Rosa Mundi by Ethel May Dell (e books free to read .TXT) 📖

to laugh.
"It's all right; you needn't look so starched. The little beggar's been starving himself for the occasion, and overdone it. He'll pull round with a little feeding up. Tell me what you thought of the race! Splendid chap, that animal of mine, eh?"
He kept Baring talking for several minutes; and, when they finally parted, his opportunity had gone.
Baring went into the weighing-tent, but Ronnie was nowhere to be seen. And he wondered rather grimly as he walked away if Hyde had detained him purposely to give the boy a chance to escape.


X
THE ENEMY'S TERMS

It was nearly dark that evening when Hope stood again on the veranda of the Magician's, bungalow, and listened to the water running through the reeds. She thought it sounded louder than in the morning--- more insistent, less mirthful. She shivered a little as she stood there. She felt lonely; her uncle was away for a couple of days, and Ronnie was in his room. She was bracing herself to go and rouse him to dress for mess. Slowly, at last, she turned to go. But at the same instant a voice called to her from below, and she stopped short.
"Ah, don't run away!" it said. "I've come on purpose to see you--on a matter of importance."
Reluctantly Hope waited. She knew the voice well, and it made her quiver in every nerve with the instinct of flight. Yet she summoned all her resolution and stood still, while Hyde calmly mounted the veranda steps and approached her. He was in riding-dress, and he carried a crop, walking with all the swaggering insolence that she loathed.
"There's something I want to say to you," he said. "I can come in, I suppose? It won't take me long."
He took her permission for granted, and turned into the drawing-room. Hope followed him in silence. She could not pretend to this man that his presence was a pleasure to her. She hated him, and deep in her heart she feared him as she feared no one else in the world.
He looked at her with eyes of cynical criticism by the light of the shaded lamp. She felt that there was something worse than insolence about him that night--something of cruelty, of brutality even, from which she was powerless to escape.
"Come!" he said, as she did not speak. "Doesn't it occur to you that I have been a particularly good friend to you to-day?"
Hope faced him steadily. Twice before she had evaded this man, but she knew that to-night evasion was out of the question. She must confront him without panic, and alone.
"I think you must tell me what you mean," she said, her voice very low.
He shrugged his shoulders indifferently, and then laughed at her--his abominable, mocking laugh.
"I have noticed before," he said, "that when a woman finds herself in a tight corner, she invariably tries to divert attention by asking unnecessary questions. It's a harmless little stratagem that may serve her turn. But in this case, let me assure you, it is sheer waste of time. I hold you--and your brother, also--in the hollow of my hand. And you know it."
He spoke slowly, with a confidence from which there was no escape. His eyes still closely watched her face. And Hope felt again that wild terror, which only he had ever inspired in her, knocking at her heart.
She did not ask him a second time what he meant. He had made her realize the utter futility of prevarication. Instead, she forced herself to meet his look boldly, and grapple with him with all her desperate courage.
"My brother owed you a debt of honour," she said; "and it has been paid. What more do you want?"
A glitter of admiration shone for a moment through his cynicism. This was better than meek surrender. A woman who fought was worth conquering.
"You are not going to acknowledge, then," he said, "that you--you personally--are in any way indebted to me?"
"Certainly not!" The girl's eyes did not flinch before his. Save that she was trembling, he would scarcely have detected her fear. "You have done nothing for me," she said. "You only served your own purpose."
"Oh, indeed!" said Hyde softly. "So that is how you look at it, is it?"
He moved, and went close to her. Still she did not shrink. She was fighting desperately--desperately--a losing battle.
"Well," he said, after a moment, in which she withstood him silently with all her strength, "in one sense that is true. I did serve my own purpose. But have you, I wonder, any idea what that purpose of mine was?"
He waited, but she did not answer him. She was nearly at the end of her strength. Hyde did not offer to touch her. He only smiled a little at the rising panic in her white face.
"Do you know what I am going to do now?" he said. "I am going to mess--it's a guest night--and they will drink my health as the winner of the Ghantala Cup. And then I shall propose someone else's health. Can you guess whose?"
She shrank then, shrank perceptibly, painfully, as the victim must shrink, despite all his resolution, from the hot iron of the torturer.
Hyde stood for a second longer, watching her. Then he turned. There was fiendish triumph in his eyes.
"Good-bye!" he said.
She caught her breath sharply, spasmodically, as one who suppresses a cry of pain. And then, before he reached the window, she spoke:
"Please wait!"
He turned instantly, and came back to her.
"Come!" he said. "You are going to be reasonable after all."
"What is it that you want?" Her desperation sounded in her voice. She looked at him with eyes of wild appeal. Her defiance was all gone. The smile went out of Hyde's face, and suddenly she saw the primitive savage in possession. She had seen it before, but till that moment she had never realized quite what it was.
"What do I want?" he said. "I want you, and you know it. That fellow Baring is not the man for you. You are going to give him up. Do you hear? Or else--if you prefer it--he will give you up. I don't care which it is, but one or the other it shall be. Now do we understand one another?"
Hope stared at him, speechless, horror-stricken, helpless!
He came nearer to her, but she did not recoil, for as a serpent holds its prey, so he held her. She wanted to protest, to resist him fiercely, but she was mute. Even the power to flee was taken from her. She could only stand as if chained to the ground, stiff and paralyzed, awaiting his pleasure. No nightmare terror had ever so obsessed her. The agony of it was like a searing flame.
And Hyde, seeing her anguished helplessness, came nearer still with a sort of exultant deliberation, and put his arm about her as she stood.
"I thought I should win the trick," he said, with a laugh that seemed to turn her to ice. "Didn't I tell you weeks ago that I had--Hope?"
She did not attempt to answer or to resist. Her lips were quite bloodless. A surging darkness was about her, but yet she remained conscious--vividly horribly conscious--of the trap that had so suddenly closed upon her. Through it she saw his face close to her own, with that sneering, devilish smile about his mouth that she knew so well. And the eyes with their glittering savagery were mocking her--mocking her.
Another instant and his lips would have pressed her own. He held her fast, so fast that she felt almost suffocated. It was the most hideous moment of her life. And still she could neither move nor protest. It seemed as if, body and soul, she was his prisoner.
But suddenly, unexpectedly, he paused. His arms slackened and fell abruptly from her; so abruptly that she tottered, feeling vaguely for support. She saw his face change as he turned sharply away. And instinctively, notwithstanding the darkness that blinded her, she knew the cause. She put her hand over her eyes and strove to recover herself.


