Darkness and Dawn (70 page)

H'yemba already grasped for her, to force her down upon the floor,
kneeling to him—to make her call him master.

Already his strong and hairy fingers had all but seized her robe.

But she, lithe and agile, evaded the grip. To the fire she sprang. She
caught up a flaming stick that lay upon the hearth. With a cry she
dashed it full into his glaring eyes.

So sudden was the attack that H'yemba had no time even to ward it off
with his hands. Fair in the face the scorching flame struck home.

Howling, blinded, stricken, he staggered back; beat the air with vain
blows and retreated toward the door.

As he went he poured upon her a torrent of the most hideous
imprecations known to their speech—and they were many.

But she, undaunted now, feeling her power and her strength again,
followed close. And like blows of a flail, the sputtering, flaring
flame beat down upon his head, neck, shoulders.

His hair was blazing now; a smell of scorched flesh diffused itself
through the cavern.

"Go!
Go, dog!
" she shouted, maddened and furious, in consuming rage
and hate. "Coward! Slanderer and liar! Go, ere I kill you now!"

In panic-stricken fright, unable to see, trying in vain to ward off
the devastating, torturing whip of flame and to extinguish the fire
ravaging his hair, the brute half ran, half fell out of the cave.

Down the steep path he staggered, yelling curses; down, away,
anywhere—away from this pursuing fury.

But the woman, outraged in all her inmost sacred tendernesses, her
love for child and husband, still drove him with the blazing
scourge—drove, till the torch was beaten to extinction—drove, till
the smith took refuge in his own cave.

There, being spent and weary, she let him lie and howl. Exhausted,
terribly shaken in body and soul, yet her eyes triumphant, she once
more climbed the precipitous path to her own dwelling. The torch she
flung away, down the canyon into the river.

She ran to the far recess of the cave, found Gesafam indeed bound and
helpless, and quickly freed her.

The old woman was shaking like a leaf, and could give no coherent
account of what had happened. Beta made her lie down on the couch, and
herself prepared a bowl of hot broth for the faithful nurse.

Then she bethought herself of the pistol Allan had given her.

"I must never take that off again, whatever happens," said she.
"But—where is it now?"

In vain she hunted for it on the table, the floor, the shelves, and in
the closets Allan had built. In vain she ransacked the whole cave.

The pistol, belt, and cartridges—all were gone.

Suddenly finding herself very much alarmed and shaken, Beatrice
sat down in the low chair beside her bed, and covering her face with
both hands tried to think.

The old woman, somewhat recovered, moved about with words of pity and
indignation, and sought to make speech with her, but she paid no heed.
Now, if ever, she had need of self-searching—of courage and
enterprise. And all at once she found that, despite everything, she
was only a woman.

Her passion spent, she felt a desperate need of a man's strength,
advice, support. In disarray she sat there, striving to collect her
reason.

Her robe was torn, and her loosened hair, escaping from its golden
pins, cascaded all about her shoulders. Loudly her heart throbbed; a
certain shivering had taken possession of her, and all at once she
noticed that her brow was burning.

Resolutely she tried to put her weakness from her, and marshalled her
thoughts. In the bed her son still slept quietly, his fat fist
protruding from the clothes, his ruddy, healthy little face half
buried in the pillow.

A great, overpowering wave of mother-love swept her heart. She leaned
forward, and through lids now tear-dimmed, with eyes no longer angry,
peered at the child—her child and Allan's.

"For your sake—for yours if not for mine," she whispered, "I must be
strong!"

She thought.

"Evidently some great conspiracy is going on here. Beyond and apart
from the calamity of the landslide, some other and even greater peril
menaces the colony!"

She reflected on the incident of her pistol and ammunition being
stolen.

"There can be no doubt that H'yemba did that," she decided. "In the
confusion of the catastrophe he has disarmed me. That means
well-planned rebellion—and at this time it will be fatal! Now, above
all else, we must work in harmony, stand fast, close up the ranks!
This must not be!"

