Chapter 5

And Hyde, seeing her anguished helplessness, came nearer still with a sort of exultant deliberation, and put his arm about her as she stood.

"I thought I should win the trick," he said, with a laugh that seemed to turn her to ice. "Didn't I tell you weeks ago that I had--Hope?"

She did not attempt to answer or to resist. Her lips were quite bloodless. A surging darkness was about her, but yet she remained conscious--vividly horribly conscious--of the trap that had so suddenly closed upon her. Through it she saw his face close to her own, with that sneering, devilish smile about his mouth that she knew so well. And the eyes with their glittering savagery were mocking her--mocking her.

Another instant and his lips would have pressed her own. He held her fast, so fast that she felt almost suffocated. It was the most hideous moment of her life. And still she could neither move nor protest. It seemed as if, body and soul, she was his prisoner.

But suddenly, unexpectedly, he paused. His arms slackened and fell abruptly from her; so abruptly that she tottered, feeling vaguely for support. She saw his face change as he turned sharply away. And instinctively, notwithstanding the darkness that blinded her, she knew the cause. She put her hand over her eyes and strove to recover herself.

XI

WITHOUT DEFENCE

When Hope looked up, the silence had become unbearable. She saw Baring standing quite motionless near the window by which he had entered. He was not looking at her, and she felt suddenly, crushingly, that she had become less than nothing in his sight, not so much as a thing, to be ignored.

Hyde, quite calm and self-possessed, still stood close to her. But he had turned his back upon her to face the intruder. And she felt herself to be curiously apart from them both, almost like a spectator at a play.

It was Hyde who at last broke the silence when it had begun to torture her nerves beyond endurance.

"Perhaps this _rencontre_ is not as unfortunate as it looks at first sight," he remarked complacently. "It will save me the trouble of seeking an interview with you to explain what you are now in a position to see for yourself. I believe a second choice is considered a woman's privilege. Miss Carteret, as you observe, has just availed herself of this. And I am afraid that in consequence you will have to abdicate in my favour."

Baring heard him out in complete silence. As Hyde ended, he moved quietly forward into the room. Hope felt him drawing nearer, but she could not face him. His very quietness was terrible to her, and she was desperately conscious that she had no weapon of defence.

She had not thought that he would so much as notice her, but she was wrong. He passed by Hyde without a glance, and reached her.

"What am I to understand?" he said.

She started violently at the sound of his voice. She knew that Hyde had turned towards her again, but she looked at neither of them. She was trembling so that she could scarcely stand. Her very lips felt cold, and she could not utter a word.

After a brief pause Baring spoke again: "Can't you answer me?"

There was no anger in his voice, but there was also no kindness. She knew that he was watching her with a piercing scrutiny, and she dared not raise her eyes. She shook her head at last, as he waited for her reply.

"Are you willing for me to take an explanation from Mr. Hyde?" he asked; and his tone rang suddenly hard. "Has he the right to explain?"

"Of course I have the right," said Hyde easily.

"Tell him so, Hope!"

Baring bent towards the girl.

"If he has the right," he said, his voice quiet but very insistent, "look me in the face--and tell me so!"

She made a convulsive effort and looked up at him.

"Yes," she said in a whisper. "He has the right."

Baring straightened himself abruptly, almost as if he had received a blow in the face.

He stood for a second silent. Then:

"Where is your brother?" he asked.

Hope hesitated, and at once Hyde answered for her.

"He isn't back yet. He stopped at the club."

"That," said Baring sternly, "is a lie."

He laid his hand suddenly upon Hope's shoulder.

"Surely you can tell me the truth at least!" he said.

Something in his tone pierced the wild panic at her heart. She looked up at him again, meeting the mastery of his eyes.

"He is in his room," she said. "Mr. Hyde didn't know."

Hyde laughed, and at the sound the hand on Hope's shoulder closed like a vice, till she bit her lip with the effort to endure the pain. Baring saw it, and instantly set her free.

"Go to your brother," he said, "and ask him to come and speak to me!"

