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Title: Riders of the wind
a romance
Author: Elswyth Thane
Release date: October 28, 2026 [eBook #79875]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1926
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79875
Credits: Charlene Taylor, Laura Natal and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDERS OF THE WIND ***
[Illustration]
_Riders of the Wind_
[Illustration]
RIDERS OF THE
WIND
_A ROMANCE_
_By_
ELSWYTH THANE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
MCMXXVI
_Copyright, 1926, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
Published, February 4, 1926
Second Printing (before publication) Jan. 19, 1926
Third Printing (before publication) Jan. 29, 1926
Fourth Printing, February 4, 1926
Fifth Printing, February 15, 1926
_Printed in the United States of America_
To
WILLIAM BEEBE
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I
FOG 1
PART II
STORM 75
PART III
WIND 153
PART IV
SEA 269
_Fog_
“_You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind_,
_And the thresh of the deep-sea rain_;
_You have heard the song--how long? how long_?
_Pull out on the trail again!_”
CHAPTER I
CLEMENT MARLEY was waiting for his tea. The table was laid near the
open fire, the muffins were cooling under their cover, the teapot had
long since ceased to steam. And Marley was prey to the melancholy
emptiness of the methodical Englishman tea-less at five o’clock on a
foggy afternoon.
Still, it did not occur to him to raid the table before the muffins
got quite cold and the tea too strong. Alexandra always poured the
tea. It was a wife’s duty--one of them--to pour her husband’s tea. And
Alexandra was missing.
He went to the window again and peered out into the Bloomsbury twilight
and fog. Impossible to see as far as the corner. He was becoming a
little anxious. Only a little. Alexandra had been missing like this
before, and she had never yet been run over or lost. She would turn up.
She always did turn up, conscious of truancy, but bright-eyed, aglow,
and not sufficiently apologetic.
He turned back into the room and prowled about it gloomily. It was not
a helpful room on a depressing afternoon; fusty with honorable age;
aridly neat; impersonal even to the pictures on its walls; the sort
of room which must become either a sacred tradition or a prison. To
Clement Marley it was home. To Alexandra it spelled duty, which is at
best a sort of compromise with fate.
The furniture was mid-Victorian, a bit faded, and without the sybaritic
softness of modern upholstery. The piano stood out from it; warm,
polished wood, and when it was played, warm, rich tone. Alexandra’s
piano, a stranger ten years ago like its owner--a stranger still, in
the surrounding desert of horsehair and carved black walnut upholstered
in a relentless red. It stood a dumb yet somehow sentient thing, as
though awaiting release from a spell. She never closed it, being
careless of her things as a boy, Marley frequently pointed out. But she
never played it either, any more.
The window beyond the piano bench gave upon the square, and when in
the old days one had stood on the hearth-rug watching her while she
played, her clear young profile and slender throat were silhouetted
against the light. And sometimes when the late sun came in, haloing
her smooth hair, pale gold like the London sunshine, sometimes she
sang. And if she had only sung the right things, Clement Marley might
very well at such times have been badly in love with his wife. But the
songs were likely to be not quite what is expected of a saintly-looking
yellow-haired woman: sailor songs, often, chanteys with a troublesome
rhythm, with words which fell disconcertingly on the chaste ears of
the Bloomsbury born; or wild, wordless Eastern things with the beat of
drums under her fingers and the wail and whine of pipes in her taut
throat; or love songs of the harem lattice--well, really! No, Marley’s
Saint Cecilia had always been a subject for a husband’s kindly censure
rather than a lover’s uncritical worship.
They thought very well of Marley at the British Museum, where he was
known as an authority on Oriental art. He read glaze and color and
carving as few men could. He wrote expensive books about ceramics
and ancient jewelry. Unutterably dry books they were, for all their
lovely colored plates and gold edges. Other men brought the priceless
treasures across the sea to Bloomsbury--brought them at great cost of
money and effort and sometimes of life and limb--and Clement Marley
wrote the books.
You always knew where you were, with Marley. His manner was weighted
with the slight ponderosity of men whose work is done at close range
among the dead echoes of the ages. He was ruddy and near-sighted,
kindly by nature, a little patronizing, a little absent-minded, a
little inclined to be fretful about things he could not understand.
Alexandra had discovered in nearly ten years of marriage that there
were a great many things he could not understand. And just now he was
wishing not very patiently that Alexandra would not behave like this.
The mantel clock struck five. He looked at it reproachfully and then
at his watch. The clock was slow. He set it right to the minute by the
loud, bulbous watch in his hand. Really, Alexandra, this is becoming
unpardonable....
Rather aimlessly, then, he rang the bell for Susan.
Susan did not appear silently, as the perfect maid is trained to do.
Susan arrived. She stood now in the dining-room doorway, the knob
having rattled under her hand, a scraggy little Cockney girl, too small
for her aprons.
Marley cleared his throat.
“Susan, just when did Mrs. Marley go out?”
“Directly after luncheon, sir.”
“And she didn’t say where she was going?”
“For a walk, sir.” They had been all over it before.
“She was quite alone?”
“Oh, yes, sir. She always is, sir.”
“But she should be home now,” he pointed out.
“Yes, sir. But if you was to ask me, sir, I’d say it was just one o’
those days.”
Marley looked over his spectacles.
“One of what days?”
“Well, sir, there’s times when things ’ere gets on ’er nerves, like,
an’ maybe she cries an’ more often she goes for a walk.”
“Cries?” The word carried its usual quota of masculine horror.
“I’ve caught ’er at it twice, sir.”
“But--surely she’s perfectly well!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, what--” He checked himself. After all, Susan was only a
child. “That will do, Susan.”
“If you please, sir----”
“Well?”
“You wouldn’t be too ’ard on ’er, sir?”
“Be--!” Marley was dumfounded. “_What?_”
Susan stuck to her guns.
“She can’t ’elp it, sir. She’s one o’ Them.”
“One of--whom?”
“One o’ _Them_.” Susan waved a hand to include horizons.
“What on earth do you mean?” he demanded.
“My old man’s a sailor, and _I_ know. My mother says it’s like
drink, sir. You never ’ave no warnin’--just all of a sudden they’re off
again.”
“Drink?” A man must have patience with these people. “What has drink to
do with Mrs. Marley?”
“Not drink, Lor, no, sir. But when she gets these spells o’ wantin’
to be Out There--” (another wave of her hand) “--it’s all the same as
sailors, sir. It’s the Call. They ’ear it and they got to go.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” said Marley.
Nor had he.
“No, sir,” agreed Susan hopelessly.
“You may go, Susan.”
“Yes, sir.” She turned on the threshold. “My mother says it’s the wind,
sir.”
“But there’s no wind today,” he objected. “It’s fog.”
“There’s always a wind--Out There.”
“Susan.” He stopped her as the door was closing. He would go to the
bottom of this.
“Sir?”
“Does--does Mrs. Marley speak to you about all this?”
“Oh, no, sir! But I’m from Poplar an’ I’ve ’eard ’em talk. There’s them
as nothing can ’old, sir, once they’ve got to go. My mother knows.”
“But Mrs. Marley is a woman--delicately reared--and in Buckinghamshire,
too!” He was arguing with his own serving maid for his peace of mind
and he deeply resented the fact. “Where’s your wind and sea there?”
“In ’er blood, sir. My mother says----”
“You’d better make fresh tea, Susan,” he closed it abruptly.
“Yes, sir.”
She went, taking the teapot.
Marley looked after her, frowning. It was disquieting, this talk of
wind and sea and the things in his wife’s blood. How much did Susan
know? How much did that shrewd little brain, cheated of childhood,
comprehend of the perplexing creature who was his wife? How much did
Susan’s slavish devotion to her erratic and unexacting mistress enable
the girl to guess concerning her; concerning him; and their way of life
together? _In her blood._ The girl was uncanny.
It brought up a picture of Alexandra’s father, a tawny-bearded giant
who had loomed Olympian in the stuffy drawing-rooms of the ’Nineties--a
man who spoke and sang and swore and laughed like Baldur the Beautiful,
his own everlasting god of youth and light--a man, however, who
unaccountably tripped over the skirts of a woman and measured his
great length at her flattered feet, and somehow married her and finally
left her, and so died miserably, as was only fitting, alone, with
his face to the African sky. In Alexandra’s blood--a heedless Nordic
paganism, a blindness to private obligations and public opinion, a
carelessness of life itself, a streak of madness, even, boasting the
wind’s will, and without the fear of God!
But on the other side was Clement’s own second cousin Emily, a
Marley too, a plump, capable robin of a girl with no imagination; an
excellent wife if properly appreciated; a conscientious mother for
all her fretful ill health in later life. How very singular, then,
that Alexandra should be so exclusively Norse, so entirely without
Marleyisms. It set all one’s notions of heredity askew. All very well
for her to look like her father’s side--Clement had always rather liked
her looks--but might she not still have possessed some inward evidence
of the restraining Marley inheritance?
He got out his pipe, poor man, and stood on the hearth-rug filling
it and frowning. Things he wanted to forget, things he had chosen to
regard as forgotten, skulked about the edges of his well-ordered scheme
of life. Alexandra was his wife. She ought not to behave like this.
Must he tell her so--again? Surely after nearly ten years the daily
necessity for disciplining even such a very young wife as Alexandra
should abate?
His mind went back reluctantly along the years, and came to the bride
Alexandra. And he saw as he had not taken time to see for years her
white face, remembered acutely that it had been white as her dress,
recalled her icy fingers and whispered responses. He had supposed at
the time, in his colossal ignorance of women, that all brides were
like that--sheer nervousness. And he had pressed her hand with extra
fervor as they left the church, by way of conveying to her how very
safe she would be with him, and how he never meant to let her go now
that he had got her. He remembered her eyes, wide and watchful like
a child’s in the dark, and how he had seen the pulse beating in her
throat--a phenomenon he had never before beheld. And it occurred to him
to wonder, standing on the hearth-rug nearly ten years later, if all
brides looked as starkly, pitiably frightened as his Alexandra, after
all--if, when one came down to it, she had quite wanted to marry him.
Such a doubt was of course absurd. Look at the life she had been
living. Running wild at seventeen, with her long, straw-colored plait
carelessly looped and tied on her neck, always out of breath about
something unless caught and reproved and made to sit down. Poor Emily,
with her martyred widow’s tears, her headaches, her smelling-salts,
her alarming shortness of breath, her fastidious appetite, had little
strength to spare for curbing a spirited daughter. But once Alexandra
was caught and provided with a book or a bit of becoming needlework and
seated submissively beside her mother--once she was momentarily tamed,
as it were, and placed where one could look at her without following
her about until one was out of breath oneself--how fascinating became
the shadow of her lashes on her cheek, the smooth undulations of her
hair, the strong, sweet lines of her profile!
The truth was that Marley had never looked with acquisitive eyes on a
woman before, and so could not know that this girl was half goddess
as well. He saw, however, that she was a swift, enlivening, adaptable
thing to have about, and from this it was but a step to the conclusion
that the deference she paid him was perhaps not wholly due to his very
distant relationship with her mother, whose affairs he had come to
straighten out. Which latter reflection rather went to his sober head.
Moreover, his masculine fingers itched for the reins.
With a sigh of relief and some maternal tears, his cousin Emily heard
his plans regarding Alexandra’s future. Looking back on her own
exhausting years of marriage, she regarded Clement Marley as a very
restful and desirable husband for anybody. Alexandra would never be
exposed to the strenuosities she herself had weathered. And in time,
she confidently assured her cousin Clement, Alexandra would become less
strenuous herself.
“It was her father,” she explained. “He fostered it. There was nothing
I could do. I hope you realize my position. Even after he--went
away--in fact, even up to the time of his tragic death, he wrote to
her. And he would send her things--such heathenish things! If she
had been a boy--!” Her open hands expressed utter hopelessness. “But
marriage,” Emily assured him, brightening, “marriage will bring out her
womanliness. She’ll have that from me,” Emily assured him complacently.
It did not occur to either of them that Alexandra might not want to
marry him. Marley was ten years late with that idea, and Emily never
achieved it this side of the grave. “_I_ was married at sixteen,”
she was accustomed to observe impressively, so that poor Alexandra was
made quite properly to feel that it was high time she found a good
husband. Anyway, she allowed Clement to kiss her cheek, and appeared
next morning with her hair suitably dressed, and a seemly air of
pensive dignity. Observing which, Marley began to fall in love, and
watched her with already a proprietary pleasure. He even paid her
a discreet compliment, and noting the flush it brought resolved to
indulge her often in expressions of his approval. But he found himself
not overly fertile in these, and abandoned the idea philosophically as
the idle pursuit of a younger man.
It can be seen that Marley was not imaginative, and it was never
given him to suspect the complicated emotions behind Alexandra’s new
passivity. She had been like a colt, racing hilariously at the heels
of life, before the news came of her father’s sudden death. Her mother
had told her, weeping, how he died. Alexandra had stood a moment, dumb,
quivering, cold--then turned and walked blindly out of the room. No
one saw her cry, no one ever heard her regret her loss. No one, least
of all herself, could have told you the devious ways she traveled to
the realization that though she would never see him again the sky he
had loved was still blue. After that she lived for him too, who had so
loved life; saw for him, sang for him, laughed for him, and in spending
his lavish legacy of life ceased to mourn for him.
Then Marley.
Staggering as the idea of marriage was, rebellion did not enter her
head. You grew up and got married. It was life. Her time had come.
A little soon perhaps, but-- Anyway, Clement was good and kind and
she would go to live in London. She had been in London once with her
father, and liked it. They had watched the boats and gone to the
play. She told herself that to live in London would be like having
the sea at the bottom of the garden. Perhaps they could live near the
Embankment--? Clement said, No, they would live in Bloomsbury. She
supposed one could walk from there to the River--? Clement said there
were omnibuses. What fun, insisted Alexandra to her often faint-hearted
self, what fun to live in London! One would see life, in London!
Clement spoke vaguely of concerts and parks.
And then, most alluring of all, she was allowed to choose where they
should spend the honeymoon, and after a great deal of mental stress
she settled on North Devon. It was there that she met her father’s
mistress, the wind from the sea.
Thus, between the two of them and her own pellucid views on life,
Alexandra was married and went to live in London. She took with her the
humiliating memory of how her teeth had chattered over her responses;
and of how when Clement pressed her hand at the end she would have fled
in panic but for the sick knowledge that there was nowhere to flee to
now, that it was too late, that she would only be brought back, shamed
and helpless, to this stranger who had put a ring on her finger; an
implacable memory of a naked, unreasoning fear; a memory which not all
the winds of the world could blow from her.
If she found London not quite the Baghdad that she remembered it, that
was doubtless because it was only Clement now and not her father.
Clement was very good, and she loved him--she was quite, quite sure she
loved him, for was she not his wife?--but, after all, a husband was
not one’s father, was he! She tried very hard to please him, though.
That was a difference between husbands and fathers, one couldn’t
please husbands just by breathing, and they were sometimes hurt and
reproachful if one wasn’t careful. But really, it might be rather jolly
after one got used to things.
By imperceptible degrees this valiant, hopeful bride had become the
wife who was missing at tea-time. Marley could remember how assiduous
she had once been about tea and clocks and his many preferences about
such things. Once she had cared to please him. Once she had thought of
nothing else. He had even invented small duties to amuse her. Once....
Something was forming at the back of his brain. There was a pinpoint
of time when he dreaded its actual conception. Relentlessly it shaped
itself in words. If and granted that Alexandra had really wanted to
marry him in the beginning, was it possible that now his wife no longer
loved him?
And even as he stood aghast before the enormity of such a thought, the
door opened and Alexandra came in.
CHAPTER II
ALEXANDRA--slim, with a boyish length of limb; hair and eyes that
revealed the Viking strain; a wistful mouth with humorous corners;
and the chin that had seen her through years of this room. Her suit
was dark and trim and in its second season. Her hat was small and
plain against the smooth sheen of her pale hair. Her long hands were
black-gloved. No fur, no touch of deft color, not even violets to set
her off. And when she entered a room, seemingly borne on the wind of
her own swift coming without a footfall to herald her, something of
youth and light, something brave and very beautiful, something that
caught at the heart, came with her.
Now her cheeks were flushed and she was breathless from hurrying, a bit
guilty above a secret lilt. And she had on a new leash a very dirty,
very hungry, very sad little dog, chiefly Irish terrier. Her smile was
ingratiating.
“Hello, Clem.”
Marley looked over his spectacles.
“Alex, I’ve been worried--” He halted as though an abyss had opened
between them. “My God, what’s that?”
“Oh, that?” She looked down at the dog, seemed to meet his questioning
gaze and silently reassure him. “Just a fellow vagabond.”
The dog sat down, leaning wearily against her skirt.
“But you can’t bring things like that into the house! It’s nasty, dirty
and bound to be full of germs!”
“Germs? I didn’t think.” She looked down at the dog speculatively
and he sank still lower, half his weight across her feet, as though
crowding closer to the sound of her voice. “Well, Susan can keep him
downstairs,” she concluded comfortably.
“But, my dear Alex----”
“Oh, he won’t stay long, Clem, don’t fret. I shan’t try to keep him. A
few good meals and he’ll take to the road again, won’t you, old man?”
She stooped and rubbed the scrubby ears, almost roughly as a boy would,
and covered even that moment of tenderness with a resounding slap on
the lean shoulder as she straightened. “You don’t mind if I stake him
to a dinner, do you?”
“Where on earth have you been?”
“Down to the Bridge.” She pulled off her gloves and tossed them into a
chair, moving on to ring the bell. The dog dragged himself to his feet
and followed, trailing his leash, his nose at the hem of her skirt.
“You know, Clem, he’s been a different dog since I bought that leash.
I didn’t know how to get him home without it, but it weighs on his
spirit!”
Marley allowed the things he did not say to shriek in the silence.
Again the dog sat down, or rather folded up, bonily, with a tired sigh.
Susan came in, bringing fresh tea. She set down the teapot with a cry
and stood gazing rapturously at the despondent stranger huddled at
Alexandra’s feet.
“Oh!” gasped Susan. “Oh, ma’am! He’s a dog!”
“He was meant to be.” She smiled. Sensing it, the dog looked up into
her face and snuffled engagingly, his stumpy tail entreating favors.
“Are you afraid of germs, Susan?”
“Germs, ma’am?” Susan had fastened yearning eyes on the dog.
“Mr. Marley thinks he may have some.”
“They do ’ave fleas, ma’am.” Susan was drawn irresistibly toward the
waif. “Aw, ’e needs a bath, ’e does!”
“My poor friend!” Alexandra stooped for the dragging leash and the dog
nuzzled her hands affectionately. “It’s an effete age we live in!”
“I could wash ’im, ma’am--if you was to let ’im stay!”
“He’s to stay as long as he likes, which will be as long as he’s hungry
and no longer.”
Susan had come to the dog as a needle to a magnet, reaching down
motherly hands with little croons and cluckings.
“Well, there, now, wuz ’e, wuz ’e, wuz ’e! Yus, ’e wuz a booful baby,
that’s wot ’e wuz! Did ’e wanna ’come wiv Susan an’ ’ave a bone an’
some nice biscuit an’----”
“Yes, do give him a good dinner. Look at his ribs!” Alexandra handed
over the leash.
But Susan’s arms were round his neck, his dirty paws smirching her
crisp apron, germs, etiquette, service, all swept aside before a child
and a dog as they are the world over.
“Yus, ’e would be jus’ a booful angel once ’e gets fattened up a bit!
Susan knows wot ’e likes to eat----”
“That will do, Susan, take it away at once,” Marley’s voice cut in
decisively.
“Yes, sir.” Susan stumbled to her feet, clutching the leash.
“And, Susan.” The eyes of servant and mistress met with a mutual
understanding, a half smile in Alexandra’s. One mustn’t mind men. “He’s
not to be tied up.”
“But, ma’am--!” Susan’s grip on the leash was convulsive.
“Take the leash off, Susan. When he has learned that he can get food
here he’s to come and go as he likes. I’ll have nothing tied in this
house.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And, Susan.” It was Marley again. “See that it does not come upstairs.”
“Y-no, sir.”
Susan went, leading the treasure.
There was a silence, loud with a husband’s disapproval. Alexandra
took off her hat and dropped it in another chair. Then Marley, having
weighed his words, spoke, he was sure, more in sorrow than in anger.
“My dear, I wish you wouldn’t do these things. How do you know where
such a dog may have been, or----”
“But that’s just it! He has such possibilities! He may have been
anywhere! He may have got lost from a ship!”
Her face was alight with the infinite desirability of owning a dog
which had been lost from a ship. He knew that look, did Marley.
“But--where on earth have you been all this time?” he demanded again,
fretfully. “It’s nearly six.”
“Poor dear, you want your tea, don’t you! I’m sorry.” She went to the
tea-table hurriedly. Men got so hungry. It made them cross.
“It is not entirely a question of tea,” he insisted. “Though you know
very well that I like things on time. But you are also aware that I’m
bound to worry when you disappear on these wild enterprises.”
Looking back on it, he was surprised, positively surprised, at how
anxious he had been. And then she had come walking in, as always, quite
safe, and not sufficiently apologetic. Anything might have happened.
How was he to know? And now that she was here, quite safe, and pouring
his tea as she should have been two hours ago, what was the good of
it, this tardiness? What had she gained by keeping him waiting for his
tea and giving him a bad fright besides? Where was the fun of tramping
about in a fog picking up strange dogs? What were dogs compared to a
husband’s comfort and peace of mind?
“It all seems so--so useless, Alex,” he pointed out.
“Yes--doesn’t it!” Her hands came to rest among the tea things. “I only
went down to the Bridge to listen to the ships. I love these early
twilights with a fog to blot out the sharp edges and hard corners of
London. I stood leaning on the wall in that muffled babel--how can
one lose one’s temper in a fog?--looking down the River, watching for
those queer rifts in the white that showed a light or gave up a voice
shouting things I couldn’t understand--till the stone wall under my
arms became a ship’s rail and I wasn’t in England any more--till I
could see and hear and almost smell South Africa--Suez--Shanghai--” She
drifted, unseeing, adream.
“Darling--aren’t you going to pour the tea?”
“Oh!” She rather leaped at it. Things clinked under her hands. He
wished she weren’t so jumpy. “I _am_ sorry!”
“Fortunately,” pursued Marley in the even tones of marital forbearance,
“fortunately Dorin is late too--or isn’t coming.”
“Dorin?” She was spearing a slice of lemon. It fell off the fork and
she jabbed at it again, viciously, almost, her teeth set on her lower
lip.
“Blaise Dorin,” amplified her husband and waited, his eyes on her
hands. Beautiful hands. But jerky.
“But--is this Tuesday?” She lifted startled, guilty eyes to him. “Oh,
Clem, I forgot today was Tuesday! How silly of me!”
Her smile as she handed his cup was fleeting, nervously propitiatory.
He reflected that when one was being most patient, Alexandra often
behaved like a punished child. He had said nothing, he was sure he had
said nothing--so far--in the way of a justly deserved rebuke. Somehow
that smile and the way her lashes fluttered down before his mildly
reproachful gaze infuriated him. He couldn’t understand why Alexandra
should act--well, almost as though she feared him. He spoke with what
he felt to be heroically concealed annoyance.
“How could you forget, Alex? Will you never stop being the same
irresponsible child that you were when I married you? Will you never
take your duties seriously as mistress of my house? How could you
forget when a guest is coming to tea?”
Alexandra sat with bent head, eyes on her tense, clasped hands. She
was not going to cry--oh, no!--but she terribly wanted to scream. She
wished herself out in the fog again. She wished she had not come home
just yet. Inside, the fog made for echoes. Outside.... Out there....
Marley was speaking still.
“And so it’s time we came to an understanding, Alex. Now, wherein have
I failed?”
“Failed?” she repeated faintly.
“To make you happy.”
Oh, he wasn’t going to begin _that_ again! They hadn’t gone into
that for months--years!
“I--I’m perfectly happy, Clem.”
“Then why do you cry?”
“I don’t!” How had he known?
“You’re fretting again,” he accused. “Things go along well enough for
a while and then something comes over you and you fret. Don’t think
I haven’t seen. Why, even Susan sees! And something she said this
afternoon set me thinking.”
“Why, what could Susan say that--that--?” She felt betrayed. Outraged.
She and Susan understood each other. Even Susan saw!
“Never mind, it set me wondering about things I had almost forgotten.
You’ve got Viking blood. Your father had it, and his father before him.
He used to talk a lot of nonsense about Leif the Red and King Olaf. I
might have known, I did know, he had left you his own roving foot. But
I thought because you were so young when I took you that this--” his
gesture took in the room and his own not inconsiderable self “--would
do as well in the end.”
He came to a full stop. There was no applause. Alexandra said nothing,
tensely. It was a way she had. He stood looking down at her, at the
slim grace of her body, the sweet line of her averted cheek, her meek,
shining hair in its great coil on the nape of her neck. To look at
her one would never guess, thought Marley. She looked like a quiet,
sensible woman--a treasure of a wife. And she behaved like a mad,
undisciplined boy. He was too near-sighted to see that in every line
of her was the hopeless droop of broken pinions.
“I remember,” he pursued after a silence in a tone which tactfully
ignored sulking, “I remember on our wedding journey you stood on a
cliff overlooking the sea and held out your arms to the wind like--like
a lost child! You had the same look just now when you spoke of the
fog. And I’ve seen it--other times. It--it--well, I don’t like it!” An
ultimatum.
She spoke at last, with submissive, lowered eyelids.
“I suppose it must be that old storm-king inside me, Clem. I suppose he
dies hard.”
“But, my dear--” (It is not cricket to clothe the exaggerated patience
of conjugal argument in my-dears.) “But, my dear--it does seem to
me--That is, after all, you are my wife!” As though that didn’t settle
everything! “And you can’t change things much this way, can you!”
“No.” She drew a sudden breath between her teeth. “Sometimes the
thought of all the days that are still to come--!” She broke off with a
gesture.
“But how long is this to go on, Alex?” Marley was still being patient.
“There may have been some excuse for it once, I saw that, but----”
“Oh, you saw that,” she murmured.
“I knew your father.” The statement spoke volumes in its simplicity. We
need not, it implied, go into this.
“Poor dear,” breathed Alexandra.
“He was a man without the fear of God,” said Marley.
“I’m sick of hearing about fearing God!” she broke out. “It’s wrong!
It’s wicked talk!” She flushed pitifully under his astonished gaze.
“This,” said Marley, “is what comes of never being taken to church when
you were a child.”
“My father’s God was not a thing of wrath and vengeance! My father’s
God was love. That’s in the Bible too,” she added defiantly, with
scarlet cheeks.
“A very comfortable doctrine,” said Marley. “Trust your father for
that.” He cleared his throat. “Nevertheless, I can never forgive him
for treating your mother as he did.”
“She couldn’t understand. And he meant to come back.”
“Oh, I’m not saying he intended to desert her.” Magnanimous Marley!
“Nor to die like a dog in South Africa, for that matter!”
“He died--happy,” muttered Alexandra.
Marley stared at her, surprised anew at her reprehensible
ideas of things. Died happy! Alone on the veldt, fever-ridden,
thirst-tortured--_alone_, beneath the sun! Not even he was mad
enough to choose to die like that!
“It broke your mother’s heart,” he said conclusively.
“A man like my father,” she lingered lovingly over the words, “a man
like my father ought never to have married.” She sat with parted lips,
thinking it out. “Unless perhaps,” she added slowly, “a woman like me.”
“A woman like you?” repeated Marley, vaguely shocked.
“I should have gone with him, if I had been his wife.”
“Your mother had a child,” he argued. “A woman’s first duty is to her
child.”
“The tiger’s cub,” smiled Alexandra, distant-eyed.
“You’re your father over again!” he said impatiently, and paused,
struck by the thing he had accused her of.
“Yes,” she agreed serenely.
There was a silence.
Marley felt bewildered, hurt, ill-used. The hypersensitive complacency
of the egoist was injured. She had said that her father ought never to
have married, and in the next breath had admitted her profound likeness
to him. Was her husband then to infer that she felt she herself had
made a mistake? But how could she have made a mistake? He was a
generous, virtuous man, and she was a woman without a large fortune in
her own right. Had he not been good to her? How could she regret having
married him? The idea was preposterous. It was not a woman’s place to
go traipsing about the world, no matter what her inheritance of madness.
She sat quiet, apparently dreaming. For perhaps the millionth time he
was baffled by a sense of her utter remoteness, her inaccessibility to
his honest affection. He had done his deserving best all these years
and there she sat--still somehow beyond his reach. She was his wife
and he had cherished her, given her all the money she wanted, justly
praised her, tenderly chastened her, in short, loved her. And there she
sat, no more one spirit and one flesh with him than was that elusive,
self-contained bride he had brought home nine years ago. She did not
love him. She had never loved him. He felt very sorry for himself.
“I thought--surely I had the right to think that you would forget
your father’s legacy of restlessness here,” he complained. “It--it’s
unnatural in a woman.”
“You were wrong to set your will against my ancestors’. And I was too
young then to know what I wanted. I was seventeen. To me then even
marriage looked a Great Adventure.”
“And what else is marriage but that, for a woman!” He now permitted
himself more than a trace of legitimate annoyance. That she could be so
thoughtless as to say such things, to wound him so deeply! “And you are
a woman now, Alexandra--a nine years’ wife!”
“Nine!” Plainly the sum of them startled her. “Why--it _is_ nine
years! Why--I shall be thirty soon!”
“When we were married I was as much past thirty as you are this side of
it today--just double your age then. You’re catching up!” he rallied
her kindly.
“Thirty.”
Her eyes went slowly round the room. So much of life gone already--to
this! So little of living--yet! And somewhere there was hot sun and
dazzling sand, somewhere still that mystic line where sky and water
meet, and the wind that sang to her like a seashell to a child’s
enchanted ear! Less than four years away--thirty. Why, thirty years ago
her father had been still in India!
So Marley’s little jest failed. And now he spoke more sharply, and said
not quite what he had intended to say.
“What I mean to say is, can’t you settle down?”
“And get in a rut, like you?” She shook her head. “I’ve tried.”
“I like ruts.” And so he did.
“Yes.” She spoke half to herself still, not looking at him. “And you
think it’s every one’s Christian duty to be in a rut!”
“This is how it always ends!” cried Marley helplessly. “I can’t match
words with you! I can’t make you see reason! I can’t make you see my
viewpoint for one minute!”
“But you can’t see mine, Clem.”
“Your viewpoint,” pedantically, “is not reason.”
“Other people’s viewpoints so often aren’t,” she sighed, without malice.
“There it is again!” Marley threw out his hands. “I can’t understand
you, Alex! I can’t reach you!” And with unconscious pathos, “All I can
do is--is mean well!”
She turned to him then on a warm, quick impulse to atone, to explain,
to convey to him something of her captive spirit. Clem was so good. It
wasn’t his fault. She must be fair to Clem. Clem was so very good, so
very dear, as far as he went. She had been behaving like a beast again.
She was forever hurting Clem. She wondered how he bore with her at all.
Poor Clem!
“Oh, Clem, I mean well, too; truly I do! Only--don’t you see,
dear--sometimes it seems as though I must get out of this house--away
from all this--quickly, before I suffocate!”
“But that’s exactly what I’m driving at!” He began an irritable
pacing. “What’s the good of getting away from it, I say! Your life is
here--your duty is here--” (his gesture was eloquent) “--here in this
room!”
She stood up suddenly, a hand to her face. The low words leaped, with
the movement.
“Oh, I hate this room!”
“Now, Alex, you know very well that we----”
“I know, I know, we’ve been all over it a thousand times! If we changed
it your mother would immediately turn up for a visit and there would
have to be explanations, apologies, and so forth! But I----”
“She likes it as it is,” he reminded her, becoming patient again with
this lesser folly of hers, this unreasoning desire for change. He
could understand, a little, that a woman might like to furnish her own
home. It was fitting that she should wish that privilege. And it was
regrettable to have to deny it again. But after all, a man’s mother--!
“She was happy here, in her way,” he said.
“Until I drove her out.”
“Oh, don’t say that, old girl.” Clumsily kind, now, he put out a hand
that fell short of her. “Very sensible of her to go. Brides, you
know----”
“Oh, I know!”
How well she remembered that first awful week in Bloomsbury! Her
mother-in-law’s half-packed boxes, the harried servant’s endless trips
up and down stairs, the persistent allusions to the uprooting of
life-long habits--as though she herself had not felt uprooted too!--and
the continuous cold, furtive scrutiny of a pair of prominent blue eyes.
“My only son,” was always on Mrs. Marley’s lips. “My only living son,”
like a dirge. Alexandra was made to feel hopelessly an interloper,
inept, unwanted, a misfit. When Mrs. Marley finally departed, tearless,
stony, chill, to the end, Alexandra felt as though she had callously
turned an old woman out into the streets, whereas Mrs. Marley was going
to live quite comfortably on her income with a spinster sister in
Tunbridge Wells. At the last minute Alexandra had begged her, trembling
and with tears, to remain in her old home, not to be turned out if
she didn’t want to go, not wholly to surrender her only son; and Mrs.
Marley turned upon her those bleak blue eyes, freezing the tears on
Alexandra’s cheeks, and said, “You will want my room for the nursery
soon. It faces south.” And she got into the carriage and drove away,
looking straight ahead of her, relentlessly a martyr.
“But,” resumed Clement more cheerfully, “she likes to come back and
find it just as it’s always been. Surely we are reasonable enough to
allow an old woman--a lonely old woman,” he emphasized, “what few
small pleasures are left to her? Surely we, with youth and love before
us--” (it was even thus he had spoken nine years ago) “--can afford
to be generous to an old woman’s whims? After all,” he summed up
overwhelmingly, “after all, my dear, she is my mother.”
Alexandra’s spirit cried out rebelliously within her, “But it’s
_not_ youth! It’s thirty! It’s _not_ love! It’s--!” Her
spirit was silent, aghast.
Not love? But she was married to him! They had lived together a long
time; sat across the table from one another at breakfast; he liked her
hair when it was down; she had seen him at odd times like shaving;
they had spoken together intimately, sometimes they had even laughed
together intimately.... _Not love?_
Her mind fled headlong from heresy. What had they been talking about?
Oh, yes.
“I--I only thought--” she began, and found that she was interrupting
him.
“I keep forgetting to tell you,” he was saying, his hand going from one
pocket to another in search of something, “I----”
“Clem.” She took a heedless step toward him, twisting her fingers
nervously. “If I take all the blame next time she comes--couldn’t I
have some bookshelves built in over there and--and perhaps get new
curtains? I just can’t _bear_ red--!” She hurried on, reading
refusal in his face. “After all, she may not come again for months--and
I could put these curtains back while she’s here! She needn’t know I’ve
changed things--except perhaps the bookshelves. Oh, Clem, please let
me----”
“I keep forgetting to tell you,” he continued, producing an envelope at
last, “that I had a letter from her yesterday----”
“She’s coming--!” There was horror in the gasp.
“She has decided that Tunbridge Wells doesn’t agree with her any more.
And she’s coming here, next month, for an indefinite stay.”
Alexandra dropped into a chair as though her knees had gone suddenly
weak. Things were bad enough, insisted that other, insurgent self she
was forever quieting lest Clem hear and be hurt, oh, things were bad
enough without _this_!
“It means only one thing, I’m afraid,” he went on, oblivious to
atmospheric conditions. “It means that, indomitable as she is,
she feels the end coming on. We must persuade her--tactfully, of
course--not to leave here again. This must be her home henceforth.”
“Of course,” she assented dully.
“Now, my dear,” said Marley, “a word to the wise. Her visits have been
short heretofore. You’ve accommodated yourself to them fairly well. But
now that she is coming to live with us, I’m very much afraid----”
“But, Clem----!”
“She won’t understand these queer excursions of yours into the fog. You
can’t expect her to. I--I confess I don’t quite understand them myself.
It seems as though the worse the weather is, the worse you want to be
out in it. It’s madness. It--it doesn’t look well. I’m sure I don’t
know what she’d think!”
“But if I manage the house satisfactorily and still have time for
myself--need she think at all?”
“But she will. You know Mother, my dear.”
“Yes, I--I do,” faintly.
“Well, then, don’t you see----”
The doorbell rang. Marley, interrupted in mid-air, frowned. Alexandra
was on her feet, relief in every inch of her.
“That must be Blaise Dorin at last!”
“He’s confoundedly late!” said Marley.
“I suppose poor Susan must make still another pot of tea!”
“Certainly. You have a tendency to spoil that girl, Alexandra.”
She did not hear. Her eyes were on the door, frankly expectant. It was
the face of a child before the curtain at a pantomime.
For when Blaise Dorin came her father came too, a little. They had
not known each other, those two who could have been such friends, and
she thought it a great pity. But something of her father lived in
Blaise Dorin’s deep eyes and spoke to her through the tales Blaise
Dorin sometimes told--at least as much of him as though he sent her a
message--even almost as much of him had come in his treasured letters.
Blaise Dorin would have loved her father.
Marley, who hated being interrupted, felt in an unpleasantly chaotic
state of mind. And though he placed some trust in the steadying
influence of his mother, soon to become a permanent member of the
household, he had nevertheless some uneasiness as to her real
opinion of Alexandra, whom she was known to have none too privately
described as flighty. She would not suspect, of course, that a perfect
understanding did not exist between himself and his wife. A man does
not speak of these things, even to his mother. But with him dwelt the
doubt: Was it possible that his wife, his Alexandra, would rather have
not married him?
CHAPTER III
BUT it was not Blaise Dorin, after all, and Alexandra, swallowing
disappointment, gave up hope that he would come that day. Lone wolves
like Dorin are likely to be a bit hazy about engagements, remembering
them too late and then being very contrite and funny about apologies.
And it never occurred to Dorin that it really mattered to anybody
whether he turned up or not. Her father had been like that.
The visitor was a Mr. Starke of New Orleans, an unholy mixture of
New England and Louisiana French, a millionaire and an acquisitive
connoisseur of old ivory and jade; in fact, of anything ancient and
priceless and hard to get. Oddly enough, he was not equally well-versed
in horses and women.
He was a rugged, seemingly ingenuous giant, heavy-shouldered,
heavy-chinned, with a heavy geniality. His clothes were good because
he could afford to place himself in the hands of the best tailor.
His manners were fair because he had the self-made man’s pathetic
appreciation of things he can never hope quite to attain.
Alexandra’s clear, cool fairness caught him at first sight. He looked
at her as he looked at Gainsboroughs--with a measuring, merciless
appreciation of what he unerringly recognized as beauty.
Marley and he had met a few weeks before at the Museum, where he had
come in quest of further records and rumors concerning his current
enterprise. He was obsessed with the desire for a new treasure which
had been described to him by a chance-met Frenchman in Saigon, a
jewelled fabric supposed to be hidden in the wildest hill regions of
Central Asia. The Frenchman’s expressive shoulders had risen to his
ears when he was driven into a corner and pressed for facts. He knew
nothing definitely, he had heard this, had heard that. Perhaps he did
not quite believe, he could not say. It was what the Americans call a
good yarn. Yes, others had heard it. There was a Babu at Delhi who said
there was once a Russian at Bokhara who made a bet with a Jew.... No,
the Russian had not won. In fact, he had disappeared.
The Museum itself had heard tales of the thing. A fabled sacrificial
robe, men said, of woven gold encrusted with unbelievable yellow
topazes. It was fantastic. Chimerical. Still, there was the myth.
Starke had gone beyond legend to names and places. Vague, contradictory
clues at first, but by process of patient elimination they had become
enticingly possible. Probable, even. Worth a long chance, said Starke.
All he wanted now was a trustworthy man, fearless, with a charmed
life. All he wanted was Blaise Dorin. Marley had put him in touch with
Dorin a week ago. And to Marley Starke came now in perplexity and some
annoyance.
“Say,” he began without preamble, having refused tea and ensconced
himself behind a cigarette. “Tell me more about this man Dorin.”
“Well, I don’t know--let me see--” Marley found it taxing. He had not
given much thought to Dorin, who was a man nobody seemed to know well
and yet whom everybody seemed to--well, to exaggerate. “He’s a queer
sort. For one thing he knows more about jade than any man on earth. He
seems to smell it out, like a setter. By the way, he’s coming here this
afternoon, unless he’s forgotten all about it!”
“Coming here? Fine!” Starke settled back to wait.
“He promised to bring a piece of nephrite carving he spoke about the
other day. My wife was interested in its story. He’s a dashed queer
sort, you know! He wouldn’t let the thing out of his sight, apparently,
except under lock and key.”
“He’s a little superstitious about it, I think,” ventured Alexandra.
“All those fellows are superstitious, the whole lot of ’em!” Starke
disposed of them with a sweep of his cigarette. “Regular Hindus for
superstition!”
“They’re all mad!” said Marley. “Take Dorin, for instance, risking his
neck the way he does again and again, just for the sake of some trinket
not a hundred men in the world can appreciate! I’m one of the hundred.
I know the value of the stuff. But make it my business to hunt it down?
Not for me! It’s not worth any man’s life!”
“Oh, it isn’t the trinket itself that counts.” Alexandra’s voice came
slowly on the emphatic period. “It’s fun of smelling it out--the risk
of making it your own--the Big Handicap, with the odds against you
forty-to-one and no takers! There has come to be such a premium on
adventure. Time was when something happened every time a man showed his
nose outside his own front gate! Nowadays the places where a man can
risk his neck in peace are numbered!”
Marley looked over his spectacles.
“But why should a man risk his neck nowadays, that’s my point,” he said.
Her eyes came back to his face with a jerk.
“Perhaps to keep museum curators busy.”
Starke laughed, and Marley, after a moment, conceded the joke.
“Below the belt, Alex! You’re married to one, you know.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, Clem!” She was instantly penitent.
“It’s because it’s in his blood, I suppose, really. The primeval
instinct to dare the gods and win! When men do stop gambling with life
and death-- Oh, well, I shan’t be here to see! And neither will Blaise
Dorin!”
“They call him Dodo, did you know that?” Starke asked.
“Silly name!” worried Marley. “It sounds like a--like a lap-dog!”
“It means they love him,” explained Alexandra. “By their nicknames ye
shall know them.”
Marley sighed, and turned to Starke.
“Well, how did you get on with him? All satisfactory, I hope?”
“Not so good,” grinned Starke.
“No? What’s the matter?”
“Well, here’s how it is. I’ve got a nice little scheme worked out for
this Asian job. All Dorin has to do is put it over. I understand he’s
a cracking good shot and uncommon handy with a knife. He’s been in
tighter places than this would ever be. It’s a cinch. If he follows
directions he can’t fail.”
“What’s wrong, then?”
“He balks. If it was a case of his not having the nerve I could
understand it. But it isn’t that. What he wants is to nick the old
bankroll for a fair purchase price.”
“I see,” said Marley, a great light breaking on his trusting soul.
“Well, what’s the use?” Starke spread well-kept artisan hands. “I know
a better way.”
Alexandra spoke unexpectedly.
“I believe Mr. Dorin does always pay a fair price.”
“Oh, rubbish!” He swept this aside. “How do you suppose half the stuff
is brought out? Stolen and smuggled and hacked out! No argument like
three inches of cold steel. Cold cash can’t compare with it! Dorin
knows that as well as I do! But he won’t see it!”
“No, I confess I don’t quite see it either!”
“Oh, well, you’re a woman,” he reminded her indulgently. “But Dorin’s
been around. He knows the ropes.”
“I’m afraid there’s no getting round the fact that Mr. Dorin does play
fair.”
“You got any influence with him?” he asked abruptly.
“I?” Alexandra looked bewildered. “Not the slightest!”