Yet she could see no way clear to crush the danger. What could she do
against so many—nearly all provided with firearms? Why had H'yemba
even taken the trouble to steal her weapon?

"Coward!" she exclaimed. "Afraid for his own life—afraid even to face
me, so long as I had a pistol! As I live, and heaven is above me, in
case of civil war he shall be the first to die!"

She summoned Gesafam.

"Go, now!" she commanded; "go among the remaining Folk and secretly
find me a pistol, with ammunition. Steal them if you must. Say
nothing, and return as quickly as you can. There be many guns among
the Folk. I must have one. Go!"

"O, Yulcia, will there be fighting again?"

"I know not. Ask no questions, but obey!"

Trembling—shaking her head and muttering strange things, the old
woman departed.

She returned in a quarter-hour with not only one, but two pistols and
several ammunition-belts cleverly concealed beneath her robe. Beta
seized them gladly with a sudden return of confidence.

But the old woman, though she said no word, eyed her mistress in a
strange, disquieting manner. What had she heard, or seen, down in the
caves? Beatrice had now neither time nor inclination to ask.

"Listen, old mother," she commanded. "I am now going to leave you and
my son here together. After I am gone lock the door. Let no one in. I
alone shall enter. My signal shall be two knocks on the door, then a
pause, then three. Do not open till you hear that signal. You
understand me?"

"I understand and I obey, O Yulcia noa!"

"It is well. Guard my son as your life. Now I go to see the wounded
and the sick again!"

The old woman let her out and carefully barred the door behind her.
Beatrice, unafraid, with both her weapons lying loose in their
holsters, belted under her robe, advanced alone down the terrace path.

Her hair had once more been bound up. She had recovered something of
her poise and strength. The realization of her mission inspired her to
any sacrifice.

"It's all for your sake, Allan," she whispered as she went. "All for
yours—and our boy's!"

Far beneath her New Hope River purled and sparkled in the morning sun.
Beyond, the far and vivid tropic forest stretched in wild beauty to
the hills that marked the world's end—those hills beyond which—

She put away the thought, refusing to admit even the possibility of
Allan's failure, or accident, or death.

"He will come back to me!" she said bravely and proudly, for a moment
stopping to face the sun. "He will come back from beyond those hills
and trackless woods! He will come back—to us!"

Again she turned, and descending some dozen steps in the terrace path,
once more reached the doorway of the hospital cave.

Pausing not, hesitating not, she lifted the rude latch and pushed.

The door refused to give.

Again she tried more forcibly.

It still resisted.

Throwing all her strength against the barrier, she fought to thrust it
inward. It would not budge.

"Barred!" she exclaimed, aghast.

Only too true. During her absence, though how or by whom she could not
know, the door had been impassably closed to keep her out!

Who, now, was working against her will? Could it be that H'yemba, all
burned and blinded as he was, could have returned so soon and once
more set himself to thwart her? And if not the smith, then who?

"Rebellion!" she exclaimed. "It's spreading—growing—now, at the very
minute when I should have help, faith and cooperation!

"Open! Open, in the name of the law that has been given you—our law!"
she cried loudly in the Merucaan tongue.

No answer.

She snatched out a pistol, and with the butt loudly smote the planks
of palm-wood. Within, the echoes rumbled dully, but no human voice
replied.

"Traitors! Cowards!" she defied the opposing power. "I, a woman, your
mistress, am come to save you, and you bar me out! Woe on you! Woe!"

Waiting not, but now with greater haste, she ran down along the
pathway toward the next door.

That, too, was sealed. And the next, and the fourth, and all, every
one, both on the upper and the lower terrace, all—all were
barricaded, even to the great gap made by the landslide.

From within no sound, no reply, no slightest sign that any heard or
noticed her. Dumb, mute, passive, invincible rebellion!

In vain she called, commanded, pleaded, explained, entreated. No
answer. The white barbarians, all banded against her now, had shut
themselves up with their wounded and their dying, to wait their
destiny alone.

How many were already dead? How many might yet be saved, who would die
without her help? She could not tell. The uncertainty maddened her.

