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

He stood a second or two, then turned again with a species of sullen courage.
"May I have the candle?" he said, not looking at Dick.
"What for?" said Dick. "Haven't you got one upstairs?"
Robin stood a moment or two debating with himself, then made a second movement to go. "All right. I'll fetch it."
"Wait a minute!" Dick's voice compelled. "What do you want a candle down here for?"
Robin backed against the door-post with a kind of heavy defiance. "Want to get something--out of the kitchen," he muttered.
"What do you want to get?" said Dick.
Robin was silent, stubbornly, insistently silent, the fingers of one hand working with agitated activity.
"Robin!"
It was the voice of authority. He had to respond to it. He made a lumbering gesture towards the speaker, but his eyes remained obstinately lowered under the shag of hair that hung over his forehead.
Dick sat for a few seconds looking at him, then with a sudden sigh that caught him unawares he got up.
"What did you come down for? Tell me!" he said.
His tone was absolutely quiet, but something in his utterance or the sigh that preceded it--or possibly some swiftly-piercing light of intuition--seemed to send a galvanizing current through Robin. With clumsy impulsiveness he came to Dick and stood before him.
"I was going--to get you--something to eat," he said, speaking with tremendous effort. "You must be--pretty near starving--and I forgot." He paused to fling a nervous look upwards. "I thought you were asleep. I didn't know--or I wouldn't have done it. I--didn't mean to get in the way." His voice broke oddly. He began to tremble. "I'll go now," he said.
But Dick's hand came out, detaining him. "You came down to get me food?" he said.
"Yes," muttered Robin, with his head down. "Thought I'd--put it in the hall--so you'd find it--before you came up."
Dick stood silent for a space, looking at him. His eyes were very gentle and the grimness had gone from his mouth, but Robin could not see that. He stood humped and quivering, expectant of rebuke.
But he recognized the change when Dick spoke. "Thought you'd provide me with the necessary strength to hammer you, eh?" he said, and suddenly his arm went round the misshapen shoulders; he gave Robin a close squeeze. "Thanks, old chap," he said.
Robin looked up then. The adoring devotion of a dumb animal was in his eyes. He said nothing, being for the moment beyond words.
Dick let him go. A clock on the mantelpiece was striking twelve. "You get to bed, boy!" he said. "I don't want anything to eat, thanks all the same." He paused a moment, then held out his hand. "Good-night!"
It was tacit forgiveness for his offence, and as such Robin recognized it. Yet as he felt the kindly grasp his eyes filled with tears.
"I'm--I'm sorry, Dicky," he stammered.
"I'm sorry too," Dick said. "But that won't undo it. For heaven's sake, Robin, never lie to me again! There! Go to bed! I'm going myself as soon as I've had a smoke. Good-night!"
It was a definite dismissal, and Robin turned away and went stumblingly from the room.
His brother looked after him with a queer smile in his eyes. It was Juliet who had taught Robin to say he was sorry. He threw himself into an easy-chair and lighted a pipe. Perhaps after all in his weariness he had exaggerated the whole matter. Perhaps--after all--she might yet find that she loved him enough to cast her own world aside. Recalling her last words to him, he told himself that he had been too quick to despair. For she loved him--she loved him! Not all the fashionable cynics her world contained could alter that fact.
A swift wave of exultation went through him, combating his despair. However heavy the odds,--however formidable the obstacles--he told himself he would win--he would win!
Going upstairs a little later, he was surprised to hear a low sound coming from Robin's room. He had thought the boy would have been in bed and asleep some time since. He stopped at the door to listen.
The next moment he opened it and quietly entered, for Robin was sobbing as if his heart would break.
There was no light in the room save that which shone from the park-gates opposite and the candle he himself carried. Robin was sunk in a heap against the bed still fully dressed. He gave a great start at his brother's coming, shrinking together in a fashion that seemed to make him smaller. His sobbing ceased on the instant. He became absolutely still, his claw-like hands rigidly gripped on the bedclothes, his face wholly hidden. He did not even breathe during the few tense seconds that Dick stood looking down at him. He might have been a creature carved in granite. Then Dick set down his candle, went to him, sat on the low bed, and pulled the shaggy head on to his knee.
"What's the matter, old chap?" he said.
All the tension went out of Robin at his touch. He clung to him in voiceless distress.
Dick's heart smote him. Why had he left the boy so long? He laid a very gentle hand upon him.
"Come, old chap!" he said. "Get a hold on yourself! What's it all about?"
Robin's shoulders heaved convulsively; his hold tightened. He murmured some inarticulate words.
Dick bent over him. "What, boy? What? I can't hear. You haven't been up to any mischief, have you? Robin, have you?" A sudden misgiving assailed him. "You haven't hurt anybody? Not Jack, for instance?"
"No," Robin said. But he added a moment later with a concentrated passion that sounded inexpressibly vindictive, "I hate him! I do hate him! I wish he was dead!"
"Why?" Dick said. "What has he been doing?"
But Robin burrowed lower and made no answer.
