Rosa Mundi and Other Stories Part 59

X

SAVED A SECOND TIME

All through the day quiet reigned. An occasional sword-glint in the mountains, an occasional gleam of white against the brown hillside; these were the only evidences of an active enemy.

The women were released from durance in the club-house, with strict orders to return in the early evening.

Derrick went restlessly through the camp, seeking Carlyon. He found him superintending the throwing-up of earthworks. The most exposed part of the camp was to be abandoned. Derrick joined him in silence. Somehow this man's personality attracted him strongly. Though he had defied him, quarrelled with him, insulted him, the spell of his presence was irresistible.

Carlyon paid small attention to him till he turned to leave that part of the camp's defences. Then, with a careless hand through Derrick's arm, he said:

"You will have your fill of stiff fighting to-night, boy. But, remember, you are not to throw yourself away."

As evening fell, the attack was resumed, and it continued throughout the night. Tribesmen charged up to the very breastworks themselves and fell before the awful fire of the defenders' rifles. Death had no terrors for them. They strove for the mastery with fanatical zeal. But they strove in vain. A greater force than they possessed, the force of discipline and organized resistance--kept them at bay. Behind the splendid courage of the Indian soldiers were the resource and the resolution of a handful of Englishmen. The spirit of the conquering race, unquenchable, irresistible, weighed down the balance.

In the middle of the night Captain Raymond was. .h.i.t in the shoulder and carried, fainting, to the closely guarded club-house, where his wife was waiting.

The command devolved upon Lieutenant Steele, who took up the task undismayed. Down in the hastily dug trenches Toby Carey was fiercely holding his men to their work.

And Derrick Rose was with him, unrestrained for that night at least.

"Relief at dawn!" Toby said to him once.

And Derrick responded with a wild laugh.

"Relief be d.a.m.ned! We can hold our own without it."

Relief came with the dawn, at a moment when the tribesmen were spurring themselves to the greatest effort of all, sustained by the knowledge that their Great Fakir was among them.

General Harford, with guides, Sikhs, Goorkhas, came down like a hurricane from the south-east, cut off a great body of tribesmen from their fellows, and drove them headlong, with deadly force, upon the defences they had striven so furiously to take.

The defenders sallied out to meet them with fixed bayonets. The brief siege, if siege it could be called, was over.

In the early light Derrick found himself fighting, fighting furiously, sword to sword. And the terrible joy of the conflict ran in his blood like fire.

"Ah!" he gasped. "It's good! It's good!"

And then he found another fighting beside him--a mighty fighting man, grim, terrible, silent. They thrust together; they withdrew together; they charged together.

Once an enemy seized Derrick's sword and he found himself vainly struggling against the awful, wild-faced fanatic's sinewy grasp. He saw the man's upraised arm, and knew with horrible certainty that he was helpless, helpless.

Then there shot out a swift, rescuing hand. A straight and deadly blow was struck. And Derrick, flinging a laugh over his shoulder, beheld a man dressed as a tribesman fall headlong over his enemy's body, struck to the earth by another swordsman.

Like lightning there flashed through his brain the memory of a man who had saved his life more than a year before on this same tumultuous Frontier--a man in tribesman's dress, with blue eyes of a strange, keen friendliness. He had it now. This was the Secret Service man. Derrick planted himself squarely over the prostrate body, and there stood while the fight surged on about him to the deadly and inevitable end.

XI

THE SECRET OUT

"All Carlyon's doing!" General Harford said a little later. "He has pulled the strings throughout, from their very midst. Carlyon the ubiquitous, Carlyon the silent, Carlyon the watchful! He has averted a horrible catastrophe. The Indian Government must be made to understand that he is a servant worth having. They say he personally led the tribesmen to their death. They certainly walked very willingly into the trap arranged for them. Now, where is Carlyon?"

No one knew. In the plain outside the camp wounded men were being collected. The General was relieved to hear that Carlyon was not among them. He sat down to make his report, a highly eulogistic report, of this man's splendid services. And then he went to late breakfast at the club-house.

In the evening Averil rode back to the station with an escort. The terrible traces of the struggle were not wholly removed. They rode round by a longer route to avoid the sight.

Seddon was the first of her friends who saw her. He was standing inside the mess-house. He went hurriedly forward and gave her brief details of the fight. Then, while they were talking, Derrick himself came running up. He greeted her with less of his boyish effusion than was customary.

"How is the Secret Service man?" he asked abruptly of Seddon. "Is he badly damaged?"

The latter looked at him hard for a second.

"You can come in and see him," he said, and led the way into the mess.

Averil and Derrick followed him hand in hand. In a few low words the boy told her of his old friend's reappearance.

"He has saved my life twice over," he said.

"He has saved more lives than yours," Seddon remarked abruptly, over his shoulder.

He led the way "to the little ante-room where, stretched on a sofa, lay Derrick's Secret Service man. He was dressed in white, his face half covered with a fold of his head-dress. But the eyes were open--blue, alert, beneath drooping lids. He was speaking, softly, quickly, as a man asleep.

"The women must be protected," he said. "Let the blackguards take the risks!"

Averil started forward with a cry, and in a moment was kneeling by his side. The strange eyes were turned upon her instantly. They were watchful still and exceeding tender--the eyes of the hero she loved.

They faintly smiled at her. To his death he would keep up the farce. To his death he would never show her the secret he had borne so long.

"Ah! The message!" he said, with an effort. "You gave it?"

"There was no need of a message," Averil cried. "You invented it to get me away, to make me escape from danger. You knew that otherwise I would not have gone. It was your only reason for sending me."

He did not answer her. The smile died slowly out. His eyes pa.s.sed to Derrick. He looked at him very earnestly, and there was unutterable pleading in the look.

The boy stooped forward. Shocked by the sudden discovery, he yet answered as it were involuntarily to the man's unspoken wish. He knelt down beside the girl, his arm about her shoulders. His voice came with a great sob.

"The Secret Service man and Carlyon of the Frontier in one!" he said. "A man who does not forsake his friends. I might have known."

There was a pause, a great silence. Then Carlyon of the Frontier spoke softly, thoughtfully, with grave satisfaction it seemed. He looked at neither of them, but beyond them both. His eyes were steady and fearless.

"A blackguard--a spy--yet faithful to his friends--even so," he said; and died.