The Great Amulet

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Her answering look set a crown on him.

"Ah, my dear," she whispered. "In spite of all you said last night, I
am happy beyond words."

"So am I," he answered simply. "Come."

From her own area of luggage-strewn ground, Honor Desmond,--carrying
little Paul, whom she had insisted on bringing into camp,--looked after
them as they went, her glad heart in her eyes; and Desmond, coming up
from behind, took her lightly by the arm.

"Well, old lady," he asked. "Are you satisfied yet?"

"Abundantly."

"And am I to get my wife back again as a reward for distinguished
services rendered?"

"I imagine so!" she answered, laughing happily. "Unless you would
rather keep your grievance!--Now go on to breakfast, darling; and I'll
follow when I have packed this priceless person into his dandy.
Whatever happens, he and Parbutti must run no risk of getting drenched."

Breakfast was half through before Garth sauntered into the mess-tent:
and Honor, who had watched for his coming, felt an unbidden pang of
pity at sight of his blank face, when he beheld Quita sitting beside
her husband, a bright spot of colour in either cheek, her eyes
radiating a light that refused to be hidden under a bushel.

The unexpected blow roused all the devil in him. Man of prudence
though he was, he could have murdered Lenox at that moment. But life
rarely lends itself to melodrama: and instead he sat down at the far
end of the table; and, for once in his life, ate a meal without being
aware of its quality. His brain was busy reviewing the events of the
previous day; putting two and two together, and trying not to see that
they made four. A physical chill took him as he realised how narrowly
he had escaped the ignominy of betraying the fact that he had counted
on the consent of this proudest among women to the only proposals
possible in the circumstances.

It was an awkward corner for James Garth; and in his chequered
experience of awkward corners the _role_ of victim had rarely been his.
Even the witness of his eyes did not carry conviction. By some means
he must contrive to ride home with her, and learn from her lips the
'wherefore' of this astonishing change of front. He reflected that
Lenox had little _finesse_, and anticipated small trouble in
circumventing him.

But he reckoned without Honor Desmond, whose strategical skill came to
her from a long line of distinguished soldiers, and whose sympathies
had been touched to the quick by the grave contentment in Eldred
Lenox's eyes when they lingered on his wife's face and figure.

Breakfast over, she accosted Garth straightway with a cheerful morning
greeting: and from that moment, to the time of their departure, she
took charge of him, gently yet irresistibly; keeping him well away from
Quita's neighbourhood; and so isolating him that he could not desert
her without open rudeness: proceedings that at once mystified and
flattered him, as Honor herself was delightedly aware.

For a full hour the exodus of man and beast went noisily forward. But
Colonel Mayhew's departure was delayed by his desire to see the Chumba
contingent well under weigh before leaving: and by the time he
announced his readiness to start, the last remaining units of the Great
Camp were out of sight, trotting briskly along the shadowed road that
winds up through the forest to Bukrota Mall.

"If we push along briskly we may get in with dry skins yet," he said,
scanning the sky, where a vanguard of tattered cloud trailed aimlessly
across the blue.

"And I was actually hoping we might get caught!" Quita confessed on a
mock note of apology. "It would make such a thrilling _finale_: and I
delight in your Indian storms."

Colonel Mayhew laughed and shook his head.

"When you have seen and heard as many of them as I have, Miss Maurice,
you will simply find them 'demnition damp and disagreeable,' like
Mantalini's dead body! And even at the risk of disappointing you, I
intend to make a bolt for it.--Come on, my contingent!"

Lenox was at his wife's right hand, as he had promised: and Garth had
so far succumbed as to lift Mrs Desmond into her saddle.

"You are a practised hand at it!" she said, smiling down upon his
obvious annoyance at the fate in store for him. "Why shouldn't you and
I head the contingent? Some one must go first!"

There was nothing for it but to acquiesce; and to endure, as best he
might, the torment of Quita's clear tones close behind, alternating
with her husband's bass; both voices pitched too low to be articulate,
Desmond followed with Mayhew, while Maurice and Elsie, and the
customary string of coolies, brought up the rear.

For the first few miles splashes of sunlight gleamed and quivered on
the rough pathway, on red-pine stems, and moss-coated rocks. But
before half their journey was accomplished, it became evident that they
were not to escape the opening storm of the great monsoon.

