Devil's Wind

by Patricia Wentworth

  “It is a good thing that one doesn’t acquire new relations at my age, or I should have got detached from mine, with a vengeance,” said Richard.

  He threw a little stone into the pool, and

  watched the ripples spread like rings of crystal

  on its smooth brown surface.

  Helen watched them too. They opened, widened, touched the edges of the pool, and came back in tiny waves.

  She had not meant to speak, but she did speak.

  “Men of jour age do form new relationships sometimes,” she said.

  As soon as the words had passed her lips, her whole body tingled. She knew that he had turned and was looking at her, but she could not meet his look.

  “You mean they marry? Or get engaged?”

  He spoke very slowly and thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” said Helen, her conscience urging her.

  “One would hardly forget a thing like that,” said Richard. He stared at her left hand, as he had stared at it once or twice before.

  “No,” he said again, “one would hardly forget that.”

  Suddenly his glance leapt to her face.

  “Helen, was I engaged to be married?”

  Helen felt the blood leave her heart. It beat noisily against her temples and against the drums of her ears. Through the noise she heard Dick’s voice repeating his question, and she heard her own voice answer: “No; oh, no!”

  And then there was silence and a mist all about her. Presently it cleared, and she saw the green shadows and brown depths of the pool below her. There was a quick play of light and shade upon its surface, a mingling of many reflections which yielded to one another by beautiful gradations of colour. A brilliant butterfly danced by, beating the hot, moist air with exquisite iridescent flutterings.

  Below, in the water, its faint, lovely shadow danced too. It flickered from sun to shade and from shade to sun again. Then it was gone.

  Richard Morton’s chin was in his hand and his lips smiled. He still wore the native dress with which he had come into the entrenchment, and Helen had torn her sheet in two to provide him with a turban for his head. He had grown a short, black beard that was curly, though his hair was not, and his face was burned so brown that he might very well have passed for a native, until he looked up, and you saw how blue his eyes were.

  He had been doing some hard thinking in the past days. He still remembered nothing, but the situation had begun to have a charm for him. Behind the dark curtain which had dropped across his life, he suspected—Helen.

  She watched him, but had not guessed that he was watching her. He had not forgotten the look on her face when she found him waking in the temple. That look and his name upon her lips. A girl like Helen Wilmot did not call a man by the name which his intimate friends used, unless he were more to her than a friend. From the first he had suspected, but now he began to feel sure, quite sure. It was not for nothing that their natures fitted at every point. Richard was at that stage in which a man feels that he has always known, and always loved, the one woman in the world. From the first she had been friend and comrade. Closer friend, dearer comrade than any that he could recall. After three days he found it impossible to believe that he had known her for three years, and had not loved her. He could not guess that the Helen she showed him here in this solitude was not the Helen whom he and the world had known. No, he could not believe that this love was a new thing. Her presence was too dearly familiar. They had been lovers in the years he had forgotten, and death had spared them that they might be lovers again through all the years which he and she would remember together. He grudged those past, forgotten years, and yet as he peered back into them, he thought he could recall the love that had filled them. As every lover believes that there was no time before his love began, so his love reached backwards now and filled the empty past.

  Past, present, and future caught and held the glow. Life was very pleasant to Richard Morton as he lay by the sun-flecked pool and looked at Helen Wilmot.

  The coarse native sheet wrapped her closely. Even the half of it was sufficiently wide to reach from breast to knee, confining the torn, limp folds of her grey dress. Her arms were bare, and her hair fell in a thick plait to her waist. Over the brow it lay in deep waves. Mrs. Middleton would have called it very untidy. Richard thought it made her look very young. Then she moved a little, and he saw the colour stir under that white skin of hers which never burned at all.

  “Helen,” he said, in a new voice, and she turned startled tragic eyes on him. Their looks met, his ardent, hers imploring. She got up with a quick nervous movement.

  “Oh, it is going to rain again!” she exclaimed. “Dick, we must go back. We really can’t afford to get wet, with no clothes to change, and it would mean fever, to a certainty.”

  Richard got up too. He laughed a little, and did not speak. His look of tender amusement followed her as she ran before him to the cave. That night Helen could not sleep. Her conscience was awake, and it stabbed deep. When she was sure that Richard slept she got up and knelt at the narrow mouth of the cave.

  A jutting boulder sheltered the opening from above. The rain came down in a steady sheet, and there was not a breath of wind. Helen tried to pray, but her prayers seemed shut into the low cave. The rain hung like a curtain at its door, and her prayers were shut in with her—with her and Dick.

  She stopped praying.

  It was very dark—very, very dark. Somewhere behind all that blackness there was the soul that had been Adela. Helen’s eyes strained against the gloom. Her spirit strained too. Her lips moved.

  “Adie,” she said, on a low gasping breath. “Oh, Adie, are you there? Can you hear? Can you understand? You didn’t love him. You didn’t make him happy. I love him so much. Oh, Adie, poor Adie, do you know?”

