Part 48 (1/2)

Those moments seem to be long hours; they are spells of invisible woe; this dog is perhaps a phantom, come to warn her of some ghastly peril into which Carol has fallen. Its fangs look ripe for human gore; it pants, and its breath is as the rush of a storm.

”Help!” says a low voice, calling the dog by name.

The animal turns at the sound of that word. ”Help! come back.” He crouches away disappointed; he would have liked to seize Eleanor by the throat if he dared.

At the sound of the man's call Eleanor does not move, nor even start, only the blood seems to dry up in her veins, her fingers twitch convulsively, her eyes roll back in her head. She can hear the heavy footfalls mounting the steps to the verandah one by one; she dares not look, for she _knows_, she _understands_!

Then a sudden idea seizes her. They are not yet face to face. If her paralysed limbs will let her she may yet escape through the room, and out behind. She can hide in the thick undergrowth, and watch her opportunity to creep down the road and warn Carol of the danger threatening their lives. He may even now be pa.s.sing the well and riding up the hill to death!

She rushes blindly across the room, but that instant the heavy steps reach the verandah. Her aim is frustrated. She staggers against the wall, extending her arms aloft with a wild gesture.

The intruder stands in the open window, his dark figure framed, in the line between the verandah and the interior, his face illuminated by the moon which has burst like a ghostly lamp-man over the east. She feels like one dazed in the trammels of opium. She tries to cry out, to shriek for help, but only one word breaks hoa.r.s.ely from her lips with a hollow groan:

”Philip!”

The man enters the room silently, his garments are thick with dust, his coat torn as with jungle briars sharply thorned. He looks as if he had lived in the outer air, unkempt, dishevelled! Thick black hair has grown over the lower part of his face; but his eyes gleam as they meet hers while he advances, his gaze riveted on Eleanor. A fierce growl makes him turn, and his eyes fall on the lounging coat of Tussore silk lying upon yellow cus.h.i.+ons.

”Help” has scented it, and springing with his huge paws towards the sofa, tears and rends it furiously in his heavy jaws with the savage air of a lion destroying prey.

The sight is strangely horrible to Eleanor. Her eyes start from their sockets, staring, bloodshot, fixed. Her lips are livid, her limbs stiff, she is still drawn up against the wall at bay; but for its support she would fall upon the ground.

Philip smiles. The action of the dog pleases him. He does not notice the photograph of Carol, which dropped from Eleanor's hands as she started across the room, but the heel of his dusty boot falls on the face, crus.h.i.+ng it under the weight of his tread, scarring the features and cracking the card. He advances and stands pa.s.sively before Eleanor, so close that his hot breath fans her cheek, looking at her and waiting.

The steady ticking of the clock resounds in the room; in that moment of extreme tension it deafens her.

The silence is horrible, unendurable; she struggles to break it, and her voice sounds to her own amazement perfectly natural.

”I know why you have come, Philip,” she says calmly, and it seems that she has lived through this moment in some past existence, so painfully familiar are the ghastly occurrences of to-night. Perhaps it was in some shadowy dream which faded from her memory on awaking. ”I know why you are here,” she repeats throwing back her head against the bamboo panelling, and stretching out her arms in the att.i.tude of a crucified victim. ”I read it in your face. But I am too young to die, too sin-stained.”

”You think I have come to kill you, Eleanor?”

His words are low and hollow; they seem strangely similar to the warning growl of his huge dog. She thinks he has grown to resemble the ferocious-looking beast, or ”Help,” in the moonlight, appears like his master--from perpetual companions.h.i.+p.

But even as she looks, something of the man creeps into Philip's eyes, humanising them. The brute nature fades.

She answers his question under her breath:

”Yes, you have hunted me down to take my life.”

An expression of intense pain contracts his features; she has cut him to the quick.

With a woman's sharp instinct, intensified by dread, Eleanor sees that her doom is not yet; but the thought of another burns like fire in her brain. Her own miserable thread of life, what does it matter? She holds it as nought compared with the one she loves. She would die a thousand deaths if such a sacrifice would buy him safety.

”How little you understand me!” he says at last. ”It was always so.”

”Why have you come?” she asks, faintly tracing the shadows that fall around him in the pallid moonlight.

He turns, as if in answer, to the scattered rags of a silken coat, some of which still hang in the mastiff's jaws; then his gaze travels through the verandah, down the zig-zag path towards the jungle.