“Well, he’s got to see reason, that’s all, if I have to knock it into
him! No agent of mine is going to Asia on tiptoe for fear of hurting
their little yellow feelings! My men go to do business!”
“And do you call murder business?” she demanded indignantly.
“Eh?” said Starke, staring.
“Alex, my dear--!” said Marley.
“You can’t hire assassins in England, Mr. Starke!”
“It has been done, I believe.” Marley was oil on the waters. “However,
I’m sure Mr. Starke doesn’t mean anything so melodramatic.”
“Nothing melodramatic about it.” Starke disclaimed it in all honesty.
“Plain business proposition. I want what I want and I get it. There’s
always a way.”
Again the doorbell. This time it was Marley who spoke with relief.
“There’s Dorin at last!”
Alexandra rose and slipped out into the hall, her ready loyalty up in
arms. Blaise Dorin should be warned that this man was here.
“Mind if I have it out with him right now?” Starke inquired of Marley.
“If he’s going I want to see him on his way. Got to come to terms. Put
in a word, will you? You’re a reasonable man yourself.”
“Dorin makes his own terms, you know.” Marley was dimly aware that many
people had cause to know this.
“Not with me, he doesn’t! Of course that pretty wife of yours would be
on his side. By George, I like her spirit, going for me that way!”
“My wife is an enthusiast always,” admitted Marley, a bit stiffly
perhaps.
There were men’s voices in the hall and Alexandra returned, laughing as
she came, with Blaise Dorin and a stranger in her wake.
She was aglow with frank hero-worship like a boy. These were the men
who did things, kinsmen of her ancestors. Her gaze as it rested on them
was somehow possessive. They spoke her language, thought her thoughts,
heard what she had once heard in the wind and the sea. They were
splendid.
Dorin was lean and humorous, and spoke as Englishmen speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, though he used the slang of three
continents and could swear engagingly in half a dozen languages.
His gray eyes had seen things no man can speak of, and his hair had
whitened round his ears with fever, and other things.
Bob Taunton was younger, solidly built, sunbleached and tanned. He
brimmed with a boyish exuberance and made no attempt to conceal his
idolatry of Dorin. Starke and he were already known to each other by
reputation, and his private advice to old Dodo had been to go slow. A
friend of his, a maharajah and a gentleman, who knew all about horses
and women _and_ pearls had yet learned about swindles from Starke.
It was all quite legal and correct--and very clever. The maharajah,
being a gentleman, had been able to see the joke. But he would never
see those pearls again.
They were surprised, as much as their kind is ever surprised at
anything, to find Starke there. And they neglected to shake hands with
him, but no one, least of all himself, noticed this. The air cleared
before the largeness of them. The room was somehow windswept, no longer
stuffy, no longer bounded by red plush. Yes, they were splendid.
They explained that they had run into each other in the club. They
explained that they were forever running into each other, even in
the Kimberley, and that they were inevitably late to appointments
thereafter. They explained that they had left the club with a due
regard for the time, however, Bob coming along to be introduced since
he was to be in London for a while, and Dorin was leaving tomorrow for
Algiers. No, they had not got lost in the fog. But there was a most
singular bookshop on the way....
“Never mind, we can guess the rest!” said Alexandra.
“Find anything of value?” The connoisseur speaking.
“Nothing we could buy,” admitted Dorin, and grinned. He had an
astonishing grin for one so grave. It spread all over his face. It made
little crinkles round his eyes.
“No, the old cove who owned the place was the attraction.” Taunton
grinned, too, and it made him look like a friendly bull-pup. “He rowed
Dodo the whole time we were there.”
“Rather fancies himself as a Buddhist, and was fretful because I hadn’t
made a pilgrimage of some sort during four years in Asia,” added Dorin.
“But why Buddhist?” Alexandra hung breathless on the answer.
“That’s what I said. And he replied, ‘My son, for fifty years I watched
Christianity work out!’ Well, I mean--!” grinned Dorin. “That did it!
I’m not a missionary, even in London!”
“Now, look here, my boy.” Starke snapped the case of his large gold
watch upon irrelevancies. “I’ve got just five minutes to come to terms
with you.”
There was a silence. Dorin glanced over his shoulder as though he was
the last possible person to be so addressed.
“With me?” he inquired.
“I’ve been laying for you. Let’s talk business.”
“Here?”
“And now.”
“Changed your mind?”
“No. Have you?”
“No.”
Dorin had become suddenly rather like a coiled steel spring, for all
his loose grace in the big chair. Taunton winked at Alexandra, and
settled down on his spine prepared to enjoy the ensuing half-hour.
“Well, let’s get together on it,” proposed Starke. “Assuming that you
agree to go----”
“But I haven’t.”
“Assuming that you do--just what would be your plan of campaign?”
“Heretofore you haven’t been much interested in my plan,” Dorin
reminded him warily.
“Well, suppose I am now. Now, on the basis of, say, fifty bearers--good
shots all--I could arrange about the rifles, I think----”
“Assuming that I go,” interrupted Dorin softly, “I shall leave Bokhara
without ostentation.”
“Oho! Disguised as a native, eh!” Starke looked pleased.
“N--no,” said Dorin thoughtfully. “N--no, I don’t think that would help
much this time.”
“But a lone game in the hills--it’s dangerous!”
“So is--the other.”
“Well, go on. How would you work it?”
“I should go to the monastery and open negotiations.” It sounded simple
enough.
“They won’t sell it, man!”
“You seem to forget the complications about their possession of it.”
“You’ll never get it if they find out what you want!”
“_You’ll_ never get it if they aren’t sure exactly what I want!”
Starke leaned forward.
“You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“My knowledge of priests. And those--complications.”
“You actually mean to buy it?”
“That does come into it.”
“What else?”
“A fair offer--a warning--and some tact.”
“But, my God, it’s worth a king’s ransom!”
“You are a rich man, Mr. Starke. And I’m a tactful one. And we know
what we know. I fancy they’ll be glad enough to be rid of it--at a
price.”
“I’m not made of money!” Starke pointed out petulantly.
“Well, be that as it may, my way will cost you less than your way in
the end, and it gives me a chance of getting back alive, which you must
admit is a point in its favor.”
“But my plan----”
Dorin cut in crisply.
“Your plan is bound to fail, Mr. Starke!”
“I don’t see why!”
“Have you never discovered that blood is always slippery?”
“You’re squeamish, that’s all!”
“If you like.” Dorin smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.
“Well, what’s a few Chinks?” demanded Starke querulously. He was not
accustomed to this sort of thing. “Plenty more!”
“The yellow man’s blood is as red as mine.”
“So you’re a sentimentalist!” It came near to insult.
“Am I?” said Dorin.
“Then you refuse, do you? You actually sit there and calmly refuse to
take on a job that ought to be meat and drink to one of your tribe? And
you give a womanish reason, a barefaced excuse, a mere prejudice about
the red blood of the noble heathen Chinee!”
“A prejudice,” Dorin corrected, “against making a needless mess.
Blood,” he explained, and this time the smile was in his eyes only,
“even English blood, is unpleasant stuff to work with. Did you ever,”
he inquired pleasantly of Starke, “feel the warm, slow crawl of it
outside you, where it didn’t belong? Did you ever carry it about with
you, stiffening on your hands, so that when you finally got a chance
to wash it off, in cold water, perhaps, hours later, miles along the
trail----”
“I know what’s the matter with you!” roared Starke. “You’ve lost your
nerve! I’ve heard that when you fellows do break up you go all at once
and have the general horrors ever after about getting a knife between
your ribs any night in Piccadilly! So it’s turned on you now, has it!
You’ve had enough! Well, there’s some younger man to take on the job, I
guess!”
Taunton drew in his breath with a little hiss, and Alexandra
instinctively laid a quick hand on his arm. Dorin was getting out a
cigarette.
“He would certainly have to be young to the point of childishness,”
he said at last, “to undertake to filch the thing as you suggest.” He
turned courteously to Alexandra, holding up the cigarette. “May I--?”
he asked, and she nodded, spellbound.
“Well, since you’re not interested--” Starke rose. His neck was red.
“But I am interested,” objected Dorin, searching his pockets for
matches. “As I told you the other day, I am very much interested
indeed. But--Bob, have you got a match?” He caught the box Taunton
tossed. “Thanks. But----”
“But you have flatly refused the job!” said Starke.
“Oh, no. I’ve refused the terms.” He tossed the match-box back to
Taunton, so that it missed Starke’s head by scant inches. “I was only
going to say----”
“Who says terms? I’ll pay anything within reason! Come, now, what will
you take to go up there and do the job my way?”
“If the time ever comes when your way is not the only one, let me know.
Meanwhile, I’m off for Algiers in the morning.”
“You’d let this chance slip for a ten-twenty-thirty holiday in the
Sahara?” Starke stood over him, bellowing.
“A letter addressed to the Travelers’ Club will always reach me,” Dorin
told him sweetly.
“All right, I guess that settles it! Good-afternoon, all.” He stalked
toward the door in a huff.
Alexandra had got uncertainly to her feet.
“But--Mr. Starke----”
“You’ll pardon me, Mrs. Marley, but I have a dinner engagement.”
“Dear, dear--most unfortunate--I’ll see you out--” Marley followed him
from the room in great distress.
Dorin looked at Taunton and they laughed silently, like terriers at a
rat-hole. Alexandra was all but wringing her hands.
“Oh, what a pity!” she moaned. “Oh, to think of your having to miss it!
He’ll never get it now, will he----”
“Oh, he’ll come round!” prophesied Taunton. “Dodo knows what he’s
about. Look at him! He knows he’s got Starke on toast! Give him time!”
“I’ll pop over to Africa,” grinned Dorin, sheepishly conscious of
having played his hand rather well. “He’ll still be here when I get
back.”
CHAPTER IV
“WEIRD cove,” remarked Dorin comfortably behind his cigarette, when
Marley had returned. “He’s got a house in New Orleans which must be a
museum in itself, nothing less. And according to all accounts, it’s
full of things which have no business in a private collection. How he
gets them seems to be another story!”
“But look here, Dorin.” Marley drew up a chair. “Do men actually go the
limit in these secret enterprises?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dorin cryptically.
“You mean that men, less principled than yourself, actually steal and
sometimes murder for the whim of a man like this fellow Starke?”
“And are murdered. For the same whim.”
“But it’s such a senseless business!” protested Marley. “I mean to
say--getting yourself murdered!”
“It’s because they’re fools, usually.” Dorin’s eyes were lowered to
his cigarette, so that his ridiculous lashes cast a child-like shadow
on his cheek. Dorin’s looks took a lot of living down. He was not even
blessed with a serviceable scar. Too thin, and somewhat weather-beaten,
but young and unmistakably Eton, Oxford, and the West End. Nothing
brawny, nothing grim, nothing at all ruthless about him. A quiet,
low-voiced man with little crinkles round his eyes when he laughed. And
then you caught the lean line of his jaw, or a glance like a scalpel on
the soul.... “It’s because they’re fools,” he said. “Fools not to like
the Asian and treat him well when he deserves it. Worse fools to risk
his vengeance.”
“But you yourself----”
“Oh, I’m a different kind of a fool. I admire the native in several
ways. Sometimes I--almost--trust him. It’s not quite as suicidal as it
sounds,” he grinned.
“Dodo’s got heaps of pals up Kashmir way,” boasted Taunton. “The Sikhs
are good children if you know how to handle ’em.”
“The Sikhs have nothing to do with the case,” murmured Dorin.
“Unfortunately!”
“But what is it all about? Do tell me everything!” Alexandra sat with
clasped hands, looking from one to the other.
“Poor Bob’s been through it already, hunting for hitches.”
“Oh, don’t mind me!” Taunton picked up the _Times_ from a table
and retired to a chair by the fire. “It’s a beautiful story. Tell it.
I’ll sit over here and improve my mind.”
“Well,” began Dorin, putting out his cigarette, “once upon a time there
was a goddess named Shir Shan. She had not been seen within the memory
of man, but she was known to have sun-colored hair and eyes like the
heavens at midnight. She was beautiful and she should have been good,
but she had an unfortunate weakness for human sacrifice. Even so, she
was neat about it. At certain intervals her priests would find a golden
robe, supposedly her own, lying across the long-deserted throne in her
temple. Bells were rung and drums were beaten and there was feasting
and ceremony, and at the end of three days the usual luckless virgin
was dressed in the golden robe and seated on the throne and left there,
quite alone. The trick was that she vanished without a trace and was
never seen again. Evaporated, the legend runs. Consumed by the magic
fabric of Shir Shan’s robe. Gone up in smoke! And the empty robe,
spotless and shining, always came back for more.”
“But the priests! They must have--” It was again the little girl at the
pantomime.
“Aha! The priests!” said Dorin.
“Never look for trouble in that direction, Mrs. Marley,” advised
Taunton from behind the _Times_. “You’re sure to find it.”
“And the magic robe still exists?”
“So Starke says. He’s run it to earth, he thinks, some distance from
the temple where it flourished, which was long since abandoned. It’s in
the keeping of a little-known religious order who might be induced to
part with it--for reasons of their own.”
“Stolen?” she whispered, tingling.
“A hundred times over!”
“And you’d go off on a wild-goose chase like that--?” began Marley
incredulously.
“Try me!” said Dorin.
“But you’ve no kind of proof that the robe ever even existed! Perhaps
it’s just a myth!”
“Perhaps!”
“Like the Golden Fleece!” nodded Alexandra. “_He_ found it!” she
nodded again, sparkling at them.
“He did, he did!” murmured Taunton to the _Times_.
Marley turned on him.
“But Dorin’s mad!” he cried. “Why doesn’t somebody talk him out of
this?”
“Well, after all,” reflected Alexandra, “Bruce came home from a
thousand perils in Abyssinia and fell downstairs and died!”
“Why, I--I feel a certain responsibility!” worried Marley. “It was I
who introduced you to this man! I had no idea-- Dear, dear, I supposed
you’d put him off somehow; I never dreamed you’d take it seriously--”
Again he turned to Taunton. “And are you going to sit there and let him
do this?”
“Who am I to stop him?” queried Taunton modestly.
“But--it’s dangerous! It’s suicidal! He won’t come through alive! Why,
Starke says there was a Russian from Bokhara who went up there on a bet
and was never seen again, but the story goes that they----”
“Russians,” said Taunton, “have no social tact. And I’ve heard they
torture well.” He turned a page. “Dodo will turn up. He always does.”
“Well, of all the cold-blooded, sinful--” began Marley, eying him with
incredulous horror.
“My dear fellow.” Taunton sat up. “My dear fellow. Would you tie a man
by the leg to the Nelson monument for fear some snipin’ Asiatic wit
might miraculously hit him? I quite see your point; I realize as well
as you do that some day good old Dodo will inevitably fail to turn up
at all--and God grant that it be not yet. But we are all destined one
way or another for the front page of the _Times_, and he takes his
standing up--as I do!” Having delivered himself of which he returned,
reddening, to the paper and was seen no more.
“What a way to go!” said Alexandra, half to herself. “No fuss--no
tears--no dying wish--no procession with plumes--no marble weight
pressing down, down above your head-- Just--!” She snapped her fingers,
so that Marley started, frowning, and took up the argument again.
“Why don’t you go along and look after him, then?” he demanded
indignantly of the _Times_.
“Haven’t been asked,” complained the voice behind it.
“Oh, get along,” advised Dorin, grinning fondly. “You know you’ve
already promised to go to South Africa!”
“What for?” Still the little girl, begging for more stories.
“Alex, my dear--!” said Marley.
“Some camera Johnny wants to shoot lions,” Dorin told her. “Bob’s got
to coax ’em to come out and sit for their portraits.”
“Just with cameras?” queried Alexandra, looking rather dashed.
“Alex, my dear--!” said Marley.
“Daresay that depends on how they behave themselves,” admitted the
invisible Taunton. “Been trying to get Dodo to wait and go as far as
Gibraltar with us, but he’s off tomorrow in spite of me. Unsociable
cove, Dodo.”
“Seems as though everybody’s going somewhere!” sighed Alexandra.
“Which reminds me--” Marley rose briskly. “I’m going out to dinner.
Making a speech--that sort of thing. You chaps excuse me while I dress?
I won’t be long.”
He went, and was not missed.
“Where is the robe, now, supposedly?”
Alexandra fixed expectant eyes on Dorin. He was to her at the moment
far less a hero than a talking-machine from which further details of
this fascinating quest might be unwound. The man, the adventurer, the
protagonist of a possible tragedy, all were lost in the immensity of
the thing he stood for: _Hazard_.
“Supposedly there is a monastery in the Hills south and east of--” he
was beginning.
“Wait! I’ll get a map! I love maps! Could you show me on a map?”
“Approximately.”
“There’s an atlas in Clem’s study--and a guidebook. Wait, I’ll fetch
them!” She hurried out, light-footed.
Dorin retrieved her handkerchief from the floor, looked at it with
a half smile, tossed it to the table, glanced about the chill,
commonplace room, back to the handkerchief--and lighted a cigarette.
Taunton was still out of sight behind the _Times_. Dorin drifted
to the piano, and as he sat down before it he perceived for the first
time its mute tragedy amidst the red plush. It was her piano. All that
was hers in her home.
Poor little devil, he thought, as his foot went home to the pedal.
There was something about her like--he fumbled about rather shyly in
his mind for something to describe her, for he was unused to describing
women even in the privacy of his own mind--like the beating of wings,
he decided, and smiled, grave-eyed, above the keys as the piano awoke
to the touch of a lover. That was it. A dauntless eaglet warring with
the bars of a cage....
“Mandalay” throbbed softly under his fingers. Bob began to sing, and
Bob had a tenor so sweet that it ached.
“‘If you’ve ’eard the East a-callin’ you won’t never ’eed naught else;
No! You won’t ’eed nothin’ else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An’ the sunshine an’ the palm trees an’ the tinkly temple bells;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay;
Can’t you ’ear their paddles chunkin’ from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay....’”
Across the hall Alexandra was crouched by the bottom shelf, tugging at
the atlas. She paused and sat back on her heels to listen.
The song she and her father had sung that night, sitting by the window
with his arms round her, waiting for the moon to rise ... and finally
the moon had come, scarved with cloud.... Alexandra could almost feel
his beard brushing her cheek now, and the rumble of his great chest as
he sang, she leaning against him ... and the excruciating strength of
him when he caught her close at the end, and her ecstatic “Tighter!”
which made him laugh ... and he had said, “What’s the good of sons,
when they make girls like you!” ... and then he sighed, looking down
at her straw-colored plait in his big fingers--“Moon-gold,” he said
... and then-- “But girls get married, don’t they, and leave their old
dads!” ... and she, crowding closer to him-- “Not this one! Not my
dad!” ... but he shook his head, fingering her thick plait-- “You’ll
see--some younger fellow--not long now--” ... and then at last,
crushing her-- “By gad, it’s been worth it--having you!” The next
morning he was gone.
“‘For the temple bells are callin’ an’ it’s there that I would be----
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’ fishes play....”
She stumbled to her feet and gathered up the books. He had reached her
again. Another message had come through. And so life went on, must go
on, somehow.
CHAPTER V
“THAT was my father’s song,” she said, from the doorway, as they
finished.
“I’m sorry!” said Dorin quickly, dropping his hands from the keys.
She shook her head.
“He would have liked you.” She dumped the books on the table and sat
down beside them. “I brought everything I could find on Clem’s shelves
about Central Asia. You must tell me what to read.”
He came and bent above her and the open books, turning the pages. He
began to talk, briefly at first, unemotionally, even, of supplies,
transportation, frontiers, difficulties. And then, as she made no move,
said nothing to remind him that she was a woman and this was London,
he went on. While Alexandra, with yearning eyes on a few square inches
of red and yellow and pink and green, saw a tiny party picking its
perilous way across desert, timber, and rock--tired plodding beasts, a
syce sulking in the rear, a man in khaki on a horse, a very good horse
it would have to be--a blinding sky above them with the sun scorching
down while a biting wind ripped by.... Sun--and Wind! And round the
next ledge of rock the Unknown. Behind them, Russia’s restless power.
Ahead--far ahead--the British Raj. And between them and the goal....
Fifteen minutes later found them still at it, the floor littered
with discarded books and sprawling maps. It found Taunton frankly
fast asleep before the fire, his feet outstretched before him, the
_Times_ slipping from his fingers. His attitude was of such
childish abandon that it seemed only by the grace of God that he
did not snore. Alexandra sat with her chin in her hands, Bloomsbury
forgotten. Dorin was perched on the table swinging a foot. Her
almost hypnotic receptiveness had as usual momentarily dispelled the
Englishman’s holy horror of talking “shop” and he forgot to stop at all
the most interesting places and leave out all the best parts, as is
likely to be the way of his kind.
“Of course,” he finished, “it all happened so long ago that none of it
makes sense, I suppose. But it is fairly safe to assume, isn’t it, that
after the tumult and the shouting had died and the blood no longer ran
in rivulets nobody ever did go near the place again. It was natural
enough for them to harbor ideas about the goddess’ vengeance. In that
case, the temple itself is still there somewhere, gone to wrack and
ruin, and haunted by all the pagan souls which assisted at the carnage.
Nobody seems to know its exact location. It’s not much of a country
to go prospecting in just for the look of the thing. But the robe was
carried off and has had many adventures. If my luck holds it will have
one more.”
“And that’s your job,” she said slowly.
“That’s my job. When I get it!”
“Oh, what fun!” she whispered, with clasped hands. “What fun!”
“Oh, yes,” he agreed with a touch of irony. “And a suffocating wind
blows for days and the air is thick with sand, and there’s never enough
water. And then in the hills you freeze, and everywhere you go you’re
generally unwelcome. It’s great fun! But back I go, just the same!”
“One always does go back,” she nodded, distant-eyed.
“Like the pitcher to the well.”
Reminded of something, he took from his pocket a bit of greenish stone,
a carven knot with an inscription. Through it, apparently a part of it,
ran an odd streak of dull red. He dropped it in her lap and watched her
fingers close over it as she lifted and held it lovingly.
“Why--I never saw anything quite like this!”
“Nor I,” he said.
“You called it a gift-stone--the other day.”
“With blood on it.” Half smiling, he touched the red streak with one
finger. “Magic, you see. A magic lost centuries ago. Bought or stolen
or found--the thing’s no good. But given freely for love--oh, yes! Or
so I was told by the Chinese gentleman who put it in my hand when he
died.”
“Murdered, you said.”
“Yes.”
She waited, eyes on the stone in her hand, watching it as though it
were a crystal ball, waiting for its story to unfold. Again the spell
of her intent silence worked. He went on, dreamily, as one spins a tale
at twilight for a child.
“It was in a little village beyond Su-Chow. The old chap had a sort
of shop, and we had done business together for years. So once when I
turned up from the interior, somewhat the worse for wear, he took me
in and gave me a place to sleep, and no questions asked. I saw this
thing one day lying in a tray full of more or less worthless stuff and
asked him to set a price on it. He refused, and when I went to look
for it again it was gone. He read my thought, as those fellows do, and
said, ‘Often the best way of concealing a thing is not to hide it. But
plainly what your eyes saw at once could not be invisible to those
who search.’ I tried to get the story out of him, but he sheered off
at once and I could see it wasn’t any good. Though why any one should
want to steal a thing with such a reputation-- However, that’s the way.
Well, that same night I woke with a feeling I had been called. My head
felt queer and there was an odor in the room I couldn’t recognize--dope
of some sort. And there was a something in the stillness--well, I had
felt it before. I got up and went into the other room and fell over
something--he was dying, and the thief, whoever he was, had gone on
before. When I took his hand he pressed this into mine and said, ‘Too
late--yours now--will serve you better--’ and--cashed in.”
Eyes on the stone, she did not answer his wry smile.
“He might have told you before, of his danger.”
“He was an Oriental.”
“What does it say--there in the carving?”
“It seems to be a sort of ‘God keep you.’”
“He loved you--the Chinese gentleman.”
“We were friends,” he said simply.
With a small, satisfied sigh she held out the stone to him.
“Thank you for letting me see it.”
“Won’t you keep it?” This was an impulse he was to wonder at later.
“Why--I--” She drew it toward her again, wistfully.
“Freely given--for love.” Again she failed to answer his smile, that
enveloping smile which robbed the words of any ulterior meaning. His
voice softened then, deepened. “Please keep it. God knows it’s an odd
enough thing for a woman to love like that. But if you’ll have it-- The
truth is, I’ve got a sort of hunch this time.”
“A hunch?” She looked up at him quickly.
“One has them.” He shrugged. “It’s only that I think you’ll be surer
of having it if I leave it with you now--than if I were to promise to
bring it back to you from Asia.”
Her eyes were on his, gravely.
“From all I can gather you’d better have all the luck you possess in
your pocket, if you go.”
“Oh, I’ll go! But no gift-stone is proof against the ultimate hunch.”
“You really mean you think things may not go right this time?” she
asked quite calmly.
“Oh, bless you for putting it like that!” Briefly, his fingers pressed
hers round the stone. “You should have been a man yourself--one of Us.
You’d shoot straight, you’d go till you dropped, and you never would
say die! Teach you to shoot and you could take on anything and pull
through!”
“One of--Us.”
She sat staring down at the stone, while he told himself ruefully that
he shouldn’t have said it, and wondered what temporary insanity had
loosened his tongue at both ends. It was not his way to talk too much.
He wondered just how it had happened.
“If I were a boy,” she said slowly, “I’d take you up on that. I’d run
away and go with you. I’d ask nothing better than one day of burning
sand--one night of tormenting cold--one hour of a great uncertainty
between life and death! Oh, just one little glimpse of the things that
make just existing from one hour to the next a great adventure!”
He was silent, appalled at this sudden giving way of barriers,
this unforeseen overflow into words of hidden, sacred things, this
unpremeditated and embarrassing confidence for which he was himself
to blame. He had been right, then, he thought. And she knew she was
caged, too, and was acutely miserable, as he had suspected. It was not
just tucked away at the back of her consciousness, buried under her
wifehood and her housekeeping, mercifully dormant. It was a thing
which possessed and tormented her. He could see that now.
She had risen and paced away from him, her movement, her hands, her
very voice, a blind, unreasoning beating of wings.
“Oh, I grate on rusty hinges here! But it isn’t just that I’m
bored--dissatisfied--malcontent! It’s something driving--dragging!
Something as insistent as hunger! When I was small I once tried to know
what starvation felt like, and when they caught me at that and made
me eat, I went without water to know thirst. I rebelled, even then,
against the smug snugness of life in England! I missed my heritage of
hardship--craved it--groped for it! I was seventeen before I saw the
sea, and heard the wind that walks on the water. It was on my wedding
journey I found that wind, and knew that I was a girl, and so not free
to follow it!”
She threw wide her arms, there in the stolid room with the fog outside
and the red plush inside choking the bright, insurgent flame of her
love of living; that fatal spark, handed down from father to son
through the years--to a girl! To just this mad, shackled creature,
slim and shining and keen as a blade! The pity of it, thought Dorin
helplessly. The pity of it!
“All my grandfathers were free men! And one of them fell with Wolfe at
Quebec, and one of them died at Cawnpore! And I had an uncle once who
came home from Natal and told me stories--as you do. My father--” (her
eyes grew eerie) “--my father made just one little mistake. He thought
because I was a girl he must leave me behind! He went back There
without me. But we’re rovers, all of us, always! Men who rode the wind
and died young, happy to have had so much of life, but yearning still
over things undone! It is hard for me, the last, to see life pass me
by!”
“I know,” he said, inadequately enough, he felt, but what could a man
say?
“I’ve tried so hard to forget my grandfathers. I’ve tried to be a
Marley. I can’t.”
“I know,” he said again, impotently.
“I wonder if they know--those splendid, ruthless, gallant grandfathers.
I wonder if they know--” She blinked up at him, dazed, and suddenly
timid. “Oh, I forgot--I-- You had me half drunk with your talk, I
think. You--you do understand?”
“So very well,” he said.
They smiled at each other briefly. Then she passed him and dropped into
the chair at the table, drawn again to the maps.
Bob Taunton still slept. He had spent the night in the smoking-room
of a Channel boat, exchanging views on the Congo with a colonel of
the Indian Army, on leave. They didn’t think alike, which made it
interesting, but they had parted good friends, and the Congo was no
better off than before.
“If it’s in the Hills,” said Alexandra above the maps, “why don’t you
go up through India?”
“I’d prefer to go in by way of Bokhara and come out into India through
the Pass here, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Just as you like!” she grinned. “Tell me about Bokhara.”
“Well,” he began obligingly, “it’s an Aladdin city, with toothed
walls and covered alleys--mosques where the storks are encouraged to
nest--pink doves feeding under foot--fine old doorways, and a dignified
people--luxurious bazaars--oh, you never saw such silks and such
color----!”
Marley came in, in evening dress, and glanced about the book-strewn
room.
“Good heavens, have you fought the whole campaign? Where’s Mr. Taunton?”
“Oh, Bob!” said Dorin loudly, and Bob sat up.
“Hullo?”
“It’s all right, I’ve finished talking about myself for a while.”
“Oh, but it’s been splendid!” cried Alexandra.
“Did he ever tell you about the time we----”
“Now, Bob.”
“--about the time we completely lost ourselves in the Pamirs, and there
wasn’t even anything worth shooting at until one day----”
“Bob, that’s not a pretty story! Please don’t encourage him!”
“Oh, be quiet!” Alexandra quelled him with a gesture. “Go on,” she
commanded.
And then Taunton told a tale whereat Marley winced fastidiously and
Alexandra crowed with a heathenish satisfaction. But Dorin knew and
praised God for what had been omitted in the telling.
“Now, look here,” complained Marley at the end, “do you expect me to
believe that you _enjoy_ these experiences--that you _like_
being without food or water----”
“The only thing we really resent being without is cartridges,” said
Taunton. “That’s tough. _That’s_ hardship.”
“But you can’t eat cartridges!”
“There’s not much choice between a cartridge and a biscuit in the
Hills,” said Dorin.
“But the Government--” argued the man who wrote books.
“Oh, God bless the Government!” cried Taunton gayly.
“Well, it’s beyond me, risking your neck pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp!
You’re always on the move!”
“Life’s none so long,” Dorin apologized.
“And you pick such fantastic schemes! I could understand the desire to
plant a flag at the poles----”
“But that’s been done, Mr. Marley!” objected Taunton.
“--or some sort of relief expedition----”
“But there are so few people to rescue!”
“But this robe!” fretted Marley. “It’s such a--such a pipe-dream!”
“Oh, it isn’t what lies at the end, or even whether it’s there or not,”
said Alexandra. “It’s the getting there one goes for.”
“Exactly! _She_ knows! It’s the call of the off-shore wind--it’s
the spell of the trail that’s always new--it’s the lure of the happy
roads that take you over the world! One man has said it all. Listen!”
Carried away, Taunton began tramping up and down the room, his hands in
his pockets.
“‘It’s like a book, I think, this bloomin’ world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you’re readin’ done
And turn another--likely not so good;
But what you’re after is to turn ’em all.’”
“Bobby, in heaven’s name, dry up!” said Dorin in affectionate horror.
“I’ll leave you at home next time!” He rose. “Come along. We promised
to feed that fellow Whatshisname at the club and it’s getting late.”
“Oh, Lord, yes, I forgot! He’s starving by now. Let’s go be a relief
expedition!” He pranced toward the door.
“The club?” said Marley. “I’m going that way. We’ll have a cab. I’ll be
late tonight, Alex.”
“Yes, Clem.” She gave her hand to Dorin. “I do hope I can see the robe,
when you get it!”
“I hope I get it!” he grinned.
“But suppose the robe isn’t there!” Marley turned in the doorway.
“Suppose there simply _isn’t_ any robe. Suppose----”
“Oh, suppose there was no such word as suppose!” Laughing, she waved
them out, and stood alone in the middle of the room looking after them.
She was tired. Tired to the soul of being left behind. She went
forlornly to the window and watched them getting into a cab, and
wondered what she was to do with herself the rest of the evening. She
didn’t mind being alone, but she hated emptiness, and the room seemed
somehow bereft. The walls closed in again. It would have been easier,
almost, if they had never opened and let her out.
She stood disconsolately in the middle of the room, looking at the
abandoned books, becoming conscious of the clock, hearing the distant
clink of silver and china as Susan laid the table for dinner. She might
go and look at the dog.... But she stood still, strangely indifferent
now to dogs. Besides, it had annoyed Clem. Almost she wished that Clem
hadn’t had that engagement tonight. She would have liked him at home,
solid and kind and comfortable, reading in his study with the door
open, and the smell of his pipe drifting out....
It might have been better, Clem, to have let that lecture go.
CHAPTER VI
BLAISE DORIN had happened to look back as he stepped into the cab. He
saw that slim figure at the window, silhouetted lonesomely against the
lighted room. And as they drove away his mind’s eye saw too clearly for
comfort the heap of books, the deserted chairs, the open piano with its
empty music rack, the red plush. He wondered what she would do with
herself the rest of the evening.
Poor little devil, he might have helped her pick up the books. Awful,
the way a room must feel when people went out of it, several people
laughing and talking together, and you were left, with things to
pick up. He wished there was time to call in again before he left
London. She might have liked to see that dagger he had picked up in
Rangoon--the one with the elephant’s head and trunk for a handle. She
was such a bloodthirsty little thing. Little? She would come to his
chin!
He dismissed her with a mental shrug, but she kept coming between him
and the talk. He decided that he might take her the dagger when he
returned from Algiers. Perhaps she might like to own it. She would
think it great fun to give him sixpence in return, to scotch the
hoodoo. A luck-piece for him. He would need it!
They deposited Marley on the pavement at his destination and proceeded
fitfully in the cab toward Pall Mall. Dorin was wondering if there was
anything he could bring her from Algiers.
“It seems too bad,” he said at last, into the silence.
“What seems too bad, old son?” queried Bob.
There wasn’t much in Algiers that one could conceivably bring away in
one’s pocket.
“I’m sorry for her, hanged if I’m not.”
“Sorry for who?” said Bob, cheerfully ungrammatical. “Oh, you mean
_her_? You know, Dodo, if she’d been born a boy she’d have run
away to sea, as I did!”
“Why on earth wasn’t she born a boy, I wonder!”
“Might just as well have been! There’s about as much of the eternal
feminine in her as in the first Eton jacket you meet!”
“Yes. You forget she’s a woman, somehow.”
“Yes, but _is_ she!” There was a silence. “Wonder how she came to marry
him,” said Bob.
“Loved him--I suppose.”
“Loved _that_?” Bob got out his cigarettes. “Garn!” he jeered.
More silence, with the scratching of matches.
“Good Lord, Bobby, think of all that joy-of-life buried in that house!”
“Awful hole!” agreed Bob round the light. “Not even a _Punch_!”
“It’s a beastly shame,” Dorin ruminated aloud. “It’s wicked. How would
_you_ like it?”
“Oh, me!” said Bob airily. “I’d clear out.” He thought it over. “That
woman,” he pronounced then with emphatic forefinger, “that woman is
what they call a throw-back! She--she’s-- What’s the word I want?
What’s that beauty of a word I want?”
“Atavistic?”
Bob gazed at him admiringly.
“Now you see,” he pointed out, “the value of an education!”
“But she isn’t, you know,” grinned Dorin. “That is--she comes by it
honestly enough through her own father.”
“Where’s he?”
“Valhalla.”
“I see,” said Bob, more soberly.
“He was Ingarsen.”
“_Ingarsen’s daughter?_ Oh, well--!” Bob threw out his hands.
“All the Ingarsens are like that!” he said. Again he thought hard.
“No--brothers or anything of that sort?”
“No. She’s the last of the line, I think.”
“Golly.” Bob scowled intently out of the cab window. “Why didn’t he
stick round and look after her?” he demanded. “Where does _this_
bloke come into it?”
“Ingarsen died.”
“No way to do,” decreed Bob. “Leavin’ a girl like that. God only knows
what girls will marry. Should have stuck round.”
“Africa,” said Dorin, and sighed.
“Mmmm,” said Bob. “She’ll get me too, you know. Africa will.”
Dorin was silent, thinking of the Hills. He was not for Africa.
“No way to do,” repeated Bob. “Chap marries--kids have some rights.
For hundreds of years there have been Ingarsens. That’s what India
needs--more Ingarsens. And now this girl--the quintessence of Ingarsen,
mind you--think of the sons----”
“_Bobby_, my God!” said Dorin, badly shocked, and again there
was silence. “Well, I thought perhaps you might like to go and talk
to her sometimes when you’re in town,” he suggested. “That is, if you
can behave yourself. There’s precious little we can do, but she’s like
a kid for stories. Of course,” he added, thinking of that time in the
Pamirs, “you’ll have to censor a bit sometimes, as you go.”
“But I haven’t any parlor tricks,” worried Taunton. “I don’t belong in
a place like that.”
“Neither does she belong there.”
“Yes, but after all, she is a woman, and----”
“Yes, but _is_ she?” No reply. “Lord, how she’d live the life we
love!” he muttered.
“I say, you know--please don’t shoot--but after all, it’s no good
sentimentalizin’ over--over----”
“Can one be sentimental over an Eton jacket, you ass? I only said----”
“Besides, the world is full of people married to the wrong ones.”
Dorin threw away his cigarette.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Perhaps not, but----”
“Oh, don’t talk rot.”
“But all the same, if----”
“Stow it, Bobby!”
“Right-O!”
Thus the subject was amiably closed between them.
Months later, reading his mail by the light of a camp-fire in South
Africa, Bob remembered this conversation incredulously, and rose up and
called the world a liar in the face of it. Later still, when life for
Bob had resolved itself into just the single idea of finding Dodo alive
somewhere, somehow, when nothing else mattered and everybody could go
straight to blazes, it began to haunt him most horribly--it, and the
eager eyes of Ingarsen’s daughter, who should have been born a boy.
_Storm_
_“The days are sick and cold, and the skies are gray and old_,
_And the twice-breathed airs blow damp...._”
CHAPTER I
TAUNTON did go back to the house in Bloomsbury Square, however, and
they talked lions and Kimberley diamonds and the Boer War--among other
things. She knew all about the Boer War, he found to his amusement.
“Of course we were all wrong in a way,” she said with her quaint
earnestness about such matters. “But, after all, we _can_
colonize--we _do_ colonize--better than anybody!”
He wanted to pat her on the head.
“Imperialist,” he said fondly.
But always they would return, by this way or that, to the subject
which if they left it at all lay just under the surface of the talk
and of which they were constantly being reminded by something--the
life and works of Blaise Dorin. The saga of his not uneventful career
was faithfully unfolded in jerky, graphic chapters told in Taunton’s
colorful language, for now that Dorin’s restraining influence was
removed to Africa, Bob rather let himself go and became simply a modest
Roland singing of his Oliver. It was a diet of sheer hero-worship,
shining and unashamed, that Alexandra’s greedy imagination fed on now.
So she heard, among other things, how once in the Congo Bob had
lain with a broken leg, weakened by fever and pain, and watched the
bull-like rush of a mad black giant toward where Dorin stood with a
revolver in his hand. “You see, I didn’t dare try to shoot, I wobbled
so I’d have hit Dodo instead--black fellow came on swingin’ four feet
of iron chain and bellowin’--_musth_, you know, _musth_
as any elephant, and no prettier to see--all over mud and blood he
was--hijjus-lookin’ nightmare--” And Dorin had stood there waiting, his
finger ready on the trigger, but waiting, until it seemed no bullet
made on earth could stop the fatal impact of that black body. “I had
time to think of all my ill-spent life, while I waited for Dodo to
shoot--like drowning, it was--and I heard the rattle of the chain,
and the giggle of the river beyond--I smelt the brute, too--I did,
I _smelt_ him!--and I felt the breath of the jungle on my face
like the breath of a hot ghost, with never a leaf stirring--I saw the
flash of a bright bird out of a tree over Dodo’s head--and I heard
Dodo breathing--he’d had quite a run up the bank after I yelled--by
God, I even had time to _pray_!--and Dodo stood there, solid as
though he was watchin’ a bloomin’ parade go by, holding his blessed
fire!” Bob had been afraid to shout to him to hurry, though his every
shattered nerve shrieked for the sound of the gun--afraid to move,
for fear of disturbing for a flickering second the steady, measuring
gaze of the man with the gun. He had huddled there, spent and sick and
scared--“whistling with funk each time I breathed”--till finally the
gun barked twice and the black doubled forward, coughing--“as though a
taut wire had caught him across the stomach”--and pitched on his face
at Dorin’s very feet. Dorin looked down at him a moment, reflectively,
it seemed, then shook out the used shells and stepping over a huge
black arm and the sprawling length of chain tossed an empty revolver to
Bob with a request for the loan of a cartridge or two. “Those two were
his last, do you see? First _I_ knew we’d run as short as that! My
gun still had its full quota--I’d been laid up for days. Oh, yes, we
got through to the coast without much more trouble--had three to spare,
I think.”
Another time----
“Unless you know his little ways you always think he isn’t going to
fight,” said Bob. “They always think it doesn’t look like Dodo’s day
to shoot. That’s their fatal mistake. He goes about his business, you
know, sort of absent-minded and sweet-tempered. Harmless-looking sort
of cove, Dodo is. But when he begins to squint, look out! Of course,
I’ve only seen it happen a couple of times myself--but other chaps say
the same. His eyes get queer, just before he lets fly. How? Oh, I don’t
know--slits, you know--light gray--chilly sort of look--” He hunched
his broad shoulders in a boyish shiver. “_Glittery!_” he explained.
“You can’t hurry him either. He always takes the whites of their eyes.
Cheaper in the long run. Neater, too. Dodo hates a mess. There was once
he wasn’t quite tidy, though.” He pulled up suddenly. “_Just_ once
in all history.”
She waited tensely, her hands pressed together. She _had_ to have
that story. Mutely, she willed him to go on, uttering no sound to bring
his thoughts to focus in Bloomsbury. If she kept very still he might
go on ... he must go on....
“Something gave, somewhere,” he went on slowly, almost unwillingly,
speaking more to himself than to her. “Nothing to apologize for, I
suppose. One isn’t quite oneself sometimes--civilization caves in-- Oh,
I wasn’t there, I heard about it. Wish to God I had been there----”
Again that tight silence. He looked up at last, as if drawn by her
intent eyes, caught her look, surrendered to it....
“Well, if you must--! Seems there were a lot of fuzzies lying
round dead--trickiest native of all, fuzzy-wuzzy--but _you_
know that--there’d been a bit of a row, you see, and one of Dodo’s
particular pals had been downed in the middle of it. _He_ was
bendin’ over this chap lookin’ out the damage--and all of a sudden the
nearest dead fuzzy rolled over and took a swipe at him with a knife.
Damned near thing, just missed--important mechanisms. Nasty gash,
anyway. Dodo’d been through a good deal that day--he was nervy, no
denyin’--there was a scrabble, of course, knife and gun, and his first
bullet did for the fuzzy, who was about done anyway--but Dodo laid
back his ears and emptied his gun into It. All six. Came to when the
trigger changed its tune--thought it had jammed--found he’d used ’em
all--and was rather sick very soon after, of course. But I mean to say,
it _was_ irritatin’, wasn’t it! That is--a dead fuzzy suddenly
hackin’ at you like that--what?”
Alexandra had put a question, large eyed.
“How many--?” said Bob in surprise. “Oh, I don’t know--perhaps--” He
checked off sundry fingers, waggled another vaguely, gave it up. “Dodo
doesn’t notch his gun. The War and all--no good dwellin’ on it, is
there? You do it when you’ve got to, and let it go. But there’s one
thing--if ever he’d been inclined to be the least bit hasty twice as
many more would have gone shoutin’ home to glory various ways. And half
of _those_ are still looking for him. He’s a bit careless-like
with his feuds. Forgetful. Or maybe it only looks as though he is.” Bob
pondered this. “No. I don’t think you could call Dodo exactly careless,
after all. _Lenient_ is the word, I think. He’s dretful lenient,
sometimes. The fact is,” added Bob slowly to his boot-toes, “the fact
is, he’s not quite hasty _enough_, to my way of lookin’ at it.