The authority in his voice was not to be gainsaid. She threw an imploring look at Hyde, and went. She fled like a wild creature along the veranda to her brother's room, and tapped feverishly, frantically at the window. Then she paused listening intently for a reply. But she could hear nothing save the loud beating of her heart. It drummed in her ears like the hoofs of a galloping horse. Desperately she knocked again.

"Let me in!" she gasped. "Let me in!"

There came a blundering movement, and the door opened.

"Hullo!" said Ronnie, in a voice of sleepy irritation. "What's up?"

She stumbled into the dark room, breathless and sobbing.

"Oh, Ronnie!" she cried. "Oh, Ronnie; you must help me now!"

He fastened the door behind her, and as she sank down half-fainting in a chair, she heard him groping for matches on the dressing-table.

He struck one, and lighted a lamp. She saw that his hand was very shaky, but that he managed to control it. His face was pale, and there were deep shadows under his heavy eyes, but he was himself again, and a thrill of thankfulness ran through her. There was still a chance, still a chance!

XII

THE PENALTY

Five minutes later, or it might have been less, the brother and sister stepped out on to the veranda to go to the drawing-room. They had to turn a corner of the bungalow to reach it, and the moment they did so Hope stopped dead. A man's voice, shouting curses, came from the open window; and, with it, the sound of struggling and the sound of blows--blows delivered with the precision and regularity of a machine--frightful, swinging blows that sounded like revolver shots.

"What is it?" gasped Hope in terror. "What is it?" But she knew very well what it was; and Ronnie knew, too.

"You stay here," he said. "I'll go and stop it."

"No, no!" she gasped back. "I am coming with you; I must." She slipped her cold hand into his, and they ran together towards the commotion.

Reaching the drawing-room window, Ronnie stopped, and put the trembling girl behind him. But he himself did not enter. He only stood still, with a cowed look on his face, and waited. In the middle of the room, Baring, his face set and terrible, stood gripping Hyde by the torn collar of his coat and thrashing him, deliberately, mercilessly, with his own riding-whip. How long the punishment had gone on the two at the window could only guess. But it was evident that Hyde was nearing exhaustion. His face was purple in patches, and the curses he tried to utter came maimed and broken and incoherent from his shaking lips. He had almost ceased to struggle in the unwavering grip that held him; he only moved convulsively at each succeeding blow.

"Oh, stop him!" implored Hope, behind her brother. "Stop him!" Then, as he did not move, she pushed wildly past him into the room.

Baring saw her, and instantly, almost as if he had been awaiting her, stayed his hand. He did not speak. He simply took Hyde by the shoulders and half-carried, half-propelled him to the window, through which he thrust him.

He returned empty-handed and closed the window. Ronnie had entered, and was standing by his sister, who had dropped upon her knees by the sofa and hidden her face in the cushions, sobbing with a pasionate abandonment that testified to nerves that had given way utterly at last beneath a strain too severe to be borne. Baring just glanced at her, then turned his attention to her brother.

"I have been doing your work for you," he remarked grimly. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" He put his hand upon Ronnie, and twisted him round to face the light, looking at him piercingly. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" he repeated.

Ronnie met his eyes irresolutely for a moment, then looked away towards Hope. She had become very still, but her face remained hidden. There was something tense about her attitude. After a moment Ronnie spoke, his voice very low.

"I suppose you had a reason for what you have just been doing?"

"Yes," Baring said sternly, "I had a reason. Do you mean me to understand that you didn't know that fellow to be a blackguard?"

Ronnie made no answer. He stood like a beaten dog.

"If you didn't know it," Baring continued, "I am sorry for your intelligence. If you did, you deserve the same treatment as he has just received."

Hope stirred at the words, stirred and moaned, as if she were in pain; and again momentarily Baring glanced at her. But his face showed no softening.

"I mean what I say," he said, turning inexorably to Ronnie. "I told you long ago that that man was not fit to associate with your sister. You must have known it for yourself; yet you continued to bring him to the house. What I have just done was in her defence. Mark that, for--as you know--I am not in the habit of acting hastily. But there are some offences that only a horsewhip can punish." He set the boy free with a contemptuous gesture, and crossed the room to Hope. "Now I have something to say to you," he said.

