Chapter Nine.
“Love that is First and Last...”
“Now you will have to take care of me,” began Mona, after some minutes of silence, as they started slowly to ride round beneath the cliff.
“A heavy responsibility for any one man during a whole hour or more.”
“You have not found it so hitherto?”
“Oh, then there were two of us. We took the risk between us. Hallo!” he broke off, “that’s a fine specimen!”
She followed his upward glance. A huge bird of prey had shot out from the cliff overhead and was circling in bold, powerful sweeps, uttering a loud, raucous scream.
“As good a specimen of a dasje-vanger as I ever saw,” went on Roden, still gazing upward. “Now, I wonder if a Snider bullet would blow it all to pieces at that distance!”
“You’ll never bring it down with a bullet?” said Mona eagerly.
“Not, eh? Perhaps not.”
The great eagle, jet black save for her yellow feet standing out against the thick dusky plumage, floated round and round in her grand gyrations, her flaming eye visible to the spectators as she turned her head from side to side. Roden, without dismounting, put up his rifle. Simultaneously with the report a cloud of black feathers flew from the noble bird, who, as though with untamable determination to disappoint her slayer, shot downward obliquely, with arrow-like velocity, and disappeared beyond the brow of the cliff overhead.
“You were right,” said Roden, slipping a fresh cartridge into his piece. “I did not bring it down, for with characteristic perversity, the ill-conditioned biped has chosen to yield up the ghost at the top of the cliff, whereas we are at the bottom.”
“Oh, can’t we go up to it? This is much better game than those poor little rhybok. But, wherever did you learn to shoot like that?”
“We can go up!” he replied, purposely or accidentally evading the last question. “That gully we passed, a little way back is climbable. But you had better wait below. It will be hard work.”
“So that’s how you propose taking care of me—to leave me all alone? Not if I know it. The place looked perfectly safe.”
Safe it was: a narrow, staircase-like couloir, consisting of a series of natural steps; the rocks on either side heavily festooned with thick masses of the most beautiful maidenhair fern. Leaving the horses beneath, they began the climb, and after a couple of hundred feet of this they stood on the summit of the mountain.
The summit was as flat as a table, and covered with long coarse grass, billowing in the fresh strong breeze which swept it like the surface of a lake. Around, beneath, free and vast, spread the rolling panorama of mountain and plain.
“Ah! this is to live indeed!” broke from Mona. “I don’t know that I ever enjoyed a day so much in my life.”
The other did not immediately look at her, but when he presently did steal a keen, but furtive glance at her face, there was something there, which, combined with the tone wherein she had uttered the above words, set him thinking.
“I don’t see anything of the dasje-vanger,” he said, at length; “and yet this is about the place where it should have fallen. It may have fluttered into the long grass, but couldn’t have gone far with that bullet hole through it. Now, you search that way, and I’ll search this.”
For a few minutes they searched hither and thither; then a cry from Mona brought him to her side.
“This is the place,” she said. “Look!”
She stood as near as she dared to the brow of the cliff, pointing downwards. On the very verge, fluttering among the grass bents, were several small feathers, jet black, and such as might have come out of the breast of the great bird. Roden advanced to the brink.
“This is the place!” he declared, leaning over. “And, look! there lies our quarry, stone dead. The spiteful brute has chosen a difficult place, if not an inaccessible one.”
“Where? Let me see. Hold my hand, while I look down, for I don’t half like it.”
This he did, and shudderingly she peered over. From where they stood the cliff fell for about twenty feet obliquely, but very steep, and grown over with tufts of grass, to a narrow ledge scarcely two feet wide; below this—space. But upon this ledge lay the great eagle, with outstretched wings, stone dead, its head hanging over the abyss.
“I can get at it there, fortunately,” muttered Roden.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going down to pick up the bird.”
“You are not.”
He stared.
“But I want it,” he urged. “It is too fine a specimen to be left lying there.”
“Never mind; you can shoot another. Now, don’t go, don’t!”
Again he recognised the expression which came into her face, as with startled eyes and voice which shook with the very abandon of her entreaty, she stood there before him. What then? He had seen that look in other faces, but what had come of it!
“I am going down,” he repeated.
