The Swindler, Ethel May Dell [distant reading TXT] 📗

she heard the mill-wheel creak and turn and the rush and roar of the water below, common sense came to her aid, and she was able to tell herself that her night alarm might have been due to nothing more than her own startled imagination.
On the breakfast table she found a card awaiting her, which she seized, and read with deepening colour.
"Expect me by the afternoon train. I shall walk from the station.--K.E."
A feeling of gladness, so intense that it was almost rapture, made her blood flow faster. He was coming in answer to her desperate summons. He would be with her that very day. She was sure that he would tell her what to do.
She read the card several times in the course of the morning, and came to the conclusion that it would be only nice of her to walk to meet him. The path lay through beech woods. She had gone part of the way with him only three days before. Only three days! It seemed like months. She looked forward to meeting him again as though he had been an old friend.
She started soon after the early dinner. The afternoon was hot and sultry. She was glad to turn from the road into the shade and stillness of the woods. The sun-rays slanting downwards through the mazy, golden aisles made her think of the afternoon on which she had waited for him under the dome of St. Paul's.
The heat as she proceeded became intense. The humming of many insects filled the air with a persistent drone. It was summer at its height.
A heavy languor began to possess her. She remembered that she had not slept all the previous night. She also recalled the panic that had kept her awake, and smiled faintly to herself. She did not feel afraid now that Rivington was coming. She even began to think she had been rather foolish, and wondered if he would think so too.
She began to go more slowly. Her feet felt heavier at every step. A few yards ahead a golden-brown stream ran babbling through the wood. It was close to the path. She would sit down beside it and rest till he arrived.
She reached the stream, sank down upon a bed of moss, then found the heat intolerable, and began impulsively to loosen her shoes. What if he did discover her a second time barefooted? He had not minded before; neither had she. And no one else would come that way. He had even lent her his handkerchief to dry her feet. Perhaps he would again.
Once more a strictly private little smile twitched the corners of her mouth. She slipped off her stockings and plunged her tired feet into the cool, running water.
Leaning back against a tree-trunk she closed her eyes. An exquisite sense of well-being stole over her. He would not be here yet. What did it matter if she dozed? The bubbling of the water lulled her. She rested her feet upon a sunny brown stone. She turned her cheek upon her arm.
And in her sleep she heard the thudding of a horse's hoofs, and dreamed that her knight errant was close at hand.


