Banked Fires Part 31

THE AFTERMATH

In the early morning, Joyce realised that she was both hungry and thirsty. Her lips were parched, her throat dry, nothing having pa.s.sed them since early tea the previous afternoon, and she was at the lowest ebb of despondency and depression. Her surroundings helped to increase her misery, for the ground was a mixture of puddle and slush, and there seemed no chance of help anywhere. She seemed to have fallen into a deep crater, and but for a projection of roof that still held firm owing to a network of pipal roots, she would have been as drenched as the bricks and mortar with which she was surrounded.

To add to her alarm, she was all alone. Captain Dalton was nowhere to be seen.

Though he had behaved horribly the evening before, he had not troubled her since; the tramp of his feet as he paced up and down the circ.u.mscribed s.p.a.ce that was left to them of the chamber, being the only evidence she had till she dropped off to sleep that she was not without company. But with the daylight he was gone, and feeling almost panic-stricken with ghostly fears and loneliness, she called aloud to him.

"Captain Dalton!"

"I'm here," his voice cheerily announced as he emerged from the inner room which had suffered an equal amount of damage. "See what the G.o.ds have sent you!" and he handed her a pipal-leaf cup, full of water to drink.

It was eagerly seized and gratefully drunk. "Where did you get it from?"

"That other room is full of branches torn from the roof when it fell in," he returned. "I discovered them by the light of a match and amused myself making cups out of the leaves by the light of a few more. They don't hold much, but I managed to set a good few to catch the rain drops as they fell, and that's better than nothing."

"Have you had any?" she asked politely.

"I was waiting for you, but I'll take a drink now." He retired and did not return till she called him again.

"I wish you would take your coat. You must be so chilled," she ventured.

"The rug will do for me."

"Are you quite sure?" he asked and Joyce noticed that his hands were blue with cold. After putting on his coat he was about to retire again when she stopped him wistfully. "Please stay--I feel so frightened alone."

"I thought you preferred not to have me around," he said dropping down beside her.

For answer she wept into her arms as they rested on her knees.

"I was beastly, last night, wasn't I--poor little kid," he said in gentler tones than she had ever heard from him. "Can't you have it in your heart to forgive me?--just wipe it out as though it had never happened?"

"I can forgive you, but--I--could never wipe it out. I feel so degraded.

It is like having an ugly stain on a page you had always wanted to keep clean."

Dalton studied her as something entirely new to his experience. "I have never in my life met anyone like you. It has been an eye-opener to a man like me. I didn't understand you all this time. I am just beginning to, now. Tell me frankly your idea."

"It is nothing extraordinary," she said drying her eyes. "It is only that I did not believe a gentleman could treat a decent married girl as you did me. I wanted to be like brother and sister, and I thought you understood. Anything else never entered my head as possible to self-respecting people."

"And I have spoilt all your pretty illusions!--let down my s.e.x too, rather badly! What don't I deserve! It would relieve my feelings if you slanged me for all you are worth. Believe me, you have done no wrong. It is only that I see things crookedly, and am just what you called me, an 'unspeakable cad.' I should have respected your helplessness. Truly, I deserve to be shot."

"I _have_ been very silly, I don't care what you say. But I never can remember I am grown up!" she said pathetically. "Honor told me that people would talk, but I did not believe they had any cause. Now I realise what they are thinking! and it breaks my heart. They will believe I am like Mrs. Fox. She does things that look bad, and people despise her. Now they will despise me."

"Never! they have only to look at you and hear you speak, to see what you are."

"Honor said it was not enough to be good but to avoid doing the things that make people think we are not. Now they are thinking perhaps that I flirt with you and let you kiss me!" Her face was suffused with crimson shame. Nothing was so horrible to contemplate as the fact that he had kissed her! She was stripped of self-respect forever.

Dalton might have been tempted to smile at her self-accusing att.i.tude had it not been for her perfect sincerity. He felt overcome with contrition and longed to atone.

"You make me infinitely ashamed," he said humbly. "Perhaps if you knew what went towards making me such a brute-beast, you would feel just a little sorry for me and understand--even bring yourself to like me a little bit as you say you once did. I have never had a sister. It might have made a difference if I had." After a pause--"Some years ago there were two persons in whom I believed as--I believe--in G.o.d. One was a woman and the other, my dearest pal. He and I were like brothers. I would have trusted him with my life. I did more. I trusted him with my honour." A pause. "And he whom I trusted and loved, robbed me of all that made life dear to me, and of what I valued more than life. And the woman I loved and believed pure and true, conspired with him to betray my honour! I was their dupe. A blind confiding fool!"

"Oh!" was wrung sympathetically from Joyce.

"When I found out all I went mad, I think. I have been pretty mad--and bad--ever since; but at the time, if I could have laid hands on both I might have ended my career on the gallows. But Fate intervened. He was killed in a railway accident shortly afterwards, and a year later, she came whining to me for forgiveness."

"Did you forgive her?"

Dalton's eyes glowed with cruelty and an undying contempt. "Forgive her?

Not if she had been dying! There are things impossible to forgive. She had killed my soul, destroyed my faith in human nature--which others, since, have not helped to restore!--turned me into a very devil, and without an incentive to live. Do you think I could forgive her? If I hated her then, I loathe the very memory of her now."

"Yet you tried your best to make me one of the same sort?" Joyce asked wonderingly.

"I did not believe, till you proved it to me, that women are of any other sort," he replied.

"You forget Honor Bright?"

"I never forget Honor Bright," he replied unexpectedly. "I have looked upon her as the exception that proves the rule."

"Your mother?" Joyce interposed gently.

"My father divorced her," he said harshly. "So you see I have had rather a bad education!"

"I am very sorry for you."

"You are?--that's good. Then there is hope for me."

"I am sorry that you should have such a contempt for women, owing to your unfortunate experience."

"I owe you an eternal debt of grat.i.tude for teaching me what an egotistical jacka.s.s I have been."

"Tell me," she asked, suddenly waking up to their dust-laden condition, "am I covered with s.m.u.ts and grime?"

Dalton surveyed her quizzically. "You are covered from head to foot, like a miller, with fine white dust."

"So are you!" and they laughed together for the first time since the calamity.

"Let's wash, there's a pool in the next room. Quite a respectable amount of clean water is collected about the floor."

He showed her the pool and left her to make her toilet while he explored their prison for some possibility of escape. Putting his hands to his mouth he sent forth stentorian cries for help with no result. Without a pick-axe to work with, he saw no chance of cutting a way through the tons of material that lay around them.

It was midday, when Joyce was feeling weak with hunger, and Dalton fighting a strong tendency to pessimism, that he heard Honor's "_Coo-ee!_" and replied.

"Thank G.o.d!--at last here's someone to the rescue!" he exclaimed, and Joyce burst into tears.

When Honor was able to locate the spot from which the answering voice proceeded, she contrived with difficulty to get near enough to the opening to hear what had happened. It was good to know, however terrible had been the experience of the pair, that both were unhurt, and that Joyce was bearing up wonderfully.

"I shall run back and get help at once, cheer up!" she called out.

"We don't, either of us, feel cheerful, I can a.s.sure you. It has been ghastly here all night," the doctor shouted back.