Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 28

"Pot o' fresh tea, miss," said Bunce to the round-faced, soft-eyed girl at the door. "And pikelets and parkin an' anything you've got to hand.

We've n.o.bbut ten minutes now forth to eat an' drink."

He put two half-crowns on the table.

"An' Ah'll never take change, my dear," he added, "so be 'tis ready in three."

In two and a half they were drinking it, Bunce-like, from the saucers; and Amaryllis once more in danger of the giggles.

"Ma la.s.s and self, miss," said Bunce, between gulps, "be footin' it to Harthborough Junction. Bain't there a train, five summat wi' another five in it?"

"Five fifteen," said the girl. "Lunnon way."

"That'll be it. We're takin' 't easy-like o'er moor. Now, Ah do call to mind there be a track to left, some way down t' ro'd, as'll take 'ee gentle and pleasant 'tween two gradely hummocks down into Harthborough.

But how far out o' Ecclesthorpe that track takes off the pike, I can't bring to mind. 'Tis not a ro'd proper but indistink like an' wanderin'.

So Ah be feared o' missin' it."

"T' owd Drovers' Track, tha meanst. 'Tis easy findin'," said the girl.

"Thou turn'st off to left by two thorns wi' a white stone by root o' t'

girt 'un. But they stand a long mile down t' road. Now, if 'ee likes to go through house an' cross t' paddock, Ah'll put 'ee in sheep path that'll take thee to Drovers' Track where un runs up 'tween t'

rocks--Bull's Neck, they call it."

When they had finished their tea, and d.i.c.k, from the sweetstuff counter, had crammed into already burdened pockets two half-pound packets of chocolate, the girl led them to the further gate of her father's paddock, whence she indicated the highest point of the ridge over which "T' owd Drovers' Track" threaded its way.

"Howd eyes on t' lofty k.n.o.b of 'un," she said, "and thou'lt not stray."

For two or three hundred yards the pair walked in silence; and now that terror had pa.s.sed with the imminence of danger, and that no strange eyes surrounded her for which she must play a part not learned nor rehea.r.s.ed, the terrible pressure which had brought Amaryllis so close to her companion was relaxed--not annihilated, but withdrawn to lurk in sky and air, instead of squeezing the very life and breath out of her physical body.

d.i.c.k, therefore, though not two feet from her side, seemed all at once a hundred miles away. The man whose arm had held her, and whose coat she had rubbed her face against, she now found herself too shy to touch or speak to. Yet she wished to hear his voice, and even more, longed to feel that he was really there--the same man, no other than she had found him.

She fixed her eyes upon him, hoping he would feel them and respond--help her somehow to bridge this silly gulf. But he strode on, at a pace which made her run lest she should fall behind.

His eyes were set straight forward, his head a little bent. No smoke came from the pipe in his mouth, and the whole expression of face and figure was of dogged endurance. A little trickle of blood had started afresh from the wound on his cheek. She wondered what had set it flowing again. Could it have been some clumsiness of her own in her convulsive clinging to him?

A woman's compa.s.sion, more easily aroused by a cut finger than by a suffering mind, narrowed the chasm between them, until a small, soft voice bridged it.

"d.i.c.k!" she cried. "Oh, d.i.c.k."

But the stiff face remained rigid, so the frightened girl quickened her pace until she was well in front; then, turning, she saw that their lids covered two-thirds of the eye-b.a.l.l.s, and that the mechanism of the man was driven by an impulse of which, if it were his at all, he was surely not conscious.

As he reached her side, she laid a hand on him, and, "d.i.c.k!" she cried again.

The man started, turning his face the wrong way.

The eyes did not open, but the jaw muscles relaxed, letting the cold pipe fall from his teeth. The blind effort which he made to catch it overbalanced the automaton.

He pitched forward, and would have fallen on his face, but for the shoulder which stopped his head, and the arms that clutched his reeling body.

Accurate instinct loosened her joints as the weight struck her, and she came slowly to her knees, sinking back until she sat upon her heels, so that the man received no shock. She had turned halfside-ways as she went down; and kneeling, held him across her, with the uninjured cheek strained upon her left shoulder, and his heels far away to her right.

She looked down into the face, where the eyes were now wholly covered.

The dark semi-circles under the closed lids and the deepened lines of the thin face moved in her compa.s.sion as tender as she felt for the bleeding bruise on the cheek. She remembered how he had nursed her, and given her, by his mere sympathy and control, that hour's wonderful sleep. She remembered him crawling, at the acme of her terror, through the slit of the window; saving her from the Dutch woman; turning his back while she dressed; leaping like a heaven-sent devil over the stair-rail; fighting Ockley with his fists--and refused to remember that same enemy brought utterly to an end of his enmity.

Her heart swelled, and beat heavily with the sense of ownership and the dread of losing what was her own; it was a fear more poignant than any other of the fears which she had suffered in a long chain since she fell asleep in Randal Bellamy's study--only last night!

Was it death--death which she had seen once already to-day--was it that coming to her here against her heart? Or was it but with him as it had been with her in the Brundage bedroom--the awful need of sleep.

She bent her ear close over his lips, and heard the breath long, and regular.

She forgot his wasted features in the beauty of the long eyelashes touching his cheeks; and just because she could not see what the lids were hiding, she remembered her walk down through the wood below the Manor House, and that foolish phrase, "blue as a hummin-bird's weskit,"

which had then haunted her, till she found him playing with Gorgon in the road; and from that to her bewilderment twenty-four hours later, when he had called the dog Zola. She had reproved the enormity of the syncopated pun, but d.i.c.k had insisted that Zola fitted an animal whose expression was always either disgusted or disgusting.

She must not keep him here, so near the stone cottage, and the road.

They might be seen.

He had offered her brandy. Carefully she felt his coat. The right outside pocket she could not reach, but there was a hard lump in it, pressing against her cramped knees.

She leaned over sideways, twisted her legs in front of her, and made a lap into which, by edging away from the heavy body, she let the head slide gently. She got the flask out, pulled the metal cup from its base, and into it poured a little brandy. With tender force she managed at last to send a trickle of the spirit into his mouth.

He choked, tried to swallow, coughed violently, and then opened his eyes.

"I told you," he said, "that you needed brandy, not to kill me with it.

What's happened?"

"You were walking in your sleep," she began.

"Sleeping in my walk, perhaps," he admitted. "Bad enough, but very different."

His senses coming back to him, d.i.c.k felt a wet drop on his forehead, brushed it away, and glanced at the sky, but not, as Amaryllis expected, at her.

"Well," she said, "I was frightened."

"Why?"

"You dropped your pipe, tried to catch it, and fell on your face,"

explained Amaryllis.

d.i.c.k felt his nose and eyebrows. "No, I never!" he declared indignantly.

Amaryllis laughed shakily.

"You see, I'm softer than the ground. You fell on me." And she patted her left shoulder.

"Your fault, I'm afraid. Must have tipped you right over."

"No, I just subsided--quite neatly. And you never got a b.u.mp, d.i.c.k. But I was afraid--afraid, you know."

"I must be in rotten condition, going to pieces like that. Why, look at you--been through twice as much."