Part 1 - Chapter 4. Desolation

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_ PART I CHAPTER IV. DESOLATION

Out of a deep abyss of darkness in which she seemed to have wandered ceaselessly and comfortlessly for many days, Muriel Roscoe came haltingly back to the surface of things. She was very weak, so weak that to open her eyes was an exertion requiring all her resolution, and to keep them open during those first hours of returning life a physical impossibility. She knew that she was not alone, for gentle hands ministered to her, and she was constantly aware of some one who watched her tirelessly, with never-failing attention. But she felt not the smallest interest regarding this faithful companion, being too weary to care whether she lived or fell away for ever down those unending steeps up which some unseen influence seemed magnetically to draw her.

It was a stage of returning consciousness that seemed to last even longer than the period of her wandering, but this also began to pass at length. The light grew stronger all about her, the mists rolled slowly away from her clogged brain, leaving only a drowsing languor that was infinitely restful to her tired senses.

And then while she lay half-dreaming and wholly content, a remorseless hand began to bathe her face and head with ice-cold water. She awoke reluctantly, even resentfully.

"Don't!" she entreated like a child. "I am so tired. Let me sleep."

"My poor dear, I know all about it," a motherly voice made answer. "But it's time for you to wake."

She did not grasp the words--only, very vaguely, their meaning; and this she made a determined, but quite fruitless, effort to defy. In the end, being roused in spite of herself, she opened her eyes and gazed upwards.

And all his life long Nick Ratcliffe remembered the reproach that those eyes held for him. It was as if he had laid violent hands upon a spirit that yearned towards freedom, and had dragged it back into the sordid captivity from which it had so nearly escaped.

But it was only for a moment that she looked at him so. The reproach faded swiftly from the dark eyes and he saw a startled horror dawn behind it.

Suddenly she raised herself with a faint cry. "Where am I?" she gasped. "What--what have you done with me?"

She stared around her wildly, with unreasoning, nightmare terror. She was lying on a bed of fern in a narrow, dark ravine. The place was full of shadow, though far overhead she saw the light of day. At one end, only a few yards from her, a stream rushed and gurgled among great boulders, and its insistent murmur filled the air. Behind her rose a great wall of grey rock, clothed here and there with some dark growth. Its rugged face was dented with hollows that looked like the homes of wild animals. There was a constant trickle of water on all sides, an eerie whispering, remote but incessant. As she sat there in growing panic, a great bat-like creature, immense and shadowy, swooped soundlessly by her.

She shrank back with another cry, and found Nick Ratcliffe's arm thrust protectingly about her.

"It's all right," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "You're not frightened at flying-foxes, are you?"

Recalled to the fact of his presence, she turned sharply, and flung his arm away as though it had been a snake. "Don't touch me!" she gasped, passionate loathing in voice and gesture.

"Sorry," said Nick imperturbably. "I meant well."

He began to busy himself with a small bundle that lay upon the ground, whistling softly between his teeth, and for a few seconds Muriel sat and watched him. He was dressed in a flowing native garment, that covered him from head to foot. Out of the heavy enveloping folds his smooth, yellow face looked forth, sinister and terrible to her fevered vision. He looked like some evil bird, she thought to herself.

Glancing down, she saw that she was likewise attired, save that her head was bare. The hair hung wet on her forehead, and the water dripped down her face. She put up her hand half-mechanically to wipe the drops away. Her fear was mounting rapidly higher.

She knew now what had happened. He had drugged her forcibly--she shivered at the remembrance--and had borne her away to this dreadful place during her unconsciousness. Her father was left behind in the fort. He had sanctioned her removal. He had given her, a helpless captive, into this man's keeping.

But no! Her whole soul rose up in sudden fierce denial of this. He had never done this thing. He had never given his consent to an act so cowardly and so brutal. He was incapable of parting with her thus. He could never have permitted so base a trick, so cruel, so outrageous, a deed of treachery.

Strength came suddenly to her--the strength of frenzy. She leaped to her feet. She would escape. She would go back to him through all the hordes of the enemy. She would face anything--anything in the world--rather than remain at the mercy of this man.

But--he had not been looking at her, and he did not look at her,--his arm shot out as she moved, and his hand fastened claw-like upon her dress.

"Sorry," he said again, in the same practical tone. "But you'll have something to eat before you go."

She stooped and strove wildly, frantically, to shake off the detaining hand. But it held her like a vice, with awful skeleton fingers that she could not, dared not, touch.

"Let me go!" she cried impotently. "How dare you? How dare you?"

Still he did not raise his head. He was on his knees, and he would not even trouble himself to rise.

"I can't help myself," he told her coolly. "It's not my fault. It's yours."

She made a final, violent effort to wrest herself free. And then--it was as if all power were suddenly taken from her--her strained nerves gave way completely, and she dropped down upon the ground again in a quivering agony of helplessness.

Nick's hand fell away from her. "You shouldn't," he said gently. "It's no good, you know."

He returned to his former occupation while she sat with her face hidden, in a stupor of fear, afraid to move lest he should touch her again.

"Now," said Nick, after a brief pause, "let me have the pleasure of seeing you break your fast. There is some of that excellent boiled rice of yours here. You will feel better when you have had some."

She trembled at the sound of his voice. Could he make her eat also against her will, she wondered?

"Come!" said Nick again, in a tone of soft wheedling that he might have employed to a fractious child. "It'll do you good, you know, Muriel. Won't you try? Just a mouthful--to please me!"

Reluctantly she uncovered her face, and looked at him. He was kneeling in front of her, the _chuddah_ pushed back from his face, humbly offering her an oatmeal biscuit with a small heap of rice piled upon it.

She drew back shuddering. "I couldn't eat anything--possibly," she said, and even her voice seemed to shrink. "You can. You take it. I would rather die."

Nick did not withdraw his hand. "Take it, Muriel," he said quietly. "It is going to do you good."

She flashed him a desperate glance in which anger, fear, abhorrence, were strongly mingled. He advanced the biscuit a little nearer. There was a queer look on his yellow face, almost a bullying look.

"Take it," he said again.

And against her will, almost without conscious movement, she obeyed him. The untempting morsel passed from his hand to hers, and under the compulsion of his insistence she began to eat.

She felt as if every mouthful would choke her, but she persevered, urged by the dread certainty that he would somehow have his way.

Not until the last fragment was gone did she feel his vigilance relax, but he ate nothing himself though there remained several biscuits and a very little of the rice.

"You are feeling better?" he asked her then.

A curious suspicion that he was waiting to tell her something made her answer almost feverishly in the affirmative. It amounted to a premonition of evil tidings, and instinctively her thoughts flew to her father.

"What is it?" she questioned nervously. "You have something to say."

Nick's face was turned from her. He seemed to be gazing across the ravine.

"Yes," he said, after a moment.

"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 attitude, 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 hit 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 passionate 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. _

Read next: Part 1: Chapter 5. The Devil In The Wilderness

Read previous: Part 1: Chapter 3. The Victim Of Treachery

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