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The Top of the World by Ethel M. Dell

E >> Ethel M. Dell >> The Top of the World



THE TOP OF THE WORLD

By

Ethel M. Dell



Author of "The Way of an Eagle," "The Lamp in the Desert."



1920




I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

TO THE PRECIOUS MEMORY

OF MY MOTHER




"The years shall not outgo my thinking of thee"




When you have reached the top of the world
And only the stars remain,
Where there is never the sound of storm
And neither cold nor rain,
Will it be by wealth, success, or fame
That you mounted to your goal?
Nay, I mount only by faith and love
And God's goodness to my soul.

When you have reached the top of the world
And the higher stars grow near,
When greater dreams succeed our dreams
And the lesser disappear,
Will the world at your feet seem good to you,
A vision fair to see?
Nay, I look upward for one I love
Who has promised to wait for me.

For to those who reach the top of the world
The things of the world seem less
Than the rungs of the ladder by which they climbed
To their place of happiness,
And I think that success and wealth and fame
Will be the first to pall,
For they reach their goal but by faith and love
And God's goodness over all.




CONTENTS


PART I

CHAPTER

I.--ADVICE
II.--THE NEW MISTRESS
III.--THE WHIP-HAND
IV.--THE VICTORY
V.--THE MIRACLE
VI.--THE LAND OF STRANGERS
VII.--THE WRONG TURNING
VIII.--THE COMRADE
IX.--THE ARRIVAL
X.--THE DREAM
XI.--THE CROSS-ROADS
XII.--THE STAKE


PART 11

I.--COMRADES
II.--THE VISITORS
III.--THE BARGAIN
IV.--THE CAPTURE
V.--THE GOOD CAUSE
VI.--THE RETURN
VII.--THE GUEST
VIII.--THE INTERRUPTION
IX.--THE ABYSS
X.--THE DESIRE TO LIVE
XI.--THE REMEDY


PART III

I.--THE NEW ERA
II.--INTO BATTLE
III.--THE SEED
IV.--MIRAGE
V.--EVERYBODY'S FRIEND
VI.--THE HERO
VII.--THE NET
VIII.--THE SUMMONS
IX.--FOR THE SAKE OF THE OLD LOVE
X.--THE BEARER OF EVIL TIDINGS
XI.--THE SHARP CORNER
XII.--THE COST


PART IV

I.--SAND OF THE DESERT
II.--THE SKELETON TREE
III.--THE PUNISHMENT
IV.--THE EVIL THING
V.--THE LAND OF BLASTED HOPES
VI.--THE PARTING
VII.--PIET VREIBOOM
VIII.--OUT OF THE DEPTHS
IX.--THE MEETING
X.--THE TRUTH
XI.--THE STORM
XII.--THE SACRIFICE
XIII.--BY FAITH AND LOVE




The Top of the World


PART I

CHAPTER I

ADVICE

"You ought to get married, Miss Sylvia," said old Jeffcott, the
head gardener, with a wag of his hoary beard. "You'll need to be
your own mistress now."

"I should hope I am that anyway," said, Sylvia with a little laugh.

She stood in the great vinery--a vivid picture against a background
of clustering purple fruit. The sunset glinted on her tawny hair.
Her red-brown eyes, set wide apart, held a curious look, half
indignant, half appealing.

Old Jeffcott surveyed her with loving admiration. There was no one
in the world to compare with Miss Sylvia in his opinion. He loved
the open English courage of her, the high, inborn pride of race.
Yet at the end of the survey he shook his head.

"There's not room for two mistresses in this establishment, Miss
Sylvia," he said wisely. "Three years to have been on your own, so
to speak, is too long. You did ought to get married, Miss Sylvia.
You'll find it's the only way."

His voice took on almost a pleading note. He knew it was possible
to go too far.

But the girl facing him was still laughing. She evidently felt no
resentment.

"You see, Jeffcott," she said, "there's only one man in the world I
could marry. And he's not ready for me yet."

Jeffcott wagged his beard again commiseratingly. "So you've never
got over it, Miss Sylvia? Your feelings is still the same--after
five years?"

"Still the same," said Sylvia. There was a momentary challenge in
her bright eyes, but it passed. "It couldn't be any different,"
she said softly. "No one else could ever come anywhere near him."

Jeffcott sighed aloud. "I know he were a nice young gentleman," he
conceded. "But I've seen lots as good before and since. He
weren't nothing so very extraordinary, Miss Sylvia."

Sylvia's look went beyond him, seeming to rest upon something very
far away. "He was to me, Jeffcott," she said. "We just--fitted
each other, he and I."

