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

story. You know the rest. I'm sorry--I'm very sorry--I hadn't the decency to tell you before we married."
"You--needn't be sorry, dear," she said very gently.
He looked at her. "Do you mean that, Vera? Do you mean it makes no difference to you?"
She met his eyes with a shining tenderness in her own that gave her a womanliness which he had never seen in her before. "No," she said, "I don't mean that. I mean that I'm glad nothing happened to--to prevent my marrying you. I mean--that I love you ten times more for telling me now."
He gathered her impulsively close in his arms, kissing her with lips that trembled. "My own girl! My own generous wife! I'll make up to you," he vowed. "I'll give you such love as you've never dreamed of. I've been a brute to you often--often. But that's over. I'll make you happy now--if it kills me!"
She laughed softly, with a quivering exultation, between his kisses. "That wouldn't make me happy in the least. And I don't think you will find it so hard as that either. You've begun already--quite nicely. Now that we understand each other, we can never make really serious mistakes again."
Thereafter, they sat and talked in the firelight for a long time, closely, intimately, as friends united after a long separation. And in that talk the last barrier between them crumbled away, and a bond that was very sacred took its place.
In the end the striking of the clock above them awoke Vera to the lateness of the hour. "My dear Edward, it's to-morrow morning already! Wouldn't it be a good idea to go to bed?"
"Of course," he said. "You must be half dead. Thoughtless brute that I am!" He let her go out of his arms at last, but in a moment paused, looking at her with an odd wistfulness. "You're sure you've forgiven me? Sure you won't think it over and find you've made a mistake?"
Her hands were on his shoulders. Her eyes looked straight into his. "I am quite sure," she said.
He began to smile. "What makes you so generous, I wonder? I never thought you had it in you."
She leaned towards him, a great glow on her face which made her wonderful in his sight. "Oh, my dear," she said, "I never had before. But I can afford to be generous now. What does the past matter when I know that the present and the future are all my own?"
His smile passed. He met her look steadfastly. "As long as I live," he said, "so shall it be."
And the kiss that passed between them was as the sealing of a vow.


