Rosa Mundi by Ethel May Dell (reading books for 6 year olds TXT) 📕

she had not seen it.
They rode that day almost exclusively through Mercer's property, which extended for many miles. He was the owner of several farms, two of which they passed without drawing rein. He was taking her to what he called the Home Farm, his native place, which he still made his headquarters, and from which he overlooked the whole of his great property.
The brief twilight had turned to darkness before they reached it. During the last half hour Mercer rode with his hand upon Sybil's bridle, and she was glad to have it there. She was not accustomed to riding in the dark. Moreover, she was very tired, and when at last they turned in through an open gateway to one side of which a solitary lantern had been fixed, she breathed a deep sigh of thankfulness.
She saw the outline of the house but vaguely, but in two windows lights were burning, and as they clattered up a door was thrown open, and a man stood silhouetted for a moment on the threshold.
"Hullo, Curtis! Here we are!" was Mercer's greeting. "Later than I intended, but it's a far cry from Wallarroo, and we had to take it easy."
"The best way," the other said.
He went forward and quietly helped Sybil to dismount. He did not speak to her as he did so, and she wondered a little at the reserve of his manner. But the next moment she forgot him at the sight of a hideous young negro who had suddenly appeared at the horses' heads.
"It's only Beelzebub," said the man at her side, in a tired voice, as if it were an effort to speak at all.
She realized that the explanation was intended to be reassuring, and laughed rather tremulously. Finding Mercer at her side she slipped her hand into his.
He gave it a terrific squeeze. "Come inside!" he said. "You are tired."
They went in, Curtis following.
In a room with a sanded floor that looked pleasantly homely to her English eyes a meal was spread. The place and everything it contained shone in the lamplight. She looked around her with a smile of pleasure, notwithstanding her weariness. And then her eyes fell upon Curtis, and found his fixed upon her.
He averted them instantly, but she had read their expression at a glance--surprise and compassion--and her heart gave a curious little throb of dismay.
She turned nevertheless without a pause to Mercer.
"Won't you introduce me to your friend?" she said.
"What?" said Mercer. "Oh, that's Curtis, my foreman. Curtis, this is my wife."
Curtis bowed stiffly, but Sybil held out her hand.
"How nice everything looks!" she said. "I am sure we have you to thank for it."
"Beelzebub and me," he said; and again she was struck by the utter lack of animation in his voice.
He was a man of about forty, lean and brown, with an unmistakable air of breeding about him that put her at her ease at once. His quiet manner was a supreme contrast to Mercer's roughness. She was quite sure that he was not colonial born.
He sat at table with them, and waited also, but he did not utter a word except now and again in answer to some brief query from Mercer. When the meal was over he cleared the table and disappeared.
She looked at Mercer in some surprise as the door closed upon him.
"He's a useful chap," Mercer said. "I'm sorry there isn't a woman in the house, but you'll find Beelzebub better than a dozen. And this fellow is always at hand for anything you may want in the evening."
"He is a gentleman," she said almost involuntarily.
Mercer looked at her.
"Do you object to having a gentleman to wait on you?" he asked curtly.
She did not quite understand his tone, but she was very far just then from understanding the man himself. His question demanded no answer, and she gave none.
After a moment she got up, and, conscious of an oppression in the atmosphere, took off her hat and pushed back the hair from her face. She knew that Mercer was watching her, felt his eyes upon her, and wished intensely that he would speak, but he did not utter a word. There seemed to her to be something stubborn in his silence, and it affected her strangely.
For a while she stood also silent, then suddenly with a little smile she looked across at him.
"Aren't you going to show me everything?" she said.
"Not to-night," he said. "I will show you your bedroom if you are too tired to stay up any longer."
She considered the matter for a few seconds, then quietly crossed the room to his side. She laid a hand that trembled slightly on his shoulder.
"You have been very good to me," she said.
He stiffened at her touch.
"You had better go to bed," he said gruffly, and made as if he would rise.
But she checked him with a dignity all her own.
"Wait, please; I want to speak to you."
"Not to thank me, I hope," he said.
"No, not to thank you." She paused an instant, and seemed to hesitate. "I--I really want to ask you something," she said at length.
He reached up and removed her hand from his shoulder.
"Well?" he questioned.
"Don't hold me at arms' length!" she pleaded gently. "It makes things so difficult."
"What is it you want to know?" he asked without relaxing.
She stood silent for a few seconds as if summoning all her courage. Then at length, her voice very low, she spoke.
"When you said that you wanted me for your wife, did you mean that you--loved me?"
He made an abrupt movement, and his fingers closed tightly upon her wrist. For a moment or more he sat in tense silence, then he got to his feet.
"Why do you want to know?" he demanded harshly.
She stood before him with bent head.
"Because," she said, and there was a piteous quiver in her voice, "I am lonely, and I have a very empty heart. And--and--if you love me it will not frighten me to know it. It will only--make me--glad."
He put his hand on her shoulder. "Do you know what you are saying?" he questioned.
"Yes," she said under her breath.
"Are you sure?" he persisted.
She raised her head impulsively, and, with a gesture most winning, most confident, she stretched up her arms to him.
"Yes," she said. "I mean it! I mean it! I want--to be loved!"
His arms were close about her as she ended, and she uttered the last words chokingly with her face against his breast. The effort had cost her all her strength, and she clung to him panting, almost fainting, while panic--wild, unreasoning panic--swept over her. What was this man to whom she had thus impulsively given herself--this man whom all men feared?
Nevertheless, she grew calmer at last, awaking to the fact that though his hold was tense and passionate, he still retained his self-control. She commanded herself, and turned her face upwards.
"Then you do love me?" she said tremulously.
His eyes shone into hers, red as the inner, intolerable glow of a furnace. He did not attempt to make reply in words. He seemed at that moment incapable of speech. He only bent and kissed her fiercely, burningly, even brutally, upon the lips. And so she had her answer.


