The Lamp in the Desert, Ethel May Dell [the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT] 📗

come near you again."
She saw that he was not himself. The awful fire in his eyes alone would have told her that. But words and action so bewildered her that she yielded to the compelling grip. In a moment she was in the room, and he was closing and shuttering the window with fevered haste.
She stood and watched him, a cold sensation beginning to creep about her heart. When he turned round to her, she saw that he was smiling, a fierce, triumphant smile.
He threw down the revolver, and as he did so, she found her voice. "Captain Monck, what does that man want? What--what is he doing?"
He stood looking at her with that dreadful smile about his lips and the red fire leaping, leaping in his eyes. "Can't you guess what he wants?" he said. "He wants--you."
"Me?" She gazed back at him astounded. "But why--why? Does he want to get money out of me? Where has he gone?"
Monck laughed, a low, terrible laugh. "Never mind where he has gone! I've frightened him off, and I'll shoot him--I'll shoot him--if he comes back! You're mine now--not his. You were right to come to me, quite right. I was just coming to you. But this is better. No one can come between us now. I know how to protect my wife."
He reached out his hands to her as he ended. His eyes shocked her inexpressibly. They held a glare that was inhuman, almost devilish.
She drew back from him in open horror. "Captain Monck! I am not your wife! What can you be thinking of? You--you are not yourself."
She turned with the words, seeking the door that led into the passage. He made no attempt to check her. Instinct told her, even before she laid her hand upon it, that it was locked.
She turned back, facing him with all her courage. "Captain Monck, I command you to let me go!"
Clear and imperious her voice fell, but it had no more visible effect upon him than the drip of the rain outside. He came towards her swiftly, with the step of a conqueror, ignoring her words as though they had never been uttered.
"I know how to protect my wife," he reiterated. "I will shoot any man who tries to take you from me."
He reached her with the words, and for the first time she flinched, so terrible was his look. She shrank away from him till she stood against the closed door. Through lips that felt stiff and cold she forced her protest.
"Indeed--indeed--you don't know what you are doing. Open the door and--let me--go!"
Her voice sounded futile even to herself. Before she ceased to speak, his arms were holding her, his lips, fiercely passionate, were seeking hers.
She struggled to avoid them, but her strength was as a child's. He quelled her resistance with merciless force. He choked the cry she tried to utter with the fiery insistence of his kisses. He held her crushed against his heart, so overwhelming her with the volcanic fires of his passion that in the end she lay in his hold helpless and gasping, too shattered to oppose him further.
She scarcely knew when the fearful tempest began to abate. All sense of time and almost of place had left her. She was dizzy, quivering, on fire, wholly incapable of coherent thought, when at last it came to her that the storm was arrested.
She heard a voice above her, a strangely broken voice. "My God!" it said. "What--have I done?"
It sounded like the question of a man suddenly awaking from a wild dream. She felt the arms that held her relax their grip. She knew that he was looking at her with eyes that held once more the light of reason. And, oddly, that fact affected her rather with dismay than relief. Burning from head to foot, she turned her own away.
She felt his hand pass over her shamed and quivering face as though to assure himself that she was actually there in the flesh. And then abruptly--so abruptly that she tottered and almost fell--he set her free.
He turned from her. "God help me! I am mad!" he said.
She stood with throbbing pulses, gasping for breath, feeling as one who had passed through raging fires into a desert of smouldering ashes. She seemed to be seared from head to foot. The fiery torment of his kisses had left her tingling in every nerve.
He moved away to the table on which he had flung his revolver, and stood there with his back to her. He was swaying a little on his feet.
Without looking at her, he spoke, his voice shaky, wholly unfamiliar. "You had better go. I--I am not safe. This damned fever has got into my brain."
She leaned against the door in silence. Her physical strength was coming back to her, but yet she could not move, and she had no words to speak. He seemed to have reft from her every faculty of thought and feeling save a burning sense of shame. By his violence he had broken down all her defences. She seemed to have lost both the power and the will to resist. She remained speechless while the dreadful seconds crept away.
He turned round upon her at length suddenly, almost with a movement of exasperation. And then something that he saw checked him. He stood silent, as if not knowing how to proceed.
Across the room their eyes met and held for the passage of many throbbing seconds. Then slowly a change came over Monck. He turned back to the table and deliberately picked up the revolver that lay there.
