VAE VICTIS
A wonderful deep bank of orange glowed all across the western sky, and
the light of the sunset fell like a mantle over the limitless expanse
of the desert stretching away for ever, as it seemed, beneath the
flaming clouds. Round the camp that lay between the rocky ridges to
east and west was some stir and excitement. A train of camels bearing
tents and outfits stood ready waiting the signal to depart. A group of
figures were in parley before the three white tents that still stood
pitched upon the sand.
Sybil and Merton, with their part of the camp, their servants, guides
and camels, were going.
The figures waited in silence outside the closed doors of Regina's
tent. In a moment or two Everest came out.
"You can come and say good-bye to her now. She is waiting for you,"
he said, as he joined the group. Graham started forward immediately.
Sybil's feet seemed to cling to the sand, she hesitated and murmured
half inaudibly: "I don't want to see her."
Everest said nothing. He merely looked at her, and Sybil walked forward
mechanically and entered the tent.
On the bed, with her head raised, lay Regina, her great flashing eyes
turned towards them all as they pressed in. Her face was like marble
in its whiteness, even her lips were colourless. Her whole shoulder,
right arm and side were a mass of bandages, the soft cloudy yellow
of her hair lay above her forehead and fell over her left arm. Sybil
approached the bed and said nervously:
"Good-bye, Regina, I hope you will get over it soon. I expect you
will. Everest is such a splendid nurse." There was a half-suppressed
sigh at the end of her words, and as they fell on the silence in the
tent all the three men who heard it glanced involuntarily at Everest.
It was quite clear in that moment to them all that of the two women,
Sybil, standing upright, erect, untouched in her full power and beauty,
envied bitterly the one who was lying crushed and broken, maimed and
disfigured in the shadow of death, at her feet, simply because of the
delight of this man's presence that she would have about her which
would outweigh delirium and fever and pain. It came in upon them all
for a moment, a glimpse of the greatness of a woman's love, even when
it has a base and selfish form, the value of it, the immense proportion
it has in a woman's scheme of things.
They felt the truth, that Sybil, fresh and strong and sound, only
longed to change place with the other, shattered and in pain, to know
his touch and his kiss.
The colour came hotly to Everest's cheek as he felt all the men turn
their eyes on him and heard the keen envy in Sybil's tone, and he said
hurriedly:
"No nursing, I am afraid, can help her much in such suffering as hers."
Regina put out her left hand and smiled, letting her eyes wander over
the wonderfully beautiful lines of the face above her which she had
rescued from destruction.
"Good-bye, Sybil; I am so glad to know you are not hurt at all."
Their hands clasped, but there was no warmth in Sybil's pressure. She
knew that the other, helpless, perhaps about to die, had yet--won; that
she was absolutely content and happy, and that the one who walked out
of the tent into life and freedom was vanquished. She turned abruptly.
"Can I go now?" she said almost rudely to Everest, and he held up the
door flap for her in silence and stood back for her to pass.
Graham's farewell was very different from his sister's. He fell on his
knees beside the low tent bed and took the unwounded hand. His face was
as white as hers, and looked drawn and livid as he raised it to his
host, who was standing with his arms folded at Regina's feet, his eyes
fixed on her.
"Everest, give me leave to say good-bye to her alone," he entreated,
and Everest made a signal to the others and they went out, leaving
Graham sobbing at her side, his tears falling on her hand.
Outside in the hot, ruddy light that the west was throwing on the
desert before it donned its violet evening robe of twilight and cool
silver cloak, Everest lifted Sybil on to her riding camel for the last
time and wondered at himself for the sense of hatred he felt for her.
Only such a short time before and his whole frame had vibrated with
passion and longing for her, in that very same action, and now the
sickening sense of aversion was so great as the slight light figure
touched his arms that he had to use all his self-command to prevent her
seeing it. She saw his face pale with the effort, but only thought he
was shaken with emotion at their final parting.
The camel rose to its feet and rocking, swaying, lifted her into the
air, far above him, but she bent down and in the crimson light her face
hung over him.
"Everest, good-bye; but it is not for long, is it? You will come up to
Scotland soon, won't you--I can never forget."
She saw a new expression pass over his face which she did not
understand; but how beautiful, how wonderful his face was, no matter
what look it wore. She gazed upon it wistfully. Oh, to be in Regina's
place, to be lying in that tent, waited on, tended by, caressed and
loved by him! How bitterly she envied her!
"Good-bye, Sybil! Please do not think of our meeting again. I do not
wish it, and if it has to be I shall regret it." Sybil sat dumb,
stupefied, feeling mad with a useless misery.
"How can you be so unkind just at the last," she whispered.
"I do not want to be unkind, but I don't wish you to look forward to
impossibilities."
Sybil could not answer. There was an iron inflexibility in his tone
against which all words of hers would seem to break in vain. She sat
upright on the camel, and Everest fell back to speak to Graham, who
came towards him from the tent.
The men shook hands coldly, without any demonstration either of
friendliness or enmity. All the events of that wretched camping had
rolled into the past, and no words and no acts could alter them now.
When Merton had mounted the whole line started and moved off slowly to
the west, making for the next stopping place, which they hoped to reach
before dawn, and where they would rest through the heat of the day. The
red of the sunset hung in a fiery glow before them, in the east behind
them was rising steadily the silver moon.
Sybil's brain seemed to swim in mists of rage as she was borne forward.