Lots of loose ends hangin’ out, in Dodo’s life--one of ’em will trip
him up some windy night. The Congo, now--big place--hard to get about
in to find a man in a hurry--low visibility, as it were--but I’ll keep
him clear of the whole damn’ works from now on if I have to sit on his
head!”
“Why?”
He looked at her queerly, seeing something else.
“We’ll let that go,” he said.
There was the other side, too, the less spectacular, wholly lovable
side--the man who doctored native babies, endured hunger or thirst
or risked infection for the sake of a favorite servant or a faithful
headman or merely an obligation of long standing, who spoke all tongues
and was made welcome in many places, and carried in his head the
etiquette and idiosyncrasies of a dozen wilderness kings. There was the
Dodo who could soothe a sick man in his arms when delirium razed the
barriers of consciousness, loosing things that were better not babbled
aloud; once all one night, white-faced and patient, he had answered to
a woman’s name and thus forgiven an ancient wrong, lost at this long
last in fevered incoherency. Once there was a Bhil, one of those little
apparently unloving, unlovable savages, who had thrown his own body and
soul to a tiger that the _sahib_ might live with but the mark of
claws on his shoulder--the Bhils are small men, but quick. Once a whole
village had pelted him with flowers, to his chagrin, and once a child
had crept into his lap to die.
All this Alexandra heard, and much more, often laughing with wet eyes,
while Taunton talked as he had never talked to woman before, pouring
out the shy, sacred love of man for man, unembarrassed. She echoed
to it all, like a harp to remembered music, caught at it with hungry
hands, took it to bed with her and dreamed it again in the dark,
vividly, lying taut between waking and sleeping, seeing the far-flung
camel-lines marching across her eyelids, hearing the beat of torture
tomtoms in the pulses in her own ears.
“‘Frabjous’ times,” Bob called them gayly. Frabjous’ times, when he and
Dodo worked together. He shared them with her, the best he could. He
even shared a cheerful scrawl, two weeks old, relayed from Marseilles,
which spoke lightly of inevitable trouble pending in Morocco,
feelingly of a _pukka_ sandstorm, and vaguely of a probable
errand in Paris. “Paris,” puzzled Bob. “What’s he up to now, I wonder!
Paris--it doesn’t seem to fit in.” This was to remain a mystery to them.
Then a packet arrived for Alexandra, containing a bangle with a charm,
heavy, thrilling, seeming still warm from an arm brown with the African
sun, but of small intrinsic value--so Clem said she might keep it.
She had hidden the note which accompanied it, in a groundless fit of
childish naughtiness.
“I was able to make myself useful to a damsel in distress,” it
read. “There was a lover or something in a bit of a fix--I helped
him out--nice chap, too--bless-you-my-children--_that_ sort of
thing. She gave me this for my sweetheart, and thought it no end
funny I hadn’t got one. No offense, but--thought you might care to
have it!”
She hid the paper under her handkerchiefs in the top drawer, beside the
knot of carven nephrite with its heathen blessing. One could always
keep notes. That was no affair of Clem’s.
Then Bob Taunton went away to his lions and there were no more stories.
But she went over and over the ones she knew, building them, filling in
the gaps in Bob’s vocabulary, visioning, hoarding, dreaming....
Yes, she dreamed of Blaise Dorin now. Not tenderly and gladly as women
dream, but exaggeratedly and in secret as children and men, both of
which dwell in the fear of ridicule, think on their gods.
CHAPTER II
MR. STARKE returned one day to make his peace, he said, and was
graciously absolved. Then he came to inquire Bob Taunton’s London
address--which he probably already knew--in order, he confessed,
grinning, to learn from him the approximate date of Dorin’s return from
Algiers--which he also probably knew. And again, with a carved jade
necklace which Marley named, dated, pigeonholed, and forgot, and which
Alexandra touched with reverent fingers for its beauty’s sake.
Finally--it seemed somehow quite a natural thing--Starke kept on
coming, not too often, of course, and welcome for his genial presence
and his way of producing casually from his pocket some priceless
trinket with a history.
His eyes would go wistfully from Alexandra’s blonde perfection to the
thing of his in her hand. He could never decide in his own mind the
fine point of what object of sufficient value to be worth the offering,
she would not decline as too lavish a gift. Yet he always experienced
an almost uncontrollable desire to bestow upon her everything she
admired.
One satisfaction the conventions did allow him, and he showered her
with books of travel and adventure, most of it in Asia. She seemed
never to tire of hearing his varied reasons for believing in the
golden robe of Shir Shan, which became to her the shining symbol of all
the romance left in a dreary world.
Starke had no parlor tricks either, but he never for one moment forgot
she was a woman.
Meanwhile, existence was getting a strangle hold on her spirits.
The elder Mrs. Marley, an indomitable dowager in black taffeta, had
reëstablished herself in the south room, hung her canary in its gilded
cage above the mute piano, and commanded the restoration of the
antimacassars to all the chairs.
Alexandra shut herself up in the linen closet to look for them, and
having found them much too soon mislaid them again by placing a sheet
on top, and sat down in a disconsolate heap and told herself that once
things became adjusted, once Susan learned to make that tea-cake, once
she herself learned never to express ideas even about the weather,
life might become more simple. But after the first frenzied weeks of
striving to please one who was by nature and inclination incapable of
being pleased, Alexandra felt the waters of despair close over her
aching head; felt herself sinking down, down, into utter blackness and
inert misery.
Her long, solitary walks were forfeit. The pace of her circumspect
daily airing was either reduced to suit the majestic gait of a stout
old woman with a stick, or driven with the responsibility of a dozen
small errands to be accomplished before tea-time. To be alone became an
obsession. Freedom became a madness. Life slipped past her while she
danced attendance on a born tyrant.
The faithful Susan retrieved and confiscated sundry small, hard, damp
balls which had once been handkerchiefs. Susan closed doors with great
presence of mind when one dissolved without warning in the pantry or
the linen closet, overtaken by a general blurriness and limpness. Susan
patted one’s shoulder understandingly and said, “There, now!” till
one’s sorry pride got on its feet again.
And then at last one morning in the pantry where she had come upon
Alexandra huddled on a stool with her head on her knees, very still,
Susan spoke to the point.
Alexandra had long since discovered that the closed door of her bedroom
only brought about questions when she was at length forced by hunger
or conscience to emerge. Or if she withstood both these too long the
door was tapped upon and the questions fired through it. There was no
sanctuary. But the pantry was safest.
“This won’t do, ma’am, it won’t,” said Susan. “You’ll be ill, and think
how you’d like _that_, ma’am!”
Alexandra forced herself, blinking, to contemplate being ill. No, most
decidedly that would not do. She had been ill once....
She sat quiet, contemplating memory, holding her reluctant mind by the
scruff of its neck, as it were, making it look. Of course that had been
different, that time. But, after all, if one was ill one was ill; it
all amounted to much the same thing so far as she could see. A shiver
ran through her. It was not the pain she minded so much. Pain holds you
there, gives you something to get your teeth into. It is after pain
recedes, taking everything with it, leaving you floating, blind, deaf,
half-dead--half-dead!... She remembered that she had roused from that
to a voice suddenly quite distinct in ears which had so long heard only
blurs. A man’s voice, saying quietly to whatever was on the other side
of her bed, “That doesn’t fetch her. Nothing will. She won’t last the
night out.” Was it a ship he meant, she wondered vaguely. What ship?
Was something sinking? She puzzled over it, lying there half-dead,
until a little frown showed between her closed eyes. She couldn’t
remember a ship.... Some one bent over her, there was an exclamation of
triumph, there were fingers on her wrist.... Then she knew. Death was
waiting for her. For _her_! And they were going to turn her over
to him already--they, whose business it surely was to fight him off
for her, to get her well again in spite of him--and they had abandoned
her now that he had almost got her. She wondered where Clement was.
Had he deserted her, too? Very well, she would fight alone, but it
was hardly fair of them to go back on her now--she was so tired--it
wasn’t fair.... Complaining bitterly, grumbling resentfully, feeling
much abused but quite undaunted, more hurt than frightened, her fagged
spirit girded itself for battle. Leave her in the lurch, would they!
Go back on all their fine promises! Perhaps they thought she didn’t
mind dying! She _would_ not die--she _could_ not die--she
had only begun to live--it was her right to live.... She began to
count her breathing conscientiously. Breath--death. Odd they should
rhyme.... There seemed to be a lot of activity all of a sudden--what
were they saying?--it didn’t matter now, she hadn’t time to listen--not
if she had to bring this off alone.... She wished they would let go of
her wrist--she was sure she could breathe better if they would let go
of her wrist--it smothered her, that small pressure on her wrist....
She tried to free herself, but nothing moved. No matter. There wasn’t
time now.... Hours passed. Eternities. She gave up counting because
it seemed to make her sleepy. She got her eyelids up a little way and
could see the foot of the bed with the lamplight across it, and the
shadow of some one who moved. If they would move oftener it might help
her to keep awake. Was it sleep or Death that plagued her so? He had
as many shapes as the Old Man of the Sea. She must be careful--must
keep awake--it seemed a very long night she had to last through....
Hours. Eternities. While she kept Death off with one hand and held
to Life with the other.... What was that, there on the wall? A bit
of something gray--smoke?--daylight?--dawn between the curtains? She
wished they would open the curtains, but there was no time to tell
them.... She lay watching the gray place on the wall, her eyes a little
wider as it widened. She was sure it was daylight; why didn’t they
open the curtains and put out the lamp? How could she be sure she had
lasted the night out so long as they kept the lamp burning? Another
hour, perhaps. Then it would be day. Another hour--another day. And
what then? Would she be safe, once it was day? Then would they take
hold of things again, and let her rest? She had done her share. It was
their turn at Death. Apparently they hadn’t quite deserted her--there
seemed to be something going on over there--she wished they would let
her alone.... The minutes crawled by, while the gray streak grew and
grew. At last before her very eyes it reddened faintly, deepened,
brightened, and was sunlight! Sunlight on the wall! Her eyes opened
wider, and there came a face. Not Clement’s face. But she had seen it
somewhere before. It smiled. “Hullo,” it said. Its eyes were kind--they
_knew_. Her gaze went back to the patch of sunlight. She wanted to
say something, too. She wanted to show them she was still alive. She
looked up at the face again, earnestly, into its eyes. It bent nearer,
inquiringly. A flicker, a mere wan wish to smile, passed over her lips.
“Sun,” she said, and went to sleep.
That was what it meant to be ill. Just an exhausting determination to
live, one’s whole being fastened with sick longing on the glory of a
miserable little patch of sunlight reflected on the wall.
She lifted helpless, questioning eyes to Susan.
“What shall I do?” she asked meekly.
“It’s those walks you don’t get nowadays, ma’am. It’s pullin’ you
under, bein’ shut up like this. For one thing, it’s too sudden. You
can’t just turn off a ’abit like turnin’ off water in the sink, ma’am.
You’ll be ill.”
“But I mustn’t be ill!” she argued apprehensively.
“No, ma’am. That’s what I say.”
“But I never am ill!” she protested hopefully. “Except that once,” she
added, averting her eyes from it.
“No, ma’am. But _she_ ain’t never been ’ere this long before.”
This was logic. Alexandra went down before it.
“Do you think--? I mean--you don’t think--?” she began, and stopped.
Through the house shrilled the soprano ecstasy of the canary, driven
out of his witless head by a rare sunbeam athwart his cage.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Susan. “You got to be out more, that’s what.” She
jerked her head toward the front of the house. “_You_ ain’t a
canary-bird, ma’am.”
“I’ve tried,” said Alexandra vaguely.
“It’s killin’ you, ma’am,” Susan comforted her. “_I_ can tell. You
can’t go on like this, not noways you can’t. You’ll be ill.”
Alexandra sprang to her feet, her hands over her ears.
“I won’t be ill!” she cried wildly. “I won’t! I won’t!” And she ran out
of the pantry and through the house and up the stairs for her hat.
She did not come home to luncheon that day. Susan, under
cross-examination, admitted that she had gone out without saying where
nor when she would return.
“How very extraordinary,” said Mrs. Marley.
Clement sighed.
CHAPTER III
DESPERATELY, then, Alexandra set about the business of not being ill.
She walked alone by the River till the old sweet weariness came upon
her. She dreamed on the Bridge and went home through the dusk to a
belated dinner amid the coolness and formal converse of a politely
disapproving household; gratefully ate the hot food Susan had kept for
her; wondered a little through a pleasant tiredness and plenitude how
things had ever seemed so important in the linen closet days a century
or so ago; went to bed very early, and to sleep.
At first the mere regaining of her lost privileges put new life into
her, privileges grown doubly dear through long abstinence. It was as
though she had discovered life all over again. It was like getting well.
She was so very happy about it, so very glowing, that Starke on one of
his pilgrimages to the shrine was smitten anew, and if opportunity had
offered would certainly have pressed upon her a bracelet of old wrought
silver from the arm of a dead queen. There was coming to be quite a
collection in his rooms at the Cecil of historic trinkets designed
to delight the most capricious of her sex. They accumulated, locked
rather carelessly into a lacquer box, for once she had seen them,
once they had been produced for her entertainment, like rabbits from
a conjuror’s hat, they had served their purpose and appeared to have
no further destiny in his eyes. I have already said that many of the
diversions of his kind were a closed book to him.
But she found it only temporary, this regained paradise of
quasi-freedom. As time went on, the atmosphere surrounding her belated
meals and erratic absences became more and more chilled with reproof,
less and less painfully polite. Life again closed in on her. It became
imperative when she was out to stay out and when she was in to flee.
_To get away._ To feel the wind on her face and to smell the sea
and to hear the hundred intimate and precious sounds that water makes
on wood, rock, or sand--to tread turf instead of pavement, even to
empty sand from one’s ridiculous low shoes--to lie face down and watch
what happened in the mysterious insect world underfoot--to lie face up
and watch the white kaleidoscope of clouds--to play recklessly at being
a child again--_to get away_! So she went farther and farther
afield, and sometimes was gone so long that even Susan, who had every
confidence in her immunity from disaster, watched anxiously for her
return. And then she would be seized with spasms of remorse and stay
close at home for days, a disarming, yellow-haired saint doing penance.
Clement washed his hands of her.
It was now that she became really acquainted with the vast loneliness
of her own soul, stranded in a world of other souls lost in their
respective lonelinesses. She turned, as her forefathers had done
throughout the ages, to the sky for comfort. The sky, where the wind
came from and where mystically God dwelt--the God of her childhood,
builded upon the somewhat haphazard foundation of her father’s
casual-seeming faith, the religion of a man who had lived and died
ignorant of fear. It was a kindly, even humorous God she had known as a
child, of Whom one asked and if in His infinite wisdom He thought best,
it was given. He sat somewhere beyond the sun, meting out His gentle
justice, never angry if people meant well, always willing to listen to
reason, like her father--and, like her father, never too busy to stop
and hear.
Somehow she stumbled back along the road now to that child’s God in the
sky, of Whom it was possible to ask things, even to point out angles
of the situation which might have escaped his attention. And while no
tumbling incoherencies shaped themselves on this grown-up Alexandra’s
lips, she would sit watching the clouds or the stars, and in her eyes,
in her stillness, in her very hands clasped loosely on her knees, was
prayer.
So there were days when she stood listlessly at the window, nursing
vague plans. And there were nights when she lay awake with feverish
eyes on the moonlight marching along the carpet--it was surprising how
fast that moonlight moved--mentally equipping in minutest detail an
expedition into the Hills for Shir Shan’s robe. She was crammed with
facts and theories about this, accumulated greedily from a hundred
sources in the forlorn hope of seeing Blaise Dorin just once before
he started, and perhaps having a share--just a glimpse--of his own
mysterious arrangements.
Dodo Dorin. There was magic in the name. Men loved him, his friends
were legion, of all colors and creeds; men had voluntarily died for him
as he had in turn offered his charmed life for other lives he loved.
God still made men like her father, then, and the art of living was
still practiced by a fortunate few. And the knowledge that she belonged
among them, that she was missing her divine heritage, became veritable
torment. Then, quite unexpectedly, she discovered a way to ease the
misery of it. She learned to shut her eyes and go!
No longer just a wistful looker-on at a distant drama on a mental
motion-picture screen now, for she had found she could _remember_
things. It was the only word she could find for it. Remembering. It
was as though when she had come to a blank wall and could no longer go
forward the doors in front of her had swung softly ajar. Breathlessly,
she peeped and listened at their tantalizing cracks--and this one
showed a deep blue sky curved above a strange red desert city whose
streets were given over to pigeons and the winds--and that one would
reveal, if only she could have touched the door to swing it wide open,
long lines of yellow-robed men, passing, passing, endlessly, with
whispering bare feet--beyond another was the source of nameless music
trickling from unseen, unguessable instruments played by houris or
beggars, there was no telling which--behind another lurked an unknown,
inevitable evil, to which some one would presently pass in--still
another shut her out from some unimaginable paradise of warmth and
kindness and low laughter and fellowship--and none of the doors
would give way an inch more, though her spirit pressed against them
pitifully, its ear against the panel, pleading.
“It’s very odd,” her mind would murmur to her consciousness as it
pattered busily from door to door, eavesdropping, “it’s most unusual;
perhaps we’re going mad--or perhaps it keeps us sane--or perhaps it’s
only natural to Us.”
By piecing together a sort of legacy wrenched by her dire need from
ancestors rich in all such things, a legacy of beauty and discomfort,
of heat and smells and sounds and motion, and adding these to what she
knew and what she could guess of Dorin’s impending venture--she found
she was able to almost go along! This was a new and thrilling game.
More than ever before she pored over books and pictures--raw material
for the Dream, grist for the mill of her omnivorous imagination. So
that bit by bit, rock by rock, mile by mile, and sun by sun, she set
herself to build a world and saw it spread, mirage-like, beyond the
desert at her feet. And here at last was sanctuary.
She was able at times to be very sorry for her mother-in-law. Dreadful
to be like that, dreadful for life to mean so little. Not that her
mother-in-law took life easily. But all the wrong things mattered,
and all the real things, the tremendous things, might just as well not
be there. Rain meant merely that the pavement would be wet. Sun only
relieved one from one’s umbrella. Fog delayed the butcher’s boy. Her
mother-in-law, she decided, had no sense of proportion.
Dreadful, too, to have outlived love. She supposed that that nebulous
being, Clem’s father, had loved his wife, at least in the beginning,
at least when he had asked her, in effect, to become Clem’s mother.
And she supposed Clem’s grandmother had loved her daughter, at least
when she was a child. And the spinster sister, with whom Mrs. Marley
had implacably quarreled--they must have been fond of each other years
ago when they were girls together and had secrets and borrowed each
other’s things. Everything seemed to have had its beginning in love.
And then you came on along the way and love lagged behind, and finally
you turned round to look for it and--it wasn’t there! That was the way
it was with Clem’s mother. She had come so far and left so much of love
behind. There was only Clem’s love left, and Alexandra suspected that
it was mainly scriptural. Dreadful to have outlived love. That left
only pity.
She saw less and less of Clem these days. He was absorbed in the
writing of his new book on the pottery of the Sung period, and there
were beautiful things in the library, loaned for his study and minute,
dispassionate description. She loved to pass her fingertips across the
cool glaze.... But of course the library was kept locked most of the
time. Locked when Clem was in because he must not be disturbed, except,
of course, for meals. Locked when he was out because other people’s
valuable belongings must not be disturbed.
Once when she knew Clem had gone out for the day she stealthily tried
the library door, hoping he might have gone just this once without
remembering to turn the key, hoping to steal in and touch the lovely
whites and greens and buffs without Clem’s nervous admonitions. It did
no harm just to touch....
But Clem always remembered things like keys. The door was locked and
the keyhole was empty. And Alexandra, like her impatient spirit at the
haunted doors to the past, shed swift, unreasonable tears against the
panels because for the moment it was as though the key to Life itself
was in Clem’s pocket.
CHAPTER IV
ONE day she paused beside a flower-girl in the Strand and lifted her
nose to the scent of violets. She had promised herself Tilbury and
a sight of the big ships today. She had declared another truce to
conscience. And then--violets. Quite suddenly she wanted some.
“Violets for consolation and tea at home like a good girl,” she told
herself firmly, “or no violets and Tilbury. Which shall it be?”
She hung on one foot deciding for Tilbury, when the flower-girl
smiled at her. It was a smile of artless flattery, tribute to the
golden-haired princess of the fairy tales. Alexandra smiled back, and
sighed as she put the violets in her belt and turned homeward.
She entered hastily with a nervous laugh.
“Well, I did it this time!”
“Did what?” inquired Mrs. Marley coldly. She had come downstairs after
her nap only to find an empty house. And Dicky was not well and would
not sing. It must have been that bit of lettuce. She would have liked
to discuss his symptoms and reject all suggested remedies. And she had
found an empty house. “Did what?” she inquired coldly.
“Got home in time for tea,”
“Tea is late, as usual. Where have you been, pray?”
“Oh, just round the square. It’s a beautiful day.”
“Where did you get those violets?”
“Aren’t they lovely?” Alexandra took them from her belt and buried her
nose in them. “See, there are two bunches, I’ll share with you.” She
held out the violets. “Smell! Aren’t they sweet?” And she pushed them
impulsively into her mother-in-law’s unsmiling face.
“I asked you where you got them,” observed Mrs. Marley when she had her
breath again.
“I bought them on my way home.” She dropped them as an offering in the
sloping black taffeta lap.
“Oh, did you!” sniffed Mrs. Marley. “Take them away, Alexandra, before
they spot my dress with their stems. Put them in a vase where they
belong. That pink one on the mantel will do. Be careful of it. It was
my mother’s.”
Meekly Alexandra took up her violets, and without even a glance at the
pink vase replaced them in her belt.
“Nothing will induce that girl to bring tea on time,” said Mrs. Marley.
“She does her best. Perhaps the kitchen clock is slow.”
“The minute your husband’s mother ventures to suggest that the service
in this house is abominably slack you begin to find excuses for the
kitchen maid!”
“But I--” Alexandra looked troubled. “She’s very young.”
“You couldn’t be more tender of her feelings if she were your own
daughter. Mine don’t matter.”
“I--I’m very fond of Susan,” faltered Alexandra unluckily.
“I see. Your implication is plain.”
“Oh, _no_, Mother!” flushing pitifully. “But you see----”
“You spoil her, Alexandra. You haven’t children, so you indulge this
little Cockney.” She paused. Alexandra had turned away, tugging at
her gloves with futile fingers. “I’m always sorry for a woman without
daughters and a man without sons,” pursued Mrs. Marley, along a
favorite theme. “Clement’s boy would have been a great comfort to me
now and to him in his old age.” She glanced sharply at Alexandra’s bent
head. “Now what’s the matter? You always act as squeamish as a girl.
If your own mother-in-law can’t say these things to you, who can?”
Silence. “Children,” resumed Mrs. Marley, “give a woman something to do
besides coddle her complexes, as they call them nowadays. In my time
we had nerves as an excuse for not doing our duty. But it’s my opinion
you’re not sorry you don’t have children. And from what I see of you,
it may be just as well----”
Susan came in with tea, and the attack shifted.
“Oh, there you are at last. Tea is late.”
“Yes, ma am.
“Why?” ruthlessly.
“It was the cake, ma’am. _Your_ cake.”
“What’s the matter with it?” Mrs. Marley leveled a lorgnon on the
tea-table.
“Nothin’, ma’am,” hastily. “I--I ain’t used to makin’ it yet, that’s
all.”
“I suppose you forgot to start it in time.”
“N--no, ma’am.” Susan sent an appealing glance toward Alexandra, who
could only basely pretend not to see.
“What then?”
“It--well, it didn’t come right the first time.”
“So you threw it out and made another.”
“Y-yes, ma’am.” It was no good lying. Nothing could be concealed, not
even with lies, from this terrible woman.
Mrs. Marley bent a severe gaze on Alexandra.
“That’s waste,” she said, and “Do something,” was in her tone.
“You may go, Susan,” said Alexandra.
“You may take two weeks’ notice.”
“Mother!”
“I’ve had enough of this incompetence. I shall engage a girl myself.”
Susan became tearful. Exile from her adored and lenient mistress would
leave little to live for.
Now, Alexandra had an almost masculine horror of scenes. Already the
situation had got out of hand. Life was resolving itself into dozens of
these small daily crises, which left her faint and sick with something
between white rage and the utter slackness of despair. Gently she
turned the weeping Susan about and gave her a push toward the door.
“That’s all, child. It will be all right.”
Susan went, her apron to her eyes.
“Come back,” spoke Mrs. Marley, “and close that door behind you.”
But Alexandra was there first, leaning against the panels, her hand on
the knob, her voice a little shaken, very low.
“All that fuss about ten minutes, Mother!”
“It’s not the first time. I’ve borne all I can from that girl. She’s
got to go.”
“I engaged Susan. She’s a good girl--faithful, and tries hard.”
“She’s incompetent.”
“She’ll learn.”
“Not here.”
Alexandra drew a long breath.
“She’s not going.”
“Alexandra--” began Mrs. Marley in an awful voice, and Alexandra’s
fingers flew to the growing ache between her eyes.
“Oh, _please_ don’t call me by that horrible name!” Always she had
hated the unwieldiness of it, which seemed to carry the weight of a
rebuke. She was Alex when she was good. Even Clem knew that.
“You’ve answered to it for near to thirty years, now. I fancy it will
serve for the next thirty.” She waited. “You understand me, Alexandra.
The girl goes. I shall speak to Clement.”
Susan too! She was to have nothing left. And Susan would cry and beg
to stay, and nothing would get her a reprieve. Nothing. It was no
good resisting. You got mowed down and the juggernaut passed over you
and left you flat and maimed, but never quite dead. Something in you
always rebelled, cropped up, dragged you painfully to your feet, and
you made one last stand and went down again, endlessly....
Alexandra found herself on the way to the door, heard herself saying
submissively:
“Very well, Mother.”
“Aren’t you going to pour the tea?”
“I--” She had learned that automatic acquiescence was cheaper in the
long run. Listlessly, she returned to the tea-table and prepared a cup
with cream and two lumps.
“And whom is that for, pray?” inquired Mrs. Marley when she had quite
finished.
“Who--why--” What had she done? She glanced up, puzzled.
“You’ve put in two lumps and cream. I take cream and one lump, and for
some absurd reason you don’t take cream at all.”
Alexandra set her teeth. It was Clem who had two lumps. And she had a
silly aversion to murking the clear amber of good Ceylon with cream.
Her fingers shook over the second cup. She dropped a spoon in the
saucer with a clatter, snatched at it, and tipped an empty cup
sickeningly.
“Did you break anything?” Mrs. Marley’s cold blue eyes were on those
shaking hands. “You’re getting as clumsy as Susan.”
“Why not dismiss me too?” Alexandra handed the cup, childishly at arm’s
length, and laughed with an odd defiance. “I’ll take two weeks’ notice!”
“That’s hardly in good taste, Alexandra. You are my son’s wife. I’m
sure I do my best to further an understanding between us. I can’t reach
the cake.”
Alexandra handed the cake.
“Aren’t you going to have tea?” demanded Mrs. Marley.
“Not today.” She turned away, picking up a book from the table, a
handsomely bound offering from Starke.
“Now, don’t sulk. You’ve had your nose in that book for days. What is
it about?”
“Central Asia. The Hill country.”
“Uncomfortable region. Extremes of heat and cold, I understand. Why do
you read about it?”
“It’s more interesting than London.”
“Nonsense. There are no English there.”
Alexandra managed to smile faintly. Mrs. Marley sipped her tea, which
was too hot, and munched her cake, still warm as she liked it, while
Alexandra experienced that unreasoning hatred of people who eat or
sleep when we ourselves for any reason under the sun cannot. Then Mrs.
Marley spoke again.
“Is any one coming to tea?”
“I don’t think so. Clem should be here soon, of course.”
“Did you see that man Starke on your walk this afternoon?”
“Starke?” She lifted surprised eyes. “Why--no, of course not!”
“I may as well tell you, Alexandra, I do not like that man.”
Now, if the truth be told, there was that about him from which
Alexandra herself instinctively withdrew. But he was a link, almost the
only link now, with that never-never-land her aching spirit craved.
That, and criticism from this source, drove her headlong to his defense.
“He’s an interesting talker--a man of wide experience--he’s traveled a
lot--I like the things he has to tell----”
“You’re often alone with him.”
“Only if Clem is late or has another engagement.”
“He doesn’t look at Clem when you’re in the room!”
The fact that Alexandra was dimly aware of this only tried her patience
the more.
“But really, Mother----!”
“You’re not a plain woman, Alexandra, and you dress as if you knew it.
This fellow Starke has the rich man’s eye for pretty women----”
This went beyond all reason. Her convulsive movement shut the book with
a snap.
“Mother, don’t you think a man like Clem knows----”
“A man like Clement is always as blind as a bat!”
“Then you think--” She was dangerously quiet now, level-eyed with
outraged dignity. “You think I am the sort of woman who----”
“I think you are the sort of woman my son ought never to have married!”
Anger flared again, and was mastered. Her voice was very low.
“I’ve tried not to be that.”
And then Mrs. Marley said an amazing thing, a thing which left
Alexandra wide-eyed and groping among its infinite possibilities.
“It’s no good trying, in these things. A woman either is or she isn’t.”
“You say--it’s no good trying----?”
“A woman is either a born home-maker or she isn’t. I was never so happy
as at some little task about the house, though my husband thought as
Clement does that a lady should fold her hands and be waited upon. My
husband was a remarkable man, but he knew too much about the wrong kind
of women. He never liked to see me in an apron. But I liked to cook and
I cooked. I was a born home-maker.”
“Yes, Mother,” said Alexandra mechanically at the pause. She had
heard all this before. Her mind was busy with something new and
disturbing--something that opened vistas. _It’s no good trying...._
“But then, _I_ had sons,” continued Mrs. Marley, complacently. “A
childless woman----”
The words beat in on Alexandra’s abstraction. Words that she had told
herself would some day drag her screaming from her chair with murderous
intent. They brought back the lurking memory of the only illness she
had ever known--the awful endlessness of it, stretching into leaden,
wasted weeks, crawling with lowered voices and firm, gentle hands,
quick professional hands of hateful efficiency.... And then the horror
of that long weakness when she tried to move, she who had been so light
and strong. The indignity, the impotence, the utter misery of having to
be waited upon. The impatience of slowly returning strength that failed
her ignominiously again and again....
She rose with a little cry.
“Mother, I----”
The doorbell rang.
“There,” said Mrs. Marley with a kind of triumph. “It _is_ that
man Starke! You knew he was coming to tea today! That’s why you came
hurrying home!”
“I _didn’t_ know!” cried Alexandra, passionately innocent. “Why
should it be Mr. Starke? Why do you always----”
“You intentionally deceived me, Alexandra, when I asked you. I shall
speak to Clement about this. It’s gone on long enough.”
Something snapped somewhere. Alexandra heard her own voice, outside
herself, as though another woman spoke, a woman she tried in vain to
hush.
“If you don’t stop ‘speaking to Clement’ something dreadful is going
to happen! Clem and I were muddling through well enough, but since you
came it’s been horrible! _Horrible!_”
“Be quiet!” commanded Mrs. Marley, just in time.
“It’s Mr. Starke, ma’am,” said Susan from the doorway.
CHAPTER V
HE surveyed Alexandra with pleasure from the threshold as she turned,
dark-eyed, a little flushed.
“Well, well!” he began with that weighty, well-meant geniality of his
that seemed somehow to make one’s answering smile compulsory. “Thought
I’d get in yesterday, but was detained.”
“How do you do?”
With a swift reversal of mood, she gave him her slim, boyish paw almost
gratefully. Her lips twitched. Her eyes fell to hide the sudden,
unholy glee which surprised even herself. He was too opportune, too
theatrically pat upon Mrs. Marley’s unfounded suspicions. She was all
at once perversely delighted to have appearances so against her. It
made Mrs. Marley so completely a fool. It served her so jolly well
right to have been wrong! It was delicious. Life was a joke, if you
stopped to think!
“We were just speaking of you,” said Alexandra, with hidden eyes.
“Speak of the angels, eh!” boomed Starke.
She recovered her hand hastily. It was positively almost as though he
had tweaked her chin. Things were still funny, but she was the only one
who knew they were funny. That was the worst of life’s best jokes. One
laughed and was misunderstood. It made a sense of humor a liability.
Meanwhile Mrs. Marley was frigid. Mr. Starke remained oblivious to
temperature.
He lighted a cigarette, and having done so asked permission to smoke.
Alexandra gave it, with one eye on Mrs. Marley, in whose presence not
even Clement’s briar pipe went unchallenged.
“Sure you won’t light up with me?” he queried, and as always she
shook her head, thinking of Clem. That was funny too. “You’re a real
old-fashioned woman, aren’t you!” he said admiringly. “You know,
some day some clever woman is going to make it fashionable to be
old-fashioned.” He turned genially to Mrs. Marley, who sat wrapped in
an icy silence. “She could set the style, eh?”
“But I’m not clever!” protested Alexandra. No one had ever told her
otherwise.
“Unless you know you are, you aren’t!” he grinned at her fondly.
Mrs. Marley rose with a rustle of black taffeta.
“If you will excuse me--” she announced. “There’s a little sun coming
in my window. I think it might be good for Dicky. He’s not been well.”
“Birdie a bit off his feed?” queried Starke sympathetically. “Now,
that’s too bad. Try him with a bit of red pepper on the yolk of a
hard-boiled egg. That’ll set him up. It’s your crazy climate. I know
how he feels!”
“He’s only sick of his cage,” said Alexandra. “It will pass.”
“What’s that?” Mrs. Marley paused accusingly, the cage in her hand,
Dicky swinging dizzily with protesting, piercing chirps.
“He’s dreaming of tree-tops and the sky today.”
“Nonsense. He’s used to a cage. He was born and reared in one.”
“It doesn’t matter where you’re born.” A sullen restlessness possessed
Alexandra’s white and gold. “Whatever is born in you will raise the
devil just the same.”
“Really, Alexandra----!”
Mrs. Marley majestically withdrew. Not every one can move majestically
with a bird-cage in one hand. Life had left her behind, stranded in
the backwater of a mind more Victorian than Victoria’s own, and wholly
without the intense sympathies of the great queen. Looking at the thing
impartially, it can be seen that a canary-bird was the inevitable
affinity for Mrs. Marley.
“But how on earth did you know about the red pepper?” asked Alexandra
curiously.
“My mother used to have ’em,” he replied succinctly, and stretched his
legs as he sat down. “Well--! Got you all to myself now!”
“I can’t think what’s keeping Clem.” It was at such times that she was
really rather glad of Clem, and of his leisurely habit of taking tea at
home. One always knew where one was, with Clem.
“He’ll turn up, I guess.” That settled Clem. “Things are looking up,
anyway. Dorin’s back,” he announced with satisfaction.
“Blaise Dorin--back!” She caught at the name as she snatched at
Shanghai or Kublai Khan--a name spangled with romance, foreign to
Bloomsbury. Would she see him?--could she see him?--they were such old
friends, now that she had ridden with him into the Hills.... She would
like to tell him how she had learned to remember. He would understand
that--he wouldn’t laugh--he would so splendidly understand what it
meant to her to be able to remember. Would he come to see her, she
wondered, or would there be time for her now, on his way back to the
jealous Hills?
“Got back from Africa last night. Been up to some mischief or other in
the desert. I’ve got him with me at the Cecil now. Don’t intend to let
him out of my sight for long till I see him actually on the boat. He’s
a card, that fellow! I like him, darned if I don’t, for all his crazy
notions!”
“But are they crazy? That’s the question!” said Alexandra.
“Yes, well, women always agree with men who look like Dodo Dorin,” he
remarked dryly.
“That’s hardly fair!”
“Maybe not. Anyway, we’ve both come round. I know I can’t get anybody
to do the job the way he can, and he knows he’ll have the time of his
life bringing it off. Well, there we are! I’ve got him now!”
“On his terms?” That was tactless, but she had to know.
“Largely. He’s worth it. I believe he’s the only man in the world who
can deal this game and win. And I want that robe. I’ve wanted it for
years. And I’ve as good as got it once he’s on the way.” Starke blew a
smoke-ring and destroyed it with a breath. “Provided he gets back,” he
added.
“You think there may really be trouble, then?”
“Well, there’s a lot of superstition to contend with in those parts--we
all know that. And those beggars will play horse with a bargain any
day. And the region is full of roving gangs accountable to nobody. But
I guess he’ll pull through all right,” he concluded comfortably. “There
ought to be two of him, to make sure. But Taunton’s blowing bubbles in
South Africa--can’t get hold of him for another two-three months. And
Dorin won’t hear of taking anybody else.”
“When does he start?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight!” Disappointment engulfed her unbearably. She wouldn’t see
him, then. She couldn’t tell him about that other world she had
made--_her_ world, where she rode in the heat and the silence as
her ancestors had done, _their_ world, hers and his, where they
were old, old comrades in arms and talked together exactly as they
pleased of things other people didn’t comprehend and couldn’t approve.
Except Bob Taunton. She had wanted to tell him how kind Bob Taunton had
been. And now there wouldn’t be time. Life wasn’t kind, she cried out
sickly within herself. It stripped one so. It might have let her see
him just once--hear his plans--tell him her little news and hear him
say it was good. Life might have helped her that much, when she loved
it so! Oh, life _wasn’t_ kind! “Tonight!” she cried.
“He’s a fast worker, Dorin is! Barring something very unforeseen, the
robe is as good as in my hands right now. Which only goes to prove my
pet theory.”
“What’s that?” She was sitting very still, her great eyes gauntly
on his face. Tonight! The Dream was in shards at her feet. Could
she ever build it again from the beginning, if he went without even
knowing it had once miraculously existed? Could she ever face again
that endless labor of love, if she were actually left behind? Had she
been--hoping? For what? She could never get away. “What theory?” she
asked mechanically, because he seemed to be waiting for her to ask.
“Why, simply that if you want a thing bad enough, there’s a way to
get it.” He perceived that he had made a gratifying impression, and
elaborated. “No matter what you want in this world, if you want it long
enough and hard enough, there’s always some way to get it. You may not
like what you have to do, but there it is if you’ve got the guts. You
can go through with it or not as you please. I didn’t like crawling on
my knees to Dorin, but I did it! And I’ll be glad, about a year from
now when I’ve got Shir Shan’s robe--” He clenched a mighty fist slowly.
“--in my hand.”
There fell a tiny pause, while Alexandra followed her own thoughts down
this new and somewhat terrifying vista. It was only another version
of faith in an answer to prayer, wasn’t it. Anything you wanted--if
you had the courage! But what if you wanted the sea ... hot sand....
Himalayan cold.... What if you wanted to die with your boots on?
With an effort she recalled his last words.
“A year,” she said. “Will it take that long?”
“He’s got a stop-over somewhere in the desert on the way. More business
with that sheik pal of his, there. Take a month or two, maybe. Then on
to Port Said.”
“Port Said!” she echoed softly, still with a separate consciousness
at work within her. That sultry city of iniquities, sprawling on the
fringe of shifting mirage, not by any stretch of the most fatuous
imagination inviting, not even picturesque. And yet--a man who knows
has written that it is there that the great Smell of the East begins.
Port Said!
“Dirty hole,” said Starke. “Ever been there?”
“No.”
“Ever been anywhere?”
“No.”
“Well, personally, I like to travel.” His narrowing eyes missed nothing
of the wide abstraction of her gaze. “But I must say I like to do it in
style. Got a nice little yacht--all the comforts of home.” His glance
round the room was eloquent. “No roughing it in mine. I leave that end
of it to these crazy fools like Dorin. He goes for the sake of going. I
want to be comfortable on the way.”
“The idea,” said Alexandra, almost unaware that she spoke, “is to get
there.”
Starke leaned toward her.
“Say--I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Only been waiting for a chance.”
There was a portentous silence, which she broke at last, preoccupied.
“Well?”
“You know, I like to play a sort of game with myself. I like to look at
people and decide what they want worst--what they need worst to round
out their lives--what they’d ask for first if their fairy godmother
came along. I wonder--if you know yourself what it is that you want.”
Still he had not her usual keen attention. Her eyes came slowly to his
face. She answered automatically.
“Why should you think I want anything?”
“I don’t think. I know. Besides, everybody wants something they haven’t
got, if they’re any good at all.”
“You think there is no such thing as contentment?”
“Show me the man who has stopped seeking--craving--hankering for
something, no matter what he may have attained already, and I’ll show
you a man who’s as good as buried. With a woman it’s usually different.
But not with you.”
She was a little confused now, conscious of the steadiness and
hunger of his gaze, and she rejected several half formed replies
instinctively. How had this got started? She had no desire to talk
about herself or to be talked about. Not by this man whose eyes took
liberties, however humbly.
“And you, Mr. Starke--will you never have everything you want?”
“I hope not!” His smile was oddly whimsical for so big a man. “When I
stop wanting things I hope to God they come cover me up with leaves
quick! Oh, yes, I keep thinking ‘Now if my luck only holds good for
just this one thing more, I’ll never want anything so bad again.’ But I
always go back on it, sooner or later. I’ve just done it again.”
“You mean the robe,” she puzzled.
“Oh, yes, the robe!” He waved it aside. “I’ve wanted that for years.
And now that I’ve practically got it, I’ve come on to the next thing.
This time I want--the moon.”
She laughed briefly, not quite keeping up with him, not quite at ease,
not quite knowing why.
“I’m afraid that _is_ hopeless!”
“They said that about the robe. But I’ll have it. You’ll see. And
you’ve told yourself that what you want is hopeless--haven’t you. But
I’ve got what you want. Money.”
She shook her head with a dim feeling of relief.
“Wrong.”
“Not the glitter of the gold itself. That doesn’t satisfy me either.
But the things that Money will buy. That’s what you want. You love
beauty. You _are_ beauty, in your queer, cool way. Lord, I’d like
to see you with a few million behind you!”
“Mr. Starke----!”
“Why, you were made for palaces!” he swept on. “You could carry
a fortune in jewels better than any one I ever saw! And look at
you! Violets wilting in your belt and not a diamond to your name!
Look at this room! There’s a room in my house done in peacock and
ivory that would set you off! And a conservatory, with five kinds
of orchids! You’re wasted here--you’ll be an old woman in five
years--stifled--mummified!”
He leaned closer, clasping his big hands loosely lest they betray him,
clumsily in earnest. He meant it so. This fact stood out through her
bewilderment. He meant it so!
“There’s nothing like an unlimited clothes allowance for keeping a
woman young,” he was saying. “And for all your brains and coolness
you’re a woman. Cloth of gold is your style. I’m not joking. Woven
gold, like that robe I’m sending Dorin after. _Would you dare to wear
it?_”
He seemed to be waiting for her to say something. Her mind fumbled
desperately. What did one do when things like this happened? Presumably
one was indignant, insulted, outraged. That is, if he meant-- Well,
what did he mean? He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t made love to her. He
wasn’t the sort of man who made love to people. What did he mean? She
wasn’t quite sure.
“I don’t think I--understand all this,” she said.
“I guess you do.”
