OUT OF THE DEPTHS
That night the thunder rolled among the _kopjes_, and Sylvia lay in
her hut wide-awake and listening. The lightning glanced and
quivered about the distant hills and threw a weird and fitful
radiance about her bed, extinguishing the dim light thrown by her
night-lamp.
Bill Merston had brought her back a written message from her
husband, and she lay with it gripped in her hand. For that message
held a cry which had thrown her whole soul into tumult.
"I want you," he had written in a hand that might have been Guy's.
"I can't get on without you. I am coming to-morrow to fetch you
back--if you will come."
If she would come! In those last words she seemed to hear the
appeal of a man's agony. What had he been through before he had
brought himself to write those words? They hurt her unutterably,
piercing her to the soul, when she remembered her own half-hearted
offer to return. Yet she would have given all she had for a few
days' respite. The hot fierce longing that beat in those few words
frightened her by its intensity. It made her think of one of those
overwhelming _veldt_ fires, consuming everything in its path,
leaving behind it the blackness of desolation. Yes, he wanted her
now because she had been denied to him. The flame of his desire
had been fanned to a white heat. She seemed to feel it reaching
out to her, scorching her, even as she lay. And she shrank with a
desperate sense of impotence, feeling her fate to be sealed. For
she knew that she must go to him. She must pass through the
furnace anew. She must endure her fate. Afterwards--it might
be--when it had burnt itself out, some spark of the Divine would be
found kindled among the ashes to give her comfort.
And ever the thought of Guy waited at the back of her mind, Guy who
had failed her so hopelessly, so repeatedly. Was she going to fail
him now? Was she going to place herself so completely out of his
reach that even if he called to her for help she would be powerless
to stretch forth a hand to him? The thought tormented her. It was
the one thing that she felt she could not face, the one point upon
which she and Burke would be for ever at variance. Ah no!
Whatever else she surrendered, she could not yield to him in this.
She could not, she would not, leave Guy to sink while there
remained the smallest chance of saving him.
So she told herself, lying there alone, while the thunder rolled
now near, now far, like a menacing monster wandering hither and
thither in search of prey. Earlier in the night she had tried to
pray, but it had brought her no relief. She had not really prayed
since that terrible journey to Brennerstadt when she had poured out
her whole soul in supplication and had met only failure. She felt
in a fashion cut off, forgotten in this land of strangers. The
very effort to bridge the gulf seemed but to emphasize her utter
impotence. She had come to that barren part of the way where even
the most hopeful traveller sometimes feels that God has forgotten
to be gracious. She had never felt more alone in all her life, and
it was a loneliness that frightened her.
Weirdly the lightning played about her bed. She watched it with
eyes that would not close. She wondered if Burke were watching it
also, and shivered with the thought of the morrow, asking herself
for the first time why she had ever consented to marry him, why she
had not rather shouldered her fate and gone back to her father.
She would have found work in England. He would have helped her if
she had only had the courage to return, the strength to be humble.
Her thoughts lingered tenderly about him. They had been so much to
each other once. Did he ever regret her? Did he ever wish her
back?
A burning lump rose in her throat. She turned her head upon the
pillow, clasping her hands tightly over her eyes. Ah, if she had
but gone back to him! They had loved each other, and somehow love
would have conquered. Did not love always conquer? What were
those words that she had read cut deep in the trunk of a dead tree?
They flashed through her brain more vividly than the glancing
lightning--the key to every closed door--the balm for every
wound--the ladder by which alone the top of the world is reached.
_Fide et Amore_! By Faith and Love!
There came again to her that curious feeling of revelation.
Looking back, she saw the man on horseback hewing those words while
she waited. The words themselves shone in fiery letters across.
her closed eyelids. She asked herself suddenly, with an awed
wonder if perchance her prayer had been answered after all, and she
had suffered the message to pass her by. . . .
There came a crash of thunder nearer and more menacing than any
that had gone before, startling her almost with a sense of doom,
setting every pulse in her body beating. She uncovered her face
and sat up.
Sullenly the echoes rolled away, yet they left behind a strange
impression that possessed her with an uncanny force from which she
could not shake herself free--a feeling that amounted to actual
conviction that some presence lurked without in the storm, alert
and stealthy, waiting for something.
