The Swindler, Ethel May Dell [distant reading TXT] 📗

Soon after that came a letter from Jim to tell me you had thrown him over. Now, why?"
She answered him with her head bent:
"I found that I didn't care for him quite in that way."
Cheveril did not speak for several seconds. Then, abruptly, he said:
"There is another fellow in the business."
She made a slight gesture of appeal, and remained silent.
He leaned forward slowly at length, and laid his hand upon both of hers.
"Evelyn," he said very gently, "will you tell me his name?"
She shook her head instantly. Her lips were quivering, and she bit them desperately.
He waited, but no word came. Outside, the roaring of the sea was terrible and insistent. The great sound sent a shudder through the girl. She shrank closer to the cold stone.
He pulled off his coat and wrapped it round her. Then, as if she had been a child, he drew her gently into his arms, and held her so.
"Tell me--now," he said softly.
But she hid her face dumbly. No words would come.
It seemed a long while before he spoke again.
"That cable of yours was a fraud," he said then. "I was not--I am not--prepared to release you from your engagement except under the original condition."
"I think you must," she said faintly.
He sought for her cold hands and thrust them against his neck. And again there was a long silence, while outside the sea raged fiercely, and far below them in the distance a white streak of foam ran bubbling over the rocky floor.
Soon the streak had become a stream of dancing, storm-tossed water. Evelyn watched it with wide, fascinated eyes. But she made no sign of fear. She felt as if he had, somehow, laid a quieting hand upon her soul.
Higher the water rose, and higher. The cave was filled with dreadful sound. It was almost dark, for dusk had fallen. She felt that but for the man's presence she would have been wild with fear. But his absolute confidence wove a spell about her that no terror could penetrate. The close holding of his arms was infinitely comforting to her. She knew with complete certainty that he was not afraid.
"It's very dark," she whispered to him once; and he pressed her head down upon his breast and told her not to look. Through the tumult she heard the strong, quiet beating of his heart, and was ashamed of her own mortal fear.
It seemed to her that hours passed while she crouched there, listening, as the water rose and rose. She caught the gleam of it now and then, and once her face was wet with spray. She clung closer and closer to her companion, but she kept down her panic. She felt that he expected it of her, and she would have died there in the dark, sooner than have disappointed him.
At last, after an eternity of quiet waiting, he spoke.
"The tide has turned," he said. And his tone carried conviction with it.
She raised her head to look.
A dim, silvery light shone mysteriously in revealing the black walls above them, the tossing water below. It had been within a foot of their resting-place, but it had dropped fully six inches.
Evelyn felt a great throb of relief pass through her. Only then did she fully realise how great her fear had been.
"Is that the moon?" she asked wonderingly.
"Yes," said Cheveril. He spoke in a low voice, even with reverence, she thought. "We shall be out of this in an hour. It will light us home."
"How--wonderful!" she said, half involuntarily.
Cheveril said no more; but the silence that fell between them was the silence of that intimacy which only those who have stood together before the great threshold of death can know. Many minutes passed before Evelyn spoke again, and then her words came slowly, with hesitation.
"You knew?" she said. "You knew that we were safe?"
"Yes," he answered quietly; "I knew. God doesn't give with one hand and take away with the other. Have you never noticed that?"
"I don't know," she answered with a sharp sigh. "He has never given me anything very valuable."
"Quite sure?" said Cheveril, and she caught the old quizzical note in his voice.
She did not reply. She was trying to understand him in the darkness, and she found it a difficult matter.
There followed a long, long silence. The roar of the breaking seas had become remote and vague.
But the moonlight was growing brighter. The dark cave was no longer a place of horror.
"Shall we go?" Evelyn suggested at last.
He peered downwards.
"I think we might," he said. "No doubt your people will be very anxious about you."
They climbed down with difficulty, till they finally stood together on the wet stones.
And there Cheveril reached out a hand and detained the girl beside him.
"That other fellow?" he said, in his quiet, half-humorous voice. "You didn't tell me his name."
"Oh, please!" she said tremulously.
He took her hands gently into his, and stood facing her. The moonlight was full in his eyes. They shone with a strange intensity.
"Do you remember," he said, "how I once said to you that I was romantic enough to like to see a love affair go the right way?"
She did not answer him. She was trembling in his hold.
He waited for a few seconds; then spoke, still kindly, but with a force that in a measure compelled her:
"That is why I want you to tell me his name."
She turned her face aside.
"I--I can't!" she said piteously.
"Then I hold you to your engagement," said Lester Cheveril, with quiet determination.
Her hands leapt in his. She threw him a quick uncertain glance.
"You can't mean that!" she said.
"I do mean it," he rejoined resolutely.
"But--but--" she faltered. "You don't really want to marry me? You can't!"
He looked grimly at her for a moment. Then abruptly he broke into a laugh that rang and echoed exultantly in the deep shadows behind them.
"I want it more than anything else on earth," he said. "Does that satisfy you?"
His face was close to hers, but she felt no desire to escape. That laugh of his was still ringing like sweetest music through her soul.
He took her shoulders between his hands, searching her face closely.
"And now," he said--"now tell me his name!"
Yet a moment longer she withstood him. Then she yielded, and went into his arms, laughing also--a broken, tearful laugh.
"His name is--Lester Cheveril," she whispered. "But I--I can't think how you guessed."
He answered her as he turned her face upwards to meet his own.
"The friend who stands by sees many things," he said wisely. "And Love is not always blind."
"But you--you weren't in love," she protested. "Not when----"
He interrupted her instantly and convincingly.
"I have always loved you," he said.
And she believed him, because her own heart told her that he had spoken the truth.

