Two or three big drops of rain fell. Norah made her way slowly back to camp. Near the ruins she was stopped by Dick, already tired of watching the woodcutters. She noticed that access to his shaving tackle had restored his freshness.
'Norah,' he said, with his hint of a brogue, 'why have you been keeping away from me all day, the day I needed you most?'
Norah, never less inclined for sentiment, found two answers ready to her lips; the first, that any attention to him might set Archie at his throat, too melodramatic; the second, that in his present mood he was best left alone, too brutal. So she remained silent.
'What was Sinclair saying to you on the beach?' he asked.
'Nothing much. Being decent.'
Dick's face darkened.
'You mean I'm not?'
'Well, the way you come to me the moment his back's turned, makes me look pretty cheap,' she said dispassionately.
'How can I talk to you before him? Be fair, Norah.'
'Is there anything to talk about?' she asked. 'Isn't all as bad as we can make it without more talk?'
'All right,' said Dick, 'I'll go back to the wood-cutting. If you'd rather talk to Sinclair...'
'Oh! Dick,' she cried. 'Don't let's quarrel. It's horrible enough, without that!'
'Our love's horrible?'
'I didn't mean that. The world's horrible; life's ugly, cruel. I thought I was finding something beautiful, and all I've done is to hurt, betray, spoil....'
Dick's jealousy boiled over.
'What makes you suddenly so careful of Sinclair's feelings?' he asked. 'He had his chance of you. He wasn't man enough to keep you.'
Norah was silent. Why couldn't Dick shut up?
'But he's trying to get you back. I know it.'
'You think he'd take me back?' she asked the question half bitterly, half soberly, and for a moment she fingered the sheet, draping a future that lay as imperturbable as a corpse.
'Do you want him to?' said Dick violently. 'I'd rather see you dead first.'
'It isn't on the cards,' she stated quietly. She had no clear idea of her own hopes, let alone Archie's intentions. She said as much to Dick. He caught up her words.
'Yes, what's he up to, Norah?' Dick's voice was eager. 'What's his game? Hasn't he given any idea?'
'Has he any "game"?' she asked wearily. 'Unless fighting with beasts in your heart is a game.'
'Why did he give me those cartridges?' persisted Dick. 'He wasn't keen on me touching his ammunition last night!' he added with a laugh, and made Norah the confidante of his nocturnal adventure.
As a word, or a tune, or a scent may fire a train of latent memory and illumine or connect experiences till then dark and unrelated, so Dick's story threw across his actions a beam as unsparing as the blue glare of some great arc light in a main street that midnight, rain, and frost had emptied.
Memories crossed her mind like pictures on a screen. Again Dick humbled himself on the shore of the lake, and again she heard the paddles splash as the Hindoo disappeared across the water. She saw Dick's helpless stare as he sat limply on the pile of baggage contemplating the disaster he had provoked and was impotent to stem. She felt him tugging at her sleeves in naked terror of Archie's decision in the hills. His breath was warm on her face, urging her to beg the man they had wronged for a few days' life. She blushed with shame at his advice to offer to go back, a promise, said he, that need not be kept.
A dozen times he was convicted of meanness, ingratitude, treachery. She saw for a bungler and a coward the man she had left all to follow. The man she had loved—that she still loved for all she knew. Feeling was dried out of her by pain and anxiety, but her brain told her that, if ever the crisis passed, she would find the image of Dick still near her heart.
And Archie, while she could see each of his virtues—pluck, loyalty, gentleness—written in letters of fire, she knew that never again could he quicken her pulses.
Hot scorn of herself and her lover filled her veins, but she did not voice it. All her wit was devoted to the task of keeping the men from each other's throats. She scrutinised every word before she spoke it, that nothing she said might send the precarious triangle, at whose apex she stood, heeling to disaster.
So while her realisation of Dick's unworth penetrated her brain as lead is melted and poured into a mould, she was guiding the conversation to soothe his ruffled vanity: and not until she felt her end attained did she leave him on the excuse that she must see about the fishing.
On her way to the beach she was met by a note from Archie asking her to send six men to carry in a hartebeeste he had shot. With a sigh of relief she dismissed one anxiety. There was food now for all for a day or two.
It was dusk before the procession returned in pairs, the dismembered limbs of the buck swinging from freshly-cut poles that rested on their bowed shoulders. Anxious to regain the firelight before dark, their knees were bent and their hips swung in a gliding trot. One arm supported the pole, the other held a spear or axe. Behind them walked Archie with his gun over his shoulder. He gave orders for the meat to be spread on the ground beside the fire and bade the tense, black circle stand farther back.
'In this heat the stuff will be rotten by to-morrow night,' he remarked. 'They won't mind, though.'
He told Changalilo to take the saddle for the European table, and watched while Matao with an axe divided the rest between the natives. They knelt and clapped their hands in salutation before they withdrew, clasping each man his sanguinary portion. Soon a ring of bright little fires half-burnt, half-smoked the spitted meat, and the night was full of soft voices and high-pitched laughter.
