Devil's Wind (20 page)

CHAPTER XXII

THE TWO SCARS

Let be the past of Shadow, let be the past of Pain,

Are we to squander the gold of our Youth for what is not?

Now we are come from the darkness into the light again,

Is death to be remembered and Life to be forgot?

Helen Wilmot slept for nearly twelve hours. When she awoke the shadows of the trees were lengthening towards the east. It was already dusk in the little temple. Outside, birds were chattering as they do at sunset all the world over. Helen sat up, and found that her clothes had dried upon her whilst she slept. She had a vague recollection of heat—of the sun upon her stiff limbs. They were very stiff. She was unutterably weary, and her joints ached.

Richard Morton was lying on his back about a yard away. Helen crawled to his side. The light came through the middle door of the temple and fell upon his face, and she was frightened at the look of exhaustion which it showed. The sunburn was like a brown film over its pallor, there were deep hollows beneath the closed eyes, and his hand when she touched it was chill and clammy. His breath came very slowly and his lips were dry. Water—there should be plenty of water after last night's rain. Helen limped to the temple door, and looked about her. To the right, the stony ground fell away into a hollow, shaded by a tree that had big, twisted roots. There was a little pool there, and another beyond, larger and deeper.

Helen crumpled up a corner of the linen sheet which was wrapped about her, soaked it in the nearer pool, and then ran back and squeezed the moisture on to Dick's parched lips. Her own were almost as dry, but she did not know it until she saw him suck at the wet cloth and felt the water upon her hand. Then her tongue seemed like a cinder in her mouth, but she went on squeezing steadily until all the water was gone, and Richard Morton muttered, opened blank eyes for a moment, and then fell again into an exhausted sleep.

Helen went again to the pool. This time she drank herself, and bathed her temples. Then she came back and looked at Dick, touching him to make sure that his clothing was dry, and that this was only sleep which held him. It was food he needed. She knew that very well. She looked at the dry chupatti on the well's edge, at the few grains of rice which they had left beside it. She tried to get some of the rice between Dick's lips, but he only muttered and turned his head, and she abandoned the attempt. A terror of the coming night seized her. All those hours and hours of darkness, and Dick must have nourishment, or this sleep of his would pass into the final sleep of all. She watched his grey face in the grey twilight until she dared not watch any more. Then she went back to the temple door and crouched there, looking about her in a dazed fashion for some help, some hope.

The birds were making so much noise that she found it hard to think, or to collect her thoughts. The thoughts fluttered in her brain as the birds fluttered in the branches. They seemed to have a life of their own, and not to be under her own control any more.

Sometimes they rose about her with a whirring noise; then she found it hard to decide which were her thoughts, and which were the fluttering birds. At last she discovered that her thoughts were grey and dull, but the birds were vivid and gay. They were parrots. There were a whole troop of them, small and brilliant and loud of voice. Once, half a dozen flashed from one tree to another, and a slanting beam of sunlight set their wings ablaze with emerald and sapphire, until the thread of light seemed strung with jewels. Then the shadows swallowed them up, and only their loud, harsh talk came down to Helen, and beat against the confusion of her brain. She listened to it, and through it she listened for Dick's breathing, and thought that it grew fainter.

Helen sat very still, and the shadows of the temple covered her from head to foot, but a yard or two away the sunset light touched the damp earth, and showed a white speck or two of rice which had fallen from her dress as she came to the doorway. Suddenly there was a stir of beating wings. Two of the little green parrots came down with a whirr, quarrelling, striking at one another, greedy, curious, angry.

Helen drew in her breath. She became conscious that her right hand was resting on a piece of broken brick. She had been leaning hard upon it, letting the sharp edge cut her palm, because the pain eased her heart a little.

