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

was gone with the words, snatching his hat from a chair where he had thrown it, and departing into the glare of the desert with never a backward glance.
Sylvia turned swiftly to her husband, and found his eyes upon her.
"With a gasping cry she caught his arm. Oh, can't you go after him? Can't you bring him back?"
He freed the arm to put it round her, with the gesture of one who comforts a hurt child. "My dear, it's no good," he said. "Let him go!"
"But, Burke--" she cried. "Oh, Burke----"
"I know," he made answer, still soothing her. "But it can't be done--anyhow at present. You'll drive him away if you attempt it. I know. I've done it. Leave him alone till the devil has gone out of him! He'll come back then--and be decent--for a time."
His meaning was unmistakable. The force of what he said drove in upon her irresistibly. She burst into tears, hiding her face against his shoulder in her distress.
"But how dreadful! Oh, how dreadful! He is killing himself. I think--the Guy--I knew--is dead already."
"No, he isn't," Burke said, and he held her with sudden closeness as he said it. "He isn't--and that's the hell of it. But you can't save him. No one can."
She lifted her face sharply. There was something intolerable in the words. With the tears upon her cheeks she challenged them.
"He can be saved! He must be saved! I'll do it somehow--somehow!"
"You may try," Burke said, as he suffered her to release herself. "You won't succeed."
She forced a difficult smile with quivering lips. "You don't know me. Where there's a will, there's a way. And I shall find it somehow."
He looked grim for an instant, then smiled an answering smile. "Don't perish in the attempt!" he said. "That do-or-die look of yours is rather ominous. Don't forget you're my partner! I can't spare you, you know."
She uttered a shaky laugh. "Of course you can't. Blue Hill Farm would go to pieces without me, wouldn't it? I've often thought I'm quite indispensable."
"You are to me," said Burke briefly; and ere the quick colour had sprung to her face, he also had gone his way.