"And you was only eighteen," pleaded Jeffcott, "You wasn't
full-grown in those days."

"No?" A quick sigh escaped her; her look came back to him, and she
smiled. "Well, I am now anyway; and that's the one thing that
hasn't altered or grown old--the one thing that never could."

"Ah, dear!" said old Jeffcott. "What a pity now as you couldn't
take up with young Mr. Eversley or that Mr. Preston over the way,
or--or--any of them young gents with a bit of property as might be
judged suitable!"

Sylvia's laugh rang through the vinery, a gay, infectious laugh.

"Oh, really, Jeffcott! You talk as if I had only got to drop my
handkerchief for the whole countryside to rush to pick it up! I'm
not going to take up with anyone, unless it's Mr. Guy Ranger. You
don't seem to realize that we've been engaged all this time."

"Ah!" said old Jeffcott, looking sardonic. "And you not met for
five years! Do you ever wonder to yourself what sort of a man he
may be after five years, Miss Sylvia? It's a long time for a young
man to keep in love at a distance. It's a very long time."

"It's a long time for both of us," said Sylvia. "But it hasn't
altered us in that respect."

"It's been a longer time for him than it has for you," said
Jeffcott shrewdly. "I'll warrant he's lived every minute of it.
He's the sort that would."

Sylvia's wide brows drew together in a little frown. She had
caught the note of warning in the old man's words, and she did not
understand it.

"What do you mean, Jeffcott?" she said, with a touch of sharpness.

But Jeffcott backed out of the vinery and out of the discussion at
the same moment. "You'll know what I mean one day, Miss Sylvia,"
he said darkly, "when you're married."

"Silly old man!" said Sylvia, taking up the cluster of grapes for
which she had come and departing in the opposite direction.
Jeffcott was a faithful old servant, but he could be very
exasperating when he liked.

The gardens were bathed in the evening sunlight as she passed
through them on her way to the house. The old Manor stood out grey
and ancient against an opal sky. She looked up at it with loving
eyes. Her home meant very much to Sylvia Ingleton. Until the last
six months she had always regarded it as her own life-long
possession. For she was an only child, and for the past three
years she had been its actual mistress, though virtually she had
held the reins of government longer than that. Her mother had been
delicate for as long as she could remember, and it was on account
of her failing health that Sylvia had left school earlier than had
been intended, that she might be with her. Since Mrs. Ingleton's
death, three years before, she and her father had lived alone
together at the old Manor in complete accord. They had always been
close friends, the only dissension that had ever arisen between
them having been laid aside by mutual consent.

That dissension had been caused by Guy Ranger. Five years before,
when Sylvia had been only eighteen, he had flashed like a meteor
through her sky, and no other star had ever shone for her again.
Though seven years older than herself, he was little more than a
boy, full of gaiety and life, possessing an extraordinary
fascination, but wholly lacking in prospects, being no more than
the son of Squire Ingleton's bailiff.

The Rangers were people of good yeoman extraction, and Guy himself
had had a public school education, but the fact of their position
was an obstacle which the squire had found insuperable. Only his
love for his daughter had restrained him from violent measures.
But Sylvia had somehow managed to hold him, how no one ever knew,
for he was a man of fiery temper. And the end of if it had been
that Guy had been banished to join a cousin farming in South Africa
on the understanding that if he made a success of it he might
eventually return and ask Sylvia to be his wife. There was to be
no engagement between them, and if she elected to marry in the
meantime so much the better, in the squire's opinion. He had had
little doubt that Sylvia would marry when she had had time to
forget some of the poignancy of first love. But in this he had
been mistaken. Sylvia had steadfastly refused every lover who had
come her way.

He had found another billet for old Ranger, and had installed a
dour Scotchman in his place. But Sylvia still corresponded with
young Guy, still spoke of him as the man she meant to marry. It
was true she did not often speak of him, but that might have been
through lack of sympathetic listeners. There was, moreover, about
her an innate reserve which held her back where her deepest
feelings were concerned. But her father knew, and she meant him to
know, that neither time nor distance had eradicated the image of
the man she loved from her heart. The days on which his letters
reached her were always marked with a secret gladness, albeit the
letters themselves held sometimes little more than affectionate
commentary upon her own.

