heart and soul into the intoxication of the game; half hoping that some sudden crash and fall might solve the problem of her life by the simple expedient of putting out the light.
More than once Desmond called out an unheeded warning. He saw that pony and rider alike were in danger of losing their heads; and Lenox, leaning forward in an anguish of suspense, followed her every movement with conflicting fury and admiration.
At last thechukkurdrew to an end.
Away by the farthest goal-posts a fine parody of a scrimmage was in progress, Desmond and Quita being 'on the ball.' The advantage was hers; and she made haste to secure it. Rising in the saddle, she swung her stick for an ambitious back-handed stroke, missed the ball, and smote 'Unlimited Loo,' with the full force of her arm, high up on the off hind-leg.
At this uncalled bolt from the blue, the sensitive animal,—who had never in all his days been chastised by a polo stick for doing his simple duty,—lost his head outright. His first bound snapped the curb chain; and taking the bit between his teeth he bolted across the green as if all the fiends in hell were after him. In vain Quita sat back, and put her whole light weight into her arms. Sheer terror had caught hold of him: and he headed blindly for the ring of natives, who broke away right and left, with shrill cries that gave the finishing touch to his terror.
And now no more than a stretch of shelving turf lay between him and the unfathomed lake. Towards it he fled at an undiminished pace: and Quita, sitting square and steady, with a rushing sound in her ears, foresaw that in less than five minutes her mad hope might be terribly fulfilled. For at the lake's edge the pony must needs swerve sharply, or come to a dead halt: and in either case, at their present rate of speed, she would be flung violently out of the saddle.
Desmond dared not follow, lest he make matters worse.
Maurice sprang up from his seat in the pavilion, and stood transfixed, helpless. "Nom de Dieu . . . que faire? Elle va mourir!" he muttered with shaking lips: and Elsie, child as she was, yearned over him with all the tenderness and pity of inherent motherhood.
Then the tall figure of Lenox broke away from the stunned crowd racing diagonally across the clear stretch between the pony and the lake.
The instant Quita missed her stroke he had risen to his feet; and his intent now was to reach a given spot simultaneously with the pony, and by the force of his added weight on the reins save the situation.
A shout of approval went up from soldiers and natives; and 'Unlimited Loo' fled faster. He passed the point Lenox was making for a bare hand's-length out of reach: but two strides landed him on a treacherous strip of thinly-crusted bog that encircles the lake, and he sank up to his knees in semi-liquid mud.
Quita, breathless and shaken, was jerked out of the saddle, and must have fallen, ignominiously, face downward in her Slough of Despond, but that Lenox,—reaching her in the nick of time—caught and crushed her in his arms.
"You're not hurt. Thank God, you're not hurt," he whispered unsteadily.
With a gasp of amazement that ended in a sob, she leaned her cheek against his coat; and the riotous music of their hearts seemed to fill the universe.
Then reality rushed in, and shattered the dream. For Garth, Maurice, andBathurst were hurrying towards them.
Quita felt her husband stiffen, and lifted her head.
"Thank you—thank you," she said with a twisted smile. "I think I can stand on my feet now."
In two strides he was clear of the mud, and had set her on firm earth. But she was still clinging to his arm when Garth came up, brimming with concern.
"I'm quite disappointingly all right," she assured him hastily, stung by a keen sense that her catastrophe had fallen headlong from impending tragedy to bathos. "Please bestow all your sympathy on Mr Bathurst, and Unlimited Loo!"
For a second Garth looked up at the man who stood beside her; but only for a second. For in the Scotchman's eye hate gleamed like a naked sword; and Garth had small taste for bared weapons of any kind.
"Ah, mon pauvre Michel!" Quita exclaimed, in a quick rush of tenderness, as her brother half ran to her, white and panting, both hands outstretched: and deserting Lenox, she flew to him, anathematising her own folly in a rapid flow of French. "Take me to my tent now," she concluded, linking her arm in his. "I still feel idiotically shaky, and I am certainly no loss to my side!—Mr Bathurst"—she turned in Jeff's direction—"please forgive me. I promise I'll never ask you to lend me a polo pony again!"
Bathurst,—who had rescued his treasure, and was feeling him all over with skilled hands,—shouted a cheery: "Don't mention it, Miss Maurice. Always glad to oblige a lady!"
And with a tired smile she turned back to Michael.
"Viens, mon cher," she said gently; and he led her away.
Conscious of Garth's eyes on her face, she could not trust herself to look again at Lenox, who had neither moved nor spoken since he set her on dry ground. But that one moment in his arms had solved her problem in a fashion that she dreamed not of: a fashion that still seemed past belief. She knew now that she had never lost him; and her heart sang a Jubilate Deo all the way to her tent. But she knew also that his pride equalled hers; that the first move was 'up to her'; and that now, at last, she might make it without fear of rebuff. But how—how?
Ten minutes later Maurice left her prostrate, in the twilight of her tent;—eau de cologne on her temples, and a chaos of mixed emotions at her heart.
"How the world seems made for each of us;How all we perceive and know in itTends to some moment's product,—thus,When the soul declares itself; to wit,By its fruit: the thing it does."—Browning.
Quita lacked courage to appear again in public till the dinner bugle sounded. Garth was her promised partner: and she found him awaiting her just outside her tent.
"My turn now, dear lady," he said, pressing her fingertips against his side, as she took his proffered arm. "It has been a blank afternoon for me; but in revenge, I mean to keep you all the evening."
"You are presumptuous, as always!" she answered with admirable lightness. "Your claim ends with dessert."
"Quite so. But you are generous; and I can trust the rest to you, since you know how much I want it."
She smiled, as in duty bound. But to-night the man's facile gallantry revolted her as it had never yet done. She wondered how she had endured it these many months.
The instant they entered the long tent her eyes sought and found the thing they craved: though the sight of Lenox in his accustomed place between the Desmonds reawakened her smouldering jealousy of Honor, and gave the lie to her amazing instant of revelation. But once during the meal she encountered her husband's eyes. It was as if he had put out a hand and touched her; and her partner's veiled love-making became a meaningless murmur at her ear. Yet the surface of her brain travelled mechanically along the beaten track of dinner-table talk: and Garth, finding her gentler and more serious than her wont, deemed his hour of triumph very near at hand. Direct encouragement, in the face of his hidden knowledge, had strengthened his conviction that for many weeks she had been stifling her true feelings; that one touch at the right moment would suffice to lift the veil, to bring her at last into his arms. Beyond that moment of mastery he did not choose to look. For to-night passion had elbowed prudence out of the field. He had claimed her for the evening; and he anticipated great things from the next two hours under the stars.
