The Obstacle Race Part 59

"But, I've been waiting for you," she said rather hopelessly.

He came to her, stood looking down at her, the old bitter frown struggling with a more kindly expression on his face. He was obviously waiting for something with no pleasant sense of antic.i.p.ation.

But Vera did not speak. She only sat drawn together, her fingers locked and her eyes downcast. She was using her utmost strength to keep herself in hand.

"Well?" he said at length, a faint ring of irritation in his voice, "Have you nothing to say to me now I have come?"

Her lips quivered a little. "I don't think--there is anything to be said," she said. "I knew--I felt--it was too good to last."

"It's over then, is it?" he said, the bitterness gaining the upper hand because of the misery at his heart. "The indiscretions of my youth have placed me finally beyond the pale. Is that it?"

She gripped her hands together a little more tightly. "I think you have been--you are--rather cruel," she said, her voice very low. "If you had only--told me!"

He made a gesture of exasperation. "My dear girl, for heaven's sake, look at the thing fairly if you can! How long have I known you well enough to let you into my secrets? How long have you been up to hearing them? I meant to tell you--as you know. I've been on the verge of it more than once. It wasn't cowardice that held me back. It was consideration for you."

She glanced at him momentarily. "I see," she said in that small quivering voice of hers that told so little of the wild tumult within her.

"Well?" he said harshly. "And that is my condemnation, is it? Henceforth I am to be thrust outside--a sinner beyond redemption. Is that it?"

Her eyelids fluttered nervously, but she did not raise them again. She leaned instead towards the fire. Her shoulders were bent. She looked crushed, as if her vitality were gone, and yet so slender, so young, in her thin wrap. He clinched his hands with a sharp intake of the breath, and his frown deepened.

"So you won't speak to me?" he said. "It's beyond words, is it? It's to be an insurmountable obstacle to happiness for the rest of our lives? We go back to the old d.a.m.nable existence we've led for so long! Or perhaps--" his voice hardened--"perhaps you think we should be better apart? Perhaps you would prefer to leave me?"

She flinched at that--flinched as if he had struck her--and then suddenly she lifted her white face to his, showing him such an anguish of suffering as he had not suspected.

"Oh, Edward," she said, "why did this have to happen? We were so happy before."

That pierced him--the utter desolation of her--the pain that was too deep for reproach. He bent to her, all the bitterness gone from his face.

"My dear," he said in a voice that shook, "can't you see how I loathe myself--for hurting you--like this?"

And then suddenly--so suddenly that neither knew exactly how it happened--they were linked together. She was clinging to him with a rush of piteous tears, and he was kneeling beside her, holding her fast pressed against his heart, murmuring over her brokenly, pa.s.sionately, such words of tenderness as she had never heard from him before. When in the end she lifted her face to kiss him, it was wet with tears other than her own, and somehow that fact did more to ease her own distress than any consolation he could find to offer.

She slipped her arm about his neck and pressed her cheek to his. "I'm thankful I know," she told him tremulously. "Oh, Edward darling, don't--don't keep anything from me ever again! If I'd only known sooner, things might have been so different. I feel as if I have never known you till now."

"Have you forgiven me?" he said, his grey head bent.

She turned her lips again to his. "My dear, of course--of course!"

And in a lower voice, "Will you--tell me about her? Did she mean very much to you?"

His arm tightened about her. "My darling, it's nearly twenty-three years ago that she died. Yes, I loved her. But I've never wanted her back. Her life was such an inferno." He paused a moment, then as she was silent went on more steadily. "She was eighteen and I was twenty-two when it began. I was home for a summer vacation, and she had just come to help her aunt as infant teacher at the school. All the men were wild about her, but she had no use for any of 'em till I come along. We met along the sh.o.r.e or on the cliffs. We met constantly. We loved each other like mad. It got beyond all reason--all restraint. We didn't look ahead, either of us. We were young, and it was so infernally sweet. I'm not offering any excuse--only telling you the simple truth. You won't understand of course."

She pressed closer to him. "Why shouldn't I understand?"

He leaned his head against her. "G.o.d bless you, my dear! You're very good to me--far better than I deserve. I was a blackguard, I know. But I never meant to let her down. That was almost as much her doing as mine--poor little soul! We were found out at last, and there was a fearful row with my people. I wanted to take her away then and there, and marry her. But she wouldn't hear of it--neither would her aunt--a hard, proud woman! I didn't know then--no one knew--that she was expecting a child, or I'd have defied 'em all. Instead, she urged and entreated me to go away for a few weeks--give her time to think, she said. I hoped even then that she would give in and come to me. But the next thing I knew, she was married to a brute called Green--skipper of a filthy little cargo-steamer, who had been after her for some time. She went with him on one or two short voyages. Heaven knows what she endured in that time. Then the baby was born--d.i.c.k. They called him a seven-months child. But I knew--I guessed at once. One day I met her--told her so. I saw then--in part--what her life was like. She was terrified--said Green would kill her if he ever found out. The man was a great hulking bully--a drunkard perpetually on sh.o.r.e. He used to beat her as it was. She implored me not to come up against him, and--for her sake alone--I never did. Then--it was nearly a year after--he went off on a voyage and didn't come back. The boat was reported lost with all hands. I think everyone rejoiced so far as he was concerned. She went back to work at the school, supporting herself and the child. I never induced her to accept any help from me, but gradually, as the years went on and my uncle died and I became my own master, I got into the position of intimate friend. I was allowed to interfere a bit in d.i.c.k's destinies. But for a long, long while she permitted no more than that. I don't know exactly what made me stick to her. I used to go away, but I always came back. I couldn't give her up. And at last--twelve years after Green's disappearance--I won her over. She promised to marry me.

