The Rocks of Valpre by Ethel May Dell (best contemporary novels .txt) 📕

must not! When animals are hurt they will bite without knowing what they are doing. Chris, do you hear me? You must go."
But she would not. "Do you think I would leave him now--when he wants me most? And as if he would bite me--Cinders--Cinders--who never even growled at me!"
She bent over him again, beside herself with grief. Cinders, in the midst of his pain, tried gently to wag his tail. His brown eyes, faithful, appealing, full of love, gazed up at her. He had never seen his mistress in such trouble before, and the instinct to comfort her urged him even then, in the midst of his own. Again he made piteous efforts to crawl into her arms, but again he failed, and fell back, whimpering.
Chris covered her face. It was more than she could bear, and yet she could not--could not--leave him.
For a space that might have been minutes or only seconds she was left alone, tortured but impotent. A dreadful darkness had fallen upon her, a numbness in which Cinders, suffering and slowly dying, was the only reality.
Then again she became conscious of another presence. A quick hand touched her. A soft voice spoke.
"Ah, the poor Cinders! And he lives yet! _Cherie_, we will be kind to him, yes? We cannot make him live, but we will let him die quick--quick, so that he suffer no more. That is kind, that is merciful, _n'est-ce-pas_?"
She turned instinctively in answer to that voice. She held up her hands to the speaker like a child. "Oh, Bertie," she cried piteously, "is there nothing to be done? Nothing?"
"Only that, _cherie_," he made answer, very gently.
"Then"--she was sobbing terribly, but she suffered his hands to raise her--"don't let them--send me away, Bertie. I can't go--while he lives. It--it would hurt him more, if I went."
"No, no, _cherie_," he answered her reassuringly. "You will be brave, yes? See, I will hold your hand. We will go just across the road, but not beyond his sight. He will see you. He will know that you are near. There--there, _cherie_! Shut your eyes! It will be finished soon."
He put his arm around her, for she stumbled blindly. They went across the road as he had said, and halted under the trees on the farther side.
There followed a pause--an interval that was terrible--during which only the low crying of an animal in pain was audible.
Bertrand stood like a rock, still holding her. "But you will not look, _cherie_," he whispered to her softly. "It is deliverance--this death. Soon--soon he will not cry any more."
She pressed her face against his shoulder, wrapped in the close security of his arms, and waited, drawing each breath with difficulty, saying no word.
She did not know what was happening, and she dared not look. She could only wait in anguish for the whimpering that tore her heart to cease.
"Now, _cherie_!" whispered Bertrand at last, and she stiffened in his arms, preparing for she knew not what.
His hold tightened. For that instant he pressed her hard against his heart, so that she heard its quick beating.
The next there came a loud report--a sound that violently rent her stretched nerves, shattering them as glass is shattered by a stone. She drooped without sound like a broken flower, and the young Frenchman gathered her up, just as he had done on the occasion of their first meeting at Valpre, and bore her away.


