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

I'm not myself to-night. I can't--think. It was awfully good of you to come. But don't--stay!"
"Dick!" she said.
At sound of her voice he turned. His eyes looked at her out of such a depth of misery as pierced her to the heart. She saw his hands clench against his sides. "O my God!" he said under his breath.
"Dick!" she said again very earnestly. "Don't send me away! Let me help you!"
"You can't," he said. "You've been too good to me--already."
"You wouldn't say that to me if I were--your wife," she said.
He flinched sharply. "Juliet! Don't torture me! I've had--as much as I can stand to-night."
She held out her hand to him with a gesture superbly simple. "My dear, I will marry you to-morrow if you will have me," she said.
He stood for a long second staring at her. Then she saw his face change and harden. The ascetic look that she had noticed long ago came over it like a mask.
"No!" he said. "No!"
Again he turned from her. He went away up the long room, the bare boards echoing to the tramp of his feet with a dull and hopeless sound. He came to a stand before the writing-table at the further end, and from there he spoke to her, his words brief, as it were edged with steel.
"Can you imagine how Cain felt when he said that his punishment was greater than he could bear? That's how I feel to-night. I am like Cain. Whatever I touch is cursed."
The words startled her. Again for a second she wondered if the suffering through which he had passed had affected his brain. But she felt no fear. She kept her purpose before her, clear and steadfast as a beacon shining in the dark.
"You are not like Cain," she said. "And even if you were, do you think I should love you any the less?"
He made a desperate gesture. "Would you love me if I were a murderer?" he said.
"I love you--whatever you are," she made unfaltering reply.
He turned upon her, almost like an animal at bay. "I am--a murderer, Juliet!" he said, a terrible fire in his eyes.
In spite of herself she flinched, so awful was his look. "Dick, what do you mean?"
He flung out a hand as if to keep her from him though she had not moved. "I will tell you what I mean, and then--you will go. On the night Robin was born,--I killed his father!"
"Dick!" she said.
He went on rapidly. "I was a boy at the time, but I had a man's purpose. My mother was dying. They sent me to fetch him. I loathed the man. So did she. He was at The Three Tuns--drinking. I hung about till he came out. He was blind drunk, and the night was dark. He took the wrong path that led to the cliff, and I let him go. In the morning they found him on the rocks, dead. I might have saved him. I didn't. I went back to my mother, and stayed with her--till she died."
"Oh Dick--my dear!" she said.
He stood stiffly facing her. "I never repented. I'd do the same again now--or worse, to such a man as that. He was a brute beast. But--I suppose God doesn't allow these things. Anyway, I've been punished--pretty heavily. I got fond of the boy. He was the only thing left to care for. He took the place of everything else. And now--because of a damnable lie--" Something seemed to rise in his throat, he paused, struggling with himself, finally went on jerkily, with difficulty. "One more thing--you'd better know. It'll help you to--forget me. The man I killed was not my own father--except in name. My mother refused to marry the man she loved because she thought it would injure his career--his people threatened to disown him. She gave herself instead to--the scoundrel whose name I bear--just to set him free."
Again he stopped. Juliet had moved. She was coming up the long room to him, not quickly, but with purpose. He stood, still facing her, his breathing short and hard.
Quietly, with that regal bearing that was so supremely her own, she drew near. And her eyes were shining with a light that made her beautiful. She reached him and stood before him.
"Dick," she said, "I am not like your mother. I've been fighting against it, but it's too strong for me. I have got to marry--the man I love."
He made an impotent gesture, and she saw that he was trembling.
She stood a moment, then reached out, took his arms, and drew them gently round her. "Are you still trying to send me away?" she said. "Because--it's stronger than both of us, Dick--and I'm not going--I'm not going!"
He looked into the shining, steadfast eyes, and suddenly the desperate strain was over. His resistance snapped. "God forgive me!" he said under his breath, and caught her passionately close.
There was that in his hold--perhaps because of the fulness of her surrender--that had never been before,--something flaming, something fiercely electric, in his swift acceptance of her. As he clasped her, she felt the wild throbbing of his heart like the pulsing force of a racing engine. He kissed her, and in his kiss there was more than the lover's adoration. It held the demand and mastery of matehood. By it he claimed and sealed her for his own.
When his hold relaxed, she made no effort to withdraw herself. She leaned against him gasping a little, but her eyes--with the glory yet shining in them--were still raised to his.
"So that's settled, is it?" she said, with a quivering smile. "You are quite sure, Dick?"
His hands were clasped behind her. His look had a certain burning quality as if he challenged all the world for her possession.
"What am I to say to you, Juliet?" he said, his words low, deeply vibrant. "I can't deny--my other self--can I?"
