_ PART IV CHAPTER XXXIII. THE LIFTING OF THE MASK
Out of a curious numbness that had almost been a swoon there came to her the consciousness of a hand that rapped and rapped and rapped upon the pane. She had fled away to the farther end of the room in her panic. She had turned the lamp low at the beginning of the storm, and now it burned so dimly that it scarcely gave out any light at all. Beyond the window, the lightning flashed with an awful luridness upon the rushing hail. Beyond the window, looking in upon her, and knocking, knocking, knocking, stood the figure of her dread.
She came to herself slowly, with a quaking heart. It was more horrible to her than anything she had known since the days of her flight from the beleaguered fort; but she knew that she must fight down her horror, she knew as certainly as if a physical force compelled her that she would have to go to the window, would have to open to the man who waited there.
Slowly she brought her quivering body into subjection, while every nerve twitched and clamoured to escape. Slowly she dragged herself back to the vision that had struck her with that paralysis of terror. Resisting feebly, invisibly compelled, she went.
He ceased to knock, and, his face against the pane, he spoke imperatively. What he said, she could not hear in that tumult of mighty sound. Only she felt his insistence, answered to it, was mastered by it.
White-faced, with horror clutching at her heart, she undid the catch. His one hand, strong, instinct with energy, helped her to raise the sash. In a moment he was in the room, bare-headed, drenched from head to foot.
She fell back before him, but he scarcely looked at her. He shut the window sharply, then strode to the lamp, and turned it up. Then, abruptly he wheeled and spoke in a voice half-kindly, half-contemptuous. "Muriel, you're a little idiot!"
There was little in the words to comfort her, yet she was instantly and vastly reassured. She was also for the moment overwhelmingly ashamed, but he did not give her time to think of that.
"I couldn't get in any other way," he said. "I tried the doors first, hammered at them, but no one came. Look here! Olga is ill, very ill, and she wants you badly. Are you brave enough to come?"
"Oh!" Muriel said, with a gasp. "Now, do you mean? With--with you?"
He threw her an odd look under his flickering eyelids, and she noted with a scared minuteness of attention the gleam of the lamplight on their pale lashes. She had always hated pale eyelashes. They seemed to her untrustworthy.
"Yes," he told her grimly. "All alone--with me--in the storm. Shall you be afraid--if I give you my hand to hold? You've done it before."
Was he mocking her weakness? She could not say. She only knew that he watched her with the intensity of an eagle that marks its quarry. He did not mean her to refuse.
"What is the matter with Olga?" she asked.
"I don't know. I believe it is sunstroke. We were motoring in the mid-day heat. She didn't seem to feel it at the time, but her head ached when we got in. She is in a high fever now. I've sent my man on in the motor to fetch Jim's locum from Weir. I should have brought the dogcart myself, to fetch you, but I couldn't trust the horse in this."
"You left her alone to come here?" Muriel questioned.
He nodded. "I had no choice. She wished it. Besides, there were none but women-folk left. She's got one of them with her, the least imbecile of the lot, which isn't saying much. They're all terrified of course at the storm--all except Olga. She is never afraid of anything."
A frightful crash of thunder carried away his words. Before it had rolled away, Muriel was at the door. She made a rapid sign to him, and was gone.
Nick chafed up and down the room, waiting for her. The storm continued with unabated violence, but he did not give it a thought. He was counting the moments with feverish impatience.
Muriel's absence scarcely lasted for five minutes, but when she came back all trace of fear had left her. Her face showed quiet and matter-of-fact above the long waterproof in which she had wrapped herself. Over her arm she carried a waterproof cloak.
She held it out to him. "It's one of Daisy's, but you are to wear it. I think you must be mad to have come out without anything."
She put it round his shoulders; and he thanked her with a smothered laugh.
A terrific blast of wind and rain met them as they emerged from the cottage, nearly whirling Muriel off her feet. She made an instinctive clutch at her companion and instantly her hand was caught fast in his. He drew her arm close under his own, and she did not resist him. There was something reassuring in his touch.
Later she wondered if they spoke at all during that terrible walk. She could never recall a word on either side. And yet, though in a measure frightened, she was not panic-stricken.
The storm was beginning to subside a little before they reached Redlands, though the rain still fell heavily. In the intervals between the lightning it was pitch dark. They had no lantern, but Nick was undismayed. He walked as lightly and surely as a cat, and Muriel had no choice but to trust herself unreservedly to his guidance. She marvelled afterwards at the complete trust with which that night he had managed to inspire her, but at the time she never questioned it.
Yet when the lights of Redlands shone at last through the gloom, she breathed a sigh of relief. Instantly Nick spoke.
"Well done!", he said briefly. "You are your father's daughter still."
She knew that she flushed in the darkness, and was glad that he could not see her face.
"You must go and get dry, first of all," he went on. "I told them to light a fire somewhere. And you are to have some coffee too. Mind, I say it."
