"Yes, I did." Grange's voice was deep and savage. He glowered down upon him in rising fury. "It was to escape you."
Nick's eyes flamed back like the eyes of a crouching beast. He uttereda sudden, dreadful laugh. "Yes—to escape me," he said, "to escape me!And it has fallen to me to deliver her from her chivalrous protector.If you look all round that, you may see something funny in it."
"Funny!" burst forth Grange, letting himself go at last. "It's what you have been playing for all along, you infernal mountebank! But you have overreached yourself this time. For that very reason I will never give her up."
He swung past Nick with the words, goaded past endurance, desperately aware that he could not trust himself within arm's length of that gibing, devilish countenance.
He reached the door and seized the handle, wrenched furiously for a few seconds, then flung violently round.
"Ratcliffe," he exclaimed, "for your own sake I advise you not to keep me here!"
But Nick had remained with his face to the fire. He did not so much as glance over his shoulder. He had suddenly grown intensely quiet. "I haven't quite done with you," he said. "There is just one thing more I have to say."
Grange was already striding back like an enraged bull, but something in the voice or attitude of the man who leaned against the mantelpiece without troubling to face him, brought him up short.
Against his will he halted. "Well?" he demanded.
"It's only this," said Nick. "You know as well as I do that I possess the means to prevent your marriage to Muriel Roscoe, and I shall certainly use that means unless you give her up of your own accord. You see what it would involve, don't you? The sacrifice of your precious honour—and not yours only."
He paused as if to allow full vent to Grange's anger, but still he did not change his position.
"You damned cur!" said Grange, his voice hoarse with concentrated passion.
Nick took up his tale as if he had not heard. "But, on the other hand, if you will write and set her free now, at once—I don't care how you do it; you can tell any likely lie that occurs to you—I on my part will swear to you that I will give her up entirely, that I will never plague her again, will never write to her or attempt in any way to influence her life, unless she on her own initiative makes it quite clear that she desires me to do so."
He ceased, and there fell a dead silence, broken only by the lashing rain upon the windows and the long, deep roar of the sea. He seemed to be listening to them with bent head, but in reality he heard nothing at all. He had made the final sacrifice for the sake of the woman he loved. To secure her happiness, her peace of mind, he had turned his face to the desert, at last, and into it he would go, empty, beaten, crippled, to return no more for ever.
Across the lengthening silence Grange's voice came to him. There was a certain hesitation in it as though he were not altogether sure of his ground.
"I am to take your word for all that?"
Nick turned swiftly round. "You can do as you choose. I have nothing else to offer you."
Grange abandoned the point abruptly, feeling as a man who has lost his footing in a steep place and is powerless to climb back. Perhaps even he was vaguely conscious of something colossal hidden away behind that baffling, wrinkled mask.
"Very well," he said, with that dogged dignity in which Englishmen clothe themselves in the face of defeat. "Then you will take my word to set her free."
"To-night?" said Nick.
"To-night."
There was another pause. Then Nick crossed to the door and unlocked it.
"I will take your word," he said.
A few seconds later, when Grange had gone, he softly shut and locked the door once more, and returned to his chair before the fire. Great gusts of rain were being flung against the window-panes. The wind howled near and far with a fury that seemed to set the walls vibrating. Now and then dense puffs of smoke blew out across the hearth into the room, and the atmosphere grew thick and stifling.
But Nick did not seem aware of these things. He sat on unheeding in the midst of his dust and ashes while the storm raged relentlessly above his head.
With the morning there came a lull in the tempest though the great waves that spent themselves upon the shore seemed scarcely less mountainous than when they rode before the full force of the storm.
In Daisy Musgrave's cottage above the beach, a woman with a white, jaded face sat by the window writing. A foreign envelope with an Indian stamp lay on the table beside her. It had not been opened; and once, glancing up, she pushed it slightly from her with a nervous, impatient movement. Now and then she sat with her head upon her hand thinking, and each time she emerged from her reverie it was to throw a startled look towards the sea as though its ceaseless roar unnerved her.
Nevertheless, at sight of a big, loosely-slung figure walking slowly up the flagged path, a quick smile flashed into her face, making it instantly beautiful. She half rose from her chair, and then dropped back again, still faintly smiling, while the light which only one man's coming can kindle upon any woman's face shone upon hers, erasing all weariness and bitterness while it lingered.
At the opening of the door she turned without rising. "So you have come after all! But I knew you would. Sit down a minute and wait while I finish this tiresome letter. I have just done."
She was already scribbling last words as fast as her pen would move, and her visitor waited for her without a word.
In a few minutes she turned to him again. "I have been writing a note to Muriel, explaining things a little. She doesn't yet know that I am here; but it would be no good for her to join me, for I am only packing. I shall leave as soon as I can get away. And she too is going almost at once to Mrs. Langdale, I believe. So we shall probably not meet again at present. You will be seeing her this afternoon. Will you give it to her?"
She held the letter out to him, but he made no move to take it. His face was very pale, more sternly miserable than she had ever seen it. "I think you had better post it," he said.
She rose and looked at him attentively. "Why, what's the matter,Blake?" she said.
He did not answer, and she went on immediately, still with her eyes steadily uplifted.
"Do you know, Blake, I have been thinking all night, and I have made up my mind to have done with all this foolish sentimentality finally and for ever. From to-day forward I enter upon the prosaic, middle-aged stage. I was upset yesterday at the thought of losing you so soon. It's been a lovely summer, hasn't it?" She stifled a sigh half uttered. "Well, it's over. You have to go back to India, and we must just make the best of it."
He made a sharp movement, but said nothing. The next moment he dropped down heavily into a chair and sat bowed, his head in his hands.
Daisy stood looking down at him, and slowly her expression changed. A very tender look came into her eyes, a look that made her seem older and at the same time more womanly. Very quietly she sat down on the arm of his chair and laid her hand upon him, gently rubbing it to and fro.
