Chapter 14

The effort to see was fruitless. He sank back, blind and tortured, upon the pillow. He had been taken ill at one of his own outlying farms, and here he had lain for days--a giant bereft of his strength, waiting for death.

His only attendant was a farm-hand who had had the disease, but knew nothing of its treatment, who was, moreover, afraid to go near him.

Curtis took in the whole situation at a glance as he bent over him.

"Why didn't you send for me?" he said.

"That you?" gasped Mercer. "Man, I'm in hell! Can't you give me something to put me out of my misery?"

Curtis was already at work over him.

"No," he said briefly. "I'm going to pull you through. You're wanted."

"You lie!" gasped back Mercer, and said no more.

Some hours after, starting suddenly from fevered sleep, he asked an abrupt question:

"Does my wife know?"

"Yes, she knows," Curtis answered.

He flung his arms wide with a bitter gesture. "She'll soon be free," he said.

"Not if I know it," said Curtis, in his quiet, unemotional style.

"You can't make me live against my will," muttered Mercer.

"Don't talk like a fool!" responded Curtis.

Late that night a hand that was not Curtis's smoothed the sick man's pillow, and presently gave him nourishment. He noticed the difference instantly, though he could not open his eyes; but he said nothing at the time, and she fancied he did not know her.

But presently, when she thought him sleeping, he spoke.

"When did you come?"

Even then she was not sure that he was in his right mind. His face was so swollen and disfigured that it told her nothing. She answered him very softly:

"I came with Mr. Curtis."

"Why?" That one word told her that he was in full possession of his senses. He moved his head to and fro on the pillow as one vainly seeking rest. "Did you want to see me in hell?" he questioned harshly.

She leaned towards him. She was sitting by his bed.

"No," she said, speaking under her breath. "I came because--because it was the only way out--for us both."

"What?" he said, and the old impatient frown drew his forehead. "You came to see me die, then?"

"I came," she answered, "to try and make you live."

He drew a breath that was a groan.

"You won't succeed," he said.

"Why not?" she asked.

Again feverishly he moved his head, and she smoothed his pillow afresh with hands that trembled.

"Don't touch me!" he said sharply. "What was Curtis dreaming of to bring you here?"

"Mr. Curtis couldn't help it," she answered, with more assurance. "I came." And then after a moment, "Are you--sorry--I came?"

"Yes," he muttered.

"Oh, why?" she said.

"I would sooner die--without you looking on," he said, forcing out his words through set teeth.

"Oh, why?" she said again. "Don't you believe--can't you believe--that I want you to live?"

"No," he groaned.

"Not if I swear it?" she asked, her voice sunk very low.

"No!" He flung the word with something of his ancient ferocity. She was torturing him past endurance. He even madly hoped that he could scare her away.

But Sybil made no move to go. She sat quite still for a few seconds. Then slowly she went down upon her knees beside his pillow.

"Brett," she said, and he felt her breath quick and tremulous upon his face as she spoke, "you may refuse to believe what I say. But--I can convince you without words."

And before he knew her meaning, she had pressed her quivering lips to his.

He recoiled, with an anguished sound that was half of protest and half of unutterable pain.

"Do you want to die too?" he said. "Or don't you know the risk?"

"Yes, I know it," she answered. "I know it," and in her voice was such a thrill of passion as he had never heard or thought to hear from her. "But I know this, too, and I mean that you shall know it. My life is nothing to me--do you understand?--nothing, unless you share it. Now--will you believe me?"

Yes, he believed her then. He had no choice. The knowledge was as a sword cutting its way straight to his heart. He tried to answer her, tried desperately hard, because he knew that she was waiting for him to speak, that his silence would hurt her who from that day forward he would never hurt again.

But no words would come. He could not force his utterance. The power of speech was gone from him. He turned his face away from her in choking tears.

And Sybil knew that the victory was hers. Those tears were more to her than words. She knew that he would live--if he could--for her sake.

