The Way of an Eagle - Ethel May Dell (i read books TXT) 📗

short, imperious note of a motor-horn, repeated many times in a succession of sharp blasts. Every one stood to view the intruder with startled curiosity for perhaps five seconds. Then there came a sudden squeal of rapture from Olga, and in a moment she had torn her arm free and was gone, darting like a swallow over the turf.
Muriel stood looking after her, but she was as one turned to stone. She was no longer aware of the children grouped around her. She no longer saw the fleeting sunshine, or felt the drift of rain in her face. Something immense and suffocating had closed about her heart. Her racing pulses had ceased to beat.
A figure familiar to her--a man's figure, unimposing in height, unremarkable in build, but straight, straight as his own sword-blade--had bounded from the car and scaled the intervening gate with monkey-like agility.
He met the child's wild rush with one arm extended; the other--Muriel frowned sharply, peering with eyes half closed, then uttered a queer choked sound that had the semblance of a laugh--in place of the other arm there was an empty sleeve.
Through the rush of the wind she heard his voice.
"Hullo, kiddie, hullo! Hope I don't intrude. I've come over on purpose to pay my respects."
Olga's answer did not reach her. She was hanging round her hero's neck, and her head was down upon Nick's shoulder. It seemed to Muriel that she was crying, but if so, she received scant sympathy from the object of her solicitude. His cracked, gay laugh rang out across the field.
"What? Why, yesterday, to be sure. Spent the night in town. No, I know I didn't. Never meant to. Wanted to steal a march on you all. Why not? I say, is that--Muriel?"
For the first time he seemed to perceive her, and instantly with a dexterous movement he had disengaged himself from Olga's clinging arms and was briskly approaching her. Two of the doctor's boys sprang to greet him, but he waved them airily aside.
"All right, you chaps, in a minute! Where's Dr. Jim? Go and tell him I'm here."
And then in a couple of seconds more they were face to face.
Muriel stared at him speechlessly. She felt cold from head to foot. She had known that he was coming. She had been steeling herself for weeks to meet him in an armour of conventional reserve. But all her efforts had come to this. Swift, swift as the wind over wheat, his coming swept across her new-born confidence. It wavered and bent its head.
"Does your Excellency deign to remember the least and humblest of her servants?" queried Nick, with a deep salaam.
The laugh in his tone brought her sharply back to the demand of circumstance. Before the watching crowd of children, she forced her white lips to smile in answer, and in a moment she had recovered her self-possession. She remembered with a quick sense of relief that this man's power over her belonged to the past alone--to the tale that was told.
The hand she held out to him was almost steady. "Yes, I remember you, Nick," she said, with chilly courtesy. "I am sorry you have been ill. Are you better?"
He made a queer grimace at her words, and for the second that her hand lay in his, she knew that he looked at her closely, piercingly.
"Thanks--awfully," he said. "As you may have noticed, there is a little less of me than there used to be. I hope you think it's an improvement."
She felt as if he had flung back her conventional sympathy in her face, and she stiffened instinctively. "I am sorry to see it," she returned icily.
Nick laughed enigmatically. "I thought you would be. Well, Olga, my child, what do you mean by growing up like this in my absence? You used to be just the right size for a kid, and now you are taller than I am."
"I'm not, Nick," the child declared with warmth. "And I never will be, there!"
She slid her arm again round his neck. Her eyes were full of tears.
Nick turned swiftly and bestowed a kiss upon the face which, though the face of a child, was so remarkably like his own.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friends?" he said.
"There's no need," said Olga, hugging him closer. "They all know Captain Ratcliffe of Wara. Why haven't you got the V.C., Nick, like Captain Grange?"
"Didn't qualify for it," returned Nick. "You see, I only distinguished myself by running away. Hullo! It's raining. Just run and tell the chauffeur to drive round to the house. You can go with him. And take your friends too. It'll carry you all. I'm going the garden way with Muriel."
Muriel realised the impossibility of frustrating this plan, though the last thing in the world that she desired was to be alone with him. But the distance to the house was not great. As the children scampered away to the waiting motor-car she moved briskly to leave the field.
Nick walked beside her with his free, elastic swagger. In a few moments he reached out and took her hockey-stick from her.
"Jove!" he said. "It did me good to see you shoot that goal."
"I had no idea you were watching," she returned stiffly.
He grinned. "No, I saw that. Fun, wasn't it? Like to know what I said to myself?"
She made no answer, and his grin became a laugh. "I'm sure you would, so I'll tell you. I said, 'Prayer Number One is granted,' and I ticked it off the list, and duly acknowledged the same."
Muriel was plainly mystified. He was in the mood that most baffled her. "I don't know what you mean," she said at last.
Nick swung the hockey-stick idly. His yellow face, for all its wrinkles, looked peculiarly complacent.
"Let me explain," he said coolly; "I wanted to see you young again, and--my want has been satisfied, that's all."
Muriel looked sharply away from him, the vivid colour rushing all over her face. She remembered--and the memory seemed to stab her--a day long, long ago when she had lain in this man's arms in the extremity of helpless suffering, and had heard him praying above her head, brokenly, passionately, for something far different--something from which she had come to shrink with a nameless, overmastering dread.
She quickened her pace in the silence that followed. The rain was coming down sharply. Reaching the door that led into the doctor's walled garden, she stretched out her hand with impetuous haste to push it open.
Instantly, with disconcerting suddenness, Nick dropped the hockey-stick and swooped upon it like a bird of prey.
"Who gave you that?" he demanded.
He had spied a hoop of diamonds upon her third finger. She could not see his eyes under the flickering lids, but he held her wrist forcibly, and it seemed to her that there was a note of savagery in his voice.
Her heart beat fast for a few seconds, so fast that she could not find her voice. Then, almost under her breath, "Blake gave it to me," she said. "Blake Grange."
"Yes?" said Nick. "Yes?"
Suddenly he looked straight at her, and his eyes were alight, fierce, glowing. But she felt a curious sense of scared relief, as if he were behind bars,--an eagle caged, of which she need have no fear.
"We are engaged to be married," she said quietly.
There fell a momentary silence, and a voice cried out in her soul that she had stabbed him through the bars.
Then in a second Nick dropped her hands and stooped to pick up the hockey-stick. His face as he stood up again flashed back to its old, baffling gaiety.
"What ho!" he said lightly. "Then I'm in time to dance at the wedding. Pray accept my heartiest congratulations!"
Muriel murmured her thanks with her face averted. She was no longer afraid merely, but strangely, inexplicably ashamed.


