The Top of the World by Ethel May Dell (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📕

back gaily. "Whoever gets there first can fix the stakes."
He laughed aloud, and the sound of his laugh made her catch her breath with a sharp, involuntary start. She ran to her mount feeling as if Guy were behind her, and with an odd perversity she would not look round to disillusion herself.
During the fevered minutes that followed, the illusion possessed her strongly, so strongly that she almost forgot the vital importance of being first. It was the thudding hoofs of his companion that made her animal gallop rather than any urging of hers. But once started, with the air swirling past her and the excitement of rapid motion setting her veins on fire, the spirit of the race caught her again, and she went like the wind.
The blasted tree stood on a slope nearly a mile away. The ground was hard, and the grass seemed to crackle under the galloping hoofs. The horse she rode carried her with superb ease. He was the finest animal she had ever ridden, and from the first she believed the race was hers.
On she went through the orange glow of evening. It was like a swift entrancing dream. And the years fell away from her as if they had never been, and she and Guy were racing over the slopes of her father's park, as they had raced in the old sweet days of youth and early love. She heard him urging his horse behind her, and remembered how splendid he always looked in the saddle.
The distance dwindled. The stark arms of the naked tree seemed to be stretching out to receive her. But he was drawing nearer also. She could hear the thunder of his animal's hoofs close behind. She bent low in the saddle, gasping encouragement to her own.
There came a shout beside her--a yell of triumph such as Guy had often uttered. He passed her and drew ahead. That fired her. She saw victory being wrested from her.
She cried back at him "You--bounder!" and urged her horse to fresh effort.
The ground sped away beneath her. The heat-haze seemed to spin around. Her eyes were fixed upon their goal, her whole being was concentrated upon reaching it. In the end it was as if the ruined tree shot towards her. The race was over. A great giddiness came upon her. She reeled in the saddle.
And then a hand caught her; or was it one of those outstretched skeleton arms? For a moment she hung powerless; then she was drawn close--close--to a man's breast, and felt the leap and throb of a man's heart against her own.
Breathless and palpitating, she lifted her face. His eyes looked deeply into hers, eyes that glowed like molten steel, and in an instant her illusion was swept away. It seemed to her that for the first time she looked upon Burke Ranger as he was, and her whole being recoiled in sudden wild dismay from what she saw.
"Ah! Let me go!" she said.
He held her still, but his hold slackened. "I won the race," he said.
"Yes, but--but it was only a game," she gasped back incoherently. "You--you can't--you won't----"
"Kiss you?" he said. "Not if you forbid it." That calmed her very strangely. His tone was so quiet; it revived her courage. She uttered a faint laugh. "Is that the stake? I can't refuse to pay--a debt of honour."
"Thank you," he said, and she saw a curious smile gleam for a moment on his face. "That means you are prepared to take me like a nasty pill, doesn't it? I like your pluck. It's the best thing about you. But I won't put it to the test this time."
He made as if he would release her, but with an odd impulse she checked him. Somehow it was unbearable to be humoured like that. She looked him straight in the eyes.
"We are pals, aren't we?" she said.
The smile still lingered on Burke's face; it had an enigmatical quality that disquieted her, she could not have said wherefore. "It's rather an ambiguous term, isn't it?" he said.
"No, it isn't," she assured him, promptly and Very earnestly. "It means that we are friends, but we are not in love and we are not going to pretend we are. At least," she flushed suddenly under his look, "that is what it means to me."
"I see," said Burke. "And what would happen if we fell in love with each other?"
Her eyes sank in spite of her. "I don't think we need consider that," she said.
"Why not?" said Burke.
"I could never be in love with anyone again," she said, her voice very low.
"Quite sure?" said Burke.
Something in his tone made her look up sharply. His eyes were intently and critically upon her, but the glow had gone out of them. They told her nothing.
"Do you think we need discuss this subject?" she asked him uneasily.
"Not if you prefer to shirk it," he said. She flushed a little. "But I don't shirk. I'm not that sort."
"No," he said. "I don't think you are. You may be frightened, but you won't run away."
"But I'm not frightened," she asserted boldly, looking him squarely in the face. "We are friends, you and I. And--we are going to trust each other. Being married isn't going to make any difference to us. It was just a matter of convenience and--we are going to forget it."
She paused. Burke's face had not altered. He was looking back at her with perfectly steady eyes.
"Very simple in theory," he said. "Won't you finish?"
"That's all," she said lightly. "Except--if you really want to kiss me now and then--you can do so. Only don't be silly about it!"
Burke's quick movement of surprise told her that this was unexpected. The two horses had recovered their wind and begun to nibble at one another. He checked them with a growling rebuke. Then very quietly he placed Sylvia's bridle in her hand, and put her from him.
"Thank you," he said again. "But you mustn't be too generous at the outset. I might begin to expect too much. And that would be--silly of me, wouldn't it?"
There was no bitterness in voice or action, but there was unmistakable irony. A curious sense of coldness came upon her, as if out of the heart a distant storm-cloud an icy breath had reached her.
She looked at him rather piteously. "You are not angry?" she said.
He leaned back in the saddle to knock a blood-sucking fly off his horse's flank. Then he straightened himself and laughed.
"No, not in the least," he said.
She knew that he spoke the truth, yet her heart misgave her. There was something baffling, something almost sinister to her, in the very carelessness of his attitude. She turned her horse's head and walked soberly away.
He did not immediately follow her, and after a few moments she glanced back for him. He had dismounted and was scratching something on the trunk of the blasted tree with a knife. The withered arms stretched out above his head. They looked weirdly human in the sunset glow. She wished he would not linger in that eerie place.
She waited for him, and he came at length, riding with his head up and a strange gleam of triumph in his eyes.
"What were you doing?" she asked him, as he joined her.
He met her look with a directness oddly disconcerting. "I was commemorating the occasion, he said.
"What do you mean?" she said.
"Never mind now!" said Burke, and took out his pipe.
The light still lingered in his eyes, firing her to something deeper than curiosity. She turned her horse abruptly.
"I am going back to see for myself."
But in the same moment his hand came out, grasping her bridle. "I shouldn't do that," he said. "It isn't worth it. Wait till we come again!"
"The tree may be gone by then," she objected.
"In that case you won't have missed much," he rejoined. "Don't go now!"
He had his way though she yielded against her will. They turned their animals towards Brennerstadt, and rode back together over, the sun-scorched _veldt_.


