The Knave of Diamonds by Ethel May Dell

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He drew up at the side of the long white road that zigzagged over the
moor, and they went together into the springy heath, wading in it after
the waxen flowers.

And here Anne sat down in the blazing sunshine and lifted her clear eyes
to his. "I won't thank you, because we are friends," she said. "But this
is the best day I have ever had."

He pushed up his goggles and sat down beside her. "So you are not sorry
you came?" he said.

"I could not be sorry to-day," she answered. "How long have you known
this perfect place?"

He lay back in the heather with his arms flung wide. "I came here first
one day in the spring, a day in May. The place was a blaze of gorse and
broom--as if it were on fire. It suited me--for I was on fire too."

In the silence that succeeded his words he turned and leisurely
scrutinised her. She was snapping a stalk of heather with minute care. A
deep flush rose and spread over her face under his eyes.

"Why don't you look at me?" he said.

Very slowly her eyes came down to him. He was smiling in a secret
fashion, not as if he expected her to smile in return. The sunlight beat
down upon his upturned face. He blinked at her lazily and stretched every
limb in succession, like a cat.

"Let me know when you begin to feel bored," he said. "I am quite ready to
amuse you."

"I thought it was only the bores who were ever bored," she said.

He opened his eyes a little. "Did I say that or did you?"

She returned to her heather-pulling. "I believe you said it originally."

"I remember," he returned composedly. "It was on the night you bestowed
upon me the office of court-jester, the night you dreamed I was the Knave
of Diamonds, the night that--"

She interrupted very gently but very resolutely; "The night that we
became friends, Nap."

"A good many things happened that night," he remarked, pulling off his
cap and pitching it from him.

"Is that wise?" she said. "The sun is rather strong."

He sat up, ignoring the warning. "Anne," he said, "have you ever dreamed
about me since that night?"

She was silent, all her attention concentrated upon her bunch of heather.
His eyes left her face and began to study her hands.

After a moment he pulled a bit of string out of his pocket and without
a word proceeded to wind it round the stalks she held. As he knotted
it he spoke.

"So that is why you were afraid of me to-day. I knew there was something.
I winded it the moment we met. Whenever I hold your hand in mine I can
see into your soul. What was it, Anne? The Knave of Diamonds on a black
mare--riding to perdition?"

He laughed at her softly as though she had been a child. He was still
watching her hands. Suddenly he laid his own upon them and looked
into her face.

"Or was it just a savage?" he asked her quietly.

Against her will, in spite of the blaze of sunshine, she shivered.

"Yes," he said. "But isn't it better to face him than to run away?
Haven't you always found it so? You kissed him once, Anne. Do you
remember? It was the greatest thing that ever happened to him."

He spoke with a gentleness that amazed her. His eyes held hers, but
without compulsion. He was lulling her fear of him to rest, as he
alone knew how.

She answered him with quivering lips. "I have wondered since if I
did wrong."

"Then don't wonder," he said. "For I was nearer to the God you worship
at that moment than I had ever been before. I never believed in Him till
then, but that night I wrestled with Him--and got beaten." He dropped
suddenly into his most cynical drawl, so that she wondered if, after
all, he were mocking her. "It kind of made an impression on me. I
thought it might interest you to know. Have you had enough of this yet?
Shall we move on?"

She rose in silence. She was very far from certain, and yet she fancied
there had been a ring of sincerity in his words.

As they reached the car she laid her hand for an instant on his arm. "If
it did that for you, Nap," she said, "I do not regret it."

He smiled in his faint, cynical fashion. "I believe you'll turn me out a
good man some day," he said. "And I wonder if you will like me any when
it's done."

"I only want you to be your better self," she answered gently.

"Which is a myth," he returned, as he handed her in, "which exists only
in your most gracious imagination."

And with that he pulled the mask over his face once more and turned to
the wheel.

CHAPTER XI

THE RETURN TO EARTH

It was nearly two before they reached Bramhurst and drew up before the
one ancient inn the place possessed. Upstairs, in a lattice-windowed room
with sloping floor and bulging ceiling, a room that was full of the scent
of honeysuckle, Anne washed away the dust of the road. Turning to the
mirror on the dressing-table when this was over, she stood a moment
wide-eyed, startled. Through her mind there swept again the memory of a
day that seemed very far away--a day begun in sunshine and ended in
storm, a day when she had looked into the eyes of a white-faced woman in
the glass and had shrunk away in fear. It was a very different vision
that now met her gaze, and yet she had a feeling that there was something
in it that remained unaltered. Was it in the eyes that shone from a face
so radiant that it might have been the face of a girl?

