CHAPTER XXV
I came to myself slowly and painfully. I was conscious of an aching
head and a shooting pain down my left arm when I tried to move,
and everything seemed dream-like and unreal. Nightmare visions
floated before me. I felt myself falling—falling again. Once Harry
Rayburn’s face seemed to come to me out of the mist. Almost I
imagined it real. Then it floated away again, mocking me. Once, I
remember, some one put a cup to my lips and I drank. A black face
grinned into mine—a devil’s face, I thought it, and screamed out.
Then dreams again—long troubled dreams in which I vainly sought
Harry Rayburn to warn him—warn him—what of? I did not know myself.
But there was some danger—some great danger—and I alone could save
him. Then darkness again, merciful darkness, and real sleep.
I woke at last myself again. The long nightmare was over. I
remembered perfectly everything that had happened, my hurried
flight from the hotel to meet Harry, the man in the shadows and
that last terrible moment of falling. . . .
By some miracle or other I had not been killed. I was bruised and
aching and very weak, but I was alive. But where was I? Moving my
head with difficulty I looked round me. I was in a small room with
rough wooden walls. On them were hung skins of animals and various
tusks of ivory. I was lying on a kind of rough couch, also covered
with skins, and my left arm was bandaged up and felt stiff and
uncomfortable. At first I thought I was alone, and then I saw a
man’s figure sitting between me and the light, his head turned
toward the window. He was so still that he might have been carved
out of wood. Something in the close-cropped black head was familiar
to me, but I did not dare to let my imagination run astray. Suddenly
he turned, and I caught my breath. It was Harry Rayburn. Harry
Rayburn in the flesh.
He rose and came over to me.
“Feeling better?” he said a trifle awkwardly.
I could not answer. The tears were running down my face. I was weak
still, but I held his hand in both of mine. If only I could die
like this, whilst he stood there looking down on me with that new
look in his eyes.
“Don’t cry, Anne. Please don’t cry. You’re safe now. No one shall
hurt you.”
He went and fetched a cup and brought it to me.
“Drink some of this milk.”
I drank obediently. He went on talking in a low coaxing tone such
as he might have used to a child.
“Don’t ask any more questions now. Go to sleep again. You’ll be
stronger by and by. I’ll go away if you like.”
“No,” I said urgently. “No, no.
“Then I’ll stay.”
He brought a small stool over beside me and sat there. He laid his
hand over mine, and, soothed and comforted, I dropped off to sleep
once more.
It must have been evening then, but when I woke again the sun was
high in the heavens. I was alone in the hut, but as I stirred an
old native woman came running in. She was hideous as sin, but she
grinned at me encouragingly. She brought me water in a basin and
helped me wash my face and hands. Then she brought me a large bowl
of soup, and I finished it every drop! I asked her several
questions, but she only grinned and nodded and chattered away in
a guttural language, so I gathered she knew no English.
Suddenly she stood up and drew back respectfully as Harry Rayburn
entered. He gave her a nod of dismissal and she went out leaving
us alone. He smiled at me.
“Really better to-day!”
“Yes, indeed, but very bewildered still. Where am I?”
“You’re on a small island on the Zambesi about four miles up from
the Falls.”
“Do—do my friends know I’m here?”
He shook his head.
“I must send word to them.”
“That is as you like of course, but if I were you I should wait
until you are a little stronger.”
“Why?”
He did not answer immediately, so I went on.
“How long have I been here?”
His answer amazed me.
“Nearly a month.”
“Oh!” I cried. “I must send word to Suzanne. She’ll be terribly
anxious.”
“Who is Suzanne?”
“Mrs. Blair. I was with her and Sir Eustace and Colonel Race at
the hotel—but you knew that surely?”
He shook his head.
“I know nothing, except that I found you, caught in the fork of a
tree, unconscious and with a badly wrenched arm.”
“Where was the tree?”
“Overhanging the ravine. But for your clothes catching on the
branches, you would infallibly have been dashed to pieces.”
I shuddered. Then a thought struck me.
“You say you didn’t know I was there. What about the note then?”
“What note?”
“The note you sent me, asking me to meet you in the clearing.”
He stared at me.
“I sent no note.”
I felt myself flushing up to the roots of my hair. Fortunately he
did not seem to notice.
“How did you come to be on the spot in such a marvellous manner?”
I asked in as nonchalant a manner as I could assume. “And what are
you doing in this part of the world, anyway?”
“I live here,” he said simply.
“On this island?”
“Yes, I came here after the War. Sometimes I take parties from the
hotel out in my boat, but it costs me very little to live, and
mostly I do as I please.”
“You live here all alone?”
“I am not pining for society, I assure you,” he replied coldly.