PART II

CHAPTER I
COMRADES

Some degree of normality seemed to come back into Sylvia's life with her return to Blue Hill Farm. She found plenty to do there, and she rapidly became accustomed to her surroundings.
It would have been a monotonous and even dreary existence but for the fact that she rode with Burke almost every evening, and sometimes in the early morning also, and thus saw a good deal of the working of the farm. Her keen interest in horses made a strong bond of sympathy between them. She loved them all. The mares and their foals were a perpetual joy to her, and she begged hard to be allowed to try her powers at breaking in some of the young animals. Burke, however, would not hear of this. He was very kind to her, unfailingly considerate in his treatment of her, but by some means he made her aware that his orders were to be respected. The Kaffir servants were swift to do his bidding, though she did not find them so eager to fulfil their duties when he was not at hand.
She laughingly commented upon this one day to Burke, and he amazed her by pointing to the riding-whip she chanced to be holding at the time.
"You'll find that's the only medicine for that kind of thing," he said. "Give 'em a taste of that and they'll respect you!"
She decided he must be joking, but only a few days later he quite undeceived her on that point by dragging Joe, the house boy, into the yard and chastising him with a _sjambok_ for some neglected duty.
Joe howled lustily, and Sylvia yearned to fly to the rescue, but there was something so judicial about Burke's administration of punishment that she did not venture to intervene.
When he came in a little later, she was sitting in their living-room nervously stitching at the sleeve of a shirt that he had managed to tear on some barbed wire. He had his pipe in his hand, and there was an air of grim satisfaction about him that seemed to denote a consciousness of something well done.
Sylvia set her mouth hard and stitched rapidly, trying to forget Joe's piercing yells of a few minutes before. Burke went to the window and stood there, pensively filling his pipe.
Suddenly, as if something in her silence struck him, he turned and looked at her. She felt his eyes upon her though she did not raise her own.
After a moment or two he came to her. "What are you doing there?" he said.
It was the first piece of work she had done for him. She glanced up. "Mending your shirt," she told him briefly.
He laid his hand abruptly upon it. "What are you doing that for? I don't want you to mend my things."
"Oh, don't be silly, Burke!" she said. "You can't go in tatters. Please don't hinder me! I want to get it done."
She spoke with a touch of sharpness, not feeling very kindly disposed towards