It was to all outward seeming a very gay crowd that assembled at the
club-house on the following night for the first dance of the season.
For some unexplained reason sentries had been doubled on all sides of
the Camp, but no one seemed to have any anxiety on that account.
"We ought to feel all the safer," laughed Mrs. Raymond when she heard.
"No one ever took such care of us before."
"It must be all rot," said Derrick who had arrived the previous evening
in excellent spirits. "If there were the smallest danger of a rising you
wouldn't be here."
"Quite true," laughed Mrs. Raymond, "unless the road to Fort Akbar is
considered unsafe."
"I never saw a single border thief all the way here!" declared Derrick,
departing to look for Averil.
He claimed the first waltz imperiously, and she gave it to him. She was
the prettiest girl in the room, and she danced with a queenly grace of
movement. Derrick was delighted. He did not like giving her up, but
Steele was insistent on this point. He had made Derrick's acquaintance
in the Frontier campaign of a year before, and he parted the two without
scruple, declaring he would not stand by and see a good chap like
Derrick make a selfish beast of himself on such an occasion.
Derrick gave place with a laugh and sought other partners. In the middle
of the evening Toby Carey strolled up to Averil and bent down in a
conversational attitude. He was not dancing himself. She gave him a
somewhat cold welcome.
After a few commonplace words he took her fan from her hand and
whispered to her behind it:
"There's a fellow on the veranda waiting to speak to you," he said.
"Calls himself a friend."
Her heart leapt at the murmured words. She glanced hurriedly round.
Everyone in the room was dancing. She had pleaded fatigue. She rose
quietly and stepped to the window, Toby following.
She stood a moment on the threshold of the night and then passed slowly
out. All about her was dark.
"Go on to the steps!" murmured Toby behind her. "I shall keep watch."
She went on with gathering speed. At the head of the veranda-steps she
dimly discerned a figure waiting for her, a figure clothed in some
white, muffling garment that seemed to cover the face. And yet she knew
by all her bounding pulses whom she had found.
"Colonel Carlyon!" she said, and on the impulse of the moment she gave
him both her hands.
His quiet voice answered her out of the strange folds. "Come into the
garden a moment!" he said.
She went with him unquestioning, with the confidence of a child. He led
her with silent, stealthy tread into the deepest gloom the compound
afforded. Then he stopped and faced her with a question that sent a
sudden tumult of doubt racing through her brain.
"Will you take a message to Fort Akbar for me, Averil?" he said. "A
matter of life and death."
A message! Averil's heart stood suddenly-still. All the evil report that
she had heard of this man raised its head like a serpent roused from
slumber, a serpent that had hidden in her breast, and a terrible agony
of fear took the place of her confidence.
Carlyon waited for her answer without a sign of impatience. Through her
mind, as it were on wheels of fire, Steele's passionate words were
running: "He lives on treachery. He would betray any one or all of us to
death if it were to the interest of the Empire that we should be
sacrificed." And again: "I would sooner tread barefoot on a scorpion
than get entangled in Carlyon's web."
All this she would once have dismissed as vilest calumny. But Carlyon's
abandonment of Derrick, and his subsequent explanation thereof, were
terribly overwhelming evidence against him. And now this man, this spy,
wanted to use her as an instrument to accomplish some secret end of his.
A matter of life or death, he said. And for which of these did he
purpose to use her efforts? Averil sickened at the possibilities the
question raised in her mind. And still Carlyon waited for her answer.
"Why do you ask me?" she said at last, in a quivering whisper. "What is
the message you want to send?"
"You delivered a message for me only yesterday without a single
question," he said.
She wrung her hands together in the darkness. "I know. I know," she
said; "but then I did not realize."
"You saved the camp from destruction," he went on. "Will you not do the
same to-night?"
"How shall I know?" she sobbed in anguish.
"What have they been telling you?"
The quiet voice came in strange contrast to the agitated uncertainty of
her tones. Carlyon laid steady hands on her shoulders. In the dim light
his eyes had leapt to blue flame, sudden, intense. She hid her face from
their searching; ashamed, horrified at her own doubts--yet still
doubting.
"Your friendship has stood a heavier strain than this," Carlyon said,
with grave reproach.
But she could not answer him. She dared scarcely face her own thoughts
privately, much less utter them to him.
What if he were urging the tribes to rise to give the Government a
pretext for war? She had heard him say that peace had come too soon,
that war alone could remedy the evil of constantly recurring outrages
along that troublous Frontier.
What if he counted the lives of a few women and their gallant protectors
as but a little price to pay for the accomplishment of this end?
