Part 18

*CHAPTER XXI*

Aspasia awoke from a heavy dreamless sleep with a sense of panic. Her heart was beating violently. She sat up in bed, listening eagerly, through the hammering of her pulses.

It is the nature of such old haunted places as Saltwoods that they impress you with their stillness by day and their stirring by night. Then the old boards creak as if to the tread of forgotten steps; old echoes answer to voices long silent; there is a rustle down the narrow passages as of garments the very texture of which is forgotten; there are sighs in the night airs, and little cold blasts wandering round corners, even on the stillest night. You tell yourself that it is the crumbling brick and wood work setting ever a little more towards destruction; but it seems rather as if the years-laden habitation had acquired a sentient being of its own; that when, like the aged, it lies wakeful in the night, the memories of the past come back to it; that it laments, with sighs, lost life, lost mirth, lost dignity.

But Baby would at no time, have had, in her practical young mind, room for such fancies as these; and now, the very real well-grounded fears which were strong upon her lent every stealthy creak about her a hideous material significance, every sighing breath the echo of a present tragedy.

Supposing Muhammed were really to creep into the Runkle's room--Sir Arthur might not have locked his door. It is all very well, in a fit of rage, to wish an irritating relative disposed of; it is a very different thing to wake in the middle of the night and think of the murderer at his work. Poor old Runkle...! Or, suppose Lady Gerardine were to do herself a mischief, were to ... there are ideas to which one cannot bear to give concrete shape, even in one's own imagination.

The girl lit a candle, sprang out of bed, and huddled on a dressing-gown. How foolish, how selfish, how wicked she had been to leave the fevered woman alone with Jani--Jani, the most helpless and unreasoning of human beings!

The old house might have been in league with the evil passions it housed that night, so loudly did it seem to protest against Aspasia's interference.

Heard any one ever door so groan on its hinges, ever boards so complain under tread of light foot? What menacing shadows leapt from every corner! It was enough to scare any less courageous heart from its purpose. But on went Baby, down the little stairs, past Lady Aspasia's door (the creature snored--it was quite what Baby expected of her); round the corner of the passage, past Sir Arthur's little room. What a dead silence in there! She was afraid to listen to the suggestion, and scurried by, past M. Châtelard's room. Her aunt's door at last in sight. Baby stopped with a great start, her heart in her mouth, the candle almost dropping from her grasp--what was that black thing lying at such sinister length across the threshold? A heap of clothes? ... Jani? No--diminutive Jani could never spread to such bulk. Then what?

The thing moved slowly, reared itself to its knees, turned a wild black head, a wild black-bearded face, fierce eyes, towards Aspasia; then rose, with a spring.

Aspasia, in her mind, flung the light from her and ran into the darkness, shrieking: "The Panther, the Panther!" But Aspasia, in the flesh, stood rooted to the spot, in a paralysis of terror, unable to move a muscle.

The thing came close to her on its noiseless feet. And she saw that the panther was Muhammed. This was no surprise; she had known it.

But, under his dishevelled locks, from out of the barbaric wings of his beard, the savage being's face was gazing upon her--as it gradually filtered to her panic-stricken mind--with no sort of savageness; rather, indeed, a gentle, a pathetic anxiety.

"Miss Cuningham..." said the Pathan.

To her bewildered ears it was the voice of no Pathan that spoke, but the high-bred accents of an English gentleman. The girl rubbed her eyes with her left hand. ("Wake up, Aspasia, wake up. You are still asleep, and in the middle of some ridiculous dream!")

"Miss Cuningham," pursued the dream-creature that was panther and Pathan, and yet looked and spoke like one of her own sober kin; "are you going to her?"

"I was going," answered the girl, abandoning herself to her dream. Then she began suddenly to tremble, and with knees giving way beneath her, advanced uncertainly towards the door, all her energies bent on reaching safety within. But he, with an outflung gesture of prayer, cried to her, in that low English voice that was so amazing, yet which, in spite of its incongruity, soothed her frantic fear.

