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

water in a basin, and then he came back to her. As if she had been a child, he raised her to lean against him, and proceeded very quietly to bathe her face and head with ice-cold water.
She shrank at the chill of it, but he persisted in his task, and very soon she began to feel refreshed.
"Thank you," she murmured at last. "I am better now. I will get up."
"You had better lie still for the present," he said. "I will send you in some supper later."
His tone was repressive. She could not look him in the face. But, as he made as if he would rise, something impelled her to lay a detaining hand upon his arm.
"Please wait a minute!" she said,
He waited, and in a moment, with difficulty, she went on.
"Burke, I have done wrong, I know. I am sorry. Please don't be angry with me! I--can't bear it."
There was a catch in her voice that she could not restrain. She had a great longing to hide her face on his shoulder and burst into tears. But something--some inner, urgent warning--held her back.
Burke sat quite still. There was a touch of rigidity in his attitude. "All right," he said at last. "I am not angry--with you."
Her fingers closed upon his arm. "Please don't quarrel with Dr. Kieff about it!" she said nervously. "It won't happen again."
She felt him stiffen still further at her words. "It certainly won't," he said briefly, "Tell me, have you got any of the infernal stuff by you?"
She glanced up at him, startled by the question. "Of course I haven't!" she said.
His eyes held a glitter that was almost bestial. She dropped her hand from, his arm as if she had received an electric shock. He got up instantly.
"Very well. I will leave you now. You had better go to bed."
"I must see Guy first," she objected.
"I am attending to Guy," he said.
That opened her eyes. She started up, facing him, a sudden sharp misgiving at her heart. "Burke! You! Where--is Dr. Kieff?"
He uttered a grim, exultant sound that made her quiver. "He is on his way back to Ritzen--or Brennerstadt. He didn't mention which."
"Ah!" Her hands were tightly clasped upon her breast. "What--what have you done to him?" she panted.
Burke had risen to his feet. "I have--helped him on his way, that's all," he said.
She tried to stand up also, but the moment she touched the ground, she reeled. He caught her, and held her, facing him. His eyes shone with a glow as of molten metal,
"Do you think," he said, breathing deeply, "that I would suffer that accursed fiend to drag my wife--my wife--down into that infernal slough?"
She was trembling from head to foot; her knees doubled under her, but he held her up. The barely repressed violence of his speech was perceptible in his hold also. She had no strength to meet it.
"But what of Guy?" she whispered voicelessly. "He will die!"
"Guy!" he said, and in the word there was a bitterness indescribable. "Is be to be weighed in the balance against you?"
She was powerless to reason with him, and perhaps it was as well for her that this was so, for he was in no mood to endure opposition. His wrath seemed to beat about her like a storm-blast. But yet he held her up, and after a moment, seeing her weakness, he softened somewhat.
"There! Lie down again!" he said, and lowered her to the bed. "I'll see to Guy. Only remember," he stooped over her, and to her strained senses he loomed gigantic, "if you ever touch that stuff again, my faith in you will be gone. And where there is no trust, you can't expect--honour."
The words seemed to pierce her, but he straightened himself the moment after and turned to go.
She covered her face with her hands as the door closed upon him. She felt as if she had entered upon a new era, indeed, and she feared with a dread unspeakable to look upon the path which lay before her.