She started and quivered, but she did not raise her head. Very quietly he stooped and lifted her up. He saw that she was too upset for the moment to control herself, and he put her into a chair and waited beside her. After several seconds she slipped a trembling hand into his, and spoke.

"Monty," she said, "I have something to say to you first."

Her action surprised him. It touched him also, but he did not show it.

"I am listening," he said gravely.

She looked up at him and uttered a sharp sigh. Then, with an effort, she rose and faced him.

"You are very angry with me," she said. "You are going to--to--give me up."

His face hardened. He looked back at her with a sternness that sent the blood to her heart. He said nothing whatever. She went on with difficulty.

"But before you do," she said, "I want to tell you that--that--ever since you asked me to marry you I have loved you--with my whole heart; and I have never--in thought or deed--been other than true to my love. I can't tell you any more than that. It is no good to question me. I may have done things of which you would strongly disapprove, which you would even condemn, but my heart has always been true to you--always."

She stopped. Her lips were quivering painfully. She saw that her words had not moved him to confidence in her, and it seemed as if the whole world had suddenly turned dark and empty and cold--a place to wander in, but never to rest.

A long silence followed that supreme effort of hers. Baring's eyes--blue, merciless as steel--were fixed upon her in a gaze that pierced and hurt her. Yet he forced her to endure it. He held her in front of him ruthlessly, almost cruelly.

"So I am not to question you?" he said at last. "You object to that?"

She winced at his tone.

"Don't!" she said under her breath. "Don't hurt me more--more than you need!"

He was silent again, grimly, interminably silent, it seemed to her. And all the while she felt him doing battle with her, beating down her resistance, mastering her, compelling her.

"Hope!" he said at length.

She looked up at him. Her knees were shaking under her. Her heart was beginning to whisper that her strength was nearly spent; that she would not be able to resist much longer.

"Tell me," he said very quietly, "this one thing only! What is the hold that Hyde has over you?"

She shook her head.

"That is the one thing--"

"It is the one thing that I must know," he said sternly.

She was white to the lips.

"I can't answer you," she said.

"You must answer me!" He turned her quivering face up to his own. "Do you hear me, Hope?" he said. "I insist upon your answering me."

He still spoke quietly, but she was suddenly aware that he was putting forth his whole strength. It came upon her like a physical, crushing weight. It overwhelmed her. She hid her face with an anguished cry. He had conquered her.

In another moment she would have yielded. Her opposition was dead. But abruptly, unexpectedly, there came an interruption. Ronnie, very pale, and looking desperate, came between them.

"Look here, sir," he said, "you--you are going too far. I can't have my sister coerced in this fashion. If she prefers to keep this matter to herself, she must do so. You can't force her to speak."

Baring released Hope and turned upon him almost violently, but, seeing the unusual, if precarious, air of resolution with which Ronnie confronted him, he checked himself. He walked to the end of the room and back before he spoke. His features were set like a mask when he returned.

"You may be right," he said, "though I think it would have been better for everyone if you had not interfered. Hope, I am going. If you cannot bring yourself to tell me the whole truth without reservation, there can be nothing further between us. I fear that, after all, I spoke too soon. I can enter upon no compact that is not based upon absolute confidence."

He spoke coldly, decidedly, without a trace of feeling; and, having spoken, he went deliberately to the window. There he stood for a few seconds with his back turned upon the room; then, as the silence remained unbroken, he quietly lifted the catch and let himself out.

In the room he left not a word was spoken for many tragic minutes.

XIII

THE CURSE OF THE VALLEY

Hope had some difficulty in persuading Ronnie to attend mess that night, though, as a matter of fact, she was longing for solitude.

He went at last, and she was glad, for a great restlessness possessed her to which it was a relief to give way. She wandered about the veranda in the dark after his departure, trying to realize fully what had happened. It had all come upon her so suddenly. She had been forced to act throughout without a moment's pause for thought. Now that it was all over she wanted to collect herself and face the worst.

