The Obstacle Race Part 62

He clasped her close. His lips pressed hers, stopping all utterance for a while with a mastery that would not be held in check. She could not resist him, but there was no rapture in her yielding. His love was like a flame about her, but she was cold--cold as ice. Suddenly, with his face against her neck, he spoke: "What's the matter, Juliet?"

She quivered in response, made an attempt to release herself, felt his arms tighten, and was still. "I have--found out--something," she said, her voice very low.

"What is it?" he said.

She did not answer. A great impulse arose in her to wrench herself from him, to thrust him back but she could not. She stood--a prisoner--in his hold.

He waited a moment, still with his face bent over her, his lips close to her neck. "Is it anything that--matters?" he asked.

She felt his arms drawing her and quivered again like a trapped bird.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Very much?"

"Yes," she said again.

"Then you are angry with me," he said.

She was silent.

He pressed her suddenly very close. "Juliet, you don't hate me, do you?"

She caught her breath with a sob that sounded painfully hard and dry.

"I--couldn't have married you--if I had known," she said.

He started a little and lifted his head. "As bad as that!" he said.

For a s.p.a.ce there was silence between them while his eyes dwelt sombrely upon the litter of books upon the table, and still his arms enfolded her though he did not hold her close. When at last she made as if she would release herself, he still would not let her go.

"Will you listen to me?" he said. "Give me a hearing--just for a minute?

You have forgiven so much in me that is really bad that I can't feel this last to be--quite unpardonable. Juliet, I haven't really wronged you. You have got a false impression of the man who wrote those books. It's a prejudice which I have promised myself to overcome. But I must have time.

Will you defer judgment--for my sake--till you have read this latest book, written when you first came into my life? Will you--Juliet, will you have patience till I have proved myself?"

She shivered as she stood. "You don't know--what you have done," she said.

He made a quick gesture of protest. "Yes, I do know. I know quite well.

I have hurt you, deceived you. But hear my defence anyway! I never meant to marry you in the first place without telling you, but I always wanted you to read this book of mine first. It's different from the others. I wanted you to see the difference. But then I got carried away as you know. I loved you so tremendously. I couldn't hold myself in. Then--when you came to me in my misery--it was all up with me, and I fell. I couldn't tell you then, Juliet, I wasn't ready for you to know. So I waited--till the book could be published and you could read it. I am infernally sorry you found out like this. I wanted you--so badly--to read it with an open mind. And now--whichever way you look at it--you certainly won't do that."

There was a whimsical note in his voice despite its obvious sincerity as he ended, and Juliet winced as she heard it, and in a moment with resolution freed herself from his hold.

She did it in silence, but there was that in the action that deeply wounded him. He stood motionless, looking at her, a glitter of sternness in his eyes.

"Juliet," he said after a moment, "you are not treating this matter reasonably. I admit I tricked you; but my love for you was my excuse. And those books of mine--especially the one I didn't want you to read--were never intended for such as you."

She looked back at him with a kind of frozen wonder. "Then who were they meant for?" she said.

He made a slight movement of impatience. "You know. You know very well.

They were meant for the people whom you yourself despise--the crowd you broke away from--men and women like the Farringmores who live for nothing but their own beastly pleasures and don't care the toss of a halfpenny for anyone else under the sun."

She went back against the table and stood there, supporting herself while she still faced him. "You forget--" she said, her voice very low,--"I think you forget--that they are my people--I belong to them!"

"No, you don't!" he flung back almost fiercely. "You belong to me!"

A great shiver went through her. She clenched her hands to repress it. "I don't see," she said, "how I can--possibly--stay with you--after this."

"What?" He strode forward and caught her by the shoulders. She was aware of a sudden hot blaze of anger in him that made her think of the squire.

He held her in a grip that was merciless. "Do you know what you are saying?" he asked.

She tried to hold him from her, but he pressed her to him with a dominance that would not brook resistance.

"Do you?" he said. "Do you?"

His face was terrible. She felt the hard hammer of his heart against her own, and a sense of struggling against overwhelming odds came upon her.

She bowed her head against his shoulder. "Oh, d.i.c.k!" she said. "It is you--who--don't--know!"

His hold did not relax, and for a s.p.a.ce he said no word, but stood breathing deeply as a man who faces some deadly peril.

He spoke at length, and in his voice was something she had never heard before--something from which she shrank uncontrollably, as the victim shrinks from the branding-iron.

"And so you think you can leave me--as lightly as Lady Joanna Farringmore left that man I went to see today?"

She lifted her head with a gasp. "No!" she said. "Oh, no!

Not--like that!"

His eyes pierced her with their appalling brightness. "No, not quite like that," he said, with awful grimness. "There is a difference. An engaged woman can cut the cable and be free without a.s.sistance. A married woman needs a lover to help her!"

She shrank afresh from the scorching cynicism of his words. "d.i.c.k!" she said. "Have I asked for--freedom?"

"You had better not ask!" he flashed back. "You have gone too far already. I tell you, Juliet, when you gave yourself to me it was irrevocable. There's no going back now. You have got to put up with me--whatever the cost."

"Ah!" she whispered.

"Listen!" he said. "This thing is going to make no difference between us--no difference whatever. You cared for me enough to marry me, and I am the same man now that I was then. The man you have conjured up in your own mind as the writer of those books is nothing to me--or to you now. I am the man who wrote them--and you belong to me. And if you leave me--well, I shall follow you--and bring you back."

His lips closed implacably upon the words; he held her as though challenging her to free herself. But Juliet neither moved nor spoke. She stood absolutely pa.s.sive in his hold, waiting in utter silence.

He waited also, trying to read her face in the dimness, but seeing only a pale still mask.

At last: "You understand me?" he said.

She bent her head. "Yes--I understand."

He stood for a moment longer, then abruptly his hold tightened upon her.

She lifted her face then sharply, resisting him almost instinctively, and in that instant his pa.s.sion burst its bonds. He crushed her to him with sudden mastery, and, so compelling, he kissed her hotly, possessively, dominatingly, holding her lips with his own, till she strained against him no longer, but hung, burning and quivering, at his mercy.

Then at length very slowly he put her down into the chair from which she had risen at his entrance, and released her. She leaned upon the table, trembling, her hands covering her face. And he stood behind her, breathing heavily, saying no word.

So for a s.p.a.ce they remained in darkness and silence, till the brisk opening of the kitchen-door brought them back to the small things of life.