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

very suddenly, he spoke to her. "Good-bye!" he said.
She lifted her face. He was smiling faintly, but his smile hurt her inexplicably. It seemed to veil something that was tragic from her eyes.
He bent towards her. "Good-bye!" he said again.
She moved swiftly, seized by an impulse she could not pause to question. It was as if an unknown force compelled her. She mounted the wheel, and offered him her lips in farewell.
For a moment his arms encircled her with a close and quivering tension. He kissed her, and in that kiss for the first time she felt the call of the spirit.
Then she was free, and blindly feeling for the ground. As she reached it, she heard Merston returning, and without a backward look she took up her suit-case and turned to enter. There was a burning sensation as of tears in her throat, but she kept them from her eyes by sheer determination, and Merston noticed nothing.
"Go straight in!" he said to her with cheery hospitality. "You'll find my wife inside. She's cooking the supper. She'll be awfully pleased to see you."
If this were indeed the case, Mrs. Merston certainly concealed any excess of pleasure very effectually. She greeted her with a perfunctory smile, and told her it was very good of her to come but she would soon wish she hadn't. She was looking very worn and tired, but she assured Sylvia somewhat sardonically that she was not feeling any worse than usual. The heat and the drought had been very trying, and her husband's accident had given her more to do. She had fainted the evening before, and he had been frightened for once and made a fuss--quite unnecessarily. She was quite herself again, and she hoped Sylvia would not feel she had been summoned on false pretences.
Sylvia assured her that she would not, and declared it would do her good to make herself useful.
"Aren't you that at home?" said Mrs. Merston.
"Well, there are plenty of Kaffirs to do the work. I am not absolutely necessary to Burke's comfort," Sylvia explained.
"I thought you were," Matilda Merston's pale eyes gave her a shrewd glance. "He was keen enough to run after you to Brennerstadt," she remarked. "How did you get on there?"
Sylvia hesitated. "We were only there a couple of nights," she said vaguely.
"So I gathered. Did you find Guy?"
"No. I didn't see him. But Mr. Kelly has promised to look after him."
"Ah, Donovan is a good sort," said Mrs. Merston. "He'd nursemaid anyone. So Kieff is dead!"
She said it abruptly, too intent upon the mixing of her cake to look up.
There came the sound of wheel and hoofs outside, and Sylvia paused to listen before she replied.
"Yes. Kieff is dead."
The sound died away in the distance, and there fell a silence.
Then, "Killed himself, did he?" asked Mrs. Merston.
"I was told so," said Sylvia.
"Don't you believe it?" Mrs. Merston looked across at her suddenly. "Did someone else have a try first? Did he have a row with Burke?"
There was no evading the questions though she would fain have avoided the whole subject. In a very low voice Sylvia spoke of the violent scene she had witnessed.
Mrs. Merston listened with interest, but with no great surprise. "Burke always was a savage," she commented. "But after all, Kieff had tried to kill him a day or two before. Guy prevented that, so Donovan told me. What made Guy go off in such a hurry?"
"I--can't tell you," Sylvia said.
Something in her reply struck Mrs. Merston. She became suddenly silent, and finished her task without another word.
Later, when she took Sylvia to the guest-room, which was no more than a corrugated iron lean-to lined with boarding, she unexpectedly drew the girl to her and kissed her. But still she did not say a word.


