The Obstacle Race, Ethel May Dell [best biographies to read TXT] 📗

said, and stifled a sigh. "Life has been pretty damnable to us both, Dick. We might have been--we ought to have been--much more to each other."
"There's no tie more enduring than friendship," said Dick quickly. "You and I are friends--always will be."
Fielding's eyes had a misty look. "The best of friends, Dick lad," he said. "But will--friendship--give me the right to offer you help without putting up your pride? I don't want to order your life for you, but you can't go on with this village _domini_ business much longer. You were made for better things."
"Oh, that!" Dick said, and laughed. "Yes, I'm going to chuck that--but not just at once. Listen, sir! I have a reason. I'll tell you what it is, but not now, not yet. As to accepting help from you, I'd do that to-morrow if I needed it, but I don't. I've no pride left where you are concerned. You're much too good to me and I'm much too grateful. Is that quite clear?"
He gave the squire a straight and very friendly look, then wheeled round swiftly at the opening of the door.
They were standing side by side as Vera threw it impatiently wide. She stood a second on the threshold staring at them. Then: "Are you never coming in?" she said. "I thought--I thought--" she stammered suddenly and turned white. "Edward!" she said, and went back a step as if something had frightened her.
Dick instantly went forward to her. "Yes, Mrs. Fielding. We're coming now," he said. "Awfully sorry to have kept you waiting. We've had things to talk about, but we've just about done. You're coming, aren't you, sir? Take my arm, I say! You look tired."
He offered and she accepted almost instinctively. Her hand trembled on his arm as they left the room, and he suddenly and very impulsively laid his own upon it.
It was a protective impulse that moved him, but a moment later he adjusted the position by asking a favour of her--for the first time in the whole of their acquaintance.
"Mrs. Fielding, please, after to-day--give me the privilege of numbering myself among your friends!"
She looked at him oddly, seeking to cover her agitation with a quivering assumption of her old arrogance. But something in his face deterred her. It was not this man's way to solicit favours, and somehow, since he had humbled himself to ask, she had it not in her to refuse.
"Very well, Dick," she said, faintly smiling. "I grant you that."
"Thank you," he said, and gently released her hand.
It was the swiftest and one of the most complete victories of his life.


