Chapter Eleven.
Concerning the Occult.
“How would it be to move camp to-morrow?” Tarleton was saying. “We’ve been here long enough, and there’s nothing to shoot, or next to nothing. What do you think, Raynier?”
“No great hurry, is there? It’s breezy and picturesque here, and has its advantages. What do you think, Haslam?”
“I’m with Tarleton,” said the Forest Officer. “All our fellows are grumbling. They say it’s an unlucky place.”
It was the evening after the somewhat eventful ride just recorded, and they were all assembled within the large tent which was used as a common dining-room. Dinner was over and cheroots were being discussed.
“Yes. My Babu was telling me something of the kind only to-day,” rejoined Raynier, tranquilly. “By the way, Haslam, how is it all this while we’ve never been through that tangi? You know, the one you were telling me the yarn about?”
Haslam stared.
“Well, you know, old chap—I—I told you the yarn, didn’t I? Well, that explains it.”
“But you don’t really mean to say you believe in such arrant tomfoolery?”
“I don’t know about believing in it. But—well, it’s best to be on the safe side.”
“Goodness gracious, I should think so,” struck in Mrs Tarleton. “Why, I wouldn’t go into that place if anyone were to offer me a million pounds.”
“Well, I wish they’d offer it to me, that’s all,” said Raynier. “For I mean to go through it to-morrow, gratis. Who’ll volunteer? What do you say, Miss Clive?”
“I’ll go, with pleasure,” was the answer.
It will be seen that these two had kept their former experience to themselves, and this they had done by mutual agreement, mainly to get some fun out of the rest of the party, and it was to this object Raynier was now leading up. The head which both had seen watching them they had since accounted for by optical delusion, even as the startling sounds had been accounted for by perfectly natural causes.
Mrs Tarleton gave a cry of genuine consternation.
“Hilda, you must not go,” she implored. “Oh, Mr Raynier, don’t take her—if only as a favour to me.”
“But I’m not in the least superstitious, Mrs Tarleton,” said the girl, looking up from the work she was engaged upon. “In fact, I like to demonstrate the absurdity of these childish beliefs. Why, I can hardly count the number of times I’ve got up first of thirteen from table.”
“Well, there must be something in these ideas, I suppose, or else they wouldn’t be so universally accepted,” cut in Tarleton.
“No? Then of course the world has only lately become round, seeing that for ages it was ‘universally accepted’ as flat,” said Raynier.
“Ah, but that’s quite a different thing.”
Then Haslam told a weird and wonderful story or two illustrating the strange power of native prophecy, which interested Hilda, and Tarleton would cap such with the coincidence type of anecdote, such as the first of thirteen at table—and at these she laughed.
“None of those instances come anywhere near carrying conviction,” she said. “Now, remember. In good time I will supply you with just such an instance to the contrary. No; I won’t tell you anything about it now. But you’ll see at the right time.”
“I believe Miss Clive means to go into the tangi,” said Haslam.
“No, I don’t,” Hilda answered. “I won’t go into it now. I don’t want to frighten all you poor creatures.”
They laughed, rather weakly it must be owned—all but Raynier, that is, for he was in the know, and was enjoying the situation immensely. How well she looked when she was animated and her face lighted up like that—was what he was thinking as he sat watching her. Somebody touched on the subject of clairvoyance. In a moment Hilda’s manner changed. She became grave, almost earnest.
“Hullo!” cried Tarleton. “We’ve got hold of something at last that Miss Clive does believe in.”
“To a certain extent, yes.”
“I remember going to a séance once,” said Mrs Tarleton. “There was a dreadful woman going into trances, and pointing out people’s dead relations standing behind their chairs. She described them, and all sorts of things. It made me feel quite creepy.”
“Yes, but how many times was she wide of the mark for every time she made a good shot?” said Raynier.
“Hardly once. It is quite wonderful.”
“There’s nothing in that sort of clairvoyance; it’s sheer quackery,” said Hilda, speaking in a decisive, authoritative tone that astonished her hearers.
“I should think so,” said Raynier. “Whatever may be the state or locality of the dead, it is not to be supposed that they would be empowered, or would even wish, to appear in London, to enable a cad in a second-hand dress-suit to take up so much a head in gate money, nor a female fraud either, for the matter of that.”
“Well, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t,” cut in Tarleton, characteristically.
“No! It doesn’t strike you as improbable?” said Hilda, with a pitying look.
“Why should they be quacks?” persisted Tarleton. “Why shouldn’t there be anything in what they do?”
“I don’t know why there shouldn’t be, I only know there isn’t,” she replied. “Why, the gift—for clairvoyance is a gift—is so rare that it is hardly surprising its very existence is disbelieved in. I know it—at least, I mean—er—anybody can reason out the matter for themselves.”
The concluding words were lame and stammering, and the change from the firmness and decision of tone which had marked her utterances hitherto, as though she had suddenly found herself out in saying too much, could not but strike her hearers as strange, to say the least of it. To Raynier it suggested a new idea, which indeed came to him with a sort of mental start. But he came to the rescue.
“Its existence is undoubted, though as rare as Miss Clive says. Why, that feeling that comes to us sometimes of having done or said some given thing before, or found ourselves in some given place, is a sort of an approach to the art, or gift, or whatever you like to call it.”
