The Mistress of Shenstone

“Hullo!” he said. “I meant to keep watch all the time; but I must have slept. Are you all right? Sure? No cramp? Well, I have a cramp in my left leg which will make me kick down the cliff in another minute, if I don’t move it. Let me help you up… That’s the way. Now you sit safely there, while I get unwedged… By Jove! I believe I’ve grown into the cliff, like a fossil ichthyosaurus. Did you ever see an ichthyosaurus? Doesn’t it seem years since you said: ‘And who is Davy Jones?’ Don’t you want some breakfast? I suppose it’s about time we went home.”

Talking gaily all the time, Jim Airth drew up his long limbs, rubbing them vigorously; stretched his arms above his head; then passed his hand over his tumbled hair.

“My wig!” he said. “What a morning! And how good to be alive!”

Myra stole a look at him. His eyes were turned seaward. The same dawn-light was in them, as shone in her own.

“Don’t you want breakfast?” said Jim Airth, and pulled out his watch.

“I do,” said Myra, gaily. “And now I can venture to tell you what delicious home-made bread I had for tea. What time is it, Jim?”

“Half past three. In a few minutes the sun will rise. Watch! Did you ever before see the dawn? Is it not wonderful? Always more of pearl and silver than at sunset. Look how the narrow rift has widened and spread right across the sky. The Monarch of Day is coming! See the little herald clouds, in livery of pink and gold. Now watch where the sea looks brightest. Ah!.. There is the tip of his blood-red rim, rising out of the ocean. And how quickly the whole ball appears. Now see the rippling path of gold and crimson, a royal highway on the waters, right from the shore below us, to the footstool of his brilliant Majesty… A new day has begun; and we have not said ‘Good-morning.’ Why should we? We did not say ‘Good-night.’ How ideal it would be, never to say ‘Good-morning’; and never to say ‘Good-night.’ The night would be always ‘good’, and so would the morning. All life would be one grand crescendo of good – better – best. What? Have we found the Best? Ah, hush! I did not mean to say that yet… Are you ready for the climb down? No, I can’t allow any peeping over, and considering. If you really feel afraid of it, I will run to Tregarth as quickly as possible, rouse the sleeping village, bring ropes and men, and haul you up from the top.”

“I absolutely decline to be ‘hauled up from the top,’ or to be left here alone,” declared Lady Ingleby.

“Then the sooner we start down, the better,” said Jim Airth. “I’m going first.” He was over the edge before Myra could open her lips to expostulate. “Now turn round. Hold on to the ledge firmly with your hands, and give me your feet. Do you hear? Do as I tell you. Don’t hesitate. It is less steep than it seemed yesterday. We are quite safe. Come on!.. That’s right.”

Then Lady Ingleby passed through a most terrifying five minutes, while she yielded in blind obedience to the strong hands beneath her, and the big voice which encouraged and threatened alternately.

But when the descent was over and she stood on the shore beside Jim Airth; when together they turned and looked in silence up the path of glory on the rippling waters, to the blazing beauty of the rising sun, thankful tears rushed to Lady Ingleby’s eyes.

“Oh, Jim,” she exclaimed, “God is good! It is so wonderful to be alive!”

Then Jim Airth turned, his face transfigured, the sunlight in his eyes, and opened his arms. “Myra,” he said. “We have found the Best.”

They walked along the shore, and up the steep street of the sleeping village, hand in hand like happy children.

Arrived at the Moorhead Inn, they pushed open the garden gate, and stepped noiselessly across the sunlit lawn.

The front door was firmly bolted. Jim Airth slipped round to the back, but returned in a minute shaking his head. Then he felt in his pocket for the big knife which had served them so well; pushed back the catch of the coffee-room window; softly raised the sash; swung one leg over, and drew Myra in after him.

Once in the familiar room, with its mustard-pots and salt-cellars, its table-cloths, left on in readiness for breakfast, they both lapsed into fits of uncontrollable laughter; laughter the more overwhelming, because it had to be silent.

Jim, recovering first, went off to the larder to forage for food.

Lady Ingleby flew noiselessly up to her room to wash her hands, and smooth her hair. She returned in two minutes to find Jim, very proud of his success, setting out a crusty home-made loaf, a large cheese, and a foaming tankard of ale.

Lady Ingleby longed for tea, and had never in her life drunk ale out of a pewter pot. But not for worlds would she have spoiled Jim Airth’s boyish delight in the success of his raid on the larder.

So they sat at the centre table, Myra in Miss Murgatroyd’s place, and Jim in Susie’s, and consumed their bread-and-cheese, and drank their beer, with huge appetites and prodigious enjoyment. And Jim used Miss Susannah’s napkin, and pretended to be sentimental over it. And Myra reproved him, after the manner of Miss Murgatroyd reproving Susie. After which they simultaneously exclaimed: “Oh, my dear love!” in Miss Eliza’s most affecting manner; then linked fingers for a wish, and could neither of them think of one.