At these informal camp dinners men and women left the table together; only habitual card-players remaining behind to tempt fortune until the small hours. Quita's hope had been that Desmond might come to her aid. But he had made up a rubber of whist; and to her dismay, she saw Lenox and Honor depart without him. Garth, who also noted their movements, carefully led her round to the far side of a blazing bonfire, piled ten feet high on this last night of Arcadia; and with a suppressed sigh she resigned herself to an evening of comic songs and personalities; and decided that a headache must rescue her, if no other champion were forthcoming.
It was a clear night of stars. The moon had not yet risen; though a herald brightness gave news of her coming. No least whisper of wind stirred the tree-tops. Sun-baked fir branches crackled and snapped like fairy musketry; and many-hued flames,—rose and saffron, heliotrope and sea-green,—played hide-and-seek among them, flinging inverted shadows on faces nearest the blaze.
Human beings break into song round a bonfire as naturally as birds after a shower of rain, and for those who see in such a fire no mere holocaust of dead twigs, but the Red Flower of the Jungle, the symbol and spirit of wild life, this spontaneous minstrelsy has a charm peculiarly its own. A charm of the simplest, certainly; for at camp-fires the banjo reigns supreme; and the aptest songs are those that 'rip your very heartstrings out' and offer fine facilities for effervescing between the verses.
Already a remarkable assortment of these had challenged the winking stars; and Quita was encouraging the requisite headache, while Garth contemplated the suggestion of a stroll towards the lake, when Michael Maurice came up to them.
"Quita,chérie, they have sent me to ask if you will sing. I have my fiddle here for accompaniment."
She hesitated. A rare shyness, born of the afternoon's fiasco, was still upon her.
"Who sent you?" she asked, smiling up at him.
"Colonel Mayhew, and several others." He bent lower. "Tu es trop fatiguée apres ce vilain polo?"
"Non, ce n'est pas ça . . . mais . . ."
"Do, Miss Maurice, please, do," urged an enthusiastic young civilian on her left. "A woman's voice, especially yours, would be a rare treat after our promiscuous shouting."
And on her other side Garth, pressing closer, whispered his plea.
"Don't disappoint me. It is ages since I last heard you sing."
Without answering either, she touched her brother's arm. "Tune up,Michel," she said low and hurriedly. "I have thought of a song."
Garth murmured his thanks with unusualempressement. Her instant acquiescence had both moved and flattered him; and his hopes rode high. As a matter of fact, she had not even heard his request. She had simply obeyed an impulse, as in most crises of her life;—an impulse so peremptory that it seemed almost a command from Beyond.
"What song is it to be?" Maurice asked, when the tuning process was complete.
"Swinburne's 'Ask Nothing More.'"
He raised his eyebrows. "A man's song?"
"Yes. But you know I often sing it; and I want to . . . to-night."
"Qu'y a-t-il, petite soeur?" he asked, for her manner puzzled him.
"Rien . . . rien de tout. Commence."
And he played the soft chords, pregnant with pleading, that usher in the song.
A moment later, Lenox, leaning back in a canvas chair, sat upright, and took the cigar from his lips.
"A woman singing? Jove—it's Quita!" he added under his breath. Then he remained motionless, straining his eyes for a sight of her between the dancing flames.
Clear and unfaltering her voice soared into the night; and as the song swept on, through pleading to impassioned longing, the whole awakened heart of her took fire from the poet's faultless phrases; till, in the last verse, it spoke straightly and simply to her husband, as though they two stood alone in the interstellar spaces of the universe.
"I who have love, and no more,Give you but love of you, sweet;He that hath more, let him give;He that hath wings let him soar.Mine is the heart at your feet . . .Here that must love you . . . love you, to live!"
The last stupendous chords crashed into silence; and the fall of a charred twig sounded loud in the pause that followed. Then there came from the shadowy circle of listeners no clatter of hands and voices, but a low disjoined murmur;—the very attar of applause.
But by that time Quita was making her way blindly through the outskirts of the crowd into the blessed region of darkness and stars.
For, as the last words left her lips, the full apprehension of her act and its possible consequences submerged her in a red-hot wave of shame and self-consciousness; and before Garth had recovered himself sufficiently to rise and make the request that hovered on his lips, she was gone. For a space he sat still, lost in an amazement that swelled to exultation as the conviction grew in him that at last, after long and laudable repression, her heart had spoken, indirectly, yet unmistakably; that now, scandal or no scandal, he must make her altogether his.
And while he sat stunned to inaction by the vital issues at stake, Quita hurried on toward the temple, with no purpose in her going save to escape from the consciousness of human presence. She stood still at length, and wrung her hands together.
"Oh, but it was folly—worse than folly! He will only think or hateful,—theatrical. He will never understand."
Yet if, by miraculous chance, he did understand . . . what then? She held her breath and waited; till the night seemed alive with voices that laughed her to scorn.
The new-risen moon hung low as if caught and tangled among the tree-tops of the forest that broke up her golden disc in fantastic fashion. Away there by the bonfire some one else was singing now; a song with a boisterous chorus. Her mad impulse had simply been added to the mass of ineffectual things that form the groundwork of our rare successes.
Suddenly she started, and raised her head. The sound she desired yet dreaded was close at hand. He was coming to her. He must have understood. And because she needed all her courage to face him, she did it at once; for nothing saps courage like hesitation.
Then her heart stood still; a chill aura swept through her and she shivered. The dark figure nearing her was not Lenox. It was Garth.
But that all power of initiative seemed gone from her, she must have turned and fled. Instead she stood her ground, without motion or speech; and he, still misreading her, held out his arms.
"Quita . . . darling . . ." he began, his voice thick with passion.
But her name on his lips roused her like a pistol-shot.
"Go back . . . please go back," she cried imperatively. "I came away because I wanted . . . to be alone."
"But I thought . . ."
"I can't help what you thought! If you have any—respect for me at all, you will do what I ask."
