Chapter Twelve.
A Strange Midnight Ramble.
She was walking in her sleep.
This was the conclusion Raynier instinctively arrived at as he followed stealthily and noiselessly behind; and to his mind the problem occurred as to what he had better do. He had always been under the impression that to awaken a person under such circumstances was likely to produce an alarming, if not rather a disastrous, shock. But what on earth was to be done? She could not be suffered to walk on like this, Heaven knew where. Should he go back and rouse up Tarleton? But at the pace she was going she would be away and out of sight by the time he had hammered into the understanding of that contentious idiot the urgency of the situation, and this was no sort of country for any woman to go wandering about in at night. There were wolves around, too, for had they not been making themselves heard? and however chary such were of letting themselves be seen if anyone were anxious to get the sights of a rifle upon them, a solitary woman was a different story—and he was cognisant, moreover, of the fact that even the most skulking of wild animals are, strangely enough, far less afraid of the female of the human species. No, he must follow on after her, and that at once.
But where on earth was she going to lead him? On, on, she pressed, walking swiftly, and although the ground itself was, in places, none of the smoothest, yet, while not seeming to notice the way, she sped over it almost quicker than he did, looking carefully where he was going. It was a weird sort of undertaking. He could see in the moonlight her splendid hair streaming like a mantle about her shoulders, and noted the grace and ease with which she walked. On—ever. They were nearing the edge of the plain—and lo!—there in front of them rose the mountain which was cleft by the great tangi—the haunted tangi, equally feared seemingly by the enlightened and highly-educated Europeans who were his fellow-travellers as by the superstitious natives of the land.
Straight for this the unconscious pedestrian was heading. What strange influence was drawing her thither, thought he who followed: and for the first time something of the superstitious shrinking which caused them to shun the place began to creep over him. He glanced over his shoulder with some faint hope that others might have discovered the girl’s absence and be following, but no. All was dead and silent. Nothing moved in the silvery moonlight.
And now in front rose the great rock portal—and on, ever on, kept the white and gliding figure before him. He saw it stand forth whiter than ever against the gloom of the entrance, then disappear, swallowed within the cavernous blackness of the great chasm.
Would the sudden change both of light and atmosphere awaken her? Would she come rushing forth wild with terror, instinctively making for the light? For a moment he waited in case this should be so—then plunged within the darkness of the place.
Raynier felt that here her wandering would end. Some strange psychological wave, acting with their experience of the day before, stimulated by the subject of their conversation that evening, had moved her to rise in her sleep and come hither. But to what end? There was something uncanny about her, Haslam had remarked, but Raynier was conscious of a very lively sense of thankfulness that he had been awake, and thus ready to follow and watch over her on this eerie and far from safe adventure upon which she had all unconsciously embarked.
The light from without hardly penetrating here, Raynier found himself slipping and stumbling in the gloom, yet, with it all, his quick ears could hear the footsteps in front moving easily and firmly without trip or stumble. It was marvellous—nor did the noise he made on the rattling stones seem in any way to disturb her whom he followed.
Now it grew light again in front. The white figure had reached the point where the rock walls widened out, and—had halted. The moon, immediately overhead now, darted down its light right into the chasm. Should he go forward and gently awaken her, if indeed she were not already awake? Surely she must be, for now she turned slowly round and faced him. He could see her great eyes, wide open and stamped with a wondering look; then, as he was about to advance and address her, she turned again and moved slowly onward.
And then a sound struck upon Raynier’s ears which caused every drop of blood within him to freeze, and well it might, for well he knew that sawing, grating cough drawing nearer. A panther was coming up the tangi. Heavens, and the girl was between it and him.
Then the brute appeared—and with it a cub. Raynier knew with what deadly peril the situation was now fraught, for a revolver, save in the hand of a thorough expert, is an uncertain weapon, especially in an indifferent light. At sight of them the brute stopped, then crouched, uttering a hideous, purring snarl. In that second of time the scene was photographed upon his mind; the ghostly moonlight glinting down between the great rock walls, the spotted, sinuous shape of the savage beast, every muscle quivering as it crouched there ready for its spring, its tail softly waving to and fro, and the white gliding figure advancing straight upon it; straight upon destruction in the most horrible of forms. Yes, in a flash the whole scene was before him as, pointing the pistol past her, he steadied his nerves to take the best possible aim.
But—what was this? Instead of edging forward preparatory to making its fatal rush, as he had often seen a cat do when stealing upon a bird or mouse, the brute was stealthily backing. Was it fear of the strange sight that was actuating the beast? Was there indeed some latent magnetic force about those wide open eyes? For the gliding white figure advanced unwaveringly, and as it did so the crouching brute shrank back more and more—now in unmistakable alarm. Then suddenly snatching up its cub in its mouth, it turned and bounded away beyond the elbow of rock wall round which it had first appeared.
Every nerve in the spectator’s being thrilled to the revulsion produced by this sudden removal of the awful tension of those few moments. At all risks he must awaken her and take her back to the camp. But as he advanced to do this, she halted again, turned round, passed a hand over her brow and face, looked upward at the great cliffs, then down again at him. Then she spoke,—
“So we are here together again.”
