The Great Amulet Part 46

"Desmond and his wife will gladly do that much for us." He was about to add that his chief friend knew already: but decided that it would be hardly fair on d.i.c.k to 'give him away.'

"And where did it all happen?" she demanded, dimpling with enjoyment.

"In Dalhousie?"

"I imagine so."

"You mustn't imagine. We must have all the details clear, so as to lie consistently!"

"Well then, to account for our abruptness, we'll decide that I lost my heart to you at home, some time ago; and rediscovered you by chance in Dalhousie."

She laughed again, from pure exuberance of happiness.

"That's capital! I'll explain it all to Mrs Desmond; and she shall do the rest."

While they talked, she had succeeded in extricating her rings; and now she dropped them into his open palm:--the gold band of Destiny, and the hoop of sapphires and diamonds that he had chosen with such elaborate care, and presented to her with such awkward, palpitating shyness nearly six years ago.

"Put them on, please," she said softly, thrusting out her wedding finger.

"'For better for worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health; till death us do part.'"

On the last words she lifted her head. He caught the gleam of tears on her lashes, and slipped the ring on to her finger; uttering the triple a.s.severation with a suppressed fervour rarely to be heard at the altar rails. Then the second hoop was added; and, still keeping possession of the fettered hand, he sat silent a moment, looking down at his achievement with an absurd sense of satisfaction. Quita was looking at it also, wondering if he could hear the hammering of her heart.

"Now we are really married," she murmured as simply as a child.

"Weren't we before?" he asked, on a note of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I suppose so. It didn't feel like it."

"And does it feel more like it now?"

"Not much, yet. But it will, in time."

"Yes. In _time_."

The pause, and the emphasis smote her. But again she ignored the cloud no bigger than a man's hand; defying its power to veil her sunlight.

"The proper thing after a wedding is . . to kiss your wife," she remarked demurely, without looking up.

"Is it? I don't remember doing so last time."

"You never did; and it's bad luck not to. That's why everything went wrong! You were too shy; and . . your first wife didn't much like that sort of thing."

"My second wife will have to put up with it, whether she likes it or not!" he answered, drawing her towards him by dear and delicious degrees.

"We won't play fast and loose with our luck this time."

An abrupt knock at the door startled her out of his arms; and the curtain was pushed aside by Desmond:--a strangely transfigured Desmond, with set jaw, and desperate eyes.

"My dear man . ." Lenox began. But an intuition of catastrophe past the show of speech made him break off short.

Then Desmond spoke, in a voice thick and unlike his own.

"Sorry to spoil things by interrupting you in this way. But one had to tell you. It's Honor . . ."

He could get no further: but his eyes were terribly eloquent; and the silence held them all as in a vice. The awakening woman in Quita gave her courage to break it.

"May I go to her?" she pleaded. "And help her . . if one can?"

Though the plea was addressed to Desmond, she glanced first at Lenox, and read approval in his eyes.

But Desmond shook his head.

"That's my business," he answered quietly. He had mastered his voice by now. "I want you to take over charge here. It's a sharp attack. I shan't leave her again, till . . . it's over."

And before either of them knew how to answer him, the curtain had fallen heavily behind him.

Overwhelming tragedy, striking across their golden hour like a naked sword, wrenched them out of themselves.

Without a word Quita knelt down beside her husband, bowing her forehead on the back of his hand. Women of her temperament are little given to the habit of prayer: and her rare communings with the Hidden Soul of Things more often took the form of wordless aspiration, than of direct pet.i.tion or praise. But now her uplifted soul went out in a pa.s.sionate appeal to the Great Giver, and the great Taker Away, for the life of the woman whom she had hated so heartily less than three months ago.

And Lenox lay looking straight before him, stroking her hair soothingly from time to time.

"Desmond is a strong man, a very strong man," he said, as if speaking to himself. "But there's a flaw in his armour just above the heart; and I believe that if any real harm comes to that wife of his, he'll go to pieces, like a wheel with the centre knocked out."

CHAPTER XXII.

"What Love may do, that dares Love attempt."

--Shakspere.

It was evening at last: a sullen, breathless evening, heavy with threatening cloud.

Since morning Honor Desmond had been fighting for life, against appalling odds; while the man, whose love for her almost amounted to a religion, did all that human skill could devise, which was pitifully little after all, to ease the torturing thirst and pain, to uphold the vitality that ebbed visibly with the ebbing day. But the very vigour of her const.i.tution went against her; for cholera takes strong bold upon the strong. And Desmond never left her for an instant. He seemed to have pa.s.sed beyond the zone of hunger, thirst, or weariness, to have reached that exalted pitch of suffering where the soul transcends the body's imperious demands, a.s.serts itself, momentarily, for the absolute unconquerable thing it is.

Frank Olliver, in defiance of a July sun, flitted restlessly in and out of the bungalow; and since Desmond would admit no one but the doctor to his wife's room, she found some measure of comfort in futile attempts to lighten Paul Wyndham's anxiety, and distract his thoughts; while the newly joined husband and wife, so strangely isolated in their moment of reunion, waited and hoped through the interminable hours, and s.n.a.t.c.hed fugitive gleams of contentment from the fact that now, at least, they could suffer together.

James Mackay, the regimental doctor, a crustacean type of Scot, came and went as frequently as his manifold duties would permit. On each occasion he was waylaid in the dining-room by Paul Wyndham, his face haggard with suffering; and on each occasion the little man's decisive headshake struck a fresh blow at the hope that took 'such an unconscionable time a-dying.' Finally he spoke his conviction outright. It was late afternoon, and Honor's strength and courage, though still flickering fitfully, were almost spent.

"I'm doubting if we can do much more for her now," he said, when the door of her room had been quietly closed behind him. "It'll be no less than a miracle if she lasts through the night."

"Have you told him that?" Wyndham asked in a voice of stunned quietness.

"Man alive, no! 'Twould be no mortal use. _He_ won't give up hope till the last nail's in her coffin." Paul winced visibly, and by way of atonement for his bluntness, the other made haste to add: "If there's the remotest chance of pulling her through, Desmond 'll do it.

You may swear to that. The man's just one concentrated, incarnate purpose."

Wyndham set his lips, and turned away: and the Scotchman stood eyeing him keenly.