The Rocks of Valpre by Ethel May Dell (best contemporary novels .txt) 📕

since there was no ignoring it. She was frightened at the very existence of his passion, restrain it how he would. She was his and yet not his. She eluded him, even when he held her in his arms.
His thoughts travelled backwards, recalling incident after incident, all pointing to the same thing. And yet he knew that he had been patient with her. He had held himself in check perpetually. And here again Bertrand's words recurred to him. If he had asked more, might he not have obtained more? Was it possible that he had failed to win her because he had not let her feel the compulsion of his love? Was it perchance his very restraint that frightened her? Had he indeed asked too little?
Again his thoughts went back and dwelt upon their wedding-night. He had kindled some answering flame within her then. She had not attempted to withhold herself. The memory of her shy surrender swept over him, setting the blood leaping in his veins anew. She had been his that night, and his throughout the brief fortnight that followed. They had been very intent upon the renovations, and no cloud had even shadowed their horizon. How was it she had slipped away from him since? Was it the advent of that tempestuous youngster that had caused the change? Undoubtedly Chris was less a Wyndham when alone with him. Or was there some other cause, arising possibly from some hidden fluctuation of mood, some restlessness of the spirit, of which he had had no warning? Her aunt's declaration that they were all lacking in stability recurred to him. Was it so with her? Was she fickle, was she changeable, his little Chris?
Her own words came back to him, uttered with tears upon her wedding-day: "Don't you often think me silly and fickle? You'll find it more and more, the more you see of me. You'll be horribly disappointed in me some day."
He rose abruptly. No, that day had not dawned yet. If she had slipped away from him, he, and he alone, was to blame. He had not won the friendship which alone brings trust, and he knew now that he could not hold her without it. As Bertrand had said, he had not been enough her friend. Even now she was probably crying herself ill in solitude over the loss of Cinders.
The thought quickened him to action. He turned out the light, and went swiftly from the room.
Upstairs, outside her door, he stopped to listen, but he heard no sound. She had cried herself to sleep, then, and he had not been there to comfort her. His heart smote him. Had she deemed him unsympathetic? She had seemed to wish to be alone, and for that reason he had left her as soon as he had satisfied himself that she had all she needed in a physical sense. She had not wanted him. She had shrunk from his touch. She had probably seen him go with relief. But--he asked himself the question with sudden misgiving--would it have been better if he had ignored her evident desire and stayed? He had feared exhaustion for her and had avoided any word or action that might have led to a renewal of her grief. Had he seemed to think too lightly of her sorrow? Had she been repelled by his very forbearance?
He passed on softly to his own room. The door that led from this into hers was ajar. He pushed it a little wider, and looked in.
It was lighted only by the moon, which threw a flood of radiance through the wide-flung windows. Every object in the room stood out in strong relief. Standing motionless in the doorway, Trevor Mordaunt sought and found his wife.
She was lying with her face to the moonlight, her hair streaming loose, the bedclothes pushed off her shoulders.
And there beside her, curled up in a big easy-chair, his black head lodged against her pillow, one hand clasped close in hers, lay Noel. Both had been crying, both were asleep.
For many seconds Mordaunt stood upon the threshold, gravely watching them, but he made no movement to draw nearer. At last noiselessly he withdrew, and closed the door.
The grimness had all gone from his face. He even smiled a little as he resigned himself to spending the night in his own room. The idea of disturbing the brother and sister never crossed his mind. It was enough for him that Chris had found comfort.


