Part 24 (1/2)

'Now,' she cried, 'tell me the truth. Have you told me all?'

'No, I have not. I can hardly bear to tell you; but you have sense and courage, and would rather hear the truth. _He is down with cholera._'

The words went like a sword through Maud's heart. A blank horror seized her. This, then, had been the meaning of her dream. The blow came cras.h.i.+ng down upon her, and body and soul seemed to reel before it. She sank like a crushed, terrified child on the sofa, and, covering her face in her hands, hid herself, speechless, motionless, as from an ill that was too great to bear.

'Let me send for Mrs. Vereker,' said Boldero.

'No!' cried Maud, starting up, 'pray do not. Leave me for a minute or two. I shall be better directly. Will you come back in a quarter of an hour?'

'I will do anything you bid me,' said Boldero frightened at the task he had in hand and its probable results, and thinking that perhaps the best thing he could do was to leave Maud to deal with her sorrow alone.

So Boldero went out into the moonlight, and strolled about the pathway, now so silent, where so many joyous footsteps used to press, and Maud was left to herself with her first great trouble.

It was significant of the real nature of her relations to Mrs. Vereker that she shrank especially from seeking her now, in her time of sorrow, or following her counsel. Mrs. Vereker was essentially a fine-weather friend. The task which Maud had now in hand was something deeper and graver than anything that the other's feelings reached. What lay before her now to do, or to endure, was something between her husband and herself, and it would be profanity for a stranger to come into that sacred region. Mrs. Vereker's advice would, Maud knew instinctively, be all wrong. She herself felt already what she ought to do. She knelt weeping on the sofa, and the thoughts of sorrow, humiliation, remorse, came pouring thick upon her troubled mind. To what a precipice's edge had not her folly and madness brought her! her fair fame darkened, her husband's name dishonoured, her vows of love and honour how badly kept!

Oh, how unutterably weak, faithless, heartless she had been! How ghastly all the afternoon's adventures, the evening's folly, seemed! how wicked, how base, how altogether bad! She had felt the thought stinging all the while, but other, stronger feelings had helped her to ignore it and forget. Now there was no other feeling, and it was overwhelming.

There was only one thing left to do, one good, one hope left--to fly to her husband's side, to pour out the pent-up stream of confession, repentance, and love, and, if only G.o.d would spare him, never, never leave him again!

When Boldero came in again Maud was herself again. 'I am better and stronger now,' she said; 'the news came upon me too suddenly, but now I am calm. I have settled what I ought to do, and you must help me. I shall go down to him at once.'

'Indeed, you cannot do that,' Boldero said, decisively; 'it would be excessively wrong.'

'Indeed, indeed I will!' cried Maud; 'I feel that I ought and must. What is there to stop me?'

'It is out of the question,' said the other; 'you will be running into a great deal of danger unnecessarily.'

'I have no strength to talk about it,' said Maud, 'but I must go or I shall die, and you must help me. Do you mean me to stay quietly here, and Jem dying by himself? My G.o.d, my G.o.d! why did I ever leave him?'

Here Maud threw herself on the sofa, and cried a longer, sadder, more heartfelt cry than ever in her life before. Boldero went again into the garden in despair, for it was in vain, he saw, to try to soothe her.

It ended, of course, in Boldero telegraphing for two relays of horses to be sent out from the Camp, and sending out two more as fast as possible, to get as far as might be on the way for the forced march of fifty miles which Maud and he were, it was settled, at once to undertake. She was to rest for a few hours, start at three o'clock, get on as far as they could in the cool, rest through the day, and complete the remainder of the journey the following night. They would be at the Camp, Boldero reckoned, by the morning of the day after to-morrow.

It required all his official resources to organise such a journey, but a Collector on his march can do anything; and Boldero, with whom Maud was by a sudden reaction of sentiment rapidly being promoted from heroine to saint, was determined that her journey, so far as in him lay, should be as comfortable as money and care could make it.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

FLIGHT.

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand, and led them away from the City of Destruction. We see no white winged angels now; but yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward.

Maud effected a speedy reconciliation with Mrs. Vereker, who had entrenched herself in her bedroom with a French novel till such time as Maud should have recovered her equanimity. Mrs. Vereker at once forgot her grievance, listened with real concern to Maud's alarming tidings, and lent herself with great alacrity to a.s.sist in the preparations for a hasty departure. Boldero had gone off and was to get coolies[5] together as speedily as possible, so as to be well on the way during the cool hours of the early morning, before the heat of the day would render travelling a work of distress.

By three o'clock, accordingly, a little army was collected in front of Mrs. Vereker's door. The urgent demands of the Collector and the subsequent zeal of his subordinates had done wonders, and some forty men had been a.s.sembled at an hour's notice for the task of carrying down Maud, her servant and her various belongings.

The moon had sunk and the torches glared fitfully with dreadful smell and smoke. The figures looked weird and strange and, to Maud's eye, horribly numerous. The arrangement of each box involved enormous discussion as to how the burden of carrying it could best be shared. At last all was ready; Maud was established in a palanquin; the carriers kept time to the cadence of a wild refrain; the torch-bearers shuffled along in front, relays of coolies came behind; close at her side rode the faithful Boldero, marshalling the little force, and ever on the watch to s.h.i.+eld her from any possible annoyance. Maud appreciated his fidelity, and felt that she had never liked him half well enough before.