"Of course. Only I shall see you again to-night. I must."
"No . . . no. Not to-night."
"To-morrow then?"
But she had already left him; and for his part, he must needs return the way he came,—frustrated, yet not enlightened; cursing, in no measured terms, the unfathomable ways of women. No doubt she was upset, unstrung by the knowledge of all that her confession implied; and woman-like, showed small regard for his consuming impatience to possess her. But to-morrow he would ride home with her. And after that—the Deluge!
Quita left alone again went forward with lagging feet, and a heart emptied of hope. Her own disappointment crowded out all thought of Garth's unusual behaviour; till renewed steps behind her suggested the astonishing possibility that he had dared to disregard her request, and followed her, in spite of all. The suggestion roused not fear, but anger, and the militant spirit of independence that circumstances had so fostered in her.
She knew now that she hated him, as we only hate those whom we have wronged. It was intolerable that he should persecute her against her wish; and she swung round sharply, with words of pitiless truth on her lips.
But the night seemed marked for the unexpected:—and now it was joy incredible that fettered her tongue and her feet, while her husband hastened forward, his face clearly visible in the growing light.
"I followed that fellow when he went after you," he said bluntly, anger smouldering in his tone. "And I saw him leave you. Did you send him away?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I didn't want him."
"Does that apply to me also?"
"No . . . please stay."
There fell a silence pregnant with things unutterable. Lenox came closer.
"What possessed you to sing that song,—in that way—Quita?"
It was the first time he had spoken her name, and she turned from him, pressing her fingers against flaming cheeks.
"Oh, I am burnt up with shame! I feel as if I had told all of them."
"Told them—what?"
"Mon Dieu! Will you compel me to say everything?"
She flung out both hands, and he caught and crushed them till she winced under the pressure. Then, holding her at arm's-length, he looked searchingly into her eyes.
And while they stood so—in this their first instant of real union, that dwarfed the years between to a watch in the night—each was aware of the other's answering heart; and in each, love burnt with so flame-like a quality that neither speech nor touch was needed to seal the intimacy of contact.
At length he drew her nearer.
"Does it frighten you now when I look right into you?" he asked, an odd vibration in his voice.
"No . . . no. I am only afraid you may not see deep enough."
He drew a great breath.
"Thank God for that. But tell me,—for I am still in the dark,—how on earth has such a miracle come to pass?"
Her low laugh had a ring of inexpressible content.
"Dearest, and blindest! Did it never occur to you that you could not have laid a surer trap to win me than by just keeping clear of me, and living in . . . that Mrs Desmond's pocket?"
He shook his head, smiling down at her. Her old subtle charm with this strange new tenderness superadded, was working like an elixir in his veins.
"But what does thehowof it matter, after all?" she went on, leaning closer, and speaking low and fervently. "Isn't it enough that I love you with all there is of me . . . Eldred; that I ask you to believe me, and to make me . . . your very wife. There: you have compelled me to say everything! Are you satisfied now?"
To such a question he could find no answer in words. But his silence was cardinal. He put an arm round her, straining her close, and with a sigh of sheer rapture she lifted her face to his.
Their eyes met. Then their lips; and Eldred Lenox entered into a knowledge that he dreamed not of. The whole soul of his wife came to him in that kiss; and for a long minute ecstacy held them.
Then he released her, slowly . . . reluctantly.
"Shall we sit out here?" he said. "The whole camp will soon be asleep; but I can't let you go yet."
She sank down, forthwith, upon the grassy slope, in which the fire of a June sun still lingered; and clasping her hands about her knees, looked up at him invitingly. By way of response he stretched himself full length, a little below her, resting on his elbow in such a position as afforded him a clear view of her profile, that gleamed, like a cameo against a background of deodars.
"Smoke," she said softly.
"No. I think not."
His tone had a touch of constraint, and a lone silence fell.
The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the enchantment of being alone in it together; and there was that in their hearts that made speech difficult.
They sat looking northward toward the moonlit hollow where the station camp clustered close to the forest's edge. Behind the camp—a mass of unbroken shadow—it climbed up and upward to the mystery of a sky, powdered with the gold-dust of faint stars, on which its jagged outline was printed black as ink. Beyond that again, one majestic snow-peak,—like a stainless soul rising out of a tomb,—gleamed in the light of an increasingly brilliant moon. The crowd round the bonfire had crumbled into a hundred insignificant seeming units; and the fire itself, no longer aspiring to the stars, glowed like an angry eye in the dusky face of the glade.
Presently Quita spoke.
"There is so endlessly much to say, that I don't know where to begin. And after all, I am utterly content just to feel that you are there; that I have really got you back at last."
"You have had me, body and soul, these five years," he answered simply. "It is I who have gained you, by some miracle of your womanhood that I shall never fathom."
"If you set it down to your own manhood, you might be nearer the mark. You are very much too humble, Eldred; and I love you for it,—always did."
"Always?"
"I verily believe so."
"Good God! I never misjudged you, did I? If you . . . caredthen, why ever did you leave me?"
"Because you gave me no time to take it in. But I am sure now that the germ was there. I think your . . . kisses must have waked it into life. That was why they upset me so. And when I came back, I meant to . . . Oh why should we rake it all up again? It hurts too much."
"But I must know everything now, Quita. You meant to tell me,—was that it?"
"Yes. Though I own it was rather late in the day. Then you sprang it upon me with that letter. I detest the man who wrote it, and I always shall. There was just enough of truth in it, and in your bitter reproaches, to make me feel the hopelessness of lame explanations. Besides, your anger frightened me, though I didn't show it; and I simply acted on a blind impulse to escape from the unknown things ahead; to get back to the love and work I could understand."
"My poor darling! What a blackguard I was to you!"
"Hush! You are not to say that."
"I will. It's true. But . . . didn't you care a great deal for the other chap?"
"I imagined I did. Girls can't always analyse new feelings of that sort. I can see now that it was chiefly mental sympathy between us, on my side at least. But I only discovered that when the real thing came—in a flash."
"When was that?" he asked on a note of eagerness.
"One May morning on the Kajiar road! I knew then that I must have cared always, without guessing it. But your coolness roused my pride; and I vowed that if you had wiped me out of your heart, I would die sooner than let you suspect my discovery. Yet all the while I longed for you to know it; and in the end, goaded by your blindness, and your astonishing want of conceit, I break my pride into a hundred little bits.Ai-je été assez femme?" she concluded with a whimsical smile.
