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

enough. We really ought to go."
She baffled him completely. He turned away. "As you will," he said. "We ought to start in two hours."
"I shall be ready," said Sylvia.


CHAPTER III
THE SEED

"Well!" said Mrs. Merston, with her thin smile. "Are you still enjoying the Garden of Eden, Mrs. Ranger?"
Sylvia, white and tired after her ride, tried to smile in answer and failed. "I shall be glad when the winter is over," she said.
Mrs. Merston's colourless eyes narrowed a little, taking her in. "You don't look so blooming as you did," she remarked. "I hear you have had Guy Ranger on your hands."
"Yes," Sylvia said, and coloured a little in spite of herself.
"What has been the matter with him?" demanded Mrs. Merston.
Sylvia hesitated, and in a moment the older woman broke into a grating laugh.
"Oh, you needn't trouble to dress it up in polite language. I know the malady he suffers from. But I wonder Burke would allow you to have anything to do with it. He has a reputation for being rather particular."
"He is particular," Sylvia said.
Somehow she could not bring herself to tell Mrs. Merston the actual cause of Guy's illness. She did not want to talk of it. But Mrs. Merston was difficult to silence.
"Is it true that that scoundrel Kieff has been staying at Blue Hill Farm?" she asked next, still closely observant of her visitor's face.
Sylvia looked at her with a touch of animation. "I wonder why everyone calls him that," she said. "Yes, he has been with us. He is a doctor, a very clever one. I never liked him very much, but I often wondered what he had done to be called that."
"Oh, I only know what they say," said Mrs. Merston. "I imagine he was in a large measure responsible for young Ranger's fall from virtue in the first place--and that of a good many besides. He's something of a vampire, so they say. There are plenty of them about in this charming country."
"How horrible!" murmured Sylvia, with a slight shudder as a vision of the motionless, onyx eyes which had so often watched her rose in her mind.
"You're looking quite worn out," remarked Mrs. Merston. "Why did you let your husband drag you over here? You had better stay the night and have a rest."
But Sylvia hastened to decline this invitation with much decision. "I couldn't possibly do that, thank you. There is so much to be seen to at home. It is very kind of you, but please don't suggest it to Burke!"
Mrs. Merston gave her an odd look. "Do you always do as your husband tells you!" she said. "What a mistake!"
Sylvia blushed very deeply. "I think--one ought," she said in a low voice.
"How old-fashioned of you!" said Mrs. Merston. "I don't indulge mine to that extent. Are you going to Brennerstadt for the races next month? Or has the oracle decreed that you are to stay behind?"
"I don't know. I didn't know there were any." Sylvia looked out through the mauve-coloured twilight to where Burke stood talking with Merston by one of the hideous corrugated iron cattle-sheds. The Merstons' farm certainly did not compare favourably with Burke's. She could not actively condemn Mrs. Merston's obvious distaste for all that life held for her. So far as she could see, there was not a tree on the place, only the horrible prickly pear bushes thrusting out their distorted arms as if exulting in their own nakedness.
They had had their tea in front of the bungalow, if it could be dignified by such a name. It was certainly scarcely more than an iron shed, and the heat within during the day was, she could well imagine, almost unbearable. It was time to be starting back, and she wished Burke would come. Her hostess's scoffing reference to him made her long to get away. Politeness, however, forbade her summarily to drop the subject just started.
"Do you go to Brennerstadt for the races?" she asked.
"I?" said Mrs. Merston, and laughed again her caustic, mirthless laugh. "No! My acquaintance with Brennerstadt is of a less amusing nature. When I go there, I merely go to be ill, and as soon as I am partially recovered, I come back--to this." There was inexpressible bitterness in her voice. "Some day," she said, '"I shall go there to die. That is all I have to look forward to now."
"Oh, don't!" Sylvia said, with quick feeling. "Don't, please! You shouldn't feel like that."
Mrs. Merston's face was twisted in a painful smile. She looked into the girl's face with a kind of cynical pity. "You will come to it," she said. "Life isn't what it was to you even now. You're beginning to feel the thorns under the rose-leaves. Of course you may be lucky. You may bear children, and that will be your salvation. But if you don't--if you don't----"
"Please!" whispered Sylvia. "Please don't say that to me!"
The words were almost inarticulate. She got up as she uttered them and moved away. Mrs. Merston looked after her, and very strangely her face altered. Something of that mother-love in her which had so long been cheated showed in her lustreless eyes.
"Oh, poor child!" she said. "I am sorry."
It was briefly spoken. She was ever brief in her rare moments of emotion. But there was a throb of feeling in the words that reached Sylvia. She turned impulsively back again.
"Thank you," she said, and there were tears in her eyes as she spoke. "I think perhaps--" her utterance came with an effort "--my life is--in its way--almost as difficult as yours. That ought to make us comrades, oughtn't it? If ever there is anything I can do to help you, please tell me!"
"Let it be a mutual understanding!" said Mrs. Merston, and to Sylvia's surprise she took and pressed her hand for a moment.
There was more comfort in that simple pressure than Sylvia could have believed possible. She returned it with that quick warmth of hers which never failed to respond to kindness, and in that second the seed of friendship was sown upon fruitful ground.
The moment passed, sped by Mrs. Merston who seemed half-afraid of her own action.
"You must get your husband to take you to Brennerstadt for the races," she said. "It would make a change for you. It's a shame for a girl of your age to be buried in the wilderness."
"I really haven't begun to be dull yet," Sylvia said.
"No, perhaps not. But you'll get nervy and unhappy. You've been used to society, and it isn't good for you to go without it entirely. Look at me!" said Mrs. Merston, with her short laugh. "And take warning!"
The two men were sauntering towards them, and they moved to meet them. Far down in the east an almost unbelievably huge moon hung like a brazen shield. The mauve of the sunset had faded to pearl.
"It is rather a beautiful world, isn't it?" Sylvia said a little wistfully.
"To the favoured few--yes," said Mrs. Merston.
Sylvia gave her a quick glance. "I read somewhere--I don't know if it's true--that we are all given the ingredients of happiness, but the mixing is left to ourselves. Perhaps you and I haven't found the right mixture yet."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Merston. "Perhaps not."
"I'm going to have another try," said Sylvia, with sudden energy.
"I wish you luck," said Mrs. Merston somewhat grimly.


