Part 31 (1/2)
Thus urged, the good man hurried away; and Honor went straight to Quita, whose unnatural apathy cut her to the heart.
”Miss Maurice, here's brandy,” she said softly. ”Drink all of it, before I help you down.”
Quita emptied the tumbler; and Honor, grasping her waist with both hands, lifted her out of the saddle.
”How strong you are,” she said, in the toneless voice of a sleep-walker. Then her frozen anguish melted suddenly and completely.
For Honor Desmond, instead of releasing her, clasped her close, kissing her, with pa.s.sionate tenderness, on cheeks and brows, like wet marble: and in the midst of her bewildered misery Quita realised dimly what it might mean to possess a mother.
”Theo and I know about it all,” Honor explained at length; and Quita nodded. The fact that she was crying her heart out on the shoulder of her detested rival made the whole incident dreamlike to the verge of stupefaction: and it was Honor who spoke again.
”We'll just wait here together till they come back; and shut--the worst out of our thoughts. You have splendid courage, my dear, and I think I love nothing in the world more than courage. Sit down with me now on this pile of fir-needles. It looks a little less saturated than the rest of the world.”
Still keeping an arm round her, she drew her down unresisting to her side: and Quita, choking back the tears that had probably saved her brain from after-effects of the shock, looked with awakened interest at her new-found friend.
”I don't deserve that you should be so good to me,” she said, humour flas.h.i.+ng through her pain like a watery sunbeam on a day of mist. ”I have hated you, with all my heart, ever since I first saw you!”
At which confession Honor pressed her closer. ”Bless you for telling me!--I take it simply as the measure of--your love for him.”
”_Mon Dieu_, no! Not now,” she answered very low.
”I am glad of that too. For I want very much to be good friends with Captain Lenox's wife.”
On the last word a slow colour crept back into Quita's cheeks.
”You mustn't speak of it--yet, to any one else. There are difficulties--big difficulties . . .”
”I know;--but you may trust him to conquer them. One feels in him the sort of force that moves mountains.”
Again Quita nodded. ”You seem to know everything,” she added, a last spark flickering in the ashes of her jealousy. ”And I suppose you blame _me_ for it all.”
”I am too ignorant of the facts to blame either of you. I only know that even if he wronged you in any way, he has been more than sufficiently punished.”
At that Quita's lips quivered, and the storm of her grief broke out afresh: while the greater storm overhead, having accomplished its evil work, rolled rapidly northward, with the colossal unconcern of a giant who crushes a beetle in his path; and the first stupendous downrush of water subsided into a melancholy drizzle of rain.
In that endless hour of looking and waiting for those who seemed as if they had been blotted out for all time, Quita learned once and for all what manner of woman Honor Desmond was; learnt also something of the loyalty and reserve that had marked Eldred's intercourse with her whom he had spoken of as his best friend.
CHAPTER XIV.
”My undissuaded heart I hear Whisper courage in my ear.”
--R.L.S.
Down,--steadily, interminably down the face of that formidable ravine, Theo Desmond slid, and scrambled, and climbed; holding his mind rigidly on the practical necessities of the moment, which were many and disconcerting. His stockinged feet showed dull-red streaks and blotches, where sharp stones had cut them. His hands were grazed and torn by futile clutchings at the surface of broken rocks: and the protruding neck of the brandy bottle had a trick of digging him playfully in the ribs: which made him swear. Impertinent raindrops chased each other down his cheeks and forehead; trickling into his eyes, and blinding him at critical moments when he dared not release a hand to brush them away.
The inch-by-inch progress to which he was condemned fretted the hasty spirit of the man; anxiety consumed him, and conspired with impatience to beget a nightmare illusion that he had been battling with naked rock and dripping vegetation since the beginning of Time.
Once,--for all the caution with which he crept backward and downward,--his foot slipped, on the wet surface of a boulder; and, in the hope of avoiding a fall, he clutched at a small shrub, with one hand, s.h.i.+elding the aggressive brandy bottle with the other. But the treacherous sapling yielded under his weight; and wrenching its roots from the moist earth, he rolled over and over, knocking his head and chest violently against outlying peninsulars of rock.
Both hands were requisitioned now, in a vain effort to check a descent that had become too rapid for comfort or dignity: and before long, a musical clink, followed by a strong whiff of spirit, announced the fate of the brandy bottle.
”d.a.m.n the thing!” he exclaimed in an access of helpless fury. Then a fresh blow on his head whelmed anger and anxiety in sheer pain, and sent him rolling like a log into a kindly patch of undergrowth, which had, so far, blocked his downward view.