Hope had some difficulty in persuading Ronnie to attend mess that night,
though, as a matter of fact, she was longing for solitude.
He went at last, and she was glad, for a great restlessness possessed
her to which it was a relief to give way. She wandered about the veranda
in the dark after his departure, trying to realize fully what had
happened. It had all come upon her so suddenly. She had been forced to
act throughout without a moment's pause for thought. Now that it was all
over she wanted to collect herself and face the worst.
Her engagement was at an end. It was mainly that fact that she wished to
grasp. But somehow she found it very difficult. She had grown into the
habit of regarding herself as belonging exclusively and for all time to
Montagu Baring.
"He has given me up! He has given me up!" she whispered to herself, as
she paced to and fro along the crazy veranda. She recalled the look his
face had worn, the sternness, the pitilessness of his eyes. She had
always felt at the back of her heart that he had it in him to be hard,
merciless. But she had not really thought that she would ever shrink
beneath the weight of his anger. She had trusted blindly to his love to
spare her. She had imagined herself to be so dear to him that she must
be exempt. Others--it did not surprise her that others feared him. But
she--his promised wife--what could she have to fear?
She paused at the end of the veranda, looking up. The night was full of
stars, and it was very cold. At the bottom of the compound she heard the
water running swiftly. It did not chuckle any more. It had become a
miniature roar. It almost seemed to threaten her.
She remembered how she had listened to it in the morning, sitting in the
sunshine, dreaming; and her heart suddenly contracted with a pain
intolerable. Those golden dreams were over for ever. He had given her
up.
Again her restlessness urged her. Cold as it was, she could not bring
herself to go indoors. She descended into the compound, passed swiftly
through it, and began to climb the rough ground of the hill that rose
behind it above the native village.
The Magician's bungalow looked very ghostly in the starlight. Presently
she paused, and stood motionless, gazing down at it. She remembered
how, when she and her uncle had first come to it, the native servants
had told them of the curse that had been laid upon it; of the evil
spirits that had dwelt there; of voices that had cried in the night! Was
it true, she wondered vaguely? Was it possible for a place to be cursed?
A faint breeze ran down the valley, stirring the trees to a furtive
whispering. Again, subconsciously, she was aware of the cold, and moved
to return. At the same moment there came a sound like the report of a
cannon half a mile away, followed by a long roar that was unlike
anything she had ever heard--a sound so appalling, so overwhelming, that
for an instant, seized with a nameless terror, she stood as one turned
to stone.
And then--before the impulse of flight to the bungalow had reached her
brain--the whole terrible disaster burst upon her. Like a monster of
destruction, that which had been a gurgling stream rose above its banks
in a mighty, brown flood, surged like an inrushing sea over the moonlit
compound, and swept down the valley, turning it into a whirling turmoil
of water.