The Great Amulet

M >> Maud Diver >> The Great Amulet

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33

And what was to be the outcome?

The question stabbed her in the small hours, when ugly possibilities loom
large, like figures seen through mist. So strongly had this late love
smitten her, that she had been capable of strangling pride, and taking
the initiative, had Lenox's bearing given her the smallest hope of
success. But unsought surrender, plus the mortification of failure, was
more than she felt prepared to risk, even for a chance of winning the one
man in all the world:--the man who could at least belong to no other
woman, she assured herself with a throb of satisfaction. Thus there
seemed no choice left but to go blindly forward along the line of least
resistance.

Lenox's non-appearance on Wednesday evening had startled her into fuller
knowledge of her dependence on his mere presence to maintain even a
mimicry of good spirits; and she heaped contempt upon her own head
accordingly. Nevertheless she escaped at an early hour; and lay awake
half the night tormenting herself with unanswerable problems.

When breakfast brought no sign of him, she concluded that he must have
returned to Dalhousie in disgust: and the conclusion brought her near to
the end of her tether. She took refuge in her tent, and, for the first
time in many years, sobbed shamelessly, till her eyelids smarted, and her
head throbbed and burned. After that she felt better, and her
unquenchable courage revived. There is much virtue in your
thunder-shower at the psychological moment! She got upon her feet at
last; hands pressed against pulsing temples, swaying a little, like a
willow that the storm had shaken. But cold water, eau-de-cologne, and
the stinging tonic of self-scorn, soon restored her to a semblance of her
normal aspect: and by lunch-time she was out again in the mocking
sunshine, swept unresisting back into the light-hearted whirl of things.

At tiffin, to her intense relief, Theo Desmond took the empty chair next
her own. He had missed her during the morning: and a glance at her face
sufficed to give him an inkling of the truth. All his heart went out to
her; and he hastened to answer the question in her eyes.

"Lenox went off at sunrise, for a day's shooting," he remarked
conversationally, when they had exchanged greetings.

She lifted her eyebrows. "Did he? Sensible man! I suppose he is tired
to death of our frivolous fooling."

"That's rather severe! I can't let you run him down. The other thing's
more in his line, that's all; and it'll do him a power of good. He
suffers cruelly from want of sleep, poor chap.--By the way, have you
heard the latest suggestion for to-morrow?"

"No. I was--lying down this morning. What is it?"

"A burlesque polo match: ladies against men: the men to play on
side-saddles by way of a mild handicap! Some of the older folk are a bit
horrified at the notion. But I believe it'll come off; and they want me
to captain the team."

"You? One of the champions of the Punjaub! What impertinence! Shall
you?"

"Why, certainly. It will be rather a lark."

"Well, then, I'll play too, if they'll have me. Will you ask them,
please?"

He regarded her in frank astonishment. "Jove! I never thought of that.
Are you in earnest?"

"But yes. In cut-throat earnest!" she answered, laughing.

"Ever tried your hand at it?"

"Never, in all my days. I will this afternoon though, if you'll take me
in hand for an hour or so."

"With all the pleasure in life. You can ride Diamond, if you like. He
knows almost as much about the game as I do."

Her eyes sparkled.

"That gem of an Arab? May I, really? I always thought you were a man in
a hundred; and now I know it! That's a bargain, then. Things have been
deadly insipid the last two days. But I have something to live for now!"

Garth received her announcement with open dismay. He suspected Desmond's
influence: and, in his zeal to dissuade her, ventured on a mild tone of
authority, with disastrous results.

"Well, I shan't have a comfortable moment till the thing is safely over,"
he concluded unwisely: and she tossed an indignant head.

"Am I such a despicable horseman?" she demanded haughtily. "Captain
Desmond doesn't find me so, I assure you."

And indeed, after an hour of assiduous instruction, Desmond had frankly
expressed his approval both of her aptness and daring.

When Lenox heard the news on Friday morning, he heartily wished he had
decided on a second day's shooting.

Anxiety apart, the knowledge that the woman he loved could thus make a
public exhibition of herself for the amusement of a very mixed crowd, set
the fastidious, old-world temper of the man on edge. For all that he was
in his place, well before the appointed time: and from the first crack of
polo-stick on ball his eyes never left his wife's flushed face and
lightly swaying figure.

