"I'M GOING TO LIVE, AND SO ARE YOU."
"We shall hold on here for about two minutes," said the woman grimly,
"if the bush don't give way before that."
Leslie turned her face to the wall, and shut her eyes.
"And he will be waiting for me!" she murmured. "He will not know, will
think I have mistrusted him. I shall never see him again, never hear
his voice! Oh, why did we part to-day; why didn't I ask him, pray him
to take me with him. Never to see him again----." She broke off with a
sob that shook her. "My arm is numbed, I am falling!" she said with a
wail. "Tell him--tell him--oh, God, and I love him so!"
The agony in her voice seemed to go straight to her companion's heart.
The dark face flushed red, her eyes shone with a kind of pity.
"Hold on!" she said, almost hissed between her white teeth shut fast.
"You shan't die! You tried to save me, you risked your life for me, and
I'll save you. Put your arm round my neck. Don't be afraid. I'm strong.
I can dance for hours; my ankles are like steel. Cling to me, I say,
with one hand, anyhow."
Scarcely knowing what she was doing, Leslie released the bush with one
hand, and put her arm round her companion's neck.
"If I'd only a drop of brandy!" muttered the woman. "How cold your
arm feels; you're not going to faint! For God's sake don't do that,
or we're both lost; for I don't mean to let you go now. Die! Who says
we're going to die? I want to live now! After all, he's not quite
lost--my man, I mean! He may come back. I'll get him back. I'll best
this other woman or know the reason why!"
Her face was flushed, her voice husky with excitement.
"No use, no use!" moaned Leslie.
"No use! What do you mean! Am I ugly, hump-backed? Do you mean she's
better looking than I am! I don't believe it! He's been caught by a new
face. That isn't what you mean? You're going to fall? Not you! Hold
on tight now, for I'm going to have a shy at the bush above. There's
a bit of a path." She laughed fiercely, defiantly. "Old Faber had us
do gymnastics. I used to hate 'em; but I'm much obliged to him now.
Put your foot against the rock and spring--not too hard, mind--when I
do. Once let me get a grip of that bush up there, and I'll hang on or
fight my way till my arms drop off. Die! Why should I? I was a fool!
I'll get him back, you see if I don't! No, we won't die. You shall have
your husband again! Now!" she breathed between her clenched teeth. "If
you've got any pluck in you, if you want to see your husband again, put
your heart into it! Now!"
She made a spring; they both sprang at the same moment, as if they were
one body inspired by the same will, and the woman got hold of the bush,
and clung with the strength and tenacity of a leopardess.
"Ah!" she gasped. "We've done it! Cling on to me! We'll wait while I
count twenty, and then we'll go for the path."
"No--no!" panted Leslie. "I could not, I could not! Let us stay here
till----."
"Till this bit of ledge crumbles under us with our weight, and lets
us drop like poisoned flies! No, no! I don't feel like that. It isn't
convenient to die now; it was just now! I'm going to live, to live! And
so are you!"
She counted the twenty, then put her arm around Leslie's waist.
"Now! Put your hand on my shoulder and cling with the other to the bits
of bush and stump, and don't look down! Mind that, or you'll drop, as
sure as fate."
Leslie shuddered. Her heart was beating wildly, but a grand hope was
creeping over her. Was it possible that she should live and see Yorke
once more?
Slowly she felt her way along the surface with her hand, till she got
hold of the dry but firmly rooted scrub, then she drew herself up and
along the narrow ledge, which was a fissure in the rock rather than a
path. No one, in cold blood, could have maintained a footing there for
more than thirty seconds, but these two were fighting for dear life,
and their blood was burning at fever heat, and they managed, almost
miraculously, to creep, crawl, drag themselves upward and still upward.
Below them roared the angry waves, as if with mocking rage at their
attempts to escape their voracious maw. Above their heads whirled
the gulls, screaming weirdly. Every now and then a stone, displaced
by their feet, rolled and sprang from point to point, and ultimately
bounded into the gulf below them; and each time Leslie felt that in a
moment she would be bounding and falling like the stone, to the hideous
death.
For some minutes neither spoke. They could hear each other's breath
coming in thick, labored gasps; and Leslie, who was in front, now and
again felt her companion's breath striking, like that of a hot furnace,
on her neck.