"My own boy, don't fret, don't fret!" she said. "You will be happier by-and-by. I am sure of it."
He took the little hand from his shoulder, and held it against his eyes. At last after several seconds of silence he spoke.
"Daisy, I have broken my engagement."
Daisy gave a great start. A deep glow overspread her face, but it faded very swiftly, leaving her white to the lips. "My dear Blake, why?" she whispered.
He answered her with his head down. "It was Nick Ratcliffe's doing. He made me."
"Made you, Blake! What can you mean?"
Sullenly Grange made answer. "He had got the whip-hand, and I couldn't help myself. He saw us on the shore together yesterday afternoon, made up his mind then and there that I was no suitable partner for Muriel, got me to go and dine with him, and told me so."
"But Blake, how absurd!" Daisy spoke with a palpable effort. "How—how utterly unreasonable! What made you give in to him?"
Grange would not tell her. "I shouldn't have done so," he said moodily, "if he hadn't given his word that he would never pester Muriel again. She's well rid of me anyhow. He was right there. She will probably see it in the same light."
"What did you say to her?" questioned Daisy.
"Oh, it doesn't matter, does it? I didn't see her. I wrote. I didn't tell her anything that it was unnecessary for her to know. In fact I didn't give her any particular reason at all. She'll think me an infernal cad. And so I am."
"You are not, Blake!" she declared vehemently. "You are not!"
He was silent, still tightly clasping her hand.
After a pause, she made a gentle movement to withdraw it; but at that he turned with a sudden mastery and thrust his arms about her. "Daisy," he broke out passionately, "I can't do without you! I can't! I can't! I've tried,—Heaven knows how I've tried! But it can't be done. It was madness ever to attempt to separate us. We were bound to come together again. I have been drifting towards you always, always, even when I wasn't thinking of you."
Fiercely the hot words rushed out. He was holding her fast, though had she made the smallest effort to free herself he would have let her go.
But Daisy sat quite still, neither yielding nor resisting. Only at his last words her lips quivered in a smile of tenderest ridicule. "I know, my poor old Blake," she said, "like a good ship without a rudder—caught in a strong current."
"And it has been the same with you," he insisted. "You have always wanted me more than—"
He did not finish, for her hand was on his lips, restraining him. "You mustn't say it, dear. You mustn't say it. It hurts us both too much. There! Let me go! It does no good, you know. It's all so vain and futile—now." Her voice trembled suddenly, and she ceased to speak.
He caught her hand away, looking straight up at her with that new-born mastery of his that made him so infinitely hard to resist.
"If it is quite vain," he said, "then tell me to go,—and I will."
She tried to meet his eyes, but found she could not. "I—shall have to, Blake," she said in a whisper.
"I am waiting," he told her doggedly.
But she could not say the word. She turned her face away and sat silent.
He waited with absolute patience for minutes. Then at last very gently he took his arms away from her and stood up.
"I am going back to the inn," he said. "And I shall wait there till to-morrow morning for your answer. If you send me away, I shall go without seeing you again. But if—if you decide otherwise,"—he lowered his voice as if he could not wholly trust it—"then I shall apply at once for leave to resign. And—Daisy—we will go to the New World together, and make up there for all the happiness we have missed in the Old."
He ended almost under his breath, and she seemed to hear his heart beat through the words. It was almost too much for her even then. But she held herself back, for there was that in her woman's soul that clamoured to be heard—the patter of tiny feet that had never ceased to echo there, the high chirrup of a baby's voice, the vision of a toddling child with eager arms outstretched.
And so she held her peace and let him go, though the struggle within her left her physically weak and cold, and she did not dare to raise her eyes lest he should surprise the love-light in them once again.
It had come to this at last then—the final dividing of the ways, the definite choice between good and evil. And she knew in her heart what that choice would be, knew it even as the sound of the closing door reached her consciousness, knew it as she strained her ears to catch the fall of his feet upon the flagged path, knew it in every nerve and fibre of her being as she sprang to the window for a last glimpse of the man who had loved her all her life long, and now at last had won her for himself.
Slowly she turned round once more to the writing-table. The unopened letter caught her eye. She picked it up with a set face, looked at it closely for a few moments, and then deliberately tore it into tiny fragments.
A little later she went to her own room. From a lavender-scented drawer she took an envelope, and shook its contents into her hand. Only a tiny unmounted photograph of a laughing baby, and a ringlet of baby hair!
Her face quivered as she looked at them. They had been her dearest treasures. Passionately she pressed them to her trembling lips, but she shed no tears. And when she returned to the sitting-room there was no faltering in her step.
She poked the fire into a blaze, and, kneeling, dropped her treasures into its midst. A moment's torture showed in her eyes, and passed.
She had chosen.
During the whole of that day Muriel awaited in restless expectancy the coming of herfiancé. She had not heard from him for nearly a week, and she had not written in the interval for the simple reason that she lacked his address. But every day she had expected him to pay his promised visit of farewell.
It was hard work waiting for him. If she could have written, she would have done so days before in such a fashion as to cause him almost certainly to abandon his intention of seeing her. For her mind was made up at last after her long torture of indecision. Dr. Jim's vigorous speaking had done its work, and she knew that her only possible course lay in putting an end to her engagement.
She had always liked Blake Grange. She knew that she always would like him. But emphatically she did not love him, and she knew now with the sure intuition which all women develop sooner or later that he had never loved her. He had proposed to her upon a mere chivalrous impulse, and she was convinced that he would not wish to quarrel with her for releasing him.
Yet she dreaded the interview, even though she was quite sure that he would not lose his self-control and wax violent, as had Nick on that terrible night at Simla. She was almost morbidly afraid of hurting his feelings.
