Chapter Ten.
The Syyed’s Tangi.
“Are you superstitious, Miss Clive?”
“Well, I don’t know. Not more than other people, I suppose.”
“That is tantamount to an answer in the affirmative,” rejoined Raynier. “Believer in ‘luck.’ Observances connected with the new moon—the finding of a horse-shoe. Things of that kind.”
“Oh no, I’m not,” she answered decidedly.
“What? You would really upset the salt, and omit to throw some over your shoulder—or walk under a ladder?”
“As to that, I’d make sure there was no one on it with a paint-pot first.”
“That’s better. And you’re not afraid of ghosts, eh?”
“Well, I’ve never seen one,” she answered, demurely mischievous. And then they both laughed.
It was near sundown—also near the camp. They were returning from an afternoon ride, and the rest of the party, Haslam and the Tarletons to wit, were some way on ahead. These two were alone together.
This they had frequently been, since accident had thus thrown them together, and in that brief period of time Raynier had fallen to wondering more and more what there was about Hilda Clive that already he had begun to think how he would miss her later on, and how on earth they could have been shut up together on board a ship all the time they had, and yet that he should hardly have taken any notice of her. Now in their daily intercourse she was so companionable and tactful—and withal feminine. She was really attractive too, he thought, not for the first time, as he looked at her and noticed how well she sat her horse. As an actual fact she really had improved in the point of appearance, and that vastly; for the healthy outdoor life in that high climate had added a colour to her face which gave it just that amount of softness in which it had seemed lacking before.
“If you are absolutely sure you are free from superstition,” went on Raynier, “I’d like to show you something that’s worth seeing.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a real thrill of curiosity in that question,” he laughed. “It’s a tangi—and a haunted one.”
“Oh, I must see it. Where is it, Mr Raynier?”
“Close here. But before you venture you had better think over the penalty. The belief is that whoever enters it meets his death in some shape or form before the end of the next moon.”
“That’s creepy, at any rate. But is the idea borne out by fact?”
“They say it is, without exception. You would not get any of the people here to set foot in it on any consideration whatever.”
“Then none of them ever set foot in it?”
“I should rather think not.”
“Then how do they know what would happen if they did?”
“They know what has happened—at least, they say so. This is the place.”
They had been riding over a nearly level plain, sparsely grown with stunted vegetation, and shut in by hills, stony and desolate, breaking up here and there into a network of chasms. Under one of these and at the further edge of the plain was pitched their camp, and from where they now halted they could distinguish the smoke of the fires rising straight upward on the still air, could make out the glimmer of a white tent or two. Right in front of them reared a mountain side, steep and lofty, rising in terraced slopes—and, cleaving this there yawned the entrance of a gigantic rift.
“I’m not surprised they should weave all sorts of superstitions about such a place as this,” said Hilda Clive, as she gazed up, with admiration not unmixed with awe, at the sheer of the stupendous rock portals, so regular in their smooth immensity as almost to preclude the possibility of being the work of Nature unaided.
“Well, now, I’ve warned you what the penalty is,” went on the other. “Do you still want to go in?”
“Why, you are so solemn over it, Mr Raynier, that anyone would think you believed in it yourself.”
“They could hardly think that, could they, seeing that I’ve been through it already.”
“Been through it? Have you really? How long ago?”
“From end to end. A couple of days after we came up here.”
“But did you know the tradition?”
“Yes. Haslam told me. I questioned Mehrab Khan about it, and he is a firm believer in it. In fact, all the people are. That’s the reason I sent him on to the camp now. I didn’t want him to know what we were going to do, if only that there’s nothing to be gained by jumping with both feet upon other people’s prejudices, especially natives’. And these might look upon it as a desecration.”
“Has Mr Haslam been through it himself?”
Raynier whistled, then laughed.
“Haslam! Why, he’d about as soon go into it as Mehrab Khan.”
“Really, Mr Raynier, I couldn’t have believed you people out here were so superstitious. You are as bad as the natives themselves. I suppose you get it from them.”
“‘You’? Count me out, please. Didn’t I just say I’d been through the place? I’m doomed anyhow, you see,” he added banteringly, “but there’s no reason why you should be. So now we’ll get back to camp.”
“No. I want to go through it too.”
“Quite sure you won’t feel uncomfortable about it afterwards?” he said. “You might, you know.”
But a strange expression had come over her face, the set, far-away look of one whose thoughts were not with her words. In after times that look came back to him.
“I want to go through it too,” she repeated.
“Very well, then—you’ve been warned.”
As they entered the grim portal the sun was just touching the horizon, but it occurred to neither of them that it might be pitch dark before they emerged. At first the slant of the rock walls caused one of these to overhang, shutting out the sky, but the rift gradually widening, they could see the brow of these stupendous cliffs, far above against the sky at a dizzy height. Unconsciously the tones of both were lowered as they conversed.
“It isn’t healthy taking too long to get through a tangi like this when there are rain storms going about,” Raynier was saying. “It makes a most effective waterway for ten, twenty, forty feet of flood. Ah, I thought so. Look.”
High over their heads, caught here and there in a crevice of the rock, was a wisp of withered grass or a few sticks. There was no mistaking how these objects had got there, and the awful magnitude of the flood which at times bellowed through this grisly rift.