The polo ground, occupying the centre of the glade, was ringed about by a
crowd as varied and gay in colouring as a bed of mixed tulips in spring.
Even the open tent, where the English spectators were gathered, showed a
prevailing lightness and brightness of tint. On the farther side of the
tent, the Depot band gave out a cheerful blare of sound; and a June sun
beamed complacently over all.

For the first twenty minutes the serio-comic game went forward merrily:
the women playing in desperate earnest; the men making broad farce out of
their ludicrous handicap.

Quita, who had elected to play Diamond first and fourth, was restrained
at the outset by the fact that she was handling a priceless pony. But,
with the opening of the third _chukkur_, increasing self-confidence,
coupled with the pace and keenness of Bathurst's 'Unlimited Loo,' fired
her venturesome spirit: and she flung herself heart and soul into the
intoxication of the game; half hoping that some sudden crash and fall
might solve the problem of her life by the simple expedient of putting
out the light.

More than once Desmond called out an unheeded warning. He saw that pony
and rider alike were in danger of losing their heads; and Lenox, leaning
forward in an anguish of suspense, followed her every movement with
conflicting fury and admiration.

At last the _chukkur_ drew to an end.

Away by the farthest goal-posts a fine parody of a scrimmage was in
progress, Desmond and Quita being 'on the ball.' The advantage was hers;
and she made haste to secure it. Rising in the saddle, she swung her
stick for an ambitious back-handed stroke, missed the ball, and smote
'Unlimited Loo,' with the full force of her arm, high up on the off
hind-leg.

At this uncalled bolt from the blue, the sensitive animal,--who had never
in all his days been chastised by a polo stick for doing his simple
duty,--lost his head outright. His first bound snapped the curb chain;
and taking the bit between his teeth he bolted across the green as if all
the fiends in hell were after him. In vain Quita sat back, and put her
whole light weight into her arms. Sheer terror had caught hold of him:
and he headed blindly for the ring of natives, who broke away right and
left, with shrill cries that gave the finishing touch to his terror.

And now no more than a stretch of shelving turf lay between him and the
unfathomed lake. Towards it he fled at an undiminished pace: and Quita,
sitting square and steady, with a rushing sound in her ears, foresaw that
in less than five minutes her mad hope might be terribly fulfilled. For
at the lake's edge the pony must needs swerve sharply, or come to a dead
halt: and in either case, at their present rate of speed, she would be
flung violently out of the saddle.

Desmond dared not follow, lest he make matters worse.

Maurice sprang up from his seat in the pavilion, and stood transfixed,
helpless. "_Nom de Dieu . . . que faire? Elle va mourir!_" he muttered
with shaking lips: and Elsie, child as she was, yearned over him with all
the tenderness and pity of inherent motherhood.

Then the tall figure of Lenox broke away from the stunned crowd racing
diagonally across the clear stretch between the pony and the lake.

The instant Quita missed her stroke he had risen to his feet; and his
intent now was to reach a given spot simultaneously with the pony, and by
the force of his added weight on the reins save the situation.

A shout of approval went up from soldiers and natives; and 'Unlimited
Loo' fled faster. He passed the point Lenox was making for a bare
hand's-length out of reach: but two strides landed him on a treacherous
strip of thinly-crusted bog that encircles the lake, and he sank up to
his knees in semi-liquid mud.

Quita, breathless and shaken, was jerked out of the saddle, and must have
fallen, ignominiously, face downward in her Slough of Despond, but that
Lenox,--reaching her in the nick of time--caught and crushed her in his
arms.

"You're not hurt. Thank God, you're not hurt," he whispered unsteadily.

With a gasp of amazement that ended in a sob, she leaned her cheek
against his coat; and the riotous music of their hearts seemed to fill
the universe.

Then reality rushed in, and shattered the dream. For Garth, Maurice, and
Bathurst were hurrying towards them.

Quita felt her husband stiffen, and lifted her head.

"Thank you--thank you," she said with a twisted smile. "I think I can
stand on my feet now."

In two strides he was clear of the mud, and had set her on firm earth.
But she was still clinging to his arm when Garth came up, brimming with
concern.

"I'm quite disappointingly all right," she assured him hastily, stung by
a keen sense that her catastrophe had fallen headlong from impending
tragedy to bathos. "Please bestow all your sympathy on Mr Bathurst, and
Unlimited Loo!"

For a second Garth looked up at the man who stood beside her; but only
for a second. For in the Scotchman's eye hate gleamed like a naked
sword; and Garth had small taste for bared weapons of any kind.