XIX

It was more than six weeks later that Brett Mercer and his wife turned in at the Home Farm, as they had turned in on that memorable night that he had brought his bride from Wallarroo.

Now, as then, Curtis was ready for them in the open doorway, and Beelzebub advanced grinning to take the horses. But there the resemblance ceased. The woman who entered with her husband leaning on her shoulder was no nervous, shrinking stranger, but a wife entering her home with gladness, bearing her burden with rejoicing. The woman from Wallarroo looked at her with a doubtful sort of sympathy. She also looked at the gaunt, bowed man who accompanied her, and questioned with herself if this were indeed Brett Mercer.

Brett Mercer it undoubtedly was, nor could she have said, save for his slow, stooping gait, wherein lay the change that so amazed her.

Perhaps it was more apparent in Sybil than in the man himself as she raised her face on entering, and murmured:

"So good to get home again, isn't it, dear?"

He did not speak in answer. He scarcely spoke at all that night. But his silence satisfied her.

It was not till the following morning that he stretched out a great, bony hand to her as she waited on him, and drew her down to his side.

"There has been enough of this," he said, with a touch of his old imperiousness. "You have worked too hard already, harder than I ever meant you to work. You are to take a rest, and get strong."

She uttered her gay little laugh.

"My dearest Brett, I am strong."

He lay staring at her in his most direct, disconcerting fashion. She endured his look for a moment, and then averted her eyes. She would have risen, but he prevented her.

"Sybil!" he said abruptly.

"Yes?" she answered, with her head bent.

"Are you afraid of me?" he said.

She shook her head instantly.

"Don't be absurd!"

"Then look at me!" he said.

She raised her eyes slowly, not very willingly. But, having raised them, she kept them so, for there was that in his look which no longer made her shy.

He made a slight gesture towards her that was rather of invitation than insistence.

"Don't you think I'm nearly well enough to be let into the secret?" he said.

His action, his tone, above all his look, broke down the last of the barrier between them. She went into his arms with a shaky little laugh, and hid her face against him.

"I would have told you long ago," she whispered, "only somehow--I couldn't. Besides, I was so sure that you knew."

"Oh, yes, I knew," said Mercer. "Curtis saw to that; literally flayed me with it till I took his advice and cleared out. You know, I've often wondered since if it was that that made you want me, after all."

She shook her head, still with her face against his breast.

"No, dear, it wasn't. It--it made things worse at first. It was only when I heard you were ill that--that I found--quite suddenly--that I couldn't possibly go on without you. It was as if--as if something bound round my heart had suddenly given way, and I could breathe again. When I saw you I knew how terribly I wanted you."

"And that was how you came to kiss me with that loathsome disease upon me?" he whispered. "That was what made you follow me down to hell to bring me back?"

She turned her face upwards. Her eyes were shining.

"My dear," she said, and in her voice was a thrill like the first sweet notes of a bird in the dawning, "you don't need to ask me why did these things. For you know--you know. It was simply and only because I loved you."

"Heaven knows why," he said, as he bent to kiss her.

"Heavens knows," she answered, and softly laughed as she surrendered her lips to his.

The Secret Service Man

I

A TIGHT PLACE

"Shoulder to shoulder, boys! Give it 'em straight! There's no going back this journey." And the speaker slapped his thigh and laughed.

He was penned in a hot corner with a handful of grinning little Goorkhas, as ready and exultant as himself. He had no earthly business in that particular spot. But he had won his way there in a hand-to-hand combat, which had rendered that bit of ground the most desirable abiding-place on the face of the earth. And being there he meant to stay.

He was established with the inimitable effrontery of British insolence. He had pushed on through the dark, fired by the enthusiasm which is born of hard resistence. It had been no slight matter, but neither he nor his men were to be easily dismayed. Moreover, their patience had been severely tried for many tedious hours, and the removal of the curb had gone to their heads like wine.