Of Nick she rigidly refused to think at all, though it was no easy matter to exclude him from her thoughts, for he always seemed to be clamouring for admittance. But she could not help wondering if, when Blake had gone at last and she was free, she would be very greatly afraid.
She was sitting alone in her room that afternoon, watching the scudding rain-clouds, when Olga brought her two letters.
"Both from Brethaven," she said, "but neither from Nick. I wonder if he is at Redlands. I hope he will come over here if he is."
Muriel did not echo the hope. She knew the handwriting upon both the envelopes, and she opened Daisy's first. It did not take long to read. It simply contained a brief explanation of her presence at Brethaven, which was due to an engagement having fallen through, mentioned Blake as being on the point of departure, and wound up with the hope that Muriel would not in any way alter her plans for her benefit as she was only at the cottage for a few days to pack her possessions and she did not suppose that she would care to be with her while this was going on.
There was no reference to any future meeting, and Muriel gravely put the letter away in thoughtful silence. She had no clue whatever to the slackening of their friendship, but she could not fail to note with pain how far asunder they had drifted.
She turned to Grange's letter with a faint wonder as to why he should have troubled himself to write when he was so short a distance from her.
It contained but a few sentences; she read them with widening eyes.
"Fate or the devil has been too strong for me, and I am compelled to break my word to you. I have no excuse to offer, except that my hand has been forced. Perhaps in the end it will be better for you, but I would have stood by had it been possible. And even now I would not desert you if I did not positively know that you were safe—that the thing you feared has ceased to exist.
"Muriel, I have broken my oath, and I can hardly ask your forgiveness. I only beg you to believe that it was not by my own choice. I was fiendishly driven to it against my will. I came to this place to say good-bye, but I shall leave to-morrow without seeing you unless you should wish otherwise.
"B. Grange."
She reached the end of the letter and sat quite still, staring at the open page.
She was free, that was her first thought, free by no effort of her own. The explanation she had dreaded had become unnecessary. She would not even have to face the ordeal of a meeting. She drew a long breath of relief.
And then swift as a poisoned arrow came another thought,—a stabbing, intolerable suspicion. Why had he thus set her free? How had his hand been forced? By what means had he been fiendishly driven?
She read the letter through again, and suddenly her heart began to throb thick and hard, so that she gasped for breath. This was Nick's doing. She was as sure of it as if those brief, bitter sentences had definitely told her so. Nick was the motive power that had compelled Grange to this action. How he had done it, she could not even vaguely surmise. But that he had in some malevolent fashion come between them she did not for an instant doubt.
And wherefore? She put her hand to her throat, feeling suffocated, as the memory of that last interview with him on the shore raced with every fiery detail through her brain. He had marked her down for himself, long, long ago, and whatever Dr. Jim might say, he had never abandoned the pursuit. He meant to capture her at last. She might flee, but he was following, tireless, fleet, determined. Presently he would swoop like an eagle upon his prey, and she would be utterly at his mercy. He had beaten Grange, and there was no one left to help her.
"Oh, Muriel,"—it was Olga's voice from the window—"come here, quick, quick! I can see a hawk."
She started as one starts from a horrible dream, and looked round with dazed eyes.
"It's hovering!" cried Olga excitedly. "It's hovering! There! Now it has struck!"
"And something is dead," said Muriel, in a voiceless whisper.
The child turned round, saw something unusual in her friend's face, and went impetuously to her.
"Muriel, darling, you look so strange. Is anything the matter?"
Muriel put an arm around her. "No, nothing," she said. "Olga, will it surprise you very much to hear that I am not going to marry Captain Grange after all?"
"No, dear," said Olga. "I never somehow thought you would, and I didn't want you to either."
"Why not?" Muriel looked up in some surprise. "I thought you liked him."
"Oh, yes, of course I do," said Olga. "But he isn't half the man Nick is, even though he is a V.C. Oh, Muriel, I wish,—I do wish—you would marry Nick. Perhaps you will now."
But at that Muriel cried out sharply and sprang to her feet, almost thrusting Olga from her.
"No, never!" she exclaimed, "Never,—never,—never!" Then, seeing Olga's hurt face, "Oh, forgive me, dear! I didn't mean to be unkind. But please don't ever dream of such a thing again. It—it's impossible—quite. Ah, there is the gong for tea. Let us go down."
They went down hand in hand. But Olga was very quiet for the rest of the evening; and she did not cling to Muriel as usual when she said good-night.
It was growing late on that same evening when to Daisy, packing in her room with feverish haste, a message was brought that Captain Ratcliffe was waiting, and desired to see her.
Her first impulse was to excuse herself from the interview, for she and Nick had never stood upon ceremony; but a very brief consideration decided her to see him. Since he had come at an unusual hour, it seemed probable that he had some special object in view, and if that were so, she would find it hard to turn him from his purpose. But she resolved to make the interview as brief as possible. She had no place for Nick in her life just then.
She entered the little parlour with a certain impetuosity, that was not wholly spontaneous. "My dear Nick," she said, as she did so, "I can give you exactly five minutes, not one second more, for I am frightfully busy packing up my things to leave to-morrow."
He came swiftly to meet her, so swiftly that she was for the moment deceived, and fancied that he was about to greet her with his customary bantering gallantry. But he did not lift her fingers to his lips after his usual gay fashion. He only held her proffered hand very tightly for several seconds without verbal greeting of any sort.
Suddenly he began to speak, and as he did so she seemed to see a hundred wrinkles spring into being on his yellow face. "I have something to say to you, Mrs. Musgrave," he said. "And it's something so particularly beastly that I funk saying it. We have always been such pals, you and I, and that makes it all the harder."
He broke off, his shrewd glance flashing over her, keen and elusive as a rapier. Daisy faced him quite fully and fearlessly. The possibility of a conflict in this quarter had occurred to her before. She would not shirk it, but she was determined that it should be as brief as possible.
