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

/> "And when do you expect to meet again?" Mordaunt asked, with great distinctness.
She flinched as if he had struck her. "Oh, haven't you tortured me enough?" she said.
His jaw hardened. He stepped suddenly to her and took her by the shoulders. His eyes appalled her. It was as if a devil looked out of them. She shrank away from him in sheer physical terror.
"Oh, you needn't be afraid," he said. "I shan't hurt you. Why should I? You are nothing to me. But--for the last time--let me hear you speak the truth. You love this man?"
The words, curt and cold, might have fallen from the lips of a stranger, so impersonal were they, so utterly devoid of any emotion.
Wide-eyed, she faced him, for she could not look away with his hands upon her, compelling her.
"You love this man?" he repeated, his speech still cold but incisive--a sharp weapon probing for the truth.
She caught her quivering nerves together, and valiantly answered him. "I do!" she said. "I do!" And as she spoke, the power within her surged upwards, defying constraint, dominating her with a mastery irresistible. She suddenly stripped her heart bare of all reserve and showed him the love that agonized there. "I have always loved him!" she said. "I shall love him till I die!"
It was a woman's confession, in which triumph and anguish were strangely mingled. In a calmer moment she would never have made it, but that moment was supreme, and she had no choice. Regardless of all consequences, she told the burning truth. She would have told it with his hands upon her throat.
In the silence that followed the avowal she even waited for violence. But she was unafraid. The greatness of the power that possessed her had lifted her above all fear. She trod the heights where fear is not. And all-unconsciously, in that moment she won a battle which she had deemed irrevocably lost.
Mordaunt's hands fell from her, setting her free. "In Heaven's name," he said, "why didn't you go with him?"
She did not understand his tone. It held neither anger nor contempt, and so quiet was it that she could still have fancied it almost indifferent. Yet, inexplicably, it cut her to the heart.
"I'll tell you the truth!" she said, a little wildly. "I--I would have gone with him. I offered--I begged--to go. But he--he sent me back."
"Why?" Again that deadly quietness of utterance, as though, indeed, a dead man spoke.
Her throat began to work spasmodically, though she had no desire to weep. She felt as if her heart were bleeding from a mortal wound.
With an effort that nearly choked her, she made reply.
"He said--it was--my duty."
"Your duty!" He repeated the word deliberately. Though the devil had gone out of his eyes, she could not meet them any longer. Not that she feared to do so; but the pain at her heart was intolerable, and it was his look, his voice, that made it so.
Almost as if he divined this, he turned quietly from her. He walked to the window and opened it wide, as if he felt suffocated. The wind was moaning desolately through the trees. There was the scent of coming rain in the air.
He spoke with his back to her, without apparent effort. "I release you from your duty," he said. "Go to him! Go to him--now!"
She gazed at him, dumbfounded, not breathing. But he remained motionless, his hands clenched, his face to the night.
"Go to him!" he repeated. "I shall set you free--at once. Go--and tell him so!"
Then, as still she neither moved nor spoke, he slowly turned and looked at her.
From head to foot she felt his eyes comprehend her, and from head to foot, under his look, she shuddered. She spoke no word; she was as one paralysed.
Very quietly he pulled the window to behind him, still with his eyes upon her. In that moment he was complete master of himself. He stood aloof, shrouded, as it were, in an icy calm. She had no clue to his thoughts. She only knew that by some means, inexplicable and irresistible, he bound her even as he set her free.
"You understand me?" he said, his voice cold, level, pitilessly distinct. "It is my last word upon the subject. You and I have done with each other. Go!"
It was literally his last word. As he uttered it, his eyes fell away from her. He crossed the room with even, unhurried tread, opened the intervening door that led into his own, passed through with no backward glance, and shut it steadily behind him.
As for Chris, she stood numbly gazing after him till only the panels of the door met her look. And then, her strength leaving her, without sound she sank downwards and lay crumpled, inanimate, broken, upon the floor.