Now she withdrew her weight, and with a swift instinctive movement with which her consciousness had no concern, she flung out her hand with the brick in it, and let go. There was a quick outcry and an uprushing of bright wings, but only one of the birds had flown away. The other lay half-stunned, with a broken wing, and in an instant she had it fluttering in her hands. Helen had never killed anything in all her life before, but her hands were quick and strong enough to kill now. She felt the short struggle of the terrified creature, she felt its heart fail under her hand. Half a dozen sharp little hammer strokes, that tingled all through her, and then it was dead, a limp warm handful of emerald feathers.

Helen looked at it stupidly, and then remembered that Dick had a knife. It was hung about his neck on a strong cord. She remembered how he had cut a soldier for Lucy out of a splinter of wood. It seemed a very long time ago.

She turned with the bird in her hand and went into the temple. Half an hour later she came out into the dusk again, and went down to the pool. She was trembling all over, but Dick was fed, and sleeping as people sleep when they are going to wake again. Helen's hands were red, because she had to grind the bird's raw flesh between two stones. Then she had moistened it to a pulp with water, and forced it between Dick's lips. It had been rather horrible, but after the first he had taken all that she gave him. Now she rubbed her hands in the mud, and then washed them clean. She was glad that it was getting dark, so that she could not see. She had a dreadful feeling that her hands were still red, still stained with blood. O God, there had been so much blood—so much agony. Strange, that after all the horrors of Cawnpore, she should feel like a murderess because she had killed a bird. And she was so weary, so unutterably weary. She drank deep of the first pool, then forced herself to eat some of the stale chupatti, and again sleep came upon her.

Fourteen hours later Richard Morton opened his eyes. He saw a reddish shadow over his head. He lay quite still, and kept on looking into the shadow. Presently he saw that it had concealed an arch of brick, and he began to count the bricks. Some of them were in a disgracefully broken state. When he had counted up to fifteen, it occurred to him that he was very stiff, and he began to stretch out his limbs. He was lying upon something uncommonly hard too. Ah—more bricks, but there was something soft under his head, and, O Lord, yes—his head must have had a pretty hard crack on it to feel like this. He put up a hand and discovered the presence of a bandage. Then a voice said, “Oh, Dick!” and he sat up, leaning on one hand, and holding the other to his head.

The daylight was coming in through three low doors, and just inside the middle one was a woman.

Richard Morton passed his hand across his eyes and stared at her. The woman had a very pale, thin face of an oval shape. Her lips were pale too, but they were firmly cut, and she had eyes that looked black. There were dark lashes over them and dark circles beneath. She wore a native sheet wrapped closely about her body, but the remains of a tattered grey muslin dress showed at breast and ankle. Her arms were bare to the elbow, and she seemed to have been washing her hair, for it hung in damp black curls all about her shoulders. As he stared at her, her face changed. She looked at him as no woman had ever looked at him since his mother died.

“Oh, Dick!” she said again.

Her eyes were full of a mist, and he saw that they were very beautiful eyes, and that they were not black at all, but grey. Richard Morton kept on staring for a moment. Then he sat bolt upright, dug the nails of one hand into the palm of the other, shut his eyes tightly, opened them again, and finding that the woman was still there, he said:

“Where on earth am I?”

The sound of his own voice reassured him a little, but it seemed to alarm the woman.

She came nearer, knelt down upon the brick floor, took hold of his wrist, and began to feel for the pulse.

Richard felt uncommonly like a fool.

“Do tell me where I am,” he urged.

“But I don't know,” said the woman; “I really wish I did. We ought to know.”

Apparently his pulse pleased her, for she smiled as she let go his hand. When she smiled, Richard saw that she was very much younger than he had thought at first. He liked her face very much.

“Yes, we ought to know,” he said. “But why don't we?” And the lady shook her hair back and said:

“Because we came here in the night. Don't you remember at all, Dick? Oh, you had better not try,” she added, as he wrinkled up his forehead, and was reminded of the fact that there was a bandage across it.

“But I do remember,” he began. “Of course I remember everything. Blake and I were together, and his horse went down. I grabbed at him and a great ugly brute hit me over the head.”

