"LOVE THAT IS FIRST AND LAST..."
"Now you will have to take care of me," began Mona, after some minutes
of silence, as they started slowly to ride round beneath the cliff.
"A heavy responsibility for any one man during a whole hour or more."
"You have not found it so hitherto?"
"Oh, then there were two of us. We took the risk between us. Hallo!"
he broke off, "that's a fine specimen!"
She followed his upward glance. A huge bird of prey had shot out from
the cliff overhead and was circling in bold, powerful sweeps, uttering a
loud, raucous scream.
"As good a specimen of a _dasje-vanger_ as I ever saw," went on Roden,
still gazing upward. "Now, I wonder if a Snider bullet would blow it
all to pieces at that distance!"
"You'll never bring it down with a bullet?" said Mona eagerly.
"Not, eh? Perhaps not."
The great eagle, jet black save for her yellow feet standing out against
the thick dusky plumage, floated round and round in her grand gyrations,
her flaming eye visible to the spectators as she turned her head from
side to side. Roden, without dismounting, put up his rifle.
Simultaneously with the report a cloud of black feathers flew from the
noble bird, who, as though with untamable determination to disappoint
her slayer, shot downward obliquely, with arrow-like velocity, and
disappeared beyond the brow of the cliff overhead.
"You were right," said Roden, slipping a fresh cartridge into his piece.
"I did not bring it down, for with characteristic perversity, the
ill-conditioned biped has chosen to yield up the ghost at the top of the
cliff, whereas we are at the bottom."
"Oh, can't we go up to it? This is much better game than those poor
little rhybok. But, wherever did you learn to shoot like that?"
"We can go up!" he replied, purposely or accidentally evading the last
question. "That gully we passed, a little way back is climbable. But
you had better wait below. It will be hard work."
"So that's how you propose taking care of me--to leave me all alone?
Not if I know it. The place looked perfectly safe."
Safe it was: a narrow, staircase-like _couloir_, consisting of a series
of natural steps; the rocks on either side heavily festooned with thick
masses of the most beautiful maidenhair fern. Leaving the horses
beneath, they began the climb, and after a couple of hundred feet of
this they stood on the summit of the mountain.
The summit was as flat as a table, and covered with long coarse grass,
billowing in the fresh strong breeze which swept it like the surface of
a lake. Around, beneath, free and vast, spread the rolling panorama of
mountain and plain.
"Ah! this is to live indeed!" broke from Mona. "I don't know that I
ever enjoyed a day so much in my life."
The other did not immediately look at her, but when he presently did
steal a keen, but furtive glance at her face, there was something there,
which, combined with the tone wherein she had uttered the above words,
set him thinking.
"I don't see anything of the _dasje-vanger_," he said, at length; "and
yet this is about the place where it should have fallen. It may have
fluttered into the long grass, but couldn't have gone far with that
bullet hole through it. Now, you search that way, and I'll search
this."
For a few minutes they searched hither and thither; then a cry from Mona
brought him to her side.
"This is the place," she said. "Look!"
She stood as near as she dared to the brow of the cliff, pointing
downwards. On the very verge, fluttering among the grass bents, were
several small feathers, jet black, and such as might have come out of
the breast of the great bird. Roden advanced to the brink.
"This _is_ the place!" he declared, leaning over. "And, look! there
lies our quarry, stone dead. The spiteful brute has chosen a difficult
place, if not an inaccessible one."
"Where? Let me see. Hold my hand, while I look down, for I don't half
like it."
This he did, and shudderingly she peered over. From where they stood
the cliff fell for about twenty feet obliquely, but very steep, and
grown over with tufts of grass, to a narrow ledge scarcely two feet
wide; below this--space. But upon this ledge lay the great eagle, with
outstretched wings, stone dead, its head hanging over the abyss.
"I can get at it there, fortunately," muttered Roden.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going down to pick up the bird."
"You are not."
He stared.
"But I want it," he urged. "It is too fine a specimen to be left lying
there."
"Never mind; you can shoot another. Now, don't go, don't!"
Again he recognised the expression which came into her face, as with
startled eyes and voice which shook with the very _abandon_ of her
entreaty, she stood there before him. What then? He had seen that look
in other faces, but what had come of it!
"I am going down," he repeated.
"You cannot; you shall not. It is too horrible. You will be killed
before my eyes. Won't you give it up because _I_ ask you?"