PART IV

CHAPTER I
THE REFUGEE

Autumn on a Yorkshire moor.
Hilda Davenant leaned back and looked from her sketch to the moor with slight dissatisfaction in her calm eyes.
"What's the matter with it?" said Lord Percy.
He was lying in the faded heather beside her, sucking grass-stems with bovine enjoyment. He surveyed the faint pucker on his wife's forehead with lazy amusement.
She looked down at him. "It isn't nearly good enough."
He laughed comfortably. "Put it away! It'll do for my birthday. I shan't look at it from an artist's point of view."
She smiled a little. "Oh, any daub would do for you. You simply don't know what art is."
"Exactly," he rejoined tranquilly. "Any daub will do, provided your hand lays on the colours. But nothing less than that would satisfy me. Come! Isn't that a pretty speech? And you didn't angle for it either!" He caught her hand and rubbed it against his cheek. "You are civilizing me wonderfully," he declared. "I never knew how to make pretty speeches before I met you."
"Surely I never taught you that!" she protested. "I am never guilty of empty compliments myself."
"Nor I," smiled her husband. "I say what I think to you always. Now what do you say to coming for a stretch? There's an hour left before I need buzz down to the station and meet Jack. You will admit I have been very good and patient all this time. Pack up your painting things, and I'll trek back to the house with them."
"No. We will go together," Hilda said. "Why not?"
"I thought you would prefer to sit and admire the landscape," he said.
She smiled and made no response.
"A case in point!" laughed Lord Percy. "But here the compliment would not have been empty since you obviously prefer my company to the solitude of a Yorkshire moor."
She looked at him with the smile still in her eyes, but she did not put the compliment into words. Only, as she rose to leave the scene of her labours, she slipped her hand within his arm.
"I have been thinking a great deal of Chris lately," she said. "I wish she would write to me again."
"I thought your mother was there," said Lord Percy.
"She has been. I believe she left them yesterday. But then, she does not give me any detailed news of Chris. I have a feeling that I can't get rid of that the child is unhappy."
"She has no right to be," rejoined her husband. "She's married about the best fellow going."
"Who understands her about as thoroughly as you understand art."
"Oh, come!" he remonstrated. "Mordaunt is not quite such a fool as that! The little monkey ought to be happy enough--unless she tries to play fast and loose with him. Then, I grant you, there would be the devil to pay."
Hilda smiled. "I can't help feeling anxious about her. It has always been my fear that, when the glamour of first love is past, Trevor might misjudge her. She is so gay and bright that many people think her empty. I know my mother does for one."
"Your mother might," he conceded. "Trevor wouldn't--being a man of considerable insight. Tell you what, though, if you want to satisfy yourself on the score of Chris's happiness, we will get them to put us up for a night when we leave here for town three weeks hence. How will that suit you?"
"I should love it, of course," she said. "But wouldn't it be rather far out of our way?"
"I daresay the car won't mind," said Lord Percy.
They walked back to the house that a friend had lent for their three-months' honeymoon. It nestled in a hollow amongst trees, the long line of moors stretching above it. They were well out of the beaten track. Few tourists penetrated to their paradise. Near the house was a glade with a miniature waterfall that filled the place with music.
"That waterfall makes for laziness," Lord Percy was wont to declare, and many were the happy hours they had spent beside it.
They passed it by without lingering to-day, however, for both were feeling energetic. Briskly they crossed the little lawn before the house, and entered by a French window.
"Better secure some refreshments before we go on the tramp," suggested Lord Percy. "I've got a thirst already. Hullo! What on earth--"
He broke off in amazement. A slight figure had risen up suddenly from a settee in a dark corner; and a woman's face, wild-eyed and tragic, confronted them.
"Great Scott! Who is it?" said Lord Percy Davenant.
And "Chris!" exclaimed Hilda, at the same moment.
As for Chris, she stood a second, staring at them; then: "Trevor has turned me out, so I've come to you," she said her white lips moving stiffly. "I've nowhere else to go."
With the words she stumbled forward, feeling vaguely out before her as though she saw not. Hilda started towards her on the instant, caught her, folded warm arms about her, held her fast.
"My darling!" she said, and again, "My darling!"
But Chris heard not, nor saw, nor felt. She had reached the end of her strength, and black darkness had closed down upon her agony, blotting out all things. She sank senseless in her cousin's embrace....
It was long before they brought her back, so long that Hilda became frightened and dispatched her husband in the motor for a doctor, wholly forgetting her brother's expected visit in her anxiety.
Lord Percy ultimately returned with the local practitioner, whom he had dragged almost by force from the bedside of a patient ten miles away. He, too, had forgotten Jack, but remembered him as he set down the doctor, and whirled away again in a cloud of dust, leaving him to announce himself.
Chris had by that time recovered consciousness, in response to Hilda's strenuous efforts, but she had scarcely spoken a word. She lay on the sofa in the drawing-room, cold from head to foot, and shivering spasmodically at intervals. She drank the wine that Hilda brought her with shuddering docility; but it seemed to have no effect upon her. It was as if the blood had frozen at her very heart.
"Get her to bed," were the doctor's orders, and he himself carried Chris up to Hilda's room.
She was perfectly passive in their hands, but quite incapable of the smallest effort, and so painfully apathetic that Hilda grew more and more uneasy. She had never imagined that her gay, light-hearted Chris could be thus. It wrung her heart to see her. She was like a dainty flower crushed into the dust of the highway.
"Nervous prostration consequent upon severe mental strain," was the doctor's verdict later. "You will have to take great care of her, and keep her absolutely quiet, or I can't be answerable for the consequences. She is in a very critical