“Why is the place supposed to be haunted?” said Hilda Clive. “You didn’t tell me.”
“The usual thing—a curse. There was a man killed here by the people of the neighbourhood—not an incident of very great moment in this country, you would think. But this one was a great character in the sanctity line of business—a Syyed or a Hadji, or something of the sort—and so his ghost appeared and took it out of the neighbourhood, and indeed the human race in general, by planting a rigid embargo on the place. And it was a pretty practical way of taking it out of them too, for they used this tangi as a thoroughfare—it’s scarcely a mile long, you know—whereas now they’ve got to go round the mountain instead of through it, which makes a difference of at least eight.”
“It’s an eerie place, anyhow,” said the girl, looking up a little awe-stricken at the immensity of the cliff walls. The sun had gone off the world now, and a tomb-like twilight prevailed here in the heart of the mountain. It was chilling enough to have begotten a whole volume of grim legends.
“Wonder if the old Syyed’s ghost is on hand now,” said Raynier, who was cynically and frankly sceptical in such matters. “We’ll give him the salaam anyhow.” Then, raising his voice but very slightly, he exclaimed,—
“Salaam, Syyed!”
What was this? The whole of the immense vault was roaring and bellowing with sound. In waves it rolled, now running along the ground at their feet, now tossed on high as though escaping into outer air. “Salaam, salaam, salaam!” it replied in every conceivable tone and key, then roared along the cliffs again as in a peal of thunder, the whole accompanied by a mighty rattling. The noise was simply appalling.
Raynier, the sceptical, was more than startled. Not to put too line a point on it, he was just a little bit scared, though no manifestation of it escaped him. The horses of both, too, were backing and snorting, evincing a degree of terror not at all calculated to soothe the nerves of their riders. The suddenness of it all, the booming of the spectral voices here in the grisly depths, was rather startling.
He looked at his companion somewhat apprehensively, expecting to see her pale and shaking, perhaps hysterical. To his surprise she was laughing. His first thought even then was that this was a form of hysteria.
“Don’t you see?” she said.
“Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” boomed the vault around. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” shrieked and wailed the heights above. And then Raynier felt secretly more than a little ashamed of himself—for he did see.
As they were talking they had rounded a sudden bend in the defile, and the salute he had jocosely directed to the dead Syyed—if such a person had ever existed in fact—had been caught up by a most astounding echo, which, for no apparent reason, was given forth precisely at that spot. Still, it was not a little curious that they should have entered within its scope simultaneously with the utterance of the half-mocking words, which, mingling with the rattle of the horses’ hoofs upon the loose stones of the tangi, had produced the horrible din.
Now it was she who said in a whisper,—
“We had better not talk out loud or these horses will go quite mad. It is all I can do to stay on mine as it is.”
In fact the animals were in the wildest stage of snorting, trembling fear, and could hardly be persuaded to proceed at all. Their shying and plunging created a rattle which the echo reproduced and magnified as before. At length they quieted down.
“We may be through the sphere of the echo,” said Raynier, tentatively raising his voice a little. And the result showed that they were.
“How is it the same thing did not happen when you came through here before?” said Hilda Clive, as soon as it became safe to converse again.
“Easily explained. I left my horse at the entrance and walked. I always wear very silent boots, and I had nobody to talk to. Look, we are through now, but we sha’n’t have much time to admire the view on the other side because it’s rather late, and we ought to get back to camp.”
A tower of light now rose in front of them, light only in comparison to the gloom of the tangi. It was the exit at the other end, similar in every particular to the entrance.
They stood looking out over a wild wide valley shut in by the same eternal hills. From far beneath among the gloomy rifts and sparse vegetation arose the long-drawn howl of a wolf.
“What a wilderness!” exclaimed the girl. “Do you know, it’s splendid. I’m so glad I came.”
She had turned her eyes full upon his face. What wonderful eyes they were, he thought—and they were fascinating too. How on earth had he been so long in making the discovery? He thought, too, how she had been the one whose nerves had remained entirely unshaken during that very startling surprise—how she it was—not he—who had at once seen through its perfectly natural solution, and he felt small accordingly. But his admiration for her had strangely increased.
They turned to retrace their way, hardly able to make it out in the gloom. They had been descending all the time, and now it took a little longer, for the floor of the tangi was stony and rough.
“I’m not surprised they have set up a ghost here,” said Raynier, when they had passed the echo point. “That is one of the most extraordinary effects I have ever experienced.”
“Is it not?” she answered quietly. “Don’t look up just yet—it has disappeared—but there was the head of someone watching us just over the ledge a little above you on the right. There. Now look.”
Raynier could hardly repress a start, as his hand went instinctively to his pistol pocket nor did he feel any the easier because, by some inadvertence, it was empty. Then he looked up.
Right over the way they were to pass was a small ledge, apparently inaccessible to mortal foot, or incapable of sustaining a single human being could such attain to it. Yet, there was the head again—huge, shaggy, menacing—staring down upon them in the gloom. Then it again disappeared.
Chapter Eleven.
Concerning the Occult.