That Guy was making his way and that he would eventually return to
her were practical certainties in her young mind. If his letters
contained little to support this belief, she yet never questioned
it for a moment. Guy was the sort to get on. She was sure of it.
And he was worth waiting for. Oh, she could afford to be patient
for Guy. She did not, moreover, believe that her father would hold
out for ever. Also, and secretly this thought buoyed her up in
rare moments of depression, in another two years--when she was
twenty-five--she would inherit some money from her mother. It was
not a very large sum, but it would be enough to render her
independent. It would very greatly increase her liberty of action.
She had little doubt that the very fact of it would help to
overcome her father's prejudices and very considerably modify his
attitude.

So, in a fashion, she had during the past three years come to
regard her twenty-fifth birthday as a milestone in her life. She
would be patient till it came, but then--at last--if circumstances
permitted, she would take her fate into her own hands, She
would--at last--assume the direction of her own life.

So she had planned, but so it was not to be. Her fate had already
begun to shape itself in a fashion that was little to her liking.
Travelling with her father in the North earlier in the summer, she
had met with a slight accident which had compelled her to make the
acquaintance of a lady staying at the same hotel whom she had
disliked at the outset and always sought to avoid. This lady, Mrs.
Emmott, was a widow with no settled home. Profiting by
circumstances she had attached herself to Sylvia and her father,
and now she was the latter's wife.

How it had come about, even now Sylvia scarcely realized. The
woman's intentions had barely begun to dawn upon her before they
had become accomplished fact. Her father's attitude throughout had
amazed her, so astoundingly easy had been his capture. He was
infatuated, possibly for the first time in his life, and no
influence of hers could remove the spell.

Sylvia's feelings for Mrs. Emmott passed very rapidly from dislike
to active detestation. Her iron strength of will, combined with an
almost blatant vulgarity, gave the girl a sense of being borne down
by an irresistible weight. Very soon her aversion became such that
it was impossible to conceal it. And Mrs. Emmott laughed in her
face. She hated Sylvia too, but she looked forward to subduing the
unbending pride that so coldly withstood her, and for the sake of
that she kept her animosity in check. She knew her turn would come.

Meantime, she concentrated all her energies upon the father, and
with such marked success that within two months of their meeting
they were married. Sylvia had gone to that wedding in such
bitterness of soul and seething inward revolt as she had never
experienced before. She did not know how she had come through it,
so great had been her disgust. But that was nearly six weeks ago,
and she had had time to recover. She had spent part of that period
very peacefully and happily at the seaside with a young married
cousin and her babies, and it had rested and refreshed her. She
had come back with a calm resolve to endure what had to be endured
in a philosophical spirit, to face the inevitable without futile
rebellion.

Girt in an impenetrable armour of reserve, she braced herself to
bear her burdens unflinching, so that none might ever guess how it
galled her. And on that golden evening in September she prepared
herself with a smiling countenance to meet her enemy in the gate.

They were returning from a prolonged honeymoon among the Italian
lakes, and she had made everything ready for their coming. The
great west-facing bedroom, which her father had never occupied
since her mother's death, had been redecorated and prepared as for
a bride. Sylvia had changed it completely, so that it might never
again look as it had looked in the old days. She had hated doing
it, but it had been in a measure a relief to her torn heart. It
was thus she rendered inviolate that inner sanctuary of memory
which none might enter.

As she passed along the terrace in the golden glow, the slight
frown was still upon her brow. It had been such a difficult time.
Her one ray of comfort had been the thought of Guy, dear, faithful
lover working for her far away. And now old Jeffcott had cast a
shade even upon that. But then he did not really know Guy. No one
knew him as she knew him. She quickened her steps a little.
Possibly there might be a letter from him that evening.

There was. She spied it lying on the hall table as she entered.
Eagerly she went forward and picked it up. But as she did so there
came the sound of a car in the drive before the open front door,
and quickly she thrust it away in the folds of her dress. The
travellers had returned.

With a resolutely smiling face she went to meet them.




CHAPTER II

THE NEW MISTRESS

"Here is our dear Sylvia!" said Mrs. Ingleton.

She embraced the girl with much _empressement_, and then, before
Sylvia could reach her father, turned and embraced him herself.

"So very nice to be home, dear!" she said effusively. "We shall be
very happy here."

Gilbert Ingleton bestowed a somewhat embarrassed salute upon her,
one eye on his daughter. She greeted him sedately the next moment,
and though her face was smiling, her welcome seemed to be frozen at
its source; it held no warmth.

Mrs. Ingleton, tall, handsome, assertive, cast an appraising eye
around the oak-panelled hall. "Dear me! What severe splendour!"
she commented. "I have a great love for cosiness myself. We must
scatter some of those sweet little Italian ornaments about,
Gilbert. You won't know the place when I have done with it. I am
going to take you all in hand and bring you up-to-date."