Her engagement was at an end. It was mainly that fact that she wished to grasp. But somehow she found it very difficult. She had grown into the habit of regarding herself as belonging exclusively and for all time to Montagu Baring.

"He has given me up! He has given me up!" she whispered to herself, as she paced to and fro along the crazy veranda. She recalled the look his face had worn, the sternness, the pitilessness of his eyes. She had always felt at the back of her heart that he had it in him to be hard, merciless. But she had not really thought that she would ever shrink beneath the weight of his anger. She had trusted blindly to his love to spare her. She had imagined herself to be so dear to him that she must be exempt. Others--it did not surprise her that others feared him. But she--his promised wife--what could she have to fear?

She paused at the end of the veranda, looking up. The night was full of stars, and it was very cold. At the bottom of the compound she heard the water running swiftly. It did not chuckle any more. It had become a miniature roar. It almost seemed to threaten her.

She remembered how she had listened to it in the morning, sitting in the sunshine, dreaming; and her heart suddenly contracted with a pain intolerable. Those golden dreams were over for ever. He had given her up.

Again her restlessness urged her. Cold as it was, she could not bring herself to go indoors. She descended into the compound, passed swiftly through it, and began to climb the rough ground of the hill that rose behind it above the native village.

The Magician's bungalow looked very ghostly in the starlight. Presently she paused, and stood motionless, gazing down at it. She remembered how, when she and her uncle had first come to it, the native servants had told them of the curse that had been laid upon it; of the evil spirits that had dwelt there; of voices that had cried in the night! Was it true, she wondered vaguely? Was it possible for a place to be cursed?

A faint breeze ran down the valley, stirring the trees to a furtive whispering. Again, subconsciously, she was aware of the cold, and moved to return. At the same moment there came a sound like the report of a cannon half a mile away, followed by a long roar that was unlike anything she had ever heard--a sound so appalling, so overwhelming, that for an instant, seized with a nameless terror, she stood as one turned to stone.

And then--before the impulse of flight to the bungalow had reached her brain--the whole terrible disaster burst upon her. Like a monster of destruction, that which had been a gurgling stream rose above its banks in a mighty, brown flood, surged like an inrushing sea over the moonlit compound, and swept down the valley, turning it into a whirling turmoil of water.

XIV

HOW THE TALE WAS TOLD

Ronnie Carteret was the subject of a good deal of chaff that night at mess. The Rajah was being entertained, and he was the only man who paid the young officer any compliments on the matter of his achievement on the racecourse. Everyone else openly declared that the horse, and not its rider, was the one to be congratulated.

"Never saw anything so ludicrous in my life," one critic said. "He looked like a rag doll in the saddle. How he managed to stick on passes me. Is it the latest from America, Ronnie? Leaves something to be desired, old chap! I should stick to the old style, if I were you."

Ronnie had no answer for the comments and advice showered upon him from all sides. He received them all in silence, sullenly ignoring derisive questions.

Hyde was not present, to the surprise of every one. All knew that he had been invited, and there was some speculation upon his non-appearance.

Baring was there, quiet and self-contained as usual. No one ever chaffed Baring. It was generally recognized that he did not provide good sport. When the toasts were over he left the table.

It was soon after his departure that a sound like a distant explosion was heard by those in the messroom, causing some discussion there.

"It's only some fool letting off fireworks," someone said; and as this seemed a reasonable explanation, no one troubled to enquire further. And so fully half an hour passed before the truth was known.

It was Baring who came in with the news, and none who saw it ever forgot his face as he threw open the messroom door. It was like the face of a man suddenly stricken with a mortal hurt.

"Heavens, man! What's the matter?" the colonel exclaimed, at sight of him. "You look as if--as if--"

Baring glanced round till his eyes fell upon Ronnie, and, when he spoke, he seemed to be addressing him alone.

"The dam has burst," he said, his words curt, distinct, unfaltering. "The whole of the lower valley is flooded. The Magician's bungalow has been swept away!"

"What?" gasped Ronnie. "What?"