She could not have said. Only after that one brief glimpse she
looked no more.

Descending, she found Nap waiting for her in the oak-beamed coffee-room.
He made her sit facing the open window, looking forth upon hill and
forest and shallow winding river.

The stout old English waiter who attended to their wants very
speedily withdrew.

"He thinks we are on our wedding-trip," said Nap.

She glanced at him sharply.

"Yes, I let him have it so," he returned. "I never destroy a pretty
illusion if I can help it."

"What time do we start back?" said Anne, aware of burning cheeks, which
he was studying with undisguised amusement.

"Would you like some ice?" he suggested.

She laughed, with something of an effort. "Don't be ridiculous, Nap!"

"I am sure you have never done anything so improper in all your life
before," he went on. "What must it feel like? P'r'aps you would have
preferred me to explain the situation to him in detail? I will have him
in and do it now--if you really think it worth while. I shouldn't myself,
but then I seldom suffer from truthfulness in its most acute form. It's a
tiresome disease, isn't it? One might almost call it dashed inconvenient
on an occasion such as this. There is only one remedy that I can suggest,
and that is to pretend it's true."

"I am not good at pretending," Anne answered gravely.

He laughed. "Very true, O Queen! Horribly true! But I am, you know, a
positive genius in that respect. So I'm going to pretend I'm an
Englishman--of the worthy, thick-headed, bulldog breed. (I am sure you
admire it; you wouldn't be an Englishwoman if you didn't). And you are my
devoted and adorable wife. You needn't look shocked. It's all for the
sake of that chap's morals. Do you think I can do it?"

"I don't want you to do it, Nap," she said earnestly.

He dropped the subject instantly. "Your wish is law. There is only one
other person in this world who can command my implicit obedience in this
fashion. So I hope you appreciate your power."

"And that other is Lucas?" said Anne.

He nodded. "Luke the irresistible! Did you ever try to resist him?"

She shook her head with a smile.

"Take my advice then," he said. "Never do! He could whip creation with
his hands tied behind him. Oh, I know you all think him mild-tempered and
easy-going, more like a woman than a man. But you wait till you're hard
up against him. Then you'll know what I mean when I tell you he's
colossal." There was a queer ring of passion in his voice as he ended. It
sounded to Anne like the half-stifled cry of a wounded animal.

Because of it she repressed the impulse to ask him what he meant.
Nevertheless, after a moment, as if impelled by some hidden force, he
continued.

"There was a time when I thought of him much as you do. And then one day
there came a reckoning--an almighty big reckoning." He leaned back in his
chair and stared upwards, while the grim lines of his mouth tightened.
"It was down in Arizona. We fought a duel that lasted a day and a night.
He was a worse cripple in those days than he is now, but he won out--he
won out." Again came the cynical drawl, covering his actual feelings as
with an impenetrable veil. "I've had a kind of respect for him ever
since," he said. "One does, you know."

"One would," said Anne, and again refrained from asking questions.

She was thinking of the complete confidence with which Lucas had spoken
of his ascendency over this man.

Finishing luncheon they went out over the common that stretched from the
very door, down the hill-side of short, sun-baked grass, passing between
masses of scorched broom, whose bursting pods crackled perpetually in the
sunshine, till they came to the green shade of forest trees and the gleam
of a running stream.

The whirr of grasshoppers filled the air and the humming of insects
innumerable. Away in the distance sounded the metal clang of a cow-bell.
It was the only definite sound that broke the stillness. The heat was
intense. A dull, copper haze had risen and partially obscured the sun.

Anne stopped on the edge of the stream. Wonderful dragon-flies such as
she had never seen before, peacock, orange and palest green, darted to
and fro above the brown water. Nap leaned against a tree close to her and
smoked a cigarette.

She spoke at last without turning. "Am I in fairyland, I wonder?"

"Or the Garden of Eden," suggested Nap.

She laughed a little, and stooping tried to reach a forget-me-not that
grew on the edge of the water.

"Beware of the serpent!" he warned. "Anyway, don't tumble in!"

She stretched back a hand to him. "Don't let me go!"

His hand closed instantly and firmly upon her wrist. In a moment she
drew back with the flower in her hand, to find his cigarette smouldering
on a tuft of moss. He set his foot upon it without explanation and
lighted another.