Young Derrick Rose, war correspondent, was hot of head and ready of hand. He had a knack also of getting into tight places and extricating himself therefrom with amazing agility; which knack served to procure for him the admiration of his friends and the respect of his enemies. It was his first Frontier campaign, but it was not apparently destined to be his last, for he bore a charmed life. And he went his way with a cheery recklessness that seemed its own security.

On the present occasion he had planted himself, with a serene assumption of authority, at the head of a handful of Goorkhas who had been pressed forward too far by an over-zealous officer in the darkness, and had lost their leader in consequence.

Derrick had stumbled on the group and had forthwith taken upon himself to direct them to a position which, with a good deal of astuteness, he had marked out in his own mind earlier in the day as a desirable acquisition.

There had been a hand-to-hand scuffle in the darkness, and then the tribesmen had fallen back, believing themselves overwhelmed by superior numbers.

Derrick and his Goorkhas had promptly taken possession of the rocky eminence which was the object of their desire, and now prepared, with commendable determination, to maintain themselves at the post thus captured; an impossible feat in consideration of the paucity of their numbers, which fact a wily enemy had already begun to suspect.

That the main force could by any means fail them was a possibility over which for long neither Derrick nor his followers wasted a thought. Nevertheless half-an-hour of mad turmoil passed, and no help came.

Derrick charitably set down its non-appearance to ignorance of his state and whereabouts, and he began at length to wonder within himself how the place was to be defended throughout the night. Retreat he would not think of, for he was game to the finger-tips. But even he could not fail to see that, when the moon rose, he and his followers would be in a very tight fix.

"Confound their caution! What are they thinking of?" he muttered savagely. "If they only came straight ahead they would be bound to find us."

And then a yelling crowd of dim figures breasted the rocks and dashed forward with the force of a hurricane upon the little body of Goorkhas. In a second Derrick was fighting in the dark with mad enthusiasm for bare foothold, and shouting at the top of his voice exhortations to his men to keep together.

It was a desperate struggle, but once more the little party of invaders held their ground. And Derrick, yelling encouragement to his friends and defiance to his foes, became vaguely conscious of a new element in the strife.

Someone, not a Goorkha, was standing beside him, fighting as he fought, but in grim silence.

Derrick wondered considerably, but was too busy to ask questions. Only when he missed his footing, and a strong hand shot out and dragged him up, his wonder turned to admiration. Here was evidently a mighty fighting-man!

The tribesmen drew off at length baffled, to wait for the moon to rise. They were pretty sure of their prey despite the determined resistance they had encountered. They did not know of the new force that had come to strengthen that forsaken little knot of men. Had they known, their estimate of the task before them would have undergone a very material amendment.

"Hullo!" said Derrick, rubbing his sleeve across his forehead. "Where on earth did you spring from?"

A steady voice answered him out of the gloom. "I came up from the valley. The troops are halted at the entrance of the ravine. There will be no further advance to-night."

Derrick swore a sudden, fierce oath.

"No further advance! Do you mean that? Then Carlyon doesn't know we are here."

"Oh, yes, he knows," answered the man indifferently. "But he says very reasonably that he didn't order you to come up here, and he can't sacrifice twice the number of men here to get you down again. Unfortunate for you, of course; but we all have to swallow bad luck at one time or another. Make the best of it!"

Derrick swore again with less violence and greater resolution.

"And who, in wonder, may you be?" he broke off to enquire. "I'm a war correspondent myself."

There was a vein of humour in the quiet reply.

"Oh, I'm a non-combatant, too. It's always the non-combatants that do the work. Have you got a revolver? Good! Any cartridges? That's right. Now, look here, it's out of the question to remain in this place till moonrise."

"I won't go back," said Derrick doggedly. "I'll see Carlyon hang first."

"Quite right. I wasn't going to propose that. It's impossible, in the first place. Perhaps it is only fair to Colonel Carlyon to mention that he had no notion that there is anything so important as a newspaper man at the head of this expedition. It's a detail, of course. Still, if you get through, it is just as well that you should know the rights of the case."

Derrick broke into an involuntary laugh.