"In pity, stop one second. Do you hear how she is crying within? Tell me, what is her trouble?" And, as Baby fell from amazement to amazement, as even in dreams one falls, and could find no thought, much less words for answer, he went on in his pleading undertone: "Is the old man not good to her? Oh, do not stop to wonder why I should ask you! Answer me, in the name of God, as one fellow-creature to another: Whom, or what, is she mourning for?"

Aspasia saw how, between the sweep of his moustache and the great fans of his beard, the man's lips quivered as he spoke: she felt his haggard eyes imploring, compelling; and she made answer, as she was bidden, "as one fellow-creature to another," with a solemnity which she herself was scarce aware of:

"She is mourning for her dead husband."

When she had spoken, Baby had a vision so swift that she had hardly time to seize it, of Muhammed's eyes lightening upon her with an extraordinary illumination. The next instant he had dropped his lids. Then he turned and, running, left her; and she heard the crazy boards creak, the stairs groan under his flying unshod feet.

Utter chaos possessed her thoughts as she turned the handle of the locked door and gently knocked, calling upon Jani; the fantastic terrors of her inexplicable experience, and the sounds of Rosamond's moans and sobs within driving her to urgency. As still in a sort of nightmare she found herself repeating her own phrase to the Pathan, and an odd speech of her aunt's, as if in answer to it: "She is mourning for her dead husband.... He is not really dead, Baby...."

Here an idea so extraordinary, so utterly impossible, suddenly tapped at her brain that, added to all the rest, a new fear of her own self came upon her.

"I think I am going mad, too," said the poor child to herself. "Jani, Jani," she cried louder, "let me in!"

And Jani, hearing, did so--this time, it seemed, with alacrity.

The candles on Lady Gerardine's dressing-table had been lit, and the portrait on the panel was in full illumination.

Rosamond was crouching in bed, her head on her knees, her hair in long strands about her. She did not move upon Aspasia's entrance; she did not seem to have heard it. Now and again a moan escaped her.

"Why did you not call me?" cried the girl, turning angrily upon Jani.

The ayah shook her head, her face was wrinkled into a thousand lines of dismay. She made a helpless gesture with both hands.

"Has she been like that all night?" asked Aspasia.

"All night," answered Jani, adding apologetically: "quieter now."

"Quiet!" echoed Baby.

Quiet! It was indeed this very quietude of suffering that terrified her. From such an extremity of pain she felt herself separated by all her own young vitality as from death itself. Here the science of her heart failed her. This inert woman, moaning like a suffering animal, seemed something horribly different from her beautiful aunt. Baby dared not touch her; she could not even find a word for her.

"Speak to her, you, Jani," she whispered.

Jani obediently approached the bed and, bending towards her mistress, poured forth a flood of Hindustani. Failing to make an impression, she seized the clasped hands in her claw-like grip and shook them.

Then Rosamond raised her head and turned a vacant look. Her face was drawn beyond recognition; Baby saw a slow tear gather and roll down into the open mouth. Anything more forlorn, more hopeless, the girl thought she had never beheld. As the golden head drooped once more into its broken attitude, Baby, her own tears springing scalding to her eyes, turned determinedly to Jani:

"I will get old Mary," she cried; and, seizing her candle again, pattered from the room, all her previous terrors swallowed up in the single huge anxiety. Instinctively Aspasia felt that if Lady Gerardine's reason, nay, her life itself, were to be saved, help must be forthcoming. And the only help she could think of was that of the mystic sorrow-experienced old servant of the family.

Old Mary, whose spirit seemed already a dweller of those regions where from the point of view of the eternal nothing finite can surprise, was soon ready at Aspasia's summons.

"Yes, Miss Cuningham, I'll come. Eh, the poor lady! Don't you fret yourself, miss, she's in God's hands."

The very sight of her, so promptly robed in her everyday black with the white cap tied under her chin, and the familiar little shawl over her shoulders, was enough to inspire confidence. Baby's tremors were calming down into hopefulness when they entered Lady Gerardine's room together.

"Eh, the poor lady," cried old Mary again, after one glance at the bed. Then she approached, and took her mistress' hands into hers: "My Lady," she said, "what ails you?"