CHAPTER IV
COUNSEL

Juliet and Columbus sat in a sheltered nook on the shore and gazed thoughtfully out to sea. It was a warm morning after a night of tempest, and the beach was strewn with seaweed after an unusually high tide.
Columbus sat with a puckered brow. In his heart he wanted to be pottering about among these ocean treasures which had a peculiar fascination for his doggy soul. But a greater call was upon him, keeping him where he was. Though she had not uttered one word to detain him, he had a strong conviction that his mistress wanted him, and so, stolidly, he remained beside her, his sharp little eyes flashing to and fro, sometimes watching the great waves riding in, sometimes following the curving flight of a sea-gull, sometimes fixed in immensely dignified contemplation upon the quivering tip of his nose. His nostrils worked perpetually. The air was teeming with interesting scents; but not one of them could lure him from his mistress's side while he sensed her need of him. His body might be fat and bulging, but his spirit was a thing of keen perceptions and ardent, burning devotion, capable of denying every impulse save the love that was its mainspring.
Juliet was certainly very thoughtful that day. She also was watching the waves, but the wide brow was slightly drawn and the grey eyes were not so serene as usual. She had the look of one wrestling with a difficult problem. The roar of the sea was all about her, blotting out every other sound, even the calling of the gulls. Her arm encircled Columbus who was pressed solicitously close to her side. They had been sitting so, almost without moving, for over half-an-hour.
Suddenly Columbus turned his head sharply, and a growl swelled through him. Juliet looked round, and in a moment she had started to her feet. A man's figure, lithe and spare, with something of a monkey's agility of movement, was coming to her over the stones. They met in a shelving hollow of shingle that had been washed by the sea.
"Oh, Charles!" she said impulsively. "It is good of you to come!"
He glanced around him as he clasped her hand, his ugly face brimming with mischief. "It is rather--considering the risk I run. I trust your irascible husband is well out of the way?"
She laughed, though not very heartily. "Yes, he has gone to town. I didn't want him to. I wish I had stopped him."
He looked at her shrewdly. "You've got an attack of nerves," he observed.
She still sought to smile--though the attempt was a poor one. "To be quite honest--I am rather frightened."
"Frightened!" He pushed a sudden arm around her, looking comical and tender in the same moment. "And so you sent for me! Then it's Ho for the _Night Moth_, and when shall we start?"
She gave him a small push as half-hearted as her laugh had been. "Don't talk rubbish, please, Charles--if you don't mind! I don't see myself going on the _Night Moth_ with the sea like that; do you?"
"Depends," he said quizzically. "You might be persuaded if the devil were behind you."
"What! In your company!" Her laugh was more normal this time; she gave his arm a kindly touch and put it from her.
"But I'm as meek as a lamb," protested Saltash.
She met his look with friendly eyes. "Yes, I know--a lamb in wolf's clothing--rather a frisky lamb, Charles, but comparatively harmless. If I hadn't realized that--I shouldn't have asked you to come."
"I like your qualification," he said. "With whom do I compare thus favourably? The redoubtable Dick?"
The colour came swiftly into her face and he laughed, derisively but not unkindly.
"It's a new thing for me--this sort of job. Are you sure my lamb-like qualities will carry me through? Do you know, dear, I've never seen you look so amazing sweet in all my life before? I never knew you could bloom like this. It's positively dangerous."
He regarded her critically, his head on one side, an ardour half-mocking, half-genuine, in his eyes.
Juliet uttered a sigh. "I feel a careworn old hag," she said. "My own fault of course. Things are in a nice muddle, and I don't know which way to turn."
"One slip from the path of rectitude!" mocked Saltash. "Alas, how fatal this may prove!"
She looked away from him. "Do you always jeer at your friends when they are in trouble?" she said somewhat wearily.
"Always," said Saltash promptly. "It helps 'em to find their feet--like lighting the fire when the chimney-sweep's boy got stuck in the chimney. It's a priceless remedy, my _Juliette_. Nothing like it."
"I shall begin to hate you directly," remarked Juliet with her wan smile.
He laughed, not without complacence. "Do you good to try. You won't succeed. No one ever does. I gather the main trouble is that Dick has gone to town when you didn't want him to. Husbands are like that sometimes, you know. Are you afraid he won't come back--or that he will?"
"He will come back--to-day," she said. "You know--or perhaps you don't know--there is going to be a concert to-night for the miners. He is going to talk to them afterwards. He has gone up to-day to see--Ivor Yardley."
"What ho!" said Saltash. "This is interesting. And what does he hope to get out of him?"
"I don't know," she said. "I had no idea who he was going to see till yesterday evening. Mr. Ashcott came in and they were talking, and the name came out. I am not sure that he wanted me to know--though I don't know why I think so."
"And so you sent me an S.O.S.!" said Saltash. "I am indeed honoured!"
She turned towards him very winningly, very appealingly. "Charles Rex, I sent for you because I want a friend--so very badly. My happiness is in the balance. Don't you understand?"
Her deep voice throbbed with feeling. He stretched out a hand to her with a quick, responsive gesture that somehow belied the imp of mischief in his eyes. "_Bien, ma Juliette_! I am here!" he said.
"Thank you," she said very earnestly. "I knew I could count on you--that you would not withdraw your protection when once you had offered it."
"Would you like my advice as well?" he questioned.
She met his quizzing look with her frank eyes. "What is your advice?" she said.
He held her hand in his. "You haven't forgotten, have you, the sole condition on which I extended my protection to you? No. I thought not. We won't discuss it. The time is not yet ripe. And, as you say, the _Night Moth_ in this weather, though safe, might not be a very comfortable abiding-place. But--don't forget she is quite safe, my _Juliette_! I should like you to remember that."
He spoke with a strange emphasis that must in some fashion have conveyed more than his actual words, for quite suddenly her throat worked with a sharp spasm of emotion. She put up her hand instinctively to hide it.
"Thank you," she said. "If I need--a city of refuge--I shall know which way to turn. Now for your advice!"
"My advice!" He was looking at her with those odd, unstable eyes of his that ever barred the way to his inner being. "It depends a little on the condition of your heart--that. When it comes to this in an obstacle race, there are three courses open to you. Either you refuse the jump and drop out--which is usually the safest thing to do. Or you take the thing at full gallop and clear it before you know where you are. Or you go at it with a weak heart and come to grief. I don't advise the last anyway. It's so futile--as well as being beastly humiliating."
She smiled at him. "Thank you, Charles! A very illuminating parable! Well, I don't contemplate the first--as you know. I must have a try at the second. And if I smash,--it's horribly difficult, you know--I may smash--" Sudden anguish looked at him out of her eyes, and a hard shiver went through her as she turned away. "Oh, Charles!" she said. "Why did I ever come to this place?"
He made a frightful grimace that was somehow sympathetic and shrugged his shoulders. "If you smash, my dearly-beloved, your faithful comrade will have the priceless privilege of picking up the pieces. Why you came here is another matter. I have sometimes dared to wonder if the proximity of my poor castle--No? Not that? Ah, well then, it must be that our destinies are guided by the same star. To my mind that is an even more thrilling reflection than the other. Think of it, my _Juliette_, you and I--helplessly kicking like flies in the cream-jug--being drawn to one another, irresistibly and in spite of ourselves, even leaving some of our legs behind us in the desperate struggle to be calm and reasonable and quite--quite moral! And then a sudden violent storm in the cream-jug, and we are flung into each other's unwilling arms where we cling for