Archie subsided into a deck-chair and sat silent, his head in his hands. Nervous of his thoughts, Norah inquired about the kill.
He had had to cover a lot of ground, he answered, uttering his words carefully. No, there wasn't a herd; a solitary ram, turned out probably for his bad temper; grazing behind an anthill. He was hoping she would not hear his teeth clattering against each other. Pains that started from the base of his skull and shot across his head assured him that an attack of malaria threatened.
With an effort he answered Norah, who, anxious to cover Dick's silence, had asked another question.
'One round,' he said, 'heart shot.'
When at last dinner came he could not eat it. As soon as the others had done, he withdrew to his shelter. Though she guessed he was ill, Norah did not dare to follow, and after enduring Dick's sullen monologue retired early to the tent Archie had allotted her. Body triumphed over mind, and she slept as soon as she had stretched herself on her bed.
In the early hours of the morning she woke. She was conscious at once, before thought returned, of the oppression of impending disaster that had been her waking burden. Then she remembered.
Refreshed by sleep, her brain took up its round, searching for the path that led to safety. She saw at last why that search had been futile. Till now she had not dared face the future, to imagine what lay behind the curtain. A flash of insight revealed that she must pledge her future if she was to cope with the present.... For a time she fought off the question that clawed at her brain. At last she confronted it—'Must I give up Dick?' she asked herself.
With reluctant clearness she saw that, if she gave up her lover and told her husband, she would sterilise the soil so fertile with violence. But could she pay the price of sacrifice and humiliation? Could she let Dick go? Though all passion was buried under ashes, Dick was still a part of her subconscious life. She could not at once uproot the vivid memories of their few weeks together. Her emotions were in a state of suspended animation, shut off, not dead. What needs might not arise in that future she shrank from visualising!
Moreover, Dick loved her. Must he pay the price as well? Must she go on racking the men who loved her and inflict on Dick the anguish Archie seemed to suffer?
When she was sinking into a morass of conflicting emotion, pride came to her help. Whatever else she felt for Dick, she knew that she despised him. Contempt makes an ill bedfellow. A woman can love a weak man whom she pities; she is too practical to trust her life to a man she despises.
Almost against her will, Norah's mood hardened. The tent stifled her. She must make this cruel decision in the open air. Slipping into a cloak, she stepped into the moonlight.
The natives, less black than their shadows, slept in contorted postures about the ground. Here was an arm flung out, as if a declamatory gesture had beep stilled in sleep; there was a knee drawn up as if pain had found cessation in death. The ruined tower threw its shadow across the sleepers, a shadow which seemed to Norah the visible presentation of the doom she had divined.
In the distance a hyæna howled like a ship's syren and reminded her that it was not safe to move beyond the arc of light flung by the fire. As she took the chair Dick had left, she was startled by a voice she did not recognise. She could distinguish no words. Quietly she picked her way between the sleeping bodies to the shelter where Archie lay. The moonlight fell in flecks between the leaves, and she could see Archie sprawling on his back, nearly naked, his lips muttering in fever. As she picked up the clothes her arm brushed against him. He caught at it with hot, dry hands. A string of curses poured from his unconscious lips as he gripped her wrist with his two hands, digging his thumbs into her flesh. The pressure was so painful she felt she must wake him, but with a final twist under which her skin tore, he let go.
'You won't touch her again,' he muttered. 'Damn you, not ever again!'
She pulled the clothes on to the bed and tucked them in, then fetched another blanket from her tent and spread it over him, that he might sweat out the fever. He had enough to endure without that.
She bathed her arm and sat down, her hesitation gone. The manner of Archie's dreaming proved that her fears were not imaginary. It lay with her that dreams did not pass into deeds.
Nor could she leave Archie to fight his fever alone; but until she had made clear her position between the two men, it was not possible for her to take up her duty by her husband's sick-bed. As another man's acting mistress she had no right there. The sight of her might even make him worse.
She would not feel clean till she had humbled herself before Archie, told him she renounced Dick, and offered to fulfil the contract she had vowed and broken. Archie might well refuse the spoiled remnants of her loyalty, but she would at least have done the little she could to repair the irreparable wrong. And Dick ... she did not dare to think of Dick. Before she spoke to Archie she must tell Dick. He had a right to hear from her lips. She had to tell him that their love must end ... was ended. She would have to launch upon a hopeless explanation of motives she barely understood and reasons which he would refuse. Every shred of reticence would be torn to tatters. Agonised but inflexible, she would have to listen to his reproaches, arguments, prayers.
Could she trust her will under that fire? Would she not be wiser to tell Archie before she told Dick? Once she had offered to her husband the remainder of her burnt-out life, honour would keep her weak flesh from yielding to her lover's entreaties.
Nor was that all. Dick jilted, his love and vanity ableed, would be in the mood to provoke Archie, not yet aware of his wife's renunciation, to fatal action; and the tragedy she had given her love to avert would be consummated in a death grapple between the two men she had loved and left.
Before she fell asleep again, her mind was made up that first Archie must hear she had given up Dick for ever. Then Dick must be told.”