Her keen dark eyes rested upon her step-daughter with a smile of
peculiar meaning. Sylvia met them with the utmost directness.

"We like simplicity," she said.

Mrs. Ingleton pursed her lips, "Oh, but there is simplicity and
simplicity! Give me warmth, homeliness, and plenty of pretty
things. This place is archaically cold--quite like a convent. And
you, my dear, might be the Sister Superior from your air. Now,
Gilbert darling, you and I are going to be very firm with this
child. I can plainly see she needs a guiding hand. She has had
much too much responsibility for so young a girl. We are going to
alter all that. We are going to make her very happy--as well as
good."

She tapped Sylvia's shoulder with smiling significance, looking at
her husband to set his seal to the declaration.

Mr. Ingleton was obviously feeling very uncomfortable. He glanced
at Sylvia almost appealingly.

"I hope we are all going to be happy," he said rather gruffly.
"Don't see why we shouldn't be, I'm sure. I like a quiet life
myself. Got some tea for us, Sylvia?"

Sylvia turned, stiffly unresponsive to her step-mother's
blandishments. "This way," she said, and crossed the hall to the
drawing-room.

It was a beautiful room aglow just then with the rays of the
western sun. Mrs. Ingleton looked all around her with smiling
criticism, and nodded to herself as if seeing her way to many
improvements. She walked to the windows.

"What a funny, old-fashioned garden! Quite medieval! I foresee a
very busy time in store. Who lives on the other side of this
property?"

"Preston--George Preston, the M.F.H.," said her husband, lounging
up behind her. "About the richest man about here. Made his money
on the Turf."

She gave him a quick look. "Is he young?" she asked.

He hesitated, "Not very."

"Married?" questioned Mrs. Ingleton, with the air of a ferret
pursuing its quarry down a hole.

"No," said the squire, somewhat reluctantly.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Ingleton, in a tone of satisfaction.

"Won't you have some tea?" said Sylvia's grave voice behind them.

Mrs. Ingleton wheeled. "Bless the child!" she exclaimed. "She has
a face as long as a fiddle. Let us have tea by all means. I am as
hungry as a hunter. I hope there is something really substantial
for us."

"It is less than an hour to dinner," said Sylvia.

She hardly looked at her father. Somehow she had a feeling that he
did not want to meet her eyes.

He sat in almost unbroken silence while she poured out the tea,
"for the last time, dear," as her step-mother jocosely remarked,
and for his sake alone she exerted herself to make polite
conversation with this new mistress of the Manor.

It was not easy, for Mrs. Ingleton did not want to talk upon
indifferent subjects. Her whole attitude was one of unconcealed
triumph. It was obvious that she meant to enjoy her conquest to
the utmost. She was not in the least tired after her journey; she
was one of those people who never tire. And as soon as she had
refreshed herself with tea she announced her intention of going
round the house.

Her husband, however, intervened upon this point, assuring her that
there would be ample time in the morning, and Mrs. Ingleton yielded
it not very gracefully.

She was placed at the head of the table at dinner, but she could
not accept the position without comment.

"Poor little Sylvia! We shall have to make up for this, or I shall
never be forgiven," with an arch look at the squire which
completely missed its mark.

There were no subtleties about Gilbert Ingleton. He was thoroughly
uncomfortable, and his manner proclaimed the fact aloud. If he
were happy with his enchantress away from home, the home atmosphere
completely dispelled all enchantment. Was it the fault of the
slim, erect girl with the red-brown eyes who sat so gravely silent
on his right hand?

He could not in justice accuse her, and yet the strong sense of her
disapproval irritated him. What right had she, his daughter, to
sit in judgment upon him? Surely he was entitled to act for
himself--choose his own course--make his own hell if he wished! It
was all quite unanswerable. He knew she would not have attempted
to answer if he had put it to her, but that very fact made him the
more sore. He hated to feel himself at variance with Sylvia.

"Can't you play something?" he said to her in desperation as they
entered the drawing-room after dinner.

She looked at bun, her wide brows slightly raised.

"Well?" he questioned impatiently.

"Ask--Mrs. Ingleton first!" she said in a rapid whisper.

Mrs. Ingleton caught it, however. She had the keen senses of a
lynx. "Now, Sylvia, my child, come here!" she commanded playfully.
"I can't have you calling me that, you know. If we are going to
live together, we must have absolutely clear understanding between
us on all points. Don't you agree with me, Gilbert?"

Ingleton growled something unintelligible, and made for the open
window.

"Don't go!" said his wife with a touch of peremptoriness. "I want
you here. Tell this dear child that as I have determined to be a
mother to her she is to address me as such!"