“How would it be to move camp to-morrow?” Tarleton was saying. “We’ve been here long enough, and there’s nothing to shoot, or next to nothing. What do you think, Raynier?”
“No great hurry, is there? It’s breezy and picturesque here, and has its advantages. What do you think, Haslam?”
“I’m with Tarleton,” said the Forest Officer. “All our fellows are grumbling. They say it’s an unlucky place.”
It was the evening after the somewhat eventful ride just recorded, and they were all assembled within the large tent which was used as a common dining-room. Dinner was over and cheroots were being discussed.
“Yes. My Babu was telling me something of the kind only to-day,” rejoined Raynier, tranquilly. “By the way, Haslam, how is it all this while we’ve never been through that tangi? You know, the one you were telling me the yarn about?”
Haslam stared.
“Well, you know, old chap—I—I told you the yarn, didn’t I? Well, that explains it.”
“But you don’t really mean to say you believe in such arrant tomfoolery?”
“I don’t know about believing in it. But—well, it’s best to be on the safe side.”
“Goodness gracious, I should think so,” struck in Mrs Tarleton. “Why, I wouldn’t go into that place if anyone were to offer me a million pounds.”
“Well, I wish they’d offer it to me, that’s all,” said Raynier. “For I mean to go through it to-morrow, gratis. Who’ll volunteer? What do you say, Miss Clive?”
“I’ll go, with pleasure,” was the answer.
It will be seen that these two had kept their former experience to themselves, and this they had done by mutual agreement, mainly to get some fun out of the rest of the party, and it was to this object Raynier was now leading up. The head which both had seen watching them they had since accounted for by optical delusion, even as the startling sounds had been accounted for by perfectly natural causes.
Mrs Tarleton gave a cry of genuine consternation.
“Hilda, you must not go,” she implored. “Oh, Mr Raynier, don’t take her—if only as a favour to me.”
“But I’m not in the least superstitious, Mrs Tarleton,” said the girl, looking up from the work she was engaged upon. “In fact, I like to demonstrate the absurdity of these childish beliefs. Why, I can hardly count the number of times I’ve got up first of thirteen from table.”
“Well, there must be something in these ideas, I suppose, or else they wouldn’t be so universally accepted,” cut in Tarleton.
“No? Then of course the world has only lately become round, seeing that for ages it was ‘universally accepted’ as flat,” said Raynier.
“Ah, but that’s quite a different thing.”
Then Haslam told a weird and wonderful story or two illustrating the strange power of native prophecy, which interested Hilda, and Tarleton would cap such with the coincidence type of anecdote, such as the first of thirteen at table—and at these she laughed.
“None of those instances come anywhere near carrying conviction,” she said. “Now, remember. In good time I will supply you with just such an instance to the contrary. No; I won’t tell you anything about it now. But you’ll see at the right time.”
“I believe Miss Clive means to go into the tangi,” said Haslam.
“No, I don’t,” Hilda answered. “I won’t go into it now. I don’t want to frighten all you poor creatures.”
They laughed, rather weakly it must be owned—all but Raynier, that is, for he was in the know, and was enjoying the situation immensely. How well she looked when she was animated and her face lighted up like that—was what he was thinking as he sat watching her. Somebody touched on the subject of clairvoyance. In a moment Hilda’s manner changed. She became grave, almost earnest.
“Hullo!” cried Tarleton. “We’ve got hold of something at last that Miss Clive does believe in.”
“To a certain extent, yes.”
“I remember going to a séance once,” said Mrs Tarleton. “There was a dreadful woman going into trances, and pointing out people’s dead relations standing behind their chairs. She described them, and all sorts of things. It made me feel quite creepy.”
“Yes, but how many times was she wide of the mark for every time she made a good shot?” said Raynier.
“Hardly once. It is quite wonderful.”
“There’s nothing in that sort of clairvoyance; it’s sheer quackery,” said Hilda, speaking in a decisive, authoritative tone that astonished her hearers.
“I should think so,” said Raynier. “Whatever may be the state or locality of the dead, it is not to be supposed that they would be empowered, or would even wish, to appear in London, to enable a cad in a second-hand dress-suit to take up so much a head in gate money, nor a female fraud either, for the matter of that.”
“Well, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t,” cut in Tarleton, characteristically.
“No! It doesn’t strike you as improbable?” said Hilda, with a pitying look.
“Why should they be quacks?” persisted Tarleton. “Why shouldn’t there be anything in what they do?”
“I don’t know why there shouldn’t be, I only know there isn’t,” she replied. “Why, the gift—for clairvoyance is a gift—is so rare that it is hardly surprising its very existence is disbelieved in. I know it—at least, I mean—er—anybody can reason out the matter for themselves.”
The concluding words were lame and stammering, and the change from the firmness and decision of tone which had marked her utterances hitherto, as though she had suddenly found herself out in saying too much, could not but strike her hearers as strange, to say the least of it. To Raynier it suggested a new idea, which indeed came to him with a sort of mental start. But he came to the rescue.
“Its existence is undoubted, though as rare as Miss Clive says. Why, that feeling that comes to us sometimes of having done or said some given thing before, or found ourselves in some given place, is a sort of an approach to the art, or gift, or whatever you like to call it.”
