Chapter XXIV: The Final Warning

But little recollection of the drive remained afterwards in Olwen's memory. She could recall only the moment when Ninian pulled back the folds of the enveloping plaid, lifted her and bore her into the Pele. The strait dimensions of the newel stair compelled him to carry her upright, and the pain of her head, thus unsupported, was severe.

There followed only a confused impression of Sunia's sympathetic hands, of being undressed, tended and laid in bed. After this nothing definite for several days.

The reaction, which Dr. Balmayne had anticipated, supervened. That night her temperature rose, and for some days she alternated between delirium and weakness. Her youthful strength, however, very soon triumphed. There was no symptom of pneumonia or any other bad result from her exposure. Her wound healed cleanly and rapidly, and on the morning of the fourth day after the accident she awoke to a normal state of things.

The room was warm with fire and gay with sunshine. Her head no longer ached, and her mind worked clearly. Sunia, as usual, squatted upon the hearth.

"Oh, Sunia," she said suddenly, "what trouble I have given!"

The Hindu rose and came to the bedside with a pleased face. "Come! Missee get back herself," said she cooingly. "All right, so long as she get well quick."

"I am well. I shall ask the doctor to let me get up to-day."

The ayah's face darkened a little at mention of the doctor. "Humph! First ting you speak of doctor sahib," said she. "He not care how long Missee stay in bed, he allowed come up and see her. English way--bad English way. My country, no let pretty doctor see mem-sahibs."

Olwen smiled at the old woman's talk. "There is so much news I want to hear," she said. "You must tell me all about everything. First, was Madam very vexed with us? Was she very anxious when we did not come home that night?"

The ayah glanced at her sidelong. "Um--yes. She wonder if you safe and warm. She think you stop in the farm all a night."

"We hoped she would think that. Now about Mr. Guyse. I hope he was not ill afterwards?" She spoke as unconcernedly as she could, turning away her head.

"He get shocking bad cold. Been two days in his bed. Better now," said Sunia, watching as keenly as a bird the colour that would flicker over the averted cheek at the mention of Ninian's name.

"I am sorry. He was very good to me all that night. I should have frozen to death if he had not kept me warm."

"With a clothes off his back," replied the ayah.

"Yes. Now about my own people. Did Madam write to my home, do you know, Sunia?"

"No, Madam not write. She not know what best to say. Think Missee better write her own self, Doctor say, don't frighten 'em, Missee all better in a little few days."

Olwen felt grateful. Now that memory was coming back she felt a keen desire that the whole of her adventure should not be known in Bramforth.

The intensity of this desire lit up the episode in an ugly light. She knew full well that she ought not to have set forth upon a day's lonely expedition with Ninian, completely unchaperoned. She recalled the things she had written concerning him to Gracie. Yet she had accepted him as sole escort during the whole of a day, a favour she would never have dreamed of according to Ben, who was a dozen times more reliable. She was greatly to blame, and had a lively consciousness that this was so. The resulting disaster had been an accident; but such an accident ought not to have been possible had she been as circumspect as her grandfather and aunts would expect of her.

And now, what came next?

Her mind held two distinct ideas, and they fronted her like danger-boards. She heard Ninian's voice, saying, far more earnestly than she had ever heard him speak, "I wish to God I had never seen you." ... And she saw Balmayne's grave, kind face, his anxious expression, as he said, "I wish it had not happened--not with that man!" ... and woven into both these thoughts was a wild thrill, a stir of the heart, a nameless sweetness which she could not banish.

She was hovering once more in the tangle of doubt and fear in which Sunia's attempt to administer the love potion had cast her. She felt afraid to face Madam or Ninian. Madam had not been to see her at all, and she could not help knowing that most people in Madam's place would feel considerable annoyance at such an escapade on the part of a girl in her position.

With renewed force the conviction that the Pele was no place for her asserted itself. But now she fought against the conviction. She did not want to go--did not want to leave ... what or whom?

