The Mistress of Shenstone Part 15

"Thus evermore, shall rise to Thee, Glad hymns of praise from land and sea."

Jim Airth's big ba.s.s boomed through the little church; and Myra, close to his shoulder, sang with a face so radiant that none could doubt the reality of her praise.

Then back to a cold supper at the Moorhead Inn; after which they strolled out to the honeysuckle arbour for Jim's evening pipe, and a last quiet talk.

It was then that Jim Airth said, suddenly: "By the way I wish you would tell me more about Lady Ingleby. What kind of a woman is she? Easy to talk to?"

For a moment Myra was taken aback. "Why, Jim--I hardly know. Easy? Yes, I think _you_ will find her easy to talk to."

"Does she speak of her husband's death, or is it a tabooed subject?"

"She speaks of it," said Myra, softly, "to those who can understand."

"Ah! Do you suppose she will like to hear details of those last days?"

"Possibly; if you feel inclined to give them, Jim--do you know who did it?"

A surprised silence in the arbour. Jim removed his pipe, and looked at her.

"Do I know--who--did--what?" he asked slowly.

"Do you know the name of the man who made the mistake which killed Lord Ingleby?"

Jim returned his pipe to his mouth.

"Yes, dear, I do," he said, quietly. "But how came you to know of the blunder? I thought the whole thing was hushed up, at home."

"It was," said Myra; "but Lady Ingleby was told, and I heard it then.

Jim, if she asked you the name, should you tell her?"

"Certainly I should," replied Jim Airth. "I was strongly opposed, from the first, to any mystery being made about it. I hate a hushing-up policy. But there was the fellow's future to consider. The world never lets a thing of that sort drop. He would always have been pointed out as 'The chap who killed Ingleby'--just as if he had done it on purpose; and every man of us knew that would be a millstone round the neck of any career. And then the whole business had been somewhat irregular; and 'the powers that be' have a way of taking all the kudos, if experiments are successful; and making a what-on-earth-were-you-dreaming-of row, if they chance to be a failure. Hence the fact that we are all such stick-in-the-muds, in the service. n.o.body dares be original. The risks are too great, and too astonishingly unequal. If you succeed, you get a D.S.O. from a grateful government, and a laurel crown from an admiring nation. If you fail, an indignant populace derides your name, and a pained and astonished government claps you into jail. That's not the way to encourage progress, or make fellows prompt to take the initiative. The right or the wrong of an action should not be determined by its success or failure."

Lady Ingleby's mind had paused at the beginning of Jim's tirade.

"They could not have taken Michael's kudos," she said. "It must have been patented. He was always most careful to patent all his inventions."

"Eh, what?" said Jim Airth. "Oh, I see. 'Kudos,' my dear girl, means 'glory'; not a new kind of explosive. And why do you call Lord Ingleby 'Michael'?"

"I knew him intimately," said Lady Ingleby.

"I see. Well, as I was saying, I protested about the hushing up, but was talked over; and the few who knew the facts pledged their word of honour to keep silence. Only, the name was to be given to Lady Ingleby, if she desired to know it; and some of us thought you might as well put it in _The Times_ at once, as tell a woman. Then we heard she had decided not to know."

"What do you think of her decision?" asked Lady Ingleby.

"I think it proved her to be a very just-minded woman, and a very unusual one, if she keeps to it. But it would be rather like a woman, to make a fine decision such as that during the tension of a supreme moment, and then indulge in private speculation afterwards."

"Did you hear her reason, Jim? She said she did not wish that a man should walk this earth, whose hand she could not bring herself to touch in friendship."

"Poor loyal soul!" said Jim Airth, greatly moved. "Myra, if _I_ got accidentally done for, as Ingleby was,--should _you_ feel so, for my sake?"

"No!" cried Myra, pa.s.sionately. "If I lost _you_, my beloved, I should never want to touch any other man's hand, in friendship or otherwise, as long as I lived!"

"Ah," mused Jim Airth. "Then you don't consider Lady Ingleby's reason for her decision proved a love such as ours?"

Myra laid her beautiful head against his shoulder.

