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

"The woman you dissected so cleverly--stripped to the naked soul--and exposed to public ridicule? You were terribly merciless, weren't you, Dick? You didn't expect--some day--to find yourself married--to that sort of woman."
His face hardened. "In what way do you resemble her?" he said. "I have never seen it yet."
"Can't you see it--now?" she returned, lifting her face more fully to the light.
He was silent for several seconds, looking at her. Then very suddenly his attitude changed. He knelt down by her side and spoke, urgently, passionately.
"Juliet--for God's sake--let us remember what we are to each other--and put the rest away!"
His arm encircled her. He would have drawn her close, but she held back with a sharp sound that was almost a cry of pain.
"Dick, wait--wait a moment! You don't know--don't understand! Ah, wait--please wait! Take your arm away--just for a moment--please--just for a moment! I have something to tell you, but I can't say it like this. I can't--I can't! Ah! What is that?"
She broke off, gasping, almost fighting for breath, as the sudden rush and hoot of a car sounded at the gate.
Dick got to his feet. His face was white. "Are you expecting someone?" he said.
She clasped her hands tightly upon her breast to still her agitation. "No, I'm not expecting--anyone. But--but--someone--has come."
"Evidently," said Dick.
He turned towards the door, but in a moment she had sprung up, reaching it before him. "Dick, if it is Saltash--"
"Why should it be Saltash?" he said, with that in his voice that arrested her as compelling as if he had laid a hand upon her.
She faced him standing at the door, striving desperately for self-control. "It may be Saltash," she said, speaking more quietly. "I saw him this morning, and he knows about the concert to-night. Dick--" she caught her breath involuntarily--"Dick, why do you look at me like that?"
He made a curious jerky movement--as if he strove against invisible bonds. "So," he said, "you are expecting him!"
She stiffened at his words. "I have told you I am expecting no one, but that is no reason why Saltash should not come."
For a second he looked at her with something that was near akin to contempt in his eyes, then suddenly an awful flame leapt up in them consuming all beside. He took a swift step forward, and caught her between his hands.
"Juliet!" he said sternly. "Stop this trifling! What are you hiding from me? What is it you were trying to tell me just now?"
She shrank from the fire of his look. "I can't tell you now, Dick. It's impossible. Dick, you are hurting me!"
He spoke between his teeth. "I've got to know! Tell me now!"
Someone was knocking a careless tattoo upon the outer door. Juliet turned her head sharply, but she kept her eyes upon her husband's face.
"No, Dick," she said after a moment, and with the words something of her customary quiet courage came back to her. "I can't--possibly--tell you now. Do this one thing for me--wait till to-night!"
"And then?" he said.
"I promise that you shall know--everything--then," she said. "Please--give me till then!"
There was earnest entreaty in her voice, but she had subdued her agitation. She met the scorching intensity of his look with eyes that never wavered, and in spite of himself he was swayed by her steadfastness.
"Very well," he said, and set her free. "Till to-night!"
She turned from him in silence and opened the door. He stood motionless, with hands clenched at his sides, and watched her.
She went down the passage without haste and reached the outer door. She opened it without fumbling, and in a moment Saltash's debonair accents came to him.
"Ah, _Juliette_! You are ready? Has your good husband got back yet? Ah, there you are, sir! I have called to offer you and _madame_ a lift. I am going your way."
He came sauntering up the passage with the royal assurance characteristic of him, and held out his hand to Dick with malicious cordiality.
"I come as a friend, Romeo. Do you know you're very late? Have you only just got back?"
Juliet's eyes were upon Dick. She saw his momentary hesitation before he took the proffered hand.
Saltash saw it also and grinned appreciatively. "Well, what news? What did Yardley have to say?"
"I didn't see him," Dick said briefly.
"No? How was that?"
Dick shrugged his shoulders. "Merely because he wasn't there. I can't tell you why, for I don't know. I waited about all day--to no purpose."
"Drew a blank!" commented Saltash. "No wonder you're feeling a bit savage! What are you going to do now?"
Dick faced him, grimly uncommunicative. "Oh, talk, I suppose. What else?"
"And you're taking Juliet?" pursued Saltash.
"Have you any objection?" said Dick sharply.
"None," said Saltash smoothly. "She is your wife, not mine--perhaps fortunately for her." He threw a gay glance at Juliet. "Are you ready, _ma chere_? Come along, _mon ami_! It will amuse me to hear you--talk."
Juliet went upstairs to fetch her cloak, and Dick took his coat from the peg in the hall, and began to put it on. Saltash watched him with careless amiability.
"Are you going to be there to-night then?" Dick asked him suddenly.
"I am proposing to give myself that pleasure," he returned. "That is, of course, if you on your part have no objection."
Dick's black eyes surveyed him keenly. "I am quite capable of protecting my wife single-handed," he said. "Not that there will be any need."
Saltash executed a smiling bow. "I am delighted to hear you say so. Have you got a cigarette to spare?"
Dick took out his case and held it to him. Saltash helped himself, the smile still twitching the corners of his mouth.
"Thanks," he said lightly. "So you have no anxieties about to-night!"
"None," said Dick.
"You think the men will come to heel?"
"They haven't broken away yet," Dick reminded him curtly.
Saltash raised his eyes suddenly. "When they do--what then?" he said.
"What do you mean?" said Dick.
He laughed mischievously. "I suppose you know that you are credited with being at their head?"
Dick, in the act of striking a match, paused. He looked at the other man with raised brows. "At their head?" he questioned. "What do you mean?"
Without the smallest change of countenance Saltash enlightened him. "As strike-leader, agitator, and so on. You have achieved an enviable reputation by your philanthropy. Didn't you know?"
Dick struck the match with an absolutely steady hand, and held it to his cigarette. "I did not," he said.
Saltash puffed at the cigarette, peering at him curiously through the smoke. "Which may account for your failure to find Ivor Yardley," he suggested after a moment.
"In what way?" said Dick.
Saltash straightened himself. "I imagine he is not a great believer in--philanthropy," he said.
Dick's eyes shone with an ominous glitter. "From my point of view these insinuations are not worth considering," he said, "though no doubt it has given you a vast amount of enjoyment to fabricate them."
"I!" said Saltash.
"You!" said Dick.
There was a moment's silence, then Saltash began to laugh. "My dear chap, you don't really think that! You'd like to--but you can't!"
Dick looked at him, thin-lipped, uncompromising, silent.
"You actually do?" questioned Saltash. "You really think I care a twopenny damn what anybody thinks about you or anyone else under the sun? I say, don't be an ass, Green, whatever else you are! It's too tiring for all concerned. If you really want to know who is responsible--"
"Well?" said Dick.
"Well," Saltash sent a cloud of smoke upwards, "look a bit nearer home, man! Haven't you got--a brother somewhere?"
Dick gave a sudden start. "I have not!" he said sternly.
Saltash nodded. "Ah! Well, I imagine Yardley knows him if you don't. He is the traitor in the camp, and he's out to trip you if he can." He laughed again with careless humour. "I don't know why I should give you the tip. It is not my custom to heap coals of fire. Pray excuse them on this occasion! I suppose you are quite determined to take _Juliette_ to the meeting to-night?"
"I am quite determined to go," said Juliet quietly, as she came down the stairs. "Will you have anything, Charles? No? Then let us start! It is getting late. You are driving yourself?"
He threw open the door for her with a deep bow. "I always drive myself, _Juliette_, and--I always get there," he said.
Her faint laugh floated back to Dick as he followed them out.


