CHAPTER XLIII
THE SECRET THE RIVER KEPT
Daunt had dined cheerlessly in the deserted dining-room. Afterward,shrinking from the gay piazzas, he had struck off for a long ramblingwalk. Only the frail moonlight, glimpsing through a cloudy sky, lay overthe landscape, when, returning, worn but in no mood for sleep, he foundhimself at the hill shrine looking down on the white hotel with its longred balconies, brightened here and there by the lighted window of somelate-retiring guest.
His few days at Chuzenji had passed in a kind of stifled fever. Thereport of Barbara's engagement had added its poisoned barb. Thatmorning, however, a careless remark had torn across his mood assheet-lightning tears the weaving dusk. Tokyo was talking of it--of_him_!--making a jest of that sweet, dead thing in his heart? Thethought had stung his pride, and there had grown in him a sharp sense ofhumiliation at his own cowardice. The afternoon had found him ridingdown the mountain trail to Nikko. To-morrow he would go back toTokyo--to the round of gaieties that would now be hateful, and to hiswork.
He put out his hand to one of the benches in the deep pine-shadow, butdrew it back with a sharp breath. A sliver of the warped wood hadpierced his knuckle to the bone.
Frowning, he wrapped the bleeding member in his handkerchief and satdown at the bench's other end, bitterly absorbed. The vagrant,intermittent moonlight touched the tumbling water below with creepingsilver, and on the horizon, where the cloud-bank frayed away, one whiteconstellation swung low, a cluster of lamps in golden chains. ButDaunt's thought had no place for the delicate beauty of the night. Hispipe was long since cold, and he knocked out the dead ashes against thebench, and did not relight it. He thought of Tokyo, that to-morrow wouldstretch so blank and irksome, of the humdrum tedium of the Chancery, inwhich a few days ago he had worked so blithely. Then all had beeninterest and beauty. Now the future stretched before him dull andsavorless, an arid Desert of Gobi, through whose thirsty waste he musttrudge on for ever to a comfortless goal.
How long he sat there with bowed head he could not have told, but atlength he rose heavily to his feet As he did so he became aware of asound below him--a footfall, coming toward him. It crossed a bar of themoonlight.
He shrank, and a tremor ran over him, for it was Barbara.
She had thrown over her a loose cloak, and a bit of soft, clinging laceshowed between its dark edges. Her brilliant hair was loosely gatheredin a single braid, and in the moonlight it shone like beaten copperagainst the vivid pallor of her face. He sat stirless, smitten withconfusion, conscious that a movement must betray him. A painfulembarrassment enveloped him, a fastidious sense of shrinking from hersight of him. He felt a dull wave of resentment that an antic irony ofcircumstance should have brought them beneath the same roof--to make himseem the moody pursuer, the unwelcome trespasser on her reserve--andthat now thrust him into a position which at any hazard he would haveshunned. But all thought of himself, all feeling save one vanished,when, with sudden piteous abandon, she threw herself on her knees by thebench and broke into slow sobs, shuddering and tearless.
In that outbreak of emotion, were not alone the pent-up pain andhumiliation she had suffered, or the desperate joy of that evening'sknowledge. There were in it, too, grief and compunction, dismay anddoubt of the future. She was engaged to Austen Ware. Would Daunt everforgive? Would he want her--now? In the first realization of her error,wound with the knowledge that he was so near her, she had felt only joy;but in the silence of her room, shock on shock had come the incredulousquestion, the burning revulsion. A while she had lain wide-eyed, but atlength, sleepless, she had stolen out to the balmy, fragrant night,craving its peace, longing passionately for its soft shadows and thehovering touch of the mountain's breath on her hair. And in its friendlyshadows the gust of feeling had swept her from her feet.
The action took Daunt wholly by surprise. The sound tore his heart likea ruthless talon, and drew a hoarse word from his lips:
"Barbara!" It was little more than a whisper, but she sprang erect witha gasp, her breath labored and terror-stricken.
"I--I beg pardon," he said, with a dry catch in his throat. "Don't befrightened. I will go at once. I should not have stayed. But you came sosuddenly, and I did not dream--I--"
"How strange that you should have been here!" She thought he must hearthe loud drumming of her pulse.