CHAPTER III
CONFESSION

It was nearly two hours later that Vera sitting alone before her fire turned with a slight start at the sound of her husband's step in the room beyond. She was wearing a pale silk dressing-gown and her hair hung in a single plait over her shoulder, giving her a curiously girlish look. The slimness of her figure as she leaned among the cushions accentuated the fragility which her recent illness had stamped upon her. Her eyes were ringed with purple, and they had a startled expression that the sound of the squire's step served to intensify. At the soft turning of the handle she made a movement that was almost of shrinking. And when he entered she looked up at him with a small pinched smile from which all pleasure was wholly absent.
He was still in evening dress, and the subdued light falling upon him gave him the look of a man still scarcely past his prime. He stood for a moment, erect and handsome, before he quietly closed the door behind him and moved forward.
"Still up?" he said.
Again at his approach she made a more pronounced movement of shrinking. "But, I've been waiting for you," she said rather hopelessly.
He came to her, stood looking down at her, the old bitter frown struggling with a more kindly expression on his face. He was obviously waiting for something with no pleasant sense of anticipation.
But Vera did not speak. She only sat drawn together, her fingers locked and her eyes downcast. She was using her utmost strength to keep herself in hand.
"Well?" he said at length, a faint ring of irritation in his voice, "Have you nothing to say to me now I have come?"
Her lips quivered a little. "I don't think--there is anything to be said," she said. "I knew--I felt--it was too good to last."
"It's over then, is it?" he said, the bitterness gaining the upper hand because of the misery at his heart. "The indiscretions of my youth have placed me finally beyond the pale. Is that it?"
She gripped her hands together a little more tightly. "I think you have been--you are--rather cruel," she said, her voice very low. "If you had only--told me!"
He made a gesture of exasperation. "My dear girl, for heaven's sake, look at the thing fairly if you can! How long have I known you well enough to let you into my secrets? How long have you been up to hearing them? I meant to tell you--as you know. I've been on the verge of it more than once. It wasn't cowardice that held me back. It was consideration for you."
She glanced at him momentarily. "I see," she said in that small quivering voice of hers that told so little of the wild tumult within her.
"Well?" he said harshly. "And that is my condemnation, is it? Henceforth I am to be thrust outside--a sinner beyond redemption. Is that it?"
Her eyelids fluttered nervously, but she did not raise them again. She leaned instead towards the fire. Her shoulders were bent. She looked crushed, as if her vitality were gone, and yet so slender, so young, in her thin wrap. He clinched his hands with a sharp intake of the breath, and his frown deepened.
"So you won't speak to me?" he said. "It's beyond words, is it? It's to be an insurmountable obstacle to happiness for the rest of our lives? We go back to the old damnable existence we've led for so long! Or perhaps--" his voice hardened--"perhaps you think we should be better apart? Perhaps you would prefer to leave me?"
She flinched at that--flinched as if he had struck her--and then suddenly she lifted her white face to his, showing him such an anguish of suffering as he had not suspected.
"Oh, Edward," she said, "why did this have to happen? We were so happy before."
That pierced him--the utter desolation of her--the pain that was too deep for reproach. He bent to her, all the bitterness gone from his face.
"My dear," he said in a voice that shook, "can't you see how I loathe myself--for hurting you--like this?"
And then suddenly--so suddenly that neither knew exactly how it happened--they were linked together. She was clinging to him with a rush of piteous tears, and he was kneeling beside her, holding her fast pressed against his heart, murmuring over her brokenly, passionately, such words of tenderness as she had never heard from him before. When in the end she lifted her face to kiss him, it was wet with tears other than her own, and somehow that fact did more to ease her own distress than any consolation he could find to offer.
She slipped her arm about his neck and pressed her cheek to his. "I'm thankful I know," she told him tremulously. "Oh, Edward darling, don't--don't keep anything from me ever again! If I'd only known sooner, things might have been so different. I feel as if I have never known you till now."
"Have you forgiven me?" he said, his grey head bent.
She turned her lips again to his. "My dear, of course--of course!" And in a lower voice, "Will you--tell me about her? Did she mean very much to you?"
His arm tightened about her. "My darling, it's nearly twenty-three years ago that she died. Yes, I loved her. But I've never wanted her back. Her life was such an inferno." He paused a moment, then as she was silent went on more steadily. "She was eighteen and I was twenty-two when it began. I was home for a summer vacation, and she had just come to help her aunt as infant teacher at the school. All the men were wild about her, but she had no use for any of 'em till I come along. We met along the shore or on the cliffs. We met constantly. We loved each other like mad. It got beyond all reason--all restraint. We didn't look ahead, either of us. We were young, and it was so infernally sweet. I'm not offering any excuse--only telling you the simple truth. You won't understand of course."
She pressed closer to him. "Why shouldn't I understand?"
He leaned his head against her. "God bless you, my dear! You're very good to me--far better than I deserve. I was a blackguard, I know. But I never meant to let her down. That was almost as much her doing as mine--poor little soul! We were found out at last, and there was a fearful row with my people. I wanted to take her away then and there, and marry her. But she wouldn't hear of it--neither would her aunt--a hard, proud woman! I didn't know then--no one knew--that she was expecting a child, or I'd have defied 'em all. Instead, she urged and entreated me to go away for a few weeks--give her time to think, she said. I hoped even then that she would give in and come to me. But the next thing I knew, she was married to a brute called Green--skipper of a filthy little cargo-steamer, who had been after her for some time. She went with him on one or two short voyages. Heaven knows what she endured in that time. Then the baby was born--Dick. They called him a seven-months child. But I knew--I guessed at once. One day I met her--told her so. I saw then--in part--what her life was like. She was terrified--said Green would kill her if he ever found out. The man was a great hulking bully--a drunkard perpetually on shore. He used to beat her as it was. She implored me not to come up against him, and--for her sake alone--I never did. Then--it was nearly a year after--he went off on a voyage and didn't come back. The boat was reported lost with all hands. I think everyone rejoiced so far as he was concerned. She went back to work at the school, supporting herself and the child. I never induced her to accept any help from me, but gradually, as the years went on and my uncle died and I became my own master, I got into the position of intimate friend. I was allowed to interfere a bit in Dick's destinies. But for a long, long while she permitted no more than that. I don't know exactly what made me stick to her. I used to go away, but I always came back. I couldn't give her up. And at last--twelve years after Green's disappearance--I won her over. She promised to marry me. The very day afterwards, that scoundrel Green came back! And her martyrdom began again."
"Oh, Edward, my dear!" Vera's hand went up to his face, stroking, caressing. The suppressed misery of his voice was almost more than she could bear. "How you suffered!" she whispered.
He was silent for a moment or two, controlling himself. "It's over now," he said then. "Thank God, it's a long time over! She died--less than a year after--when Jack and Robin were born. Her husband fell over the cliff on the same night in a fit of drunkenness and was killed. That's all the