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

presence.
She was trembling as she went forward, but the instant their hands met her agitation fell away from her, for she suddenly realized that he was trembling also.
No conventional words came to her lips. How could she ever be conventional with Guy? And it was Guy--Guy in the flesh--who stood before her, so little altered in appearance from the Guy she had known five years before that the thought flashed through her mind that he looked only as if he had come through a sharp illness. She had expected far worse, though she realized now what Burke had meant when he had said that whatever resemblance had once existed between them, they were now no longer alike. He had not developed as she had expected. In Burke, she seemed to see the promise of Guy's youth. But Guy himself had not fulfilled that promise. He had degenerated. He had proved himself a failure. And yet he did not look coarsened or hardened by vice. He only looked, to her pitiful, inexperienced eyes, as if he had been ravaged by some sickness, as if he had suffered intensely and were doomed to suffer as long as he lived.
That was the first impression she received of him, and it was that that made her clasp his hand in both her own and hold it fast.
"Oh, Guy!" she said. "How ill you look!"
His fingers closed hard upon hers. He did not attempt to meet her earnest gaze. "So you got married to Burke!" he said, ignoring her exclamation. "It was the best thing you could do. He may not be exactly showy, but he's respectable. I wonder you want to speak to me after the way I let you down."
The words were cool, almost casual; yet his hand still held hers in a quivering grasp. There was something in that grasp that seemed to plead for understanding. He flashed her a swift look from eyes that burned with a fitful, feverish fire out of deep hollows. How well she remembered his eyes! But they had never before looked at her thus. With every moment that passed she realized that the change in him was greater than that first glance had revealed.
"Of course I want to speak to you!" she said gently. "I forgave you long ago--as, I hope, you have forgiven me."
"I!" he said. "My dear girl, be serious!"
Somehow his tone pierced her. There was an oddly husky quality in his voice that seemed to veil emotion. The tears sprang to her eyes before she was aware.
"Whatever happens then, we are friends," she said. "Remember that always, won't you? It--it will hurt me very much if you don't."
"Bless your heart!" said Guy, and smiled a twisted smile. "You were always generous, weren't you? Too generous sometimes. What did you want to rake me out of my own particular little comer of hell for? Was it a mistaken idea of kindness or merely curiosity? I wasn't anyhow doing you any harm there."
His words, accompanied by that painful smile, went straight to her heart. "Ah, don't--don't!" she said. "Did you think I could forget you so easily, or be any thing but wretched while you were there?"
He looked at her again, this time intently, "What can you be made of, Sylvia?" he said. "Do you mean to say you found it easy to forgive me?"
She dashed the tears from her eyes. "I don't remember that I was ever--angry with you," she said. "Somehow I realized--from the very first--that--that--it was just--bad luck."
"You amaze me!" he said.
She smiled at him. "Do I? I don't quite see why. Is it so amazing that one should want to pass on and make the best of things? That is how I feel now. It seems so long ago, Guy,--like another existence almost. It is too far away to count."
"Are you talking of the old days?" he broke in, in a voice that grated. "Or of the time a few weeks ago when you got here to find yourself stranded?"
She made a little gesture of protest. "It wasn't for long. I don't want to think of it. But it might have been much worse. Burke was--is still--so good to me."
"Is he?" said Guy. He was looking at her curiously, and instinctively she turned away, avoiding his eyes.
"Come and have some lunch!" she said. "He ought to be in directly."
"He is in," said Guy. "He went round to the stable."
It was another instance of Burke's goodness that he had not been present at their meeting. She turned to lead the way within with a warm feeling at her heart. It was solely due to this consideration of his that she had not suffered the most miserable embarrassment. Somehow she felt that she could not possibly have endured that first encounter in his presence. But now that it was over, now that she had made acquaintance with this new Guy--this stranger with Guy's face, Guy's voice, but not Guy's laugh or any of the sparkling vitality that had been his--she felt she wanted him. She needed his help. For surely now he knew Guy better than she did!
It was with relief that she heard his step, entering from the back of the house. He came in, whistling carelessly, and she glanced instinctively at Guy. That sound had always made her think of him. Had he forgotten how to whistle also, she wondered?
She expected awkwardness, constraint; but Burke surprised her by his ease of manner. Above all, she noticed that he was by no means kind to Guy. He treated him with a curt friendliness from which all trace of patronage was wholly absent. His attitude was rather that of brother than host, she reflected. And its effect upon Guy was of an oddly bracing nature. The semi-defiant air dropped from him. Though still subdued, his manner showed no embarrassment. He even, as time passed, became in a sardonic fashion almost jocose.