"Ought we not to be starting back?" she asked.

"It won't be so hot in half-an-hour," he said.

"But how long will it take?"

"It can be done in under three hours. If we start at half-past-four you
should be home well before sunset."

He smiled with the words, and Anne suffered herself to be persuaded.
Certainly the shade of the beech trees was infinitely preferable to the
glare of the dusty roads, and the slumberous atmosphere made her feel
undeniably languorous.

She sat down therefore on the roots of a tree, still watching the
dragon-flies flitting above the water.

Nap stripped off his coat and made it into a cushion. "Lean back on this.
Yes, really. I'm thankful for the excuse to go without it. How is that?
Comfortable?"

She thanked him with a smile. "I mustn't go to sleep."

"Why not?" said Nap. "There is nothing to disturb you. I'm going back to
the inn to order tea before we start."

He was off with the words with that free, agile gait of his that always
made her think of some wild creature of the woods.

She leaned back with a sense of complete well-being and closed her
eyes....

When she opened them again it was with a guilty feeling of having been
asleep at a critical juncture. With a start she sat up and looked
around her. The sun-rays were still slanting through the wood, but
dully, as though they shone through a sheet of smoked glass. The
stillness was intense.

A sharp sense of nervousness pricked her. There seemed to be something
ominous in the atmosphere; or was it only in her own heart that it
existed? And where was Nap? Surely he had been gone for a very long time!

She rose stiffly and picked up his coat. At the same instant a shrill
whistle sounded through the wood, and in a moment she saw him coming
swiftly towards her.

Quietly she moved to meet him.

He began to speak before he reached her. "I was afraid you would be tired
of waiting and wander about till you got frightened and lost yourself. Do
you ever have hysterics?"

"Never," said Anne firmly.

He took his coat and began to wriggle into it, surveying her meantime
with a smile half-speculative, half-rueful.

"Well, that's a weight off my mind, anyway," he remarked at length.
"For I have a staggering piece of news for you which I hardly dare to
impart. Oh, it's no good looking at your watch. It's hopelessly late,
nearly six o'clock, and in any case I can't get you home to-night.
There's no petrol."

"Nap!" Anne's voice was a curious compound of consternation and relief.
Somehow--doubtless it was the effect of thunder in the atmosphere--she
had expected something in the nature of tragedy.

Nap put on his most contrite air. "Do be a brick and take it nicely!" he
pleaded. "I know I was an all-fired fool not to see to it for myself. But
I was called away, and so I had to leave it to those dunderheads at the
garage. I only made the discovery when I left you a couple of hours ago.
There was just enough left to take me to Rodding, so I pelted off at once
to some motorworks I knew of there, only to find the place was empty.
It's a hole of a town. There was some game on, and I couldn't get a
conveyance anywhere. So I just put up the motor and came back across
country on foot. I don't see what else I could have done, do you?"

Anne did not for the moment, but she was considering the situation too
rapidly to answer him.

"My only consolation," he went on, "is that you have got a change of
raiment, which is more than I have. Oh, yes, I had the sense to think of
that contingency. Your bag is at the inn here, waiting for you."

"You had better have taken me back with you to Rodding," Anne said.

"Yes, I know. But I expected to be back in half an hour if all went well.
It's easy to be wise after the event, isn't it? I've thought of that
myself since." Nap picked up a twig and bit it viciously. "Anyway, there
is some tea waiting for us. Shall we go back?"

Anne turned beside him. "Then what do you propose to do?"

He glanced at her. "Nothing before morning, I'm afraid. There is no
vehicle to be had here. I will send someone down to Rodding in the
morning for a conveyance. We can take the train from there to Staps,
where I can get some petrol. We ought by that means to reach home
sometime in the afternoon. It is the only feasible plan, I am afraid;
unless you can suggest a better."

He looked at her keenly, still biting at the twig between his teeth.

Anne walked for several seconds in silence. At last, "Would it be quite
impossible to walk to Rodding now?" she asked.

"Not at all," said Nap. "It is about eight miles through the woods. We
should be benighted, of course. Also I fancy there is a storm coming up.
But if you wish to make the attempt--"

"I was only wondering," she said quietly, "if we could get an evening
train to Staps. That, I know, is on the main line. You could put up
there, and I could take the night train to town."

"Oh, quite so," said Nap. "Shall we have tea before we start?"

