Margarita's Soul Part 31

She says that I said,

"Where are they, old fellow? Go seek!" but I don't remember it. I know that she said in a low voice,

"I shall be of no use--I can't run--but I will have everything ready,"

though she says I must have imagined it.

Rosy flew through the door and I after him--she had the sense to bring me my heavy arctic overshoes, or I should have slipped in a minute--and I ran for about fifty yards.

Then something stopped me. Where it came from, _what_ did it, I don't know and can never know, but I swear I heard a low, distinct voice close to me (not a cry, mind you, but a quiet, hoa.r.s.e voice) saying,

"Get a rope. Get a rope."

I checked like a scared horse and nearly fell.

"Get a rope," I heard again, "_get a rope_."

Then, cursing at myself for a crazy fool, I actually turned, with Rosy showing his teeth at me, and dashed back (all those precious yards!) and grabbed a pile of rope Caliban had brought out to bind some big logs for hauling and abandoned under the eaves when we arrived on the island. Rosy was far ahead now, but he had gone through the crust at intervals and I tracked him by that.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I LEANED OVER THE BANK AND CRIED THAT I WAS THERE, BUT SHE NEVER STOPPED--IT WAS TERRIBLE]

Suddenly the wind--it was blowing a steady gale behind me--s.h.i.+fted, and I heard a succession of terrible cries, great hoa.r.s.e, high shrieks, like nothing human and yet unlike any animal. Wordless, throat-tearing screams they were, and I shouted back, against the head-on wind,

"Coming! Coming! Hold on! I'm coming!" till I coughed and strangled and had to stop.

How I ran! I never did it before and certainly never can again. Rosy's tracks curved and twisted, and I felt I was losing time, but dared not risk missing them, for I was coming nearer to that awful voice steadily, though it echoed so I should have been helpless without any other guide.

Well, I found them. Roger up to his shoulders in icy water, his head dropped back, white, on her arm, and she up to her waist on a slippery ledge under the highest point of the bank--the bank that I blasted out! She was caught, I could see, on a jagged point by her heavy, woollen skirt (it was made in London, bless it!) and must have wedged her foot, besides, in some way, for she had his whole weight; her lips were blue. She wore a blood-red cape, all merry and Christmas-like against the white ledges, and her hair streamed in the wind. Her head was thrown back like a hound's and those blood-curdling screams poured out of it; her eyes were shut. Now and then Rosy bayed beside her, scratching at the snow, and where the water was not frozen in the protected pools it swirled like a mill-race around the nasty, pointed rocks.

I leaned over the bank and cried that I was there, but she never stopped--it was terrible. Finally I made a slip-noose and actually managed to fling it over his head--Roger had taught me to do that at school, twenty years ago--and that stopped her, hitting against her cheek, and she opened her eyes.

"Put it under his arms, can you?" I cried, and after several efforts, for she was nearly frozen stiff, the brave, clever creature did, and I got it around a tree on the edge. Then I stopped, panting, for I realised that I could do no more. The run had taken all the strength out of me--I couldn't have dragged a cat--and she was little more than a foot below me!

I can't write about it. My arms ache now, just as my infernal shoulders ached with that paralysing, numb ache then.

"Listen!" I cried, for she had begun to scream again, "listen, Margarita, or I will beat you! Is he unconscious?"

She nodded.

"Can you hold on five minutes, with his weight gone?"

She blinked in a sort of stupid a.s.sent.

"Could you for ten? Are you braced solid?"

Again she blinked, and with an inspiration I plunged my shaking hand into my great-coat pocket and pulled out a brandy-flask. Miss Jencks had taken it from the sideboard.

I tied it into my handkerchief, opened, and swung it down to her, and she got her lips around it and coughed it down. It acted instantly and she could move a little, and while I encouraged her, and after several heartrending failures, which nearly spilled all the brandy, she got it into his mouth between his teeth, as his big body swung in the noose.

It ran over his chin and down his neck, but a little got in, and his eyelids quivered. Soon he coughed, and I dared not wait another second.

"I am going for Caliban," I said very distinctly, "we will pull you out in a few minutes. Let him alone and hang on, do you hear? Don't scream any more--you are safe. Pour all the brandy into him--tell him he is tied fast. Don't try to move--you may slip, and tear your skirt.

Hold on!"

Then I turned my back on them and ran, or rather stumbled off. I leaned over and kissed her forehead, first.

I remember muttering, "I never asked before--if You or Anybody is there, save them! Take me and save them!" and then I stumbled on and on....

