CHAPTER XXI
JULIAN FEELS STRANGE
A fortnight had elapsed, it has been written, since the meeting between Beatrix and Julian on the palm-clad knoll, and during that time the latter had found himself left very much to his own resources by Sebastian. Indeed, Julian was never quite able to make out what became of his "relative" during the day, although at night, when they sat as usual on the veranda, Sebastian generally explained matters by saying that he had been absent at one place or another on business, the "business" consisting of trafficking with other settlers for the sale or purchase of the productions of the various estates. As, however, few people ever came to Desolada, and none as "visitors" in the ordinary sense of the word, Julian had no opportunity of discovering by outside conversation whether the other's statements were accurate or not. Still, as he said to himself, Sebastian's pursuits were no concern whatever of his, and at any rate the latter's absence left him free to do whatever he chose with his own time. To shoot curassows, wild turkeys, and sometimes monkeys, or, at least, to appear to go out shooting them; though, as often as not, the expedition ended at All Pines, to which place Julian made his way every other day to post a letter to Beatrix.
Now, after a fortnight had been spent in this manner, during the whole of which period he had not set his eyes on Madame Carmaux, who still kept her room and was reported to be suffering from a bilious fever, the two men sat upon the veranda of the lower floor after the evening meal had been concluded, both of them having their pipes in their mouths. While, close to Sebastian's hand, was a large tumbler which contained a very good modicum of Bourbon whisky, slightly dashed with water.
"You don't drink at all now," that gentleman said to his cousin, as he always called him. "Don't you like the stuff, or what? If that's what it is, I can get something else, you know, from Belize."
"No," Julian replied, "that is not what it is. But of late, for a week or so now, I have not been feeling well, and perhaps abstinence from that is the best thing," and he nodded his head towards where the Bourbon whisky bottle stood.
"I told you so," Sebastian exclaimed; "only you wouldn't believe me. You were sure to feel seedy sooner or later. Every one does at first, when they come to this precious colony."
"I ought to be pretty well climate-hardened all the same," Julian remarked, "after the places I've been in. Burmah isn't considered quite the sweetest thing in the way of health resorts, yet I got through that all right."
"I hope you are not going to have a fever or anything wrong with your liver. Those are the things people suffer from here, intermittent and remittent fevers especially. I must give you some medicine."
"No, thanks," Julian replied; "I think I can do very well without it at present. Besides, the time has come for me to bring my visit to a close, you know. You have been very kind and hospitable, but there is such a thing as overstaying one's welcome."
To his momentary astonishment, since he quite expected that Sebastian was looking forward to his departure with considerable eagerness and was extremely desirous of seeing the last of him, this announcement was not received at all as he expected. In actual truth, Julian had imagined that his decision would be accepted with the faintest of protests which a host could make, while, instead, he perceived that Sebastian was absolutely overcome with something that, if not dismay, was very like it. His face fell, as the light of the lamp (round which countless moths buzzed and circled in the sickly night air) testified plainly, and he uttered an exclamation that was one of unfeigned disappointment, if not regret.
"Oh!" he said, "but I can't allow that. I can't, indeed. Going away because you feel queer. Nonsense, man! You'll be all right in a day or so. And to go away after a visit of two or three weeks only! Why! when people come such a journey as you have done from England to here, we expect them to stop six months."
"That in any case would be impossible. My leave of absence only covers that space of time, and cannot be exceeded. But," Julian continued, "don't think, all the same, that I am afraid of fever or anything of that sort. That wouldn't frighten me away."
"I can't see what you came for, then. What the deuce," he said, speaking roughly now as though his temper was rising, "could have brought you to Honduras if you weren't going to stay above a month in the place?"
"I wanted to see the place where my father lived," the other replied, and as he did so he watched Sebastian's features carefully. For although, of course, he was supposed to be the son of George Ritherdon who had lived at Desolada once, he thought it most probable that this remark might cause his cousin some disturbance.
