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

her eyes were grave. She clasped her fingers about her knees. "My dear Dick, that's why. It didn't hurt me like _The Valley of Dry Bones_. In fact I was feeling so nice and superior when I read it that I rather enjoyed it."
Dick sent the boat through the water with a long stroke. His face was stern. After a moment Juliet looked at him. "Are you cross with me because I read it, Dick?"
His face softened instantly. "With you! What an idea!"
"With the man who wrote it then?" she suggested. "He exasperates me intensely. He has such a maddeningly clear vision, and he is so inevitably right."
"And yet you persist in reading him!" Dick's voice had a faintly mocking note.
"And yet I persist in reading him. You see, I am a woman, Dick. I haven't your lordly faculty for ignoring the people I most dislike. I detest Dene Strange, but I can't overlook him. No one can. I think his character studies are quite marvellous. That girl and her endless flirtations, and then--when the real thing comes to her at last--that unspeakable man of iron refusing to take her because she had jilted another man, ruining both their lives for the sake of his own rigid code! He didn't deserve her in any case. She was too good for him with all her faults." Juliet paused, studying her lover's face attentively. "I hope you're not that sort of man, Dick," she said.
He met her eyes. "Why do you say that?"
"Because there's a high-priestly expression about your mouth that rather looks as if you might be. Please don't tell me if you are because it will spoil all my pleasure! Give me a cigarette instead and let's enjoy ourselves!"
"You'll find the case in my coat behind," he said. "But, Juliet, though I wouldn't spoil your pleasure for the world, I must say one thing. If a woman engages herself to a man, I consider she is bound in honour to fulfil her engagement--unless he sets her free. If she is an honourable woman, she will never free herself without his consent. I hold that sort of engagement to be a debt of honour--as sacred as the marriage vow itself."
"Even though she realizes that she is going to make a mistake?" said Juliet, beginning to search the coat.
"Whatever the circumstances," he said. "An engagement can only be broken by mutual consent. Otherwise, the very word becomes a farce. I have no sympathy with jilts of either sex. I think they ought to be kicked out of decent society."
Juliet found the cigarettes and looked up with a smile. "I think you and Dene Strange ought to collaborate," she said. "You would soon put this naughty world to rights between you. Now open your mouth and shut your eyes, and if you're very good I'll light it for you!"
There was in her tone, despite its playfulness, a delicate finality that told him plainly that she had no intention of pursuing the subject further, and, curiously, the man's heart smote him for a moment. He felt as if in some fashion wholly inexplicable he had hurt her.
"You're not vexed with me, sweetheart?" he said.
She looked at him still smiling, but her look, her smile, were more of a veil than a revelation. "With you! What an idea!" she said, softly mocking.
"Ah, don't!" he said. "I'm not like that, Juliet!"
She held up the cigarette. "Quite ready? Ah, Dick! Don't--don't upset the boat!"
For the sculls floated loose again in the rowlocks. He had her by the wrists, the arms, the shoulders. He had her, suddenly and very closely, against his heart. He covered her face with his kisses, so that she gasped and gasped for breath, half-laughing, half-dismayed.
"Dick, how--how disgraceful of you! Dick, you mustn't! Someone--someone will see us!"
"Let them!" he said, grimly reckless. "You brought it on yourself. How dare you tell me I'm like a high priest? How dare you, Juliet?"
"I daren't," she assured him, her hand against his mouth, restraining him. "I never will again. You're much more like the great god Pan. There, now do be good! Please be good! I am sure someone is watching us. I can feel it in my bones. You're flinging my reputation to the little fishes. Please, Dick--darling,--please!"
He held the appealing hand and kissed it very tenderly. "I can't resist that," he said. "So now we're quits, are we? And no one any the worse. Juliet, you'll have to marry me soon."
She drew away from his arms, still panting a little. Her face was burning. "Now we'll go back," she said. "You're very unmanageable to-day. I shall not come out with you again for a long time."
"Yes--yes, you will!" he urged. "I shouldn't be so unmanageable if I weren't so--starved."
She laughed rather shakily. "You're absurd and extravagant. Please row back now, Dick! Mr. and Mrs. Fielding will be wondering where we are."
"Let 'em wonder!" said Dick.
Nevertheless, moved by something in her voice or face, he turned the boat and began to row back to the little landing-stage. Juliet rescued the cigarettes from the floor, and presently placed one between his lips and lighted it for him. But her eyes did not meet his during the process, and her hand was not wholly steady. She leaned back in the stern and smoked her own cigarette afterwards in almost unbroken silence.
"Don't you want a water-lily?" Dick said to her once as they drew near a patch.
She shook her head. "No, don't disturb them! They're happier where they are."
"Impossible!" he protested. "When they might be with you!"
She raised her eyes to his then, and looked at him very steadily. "No, that doesn't follow, Dick," she said.
"I think it does," he said. "Never mind if you don't agree! Tell me when you are coming to sing at one of my Saturday night concerts at High Shale!"
"Oh, I don't know, Dick." She looked momentarily embarrassed. "You know we are going away very soon, don't you?"
"Where to?" he said.
