The Safety Curten by Ethel May Dell (ebook e reader .txt) 📖

answered gravely. "That is why I postponed the discussion. But I was then--as I am now--entirely at your disposal. I will take you back to your people at once if you wish it."
She made a quick, passionate gesture of protest, and moved away from him.
"Have you any alternative in your mind?" he asked.
She remained with her back to him.
"I shall go away," she said, a sudden note of recklessness in her voice. "I shall travel."
"Alone?" he questioned.
"Yes, alone." This time her voice rang defiance. She wheeled round quivering from head to foot. "But for you," she said, "but for your unwarrantable interference I should never have been placed in this hateful, this impossible, position. I should have been with my friends in London. It would have been my wedding-day."
The attack was plainly unexpected. Even Caryl was taken by surprise. But the next moment he was ready for her.
"Then by all means," he said, "let me take you to your friends in London. Doubtless your chivalrous lover has found his way thither long ere this."
She stamped like a little fury.
"Do you think I would marry him--now? Do you think I would marry any one after--after what happened last night? Oh, I hate you--I hate you all!"
Her voice broke. She covered her face, with tempestuous sobbing, and sank into a chair.
Caryl stood silent, biting his lip as if in irresolution. He did not try to comfort her.
After a while, her weeping still continuing, he leant across the table.
"Doris," he said, "leave off crying and listen to me. I know it is out of the question for you to marry that scoundrel whom I had the pleasure of thrashing last night. It always has been out of the question. That is one reason why I have been keeping such a hold upon you. Now that you admit the impossibility of it, I set you free. But you will be wise to think well before you accept your freedom from me. You are in an intolerable position, and I am quite powerless to help you unless you place yourself unreservedly in my hands and give me the right to protect you. It means a good deal, I know. It means, Doris, the sacrifice of your independence. But it also means a safe haven, peace, comfort, if not happiness. You may not love me. I never seriously thought that you did. But if you will give me your trust--I shall try to be satisfied with that."
Love! She had never heard the word on his lips before. It sent a curious thrill through her to hear it then. She had listened to him with her face hidden, though her tears had ceased. But as he ended, she slowly raised her head and looked at him.
"Are you asking me to marry you?" she said.
"I am," said Caryl.
She lowered her eyes from his, and began to trace a design on the table-cloth with one finger.
"I don't want to marry you," she said at length.
"I know," said Caryl.
She did not look up.
"No, you don't know. That's just it. You think you know everything. But you don't.
For instance, you think you know why I ran away with Major Brandon. But you don't. You never will know--unless I tell you, probably not even then."
She broke off with an abrupt sigh, and leant back in her chair.
"One thing I do thank you for," she said irrelevantly. "And that is that you didn't take me back to Rivermead last night. Have they, I wonder, any idea where I am?"
"I left a message for your cousin before I left," Caryl said.
"Oh, then he knew--?"
"He knew that I had you under my protection," Caryl told her grimly. "I did not go into details. It was unnecessary. Only Flicker knew the details. I marked him down in the afternoon, after the incident at luncheon."
She opened her eyes.
"Then you guessed--?"
"I knew he did not find the missing glove under the table," said Caryl quietly. "I did not need any further evidence than that. I knew, moreover, that you had not devoted the whole of the previous afternoon to your correspondence. I was waiting for your cousin in the conservatory when you joined Brandon in the garden."
"And you--you were in the conservatory last night when I went through. I--I felt there was someone there."
"Yes," he answered. "I waited to see you go."
"Why didn't you stop me?"
For an instant her eyes challenged his.
He stood up, straightening himself slowly.
"It would not have answered my purpose," he told her steadily.
She stood up also, her face gone suddenly white.
"You chose this means of--of forcing me to marry you?"
"I chose this means--the only means to my hand--of opening your eyes," he said. "It has not perhaps been over successful. You are still blind to much that you ought to see. But you will understand these things better presently."
"Presently?" she faltered.
"When you are my wife," he said.
She flashed him a swift glance.
"I am to marry you then?"
He held out his hand to her across the table.
"Will you marry me, Doris?"
She hesitated for a single instant, her eyes downcast. Then suddenly, without speaking, she put her hand into his, glad that, notwithstanding the overwhelming strength of his position, he had allowed her the honours of war.


