Colonel Ryder laughed. "You've always got a fine vision for the dramatic."
We passed on. I suppose about twenty minutes had gone when, as we were entering the garden again, we heard loud cries. Hurrying forward towards the Tanks, we saw a strange sight.
There, on a narrow wall dividing two great tanks, were three people— Mrs. Falchion, Amshar, and the rejected Arab guide. Amshar was crouching behind Mrs. Falchion, and clinging to her skirts in abject fear. The Arab threatened with a knife. He could not get at Amshar without thrusting Mrs. Falchion aside, and, as I said, the wall was narrow. He was bent like a tiger about to spring.
Seeing Mrs. Falchion and Amshar apart from the others,—Mrs. Falchion having insisted on crossing this narrow and precipitous wall,—he had suddenly rushed after them. As he did so, Miss Treherne saw him, and cried out. Mrs. Falchion faced round swiftly, and then came this tragic situation.
Some one must die.
Seeing that Mrs. Falchion made no effort to dislodge Amshar from her skirts, the Arab presently leaped forward. Mrs. Falchion's arms went out suddenly, and she caught the wrist that held the dagger. Then there was an instant's struggle. It was Mrs. Falchion's life now, as well as Amshar's. They swayed. They hung on the edge of the rocky chasm. Then we lost the gleam of the knife, and the Arab shivered, and toppled over. Mrs. Falchion would have gone with him, but Amshar caught her about the waist, and saved her from the fall which would have killed her as certainly as it killed the Arab lying at the bottom of the tank. She had managed to turn the knife in the Arab's hand against his own breast, and then suddenly pressed her body against it; but the impulse of the act came near carrying her over also.
Amshar was kneeling at her feet, and kissing her gown gratefully. She pushed him away with her foot, and, coolly turning aside, began to arrange her hair. As I approached her, she glanced down at the Arab. "Horrible! horrible!" she said. I remembered that these were her words when her husband was lifted from the sea to the 'Fulvia'.
Not ungently, she refused my hand or any assistance, and came down among the rest of the party. I could not but feel a strange wonder at the powerful side of her character just shown—her courage, her cool daring. In her face now there was a look of annoyance, and possibly disgust, as well as of triumph—so natural in cases of physical prowess. Everybody offered congratulations, but she only showed real pleasure, and that mutely, at those of Miss Treherne. To the rest of us she said: "One had to save one's self, and Amshar was a coward."
And so this woman, whose hardness of heart and excessive cruelty Hungerford and I were keeping from the world, was now made into a heroine, around whom a halo of romance would settle whenever her name should be mentioned. Now, men, eligible and ineligible, would increase their homage. It seemed as if the stars had stopped in their courses to give her special fortune.
That morning I had thought her appearance at this luncheon-party was little less than scandalous, for she knew, if others did not, who Boyd Madras was. After the occurrence with the Arab, the other event was certainly much less prominent, and here, after many years, I can see that the act was less in her than it would have been in others. For, behind her outward hardness, there was a sort of justice working, an iron thing, but still not unnatural in her.