  The tears sprang hot from her eyes and ran down to her moving lips. The rain never ceased and they kept on falling, those salt, hot tears. Suddenly they came with a rush:

  “I ought to have told him—I ought to tell him now. Oh, I ought—I ought—I ought—”

  She said the words over and over until they lost all meaning, and all the time she knew that she dared not tell him now. The courage was all gone out of her.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE AWAKING

  Over the edge of the World, away from the noise of its strife,

  We walk the enchanted Woods, we wander with things that seem,

  Till we come to the Garden of Eden, till we handle the Tree of Life,

  And the knowledge of Good and Evil comes with the breaking of the dream.

  During the days that followed, Helen was in torment. She could not look at Richard Morton without seeing that he loved her. And Adela was not dead a month. If he knew—when he knew. She kept her eyes from his, and walked in a mist of pain. To him this new timidity, this withdrawal gave her the last touch of virginal charm. She had been friend and comrade, but now she was the heart of his dream as well.

  He thought he read her mind.

  He was to remember, to catch up the lost thread before he could come to the centre of the maze and find her waiting. How could she, or any other woman, say to a man:

  “You loved me, and I loved you. We were to have been married, but you have forgotten.”

  How she must have suffered—his proud, fine Helen. And now as he read her, it was the old lover, the old familiar love that she wanted, not this new love which was all that he had to give until he could remember. Well, he would give her her way, he would wait, and be patient for a while. These days were happy ones, and it would not be very long.

  Already the darkness that had settled over his memory was beginning to be shot with light. Flashes came and went. Sometimes he was on the point of remembering. The black curtain stirred, as if about to rise. Then just as anticipation rose to its height the moment passed, and all was a blank again.<
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  One day as they sat in the cave, and the rain poured down outside, he asked Helen:

  “Where did I meet you first?”

  And she answered him, without turning her head:

  “At Aunt Lucy’s house”; and she gave the street and the number.

  “And who is Aunt Lucy?” His voice held a teasing note. “Another Disagreeable Relation?”

  This was the turn of the screw, but Helen steadied herself to say the name that had been Adela’s.

  “Mrs. Lauriston.”

  “Oh!”

  He was silent for a moment, and she felt giddy with fear. Not here. Not now. Not whilst they were shut up in this narrow space, so close that they touched one another if either moved. Oh, she prayed that he might not remember now.

  “That is curious,” he said at last. “That name—and I suppose I couldn’t have known it very well; but when you said it—I had a sudden feeling—I thought everything was coming back to me. I do have that feeling sometimes now—but just then it was strong. It has never been quite so strong. Lauriston—Lauriston—no, it has gone again. Well, we met at Mrs. Lauriston’s house? Did you live with her?”

  “No, I was only staying there, after my grandmother died. I told you about my grandmother, you never saw her. Then I came out to India to my father, in the autumn.”

  “Did you like the voyage?” inquired Richard conversationally.

  “Very much. I love the sea.”

  “Oh!”

  Then he leaned over her shoulder as they sat and asked with one of his quick thrusts:

  “Was I on board?”

  Helen was startled into turning her head. His eyes laughed into hers, but behind the laughter they were keen.

  “How did you know?” she stammered.

  “I didn’t,” said Richard, quite pleased with himself, “I guessed. I expect I enjoyed the voyage too, didn’t I—Helen?”

  Helen felt as if her heart would break.

  “Dick, please, please don’t,” she said, and then she wondered what he must think of her. Her mood changed. If he would only guess, would only find out. It had come to that with her now. Tell him she could not. But this daily torment. It was her punishment, but it was more than she could bear.

  Richard meanwhile had drawn back, and was fitting another fragment into his mental puzzle. They must have become engaged upon the voyage. That was it. But why had they not been married?

  He pursued his inquisition.

  “So you came out to your father? Where was he?”

  “At Mian Mir.”

  “That was when I was in Peshawur. And then what happened?”

  “Papa died—last autumn. I came to Urzeepore, to stay with cousins. Please, Dick, I don’t want to talk about it. You’ll know why some day.”

  Richard Morton thought he knew now. He had got what he wanted. The father’s illness must have delayed their marriage. An only daughter of Helen’s type would scarcely leave her father if he were ill. And then she had come to Urzeepore to be near him. They must have been on the eve of their marriage when the mutiny broke out. They would have had to wait a few months after Colonel Wilmot’s death—but not more than six, he decided.

  He remembered Colonel Wilmot.

  How strange that was. To remember Colonel Wilmot—the man whom nobody particularly liked, or respected—and to forget Helen, who had been almost his wife. Why, no wonder it hurt her to talk of it. One day he would make it all up to her. One day she should forget it all—in his arms. He felt tempted to put them about her now, but, instead, he folded them across his breast and stared out into the rain. His thoughts of her were very tender.

  In the middle of July there was a substantial break in the rains. Richard Morton began to go off upon long expeditions. He was often away for hours at a stretch. He told Helen that he was foraging, and sometimes he brought back a couple of doves or a little wild honey.

