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

and in a moment, as it were automatically, the general attention was turned upon Sylvia. She was still leaning against Kelly, her death-white face fixed and rigid. Her eyes were closed.
Burke went to her. "Come!" he said. "We will go up."
Her eyes opened. She looked straight at him, seeing none beside. "Was that how you treated Guy?" she said.
He laid an imperative hand upon her. "Come!" he said again.
She made a movement as though to evade him, and then suddenly she faltered. Her eyes grew wide and dark. She threw out her hands with a groping gesture as if stricken blind, and fell straight forward.
Burke caught her, held her for a moment; then as she sank in his arms he lifted her, and bore her away.


CHAPTER IV
THE EVIL THING

When Sylvia opened her eyes again she was lying in the chair by the open window where she had waited so long the previous evening. Her first impression was that she was alone, and then with a sudden stabbing sense of fear she realized Burke's presence.
He was standing slightly behind her, so that the air might reach her, but leaning forward, watching her intently. With a gasp she looked up into his eyes.
He put his hand instantly upon her, reassuring her. "All right. It's all right," he said.
Both tone and touch were absolutely gentle, but she shrank from him, shrank and quivered with a nervous repugnance that she was powerless to control. He took his hand away and turned aside.
She spoke then, her voice quick and agitated. "Don't go! Please don't go!"
He came and stood in front of her, and she saw that his face was grim. "What is the matter?" he said. "Surely you don't object to a serpent like that getting his deserts for once!"
She met his look with an effort. "Oh, it's not that--not that!" she said.
"What then? You object to me being the executioner?" He spoke curtly, through lips that had a faintly cynical twist.
She could not answer him; only after a moment she sat up, holding to the arms of the chair. "Forgive me for being foolish!" she said. "I--you gave me--rather a fright, you know. I've never seen you--like that before. I felt--it was a horrible feeling--as if you were a stranger. But--of course--you are you--just the same. You are--really--you."
She faltered over the words, his look was so stern, so forbidding. She seemed to be trying to convince herself against her own judgment.
His eyes met hers relentlessly. "Yes, I am myself--and no one else," he said. "I fancy you have never quite realized me before. Possibly you have deliberately blinded yourself. But you know me now, and it is as well that you should. It is the only way to an ultimate understanding."
She blenched a little in spite of herself. "And you--and you--once--thrashed--Guy," she said, her voice very low, sunk almost to a whisper. "Was it--was it--was it like--that?"
He turned sharply away as if there were something intolerable in the question. He went to the window and stood there in silence. And very oddly at that moment the memory of Kelly's assurance went through her that he had been fond of Guy. She did not believe it, yet just for the moment it influenced her. It gave her strength. She got up, and went to his side.
"Burke," she said tremulously, "promise me--please promise me--that you will never do that again!"
He gave her a brief, piercing glance. "If he keeps out of my way, I shan't run after him," he said.
"No--no! But even if he doesn't--" she clasped her hands hard together--"Burke, even if he doesn't--and even though he has disappointed you--wronged you--oh, have you no pity? Can't you--possibly--forgive?"
He turned abruptly and faced her. "Forgive him for making love to you?" he said. "Is that what you are asking?"
She shivered at the question. "At least you won't--punish him like that--whatever he has done," she said.
He was looking full at her. "You want my promise on that?" he said.
"Yes, oh yes." Very earnestly she made reply though his eyes were as points of steel, keeping her back. "I know you will keep a promise. Please--promise me that!"
"Yes," he said drily. "I keep my promises. He can testify to that. So can you. But if I promise you this, you must make me a promise too."
"What is it?" she said.
"Simply that you will never have anything more to do with him without my knowledge--and consent." He uttered the words with the same pitiless distinctness as had characterized his speech when dictating to Kieff.
She drew sharply. "Oh, but why--why ask such a promise of me when you have only just proved your own belief in me?"
"How have I done that?" he said.
"By taking my part before all those horrible men downstairs." She suppressed a hard shudder. "By--defending my honour."
Burke's face remained immovable. "I was defending my own," he said. "I should have done that--in any case."
She made a little hopeless movement with her hands and dropped them to her sides. "Oh, how hard you are!" she said, "How hard--and how cruel!"
He lifted his shoulders slightly, and turned away in silence. Perhaps there was more of forbearance in that silence than she realized.
