The Way of an Eagle - Ethel May Dell (i read books TXT) 📗

drew back with a sharp, instinctive contraction of her whole body as the horseman reined in before the surgery-door and dismounted with a monkey-like dexterity, his one arm twined in the bridle. A moment later the surgery-bell pealed loudly, and her heart stood still. She felt suddenly sick with a nameless foreboding.
Standing with bated breath, she heard Dr. Jim himself go to answer the summons, and an instant later Nick's voice came to her, gasping and uneven, but every word distinct.
"Ah, there you are! Thought I should catch you. Man, you're wanted--quick! In heaven's name--lose no time. Grange was drowned early this morning, and--I believe it's killed Daisy. For mercy's sake, come at once!"
There was a momentary pause. Muriel's heart was beating in great sickening throbs. She felt stiff and powerless.
Dr. Jim's voice, brief and decided, struck through the silence. "Come inside and have something. I shall be ready to start in three minutes. Leave your animal here. He's dead beat."
There followed the sound of advancing feet, a hand upon the door, and the next moment they entered together. Nick was reeling a little and holding Jim's arm. He saw Muriel with a sharp start, standing as she had turned from the window. The doctor's brows met for an instant as he put his brother into a chair. He had forgotten Muriel.
With an effort she overcame the paralysis that bound her, and moved forward with shaking limbs.
"Did you say Blake was--dead?" she asked, her voice pitched very low.
She looked at Nick as she asked this question, and it was Nick who answered her in his quick, keen way, as though he realised the mercy of brevity.
"Yes. He and some fisher chaps went out early this morning in an ordinary boat to rescue some fellows on a wreck that had drifted on to the rocks outside the harbour. The lifeboat had been damaged, and couldn't be used. They reached the wreck all right, but there were more to save than they had reckoned on--more than the boat would carry--and the wreck was being battered to pieces. It was only a matter of seconds for the tide was rising. So they took the lot, and Grange went over the side to make it possible. He hung on to a rope for a time, but the seas were tremendous, and after a bit it parted. He was washed up two hours ago. He had been in the water since three, among the rocks. There wasn't the smallest chance of bringing him back. He was long past any help we could give."
He ended abruptly, and helped himself with a jerk to something in a glass that Jim had placed by his side.
Muriel stood dumbly watching. She noticed with an odd, detached sense of curiosity that he was shivering violently as one with an ague. Dr. Jim was already making swift preparations for departure.
Suddenly Nick looked up at her. His eyes were glittering strangely. "I know now," he said, "what you women feel like when you can only stand and look on. We have been looking on--Daisy and I--just looking on, for six mortal hours." He banged his fist with a sort of condensed fury upon the table, and leapt to his feet. "Jim, are you ready? I can't sit still any longer."
"Finish that stuff, and don't be a fool!" ordered Jim curtly.
Muriel turned swiftly towards him. "You'll take me with you!" she said very earnestly.
Nick broke in sharply upon the request. "No, no, Muriel! You're not to go. Jim, you can't--you shan't--take her! I won't allow it!"
But Muriel was clinging to Dr. Jim's arm with quivering face upraised. "You will take me," she entreated. "I was able to help Daisy before. I can help her now."
But even before she spoke there flashed a swift glance between the two brothers that foiled her appeal almost before it was uttered. With a far greater gentleness than was customary with him, but with unmistakable decision, Dr. Jim refused her petition.
"I can't take you now, child. But if Daisy should ask for you, or if there is anything under the sun that you can do for her, I will promise to let you know."
It was final, but she would not have it so. A sudden gust of anger caught her, anger against the man for whose sake she had one night shed so many bitter tears, whom now she so fierily hated. She still clung to Jim. She was shaking all over.
"What does it matter what Nick says?" she urged pantingly. "Why give in to him at every turn? I won't be left behind--just because he wishes it!"
She would have said more. Her self-control was tottering; but Dr. Jim restrained her. "My dear, it is not for Nick's sake," he said. "Come, you are going to be sensible. Sit down and get your breath. There's no time for hysterics. I must go across and speak to my wife before I go."
He looked at Nick who instantly responded. "Yes, you be off! I'll look after her. Be quick, man, be quick!"
But when Dr. Jim was gone, his impatience fell away from him. He moved round the table and stood before her. He was steady enough now, steadier far than she.
"Don't take it too hard," he said. "At least he died like a man."
She did not draw away from him. There was no room for fear in her heart just then. It held only hatred--a fierce, consuming flame--that enabled her to face him as she had never faced him before.
"Why did you let him go?" she demanded of him, her voice deep and passionate, her eyes unwaveringly upon him. "There must have been others. You were there. Why didn't you stop him?"
"I stop him!" said Nick, and a flash of something that was almost humour crossed his face. "You seem to think I am omnipotent."
Her eyes continued to challenge him. "You always manage to get your own way somehow," she said very bitterly, "by fair means or foul. Are you going to deny that it was you who made him write that letter?"
He did not ask her what she meant. "No," he said with a promptitude that took her by surprise. "I plead guilty to that. As you are aware, I never approved of your engagement."
His effrontery stung her into what was almost a state of frenzy. Her eyes blazed their utmost scorn. She had never been less afraid of him than at that moment. She had never hated him more intensely.
"You could make him do a thing like that," she said. "And yet you couldn't hold him back from certain death!"
He answered her without heat, in a tone she deemed most hideously callous. "It was not my business to hold him back. He was wanted. There would have been no rescue but for him. They needed a man to lead them, or they wouldn't have gone at all."
His composure goaded her beyond all endurance. She scarcely waited for him to finish, nor was she wholly responsible for what she said.
"Was there only one man among you, then?" she asked, with headlong contempt.
He made her a curious, jerky bow. "One man--yes," he said. "The rest were mere sheep, with the exception of one--who was a cripple."
Her heart contracted suddenly with a pain that was physical. She felt as if he had struck her, and it goaded her to a fiercer cruelty.
"You knew he would never come back!" she declared her voice quivering uncontrollably with the passion that shook her. "You--you never meant him to come back!"
He opened his eyes wide for a single instant, and she fancied that she had touched him. It was the first time in her memory that she had ever seen them fully. Instinctively she avoided them, as she would have avoided a flash of lightning.
And then he spoke, and she knew at once that her wild accusation had in no way hurt him. "You think that, do you?" he said, and his tone sounded to her as though he barely repressed a laugh. "Awfully nice of you! I wonder what exactly you take me for."
She did not keep him in suspense on that point. If she had never had the strength to tell him before, she could tell him now.
"I take you for a fiend!" she cried hysterically. "I take you for a fiend!"
He turned sharply from her, so sharply that she was conscious of a moment's fear overmastering her madness. But instantly, with his back to her, he spoke, and her brief misgiving was gone.
"It doesn't matter much now what you take me for," he said, and again in the cracked notes of his voice she seemed to hear the echo of a laugh. "You won't need to seek any more protectors so far as I am concerned. You will never see me again unless the gods ordain that you should come and find me. It isn't the way of an eagle to swoop twice--particularly an eagle with only one wing."
The laugh was quite audible now, and she never saw how that one hand of his was clenched and pressed against his side. He had reached the door while he was speaking. Turning swiftly, he cast one flickering, inscrutable glance towards her, and then with no gesture of farewell was gone. She heard his receding footsteps die away while she struggled dumbly to quell the tumult of her heart.