"Being pals doesn't entitle you to go trespassing, Nick," she said.
"I know that," said Nick, speaking very rapidly. "None better. ButI am not thinking of you only, though I hate to make you angry. Mrs.Musgrave—Daisy—I want to ask you, and you can't refuse to answer.What are you doing? What are you going to do?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said, speaking coldly. "And anyhow I can't stop to listen to you. I haven't time. I think you had better go."
"You must listen," Nick said. She caught the grim note of determination in his voice, and was aware of the whole force of his personality flung suddenly against her. "Daisy," he said, "you are to look upon me as Will's representative. I am the nearest friend he has. Have you thought of him at all lately, stewing in those hellish Plains for your sake? He's such a faithful chap, you know. Can't you go back to him soon? Isn't it—forgive me—isn't it a bit shabby to play this sort of game when there's a fellow like that waiting for you and fretting his very heart out because you don't go?"
He stopped—his lips twitching with the vigour of his appeal. And Daisy realised that he would have to be told the simple truth. He would not be satisfied with less.
Very pale but quite calm, she braced herself to tell him. "I am afraid you are pleading a lost cause," she said, her words quiet and very distinct. "I am never going back to him."
"Never!" Nick moved sharply drawing close to her. "Never?" he said again; then with abrupt vehemence, "Daisy, you don't mean that! You didn't say it!"
She drew back slightly from him, but her answer was perfectly steady, rigidly determined. "I have said it, Nick. And I meant it. You had better go. You will do no good by staying to argue. I know all that you can possibly say, and it makes no difference to me. I have chosen."
"What have you chosen?" he demanded.
For an instant she hesitated. There was something almost fierce in his manner, something she had never encountered before, something that in spite of her utmost effort made her feel curiously uneasy, even apprehensive. She had always known that there was a certain uncanny strength about Nick, but to feel the whole weight of it directed against her was a new experience.
"What have you chosen?" he repeated relentlessly.
And reluctantly, more than half against her will, she told him. "I am going to the man I love."
She was prepared for some violent outburst upon her words, but none came. Nick heard her in silence, standing straight before her, watching her, she felt, with an almost brutal intentness, though his eyes never for an instant met her own.
"Then," he said suddenly at length, and quick though they were, it seemed to her that the words fell with something of the awful precision of a death-sentence, "God help you both; for you are going to destroy him and yourself too."
Daisy made a sharp gesture; it was almost one of shrinking. And at once he turned from her and fell to pacing the little room, up and down, up and down incessantly, like an animal in a cage. It was useless to attempt to dismiss him, for she saw that he would not go. She moved quietly to a chair and sat down to wait.
Abruptly at last he stopped, halting in front of her. "Daisy,"—he began, and broke off short, seeming to battle with himself.
She looked up in surprise. It was so utterly unlike Nick to relinquish his self-command at a critical juncture. The next moment he amazed her still further. He dropped suddenly down on his knees and gripped her clasped hands fast.
"Daisy," he said again, and this time words came, jerky and passionate, "this is my doing. I've driven you to it. If I hadn't interfered with Grange, you would never have thought of it."
She sat without moving, but the hasty utterance had its effect upon her. Some of the rigidity went out of her attitude. "My dear Nick," she said, "what is the good of saying that?"
"Isn't it true?" he persisted.
She hesitated, unwilling to wound him.
"You know it is true," he declared with vehemence. "If I had let him alone, he would have married Muriel, and this thing would never have happened. God knows I did what was right, but if it doesn't turn out right, I'm done for. I never believed in eternal damnation before, but if this thing comes to pass it will be hell-fire for me for as long as I live. For I shall never believe in God again."
He swung away from her as though in bodily torture, came in contact with the table and bowed his head upon it. For many seconds his breathing, thick and short, almost convulsed, was the only sound in the room.
As for Daisy, she sat still, staring at him dumbly, witnessing his agony till the sight of it became more than she could bear. Then she moved, reached stiffly forward, and touched him.
"You are not to blame yourself, Nick," she said.
He did not stir. "I don't," he answered, and again fell silent.
At last he moved, seemed to pull himself together, finally got to his feet.
"Do you think you will be happy?" he said. "Do you think you will ever manage to forget what you have sacrificed to this fetish you call Love,—how you broke the heart of one of the best fellows in the world, and trampled upon the memory of your dead child—the little chap you used to call the light of your eyes, who used to hold out his arms directly he saw you and cry when you went away?"
His voice was not very steady, and he paused but he did not look at her or seem to expect any reply.
Daisy gave a great shiver. She felt cold from head to foot. But she was not afraid of Nick. If she yielded, it would not be through fear.
A full minute crawled away before he spoke again. "And this fellow Grange," he said then. "He is a man who values his honour. He has lived a clean life. He holds an unblemished record. He is in your hands. You can do what you like with him—whatever your love inspires you to do. You can pull him back into a straight course, or you can wreck him for good and all. Which is it going to be, I wonder? It's a sacrifice either way,—a sacrifice to Love or a sacrifice to devils. You can make it which you will. But if it is to be the last, never talk of Love again. For Love—real Love—is the safeguard from all evil. And if you can do this thing, it has never been above your horizon, and never will be."
Again he stopped, and again there was silence while Daisy sat white-faced and slightly bowed, wondering when it would be over, wondering how much longer she could possibly endure.
And then suddenly he bent down over her. His hand was on her shoulder. "Daisy," he said, and voice and touch alike implored her, "give him up, dear! Give him up! You can do it if you will, if your love is great enough. I know how infernally hard it is to do. I've done it myself. It means tearing your very heart out. But it will be worth it—it must be worth it—afterwards. You are bound—some time—to reap what you have sown."
