The Odds - Ethel May Dell (read full novel .TXT) 📗

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At nine o'clock on the following morning Lord Wyverton, sitting at breakfast alone in the little coffee-room of the Red Lion, heard a voice he recognized speak his name in the passage outside.
"Lord Wyverton," it said, "is he down?"
Lord Wyverton rose and went to the door. He met the landlady just entering with a basket of eggs in her hand. She dropped him a curtsy.
"It's Miss Molly from the Vicarage, my lord," she said.
Molly herself stood in the background. Behind the landlady's broad back she also executed a village bob.
"I had to come with the eggs. We supply Mrs. Richards with eggs. And it seemed unneighbourly to go away without seeing your lordship," she said.
She looked at him with wonderful dark eyes that met his own with unreserved directness. He told himself as he shook hands that this girl was a great beauty and would be a magnificent woman some day.
"I am pleased to see you," he said, with quiet courtesy. "It was kind of you to look me up. Will you come into the garden?"
"I haven't much time to spare," said Molly. "It's my cake morning. You are coming round to the Vicarage, aren't you? Can't we walk together?"
"Certainly," he replied at once, "if you think I shall not be too early a visitor."
Molly's lips parted in a little smile. "We begin our day at six," she said.
"What energy!" he commented. "I am only energetic when I am on a holiday."
"You're on business now, then?" queried Molly.
He looked at her keenly as they passed out upon the sunlit road. "I think you know what my business is," he said.
She did not respond. "I'll take you through the fields," she said. "It's a short cut. Don't you want to smoke?"
There was something in her manner that struck him as not altogether natural. He pondered over it as he lighted a cigarette.
"They are cutting the grass in the church fields," said Molly. "Don't you hear?"
Through the slumberous summer air came the whir of the machine. It was June.
"It's the laziest sound on earth," said Wyverton.
Molly turned off the road to a stile. "You ought to take a holiday," she said, as she mounted it.
He vaulted the railing beside it and gave her his hand. "I'm not altogether a drone, Miss Neville," he said.
Molly seated herself on the top bar and surveyed him. "Of course not," she said. "You are here on business, aren't you?"
Wyverton's extended hand fell to his side. "Now what is it you want to say to me?" he asked her, quietly.
Molly's hands were clasped in her lap. They did not tremble, but they gripped one another rather tightly.
"I want to say a good many things," she said, after a moment.
Lord Wyverton smiled suddenly. He had meeting brows, but his smile was reassuring.
"Yes?" he said. "About your sister?"
"Partly," said Molly. She put up an impatient hand and removed her hat. Her hair shone gloriously in the sunlight that fell chequered through the overarching trees.
"I want to talk to you seriously, Lord Wyverton," she said.
"I am quite serious," he assured her.
There followed a brief silence. Molly's eyes travelled beyond him and rested upon the plodding horses in the hay-field.
"I have heard," she said at length, "that men and women in your position don't always marry for love."
Wyverton's brows drew together into a single, hard, uncompromising line. "I suppose there are such people to be found in every class," he said.
Molly's eyes returned from the hay-field and met his look steadily. "I like you best when you don't frown," she said. "I am not trying to insult you."
His brows relaxed, but he did not smile. "I am sure of that," he said, courteously. "Please continue."
Molly leaned slightly forward. "I think one should be honest at all times," she said, "at whatever cost. Lord Wyverton, Phyllis isn't in love with you at all. She cares for Jim Freeman, the doctor's assistant--an awfully nice boy; and he cares for her. But, you see, you are rich, and we are so frightfully poor; and mother is often ill, chiefly because there isn't enough to provide her with what she needs. And so Phyllis felt it would be almost wicked to refuse your offer. Perhaps you won't understand, but I hope you will try. If it weren't for Jim, I would never have told you. As it is--I have been wondering--"
She broke off abruptly and suddenly covered her face with her two hands in a stillness so tense that the man beside her marvelled.
He moved close to her. He was rather pale, but by no means discomposed.
"Yes?" he said. "Go on, please. I want you to finish."
There was authority in his voice, but Molly sat in unbroken silence.
He waited for several moments, then laid a perfectly steady hand on her knee.
"You have been wondering--" he said.
She did not raise her head. As if under compulsion, she answered him with her face still hidden.
"I have dared to wonder if--perhaps--you would take me--instead. I--am not in love with anybody else, and I never would be. If you are in love with Phyllis, I won't go on. But if it is just beauty you care for, I am no worse-looking than she is. And I should do my best to please you."
