CHAPTER XXV.
I came to myself slowly and painfully. I was conscious of an aching head and a shooting pain down my left arm when I tried to move, and everything seemed dream-like and unreal. Nightmare visions floated before me. I felt myself falling—falling again. Once Harry Rayburn’s face seemed to come to me out of the mist. Almost I imagined it real. Then it floated away again, mocking me. Once, I remember, some one put a cup to my lips and I drank. A black face grinned into mine—a devil’s face, I thought it, and screamed out. Then dreams again—long troubled dreams in which I vainly sought Harry Rayburn to warn him—warn him—what of? I did not know myself. But there was some danger—some great danger—and I alone could save him. Then darkness again, merciful darkness, and real sleep.
I woke at last myself again. The long nightmare was over. I remembered perfectly everything that had happened, my hurried flight from the hotel to meet Harry, the man in the shadows and that last terrible moment of falling——.
By some miracle or other I had not been killed. I was bruised and aching and very weak, but I was alive. But where was I? Moving my head with difficulty I looked round me. I was in a small room with rough wooden walls. On them were hung skins of animals and various tusks of ivory. I was lying on a kind of rough couch, also covered with skins, and my left arm was bandaged up and felt stiff and uncomfortable. At first I thought I was alone, and then I saw a man’s figure sitting between me and the light, his head turned toward the window. He was so still that he might have been carved out of wood. Something in the close-cropped black head was familiar to me, but I did not dare to let my imagination run astray. Suddenly he turned, and I caught my breath. It was Harry Rayburn. Harry Rayburn in the flesh.
He rose and came over to me.
“Feeling better”? he said a trifle awkwardly.
I could not answer. The tears were running down my face. I was weak still, but I held his hand in both of mine. If only I could die like this, whilst he stood there looking down on me with that new look in his eyes.
“Don’t cry, Anne. Please don’t cry. You’re safe now. No one shall hurt you”.
He went and fetched a cup and brought it to me.
“Drink some of this milk”.
I drank obediently. He went on talking in a low coaxing tone such as he might have used to a child.
“Don’t ask any more questions now. Go to sleep again. You’ll be stronger by and by. I’ll go away if you like”.
“No,” I said urgently. “No, no”.
“Then I’ll stay.”
He brought a small stool over beside me and sat there. He laid his hand over mine, and, soothed and comforted, I dropped off to sleep once more.
It must have been evening then, but when I woke again the sun was high in the heavens. I was alone in the hut, but as I stirred an old native woman came running in. She was hideous as sin, but she grinned at me encouragingly. She brought me water in a basin and helped me wash my face and hands. Then she brought me a large bowl of soup, and I finished it every drop! I asked her several questions, but she only grinned and nodded and chattered away in a guttural language, so I gathered she knew no English.
Suddenly she stood up and drew back respectfully as Harry Rayburn entered. He gave her a nod of dismissal and she went out leaving us alone. He smiled at me.
“Really better to-day”!
“Yes, indeed, but very bewildered still. Where am I”?
“You’re on a small island on the Zambesi about four miles up from the Falls”.
“Do—do my friends know I’m here”?
He shook his head.
“I must send word to them”.
“That is as you like of course, but if I were you I should wait until you are a little stronger”.
“Why”?
He did not answer immediately, so I went on.
“How long have I been here”?
His answer amazed me.
“Nearly a month”.
“Oh!” I cried. “I must send word to Suzanne. She’ll be terribly anxious”.
“Who is Suzanne”?
“Mrs. Blair. I was with her and Sir Eustace and Colonel Race at the hotel—but you knew that surely”?
He shook his head.
“I know nothing, except that I found you, caught in the fork of a tree, unconscious and with a badly wrenched arm”.
“Where was the tree”?
“Overhanging the ravine. But for your clothes catching on the branches, you would infallibly have been dashed to pieces”.
I shuddered. Then a thought struck me.
“You say you didn’t know I was there. What about the note then”?
“What note”?
“The note you sent me, asking me to meet you in the clearing”.
He stared at me.
“I sent no note”.
I felt myself flushing up to the roots of my hair. Fortunately he did not seem to notice.
“How did you come to be on the spot in such a marvellous manner”? I asked in as nonchalant a manner as I could assume. “And what are you doing in this part of the world, anyway”?
“I live here,” he said simply.
“On this island”?
“Yes, I came here after the War. Sometimes I take parties from the hotel out in my boat, but it costs me very little to live, and mostly I do as I please”.
“You live here all alone”?
“I am not pining for society, I assure you,” he replied coldly.
