The Knave of Diamonds, Ethel May Dell [fun books to read for adults txt] 📗

smiled as she said, "I have yet to discover that you are so very despicable."
"You have yet to discover--many things," said Nap enigmatically. "Will you be pleased to make the first move?"
She did so silently. They had played together several times before. He had formed a habit of visiting her every evening, and though her skill at the game was far from great, it had been a welcome diversion from the constant anxiety that pressed so heavily upon her. Nap was an expert player, yet he seemed to enjoy the poor game which was all she had to offer. Perhaps he liked to feel her at his mercy. She strongly suspected that he often deliberately prolonged the contest though he seldom allowed her to beat him.
To-night, however, he seemed to be in a restless mood, and she soon saw that he was bent upon a swift victory. He made his moves with a quick dexterity that baffled her completely, and but a very few minutes elapsed before he uttered his customary warning.
"You would do well to beware."
"Which means that I am beaten, I suppose," she said, with a smile of resignation.
"You can save yourself if you like," he said, with his eyes on the board, "if you consider it worth while."
"I don't think I do," she answered. "The end will be the same."
His eyes flashed up at her. "You surrender unconditionally?"
She continued to smile despite the sadness of her face. "Absolutely. I am so accustomed to defeat that I am getting callous."
"You seem to have great confidence in my chivalry," he said, looking full at her.
"I have--every confidence, Mr. Errol," she answered gravely. "I think that you and your brother are the most chivalrous men I know."
His laugh had a ring of harshness. "Believe me, I am not accustomed to being ranked with the saints," he said. "How shall I get away from your halo? I warn you, it's a most awful misfit. You'll find it out presently, and make me suffer for your mistake."
"You haven't a very high opinion of my sense of justice," Anne said, with just a tinge of reproach in her gentle voice.
"No," he said recklessly. "None whatever. You are sure to forget who fashioned the halo. Women always do."
Anne was silent.
He leaned suddenly towards her, careless of the chessmen that rolled in all directions. "I haven't been living up to the halo to-day," he said, and there was that in his voice that touched her to quick pity. "I've been snapping and biting like a wild beast all day long. I've been in hell myself, and I've made it hell wherever I went."
"Oh, but why?" Half involuntarily she held out her hand to him as one who would assist a friend in deep waters.
He took it, held it closely, bowed his forehead upon it, and so sat tensely silent.
"Something is wrong. I wish I could help you," she said at last.
He lifted his head, met her eyes of grave compassion, and abruptly set her free.
"You have done what you could for me," he said. "You've made me hate my inferno. But you can't pull me out. You have"--she saw his teeth for a second though scarcely in a smile--"other fish to fry."
"Whatever I am doing, I shall not forget my friends, Nap," she said, with great earnestness.
"No," he returned, "you won't forget them. I shouldn't wonder if you prayed for them even. I am sure you are one of the faithful." There was more of suppressed misery than irony in his voice. "But is that likely to help when you don't so much as know what to pray for?"
He got up and moved away from her with that noiseless footfall that was so like the stealthy padding of a beast.
Anne lay and silently watched him. Her uncertainty regarding him had long since passed away. Though she was far from understanding him, he had become an intimate friend, and she treated him as such. True, he was unlike any other man she had ever met, but that fact had ceased to embarrass her. She accepted him as he was.
He came back at length and sat down, smiling at her, though somewhat grimly.
"You will pardon your poor jester," he said, "if he fails to make a joke on your last night. He could make jokes--plenty of them, but not of the sort that would please you."
Anne said nothing. She would not, if she could help it, betray to any how much she was dreading the morrow. But she felt that he knew it in spite of her.
His next words revealed the fact. "You are going to purgatory," he said, "and I am going to perdition. Do you know, I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't do better to turn and fly in the face of the gods when they drive us too hard? Why do we give in when we've nothing to gain and all to lose?"
She met his look with her steadfast eyes. "Does duty count as nothing?" she said.
He made an impatient movement, and would have spoken, but she stopped him.
"Please don't rail at duty. I know your creed is pleasure, but the pursuit of pleasure does not, after all, bring happiness."
"Who wants pleasure?" demanded Nap fiercely. "That's only the anesthetic when things get unbearable. You use duty in the same way. But what we both want, what we both hanker for, starve for, is just life! Who cares if there is pain with it? I don't, nor do you. And yet we keep on stunting and stultifying ourselves with these old-fashioned remedies for a disease we only half understand, when we might have all the world and then some. Oh, we're fools--we're fools!" His voice rang wildly passionate. He flung out his arms as if he wrestled with something. "We've been cheated for centuries of our birthright, and we still put up with it, still bring our human sacrifices to an empty shrine!"
And there he broke off short, checked suddenly at the height of his outburst though she had made no second effort to stop him.
Her quiet eyes had not flinched from his. She had made no sign of shrinking. With the utmost patience she had listened to him. Yet by some means intangible the fiery stream of his rebellion was stayed.
There fell a brief silence. Then he rose. "I am afraid I am not fit for civilised society to-night," he said. "I will say good-bye." He held her hand for a moment. "You will let me see you sometimes?"
"I hope to come now and then to Baronmead," she answered quietly. "But you will not--please--come to the Manor again."
He looked down at her with eyes that had become inscrutable. "I shall not come against your will," he said.
"Thank you," she answered simply.
And so he left her.


