The Top of the World - Ethel May Dell (read novels website txt) 📗

draught.
She made a slight, half-scared movement and in a moment his hand released hers.
"You do object!" he said.
She clasped her hands tightly together. "Please don't say--or think--that! It is such a sudden idea, and--it's rather a wild one, isn't it?" Her breath came quickly. "If--if I agreed--and let the pretence go on--people would be sure to find out sooner or later. Wouldn't they?"
"I am not suggesting any pretence," he said.
"What do you mean then?" Sylvia said, compelling herself to speak steadily.
"I am asking you to marry me," he said, with equal steadiness.
"Really, do you mean? You are actually in earnest?" Her voice had a sharp quiver in it. She was trembling suddenly. "Please be quite plain with me!" she said. "Remember, I don't know you very well. I have got to get used to the ways out here."
"I am quite in earnest," said Burke. "You know me better than you knew the man you came out here to marry. And you will get used to things more quickly married to me than any other way. At least you will have an assured position. That ought to count with you."
"Of course it would! It does!" she said rather incoherently. "But--you see--I've no one to help me--no one to advise me. I'm on a road I don't know. And I'm so afraid of taking a wrong turning."
"Afraid!" he said. "You!"
She tried to laugh. "You think me a very bold person, don't you? Or you wouldn't have suggested such a thing."
"I think you've got plenty of grit," he said, "but that wasn't what made me suggest it." He paused a moment. "Perhaps it's hardly worth while going on," he said then. "I seem to have gone too far already. Please believe I meant well, that's all!"
"Oh, I know that!" she said.
And then, moved by a curious impulse, she did an extraordinary thing. She leaned forward and laid her clasped hands on his knee.
"I'm going to be--awfully frank with you," she said rather tremulously. You--won't mind?''
He sat motionless for a second. Then very quietly he dropped his pipe back into his pocket and grasped her slender wrists. "Go on!" he said.
Her face was lifted, very earnest and appealing, to his. "You know," she said, "we are not strangers. We haven't been from the very beginning. We started comrades, didn't we?"
"We should have been married by this time, if I hadn't put the brake on," said Burke.
"Yes," Sylvia said. "I know. That is what makes me feel so--intimate with you. But it is different for you. I am a total stranger to you. You have never met me--or anyone like me--before. Have you?"
"And I have never asked anyone to marry me before," said Burke.
The wrists he held grew suddenly rigid. "You have asked me out of--out of pity--and the goodness of your heart?" she whispered.
"Quite wrong," said Burke. "I want a capable woman to take care of me--when Mary Ann goes on the bust."
"Please don't make me laugh!" begged Sylvia rather shakily. "I haven't done yet. I'm going to ask you an awful thing next. You'll tell me the truth, won't you?"
"I'll tell you before you ask," he said. "I can be several kinds of beast, but not the kind you are afraid of. I am not a faddist, but I am moral. I like it best."
The curt, distinct words were too absolute to admit of any doubt. Sylvia breathed a short, hard sigh.
"I wonder," she said, "if it would be very wrong to marry a person you only like."
"Marriage is a risk--in any case," said Burke. "But if you're not blindly in love, you can at least see where you are going."
"I can't," she said rather piteously.
"You're afraid of me," he said.
"No, not really--not really. It's almost as big a risk for you as for me. You haven't bothered about--my morals, have you?" Her faint laugh had in it a sound of tears.
The hands that held her wrists closed with a steady pressure. "I haven't," said Burke with simplicity.
"Thank you," she said. "You've been very kind to me. Really I am not afraid of you."
"Sure?" said Burke.
"Only I still wish I were a boy," she said. "You and I could be just pals then."
"And why not now?" he said.
"Is it possible?" she asked.
"I should say so. Why not?"
She freed her hands suddenly and laid them upon his arms. "If I marry you, will you treat me just as a pal?"
"I will," said Burke.
She was still trembling a little. "You won't interfere with my--liberty?"
"Not unless you abuse it," he said.
She laughed again faintly. "I won't do that. I'll be a model of discretion. You may not think it, but I am--very discreet."
"I am sure of it," said Burke.
"No, you're not. You're not in the least sure of anything where I am concerned. You've only known me--two days."
He laughed a little. "It doesn't matter how long it has taken. I know you."
She laughed with him, and sat up, "What must you have thought of me when I told you you hadn't shaved?"
He took out his pipe again. "If you'd been a boy, I should probably have boxed your ears," he said. "By the way, why did you get up when I told you to stay in bed?"
"Because I knew best what was good for me," said Sylvia. "Have you got such a thing as a cigarette?"
He got up. "Yes, in my room. Wait while I fetch them!"
"Oh, don't go on purpose!" she said. "I daresay I shouldn't like your kind, thanks all the same."
He went nevertheless, and she leaned back with her face to the hills and waited. The moon was just topping the great summits. She watched it with a curious feeling of weakness. It had not been a particularly agitating interview, but she knew that she had just passed a cross-roads, in her life.
She had taken a road utterly unknown to her and though she had taken it of her own accord, she did not feel that the choice had really been hers. Somehow her faculties were numbed, were paralyzed. She could not feel the immense importance of what she had done, or realize that she had finally, of her own action, severed her life from Guy's. He had become such a part of herself that she could not all at once divest herself of that waiting feeling, that confident looking forward to a future with him. And yet, strangely, her memory of him had receded into distance, become dim and remote. In Burke's presence she could not recall him at all. The two personalities, dissimilar though she knew them to be, seemed in some curious fashion to have become merged into one. She could not understand her own feelings, but she was conscious of relief that the die was cast. Whatever lay before her, she was sure of one thing. Burke Ranger would be her safeguard against any evil that might arise and menace her. His protection was of the solid quality that would never fail her. She felt firm ground beneath her feet at last.
At the sound of his returning step, she turned with the moonlight on her face and smiled up at him with complete confidence.


