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

mascot, their safeguard from defeat, their luck--a dead man, Herne, a dead man! Can't you see the joke? Why don't you laugh?"
Again the grim voice thrilled as if some fiendish mirth stirred it to life.
Herne moved and groaned, but spoke no word.
"What? You don't see it? You never had much sense of humour. And yet it's a good thing to laugh when you can. We savages don't know how to laugh. We only yell. That is all you wanted to know, is it? You will go back now with an easy mind?"
"As if that could be all!" Herne muttered.
"That is all. And count yourself lucky that I haven't killed you. It was touch and go that night you attacked me. You may die yet."
"I may. But it won't be your fault if I do. Great Heaven, I might have killed you!"
"So you might." Again came that quiver of dreadful laughter. "That would have been the end of the story for everyone, for you wouldn't have got away without me. But that was no part of the program. Even you couldn't kill a dead man. Feel that, if you don't believe me!" Suddenly one of the shrivelled, mummy hands came down to his own. "How much life is there in that?"
Herne gripped the hand. It was cold and clammy; he could feel every separate bone under the skin. He could almost hear them grind together in his hold. He repressed another shudder; and even as he did it, he heard again the bitter cry of a woman's wrung heart, "Bobby is still alive and wanting me."
Would she say that when she knew? Would she still reach out her hands to this monstrous wreck of humanity, this shattered ruin of what had once been a tower of splendid strength? Would she feel bound to offer herself? Was her love sufficient to compass such a sacrifice? The bare thought revolted him.
"Are you satisfied?" asked the voice that seemed to him like a mocking echo of Bobby's ardent tones. "Why don't you speak?"
A great struggle was going on in Herne's soul. For Betty's sake--for Betty's sake--should he hold his peace? Should he take upon himself a responsibility that was not his? Should he deny this man the chance that was his by right--the awful chance--of returning to her? The temptation urged him strongly; the fight was fierce. But--was it because he still grasped that bony hand?--he conquered in the end.
"I haven't told you yet why I came to look for you," he said.
"Is it worth while?" The question was peculiarly deliberate, yet not wholly cynical.
Desperately Herne compelled himself to answer.
"You have got to know it, seeing it was not for my own satisfaction--primarily--that I came."
"Why then?" The brief query held scant interest; but the hand he still grasped stirred ever so slightly in his.
Herne set his teeth.
"Because--someone--wanted you."
"No one ever wanted me," said the Wandi Mullah curtly.
But Herne had tackled his task, and he pursued it unflinching.
"I came for the sake of a woman who once--long ago--refused to marry you, but who has been waiting for you--ever since."
"A woman?" Undoubtedly there was a savage note in the words. The shrunken fingers clenched upon Herne's hand.
"Betty Derwent," said Herne very quietly.
Dead silence fell in the darkened tent--the silence of the desert, subtle, intense, in a fashion terrible. It lasted for a long time; so long a time that Herne suffered himself at last to relax, feeling the strain to be more than he could bear. He leaned among his pillows, and waited. Yet still, persistently, he grasped that cold, sinuous hand, though the very touch of it repelled him, as the touch of a reptile provokes instinctive loathing. It lay quite passive in his own, a thing inanimate, yet horribly possessed of life.
Slowly at last through the darkness a voice came:
"Monty!"
It was hardly more than a whisper; yet on the instant, as if by magic, all Herne's repulsion, his involuntary, irrepressible shrinking, was gone. He was back once more on the other side of the gulf, and the hand he held was the hand of a friend.
"My dear old chap!" he said very gently.
Vaguely he discerned the figure by his side. It sat huddled, mummy-like but it held no horrors for him any longer. They were not face to face in that moment--they were soul to soul.
"I say--Monty," stumblingly came the words, "you know--I never dreamed of this. I thought she would have married--long ago. And she has been waiting--all these years?"
"All these years," Herne said.
"Do you think she has suffered?" There was a certain sharpness in the question, as if it were hard to utter.
And Herne, pledged to honesty, made brief reply:
"Yes."
There followed a pause; then:
"Will it grieve her--very badly--to know that I am dead?" asked the voice beside him.
"Yes, it will grieve her." Herne spoke as if compelled.
"But she will get over it, eh?"
"I believe so." Herne's lips were dry; he forced them to utterance.
The free hand fastened claw-like upon his arm.
"You'll tell me the straight truth, man," said Bobby's voice in his ear. "What if I--came to life?"
But Herne was silent. He could not bring himself to answer.
"Speak out!" urged the voice--Bobby's voice, quick, insistent, even imploring. "Don't be afraid! I haven't any feelings left worth considering. She wouldn't get over that, you think? No woman could!"
Herne turned in desperation, and faced his questioner.
"God knows!" he said helplessly.
Again there fell a silence, such a silence as falls in a death-chamber at the moment of the spirit's passing. The darkness was deepening. Herne could scarcely discern the figure by his side.
The hand upon his arm had grown slack. All vitality seemed to have gone out of it. It was as though the spirit had passed indeed. And in the stillness Herne knew that he was recrossing the gulf, that his friend--the boy he had known and loved--was receding rapidly, rapidly behind the veil of years, would soon be lost to him for ever.
The voice that spoke to him at length was the voice of a stranger.
"Remember," it said, "Bobby Duncannon is dead--has been dead for years! Let no woman waste her life waiting for him, for he will never return! Let her marry instead the man who wants her, and put the empty years behind! In no other way will she find happiness."
"But you?" Herne groaned. "You?"
The hand he held had slipped from his grasp. Through the dimness he saw the man beside him rise to his feet. A moment he stood; then flung up his arms above his head in a fierce gesture of renunciation that sent a stab of recollection through Herne.
"I! I go to my people!" said the Prophet of the Wandis. "And you--will go to yours."
It was final, and Herne knew it; yet his heart cried out within him for the friend he had lost. Suddenly he found he could not bear it.
"Bobby! Bobby!" he burst forth impulsively. "Stop, man, stop and think! There must be some other way. You can't--you shan't--go back!"
He hardly knew what he said, so great was his distress. The gulf was widening, widening, and he was powerless. He knew that it could never be bridged again.
"It's too big a forfeit," he urged very earnestly. "You can't do it. I won't suffer it. For Betty's sake--Bobby, come back!"
And then, for the last time, he heard his friend's voice across the ever-widening gulf.
"For Betty's sake, old chap, I am a dead man. Remember that! It's you who must go back to her. Marry her, love her, make her--forget!"
For an instant those mummy hands rested upon him, held him, caressed him; it was almost as if they blessed him. For an instant the veil was lifted; they were comrades together. Then it fell....
There came a quiet movement, the sound of departing feet.
Herne turned and blindly searched the darkness. Across the gulf he cried to his friend to return to him.
"Bobby, come back, lad, come back! We'll find some other way."
But there came no voice in answer, no sound of any sort. The desert had received back its secret. He was alone....