“You cannot; you shall not. It is too horrible. You will be killed before my eyes. Won’t you give it up because I ask you?”
“No.”
There were men who would have given a great deal to have heard Mona Ridsdale speak to them in that tone, who would willingly have risked their lives, rather than have refrained from risking them, at her request. This one, however, answered short and straight and with brutal indifference, “No.”
They looked at each other for a moment, as though both realised that this was a strange subject for a conflict of will, then she said,
“So you will not give it up?”
“No. It is an easy undertaking, and for me a safe one.”
She turned away without another word, and he began his descent.
This, however, was less simple than it looked, as is usually the case, or rather, so appallingly simple that a slight slip, or the loosening of a grass tussock, would send the average climber whirling into space. But Roden Musgrave was an experienced hand on mountains, and thoroughly understood the principle of distributing his weight. In a very short space of time he was standing on the ledge, and had picked up the dead bird.
“I can’t throw it up,” he cried, for the benefit of his companion, who, once he had began his descent, had not been able to resist watching its progress, and lying flat on the brink was marking every step. “It’s too heavy. I shall have to sling it around me somehow.”
“Make haste and come out of that grisly position,” was all she replied.
And her definition of it was not an unmerited one. The ledge was hardly wide enough to turn upon, and from beneath they had both seen the great rock wall, in its unbroken smoothness, considerably upwards of a hundred feet in height.
Then with the dead eagle slung around him, he began his return, inch by inch, step by step, holding on by every tuft of grass or projecting stone, carefully testing each before trusting any portion of his weight to it—she the while watching every step with a fearful fascination.
All of a sudden something gave way. One moment more, and he would have been in safety. Roden felt himself going—going. Still, with consummate presence of mind, he strove to distribute his weight. All in vain. He could not recover his lost footing. He was sliding with increased momentum, sliding to the brink of the terrible height.
Mona’s blood turned to ice within her. She was too stricken even to shriek, in the unspeakable horror of the moment. Her fingers dug into the ground, instinctively clenched, as she lay there, gazing down, an appalled and powerless spectator.
He, for his part, did not look up. The dust and stones slid in streams from beneath him and leaped over the ledge into space—then his descent stopped. He seemed to be flattening himself against the height, clinging for all he knew how. And then, as if to add to the gloomy depression of this horrible peril, there stole up a dark, misty cloud, spreading its black wings around the summit of the mountain, shedding a twilight as of fear and disaster. Mona found her voice.
“Oh, try and rest a little while and collect yourself,” she said; “then make another attempt!”
“I can’t move,” came the response; “and—I can’t hold on here much longer. I believe my left wrist is broken. I am suffering the torments of hell.”
Mona was almost beside herself. Roden Musgrave was in a bad way indeed when such an admission could be wrung from him.
“Dear, don’t give up!” she cried, in a wail of despairing tenderness, such as had never been wrung from her lips before. “Make one more effort; this time, because I ask you. A yard or two more, and I shall be able to reach you.”
Was this the woman who had stood shrinkingly to gaze over the brink, and had quickly retreated with a shudder? Now, as she lay there, extending her arm down as far as it would go, in order to afford him the necessary hand-grasp, all fear on her own behalf seemed to have left her. But the man, flattened against the face of the cliff with the dead eagle slung to his back, seemed not able to move, and as she had said, it was but a yard or two farther.
But the effort must be made. Roden was only resting for one final struggle. It was made. Reaching upward he grasped the extended hand, then let go again.
“Hold it! hold it!” cried Mona, appalled by the awful whiteness which had spread over his face, evoked as it was by the agony he was suffering.
“No, I won’t, I should only drag you down.”
“You would not. I am very firm up here,” she replied. “I can hold you till—till help comes.”
He wriggled up a little higher, then with his uninjured hand he grasped hers. A sick faintness came upon him. The world seemed to go round. The brink of the cliff, the brave, eager face and love-lit eyes, the swaying grass bents, now rimy with misty scud, all danced before his vision. He felt cold as ice, that deathly numbness which precedes a faint. But for the strong, warm clasp of the hand which now held his, Roden Musgrave’s days were numbered. Well indeed was it for him, that the splendid frame of its owner was not merely the perfection of feminine symmetry, but encased a very considerable modicum of sheer physical strength.
