The Tidal Wave - Ethel May Dell (top books to read TXT) 📗

ace of hearts!
She felt herself stiffen involuntarily, and something within her began to pound and race like the hoofs of a galloping horse. A brief agitation was hers, which she almost instantly subdued, but which left her strangely cold.
Hone had risen from the table. He came quietly to her side. There was no visible elation about him. His grey eyes were essentially honest, but they were deliberately emotionless at that moment.
In the hubbub of voices all about them he bent and spoke.
"It may not be the fate you would have chosen; but since submit we must, shall we not make the best of it?"
She met his look with the aloofness of utter disdain.
"Your strategy was somewhat too apparent to be ascribed to Fate," she said. "I cannot imagine why you took the trouble."
A dark flush mounted under Hone's tan. He straightened himself abruptly, and she was conscious of a moment's sharp misgiving that was strangely akin to fear. Then, as he spoke no word, she rose and stood beside him, erect and regal.
"I submit," she said quietly; "not because I must, but because I do not consider it worth while to do otherwise. The matter is too unimportant for discussion."
Hone made no rejoinder. He was staring straight before him, stern-eyed and still.
But a few moments later, he gravely proffered his arm, and in the midst of a general move they went out together into the moonlit splendour of the Indian night.


IV

Slowly the boats slipped through the shallows by the bank.
Hone sat facing his companion in unbroken silence while he rowed steadily up the stream. But there was no longer anger in his steady eyes. The habit of kindness, which was the growth of a lifetime, had reasserted itself. He had not been created to fulfil a harsh destiny. The chivalry at his heart condemned sternness towards a woman.
And Nina Perceval sat in the stern with the moonlight shining in her eyes and the darkness of a great bitterness in her soul, and waited. Despite her proud bearing she would have given much to have looked into his heart at that moment. Notwithstanding all her scorn of him very deep down in her innermost being she was afraid.
For this was the man who long ago, when she was scarcely more than a child, had blinded her, baffled her, beaten her. He had won her trust, and had used it contemptibly for his own despicable ends. He had turned an innocent game into tragedy, and had gone his way, leaving her life bruised and marred and bitter before it had ripened to maturity. He had put out the sunshine for ever, and now he expected to be forgiven.
But she would never forgive him. He had wounded her too cruelly, too wantonly, for forgiveness. He had laid her pride too low. For even yet, in all her furious hatred of him, she knew herself bound by a chain that no effort of hers might break. Even yet she thrilled to the sound of that soft, Irish voice, and was keenly, painfully aware of him when he drew near.
He did not know it, so she told herself over and over again. No one knew, or ever would know. That advantage, at least, was hers, and she would carry it to her grave. But yet she longed passionately, vindictively, to punish him for the ruin he had wrought, to humble him--this faultless knight, this regimental hero, at whose shrine everybody worshipped--as he had once dared to humble her; to make him care, if it were ever so little--only to make him care--and then to trample him ruthlessly underfoot, as he had trampled her.
She began to wonder how long he meant to maintain that uncompromising silence. From across the water came the gay voices of their fellow-guests, but no other boat was very near them. His face was in the shadow, and she had no clue to his mood.
For a while longer she endured his silence. Then at length she spoke:
"Major Hone!"
He started slightly, as one coming out of deep thought.
"Why don't you make conversation?" she asked, with a little cynical twist of the lips. "I thought you had a reputation for being entertaining."
"Will it entertain you if I ask for an apology?" said Hone.
"An apology!" She repeated the words sharply, and then softly laughed. "Yes, it will, very much."
"And yet you owe me one," said Hone.
"I fear I do not always pay my debts," she answered. "But you will find it difficult to convince me on this occasion that the debt exists."
"Faith, I shall not try!" he returned, with a doggedness that met and overrode her scorn. "The game isn't worth the candle. I know you will think ill of me in either case."
"Why, Major Hone?"
He met her eyes in the moonlight, and she felt as if by sheer force he held them.
"Because," he said slowly, "I have made it impossible for you to do otherwise."
"Surely that is no one's fault but your own?" she said.
"I blame no one else," said Hone.
And with that he bent again to his work as though he had been betrayed into plainer speaking than he deemed advisable, and became silent again.
Nina Perceval trailed her hand in the water and watched the ripples. Those few words of his had influenced her strangely. She had almost for the moment forgotten her enmity. But it returned upon her in the silence. She began to remember those bitter years that stretched behind her, the blind regrets with which he had filled her life--this man who had tricked her, lied to her--ay, and almost broken her heart in those far-off days of her girlhood, before she had learned to be cynical.
"And even if I did believe you," she said, "what difference would it make?"
Hone was silent for a moment. Then--"Just all the difference in the world," he said, his voice very low.
"You value my good opinion so highly?" she laughed. "And yet you will make no effort to secure it?"
He turned his eyes upon her again.
"I would move heaven and earth to win it," he said, and she knew by his tone that he was putting strong restraint upon himself, "if there were the smallest chance of my ever doing so. But I know my limitations; I know it's all no good. Once a blackguard, always a blackguard, eh, Mrs. Perceval? And I'd be a special sort of fool if I tried to persuade you otherwise."
But still she only laughed, in spite of the agitation but half-subdued in his voice.
"I would offer to steer," she remarked irrelevantly, "only I don't feel equal to the responsibility. And since you always get there sooner or later, my help would be superfluous."
"You share the popular belief about my luck?" asked Hone.
"To be sure," she answered gaily. "Even you could scarcely manage to find fault with it."
He drew a deep breath. "Not with you in the boat," he said.
She withdrew her hand from the water, and flicked it in his face.
"Hadn't you better slow down? You are getting overheated. I feel as if I were sitting in front of a huge furnace."
"And you object to it?" said Hone.
"Of course I do. It's unseasonable. You Irish are so tropical."
"It's only by contrast," urged Hone. "You will get acclimatised in time."
She raised her head with a dainty gesture.
"You take a good deal for granted, Major Hone."
"Faith, I know it!" he answered. "It's yourself that has turned my head."
Her laugh held more than a hint of scorn.
"How amusing," she commented, "for both of us!"
"Does it amuse you?" said Hone.
The question did not call for a reply, and she made none. Only once more she gathered up some water out of the magic moonlit ripples, and tossed it in his face.