The window was at the side of her bed. She had but to draw aside
the curtain and look out. It was within reach of her hand. But
for many breathless seconds she dared not.
What it was that stood outside she had no idea, but the thought of
Kieff was in her mind--Kieff the vampire who was dead.
She felt herself grow cold all over. She had only to cross the
narrow room and knock on the main wall of the bungalow to summon
Merston. He would come at a moment's notice, she knew. But she
felt powerless to move. Sheer terror bound her limbs.
The thunder slowly ceased, and there followed a brief stillness
through which the beating of her heart clamoured wildly. Yet she
was beginning to tell herself that it was no more than a nightmare
panic that had caught her, when suddenly something knocked softly
upon the closed window beneath which she lay.
She started violently and glanced across the room, measuring the
distance to the further wall on which she herself would have to
knock to summon help.
Then, while instinctively she debated the point, summoning her
strength for the effort, there came another sound close to her--a
low voice speaking her name.
"Sylvia! Sylvia! Wake up and let me in!"
She snatched back the curtain in a second. She knew that voice.
By the shifting gleam of the lightning she saw him, looking in upon
her. Her fear vanished.
Swiftly she sprang to do his bidding. Had she ever failed to
answer any call of his? She drew back the bolts of her door, and
in a moment they were together.
The thunder roared again behind him as he entered, but neither of
them heard it. For he caught her in his arms with a hungry sound,
and as she clung to him nearly fainting with relief, he kissed her,
straining her to him gasping wild words of love.
The touch of those hot, devouring lips awoke her. She had never
felt the slightest fear of Guy before that moment, but the
fierceness of his hold called a sharp warning in her soul. There
was about him an unrestraint, a lawlessness, that turned her relief
into misgiving. She put up a quick hand, checking him.
"Guy--Guy, you are hurting me!"
He relaxed his hold then, looking at her, his head back, the old
boyish triumph shining in his eyes. "Little sweetheart, I'm sorry.
I couldn't help it--just for the moment. The sight of you and the
touch of you together just turned my head. But it's all right.
Don't look so scared! I wouldn't harm a single hair of your
precious little head." He gathered up the long plait of her hair
and kissed it passionately.
She laid a trembling hand against his shoulder. "Guy, please! You
mustn't. I had to let you in. But not--not for this."
He uttered a low laugh that seemed to hold a note of triumph. But
he let her go.
"Of course you had to let me in! Were you asleep? Did I frighten
you?"
"You startled me just at first. I think the thunder had set me on
edge, for I wasn't asleep. It's such a--savage sort of night,
isn't it?"
Sylvia glanced forth again over the low _veldt_ where the
flickering lightning leaped from cloud to cloud.
"Not so bad," said Guy. "It will serve our turn all right. Do you
know what I have come for?"
She looked back at him quickly. There was no mistaking the
exultation in his low voice. It amazed her, and again she was
stabbed by that sense of insecurity.
"I thought you had come to--explain things," she made answer. "And
to say--good-bye."
"To say--what?" He took her by the shoulders; his dark eyes
flashed a laughing challenge into hers. "You're not in earnest!"
he said.
She backed away from him. "But I am, Guy. I am." Her voice
sounded strained even to herself, for she was strangely discomfited
by his attitude. She had expected a broken man kneeling at her
feet in an agony of contrition. His overweening confidence
confounded her. "Have you no sense of right and wrong left?" she
said.
He kept his hands upon her. "None whatever," he told her
recklessly. "The only thing in life that counts is you--just you.
Because we love each other, the whole world is ours for the taking.
No, listen, darling! I'm not talking rot. Do you remember the
last time we were together? How I swore I would conquer--for your
sake? Well,--I've done it. I have conquered. Now that that devil
Kieff is dead, there is no reason why I shouldn't keep straight
always. And so I have come to you--for my crown."
His voice sank. He stooped towards her.
But she drew back sharply. "Guy, don't forget--don't forget--I am
married to Burke!" she said, speaking quickly, breathlessly.
His hands tightened upon her. "I am going to forget," he told her
fiercely. "And so are you. You have no love for him. Your
marriage is nothing but an empty bond."
"No--no!" Painfully she broke in upon him. "My marriage is--more
than that. I am his wife--and the keeper of his honour. I am
going back to him--to-morrow."
