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

any right to complain."
She spoke without agitation, but her face was flushed, and there was something about the clasp of her arm that made Columbus look up with earnest affection.
"If that's so," said Saltash, "I can withdraw my protection without compunction."
She smiled. "No doubt you can, most puissant Rex! But it really wouldn't answer your purpose. You've nothing to gain by treachery to a friend, and it would give you a horrid taste afterwards."
He made a face at her. "That's your point of view. And what am I to say when I meet Muff and all the rest of the clan again?"
She gave a slight shrug. "Do you think it matters? They are much too busy chasing after their own affairs to give me a second thought. If I were Lady Jo, they might be interested--for half-an-hour--not a minute longer."
Saltash made a mocking sound. "I know one person whose interest would last a bit longer than that--if you were Lady Jo."
"Indeed?" said Juliet.
"Yes--indeed, _ma Juliette_! I met him the other day at the Club before I went North, and it may interest you to know that he is determined to find her--and marry her--or perish in the attempt."
"It doesn't interest me in the least," said Juliet.
"No? Hard-hearted as ever!" Saltash's grin was one of sheer mischief. "Well, he seemed to share the popular belief that I know where the elusive Lady Jo is to be found. I really can't think what I've done to deserve such a reputation. I was put through a pretty stiff cross-examination, I can tell you."
"I have no doubt you were more than equal to it," said Juliet.
Saltash broke into a laugh. "It was such a skilful fencing-match that I imagine we left off much as we began. But I don't flatter myself that I am cleared of suspicion. In fact it wouldn't surprise me at all to find I was being shadowed--not for the first time in my disreputable career."
"I wonder when you will marry and turn respectable," said Juliet.
He made an appalling grimace. "Follow your pious example? May heaven forbid!"
She looked at him, faintly smiling. "Wait till the real thing comes to you, Charles Rex! You won't feel so superior then."
"Do you know how old I am?" said Saltash.
"Thirty-five," said Juliet idly.
Again his brows went up. "How on earth do you know these things off-hand?"
Her grey eyes were quizzical. "You are quite young enough yet to be happy--if only the right woman turns up."
He leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head, and contemplated her with a criticism that lasted several seconds. His dark face wore its funny, monkeyish look of regret, half-wistful and half-feigned.
"I wish--" he said suddenly--"I wish I'd come down here when you first began to rusticate."
"Why?" said Juliet, with her level eyes upon him.
He laughed and sprang abruptly to his feet. "_Quien sabe_? I might have turned rustic too--pious also, my _Juliette_! Think of it! Life isn't fair to me. Why am I condemned always to ride the desert alone?"
"Mainly because you ride too hard," said Juliet. "None but you can keep up the pace. Ah!" She turned her head quickly, and the swift colour flooded her face.
"Ah!" mocked Saltash softly, watching her. "Is it Romeo's step that I hear?"
Columbus wagged his tail in welcome as Dick Green came round the corner of the Ricketts' cottage and walked down under the apple-trees to join them. He greeted Saltash with the quiet self-assurance of a man who treads his own ground. There was no hint of hostility in his bearing.
"I've been expecting you," he said coolly.
"Have you?" said Saltash, a gleam of malicious humour in his eyes. "I thought there was something of the conquering hero about you. I have come--naturally--to congratulate you on your conquest."
"Thank you," said Dick, and seated himself on the bench beside Juliet and Columbus. "That is very magnanimous of you."
"It is," agreed Saltash. "But if I had known what was in the wind I might have carried it still further and offered you Burchester Castle for the honeymoon."
"How kind of you!" said Juliet. "But we prefer cottages to castles, don't we, Dick? We might have had the Court. The squire very kindly suggested it. But we like this best--till our own house is in order."
"Still rusticating!" commented Saltash. "I should have thought your passion for that would have been satisfied by this time. I seem to have got out of touch with you all during my stay in Scotland. I never meant to go there this year, but I got lured away by Muff and his crowd. Mighty poor sport on the whole. I've often wished myself back. But I pictured you far away on the _Night Moth_ with Mr. and Mrs. Fielding, and myself bored to extinction in my empty castle. And so I hung on. I certainly never expected you to get married in my absence, _ma Juliette_. That was the unkindest cut of all. Why didn't you write and tell me?"
"I didn't even know where you were," said Juliet. "You disappeared without warning. We expected you back at any time."
"Bad excuses every one of 'em!" said Saltash. "You know you wanted to get it over before I came back. Very rash of you both, but it's your funeral, not mine. Is this all the honeymoon you're going to have?"
Juliet laughed a little. "Well, my dear Rex, it doesn't much matter where you are so long as you are happy. We spend a good deal of our time on the sea and in it. We also go motoring in the squire's little car. And we superintend the decorating of our house. At the same time Dick is within reach of the miners who are being rather tiresome, so every one--except the miners--is satisfied."
