CHAPTER I

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Paul Ereaut and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

THE

SAFETY CURTAIN

AND OTHER STORIES

by

ETHEL M. DELL

AUTHOR OF:-

The Hundreth Chance

Greatheart

The Lamp in the Desert

The Tidal Wave

The Top of the World

The Obstacle Race

The Way of an Eagle

The Knave of Diamonds

The Rocks of Valpré

The Swindler

The Keeper of the Door

Bars of Iron

Rosa Mundi

Etc.

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers

G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London

Made in the United States of America

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

CONTENTS

The Safety Curtain

The Experiment

Those Who Wait

The Eleventh Hour

The Place of Honour

The Safety Curtain

CHAPTER I

THE ESCAPE

A great shout of applause went through the crowded hall as the

Dragon-Fly Dance came to an end, and the Dragon-Fly, with quivering,

iridescent wings, flashed away.

It was the third encore. The dance was a marvellous one, a piece of

dazzling intricacy, of swift and unexpected subtleties, of almost

superhuman grace. It must have proved utterly exhausting to any ordinary

being; but to that creature of fire and magic it was no more than a

glittering fantasy, a whirl too swift for the eye to follow or the brain

to grasp.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" asked a man in the front row.

"It's a boy, of course," said his neighbour, shortly.

He was the only member of the audience who did not take part in that

third encore. He sat squarely in his seat throughout the uproar,

watching the stage with piercing grey eyes that never varied in their

stern directness. His brows were drawn above them--thick, straight brows

that bespoke a formidable strength of purpose. He was plainly a man who

was accustomed to hew his own way through life, despising the trodden

paths, overcoming all obstacles by grim persistence.

Louder and louder swelled the tumult. It was evident that nothing but a

repetition of the wonder-dance would content the audience. They yelled

themselves hoarse for it; and when, light as air, incredibly swift, the

green Dragon-Fly darted back, they outdid themselves in the madness of

their welcome. The noise seemed to shake the building.

Only the man in the front row with the iron-grey eyes and iron-hard

mouth made no movement or sound of any sort. He merely watched with

unchanging intentness the face that gleamed, ashen-white, above the

shimmering metallic green tights that clothed the dancer's slim body.

The noise ceased as the wild tarantella proceeded. There fell a deep

hush, broken only by the silver notes of a flute played somewhere behind

the curtain. The dancer's movements were wholly without sound. The

quivering, whirling feet scarcely seemed to touch the floor, it was a

dance of inspiration, possessing a strange and irresistible fascination,

a weird and meteoric rush, that held the onlookers with bated breath.

It lasted for perhaps two minutes, that intense and trancelike

stillness; then, like, a stone flung into glassy depths, a woman's

scream rudely shattered it, a piercing, terror-stricken scream that

brought the rapt audience back to earth with a shock as the liquid music

of the flute suddenly ceased.

"Fire!" cried the voice. "Fire! Fire!"

There was an instant of horrified inaction, and in that instant a tongue

of flame shot like a fiery serpent through the closed curtains behind

the dancer. In a moment the cry was caught up and repeated in a dozen

directions, and even as it went from mouth to mouth the safety-curtain

began to descend.

The dancer was forgotten, swept as it were from the minds of the

audience as an insect whose life was of no account. From the back of the

stage came a roar like the roar of an open furnace. A great wave of heat

rushed into the hall, and people turned like terrified, stampeding

animals and made for the exits.

The Dragon-Fly still stood behind the footlights poised as if for

flight, glancing this way and that, shimmering from head to foot in the

awful glare that spread behind the descending curtain. It was evident

that retreat behind the scenes was impossible, and in another moment or

two that falling curtain would cut off the only way left.

But suddenly, before the dancer's hunted eyes, a man leapt forward. He

held up his arms, making himself heard in clear command above the

dreadful babel behind him.

"Quick!" he cried. "Jump!"

The wild eyes flashed down at him, wavered, and were caught in his

compelling gaze. For a single instant--the last--the trembling,

glittering figure seemed to hesitate, then like a streak of lightning

leapt straight over the footlights into the outstretched arms.

They caught and held with unwavering iron strength. In the midst of a

turmoil indescribable the Dragon-Fly hung quivering on the man's breast,

the gauze wings shattered in that close, sustaining grip. The

safety-curtain came down with a thud, shutting off the horrors behind,

and a loud voice yelled through the building assuring the seething crowd

of safety.

But panic had set in. The heat was terrific. People fought and struggled

to reach the exits.

The dancer turned in the man's arms and raised a deathly face, gripping

his shoulders with clinging, convulsive fingers. Two wild dark eyes

looked up to his, desperately afraid, seeking reassurance.

He answered that look briefly with stern composure.

"Be still! I shall save you if I can."

The dancer's heart was beating in mad terror against his own, but at his

words it seemed to grow a little calmer. Quiveringly the white lips

spoke.

"There is a door--close to the stage--a little door--behind a green

curtain--if we could reach it."

"Ah!" the man said.

His eyes went to the stage, from the proximity of which the audience had

fled affrighted. He espied the curtain.

Only a few people intervened between him and it, and they were

struggling to escape in the opposite direction.

"Quick!" gasped the dancer.

He turned, snatched up his great-coat, and wrapped it about the slight,

boyish figure. The great dark eyes that shone out of the small white

face thanked him for the action. The clinging hands slipped from his

shoulders and clasped his arm. Together they faced the fearful heat that

raged behind the safety-curtain.

They reached the small door, gasping. It was almost hidden by green

drapery. But the dancer was evidently familiar with it. In a moment it

was open. A great burst of smoke met them. The man drew back. But a

quick hand closed upon his, drawing him on. He went blindly, feeling as

if he were stepping into the heart of a furnace, yet strangely

determined to go forward whatever came of it.

The smoke and the heat were frightful, suffocating in their intensity.

The roar of the unseen flames seemed to fill the world.

The door swung to behind them. They stood in seething darkness.

But again the small clinging hand pulled upon the man.

"Quick!" the dancer cried again.

Choked and gasping, but resolute still, he followed. They ran through a

passage that must have been on the very edge of the vortex of flame, for

behind them ere they left it a red light glared.

It showed another door in front of them with which the dancer struggled

a moment, then flung open. They burst through it together, and the cold

night wind met them like an angel of deliverance.

The man gasped and gasped again, filling his parched lungs with its

healing freshness. His companion uttered a strange, high laugh, and

dragged him forth into the open.

They emerged into a narrow alley, surrounded by tall houses. The night

was dark and wet. The rain pattered upon them as they staggered out into

a space that seemed deserted. The sudden quiet after the awful turmoil

they had just left was like the silence of death.

The man stood still and wiped the sweat in a dazed fashion from his

face. The little dancer reeled back against the wall, panting

desperately.

For a space neither moved. Then, terribly, the silence was rent by a

crash and the roar of flames. An awful redness leapt across the darkness

of the night, revealing each to each.

The dancer stood up suddenly and made an odd little gesture of

farewell; then, swiftly, to the man's amazement, turned back towards the

door through which they had burst but a few seconds before.

He stared for a moment--only a moment--not believing he saw aright, then

with a single stride he reached and roughly seized the small,

oddly-draped figure.

He heard a faint cry, and there ensued a sharp struggle against his

hold; but he pinioned the thin young arms without ceremony, gripping

them fast. In the awful, flickering glare above them his eyes shone

downwards, dominant, relentless.

"Are you mad?" he said.

The small dark head was shaken vehemently, with gestures curiously

suggestive of an imprisoned insect. It was as if wild wings fluttered

against captivity.

And then all in a moment the struggling ceased, and in a low, eager

voice the captive began to plead.

"Please, please let me go! You don't know--you don't understand. I

came--because--because--you called. But I was wrong--I was wrong to

come. You couldn't keep me--you wouldn't keep me--against my will!"

"Do you want to die, then?" the man demanded. "Are you tired of life?"

His eyes still shone piercingly down, but they read but little, for the

dancer's were firmly closed against them, even while the dark cropped

head nodded a strangely vigorous affirmative.

"Yes, that is it! I am so tired--so tired of life! Don't keep me! Let

me go--while I have the strength!" The little, white, sharp-featured

face, with its tight-shut eyes and childish, quivering mouth, was

painfully pathetic. "Death can't be more dreadful than life," the low

voice urged. "If I don't go back--I shall be so sorry afterwards. Why

should one live--to suffer?"

It was piteously spoken, so piteously that for a moment the man seemed

moved to compassion. His hold relaxed; but when the little form between

his hands took swift advantage and strained afresh for freedom he

instantly tightened his grip.

"No, No!" he said, harshly. "There are other things in life. You don't

know what you are doing. You are not responsible."

The dark eyes opened upon him then--wide, reproachful, mysteriously

far-seeing. "I shall not be responsible--if you make me live," said the

Dragon-Fly, with the air of one risking a final desperate throw.

It was almost an open challenge, and it was accepted instantly, with

grim decision. "Very well. The responsibility is mine," the man said

briefly. "Come with me!"

His arm encircled the narrow shoulders. He drew his young companion

unresisting from the spot. They left the glare of the furnace behind

them, and threaded their way through dark and winding alleys back to the

throbbing life of the city thoroughfares, back into the whirl and

stress of that human existence which both had nearly quitted--and one

had strenuously striven to quit--so short a time before.

CHAPTER II

NOBODY'S BUSINESS

"My name is Merryon," the man said, curtly. "I am a major in the Indian

Army--home on leave. Now tell me about yourself!"

He delivered the information in the brief, aggressive fashion that

seemed to be characteristic of him, and he looked over the head of his

young visitor as he did so, almost as if he made the statement against

his will.

The visitor, still clad in his great-coat, crouched like a dog on the

hearthrug before the fire in Merryon's sitting-room, and gazed with

wide, unblinking eyes into the flames.

After a few moments Merryon's eyes descended to the dark head and

surveyed it critically. The collar of his coat was turned up all round

it. It was glistening with rain-drops and looked like the head of some

small, furry animal.

As if aware of that straight regard, the dancer presently spoke, without

turning or moving an eyelid.

"What you are doesn't matter to any one except yourself. And what I am

doesn't matter either. It's just--nobody's business."

"I see," said Merryon.

A faint smile crossed his grim, hard-featured face. He sat down in a low

chair near his guest and drew to his side a small table that bore a tray

of refreshments. He poured out a glass of wine and held it towards the

queer, elfin figure crouched upon his hearth.

The dark eyes suddenly flashed from the fire to his face. "Why do you

offer me--that?" the dancer demanded, in a voice that was curiously

vibrant, as though it strove to conceal some overwhelming emotion. "Why

don't you give me--a man's drink?"

"Because I think this will suit you better," Merryon said; and he spoke

with a gentleness that was oddly at variance with the frown that drew

his brows.

The dark eyes stared up at him, scared and defiant, for the passage of

several seconds; then, very suddenly, the tension went out of the white,

pinched face. It screwed up like the face of a hurt child, and all in a

moment the little, huddled figure collapsed on the floor at his feet,

while sobs--a woman's quivering piteous sobs--filled the silence of the

room.

Merryon's own face was a curious mixture of pity and constraint as he

set down the glass and stooped forward over the shaking, anguished form.

"Look here, child!" he said, and whatever else was in his voice it

certainly held none of the hardness habitual to it. "You're

upset--unnerved. Don't cry so! Whatever you've been through, it's over.

No one can make you go back. Do you understand? You're free!"

He laid his hand, with the clumsiness of one little accustomed to

console, upon the bowed black head.

"Don't!" he said again. "Don't cry so! What the devil does it matter?

You're safe enough with me. I'm not the sort of bounder to give you

away."

She drew a little nearer to him. "You--you're not a bounder--at all,"

she assured him between her sobs. "You're just--a gentleman. That's what

you are!"

"All right," said Merryon. "Leave off crying!"

He spoke with the same species of awkward kindliness that characterized

his actions, and there must have been something strangely comforting in

his speech, for the little dancer's tears ceased as abruptly as they had

begun. She dashed a trembling hand across her eyes.

"Who's crying?" she said.

He uttered a brief, half-grudging laugh. "That's better. Now drink some

wine! Yes, I insist! You must eat something, too. You look

half-starved."

She accepted the wine, sitting in an acrobatic attitude on the floor

facing him. She drank it, and an odd sparkle of mischief shot up in her

great eyes. She surveyed him with an impish expression--much as a

grasshopper might survey a toad.

"Are you married?" she inquired, unexpectedly.

"No," said Merryon, shortly. "Why?"

She gave a little laugh that had a catch in it. "I was only thinking

that your wife wouldn't like me much. Women are so suspicious."

Merryon turned aside, and began to pour out a drink for himself. There

was something strangely elusive about this little creature whom Fortune

had flung to him. He wondered what he should do with her. Was she too

old for a foundling hospital?

"How old are you?" he asked, abruptly.

She did not answer.

He looked at her, frowning.

"Don't!" she said. "It's ugly. I'm not quite forty. How old are you?"

"What?" said Merryon.

"Not--quite--forty," she said again, with extreme distinctness. "I'm

small for my age, I know. But I shall never grow any more now. How old

did you say you were?"

Merryon's eyes regarded her piercingly. "I should like the truth," he

said, in his short, grim way.

She made a grimace that turned into an impish smile. "Then you must

stick to the things that matter," she said. "That is--nobody's

business."

He tried to look severe, but very curiously failed. He picked up a plate

of sandwiches to mask a momentary confusion, and offered it to her.

Again, with simplicity, she accepted, and there fell a silence between

them while she ate, her eyes again upon the fire. Her face, in repose,

was the saddest thing he had ever seen. More than ever did she make him

think of a child that had been hurt.

She finished her sandwich and sat for a while lost in thought. Merryon

leaned back in his chair, watching her. The little, pointed features

possessed no beauty, yet they had that which drew the attention

irresistibly. The delicate charm of her dancing was somehow expressed in

every line. There was fire, too,--a strange, bewitching fire,--behind

the thick black lashes.

Very suddenly that fire was turned upon him again. With a swift, darting

movement she knelt up in front of him, her clasped hands on his knees.

"Why did you save me just now?" she said. "Why wouldn't you let me die?"

He looked full at her. She vibrated like a winged creature on the verge

of taking flight. But her eyes--her eyes sought his with a strange

assurance, as though they saw in him a comrade.

"Why did you make me live when I wanted to die?" she insisted. "Is life

so desirable? Have you found it so?"

His brows contracted at the last question, even while his mouth curved

cynically. "Some people find it so," he said.

"But you?" she said, and there was almost accusation in her voice, "Have

the gods been kind to you? Or have they thrown you the dregs--just the

dregs?"

The passionate note in the words, subdued though it was, was not to be

mistaken. It stirred him oddly, making him see her for the first time as

a woman rather than as the fantastic being, half-elf, half-child, whom

he had wrested from the very jaws of Death against her will. He leaned

slowly forward, marking the deep, deep shadows about her eyes, the vivid

red of her lips.

"What do you know about the dregs?" he said.

She beat her hands with a small, fierce movement on his knees, mutely

refusing to answer.

"Ah, well," he said, "I don't know why I should answer either. But I

will. Yes, I've had dregs--dregs--and nothing but dregs for the last

fifteen years."

He spoke with a bitterness that he scarcely attempted to restrain, and

the girl at his feet nodded--a wise little feminine nod.

"I knew you had. It comes harder to a man, doesn't it?"

"I don't know why it should," said Merryon, moodily.

"I do," said the Dragon-Fly. "It's because men were made to boss

creation. See? You're one of the bosses, you are. You've been led to

expect a lot, and because you haven't had it you feel you've been

cheated. Life is like that. It's just a thing that mocks at you. I

know."

She nodded again, and an odd, will-o'-the-wisp smile flitted over her

face.

"You seem to know--something of life," the man said.

She uttered a queer choking laugh. "Life is a big, big swindle," she

said. "The only happy people in the world are those who haven't found it

out. But you--you say there are other things in life besides suffering.

How did you know that if--if you've never had anything but dregs?"

"Ah!" Merryon said. "You have me there."

He was still looking full into those shadowy eyes with a curious,

dawning fellowship in his own.

"You have me there," he repeated. "But I do know. I was happy enough

once, till--" He stopped.

"Things went wrong?" insinuated the Dragon-Fly, sitting down on her

heels in a childish attitude of attention.

"Yes," Merryon admitted, in his sullen fashion. "Things went wrong. I

found I was the son of a thief. He's dead now, thank Heaven. But he

dragged me under first. I've been at odds with life ever since."

"But a man can start again," said the Dragon-Fly, with her air of

worldly wisdom.

"Oh, yes, I did that." Merryon's smile was one of exceeding bitterness.

"I enlisted and went to South Africa. I hoped for death, and I won a

commission instead."

The girl's eyes shone with interest. "But that was luck!" she said.

"Oh, yes; it was luck of a sort--the damnable, unsatisfactory sort. I

entered the Indian Army, and I've got on. But socially I'm practically

an outcast. They're polite to me, but they leave me outside. The man who

rose from the ranks--the fellow with a shady past--fought shy of by the

women, just tolerated by the men, covertly despised by the

youngsters--that's the sort of person I am. It galled me once. I'm used

to it now."

Merryon's grim voice went into grimmer silence. He was staring sombrely

into the fire, almost as if he had forgotten his companion.

There fell a pause; then, "You poor dear!" said the Dragon-Fly,

sympathetically. "But I expect you are like that, you know. I expect

it's a bit your own fault."

He looked at her in surprise.

"No, I'm not meaning anything nasty," she assured him, with that quick

smile of hers whose sweetness he was just beginning to realize. "But

after a bad knockout like yours a man naturally looks for trouble. He

gets suspicious, and a snub or two does the rest. He isn't taking any

more. It's a pity you're not married. A woman would have known how to

hold her own, and a bit over--for you."

"I wouldn't ask any woman to share the life I lead," said Merryon, with

bitter emphasis. "Not that any woman would if I did. I'm not a ladies'

man."

She laughed for the first time, and he started at the sound, for it was

one of pure, girlish merriment.

"My! You are modest!" she said. "And yet you don't look it, somehow."

She turned her right-hand palm upwards on his knee, tacitly inviting

his. "You're a good one to talk of life being worth while, aren't you?"

she said.

He accepted the frank invitation, faintly smiling. "Well, I know the

good things are there," he said, "though I've missed them."

"You'll marry and be happy yet," she said, with confidence. "But I

shouldn't put it off too long if I were you."

He shook his head. His hand still half-consciously grasped hers. "Ask a

woman to marry the son of one of the most famous swindlers ever known? I

think not," he said. "Why, even you--" His eyes regarded her,

comprehended her. He stopped abruptly.

"What about me?" she said.

He hesitated, possessed by an odd embarrassment. The dark eyes were

lifted quite openly to his. It came to him that they were accustomed to

the stare of multitudes--they met his look so serenely, so impenetrably.

"I don't know how we got on to the subject of my affairs," he said,

after a moment. "It seems to me that yours are the most important just

now. Aren't you going to tell me anything about them?"

She gave a small, emphatic shake of the head. "I should have been dead

by this time if you hadn't interfered," she said. "I haven't got any

affairs."

"Then it's up to me to look after you," Merryon said, quietly.

But she shook her head at that more vigorously still. "You look after

me!" Her voice trembled on a note of derision. "Sure, you're joking!"

she protested. "I've looked after myself ever since I was eight."

"And made a success of it?" Merryon asked.

Her eyes shot swift defiance. "That's nobody's business but my own," she

said. "You know what I think of life."

Merryon's hand closed slowly upon hers. "There seems to be a pair of

us," he said. "You can't refuse to let me help you--for fellowship's

sake."

The red lips trembled suddenly. The dark eyes fell before his for the

first time. She spoke almost under her breath. "I'm too old--to take

help from a man--like that."

He bent slightly towards her. "What has age to do with it?"

"Everything." Her eyes remained downcast; the hand he held was trying

to wriggle free, but he would not suffer it.

"Circumstances alter cases," he said. "I accepted the responsibility

when I saved you."

"But you haven't the least idea what to do with me," said the

Dragon-Fly, with a forlorn smile. "You ought to have thought of that.

You'll be going back to India soon. And I--and I--" She stopped, still

stubbornly refusing to meet the man's eyes.

"I am going back next week," Merryon said.

"How fine to be you!" said the Dragon-Fly. "You wouldn't like to take me

with you now as--as _valet de chambre_?"

He raised his brows momentarily. Then: "Would you come?" he asked, with

a certain roughness, as though he suspected her of trifling.

She raised her eyes suddenly, kindled and eager. "Would I come!" she

said, in a tone that said more than words.

"You would?" he said, and laid an abrupt hand on her shoulder. "You

would, eh?"

She knelt up swiftly, the coat that enveloped her falling back,

displaying the slim, boyish figure, the active, supple limbs. Her

breathing came through parted lips.

"As your--your servant--your valet?" she panted.

His rough brows drew together. "My what? Good heavens, no! I could only

take you in one capacity."

She started back from his hand. For a moment sheer horror looked out

from her eyes. Then, almost in the same instant, they were veiled. She

caught her breath, saying no word, only dumbly waiting.

"I could only take you as my wife," he said, still in that

half-bantering, half-embarrassed fashion of his. "Will you come?"

She threw back her head and stared at him. "Marry you! What, really?

Really?" she questioned, breathlessly.

"Merely for appearances' sake," said Merryon, with grim irony. "The

regimental morals are somewhat easily offended, and an outsider like

myself can't be too careful."

The girl was still staring at him, as though at some novel specimen of

humanity that had never before crossed her path. Suddenly she leaned

towards him, looking him full and straight in the eyes.

"What would you do if I said 'Yes'?" she questioned, in a small, tense

whisper.

He looked back at her, half-interested, half amused. "Do, urchin? Why,

marry you!" he said.

"Really marry me?" she urged. "Not make-believe?"

He stiffened at that. "Do you know what you're saying?" he demanded,

sternly.

She sprang to her feet with a wild, startled movement; then, as he

remained seated, paused, looking down at him sideways, half-doubtful,

half-confiding. "But you can't be in earnest!" she said.

"I am in earnest." He raised his face to her with a certain doggedness,

as though challenging her to detect in it aught but honesty. "I may be

several kinds of a fool," he said, "but I am in earnest. I'm no great

catch, but I'll marry you if you'll have me. I'll protect you, and I'll

be good to you. I can't promise to make you happy, of course,

but--anyway, I shan't make you miserable."

"But--but--" She still stood before him as though hovering on the edge

of flight. Her lips were trembling, her whole form quivering and

scintillating in the lamplight. She halted on the words as if uncertain

how to proceed.

"What is it?" said Merryon.

And then, quite suddenly, his mood softened. He leaned slowly forward.

"You needn't be afraid of me," he said. "I'm not a heady youngster. I

shan't gobble you up."

She laughed at that--a quick, nervous laugh. "And you won't beat me

either? Promise!"

He frowned at her. "Beat you! I?"

She nodded several times, faintly smiling. "Yes, you, Mr. Monster! I'm

sure you could."

He smiled also, somewhat grimly. "You're wrong, madam. I couldn't beat a

child."

"Oh, my!" she said, and threw up her arms with a quivering laugh,

dropping his coat in a heap on the floor. "How old do you think this

child is?" she questioned, glancing down at him in her sidelong,

speculative fashion.

He looked at her hard and straight, looked at the slim young body in its

sheath of iridescent green that shimmered with every breath she drew,

and very suddenly he rose.

She made a spring backwards, but she was too late. He caught and held

her.

"Let me go!" she cried, her face crimson.

"But why?" Merryon's voice fell curt and direct. He held her firmly by

the shoulders.

She struggled against him fiercely for a moment, then became suddenly

still. "You're not a brute, are you?" she questioned, breathlessly.

"You--you'll be good to me? You said so!"

He surveyed her grimly. "Yes, I will be good to you," he said. "But I'm

not going to be fooled. Understand? If you marry me, you must play the

part. I don't know how old you are. I don't greatly care. All I do care

about is that you behave yourself as the wife of a man in my position

should. You're old enough to know what that means, I suppose?"

He spoke impressively, but the effect of his words was not quite what he

expected. The point of a very red tongue came suddenly from between the

red lips, and instantly disappeared.

"That all?" she said. "Oh yes; I think I can do that. I'll try, anyway.

And if you're not satisfied--well, you'll have to let me know. See?

Now let me go, there's a good man! I don't like the feel of your

hands."

He let her go in answer to the pleading of her eyes, and she slipped

from his grasp like an eel, caught up the coat at her feet, and wriggled

into it.

Then, impishly, she faced him, buttoning it with nimble fingers the

while. "This is the garment of respectability," she declared. "It isn't

much of a fit, is it? But I shall grow to it in time. Do you know, I

believe I'm going to like being your wife?"

"Why?" said Merryon.

She laughed--that laugh of irrepressible gaiety that had surprised him

before.

"Oh, just because I shall so love fighting your battles for you," she

said. "It'll be grand sport."

"Think so?" said Merryon.

"Oh, you bet!" said the Dragon-Fly, with gay confidence. "Men never know

how to fight. They're poor things--men!"

He himself laughed at that--his grim, grudging laugh. "It's a world of

fools, Puck," he said.

"Or knaves," said the Dragon-Fly, wisely. And with that she stretched up

her arms above her head and laughed again. "Now I know what it feels

like," she said, "to have risen from the dead."

CHAPTER III

COMRADES

There came the flash of green wings in the cypresses and a raucous

scream of jubilation as the boldest parakeet in the compound flew off

with the choicest sweetmeat on the tiffin-table in the veranda. There

were always sweets at tiffin in the major's bungalow. Mrs. Merryon loved

sweets. She was wont to say that they were the best remedy for

homesickness she knew.

Not that she ever was homesick. At least, no one ever suspected such a

possibility, for she had a smile and a quip for all, and her laughter

was the gayest in the station. She ran out now, half-dressed, from her

bedroom, waving a towel at the marauder.

"That comes of being kind-hearted," she declared, in the deep voice that

accorded so curiously with the frothy lightness of her personality.

"Everyone takes advantage of it, sure."

Her eyes were grey and Irish, and they flashed over the scene

dramatically, albeit there was no one to see and admire. For she was

strangely captivating, and perhaps it was hardly to be expected that

she should be quite unconscious of the fact.