"If they den up, that way," she said, "pestilence may break out among
them and all may die! And then what? If I'm left all alone in the
wilderness with Gesafam and the boy—what then?"

The thought was too horrible for contemplation. So many blows had
crashed home to her soul the past week—even the past few hours—that
the girl felt numbed and dazed as in a nightmare.

It was, it must be, all some frightful unreality—Allan's absence, the
avalanche, H'yemba's attack, and this widespread, silent defiance of
her power.

Only a few days before Allan had been there with her—strong,
vigorous, confident.

Authority had been supreme. Labor, content, prosperity had reigned.
Health and life and vigor had been everywhere. On the horizon of
existence no cloud; none over the sun of progress.

And now, suddenly—annihilation!

With a groan that was a sob, her face drawn and pale, eyes fixed and
unseeing, Beatrice turned back up the terrace path, back up the steep,
toward the only door still at her command—Hope Villa.

Back toward the only one of these strange Folk still loyal; back
toward her child.

Her head felt strangely giddy. The depths at her left hand, below the
parapet of stone, seemed to be calling—calling insistently. Before
her sight something like a veil was drawn; and yet it was not a veil,
but a peculiar haze, now and then intershot with sparkles of pale
light.

Through her mind flittered for the first time something like an
adequate realization of the vast, abysmal gulf in culture-status still
yawning between these barbarians and Allan and herself.

"Civilization," she stammered in an odd voice; "why that
means—generations!"

All at once she wondered if she were going to faint. A sudden pain had
stabbed her temples; a humming had attacked her ears.

She put out her hand against the rock wall of the cliff at the right
to steady herself. Her mouth felt hot and very dry.

"I—I must get back home," she said weakly. "I'm not at all well—this
morning. Overexertion—"

Painfully she began to climb the stepped path toward the upper level
and Cliff Villa. And again it seemed to her the depths were calling;
but now she felt positive she heard a voice—a voice she knew but
could not exactly place—a hail very far away yet near—all very
strange, unreal and terrifying.

"Oh—am I going to be ill?" she panted. "No, no! I mustn't! For the
boy's sake, I mustn't! I can't!"

With a tremendous effort, now crawling rather than walking—for her
knees were as water—the girl dragged herself up the path almost to
her doorway.

Again she heard the call, this time no hallucination, but reality.

"Beatrice!
Beatrice!
" the voice was shouting. "O-he! Beatrice!"

His hail! Allan's!

Her heart stopped, a long minute, and then, leaping with joy, a very
anguish of revulsion from long pain, thrashed terribly in her breast.

Gasping with emotion, burned with the first sudden onset of a
consuming fever, half-blind, shivering, parched and in agony, the girl
made a tremendous effort to hear, to see, to understand.

"Allan! Allan!" she shouted wildly. "Where are you?
Where?
"

"Beatrice! Here! On the bridge!
I'm coming!
"

She turned her dimming eyes toward the suspension bridge hung high
above the swift and lashing rapids of New Hope River—the bridge, a
cobweb-strand in space, across the chasm.

There it seemed to her, though now she could be sure of nothing, so
strangely did the earth and sky and cliffs, the bridge, the jungle,
all dance and interplay—there, it seemed, she saw a moving figure.

Disheveled, torn, almost naked, lame and slow, yet with something
still of power and command in its bearing, this figure was advancing
over the swaying path of bamboo-rods lashed to the cables of twisted
fiber.

Now it halted as in exhaustion and great pain; now, once more, it
struggled forward, limping, foot by foot; crawling, hanging fast to
the ropes like some great insect meshed in the wind-swung filaments.

She saw it, and she knew the truth at last.

"Allan! Allan—come quick!
Help me—help!
"

Then she collapsed. At her door she fell. All things blent and
swirled, faded, darkened.

She knew no more.

The man, weak, wounded, racked with exhaustion from the
terrible ordeal of the past days, felt fresh vigor leap through his
spent veins at sight of her distress, afar.