IX

"Now, don't bother any more about me!" commanded Betty Derwent, establishing herself with an air of finality on the edge of the trout stream to which she had just suffered herself to be conducted by her companion. "I am quite capable of baiting my own hook if necessary. You run along up-stream and have some sport on your own account!"
The companion, a very young college man, looked decidedly blank over this kindly dismissal. He had been manoeuvring to get Betty all to himself for days, but, since everybody seemed to want her, it had been no easy matter. And now, to his disgust, just as he was congratulating himself upon having gained his end and secured a _tete-a-tete_ that, with luck, might last for hours, he was coolly told to run along and amuse himself while she fished in solitude.
"I say, you know," he protested, "that's rather hard lines."
"Don't be absurd!" said Betty. "I came out to catch fish, not to talk. And you are going to do the same."
"Oh, confound the fish!" said the luckless one.
Nevertheless, he yielded, seeing that it was expected of him, and took himself off, albeit reluctantly.
Betty watched him go, with a faint smile. He was a nice boy undoubtedly, but she much preferred him at a distance.
She sat down on the bank above the trout-stream, and took a letter from her pocket. It had reached her the previous day, and she had already read it many times. This fact, however, did not deter her from reading it yet again, her chin upon her hand. It was not a lengthy epistle.

"DEAR BETTY," it said, "I am back from my wanderings, and I
am coming straight to you; but I want you to get this letter
first, in time to stop me, if you feel so inclined. It is
useless for me to attempt to soften what I have to say. I
can only put it briefly, just because I know--too well--what
it will mean to you. Betty, the boy is dead, has been dead
for years. How he died and exactly when, I do not know; but
I have certified the fact of his death beyond all question.
He died at the hands of the Wandis, when his own men, the
Zambas, were defeated. So much I heard from the Wandi Mullah
himself, and more than that I cannot tell you. My dear, that
is the end of your romance, and I know that you will never
weave another. But, that notwithstanding, I am coming--now,
if you will have me--later, if you desire it--to claim you
for myself. Your happiness always has and always will come
first with me, and neither now nor hereafter shall I ever
ask of you more than you are disposed to give.--Ever yours,"
"MONTAGUE HERNE."

Very slowly Betty's eyes travelled over the paper. She read right to the end, and then suffered her eyes to rest for a long time upon the signature. Her fishing-rod lay forgotten on the ground beside her. She seemed to be thinking deeply.