From the very first she had planned and schemed and worked for herself
with that steady singleness of aim which is supposed to ensure success,
and yet she had failed, failed and lost. Regina, unselfish, careless,
reckless, she had won. _She_ had trusted to Everest, and he had not
denied _her_ claims. Then she had risked her life, thrown herself
absolutely into the jaws of death, and yet she had not been called
upon to pay the full price, she had been allowed to come out of it all
alive and crowned as a heroine. It was not like life, it was like a
Sunday school tale, where the good are always saved and praised and
the selfish are always punished. Sybil ground her teeth and the tears
brimmed over her eyes. Why was _she_ so favoured? Girls who lived as
Regina was doing were abandoned every day, yet Everest meant to marry
her. She knew he would never have spoken as he had unless he meant it.
People who risked their lives for others generally had to give them up.
Why should she be spared and come back smiling, to be nursed by him to
health again?
As the camel swung forward, bearing her away from the camp and that
dear figure standing there, a suffocating sense of the injustice of
Fate, an agonised realisation of failure, rode beside her into the dark
shades of the falling night. The three men turned back into the camp
when the procession grew indistinct in the red distance.
"It's good of you to stay, St John," remarked Everest. "I am afraid it
may be dull work for you now."
"Not a bit, not a bit," he returned. "I didn't like the idea of leaving
you. I might come in useful with the nursing and watching, perhaps, as
an extra hand. And I'll have a look in at those lions now we've got on
to them."
That same night, when the ring of protecting fires had been lighted
round the camp and all the lamps were lighted, the native servants
brought round to Regina's tent the skin of the lioness. They had not
yet finished the dressing and preparing of it, which would take fully a
week, but they thought she would like to see it, and Everest let them
come in and hold it up before her at the foot of her bed.
It was a magnificent skin; the lioness was a large one, and had been in
splendid condition. A little colour came into Everest's face from pride
at his pupil as he saw it, but Regina's own eyes filled with tears.
The skin was so golden, so beautiful, with a sheen like satin on it,
the breast part so snowy white where the cruel hole her rifle had made
showed its rusty coloured edges.
"Oh, Everest, I feel so sorry for her! Poor mother, and what will the
cubs do now? Will they die if she no longer is there to feed them?"
Everest laughed at this view of things.
"They may not keep so fat now she is no longer able to supply them with
human beings for breakfast, but they will probably get on all right.
They'll go and forage for themselves. The mother goes on hunting for
them long after they can hunt quite well. Let them take away the skin,
dearest, if it distresses you. I can't have you crying over anything."
And he told the men to take it away, and give every attention to the
curing of it and do it as perfectly as possible. For it was her gift to
him and he knew she wanted him to keep and value it.
Day after day passed slowly by over the white tent in the desert, where
such terrible, physical suffering struggled hour by hour to dominate
the spirit of happiness--in vain. Regina lay in pain and was content,
and Everest, torn with anxiety, harrowed by the sight of suffering he
could not assuage, passing sleepless nights and long weary days at
her bedside, was yet happy too. So strange a witch, so essentially a
coquette is Happiness! Men spread nets for her feet and prepare chains
to bind her airy wings, and just when they fancy she is securely
bound to them they look round and she is gone! And those who with
tear-blinded eyes have thought they had renounced her for ever, as they
have said good-bye, dear Happiness, she has leapt to their heart and
said she would never leave them. She will fly from the millionaire,
suffocated in the pomp of his palace, to nestle so closely at the side
of some one of Life's outcasts toiling in the dust of the road. She is
bound by no laws, owes no allegiance, and those who do not court her
she follows most. And here in the tent of fever and apprehension, of
agony and tedium, she chose to take up her residence with these two.
To Everest, in the violent reaction of mind and body, which had thrown
him into the extreme of passion for this woman, it was a pleasure to
deny himself, to wait upon her and suffer for her sake. He watched
and waited on Regina with untiring devotion. At first, while there
was great danger of fever, he never slept at all through the night,
sitting by her wakeful and intent on watching the changes of her face,
snatching for himself what little sleep he could in the day while the
doctor took her in charge; and through all the hot long noontide hours
he was there by her, reading to her when she could listen, watching
her if she slept. And often the lions roared about the camp and his
whole blood leapt up in a call upon him to go out into the old danger
and excitement that he loved, but he checked and repressed himself and
let them challenge him in vain. He knew if he left her now she would
be anxious, nervous about him, and those feelings would bring on fever
and retard her recovery. St John went out on several hunts, taking the
guides and men with him, but neither Everest nor the doctor moved from
the camp through all the burning weeks. They had their reward, for
never did a patient progress more smoothly and evenly towards recovery
than Regina. The iron fortitude of her nature, that enabled her to
lie for hours without moving, resulted in her arm setting and joining
perfectly. The absolute and silent resignation that she imposed upon
herself kept the fever at bay.
One day when St John was out lion-hunting--fired by his success of
yesterday, when he had brought back in triumph a young lion to the
camp--and the doctor was asleep in his tent, Everest sat by Regina
combing and brushing into order the long strands of her hair, that he
had never once allowed to grow tangled or matted in neglect. In the
dry, sunny air of the desert it had grown more golden and more crisp,
and as he brushed it, it curled and sprang round his fingers in shining
silky curls and meshes.
Regina looked up at him suddenly.
"I am so sorry you should have such a wretched time. Fancy you, with
all your life and energy, shut up here day after day nursing a sick
girl in a tent!"
Everest let the gold strands twine round his wrist as he leant over
her, his eyes full of ardent joy and delight in her.
"And yet, do you know that this time of nursing a sick girl in a tent
has been the happiest in my life?"