One of her hands lay on the grass beside him. He covered it with his own.
"And was the amazing discovery responsible for the Garth episode?" His tone had a hint of anxiety.
"For the latter part of it, yes; though we have been friends all the winter. He is at least moderately intelligent; and an intelligent egoist is always interesting. Besides, companionship is the breath of life to me, you understand; and I seldom manage to make friends with women."
"The other kind of friendship is an edged tool."
"And therefore irresistible! It's like fencing with the buttons off the foils."
"You speak from much practical experience?"
"Yes. I have had my share of it. But please believe me, Eldred,"—she hesitated,—"I have been as loyal to you in word and deed, all these years, as if I had borne your name, and lived under your roof. In spite of my weakness for edged tools, I have never let any man tell me that he loved me since you told me so yourself, in the dark ages. And if a few have wanted to do so, I could hardly help that, could I?"
"No more than you could help breathing or sleeping," he answered with a slow strong pressure of her hand.
"I know I ought not to have let Major Garth see so much of me after I saw how it was with him, but—since it's the whole truth to-night—I confess your aloofness hurt me so, that I wanted to see if I could rouse you to a spark of feeling by hurting you back, and I chose the weapon readiest to my hand."
"You struck deep with it. Does the knowledge give you any satisfaction?"
"It fills my cup of shame to overflowing. Yet,—come to think of things, you did much the same without realising it."
"Which makes a vast difference, surely?"
"Not to me,mon ami. It is only God who judges by the intention; possibly because He never suffers from the action."
"Quita! That's irreverent!"
"Is it? I'm sorry if it sets your Scottish prickles on end! Are you . . . a very religious man, Eldred?"
"I believe in God," he answered simply.
A short silence followed the statement. Then Quita spoke.
"But you see, don't you, dear man, that I spoke truth. My pain was none the less sharp because you inflicted it unwittingly. It's one of the things people are apt to forget."
"Your pain? Before God I never dreamed that any act of mine could give you a minute's uneasiness; though Mrs Desmond . . ."
"Don't begin about Mrs Desmond, please!" She drew her hand away with a touch of impatience. "She is everything that is perfect, of course. But I hate her; and I believe I always shall."
Lenox turned on his elbow and looked up into her face.
"My dear . . . I can't let you speak so of my best friend. We owe her everything, you and I. You shall hear about it all one of these days. And apart from that, she is . . ."
"Yes, yes. I can see what she is, clearly enough. A superbly beautiful woman, outside and in, who possesses a good deal of influence over you. I can be just to her, you see, if I am . . . jealous."
"Jealous? Nonsense. The word is an insult to her, and to me."
She reddened under the reproof in his tone.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean it so. I am only afraid that after close intimacy with her you will find—your wife rather a poor thing by comparison. Just the 'eternal feminine' with all an artist's egoism, and more than the full complement of faults."
She spoke so simply, and with such transparent sincerity, that again he turned on her abruptly; his smouldering passion quickened to a flame.
"Quita . . . you dear woman . . . if I could only make you realise . . . !"
But long repression, and the knowledge that was poisoning his perfect hour, constrained him to reticence. He dared not let himself go.
"I think I do realise . . . now . . ." she whispered, stirred to the depths by the repressed intensity of his tone.
"Then don't belittle yourself any more. I forbid it. You understand?"
Again he heard the low laugh on which her soul seemed to ride. Then, leaning impulsively down to him, she put her bare arms round his shoulders from behind, and rested her cheek upon his hair.
The man held his breath, and remained very still, as if fearful lest word or movement should break the spell. After five years of unloved loneliness, this first spontaneous caress from his wife, with its delicate suggestion of intimacy, seemed to break down invisible barriers and set new life coursing in his veins.
"You forbid it?" she echoed, on a tremulous note of happiness. "And you have the right to. You, and no one else in all the world! You laughed at me in the old days—do you remember?—for clutching at my independence. Well, I have had my surfeit of it now; and I am desperately tired of standing alone . . . darling."
She paused before the unfamiliar word, unconsciously accentuating its effect, and Lenox, taking her two hands in one of his own, kissed them fervently. The moment he dreaded was upon him, and in the face of her impassioned tenderness he scarcely knew how to meet it.
"You should not stand alone one minute longer, if I could have my will," he said in a repressed voice.
She lifted her head and looked at him.
"And why can't you have your will? What are we going to do about it,Eldred?"
"Nothing in a hurry," he answered slowly. "We paid too dearly for that last time."
"But,mon cher. . . we have waited five whole years."
"That is just the difficulty. Five years of overwork and bitterness of spirit are not to be wiped out in a single hour; even such an hour as this. The man you married had not gone through the fire, and been badly burned in the process."
He paused. The irony of their reversed positions stung him to the quick, and she sat watching his face. The pallor of moonlight intensified its ruggedness, its deep indentations of cheek and brow. She began to be aware that the dropped stitches of life cannot always be picked up again at will; that there is no tyrant more pitiless than the Past; and a vague dread took hold of her, sealing her lips.
"We have got to look facts in the face to-night," Lenox went on with the doggedness of his race. "I'm a poor hand at discussing myself. It's an unprofitable subject. But I can't let you rush headlong into a reunion that may prove disastrous . . . for you. To-night's revelation has astounded me. It isn't easy to get one's bearings all at once; but before we take any further irretrievable step I am bound, in conscience, to tell you how the land lies. When you—repudiated me, I accepted your decision as final. I never dreamed of your coming back; and I acted accordingly. I took to work as I might have taken to drink, if I had been made that way; with the natural result that I . . . smoked a great deal too much, and slept too little. I saw no earthly reason to husband my strength, or my life; and in consequence, I have gained something of a reputation for tackling dangerous and difficult jobs. There's plenty more work of the kind ahead, with the forward policy in full swing; and one can't go back on all that has been done. You see that, don't you?"
"Yes. But couldn't I ever go with you?"
He smiled. "I believe you have grit enough! But it would be unheard of. Besides . . . there is another trouble, and a very serious one, blocking the way."
"You will tell me what it is?"