“Oh, I don’t know what that is,” said Mrs Tarleton. “Thank goodness that sort of thing doesn’t come my way. But we’ve been talking about creepy things all the evening. I’m sure I shall dream. Ugh!” with a shiver. “What is it like outside?”
It was time to separate for the night, but they lingered a while chatting in front of the tent. There was a very wildness of desolation in this sudden transition from light to darkness. All within the camp was silent, and away beyond, the loom of the hills was just discernible, black against the stars. The ghostly cry of a night bird echoed from the craggy height which overhung the camp, and far away over the plain a most weird and melancholy howling was borne upon the night wind.
“That’s a wolf—or wolves,” said Haslam, his shikari instincts metaphorically pricking up his ears. “Aren’t you afraid, Miss Clive? There’s nothing between you and them but a strip of canvas, all night through.”
Hilda laughed.
“Afraid?” she repeated. “Why, this is positively delightful. It is such a contrast. Inside the tents—why, we might be in Mazaran, or even in London. Outside—the very ideal of savage wildness. Afraid? Why, I’m positively revelling in it. I like to hear that. Hark! There it is again. I’d like to see those wolves close—to watch them prowling for prey and doubling back and signalling to each other—if only I could get near enough to observe them without scaring them.”
“My goodness, child! Why, they’d eat you,” said Mrs Tarleton.
“Not they.” And Hilda laughed again.
“I say, old chap,” said Haslam, later, as Raynier lounged into his tent for another “peg” and a final smoke, “that’s a strange sort of girl the Tarletons have picked up. Who is she? Do you know?”
“No more than you do.”
“Well, there’s something dashed uncanny about her. The way she talks—there’s something sort of creepy about it. Eh? And did you ever see such eyes as she’s got? Eh?”
“N-no, I don’t think I ever did,” answered Raynier, slowly and between puffs, but in no wise with the same meaning as Haslam had in his mind.
“I say, she’d make a rum sort of a wife for most fellows, with those rum uncanny ideas of hers. Eh?” And then the speaker stopped rather short, remembering, all of a sudden, that Raynier and the object of his remarks had been getting a bit thick of late. But, then, Raynier was rather a queer chap himself, he reflected. Anyway, he felt a trifle embarrassed, as though he had been putting his foot in it.
“I daresay,” answered Raynier, equably. “‘Most fellows’ are like shot—assorted into sizes, and might safely be numbered in the same way.” At bottom, however, the remark jarred upon him, and set him wondering for the fiftieth time what insidious fascination the strange personality of Hilda Clive was beginning to set up within his innermost being, and that such was the case he was only beginning to admit, hugging to himself the very secrecy of the thought, and the subtle stimulus it afforded. Yet, what did it all mean? He was not in love with Hilda Clive, but some strange fascination radiated from her. It might be uncanny—as Haslam had said—yet he liked it—nor would he have bartered it for the artless advances of conventional attractions, and of such he was not without experience, for natural and unassuming as he constitutionally was, the Political Agent of Mazaran, on the right side of forty, was something of a parti, by reason of his position and its emoluments; and when, added to this, he who filled the one and enjoyed the other was in the prime of physical health and strength, why, then, so much the more eligible did that parti become.
Haslam the while had turned in, and was yawning profusely—in fact, could hardly give a coherent answer to any question or remark, wherefore Raynier adjourned to his own tent. But not the slightest inclination was on him to follow Haslam’s example. He felt extraordinarily wide awake, wherefore he got out a camp-chair, and, having extinguished the lamp within his tent, lit another cheroot and sat there to enjoy the beauty of the night and think.
It was very still. What little wind there had been had dropped completely. A glow had begun to suffuse the velvety darkness of the star-gemmed sky, and, widening, the black loom of a rocky ridge away beyond the plain became clearly defined, then a rim of fire, and lo!—a broad moon soared majestically upward.
It was beautiful. The white tents lay like blocks of marble in its light, which silvered over the plain and the scant foliage of a few scattered junipers. The crunch, crunch of ruminating camels, and the stamp and snort of a horse, alone broke the stillness, save for the long-drawn howl still heard from time to time over the wilderness afar, where wolves prowled. Dark peaks, in softened outline, stood clear against the sky.
His thoughts ran back to the time of his furlough, to England and what had transpired there. Again and again he congratulated himself that he was free from that bond; how on earth he could ever have entered into it seemed more incomprehensible than ever. And what a long while ago it seemed, and—
What was this? A figure moving in the moonlight, a figure clothed in white draperies. In a brief flash the solution of a midnight marauder—the first of others—occurred to him, and his hand went to his pistol pocket—this time not empty. But he quickly withdrew it. For as the figure glided swiftly among the tents he knew it—knew it for that of Hilda Clive.
Heavens! What was she doing, what was she bent upon, just as she had risen from bed like this? She was walking, erect and rather swiftly, and now in a straight line; stepping forward, looking neither to the right nor to the left, yet there was something about the gait that was not usual, a something as though she was walking unconsciously. And—she had left the tents behind her now, and was walking swiftly and straight for the open country. He gazed for a moment, dumbfounded, after the receding form, then, rising, started to follow.