"No."
There were men who would have given a great deal to have heard Mona
Ridsdale speak to them in that tone, who would willingly have risked
their lives, rather than have refrained from risking them, at her
request. This one, however, answered short and straight and with brutal
indifference, "No."
They looked at each other for a moment, as though both realised that
this was a strange subject for a conflict of will, then she said,
"So you will not give it up?"
"No. It is an easy undertaking, and for me a safe one."
She turned away without another word, and he began his descent.
This, however, was less simple than it looked, as is usually the case,
or rather, so appallingly simple that a slight slip, or the loosening of
a grass tussock, would send the average climber whirling into space.
But Roden Musgrave was an experienced hand on mountains, and thoroughly
understood the principle of distributing his weight. In a very short
space of time he was standing on the ledge, and had picked up the dead
bird.
"I can't throw it up," he cried, for the benefit of his companion, who,
once he had began his descent, had not been able to resist watching its
progress, and lying flat on the brink was marking every step. "It's too
heavy. I shall have to sling it around me somehow."
"Make haste and come out of that grisly position," was all she replied.
And her definition of it was not an unmerited one. The ledge was hardly
wide enough to turn upon, and from beneath they had both seen the great
rock wall, in its unbroken smoothness, considerably upwards of a hundred
feet in height.
Then with the dead eagle slung around him, he began his return, inch by
inch, step by step, holding on by every tuft of grass or projecting
stone, carefully testing each before trusting any portion of his weight
to it--she the while watching every step with a fearful fascination.
All of a sudden something gave way. One moment more, and he would have
been in safety. Roden felt himself going--going. Still, with
consummate presence of mind, he strove to distribute his weight. All in
vain. He could not recover his lost footing. He was sliding with
increased momentum, sliding to the brink of the terrible height.
Mona's blood turned to ice within her. She was too stricken even to
shriek, in the unspeakable horror of the moment. Her fingers dug into
the ground, instinctively clenched, as she lay there, gazing down, an
appalled and powerless spectator.
He, for his part, did not look up. The dust and stones slid in streams
from beneath him and leaped over the ledge into space--then his descent
stopped. He seemed to be flattening himself against the height,
clinging for all he knew how. And then, as if to add to the gloomy
depression of this horrible peril, there stole up a dark, misty cloud,
spreading its black wings around the summit of the mountain, shedding a
twilight as of fear and disaster. Mona found her voice.
"Oh, try and rest a little while and collect yourself," she said; "then
make another attempt!"
"I can't move," came the response; "and--I can't hold on here much
longer. I believe my left wrist is broken. I am suffering the torments
of hell."
Mona was almost beside herself. Roden Musgrave was in a bad way indeed
when such an admission could be wrung from him.
"Dear, don't give up!" she cried, in a wail of despairing tenderness,
such as had never been wrung from her lips before. "Make one more
effort; this time, because _I_ ask you. A yard or two more, and I shall
be able to reach you."
Was this the woman who had stood shrinkingly to gaze over the brink, and
had quickly retreated with a shudder? Now, as she lay there, extending
her arm down as far as it would go, in order to afford him the necessary
hand-grasp, all fear on her own behalf seemed to have left her. But the
man, flattened against the face of the cliff with the dead eagle slung
to his back, seemed not able to move, and as she had said, it was but a
yard or two farther.
But the effort must be made. Roden was only resting for one final
struggle. It was made. Reaching upward he grasped the extended hand,
then let go again.
"Hold it! hold it!" cried Mona, appalled by the awful whiteness which
had spread over his face, evoked as it was by the agony he was
suffering.
"No, I won't, I should only drag you down."
"You would not. I am very firm up here," she replied. "I can hold you
till--till help comes."
He wriggled up a little higher, then with his uninjured hand he grasped
hers. A sick faintness came upon him. The world seemed to go round.
The brink of the cliff, the brave, eager face and love-lit eyes, the
swaying grass bents, now rimy with misty scud, all danced before his
vision. He felt cold as ice, that deathly numbness which precedes a
faint. But for the strong, warm clasp of the hand which now held his,
Roden Musgrave's days were numbered. Well indeed was it for him, that
the splendid frame of its owner was not merely the perfection of
feminine symmetry, but encased a very considerable modicum of sheer
physical strength.
