Читать книгу Ambition's Slave - Fred M. White - Страница 8

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"THAT is as far as I have gone," Desborough said. "Some papers I found to-day suggested the romance to me, and I amused myself by working it out as I came along. You can finish the story as you please. It is a matter of indifference to me whether that fellow repents or holds the girl in his power. But the class of man I have in my mind would never sacrifice his career."

A band was playing somewhere near. The noisy chatter was going on. Maude lowered her fan. Her face was deadly pale, but there was a look of strange contempt not unmixed with pleading yearning in her eyes that was lost on all but Desborough.

"Would your friend trade on a professional secret like that?" she asked.

"You find the story convincing?" Desborough asked with a hard little laugh.

"Horribly convincing," Maude shuddered. "It seems strange that such scoundrels should be allowed to live. But really you have carried me away. I suppose it is because I am hot and tired. Take me somewhere and get me an ice."

She flashed a challenge at Desborough for a moment. She was going to see this thing through without delay. Desborough offered his arm. His feelings were strongly mixed as he walked along. The task of telling a woman whom he honoured and admired that he was a scoundrel was accomplished.

"Take me to the garden," Maude said. "It will be quiet there."

They found a secluded spot at length, a shady seat under the swaying light of a Chinese lantern. Maude turned upon her companion instantly.

"Now let us understand each other," she said, with heaving bosom. "I am not blind enough to think that you told your story for sheer amusement."

"My dear Maude, nothing is further from my thoughts at this moment."

"Miss Beaumont, if you please," Maude said coldly. "Well, for the present, if you like. But I beg your pardon. You were speaking. Go on."

"I will. You are the needy, ambitious, outwardly successful barrister. At the present moment you stand between a shining career and utter collapse. Therefore, you must marry money. It all comes down to money in the end. If you want money, ten, twenty thousand pounds—"

"Stop," Desborough cried hoarsely. Even his nature was galled at last. "I cannot stoop to that. Strange as it may seem, I still have my pride. My mood is not to blackmail you. If you only knew how I respect and esteem you—"

He came a step nearer, but Maude recoiled with horror.

"You fill me with contempt," she said. "How dare you pollute such words with your lips! You have a mother, a good woman."

"You have a mother too, which brings us to the point."

"Oh, you are shameless! You have me in your power, you have it in your hands to cast a slur over a good and honourable name, to strike one of the sweetest, dearest women on earth to the heart. Of course the miserable girl you told of in your story was my sister. My father's diary came into your hands for business purposes, and you abuse their secrets like this! Unless I promise to become your wife, you will tell this shameful story."

Desborough was silent for the moment. There was something in the pleasing scorn of the girl's voice that touched him. He was not quite so hard as he had imagined. But the thoughts of Minter and the gripping power of the man drove all feeling back. He was not going to stay his hand now.

"I must do it," he said hoarsely. "I cannot sacrifice myself now. As your mother is to you, so is my ambition to me. I am Ambition's Slave. A day or two and I shall be a Cabinet Minister or a beggar."

"A beggar or an honest man?" Maude cried.

"You are merely wasting time," said Desborough impatiently. "I have told you everything. You have seen the strong man, you have witnessed his struggle for his darling sin."

"And from the bottom of my heart I pity you."

"Pity me! Why—why on earth should you pity me?"

"Because you are an object of pity. What sadder spectacle than the sight of a man who for the first time proclaims himself a scoundrel?"

"Ah, you madden me," Desborough said, with a quick intake of his breath. "I should be a fool as well as a knave if I drew back now. You are going to marry me. With you by my side I would do anything."

"And if I refused the distinguished honour that you would confer on me?"

"You are not going to refuse. When you came out here this evening with me, you knew perfectly well what was the inevitable conclusion. You are going to save your mother—you are going to save me, you are going to save the situation all round."

Maude drooped into her seat pale and trembling. There was a mist before her eyes, and in the centre of it Desborough loomed big and strong and merciless. And only last night she had been so happy. Besides, she had given her word to another, she had promised to become the wife of Kit Clive.

But she could not go on with that now. She did not dare to think what Kit would say when she told him, as she must, that it was all over between them. Still, her mother must never know the shameful secret that had come so strangely into the possession of Clifford Desborough.

She knew the man well, and how strong his ambitions were. He must indeed have been desperately placed to go so far as this. She looked into his eyes and saw not the slightest sign of relenting there. Hatred, contempt, scorn all alike were lost on him.

"Why hesitate?" he said, "why wait? The thing is inevitable. Will you marry me—will you consent to be my wife, or—"

He paused. He took something shining from his pocket.

"This was my mother's engagement ring," he said. "I brought it with me for a surprise. See, it fits like a glove, an omen for the future."

A convulsive shudder shook Maude from head to foot. She could do no more than glance in a fascinated way at the shining hoop of diamonds.

"Go away," she said. "Leave me, or I shall do something desperate. Be content with the knowledge that I—I shall marry you."

The last two words were raised, they came as if dragged from the girl's lips. Desborough fought down the triumph that rose within him. It was not the moment to exult. He just touched the tips of Maude's chill fingers with his lips and was gone.

He did not see Maude fling herself back in her seat, he did not see the tears that ran down her cheeks. He had no consciousness of the man who had come up in the last moment or two and who had remained outside the ring of light watching the little scene with dazed fascination.

But the man came forward and laid his hand gently on Maude's shoulder. She did not look up, she cowered down as if something loathsome had touched her.

"Go away," she said. "For Heaven's sake be satisfied with your work."

"It is I, Maudie," said Clive. "I came to look for you. And I saw and heard things that pass my comprehension. What does it mean?"

Maude looked up now, her face white and deathly.

"This completes my humiliation," she whispered. "What did you hear, Kit?"

"I heard you promise to marry Desborough. You are engaged tome. And yet all the time you hate and loathe him!"

"Oh I do, I do. God knows that I do. Kit, you have trodden on the fringe of a strange and dreadful secret. I meant you to know nothing of this. I meant to have written to you a cold little note saying that our engagement was a mistake. My idea was to try and anger you, to make you feel that I was not worthy of an honest man's love. And now my misery is all the more profound."

"But, my darling, I am sure you have done nothing wrong."

"Not myself. But there are others. And you must not speak to me like that again, Kit, or I shall break down. It cuts me to the heart to tell you, but our engagement is at an end. I shall have to marry Mr. Desborough. Don't ask me why, don't press me to tell how, because I cannot. I dare not tell you. If you only knew, from the bottom of your heart you would pity me."

Kit made no reply. For a long time he was strangely silent. Maude looked up, her eyes red with tears.

"Say you are not angry with me!" she whispered.

"I am not angry with you at all," Clive said. "I am wounded sorely, but I have no feeling against you. My darling, I am going to get to the bottom of the thing. I am going to save you from a scoundrel. There is time to do so yet, time to set you free. If you say that you no longer love me—"

A broken cry came from Maude's lips.

"Never," she said. "Never, I shall love you to the end of my life."