CHAPTER IX
THE WILLING CAPTIVE

"And so you were obliged to marry your _bete noire_ after all! My dear, it has been the talk of the town. Come, sit down, and tell me all about it. I am burning to hear how it came about."
Doris's old friend, Mrs. Lockyard, paused to flick the ash from her cigarette, and to laugh slyly at the girl's face of discomfiture.
Doris also held a cigarette between her fingers, but she was only toying with it restlessly.
"There isn't much to tell," she said. "We were married by special licence. I was not obliged to marry him. I chose to do so."
Mrs. Lockyard laughed again, not very pleasantly.
"And left poor Maurice in the lurch. That was rather cruel of you after all his chivalrous efforts to deliver you from bondage. And he so hard up, too."
A flush of anger rose in the girl's face. She tilted her chin with the old proud gesture.
"I should not have married him in any case," she said. "He made that quite impossible by his own act. He--was not so chivalrous as I thought."
A gleam of malice shone for a moment in Mrs. Lockyard's eyes, and just a hint of it was perceptible in her voice as she made response.
"One has to make allowances sometimes. All men are not made after the pattern of your chosen lord and master. He, I grant you, is hard as granite and about as impassive. Still I mustn't depreciate your prize since it was of your own choosing. Let me wish you instead every happiness."
"He was not impassive that night," said Doris quickly, with a sharp inward sense of injustice.
"No?" questioned Mrs. Lockyard.
"No. At least--Major Brandon did not find him so." Doris's blue eyes took fire at the recollection. "He gave him his deserts," she said, with a certain exultation. "He thrashed him."
"Oh, my dear, he would have done that in any case. That was an old, old score paid off at last. Forgive me for depriving you of this small gratification. But that debt was contracted many years ago when you were scarcely out of your cradle. Your presence was a mere incident. You were the opportunity, not the cause."
"I don't know what you mean," said Doris, looking her straight in the face.
"No? Well, my dear, it isn't my business to enlighten you. If you really want to know, I must refer you to your husband. Surely that is Mrs. Fricker over there. You will not mind if she joins us?"
"I am going!" Doris announced abruptly--"I really only looked in to see if there were any letters."
She dropped her cigarette with determination and turned to the nearest door.
It was true that she had run into the club for her correspondence, but having met Mrs. Lockyard she had been almost compelled to linger, albeit unwillingly. Now from the depths of her soul she regretted the impulse that had borne her thither. She vowed to herself that she would not enter the club again so long as Mrs. Lockyard remained in town.
Three weeks had elapsed since her marriage; three weeks of shopping in Paris with Caryl somewhere in the background, looking on but never advising.
He had been very kind on the whole, she was fain to admit, but she was further from understanding him now than she had ever been. He had retired into his shell so completely that it seemed unlikely that he would ever again emerge, and she did not dare to make the first advance.
Her return to London had been one of the greatest ordeals she had ever faced, but she had endured it unflinchingly, and had found that London had already almost forgotten the eccentricity of her marriage. In the height of the season memories are short.
Caryl had taken a flat overlooking the river, and here they had settled down. He spent the greater part of his day at the Law Courts, and Doris found herself thrown a good deal upon her own resources. In happier days this had been her ideal, but for some reason it did not now content her.
Returning from her encounter with Mrs. Lockyard at the club, she told herself with sudden petulance that life in town had lost all charm for her.
Entering the dainty sitting-room that looked on to the river, she dropped into a chair by the window and stared out with her chin in her hands. The river was a blaze of gold. A line of long black barges was drifting down-stream in the wake of a noisy steam-tug. She watched them absently, sick at heart.
Gradually the shining water grew blurred and dim. Its beauty wholly passed her by, or if she saw it, it was only in vivid contrast to the darkness in her soul. For a little, wide-eyed, she resisted the impulse that tugged at her heart-strings; but at last in sheer weariness she gave in. What did it matter, a tear more or less? There was no one to know or care. And tears were sometimes a relief. She bowed her head upon the sill and wept.
"Why, Doris!" a quiet voice said.
She started, started violently, and sprang upright.
Caryl was standing slightly behind her, his hand on the back of her chair, but as she rose he came forward and stood beside her.
"What is it?" he said. "Why are you crying?"
"I'm not!" she declared vehemently. "I wasn't! You--you startled me--that's all."
She turned her back on him and hastily dabbed her eyes. She was furious with him for coming upon her thus.
He stood at the window, looking out upon the long, black barges in silence.
After a few seconds of desperate effort she controlled herself and turned round.
"I never heard you come in. I--must have been asleep."
He did not look at her, or attempt to refute the statement.
"I thought you were going to be out this afternoon," he said.
"So I was. So I have been. I went to the club to get my letters."
"Didn't you find any one there to talk to?" he asked.
"No one," she answered somewhat hastily; then, moved by some impulse she could not have explained, "That is, no one that counts. I saw Mrs. Lockyard."
"Doesn't she count?" asked Caryl, still with his eyes on the river.
"I hate the woman!"