The Great Amulet Part 23

I want you to carry all before you in the tournament."

"Do you indeed!" she answered, laughing. "But I shan't hit a single ring to-day. This distracting muddle is getting on my nerves!"

And if Honor Desmond found the strain of sympathetic anxiety ill to endure, what of Quita, whose life's happiness hung upon the issue?

For her the Kajiar Camp, despite its light-comedy atmosphere, had proved a nightmare of surface hilarity, broken rest, and growing distaste for the man whose name she had permitted to be coupled with her own:--all to no purpose, it seemed, save to inflate his self-satisfaction, and fortify his intention, now too clearly manifest, of hindering to the utmost her reunion with her husband.

Moreover, her self-imposed att.i.tude became increasingly hard to maintain.

A flash of defiance is one thing; but sustained defiance, when the heart has unblushingly gone over to the enemy, puts a severe strain upon the nerves.

And what was to be the outcome?

The question stabbed her in the small hours, when ugly possibilities loom large, like figures seen through mist. So strongly had this late love smitten her, that she had been capable of strangling pride, and taking the initiative, had Lenox's bearing given her the smallest hope of success. But unsought surrender, plus the mortification of failure, was more than she felt prepared to risk, even for a chance of winning the one man in all the world:--the man who could at least belong to no other woman, she a.s.sured herself with a throb of satisfaction. Thus there seemed no choice left but to go blindly forward along the line of least resistance.

Lenox's non-appearance on Wednesday evening had startled her into fuller knowledge of her dependence on his mere presence to maintain even a mimicry of good spirits; and she heaped contempt upon her own head accordingly. Nevertheless she escaped at an early hour; and lay awake half the night tormenting herself with unanswerable problems.

When breakfast brought no sign of him, she concluded that he must have returned to Dalhousie in disgust: and the conclusion brought her near to the end of her tether. She took refuge in her tent, and, for the first time in many years, sobbed shamelessly, till her eyelids smarted, and her head throbbed and burned. After that she felt better, and her unquenchable courage revived. There is much virtue in your thunder-shower at the psychological moment! She got upon her feet at last; hands pressed against pulsing temples, swaying a little, like a willow that the storm had shaken. But cold water, eau-de-cologne, and the stinging tonic of self-scorn, soon restored her to a semblance of her normal aspect: and by lunch-time she was out again in the mocking sunshine, swept unresisting back into the light-hearted whirl of things.

At tiffin, to her intense relief, Theo Desmond took the empty chair next her own. He had missed her during the morning: and a glance at her face sufficed to give him an inkling of the truth. All his heart went out to her; and he hastened to answer the question in her eyes.

"Lenox went off at sunrise, for a day's shooting," he remarked conversationally, when they had exchanged greetings.

She lifted her eyebrows. "Did he? Sensible man! I suppose he is tired to death of our frivolous fooling."

"That's rather severe! I can't let you run him down. The other thing's more in his line, that's all; and it'll do him a power of good. He suffers cruelly from want of sleep, poor chap.--By the way, have you heard the latest suggestion for to-morrow?"

"No. I was--lying down this morning. What is it?"

"A burlesque polo match: ladies against men: the men to play on side-saddles by way of a mild handicap! Some of the older folk are a bit horrified at the notion. But I believe it'll come off; and they want me to captain the team."

"You? One of the champions of the Punjaub! What impertinence! Shall you?"

"Why, certainly. It will be rather a lark."

"Well, then, I'll play too, if they'll have me. Will you ask them, please?"

He regarded her in frank astonishment. "Jove! I never thought of that.

Are you in earnest?"

"But yes. In cut-throat earnest!" she answered, laughing.

"Ever tried your hand at it?"

"Never, in all my days. I will this afternoon though, if you'll take me in hand for an hour or so."

"With all the pleasure in life. You can ride Diamond, if you like. He knows almost as much about the game as I do."

Her eyes sparkled.

"That gem of an Arab? May I, really? I always thought you were a man in a hundred; and now I know it! That's a bargain, then. Things have been deadly insipid the last two days. But I have something to live for now!"

Garth received her announcement with open dismay. He suspected Desmond's influence: and, in his zeal to dissuade her, ventured on a mild tone of authority, with disastrous results.

"Well, I shan't have a comfortable moment till the thing is safely over,"

he concluded unwisely: and she tossed an indignant head.