He did not ask her where she had been with Kelly or comment upon the fact that she had been out at all. Only after a brief pause he told her that they would not leave till the following day as he had some business to attend to. Then to her relief he left her. At least he had promised that he would not go in search of Guy!
Later in the evening, a small packet was brought to her which she found to contain some money in notes wrapped in a slip of paper on which was scrawled a few words.
"I have done my best with young G., but he is rather out of hand for the present. I enclose the 'loan.' Just put it back, and don't worry any more. Yours, D. K."
She put the packet away with a great relief at her heart. That danger then, had been averted. There yet remained a chance for Guy. He was not--still he was not--quite beyond redemption. If only--ah, if only--she could have gone to Burke with the whole story! But Burke had become a stranger to her. She had begun to wonder if she had ever really known him. His implacability frightened her almost more than his terrible vindictiveness. She felt that she could never again turn to him with confidence.
That silence that lay between them was like an ever-widening gulf severing them ever more and more completely. She believed that they would remain strangers for the rest of their lives. Very curiously, those three words which she had read upon the tree served to strengthen this conviction. They were, indeed, to her as a message from the dead. The man who had written them had ceased to exist. Guy might have written them in the old days, but his likeness to Guy was no more. She saw them both now with a distinctness that was almost cruel--the utter weakness of the one, the merciless strength of the other. And in the bitterness of her soul she marvelled that either of them had ever managed to reach her heart.
That could never be so again, so she told herself. The power to love had been wrested from her. The object of her love had turned into a monstrous demon of jealousy from which now she shrank more and more--though she might never escape. Yes, she had loved them both, and still her compassion lingered pitifully around the thought of Guy. But for Burke she had only a shrinking that almost amounted to aversion. He had slain her love. She even believed she was beginning to hate him.
She dreaded the prospect of another long day spent at Brennerstadt. It was the day of the diamond draw, too. The place would be a seething tumult. She was so unutterably tired. She thought with a weary longing of Blue Hill Farm. At least she would find a measure of peace there, though healing were denied her. This place had become hateful to her, an inferno of vice and destruction. She yearned to leave it.
Something of this yearning she betrayed on the following morning when Burke told her that he was making arrangements to leave by the evening train for Ritzen.
"Can't we go sooner?" she said.
He looked at her as if surprised by the question. "There is a train at midday," he said. "But it is not a good time for travelling."
"Oh, let us take it!" she said feverishly. "Please let us take it! We might get back to the farm by to-night then."
He had sent his horse back to Ritzen the previous day in the care of a man he knew, so that both their animals would be waiting for them.
"Do you want to get back?" said Burke.
"Oh, yes--yes! Anything is better than this." She spoke rapidly, almost passionately. "Let us go! Do let us go!"
"Very well," said Burke. "If you wish it."
He paused at the door of the office a few minutes later, when they descended, to tell the girl there that they were leaving at noon.
She looked up at him sharply as he stood looking in. "Heard the latest?" she asked.
"What is the latest?" questioned Burke.
"That dirty dog you thrashed last night--Kieff; he's dead," she told him briefly. "Killed himself with an overdose of opium, died at Hoffstein's early this morning." She glanced beyond him at Sylvia who stood behind. "And a good job, too," she said vindictively. "He's ruined more people in this town than I'd like to be responsible for--the filthy parasite. He was the curse of the place."
Burke turned with a movement that was very deliberate. He also looked at Sylvia. For a long moment they stood so, in the man's eyes a growing hardness, in the woman's a horror undisguised. Then, with a very curious smile, Burke put his hand through his wife's arm and turned her towards the room where breakfast awaited them.
"Come and have something to eat, partner!" he said, his voice very level and emotionless.
She went with him without a word; but her whole being throbbed and quivered under his touch as if it were torture to her. Stark and hideous, the evil thing reared itself in her path, and there was no turning aside. She saw him, as she had seen him on the night of her arrival, as she had seen him the night after, as she believed that she would always see him for the rest of her life. And the eyes that looked into hers--those eyes that had held her, dominated her, charmed her--were the eyes of a murderer. Go where she would, there could be no escape for her for ever. The evil thing had her enchained.


CHAPTER V
THE LAND OF BLASTED HOPES

They were still at breakfast when Kelly came dashing in full of the news of