The Obstacle Race Part 48

Mrs. Rickett sighed and went on with her ironing. "No more do I, Robin.

But we can't always do without 'em. Have you told your brother now?"

Robin, sullenly rocking himself to and fro, made no reply for several seconds. Then very suddenly: "He asked me if I'd got a headache and I told him No," he flung out defiantly. "What's the good of bothering him?

He can't do anything."

"The doctor might, you know," Mrs. Rickett ventured again, with a glance through the window at Freddy who had been sent out to amuse himself and was staggering with much perseverance in the wake of an elusive chicken.

"It's wonderful what they can do now-a-days to make things better."

"Don't want to be better," growled Robin.

She turned and looked at him in astonishment. "You didn't ought to say that, my dear," she said.

Again he raised his heavy eyes to hers and something she saw in them--something she was quite at a loss to define--went straight to her heart.

"Robin, my dear, what's the matter?" she said. "Is there something that's troubling you?"

Again Robin was silent for a s.p.a.ce. His eyes fell dully to the ground between his feet. At last, in a tone of muttered challenge, he spoke.

"Don't want it to get better. Want it to end."

"Sakes alive!" said Mrs. Rickett, shocked. "You don't know what you're saying."

He did not contradict her or lift his eyes again, merely sat there like a hunched baboon, his head on his chest, his monstrous body slowly rocking.

There followed a lengthy silence. Mrs. Rickett ironed and folded, ironed and folded, with a practised hand, still keeping an eye on the small chicken-chaser outside.

After several minutes, however, the boy's utter dejection of att.i.tude moved her to attempt to divert his thoughts. "I wonder when our young lady will be coming to see us again," she said.

Robin uttered a queer sound in his throat; it was almost like the moan of an animal in pain. He said nothing.

She gave him an uneasy glance, but still kind-heartedly she persevered in her effort to lift him out of his depression. "She was always very friendly-like," she said. "You liked her, didn't you Robin?"

Robin s.h.i.+fted his position with a sharp movement as though he winced at some sudden dart of pain. "What should make her come back?" he said.

"She'll stay away now she's gone."

"Oh, I expect we shall be seeing her again some day," said Mrs. Rickett, "when poor Mrs. Fielding is a bit stronger. She's busy now, but she'll come back, you'll see."

Again almost violently Robin moved in his chair. "She won't!" he flung out in a fierce undertone. "Tell you she won't!"

"How can you possibly know?" reasoned Mrs. Rickett.

"I do know," he said doggedly. "She won't come back,--anyhow not till--" his utterance trailed off into an unintelligible murmur in his throat and he became silent.

Mrs. Rickett shook out a small damp garment, and spread it upon the table with care. "I don't see how anyone is to say as she won't come back," she said. "Of course I know she's a lady born, but that don't prevent her making friends among humbler folk. She's talked of this place more than once as if she'd like to settle here."

"She won't then!" growled Robin. "She'll never do that, not while--." Again he became inarticulate, muttering deeply in his throat like an animal goaded to savagery.

Mrs. Rickett turned from her ironing to regard him. She had never found Robin hard to understand before, but there was something about him to-day which was wholly beyond her comprehension. He was like some wild creature that had received a cruel wound. Dumb resentment and fiery suffering seemed to mingle in his half uttered sentences. As he sat there, huddled forward with his hands pathetically clenched she thought she had never seen a more piteous sight.

"Lor', Robin, my dear!" she said. "What ever makes you know such a lot?

Why shouldn't she come back then? Tell me that!"

He shook his s.h.a.ggy head, but more in protest than refusal.

Mrs. Rickett bent down over him, her kindly red face full of the most motherly concern.

"What's troubling you, Robin?" she said. "You aren't--fretting for her, are you?"

He threw her one of his wild, furtive looks, and again in his eyes she caught a glimpse of something that deeply moved her. She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Is that it, lad? Are you wanting her? Ah, don't fret then--don't fret!

She'll surely come back--some day."

The boy's face quivered. He looked down at his clenched hands, and at length jerkily, laboriously, he spoke, giving difficult and bitter utterance to the trouble that gnawed at his heart.

"It's--d.i.c.ky that wants her. But she won't come--she won't come--while I'm here." A sudden hard s.h.i.+ver went through him, he drew his breath through his set teeth, with a desperate sound. "No woman would," he said with hard despair.

And then abruptly, as if with speech his misery had become unendurable, he blundered to his feet with outflung arms, making the only outcry against fate that his poor stunted brain had ever accomplished. "It isn't fair!" he wailed. "It isn't right! I'm going to G.o.d--to tell Him so!"

He turned with the words, the impulse of the stricken creature urging him, and ignoring the remonstrance which Mrs. Rickett had barely begun he made headlong for the door, dragged it open, and was gone.

He went past his little playmate in the yard, shambling blindly for the open, deaf to the baby's cry of welcome, insensible to everything but the bitter burden of his pain. He slammed the gate behind him and set off at a lumbering run down the glaring road.

The evening sun smote full in his face as he went; but it might have been midnight, for he neither saw nor felt. Instinct alone guided him--the instinct of the wild creature, hunted by disaster, wounded to the heart, that must be alone with its agony and its fruitless strife against fate.