If anything could have called Rosamond back from her deep slough of despond it was this appellation from lips that had hitherto so sweetly acknowledged her only as widow. The voice and words pierced to her brain. She reared her head quickly.

"Why do you call me that?"

"My Lady!"

The arrival of Sir Arthur Gerardine had made a distinct impression upon the housekeeper's half-dreaming mind. Lady Gerardine wrenched her hands from the withered clasp, and clapped them over her ears.

"My Lady! my Lady!" she cried wildly, "I am not Lady Gerardine, I never was Lady Gerardine; I am Mrs. English, Mrs. English. Don't you know it?--you of all women!"

"Ma'am!" ejaculated old Mary, while Aspasia nipped her arm, with warning fingers.

"Oh, Mary," wailed Rosamond, and broke into a storm of sobs, "do you think he will ever understand, do you think he will ever forgive me? Oh, Mary, you who have felt his presence here, ask him--ask him if he will forgive me!"

Now Mary hardly needed Aspasia's agitated whispers; she had understood. Her blue eyes became illumined.

"In God's heaven," she said solemnly, "where dwell the happy spirits who have entered into life, all is peace and understanding--there is no need to forgive. Eh, Ma'am," she went on, while Rosamond stifled her sobs to hang upon her words, "do you think these poor things of earth can hurt those that have gone before? In heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage!"

A moment Rosamond stared with blazing eyes; then she struck at the woman with both hands.

"How dare you!" she cried hoarsely. "How dare you! Out of my sight! I want none of your God who can make such cruel laws, none of your heaven that can hold such coldness. Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry! Somewhere you are. Hear me--come to me. Come!"

Fiercely, as if madness were indeed upon her, she flung her glance from one to the other of the helpless watchers.

"I must see him! Send old Mary away, she is keeping him from me. Send her away. Harry, Harry, come to me. Tell me you forgive me... Jani, your people can raise the dead, they say. Call him back to me. By your gods or your devils call his spirit to me. Jani, will you let your child die and not help her?"

The fluent Hindustani of her childhood rushed back to her lips. Aspasia, after having huddled old Mary out of sight, stood, feeling again as if one hideous dream had been succeeded by another still more hideous; feeling, while the unknown cry rang out, and the dear voice grew hoarse and feeble, more abjectly useless herself than in her teeming energy she could ever have thought possible. All at once the ayah, who had listened at first bewildered, then with an air of darkling attention, suddenly interrupted the failing accents of her mistress by a few harsh words.

Rosamond fell back upon her pillows with a sigh of exhaustion. The Hindoo turned, and went stealthily from the room, and Aspasia sank into a chair; her limbs would no longer support her.

Rosamond lay very still, almost like death, the girl thought, her eyelids only half closed over her dulled eyes. Never had minutes seemed so interminable; never silence so charged with boding sounds, as during this span of expectation. Never would Aspasia know whether it were hours or minutes that she sat, expecting she knew not what.

At length the shuffling tread of the ayah sounded without the door, and Jani entered. She had thrown a long white veil over her head, and between her hands she held the chafing-dish in which she was wont to cook her own food. The glimmer of the hot charcoal shone fitfully on her dark intent face. A thrill of superstitious terror ran through Aspasia.

"Jani," she cried, catching at the woman's veil, "what are you going to do?" She thought the black eyes were lit with an evil spark as they looked back at her:

"Do my Missie Sahib's will," whispered Jani.

Baby gave a shivering cry.

"Oh--but, Jani, no one can call back the dead!"

Jani was crouching before the hearth. Without replying, she set her little tripod, and balanced the earthen pan on the top of it. In this lay divers herbs and other substances unknown to the watcher. A fine blue fume, with an aromatic odour, began to rise in the room.

Suddenly Jani looked up from her manipulations and spoke again. It was a belated answer to the girl's expostulation.

"Who knows," said she, in her slow difficult English, "where the spirits dwell, or how close they live to us? I will pray my gods! And you, Missie Sahib, pray yours, pray hard that she may have her wish."

The aromatic steam rose and circled. Jani drew a bag from her bosom and began to shake its contents over the pan.