CHAPTER IV
MIRAGE

From the day of her visit to the Merstons Sylvia took up her old life again, and pursued all her old vocations with a vigour that seemed even more enthusiastic than of yore. Her ministrations to Guy had ceased to be of an arduous character, or indeed to occupy much of her time. It was mainly Burke who filled Kieff's place and looked after Guy generally with a quiet efficiency that never encouraged any indulgence. They seemed to be good friends, yet Sylvia often wondered with a dull ache at the heart if this were any more than seeming. There was so slight a show of intimacy between them, so little of that camaraderie generally so noticeable between dwellers in the wilderness. Sometimes she fancied she caught a mocking light in Guy's eyes when they looked at Burke. He was always perfectly docile under his management, but was he always genuine? She could not tell. His recovery amazed her. He seemed to possess an almost boundless store of vitality. He cast his weakness from him with careless jesting, laughing down all her fears. She knew well that he was not so strong as he would have had her believe, that he fought down his demon of suffering in solitude, that often he paid heavily for deeds of recklessness. But the fact remained that he had come back from the gates of death, and each day she marvelled anew.
She and Burke seldom spoke of him when together. That intangible reserve that had grown up between them seemed to make it impossible. She had no longer the faintest idea as to Burke's opinion of the returned prodigal, whether he still entertained his previous conviction that Guy was beyond help, or whether he had begun at length to have any confidence for the future. In a vague fashion his reticence hurt her, but she could not bring herself to attempt to break through it. He was a man perpetually watching for something, and it made her uneasy and doubtful, though for what he watched she had no notion. For it was upon herself rather than upon Guy that his attention seemed to be concentrated. His attitude puzzled her. She felt curiously like a prisoner, though to neither word, nor look, nor deed could she ascribe the feeling. She was even at times disposed to put it down to the effect of the weather upon her physically. It did undoubtedly try her very severely. Though the exercise that she compelled herself to take had restored to her the power to sleep, she always felt as weary when she arose as when she lay down. The heat and the drought combined to wear her out. Valiantly though she struggled to rally her flagging energies, the effort became increasingly difficult. She lived in the depths of a great depression, against which, strive as she might, she ever strove in vain. She was furious with herself for her failure, but it pursued her relentlessly. She found the Kaffir servants more than usually idle and difficult to deal with, and this added yet further to the burden that weighed her down.
One day, returning from a ride to find Fair Rosamond swabbing the floor of the _stoep_ with her bath-sponge, she lost her temper completely and wholly unexpectedly, and cut the girl across her naked shoulders with her riding-switch. It was done in a moment--a single, desperate moment of unbearable exasperation. Rosamond screamed and fled, upsetting her pail inadvertently over her mistress's feet as she went. And Sylvia, with a burning sense of shame for her violence, retreated as precipitately to her own room.
She entered by the window, and, not even noticing that the door into the