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

/> She got up, feeling her knees bend beneath her but controlling them with rigid effort. "I--am all right," she said. "You--you think he isn't dead?"
Burke's hand closed upon her elbow. "He's not dead,--no! He may die of course, but I don't fancy he will at present,--not while he lies like that."
He was drawing her out of the room, but she resisted him suddenly. "I can't go. I can't leave him--while he lives. Burke, don't, please, bother about me! Are you--are you going to fetch a doctor?"
"Yes," said Burke.
She looked at him, her eyes wide and piteous. "Then please go now--go quickly! I--will stay with him till you come back."
"I shall have to leave you for some hours," he said.
"Oh, never mind that!" she answered, "Just be as quick as you can, that's all! I will be with him. I--shan't be afraid."
She was urging him to the door, but he turned back. He went to the table, picked up the revolver he had laid there, and put it away in a cupboard which he locked.
She marked the action, and as he came to her again, laid a trembling hand upon his arm. "Burke! Could it--could it have been an accident?"
"No. It couldn't," said Burke. He paused a moment, looking at her in a way she did not understand. She wondered afterwards what had been passing in his mind. But he said no further word except a brief, "Good-bye!"
Ten minutes later, she heard the quick thud of his horse's hoofs as he rode into the night.


CHAPTER IX
THE ABYSS

"Sylvia!"
Was it a voice that spoke in the overwhelming silence, or was it the echo in her soul of a voice that would never speak again? Sylvia could not decide. She had sat for so long, propped against a chair, watching that still figure on the floor, straining her senses to see or hear some sign of breathing, trying to cheat herself into the belief that he slept, and then with a wrung heart wondering if he were not better dead.
All memory of the bitterness and the cruel disappointment that he had brought into her life had rolled away from her during those still hours of watching. She did not think of herself at all; only of Guy, once so eager and full of sparkling hope, now so tragically fallen in the race of life. All her woman's tenderness was awake and throbbing with a passionate pity for this lover of her youth. Why, oh why had he done this thing? The horror of it oppressed her like a crushing, physical weight. Was it for this that she had persuaded Burke to rescue him from the depths to which he had sunk? Had she by her rash interference only precipitated his final doom--she who had suffered so deeply for his sake, who had yearned so ardently to bring him back?
Burke had been against it from the beginning; Burke knew to his cost the hopelessness of it all. Ah, would it have been better if she had listened to him and refrained from attempting the impossible? Would it not have been preferable to accept failure rather than court disaster? What had she done? What had she done?
"Sylvia!"
Surely the old Guy was speaking to her! Those pallid lips could make no sound; the new, strange Guy was dead.
As in a dream, she answered him through the silence, feeling as if she spoke into the shadows of the Unknown.
"Yes, Guy? Yes? I am here."
"Will you--forgive me," he said, "for making--a boss shot!"
Then she turned to the prostrate form beside her on the floor, and saw that the light of understanding had come back into those haunted eyes.
She knelt over him and laid her hand upon his rough hair. "Oh, Guy, hush--hush!" she said. "Thank God you are still here!"
A very strange expression flitted over his upturned face, a look that was indescribably boyish and yet so sad that she caught her breath to still the intolerable pain at her heart.
"I shan't be--long." he said. "Thank God for that--too! I've been--working myself up to it--all day."
"Guy!" she said.
He made a slight movement of one hand, and she gathered it close into her own. It seemed to her that the Shadow of Death had drawn very near to them, enveloping them both.
"It had--to be," he said, in the husky halting voice so unfamiliar to her. "It--was a mistake--to try to bring me back. I'm--beyond--redemption. Ask Burke;--he knows!"
"You are not--you are not!" she told him vehemently. "Guy!" She was holding his hand hard pressed against her heart; her words came with a rush of pitying tenderness that swept over every barrier. "Guy! I want you! You must stay. If you go now--you--you will break my heart."
His eyes kindled a little at her words, but in a moment the emotion passed. "It's too late, my dear;--too late," he said and turned his head on the pillow under it as if seeking rest. "You don't--understand. Just as well for me perhaps. But I'm better gone--for your sake, better gone."
The conviction of his words went through her like a sword-thrust. He seemed to have passed beyond her influence, almost, she fancied, not to care. Yet why did the look in his eyes make her think of a lost child--frightened, groping along an unknown road in the dark? Why did his hand cling to hers as though it feared to let go?
She held it very tightly as she made reply. "But, Guy, it isn't for us to choose. It isn't for us to discharge ourselves. Only God knows when our work is done."
He groaned. "I've given all mine to the devil. God couldn't use me if He tried."
"You don't know," she said. "You don't know. We're none of us saints, I think He makes allowances--when things go wrong with us--just as--just as we make allowances for each other."
He groaned again. "You would make allowances for the devil himself," he muttered. "It's the way you're made. But it isn't justice. Burke would tell you that."
An odd little tremor of impatience went through her. "I know you better than Burke does," she said. "Better, probably--than anyone else in the world."
He turned his head to and fro upon the pillow. "You don't know me, Sylvia. You don't know me--at all."
Yet the husky utterance seemed to plead with her as though he longed for her to understand.
She stooped lower over him. "Never mind, dear! I love you all the same," she said. "And that's why I can't bear you--to go--like this." Her voice shook unexpectedly. She paused to steady it. "Guy," she urged, almost under her breath at length, "you will live--you will try to live--for my sake?"
Again his eyes were upon her. Again, more strongly, the flame kindled. Then, very suddenly, a hard shudder went through him, and a dreadful shadow arose and quenched that vital gleam. For a few moments consciousness itself seemed to be submerged in the most awful suffering that Sylvia had ever beheld. His eyeballs rolled upwards under lids that twitched convulsively. The hand she held closed in an agonized grip upon her own. She thought that he was dying, and braced herself instinctively to witness the last terrible struggle, the rending asunder of soul and body.
Then--as one upon the edge of an abyss--he spoke, his voice no more than a croaking whisper.
"It's hell for me--either way. Living or dead--hell!"
The paroxysm spent itself and passed like an evil spirit. The struggle for which she had prepared herself did not come. Instead, the flickering lids closed over the tortured eyes, the clutching hand relaxed, and there fell a great silence.
She sat for a long time not daring to move, scarcely breathing, wondering if this were the end. Then gradually it came to her, that he was lying in the stillness of utter exhaustion. She felt for his pulse and found it beating, weakly but unmistakably. He had sunk into a sleep which she realized might be the means of saving his life.
Thereafter she sat passive, leaning against a chair, waiting, watching, as she had waited and watched for so long. Once she leaned her head upon her hand and prayed "O dear God, let him live!" But something--some inner voice--seemed to check that prayer, and though her whole soul yearned for its fulfilment she did not repeat it. Only, after a little, she stooped very low, and touched Guy's forehead with her lips.
"God bless you!" she said softly. "God bless you!"
And in the silence that followed, she thought there was a benediction.