To this she responded with some spirit. "I will if you will."
"I must go straight to Olga," he said. "I promised I would."
"Not in your wet things!" Muriel exclaimed. "No, Nick! Listen! I am not wet, not as you are. Let me go to Olga first. You can send me some coffee in her room if you like. But you must go at once and change. Promise you will, Nick!"
She spoke urgently. For some reason the occasion seemed to demand it.
Nick was silent for a little, as if considering. Then as they finally reached the porch he spoke in a tone she did not altogether fathom.
"I say, you are not going to shut me out, you know."
She looked up in astonishment. "Of course not. I never dreamt of such a thing."
"All right," he said, and this time she knew he spoke with relief. "I will do as you like then."
A moment more, and he opened the door, standing aside for her to pass. She entered quickly, glad to be in shelter, and paused to slip off her streaming waterproof. He took it from her, passing his hand over her sleeve.
"You are sure you are not wet through?"
"Quite sure," she told him. "Take me straight up, won't you?"
"Yes. Come this way."
He preceded her up the wide stairs where he might have walked beside her, not pausing for an instant till he stood at Olga's door.
"Go straight in," he said then. "She is expecting you. Tell her, if she wants to know, that I am coming directly."
He passed on swiftly with the words, and disappeared into a room close by.
Very softly Muriel turned the door-handle and entered. Olga's voice greeted her before she was well in the room. It sounded husky and strained.
"Muriel! Dear Muriel! I'm so glad you've come. I've wanted you so you can't think. Where's Nick?"
"He is coming, dearest." Muriel went forward to the bed, and took in hers the two hands eagerly extended.
The child was lying in an uneasy position, her hair streaming in a disordered tangle about her flushed face. She was shivering violently though the hands Muriel held were burning. "You came all through this awful storm," she whispered. "It was lovely of you, dear. I hope you weren't frightened."
Muriel sat down beside her. "And you have been left all alone," she said.
"I didn't mind," gasped Olga. "Mrs. Ellis--that's the cook--was here at first. But she was such an ass about the thunder that I sent her away. I expect she's in the coal cellar."
A gleam of fun shone for an instant in her eyes, and was gone. The fevered hands closed tightly in Muriel's hold. "I feel so ill," she murmured, "so ill."
"Where is it, darling?" Muriel asked her tenderly.
"It's, it's all over me," moaned Olga. "My head worst, and my throat. My throat is dreadful. It makes me want to cry."
There was little that Muriel could do to ease her. She tied back the tossing hair, and rearranged the bedclothes; then sat down by her side, hoping she might get some sleep.
Not long after, Nick crept in on slippered feet, but Olga heard him instantly, and started up with out-flung arms. "Nick, darling, I want you! I want you! Come quite close! I think I'm going to die. Don't let me, Nick!"
Muriel rose to make room for him, but he motioned her back sharply; then knelt down himself by the child's pillow and took her head upon his arm.
"Stick to it, sweetheart!" he murmured softly. "There's a medicine man coming, and you'll be better presently." Olga cuddled against him with a sigh, and comforted by the close holding of his arm dropped presently into an uneasy doze.
Nick never stirred from his position, and mutely Muriel sat and watched him. There was a wonderful tenderness about him just then, a softness with which she was strangely familiar, but which almost she had forgotten. If she had never seen him before that moment, she knew that she would have liked him.
He seemed to have wholly forgotten her presence. His entire attention was concentrated upon the child. His lips twitched from time to time, and she knew that he was very anxious, intensely impatient under his stillness for the doctor's coming. She remembered that old trick of his. She had never before associated it with any emotion.
Suddenly he turned his head as if he had felt her scrutiny, and looked straight into her eyes. It was only for a moment. His glance flickered beyond her with scarcely a pause. Yet it was to her as if by that swift look he had spoken, had for the first time made deep and passionate protest against her bitter judgment of him, had as it were shown her in a single flash the human heart beneath the jester's garb.
And again very deep down in her soul there stirred that blind, unconscious entity, of the existence of which she herself had so vague a knowledge, feeling upwards, groping outwards, to the light.
There came upon her a sudden curious sense of consternation--a feeling as of a mental earthquake when the very foundations of the soul are shaken. Had she conceivably been mistaken in him? With all her knowledge of him, had she by some strange mischance--some maddening, some inexplicable misapprehension--failed utterly and miserably to see this man as he really was?
For the first time the question sprang up within her. And she found no answer to it--only that breathless, blank dismay.
Softly Nick's voice broke in upon her seething doubt. He had laid Olga back upon the pillow.
"The doctor is here. Do you mind staying with her while I go?"
"You'll come back, Nick?" the child urged, in her painful whisper.
"Yes, I'll come back," he promised. "Honest Injun!"
He touched her cheek lightly at parting, and Olga caught the caressing hand and pressed it against her burning lips. Muriel saw his face as he turned from the bed. It was all softened and quivering with emotion. _