Whether it did so or not, he could, however, scarcely tell, since, as he made it, Sebastian, who was relighting his pipe with a match, let the latter fall, and instantly leant forward to pick it up again.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, when he had done so, "of course, if you only wanted to do that, two or three weeks are long enough. Yet, I must say, I think it is an uncommon short stay. However, I suppose even now you don't mean to go off in a wonderful hurry?"
"To-day," said Julian, "is Wednesday. Suppose, as you are so kind, that we fix next Monday for my departure."
"Next Monday. Next Monday," and by the movement of Sebastian's lips, the other could see that he was making some kind of calculation. "Next Monday. Four clear days. Ah!" and his face brightened very much as he spoke. "Well! that's something, isn't it? Four clear days."
Upstairs, when Julian had reached his room, he found himself meditating upon why Sebastian should have seemed so undoubtedly pleased at the knowledge that he was going to stay for another "four clear days."
"We haven't seen such a wonderful lot of each other," he reflected, "except for an hour or so after supper; and as I have spent my time uselessly in mooning about this place and the neighbourhood, he can't suppose that it's very lively for me. Especially as-as there have been risks."
"As-as-as there have been-risks," he repeated a few moments afterwards. Then, while still he sat on in his chair, gazing, as he recognised, vaguely out of the window, he noticed that his mind seemed to have got into a dull, sodden state-that it was not active.
"As-there-have-been risks," he repeated once more. And now he pushed his chair on one side as he rose from it, exclaiming:
"This won't do. There's something wrong with me. As-there-have-no! – no! I don't want to keep on repeating this phrase over and over again. What is the matter with me? Have I got a fever?"
Thinking this, though as he did so he recognised that his head was by no means clear and that he felt dull and heavy, as a man might do who had not slept for some nights, he thought, too, that it would be best for him to go to bed. Doubtless his liver was affected by the climate; doubtless, also, he would be well enough in the morning.
"There is," he said to himself, "a chemist's in the village of All Pines-I will let him to give me a draught in the morning. I wonder if Zara ever takes a draught-I-I-mean Beatrix. What rot I am talking!" he murmured to himself, "and now, to add to other things the lamp is going out."
Whereon he made a step towards where the lamp stood on the table, and turning up the wicks gently saw that, in a moment, the flames were leaping up the glass chimney and blackening it.
"I thought it was going out," he said to himself, turning the wicks down again rapidly; "I seem to be getting blind too. There is no doubt that I have got a fever. Let me see."
As he spoke he put his hand into his trousers pocket to draw out his keys, it being his intention to open his Gladstone bag and get out a little medicine casket he always carried with him when out of England, and especially when in tropical places; and, in doing so, he leant his head a little to the side that the pocket was on, his chin drooping somewhat towards the lapel of his white jacket.
"I suppose," he muttered, "that my sense of smell's affected too, now. Or else-jacket's getting-some beastly old-old-old tropical smell that clings to everything-in-in such countries. Never mind. Here's keys."
He drew them forth, regarding the bunch with a stare as though it was something he was unacquainted with, and then, instead of putting into the lock of the bag the long slim key which is usual, he endeavoured to insert a large one that really belonged to a trunk he had left behind at the shipping office in Belize as not being wanted.
Reflection served, however, to call to his mind that this key was not very likely to open the bag, and at last, after giving an inane smile at the mistake, he succeeded in his endeavour and was able to get out the contents, and to withdraw the little medicine casket.
"Quinine," he said, spelling the word letter by letter as he held the phial under the lamp. "Quinine. That's it. Don't let's make a mistake. Q-u-i-n-i-n-e. That's all right. Can't go wrong now."
By the aid of the contents of the water-bottle and his glass he was enabled to swallow two quinine pills of two grains each, and then he resolved-in a hazy, uncertain kind of way-to go to bed. Whereon, slowly he divested himself of his clothes and, in a mechanical manner, threw back the mosquito curtains. But, whatever might be the matter with him, and however clouded his intellect might be, he was not yet so dense as to forget the strange occupant of that bed which he had once before discovered there.
