The Lamp in the Desert - Ethel May Dell (ebooks online reader .TXT) 📗

it had been left by her husband the night before. With shaking fingers she drew it aside and looked forth.
The hubbub of voices had died down to awed whisperings. A group of coolies huddled in the open space before her like an assembly of monkeys holding an important discussion.
Further away, with distorted limbs and grim, impassive countenance, crouched the black-bearded beggar whose importunity had lured Ralph from her side the previous evening. His red-rimmed, sunken eyes gazed like the eyes of a dead man straight into the sunrise. So motionless were they, so utterly void of expression, that she thought they must be blind. There was something fateful, something terrible in the aloofness of him. It was as if an invisible circle surrounded him within which none might intrude.
And close at hand--so close that she could have touched his turbaned head as she stood--the great Sikh bearer, Peter, sat huddled in a heap on the soft green earth and rocked himself to and fro like a child in trouble. She knew at the first glance that it was he who had uttered that anguished wail.
To him she turned, as to the only being she could trust in that strange scene.
"Peter," she said, "what has happened? What is wrong? Where--where is the captain _sahib_?"
He gave a great start at the sound of her voice above him, and instantly, with a rapid noiseless movement, arose and bent himself before her.
"The _mem-sahib_ will pardon her servant," he said, and she saw that his dark face was twisted with emotion. "But there is bad news for her to-day. The captain _sahib_ has gone."
"Gone!" Stella echoed the word uncomprehendingly, as one who speaks an unknown language.
Peter's look fell before the wide questioning of hers. He replied almost under his breath: "_Mem-sahib_, it was in the still hour of the night. The captain _sahib_ slept on the mountain, and in his sleep he fell--and was taken away by the stream."
"Taken away!" Again, numbly, Stella repeated his words. She felt suddenly very weak and sick.
Peter stretched a hand towards the inscrutable stranger. "This man, _mem-sahib_," he said with reverence, "he is a holy man, and while praying upon the mountain top, he saw the _sahib_, sunk in a deep sleep, fall forward over the rock as if a hand had touched him. He came down and searched for him, _mem-sahib_; but he was gone. The snows are melting, and the water runs swift and deep."
"Ah!" It was a gasp rather than an exclamation. Stella was blindly tottering against the tent-rope, clutching vaguely for support.
The great Sikh caught her ere she fell, his own distress subdued in a flash before the urgency of her need. "Lean on me, _mem-sahib!_" he said, deference and devotion mingling in his voice.
She accepted his help instinctively, scarcely knowing what she did, and very gently, with a woman's tenderness, he led her back into the tent.
"My _mem-sahib_ must rest," he said. "And I will find a woman to serve her."
She opened her eyes with a dizzy sense of wonder. Peter had never failed before to procure anything that she wanted, but even in her extremity she had a curiously irrelevant moment of conjecture as to where he would turn in the wilderness for the commodity he so confidently mentioned.
Then, the anguish returning, she checked his motion to depart. "No, no, Peter," she said, commanding her voice with difficulty. "There is no need for that. I am quite all right. But--but--tell me more! How did this happen? Why did he sleep on the mountain?"
"How should the _mem-sahib's_ servant know?" questioned Peter, gently and deferentially, as one who reasoned with a child. "It may be that the opium of his cigar was stronger than usual. But how can I tell?"
"Opium! He never smoked opium!" Stella gazed upon him in fresh bewilderment. "Surely--surely not!" she said, as though seeking to convince herself.
"_Mem-sahib_, how should I know?" the Indian murmured soothingly.
She became suddenly aware that further inaction was unendurable. She must see for herself. She must know the whole, dreadful truth. Though trembling from head to foot, she spoke with decision. "Peter, go outside and wait for me! Keep that old beggar too! Don't let him go! As soon as I am dressed, we will go to--the place--and--look for him."
She stumbled over the last words, but she spoke them bravely. Peter straightened himself, recognizing the voice of authority. With a deep salaam, he turned and passed out, drawing the tent-flap decorously into place behind him.
And then with fevered energy, Stella dressed. Her hands moved with lightning speed though her body felt curiously weighted and unnatural. The fantastic thought crossed her brain that it was as though she prepared herself for her own funeral.
No sound reached her from without, save only the monotonous and endless dashing of the torrent among its boulders. She was beginning to feel that the sound in some fashion expressed a curse.
When she was ready at length, she stood for a second or two to gather her strength. She still felt ill and dizzy, as though the world she knew had suddenly fallen away from her and left her struggling in unimaginable space, like a swimmer in deep waters. But she conquered her weakness, and, drawing aside the tent-flap once more, she stepped forth.
The morning sun struck full upon her. It was as if the whole earth rushed to meet her in a riot of rejoicing; but she was in some fashion outside and beyond it all. The glow could not reach her.