XI
WITHOUT DEFENCE

When Hope looked up, the silence had become unbearable. She saw Baring standing quite motionless near the window by which he had entered. He was not looking at her, and she felt suddenly, crushingly, that she had become less than nothing in his sight, not so much as a thing, to be ignored.
Hyde, quite calm and self-possessed, still stood close to her. But he had turned his back upon her to face the intruder. And she felt herself to be curiously apart from them both, almost like a spectator at a play.
It was Hyde who at last broke the silence when it had begun to torture her nerves beyond endurance.
"Perhaps this _rencontre_ is not as unfortunate as it looks at first sight," he remarked complacently. "It will save me the trouble of seeking an interview with you to explain what you are now in a position to see for yourself. I believe a second choice is considered a woman's privilege. Miss Carteret, as you observe, has just availed herself of this. And I am afraid that in consequence you will have to abdicate in my favour."
Baring heard him out in complete silence. As Hyde ended, he moved quietly forward into the room. Hope felt him drawing nearer, but she could not face him. His very quietness was terrible to her, and she was desperately conscious that she had no weapon of defence.
She had not thought that he would so much as notice her, but she was wrong. He passed by Hyde without a glance, and reached her.
"What am I to understand?" he said.
She started violently at the sound of his voice. She knew that Hyde had turned towards her again, but she looked at neither of them. She was trembling so that she could scarcely stand. Her very lips felt cold, and she could not utter a word.
After a brief pause Baring spoke again: "Can't you answer me?"
There was no anger in his voice, but there was also no kindness. She knew that he was watching her with a piercing scrutiny, and she dared not raise her eyes. She shook her head at last, as he waited for her reply.
"Are you willing for me to take an explanation from Mr. Hyde?" he asked; and his tone rang suddenly hard. "Has he the right to explain?"
"Of course I have the right," said Hyde easily.
"Tell him so, Hope!"
Baring bent towards the girl.
"If he has the right," he said, his voice quiet but very insistent, "look me in the face--and tell me so!"
She made a convulsive effort and looked up at him.
"Yes," she said in a whisper. "He has the right."
Baring straightened himself abruptly, almost as if he had received a blow in the face.
He stood for a second silent. Then:
"Where is your brother?" he asked.
Hope hesitated, and at once Hyde answered for her.
"He isn't back yet. He stopped at the club."
"That," said Baring sternly, "is a lie."
He laid his hand suddenly upon Hope's shoulder.
"Surely you can tell me the truth at least!" he said.
Something in his tone pierced the wild panic at her heart. She looked up at him again, meeting the mastery of his eyes.
"He is in his room," she said. "Mr. Hyde didn't know."
Hyde laughed, and at the sound the hand on Hope's shoulder closed like a vice, till she bit her lip with the effort to endure the pain. Baring saw it, and instantly set her free.
"Go to your brother," he said, "and ask him to come and speak to