A shuddering wind set the dense pines above and below them swaying and
moaning, a sound of strange and infinite melancholy. The sunlight went
out like a snuffed candle; battalions of clouds, charged with
electricity, rolled silently northward, obliterating all things; and an
ochreous twilight settled down upon the forest. Save for the
whispering of wind-tossed trees, all Nature seemed hushed, expectant,
holding her breath.

The dusky stillness wrought upon the nerves of the riders, producing a
vague, discomfortable sense of foreboding. Talk grew fitful; and was
instinctively carried on in lowered tones.

"Push on a bit faster, Mrs Desmond. It would be as well to get out
where the trees are thinner before the worst is upon us."

Colonel Mayhew's voice had an anxious note. He had weathered the
opening storm of many monsoons; but his daughter's presence wakened in
him a new fear of the thunderbolts of the gods.

Even as he spoke, a phosphorescent gleam sped through the trees, like a
passing soul; and a threatening growl rumbled up from the South. It
was the prelude. Two minutes later, rocks, stems, branches, and the
minutest fir-needles that flickered against the grey, showed like
ink-strokes on tarnished silver as a forked flash, leaped, quivering,
from the heart of a blue-black cloud. The report that followed, after
scarce five seconds of stillness, was smart, crisp, short as a
revolver-shot; and long before a hundred peaks had made an end of
flinging back the sound, a second flash and crash--in swifter
succession--smote the eyes and ears of the riders, who now urged their
horses to a canter, _saises_, coolies, and three devoted dogs panting
zealously behind them.

Their hope was to gain shelter in the Government woodsheds, two miles
ahead, before the inevitable downpour came to drench their bodies and
impede their progress. But fate was in a merciless mood on that June
morning.

The third flash split up the sky as a stone splits a window pane.
Pulsating streaks of fire, red, green, and blue, radiated in all
directions, half-blinding them with the brazen glare. And before it
faded, a crackling detonation seemed to rip the very heavens from marge
to marge.

As yet no rain had fallen: and for ten deafening minutes the little
party rode in silence through an inferno of reiterate light and sound.
Once or twice Quita glanced at her husband, cantering beside her, and
wondered vaguely when she would hear him speak again; wondered, too, at
her own matter-of-fact acceptance of that which a week ago had appeared
impossible. But the storm stunned heart and brain, as well as eye and
ear. Everything human,--life, death, love itself,--seemed trivial in
face of this stupendous battle of the elements. Above them, and on all
sides of them, the lightning leaped and darted, like a live thing
seeking its prey. It was as if the sombre heavens were bringing forth
brood upon brood of fiery serpents, and greeting the birth of each with
ear-splitting peals of Titanic laughter.

Then came the rain:--not in mere drops, but in a solid sheet of water,
blinding, drenching, stupefying. At the same instant the fury of the
storm culminated in a blaze of white light that seemed to spring upon
them from all sides at once, with a shout as of fiends let loose; and,
through the echoing after-roll of thunder, came a sharper, harsher
sound,--the death note of a mighty tree.

Lenox and his wife faced one another involuntarily with startled looks.

"How appalling!--What was it?" she asked between two breaths.

"A pine struck somewhere up the _khud_. Not frightened, are you,
lass?" he added with tender concern. "It's the very thing you wanted.
You've got your thrilling finale with a vengeance!"

A clatter of breaking branches made him look up. "Great God!" he
cried, on a note of alarm. "Back your pony sharp. It's coming down on
the top of us!"

And as she obeyed, with the swift instinct of fear, Desmond's voice
reached him through the rush of the rain.

"Look out for yourself, Lenox! She's safe enough."

But before the words were out, the upper half of a great deodar crashed
down upon the narrow path, and a long branch struck the Galloway's
shoulder with tremendous force. For an instant Shaitan staggered under
the blow:--then horse, and man, and tree were hurled headlong down the
steep, rain-lashed ravine.

A great cry broke from Quita: and in that cry, and the white, rigid
repression that followed it, Garth had his answer to the question he
had never asked.

For the hundredth part of a second all seven sat paralysed by the
hideous thing that had happened before their eyes, and by the hopeless
nature of the drop down which Lenox had disappeared:--wiped out, as
though he had never been.

Then Desmond's practical vigour asserted itself, and he sprang lightly
to the ground.

"Here, take hold of the Demon, some one!"

And it was Quita who leant forward and grasped the bridle with a steady
hand. Her action gave him the chance he wanted of getting close enough
to speak a few words of encouragement in a hurried undertone.

"Don't lose heart. It's an ugly drop. But he fell clear of the tree;
and these _khuds_ are the most chancy things imaginable. I'm off after
him, as fast as hands and feet can take me."