He did not answer at once. To blacken himself deliberately in the eyes of the woman he loves is no light ordeal for a man; and Lenox shrank from it with the peculiar sensitiveness of a nature at once humble and proud; the more so since to-night had brought home to him the heart-breaking truth that in "the devil's wedlock of evil and pain" one can never suffer alone.
But a great love had been given him, and a force stronger than his will impelled him to speak truth, even at the cost of losing it.
"Yes . . . I will tell you what it is," he said slowly, looking straight before him. "You have the right to know."
And in a few blunt words, unsoftened by excuse or justification, he told her, not the fact only, but his dread of its far-reaching effect.
"And it seems plain as daylight to me," he added bitterly, "that a man so cursed has no right to multiply misery by taking a woman into his life. That was the real reason why I kept clear of you latterly, and tried to thank God that you did not care."
He could not trust himself to look round at her face, but he felt her lean close to him again. For the unobtrusive strength of the man stood revealed in his confession; and it is woman's second nature to admire strength.
"Eldred, . . . my husband," she breathed, her voice breaking on the word. "How cruelly you must have suffered! And it was allmyfault."
There spoke the woman!—intent upon the individual; blind—wilfully or otherwise—to the larger issues involved.
"It wasnotyour fault," he answered with smothered vehemence. "And in any case, don't you see, it's no question of blame, but of consequences. And we dare not shut our eyes to them. For this business of marriage is a complicated affair. What's more, I believe the wrench of immediate separation, with the comparative freedom it involves, would come less hard on you in the long-run, than actual marriage with a man of my stamp.—Oh, you would find me a sorry bargain all round, I assure you," he concluded with a short, hard laugh. "And you will do well to think twice before you burn your boats for me!"
She slid lower down the slope, and laid one hand on his knee.
"I don't choose to think twice; and Ihaveburnt my boats as it is! Besides . . . you will be strong to conquer your trouble, now you know that all my happiness depends upon it." She paused for an appreciable moment. "We seem to have changed places since that long-ago morning, Eldred. It is I who want—to begin now—on any terms."
He put out his arm, and drew her very close to him.
"Feckless as ever!" he chided without severity. "You dismissed me on an impulse; and now you would take me back again with the same stupendous disregard for results. It is very evident you need some one to look after you, and teach you common-sense."
"I have told you alreadywhoit is that I need. Isn't that enough?"
The thrill in her low tone set all the man in him on fire. The influence of the hour was strong upon him.
"My God!" he muttered under his breath. "How can mere flesh and blood hold out against you?"
"Must you hold out against me—even after what I said?"
She nestled nearer, and stray tendrils of hair softly brushed his cheek. His lips whitened, but he set them close. Her touch, the perfume of her passion, had their exalting effect on him. Her weakness challenged his strength.
"Yes; I must," he answered quietly. "For your sake, my dear, and for my own self-respect. I am fighting this thing, you understand, with every weapon at my command. And until I see my way clear out on the other side, I will not—I dare not—take you back. Now come. It is high time you were asleep. We can't stay out here together all night."
"We have every right to . . . if we choose," she murmured, still rebellious.
"You forget, I am to teach you common-sense! There is to-morrow to be thought of, and your long ride back to Dalhousie."
A small shiver ran through her.
"I am afraid of to-morrow. I shall wake up and feel as if all this had been a dream. When shall I see you again . . . alone?"
"I will come up and call on you the day after!" he said, assuming a deliberate lightness in sheer self-defence. "Don't let me find Garth there, though; or I warn you I shall not be accountable for my behaviour!"
He rose on the words, and lifted her to her feet. They descended the slope in silence, walking a little apart, as if accentuating the fact that their reunion in this June night of enchantment and faint stars was an incomplete thing after all.
The moon was near her zenith; and, outside the formless dark of the forest, the great glade held her radiance as a goblet holds wine. Past the half-hidden temple of the holy lake they moved leisurely towards the cluster of tents that showed like a pallid excrescence at the forest's edge. To-night again, as on that earlier unforgettable day, they seemed the only living beings in a world of shadows and folded wings; and the decree of separation, coming at such a moment, put a severe strain on their self-control.
Fifty feet from Quita's tent they stood still.
She held out her hands. He pressed them closely between his own, that were strangely cold, and lifted them to his lips. Then she swayed forward unsteadily; and in an instant her face was hidden against his shoulder, her whole frame shaken with soundless sobs.
A woman in tears sets even a case-hardened man at a disadvantage; and Lenox, confronted with the phenomenon for the first time in his life, experienced a sense of helpless bewilderment, coupled with a vague conviction of his own brutality in having brought this happy-hearted wife of his to such a pass. He could not guess that after a week of ceaseless tension, played out with no little fortitude, this moment of unrestraint came as a pure relief to her overwrought nerves; a relief that verged upon ecstasy, since her husband's arm was round her, his hand mechanically stroking her hair.
"Hold up, hold up," he urged her gently. "This sort of thing will never do."
But control, once lost, is ill to regain. His words produced no visible affect, for in her momentary abandonment, she could not see his face; or guess at the struggle that was enacting behind its curtain of self-mastery. And now, to discomfiture was added an overpowering temptation to trample on all scruples of conscience; to take that which was his, without further let or hindrance; and put an end to their distracting situation once for all.
"Quita, . . . my darling wife . . . !" he broke out desperately. "For Heaven's sake pull yourself together. You are torturing me past endurance. Do you suppose it is an easy thing . . . to let you go?"
She raised her head at that, compressing her lips to still their tremor.
"Forgive me, . . . dearest. It was stupid of me to make a fuss. I will go now; and I promise not to behave like this again."
She deliberately drew his head down to her own; and they kissed, once. Then she left him, something hurriedly; and he stood transfixed looking after her, till the falling flap of the tent hid her from view.
There could be no thought of sleep for Eldred Lenox that night.
Till the moon slipped behind the pines, and the sentinel snow-peak in the North caught, and flung back, the first glimmer of dawn, he paced the empty glade from end to end. His mouth and throat were parched. His every nerve clamoured for the accustomed narcotic. But pipe and tobacco-pouch reposed in his breast-pocket—untouched.
"Ah, Love, but a day,And the world has changed!"—Browning.
