Charles Rex - Ethel May Dell (i love reading .TXT) 📗

no more than a child herself as she danced across the grass, executing a fairy-like step as she came. The tiny girl's tinkling laughter mingled with hers. Her little hands were fondly clasped about the girl's neck; she looked down into her face with babyish adoration while Eileen, the elder child, gazed upward with a more serious devotion.
General Melrose interrupted his narrative to look at the advancing trio. "My Jove, Mrs. Bolton," he said, "but that's a pretty sight!"
Sheila also ceased very suddenly to converse with Bunny, while Saltash made a scarcely perceptible movement as though he braced and restrained himself in the same instant.
"The prettiest picture I've seen for years!" vowed the General. "How that little Larpent girl changes! She is like a piece of quicksilver. There's no getting hold of her. How old is she?"
"She is nearly twenty," said Bunny with the swiftness of ownership.
"Nearly twenty! You don't say so! She might be fourteen at the present moment. Look at that! Look at it!" For Toby was suddenly whizzing like a butterfly across the lawn in a giddy flight that seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the little girl still upon her shoulder, the elder child standing apart and clapping her hands in delighted admiration.
"Yes, she is rather like fourteen," Maud said, with her tender smile. "Do you know what she did the other day? It was madness of course, and my husband was very angry with her. I was frightened myself though I have more faith in her than he has. She climbs like a cat, you know, and she actually took both those children up to a high bough of the old beech tree; I don't know in the least how she did it. None of the party seemed to think there was any cause for alarm till Jake came on the scene. He fetched them down with a ladder--all but Toby who went higher and pelted him with beech nuts till he retreated--at my urgent request."
"And what happened after that?" questioned Saltash, with his eyes still upon the dancing figure. "From what I have observed of Jake, I should say that an ignominious retreat is by no means in his line."
Maud laughed a little. "Oh, Jake can be generous when he likes. He had it out with her of course, but he wasn't too severe. Ah, look! She is going to jump the sun dial!"
Sheila turned to her. "Surely you are nervous! If she fell, the little one might be terribly hurt."
"She won't fall," Maud said with confidence.
And even as she spoke, Toby leapt the sun dial, leaving the ground as a bird leaves it, without effort or any sort of strain, and alighting again as a bird alights from a curving flight with absolute freedom and a natural adroitness of movement indescribably pleasant to watch.
"A very pretty circus trick!" declared the General, and even Bunny's clouded brow cleared a little though he said nothing.
"A circus trick indeed!" said Sheila, as if speaking to herself. "How on earth did she do it?"
"She is like a boy in many ways," said Maud.
Sheila looked at her. "Yes. She is just like a boy, or at least--" Her look went further, reached Saltash who lounged on Maud's other side, and fell abruptly away.
As Toby came up with the two children, all of them flushed and laughing, Toby herself in her white frock looking like a child just out of school, she rose and turned to Bunny.
"We ought to go now," she said. "I am going to fetch the car round for Dad."
"I'll do it," he said.
But she went with him as he had known she would. They left the group at the window and moved away side by side in silence as they had walked that afternoon.
Saltash stood up and addressed Maud. "I'm going too. Bunny is dining with me tonight. I suppose you won't come?"
She gave him her hand, smiling. "I can't thank you. Ask me another day! You and Bunny will really get on much better without me."
"Impossible!" he declared gallantly, but he did not press her.
He turned to the General and took his leave.
Toby and the two children walked the length of the terrace with him, all chattering at once. She seemed to be in a daring, madcap mood and Saltash laughed and jested with her as though she had been indeed the child she looked. Only at parting, when she would have danced away, he suddenly stopped her with a word.
"Nonette!"
She stood still as if at a word of command; there had been something of compulsion in his tone.
He did not look at her, and the smile he wore was wholly alien to the words he spoke.
"Be careful how you go! And don't see Bunny again--till I have seen him!"
A hard breath went through Toby. She stood like a statue, the two children clasping her hands. Her blue eyes gazed at him with a wide questioning. Her face was white.
"Why? Why?" she whispered at length.
His look flashed before her vision like the grim play of a sword. "That girl remembers you. She will give you away. She's probably at it now. I'll see him--tell him the truth if necessary. Anyhow--leave him to me!"
"Tell him--the truth?" The words came from her like a cry. There was a sudden terror in her eyes. He made a swift gesture of dismissal. "Go, child! Go! Whatever I do will make it all right for you. I'm standing by. Don't be afraid! Just--go!"
It was a definite command. She turned to obey, the little girls still clinging to her. The next moment she was running lightly back with them, and Saltash turned in the opposite direction and passed out of sight round the corner of the house on his way to the stable-yard.