Speech was beyond her; but she thanked him with her eyes.

A moment later he was kneeling in the mud, rapidly unfastening boots
and gaiters; for one downward glance had convinced him that it would be
a matter of climbing, and difficult climbing at that.

By now Colonel Mayhew had dismounted also; and as Desmond stood
upright--in socks and breeches--and flung aside his dripping helmet,
the older man drew him to the path's edge.

"Look here, my dear chap," he mid, when they were out of earshot of the
group, who sat spellbound in the grip of tragedy, "are you justified in
running a serious risk, probably--to no purpose? For I'm afraid poor
Lenox hasn't a ghost of a chance. You're a married man, remember; and
it looks to me uncommonly like madness to attempt that _khud_ in such
weather. It'll be a case of holding on with your eyelids; and there's
a coolie track not far from here, that leads down to the valley."

Desmond's month took the dogged line that his _sowars_ knew and loved;
and a combatant light flashed in his eyes.

"Your blood's cooler than mine, sir," he answered quietly. "But I have
a fairly steady head; and my wife would be the last person in the world
to hold me back, thank God. In such cases five or ten minutes may mean
just the difference between life . . . and death. If you will get
together some sort of a stretcher--a good strong one--and come on
post-haste down the coolie track, I'll be grateful. I suppose we
haven't a drop of brandy among us?--bad luck to it!"

"There's a provision _kilter_ on one of the coolies. Shall we have it
turned out, on the chance?"

"Good Lord, yes. Get it done at once, please." Then he turned to
Garth. "I say, Major, gallop on, will you, and catch up Dr O'Malley.
I saw him start with the last contingent. They can't be more than two
miles ahead."

And as Garth obeyed the peremptory request, the devil himself must have
whispered to his heart the despicable suggestion that possibly Fate had
struck a blow in his favour after all.

Colonel Mayhew, meanwhile, rummaging feverishly in the depths of the
_kilter_ with scant hope of success, bestrewed the wet earth on all
sides of him with canned fruits, sardines, greasy jharrons, and
crumpled wads of newspaper: till at length, like Hope out of Pandora's
casket, there came forth from an unsuspicious-looking bundle of clothes
half a bottle of brandy, stowed carefully away by the kitmutgar, for
private ends best known to himself.

Desmond, who stood by fuming with impatience to be gone, laid eager
hands on it.

"Lord, what a miracle! Pity there's no flask handy," he muttered,
buttoning his coat, and thrusting the unwieldly impediment into a
side-pocket. Then, catching sight of a horn tumbler among the
_debris_, he picked it up, and drew out the bottle.

"Better leave you some for the women,--if you can get 'em to drink it
diluted with a trifle of rain!--There now, I'm off. For God's sake,
Colonel, look sharp after me."

Without waiting for an answer, he swung round on his heel, and for the
first time looked at his wife, whose eyes had never left him since he
sprang from the saddle. Now, as his own challenged them, they gave him
in full the approval he craved; and, for the space of a few seconds,
their spirits clung together in an embrace more intimate than any
communion of the lips.

Then Theo Desmond wrenched himself away.

Stepping deliberately backward, over a short, sheer drop, he let
himself down by his hands on to a tumbled mass of boulders, and began
his perilous descent in earnest. Whereupon Brutus,--who stood at the
_khud's_ edge peering into space, ears and tail dumbly demanding
explanation,--lunged forward, as if to follow so practical a lead; and
only Colonel Mayhew's prompt clutch at his collar saved him from
joining the master who had so basely deserted him. Both he and
Desmond's distracted Aberdeen were handed over to a _sais_; and after
much ineffectual choking and gurgling, subsided into apathetic despair.

Already half a dozen natives were busy devising an impromptu stretcher
from fir branches, ropes, and strips of coolie blanket,--drenched and
evil-smelling, yet acceptable enough; while Quita sat watching its
construction in a dazed stillness; her eyes dry and wide; her artist's
brain picturing too vividly that which lay awaiting it down there in
the pitiless rain, that seemed to add a refinement of cruelty to the
horse-play of lightning and thunder.

But Colonel Mayhew, unaware of the morning's double tragedy, had eyes
only for his daughter; and, in his first free moment, hurried to her
side. She had hidden her face, and was crying softly, to Michael's
open dismay. Once or twice he had even laid a hand on her, unheeded,
and unrebuked. But her father's touch roused her, and she took
convulsive hold of him. She was still little more than a child; and
this was her first face-to-face encounter with the brutality of God's
universe.

