“I’ve banged up a knee a good bit; but I expect it’s only bruised. Now we’d better start. I seem to be getting all right.”
He was ghastly pale as he tottered to his feet, evidently still in great pain.
“No, never mind,” he went on; “I don’t want any help, I can walk all right.”
But as they began the descent of the gully, Suffield, carrying both rifles and the dead eagle, leading the way, he felt faint and dizzy. In an instant Mona’s hand had closed upon his. Hitherto she had stood silently aloof in the revulsion of feeling. He was safe now. The words which had been wrung from her by the extremity of his peril must be regarded as unsaid. So she resolved – but was it a revolution that came within her power to keep? The volcanic fires of her strong, passionate, sensuous temperament had lain dormant beneath an egotistic and inconsiderate vanity, had lain dormant, unknown even to herself. Now they were to burst forth with a force, and to an extent, unsuspected by herself, and as startling as they had been hitherto unknown. But on one point there was no room for any more self-deception. Whatever half-truth there might have been in Grace Suffield’s oft-uttered prediction, now it had become all truth. Mona realised that her tarn had indeed come – for good and for ill, for once and for ever.
Chapter Ten.
“I Have Won You!”
The alarm and concern felt by Grace Suffield on the return of the trio, Roden with his arm in a sling, and looking rather pale and, as he jocosely put it, interesting, almost beggars description; and the way in which her concern found expression in rating, womanlike, the person whose chief raison d’être was to be rated – viz., her husband, was beautiful to behold.
Why had he allowed his guest to ran such risks – to go into dangerous places by himself? He could not be expected to know the country as they did; and so on, and so on. And Roden listening, stared and then laughed – first, as he looked back to a few experiences of “dangerous places” that would make them open their eyes wide did he choose to narrate them; secondly, at the idea that he needed to be taken out in leading-strings. And this idea brought him promptly to Suffield’s aid. The accident was his own fault entirely, he declared, and it was lucky it was no worse. And then, glad of the opportunity, he launched out at length upon the topic of Mona’s courage in the emergency, and how he owed his life entirely to her. A new light seemed to dawn upon Grace as she listened to this recital, and she glanced narrowly at Mona, who, however, lost no time in taking herself out of the room, remarking rather petulantly that there was no need to trumpet her praises quite so loudly.
Roden’s injuries, when carefully examined, were found to consist of a severe sprain of the left wrist, which was not broken as he at first believed; a bruise on the side of the head, which had had not a little to do with his incapacitation at the time of the occurrence; and a contused knee. He vigorously, however, opposed the idea of sending for Lambert. The whole thing was simple enough, he declared. A mere question of bandages and fomentation. He would be all right in the morning.
“You ought to say, ‘See what comes to wicked people who go out buck-shooting on Sunday,’ Mrs Suffield,” he concluded.
“I won’t strike a man when he’s down,” she answered. “I’m waiting until you’re well again. Then the lecture is coming. Don’t flatter yourself you are going to escape it.”
The bandaging and fomentation were most effectually carried out. Strangely enough, however, Mona held aloof. She seemed in no way anxious to do anything for the sufferer now. She was abnormally silent, too, throughout the evening; but that might be due to reaction from the shock and fright she had received.
Although at bedtime Roden had made light of his injuries, yet they were sufficiently painful to keep him awake during the best part of the night. After a couple of hours of unrestful slumber he started up, feeling feverish and miserable. A burning thirst was upon him, together with a strange sinking sensation, begotten of the constant throbbing of his sprained wrist, and the dull, dead ache of his bruised knee. He would have given much for some brandy-and-water, but it was unobtainable by any means short of disturbing the household in the dead of midnight, and this he did not care to do. Stay, though! There was his flask. It might still contain a little of the ardently desired stimulant. Quickly he found it, and a shake resulting in a grateful gurgle, announced that it was nearly half full.
But alas for the uncertainty of human hopes! The stopper was jammed, and flatly refused to be unscrewed. With both hands he might have managed it, but with the use of only one the thing was impossible. In vain he tried every conceivable device for holding the flask, while with his uninjured hand he twisted frantically at the stopper. It would not yield.
“Tantalus, with a vengeance,” he growled wearily. “If it were made of glass instead of this infernal metal, I’d knock the head off.”