She lifted a haggard face. There was something in the utterance that compelled her. And so looking, she saw that which none other of this man's friend's had ever seen. She saw his naked soul, stripped bare of all deception, of all reserve,—a vital, burning flame shining in the desert. The sight moved her as had nought else.
"Oh, Nick," she cried out desperately, "I can't—I can't!"
He bent lower over her. He was looking straight down into her eyes."Daisy," he said very urgently, "Daisy, for God's sake—try!"
Her white lips quivered, striving again to refuse. But the words would not come. Her powers of resistance had begun to totter.
"You can do it," he declared, his voice quick and passionate as though he pleaded with her for life itself. "You can do it—if you will. I will help you. You shan't stand alone. Don't stop to think. Just come with me now—at once—and put an end to it before you sleep. For you can't do this thing, Daisy. It isn't in you. It is all a monstrous mistake, and you can't go on with it. I know you better than you know yourself. We haven't been pals all these years for nothing. And there is that in your heart that won't let you go on. I thought it was dead a few minutes ago. But, thank God, it isn't. I can see it in your eyes."
She uttered an inarticulate sound that was more bitter than any weeping, and covered her face.
Instantly Nick straightened himself and turned away. He went to the window and leaned his head against the sash. He had the spent look of a man who has fought to the end of his strength. The thunder of the waves upon the shore filled in the long, long silence.
Minutes crawled away, and still he stood there with his face to the darkness. At last a voice spoke behind him, and he turned. Daisy had risen.
She stood in the lamplight, quite calm and collected. There was even a smile upon her face, but it was a smile that was sadder than tears.
"It's been a desperate big fight, hasn't it, Nick?" she said. "But—my dear—you've won. For the sake of my little baby, and for the sake of the man I love—yes, and partly for your sake too,"—she held out her hand to him with the words—"I am going back to the prison-house. No, don't speak to me. You have said enough. And, Nick, I must go alone. So I want you, please, to go away, and not to come to me again until I send for you. I shall send sooner or later. Will you do this?"
Her voice never faltered, but the misery in her eyes cut him to the heart. In that moment he realised how terribly near he had been to losing the hardest battle he had ever fought.
He gave her no second glance. Simply, without a word, he stooped and kissed the hand she had given him; then turned and went noiselessly away.
He had won indeed, but the only triumph he knew was the pain of a very human compassion.
Scarcely five minutes after his departure, Daisy let herself out into the night that lay like a pall above the moaning shore. She went with lagging feet that often stumbled in the darkness. It was only the memory of a baby's head against her breast that gave her strength.
"I believe I heard a gun in the night," remarked Mrs. Ratcliffe at the breakfast-table on the following morning.
"Shouldn't be surprised," said Dr. Jim. "I know there was a ship in distress off Calister yesterday. They damaged the lifeboat trying to reach her. But the wind seems to have gone down a little this morning. Do you care for a ride, Muriel?"
Muriel accepted the invitation gladly. She liked accompanying Dr. Jim upon his rounds. She had arranged to leave two days later, a decision which the news of Daisy's presence at Brethaven had not affected. Daisy seemed to have dropped her for good and all, and her pride would not suffer her to inquire the reason. She had, in fact, begun to think that Daisy had merely tired of her, and that being so she was the more willing to go to Mrs. Langdale, whose letters of fussy kindliness seemed at least to ensure her a cordial welcome.
She had discussed her troubles no further with Dr. Jim. Grange's letter had in some fashion placed matters beyond discussion. And so she had only briefly told him that her engagement was at an end, and he had gruffly expressed his satisfaction thereat. Her one idea now was to escape from Nick's neighbourhood as speedily as possible. It possessed her even in her dreams.
She went with Dr. Jim to the surgery when breakfast was over, and sat down alone in the consulting-room to wait for him. He usually started on his rounds at ten o'clock, but it wanted a few minutes to the hour and the motor was not yet at the door. She sat listening for it, hoping that no one would appear to detain him.
The morning was bright, and the wind had fallen considerably. Through the window she watched the falling leaves as they eddied in sudden draughts along the road. She looked through a wire screen that gave rather a depressing effect to the sunshine.
Suddenly from some distance away there came to her the sound of a horse's hoof-beats, short and hard, galloping over the stones. It was a sound that arrested the attention, awaking in her a vague, apprehensive excitement. Almost involuntarily she drew nearer to the window, peering above the blind.
Some seconds elapsed before she caught sight of the headlong horseman, and then abruptly he dashed into sight round a curve in the road. At the same instant the gallop became a fast trot, and she saw that the rider was gripping the animal with his knees. He had no saddle.
Amazed and startled, she stood motionless, gazing at the sudden apparition, saw as the pair drew nearer what something within her had already told her loudly before her vision served her, and finally drew back with a sharp, instinctive contraction of her whole body as the horseman reined in before the surgery-door and dismounted with a monkey-like dexterity, his one arm twined in the bridle. A moment later the surgery-bell pealed loudly, and her heart stood still. She felt suddenly sick with a nameless foreboding.
Standing with bated breath, she heard Dr. Jim himself go to answer the summons, and an instant later Nick's voice came to her, gasping and uneven, but every word distinct.
"Ah, there you are! Thought I should catch you. Man, you're wanted—quick! In heaven's name—lose no time. Grange was drowned early this morning, and—I believe it's killed Daisy. For mercy's sake, come at once!"
There was a momentary pause. Muriel's heart was beating in great sickening throbs. She felt stiff and powerless.
Dr. Jim's voice, brief and decided, struck through the silence. "Come inside and have something. I shall be ready to start in three minutes. Leave your animal here. He's dead beat."
There followed the sound of advancing feet, a hand upon the door, and the next moment they entered together. Nick was reeling a little and holding Jim's arm. He saw Muriel with a sharp start, standing as she had turned from the window. The doctor's brows met for an instant as he put his brother into a chair. He had forgotten Muriel.
