The Ruby Sword Part 13

"Does she? Finds it dull, perhaps, now, without those two jokers.

She's never happy without a lot of them strung around her."

"_So_? These blue-eyed, fluffy headed girls usually are that way, I have observed. They are wonderfully taking, but--lacking in depth."

"Thought at one time she was rather stringing _yours_ on to her collection of scalps, old chap," said Upward, with a sly chuckle.

"Because we went out chikor shooting together once or twice?" replied Campian tranquilly. "Talk of the devil--there _are_ some chikor." And the next few minutes were spent in dismounting--a rapid fifty paces through the spa.r.s.e herbage--a whirr of wings--the triple crack of guns-- and a brace and a half of birds retrieved by the attendant forest guard; while the remainder of the covey, having gained the mountain side, was crawling up the rock slopes like spiders on a wall.

"See that hole, Campian?" said Upward, soon after they had resumed their way. "That's the markhor cave. There's always a markhor there, the people say."

"Let's go and see if he's at home now, except that we've only got shot guns," replied Campian, looking up at the black fissure pointed out, and which cleft the rock face some distance overhead, seeming to start from a gra.s.sy ledge. It looked by no means an inaccessible sort of place.

"Bhallu Khan says he wouldn't be in now," said Upward, who had been talking in Hindustani to the old Pathan. "He only sleeps there."

"So? Well, I don't believe in his markhor then, Upward. If the brute was so regular in his habits as all that, he'd have been shot long ago."

"Very likely. But Bhallu Khan says the people are afraid of him. They don't believe he is a real markhor, but a spirit that takes the form of one. He is guarding some buried treasure, and it's unlucky to go near the place."

"It wouldn't be unlucky if they found the treasure, by Jove! What does it consist of?"

Upward spoke again to the old forester, whose answer, translated to Campian, caused the latter fairly to start in his saddle, his scepticism dispersed.

"He says it is supposed to be old sword hilts and things, encrusted with the most priceless jewels. Hallo! You seem to believe in it, old chap?"

"Not I. Only it reminded me of something else. But I suppose they have a yarn of the kind attached to pretty nearly every hole and corner of the land, eh?"

"Yes. I have heard of others; but, curiously enough, now I think of it, this jewelled sword hilt idea doesn't seem to come into them. It's generally a case of tons of gold mohurs, and all that sort of thing."

"I suppose so," a.s.serted Campian tranquilly. But his tranquillity was all outward, for as they continued their way, his mind was very lively indeed. Was there really something in the legend? Had he struck upon the clue at last--not merely a clue, but the actual spot? How he wished he had learned Hindustani, so as to be able to communicate, at first hand, with those who might be able to furnish other clues. All save the wild Baluchis of the more remote and nomad clans spoke that language, and it was of primary importance to obtain information of this kind at first hand, and unfiltered through a third party.

"Campian's very _chup_ to-day," thought Upward, peering furtively at his companion, who, during the last couple of miles, had hardly spoken, except in monosyllables. "I wonder if the sly old dog is really smashed on Nesta, and is thinking it over--I wonder?"

He would have wondered more could he have read the thoughts of "the sly old dog" aforesaid, for they ran not upon love but upon lucre.

"There's the bungalow," said Upward presently, pointing out a white low-roofed dwelling high up on the hillside. "Not a bad little place for a while, but most confoundedly out of the way."

The path wound around the spurs, ascending more abruptly, mostly in the shade of the junipers, here growing to greater size, and more thickly.

Presently they came out upon a small plateau, and the bungalow.

"Hallo, Upward! Glad to see you. Don't get many visitors up here."

"How do, colonel? This is Mr Campian--stopping with me. Nearly got shot by some Pathan budmashes, and then drowned by the _tangi_ coming down, on the night he arrived. You may have heard about it."

"Not a word--not a word. Haven't seen a soul for weeks. Glad to meet you, Mr Campian. Fine view from here, isn't there?"

"Splendid," a.s.sented Campian, who had been taking in both the speaker and the view. The former was of the pleasant, genial type of soldier-- elderly, grizzled, upright, well-groomed. The latter--well, it was fine--uncommonly so. From its eyrie-like position, the bungalow commanded a vast sweep of mountain and valley. Embedded against a background of juniper slope the front of the plateau looked out upon a scene, the leading idea conveyed by which was that of alt.i.tude and vastness. Opposite, a line of great mountains shot up in craggy heads to the sky; their slopes alternating in slab-like cliffs and gloomy chasms running up into lateral valleys. Juniper forest, more or less spa.r.s.e, straggled along the base; and but for the aridity of the all prevailing stone and the scattered vegetation, the view would have been lovely. As it stood, it was only immense. Circling kites, uttering their plaintive whistle, floated in clouds against the blue of the sky, or, gracefully steering themselves with their long forked tails, soared out over the valley.

"Fine air, too," went on Colonel Jermyn. "After the awful heat of some of those plains stations you can appreciate it, I can tell you. But I daresay, you got a taste of that on your way up?"

"Rather. Coming through Sindh, for instance, if you leaned back suddenly in the train against the back of the seat, it was like leaning against a lot of fizzling Vesuvian heads."

"Ah, p.r.i.c.kly heat. We know what that is down below--don't we, Upward?"

But the reply was lost in the soft rustle of draperies, and a softer voice:

"How do you do, Mr Upward?" As the three rose, it needed not the formal introduction. The colonel's words seemed to sound from far away in Campian's ears. "My niece--Miss Wymer."

