Part 39 (1/2)

He had sat for some minutes in the att.i.tude of depression, or bodily weakness, which has, been described, when once more a sound startled him. He raised his head and turned his eyes, sharpened by hunger, on the window. But this time, distrusting his senses, he did not rise until the sound was repeated. Then he faltered to his feet, and once again went unsteadily to the window, and, leaning a hand on each jamb, looked out.

At the same moment Flavia looked in. Their eyes met. Their faces were less than a yard apart.

The girl started back with a low cry, caused either by alarm on finding him so near her or by horror at the change in his aspect. If the latter, there was abundant cause. For she had left him hungry, she found him starving; she had left him haggard, she found him with eyes unnaturally large, his temples hollow, his lips dry, his chin unshaven.

It was indeed a mask rather than a face, a staring mask of famine, that looked out of the dusky room at her, and looked not the less pitifully, not the less wofully, because, as soon as its owner took in her ident.i.ty, the mask tried to smile.

”Mother of G.o.d!” she whispered. Her face had grown nearly as white as his. ”O Mother of G.o.d!” She had imagined nothing like this.

And Colonel John, believing--his throat was so dry that he could not speak at once--that he read pity as well as horror in her face, felt a sob rise in his breast. He tried to smile the more bravely for that, and presently he found his voice, a queer, husky voice.

”You must not leave me--too long,” he said. His smile was becoming ghastly.

She drew in her breath, and averted her face, to hide, he hoped, the effect of the sight upon her. Or perhaps--for he saw her shudder--she was mutely calling the sunlit lake on which her eyes rested, the blue sky, the smiling summer scene, to witness against this foul cruelty, this dark wickedness.

But it seemed that he deceived himself. For when she turned her face to him again, though it was still colourless, it was hard and set.

”You must sign,” she said. ”You must sign the paper.”

His parched lips opened, but he did not answer. He was as one struck dumb.

”You must sign!” she repeated insistently. ”Do you hear? You must sign!”

Still he did not answer; he only looked at her with eyes of infinite reproach. The pity of it! The pity of it! She, a woman, a girl, whom compa.s.sion should have constrained, whose tender heart should have bled for him, could see him tortured, could aid in the work, and cry ”Sign!”

She could indeed, for she repeated the word--fiercely, feverishly.

”Sign!” she cried. And then, ”If you will,” she said, ”I will give you--see! See! You shall have this. You shall eat and drink; only sign!

For G.o.d's sake, sign what they want, and eat and drink!”

And, with fingers that trembled with haste, she drew from a hiding-place in her cloak, bread and milk and wine. ”See what I have brought,” she continued, holding them before his starting eyes, his cracking lips, ”if you will sign.”

He gazed at them, at her, with anguish of the mind as well as of the body. How he had mistaken her! How he had misread her! Then, with a groan, ”G.o.d forgive you!” he cried, ”I cannot! I cannot!”

”You will not sign?” she retorted.

”Cannot, and will not!” he said.

”And why? Why will you not?”

On that his patience, sorely tried, gave way; and, swept along by one of those gusts of rage, he spoke. ”Why?” he cried in hoa.r.s.e accents.

”You ask me why? Because, ungrateful, unwomanly, miserable as you are--I will not rob you or the dead! Because I will not be false to an old man's trust! I will not give to the forsworn what was meant for the innocent--nor sell my honour for a drink of water! Because,”--he laughed a half-delirious laugh--”there is nothing to sign, nothing! I have burned your parchments these two days, and if you tempt me two more days, if you make me suffer twice as much as I have suffered, you can do nothing! If your heart be as hard as--it is, you can do nothing!” He held out hands which trembled with pa.s.sion. ”You can do nothing!” he repeated. ”Neither you, who--G.o.d forgive you, are no woman, have no woman's heart, no woman's pity!--nor he who would have killed me in the bog to gain that which he now starves me to get! But I foiled him then, as I will foil him to-day, ingrate, perjured, accursed, as he is, accursed----”

He faltered and was silent, steadying himself by resting one hand against the wall. For a moment he covered his eyes with the other hand.

Then ”G.o.d forgive me!” he resumed in a lower tone, ”I know not what I say! G.o.d forgive me! And you--Go! for you too--G.o.d forgive you--know not what you do. You do not know what it is to hunger and thirst, or you would not try me thus! Nor do you know what you were to me, or you would not try me thus! Yet I ought to remember that--that it is not for yourself you do it!”

He turned his back on her then, and on the window. He had taken three steps towards the middle of the room, when she cried, ”Wait!”

”Go!” he repeated with a backward gesture of the hand. ”Go! and G.o.d forgive you, as I do!”

”Wait!” she cried. ”And take them! Oh, take them! Quick!” He turned about slowly, almost with suspicion. She was holding the food and the drink through the window, holding them out for him to take. But it might be another deception. He was not sure, and for a moment a cunning look gleamed in his eyes, and he took a step in a stealthy fas.h.i.+on towards the window, as if, were she off her guard, he would s.n.a.t.c.h them from her. But she cried again, ”Take them! Take them!” with tears in her voice. ”I brought them for you. May G.o.d indeed forgive me!”