He watched her anxiously. His eyes went to her hands. Queer how they
had always fascinated him. Quiet, slim, helpless hands, cool, he
thought, to a man’s lips. They reminded him of pearls. Pink pearls,
a little warmed by the sun. Some men, he knew, could have contrived
to kiss her hands before now. He didn’t know how to kiss a woman’s
hands like that.... Still he waited, his eyes on her hands. What ailed
the girl? It was not like her to pose. Had she been brought up in a
convent? Why did she only sit and look at him? Couldn’t she understand?
“Well, then, I’ll make it plainer,” he said at last. “You haven’t by
any means got what you want out of life, little girl, and you know it.
But you remember what I said just now, and I’ve proved it again and
again. If you want what you want bad enough, there’s always some way to
get it. Now you see, don’t you? I’ve got what you want. Money to dress
and travel and gratify a thousand whims. And I want you.”
For a moment she stared at him and through him. So that was what he
meant! Odd she didn’t feel outraged. Not even angry with him. Only
rather numb. And she was suddenly, illuminatingly aware that he meant
to be kind. He was sorry for her. He wanted to help. He was offering
the best bargain he knew.
Dizzily, she rose and turned away.
“Now, take it easy,” his voice went on, reassuringly. “Take your time
about it. And get this. I’m in dead earnest. It’s on the level, do
you hear? Marley would divorce you. And Shir Shan’s robe would be my
wedding present to the most exquisite woman I’ve ever known.”
She was standing motionless, her face hidden in her hands. He rose
uncertainly and remained where he was, half the room between them. Why
didn’t she say something? Had he bungled it? He had done the best he
could, but he was a blunt man. At least she hadn’t shown him the door.
“I expect I’ve been pretty clumsy about it,” he admitted humbly, as
she still said nothing. “There wasn’t too much time, and I can’t make
pretty speeches anyhow. But I--” His forehead was damp. The words
came jerkily, torn from his inarticulate emotion by his terrible
earnestness. “Well, you won’t--be sorry--if you come. I swear it. I’ll
give you everything on earth you want, little girl. I--I’ll treat you
square--you know that--don’t you--and I’ll bow down before you and
worship.”
At last she spoke, her voice muffled with her hands.
“Please go now.”
He hesitated, frowning like a worried mastiff.
“Does that mean Yes--or No?”
“Oh-h-h-h!” It was half moan, half sigh. “Need you ask that?”
He had refused to contemplate failure, before now. He had formed no
arguments beyond the stating of his case. She was miserable here--a
man with half an eye could see that--and he had so much to offer. And
he wanted her so. That would make up for a lot, in the end, wouldn’t
it? It was a fair bargain. She would be his wife--eventually. That made
it all right. They would cruise about the Orient for a while. Then,
when it was all settled, he would take her home to America. Already he
saw her at the other end of his table. The finest woman wearing the
finest jewels in the room. And his. _His._
He was a man who dies hard.
“Now, just a minute,” he said. “Take a look at your life here. Look
ahead. What do you see? Drab old age. Canary-birds. Black silk. We all
have the right to a splash of color.” A telling shot. He felt it hit
and came toward her, a hand out. “I’ll be good to you--can’t you see
that? What’s a man’s money for, if not to amuse a pretty woman?” His
fingers touched her sleeve, ran down it to close on her wrist. “What
are you afraid of, little girl?”
She faced him quietly. Her knees felt queer. She wondered if he could
hear her silly heart thumping. After all, what was she afraid of? He
was kind. He was good. He meant well. She didn’t have to go with him.
All she had to say was “No,” and he would go away. Nothing to be afraid
of.
“No--please,” she said.
But he stood there, clutching her hand helplessly.
“But--I’ll take you out of this!” he expostulated.
_Out of this!_ She caught her breath, and her eyes swept the
room, wincing anew at its red plush ugliness. She hated it so! It
was all she had, all she ever would have, and she hated it so! To be
taken out of it--never to have to come back to it--to be free of it,
forever--_to get away_....
His fingers were hot on her hand. He bent his head and his breath was
hot on her cheek.
“They’ve no right to keep you here,” he said, and seeing her hesitate
while her eyes went round the room he became suddenly eloquent,
driven by the fear of losing even what little he had of her, and by
the leaping hope.... “No more right than the oyster to its pearl!”
he cried. “Pearls--that’s you. Not diamonds--not rubies--nothing
hard, to hurt you. No sharp corners for my little girl. I’ll buy you
pearls--ropes of them! And white satin--velvets--ermine! I’ll make you
a queen! There’s nothing soft and warm and beautiful you shan’t have,
little girl! Paris--Nice--Monte--New York--Miami--we’ll show ’em, eh?”
She was trying dizzily to think. Paris--ermine--pearls--orchids....
But she didn’t want conservatories--that would be as bad as the red
plush! She didn’t want Paris--she wanted the Hills! She didn’t even
want the robe--all she cared about was going after it! Still--to leave
Bloomsbury forever--even for Paris--even for conservatories.... It
would see an end to this. It would be a sort of freedom. It would
be ships, and the sea, and moving about in the world. It would
be adventure, in its way. It would be to dare madly, to gamble
greatly.... Gamble? But with what chance of winning? Ropes of pearls.
Bonds. Always bonds, because she had been born a girl. And it was the
sharp corners that she wanted. It was not just getting out of this,
after all, but getting into the desert that she wanted. He didn’t
understand. He didn’t understand a bit better than Clem did. And they
both wanted her, both loved her, both were doing their best. It seemed
too bad, all that kindness, all that loving, going to waste. But there
was nothing she could do. Nothing but stay where she was. Clem had
loved her first. Poor Clem.
“Please go,” she said, very low. And then, quickly, “I--I’m sorry.”
What a cool, white thing she was! How she took her time about things
and thought her way through! No heroics. No tears. No cant. How she
kept her head up! Honest, too. She played fair. Lord, what a woman! He
snatched at her awkwardly.
“For God’s sake, don’t be a fool, little girl!”
With a gasp she flickered out of reach and rang the bell. He stood and
watched her go.
“All right,” he said quietly. “Think it over. I’m at the Cecil, you
know. A telephone call any time----”
The latch rattled under Susan’s hand. Alexandra heard it with a dull
thud of her heart. The decision had got itself made somehow. She had
elected to stay. The chance was gone forever. Thrown away. She had
been a fool--but she was glad.
“Did you ring, ma’am?”
“Yes, Susan. Mr. Starke is going. Please show him out.”
The sentence dwindled away in her throat. Clement had appeared in the
doorway behind Starke, who put the lid on it by passing him without a
word, not seeming to see him. She stared after Starke helplessly. He
looked round-shouldered, and old. Had it mattered so, to him? Did she
matter that much--to anybody?
She turned toward Clem, troubled, pathetic, feeling small and to blame,
desperately wanting to be told that she had done the only thing. She
met his eyes across the room, and something within her stumbled and
went down. She was cold and tired and had a headache. And she was not
at all sure she had done the only thing.
CHAPTER VI
MARLEY waited until the front door had closed and Susan’s footsteps
died away. The atmosphere became almost unbearably charged. Then he
spoke.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, I--I’ll have fresh tea in a minute, Clem. You’re very late.”
She was wondering how she was to touch the cups with hands that shook
like this.
“Never mind tea. What happened between you and Starke just now?”
“I asked him to go. He won’t come here again.” She started blindly for
the door. “Please don’t let’s talk about it any more. I----”
Mrs. Marley stood on the threshold, blocking the way. Alexandra
swerved, hopelessly trapped.
“Didn’t I hear Clement come in?”
“Yes, Mother.” His eyes were on his wife.
“You’re late, my son.”
“I’m sorry, Mother.” What had happened to upset Alexandra like this?
“Where’s that man?”
“Starke? He’s just gone.” She was white. He was sure her hands were
shaking.
“Odd,” said Mrs. Marley, “that he should take himself off just as you
come in.” In the silence she struck her stick on the floor. “Well, out
with it! What’s happened?”
“Clem, I’m very tired,” pleaded Alexandra. “I--I was just going to my
room----”
“You were not so tired an hour ago,” said Mrs. Marley. “Sit down and
pour your husband some tea.”
“He--he said he didn’t want it----”
“Sit down!” Mrs. Marley pointed with her stick. “I’ve got something to
say to Clement.”
Alexandra gripped cold fingers in foolish panic. She had had about all
she could bear.
“Clem, I--I’ve got a headache----”
“Clement, will you ask Alexandra not to leave the room until I have
finished?”
“Oh, good heavens, can’t you see my position?” he cried. “Can’t you see
that this atmosphere of constant strife and dissension is bad for my
work? I’m getting nervous--I don’t sleep well--I--I--my food doesn’t
tempt me! I’m all upset!”
“It’s time you paid a little less attention to your work and your food
and a little more to what is going on under your very nose,” said his
mother. “What _I_ want to know is--how much longer is it to go on?”
“Very well, we’ll come to an understanding here and now, and then I
shall expect to be undisturbed. Alex--” He indicated a chair, and she
took it listlessly. “Now, Mother?”
Mrs. Marley seated herself expansively on the sofa and the tribunal was
on. Weeks of suspicions, fancied slights, misunderstandings, years of
prejudice and brooding, lurked behind her cold eyes. She had promised
herself a reckoning. She had nursed the idea of a reckoning, pictured
it, planned it, a sort of Judgment Day _à trois_, which would
leave this yellow-haired young woman in a properly penitential frame of
mind. There could be no extenuating circumstances this time. This time
she had overstepped. The Taunton business had been a little different.
There was a matter-of-factness about it all. One couldn’t lay hold of
the man. And she had heard them talk. Madness. But impersonal madness.
But this fellow named Starke--he brought her things--he looked at her.
Their voices were low. Too low to be heard from the stairs. Clement
should be undeceived at once, should know once and for all that the
woman he had married and whom he had dared to defend against his own
mother was not fit to be a Marley. One could have seen all along by the
color of her hair that she was not. Reckoning. It was high time.
“Did you know that man Starke was coming here this afternoon?” she
inquired of Clement, in the complacent tones of one who is perfectly
sure the answer will increase the unpleasantness of the situation.
“No. What’s that got to do with it?”
“_She_ knew.”
“I didn’t!” Alexandra bit her lip over the foolish denial.
“She knew he was coming and she didn’t tell you and she didn’t tell
me. It looks very odd, to my way of thinking.”
“But I didn’t know he was coming!” protested Alexandra with the guilty
vehemence of innocence. “You certainly don’t think I’d be planning
anything clandestine at my own tea-table!” This shocked them both.
Unexpectedly her inconsequent sense of the ridiculous tittered again
within her. “In the first place, there’s no screen for Mr. Starke to
hide behind when Clem came in, the way they do in the French farces!”
She laughed incomprehensibly, in their stony faces. Things were
getting out of proportion. It made her dizzy. And her head ached.
“Oh, it’s simply too absurd! Why shouldn’t I have told you? I didn’t
know--I--didn’t know--” She faltered, sobered, over what she hadn’t
known. She saw again in her mind’s eye that unfamiliar stoop to
Starke’s thick shoulders. It wasn’t funny. But it made her dizzy.
“No women ever come to tea.” Mrs. Marley brought forward her next
point. “Where are all your women friends?”
“I haven’t many.” Then, defiantly, “We don’t seem to speak the same
language.”
“What’s that?” said Marley. This was going to be one of her difficult
flights which so confused and annoyed him.
“We’ve nothing to talk about--nothing to be friends _with_. Women
whose ideas are bounded by puddings and prams make the best wives
according to your mother’s standards. I’m outside the pale!” she told
them, jeering, quite mad.
“Whose fault is that?” said Mrs. Marley from the sofa, and Alexandra’s
eyes darted angrily in that direction only to slide off ignominiously
from the ice in the gaze which was fixed upon her.
“Can’t you take this situation a little more seriously, Alex?” Clem was
inquiring patiently. He did wish she could talk sense in an argument.
“Can’t you try to be a little more considerate----”
“Seriously!” She was looking at him now with an odd intentness.
“Yes, seriously!” he repeated crossly. “It is getting serious. I----”
“Oh, you see that at last, do you!” said his mother.
He turned to her courteously, a man almost ludicrously between the
devil and the deep blue sea.
“I beg your pardon, Mother?”
“So you are beginning to realize at last that your house is not in
order. How do you know where she goes or whom she sees or what she does
all day long? Yes, and nights too! She disappears for hours--she’s
late to meals--she comes in looking as though she had been up to
something--! It seems very odd to me!”
So that was it! The old, old question. Well, he had warned her. He
turned on his wife severely.
“Now, Alex, I’ve mentioned this to you before. This is the last time.
These mad excursions of yours at all hours must stop. Do you hear?
They must stop!”
“Stop--my walks?”
“It won’t do. I’ve told you that before. Hereafter, you will be more
careful of appearances. Less free!”
“Appearances!” snorted Mrs. Marley. “Are appearances all you think of,
then?”
“What--what--?” His eyes went to the door through which Starke had
passed without a word. She had asked him not to come again. _Why?_
“You went out last night about nine o’clock, Alexandra,” Mrs. Marley
observed, settling to it.
“Yes.”
“Where did you go?”
“Why--nowhere.”
“You were gone more than three hours. What did you do all that time?”
“I-- Does it matter?”
“I begin to think it does.”
Marley clutched at reason.
“Mother, I--I think we’ve had quite enough of this. If--if you’ll just
leave this to me----”
“That will do, Clement!” she rounded on him. “I’m handling this! Well,
Alexandra?”
“I sat for a long time in the square.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, I-- That is, there was a policeman.”
“A policeman?” Clement was thoroughly horrified.
“He asked me if I was all right. I said--said yes, that I lived just
over the way and couldn’t sleep,” she stumbled on, knowing the futility
of trying to make them understand what even the policeman, looking into
her white face, had understood--her desperate need to be let alone.
“He--he just walked up and down on the other side--till I came in. I--I
was looking at the stars. They were so near--if you look at the stars
long enough they come down to you. You can get in among them, even here
in London----”
“Never mind the stars. You didn’t come in until after midnight. Not
until after Clement came home from the club. You weren’t with him--were
you?”
“No, but--I--I saw him come in----”
“Oh, you saw him come in! Where were you then?”
“There in the square--I--” She was becoming confused, hunted, with a
horror that was like guilt.
“How long had you been in the square?” the relentless voice pursued her.
“Why--all the time--I don’t know--it must have been quite a while-- Why
do you question me like this! I’m not a child!”
“No, and neither are we children, Alexandra! Yet you want us to believe
that you saw no one and expected to see no one between nine and
midnight?”
“Yes--no--I--why, of course--!” She was bewildered, at the
breaking-point. “I don’t understand what you mean--I----”
Once more Marley interfered, torn between a good man’s loyalty to his
mother, right or wrong, his own knowledge of his wife, and a hideous,
creeping doubt of her.
“Mother, this is--! Oh, this is unheard-of--preposterous----!”
“I tell you, Clement, it’s time you put an end to her unaccountable
absences from this house! Take this man Starke who was here today. If
you used one-tenth the intuition God gave you you wouldn’t trust him
alone with her for one minute----”
“_Clem!_”
“A word to the wise, Alexandra!” Mrs. Marley turned on her at the cry.
“I’ll say no more--this time.”
For a second their eyes held. Then Alexandra began to laugh, her own
brave sanity and guiltlessness in pitiful revolt against her own cold
horror. This thing could not be! It was nightmare--these things being
said to her in her own home while Clem stood by in a silence that could
mean only doubt! Nightmare, but while it lasted she was afraid. And so
she laughed, stiff-lipped, at terror.
“Oh, how perfectly ridiculous!” she laughed. “Oh, how perfectly
incredible it all is! And this is what you want me to take more
seriously, Clem! Don’t you see the joke?” She dropped her head in her
hands, rocking, laughing. “You want me to take the creeping paralysis
of this house more seriously! You want me to grieve over the ghastly
process of being buried alive in this house! You object to my levity at
my own funeral--levity being unseemly in a corpse! I must preserve the
dignity of the inquisition--I must wear my martyr’s crown with a long
face--my ghost must not walk at night--” The laughter rattled on.
“Alex!” Clement shook her with a hand on her shoulder. “Alexandra!
I’ve never seen you like this! For God’s sake, Alex, be quiet!
_Alex_--!”
“Oh, go away!” she cried wildly. “Go away, both of you, or I shall
_scream_!” And then the laughter crossed the borderline into tears.
Clement fell back aghast, at sea. This madness meant one of two
things. But it is so hard to distinguish between flagrant guilt and an
innocence that is well-nigh divine!
Mrs. Marley’s sharp voice clove the air.
“Now, stop that, Alexandra! A foolish woman’s last resource is always
hysteria. Stop it!”
They waited, while Alexandra became chokingly quieter. With all his
honest soul, Clement Marley wanted to believe in her. He told himself
futilely that he did believe in her. And yet he did not go and take
her in his arms. He left her huddled there beneath his mother’s eyes,
alone. And then it was too late.
Mrs. Marley, having done her duty and relieved her mind, rose at last
and smoothed her taffeta skirt. She was agreeably aware of a crisis.
She had, to put it crudely, started something. The rest was up to
Clement. Now he knew. She had done enough for the time being. One might
have known that Alexandra would cry. Women with that color hair always
cried. They thought it was becoming. Clement’s taste in women was like
his father’s. Why had her life had to be so littered with blondes!
“A word to the wise, Alexandra,” she repeated crisply. “If you mend
your ways at once, I fancy nothing more need be said of this. Don’t
think I don’t perceive how things are between you and my son--” This
was for Clement too. “But Marley is too old a name to court a needless
scandal in the divorce courts.” She moved toward the door. “But for
Clement’s sake--mend your ways.”
The sound of her stick died away on the stairs at last.
Alexandra turned shaking to Marley in the bleak silence that was left.
“You--heard that? _You heard what she said to me?_ She is able to
suggest--to _believe_ that of me--and yet--_if_ I mend my
ways--!” With a gasp of shame she buried her face in her hands.
Things had been going a little fast for him. He did feel, of course,
that he knew Alexandra too well for this. But after ten years what
had they? Nothing. Less than nothing. A closed door. He felt dimly,
too, that she had been deeply hurt--wronged, even. But, after all,
what could he have said or done more than he had done? An old woman’s
notions--one must make allowances--the past generation--after all, a
man’s mother--! Besides--three hours--the square at midnight.... Poor
Clem.
“Oh, my God, why don’t you say something!” Her head was back, her eyes
blazing up at him darkly.
“Even then, Clem, you might have-- But no.”
“Now, Alex, I hardly know what to think of all this, it’s--it’s most
unfortunate. I suppose we must try to forget it. But you had fair
warning, didn’t you? Didn’t I tell you before she came that she would
never understand your odd comings and goings? And besides, that--that
business in the square last night was a bit thick, you know. I mean
to say--a policeman--! Suppose some one had seen you! I think I’m a
fairly reasonable man, but there is a limit. As Mother said--for my
sake, you really must-- Understand, I do not--er--doubt you myself.
But hereafter, oblige me by taking such walks as are necessary to your
health at a respectable hour, and don’t turn up missing at half a dozen
meals in the week. You--you can see my position, can’t you?”
He patted her shoulder perfunctorily, as she sat looking up at him with
a face gone blank, expressionless, while life swirled about her. What
was happening to her? Where was she being driven? What had they done,
between them?
“You know I hate scenes,” said Marley, with the air of a man heroically
coping with a grievance. “I shall dine at the club; I’ve had about all
I care for in one evening. A man does like a little harmony in his
home, if nothing else.” He crossed the room and turned, a hand on the
door-knob. “Remember, now--no star-gazing tonight!”
The door closed smartly behind him. A good man, blind as a bat, bound
for his club.
For a long time she sat staring at the door. Then hideously into the
silence the clock began to strike five. With a gesture that was like a
scream, her hands came to her ears.
She paced up and down the room, her hands pressed over her ears, long
after the clock had finished. At last she paused, staring at it,
unseeing, her brain beginning to work again, numbly.
_A woman either is, or she isn’t_, groped her brain. _It’s no
good trying._ But she had tried. For ten years she had tried, and it
was no good, just as Clem’s mother had said. Clem, after ten years of
her trying, did not know quite what to think. Were they wasted, then,
those ten years? Ten whole years out of a lifetime--gone for nothing?
_Canary birds. Black silk. We all have the right to a splash of
color._ The blue depths of the desert sky. The white radiance of a
desert moon. Or the yellow fire of topazes. Or even the red ugliness
of blood.... Color, as her ancestors had understood it. Life up to the
hilt, as her grandfather had lived it for a few crowded years in the
Sudan. Death as her father had died, with room to die in....
_If you want a thing long enough and hard enough--there’s always a
way to get it._ You might not like what you had to do, but the way
was there, if you wanted to go through with it. The way was there. But
was it? The way to what she wanted--the way to the Hills--the way....
_You should have been--one of Us._ And Blaise Dorin was at the
Cecil with Starke, who did not intend to let him out of his sight....
Her heart was beating thunderously in her ears. If she could go
along--if only he would take her with him--he _must_ take her
with him--that was the way--they didn’t really want her here--she
couldn’t fit in, no matter how hard she tried--she only made them angry
and miserable--she shouldn’t have married Clem at all--she had never
been much of a success as Clem’s wife--she hadn’t quite understood
things, when she married Clem--it would be better now, for everybody,
if she went--no good bothering Clem any more, making mistakes, having
scenes--she would go--the Dream--she would have it--it was her right to
have it--she had wanted it so long-- Blaise Dorin would understand....
Fumblingly, with cold, moist fingers, she got the telephone directory
and looked out the Hotel Cecil number. Stammering, clearing her throat,
not able to hear anything but her own heart, she spoke it into the
instrument. And at last, after interminable waiting, came Blaise
Dorin’s voice, indistinctly, beyond the thunder of her heart....
CHAPTER VII
HE was coming.
He would be there any minute now. Rushed as he was, he could drop
everything long enough to answer an inarticulate summons from a woman
he had seen hardly a dozen times altogether. He understood only that
something was wrong, and that she had turned to him. A soldier of
fortune, son of a soldier of England, he wasted no time in questions
once the course of action was clear. He said he would be there.
She went to the window. He was not yet in sight. Suppose he shouldn’t
come, after all. Suppose Starke reached the hotel and prevented him.
Suppose he went away tonight to the desert--to her grandfather’s
desert--without her! No, he had said he would come. Not even Starke
could stop him now.
Alexandra pressed against the window-pane, staring feverishly down the
street and into the future.
She had a little money of her own. How far would it take her--if he
shouldn’t come? Could she manage alone--if he shouldn’t come? Would she
know the way, she who had hardly journeyed across the county alone?
Would the same torturing instinct that had hounded her all her life
turn, now that she had yielded, to guide, philosopher, and friend?
She confronted the tremendous fact of her surrender, breathless but
unafraid. She was going to stop trying. She was going to give in. Her
nomad heritage was to have its way at last. Tomorrow would find her
homeless--and free. It was over. All over.
Odd, how suddenly one turned the corner. This morning life had
stretched drearily from her feet to the horizon, complete in each drab
detail: a flat, gray expanse of leaden duty and small, stolen, secret
joys. Then violets; the dismissal of a servant-girl; an old woman’s
grievance; an unexpected guest at tea-time; cataclysm.
And now she could not see the length of her own shadow on the path
ahead, but life was precious as it had never been before. She had
crossed over. There remained only to fire her bridges. They would give
a lovely light!
“I am leaving Clem,” she thought, amazed at her own calmness, mentally
pinching herself. “Perhaps I’ll die without ever seeing Clem again. And
he loves me--at least--I thought he loved me.... I am going away--right
away from England. Tomorrow morning everything will be different. I am
leaving my husband. I am running away.”
Still no remorse, even less elation. Just the serenity of an immense
decision.
“The sea,” she thought, trying to make herself realize what had really
happened. “The dance of it in the sun--the heave and dip and roll of
it--the clean sea-smell that comes far out from land--horizon--on
all sides, sky and water meeting--_the sea_--I shall know soon!
Gibraltar,” she went on wonderingly, “and the Mediterranean--the tip of
Spain behind me--Africa----”
Her heart skipped at that.
_Africa._
She whispered it against the pane. She shut her eyes and saw--a map.
Africa was mostly pink and purple, patched with scraps of yellow and
green for the Congo and German East. She shut her eyes tighter. Across
the dots that mean desert a golden glare came glowing. She felt the
light--actually _felt_ the brutal desert sun on her eyelids! She
heard--what was it? Voices--singing--a kind of chant--and the dry,
husky whisper of camels’ feet in sand--and everywhere the cruel light,
beating down till one felt faint and bruised beneath it....
It faded. She let go her breath with a sob. _She had remembered
Africa!_
“Please, ma’am----”
Susan stood uncertainly in the doorway, her apron crumpled, her face
blotchy and swollen from crying. Alexandra looked at her as from a
great distance.
“Yes, Susan----?”
Tears rose again in Susan’s reddened eyes, and her mouth squared
ludicrously as she stood twisting her thin little fingers in her apron.
“I--I could do with less wages, ma’am--so long as I can’t please
_’er_--if only I didn’t ’ave to--go! I’d work fer you fer nothin’,
ma’am, only--my mother needs what I send ’ome. I don’t want nothin’
fer myself, ma’am--if only I can stay with you----”
Vaguely it reached Alexandra’s consciousness that this piteous child
was crying over the thought of leaving her--that other lives must go on
as before, after tomorrow. It seemed too bad....
“I--I don’t see what I can do--now--” she said doubtfully, half to
herself.
Susan came to her, sniffling, her ravaged face lifted hopefully.
“I was thinkin’--you might let _’er_ get somebody else--an’ let me
stay an’ work for _you_. I could stay for ’alf, an’ wouldn’t make
no trouble, an’----”
“I’ll--think about it,” Alexandra promised gently. “I’ll see--what can
be done. Now serve dinner as usual tonight. Mr. Marley is dining out.
And I’m going for a little walk and may--may be late.”
“Don’t you--don’t you feel good, ma’am?” Susan’s eyes were searching
Alexandra’s face. She came nearer, her eyes on that white, rigid face,
and her voice shrilled sharp with a nameless apprehension. “Don’t
you--feel good?”
No answer. Alexandra was looking at the window, but it was not the
window that she saw. Susan clenched her bird-like claws in her crumpled
apron. She had seen that look before, in the eyes of men who followed
the sea--a look as of listening for something beyond the rim of the
world.
“Take me with you, ma’am!” she cried sharply.
“_What--?_” Alexandra whirled.
“D’ya think _I_ don’t know they’re killin’ you between the two
of ’em?” Susan was crying openly now, shamelessly. “Every time you go
out--lookin’ white like this--I get afraid, thinkin’ o’ the things
you might do, rather than come back! _’Er_ givin’ me the sack
today--she ’adn’t no right! Think _I_ don’t know you won’t be
takin’ things like that lyin’ down forever? Goin’ fer a walk, you say!
An’ can’t I tell by the looks of you that _this_ time you ain’t
comin’ back--” Alexandra’s hand covered the rest of it.
“You mustn’t say such things!” she commanded, in a guilty whisper.
“T-take me with you, ma’am----?”
“No, I-- No--” Alexandra swung away toward the window, and felt panic
grip her. Blaise Dorin was getting out of a cab in front of the house.
How should she begin?
He would understand, of course. But suppose he refused to help her. It
was Bob Taunton he wanted. Nobody else. Suppose he should regard her
only as a possible burden. Her task was to convince him that lacking
Bob Taunton he would find her better than nothing. No other aspect
occurred to her now. To get him to see that she would not be in the
way--a tremendous undertaking, but she would not, could not, be beaten
now. And Blaise Dorin would understand.
The doorbell rang.
“Never mind that,” she said quickly to Susan. “I’ll go.” Stooping
suddenly, she set her lips on Susan’s wet cheek--Susan felt them cold
through her tears--and pushed her toward the other door, and waited
till it had closed behind her.
Then she went herself to answer Dorin’s ring.
He followed her into the room, his hat still in his hand, silent before
her whiteness, aware of her pushed-back hair and trembling hands;
aware, too, of the crushed, fragrant violets in her belt; but still not
dreaming that the scent of violets was to go with them both all the
rest of the way.
He had not been able to make much of what she was saying over the
telephone. It had sounded as though she was crying, or had a sore
throat--both irreconcilable with his ideas of her. Two facts at last
emerged from the chaos--she had to see him before he went--and she
couldn’t come to the hotel on account of Starke. Naturally if she
wanted to see him he would find time to go to her. Odd, her calling
him just then. He had been thinking of her--regretting that he
couldn’t see her again, and ask her to wish him luck. And then she had
sent for him. Very odd. Where did Starke come into it? Why had she
sounded--frightened? Why, in any case, had she turned to _him_?
Where did _he_ come into it? Had Starke been up to something....
He made nothing of it in the cab. And now--_had_ she been crying?
It didn’t seem to fit in. He wasn’t quite sure how she ought to look,
but surely she looked different--? He was prepared for almost anything
but what was about to happen to him.
She faced him without embarrassment, purposeful, but shaking with
tension. As always, his flesh and blood presence was lost in the
immensity of the thing he symbolized. He had never seemed less a man,
more a means to an end.
“You’re leaving tonight,” she said.
“Yes.” There was a puzzled question in the word.
She plunged.
“I’m going with you.”
He was staring dumbly, incredulously, obviously doubting his ears. She
repeated it, distinctly----
“I’m going with you.”
“But--Mrs. Marley--!” He half gasped, half laughed. It was his own
stupidity, of course, but for the life of him he couldn’t see--! “I--I
don’t quite----”
“Yes,” she conceded gravely. “I suppose it does seem a bit sudden to
you.”
“But--you can’t be serious!” This was far worse than he had feared.
That is--_going with him_!
“Oh, yes,” she assured him with a small smile. “I’m serious--now.”
“Won’t you--” He passed an agitated hand across his hair. “Well, could
you explain a bit? I--” He paused appealingly.
“It’s quite simple,” she said patiently. “I’m not going to be a Marley
any more. I’m not going to try to be. It’s no good trying,” she added,
to clinch it.
“But,” said Dorin helplessly, “I--you--that is--we----”
“You said we could take anything on and win. You said I should have
been a man. You said----”
“But unfortunately the good God in His wisdom made you a woman. He may
know why. I don’t. But----”
“There’s not much time to talk,” she interrupted. “I can pack a bag and
be at the station in an hour. Will that do?”
Dorin called inwardly upon his gods. He was as near to being floored as
he had ever been in an adventurous life.
“But, Mrs. Marley, I can’t let you do this thing on an impulse. Think
what it means! Think what you’re doing! That is--I mean--think--” He
floundered.
“I am leaving my husband.” She put it into words for him,
unemotionally. “I know. It will hurt Clem. It would have hurt him more
a year ago. Since _she_ came--things are different.”
“I--I don’t think I--” he groped.
“His mother,” explained Alexandra.
“Oh.” His eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, thinking it over.
“This afternoon,” she went on, perceiving that she must make things a
trifle clearer for him, “something happened. I can’t go on here after
that. I won’t! And, anyway, it isn’t any good. Clem is a good man, and
good men always take their mother’s part. I don’t blame him,” she added
conscientiously, and indeed her soul was swept clean of rancor by the
ghost of a wind from the sea. “One can’t blame him. But I’m going with
you. I’ve got to love life,” she pleaded, “before I die!”
Well, yes, Blaise Dorin understood. He was an observant man, for one
thing, and, too, he had learned to think quickly for very life’s sake.
He had by now assimilated her reasons, her intentions, above all, her
heartbreaking need. But all this he set aside as his mind leaped ahead
to the inevitable results of the course she had chosen.
“But have you thought carefully about what it would mean for you?” he
probed uncomfortably. “Disgrace, you know--divorce--scandal--all that
sort of thing. You see, the world is pretty hard on a woman who----”
“Oh, don’t talk like that!” she cried. “Besides, if you take me on to
Asia--I might never have to face that.”
“Now, look here, if you’re thinking only of the chance of getting
yourself killed, it’s a slim one! You _would_ have to face it. And
the injustice of it _would_ very nearly kill you! If--if you--” He
stammered a little here. She was so clear and fine. Such things would
not have occurred to her, of course. “If we were in love with each
other--that sort of thing--it might be different, but----”
“But we’re not!” she cried, honestly horrified.
“No, that’s what I say! And so----”
“And so there’s nothing wrong about it!” she cut in triumphantly. “Why
shouldn’t I go with you?”
He grasped his patience firmly as he grasped her slim, straight
shoulders, and the violets sighed against his coat. Was she a child,
an utter, impossible urchin of six? One oughtn’t to have to explain
these things to a married woman. He wanted to shake her for being such
an exasperating and inconvenient anomaly. Couldn’t she see _his_
side of it? A fellow can’t do these things.... His irrepressible levity
quirked through his mind here, as it was bound to do in a crisis. He
had too much perspective not to see the funny side of every crisis.
Well, then, was he to be run away with, scandalously, by a tow-headed
schoolboy in a wedding-ring? It was like dreams. It wasn’t real. It
couldn’t be happening.
“But, my dear, sweet, unsophisticated soul, no one would ever in this
world believe anything but what is customary, and----”
“Customary?” She blinked at him a moment, then a shade of real
embarrassment crossed her upturned face. Not a blush. Nothing so
encouraging as that. “Oh, but they couldn’t be so silly! It’s not an
elopement! God knows there’s nothing romantic--that way--about--what
we’d be going into! It’s not a--it’s no kind of honeymoon trip! If
you l-loved me--that way--you wouldn’t let me go,” she argued wisely.
“Women men love _that_ way stay safe at home. I’m just--just like
_you_! Surely people would see exactly how it is!”
“But I’m telling you they won’t! I----”
“But they’d have to! Look at us! Beastly uncomfortable climate--both
of us wearing khaki--hard going--short rations--our lives in danger,
perhaps---- Wasn’t it Loti who said that hunger and thirst come first,
and----”
“No, it wasn’t.” He had to smile at that, though a bit grimly. “And
you’d be surprised how silly the world can be. Anyway, you’re not
coming with me. I wish you could. It would be jolly. But you simply
must not think of it.”
“But----”
“No,” he said. “My blessed innocent, you’ve no idea of the hardship and
the danger, especially to a woman!”
“But I _want_----”
“Look here. I said your chance of getting killed was a slim one. It
probably is, for all I know now. But think a minute. Suppose I was mad
enough to take you on this Asian job. We must cross miles of wilderness
with the smallest possible equipment--we can take no armed escort--we
must camp when and where and how we can--we must be alone, the pair of
us, without seeing another English face for weeks--Government washes
its hands of us because it has formally forbidden me to go--and we may
meet up with very undesirable native company. If anything should happen
to me-- Can’t you see how impossible it is?”
“But if anything should happen to you, that’s just where I’d come in!
I’m as strong as any boy! I’ll do anything you say to get fit! I can
learn to shoot and all the rest of it--I’ll _remember_ all that
too, as soon as I have the chance! I won’t be a hindrance--I’m not a
whimpering girl!” She caught at his sleeve. “Oh, let me come! Please
let me come!”
“I can’t,” he said gently.
“Make this little bargain with me, then! Take me as far as
Algiers--into the desert. Try me--see how I get on there--don’t spare
me--put me through it--anything, everything you can think of! And then
if you honestly feel I’d be a handicap on the big job, I won’t snivel
or argue--I’ll go away!”
“But don’t you see, the result would be the same, even if you only went
as far as Calais! That is--you couldn’t come back here----”
“You’re afraid of having me on your hands when this is over, is that
it? You’re not to worry about that!” She hurried on, twisting her
fingers in an agony of effort, trying piteously to read his face.
“If--when we come through--that will be all I’ll ask of you, ever.
When we get down to India I won’t trouble you any more. I can take
care of myself. I’ll have had my fun. I can stay there in Lahore or
Delhi--somewhere where there is light and color and work. I can teach,
or learn nursing. I’ve got a little money of my own. You can forget all
about me! But let me come with you, just this once! Starke said two
men would be better than one. I’d be better than nothing. Take me! You
can’t wait for Bob Taunton. Take me--in his place!”
He steeled himself against her white entreaty, and the insurgent
knowledge that it would be somehow wrong to refuse her. Not only
cruel, but wrong. And yet--it would be wrong to take her. Oh, not the
traditional wrong of the broken marriage vow. That sort of thing didn’t
trouble him now. But the wrong the world would do her. That was what
he balked at. The things it would convict her of, unheard. The things
it always looked for and that never occurred to her. That would be
wicked--to let her in for that.
“No,” he said again. “I’m sorry--but it just wouldn’t do.”
She drew back, looking at him oddly.
“Is that final?”
“It’s got to be.”
“Very well.” She turned away.
“Hold on a minute. I don’t like the way you say that. You’ve got
something up your sleeve.”
He waited, watching her. Her mouth was mutinous. She was capable of
anything. He was afraid for her. Afraid to leave her like this.
“Good-by,” she said, her back to him.
“Oh, poor little kid, I-- Look here, promise you won’t do anything
foolish while this fit is on. I know how you feel, indeed I do.
But--it’s no go.”
She would not answer. Manifestly, he could not leave her like this. He
went to her and turned her about by the shoulders. She drooped in his
hands like a sulky lad. He was reminded vividly of the Eton jacket.
“Promise you’ll be a good boy while I’m gone,” he begged whimsically.
She shook her head, looking down.
“Word of honor that you’ll stick it out--say, till I come back,” he
said, and held out his hand.
She put both hers behind her and faced him, then.
“What would you do,” she asked evenly, “if some pagan ritual required
that Bob Taunton be shut up in a box and driven slowly mad by beaten
drums? Would you stop to consider the ethics of the case? Or would you
simply get him out of it the quickest way you could?”
“As bad as that?”
“Oh, I was doing the best I could!” Her fists came to her temples as if
the torture drums were beating there in Bloomsbury. “But sometimes I’ve
run away for hours, down to the docks--Wapping, Limehouse, even Poplar!
At first I skulked, knowing I had no right there. But now--well, either
they think I’m just a harmless mad thing or else they understand--a
little. Anyway, they let me alone down there. I’m free to pry and sniff
and poke about as I please. But that wasn’t enough. The time came when
I had to go farther--down to Greenwich and Tilbury where the big ships
come in--I don’t know quite why, I--I had to go till I felt free of
this! Each time I have to go farther, and it’s harder to come back.
And the water--the smell and the depth and the sound of it beside the
piers--it has a fascination----”
“Good God!” he murmured.
“It has, it has! At first they treated me like a naughty child when
I came home. I was always in disgrace. I didn’t mind that--much. But
this afternoon they said--things. She said them and--Clem-- Well, Clem
wasn’t quite sure. You can see, can’t you, that now Clem will never
know quite what to think-- And so--whether it’s with you or not--one
way or another, I’ve got to go away and not come back. I can go alone,
I suppose--one way or another--” Her voice died away.
“Easy, now.” This was different. He took her hands down from her face
and held them against his coat, the violets bruised beneath their
fingers. Hers were icy cold, and damp. She had had all she was good
for, he thought. “Easy, now. If you’ve thought this out--if you really
mean it--I’ll stand by, you know that.”
Her fingers clutched his gratefully.
“You’ll let me come?”
“Yes. At least as far as the desert. If you must.”
“The desert!” She looked up at him, laughing with suddenly quivering
lips, with happy, flooded eyes. “My grandfather,” she boasted
tremulously, “loved the desert better than anything!” Like a child she
caught up their clasped hands so that her wet cheek rested for a moment
against his fingers. “Oh, I knew you’d see how it is! You’ve been so
good, I--I can’t ever say thank you enough!” This passed swiftly, in a
glance at the clock. “I can pack a bag and be at Charing Cross station
in an hour,” she said, laying plans. “I’ll wait for you there.”
“Right,” he agreed briefly, and dropped her hands and strode out of the
house.
Not until he was outside on the pavement did the thing strike him
with full force in all its awfulness. _He had contracted to run off
with another man’s wife!_ In a moment of complete aberration he had
saddled himself, for the most ticklish job of his life, with a woman.
You forgot she was a woman, somehow. But no, she should not go on to
Asia. Africa was hers. He had let himself in for that. But it would end
with Africa. She should not hypnotize him again. He was all kinds of
a fool and he would look it, when this thing got round. Oh, this was
horrible!... Poor little beggar.
The violets fell from her belt on the stairs as she ran to pack the
bag. Clement stepped on them the next morning, as he went up to see
why she did not come to breakfast. Susan cried over them, hours later,
crouched against the banisters in a stricken house. And the time was
to come when Blaise Dorin would remember them and hold to them when
everything else was slipping away.
_Wind_
“_For I know of a sun an’ a wind_,
_An’ some plains an’ a mountain be’ind...._”
CHAPTER I
THE Mediterranean’s fairy blue and gold and pearl flung open the doors
of Alexandra’s spirit to the four winds of heaven.
“It’s the sun!” she would try to explain, with a catch in her breath.
And then, throwing out her hands to it, “It’s the water!” And then,
laughing, with tear-pointed lashes, “Oh, I know you think I’m an idiot,
but--it’s the wind!”
Viewed from the harbor, terraced Algiers delighted her, but after
landing it left her restless and still unsatisfied. This was not quite
what she had come for. There was more.
Neither the exotic French section with its boulevards and cafés, nor
the rabbit warrens of the Arab town crawling with beggars and tiny,
laden donkeys was enough. She loitered in the heat and seethe and
changing color of the market-place. She expressed a docile appreciation
of the fortress, which Dorin went to the trouble of showing her. But he
noted with an inward grin that she was continually sniffing upwind, as
it were, and they pushed on next day, southward toward the sands.
She tried not to chafe at the inevitable delay in the tattered town
huddling at the edge of the desert, a place which had won no star from
Baedecker. Dorin had no time now to listen to inarticulate rhapsodies,
nor to take her sightseeing. Her presence amounted chiefly to further
difficulties, and while he coped with them he left her to amuse or bore
herself as might be, in the best room the inn afforded. He gave her
audience at meals, however, and she gratefully gathered the crumbs of
his esoteric doings and begged, terrier-eyed, for more.
She made only tentative excursions by herself, fearing to miss a
summons from him, staying like a good child where he had stowed and
forgotten her. She felt humbly enough that she was a bother at best,
and that the least she could do was to be at hand if by some miracle he
should happen to want her. She ached to help, but her Arabic was still
very weak, and he seemed only to desire her out of sight.
Meanwhile time dragged, and the desert lured.
Never had she seen such sunlight. She spread her hands to it, lifted
her face till it blindingly kissed her closed eyelids, soaked in the
tremendous vitality of it, perversely preferred it to the glorious full
moon of their arrival. She was up at dawn, watching for the wonder of a
new day. She lingered wistfully at the window while the quick African
night closed in on the heels of sunset. She hinted pathetically to be
taken for just one look at the desert between sun and moon. But Dorin,
his mind on horses and camels and an extra boy who would not steal more
than was expected of him, remained impervious to hints.
On the afternoon of the fourth day she slipped guiltily away from
the inn and was gone until after sunset. Harassed by details of
transportation, Dorin was slow to miss her. At first confident of her
ability to look out for herself, he became uneasy, then annoyed, and
finally as the swift desert dark drew in, frightened.
He strode out of the inn with his stick at a militant angle in search
of her and of the vanished servant he had dispatched to find her. And
just as he reached the street she turned the corner and came toward
him, flushed, dusty, radiant. He understood suddenly the primitive
parental impulse to smack a runaway child miraculously restored intact.
He had yet to learn, like Clement, that nothing ever happened to her.
“Where have you been?” he barked.
“Out there.” She waved a vague hand back toward the desert. “The sun
went down,” she explained further, with a beatific smile.
“Yes, I know it did.” His swift glance took in her dusty white frock
and returned to her hot, ecstatic face. “I suppose you can’t eat dinner
like that,” he observed.