Dick sat for a space in silence, waiting for him to recover himself. He knew very well that he had good reason for his rooted dislike for Jack. It was useless to attempt any argument on that point. But when Robin had grown calmer, he returned to the charge very quietly but with determination.
"What has Jack been doing or saying? Tell me! I've got to know."
Robin stirred uneasily. "Don't want to tell you, Dicky," he said.
Dick's hand pressed a little upon him. "You must tell me," he said. "When did you meet him?"
Robin hesitated in obvious reluctance. "It was after supper," he said. "My head ached, and I went outside, and he came down the drive. And he--and he laughed about--about you coming home alone from Burchester, and said--said that your game was up anyhow. And I didn't know what he meant, Dicky--" Robin's arms suddenly clung closer--"but I got angry, because I hate him to talk about you. And I--I went for him, Dicky." His voice dropped on a shamed note, and he became silent.
"Well?" Dick said gravely. "What happened then?"
Very unwillingly Robin responded to his insistence. "He got hold of me--so that I couldn't hurt him--and then he said--he said--" A great sob rose in his throat choking his utterance.
"What did he say?"
There was a certain austerity in Dick's question. Robin shivered as it reached him.
With difficulty he struggled on. "Said that only--a fool--like me--could help knowing that--you hadn't--a chance--with any woman--so long as--so long as--" He choked again and sank into quivering silence.
Dick's hand found the rough head and patted it very tenderly. "But you're not fool enough to take what Jack says seriously, are you?" he said.
Robin stifled a sob. "He said that--afterwards," he whispered. "And he took me along to The Three Tuns--to make me forget it."
"You actually drank with him after that!" Dick said.
"I didn't know what I was doing, Dicky," he make apologetic answer. "It--knocked the wind out of me. You see, I--I'd never thought of that before."
He began to whimper again. Dick swallowed down something that tried to escape him.
"A bit of an ass, aren't you, Robin?" he said instead. "You know as well as I do that there isn't a word of truth in it. Anyhow--the woman I love--isn't--that sort of woman."
Robin shifted his position uneasily. There was that in the words that vaguely stirred him. Dick had never spoken in that strain before. Slowly, with a certain caution, he lifted his tear-stained face and peered up at his brother in the fitful candle-light.
"You do--want to marry Miss Moore then, Dicky?" he asked diffidently.
Dick looked straight back at him; his eyes shone with a sombre gleam that came and went. For several seconds he sat silent, then very steadily he spoke.
"Yes, I want her all right, Robin, but there are some pretty big obstacles in the way. I may get over them--and I may not. Time will prove."
His lips closed upon the words, and became again a single hard line. His look went beyond Robin and grew fixed. The boy watched him dumbly with awed curiosity.
Suddenly Dick moved, gripped him by the shoulders and pulled him upwards. "There! Go to bed!" he said. "And don't take any notice of what Jack says for the future! Don't fight him either! Understand? Leave him alone!"
Robin blundered up obediently. Again there looked forth from his eyes the dog-like worship which he kept for Dick alone. "I'll do--whatever you say, Dicky," he said earnestly. "I--I'd die for you--I would!" He spoke with immense effort, and all his heart was in the words.
Dick smiled at him quizzically. "Instead of which I only want you to show a little ordinary common or garden sense," he said. "Think you can do that for me?"
"I'll try, Dicky," he said humbly.
"Yes, all right. You try!" Dick said, and got up, more moved than he cared to show. He turned to go, but paused to light Robin's candle from his own. "And don't forget I'm--rather fond of you, my boy!" he said, with a brief smile over his shoulder as he went away.
No, Robin was not likely to forget that, seeing that Dick's love for him was his safeguard from all evil, and his love for Dick was the mainspring of his life. But--though his development was stunted and imperfect--there were certain facts of existence which he was beginning slowly but surely to grasp. And one of these--before but dimly suspected--he had realized fully to-night, a fact beyond all questioning learnt from Dick's own lips.
Dick's words: "The woman I love," had sunk deep--deep into his soul. And he knew with that intuition which cannot err that his love for Juliet was the greatest thing life held for him--or ever could hold again.
And the driving force gripped Robin's soul afresh as he lay wide-eyed to the smothering gloom of the night. Whatever happened--whoever suffered--Dicky must have his heart's desire.


CHAPTER VI
THE SISTER OF MERCY

For five days after that burning afternoon of the flower-show Juliet scarcely left Vera Fielding's side. During those five days Vera lay at the point of death, and though her husband was constantly with her it was to Juliet that she clung through all the terrible phases of weakness, breathlessness, and pain that she passed. Through the dark nights--though a trained nurse was in attendance--it was Juliet's hand that held her up, Juliet's low calm voice that reassured her in the Valley of the Shadow through which she wandered. Often too spent for speech, her eyes would rest with a piteous, child-like pleading upon Juliet's quiet face, and--for Juliet at least--there was no resisting their entreaty. She laid all else aside and devoted herself body and soul to the tender care of the sick woman.
Edward Fielding regarded her with reverence and a deep affection that grew with every day that passed. She was