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

was not slow to perceive. Because of it she found strength to abstain from further argument. He had undoubtedly conceded a good deal.
"I'll be decent to anyone," she said, "so long as you are decent to me."
"Hear, hear!" said the squire. "Now dry your eyes and be sensible! Miss Moore will go for me like mad if she finds you crying again. If we don't pull together we shall have that girl running the whole show before we are much older, and neither of us will ever dare even to contradict the other in her presence again. We shouldn't like that, should we?"
She laughed a little in spite of her wan countenance. "Oh, no, Edward. We mustn't risk that." Then, with a touch of anxiety, "It wasn't Miss Moore's idea that you should bring me flowers, was it?"
"No." The squire grinned at her suddenly. "The worthy Columbus was responsible for that. I found him routing in the lily-bed after snails or some such delicacy. He was so infernally busy he made me feel ashamed. So I went down on my knees and joined him, gathered the lot,--nearly killed myself over it, but that's an unimportant detail. Now for your champagne! You'll feel a different woman when you've had it."
He departed, leaving his wife looking after him with an odd wistfulness in her eyes. She was seeing him in a new light which made her feel strangely uncertain of herself also. Was it possible that all these years of misunderstanding, which she had regarded as inevitable, might have been avoided after all?
A quick sigh rose to her lips as again she took his flowers and held them against her face.