“I am sorry to have inflicted mine upon you,” I retorted, “but I seem to have had very little to say in the matter”.
To my surprise his eyes twinkled a little.
“None whatever. I slung you across my shoulders like a sack of coal and carried you to my boat. Quite like a primitive man of the Stone Age”.
“But for a different reason,” I put in.
He flushed this time, a deep burning blush. The tan of his face was suffused.
“But you haven’t told me how you came to be wandering about so conveniently for me”? I said hastily, to cover his confusion.
“I couldn’t sleep. I was restless—disturbed—had the feeling something was going to happen. In the end I took the boat and came ashore and tramped down towards the Falls. I was just at the head of the palm gully when I heard you scream”.
“Why didn’t you get help from the hotel instead of carting me all the way here”? I asked.
He flushed again.
“I suppose it seems an unpardonable liberty to you—but I don’t think that even now you realize your danger! You think I should have informed your friends? Pretty friends, who allowed you to be decoyed out to death. No, I swore to myself that I’d take better care of you than any one else could. Not a soul comes to this island. I got old Batani, whom I cured of a fever once, to come and look after you. She’s loyal. She’ll never say a word. I could keep you here for months and no one would ever know”.
I could keep you here for months and no one would ever know! How some words please one!
“You did quite right,” I said quietly. “And I shall not send word to any one. A day or so more anxiety doesn’t make much difference. It’s not as though they were my own people. They’re only acquaintances really—even Suzanne. And whoever wrote that note must have known—a great deal. It was not the work of an outsider”.
I managed to mention the note this time without blushing at all.
“If you would be guided by me——” he said, hesitating.
“I don’t expect I shall be,” I answered candidly. “But there’s no harm in hearing”.
“Do you always do what you like, Miss Beddingfeld”?
“Usually,” I replied cautiously. To any one else I would have said “Always”.
“I pity your husband,” he said unexpectedly.
“You needn’t,” I retorted. “I shouldn’t dream of marrying any one unless I was madly in love with them. And of course there is really nothing a woman enjoys so much as doing all the things she doesn’t like for the sake of some one she does like. And the more self-willed she is, the more she likes it”.
“I’m afraid I disagree with you. The boot is on the other leg as a rule”. He spoke with a slight sneer.
“Exactly,” I cried eagerly. “And that’s why there are so many unhappy marriages. It’s all the fault of the men. Either they give way to their women—and then the women despise them, or else they are utterly selfish, insist on their own way and never say ‘thank you.’ Successful husbands make their wives do just what they want, and then make a frightful fuss of them for doing it. Women like to be mastered, but they hate not to have their sacrifices appreciated. On the other hand, men don’t really appreciate women who are nice to them all the time. When I am married, I shall be a devil most of the time, but every now and then, when my husband least expects it, I shall show him what a perfect angel I can be”!
Harry laughed outright.
“What a cat and dog life you will lead”.
“Lovers always fight,” I assured him. “Because they don’t understand each other. And by the time they do understand each other they aren’t in love any more”.
“Does the reverse hold true? Are people who fight each other always lovers”?
“I—I don’t know,” I said, momentarily confused.
He turned away to the fireplace.
“Like some more soup”? he asked in a casual tone.
“Yes, please. I’m so hungry that I could eat a hippopotamus”.
“That’s good”.
He busied himself with the fire; I watched.
“When I can get off the couch, I’ll cook for you,” I promised.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about cooking”.
“I can warm up things out of tins as well as you can,” I retorted, pointing to a row of tins on the mantelpiece.
“Touché,” he said, and laughed.
His whole face changed when he laughed. It became boyish, happy—a different personality.
I enjoyed my soup. As I ate it I reminded him that he had not, after all, tendered me his advice.
“Ah, yes, what I was going to say was this. If I were you I would stay quietly perdu here until you are quite strong again. Your enemies will believe you dead. They will hardly be surprised at not finding the body. It would have been dashed to pieces on the rocks and carried down with the torrent”.
I shivered.
“Once you are completely restored to health, you can journey quietly on to Beira and get a boat to take you back to England”.
“That would be very tame,” I objected scornfully.
“There speaks a foolish schoolgirl”.
“I’m not a foolish schoolgirl,” I cried indignantly. “I’m a woman”.
He looked at me with an expression I could not fathom as I sat up flushed and excited.
“God help me, so you are,” he muttered, and went abruptly out.
My recovery was rapid. The two injuries I had sustained were a knock on the head and a badly wrenched arm. The latter was the most serious and, to begin with, my rescuer had believed it to be actually broken. A careful examination, however, convinced him that it was not so, and although it was very painful I was recovering the use of it quite quickly.