CHAPTER XLIV
LOVE'S PRISONER

Late that evening a scribbled note reached Muriel from Dr. Jim.
"You can do nothing whatever," he wrote. "Daisy is suffering from a sharp attack of brain fever, caused by the shock of her cousin's death, and I think it advisable that no one whom she knows should be near her. You may rest assured that all that can be done for her will be done. And, Muriel, I think you will be wise to go to Mrs. Langdale as you originally intended. It will be better for you, as I think you will probably realise. You shall be kept informed of Daisy's condition, but I do not anticipate any immediate change."
She was glad of those few words of advice. Her anxiety regarding Daisy notwithstanding, she knew it would be a relief to her to go. The strain of many days was telling upon her. She felt herself to be on the verge of a break-down, and she longed unspeakably to escape.
She went to her room early on her last night at Weir, but not in order to rest the longer. She had something to do, something from which she shrank with a strange reluctance, yet which for her peace of mind she dared not leave neglected.
It was thus she expressed it to herself as with trembling fingers she opened the box that contained all her sacred personal treasures.
It lay beneath them all, wrapped in tissue-paper, as it had passed from his hand to hers, and for long she strove to bring herself to slip the tiny packet unopened into an envelope and seal it down--yet could not.
At last--it was towards midnight--she yielded to the force that compelled. Against her will she unfolded the shielding paper and held that which it contained upon the palm of her hand. Burning rubies, red as heart's blood, ardent as flame, flashed and glinted in the lamp-light. "OMNIA VINCIT AMOR"--how the words scorched her memory! And she had wondered once if they were true!
She knew now! She knew now! He had forced her to realise it. He had captured her, had kindled within her--by what magic she knew not--the undying Against her will, in spite of her utmost resistance, he had done this thing. Above and beyond and through her fiercest hatred,