"Jim," she said, brokenly, "I do not feel myself competent to discuss any other love. One thing only is clear to me;--I never realised what love meant, until I knew _you_."

A long silence in the honeysuckle arbour.

Then Jim Airth cried almost fiercely to the woman in his arms: "Can you really think you have been right to keep me waiting, even for a day?"

And she who loved him with a love beyond expression could frame no words in answer to that question. Thus it came to pa.s.s that, in the days to come, it was there, unanswered; ready to return and beat upon her brain with merciless reiteration: "Was I right to keep him waiting, even for a day."

In the hall, beside the marble table, where lay the visitors' book, they paused to say good-night. From the first, Myra had never allowed him up the stairs until her door was closed. "If you don't keep the rules I think it right to make, Jim," she had said, with her little tender smile, "I shall, in self-defence, engage Miss Murgatroyd as chaperon; and what sort of a time would you have then?"

So Jim was pledged to remain below until her door had been shut five minutes. After which he used to tramp up the stairs whistling:

"A long long life, to my sweet wife, And mates at sea; And keep our bones from Davy Jones, Where'er we be.

And may you meet a mate as sweet----"

Then his door would bang, and Myra would venture to give vent to her suppressed laughter, and to sing a soft little

"Yeo ho! we go!--Yeo ho! Yeo ho!"

for sheer overflowing happiness.

But this was the last evening. A parting impended. Also there had been tense moments in the honeysuckle arbour.

Jim's blue eyes were mutinous. He stood holding her hands against his breast, as he had done in Horseshoe Cove, when the waves swept round their feet, and he had cried: "You _must_ climb!"

"So to-morrow night," he said, "you will be at the Lodge, Shenstone; and I, at my Club in town. Do you know how hard it is to be away from you, even for an hour? Do you realise that if you had not been so obstinate we never need have been parted at all? We could have gone away from here, husband and wife together. If you had really cared, you wouldn't have wanted to wait."

Myra smiled up into his angry eyes.

"Jim," she whispered, "it is _so_ silly to say: '_If_ you had really cared'; because you know, perfectly well, that I care for you, more than any woman in the world has ever cared for any man before! And I do a.s.sure you, Jim, that you couldn't have married me _validly_ from here--and think how awful it would be, to love as much as we love and then find out that we were not _validly_ married--and when you come to my home, and fetch me away from there, you will admit--yes really _admit_--that I was right. You will have to apologise humbly for having said 'Bosh!' so often. Jim--dearest! Look at the clock! I _must_ go. Poor Miss Murgatroyd will grow so tired of listening for us. She always leaves her door a crack open. So does Miss Susannah. They have all taken to sleeping with their doors ajar. I deftly led the conversation round to riddles yesterday, when I was alone with them for a few minutes, and asked sternly: 'When is a door, not a door?' They all answered: 'When it is a jar!' quite unabashed; and Miss Eliza asked another! I believe Susie stands at her crack, in the darkness, in hopes of seeing you march by....

No, don't say naughty words. They are dears, all three of them; and we shall miss them horribly to-morrow. Oh, Jim--I've just had such a brilliant idea! I shall ask them to be my bridesmaids! Can't you see them following me up the aisle? It would be worse than the d.u.c.h.ess giving Jane away. Ah, you don't know that story? I will tell it you, some day. Jim, say 'Good-night' quickly, and let me go."

"Once," said Jim Airth, tightening his grasp on her wrists--"once, Myra, we said no 'good-night,' and no 'good-morning.'"

"Jim, darling!" said Myra, gently; "on that night, before I went to sleep, you said to me: 'We are not alone. _G.o.d is here_.' And then you repeated part of the hundred and thirty-ninth psalm. And, Jim--I thought you the best and strongest man I had ever known; and I felt that, all my life, I should trust you, as I trusted my G.o.d."

Jim Airth loosed the hands he had held so tightly, and kissed them very gently. "Good-night, my sweetheart," he said, "and G.o.d bless you!" Then he turned away to the marble table.

Myra ran swiftly up the stairs and closed her door.