It was a strange time. We were cut off from the world, alone together as Adam and Eve might have been—but with what a difference! Old Batani hovered about counting no more than a dog might have done. I insisted on doing the cooking, or as much of it as I could manage with one arm. Harry was out a good part of the time, but we spent long hours together lying out in the shade of the palms, talking and quarrelling—discussing everything under high heaven, quarrelling and making it up again. We bickered a good deal, but there grew up between us a real and lasting comradeship such as I could never have believed possible. That—and something else.
The time was drawing near, I knew it, when I should be well enough to leave and I realized it with a heavy heart. Was he going to let me go? Without a word? Without a sign? He had fits of silence, long moody intervals, moments when he would spring up and tramp off by himself. One evening the crisis came. We had finished our simple meal and were sitting in the doorway of the hut. The sun was sinking.
Hairpins were necessities of life with which Harry had not been able to provide me, and my hair, straight and black, hung to my knees. I sat, my chin on my hands, lost in meditation. I felt rather than saw Harry looking at me.
“You look like a witch, Anne,” he said at last, and there was something in his voice that had never been there before.
He reached out his hand and just touched my hair. I shivered. Suddenly he sprang up with an oath.
“You must leave here to-morrow, do you hear?” he cried. “I—I can’t bear any more. I’m only a man after all. You must go, Anne. You must. You’re not a fool. You know yourself that this can’t go on”.
“I suppose not,” I said slowly. “But—it’s been happy, hasn’t it”?
“Happy? It’s been hell”!
“As bad as that”!
“What do you torment me for? Why are you mocking at me? Why do you say that—laughing into your hair”?
“I wasn’t laughing. And I’m not mocking. If you want me to go, I’ll go. But if you want me to stay—I’ll stay”.
“Not that!” he cried vehemently. “Not that. Don’t tempt me, Anne. Do you realize what I am? A criminal twice over. A man hunted down. They know me here as Harry Parker—they think I’ve been away on a trek up country, but any day they may put two and two together—and then the blow will fall. You’re so young, Anne, and so beautiful—with the kind of beauty that sends men mad. All the world’s before you—love, life, everything. Mine’s behind me—scorched, spoiled, with a taste of bitter ashes”.
“If you don’t want me——”.
“You know I want you. You know that I’d give my soul to pick you up in my arms and keep you here, hidden away from the world, for ever and ever. And you’re tempting me, Anne. You, with your long witch’s hair, and your eyes that are golden and brown and green and never stop laughing even when your mouth is grave. But I’ll save you from yourself and from me. You shall go to-night. You shall go to Beira——”.
“I’m not going to Beira,” I interrupted.
“You are. You shall go to Beira if I have to take you there myself and throw you on to the boat. What do you think I’m made of? Do you think I’ll wake up night after night, fearing they’ve got you? One can’t go on counting on miracles happening. You must go back to England, Anne—and—and marry and be happy”.
“With a steady man who’ll give me a good home”!
“Better that than—utter disaster”.
“And what of you”?
His face grew grim and set.
“I’ve got my work ready to hand. Don’t ask what it is. You can guess, I dare say. But I’ll tell you this—I’ll clear my name, or die in the attempt, and I’ll choke the life out of the damned scoundrel who did his best to murder you the other night”.
“We must be fair,” I said. “He didn’t actually push me over”.
“He’d no need to. His plan was cleverer than that. I went up to the path afterwards. Everything looked all right, but by the marks on the ground I saw that the stones which outline the path had been taken up and put down again in a slightly different place. There are tall bushes growing just over the edge. He’d balanced the outside stones on them, so that you’d think you were still on the path when in reality you were stepping into nothingness. God help him if I lay my hands upon him”!
He paused a minute and then said in a totally different tone:
“We’ve never spoken of these things, Anne, have we? But the time’s come. I want you to hear the whole story—from the beginning”.
“If it hurts you to go over the past, don’t tell me,” I said in a low voice.
“But I want you to know. I never thought I should speak of that part of my life to any one. Funny, isn’t it, the tricks Fate plays”?
He was silent for a minute or two. The sun had set, and the velvety darkness of the African night was enveloping us like a mantle.
“Some of it I know,” I said gently.
“What do you know”?
“I know that your real name is Harry Lucas”.
Still he hesitated—not looking at me, but staring straight out in front of him. I had no clue as to what was passing in his mind, but at last he jerked his head forward as though acquiescing in some unspoken decision of his own and began his story.