Ingleton barely paused. "You must settle that between yourselves,"
he said gruffly. "And for heaven's sake, don't fight over it!"

He passed heavily forth, and Sylvia, after a very brief hesitation,
sat down in a chair facing her step-mother.

"I am sorry," she said quietly. "But I can't call you Mother.
Anything else you like to suggest, but not that."

Mrs. Ingleton uttered an unpleasant laugh. "I hope you are going
to try and be sensible, my dear," she said, "for I assure you
high-flown sentiment does not appeal to me in the very least. As
head of your father's house, I must insist upon being treated with
due respect. Let me warn you at the outset, though quite willing
to befriend you, I am not a very patient woman. I am not prepared
to put up with any slights."

Her voice lifted gradually as she proceeded till she ended upon a
note that was almost shrill.

Sylvia sat very still. Her hands were clasped tightly about her
knee. Her face was pale, and the red-brown eyes glittered a
little, but she betrayed no other signs of emotion,

"I quite understand," she said after a moment. "But that doesn't
solve the present difficulty, does it? I cannot possibly call you
by a name that is sacred to someone else."

She spoke very quietly, but there was indomitable resolution in her
very calm--a resolution that exasperated Mrs. Ingleton almost
beyond endurance.

She arose with a sweeping gesture. "Oh, very well then," she said.
"You shall call me Madam!"

Sylvia looked up at her. "I think that is quite a good idea," she
said in a tone that somehow stung her hearer, unbearably. "I will
do that."

"And don't be impertinent!" she said, beginning to pace to and fro
like an angry tigress. "I will not put up with it, Sylvia. I warn
you. You have been thoroughly spoilt all your life. I know the
signs quite well. And you have come to think that you can do
anything you like. But that is not so any longer. I am mistress
here, and I mean to maintain my position. Any hint of rebellion
from you or anyone else I shall punish with the utmost severity.
So now you understand."

"I do indeed," said Sylvia.

She had not stirred from her chair, but sat watching her
step-mother's agitated pacing with grim attention. It was her
first acquaintance with the most violent temper she had ever
encountered in a woman, and it interested her. She was no longer
conscious of being angry herself. The whole affair had become a
sort of bitter comedy. She looked upon it with a species of
impersonal scorn.

Mrs. Ingleton was obviously lashing herself to fury. She could not
imagine why, not realizing at that stage that she was the victim of
a jealousy so fierce as to amount almost to a mania. She wondered
if her father were watching them from the terrace, and contemplated
getting up to join him, but hesitated to do so, reflecting that it
might appear like flight. At the same time she did not see why she
should remain as a target for her step-mother's invective, and she
had just decided upon departure when Bliss, the butler, opened the
door with his own peculiarly quiet flourish and announced, "Captain
Preston!"

A clean-shaven little man, with a horsey appearance about the legs
which evening-dress wholly failed to conceal, entered, and
instinctively Sylvia rose to receive him.

Mrs. Ingleton stopped short and stared as they met in the middle of
the room.

"Hullo, Sylvia!" said the little man, and stamped forward as if he
had just dismounted after a long ride. He had a loud voice and an
assertive manner, and Mrs. Ingleton gazed at him in frozen surprise.

Sylvia turned towards her. "May I introduce Mr. Preston--the
M.F.H.?" Her tone was cold. If the newcomer's advent had been a
welcome diversion it obviously gave her no pleasure.

Preston, however, plainly did not stand in need of any
encouragement. He strode up to Mrs. Ingleton, confronting her with
aggressive self-assurance, "Delighted to meet you, madam. You are
Sylvia's step-mother, I presume? I hope we shall be more nearly
connected before long. Anyone belongin' to Sylvia has my highest
esteem. She has the straightest seat on a horse of any woman I
know. Ingleton and I between us taught her all she knows about
huntin', and she does us credit, by gad!"

He winked at Mrs. Ingleton as he ended, and Sylvia bit her lip.
Mrs. Ingleton, however, held out her hand.

"Pray sit down, Mr. Preston! You are most welcome. Sylvia, my
dear, will you find the cigarettes?"

Sylvia took a box from the table and handed it to him. He took it
from her, openly pinching her fingers as he did so, and offered it
to her instead.

"After you, Cherry-ripe! You're lookin' spiffin' to-night, hey,
Mrs. Ingleton? What do you think of your new daughter?"

Mrs. Ingleton was smiling. "I am only wondering what all you young
men can be about," she said. "I should have thought one of you
would have captured her long ago."