The Great Amulet Part 31

Thus urged, the good man hurried away; and Honor went straight to Quita, whose unnatural apathy cut her to the heart.

"Miss Maurice, here's brandy," she said softly. "Drink all of it, before I help you down."

Quita emptied the tumbler; and Honor, grasping her waist with both hands, lifted her out of the saddle.

"How strong you are," she said, in the toneless voice of a sleep-walker. Then her frozen anguish melted suddenly and completely.

For Honor Desmond, instead of releasing her, clasped her close, kissing her, with pa.s.sionate tenderness, on cheeks and brows, like wet marble: and in the midst of her bewildered misery Quita realised dimly what it might mean to possess a mother.

"Theo and I know about it all," Honor explained at length; and Quita nodded. The fact that she was crying her heart out on the shoulder of her detested rival made the whole incident dreamlike to the verge of stupefaction: and it was Honor who spoke again.

"We'll just wait here together till they come back; and shut--the worst out of our thoughts. You have splendid courage, my dear, and I think I love nothing in the world more than courage. Sit down with me now on this pile of fir-needles. It looks a little less saturated than the rest of the world."

Still keeping an arm round her, she drew her down unresisting to her side: and Quita, choking back the tears that had probably saved her brain from after-effects of the shock, looked with awakened interest at her new-found friend.

"I don't deserve that you should be so good to me," she said, humour flashing through her pain like a watery sunbeam on a day of mist. "I have hated you, with all my heart, ever since I first saw you!"

At which confession Honor pressed her closer. "Bless you for telling me!--I take it simply as the measure of--your love for him."

"_Mon Dieu_, no! Not now," she answered very low.

"I am glad of that too. For I want very much to be good friends with Captain Lenox's wife."

On the last word a slow colour crept back into Quita's cheeks.

"You mustn't speak of it--yet, to any one else. There are difficulties--big difficulties . . ."

"I know;--but you may trust him to conquer them. One feels in him the sort of force that moves mountains."

Again Quita nodded. "You seem to know everything," she added, a last spark flickering in the ashes of her jealousy. "And I suppose you blame _me_ for it all."

"I am too ignorant of the facts to blame either of you. I only know that even if he wronged you in any way, he has been more than sufficiently punished."

At that Quita's lips quivered, and the storm of her grief broke out afresh: while the greater storm overhead, having accomplished its evil work, rolled rapidly northward, with the colossal unconcern of a giant who crushes a beetle in his path; and the first stupendous downrush of water subsided into a melancholy drizzle of rain.

In that endless hour of looking and waiting for those who seemed as if they had been blotted out for all time, Quita learned once and for all what manner of woman Honor Desmond was; learnt also something of the loyalty and reserve that had marked Eldred's intercourse with her whom he had spoken of as his best friend.

CHAPTER XIV.

"My undissuaded heart I hear Whisper courage in my ear."

--R.L.S.

Down,--steadily, interminably down the face of that formidable ravine, Theo Desmond slid, and scrambled, and climbed; holding his mind rigidly on the practical necessities of the moment, which were many and disconcerting. His stockinged feet showed dull-red streaks and blotches, where sharp stones had cut them. His hands were grazed and torn by futile clutchings at the surface of broken rocks: and the protruding neck of the brandy bottle had a trick of digging him playfully in the ribs: which made him swear. Impertinent raindrops chased each other down his cheeks and forehead; trickling into his eyes, and blinding him at critical moments when he dared not release a hand to brush them away.

The inch-by-inch progress to which he was condemned fretted the hasty spirit of the man; anxiety consumed him, and conspired with impatience to beget a nightmare illusion that he had been battling with naked rock and dripping vegetation since the beginning of Time.

Once,--for all the caution with which he crept backward and downward,--his foot slipped, on the wet surface of a boulder; and, in the hope of avoiding a fall, he clutched at a small shrub, with one hand, shielding the aggressive brandy bottle with the other. But the treacherous sapling yielded under his weight; and wrenching its roots from the moist earth, he rolled over and over, knocking his head and chest violently against outlying peninsulars of rock.

Both hands were requisitioned now, in a vain effort to check a descent that had become too rapid for comfort or dignity: and before long, a musical clink, followed by a strong whiff of spirit, announced the fate of the brandy bottle.

"d.a.m.n the thing!" he exclaimed in an access of helpless fury. Then a fresh blow on his head whelmed anger and anxiety in sheer pain, and sent him rolling like a log into a kindly patch of undergrowth, which had, so far, blocked his downward view.

Here he lay awhile, half stunned, small runnels of water trickling from his clothing. But his vitality--never long in abeyance--soon rea.s.serted itself. He sat up, and his hand went instinctively to his pocket.