CHAPTER VIII
THE INTERRUPTION

Sylvia meant to ride round to Guy's hut in search of him that evening, but when the time came something held her back.
Burke's words, "You'll drive him away," recurred to her again and again, and with them came a dread of intruding that finally prevailed against her original intention. He must not think for a moment that she desired to spy upon him, even though that dreadful craving in his eyes haunted her perpetually, urging her to action. It seemed inevitable that for a time at least he must fight his devil alone, and with all her strength she prayed that he might overcome.
In the end she rode out with Burke, covering a considerable distance, and returning tired in body but refreshed in mind.
They had supper together as usual, but when it was over he surprised her by taking up his hat again.
"You are going out?" she said.
"I'm going to have a smoke with Guy," he said. "You have a game of Patience, and then go to bed!"
She looked at him uncertainly. "I'll come with you," she said.
He was filling his pipe preparatory to departure. "You do as I say!" he said.
She tried to laugh though she saw his face was grim. "You're getting rather despotic, partner. I shall have to nip that in the bud. I'm not going to stay at home and play Patience all by myself. There!"
He raised his eyes abruptly from his task, and suddenly her heart was beating fast and hard. "All right," he said. "We'll stay at home together."
His tone was brief, but it thrilled her. She was afraid to speak for a moment or two lest he should see her strange agitation. Then, as he still looked at her, "Oh no, partner," she said lightly. "That wouldn't be the same thing at all. I am much too fond of my own company to object to solitude. I only thought I would like to come, too. I love the _veldt_ at night."
"Do you?" he said. "I wonder what has taught you to do that."
He went on with the filling of his pipe as he spoke, and she was conscious of quick relief. His words did not seem to ask for an answer, and she made none.
"When are you going to take me to Ritzen?" she asked instead.
"To Ritzen!" He glanced up again in surprise. "Do you want to go to Ritzen?"
"Or Brennerstadt," she said, "Whichever is the best shopping centre."
"Oh!" He began to smile. "You want to shop, do you? What do you want to buy?"
She looked at him severely. "Nothing for myself, I am glad to say."
"What! Something for me?" His smile gave him that look--that boyish look--which once she had loved so dearly upon Guy's face. She felt as if something were pulling at her heart. She ignored it resolutely.
"You will have to buy it for yourself," she told him sternly. "I've got nothing to buy it with. It's something you ought to have got long ago--if you had any sense of decency."
"What on earth is it?" Burke dropped his pipe into his pocket and gave her his full attention.
Sylvia, with a cigarette between her lips, got up to find the matches. She lighted it very deliberately under his watching eyes, then held out the match to him. "Light up, and I'll tell you."
He took the slender wrist, blew out the match, and held her, facing him.
"Sylvia," he said. "I ought to have gone into the money question with you before. But all I have is yours. You know that, don't you?"
She laughed at him through the smoke. "I know where you keep it anyhow, partner," she said. "But I shan't take any--so you needn't be afraid."
"Afraid!" he said, still holding her. "But you are to take it. Understand? It's my wish."
She blew the smoke at him, delicately, through pursed lips. "Good my lord, I don't want it. Couldn't spend it if I had it. So now!"
"Then what is it I am to buy?" he said.
Lightly she answered him. "Oh, you will only do the paying part. I shall do the choosing--and the bargaining, if necessary."
"Well, what is it?" Still he held her, and there was something of insistence, something of possession, in his hold.
Possibly she had never before seemed more desirable to him--or more elusive. For she was beginning to realize and to wield her power. Again she took a whiff from her cigarette, and wafted it at him through laughing lips.
"I want some wool--good wool--and a lot of it, to knit some socks--for you. Your present things are disgraceful."
His look changed a little. His eyes shone through the veil of smoke she threw between them, "I can buy ready-made socks. I'm not going to let you make them--or mend them."
Sylvia's red lips expressed scorn. "Ready-made rubbish! No, sir. With your permission I prefer to make. Then perhaps I shall have less mending to do."
He was drawing her to him and she did not actively resist, though there was no surrender in her attitude.
"And why won't you have any money?" he said. "We are partners."
She laughed lightly. "And you give me board and lodging. I am not worth more."
He looked her in the eyes. "Are you afraid to take too much--lest I should want too much in return?"
She did not answer. She was trembling a little in his hold, but her eyes met his fearlessly.
He put up a hand and took the cigarette very gently from her lips. "Sylvia, I'm going to tell you something--if you'll listen."
He paused a moment. She was suddenly throbbing from head to foot.
"What is it?" she whispered.
He snuffed out the cigarette with his fingers and put it in his pocket. Then he bent to her, his hand upon her shoulder.
His lips were open to speak, and her silence waited for the words, when like the sudden rending of the heavens there came an awful sound close to them, so close that is shook the windows in their frames and even seemed to shake the earth under their feet.
Sylvia started back with a cry, her hands over her face. "Oh, what--what--what is that?"
Burke was at the window in a second. He wrenched it open, and as he did so there came the shock of a thudding fall. A man's figure, huddled up like an empty sack lay across the threshold. It sank inwards with the opening of the window, and Guy's face white as death, with staring, senseless eyes, lay upturned to the lamplight.
Something jingled on the floor as his inert form collapsed, and a smoking revolver dropped at Burke's feet.
He picked it up sharply, uncocked it and laid it on the table. Then he stooped over the prostrate body. The limbs were twitching spasmodically, but the movement was wholly involuntary. The deathlike face testified to that. And through the grey flannel shirt above the heart a dark stain spread and spread.
"He is dead!" gasped Sylvia at Burke's shoulder.
"No," Burke said.
He opened the shirt with the words and exposed the wound beneath. Sylvia shrank at the sight of the welling blood, but Burke's voice steadied her.
"Get some handkerchiefs and towels," he said, "and make a wad! We must stop this somehow."
His quietness gave her strength. Swiftly she moved to do his bidding.
Returning, she found that he had stretched the silent figure full length upon the floor. The convulsive movements had wholly ceased. Guy lay like a dead man.
She knelt beside Burke. "Tell me what to do and I'll do it! I'll do--anything!"
"All right," he said. "Get some cold water!"
She brought it, and he soaked some handkerchiefs and covered the wound.
"I think we shall stop it," he said. "Help me to get this thing under his shoulders! I shall have to tie him up tight. I'll lift him while you get it underneath."
She was perfectly steady as she followed his instructions, and even though in the process her hands were stained with Guy's blood, she did not shrink again. It was no easy task, but Burke's skill and strength of muscle accomplished it at last. Across Guy's body he looked at her with a certain grim triumph.
"Well played, partner! That's the first move. Are you all right?"
She saw by his eyes that her face betrayed the horror at her heart. She tried to smile at him, but her lips felt stiff and cold. Her look went back to the ashen face on the floor.
"What--what must be done next?" she said.
"He will have to stay as he is till we can get a doctor," Burke answered. "The bleeding has stopped for the present, but--" He broke off.
"Child, how sick you look!" he said. "Here, come and wash! There's nothing more to be done now."