"Oh, those infernal miners!" said Saltash, and looked at Dick. "How long do you think you are going to keep them in hand?"
"I can't say," said Dick somewhat briefly. "I don't advise Lord Wilchester or any of his people to come down here till something has been done to settle them."
Saltash laughed. "Oh, Muff won't come near. You needn't be afraid of that. He's deer-stalking in the Highlands. He's a great believer in leaving things to settle themselves."
"Is he?" said Dick grimly. "Well, they may do that in a fashion he won't care for before he's much older."
"Are you organizing a strike?" suggested Saltash, a wicked gleam of humour in his eyes.
Dick's eyes flashed in answer. "I am not!" he said. "But--I'm damned if they haven't some reason for striking--if he cares as little as that!"
"How often do you tell 'em so?" said Saltash.
Juliet's hand slipped quietly from Columbus's head to Dick's arm. "May I have a cigarette, please?" she said.
He turned to her immediately and his fire died down. He offered her his cigarette-case in silence.
Juliet took one, faintly smiling. "Do you know," she said to Saltash, "it was Dick's cigarettes that first attracted me to him? When I landed on this desert island, I had only three left. He came to the rescue--most nobly, and has kept me supplied ever since. I don't know where he gets them from, but they are the best I ever tasted."
"He probably smuggles 'em," said Saltash, offering her a match.
"No, I don't," said Dick, rather shortly. "I get them from a man in town. A fellow I once met--Ivor Yardley, the K. C.--first introduced me to them. I get them through his secretary who has some sort of interest in the trade."
A sudden silence fell. Juliet's cigarette remained poised in the act of kindling, but no smoke came from her lips. She had the look of one who listens with almost painful intentness.
The flame of the lighted match licked Saltash's fingers, and he dropped it. "Pardon my clumsiness! Let's try again! So you know Yardley, do you?" He flung the words at Dick. "Quite the coming man in his profession. Rather a brute in some ways, cold-blooded as a fish and wily as a serpent, but interesting--distinctly interesting. When did you meet him?"
"Early this year. I consulted him on a matter of business. I have no private acquaintance with him." Dick was looking straight at Saltash with a certain hardness of contempt in his face. "You evidently are on terms of intimacy with him."
"Oh, quite!" said Saltash readily. "He knows me--almost as well as you do. And I know him--even better. I was saying to _Juliette_ just now that I believe he shares the general impression that I have got Lady Jo Farringmore somewhere up my sleeve. She did the rabbit trick, you know, a week or two before the wedding, and because I was to have been the best man I somehow got the blame. Wonder if he'd have blamed you if you'd been there!"
Dick stiffened. "I think not," he said.
"Not disreputable enough?" laughed Saltash.
"Not nearly," said Juliet, coming out of her silence. "Dick has rather strong opinions on this subject, Charles, so please don't be flippant about it! Will you give me another match?"
He held one for her, his eyebrows cocked at a comical angle, open derision in the odd eyes beneath them. Then, her cigarette kindled, he sprang up in his abrupt fashion.
"I'm going. Thanks for putting up with me for so long. I had to come and see you, Juliette. You are one of the very few capable of appreciating me at my full value."
"I hope you will come again," she said.
He bowed low over her hand. "If I can ever serve you in any way," he said, "I hope you will give me the privilege. Farewell, most estimable Romeo! You may yet live to greet me as a friend."
He was gone with the words with the suddenness of a monkey swinging off a bough, leaving behind him a silence so marked that the fall of an unripe apple from the tree immediately above them caused Columbus to start and jump from his perch to investigate.
Then Juliet, very quiet of mien and level of brow, got up and went to Dick who had risen at the departure of the visitor. She put her hand through his arm and held it closely.
"You are not to be unkind to my friends, Richard," she said. "It is the one thing I can't allow."
He looked at her with some sternness, but his free hand closed at once upon hers. "I hate to think of you on terms of intimacy with that bounder," he said.
She smiled a little. "I know you do. But you are prejudiced. I can't give up an old friend--even for you, Dick."
He squeezed her hand. "Have you got many friends like that, Juliet?"
She flushed. "No. He is the only one I have, and--"
"And?" he said, as she stopped.
She laid her cheek with a very loving gesture against his shoulder. "Ah, don't throw stones!" she pleaded gently. "There are so few of us without sin."
His arm was about her in a moment, all his hardness vanished. "My own girl!" he said.
She held his hand in both her own. "Do you know--sometimes--I lie awake at night and wonder--and wonder--whether you would have thought of me--if you had known me in the old days?"
"Is that it?" he said very tenderly. "And you thought I was sleeping like a hog and didn't know?"
She laughed rather tremulously, her face turned from him. "It isn't always possible to bury the past, is it, however hard we try? I hope you'll make allowances for that, Dick, if ever I shock your sense of propriety."
"I shall make allowances," he said, "because you are the one