Nedra Part 35

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'THEY HAVE KILLED YOU! LET THEM KILL ME!'"]

He was unable to follow, but his heart glowed with joy as he staggered blindly toward the earthworks. As he fell, half fainting, against the b.l.o.o.d.y bank, the agonized figure in white flew up to the opposite side.

"Hugh, Hugh," she wailed, burying her face in her hands. "They have killed you! Let them kill me!"

"Oh, it's--nothing--" he gasped, trying to smile. "I'm all right, little woman, but--you--got--here--just--in--time! Didn't I say--get--home--for--lunch--or something--like--that?"

And he knew no more.

CHAPTER XXVIII

TO THE VICTOR BELONGS--?

It was a month before Ridgeway was able to leave his couch and to sit beneath the awning in front of the temple. Not that he had been so severely wounded in the battle of June thirtieth, but that his whole system had collapsed temporarily.

After the first terrible fear, Tennys gave herself entirely to the task of caring for him. Night and day she watched, worked, and prayed over the tossing sufferer. In seasons of despair, created by the frequent close encroachments of death, she experienced dreams that invariably ended with the belief that she heard his dying gasps. Until she became thoroughly awake and could hear the movements of the two savages who sat faithfully in the next room with their Izor, her heart was still with a terror so depressing that it well-nigh drove her mad.

The wounds in his legs and side were closed and the great bruises on his back and head were reduced. When he, faint and weak, began to understand what was going on about him, he saw the face of one of the two women over whom he had raved in his delirium. In the hours when death seemed but a step away he had plaintively called for Grace and then for Tennys. A strange gladness filled the heart of the one beside him when he uttered the unconscious appeal to her. Sometimes she found herself growing red over the things he was saying to her in his ravings; again she would chill with the tender words that went to Grace. Then came the day when he saw and knew her. Often in the days of his convalescence she would start from a reverie, certain that she heard him call as he did in delirium, only to sink back and smile sadly with the discovery that she had been dreaming.

The village of Ridgehunt was a great hospital for weeks after the fight.

Lady Tennys herself had ordered the dead to be buried in the trenches.

For the first time in the history of the island the Oolooz men had been beaten. She spent many hours in telling Hugh of the celebrations that followed the wonderful achievements.

"There is one thing about our friends that I have not told you, Hugh,"

she said one night as they sat under the awning. "You have been so weak that I feared the shock might hurt you."

"You think of my comfort always," he said gratefully.

"You never knew that they brought a number of prisoners to the village and--and--oh, it is too horrible to tell you."

"Brought them to the village? What for?"

"They intended to eat them," she said, shuddering.

"Great Scott! They are not cannibals?"

"I couldn't believe it until I saw them making ready for their awful feast out there. I shall never be able to eat meat again. Alzam brought me a piece of the horrid stuff. They executed the prisoners before I could interfere."

"Oh, that's too horrible!"

"Sick and terrified, I went among the men who were dancing about the feast they were ready to devour, and, a.s.suming a boldness I did not feel, commanded them to desist. The king was bewildered at first, then chagrined, but as I threatened him ferociously--"

"I should have enjoyed seeing you ferocious."

"He called the brutes away and then I gave orders to have every one of the bodies buried. For several days after that, however, the men were morose and ugly looking, and I am sure it was hard for them to submit to such a radical change."

"Talk about missionaries! You are a wonder!"

"I could not have done it as a missionary, Mr. Ridgeway. It was necessary for me to exert my authority as a G.o.ddess."

"And so they are cannibals," he mused, still looking at her spirited face.

"Just think what might have happened to us," she said.

That night as he lay on his couch he was forced to admit that the inconsolable grief that had borne down so heavily upon him at first was almost a part of the past. The pain inspired by the loss of a loved one was being mysteriously eased. He was finding pleasure in a world that had been dark and drear a few short months before. He was dimly conscious of a feeling that the companions.h.i.+p of Tennys Huntingford was beginning to wreak disaster to a supposedly impregnable constancy.

Tears came to his eyes as he murmured the name of the girl who had sailed so blithely from New York with his love as her only haven. He called himself the basest of wretches, the most graceless of lovers. He sobbed aloud at last in his penitence, and his heart went back to the night of the wreck. His love went down to the bottom of the sea, craving a single chance to redeem itself before the one it had wounded and humiliated. Before he fell asleep his conscience was relieved of part of its weight and the strong, sweet face of Grace Vernon pa.s.sed from his vivid thoughts into vague dreams.