In company with Burke, he drank lager-beer, and he betrayed not the smallest desire to drink too much. Furtively she watched him throughout the meal, trying to adjust her impressions, trying to realize him as the lover to whom she had been faithful for so long, the lover who had written those always tender, though quite uncommunicative letters, the lover, who had cabled her his welcome, and then had so completely and so cruelly failed her.
Her ideas of him were a whirl of conflicting notions which utterly bewildered her. Of one thing only did she become very swiftly and surely convinced, and that was that in failing her he had saved her from a catastrophe which must have eclipsed her whole life. Whatever he was, whatever her feelings for him, she recognized that this man was not the mate her girlish dreams had so fondly pictured. Probably she would have realized this in any case from the moment of their meeting, but circumstances might have compelled her to join her life to his. And then------
Her look passed from him to Burke, and instinctively she breathed a sigh of thankfulness. He had saved her from much already, and his rock-like strength stood perpetually between her and evil. For the first time she was consciously glad that she had entrusted herself to him.
At the end of luncheon she realized with surprise that there had not been an awkward moment. They went out on to the _stoep_ to smoke cigarettes when it was over, and drink the coffee which she went to prepare. It was when she was coming out with this that she first heard Guy's cough--a most terrible, rending sound that filled her with dismay. Stepping out on to the _stoep_ with her tray, she saw him bent over the back of a chair, convulsed with coughing, and stood still in alarm. She had never before witnessed so painful a struggle. It was as if he fought some demon whose clutch threatened to strangle him.
Burke came to her and took the tray from her hands. "He'll be better directly," he said. "It was the cigarette."
With almost superhuman effort, Guy succeeded in forcing back the monster that seemed to be choking him, but for several minutes thereafter he hung over the chair with his face hidden, fighting for breath.
Burke motioned to Sylvia to sit down, but she would not. She stood by Guy's side, and at length as he grew calmer, laid a gentle hand upon his arm.
"Come and sit down, Guy. Would you like some water?"
He shook his head. "No--no! Give me--that damned cigarette!"
"Don't you be a fool!" said Burke, but he said it kindly. "Sit down and be quiet for a bit!"
He came up behind Guy, and took him by the shoulders. Sylvia saw with surprise the young man yield without demur, and suffer himself to be put into the chair where with an ashen face he lay for a space as if afraid to move.
Burke drew her aside. "Don't be scared!" he said, "It's nothing new. He'll come round directly."
Guy came round, sat slowly up, and reached a shaking hand towards the table on which lay his scarcely lighted cigarette.
"Oh, don't!" Sylvia said quickly. "See, I have just brought out some coffee. Won't you have some?"
Burke settled the matter by picking up the cigarette and tossing it away.
Guy gave him a queer look from eyes that seemed to bum like red coals, but he said nothing whatever. He took the coffee Sylvia held out to him and drank it as if parched with thirst.
Then he turned to her. "Sorry to have made such an exhibition of myself. It's all this infernal sand. Yes, I'll have some more, please. It does me good. Then I'll get back to my own den and have a sleep."
"You can sleep here," Burke said unexpectedly. "No one will disturb you. Sylvia never sits here in the afternoon."
Again Sylvia saw that strange look in Guy's eyes, a swift intent glance and then the instant falling of the lids.
"You're very--kind," said Guy. "But I think I'll get back to my own quarters all the same."
Impulsively Sylvia intervened. "Oh, Guy, please,--don't go back to that horrible little shanty on the sand! I got a room all ready for you yesterday--if you will only use it."
He turned to her. For a second his look was upon her also, and it seemed to her in that moment that she and Burke had united cruelly to bait some desperate animal. It sent such a shock through her that she shrank in spite of herself.
And then for the first time she heard Guy laugh, and it was a sound more dreadful than his cough had been, a catching, painful sound that was more like a cry--the hunger-cry of a prowling beast of the desert.
He got up as he uttered it, and stretched his arms above his head. She saw that his hands were clenched.
"Oh, don't overdo it, I say!" he begged. "Hospitality is all very well, but it can be carried too far. Ask Burke if it can't! Besides, two's company and three's the deuce. So I'll be going--and many thanks!"
He