X
THE TIGER'S PREY

With a start she opened her eyes. Some one was drawing near. It must be later than she had thought.
Again she heard the tramp of a horse's feet, and hastily peered round the trunk of her tree. Surely he had not come on horseback! It must be a stranger. She cast a hasty glance towards her shoes, and gathered her feet under her.
A few yards away she caught sight of a horse's clean limbs moving in the checkered sunlight. Its rider--her heart gave a sudden, sickening throb and stood still. He was riding like a king, with his insolent dark face turned to the sun. She stared at him for one wild moment, then shrank against her tree. It was possible, it was possible even then, that he might pass her by without turning his eyes in her direction.
Nearer he came, and nearer yet. The path wound immediately behind the beech tree that sheltered her. He was close to her now. He had reached her. She cowered down in breathless terror in the moss, motionless as a stone. On went the horse's feet, on without a pause, slow and regular as the beat of a drum. He went by her at a walking pace. Surely he had not seen her!
She did not dare to lift her head, but it seemed to her that the sound of the thudding hoofs died very quickly away. For seconds that seemed like hours she crouched there in the afternoon stillness. Then at last--at last--she ventured to raise herself--to turn and look.
And in that moment she knew the agony that pierces every nerve with a physical anguish in the face of sudden horror. For there, close to her, was Dinghra, on foot, not six paces away, and drawing softly nearer. There was a faint smile on his face. His eyes were fixed and devilish.
With a gasp she sprang up, and the next moment was running wildly away, away, down the forest path, heedless of the rough ground, of the stones and roots that tore her bare feet, running like a mad creature, with sobbing breath, and limbs that staggered, compel them though she might.
She did not run far. Her flight ended as suddenly as it had begun in a violent, headlong fall. A long streamer of bramble had tripped her unaccustomed feet. She was conscious for an instant of the horrible pain of it as she was flung forward on her hands.
And then came the touch that she dreaded, the sinewy hands lifting her, the sinister face looking into hers.
"You should never run away from destiny," said Dinghra softly. "Destiny can always catch you up."
She gasped and shuddered. She was shaking all over, too crushed, too shattered, for speech.
He set her on her feet.
"We will go back," he said, keeping his arm about her. "You have had a pleasant sleep? I am sorry you awoke so soon."
But she stood still, her wild eyes searching the forest depths.
"Oh, let me go!" she cried out suddenly. "Oh, do let me go!"
His arm tightened, but still he smiled.
"Never again. I have had some trouble to find you, but you are mine now for ever--or at least"--and the snarl of the beast was in his voice--"for as long as I want you."
She resisted him, striving to escape that ever-tightening arm.
"No!" she cried in an agony. "No! No! No!"
His hold became a vice-like grip. Without a word he forced her back with him along the way she had come. She limped as she went, and he noted it with a terrible smile.
"It would have been better if you hadn't run away," he said.
"Oh, do let me go!" she begged again through her white lips. "Why do you persecute me like this? I have never done you any harm."
"Except laugh at me," he answered. "But you will never do that again, at least."
And then, finding her weight upon him, he stopped and lifted her in his arms.
She covered her face with her hands, and he laughed above her head.
"It is a dangerous amusement," he said, "to laugh at Dinghra. There are not many who dare. There is not one who goes unpunished."
He bore her back to her resting-place. He set her on her feet and drew her hands away, holding her firmly by the wrists.
"Now tell me," he said "it is the last time I shall ever ask you--will you marry me?"
"Never!" she cried.
"Be careful!" he broke in warningly. "That is not your answer. Look at me! Look into my eyes! Do you think you are wise in giving me such an answer as that?"
But she would not meet his eyes. She dared not.
"Listen!" he said. "Your mother has given you to me. She will never speak to you again, except as my promised wife. I have sworn to her that I will make you accept me. No power on earth can take you from me. Ernestine, listen! You are the only woman who ever resisted me, and for that I am going to make you what I have never desired to make any woman before,--my wife--not my servant; my queen--not my slave. I can give you everything under the sun. You will be a princess. You will have wealth, jewels such as you have never dreamed of, palaces, servants, honour--"
"And you!" she cried hysterically. "You!"
"Yes, and me," he said. "But you will have me in one form or another whatever your choice. You won't get away from me. You may refuse to marry me, but----"
"I do!" she burst out wildly. "I do!"
"But--" he said again, very deliberately.
And then, compelled by she knew not what, she lifted her eyes to his. And all her life she shrank and shuddered at the dread memory of what she saw.
For seconds he did not utter a single word. For seconds his eyes held hers, arresting, piercing, devouring. She could not escape them. She was forced to meet them, albeit with fear and loathing unutterable.
"You see!" he said at last, as though concluding an argument. "You are mine! I can do with you exactly as I will--exactly as I will!" He repeated the words almost in a whisper.
But at that she cried out, and began to struggle, like a bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage.
His hold became cruel in an instant. He forced her hands behind her, holding her imprisoned in his arms. He tilted her head back. His eyes shone down into hers like the eyes of a tiger that clutches its prey. He quelled her resistance by sheer brutality.
"I have warned you!" he said; and she knew instinctively that he would have no mercy.
"How can I marry you?" she gasped in desperation. "I am engaged to--another man!"
She saw his face change. Instantly she knew that she had made a mistake. The ferocity in his eyes turned to devilish malice.
"You will marry me yet!" he said.
"But you will come to hate me some day!" she cried, clutching at straws. "As--as I hate you to-day!"
His look appalled her, his lips were close to hers.
"If I do," he said, with a fiendish smile, "I shall find a remedy. But so long as you hate me, I shall not grow tired of you!"
And with that he suddenly and savagely pressed his lips to hers.


XI
THE TIGER'S PUNISHMENT

That single kiss was to Ernestine the climax and zenith of horror. It seemed to sear and blister her very soul with an anguish of repulsion that would scar her memory for all time. She retained her consciousness, but she never knew by what lightning stroke she was set free. She was too dazed, too blinded, by her horror to realise. But suddenly the cruel grip that had her helpless was gone. A vague confusion swam before her eyes. Her knees doubled under her. She sank down in a huddled heap, and lay quivering.
There came to her the sound of struggling, the sound of cursing, the sound of blows. But, sick and spent, she heeded none of these things, till a certain monotony of sound began to drum itself into her senses. She came to full understanding to see Dinghra, in the grip of an Englishman, being hideously thrashed with his own horsewhip. He was quite powerless in that grip, but he would fight to the end, and it seemed that the end was not far off. The punishment must have been going on