He sprang to his feet, the awful look in Baring's eyes reflected in his own, and made a dash for the doorway in which Baring stood. He stumbled as he reached, it and the latter threw out a supporting arm.

"It's no use your going," he said, his voice hard and mechanical. "There's nothing to be done. I've been as near as it is possible to get. It's nothing but a raging torrent half a mile across."

He moved straight forward to a chair, and thrust the boy down into it. There was a terrible stiffness--almost a fixity--about him. He did not seem conscious of the men that crowded round him. It was not his habitual reserve that kept him from collapse at that moment; it was rather a stunned sense of expediency.

"There's nothing to be done," he repeated.

He looked down at Ronnie, who was clutching at the table with both hands, and making ineffectual efforts to speak.

"Give him some brandy, one of you!" he said.

Someone held a glass against the boy's chattering teeth. The colonel poured some spirit into another and gave it to Baring. He took it with a hand that seemed steady, but the next instant it slipped through his fingers and smashed on the floor. He turned sharply, not heeding it. Most of the men in the room were on their way out to view the catastrophe for themselves. He made as if to follow them; then, as if struck by a sudden thought, he paused.

Ronnie, deathly pale, and shaking all over, was fighting his way back to self-control. Baring moved back to him with less of stiffness and more of his usual strength of purpose.

"Do you care to come with me?" he said.

Ronnie looked up at him. Then, though he still shivered violently, he got up without speaking; and, in silence, they went away together.

XV

THE NIGHT OF DESPAIR

Not till more than two hours later did Ronnie break his silence. He would have tramped the hills all night above the flooded valley, but Baring would not suffer it. He dragged him almost forcibly away from the scene of desolation, where the water still flowed strongly, carrying trees and all manner of wreckage on its course. And, though he was almost beside himself, the boy yielded at last. For Baring compelled obedience that night. He took Ronnie back to his own quarters, but on the threshold Ronnie drew back.

"I can't come in with you," he said.

Baring's hand was on his shoulder.

"You must," he answered quietly.

"I can't," Ronnie persisted, with an effort. "I can't! I'm a cur; I'm worse. You wouldn't ask me if you knew."

Baring paused, then, with a strange, unwonted gentleness, he took the boy's arm and led him in. "Never mind!" he said.

Ronnie went with him, but in Baring's room he faced him with the courage of despair.

"You'll have to know it," he said jerkily. "It was my doing that you--and she--parted as you did. She was going to tell you the truth. I prevented her--for my own sake--not hers. I--I came between you."

Baring's hand fell, but neither his face nor his tone varied as he made steady reply.

"I guessed it might be that--afterwards. I was on my way to tell her so when the dam went."

"That isn't all," Ronnie went on feverishly. "I'm worse than that, worse even than she knew. I engaged to ride Hyde's horse to--to discharge a debt I owed him. I told her it was a debt of honour. It wasn't. It was to cover theft. I swindled him once, and he found out. I hated riding his horse, but it would have meant open disgrace if I hadn't. She knew it was urgent. And then at the last moment I was thirsty; I overdid it. No; confound it, I'll tell you the truth! I went home drunk, too drunk to sit a horse. And so she--she sent me to bed, and went in my place. That's the thing she wouldn't tell you, the thing Hyde knew. She always hated the man--always. She only endured him for my sake." He broke off. Baring was looking at him as if he thought that he were raving. After a moment Ronnie realized this. "It's the truth," he said. "I've told you the truth. I never won the cup. I didn't know anything more about it till it was over and she told me. I don't wonder you find it hard to believe. But I swear it's the truth. Now let me go--and shoot myself!"

He flung round distractedly, but Baring stopped him. There was no longer any hardness about him, only compassionate kindness, as he made him sit down, and gravely shut the door. When he spoke, it was not to utter a word of reproach or blame.

"No, don't go, boy!" he said, in a tone that Ronnie never forgot. "We'll face this thing together. May God help us both!"

And Ronnie, yielding once more, leaned his head in his hands, and burst into anguished tears.

XVI

THE COMING OF HOPE