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

the man on horseback hewing those words while she waited. The words themselves shone in fiery letters across. her closed eyelids. She asked herself suddenly, with an awed wonder if perchance her prayer had been answered after all, and she had suffered the message to pass her by. . . .
There came a crash of thunder nearer and more menacing than any that had gone before, startling her almost with a sense of doom, setting every pulse in her body beating. She uncovered her face and sat up.
Sullenly the echoes rolled away, yet they left behind a strange impression that possessed her with an uncanny force from which she could not shake herself free--a feeling that amounted to actual conviction that some presence lurked without in the storm, alert and stealthy, waiting for something.
The window was at the side of her bed. She had but to draw aside the curtain and look out. It was within reach of her hand. But for many breathless seconds she dared not.
What it was that stood outside she had no idea, but the thought of Kieff was in her mind--Kieff the vampire who was dead.
She felt herself grow cold all over. She had only to cross the narrow room and knock on the main wall of the bungalow to summon Merston. He would come at a moment's notice, she knew. But she felt powerless to move. Sheer terror bound her limbs.
The thunder slowly ceased, and there followed a brief stillness through which the beating of her heart clamoured wildly. Yet she was beginning to tell herself that it was no more than a nightmare panic that had caught her, when suddenly something knocked softly upon the closed window beneath which she lay.
She started violently and glanced across the room, measuring the distance to the further wall on which she herself would have to knock to summon help.
Then, while instinctively she debated the point, summoning her strength for the effort, there came another sound close to her--a low voice speaking her name.
"Sylvia! Sylvia! Wake up and let me in!"
She snatched back the curtain in a second. She knew that voice. By the shifting gleam of the lightning she saw him, looking in upon her. Her fear vanished.
Swiftly she sprang to do his bidding. Had she ever failed to answer any call of his? She drew back the bolts of her door, and in a moment they were together.
The thunder roared again behind him as he entered, but neither of them heard it. For he caught her in his arms with a hungry sound, and as she clung to him nearly fainting with relief, he kissed her, straining her to him gasping wild words of love.
The touch of those hot, devouring lips awoke her. She had never felt the slightest fear of Guy before that moment, but the fierceness of his hold called a sharp warning in her soul. There was about him an unrestraint, a lawlessness, that turned her relief into misgiving. She put up a quick hand, checking him.
"Guy--Guy, you are hurting me!"
He relaxed his hold then, looking at her, his head back, the old boyish triumph shining in his eyes. "Little sweetheart, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it--just for the moment. The sight of you and the touch of you together just turned my head. But it's all right. Don't look so scared! I wouldn't harm a single hair of your precious little head." He gathered up the long plait of her hair and kissed it passionately.
She laid a trembling hand against his shoulder. "Guy, please! You mustn't. I had to let you in. But not--not for this."
He uttered a low laugh that seemed to hold a note of triumph. But he let her go.
"Of course you had to let me in! Were you asleep? Did I frighten you?"
"You startled me just at first. I think the thunder had set me on edge, for I wasn't asleep. It's such a--savage sort of night, isn't it?"
Sylvia glanced forth again over the low _veldt_ where the flickering lightning leaped from cloud to cloud.
"Not so bad," said Guy. "It will serve our turn all right. Do you know what I have come for?"
She looked back at him quickly. There was no mistaking the exultation in his low voice. It amazed her, and again she was stabbed by that sense of insecurity.
"I thought you had come to--explain things," she made answer. "And to say--good-bye."
"To say--what?" He took her by the shoulders; his dark eyes flashed a laughing challenge into hers. "You're not in earnest!" he said.
She backed away from him. "But I am, Guy. I am." Her voice sounded strained even to herself, for she was strangely discomfited by his attitude. She had expected a broken man kneeling at her feet in an agony of contrition. His overweening confidence confounded her. "Have you no sense of right and wrong left?" she said.
He kept his hands upon her. "None whatever," he told her recklessly. "The only thing in life that counts is you--just you. Because we love each other, the whole world is ours for the taking. No, listen, darling! I'm not talking rot. Do you remember the last time we were together? How I swore I would conquer--for your sake? Well,--I've done it. I have conquered. Now that that devil Kieff is dead, there is no reason why I shouldn't keep straight always. And so I have come to you--for my crown."
His voice sank. He stooped towards her.
But she drew back sharply. "Guy, don't forget--don't forget--I am married to Burke!" she said, speaking quickly, breathlessly.