What if he purposed to make this awful sacrifice in the interests of the
Empire, and only asked this thing of her because no other would
undertake it?
She lifted her face. He was still looking at her with those strange,
burning eyes that seemed to pierce her very soul.
"Averil," he said, "you may do a great thing for the Empire to-night--if
you will."
The Empire! Ah, what fearful things would he not do behind that mask!
Yet she stood silent, bound by the spell of his presence.
Carlyon went on. "There is going to be a rising, but we shall hold our
own, I hope without loss. You can ride a horse, and I can trust you.
This message must be delivered to-night. There is not an officer at
liberty. I would not send one if there were. Every man will be wanted.
Averil, will you go for me?"
He was holding her very gently between his hands. He seemed to be
pleading with her. Her resolution began to waver. They had shattered her
idol, yet she clung fast to the crumbling shrine.
"You will not let them be killed?" she whispered piteously. "Oh, promise
me!"
"No one belonging to this camp will be killed if I can help it," he
said. "You will tell them at Fort Akbar that we are prepared here.
General Harford is marching to join them from Fort Wara. Whatever they
may hear they must not dream of moving to join us till he reaches them.
They are not strong enough. They would be cut to pieces. That is the
message you are going to take for me. Their garrison is too small to be
split up, and Fort Akbar must be protected at all costs. It is a more
important post than this even."
"But there are women here," Averil whispered.
"They are under my protection," said Carlyon quietly. "I want you to
start at once--before we shut the gates."
"Have they taken you by surprise, then?" she asked, with a sharp,
involuntary shiver.
"No," Carlyon said. "They have taken the Government by surprise. That's
all." He spoke with strong bitterness. For he was the watchman who had
awaked in vain.
A moment later he was drawing her with him along the shadowy path.
"You need have no fear," he whispered to her. "The road is open all the
way. I have a horse waiting that will carry you safely. It is barely ten
miles. You have done it before."
"Am I to go just as I am?" she asked him, carried away by his
unfaltering resolution.
"Yes," said Carlyon, "except for this." He loosened the _chuddah_ from
his own head and stooped to muffle it about hers. "I have provided for
your going," he said. "You will see no one. You know the way. Go hard!"
He moved on again. His arm was round her shoulders.
"And you?" she said, with sudden misgiving.
"I shall go back to the camp," he said, "when I have seen you go."
They went a little farther, ghostly, white figures gliding side by
side. Wildly as her heart was beating, Averil felt that it was all
strangely unreal, felt that the man beside her was a being unknown and
mysterious, almost supernatural. And yet, strangely, she did not fear
him. As she had once said to him, she believed he was a good man. She
would always believe it. And yet was that awful doubt hammering through
her brain.
They reached the bounds of the club compound and Carlyon stopped again.
From the building behind them there floated the notes of a waltz, weird,
dream-like, sweet as the earth after rain in summer.
"I want to know," Carlyon said steadily, "if you trust me."
She stretched up her hands like a child and laid them against his
breast. She answered him with piteous entreaty in which passion
strangely mingled.
"Colonel Carlyon," she whispered brokenly, "promise me that when this is
over you will give it up! You were not made to spy and betray! You were
made an honourable, true-hearted man--God's greatest and best creation.
You were never meant to be twisted and warped to an evil use. Ah, tell
me you will give it up! How can I go away and leave you toiling in the
dungeons?"
"Hush!" said Carlyon. "You do not understand."
Later, she remembered with what tenderness he gathered her hands again
into his own, holding them reverently. At the time she realized nothing
but the monstrous pity of his wasted life.
"It isn't true!" she sobbed. "You would not sacrifice your friends?"
"Never!" said Carlyon sharply.
He paused. Then--"You must go, Averil," he said. "There are two sentries
on the Buddhist road, and the password is 'Empire.' After that-straight
to Akbar. The moon is rising, and no one will speak to you or attempt to
stop you. You will not be afraid?"
"I trust you," she said very earnestly.
Ten minutes later, as the moon shot the first silver streak above the
frowning mountains, a white horse flashed out on the road beyond the
camp--a white horse bearing a white-robed rider.
On the edge of the camp one sentry turned to another with wonder on his
face.
"That messenger's journey will be soon over," he remarked. "An easy
target for the black fiends!"
In the mountains a dusky-faced hillman turned glittering, awe-struck
eyes upon the flying white figure.
"Behold!" he said. "The Heaven-sent rides to the moonrise even as he
foretold. The time draws near."
And Carlyon, walking back in strange garb to join his own people,
muttered to himself as he went: "One woman, at least, is safe!"