"_Ah, mon pauvre Michel_!" Quita exclaimed, in a quick rush of
tenderness, as her brother half ran to her, white and panting, both hands
outstretched: and deserting Lenox, she flew to him, anathematising her
own folly in a rapid flow of French. "Take me to my tent now," she
concluded, linking her arm in his. "I still feel idiotically shaky, and
I am certainly no loss to my side!--Mr Bathurst"--she turned in Jeff's
direction--"please forgive me. I promise I'll never ask you to lend me a
polo pony again!"

Bathurst,--who had rescued his treasure, and was feeling him all over
with skilled hands,--shouted a cheery: "Don't mention it, Miss Maurice.
Always glad to oblige a lady!"

And with a tired smile she turned back to Michael.

"_Viens, mon cher_," she said gently; and he led her away.

Conscious of Garth's eyes on her face, she could not trust herself to
look again at Lenox, who had neither moved nor spoken since he set her on
dry ground. But that one moment in his arms had solved her problem in a
fashion that she dreamed not of: a fashion that still seemed past belief.
She knew now that she had never lost him; and her heart sang a Jubilate
Deo all the way to her tent. But she knew also that his pride equalled
hers; that the first move was 'up to her'; and that now, at last, she
might make it without fear of rebuff. But how--how?

Ten minutes later Maurice left her prostrate, in the twilight of her
tent;--eau de cologne on her temples, and a chaos of mixed emotions at
her heart.

CHAPTER XII.

"How the world seems made for each of us;
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product,--thus,
When the soul declares itself; to wit,
By its fruit: the thing it does."
--Browning.

Quita lacked courage to appear again in public till the dinner bugle
sounded. Garth was her promised partner: and she found him awaiting
her just outside her tent.

"My turn now, dear lady," he said, pressing her fingertips against his
side, as she took his proffered arm. "It has been a blank afternoon
for me; but in revenge, I mean to keep you all the evening."

"You are presumptuous, as always!" she answered with admirable
lightness. "Your claim ends with dessert."

"Quite so. But you are generous; and I can trust the rest to you,
since you know how much I want it."

She smiled, as in duty bound. But to-night the man's facile gallantry
revolted her as it had never yet done. She wondered how she had
endured it these many months.

The instant they entered the long tent her eyes sought and found the
thing they craved: though the sight of Lenox in his accustomed place
between the Desmonds reawakened her smouldering jealousy of Honor, and
gave the lie to her amazing instant of revelation. But once during the
meal she encountered her husband's eyes. It was as if he had put out a
hand and touched her; and her partner's veiled love-making became a
meaningless murmur at her ear. Yet the surface of her brain travelled
mechanically along the beaten track of dinner-table talk: and Garth,
finding her gentler and more serious than her wont, deemed his hour of
triumph very near at hand. Direct encouragement, in the face of his
hidden knowledge, had strengthened his conviction that for many weeks
she had been stifling her true feelings; that one touch at the right
moment would suffice to lift the veil, to bring her at last into his
arms. Beyond that moment of mastery he did not choose to look. For
to-night passion had elbowed prudence out of the field. He had claimed
her for the evening; and he anticipated great things from the next two
hours under the stars.

At these informal camp dinners men and women left the table together;
only habitual card-players remaining behind to tempt fortune until the
small hours. Quita's hope had been that Desmond might come to her aid.
But he had made up a rubber of whist; and to her dismay, she saw Lenox
and Honor depart without him. Garth, who also noted their movements,
carefully led her round to the far side of a blazing bonfire, piled ten
feet high on this last night of Arcadia; and with a suppressed sigh she
resigned herself to an evening of comic songs and personalities; and
decided that a headache must rescue her, if no other champion were
forthcoming.

It was a clear night of stars. The moon had not yet risen; though a
herald brightness gave news of her coming. No least whisper of wind
stirred the tree-tops. Sun-baked fir branches crackled and snapped
like fairy musketry; and many-hued flames,--rose and saffron,
heliotrope and sea-green,--played hide-and-seek among them, flinging
inverted shadows on faces nearest the blaze.

Human beings break into song round a bonfire as naturally as birds
after a shower of rain, and for those who see in such a fire no mere
holocaust of dead twigs, but the Red Flower of the Jungle, the symbol
and spirit of wild life, this spontaneous minstrelsy has a charm
peculiarly its own. A charm of the simplest, certainly; for at
camp-fires the banjo reigns supreme; and the aptest songs are those
that 'rip your very heartstrings out' and offer fine facilities for
effervescing between the verses.