The very day afterwards, that scoundrel Green came back! And her martyrdom began again."

"Oh, Edward, my dear!" Vera's hand went up to his face, stroking, caressing. The suppressed misery of his voice was almost more than she could bear. "How you suffered!" she whispered.

He was silent for a moment or two, controlling himself. "It's over now,"

he said then. "Thank G.o.d, it's a long time over! She died--less than a year after--when Jack and Robin were born. Her husband fell over the cliff on the same night in a fit of drunkenness and was killed. That's all the story. You know the rest. I'm sorry--I'm very sorry--I hadn't the decency to tell you before we married."

"You--needn't be sorry, dear," she said very gently.

He looked at her. "Do you mean that, Vera? Do you mean it makes no difference to you?"

She met his eyes with a s.h.i.+ning tenderness in her own that gave her a womanliness which he had never seen in her before. "No," she said, "I don't mean that. I mean that I'm glad nothing happened to--to prevent my marrying you. I mean--that I love you ten times more for telling me now."

He gathered her impulsively close in his arms, kissing her with lips that trembled. "My own girl! My own generous wife! I'll make up to you," he vowed. "I'll give you such love as you've never dreamed of. I've been a brute to you often--often. But that's over. I'll make you happy now--if it kills me!"

She laughed softly, with a quivering exultation, between his kisses.

"That wouldn't make me happy in the least. And I don't think you will find it so hard as that either. You've begun already--quite nicely. Now that we understand each other, we can never make really serious mistakes again."

Thereafter, they sat and talked in the firelight for a long time, closely, intimately, as friends united after a long separation. And in that talk the last barrier between them crumbled away, and a bond that was very sacred took its place.

In the end the striking of the clock above them awoke Vera to the lateness of the hour. "My dear Edward, it's to-morrow morning already!

Wouldn't it be a good idea to go to bed?"

"Of course," he said. "You must be half dead. Thoughtless brute that I am!" He let her go out of his arms at last, but in a moment paused, looking at her with an odd wistfulness. "You're sure you've forgiven me?

Sure you won't think it over and find you've made a mistake?"

Her hands were on his shoulders. Her eyes looked straight into his. "I am quite sure," she said.

He began to smile. "What makes you so generous, I wonder? I never thought you had it in you."

She leaned towards him, a great glow on her face which made her wonderful in his sight. "Oh, my dear," she said, "I never had before. But I can afford to be generous now. What does the past matter when I know that the present and the future are all my own?"

His smile pa.s.sed. He met her look steadfastly. "As long as I live," he said, "so shall it be."

And the kiss that pa.s.sed between them was as the sealing of a vow.

CHAPTER IV

COUNSEL

Juliet and Columbus sat in a sheltered nook on the sh.o.r.e and gazed thoughtfully out to sea. It was a warm morning after a night of tempest, and the beach was strewn with seaweed after an unusually high tide.

Columbus sat with a puckered brow. In his heart he wanted to be pottering about among these ocean treasures which had a peculiar fascination for his doggy soul. But a greater call was upon him, keeping him where he was. Though she had not uttered one word to detain him, he had a strong conviction that his mistress wanted him, and so, stolidly, he remained beside her, his sharp little eyes flas.h.i.+ng to and fro, sometimes watching the great waves riding in, sometimes following the curving flight of a sea-gull, sometimes fixed in immensely dignified contemplation upon the quivering tip of his nose. His nostrils worked perpetually. The air was teeming with interesting scents; but not one of them could lure him from his mistress's side while he sensed her need of him. His body might be fat and bulging, but his spirit was a thing of keen perceptions and ardent, burning devotion, capable of denying every impulse save the love that was its mainspring.

Juliet was certainly very thoughtful that day. She also was watching the waves, but the wide brow was slightly drawn and the grey eyes were not so serene as usual. She had the look of one wrestling with a difficult problem. The roar of the sea was all about her, blotting out every other sound, even the calling of the gulls. Her arm encircled Columbus who was pressed solicitously close to her side. They had been sitting so, almost without moving, for over half-an-hour.

Suddenly Columbus turned his head sharply, and a growl swelled through him. Juliet looked round, and in a moment she had started to her feet. A man's figure, lithe and spare, with something of a monkey's agility of movement, was coming to her over the stones. They met in a shelving hollow of s.h.i.+ngle that had been washed by the sea.

"Oh, Charles!" she said impulsively. "It is good of you to come!"