The radiance faded. Men got so hungry. It made them cross.
“I’m sorry I--kept you waiting.”
“Well, pop along and wash your face. You must be starving, if you only
knew it!”
She looked up quickly to find him grinning down. Relief flooded her.
He wasn’t cross! She felt somehow reprieved.
“I won’t be ten minutes!” she promised fervently, and disappeared up
the steps of the inn.
As a matter of fact, it was less than twenty minutes later that she sat
across the table from him, clean and cool and meek, eating her dinner
with an undisguised appetite. But meek. It was exasperating.
“Look here,” he said abruptly. “It wasn’t that you kept me waiting and
it wasn’t that your face was dirty. It was only that I had let you
start off alone and I felt a fool.”
“Oh, but I didn’t at all mind going alone!” she assured him hastily.
“It won’t do.”
“But----”
“Tell me all about it. Where did you go and what did you see?”
And glowing again, she told him, eloquently and with gestures, until
long after the coffee was brought; while he watched her from behind
his cigarette, marveling anew at the extraordinary situation in which
he found himself. He knew by heart all that she spoke of. And yet
it was curious, pitiful, almost, the way it went to her head. As
far back as he could remember there was sand and heat, the chill of
altitudes, and the glory of sunset and dawn. His had been a vivid
childhood passed under the tutelage of an Indian cavalry regiment,
which one day returned from the Border without his father. Death and
a jest, Oriental loyalty and Oriental treason, fatigue and the courage
of strength, the value of ten drops of water and the nothingness of
life--these things had been clear to him almost before she was born.
Poor little soul, what a thin time of it she had had, all these years!
After that, she was attended by an adoring Arab boy who kept ever at
her heels, while she haunted the edge of the desert, yearning eyes on
the sea of sand. She detested the boy for his proprietary airs, and
tried repeatedly to dismiss or lose him, but young Ahmed had his orders
from the tall Englishman, and stuck like a limpet, silenced, hangdog,
devotedly watchful.
“Please call Ahmed off,” she begged one morning at breakfast. “I won’t
get lost. Truly, I won’t.”
“Does he talk too much?” Dorin frowned.
“No, he’s lovely. But I’d rather be by myself, really.”
“My dear child, this isn’t London, you know!”
“But surely there’s no danger! Surely an Englishwoman----”
“Quite so. But I’ve enough on my mind without you, too,” conclusively.
“I thought--this morning--since I was only going as far as----”
“You’re not allowed to think.” He smiled his transfiguring, squint-eyed
smile, to take the bite out of his tone. “Not yet.”
“Of course I don’t want to be a bother--” She bent her head beneath
the rebuke. “Of course you do know best----”
“Don’t be an ass.” Her downcast eyes missed the humorous understanding
in his. “Ahmed knows his way about, and he’s to be trusted. I’m afraid
you’ll have to put up with him.”
“Very well.”
“Besides, he’ll do to practice your Arabic on, won’t he?”
“Yes.”
She drank her coffee contentedly. What did Ahmed matter? What did
anything matter beside the stupendous fact that she was _here_,
with all the Sahara before her? And Blaise Dorin wasn’t cross when one
was late to meals.
CHAPTER II
DAWNS of pearl and saffron; brief, opalescent twilights; days when she
seemed to move waist-deep in a dizzy, shimmering flood of heat, and
distance lost all meaning in the glare that beat like thunder on her
consciousness; blue velvet nights, star-strewn, when she grudged the
sleep her weariness demanded.
She thrilled to the dry suck of sand under foot, and the wail of the
Arab pipes and the musical Arab prayer, and to a silence that was
somehow a tangible thing. She watched her long, sharp-cut shadow on
the sand as she rode, rested, dazzled, loving eyes on the wind-carven
dunes, and cried out rapturously at the mirage. She snatched at each
hour and devoured it with its wealth of unexplored sensation. It was
all holiday.
And her grandfathers, that ghostly host of gallant gentlemen, must
have smiled to see her stretch out greedy hands to the wilderness,
even while she paid its price of discomfort. She lived in boots and
breeches, Dorin’s lean length in miniature. There was sand in her long
hair and in her clothes and in her food. She forgot the taste of a
civilized cup of tea. She suffered heat tortures, the worse for her
delicate fairness. But her eyes grew steadily bigger and brighter, and
she learned to laugh aloud. No doubt her grandfathers swelled with
celestial pride.
Often dog-tired, aching, and very thirsty, she went about the arduous
business of “remembering.” Dorin’s rigorous system of training included
a grilling target practice, and she sniffed the sharp, sweet smell of
powder, along with other less exhilarating odors of hot leather and hot
horse, and told herself that at last she had life in both hands. She
acquired a painful knowledge of camels and mules and struggled with
dialects and the native mind.
Dorin said it was as good as a play, and stood by impassive with secret
mirth much of the time. Sometimes his tactful gravity gave way under
the strain and they laughed together helplessly and began again. Always
impersonal, never impatient, he seemed to regard her as somewhat more
dependable and a little less useful and infinitely more amusing than an
ambitious boy of her size.
She had not been given a rocking-horse to ride. The black brute which
carried her was a very different animal from the country mare of her
girlhood.
In the beginning, she was fly-weight on his back and her hands were
light on the rein. This puzzled him. He danced experimentally. The fly
sat still. He plunged, with a sea-going motion, and the fly laughed
like a boy. He shook himself till he clattered, and the fly chaffed
him. This was impertinence and not to be borne. He rose and walked on
his hind legs, and something slid off over his tail without a sound.
He paused then, disdaining to kick out. It was no man.
Next, some eleven stone arrived expertly in the saddle and his mouth
felt a hand that meant business.
“Now, then, damn you, march!”
This was more like it. He could carry a man as prettily as anybody. He
marched, stepping delicately.
Three times they made the circuit of the camp, in all his paces, as
though at a sale. Then Dorin swung down.
“Seems to have worked off his mad,” he said. “Feel like trying him
again?”
“Of course!” snapped Alexandra, who, having lit in sand, nursed only an
injured dignity.
The fly was up again! The black brute stood still, quivering with
indignation.
“Well, get along!” advised the speck atop him. “Do your stuff!”
His fine Arab soul rebelled. This was colt’s play. He would be laughed
at. He did his stuff, and he had a neat bag of tricks. Again she went
off, over his head this time. Some one swore at him vividly, and he
stood still, more than pleased with himself.
“He won’t have me!” gasped Alexandra, spitting sand. “He’s got a crush
on you! But I’ll ride him if it takes all summer!”
“He’s no gentleman,” said Dorin, lifting her to her feet. “Sure you’re
not hurt?”
“It’s nice soft sand,” said Alexandra.
“That’s enough for today. I’m going to reason with him.”
But with Dorin up again the black brute became as a horse with wings.
They had a most amiable time of it.
Alexandra refused to try Dorin’s mount the next day. The black one was
hers and she would ride him. And ride him she did, in the end, though
not without slight mishaps.
The first three minutes were the hardest. If she managed to stick
that long the rest of the day was fairly peaceful. Dorin would stand
watching, so interested that he often had to dodge rather suddenly,
while with set teeth and pink cheeks Alexandra silently stuck her three
minutes out.
“Ride ’em, Sandy!” he would shout, squinting into the whirlwind, and
the name stuck.
They called the black brute Brugglesmith, for no reason at all except
that they considered it--and no doubt so did he--opprobrious.
Men said that Dodo Dorin was “handy with a knife,” which meant only
that if deprived of his white man’s weapon, the neat and honest gun,
if brought to close fighting, or if silence meant very life itself,
his work would be swift and conclusive. He had compromised with the
Englishman’s natural fastidiousness in such matters by a certain
deftness and minimum of fuss, and this fact was clearly set forth in
the subtle, wind-written lore of the far places, so that they gave
him room in a row. There was only a man in Somaliland and another in
Mexico who could really tell, first hand, of witnessing the famous
short thrust and draw which Dorin now set himself patiently to teach
a fair-haired girl. “Might need it some day,” he explained almost
diffidently. “It’s all in getting home with the point. Any one can
jab and gouge and make no end of a mess. You hold it--so.” She gave
breathless attention. And when at the end of the lesson he gayly pinned
a corner of a tarpaulin on the ground with a ten-foot forward flip, she
shrieked with delight and ran to fetch the knife, and begged to learn
that too.
Gradually, Dorin’s sense of the queerness of it wore off. She was a
jolly little thing. He was not sorry he had brought her.
Like a boy she rode beside him, learning his easy, tireless seat,
enduring the longest day’s travel without complaint. Boylike, she lay
on her stomach by the fire after the evening meal, a cigarette in her
fingers, the firelight dancing in her eyes, and coaxed stories from
him. And like a boy, she was up at his first shout in the morning,
eager for the new day even though it was of a desert sameness with the
one which had gone before. No, he could not be sorry he had brought her.
Shy of personalities as any Etonian, she had never asked questions
about the mysterious errand which took them thus into the heart of an
unfriendly desert region. And perhaps because it did not occur to him
to do so, Dorin never told. Twice they were followed suspiciously by
a chain of horsemen flung along the skyline, and once they rode at
night well-nigh beyond all endurance, because of certain fires to the
north and east. Alexandra, noting that Dorin nursed a gun across his
knees and that his eyes became quicksilver slits at the murmurings of
his men, held her peace and reeled in the saddle as the sun came up.
Long, blind, parching hours later, they came to a staggering halt in
a tiny oasis where they seemed to be expected and were ceremoniously
welcomed. Some one lifted her down, and there was fresh water, and she
slept where she was, amid voices and movement with which she felt no
concern. When she awoke it was dark, and Dorin sat nearby, smoking.
She sat up swiftly, clutching at consciousness, guilty, apologetic.
“It’s all right,” he grinned. “We made it. And that’s that.” He sighed
with contentment and lay back, communing with the stars. A priceless
packet of ancient jewels whimsically reset by a great Parisian firm
for the covetous fingers and round brown throat of some favorite
dancing-girl--a verbal message from a man in Marseilles. Both delivered
safely, intact. And that was that.
It was not until they had turned north again that Alexandra really
looked beyond the twelve hours immediately in hand. But on the return
journey, as she lay one night in her tent, hearing the parched rustle
of some sad desert herbage and the last nameless sounds of a drowsy
camp, she was snatched back from sleep by the horrid thought that this
part of it was almost over. At what point would he turn eastward
toward Port Said? Would he return to Algiers first? Not, she decided,
unless he meant to go on alone.
With dreadful accuracy she counted the days that would be left. They
were appallingly few. In sudden panic she crawled to the flap of her
tent and peered out. The fire was low, the Arab pipes were still. The
camp slept, and the desert moon rode high, a luminous silver plaque on
the wall of heaven. Dorin’s tent, a short distance away, was black and
quiet.
Was he pleased with her, she wondered. She had been game, she knew she
had. She had loved every minute of it. She had not once said she was
tired. She had even reached some sort of compromise with Brugglesmith,
lately. She had not been a failure here! And yet Shir Shan’s robe had
not been mentioned for days. Not for weeks.
Suppose he sent her back, after all, like an importunate puppy. Suppose
he left her behind, and she never saw the Hills, with him. With him.
She regarded the addition curiously. She wanted above all to go with
him. She could get to India alone, somehow, with her little money. But
without Dodo--she was among the elect now and privileged to call him
that--without Dodo things would seem very queer. He knew how she felt
about it all. And they laughed at the same instant, always. He--she
sat back on one foot and contemplated this--he had taught her to laugh
like that. He had given her life as surely as though he had picked
her dripping from the Thames, and she owned him now with a doggish
devotion which had nothing to do with the skirts she had shed, and
partook of the mute worship of his native boys.
She wanted to explore Port Said at his heels. That is where the East
begins. She wanted to go to Bokhara and see the storks. She wanted to
penetrate to that monastery in the Hills and watch the bargaining.
She pictured it, hugging one knee in the moonlight. Dodo so grave and
respectful and keen of eye. And all the while thinking what rot it was,
and laughing down inside. Always those imps inside. But if the robe was
at the monastery Dodo would be sure to have it before he had finished.
He would come away with it in his pocket. The robe was as good as in
Starke’s hands--provided Dodo got back.
Then there would be the thrilling journey down to the Pass and so to
India--Dodo, again, beloved of his kind. They would fall on his neck at
the Fort and there would be high jinks. She knew, from the tales he had
told.
Dodo, always, in the center of things, but taking it all quite calmly.
Arabs, Asiatics, or Englishmen, priests or subalterns--Dodo, playing
the game, leading it, loving it, winning it. And perhaps herself, proud
as any possessive canine, wagging and smiling at his heels....
The joy of it! The freedom of it! The heat and the cold and the
breathlessness, the heavenly tiredness! The intolerable strain
triumphantly endured, the possible danger encountered, the thrill of
wit against wit like the ring of steel on steel! The risk and the dare
of it--Out There!
“O God,” prayed Alexandra suddenly toward the desert moon, “let me go
on like this always!”
All the next day she watched his face, while hope and fear and a tact
that was more than woman’s kept her dumb. She must not make it harder
for him. If he meant to leave her behind he must be allowed to break
it in his own way. He was fond of her, she knew that. She must not
press him. He would hate to disappoint her, but he would undoubtedly do
exactly as he thought best. He was a soldier, first of all. Her chin
quivered, as an overstrung terrier whimpers for action. She would be a
soldier, too!
There were things, you see, which did not occur to her. Things which
Dorin, facing a decision, was compelled to consider.
What, for instance, about their necessary stop at Port Said if he
took her on with him? An obscure hotel, a hole-and-corner business,
or--glances, perhaps even snubs? Not at all the sort of thing either
of them was used to. An ordeal at best for both of them. And what
about taking her into India later, where each colonel’s lady sharpens
her claws for infinitely less than poor Sandy could imagine? She had
no idea of the chill blast of public opinion. Of course it might not
precede them. But even so, how could he explain her to fellows he
couldn’t avoid? Of course they might never get to India....
And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t got devilish fond of her. She was
the gamest little beggar, and too heartbreakingly happy over this mild
lark in the Sahara. Had he the courage, he wondered, to turn her back
even for her own good, when this job was finished? Could he watch her
take it as she would take it, on her two feet, but with her great eyes
gone suddenly desolate? How in heaven’s name could he bear to put out
the light he had seen there? The light not only of complete beatitude
toward life, but of such ridiculous--he rejected several words
hastily--well, the way she looked at him. As though he had himself made
this desert in all its hideous beauty and tossed it into her lap. He
would miss that look. Yes, hang it, he would miss her!
And yet, somehow, he couldn’t quite see himself riding serenely into
British India with her at his side. And yet neither could he just
dump her down somewhere to get along on her few hundred pounds a
year--he was sure it couldn’t be much--and perhaps become the prey of
God knew what. To suggest that Ingarsen’s daughter couldn’t take care
of herself was absurd. Never was such a valiant soul. But there were
so many things that never occurred to her. And it was borne in upon
him sickeningly that this Sahara business of theirs would give her a
certain reputation.... He always swore a little here. He had seen women
in his time who had for several years away from Home worn that sort of
reputation.
He had been mad, to bring her. But what would have become of her if he
hadn’t? She would have walked out of that house that night, regardless.
Nevertheless, what was to become of her now that he had brought her?
And he himself--it would make a difference to him too. A fellow can’t
do these things....
Was it her imagination, she wondered, or was he silent and preoccupied
that day? At the evening meal he hardly spoke at all. And she, her
whole being concentrated on his unreadable thoughts, choked on her
bitter tea and was thumped perfunctorily on the back, without comment,
and forgotten again, while he retired within himself, filling his pipe
by the fire.
Silently, then, he felt in all his pockets. Silently she tossed him her
own match-box. In silence the match was struck and applied.
He kept the box in his hand long after the pipe was alight, and she
waited meekly with an unlighted cigarette, dreading to intrude herself
upon his notice. At last he laid it down between them and stretched
himself full length, eyes on the fire. She reached out cautiously and
struck her own match. He did not notice.
Minutes, perhaps an hour passed. She had begun to nod above her
hunched-up knees. Then he spoke.
“You’ll want another pair of boots,” he said. “We can pick them up at
Port Said. Have to stop there for some stuff I sent on ahead.”
Thus lightly he tossed the Dream into her lap.
CHAPTER III
GOLD fabric, of an ancient mystery. Gold in a woman’s hair. Gold that
clinks. Trouble, three times over.
As hidden water draws the diviner’s rod, so hidden gold exerts its
unholy magnetism. They were not a week out of Bokhara when there began
to be furtive whisperings, watchful eyes, among the three servants.
Dorin had allowed himself only three, so that his little party might
the better melt into the vast, uncaring landscape. These three soon
had their heads together over certain luggage which was heavy and
which slept in the _sahib’s_ tent at night, under his hand, like
a dearly loved woman. Or like treasure. Stealthy fingers pinched and
poked at it during the loading--it was assuredly very heavy--ears were
attuned to catch a sound which imagination readily supplied. Gold. The
_sahib_ carried gold into the wilderness. And they were three. The
woman-- They did not like the woman, with her pale hair and level eyes.
_Was_ she--woman? Then a silence would fall, while eyes avoided
eyes, and a great uneasiness went unvoiced.
Dorin, not at all unaware that he rode into triple trouble, chose to be
oblivious to signs, but his trained nerves registered cross-currents,
his sleep was light, and he would wake in the night without apparent
cause.
He was not satisfied that the heavy khaki-swathed bundle which lay
beside him every night accounted for all that which subtly charged
the air. Nor could he feel that the absence of a known destination
alone would cause this growing unrest among his men. No. He sniffed
superstition, an unreasoning apprehension, mutiny, even. And it did
not tax his practiced perceptions to trace it to Alexandra’s glowing,
joyous presence, her almost unearthly grace and zest. She was amazingly
handy, and possessed of an endurance almost equal to his own. She
was fast becoming unbelievable even to him, tanned now to a clear
creaminess which made her eyes seem bluer, her hair fairer than before.
And she lived in an exultation that was like white flame. Small wonder
that they murmured of her, apart.
Slowly his beloved Hills rose before him, shouldering the clouds. He
watched them reaching out their ridges to him, perceptibly nearer each
day, and as he looked his gray eyes darkened with something sad and
wise and yearning, something old as the Hills. Alexandra would dance
and throw wide her arms in pagan joy, and talk happy foolishness to
her stoical pony. To her the Hills meant heaven unalloyed. Perhaps
there were, after all, a few things she had forgotten.... But her nose
came up to the first whiff of the snows with a jerk identical with
Dorin’s own, and a shadow crossed her face, like the shadow of a great
bird flying low, or of the spirit of him who had died at Cawnpore;
but it was gone again in a cry of sheer rapture. Dorin smiled
sympathetically, and from then on, while the Hills gathered him ever
more closely to their rugged, ruthless hearts, he rode preoccupied,
like a man who keeps a rendezvous.
And now there began to be talk among the three of magic, and of men
lured to a horrible undoing, of the need of certain forgotten deities
for sacrifice, and of divers methods whereby victims were secured. This
strange, laughing creature with yellow hair--whither was she leading
them? This tireless blue-eyed one, this goddess-woman who was obviously
no woman at all, but-- Silence and nods. And the treasure? A pity that
so much good treasure should be abandoned forever to the avarice of
some long-lost evil spirit. It was still possible to return the way
they had come--not, of course, forgetting the treasure--_if_
the _sahib_ were not in a position to interfere. There were
certain villages to the north.... One called Mohammed objected here
that the _sahib_ was not a man to be lightly disposed of, and
that the other, the blue-eyed one-- He was scornfully overruled.
The _sahib_ was but one man, and they were three. And the
goddess-woman would doubtless be powerless until her own country,
somewhere beyond the realms of possibility, was reached. She would
doubtless die of hunger and thirst in due time if left to herself here,
where her needs were as yet quite human like other people’s. Had they
not all seen her eat and drink, like other people?...
One morning a swift, unerring instinct turned Dorin about suddenly
just as he was going to mount, and a long knife drove past him into the
saddle. His fist shot out and the man rolled between the horse’s feet.
Dorin covered the scene with a revolver and got his breath. Alexandra
sat silent, rigid with astonishment, with a brown hand still gripping
her wrists on the pommel. The third man, he who was called Mohammed,
dropped a rifle as though it had burned his fingers, and busied himself
with a pack.
Then Dorin spoke briefly and to the point behind that unwavering
revolver. The prostrate would be murderer was unceremoniously doubled
groaning across a pony and the day’s march began without further
incident.
Toward evening Mohammed, who had plainly been a prey to conflicting
emotions all day, fell back beside Dorin’s horse at the end of the line
and lifted the somber, inscrutable eyes of the East.
“If the _sahib_ permits his servant to speak--” he suggested in a
confidential whine.
“Yes--well?”
“It is--_that_.” Mohammed’s skinny brown finger indicated
Alexandra where she rode just in front. “The gold--it is nothing to
_me_.” His oblique gaze slid away, half sullen, half ashamed, to
the horizon and beyond. “The _sahib_ is my master and I obey. But
I do _not_ like--that.”
“What’s the matter with it?” demanded Dorin, grimly amused.
“They say--” There was a sidelong glint of the opaque brown glance.
“They say _she_ leads us--nowhere.”
“Nonsense. _I_ lead. And I have a destination, but that is my
own affair. You all knew it would be so when you agreed in Bokhara to
follow.”
“We did not see _that_ in Bokhara,” complained Mohammed.
“That is a woman of my people, only. All Englishwomen are like that.”
Again grim humor touched his tone. It was perhaps overstating the case
a bit.
“I do not understand,” sighed Mohammed. “But the _sahib_ is my
master and I obey.”
“It is well.” Dorin closed the subject, and rode on, looking thoughtful.
There was undeniable humor in it. Forthright, vivid Sandy, being
suspected of witchcraft, savoring of the supernatural, in the face
of her passionate mortal love of the earth she trod and the air she
breathed! And now, as she rode before him in the slanting sunlight
of late afternoon, she began to sing in a muted tone, eerily sweet,
swaying slightly to the motion of her horse in a small private ecstasy
of her own at the dear immensity of things.
“I got wings! You got wings!
All God’s chillun got wings!”
crooned Sandy happily, as he had taught her.
Dear old thing, thought Dorin, fond eyes on the supple back ahead of
him. It was worth it, having her, no matter what happened. Too bad,
though, that she had to be a girl-- Something clicked in his mind and
turned over. _Was_ it altogether a pity that she was a girl?
That slim delicacy of line overgrown into masculine proportions--that
hair cut short--that voice--Here, he told himself abruptly. Hold on a
minute. Was hers a merely decorative value, like other women’s? Oh,
most decidedly not. And yet--that spirit in another shell, speaking in
other tones-- Sandy, by any other name----?
“Lots o’ folks talkin’ ’bout hebben ain’ goin’ dere!
Hebben! Hebben!
Goin’ to fly all ober God’s hebben!”
Then, as the weird little melody began again, wordless this time, in
her quaintly sexless choir-boy pipe, he straightened and his eyes came
sharply to focus where Mohammed had rejoined the others. The three
were casting glances over hunched, secretive shoulders as they rode.
And suddenly Sandy’s harmless crooning among the lengthening shadows
assumed a new aspect in his eyes.
He pushed forward and aimed a kick at her stirrup.
“Stow it!” he hissed as he passed. “Shut up!”
He had a glimpse of her amazed face, its naïve surprise complicated by
the added injury of her kicked ankle, and this abode with him while he
shouted orders full of a studied fractiousness about the pitching of
camp--a good hour before he had meant to halt.
But even though harried by their _sahib’s_ incomprehensible
querulousness, his many fretful and useless exactions, the three found
time to ponder this new development of their destiny--the singing of
spells and incantations at twilight by the blue-eyed one.
The evening meal was eaten almost in silence, polite and puzzled on
Alexandra’s part, remorseful but inarticulate on Dorin’s. He deemed it
unwise for them to appear to confer and so gave her no very detailed
explanations. She wasn’t to sing, he said. It made these beggars
fidgety.
She accepted the dictum philosophically, and his heart smote him anew
with how he had taught her that song and then kicked her when she sang
it so that he listened too long. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to
be happy. Her happiness was to him suddenly beyond price. It wasn’t
that he didn’t like her to sing.
“Sorry,” he mumbled inadequately. “Ticklish job--no chances--queer
chaps, you know--weird notions----”
“Yes,” she agreed serenely, her mind already drifting away to the
sunset and the picturesqueness of Mohammed outlined against it where he
stood peering intently across at the opposite hillside and the shadows
of the valley between. “Do you think he sees something?” she queried,
minutes later, into the silence.
“Who?” Dorin sat up. “Where?”
Economical of movement, she nodded her head in Mohammed’s direction,
and Dorin, too, scanned the hillside, and the shadows, until Mohammed,
seeing himself under observation, became ostentatiously busy.
Dorin roused several times during the night to a phantom movement and
whispering, but the open flap of his tent gave an unobstructed view
of Alexandra’s quarters a few feet away, and nothing seemed to be
stirring. Each time he reproached himself for nerves and napped again.
He was quite sure before morning, however, that he wished she wasn’t a
girl.
Alexandra slept with utter confidence in the goodness of life and in
Dodo’s guardianship. The episode of the morning had not badly shaken
her. She supposed such things happened occasionally. Natives were queer
and resented fancied slights. Dodo knew how to manage them, though.
Dodo was altogether wonderful. Everything was wonderful. Being a girl
hadn’t mattered, after all.
When Dorin stepped out of his tent soon after dawn into a strangely
quiet camp a spatter of earth rose at his feet and something else
struck _whack_! on the tent-pole behind him.
“Hullo!” said Dorin mildly, thinking fast.
“They have gone, _sahib_.” Mohammed’s confidential whine came from
where he squatted placidly on his hunkers in the lee of the tent. “All
gone, but me. Gold--it is nothing to me. The _sahib_ is my master
and----”
“Gone! Oh, my hat!” Dorin gazed ruefully across the valley. “Stalky
brutes they were, too! But I might have known-- _Zut_!” he added
cheerfully, unstartled, as another bullet plopped on to rock three feet
to the right of him. “We can’t have this!” He dived into the tent for
his rifle. “What did they take with them?” he demanded, emerging gun in
hand and making for the stores piled on the far side of the burnt-out
fire.
“A good share, _sahib_. Two horses, two guns----”
“They’ve got my little Enfield, confound ’em!” Dorin was making swift
inventory of what remained. “I liked that gun. She was a lady.” He
cocked the rifle in his hand briskly, his gaze raking the hillside
opposite.
“The _sahib_ sees where the rock dips down to the timber.”
Mohammed’s skinny brown finger pointed across the valley. “One of them
is there--behind the large round stone which overhangs. The other----”
“Above and to the left. Dashed good at taking cover--” The rifle
snuggled lovingly into Dorin’s shoulder. “I don’t think he’d be
missed,” he murmured, and the rifle spoke.
The answer came promptly and scattered the ashes of the fire.
“The ledge,” remarked Mohammed regretfully, “projects too far.”
“Dodo, what _is_ it?” Alexandra stood breathless and blinking in
the morning light.
Dorin whirled. He had clean forgotten her.
“Go into the tent and lie down, you,” he commanded. “_Ek dum!_”
“But what----”
_Ping!_ one of Mohammed’s cherished cooking utensils was disabled.
_Plop!_ to Alexandra’s immediate left.
“Oh, here, I say, this won’t do!” cried Dorin. “Get out of sight, I
tell you, and keep still!” He glanced at Mohammed’s expressionless
countenance as she vanished obediently within the tent. “Got your
revolver handy?” he called after her.
“Yes, but----”
“Hang on to it.” He started dodging along the slope to the left, rifle
in hand. “Shan’t be long. Keep still, I say.”
“But where are you going?” A reckless head appeared at the tent flap.
“Round the end. Can’t have them firing into camp like this. Lie down,
you idiot!” He was already out of sight.
The firing was occasional but persistent while Dorin made his zig-zag
way along the side of his hill, into a rock chimney, out again, and on,
unhurried, methodical, sure-footed. It came inevitably to his mind that
he had had a hunch. He hoped things weren’t going to be awkward for
Sandy....
Once he glanced over his shoulder at a blob of lead on the rock,
then at the hillside opposite, and grinned. “Not bad, that one,” he
commented approvingly. “Good gun you’ve got, my boy.” Again, working
along an exposed ledge, flat to the cliff wall, he paused as though a
hand had held him back, while lead flattened on the rock six inches
ahead. He shook his head at the hunch, then, a trifle thoughtfully.
“No,” he decided. “This isn’t it.”
He came to the end of the ravine and began working up toward higher
ground. The range had lessened and he had to be more careful about
keeping to cover. He had forced them to change their position, and the
balanced rock no longer blanketed the man in its shadow. He found a
ledge with a deep crevice and fitted himself to it, breathing hard,
dusty, somewhat cut and bruised, but happy enough. He could see the
stolen horses and the second man from where he lay. Now, then.
Almost immediately a bullet spat dust into his face. “Oh, shut up,”
he said, not impatiently. “Wait a minute, can’t you?” His eyes had
gone cold and bright and narrow. Again the rifle snuggled against his
shoulder and spoke once. The hillside answered twice. “Must be getting
old,” he complained, shifting a little. “Better make my will.”
He fired again, with the same result. “_I_ know,” he sighed. “I’m
nervous!” His third shot brought a yell, and the man beside the rock
moved incautiously and then lay spraddled out and visible, one arm
flung wide into a patch of early sunlight. Dorin waited, tight lines
around his mouth. The humor was now quite gone from the situation.
The man behind the ledge which Mohammed had deplored apparently lost
his head and fired several times rapidly. The bullets went wild. Dorin
kept very quiet. At last the man raised himself and curiously surveyed
his comrade, who was ominously still. Dorin watched him grimly, while
he crawled from behind the ledge toward the widening patch of sunlight,
in the edge of which huddled the bundle of rags and villainy which
seemed so indifferent now to fate.
Something in its stillness struck the late conspirator with sudden
panic. He rose and made for the horses at a dodging, drunken run,
finally abandoning all thought of cover as he flung himself at the
saddle and dug his heels into the horse’s sides. Dorin sent several
bullets after him not too wide of the mark, to lend color to his
escape, and watched him gallop out of sight round a shoulder of rock,
the second horse clattering aimlessly behind. “Break his silly neck,”
he muttered. “Save trouble all round.”
He got to his feet a little stiffly, and with a sigh of resignation
started for the balanced rock. And as he went the hunch went with him,
puzzlingly, until-- “Look here,” he said to it. “Look here, let me see
her through, can’t you? I’ll come back,” he promised it. “I swear I’ll
come back. But I’ve got a bit of a job on, this time. Hold off a bit,
can’t you...?”
The bundle lay there on its face, deserted, inert, the sun creeping
along its shapeless length, warming it. He turned it over, to make
sure. Yes, one might as well leave it there, now. He rolled it back on
its face and stood looking down at it a minute. Beastly business. But
what was a man to do?
As he turned away he caught sight of something out of the tail of
his eye, and stooping he picked up the gun who was a lady. “No good
here--either of us,” he told her apologetically. “Let’s go home.”
Mohammed was getting breakfast with Oriental impassivity when Alexandra
looked out at last into the silence.
“It’s--very quiet,” she said.
“Breakfast now,” he opined brightly. “I think no more shooting today.”
“What’s happened? Could you see?”
“One died. One ran away. The _sahib_ will be hungry. Allah! It is
a man!”
Alexandra peered down the ravine against the rising sun. Dorin was
headed for camp. One died....
“Snipers,” said Mohammed virtuously. “Gold--it is nothing to
_me_.” He spat eloquently into the fire. “A wise man could see
that the _sahib_ is not an easy man to kill.”
“They meant to--to murder him and--and----”
“For the gold, yes. A wise man could see it could not be done. The
_sahib_ is not a child.” Mohammed pondered this a moment. “He
_need_ not have let that one run away,” he said.
Alexandra stood still in the sunlight, working it out, contemplating
the stupendous idea of a Dodo who had just-- She knew, of course, that
he had killed before, knew well from Bob Taunton that one does kill at
need. But on her holiday--! B-before breakfast--! stammered her mind
incredulously.
And now he was coming back, carrying two guns. He waved to her with
his free hand, and she waved back, absent-mindedly, and he came on,
stepping lightly, almost gayly, she thought, watching him, from rock to
rock, and there was the smell of cooking in the air....
She wondered how it felt to kill a man, how it felt to know that a
crooking of your finger had robbed some one of long, warm, thrilling
years, of dawns and moons and winds and laughter, and the feel of a
good horse between his knees. A life gone out, finished, because you
crooked your finger....
_A wise man could see that the sahib is not an easy man to kill._
They had meant it to be Dodo who forfeited this day, this precious
early sunlight--and all days and all sunlight to come. Suppose they
had brought it off. Suppose it had been Dodo’s life which had gone
out, instead of that one there by the rock. Dodo’s splendid love of
living--or that man’s mere existence. Well, but did that make a real
difference? The dead man would have killed Dodo if he could, and she
was immeasurably glad that he was dead. But was a life, then, to be
valued according to how it was lived and loved?
It was hard to look at the thing impartially. But the idea of
Dodo--dead.... With a little gasp she ran down the slope to meet him.
The _sahib_ was indeed hungry. Alexandra watched him at
breakfast, awed and almost silent before his new distinction. The
day’s work. That was all he made of it. Of course that would be all.
But--_breakfast_! There was reverence in her gaze. He was a very
great man indeed, and he had let her come along.
Dorin, too, was watching, and he smiled in his sleeve. He had wondered
how she would take this necessitous slaying of an acquaintance. He had
been, on one side of his mind, cold-bloodedly interested in its effect
on her. On the other side, being ignorant in the main of the educative
influence of Bob Taunton for one thing, he had half dreaded to meet her
eyes. He had been less pleased with things than he looked from above,
striding back to camp with the recovered Enfield. And then she had
come running to meet him, carried one of the guns, inquired the range,
praised his marksmanship, and superintended the cleaning of his rifle.
She was beyond belief. His pride of her was enormous.
CHAPTER IV
THE odd part of it all was that Shir Shan’s robe did exist in that
monastery in the Hills--a breath-taking thing, truly, when its ageless
splendor was gingerly unfolded before them; supple gold, like Danae’s
shower. An incredible thing, even though shorn now of all its largest
topazes, its clasp dangling an empty setting, its hem bare of the great
stones which once had weighted it. Still, the skirt and sleeves gave
back the light in a thousand pin-points of yellow flame, and the rich
fabric sighed against itself under its burden.
Later, when there was time to laugh, Dorin said it was Sandy’s _beaux
yeux_ which turned the trick. It is possible that without the
blue-eyed goddess he would never have touched the robe. It is certain
that because of her it came very near to being one of the last things
he ever did.
To go back a little----
Arrived within sight of the monastery, Dorin cached her in a nullah
with the pack animals, while he and Mohammed went on. She was somewhat
aggrieved about that, but she submitted gracefully. Dodo knew best. She
watched them out of sight round the shoulder of the hill with envious
eyes, and then sat down on her saddle with a cigarette.
He had said he would be back by dark, or as a last resort would send
Mohammed with a message. They did not entirely trust Mohammed. But no
one came that night. Nor the next night. Alexandra was not frightened,
but she trusted Mohammed less and less. And she wondered if there was
not something she could do.
On the third morning she got the packs together alone and followed
Dorin’s track round the shoulder of the hill, taking the pack animals
with her; a slim, valiant figure with alert, anxious eyes, and a
revolver at its hip.
Meanwhile Dorin, that very tactful man, was having his troubles at the
monastery. Things were not quite as he had been led to expect, and his
original plan was thrown badly out of gear. And just to make things
more interesting, Mohammed disappeared, whether voluntarily or perforce
he could only suspect. It was inconvenient, but by no means fatal.
Sandy would have to possess her soul in patience. Hastily reorganizing
his always elastic schemes of action, he broached the delicate subject
of his quest. At first they declined to understand what he was talking
about. Then they began to evince an almost embarrassing interest in
him. And finally they refused to part with him at all, which was
awkward.
On the morning of the third day he insisted upon another audience with
the authorities and got it. They talked. He talked. Time passed.
At last they came to the point.
“Who,” they desired to know, “is the one in the nullah beyond the hill?”
“My brother,” said Dorin, without blinking.
“Slender, with small hands and feet like a Rajput.”
“A lad only,” said Dorin.
“And long yellow hair.”
He glanced about for Mohammed and saw him in a corner looking detached
and innocent.
“Some one deceives you,” he said.
“It is a woman.”
“A woman? Here?” He smiled. “How could a woman of my people be here?”
“It is a woman.”
“Are these magic hills,” he queried, “that one can leave a boy and
return to find a woman?”
“It is,” they assured him, “a woman.”
“I know of no woman.”
“You lie.”
“I will ride down to my camp and fetch the boy,” he proposed blandly.
“No,” they said.
“I would leave my servant here as security,” he offered craftily.
“No,” they said. “She will be sent for.”
And at that moment Alexandra, driving the pack animals before her, rode
into the courtyard.
Dorin followed the crowd. At sight of him she waved her hand and called
out in her clear voice.
“Hullo!” she called. “I thought perhaps they’d eaten you!” She swung
down, unassisted, and walked, as though it was not there, through the
mob which parted before her to where he stood on the steps. “Have you
seen the robe? Is it here?”
“Do you know what you’ve done?” he demanded. “You’ve walked straight
into the trap!”
“Trap?” She glanced out over the heads of the watchful crowd, packed
below them. “What’s all this? Going to make a speech?”
“They were told--Mohammed, of course--that I had a yellow-haired woman
up my sleeve. And they were all for making me produce her.”
“Well, then, it’s a good thing I came on in, isn’t it!” she beamed.
“Is it?”
He was looking down at the crowd, from which a spokesman advanced and
delivered himself of a message. She listened with a puckered brow. It
didn’t sound at all like the sort of thing Dodo had been teaching her.
“What’s he talking?” she asked, deeply interested. “It’s beyond me.
What’s on his mind, do _you_ know?”
“He wants to see your hair.”
“Oh.” Obediently she took off her helmet.
A murmur ran through the crowd as her blondeness was revealed. Dorin’s
eyes were on those upturned faces. He was thinking hard. It was at work
again, that weird illusion she unconsciously created of being--not
quite mortal. They had to deal with a mob which was literally ready for
anything. And it was a pet conviction of his that almost any crisis
could be turned to account if only you were good for it.
For a breath he hesitated, weighing Sandy’s untried nerve with the
possible consequences of failure. Both unknown quantities. Might as
well give it a run.
“Listen, now.” He began to speak rapidly, close to her ear. “There is a
long chance--if you want to take it. They remember that Shir Shan had
yellow hair, too, and they’re wondering. It might be possible to run
a colossal bluff. I don’t know what will happen if they call it. One
never knows. Anyway, we’re in a fix as it is. But I could tell them
that Shir Shan has come for what is hers.”
“Try it!” she urged instantly. “Oh, what a lark! Try it!”
“Sure you want to?”
“We can swing it! It’s worth a try!” Her eyes were blazing. “Tell them
I’m Shir Shan and see what happens!”
She went up a step and stood above him, looking out fearlessly over the
crowd, which waited, expectant, incredulous, murmuring, uncertain.
After a moment he stretched his arms for silence and spoke. He told
them that she was the rightful owner of the robe and that owing to
their obduracy and stupid ways with her emissary she had come herself
for what was rightfully hers, and that it had pleased her to come in
this guise. He told them that acting on her orders and for their own
good he, who was her high priest and as the dust beneath her feet,
had thought to conceal from them her presence in these hills, but that
now she had come and they had best walk lightly. He told them that
owing to her all-embracing clemency they should be unharmed if they
returned to her the sacred robe which was in their keeping, and that it
was her gracious wish that they should even be rewarded for holding it
safe until she came for it. He said that they had thus so far acquired
merit, and advised that the robe be brought forth at once.
It was a beautiful speech.
The spokesman conferred with others. There was a priest with turquoises
in his ears who objected to everything and whom they sought to placate.
He was the one who had sat highest in the council hall all morning,
and he had taken no active part in proceedings hitherto. So aloof had
he seemed on his uncomfortable pedestal that Dorin had wondered if
he weren’t a deaf mute. He spoke now, with gestures. They seemed a
little afraid of him, but they argued. Then suddenly he withdrew his
objections. It was as though something had occurred to him.
Alexandra waited, bare-headed, pink-cheeked, her weight thrown on one
foot, her thumb hooked into her revolver belt, while her blazing eyes
missed nothing. Dorin, who was himself ready for almost anything now,
saw that she looked quite plausibly of another world, with a thousand
years of life and death and mystery in those eyes. She caught his
glance and laughed silently. This was living!
The spokesman came forward again. They were humbly invited to enter
the building. Alexandra shook her yellow head.
“Bring it here,” she said, with an imperious gesture.
They understood the gesture.
And so, amazingly, they brought it, and unrolled it on the steps before
her, half in sunlight, half in shadow, shorn of its largest stones and
with a rifled clasp, but unbelievably magnificent still.
And she, playing her part, frowned over the clasp, held up the barren
hem. Volubly, they explained that it had come to them so. Still she
frowned, turning it over and over.
A mutter started among those gathered in the courtyard round the man
who had objected, and spread to those about them on the steps. It
passed from lip to lip that none but Shir Shan could wear the robe and
live. When this reached Dorin’s ears he heard, as it were, the fall of
the next card, and his lips tightened. He drew closer to her and bent
his head.
“Put it on,” he said. “You’ve got to put it on. Quick!”
“Here.” She thrust her helmet into his hands. “Hold this, then.”
It was ridiculous, but he felt something, a sort of twinge, as he
watched her getting so matter-of-factly into the magic robe. Of course
nothing happened. But he had held his breath, there in broad daylight,
conscious of the cobra-like glitter in the gaze of the man with the
turquoises in his ears. She was so game, so pitifully unquestioning.
And now they were in for it.
She faced the crowd again, muffled to the chin in supple gold, her blue
eyes blazing, the sun on her pale hair.
“Well?” she demanded of them impudently.
They gaped. Then there was a movement, a bending of backs.
“Done it!” murmured Dorin, his face inscrutable. “Now to get out of
this.”
“We mustn’t seem to hurry,” she warned him wisely. “Wait----”
She moved down the steps toward them, looking them between the eyes,
and they gave back before her. She went to her horse, which stood
against the wall, and returned with a heavy bag which clinked as she
set it on the steps.
“Now. Get your horse. I’ll wear this thing till we’re out of sight.
Hang on to my hat.” She turned again, as coolly as though she had given
him orders many times before, and mounted, the robe dragging behind her.
A shout of protest went up at that. Hands caught at her stirrups and
bridle. The mob closed in about her. Yelling, chanting, jostling each
other, they swept her forward so that she rode a bewildered, stumbling
horse up the steps and into the great hall. Heavy doors swung to behind
her, shutting out the sunlight, shutting in the exultant noise.
She had caught one dazed glimpse of Dorin, struggling to get to her
through the crowd. Looking about now in the dim light of the interior,
she could not see him. She rose in her stirrups and loudly demanded
him, but they did not hear nor would they have understood. Alexandra
felt disconcerted. She had been so very clever, everything was going so
beautifully, and now.... She was still not badly frightened. But it was
getting a bit thick, wasn’t it!
Red fires were kindled, and swinging lamps cast weird shadows on great
gray walls. The clamor was deafening. And she realized at last, with
a queer feeling in the pit of her stomach, that Dodo was on the other
side of those metal doors.
CHAPTER V
ALL the rest of that day and all night, Dorin waited on the steps
outside the metal doors. So far as he knew, it was the only entrance to
that part of the building. He could not tear down stone walls with his
bare hands. He could only wait. She might find a chance to slip out.