“I am sorry to have inflicted mine upon you,” I retorted, “but I
seem to have had very little to say in the matter.”
To my surprise his eyes twinkled a little.
“None whatever. I slung you across my shoulders like a sack of coal
and carried you to my boat. Quite like a primitive man of the Stone
Age.”
“But for a different reason,” I put in.
_He_ flushed this time, a deep burning blush. The tan of his face
was suffused.
“But you haven’t told me how you came to be wandering about so
conveniently for me?” I said hastily, to cover his confusion.
“I couldn’t sleep. I was restless—disturbed—had the feeling
something was going to happen. In the end I took the boat and came
ashore and tramped down towards the Falls. I was just at the head
of the palm gully when I heard you scream.”
“Why didn’t you get help from the hotel instead of carting me all
the way here?” I asked.
He flushed again.
“I suppose it seems an unpardonable liberty to you—but I don’t
think that even now you realize your danger! You think I should
have informed your friends? Pretty friends, who allowed you to be
decoyed out to death. No, I swore to myself that I’d take better
care of you than any one else could. Not a soul comes to this
island. I got old Batani, whom I cured of a fever once, to come
and look after you. She’s loyal. She’ll never say a word. I could
keep you here for months and no one would ever know.”
_I could keep you here for months and no one would ever know!_ How
some words please one!
“You did quite right,” I said quietly. “And I shall not send word
to any one. A day or so more anxiety doesn’t make much difference.
It’s not as though they were my own people. They’re only
acquaintances really—even Suzanne. And whoever wrote that note must
have known—a great deal. It was not the work of an outsider.”
I managed to mention the note this time without blushing at all.
“If you would be guided by me——” he said, hesitating.
“I don’t expect I shall be,” I answered candidly. “But there’s no
harm in hearing.”
“Do you always do what you like, Miss Beddingfeld?”
“Usually,” I replied cautiously. To any one else I would have said
“Always.”
“I pity your husband,” he said unexpectedly.
“You needn’t,” I retorted. “I shouldn’t dream of marrying any one
unless I was madly in love with them. And of course there is really
nothing a woman enjoys so much as doing all the things she doesn’t
like for the sake of some one she _does_ like. And the more
self-willed she is, the more she likes it.”
“I’m afraid I disagree with you. The boot is on the other leg as
a rule.” He spoke with a slight sneer.
“Exactly,” I cried eagerly. “And that’s why there are so many
unhappy marriages. It’s all the fault of the men. Either they give
way to their women—and then the women despise them, or else they
are utterly selfish, insist on their own way and never say ‘thank
you.’ Successful husbands make their wives do just what they want,
and then make a frightful fuss of them for doing it. Women like to
be mastered, but they hate not to have their sacrifices appreciated.
On the other hand, men don’t really appreciate women who are nice
to them all the time. When I am married, I shall be a devil most
of the time, but every now and then, when my husband least expects
it, I shall show him what a perfect angel I can be!”
Harry laughed outright.
“What a cat and dog life you will lead.”
“Lovers always fight,” I assured him. “Because they don’t understand
each other. And by the time they do understand each other they
aren’t in love any more.”
“Does the reverse hold true? Are people who fight each other always
lovers?”
“I—I don’t know,” I said, momentarily confused.
He turned away to the fireplace.
“Like some more soup?” he asked in a casual tone.
“Yes, please. I’m so hungry that I could eat a hippopotamus.”
“That’s good.”
He busied himself with the fire; I watched.
“When I can get off the couch, I’ll cook for you,” I promised.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about cooking.”
“I can warm up things out of tins as well as you can,” I retorted,
pointing to a row of tins on the mantelpiece.
_“Touché,”_ he said, and laughed.
His whole face changed when he laughed. It became boyish, happy—a
different personality.
I enjoyed my soup. As I ate it I reminded him that he had not,
after all, tendered me his advice.
“Ah, yes, what I was going to say was this. If I were you I would
stay quietly _perdu_ here until you are quite strong again. Your
enemies will believe you dead. They will hardly be surprised at
not finding the body. It would have been dashed to pieces on the
rocks and carried down with the torrent.”
I shivered.
“Once you are completely restored to health, you can journey
quietly on to Beira and get a boat to take you back to England.”
“That would be very tame,” I objected scornfully.
“There speaks a foolish schoolgirl.”
“I’m not a foolish schoolgirl,” I cried indignantly. “I’m a woman.”
He looked at me with an expression I could not fathom as I sat up
flushed and excited.
“God help me, so you are,” he muttered, and went abruptly out.
My recovery was rapid. The two injuries I had sustained were a
knock on the head and a badly wrenched arm. The latter was the most
serious and, to begin with, my rescuer had believed it to be
actually broken. A careful examination, however, convinced him that
it was not so, and although it was very painful I was recovering
the use of it quite quickly.