With a sharp sense of revulsion, she saw the deformed man squatting close to her, his _chuddah_-draped head lodged upon his knees. He did not stir at her coming though she felt convinced that he was aware of her, aware probably of everything that passed within a considerable radius of his disreputable person. His dark face, lined and dirty, half-covered with ragged black hair that ended in a long thin wisp like a goat's beard on his shrunken chest, was still turned to the east as though challenging the sun that was smiting a swift course through the heavens as if with a flaming sword. The simile rushed through her mind unbidden. Where would she be--what would have happened to her--by the time that sword was sheathed?
She conquered her repulsion and approached the man. As she did so, Peter glided silently up like a faithful watch-dog and took his place at her right hand. It was typical of the position he was to occupy in the days that were coming.
Within a pace or two of the huddled figure, Stella stopped. He had not moved. It was evident that he was so rapt in meditation that her presence at that moment was no more to him than that of an insect crawling across his path. His eyes, red-rimmed, startlingly bright, still challenged the coming day. His whole expression was so grimly aloof, so sternly unsympathetic, that she hesitated to disturb him.
Humbly Peter came to her assistance. "May I be allowed to speak to him, _mem-sahib?_" he asked.
She turned to him thankfully. "Yes, tell him what I want!"
Peter placed himself in front of the stranger. "The noble lady desires your service," he said. "Her gracious excellency is waiting."
A quiver went through the crouching form. He seemed to awake, his mind returning as it were from a far distance. He turned his head, and Stella saw that he was not blind. For his eyes took her in, for the moment appraised her. Then with ungainly, tortoiselike movements, he arose.
"I am her excellency's servant," he said, in hollow, quavering accents. "I live or die at her most gracious command."
It was abjectly spoken, yet she shuddered at the sound of his voice. Her whole being revolted against holding any converse with the man. But she forced herself to persist. Only this monstrous, half-bestial creature could give her any detail of the awful thing that had happened in the night. If Ralph were indeed dead, this man was the last who had seen him in life.
With a strong effort she subdued her repugnance and addressed him. "I want," she said, "to be guided to the place from which you say he fell. I must see for myself."
He bent himself almost to the earth before her. "Let the gracious lady follow her servant!" he said, and forthwith straightened himself and hobbled away.
She followed him in utter silence, Peter walking at her right hand. Up the steep goat-path which Dacre had so arrogantly ascended in the wake of his halting guide they made their slow progress in dumb procession. Stella moved as one rapt in some terrible dream. Again that drugged feeling was upon her, that sense of being bound by a spell, and now she knew that the spell was evil. Once or twice her brain stirred a little when Peter offered his silent help, and she thanked him and accepted it while scarcely realizing what she did. But for the most part she remained in that state of awful quiescence, the inertia of one about whom the toils of a pitiless Fate were closely woven. There was no escape for her. She knew that there could be no escape. She had been caught trespassing in a forbidden paradise, and she was about to be thrust forth without mercy.
High up on a shelf of naked rock their guide stood and waited--a ragged, incongruous figure against the purity of the new day. The early sun had barely topped the highest mountains, but a great gap between two mighty peaks revealed it. As Stella pressed forward, she came suddenly into the splendour of the morning.
It affected her strangely. She felt as Moses must have felt when the Glory of God was revealed to him. The brightness was intolerable. It seemed to pierce her through and through. She was not able to look upon it.
"Excellency," the stranger said, "it was here."
She moved forward and stood beside him. Quiveringly, in a voice she hardly recognized as her own, she spoke. "You were with him. You brought him here."
He made a gesture as of one who repudiates responsibility. "I, excellency, I am the servant of the Holy Ones," he said. "I had a message for him. I knew that the Holy Ones were angry. It was written that the white _sahib_ should not tread the sacred ground. I warned him, excellency, and then I left him. And now the Holy Ones have worked their will upon him, and lo, he is gone."
Stella gazed at the man with fascinated eyes. The confidence with which he spoke somehow left no room for question.
"He is mad," she murmured, half to herself and half to Peter. "Of course he is mad."
And then, as if a hand had touched her also, she moved forward to the edge of the precipice and looked down.
The rush of the torrent rose up like the tumult of many voices calling to her, calling to her. The depth beneath her feet widened to an abyss that yawned to engulf her. With a sick sense of horror she realized that ghastly, headlong fall--from warm, throbbing life on the enchanted height to instant and terrible destruction upon the green, slimy boulders over which the water dashed and roared continuously far below. Here he had sat, that arrogant lover of hers, and slipped from somnolent enjoyment into that dreadful gulf. At her feet--proof indisputable of the truth of the story she had been told--lay a charred fragment of the cigar that had doubtless been between his lips when he had sunk into that fatal sleep. The memory of Peter's words flashed through her brain. He had smoked opium. She wondered if Peter really knew. But of what avail now to