She glanced at the ayah, knowing full well that those watchful eyes had discovered her secret.

"Poor Missee," said Sunia pityingly. "Ole Ayah saw it all that night--night before you go skating with the sahib--that you going to be hurt, going to hurt a head. She not say, no good frighten Missee. But ole Ayah never see wrong." She sighed deeply, lifting a little saucepan from the fire, and bringing to the girl a cup of such soup as Mrs. Baxter alone knew how to make.

Her gentleness, her sympathy, were so seductive that Olwen was almost ready to fling her arms round her neck and whisper that she loved the sahib--loved him and trusted him. Almost--not quite. The thought of the philtre stuck in her throat. What would have become of her in her extremity that night in the mile-castle had she swallowed the horrible brew? She shuddered as she thought of it.

She knew that Ayah was waiting there, pleadingly, hopefully, for her to speak again of the sahib--to give her some details of their adventure. This she was determined not to do. In her mind was stirring an uneasy wonder as to what she might have said when she was feverish. She knew that she had talked, for there had been glimpses of sanity during which she had heard her own tongue babbling, and wondered who that was who would go on chattering so disturbingly.

She longed for somebody in whom she might confide. But there was nobody; and she did not intend to write anything like the full story of her accident home to Bramforth.

She asked, presently, for pencil and paper, and wrote a line to Aunt Ada:

- "I'm sorry it is so long since I wrote, but I have had a slight accident. It happened when I was skating. I cut my head against a bit of rock. As a result I have had to go to bed for a day or two, but am now well on the mend. They are extremely kind, and I have a doctor in attendance. Ayah waits on me hand and foot. I am much vexed at being laid up, as you may imagine, and if I don't get well as fast as I hope to do, I shall come home for a week or two. Can write more fully after the doctor's next visit, but mind you don't worry. I am quite all right."

- When the doctor arrived that day she was, for the first time, eager to talk.

He sat down at the bedside, and the ayah stood in the background with the air of being blind, deaf and dumb, but, as Olwen knew, alive to every word, every look, every smile that passed between them.

Balmayne was as conscious as she of this fact. He knew also that all the Hindu's ideas of propriety would be outraged were he left alone with his patient; but for all that he meant to have private speech with Miss Innes.

"Sorry to trouble you, Ayah," he said, "but I must ask you to prepare that hot lotion again for me."

The woman rose, looking malevolently at him, listened to his directions, and slipped out through the arras to her own room, where she kept a small cooking-stove.

He followed, and drew back the hangings, saying quietly, "Too much draught through these curtains. I will close the door." He did so, in spite of the gleam of hate in the old woman's eyes, returned to Olwen with a smile, and began his unrolling of the bandages about her head.

"Well, Miss Innes," he said, purposely lowering his voice, "it is strange how things settle themselves, as it were, accidentally. A while ago I was wondering how it would be possible to get you away from this place; and behold! You have decided to break your head and made departure inevitable."

She turned quite pale, as he noted with vexation. "Departure inevitable?" she repeated in a startled voice. "Why?"

"You won't be able to do any work for some time yet. I shall have to order you home, but I thought there was no need to tell the Guyses as much until we came within reasonable distance of the date at which I can allow you to travel."

"And that--when will that be?" she asked faintly.

"Well, let me see. To-day is Saturday. I ought to have these stitches out on Monday or Tuesday. You could travel the day after, or two days after. Yes, you might leave next Wednesday or Thursday."

"But--but I shall be quite well by then," she stammered.

"No. You will have to go quietly for some weeks. No careering on skates or in sleighs." He smiled. She returned no answer, she was most evidently perturbed. "Fresh air," he went on, "is necessary, and the Guyses keep no car. Now that the snow is gone, the only vehicle you could use is that dog-cart, which is most unsuitable."

She laughed a little bitterly. "Do you think my grandfather keeps a car? You don't seem to understand that I am out to earn my living."

