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

struggle, to be overwhelmed at last by the odds he had so bravely dared? It was almost unthinkable. He could not reconcile himself to it. And yet at the heart of him lurked the conviction that failure was to be his portion. He had attempted the impossible. He had offered himself in vain; and any further sacrifice could only end in the same way. If Bobby Duncannon were indeed dead, his task was done; but he had felt so assured that he still lived that he could not bring himself to expel the belief. It was the lack of knowledge that he could not endure, the thought of returning to the woman he loved empty-handed, of seeing once more the soul-hunger in her eyes, and being unable to satisfy it.
No, he could not face it. He would have to go back, even though it meant to his destruction, unless this Mad Prophet could furnish him with proof incontestable of young Duncannon's death. He glanced with impatience towards the entrance. Why did the man delay?
He supposed the fellow would want _backsheesh_, and that thought sent him searching among his tattered clothing for his pocket-book. He found it with relief; and then again physical weakness asserted itself, and he leaned back with closed eyes. His shoulder was throbbing with a fiery pain. He wondered if Hassan knew how to treat it. If not, things would probably get serious.
The buzzing of a multitude of flies distracted his thoughts from this, and he began to long ardently for a smoke. He roused himself to hunt for his cigarette-case; but he sought in vain and finally desisted with a groan.
It was at this point that the tent-flap was drawn aside, admitting for a moment the marvellous orange glow of the sinking sun, and a man attired as an Arab came noiselessly in.


VII

Herne lay quite still, regarding his visitor with critical eyes.
The latter stood with his back to the western glow. His face was more than half concealed by one end of his turban. He made no advance, but stood like a brazen image, motionless, inscrutable, seeming scarcely aware of the Englishman's presence.
It was Herne who broke the silence. The light was failing very rapidly. He raised his voice with a touch of impatience.
"Hassan, where are you?"
At that the stranger moved, as one coming out of a deep reverie.
"There is no need to call your servant," he said, halting slightly over the words. "I speak your language."
Herne opened his eyes in surprise. He knew that many of the Wandis had come in contact with Englishmen, but few of them could be said to have a knowledge of the language. He saw at a glance that the man before him was no ordinary Wandi warrior. His build was too insignificant, more suggestive of the Arab than the negro. His hands were like the hands of an Egyptian mummy, dark of hue and incredibly bony. He wished he could see the fellow's face. Hassan's description had fired his curiosity.
"So," he said, "you speak English, do you? I am glad to hear it. And you are the Mullah of Wanda, the man who saved my life?"
He received no reply whatever from the man in the doorway. It was as if he had not spoken.
Herne frowned. It seemed likely to be an unsatisfactory interview after all. But just as he was about to launch upon a fresh attempt, the man spoke, in a slow, deep voice that was not without a certain richness of tone.
"You came to Wanda--my prisoner," he said. "You left because I do not kill white men, and they are not good slaves. But if you return to Wanda you will die. Therefore be wise, and go back to your people, as I go to mine!"
Herne raised himself to a sitting position. His shoulder was beginning to hurt him intolerably, but he strove desperately to keep it in the background of his consciousness.
"Why don't you kill white men?" he said.
But the question was treated with a silence that felt contemptuous.
The glow without was fading swiftly, and the darkness was creeping up like a curtain over the desert. The weird figure standing upright against the door-flap seemed to take on a deeper mystery, a silence more unfathomable.
Herne began to feel as if he were in a dream. If the man had not spoken he would have wondered if his very presence were but hallucination.
He gathered his wits for another effort.
"Tell me," he said, "do you never use white men as slaves?"
Still that uncompromising silence.
Herne persevered.
"Three years ago, before the Wandis conquered the Zambas, there was a white man, an Englishman, who placed himself at their head, and taught them to fight. I am here to seek him. I shall not leave without news of him."
"The Englishman is dead!" It was as if a mummy uttered the words. The speaker neither stirred nor looked at Herne. He seemed to be gazing into space.
Herne waited for more, but none came.
"I want proof of his death," he said, speaking very deliberately. "I must know beyond all doubt when and how he died."
"The Englishman was burned with the other captives," the slow, indifferent voice went on. "He died in the fire!"
"What?" said Herne, with violence. "You devil! I don't believe it! I thought you did not kill white men!"
"He was not as other white men," came the unmoved reply. "The Wandis feared his magic. Fire alone can destroy magic. He died slowly but--he died!"
"You devil!" Herne said again.
His hand was fumbling feverishly at his bandaged shoulder. He scarcely knew what he was doing. In his impotent fury he sought only for freedom, not caring how he obtained it. Never in the whole of his life had he longed so overpoweringly to crush a man's throat between his hands.
But his strength was unequal to the effort. He sank back, gasping, half-fainting, yet struggling fiercely against his weakness. Suddenly he was aware of the blood welling up to his injured shoulder. He knew in an instant that the wound had burst out afresh; knew, too, that the bandage would be of no avail to check the flow.
"Fetch Hassan!" he jerked out.
But the man before him made no movement to obey.
"Are you going to stand by, you infernal fiend, and watch me die?" Herne flung at him.
A thick mist was beginning to obscure his vision, but it seemed to him that those last words of his took effect. Undoubtedly the man moved, came nearer, stooped over him.
"Go!" Herne gasped. "Go!"
He could feel the blood soaking through the bandage under his hand, spreading farther every instant.
This was to be the end, then, to lie at the mercy of this madman till death came to blot out all his efforts, all his hopes. He made a last feeble effort to stanch that deadly flow, failed, sank down exhausted.
It was then that a voice came to him out of the gathering darkness, quick and urgent, speaking to him, as it were, across the gulf of years:
"Monty, Monty, lie still, man! I'll see to you!"
That voice recalled Herne, renewed his failing faculties, galvanized him into life. The man with the mummy's hands was bending over him, stripping away the useless bandage, fashioning it anew for the moment's emergency. In a few seconds he was working at it with pitiless strength, twisting and twisting again till the tension told, and Herne forced back a groan.
But he clung to consciousness with all his quivering strength, bewildered, unbelieving still, yet hovering on the edge of conviction.
"Is it really you, Bobby?" he whispered. "I can't believe it! Let me look at you! Let me see for myself!"
The man beside him made no answer. He had snatched up the first thing he could find, a fragment of a broken tent-peg, to tighten the pressure upon the wound.
But, as if in response to Herne's appeal, he freed one hand momentarily, and pushed back the covering from his face. And in the dim light Herne looked, looked closely; then shut his eyes and sank back with an uncontrollable shudder.
"Merciful Heaven!" he said.