"Much too taking to be good, dear," had been the verdict of the

Commissioner's wife when she had first seen little Puck Merryon, the

major's bride.

But then the Commissioner's wife, Mrs. Paget, was so severely plain in

every way that perhaps she could scarcely be regarded as an impartial

judge. She had never flirted with any one, and could not know the joys

thereof.

Young Mrs. Merryon, on the other hand, flirted quite openly and very

sweetly with every man she met. It was obviously her nature so to do.

She had doubtless done it from her cradle, and would probably continue

the practice to her grave.

"A born wheedler," the colonel called her; but his wife thought "saucy

minx" a more appropriate term, and wondered how Major Merryon could put

up with her shameless trifling.

As a matter of fact, Merryon wondered himself sometimes; for she flirted

with him more than all in that charming, provocative way of hers, coaxed

him, laughed at him, brilliantly eluded him. She would perch daintily on

the arm of his chair when he was busy, but if he so much as laid a hand

upon her she was gone in a flash like a whirling insect, not to return

till he was too absorbed to pay any attention to her. And often as those

daring red lips mocked him, they were never offered to his even in

jest. Yet was she so finished a coquette that the omission was never

obvious. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that she should

evade all approach to intimacy. They were comrades--just comrades.

Everyone in the station wanted to know Merryon's bride. People had begun

by being distant, but that phase was long past. Puck Merryon had stormed

the citadel within a fortnight of her arrival, no one quite knew how.

Everyone knew her now. She went everywhere, though never without her

husband, who found himself dragged into gaieties for which he had scant

liking, and sought after by people who had never seemed aware of him

before. She had, in short, become the rage, and so gaily did she revel

in her triumph that he could not bring himself to deny her the fruits

thereof.

On that particular morning in March he had gone to an early parade

without seeing her, for there had been a regimental ball the night

before, and she had danced every dance. Dancing seemed her one passion,

and to Merryon, who did not dance, the ball had been an unmitigated

weariness. He had at last, in sheer boredom, joined a party of

bridge-players, with the result that he had not seen much of his young

wife throughout the evening.

Returning from the parade-ground, he wondered if he would find her up,

and then caught sight of her waving away the marauders in scanty attire

on the veranda.

He called a greeting to her, and she instantly vanished into her room.

He made his way to the table set in the shade of the cluster-roses, and

sat down to await her.

She remained invisible, but her voice at once accosted him.

"Good-morning, Billikins! Tell the _khit_ you're ready! I shall be out

in two shakes."

None but she would have dreamed of bestowing so frivolous an appellation

upon the sober Merryon. But from her it came so naturally that Merryon

scarcely noticed it. He had been "Billikins" to her throughout the brief

three months that had elapsed since their marriage. Of course, Mrs.

Paget disapproved, but then Mrs. Paget was Mrs. Paget. She disapproved

of everything young and gay.

Merryon gave the required order, and then sat in stolid patience to

await his wife's coming. She did not keep him long. Very soon she came

lightly out and joined him, an impudent smile on her sallow little face,

dancing merriment in her eyes.

"Oh, poor old Billikins!" she said, commiseratingly. "You were bored

last night, weren't you? I wonder if I could teach you to dance."

"I wonder," said Merryon.

His eyes dwelt upon her in her fresh white muslin. What a child she

looked! Not pretty--no, not pretty; but what a magic smile she had!

She sat down at the table facing him, and leaned her elbows upon it. "I

wonder if I could!" she said again, and then broke into her sudden

laugh.

"What's the joke?" asked Merryon.

"Oh, nothing!" she said, recovering herself. "It suddenly came over me,

that's all--poor old Mother Paget's face, supposing she had seen me last

night."

"Didn't she see you last night? I thought you were more or less in the

public eye," said Merryon.

"Oh, I meant after the dance," she explained. "I felt sort of wound up

and excited after I got back. And I wanted to see if I could still do

it. I'm glad to say I can," she ended, with another little laugh.

Her dark eyes shot him a tentative glance. "Can what?" asked Merryon.

"You'll be shocked if I tell you."

"What was it?" he said.

There was insistence in his tone--the insistence by which he had once

compelled her to live against her will. Her eyelids fluttered a little

as it reached her, but she cocked her small, pointed chin

notwithstanding.

"Why should I tell you if I don't want to?" she demanded.

"Why shouldn't you want to?" he said.

The tip of her tongue shot out and in again. "Well, you never took me

for a lady, did you?" she said, half-defiantly.

"What was it?" repeated Merryon, sticking to the point.

Again she grimaced at him, but she answered, "Oh, I only--after I'd had

my bath--lay on the floor and ran round my head for a bit. It's not a

bit difficult, once you've got the knack. But I got thinking of Mrs.

Paget--she does amuse me, that woman. Only yesterday she asked me what

Puck was short for, and I told her Elizabeth--and then I got laughing so

that I had to stop."

Her face was flushed, and she was slightly breathless as she ended, but

she stared across the table with brazen determination, like a naughty

child expecting a slap.

Merryon's face, however, betrayed neither astonishment nor disapproval.

He even smiled a little as he said, "Perhaps you would like to give me

lessons in that also? I've often wondered how it was done."

She smiled back at him with instant and obvious relief.

"No, I shan't do it again. It's not proper. But I will teach you to

dance. I'd sooner dance with you than any of 'em."

It was naïvely spoken, so naïvely that Merryon's faint smile turned into

something that was almost genial. What a youngster she was! Her

freshness was a perpetual source of wonder to him when he remembered

whence she had come to him.

"I am quite willing to be taught," he said. "But it must be in strict

privacy."

She nodded gaily.

"Of course. You shall have a lesson to-night--when we get back from the

Burtons' dinner. I'm real sorry you were bored, Billikins. You shan't be

again."

That was her attitude always, half-maternal, half-quizzing, as if

something about him amused her; yet always anxious to please him, always

ready to set his wishes before her own, so long as he did not attempt to

treat her seriously. She had left all that was serious in that other

life that had ended with the fall of the safety-curtain on a certain

night in England many æons ago. Her personality now was light as

gossamer, irresponsible as thistledown. The deeper things of life passed

her by. She seemed wholly unaware of them.

"You'll be quite an accomplished dancer by the time everyone comes back

from the Hills," she remarked, balancing a fork on one slender brown

finger. "We'll have a ball for two--every night."

"We!" said Merryon.

She glanced at him.

"I said 'we.'"

"I know you did." The man's voice had suddenly a dogged ring; he looked

across at the vivid, piquant face with the suggestion of a frown between

his eyes.

"Don't do that!" she said, lightly. "Never do that, Billikins! It's

most unbecoming behaviour. What's the matter?"

"The matter?" he said, slowly. "The matter is that you are going to the

Hills for the hot weather with the rest of the women, Puck. I can't keep

you here."

She made a rude face at him.

"Preserve me from any cattery in the Hills!" she said. "I'm going to

stay with you."

"You can't," said Merryon.

"I can," she said.

He frowned still more.

"Not if I say otherwise, Puck."

She snapped her fingers at him and laughed.

"I am in earnest," Merryon said. "I can't keep you here for the hot

weather. It would probably kill you."

"What of that?" she said.

He ignored her frivolity.

"It can't be done," he said. "So you must make the best of it."

"Meaning you don't want me?" she demanded, unexpectedly.

"Not for the hot weather," said Merryon.

She sprang suddenly to her feet.

"I won't go, Billikins!" she declared, fiercely, "I just won't!"

He looked at her, sternly resolute.

"You must go," he said, with unwavering decision.

"You're tired of me! Is that it?" she demanded.

He raised his brows. "You haven't given me much opportunity to be that,

have you?" he said.

A great wave of colour went over her face. She put up her hand as though

instinctively to shield it.

"I've done my best to--to--to--" She stopped, became piteously silent,

and suddenly he saw that she was crying behind the sheltering hand.

He softened almost in spite of himself.

"Come here, Puck!" he said.

She shook her head dumbly.

"Come here!" he repeated.

She came towards him slowly, as if against her will. He reached forward,

still seated, and drew her to him.

She trembled at his touch, trembled and started away, yet in the end she

yielded.

"Please," she whispered; "please!"

He put his arm round her very gently, yet with determination, making her

stand beside him.

"Why don't you want to go to the Hills?" he said.

"I'd be frightened," she murmured.

"Frightened? Why?"

"I don't know," she said, vaguely.

"Yes, but you do know. You must know. Tell me." He spoke gently,

but the stubborn note was in his voice and his hold was

insistent. "Leave off crying and tell me!"

"I'm not crying," said Puck.

She uncovered her face and looked down at him through tears with a

faintly mischievous smile.

"Tell me!" he reiterated. "Is it because you don't like the idea of

leaving me?"

Her smile flashed full out upon him on the instant.

"Goodness, no! Whatever made you think that?" she demanded, briskly.

He was momentarily disconcerted, but he recovered himself at once.

"Then what is your objection to going?" he asked.

She turned and sat down conversationally on the corner of the table.

"Well, you know, Billikins, it's like this. When I married you--I did it

out of pity. See? I was sorry for you. You seemed such a poor, helpless

sort of creature. And I thought being married to me might help to

improve your position a bit. You see my point, Billikins?"

"Oh, quite," he said. "Please go on!"

She went on, with butterfly gaiety.

"I worked hard--really hard--to get you out of your bog. It was a horrid

deep one, wasn't it, Billikins? My! You were floundering! But I've

pulled you out of it and dragged you up the bank a bit. You don't get

sniffed at anything like you used, do you, Billikins? But I daren't

leave you yet--I honestly daren't. You'd slip right back again directly

my back was turned. And I should have the pleasure of starting the

business all over again. I couldn't face it, my dear. It would be too

disheartening."

"I see," said Merryon. There was just the suspicion of a smile among the

rugged lines of his face. "Yes, I see your point. But I can show you

another if you'll listen."

He was holding her two hands as she sat, as though he feared an attempt

to escape. For though Puck sat quite still, it was with the stillness of

a trapped creature that waits upon opportunity.

"Will you listen?" he said.

She nodded.

It was not an encouraging nod, but he proceeded.

"All the women go to the Hills for the hot weather. It's unspeakable

here. No white woman could stand it. And we men get leave by turns to

join them. There is nothing doing down here, no social round whatever.

It's just stark duty. I can't lose much social status that way. It will

serve my turn much better if you go up with the other women and continue

to hold your own there. Not that I care a rap," he added, with masculine

tactlessness. "I am no longer susceptible to snubs."

"Then I shan't go," she said at once, beginning to swing a restless

foot.

"Yes, but you will go," he said. "I wish it."

"You want to get rid of me," said Puck, looking over his head with the

eyes of a troubled child.

Merryon was silent. He was watching her with a kind of speculative

curiosity. His hands were still locked upon hers.

Slowly her eyes came down to his.

"Billikins," she said, "let me stay down for a little!" Her lips were

quivering. She kicked his chair agitatedly. "I don't want to go," she

said, dismally. "Let me stay--anyhow--till I get ill!"

"No," Merryon said. "It can't be done, child. I can't risk that.

Besides, there'd be no one to look after you."

She slipped to her feet in a flare of indignation. "You're a pig,

Billikins! You're a pig!" she cried, and tore her hands free. "I've a

good mind to run away from you and never come back. It's what you

deserve, and what you'll get, if you aren't careful!"

She was gone with the words--gone like a flashing insect disturbing the

silence for a moment, and leaving a deeper silence behind.

Merryon looked after her for a second or two, and then philosophically

continued his meal. But the slight frown remained between his brows. The

veranda seemed empty and colourless now that she was gone.

CHAPTER IV

FRIENDS

The Burtons' dinner-party was a very cheerful affair. The Burtons were

young and newly married, and they liked to gather round them all the

youth and gaiety of the station. It was for that reason that Puck's

presence had been secured, for she was the life of every gathering; and

her husband had been included in the invitation simply and solely

because from the very outset she had refused to go anywhere without him.

It was the only item of her behaviour of which worthy Mrs. Paget could

conscientiously approve.

As a matter of fact Merryon had not the smallest desire to go, but he

would not say so; and all through the evening he sat and watched his

young wife with a curious hunger at his heart. He hated to think that he

had hurt her.

There was no sign of depression about Puck, however, and he alone

noticed that she never once glanced in his direction. She kept everyone

up to a pitch of frivolity that certainly none would have attained

without her, and an odd feeling began to stir in Merryon, a sensation of

jealousy such as he had never before experienced. They seemed to

forget, all of them, that this flashing, brilliant creature was his.

She seemed to have forgotten it also. Or was it only that deep-seated,

inimitable coquetry of hers that prompted her thus to ignore him?

He could not decide; but throughout the evening the determination grew

in him to make this one point clear to her. Trifle as she might, she

must be made to understand that she belonged to him, and him alone.

Comrades they might be, but he held a vested right in her, whether he

chose to assert it or not.

They returned at length to their little gimcrack bungalow--the

Match-box, as Puck called it--on foot under a blaze of stars. The

distance was not great, and Puck despised rickshaws.

She flitted by his side in her airy way, chatting inconsequently, not

troubling about response, as elusive as a fairy and--the man felt it in

the rising fever of his veins--as maddeningly attractive.

They reached the bungalow. She went up the steps to the rose-twined

veranda as though she floated on wings of gossamer. "The roses are all

asleep, Billikins," she said. "They look like alabaster, don't they?"

She caught a cluster to her and held it against her cheek for a moment.

Merryon was close behind her. She seemed to realize his nearness quite

suddenly, for she let the flowers go abruptly and flitted on.

He followed her till, at the farther end of the veranda, she turned and

faced him. "Good-night, Billikins," she said, lightly.

"What about that dancing-lesson?" he said.

She threw up her arms above her head with a curious gesture. They

gleamed transparently white in the starlight. Her eyes shone like

fire-flies.

"I thought you preferred dancing by yourself," she retorted.

"Why?" he said.

She laughed a soft, provocative laugh, and suddenly, without any

warning, the cloak had fallen from her shoulders and she was dancing.

There in the starlight, white-robed and wonderful, she danced as, it

seemed to the man's fascinated senses, no human had ever danced before.

She was like a white flame--a darting, fiery essence, soundless,

all-absorbing, all-entrancing.

He watched her with pent breath, bound by the magic of her, caught, as

it were, into the innermost circle of her being, burning in answer to

her fire, yet so curiously enthralled as to be scarcely aware of the

ever-mounting, ever-spreading heat. She was like a mocking spirit, a

will-o'-the-wisp, luring him, luring him--whither?

The dance quickened, became a passionate whirl, so that suddenly he

seemed to see a bright-winged insect caught in an endless web and

battling for freedom. He almost saw the silvery strands of that web

floating like gossamer in the starlight.

And then, with well-nigh miraculous suddenness, the struggle was over

and the insect had darted free. He saw her flash away, and found the

veranda empty.

Her cloak lay at his feet. He stooped with an odd sense of giddiness and

picked it up. A fragrance of roses came to him with the touch of it, and

for an instant he caught it up to his face. The sweetness seemed to

intoxicate him.

There came a light, inconsequent laugh; sharply he turned. She had

opened the window of his smoking-den and was standing in the entrance

with impudent merriment in her eyes. There was triumph also in her

pose--a triumph that sent a swirl of hot passion through him. He flung

aside the cloak and strode towards her.

But she was gone on the instant, gone with a tinkle of maddening

laughter. He blundered into the darkness of an empty room. But he was

not the man to suffer defeat tamely. Momentarily baffled, he paused to

light a lamp; then went from room to room of the little bungalow,

locking each door that she might not elude him a second time. His blood

was on fire, and he meant to find her.

In the end he came upon her wholly unexpectedly, standing on the veranda

amongst the twining roses. She seemed to be awaiting him, though she

made no movement towards him as he approached.

"Good-night, Billikins," she said, her voice very small and humble.

He came to her without haste, realizing that she had given the game

into his hands. She did not shrink from him, but she raised an appealing

face. And oddly the man's heart smote him. She looked so pathetically

small and childish standing there.

But the blood was still running fiercely in his veins, and that

momentary twinge did not cool him. Child she might be, but she had

played with fire, and she alone was responsible for the conflagration

that she had started.

He drew near to her; he took her, unresisting, into his arms.

She cowered down, hiding her face away from him. "Don't, Billikins!

Please--please, Billikins!" she begged, incoherently. "You promised--you

promised--"

"What did I promise?" he said.

"That you wouldn't--wouldn't"--she spoke breathlessly, for his hold was

tightening upon her--"gobble me up," she ended, with a painful little

laugh.

"I see." Merryon's voice was deep and low. "And you meantime are at

liberty to play any fool game you like with me. Is that it?"

She was quivering from head to foot. She did not lift her face. "It

wasn't--a fool game," she protested. "I did it because--because--you

were so horrid this morning, so--so cold-blooded. And I--and I--wanted

to see if--I could make you care."

"Make me care!" Merryon said the words over oddly to himself; and then,

still fast holding her, he began to feel for the face that was so

strenuously hidden from him.

She resisted him desperately. "Let me go!" she begged, piteously. "I'll

be so good, Billikins. I'll go to the Hills. I'll do anything you like.

Only let me go now! Billikins!"

She cried out sharply, for he had overcome her resistance by quiet

force, had turned her white face up to his own.

"I am not cold-blooded to-night, Puck," he said. "Whatever you

are--child or woman--gutter-snipe or angel--you are mine, all mine.

And--I want you!"

The deep note vibrated in his voice; he stooped over her.

But she flung herself back over his arm, striving desperately to avoid

him. "No--no--no!" she cried, wildly. "You mustn't, Billikins! Don't

kiss me! Don't kiss me!"

She threw up a desperate hand, covering his mouth. "Don't--oh, don't!"

she entreated, brokenly.

But the fire she had kindled she was powerless to quench. He would not

be frustrated. He caught her hand away. He held her to his heart. He

kissed the red lips hotly, with the savage freedom of a nature long

restrained.

"Who has a greater right?" he said, with fiery exultation.

She did not answer him. But at the first touch of his lips upon her own

she resisted no longer, only broke into agonized tears.

And suddenly Merryon came to himself--was furiously, overwhelmingly

ashamed.

"God forgive me!" he said, and let her go.

She tottered a little, covering her face with her hands, sobbing like a

hurt child. But she did not try to run away.

He flung round upon his heel and paced the veranda in fierce discomfort.

Beast that he was--brute beast to have hurt her so! That piteous sobbing

was more than he could bear.

Suddenly he turned back to her, came and stood beside her. "Puck--Puck,

child!" he said.

His voice was soft and very urgent. He touched the bent, dark head with

a hesitating caress.

She started away from him with a gasp of dismay; but he checked her.

"No, don't!" he said. "It's all right, dear. I'm not such a brute as I

seem. Don't be afraid of me!"

There was more of pleading in his voice than he knew. She raised her

head suddenly, and looked at him as if puzzled.

He pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed her wet cheeks with clumsy

tenderness. "It's all right," he said again. "Don't cry! I hate to see

you cry."

She gazed at him, still doubtful, still sobbing a little. "Oh,

Billikins!" she said, tremulously, "why did you?"

"I don't know," he said. "I was mad. It was your own fault, in a way.

You don't seem to realize that I'm as human as the rest of the world.

But I don't defend myself. I was an infernal brute to let myself go like

that."

"Oh, no, you weren't, Billikins!" Quite unexpectedly she answered him.

"You couldn't help it. Men are like that. And I'm glad you're human.

But--but"--she faltered a little--"I want to feel that you're safe, too.

I've always felt--ever since I jumped into your arms that night--that

you--that you were on the right side of the safety-curtain. You are,

aren't you? Oh, please say you are! But I know you are." She held out

her hands to him with a quivering gesture of confidence. "If you'll

forgive me for--for fooling you," she said, "I'll forgive you--for being

fooled. That's a fair offer, isn't it? Don't let's think any more about

it!" Her rainbow smile transformed her face, but her eyes sought his

anxiously.

He took the hands, but he did not attempt to draw her nearer. "Puck!" he

said.

"What is it?" she whispered, trembling.

"Don't!" he said. "I won't hurt you. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your

head. But, child, wouldn't it be safer--easier for both of us--if--if we

lived together, instead of apart?"

He spoke almost under his breath. There was no hint of mastery about

him at that moment, only a gentleness that pleaded with her as with a

frightened child.

And Puck went nearer to him on the instant, as it were instinctively,

almost involuntarily. "P'r'aps some day, Billikins!" she said, with a

little, quivering laugh. "But not yet--not if I've got to go to the

Hills away from you."

"When I follow you to the Hills, then," he said.

She freed one hand and, reaching up, lightly stroked his cheek.

"P'r'aps, Billikins!" she said again. "But--you'll have to be awfully

patient with me, because--because--" She paused, agitatedly; then went

yet a little nearer to him. "You will be kind to me, won't you?" she

pleaded.

He put his arm about her. "Always, dear," he said.

She raised her face. She was still trembling, but her action was one of

resolute confidence. "Then let's be friends, Billikins!" she said.

It was a tacit invitation. He bent and gravely kissed her.

Her lips returned his kiss shyly, quiveringly. "You're the nicest man I

ever met, Billikins," she said. "Good-night!"

She slipped from his encircling arm and was gone.

The man stood motionless where she had left him, wondering at himself,

at her, at the whole rocking universe. She had kindled the Magic Fire

in him indeed! His whole being was aglow. And yet--and yet--she had had

her way with him. He had let her go.

Wherefore? Wherefore? The hot blood dinned in his ears. His hands

clenched. And from very deep within him the answer came. Because he

loved her.

CHAPTER V

THE WOMAN

Summer in the Plains! Pitiless, burning summer!

All day a blinding blaze of sun beat upon the wooden roof, forced a way

through the shaded windows, lay like a blasting spell upon the parched

compound. The cluster-roses had shrivelled and died long since. Their

brown leaves still clung to the veranda and rattled desolately with a

dry, scaly sound in the burning wind of dawn.

The green parakeets had ceased to look for sweets on the veranda.

Nothing dainty ever made its appearance there. The Englishman who came

and went with such grim endurance offered them no temptations.

Sometimes he spent the night on a _charpoy_ on the veranda, lying

motionless, though often sleepless, through the breathless, dragging

hours. There had been sickness among the officers and Merryon, who was

never sick, was doing the work of three men. He did it doggedly, with

the stubborn determination characteristic of him; not cheerfully--no one

ever accused Merryon of being cheerful--but efficiently and

uncomplainingly. Other men cursed the heat, but he never took the

trouble. He needed all his energies for what he had to do.

His own chance of leave had become very remote. There was so much sick

leave that he could not be spared. Over that, also, he made no

complaint. It was useless to grumble at the inevitable. There was not a

man in the mess who could not be spared more easily than he.

For he was indomitable, unfailing, always fulfilling his duties with

machine-like regularity, stern, impenetrable, hard as granite.

As to what lay behind that hardness, no one ever troubled to inquire.

They took him for granted, much as if he had been a well-oiled engine

guaranteed to surmount all obstacles. How he did it was nobody's

business but his own. If he suffered in that appalling heat as other men

suffered, no one knew of it. If he grew a little grimmer and a little

gaunter, no one noticed. Everyone knew that whatever happened to others,

he at least would hold on. Everyone described him as "hard as nails."

Each day seemed more intolerable than the last, each night a perceptible

narrowing of the fiery circle in which they lived. They seemed to be

drawing towards a culminating horror that grew hourly more palpable,

more monstrously menacing--a horror that drained their strength even

from afar.

"It's going to kill us this time," declared little Robey, the youngest

subaltern, to whom the nights were a torment unspeakable. He had been

within an ace of heat apoplexy more than once, and his nerves were

stretched almost to breaking-point.

But Merryon went doggedly on, hewing his unswerving way through all. The

monsoon was drawing near, and the whole tortured earth seemed to be

waiting in dumb expectation.

Night after night a glassy moon came up, shining, immense and awful,

through a thick haze of heat. Night after night Merryon lay on his

veranda, smoking his pipe in stark endurance while the dreadful hours

crept by. Sometimes he held a letter from his wife hard clenched in one

powerful hand. She wrote to him frequently--short, airy epistles, wholly

inconsequent, often provocatively meagre.

"There is a Captain Silvester here," she wrote once; "such a bounder.

But he is literally the only man who can dance in the station. So what

would you? Poor Mrs. Paget is so shocked!"

Feathery hints of this description were by no means unusual, but though

Merryon sometimes frowned over them, they did not make him uneasy. His

will-o'-the-wisp might beckon, but she would never allow herself to be

caught. She never spoke of love in her letters, always ending demurely,

"Yours sincerely, Puck." But now and then there was a small cross

scratched impulsively underneath the name, and the letters that bore

this token accompanied Merryon through his inferno whithersoever he

went.

There came at last a night of terrible heat, when it seemed as if the

world itself must burst into flames. A heavy storm rolled up, roared

overhead for a space like a caged monster, and sullenly rolled away,

without a single drop of rain to ease the awful tension of waiting that

possessed all things.

Merryon left the mess early, tramping back over the dusty road,

convinced that the downpour for which they all yearned was at hand.

There was no moonlight that night, only a hot blackness, illumined now

and then by a brilliant dart of lightning that shocked the senses and

left behind a void indescribable, a darkness that could be felt. There

was something savage in the atmosphere, something primitive and

passionate that seemed to force itself upon him even against his will.

His pulses were strung to a tropical intensity that made him aware of

the man's blood in him, racing at fever heat through veins that felt

swollen to bursting.

He entered his bungalow and flung off his clothes, took a plunge in a

bath of tepid water, from which he emerged with a pricking sensation all

over him that made the lightest touch a torture, and finally, keyed up

to a pitch of sensitiveness that excited his own contempt, he pulled on

some pyjamas and went out to his _charpoy_ on the veranda.

He dismissed the _punkah_ coolie, feeling his presence to be

intolerable, and threw himself down with his coat flung open. The

oppression of the atmosphere was as though a red-hot lid were being

forced down upon the tortured earth. The blackness beyond the veranda

was like a solid wall. Sleep was out of the question. He could not

smoke. It was an effort even to breathe. He could only lie in torment

and wait--and wait.

The flashes of lightning had become less frequent. A kind of waking

dream began to move in his brain. A figure gradually grew upon that

screen of darkness--an elf-like thing, intangible, transparent, a

quivering, shadowy image, remote as the dawn.