CHAPTER XIII
THE TRUTH

He went with careless tread as his fashion was, whistling the gay air to which all England was dancing that season. His swarthy countenance wore the half-mischievous, half-amused expression with which it was his custom to confront--and baffle--the world at large. No one knew what lay behind that facile mask. Only the very few suspected that it hid aught beyond a genial wickedness of a curiously attractive type.
His spurs rang upon the white stones, and Sheila Melrose, standing beside her father's car in the shadow of some buildings, turned sharply and saw him. Her face was pale; it had a strained expression. But it changed at sight of him. She regarded him with that look of frozen scorn which once she had flung him when they had met in the garish crowd at Valrosa.
Bunny was stooping over the car, but he became aware of Saltash almost in the same moment, and stood up straight to face him. Sheila was pale, but he was perfectly white, and there were heavy drops of perspiration on his forehead. He looked full at Saltash with eyes of blazing accusation.
Saltash's face never changed as he came up to the car. He ceased to whistle, but the old whimsical look remained. He seemed unaware of any tension.
"Car all right?" he asked smoothly. "Can I lend a hand? The general is beginning to move."
Sheila turned without a word and got into the car.
Bunny neither moved nor spoke. He stood like a man paralysed. It was Saltash who, with that royal air of amusing himself, stooped to the handle and started the engine.
The girl at the wheel did not even thank him. She looked beyond. Only as he stood aside and the car slid forward, she turned stiffly to Bunny.
"Good-bye!" she said.
He made a jerky movement. Their eyes met for a single second. "You will write?" he said.
His throat was working spasmodically, the words seemed to come with gigantic effort. She bent her head in answer and passed between them through the white gate into the drive that led round to the house.
Saltash turned with a lightning movement to Bunny. "Walk back with me and we can talk!" he said.
Bunny drew sharply back. The movement was one of instinctive recoil. But still no words came. He stood staring at Saltash, and he was trembling from head to foot.
"Don't be an ass now!" Saltash said, and his voice was oddly gentle, even compassionate. "You've stumbled on a mare's nest. It's all right. I can explain."
Bunny controlled himself with a jerk. His face was like death, but he found his voice. "You can keep your damned lies to yourself," he said. "I've no use for them."
The prod of a riding-switch against his shoulder made him start as a spirited animal starts at the touch of a spur. But Saltash only laughed.
"You'll fight me for that!" he said.
"I wouldn't touch you!" flung back Bunny.
"Oh, wouldn't you?" The odd eyes mocked him openly. "Then you withdraw the insult--with apologies?"
"Apologise--to you!" said Bunny.
"Or fight!" said Saltash. "I think that would do you more good than the other, but you shall decide."
"I will do neither," said Bunny, and turned his back with the words. "I've--done with you."
"You're wrong!" said Saltash. "You've got to face it, and you won't get the truth from anyone but me. That girl knows nothing, Bunny!" His voice was suddenly curt, with that in it which very few ever heard. "Turn around! Do you hear? Turn round--damn you! I'll kick you if you don't!"
Bunny turned. It was inevitable. They stood face to face. Then Saltash, the mockery gone from his eyes, reached out abruptly and gripped him by the arm. His touch was electric. For that moment--only for that moment--he was dangerous. There was something of the spring of a tiger in his action.
"You damn fool!" he said, and he spoke between his teeth. "Do you suppose even I would play such a blackguard's game as that?"
"Let me go!" Bunny said through white lips. "Facts are facts."
Saltash's hold did not slacken. "Where's Jake?" he said.
"Jake's away."
"Confound him! Just when he's wanted!" The ferocity died out of Saltash like the glow from cinders blown from a furnace. "Well, listen! I swear to you by all that is sacred that you're making a mistake. Sheila has told you a certain thing that is true, so far as it goes. But you've let your imagination run away with you. The rest is false."
He spoke with an emphasis that carried weight, and Bunny was moved in spite of himself. His own fire died down.
Saltash saw his advantage and pressed it. "If Jake were here, he'd tell you I was speaking the truth, and you'd believe him. You're on a wrong scent. So far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to follow it to blazes. I'm used to pleasantries of that sort from my friends. But I'm damned if I'll let that child be tripped for nothing. Do you hear, Bunny?" He shook the arm he gripped impatiently. "I'll see you in hell first!"
Bunny's mouth twisted with a painful effort to smile. "I'm in hell now," he said.
"Why the devil did you listen?" said Saltash. "Look here! We've got to have this thing out. Send a man along with my horse and walk across the park with me!"
He had gained his point by sheer insistence, and he knew it. Bunny knew it also and cursed himself for a weak fool as he moved to comply. With Saltash's blade through his heart, he yet could somehow find it possible to endure him.
He went with him in silence, hating the magnetism he found it impossible to resist. They passed through the shrubberies that skirted the house, and so to the open down.
Then in his sudden fashion, crudely and vehemently, Saltash