CHAPTER XXIII
THE RETURN OF THE MASTER
Suddenly finding herself very much alarmed and shaken, Beatricesat down in the low chair beside her bed, and covering her face withboth hands tried to think.
The old woman, somewhat recovered, moved about with words of pity andindignation, and sought to make speech with her, but she paid no heed.Now, if ever, she had need of self-searching--of courage andenterprise. And all at once she found that, despite everything, shewas 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 herreason.
Her robe was torn, and her loosened hair, escaping from its goldenpins, cascaded all about her shoulders. Loudly her heart throbbed; acertain shivering had taken possession of her, and all at once shenoticed that her brow was burning.
Resolutely she tried to put her weakness from her, and marshalled herthoughts. In the bed her son still slept quietly, his fat fistprotruding from the clothes, his ruddy, healthy little face halfburied in the pillow.
A great, overpowering wave of mother-love swept her heart. She leanedforward, 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 bestrong!"
She thought.
"Evidently some great conspiracy is going on here. Beyond and apartfrom the calamity of the landslide, some other and even greater perilmenaces the colony!"
She reflected on the incident of her pistol and ammunition beingstolen.
"There can be no doubt that H'yemba did that," she decided. "In theconfusion of the catastrophe he has disarmed me. That meanswell-planned rebellion--and at this time it will be fatal! Now, aboveall 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 doagainst so many--nearly all provided with firearms? Why had H'yembaeven taken the trouble to steal her weapon?
"Coward!" she exclaimed. "Afraid for his own life--afraid even to faceme, so long as I had a pistol! As I live, and heaven is above me, incase of civil war he shall be the first to die!"
She summoned Gesafam.
"Go, now!" she commanded; "go among the remaining Folk and secretlyfind me a pistol, with ammunition. Steal them if you must. Saynothing, and return as quickly as you can. There be many guns amongthe 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 oldwoman departed.
She returned in a quarter-hour with not only one, but two pistols andseveral ammunition-belts cleverly concealed beneath her robe. Betaseized them gladly with a sudden return of confidence.
But the old woman, though she said no word, eyed her mistress in astrange, disquieting manner. What had she heard, or seen, down in thecaves? Beatrice had now neither time nor inclination to ask.
"Listen, old mother," she commanded. "I am now going to leave you andmy son here together. After I am gone lock the door. Let no one in. Ialone shall enter. My signal shall be two knocks on the door, then apause, then three. Do not open till you hear that signal. Youunderstand me?"
"I understand and I obey, O Yulcia noa!"
"It is well. Guard my son as your life. Now I go to see the woundedand 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 theirholsters, belted under her robe, advanced alone down the terrace path.
Her hair had once more been bound up. She had recovered something ofher poise and strength. The realization of her mission inspired her toany sacrifice.
"It's all for your sake, Allan," she whispered as she went. "All foryours--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 tothe hills that marked the world's end--those hills beyond which--
She put away the thought, refusing to admit even the possibility ofAllan's failure, or accident, or death.
"He will come back to me!" she said bravely and proudly, for a momentstopping to face the sun. "He will come back from beyond those hillsand 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 itinward. It would not budge.
"Barred!" she exclaimed, aghast.
Only too true. During her absence, though how or by whom she could notknow, the door had been impassably closed to keep her out!
Who, now, was working against her will? Could it be that H'yemba, allburned and blinded as he was, could have returned so soon and oncemore set himself to thwart her? And if not the smith, then who?
"Rebellion!" she exclaimed. "It's spreading--growing--now, at the veryminute 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 planksof palm-wood. Within, the echoes rumbled dully, but no human voicereplied.
"Traitors! Cowards!" she defied the opposing power. "I, a woman, yourmistress, 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 thepathway toward the next door.
That, too, was sealed. And the next, and the fourth, and all, everyone, both on the upper and the lower terrace, all--all werebarricaded, even to the great gap made by the landslide.
From within no sound, no reply, no slightest sign that any heard ornoticed her. Dumb, mute, passive, invincible rebellion!
In vain she called, commanded, pleaded, explained, entreated. Noanswer. The white barbarians, all banded against her now, had shutthemselves up with their wounded and their dying, to wait theirdestiny alone.
How many were already dead? How many might yet be saved, who would diewithout her help? She could not tell. The uncertainty maddened her.
"If they den up, that way," she said, "pestilence may break out amongthem and all may die! And then what? If I'm left all alone in thewilderness with Gesafam and the boy--what then?"
The thought was too horrible for contemplation. So many blows hadcrashed home to her soul the past week--even the past few hours--thatthe girl felt numbed and dazed as in a nightmare.
It was, it must be, all some frightful unreality--Allan's absence, theavalanche, H'yemba's attack, and this widespread, silent defiance ofher 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 ofexistence 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 andunseeing, 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; backtoward her child.
Her head felt strangely giddy. The depths at her left hand, below theparapet of stone, seemed to be calling--calling insistently. Beforeher 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 palelight.
Through her mind flittered for the first time something like anadequate realization of the vast, abysmal gulf in culture-s
tatus stillyawning between these barbarians and Allan and herself.
"Civilization," she stammered in an odd voice; "why thatmeans--generations!"
All at once she wondered if she were going to faint. A sudden pain hadstabbed her temples; a humming had attacked her ears.
She put out her hand against the rock wall of the cliff at the rightto steady herself. Her mouth felt hot and very dry.
"I--I must get back home," she said weakly. "I'm not at all well--thismorning. Overexertion--"
Painfully she began to climb the stepped path toward the upper leveland 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 butcould not exactly place--a hail very far away yet near--all verystrange, unreal and terrifying.
"Oh--am I going to be ill?" she panted. "No, no! I mustn't! For theboy's sake, I mustn't! I can't!"
With a tremendous effort, now crawling rather than walking--for herknees were as water--the girl dragged herself up the path almost toher 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 veryanguish of revulsion from long pain, thrashed terribly in her breast.
Gasping with emotion, burned with the first sudden onset of aconsuming fever, half-blind, shivering, parched and in agony, the girlmade 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 highabove the swift and lashing rapids of New Hope River--the bridge, acobweb-strand in space, across the chasm.
There it seemed to her, though now she could be sure of nothing, sostrangely 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 somethingstill of power and command in its bearing, this figure was advancingover the swaying path of bamboo-rods lashed to the cables of twistedfiber.
Now it halted as in exhaustion and great pain; now, once more, itstruggled forward, limping, foot by foot; crawling, hanging fast tothe 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 andswirled, faded, darkened.
She knew no more.
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