It was a strange time. We were cut off from the world, alone
together as Adam and Eve might have been—but with what a difference!
Old Batani hovered about counting no more than a dog might have
done. I insisted on doing the cooking, or as much of it as I could
manage with one arm. Harry was out a good part of the time, but we
spent long hours together lying out in the shade of the palms,
talking and quarrelling—discussing everything under high heaven,
quarrelling and making it up again. We bickered a good deal, but
there grew up between us a real and lasting comradeship such as I
could never have believed possible. That—and something else.
The time was drawing near, I knew it, when I should be well enough
to leave and I realized it with a heavy heart. Was he going to let
me go? Without a word? Without a sign? He had fits of silence, long
moody intervals, moments when he would spring up and tramp off by
himself. One evening the crisis came. We had finished our simple
meal and were sitting in the doorway of the hut. The sun was
sinking.
Hairpins were necessities of life with which Harry had not been
able to provide me, and my hair, straight and black, hung to my
knees. I sat, my chin on my hands, lost in meditation. I felt
rather than saw Harry looking at me.
“You look like a witch, Anne,” he said at last, and there was
something in his voice that had never been there before.
He reached out his hand and just touched my hair. I shivered.
Suddenly he sprang up with an oath.
“You must leave here to-morrow, do you hear?” he cried. “I—I can’t
bear any more. I’m only a man after all. You must go, Anne. You
must. You’re not a fool. You know yourself that this can’t go on.”
“I suppose not,” I said slowly. “But—it’s been happy, hasn’t it?”
“Happy? It’s been hell!”
“As bad as that!”
“What do you torment me for? Why are you mocking at me? Why do you
say that—laughing into your hair?”
“I wasn’t laughing. And I’m not mocking. If you want me to go, I’ll
go. But if you want me to stay—I’ll stay.”
“Not that!” he cried vehemently. “Not that. Don’t tempt me, Anne.
Do you realize what I am? A criminal twice over. A man hunted down.
They know me here as Harry Parker—they think I’ve been away on a
trek up country, but any day they may put two and two together—and
then the blow will fall. You’re so young, Anne, and so beautiful—with
the kind of beauty that sends men mad. All the world’s before
you—love, life, everything. Mine’s behind me—scorched, spoiled,
with a taste of bitter ashes.”
“If you don’t want me——”
“You know I want you. You know that I’d give my soul to pick you
up in my arms and keep you here, hidden away from the world, for
ever and ever. And you’re tempting me, Anne. You, with your long
witch’s hair, and your eyes that are golden and brown and green
and never stop laughing even when your mouth is grave. But I’ll
save you from yourself and from me. You shall go to-night. You
shall go to Beira——”
“I’m not going to Beira,” I interrupted.
“You are. You shall go to Beira if I have to take you there myself
and throw you on to the boat. What do you think I’m made of? Do
you think I’ll wake up night after night, fearing they’ve got you?
One can’t go on counting on miracles happening. You must go back
to England, Anne—and—and marry and be happy.”
“With a steady man who’ll give me a good home!”
“Better that than—utter disaster.”
“And what of you?”
His face grew grim and set.
“I’ve got my work ready to hand. Don’t ask what it is. You can
guess, I dare say. But I’ll tell you this—I’ll clear my name, or
die in the attempt, and I’ll choke the life out of the damned
scoundrel who did his best to murder you the other night.”
“We must be fair,” I said. “He didn’t actually push me over.”
“He’d no need to. His plan was cleverer than that. I went up to
the path afterwards. Everything looked all right, but by the marks
on the ground I saw that the stones which outline the path had been
taken up and put down again in a slightly different place. There
are tall bushes growing just over the edge. He’d balanced the
outside stones on them, so that you’d think you were still on the
path when in reality you were stepping into nothingness. God help
him if I lay my hands upon him!”
He paused a minute and then said in a totally different tone:
“We’ve never spoken of these things, Anne, have we? But the time’s
come. I want you to hear the whole story—from the beginning.”
“If it hurts you to go over the past, don’t tell me,” I said in a
low voice.
“But I want you to know. I never thought I should speak of that
part of my life to any one. Funny, isn’t it, the tricks Fate
plays?”
He was silent for a minute or two. The sun had set, and the velvety
darkness of the African night was enveloping us like a mantle.
“Some of it I know,” I said gently.
“What do you know?”
“I know that your real name is Harry Lucas.”
Still he hesitated—not looking at me, but staring straight out in
front of him. I had no clue as to what was passing in his mind,
but at last he jerked his head forward as though acquiescing in
some unspoken decision of his own and began his story.