"I don't know," she said. "You were very near it, weren't you? I thought you had--all these weeks."
"Ah!" His brows contracted. "Will you forgive me, Juliet? I've had--an infernal time."
"Yes. I know," she said gently.
"No, dear, you don't know. How could you? Your life hasn't been one perpetual struggle against overwhelming odds like mine." He paused. "Look here, darling! I'm rather a fool to-night. I can't explain things. But you've been very wonderful to me. You've lighted a torch in the dark. I kept away because--it didn't seem fair to you to do anything else. You were back in your own inner circle, and I was miles outside. And you never wanted to be bound. When I saw you with--Lord Saltash--I knew why."
"My dear!" she said. "You didn't imagine I was in love with Saltash surely!"
"No--no!" he said. "I knew you weren't. And yet--somehow--I felt you were nearer to his world than mine. I realized it more and more as the days went on. And my boy was ill--I couldn't leave him. Juliet--" a hint of entreaty crept into his voice--"I can't explain. But somehow here on my own ground it's--different. I feel you belong to me here. I know I can win and hold you. But there--there--you are--leagues and leagues above me--far out of reach."
"Oh, Dick!" she said. "I thought you had more sense! Don't you realize--yet--that your world is the world I want to be in? I want to forget that other world--just to blot it out of my life--if only you will make that possible."
"If I will!" he said, with a deep breath. And then suddenly he took her face between his hands, looking closely into her eyes. "Don't you care about--all the horrible things I've told you?" he said. "Does it make no difference at all to you?"
She was still smiling--a tremendous smile. "It doesn't seem much like it, does it?" she said. "I'm not such a saint myself, Dick. Moreover, I knew about--some things--before I came."
"What things?" he said.
She made a very winning gesture towards him. "Don't think me a Paul Pry, dear! But I couldn't help knowing--ages ago--what made the squire--so fond of you."
"Juliet!" He gazed at her. "How on earth did you find out?"
She coloured deeply under his look. "You--are rather alike--in some ways," she said. "It was partly that and partly being--well, rather interested in you, I suppose. And Mrs. Rickett told me as much of your family history as she knew before I ever met you. So, you see, I didn't have much to fill in."
"And still it makes no difference?" he said.
She shook her head. "None whatever. I'm just glad for your sake that the man you hated so was not your father. But I think you go rather far, Dick, when you say you killed him."
The hard onyx glitter shone again in his eyes. "No, it was not an exaggeration," he said. "I was a murderer that night. I meant him to go to his death. When he was dead I was glad. He had tortured the only being I loved on earth. I believed he was my father for quite a long time after--till the squire came home, and I told him the whole story. Then--in an impulsive moment--he told me the truth. He cared about my mother's death--cared badly. They would have been married by that time if her husband hadn't turned up again. It was two lives spoilt."
"And what about yours?" she said.
"Mine!" He smiled rather bitterly. "Well, I've never expected much of life. I've stuck to my independence and been satisfied with that. He'd have bossed my destiny if I'd have let him. But I wouldn't. I was cussed on that point, though if it hadn't been for Robin, I shouldn't have bothered. I stayed on here for the boy's sake. He wouldn't have been happy anywhere else. Well," he uttered a weary sigh, "that chapter's closed."
She pressed his arm. "Dick, we might never have met but for that."
"Oh, we might have met," he said. "But--you'd probably have detested me--under any other circumstances."
She smiled at him with a touch of wistfulness. "And you me, Dick. Neither of us would have looked below the surface if we'd met in the general hurly-burly. We shouldn't have had time. So we have a good deal to be thankful for, haven't we?"
He drew her to him again. The desperate misery had passed from his face, but he looked worn out. "What on earth should I do without you?" he said.
"I don't know, dear," she answered tenderly. "I hope you are not going to try any longer, are you?"
His lips were near her own. "Juliet, will you stay--within reach--till after the funeral?"
"Yes," she breathed.
"And then--then--will you--marry me?" His whisper was even lower than hers. The man's whole being pulsed in the words.
Her arms went round his neck. "I will, dearest."
His breath came quickly. "And if--if--later--you come upon some things that hurt you--things you don't understand--will you remember how I've been handicapped--and--forgive me?"
Her eyes looked straight up to his. They held a shadowy smile. "Dick,--I was just going--to say that--to you!"
He pressed her to his heart. "Ah, my Juliet!" he said. "Could anything matter to us--anything on earth--except our love?"
In the deep silence her lips answered his. There was no further need for words.


PART IV


CHAPTER I
THE FREE GIFT

"I'm not quite sure that I call this fair play," said Saltash with a comical twist of the eyebrows. "I didn't expect all these developments in so short a time."
"There are no further rules to this game," said Juliet, squeezing Columbus around his sturdy shoulders as he sat on the bench beside her. "Whoever wins--or loses--no one has