“Oh, I don’t know what that is,” said Mrs Tarleton. “Thank goodness that sort of thing doesn’t come my way. But we’ve been talking about creepy things all the evening. I’m sure I shall dream. Ugh!” with a shiver. “What is it like outside?”
It was time to separate for the night, but they lingered a while chatting in front of the tent. There was a very wildness of desolation in this sudden transition from light to darkness. All within the camp was silent, and away beyond, the loom of the hills was just discernible, black against the stars. The ghostly cry of a night bird echoed from the craggy height which overhung the camp, and far away over the plain a most weird and melancholy howling was borne upon the night wind.
“That’s a wolf—or wolves,” said Haslam, his shikari instincts metaphorically pricking up his ears. “Aren’t you afraid, Miss Clive? There’s nothing between you and them but a strip of canvas, all night through.”
Hilda laughed.
“Afraid?” she repeated. “Why, this is positively delightful. It is such a contrast. Inside the tents—why, we might be in Mazaran, or even in London. Outside—the very ideal of savage wildness. Afraid? Why, I’m positively revelling in it. I like to hear that. Hark! There it is again. I’d like to see those wolves close—to watch them prowling for prey and doubling back and signalling to each other—if only I could get near enough to observe them without scaring them.”
“My goodness, child! Why, they’d eat you,” said Mrs Tarleton.
“Not they.” And Hilda laughed again.
“I say, old chap,” said Haslam, later, as Raynier lounged into his tent for another “peg” and a final smoke, “that’s a strange sort of girl the Tarletons have picked up. Who is she? Do you know?”
“No more than you do.”
“Well, there’s something dashed uncanny about her. The way she talks—there’s something sort of creepy about it. Eh? And did you ever see such eyes as she’s got? Eh?”
“N-no, I don’t think I ever did,” answered Raynier, slowly and between puffs, but in no wise with the same meaning as Haslam had in his mind.
“I say, she’d make a rum sort of a wife for most fellows, with those rum uncanny ideas of hers. Eh?” And then the speaker stopped rather short, remembering, all of a sudden, that Raynier and the object of his remarks had been getting a bit thick of late. But, then, Raynier was rather a queer chap himself, he reflected. Anyway, he felt a trifle embarrassed, as though he had been putting his foot in it.
“I daresay,” answered Raynier, equably. “‘Most fellows’ are like shot—assorted into sizes, and might safely be numbered in the same way.” At bottom, however, the remark jarred upon him, and set him wondering for the fiftieth time what insidious fascination the strange personality of Hilda Clive was beginning to set up within his innermost being, and that such was the case he was only beginning to admit, hugging to himself the very secrecy of the thought, and the subtle stimulus it afforded. Yet, what did it all mean? He was not in love with Hilda Clive, but some strange fascination radiated from her. It might be uncanny—as Haslam had said—yet he liked it—nor would he have bartered it for the artless advances of conventional attractions, and of such he was not without experience, for natural and unassuming as he constitutionally was, the Political Agent of Mazaran, on the right side of forty, was something of a parti, by reason of his position and its emoluments; and when, added to this, he who filled the one and enjoyed the other was in the prime of physical health and strength, why, then, so much the more eligible did that parti become.
Haslam the while had turned in, and was yawning profusely—in fact, could hardly give a coherent answer to any question or remark, wherefore Raynier adjourned to his own tent. But not the slightest inclination was on him to follow Haslam’s example. He felt extraordinarily wide awake, wherefore he got out a camp-chair, and, having extinguished the lamp within his tent, lit another cheroot and sat there to enjoy the beauty of the night and think.
It was very still. What little wind there had been had dropped completely. A glow had begun to suffuse the velvety darkness of the star-gemmed sky, and, widening, the black loom of a rocky ridge away beyond the plain became clearly defined, then a rim of fire, and lo!—a broad moon soared majestically upward.
It was beautiful. The white tents lay like blocks of marble in its light, which silvered over the plain and the scant foliage of a few scattered junipers. The crunch, crunch of ruminating camels, and the stamp and snort of a horse, alone broke the stillness, save for the long-drawn howl still heard from time to time over the wilderness afar, where wolves prowled. Dark peaks, in softened outline, stood clear against the sky.
His thoughts ran back to the time of his furlough, to England and what had transpired there. Again and again he congratulated himself that he was free from that bond; how on earth he could ever have entered into it seemed more incomprehensible than ever. And what a long while ago it seemed, and—
What was this? A figure moving in the moonlight, a figure clothed in white draperies. In a brief flash the solution of a midnight marauder—the first of others—occurred to him, and his hand went to his pistol pocket—this time not empty. But he quickly withdrew it. For as the figure glided swiftly among the tents he knew it—knew it for that of Hilda Clive.
Heavens! What was she doing, what was she bent upon, just as she had risen from bed like this? She was walking, erect and rather swiftly, and now in a straight line; stepping forward, looking neither to the right nor to the left, yet there was something about the gait that was not usual, a something as though she was walking unconsciously. And—she had left the tents behind her now, and was walking swiftly and straight for the open country. He gazed for a moment, dumbfounded, after the receding form, then, rising, started to follow.