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Updated: May 27, 2025
The rose-vines were whipped from the veranda and flung writhing in all directions. The trees in the compound strove like terrified creatures in the grip of a giant. The heat of the blast was like tongues of flame blown from an immense furnace. Merryon's whole body seemed to be wrapped in fire. With a fierce movement, he stripped the coat from him and flung it into the room behind him.
"My name," he said, speaking in a peculiarly soft voice that somehow reminded Merryon of the hiss of a reptile, "is Leo Vulcan. You have heard of me? Perhaps not. I am better known in the Western Hemisphere. You ask me what I want?" He raised a brown, hairy hand and pointed straight at the girl in Merryon's arms. "I want my wife!"
The Plains had become a vast and fetid swamp, the atmosphere a weltering, steamy heat, charged with fever, leaden with despair. But Puck was like a singing bird in the heart of the wilderness. She lived apart in a paradise of her own, and even the colonel had to relent again and bestow his grim smile upon her. "Merryon's a lucky devil," he said, and everyone in the mess agreed with him.
A very curious smile drew Merryon's mouth. "I thought I had had something to do with it," he said. "I think I am entitled to part-ownership, anyway." She shook her head, albeit she was very close to his breast. "You're not, Billikins!" she declared, with vehemence. "You only say that out of pity. And I don't want pity. I I'd rather you hated me than that! Miles rather!" His arms went round her.
Taken fright at last? Well, best thing she could do, all things considered. You ought to be very thankful." He dismissed the subject for more pressing matters, and he never noticed the awful whiteness of Merryon's face or the deadly fixity of his look. Macfarlane noticed both, coming up two hours later to report the death of one of the officers at the bungalow.
The lad spoke uncomfortably, as if against his will. "She asked questions, then?" Merryon's voice was sharp. "Yes, a few. She wanted to know about Forbes and Robey. Robey is awfully bad. I didn't tell her that." "Who is looking after them?" Merryon asked. "Only a native orderly now. The colonel and Macfarlane both had to go to the barracks. It's frightful there. About twenty cases already.
"I've considered everything," Merryon said, rather heavily. "But she came to me through that inferno. I can't send her away again. She wouldn't go." Colonel Davenant swore under his breath. "Let me talk to her!" he said, after a moment. The ghost of a smile touched Merryon's face. "It's no good, sir. You can talk. You won't make any impression."
The colonel lost his temper after his own precipitate fashion. "Don't be such a confounded fool! Take a fortnight's leave I can't spare you longer and go back to the Hills with her! Make her settle down with my wife at Shamkura! Tell her you'll beat her if she doesn't!" Merryon's grim face softened a little. "Thank you very much, sir! But you can't spare me even for so long.
She knelt down before him with small hands tightly clasped. "I'm going to say something dreadful, Billikins," she said. He looked at her for a moment or two in silence. Then, "I know what you are going to say," he said. She shook her head. "Oh, no, you don't, darling. It's something that'll make you frightfully angry." The faintest gleam of a smile crossed Merryon's face. "With you?" he said.
But, "You wait!" said Macfarlane, the doctor, with gloomy emphasis. "There's more to come." It was on a night of awful darkness that he uttered this prophecy, and his hearers were in too overwhelming a state of depression to debate the matter. Merryon's bungalow was actually the only one in the station in which happiness reigned.
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