Drawing out the beheaded bottle, he was relieved to find that it still held a tablespoonful or more; and that his handkerchief was saturated with the precious fluid. He sucked a mouthful from it with keen satisfaction: then, using it for a wad, plugged up the bottle; and undaunted by bruises, dizziness, torn hands, and smarting feet, lost no time in starting afresh.

For the time being, progress was simpler, and less hazardous: and, once through the undergrowth, he came with disconcerting abruptness upon that which he sought.

Eight feet below him, on a merciful ledge of earth wide enough to check the fatal rebound into s.p.a.ce, Eldred Lenox lay face downward, his left arm crumpled under him; the other flung outward as if in a last desperate effort to ward off the inevitable. Shaitan was nowhere to be seen. The sheer drop beyond told his fate.

Soldier as he was, and inured to the sight of death in its most barbarous aspect, Desmond's heart stood still as he looked down upon that powerful figure of manhood lying helpless and alone, pattered upon indifferently by the dripping heavens.

Choosing a spot that promised a soft landing-place, Desmond dropped on to the ledge; knelt beside the injured man; and speedily a.s.sured himself that life was not extinct. Unconsciousness was due to a wound on the back of his head, from which blood still trickled sluggishly through the thick black hair. The arm crumpled under him was broken below the elbow.

Very gently, as though he were a child asleep, Desmond turned him on to his back. His eyes showed fixed and glazed between half-open lids, and a deep scratch disfigured his cheek. Pillowing the inert head on one arm, Desmond applied the spirit to his lips again and again, a few drops at a time: till the lids lifted heavily, and life returned with a slow shuddering breath.

Desmond bent down to him eagerly.

"Not going out this journey, Lenox, old chap."

But no answering gleam rewarded him; no movement of limb or feature.

Only the lids fell again; and Desmond knew that this was no fainting fit, but collapse from probable damage to the brain.

After applying more brandy to the lips and temples without result, he removed his Norfolk coat--still warm and dry within--and with the help of two fir boughs contrived to shelter Lenox's head and chest from the chilling downpour. Then he set to work on the broken arm. The same fir,--springing st.u.r.dily from a cleft in the rock below,--provided a splint; and with two handkerchiefs (he had wrung the last drop of rain-diluted brandy from his own) he tied the injured limb skilfully and securely into place. That done, there remained nothing but to wait:--the hardest task that can be a.s.signed to a man of action.

And to wait sitting was beyond him. Steady pacing in the cramped s.p.a.ce available helped to deaden thought and promote warmth,--for by now his soaked shirt-sleeves clung to his arms.

He kept it up doggedly till approaching footsteps brought his damp vigil to an end; and Colonel Mayhew stepped on to the ledge.

"Alive?" he asked, glancing at the prostrate figure, and Desmond nodded.

"Can't get him round, though. Concussion, I'm afraid. A nasty wound on his head, and one arm fractured. But for that strip of undergrowth, he would have been done for. Hope to G.o.d that lazy beggar Garth hurried up after O'Malley. We won't wait here, though.--Come on, _coolie-log_."

[Transcriber's note: The "o" in "_log_" is the Unicode "o-macron", U+014D.]

Colonel Mayhew going forward to lend a hand, glanced over the precipitous drop on his right, and turned hastily away again. That which had been Shaitan was visible below; and it was not pleasant to look at.

"Lenox'll be cut up about that," he muttered as they lifted him cautiously on to the reeking strip of blanket.

It was a dreary journey up that corkscrew footpath, inch-deep in running water, that led to the ordinary levels of life. Desmond kept his post by Lenox's head and shoulders, sheltering him still with the discarded coat, and clinging to the track's edge with supple, stockinged feet. But there was no preventing jars and jolts arising from broken ground, and the difficulty of carrying a litter at an almost impossible angle. Half-way up they caught sight of Dr O'Malley,--a Pickwickian figure of a man, booted and spurred,--skipping, stumbling, and slithering towards them in a fashion ludicrous enough to bring a flicker of mirth into Desmond's eyes.

They drew up when, at length, he bore down upon them with a rush of expletives by way of sympathy: for he was good-hearted and a ready man of his tongue, if not a brilliant unit of his profession. His rapid examination of Lenox ended in praise of Desmond's amateur bit of surgery, and a confirmation of his verdict--concussion of the brain.

"An' there's no telling yet, of course, if it's slight or serious. But begad be must have had a nasty tumble. Devilish lucky to get off with his life,--that's a fact. What's the nearest bungalow we can get him into? 'Tis a good eight miles to the hospital; and the sooner he's out of this d--d watering-can business the better chance for him."

Desmond turned to Colonel Mayhew.

"How about the Forest bungalow, sir? Only a couple of miles on, isn't it? Brodie must be there now; and he's the right sort, if he is a bit of an anchorite."

"Why, of course. The very thing. He's something of an experimentalist too. Keeps up a small pharmacy in one of his outhouses. He'll make room for Lenox like a shot."