"Beatrix said," he muttered, "that coral snake kills in an hour. I don't want to die in an hour. Let's see if we've got another guest here to-night."
And, as he had done every night since he had returned to Desolada, he thoroughly explored the bed, doing so, however, on this occasion in a lethargic, heavy manner which caused him to be some considerable time about it.
"Turn to the left to unscrew," he said to himself, recalling some old schoolboy phrase as he stood now by the lamp ready to extinguish it, "to the right to screw. Same, I suppose, to turn up and down. Oh! the revolver. Where's that? May as well have it handy." Whereupon he went over to where he had hung up his jacket and removed the weapon from the inside pocket.
"A nasty smell these tropical places have," he muttered as he did so. "There's the smell of India-no one ever forgets that-and also the smell of Africa. Well! strikes me Honduras can go one better than either of them."
Then he got into bed.
Dizzy, stupefied as he felt, however, it did not seem as if his stupefaction or semi-delirium, or whatever it was which had overcome him, was likely to plunge him into a heavy, dull sleep. Instead, he found himself lying there with his eyes wide open, and, although his brain felt like a lump of lead, while there was a weight at his forehead as if something were pressing on it, he was conscious that one of his senses was very acute-namely, the sense of smell. Either that, or else some very peculiar phase in the fever which he was experiencing, was causing a strange sense of disgust in his nostrils.
"This bed smells just like a temple I went into in Burmah once," he thought to himself. "What the deuce is the matter with me-or it? Anyhow, I can't stand it." And, determined not to endure the unpleasantness any longer, he got up from the bed, while wrapping himself in the dark coverlet he went over to an old rickety sofa that ran along the opposite side of the room and lay down upon it.
And here, at least, the odour was not apparent. The old horsehair bolster and pillow did emit, it is true, the peculiar stuffy flavour which such things will do even in temperate climates; but beyond that nothing else. The acrid, loathsome odour which he had smelt for the first time when he leant his head slightly as he felt for his keys, and which he had perceived in a far more intensified form when he lay down in the bed, was not at all apparent now. It seemed as if he was, at last, likely to fall asleep.
CHAPTER XXII
IN THE DARK
Julian supposed when he was awakened later on, and felt that he was drenched with a warm perspiration which caused his light tropical clothes to stick to him with a hot clammy feeling, that he must have slept for two hours. For now, as he lay on the sofa facing the window, he could see through the slats of the persianas, which he had forgotten to turn down, that, peeping round the window-frame there came an edge of the moon, which he seemed to recollect-dimly, hazily, and indistinctly-had risen late last night.
And that moon-which stole more and more into his view as he regarded it-was casting now a long ray into the bedroom, so that there came across the floor a streak of light of about the breadth of nine inches.
Yet-once his bemused brain had grasped the fact that this ray was there, while, at the same time, that brain was still clear enough to comprehend that every moment the flood of light was becoming larger, so that soon the apartment would be filled with it-he paid no further attention to the matter, nor to the distant rumbling of thunder far away-thunder that told of a tropical storm taking place at a distance. Instead, he was endeavouring to argue silently with himself as to the actual state in which his mind was; as to whether he was in a dreamy kind of delirium, or whether, in spite of any fever that might be upon him, he was still able to distinctly understand his surroundings.
If, as he hoped earnestly, the latter was the case; if he was not delirious, but only numbed by some ailment that had insidiously taken possession of him-then-why then-surely! he was in deadly peril of some immediate attack upon him-upon his life perhaps.
For, outside those persianas there was another light, two other lights glittering in upon him that were not cast by the moon, but that (because now and again her rays were thrown upon them) he discovered to be a pair of eyes. And not the eyes of an animal either, since they glisten in the dark, but, instead, human eyes that glared horribly as now and again the moonbeams caught them.
Only! was it the truth that they were real tangible eyes, or were they but a fantasy of a mind unhinged by fever?
He must know that! And he could only do so by lying perfectly still; by watching.