Wide-eyed, he watched the vision, his pulses beating with a mad longing

so fierce as to be utterly beyond his own control. It was as though he

had drunk strong wine and had somehow slipped the leash of ordinary

convention. The savagery of the night, the tropical intensity of it, had

got into him. Half-naked, wholly primitive, he lay and waited--and

waited.

For a while the vision hung before him, tantalizing him, maddening him,

eluding him. Then came a flash of lightning, and it was gone.

He started up on the _charpoy_, every nerve tense as stretched wire.

"Come back!" he cried, hoarsely. "Come back!"

Again the lightning streaked the darkness.

There came a burst of thunder, and suddenly, through it and above it,

he heard the far-distant roar of rain. He sprang to his feet. It was

coming.

The seconds throbbed away. Something was moving in the compound, a

subtle, awful Something. The trees and bushes quivered before it, the

cluster-roses rattled their dead leaves wildly. But the man stood

motionless in the light that fell across the veranda from the open

window of his room, watching with eyes that shone with a fierce and

glaring intensity for the return of his vision.

The fevered blood was hammering at his temples. For the moment he was

scarcely sane. The fearful strain of the past few weeks that had

overwhelmed less hardy men had wrought upon him in a fashion more subtle

but none the less compelling. They had been stricken down, whereas he

had been strung to a pitch where bodily suffering had almost ceased to

count. He had grown used to the torment, and now in this supreme moment

it tore from him his civilization, but his physical strength remained

untouched. He stood alert and ready, like a beast in a cage, waiting for

whatever the gods might deign to throw him.

The tumult beyond that wall of blackness grew. It became a swirling

uproar. The rose-vines were whipped from the veranda and flung writhing

in all directions. The trees in the compound strove like terrified

creatures in the grip of a giant. The heat of the blast was like tongues

of flame blown from an immense furnace. Merryon's whole body seemed to

be wrapped in fire. With a fierce movement, he stripped the coat from

him and flung it into the room behind him. He was alone save for the

devils that raged in that pandemonium. What did it matter how he met

them?

And then, with the suddenness of a stupendous weight dropped from

heaven, came rain, rain in torrents and billows, rain solid as the

volume of Niagara, a crushing mighty force.

The tempest shrieked through the compound. The lightning glimmered,

leapt, became continuous. The night was an inferno of thunder and

violence.

And suddenly out of the inferno, out of the awful strife of elements,

out of that frightful rainfall, there came--a woman!

CHAPTER VI

LOVERS

She came haltingly, clinging with both hands to the rail of the veranda,

her white face staring upwards in terror and instinctive appeal. She was

like an insect dragging itself away from destruction, with drenched and

battered wings.

He saw her coming and stiffened. It was his vision returned to him, but

till she came within reach of him he was afraid to move. He stood

upright against the wall, every mad instinct of his blood fiercely awake

and clamouring.

The noise and wind increased. It swirled along the veranda. She seemed

afraid to quit her hold of the balustrade lest she should be swept away.

But still she drew nearer to the lighted window, and at last, with

desperate resolution, she tore herself free and sprang for shelter.

In that instant the man also sprang. He caught her in arms that almost

expected to clasp emptiness, arms that crushed in a savage ecstasy of

possession at the actual contact with a creature of flesh and blood. In

the same moment the lamp in the room behind him flared up and went out.

There arose a frightened crying from his breast. For a few moments she

fought like a mad thing for freedom. He felt her teeth set in his arm,

and laughed aloud. Then very suddenly her struggles ceased. He became

aware of a change in her. She gave her whole weight into his arms, and

lay palpitating against his heart.

By the awful glare of the lightning he found her face uplifted to his.

She was laughing, too, but in her eyes was such a passion of love as he

had never looked upon before. In that moment he knew that she was

his--wholly, completely, irrevocably his. And, stooping, he kissed the

upturned lips with the fierce exultation of the conqueror.

Her arms slipped round his neck. She abandoned herself wholly to him.

She gave him worship for worship, passion for passion.

Later, he awoke to the fact that she was drenched from head to foot. He

drew her into his room and shut the window against the driving blast.

She clung to him still.

"Isn't it dreadful?" she said, shuddering. "It's just as if Something

Big is trying to get between us."

He closed the shutter also, and groped for matches. She accompanied him

on his search, for she would not lose touch with him for a moment.

The lamp flared on her white, childish face, showing him wild joy and

horror strangely mingled. Her great eyes laughed up at him.

"Billikins, darling! You aren't very decent, are you? I'm not decent

either, Billikins. I'd like to take off all my clothes and dance on my

head."

He laughed grimly. "You will certainly have to undress--the sooner the

better."

She spread out her hands. "But I've nothing to wear, Billikins, nothing

but what I've got on. I didn't know it was going to rain so. You'll have

to lend me a suit of pyjamas, dear, while I get my things dried. You

see"--she halted a little--"I came away in rather a hurry. I--was

bored."

Merryon, oddly sobered by her utter dependence upon him, turned aside

and foraged for brandy. She came close to him while he poured it out.

"It isn't for me, is it? I couldn't drink it, darling. I shouldn't know

what was happening for the next twenty-four hours if I did."

"It doesn't matter whether you do or not," he said. "I shall be here to

look after you."

She laughed at that, a little quivering laugh of sheer content. Her

cheek was against his shoulder. "Live for ever, O king!" she said, and

softly kissed it.

Then she caught sight of something on the arm below. "Oh, darling, did I

do that?" she cried, in distress.

He put the arm about her. "It doesn't matter. I don't feel it," he

said. "I've got you."

She lifted her lips to his again. "Billikins, darling, I didn't know it

was you--at first, not till I heard you laugh. I'd rather die than hurt

you. You know it, don't you?"

"Of course I know it," he said.

He caught her to him passionately for a moment, then slowly relaxed his

hold. "Drink this, like a good child," he said, "and then you must get

to bed. You are wet to the skin."

"I know I am," she said, "but I don't mind."

"I mind for you," he said.

She laughed up at him, her eyes like stars. "I was lucky to get in when

I did," she said. "Wasn't the heat dreadful--and the lightning? I ran

all the way from the station. I was just terrified at it all. But I kept

thinking of you, dear--of you, and how--and how you'd kissed me that

night when I was such a little idiot as to cry. Must I really drink it,

Billikins? Ah, well, just to please you--anything to please you. But you

must have one little sip first. Yes, darling, just one. That's to please

your silly little wife, who wants to share everything with you now.

There's my own boy! Now I'll drink every drop--every drop."

She began to drink, standing in the circle of his arm; then looked up at

him with a quick grimace. "It's powerful strong, dear. You'll have to

put me to bed double quick after this, or I shall be standing on my head

in earnest."

He laughed a little. She leaned back against him.

"Yes, I know, darling. You're a man that likes to manage, aren't you?

Well, you can manage me and all that is mine for the rest of my natural

life. I'm never going to leave you again, Billikins. That's understood,

is it?"

His face sobered. "What possessed you to come back to this damnable

place?" he said.

She laughed against his shoulder. "Now, Billikins, don't you start

asking silly questions. I'll tell you as much as it's good for you to

know all in good time. I came mainly because I wanted to. And that's the

reason why I'm going to stay. See?"

She reached up an audacious finger and smoothed the faint frown from his

forehead with her sunny, provocative smile.

"It'll have to be a joint management," she said. "There are so many

things you mustn't do. Now, darling, I've finished the brandy to please

you. So suppose you look out your prettiest suit of pyjamas, and I'll

try and get into them." She broke into a giddy little laugh. "What would

Mrs. Paget say? Can't you see her face? I can!"

She stopped suddenly, struck dumb by a terrible blast of wind that shook

the bungalow to its foundations.

"Just hark to the wind and the rain, Billikins!" she whispered, as it

swirled on. "Did you ever hear anything so awful? It's as if--as if God

were very furious--about something. Do you think He is, dear? Do you?"

She pressed close to him with white, pleading face upraised. "Do you

believe in God, Billikins? Honestly now!"

The man hesitated, holding her fast in his arms, seeing only the

quivering, childish mouth and beseeching eyes.

"You don't, do you?" she said. "I don't myself, Billikins. I think He's

just a myth. Or anyhow--if He's there at all--He doesn't bother about

the people who were born on the wrong side of the safety-curtain. There,

darling! Kiss me once more--I love your kisses--I love them! And now go!

Yes--yes, you must go--just while I make myself respectable. Yes, but

you can leave the door ajar, dear heart! I want to feel you close at

hand. I am yours--till I die--king and master!"

Her eyes were brimming with tears; he thought her overwrought and weary,

and passed them by in silence.

And so through that night of wonder, of violence, and of storm, she lay

against his heart, her arms wound about his neck with a closeness which

even sleep could not relax.

Out of the storm she had come to him, like a driven bird seeking refuge;

and through the fury of the storm he held her, compassing her with the

fire of his passion.

"I am safe now," she murmured once, when he thought her sleeping. "I am

quite--quite safe."

And he, fancying the raging of the storm had disturbed her, made hushing

answer, "Quite safe, wife of my heart."

She trembled a little, and nestled closer to his breast.

CHAPTER VII

THE HONEYMOON

"You can't mean to let your wife stay here!" ejaculated the colonel,

sharply. "You wouldn't do anything so mad!"

Merryon's hard mouth took a sterner downward curve. "My wife refuses to

leave me, sir," he said.

"Good heavens above, Merryon!" The colonel's voice held a species of

irritated derision. "Do you tell me you can't manage--a--a piece of

thistledown like that?"

Merryon was silent, grimly, implacably silent. Plainly he had no

intention of making such an admission.

"It's madness--criminal madness!" Colonel Davenant looked at him

aggressively, obviously longing to pierce that stubborn calm with which

Merryon had so long withstood the world.

But Merryon remained unmoved, though deep in his private soul he knew

that the colonel was right, knew that he had decided upon a course of

action that involved a risk which he dreaded to contemplate.

"Oh, look here, Merryon!" The colonel lost his temper after his own

precipitate fashion. "Don't be such a confounded fool! Take a

fortnight's leave--I can't spare you longer--and go back to the Hills

with her! Make her settle down with my wife at Shamkura! Tell her you'll

beat her if she doesn't!"

Merryon's grim face softened a little. "Thank you very much, sir! But

you can't spare me even for so long. Moreover, that form of punishment

wouldn't scare her. So, you see, it would come to the same thing in the

end. She is determined to face what I face for the present."

"And you're determined to let her!" growled the colonel.

Merryon shrugged his shoulders.

"You'll probably lose her," the colonel persisted, gnawing fiercely at

his moustache. "Have you considered that?"

"I've considered everything," Merryon said, rather heavily. "But she

came to me--through that inferno. I can't send her away again. She

wouldn't go."

Colonel Davenant swore under his breath. "Let me talk to her!" he said,

after a moment.

The ghost of a smile touched Merryon's face. "It's no good, sir. You can

talk. You won't make any impression."

"But it's practically a matter of life and death, man!" insisted the

colonel. "You can't afford any silly sentiment in an affair like this."

"I am not sentimental," Merryon said, and his lips twitched a little

with the words. "But all the same, since she has set her heart on

staying, she shall stay. I have promised that she shall."

"You are mad," the colonel declared. "Just think a minute! Think what

your feelings will be if she dies!"

"I have thought, sir." The dogged note was in Merryon's voice again. His

face was a mask of impenetrability. "If she dies, I shall at least have

the satisfaction of knowing that I made her happy first."

It was his last word on the subject. He departed, leaving the colonel

fuming.

That evening the latter called upon Mrs. Merryon. He found her sitting

on her husband's knee smoking a Turkish cigarette, and though she

abandoned this unconventional attitude to receive her visitor, he had a

distinct impression that the two were in subtle communion throughout his

stay.

"It's so very nice of you to take the trouble," she said, in her

charming way, when he had made his most urgent representations. "But

really it's much better for me to be with my husband here. I stayed at

Shamkura just as long as I could possibly bear it, and then I just had

to come back here. I don't think I shall get ill--really. And if I

do"--she made a little foreign gesture of the hands--"I'll nurse

myself."

As Merryon had foretold, it was useless to argue with her. She

dismissed all argument with airy unreason. But yet the colonel could not

find it in his heart to be angry with her. He was very angry with

Merryon, so angry that for a whole fortnight he scarcely spoke to him.

But when the end of the fortnight came, and with it the first break in

the rains, little Mrs. Merryon went smiling forth and returned his call.

"Are you still being cross with Billikins?" she asked him, while her

hand lay engagingly in his. "Because it's really not his fault, you

know. If he sent me to Kamchatka, I should still come back."

"You wouldn't if you belonged to me," said Colonel Davenant, with a

grudging smile.

She laughed and shook her head. "Perhaps I shouldn't--not unless I loved

you as dearly as I love Billikins. But I think you needn't be cross

about it. I'm quite well. If you don't believe me, you can look at my

tongue."

She shot it out impudently, still laughing. And the colonel suddenly and

paternally patted her cheek.

"You're a very naughty girl," he said. "But I suppose we shall have to

make the best of you. Only, for Heaven's sake, don't go and get ill on

the quiet! If you begin to feel queer, send for the doctor at the

outset!"

He abandoned his attitude of disapproval towards Merryon after that

interview, realizing possibly its injustice. He even declared in a

letter to his wife that Mrs. Merryon was an engaging chit, with a will

of her own that threatened to rule them all! Mrs. Davenant pursed her

lips somewhat over the assertion, and remarked that Major Merryon's wife

was plainly more at home with men than women. Captain Silvester was so

openly out of temper over her absence that it was evident she had been

"leading him on with utter heartlessness," and now, it seemed, she meant

to have the whole mess at her beck and call.

As a matter of fact, Puck saw much more of the mess than she desired. It

became the fashion among the younger officers to drop into the Merryons'

bungalow at the end of the evening. Amusements were scarce, and Puck was

a vigorous antidote to boredom. She always sparkled in society, and she

was too sweet-natured to snub "the boys," as she called them. The smile

of welcome was ever ready on her little, thin white face, the quick jest

on her nimble tongue.

"We mustn't be piggy just because we are happy," she said to her husband

once. "How are they to know we are having our honeymoon?" And then she

nestled close to him, whispering, "It's quite the best honeymoon any

woman ever had."

To which he could make but the one reply, pressing her to his heart and

kissing the red lips that mocked so merrily when the world was looking

on.

She had become the hub of his existence, and day by day he watched her

anxiously, grasping his happiness with a feeling that it was too great

to last.

The rains set in in earnest, and the reek of the Plains rose like an

evil miasma to the turbid heavens. The atmosphere was as the interior of

a steaming cauldron. Great toadstools spread like a loathsome disease

over the compound. Fever was rife in the camp. Mosquitoes buzzed

incessantly everywhere, and rats began to take refuge in the bungalow.

Puck was privately terrified at rats, but she smothered her terror in

her husband's presence and maintained a smiling front. They laid down

poison for the rats, who died horribly in inaccessible places, making

her wonder if they were not almost preferable alive. And then one night

she discovered a small snake coiled in a corner of her bedroom.

She fled to Merryon in horror, and he and the _khitmutgar_ slew the

creature. But Puck's nerves were on edge from that day forward. She went

through agonies of cold fear whenever she was left alone, and she

feverishly encouraged the subalterns to visit her during her husband's

absence on duty.

He raised no objection till he one day returned unexpectedly to find her

dancing a hornpipe for the benefit of a small, admiring crowd to whom

she had been administering tea.

She sprang like a child to meet him at his entrance, declaring the

entertainment at an end; and the crowd soon melted away.

Then, somewhat grimly, Merryon took his wife to task.

She sat on the arm of his chair with her arms round his neck, swinging

one leg while she listened. She was very docile, punctuating his remarks

with soft kisses dropped inconsequently on the top of his head. When he

ended, she slipped cosily down upon his knee and promised to be good.

It was not a very serious promise, and it was plainly proffered in a

spirit of propitiation. Merryon pursued the matter no further, but he

was vaguely dissatisfied. He had a feeling that she regarded his

objections as the outcome of eccentric prudishness, or at the best an

unreasonable fit of jealousy. She smoothed him down as though he had

been a spoilt child, her own attitude supremely unabashed; and though he

could not be angry with her, an uneasy sense of doubt pressed upon him.

Utterly his own as he knew her to be, yet dimly, intangibly, he began to

wonder what her outlook on life could be, how she regarded the tie that

bound them. It was impossible to reason seriously with her. She floated

out of his reach at the first touch.

So that curious honeymoon of theirs continued, love and passion crudely

mingled, union without knowledge, flaming worship and blind possession.

"You are happy?" Merryon asked her once.

To which she made ardent answer, "Always happy in your arms, O king."

And Merryon was happy also, though, looking back later, it seemed to him

that he snatched his happiness on the very edge of the pit, and that

even at the time he must have been half-aware of it.

When, a month after her coming, the scourge of the Plains caught her, as

was inevitable, he felt as if his new-found kingdom had begun already to

depart from him.

For a few days Puck was seriously ill with malaria. She came through it

with marvellous resolution, nursed by Merryon and his bearer, the

general factotum of the establishment.

But it left her painfully weak and thin, and the colonel became again

furiously insistent that she should leave the Plains till the rains were

over.

Merryon, curiously enough, did not insist. Only one evening he took the

little wasted body into his arms and begged her--actually begged her--to

consent to go.

"I shall be with you for the first fortnight," he said. "It won't be

more than a six-weeks' separation."

"Six weeks!" she protested, piteously.

"Perhaps less," he said. "I may be able to come to you for a day or two

in the middle. Say you will go--and stay, sweetheart! Set my mind at

rest!"

"But, darling, you may be ill. A thousand things may happen. And I

couldn't go back to Shamkura. I couldn't!" said Puck, almost crying,

clinging fast around his neck.

"But why not?" he questioned, gently. "Weren't they kind to you there?

Weren't you happy?"

She clung faster. "Happy, Billikins! With that hateful Captain Silvester

lying in wait to--to make love to me! I didn't tell you before. But

that--that was why I left."

He frowned above her head. "You ought to have told me before, Puck."

She trembled in his arms. "It didn't seem to matter when once I'd got

away; and I knew it would only make you cross."

"How did he make love to you?" demanded Merryon.

He tried to see her face, but she hid it resolutely against him. "Don't,

Billikins! It doesn't matter now."

"It does matter," he said, sternly.

Puck was silent.

Merryon continued inexorably. "I suppose it was your own fault. You led

him on."

She gave a little nervous laugh against his breast. "I never meant to,

Billikins. I--I don't much like men--as a rule."

"You manage to conceal that fact very successfully," he said.

She laughed again rather piteously. "You don't know me," she whispered.

"I'm not--like that--all through."

"I hope not," said Merryon, severely.

She turned her face slightly upwards and snuggled it into his neck. "You

used not to mind," she said.

He held her close in his arms the while he steeled himself against her.

"Well, I mind now," he said. "And I will have no more of it. Is that

clearly understood?"

She assented dubiously, her lips softly kissing his neck. "It isn't--all

my fault, Billikins," she whispered, wistfully, "that men treat

me--lightly."

He set his teeth. "It must be your fault," he declared, firmly. "You can

help it if you try."

She turned her face more fully to his. "How grim you look, darling! You

haven't kissed me for quite five minutes."

"I feel more like whipping you," he said, grimly.

She leapt in his arms as if he had been about to put his words into

action. "Oh, no!" she cried. "No, you wouldn't beat me, Billikins.

You--you wouldn't, dear, would you?" Her great eyes, dilated and

imploring, gazed into his for a long desperate second ere she gave

herself back to him with a sobbing laugh. "You're not in earnest, of

course. I'm silly to listen to you. Do kiss me, darling, and not

frighten me anymore!"

He held her close, but still he did not comply with her request. "Did

this Silvester ever kiss you?" he asked.

She shook her head vehemently, hiding her face.

"Look at me!" he said.

"No, Billikins!" she protested.

"Then tell me the truth!" he said.

"He kissed me--once, Billikins," came in distressed accents from his

shoulder.

"And you?" Merryon's words sounded clipped and cold.

She shivered. "I ran right away to you. I--I didn't feel safe any more."

Merryon sat silent. Somehow he could not stir up his anger against her,

albeit his inner consciousness told him that she had been to blame; but

for the first time his passion was cooled. He held her without ardour,

the while he wondered.

That night he awoke to the sound of her low sobbing at his side. His

heart smote him. He put forth a comforting hand.

She crept into his arms. "Oh, Billikins," she whispered, "keep me with

you! I'm not safe--by myself."

The man's soul stirred within him. Dimly he began to understand what his

protection meant to her. It was her anchor, all she had to keep her from

the whirlpools. Without it she was at the mercy of every wind that blew.

Again cold doubt assailed him, but he put it forcibly away. He gathered

her close, and kissed the tears from her face and the trouble from her

heart.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MOUTH OF THE PIT

So Puck had her way and stayed.

She was evidently sublimely happy--at least in Merryon's society, but

she did not pick up her strength very quickly, and but for her unfailing

high spirits Merryon would have felt anxious about her. There seemed to

be nothing of her. She was not like a creature of flesh and blood. Yet

how utterly, how abundantly, she satisfied him! She poured out her love

to him in a perpetual offering that never varied or grew less. She gave

him freely, eagerly, glowingly, all she had to give. With passionate

triumph she answered to his need. And that need was growing. He could

not blind himself to the fact. His profession no longer filled his life.

There were times when he even resented its demands upon him. The sick

list was rapidly growing, and from morning till night his days were

full.

Puck made no complaint. She was always waiting for him, however late the

hour of his return. She was always in his arms the moment the dripping

overcoat was removed. Sometimes he brought work back with him, and

wrestled with regimental accounts and other details far into the night.

It was not his work, but someone had to do it, and it had devolved upon

him.

Puck never would go to bed without him. It was too lonely, she said; she

was afraid of snakes, or rats, or bogies. She used to curl up on the

_charpoy_ in his room, clad in the airiest of wrappers, and doze the

time away till he was ready.

One night she actually fell into a sound sleep thus, and he, finishing

his work, sat on and on, watching her, loath to disturb her. There was

deep pathos in her sleeping face. Lines that in her waking moments were

never apparent were painfully noticeable in repose. She had the puzzled,

wistful look of a child who has gone through trouble without

understanding it--a hurt and piteous look.

He watched her thus till a sense of trespass came upon him, and then he

rose, bent over her, and very tenderly lifted her.

She was alert on the instant, with a sharp movement of resistance. Then

at once her arms went round his neck. "Oh, darling, is it you? Don't

bother to carry me! You're so tired!"

He smiled at the idea, and she nestled against his heart, lifting soft

lips to his.

He carried her to bed, and laid her down, but she would not let him go

immediately. She yet clung about his neck, hiding her face against it.

He held her closely. "Good-night, little pal--little sweetheart," he

said.

Her arms tightened. "Billikins!" she said.

He waited. "What is it, dear?"

She became a little agitated. He could feel her lips moving, but they

said no audible word.

He waited in silence. And suddenly she raised her face and looked at him

fully. There was a glory in her eyes such as he had never seen before.

"I dreamt last night that the wonderfullest thing happened," she said,

her red lips quivering close to his own. "Billikins, what if--the dream

came true?"

A hot wave of feeling went through him at her words. He crushed her to

him, feeling the quick beat of her heart against his own, the throbbing

surrender of her whole being to his. He kissed her burningly, with such

a passion of devotion as had never before moved him.

She laughed rapturously. "Isn't it great, Billikins?" she said. "And I'd

have missed it all if it hadn't been for you. Just think--if I hadn't

jumped--before the safety-curtain--came--down!"

She was speaking between his kisses, and eventually they stopped her.

"Don't think," he said; "don't think!"

It was the beginning of a new era, the entrance of a new element into

their lives. Perhaps till that night he had never looked upon her wholly

in the light of wife. His blind passion for her had intoxicated him.

She had been to him an elf from fairyland, a being elusive who offered

him all the magic of her love, but upon whom he had no claims. But from

that night his attitude towards her underwent a change. Very tenderly he

took her into his own close keeping. She had become human in his eyes,

no longer a wayward sprite, but a woman, eager-hearted, and his own. He

gave her reverence because of that womanhood which he had only just

begun to visualize in her. Out of his passion there had kindled a

greater fire. All that she had in life she gave him, glorying in the

gift, and in return he gave her love.

All through the days that followed he watched over her with unfailing

devotion--a devotion that drew her nearer to him than she had ever been

before. She was ever responsive to his mood, keenly susceptible to his

every phase of feeling. But, curiously, she took no open notice of the

change in him. She was sublimely happy, and like a child she lived upon

happiness, asking no questions. He never saw her other than content.

Slowly that month of deadly rain wore on. The Plains had become a vast

and fetid swamp, the atmosphere a weltering, steamy heat, charged with

fever, leaden with despair.

But Puck was like a singing bird in the heart of the wilderness. She

lived apart in a paradise of her own, and even the colonel had to

relent again and bestow his grim smile upon her.

"Merryon's a lucky devil," he said, and everyone in the mess agreed with

him.

But, "You wait!" said Macfarlane, the doctor, with gloomy emphasis.

"There's more to come."

It was on a night of awful darkness that he uttered this prophecy, and

his hearers were in too overwhelming a state of depression to debate the

matter.

Merryon's bungalow was actually the only one in the station in which

happiness reigned. They were sitting together in his den smoking a great

many cigarettes, listening to the perpetual patter of the rain on the

roof and the drip, drip, drip of it from gutter to veranda, superbly

content and "completely weather-proof," as Puck expressed it.

"I hope none of the boys will turn up to-night," she said. "We haven't

room for more than two, have we?"

"Oh, someone is sure to come," responded Merryon. "They'll be getting

bored directly, and come along here for coffee."

"There's someone there now," said Puck, cocking her head. "I think I

shall run along to bed and leave you to do the entertaining. Shall I?"

She looked at him with a mischievous smile, very bright-eyed and alert.

"It would be a quick method of getting rid of them," remarked Merryon.

She jumped up. "Very well, then. I'll go, shall I? Shall I, darling?"

He reached out a hand and grasped her wrist. "No," he said,

deliberately, smiling up at her. "You'll stay and do your duty--unless

you're tired," he added. "Are you?"

