The Obstacle Race by Ethel May Dell (chromebook ebook reader TXT) 📖

married to-day."
"And she broke it off! That must have taken some pluck!"
"But she didn't stay to face the music," Juliet pointed out. "That was what I hated in her. She ought to have stayed."
"Was she afraid of him then?"
"Afraid? Yes, she was afraid of him--and of everybody else. I know that perfectly well, though you would never get her to admit it. She was terrified in her heart--and so she bolted."
"Why didn't you go with her?" asked Mrs. Fielding.
Juliet made an odd gesture of the hands that was somehow passionate. "Why should I? I have disapproved of her for a long time. Now we have finally quarrelled. She behaved so badly--so very badly. I don't want to meet her--or any of her set--again!"
Mrs. Fielding was silent for a moment. She had not expected that intensity. "Do you know, that doesn't sound like you somehow?" she said at length, speaking with just a hint of embarrassment.
"But how do you know what I am really like?" said Juliet. "Ah! There is the sea again--and the wonderful sky-line! Is he going to stop? Or are we going to plunge over the edge?"
She spoke with a little breathless laugh. They had reached the summit of the great headland, and it looked for the moment as if the car must leap over a sheer precipice into the clear green water far below. But even as she spoke, there came a check and a pause, and then they were standing still on a smooth stretch of grass not twenty feet from the edge.
The soft wind blew in their faces, and there was a glittering purity in the atmosphere that held Juliet spell-bound. She breathed deeply, gazing far out over that sparkling sea of wonder.
"Oh, the magic of it!" she said. "The glorious freedom! It makes you feel--as if you had been born again."
Her companion watched her in silence, a certain curiosity in her look.
After many seconds Juliet turned round. "Thank you for bringing me here," she said. "It has done me good. I should like to stay here all day long."
Her eyes travelled along the line of cliff towards that distant spot that had been the scene of her night adventure, and slowly returned to dwell upon a long deep seam in the side of the hill.
"That's the lead mine," observed Mrs. Fielding. "It belongs to your aristocratic relatives, the Farringmores. They are pretty badly hated by the miners, I believe. But your friend Mr. Green is extremely popular with them. He rather likes to be a king among cobblers, I imagine."
"How nice of him!" said Juliet. "And where do the cobblers live?"
"You can't see it from here. It's just on the other side of the workings--a horribly squalid place. I never go near it. It's called High Shale, but it's very low really, right in a pocket of the hills, and very unhealthy. You can see the smoke hanging over there now. The cottages are wretched places, and the people who live in them--words fail! Ashcott, the agent and manager of the mines, says they are quite hopeless, and so they are. They are just like pigs in a sty."
"Poor dears!" said Juliet.
"Oh, they're horrors!" declared Mrs. Fielding. "They fling stones at the car if we go within half-a-mile of them. And they are such a drunken set. Go round the other way, Jack,--round by Fairharbour! Miss Moore will enjoy that."
"Thank you," said Juliet, with her friendly smile. "I am enjoying it very much."
They travelled forty miles before they ran back again into Little Shale, and the children were reassembling for afternoon school as they neared the Court gates.
"Put me down here!" Juliet said. "I can run down the hill. It isn't worth while coming those few yards and having to turn the car."
"I want you to lunch with me," said Mrs. Fielding.
"Oh, thank you very much. Not to-day. I really must get back. I've got to buy cakes for tea," laughed Juliet.
Mrs. Fielding stopped the car abruptly. "I'm not going to press you, or you'll never come near me again," she said. "I never press people to do what they obviously don't want to. Do you think you would hate living with me, Miss Moore? Or are you still giving the matter your consideration?"
There was a hint of wistfulness in the arrogant voice that somehow touched Juliet.
She sat silent for a moment; then: "If I might come to you for a week on trial," she said. "You won't pay me anything of course. I think we should know by that time if it were likely to answer or not."
"When will you come?" said Mrs. Fielding.
"Just when you like," said Juliet.
"To-morrow?"
"Yes, to-morrow, if that suits you."
"And if you don't hate me at the end of a week you'll come for good."
Juliet laughed. "No, I won't say that. I'll leave you a way of escape too. We will see how it answers."
Mrs. Fielding held out her hand. "Good-bye! Next time you take your tea on the shore, I want to be the guest of honour."
"You shall be," said Juliet.