Chapter Twelve.
A Strange Midnight Ramble.
She was walking in her sleep.
This was the conclusion Raynier instinctively arrived at as he followed stealthily and noiselessly behind; and to his mind the problem occurred as to what he had better do. He had always been under the impression that to awaken a person under such circumstances was likely to produce an alarming, if not rather a disastrous, shock. But what on earth was to be done? She could not be suffered to walk on like this, Heaven knew where. Should he go back and rouse up Tarleton? But at the pace she was going she would be away and out of sight by the time he had hammered into the understanding of that contentious idiot the urgency of the situation, and this was no sort of country for any woman to go wandering about in at night. There were wolves around, too, for had they not been making themselves heard? and however chary such were of letting themselves be seen if anyone were anxious to get the sights of a rifle upon them, a solitary woman was a different story—and he was cognisant, moreover, of the fact that even the most skulking of wild animals are, strangely enough, far less afraid of the female of the human species. No, he must follow on after her, and that at once.
But where on earth was she going to lead him? On, on, she pressed, walking swiftly, and although the ground itself was, in places, none of the smoothest, yet, while not seeming to notice the way, she sped over it almost quicker than he did, looking carefully where he was going. It was a weird sort of undertaking. He could see in the moonlight her splendid hair streaming like a mantle about her shoulders, and noted the grace and ease with which she walked. On—ever. They were nearing the edge of the plain—and lo!—there in front of them rose the mountain which was cleft by the great tangi—the haunted tangi, equally feared seemingly by the enlightened and highly-educated Europeans who were his fellow-travellers as by the superstitious natives of the land.
Straight for this the unconscious pedestrian was heading. What strange influence was drawing her thither, thought he who followed: and for the first time something of the superstitious shrinking which caused them to shun the place began to creep over him. He glanced over his shoulder with some faint hope that others might have discovered the girl’s absence and be following, but no. All was dead and silent. Nothing moved in the silvery moonlight.
And now in front rose the great rock portal—and on, ever on, kept the white and gliding figure before him. He saw it stand forth whiter than ever against the gloom of the entrance, then disappear, swallowed within the cavernous blackness of the great chasm.
Would the sudden change both of light and atmosphere awaken her? Would she come rushing forth wild with terror, instinctively making for the light? For a moment he waited in case this should be so—then plunged within the darkness of the place.
Raynier felt that here her wandering would end. Some strange psychological wave, acting with their experience of the day before, stimulated by the subject of their conversation that evening, had moved her to rise in her sleep and come hither. But to what end? There was something uncanny about her, Haslam had remarked, but Raynier was conscious of a very lively sense of thankfulness that he had been awake, and thus ready to follow and watch over her on this eerie and far from safe adventure upon which she had all unconsciously embarked.
The light from without hardly penetrating here, Raynier found himself slipping and stumbling in the gloom, yet, with it all, his quick ears could hear the footsteps in front moving easily and firmly without trip or stumble. It was marvellous—nor did the noise he made on the rattling stones seem in any way to disturb her whom he followed.
Now it grew light again in front. The white figure had reached the point where the rock walls widened out, and—had halted. The moon, immediately overhead now, darted down its light right into the chasm. Should he go forward and gently awaken her, if indeed she were not already awake? Surely she must be, for now she turned slowly round and faced him. He could see her great eyes, wide open and stamped with a wondering look; then, as he was about to advance and address her, she turned again and moved slowly onward.
And then a sound struck upon Raynier’s ears which caused every drop of blood within him to freeze, and well it might, for well he knew that sawing, grating cough drawing nearer. A panther was coming up the tangi. Heavens, and the girl was between it and him.
Then the brute appeared—and with it a cub. Raynier knew with what deadly peril the situation was now fraught, for a revolver, save in the hand of a thorough expert, is an uncertain weapon, especially in an indifferent light. At sight of them the brute stopped, then crouched, uttering a hideous, purring snarl. In that second of time the scene was photographed upon his mind; the ghostly moonlight glinting down between the great rock walls, the spotted, sinuous shape of the savage beast, every muscle quivering as it crouched there ready for its spring, its tail softly waving to and fro, and the white gliding figure advancing straight upon it; straight upon destruction in the most horrible of forms. Yes, in a flash the whole scene was before him as, pointing the pistol past her, he steadied his nerves to take the best possible aim.
But—what was this? Instead of edging forward preparatory to making its fatal rush, as he had often seen a cat do when stealing upon a bird or mouse, the brute was stealthily backing. Was it fear of the strange sight that was actuating the beast? Was there indeed some latent magnetic force about those wide open eyes? For the gliding white figure advanced unwaveringly, and as it did so the crouching brute shrank back more and more—now in unmistakable alarm. Then suddenly snatching up its cub in its mouth, it turned and bounded away beyond the elbow of rock wall round which it had first appeared.
Every nerve in the spectator’s being thrilled to the revulsion produced by this sudden removal of the awful tension of those few moments. At all risks he must awaken her and take her back to the camp. But as he advanced to do this, she halted again, turned round, passed a hand over her brow and face, looked upward at the great cliffs, then down again at him. Then she spoke,—
“So we are here together again.”