"Don't upset yourself, girlie," he said kindly. "The damage may be
less than we think for. I must stay here and help; but you must be a
good child, and ride on at once. You'll see her safe home for me,
won't you, Maurice?"

Michael acquiesced eagerly. Unrelieved tragedy upset his nerves. He
longed to escape from the consciousness of Quita's dumb despair; and
when Elsie had been induced to swallow a drop of brandy that would not
have warmed a sparrow, they rode off briskly through the sullen
downpour.

With a breath of relief, Colonel Mayhew went up to Honor Desmond, who
had just dismounted.

"What's that for?" he asked anxiously. "You and Miss Maurice are going
on too, of course."

Honor shook her head.

"But you can do no earthly good by waiting. We may be an hour or more
before we get up here again. It will be slow work, if . . . if Lenox
is alive;--and you will be drenched to the skin."

"There are worse evils than that!" she answered with gentle immobility.
"Don't trouble about me, please. I _must_ stay here till I know what
has happened; and I think Miss Maurice will wish to stay too. We shall
come to no harm. We women have nine lives, you know!"

"And if you will--you will. . . . I know that also! But at least take
a nip to keep out the damp. Your husband gave me this at the last
moment for the three of you."

"How like him to think of it!" she murmured, smiling unsteadily.

"Yes--it _was_ like him,"--and in the expansion of the moment the
warm-hearted Resident put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. "He's a
deuced fine fellow, my dear, and he has found a wife that's worthy of
him."

Honor blushed rose-red, and took the proffered stimulant.

"I'll give Miss Maurice some too," she said. "Don't lose a second on
our account, please."

Thus urged, the good man hurried away; and Honor went straight to
Quita, whose unnatural apathy cut her to the heart.

"Miss Maurice, here's brandy," she said softly. "Drink all of it,
before I help you down."

Quita emptied the tumbler; and Honor, grasping her waist with both
hands, lifted her out of the saddle.

"How strong you are," she said, in the toneless voice of a
sleep-walker. Then her frozen anguish melted suddenly and completely.
For Honor Desmond, instead of releasing her, clasped her close, kissing
her, with passionate tenderness, on cheeks and brows, like wet marble:
and in the midst of her bewildered misery Quita realised dimly what it
might mean to possess a mother.

"Theo and I know about it all," Honor explained at length; and Quita
nodded. The fact that she was crying her heart out on the shoulder of
her detested rival made the whole incident dreamlike to the verge of
stupefaction: and it was Honor who spoke again.

"We'll just wait here together till they come back; and shut--the worst
out of our thoughts. You have splendid courage, my dear, and I think I
love nothing in the world more than courage. Sit down with me now on
this pile of fir-needles. It looks a little less saturated than the
rest of the world."

Still keeping an arm round her, she drew her down unresisting to her
side: and Quita, choking back the tears that had probably saved her
brain from after-effects of the shock, looked with awakened interest at
her new-found friend.

"I don't deserve that you should be so good to me," she said, humour
flashing through her pain like a watery sunbeam on a day of mist. "I
have hated you, with all my heart, ever since I first saw you!"

At which confession Honor pressed her closer. "Bless you for telling
me!--I take it simply as the measure of--your love for him."

"_Mon Dieu_, no! Not now," she answered very low.

"I am glad of that too. For I want very much to be good friends with
Captain Lenox's wife."

On the last word a slow colour crept back into Quita's cheeks.

"You mustn't speak of it--yet, to any one else. There are
difficulties--big difficulties . . ."

"I know;--but you may trust him to conquer them. One feels in him the
sort of force that moves mountains."

Again Quita nodded. "You seem to know everything," she added, a last
spark flickering in the ashes of her jealousy. "And I suppose you
blame _me_ for it all."

"I am too ignorant of the facts to blame either of you. I only know
that even if he wronged you in any way, he has been more than
sufficiently punished."

At that Quita's lips quivered, and the storm of her grief broke out
afresh: while the greater storm overhead, having accomplished its evil
work, rolled rapidly northward, with the colossal unconcern of a giant
who crushes a beetle in his path; and the first stupendous downrush of
water subsided into a melancholy drizzle of rain.

In that endless hour of looking and waiting for those who seemed as if
they had been blotted out for all time, Quita learned once and for all
what manner of woman Honor Desmond was; learnt also something of the
loyalty and reserve that had marked Eldred's intercourse with her whom
he had spoken of as his best friend.