With an effort she overcame the paralysis that bound her, and moved forward with shaking limbs.
"Did you say Blake was—dead?" she asked, her voice pitched very low.
She looked at Nick as she asked this question, and it was Nick who answered her in his quick, keen way, as though he realised the mercy of brevity.
"Yes. He and some fisher chaps went out early this morning in an ordinary boat to rescue some fellows on a wreck that had drifted on to the rocks outside the harbour. The lifeboat had been damaged, and couldn't be used. They reached the wreck all right, but there were more to save than they had reckoned on—more than the boat would carry—and the wreck was being battered to pieces. It was only a matter of seconds for the tide was rising. So they took the lot, and Grange went over the side to make it possible. He hung on to a rope for a time, but the seas were tremendous, and after a bit it parted. He was washed up two hours ago. He had been in the water since three, among the rocks. There wasn't the smallest chance of bringing him back. He was long past any help we could give."
He ended abruptly, and helped himself with a jerk to something in a glass that Jim had placed by his side.
Muriel stood dumbly watching. She noticed with an odd, detached sense of curiosity that he was shivering violently as one with an ague. Dr. Jim was already making swift preparations for departure.
Suddenly Nick looked up at her. His eyes were glittering strangely. "I know now," he said, "what you women feel like when you can only stand and look on. We have been looking on—Daisy and I—just looking on, for six mortal hours." He banged his fist with a sort of condensed fury upon the table, and leapt to his feet. "Jim, are you ready? I can't sit still any longer."
"Finish that stuff, and don't be a fool!" ordered Jim curtly.
Muriel turned swiftly towards him. "You'll take me with you!" she said very earnestly.
Nick broke in sharply upon the request. "No, no, Muriel! You're not to go. Jim, you can't—you shan't—take her! I won't allow it!"
But Muriel was clinging to Dr. Jim's arm with quivering face upraised. "You will take me," she entreated. "I was able to help Daisy before. I can help her now."
But even before she spoke there flashed a swift glance between the two brothers that foiled her appeal almost before it was uttered. With a far greater gentleness than was customary with him, but with unmistakable decision, Dr. Jim refused her petition.
"I can't take you now, child. But if Daisy should ask for you, or if there is anything under the sun that you can do for her, I will promise to let you know."
It was final, but she would not have it so. A sudden gust of anger caught her, anger against the man for whose sake she had one night shed so many bitter tears, whom now she so fierily hated. She still clung to Jim. She was shaking all over.
"What does it matter what Nick says?" she urged pantingly. "Why give in to him at every turn? I won't be left behind—just because he wishes it!"
She would have said more. Her self-control was tottering; but Dr. Jim restrained her. "My dear, it is not for Nick's sake," he said. "Come, you are going to be sensible. Sit down and get your breath. There's no time for hysterics. I must go across and speak to my wife before I go."
He looked at Nick who instantly responded. "Yes, you be off! I'll look after her. Be quick, man, be quick!"
But when Dr. Jim was gone, his impatience fell away from him. He moved round the table and stood before her. He was steady enough now, steadier far than she.
"Don't take it too hard," he said. "At least he died like a man."
She did not draw away from him. There was no room for fear in her heart just then. It held only hatred—a fierce, consuming flame—that enabled her to face him as she had never faced him before.
"Why did you let him go?" she demanded of him, her voice deep and passionate, her eyes unwaveringly upon him. "There must have been others. You were there. Why didn't you stop him?"
"I stop him!" said Nick, and a flash of something that was almost humour crossed his face. "You seem to think I am omnipotent."
Her eyes continued to challenge him. "You always manage to get your own way somehow," she said very bitterly, "by fair means or foul. Are you going to deny that it was you who made him write that letter?"
He did not ask her what she meant. "No," he said with a promptitude that took her by surprise. "I plead guilty to that. As you are aware, I never approved of your engagement."
His effrontery stung her into what was almost a state of frenzy. Her eyes blazed their utmost scorn. She had never been less afraid of him than at that moment. She had never hated him more intensely.
"You could make him do a thing like that," she said. "And yet you couldn't hold him back from certain death!"
He answered her without heat, in a tone she deemed most hideously callous. "It was not my business to hold him back. He was wanted. There would have been no rescue but for him. They needed a man to lead them, or they wouldn't have gone at all."
His composure goaded her beyond all endurance. She scarcely waited for him to finish, nor was she wholly responsible for what she said.
"Was there only one man among you, then?" she asked, with headlong contempt.
He made her a curious, jerky bow. "One man—yes," he said. "The rest were mere sheep, with the exception of one—who was a cripple."
Her heart contracted suddenly with a pain that was physical. She felt as if he had struck her, and it goaded her to a fiercer cruelty.
"You knew he would never come back!" she declared her voice quivering uncontrollably with the passion that shook her. "You—you never meant him to come back!"
He opened his eyes wide for a single instant, and she fancied that she had touched him. It was the first time in her memory that she had ever seen them fully. Instinctively she avoided them, as she would have avoided a flash of lightning.
And then he spoke, and she knew at once that her wild accusation had in no way hurt him. "You think that, do you?" he said, and his tone sounded to her as though he barely repressed a laugh. "Awfully nice of you! I wonder what exactly you take me for."
She did not keep him in suspense on that point. If she had never had the strength to tell him before, she could tell him now.
"I take you for a fiend!" she cried hysterically. "I take you for a fiend!"
He turned sharply from her, so sharply that she was conscious of a moment's fear overmastering her madness. But instantly, with his back to her, he spoke, and her brief misgiving was gone.
"It doesn't matter much now what you take me for," he said, and again in the cracked notes of his voice she seemed to hear the echo of a laugh. "You won't need to seek any more protectors so far as I am concerned. You will never see me again unless the gods ordain that you should come and find me. It isn't the way of an eagle to swoop twice—particularly an eagle with only one wing."