"Keep on! Hold tight!" she heard her say presently. "Keep your eyes up;
the path's broadening. If--if we can hold on another minute or two--or
a year, for that's what it seems like!--we're saved!"
Leslie could not reply; her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth;
her lips, dry and stiff, would not move. But still as she climbed her
heart's voice murmured "Yorke, Yorke!" and she drew courage from it. It
was worth fighting for, this life of hers, this life which his love had
made so precious, so beauteous. If she lived she would be his wife. His
wife! Yes, she would live, she would fight on while there was breath in
her body, while there was strength in her fingers to clutch an inch of
even the moss on the cliff's surface.
In such moments Time is not. It is swallowed up in the agony, the
suspense, the mingled hope and despair which rack and wring the heart
and brain. She scarcely knew how long they had been making their awful
journey through the valley of the shadow of death, scarcely realized
that they were saved, when she saw the edge of the cliff just above
her, and with one great effort raised herself above it--above it!--and
threw herself upon the level ground, gripping the short turf with her
hot fingers as if she dreaded that something would drag her back again,
and hurl her into the awful sea whose voice still howled faintly in her
ears.
She lay thus for a minute or two, her companion lying at her elbow,
panting, beside her; then, with a great sob, Leslie rose to her knees
and poured out her heart in thanksgiving to Him who had restored her to
life--and to Yorke!
The woman stood and eyed her with a pale face and half lowered lids.
"Where are we?" she said at last.
Leslie rose and turned to her with both hands outstretched.
"Oh, what can I say, how can I thank you?" she exclaimed in great
agitation. "You have saved my life!"
The woman wiped her lips and forced a smile.
"That's a rum way of putting it," she said, her voice shaking a little.
"If I did, you saved mine first. It was a narrow squeak for both of us."
She looked round almost impatiently.
"Where are we?" she repeated. "I--I want to get back to London as soon
as I can. I----'ve been half out of my mind, I think, and this--this
affair has pulled me round. Don't you take any notice of what I said
about--about him, the man I spoke of. I don't believe I've lost him,
after all. I can get him back." She laughed discordantly, and flushed,
as if half ashamed of the new hope that the escape from death had
seemed to give her. "He's--he's no worse than the rest. They're all
alike, easily taken with a new face. And--and I know he likes me. He
was sorry for going directly after he'd left me, and--yes--" she pushed
the black hair from her face--"yes, I'll bet my life I get him back."
Leslie looked at her with a smile of sympathy and encouragement.
"Yes," she said, "I hope so; ah, yes, I hope so! It was dreadful to
see you and hear you when we were--down there!" and she glanced with a
shudder at the edge of the cliff.
"Yes, I was pretty low then," said the other. "It was a hard fight,
wasn't it? You and I ought to be friends; but--" she paused and looked
hard and almost shyly at Leslie's face--"but perhaps you wouldn't care
for that. You're a lady--a swell, I can see, and I--well, I'm not
fit----."
Leslie put out her hand to stop her.
"You must not talk like that now--now, just when we have escaped death
together. And I hope--ah! yes, I hope that you will be happier, that
he--" she blushed, and her voice grew low; love was so sacred a thing
to her--"that he you love will come back to you. If he does you must
forgive him, and take him back----."
She stopped, for the tall, graceful figure in front of her swayed and
staggered; and the dark eyes grew suddenly heavy and closed.
Leslie uttered a cry of alarm.
"Oh, what is it? You are ill, faint----."
The other opened her lips as if to speak, then fell heavily forward on
Leslie's arm.
Leslie knelt beside her on the grass, and looked round anxiously. The
solitude was as intense as that which they had just left. They were
still alone together with no help near.
Leslie remembered that a small spring ran from a cleft on the cliff,
and, though the thought of going near the edge made her heart quake,
she gently set the woman's head down, and, stooping over the cliff, wet
her handkerchief in the rill, and, returning, bathed the white face
with one hand while she unfastened the bosom of the lifeless woman's
dress with the other.
As she did so her hand came in contact with something hard, though for
a second or two she was too intent upon watching for some signs of
returning consciousness in the face on her knee to look to see what it
was; but presently her eye caught a plain gold locket.
