Читать книгу The Top of the World - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 14

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Ingleton, rising to kiss her step-daughter on the following morning, "I consider you are a very—lucky—girl."

Sylvia received the kiss and passed on without reply. She was very pale, but the awful inertia of the previous night had left her. She was in full command of herself. She took up some letters from a side table, and sat down with them.

Her step-mother eyed her for a moment or two in silence. Then:

"Well, my dear?" she said. "Have you nothing to say for yourself?"

"Nothing particular," said Sylvia.

The letters were chiefly letters of congratulation. She read them with that composure which Mrs. Ingleton most detested, and put them aside.

"Am I to have no share in the general rejoicing?" she asked at length, in a voice that trembled with indignation.

Sylvia recognized the tremor. It had been the prelude to many a storm. She got up and turned to the window. "You can read them all if you like," she said. "I see Dad on the terrace. I am just going to speak to him."

She passed out swiftly with the words before her step-mother's gathering wrath could descend upon her. One of Mrs. Ingleton's main grievances was that it was so difficult to corner Sylvia when she wanted to give free vent to her violence.

She watched the girl's slim figure pass out into the pale November sunshine, and her frown turned to a very bitter smile.

"Ah, my girl, you wait a bit!" she murmured. "You've met your match, or I'm much mistaken."

The squire was smoking his morning pipe in a sheltered corner. He looked round with his usual half-surly expression as his daughter joined him.

She came to him very quietly and put her hand on his arm.

"Well?" he said gruffly.

She stood for a moment or two in silence, then:

"Dad," she said very quietly, "I am going to cable to Guy. I haven't heard from him lately. I must know the reason why before—before——" A quiver of agitation sounded in her voice and she stopped.

"If you've made up your mind to marry Preston, I don't see why you want to do that," said the squire curtly.

"I am going to do it," she answered steadily. "I only wish I had done it sooner."

Ingleton burrowed into his paper. "All right," he growled.

Sylvia stood for a few seconds longer, but he did not look up at her, and at length, with a sharp sigh, she turned and left him.

She did not return to her step-mother, however. She went to her room to write her message.

A little later she passed down the garden on her way to the village. A great restlessness was upon her, and she thought the walk to the post-office would do her good.

She came upon Jeffcott in one of the shrubberies, and he stopped her with the freedom of an old servant.

"Beggin' your pardon, missie, but you'll let me wish you joy?" he said. "I heard the good news this morning."

She stood still. His friendly look went straight to her heart, stirring in her an urgent need for sympathy.

"Oh, Jeffcott," she said, "I'd never have given in if Mr. Ranger hadn't stopped writing."

"Lor!" said Jeffcott. "Did he now?" He frowned for an instant.

"But—didn't you have a letter from him last week?" he questioned.

"Friday morning it were. I see Evans, the postman, and he said as

there were a South African letter for you. Weren't that from Mr.

Ranger, missie?"

"What?" said Sylvia sharply.

"Last Friday it were," the old man repeated firmly. "Why, I see the letter in his hand top of the pile when he stopped in the drive to speak to me. We both of us passed a remark on it."

Sylvia was staring at him. "Jeffcott, are you sure?" she said.

"Sure as I stand here, Miss Sylvia," he returned. "I couldn't have made no mistake. Didn't you have it then, missie? I'll swear to heaven it were there."

"No," Sylvia said. "I didn't have it." She paused a moment; then very slowly, "The last letter I had from Guy Ranger," she said, "was more than six weeks ago—the day that the squire brought Madam to the Manor."

"Lor!" ejaculated old Jeffcott again. "But wherever could they have got to, Miss Sylvia? Don't Bliss have the sortin' of the letters?"

"I—don't—know." Sylvia was gazing straight before her with that in her face which frightened the old man. "Those letters have been—kept back."

She turned from him with the words, and suddenly she was running, running swiftly up the path.

