She leaned her head against Olga"s shoulder, rocking a little to and fro with closed eyes. "Yes," she said at last, "you can help me, Olga, if you will. That ring on the table, dear,--a ring with rubies--do you see it?"
"Yes," breathed Olga, holding her very close.
"Then just take it, dear." Muriel"s voice was unutterably weary; she seemed to speak with a great effort. "It belongs to Nick. He gave it to me once, long ago, in remembrance of something. I want you to give it back to him, and tell him simply that I prefer to forget."
Olga took up the ring. Her lips were trembling. "Aren"t you--aren"t you being nice to Nick any more, Muriel?" she asked in a whisper.
Muriel did not answer.
"Not when you promised?" the child urged piteously.
There was silence. Muriel"s face was hidden. Her black hair hung about her like a cloud, veiling her from her friend"s eyes. For a long time she said nothing whatever. Then at last without moving she made reply.
"It"s no use, Olga. I can"t! I can"t! It"s not my doing. It"s his.
Oh, I think my heart is broken!" Through the anguish of weeping that followed, Olga clasped her pa.s.sionately close, frightened, by an intensity of suffering such as she had never seen before and was powerless to alleviate.
She slept with Muriel that night, but, waking in the dawning, just when Muriel had sunk to sleep, she crept out of bed and, with Nick"s ring grasped tightly in her hand, softly stole away.
PART V
CHAPTER XLV
THE VISION
A gorgeous sunset lay in dusky, fading crimson upon the Plains, trailing to darkness in the east. The day had been hot and cloudless, but a faint, chill wind had sprung up with the pa.s.sing of the sun, and it flitted hither and thither like a wandering spirit over the darkening earth.
Down in the native quarter a _tom-tom_ throbbed, persistent, exasperating as the voice of conscience. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked restlessly, at irregular intervals. And at a point between _tom-tom_ and dog a couple of parrots screeched vociferously.
Over all, the vast Indian night was rushing down on silent, mysterious wings. Crimson merged to grey in the telling, and through the falling dark there shone, detached and wonderful, a single star.
In the little wooden bungalow over against, the water-works a light had been kindled and gleamed out in a red streak across the Plain.
Other lights were beginning to flicker also from all points of the compa.s.s, save only where a long strip of jungle lay like a blot upon the face of the earth. But the red light burned the steadiest of them all.
It came from the shaded lamp of an Englishman, and beneath it with stubborn, square-jawed determination the Englishman sat at work.
Very steadily his hand moved over the white paper, and the face that was bent above it never varied--a face that still possessed something of the freshness of youth though the set of the lips was firm even to sternness and the line of the chin was hard. He never raised his eyes as he worked except to refer to the notebook at his elbow. The pa.s.sage of time seemed of no moment to him.
Yet at the soft opening of the door, he did look up for an instant, a gleam of expectancy upon his face that died immediately.
"All right, Sammy, directly," he said, returning without pause to his work.
Sammy, butler, bearer, and general factotum, irreproachable from his snowy turban to his white-slippered feet, did not take the hint to retire, but stood motionless just inside the room, waiting with statuesque patience till his master should deign to bestow upon him the favour of his full attention.
After a little Will Musgrave realised this, and with an abrupt sigh sat back in his chair and rubbed his hand across his forehead.
"Well?" he said then. "You needn"t trouble to tell me that the mail has pa.s.sed, for I heard the fellow half an hour ago. Of course there were no letters?"
The man shook his head despondingly. "No letters, sahib."
"Then what do you want?" asked Will, beginning to eye his work again.
Sammy--so dubbed by Daisy long ago because his own name was too sore a tax upon her memory--sent a look of gleaming entreaty across the lamp-lit s.p.a.ce that separated him from his master.
"The dinner grows cold, sahib," he observed pathetically.
Will smiled a little. "All right, my good Sammy. What does it matter?
I"m sure if I don"t mind, you needn"t. And I"m busy just now."
But the Indian stood his ground. "What will my mem-sahib say to me,"
he said, "when she comes and finds that my lord has been starved?"
