Rosa Mundi and Other Stories Part 48

Now, as then, Curtis was ready for them in the open doorway, and Beelzebub advanced grinning to take the horses. But there the resemblance ceased. The woman who entered with her husband leaning on her shoulder was no nervous, shrinking stranger, but a wife entering her home with gladness, bearing her burden with rejoicing. The woman from Wallarroo looked at her with a doubtful sort of sympathy. She also looked at the gaunt, bowed man who accompanied her, and questioned with herself if this were indeed Brett Mercer.

Brett Mercer it undoubtedly was, nor could she have said, save for his slow, stooping gait, wherein lay the change that so amazed her.

Perhaps it was more apparent in Sybil than in the man himself as she raised her face on entering, and murmured:

"So good to get home again, isn't it, dear?"

He did not speak in answer. He scarcely spoke at all that night. But his silence satisfied her.

It was not till the following morning that he stretched out a great, bony hand to her as she waited on him, and drew her down to his side.

"There has been enough of this," he said, with a touch of his old imperiousness. "You have worked too hard already, harder than I ever meant you to work. You are to take a rest, and get strong."

She uttered her gay little laugh.

"My dearest Brett, I am strong."

He lay staring at her in his most direct, disconcerting fashion. She endured his look for a moment, and then averted her eyes. She would have risen, but he prevented her.

"Sybil!" he said abruptly.

"Yes?" she answered, with her head bent.

"Are you afraid of me?" he said.

She shook her head instantly.

"Don't be absurd!"

"Then look at me!" he said.

She raised her eyes slowly, not very willingly. But, having raised them, she kept them so, for there was that in his look which no longer made her shy.

He made a slight gesture towards her that was rather of invitation than insistence.

"Don't you think I'm nearly well enough to be let into the secret?" he said.

His action, his tone, above all his look, broke down the last of the barrier between them. She went into his arms with a shaky little laugh, and hid her face against him.

"I would have told you long ago," she whispered, "only somehow--I couldn't. Besides, I was so sure that you knew."

"Oh, yes, I knew," said Mercer. "Curtis saw to that; literally flayed me with it till I took his advice and cleared out. You know, I've often wondered since if it was that that made you want me, after all."

She shook her head, still with her face against his breast.

"No, dear, it wasn't. It--it made things worse at first. It was only when I heard you were ill that--that I found--quite suddenly--that I couldn't possibly go on without you. It was as if--as if something bound round my heart had suddenly given way, and I could breathe again. When I saw you I knew how terribly I wanted you."

"And that was how you came to kiss me with that loathsome disease upon me?" he whispered. "That was what made you follow me down to h.e.l.l to bring me back?"

She turned her face upwards. Her eyes were shining.

"My dear," she said, and in her voice was a thrill like the first sweet notes of a bird in the dawning, "you don't need to ask me why did these things. For you know--you know. It was simply and only because I loved you."

"Heaven knows why," he said, as he bent to kiss her.

"Heavens knows," she answered, and softly laughed as she surrendered her lips to his.

The Secret Service Man

I

A TIGHT PLACE

"Shoulder to shoulder, boys! Give it 'em straight! There's no going back this journey." And the speaker slapped his thigh and laughed.

He was penned in a hot corner with a handful of grinning little Goorkhas, as ready and exultant as himself. He had no earthly business in that particular spot. But he had won his way there in a hand-to-hand combat, which had rendered that bit of ground the most desirable abiding-place on the face of the earth. And being there he meant to stay.

He was established with the inimitable effrontery of British insolence.

He had pushed on through the dark, fired by the enthusiasm which is born of hard resistence. It had been no slight matter, but neither he nor his men were to be easily dismayed. Moreover, their patience had been severely tried for many tedious hours, and the removal of the curb had gone to their heads like wine.

Young Derrick Rose, war correspondent, was hot of head and ready of hand. He had a knack also of getting into tight places and extricating himself therefrom with amazing agility; which knack served to procure for him the admiration of his friends and the respect of his enemies. It was his first Frontier campaign, but it was not apparently destined to be his last, for he bore a charmed life. And he went his way with a cheery recklessness that seemed its own security.

On the present occasion he had planted himself, with a serene a.s.sumption of authority, at the head of a handful of Goorkhas who had been pressed forward too far by an over-zealous officer in the darkness, and had lost their leader in consequence.

Derrick had stumbled on the group and had forthwith taken upon himself to direct them to a position which, with a good deal of astuteness, he had marked out in his own mind earlier in the day as a desirable acquisition.

There had been a hand-to-hand scuffle in the darkness, and then the tribesmen had fallen back, believing themselves overwhelmed by superior numbers.

Derrick and his Goorkhas had promptly taken possession of the rocky eminence which was the object of their desire, and now prepared, with commendable determination, to maintain themselves at the post thus captured; an impossible feat in consideration of the paucity of their numbers, which fact a wily enemy had already begun to suspect.

That the main force could by any means fail them was a possibility over which for long neither Derrick nor his followers wasted a thought.

Nevertheless half-an-hour of mad turmoil pa.s.sed, and no help came.

Derrick charitably set down its non-appearance to ignorance of his state and whereabouts, and he began at length to wonder within himself how the place was to be defended throughout the night. Retreat he would not think of, for he was game to the finger-tips. But even he could not fail to see that, when the moon rose, he and his followers would be in a very tight fix.

"Confound their caution! What are they thinking of?" he muttered savagely. "If they only came straight ahead they would be bound to find us."

And then a yelling crowd of dim figures breasted the rocks and dashed forward with the force of a hurricane upon the little body of Goorkhas.

In a second Derrick was fighting in the dark with mad enthusiasm for bare foothold, and shouting at the top of his voice exhortations to his men to keep together.

It was a desperate struggle, but once more the little party of invaders held their ground. And Derrick, yelling encouragement to his friends and defiance to his foes, became vaguely conscious of a new element in the strife.

Someone, not a Goorkha, was standing beside him, fighting as he fought, but in grim silence.