Mr Jones, after firing his shot over Heyst's shoulder, had thought it
proper to dodge away. Like the spectre he was, he noiselessly vanished
from the veranda. Heyst stumbled into the room and looked around. All
the objects in there--the books, portrait on the wall--seemed shadowy,
unsubstantial, the dumb accomplices of an amazing dream-plot ending in
an illusory effect of awakening and the impossibility of ever closing
his eyes again. With dread he forced himself to look at the girl. Still
in the chair, she was leaning forward far over her knees, and had hidden
her face in her hands. Heyst remembered Wang suddenly. How clear all
this was--and how extremely amusing! Very.
She sat up a little, then leaned back, and taking her hands from her
face, pressed both of them to her breast as if moved to the heart by
seeing him there looking at her with a black, horror-struck curiosity.
He would have pitied her, if the triumphant expression of her face had
not given him a shock which destroyed the balance of his feelings. She
spoke with an accent of wild joy:
"I knew you would come back in time! You are safe now. I have done it!
I would never, never have let him--" Her voice died out, while her eyes
shone at him as when the sun breaks through a mist. "Never get it back.
Oh, my beloved!"
He bowed his head gravely, and said in his polite. Heystian tone:
"No doubt you acted from instinct. Women have been provided with their
own weapon. I was a disarmed man, I have been a disarmed man all my life
as I see it now. You may glory in your resourcefulness and your profound
knowledge of yourself; but I may say that the other attitude, suggestive
of shame, had its charm. For you are full of charm!"
The exultation vanished from her face.
"You mustn't make fun of me now. I know no shame. I was thanking God
with all my sinful heart for having been able to do it--for giving you
to me in that way--oh, my beloved--all my own at last!"
He stared as if mad. Timidly she tried to excuse herself for disobeying
his directions for her safety. Every modulation of her enchanting voice
cut deep into his very breast, so that he could hardly understand the
words for the sheer pain of it. He turned his back on her; but a sudden
drop, an extraordinary faltering of her tone, made him spin round. On
her white neck her pale head dropped as in a cruel drought a withered
flower droops on its stalk. He caught his breath, looked at her closely,
and seemed to read some awful intelligence in her eyes. At the moment
when her eyelids fell as if smitten from above by an the gleam of
old silver familiar to him from boyhood, the very invisible power, he
snatched her up bodily out of the chair, and disregarding an unexpected
metallic clatter on the floor, carried her off into the other room. The
limpness of her body frightened him. Laying her down on the bed, he
ran out again, seized a four-branched candlestick on the table, and ran
back, tearing down with a furious jerk the curtain that swung stupidly
in his way, but after putting the candlestick on the table by the bed,
he remained absolutely idle. There did not seem anything more for him
to do. Holding his chin in his hand he looked down intently at her still
face.
"Has she been stabbed with this thing?" asked Davidson, whom suddenly he
saw standing by his side and holding up Ricardo's dagger to his sight.
Heyst uttered no word of recognition or surprise. He gave Davidson only
a dumb look of unutterable awe, then, as if possessed with a sudden
fury, started tearing open the front of the girls dress. She remained
insensible under his hands, and Heyst let out a groan which made
Davidson shudder inwardly the heavy plaint of a man who falls clubbed in
the dark.
They stood side by side, looking mournfully at the little black hole
made by Mr. Jones's bullet under the swelling breast of a dazzling and
as it were sacred whiteness. It rose and fell slightly--so slightly that
only the eyes of the lover could detect the faint stir of life. Heyst,
calm and utterly unlike himself in the face, moving about noiselessly,
prepared a wet cloth, and laid it on the insignificant wound,
round which there was hardly a trace of blood to mar the charm, the
fascination, of that mortal flesh.
Her eyelids fluttered. She looked drowsily about, serene, as if fatigued
only by the exertions of her tremendous victory, capturing the very
sting of death in the service of love. But her eyes became very
wide awake when they caught sight of Ricardo's dagger, the spoil of
vanquished death, which Davidson was still holding, unconsciously.
"Give it to me," she said. "It's mine."
Davidson put the symbol of her victory into her feeble hands extended to
him with the innocent gesture of a child reaching eagerly for a toy.
"For you," she gasped, turning her eyes to Heyst. "Kill nobody."
"No," said Heyst, taking the dagger and laying it gently on her breast,
while her hands fell powerless by her side.
The faint smile on her deep-cut lips waned, and her head sank deep into
the pillow, taking on the majestic pallor and immobility of marble.
But over the muscles, which seemed set in their transfigured beauty for
ever, passed a slight and awful tremor. With an amazing strength she
asked loudly:
"What's the matter with me?"
"You have been shot, dear Lena," Heyst said in a steady voice, while
Davidson, at the question, turned away and leaned his forehead against
the post of the foot of the bed.
"Shot? I did think, too, that something had struck me."
Over Samburan the thunder had ceased to growl at last, and the world of
material forms shuddered no more under the emerging stars. The spirit
of the girl which was passing away from under them clung to her triumph
convinced of the reality of her victory over death.
"No more," she muttered. "There will be no more! Oh, my beloved," she
cried weakly, "I've saved you! Why don't you take me into your arms and
carry me out of this lonely place?"
Heyst bent low over her, cursing his fastidious soul, which even at that
moment kept the true cry of love from his lips in its infernal mistrust
of all life. He dared not touch her and she had no longer the strength
to throw her arms about his neck.
"Who else could have done this for you?" she whispered gloriously.
"No one in the world," he answered her in a murmur of unconcealed
despair.
She tried to raise herself, but all she could do was to lift her head
a little from the pillow. With a terrible and gentle movement, Heyst
hastened to slip his arm under her neck. She felt relieved at once of
an intolerable weight, and was content to surrender to him the infinite
weariness of her tremendous achievement. Exulting, she saw herself
extended on the bed, in a black dress, and profoundly at peace, while,
stooping over her with a kindly, playful smile, he was ready to lift
her up in his firm arms and take her into the sanctuary of his innermost
heart--for ever! The flush of rapture flooding her whole being broke out
in a smile of innocent, girlish happiness; and with that divine radiance
on her lips she breathed her, last triumphant, seeking for his glance in
the shades of death.