"See, missie, see," she went on, her eyes fixed, "this is the good medicine. Behold, Missie Sahib shall dream, and in her dream, she shall be happy." She folded her hands, rocked herself backwards and forwards, low croonings and mutterings escaping from her lips. Now, like her who soothes a babe to rest, now with a passionate hypnotic fervour as before one of her own world-old shrines. Once she called sharply to Aspasia again:

"Pray, pray!"

Then Aspasia folded her hands, and obediently began to pray. Her first thought was to plead that she and her aunt be protected against what evil might be called into being by these unholy Eastern doings. She heard Rosamond turn in the bed, and saw dreamily, through the floating mists, that she was lying with her eyes fixed on the burning charcoal. Then the girl's thoughts began to wander. She would find herself earnestly petitioning for something, wanting something; and suddenly become aware that she knew not what it was. From where she sat the illumined portrait of Harry English looked down upon her: as once before in the dusk, it now, through the vapours, began to assume airs of life; seemed to smile, to frown. The lips quivered; then, she told herself, they spoke; the very words were ringing in her ears.

"In God's name, tell me, who is she mourning for?" It was no longer a picture, it was a living presence. Baby's eyelids drooped; her ideas grew less and less coherent. Finally it was the merest wisps of consciousness that floated through her brain. The old house seemed to hold its breath as in expectation. The stillness seemed to become palpable.

Presently, through her stupor, she felt herself called by a moaning voice and made painful clutches towards consciousness. She knew that Rosamond wanted her and struggled bravely in spirit to break the bonds that held the body.

"Oh," pleaded the voice, "he is dead indeed, and it is I who have made him dead: Harry--Harry!"

* * * * *

All at once Aspasia found herself awake--a blast of cold air had rushed into the drowsy secret atmosphere. The door had been flung open and one had entered--a man who came with quick clean tread, whose face was pale, as if indeed risen from the dead, but whose eyes shone with a wonderful light of life.

The woman in the bed reared herself up with outflung arms, and, as he who entered went straight to her, she cast herself upon his breast with a great cry.

"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry!"

Such a cry had the walls of the manor-house surely never held before. It might have been the voice of all the anguish and all the ecstasies it had known these centuries. It rang round the old walls; every echo took it up and answered it, as if they had been waiting for it.

*BOOK III*

*CHAPTER I*

Bethune had soon packed his simple baggage; then he went straight to bed, setting his will upon sleep, against thought.

But what mind perturbed can command repose? Every ugly demon of disquiet that his situation could breed took form and sat beside him on the narrow bed. Three there were of a special torment. One with the eyes of hatred that Lady Gerardine had fixed upon him that evening. A twin demon that for ever repeated in his ear: "You should have died, that he might live." And a third, whose face was veiled, whose immutable hand pointed towards the empty sandy desert of the future.

When at last, far on in the watches of the night, sleep did fall upon him, it was in trouble and confusion of mind--a dream-struggle with fate, more painful even than the reality.

He was back in the midst of the siege--one of the starving, thirst-plagued, harassed garrison. They were hard pressed, piling sandbags on a newly defiladed rampart, but his men were a leaden weight upon him. He could not stir them to activity; when he tried to shout orders or expostulation, he could bring forth nothing but a whisper. Always the barricades melted away beneath his touch, his very rifle twisted like wax when he handled it, and then there sprang into the breach Muhammed Saif-u-din, one of an endless chain of leaping swordsmen: and Muhammed stood with folded arms smiling at him ironically.

Once again the siege. They were going to bury Vane. A file of little Goorkhas were picking the grave, and he was working at it too with the shot whistling overhead. Never was grave so hard to dig. They toiled, it seemed to him, for years, and still the stones rolled back into the hole and all was to begin again. Then suddenly it was ready: they were lowering the stiff figure, rolled in a cerement of tent canvas, into the shallow ditch. And a flap of the cloth fell back from over the face of the dead. It was not the face of Vane, but the face of Harry English. Then, with the awful knowledge of the dreamer, Bethune knew that Harry was not dead. But when he tried to call out to the others to stop, again he had no voice. He saw a little brown Goorkha twist the cloth over the livid countenance. They began shovelling the stony earth upon his friend; and while he felt in his own lungs the suffocation of him that is buried alive, a voice said in his ear: "What is it to you? You, who should have died that he might live!"