Those eyes which stared in at him now were low down to the floor of the balcony, even as he seemed to recollect Zara's eyes had been on one occasion during her nocturnal visits to him when he first arrived at Desolada; yet now he knew, felt sure, that they were not Zara's. Why he felt so sure he could not tell, nor in the feverish languor that was upon him, could he even reason with himself as why he did feel so sure. But, at the same time, he told himself, they were not hers. Of that he was certain.
How did they come there, low down-not a foot above the floor of the veranda? Could they indeed be the eyes of an animal in spite of the white eyeballs on which the rays shone with such a sickly gleam; did they belong to some household dog which had chosen this spot for its night's repose? Yet-yet-if such was the case, why did it not sleep curled up or stretched out, instead of peering through the latticework with its eyes close to the slats, as though determined to see all that was in the room and all that was going on in it. No! it could not be that, while, also it was not what he had deemed it might be a few minutes ago-the eyes of a snake. It was impossible, since the eyes of a snake would have been much closer together.
They were-there could be no doubt about it! the eyes of a human being, man or woman. And they were not Zara's. He was sure of that.
But still they glared into the room, glared through the dusky sombreness of the lower part of it, of that part of the floor which, even now, the moonlight was not illuminating. And then to his astonishment he saw, as the light flooded the apartment more and more, that those eyes were staring not at him but towards another portion of the room; towards where the bed stood enveloped in the long hanging folds of the mosquito curtains, which, to his distempered mind, seemed in the weird light of the tropical night to look like the hangings that enshroud a catafalque-a funeral canopy.
His hand, shaky though he knew it was from whatever ailed him, was on his revolver; for a moment or so he lay there asking himself if he should fire at that wizard thing, that creepy mystery outside his room; if he should aim fair between those glistening eyeballs and trust to fortune to kill or disable the mysterious watcher? But still, however, he refrained; for, if his senses were still in his own possession, if his mind was still able to understand anything, it understood that near the bed in which he should have been sleeping had it not been for the evil odours exhaled from it to-night, there was something that might be a more fitting object of his discharge than the creature outside.
"If," he thought to himself, "I am neither mad nor delirious nor drenched with fever, those eyes are watching something in this room, and that something is not myself."
Should he turn his head; could he turn it towards that dark patch behind the mosquito curtains which was not illuminated with the moon's rays? Could he do it as a man turns in his sleep-restlessly-so that in the action there might be nothing which should alarm whatever lurked in the darkness over there; the thing that, having got into his room in the night full of evil intentions towards him, was now itself being watched, suspected, perhaps trapped.
Could he do it?
As he meditated thus, feeling sure now that his stupor, his density of mind, was not what it had been-recognising with a feeling of devout thankfulness that, whatever his state might hitherto have been, his mind was now becoming clear and his intellect collected, he prepared to put this determination into practise. He would roll over on to his right side, as he had seen sleepy sailors roll over on to theirs in the watch below; he would roll over too, with his hand securely on the butt of his revolver. And then-if-if, as he felt certain was the case, there was some dark skulking thing hiding behind his bedhead, if he should see another pair of eyes gleaming out in the rays of the moon-why, then, woe befall it! He had had enough of these midnight hauntings from one visitant or another in this house of mystery; he would fire straight at that figure, he would kill it dead, if so it must be, even if it were Sebastian himself.
As he turned, imitating a sleeper's restlessness, as well as he was able, there came two interruptions-interruptions that stayed his hand.
From near the bed-he was right! those eyes outside had been watching something that was inside there! – close to him, across the room, he heard a sound. A sound that was half a one, half an inward catching of the breath, a gasp. Yet so low, so quickly suppressed, that none who had not suspected, none who had not been on the watch for the slightest sign, would have heard or noticed it. But he had heard it!
The other was a noisier, a more palpable interruption. Sebastian, below in the great saloon on the front was singing to himself, loudly and boisterously, and then, equally boisterously, was wishing Madame Carmaux "Good-night." Answering evidently, too, some question, which Julian could not hear put to him by her, and expressing also the hope that she would feel better soon.