That was all. Her tone was even, placid, and evinced no astonishment whatever, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to get up in the middle of the night, and take a moonlight stroll away over a particularly wild, and, as the recent incident showed, somewhat dangerous country, or to wake to consciousness in the heart of a vast rock chasm of awe-inspiring and savage grandeur and enjoying an eerie reputation. To her listener this was well-nigh the most astounding part of the whole adventure. Was she conscious? was his first thought.
Again she passed a hand over her brow, and her great eyes rested calmly upon his face.
“Now I remember,” she said, in the same even tones. “Something threatened me—there, just now,” looking toward the spot where the panther had crouched. “It was an animal—a panther. But—it went,” she added, with a slight smile.
“That it certainly did,” rejoined Raynier, “and thank Heaven it did. Do you know that that was about the tightest situation I have ever heard or read of—a panther with a cub—with a cub, mind, for in that lay nearly the whole of the peril—coming along this narrow tube where there’s no possible means of getting out of its way—and you walking straight into its jaws. And this, under the circumstances, is a precious unreliable weapon,” showing the revolver he still held in his hand. “You or both of us might have been horribly mauled before it even began to take effect.”
“So we might. But I had a better plan with it, don’t you think so? Anyhow, the thing got in my way, and—it had to get out of it.”
The same cool tone, the same confident, but rather captivating smile. Two subjects of wonderment were at that moment crowding Herbert Raynier’s mind to the exclusion of all others. What was there about this girl—what magnetic compelling power had enabled her, by the sheer, unflinching fearlessness of her presence, to put to flight what, under the circumstances—the narrowness of the place to wit, the suddenness of the encounter, and, above all, the cub—was one of the most dangerous and formidable of wild beasts? This was one. The other was, how on earth he could ever have passed her by as being without attractiveness, and that not once, but day after day. Here, standing before him in the moonlight, looking tall in her loose white wrapper—for her strange excursion had not been so impromptu as he at first supposed—her splendid hair flowing in masses over her shoulders, her great eyes smiling upon him with something of the compelling force which had given her power over the brute, he decided that she was scarcely, if anything, short of beautiful. And then the somewhat uncommon circumstances of this interview came back upon him.
“What made you come here?” he said, the lameness of the remark striking him even while he uttered the words.
“The very question I was going to ask you.”
“Well, the answer to that should be obvious,” he said. “I saw you start out, and thought you were walking in your sleep—and I need hardly remind you that this is not an over-safe part of the world for that kind of exercise.”
“And you came to take care of me? That was very sweet of you.”
“If I had gone back to wake up Tarleton, you might have got to Heaven knows where by the time he was under way,” went on Raynier, conscious that her tone and manner had become insidiously alluring. Was he going to drift into the common idiocy? he thought, with something of dismay. “You might have altered your course and got right away from us. Then, when I did come up with you I didn’t like to wake you, because I thought it might give you a shock of sorts.”
“But I was not asleep—at least, I don’t think I was.”
Raynier stared.
“Not asleep? But you won’t mind my saying that that is—er—rather an unusual kind of walking attire.”
She laughed, glancing at her wrapper.
“Isn’t it? The fact is I hadn’t gone to bed yet I was sitting reading in the tent, and some impulse moved me to come to this place again—I can’t explain it, but it was there. Yet, I must have been asleep at times, when I walked. But I was half conscious, too, that you were near to me.”
“Well, you did not seem surprised when you woke up, so to say, and found I was.”
“No. And in a way it was a waking-up. I can’t explain it—unless it was a kind of sleeping consciousness.”
“What a strange girl you are, Miss Clive. Somehow I can’t make you out at all.”
“No? And yet you wish you could. Am I right?”
The smile she flashed at him was inexpressibly winning and sweet. Raynier recalled Haslam’s dictum. Something uncanny about her, he had said—something sort of creepy. Well, there might be from the point of view of some, even of most. But what would have repelled most men appealed to him, and the proof of it was that he was conscious of no inclination to terminate this interview—rather the reverse. Still, it had to be done.
“We ought to return to the camp, I think,” he said, in the same unconcerned tone as though suggesting a return from an ordinary walk or ride. And she acquiesced.
“I want you to promise me something,” Raynier said, rather earnestly, and perhaps a little tenderly, as they wended their way back over the moon-lit wildness of the plain, and the tents of the sleeping camp were quite near, “and that is not to repeat to-night’s adventure. It’s anything but safe. And if the same impulse comes over you, you must combat it.”
“I’ll almost promise that. Do you know, you are awfully unlike other men. For instance, all this time you have scarcely given a single thought to the awkwardness of this situation. Most men would have been fidgety and thinking what everyone would say, and so on.”
He laughed.
“Magician as you are, that is not difficult to divine,” he said. “What I want to get at is, how do you know I have not?”
“There’s no magic in knowing that. It is almost like setting yourself out to prove a negative. I can see—by the absence of all signs of it. Shall I tell you why that strange place has a fascination for me? Something warns me there will come a day when our knowledge of it will make all the difference between life and death. There—the thought has gone, nor can I pick up the thread of it. It has left me.”
