"Oh, what?" she broke in. "Tell me quickly--quickly! It is my father, I know, I know. He has been hurt--wounded--"
She stopped. Nick had lifted one hand as if to silence her. "My dear,"
he said, his voice very low, "your father died last night--before we left the fort."
At her cry of agony he started up, and in a second he was on his knees by her side and had gathered her to him as though she had been a little child in need of comfort. She did not shrink from him in her extremity. The blow had been too sudden, too overwhelming. It blotted out all lesser sensibilities. In those first terrible moments she did not think of Nick at all, was scarcely conscious of his presence, though she vaguely felt the comfort of his arms.
And he, holding her fast against his breast, found no consolation, no word of any sort wherewith to soothe her. He only rocked her gently, pressing her head to his shoulder, while his face, bent above her, quivered all over as the face of a man in torture.
Muriel spoke at last, breaking her stricken silence with a strangely effortless composure. "Tell me more," she said.
She stirred in his arms as if to free herself from some oppression, and finally drew herself away from him, though not as if she wished to escape his touch. She still seemed to be hardly aware of him. He was the medium of her information, that was all. Nick dropped back into his former att.i.tude, his hands clasped firmly round his knees, his eyes, keen as a bird"s and extremely bright, gazing across the ravine.
His lips still quivered a little, but his voice was perfectly even and quiet.
"It happened very soon after the firing began. It must have been directly after he left you. He was. .h.i.t in the breast, just over the heart. We couldn"t do anything for him. He knew himself that it was mortal. In fact, I think he had almost expected it. We took him into the guardroom and made him as easy as possible. He lost consciousness before he died. He was lying unconscious when I came to you."
Muriel made a sharp movement. "And you never told me," she said, in a dry whisper.
"I thought it best," he answered with great gentleness. "You could not have gone to him. He didn"t wish it."
"Why not?" she demanded, and suddenly her voice rang harsh again. "Why could I not have gone to him? Why didn"t he wish it?"
Nick hesitated for a single instant. Then, "It was for your own sake,"
he said, not looking at her.
"You mean he suffered?"
"While he remained conscious--yes." Nick spoke reluctantly. "It didn"t last long," he said.
She scarcely seemed to hear him. "And so you tricked me," she said; "you tricked me while my father was lying dying. I was not to see him--either then or after--for my own sake! And do you think"--her voice rising--"do you think that you were in any way justified in treating me so? Do you think it was merciful to blind me and to take from me all I should ever have of comfort to look back upon? Do you think I couldn"t have borne it all ten thousand times easier if I could have seen and known the very worst? It was my right--it was my right! How dared you take it from me? I will never forgive you--never!"
She was on her feet as the pa.s.sionate protest burst from her, but she swayed as she stood and flung out her arms with a groping gesture.
"I could have borne it," she cried again wildly, piteously. "I could have borne anything--anything--if I had only known!"
She broke into a sudden, terrible sobbing, and threw herself down headlong upon the earth, clutching at the moss with shaking, convulsive fingers, and crying between her sobs for "Daddy! Daddy!" as though her agony could pierce the dividing barrier and bring him back to her. Nick made no further attempt to help her. He sat gazing stonily out before him in a sphinx-like stillness that never varied while the storm of her anguish spent itself at his side.
Even after her sobs had ceased from sheer exhaustion he made no movement, no sign that he was so much as thinking of her.
Only when at last she raised herself with difficulty, and put the heavy hair back from her disfigured face, did he turn slightly and hold out to her a small tin cup.
"It"s only water," he said gently. "Have some."
She took it almost mechanically and drank, then lay back with closed eyes and burning head, sick and blinded by her paroxysm of weeping.
A little later she felt his hands moving about her again, but she was too spent to open her eyes. He bathed her face with a care equal to any woman"s, smoothed back her hair, and improvised a pillow for her head.
And afterwards she knew that he sat down by her, out of sight but close at hand, a silent presence watching over her, till at last, worn out with grief and the bitter strain of the past weeks, she sank into natural, dreamless slumber, and slept for hours.
CHAPTER V
THE DEVIL IN THE WILDERNESS
It was dark when Muriel awoke--so dark that she lay for a while dreamily fancying herself in bed. But this illusion pa.s.sed very quickly as her brain, refreshed and active, resumed its work. The cry of a jackal at no great distance roused her to full consciousness, and she started up in the chill darkness, trembling and afraid.
Instantly a warm hand grasped hers, and a low voice spoke. "It"s all right," said Nick. "I"m here."
"Oh, isn"t it dark?" she said. "Isn"t it dark?"
"Don"t be frightened," he answered gently. "Come close to me. You are cold."
She crept to him shivering, thankful for the shielding arm he threw around her.
"The sunrise can"t be far off," he said. "I expect you are hungry, aren"t you?"
She was very hungry, and he put a biscuit into her hand. The very fact of eating there in the darkness in some measure rea.s.sured her. She ate several biscuits, and began to feel much better.
"Getting warmer?" questioned Nick. "Let me feel your hands." They were still cold, and he took them and thrust them down against his breast.
She shrank a little at the touch of his warm flesh.
"It will make you so cold," she murmured.
But he only laughed at her softly, and pressed them closer. "I am not easily chilled," he said. "Besides, it"s sleeping that makes you cold.
And I haven"t slept."
Muriel heard the news with astonishment. She was no longer angry with Nick, and her fears of him were dormant. Though she would never forget and might never forgive his treachery, he was her sole protector in that wilderness of many terrors, and she lacked the resolution to keep him at arm"s length. There was, moreover, something comforting in his presence, something that vastly rea.s.sured her, making her lean upon him almost in spite of herself.
"Haven"t you slept at all?" she asked him in wonder. "How in the world did you keep awake?"
He did not answer her, only laughed again as though at some secret joke. He seemed to be in rather good spirits, she noticed, and she marvelled at him with a heavy pain at her heart that was utterly beyond expression or relief.
She sat silent for a little, then at length withdrew her hands, a.s.suring him that they were quite warm.
"And I want to talk to you," she added, in a more practical tone than she had previously managed to a.s.sume. "Mr. Ratcliffe, you may be in command of this expedition, but I think you ought to tell me your plans."
"Call me Nick, won"t you?" he said. "It"ll make things easier. You are quite welcome to know my plans, such as they are. I haven"t managed to develop anything very ingenious during all these hours. You see we are, to a certain extent, at the mercy of circ.u.mstances. This place isn"t more than a dozen miles from the fort, and the hills all round are infested with tribesmen. I hoped at first that we should get clear in the night, but you were asleep, and on the whole it seemed best to lie up for another day. We might make a bolt for it to-morrow night if all goes well. I have a sort of instinct for these mountains. There is always plenty of cover for those who know how to find it. It will be slow progress, of course, but we will keep moving south, and, given luck, we may fall in with Ba.s.sett"s relief column before many days."
So with much serenity he disclosed his plans, and Muriel marvelled afresh at the confidence that buoyed him up. Was he really as sublimely free from anxiety as he wished her to believe, she wondered?
It was difficult to think otherwise, even though he had admitted that they were governed by circ.u.mstance. She began to think that there was magic in him, some hidden reserve force upon which he could always draw when all other resources failed.
Another matter had also caught her attention, and this she presently decided to investigate. She had never thought of Nick Ratcliffe as in any sense a remarkable person before.
"Did you actually carry me ten miles?" she asked.
"Something very near it," said Nick.