She stooped to bestow a swift caress upon his forehead. "My own

Billikins!" she murmured. "You're the kindest husband that ever was. Of

course, I'm going to stay."

She could scarcely have effected her escape had she so desired, for

already a hand was on the door. She turned towards it with the roguish

smile still upon her lips.

Merryon was looking at her at the moment. She interested him far more

than the visitor, whom he guessed to be one of the subalterns. And so

looking, he saw the smile freeze upon her face to a mask-like

immobility. And very suddenly he remembered a man whom he had once seen

killed on a battlefield--killed instantaneously--while laughing at some

joke. The frozen mirth, the starting eyes, the awful vacancy where the

soul had been--he saw them all again in the face of his wife.

"Great heavens, Puck! What is it?" he said, and sprang to his feet.

In the same instant she turned with the movement of one tearing herself

free from an evil spell, and flung herself violently upon his breast.

"Oh, Billikins, save me--save me!" she cried, and broke into hysterical

sobbing.

His arms were about her in a second, sheltering her, sustaining her. His

eyes went beyond her to the open door.

A man was standing there--a bulky, broad-featured, coarse-lipped man

with keen black eyes that twinkled maliciously between thick lids, and a

black beard that only served to emphasize an immensely heavy under-jaw.

Merryon summed him up swiftly as a Portuguese American with more than a

dash of darker blood in his composition.

He entered the room in a fashion that was almost insulting. It was

evident that he was summing up Merryon also.

The latter waited for him, stiff with hostility, his arms still tightly

clasping Puck's slight, cowering form. He spoke as the stranger

advanced, in his voice a deep menace like the growl of an angry beast

protecting its own.

"Who are you? And what do you want?"

The stranger's lips parted, showing a gleam of strong white teeth. "My

name," he said, speaking in a peculiarly soft voice that somehow

reminded Merryon of the hiss of a reptile, "is Leo Vulcan. You have

heard of me? Perhaps not. I am better known in the Western Hemisphere.

You ask me what I want?" He raised a brown, hairy hand and pointed

straight at the girl in Merryon's arms. "I want--my wife!"

Puck's cry of anguish followed the announcement, and after it came

silence--a tense, hard-breathing silence, broken only by her long-drawn,

agonized sobbing.

Merryon's hold had tightened all unconsciously to a grip; and she was

clinging to him wildly, convulsively, as she had never clung before. He

could feel the horror that pulsed through her veins; it set his own

blood racing at fever-speed.

Over her head he faced the stranger with eyes of steely hardness. "You

have made a mistake," he said, briefly and sternly.

The other man's teeth gleamed again. He had a way of lifting his lip

when talking which gave him an oddly bestial look. "I think not," he

said. "Let the lady speak for herself! She will not--I think--deny me."

There was an intolerable sneer in the last sentence. A sudden awful

doubt smote through Merryon. He turned to the girl sobbing at his

breast.

"Puck," he said, "for Heaven's sake--what is this man to you?"

She did not answer him; perhaps she could not. Her distress was terrible

to witness, utterly beyond all control.

But the newcomer was by no means disconcerted by it. He drew near with

the utmost assurance.

"Allow me to deal with her!" he said, and reached out a hand to touch

her.

But at that action Merryon's wrath burst into sudden flame. "Curse you,

keep away!" he thundered. "Lay a finger on her at your peril!"

The other stood still, but his eyes gleamed evilly. "My good sir," he

said, "you have not yet grasped the situation. It is not a pleasant one

for you--for either of us; but it has got to be grasped. I do not happen

to know under what circumstances you met this woman; but I do know that

she was my lawful wife before the meeting took place. In whatever light

you may be pleased to regard that fact, you must admit that legally she

is my property, not yours!"

"Oh, no--no--no!" moaned Puck.

Merryon said nothing. He felt strangled, as if a ligature about his

throat had forced all the blood to his brain and confined it there.

After a moment the bearded man continued: "You may not know it, but she

is a dancer of some repute, a circumstance which she owes entirely to

me. I picked her up, a mere child in the streets of London, turning

cart-wheels for a living. I took her and trained her as an acrobat. She

was known on the stage as Toby the Tumbler. Everyone took her for a boy.

Later, she developed a talent for dancing. It was then that I decided to

marry her. She desired the marriage even more than I did." Again he

smiled his brutal smile.

"Oh, no!" sobbed Puck. "Oh, no!"

He passed on with a derisive sneer. "We were married about two years

ago. She became popular in the halls very soon after, and it turned her

head. You may have discovered yourself by this time that she is not

always as tractable as she might be. I had to teach her obedience and

respect, and eventually I succeeded. I conquered her--as I

hoped--completely. However, six months ago she took advantage of a stage

fire to give me the slip, and till recently I believed that she was

dead. Then a friend of mine--Captain Silvester--met her out here in

India a few weeks back at a place called Shamkura, and recognized her.

Her dancing qualities are superb. I think she displayed them a little

rashly if she really wished to remain hidden. He sent me the news, and I

have come myself to claim her--and take her back."

"You can't take me back!" It was Puck's voice, but not as Merryon had

ever heard it before. She flashed round like a hunted creature at bay,

her eyes blazing a wild defiance into the mocking eyes opposite. "You

can't take me back!" she repeated, with quivering insistence. "Our

marriage was--no marriage! It was a sham--a sham! But even if--even

if--it had been--a true marriage--you would have to--set me--free--now."

"And why?" said Vulcan, with his evil smile.

She was white to the lips, but she faced him unflinching. "There is--a

reason," she said.

"In--deed!" He uttered a scoffing laugh of deadly insult. "The same

reason, I presume, as that for which you married me?"

She flinched at that--flinched as if he had struck her across the face.

"Oh, you brute!" she said, and shuddered back against Merryon's

supporting arm. "You wicked brute!"

It was then that Merryon wrenched himself free from that paralysing

constriction that bound him, and abruptly intervened.

"Puck," he said, "go! Leave us! I will deal with this matter in my own

way."

She made no move to obey. Her face was hidden in her hands. But she was

sobbing no longer, only sickly shuddering from head to foot.

He took her by the shoulder. "Go, child, go!" he urged.

But she shook her head. "It's no good," she said. "He has got--the

whip-hand."

The utter despair of her tone pierced straight to his soul. She stood as

one bent beneath a crushing burden, and he knew that her face was

burning behind the sheltering hands.

He still held her with a certain stubbornness of possession, though she

made no further attempt to cling to him.

"What do you mean by that?" he said, bending to her. "Tell me what you

mean! Don't be afraid to tell me!"

She shook her head again. "I am bound," she said, dully, "bound hand and

foot."

"You mean that you really are--married to him?" Merryon spoke the words

as it were through closed lips. He had a feeling as of being caught in

some crushing machinery, of being slowly and inevitably ground to

shapeless atoms.

Puck lifted her head at length and spoke, not looking at him. "I went

through a form of marriage with him," she said, "for the sake

of--of--of--decency. I always loathed him. I always shall. He only wants

me now because I am--I have been--valuable to him. When he first took me

he seemed kind. I was nearly starved, quite desperate, and alone. He

offered to teach me to be an acrobat, to make a living. I'd better have

drowned myself." A little tremor of passion went through her voice; she

paused to steady it, then went on. "He taught by fear--and cruelty. He

opened my eyes to evil. He used to beat me, too--tie me up in the

gymnasium--and beat me with a whip till--till I was nearly beside myself

and ready to promise anything--anything, only to stop the torture. And

so he got everything he wanted from me, and when I began to be

successful as a dancer he--married me. I thought it would make things

better. I didn't think, if I were his wife, he could go on ill-treating

me quite so much. But I soon found my mistake. I soon found I was even

more his slave than before. And then--just a week before the

fire--another woman came, and told me that it was not a real marriage;

that--that he had been through exactly the same form with her--and there

was nothing in it."

She stopped again at sound of a low laugh from Vulcan. "Not quite the

same form, my dear," he said. "Yours was as legal and binding as the

English law could make it. I have the certificate with me to prove this.

As you say, you were valuable to me then--as you will be again, and so I

was careful that the contract should be complete in every particular.

Now--if you have quite finished your--shall we call it confession?--I

suggest that you should return to your lawful husband and leave this

gentleman to console himself as soon as may be. It is growing late, and

it is not my intention that you should spend another night under his

protection."

He spoke slowly, with a curious, compelling emphasis, and as if in

answer to that compulsion Puck's eyes came back to his.

"Oh, no!" she said, in a quick, frightened whisper. "No! I can't! I

can't!"

Yet she made a movement towards him as if drawn irresistibly.

And at that movement, wholly involuntary as it was, something in

Merryon's brain seemed to burst. He saw all things a burning,

intolerable red. With a strangled oath he caught her back, held her

violently--a prisoner in his arms.

"By God, no!" he said. "I'll kill you first!"

She turned in his embrace. She lifted her lips and passionately kissed

him. "Yes, kill me! Kill me!" she cried to him. "I'd rather die!"

Again the stranger laughed, though his eyes were devilish. "You had

better come without further trouble," he remarked. "You will only add to

your punishment--which will be no light one as it is--by these

hysterics. Do you wish to see my proofs?" He addressed Merryon with

sudden open malignancy. "Or am I to take them to the colonel of your

regiment?"

"You may take them to the devil!" Merryon said. He was holding her

crushed to his heart. He flung his furious challenge over her head. "If

the marriage was genuine you shall set her free. If it was not"--he

paused, and ended in a voice half-choked with passion--"you can go to

blazes!"

The other man showed his teeth in a wolfish snarl. "She is my wife," he

said, in his slow, sibilant way. "I shall not set her free.

And--wherever I go, she will go also."

"If you can take her, you infernal blackguard!" Merryon threw at him.

"Now get out. Do you hear? Get out--if you don't want to be shot!

Whatever happens to-morrow, I swear by God in heaven she shall not go

with you to-night!"

The uncontrolled violence of his speech was terrible. His hold upon Puck

was violent also, more violent than he knew. Her whole body lay a

throbbing weight upon him, and he was not even aware of it.

"Go!" he reiterated, with eyes of leaping flame. "Go! or--" He left the

sentence uncompleted. It was even more terrible than his flow of words

had been. The whole man vibrated with a wrath that possessed him in a

fashion so colossal as to render him actually sublime. He mastered the

situation by the sheer, indomitable might of his fury. There was no

standing against him. It would have been as easy to stem a racing

torrent.

Vulcan, for all his insolence, realized the fact. The man's strength in

that moment was gigantic, practically limitless. There was no coping

with it. Still with the snarl upon his lips he turned away.

"You will pay for this, my wife," he said. "You will pay in full. When I

punish, I punish well."

He reached the door and opened it, still leering back at the limp,

girlish form in Merryon's arms.

"It will not be soon over," he said. "It will take many days, many

nights, that punishment--till you have left off crying for mercy, or

expecting it."

He was on the threshold. His eyes suddenly shot up with a gloating

hatred to Merryon's.

"And you," he said, "will have the pleasure of knowing every night when

you lie down alone that she is either writhing under the lash--a

frequent exercise for a while, my good sir--or finding subtle comfort in

my arms; both pleasant subjects for your dreams."

He was gone. The door closed slowly, noiselessly, upon his exit. There

was no sound of departing feet.

But Merryon neither listened nor cared. He had turned Puck's deathly

face upwards, and was covering it with burning, passionate kisses,

drawing her back to life, as it were, by the fiery intensity of his

worship.

CHAPTER IX

GREATER THAN DEATH

She came to life, weakly gasping. She opened her eyes upon him with the

old, unwavering adoration in their depths. And then before his burning

look hers sank. She hid her face against him with an inarticulate sound

more anguished than any weeping.

The savagery went out of his hold. He drew her to the _charpoy_ on which

she had spent so many evenings waiting for him, and made her sit down.

She did not cling to him any longer; she only covered her face so that

he should not see it, huddling herself together in a piteous heap, her

black, curly head bowed over her knees in an overwhelming agony of

humiliation.

Yet there was in the situation something that was curiously reminiscent

of that night when she had leapt from the burning stage into the safety

of his arms. Now, as then, she was utterly dependent upon the charity of

his soul.

He turned from her and poured brandy and water into a glass. He came

back and knelt beside her.

"Drink it, my darling!" he said.

She made a quick gesture as of surprised protest. She did not raise her

head. It was as if an invisible hand were crushing her to the earth.

"Why don't you--kill me?" she said.

He laid his hand upon her bent head. "Because you are the salt of the

earth to me," he said; "because I worship you."

She caught the hand with a little sound of passionate endearment, and

laid her face down in it, her hot, quivering lips against his palm. "I

love you so!" she said. "I love you so!"

He pressed her face slowly upwards. But she resisted. "No, no! I

can't--meet--your--eyes."

"You need not be afraid," he said. "Once and for all, Puck, believe me

when I tell you that this thing shall never--can never--come between

us."

She caught her breath sharply; but still she refused to look up. "Then

you don't understand," she said. "You--you--can't understand

that--that--I was--his--his--" Her voice failed. She caught his hand in

both her own, pressing it hard over her face, writhing in mute shame

before him.

"Yes, I do understand," Merryon said, and his voice was very quiet, full

of a latent force that thrilled her magnetically. "I understand that

when you were still a child this brute took possession of you, broke you

to his will, did as he pleased with you. I understand that you were as

helpless as a rabbit in the grip of a weasel. I understand that he was

always an abomination and a curse to you, that when deliverance offered

you seized it; and I do not forget that you would have preferred death

if I would have let you die. Do you know, Puck"--his voice had softened

by imperceptible degrees; he was bending towards her so that she could

feel his breath on her neck while he spoke--"when I took it upon me to

save you from yourself that night I knew--I guessed--what had happened

to you? No, don't start like that! If there was anything to forgive I

forgave you long ago. I understood. Believe me, though I am a man, I can

understand."

He stopped. His hand was all wet with her tears. "Oh, darling!" she

whispered. "Oh, darling!"

"Don't cry, sweetheart!" he said. "And don't be afraid any longer! I

took you from your inferno. I learnt to love you--just as you were,

dear, just as you were. You tried to keep me at a distance; do you

remember? And then--you found life was too strong for you. You came back

and gave yourself to me. Have you ever regretted it, my darling? Tell me

that!"

"Never!" she sobbed. "Never! Your love--your love--has been--the

safety-curtain--always--between me and--harm."

And then very suddenly she lifted her face, her streaming eyes, and met

his look.

"But there's one thing, darling," she said, "which you must know. I

loved you always--always--even before that monsoon night. But I came to

you then because--because--I knew that I had been recognized, and--I was

afraid--I was terrified--till--till I was safe in your arms."

"Ah! But you came to me," he said.

A sudden gleam of mirth shot through her woe. "My! That was a night,

Billikins!" she said. And then the clouds came back upon her,

overwhelming her. "Oh, what is there to laugh at? How could I laugh?"

He lifted the glass he held and drank from it, then offered it to her.

"Drink with me!" he said.

She took, not the glass, but his wrist, and drank with her eyes upon his

face.

When she had finished she drew his arms about her, and lay against his

shoulder with closed eyes for a space, saying no word.

At last, with a little murmuring sigh, she spoke. "What is going to

happen, Billikins?"

"God knows," he said.

But there was no note of dismay in his voice. His hold was strong and

steadfast.

She stirred a little. "Do you believe in God?" she asked him, for the

second time.

He had not answered her before; he answered her now without hesitation.

"Yes, I do."

She lifted her head to look at him. "I wonder why?" she said.

He was silent for a moment; then, "Just because I can hold you in my

arms," he said, "and feel that nothing else matters--or can matter

again."

"You really feel that?" she said, quickly. "You really love me, dear?"

"That is love," he said, simply.

"Oh, darling!" Her breath came fast. "Then, if they try to take me from

you--you will really do it--you won't be afraid?"

"Do what?" he questioned, sombrely.

"Kill me, Billikins," she answered, swiftly. "Kill me--sooner than let

me go."

He bent his head. "Yes," he said. "My love is strong enough for that."

"But what would you do--afterwards?" she breathed, her lips raised to

his.

A momentary surprise showed in his eyes. "Afterwards?" he questioned.

"After I was gone, darling?" she said, anxiously.

A very strange smile came over Merryon's face. He pressed her to him,

his eyes gazing deep into hers. He kissed her, but not passionately,

rather with reverence.

"Your afterwards will be mine, dear, wherever it is," he said. "If it

comes to that--if there is any going--in that way--we go together."

The anxiety went out of her face in a second. She smiled back at him

with utter confidence. "Oh, Billikins!" she said. "Oh, Billikins, that

will be great!"

She went back into his arms, and lay there for a further space, saying

no word. There was something sacred in the silence between them,

something mysterious and wonderful. The drip, drip, drip of the

ceaseless rain was the only sound in the stillness. They seemed to be

alone together in a sanctuary that none other might enter, husband and

wife, made one by the Bond Imperishable, waiting together for

deliverance. They were the most precious moments that either had ever

known, for in them they were more truly wedded in spirit than they had

ever been before.

How long the great silence lasted neither could have said. It lay like a

spell for awhile, and like a spell it passed.

Merryon moved at last, moved and looked down into his wife's eyes.

They met his instantly without a hint of shrinking; they even smiled.

"It must be nearly bedtime," she said. "You are not going to be busy

to-night?"

"Not to-night," he said.

"Then don't let's sit up any longer, darling," she said. "We can't

either of us afford to lose our beauty sleep."

She rose with him, still with her shining eyes lifted to his, still with

that brave gaiety sparkling in their depths. She gave his arm a tight

little squeeze. "My, Billikins, how you've grown!" she said, admiringly.

"You always were--pretty big. But to-night you're just--titanic!"

He smiled and touched her cheek, not speaking.

"You fill the world," she said.

He bent once more to kiss her. "You fill my heart," he said.

CHAPTER X

THE SACRIFICE

They went round the bungalow together to see to the fastenings of doors

and windows. The _khitmutgar_ had gone to his own quarters for the

night, and they were quite alone. The drip, drip, drip of the rain was

still the only sound, save when the far cry of a prowling jackal came

weirdly through the night.

"It's more gruesome than usual somehow," said Puck, still fast clinging

to her husband's arm. "I'm not a bit frightened, darling, only sort of

creepy at the back. But there's nobody here but you and me, is there?"

"Nobody," said Merryon.

"And will you please come and see if there are any snakes or scorpions

before I begin to undress?" she said. "The very fact of looking under my

bed makes my hair stand on end."

He went with her and made a thorough investigation, finding nothing.

"That's all right," she said, with a sigh of relief. "And yet, somehow,

I feel as if something is waiting round the corner to pounce out on us.

Is it Fate, do you think? Or just my silly fancy?"

"I think it is probably your startled nerves, dear," he said, smiling a

little.

She assented with a half-suppressed shudder. "But I'm sure something

will happen directly," she said. "I'm sure. I'm sure."

"Well, I shall only be in the next room if it does," he said.

He was about to leave her, but she sprang after him, clinging to his

arm. "And you won't be late, will you?" she pleaded. "I can't sleep

without you. Ah, what is that? What is it? What is it?"

Her voice rose almost to a shriek. A sudden loud knocking had broken

through the endless patter of the rain.

Merryon's face changed a very little. The iron-grey eyes became stony,

quite expressionless. He stood a moment listening. Then, "Stay here!" he

said, his voice very level and composed. "Yes, Puck, I wish it. Stay

here!"

It was a distinct command, the most distinct he had ever given her. Her

clinging hands slipped from his arm. She stood rigid, unprotesting,

white as death.

The knocking was renewed with fevered energy as Merryon turned quietly

to obey the summons. He closed the door upon his wife and went down the

passage.

There was no haste in his movements as he slipped back the bolts, rather

the studied deliberation of purpose of a man armed against all

emergency. But the door burst inwards against him the moment he opened

it, and one of his subalterns, young Harley, almost fell into his arms.

Merryon steadied him with the utmost composure. "Halloa, Harley! You, is

it? What's all this noise about?"

The boy pulled himself together with an effort. He was white to the

lips.

"There's cholera broken out," he said. "Forbes and Robey--both down--at

their own bungalow. And they've got it at the barracks, too.

Macfarlane's there. Can you come?"

"Of course--at once." Merryon pulled him forward. "Go in there and get a

drink while I speak to my wife!"

He turned back to her door, but she met him on the threshold. Her eyes

burned like stars in her little pale face.

"It's all right, Billikins," she said, and swallowed hard. "I heard.

You've got to go to the barracks, haven't you, darling? I knew there was

going to be--something. Well, you must take something to eat in your

pocket. You'll want it before morning. And some brandy too. Give me your

flask, darling, and I'll fill it!"

Her composure amazed him. He had expected anguished distress at the bare

idea of his leaving her, but those brave, bright eyes of hers were

actually smiling.

"Puck!" he said. "You--wonder!"

She made a small face at him. "Oh, you're not the only wonder in the

world," she told him. "Run along and get yourself ready! My! You are

going to be busy, aren't you?"

She nodded to him and ran into the drawing-room to young Harley. He

heard her chatting there while he made swift preparations for departure,

and he thanked Heaven that she realized so little the ghastly nature of

the horror that had swept down upon them. He hoped the boy would have

the sense to let her remain unenlightened. It was bad enough to have to

leave her after the ordeal they had just faced together. He did not want

her terrified on his account as well.

But when he joined them she was still smiling, eager only to provide for

any possible want of his, not thinking of herself at all.

"I hope you will enjoy your picnic, Billikins," she said. "I'll shut the

door after you, and I shall know it's properly fastened. Oh, yes, the

_khit_ will take care of me, Mr. Harley. He's such a brave man. He kills

snakes without the smallest change of countenance. Good-night,

Billikins! Take care of yourself. I suppose you'll come back sometime?"

She gave him the lightest caress imaginable, shook hands affectionately

with young Harley, who was looking decidedly less pinched than he had

upon arrival, and stood waving an energetic hand as they went away into

the dripping dark.

"You didn't tell her--anything?" Merryon asked, as they plunged down the

road.

"Not more than I could help, Major. But she seemed to know without."

The lad spoke uncomfortably, as if against his will.

"She asked questions, then?" Merryon's voice was sharp.

"Yes, a few. She wanted to know about Forbes and Robey. Robey is awfully

bad. I didn't tell her that."

"Who is looking after them?" Merryon asked.

"Only a native orderly now. The colonel and Macfarlane both had to go to

the barracks. It's frightful there. About twenty cases already. Oh, hang

this rain!" said Harley, bitterly.

"But couldn't they take them--Forbes, I mean, and Robey--to the

hospital?" questioned Merryon.

"No. To tell you the truth, Robey is pegging out, poor fellow. It's

always the best chaps that go first, though. Heaven knows, we may be all

gone before this time to-morrow."

"Don't talk like a fool!" said Merryon, curtly.

And Harley said no more.

They pressed on through mud that was ankle-deep to the barracks.

There during all the nightmare hours that followed Merryon worked with

the strength of ten. He gave no voluntary thought to his wife waiting

for him in loneliness, but ever and anon those blazing eyes of hers rose

before his mental vision, and he saw again that brave, sweet smile with

which she had watched him go.

The morning found him haggard but indomitable, wrestling with the

difficulties of establishing a camp a mile or more from the barracks out

in the rain-drenched open. There had been fourteen deaths in the night,

and seven men were still fighting a losing battle for their lives in the

hospital. He had a native officer to help him in his task; young Harley

was superintending the digging of graves, and the colonel had gone to

the bungalow where the two stricken officers lay.

Dank and gruesome dawned the day, with the smell of rot in the air and

the sense of death hovering over all. And there came to Merryon a

sudden, overwhelming desire to go back to his bungalow beyond the fetid

town and see how his wife was faring. She was the only white woman in

the place, and the thought of her isolation came upon him now like a

fiery torture.

It was the fiercest temptation he had ever known. Till that day his

regimental duties had always been placed first with rigorous

determination. Now for the first time he found himself torn by

conflicting ties. The craving for news of her possessed him like a

burning thirst. Yet he knew that some hours must elapse before he could

honestly consider himself free to go.

He called an orderly at last, finding the suspense unendurable, and gave

him a scribbled line to carry to his wife.

"Is all well, sweetheart? Send back word by bearer," he wrote, and told

the man not to return without an answer.

The orderly departed, and for a while Merryon devoted himself to the

matter in hand, and crushed his anxiety into the background. But at the

end of an hour he was chafing in a fever of impatience. What delayed the

fellow? In Heaven's name, why was he so long?

Ghastly possibilities arose in his mind, fears unspeakable that he dared

not face. He forced himself to attend to business, but the suspense was

becoming intolerable. He began to realize that he could not stand it

much longer.

He was nearing desperation when the colonel came unexpectedly upon the

scene, unshaven and haggard as he was himself, but firm as a rock in the

face of adversity.

He joined Merryon, and received the latter's report, grimly taciturn.

They talked together for a space of needs and expediencies. The fell

disease had got to be checked somehow. He spoke of recalling the

officers on leave. There had been such a huge sick list that summer that

they were reduced to less than half their normal strength.

"You're worth a good many," he said to Merryon, half-grudgingly, "but

you can't work miracles. Besides, you've got--" He broke off abruptly.

"How's your wife?"

"That's what I don't know, sir." Feverishly Merryon made answer. "I left

her last night. She was well then. But since--I sent down an orderly

over an hour ago. He's not come back."

"Confound it!" said the colonel, testily. "You'd better go yourself."

Merryon glanced swiftly round.

"Yes, go, go!" the colonel reiterated, irritably. "I'll relieve you for

a spell. Go and satisfy yourself--and me! None but an infernal fool

would have kept her here," he added, in a growling undertone, as Merryon

lifted a hand in brief salute and started away through the sodden mists.

He went as he had never gone in his life before, and as he went the

mists parted before him and a blinding ray of sunshine came smiting

through the gap like the sword of the destroyer. The simile rushed

through his mind and out again, even as the grey mist-curtain closed

once more.

He reached the bungalow. It stood like a shrouded ghost, and the drip,

drip, drip of the rain on the veranda came to him like a death-knell.

A gaunt figure met him almost on the threshold, and he recognized his

messenger with a sharp sense of coming disaster. The man stood mutely at

the salute.

"Well? Well? Speak!" he ordered, nearly beside himself with anxiety.