VII

It was a curious establishment over which Sybil found herself called upon to preside. The native, Beelzebub, was her only domestic, and, as Mercer had predicted, she found him very willing if not always efficient. One thing she speedily discovered regarding him. He went in deadly fear of his master, and invariably crept about like a whipped cur in his presence.
"Why is it?" she said to Curtis once.
But Curtis only shrugged his shoulders in reply.
He was a continual puzzle to her, this man. There was no servility about him, but she had a feeling that he, too, was in some fashion under Mercer's heel. He made himself exceedingly useful to her in his silent, unobtrusive way; but he seldom spoke on his own initiative, and it was some time before she felt herself to be on terms of intimacy with him. He was an excellent cook; and he and Beelzebub between them made her duties remarkably light. In fact, she spent most of her time riding with her husband, who was fully occupied just then in overlooking the shearers' work. She also was keenly interested, but he never suffered her to go among the men. Once, when she had grown tired of waiting for him, and followed him into one of the sheds, he was actually angry with her--a new experience, which, if it did not seriously scare her, made her nervous in his presence for some time afterwards.
She had come to regard him as a man whose will was bound to be respected, a man who possessed the power of impressing his personality indelibly upon all with whom he came in contact. There were times when he touched and set vibrating the very pulse of her being, times when her heart quivered and expanded in the heat of his passion as a flower that opens to the sun. But there were also times when he filled her with a nameless dread, when the very foundations of her confidence were shaken, and she felt as a prisoner behind iron bars. She did not know him, that was her trouble. There were in him depths that she could not reach, could scarcely even realize. He was slow to reveal himself to her, and she had but the vaguest indications to guide her. She even felt sometimes that he deliberately kept back from her that which she felt to be almost the essential part of him. This she knew that time must remedy. Living his life, she was bound ultimately to know whereof he was made, and she tried to assure herself that when that knowledge came to her she would not be dismayed. And yet she had occasional glimpses of him that made her tremble.
One evening, after they had spent the entire day in the saddle, he went after supper to look at one of the horses that was suffering from a cracked hock. Curtis was busy in the kitchen, and Sybil betook herself to the step to wait for her husband. She often sat in the starlight while he smoked his pipe. She knew that he liked to have her there.
She was drowsy after her long exercise, and must have dozed with her head against the door-post, when suddenly she became conscious of a curious sound. It came from the direction of the stable which was on the other side of the house. But for the absolute stillness of the night she would not have heard it. She started upright in alarm, and listened intently.
It came again--a terrible wailing, unlike anything she had ever heard, ending in a staccato shriek that made her blood run cold.
She sprang up and turned into the house, almost running into Curtis, who had just appeared in the passage behind her.
"Oh, what is it?" she cried. "What is it? Something terrible is happening! Did you hear?"
She would have turned into the kitchen, that being the shortest route to the stable, but he stretched an arm in front of her.
"I shouldn't go if I were you," he said. "You can't do any good."
She stood and stared at him, a ghastly fear clutching her heart. "What--what do you mean?" she gasped.
"It's only Beelzebub," he said, "getting hammered for his sins."
She gripped her hands tightly over her breast. "You mean that--that my husband--?"
He nodded. "It won't go on much