Part 30 (1/2)
”You?” he questioned. ”This had nothing to do with you.”
She leaned against him. ”Wherever I go, trouble follows. Haven't you noticed it? It seems as if--as if--whichever way I turn--a flaming sword is stretched out, barring the way.” Her voice suddenly quivered. ”I know why,--oh, yes, I know why. It is because once--like the man without a wedding-garment, I found my way into a forbidden paradise. They hurled me out, Everard. I was flung into a desert of ashes. And now--now that I have dared to approach by another way--the sentence has gone forth that wherever I pa.s.s, something shall die. That dreadful man--told me on the day that Ralph was taken away from me--that the Holy Ones were angry.
And--my dear--he was right. I shall never be pardoned until I have--somehow--expiated my sin.”
”Stella! Stella!” He broke in upon her sharply. ”You are talking wildly.
Your sin, as you call it, was at the most no more than a bad mistake.
Can't you put it from you?--get above it? Have you no faith? I thought all women had that.”
She looked at him strangely. ”I wasn't brought up to believe in G.o.d,”
she said. ”At least not personally, not intimately. Were you?”
”Yes,” he said.
”Ah!” Her eyes widened a little. ”And you still believe in Him--still believe He really cares--even when things go hopelessly wrong?”
”Yes,” he said again. ”I can't talk about Him. But I know He's there.”
She still regarded him with wonder. ”Oh, my dear,” she said finally, ”are you behind me, or a very, very long way in front?”
He smiled faintly, grimly. ”Probably a thousand miles behind,” he said.
”But I have been given long sight, that's all.”
She rose to her feet with a sigh. ”And I,” she said very sadly, ”am blind.”
Down by the gate the blue jay laughed again, laughed and flew away.
CHAPTER III
THE BEAST OF PREY
In a darkened room Netta Ermsted lay, trembling and unnerved. As usual in cases of adversity, Mrs. Ralston had taken charge of her; but there was very little that she could do. It was more a matter for her husband's skill than for hers, and he could only prescribe absolute quiet. For Netta was utterly broken. Since the fatal moment when she had returned from a call in her 'rickshaw to find Major Burton awaiting her with the news that Ermsted had been shot on the jungle-road while riding home from Khanmulla, she had been as one distraught. They had restrained her almost forcibly from rus.h.i.+ng forth to fling herself upon his dead body, and now that it was all over, now that the man who had loved her and whom she had never loved was in his grave, she lay prostrate, refusing all comfort.
Tessa, wide-eyed and speculative, was in the care of Mrs. Burton, alternately quarrelling vigorously with little Cedric Burton whose intellectual leanings provoked her most ardent contempt, and teasing the luckless Scooter out of sheer boredom till all the animal's ideas in life centred in a desperate desire to escape.
It was Tessa to whom Stella's pitying attention was first drawn on the day after her return to The Green Bungalow. Tommy, finding her raging in the road like a little tiger-cat over some small _contretemps_ with Mrs.
Burton, had lifted her on to his shoulders and brought her back with him.
”Be good to the poor imp!” he muttered to his sister. ”n.o.body wants her.”
Certainly Mrs, Burton did not. She pa.s.sed her on to Stella with her two-edged smile, and Tessa and Scooter forthwith cheerfully took up their abode at The Green Bungalow with whole-hearted satisfaction.
Stella experienced little difficulty in dealing with the child. She found herself the object of the most pa.s.sionate admiration which went far towards simplifying the problem of managing her. Tessa adored her and followed her like her shadow whenever she was not similarly engrossed with her beloved Tommy. Of Monck she stood in considerable awe. He did not take much notice of her. It seemed to Stella that he had retired very deeply into his sh.e.l.l of reserve during those days. Even with herself he was reticent, monosyllabic, obviously absorbed in matters of which she had no knowledge.
But for her small wors.h.i.+pper she would have been both lonely and anxious. For he was often absent, sometimes for hours at a stretch wholly without warning, giving no explanation upon his return. She asked no questions. She schooled herself to patience. She tried to be content with the close holding of his arms when they were together and the certainty that all the desire of his heart was for her alone. But she could not wholly, drive away the conviction that at the very gates of her paradise the sword she dreaded had been turned against her. They were back in the desert again, and the way to the tree of life was barred.
Perhaps it was natural that she should turn to Tessa for consolation and distraction. The child was original in all her ways. Her ideas of death were wholly devoid of tragedy, and she was too accustomed to her father's absence to feel any actual sense of loss.