CHAPTER IX
THE INTRUDER

"Everyone to his taste," remarked Green. "But I'd rather be anything under the sun than Mrs. Fielding's paid companion." He glanced at Juliet with a smile as he spoke, but there was a certain earnestness in his speech that told her he meant what he said. He sat with his back to a rock, smoking a cigarette. His attitude was one of repose, but in the strong light his dark face showed a tenseness that did not wholly agree with it.
"Do you really think you'll like it?" he asked, as Juliet did not speak.
She also had a cigarette between her lips, and there was genuine relaxation in her fashion of lounging on the shingle.
"I really don't know," she said. "I've got to find out."
"Don't let them bully you!" said Green.
She smiled. "No, they won't do that. I think it is rather kind of them to take me without references, don't you?"
"No," said Green.
She turned and surveyed him with a gleam of amusement in her look. "You sound cross! Are you cross about anything?"
His eyes flashed down to hers with a suddenness almost startling. He did not speak for a moment, then again he smiled abruptly with his eyes still holding hers. "I believe I am," he said.
"I wonder why," said Juliet.
He laughed. "Yes, you do, don't you? Great impertinence on my part of course. It's nice of you to put it so mildly."
"I don't think you impertinent," said Juliet; "only rather silly."
"Oh, thanks!" said Green. "Kinder and kinder. Silly to be cross on your account, is that it? Well, it certainly sounds silly."
Juliet smiled. "No, silly to think I am not capable of taking care of myself."
"Oh!" said Green. "Well, I have some reason for thinking that, haven't I?"
"None whatever," said Juliet.
"All right. I haven't," he said, and looked away.
"You are cross!" ejaculated Juliet, and broke into a laugh.
Green smoked steadily for some seconds with his eyes upon the sea. A few yards below them Robin wandered bare-footed along the shore, accompanied by Columbus who had bestowed a condescending species of friendship upon him.
Green's dark, alert face looked strangely swarthy against the rock behind him. His expression was one of open discontent.
"I hate to think of you turning into that woman's slave," he said abruptly. "To be quite honest, that was what brought me along to-day, intruding upon your picnic with Robin. I want to warn you, I've got to warn you."
"You have warned me," said Juliet.
"Without result," he said.
"No, not without result. I am very grateful to you, and I shall remember your warning."
"But you won't profit by it," Green's voice was moody.
"I think I shall," she said. "In any case, I am only going for a week on trial. That couldn't hurt anyone."
He did not look at her. "You're going out of the goodness of your heart," he said. "And--though you won't like it--you'll stay for the same reason."
"Oh, don't you think you are rather absurd?" said Juliet. "I am not at all that sort of person, I assure you."
"I think you are," said Green.
She laughed again. "Well I am told you are quite a frequent visitor there. Why do you go--if you don't like it?"
"That is different," he said. "I can hold my own--anyway with Mr. Fielding."
She lifted her brows. "And you think I can't?"
"I think you'll lead a dog's life," he said.
"Oh, I hope not. It won't be on a chain anyhow. I've provided against that."
"You'll hate it," Green said with conviction.
"I don't think I shall," she answered quietly. "If I do, I shall come away."
"It'll be too late then," he said.
"Too late!" Juliet's soft eyes opened wide. "What can you mean?"
He made a gesture which though half-restrained was yet vehement "It's a hostile atmosphere--a hateful atmosphere. She will poison you with her sneers and snobbery!"
A light began to break upon Juliet. She sat up very suddenly. "That sort of poison doesn't have any effect upon me," she said, and she spoke with a stateliness that brought the man's eyes swiftly down to her. "I am--sneer-proof."
"She won't sneer at you," said Green quickly.
With her eyes looking straight up to him, she laughed.
"Oh, I quite catch your meaning, Mr. Green. But--really I am not in the position of listening to sneers against my friends. Now will you be satisfied?"
He laughed also though still with a touch of restraint. "Yes, I feel better for that. You are so royal in your ways. I might have known I was safe there."
"'Loyal' is a better word I think," said Juliet quietly. "Why should a paid companion aspire to be any higher in the social scale than a village schoolmaster? Do you think occupation really makes any difference?"
"Theoretically--no!" said Green.
"Neither theoretically nor practically," said Juliet. "I detest snobbery, so do you. If you came to the Court to sweep the kitchen chimney, I should be just as pleased to see you. What a man does is nothing. How could it make any difference?"
"It couldn't--to you," said Green.
"Or to you?" said Juliet.
He laughed a little, his black brows working comically. "Madame, if I met you hawking stale fish for cat's meat in the public street, I couldn't venerate you more or adore you less. Whatever you do--is right."
"Good heavens!" said Juliet, and flushed in spite of herself. "What a magnificent compliment! It's a pity you are not wearing a slouch hat with an ostrich plume! You really need a plume to express that sort of sentiment properly."
"Yes, I know," said Green. "But--I imagine you are not attracted by plumes. In fact, you have just told me so. Proof positive of your royalty! It is only crowned heads that can afford to despise them nowadays."
"Mine isn't a crowned head," protested Juliet.
He looked at her searchingly. "Have you never been to Court?"
She snapped her fingers airily. "Of course! Dozens of times! Poor companions always go to Court. How often do you go!"
"As often as you admit me to your most gracious presence," he said.
She clapped her hands softly. "Why, that is even prettier than the stale fish one! Mr. Green, what can have happened to you?"
"I daren't tell you," he said.
A sudden silence fell upon the words. Juliet puffed the smoke from her cigarette, and watched it rise. "Well, don't spoil it, will you?" she said, as it vanished into air.
Green's hand suddenly gripped a handful of shingle and ground