"Why didn't you come back with an answer?"

The man spoke with deep submission. "_Sahib_, there was no answer."

"What do you mean by that? What the--Here, let me pass!" cried Merryon,

in a ferment. "There must have been--some sort of answer."

"No, _sahib_. No answer." The man spoke with inscrutable composure. "The

_mem-sahib_ has not come back," he said. "Let the _sahib_ see for

himself."

But Merryon had already burst into the bungalow; so he resumed his

patient watch on the veranda, wholly undisturbed, supremely patient.

The _khitmutgar_ came forward at his master's noisy entrance. There was

a trace--just the shadow of a suggestion--of anxiety on his dignified

face under the snow-white turban. He presented him with a note on a

salver with a few murmured words and a deep salaam.

"For the _sahib's_ hands alone," he said.

Merryon snatched up the note and opened it with shaking hands.

It was very brief, pathetically so, and as he read a great emptiness

seemed to spread and spread around him in an ever-widening desolation.

"Good-bye, my Billikins!" Ah, the pitiful, childish scrawl she had made

of it! "I've come to my senses, and I've gone back to him. I'm not

worthy of any sacrifice of yours, dear. And it would have been a big

sacrifice. You wouldn't like being dragged through the mud, but I'm used

to it. It came to me just that moment that you said, 'Yes, of course,'

when Mr. Harley came to call you back to duty. Duty is better than a

worthless woman, my Billikins, and I was never fit to be anything more

than a toy to you--a toy to play with and toss aside. And so good-bye,

good-bye!"

The scrawl ended with a little cross at the bottom of the page. He

looked up from it with eyes gone blind with pain and a stunned and awful

sense of loss.

"When did the _mem-sahib_ go?" he questioned, dully.

The _khitmutgar_ bent his stately person. "The _mem-sahib_ went in

haste," he said, "an hour before midnight. Your servant followed her to

the _dâk-bungalow_ to protect her from _budmashes_, but she dismissed me

ere she entered in. _Sahib_, I could do no more."

The man's eyes appealed for one instant, but fell the next before the

dumb despair that looked out of his master's.

There fell a terrible silence--a pause, as it were, of suspended

vitality, while the iron bit deeper and deeper into tissues too numbed

to feel.

Then, "Fetch me a drink!" said Merryon, curtly. "I must be getting back

to duty."

And with soundless promptitude the man withdrew, thankful to make his

escape.

CHAPTER XI

THE SACRED FIRE

"Well? Is she all right?" Almost angrily the colonel flung the question

as his second-in-command came back heavy-footed through the rain. He had

been through a nasty period of suspense himself during Merryon's

absence.

Merryon nodded. His face was very pale and his lips seemed stiff.

"She has--gone, sir," he managed to say, after a moment.

"Gone, has she?" The colonel raised his brows in astonished

interrogation. "What! Taken fright at last? Well, best thing she could

do, all things considered. You ought to be very thankful."

He dismissed the subject for more pressing matters, and he never noticed

the awful whiteness of Merryon's face or the deadly fixity of his look.

Macfarlane noticed both, coming up two hours later to report the death

of one of the officers at the bungalow.

"For Heaven's sake, man, have some brandy!" he said, proffering a flask

of his own. "You're looking pretty unhealthy. What is it? Feeling a bit

off, eh?"

He held Merryon's wrist while he drank the brandy, regarding him with a

troubled frown the while.

"What is the matter with you, man?" he said. "You're not frightening

yourself? You wouldn't be such a fool!"

Merryon did not answer. He was never voluble. To-day he seemed

tongue-tied.

Macfarlane continued with an uneasy effort to hide a certain doubt

stirring in his mind. "I hear there was a European died at the

_dâk-bungalow_ early this morning. I wanted to go round and see, but I

haven't been able. It's fairly widespread, but there's no sense in

getting scared. Halloa, Merryon!"

He broke off, staring. Merryon had given a great start. He looked like a

man stabbed suddenly from a dream to full consciousness.

"A European--at the _dâk-bungalow_--dead, did you say?"

His words tumbled over each other; he gripped Macfarlane's shoulder and

shook it with fierce impatience.

"So I heard. I don't know any details. How should I? Merryon, are you

mad?" Macfarlane put up a quick hand to free himself, for the grip was

painful. "He wasn't a friend of yours, I suppose? He wouldn't have been

putting up there if he had been."

"No, no; not--a friend." The words came jerkily. Merryon was breathing

in great spasms that shook him from head to foot. "Not--a friend!" he

said again, and stopped, gazing before him with eyes curiously

contracted as the eyes of one striving to discern something a long way

off.

Macfarlane slipped a hand under his elbow. "Look here," he said, "you

must have a rest. You can be spared for a bit now. Walk back with me to

the hospital, and we will see how things are going there."

His hand closed urgently. He began to draw him away.

Merryon's eyes came back as it were out of space, and gave him a quick

side-glance that was like the turn of a rapier. "I must go down to the

_dâk-bungalow_," he said, with decision.

Swift protest rose to the doctor's lips, but it died there. He tightened

his hold instead, and went with him.

The colonel looked round sharply at their approach, looked--and swore

under his breath. "Yes, all right, major, you'd better go," he said.

"Good-bye."

Merryon essayed a grim smile, but his ashen face only twisted

convulsively, showing his set teeth. He hung on Macfarlane's shoulder

while the first black cloud of agony possessed him and slowly passed.

Then, white and shaking, he stood up. "I'll get round to the _dâk_ now,

before I'm any worse. Don't come with me, Macfarlane! I'll take an

orderly."

"I'm coming," said Macfarlane, stoutly.

But they did not get to the _dâk-bungalow_, or anywhere near it. Before

they had covered twenty yards another frightful spasm of pain came upon

Merryon, racking his whole being, depriving him of all his powers,

wresting from him every faculty save that of suffering. He went down

into a darkness that swallowed him, soul and body, blotting out all

finite things, loosening his frantic clutch on life, sucking him down as

it were into a frightful emptiness, where his only certainty of

existence lay in the excruciating agonies that tore and convulsed him

like devils in some inferno under the earth.

Of time and place and circumstance thereafter he became as completely

unconscious as though they had ceased to be, though once or twice he was

aware of a merciful hand that gave him opium to deaden--or was it only

to prolong?--his suffering. And æons and eternities passed over him

while he lay in the rigour of perpetual torments, not trying to escape,

only writhing in futile anguish in the bitter dark of the prison-house.

Later, very much later, there came a time when the torture gradually

ceased or became merged in a deathly coldness. During that stage his

understanding began to come back to him like the light of a dying day. A

vague and dreadful sense of loss began to oppress him, a feeling of

nakedness as though the soul of him were already slipping free, passing

into an appalling void, leaving an appalling void behind. He lay quite

helpless and sinking, sinking--slowly, terribly sinking into an

overwhelming sea of annihilation.

With all that was left of his failing strength he strove to cling to

that dim light which he knew for his own individuality. The silence and

the darkness broke over him in long, soundless waves; but each time he

emerged again, cold, cold as death, but still aware of self, aware of

existence, albeit the world he knew had dwindled to an infinitesimal

smallness, as an object very far away, and floating ever farther and

farther from his ken.

Vague paroxysms of pain still seized him from time to time, but they no

longer affected him in the same way. The body alone agonized. The soul

stood apart on the edge of that dreadful sea, shrinking afraid from the

black, black depths and the cruel cold of the eternal night. He was

terribly, crushingly alone.

Someone had once, twice, asked him a vital question about his belief in

God. Then he had been warmly alive. He had held his wife close in his

arms, and nothing else had mattered. But now--but now--he was very far

from warmth and life. He was dying in loneliness. He was perishing in

the outer dark, where no hand might reach and no voice console. He had

believed--or thought he believed--in God. But now his faith was wearing

very thin. Very soon it would crumble quite away, just as he himself was

crumbling into the dreadful silence of the ages. His life--the brief

passion called life--was over. Out of the dark it had come; into the

dark it went. And no one to care--no one to cry farewell to him across

that desolation of emptiness that was death! No one to kneel beside him

and pray for light in that awful, all-encompassing dark!

Stay! Something had touched him even then. Or was it but his dying

fancy? Red lips he had kissed and that had kissed him in return, eager

arms that had clung and clung, eyes of burning adoration! Did they truly

belong all to the past? Or were they here beside him even now--even now?

Had he wandered backwards perchance into that strange, sweet heaven of

love from which he had been so suddenly and terribly cast out? Ah, how

he had loved her! How he had loved her! Very faintly there began to stir

within him the old fiery longing that she, and she alone, had ever waked

within him. He would worship her to the last flicker of his dying soul.

But the darkness was spreading, spreading, like a yawning of a great

gulf at his feet. Already he was slipping over the edge. The light was

fading out of his sky.

It was the last dim instinct of nature that made him reach out a

groping hand, and with lips that would scarcely move to whisper, "Puck!"

He did not expect an answer. The things of earth were done with. His

life was passing swiftly, swiftly, like the sands running out of a

glass. He had lost her already, and the world had sunk away, away, with

all warmth and light and love.

Yet out of the darkness all suddenly there came a voice, eager,

passionate, persistent. "I am here, Billikins! I am here! Come back to

me, darling! Come back!"

He started at that voice, started and paused, holding back as it were on

the very verge of the precipice. So she was there indeed! He could hear

her sobbing breath. There came to him the consciousness of her hands

clasping his, and the faintest, vaguest glow went through his ice-cold

body. He tried, piteously weak as he was, to bend his fingers about

hers.

And then there came the warmth of her lips upon them, kissing them with

a fierce passion of tenderness, drawing them close as if to breathe her

own vitality into his failing pulses.

"Open your eyes to me, darling!" she besought him. "See how I love you!

And see how I want your love! I can't do without it, Billikins. It's my

only safeguard. What! He is dead? I say he is not--he is not! Or if he

is, he shall rise again. He shall come back. See! He is looking at me!

How dare you say he is dead?"

The wild anguish of her voice reached him, pierced him, rousing him as

no other power on earth could have roused him. Out of that deathly

inertia he drew himself, inch by inch, as out of some clinging swamp.

His hand found strength to tighten upon hers. He opened his eyes,

leaden-lidded as they were, and saw her face all white and drawn, gazing

into his own with such an agony of love, such a consuming fire of

worship, that it seemed as if his whole being were drawn by it, warmed,

comforted, revived.

She hung above him, fierce in her devotion, driving back the destroyer

by the sheer burning intensity of her love. "You shan't die, Billikins!"

she told him, passionately. "You can't die--now I am here!"

She stooped her face to his. He turned his lips instinctively to meet

it, and suddenly it was as though a flame had kindled between them--hot,

ardent, compelling. His dying pulses thrilled to it, his blood ran

warmer.

"You--have--come--back!" he said, with slow articulation.

"My darling--my darling!" she made quivering answer. "Say I've come--in

time!"

He tried to speak again, but could not. Yet the deathly cold was giving

way like ice before the sun. He could feel his heart beating where

before he had felt nothing. A hand that was not Puck's came out of the

void beyond her and held a spoonful of spirit to his mouth. He swallowed

it with difficulty, and was conscious of a greater warmth.

"There, my own boy, my own boy!" she murmured over him. "You're coming

back to me. Say you're coming back!"

His lips quivered like a child's. He forced them to answer her. "If

you--will--stay," he said.

"I will never leave you again, darling," she made swift answer. "Never,

never again! You shall have all that you want--all--all!"

Her arms closed about him. He felt the warmth of her body, the

passionate nearness of her soul; and therewith the flame that had

kindled between them leaped to a great and burning glow, encompassing

them both--the Sacred Fire.

A wonderful sense of comfort came upon him. He turned to her as a man

turns to only one woman in all the world, and laid his head upon her

breast.

"I only want--my wife," he said.

CHAPTER XII

FREEDOM

It took him many days to climb back up that slope down which he had

slipped so swiftly in those few awful hours. Very slowly, with painful

effort, but with unfailing purpose, he made his arduous way. And through

it all Puck never left his side.

Alert and vigilant, very full of courage, very quick of understanding,

she drew him, leaning on her, back to a life that had become strangely

new to them both. They talked very little, for Merryon's strength was

terribly low, and Macfarlane, still scarcely believing in the miracle

that had been wrought under his eyes, forbade all but the simplest and

briefest speech--a prohibition which Puck strenuously observed; for

Puck, though she knew the miracle for an accomplished fact, was not

taking any chances.

"Presently, darling; when you're stronger," was her invariable answer to

any attempt on his part to elicit information as to the events that had

immediately preceded his seizure. "There's nothing left to fret about.

You're here--and I'm here. And that's all that matters."

If her lips quivered a little over the last assertion, she turned her

head away that he might not see. For she was persistently cheery in his

presence, full of tender humour, always undismayed.

He leaned upon her instinctively. She propped him so sturdily, with a

strength so amazing and so steadfast. Sometimes she laughed softly at

his weakness, as a mother might laugh at the first puny efforts of her

baby to stand alone. And he knew that she loved his dependence upon her,

even in a sense dreaded the time when his own strength should reassert

itself, making hers weak by comparison.

But that time was coming, slowly yet very surely. The rains were

lessening at last, and the cholera-fiend had been driven forth. Merryon

was to go to the Hills on sick leave for several weeks. Colonel Davenant

had awaked to the fact that his life was a valuable one, and his

admiration for Mrs. Merryon was undisguised. He did not altogether

understand her behaviour, but he was discreet enough not to seek that

enlightenment which only one man in the world was ever to receive.

To that man on the night before their departure came Puck, very pale and

resolute, with shining, unwavering eyes. She knelt down before him with

small hands tightly clasped.

"I'm going to say something dreadful, Billikins," she said.

He looked at her for a moment or two in silence.

Then, "I know what you are going to say," he said.

She shook her head. "Oh, no, you don't, darling. It's something that'll

make you frightfully angry."

The faintest gleam of a smile crossed Merryon's face. "With you?" he

said.

She nodded, and suddenly her eyes were brimming with tears. "Yes, with

me."

He put his hand on her shoulder. "I tell you, I know what it is," he

said, with a certain stubbornness.

She turned her cheek for a moment to caress the hand; then suddenly all

her strength went from her. She sank down on the floor at his feet,

huddled together in a woeful heap, just as she had been on that first

night when the safety-curtain had dropped behind her.

"You'll never forgive me!" she sobbed. "But I knew--I knew--I always

knew!"

"Knew what, child?" He was stooping over her. His hand, trembling still

with weakness, was on her head. "But, no, don't tell me!" he said, and

his voice was deeply tender. "The fellow is dead, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes, he's dead." Quiveringly, between piteous sobs, she answered

him. "He--was dying before I reached him--that dreadful night. He

just--had strength left--to curse me! And I am cursed! I am cursed!"

She flung out her arms wildly, clasping his feet.

He stooped lower over her. "Hush--hush!" he said.

She did not seem to hear. "I let you take me--I stained your honour--I

wasn't a free woman. I tried to think I was; but in my heart--I always

knew--I always knew! I wouldn't have your love at first--because I knew.

And I came to you--that monsoon night--chiefly because--I wanted--when

he came after me--as I knew he would come--to force him--to set

me--free."

Through bitter sobbing the confession came; in bitter sobbing it ended.

But still Merryon's hand was on her head, still his face was bent above

her, grave and sad and pitiful, the face of a strong man enduring grief.

After a little, haltingly, she spoke again. "And I wasn't coming back to

you--ever. Only--someone--a _syce_--told me you had been stricken down.

And then I had to come. I couldn't leave you to die. That's all--that's

all! I'm going now. And I shan't come back. I'm not--your wife. You're

quite, quite free. And I'll never--bring shame on you--again."

Her straining hands tightened. She kissed, the feet she clasped. "I'm a

wicked, wicked woman," she said. "I was born--on the wrong side--of the

safety-curtain. That's no--excuse; only--to make you understand."

She would have withdrawn herself then, but his hands held her. She

covered her face, kneeling between them.

"Why do you want me to understand?" he said, his voice very low.

She quivered at the question, making no attempt to answer, just weeping

silently there in his hold.

He leaned towards her, albeit he was trembling with weakness. "Puck,

listen!" he said. "I do understand."

She caught her breath and became quite still.

"Listen again!" he said. "What is done--is done; and nothing can alter

it. But--your future is mine. You have forfeited the right to leave me."

She uncovered her face in a flash to gaze at him as one confounded.

He met the look with eyes that held her own. "I say it," he said. "You

have forfeited the right. You say I am free. Am I free?"

She nodded, still with her eyes on his. "I have--no claim on you," she

whispered, brokenly.

His hands tightened; he brought her nearer to him. "And when that dream

of yours comes true," he said, "what then? What then?"

Her face quivered painfully at the question. She swallowed once or twice

spasmodically, like a hurt child trying not to cry.

"That's--nobody's business but mine," she said.

A very curious smile drew Merryon's mouth. "I thought I had had

something to do with it," he said. "I think I am entitled to

part-ownership, anyway."

She shook her head, albeit she was very close to his breast. "You're

not, Billikins!" she declared, with vehemence. "You only say that--out

of pity. And I don't want pity. I--I'd rather you hated me than that!

Miles rather!"

His arms went round her. He uttered a queer, passionate laugh and drew

her to his heart. "And what if I offer you--love?" he said. "Have you no

use for that either, my wife--my wife?"

She turned and clung to him, clung fast and desperately, as a drowning

person clings to a spar. "But I'm not, Billikins! I'm not!" she

whispered, with her face hidden.

"You shall be," he made steadfast answer. "Before God you shall be."

"Ah, do you believe in God?" she murmured.

"I do," he said, firmly.

She gave a little sob. "Oh, Billikins, so do I. At least, I think I do;

but I'm half afraid, even now, though I did try to do--the right thing.

I shall only know for certain--when the dream comes true." Her face came

upwards, her lips moved softly against his neck. "Darling," she

whispered, "don't you hope--it'll be--a boy?"

He bent his head mutely. Somehow speech was difficult.

But Puck was not wanting speech of him just then. She turned her red

lips to his. "But even if it's a girl, darling, it won't matter, for

she'll be born on the right side of the safety-curtain now, thanks to

your goodness, your generosity."

He stopped her sharply. "Puck! Puck!"

Their lips met. Puck was sobbing a little and smiling at the same time.

"Your love is the safety-curtain, Billikins darling," she whispered,

softly. "And I'm going to thank God for it--every day of my life."

"My darling!" he said. "My wife!"

Her eyes shone up to his through tears. "Oh, do you realize," she said,

"that we have risen from the dead?"

The Experiment

CHAPTER I

ON TRIAL

"I really don't know why I accepted him. But somehow it was done before

I knew. He waltzes so divinely that it intoxicates me, and then I

naturally cease to be responsible for my actions."

Doris Fielding leant back luxuriously, her hands clasped behind her

head.

"I can't think what he wants to marry me for," she said reflectively. "I

am quite sure I don't want to marry him."

"Then, my dear child, what possessed you to accept him?" remonstrated

her friend, Vera Abingdon, from behind the tea-table.

"That's just what I don't know," said Doris, a little smile twitching

the corner of her mouth. "However, it doesn't signify greatly. I don't

mind being engaged for a little while if he is good, but I certainly

shan't go on if I don't like it. It's in the nature of an experiment,

you see; and it really is necessary, for there is absolutely no other

way of testing the situation."

She glanced at her friend and burst into a gay peal of laughter. No one

knew how utterly charming this girl could be till she laughed.

"Oh, don't look so shocked, please!" she begged. "I know I'm flippant,

flighty, and foolish, but really I'm not a bit wicked. Ask Phil if I am.

He has known me all my life."

"I do not need to ask him, Dot." Vera spoke with some gravity

notwithstanding. "I have never for a moment thought you wicked. But I do

sometimes think you are rather heartless."

Doris opened her blue eyes wide.

"Oh, why? I am sure I am not. It really isn't my fault that I have been

engaged two or three times before. Directly I begin to get pleasantly

intimate with any one he proposes, and how can I possibly know, unless I

am on terms of intimacy, whether I should like to marry him or not? I am

sure I don't want to be engaged to any one for any length of time. It's

as bad as being cast up on a desert island with only one wretched man to

speak to. As a matter of fact, what you call heartlessness is sheer

broad-mindedness on my part. I admit that I do occasionally sail near

the wind. It's fun, and I like it. But I never do any harm--any real

harm I mean. I always put my helm over in time. And I must protect

myself somehow against fortune-hunters."

Vera was silent. This high-spirited young cousin of her husband's was

often a sore anxiety to her. She had had sole charge of the girl for the

past three years and had found it no light responsibility.

"Cheer up, darling!" besought Doris. "There is not the smallest cause

for a wrinkled brow. Perhaps the experiment will turn out a success this

time. Who knows? And even if it doesn't, no one will be any the worse. I

am sure Vivian Caryl will never break his heart for me."

But Vera Abingdon shook her head.

"I don't like you to be so wild, Dot. It makes people think lightly of

you. And you know how angry Phil was last time."

Dot snapped her fingers airily and rose.

"Who cares for Phil? Besides, it really was not my fault last time,

whatever any one may say. Are you going to ask my _fiancé_ down to

Rivermead for Easter? Because if so, I do beg you won't tell everybody

we are engaged. It is quite an informal arrangement, and perhaps,

considering all the circumstances, the less said about it the better."

She stopped and kissed Vera's grave face, laughed again as though she

could not help it, and flitted like a butterfly from the room.

CHAPTER II

HIS INTENTIONS

"Where is Doris?" asked Phil Abingdon, looking round upon the guests

assembled in his drawing-room at Rivermead. "We are all waiting for

her."

"I think we had better go in without her," said his wife, with her

nervous smile. "She arranged to motor down with Mrs. Lockyard and her

party this afternoon. Possibly they have persuaded her to dine with

them."

"She would never do that surely," said Phil, with an involuntary glance

at Vivian Caryl who had just entered.

"If you are talking about my _fiancé_, I think it more than probable

that she would," the latter remarked. "Mrs. Lockyard's place is just

across the river, I understand? Shall I punt over and fetch Doris?"

"No, no!" broke in his hostess anxiously. "I am sure she wouldn't come

if you did. Besides--"

"Oh, as to that," said Vivian Caryl, with a grim smile, "I think, with

all deference to your opinion, that the odds would be in my favour.

However, let us dine first, if you prefer it."

Mrs. Abingdon did prefer it, and said so hastily. She seemed to have a

morbid dread of a rupture between Doris Fielding and her _fiancé_, a

feeling with which Caryl quite obviously had no sympathy. There was

nothing very remarkable about the man save this somewhat supercilious

demeanour which had caused Vera to marvel many times at Doris's choice.

They went in to dinner without further discussion. Caryl sat on Vera's

left, and amazed her by his utter unconcern regarding the absentee. He

seemed to be in excellent spirits, and his dry humour provoked a good

deal of merriment.

She led the way back to the drawing-room as soon as possible. There was

a billiard-room beyond to which the members of her party speedily betook

themselves, and here most of the men joined them soon after. Neither

Caryl nor Abingdon was with them, and Vera counted the minutes of their

absence with a sinking heart while her guests buzzed all unheeding

around her.

It was close upon ten o'clock when she saw her husband's face for a

moment in the doorway. He made a rapid sign to her, and with a murmured

excuse she went to him, closing the door behind her.

Caryl was standing with him, calm as ever, though she fancied that his

eyes were a little wider than usual and his bearing less supercilious.

Her husband, she saw at a glance, was both angry and agitated.

"She has gone off somewhere with that bounder Brandon," he said. "They

got down to tea, and went off again in the motor afterwards, Mrs.

Lockyard doesn't seem to know for certain where."

"Phil!" she exclaimed in consternation, and added with her eyes on

Caryl, "What is to be done? What can be done?"

Caryl made quiet reply:

"There was some talk of Wynhampton. I am going there now on your

husband's motor-bicycle. If I do not find her there----"

He paused, and on the instant a girl's high peal of laughter rang

through the house. The drawing-room door was flung back, and Doris

herself stood on the threshold.

"Goodness!" she cried. "What a solemn conclave! You can't think how

funny you all look! Do tell me what it is all about!"

She stood before them, the motor-veil thrown back from her dainty face,

her slight figure quivering with merriment.

Vera hastened to meet her with outstretched hands.

"Oh, my dear, you can't think how anxious we have been about you."

Doris took her by the shoulders and lightly kissed her.

"Silly! Why? You know I always come up smiling. Why, Phil, you are

looking positively green! Have you been anxious, too? I am indeed

honoured."

She swept him a curtsey, her face all dimples and laughter.

"We've had the jolliest time," she declared. "We motored to Wynhampton

and saw the last of the races. After that, we dined at a dear little

place with a duckpond at the bottom of the garden. And finally we

returned--it ought to have been by moonlight, only there was no moon.

Where is everyone? In the billiard-room? I want some milk and soda

frightfully. Vivian, you might, like the good sort you are, go and get

me some."

She bestowed a dazzling smile upon her _fiancé_ and offered him one

finger by way of salutation.

Abingdon, who had been waiting to get in a word, here exploded with some

violence and told his young cousin in no measured terms what he thought

of her conduct.

She listened with her head on one side, her eyes brimful of mischief,

and finally with an airy gesture turned to Caryl.

"Don't you want to scold me, too? I am sure you do. You had better be

quick or there will be nothing left to say."

Abingdon turned on his heel and walked away. He was thoroughly angry and

made no attempt to hide it. His wife lingered a moment irresolute, then

softly followed him. And as the door closed, Caryl looked very steadily

into the girl's flushed face and spoke:

"All I have to say is this. Maurice Brandon is no fit escort for any

woman who values her reputation. And I here and now forbid you most

strictly, most emphatically, ever to go out with him alone again."

He paused. She was looking straight back at him with her chin in the

air.

"Dear me!" she said. "Do you really? And who gave you the right to

dictate to me?"

"You yourself," he answered quietly.

"Indeed! May I ask when?"

He stiffened a little, but his face did not alter.

"When you promised to be my wife," he said.

Her eyes blazed instant defiance.

"An engagement can be broken off!" she declared recklessly.

"By mutual consent," said Caryl drily.

"That is absurd," she rejoined. "You couldn't possibly hold me to it

against my will."

"I am quite capable of doing so," he told her coolly, "if I think it

worth my while."