The first utterance had been enough for Campian. There was no other such voice in the world. And as he stood there, exchanging the formal hand-clasp of ordinary every-day greeting with Vivien Wymer, small wonder that his self-possession should be shaken to the core. For, five years earlier, these two had parted--in anger and bitterness on the side of one, a whole world of heart-consuming love on that of both. They had parted, agreeing to be strangers thenceforward, and had been so, nor had they set eyes on each other since. Now, by the merest of chances, and totally unprepared, they met again amid the craggy mountain ranges of wild Baluchistan.

"We were talking about the p.r.i.c.kly heat, Vivien," went on the colonel.

"Mr Campian says it was like leaning against burning match-heads coming up in the train--ha, ha! You look a trifle below par even now," turning to Campian. "Won't you have a 'peg'? Upward, excuse me--what a forgetful a.s.s I am. So seldom I see anyone up here I'm forgetting my manners. After your long, hot ride, too!"

"Not feeling fit to-day. A new climate sometimes does knock me out at first," replied Campian mendaciously, he being both by const.i.tution and practice as hard as nails. He was savage with himself for losing his self-possession, even for a moment. "No lack of that article on the other side, anyway," he thought bitterly.

Outwardly there was not. Vivien Wymer's manner in greeting him had been so perfectly free and unconcerned that not one in ten thousand would have dreamed she had ever set eyes on him before. Nor, as she sat there talking to Upward, could the keenest ear have detected a trace of flurry in her soft-voiced, flowing tones; and what ear could be keener than that of the man who sat there, straining to catch every word--every tone--while endeavouring to avoid replying at random to the conversation of his host.

"That'll pick you up," said the latter, as the bearer appeared with a tray containing very tall tumblers and a bottle and syphons. "Nothing like a 'peg' after a hot ride. We can't get ice up here, but I always have the stuff kept in a cooler. Mix for yourself."

"You must come down to our camp for a day or two, Miss Wymer," Upward was saying. "You'll come, too, won't you, colonel? There are still some birds left. It's rotten shooting, but all there is here."

Thereupon the conversation turned on _s.h.i.+kar_ in general, and tiger in particular, and Campian felt relieved, for now he could drop out of it.

Five years ago it was that he and Vivien had parted--yes, exactly five years--and now, as he sat watching her, it seemed as though but five days had pa.s.sed over her, for all the change they had brought-- outwardly, at any rate. All was the same--the poise of the head--even the arrangement of the rippling waves of soft dark hair had undergone but slight alteration; the quick lifting of the eyelids, the glance, straight and full, of the heavily fringed eyes. Yet, if taken feature by feature, Vivien Wymer could not have been summed up as beautiful.

Was it a certain grace of movement inseparable from a perfect symmetry of form--an irresistible, sensuous attractiveness side by side with a rare refinement--that would have set her on the highest pinnacle, while other women, beautiful as a dream, would have been pa.s.sed by unnoticed?

He could not say. He only knew that she had appealed to him as no other woman had ever done before or since; that the possession of her would fill every physical and mental want--we desire to emphasise the latter phase, in that it was a question of no wild whirlwind of infatuated pa.s.sion. She had drawn out in him--as regarded herself, at any rate-- all that was best; had even been the means of implanting within him qualities wholly beneficial, and which he would have repudiated all capacity for entertaining. In her he had recognised his destined counterpart. He might live a thousand years and never again meet with such. He was no longer young. He had known varied and eventful experiences, including a sinister matrimonial one, mercifully for himself, comparatively short. But Vivien Wymer had been the one love of his life, and the same held good of him as regarded herself, yet they met again now as strangers. One thing he decided. They were to keep up the _role_. Since she wished it--and evidently she did wish it--he would offer no enlightenment.

"Is your friend keen on sport, Upward?" the colonel was saying. "You ought to take him to try for a markhor."

"Don't know that I care much for sport in that form," cut in Campian.

"It represents endless bother and clambering; all for the sake of one shot, and that as likely as not a miss. The knowledge that it is going to be your one and only chance is bound to make you shoot nervous. Now, I like letting off the gun a great deal, not once only."

"Yes, it means a lot of hard work. Well, you've come to the wrong country for sport."

"By the way, colonel," said Upward, "my head forester points out a cave on the way here, where they say there's always a markhor. It doesn't seem difficult to get at I don't believe in it myself, because there's a legend attached." And thereupon he went into the whole story.

Vivien was listening with deepening interest.

"I should like to see that place," she said. "Anything to do with the legends of the people and country is always interesting. Could we not arrange to go and explore it? You say it is easy to get at?"

"I think so," answered Upward. "We might make a picnic of it. Two fellows from Shalalai who joined camp with me are coming back to-morrow or the next day, and we might all go together. What do you say, colonel?"

"Oh, I don't mind. Getting rather old for clambering, though. Come along in to tiffin; that's the second gong."

Throughout that repast, Vivien addressed most of her conversation to Upward. Campian, however, who had pulled himself together effectually by now, was observing her keenly. When she did have occasion to answer some remark of his, it was as though she were talking to a perfect stranger, beheld that morning for the first time. Very good. If that were the line she desired to keep to, not in him was it to encroach upon it. He had his share of pride, likewise of vindictiveness, and some of the aggrieved bitterness of their parting was upon him now. But he remembered also that the ornamental s.e.x are consummate actors, and felt savage with himself for having let down his own guard. And this impa.s.siveness he kept up throughout the ordeal of again saying good-bye.

"Well, and what did you think of Colonel Jermyn, Mr Campian?" queried Mrs Upward, when they were seated at dinner that evening. The two men had returned late, having fallen in with more chikor on the way, and she had had no opportunity of catechising him before.

"He seems a pleasant sort of man," returned Campian. "There was some scheme of cutting them into a kind of exploration picnic, wasn't there, Upward?" he went on, with the idea of diverting an inevitable cross-examination.