"Roden, darling!" she murmured. "Save yourself if only that you may do
so through me. You have surprised my secret, but it shall be as though
you had not, if you prefer it."
It was a strange love-making, as they faced each other thus, the one
overhanging certain death, the other raised entirely out of her physical
fears, resolute to save this life, which after all might not belong to
her. Thus they faced each other, and the dark whirling blackness of the
glooming cloud lowered thicker and thicker around them.
"Let me go, Mona!" he gasped forth wearily, in his semi-faint. "I may
drag you down. Good-bye. Now--let go!"
She almost laughed. The strong grasp tightened upon his hand firmer
than ever.
"If you go, I go too. Now I am going to shout. Perhaps Charlie will
hear." And lifting up her voice she sent forth a long, clear, ringing
call; then another and another.
No answer.
Then, as the minutes went by, the bolt of a wild despair shot through
Mona's brave heart. Strong as she was, she could not hold him for ever,
nor was he able, in the agony of his broken wrist, to raise himself any
farther. Her brain reeled. Wild-eyed with despair she strove to pierce
the opaque grey curtain which was crusting her face and hair with rime.
It was winter, and this table-topped mountain was of considerable
elevation. What if this thick chill cloud was the precursor of a heavy
snowfall? Charlie, acting on the idea that they had missed each other
in the mist, might have gone home. Every muscle in her fine frame
seemed cracking. The strain was momentarily becoming greater, more
intense, and again she sent forth her loud, clear call, this time
thrilling with a fearful note of despair.
It was answered. Eagerly, breathlessly she listened. Yes--it came from
below the cliff. Charlie had arrived at the spot where they had left
their horses. She shouted again. The answer told that he was climbing
the gully by which they had ascended.
"Do you hear that? We are safe now. A few minutes more, and Charlie
will be here."
"It is you who have done it, Mona," he murmured.
Then she spoke no more. Now that succour was near at hand, she found
herself actually revelling in the position, and a delight in making the
most of it while it lasted was qualified by the agony Roden was
suffering, as also by a strange feeling of jealousy that she had not
been able to carry out the rescue alone and unaided; of resentment that
she should be driven to call in the help of another.
"That's it, is it?" said Suffield, prompt to master the situation at a
glance. "Now, Mona, I'll relieve you of this amount of avoirdupois, and
when you have rested for a minute you hold on to me for all you know
how, and I'll lug him up in a second."
The while he had got hold of Roden by the hand and wrist; then in a
trice had, as he said, dragged the sufferer over the brink and into
safety, for he was a powerful man.
"So that's what it was all about?" he went on, as he cut loose the dead
eagle. "The _dasje-vanger_ nearly revenged itself. How do you feel,
Musgrave, old chap?"
"Like an idiot," said Roden faintly, as he took a liberal pull at the
flask the other had been swift to tender him, and began to feel the
better therefor. "I never could stand being hurt. Though hard enough
in other ways, anything in the way of pain turns me sick. But,
Suffield, if it had not been for Mona I should have been a dead man."
"Oh, `Mona,' is it?" thought Suffield, with an internal grin. Then
aloud, rather anxiously, "Anything else besides the wrist?"
"I've banged up a knee a good bit; but I expect it's only bruised. Now
we'd better start. I seem to be getting all right."
He was ghastly pale as he tottered to his feet, evidently still in great
pain.
"No, never mind," he went on; "I don't want any help, I can walk all
right."
But as they began the descent of the gully, Suffield, carrying both
rifles and the dead eagle, leading the way, he felt faint and dizzy. In
an instant Mona's hand had closed upon his. Hitherto she had stood
silently aloof in the revulsion of feeling. He was safe now. The words
which had been wrung from her by the extremity of his peril must be
regarded as unsaid. So she resolved--but was it a revolution that came
within her power to keep? The volcanic fires of her strong, passionate,
sensuous temperament had lain dormant beneath an egotistic and
inconsiderate vanity, had lain dormant, unknown even to herself. Now
they were to burst forth with a force, and to an extent, unsuspected by
herself, and as startling as they had been hitherto unknown. But on one
point there was no room for any more self-deception. Whatever
half-truth there might have been in Grace Suffield's oft-uttered
prediction, now it had become all truth. Mona realised that her tarn
had indeed come--for good and for ill, for once and for ever.