"I am speaking," he said, "in the purest altruism," and he smiled a little ruefully. "Personally I shall be considerably the poorer when you go. But--well, I have sisters of my own, and I know a girl of the right kind when I see her. I tell you, I would not trust a sister of mine in the house with Guyse for a week."

"Yet I have been safely in the house with him for six weeks," she countered swiftly.

He glanced at the bandage on her hair, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Safely? Perhaps safety is a matter of opinion."

"No, it is a matter of fact," said Olwen, with a shaking voice. "As a fact, I am convinced that Mr. Guyse would do nothing to harm me."

The doctor stood a moment silent, mechanically rolling a bandage between his skilful fingers.

"Well," he said slowly, "I must ask you to pardon my interference. This is the last time I shall speak to you on this subject. It is a very disagreeable duty, and will probably be useless; but I must clear my conscience. Were I in the place of your relatives, I should argue somewhat thus: 'She was young and inexperienced, and as innocent as all good girls. The only person who had a chance to warn her was the doctor. It was up to him to use his medical authority and give her a pretext to slip out of the net.'"

Olwen's colour was brilliant. "But," she expostulated, "if you mean--what you seem to mean--that Mr. Guyse has--bad designs--surely he knows that I am not without a family and friends----"

"He also knows that you are of age," put in the doctor quietly. "I should guess you to be a little over twenty-one----"

"I am twenty-three."

"Just so. Then what remedy has your family? None whatever. Anything they might do would merely make public what they would wish to hide. Abduction is a punishable offence. But this is another matter."

She was outraged. "Oh, Dr. Balmayne, won't you give me credit for some self-restraint, some modesty? Don't you realise that what you are hinting could never be?"

It was his turn to colour, and he did so. "I am aware that I am risking your friendship, even your toleration, by speaking," he replied steadily. "I do know, of course, that this could never be, except in the one case----"

"In the one case?"

"Of his having succeeded in making you care for him."

In the pulsating silence which followed this remark they heard the door unlatch, and Sunia brought in the bowl of hot lotion.

The doctor took it calmly from her hands, completed his treatment, and presently took his leave. As he wished Olwen good-bye, he added rapidly in French: "_Soyez calme. Je ne vous redirai jamais les choses que j'ai dit aujourd'hui_."

Nothing at all passed between her and the ayah after the doctor left. All the rest of the day she was meditating upon what he had said. She could not but see that he honestly thought her in danger; and as she pictured to herself the next meeting between herself and the incorrigible Nin, she felt herself falter.

She was no fool. She knew that a girl does not think of a man day and night--even to be in a rage with him--unless he has made a deep impression.

She wondered a good deal that he sent her no written message. Each day Sunia brought an inquiry from Madam and the sahib as to the health and progress of the invalid. This was answered verbally. No note came from the young man. Was he her lover, or not? If he were not, she knew she could not stay. If he were, the doctor thought she ought not to stay.

On the following day, which was Sunday, she sent down a written message on an open morsel of paper: "Please send me up some light fiction."

Half a dozen books came up, but with no message. She would not ask Sunia how Mr. Guyse was, or what he was doing; but as the woman moved about the room, putting it to rights, she remarked: "First day my sahib gone out. He gone spend a day with Kendall-folk. They pleased, I thinking."

"Would not you be pleased, too, to have your sahib married?" asked Olwen boldly, hoping her colour did not change.

"I pray my gods all days for my sahib to marry," was the simple reply, "and that I hold his son in my arms before I die."

Olwen rolled over and pretended to hunt for a handkerchief under her pillow. "Well, I hope you will have your wish," said she tranquilly.

The Hindu woman paused a moment to contemplate the enigma of the European woman's coldness. Olwen nearly laughed, the woman's thoughts was so plainly written in her face. "You must be an inhuman she-creature," was the unspoken word. "I gave you the most potent philtre known to Hindu lore, and still you are unawakened. Still you can talk of his marriage with another woman quietly. I have been mistaken in you."