The low voice sank. Molly's habitual self-possession had wholly deserted her at this critical moment. She was painfully conscious of the quiet hand on her knee. It seemed to press upon her with a weight that was almost intolerable.
The silence that followed was terrible to her. She wondered afterwards how she sat through it.
Then at last he moved and took her by the wrists. "Will you look at me?" he said.
His voice sent a quiver through her. She had never felt so desperately scared and ashamed in all her healthy young life. Yet she yielded to the insistence of his touch and tone, and met the searching scrutiny of his eyes with all her courage. He was not angry, she saw; nor was he contemptuous. More than that she could not read. She lowered her eyes and waited. Her pulses throbbed wildly, but still she kept herself from trembling.
"Is this a definite offer?" he asked at last.
"Yes," she answered. Her voice was very low, but it was steady.
He waited a second, and she felt the mastery of the eyes she could not meet.
"Forgive me," he said, then; "but are you actually in earnest?"
"Yes," she said again, and marvelled at her own daring.
His hold tightened upon her wrists. "You are a very brave girl," he said.
There was a baffling note in his tone, and she glanced up involuntarily. To her intense relief she saw the quizzical, kindly look in his eyes again.
"Will you allow me to say," he said, "that I don't think you were created for a consolation prize?"
He spoke somewhat grimly, but his tone was not without humour. Molly sat quite still in his hold. She had a feeling that she had grossly insulted him, that she had made it his right to treat her exactly as he chose.
After a moment he set her quietly free.
"I see you are serious," he said. "If you weren't--it would be intolerable. But do you actually expect me to take you at your word?"
She did not hesitate. "I wish you to," she said.
"You think you would be happy with me?" he pursued. "You know, I am called eccentric by a good many."
"You are eccentric," said Molly, "or you wouldn't dream of marrying one of us. As to being happy, it isn't my nature to be miserable. I don't want to be a countess, but I do want to help my people. That in itself would make me happy."
"Thank you for telling me the truth," Wyverton said, gravely. "I believe I have suspected some of it from the first. And now listen. I asked your sister to marry me--because I wanted her. But I will spoil no woman's life. I will take nothing that does not belong to me. I shall set her free."
He paused. Molly was looking at him expectantly. His face softened a little under her eyes.
"As for you," he said, "I don't think you quite realize what you have offered me--how much of yourself. It is no little thing, Molly. It is all you have. A woman should not part with that lightly. Still, since you have offered it to me, I cannot and do not throw it aside. If you are of the same mind in six months from now, I shall take you at your word. But you ought to marry for love, child--you ought to marry for love."
He held out his hand to her abruptly, and Molly, with a burning face, gave him both her own.
"I can't think how I did it," she said, in a low voice. "But I--I am not sorry."
"Thank you," said Lord Wyverton, and he stooped with an odd little smile, and kissed first one and then the other of the hands he held.
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No one, save Phyllis, knew of the contract made on that golden morning in June on the edge of the flowering meadows; and even to Phyllis only the bare outlines of the interview were vouchsafed.
That she was free, and that Lord Wyverton felt no bitterness over his disappointment, he himself assured her. He uttered no word of reproach. He did not so much as hint that she had given him cause for complaint. He was absolutely composed, even friendly.
He barely mentioned her sister's interference in the matter, and he said nothing whatsoever as to her singular method of dealing with the situation. It was Molly who briefly imparted this action of hers, and her manner of so doing did not invite criticism.
Thereafter she went back to her multitudinous duties without an apparent second thought, shouldering her burden with her usual serenity; and no one imagined for a moment what tumultuous hopes and doubts underlay her calm exterior.
Lord Wyverton left the place, and the general aspect of things returned to their usual placidity.
The announcement of the engagement of the vicar's eldest daughter to Jim Freeman, the doctor's assistant in the neighbouring town, created a small stir among the gossips. It was generally felt that, good fellow as young Freeman undoubtedly was, pretty Phyllis Neville might have done far better for herself. A rumour even found credence in some quarters that she had actually refused the wealthy aristocrat for Jim Freeman's sake, but there were not many who held this belief. It implied a foolishness too sublime.
Discussion died down after Phyllis's return to her work. It was understood that her marriage was to take place in the winter. Molly's hands were, in consequence, very full, and she had obviously no time to talk of her sister's choice. There was only one visitor who ever called at the Vicarage in anything approaching to state. Her visits usually occurred about twice a year, and possessed something of the nature of a Royal favour. This was Lady Caryl, the Lady of the Manor, in whose gift the living lay.
This lady had always shown a marked preference for the vicar's second daughter.
"Mary Neville," she would remark to her friends, "is severely handicapped by circumstance, but she will