CHAPTER XIV
A BIG THING

As the widowed rector's only daughter, Dot's occupations were many and various, and it was in consequence no difficult matter to be too deeply engrossed in these occupations to have any time to spare for intercourse with the rector's pupil.
Her brother had gone back to college, and there was therefore no excuse for the said pupil to linger when his studies were over, though he invented many that would not have borne a very close investigation.
But his ingenuity was all to no purpose. Dot could be ingenious too, and she evaded him so adroitly that at the end of a week he had abandoned his efforts.
He went about with a certain sternness in those days, but it was not the sternness of the vanquished, rather the dogged patience of the man who is quite sure of ultimate success. Dot, peeping from the kitchen window to see him ride away, marked this on more than one occasion and strengthened her defences in consequence. She had not the remotest intention of seeing Bertie alone again for many a month, if ever. His persistence had scared her badly on that night at Baronmead. She was horribly afraid of what he might feel impelled to say to her, almost terrified at the bare notion of an explanation, and the prospect of a possible apology was unthinkable. It was easier for her to sacrifice his good comradeship, though that of itself was no easy matter, and she could only thrust her sense of loss into the background of her thoughts by the most strenuous efforts.
She was sturdily determined to make him relinquish their former pleasant intimacy before they should meet again. She was growing up, she told herself severely, growing up fast; and intimacies of that sort were likely to be misconstrued.
She took the counsel of none upon this difficult matter. Her father was too vague a dreamer to guide her, or so much as to realise that she stood in need of guidance. And Dot had gone her own independent way all her life. Her healthy young mind was not accustomed to grapple with problems, but she did not despair on that account. She only resolutely set herself to cope with this one as best she might, erecting out of her multifarious duties a barrier calculated to dishearten the most hopeful knight.
But in thus constructing her defences there was one force with which she omitted to reckon and against which she in consequence made no preparation, a force which, nevertheless, was capable of shattering all her carefully-laid schemes at a touch.
As she emerged among the last of the congregation from the church on the Sunday morning following her visit to Baronmead, she found Lucas Errol leaning upon the open lych-gate.
He greeted her with that shrewd, kindly smile of his before which it was almost impossible to feel embarrassed or constrained. Yet she blushed vividly at meeting him, and would gladly have turned the other way had the opportunity offered. For there in the road below, doing something to the motor, was Bertie.
"It's a real pleasure to meet you again, Miss Waring," said Lucas, in his pleasant drawl. "I was just hoping you would come along. I met your father before the service, and he promised to show me his orchids."
"Oh!" said Dot, nervously avoiding a second glance in Bertie's direction. "Won't you come across to the Rectory then and wait for him there?"
"May I?" said Lucas.
He straightened himself with an effort and transferred his weight to his crutch. Dot shyly proffered her arm.
"Let me!" said Bertie.
He was already on the steps, but Lucas waved him down, and accepted the girl's help instead.
"We will go in the garden way," said Dot. "It's only just across the road."
He halted terribly in the descent, and glancing at him in some anxiety she saw that his lips were tightly closed. Overwhelming pity for the man overcame her awkwardness, and she spoke sharply over her shoulder.
"Bertie, come and take my place! You know what to do better than I do."
In an instant Bertie was beside her, had slipped his arm under his brother's shoulder, and taken his weight almost entirely off the crutch. His active young strength bore the great burden unfalteringly and with immense tenderness, and there ran through Dot, watching from above, a queer little indefinable thrill that made her heart beat suddenly faster. He certainly was a nice boy, as he himself had declared.
"That didn't hurt so badly, eh, old chap?" asked the cheery voice. "Come along, Dot. You can give him a hand now while I fetch the car round. There are no steps to the Rectory, so he will be all right."
His airy friendliness banished the last of Dot's confusion. With a keen sense of relief she obeyed him. Those few seconds of a common