The laugh was quite audible now, and she never saw how that one hand of his was clenched and pressed against his side. He had reached the door while he was speaking. Turning swiftly, he cast one flickering, inscrutable glance towards her, and then with no gesture of farewell was gone. She heard his receding footsteps die away while she struggled dumbly to quell the tumult of her heart.
Late that evening a scribbled note reached Muriel from Dr. Jim.
"You can do nothing whatever," he wrote. "Daisy is suffering from a sharp attack of brain fever, caused by the shock of her cousin's death, and I think it advisable that no one whom she knows should be near her. You may rest assured that all that can be done for her will be done. And, Muriel, I think you will be wise to go to Mrs. Langdale as you originally intended. It will be better for you, as I think you will probably realise. You shall be kept informed of Daisy's condition, but I do not anticipate any immediate change."
She was glad of those few words of advice. Her anxiety regarding Daisy notwithstanding, she knew it would be a relief to her to go. The strain of many days was telling upon her. She felt herself to be on the verge of a break-down, and she longed unspeakably to escape.
She went to her room early on her last night at Weir, but not in order to rest the longer. She had something to do, something from which she shrank with a strange reluctance, yet which for her peace of mind she dared not leave neglected.
It was thus she expressed it to herself as with trembling fingers she opened the box that contained all her sacred personal treasures.
It lay beneath them all, wrapped in tissue-paper, as it had passed from his hand to hers, and for long she strove to bring herself to slip the tiny packet unopened into an envelope and seal it down—yet could not.
At last—it was towards midnight—she yielded to the force that compelled. Against her will she unfolded the shielding paper and held that which it contained upon the palm of her hand. Burning rubies, red as heart's blood, ardent as flame, flashed and glinted in the lamp-light. "OMNIA VINCIT AMOR"—how the words scorched her memory! And she had wondered once if they were true!
She knew now! She knew now! He had forced her to realise it. He had captured her, had kindled within her—by what magic she knew not—the undying Against her will, in spite of her utmost resistance, he had done this thing. Above and beyond and through her fiercest hatred, he had conquered her quivering heart. He had let her go again, but not till he had blasted her happiness for ever. None other could ever dominate her as this man dominated. None other could ever kindle in her—or ever quench—the torch that this man's hand had lighted.
And this was Love—this hunger that could never be satisfied, this craving which would not be stifled or ignored—Love triumphant, invincible, immortal—the thing she had striven to slay at its birth, but which had lived on in spite of her, growing, spreading, enveloping, till she was lost, till she was suffocated, in its immensity. There could never be any escape for her again. She was fettered hand and foot. It was useless any longer to strive. She stood and faced the truth.
She did not ask herself how it was she had ever come to care. She only numbly realised that she had always cared. And she knew now that to no woman is it given so to hate as she had hated without the spur of Love goading her thereto. Ah, but Love was cruel!
Love was merciless! For she had never known—nor ever could know now—the ecstasy of Love. Truly, it conquered; but it left its prisoners to perish of starvation in the wilderness.
A slight sound in the midnight silence! A timid hand softly trying the door-handle! She sprang up, dropping the ring upon her table, and turned to see Olga in her nightdress, standing in the doorway.
"I was awake," the child explained tremulously. "And I heard you moving. And I wondered, dear Muriel, if perhaps I could do anything to help you. You—you don't mind?"
Muriel opened her arms impulsively. She felt as if Olga had been sent to lighten her darkest hour.
For a while she held her close, not speaking at all; and it was Olga who at last broke the silence.
"Darling, are you crying for Captain Grange?"
She raised her head then to meet the child's gaze of tearful sympathy.
"I am not crying, dear," she said. "And—it wouldn't be for him if I were. I don't want to cry for him. I just envy him, that's all."
She leaned her head against Olga's shoulder, rocking a little to and fro with closed eyes. "Yes," she said at last, "you can help me, Olga, if you will. That ring on the table, dear,—a ring with rubies—do you see it?"
"Yes," breathed Olga, holding her very close.
"Then just take it, dear." Muriel's voice was unutterably weary; she seemed to speak with a great effort. "It belongs to Nick. He gave it to me once, long ago, in remembrance of something. I want you to give it back to him, and tell him simply that I prefer to forget."
Olga took up the ring. Her lips were trembling. "Aren't you—aren't you being nice to Nick any more, Muriel?" she asked in a whisper.
Muriel did not answer.
"Not when you promised?" the child urged piteously.
There was silence. Muriel's face was hidden. Her black hair hung about her like a cloud, veiling her from her friend's eyes. For a long time she said nothing whatever. Then at last without moving she made reply.
"It's no use, Olga. I can't! I can't! It's not my doing. It's his. Oh, I think my heart is broken!" Through the anguish of weeping that followed, Olga clasped her passionately close, frightened, by an intensity of suffering such as she had never seen before and was powerless to alleviate.
She slept with Muriel that night, but, waking in the dawning, just when Muriel had sunk to sleep, she crept out of bed and, with Nick's ring grasped tightly in her hand, softly stole away.
A gorgeous sunset lay in dusky, fading crimson upon the Plains, trailing to darkness in the east. The day had been hot and cloudless, but a faint, chill wind had sprung up with the passing of the sun, and it flitted hither and thither like a wandering spirit over the darkening earth.
Down in the native quarter atom-tomthrobbed, persistent, exasperating as the voice of conscience. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked restlessly, at irregular intervals. And at a point betweentom-tomand dog a couple of parrots screeched vociferously.
Over all, the vast Indian night was rushing down on silent, mysterious wings. Crimson merged to grey in the telling, and through the falling dark there shone, detached and wonderful, a single star.
