When the Birds Begin to Sing Part 49

"Philip, for pity's sake----"

He runs his fingers through the grey hair, lying moist upon his sun-bronzed brow. The crow's feet of sorrow furrow the corners of his eyes, which are stern, but not angry. They have looked for the last time on the golden season of life, now they stare at Eleanor as if reading in her face the key of the everlasting twilight that has fallen on his days.

Instinctively she cowers back, hiding her burning face in her hands, red with a flush of deepest shame.

"Don't shrink from me," he says. "It is almost incomprehensible, Eleanor, but----"

She looks up quickly.

"Ever since you left me I have had no thought but you. In life's morning you were my love, my all. I could not tear you from my heart had I wished to. But I never tried."

"Is that possible?" she gasps incredulously. "You must indeed have loved me!"

"I may be mad, but it is so. I love you now in your degradation, and misery, in spite of all!"

The confession staggers her.

"And you show it by hunting me down to destroy my happiness. You must have sought long to find me here, and now that you are successful, now that I am run to earth, what will you do?"

"What do you _think?_"

His face becomes fiendish. She watches his sinister smile.

"I have told you what I believe you capable of--you will murder him. I know it. You have no pity! The love you boast of is swallowed up in hate."

An evil flame lights his mocking eyes.

"Yes, I might spring at his throat as he comes from the jungle, I might set 'Help' upon him in the dark. He is a weak man, easily unnerved.

The very sight of this knife----"

"Ah!"

Philip has drawn a sharp blade of steel from his coat and flashed it in the moonlight, with a bitter groan.

He replaces it at the sight of her terror, with something of regret in his hard smile.

"What false professions!" sneers Eleanor. "You dare to speak of loving mo, when you would rob me of the man in whom all my happiness lies!"

Philip winces as if suddenly recalled to facts.

"Yes, your whole future was controlled by him."

His words fill her with a vague misgiving, but she draws herself up proudly and replies:

"It is safe in Carol's keeping."

"You are sure of that?"

She bows a cold a.s.sent.

"Then listen, Eleanor." He speaks authoritatively. "Come here. Sit down."

He points to a chair, but she sinks on the edge of the sofa, too agitated to notice her proximity to the huge mastiff.

"There is need of explanation," Philip continues, never taking his eyes off her white, scared face. "It is time you understood me. You say I have 'run you to earth,' as if through this long period of separation I had been hunting you like a bloodhound, and suddenly found myself on your track. You imagine I have just discovered you."

Eleanor's lips part as if to speak, but the words are choked back in her throat. "Help" stirs his head, for the first time she sees he is at her feet.

"You recall," says Philip, "that small dog--a suspicious Irish terrier--you were given some time back?"

"What of him? How did you know?" turning her eyes wonderingly from "Help" to Philip.

"It was killed in some bushes by a wild beast, when you were riding one day with your lover."

"Yes."

He pauses.

The mastiff rises slowly, and stretches himself, as if wearied by his day's work.

Eleanor draws her skirts away from contact with his coa.r.s.e hair.

She sees it all at last.

"Killed," she repeats, "and by your dog."

Her breath comes quicker, she turns and peers through the window, as if expecting something.

"There is still more," declares Philip. "That cat's-eye ring I gave you, Eleanor--where is it?"

His voice pulses with suppressed force.

"Carol was attacked in the jungle one night----"

"By a masked fiend, who tore him from his horse and shook him by the throat, like a cat with a mouse, then flung him aside as a scorpion too poisonous to touch--a foul thing, only fit to lie beneath a rock, hidden from the sight of man. When he rose up, his a.s.sailant had gone, like a silent ghost on that lonely road."

Philip holds his lean fingers before her eyes, and flas.h.i.+ng on one of them gleams the greenish light of the cat's-eye gem.

Again Eleanor looks fearfully out into the night, she fancies she hears Carol on the steps below.

"While you have been basking in your 'paradise' dreaming your short-lived vision of love, I have watched and waited, prowling to and fro with 'Help,' a faithful servant, at my heels. Your dog scented me, he proclaimed my presence, so I let 'Help' silence him once and for all. Many a night when you sat together, there in that verandah, your hand linked in his ringless fingers, your eyes feasting on his false face, I crouched below, watching. Did you never feel my nearness? Ah, you shudder! It _was_ strange--very strange. It maddened me that he should wear your ring--my ring--so I wrenched it from him."

She listens like one in the thralls of a hideous nightmare. If Carol comes now--he is lost!

"Why, when I had him by the throat," asks Philip, "did I not strangle the life from his body? Why did I stay my hand? How was it I watched your happiness with hungry eyes, and did not strike? I could have shot you dead in each other's arms scores of times. I inexorably determined on his death, but held the sword suspended, like Damocles, by a single hair."

She listens acutely to his every syllable.