"Did Carlyon get you to come and tell me so?" He turned and peered through the darkness at the man beside him. "You never got up here alone?" he said incredulously.

"Oh, yes. It wasn't difficult. I was guided by the noise you made. How many men have you?"

"Ten or twelve; not more--all Goorkhas."

"Good! We must quit this place at once. It will be a death-trap when the moon rises. There are some boulders higher up, away to the right. We can occupy them till morning and fight back to back if they try to rush us. There ought to be plenty of shelter among those rocks."

The man's cool speech caught Derrick's fancy. He spoke as quietly as if he were sitting at an English dinner-table.

"You had better take command," said Derrick.

"No, thanks; you are going to pull this through. Are you ready to move? Pass the word to the men! And then all together! It is now or never!"

A few seconds later they were stumbling in an indistinguishable mass towards the haven indicated by the latest comer. It was a difficult scramble, not the least difficult part of it being the task of keeping in touch with each other. But Derrick's spirits returned at a bound with this further adventure, and he began to rejoice somewhat prematurely in his triumph over Carlyon's caution.

The man who had come to his assistance kept at his elbow throughout the climb. Not a word was spoken. The men moved like cats through the dimness. Below them was a confused din of rifle-firing. Their advance had evidently not been detected.

"Silly owls! Wasting their ammunition!" murmured Derrick to the man beside him. He received no response. A warning hand closed with a grip on his elbow. And Derrick subsided.

When the moon rose, magnificent and glowing from behind the mountains, Derrick and his men looked down from a high perch on the hillside, and watched a furious party of tribesmen charge and occupy their abandoned position.

"Now, this is good!" said Derrick, and he was in the act of firing his revolver into the thick of the crowd below him when again the sinewy hand of his unknown friend checked him.

"Hold your fire, man!" the man said, in his quiet, unmoved voice. "You will want it presently."

But the stranger's hold tightened. He was standing in the shadow slightly behind Derrick.

"Wait!" he said. "They will find you soon enough. You are not in a position to take the offensive."

Derrick swung round with a restless word. And then he pulled up short. He was facing a tribesman, gaunt and tall, with odd, light eyes that glittered strangely in the moonlight. Derrick stared at the apparition, dumbfounded. After a pause the man took his hand from the correspondent's arm.

"Don't give the show away for want of a little caution!" he said. "There are your men to think of, remember. This is no picnic."

Derrick was still staring hard at the strange figure before him.

"I say," he said at length, "what in the name of wonder are you?"

He heard a faint, contemptuous laugh. The unknown drew the end of his _chuddah_ farther across his face.

"You are marvellously guileless for a war correspondent," he said. And he turned on his heel and stalked away into the shadows.

Derrick stood gazing after him in stupefaction.

"A Secret Service agent, is he?" he murmured at length to himself. "By Jove! What a marvellous fake! On Carlyon's business, I suppose. Confound Carlyon! I'll tell him what I think of him if I come through this all right."

Carlyon, in times of peace, was one of Derrick Rose's most intimate friends. That Carlyon, upon whom he relied as upon a tower of strength should fail him at such a pinch as this, and for motives of caution alone, was a circumstance so preposterous and unheard-of that Derrick's credulity was hardly equal to the strain.

He began to wonder if this stranger who had guided him into safety, from what he now realized to be a positive death-trap, had given him a wholly unexaggerated account of Carlyon's attitude.

He waited awhile, thinking the matter over with rising indignation; and at length, as the noise below him subsided, he moved from his shelter to find his informant. It was a rash thing to do, but prudence was not his strong point. Moreover, the Secret Service man had aroused his curiosity. He wanted to see more of this fellow. So, with an indifference to danger, foolhardy, though too genuine to be contemptible, he strolled across an unprotected space of moonlight to join him.

Two seconds later he was lying on his face, struggling with the futile, convulsive effort of a stricken man to recover his footing. And even while he struggled, he lost consciousness.

He awoke at length as one awakes from a troublous dream, and looked about him with a dazed consciousness of great tumult.