By the time they had finished, and cleared away, it was half past five. They passed into the hall together.

“You must get some more sleep,” said Jim Airth, authoritatively.

“I will, if you wish it,” whispered Myra; “but I never, in my whole life, felt so strong or so rested. Jim, I shall sit at your table, and pour out your coffee at breakfast. Let’s aim to have it at nine, as usual. It will be such fun to watch the Murgatroyds, and to remember our cheese and beer. If you are down first, order our breakfasts at the same table.”

“All right,” said Jim Airth.

Myra commenced mounting the stairs, but turned on the fifth step and hung over the banisters to smile at him.

Jim Airth reached up his hand. “How can I let you go?” he exclaimed suddenly.

Myra leaned over, and smiled into his adoring eyes.

“How can I go?” she whispered, tenderly.

Jim Airth took both her hands in his. His eyes blazed up into hers.

“Myra,” he said, “when shall we be married?”

Myra’s face flamed, just as the soft white clouds had flamed when the sun arose. But she met the fire of his eyes without flinching.

“When you will, Jim,” she answered gently.

“As soon as possible, then,” said Jim Airth, eagerly.

Myra withdrew her hands, and mounted two more steps; then turned to bend and whisper: “Why?”

“Because,” replied Jim Airth, “I do not know how to bear that there should be a day, or an hour, or a minute, when we cannot be together.”

“Ah, do you feel that, too?” whispered Myra.

“Too?” cried Jim Airth. “Do you– Myra! Come back!”

But Lady Ingleby fled up the stairs like a hare. She had not run so fast since she was a little child of ten. He heard her happy laugh, and the closing of her door.

Then he unbarred the front entrance; and stepping out, stood in the sunshine, on the path where he had seen his Fairy-land Princess arrive.

He stretched his arms over his head.

“Mine!” he said. “Mine, altogether! Oh, my God! At last, I have won the Highest!”

Then he raced down the street to the beach; and five minutes later, in the full strength of his vigorous manhood, he was swimming up the golden path, towards the rising sun.

CHAPTER XIV

GOLDEN DAYS

The week which followed was one of ideal joy and holiday. Both knew, instinctively, that no after days could ever be quite as these first days. They were an experience which came not again, and must be realised and enjoyed with whole-hearted completeness.

At first Jim Airth talked with determination of a special licence, and pleaded for no delay. But Lady Ingleby, usually vague to a degree on all questions of law or matters of business, fortunately felt doubtful as to whether it would be wise to be married in a name other than her own; and, though she might have solved the difficulty by at once revealing her identity to Jim Airth, she was anxious to choose her own time and place for this revelation, and had set her heart upon making it amid the surroundings of her own beautiful home at Shenstone.

“You see, Jim,” she urged, “I have a few friends in town and at Shenstone, who take an interest in my doings; and I could hardly reappear among them married! Could I, Jim? It would seem such an unusual and unexpected termination to a rest-cure. Wouldn’t it, Jim?”

Jim Airth’s big laugh brought Miss Susie to the window. It caused sad waste of Susannah’s time, that her window looked out on the honeysuckle arbour.

“It might make quite a run on rest-cures,” said Jim Airth.

“Ah, but they couldn’t all meet you,” said Myra; and the look he received from those sweet eyes, atoned for the vague inaccuracy of the rejoinder.

So they agreed to have one week of this free untrammelled life, before returning to the world of those who knew them; and he promised to come and see her in her own home, before taking the final steps which should make her altogether his.

So they went gay walks along the cliffs in the breezy sunshine; and Myra, clinging to Jim’s arm, looked down from above upon their ledge.

They revisited Horseshoe Cove at low water, and Jim Airth spent hours cutting the hurried niches into proper steps, so as to leave a staircase to the ledge, up which people, who chanced in future to be caught by the tide, might climb to safety. Myra sat on the beach and watched him, her eyes alight with tender memories; but she absolutely refused to mount again.

“No, Jim,” she said; “not until we come here on our honeymoon. Then, if you wish, you shall take your wife back to the place where we passed those wonderful hours. But not now.”

Jim, who expected always to have his own way, unless he was given excellent reasons in black and white for not having it, was about to expostulate and insist, when he saw tears on her lashes and a quiver of the sweet smiling lips, and gave in at once without further question.

They hired a tent, and pitched it on the shore at Tregarth, Myra telegraphed for a bathing-dress, and Jim went into the sea in his flannels and tried to teach her to swim, holding her up beneath her chin and saying; “One, two! ONE, TWO!” far louder than Myra had ever had it said to her before. Thus, amid much splashing and laughter, Lady Ingleby accomplished her swim of ten yards.

