The Obstacle Race Part 55

A fellow I once met--Ivor Yardley, the K. C.--first introduced me to them. I get them through his secretary who has some sort of interest in the trade."

A sudden silence fell. Juliet's cigarette remained poised in the act of kindling, but no smoke came from her lips. She had the look of one who listens with almost painful intentness.

The flame of the lighted match licked Saltash's fingers, and he dropped it. "Pardon my clumsiness! Let's try again! So you know Yardley, do you?"

He flung the words at d.i.c.k. "Quite the coming man in his profession.

Rather a brute in some ways, cold-blooded as a fish and wily as a serpent, but interesting--distinctly interesting. When did you meet him?"

"Early this year. I consulted him on a matter of business. I have no private acquaintance with him." d.i.c.k was looking straight at Saltash with a certain hardness of contempt in his face. "You evidently are on terms of intimacy with him."

"Oh, quite!" said Saltash readily. "He knows me--almost as well as you do. And I know him--even better. I was saying to _Juliette_ just now that I believe he shares the general impression that I have got Lady Jo Farringmore somewhere up my sleeve. She did the rabbit trick, you know, a week or two before the wedding, and because I was to have been the best man I somehow got the blame. Wonder if he'd have blamed you if you'd been there!"

d.i.c.k stiffened. "I think not," he said.

"Not disreputable enough?" laughed Saltash.

"Not nearly," said Juliet, coming out of her silence. "d.i.c.k has rather strong opinions on this subject, Charles, so please don't be flippant about it! Will you give me another match?"

He held one for her, his eyebrows c.o.c.ked at a comical angle, open derision in the odd eyes beneath them. Then, her cigarette kindled, he sprang up in his abrupt fas.h.i.+on.

"I'm going. Thanks for putting up with me for so long. I had to come and see you, Juliette. You are one of the very few capable of appreciating me at my full value."

"I hope you will come again," she said.

He bowed low over her hand. "If I can ever serve you in any way," he said, "I hope you will give me the privilege. Farewell, most estimable Romeo! You may yet live to greet me as a friend."

He was gone with the words with the suddenness of a monkey swinging off a bough, leaving behind him a silence so marked that the fall of an unripe apple from the tree immediately above them caused Columbus to start and jump from his perch to investigate.

Then Juliet, very quiet of mien and level of brow, got up and went to d.i.c.k who had risen at the departure of the visitor. She put her hand through his arm and held it closely.

"You are not to be unkind to my friends, Richard," she said. "It is the one thing I can't allow."

He looked at her with some sternness, but his free hand closed at once upon hers. "I hate to think of you on terms of intimacy with that bounder," he said.

She smiled a little. "I know you do. But you are prejudiced. I can't give up an old friend--even for you, d.i.c.k."

He squeezed her hand. "Have you got many friends like that, Juliet?"

She flushed. "No. He is the only one I have, and--"

"And?" he said, as she stopped.

She laid her cheek with a very loving gesture against his shoulder.

"Ah, don't throw stones!" she pleaded gently. "There are so few of us without sin."

His arm was about her in a moment, all his hardness vanished. "My own girl!" he said.

She held his hand in both her own. "Do you know--sometimes--I lie awake at night and wonder--and wonder--whether you would have thought of me--if you had known me in the old days?"

"Is that it?" he said very tenderly. "And you thought I was sleeping like a hog and didn't know?"

She laughed rather tremulously, her face turned from him. "It isn't always possible to bury the past, is it, however hard we try? I hope you'll make allowances for that, d.i.c.k, if ever I shock your sense of propriety."

"I shall make allowances," he said, "because you are the one and only woman I wors.h.i.+p--or have ever wors.h.i.+pped--and I can't see you in any other light."

"How dear of you, d.i.c.ky!" she murmured. "And how ras.h.!.+"

"Am I such an unutterable prig?" he said. "I feel myself that I have got extra fastidious since knowing you."

She laughed at that, and after a moment turned with impulsive sweetness and put her cigarette between his lips. "You're not a prig, darling. You are just an honourable and upright gentleman whom I am very proud to belong to and with whom I always feel I have got to be on my best behaviour. What have you been doing all this time? I should have come to look for you if Saltash hadn't turned up."

d.i.c.k's brows were slightly drawn. "I've been talking to Jack," he said.

"Jack!" She opened her eyes. "d.i.c.k! I hope you haven't been quarrelling!"

He smiled at her anxious face, though somewhat grimly. "My dear, I don't quarrel with people like Jack. I came upon him at the school. I don't know why he was hanging round there. He certainly didn't mean me to catch him. But as I did so, I took the opportunity for a straight talk--with the result that he leaves this place to-morrow--for good."

"My dear d.i.c.k! What will the squire say?"

"I can manage the squire," said d.i.c.k briefly.

She smiled and pa.s.sed on. "And Jack? What will he do?"

"I don't know and I don't care. He's the sort of animal to land on his feet whichever way he falls. Anyhow, he's going, and I never want to speak or hear of him again." d.i.c.k's thin lips came together in a hard, compelling line.

"Are you never going to forgive him?" said Juliet.

His eyes had a stony glitter. "It's hardly a matter for forgiveness," he said. "When anyone has done you an irreparable injury the only thing left is to try and forget it and the person responsible for it as quickly as possible. I don't thirst for his blood or anything of that kind. I simply want to be rid of him--and to wipe all memory of him out of my life."

"Do you always want to do that with the people who injure you?"

said Juliet.

He looked at her, caught by something in her tone. "Yes, I think so.

Why?"

"Oh, never mind why!" she said, with a faint laugh that sounded oddly pa.s.sionate. "I just want to find out what sort of man you are, that's all."

She would have turned away from him with the words, but he held her with a certain dominance. "No, Juliet! Wait! Tell me--isn't it reasonable to want to get free of anyone who wrongs you--to shake him off, kick him off if necessary,--anyway, to have done with him?"

"I haven't said it was unreasonable," she said, but she was trembling as she spoke and her face was averted.

"Look at me!" he said. "What? Am I such a monster as all that?

Juliet,--my dear, don't be silly! What are you afraid of? Surely not of me!"

She turned her face to him with a quivering smile. "No! I won't be silly, d.i.c.k," she said. "I'll try to take you as I find you and--make the best of you. But, to be quite honest, I am rather afraid of the hard side of you. It is so very uncompromising. If I ever come up against it--I believe I shall run away!"

"Not you!" he said, trying to look into the soft, down-cast eyes. "Or if you do you'll come back again by the next train to see how I am bearing up. I've got you, Juliet!" He lifted her hand, displaying it exultantly, closely clasped in his. "And what I have--I hold!"

"How clever of you!" said Juliet, and with a swift lithe movement freed herself.