The Obstacle Race Part 18

"Because I should know then it mattered a little. Now I know it doesn't.

I am just one of the many. Isn't that it? There are so many of us that one more or less doesn't count either way." He laughed ruefully. "Well, I won't repeat the offence. Even your patience must have its limits. Shall we go back?"

It was then that Juliet turned, moved by an impulse so strangely urgent that she could not pause to a.n.a.lyse it. She held out her hand to him, quickly, shyly, and as he gripped and held it, she spoke, her voice tremulous, breathless, barely coherent.

"I am not--offended. I am--very--very--deeply--honoured. Only you--you--don't understand."

He kept her hand closely in his own. His grasp vibrated with electric force, but he had himself in check. "You are more generous than I deserve," he said, his voice sunk to a whisper. "Perhaps--some day--understanding will come. May I hope for that?"

She did not answer him, but for one intimate second her eyes looked straight into his. Then with a little, sobbing breath she slipped her hand free.

"We--are forgetting Robin," she said, with an effort.

He turned at once. "By George, yes! I'm afraid I had forgotten him," he said.

They walked back along the sh.o.r.e side by side.

PART II

CHAPTER I

THE WAND OF OFFICE

Robin was in disgrace. He crouched in a sulky heap in a far corner of the schoolroom, and glowered across the empty desks and benches at his elder brother who sat in the place of authority at his writing-table with a litter of untidy exercise-books in front of him. There was a long, thin cane also at his elbow that had the look of a somewhat sinister wand of office. He was correcting book after book with a species of forced patience, that was not without an element of exasperation.

The evening sunlight slanted through the leaded windows. They were open to their widest extent, but the place was oppressively close. There was a brooding sense of storm in the atmosphere. Suddenly, as if in some invisible fas.h.i.+on a set limit had been reached and pa.s.sed, Richard Green lifted his head from his work. His keen eyes sent a flas.h.i.+ng glance down the long, bare room.

"Robin!" he said.

Robin gave a violent start, and then a shuffling, reluctant movement as if prodded into action against his will.

"Get up and come here!" his brother said.

Robin, in the act of blundering to his feet, checked abruptly, as if arrested by something in the peremptory tone. "What for?" he asked, in a surly note.

"Get up," Green repeated, with grim insistence, "and come here!"

Robin grabbed at the end of the row of desks nearest to him and dragged himself slowly up. But there he hung irresolute. His heavy brows were drawn, but the eyes beneath had a frightened, hunted look. They glared at Green with a defiance so precarious that it was pathetic.

Green waited inexorably, magisterially, at his table. The sunlight had gone and the room was darkening. Very slowly Robin moved forward, dragging his feet along the bare boards. At the other end of the row of desks he halted. His eyes travelled swiftly between his brother's stern countenance and the wand of office that lay before him on the writing-table. He s.h.i.+vered.

"Come here!" Green said again.

He crept a little nearer like a guilty dog. His humped shoulders looked higher than usual. His eyes shone red.

Across the writing-table Green faced him. He spoke, very distinctly.

"Why did you throw that stone at Mrs. Fielding's car?"

Robin was trembling from head to foot. He drew a quivering breath between his teeth, and stood silent.

"Tell me why!" Green insisted.

Robin locked his working hands together. Green waited.

"It--it--I didn't see--Mrs. Fielding," he blurted forth at last.

Green made a slight movement that might have indicated relief, but his tone was as uncompromising as before as he said, "That's not an answer to my question. I asked you why you did it."

Robin shrank from the curt directness of his speech. His defiance wilted visibly. "I--didn't mean to break the window, d.i.c.ky," he said, twisting and cracking his fingers in rising agitation.

"What did you mean to do?" said Green.

Robin stood silent again.

"Are you going to answer me?" Green said, after a pause.

Robin made a great effort. He parted his straining hands and rested them upon the table behind which Green sat. Standing so, he glowered down into his brother's grim face with something of menace in his own.

"I'll tell you one thing, d.i.c.ky," he said, with stupendous effort. "I'm not going--to take a caning for it."

Green's eyebrows went up. He sat perfectly still, looking straight up into the heavy face above him. For several seconds a tense silence reigned.

Then: "Oh yes, you will," he said quietly. "You will take--whatever I decide to give you. Sit down there!" He indicated the end of the bench nearest to him. "I'll deal with you presently."

Robin did not stir. In the growing gloom of the room his eyes shone like the eyes of an animal, goaded and desperate. But the man before him showed neither surprise nor anger. His clean-cut lips were closed in a straight, unyielding line. For a full minute he looked at Robin and Robin looked at him.

Then he spoke. "I've only one treatment for this sort of thing--as you know. It isn't especially inspiring for either of us. I shouldn't qualify for it if I were you."

Robin had begun to shake again. The cold, clear words seemed to deprive him of the brief strength he had managed to muster. His eyes fell before the steady regard that was fixed upon him. With an incoherent murmur he turned aside, and dropped upon the end of the bench indicated, his trembling hands gripped hard between his knees, his att.i.tude one of utter dejection.

Green went back to his correcting with a frown between his brows, and a deep silence fell.

Minutes pa.s.sed. The room grew darker, the atmosphere more leaden. Pencil in hand, Green went over book after book and put them aside. Suddenly he looked across at the silent figure. The humped shoulders were heaving.

Slow tears were falling upon the clasped hands. There was no sound of any sort. Green sat and watched, a kind of stern pity replacing the unyielding mastery of his look. He moved at length, was on the verge of speech, when something checked him. Footsteps fell beyond the open door, and in a moment a man's figure appeared entering through the gloom.

"Hullo, d.i.c.k!" a voice said. "You here? There's going to be the devil of a storm. Where's that scoundrel Robin?"

Robin stirred with a deep sound in his throat like the growl of an angry animal.

Richard Green rose with a sharp movement. "Jack! I want a word with you.

Come outside!"