"Poor girl!" she thought. "It is the gift of the man who has deserted
her. And she wears it near her heart. Poor girl, poor girl!"
At that moment the white lips parted, and the dark eyes opened.
"Yorke!" she breathed. "Is it you, Yorke? Have you come back to me?"
The words struck upon Leslie's ear at first without any significance.
She scarcely heard them or took them in for a space during which one
could have counted fifty.
Then, gradually it came upon her, gradually, slowly.
"Yorke! Is it you, Yorke? Have you come back to me?"
She repeated them mechanically, as one repeats a phrase in a foreign
language, the meaning of which one does not understand. Then she began
to tremble, and a faint, sick dread fell upon her.
All the time she bathed the white face and lips and brushed the dark
hair from the low, handsome forehead; doing it mechanically, absently.
Yorke? Had this girl said Yorke, or, was she mistaken?
She waited, breathless, the sick feeling weighing on her heart; and
presently the full lips opened again, and again the name--the beloved
name--was breathed. There could be no mistake this time. Leslie heard
it plainly.
It was Yorke.
Her hand trembled, the beautiful face on her lap grew dim, and seemed
to fade away. Then she made an effort and forced the dread from her
heart, and a smile to her lips.
What if this girl, the beautiful girl, had called upon Yorke? Surely
there was more than one man of that name in the world, the great
big wide world; and this woman's Yorke was not, could not be, hers,
Leslie's.
She could have laughed at her wicked, worse than wicked, foolish fears!
Could have laughed if it had not been for the stress of circumstances.
How could she suspect for a moment that he Yorke--the Duke of Rothbury,
her lover, so good and true and stanch--should be the Yorke whom this
woman loved, and who had, by her own account, deserted her!
"Oh, I wrong him cruelly, wickedly, even by this momentary doubt!" she
told herself. "He would not have doubted me as I have done him, though
only for a second!" And her face flushed.
But though she reproached herself, her mind was at work, and, against
her will, she remembered how she had first seen this girl.
She recalled the scene, the incident, at St. Martin's Tower. Yorke had
stood beside her looking down, and he had started--yes, and turned
pale, white to the lips, as the woman's voice had floated up to them.
Did he know her?
All her being rose in revolt at the idea, the suspicion. And yet----.
She remembered his face as it had looked at that moment. She had
thought that he had turned pale with anger that such a song should
have been sung in her presence, and had loved him for his anxiety on
her account.
She tried to thrust the dawning suspicion from her as if it were some
insidious demon whispering in her ear, but still she could not forget
that this woman had told her that she had come down here to Portmaris,
had followed the man she loved to this place; and Yorke had come down
here, had come down----!
The rays of the setting sun struck the two figures, the white face
lying on Leslie's lap adding a lustre to the dark hair that swept
across Leslie's dress.
How beautiful she looked, Leslie thought in a dull, vague way; how
beautiful! Any man might well lose his heart to such a woman, even
though she were not a lady, and capable of singing such a song as she
had heard these lips sing. Any man, even----. No, not Yorke! He would
not, could not have loved her. It was she, Leslie herself, whom he
loved, not this woman!
Even as she laid the flattering unction to her soul, her eye fell again
upon the locket.
It was lying open, face downward, upon the woman's snow-white breast.
A desire, an overwhelming desire to take it up and see what face was
enshrined in it seized upon her. One glance, and this vague, unjust
suspicion of hers would be set at rest for ever. She knew, knew, that
it would not be Yorke's, her Yorke's, face she should see.
She fought against the desire, the craving. Love was a sacred thing to
her, and it would seem like sacrilege to touch this trinket which this
poor girl wore, doubtless the gift of the man she loved so dearly, the
man whose desertion had caused her to weary of life, to desire death.
"No, no, I cannot, I will not!" Leslie breathed pantingly, but even as
she spoke the words her hand stole towards the locket upon which the
rich sunlight was falling. Once, twice, her hand approached it and drew
back, but at the third time she took it up, raised it slowly, and then
swiftly turned it upwards.
Then still holding it, her eyes riveted upon it with a gaze of horror
and agony, she cried--
"Yorke! It is Yorke!"