CHAPTER VII
THE SPELL

A wonderful summer evening followed the sultry day. The sun sank gloriously behind High Shale, and a soft breeze blew in from the sea.
On the slope of the hill behind the lighthouse and above the miners' village there stood an old thatched barn, and about this a knot of men and youths loitered, smoking and talking in a desultory, discontented fashion. On the other side of the barn a shrill cackling proclaimed the presence of some of the feminine portion of the community, and the occasional squall of a baby or a squeal of a bigger child testified to the fact that the greater part of the village population awaited the entertainment which Green contrived to give on the first Saturday of every month.
He had started these concerts two winters before down in the village of Little Shale, and they had originally been for men and boys only, but the women had grumbled so loudly at their exclusion that Green had very soon realized the necessity of extending a welcome to them also. So now they flocked in a body to his support, even threatening to crowd out the men in the winter evenings when he had to assemble his audience at the Village Club at Little Shale. But in the summer, as a concession to High Shale, he held his concerts, whenever feasible, up on the hill, and practically the whole of High Shale village came to them. Little Shale was also well represented, but he always felt that he was in closer touch with the miners on these occasions, when he met them on their own ground.
The two villages were apt to eye one another with scant sympathy, the fisher population of the one and the mining population of the other having little in common beyond the liquor which they uniformly sought at The Three Tuns by the shore. Green never permitted any bickering, and they were all alike in their respect for him, but a species of armed neutrality which was very far removed from comradeship existed between them. Fights at The Three Tuns were by no means of unusual occurrence and the miners of High Shale were invariably spoken of with wholesale contempt by the men along the shore.
But, thanks to Green's untiring efforts, they met on common ground at his concerts, and any member of the audience who dared to commit any breach of the peace on any of these occasions was summarily dealt with by Green himself. He knew how to keep his men in hand. There was not one of them who ever ventured to question his supremacy. He ruled them, not one of them could have said how. Ashcott, the manager of the mine, who battled in vain against the rising spirit of disorder and rebellion among them, was wont to describe his influence over them as black magic. Whatever its source it was certainly unique. None but Dick Green could spring from the platform, seize a delinquent by his collar or the scruff of his neck, and run him, practically unresisting, out of the assembly. His lightning decisions were never questioned. His language, which could be forcible upon occasion, never met with any retort. The men seemed to recognize instinctively that it was useless to stand up to him. He could have compelled them blindfold and with his hands behind him.
It was this quality in him, this dynamic force, restrained yet always somehow in action, that had affected Juliet so strangely in the beginning of their acquaintance. Like these rough miners and fisher-folk she could not have said wherein the attraction lay, but she recognized in him that inner fire called genius, and it drew her unaccountably, irresistibly. Whatever the sphere to which he had been born, he was a man created to lead, to overcome obstacles, to wrest victory from failure,--a man who possessed the rare combination of a highly sensitive temperament and a practically invincible courage--a man who could handle the great forces of life with the fearless certainty of the born conqueror.
Yes, he attracted her, undoubtedly he attracted her. He stirred her to an interest which she had believed herself too old, too jaded with the ways of the world, ever to feel again. But she did not want to yield to the attraction. She wanted to hold aloof for a space. She had come to this quiet corner of the world in search of peace. She wanted to avoid the problems of life, to get back her poise, to become an onlooker and no longer a competitor in the maddening race from which she had so lately withdrawn herself. She was willing to be interested, she already was deeply interested, but only as a spectator, so she told herself. She would not be drawn in against her will. She would stand aside and watch.
It was in this mood that she drove off with the squire on the way to the open-air concert on the High Shale bluff on that magic June evening. Mrs. Fielding was too weary after the many emotions of the day to accompany them, but they left her in a tranquil frame of mind, and the squire was in an unusually good humour. Though he had small liking for the High Shale village people, it pleased him that Juliet should take an interest in Green's enterprises, eccentric though they might be. And he considered that she deserved a treat after her diplomatic handling of a very difficult situation that morning.
"Might as well call and see if Dick would like a lift," he said, as they neared the gates. "We've got to pass his door. I'll send Jack in."
But when they stopped at the school-house gate, a humped, familiar figure was leaning upon it, and Jack flung an imperious question without descending.
The squire's face darkened at the sight. "Here's that unspeakable baboon Robin!" he growled.
Robin paid about as much attention to his brother's curt query as he might have bestowed upon the buzzing of a fly. His dark eyes below his shaggy thatch of hair were fixed, deeply shining, upon Juliet.
Jack muttered an impatient ejaculation under his breath and flung himself out of the car. Before Juliet could speak a word to intervene, he had given the gate on which Robin leant a push that sent the boy backwards with considerable force on the grass while he himself went up the path to the house at a run.
"Oh, what a shame!" said Juliet, a quick vibration of anger in her deep voice.
She leaned forward sharply to open the door and spring out, but in a second Fielding's hand caught hers, holding her back.
"No, no! Leave the young beggar alone! He's none the worse. He can pick himself up again. Ah, and here comes Dick! He'll manage him!"
Robin was indeed struggling to his feet with a furious bellowing that might have been heard on the shore. But Dick was quicker than he. He came down the path, as it seemed in a single bound. He took Robin by his swaying arms and steadied him. He spoke, quickly and decidedly, and the roaring protest died down to a snarling, sobbing sound like the crying of a wounded animal. Then, still holding him, Dick turned towards the car at the gate. And Juliet saw that he was white with passion. The fierce blaze of his eyes was a thing she would not soon forget.
He spoke with twitching lips. "No, sir. I'm not coming, thanks. I shall go on foot over the down. It's only a quarter of the distance that way." He drew Robin aside at the sound of Jack's approach behind him, but he did not look at him. And Robin became suddenly and terribly silent. He was quivering all over like a dog that is held back from his prey.
Jack gave him a look of contempt as he strode past and returned to his seat at the wheel. And Juliet awoke to the fact that like Robin she was trembling from head to foot.
The car shot forward. She saw the two figures no more. But the memory of Green's face went with her, its pallor, and the awfulness of his eyes--the red flame of his fury. Robin's unrestrained wrath was of small account beside it. She felt as if she had never seen anger before that moment.
She scarcely heard the squire's caustic remarks concerning Robin. She was as one who had touched a live wire, and her whole being tingled with the shock. The hot glitter of those onyx eyes had been to her as the sudden revelation of a destroying force, fettered indeed, but how appalling if once set free!
She looked forward with a curious dread to seeing him again. She wondered if the man who drove the car so recklessly had the faintest suspicion of the storm he had stirred up. But surely he knew Dick in all his moods! He had probably encountered it before. They sped on through the fragrant summer night, and she talked at random, hardly knowing what she said. If the squire noticed her preoccupation, he made no comment. He had conceived a great respect for Juliet.
They neared their destination at last, and Jack performed what the squire called his favorite circus-trick, racing the car to the top of the towering cliff and stopping dead at the edge of a great immensity of sea and stars.
Again Juliet drew a deep breath of sheer marvelling delight, speaking no word, held spell-bound by the wonder of the night.
"We needn't hurry," Fielding said. "They won't be starting yet."
So for a space they remained as though caught between earth and heaven, silently drinking in the splendour.
After a long pause she spoke. "Do you often come here?"
"Not now," he said. Then, as she glanced at him: "I used to in the days of my youth--the long past days."
And she knew by his tone, by the lingering of his words, that he had not always come alone.
She asked no more, and presently the jaunty notes of a banjo floating up the grassy slope told