Already a remarkable assortment of these had challenged the winking
stars; and Quita was encouraging the requisite headache, while Garth
contemplated the suggestion of a stroll towards the lake, when Michael
Maurice came up to them.

"Quita, _cherie_, they have sent me to ask if you will sing. I have my
fiddle here for accompaniment."

She hesitated. A rare shyness, born of the afternoon's fiasco, was
still upon her.

"Who sent you?" she asked, smiling up at him.

"Colonel Mayhew, and several others." He bent lower. "_Tu es trop
fatiguee apres ce vilain polo_?"

"_Non, ce n'est pas ca . . . mais . . ._"

"Do, Miss Maurice, please, do," urged an enthusiastic young civilian on
her left. "A woman's voice, especially yours, would be a rare treat
after our promiscuous shouting."

And on her other side Garth, pressing closer, whispered his plea.

"Don't disappoint me. It is ages since I last heard you sing."

Without answering either, she touched her brother's arm. "Tune up,
Michel," she said low and hurriedly. "I have thought of a song."

Garth murmured his thanks with unusual _empressement_. Her instant
acquiescence had both moved and flattered him; and his hopes rode high.
As a matter of fact, she had not even heard his request. She had
simply obeyed an impulse, as in most crises of her life;--an impulse so
peremptory that it seemed almost a command from Beyond.

"What song is it to be?" Maurice asked, when the tuning process was
complete.

"Swinburne's 'Ask Nothing More.'"

He raised his eyebrows. "A man's song?"

"Yes. But you know I often sing it; and I want to . . . to-night."

"_Qu'y a-t-il, petite soeur_?" he asked, for her manner puzzled him.

"_Rien . . . rien de tout_. Commence."

And he played the soft chords, pregnant with pleading, that usher in
the song.

A moment later, Lenox, leaning back in a canvas chair, sat upright, and
took the cigar from his lips.

"A woman singing? Jove--it's Quita!" he added under his breath. Then
he remained motionless, straining his eyes for a sight of her between
the dancing flames.

Clear and unfaltering her voice soared into the night; and as the song
swept on, through pleading to impassioned longing, the whole awakened
heart of her took fire from the poet's faultless phrases; till, in the
last verse, it spoke straightly and simply to her husband, as though
they two stood alone in the interstellar spaces of the universe.

"I who have love, and no more,
Give you but love of you, sweet;
He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings let him soar.
Mine is the heart at your feet . . .
Here that must love you . . . love you, to live!"

The last stupendous chords crashed into silence; and the fall of a
charred twig sounded loud in the pause that followed. Then there came
from the shadowy circle of listeners no clatter of hands and voices,
but a low disjoined murmur;--the very attar of applause.

But by that time Quita was making her way blindly through the outskirts
of the crowd into the blessed region of darkness and stars.

For, as the last words left her lips, the full apprehension of her act
and its possible consequences submerged her in a red-hot wave of shame
and self-consciousness; and before Garth had recovered himself
sufficiently to rise and make the request that hovered on his lips, she
was gone. For a space he sat still, lost in an amazement that swelled
to exultation as the conviction grew in him that at last, after long
and laudable repression, her heart had spoken, indirectly, yet
unmistakably; that now, scandal or no scandal, he must make her
altogether his.

And while he sat stunned to inaction by the vital issues at stake,
Quita hurried on toward the temple, with no purpose in her going save
to escape from the consciousness of human presence. She stood still at
length, and wrung her hands together.

"Oh, but it was folly--worse than folly! He will only think or
hateful,--theatrical. He will never understand."

Yet if, by miraculous chance, he did understand . . . what then? She
held her breath and waited; till the night seemed alive with voices
that laughed her to scorn.

The new-risen moon hung low as if caught and tangled among the
tree-tops of the forest that broke up her golden disc in fantastic
fashion. Away there by the bonfire some one else was singing now; a
song with a boisterous chorus. Her mad impulse had simply been added
to the mass of ineffectual things that form the groundwork of our rare
successes.

Suddenly she started, and raised her head. The sound she desired yet
dreaded was close at hand. He was coming to her. He must have
understood. And because she needed all her courage to face him, she
did it at once; for nothing saps courage like hesitation.

Then her heart stood still; a chill aura swept through her and she
shivered. The dark figure nearing her was not Lenox. It was Garth.