The space in which he lay was no longer wide and empty. The white world was peopled with demons that leapt and surged around his prostrate body. And someone, a man in white, with naked, uplifted arms, stood above him and quelled the tumult.

Derrick saw it all, heard the mad yells lessen and die down, watched with a dumb amazement the melting away of the fierce crowd.

And then the man who stood over him turned suddenly and, kneeling, lifted him from his prostrate position. It was a man in native dress whose eyes held for Derrick an odd, half-familiar fascination.

Where had he met those eyes before? Ah, he remembered. It was the Secret Service man. And that was strange, too. For Carlyon always scoffed at Secret Service men. Still, this was a small matter which, no doubt, would right itself. Everything looked a little peculiar and distorted on this night of wonders. Carlyon himself had sadly degenerated in his opinion since the morning. Bother Carlyon!

Suddenly a great sigh burst from Derrick, and the moonlight broke up into tiny, dazzling fragments. The darkness was full of them, alive with them.

"Fire-flies!" gasped Derrick, and began to cough, at first slowly, with pauses for breath, then quickly, spasmodically, convulsively. For breath had finally failed him.

The arm behind him raised him with the steady strength of iron muscles, and a hand pressed his chest. But the coughing did not cease. It was the anguished strife of wounded Nature to assert her damaged authority; the wild, last effort to clutch and hold fast the elusive torch that, flickering in the midst of darkness, is called life--the one priceless possession of our little mortal treasury.

And while he coughed and fought with the demon of suffocation Derrick was strongly aware of the eyes that watched him, burning like two brilliant blue points out of the darkness. Wonderful eyes! Steady, strong, unflinching. The eyes of a friend--a true friend--not such an one as Carlyon--Carlyon who had failed him.

A thick, unexplored darkness fell upon Derrick as he thought of Carlyon's desertion; and he forgot at length to wonder at the strangeness of the night.

II

A BROKEN FRIENDSHIP

By and bye, when the light dawned in his eyes, Derrick began to dream of many strange things.

But he came back at last out of the shadows, weak and faint and weary. And then he found that he was in hospital and had been there for weeks.

The discovery was rather staggering. Somehow he had never quite rid himself of the impression that he was still lying on the great, rocky boulder where the Secret Service man had so magically scattered his enemies. But as life and full consciousness returned to him he became aware that this had for weeks been no more than a fevered illusion.

When he was at length fairly out of danger he was dispatched southwards on the first stage of the homeward journey.

He sailed for Home with his resentment against Carlyon yet strong upon him. He had no parents. In his reckless young days, during the last three years of his minority, Carlyon had been this boy's guardian. But Derrick had been his own master for nearly four years, and the conscious joy of independence was yet dear to his heart. He had no settled home of his own, but he had plenty of money. And that, after all, was the essential thing.

He had been brought up with the daughter of a clergyman in whose home he had lived all his early life. The two had grown up together in close companionship. They had been comrades all their lives.

Only of recent years, at the end of an uneventful college career, had Derrick awakened to the astounding fact that Averil Eversley, his little playmate, was a maiden sweet and comely whom he wanted badly for his very own. She was three years younger than himself, but she had always taken the lead in all their exploits.

Derrick discovered for the first time that this was not a proper state of affairs. He had tried, not over tactfully, to show her that man was, after all, the superior animal. Averil had first stared at his efforts, and then laughed with uncontrollable mirth.

Then Derrick had set to work with splendid energy, and achieved in two years a certain amount of literary success. Averil had praised him for this; which reward of merit had so turned his head that he had at once clumsily proposed to her. Averil had not laughed at that. She had rejected him instantly, with so severe a scolding that Derrick had lost his temper, and gone away to sulk. Later, he had turned his attention again to journalistic work, hoping thereby to recover favour.

Then, and this had brought him to the previous winter, he had returned to find Averil going in for a little innocent hero-worship on her own account. And Carlyon, his own particular friend and adviser, had happened to be the hero.