Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 29

"Oh, no," she answered, s.n.a.t.c.hing greedily at the opportunity of telling a little of what she had been thinking. "Did I drive two hundred and fifty miles in the dark, at fifty miles an hour? Did I climb and crawl, and fight, and nurse a squealing girl after carrying her for miles?"

"Three hundred yards," said d.i.c.k dryly. "And you must have been shamming to know anything about it."

"Mrs. Brundage told me," she answered, "that you came through the wood carrying me in your arms."

And so was he in hers--the reversal of their cases struck him like a soft, heavy blow on the heart.

And so much puzzled was Amaryllis by the strange intensity of his eyes lifted to hers that she found the gaze hard to endure, and moved uneasily.

"We ought not to stay here, d.i.c.k," she said.

He started scrambling to his feet, but Amaryllis was before him, and giving him a hand, helped him to rise with a pull of which the vigour surprised him.

"You're strong," he said, swaying unsteadily for a moment.

She flushed with pleasure at male praise.

"I'm awfully strong. I've felt perfectly safe, you see, ever since--since I was such a fool and you made me sleep and be sensible."

d.i.c.k looked about him, and caught sight of the stone roof of the cottage where the bees b.u.mbled.

"I didn't get far before I crumpled," he said. "Let's get a move on."

As they walked with their eyes on the cleft k.n.o.b of the ridge, he reverted to her last words.

"Not scared any more? Then what price Melchard?" he asked, "and malingering pig-tailed wenches that hide their faces and sob on their daddies' shoulders?"

"It was that frightful Chinaman, d.i.c.k. Yes, I was afraid then. I was afraid--afraid you'd----"

"Take him on? Nothin' doing," he answered. "I should've stood just a dog's chance against the village hero, my dear girl, and the Malay made just one bite of him. Next time that lopsided serang looms on the horizon, you won't see me for dust and small stones."

The tone, perhaps, more than the words in which the man of whom she could not help making a hero seemed to disparage himself, annoyed Miss Caldegard.

It was as if one good friend of hers had maligned another, and she could not quarrel with the traducer without falling out with the traduced.

"But it was Melchard's voice that made you take a lump of me between your teeth and bite a hole in my coat," he went on. "There's a hideous wound just under this." And he picked at two broken threads on his shoulder.

"That was just hate and disgust, not fear. And it's horrid to say I bit you, when you know I didn't. But I was afraid, d.i.c.k, that you'd have to do something to that huge dwarf-thing, and get hurt--and----"

"Well, I've told you I'll bolt if he shows his face," he repeated, more gently. But seeing her flush and frown angrily, "What's wrong, Amaryllis?" he asked, and drew nearer to her side as they walked.

But she kept the distance undiminished.

"I don't like the way you speak of yourself," she replied hotly. "It makes me feel angry--as if someone else had done it."

"Done what?"

"Lied about you--said you were afraid of a hideous freak out of a circus. You!"

The brown eyes blazed on him with the anger meant for his hypothetic slanderer. And d.i.c.k, between the joy with which her annexation of his honour filled him, and his weakened control, found himself on the edge of an explosion of feeling; but brought back common-sense and good-humour to them both with a touch of his antiseptic cynicism.

"Can you swim?" he asked.

"Yes," said the girl, round-eyed.

"If you couldn't, would you jump in after another fool that couldn't?"

"Another? Oh!" exclaimed the girl.

"Well, you would be, if you couldn't. But you can. Now, would you jump in?"

"No. I should run for a rope or something."

"That's me," said d.i.c.k. "Next time that crop-eared, chrome-coloured coolie shows against the sky-line, I run for a rope or something."

The wrinkles disappeared from her forehead, and once more Amaryllis slipped her hand through the bend of his arm. She did it as for friendship or support, but her thought was for him. His rest had been nothing, and at any moment that deadly sleep might seize him again. She made up her mind that next time, even should they have to finish their walking by night, his sleep should be at least as long as that he had given her.

"I'm a pig to be cross," she said. "But I'm only not cross now because you make me laugh with your ridiculous good temper. But, d.i.c.k----"

She had felt that, without her linked arm, his steps would already be wandering.

"Well?" he said.

"Next time it's too much for you, I'm going to let you sleep. You must."

He looked at his watch.

"It's a quarter to three," he said. "If we missed that train at five-fifteen, we should have to wait till ten for the next."

"And it'd be much safer," Amaryllis broke in, "to wait on the moor, than in a village or a station where people could see us."

"Yes. I'm not clear-headed enough now to see into Melchard's mind, but I can still calculate on what I know. If he didn't suspect us, he'll go the round of his pickets, beginning with Gallowstree Dip. If he did suspect, he'll come this way after us, and run down towards the London road and look across the moor, along the Drovers' Track from the hawthorns and the white stone. He won't see us--we are in a fold till we get a mile further at least. He'll go on towards the main road, but when he meets his picket that n.o.body like us two has pa.s.sed, he'll come back and try the Drovers' Track."

"He didn't suspect," insisted the girl.

"We'll bank on that, then," said d.i.c.k, "--if we can find a bush or a ditch to hide in."

The faint path they were following here reached the lowest point of the depression which hid them from the road and from the cottage by whose back door they had left it, and soon began to rise.

The ascent, as they topped it, proved, however, to be concerned merely with crossing a spur, below which the path wound about the edge of a bowl-shaped hollow, rimmed and lined with dark-green, close-cropped gra.s.s; and at the bottom lay a tiny tarn.

So steep were the sides that a broad band of green was reflected to the eyes bent down upon the still water. And this circle of mirrored green, embracing a disc of the sky's azure, stared up at them like a pupil-less blue eye.

"Oh!" exclaimed Amaryllis, "it's a sapphire set in emerald!"

Down a winding path, vague as a wrinkle on a young face, and worn, said Amaryllis, by ghostly hoofs of departed sheep, they crept to the pool's edge.

They sat on a little irregular terrace, a few feet above the water, and d.i.c.k, taking the cup from his flask, and having dipped, tasted, rinsed and filled again, pa.s.sed it to Amaryllis.