CHAPTER VII
PIET VREIBOOM

It was a strange friendship that developed between Sylvia and Matilda Merston during the days that followed; for they had little in common. The elder woman leaned upon the younger, and, perhaps in consequence of this, Sylvia's energy seemed inexhaustible. She amazed Bill Merston by her capacity for work. She lifted the burden that had pressed so heavily upon her friend, and manfully mastered every difficulty that arose. She insisted that her hostess should rest for a set time every day, and the effect of this unusual relaxation upon Matilda was surprising. Her husband marvelled at it, and frankly told her she was like another woman. For, partly from the lessening of the physical strain and partly from the influence of congenial companionship, the carping discontent that had so possessed her of late had begun to give way to a softer and infinitely more gracious frame of mind. The bond of their womanhood drew the two together, and the intimacy between them nourished in that desert place though probably in no other ground would it have taken root.
Work was as an anaesthetic to Sylvia in those days. She was thankful to occupy her mind and at night to sleep from sheer weariness. The sense of being useful to someone helped her also. She gave herself up to work as a respite from the torment of thought, resolutely refusing to look forward, striving so to become absorbed in the daily task as to crowd out even memory. She and Merston were fast friends also, and his wholesome masculine selfishness did her good. He was like a pleasant, rather spoilt child, unconventionally affectionate, and by no means difficult to manage. They called each other by their Christian names before she had been twenty-four hours at the farm, and chaffed each other with cheery inconsequence whenever they met. Sylvia sometimes marvelled at herself for that surface lightheartedness, but somehow it seemed to be in the atmosphere. Bill Merston's hearty laugh was irresistible to all but his wife.
It was but a brief respite. She knew it could not last, but its very transience made her the more ready 10 take advantage of it. And she was thankful for every day that carried her farther from that terrible time at Brennerstadt. It had begun to seem more like an evil dream to her now--a nightmare happening that never could have taken place in ordinary, normal existence.
Burke did not come over to see them again, nor did he write. Evidently he was too busy to do either. But one evening Merston announced his intention of riding over to Blue Hill Farm, and asked Sylvia if she would like to send a note by him.
"You've got ten minutes to do it in," he gaily told her. "So you'd better leave all the fond adjectives till the end and put them in if you have time."
She thanked him carelessly enough for his advice, but when she reached her own room she found herself confronted with a problem that baffled her. How was she to write to Burke? What could she say to him? She felt strangely confounded and unsure of herself.
Eight of the allotted ten minutes had flown before she set pencil to paper. Then, hurriedly, with trembling fingers, she scribbled a few sentences. "I hope all is well with you. We are very busy here. Matilda is better, and I am quite fit and enjoying the work. Is Mary Ann looking after you properly?" She paused there. Somehow the thought of Burke with only the Kaffir servants to minister to him sent an odd little pang through her. She had begun to accustom him to better things. She wondered if he were lonely--if he wanted her. Ought she to offer to go back?
Something cried out sharply within her at the thought. Her whole being shrank as the old nightmare horror swept back upon her. No--no! She could not face it--not yet. The memory of his implacability, his ruthlessness, arose like a menacing wave, shaking her to the soul.
Then, suddenly, the vision changed. She saw him as she had seen him on that last night, when she had awaked to find him kneeling by her bed. And again that swift pang went through her. She did not ask herself again if he wanted her.
The door of her room opened on to the yard. She heard Merston lead his horse up to the front of the bungalow and stand talking to his wife who was just inside. She knew that in a moment or two his cheery shout would come to her, calling for the note.
Hastily she resumed her task. "If there is any mending to be done, send it back by Bill."
Again she paused. Matilda was laughing at something her husband had said. It was only lately that she had begun to laugh.
Almost immediately came an answering shout of laughter from Merston, and then his boyish yell to her.
"Hi, Sylvia! How much longer are you going to keep me waiting for that precious love-letter?"
She called an answer to him, dashing off final words as she did so. "I feel I am doing some good here, but if you should specially wish it, of course I will come back at any time." For a second more she hesitated, then simply wrote her name.
Folding up the hurried scrawl, she was conscious of a strong sense of dissatisfaction, but she would not reopen it. There was nothing more to be said.
She went out with it to Bill Merston, and met his chaff with careless laughter.
"You haven't told him to come and fetch you away, I hope?" Matilda said, as he rode away.
And she smiled and answered, "No, not unless he specially needs me."
"You don't want to go ?" Matilda asked abruptly.
"Not unless you are tired of me," Sylvia rejoined.
"Don't be silly!" said Matilda briefly.
Half an hour after Merston's departure there came the shambling trot of another horse, and Piet Vreiboom, slouched like a sack in the saddle rode up and rolled off at the door.
"Oh, bother the man!" said Matilda, "I shan't ask him in with Bill away."
The amiable Piet, however, did not wait to be asked. He fastened up his horse and rolled into the house with his hat on, where he gave her perfunctory greeting, grinned at Sylvia, and seated himself in the easiest chair he could find.
Matilda's face of unconcealed disgust nearly provoked Sylvia to uncontrolled laughter, but she checked herself in time, and went to get the unwelcome visitor a drink in the hope of speeding his departure.
Piet Vreiboom however was in no hurry, though they assured him repeatedly that Merston would probably not return for some hours. He sat squarely in his chair with his little greedy eyes fixed upon Sylvia, and merely grunted in response to all their efforts.
When he had refreshed himself and lighted his pipe, he began to search his mind for the few English words at his disposal and to arrange these in a fashion intelligible to the two very inferior beings who were listening to him. He told them in laboured language that he had come from Brennerstadt, that the races were over and the great Wilbraham diamond was lost and won. Who had won it? No one knew. Some said it was a lady. He looked again at Sylvia who turned out the pockets of her overall,