"You are not! You are not!" Hotly he contradicted her. "By
to-morrow we shall be far away. Listen, Sylvia! I haven't told
you all. I am rich. My luck has turned. You'll hardly believe
it, but it's true. It was I who won the Wilbraham diamond. We've
kept it secret, because I didn't want to be dogged by parasites.
I've thought of you all through. And now--and now--" his voice
vibrated again on that note of triumph--"I've come to take you
away. Mine at last!"
He would have drawn her to him, but she resisted him. She pushed
him from her. For the first time in her life she looked at him
with condemnation in her eyes.
"Is this--true?" Her voice held a throb of anger.
He stared at her, his triumph slowly giving place to a half-formed
doubt. "Of course it's true. I couldn't invent anything so
stupendous as that."
She looked back at him mercilessly. "If it is true, how did you
find the money for the gamble?"
The doubt on his face deepened to something that was almost shame.
"Oh, that!" he said. "I--borrowed that."
"You borrowed it!" She repeated the words without pity. "You
borrowed it from Burke's strong-box. Didn't you?"
The question was keen as the cut of a whip. It demanded an answer.
Almost involuntarily, the answer came.
"Well--yes! But---I hoped to pay it back. I'm going to pay it
back--now."
"Now!" she said, and almost laughed. Was it for this that she had
staked everything--everything she had--and lost? There was bitter
scorn in her next words. "You can pay it back to Donovan Kelly,"
she said. "He has replaced it on your behalf."
"What do you mean?" His hands were clenched. Behind his cloak of
shame a fire was kindling. The glancing lightning seemed reflected
in his eyes.
But Sylvia knew no fear, only an overwhelming contempt. "I mean,"
she said, "that to save you--to leave you a chance of getting back
to solid ground--Donovan and I deceived Burke. He supplied the
money, and I put it back."
"Great Jove!" said Guy. He was looking at her oddly, almost
speculatively. "But Donovan never had any money to spare!" he
said. "He sends it all home to his old mother."
"He gave it to me nevertheless." Sylvia's voice had a scathing
note. "And--he pretended that it had come from you--that you had
returned it."
"Very subtle of him!" said Guy. He considered the point for a
moment or two, then swept it aside. "Well, I'll settle up with
him. It'll be all right. I always pay my debts--sooner or later.
So that's all right, isn't it? Say it's all right!"
He spoke imperiously, meeting her scorn with a dominating
self-assurance. There followed a few moments that were tense with
a mental conflict such as Sylvia had never deemed possible between
them. Then in a very low voice she made answer.
"No. It is not all right. Nothing can ever make it so again.
Please say good-bye--and go!"
He made a furious movement, and caught her suddenly and violently
by the wrists. His eyes shone like the eyes of a starving animal.
Before she had time to resist him, her hands were gripped behind
her and she was fast locked in his arms.
He spoke, his face close to hers, his hot breath seeming to consume
her, his words a mere whisper through lips that almost moved upon
her own.
"Do you think I'm going--now? Do you think you can send me away
with a word like that--fling me off like an old glove--you who have
belonged to me all these years? No, don't speak! You'd better not
speak! If you dare to deny your love for me now, I believe I shall
kill you! If you had been any other woman, I wouldn't have stopped
to argue. But--you are you. And--I--love you so."
His voice broke unexpectedly upon the words. For a moment--one
sickening, awful moment--his lips were pressed upon hers, seeming
to draw all the breath--the very life itself--out of her quivering
body. Then there came a terrible sound--a rending sound like the
tearing of dry wood--and the dreadful constriction of his hold was
gone. She burst from it, gasping for air and freedom with the
agonized relief of one who has barely escaped suffocation. She
sprang for the door though her knees were doubling under her. She
reached it, and threw it wide. Then she looked back. . . .
He was huddled against the wall, his head in his hands, writhing as
if in the grip of some fiendish torturer. Broken sounds escaped
him--sounds he fought frantically to repress. He seemed to be
choking; and in a second her memory flashed back to that anguish
she had witnessed weeks before when first she had seen Kieff's
remedy and implored him to use it.
For seconds she stood, a helpless witness, too horrified to move.