They had emerged from the wood and were beginning to climb the hill. The
veiled sunlight gave an unreal effect to the landscape. The broom bushes
looked ghostly.

Anne gave an uneasy glance around. "I believe you are right about the
storm," she said.

"I generally am right," observed Nap.

They walked on. "I shouldn't like to be benighted in the woods," she said
presently.

His scoffing smile showed for an instant. "Alone with me too! Most
improper!"

"I was thinking we might miss the way," Anne returned with dignity. "I
wonder--shall we risk it?"

She turned to him as if consulting him, but Nap's face was to the sky.
"That is for you to decide," he said. "We might do it. The storm won't
break at present."

"It will be violent when it does," she said.

He nodded. "It will."

She quickened her steps instinctively, and he lengthened his stride. The
smile had ceased to twitch his lips.

"Have you decided?" he asked her suddenly, and his voice sounded
almost stern.

They were nearing the top of the hill. She paused, panting a little.
"Yes. I will spend the night here."

He gave her a glance of approval. "You are a wise woman."

"I hope so," said Anne. "I must telegraph at once to Dimsdale and tell
him not to expect me."

Nap's glance fell away from her. He said nothing whatever.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE FACE OF THE GODS

"Thank the gods, we are the only guests!" said Nap that evening, as they
sat down to dine at the table at which they had lunched.

The glare of a lurid sunset streamed across the sky and earth. There was
a waiting stillness upon all things. It was the hush before the storm.

An unwonted restlessness had taken possession of Anne. She did not echo
his thanksgiving, an omission which he did not fail to note, but upon
which he made no comment.

It was in fact scarcely a place for any but day visitors, being some
considerable distance from the beaten track. The dinner placed before
them was not of a very tempting description, and Anne's appetite dwindled
very rapidly.

"You must eat something," urged Nap. "Satisfy your hunger with
strawberries and cream."

But Anne had no hunger to satisfy, and she presently rose from the table
with something like a sigh of relief.

They went into the drawing-room, a room smelling strongly of musk, and
littered largely with furniture of every description. Nap opened wide a
door-window that led into a miniature rosegarden. Beyond stretched the
common, every detail standing out with marvellous vividness in the weird
storm-light.

"St. Christopher!" he murmured softly. "We are going to catch it."

Anne sat down in a low chair near him, gazing forth in silence, her chin
on her hand.

He turned a little and looked down at her, and thus some minutes slipped
away, the man as tensely still as the awe-stricken world without, the
woman deep in thought.

He moved at last with a curious gesture as if he freed and restrained
himself by the same action.

"Why don't you think out loud?" he said.

She raised her eyes for a moment. "I was thinking of my husband," she
said.

He made a sharp movement--a movement that was almost fierce--and again
seemed to take a fresh grip upon himself. His black brows met above his
brooding eyes. "Can't you leave him out of the reckoning for this one
night?" he asked.

"I think not," she answered quietly.

He turned his face to the sinking sun. It shone like a smouldering
furnace behind bars of inky cloud.

"You told me once," he said, speaking with obvious constraint, "that you
did not think you would ever live with him again."

She stifled a sigh in her throat. "I thought so then."

"And what has happened to make you change your mind?"

Anne was silent. She could not have seen the fire that leapt and darted
in the dusky eyes had she been looking at him, but she was not looking.
Her chin was back upon her hand. She was gazing out into the darkening
world with the eyes of a woman who sees once more departed visions.

"I think," she said slowly at length, as he waited immovably for her
answer, "that I see my duty more clearly now than then."

"Duty! Duty!" he said impatiently. "Duty is your fetish. You sacrifice
your whole life to it. And what do you get in return? A sense of virtue
perhaps, nothing more. There isn't much warming power in virtue. I've
tried it and I know!" He broke off to utter a very bitter laugh. "And so
I've given it up," he said. "It's a trail that leads to nowhere."

Anne's brows drew together for an instant. "I hoped you might come to
think otherwise," she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. "How can I? I've lived the life of a saint for
the past six months, and I am no nearer heaven than when I began. It's
too slow a process for me. I wasn't made to plough an endless furrow."

"We all of us say that," said Anne, with her faint smile. "But do we
any of us really know what we were made for? Are we not all in the
making still?"

He thrust out his chin. "I can't be abstruse tonight. I know what I
was made for, and I know what you were made for. That--anyway for
tonight--is all that matters."