* * * * *


The Right Man

I

"He hasn't proposed, then?"
"No; he hasn't." A pause; then, reluctantly: "I haven't given him the opportunity."
"Violet! Do you want to starve?"
The speaker turned in his chair, and looked at the girl bending over the fire, with a quick, impatient frown on his handsome face. They were twins, these two, the only representatives of a family that had been wealthy three generations before them, but whose resources had dwindled steadily under the management of three successive spendthrifts, and had finally disappeared altogether in a desperate speculation which had promised to restore everything.
"You don't seem to realise," the young man said, "that we are absolutely penniless--destitute. Everything is sunk in this Winhalla Railway scheme, up to the last penny. It seemed a gorgeous chance at the time. It ought to have brought in thousands. It would have done, too, if it had been properly supported. But it's no good talking about that. It's just a gigantic failure, or, if it ever does succeed, it will come too late to help us. Just our infernal luck! And now the question is, what is going to be done? You'll have to marry that fellow, Violet. It's absolutely the only thing for you to do. And I--I suppose I must emigrate."
The girl did not turn her head. There was something tense about her attitude.
"I could emigrate too, Jerry," she said, in a low voice.
"You!" Her brother turned more fully round. "You!" he said again. "Are you mad, I wonder?"
She made a slight gesture of protest.
"Why shouldn't I?" she said. "At least, we should be together."
He uttered a grim laugh, and rose.
"Look here, Violet," he said, and took her lightly by the shoulders. "Don't be a little fool! You know as well as I do that you weren't made to rough it. The suggestion is so absurd that it isn't worth discussion. You'll have to marry Kenyon. It's as plain as daylight; and I only wish my perplexities were as easily solved. Come! He isn't such a bad sort; and, anyhow, he's better than starvation."
The girl stood up slowly and faced him. Her eyes were wild, like the eyes of a hunted creature.
"I hate him, Jerry! I hate him!" she declared vehemently.
"Nonsense!" said Jerry. "He's no worse than a hundred others. You'd hate any one under these abominable circumstances!"
She shuddered, as if in confirmation of this statement.
"I'd rather do anything," she said; "anything, down to selling matches in the gutter."
"Which isn't a practical point of view," pointed out Jerry. "You would get pneumonia with the first east wind, and die."
"Well, then, I'd rather die." The girl's voice trembled with the intensity of her preference. But her brother frowned again at the words.
"Don't!" he said abruptly. "For Heaven's sake, don't be unreasonable! Can't you see that it's my greatest worry to get you provided for? You must marry. You can't live on charity."
Her cheeks flamed.
"But I can work," she began. "I can----"
He interrupted her impatiently.
"You can't. You haven't the strength, and probably not the ability either. It's no use talking this sort of rot. It's simply silly, and makes things worse for both of us. It's all very well to say you'd rather starve, but when it comes to starving, as it will--as it must--you'll think differently. Look here, old girl: if you won't marry this fellow for your own sake, do it for mine. I hate it just as much as you do. But it's bearable, at least. And--there are some things I can't bear."
He stopped. She was clinging to him closely, beseechingly; but he stood firm and unyielding, his young face set in hard lines.
"Will you do it?" he said, as she did not speak.
"Jerry!" she said imploringly.
He stiffened to meet the appeal he dreaded. But it did not come. Her eyes were raised to his, and she seemed to read there the futility of argument. She remained absolutely still for some seconds, then abruptly she turned from him and burst into tears.
"Don't! don't!" he said.
He stepped close to her, as she leaned upon the mantelpiece, all the hardness gone from his face. Had she known it, the battle at that moment might have been hers; for he would have insisted no longer. He was on the brink of abandoning the conflict. But her anguish of weeping possessed her to the exclusion of everything else.
"Oh, Jerry, go away!" she sobbed passionately. "You're a perfect beast, and I'm another!