Will"s face changed. It was a very open face, boyishly sincere. He did not laugh at the earnest question. He only gravely shook his head.
"The mem-sahib will come," the man declared, with conviction. "And what will her servant say when she asks him why his master is so thin?
She will say, "Sammy, I left him in your care. What have you done to him?" And, sahib, what answer can her servant give?"
Will clasped his hands at the back of his head in a careless att.i.tude, but his face was grim. "I don"t think you need worry yourself, Sammy,"
he said. "I am not expecting the mem-sahib--at present."
Nevertheless, moved by the man"s solicitude, he rose after a moment and laid his work together. He might as well dine, he reflected, as sit and argue about it. With a heavy step he pa.s.sed into the room where dinner awaited him, and sat down at the table.
No, he was certainly not expecting her at present. He had even of late begun to ask himself if he expected her at all. It was five months now since the news of her severe illness had almost induced him to throw everything aside and go to her. He had only been deterred from this by a very serious letter from Dr. Jim, strongly advising him to remain where he was, since it was highly improbable that he would be allowed to see Daisy for weeks or even months were he at hand, and she would most certainly be in no fit state to return with him to India. That letter had been to Will as the pa.s.sing knell of all he had ever hoped or desired. Definitely it had told him very little, but he was not lacking in perception, and he had read a distinct and wholly unmistakable meaning behind the guarded, kindly sentences. And he knew when he laid the letter down that in Dr. Jim"s opinion his presence might do incalculable harm. From that day forward he had entertained no further idea of return, settling down again to his work with a dogged patience that was very nearly allied to despair.
He was undoubtedly a rising man. There were prospects of a speedy improvement in his position. It was unlikely that he would be called upon to spend another hot season in the scorching Plains. Steady perseverance and indubitable talent had made their mark. But success was dust and ashes to him now. He did not greatly care if he went or stayed.
That Daisy was well again, or on the high-road to recovery, he knew; but he had not received a single letter from her since her illness.
Jim"s epistles were very few and far between, but Nick had maintained a fairly regular correspondence with him till a few weeks back when it had unaccountably lapsed. But then Nick had done unaccountable things before, and he did not set down his silence to inconstancy. He was probably making prodigious efforts on his behalf, and Will awaited every mail with an eagerness he could not quite suppress, which turned invariably, however, into a sick sense of disappointment.
That Daisy would ever return to him now he did not for an instant believe, but there remained the chance--the slender, infinitesimal chance--that she might ask him to go to her. More than a flying visit she would know he could not manage. His work was his living, and hers. But so much Nick"s powers of persuasion might one day accomplish though he would not allow himself to contemplate the possibility, while week by week the chance dwindled.
So he sat alone and unexpectant at his dinner-table that night and made heroic efforts to pacify the vigilant Sammy whose protest had warmed his heart a little if it had not greatly a.s.sisted his appet.i.te.
He was glad when the meal was over, and he could saunter out on to the verandah with his cigar. The night was splendid with stars; but it held no moon. The wind had died away, but it had left a certain chill behind; and somehow he was reminded of a certain evening of early summer in England long ago, when he and Daisy had strolled together in an English garden, and she had yielded impulsively to his earnest wooing and had promised to be his wife. He remembered still the little laugh half sweet, half bitter, with which she had surrendered, the soft raillery of her blue eyes that yet had not wholly mocked him, the dainty charm of her submission. She had not loved him. He had known it even then. She had almost told him so. But with a boy"s impetuosity he had taken the little she had to give, trusting to the future to make her all his own.
Ah, well! He caught himself sighing, and found that his cigar was out.
With something less than his customary self-suppression he pitched it forth into the darkness. He could not even smoke with any enjoyment.
He would go indoors and work.
He swung round on his heel, and started back along the verandah towards his room from which the red light streamed. Three strides he took with his eyes upon the ground. Then for no reason that he knew he glanced up towards that bar of light. The next instant he stood still as one transfixed, and all the blood rushed in tumult to his heart.