His head ached furiously from the sun and the noise, and his tongue was
rough with thirst. After the doors had slammed in his face, turning the
mob back upon itself, he retrieved her helmet from the corner where it
had been kicked while he was trying to get to her. It was dusty and a
little bashed in. He sat brushing it off, worrying at the dents, and
waiting.
The place was now wholly _en fête_. The man with the turquoises
had apparently got inside. Those who had been shut out, and there
seemed to be hundreds of them sprung from somewhere, were celebrating
in their own way the acquisition of a private deity. Weird-sounding
musical instruments wailed above the steady, maddening throb of drums
and the babel of voices. As night drew in, fires sprang up and torches
danced.
He could hear nothing through the doors. She would probably be safe, he
told himself, if she kept to the horse and didn’t get trampled. They
would not willingly harm one hair of that sacred golden head. At least
not yet. And she had her revolver. He wondered if he could hear a shot,
out there.
He had for comfort the knowledge that whatever happened to her as a
result of her impromptu deification would be his fault. He had told her
to put it on. And she had unhesitatingly obeyed him in that as in all
other things, trusting to him to tell her what to do next. And here he
was. It looked like rather a bad business.
Fingering the battered helmet, he waited helplessly beneath the
Himalayan stars. He wondered if they’d give her anything to eat. He
wondered, wincing, what manner of revels and homage she would be forced
to witness. His clear-eyed, joyous Sandy--those beasts. Once he rose
and beat upon the closed doors with his hands like a madman, and then
dropped down beside her helmet again, remembering to save his strength
for whatever came next. At 3 A. M. he remembered to wind his
watch.
He got the packs off two of the ponies, which huddled in a corner where
she had left them, and shifted the kits so that they each carried water
and a little food; fed them and ate and drank, himself. She might
have to run for it now. Dawn was coming. Things were quieting down.
The place was littered with lax, exhausted figures. Perhaps she would
manage to slip away. Hang on to her hat, she said....
At last the doors swung open. He whirled, a hand going to his hip.
Some of them came out, tenderly leading a dissipated-looking horse with
an empty saddle.
They told him she was sleeping, and they tried to stop him. He sent two
of them flying, and rushed into the hall, shouting her name. The place
smelt abominably, a horrible mingling of a hundred unnamable odors, but
among them.... He sniffed. A dead sheep with its throat cut accounted
for that.
He went on through endless corridors, calling her. At last in an inner
chamber hung with fine silks and rugs, the air heavy with a sweetish
smoke despite the beautiful carven lattice open to the dawn, he found
her, lying on the stone floor with an arm beneath her head, her cheek
pillowed on the other hand. The robe had been dropped in a shimmering
heap beside her.
On his knees he raised her in his arms, felt her hands, her temples,
groaned with relief when she opened heavy eyes. She sat up, pushing him
from her futilely with one hand.
“I’m all right,” she said, holding her head. “It seemed best--to drink
the stuff. It made me sick.” A shudder ran through her. “I’m all
right,” she said again. “Help me up.”
He lifted her to her feet. How light she was, for her strength! Her
hair brushed his cheek. How tall she was!
Then there were footsteps outside and they rushed him from behind,
pinioning his arms, chattering angrily, and she reeled back against
the wall. There was the flash of naked steel.
Without time to scream she flew at them, struck up an arm blindly,
began to splutter at them in English, calling on her small stock of
epithets--somehow gave them pause. They stared at her, holding him
between them, his arm oddly twisted, his face very white.
“Loose him!” she commanded in English, pulling at him. “Let him go, I
say!” Her palm cracked smartly on the cheek of the man who was twisting
Dorin’s arm. “_Let go!_”
Astonished, the man let go, in order to rub his face. It appeared that
some one had made a mistake.
“He is mine!” she cried, striking her breast. “_Mine_, do you
hear? And I am Shir Shan! Now clear out of here! _Go!_”
Dorin had dropped to his knees and crouched there, sick with the
pain in his shoulder. Stooping swiftly, she caught up the robe and
threw it over her shoulders so that he, huddled there at her feet,
was half within its protective folds. So she faced them above him,
adding figurative cubits to her stature, seeming to tower in offended
divinity. They retreated unwillingly, muttering among themselves, eying
him with increased respect and puzzlement, abasing themselves before
her.
As the curtain fell into place behind them she drew a long breath,
pushing back her hair boyishly.
“_Well!_” she said. “Well, I’m blowed! Whatever touched them off
like that!”
“Suppose it’s what I get for laying hands on your sacred person.”
“Oh, what rot! Is your arm all right?”
“Think so.” He rose stiffly, rubbing it.
“And here we are!” She walked to the window, the robe whispering in her
wake, and stood leaning against the casement, panting a little. “Nice
view,” she said.
_He is mine._ Dorin followed her to the window and together they
watched the sun come up, while they made and rejected plans for escape.
_He is mine._ And it had stopped them like a shot. She had kept
her head. Any one else would have cut loose with a gun and there would
have been the devil to pay. But they were still alive, together again,
plus the robe, and stood one chance in ever so many of getting away.
_He is mine._ It had occurred to her to say that, unmistakably,
in every line of her, instead of pulling her gun. They owed their two
lives, perhaps, to her having said that in the nick of time. Rummy
feeling. And here they were.
They made their zealous hosts understand that she wanted him with her
throughout the day, and the two of them snatched sleep in turns until
dusk. Exploring after dark, they found they were guarded, surrounded,
bottled up. Then they made a plan.
She was to speak always in English, lots of it, with him as
interpreter. That would help to make him indispensable and free of the
place. They would stay there as they were and give no trouble, until
the time came. He would make unostentatious investigations among the
servants in the kitchens and the stables. She, speaking through him,
would sound the priests, one by one. And finally they would know just
how they stood.
The next day he delivered an address from her to the authorities, which
said that she was pleased with their zeal and their many kindnesses,
and since they so desired it would make this place her home. But it
was her wish not to be disturbed with ceremonies in her honor. She
was to be left to herself for rest and meditation, after her journey.
Furthermore, it was her will that he, her high priest and the dust
beneath her feet, should have the preparation of her food and should
come and go as he pleased, for without him she was as the moon without
its star, and lonely.
They listened attentively and seemed impressed. It should be as she
wished, they said.
And so the long siege began.
Dull days and weary weeks of waiting followed; of laying plans that
came to nothing, of setting word-traps that were never sprung, of talk,
talk, talk. Just what their hosts meant to do with Shir Shan, now
that they had got her, was not clear. Perhaps they could not agree
among themselves. Meanwhile she was kept virtually a prisoner. Queer
things happened, queer foods were offered her, she was surrounded by
intrigues, whisperings, plots. And Dorin knew well that her life hung
on the mad whims of a mob of undisciplined, all-powerful fanatics.
Small attention was paid now to his movements, but there was nothing
he could do. The pack animals and their kits remained undisturbed and
in readiness. But every exit from the suite of inner chambers was
efficiently barred to the goddess. It was as though he was to be given
every opportunity to escape and leave her there. But even if it had
occurred to him to do so the chances are that he would not have gone
far without being overtaken by an accident.
The thing looked hopeless. Even Alexandra, with her capacity for
deriving satisfaction from the very air she breathed, began to chafe
as the weeks went by. There they were. And there, by the mercy of
Providence, they might live to a ripe old age and die.
He of the turquoises, it was plain, had been until now the local
representative of heaven on earth. And him Dorin chalked up for special
attention. As fellow priests they had long discussions, often ending in
rather heated arguments which Dorin, who had dabbled in many cults and
held views of one kind or another on all subjects, would have regarded
as priceless under happier circumstances. And as fellow men they took
one another’s measure, and each recognized an adversary worthy of his
steel.
The priest was inclined to be insatiable as regarded the
goddess-woman’s past. Dorin drew him always subtly toward her future,
and in this way was able to get home with a few good ones. He had
mingled with the multitude and he had heard things which served his
purpose. And he began at last to move cautiously toward his goal.
Gradually, cloaked with hints and deferential silences but looming
larger always, it dawned on the turquoised man that his position, his
very priesthood, was becoming untenable. He had been master there, it
was true. He had ruled unchallenged, and the post was a good one. Then
had come this goddess-woman out of the blue, and his pedestal, to say
nothing of his life, was threatened. It was a new idea to him and he
did not like it at all. He had been doing very well as he was. And now
it seemed that through no desire of hers there was a movement on foot
to dispense with him entirely and enthrone the heaven-born wearer of
the robe.
It was naturally not a notion which appealed to him. He said so by
the hour. And Dorin would spread his hands and lift his shoulders in
exaggerated fatalism. One knew how one’s people were. Superstitions
ran away with them. Like children, one’s people. But, he confided, it
need not go on. Shir Shan was weary for her own land beyond hills and
water. They had been very kind here, but it was not a life that she
was accustomed to. She pined. She drooped. Her beneficent powers were
waning. A sick goddess was no good to any one, and might even become an
incubus. But he, who was her high priest and who understood her ways,
would undertake even now to convey her safely hence to her own land if
it could be arranged--provided it were arranged soon....
The turquoised man was eying him betwixt suspicion and relief.
_Something_ was bound to be arranged soon, prophesied Dorin
philosophically, and left it there.
Repeated crises of nerves had finally taught the prisoners to sleep
when they had a chance, and they were necessarily fatalists of a
sort, anyway. And so one night Dorin, who slept on a pallet across
Alexandra’s threshold, woke from dreamless slumber to a hand on his
shoulder and another over his mouth.
Some one wanted a private word with him. And as he lay looking up
into the face so near his own, he saw by the star-glow through the
open lattice that there were turquoises in its ears. He signified a
willingness to listen, and they withdrew amiably enough to the window
and there conversed at some length in the sinister sibilances of the
whispered vernacular.
There was truth, said the turquoised man, in what Dorin had told him
of his own diminishing favor. He had threatened and stormed and made
magic to no avail. The idea of change gained ground. He admitted
ingenuously that it had occurred to him to try if the goddess would not
bleed to death like a human being. But her dead body would have been
an inconvenience to him. Besides--here the cobra eyes wandered over
Dorin’s lean and lazy length--he desired no dealings with her. But if
she were just to disappear without a trace it could hardly be called
any of his affair. _He_ was not interested in her. And goddesses
were undependable people. If she were simply to vanish into the blue
as she had come from out it, that day when they spoke her name in the
council hall, and leave him in peace....
Dorin thought it over gravely, leaning against the casement. He
conceded the entire reasonableness of the turquoised gentleman’s
aversion to Shir Shan’s continued presence there, and commended
his foresight with regard to violent measures. He agreed that the
suggestion that she should disappear was feasible. There would have
to be horses, of course, and many days’ supplies. He himself was but
human, with human needs....
He was graciously urged to take his own kits with him, as much as one
extra pony would carry. The departure of more than three animals would
involve too much of a stir and be unwise. His servant, regrettably,
must be left behind. Himself, the goddess-woman, and three ponies. That
was all.
Dorin thought it would do, but-- There could hardly be any objection,
he supposed, to Shir Shan’s taking with her that which she had come
for and which was rightfully hers? Of course, he added as a flicker of
doubt passed over the sharp features of the man before him, she would
ask no embarrassing questions concerning the reward she had brought
and which had mysteriously disappeared the night of the festival.
Moreover-- His fingers were busy at his waist a moment, and then a
small khaki-covered roll, stuffed stiff and heavy, was deftly inserted
into the girdle of the turquoised man’s robe. Shir Shan never failed
to reward her faithful ones with more than her good will, smiled Dorin
sweetly. And when might the vanishing be arranged? _Tonight!_ He
straightened against the casement. Very well, he would wake Shir Shan
at once.
He found her already awake, fully dressed, kneeling by the doorway
peering through the parted curtains to make sure everything was all
right with him. He noted that her revolver was ready to her hand. Dear,
valiant Sandy!
With the robe rolled into a bundle under her arm, they followed the
swift, noiseless shadow which was the turquoised man through a darkness
which felt as darkness feels when a clock has stopped ticking. Dorin
knew that feel in the air--lifted his chin to it with dilated nostrils,
like a wild thing--and saw with his trained cat’s eyes that the trail
was blazed with huddled shapes where he had been wont to encounter
watchmen. His hand closed on Sandy’s elbow, and he grinned grimly at
the wholesale slaughter which would be laid at his door when morning
came.
Thus they reached the steps in the star-glow, and so passed out to
the stables. And that was the last they ever saw of the man with the
turquoises in his ears. But no one stopped them as they rode forth,
silent, a little awed at the dreadful ease of it, shaping their course
for India.
CHAPTER VI
SINCE the annihilation of time and space by the telegraph, nothing
from a famous actress’ first child to the disappearance into space of
an Englishman’s wife can be accomplished in private. And so the lurid
word went forth that Alexandra Marley and Blaise Dorin were believed to
be lost in the wilds of Central Asia, whither they had gone together
in search of adventure and romance. Weird speculations were made as
to their probable fate. Old stories were raked up, dating back to the
Mutiny, and new ones were invented--blood-curdling tales of mutilation
and slow death. In a temporary lull in domestic murders and divorce,
wars and rumors of wars, the whole of Alexandra’s spectacular story
came to light. _Ingarsen’s daughter!_ Oh, well, all the Ingarsens
were like that!
Even allowing for accidents, the pair were long overdue on the Indian
Border, and no word had come through. Bokhara shrugged its shoulders.
Calcutta sighed a patient, official sigh, and wished there was
something that could be done. London looked very worried and said that
something ought to be done. And women from Edinburgh to Simla called
Alexandra sporting or mad, according to their lights, and some of them
were kinder to their nice, stoutish husbands, because home was not such
a bad place to be, after all.
On the Indian frontier, where the news was naturally worst and traveled
fastest, men either shook their heads or took it without blinking, as
the case might be. And those who did not know Blaise Dorin talked too
much, twisting the knife in those who loved him.
Starke was frantic--it was he who gave the interviews--and said that if
Blaise Dorin had but taken his advice in the beginning and done exactly
as he wished they would both be safe in Calcutta or Bombay at that
moment, and the life of a beautiful woman would never have been forfeit.
Clement suffered as acutely as only a kindly, mistaken, bewildered man
can suffer, and blamed everybody and every thing except perhaps the
utter helplessness of a seventeen-year-old girl pitched into marriage.
And he thanked heaven that his mother had taken to her bed, after
commanding him to institute divorce proceedings, and need not know
the rest. “A Marley!” she would say. “Her mother was a Marley!” She
seemed to feel that excommunication from the clan, a sort of public
drumming out of the ranks, would in some way wipe the stain from the
family escutcheon. I think in the end it killed her, it and nothing
else, so that she died of being no longer proud to hold up her head.
Meanwhile, carried bodily on the wave of her relentless will, the
divorce proceedings went forward--a dreadful mockery to every one else
concerned.
And Susan, who had known an angel and been cast out of heaven, instead
of crying herself to sleep for that all kindness and beauty seemed
to have been taken from her, now lay awake staring into the dark,
imagining horrors, remembering how once she had dared to touch that
bowed, golden head, hating with a murderous frenzy that drove her nails
into her hands, a harsh, hideous old woman who was somehow to blame and
who was at that moment dying comfortably in her bed.
But Taunton, after the first strenuous hour when he didn’t believe
anything and his vocabulary wouldn’t stretch, threw up everything,
stopped for nothing, and arrived gaunt-eyed and grim in India. It was
during the hot weather, and two of every three men he wanted to see
were on leave in Kashmir, Simla, Darjeeling--as far apart as possible.
Doggedly, he set to work. And finally one night toward midnight he
paced the flower-filled living-room of a bungalow in Simla, alternately
pleading with and swearing at a man who had earned the reputation of
being able to move mountains.
“But _why_ can’t you send troops up there? Dorin’s alive! I know
he is! _You_ know he is! They can’t kill Dodo just for fun! But
he’s in some beastly hole. He’s fighting some fearful odds, holding
out, hoping against hope that we’ll come for him in time! Oh, my God,
_how_ can you sit there smokin’ that damn’ cigar and quibble about
things with official names! Thirst--death--torture--are _those_ in
your sacred treaties and army orders? I tell you you’ve _got_ to
help me find him!”
The man who could move mountains watched him with tired, kind eyes.
The love of man for man is a beautiful thing, a pitiful thing. And he
had seen it on the rack before now.
“There’s really nothing I can do, old boy,” he said gently, when
he could. “It’s no case for the Army. He--he’s just one man, you
know--going his own way at his own risk. He--he’s just Dodo Dorin, a
madman who has always pulled through somehow--so far. He knew when
he went up there that Government would not, could not back his play.
And besides--we know only that they left Bokhara with just three
servants, for some insane reason, working east, purposely avoiding
the usual trade routes--we know that they deliberately struck out
into back-of-beyond and vanished into thin air. There’s no way of
tracing them, nor of knowing how far they have come. It was a suicidal
performance, but there it is. Dodo has as many lives as a cat, we both
know that, but--this time he’s been hampered with--_her_. And
there’s no reason to believe that a whole regiment scattered through
the Hills now could find them and bring them in safe. How--” He knocked
the ash carefully from his cigar. “How did he happen to take her--do
_you_ know?”
“No,” said Taunton, and drew a little whistling breath of pain through
his teeth. “I suppose she just--_went_.”
The man who could move mountains brooded over his cigar.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I suppose she would. All the same--no job for a
woman.”
“I’m not sure--” began Taunton, and stopped.
“Not sure--?” prodded the man who could move mountains, gently.
Taunton swung round on one heel with a sigh, and passed a hand over his
hair.
“Oh, _I_ don’t know--sort of queer feeling, when you’re with
her--sort of--well, _not_ the sort of thing you feel with--women.”
There was a silence.
“I knew her father.” The cigar glowed under a long pull. “I knew
him--well.”
“He was before my time.” Taunton spoke softly, suddenly shy before
something he had not guessed. “I fancy she’s like him, though. You
ought to see her. Tall and fair--and keen. God, she was _keen_!”
“I suppose,” said the slow, tired voice behind the cigar, “I suppose
it’s the way Ingarsen’s daughter would want it.”
As he spoke the words, she was riding headlong through the dark, with
Dorin’s horse pounding just behind, bullets singing over her lowered
head. And she was thinking with an irresponsible chuckle catching at
her breath how lucky they were that it wasn’t Dodo who had taught these
blighters to shoot!
CHAPTER VII
IT was one of those courts the lion and the lizard keep; a temple stuck
on to the side of a hill, with a broken parapet jutting out over sheer
space. Rank undergrowth encroached on its decaying symmetries, for it
was situated unwholesomely near the outlying corruption of a spring,
once pure and fresh, now bubbling a death-rattle through lush foliage.
It had never been a healthful spot, the temple of Shir Shan, and it
had become less so since her beneficent influence had been withdrawn.
Things crawled and scampered across its widening fissures in the
great jungle game of killing before you yourself are killed, and the
grandsire of all the cobras had his abode in an underground chamber,
where he no doubt reflected upon the legend of his fathers that a
decent, well-meaning cobra was fed at regular intervals.
No sound disturbed the long torpor of Shir Shan’s temple except the
lisp of its foliage invasion, the glide, patter, or pounce of its
silent, eternally warring interlopers, and the terrible, gasping gurgle
of the dying spring, which rose and fell like a labored breathing in
the stillness.
And then in the slow, clammy hour before dawn, the ghost of an old
clamor echoed down the valley--shouts and the pounding of many hooves,
and the more modern, business-like rattle of rifles. Twice the racket
converged on the deserted shrine of Shir Shan, and twice held off and
passed to one side. There were riders on the crest of the hill way
above it--riders in the river-bed far below. The dark spat flame.
And Shir Shan’s temple waited, cadaverous, breathing a death-rattle,
peering into the dawn.
Two came panting to the foot of the wall beneath the crumbling parapet,
feeling their way through the protecting blackness, and one of them was
half crawling, half dragged. They spoke in whispers, and the grandsire
of all the cobras, beyond a break in the wall, heard, but being old and
very incurious, paid no attention.
“I can climb it,” said Alexandra.
“Not alone.”
“There’s an easier way in for you, but I can find it better from
inside. It will be safe to use the torch inside.”
“But it’s ten miles straight up here,” he objected. “And those rocks
will give under you.”
“The railing of that parapet is not more than ten feet above my head!”
she told him stoutly. “And we can’t wait; it’s getting light enough to
see handholds. Soon it will be light enough to be seen going up. You
stay here. Take it easy. Lie low. I won’t be long.”
Swift and sure as a boy, she came up the jagged face of the wall. Small
landslides marked her passage--things tottered under her momentarily
and righted themselves again as she left them--until with a little
grunt of achievement she swung over the railing of the parapet and
dropped to the temple floor.
Her riding-breeches and boots, once so smart, were torn and smudged
with earth and foliage. Her shirt was open at the throat, her face
and neck were smeared with dirt and perspiration, and on the sleeve
of her jacket was a dark stain from Dorin’s wound. She wore her topi
militantly, with the chin-strap. So came the last of the Ingarsens,
breathing rather hard as she took her place at the end of the
line, hunted and tired and cool-headed, with the odds against her
forty-to-one and no takers.
She pulled the electric torch from her belt, where it had somewhat
unwielidy made the ascent, and turned the light on the interior of
the temple. Everywhere there was the débris of crumbling columns and
rotting masonry. At her left rose a decayed throne with an altar-like
platform in front of it, reached from three sides by a dozen shallow
steps. An enormous image, blind, for its eyes had been sapphires, was
smashed and pitted with missiles and black with ancient fires. Beyond,
the rear of the temple lay in indistinguishable shadow, with the
glimmer of yet more broken columns, and from there came the ghastly
respirations of the spring. To her right ran a great wall with an
opening and a fallen lintel at a crazy angle across it.
“Shocking bad repair the place is in,” ran her irrepressible thoughts,
as she ducked through the doorway, the torchlight preceding her.
“Kenilworth Castle was never like this!”
She came out into a kind of inner court, crossed it, squeezed through
a hole in the wall, and emerged a hundred feet up the hill and to the
right of where she had left Dorin. She stood a moment, taking things
in. The pursuit seemed to have drawn off on a false scent. The East was
still blank and cold, but would not stay so long. A chill wind, like a
sigh from the dead, touched her face. She drew a long breath of it, and
that odd blaze leaped up suddenly in her weary eyes. _Life!_ It
was still hers!
She took her revolver from its holster and examined the chamber. Empty.
With a shrug she snapped it shut and tossed it into a corner of the
wall; frowned at a twinge in her wrist as she did so and paused to
wrap her grimy handkerchief around the sprain, jerking the knot tight
between her teeth, before she started down the slope.
Painfully and with long rests, with much tugging and some happy
nonsense from Sandy, Dorin reached the parapet room and sank with a
groaning sigh at the foot of the steps. She surveyed him anxiously.
He was wounded in the hip, the stain had spread to his shirt, and he
looked generally done for. Clutched safe in his left hand he held the
khaki-covered bundle which was Shir Shan’s robe. She put it behind his
head for a pillow, without comment. It and the torch were all they
had left. The useless rifles were miles back along the road where
the cartridges gave out. The kits were on the winded horses they
had abandoned at the bottom of the hill. She had had her hands full,
without even a canteen. Hands that had been cold but steady, as Dorin
swayed from the saddle into her arms.
“Let’s have a look at this place.” He took the torch and the finger
of light explored the throne, the broken columns, and the blackness
beyond, where the spring went on choking to death. “Mmmmm--picturesque,
at least!” he said.
“We-ell--” Alexandra, her thumbs hooked into her pockets, looked about
her at all she could see of it. “Don’t you think they’ve overdone it
just a bit?” She stood before the image, a small, impudent figure,
staring up. “It’s all sort of gone-at-the-knees!” she complained.
“And nobody cares!” remarked Dorin, feebly sententious. “Nobody loves
her any more!”
“‘The Goddess of your sacrifice has flown away,’” quoted Alexandra,
and swung round on a derisive heel at her own cleverness. “Me, I’m the
‘Deity on wandering wing,’” she added, tapping her chest.
For hours now they had played a brave game against what was very near
to hopelessness. Dorin’s laughter ended on a half sob of pain, and she
sobered.
“Look here, we’ve got to do something about that hole in your side.”
“Let me see your gun,” he said, bracing.
“It’s--out there,” with a jerk of her head toward the court.
“Fetch it.”
“Not now. I think I’d better----”
“It’s empty, then.”
“Possibly.”
“I told you to keep one.”
“I needed it back there on the road.”
“Take my knife.”
“What for?”
“Take my knife, I tell you,” he repeated peremptorily, and added as she
fumbled with the buckle of the belt, “You know how to use it.”
“They’ve gone on East. They think we’re up ahead.” She was fastening
the belt round her own waist. “We’ll lie doggo here through the day if
necessary. The horses are too done in to go far on their own. We’ll
find them still there in the ravine, I fancy, when things quiet down.”
“Have we any water?”
“None. Do you want it badly?”
“No. I only wondered.”
“Listen.” The gurgle of the spring filled in the silence. “There’s
water back there. If I could get some cold water on that wound----”
“Never mind that now. Want to rest a minute. Sandy, I want you to
promise me--that if I should go off unexpectedly----”
“Stow it, Dodo!”
“Promise you won’t go fooling about trying for water while it’s light,
though. They’re not out of the neighborhood yet.”
“Then I’d better go-look-see now, before dawn. Perhaps----”
A distant yell broke in. They listened tensely, holding each other’s
eyes. Nothing more.
“You stay here,” he commanded at last.
“Who do you suppose these ruffians are?” she demanded in a half
whisper, much as one speaks with lowered voice in the presence of a
ringing telephone. “Could they have overtaken us from the monastery?”
“Easily. Or it may be some roving robber band who either got wind of
the robe or are merely looking for a bit of fun. In any case, I don’t
mind owning, I wish we were well out of here.”
“If it were only bandits, I suppose they’d hold us for ransom, or
something.”
“Or something,” he agreed, ironically, and grinned. “‘Only bandits’
puts it well!”
“I was thinking--if they’re a delegation from the monastery, we might
look for something else again,” she reflected.
“You’ve got the knife. Don’t be afraid of it.”
“Well, they haven’t got us yet!” She straightened cheerfully. “How far
do you think we are from the Pass?”
“Hard to tell. Especially at this rate.” He laid a hand over his wound
and drew breath between his teeth.
“We’d planned to sleep on British territory tomorrow night.”
“We’ll do well if we sight this end of the Pass on the day after, now.
And that’s provided we haven’t hopelessly mislaid the horses.”
“Is there a surgeon at the Fort?”
“Doubt it. It’s a native garrison, you know, with an English officer or
two.”
“Then they can jolly well send down for a surgeon! We’ll get you as far
as the Fort and there we stick till you’re patched up!”
“Oh, Sandy--if there were words to tell how splendid you are!”
“Don’t talk rot! I’m having the time of my life!” She moved away,
embarrassed but proud.
“Yes--you would say that.” His eyes followed her, hoarding the sight
of her. “There’s only one thing you’re really afraid of, isn’t there?
That’s sentiment. Don’t worry. I’m not going to blub over you now. But
I wish to God I hadn’t let you in for this!”
“We’ll pull through somehow! And besides--I wasn’t meant to die in my
bed. I’m sure of that, since I’ve been with you.”
“Had a good time?” he asked wistfully.
“Corking!” There could be no doubt about that!
“I know,” he said. “You were born to this, as I was. You’d rather it
was short, if need be, but swift. So would I. Oh, bless you, Sandy,
I--” He broke off, and lay watching her a moment with a somewhat rueful
grin. “Do you remember something you said one day in London about the
great adventure of an hour’s uncertainty between life and death?”
She laughed aloud, lifting her face to the thrill of it as to a kiss,
her arms embracing life.
“Yes,” he admitted. “You’ve got it now!”
“Yes, I’ve got it!” she cried exultantly. “I love life tonight! Will
you ever forget that ride in a million years? Oh, it was beastly luck,
their hitting you! But we’ll get through somehow, and----”
“And if we shouldn’t?”
“Why, then--you will still have given me exactly what I wanted.”
He was looking at her thoughtfully, his mind’s eye seeing a red plush
room and a naked, neglected piano--a tea-table practically untouched--a
white, tense face--a gray gown....
“There were violets in your belt,” he said.
“Violets? Oh, you mean that day--” Her eyes widened. She came and
sat down on the step beside him, her feet tucked under her. “Those
violets,” she began slowly, “those violets started everything! If I
had not bought those violets--if I had gone to Tilbury instead, that
day--if I had not gone home to tea--why, if I had not been there when
Mr. Starke came--_none_ of it would have happened! At least, not
that day. And then you would have been gone.”
“Starke?” He had raised himself a little to look up at her.
“_Starke?_” he insisted.
“I didn’t tell you--it didn’t matter--there hasn’t been time to tell
you,” she apologized. “Starke came that afternoon, you know. That was
how I knew you were leaving that night. And--well, he asked me to go
away with him--so that there could be a divorce, so that he could marry
me, so that I could sit in the lap of luxury all my days and wear
pearls and ermine. He--he thought that was what I wanted, poor dear!”
“Starke!” he repeated, trying to grasp it.
“Yes, and so you see--when she began to say those things to Clem about
his--Starke’s coming there--well, you see, _that_ having only
just happened--Clem came in while I was having him--Starke--shown out,
the way they do on the stage--_that_ being the case, though I
certainly never dreamed, and it wasn’t exactly my fault, was it----?”
“That being the case--?” he prompted, spellbound.
“Why, then, don’t you see, when she began to say those things to Clem
about--about-- Well, the whole business rather had me treed,” she
explained. “And so I sort of had hysterics, or something, and Clem went
off to the club for dinner and--and I came with you!”
He was staring at her, raised on one elbow, his eyes already big and
bright with fever, his mouth, still sweet and fine of line despite a
three days’ beard, ajar with astonishment.
“But you never told me,” he said stupidly. “You--you never told me
this!”
“There wasn’t time.” It was the way she looked at it. That part of it
was over. She had been too busy, since, to think of it. There had been
so many other things to talk to him about, since. Things that mattered.
Starke didn’t matter. Not even Clem mattered, now. There wasn’t time
for them any more. Still, she frowned back across the months. “And
that’s not all,” she said darkly. “She sacked Susan.”
“She--? Susan--?” he groped.
“My maid.” She set her lips. “I liked Susan. She tried so hard. She
liked me too, I think. And just because tea was late-- That was
hard--having Susan dismissed before my very eyes! She cried.” She
brooded a moment. “I _liked_ Susan,” she insisted softly.
He had always dimly surmised that there must have been some sort
of row. But now, from her half sentences, her pauses, her quaint
reticences, her almost Etonian laconics, it began to assume in his eyes
the proportions of one of the decisive battles of the world. What on
earth had she been up against? Her own servant dismissed--Starke gone
mad--her husband playing the fool--and the old lady.... He had never
met the old lady.
“_She_ never liked me,” said Sandy, at this point, “because I
hadn’t a baby.”
She meant the old lady. It was uncanny the way she followed a man’s
thoughts. He settled back against the step, veiling his eyes with his
lashes, keeping careful silence so that if she were minded she might
talk it all out now that she seemed inclined to begin--might get it
all out of her system, now, while there was still time.
There was a long silence, which he forbore to break.
“I _meant_ to have one,” said Sandy, looking back along the
path she had come. “I thought it would be--well, something to talk
to--provided it wasn’t too much like Clem.”
That opened another vista to him. Sandy wanting a baby. Or rather,
Sandy wanting something to talk to that wasn’t too much like Clem. He
waited, among these astounding revelations, for more.
She sighed.
“It didn’t come off, though. _She_ said that from what she saw of
me perhaps it was just as well--” Another silence. Then-- “Were you
ever ill?” she queried suddenly. “I mean--so ill you heard them say you
couldn’t last the night out?”
“No,” he murmured, watching, fascinated, while another huge block of
the puzzle fell into place.
She was staring out over his head at the sky beyond the parapet. Dawn.
Dawn between the curtains, reddening to a patch of sunlight reflected
on the wall. And one had lived to see another day. One had lived--for
this day, breaking now. For value received!
CHAPTER VIII
THEY sat so for what seemed a long time, but it was really less than
five minutes, her eyes lovingly on the pearling sky beyond the parapet,
his on her hand where it lay on the step between them, grimed and with
a barked and bleeding knuckle, the handkerchief bandage peeping from
beneath her cuff. At last he reached out and covered the hand with his,
almost diffidently, and she looked down at him with a quick, anxious
smile.
“Oh, Dodo, what a beast I am! You must be hurting--just like
anything--and I sit here----”
“Look here,” he said. “If we seem to have thrown those beggars off the
track in the morning I want you to try for the horses and run for it.”
“Run for it?” she repeated, amazed.
“Alone.”
“Dodo, that’s an insult--no less!”
“Half a mo.” He was looking down at the hand in his, at its slim,
straight fingers, its delicacy, its strength. He loved her hands.... He
roused himself to argument. “What did we come for, anyway? Just a lark?
Or are we on business? The robe is here, a man has invested a huge sum
in it--and one of us is whole. If there is any chance of getting his
property through to the Pass we must take that chance. I wasn’t just
staging a picnic for you when I brought you along. I knew it was a
two-man job. Alone, I should have failed. You’ve got to carry on.”
“And what’s to become of you?”
“I’ll follow--more slowly. You can send back for me.”
“No, thanks. I’ll take you with me.”
“You take the robe,” he said. “That’s enough.”
“Oh, what’s the robe!” she cried impatiently.
“Our job.”
She was unimpressed. Her eyes rested on the khaki-covered bundle behind
his head, and they held no love for it. A yellow rag with a few bits
of glass attached--a fine thing to carry tenderly down to the Pass and
chaperon back to London while Dodo died! The symbol of an ancient evil
when weighed in the balance with the splendid, laughing flame that
was Dodo’s life was found hopelessly wanting. Disdain for its utter
worthlessness grew in her gaze, so that Dorin, watching, in sheer
desperation gave himself away.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sandy, take the robe and go! It’s your only
chance!”
“My--only--chance! So that’s your game! It’s not the robe you’re
worrying about at all. It’s me!” She grinned at him, amused at the
childishness of such a scheme, chagrined that she had not seen through
him at once. “And to think I nearly let you bluff me!”
“Now, Sandy, we’ve got to face this thing,” he said. “You won’t like
it. For that matter, neither do I. But here’s how it stands. This hole
in my side is bad medicine. In a few days--a few hours--I’ll be out
of my head--helpless--a dead weight. You can’t lift and carry me.” He
waited a moment, looking down at their clasped fingers because he dared
not look into her face just then. “You came in Bob’s place,” he went on
slowly. “Better than nothing, you said! But I know and so will you if
you stop to think--that Bob himself couldn’t get me down to the Pass in
time.”
“Perhaps Bob Taunton couldn’t, but I can!” she cried, secretly
appalled, but fighting it grimly. “I will! I’ve _got_ to!”
“No. You’ll only be throwing away every chance you have in the world.”
“Now, get this, Dodo. I don’t leave you.” With a quick, hard pressure
on his hands she rose and walked away. “There _are_ things no
fellow can do,” she muttered, kicking at the floor.
“But it’s no good bucking destiny, old thing. As you said a minute
ago--I’ve had my fun. But you’re not done for yet! You may go on, God
knows how long, riding the wind, as you call it--taking your chances as
they come----”
“Save your strength, Dodo. I stick.”
“Oh, Sandy--you gorgeous fool!”
He lay looking after her with shadowed, smiling eyes, her very danger
forgotten in the almost creative pride he had of her. She turned,
throwing wide her arms in a gesture of impotent energy.
“Oh, Lord, I wish we had a couple of rifles! I’d like to see them take
us here, and let the Government worry it out afterwards!”
He smiled.
“Nothing that happens here concerns the Government. We’re playing a
lone hand, at our own risk. It’s no affair of the British Army’s what
happens to us. I had fair warning that our present enterprise has no
international significance!”
“Well, in a way, that’s comforting!” she said brightly. “I had one of
those devils on my conscience! Teach me to shoot, you said! You did!”
she grinned, with satisfaction. “I can!”
“Fire-eater! The good God meant you to be a Lawrence or a Rhodes. And
to think you might never have come into your heritage!”
There was a spurt of distant yells and a shot or two. They listened,
staring at the blank, cold sky outside the parapet. Whatever trail the
pursuit had crossed led on in another direction.
“I don’t know just what is your heritage,” he added in a minute. “But
I’ve an idea that it’s on all sides of us now.”
“Well, whatever it is--we’ll go halves on it!”
“That--makes all the difference.”
His eyes closed wearily, and she caught her breath at his white misery.
It was no good making a fuss, but--she had to do something at once.
“I’m going to see if I can’t find some water and get you more
comfortable. Does it feel pretty terrible?”
“It’s all right,” he assured her, bracing again. “Come and sit down.”
“I wonder--” She was peering over the parapet into the half light
below. “I wonder if I couldn’t get to the horses and bring back a
canteen.” She leaned way out. “I see them! I’m sure I do!”
“Sandy, you heathen, come back here!” he commanded sharply. “Leave the
horses alone, wherever they are. We won’t take any chances like that
till later.”
“Wherever any of this is! I say, where do you think we really are?” She
came back reluctantly from the railing. Orders were orders as long as
he was able to give them.
“In some God and Government forsaken pocket of the Hills near the Roof
of the World.”
“We’ve been going in circles trying to dodge those blighters.
Impossible to tell how far we’ve come in a straight line.”
“Do you know what I think?” He turned the torch full on the eyeless
image, and it seemed there was the glint of gold flake about its
head-dress.
“Yes. We’ve struck it. The lost temple with the record. Those fellows
circled it when we first came toward it, and then they doubled back for
us and skirted it again. And they’re still giving it a wide berth. It’s
haunted.” She swept it with an interested glance. “Full of ghosts!” she
said with relish. “Wonder where they keep themselves!”
“Then that’s Shir Shan.” Dorin was still studying the image.
“Yes, that’s herself.” She went and posed beside it, looking up. “What
a resemblance!” she said, taking off her helmet. “Don’t you notice it?
Round the eyes----”
“Ass!” he chuckled, loving it.
“Fancy we’re safe enough here. No native will risk the spooks.”
“Superstition is a great blessing to the enlightened. Still--with Shir
Shan’s robe as the stake--if they know we’ve got it----”
“I’ll bet you a piece of real Chinese money with a hole in it that we
don’t see anything more of them!”
“Done! And I shan’t at all mind losing!” He looked at her a moment as
she stood before him, straight and slim and smiling, with smooth, fair
hair. “Are you really as game as this?” he queried. “Or haven’t you got
sense enough to be scared? Which is it?”
Laughing, she slapped her hip pocket and brought out her cigarette
case, man-size, his gift to her at Port Said.
“One--two--three--four,” she counted cheerfully. “And yours is empty
and my horse has the rest. Much good may it do him!” She lighted his
and then her own, with a steady hand. “Listen. I’m sure there’s water
back there. Hear it? A spring. I’m going to get some and look after
that wound.” She took the torch and started off briskly.
“No, no, I’d rather you didn’t. _Sandy!_”
She paused at the foot of the image, ridiculously small and fragile
looking in the lee of its clumsy bulk.
“You’ve got the jumps, old man. I’ll be within hailing distance.” And
she went on, disobedient after all, into the shadows. Her voice came
back to him gayly. “Golly! There goes the father of all serpents!”
He knew she didn’t like snakes. It was not fear, it was the recoil of
a warm and vital creature from something swift and cold which struck
unfairly--an instinctive revulsion as old as the Hills. But she went on
steadily, the point of light preceding her, until all sight and sound
of her were lost among the pillars. He lay back with his eyes closed,
surrendering to the waves of pain and sickness that broke over him once
the anesthetic of her presence was gone.
He knew, as such men often do fatalistically know, that his allotted
time was up. It was the hunch. He was done. How to get her out of it,
that was the question. How to make her leave him and go on alone, till
her last chance had been exhausted. He was perhaps still not too far
gone to plan for her safety. She must go on. Alone. And he must stay
here and die. Alone. Else they would both assuredly perish, but he
would go first. How to spare her that, he wondered. He must get her
away before fever and delirium claimed him--before her last memory of
him should become a horror unspeakable. A man cannot die like a man if
it be not given to him to know what he is doing. A man is best alone
when the cards are stacked against him.
He found himself wishing helplessly for Bob Taunton. Bob would find a
way. Bob would get her down to India, would make her understand that
she must not stay on his account. Bob would never let her know the
hideousness of watching some one die, and of being left alone with
something that had once been warm and quick and--fond of her. He could
not have her going through that. If he told her that he loved her--if
he made her understand what he himself had only just come to understand
fully--that she mattered to him more than anything.... No, that would
never do, then she would stick for his sake. And he mustn’t let her
stick. He mustn’t _let_ Sandy die.
The infinite preciousness of her. He kept coming back to that. The joy
of her gay comradeship, the wonder of her mad enthusiasms, the warmth
of her loyalty and love--for she did love him in her way, he knew,
her weird way, betwixt child and man, selfless and self-conscious. He
had known well in his time and become accustomed to the desolation of
that inevitable loneliness which must now and then engulf the hardiest
solitary soul. And then Sandy had come, laughing and strong and
beautiful, stretching her valiant stride to his, and it was unthinkable
now how lonely he had been, always, without knowing quite where it
hurt. Sandy fitted into one’s heart so. Her roots went so deep. She was
such a plucky little beggar....
He lay there, hardly breathing, his head pillowed against Shir Shan’s
robe, his mind already feeling clouded, frowning because for once he
could not seem to think clearly. Instead he kept seeing Sandy.
Sandy climbing the wall in the dim dawn while he crouched below,
following with bated breath the progress of a slim shadow he could
scarcely see, hearing things come rattling down, fancying she
slipped.... Sandy on the monastery steps, swathed in supple gold, her
blue eyes eerie with a pagan flame.... Sandy sitting Brugglesmith like
a little warrior, rather flushed and quite breathless, boundlessly
happy because he told her she had done well.... Sandy running
heedlessly with outstretched arms to meet her first camel, and how the
brute had tried to bite her.... Sandy in that house in Bloomsbury, with
violets in her belt....
Violets. If she had not bought them, she said.... He had smelt them as
he entered the room. He had felt them cool against his fingers that
time he took her hands. He loved her hands. She need not know, but--he
must touch--her hands--once more....
CHAPTER IX
AND as he lay there at the foot of the steps leading to the altar, very
still, scarcely breathing, a head rose cautiously over the railing,
while its scared Asiatic eyes probed the shadows of the interior. Then
a sole adventuresome bandit, badly frightened at his own rashness,
bestrode the railing and surveyed the scene.
A detachment of his comrades was not far off, but trespassing on
haunted ground among devils is a lonesome business, and he wished he
had not come. He hung there, astride the railing, clinging to the
unsympathetic company of his horse below, fortifying himself with
thoughts of yellow topazes and tribal glory, until a deeper shadow
at the foot of the steps caught his wandering eye. No devil, that
shadow. He hitched soundlessly along the railing to look more closely,
to verify his first impression that the shadow was shaped like a
man. Undoubtedly it was a man; dead, or something like it; helpless,
certainly. A man in khaki with a white face--one of the two they
sought--one of the two who possessed fabulous wealth. The Asiatic
astride the railing became convinced that this was his lucky day.
Whereupon Dorin’s ears were rent with a yell that seemed to have its
origin somewhere beyond the mouth of hell, and raising himself with
a jerk he beheld a ghoul dancing on the railing against the faintly
luminous sky, and the noise it made proclaimed it human in its way. It
was an excellent if lively target, but there were no cartridges. Sandy
had needed them back there on the trail. Well, it was all a part of
the dreadful nightmare of her danger. Perhaps even now if she wasn’t
seen----
“Sandy!” he shouted, without turning his head in her direction. “Oh,
Sandy! Lie low, wherever you are, do you hear? Stay where you are! Keep
still!”
