"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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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.