Faint and sick, he staggered back to bed, feeling about as miserable as a man can under the circumstances. It was a cool night, almost a cold one, still, in his feverish unrest, Roden had thrown the window wide open. As he lay, he could see the loom of the great hills against the star-gemmed vault, which was cloudless now, and there floated ever and anon the cry of a night-bird, or prowling animal from the wild mountain-side. The sight, the sounds, carried his meditations back to the strange and well-nigh tragic events of the day. A kind of fate seemed to have overhung them from the very beginning. Why had Mona suddenly and unexpectedly insisted upon joining the party? But for her, he would have met with a terrible death, crushed to atoms at the foot of the great cliff. There had been no exaggeration in his statement to that effect, and now, lying there in the darkness and silence of night, when the mind, in a state of wakefulness, is most active, he realised it more fully than ever. But for her strong courageous handgrip, he could not have maintained his position two minutes. Had she been of the kind of women who faint and scream, and altogether lose their heads, his fate had been sealed. But no. She had behaved grandly, courageously, heroically. Was it ruled that her fate was to be bound up with his? he wondered, as he reflected upon the strangely spontaneous manner in which her secret had escaped her. And here the inherent cynicism, the verjuice drop of suspiciousness engendered by a life of strange experiences, injected itself upon his reflections, and he began steadily to review all the circumstances of their acquaintanceship.
He remembered how she had first attracted, then repelled him; how she had first been disposed to make much of him, only to turn suddenly, in the most capricious and irresponsible manner, to lavish her favour upon Lambert. Well, that had in no way troubled him. Lambert was a newer arrival; Lambert was young, and he himself was not exactly young, but a tolerably jaded and experienced victim of circumstances; and while disliking him, never for a moment had he dreamed of regarding the doctor in the light of a rival. He had merely stood by and watched this new development of her preferences with a whole-hearted amusement not undashed with contempt. To-day, however, his eyes were opened. She had merely been resorting to the stale device of playing off Lambert against himself. But now – ? The better, truer, nobler side of Mona’s nature had flashed forth in that moment of peril. She had displayed a glimpse of her true self in yielding up possession of the secrets of her innermost heart; and up till that day he would not have believed that she had a heart.
But the enlightenment? What was to be the upshot of it? She had saved his life – could she not therefore claim it? Would she not therefore claim it? And at the thought his mind stirred uneasily. For he did not return her love.
How should he? Again drawing upon the stores of his experiences he could recall that same look in other eyes, could recall even the same utterances – the latter far more impassioned, far more self-oblivious than hers had been – all perfectly genuine at the moment. At the moment! For how had it ended? A year or two of absence, of separation – new interests surrounding – the gradual dimming effects of time, and all that warm, real, live passion had cooled down into the dry ashes of worn-out memories – had faded into extinction. How should he, we repeat, credit with any more lasting properties the fervour of this latest instance?
He tossed restlessly from side to side, the same feverish thirst tormenting him. Suddenly his room grew light – he could distinguish objects quite plainly. The moon had risen, suffusing the heavens and the black loom of the mountain-top across the vista of the open window with golden light. Wearily, hopelessly, he flung himself out of bed and made another attempt at unscrewing the flask. Once more in vain. Well, he did not want to disturb the household, but even consideration had its limits. He would go and knock up Suffield.
Sick with pain and exhaustion, he made for the door; but before he reached it, to his surprise it opened – opened softly.
“Roden, darling! Where are you?” whispered a voice.
“Good God! – Mona!” was all he could ejaculate, in his unbounded astonishment.
“Something told me you were in pain, and wretchedly ill,” she whispered, her voice shaking with a thrill of tenderness. “And you are. I came to see what I could do for you.”
“Just this, Mona,” was the firm reply. “Go back to your room at once. Good God! Only think! Supposing any one were to hear you! Heavens! it would be too awful.”
In the light of the newly risen moon he could distinguish the soft, velvety gleam in her eyes, that wondrous kindling of her face into a love-light which rendered it strangely beautiful. She wore a white clinging dressing-gown, which set off the lines of her splendid form, and as she stood thus before him, Roden Musgrave would not have been human if he had remained unmoved.
“Mona, Mona, why are you doing this?” he whispered, his voice slightly thrown off its balance. Then encircling her with his uninjured arm, he kissed the lips uplifted to his. And at the same time, while her eyes closed, and she nestled against him with a long, shuddering sigh of contentment, he recognised that on his part this was not love.