CHAPTER XXVIII
THE LION'S SKIN

The news of Nick's return spread like wildfire through the doctor's house, and the whole establishment assembled to greet him. Jim himself came striding out into the rain to shake his hand and escort him in.
His "Hullo, you scapegrace!" had in it little of sentiment, but there was nothing wanting in his welcome in the opinion of the recipient thereof.
Nick's rejoinder of "Hullo, you old buffer!" was equally free from any gloss of eloquence, but he hooked his hand in the doctor's arm as he made it, and kept it there.
Jim gave him one straight, keen look that took in every detail, but he made no verbal comment of any sort. His heavy brows drew together for an instant, that was all.
It was an exceedingly clamorous home-coming. The children, having arrived in the motor, swarmed all about the returned hero, who was more than equal to the occasion, and obviously enjoyed his boisterous reception to the uttermost. There never had been any shyness about Nick.
Muriel, standing watching in the background with a queer, unaccountable pain at her heart, assured herself that the news of her engagement had meant nothing to him whatever. He had managed to deceive her as usual. She realised it with burning cheeks, and ardently wished that she had borne herself more proudly. Well, she was not wanted here. Even Olga, her faithful and loving admirer, had eyes only for Nick just then. As for Dr. Jim, he had not even noticed her.
Quietly she stole away from the merry, chattering group. The hall-door stood open, and she saw that it was raining heavily; but she did not hesitate. With a haste that was urged from within by something that was passionate, she ran out hatless into the storm.
The cracked, careless laugh she knew so well pursued her as she went, and once she fancied that some one called her by name. But she did not slacken speed to listen. She only dashed on a little faster than before.
Drenched and breathless, she reached home at length, to be met upon the threshold by Blake. In her exhaustion she almost fell into his arms.
"Hullo!" he said, steadying her. "You shouldn't run like that. I never dreamed you would come back in this, or I would have come across with an umbrella to fetch you."
She sank into a chair in the hall, speechless and gasping, her hair hanging about her neck in wildest disorder.
Blake stood beside her. He was wearing his worried, moody look.
"You shouldn't," he said again. "It's horribly bad for you."
"Ah, I'm better," she gasped back. "I had to run--all the way--because of the rain."
"But why didn't you wait?" said Blake. "What were they thinking of to let you come in this down-pour?"
"They couldn't help it." Muriel raised herself with a great sobbing sigh. "It was nobody's fault but my own. I wanted to get away. Oh, Blake, do you know--Nick is here?"
Blake started. "What? Already? Do you mean he is actually in the place?"
She nodded. "He came up in a motor while we were playing. I suppose he is staying at Redlands, but I don't know. And--and--Blake, he has lost his left arm. It makes him look so queer." She gave a sudden, uncontrollable shudder. The old dumb horror looked out of her eyes. "I thought I shouldn't mind," she said, under her breath. "Perhaps--if you had been there--it would have been different. As it was--as it was--" She broke off, rising impetuously to her feet, and laying trembling hands upon his arms. "Oh, Blake," she whispered, like a scared child. "I feel so helpless. But you promised--you promised--you would never let me go."
Yes, he had promised her that. He had sworn it, and, sick at heart, he remembered that in her