But that all power of initiative seemed gone from her, she must have
turned and fled. Instead she stood her ground, without motion or
speech; and he, still misreading her, held out his arms.

"Quita . . . darling . . ." he began, his voice thick with passion.

But her name on his lips roused her like a pistol-shot.

"Go back . . . please go back," she cried imperatively. "I came away
because I wanted . . . to be alone."

"But I thought . . ."

"I can't help what you thought! If you have any--respect for me at
all, you will do what I ask."

"Of course. Only I shall see you again to-night. I must."

"No . . . no. Not to-night."

"To-morrow then?"

But she had already left him; and for his part, he must needs return
the way he came,--frustrated, yet not enlightened; cursing, in no
measured terms, the unfathomable ways of women. No doubt she was
upset, unstrung by the knowledge of all that her confession implied;
and woman-like, showed small regard for his consuming impatience to
possess her. But to-morrow he would ride home with her. And after
that--the Deluge!

Quita left alone again went forward with lagging feet, and a heart
emptied of hope. Her own disappointment crowded out all thought of
Garth's unusual behaviour; till renewed steps behind her suggested the
astonishing possibility that he had dared to disregard her request, and
followed her, in spite of all. The suggestion roused not fear, but
anger, and the militant spirit of independence that circumstances had
so fostered in her.

She knew now that she hated him, as we only hate those whom we have
wronged. It was intolerable that he should persecute her against her
wish; and she swung round sharply, with words of pitiless truth on her
lips.

But the night seemed marked for the unexpected:--and now it was joy
incredible that fettered her tongue and her feet, while her husband
hastened forward, his face clearly visible in the growing light.

"I followed that fellow when he went after you," he said bluntly, anger
smouldering in his tone. "And I saw him leave you. Did you send him
away?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I didn't want him."

"Does that apply to me also?"

"No . . . please stay."

There fell a silence pregnant with things unutterable. Lenox came
closer.

"What possessed you to sing that song,--in that way--Quita?"

It was the first time he had spoken her name, and she turned from him,
pressing her fingers against flaming cheeks.

"Oh, I am burnt up with shame! I feel as if I had told all of them."

"Told them--what?"

"_Mon Dieu_! Will you compel me to say everything?"

She flung out both hands, and he caught and crushed them till she
winced under the pressure. Then, holding her at arm's-length, he
looked searchingly into her eyes.

And while they stood so--in this their first instant of real union,
that dwarfed the years between to a watch in the night--each was aware
of the other's answering heart; and in each, love burnt with so
flame-like a quality that neither speech nor touch was needed to seal
the intimacy of contact.

At length he drew her nearer.

"Does it frighten you now when I look right into you?" he asked, an odd
vibration in his voice.

"No . . . no. I am only afraid you may not see deep enough."

He drew a great breath.

"Thank God for that. But tell me,--for I am still in the dark,--how on
earth has such a miracle come to pass?"

Her low laugh had a ring of inexpressible content.

"Dearest, and blindest! Did it never occur to you that you could not
have laid a surer trap to win me than by just keeping clear of me, and
living in . . . that Mrs Desmond's pocket?"

He shook his head, smiling down at her. Her old subtle charm with this
strange new tenderness superadded, was working like an elixir in his
veins.

"But what does the _how_ of it matter, after all?" she went on, leaning
closer, and speaking low and fervently. "Isn't it enough that I love
you with all there is of me . . . Eldred; that I ask you to believe me,
and to make me . . . your very wife. There: you have compelled me to
say everything! Are you satisfied now?"

To such a question he could find no answer in words. But his silence
was cardinal. He put an arm round her, straining her close, and with a
sigh of sheer rapture she lifted her face to his.

Their eyes met. Then their lips; and Eldred Lenox entered into a
knowledge that he dreamed not of. The whole soul of his wife came to
him in that kiss; and for a long minute ecstacy held them.

Then he released her, slowly . . . reluctantly.

"Shall we sit out here?" he said. "The whole camp will soon be asleep;
but I can't let you go yet."

She sank down, forthwith, upon the grassy slope, in which the fire of a
June sun still lingered; and clasping her hands about her knees, looked
up at him invitingly. By way of response he stretched himself full
length, a little below her, resting on his elbow in such a position as
afforded him a clear view of her profile, that gleamed, like a cameo
against a background of deodars.

"Smoke," she said softly.

"No. I think not."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33