Like a young animal released from bondage she darted out of his sight, and Jeffcott returned to his hedge-trimming with pursed lips. That last glimpse of Miss Sylvia's face had—to express it in his own language—given him something of a turn.

It had precisely the same effect upon Sylvia's step-mother a little later, when the girl burst in upon her as she sat writing letters in her boudoir.

She looked round at her in amazement, but she had no time to ask for an explanation, for Sylvia, white to the lips, with eyes of flame, went straight to the attack. She was in such a whirlwind of passion as had never before possessed her.

She was panting, yet she spoke with absolute distinctness. "I have just found out," she said, "how it is that I have had no letters from Guy during the past six weeks. They have been—stolen."

"Really, Sylvia!" said Mrs. Ingleton. She arose in wrath, but no wrath had any effect upon Sylvia at that moment. She was girt for battle—the deadliest battle she had ever known.

"You took them!" she said, pointing an accusing finger full at her step-mother. "You kept them back! Deny it as much as you like—as much as you dare! None but you would have stooped to do such a thing. And it has been done. The letters have been delivered—and I have not received them. I have suffered—horribly—because of it. You meant me to suffer!'

"You are wrong, Sylvia! You are wrong!" Shrilly Mrs. Ingleton broke in upon her, for there was something awful in the girl's eyes—they had a red-hot look. "Whatever I have done has been for your good always. Your father will testify to that. Go and ask him if you don't believe me!"

"My father had nothing to do with this!" said Sylvia in tones of withering scorn. "Whatever else he lacks, he has a sense of honour. But you—you are a wicked woman, unprincipled, cruel, venomous. It may be my father's duty to live with you, but—thank heaven—it is not mine. You have come into my home and cursed it. I will never sleep under the same roof with you again."

She turned with the words to leave the room, and found her father and George Preston just coming out of the library on the other side of the hall. Fearlessly she swung round and confronted them. The utter freedom of her at that moment made her superb. The miracle had happened. She had rent the net that entangled her to shreds.

Mrs. Ingleton was beginning to clamour in the room behind her. She turned swiftly and shut and locked the door. Then she faced the two men with magnificent courage.

"I have to tell you," she said, addressing them both impersonally, "that my engagement to Guy Ranger is unbroken. I have just found out that my step-mother has been suppressing his letters to me. That, of course, alters everything. And—also of course—it makes it impossible for me to stay here any longer. I am going to him—at once."

Her eyes went rapidly from her father's face to Preston's. It was he who came forward and answered her. The squire seemed struck dumb.

"Egad!" he said. "I've never seen you look so rippin' in all my life! That's how you look when you're angry, is it? Now I shall know what to watch out for when we're married."

She answered him with a quiver of scorn. "We never shall be married, Mr. Preston. You may put that out of your mind for ever. I am going to Guy by the next boat."

"Not you!" laughed Preston. "You're in a paddy just now, my dear, but when you've thought it over soberly you'll find there are a good many little obstacles in the way of that. You haven't been brought up to rough it for one. And Guy Ranger, as I think we settled last night, has probably married half a dozen blacks already. It's too great a risk, Cherry-ripe! And—if I know you—you won't take it."

"You don't know me," said Sylvia. She turned, from him and went to her father. "Have you nothing to say," she asked, "about this vile and hateful plot? But I suppose you can't. She is your wife. However much you despise her, you have got to endure her. But I have not. And so I am going—to-day!"

Her voice rang clear and unfaltering. She looked him straight in the eyes. He made a sharp movement, almost as if that full regard pierced him.

He spoke with manifest effort. "You won't go with my consent."

"No?" said Sylvia. "Yet—you would never respect me again if I stayed. I could never respect myself." She glanced over her shoulder at the door which Mrs. Ingleton was violently shaking. "You can let her out," she said contemptuously. "I have had my turn. I leave her—in possession." She turned to go to the stairs, then abruptly checked herself, stepped up to her father, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. The anger had gone out of her eyes. "Good-bye, Dad! Think of me sometimes!" she said.