That same movement of the hand as though clearing away an invisible mist from before her eyes. Upon her face, earnest and serious in the moonlight, there rested that same look which he had seen there when they were discussing clairvoyance and things occult, during the evening, and he felt just a little awed. Did she really possess the gift of seeing into the future?
“Good-night now, and get a good rest,” he said in a low tone and somewhat concernedly, as they regained the tents. And with a bright nod she disappeared within hers.
Chapter Thirteen.
Of the Dak—and Mehrab Khan.
“Halloa, Raynier. I see the dak coming,” cried Haslam, putting his head into the tent where the other was sitting, going over some official papers with his Babu; for, even though this was a sort of holiday trip, there were things to be attended to, and every day a Levy Sowar rode into and out from Mazaran, a distance of about forty miles. To the rest of the party this daily post was a daily event. They got English mail letters—or news from the outside world. Haslam, for instance, whose family was away in England, was wont to wax excited over the event. But to Raynier it was more of a nuisance than otherwise. It brought him official correspondence, but as for English letters he never got any, and did not want any. So Haslam’s announcement failed to awaken any interest within him.
A little later there entered a chuprassi bearing a leather bag. This Raynier unlocked, and proceeded to extract the contents by the simple process of turning it upside down. The usual official matter—but—what was this? An English mail letter?
There it lay amid the heap of long envelopes, and even before he took it up a frown came over Raynier’s face, for it was directed in the handwriting of Cynthia Daintree.
What on earth could she have to write to him about? The envelope had been re-directed on from Baghnagar, so she was evidently ignorant of his transfer and promotion. He sat staring at the envelope, and the frown deepened. He felt in no hurry to explore its contents, for his instincts warned him that they would certainly prove unpleasant, possibly mischievous. Well, it had to be done.
The letter was long and closely written, and a feeling of weariness and repulsion came over him at the anticipation of having to wade through all this. And—it began affectionately.
But before he had read far the mystified expression upon his face became one of blank astonishment and dismay.
“Great Scott! The woman must be mad,” he ejaculated, bringing his hand down upon the table; all of which afforded huge if secret delight to the Babu, whose keen native scent for an intrigue had led him to put two and two together—the receipt of the letter in a feminine hand, and the bewilderment and disgust evoked thereby in his master.
Good cause indeed had the latter for both. For the writer, after referring to their quarrel, lightly, daintily and in a prettily repentant way, proceeded to set forth that an excellent opportunity to join him having now occurred in the shape of some friends who were returning to India, she was coming out immediately—would, in fact, already have sailed by the time he received this letter, and that they could be married at Bombay when she landed, or from her friends’ house at Poonah. Then there was a good deal that was very high sounding and gracious about turning over a new leaf and learning to understand each other better and so forth, with a deft rounding off of affection to close the missive effectively and clinchingly. No wonder he was dazed.
“You can go now, Babu,” he said.
The Bengali rose and salaamed. There was going to be some fun now about some mem-sahib, he was thinking to himself with an inward chuckle, for he had seen that kind of thing before.
Raynier sat there thinking, and thinking hard. What on earth was the meaning of it all? He went over in his own mind that parting scene. There was no sort of ambiguity about it, he decided; no loophole or possibility of doubt that it was absolute and final. He recalled her own words, “Very well, then. It is your doing, your choice, remember.” There was no sort of reserve, no double meaning there, even if her silence ever since had not shown that she had considered her acquiescence final. And now she wrote coolly announcing her intention of coming out, and marrying him straight off hand. Marrying him!
It is possible that never until that moment had he so completely realised the intense feeling of emancipation which had been with him day and night since the breaking off of that most mistaken understanding. Of late, too, it had been stronger still upon him, yet now it was the strongest of all.
The thing was preposterous—in fact, preposterous was hardly the word for it. But what was to be done? To suffer himself to be led as a sheep to the slaughter was simply and entirely out of the question. But the unpleasantness of it all, the scandal it would create, the ridiculous and even scurvy position in which it would place himself—why, it was intolerable!
He scanned the letter. Even as she had said, she was well on her way now. It was absolutely too late to cable and stop her—even if he knew where, for he did not fail to notice that so important a little detail as the name of the ship, or even of the Line, was deftly omitted. How then could he meet her? Easily enough. She would cable him from Aden as to the time of her arrival, she had said. And Aden was the last port of call.
For all that he would cable on the off-chance of being in time to stop her. Such messages were expensive, and he had an idea that it would in this case prove a sheer waste of money. Ha! That was it. He would send the message to the Vicar direct. He of course would know the ship Cynthia was on board of, and would send after her to the first port of call, and thus avoid humiliation for herself and all concerned. He got out telegraph forms, and rapidly, though carefully, indited a couple of messages. Then he lifted up his voice,—
“Koi hai!”
There entered a chuprassi.
“Take those at once, and tell Mehrab Khan he is to send them in to Mazaran, now, immediately. Let him pick out the man with the best horse, and tell that man to ride it. You hear?”
“Ha, Huzoor.”
To another in the camp the post had seemingly brought tidings of moment. Hilda Clive, in the seclusion of her tent, was scrutinising her correspondence with anything but indifference. Several envelopes were opened, their contents just glanced at, and thrown down. Then a quick, eager look came into her face as she drew one sheet from its cover, and settled herself to read. As she read on the look of interest deepened, and a very soft, velvety glow rendered her eyes dangerously fascinating and winning had any been there to see them.