CHAPTER X
THE DESIRE TO LIVE

In the last still hour before the dawn there came the tread of horses' feet outside the bungalow and the sound of men's voices.
Sylvia looked up as one emerging from a long, long dream, though she had not closed her eyes all night. The lamp was burning low, and Guy's face was in deep shadow; but she knew by the hand that she still held close between her own that he yet lived. She even fancied that the throb of his pulse was a little stronger.
She looked at Burke with questioning, uncertain eyes as he entered. In the dim light he seemed to her bigger, more imposing, more dominant, than he had ever seemed before. He rolled a little as he walked as if stiff from long hours in the saddle.
Behind him came another man--a small thin man with sleek black hair and a swarthy Jewish face, who moved with a catlike deftness, making no sound at all.
"Well, Sylvia?" Burke said. "Is he alive?"
He took the lamp from the table, and cast its waning light full upon her. She shrank a little involuntarily from the sudden glare. Almost without knowing it, she pressed Guy's inert hand to her breast. The dream was still upon her. It was hardly of her own volition that she answered him.
"Yes, he is alive. He has been speaking. I think he is asleep."
"Permit me!" the stranger said.
He knelt beside the still form while Burke held the lamp. He opened the shirt and exposed the blood-soaked bandage.
Then suddenly he looked at Sylvia with black eyes of a most amazing brightness. "Madam, you cannot help here. You had better go."
Somehow he made her think of a raven, unscrupulous, probably wholly without pity, possibly wicked, and overwhelmingly intelligent. She avoided his eyes instinctively. They seemed to know too much.
"Will he--do you think he win--live?" she whispered.
He made a gesture of the hands that seemed to indicate infinite possibilities. "I do not think at present. But I must be undisturbed. Go to your room, madam, and rest! Your husband will come to you later and tell you what I have done--or failed to do."
He spoke with absolute fluency but with a foreign accent. His hands were busy with the bandages, dexterous, clawlike hands that looked as if they were delving for treasure.
She watched him, speechless and fascinated, for a few seconds. Then Burke set the lamp upon the chair against which she had leaned all the