“Roden, darling!” she murmured. “Save yourself if only that you may do so through me. You have surprised my secret, but it shall be as though you had not, if you prefer it.”
It was a strange love-making, as they faced each other thus, the one overhanging certain death, the other raised entirely out of her physical fears, resolute to save this life, which after all might not belong to her. Thus they faced each other, and the dark whirling blackness of the glooming cloud lowered thicker and thicker around them.
“Let me go, Mona!” he gasped forth wearily, in his semi-faint. “I may drag you down. Good-bye. Now—let go!”
She almost laughed. The strong grasp tightened upon his hand firmer than ever.
“If you go, I go too. Now I am going to shout. Perhaps Charlie will hear.” And lifting up her voice she sent forth a long, clear, ringing call; then another and another.
No answer.
Then, as the minutes went by, the bolt of a wild despair shot through Mona’s brave heart. Strong as she was, she could not hold him for ever, nor was he able, in the agony of his broken wrist, to raise himself any farther. Her brain reeled. Wild-eyed with despair she strove to pierce the opaque grey curtain which was crusting her face and hair with rime. It was winter, and this table-topped mountain was of considerable elevation. What if this thick chill cloud was the precursor of a heavy snowfall? Charlie, acting on the idea that they had missed each other in the mist, might have gone home. Every muscle in her fine frame seemed cracking. The strain was momentarily becoming greater, more intense, and again she sent forth her loud, clear call, this time thrilling with a fearful note of despair.
It was answered. Eagerly, breathlessly she listened. Yes—it came from below the cliff. Charlie had arrived at the spot where they had left their horses. She shouted again. The answer told that he was climbing the gully by which they had ascended.
“Do you hear that? We are safe now. A few minutes more, and Charlie will be here.”
“It is you who have done it, Mona,” he murmured.
Then she spoke no more. Now that succour was near at hand, she found herself actually revelling in the position, and a delight in making the most of it while it lasted was qualified by the agony Roden was suffering, as also by a strange feeling of jealousy that she had not been able to carry out the rescue alone and unaided; of resentment that she should be driven to call in the help of another.
“That’s it, is it?” said Suffield, prompt to master the situation at a glance. “Now, Mona, I’ll relieve you of this amount of avoirdupois, and when you have rested for a minute you hold on to me for all you know how, and I’ll lug him up in a second.”
The while he had got hold of Roden by the hand and wrist; then in a trice had, as he said, dragged the sufferer over the brink and into safety, for he was a powerful man.
“So that’s what it was all about?” he went on, as he cut loose the dead eagle. “The dasje-vanger nearly revenged itself. How do you feel, Musgrave, old chap?”
“Like an idiot,” said Roden faintly, as he took a liberal pull at the flask the other had been swift to tender him, and began to feel the better therefor. “I never could stand being hurt. Though hard enough in other ways, anything in the way of pain turns me sick. But, Suffield, if it had not been for Mona I should have been a dead man.”
“Oh, ‘Mona,’ is it?” thought Suffield, with an internal grin. Then aloud, rather anxiously, “Anything else besides the wrist?”
“I’ve banged up a knee a good bit; but I expect it’s only bruised. Now we’d better start. I seem to be getting all right.”
He was ghastly pale as he tottered to his feet, evidently still in great pain.
“No, never mind,” he went on; “I don’t want any help, I can walk all right.”
But as they began the descent of the gully, Suffield, carrying both rifles and the dead eagle, leading the way, he felt faint and dizzy. In an instant Mona’s hand had closed upon his. Hitherto she had stood silently aloof in the revulsion of feeling. He was safe now. The words which had been wrung from her by the extremity of his peril must be regarded as unsaid. So she resolved—but was it a revolution that came within her power to keep? The volcanic fires of her strong, passionate, sensuous temperament had lain dormant beneath an egotistic and inconsiderate vanity, had lain dormant, unknown even to herself. Now they were to burst forth with a force, and to an extent, unsuspected by herself, and as startling as they had been hitherto unknown. But on one point there was no room for any more self-deception. Whatever half-truth there might have been in Grace Suffield’s oft-uttered prediction, now it had become all truth. Mona realised that her tarn had indeed come—for good and for ill, for once and for ever.