VIII

"Monty, I say! Monty!"
Again the gulf of years was bridged; again the voice he knew came down to him. Herne wrestled with himself, and opened his eyes.
The man in Arab dress was still kneeling by his side, the skeleton hands still supported him, but the face was veiled again.
He suppressed another violent shudder.
"In Heaven's name," he said, "what are you?"
"I am a dead man," came the answer. "Don't move! I will call your man in a moment, but I must speak to you first. Do you feel all right?"
"Bobby!" Herne said.
"No, I am not Bobby. He died, you know, ages ago. They cut him up and burned him. Don't move. I have stopped the bleeding, but it will easily start again. Lean back--so! You needn't look at me. You will never see me again. But if I hadn't shown you--once, you would never have understood. Are you comfortable? Can you listen?"
"Bobby!" Herne said again.
He seemed incapable of anything but that one word, spoken over and over, as though trying to make himself believe the incredible.
"I am not Bobby," the voice reiterated. "Put that out of your mind for ever! He belonged to another life, another world. Don't you believe me? Must I show you--again? Do you really want to talk with me face to face?"
"Yes," Herne said, with abrupt resolution. "I will see you--talk with you--as you are."
There was a brief pause, and he braced himself to face, without blenching, the thing that a moment before, his soldier's training notwithstanding, had turned him sick with horror. But he was spared the ordeal.
"There is no need," said the familiar voice. "You have seen enough. I don't want to haunt you, even though I am dead. What put it into your head to come in search of me? You must have known I should be long past any help from you."
"I--wanted to know," Herne said. He was feeling curiously helpless, as if, in truth, he were talking with a mummy. All the questions he desired to put remained unuttered. He was confronted with the impossible, and he was powerless to deal with it.
"What did you want to know? How I died? And when? It was a thousand years ago, when those damned Wandis swallowed up the Zambas. They took me first--by treachery. Then they wiped out the entire tribe. The poor devils were lost without me. I always knew they would be--but they made a gallant fight for it." A thrill of feeling crept into the monotonous voice, a tinge of the old abounding pride, but it was gone on the instant, as if it had not been. "They slaughtered them all in the end," came in level, dispassionate tones, "and, last of all, they killed me. It was a slow process, but very complete. I needn't harrow your feelings. Only be quite sure I am dead! The thing that used to be my body was turned into an abomination that no sane creature could look upon without a shudder. And as for my soul, devils took possession, so that even the Wandis were afraid. They dare not touch me now. I have trampled them, I have tortured them, I have killed them. They fly from me like sheep. Yet, if I lead, they follow. They think, because I have conquered them, that I am invincible, invulnerable, immortal. They cringe before me as if I were a god. They would offer me human sacrifice if I would have it. I am their talisman, their