The Mistress of Shenstone Part 25

He looked around, in man-like helplessness; yet feeling something must be done. A long ivory fan, of exquisite workmans.h.i.+p, lay on a table near. He caught it up, and handed it to her. She took it; and to please him, opened it, fanning herself gently as she talked.

"I am not ill, Jim; really dear, I am not. I am only strangely happy and thankful. It seems too wonderful for our poor earthly hearts to understand. And I am a little frightened about the future--but you will help me to face that, I know. And I am rather worried about little things I have done wrong. It seems foolish--but as soon as I realised Michael was coming home, I became conscious of hosts of sins of omission, and I scarcely know where to begin to set them right. And the worst of all is--Jim! we have lost little Peter's grave! No one seems able to locate it. It is so trying of the gardeners; and so wrong of me; because of course I ought to have planted it with flowers. And Michael would have expected a little marble slab, by now. But I, stupidly, was too ill to see to the funeral; and now Anson declares they put him in the plantation, and George swears it was in the shrubbery. I have been consulting Groatley who always has ideas, and expresses them so well, and he says: 'Choose a suitable spot, m' lady; order a handsome tomb; plant it with choice flowers; and who's to be the wiser, till the resurrection?' Groatley is always resourceful; but of course I never deceive Michael. Fancy little Peter rising from the shrubbery, when Michael had mourned for years over a marble tomb on the lawn! But it really is a great worry. They must all begin digging, and keep on until they find something definite. It will be good for the shrubbery and the plantation, like the silly old man in the parable--no, I mean fable--who pretended he had hidden a treasure. Oh, Jim, don't look so distressed. I ought not to pour out all these trivial things to you; but since I have known Michael is coming back, my mind seems to have become foolish and trivial again. Michael always has that effect upon me; because--though he himself is so great and clever--he really thinks trivial and unimportant things are a woman's vocation in life. But oh, Jim--Jim Airth--with _you_ I am always lifted straight to the big things; and our big thing to-day is this:--that you never killed Michael. Do you remember telling me how, as you lay in your tent recovering from the fever, if some one could have come in and told you Michael was alive and well, and that you had not killed him after all, you would have given your life for the relief of that moment? Well, _I_ am that 'some one,' and _this_ is the 'moment'; and when first I had the telegram I could think of nothing--absolutely nothing, Jim--but what it would be to you."

"What telegram?" gasped Jim Airth. "In heaven's name, Myra, what do you mean?"

"Michael's telegram. It lies on the mantelpiece. Read it, Jim."

Jim Airth turned, took up the telegram and drew it from the envelope with steady fingers. He still thought Myra was raving.

He read it through, slowly. The wording was unmistakable; but he read it through again. As he did so he slightly turned, so that his back was toward the couch.

The blow was so stupendous. He could only realise one thing, for the moment:--that the woman who watched him read it, must not as yet see his face.

She spoke.

"Is it not almost impossible to believe, Jim? Ronald and Billy were lunching here, when it came. Billy seemed stunned; but Ronnie was delighted. He said he had always believed the first men to rush in had been captured, and that no actual proofs of Michael's death had ever been found. They never explained to me before, that there had been no funeral.

I suppose they thought it would seem more horrible. But I never take much account of bodies. If it weren't for the burden of having a weird little urn about, and wondering what to do with it, I should approve of cremation. I sometimes felt I ought to make a pilgrimage to see the grave. I knew Michael would have wished it. He sets much store by graves--all the Inglebys lie in family vaults. That makes it worse about Peter. Ronnie went up to town at once to telegraph out the money. Billy went with him. Do you think five hundred is enough? Jim?--Jim! Are you not thankful? Do say something, Jim."

Jim Airth put back the telegram upon the mantelpiece. His big hand shook.

"What is 'Veritas'?" he asked, without looking round.

"That is our private code, Jim; Michael's and mine. My mother once wired to me in Michael's name, and to him in mine--poor mamma often does eccentric things, to get her own way--and it made complications, Michael was very much annoyed. So we settled always to sign important telegrams 'Veritas,' which means: 'This is really from me.'"

"Then--your husband--is coming home to you?" said Jim Airth, slowly.

"Yes, Jim," the sweet voice faltered, for the first time, and grew tremulous. "Michael is coming home."

Then Jim Airth turned round, and faced her squarely. Myra had never seen anything so terrible as his face.

"You are mine," he said; "not his."

Myra looked up at him, in dumb sorrowful appeal. She closed the ivory fan, clasping her hands upon it. The unquestioning finality of her patient silence, goaded Jim Airth to madness, and let loose the torrent of his fierce wild protest against this inevitable--this unrelenting, fate.

"You are mine," he said, "not his. Your love is mine! Your body is mine!

Your whole life is mine! I will not leave you to another man. Ah, I know I said we could not marry! I know I said I should go abroad. But you would have remained faithful to me; and I, to you. We might have been apart; we might have been lonely; we might have been at different ends of the earth; but--we should have been each other's. I could have left you to loneliness; but, by G.o.d, I will not leave you to another!"