"Worth your while!" she exclaimed, staring at him as if she doubted his

sanity.

"Even so," he said. "When I have fully satisfied myself that a heartless

little flirt like you can be transformed into a virtuous and amiable

wife. It may prove a difficult process, I admit, and perhaps not

altogether a pleasant one. But I shall not shirk it on that account."

He leant back against the mantelpiece with a gesture that plainly said

that so far as he was concerned the matter was ended.

But it was not so with Doris. She stood before him for several seconds

absolutely motionless, all the vivid colour gone from her face, her blue

eyes blazing with speechless fury. At length, with a sudden, fierce

movement, she tore the ring he had given her from her finger and held it

out to him.

"Take it!" she said, her voice high-pitched and tremulous. "This is the

end!"

He did not stir a muscle.

"Not yet, I think," he said.

She flashed a single glance at him in which pride and uncertainty were

strangely mingled, then made a sudden swoop towards the fire. He read

her intention in a second, and stooping swiftly caught her hand. The

ring shot from her hold, gleamed in a shining curve in the firelight,

and fell with a tinkle among the ashes of the fender.

Caryl did not utter a word, but his face was fixed and grim as, still

tightly gripping the hand he had caught, he knelt and groped among the

half-dead embers for the ring it had wantonly flung there. When he found

it he rose.

"Before you do anything of that sort again," he said, "let me advise you

to stop and think. It will do you no harm, and may save trouble."

He took her left hand, paused a moment, and then deliberately fitted the

ring back upon her finger. She made no resistance, for she was

instinctively aware that he would brook no morefrom her just then. She

was in fact horribly scared, though his voice was still perfectly quiet

and even. Something in his touch had set her heart beating, something

electric, something terrifying. She dared not meet his eyes.

He dropped her hand almost contemptuously. There was nothing lover-like

about him at that moment.

"And remember," he said, "that no experiment can ever prove a success

unless it is given a fair trial. You will continue to be engaged to me

until I set you free. Is that understood?"

She did not answer him. She was pulling at the loose ends of her veil

with restless fingers, her face downcast and very pale.

"Doris!" he said.

She glanced up at him sharply.

"I am rather tired," she said, and her voice quivered a little. "Do you

mind if I say good-night?"

"Answer me first," he said.

She shook her head.

"I forget what you asked me. It doesn't matter, does it? There's someone

coming, and I don't want to be caught. Good-night!"

She whisked round with the words before he could realize her intention,

and in a moment was at the door. She waved a hand to him airily as she

disappeared. And Caryl was left to wonder if her somewhat precipitate

departure could be regarded as a sign of defeat or merely a postponement

of the struggle.

CHAPTER III

THE KNIGHT ERRANT

It was the afternoon of Easter Day, and a marvellous peace lay upon all

things.

Maurice Brandon, a look of supreme boredom on his handsome face, had

just sauntered down to the river bank. A belt of daffodils nodded to him

from the shrubbery on the farther shore. He stood and stared at them

absently while he idly smoked a cigarette.

Finally, after a long and quite unprofitable inspection, he turned aside

to investigate a boathouse under the willows on Mrs. Lockyard's side of

the stream. He found the door unlocked, and discovered within a somewhat

dilapidated punt. This, after considerable exertion, he managed to drag

forth and finally to run into the water. The craft seemed seaworthy, and

he proceeded to forage for a punt-pole.

Fully equipped at length, he stepped on board and poled himself out from

the shore. Arrived at the farther bank, he calmly disembarked and tied

up under the willows. He paused a few seconds to light another

cigarette, then turned from the river and sauntered up the path between

the high box hedges.

The garden was deserted, and he pursued his way unmolested till he came

within sight of the house. Here for the first time he stopped to take

deliberate stock of his surroundings. Standing in the shelter of a giant

rhododendron, he saw two figures emerge and walk along the narrow

gravelled terrace before the house. As he watched, they reached the

farther end and turned. He recognized them both. They were Caryl and his

host Abingdon.

For a few moments they stood talking, then went away together round an

angle of the house.

Scarcely had they disappeared before a girl's light figure appeared at

an upstairs window. Doris's mischievous face peeped forth, wearing her

gayest, most impudent grimace.

There was no one else in sight, and with instant decision Brandon

stepped into full view, and without the faintest suggestion of

concealment began to stroll up the winding path.

She heard his footsteps on the gravel, and turned her eyes upon him with

a swift start of recognition.

He raised his hand in airy salute, and he heard her low murmur of

laughter as she waved him a hasty sign to await her in the shrubbery

from which he had just emerged.

* * * * *

"Did you actually come across the river?" said Doris. "Whatever made

you do that?"

"I said I should come and fetch you, you know, if you didn't turn up,"

he said.

She laughed.

"Do you always keep your word?"

"To you--always," he assured her.

Her merry face coloured a little, but she met his eyes with absolute

candour.

"And now that you have come what can we do? Are you going to take me on

the river? It looks rather dangerous."

"It is dangerous," Brandon said coolly, "but I think I can get you over

in safety if you will allow me to try. In any case, I won't let you

drown."

"I shall be furious if anything happens," she told him--"if you splash

me even. So beware!"

He pushed out from the bank with a laugh. It was evident that her threat

did not greatly impress him.

As for Doris, she was evidently enjoying the adventure, and the risks

that attended it only added to its charm. There was something about this

man that fascinated her, a freedom and a daring to which her own

reckless spirit could not fail to respond. He was the most interesting

plaything she had had for a long time. She had no fear that he would

ever make the mistake of taking her seriously.

They reached the opposite bank in safety, and he handed her ashore with

considerable _empressement_.

"I have a confession to make," he said, as they walked up to the house.

"Oh, I know what it is," she returned carelessly. "Mrs. Lockyard did not

expect me and has gone out."

He nodded.

"You are taking it awfully well. One would almost think you didn't

mind."

She laughed.

"I never mind anything so long as I am not bored."

"Nor do I," said Brandon. "We seem to have a good deal in common. But

what puzzles me--"

He broke off. They had reached the open French window that led into Mrs.

Lockyard's drawing-room. He stood aside for her to enter.

"Well?" she said, as she passed him. "What is this weighty problem?"

He followed her in.

"What puzzles me," he said, "is how a girl with your natural

independence and love of freedom can endure to remain unmarried."

She opened her eyes wide in astonishment.

"My good sir, you have expressed the exact reason in words which could

not have been better chosen. Independence, love of freedom, and a very

strong preference for going my own way."

He laughed a little.

"Yes, but you would have all these things a thousand times multiplied if

you were married. Look at all the restraints and restrictions to which

girls are subjected where married women simply please themselves. Why,

you are absolutely hedged round with conventions. You can scarcely go

for a ride with a man of your acquaintance in broad daylight without

endangering your reputation. What would they say--your cousin and Mrs.

Abingdon--if they knew that you were here with me now? They would hold

up their hands in horror."

The girl's thoughts flashed suddenly to Caryl. How much freedom might

she expect from him?

"It's all very well," she said, with a touch of petulance, "but

easy-going husbands don't grow on every gooseberry-bush. I have never

yet met the man who wouldn't want to arrange my life in every detail if

I married him."

"Yes, you have," said Brandon.

He spoke with deliberate emphasis, and she knew that as he spoke he

looked at her in a manner that there could be no mistaking. Her heart

quickened a little, and she felt the colour rise in her face.

"Do you know that I am engaged to Vivian Caryl?" she said.

"Perfectly," he answered. "I also know that you have not the smallest

intention of marrying him."

She frowned, but did not contradict him.

He continued with considerable assurance:

"He is not the man to make you happy, and I think you know it. My only

wonder is that you didn't realize it earlier--before you became engaged

to him."

"My engagement was only an experiment," she said quickly.

"And therefore easily broken," he rejoined. "Why don't you put a stop to

it?"

She hesitated.

He bent towards her.

"Do you mean to say that he is cad enough to hold you against your

will?"

Still she hesitated, half-afraid to speak openly.

He leant nearer; he took her hand.

"My dear child," he said, "don't for Heaven's sake give in to such

tyranny as that, and be made miserable for the rest of your life. Oh, I

grant you he is the sort of fellow who would make what is called a good

husband, but not the sort of husband you want. He would keep you in

order, shackle you at every turn. Marry him, and it will be good-bye to

liberty--even such liberty as you have now--forever."

Her face had changed. She was very pale.

"I know all that," she said, speaking rapidly, with headlong impulse.

"But, don't you see how difficult it is for me? They are all on his

side, and he is so horribly strong. Oh, I was a fool I know to accept

him. But we were waltzing and it came so suddenly. I never stopped to

think. I wish I could get away now, but I can't."

"I can tell you of a way," said Brandon.

She glanced at him.

"Oh, yes, I know. But I can't be engaged to two people at once. I

couldn't face it. I detest scenes."

"There need be no scene," he said. "You have only to come to me and give

me the right to defend you. I ask for nothing better. Even Caryl would

scarcely have the impertinence to dispute it. As my wife you will be

absolutely secure from any interference."

She was gazing at him wide-eyed.

"Do you mean a runaway marriage?" she questioned slowly.

He drew nearer still, and possessed himself of her hands.

"Yes, just that," he said. "It would take a little courage, but you have

plenty of that. And the rest I would see to. It wouldn't be so very

difficult, you know. Mrs. Lockyard would help us, and you would be

absolutely safe with me. I haven't much to offer you, I admit. I'm as

poor as a church mouse. But at least you would find me"--he smiled into

her startled eyes--"a very easy-going husband, I assure you."

"Oh, I don't know!" Doris said. "I don't know!"

Yet still she left her hands in his and still she listened to him. That

airy reference of his to his poverty affected her favourably. He would

scarcely have made it, she told herself, with an unconscious effort to

silence unacknowledged misgivings, if her fortune had been the sole

attraction.

"Look here," he said, breaking in upon these hasty meditations, "I don't

want you to do anything in a hurry. Take a little while to think it

over. Let me know to-morrow. I am not leaving till the evening. You

shall do nothing, so far as I am concerned, against your will. I want

you, now and always, to do exactly as you like. You believe that?"

"I quite believe you mean it at the present moment," she said with a

decidedly doubtful smile.

"It will be so always," said Brandon, "whether you believe it or not."

And with considerable ceremony he raised her hands to his lips and

deliberately kissed them. It seemed to Doris at that moment that even so

headlong a scheme as this was not without its very material advantages.

There were so many drawbacks to being betrothed.

CHAPTER IV

AT CLOSE QUARTERS

When Doris descended to breakfast on the following morning she found an

animated party in the dining-room discussing the best means of spending

the day. Abingdon himself and most of his guests were in favour of

attending an aviation meeting at Wynhampton a few miles away.

Caryl was not present, but as she passed through the hall a little

later, he came in at the front door.

"I was just coming to you," he remarked, pausing to flick the ash from

his cigarette before closing the door. "I have been making arrangements

for you to drive to Wynhampton with me."

Doris made a stiff movement that seemed almost mechanical. But the next

moment she recovered her self-control. Why was she afraid of this man,

she asked herself desperately? No man had ever managed to frighten her

before.

"I think I should prefer to go in the motor," she said, and smiled with

quivering lips. "Get Phil to drive with you. He likes the dog-cart

better than I do."

"I have talked it over with him," Caryl responded gravely. "He agrees

with me that this is the best arrangement."

There was to be no escape then. Once more the stronger will prevailed.

Without another word she turned from him and went upstairs. She might

have defied him, but she knew in her heart that he could compass his

ends in spite of her. And she was afraid.

She had a moment of absolute panic as she mounted into the high cart. He

handed her up, and his grasp, close and firm, seemed to her eloquent of

that deadly resolution with which he mastered her.

For the first half-mile he said nothing whatever, being fully occupied

with the animal he was driving--a skittish young mare impatient of

restraint.

Doris on her side sat in unbroken silence, enduring the strain with a

set face, dreading the moment when he should have leisure to speak.

He was evidently in no hurry to do so. Or was it possible that he found

some difficulty in choosing his words?

At length he turned his head and spoke.

"I secured this interview," he said, "because there is an important

point which I want to discuss with you."

"What is it?"

She nerved herself to meet his look, but her eyes fell before its steady

mastery almost instantly.

"About our wedding," he said in his calm, deliberate voice. "I should

like to have the day fixed."

Her heart gave a great thump of dismay.

"Do you really mean to hunt me down then and--and marry me against my

will?" she said, almost panting out the words.

Caryl turned his eyes back to the mare.

"I mean to marry you--yes," he said. "I think you forget that you

accepted me of your own accord."

"I was mad!" she broke in passionately.

"People in love are never wholly sane," he remarked cynically.

"I was never in love with you!" she cried. "Never, never!"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Nevertheless you will marry me," he said.

"Why?" she gasped back furiously. "Why should I marry you? You know I

hate you, and you--you--surely you must hate me?"

"No," he said with extreme deliberation, "strange as it may seem, I

don't."

Something in the words quelled her anger. Abruptly she abandoned the

struggle and fell silent, her face averted.

"And so," he proceeded, "we may as well decide upon the wedding-day

without further argument."

"And, if--if I refuse?" she murmured rather incoherently.

"You will not refuse," he said with a finality so absolute that her

last hope went out like an extinguished candle.

She seized her courage with both hands and turned to him.

"You will give me a little while to think it over?"

"Why?" said Caryl.

"Because I--I can't possibly decide upon the spur of the moment," she

said confusedly.

Was he going to refuse her even this small request? It almost seemed

that he was.

"How long will it take you?" he asked. "Will you give me an answer

to-night?"

Her heart leapt to a sudden hope called to life by his words.

"To-morrow!" she said quickly.

"I said to-night."

"Very well," she rejoined, yielding. "To-night, if you prefer it."

"Thanks. I do."

They were his last words on the subject. He seemed to think it ended

there, and there was nothing more to be said.

As for Doris, she sat by his side, outwardly calm but inwardly shaken to

the depths. To be thus firmly caught in the meshes of her own net was an

experience so new and so terrifying that she was utterly at a loss as to

how to cope with it. Yet there was a chance, one ray of hope to help

her. There was Major Brandon, the man who had offered her freedom. He

was to have his answer to-day. For the first time she began seriously to

ponder what that answer should be.

CHAPTER V

THE WAY TO FREEDOM

So far as Doris was concerned the aviation meeting was not a success.

There were some wonderful exhibitions of flying, but she was too

preoccupied to pay more than a very superficial attention to what she

saw.

They lunched at a great hotel overlooking the aviation ground. The place

was crowded, and they experienced some difficulty in finding places.

Eventually Doris found herself seated at a square table with Caryl and

two others in the middle of the great room.

She was studying a menu as a pretext for avoiding conversation with her

_fiancé_, when a man's voice murmured hurriedly in her ear:

"Will you allow me for a moment please? The lady who has just left this

table thinks she must have dropped one of her gloves under it."

Doris pushed back her chair and would have risen, but the speaker was

already on his knees and laid a hasty, restraining hand upon her. It

found hers and, under cover of the table-cloth, pressed a screw of paper

into her fingers.

The next instant he emerged, very red in the face, but triumphant, a

lady's gauntlet glove in his hand.

"Awfully obliged!" he declared. "Sorry to have disturbed you. Thought I

should find it here."

He smiled, bowed, and departed, leaving Doris amazed at his audacity.

She had met this young man often at Mrs. Lockyard's house, where he was

invariably referred to as "the little Fricker boy."

She threw a furtive glance at Caryl, but he had plainly noticed nothing.

With an uneasy sense of shame she slipped the note into her glove.

She perused it on the earliest opportunity. It contained but one

sentence:

"If you still wish for freedom, you can find it down by the river at any

hour to-night."

There was no signature of any sort; none was needed, she hid the message

away again, and for the rest of the afternoon she was almost feverishly

gay to hide the turmoil of indecision at her heart.

She saw little of Caryl after luncheon, but he re-appeared again in time

to drive her back in the dog-cart as they had come. She found him very

quiet and preoccupied, on the return journey, but his presence no longer

dismayed her. It was the consciousness that a way of escape was open to

her that emboldened her.

They were nearing the end of the drive, when he at length laid aside his

preoccupation and spoke:

"Have you made up your mind yet?"

That query of his was the turning point with her. Had he shown the

smallest sign of relenting from his grim purpose, had he so much as

couched his question in terms of kindness, he might have melted her even

then; for she was impulsive ever and quick to respond to any warmth. But

the coldness of his question, the unyielding mastery of his manner,

impelled her to final rebellion. In the moment that intervened between

his question and her reply her decision was made.

"You shall have my answer to-night," she said.

He turned from her without a word, and a little wonder quivered through

her as to the meaning of his silence. She was glad when they reached

Rivermead and she could take refuge in her own room.

Here once more she read Brandon's message; read it with a thumping

heart, but no thought of drawing back. It was the only way out for her.

She dressed for dinner, and then made a few hasty preparations for her

flight. She laid no elaborate plans for effecting it, for she

anticipated no difficulty. The night would be dark, and she could rely

upon her ingenuity for the rest. Failure was unthinkable.

When they rose from the table she waited for Vera and slipped a hand

into her arm.

"Do make an excuse for me," she whispered. "I have had a dreadful day,

and I can't stand any more. I am going upstairs."

"My dear!" murmured back Vera, by way of protest.

Nevertheless she made the excuse almost as soon as they entered the

drawing-room, and Doris fled upstairs on winged feet. At the head she

met Caryl about to descend; almost collided with him. He had evidently

been up to his room to fetch something.

He stood aside for her at once.

"You are not retiring yet?" he asked.

She scarcely glanced at him. She would not give herself time to be

disconcerted.

"I am coming down again," she said, and ran on.

Barely a quarter of an hour after the encounter with Caryl, dressed in a

long dark motoring coat and closely veiled, she slipped down the back

stairs that led to the servants' quarters, stood listening against a

baize door that led into the front hall, then whisked it open and fled

across to open the conservatory door, noiseless as a shadow.

The conservatory was in semi-darkness. She expected to see no one;

looked for no one. A moment she paused by the door that led into the

garden, and in that pause she heard a slight sound. It might have been

anything. It probably was a creak from one of the wicker chairs that

stood in a corner. Whatever its origin, it startled her to greater

haste. She fumbled at the door and pulled it open.

A gust of wind and rain blew in upon her, but she was scarcely aware of

it. In another moment she had softly closed the door again and was

scudding across the terrace to the steps that led towards the river

path.

As she reached it a light shone out in front of her, wavered, and was

gone.

"This way to freedom, lady mine," said Brandon's voice close to her, and

she heard in it the laugh he did not utter. "Mind you don't tumble in."

His hand touched her arm, closed upon it, drew her to his side. In

another instant it encircled her, but she pushed him vehemently away.

"Let us go!" she said feverishly. "Let us go!"

"Come along then," he said gaily. "The boat is just here. You'll have to

hold the lantern. Mind how you get on board."

As he pushed out from the bank, he told her something of his

arrangements.

"There's a motor waiting--not the one Polly usually hires, but it's

quite a decent little car. By the way, she has gone straight up to Town

from Wynhampton; said we should do our eloping best alone. We shan't be

quite alone, though, for Fricker is going to drive us. But he's a

negligible quantity, eh? His only virtue is that he isn't afraid of

driving in the dark."

"You will take me to Mrs. Lockyard?" said Doris quickly.

"Of course. She is at her flat, she and Mrs. Fricker. We shall be there

soon after midnight, all being well. Confound this stream! It swirls

like a mill-race."

He fell silent, and devoted all his attention to reaching the farther

bank.

Doris sat with the lantern in her hands, striving desperately to control

her nervous excitement. Her absence could not have been discovered yet,

she was sure, but she was in a fever of anxiety notwithstanding. She

would not feel safe until she was actually on the road.

The boat bumped at last against the bank, and she drew a breath of

relief. The journey had seemed interminable.

Suddenly through the windy darkness there came to them the hoot of a

motor-horn.

"That's all right," said Brandon cheerily. "That's Fricker, wanting to

know if all's well."

He hurried her over the wet grass, skirted the house by a side-path that

ran between dripping laurels, and brought her out finally into the

little front garden.

A glare of acetylene lamps met them abruptly as they emerged, dazzling

them for the moment. The buzz of a motor engine also greeted them, and a

smell of petrol hung in the wet air.

As her eyes accustomed themselves to the brightness, Doris made out a

small closed motor-car, with a masked chauffeur seated at the wheel.

"Good little Fricker!" said Brandon, slapping the chauffeur's shoulder

as he passed. "So you've got your steam up! Straight ahead then, and as

fast as you like. Don't get run in, that's all."

He handed Doris into the car, followed her, and slammed the door.

The next moment they passed swiftly out on to the road, and Doris knew

that the die was cast. She stood finally committed to this, the wildest,

most desperate venture of her life.

CHAPTER VI

A MASTER STROKE

"Here beginneth," laughed Brandon, sliding his arm around her as she sat

tense in every nerve gazing at the rain-blurred window.

She did not heed him; it was almost as if she had not heard. Her hands

were tightly clasped upon one another, and her face was turned from him.

There was no lamp inside the car, the only illumination proceeding from

those without, showing them the driver huddled over the wheel, but

shedding little light into the interior.

He tightened his arm about her, laying his other hand upon her clasped

ones.

"By Jove, little girl, you're cold!" he said.

She was--cold as ice. She parted her fingers stiffly to free them from

his grasp.

"I--I'm quite comfortable," she assured him, without turning her head.

"Please don't trouble about me."

But he was not to be thus discouraged.

"You can't be comfortable," he argued. "Why, you're shivering. Let me

see what I can do to make things better."

He tried to draw her to him, but she resisted almost angrily.

"Oh, do leave me alone! I'm not uncomfortable. I'm only thinking."

"Well, don't be silly!" he urged. "It's no use thinking at this stage.

The thing is done now, and well done. We shall be man and wife by this

time to-morrow. We'll go to Paris, eh, and have no end of a spree."

"Perhaps," she said, not looking at him or yielding an inch to his

persuasion.

It was plain that for some reason she desired to be left in peace, and

after a brief struggle with himself, Brandon decided that he would be

wise to let her have her way. He leant back and crossed his arms in

silence.

The car sped along at a pace which he found highly satisfactory. He had

absolute faith in Fricker's driving and knowledge of the roads.

They had been travelling for the greater part of an hour, when Doris at

length relaxed from her tense attitude and lay back in her corner,

nestling into it with a long shiver.

Brandon was instantly on the alert.

"I'm sure you are cold. Here's a rug here. Let me--"

"Oh, do please leave me alone!" she said, with a sob. "I'm so horribly

tired."

Beseechingly almost she laid her hand upon his arm with the words.

The touch fired him. He considered that he had been patient long

enough. Abruptly he caught her to him.

"Come, I say," he said, half-laughing, half in savage earnest, "I can't

have you crying on what's almost our wedding trip!"

He certainly did not expect the absolutely furious resistance with which

she met his action. She thrust him from her with the strength of frenzy.

"How dare you?" she cried passionately. "How dare you touch me, you--you

hateful cad?"

For the moment, such was his astonishment, he suffered her to escape

from his hold. Then, called into activity by her unreasoning fury, the

devil in him leapt suddenly up and took possession. With a snarling

laugh he gripped her by the arms, holding her by brutal force.

"You little wild cat!" he said in a voice that shook between anger and

amusement. "So this is your gratitude, is it? I am to give all and

receive nothing for my pains. Then let me make it quite clear to you

here and now that that is not my intention. I will be kind to you, but

you must be kind to me, too. The benefit is to be mutual."

It was premature. In his heart he knew it, but she had provoked him to

it and there was no turning back now. He resented the provocation, that

was all, and it made him the more brutally inclined towards her.

As for Doris, she fought and tore at his grasp like a mad creature; and

when he mastered her, when, still laughing between his teeth, he forced

her face upwards and kissed it fiercely and violently, she shrieked

between his kisses, shrieked and shrieked again.

The sudden grinding of the brake recalled Brandon to his senses. The

fool was actually stopping the car. He relinquished his hold upon the

girl to dash his hand against the window in front.

"Drive on, curse you, drive on!" he shouted through the glass. "I'll let

you know if we want to stop."

But the car stopped in spite of him. The chauffeur, shining from head to

foot in his oil-skins, sprang to the ground. A moment and he was at the

door, had wrenched it open, and was peering within.

"What are you gaping there for, you fool?" raved Brandon, his hand upon

Doris, who was suddenly straining forward. "It's all right, I tell you.

Go on."

"I am going on," the chauffeur responded calmly through his mask. "But I

am not taking you any farther, Major Brandon. So tumble out at once, you

dirty, thieving hound!"

The words, the tone, the attitude, flashed such a revelation upon Doris

that she cried out in amazement, and then with a revulsion of feeling so

great that it deprived her of all speech she threw herself forward and

clung to the masked chauffeur in an agony of tears.

Brandon was staring at him with dropped jaw.

"Who the blazes are you?" he said.

"You know me, I think," the chauffeur responded quietly. He was pressing

Doris back into her seat with absolute steadiness. "We have met before.

I was present at your first wedding ten years ago, and--as a junior

counsel--I helped to divorce you a few months after. My name is Vivian

Caryl."

He freed a hand to push up his mask. His pale face with its heavy-lidded

eyes stared, supremely contemptuous, into Brandon's suffused

countenance. His composure was somehow disconcerting.

"Suppose you get out," he suggested. "I can talk to you then in a

language you will understand."

"Curse you!" bawled Brandon. "Where's Fricker?"

Caryl shrugged his shoulders.

"You have seen him since I have. Are you going to get out? Ah, I thought

you would."

He stood aside to allow him to do so, and then stepped back to shut the

door. He did not utter a word to the girl cowering within, but that

action of his was a mute command. She crouched in the dark and listened,

but she did not dare to follow or to flee.

CHAPTER VII

THE MAN AT THE WHEEL

When Caryl came back to the motor his handkerchief was bound about the

knuckles of his right hand, and his face wore a faint smile that had in

it more of grimness than humour.

He paused at the open window and looked in on Doris without opening the

door. The sound of the rain pattering heavily upon his shoulders filled

in a silence that she found terrible. He spoke at length:

"You had better shut the window, the rain is coming in."

That was all, spoken in his customary drawl without a hint of anger or

reproach. They cut her hard, those few words of his. It was as if he

deemed her unworthy even of his contempt.

