Part 31 (1/2)

Again her father made his little obeisance of a.s.sent.

”I could charge myself with an explanation,” he said gravely. ”There is no reason for you to go against your wishes. I fear there is little prospect of our being of real help.”

Then a sudden throb of protest surged up in her. The vision of the dark cellar and of the fevered lips which called constantly upon her name became vivid, more vivid than before. To her own amazement she realized that she wanted to go, that the thought of those two hors.e.m.e.n riding out into the wild with their message of repulse had become abhorrent to her.

She felt suddenly pitying, protective. The feminine, indeed, the maternal, instinct gripped her.

The blood rose to her cheeks.

”I should prefer to go,” she said quietly.

Van Arlen made a little gesture of finality.

”The sooner, then, the better,” he said, and moved briskly towards his own cabin, summoning the steward to his councils as he went.

The dusk was falling over them with grateful coolness as, eight hours later, they rode over the brink of the gorge and saw below them the black spectral shape of camel's-hair tents and the white dwellings of the _duar_. A lantern newly lit twinkled a welcome. A stallion neighed a greeting from his pickets as he heard the sound of advancing hoofs, and a couple of men in white uniform came to the door of a white-domed hovel and stood awaiting them.

One, a dapper, black-moustached little man with the Geneva Cross upon his sleeve, hastened to help Miss Van Arlen to alight.

”Monsieur sleeps, Mademoiselle,” he informed her, as she reached the ground. ”It is a matter of temperatures--and the subsequent weakness.

Mademoiselle may have good hope that matters will yet go well.”

His smile was rea.s.suring and, in spite of his obvious youth, almost paternal. At the tent door he turned and laid his finger upon his lips.

There must be no feminine want of self-restraint, he implied. The sight of one dear to her in his hour of helplessness must not leave her unstrung. She must be brave.

She followed with her father into the shadows within.

He lay with his arms outflung. A light coverlet was over him, but the damp of perspiration gleamed upon his forehead and neck. He moved restlessly, breathing with a panting sound.

”We poise much on Monsieur's recognition of Mademoiselle when he wakes,”

explained the orderly, and offered a smirk of intelligent sympathy to Mademoiselle's father.

She looked down, and a strange sense of unreality in the situation seized her. The white, fever-stricken face on the pillow seemed a spectre--a caricature of something familiar. A queer sense of anger, as if some well-liked possession had been meddled with and defaced by outsiders, rose in her heart. An instinct which she could not explain set her kneeling beside the pallet bed, her eyes fixed on its occupant.

Wearily, drowsily, Aylmer opened his eyes.

And then his smile dawned, slowly, incredulously, till the glory of a.s.surance had become convincing. He p.r.o.nounced her name.

In the background, emotional thrills travelled across the orderly's foolishly sentimental countenance. He took mental notes of a situation which bulked largely and enticingly in a letter to an apple-cheeked damsel in far-away Provence a few days later. ”Such are the rewards of the soldier, my soul,” he explained. ”Love? Its cords are strong to drag its devotees even across this waste wilderness of Africa!” Wherein he did one of the most fertile lands upon the habitable globe a vile injustice. But your true lover is invariably a poet and girdled with merely a poet's limitations, while the apple-cheeked demoiselle's romantic sensibilities were quickened to the point of tears.

Mr. Van Arlen moved forward to his daughter's side with a suddenly instinctive motion. And she understood it. The embarra.s.sment of the situation had at once become plain to him; his desire was to clear it, he was framing words--courteous, no doubt, but without any trace of sentiment--to a.s.sist her in this. He would do it admirably; his tact was beyond question.

And she?

Again she felt a sudden thrill of protest. No, how could they deal coldly with this man, now? It would be less than womanly--would it even be common fair play? He was down. Surely till he was up again, the indomitable soldier she knew and feared, honor forbade their striking even at his self-a.s.surance.

Her hand was laid upon her father's arm, pressing it in gentle remonstrance. Then she leaned towards the bed.