The suffocation continued so intense as to drown in physical torture even the workings of the over-active brain. Then, out of the blank, dream-consciousness struggled back to him. And again it was the siege. He was on his hard and narrow couch; it was the middle of the night, there was a great anxious rumour about him; sentries were calling; the enemy were upon them. In spite of anguished struggle, Bethune remained bound, hand and foot, while never had his spirit been more vividly awake. He could hear the running footsteps of the men in the passages, the thud, thud of the soft-shod Easterns. He could hear some one break into his room, hear himself called: "Raymond, Raymond!" And with the curious double personality of the sleeper, he told himself that it was years since any one had called him by that name--long and forlorn years of solitary life.

"Raymond!" called the voice, and the red light as of a torch burned through his closed eyelids. "Wake, Raymond!"

He knew who it was. It was Harry; his comrade who wanted him in the danger. What shame to be sleeping at such a moment!

Bethune wrenched himself from his pillow and sat upright. The room was full of light to his dazzled eyes; and the voice, the voice of Harry English, was still ringing in his ears.

Muhammed Saif-u-din, who had been bending over the bed, one hand on the sleeper's shoulder, withdrew his touch and straightened himself. In his left hand he held a candle. The light flickered upon his dense black beard. But he was turbanless, and the tossed crisp hair was boyishly loose over his brow. His eyes were fixed upon Bethune, and Bethune stared back. Then Muhammed spoke:

"Raymond," he said.

For a moment that was heavier in the scales of time than most hours of men's lives, the two plunged their gaze into each other.

"My God," said Bethune, in a whisper then, "you!"

A dream! Another dream of torture! Nay, no dream this time; he was awake. The unbelievable had happened. The grave had yawned and given out a living man. Harry English was alive. He had come back from the bourne whence no traveller returns, to claim his own--to claim his wife. As in a sudden vision, more vivid than any of his troubled fancies had been to-night, Bethune saw them in each other's arms, and was himself stabbed through and through by daggers of fire--he, the man whose misery it was to love his friend's wife! ...

The dead had heard her call. He could see it all now, with horrible lucidity. All was clear to him. He himself had brought Lady Gerardine, the forgetful, back to the memory of her love. She had called, and Harry had come--from death.

And here he stood, Harry English, looking into his friend's eyes, reading his friend's soul. Suddenly Bethune grew cold to the marrow.

He would have given everything he had, his life by inches, to be able at that instant to veil those tell-tale eyes of his. But in vain; he could not drop the lids between them. At last, with a short laugh, Harry English turned away and released him, and Bethune covered his face with his hands.

Oh life, more cruel than death! These two had been closer than brothers; it was eternity itself that was giving them back to each other. And thus did they meet!

"Bethune," said he that had been the Pathan, in brief decided accents which once again whirled Raymond back to the hours when all had hung upon their leader in the crucial emergency, "there is no time for explanation. Every moment just now is precious. I must have this beard off--I want scissors, razors." As he spoke he tore his long coat from his back; he caught up the razors on the dressing-table with impatient hands. "Scissors, man, scissors! And for the Lord's sake, give me some more light!"

Bethune sprang out of bed as if he had indeed gone back to that past of which he had been dreaming and his commanding officer had called upon his services.

No stranger scene had ever been enacted within the narrow limits of this antique room, nor one more fraught with vital significance: though here, perchance, life had been born, and from here, surely, life had departed.

A silence as heavy as the last doom lay between the comrades; and every second as it passed was ticked off, it seemed, by Bethune's heart. Death they had faced together often--it was at the test of life that friendship had faltered.

Swiftly the glossy wings of the Pathan's beard fell under the snipping blades. And when he had exhausted what aid he could render, Bethune sat on the edge of the bed and watched the passing of Saif-u-din and the rising of Harry English from the dead.