The Obstacle Race - Ethel May Dell (mobi reader android TXT) 📗

it forcibly. He did not speak for a second or two. Then: "No, I won't spoil it," he said, in a low voice.
A moment later he flung the stones abruptly from him and got up.
"You're not going?" said Juliet.
"Yes, I've got work to do. Shall I take Robin with me?"
There was a dogged note in his voice. His eyes avoided hers.
Juliet rose slowly. "Never mind Robin! Walk a little way with me!" she said.
"I think I'd better go," said Green restlessly.
"Please!" said Juliet gently.
He turned beside her without a word. They went down the shingle to the edge of the sand and began to walk along the shore.
For many seconds they walked in silence. Juliet's eyes were fixed upon the mighty outline of High Shale Point that stood out like a fortress, dark, impregnable, against the calm of the evening sky. Her companion sauntered beside her, his hands behind him. He had thrown away his cigarette.
She spoke at length, slowly, with evident effort. "I want to tell you--something--about myself."
"Something I really don't know?" asked Green, his dark face flashing to a smile.
There was no answering smile on Juliet's face. "Yes, something you don't know," she said soberly. "It's just this. I have much more in common with Mrs. Fielding than you have any idea of. I have lived for pleasure practically all my life. I have scrambled for happiness with the rest of the world, and I haven't found it. It's only just lately that I've realized why. I read a book called The Valley of Dry Bones. Do you know it? But of course you do. It is by Dene Strange. I hate the man--if it is a man. And I hate his work--the bitter cynicism of it, the merciless exposure of humanity at its lowest and meanest. I don't know what his ideals are--if he has any. I think he is probably very wicked, but detestably--oh, damnably--clever. I burnt the book I hated it so. But I felt--afterwards--as if I had been burnt, seared by hot irons--ashamed--most cruelly ashamed." Juliet's voice sank almost to a whisper. "Because--life really is like that--one vast structure of selfishness--and in many ways I have helped to make it so."
She stopped. Green was looking at her attentively. He spoke at once with decision. "I know the book. I've read it. It's an exaggeration--probably intentional. It wasn't written--obviously--for the super-sensitive."
"Wasn't it?" Juliet's lips were quivering. "Well, it's been a positive nightmare to me. I haven't got over it yet."
"That's curious," he said. "I shouldn't have thought it could have touched you anywhere."
"That is because you have a totally wrong impression of me," she said. "That is what I am trying to put right. I am the sort of person that horrible book applies to, and I've fallen out with myself very badly in consequence, Mr. Green. I haven't told anyone but you, but--somehow--I feel as if you ought to know."
"Thank you," said Green. "But why?"
She met his eyes very steadily. "Because I'm trying to play the game now, and--I don't want you to have any illusions."
"You don't want me to make a fool of myself," he said. "Is that it?"
She coloured very vividly, but she did not avoid his look. "I don't think there is much danger of that, is there?" she said.
He stood still suddenly and faced her. His eyes burned with an amazing brightness. "I don't know," he said, speaking emphatically and very rapidly. "It depends of course upon the point of view. But I'll tell you this. I'd give all I've got--and all I'm ever likely to get--to prevent you going to Shale Court as a companion."
"Oh, but aren't you unreasonable?" Juliet said.
"No, I'm not." He made a vigorous gesture of repudiation. "Presumptuous perhaps--but not unreasonable. I know too much of what goes on there. Miss Moore, I beseech you--think again! Don't go!"
She looked at him in perplexity. "But it wouldn't be fair to draw back now," she objected. "Besides--"
"Besides," he broke in almost fiercely, "you've got your living to make like the rest of us. Yes, I know--I know! You regard this as a Heaven-sent opportunity. It isn't. It's quite the reverse. If you were unhappy in London, you'll be a thousand times more so there. And--and I shan't be able to help you--shan't get anywhere near you there."
"It's very kind of you," began Juliet.
He cut her short again. "No, it isn't kind. You're the only woman of your station I have ever met who has deigned to treat me as an equal. It--it's a bit rash on your part, you know." He smiled at her abruptly, and something sent a queer sensation through her--a curious feeling of familiarity that held and yet eluded her. "And--as you see--I'm taking full advantage of it. I hope you won't think me an awful cad after this. I can't help it if you do. Miss Moore, forgive my asking,--are you really obliged to work for your living? Can't you--can't you wait a little?"
Juliet was looking at him with wonder in her soft eyes. His sudden vehemence was rather bewildering.
"I don't quite know," she said vaguely. "But I rather want to do something, you know."
"Oh, I know--I know," he said. "But you're not obliged to do this. Something else is bound to turn up. Or if it doesn't--if it doesn't--" He ground his heel deep into the yielding sand, and ended in a husky undertone. "My God! What wouldn't I give for the privilege of working for you?"
The words were uttered and beyond recall. He looked her straight in the face as he spoke them, but an instant later he turned and stared out over the wide, calm sea in a stillness that was somehow more forcible even than his low, half-strangled speech had been.
Juliet stood silent also, almost as if she were waiting for him to recover his balance. Her eyes also were gazing straight before her to that far mysterious sky-line. They were very grave and rather sad.
He broke the silence after many seconds. "You will never speak to me again after this."
"I hope I shall," she said gently.
He wheeled and faced her. "You're not angry then?"
She shook her head. "No."
His eyes flashed over her with amazing swiftness. "I almost wish you were," he said.
"But why?" she said.
"Because I should know then it mattered a little. Now I know it doesn't. I am just one of the many. Isn't that it? There are so many of us that one more or less doesn't count either way." He laughed ruefully. "Well, I won't repeat the offence. Even your patience must have its limits. Shall we go back?"
It was then that Juliet turned, moved by an impulse so strangely urgent that she could not pause to analyse it. She held out her hand to him, quickly, shyly, and as he gripped and held it, she spoke, her voice tremulous, breathless, barely coherent.
"I am not--offended. I am--very--very--deeply--honoured. Only you--you--don't understand."
He kept her hand closely in his own. His grasp vibrated with electric force, but he had himself in check. "You are more generous than I deserve," he said, his voice sunk to a whisper. "Perhaps--some day--understanding will come. May I hope for that?"
She did not answer him, but for one intimate second her eyes looked straight into his. Then with a little, sobbing breath she slipped her hand free.
"We--are forgetting Robin," she said, with an effort.
He turned at once. "By George, yes! I'm afraid I had forgotten him," he said.
They walked back along the shore side by side.


