The Mistress of Shenstone Part 11

"I was not quite eighteen. It is ten years ago."

"Did you marry for love?"

There was a long silence, while both looked steadily into the darkness.

Then Myra answered, speaking very slowly. "To be quite honest, I think I married chiefly to escape from a very unhappy home. Also I was very young, and knew nothing--nothing of life, and nothing of love; and--how can I explain, Jim Airth?--I have not learnt much during these ten long years."

"Have you been unhappy?" He asked the question very low.

"Not exactly unhappy. My husband was a very good man; kind and patient, beyond words, towards me. But I often vaguely felt I was missing the Best in life. Now--I know I was."

"How long have you been--How long has he been dead?" The deep voice was so tender, that the question could bring no pain.

"Seven months," replied Lady Ingleby. "My husband was killed in the a.s.sault on Targai."

"At Targai!" exclaimed Jim Airth, surprised into betraying his astonishment. Then at once recovering himself: "Ah, yes; of course. Seven months. I was there, you know."

But, within himself, he was thinking rapidly, and much was becoming clear.

Sergeant O'Mara! Was it possible? An exquisite refined woman such as this, bearing about her the unmistakable hall-mark of high birth and perfect breeding? The Sergeant was a fine fellow, and superior--but, good Lord! _Her_ husband! Yet girls of eighteen do foolish things, and repent ever after. A runaway match from an unhappy home; then cast off by her relations, and now left friendless and alone. But--Sergeant O'Mara! Yet no other O'Mara fell at Targai; and there _was_ some link between him and Lord Ingleby.

Then, into his musing, came Myra's soft voice, from close beside him, in the darkness: "My husband was always good to me; but----"

And Jim Airth laid his other hand over the one he held. "I am sure he was," he said, gently. "But if you had been older, and had known more of love and life you would have done differently. Don't try to explain. I understand."

And Myra gladly left it at that. It would have been so very difficult to explain further, without explaining Michael; and all that really mattered was, that--with or without explanation--Jim Airth understood.

"And now--tell me," she suggested, softly.

"Ah, yes," he said, pulling himself together, with an effort. "My experience also misses the Best, and likewise covers ten long years. But it is a harder one than yours. I married, when a boy of twenty-one, a woman, older than myself; supremely beautiful. I went mad over her loveliness. Nothing seemed to count or matter, but that. I knew she was not a good woman, but I thought she might become so; and even if she didn't it made no difference. I wanted her. Afterwards I found she had laughed at me, all the time. Also, there had all the time been another--an older man than I--who had laughed with her. He had not been in a position to marry her when I did; but two years later, he came into money. Then--she left me."

Jim Airth paused. His voice was hard with pain. The night was very black.

In the dark silence they could hear the rhythmic thunder of the waves pounding monotonously against the cliff below.

"I divorced her, of course; and he married her; but I went abroad, and stayed abroad. I never could look upon her as other than my wife. She had made a h.e.l.l of my life; robbed me of every illusion; wrecked my ideals; imbittered my youth. But I had said, before G.o.d, that I took her for my wife, until death parted us; and, so long as we were both alive, what power could free me from that solemn oath? It seemed to me that by remaining in another hemisphere, I made her second marriage less sinful.

Often, at first, I was tempted to shoot myself, as a means of righting this other wrong. But in time I outgrew that morbidness, and realised that though Love is good, Life is the greatest gift of all. To throw it away, voluntarily, is an unpardonable sin. The suicide's punishment should be loss of immortality. Well, I found work to do, of all sorts, in America, and elsewhere. And a year ago--she died. I should have come straight home, only I was booked for that muddle on the frontier they called 'a war.' I got fever after Targai; was invalided home; and here I am recruiting and finis.h.i.+ng my book. Now you can understand why loveliness in a woman, fills me with a sort of panic, even while a part of me still leaps up instinctively to wors.h.i.+p it. I had often said to myself that if I ever ventured upon matrimony again, it should be a plain face, and a n.o.ble heart; though all the while I knew I should never bring myself really to want the plain face. And yet, just as the burnt child dreads the fire, I have always tried to look away from beauty. Only--my Fairy-land Princess, may I say it?--days ago I began to feel certain that in you--YOU in golden capitals--the loveliness and the n.o.ble heart went together. But from the moment when, stepping out of the sunset, you walked up the garden path, right into my heart, the fact of YOU, just being what you are, and being here, meant so much to me, that I did not dare let it mean more. Somehow I never connected you with widowhood; and not until you said this evening on the sh.o.r.e: 'I am a soldier's widow,'

did I know that you were free.--There! Now you have heard all there is to hear. I made a bad mistake at the beginning; but I hope I am not the sort of chap you need mind sitting on a ledge with, and calling 'Jim'."

For answer, Myra's cheek came trustfully to rest against the sleeve of the rough tweed coat. "Jim," she said; "Oh, Jim!"

Presently: "So you know the Inglebys?" remarked Jim Airth.

"Yes," said Myra.

"Is 'The Lodge' near Shenstone Park?"

"The Lodge is _in_ the park. It is not at any of the gates.--I am not a gate-keeper, Jim!--It is a pretty little house, standing by itself, just inside the north entrance."

"Do you rent it from them?"

Myra hesitated, but only for the fraction of a second. "No; it is my own.

Lord Ingleby gave it to me."

"_Lord_ Ingleby?" Jim Airth's voice sounded like knitted brows. "Why not _Lady_ Ingleby?"

"It was not hers, to give. All that is hers, was his."

"I see. Which of them did you know first?"

"I have known Lady Ingleby all my life," said Myra, truthfully; "and I have known Lord Ingleby since his marriage."

"Ah. Then he became your friend, because he married her?"

Myra laughed. "Yes," she said. "I suppose so."

"What's the joke?"

"Only that it struck me as an amusing way of putting it; but it is undoubtedly true."

"Have they any children?"

Myra's voice shook slightly. "No, none. Why do you ask?"

"Well, in the campaign, I often shared Lord Ingleby's tent; and he used to talk in his sleep."

"Yes?"

"There was one name he often called and repeated."

Lady Ingleby's heart stood still.

"Yes?" she said, hardly breathing.

"It was 'Peter'," continued Jim Airth. "The night before he was killed, he kept turning in his sleep and saying: 'Peter! Hullo, little Peter!

Come here!' I thought perhaps he had a little son named Peter."

"He had no son," said Lady Ingleby, controlling her voice with effort.

"Peter was a dog of which he was very fond. Was that the only name he spoke?"

"The only one I ever heard," replied Jim Airth.

Then suddenly Lady Ingleby clasped both hands round his arm.

"Jim," she whispered, brokenly, "Not once have you spoken my name. It was a bargain. We were to be old and intimate friends. I seem to have been calling you 'Jim' all my life! But you have not yet called me 'Myra,' Let me hear it now, please."

Jim Airth laid his big hand over both of hers.