"I don't know. Either Wales or the North. Mrs. Fielding needs a change, and I--"
"You're coming back?" he said.
"I suppose so--some time. Why?" She looked at him questioningly.
He leaned forward, his black eyes unswervingly upon her. "Because--if you don't--I shall come after you," he said, with iron determination.
She laughed a little. "Pray don't look so grim! I probably shall come back all in good time. I will let you know if I don't, anyway."
"You promise?" he said.
"Of course I promise." She flicked her cigarette-ash into the water. "I won't disappear without letting you know first."
"Without letting me know where to find you," he said.
She glanced over his shoulder as if measuring the distance between the skiff and the landing-stage. "No, I don't promise that. It wouldn't be fair. But you will be able to trace me by Columbus. He will certainly accompany the cat's-meat cart wherever it goes. Oh, Dick! There's someone there--waiting for us!"
He also threw a look behind him. "Shall I put her about? I don't see anyone, but if you wish it--"
"No, no, I don't! Row straight in! There is someone there, and you'll have to apologize. I knew we were being watched."
Juliet sat upright with a flushed face.
Dick began to laugh. "Dear, dear! How tragic! Never mind, darling! I daresay it's no one more important than a keeper, and we will see if we can enlist his sympathy."
He pulled a few swift strokes and the skiff glided up to the little landing-stage. He shipped the sculls, and held to the woodwork with one hand.
"Will you get ashore, dear, and I'll tie up. There's no one here, you see."
"No one that matters," said a laughing voice above him, and suddenly a man in a white yachting-suit, slim, dark, with a monkey-like activity of movement, stepped out from the spreading shadow of a beech.
"Hullo!" exclaimed Dick, startled.
"Hullo, sir! Delighted to meet you. Madam, will you take my hand? Ah--_et tu, Juliette!_ Delighted to meet you also."
He was bowing with one hand extended, the other on his heart. Juliet, still seated in the stern of the boat, had gone suddenly white to the lips.
She gasped a little, and in a moment forced a laugh that somehow sounded desperate. "Why, it is Charles Rex!" she said.
Dick's eyes came swiftly to her. "Who? Lord Saltash, isn't it? I thought so." His look flashed back to the man above him with something of a challenge. "You know this lady then?"
Two eyes--one black, one grey--looked down into his, answering the challenge with gay inconsequence. "Sir, I have that inestimable privilege. _Juliette_, will you not accept my hand?"
Juliet's hand came upwards a little uncertainly, then, as he grasped it, she stood up in the boat. "This is indeed a surprise," she said, and again involuntarily she gasped. "Rumour had it that you were a hundred miles away at least."
"Rumour!" laughed Lord Saltash. "How oft hath rumour played havoc with my name! Not an unpleasant surprise, I trust?"
He handed her ashore, laughing on a note of mockery. Charles Burchester, Lord Saltash, said to be of royal descent, possessed in no small degree the charm not untempered with wickedness of his reputed ancestor. His friends had dubbed him "the merry monarch" long since, but Juliet had found a more dignified appellation for him which those who knew him best had immediately adopted. He had become Charles Rex from the day she had first bestowed the title upon him. Somehow, in all his varying--sometimes amazing--moods, it suited him.
She stood with him on the little wooden landing-stage, her hand still in his, and the colour coming back into her face. "But of course not!" she said in answer to his light words, laughing still a trifle breathlessly. "If you will promise not to prosecute us for trespassing!"
"_Mais, Juliette_!" He bent over her hand. "You could not trespass if you tried!" he declared gallantly. "And the cavalier with you--may I not have the honour of an introduction?"
He knew how to jest with grace in an awkward moment. Dick realised that, as, having secured the boat, he presented himself for Juliet's low-spoken introduction.
"Mr. Green--Lord Saltash!"
Saltash extended a hand, his odd eyes full of quizzical amusement. "I've heard your name before, I think. And I believe I've seen you somewhere too. Ah, yes! It's coming back! You are the Orpheus who plays the flute to the wild beasts at High Shale. I've been wanting to meet you. I listened to you from my car one night, and--on my soul--I nearly wept!"
Dick smiled with a touch of cynicism. "Miss Moore was listening that night too," he said.
"Yes," Juliet said quickly. "I was there."
Saltash looked at her questioningly for a moment, then his look returned to Dick. "I am the friend who never tells," he observed. "So it was--Miss Moore--you were playing to, was it? Ah, _Juliette_!" He threw her a sudden smile. "I would I could play like that!"
She uttered her soft, low laugh. "No; you have quite enough accomplishments, _mon ami_. Now, if you don't mind, I think we had better walk back and find Mr. and Mrs. Fielding. Perhaps you know--or again perhaps you don't--they live at Shale Court. And I am with them--as Mrs. Fielding's companion. I--" she hesitated momentarily--"have left Lady Jo."
"Oh, I know that," said Saltash. "I've missed you badly. We all have. When are you coming back to us?"
"I don't know," said Juliet.
He gave her one of his humorous looks. "Next week--some time--never?"
She opened her sun-shade absently. "Probably," she said.
"Rather hard on Lady Jo, what?" he suggested. "Don't you miss her at all?"
"No," said Juliet. "I can't--honestly--say