Then, her physical strength reviving, pity stirred within her,
striving against what had been a sick and fearful loathing.
Gradually her vision cleared. The evil shadow lifted from her
brain. She saw him as he was--a man in desperate need of help.
She flung her repugnance from her, though it dung to her, dragging
upon her as she moved like a tangible thing. She closed the door
and went slowly back into the room, mastering her horror, fighting
it at every step. She readied the struggling, convulsed figure,
laid her hands upon it,--and her repulsion was gone.
"Sit down!" she said. "Sit down and let me help you!"
Blindly he surrendered to her guiding. She led him to the bed, and
he sank upon it. She opened his shirt at the throat. She brought
him water.
He could not drink at first, but after repeated effort he succeeded
in swallowing a little. Then at length in a hoarse whisper,
scarcely intelligible, he asked for the remedy which he always
carried.
She felt in his pockets and found it, all ready for use. The
lightning had begun to die down, and the light within the room was
dim. She turned the lamp higher, moving it so that its ray fell
upon Guy. And in that moment she saw Death in his face. . . .
She felt as if a quiet and very steady Hand had been laid upon her,
checking all agitation. Calmly she bent over the bared arm he
thrust forth to her. Unflinchingly she ran the needle into the
white flesh, noting with a detached sort of pity his emaciation.
He put his other arm about her like a frightened, dinging child.
"Stay with me! Don't leave me!" he muttered.
"All right," she made gentle answer. "Don't be afraid!"
He leaned against her, shuddering violently, his dark head bowed,
his spasmodic breathing painful to hear. She waited beside him for
the relief that seemed so slow in coming. Kieff's remedy did not
act so quickly now.
Gradually at last the distress began to lessen. She felt the
tension of his crouched body relax, the anguished breathing become
less laboured. He still clung to her, and her hand was on his head
though she did not remember putting it there. The dull echoes of
the thunder reverberated far away among the distant hills. The
night was passing.
Out of a deep silence there came Guy's voice. "I want--" he said
restlessly--"I want----"
She bent over him. Her arm went round his shoulders. Somehow she
felt as if the furnace of suffering through which he had come had
purged away all that was evil. His weakness cried aloud to her;
the rest was forgotten.
He turned his face up to her; and though the stamp of his agony was
still upon it, the eyes were pure and free from all taint of
passion.
"What do you want?" she asked him softly.
"I've been--horrible to you, Sylvia," he said, speaking rather
jerkily. "Sometimes I get a devil inside me--and I don't know what
I'm doing. I believe it's Kieff. I never knew what hell meant
till I met him. He taught me practically everything I know in that
line. He was like an awful rotting disease. He ruined everyone he
came near. Everything he touched went bad." He paused a moment.
Then, with a sudden boyishness, "There, it's done with, darling,"
he said. "Will you forget it all--and let me start afresh? I've
had such damnable luck always."
His eyes pleaded with her, yet they held confidence also. He knew
that she would not refuse.
And because of that which the lamplight had revealed to her, Sylvia
bent after a moment and kissed him on the forehead. She knew as
she did it that the devil, that had menaced her had been driven
forth.
So for a space they remained in a union of the spirit that was
curiously unlike anything that had ever before existed between
them. Then Guy's arm began to slip away from her. There came from
him a deep sigh.
She bent low over him, looking into his face. His eyes were
closed, but his lips moved, murmuring words which she guessed
rather than heard.
"Let me rest--just for a little! I shall be all right--afterwards."
She laid him back very gently upon the pillow, and lifted his feet
on to the bed. He thanked her almost inaudibly, and relaxed every
muscle like a tired child. She turned the lamp from him and moved
away.
She dressed in the dimness. Guy did not stir again. He lay
shrouded in the peace of utter repose. She had watched those deep
slumbers too often to fear any sudden awakening.
A few minutes later she went to the door, and softly opened it.
The sullen clouds were lifting; the night had gone. Very far away
a faint orange light spread like the reflected glow from a mighty
furnace somewhere behind those hills of mystery. The _veldt_ lay
wide and dumb like a vast and soundless sea.
She stood awed, as one who had risen out of the depths and scarcely
yet believed in any deliverance. But the horror had passed from
her like an evil dream. She stood in the first light of the
dawning and waited in a great stillness for the coming of the day.