The dancing demon turned at the first sound of Dorin’s voice and
dropped to the floor, a ready hand searching out a knife. As he
advanced, his darting gaze caught the bundle behind Dorin’s head, and a
glitter came into it and stayed there. First of all, he would have that
bundle.
Dorin waited, lying quiet, his gray eyes looking coolly into the eyes
of murder. Sandy had dropped her empty gun somewhere. His knife was
belted round her waist. He had no weapon, and little strength to use
one. He could only wait, quietly, so that she would not try to help him
and be caught herself. If they killed him and took the robe and went
without seeing her, she might still stand a chance. Oh, Sandy, there
were violets in your belt that day.... Life and death both different
because of violets in your belt....
The native had become suspicious of Dorin’s very stillness. He felt
that a man who lay and looked at death like that must have something
up his sleeve. He circled uncertainly, muttering to himself, and so
came between his victim and something that might well have driven Dorin
quite mad--Sandy’s stealthy shadow among the shadows at the rear of the
temple.
She had found the spring and discovered how to set her cupped hand
between the rock and the stagnant pool each time the thing breathed
out. Thus the spurt of fresh water could be caught, and she found it
odorless and without a corrupted taste. Good water, always, at its
source. She had washed her face, and selected a place near-by for Dorin
to rest while she dressed his wound. If only she could get to the kits
on the horses for some bandages.... What was that yelling? It sounded
very close. It must come from-- She was on her feet, listening tautly
with parted lips. Then Dodo’s voice. _Lie low?_ Why? The yelling
had stopped abruptly. _Dodo--!_ She started, instinctively on
tiptoe, toward the throne room. Something was moving in there. She
flitted from pillar to pillar, hugging the shadows, losing no time
but being very careful, her light step on the grit of the stone floor
blurred by the ceaseless bubble and suck of the spring. Reaching
for the knife, she found the torch still in her hand, and stuck it
into her belt again. Not wise to use it now. If only the place were
lighter! Something moved between her and the steps where Dodo should
be. Something that went on two feet, as he could not. She caught its
silhouette against the sky--a native! It swept her like fire. They had
found him! They would kill him, lying there....
She never knew quite how it happened. But then she had run into a man’s
broad back from behind, with Dodo’s knife held as she had been taught
to hold it at necessity, pointing slightly up, her weight behind it as
she came.... With a queer gasping grunt the man threw up his arms and
sagged to the floor. Again that wave of fire swept through her. She had
killed!
“One of the neatest things I ever saw,” remarked a voice.
Dodo was all right, then. She had been in time. But she could not get
her eyes off the thing which sprawled, twitching, half across Dorin’s
feet, half on the steps. There had not been much room to spare.
“Is it as easy as that?” she asked.
“If you know how.” His voice was purposefully philosophic. He wanted to
laugh, and he wanted to cry over her. He wished Bob Taunton had seen
it. Nothing could hold her. Nothing. Again his own reaction was lost in
sheer pride of her. The pluck of her! The gorgeous, crazy pluck of her!
He hoped she wouldn’t wobble now that it was over. “Now, don’t let it
get you, old thing,” he warned. “It was this thing here--or me. Thanks
to you, I’m here to tell the tale.” He peered up at her with a white
smile. “From the extraordinary cleanness of our hero’s face, I judge
she has found water.”
“Yes, I did.”
Something was creeping over her fingers, warm and wet.... She regarded
the knife with interest, shifted it to the other hand, and frankly
wiped her right on her breeches. Vaguely it flitted across her mind
that a revolver was preferable for such matters. Tidier. No sense in
running out of cartridges like that. One lost one’s head and wasted
ammunition, and this is what it brought one to. Beastly business. But
what was one to do? Dodo must have had a bad minute or two before she
got there....
She glanced up from her spread fingers to find him watching her
anxiously, and saw with a pang how white he was--how drawn and parched
and feverish. She must get him more comfortable somehow. Nothing else
mattered. She stooped and matter-of-factly dragged the dead weight off
Dorin’s feet.
“There’s a nice spring back there,” she said. “Clean water. You must
get there--I’ll help you to get there--and then I can----”
“Listen,” he interrupted. “What’s going on outside?”
A distant tumult was growing--murmurs of dissension, it seemed, and
shouts of impatience. Horses’ hooves were pounding up and down below
the parapet.
Out of the mists of Dorin’s pain and giddiness uprose the hunch, and
pointed a relentless finger. He stared at it aghast, and knew it to be
as real, at least, as the Irishman’s banshee. There were such things.
One always knew. But Sandy! What about Sandy! Oh, why had he let her
come!
“That devil spread the glad tidings and they’ve come back for us,” he
said.
She nodded judicially.
“You win,” she conceded. “Lord, what a row!”
The noise seemed much nearer now. Their eyes met, and lingered.
“Well,” he said, and smiled at her wearily, “the game’s up at last.
We’re through, Sandy. Come here.”
“Not the slightest chance of a last minute rescue, either,” she said
thoughtfully.
“Not this time, I’m afraid.”
He reached unobtrusively for the knife on the floor beside him, and
held out an inviting arm to her. He had still not quite finished. He
must have her within reach and decide what he must do quickly when the
time came. Then let them yell.
“The British Army’s missed its cue,” she murmured, still thinking hard.
“Have to take a bow all by ourselves.”
“Come here and sit down. You’ve done all you can, bless you.”
“Just a minute, Dodo, this is too ridiculous----”
“Sandy, come here to me!” he cried sharply, with a glance over his
shoulder.
“Wait, now--let me think.”
She turned the torch on the crumbling altar above him, the rotting
throne, the great bulk of the desecrated image. That was Shir Shan.
She, too, was Shir Shan....
“Give me the robe, quick. Unwrap it!”
Not so much as a by-your-leave. Her grandfathers spoke in her tone.
Together they ripped away the khaki coverings and the great golden
thing spilled out, murmuring to itself of sacrilege against the stone,
while the clamor outside deafened.
Daylight is the essence of logic and reason, the ultimate argument.
Not even the healthiest legendary devils are wholly proof against a
genuine, inevitable dawn such as the one now breaking over the temple
of Shir Shan. Moreover, these were obsolete demons, much stricken in
years, vague wraiths of wraiths, half forgotten shades of a forgotten
race. Some talk there was of waiting for the sun to dispel the
shadow-shrouded riddle of the interior, some question arose as to the
fate of him who shouted triumph no longer, but all this was swept
aside before the primeval desire for more tangible gold than the first
sunbeam. Yelling, the host foregathered at the foot of the wall, and
howling they dismounted and climbed the crumbling stone and reached the
railing.
And at the top of the steps before the altar they beheld, motionless
in a miraculous light, a figure of unearthly beauty in a pose of
divine vengeance, a knife glittering in its upraised hand. Its long,
sun-colored hair lay golden on the magic gold of the robe of Shir Shan,
and its fathomless, far-fixed eyes were unlike any eyes ever seen
before. It did not seem to see or hear or be in any wise aware--and yet
the gleam of its dazzling vestments was stirred by its unmistakable
breathing. It lived. At least it was not mere image. And in the shadows
at its feet huddled the body of a man, and at the bottom of the steps
was another....
The inhuman bay of the man-hunt stopped with a wrench. The mob piled
up, blocking the way to those below. Questions, ejaculations, squeaks
and whispers flickered across the sudden hush. No movement, no sound
came from the golden mystery before the altar. The white light which
showed her was steady, unwinking. They had never seen such a light.
For moments which seemed eons the thing hung in the balance. The gloom
of the interior was chilling with a gray dawn. The spring could be
heard, gasping for breath in the stillness. Dorin’s position hurt his
wound cruelly but he hung on, with set teeth, so that the light might
not waver. Then Alexandra, her eyes fixed on a point in the shadows
straight ahead, sensed rather than saw recognition of the dead bandit
and a movement toward him. They would see that he had died by a human
enough hand. Then they would come to investigate Dodo....
Again something outside her own will acted. The knife left her hand
unerringly and struck, quivering, in the corpse. “_Mine!_” it
seemed to say. She had spent patient hours learning to throw a knife
like that.
There was a yelp, then pandemonium. Resolutely she kept her eyes again
on that spot in the air above their heads, unseeing, unaware, while
with a rush and a scramble, chattering in superstitious terror, they
fled headlong over the parapet, to horse, and away.
Then at last she drew breath, and at the same instant the torch dropped
from Dorin’s hand with a thud. He tried to ease his position, sighed,
and lay still. The robe rustled about her as she sank to her knees
beside him, her fingers seeking the pulse in his throat, and her hair
slipped down heavily across his hands.
“Dodo, old man, we’ve done it again--they’ve gone--Dodo, you’re all
right----?”
With a great effort he opened his eyes and smiled at her. It was good
to have seen her like this--bending over him, her face quite close, and
her hair.... His fingers closed on it wistfully. He was very tired.
“We must get you down to the spring,” she was saying. “I’ll fix you
up, you’ll see!” Still kneeling beside him, she threw off the robe and
rolled it up again, and swiftly gathered her hair into a plait as thick
as her wrist. “Come,” she said, sliding an arm under him. “We’ll get
some water now.”
“Yes--water--must have water now--” he agreed hazily, wondering at her
strength, trying to help her with his own weight. “Sandy, that was
a soft-nosed bullet, I think--I knew a chap once--got a soft-nosed
bullet--where it did some good--these fellows--pretty clumsy--we must
be farther North than I thought--up North they--never could shoot for
nuts----”
They were making slow progress down the steps. Dawn was graying even
the farthest corners now. He sank back against the steps with a short,
impatient sigh.
“I--I think I’d like a cigarette,” he announced.
“Rest a minute, then. I’ll give you one.”
As she drew out her case, her fingers touched something smooth and
cool--she felt it with an inward grin, that carven knot with the
inscription. “So far so good,” she told it approvingly. “Just you keep
it up and I’ll do the rest!”
“Why, Sandy--what’s that rag on your wrist?”
“I gave it a wrench and a scrape getting in here. It’s nothing. Feels a
little stiff.”
“If anything should happen to you now--!” he muttered. “If--if any harm
should come to you--!” He began to laugh unsteadily. “It’s rather a
joke, isn’t it--my saying that--now!”
“Dodo, stop that!” She spoke sharply. “Pull yourself together!”
“Sorry.” He drew on the cigarette she gave him. “It must be the fever
coming on. I--I won’t be much good by nightfall. There _is_ a
bandage on your wrist, though?”
“Just my handkerchief.” She showed him. “See--it’s nothing.”
“I can do it better than that,” he said. “It wants to be tighter than
that--let me----”
“But it doesn’t matter, I only----”
“Please let me.”
Her hands. He had so wanted to touch her hands once more.... His own
were steady and sure for the moment by a tremendous effort of his will.
He untied the knot and wrapped the handkerchief again, neatly.
His fingers lingered over the job and she glanced sidewise at his
absorbed face, a glance of mingled surprise, puzzlement, and amusement.
He was getting to be a bit of an old maid about her! First he tried to
send her on without him, and now making all this fuss about a sprained
wrist! She supposed one must humor him. Fever made people queer. Good
old Dodo--she would get him through safe, somehow!
CHAPTER X
THEY found that one of the two horses was badly lamed, and Alexandra
loaded him with the canteens, the robe, and a sketchy kit. Most of
their belongings were lost with the third horse which they had left
behind early in the chase. She got Dorin into the other saddle, and
they set out before noon, working south and east, watching their
shadows creep up and pass them as the day wore on.
Again and again Alexandra, plodding at the head of Dorin’s horse, was
overtaken by drowsiness till she stumbled, and thus jerked awake spoke
to the limping pony, took note of her surroundings, and went on again,
putting one foot in front of the other methodically, listening for any
sound from Dorin, trying blindly to keep awake. At first he was able
to help a little, with directions from the saddle, but soon he drooped
silent, only half conscious, across the horse’s neck. And by nightfall
he had begun to talk rather wildly, disjointed, pitiful talk.
She had never heard delirium before and its starkness appalled her.
Most of what he said was meant for Bob Taunton and had to do with
things that meant nothing to her, she thought, trying not to hear,
trying to forget what she heard, with a guilty sense of eavesdropping.
Then her name came into it--those violets again--something about her
hands--what worried him so about her hands, she wondered--and how she
would fall if she tried to climb up there alone--and how she must tell
Bob something when she got back. But from having tried not to hear she
did not know just what it was that she was to tell Bob. And then there
would be long gaps when he said nothing, and in the dark she would
feel her way along the horse to him and make sure he was still there.
Then on again, making as little noise as possible, being very cautious
about using the torch, hating the jackals--on, on, into the dawn, a
stumbling, earth-bound Valkyr with streaming hair.
Another day and another night of this, with short rests and walking
dozes, not daring to stop long for fear she would never go on again,
doing what she could for Dorin in his precious lucid moments, while he
alternated between babbling delirium and a silent stupor that was even
worse. But somehow she kept on, hungry, thirsty, drugged with fatigue,
playing the absorbing game of putting one foot in front of the other,
and heading south and east.
It was during the second night that she lost the limping horse with
the pack. There wasn’t a moon and the stars seemed very faint and far
away. They rounded a shoulder of the hill and came out on flat, bare
rock. Instinctively she hugged the up-hill side of it, holding Dorin’s
horse by the bit so that he walked almost in her footsteps. There was
a clatter, a hideous sort of scream, and silence. Looking back, she
knew that the other horse was gone and looking downhill she knew that
they stood on a narrow ledge above a drop so bottomless that no further
sound of the horse’s fall reached her. That made her more careful.
Tightening her grip on the bit, she went forward inch by inch, the
torch recklessly pointing the way now, her voice steadying the tired,
overwrought pony which was Dorin’s only chance.
It was an endless business. More than once she waited sickly beside the
hard-breathing horse, speaking to him in a low voice, praying that Dodo
would stay quiet just a little longer, assuring herself that in a few
minutes, a few steps now, she would be able to sit down.
At last the steep rise on her left fell away and she felt gravel
beneath her feet again. The torch revealed a safe slope covered with
dry turf. She sat down where she was, the bridle over her arm, her head
resting on her knees.
Dorin’s voice roused her, demanding of Bob what in the name of
something picturesque he had done with Sandy.
“I’m here, Dodo--I’m still here----”
“Sandy,” he insisted, pushing her away. “Fetch Sandy at once--don’t let
her wear that thing--it’s not--it’s not at all a wise thing to do--she
shouldn’t have come--we mustn’t let her know--you won’t give me away,
will you--it always happens like this, I suppose--but she doesn’t
know--it’s because she’s Ingarsen’s daughter, and they’re all like
that, you said--tell her--tell her Eton jackets are best--” He became
suddenly savage. “_Bobby!_ In God’s name, go quickly and fetch
Sandy! I tell you she’s all alone up there! If you let her die I’ll
come back and haunt you, I swear I will!” His voice sank with a groan.
“She’s all that matters, don’t you see--don’t let her die--damn the
robe--Sandy, where’s the robe?” Then he was gone again, quite limp and
still.
She had been leaning against the horse, her arm across Dorin’s body,
and she straightened with a gasp. The robe was on the horse that had
gone over the cliff! She had not given it a thought since she strapped
it securely to the saddle of the lame horse, intent on giving Dorin’s
mount the benefit of every ounce that could be spared from his burden.
The robe was gone. They would never see it again. It would lie there,
at the bottom of the pit, till the end of time. But only Dodo mattered
now.
She ran her hands lightly over his face and found it burning hot,
though he had been shaking with chill. His lips were rough and dry. It
was then that she cried out sharply and turned as though to run back
to where the horse had gone over the edge. The canteens were gone too!
They had only one left, the one slung across her shoulder, the one she
had been using as she walked. It was not as heavy as it had been.
She fought down panic resolutely. She would find water when it was
light. They had seen none all day but--there would be water when it
got light. There _had_ to be water. Dodo would want it. She drew
closer to him in the dark, put up her hand again to his face, dreading
to go and take her place at the horse’s head. At last with a little
moan she left him, feeling for the bridle.
“Come along,” she said aloud to the staggering animal. “We’ve got
another ten miles in us.” She stepped out, almost briskly. “Come along,
you poor beast. We’ve lost the robe, perhaps our jinx has gone with it.
Who knows what we’ll see when morning comes!”
And so for another hour only. Then the horse’s legs folded under him
and he went down in a heap. Dorin fell clear and rolled twice over down
the slope, which jarred him back to semi-consciousness.
She stood a moment, silently regarding the horse, which lay heaving in
the torchlight, and then turned away to look for a niche that would
shelter them from the night wind. A few feet farther on she came upon a
gully, a mere pin-scratch on the face of the hill, but deep enough at
one end to protect a small fire and she had still a few matches in her
pocket.
Putting forth such strength as she had never dreamed of in better days,
she got Dorin, protesting deliriously every inch of the way, even
swearing at her, into the shelter of the gully and covered him with her
coat while she built the fire. Between his feverish convictions and the
feeble blaze she knew no peace for an hour. The stars departed and the
dawn held off. At last Dorin became quiet again and she crawled back to
where she had left the horse. It seemed very far. She got to her feet
and swept the torchlight round hastily. There was no horse.
She was crying through clenched teeth as she crept back to the gully.
Dodo had to have a doctor. How was she to get him to a doctor without a
horse? She had been a fool to let go of the horse even for an instant.
Of course he would stumble up and on as soon as he got his breath, with
dawn coming and his load gone.
She waited on the lip of the gully, straining her eyes through the dim
gloom, her breath coming in short, jagged sobs of sheer weariness.
Relentlessly the graying night showed her what she might expect of the
coming day. They were on an arid hillside which seemed never to have
known rain. There was no water in sight. There would be no water for
miles.
At last she crawled down out of the wind and tended the fire,
mechanically, and then dragged herself close to Dorin, who lay
unconscious still, and dropped beside him, her head on her arm, her
face almost on a level with his. For minutes she stayed so, memorizing
him, as it were, seeing him in the slowly growing light as she had
never had time to see him before, tracing the delicate nostrils and
jutting brow, mentally smiling at the child-like curve of his dark
lashes. His eyes looked painted, she thought, with an inward grin.
Chorus girl’s eyes. She wondered if he knew. How still he was. She
touched him fearfully. He was hot. So hot. If only there was water.
Suppose he slipped away from her like this. Suppose he never looked at
her again, nor spoke. Suppose--she--lost--him!
It was the first time in her life that she had known the blank terror
that wipes out thought and action. Then that receded and left the
situation naked before her. They were without food and water to last a
day, the horse was gone, and Dodo was dying. She could not get him down
to India. She could not get him another foot of the way. He could not
live. In a few hours he would be dead. She couldn’t quite take it in.
Dodo--dead. Why, in that case she might as well be dead, too. She faced
it, blinking. If Dodo had to die she didn’t care what happened. Fancy
not caring what happened! Fancy life become so empty that one might
as well be dead! Oh, no, not even for Dodo--! But with the little
impatient shake of her head which accompanied the denial she knew
there was no denying. Life was dear and thrilling and beautiful. Life
was Dodo. Without him it would become mere existence again, abortive,
like sunlight lying cold on a pavement, rain beating warm against a
window-pane. He would take all the color and quickness of it with him.
No good going on without Dodo....
He stirred, and moaned. She was bending over him.
“Water,” he mumbled, stiff-lipped. “Water----”
“Yes, old man--half a mo.”
She went to the canteen, which lay beyond the fire, and tipped it
recklessly. A tablespoonful of water, perhaps, trickled into the cup
before the canteen went dry. She stared at it, more in despair than in
surprise, shook it almost with impatience, and her eyes went helplessly
round the arid gully. But Dodo had to have water!
“Hullo, we’ve slept!”
His voice startled her, natural for the first time in dreary hours. She
turned, with glad, shining eyes. He had raised himself on one elbow,
temporarily quite himself again.
“Why--Dodo, you’re--all right?”
“Think so. Was I queer?”
“You did wander a bit,” she admitted, and proffered the cup.
“Have you--?” He hesitated. “Is there--?” She nodded, and he drank.
“Now, while my head is working--where are we?” She shook her head,
watching him, thinking how good it was to have his eyes seeing and his
tongue obeying his will, once more. “God knows, eh?” He glanced round
at the fire, cunningly built, and up at the sheltering bank of the
gully. “You do go at it like a veteran, Sandy! I don’t remember coming
here. Where are the horses?”
“I lost--the lame one,” she confessed.
“Lost him!”
“I’m sorry,” she said humbly.
“Sorry!” He tried to laugh, laying a quick hand on hers. “Good Lord,
did you think I was blaming you?”
“Well, you see--he took the kit and the robe with him.”
“The robe!” His fingers tightened. “The robe--_gone_?”
“We’ll come back for it--some day.” Her chin lifted, valiantly. Perhaps
he needn’t know quite how things were. Not yet. “It will wait for us,”
she said.
“Will it?” He rubbed away a puzzled frown. “I--can’t seem to remember
just what happened.”
“I was at your horse’s head,” she told him unemotionally. “We were
simply feeling our way through the dark--the other horse was following
the best he could--stumbling, grunting, slipping--following my
voice--and then he just went over the edge.”
“That’s--hard luck, isn’t it,” he said after a pause.
“My fault.”
“Don’t be silly. You’ve done the very best you could.”
“It wasn’t good enough.”
“Better than any one else on earth could have done.”
“You--you really mean that?” She looked at him hopefully, eager even
now to hear that she had pleased him.
“Yes, yes, a thousand times I mean it! You couldn’t have eyes for two
horses. Nobody could. Where’s the one I was riding?”
Again a feeling of guilty apology came over her--a feeling that she had
somehow failed him. Miserably, she tried to give an account of herself.
“He stumbled and went down under you last night--just over there. I
couldn’t get him up again, so I left him and brought you here--and then
I didn’t dare leave you--and when at last I went back to look after
him--he was gone.”
Dorin’s eyelids flickered, but he said nothing. Now that the thing was
out, she went on brokenly, in a passion of self-abasement.
“Oh, I should have made him fast somehow! I shouldn’t have left him
like that! It was all just my stupidity----!”
“Sandy--” He tried to check her.
“It was, it was stupidity! I knew he wasn’t dead! But I forgot the
first rule you ever taught me: _Stick to your horse--half the time he
knows more than you do!_ Forgot it, as though by holding fast to you
and only you I could get you through to India, safe!”
“Oh, my dear--! To have you beaten now!” He took her hands, and his
were hot but firm. “The gods aren’t being generous!”
“They’re jealous gods. Perhaps we were too clever at the temple.
Still--this is better than that, isn’t it!”
“But you mustn’t stay here any longer.”
“Why not?” She smiled at him gravely.
“My dear, you must snatch at every chance there is left! You might be
picked up by a caravan, or-- You’ve been splendid, since I crocked up.
But you’ve done all even you can do. You must go on--alone.”
_Must._ It had been her pride always to obey orders to the letter.
And mutiny against a wounded captain made one feel a cad.
“I--I’d rather stay with you,” she objected delicately.
“But this won’t last, you know. I mean--as soon as the sun comes
I--well, I won’t be much good. I probably won’t even know if you’re
here, after that. It’s got to be--good-by--now--in any case.”
And while he smiled, his gaze clung to her face, her hair.... And then
her arms were round him convulsively, his face pressed against her
throat.
“I won’t leave you.” He felt it against his lips. “I won’t leave
you--ever!”
Mutiny. And he too tired to cope with the comfort of it. Close enough,
now, to see the pulse in her throat, and not daring to kiss it. And
there was a great grimy smear on her cheek. The kind of smear that
tears make on the cheeks of dirty urchins. With a tired little sigh, he
shut his eyes against the day.
CHAPTER XI
AT last she raised her head and with a glance at the pearling sky
shifted his weight a little, making him comfortable against her
shoulder, and spoke as one child to another, making a game.
“We’ve hours yet. Let’s talk,” she said.
So, while the cold dawn gained on them slowly, they talked as they
had never before talked, no longer shy of things, no longer tacitly
avoiding things, their quaint, school-boyish reticence laid aside for
this last great moment that remained to them. But habit was strong in
both of them, and there were many things that neither of them could
find words for, but these were all encompassed in their boundless
understanding, each for the other, which filled in the gaps and replied
to them.
The man in Simla had said that it would be as she wanted it, and but
for Dorin she might now have had no personal quarrel with fate. Her
grandfathers had known how to die when the time came. But Dodo. That
made it different. That wasn’t fair of something somewhere. Her old
passionate clinging to life for life’s sake was in abeyance before the
new and stupendous fact that Dodo wanted her for his own. And she felt
that in the face of everything Dodo should be allowed to have whatever
he wanted. And because Dodo was being deprived of something he wanted,
Death had no right to him yet, nor to her so long as he wanted her.
Things had only begun, for them.
“We’d have had such times together,” she said thoughtfully. “Such
times.”
“You’d have gone on--and on--with me?” He wanted her to say it in every
possible way. He wanted to hear it as often as he could.
“If you’d asked me,” she stipulated.
“I’m not sure I’d have had the nerve to do that! Besides----” He
hesitated.
“I know. You’re thinking of all that back there. It seems like another
woman--another incarnation.” She broke that with a smile. “How
frightfully obvious people become, don’t they, when they try to put
big things into words! Of course it was another woman! _I_ never
was Clem’s wife! Not this me! And I’ve an idea Clem hasn’t got a wife
by now.” She nodded to herself, distant-eyed. “_She_ would see to
that. And Clem is such a logical man. He would divorce me first and
eventually it might occur to him exactly how I came to do it. I can see
that now. He’ll marry again, too,” she added after a moment.
“Think so?” Dorin was lying quiet, looking down at her hand in his,
caring for nothing but the sound of her voice. He felt her nodding
again.
“Not straight off. But that will occur to him, too, eventually,” she
prophesied cheerfully. “He’ll find he needs some one to see that his
meals are right. Unfortunately for Clem, even the best cooks if left
to themselves regard mutton as one of life’s obligations. Clem doesn’t
like mutton--among other things. You know,” she went on absurdly, with
a sudden squeeze of his fingers to make him pay attention to this new
idea of hers, “you know, I’ve got a theory that boy children should be
trained in the nursery to eat everything and anything, for their wives’
sake! Why, when I was first married to Clem I used to write down the
things he wouldn’t eat, so that they could be avoided thereafter.” She
sat with wide, humorous eyes, regarding that faraway, conscientious
bride. “There got to be quite a list,” she marveled mildly.
He shook with chuckling.
“Oh, Sandy, you priceless idiot!”
“Thanks to you.”
“Me!”
“You’re why I’m a priceless idiot and not Clem’s wife.”
“Pygmalion stuff!” he jeered, much pleased.
“Yes,” she agreed. And then, wistfully, “I could have made you so proud
of me, Dodo!”
“Proud!” he murmured. “Good Lord----!”
“Oh, don’t think I’m regretting--this. I’ve learned to look the lords
of life and death between the eyes and laugh--as you do. I’m almost a
philosopher now--like you!” She smiled down at him. Oh, it was hard,
his not having time for everything he wanted! She put that away from
her, sturdily. “You know, the curious part of it is,” she continued,
“if I’d been born knowing what I know now I might never have done
what I did!” They laughed at each other, without effort, in perfect
comprehension. “_You_ know what I mean, Dodo--_little_
things!”
“Tell me--” He had made a game of bending her long, passive fingers
back as far as they would go and then collapsing them suddenly, both
joints at once. “Of course my interest is purely--academic. But suppose
I simply _wasn’t_, and you _were_. Knowing all this you
mention about little things, and so forth--couldn’t you go back and
make a go of it now--if you had the chance?”
“No,” she said slowly, with a shake of her head. “Because you see
I wasn’t born a philosopher. I learned it all--here. And so it all
belongs to you. All my laughter. All my love.”
There was a silence. His hand was quiet on hers. It was one of the
times when words wouldn’t come to him.
“I’m glad you said that,” he got out, at last.
“I wanted you to know,” she said simply.
“I-- You-- Oh, bless you, Sandy.”
“I know,” she replied again comfortably to his inarticulateness. “We’ve
both been homeless vagabonds of the spirit, born out of our time.
Leftovers, both of us. Flotsam of the ages. I had lived all my life on
the doorstep of other people’s lives. It was always the same, after my
father died. My own mother--or Clem--I seemed to them just a bit mad.
Then you came, and for the first time I’ve been _inside_. I can
talk to you. You always know what I mean and how I feel. You’ve felt it
all, too. We were bound to come home to this, I suppose--together.”
“How simple you make it sound!” he teased her, with worshipful eyes.
“I’ve always been a terrific joke to you, haven’t I!” she remarked,
almost boastfully.
“Oh, my dear--!” He buried his face against her. Then, muffled against
her shoulder, “Go on talking, Sandy. I love your--nonsense.”
“Well,” she went on, playing the game, “I was just thinking. It would
have been nicer for Clem if I’d got back to face the music, wouldn’t
it. This way he’ll never know quite where he is. Dodo, can one divorce
a woman who isn’t alive?”
“It isn’t usually considered necessary, is it?”
“And yet,” she frowned, “if Clem didn’t divorce me because it
didn’t seem to be necessary--he’ll probably never _know_, you
know--wouldn’t he always be afraid if he married again that I might
turn up after all and convict him of bigamy, the way they do in books?”
“Does he read that kind of books?” He grinned against her shoulder, at
the thought of Clem straying among popular fiction.
“No,” she admitted, soberly enough. “And Clem was never an imaginative
man. But somebody ought to warn him. Clem would hate being let in for
bigamy!”
“But it’s what they call a strictly hypothetical case, isn’t it?” He
was playing with her fingers again. He loved her hands....
“All the same--” A smile flickered across her face. “If I were Clem I’d
feel safer if I’d divorced me first. Do you follow?”
“Oh, quite!” he assured her.
“Of course it does save trouble for us--this way. You would have been
expected to marry me.”
“Frightful bore.”
“Yes, that’s what I say!”
Laughing, her cheek suddenly against his hair, they clung closer for a
moment, hugging their joke. Then he looked up at her, quite serious.
“Will you, Sandy? I mean--would you? I mean, not just because it
would be expected, but because it won’t ever be the same now if we
aren’t doing things together-- I mean, it wouldn’t be if we-- Oh,
hang, I’m all mixed in my tenses! But if we’d had better luck this
time--Sandy----?”
She looked down at him, quite serious, too, her hand along his cheek.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave you--ever.”
“Well, then--” He caught his breath, turning his face into her coat
again. “--that’s that, isn’t it.”
She sat quiet, her arms aching with his weight but knowing that
she would hold him like this as long as he was there to hold, and
after--looking out with heavy eyes on the relentless day that would
take him from her. And then everything would be over. Funny, to love
some one, even Dodo, more than she loved life, and to count his loss
the greater. Funny, how things turned out.
“It’s an odd feeling, isn’t it,” she said. “Knowing that it’s all come
to an end--and not minding.”
“But you do mind, Sandy. It’s horrid hard on you. You’re not afraid.
But you don’t like it.”
“It’s only----”
“Only the things you haven’t had a chance to do. I know.”
“With you,” she reminded him jealously.
“With me--bless you. And the hundreds of long, windy days you forfeit.
I know.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “Sun--and wind.” Then she glanced down at him
sidewise, making the game. “I should have liked a tiger!” she confessed.
“Yes. Do you remember the time we talked tigers--in the Hills south of
the monastery while it stormed?”
“Allah, that was a storm! And then it cleared, like a shot, and the
sun----”
“It was on the tip of my tongue that day to promise you a tiger hunt
when we reached India.”
“I hinted, all I could.”
“But I was afraid you might think--afraid it might sound as though I
thought----”
“As though I was bound to you by what we had done.” She nodded. “I can
see how it was.”
“You know--it _is_ funny,” he said after a pause. “I mean--if
things had gone right this time we might never have come to talk like
this. We talk such utter rot about nothing at all, usually, and shy
like anything when it goes more than skin deep. It’s the way it is
with Bob. I never think of telling him how frightfully fond of him I
am. And you--I’ve got you, thank God--that is--I might have had you,
for keeps. But if we’d had any kind of decent luck this time I might
even have been fool enough to try to let you go without--without----”
“Of course I might have demanded the tiger,” she murmured.
“Oh, Sandy, you’re so alive--so awfully keen! And you may be throwing
yourself away, sitting here like this! It’s been worth--everything,
to me. But now you must take the canteen and keep on as long as you
can--for the sake of the tiger!”
“Well, you see,” she said, driven to it, “the canteen is empty.”
“But--you said----!”
“I lied. I thought it would do the most good that way. It gave
us--this.”
With a little sound of pity and despair, he crushed her hand to his
lips, and her eyes went again to the oncoming glare of day. Quite
suddenly, then, she saw red with all her rebellious soul. He was hers,
and here she sat, doing nothing. The only thing she had ever really
owned, the only thing that had ever really mattered, the only thing
that had ever needed her and wanted her and depended on her--all
wrapped up in Dodo’s life, that was slipping through her fingers. Her
tired body stiffened under his weight, she clutched him close, and her
voice rang out piteously in the wilderness.
“The Hills shan’t have you! I’ve kept you alive, I’ve dragged you inch
by inch to all the comfort I could make for you, I’ve killed for you,
and thanked God I knew how to get home with a knife! I won’t give in, I
am _not_ beaten! I dare all the demons of India! _I’m damned if
they can have you now!_”
“Sandy--my poor dear----!”
“From the top of the hill we could see--” She got to her feet, putting
him aside, planning coolly, thinking aloud. “Yes, we must get to
the top of this hill. I daren’t leave you here--there are a hundred
pin-scratches like this. I’d lose you. Dodo, you’ve got to crawl up the
bank so we can signal each other.” She bent over him again, coaxing.
“Just that little way--come--I’ll help--why, I almost carried you last
night; you don’t know how strong I am--come!”
Obediently, white-lipped, he raised himself on one knee, only to
collapse without a sound into unconsciousness. She laid him down very
carefully, and got to her feet again, talking aloud in order to keep
her head, refusing to admit yet to herself that he was gone now for the
last time.
“The horse,” she was saying quite firmly. “Perhaps I can still find the
horse--he can’t have gone far--I must go on--a little way--I can get
Dodo down somehow--I’ll show them--I----”
She snatched her helmet from the ground and then wavered, looking back
at Dorin, up at the merciless sky, down at the empty canteen.... It
wasn’t any good. She had done all she could. She couldn’t go on--far
enough--without water. It would be better to be together.
Strength seemed to drain out of her without warning. She fell. Dizzily
she crept to him--found his hand--there was still a pulse in his
wrist--water--if she had had water she might have got him through ...
if they had had any kind of decent luck....
CHAPTER XII
LIEUTENANT ERIC AINSWORTH, hastily clad, stood on the watch-tower of
the Fort, his eyes glued to the binoculars with which he was following
a moving speck on the hillside opposite. Beside him was Lal Singh,
bearer of the news which had jerked his officer out of bed at dawn.
He had seen the speck in half as much light and without binoculars,
and his brilliant gaze was now fixed expectantly on as much of the
_sahib’s_ face as remained visible.
There was a clatter up the stairs and Burton, the senior subaltern,
appeared on the lope, clothed sketchily and much excited.
“What is it? D’ya see anything? What is it?”
“Lal Singh’s right. It’s a horse. Got a saddle and no rider. Tripping
over his bridle at every step. Nobody in sight.”
They looked at each other. Lal Singh’s fine eyes went from Burton to
Ainsworth and back again. The fate of the Empire was nothing to this.
All along the Border men were watching, hoping, praying for just such
a sign as the speck on the hillside opposite. A horse. A saddled horse
which had come a long way. Never was such a sight! Lal Singh licked his
lips, looking from one _sahib_ to the other.
Burton nodded slowly.
“Yes,” he said. He looked a long minute at the hillside, through the
binoculars. “Stripped,” he said. “No kit. No nothing.” He looked
harder. “Saddle hanging any which way. Had a fall, perhaps.” He lowered
the glasses. “Yes,” he repeated thoughtfully.
“Better take a dozen chaps with you?” offered Ainsworth. There was
heroism in the pronoun. Only one of them could go.
Burton wrenched his gaze from the hillside, to look at him and at Lal
Singh, eager-eyed behind him.
“You’re his friend,” he said. “You go. Take Lal Singh. I’ll keep shop
here.”
“Thanks.” With a glance at Lal Singh, Ainsworth turned and plunged down
the stairs, the delighted Sikh at his heels.
“Mind you,” said Burton some minutes later, as Ainsworth came out to a
little group of pleased men and impatient horses waiting in the dawn,
Lal Singh grinning beside his own mount and Ainsworth’s, “mind you,
the beast may have come miles and miles like that. Or he may belong to
somebody else entirely. Unless you’re fairly sure--unless there’s a
clue of some sort on the saddle--” He hesitated anxiously.
“Be back before dark, anyway,” Ainsworth promised, and swung up.
They found the horse and looked him over. He had been much too long
without water, his knees were raw, and the saddle hung rakishly with a
bullet scar on the leather. He had been stripped of every extra ounce
and there was nothing to identify his owner.
“He’s come a long way,” said Ainsworth, and sighed. “But still--” His
eyes went hopefully over the gaunt landscape.
“From up there he came,” said Lal Singh, pointing.
Ainsworth nodded. They remounted and rode on, a dozen pairs of
horizon-trained eyes raking every rock and hollow.
Lal Singh seemed keenest on the scent and Ainsworth watched him
enviously. Trust your Sikh to find a friend, he thought, and between
Lal Singh and Blaise Dorin lay some bond of service done, either to the
other, years before. He had watched the big Sikh fretting since the
news of Dorin’s disappearance reached them, and had half expected an
outbreak of some sort. And so there might have been if the riderless
horse had been pronounced none of their business.
They topped the hill and halted, looking down its scarred flank which
lay in its own shadow under the low morning sun.
“See, _sahib_! Something--” Lal Singh’s long arm swept out. “There
at the edge of the sunlight beyond where the rock ends.”
“Where? Sorry, got no eyes this morning. Let’s go down.”
They went down, preceded by a rattle of small stones.
Alexandra had roused incredulously to the sound of horses’ hoofs. There
was a ringing in her head. It must be that only, and not horses. She
was too tired to move. She must listen--it _was_ horses--she must
shout--anything, even Afridis, would be welcome now--she must get up,
and make them hear her....
Then Dorin was taken from her, lifted bodily into the arms of some one
who set up great howls in a strange tongue, rocking back and forth.
“Good God!”
It was the purest English, that! Hands came into her narrowed range of
vision. English hands. She turned heavily, and found herself resting
against a khaki coat. She touched a bit of colored ribbon on the breast
of it. It was real. What were they babbling about? She was very tired,
but there was something she had to do.... It ripped through her mind
and she jerked against the khaki coat.
“Dodo--water--for Dodo----”
“That’s all right,” they told her. “Don’t you fret. We’ll look after
him.”
The British Army had come, then. She rested against it, closing her
eyes. How nice. And they would look after Dodo. He needn’t die, now.
That was all right. The British Army said so. It ought to know....
As they carried her toward the horses the sunlight stuck full across
her eyelids, and the shadow of a frown appeared between her brows. She
looked up into the face above her, intently.
“Sun,” she said. “Keep him--out--of the sun.”
And she fainted dead away.
_Sea_
“_I remember the black wharves and the slips_,
_And the sea-tides tossing free_;
_And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips_,
_And the beauty and mystery of the ships_,
_And the magic of the sea._”
CHAPTER I
SO Ingarsen’s daughter came to British India, and there was rejoicing
in the land. For this one had known her father, and that one loved
Blaise Dorin, and the other one’s wife would be pleased to send up
anything that was desired from the Peshawur shops. Alexandra would lift
shining eyes from these messages. “Aren’t they kind!” she would marvel.
“Aren’t they _good_!” While certain subalterns who had taken care
that the exact manner of her coming should be known grinned fondly and
went their ways.
The tale of the two Shir Shans, shyly told as a good joke by the
second, had gone out in all its glory on the four winds. Men chuckled
pridefully, and spoke of Ingarsen _père_, and abruptly blew their
noses, chuckling still. Even the women of Simla were impressed, and
wondered what she would be like to know.
Further details leaked out, discreetly. How for two days and nights
she had walked at the head of a staggering horse which carried a man
half-dead. How she had kept on, without food, without water, almost
without hope, till horseflesh failed her. How then she had found
shelter and built a fire, and waited coolly without losing her head and
wandering off alone. How she had _stuck_, to the end. And how
when they came at last she had bade them keep him out of the sun.
Thus was the chill blast of public opinion tempered to Ingarsen’s lamb,
and Alexandra, all unaware, found every one bewilderingly kind.
It has been magnificently said that a hero is a man who does what he
can. It might be added that he is also a man who remains sublimely
unconscious of heroism. In this was Alexandra a hero. She had done
superhumanly all that she could accomplish of what there was to do,
but when they tried to praise her she would point out in all honesty
that the gods had been mercifully moved to finish the job for her.
“I was done,” she told them. “If you hadn’t seen the horse we should
have died there, within a stone’s throw of the Fort.” And she smiled
at them thoughtfully. “It was a damned near thing!” she said, with
Wellingtonian emphasis.
Taunton arrived from Simla in a cloud of dust, and he and Lal Singh
and the doctor among them completely monopolized Dorin. She would come
to the doorway and stand there jealously, forgotten, superfluously a
woman again in a Peshawur frock, looking on helplessly while they sat,
all three, silent and sleepless and terribly determined, watching him,
tending him, dragging him back each time he slipped away, gaining an
inch here, losing it again there, in their long battle with eternity.
She had done her part. Now she had only to keep out of the way.
But sometimes in the long, still hours before dawn, when Lal Singh’s
turban rested against the cot close to Dorin’s hand and Bob Taunton sat
watching the precious breath coming ever so little and going ever so
far and long as Dorin slept, he would remember her and how for a time
he had been very near to hating her. And then he would acknowledge his
debt like a gentleman, envious, meanwhile, that it should have fallen
to the lot of that slim, spooky-eyed creature to take his rightful
place between Blaise Dorin and an aggressive destiny. Moreover, Dorin
had talked--never one rational word since he was carried into the Fort,
but talked--addressing himself oftenest to the agonizing Taunton whom
he heartbreakingly desired and could not recognize. And the talk was
full of Sandy, so that Bob, forced at last to believe his unwilling
ears, perceived that in Ingarsen’s daughter he had a rival and a peer.
Lal Singh regarded her with respect, and with something of a father’s
pride, with the awe that is due an instrument of the gods, and with a
tinge of jealousy, too. But he had no time for her. And the doctor said
she must rest, and shooed her from under men’s feet.
They did not consciously shut her out, but they were men fighting for
a life and they knew their business. So she wandered forlornly round
the Fort, making herself small, and hung about outside Dorin’s room,
listening, searching the faces of those who passed in and out, trying
not to be a bother and make a fuss, vaguely awaiting a summons that
never came. Each day she told herself that tomorrow she would go in,
quite firmly, and feel Dodo’s hands and make him speak to her, so that
they all might know that he wanted her, that she was necessary to him
now, and that she had some small right to him herself. But when each
tomorrow came and they passed her with set, weary faces, she fell back
out of the way and stood looking after them wistfully, feeling by
virtue of the weak, foolish tears in her eyes incompetently feminine.
It was hard to have no part in this last great fight. One night when
Dorin’s voice rose plaintively, unceasingly, in the fever, she had
wrapped herself in a blanket and crouched on a cushion in the corridor
outside his door, just in case, she told herself apologetically,
anybody should be sent to call her. The doctor found her there early in
the morning and told her it was no way to get back her strength, and
went on, hurriedly, to telegraph. “But I’ve _got_ my strength,”
said Alexandra, running after him in the blanket. “Can’t I help?