An early return journey had been advocated by all experienced weather prophets of the mushroom colony of Kajiar. The great monsoon was already rolling up from the coast-line, and at any moment might break in thunder over the hills.
By eight of the morning tent-poles were swaying and falling on all sides: and the wide glade that had slept in silver when Quita parted from her husband, was astir from end to end. From every corner came the brisk insistent tapping of hammers on tent-pegs; the shrill neighing of ponies, and shriller chatter of coolies, bargaining for payment in advance; repudiating loads a few ounces overweight, and tragically prophesying death on the road if the illegal incubus were not removed.
Peremptory bugle-notes rang out upon the air; and mounted Englishmen, galloping hither and thither, scattered commands right and left in a series of deep-chested shouts.
Striking camp,—breaking up! It is the key-note of Anglo-Indian life.The chord of change unchanging sounds unceasingly in travel-weary ears.
But experience breeds proficiency; and the native servant is an adept in the art of so oiling the wheels that his master shall accomplish his appointed pilgrimage with the least possible damage to his much-tried nervous system.
Zyarulla, the indomitable, was a man of this order. In his opinion the Sahib had no concern whatever with the minor details of the march: an opinion with which the Sahib in question had not the smallest desire to quarrel. And on this particular morning Lenox had little attention to spare even for the sorting and bestowal of his priceless manuscripts,—so impatient was he to verify the dream-like happenings of the night; to look into his wife's eyes and feel the answering pressure of her hand. Swallowing a hasty cup of tea and a banana while he dressed, he hastened out to the place of their parting seven hours earlier.
Afar off he caught sight of her, standing, in habit andterai, on the open space where her tent had been, supervising the departure of her last load of luggage, and listening patiently to tales of coolie villainy and extortion poured forth by her Kashmiri ayah, on a high note of vituperation.
He checked his advance for the pure pleasure of watching her from a distance: and when the ayah,—denouncing as she ran,—hurried off in the wake of her refractory army, he went briskly forward and held out his hand.
She gave him her own without a word, and for a full minute of time they stood thus, hands and eyes inter-locked, oblivious of the noisy world about them, which, happily for them, was absorbed in matters of far greater moment.
"Can't I help you?" Lenox asked; and the simple question, with all that it implied of his renewed right of service, thrilled her like a caress.
"I wish you could. But I've got through most of it already."
"That's bad luck. Maurice not much use on these occasions, I suppose?"
"Not the smallest use, bless him! He says I have more talent for it than he! But call him Michael,cher ami, only to me."
"Michael then, by all means—Quita.—You can't think what it is to me to be able to call you by your name again," he added with sudden fervour.
She laughed and blushed deliciously.
"I noticed that you never called me by—the other one," she said, looking intently at a distant tree.
"Good Lord, no—I'd have bitten my tongue out sooner!"
He could not keep his eyes from her face; and as the blush died down its pallor smote him.
"Did you sleep at all?" he asked abruptly.
"Yes; for an hour or two. Did you?"
"Didn't even lie down."
"Oh,mon pauvre——!"
"Hush!—Don't trouble your dear head about that,"
"But I must. It breaks my heart——"
He laughed. "That's worse than ever! You've got to keep your heart intact—for me."
His eyes travelled from her face to her unadorned left hand. Hers followed them; and a half smile parted her lips.
"Where d'you keep them?" he asked under his breath.
Still smiling, she unfastened two buttons of her habit and vouchsafed him a glimpse of gold and diamonds. "They live on a chain—in there," she explained softly.
"You have worn them, then, after a fashion?"
"Yes: since I learnt to love—my bondage!"
"Did you really never wish that I might be conveniently wiped out, even in the early days?"
"No, never:—and I am thankful now that Icansay 'No' with perfect truth."
She drew in a long breath of ecstasy. The morning cheerfulness of the world at large, the music of her own pulses, and of the man's voice, vibrant with things inexpressible, filled her with a very oppression of happiness.
"Oh, Eldred," she breathed. "It still feels like a dream. Let's talk sheer prose just to make it feel real!—Are you and the Desmonds riding back with Colonel and Miss Mayhew?"
"Yes."
"So are we."
"And Garth?"
"I suppose so. But I wantyouto ride with me. Will you—darling?"
She added the entreaty of her eyes to the last word, and he hesitated.
"It will look a little odd, and sudden, of course. But I don't see whyI shouldn't."
"Nor do I. We can at least begin our courtship—can't we?—to prepare people for what is to come! Besides—if it isn't you, it will be Major Garth, and . . . I'm a little afraid of him after last night."
"Why? What the devil did he do?"
"Nothing—nothing definite. He only spoke rather strangely before I sent him away; and I don't want to be alone with him, if I can help it. You see, he . . . he cares for me, Eldred; and I am afraid he thinks now that I—care for him. Oh, I feel contemptuously wicked! But I have been rather desperate this week, all on account of you; and I really think it's your business to protect me from the consequences!"
"Of course it is my business, and my privilege to protect you," he answered fervently. Her confession of dependence was sweeter to him than honey in the honeycomb. "But you gave me an almighty snubbing the other day when I made a clumsy attempt at it."
"Make allowances,mon cher, and don't fail me now."
"Fail you?" He flashed a reproachful glance at her. "I hope I may never do that, while there's breath in my body! Trust me to be at your right hand when we start. Mrs Desmond will have wit enough to capture—your friend, if she sees that I want you."
"Why? Does she know all about it?"
"Just the bare facts. I told her myself."
"And he?"
"Certainly. They are one, those two, if ever man and woman achieved the miracle."
"Does that account for his flattering attentions to me since Chumba?"
"Quite possibly."
"But that wasn't fair play! He is such a grand fellow; and I was so proud of my small conquest!"
Her lighter mood was even more irresistible than her seriousness had been: but Lenox palled himself together.
"Tell him so, and you'll make your conquest at once, if you've not made it already! Hullo—there is the last breakfast bugle. Shall we go in together? If I am doomed to fall in love with you, I may as well set about it at once!"
Her answering look set a crown on him.
"Ah, my dear," she whispered. "In spite of all you said last night, I am happy beyond words."
"So am I," he answered simply. "Come."
From her own area of luggage-strewn ground, Honor Desmond,—carrying little Paul, whom she had insisted on bringing into camp,—looked after them as they went, her glad heart in her eyes; and Desmond, coming up from behind, took her lightly by the arm.