V

They reached their destination far ahead of any of the others. A thick belt of jungle stretched down to the river where they landed, enveloping both banks a little higher up the stream.
"What an awesome place!" remarked Mrs. Perceval, as she stepped ashore. "I hope the rest will arrive soon, or I shall develop an attack of nerves."
"You've got me to take care of you," suggested Hone.
She uttered her soft, little laugh.
"Faith, Major Hone, and I'm not at all sure that it isn't yourself I want to run away from!"
Hone was securing the boat, and made no immediate response. But as he straightened himself, he laughed also.
"Am I so formidable, then?"
She flashed a swift glance at him.
"I haven't quite decided."
"You have known me long enough," he protested.
She shrugged her shoulders lightly.
"Have I ever met you before to-night? I have no recollection of it."
And mutely, with that chivalry which was to him the very air he breathed, Hone bowed to her ruling. She would have no reference to the past. It was to be a closed book to them both. So be it, then! For this night, at least, she would have her way.
He stepped forward in silence into the chequered shadow of the trees that surrounded the ruin, and she walked lightly by his side with that dainty, regal carriage of hers that made him yet in his secret heart call her his princess.
The place was very dark and eerie. The shrill cries of flying-foxes, disturbed by their appearance, came through the magic silence. But no living thing was to be seen, no other sound to be heard.
"I'm frightened," said Nina suddenly. "Shall we stop?"
"Hold my hand!" said Hone.
"I'm not joking," she protested, with a shudder.
"Nor am I," he said gently.
She looked up at him sharply, as though she did not quite believe him, and then unexpectedly and impulsively she laid her hand in his.
His fingers closed upon it with a friendly, reassuring pressure, and she never knew how the man's heart leapt and the blood turned to liquid fire in his veins at her touch.
She gave a shaky little laugh as though ashamed of her weakness. "We are coming to an open space," she said. "We shall see the satyrs dancing directly."
"Faith, if we do, we'll join them," declared Hone cheerily.
"They would never admit us," she answered. "They hate mortals. Can't you feel them glaring at us from every tree? Why, I can breathe hostility in the very air."
She missed her footing as she spoke, and stumbled with a sharp cry. Hone held her up with that steady strength of his that was ever equal to emergencies, but to his surprise she sprang forward, pulling him with her, almost before she had fully recovered her balance.
"Oh, come, quick, quick!" she gasped. "I trod on something--something that moved!"
He went with her, for she would not be denied, and in a few seconds they emerged into a narrow clearing in the jungle in which stood the ruin of a small domed temple.
Nina Perceval was shaking all over in a positive frenzy of fear, and clinging fast to Hone's arm.
"What was it?" he asked her, trying gently to disengage himself. "Was it a snake that scared you?"
She shuddered violently. "Yes, it must have been. A cobra, I should think. Oh, what are you going to do?"
"It's all right," Hone said soothingly. "You stay here a minute! I've got some matches. I'll just go back a few yards and investigate."
But at that she cried out so sharply that he thought for a moment that something had hurt her. But the next instant he understood, and again has heart leapt and strained within him like a chained thing.
"No, Pat! No,