The Lamp in the Desert Part 53

"What do you mean?" he said, his arms tightening about her.

She kept her face averted. "I mean--that some forms of torture are worse than death. If it comes to that--if you compel me--I shall choose death."

"Stella!" He let her go so suddenly that she nearly fell. The utterance of her name was as a cry wrung from him by sheer agony. He turned from her with his hands over his face. "My G.o.d!" he said, and again almost inarticulately, "My--G.o.d!"

The low utterance pierced her, yet she stood motionless, her hands gripped hard together. He had forced the words from her, and they were past recall. Nor would she have recalled them, had she been able, for it seemed to her that her love had become an evil thing, and her whole being shrank from it in a species of horrified abhorrence, even though she could not cast it out.

He had turned towards the window, and she watched him, her heart beating in slow, hard strokes with a sound like a distant drum. Would he go?

Would he remain? She almost prayed aloud that he would go.

But he did not. Very suddenly he turned and strode back to her. There was purpose in every line of him, but there was no longer any violence.

He halted before her. "Stella," he said, and his voice was perfectly steady and controlled, "do you think you are being altogether fair to me?"

She wrung her clasped hands. She could not answer him.

He took them into his own very quietly. "Just look me in the face for a minute!" he said.

She yearned to disobey, but she could not. Dumbly she raised her eyes to his.

He waited a moment, very still and composed. Then he spoke. "Stella, I swear to you--and I call G.o.d to witness--that I did not kill Ralph Dacre."

A dreadful s.h.i.+ver went through her at the bald brief words. She felt, as Tommy had felt a little earlier, physically sick. The beating of her heart was getting slower and slower. She wondered if presently it would stop.

"Do you believe me?" he said, still holding her eyes with his, still clasping her icy hands firmly between his own.

She forced herself to speak before that horrible sense of nausea overcame her. "Perhaps--David--said the same thing--about Uriah the Hitt.i.te."

His face changed a little, but it was a change she could not have defined. His eyes remained inscrutably fixed upon hers. They seemed to enchain her quivering soul.

"No," he said quietly. "Nor did I employ any one else to do it."

"But you were there!" The words seemed suddenly to burst from her without her own volition.

He drew back sharply, as if he had been struck. But he kept his eyes upon hers. "I can't explain anything," he said. "I am not here to explain. I only came to see if your love was great enough to make you believe in me--in spite of all there seems to be against me. Is it, Stella? Is it?"

His words seemed to go through her, tearing a way to her heart; the agony was more than she could bear. She uttered an anguished cry, and wrenched herself from him. "It isn't a question of love!" she said. "You know it isn't a question of love! I never wanted to love you. I never wholly trusted you. But you forced my love--though you couldn't compel my trust. And now that I know--now that I know--" her voice broke as if the torture were too great for her; she flung out her hands with a gesture of driving him from her--"oh, it is h.e.l.l on earth--h.e.l.l on earth!"

He drew back for a second before her, his face deathly white. And then suddenly an awful light leapt in his eyes. He gripped her outflung hands. The fire had kindled to a flame and the torture was too much for him also.

"Then you shall love me--even in h.e.l.l!" he said, through his clenched teeth, and locked her in the iron circle of his arms.

She did not resist him. She was very near the end of her strength. Only, as he held her, her eyes met his, mutely imploring him....

It reached him even in his madness, that unspoken appeal. It checked him in the mid-furnace of his pa.s.sion. His hold relaxed as if at a word of command. He put her into a chair and turned himself from her.

The next moment he was fumbling desperately at the window fastening. The night met him on the threshold. He heard her weeping, piteously, hopelessly, as he went away.

CHAPTER X

THE DESERT PLACE

A single light shone across the verandah when Bernard Monck returned late in the night. It drew his steps though it did not come from any of the sitting-rooms. With the light tread often characteristic of heavy men, he approached it, realizing only at the last moment that it came from the window of his brother's room.

Then for a second he hesitated. He was angry with Everard, more angry than he could remember that he had ever been before. He questioned with himself as to the wisdom of seeing him again that night. He doubted if he could be ordinarily civil to him at present, and a quarrel would help no one.

Still why was the fellow burning a light at that hour? An unacknowledged uneasiness took possession of him and drove him forward. People seemed to do all manner of extravagant things in this fantastic country that they would never have dreamed of doing in homely old England. There must be something electric in the atmosphere that penetrated the veins. Even he had been aware of it now and then, a strange and potent influence that drove a man to pa.s.sionate deeds.

He reached the window without sound just as Stella had reached it on that night of rain long ago. With no consciousness of spying, driven by an urgent impulse he could not stop to question, he looked in.

The window was ajar, as if it had been pushed to negligently by someone entering, and in a flash Bernard had it wide. He went in as though he had been propelled.

A man--Everard--was standing half-dressed in the middle of the room. He was facing the window, and the light shone with ghastly distinctness upon his face. But he did not look up. He was gazing fixedly into a gla.s.s of water he held in his hand, apparently watching some minute substance melting there.

It was not the thing he held, but the look upon his face, that sent Bernard forward with a spring. "Man!" he burst forth. "What are you doing?"

Everard gave utterance to a fierce oath that was more like the cry of a savage animal than the articulate speech of a man. He stepped back sharply, and put the gla.s.s to his lips. But no drop that it contained did he swallow, for in the same instant Bernard flung it violently aside. The gla.s.s spun across the room, and they grappled together for the mastery. For a few seconds the battle was hot; then very suddenly the elder man threw up his hands.

"All right," he said, between short gasps for breath. "You can hammer me--if you want someone to hammer. Perhaps--it'll do you good."

He was free on the instant. Everard flung round and turned his back. He did not speak, but crossed the room and picked up the gla.s.s which lay unbroken on the floor.

Bernard followed him, still gasping for breath, "Give that to me!" he said.

His soft voice was oddly stern. Everard looked at him. His hand, shaking a little, was extended. After a very definite pause, he placed the gla.s.s within it. There was a little white sediment left with a drain of water at the bottom. With his blue eyes full upon his brother's face, Bernard lifted it to his own lips.

But the next instant it was dashed away, and the gla.s.s s.h.i.+vered to atoms against the wall. "You--fool!" Everard said.

A faint, faint smile that very strangely proclaimed a resemblance between them which was very seldom perceptible crossed Bernard's face.

"I--thought so," he said. "Now look here, boy! Let's stop being melodramatic for a bit! Take a dose of quinine instead! It seems to be the panacea for all evils in this curious country."

His voice was perfectly kind, even persusaive, but it carried a hint of authority as well, and Everard gave him a keen look as if aware of it.

He was very pale but absolutely steady as he made reply. "I don't think quinine will meet the case on this occasion."

"You prefer another kind of medicine," Bernard suggested. And then with sudden feeling he held out his hand. "Everard, old chap, never do that while you've a single friend left in the world! Do you want to break my heart? I only ask to stand by you. I'll stand by you to the very gates of h.e.l.l. Don't you know that?"

His voice trembled slightly. Everard turned and gripped the proffered hand hard in his own.

"I suppose I--might have known," he said. "But it's a bit rash of you all the same."

His own voice quivered though he forced a smile. He would have turned away, but Bernard restrained him.

"I don't care a tinker's d.a.m.n what you've done," he said forcibly.