“But – how selfish I am, keeping you standing like this!” she said suddenly. “I can tell by your very voice that you are in pain.”
“I am that. But go back at once to your room.”
“Not yet. I am here now; and I want to do something for you, and I will.”
“Then see if you can unscrew this infernal flask. I’ve been trying hard at it all night, but can’t do anything with only one hand.”
She took the recalcitrant flask. A firm hold, a vigorous grip with her strong, lithe fingers – the stopper came off in the most provokingly easy manner.
“Ah, I feel better now!” he said, after a liberal admixture of its contents with a little water. “And now, Mona, having done guardian angel to very considerable purpose, you must go.”
“Not even yet. I am going to do guardian angel to more purpose still. You must try and get some sleep. You are hot and feverish; but see, I have brought a fan. I am going to sit by you and cool your forehead. You will soon drop off then.”
“Mona, you are too self-sacrificing,” he whispered. “Do you think I could sleep knowing the ghastly risk you are running? Now, to please me, do go back at once. It is still safe, but you can’t tell how long it may remain so. One of those brats of Suffield’s might wake at any moment and yell, and set the house generally agog. Go while it is safe. You have already done a great deal for me, and I feel immensely the better for it.”
But his adjurations fell on deaf ears, and he was really feeling very feverish and exhausted; far too much so to continue to urge the point. So she sat by his bedside, softly fanning his burning and aching brow, and presently he dropped off into a delicious state of restfulness and ease, such as he had not known since first receiving his injuries. Was it the helplessness engendered by weakness and suffering and exhaustion that rendered his mind more amenable to her sway? Was there a languorous, all-pervading mesmerism in the very force and power of her love, which drew him beneath its spell in spite of himself? Whatever the cause, he was soon sleeping soundly and peacefully.
For upwards of an hour Mona sat there watching him, but he never stirred. At last she rose, and gazing intently for a few moments upon the sleeping face, she bent down and imprinted a long kiss upon the unconscious forehead.
“Darling love —my love! I have won you from Death, and I claim you,” she murmured passionately. “You shall be mine. You are mine.”
And still turning to look at him as though she could not tear herself away, she moved to the door, and was gone – gliding forth as softly and silently as she had come.
Chapter Eleven.
“I Hold You!”
On the morning following his misadventure Roden Musgrave was far too bruised and feverish to undertake the journey back, and accordingly a note was sent in to his official superior asking for a day’s leave, which missive Suffield undertook to deliver in person, and supplement with his own explanations; and not only was the application readily granted, but Mr Van Stolz, full of concern, must needs ride out with Suffield in the afternoon to see his damaged subordinate, and to impress upon the latter that he was not to think of returning until he felt thoroughly able to do so.
“Don’t you break your neck about anything, Musgrave, old boy,” he said, on taking his leave. “We shall manage to get along all right for a day or two. I can put Somers on to copy the letters, and even to write some of them. When a fellow is bruised and shaken about, he wants to lie quiet a little. I wouldn’t mind swapping places with you, to have Miss Ridsdale as a nurse,” he added waggishly, as Mona appeared on the scene. “Take care of him, Miss Ridsdale; good men are scarce, at any rate in Doppersdorp. Well, good-bye, everybody; good-bye, Mrs Suffield. Suffield, old chap, give us a fill out of your pouch to start on; mine has hardly enough in it, I find, to carry me home.”
And amid a chorus of hearty farewells, the genial R.M. flung himself into his saddle and cantered off townwards.
“What a delightful man Mr Van Stolz is!” said Mrs Suffield, gazing after the retreating horseman.
“I agree entirely,” assented Roden. “And now I shall feel bound to go back to-morrow, if only that one is sensitive on the point of seeming to take advantage of his good-nature.”
“Well, wait till to-morrow comes, at any rate,” rejoined his hostess. “Meanwhile, whatever you have to suffer you have richly deserved, mind that. Wicked people, who break the Sabbath, are sure to suffer. I told you I had a severe lecture in store for you when you were well enough, and now you are.”
“Then all I can say is the moral you want to draw is no moral at all, or a very bad one at best,” laughed Roden. “For I am ‘suffering’ for it in the shape of indulging in the most delicious and perfect laze, and, better still, being made such a lot of, that I feel like Sabbath-breaking again, if only to ensure the same result. For instance, it’s rather nice sitting here taking it easy all day, and being so efficiently taken care of.”