In the little wooden bungalow over against, the water-works a light had been kindled and gleamed out in a red streak across the Plain. Other lights were beginning to flicker also from all points of the compass, save only where a long strip of jungle lay like a blot upon the face of the earth. But the red light burned the steadiest of them all.
It came from the shaded lamp of an Englishman, and beneath it with stubborn, square-jawed determination the Englishman sat at work.
Very steadily his hand moved over the white paper, and the face that was bent above it never varied—a face that still possessed something of the freshness of youth though the set of the lips was firm even to sternness and the line of the chin was hard. He never raised his eyes as he worked except to refer to the notebook at his elbow. The passage of time seemed of no moment to him.
Yet at the soft opening of the door, he did look up for an instant, a gleam of expectancy upon his face that died immediately.
"All right, Sammy, directly," he said, returning without pause to his work.
Sammy, butler, bearer, and general factotum, irreproachable from his snowy turban to his white-slippered feet, did not take the hint to retire, but stood motionless just inside the room, waiting with statuesque patience till his master should deign to bestow upon him the favour of his full attention.
After a little Will Musgrave realised this, and with an abrupt sigh sat back in his chair and rubbed his hand across his forehead.
"Well?" he said then. "You needn't trouble to tell me that the mail has passed, for I heard the fellow half an hour ago. Of course there were no letters?"
The man shook his head despondingly. "No letters, sahib."
"Then what do you want?" asked Will, beginning to eye his work again.
Sammy—so dubbed by Daisy long ago because his own name was too sore a tax upon her memory—sent a look of gleaming entreaty across the lamp-lit space that separated him from his master.
"The dinner grows cold, sahib," he observed pathetically.
Will smiled a little. "All right, my good Sammy. What does it matter?I'm sure if I don't mind, you needn't. And I'm busy just now."
But the Indian stood his ground. "What will my mem-sahib say to me," he said, "when she comes and finds that my lord has been starved?"
Will's face changed. It was a very open face, boyishly sincere. He did not laugh at the earnest question. He only gravely shook his head.
"The mem-sahib will come," the man declared, with conviction. "And what will her servant say when she asks him why his master is so thin? She will say, 'Sammy, I left him in your care. What have you done to him?' And, sahib, what answer can her servant give?"
Will clasped his hands at the back of his head in a careless attitude, but his face was grim. "I don't think you need worry yourself, Sammy," he said. "I am not expecting the mem-sahib—at present."
Nevertheless, moved by the man's solicitude, he rose after a moment and laid his work together. He might as well dine, he reflected, as sit and argue about it. With a heavy step he passed into the room where dinner awaited him, and sat down at the table.
No, he was certainly not expecting her at present. He had even of late begun to ask himself if he expected her at all. It was five months now since the news of her severe illness had almost induced him to throw everything aside and go to her. He had only been deterred from this by a very serious letter from Dr. Jim, strongly advising him to remain where he was, since it was highly improbable that he would be allowed to see Daisy for weeks or even months were he at hand, and she would most certainly be in no fit state to return with him to India. That letter had been to Will as the passing knell of all he had ever hoped or desired. Definitely it had told him very little, but he was not lacking in perception, and he had read a distinct and wholly unmistakable meaning behind the guarded, kindly sentences. And he knew when he laid the letter down that in Dr. Jim's opinion his presence might do incalculable harm. From that day forward he had entertained no further idea of return, settling down again to his work with a dogged patience that was very nearly allied to despair.
He was undoubtedly a rising man. There were prospects of a speedy improvement in his position. It was unlikely that he would be called upon to spend another hot season in the scorching Plains. Steady perseverance and indubitable talent had made their mark. But success was dust and ashes to him now. He did not greatly care if he went or stayed.
That Daisy was well again, or on the high-road to recovery, he knew; but he had not received a single letter from her since her illness.
Jim's epistles were very few and far between, but Nick had maintained a fairly regular correspondence with him till a few weeks back when it had unaccountably lapsed. But then Nick had done unaccountable things before, and he did not set down his silence to inconstancy. He was probably making prodigious efforts on his behalf, and Will awaited every mail with an eagerness he could not quite suppress, which turned invariably, however, into a sick sense of disappointment.
That Daisy would ever return to him now he did not for an instant believe, but there remained the chance—the slender, infinitesimal chance—that she might ask him to go to her. More than a flying visit she would know he could not manage. His work was his living, and hers. But so much Nick's powers of persuasion might one day accomplish though he would not allow himself to contemplate the possibility, while week by week the chance dwindled.
So he sat alone and unexpectant at his dinner-table that night and made heroic efforts to pacify the vigilant Sammy whose protest had warmed his heart a little if it had not greatly assisted his appetite.
He was glad when the meal was over, and he could saunter out on to the verandah with his cigar. The night was splendid with stars; but it held no moon. The wind had died away, but it had left a certain chill behind; and somehow he was reminded of a certain evening of early summer in England long ago, when he and Daisy had strolled together in an English garden, and she had yielded impulsively to his earnest wooing and had promised to be his wife. He remembered still the little laugh half sweet, half bitter, with which she had surrendered, the soft raillery of her blue eyes that yet had not wholly mocked him, the dainty charm of her submission. She had not loved him. He had known it even then. She had almost told him so. But with a boy's impetuosity he had taken the little she had to give, trusting to the future to make her all his own.
Ah, well! He caught himself sighing, and found that his cigar was out.With something less than his customary self-suppression he pitched itforth into the darkness. He could not even smoke with any enjoyment.He would go indoors and work.
He swung round on his heel, and started back along the verandah towards his room from which the red light streamed. Three strides he took with his eyes upon the ground. Then for no reason that he knew he glanced up towards that bar of light. The next instant he stood still as one transfixed, and all the blood rushed in tumult to his heart.
There, motionless in the full glare—watching him, waiting for him—stood his wife!