Rosa Mundi by Ethel May Dell (reading books for 6 year olds TXT) 📕

by a consuming fever that urged her to perpetual movement. It did not seem to matter how the tidings of her going came to Mercer.
Not till she was in the saddle and riding, riding hard, did she know a moment's relief. The physical exertion eased the inward tumult, but she would not slacken for an instant. She felt that to do so would be to lose her reason. Beelzebub, galloping after her, thought her demented already.
Through the long, long pastures she travelled, never drawing rein, looking neither to right nor left. The animal she rode knew the way to Wallarroo, and followed it undeviatingly. The sun was beginning to slant, and the shadows to lengthen.
Mile after mile of rolling grassland they left behind them, and still they pressed forward. At last came the twilight, brief as the soft sinking of a curtain, and then the dark. But the night was ablaze with stars, and the road was clear.
Sybil rode as one in a nightmare, straining forward eternally. She did not urge her horse, but he bore her so gallantly that she did not need to do so. Beelzebub had increasing difficulty in keeping up with her.
At last, after what seemed like the passage of many hours, they sighted from afar the lights of Wallarroo. Sybil drew rein, and waited for Beelzebub.
"Which way?" she said.
He pointed to a group of trees upon a knoll some distance from the road, and thither she turned her horse's head. Beelzebub rode up beside her.
They left the knoll on one side, and, skirting it, came to a dip in the hill-side. And here they came at length to the end of their journey--a journey that to Sybil had seemed endless--and halted before a wooden shed that had been built for cattle. A flap of canvas had been nailed above the entrance, behind which a dim light burned. Sybil dismounted and drew near.
At first she heard no sound; then, as she stood hesitating and uncertain, there came a man's voice that uttered low, disjointed words. She thought for a second that someone was praying, and then, with a thrill of horror, she knew otherwise. The voice was uttering the most fearful curses she had ever heard.
Scarcely knowing what she did, but unable to stand there passively listening, she drew aside the canvas flap and looked in.
In an instant the voice ceased. There fell a silence, followed by a wild, half-strangled cry. She had a glimpse of a prone figure in a corner struggling upwards, and then Curtis was before her--Curtis haggard and agitated as she had never seen him--pushing her back out of the dim place into the clean starlight without.
"Mrs. Mercer! Are you mad?" she heard him say.
She resisted his compelling hands; she was strangely composed and undismayed.
"I am coming in," she said. "Nothing on earth will keep me back. That man--Robin Wentworth--is a friend of mine. I am going to see him and speak to him."
"Impossible!" Curtis said.
But she withstood him unfalteringly.
"It is not impossible. You must let me pass. I mean to go to him, and you cannot prevent it."
He saw the hopelessness of opposing her. Her eyes told him that it was no whim but steadfast purpose that had brought her there. He looked beyond her to Beelzebub, but gathered no inspiration in that quarter.
"Let me pass, Mr. Curtis!" said Sybil gently. "I shall take no harm. I must see him before he dies."
And Curtis yielded. He was worn out by long and fruitless watching, and he could not cope with this fresh emergency. He yielded to her insistence, and suffered her to pass him.
"He is very far gone," he said.