“Ah, you didn’t find it such fun in the night, when you couldn’t unscrew the flask top. Do you know, I’ll never forgive you for such foolishness. The idea of being afraid to knock anybody up!” said Mrs Suffield tartly.
He dared not look at Mona. The joke was too rich, and he was inwardly bursting with the kind of mirth which is calculated to kill at the longest range of all – mirth of a grim nature, to wit. He had told his tale of Tantalus, when asked what sort of a night he had had. The sequel to that episode, we need hardly say, he had not told.
“I never like disturbing anybody’s hard-earned slumbers. Don’t you think I’m right, Miss Ridsdale?”
Mona, who was watering flowers just below the stoep, thus appealed to, looked up with a half-start. He had relapsed into the formal again. But she understood.
“It depends,” she said. “No one would grudge being disturbed for such a reason as that.”
There was a caress in the tone, latent, subtle, imperceptible to any but himself. The voice, the attitude, the supple grace of her beautiful form, emphasised by the occupation she was then engaged in, as indeed it was in almost any and every movement she made, stirred him with a kind of enchantment, an enchantment that was strange, delicious, and rather intoxicating. He thought that he could lie there in his long cane chair, amid the drowsy hum of bees and the far-away bleating of sheep upon the sunny and sensuous air, and watch her for ever.
But a very much less soothing sound now rose upon the said air, in the shape of a wild yell, quick, shrill voices, and a series of vehement shrieks.
“My goodness! what on earth are those children about?” cried Mrs Suffield, springing to her feet, and hurrying round to the back of the house, where the tumult had arisen, and whence doleful howlings and the strife of tongues still continued to flow.
“They’ve been scratching each other’s faces, or got stung by a bee, or something of the kind,” said Mona composedly, her figure drawn up to its full height in an attitude of unconscious grace, as she rose from her occupation and stood for a moment with one foot on the lower step of the stoep, looking half over her shoulder at the flower bed, while calculating how much more watering it needed. Then she put down her watering can and came up the steps.
“Hot for the time of year,” she said, sweeping off her wide-brimmed straw hat, which became her so well, and drawing off her gardening gloves.
“Perhaps; but you looked such a vision of coolness, moving about among the flowers, that it made up a sort of Paradise. Now, come here, Mona, and talk to me a little. There is something about you which is the very embodiment of all soothing properties.”
A soft light grew in the hazel eyes. With a pleased smile she stepped to the head of his couch, and placing a cool hand on his forehead for a moment, bent down and kissed him.
“You poor invalid!” she murmured, looking down at him tenderly. “I feel responsible for you now – you seem to belong to me – until you are well.”
“In that case I am in no hurry to get well, dear,” was the answer, in a tone strangely soft as coming from the man who, not much more than a dozen hours ago, had been haunted by an uncomfortable dread, lest she should claim and exact this very proprietorship in the life she had saved. And indeed, if Roden Musgrave was in some danger of losing his head it is little to be wondered at – remembering time and place, his own weakened but restful state, the warm and sensuous surroundings, and this magnificent creature bending over him, with the light of love in her eyes, a caress in every tone of her voice. With all his clear-headedness and cynical mind, his was by no means a cold temperament; indeed, very much the reverse. But what kept his head level now was the ice-current of an ingrained cynicism flowing through the hothouse temperature, the intoxicating fragrance of what was perilously akin to a long-forgotten feeling – namely, love. The present state of affairs was delightful, rather entrancing; but how was it going to end? In but one way of coarse – when she was tired of it, tired of him. This sort of thing never did last – oh no! He had seen too much of it in his time.
To his last remark, however, Mona made no direct rejoinder. There was nothing unduly effusive about her, and this went far towards enhancing her attractiveness in his eyes. In the tendernesses she showed him there was nothing overpowering, nothing of gush; and keenly observing her every word, every action, he noted the fact, and was duly impressed. About her there was no jarring note; all was in perfect harmony.
Now sitting there they talked – talked on matters not limited by the boundaries of the district of Doppersdorp, or those of the Cape Colony, but on matters that were world wide. And on such Mona loved to listen; for of the world he possessed far greater knowledge than falls to the lot of most men, and of human nature likewise – this man who at middle age, for some reason, found himself compelled to fill a position usually occupied by youngsters starting in life. But while delighting in his keen, trenchant views upon men and matters, Mona failed not to note that there was one subject upon which he never dwelt, and that subject was himself.