CHAPTER IV
GOOD-BYE TO CHILDHOOD

Out of the dreadful darkness Chris groped her halting way, saw light, and, shuddering, closed her eyes again. But at once a voice spoke to her, soothingly, tenderly, calling her back.
Reluctantly she responded, reluctantly she returned to full consciousness, and knew that she was lying fully dressed upon a couch in the drawing-room. But at sight of her husband's face bending above her she shuddered again--a painful, convulsive shudder that shook her from head to foot.
He laid a quiet hand on her head, but she shrank away. "Please, Trevor"--she faltered--"please, I want to be alone."
"Yes, dear," he made gentle reply. "Just drink this first, and I will leave you."
But she withdrew herself almost violently; she buried her face deep in the cushion. "I can't! I can't! Please don't ask me to. I am quite all right. I only want--to be alone."
She was shaking all over as one with an ague, and her words were hardly articulate. He waited a little for her trembling to pass, but it only increased till her whole body seemed to twitch uncontrollably. At last with the utmost quietness he stooped and deliberately raised her.
"Chris, my dear little girl, you mustn't let yourself go like this. I want you to take this stuff to steady you. Afterwards you will have a sleep and be better."
She did not absolutely resist him, but he felt her nervous contraction at his touch. The face she turned to his was ghastly in its pallor.
"I--I don't think I can, Trevor," she said, speaking very rapidly. "My throat won't swallow. It would only choke me. Please--please, if you don't mind--go away. I shall be all right if--if you will only go."
"I can't leave you like this," he said.
"Yes, yes, you can," she answered feverishly. "Oh, what does it matter? Trevor, I must be alone. I must! I must! Please go!"
Her agitation was growing with every second, and he saw that he must yield. He laid her back again without a word, smoothed the cushions, touched her hair, and softly departed.
She listened tensely for the closing of the door, relaxing instantly the moment she heard it. A great darkness descended upon her soul. She lay motionless, face downwards, too stunned for thought.
A long time passed. It was growing late. Over the quiet garden the summer dusk was falling. The swallows were swooping through it in their multitudes--the swallows that Cinders loved to chase. To-night no cheery, impudent bark pursued their flight. To-night all was still.
Did they miss him? she began to wonder dully. Did they ask each other where he had gone? And then, half-consciously, she began to listen for him, the scamper of the light feet, the gay jingle of his collar, till in a moment she almost fancied that she heard him scratching at the door.
She was half off the sofa before realization stabbed her, and she sank back numbly into her desolation.
Again a long time passed--an interval not to be measured by hours or minutes. The swallows ceased to circle and went to roost. It began to be dark. And still Chris lay alone, a huddled, motionless figure, prostrate, crushed, inanimate. Her hands and feet were like ice, but she did not know it. She was past caring for such trifles. All her abounding vitality seemed to be arrested, as if her very blood had ceased to circulate.
It was growing late when the door opened at last. A figure stood a moment upon the threshold, then entered, moving with a quick, light tread that might have been the tread of a woman. In the darkness it reached her, bent over her.
"_Ah, pauvre petite_!" said a soft voice, a voice so full of compassion that it thrilled straight to her silent heart and made it beat again. "All alone with your grief! You permit me to intrude myself, no?"
She turned and felt up towards him with an icy hand. "Bertie!" she said. "You--might have come before!"
He knelt swiftly down beside her, pressing the little trembling fingers against his neck to give them warmth. "But you are so cold!" he said. "You must not lie here any more."
"Why not?" she said dully. "I don't think it matters, does it?"
"But of course!" he made quick rejoinder. "When you suffer we suffer also. Also"--he paused an instant--"Mr. Mordaunt awaits you, _petite_. Will you not go to him?"
She shivered. "Need I, Bertie? I don't want to."
It was the cry of a child--a child in distress--plunged for the first time in the bitter waters of grief, turning instinctively to the friend of childhood for comfort. "I don't want anyone but you," she said piteously. "You understand. You loved him--and Trevor didn't."
"Oh, but, Christine--" Bertrand began.
"No, he didn't!" she maintained, with sudden vehemence. "I always knew he didn't. He put up with him for my sake; but he never loved him. He never noticed his pretty little ways. Once--once"--she began to sob--"it was on our wedding-day--he slapped him--for chasing a cat! My sweet wee Cinders!"
She broke down utterly upon the words, and there followed such a storm of tears that Bertrand was forced to abandon all attempts to reason with her, and could only kneel and whisper soft endearments in his own language, soothing her, comforting her, as though she were indeed the child she seemed.
But it was long before she even heard him, not until the paroxysm had spent itself and she lay passive and utterly exhausted, with her hands fast clasped in his.
"You are good to me," she murmured then, and in a moment, "Why, Bertie, you're crying too!"
"Ah, pardon me!" he whispered, under his breath. "But to see you in pain, my little one, my bird of Paradise--"
"No," she said, a strange note of conviction in her voice, "I shall never be that any more now that Cinders is gone. I shan't be young like that any more. I--I shall grow up now, Bertie. I daresay Trevor will like me the better for it. But you won't, dear. You will be sorry, I know. We've been playfellows always, haven't we, even though you grew up and I didn't? Well"--there came a sharp catch in her voice--"we shall both be grown-up now."
And then, all in a moment, as if some panic urged her, she started up, drawing his hands close. "But we'll be friends still, won't we, Bertie? You won't talk of going away any more, will you? Promise me! Promise me, Bertie!"
He hesitated. "It might be better that I should go," he said slowly. "It is possible that--"
She interrupted him almost hysterically. "Oh no, no, no! I want you here. I want you, Bertie, Don't you understand?"
"But yes," he said. "Only, _petite_--"
"You will promise, then?" she broke in, as though she had not heard the last words. "Bertie, I'm so miserable. You--you--wouldn't add to it all!"
"No, _cherie_, by Heaven, no!" he said, with vehemence.
"Then you'll stay, Bertie? You will stay?" Very earnestly she besought him. Her tears were dropping on his hands. "Say you will!"
For a moment longer he hesitated; he tried to resist her, he tried to take a sane and temperate view. But those tears were too much for him. They were the one torture he could not endure. With a sharp gesture he flung his hesitation from him. Yet even then he left himself a way of escape lest the temptation should be more than he could bear.
"I will stay," he made grave reply, "as long as it would make you happy to have me with you--that is"--he checked himself--"if Mr. Mordaunt desire it also."
"But of course he does," said Chris. "He likes you. And I--I can't do without you, Bertie--not now."
He heard the desolate note in her voice, and he did not contradict her. Had he not sworn that while she needed him he would be at hand?
"_Eh bien_," he said soothingly. "I stay."
That comforted her somewhat, and presently, at his persuasion, she sat up and dried her eyes. It was too dark for them to see each other, but she held his hand very tightly; and there was comfort also in that.
"Now you will come away from here," he said. "Mr. Mordaunt is very troubled about you. He would