Helen began to unfasten the bandage. She kept her hands steady, but her voice shook a little as she asked:

“Where did this happen?”

“Don't you know?” He looked at her curiously. “Why at Multan, of course.”

Helen cried out. She could not help it. The two scars, the old and the new, swam together before her eyes.

“What is it?” said Richard Morton quickly.

Helen pulled herself together.

“Nothing—oh, nothing—your wound has healed. Fancy already—”

She hardly knew what she was saying, but the “already “brought a gasp of hysterical laughter to her lips—already—and Multan was how many years ago? Seven?

“That was not why you cried out like that,” said Captain Morton. He looked her straight in the face, turning his head to do so, and drawing back against the wall. “It was not anything to do with my wound. You cried out when I said Multan. What has happened? Of course I can see that something has happened. Why are we here? Tell me at once, please.”

Helen put out her hand, and drew it back again. She felt quite dizzy. Then she said in a low voice:

“Multan was seven years ago, Dick.”

There was a long silence.

After a minute or two she replaced the bandage. He could feel how unsteady her fingers were. Yet they moved gently, and never hurt him. When she had finished, he caught her wrists and pulled her round to face him. She met his eyes with a sweet, anxious look. The sweetness and the anxiety were both for him.

“No, you don't look mad,” he said in a voice he could hardly have known for his own.

Helen began to laugh.

“I should think I must,” she said, catching her breath. “I saw myself in the pool, and I thought that I looked quite mad—you can't get very tidy without a comb or hairpins. I'm clean though, quite, quite clean, for I've washed all my things. There is quite a deep pool in a ravine close by, and there is a sort of cave there too. It might be safer than this.”

Helen was talking to gain time, but Richard did not seem to be listening.

“Am I mad then?” he asked, and though he smiled as he said it, there was trouble in his eyes.

“Oh, no, Dick, how foolish—your head was hurt, and you have forgotten. Grandmamma knew a man that it happened to. He forgot everything—even his name—you haven't done that.”

“Richard—Vernon—Morton—no, I haven't done that.”

“You did hurt your head at Multan, you see,” said Helen. “And it happened just in the way you said. Captain Blake told me—not you—you saved his life. That was at Multan, so you see, now that you are wounded in the same place again, it is quite natural that you should get confused.”

“But I am not at all confused. It's not that. I could understand that. My head is perfectly clear. I could tell you what Blake and I had for dinner last night—only, I suppose it wasn't last night.”

He broke off, and asked abruptly:

“What is the date?”

“The 30th— yes, it must be the 30th of June, 1857.”

“Seven years.” He put his hand up to his head. “It is inconceivable.”

Then his hand came down and felt his chin—“Lord—what a beard! I was smooth enough yesterday. This is a fortnight's growth—since yesterday.”

He went off into rather shaky laughter, and Helen looked at him with troubled eyes.

“Don't think about it. Please don't,” she said. “It will all come back in time, I am sure it will all come back.” But even as she spoke, it came over her with a rush that she would be glad if it did not come back, if it never came back at all.

“Seven years,” said Richard Morton again, in a dazed sort of way. Then he put his head in his hands, and Helen began to be afraid of her own thoughts.

After a while he looked up.

“How long have you—have I—have we known each other?” he said, and she saw a little glow of colour rise in his cheeks.

“Three years,” said Helen, and she looked at him because she would not let him see her look away.

“Three—then four years are gone altogether; but you can tell me about the last three, at any rate. What have I been doing?”

He watched her face, and saw it change.

“You were in England in '54,” she said.

No, that brought back nothing, but he could see that she expected it to stir some memory. She kept her eyes upon him, and every moment she thought that memory would wake, and show him Adela, his marriage—all the unhappiness.

“In England? You are sure?”

“Why, yes. Quite sure. We met there, you see.”

Was that what he was expected to remember? His meeting with her?

Richard Morton experienced a strange sensation.

“And then?” he said.

“You returned to India, and went into Civil employ. You were at Peshawur under Colonel Edwardes.”