The Obstacle Race Part 15

"I saw you had been in society," said Mrs. Fielding half enviously.

"Yes, I have had five seasons--nearly six. And I never want another."

Juliet spoke with great emphasis. "That's why I'm here now."

"I wonder you never married," said Mrs. Fielding.

"Do you?" Juliet spoke dreamily. They were running swiftly up a steep and stony road leading to High Shale Point. "Lady Jo used to wonder that. But I've never yet met a man who was willing to wait, and I couldn't do a thing like that in a hurry."

"You could if you were in love," said Mrs. Fielding.

"Yes, perhaps you're right. In that case, I have never been enough in love to take the leap." Juliet spoke with a half smile. Her eyes were fixed upon the top of the hill. "But anyhow Lady Jo couldn't talk, for she has just jilted Ivor Yardley the K. C. and gone to Paris to buy mourning."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielding. "Why, I saw the description of the wedding-dress in the paper the other day. It must have been a near thing."

"It was," said Juliet soberly. "They were to have been married to-day."

"And she broke it off! That must have taken some pluck!"

"But she didn't stay to face the music," Juliet pointed out. "That was what I hated in her. She ought to have stayed."

"Was she afraid of him then?"

"Afraid? Yes, she was afraid of him--and of everybody else. I know that perfectly well, though you would never get her to admit it. She was terrified in her heart--and so she bolted."

"Why didn't you go with her?" asked Mrs. Fielding.

Juliet made an odd gesture of the hands that was somehow pa.s.sionate. "Why should I? I have disapproved of her for a long time. Now we have finally quarrelled. She behaved so badly--so very badly. I don't want to meet her--or any of her set--again!"

Mrs. Fielding was silent for a moment. She had not expected that intensity. "Do you know, that doesn't sound like you somehow?" she said at length, speaking with just a hint of embarra.s.sment.

"But how do you know what I am really like?" said Juliet. "Ah! There is the sea again--and the wonderful sky-line! Is he going to stop? Or are we going to plunge over the edge?"

She spoke with a little breathless laugh. They had reached the summit of the great headland, and it looked for the moment as if the car must leap over a sheer precipice into the clear green water far below. But even as she spoke, there came a check and a pause, and then they were standing still on a smooth stretch of gra.s.s not twenty feet from the edge.

The soft wind blew in their faces, and there was a glittering purity in the atmosphere that held Juliet spell-bound. She breathed deeply, gazing far out over that sparkling sea of wonder.

"Oh, the magic of it!" she said. "The glorious freedom! It makes you feel--as if you had been born again."

Her companion watched her in silence, a certain curiosity in her look.

After many seconds Juliet turned round. "Thank you for bringing me here,"

she said. "It has done me good. I should like to stay here all day long."

Her eyes travelled along the line of cliff towards that distant spot that had been the scene of her night adventure, and slowly returned to dwell upon a long deep seam in the side of the hill.

"That's the lead mine," observed Mrs. Fielding. "It belongs to your aristocratic relatives, the Farringmores. They are pretty badly hated by the miners, I believe. But your friend Mr. Green is extremely popular with them. He rather likes to be a king among cobblers, I imagine."

"How nice of him!" said Juliet. "And where do the cobblers live?"

"You can't see it from here. It's just on the other side of the workings--a horribly squalid place. I never go near it. It's called High Shale, but it's very low really, right in a pocket of the hills, and very unhealthy. You can see the smoke hanging over there now. The cottages are wretched places, and the people who live in them--words fail! Ashcott, the agent and manager of the mines, says they are quite hopeless, and so they are. They are just like pigs in a sty."

"Poor dears!" said Juliet.

"Oh, they're horrors!" declared Mrs. Fielding. "They fling stones at the car if we go within half-a-mile of them. And they are such a drunken set.

Go round the other way, Jack,--round by Fairharbour! Miss Moore will enjoy that."

"Thank you," said Juliet, with her friendly smile. "I am enjoying it very much."

They travelled forty miles before they ran back again into Little Shale, and the children were rea.s.sembling for afternoon school as they neared the Court gates.

"Put me down here!" Juliet said. "I can run down the hill. It isn't worth while coming those few yards and having to turn the car."

"I want you to lunch with me," said Mrs. Fielding.

"Oh, thank you very much. Not to-day. I really must get back. I've got to buy cakes for tea," laughed Juliet.

Mrs. Fielding stopped the car abruptly. "I'm not going to press you, or you'll never come near me again," she said. "I never press people to do what they obviously don't want to. Do you think you would hate living with me, Miss Moore? Or are you still giving the matter your consideration?"

There was a hint of wistfulness in the arrogant voice that somehow touched Juliet.

She sat silent for a moment; then: "If I might come to you for a week on trial," she said. "You won't pay me anything of course. I think we should know by that time if it were likely to answer or not."

"When will you come?" said Mrs. Fielding.

"Just when you like," said Juliet.

"To-morrow?"

"Yes, to-morrow, if that suits you."

"And if you don't hate me at the end of a week you'll come for good."

Juliet laughed. "No, I won't say that. I'll leave you a way of escape too. We will see how it answers."

Mrs. Fielding held out her hand. "Good-bye! Next time you take your tea on the sh.o.r.e, I want to be the guest of honour."

"You shall be," said Juliet.

CHAPTER IX

THE INTRUDER

"Everyone to his taste," remarked Green. "But I'd rather be anything under the sun than Mrs. Fielding's paid companion." He glanced at Juliet with a smile as he spoke, but there was a certain earnestness in his speech that told her he meant what he said. He sat with his back to a rock, smoking a cigarette. His att.i.tude was one of repose, but in the strong light his dark face showed a tenseness that did not wholly agree with it.