CHAPTER VI
A BARGAIN

"Luck!" said Rupert gloomily. "There never is any where I am concerned."
This in response to a question from his brother-in-law as to the general progress of his affairs. He sat in Mordaunt's writing-room, with one of Mordaunt's cigars between his lips, and a decidedly sullen expression on his good-looking face.
"I'm sick of everything," he declared. "I'm going to chuck the Army. It's never done anything for me. There's no chance of active service, and I loathe garrison work."
"The only question being, what else are you fit for?" said Mordaunt.
Rupert threw him a quick look. "I'll be your bailiff, if you like," he said. "I could do that."
Mordaunt raised his brows at the suggestion. "That is an idea that never occurred to me," he remarked.
"Why not? You want a bailiff, don't you?"
"A reliable one," said Mordaunt.
Rupert jumped in his chair as if he had been stung. "What the devil do you mean?"
"I mean"--Mordaunt regarded him steadily--"that I shouldn't care to trust my affairs to a man who can't look after his own."
Rupert's eyes flashed. "I am not to be trusted, then?"
Mordaunt continued to regard him, quite unmoved.
"You had better ask yourself that question, my dear fellow," he said. "You are better qualified to answer it than I am."
Rupert relaxed again, dropping back listlessly. "I suppose you are right. I certainly don't make a great success of things. I believe I should get on better with you than with anyone else. But if you feel like that about it, there is no more to be said."
"You really want to be taken seriously, do you?" Mordaunt said.
"Of course I do!" Rupert turned towards him again with the lightning change of mood characteristic of him. "You must forgive me for being a bit touchy, old chap. It's this infernal thundery weather. May I have another drink?" He helped himself without waiting for permission. "Of course I want to be taken seriously. It's a billet that would suit me down to the ground. I know the place, every inch of it, and, as you know, I'm fond of it. I would look after your interests as though they were my own."
Mordaunt smiled. "But do you look after your own?"
Rupert clinked some ice into his tumbler, and thoughtfully watched it float.
"You've been so jolly decent to me," he said at length, "that I haven't the face to bother you with my affairs again."
"I suppose that means you are in difficulties," his brother-in-law remarked.
He nodded without looking up. "I'm never out of 'em. It's not my fault. It's my beastly bad luck."
"Of course," said Mordaunt dryly.
Rupert bobbed the ice against his glass and spilt some whisky-and-water in so doing. He looked decidedly uncomfortable.
"I can't help it," he said. "I was born in Queer Street, and I've lived there all my life. You fellows who are simply rolling in wealth haven't the smallest notion what it means."
"What is the good of saying that?" Mordaunt sounded impatient for the first time. "You know as well as I do that if you had twenty thousand a year you would spend twice the amount."
Rupert glanced at him sideways. "Hullo!" he said softly. "Beginning to size us up, are you?"
"I'm beginning to think"--Mordaunt spoke with force--"that your sense of honour is as much a minus quantity as your wealth."
"Honour!" Rupert looked up in genuine astonishment.
"Yes, honour," Mordaunt repeated grimly. "Do you call it honourable to run up debts that you have no possibility of paying?"
Rupert turned crimson. "Look here! I'm not going to stay here to be insulted," he said hotly. "I haven't asked for your help, and I'm damned if I'd take it if you offered it--after that."
He was on his feet with the words, but Mordaunt remained seated. "You can do as you like," he said quietly. "If you choose to take offence, that is your affair. I helped you before because I knew you were hard up and I was sorry for you. But there is no occasion for you to be hard up now. And I am not sorry for you this time. I think you deserve to be kicked."
"You be damned!" said Rupert fiercely.
Mordaunt's brows went up. He looked full into the boy's heated face, and though he said no word Rupert turned slowly white under the look. In the dead silence that followed he stood as tense as though he expected a blow. Yet Mordaunt made no movement, spoke no word.
It was Rupert who broke the silence finally, broke it hurriedly, stammeringly, as though it had become unbearable. "All right, old chap. I didn't mean quite that. But you--you shouldn't badger me. I'm not used to it."
"Sit down," Mordaunt said.
He obeyed awkwardly, and to cover his discomfiture took up his glass to drink. But before it reached his lips Mordaunt spoke again.
"Rupert!"
He started a little, and again the liquid splashed over.
"Put that down!" Mordaunt said.
Again dumbly he obeyed.
Mordaunt leaned forward and drew the glass out of his reach. "It has never been my intention to badger you," he said. "But I reserve to myself the privilege of telling you the truth. That is the fourth drink I have seen you mix this afternoon."
"I'm perfectly sober," Rupert asserted quickly.
"Yes, I know. But you are not as cool as you might be." Very keenly Mordaunt's eyes surveyed him, but they were not without a hint of kindness notwithstanding. "I mustn't call you a young fool, I suppose," he said, "but really you are not overwise. Now, what about these affairs of yours? Shall we go into them now or after tea?"
Rupert shrugged his shoulders sullenly. "I don't know that I care to go into them at all."
The kindliness went out of Mordaunt's eyes and a certain steeliness took its place. "As you like," he said. "Only let it be clearly understood that I will have no borrowing from Chris. I have forbidden her to lend money to any one of you. If you want it, you must come direct to me."
Rupert shifted his position, and looked out of the window. Down in the garden Chris was dispensing tea to three of his brother-subalterns, assisted by Noel. Bertrand was seated by her side, alert and watchful, ready at a moment's notice to come to her aid. It was his customary attitude, and it had been so more than ever since the death of Cinders. There was a protecting brotherliness about him that Chris found infinitely comforting: He understood her so perfectly.
She had not wanted to emerge from her seclusion to entertain her brother's friends on that sunny Sunday afternoon, but he had gently persuaded her. A change had come over Chris during the past four days. The violence of her grief had spent itself on the night that she and Noel had mingled their tears over the loss of their favourite, and she had not alluded to it since. She accepted her husband's sympathy with gratitude, but she shrank so visibly from the smallest allusion to her trouble that he found no opportunity for expressing it. He would not intrude it upon her. It was not his way, and she made him aware that for this