He laughed--a hard, colorless little laugh. "Yes," he answered, "itseems so."
A mist blinded her eyes, for his tone carried to her, even more sharplythan had the look she had seen from the balcony, a sense of the pain hehad undergone. In what words could she tell him?
"You have been suffering," she said in a low voice. "I see that. And itwas my fault."
He gathered himself together with an effort of will, to still the tinglethat flashed along his nerves. "It was quite sane and right, no doubt,"he said. "When I have learned to be honest enough with myself, I shallsee it so. My mistake was in ever dreaming that I was worth one of yourthoughts or a single second's memory."
She turned her head abruptly. "Do you hear some one talking? I thought Iheard it as I came up the path--like some one muttering to himself."
He listened, but there was no sound.
"I must have imagined it," she said. There was a moment's pause, andpresently she went on:
"You have been thinking hard things of me. It is natural that youshould. And yet I--whatever you think--whatever you do--that day in thecave, I was not--was not--"
"You were nothing you should not have been," he replied rapidly. Hervoice had sent a tremor over him--he felt it with a new wave of themorning's contempt. "I understand. There is nothing for you to justify,nothing to regret."
She shook her head. "_We have left undone those things which we ought tohave done_," she quoted in a low voice, "_and have done those thingswhich we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us_. We allrecite that every Sunday. I have something now to confess to you. Won'tyou stand there in the light? I--I want to see your face."
He stepped slowly into a bar of moonlight.
"Why," she said, "you have hurt your hand!" She made a quick step towardhim, her eyes on the stained bandage.
"It is nothing," he said hastily. "I struck it a little while ago.What--"
He turned, suddenly alert. A sharp whistle had sounded below them, andbright points here and there pricked the gloom. "They have turned on thetree-lights," he said. There was a sound of voices on the path. Some oneran across the foot-bridge.
"Something has happened," she said. "What can it be?"
He made no reply. There had flashed to him a quick realization of theposition in which, unwittingly, they had placed themselves. She must notbe seen at such an hour, in that lonely spot with him! He knew thecanons of the world he lived in! With a hushed word he drew her backinto the shadow.
The voices were speaking in Japanese, and now he heard them clearly."Some one is injured," he told her. "He fell down the hillside, theythink." A hurried step crossed the bridge, and a voice, sharp andperemptory, asked a question in nervous English. Daunt chilled at theanswer, turning to her, every unselfish instinct alive to spare her.
But she had heard a name. "It is Mr. Ware who is hurt!"
He grasped her wrist. "Wait!" he said hurriedly. "I beg you to go by theupper path to the side door." But she caught away her arm and ranquickly down the path.
Daunt sprang up the hill, skirted the building, gained its uppercorridor, now simmering with excitement, and crossed the bridge. Nearits farther end a small group stood about a figure, prostrate beside thephonograph whose cylinder gleamed in the lantern-light. By it Barbarawas kneeling.
But something came between her gaze and the pallid face--something whichshe saw with the distinctness of a black paper silhouette on a whiteground: a glimmering object, unnoted by the rest, which had lainhalf-concealed by a bush--something that one day, a thousand years ago,had glittered against Daunt's brown hair as he saluted he
r from hishorse! It was a riding-crop, whose Damascene handle bore the device of afox's head.
* * * * *
Two hours later the corridors were silent and the bishop and Daunt sattogether in the darkened office, saying few words, both thinking of aman lying straight and alone--and of a girl in an upper room whosepromise he had taken with him out of the world. Daunt was to leave forTokyo on the early morning train. Half the night through he sat therelistening to the moan of the rising weather.
But a little while before the sky whitened to a rainy dawn, a graywraith glided along the upper piazza of the hotel. It crossed thefoot-bridge to the hillside.
Barbara groped and found the crop. Across the night she seemed to see anendless procession of stolid, sulphur-colored figures, linked with thin,rattling chains, filing into the humid, black mouth of a mine.Shuddering, she swung the stick with all her strength, and threw it fromher down the steep, into the water that roared and tumbled far below.