CHAPTER XIV.

"My undissuaded heart I hear
Whisper courage in my ear."
--R.L.S.

Down,--steadily, interminably down the face of that formidable ravine,
Theo Desmond slid, and scrambled, and climbed; holding his mind rigidly
on the practical necessities of the moment, which were many and
disconcerting. His stockinged feet showed dull-red streaks and blotches,
where sharp stones had cut them. His hands were grazed and torn by
futile clutchings at the surface of broken rocks: and the protruding neck
of the brandy bottle had a trick of digging him playfully in the ribs:
which made him swear. Impertinent raindrops chased each other down his
cheeks and forehead; trickling into his eyes, and blinding him at
critical moments when he dared not release a hand to brush them away.
The inch-by-inch progress to which he was condemned fretted the hasty
spirit of the man; anxiety consumed him, and conspired with impatience to
beget a nightmare illusion that he had been battling with naked rock and
dripping vegetation since the beginning of Time.

Once,--for all the caution with which he crept backward and
downward,--his foot slipped, on the wet surface of a boulder; and, in the
hope of avoiding a fall, he clutched at a small shrub, with one hand,
shielding the aggressive brandy bottle with the other. But the
treacherous sapling yielded under his weight; and wrenching its roots
from the moist earth, he rolled over and over, knocking his head and
chest violently against outlying peninsulars of rock.

Both hands were requisitioned now, in a vain effort to check a descent
that had become too rapid for comfort or dignity: and before long, a
musical clink, followed by a strong whiff of spirit, announced the fate
of the brandy bottle.

"Damn the thing!" he exclaimed in an access of helpless fury. Then a
fresh blow on his head whelmed anger and anxiety in sheer pain, and sent
him rolling like a log into a kindly patch of undergrowth, which had, so
far, blocked his downward view.

Here he lay awhile, half stunned, small runnels of water trickling from
his clothing. But his vitality--never long in abeyance--soon reasserted
itself. He sat up, and his hand went instinctively to his pocket.
Drawing out the beheaded bottle, he was relieved to find that it still
held a tablespoonful or more; and that his handkerchief was saturated
with the precious fluid. He sucked a mouthful from it with keen
satisfaction: then, using it for a wad, plugged up the bottle; and
undaunted by bruises, dizziness, torn hands, and smarting feet, lost no
time in starting afresh.

For the time being, progress was simpler, and less hazardous: and, once
through the undergrowth, he came with disconcerting abruptness upon that
which he sought.

Eight feet below him, on a merciful ledge of earth wide enough to check
the fatal rebound into space, Eldred Lenox lay face downward, his left
arm crumpled under him; the other flung outward as if in a last desperate
effort to ward off the inevitable. Shaitan was nowhere to be seen. The
sheer drop beyond told his fate.

Soldier as he was, and inured to the sight of death in its most barbarous
aspect, Desmond's heart stood still as he looked down upon that powerful
figure of manhood lying helpless and alone, pattered upon indifferently
by the dripping heavens.

Choosing a spot that promised a soft landing-place, Desmond dropped on to
the ledge; knelt beside the injured man; and speedily assured himself
that life was not extinct. Unconsciousness was due to a wound on the
back of his head, from which blood still trickled sluggishly through the
thick black hair. The arm crumpled under him was broken below the elbow.
Very gently, as though he were a child asleep, Desmond turned him on to
his back. His eyes showed fixed and glazed between half-open lids, and a
deep scratch disfigured his cheek. Pillowing the inert head on one arm,
Desmond applied the spirit to his lips again and again, a few drops at a
time: till the lids lifted heavily, and life returned with a slow
shuddering breath.

Desmond bent down to him eagerly.

"Not going out this journey, Lenox, old chap."

But no answering gleam rewarded him; no movement of limb or feature.
Only the lids fell again; and Desmond knew that this was no fainting fit,
but collapse from probable damage to the brain.

After applying more brandy to the lips and temples without result, he
removed his Norfolk coat--still warm and dry within--and with the help of
two fir boughs contrived to shelter Lenox's head and chest from the
chilling downpour. Then he set to work on the broken arm. The same
fir,--springing sturdily from a cleft in the rock below,--provided a
splint; and with two handkerchiefs (he had wrung the last drop of
rain-diluted brandy from his own) he tied the injured limb skilfully and
securely into place. That done, there remained nothing but to wait:--the
hardest task that can be assigned to a man of action.

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