It was not too long. Caliban was coming with his big wood-sled and more rope and blankets, and as I caught sight of him the most extraordinary thought flew into my mind, which worked with a dreadful clearness, for I saw them stiffen and sink and slip away every second.

Rosy bayed just then, and as my heart sank, for I thought they were gone, it suddenly occurred to me what Rosy's name must have been!

"It's _Rosencrantz_!" I muttered, "and the one Margarita insists was called 'Gildy' was _Guildenstern_, and they were _Hamlet's_ friends--poor Prynne!" Perhaps that wasn't idiotic--I laughed as I stumbled along!

Well, they were there, and Roger was enough himself to strike out with his feet a little and avoid hindering us, if he couldn't help much. I made another noose for her, and she hung in it while Caliban dragged him up--the fellow had the strength of an ox and showed wonderful dexterity--and later crawled down the rocks and cut her skirt through with his big clasp-knife. She was the hardest to move, for her foot was caught--all that saved her. I thought we should break her ankle before we could get her.

We laid them on the sledge, wrapped in blankets, poured in more brandy, and Caliban attached Rosy to it by his collar--an old trick of his, it seems--and they dragged us all home, for my worthless legs gave out completely.

Miss Jencks and Agnes rubbed them and mustard-bathed them and I wrote telegrams for Caliban to take in the launch--wrote them as well as I could in the clutches of a violent chill, with my teeth like castanets and my hands palsied--and even as I wrote, it came to me that Margarita had repeated monotonously, all the way home, in a hoa.r.s.e, painful voice (but, mercifully, a low one) "get a rope, get a rope, get a rope."

It was the voice I had heard, that turned me back!

She was all right, but very weak and sore and with a little fever--not much. She was perfectly conscious of everything within an hour, and told us about it: how she had slipped and Roger had hit his head and strained himself in going after her. She thinks she held him under the arms ten minutes, screaming all the time! She sent Rosy back, finally, though at first he refused to go.

Roger was delirious for five days and very dangerously ill for three weeks--it was double pneumonia. Miss Jencks had seen it before and it was her prompt measures before we could get the doctor or Harriet that saved him, they think. It was a bad age for pneumonia; Harriet said she would rather have pulled Margarita through it. She brought a deaconess from the little dispensary with her and one or the other was watching him like a cat every second, for three weeks. It was a nurse's case, the doctor said, though he stopped the first week.

When Margarita came to herself after an hour or so, she asked for me, and as I knelt by her bed and she turned her great eyes on me I caught my breath, for I was looking at a new woman. I can't describe it better than by saying that she had a soul! There had always been something missing, you see, though I would never have admitted it, if she hadn't got it then. But it was there.

It was very pathetic, those first days when Roger was delirious: she was nearly so herself. And yet it was not wholly grief--there was a definite reason for it, which we all felt, somehow, but she would not give it.

"Will he not know me for a minute, a little minute, Harriet?" she would beg, so piteously, and Harriet would soothe her and try to give her hope. The fifth day he was very low and the doctor told us to make up our minds for anything: he hadn't slept all night. I took Harriet by the shoulders and asked her if she could not possibly make him conscious--before. I don't know why I asked her and not the doctor, but I did. She promised me she would try (I think she had nearly given up hope, herself) and at three the next morning she called me and said that I might have a chance--that he might know us for a moment. Margarita was by the bed: her face was enough to break your heart.

"Only a minute, Harriet--only a little minute!" she pleaded like a baby. I don't know what insane vow I didn't offer ... He opened his eyes and they fell on her. She put her hand on his forehead and said very plainly.

"Listen, Roger, you must listen. It is I--Margarita, _Cherie_, you know. Do you hear?"

His eyes looked a little conscious, and Harriet held his pulse and slipped something into his mouth. In a moment we all knew that he knew us.

"Now say one thing, Mrs. Bradley--quickly!" Harriet whispered.

Margarita bent like a flash and whispered in his ear very swiftly: her whole body was tense. You should have seen his eyes--he was old Roger again! I could see his hand press hers and she kissed him just as the flash went by, and he took to muttering again.

Harriet pushed her away and put her hand on his forehead, then nodded at the deaconess.

"Call the doctor!" she said sharply, and I thought it was all over....

But it was the turn, and after that by hair's breadths and hair's breadths they pulled him over.

"Now he knows, Jerry," Margarita said to me, and went to bed herself.

It was a good week after that, when the doctor had gone and we were all breathing naturally again, that Harriet asked me abruptly if I had noticed Mrs. Bradley's voice. I said yes, that it was still decidedly husky. She looked at me so sadly, so strangely, that my nerves fairly jumped--we had all been on edge for a month--and I commanded her rather sharply to say what she meant and be done with it.