"Well, old lady," he asked. "Are you satisfied yet?"
"Abundantly."
"And am I to get my wife back again as a reward for distinguished services rendered?"
"I imagine so!" she answered, laughing happily. "Unless you would rather keep your grievance!—Now go on to breakfast, darling; and I'll follow when I have packed this priceless person into his dandy. Whatever happens, he and Parbutti must run no risk of getting drenched."
Breakfast was half through before Garth sauntered into the mess-tent: and Honor, who had watched for his coming, felt an unbidden pang of pity at sight of his blank face, when he beheld Quita sitting beside her husband, a bright spot of colour in either cheek, her eyes radiating a light that refused to be hidden under a bushel.
The unexpected blow roused all the devil in him. Man of prudence though he was, he could have murdered Lenox at that moment. But life rarely lends itself to melodrama: and instead he sat down at the far end of the table; and, for once in his life, ate a meal without being aware of its quality. His brain was busy reviewing the events of the previous day; putting two and two together, and trying not to see that they made four. A physical chill took him as he realised how narrowly he had escaped the ignominy of betraying the fact that he had counted on the consent of this proudest among women to the only proposals possible in the circumstances.
It was an awkward corner for James Garth; and in his chequered experience of awkward corners therôleof victim had rarely been his. Even the witness of his eyes did not carry conviction. By some means he must contrive to ride home with her, and learn from her lips the 'wherefore' of this astonishing change of front. He reflected that Lenox had littlefinesse, and anticipated small trouble in circumventing him.
But he reckoned without Honor Desmond, whose strategical skill came to her from a long line of distinguished soldiers, and whose sympathies had been touched to the quick by the grave contentment in Eldred Lenox's eyes when they lingered on his wife's face and figure.
Breakfast over, she accosted Garth straightway with a cheerful morning greeting: and from that moment, to the time of their departure, she took charge of him, gently yet irresistibly; keeping him well away from Quita's neighbourhood; and so isolating him that he could not desert her without open rudeness: proceedings that at once mystified and flattered him, as Honor herself was delightedly aware.
For a full hour the exodus of man and beast went noisily forward. But Colonel Mayhew's departure was delayed by his desire to see the Chumba contingent well under weigh before leaving: and by the time he announced his readiness to start, the last remaining units of the Great Camp were out of sight, trotting briskly along the shadowed road that winds up through the forest to Bukrota Mall.
"If we push along briskly we may get in with dry skins yet," he said, scanning the sky, where a vanguard of tattered cloud trailed aimlessly across the blue.
"And I was actually hoping we might get caught!" Quita confessed on a mock note of apology. "It would make such a thrillingfinale: and I delight in your Indian storms."
Colonel Mayhew laughed and shook his head.
"When you have seen and heard as many of them as I have, Miss Maurice, you will simply find them 'demnition damp and disagreeable,' like Mantalini's dead body! And even at the risk of disappointing you, I intend to make a bolt for it.—Come on, my contingent!"
Lenox was at his wife's right hand, as he had promised: and Garth had so far succumbed as to lift Mrs Desmond into her saddle.
"You are a practised hand at it!" she said, smiling down upon his obvious annoyance at the fate in store for him. "Why shouldn't you and I head the contingent? Some one must go first!"
There was nothing for it but to acquiesce; and to endure, as best he might, the torment of Quita's clear tones close behind, alternating with her husband's bass; both voices pitched too low to be articulate, Desmond followed with Mayhew, while Maurice and Elsie, and the customary string of coolies, brought up the rear.
For the first few miles splashes of sunlight gleamed and quivered on the rough pathway, on red-pine stems, and moss-coated rocks. But before half their journey was accomplished, it became evident that they were not to escape the opening storm of the great monsoon.
A shuddering wind set the dense pines above and below them swaying and moaning, a sound of strange and infinite melancholy. The sunlight went out like a snuffed candle; battalions of clouds, charged with electricity, rolled silently northward, obliterating all things; and an ochreous twilight settled down upon the forest. Save for the whispering of wind-tossed trees, all Nature seemed hushed, expectant, holding her breath.
The dusky stillness wrought upon the nerves of the riders, producing a vague, discomfortable sense of foreboding. Talk grew fitful; and was instinctively carried on in lowered tones.
"Push on a bit faster, Mrs Desmond. It would be as well to get out where the trees are thinner before the worst is upon us."
Colonel Mayhew's voice had an anxious note. He had weathered the opening storm of many monsoons; but his daughter's presence wakened in him a new fear of the thunderbolts of the gods.
Even as he spoke, a phosphorescent gleam sped through the trees, like a passing soul; and a threatening growl rumbled up from the South. It was the prelude. Two minutes later, rocks, stems, branches, and the minutest fir-needles that flickered against the grey, showed like ink-strokes on tarnished silver as a forked flash, leaped, quivering, from the heart of a blue-black cloud. The report that followed, after scarce five seconds of stillness, was smart, crisp, short as a revolver-shot; and long before a hundred peaks had made an end of flinging back the sound, a second flash and crash—in swifter succession—smote the eyes and ears of the riders, who now urged their horses to a canter,saises, coolies, and three devoted dogs panting zealously behind them.
Their hope was to gain shelter in the Government woodsheds, two miles ahead, before the inevitable downpour came to drench their bodies and impede their progress. But fate was in a merciless mood on that June morning.
The third flash split up the sky as a stone splits a window pane. Pulsating streaks of fire, red, green, and blue, radiated in all directions, half-blinding them with the brazen glare. And before it faded, a crackling detonation seemed to rip the very heavens from marge to marge.
As yet no rain had fallen: and for ten deafening minutes the little party rode in silence through an inferno of reiterate light and sound. Once or twice Quita glanced at her husband, cantering beside her, and wondered vaguely when she would hear him speak again; wondered, too, at her own matter-of-fact acceptance of that which a week ago had appeared impossible. But the storm stunned heart and brain, as well as eye and ear. Everything human,—life, death, love itself,—seemed trivial in face of this stupendous battle of the elements. Above them, and on all sides of them, the lightning leaped and darted, like a live thing seeking its prey. It was as if the sombre heavens were bringing forth brood upon brood of fiery serpents, and greeting the birth of each with ear-splitting peals of Titanic laughter.