In the next apartment tranquilly slept the disturber, the trespa.s.ser in the fields of memory, the undoer of a long-wrought love. He had tried to learn the way to her heart, wondering if she cared for him as he had more than once suspected. In pursuing this hazardous investigation he had learned nothing, had seen nothing but perfect frankness and innocence, but had become more deeply interested than he knew until this night of recapitulation.

One night, two or three after he had thrown off the delirium, he heard her praying in her room, softly, earnestly. Of that prayer one plea remained in his memory long after her death: "Oh, G.o.d, save the soul of Grace Vernon. Give to her the fulness of Thy love. If she be still alive, protect and keep her safe until in Thy goodness she may be restored to him who mourns for her. Save and bless Hugh Ridgeway."

The days and weeks went by and Hugh grew well and strong. To Tennys he was not the same Hugh as of old. She perceived a change and wondered.

One day at sundown he sat moodily in front of the temple. She was lying in the hammock near by. There had been one of the long, and to her inexplicable, silences. He felt that her eyes were upon him and knew that they were wistful and perplexed.

Try as he would, he could not keep his own eyes in leash; something irresistible made him lift them to meet her gaze. For a moment they looked at each other in a mute search for something neither was able to describe. He could not hold out against the pleading, troubled, questioning eyes, bent so solemnly upon his own. The wounds in her heart, because of his indifference, strange and unaccountable to her, gaped in those blue orbs.

A tremendous revulsion of feeling took possession of him; what he had been subduing for weeks gained supremacy in an instant. He half rose to his feet as if to rush over and crush her in his arms, but a mightier power than his emotion held him back. That same unseen, mysterious power compelled him to turn about and almost run from the temple, leaving her chilled and distressed by his action. The power that checked him was Memory.

She was deeply hurt by this last impulsive exhibition of disregard. A bewildering sense of loneliness oppressed her. He despised her! All the world grew black for her. All the light went out of her heart. He despised her! There was a faintness in her knees when she essayed to arise from the hammock. A little cry of anguish left her lips; a hunted, friendless look came into her eyes.

Staggering to the end of the temple, she looked in the direction he had taken. Far down the line of hills she saw him standing on a little elevation, his back toward her, his face to the river. Some strong influence drew her to him. Out of this influence grew the wild, unquenchable desire to understand. Hardly realizing what she did, she hurried through the growing dusk toward the motionless figure. As she came nearer a strange timidity, an embarra.s.sment she had never felt before, seized upon her and her footsteps slackened.

He had not seen her. A panicky inclination to fly back to the temple came over her. In her heart welled a feeling of resentment. Had he any right to forget what she had done for him?

He heard her, turned swiftly, and--trembled in every joint. They were but a few paces apart and she was looking unwaveringly into his eyes.

"I have followed you out here to ask why you treat me so cruelly," she said after a long silence which she Bought to break but could not. He distinguished in this pathetic command, meant to be firm and positive, the tremor of tears.

"I--I do not treat you cruelly, Tennys," he answered disjointly, still looking at the slight, graceful figure, as if unable to withdraw his eyes.

"What do you call it?" she asked bitterly.

"You wrong me--" he began.

"Wrong you? No, I do not. You saved me from the sea and you have done much for me until within the past few weeks. I had begun to forget that I am here because fate subst.i.tuted me for another. Hugh, do not let your love for Grace and your regret at not having saved her turn you against me. I am not here because I could have helped it. You must know that I--"

"For Heaven's sake, Tennys, don't talk like that! The trouble is that I do not regret having saved you. That's why you see the change in me--that's why I've hurt you. I cannot be to you what I would be--I cannot and be true to myself," he cried fiercely.

"What do you mean? Why are you so unhappy, Hugh? Have I hurt you?' she asked, coming quite close in sudden compa.s.sion.

"Hurt me!" he exclaimed. "You will kill me!" She paled with the thought that he was delirious again or crazed from the effects of the fever.

"Don't say that, Hugh. I care more for you than for any one in the world. Why should I hurt you?" she asked tenderly, completely misunderstanding him.

"You don't mean to, but you do. I have tried to conquer it but I cannot.