That was all. Her tone was even, placid, and evinced no astonishment whatever, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to get up in the middle of the night, and take a moonlight stroll away over a particularly wild, and, as the recent incident showed, somewhat dangerous country, or to wake to consciousness in the heart of a vast rock chasm of awe-inspiring and savage grandeur and enjoying an eerie reputation. To her listener this was well-nigh the most astounding part of the whole adventure. Was she conscious? was his first thought.
Again she passed a hand over her brow, and her great eyes rested calmly upon his face.
“Now I remember,” she said, in the same even tones. “Something threatened me—there, just now,” looking toward the spot where the panther had crouched. “It was an animal—a panther. But—it went,” she added, with a slight smile.
“That it certainly did,” rejoined Raynier, “and thank Heaven it did. Do you know that that was about the tightest situation I have ever heard or read of—a panther with a cub—with a cub, mind, for in that lay nearly the whole of the peril—coming along this narrow tube where there’s no possible means of getting out of its way—and you walking straight into its jaws. And this, under the circumstances, is a precious unreliable weapon,” showing the revolver he still held in his hand. “You or both of us might have been horribly mauled before it even began to take effect.”
“So we might. But I had a better plan with it, don’t you think so? Anyhow, the thing got in my way, and—it had to get out of it.”
The same cool tone, the same confident, but rather captivating smile. Two subjects of wonderment were at that moment crowding Herbert Raynier’s mind to the exclusion of all others. What was there about this girl—what magnetic compelling power had enabled her, by the sheer, unflinching fearlessness of her presence, to put to flight what, under the circumstances—the narrowness of the place to wit, the suddenness of the encounter, and, above all, the cub—was one of the most dangerous and formidable of wild beasts? This was one. The other was, how on earth he could ever have passed her by as being without attractiveness, and that not once, but day after day. Here, standing before him in the moonlight, looking tall in her loose white wrapper—for her strange excursion had not been so impromptu as he at first supposed—her splendid hair flowing in masses over her shoulders, her great eyes smiling upon him with something of the compelling force which had given her power over the brute, he decided that she was scarcely, if anything, short of beautiful. And then the somewhat uncommon circumstances of this interview came back upon him.
“What made you come here?” he said, the lameness of the remark striking him even while he uttered the words.
“The very question I was going to ask you.”
“Well, the answer to that should be obvious,” he said. “I saw you start out, and thought you were walking in your sleep—and I need hardly remind you that this is not an over-safe part of the world for that kind of exercise.”
“And you came to take care of me? That was very sweet of you.”
“If I had gone back to wake up Tarleton, you might have got to Heaven knows where by the time he was under way,” went on Raynier, conscious that her tone and manner had become insidiously alluring. Was he going to drift into the common idiocy? he thought, with something of dismay. “You might have altered your course and got right away from us. Then, when I did come up with you I didn’t like to wake you, because I thought it might give you a shock of sorts.”
“But I was not asleep—at least, I don’t think I was.”
Raynier stared.
“Not asleep? But you won’t mind my saying that that is—er—rather an unusual kind of walking attire.”
She laughed, glancing at her wrapper.
“Isn’t it? The fact is I hadn’t gone to bed yet I was sitting reading in the tent, and some impulse moved me to come to this place again—I can’t explain it, but it was there. Yet, I must have been asleep at times, when I walked. But I was half conscious, too, that you were near to me.”
“Well, you did not seem surprised when you woke up, so to say, and found I was.”
“No. And in a way it was a waking-up. I can’t explain it—unless it was a kind of sleeping consciousness.”
“What a strange girl you are, Miss Clive. Somehow I can’t make you out at all.”
“No? And yet you wish you could. Am I right?”
The smile she flashed at him was inexpressibly winning and sweet. Raynier recalled Haslam’s dictum. Something uncanny about her, he had said—something sort of creepy. Well, there might be from the point of view of some, even of most. But what would have repelled most men appealed to him, and the proof of it was that he was conscious of no inclination to terminate this interview—rather the reverse. Still, it had to be done.
“We ought to return to the camp, I think,” he said, in the same unconcerned tone as though suggesting a return from an ordinary walk or ride. And she acquiesced.
“I want you to promise me something,” Raynier said, rather earnestly, and perhaps a little tenderly, as they wended their way back over the moon-lit wildness of the plain, and the tents of the sleeping camp were quite near, “and that is not to repeat to-night’s adventure. It’s anything but safe. And if the same impulse comes over you, you must combat it.”
“I’ll almost promise that. Do you know, you are awfully unlike other men. For instance, all this time you have scarcely given a single thought to the awkwardness of this situation. Most men would have been fidgety and thinking what everyone would say, and so on.”
He laughed.
“Magician as you are, that is not difficult to divine,” he said. “What I want to get at is, how do you know I have not?”
“There’s no magic in knowing that. It is almost like setting yourself out to prove a negative. I can see—by the absence of all signs of it. Shall I tell you why that strange place has a fascination for me? Something warns me there will come a day when our knowledge of it will make all the difference between life and death. There—the thought has gone, nor can I pick up the thread of it. It has left me.”
That same movement of the hand as though clearing away an invisible mist from before her eyes. Upon her face, earnest and serious in the moonlight, there rested that same look which he had seen there when they were discussing clairvoyance and things occult, during the evening, and he felt just a little awed. Did she really possess the gift of seeing into the future?
“Good-night now, and get a good rest,” he said in a low tone and somewhat concernedly, as they regained the tents. And with a bright nod she disappeared within hers.