CHAPTER VII
FLIGHT

It was a dumb and sullen crowd that Dick Green faced that night in the great barn on the slope of High Shale.
A rough platform had been erected at one end of the place and this, with the deal table and lamp and one or two chairs, was all that went to the furnishing of his assembly-room. The men stood in a close crowd like herded cattle, and the atmosphere of the place was heavy with the reek of humanity and coarse tobacco-smoke. There was a door at each end, but the night was still and dark and there was little air beyond the vague chill of a creeping sea-mist.
Dick, entering at the door at the platform end of the building instead of passing straight up through the crowd as was his custom, was aware of a curious influence at work from the first moment--an influence adverse if not directly hostile that reached him he knew not how. He heard a vague murmur as Juliet and Saltash followed him, and sharply he turned and drew Juliet to his side. In that instant he realized that she was the only woman in the place.
He faced the crowd, his hand upon her arm. "Well, men," he said, his words clean-cut and ready, "so you've left your wives behind, have you? I on the contrary have brought mine, and she has promised to give you a song."
The mutter died. Some youths at the back started applause, which spread, though somewhat half-heartedly, through the crowd, and for a space the ugly feeling died down.
"We'll get to business," said Dick, and took out his banjo.
The concert began, Ashcott came up on to the platform and under cover of Dick's jangling ragtime spoke in a low voice and urgently to Saltash.
The latter heard him with a laugh and a careless grimace, but a little later he leaned towards Juliet who sat behind the table and touched her unobtrusively. She looked round at him almost with reluctance, and he whispered to her in rapid French.
She listened to him with raised brows, and then shook her head with a smile. "No, of course not! I am going to sing to them directly. I am here to help--not to make things worse."
He shrugged his shoulders and said no more. In a few minutes Dick's cheery banjo thrummed into silence and he turned round.
"Are you ready?" he said to Juliet.
She rose and came forward, tall and graceful, bearing the unmistakable stamp of high-breeding in every delicate movement. She might have been on the platform of a London concert-hall as she faced her audience under the shadowing hat.
They stared at her open-mouthed, spellbound, awed by the quiet dignity of her. And in the hush that fell before her, Juliet began to sing.
Her voice was low, highly trained, exquisitely soft. She sang an old English ballad with a throbbing sweetness that held her hearers with its charm. And behind her Dick leaned against the table with his banjo and very softly accompanied her.
His face was in shadow also as he bent over the instrument. Not once throughout the song did he look