He went up the cliff-path, but he did not follow it far. Something drew him down the narrow cleft that led to the spot where first he had seen her lying on the s.h.i.+ngle dreaming with her head upon her arm. He turned off the path to the place where he had crouched among the gorse-bushes and flung stones to scare her away, and stood there panting and gazing.

The memory of her, the gracious charm, the quick sympathy, went through him, pierced him. He caught his breath as though he listened for the beloved sound of her voice. She had not been really angry with him for the wantonness of those stones. She had been very ready with her forgiveness, her kindly offer of friends.h.i.+p. She had never been other than kind to him ever since. She had awakened in him the deepest, most humble grat.i.tude and devotion. She had even once or twice s.h.i.+elded him from d.i.c.ky's never unjust wrath. And he had come to love her second only to d.i.c.ky who must for ever hold the foremost place in his heart.

He had come to love her--and he stood between her and happiness. He did not reason the matter. He had small reasoning power. He recognized that Jack's brain was superior to his, and Jack had made known to him this monstrous thing. True, d.i.c.ky had denied it, but somehow that denial had not been so convincing as Jack's statement had been. The corrosive poison had already done its work, and there was no antidote. He knew that d.i.c.ky loved Juliet, knew it from his own lips. "The woman I love--the woman I love--" How often had the low-spoken words recurred to his memory! And d.i.c.ky was not happy. He had watched him narrowly ever since that night.

d.i.c.ky was not really hopeful for the winning of his heart's desire. He had said there were many obstacles. What they were, Robin could but vaguely conjecture--save one! And that one stood out in the darkness of his soul, clear as a cross against the falling night. d.i.c.ky had no chance of winning any woman so long as he--the village idiot--the hideous abortion--stood in his way. That was the truth as he saw it--the bitter, unavoidable truth. O G.o.d, it wasn't fair--it wasn't fair!

The evening shadows were lengthening. The waves splashed softly against the fallen rocks forty to fifty feet below. They seemed to be calling to him. It was almost like a summons from far away--almost like a bugle-call heard in the mists of sleep. Somehow they soothed him, lessening the poignancy of his anguish, checking his wild rebellion, making him aware of a strangely comforting peace.

As if G.o.d had spoken and stilled his inarticulate protest, the futile agony of his striving died down. He began to be conscious vaguely that somewhere within his reach there lay a way of escape. He stared out over the silver-blue of the sea with strained and throbbing vision. The sun had gone down behind High Shale, and the quiet shadows stretched towards him. He had the feeling of a hunted man who has found sanctuary. Again, more calmly, his tired brain considered the problem that had driven him forth in such bitterness of soul.

There was d.i.c.ky--d.i.c.ky who loved him--whom he wors.h.i.+pped. Yes, certainly d.i.c.ky loved him. He had never questioned that. He was the only person in the world who had ever wanted him. But a deeper love, a deeper want, had entered d.i.c.ky's life with the coming of Juliet. He wanted her with a great heart-longing that Robin but dimly comprehended but of which he was keenly conscious, made wise by the sympathy that linked them. He knew--and this without any bitterness--that d.i.c.ky wanted Juliet as he had never wanted him. It was an overmastering yearning in d.i.c.ky's soul, and somehow--by some means--some sacrifice--it must be satisfied. Even d.i.c.ky, it seemed, would have to sacrifice something; for he could not have them both.

Yes, something would have to be sacrificed. Somehow this obstacle must be cleared out of d.i.c.ky's path. Juliet could not come to d.i.c.ky while he was there. He did not ask himself why this should be, but accepted it as fact. He then was the main obstacle to d.i.c.ky's happiness, to the fulfilment of his great desire. Then he must go. But whither? And leave d.i.c.ky--and leave d.i.c.ky!

Again for a spell the anguish woke within him, but it did not possess him so overwhelmingly as before. He had begun to seek for a way out, and though it was hard to find, the very act of seeking brought him comfort. His own misery no longer occupied the forefront of his poor groping brain.

He sat for a long, long time up there on the cliff while the shadows lengthened and the day slowly died, turning the matter over and over while the flame of sacrifice gradually kindled in the darkness of his soul.

It was probably the growth of many hours of not too coherent meditation--the solution of that problem; but it came upon him very suddenly at the last, almost like the swift wheeling of a flashlight over the calm night sea.

He had heard the church clock strike in the distance, and was turning to leave when that first vision of Juliet swooped back upon him--Juliet in her light linen dress springing up the path towards him. He saw her as she had stood there, leaving the path behind her, poised like a young G.o.ddess against the dazzling blue of the spring sky. Her face had been stern at first, but all the sternness had gone into an amazing kindness of compa.s.sion when her look had lighted upon him. She had not shrunk from him as shrank so many. And then--and then--he remembered the sudden fear, the sharp anxiety, that had succeeded that first look of pity.

He had been standing on the brink of the cliff as he had stood many a time before--as he stood now. That cliff had been the tragedy of his ruined life. And yet he loved it, had never known any fear of it. But she had been afraid for his sake. He had seen the fear leap into her eyes.

And the memory of it came to him now as a revelation. He had found the way of escape at last!