He spoke almost brutally, yet still he held himself as it were aloof. He
was staring unblinking into the sunset. Already the furnace was dying
down. The thunder-clouds were closing up. The black bars had drawn
together into one immense mass, advancing, ominous. Only through a single
narrow slit the red light still shone.

Mutely they watched it pass, Anne with her sad eyes fixed and thoughtful,
Nap still with that suggestion of restrained activity as if he watched
for a signal.

Gradually the rift closed, and a breathless darkness came.

Anne uttered a little sigh. "I wish the storm would break," she said. "I
am tired of waiting."

As if in answer, out of the west there rose a long low rumble.

"Ah!" she said, and no more.

For as if the signal had come, Nap turned with a movement
incredibly swift, a movement that was almost a spring, and caught her
up into his arms.

"Are you tired of waiting, my Queen--my Queen?" he said, and there was a
note of fierce laughter in his words. "Then--by heaven--you shall wait
no longer!"

His quick breath scorched her face, and in a moment, almost before she
knew what was happening, his lips were on her own. He kissed her as she
had never been kissed before--a single fiery kiss that sent all the blood
in tumult to her heart. She shrank and quivered under it, but she was
powerless to escape. There was sheer unshackled savagery in the holding
of his arms, and dismay thrilled her through and through.

Yet, as his lips left hers, she managed to speak, though her voice was no
more than a gasping whisper. "Nap, are you mad? Let me go!"

But he only held her faster, faster still.

"Yes, I am mad," he said, and the words came quick and passionate, the
lips that uttered them still close to her own. "I am mad for you, Anne. I
worship you. And I swear that while I live no other man shall ever hold
you in his arms again. Anne--goddess--queen--woman--you are mine--you
are mine--you are mine!"

Again his lips pressed hers, and again from head to foot she felt as if a
flame had scorched her. Desperately she began to resist him though
terribly conscious that he had her at his mercy. But he quelled her
resistance instantly, with a mastery that made her know more thoroughly
her utter impotence.

"Do you think that you can hold me in check for ever?" he said. "I tell
you it only makes me worse. I am a savage, and chains of that sort won't
hold me. What is the good of fighting against fate? You have done it as
long as I have known you; but you are beaten at last. Oh, you may turn
your face from me. It makes no difference now. I've played for this, and
I've won! You have been goddess to me ever since the day I met you.
To-night--you shall be woman!"

He broke into a low, exultant laugh. She could feel the fierce beating of
his heart, and her own died within her. The blaze of his passion ringed
her round like a forest fire in which all things perish.

But even then she knew that somewhere, somewhere, there was a way of
escape, and with the instinct of the hunted creature she sought it.

"To-night," she said, "I shall know whether you have ever really
loved me."

"What?" he said. "You dare to question that now? Do you want to put me to
the proof then? Shall I show you how much I love you?"

"No," she said. "Take your arms away!"

She did not expect his obedience, but on the instant he spread them wide
and released her.

"And now?" he said.

She almost tottered, so amazing had been his compliance. And then as
swiftly--came the knowledge that he had not really set her free. It had
pleased him to humour her, that was all. He stood before her with all the
arrogance of a conqueror. And through the gathering darkness his eyes
shone like the eyes of a tiger--two flames piercing the gloom.

She mustered all her strength to face him, confronting him with that
unconscious majesty that first had drawn him to her.

"And now," she said, "let us once and for all understand one another."

"What?" he said. "Don't you understand me yet? Don't you
realise--yet--that when a man of my stamp wants a woman he--takes her?"

Again there throbbed in his voice that deep note of savagery, such
savagery as made her quail. But it was no moment for shrinking. She knew
instinctively that at the first sign of weakness he would take her back
into his arms.

She straightened herself therefore, summoning all her pride. "Do you
really think I am the sort of woman to be taken so?" she asked. "Do you
really think I am yours for the taking? If so, then you have never known
me. Nor--till this moment--have I known you."

He heard her without the faintest hint of astonishment or shame, standing
before her with that careless animal grace of his that made him in some
fashion superb.

"Yes," he said, "I really do think you are mine for the taking this time,
but you will admit I've been patient. And I've taken the trouble to make
things easy for you. I've spirited you away without putting you through
any ordeals of hesitation or suspense. I've done it all quite
unobtrusively. To-morrow we go to London, after that to Paris, and after
that--whithersoever you will--anywhere under the sun where we can be
alone. As to knowing each other"--his voice changed subtly, became soft,
with something of a purring quality--"we have all our lives before us,
and we shall be learning every day."

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