She watched him fascinated. Over his shoulder he spoke. "You will think me mad. Perhaps it is the most charitable conclusion you could come to. But I fully realize that when a thing is beyond an apology, it is an insult to offer one. The key of the door is under the pillow on the bed. Perhaps you will not mind finding it for yourself."
He sat down with the words in a heavy, dogged fashion, holding the revolver dangling between his knees. There was grim despair in his attitude; his look was that of a man utterly spent. It came to Stella at that moment that the command of the situation had devolved upon her, and with it a heavier responsibility than she had ever before been called upon to bear.
She put her own weakness from her with a resolution born of expediency, for the need for strength was great. She crossed the room to the bed, felt for and found the key, returned to the door and inserted it in the lock. Then she paused.
He had not moved. He was not watching her. He sat as one sunk deep in dejection, bowed beneath a burden that crushed him to the earth. But there was even in his abasement a certain terrible patience that sent an icy misgiving to her heart. She did not dare to leave him so.
It needed all the strength she could muster to approach him, but she compelled herself at last. She came to him. She stood before him.
"Captain Monck!" she said.
Her voice sounded small and frightened even in her own ears. She clenched her hands with the effort to be strong.
He scarcely stirred. His eyes remained downcast. He spoke no word.
She bent a little. "Captain Monck, if you have fever, you had better go to bed."
He moved slightly, influenced possibly by the increasing steadiness of her voice. But still he did not look at her or speak.
She saw that his hold upon the revolver had tightened to a grip, and, prompted by an inner warning that she could not pause to question, she bent lower and laid her hand upon his arm. "Please give that to me!" she said.
He started at her touch; he almost recoiled. "Why?" he said.
His voice was harsh and strained, even savage. But the needed strength had come to Stella, and she did not flinch.
"You have no use for it just now," she said. "Please be sensible and let me have it!"
"Sensible!" he said.
His eyes sought hers suddenly, involuntarily, and she had a sense of shock which she was quick to control; for they held in their depths the torment of hell.
"You are wrong," he said, and the deadly intention of his voice made her quiver afresh. "I have a use for it. At least I shall have--presently. There are one or two things to be attended to first."
It was then that a strange and new authority came upon Stella, as if an unknown force had suddenly inspired her. She read his meaning beyond all doubting, and without an instant's hesitation she acted.
"Captain Monck," she said, "you have made a mistake. You have done nothing that is past forgiveness. You must take my word for that, for just now you are ill and not in a fit state to judge for yourself. Now please give me that thing, and let me do what I can to help you!"
Practical and matter-of-fact were her words. She marvelled at herself even as she stooped and laid a steady hand upon the weapon he held. Her action was purposeful, and he relinquished it. The misery in his eyes gave place to a dumb curiosity.
"Now," Stella said, "get to bed, and I will bring you some of Tommy's quinine."
She turned from him, revolver in hand, but paused and in a moment turned back.
"Captain Monck, you heard what I said, didn't you? You will go straight to bed?"
Her voice held a hint of pleading, despite its insistence. He straightened himself in his chair. He was still looking at her with an odd wonder in his eyes--wonder that was mixed with a very unusual touch of reverence.
"I will do--whatever you wish," he said.
"Thank you," said Stella. "Then please let me find you in bed when I come back!"
She turned once more to go, went to the door and opened it. From the threshold she glanced back.
He was on his feet, gazing after her with the eyes of a man in a trance.
She lifted her hand. "Now remember!" she said, and with that passed quietly out, closing the door behind her.
Her brain was in a seething turmoil and her heart was leaping within her like a wild thing suddenly caged. But, very strangely, all fear had departed from her.
Only a brief interval before, she had found herself wishing that the decision of her life's destiny had not rested entirely with herself. It seemed to her that a great revelation had been vouchsafed between the amazing present and those past moments of troubled meditation. And she knew now that it did not.


CHAPTER VII
SERVICE RENDERED

The news that Monck was down with the fever brought both the Colonel and Major Ralston early to the bungalow on the following morning.
They found Stella and the ever-faithful Peter in charge of both patients. Tommy was better though weak. Monck was in a high fever and delirious.
Stella was in the latter's room, for he would not suffer her out of his sight. She alone seemed to have any power to control him, and Ralston noted the fact with astonishment.
"There's some magic about you," he observed in his blunt fashion. "Are you going to take on this job? It's no light one but you'll probably do it better than any one else."
It was a tacit invitation, and Stella knowing how widespread was the sickness that infected the station, accepted it without demur.
"It rather looks as if it were my job, doesn't it?" she said. "I am willing, anyway to do my best."
Ralston looked at her