“You give me new life,” he said, dropping his hand upon hers as she sat beside him. “What a pity we did not come together before – before I had made such a hash of the old life. But,” with a queer smile, “I am forgetting. You would have been in short frocks then, in very short frocks. I am quite an old fogey, Mona.”
“You are not,” she replied closing her fingers upon his with something of the strong supple grip, in which she had held his hand when to relax her grasp of it meant death – his death. Now it seemed as though that same grasp was in accord with her thoughts, holding him back from something else; from the Past, perhaps; from the effects of that marring of his life to which he had made so direct an allusion. Yet to what nature did that allusion apply? A chill seemed to hold her heart paralysed for the moment. Should she ask him? Here was her opportunity. Would it not be wiser – nay only in accord with the very first dictates of common sense? Confusion to the dictates of common sense! Let the past take care of itself, and the future too. The present was hers – was theirs, and the present was very good, very fair, very sunny; glowing, golden, enchanting with the strong wine of love. Do we refuse to take advantage of a cloudless day because the morrow may be black and overcast, and furious with rolling thunder and volleying squalls of rain? No. The cloudless day was hers – was theirs. Let the morrow take care of itself.
“You are nothing of the sort,” she continued. “So I give you new life, do I? Roden dear, I might say the same – I love to talk with you like this. I knew I should from the first moment we met. And Grace had said the very thing you have just said of yourself, when I asked her what you were like, ‘Quite a middle-aged fogey.’”
“Oh, the mischief she did! I shall have a row with Mrs Grace about that.”
“Ah, but wait. She only said she had heard so, for she hadn’t seen you, and of course had no idea of your identity with her knight errant during the post-cart journey. In the latter capacity you should have heard all the nice things she said about you. Charlie declared himself sick of the very name of the unknown, only he didn’t know it, for that she seemed to have got him on the brain; which I amended by saying I rather thought she had got him on the heart. Then Grace was cross.”
Roden laughed queerly.
“Well, Mona, and so ought I to be, for that was the very way to prepare me the most unfavourable reception. Come now, isn’t it an invariable rule that the individual much-belauded in advance turns out a sure disappointment on acquaintance?”
“It is the rule. But every rule has its exceptions.”
“Meaning me. Thank you. I can appreciate the delightfulness of the compliment, for I believe it is sincere. Nevertheless, my dear child, you will find few enough people to agree with you – precious few.”
“I know, Roden. You are one of those whom a few people would like very much indeed, but whom the general run would rather dislike.”
“Perhaps. And now, disclaiming all idea of being ungracious, how about quitting so profitless a topic as my own interesting self? And indeed here comes that which will assuredly divert all attention from it, or any other matter.”
Mona subtly and imperceptibly somewhat widened the distance between them – indeed, in whatever situation or dilemma she had been surprised, she might have been trusted to get out of it gracefully – just as the whole brood came running up. Their mother, having pacified the disturbance, and forthwith taken the whole lot for a walk, whence they were returning.
“Well, what was all the grief about?” said Mona. “Frank, I suppose, teasing somebody again.”
“It wasn’t me, Cousin Mona,” said the accused urchin resentfully. “I had nothing to do with it. Bah! It was Alfie, as usual. He’d let another slate pencil fall on his toe, I suppose.” And the wrongfully accused one marched off in high dudgeon.
Roden laughed unrestrainedly.
“That fellow’s a wag, by Jove!” he said. “You’ll have to entrust him with the care of the humour of the family, Mrs Suffield,” as Grace came up, and was delighted with the answer repeated for her benefit, for Frank was rather the favoured one in her eyes, probably because he was the most mischievous and unmanageable. The while Mona was watching with a jealous eye lest any of the small fry in their restive exuberance should come near imparting to the invalid chair a sudden and unpremeditated shake.
“I saw that, Mona,” he said, after they had all cleared out. “I have seen the same kind of watchfulness, though in different ways, before, since I have been lying here. Believe me, dear, I keenly appreciate it.”
Her eyes lighted up. She seemed about to reply, but thought better of it and, said nothing. In her heart, however, she was echoing gladsomely that resolute, passionate murmur which she had uttered in the silent midnight as she stilled his pain in slumber by the very restfulness of her presence; echoing it with such a thrill of exultation as to tax all her powers of self-command, “Darling love – my love – you are mine! I have won you, and now I hold you!”