"Am I such a despicable horseman?" she demanded haughtily. "Captain Desmond doesn't find me so, I a.s.sure you."

And indeed, after an hour of a.s.siduous instruction, Desmond had frankly expressed his approval both of her aptness and daring.

When Lenox heard the news on Friday morning, he heartily wished he had decided on a second day's shooting.

Anxiety apart, the knowledge that the woman he loved could thus make a public exhibition of herself for the amus.e.m.e.nt of a very mixed crowd, set the fastidious, old-world temper of the man on edge. For all that he was in his place, well before the appointed time: and from the first crack of polo-stick on ball his eyes never left his wife's flushed face and lightly swaying figure.

The polo ground, occupying the centre of the glade, was ringed about by a crowd as varied and gay in colouring as a bed of mixed tulips in spring.

Even the open tent, where the English spectators were gathered, showed a prevailing lightness and brightness of tint. On the farther side of the tent, the Depot band gave out a cheerful blare of sound; and a June sun beamed complacently over all.

For the first twenty minutes the serio-comic game went forward merrily: the women playing in desperate earnest; the men making broad farce out of their ludicrous handicap.

Quita, who had elected to play Diamond first and fourth, was restrained at the outset by the fact that she was handling a priceless pony. But, with the opening of the third _chukkur_, increasing self-confidence, coupled with the pace and keenness of Bathurst's 'Unlimited Loo,' fired her venturesome spirit: and she flung herself heart and soul into the intoxication of the game; half hoping that some sudden crash and fall might solve the problem of her life by the simple expedient of putting out the light.

More than once Desmond called out an unheeded warning. He saw that pony and rider alike were in danger of losing their heads; and Lenox, leaning forward in an anguish of suspense, followed her every movement with conflicting fury and admiration.

At last the _chukkur_ drew to an end.

Away by the farthest goal-posts a fine parody of a scrimmage was in progress, Desmond and Quita being 'on the ball.' The advantage was hers; and she made haste to secure it. Rising in the saddle, she swung her stick for an ambitious back-handed stroke, missed the ball, and smote 'Unlimited Loo,' with the full force of her arm, high up on the off hind-leg.

At this uncalled bolt from the blue, the sensitive animal,--who had never in all his days been chastised by a polo stick for doing his simple duty,--lost his head outright. His first bound snapped the curb chain; and taking the bit between his teeth he bolted across the green as if all the fiends in h.e.l.l were after him. In vain Quita sat back, and put her whole light weight into her arms. Sheer terror had caught hold of him: and he headed blindly for the ring of natives, who broke away right and left, with shrill cries that gave the finishing touch to his terror.

And now no more than a stretch of shelving turf lay between him and the unfathomed lake. Towards it he fled at an undiminished pace: and Quita, sitting square and steady, with a rushing sound in her ears, foresaw that in less than five minutes her mad hope might be terribly fulfilled. For at the lake's edge the pony must needs swerve sharply, or come to a dead halt: and in either case, at their present rate of speed, she would be flung violently out of the saddle.

Desmond dared not follow, lest he make matters worse.

Maurice sprang up from his seat in the pavilion, and stood transfixed, helpless. "_Nom de Dieu . . . que faire? Elle va mourir!_" he muttered with shaking lips: and Elsie, child as she was, yearned over him with all the tenderness and pity of inherent motherhood.

Then the tall figure of Lenox broke away from the stunned crowd racing diagonally across the clear stretch between the pony and the lake.

The instant Quita missed her stroke he had risen to his feet; and his intent now was to reach a given spot simultaneously with the pony, and by the force of his added weight on the reins save the situation.

A shout of approval went up from soldiers and natives; and 'Unlimited Loo' fled faster. He pa.s.sed the point Lenox was making for a bare hand's-length out of reach: but two strides landed him on a treacherous strip of thinly-crusted bog that encircles the lake, and he sank up to his knees in semi-liquid mud.

Quita, breathless and shaken, was jerked out of the saddle, and must have fallen, ignominiously, face downward in her Slough of Despond, but that Lenox,--reaching her in the nick of time--caught and crushed her in his arms.

"You're not hurt. Thank G.o.d, you're not hurt," he whispered unsteadily.

With a gasp of amazement that ended in a sob, she leaned her cheek against his coat; and the riotous music of their hearts seemed to fill the universe.

Then reality rushed in, and shattered the dream. For Garth, Maurice, and Bathurst were hurrying towards them.