PART II


CHAPTER I
THE WAND OF OFFICE

Robin was in disgrace. He crouched in a sulky heap in a far corner of the schoolroom, and glowered across the empty desks and benches at his elder brother who sat in the place of authority at his writing-table with a litter of untidy exercise-books in front of him. There was a long, thin cane also at his elbow that had the look of a somewhat sinister wand of office. He was correcting book after book with a species of forced patience, that was not without an element of exasperation.
The evening sunlight slanted through the leaded windows. They were open to their widest extent, but the place was oppressively close. There was a brooding sense of storm in the atmosphere. Suddenly, as if in some invisible fashion a set limit had been reached and passed, Richard Green lifted his head from his work. His keen eyes sent a flashing glance down the long, bare room.
"Robin!" he said.
Robin gave a violent start, and then a shuffling, reluctant movement as if prodded into action against his will.
"Get up and come here!" his brother said.
Robin, in the act of blundering to his feet, checked abruptly, as if arrested by something in the peremptory tone. "What for?" he asked, in a surly note.
"Get up," Green repeated, with grim insistence, "and come here!"
Robin grabbed at the end of the row of desks nearest to him and dragged himself slowly up. But there he hung irresolute. His heavy brows were drawn, but the eyes beneath had a frightened, hunted look. They glared at Green with a defiance so precarious that it was pathetic.
Green waited inexorably, magisterially, at his table. The sunlight had gone and the room was darkening. Very slowly Robin moved forward, dragging his feet along the bare boards. At the other end of the row of desks he halted. His eyes travelled swiftly between his brother's stern countenance and the wand of office that lay before him on the writing-table. He shivered.
"Come here!" Green said again.
He crept a little nearer like a guilty dog. His humped shoulders looked higher than usual. His eyes shone red.
Across the writing-table Green faced him. He spoke, very distinctly.
"Why did you throw that stone at Mrs. Fielding's car?"
Robin was trembling from head to foot. He drew a quivering breath between his teeth, and stood silent.
"Tell me why!" Green insisted.
Robin locked his working hands together. Green waited.
"It--it--I didn't see--Mrs. Fielding," he blurted forth at last.
Green made a slight movement that might have indicated relief, but his tone was as uncompromising as before as he said, "That's not an answer to my question. I asked you why you did it."
Robin shrank from the curt directness of his speech. His defiance wilted visibly. "I--didn't mean to break the window, Dicky," he said, twisting and cracking his fingers in rising agitation.
"What did you mean to do?" said Green.
Robin stood silent again.
"Are you going to answer me?" Green said, after a pause.
Robin made a great effort. He parted his straining hands and rested them upon the table behind which Green sat. Standing so, he glowered down into his brother's grim face with something of menace in his own.
"I'll tell you one thing, Dicky," he said, with stupendous effort. "I'm not going--to take a caning for it."
Green's eyebrows went up. He sat perfectly still, looking straight up into the heavy face above him. For several seconds a tense silence reigned.
Then: "Oh yes, you will," he said quietly. "You will take--whatever I decide to give you. Sit down there!" He indicated the end of the bench nearest to him. "I'll deal with you presently."
Robin did not stir. In the growing gloom of the room his eyes shone like the eyes of an animal, goaded and desperate. But the man before him showed neither surprise nor anger. His clean-cut lips were closed in a straight, unyielding line. For a full minute he looked at Robin and Robin looked at him.
Then he spoke. "I've only one treatment for this