Miss Murgatroyd was shocked; nay, more than shocked. Miss Murgatroyd was scandalised! She took to her bed forthwith, expecting Miss Eliza and Miss Susannah to follow her example – in the spirit, if not to the letter. But, released from Amelia’s personal supervision, romantic little Susie led Eliza astray; and the two took a furtive and fearful joy in seeing all they could of the “goings on” of the couple who had boldly converted the prosaic Cornish hotel into a land of excitement and romance.

From the moment when on the morning after their adventure, Myra, with yellow roses in the belt of her white gown, had swept into the coffee-room at five minutes past nine, saying: “My dear Jim, have I kept you waiting? I hope the coffee is not cold?” – all life had seemed transformed to Miss Susie. Turning quickly, she had caught the look Jim Airth gave to the lovely woman who took her place opposite him at his hitherto lonely table, and, still smiling into his eyes, lifted the coffee-pot.

Amelia’s stern whisper had recalled her to her senses, and prevented any further glancing round; but she had heard Myra say: “I forgot your sugar, Jim. One lump, or two?” and Jim Airth’s reply: “As usual, thanks, dear,” not knowing, that with a silent twinkle of fun, he laid an envelope over his cup, as a sign to Myra, waiting with poised sugar-tongs, that “as usual” meant no sugar at all!

Later on, when she one day met Lady Ingleby alone in a passage, Miss Susannah ventured two hurried questions.

“Oh, tell me, my dear! Is it really true that you are going to marry Mr. Airth? And have you known him long?”

And Myra smiling down into Susie’s plump anxious face replied: “Well, as a matter of fact, Miss Susannah, Jim Airth is going to marry me. And I cannot explain how long I have known him. I seem to have known him all my life.”

“Ah,” whispered Miss Susannah with a knowing smile of conscious perspicacity; “Eliza and I felt sure it was a tiff.”

This remark appeared absolutely incomprehensible to Lady Ingleby; and not until she had repeated it to Jim, and he had shouted with laughter, and called her a bare-faced deceiver, did she realise that the “tiff” was supposed to have been operative during the whole time she and Jim Airth had sat at separate tables, and showed no signs of acquaintance.

However, she smiled kindly into the archly nodding face. Then, in the consciousness of her own great happiness, enveloped little Susie in her beautiful arms, and kissed her.

Miss Susannah never forgot that embrace. It was to her a reflected realisation of what it must be to be loved by Jim Airth. And, thereafter, whenever Miss Murgatroyd saw fit to use such adjectives as “indecent,” “questionable,” or “highly improper,” Miss Susie bravely gathered up her wool-work, and left the room.

Thus the golden days went by, and a letter came for Jim Airth from Lady Ingleby’s secretary. Her ladyship was away at present but would be returning to Shenstone on the following Monday, and would be pleased to give him an interview on Tuesday afternoon. The two o’clock express from Charing Cross would be met at Shenstone station, unless he wrote suggesting another.

“Now that is very civil,” said Jim to Myra, as he passed her the letter, “and how well it suits our plans. We had already arranged both to go up to town on Monday, and you on to Shenstone. So I can come down by that two o’clock train on Tuesday, get my interview with Lady Ingleby over as quickly as may be, and dash off to my girl at the Lodge. I hope to goodness she won’t want to give me tea!”

“Which ‘she’?” asked Myra, smiling. “I shall certainly want to give you tea.”

“Then I shall decline Lady Ingleby’s,” said Jim with decision.

Even during those wonderful days he went on steadily with his book, Myra sitting near him in the smoking-room, writing letters or reading, while he worked. “I do better work if you are within reach, or at all events, within sight,” Jim had said; and it was impossible that Lady Ingleby’s mind should not have contrasted the thrill of pleasure this gave her, with the old sense of being in the way if work was to be done; and of being shut out from the chief interests of Michael’s life, by the closing of the laboratory door. Ah, how different from the way in which Jim already made her a part of himself, enfolding her into his every interest.

She wrote fully of her happiness to Mrs. Dalmain, telling her in detail the unusual happenings which had brought it so rapidly to pass. Also a few lines to her old friend the Duchess of Meldrum, merely announcing the fact of her engagement and the date of her return to Shenstone, promising full particulars later. This letter held also a message for Ronald and Billy, should they chance to be at Overdene.

Sunday evening, their last at Tregarth, came all too soon. They went to the little church together, sitting among the simple fisher folk at Evensong. As they looked over one hymn book, and sang “Eternal Father, strong to save,” both thought of “Davy Jones” in the middle of the hymn, and had to exchange a smile; yet with an instant added reverence of petition and thanksgiving.

“Thus evermore, shall rise to Thee,

Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.”

Jim Airth’s big bass 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. Nobody 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, passionately. “If I lost you, my belovèd, 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 pass 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 assure 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 duchess 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. God 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 God.”