  One day he came back with news.

  Helen had come some way down the ravine to meet him, and was sitting under a dhak tree, whose large dark leaves gave a pleasant shade. The shadow lay on her black hair, and made her eyes look black too. Richard came up the bank, and threw himself down beside her.

  “I didn’t say anything before, because I thought you would worry,” he explained. “But I have been trying to pick up news, near the villages. There are those two, five miles apart, and I found a place where I could watch the road. I wanted to hear what was said by the passers-by. Of course as long as the paths were all slush, very few people came along, but the last two days the ground has dried up a lot, and there have been quite a number of people coming and going. Most of them talked about the weather and the crops, but to-day I saw two men meet. If one of them wasn’t an old Sepoy, I’ll eat what’s left of my boots. Well, they sat down in the shade, quite close to where I was, and they gossiped.”

  Richard paused, and laid his hand on Helen’s arm. They were out in the open, with the trees about them.

  “The relief had reached Cawnpore,” he said.

  “Dick!”

  “Too late to save any one,” said Richard.

  “I didn’t think—oh, Dick—was there any one left to save, after that awful day?”

  “Yes, apparently there was. There were women and—and children—and they killed them all before the relief got in. My man said there was a great vengeance taken. It seemed to have put the fear of death into him anyhow, for if ever I saw a man badly scared!”

  There was a pause.

  Then Richard said:

  “If I knew where we were!”

  “I don’t see how we are to find out. Don’t run risks, Dick.”

  “He pointed over there when he was talking about Cawnpore,” said Richard. “And then he said, ‘What is twenty kos to such shaitans? If they eat their food in Cawnpore, they will wash their hands in Lucknow. I go to my village.’ So I think I know more or less, and I think that we must be moving on one of these fine days, Helen.”

  “It’s a great risk,” said Helen, leaning her chin on her clasped hands. Her hair fell over her left shoulder, and she shook it back again.

  “My dear girl, we can’t stay here for the rest of our natural lives!”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I believe you would like to.” His eyes rested on her, with a sudden mischief in them, and to her horror Helen felt the burning colour rise and sting her cheeks. She put up her hands and covered them.

  “Why do you tease me, Dick?” she said, with a quick, desperate courage.

  He laughed outright.

  “And why do you tease me, Helen?” he demanded.

  “I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. You know it too. How long are we to play this game of make-believe?”

  “I—don’t—understand.”

  “Don’t you, Helen? I think you do. I think you understand very well, dear.”

  “Dick—please—please—”

  She could not control the trembling words, and now she knew that she could not control Dick either. Her command of herself was gone and her command of him with it. It was coming. She could not help it—could not keep it back.

  “No, I don’t please,” said Richard Morton. He had risen and stood over her, very tall, blotting out the sun.

  “I don’t please at all. I want to have it out. You can’t say I haven’t been patient. Now it’s done with. We have played long enough. I knew that when I heard what I heard to-day. Anything might happen. I have waited long enough. When are you going to give me back those lost years, Helen?”

  She got up, and stood before him, shaking.

  “What do you mean, Dick?”

  He put his hands on her shoulders.

  “I mean that I can’t—I daren’t wait any more for what may never come back to me. If I can’t remember that I loved you bef
ore, at least I love you now. Why, I guessed at once. The minute I saw you, the minute you spoke. The love was in your eyes. And you know—you know I love you.”

  She could only repeat the same low question:

  “What do you mean?”

  “That I love you. That we have always loved each other—my heart.”

  “Oh, Dick, wait.”

  “No, I won’t. I’m going to kiss you, this very moment. Heaven knows I’ve waited long enough. When did I kiss you last? Oh, my dear—my dear.” His voice fell low and changed.

  Helen forgot everything but the love in it. It seemed to lap her round with healing and with peace. The pain was gone, the world was gone. In a dream she lifted her eyes to his and saw them nearer, dearer than ever before.

  His arms held her close. They kissed.

  And as the lightning flashes from the east to the west, tearing and searing the midnight, so recollection flashed upon the darkness of Richard Morton’s brain. With his lips still on Helen’s in that first kiss, the flash came. It lit the lifting tides of memory, and as he raised his head she saw remembrance flood his eyes and drown the love in them. The arms that held her grew rigid, but they did not loose her. Embraced and embracing they stood, so close that she felt his heart beat hard against her breast, stroke upon stroke, slowly, like a passing bell. And each stroke set its own deep bruise upon the spirit that shrank within.

  Helen could not move or look away. No merciful faintness swept between them. The light was full.

  For a time that seemed endless, Dick’s eyes looked through and through her, to her very soul, whilst love changed in them to judgment and judgment into condemnation.

  “Why did you do it?” he said at last, in a voice that was not like his own.

  She looked at him. He judged, and he condemned. Let it be. There was nothing for her to say. She did not know what a heart-break of love and pride was in that look of hers, but Richard Morton could never forget it.