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Read Ebook: The Yellow Streak by Williams Valentine
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Ebook has 2288 lines and 68342 words, and 46 pages
"But it's true," she answered. "The war has halved Mother's income and there's nothing between us and bankruptcy but a year or so ... unless I get married!"
Her voice trembled a little and she turned away.
"Mary," said the young man hoarsely, "for God's sake, don't do that!"
He moved a step towards her, but she drew back.
"It's all right," she said with the tears glistening wet on her face, and dabbed at her eyes with her tiny handkerchief, "but, oh, Robin boy, why couldn't you have held your tongue?"
"I suppose I had no right to speak ..." the young man began.
The girl sighed.
"I oughtn't to say it ... now," she said slowly, and looked across at Robin with shining eyes, "but, Robin dear, I'm ... I'm glad you did!"
She paused a moment as though turning something over in her mind.
"I've ... I've got something to tell you, Robin," she began. "No, stay where you are! We must be sensible now."
She paused and looked at him.
"Robin," she said slowly, "I've promised to marry somebody else ..."
There was a moment's silence.
"Who is it?" Robin asked in a hard voice.
The girl made no answer.
"Who is it? Do I know him?"
Still the girl was silent, but she gave a hardly perceptible nod.
"Not ...? No, no, Mary, it isn't true? It can't be true?"
The girl nodded, her eyes to the ground.
"It's a secret still," she said. "No one knows but Mother. Hartley doesn't want it announced yet!"
The sound of the Christian name suddenly seemed to infuriate Greve.
"Robin!" the girl cried, "you seem to forget that we're staying in his house. In spite of all you say he seems to be good enough for you to come and stay with ..."
"I only came because you were to be here. You know that perfectly well. I admit one oughtn't to blackguard one's host, but, Mary, you must see that this marriage is absolutely out of the question!"
The girl began to bridle up,
"Why?" she asked loftily.
"Because ... because Parrish is not the sort of man who will make you happy ..."
"And why not, may I ask? He's very kind and very generous, and I believe he likes me ..."
Robin Greve made a gesture of despair.
"My dear girl," he said, trying to control himself to speak quietly, "what do you know about this man? Nothing. But there are beastly stories circulating about his life ..."
Mary Trevert laughed cynically.
"My dear old Robin," she said, "they tell stories about every bachelor. And I hardly think you are an unbiassed judge ..."
Robin Greve was pacing up and down the floor.
"You're crazy, Mary," he said, stopping in front of her, "to dream you can ever be happy with a man like Hartley Parrish. The man's a ruthless egoist. He thinks of nothing but money and he's out to buy you just exactly as you ..."
Robin Greve stepped close up to Mary Trevert. His eyes were very angry and his jaw was set very square.
"If you are determined to sell yourself to the highest bidder," he said, "I suppose there's no stopping you. But you're making a mistake. If Parrish were all you claim for him, you might not repent of his marriage so long as you did not care for somebody else. But I know you love me, and it breaks my heart to see you blundering into everlasting unhappiness ..."
"At least Hartley will be able to keep me," the girl flashed out. Directly she had spoken she regretted her words.
A red flush spread slowly over Robin Greve's face.
Then he laughed drily.
"You won't be the first woman he's kept!" he retorted, and stamped out of the billiard-room.
The girl gave a little gasp. Then she reddened with anger.
"How dare he?" she cried, stamping her foot; "how dare he?"
She sank on the lounge and, burying her face in her hands, burst into tears.
"Oh, Robin, Robin, dear!" she sobbed--incomprehensibly, for she was a woman.
There is a delicious snugness, a charming lack of formality, about the ceremony of afternoon tea in an English country-house--it is much too indefinite a rite to dignify it by the name of meal--which makes it the most pleasant reunion of the day. For English country-house parties consist, for the most part, of a succession of meals to which the guests flock the more congenially as, in the interval, they have contrived to avoid one another's companionship.
And so, scarcely had the last reverberation of Bude's measured gonging died away than the French window leading from the lounge-hall on to the terrace was pushed open and two of Hartley Parrish's guests emerged from the falling darkness without into the pleasant comfort of the firelit room.
They were an oddly matched pair. The one was a tubby little man with short bristly grey hair and a short bristly grey moustache to match. His stumpy legs looked ridiculous in his baggy golf knickers of rough tweed, which he wore with gaiters extending half-way up his short, stout calves. As he came in, he slung off the heavy tweed shooting-cloak he had been wearing and placed it with his Homburg hat on a chair.
A soldier would have spotted the symptoms at once, "Five years of war!" would have been his verdict--that long and strange entry into life of so many thousands of England's manhood which impressed the stamp of premature seriousness on all those who came through. And Captain Sir Horace Trevert, Bart., D.S.O., had gone from his famous school straight into a famous regiment, had won his decoration before he was twenty-one, and been twice wounded into the bargain.
"Where's everybody?" queried the doctor, rubbing his hands at the blazing log-fire.
"Robin and Mary went off to play billiards," said the young man, "and I left old Parrish after lunch settling down for an afternoon's work in the library ..."
He crossed the room to the fire and stood with his back to the flame.
"What a worker that man is!" ejaculated the doctor. "He had one of his secretaries down this morning with a car full of portfolios, blue-prints, specifications, and God knows what else. Parrish polished the whole lot off and packed the fellow back to London before mid-day. Some of Hornaway's people who were waiting went in next, and he was through with them by lunch-time!"
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