Can’t I take my turn at watching? Can’t I--?” As he disappeared round
the corner she became aware of the trailing blanket and returned
crestfallen to her room. “They treat me,” she said resentfully, “why,
they treat me the way Clem did!” She had almost forgotten how it felt.
Then came a day when Blaise Dorin opened his eyes upon a face he had
long wanted to see. He contemplated it, momentarily expecting it to
vanish into those dreadful mental mists which rolled up from a sea of
pain, engulfing consciousness.
“Bobby,” he experimented faintly.
“Yes, old man. Been here all the time.”
Dorin lay quiet, coping with it. This was no fever-born wraith which
sat beside his cot only to fade at a touch. This was Bobby, come to him
at last. If one reached out one could grasp warm, solid flesh, one’s
hand would be caught and held in the excruciating grip of their love
for each other. Nice to be able to hang on to Bobby, if only one’s
muscles could be made to work.... These were the walls of the Fort,
then. And that was some one he knew--one of his Sikhs--they had pulled
each other out of some sort of a hole a long time ago, but he couldn’t
remember at the moment just which hole--a fine chap, though--what the
devil was his name?--you must always remember your chaps’ names.... And
all the while he was conscious of something missing. The pain? Yes, but
that wasn’t it. What had he lost? There was something that was his and
he very much wanted it. Something he was loth to lose sight of and they
had taken it away....
“Sandy!” His gaze flew to Taunton’s face. It was all of him that moved,
but the look was as though he had risen. “You’ve got Sandy--safe----?”
“Quite safe, old man. Keep still. She’s coming.”
Lal Singh left the room silently. It was a little hard on Lal Singh,
but his voice was gentle as he came up behind Alexandra, watching the
sunset from the tower-- “_Memsahib_ come quick,” he suggested
softly.
She came very quick, her heart in her throat, choking her. Taunton made
way for her without a word and she went on her knees beside the cot,
giving Dorin her hand. He lay smiling at her mutely, from the pillow.
He was never a talkative man.
Taunton turned, and motioning Lal Singh before him started to tiptoe
from the room.
“Bobby.”
He paused, looking guilty, and Dorin’s brows quirked faintly upward
while he gathered strength for what was in his mind to say. It was as
if his old, delicious chuckle shook him. They waited, fascinated, while
he came ever more surely to life before their eyes.
“Sentimental ass--come back,” he said. “Sit down.”
They wouldn’t let him talk any more and so he went to sleep, Sandy’s
hand held fast in his. Taunton looked down at her where she sat
patiently on her heels beside the cot, watching with parted lips as
he himself had watched the precious breathing. He had resented her.
He had been jealous of her. She was, after all, a woman. And yet--
He looked at her in the silence, noting again her smooth hair, her
quiet hands, that hint of the palpitant wild thing in her utter lack
of self-consciousness. And then, for the first time he saw her mouth,
wistful, with humorous corners, a mouth meant to be kissed. Resent
her? Poor little beggar, she’d earned anything she wanted in this
world. And if life chose to pay its debt to her with Dodo, she had
earned even that. For without her there would have been no Dodo now. He
felt that he wanted her to know that he knew that. He felt there was
something he ought to say to her.
“I say,” he said.
Her eyes, still clouded with her own thoughts, came slowly to his face.
He noted, too, that she did not try, woman like, to shush him.
“You--you won’t mind my always claiming my bit of him?” Thus humbly he
surrendered the keys of office.
She regarded him gravely, her usual direct gaze misted with an
indefinable appeal. It was not an Eton jacket look.
“You’ll help me?” she said astonishingly. “He’s--so tired. I must get
him back to England. I must get him Home. You’ll--help me?”
Taunton reached out so that three hands lay one on the other, and hers
the middle one.
“We’ll get him Home, don’t you fret. Allah is good.”
And then, because it was all over and there was nothing whatever to cry
about, Alexandra laid her bright head on the edge of the cot and wept,
and then laughed at herself with wet cheeks until she cried again, and
Bob blew his nose, grinning.
But the cause of it all was asleep, and missed the fun.
CHAPTER II
LONG, slow weeks later they disembarked, the three of them, at
Plymouth, and proceeded thence to a London hospital with Dorin, for the
wound was not right yet. The voyage had been a trying one, though every
one was kind. And Alexandra, looking about her, came to the conclusion
that England was, after all, England.
“Have to see Starke, I suppose,” sighed Dorin. “Hell to pay, what?” He
grinned at Bob, who grinned back contentedly.
“Tell him,” said Alexandra lightly, “we’ll go back for it if he likes!”
But something stirred within her as she spoke, so lightly. _Go
back?_ it whispered. _Risk Dodo again--back there?_ Risk? She
cold-shouldered the word. It was their job--hers and Dodo’s. Dodo would
soon be right again. The robe, lying there at the bottom of the pit,
would wait for them.
According to plan, she did not linger in town but went immediately to
a village on the Cornish coast, on the flowery fringes of which stood
a cottage which Bob Taunton had once discovered. “Shockingly like a
honeymoon cottage it is, too,” thought Alexandra, as she was being
shown about it by the bright-eyed old lady who kept the keys. “I’m
afraid Dodo will think it awfully _bridal_!”
“And would you be wanting it more than a month, ma’am?” inquired the
old lady, cocking a robin-like gaze.
“We--don’t quite know,” said Alexandra, finding it difficult.
The old lady nodded wisely.
“He--he’s been ill,” Alexandra went on.
“‘In sickness and in health,’” nodded the old lady sympathetically.
“Yes, it--it all depends on his recovery how long we stay,” explained
Alexandra.
“He’ll get well fast enough here. He’ll get well, for such a pretty
wife as you.”
“But--” said Alexandra.
“‘To have and to hold,’” nodded the old lady.
“You--you’re married, too?” It came out oddly.
“Twice, my dear, and good men they were, too, and both buried now,”
admitted the old lady with something of modest pride. And she added a
bit irrelevantly, “I was never so pretty as you.”
“Oh,” said Alexandra. “And--what about the linen?”
“There’s linen here.” The old lady led the way to the cupboard. “But
you’ll have better of your own, I fancy, a young wife like you.”
“But--” said Alexandra, and stopped. She could buy linen.
“And when would you be wanting the place, ma’am?”
“Now,” said Alexandra firmly, knowing it to be just the thing for Dodo
once he got over the shock of its bridal exterior. “That is--I should
like to settle in at once, myself, and then as soon as we can be--as
soon as he can be moved----”
“Ah, the poor man,” murmured the old lady. “And what was he ill of, if
I might ask, ma’am?”
“A--a bad fall--from a horse,” gasped Alexandra. “He--his hip--he
limps--it doesn’t mend----”
“Ah, the poor man!” The old lady clucked her tongue wisely. “And how
they fret, the men, when they can’t get about!” She sighed, an ancient
zephyr of a sigh. “Like children,” she sighed, “the men are! Like to
die of a broken leg, my first husband was! Ah, well--you’ve patience
and you’ve youth, and he likes to look at you, eh? You’ll do well
enough here, you and him!”
Alexandra thought they would. The chintzes were bright but not too
new, and the long living-room opened graciously upon a rocky, fragrant
garden above the sea. The sea, at the bottom of her garden.... She
gazed at it happily. If Dodo were in for a long period of inactivity
they would have the sea.
“Not much will grow in that garden,” the old lady apologized. “Half
wild it is--half rock--not much grows there.”
“That makes what does grow all the nicer,” said Alexandra absently, her
eyes on the sea.
The old lady chuckled, much pleased with her.
“He’ll get well,” she chuckled. “He’ll get well, for you!”
There was a piano, and a quaint library, and a lovely old desk where
Dodo could write. They had planned a book. Perhaps two books. And the
afternoon sun came in from the sea through long windows. He would get
well, she told herself happily.
So Alexandra settled in, while Bob stayed in London looking after
Dorin. And she spent long, quiet days pottering about the rocky garden
above the sea, arranging things for Dodo, making mental notes of things
he must be sure to have pointed out to him at once, devising ways of
making the time pass pleasantly for him till he was quite well again
and could get about without even a stick. She thought they could be
very happy here for a number of weeks, even months, writing the book,
while Dodo got well. “Of course we shall have to be married before he
comes down,” she thought, scratching about in the garden one morning.
“Married to Dodo. How funny,” she grinned. “How--how _quaint_!
People are so silly. Why couldn’t we just--” The thought drifted away
before her interest in a large and sociable beetle which emerged from
the geranium border.
She hoped he could come soon. One missed Dodo so. He became so much a
part of one’s scheme of things. Still, she wondered mildly at the word
“love.” It had all seemed quite clear, that morning in the Hills. But
now, with weeks of travel and Bob Taunton and England between-- Love?
She had read about it. It was fierce and tender and blinding and
sweet. It carried one away. One didn’t think, one only felt. But--Dodo?
She wanted to be with him always, no matter where he went. She wanted
to be with him now, when he seemed so quiet and tired. They belonged
together, they couldn’t be happy apart. But--_love_? She gave it
up.
It was a problem she returned to later, in the train after one of
her numerous visits to the hospital in London. She puzzled over it,
frowning out at the lovely Cornwall landscape. Ever since they had
returned to England Dodo had seemed not to want to talk about their
future. It was queer, when that, too, had been so clear in India. He
seemed to like to hear about the cottage and her many small activities
there, but he never spoke of living there himself and he was likely to
fall silent and preoccupied if she said something (as she often had)
beginning, “When you come down--” So that gradually a shyness had crept
upon her until she left off saying, “When you come down--” and talked
only of things already accomplished. And all the while he said not a
word about their marriage, when he had once been so funny about the
unquestionable necessity of marriage, for them. “It is unoriginal but
expedient,” he said, laughing at her. He hadn’t laughed at her like
that for weeks, now. And yet he was getting well. They swore their
several oaths that all danger and uncertainty were past. She frowned at
dear North Cornwall, thinking hard.
It might be, she thought, that even as certain things were less
dazzlingly clear to her than they had been that morning in the Hills,
to Dodo, too, they might seem more complicated. It might be, she
insisted sturdily to something inside her which desired to think
otherwise, that he would prefer to leave things as they were. It might
be that Dodo well, Dodo in England, Dodo already thinking of the
Amazon, looked upon their marriage as less inevitable.
She contemplated this, blinking.
Just where had this marriage business got started? He had done all she
had asked of him, that day in Bloomsbury. He had given her back the
desert and the Hills. She had promised to ask nothing more of him,
ever. And if he would rather go on alone, now.... They had both been
light-headed, that morning in the Hills. Life looks different, from the
brink of death. She must think this out. Things might be different, now
that Dodo was getting well.
Thus came the inescapable reaction in the world of men and trains.
One cannot, either figuratively or literally, live forever on a
mountain-top with the dawn of some Great Beginning turning the evilest
shadows into mere rocks, and touching no matter what future with the
unearthly glory of new-born light. One must in the nature of things
descend. The trick is to descend in time, to get one’s bearings, and
to proceed, if possible, in the same general direction that one faced
while on the heights.
To get one’s bearings. To adjust one’s compass. Life is a series of
anticlimaxes.
She got out at her station and stumbled into the cottage in the dusk.
The red-cheeked maid brought candles, and was glad to see her. But when
the door had closed softly behind her Alexandra stood in the middle of
the long room with the kindly, living light of candles on its walls and
its windows open to the murmur and beat of the sea--stood with her eyes
on the spent greenish glow of the sunset sky, wondering what would be
best for Dodo, feeling suddenly desolate and bewildered and alone.
“But this is ridiculous,” said Alexandra severely to herself. “One
would think--really, one would think--” A word popped out of her
perplexity, like a cuckoo out of a clock. _Love?_ said the cuckoo.
“Is it?” she demanded.
How was one to know?
CHAPTER III
THE nine days’ wonder of their return had subsided and with the divorce
decree out of the way the newspapers were no longer embarrassing.
Everything was settled. Everything, that is, which linked her to
Bloomsbury.
Dorin was improving slowly, and could get about with a stick now. But
she missed the old gay assurance of his laughter, the old untroubled
confidence of his outlook on life. It was as though he felt his star
had wavered, and was at a loss. His eyes clung to her, shadowed,
somehow puzzled, with an odd, mute look. And when she laid her hand on
his, his lay passive under it and she thought the little lines of pain
showed plainer round his mouth. And she thought, too, that she caught
Bob Taunton watching her with measuring eyes that held a question. It
was as though something was in the air and she stood at a disadvantage
with the wind blowing toward it.
Why wouldn’t they tell her? What had she done, to be left in the dark
this way? Dodo always told her things. She thought of cornering Bob
and dragging it out of him, whatever it was that they hadn’t told her.
But that wasn’t quite fair to Dodo. Her pride rebelled, too. If Dodo
wouldn’t tell her she couldn’t ask Bob. Perhaps it wasn’t anything.
Perhaps she was imagining things. Dodo was still very tired--still not
quite himself. He liked to have her with him, though. Even she could
see that.
This went on. Dorin limped badly, but there began to be talk of his
leaving the hospital. No one could get really well in a hospital,
decreed Alexandra, asserting herself. He needed air and the sea and
pretty rooms and things to do. He needed Cornwall and herself. She
tried it again one day, sliding her slim paw into his hand as she sat
in her favorite way on her heels on a cushion beside his chair, a book
open on his knees.
“And when you come down to the cottage, Dodo, _could_ we have a
dog? There’s a new litter of puppies--Airedales, such darlings, all
heads and feet--in the village, and the man said we could choose the
one we wanted. He said----”
Dorin’s fingers had tightened with a jerk, on her hand. Looking up, she
saw that his head rested wearily against the back of the chair, his
eyes closed.
“Dodo!” She caught at him. “You _are_ getting better? You
_are_ going to be all right? There isn’t any danger now--_is_
there? You’d tell me--if----?”
“Live forever.”
“Of course you will!”
He looked at her, without smiling, his gray eyes strangely dark under
their long lashes. She remembered irrelevantly how she had lain beside
him on the mountain and called them chorus girl’s eyes.... They had no
color at all today. Black diamonds, neither cold nor hard, but living,
fathomless, infinite with pain. She felt herself drawn into them,
not caring.... The queerest feeling.... She hid her face against his
sleeve, burrowing gratefully into its roughness, and felt him stoop to
her hair.
Dorin, for once in his life, was funking it. He knew that he ought to
tell her of this thing that hung over them, knew that she was puzzled
by his silence, knew that it wasn’t quite fair of him--but even so, he
never guessed the only explanation she had arrived at, that typically
Sandyish conclusion that she was perhaps of less importance than
they had thought, after all. He could hardly have borne that. But he
simply didn’t know how to tell her what he was facing. In his active,
inarticulate life he had learned no words for such emotions as he was
experiencing now. Love, sacrifice, renunciation--how on earth did
people speak of these things? Sandy and he had not needed many words,
until now. Things had looked so easy, until they reached London. So
miraculously easy, after that morning in the Hills. How in pity’s
name to tell her now straight out that he loved her too much to let
her marry him, after all? Besides--the doctor wasn’t quite sure....
Besides--doctors were sometimes wrong.... He kissed her hair, wistfully.
She went home quite happy that night. Dodo was going to be all right.
Everything was going to be all right. She had thought foolish things.
He had suffered so. That was all. He had died, really, and come back
again. She knew how it felt. One wasn’t sure of anything. One rattled
about in life. One had to begin all over again. But he would be all
right. She would make things come right for him, always. He was hers.
“There was a gentleman to see you, ma’am,” said Jenny, meeting her at
the door. “I told him you’d be down on the six o’clock train and he
said he’d call again this evening. Came in a motor, he did, a big blue
one, and went to the inn, ma’am.”
Alexandra was staring at her.
“A g-gentleman?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Left his card on the piano. Wrote something on it, he did,
ma’am.”
Bob Taunton had not been at the hospital that day, she remembered then.
Her first thought was that he had come down to see her, that it must be
something about Dodo, that there was something wrong just as she had
thought and that now at last she would know....
She caught up the card. It bore the name of J. Lucien Starke, and
across it, in pencil, “On business.” Dodo wasn’t it, then. _That_
was all right.
“Lucien,” chortled a far corner of her consciousness. “I never knew his
name was-- How funny!”
_On business._ What did that mean? She frowned at the card
speculatively. Business. That must be the robe. But the robe was at
the bottom of the pit. Once she had said they would go back for it.
Business. Hmmm. Lucien. She grinned.
He came in genially, enfolded her hand hugely in his, told her she
looked flourishing, lighted a cigarette, asked if he might smoke. How
it took one back, she thought. Odd, how people didn’t change. Odd, how
lives went on, untouched by upheavals in other lives.
“Pretty room,” he said, glancing about it. “Nice place. But too
peaceful to hold you long, I guess.”
“I’ve been--been very busy,” she replied, with hidden eyes.
“Getting tired of it?”
“No,” she said. Dodo hadn’t seen it yet.
“Given all that other up? Ready to settle down? That it?”
She hesitated. He asked such hard ones.
“No,” she said.
“Seen Dorin lately?”
“Today.”
“Then you know why I’m here.”
“No,” in surprise.
“Didn’t he tell you I’d been to see him?”
“No,” in still greater surprise.
“Well, great Scott!” said Starke. “What _did_ you talk about?” he
demanded almost indignantly.
“We--were reading a book.” She flushed. Rather hopeless trying to get
Starke to see that an unpretentious tale of gods and men may fill
several hours, except such chinks as are stuffed with “personal and
private things.”
“Then you _don’t_ know why I’m here?”
“On business,” she suggested humorously.
“He said you’d have to decide for yourself,” reflected Starke. “He said
he wouldn’t interfere one way or another. Still--I didn’t know he was
as close-mouthed as all this.”
“What is it?” she asked. “Interfere in what?”
“Want a job?” he queried abruptly.
“A--job?” Her eyes were fastened on his face.
“On the level. In your line. And enough risk to make it interesting.”
“A job.” Her chin was up, her eyes were bright. She hugged her knee. “A
job,” she chuckled. “Go on.”
“Well, here’s the proposition. Could you lead an expedition through the
Pass to where that horse went over the cliff with the robe, and then on
to the lost temple--with the Society to back you up and me to finance
the extras?”
“Back there?” She caught her breath. After all, it was not an entirely
new idea. “You’ve got permission to go through the Pass----?”
“The Society has taken this thing up. They want to know about the
temple. I don’t pretend to understand their jargon, but it’s something
about carvings. Anyway, negotiations are under way. An appropriation is
being made. Hell is popping on Olympus, but we leave all that to Lewis.
You know how they feel about _him_. He’s the curly-headed darling
of all the little tin gods and has wheedled Lieutenant-Governors out of
their eye-teeth before now. Wish _I_ could read Sanscrit. Well,
anyway, he’s made up his mind to go to the temple, and I’m betting
he’ll go. He wants to know about the carvings--I want to know about the
robe. The Society loans its prestige--I donate the robe. They pull the
strings--I write the checks. That’s fair enough, eh? But it’s no good
without you, and Lewis wants to see you at once. Dorin says he was out
of his head with fever the last few days above the Fort and-- Well, the
question is, have you any idea how to get back to the temple?”
“Y-yes,” she said slowly. “A sort of idea.” Her eyes grew distant.
Something was dancing within her that had been quiet a long time.
Something else tugged at its sleeve. Out on the road again! Out there!
She shook off the plucking at the sleeve of her spirit, not knowing,
not caring what it was. To go back and finish the job! What luck!
“Remember any landmarks?”
“Yes. A cairn of stones unlike any I had ever seen before--the sides of
a ravine, curving like the neck of a bottle with an unmistakable jag in
one side--a straggling letter S in a rock formation on a hill--a sort
of track that dwindled off into devil-stones. There are things printed
on my brain, I know--burned there, with thirst and fever. If I saw them
again I should know them. They would lead on to other things. The first
few miles beyond the Fort would be difficult. I was pretty far gone.
But once I picked up the trail--once my sense of direction got going--
Oh, it _would_ come back to me, I know it would!”
“Good! That’s what we wanted to know. Say, how did you happen to find
the temple in the beginning?”
“Luck. We simply fell over it in the dark.”
He was watching her, almost with awe.
“Must have been a pretty ghastly business for you, after Dorin got
plugged.”
“Oh, I got sort of numb,” she said. “Existence narrowed down to just
two things--putting one foot in front of the other, and keeping solid
ground under Dodo’s horse.”
“They say you walked all night,” he probed, incredulously.
“Two nights.” She paused, looking back. “The jackals were the worst.
And Dodo babbling in the saddle till it seemed my own brain had
snapped. And then long silences when I was sure I carried a corpse down
to India----”
“How’d you manage to keep going?”
“I had to keep going.” Her schoolboy laconics overtook her. “It meant
Dodo’s life,” she said.
“Well--!” He drew a long breath. “You’ll be more comfortable this time.
Though even Lewis admits that nobody knows what may happen.”
Magic words! They caught her again, flared in her eyes, tugged at her
lips. Her spirit turned handsprings within her. Nobody knew what might
happen. That was the game. Not to know till almost too late. To solve
it just in time. To cross swords with Circumstance, laughing to hear
the ring of steel on steel....
“I’ll talk to Dodo,” she said. “I’ll go back to town tomorrow and----”
“Well, here’s how it is.” He appeared to fumble for words. She watched
him, sitting very still again. “Dorin seemed to think that you--might
not want to wait till he was in shape to make the trip----”
“But of course I want to wait! I couldn’t go without him!”
“He seemed to think,” Starke insisted, somehow cautiously, “that since
he was unconscious most of the way down to the Fort he wouldn’t be much
use on this trip and----”
“But that’s absurd! Of course he must come! What’s the rush? A few
weeks or months here will put him right.”
“I think he would oppose your delaying the expedition on his account.”
Starke’s eyes were on his cigarette tip. She had again that fleeting
sensation of being upwind. “He says you’re able to handle it alone.”
“But I don’t want to handle it alone! That is--unless he’d really
rather not--” She broke off. “I’ll go up and see him tomorrow.”
“Like to ask you something,” announced Starke bluntly. And then, “You
planning to marry him?”
“Yes,” she said steadily, meeting his eyes.
“Well, you know what you want and you go after it, I give you that,” he
admitted. “But--is it him you want now or the things he does?”
“I--” She frowned over this one. “I like doing them with him. We--we
pull well together.”
“Then the life itself isn’t enough. You want him, too. Adventure in
the abstract--that isn’t it any more.” He seemed to be trying to
straighten something out in his mind.
“But I don’t see it in the abstract any more. Adventure means Dodo.
Dodo means adventure. They go together,” she tried to explain.
“I see.” He sighed. “Then you wouldn’t undertake this without him?”
She leaned forward suddenly, looking into his face.
“Have you any reason to believe that he wouldn’t go if he could?”
“Will a duck swim?” Starke asked grimly.
“Well, then--why not wait for him?”
“Just as you say.” He rose. “We only thought, since your own memory and
sense of direction were all we had to go on----”
“But he knows the whole country and has a way with the people! He’s
indispensable on any trip of this kind, I think.”
“Just as you say,” he repeated, but doubtfully. And he said good-night
and then drove to the nearest telegraph station, in the next town.
CHAPTER IV
THE telegram went up on Dorin’s breakfast-tray. He read it and groaned.
Bob Taunton came, and read it, and said, “I thought so,” with a
satisfied air, and was affectionately sworn at.
Then they went into conference, during which Bob waxed heated and
Dorin monosyllabic. The doctor was had in, a mammoth gray man, bearing
gallantly on his great shoulders more than his share of the world’s
suffering. And him they harried and bullied and badgered until he
brought down his fist so that things jumped on the table, and uttered a
few bald, unpleasant truths, and departed, still rumbling, Jovian.
Taunton went and closed the door and leaned his back against it,
sagging a little, and they looked at each other across the small, bare
hospital room, in Dorin’s eyes a great desolation, in Taunton’s a
stark, incredulous horror. It was the first time they had ever really
faced the thing.
“Dodo--!” he choked at last, and stumbled forward. “Dodo--old man----!”
They talked a while in low tones, and in the end Bob went out and sent
two telegrams just alike, reading: _Sit tight. Coming down._ And
though there were those who tried to stop them, they caught the noon
train for North Cornwall.
“Fine!” said Starke, on receipt of his orange envelope at the inn. “Now
we’ll know!”
Alexandra’s cheeks got quite pink over hers, and she said, “Good
heavens!” and then, “How sudden!” and then, “I’m _so_ glad!”
Things buzzed all afternoon at the cottage. Jenny went round and
round in excited circles, upsetting every other thing she touched,
and Alexandra flitted about the edges with inconsequent scraps of
song. The very chintzes looked expectant. And at the bottom of the pit
lay Shir Shan’s robe, forgotten in concern over the cream for Dodo’s
strawberries.
She came running to the gate to meet them, bare-headed in the golden
sunset light, and wearing a soft, slim, yellow frock. Dorin, who had
never seen her quite like this before, caught his breath.
She walked between them up the narrow path, holding to an arm of each,
seeming almost to skip, calling their attention to the sun-gilded sea
with the same air of comic achievement that she pointed out her fat
pansies. And Dorin, leaning rather heavily on his stick, looking where
he was bidden, praising where it was due, and laughing in all the right
places, was achingly aware that her hair swept more loosely in its
smooth waves to the great knot, that her throat was white and small
like a child’s, and that her hands were oddly clean and very beautiful.
He missed his sunburned boy acutely, but he wanted never to take his
eyes off this exquisite usurper.
So they came in the dusk to the room overlooking the sea. And, “Oh, I
say!” said Taunton from the threshold. “What a jolly place it is!”
She flashed him a grateful glance.
“We’ll have the candles,” she said. “You’re tired, Dodo, I know you
are. Sit here. The cushion fits--like that!” She inserted it deftly and
was off to the mantel for matches. “I suppose you know Starke is still
at the inn. Must we invite him to dinner?”
“Must we?” said Bob, busy with their cigarettes.
She was lighting a huge candelabrum on the table, and she looked up
laughing in the warm, magic glow of match and taper. Once more Dorin
caught his breath, and somehow looked away.
“Well--not unless Dodo insists--!” she laughed, and bent her head to
the candles again because Dodo was not looking at her. He must be very
tired. Perhaps it had not been wise for him to come. Perhaps-- A little
chill ran through her. Perhaps he would rather not have come.
“I think we can do without him.” His answer came slowly.
“At least till we know--exactly what we mean to do.” She was apparently
absorbed now in reaching to the high candlesticks on the mantel, her
lifted face saint-like in the gentle light. She was thinking that in a
very few minutes she would know what was in Dodo’s mind, that in a very
few minutes the wind must shift and bring the scent to her.
“Sandy--we may as well settle this thing at once. Are you listening?”
“Yes, Dodo.” The low candles on the writing-desk next. It was coming.
“You must go--I want you to go--without me.”
Her hand hovered, then went on to the last candle.
“I--I’d rather wait,” she suggested delicately.
“No. That won’t do.”
It was a little hard, she felt, with Bob Taunton there. It seemed not
quite fair of Dodo. But Dodo always did play fair.... She blew out the
match.
“I don’t quite see.” She faced them, chin up, and Bob’s lips tightened.
Good old Dodo was bungling it rather badly. “You mean you--have other
plans?”
“Yes,” he admitted with a small smile. “I suppose one might put it like
that.”
“Tell her what they are,” said Bob.
“That doesn’t matter just now.”
“But it does matter!” she cried, bewildered at how something was
hurting. “I’ll go on with this job if you say so. I can do it--I can
try--if you like. But--I would like to know--what you’ll be doing
instead.”
“Tell her,” said Bob.
“Later. This other thing comes first, since she’s willing to go. You’d
better let Starke know at once,” he advised her. “On second thought,
you’d better have him come to dinner, after all, and talk things over.
You must come up to town at once and see Lewis, too. He’s a whirlwind.
It won’t be long before you’re on the way.”
“Dodo.” She came and stood before him, straight and slender, her hands
behind her back. “Dodo--where are you going?”
“Not now, I said.” The old note of command, unheard since the days of
her probation, was in his voice. “There are any number of other things
to be----”
“Is it the Amazon? Why shouldn’t you tell me if it’s the Amazon?” She
waited. Her days of probation were over. “Is it?”
And after a dreadful moment, inaudibly, through his teeth--“Yes.” It
would have to do. He hadn’t the words....
“That’s a lie,” said Bob, and Dorin’s glance was like a knife-thrust.
She looked from one to the other piteously, biting her lip. You
couldn’t tell by candlelight. You couldn’t see people’s faces. You
didn’t know where you were. And Dodo wouldn’t look at her. A lie. Dodo
didn’t lie. It must be something quite unthinkable if Dodo lied--! She
dropped to her knees by his chair, trying vainly to see his eyes in the
candlelight.
“What is it? There’s something wrong. I’ve felt it for weeks. Why won’t
you tell me? I’ll not make a fuss.” She laid her hand along his thin
cheek, turning his face toward her. “Dodo--silly--are you worrying
about this marrying business? _Are_ you? Because that’s all rot,
you know! _I_ don’t care. Why, we could go just the same as
before. You--you don’t have to go to the Amazon in order not to marry
me!”
“Oh, child--Sandy--I’d give my blundering soul to marry you, but--”
He must be careful now. Mustn’t let her be sorry for him. She was so
loyal. Nothing could stop her from doing what she conceived to be the
right thing. She was fond of him, too. It would be hard on her at
best, when she knew. If only they could have got her off with Lewis
without her having to know. He mustn’t whimper now. He mustn’t let her
guess how he hated to see her go. Mustn’t be a ball-and-chain on her
sympathies. He was out of it. But she mustn’t be allowed to feel sorry
for him. Why on earth had he come here! Bob had bullied him. Bob was a
sentimental, optimistic ass. Then let Bob handle it. _He_ didn’t
know how! He stretched out a groping hand. “Bob,” he pleaded.
“But you _are_ getting well!” Her voice came clear with terror,
and she caught his face between her hands. “Bob--you swore to me he
would be all right--now----!”
Bob came and sat down on the arm of the chair.
“Tell her what the doctor said, old man.”
“The--doctor--!” She pressed white knuckles against her lips. She hated
doctors.
“Sandy--don’t look like that.” Dorin took her hands and held them. They
were slim and cool and so absurdly clean. He loved them so. How could
he ever let her go! But how could he ever let her stay! “It’s just--
Well, I thought perhaps you needn’t know--at least till you got back.
But if you must have it--I can’t ever ride again. That’s all.”
“N-not--not ride----?”
“Nor walk, much.” She didn’t seem to understand. He set his teeth and
dragged words through them, somehow, trying to make her understand. Her
fingers were clinging to his. There was so much he wanted to say. How
did people say what they wanted to say when their throats ached? Were
there words, somewhere, for what he wanted to say to Sandy? “I’m well
enough,” he was saying, jerkily. “I’ll last forever. But I’m tied to
that stick. Never be able to get about without it again. Now you see.
No good waiting for me. I can’t go.”
She knelt there, looking up at him, taking it in. He said it so
quietly, as though it was the weather. It couldn’t mean what it sounded
as though it meant.
“But--I brought you back--you didn’t die--you were getting well--you
_must_ get well--oh, but you shan’t stay behind!” Her eyes
widened, tears hanging on their lashes. “Then _I_ shan’t go!” she
cried, and Dorin groaned.
“I was afraid of that! But get it out of your head at once. Of course
you’re going.” She had to go. She would still want to go, once she got
a little used to this. Hard on her. But she had to go.
“Back there--alone?”
“Not alone. At the head of a nice little chartered expedition with its
worthless little papers all in order.”
“But--I couldn’t----”
“Yes, you could,” he contradicted grimly. “You brought me out. You can
take them in.”
“It would be different.”
“It would be. Thank God.”
“No.” She laid her cheek against his sleeve. “No, I couldn’t do that.”
“Hold on a minute.” This was awful. This wasn’t like her. She would be
sorry later if he let her have her way now. If only he could make it
easier for her, somehow. If only she had had time to get used to it. He
should have told her weeks ago. He himself had known, weeks ago. But he
had gone on foolishly hoping for a miracle.... Miracles didn’t happen.
Not after soft-nosed bullets. Poor Sandy. She was taking it much too
hard, though. How little she looked, there on the floor. If only
one could pick her up.... She wasn’t--_crying_? “Pull yourself
together, Sandy,” he said, looking down at her helplessly. “You’re not
a sentimentalist. There’s work to be done--such as it is. _Our_
work--such as it is. Come, now--how about it?”
She got to her feet slowly, pushing back her hair with the old gesture.
No, she wasn’t crying.
“I’ve got to think,” she said. “I can’t--think.”
They watched her pityingly, while she paced the room’s length and back,
and drifted out through the open windows into the garden above the sea.
Then their eyes met and Bob shook his head once, like a man who has
overshot.
There was silence in the room. Bob stooped above a candle to light
another cigarette. The sound of the sea came up, a murmur only, for the
night was calm. Jenny was singing very softly, very sweetly, in the
kitchen. No one would have heard, if it hadn’t been so still.
“Oh, damn the robe!” said Dorin suddenly.
“Agreed.”
“Bobby--I mustn’t try to hold her. That wouldn’t do. She must think
I want her to go. But it’s not safe, you know.” He was only thinking
aloud, as they could, with each other. “Lewis is a reckless fool. He
thinks it’s like Egypt. Tombs. It’s not Egypt. She oughtn’t to go.”
“Compared to the little party _you_ took her on, the Lewis
expedition is safe as houses,” Bob reminded him mercilessly.
“I know that.” He sighed. “_Not safe!_ Well, I’ve lived to say it!
Things look different from this end, somehow. Oh, very different--at
the end, Bobby! Remember that. Not that it matters. Serves me right,
doesn’t it, any way you look at it. Jolly good for me. Good for the
spirit of a mortal who was proud. I thought I knew it all. And then--we
shaved so close--she was so splendid--it was so ghastly a gamble, with
her life as the stake! Oh, she loved it! Gloried in it! And she must
go on, I suppose, taking chances in the good old way till she comes a
cropper as we all do, sooner or later. And I won’t be there!” His head
went down into his hands. “She was born to it. Mustn’t try to hold her.
Mustn’t be an old woman, Bobby. Must--let her have her head.”
“You don’t think--” began Bob, and stopped.
“No,” said Dorin, from between his hands.
“Might be better----”
“No. _You’d_ hate it.”
“But after all--she is a woman.”
“If you’d seen her in the temple you might not be so sure.”
“I’ve seen her since then.” Bob rose and walked round his chair,
aimlessly. “You see--the point is--she loves you.”
“So do you. But you’ve loafed about England long enough, for all that.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes. But she loves the life I lead--led. And so she loves me. We
belonged together--out there. But if it comes to me without the fun or
the fun without me, there’s not much choice, is there! Put yourself in
her place.”
“You could keep her here, if you tried.”
“Perhaps. But could I keep her happy, there’s the rub.”
“She loves you,” repeated Bob stubbornly.
“Don’t harp on it, there’s a good chap.”
“Sorry. But--I’m not sure you’re right to let her go.”
“If I were whole, I’d have some right to try to steer her in a
moderately safe course from now on. If I had two good legs again
I’d feel more like--putting my foot down.” He grinned one-sidedly,
hopefully, but Bob didn’t seem to see the joke. “But as it is--I can’t
presume. Why, it would be worse than the unlamented Clem! Sandy married
to me now would be like the blind man’s dog! I----”
“Dodo, you do exaggerate. Damnable habit.”
“Oh, good Lord, Bobby, do you suppose I haven’t been over this a
million times and seen her farther beyond my reach each time I looked?”
“But, old man, you could travel! You might not be able to climb things
and ride things and chase things--but you’re a long way from bedridden,
you know!”
“She’s got to be free, and not be thinking about me all the time.”
“Freedom,” said Bob, kicking at the carpet, “is a state of mind.”
“But don’t you see,” Dorin went on heedlessly, “if I should go mad and
beg her not to risk her precious neck a second time for that infernal
yellow rag with bits of glass stuck on to it--if she should marry me
now out of loyalty or pity--!” He hunched his shoulders in a sort of
shudder. “No,” he said. “Oh, no. It isn’t good enough.”
“All the same----”
“No,” repeated Dorin dully. “I can’t see it at all.”
“Look here. Give her a chance, won’t you?”
“A chance to what?”
“Go out there and talk to her, that’s all I ask.”
“Talk?” said Dorin, horrified and helpless. It was the last thing he
saw himself doing.
“Right. Talk.”
“But--there’s nothing to say. That is----”
“_Nothing to say!_ Oh, my God! What have you _been_ saying! To me,
just now! To her, all these weeks! To anybody that would listen, there
at the Fort while you were out of your head! _Nothing to say!_”
Dorin was looking interested.
“In the Fort? Did I talk about Sandy in the----”
“Did you--! Nothing else _but_! I blushed for you! Upon my word, I
blushed for you! Didn’t think you had it in you!”
Dorin was still looking interested. Perhaps what the situation really
required was more of the same.
“What did I say?” he inquired respectfully of the oracle.
Bob stood still and looked at him with something like disgust.
“I didn’t take it down,” he said. “You’ll have to make up some more as
you go. It came easy enough to you then.”
“But I’m not delirious anymore,” Dorin reminded him gently. Again his
tentative grin drew a blank.
“When you come at last to the pearly gates where St. Peter keeps the
keys,” said Bob severely, “may I be there to see if you can talk sense
just once. _I_ can’t do anything with you!”
“Well, but what was I talking at the Fort?” insisted Dorin, but more
feebly.
“Something about violets, dammit. And something about tigers.”
Violets. That settled Dorin. He leaned his head against the back of the
chair and closed his eyes. That went home.
“What do you suppose I brought you down here for?” demanded Bob
aggrievedly. “To lend a hand. To let her know she’s wanted here.”
“She knows.”
“They like to be told.”
“If I whine now she’ll stick at any price. I can’t have that.”
“So you’ll sit here and let her think you don’t care one whoop in hell
whether she goes or stays!”
“She’ll know better than to think that.”
“Oh, you consummate ass! Can’t you see----”
“I can see that I _must_ keep out of this. A word from me now
might make her do something she would regret all her life.”
“Three sensible words from you now would put the whole thing right! ‘I
want you.’ Down your stubborn pride and say ’em quick, for God’s sake!”
_I want you._ Was that all one had to say? It sounded easy enough.
Could one possibly set this thing right with three words? And would it
be right when one had done so? What _was_ right? What in heaven’s
name was one to do? To people who had been in love all their lives,
or to people who were not and never had been in love, it might appear
simple. But he was so new to it. He loved Sandy so much. Having her was
not the thing. She must be happy. And how could she be happy with a
man who couldn’t ride things, and climb things, and chase things? And
yet--she did love him, in her way. They belonged together. They had
been so long finding one another. It was terrible not to know what to
do. He wasn’t used to it.
“It’s not pride,” he began. “It’s----”
“_Oh, don’t argue!_”
Bob threw up frenzied arms to heaven. In the very act, he caught sight
of Dorin’s face and went to him, and gathered him up in a bear-like
embrace and held him, muttering penitent things.
Once more, Bob was very near to hating her. That she could hesitate
at all! That she could weigh Dodo for one instant against the whole
continent of Asia! Couldn’t she see that Dodo always had had, always
must have what he wanted? He was of a mind to go out there and talk to
her himself!
CHAPTER V
MEANWHILE, Alexandra sat on a low rock-bench in the garden above the
restless, murmurous blackness that was the sea. A feeble crescent moon
was smothered in drifting cloud. Except where the candlelight made
a dim square on the ground outside the windows it was quite dark in
the little, rocky garden, and except for Jenny singing softly in the
kitchen it was quite still. But Alexandra, trying so hard to think, sat
with her elbows on her knees and her hands over her ears and her eyes
shut tight.
It was the queerest thing the way her mind wouldn’t work. She couldn’t
go back to Dodo till she had decided, and all she wanted was to go
back. He wouldn’t know what to make of her like this. He liked the way
she always knew at once exactly what she wanted to undertake. And now
she couldn’t think. It was partly because of Dodo’s eyes. She kept
seeing them, even with her own eyes screwed tight shut. And Dodo’s
voice. She heard it, even with her hands pressed over her ears. She
wanted to go back to him. There seemed to be nothing else in the world
but going back to Dodo. Love. This must be it. Whatever did one do with
it? One couldn’t think.
_I want you to go without me._ She must carry on, then. It was
their work--such as it was. There was only one of them now. And Dodo
would fret about the robe’s being left there, so long as there was a
chance of having it. She must go back and fetch it, then, so that it
wouldn’t be always on his mind, a sort of derisive monument to his last
job. His last job. Oh, that was horrible. Dodo--never to sit a horse
again! But she mustn’t stop for that now. She must think.
_You brought me out. You could take them in._ Yes, perhaps she
could. Her sense of direction, her eye for landmarks, had never failed.
She had had that from her grandfathers. It had only wanted a chance.
But to go without Dodo. To see again the place where their last fire
had been built and where they had talked together in the dawn.... But
she must pull herself together. She must not be a sentimentalist.
How simple things had looked that morning in the Hills! It was life
that was difficult, not death. They had never dreamed of--this--that
morning. Then, if they got through alive they were going on together.
And if they died-- They had never dreamed, that morning, of not being
together, somehow. She had sworn never to leave him, and now he was
sending her, as he had tried to send her then. That time she had
mutinied. But this was different, wasn’t it? He was safe now, and
she had to go on alone, whether she liked it or not. She couldn’t
have Dodo disappointed in her. She couldn’t very well go to Dodo and
bury her face against his coat and say, “That’s all over. I’d rather
just be with you now, if you don’t mind.” That wouldn’t be playing
the game--their game. Just this one more job, then, since he wished
it. And then she would come back and be near him. She must be very
careful--must be very sure to get back this time, with Dodo waiting
helplessly instead of sharing the fun. It was no way to go, though,
with your mind always on getting back safely. She didn’t like it at
all. It was going to be so different, trying to get back to Dodo.
_I’d give my blundering soul to marry you_. He did want her, then.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. But if he wanted her like that and
she wanted only to be with him--why couldn’t the robe just go to the
devil?
She sat up at that, staring widely out to sea. Well, why not, she
argued, breathlessly. After all, what did the robe matter? They had
books to write and books to read, and there was always so much to talk
about, with Dodo. What did anything matter, really, unless they were
doing it together? Couldn’t he see that? Dodo always saw things. Her
breath came more quickly between her parted lips. They could live here,
with the sea at the bottom of the garden.... She would marry Dodo and
they would settle down.... It was a tremendous idea. A great adventure.
Adventure was Dodo. Dodo was adventure. Hang the robe!
“Dodo!” she called, jumping up and running toward the windows. “Oh,
Dodo, I--” She paused on the threshold and hung there a moment,
radiant, a little uncertain, and then came on to where they sat
waiting, Bob on the arm of the chair. “Dodo,” she began again, above
the foolish thumping of her heart, “_would_ you mind--that is--I’d
_so_ much rather marry you and stay here!” They were blinking
at her stupidly. She knelt beside the chair, and slid her hand into
Dorin’s. “_Please_ don’t send me back there,” she insisted softly.
“Just for that bit of junk!”
Then Bob began to laugh. It was just too much for him. He laughed all
up and down the room, he couldn’t help it, waving his arms and holding
his head in a kind of sublimated hysteria, moaning something about the
blind man’s dog. Alexandra, comfortably close in the sudden circle
of Dorin’s arms, watched him in astonishment over her shoulder. But
Dorin’s face was pressed against her hair and this time he failed to
see the joke.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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