Rosa Mundi by Ethel May Dell (e books free to read .TXT) 📖

Derrick's sword and he found himself vainly struggling against the awful, wild-faced fanatic's sinewy grasp. He saw the man's upraised arm, and knew with horrible certainty that he was helpless, helpless.
Then there shot out a swift, rescuing hand. A straight and deadly blow was struck. And Derrick, flinging a laugh over his shoulder, beheld a man dressed as a tribesman fall headlong over his enemy's body, struck to the earth by another swordsman.
Like lightning there flashed through his brain the memory of a man who had saved his life more than a year before on this same tumultuous Frontier--a man in tribesman's dress, with blue eyes of a strange, keen friendliness. He had it now. This was the Secret Service man. Derrick planted himself squarely over the prostrate body, and there stood while the fight surged on about him to the deadly and inevitable end.


XI
THE SECRET OUT

"All Carlyon's doing!" General Harford said a little later. "He has pulled the strings throughout, from their very midst. Carlyon the ubiquitous, Carlyon the silent, Carlyon the watchful! He has averted a horrible catastrophe. The Indian Government must be made to understand that he is a servant worth having. They say he personally led the tribesmen to their death. They certainly walked very willingly into the trap arranged for them. Now, where is Carlyon?"
No one knew. In the plain outside the camp wounded men were being collected. The General was relieved to hear that Carlyon was not among them. He sat down to make his report, a highly eulogistic report, of this man's splendid services. And then he went to late breakfast at the club-house.
In the evening Averil rode back to the station with an escort. The terrible traces of the struggle were not wholly removed. They rode round by a longer route to avoid the sight.
Seddon was the first of her friends who saw her. He was standing inside the mess-house. He went hurriedly forward and gave her brief details of the fight. Then, while they were talking, Derrick himself came running up. He greeted her with less of his boyish effusion than was customary.
"How is the Secret Service man?" he asked abruptly of Seddon. "Is he badly damaged?"
The latter looked at him hard for a second.
"You can come in and see him," he said, and led the way into the mess.
Averil and Derrick followed him hand in hand. In a few low words the boy told her of his old friend's reappearance.
"He has saved my life twice over," he said.
"He has saved more lives than yours," Seddon remarked abruptly, over his shoulder.
He led the way "to the little ante-room where, stretched on a sofa, lay Derrick's Secret Service man. He was dressed in white, his face half covered with a fold of his head-dress. But the eyes were open--blue, alert, beneath drooping lids. He was speaking, softly, quickly, as a man asleep.
"The women must be protected," he said. "Let the blackguards take the risks!"
Averil started forward with a cry, and in a moment was kneeling by his side. The strange eyes were turned upon her instantly. They were watchful still and exceeding tender--the eyes of the hero she loved. They faintly smiled at her. To his death he would keep up the farce. To his death he would never show her the secret he had borne so long.
"Ah! The message!" he said, with an effort. "You gave it?"
"There was no need of a message," Averil cried. "You invented it to get me away, to make me escape from danger. You knew that otherwise I would not have gone. It was your only reason for sending me."
He did not answer her. The smile died slowly out. His eyes passed to Derrick. He looked at him very earnestly, and there was unutterable pleading in the look.
The boy stooped forward. Shocked by the sudden discovery, he yet answered as it were involuntarily to the man's unspoken wish. He knelt down beside the girl, his arm about her shoulders. His voice came with a great sob.
"The Secret Service man and Carlyon of the Frontier in one!" he said. "A man who does not forsake his friends. I might have known."
There was a pause, a great silence. Then Carlyon of the Frontier spoke softly, thoughtfully, with grave satisfaction it seemed. He looked at neither of them, but beyond them both. His eyes were steady and fearless.
"A blackguard--a spy--yet faithful to his friends--even so," he said; and died.
The boy and girl were left to each other. He had meant it to be so--had worked for it, suffered for it. In the end Carlyon of the Frontier had done that which he had set himself to do, at a cost which none other would ever know--not even the girl who had loved him.