Then came the rain:—not in mere drops, but in a solid sheet of water, blinding, drenching, stupefying. At the same instant the fury of the storm culminated in a blaze of white light that seemed to spring upon them from all sides at once, with a shout as of fiends let loose; and, through the echoing after-roll of thunder, came a sharper, harsher sound,—the death note of a mighty tree.
Lenox and his wife faced one another involuntarily with startled looks.
"How appalling!—What was it?" she asked between two breaths.
"A pine struck somewhere up thekhud. Not frightened, are you, lass?" he added with tender concern. "It's the very thing you wanted. You've got your thrilling finale with a vengeance!"
A clatter of breaking branches made him look up. "Great God!" he cried, on a note of alarm. "Back your pony sharp. It's coming down on the top of us!"
And as she obeyed, with the swift instinct of fear, Desmond's voice reached him through the rush of the rain.
"Look out for yourself, Lenox! She's safe enough."
But before the words were out, the upper half of a great deodar crashed down upon the narrow path, and a long branch struck the Galloway's shoulder with tremendous force. For an instant Shaitan staggered under the blow:—then horse, and man, and tree were hurled headlong down the steep, rain-lashed ravine.
A great cry broke from Quita: and in that cry, and the white, rigid repression that followed it, Garth had his answer to the question he had never asked.
For the hundredth part of a second all seven sat paralysed by the hideous thing that had happened before their eyes, and by the hopeless nature of the drop down which Lenox had disappeared:—wiped out, as though he had never been.
Then Desmond's practical vigour asserted itself, and he sprang lightly to the ground.
"Here, take hold of the Demon, some one!"
And it was Quita who leant forward and grasped the bridle with a steady hand. Her action gave him the chance he wanted of getting close enough to speak a few words of encouragement in a hurried undertone.
"Don't lose heart. It's an ugly drop. But he fell clear of the tree; and thesekhudsare the most chancy things imaginable. I'm off after him, as fast as hands and feet can take me."
Speech was beyond her; but she thanked him with her eyes.
A moment later he was kneeling in the mud, rapidly unfastening boots and gaiters; for one downward glance had convinced him that it would be a matter of climbing, and difficult climbing at that.
By now Colonel Mayhew had dismounted also; and as Desmond stood upright—in socks and breeches—and flung aside his dripping helmet, the older man drew him to the path's edge.
"Look here, my dear chap," he mid, when they were out of earshot of the group, who sat spellbound in the grip of tragedy, "are you justified in running a serious risk, probably—to no purpose? For I'm afraid poor Lenox hasn't a ghost of a chance. You're a married man, remember; and it looks to me uncommonly like madness to attempt thatkhudin such weather. It'll be a case of holding on with your eyelids; and there's a coolie track not far from here, that leads down to the valley."
Desmond's month took the dogged line that hissowarsknew and loved; and a combatant light flashed in his eyes.
"Your blood's cooler than mine, sir," he answered quietly. "But I have a fairly steady head; and my wife would be the last person in the world to hold me back, thank God. In such cases five or ten minutes may mean just the difference between life . . . and death. If you will get together some sort of a stretcher—a good strong one—and come on post-haste down the coolie track, I'll be grateful. I suppose we haven't a drop of brandy among us?—bad luck to it!"
"There's a provisionkilteron one of the coolies. Shall we have it turned out, on the chance?"
"Good Lord, yes. Get it done at once, please." Then he turned toGarth. "I say, Major, gallop on, will you, and catch up Dr O'Malley.I saw him start with the last contingent. They can't be more than twomiles ahead."
And as Garth obeyed the peremptory request, the devil himself must have whispered to his heart the despicable suggestion that possibly Fate had struck a blow in his favour after all.
Colonel Mayhew, meanwhile, rummaging feverishly in the depths of thekilterwith scant hope of success, bestrewed the wet earth on all sides of him with canned fruits, sardines, greasy jharrons, and crumpled wads of newspaper: till at length, like Hope out of Pandora's casket, there came forth from an unsuspicious-looking bundle of clothes half a bottle of brandy, stowed carefully away by the kitmutgar, for private ends best known to himself.
Desmond, who stood by fuming with impatience to be gone, laid eager hands on it.
"Lord, what a miracle! Pity there's no flask handy," he muttered, buttoning his coat, and thrusting the unwieldly impediment into a side-pocket. Then, catching sight of a horn tumbler among thedébris, he picked it up, and drew out the bottle.
"Better leave you some for the women,—if you can get 'em to drink it diluted with a trifle of rain!—There now, I'm off. For God's sake, Colonel, look sharp after me."
Without waiting for an answer, he swung round on his heel, and for the first time looked at his wife, whose eyes had never left him since he sprang from the saddle. Now, as his own challenged them, they gave him in full the approval he craved; and, for the space of a few seconds, their spirits clung together in an embrace more intimate than any communion of the lips.
Then Theo Desmond wrenched himself away.
Stepping deliberately backward, over a short, sheer drop, he let himself down by his hands on to a tumbled mass of boulders, and began his perilous descent in earnest. Whereupon Brutus,—who stood at thekhud'sedge peering into space, ears and tail dumbly demanding explanation,—lunged forward, as if to follow so practical a lead; and only Colonel Mayhew's prompt clutch at his collar saved him from joining the master who had so basely deserted him. Both he and Desmond's distracted Aberdeen were handed over to asais; and after much ineffectual choking and gurgling, subsided into apathetic despair.
Already half a dozen natives were busy devising an impromptu stretcher from fir branches, ropes, and strips of coolie blanket,—drenched and evil-smelling, yet acceptable enough; while Quita sat watching its construction in a dazed stillness; her eyes dry and wide; her artist's brain picturing too vividly that which lay awaiting it down there in the pitiless rain, that seemed to add a refinement of cruelty to the horse-play of lightning and thunder.
But Colonel Mayhew, unaware of the morning's double tragedy, had eyes only for his daughter; and, in his first free moment, hurried to her side. She had hidden her face, and was crying softly, to Michael's open dismay. Once or twice he had even laid a hand on her, unheeded, and unrebuked. But her father's touch roused her, and she took convulsive hold of him. She was still little more than a child; and this was her first face-to-face encounter with the brutality of God's universe.