His hands tightened upon her. "I am going to forget," he told her fiercely. "And so are you. You have no love for him. Your marriage is nothing but an empty bond."
"No--no!" Painfully she broke in upon him. "My marriage is--more than that. I am his wife--and the keeper of his honour. I am going back to him--to-morrow."
"You are not! You are not!" Hotly he contradicted her. "By to-morrow we shall be far away. Listen, Sylvia! I haven't told you all. I am rich. My luck has turned. You'll hardly believe it, but it's true. It was I who won the Wilbraham diamond. We've kept it secret, because I didn't want to be dogged by parasites. I've thought of you all through. And now--and now--" his voice vibrated again on that note of triumph--"I've come to take you away. Mine at last!"
He would have drawn her to him, but she resisted him. She pushed him from her. For the first time in her life she looked at him with condemnation in her eyes.
"Is this--true?" Her voice held a throb of anger.
He stared at her, his triumph slowly giving place to a half-formed doubt. "Of course it's true. I couldn't invent anything so stupendous as that."
She looked back at him mercilessly. "If it is true, how did you find the money for the gamble?"
The doubt on his face deepened to something that was almost shame. "Oh, that!" he said. "I--borrowed that."
"You borrowed it!" She repeated the words without pity. "You borrowed it from Burke's strong-box. Didn't you?"
The question was keen as the cut of a whip. It demanded an answer. Almost involuntarily, the answer came.
"Well--yes! But---I hoped to pay it back. I'm going to pay it back--now."
"Now!" she said, and almost laughed. Was it for this that she had staked everything--everything she had--and lost? There was bitter scorn in her next words. "You can pay it back to Donovan Kelly," she said. "He has replaced it on your behalf."
"What do you mean?" His hands were clenched. Behind his cloak of shame a fire was kindling. The glancing lightning seemed reflected in his eyes.
But Sylvia knew no fear, only an overwhelming contempt. "I mean," she said, "that to save you--to leave you a chance of getting back to solid ground--Donovan and I deceived Burke. He supplied the money, and I put it back."
"Great Jove!" said Guy. He was looking at her oddly, almost speculatively. "But Donovan never had any money to spare!" he said. "He sends it all home to his old mother."
"He gave it to me nevertheless." Sylvia's voice had a scathing note. "And--he pretended that it had come from you--that you had returned it."
"Very subtle of him!" said Guy. He considered the point for a moment or two, then swept it aside. "Well, I'll settle up with him. It'll be all right. I always pay my debts--sooner or later. So that's all right, isn't it? Say it's all right!"
He spoke imperiously, meeting her scorn with a dominating self-assurance. There followed a few moments that were tense with a mental conflict such as Sylvia had never deemed possible between them. Then in a very low voice she made answer.
"No. It is not all right. Nothing can ever make it so again. Please say good-bye--and go!"
He made a furious movement, and caught her suddenly and violently by the wrists. His eyes shone like the eyes of a starving animal. Before she had time to resist him, her hands were gripped behind her and she was fast locked in his arms.
He spoke, his face close to hers, his hot breath seeming to consume her, his words a mere whisper through lips that almost moved upon her own.
"Do you think I'm going--now? Do you think you can send me away with a word like that--fling me off like an old glove--you who have belonged to me all these years? No, don't speak! You'd better not speak! If you dare to deny your love for me now, I believe I shall kill you! If you had been any other woman, I wouldn't have stopped to argue. But--you are you. And--I--love you so."
His voice broke unexpectedly upon the words. For a moment--one sickening, awful moment--his lips were pressed upon hers, seeming to draw all the breath--the very life itself--out of her quivering body. Then there came a terrible sound--a rending sound like the tearing of dry wood--and the dreadful constriction of his hold was gone. She burst from it, gasping for air and freedom with the agonized relief of one who has barely escaped suffocation. She sprang for the door though her knees were doubling under her. She reached it, and threw it wide. Then she looked back. . . .
He was huddled against the wall, his head in his hands, writhing as if in the grip of some fiendish torturer. Broken sounds escaped him--sounds he fought frantically to repress. He seemed to be choking; and in a second her memory flashed back to that anguish she had witnessed weeks before when first she had seen Kieff's remedy and implored him to use it.
For seconds she stood, a helpless witness, too horrified to move. Then, her physical strength reviving, pity stirred within her, striving against what had been a sick and fearful loathing. Gradually her vision cleared. The evil shadow lifted from her