CHAPTER XI
INTO BATTLE

When Sylvia saw Guy again, he greeted her with an odd expression in his dark eyes, half-humorous, half-speculative. He was lying propped on pillows by the open window, a cigarette and a box of matches by his side.
"Hullo, Sylvia!" he said. "You can come in. The big _baas_ has set his house in order and gone out."
The early morning sunshine was streaming across his bed. She thought he looked wonderfully better, and marvelled at the change.
He smiled at her as she drew near. "Yes, I've been washed and fed and generally made respectable. Thank goodness that brute Kieff has gone anyway! I couldn't have endured him much longer. What was the grand offence? Did he make love to you or what?"
"Make love to me! Of course not!" Sylvia flushed indignantly at the suggestion.
Guy laughed; he seemed in excellent spirits. "He'd better not, what? But the big _baas_ was very angry with him, I can tell you. And I can't think it was on my account. I'm inoffensive enough, heavens knows."
He reached up a hand as she stood beside him, and took and held hers.
"You're a dear girl, Sylvia," he said. "Just the very sight of you does me good. You're not sorry Kieff has gone?"
"Sorry! No!" She looked down at him with doubt in her eyes. "Only--we owe him a good deal, remember. He saved your life."
"Oh, that!" said Guy lightly. "You may set your mind quite at rest on that score, my dear. He wouldn't have done it if he hadn't felt like it. He pleases himself in all he does. But I should like to have witnessed his exit last night. That, I imagine, was more satisfactory from Burke's point of view than from his. He--Burke--came back with that smile-on-the-face-of-the-tiger expression of his. You've seen it, I daresay. It was very much in evidence last night."
Sylvia repressed a sudden shiver. "Oh, Guy! What do you think happened?"
He gave her hand a sudden squeeze. "Nothing to worry about, I do assure you. He's a devil of a fellow when he's roused, isn't he? But--so far as my knowledge goes--he's never killed anyone yet. Sit down, old girl, and let's have a smoke together! I'm allowed just one to-day--as a reward for good behaviour."
"Are you being good?" said Sylvia.
Guy closed one eye. "Oh, I'm a positive saint to-day. I've promised--almost--never to be naughty again. Do you know Burke slept on the floor in here last night? Decent of him, wasn't it?"
Sylvia glanced swiftly round. "Did he? How uncomfortable for him! He mustn't do that again,"
"He didn't notice," Guy assured her. "He was much too pleased with himself. I rather like him for that, you know. He has a wonderful faculty for--what shall we call it?--mental detachment? Or, is it physical? Anyway, he knows how to enjoy his emotions, whatever they are, and he doesn't let any little personal discomfort stand in his way."
He ended with a careless laugh from which all bitterness was absent, and after a little pause Sylvia sat down by his side. His whole attitude amazed her this morning. Some magic had been at work. The fretful misery of the past few weeks had passed like a cloud. This was her own Guy come back to her, clean, sane, with the boyish humour that she had always loved in him, and the old quick light of understanding and sympathy in his eyes.
He watched her with a smile. "Aren't you going to light up, too? Come, you'd better. It'll tone you up,"
She looked back at him. "Had you better smoke?" she said. "Won't it start your cough?"
He lifted an imperious hand. "It won't kill me if it does. Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?" she said.
"As if I'd come back from the dead." He frowned at her abruptly though his eyes still smiled. "Don't!" he said.
She smiled in answer, and picked up the matchbox. It was of silver and bore his initials.
"Yes," Guy said, "I've taken great care of it, haven't I? It's been my mascot all these years."
She took out a match and struck it without speaking. There was something poignant in her silence. She was standing again in the wintry dark of her father's park, pressed close to Guy's heart, and begging him brokenly to use that little parting gift of hers with thoughts of her when more than half the world lay between them. Guy's cigarette was in his mouth. She stooped forward to light it. Her hand was trembling. In a moment he reached up, patted it lightly, and took the match from her fingers. The action said more than words. It was as if he had gently turned a page in the book of life, and bade her not to look back.
"Now don't you bother about me!" he said. "I'm being good--as you see. So go and cook the dinner or do anything else that appeals to your housekeeper's soul! That is, if you feel it's immoral to smoke a cigarette at this early hour. Needless to say, I shall be charmed if you will join me."
But he did not mean to talk upon intimate subjects, and his tone conveyed as much. She lingered for a while, and they spoke of the farm, the cattle, Burke's prospects, everything under the sun save personal matters. Yet there was no barrier in their reserve. They avoided these by tacit consent.
In the end she left him, feeling strangely comforted. Burke had been right. The devil had gone out of Guy, and he had come back.
She pondered the matter as she went about her various tasks, but she found no solution thereof. Something must have happened to cause the change in him; she could not believe that Kieff's departure had effected it. Her thoughts went involuntarily to Burke--Burke whose wrath had been so terrible the previous night. Was it due to him? Had he accomplished what neither Kieff's skill nor her devotion had been able to achieve? Yet he had spoken of Guy as one of his failures. He had impressed upon her the fact that Guy's, case was hopeless. She had even been convinced of it herself until to-day. But to-day all things were changed. Guy had come back.
The thought of her next meeting with Burke tormented her continually, checking all gladness. She dreaded it unspeakably, listening for him with nerves on edge during the busy hours that followed.
She made the Kaffir boy bring the camp-bed out of the guest-hut which Burke had occupied of late and set it up in a corner of Guy's room. Kieff had slept on a long-chair in the sitting-room, taking his rest at odd times and never for any prolonged spell. She had even wondered sometimes if he ever really slept at all, so alert had he been at the slightest sound. But she knew that