CHAPTER XII
THE STALE

Whenever in after days Sylvia looked back upon her marriage, it seemed to be wrapped in a species of hazy dream like the early mists on that far-off range of hills.
They did not go again to Ritzen, but to a town of greater importance further down the line, a ride of nearly forty miles across the _veldt_. It was a busy town in the neighbourhood of some mines, and its teeming life brought back again to her that sense of aloneness in a land of strangers that had so oppressed her in the beginning. It drove her to seek Burke's society whenever possible. He was the shield between her and desolation, and in his presence her misgivings always faded into the background. He knew some of the English people at Brennerstadt, but she dreaded meeting them, and entreated him not to introduce anyone to her until they were married.
"People are all so curious. I can't face it," she said. "Mine is rather a curious story, too. It will only set them talking, and I do so hate gossip."
He smiled a little and conceded the point. And so she was still a stranger to everyone on the day she laid her hand in Burke's and swore to be faithful to him. The marriage was a civil one. That also robbed it of all sense of reality for her. The ceremony left her cold. It did not touch so much as the outer tissues of her most vital sensibilities. She even felt somewhat impatient of the formalities observed, and very decidedly glad when they were over.
"Now let's go for a ride and forget it all!" she said. "We'll have a picnic on the _veldt_."
They had their picnic, but the heat was so great as to rob it of much enjoyment. Sylvia was charmed by a distant view of a herd of springbok, and her eyes shone momentarily when Burke said that they would have to do some shooting together. But almost immediately she shook her head.
"No, they are too pretty to kill. I love the hunt, but I hate the kill. Besides, I shall be too busy. If I am going to be your partner, one of us will have to do some work."
He laughed at that. "When do you want to begin?"
"Very soon," she said energetically. "Tomorrow if you like. I don't think much of Brennerstadt, do you? It's such a barren sort of place." He looked at her. "I believe you'll hate the winter on the farm."
"No, I shan't. I shan't hate anything. I'm not so silly as to expect paradise all the time."
"Is this paradise?" said Burke.
She glanced at him quickly. "No, I didn't say that. But I am enjoying it. And," she flushed slightly, "I am very grateful to you for making that possible."
"You've nothing to be grateful to me for," he said.
"Only I can't help it," said Sylvia.
Burke's eyes were scanning the far stretch of _veldt_ towards the sinking sun, with a piercing intentness. She wondered what he was looking for.
There fell a silence between them, and a vague feeling of uneasiness began to grow up within her. His brown face was granite-like in its immobility, but it was exceedingly grim.
Something stirred within her at last, impelling her to action. She got up.
"Do you see that blasted tree right away over there with horrid twisted arms that look as if they are trying to clutch at something?"
His eyes came up to hers on the instant. "What of it?" he said.
She laughed down at him. "Let's mount! I'll race you to it."
He leapt to his feet like, a boy. "What's the betting?"
"Anything you like!" she threw