Brood of the Witch-Queen Part 35

"When was _he_ last there?"

"Apparently some ten days ago. You may depend upon him to be aware of our return! He will not come there again, sir. But there are other ways in which he might reach her--does he not command a whole shadow army! And Mr. Saunderson is entirely unsuspicious--and Myra thinks of the fiend as a brother! Yet--she has never once spoken of him. I wonder...."

Dr. Cairn sat deep in reflection. Suddenly he took out his watch.

"Go around now," he said--"you will be in time for lunch--and remain there until I come. From to-day onward, although actually your health does not permit of the strain, we must watch, watch night and day."

CHAPTER XXII

MYRA

Myra Duquesne came under an arch of roses to the wooden seat where Robert Cairn awaited her. In her plain white linen frock, with the sun in her hair and her eyes looking unnaturally large, owing to the pallor of her beautiful face, she seemed to the man who rose to greet her an ethereal creature, but lightly linked to the flesh and blood world.

An impulse, which had possessed him often enough before, but which hitherto he had suppressed, suddenly possessed him anew, set his heart beating, and filled his veins with fire. As a soft blush spread over the girl's pale cheeks, and, with a sort of timidity, she held out her hand, he leapt to his feet, threw his arms around her, and kissed her; kissed her eyes, her hair, her lips!

There was a moment of frightened hesitancy ... and then she had resigned herself to this sort of savage tenderness which was better in its very brutality than any caress she had ever known, which thrilled her with a glorious joy such as, she realised now, she had dreamt of and lacked, and wanted; which was a harbourage to which she came, blus.h.i.+ng, confused--but glad, conquered, and happy in the thrall of that exquisite slavery.

"Myra," he whispered, "Myra! have I frightened you? Will you forgive me?--"

She nodded her head quickly and nestled upon his shoulder.

"I could wait no longer," he murmured in her ear. "Words seemed unnecessary; I just wanted you; you are everything in the world; and,"--he concluded simply--"I took you."

She whispered his name, very softly. What a serenity there is in such a moment, what a glow of secure happiness, of immunity from the pains and sorrows of the world!

Robert Cairn, his arms about this girl, who, from his early boyhood, had been his ideal of womanhood, of love, and of all that love meant, forgot those things which had shaken his life and brought him to the threshold of death, forgot those evidences of illness which marred the once glorious beauty of the girl, forgot the black menace of the future, forgot the wizard enemy whose hand was stretched over that house and that garden--and was merely happy.

But this paroxysm of gladness--which Eliphas Levi, last of the Adepts, has so marvellously a.n.a.lysed in one of his works--is of short duration, as are all joys. It is needless to recount, here, the broken sentences (punctuated with those first kisses which sweeten the memory of old age) that now pa.s.sed for conversation, and which lovers have believed to be conversation since the world began. As dusk creeps over a glorious landscape, so the shadow of Antony Ferrara crept over the happiness of these two.

Gradually that shadow fell between them and the sun; the grim thing which loomed big in the lives of them both, refused any longer to be ignored. Robert Cairn, his arm about the girl's waist, broached the hated subject.

"When did you last see--Ferrara?"

Myra looked up suddenly.

"Over a week--nearly a fortnight, ago--"

"Ah!"

Cairn noted that the girl spoke of Ferrara with an odd sort of restraint for which he was at a loss to account. Myra had always regarded her guardian's adopted son in the light of a brother; therefore her present att.i.tude was all the more singular.

"You did not expect him to return to England so soon?" he asked.

"I had no idea that he was in England," said Myra, "until he walked in here one day. I was glad to see him--then."

"And should you not be glad to see him now?" inquired Cairn eagerly.

Myra, her head lowered, deliberately pressed out a crease in her white skirt.

"One day, last week," she replied slowly, "he--came here, and--acted strangely--"

"In what way?" jerked Cairn.

"He pointed out to me that actually we--he and I--were in no way related."

"Well?"

"You know how I have always liked Antony? I have always thought of him as my brother."

Again she hesitated, and a troubled expression crept over her pale face. Cairn raised his arm and clasped it about her shoulders.

"Tell me all about it," he whispered rea.s.suringly.

"Well," continued Myra in evident confusion, "his behaviour became--embarra.s.sing; and suddenly--he asked me if I could ever love him, not as a brother, but--"

"I understand!" said Cairn grimly. "And you replied?"

"For some time I could not reply at all: I was so surprised, and so--horrified. I cannot explain how I felt about it, but it seemed horrible--it seemed horrible!--"

"But of course, you told him?"

"I told him that I could never be fond of him in any different way--that I could never _think_ of it. And although I endeavoured to avoid hurting his feelings, he--took it very badly. He said, in such a queer, choking voice, that he was going away--"

"Away!--from England?"

"Yes; and--he made a strange request."

"What was it?"

"In the circ.u.mstances--you see--I felt sorry for him--I did not like to refuse him; it was only a trifling thing. He asked for a lock of my hair!"

"A lock of your hair! And you--"

"I told you that I did not like to refuse--and I let him snip off a tiny piece, with a pair of pocket scissors which he had. Are you angry?"

"Of course not! You--were almost brought up together. You--?"

"Then--" she paused--"he seemed to change. Suddenly, I found myself afraid--dreadfully afraid--"

"Of Ferrara?"

"Not of Antony, exactly. But what is the good of my trying to explain!

A most awful dread seized me. His face was no longer the face that I have always known; something--"