“Just as I have thought,” she said to herself, as she came to the end of the communication.
“Now it will all come right. And yet—and yet—do things ever come right? Well, this shall—yes, it shall.” And the smile that parted her lips and the light in her eyes rendered her face positively radiant, as she rose, and with extra care locked away the correspondence she had just been perusing with such happy effect. And ten minutes later Raynier’s bearer was notifying him, with profuse apologies for presuming to intrude upon the notice of the great, that the Miss Sahib was waiting, and ready to start upon the ride they were to take together.
Hilda Clives spirits were simply bubbling over, for she had just discovered something she had set herself to find out, and the result was in every way satisfactory. But they had not been long on the road before she discovered something else—viz, that her escort, usually so equable, and full of ideas and conversation, was to-day not himself. He would give random answers, and his thoughts seemed to be running on something entirely outside; in short, it took no more than a couple of searchingly furtive glances to convince her that he had something on his mind.
Their objective was the village of a sirdar of the Gularzai, and their way lay through ten miles mostly of craggy mountain, all tumbled and chaotic—shooting upward in a sea of jagged peaks. The path by which they threaded the labyrinthine passes was in places none too safe, frequently overhanging, as it did, the boulder-strewn bed of a mountain torrent, now nearly dry. All of this Hilda Clive thoroughly enjoyed, although she had to dismount while Mehrab Khan led her horse. This Mehrab Khan was jemadar of the Levy Sowars, and wore a sort of khaki uniform and a blue turban and kulla. For the rest, he was a very smart and intelligent man, and by nationality was a Baluchi of the Dumki tribe. By some intuition Raynier had at once singled him out as one to be trusted. He liked to have him in attendance on such expeditions as the present one, and would talk with him for hours at a time, and of this preference the man was intensely proud.
As they emerged from the mountain passes upon the more open country, they approached a camp of four or five shaggy herdsmen, who would hardly give the salaam, but scowled evilly at them, leaning on their queer long guns with sickle-shaped stocks. Hardly had they gone by than there was a rush of two great dogs—guardians of the flocks pasturing along the mountain side. Open-mouthed, with one ferocious bay, they came straight for Hilda, who was riding on that side. In a moment she would have been dragged from her horse, for Raynier’s steed had taken fright, and it was all he could do to keep the idiotic beast from incontinently bolting, let alone come to her assistance. But Mehrab Khan, who was behind, spurred alongside of her, and with a lightning-like sweep of his tulwar cut down the foremost beast, nearly severing it in half.
The other sheered off, growling. But a savage, vengeful shout behind told of a new danger. The herdsmen they had just passed came running up, and it could be seen that two or three of them had drawn their swords.
“Stay, brothers,” called out Mehrab Khan. “Stay. It is the Sirkar.”
Would they stop? It was little enough these wild mountaineers cared for the Sirkar. The situation was critical. There were five of these fierce, fanatical savages, fired with hate for the infidel intruder, burning with a desire for revenge upon the destroyers of their property. Raynier had got in front of Hilda Clive, whispering hurriedly to her on no account to move, while Mehrab Khan and the other Levy Sowar, with their rifles ready, faced the oncomers.
The latter, not liking the look of things, slackened their speed and came to a halt, spitting curses.
“Why do they keep savage animals to rush out at people?” Raynier asked, for, though he could talk Pushtu fairly well, he chose to put it through Mehrab Khan. “Dogs of that kind are more dangerous than a pack of wolves.”
The men answered scowlingly that they were kept to protect the flocks, and that dogs were of no use at all for such a purpose unless they were fierce. Besides, they were not accustomed to strangers in a strange dress.
“There’s something in that,” said Raynier.
“Would not the Huzoor pay for the property he had destroyed?” the spokesman asked. “Such a dog as that was valuable.”
Raynier replied that he would, but they must send or come to the camp to receive it, as he did not carry money about with him. Then a bargain was struck, allowing a trifle over for their trouble in travelling that distance, and with a surly salaam, the herdsmen withdrew.
“Of course I might have refused to pay a single pice,” Raynier said, as he explained to the girl what had transpired. “But it is not sound policy invariably to stand stiffly on one’s rights, and it’s better to pay a few rupees than make enemies of these people. Besides, poor devils, it is a loss to them.”
Hilda agreed, only insisting that, as the liability was incurred in her defence, she ought to be allowed to discharge it—a proposal which was laughed to scorn.
“You see, now, what might have happened during that little moonlight stroll of yours,” Raynier went on. “And I don’t think you’d find these brutes so ready to turn tail as that panther was. By the way, I daresay you’d rather turn back now?”
“Of course not. Why?”
“Only that you must have seen enough of the interesting Gularzai at close quarters for one day.”
“Then I haven’t,” she answered gaily. “I wouldn’t give up this visit to a real native magnate for the world.”
“It was well done, Mehrab Khan,” said Raynier, in Pushtu. “Thy stroke was a worthy one, strong and swift.”
And the Baluchi, proud and pleased, murmured his thanks.