She raised her white face.

"What--are you going to do?" she managed to ask through her quivering

lips.

"I am going to take you to the nearest town--to Bramfield to spend the

rest of the night. It is getting late, you know--past midnight already."

"Bramfield!" she echoed with a start. "Then--then we have been going

north all this time?"

"We have been going north," he said.

She glanced around. Her eyes were hunted.

"No," said Caryl. "I haven't killed him. He is sitting under the hedge

about fifty yards up the road, thinking things over."

He opened the door then abruptly, and she held her breath and became

still and tense with apprehension. But he only pulled up the window,

closed the door again with a sharp click, and left her. When she dared

to breathe again the car was in motion.

She took no interest in her surroundings. Her destination had become a

matter of such secondary importance that she gave it no consideration

whatever. What mattered, all that mattered, was that she was now in the

hands and absolutely at the mercy of the man whom she feared as she

feared no one else on earth, the man with whom in her mad coquetry she

had dared to trifle.

The car was stopping. It came to a standstill almost imperceptibly, and

Caryl stepped into the road. Tensely she watched him; but he did not so

much as glance her way. He turned aside to a little gate in a high hedge

of laurel, and passed within, leaving her alone in the night.

Soon she heard his deliberate footfalls returning. In a moment he had

reached the door, his hand was upon it. She turned stiffly towards him

as it opened.

He spoke at once in his calm, unmoved voice:

"A very old friend of mine lives here. She will put you up for the

night and see to your comfort. Will you get out?"

Mutely she did so, feeling curiously weak and unstrung. He put his arm

around her, and led her into the dim cottage garden.

They went up a tiled path to an open door from which the light of a

single candle gleamed fitfully in the draught. She stumbled at the

doorstep, but he held her up. He was almost carrying her.

As they entered, an old woman, bent and indescribably wrinkled, rose

from her knees before a deep old-fashioned fireplace on the other side

of the little kitchen, and came to meet them. She had evidently just

coaxed a dying fire back to life.

"Ah, poor dear," she said at sight of the girl's exhausted face. "She

looks more dead than alive. Bring her to the fire, Master Vivian. I'll

soon have some hot milk for the poor lamb."

Caryl led her to an arm-chair that stood on one side of the blaze, and

made her sit down. Then, stooping, he took one of her nerveless hands

and held it closely in his own.

He did not speak to her, and she was relieved by his forbearance. As the

warmth of his grasp gradually communicated itself to her numbed fingers,

she felt her racing pulses grow steadier; but she was glad when he laid

her hand down quietly in her lap and turned away.

He bent over her again in a few minutes with a cup of steaming milk.

She took it from him, tasted it, and shuddered.

"There is brandy in it."

"Yes," said Caryl.

She turned her head away.

"I don't want it. I hate brandy."

He put his hand on her shoulder.

"You had better drink it all the same," he said.

She glanced at him, caught her breath sharply, then dumbly gave way. He

kept his hand upon her while she drank, and only removed it to take the

empty cup.

After that, standing gravely before her, he spoke again.

"I am going on into the town now with the motor, and I shall put up

there. My old nurse will take care of you. I shall come back in the

morning."

CHAPTER VIII

THE SURRENDER OF THE CITADEL

Old Mrs. Maynard, sweeping her brick floor with wide-open door through

which the April sunlight streamed gloriously, nodded to herself a good

many times over the doings of the night. A very discreet creature was

Mrs. Maynard, faithful to the very heart of her, but she would not have

been mortal had she not been intensely curious to know what were the

circumstances that had led Vivian Caryl to bring to her door that

shrinking, exhausted girl who still lay sleeping in the room above.

When Doris awoke in response to her deferential knock, only the

reticence of the trained servant greeted her. The motherliness of the

night before had completely vanished.

Doris was glad of it. She had to steel herself for the coming interview

with Caryl; she had to face the result of her headlong actions with as

firm a front as she could assume. She needed all her strength, and she

could not have borne sympathy just then.

She thanked Mrs. Maynard for her attentions and saw her withdraw with

relief. Then, having nibbled very half-heartedly at the breakfast

provided, she arose with a great sigh, and began to prepare for whatever

might lie before her.

Dressed at length, she sat down by the open window to wait--and wonder.

The click of the garden gate fell suddenly across her meditations, and

she drew back sharply out of sight. He was entering.

She heard his leisurely footfall on the tiles and then his quiet voice

below. Her heart began to thump with thick, uncertain beats. She was

horribly afraid.

Yet when she heard the old woman ascending the stairs, she had the

courage to go to the door and open it.

Mr. Caryl was in the parlour, she was told. He would be glad to see her

at her convenience.

"I will go to him," she said, and forthwith descended to meet her fate.

He stood by the window when she entered, but wheeled round at once with

his back to the light. She felt that this did not make much difference.

She knew exactly how he was looking--cold, self-contained, implacable as

granite. She had seldom seen him look otherwise. His face was a

perpetual mask to her. It was this very inscrutability of his that had

first waked in her the desire to see him among her retinue of slaves.

She went forward slowly, striving to attain at least a semblance of

composure. At first it seemed that he would wait for her where he was;

then unexpectedly he moved to meet her. He took her hand into his own,

and she shrank a little involuntarily. His touch unnerved her.

"You have slept?" he asked. "You are better?"

Something in his tone made her glance upwards, catching her breath. But

she decided instantly that she had been mistaken. He would not, he could

not, mean to be kind at such a moment.

She made answer with an assumption of pride. She dared not let herself

be natural just then.

"I am quite well. There was nothing wrong with me last night. I was only

tired."

He suffered her hand to slip from his.

"I wonder what you think of doing," he said quietly. "Have you made any

plans?"

The hot blood rushed to her face before she was aware of it. She turned

it sharply aside.

"Am I to have a voice in the matter?" she said, her voice very low. "You

did not think it worth while to consult me last night."

"You were scarcely in a fit state to be consulted," he answered gravely.

"That is why I postponed the discussion. But I was then--as I am

now--entirely at your disposal. I will take you back to your people at

once if you wish it."

She made a quick, passionate gesture of protest, and moved away from

him.

"Have you any alternative in your mind?" he asked.

She remained with her back to him.

"I shall go away," she said, a sudden note of recklessness in her

voice. "I shall travel."

"Alone?" he questioned.

"Yes, alone." This time her voice rang defiance. She wheeled round

quivering from head to foot. "But for you," she said, "but for your

unwarrantable interference I should never have been placed in this

hateful, this impossible, position. I should have been with my friends

in London. It would have been my wedding-day."

The attack was plainly unexpected. Even Caryl was taken by surprise. But

the next moment he was ready for her.

"Then by all means," he said, "let me take you to your friends in

London. Doubtless your chivalrous lover has found his way thither long

ere this."

She stamped like a little fury.

"Do you think I would marry him--now? Do you think I would marry any one

after--after what happened last night? Oh, I hate you--I hate you all!"

Her voice broke. She covered her face, with tempestuous sobbing, and

sank into a chair.

Caryl stood silent, biting his lip as if in irresolution. He did not try

to comfort her.

After a while, her weeping still continuing, he leant across the table.

"Doris," he said, "leave off crying and listen to me. I know it is out

of the question for you to marry that scoundrel whom I had the pleasure

of thrashing last night. It always has been out of the question. That

is one reason why I have been keeping such a hold upon you. Now that you

admit the impossibility of it, I set you free. But you will be wise to

think well before you accept your freedom from me. You are in an

intolerable position, and I am quite powerless to help you unless you

place yourself unreservedly in my hands and give me the right to protect

you. It means a good deal, I know. It means, Doris, the sacrifice of

your independence. But it also means a safe haven, peace, comfort, if

not happiness. You may not love me. I never seriously thought that you

did. But if you will give me your trust--I shall try to be satisfied

with that."

Love! She had never heard the word on his lips before. It sent a curious

thrill through her to hear it then. She had listened to him with her

face hidden, though her tears had ceased. But as he ended, she slowly

raised her head and looked at him.

"Are you asking me to marry you?" she said.

"I am," said Caryl.

She lowered her eyes from his, and began to trace a design on the

table-cloth with one finger.

"I don't want to marry you," she said at length.

"I know," said Caryl.

She did not look up.

"No, you don't know. That's just it. You think you know everything. But

you don't. For instance, you think you know why I ran away with Major

Brandon. But you don't. You never will know--unless I tell you, probably

not even then."

She broke off with an abrupt sigh, and leant back in her chair.

"One thing I do thank you for," she said irrelevantly. "And that is that

you didn't take me back to Rivermead last night. Have they, I wonder,

any idea where I am?"

"I left a message for your cousin before I left," Caryl said.

"Oh, then he knew--?"

"He knew that I had you under my protection," Caryl told her grimly. "I

did not go into details. It was unnecessary. Only Flicker knew the

details. I marked him down in the afternoon, after the incident at

luncheon."

She opened her eyes.

"Then you guessed--?"

"I knew he did not find the missing glove under the table," said Caryl

quietly. "I did not need any further evidence than that. I knew,

moreover, that you had not devoted the whole of the previous afternoon

to your correspondence. I was waiting for your cousin in the

conservatory when you joined Brandon in the garden."

"And you--you were in the conservatory last night when I went through.

I--I felt there was someone there."

"Yes," he answered. "I waited to see you go."

"Why didn't you stop me?"

For an instant her eyes challenged his.

He stood up, straightening himself slowly.

"It would not have answered my purpose," he told her steadily.

She stood up also, her face gone suddenly white.

"You chose this means of--of forcing me to marry you?"

"I chose this means--the only means to my hand--of opening your eyes,"

he said. "It has not perhaps been over successful. You are still blind

to much that you ought to see. But you will understand these things

better presently."

"Presently?" she faltered.

"When you are my wife," he said.

She flashed him a swift glance.

"I am to marry you then?"

He held out his hand to her across the table.

"Will you marry me, Doris?"

She hesitated for a single instant, her eyes downcast. Then suddenly,

without speaking, she put her hand into his, glad that, notwithstanding

the overwhelming strength of his position, he had allowed her the

honours of war.

CHAPTER IX

THE WILLING CAPTIVE

"And so you were obliged to marry your _bête noire_ after all! My dear,

it has been the talk of the town. Come, sit down, and tell me all about

it. I am burning to hear how it came about."

Doris's old friend, Mrs. Lockyard, paused to flick the ash from her

cigarette, and to laugh slyly at the girl's face of discomfiture.

Doris also held a cigarette between her fingers, but she was only toying

with it restlessly.

"There isn't much to tell," she said. "We were married by special

licence. I was not obliged to marry him. I chose to do so."

Mrs. Lockyard laughed again, not very pleasantly.

"And left poor Maurice in the lurch. That was rather cruel of you after

all his chivalrous efforts to deliver you from bondage. And he so hard

up, too."

A flush of anger rose in the girl's face. She tilted her chin with the

old proud gesture.

"I should not have married him in any case," she said. "He made that

quite impossible by his own act. He--was not so chivalrous as I

thought."

A gleam of malice shone for a moment in Mrs. Lockyard's eyes, and just a

hint of it was perceptible in her voice as she made response.

"One has to make allowances sometimes. All men are not made after the

pattern of your chosen lord and master. He, I grant you, is hard as

granite and about as impassive. Still I mustn't depreciate your prize

since it was of your own choosing. Let me wish you instead every

happiness."

"He was not impassive that night," said Doris quickly, with a sharp

inward sense of injustice.

"No?" questioned Mrs. Lockyard.

"No. At least--Major Brandon did not find him so." Doris's blue eyes

took fire at the recollection. "He gave him his deserts," she said, with

a certain exultation. "He thrashed him."

"Oh, my dear, he would have done that in any case. That was an old, old

score paid off at last. Forgive me for depriving you of this small

gratification. But that debt was contracted many years ago when you were

scarcely out of your cradle. Your presence was a mere incident. You were

the opportunity, not the cause."

"I don't know what you mean," said Doris, looking her straight in the

face.

"No? Well, my dear, it isn't my business to enlighten you. If you really

want to know, I must refer you to your husband. Surely that is Mrs.

Fricker over there. You will not mind if she joins us?"

"I am going!" Doris announced abruptly--"I really only looked in to see

if there were any letters."

She dropped her cigarette with determination and turned to the nearest

door.

It was true that she had run into the club for her correspondence, but

having met Mrs. Lockyard she had been almost compelled to linger, albeit

unwillingly. Now from the depths of her soul she regretted the impulse

that had borne her thither. She vowed to herself that she would not

enter the club again so long as Mrs. Lockyard remained in town.

Three weeks had elapsed since her marriage; three weeks of shopping in

Paris with Caryl somewhere in the background, looking on but never

advising.

He had been very kind on the whole, she was fain to admit, but she was

further from understanding him now than she had ever been. He had

retired into his shell so completely that it seemed unlikely that he

would ever again emerge, and she did not dare to make the first advance.

Her return to London had been one of the greatest ordeals she had ever

faced, but she had endured it unflinchingly, and had found that London

had already almost forgotten the eccentricity of her marriage. In the

height of the season memories are short.

Caryl had taken a flat overlooking the river, and here they had settled

down. He spent the greater part of his day at the Law Courts, and Doris

found herself thrown a good deal upon her own resources. In happier days

this had been her ideal, but for some reason it did not now content her.

Returning from her encounter with Mrs. Lockyard at the club, she told

herself with sudden petulance that life in town had lost all charm for

her.

Entering the dainty sitting-room that looked on to the river, she

dropped into a chair by the window and stared out with her chin in her

hands. The river was a blaze of gold. A line of long black barges was

drifting down-stream in the wake of a noisy steam-tug. She watched them

absently, sick at heart.

Gradually the shining water grew blurred and dim. Its beauty wholly

passed her by, or if she saw it, it was only in vivid contrast to the

darkness in her soul. For a little, wide-eyed, she resisted the impulse

that tugged at her heart-strings; but at last in sheer weariness she

gave in. What did it matter, a tear more or less? There was no one to

know or care. And tears were sometimes a relief. She bowed her head upon

the sill and wept.

"Why, Doris!" a quiet voice said.

She started, started violently, and sprang upright.

Caryl was standing slightly behind her, his hand on the back of her

chair, but as she rose he came forward and stood beside her.

"What is it?" he said. "Why are you crying?"

"I'm not!" she declared vehemently. "I wasn't! You--you startled

me--that's all."

She turned her back on him and hastily dabbed her eyes. She was furious

with him for coming upon her thus.

He stood at the window, looking out upon the long, black barges in

silence.

After a few seconds of desperate effort she controlled herself and

turned round.

"I never heard you come in. I--must have been asleep."

He did not look at her, or attempt to refute the statement.

"I thought you were going to be out this afternoon," he said.

"So I was. So I have been. I went to the club to get my letters."

"Didn't you find any one there to talk to?" he asked.

"No one," she answered somewhat hastily; then, moved by some impulse she

could not have explained, "That is, no one that counts. I saw Mrs.

Lockyard."

"Doesn't she count?" asked Caryl, still with his eyes on the river.

"I hate the woman!" Doris declared passionately.

He turned slowly round.

"What has she been saying to you?"

"Nothing."

Again he made no comment on the obvious lie.

"Look here," he said. "Can't we go out somewhere to-night? There is a

new play at the Regency. They say it's good. Shall we go?"

The suggestion was quite unexpected; she looked at him in surprise.

"I have promised Vera to dine there," she said.

"Ring her up and say you can't," said Caryl.

She hesitated.

"I must make some excuse if I do. What shall I say?"

"Say I want you," he said, and suddenly that rare smile of his for which

she had wholly ceased to look flashed across his face, "and tell the

truth for once."

She did not see him again till she entered the dining-room an hour

later. He was waiting for her there, and as she came in he presented her

with a spray of lilies.

Again in astonishment she looked up at him.

"Don't you like them?" he said.

"Of course I do. But--but--"

Her answer tailed off in confusion. Her lip quivered uncontrollably, and

she turned quickly away.

Caryl was plainly unaware of anything unusual in her demeanour. He

talked throughout dinner in his calm, effortless drawl, and gradually

under its soothing influence she recovered herself.

She enjoyed the play that followed. It was a simple romance, well

staged, and superbly acted. She breathed a sigh of regret when it was

over.

Driving home again with Caryl, she thanked him impulsively for taking

her.

"You weren't bored?" he asked.

"Of course not," she said.

She would have said more, but something restrained her. A sudden shyness

descended upon her that lasted till they reached the flat.

She left Caryl at the outer door and turned into the room overlooking

the river. The window was open as she had left it, and the air blew in

sweetly upon her over the water. She had dropped her wrap from her

shoulders, and she shivered a little as she stood, but a feeling of

suspense kept her motionless.

Caryl had entered the room behind her. She wondered if he would pause at

the table where a tray of refreshments was standing. He did not, and her

nerves tingled and quivered as he passed it by.

He joined her at the window, and they stood together for several seconds

looking out upon the great river with its myriad lights.

She had not the faintest idea as to what was passing in his mind, but

her heart-beats quickened in his silence to such a tumult that at last

she could bear it no longer. She turned back into the room.

He followed her instantly, and she fancied that he sighed.

"Won't you have anything before you go?" he said.

She shook her head.

"Good-night!" she said almost inaudibly.

For a moment--no longer--her hand lay in his. She did not look at him.

There was something in his touch that thrilled through her like an

electric current.

But his grave "Good-night!" had in it nothing startling, and by the time

she reached her own room she had begun to ask herself what cause there

had been for her agitation. She was sure he must have thought her very

strange, very abrupt, even ungracious.

And at that her heart smote her, for he had been kinder that evening

than ever before. The fragrance of the lilies at her breast reminded her

how kind.

She bent her head to them, and suddenly, as though the flowers exhaled

some potent charm, impulse--blind, domineering impulse--took possession

of her.

She turned swiftly to the door, and in a moment her feet were bearing

her, almost without her voluntary effort, back to the room she had left.

The door was unlatched. She pushed it open, entering impetuously. And

she came upon Caryl suddenly--as he had come upon her that

afternoon--sunk in a chair by the window, with his head in his hands.

He rose instantly at her entrance, rose and closed the window; then

lowered the blind very quietly, very slowly, and finally turned round to

her.

"What is it? You have forgotten something?"

Except that he was paler than usual, his face bore no trace of emotion.

He looked at her with his heavy eyes gravely, with unfailing patience.

For an instant she stood irresolute, afraid; then again that urging

impulse drove her forward. She moved close to him.

"I only came back to say--I only wanted to tell you--Vivian, I--I was

horrid to you this afternoon. Forgive me!"

She stretched out her trembling hands to him, and he took them, held

them fast, then sharply let them go.

"My dear," he said, "you were in trouble, and I intruded upon you. It

was no case for forgiveness."

But she would not accept his indulgence.

"I was horrid," she protested, with a catch in her voice. "Why are you

so patient with me? You never used to be."

He did not answer her. He seemed to regard the question as superfluous.

She drew a little nearer. Her fingers fastened quivering upon his coat.

"Don't be too kind to me, Vivian," she said, her voice trembling.

"It--it isn't good for me."

He took her by the wrists and drew her hands away.

"You want to tell me something," he said. "What is it?"

She glanced upwards, meeting his look with sudden resolution.

"You asked me this afternoon why I was crying," she said. "And I--I lied

to you. You asked me, too, what Mrs. Lockyard said to me. And I lied

again. I will tell you now, if--if you will listen to me."

Caryl was still holding her wrists. There was a hint of sternness in his

attitude.

"Well?" he said quietly. "What did she say?"

"She said"--Doris spoke with an effort--"she said, or rather she hinted,

that there was an old grudge between you and Major Brandon, a matter

with which I was in no way concerned, an affair of many years' standing.

She said that was why you followed him up and--thrashed him that night.

She implied that I didn't count at all. She made me wonder

if--if--"--she was speaking almost inarticulately, with bent head--"if

perhaps it was only to satisfy this ancient grudge that you married me."

Her words went into silence. She could not look him in the face. If he

had not held her wrists so firmly she would have been tempted to turn

and flee. As it was, she could only stand before him in quivering

suspense.

He moved at length, moved suddenly and disconcertingly, freeing one

hand to turn her face quietly upwards. She did not resist him, but she

shrank as she met his eyes. She fancied she had never seen him look so

grim.

"And that was why you were crying?" he asked, deliberately searching her

reluctant eyes.

"That was--one reason," she acknowledged faintly.

"Then there was something more than that?"

"Yes." She laid her hand pleadingly on his arm, and he released her. "I

will tell you," she said tremulously, keeping her face upturned to his.

"At least, I will try. But it's very difficult because--"

She began to falter under his look.

"Because," he said slowly, "you have no confidence in me. That I can

well understand. You married me more or less under compulsion, and when

a wife is no more than a guest in her husband's house, confidence

between them, of any description, is almost an impossibility."

He spoke without anger, but with a sadness that pierced her to the

heart; and having so spoken he leant his arm upon the mantelpiece,

turning slightly from her.

"I will tell you," he said, his voice very quiet and even, "exactly what

Mrs. Lockyard was hinting at. Ten years ago I was engaged to a

girl--like you in many ways--gay, impulsive, bewitching. I was young in

those days, romantic, too. I worshipped her as a goddess. I was utterly

blind to her failings. They simply didn't exist for me. She rewarded me

by running away with Maurice Brandon. I knew he was a blackguard, but

how much of a blackguard I did not realize till later. However, I didn't

trust him even then, and I followed them and insisted that they should

be married in my presence. Six months later I heard from her. He had

treated her abominably, had finally deserted her, and she was trying to

get a divorce. I did my best to help her, and eventually she obtained

it." He paused a moment, then went on with bent head, "I never saw her

after she gained her freedom. She went to her people, and very soon

after--she died."

Again he paused, then slowly straightened himself.

"I never cared for any woman after that," he said, "until I met you. As

for Brandon, he kept out of my way, and I had no object in seeking him.

In fact, I took no interest in his doings till I found that you were in

Mrs. Lockyard's set. That, I admit, was something of a shock. And then

when I found that you liked the man--"

"Oh, don't!" she broke in. "Don't! I was mad ever to tolerate him. Let

me forget it! Please let me forget it!"

She spoke passionately, and as if her emotion drew him he turned fully

round to her.

"If you could have forgotten him sooner," he said, with a touch of

sternness, "you would not find yourself tied now to a man you never

loved."

The effect of his words was utterly unexpected. She started as one

stricken, wounded in a vital place, and clasped her hands tightly

against her breast, crushing the flowers that drooped there.

"It is a lie!" she cried wildly. "It is a lie!"

"What is a lie?"

He took a step towards her, for she was swaying as she stood; but she

flung out her hands, keeping him from her.

Her face was working convulsively. She turned and moved unsteadily away

from him, groping out before her as she went. So groping, she reached

the door, and blindly sought the handle. But before she found it he

spoke in a tone that had subtly altered:

"Doris!"

Her hands fell. She stood suddenly still, listening.

"Come here!" he said.

He crossed the room and reached her.

"Look at me!" he said.

She refused for a little, trembling all over. Then suddenly as he waited

she threw back her head and met his eyes. She was sobbing like a child

that has been hurt.

He bent towards her, looking closely, closely into her quivering face.

"So," he said, "it was a lie, was it? But, my own girl, how was I to

know? Why on earth didn't you say so before?"

She broke into a laugh that had in it the sound of tears.

"How could I? You never asked. How could I?"

"Shall I ask you now?" he said.

She stretched up her arms and clasped his neck.

"No," she whispered back. "Take me--take everything--for granted. It's

the only way, if you want to turn a heartless little flirt like me

into--into a virtuous and amiable wife!"

And so, clinging to him, her lips met his in the first kiss that had

ever passed between them.

Those Who Wait[1]

A faint draught from the hills found its way through the wide-flung door

as the sun went down. It fluttered the papers on the table, and stirred

a cartoon upon the wall with a dry rustling as of wind in corn.

The man who sat at the table turned his face as it were mechanically

towards that blessed breath from the snows. His chin was propped on his

hand. He seemed to be waiting.

The light failed very quickly, and he presently reached out and drew a

reading-lamp towards him. The flame he kindled flickered upward,

throwing weird shadows upon his lean, brown face, making the sunken

hollows of his eyes look cavernous.

He turned the light away so that it streamed upon the open doorway. Then

he resumed his former position of sphinx-like waiting, his chin upon his

hand.

Half an hour passed. The day was dead. Beyond the radius of the lamp

there hung a pall of thick darkness--a fearful, clinging darkness that

seemed to wrap the whole earth. The heat was intense, unstirred by any

breeze. Only now and then the cartoon on the wall moved as if at the

touch of ghostly fingers, and each time there came that mocking whisper

that was like wind in corn.

At length there sounded through the night the dull throbbing of a

horse's feet, and the man who sat waiting raised his head. A gleam of

expectancy shone in his sombre eyes. Some of the rigidity went out of

his attitude.

Nearer came the hoofs and nearer yet, and with them, mingling

rhythmically, a tenor voice that sang.

As it reached him the man at the table pulled out a drawer with a sharp

jerk. His hand sought something within it, but his eyes never left the

curtain of darkness that the open doorway framed.

Slowly, very slowly at last, he withdrew his hand empty; but he only

partially closed the drawer.

The voice without was nearer now, was close at hand. The horse's hoofs

had ceased to sound. There came the ring of spurred heels without, a

man's hand tapped upon the doorpost, a man's figure showed suddenly

against the darkness.

"Hallo, Conyers! Still in the land of the living? Ye gods, what a

fiendish night! Many thanks for the beacon! It's kept me straight for

more than half the way."

He entered carelessly, the lamplight full upon him--a handsome,

straight-limbed young Hercules--tossed down his riding-whip, and looked

round for a drink.

"Here you are!" said Conyers, turning the rays of the lamp full upon

some glasses on the table.

"Ah, good! I'm as dry as a smoked herring. You must drink too, though.

Yes, I insist. I have a toast to propose, so be sociable for once. What

have you got in that drawer?"

Conyers locked the drawer abruptly, and jerked out the key.

"What do you want to know for?"

His visitor grinned boyishly.