XIV

As Sybil entered she heard again that strange, choked cry. The sick man was struggling to rise, but could not.
She went straight to the narrow pallet on which he lay and bent over him.
"Robin!" she said.
He gave a great start, and became intensely still, lying face downwards, his body twisted, his head on his arm.
She stooped lower. She touched him. A superhuman strength was hers.
"Robin," she said, "do you know me?"
He turned his face a little, and she saw the malignant horror of the disease that gripped him. It was a sight that would have turned her sick at any other time. But to-night she knew no weakness.
"Who are you?" he said, in a gasping whisper.
"I am Sybil," she answered steadfastly. "Don't you remember me?"
He lay motionless for a little, his breathing sharp and short. At length:
"You had better get away from this pestilent hole," he panted out. "It's no place for a woman."
"I have come to nurse you," she said.
"You!" He seemed to collect himself with an effort. He turned his face fully towards her. "Didn't you marry that devil Mercer, after all?" he gasped, gazing up at her with glassy eyes.
Only by his eyes would she have known him--this man whom once long ago she had fancied that she loved--and even they were strained and unfamiliar. She bent her head in answer. "Yes, Robin, I married him."
He began to curse inarticulately, spasmodically; but that she would not have. She knelt down suddenly by his side, and took his hand in hers. The terrible, disfigured countenance did not appal her, though the memory of it would haunt her all her life.
"Robin, listen!" she said earnestly. "We may not have very long together. Let us make the most of what time we have! Don't waste your strength! Try to tell me quietly what happened, how it was you gave me up! I want to understand it all. I have never yet heard the truth."
Her quiet words, the steady pressure of her hand, calmed him. He lay still for a space, gazing at her.
"You're not afraid?" he muttered at last.
"No," she said.
He continued to stare at her.
"Is he--good to you?" he said.
The words came with difficulty. She saw his throat working with the convulsive effort to produce sound.
Curtis touched her arm. "Give him this!"
She took a cup from his hand, and held it to the swollen lips. But he could not swallow. The liquid trickled down into his beard.
"He's past it," murmured Curtis.
"Sybil!" The words came with a hard, rending sound. "Is he--good to you?"
She was wiping away the spilt drops with infinite, unfaltering tenderness.
"Yes, dear," she answered. "He is very good to me."
He uttered a great gasping sigh.
"That's--all--that matters," he said, and fell silent, still gazing at her with eyes that seemed too fixed to take her in.
In the long, long silence that followed no one moved. But for those wild eyes Sybil would have thought him sleeping.
Minutes passed, and at last Curtis spoke under his breath.
"You had better go. You can't do any more."
But she would not stir. She had a feeling that Robin still wanted her.
Suddenly through the night silence there came a sound--the hoof-beats of a galloping horse.
She turned her head and listened. "What is that?"
As if in answer, Beelzebub's black face appeared in the entrance. His eyes were distended with fright.
"Missis!" he hissed in a guttural whisper.
"Here's Boss comin'!" and disappeared again like a monstrous goblin.
Sybil glanced up at Curtis. "Don't let him come here!" she said.
But for once he seemed to be at a loss. He made no response to her appeal. While they waited, the hoofs drew steadily nearer, thudding over the grass.
"Mr. Curtis!" she said urgently.
He made a sharp, despairing gesture. "I can't help it," he said. "You must go. For Heaven's sake, don't let him touch you, and burn the clothes you have on as soon as possible! I am going to set fire to this place immediately."
"Going to--set fire to it?" She stared at him in surprise, still scarcely understanding.
"The poor chap is dead," he said. "It's the only thing to do."
She turned back to the face upon the pillow with its staring, sightless eyes. She raised a pitying hand to close them, but Curtis intervened.
He drew her to her feet. "Go!" he said. "Go! Keep Mercer away, that's all!"
She heard the jingling of a horse's bit and knew that the rider was very near. Mechanically almost, she turned from the place of death and went to meet him.


XV

He was off his horse and striding for the entrance when she encountered him. The starlight on his face showed it livid and terrible. At sight of her he stopped short.
"Are you mad?" he said.
They were the identical words that Curtis had used; but his voice, hoarse, unnatural, told her that he was in a dangerous mood.
She backed away from him. "Don't come near me!" she said quickly. "He--he is just dead. And I have been with him."
"He?" he flung at her furiously, and she knew by his tone that he suspected the truth.
She tried to answer him steadily, but her strength was beginning to fail her. The long strain was telling upon her at last. She was uncertain of herself.
"It--was Robin Wentworth," she said.
He took a swift stride towards her. His face was convulsed with passion. "You came here to see that soddened cur?" he said.
She shrank away from him. The tempest of his anger overwhelmed her. She could not stand against it. For the first time she quailed.
"I have seen him," she said. "And he is dead. Ah, don't--don't touch me!"
He paid no attention to her cry. He seized her by the shoulders and almost swung her from his path.
"It would have been better for you," he said between his teeth, "if he had died before you got here. You have begun to repent already, and you'll go on repenting for the rest of your life."
"What are you going to do?" she cried, seeing him turn. "Brett, don't go in there! Don't! Don't! You must not! You shall not!"
In a frenzy of fear she threw herself upon him, struggling with all her puny strength to hold him back.
"I tell you he is dead!" she gasped. "Why do you want to go in?"
"I am going to see for myself," he said stubbornly, putting her away.
"No!" she cried. "No!"
His eyes gleamed red with a savage fury as she clung to him afresh. He caught her wrists, forcing her backwards.
"I don't believe he is dead!" he snarled.
"He is! He is! Mr. Curtis told me so."
"If he isn't, I'll murder him!" Brett Mercer vowed, and flung her fiercely from him.
She fell with violence and lay half-stunned, while he, blinded with rage, possessed by devils, strode forward into that silent place, leaving her prone.
She thought later that she must have fainted, for the next thing she knew--and it must have been after the passage of several minutes--was Mercer kneeling beside her and lifting her. His touch was perfectly gentle, but she dared not look into his face. She cowered in his arms in mortal fear. He had crushed her at last.
"Have I hurt you?" he said.
She did not answer. Her voice was gone. She was as powerless as an infant. He raised her and bore her steadily away.
When he paused finally, it was to speak to Beelzebub, who was holding the horses. And then, without a word to her, he lifted her up on to a saddle, and mounted himself behind her. She lay against his breast as one dazed, incapable of speech or action. And so, with his arm about her, moving slowly through a world of shadows, they began the long, long journey back.
They travelled so for the greater part of the