When the Birds Begin to Sing Part 47

He has marked a pa.s.sage of Spencer's in a novel Eleanor is reading; she picks it up and comes across it.

It is like a rude shock. Why has he pencilled such disagreeable lines?

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried.

What h.e.l.l it is in suing long to bide; To loose good dayes that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent.

Perhaps it struck him as so strangely different to their ideal existence.

The hours do not seem long, for a "light heart goes all the day," but as afternoon wanes she is filled with expectant delight, awaiting Carol's advent. He will be naturally tired, and she draws the couch near the window, piles luxurious pillows upon it, and perches herself at the end of it, placing in readiness a loose lounging coat of yellow Tussore silk. Carol, it is a pretty name, she thinks, taking up his portrait and pressing it to her lips. It is in the same att.i.tude as the one she destroyed in the railway train, upon her first meeting with Elizabeth Kachin's mother.

The faint light slants across the verandah, and falls on the yellow cushions placed for Quinton.

It creeps into the room, and sheds a halo round the striking likeness she still holds in her hand.

Eleanor gazes at the Oriental splendour, the beauties of which no utterance is capable of expressing, and indulges in visions that are pleasant and soothing, marvelling at a scene she has admired a thousand times before, and recalling memories of sweet caresses and whispered words.

Filmy shadows fall from the trees without, gradually outlining themselves upon the walls of the room, and the steps from the verandah.

The hot air rises from the valley.

Eleanor breathes the tropical atmosphere and sighs. She loosens her gown at the throat, and waves an enormous palm-leaf fan leisurely backwards and forwards. The air stirs the soft hair on her forehead, cooling her brow.

She raises her eyes to the clock and smiles.

"He will soon return," she thinks. "It is growing late, and he promised to be home before nightfall."

She goes out on to the verandah, gazing down the road which leads to Mandalay.

Two or three black children are resting by a wall at the foot of the hill, one squatting on the ground hugging his knees, the others standing in easy graceful att.i.tudes, with round pitchers on their heads.

The well is beneath a huge palm. Eleanor has sometimes "wished" by it with Carol, pretending there is some mystic spell in the water.

He will pa.s.s that charmed spot as he returns, and she will stand on the steps to greet him.

Surely in all the world Carol could not have chosen a more romantic retreat in which to live and love!

The shadows deepen, they take forms, and glide from place to place as daylight dies.

She peers into the gloom, the children go home to bed. Carol is not in sight!

The red flowers of the morning lie withered up and brown on the floor where she has left them. Carol must not be greeted by the sight of her negligence. She stoops down, and gathers them together in both hands, sweeping the dust and fallen petals into her white palm. Crossing slowly to the door, Eleanor calls Quamina.

"Take these away," she says.

Quamina looks anxiously into her face, as she relieves her young mistress of the dead blossoms.

"The Sahib is long in returning," she volunteers, with a nervous leer.

"Yes. We shall soon need a light."

"The devil will not catch him this evening; the devil is well employed," Quamina a.s.sures her. "Have no fear, lady."

"What do you mean?" asks Eleanor, a shade of anger crossing her face.

Quamina looks up proudly, delightedly.

"I have placed food and drink in the rock away from the roadside," she replies chuckling. "He will be busy eating, and never see the Sahib riding up the path. Quamina loves the Sahib and his white lady; she will provide for the devil."

Eleanor shrugs her shoulders in sheer despair. She cannot bring this woman to reason. With a pitying smile she returns to the window, and buries her fingers in the soft silk of those yellow pillows with an almost frantic clutch. They are just like the sofa cushions at Lyndhurst. Philip, perhaps, is lounging on them now, or Erminie--he has given them to Mrs. Lane for her new drawing-room.

She kneels for a while on the lounge, and though there is no sound her lips move.

Thus she stays, directly opposite the open window, listening and looking, wondering and praying.

Can some evil have befallen him? She remembers his displeasure when she rode out to meet him that night--the man with the black mask.

There is a loud report in the room; she springs to her feet with a cry.

It is only a string of her guitar which has broken, and she sinks back into the old att.i.tude despairingly.

Quamina is pounding rice in the kitchen. Eleanor calls to her to stop.

She fancies the sound may prevent her hearing the first fall of a horse's hoofs in the distance, for the moon has not risen yet, and she cannot see far.

So she remains perfectly still, waiting for the pale light to rise in the heavens, while crowds of unutterable fancies rush through her brain--a mad disorder of thought.

She stares outwards, as one in the fetters of an awful dream.

"Why does he not come to her?"

Some well-known words recur to her brain. "The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees, in innumerable far-off places, the woe which is close at hand."

There is a hot and heavy vapour in the air--it seems to poison Eleanor as she inhales it in her lungs. A settled apathy pervades her spirit.

For some moments she feels nothing, has not a thought--only a strange ringing in her head. The landscape before her looks desolate and terrible, an unredeemed dreariness darkens her soul like a London fog--thick, stifling.

London! The word recalls Philip, the man whose home she shattered, whose life she ruined--for Carol's sake. It was easy to deal the blow, to forget the world, to forfeit her good name when love's overpowering fascination was the bait. She can annihilate that black past in the light of Carol's smile; but when he is absent, and night is on the earth and in her heart, then the spectre rises, points his deadly finger at her quivering soul, and she realises the hideous dropping off of the veil. Her mind is a chaos of ruins. She calls to Carol in vain; only the shrill cry of some night bird through the air, and the beating of her pulses, answer that he will not come!

The gaunt form of a four-footed beast steals across the shadows she has watched so long, that she almost doubts her senses. Can it be a tiger perchance come forth from the jungle to prowl around her home?

She looks again, a thrill of horror darting through her trembling body.

The beast creeps with a soft and stealthy tread up the verandah steps--it is long and yellow.

Eleanor stares in mesmeric terror at its fiery eyes.

Then she sees it is a dog--a huge sandy mastiff, with hanging jaws, wet with foam, a great square head, and broad noiseless feet. It shambles nearer, appearing so suddenly out of the gloom that it seems to materialise before her vision. It watches her as if about to spring; she cannot remember it is not a tiger after all.

Eleanor sickens with fear, a dizzy faintness numbs her nerves, the room swims round. Her breath comes in quick gasps from a throat parched, and dry as with desert sand.

She stares dumbly into its glistening eyes that look like coals of fire in the dark.