"Don't be bashful, old chap! I always guessed you kept her there. We'll

drink her health, too, in a minute. But first of all"--he was splashing

soda-water impetuously out of a syphon as he spoke--"first of all--quite

ready, I say? It's a grand occasion--here's to the best of good fellows,

that genius, that inventor of guns, John Conyers! Old chap, your

fortune's made. Here's to it! Hip--hip--hooray!"

His shout was like the blare of a bull. Conyers rose, crossed to the

door, and closed it.

Returning, he halted by his visitor's side, and shook him by the

shoulder.

"Stop rotting, Palliser!" he said rather shortly.

Young Palliser wheeled with a gigantic laugh, and seized him by the

arms.

"You old fool, Jack! Can't you see I'm in earnest? Drink, man, drink,

and I'll tell you all about it. That gun of yours is going to be an

enormous success--stupendous--greater even than I hoped. It's true, by

the powers! Don't look so dazed. All comes to those who wait, don't you

know. I always told you so."

"To be sure, so you did." The man's words came jerkily. They had an odd,

detached sound, almost as though he were speaking in his sleep. He

turned away from Palliser, and took up his untouched glass.

But the next instant it slipped through his fingers, and crashed upon

the table edge. The spilt liquid streamed across the floor.

Palliser stared for an instant, then thrust forward his own glass.

"Steady does it, old boy! Try both hands for a change. It's this

infernal heat."

He turned with the words, and picked up a paper from the table, frowning

over it absently, and whistling below his breath.

When he finally looked round again his face cleared.

"Ah, that's better! Sit down, and we'll talk. By Jove, isn't it

colossal? They told me over at the fort that I was a fool to come across

to-night. But I simply couldn't keep you waiting another night. Besides,

I knew you would expect me."

Conyers' grim face softened a little. He could scarcely have said how he

had ever come to be the chosen friend of young Hugh Palliser. The

intimacy had been none of his seeking.

They had met at the club on the occasion of one of his rare appearances

there, and the younger man, whose sociable habit it was to know

everyone, had scraped acquaintance with him.

No one knew much about Conyers. He was not fond of society, and, as a

natural consequence, society was not fond of him. He occupied the humble

position of a subordinate clerk in an engineer's office. The work was

hard, but it did not bring him prosperity. He was one of those men who

go silently on week after week, year after year, till their very

existence comes almost to be overlooked by those about them. He never

seemed to suffer as other men suffered from the scorching heat of that

tropical corner of the Indian Empire. He was always there, whatever

happened to the rest of the world; but he never pushed himself forward.

He seemed to lack ambition. There were even some who said he lacked

brains as well.

But Palliser was not of these. His quick eyes had detected at a glance

something that others had never taken the trouble to discover. From the

very beginning he had been aware of a force that contained itself in

this silent man. He had become interested, scarcely knowing why; and,

having at length overcome the prickly hedge of reserve which was at

first opposed to his advances, he had entered the private place which it

defended, and found within--what he certainly had not expected to

find--a genius.

It was nearly three months now since Conyers, in a moment of unusual

expansion, had laid before him the invention at which he had been

working for so many silent years. The thing even then, though complete

in all essentials, had lacked finish, and this final touch young

Palliser, himself a gunner with a positive passion for guns, had been

able to supply. He had seen the value of the invention and had given it

his ardent support. He had, moreover, friends in high places, and could

obtain a fair and thorough investigation of the idea.

This he had accomplished, with a result that had transcended his high

hopes, on his friend's behalf; and he now proceeded to pour out his

information with an accompanying stream of congratulation, to which

Conyers sat and listened with scarcely the movement of an eyelid.

Hugh Palliser found his impassivity by no means disappointing. He was

used to it. He had even expected it. That momentary unsteadiness on

Conyers' part had astonished him far more.

Concluding his narration he laid the official correspondence before him,

and got up to open the door. The night was black and terrible, the heat

came in overwhelming puffs, as though blown from a blast furnace. He

leaned against the doorpost and wiped his forehead. The oppression of

the atmosphere was like a tangible, crushing weight. Behind him the

paper on the wall rustled vaguely, but there was no other sound. After

several minutes he turned briskly back again into the room, whistling a

sentimental ditty below his breath.

"Well, old chap, it was worth waiting for, eh? And now, I suppose,

you'll be making a bee-line for home, you lucky beggar. I shan't be long

after you, that's one comfort. Pity we can't go together. I suppose you

can't wait till the winter."

"No, my boy. I'm afraid I can't." Conyers spoke with a faint smile, his

eyes still fixed upon the blue official paper that held his destiny.

"I'm going home forthwith, and be damned to everything and

everybody--except you. It's an understood thing, you know, Palliser,

that we are partners in this deal."

"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Palliser impetuously. "I don't agree to that. I did

nothing but polish the thing up. You'd have done it yourself if I

hadn't."

"In the course of a few more years," put in Conyers drily.

"Rot!" said Palliser again. "Besides, I don't want any pelf. I've quite

as much as is good for me, more than I want. That's why I'm going to get

married. You'll be going the same way yourself now, I suppose?"

"You have no reason whatever for thinking so," responded Conyers.

Palliser laughed lightheartedly and sat down on the table. "Oh, haven't

I? What about that mysterious locked drawer of yours? Don't be shy, I

say! You had it open when I came in. Show her to me like a good chap! I

won't tell a soul."

"That's not where I keep my love-tokens," said Conyers, with a grim

twist of the mouth that was not a smile.

"What then?" asked Palliser eagerly. "Not another invention?"

"No." Conyers inserted the key in the lock again, turned it, and pulled

open the drawer. "See for yourself as you are so anxious."

Palliser leaned across the table and looked. The next instant his glance

flashed upwards, and their eyes met.

There was a sharply-defined pause. Then, "You'd never be fool enough for

that, Jack!" ejaculated Palliser, with vehemence.

"I'm fool enough for anything," said Conyers, with his cynical smile.

"But you wouldn't," the other protested almost incoherently. "A fellow

like you--I don't believe it!"

"It's loaded," observed Conyers quietly. "No, leave it alone, Hugh! It

can remain so for the present. There is not the smallest danger of its

going off--or I shouldn't have shown it to you."

He closed the drawer again, looking steadily into Hugh Palliser's face.

"I've had it by me for years," he said, "just in case the Fates should

have one more trick in store for me. But apparently they haven't, though

it's never safe to assume anything."

"Oh, don't talk like an idiot!" broke in Palliser heatedly. "I've no

patience with that sort of thing. Do you expect me to believe that a

fellow like you--a fellow who knows how to wait for his luck--would give

way to a cowardly impulse and destroy himself all in a moment because

things didn't go quite straight? Man alive! I know you better than that;

or if I don't, I've never known you at all."

"Ah! Perhaps not!" said Conyers.

Once more he turned the key and withdrew it. He pushed back his chair so

that his face was in shadow.

"You don't know everything, you know, Hugh," he said.

"Have a smoke," said Palliser, "and tell me what you are driving at."

He threw himself into a bamboo chair by the open door, the light

streaming full upon him, revealing in every line of him the arrogant

splendour of his youth. He looked like a young Greek god with the world

at his feet.

Conyers surveyed him with his faint, cynical smile. "No," he said, "you

certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper

in your life."

"Haven't I, though?" Hugh sat up, eager to refute this criticism.

"That's all you know about it. I suppose you think you have had the

monopoly of hard knocks. Most people do."

"I am not like most people," Conyers asserted deliberately. "But you

needn't tell me that you have ever been right under, my boy. For you

never have."

"Depends what you call going under," protested Palliser. "I've been down

a good many times, Heaven knows. And I've had to wait--as you have--all

the best years of my life."

"Your best years are to come," rejoined Conyers. "Mine are over."

"Oh, rot, man! Rot--rot--rot! Why, you are just coming into your own!

Have another drink and give me the toast of your heart!" Hugh Palliser

sprang impulsively to his feet. "Let me mix it! You can't--you shan't be

melancholy to-night of all nights."

But Conyers stayed his hand.

"Only one more drink to-night, boy!" he said. "And that not yet. Sit

down and smoke. I'm not melancholy, but I can't rejoice prematurely.

It's not my way."

"Prematurely!" echoed Hugh, pointing to the official envelope.

"Yes, prematurely," Conyers repeated. "I may be as rich as Croesus, and

yet not win my heart's desire."

"Oh, I know that," said Hugh quickly. "I've been through it myself. It's

infernal to have everything else under the sun and yet to lack the one

thing--the one essential--the one woman."

He sat down again, abruptly thoughtful. Conyers smoked silently, with

his face in the shadow.

Suddenly Hugh looked across at him.

"You think I'm too much of an infant to understand," he said. "I'm

nearly thirty, but that's a detail."

"I'm forty-five," said Conyers.

"Well, well!" Hugh frowned impatiently. "It's a detail, as I said

before. Who cares for a year more or less?"

"Which means," observed Conyers, with his dry smile, "that the one woman

is older than you are."

"She is," Palliser admitted recklessly. "She is five years older. But

what of it? Who cares? We were made for each other. What earthly

difference does it make?"

"It's no one's business but your own," remarked Conyers through a haze

of smoke.

"Of course it isn't. It never has been." Hugh yet sounded in some

fashion indignant. "There never was any other possibility for me after I

met her. I waited for her six mortal years. I'd have waited all my life.

But she gave in at last. I think she realized that it was sheer waste of

time to go on."

"What was she waiting for?" The question came with a certain weariness

of intonation, as though the speaker were somewhat bored; but Hugh

Palliser was too engrossed to notice.

He stretched his arms wide with a swift and passionate gesture.

"She was waiting for a scamp," he declared.

"It is maddening to think of--the sweetest woman on earth, Conyers,

wasting her spring and her summer over a myth, an illusion. It was an

affair of fifteen years ago. The fellow came to grief and disappointed

her. She told me all about it on the day she promised to marry me. I

believe her heart was nearly broken at the time, but she has got over

it--thank Heaven!--at last. Poor Damaris! My Damaris!"

He ceased to speak, and a dull roar of thunder came out of the night

like the voice of a giant in anguish.

Hugh began to smoke, still busy with his thoughts.

"Yes," he said presently, "I believe she would actually have waited all

her life for the fellow if he had asked it of her. Luckily he didn't go

so far as that. He was utterly unworthy of her. I think she sees it now.

His father was imprisoned for forgery, and no doubt he was in the know,

though it couldn't be brought home to him. He was ruined, of course, and

he disappeared, just dropped out, when the crash came. He had been on

the verge of proposing to her immediately before. And she would have had

him too. She cared."

He sent a cloud of smoke upwards with savage vigour.

"It's damnable to think of her suffering for a worthless brute like

that!" he exclaimed. "She had such faith in him too. Year after year she

was expecting him to go back to her, and she kept me at arm's length,

till at last she came to see that both our lives were being sacrificed

to a miserable dream. Well, it's my innings now, anyway. And we are

going to be superbly happy to make up for it."

Again he flung out his arms with a wide gesture, and again out of the

night there came a long roll of thunder that was like the menace of a

tortured thing. A flicker of lightning gleamed through the open door for

a moment, and Conyers' dark face was made visible. He had ceased to

smoke, and was staring with fixed, inscrutable eyes into the darkness.

He did not flinch from the lightning; it was as if he did not see it.

"What would she do, I wonder, if the prodigal returned," he said

quietly. "Would she be glad--or sorry?"

"He never will," returned Hugh quickly. "He never can--after fifteen

years. Think of it! Besides--she wouldn't have him if he did."

"Women are proverbially faithful," remarked Conyers cynically.

"She will stick to me now," Hugh returned with confidence. "The other

fellow is probably dead. In any case, he has no shadow of a right over

her. He never even asked her to wait for him."

"Possibly he thought that she would wait without being asked," said

Conyers, still cynical.

"Well, she has ceased to care for him now," asserted Hugh. "She told me

so herself."

The man opposite shifted his position ever so slightly. "And you are

satisfied with that?" he said.

"Of course I am. Why not?" There was almost a challenge in Hugh's voice.

"And if he came back?" persisted the other. "You would still be

satisfied?"

Hugh sprang to his feet with a movement of fierce impatience. "I believe

I should shoot him!" he said vindictively. He looked like a splendid

wild animal suddenly awakened. "I tell you, Conyers," he declared

passionately, "I could kill him with my hands if he came between us

now."

Conyers, his chin on his hand, looked him up and down as though

appraising his strength.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright and spoke--spoke briefly, sternly, harshly,

as a man speaks in the presence of his enemy. At the same instant a

frightful crash of thunder swept the words away as though they had never

been uttered.

In the absolute pandemonium of sound that followed, Hugh Palliser, with

a face gone suddenly white, went over to his friend and stood behind

him, his hands upon his shoulders.

But Conyers sat quite motionless, staring forth at the leaping

lightning, rigid, sphinx-like. He did not seem aware of the man behind

him, till, as the uproar began to subside, Hugh bent and spoke.

"Do you know, old chap, I'm scared!" he said, with a faint, shamed

laugh. "I feel as if there were devils abroad. Speak to me, will you,

and tell me I'm a fool!"

"You are," said Conyers, without turning.

"That lightning is too much for my nerves," said Hugh uneasily. "It's

almost red. What was it you said just now? I couldn't hear a word."

"It doesn't matter," said Conyers.

"But what was it? I want to know."

The gleam in the fixed eyes leaped to sudden terrible flame, shone hotly

for a few seconds, then died utterly away. "I don't remember," said

Conyers quietly. "It couldn't have been anything of importance. Have a

drink! You will have to be getting back as soon as this is over."

Hugh helped himself with a hand that was not altogether steady. There

had come a lull in the tempest. The cartoon on the wall was fluttering

like a caged thing. He glanced at it, then looked at it closely. It was

a reproduction of Doré's picture of Satan falling from heaven.

"It isn't meant for you surely!" he said.

Conyers laughed and got to his feet. "It isn't much like me, is it?"

Hugh looked at him uncertainly. "I never noticed it before. It might

have been you years ago."

"Ah, perhaps," said Conyers. "Why don't you drink? I thought you were

going to give me a toast."

Hugh's mood changed magically. He raised his glass high. "Here's to your

eternal welfare, dear fellow! I drink to your heart's desire."

Conyers waited till Hugh had drained his glass before he lifted his own.

Then, "I drink to the one woman," he said, and emptied it at a draught.

* * * * *

The storm was over, and a horse's feet clattered away into the darkness,

mingling rhythmically with a cheery tenor voice.

In the room with the open door a man's figure stood for a long while

motionless.

When he moved at length it was to open the locked drawer of the

writing-table. His right hand felt within it, closed upon something that

lay there; and then he paused.

Several minutes crawled away.

From afar there came the long rumble of thunder. But it was not this

that he heard as he stood wrestling with the fiercest temptation he had

ever known.

Stiffly at last he stooped, peered into the drawer, finally closed it

with an unfaltering hand. The struggle was over.

"For your sake, Damaris!" he said aloud, and he spoke without cynicism.

"I should know how to wait by now--even for death--which is all I have

to wait for."

And with that he pulled the fluttering paper from the wall, crushed it

in his hand, and went out heavily into the night.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This story was originally issued in the _Red Magazine_.]

The Eleventh Hour[2]

CHAPTER I

HIS OWN GROUND

"Oh, to be a farmer's wife!"

Doris Elliot paused, punt-pole in hand, to look across a field of

corn-sheaves with eyes of shining appreciation.

Her companion, stretched luxuriously on his back on a pile of cushions,

smiled a contemplative smile and made no comment.

The girl's look came down to him after a moment. She regarded him with

friendly contempt.

"You're very lazy, Hugh," she said.

"I know it," said Hugh Chesyl comfortably.

She dropped the pole into the water and drove the punt towards the bank.

"It's a pity you're such a slacker," she said.

He removed his cigarette momentarily. "You wouldn't like me any better

if I weren't," he said.

"Indeed I should--miles!"

"No, you wouldn't." His smile became more pronounced. "If I were more

energetic, I should be for ever pestering you to marry me. And, you

know, you wouldn't like that. As it is, I take 'No,' for an answer and

rest content."

Doris was silent. Her slim, white-clad figure was bent to the task of

bringing the punt to a pleasant anchorage in an inviting hollow in the

grassy shore. Hugh Chesyl clasped his hands behind his head and watched

her with placid admiration.

The small brown hands were very capable. They knew exactly what to do,

and did it with precision. When they had finally secured the punt, with

him in it, to the bank he sat up.

"Are we going to have tea here? What a charming spot! Sweetly romantic,

isn't it? I wonder why you particularly want to be a farmer's wife?"

Doris's pointed chin still looked slightly scornful. "You wouldn't

wonder if you took the trouble to reflect, Mr. Chesyl," she said.

He laughed easily. "Oh, don't ask me to do that! You know what a

sluggish brain mine is. I can quite understand your not wanting to marry

me, but why you should want to marry a farmer--like Jeff Ironside--I

cannot see."

"Who is Jeff Ironside?" she demanded.

"He's the chap who owns this property. Didn't you know? A frightfully

energetic person; prosperous, too, for a wonder. But an absolute tinker,

my dear. I shouldn't marry him--all his fair acres notwithstanding--if

I were you. I don't think the county would approve."

Doris snapped her fingers with supreme contempt. "That for the county!

What a snob you are!"

"Am I?" said Hugh. "I didn't know."

She nodded severely. "Do you mind moving your legs? I want to get at the

tea-basket."

"Don't mention it!" he said accommodatingly. "Are you going to give me

tea now? How nice! You are looking awfully pretty to-day, do you know? I

can't think how you do it. There isn't a feature in your face worth

mentioning, but, notwithstanding, you make an entrancing whole."

Doris sternly repressed a smile. "Please don't take the trouble to be

complimentary."

Hugh groaned. "There's no pleasing you. And still you haven't let me

into the secret as to why you want to be a farmer's wife."

Doris was unpacking the tea-things energetically. "You never understand

anything without being told," she said. "Don't you know that I

positively hate the life I live now?"

"I can quite believe it," said Hugh Chesyl. "But, if you will allow me

to say so, I think your remedy would be worse than the disease. Your

utmost ingenuity will fail to persuade me that the life of a farmer's

wife would suit you."

"I should like the simplicity of it," she maintained.

"And getting up at five in the morning to make the butter? And having a

hulking brute of a husband--like Jeff Ironside--tramping into your

kitchen with his muddy boots and beastly clothes (which you would have

to mend) just when you had got things into good order? I can see you

doing it!" Hugh Chesyl's speech went into his easy, high-bred laugh.

"You of all people--the dainty and disdainful Miss Elliot, for whom no

man is good enough!"

"I don't know why you say that." There was quick protest in the girl's

voice. She clattered the cups and saucers as if something in the lazy

argument had exasperated her. "I like a man who is a man--the hard,

outdoor, wholesome kind--who isn't afraid of taking a little

trouble--who knows what he wants and how to get it. I shouldn't quarrel

with him on the score of muddy boots. I should be only glad that he had

enough of the real thing in him to go out in all weathers and not to

care."

"All of which is aimed at me," said Hugh to the trees above him. "I'm

afraid I'm boring you more than usual this afternoon."

"You can't help it," said Doris.

Hugh Chesyl's good-looking face crumpled a little, then smoothed itself

again to its usual placid expression. "Ah, well!" he said equably, "we

won't quarrel about it. Let's have some tea!"

He sat up in the punt and looked across at her; but she would not meet

his eyes, and there ensued a considerable pause before he said gently,

"I'm sorry you are not happy, you know."

"Are you?" she said.

"Yes. That's why I want you to marry me."

"Should I be any happier if I did?" said Doris, with a smile that was

somehow slightly piteous.

"I don't know." Hugh Chesyl's voice was as pleasantly vague as his

personality. "I shouldn't get in your way at all, and, at least, you

would have a home of your own."

"To be miserable in," said Doris, with suppressed vehemence.

"I don't know why you should be miserable," he said. "You wouldn't have

anything to do that you didn't like."

She uttered a laugh that caught her breath as if it had been a sob. "Oh,

don't talk about it, Hugh! I should be bored--bored to death. I want the

real thing--the real thing--not a polite substitute."

"Sorry," said Hugh imperturbably. "I have offered the utmost of which I

am capable. May I have my tea here, please? It's less trouble than

scrambling ashore."

She acceded to his request without protest; but she stepped on to the

bank herself, and sat down with her back to a corn-sheaf. Very young and

slender she looked sitting there with the sunshine on her brown,

elf-like face, but she was by no means without dignity. There was a

fairy queenliness about her that imparted an indescribable charm to her

every movement. Her eyes were grey and fearless.

"How lovely to own a field like this!" she said. "And plough it and sow

it and watch it grow up, and then cut it and turn it into sheaves! How

proud the man who owns it must be!"

Something stirred on the other side of the sheaf, and she started a

little and glanced backwards. "What's that?"

"A rat probably," said Hugh Chesyl serenely from his couch in the punt.

"I expect the place is full of 'em. Won't you continue your rhapsody?

The man who owns this particular field is a miller as well as a farmer.

He grinds his own grain."

"Oh, is he that man?" Eagerly she broke in. "Does he live in that

perfectly exquisite old red-brick house on the water with the wheel

turning all day long? Oh, isn't he lucky?"

"I doubt if he thinks so," said Hugh Chesyl. "I've never met a contented

farmer yet."

"I don't like people to be too contented," said Doris perversely. "It's

a sign of laziness and--yes--weakness of purpose."

"Oh, is it?" Again he uttered his good-tempered laugh; then, as he began

to drink his tea, he gradually sobered. "Has anything happened lately to

make you specially discontented with your lot?" he asked presently.

Doris's brows contracted. "Things are always happening. My stepmother

gets more unbearable every day. I sometimes think I will go and work

for my living, but my father won't hear of it. And what can I do? I

haven't qualified for anything. The only thing open to me is to fill a

post of unpaid companion to a rich and elderly cousin who would put up

with me but doesn't much want me. She lives at Kensington, too, and I

can breathe only in the country."

"Poor little girl!" said Hugh kindly.

"Oh, don't pity me!" she said quickly. "You can't do anything to help.

And I shouldn't grumble to you if there were anyone else to grumble to."

She leaned back against her sheaf with her eyes on the sunlit water

below. "I suppose I shall just go on in the same old way till something

happens. Anyhow, I can't see my way out at present. It's such a shame to

be unhappy, too, when life might be so ecstatic."

"How could life be ecstatic?" asked Hugh, passing up his cup to be

refilled.

She threw him a quick glance. "You wouldn't understand if I were to tell

you," she said. "It never could be--for you."

He sighed. "I know I'm very limited. But it's a mistake to expect too

much from life, believe me. Ask but little, and perhaps--if you're

lucky--you won't be disappointed."

"I would rather have nothing than that," she said quickly.

Hugh Chesyl turned and regarded her curiously. "Would you really?" he

said.

She nodded several times emphatically. "Yes; just live my own life

out-of-doors and do without everything else." She pulled a long stalk of

corn from the sheaf against which she rested and looked at it

thoughtfully. Her eyes were downcast, and the man in the punt could not

see the deep shadow of pain they held. "If I can't have corn," she said

slowly, with the air of one pronouncing sentence, "I won't have husks. I

will die of starvation sooner."

And with that very suddenly she rose and walked round the sheaf.

The movement was abrupt, so abrupt that Hugh Chesyl lifted his brows in

astonishment. He was still more surprised a moment later when he heard

her clear, girlish voice raised in admonition.

"I don't think it's very nice of you to lie there listening and not to

let us know."

Hugh sat upright in the punt. Who on earth was it that she was reproving

thus?

The next moment he saw. A huge man with the frame of a bull rose from

behind the sheaf and confronted his young companion. He had his hat in

his hand, and the afternoon sun fell full upon his uncovered head,

revealing a rugged, clean-shaven face that had in it a good deal of

British strength and a suspicion of gipsy alertness. To Chesyl's further

amazement he did not appear in the least abashed by the encounter.

"I'm sorry I overheard you," he said, with blunt deference. "I was

half-asleep at first. Afterwards, I didn't like to intrude."

Doris's grey eyes looked him up and down for a moment or two in

silence, and a flush rose in her tanned face. It seemed to Hugh that she

was likely to become the more embarrassed of the two, and he wondered if

he ought to go to the rescue.

Then swiftly Doris collected her forces. "I suppose you know you are

trespassing?" she said.

At that Hugh laid himself very suddenly down again in the bottom of the

boat, and left her to fight her own battles.

The man on the bank looked down at his small assailant with a face of

grim decorum. "No, I didn't know," he said.

"Well, you are," said Doris. "All this ground is private property. You

can see for yourself. It's a cornfield."

The intruder's eyes travelled over the upstanding sheaves, passed

gravely over the man in the punt, and came back to the girl. "Yes; I

see," he said stolidly.

"Then don't you think you'd better go?" she said.

He put his hat on somewhat abruptly. "Yes. I think I had better," he

said, and with that he turned on his heel and walked away through the

stubble.

"Such impertinence!" said Doris, as she stepped down the bank to her

companion.

"It was rather," said Hugh.

She looked at him somewhat sharply. "I don't see that there is anything

to laugh at," she said.

"Don't you?" said Hugh.

"No. Why are you laughing?"

Hugh explained. "It only struck me as being a little funny that you

should order the man off his own ground in that cavalier fashion."

"Hugh!" Genuine dismay shone in the girl's eyes. "That wasn't--wasn't--"

"Jeff Ironside? Yes, it was," said Hugh. "I wonder you have never come

across him before. He works like a nigger."

"Hugh!" Doris collapsed upon the bank in sheer horror. "I have seen him

before--seen him several times. I thought he was just--a labourer--till

to-day."

"Oh, no," said Hugh. "He's just your hard, outdoor, wholesome farmer.

Fine animal, isn't he? Always reminds me of a prize bull."

"How frightful!" said Doris with a gasp. "It's the worst _faux pas_ I

have ever made."

"Cheer up!" said Hugh consolingly. "No doubt he was flattered by the

little attention. He took it very well."

"That doesn't make matters any better," said Doris. "I almost wish he

hadn't."

Whereupon Hugh laughed again. "Oh, don't wish that! I should think he

would be quite a nasty animal when roused. I shouldn't have cared to

fight him on your behalf. He could wipe the earth with me were he so

minded."

Doris's eyes, critical though not unkindly, rested upon him as he lay.

"Yes," she said thoughtfully, "I should almost think he could."