Myra rose, moved forward a few steps and stood, leaning her arm upon the mantelpiece and looking down upon the bank of ferns and lilies.

"Hush, Jim," she said, gently. "You forget to whom you are speaking."

"I am speaking," cried Jim Airth, in furious desperation, "to the woman I have won for my own; and who is mine, and none other's. If it had not been for my pride and my folly, we should have been married by now--_married_, Myra--and far away. I left you, I know; but--by heaven, I may as well tell you all now--it was pride--d.a.m.nable false pride--that drove me away. I always meant to come back. I was waiting for you to send; but anyhow I should have come back. Would to G.o.d I had done as you implored me to do! By now we should have been together--out of reach of this cursed telegram,--and far away!"

Myra slowly lifted her eyes and looked at him. He, blinded by pain and pa.s.sion, failed to mark the look, or he might have taken warning. As it was, he rushed on, headlong.

Myra, very white, with eyelids lowered, leaned against the mantelpiece; slowly furling and unfurling the ivory fan.

"But, darling," urged Jim Airth, "it is not yet too late. Oh, Myra, I have loved you so! Our love has been so wonderful. Have I not taught you what love is? The poor cold travesty you knew before--_that_ was not love! Oh, Myra! you will come away with me, my own beloved? You won't put me through the h.e.l.l of leaving you to another man? Myra, look at me! Say you will come."

Then Lady Ingleby slowly closed the fan, grasping it firmly in her right hand. She threw back her head, and looked Jim Airth full in the eyes.

"So _this_ is your love," she said. "This is what it means? Then I thank G.o.d I have hitherto only known the 'cold travesty,' which at least has kept me pure, and held me high. What? Would you drag _me_ down to the level of the woman you have scorned for a dozen years? And, dragging me down, would you also trail, with me, in the mire, the n.o.ble name of the man whom you have ventured to call friend? My husband may not have given me much of those things a woman desires. But he has trusted me with his name, and with his honour; he has left me, mistress of his home. When he comes back he will find me what he himself made me--mistress of Shenstone; he will find me where he left me, awaiting his return. You are no longer speaking to a widow, Lord Airth; nor to a woman left desolate.

You are speaking to Lord Ingleby's wife, and you may as well learn how Lord Ingleby's wife guards Lord Ingleby's name, and defends her own honour, and his." She lifted her hand swiftly and struck him, with the ivory fan, twice across the cheek. "Traitor!" she said, "and coward!

Leave this house, and never set foot in it again!"

Jim Airth staggered back, his face livid--ashen, his hand involuntarily raised to ward off a third blow. Then the furious blood surged back. Two crimson streaks marked his cheek. He sprang forward; with a swift movement caught the fan from Lady Ingleby's hands, and whirled it above his head. His eyes blazed into hers. For a moment she thought he was going to strike her. She neither flinched nor moved; only the faintest smile curved the corners of her mouth into a scornful question.

Then Jim Airth gripped the fan in both hands; with a twist of his strong fingers snapped it in half, the halves into quarters, and again, with another wrench, crushed those into a hundred fragments--flung them at her feet; and, turning on his heel, left the room, and left the house.

CHAPTER XXIII

WHAT BILLY KNEW

Ronald and Billy had spoken but little, as they sped to the railway station, earlier on that afternoon.

"Rummy go," volunteered Ronald, launching the tentative comment into the somewhat oppressive silence.

Billy made no rejoinder.

"Why did you insist on coming with me?" asked Ronald.

"I'm not coming with you," replied Billy laconically.

"Where then, Billy? Why so tragic? Are you going to leap from London Bridge? Don't do it Billy-boy! You never had a chance. You were merely a nice kid. I'm the chap who might be tragic; and see--I'm going to the bank to despatch the wherewithal for bringing the old boy back. Take example by my fort.i.tude, Billy."

Billy's explosion, when it came, was so violent, so choice, and so unlike Billy, that Ronald relapsed into wondering silence.

But once in the train, locked into an empty first-cla.s.s smoker, Billy turned a white face to his friend.

"Ronnie," he said, "I am going straight to Sir Deryck Brand. He is the only man I know, with a head on his shoulders."

"Thank you," said Ronnie. "I suppose I dandle mine on my knee. But why this urgent need of a man with his head so uniquely placed?"

"Because," said Billy, "that telegram is a lie."

"Nonsense, Billy! The wish is father to the thought! Oh, shame on you, Billy! Poor old Ingleby!"

"It is a lie," repeated Billy, doggedly.

"But look," objected Ronald, unfolding the telegram. "Here you are.

'_Veritas._' What do you make of that?"

"Veritas be hanged!" said Billy. "It's a lie; and we've got to find out what d.a.m.ned rascal has sent it."

"But what possible reason have you to throw doubt on it?" inquired Ronald, gravely.