"Yet," thought Julian, "she cannot quit her room. It is strange. Strange, too, that she should be up so late. It must be two o'clock, at least."
With a glance from his eye towards the lower part of the window, which still he could see from the position in which he lay, he observed that the mysterious watcher outside was gone. Those eyes, at least, no longer gleamed from low down by the floor; through the slats of the blind he perceived that the spot where they had lately been was now a void. The watcher was gone! But what of the one who had been watched, of the lurking creature that was near his bed, and that had gasped with fear even as he turned over on the sofa? What of that? Well, it was still there. He was alone with it.
His thumb drew back the trigger of the revolver, the well-known click was heard-the click which can never be disguised or silenced. A click that many a man has listened to with mortal agony and terror of soul, knowing that it sounds his knell. Then again on his ears there fell that gasp, that indrawn catching of the breath, which told of a terrified object close by his side.
And it could not be Sebastian who had uttered it; Sebastian, the one person alone who had reason to meditate the worst towards him that one human being can desire for another. It could not be he. For was he not still singing boisterously below in the front of the house? It could not be he. And, Julian reflected, he was about to take a life, the life of some one whom he himself did not know, of some one whose presence in his room even at night, at such an hour of the night, might yet be capable of explanation; that might not, in absolute fact, bode evil to him. Suppose, that after all, it should be Zara, and that again she was there for some purpose of serving his interest as he had told Beatrix he believed she had been more than once before. Suppose that, and that now he should fire and kill her! How would he feel then! What would his remorse be?
No! He would not do it.
Instead, therefore, he whispered the words, "Zara, what is it?"
Even as he did so, even as he spoke, he noticed that a change had come over the room. It was quite dark now; the moon's rays no longer gleamed in; the moon itself was gone, obscured. What had happened? In a moment the question was answered.
Upon the balcony outside there came a rattle as though a deluge of small stones had been hurled down upon it, and he, who knew well what the violence of tropical storms is, recognized that one had broken over Desolada, and that the rain, if not hail, was descending in a deluge. A moment later there came, too, a flash of purple, gleaming lightning which was gone before he could turn his eyes into the quarter of the room where lurked the thing that he suspected, felt sure was there. Then, over all, there burst the roar of the thunder from above, reverberating, pealing all around, rumbling, and reechoing a moment later in the Cockscomb Mountains.
"Zara!" he called louder now, so as to make himself heard above the din of the storm-"Zara, why do you not answer me? I mean you no harm."
But, if amid this tumult any answer was given, he did not hear it. For now the crash of the thunder, the downpour of the rain, the screaming of the parrots, and the demoniacal howlings of the baboons farther away, served to create such a turmoil that scarcely could the cry of a human voice be heard above it all.
"I am determined," Julian exclaimed, "to know who and what it is that cowers there!" Wherewith he sprang from off the sofa on which he had previously raised himself to a sitting position, and, with a leap, rushed towards the mosquito curtains hanging by the bedhead. "I will see who and what you are!" he cried, feeling certain that in this spot was still lurking some strange, secret visitant.
Yet to his astonishment the spot was empty when he reached it. Neither human being nor animal, nor anything whatever, was there.
"I am indeed struck with fever and delirious," he muttered to himself, "or if not that, am mad. Yet I could have sworn it was as I thought."
Then again, as he stood there holding in his hand the gauzy curtains which he had brushed aside, the storm burst afresh over the house with renewed violence; again the sheets of rain poured down; once more the purple tropical lightning flashed and the thunder roared. And as the tempest beat down on all beneath its violence, and while a moment of intense darkness was followed by an instant of brilliant light, Julian heard a stronger rattle of the Venetian blinds than the wind had made, and saw, as again there came a flash of lightning, a dark, hooded figure creep out swiftly past them on to the balcony-a figure shrouded to the eyes, yet in the dark eyes of which, as the lightning played on them, there seemed to be a look of awful fear.