The Keeper of the Door Part 73

"What is the programme for to-day?" said Nick, when the meal was nearly over.

Olga leaned her chin on her hand, and looked across at him. "Shall you go to church, Nick?"

The cantonments boasted a small church and a visiting chaplain who held one service in it every Sunday.

Nick considered the matter in all its bearings while he stirred his coffee.

"No," he said finally; "I think I shall stay at home with you this morning."

"How do you know I am not going?" said Olga.

Nick grinned. "I'm awfully good at guessing, Olga _mia_."

She smiled rather wanly. "Well, I'm not going, as a matter of fact. I had a stupid sort of night."

Nick nodded. "I shan't take you out to dinner again for a long time."

"It wasn't that," she said. "At least, I don't think so. It was that song. Why did Noel sing it?"

"For reasons best known to himself," said Nick, taking out his cigarette-case.

She rose and went round to his side to strike a match for him, but reaching him she suddenly knelt and clasped her arms about his neck.

"Nick," she whispered, "I'm frightened."

His arm went round her instantly. "What is it, my chicken?"

She held him closely for a while in silence; then, her face hidden, she told him of the trouble at her heart.

"That song has been haunting me all night long. I feel as if--as if--someone--were calling me, and I can't quite hear or understand.

Nick, where--where is Violet?"

It had come at last. Once before she had confronted him with that question, and he had turned it aside. But to-day, he knew that he must face and answer it.

He laid his cheek against her hair. "Olga darling, I think you know, but I'll tell you all the same. She has--gone on."

Very gently he spoke the words, and after them there fell a silence broken only by the scolding of a couple of parroquets in a mimosa-tree near the verandah.

Nick did not stir. His lips twitched a little above the fair head, and his yellow face showed many lines; but there was no tension in his att.i.tude. His pose was alert rather than anxious.

Olga lifted her face at last. She was very white, but fully as composed as he.

"That," she said slowly, "was the thing I couldn't remember."

He nodded. "It was."

Her hands clasped the front of his coat with nervous force. She looked him straight in the face.

As of old, the flickering eyes evaded her. They met and pa.s.sed her over a dozen times, but imparted nothing.

"Nick," she said, "will you please tell me how it happened? I am strong enough to bear it now, and indeed--indeed, I must know."

"I have been waiting to tell you," Nick said. "Put on a hat, and we will go in the garden."

She rose at once. Somehow his brief words rea.s.sured her. She felt no agitation, was scarcely aware of shock. In his presence even the shadow of Death became devoid of all superst.i.tious fears. In some fashion he made fear seem absurd.

Nick waited for her on the verandah with his face turned up to the sky.

He scarcely looked like a man bracing himself for a stiff ordeal, but it was not his way to stoop under his burdens. He had learned to tread jauntily while he carried a heart like lead.

When Olga joined him, he put his hand through her arm and led her forth.

The path wound along between the tangle of shrubs and lower growth till it reached the cypresses, and here was a shady stretch where they could pace to and fro in complete privacy.

Arrived here, Nick spoke. "It wasn't altogether news to you, was it?"

She pa.s.sed her hand across her eyes in the old, puzzled way. "I didn't remember," she said, "and yet I wasn't altogether surprised. I think somehow at the back of my mind--I suspected."

"You remember now," said Nick.

She looked at him with troubled eyes. "No, I don't, dear. That's just it. I--I can't remember. It--frightens me." She clasped his hand with fingers that trembled.

"No need to be frightened," said Nick. "You were ill, you know; first the heat and then the shock. After brainfever, people very often do forget."

"Ah, yes," she said, with a piteous kind of eagerness. "But it is coming back now. I only want you to help a little." She stood suddenly still.

"Nick, you are not afraid of Death, I know. Wasn't it you who called it the opening of a Door?"

"It is--just that," said Nick.

"But the body," she said, "the body dies."

"The body," he said, "is like a suit of clothes that you lay aside till the time comes for it to be renovated and made wearable again."

"Ah! She couldn't die, could she, Nick?" Olga's eyes implored him. "Not she herself!" she urged. "She was so full of life. I can't realize it. I can't--I can't! Tell me how it happened! Surely I never saw her dead!

Whatever came after, I never could have forgotten that!"

"Tell me how much you do remember, kiddie," Nick said gently. "And I will fill in the gaps."

Her forehead contracted in a painful frown. "It's so difficult," she said, "so disjointed--like a dreadful dream. I know she was horribly afraid of Max. And then there was Major Hunt-Goring. I can't believe she ever liked him. It was only because he--flattered her, and gave her those dreadful cigarettes."

"Probably," said Nick.

"That morning when he invited us to go on his yacht is the last thing I can remember clearly," she said. "I didn't want to go, but--she--insisted.

After that, my mind is just a jumble of impressions that don't fit into each other. I seem to remember being on the yacht, and Major Hunt-Goring and Violet laughing together. And then he came and told me an awful thing about her mother. He wanted me to say I would marry him, and I wouldn't because I hated him so. And after that he was so furious, he went and told her too."

Olga stopped with horror in her eyes. The effort to remember was plainly torturing her, yet Nick made no effort to help her.

"And after that?" he said.

"Oh, after that, there seems to come a blank. I remember her face, and how I held her in my arms and tried to comfort her. And then--oh, it's just like a dreadful dream!--I was running in the sun, running, running, running, never seeming to get anywhere. The next thing I really remember is being at the Priory and having lunch in that awful storm, and Max coming--do you remember?--do you remember? And how I kept him away from her? Poor child, he terrified her so." Olga was shuddering now from head to foot. Her eyes were wide and staring, as though fixed upon some fearful vision.