The Penalty

I

"Now then, you fellows, step out there! Step out like the men you are! Left--right! Left--right! That's the way! Holy Jupiter! Call those chaps savages! They're gentlemen, every jack one of 'em. That's it, my hearties! Salute the old flag! By Jove, Monty, a British squad couldn't have done it better!"
The speaker pushed back his helmet to wipe his forehead. He was very much in earnest. The African sun blazing down on his bronzed face revealed that. The blue eyes glittered out of the lean, tanned countenance. They were full of resolution, indomitable resolution, and good British pluck.
As the little company of black men swung by, with the rhythmic pad of their bare feet, he suddenly snatched out his sword and waved it high in the smiting sunlight.
"Halt!" he cried.
They stood as one man, all gleaming eyes and gleaming teeth. They were all a good head taller than the Englishman who commanded them, but they looked upon him with reverence, as a being half divine.
"Now, cheer, you beggars, cheer!" he cried. "Three cheers for the King! Hip, hip--"
"Hooray!" came in hoarse chorus from the assembled troop. It sounded like a war cry.
"Hip, hip--" yelled the Englishman again.
And again "Hooray!" came the answering yell.
"Hip, hip--" for the third time from the man with the sword.
And for the third time, "Hooray!" from the deep-chested troopers halted in the blazing sunshine.
The British officer turned about with an odd smile quivering at the corners of his mouth. There was an almost maternal tenderness about it.
He sheathed his sword.
"You beauties!" he murmured softly. "You beauties!" Then aloud, "Very good, sergeant! Dismiss them! Come along, Monty! Let's go and have a drink."
He linked his arm in that of the silent onlooker, and drew him into the little hut of rough-hewn timber which was dignified by the name, printed in white letters over the door, of "Officers' Quarters."
"What do you think of them?" he demanded, as they entered. "Aren't they soldiers? Aren't they men?"
"I think, Duncannon," the other answered slowly, "that you have worked wonders."
"Ah, you'll tell the Chief so? Won't he be astounded? He swore I should never do it; declared they'd knife me if I tried to hammer any discipline into them. Much he knows about it! Good old Chief!"
He laughed boyishly, and again wiped his hot face.
"On my soul, Monty, it's been no picnic," he declared. "But I'd have sacrificed five years' pay, and my step as well, gladly--gladly--sooner than have missed it. Here you are, old boy! Drink! Drink to the latest auxiliary force in the British Empire! Damn' thirsty climate, this."
He tossed his helmet aside, and sat down on the edge of the table--a lithe, spare figure, brimming with active strength.
"I've literally coaxed those chaps into shape," he declared. "Oh, yes, I've bullied 'em too--cursed 'em right and left; but they never turned a hair--knew it was all for their good, and took it lying down. I've taught 'em to wash too, you know. That was the hardest job of all. I knocked one great brute all round the parade-ground one day, just to show I was in earnest. He went off afterwards, and blubbed like a baby. But in the evening I found him squatting outside, quite naked, and as clean as a whistle. To quote the newspapers, I was profoundly touched. But I didn't show it, you bet. I whacked him on the shoulder, and told him to be a man."
He broke off to laugh at the reminiscence; and Montague Herne gravely set down his glass, and turned his chair with its back to the sunlight.
"Do you know you've been here eighteen months?" he said.
Duncannon nodded.
"I feel as if I'd been born here. Why?"
"Most fellows," proceeded Herne, ignoring the question, "would have been clamouring for leave long ago. Why, you have scarcely heard your own language all this time."
"I have though," said Duncannon quickly. "That's another thing I've taught 'em. They picked it up wonderfully quickly. There isn't one of 'em who doesn't know a few sentences now."
"You seem to have found your vocation in teaching these heathen to sit up and beg," observed Herne, with a dry smile.
Duncannon turned dusky red under his tan.
"Perhaps I have," he said, with a certain, doggedness.
Herne, with his back to the light, was watching him.
"Well," he said finally, "we've served our turn. The battalion is going Home!"
Duncannon gave a great start.
"Already?"
"After two years' service," the other reminded him grimly.
Duncannon fell silent, considering, the matter with bent brows.
"Who succeeds us?" he asked at length.
Herne shrugged his shoulders.
"You don't know?" There was sudden, sharp anxiety in Duncannon's voice. He got off the table with a jerk. "You must know," he said.
Herne sat motionless, but he no longer looked the other in the face.
"You've taught 'em to fight," he said slowly. "They are men enough to look after themselves now."
"What?" Duncannon flung the word with violence. He took a single stride forward, standing over Herne in an attitude that was almost menacing. His hands were clenched. "What?" he said again.
Herne leaned back, and felt for his cigarette-case.
"Take it easy, old chap!" he said. "It was bound to come, you know. It was never meant to be more than a temporary occupation among these friendlies. They have been useful to us, I admit. But we can't fight their battles for them for ever. It's time for them to stand on their own legs. Have a smoke!"
Duncannon ignored the invitation. He turned pale to the lips. For a space of seconds he said nothing whatever. Then at length, slowly, in a voice that was curiously even, "Yes, I've taught 'em to fight," he said. "And now I'm to leave 'em to be massacred, am I?"
Herne shrugged his shoulders again, not because he was actually indifferent, but because, under the circumstances, it was the easiest answer to make.
Duncannon went on in the same dead-level tone:
"Yes, they've been useful to us, these friendlies. They've made common cause with us against those infernal Wandis. They might have stayed neutral, or they might have whipped us off the ground. But they didn't. They brought us supplies, and they brought us mules, and they helped us along generally, and hauled us out of tight corners. They've given us all we asked for, and more to it. And now they are going to pay the penalty, to reap our gratitude. They're going to be left to themselves to fight our enemies--the fellows we couldn't beat--single-handed, without experience, without a leader, and only half trained. They are going to be left as a human sacrifice to pay our debts."
He paused, standing erect and tense, staring out into the blinding sunlight. Then suddenly, like the swift kindling of a flame, his attitude changed. He flung up his hands