The Tidal Wave - Ethel May Dell (top books to read TXT) 📗

side, facing the light.
"I was told you wanted me," he said.
"Yes; I want you to give me a promise." Coningsby spoke rapidly, with brows drawn together. "I suppose you know I'm a dead man?"
"I don't believe in death," Carey answered very quietly.
Coningsby's eyes burned with a strange light.
"Nor I," he said. "Nor I. I've been too near it before now to be afraid. Also, I've lived too long and too hard to care overmuch for what is left. But there's one thing I mean to do before I go. And you'll give me your promise to see it through?"
He paused, breathing quick and short; then went on hurriedly, as a man whose time is limited.
"You'll stick to it, I know, for you're a fellow that speaks the truth. I nearly thrashed you for it, once. Remember? You said I wasn't fit for the society of any good woman. And you were right--quite right. I never have been. Yet you ended by sending me the best woman in the world. What made you do that, I wonder?"
Carey did not answer. His face was sternly composed. He had not once glanced at the woman who sat on the other side of Coningsby's bed.
Coningsby went on unheeding.
"I drove her away from me, and you--you sent her back. I don't think I could have done that for the woman I loved. For you do love her, eh, Carey? I remember seeing it in your face that first night I brought you here. It comes back to me. You were standing before her portrait in the library. You didn't know I saw you. I was drunk at the time. But I've remembered it since."
Again he paused. His breath was slowing down. It came spasmodically, with long silences between.
Carey had listened with his eyes fixed and hard, staring straight before him, but now slowly at length he turned his head, and looked down at the man who was dying.
"Hadn't you better tell me what it is you want me to do?" he said.
"Ah!" Coningsby seemed to rouse himself. "It isn't much, after all," he said. "I made my will only this morning. It was on my way back that I had the smash. I was quite sober, only I couldn't see very well, and I lost control. All my property goes to my wife. That's all settled. But there's one thing left--one thing left--which I am going to leave you. It's the only thing I value, but there's no nobility about it, for I can't take it with me where I'm going. I want you, Carey--when I'm dead--to marry the woman you love, and give her happiness. Don't wait for the sake of decency! That consideration never appealed to me. I say it in her presence, that she may know it is my wish. Marry her, man--you love each other--did you think I didn't know? And take her away to some Utopia of your own, and--and--teach her--to forget me."
His voice shook and ceased. His wife had slipped to her knees by the bed, hiding her face. Carey sat mute and motionless, but the grim look had passed from his face. It was almost tender.
Gaspingly at length Coningsby spoke again: "Are you going to do it, Carey? Are you going to give me your promise? I shall sleep the easier for it."
Carey turned to him and gripped one of the man's powerless hands in his own. For a moment he did not speak--it almost seemed he could not. Then at last, very low, but resolute his answer came:
"I promise to do my part," he said.
In the silence that followed he rose noiselessly and moved away.
He left Naomi still kneeling beside the bed, and as he passed out he heard the dying man speak her name. But what passed between them he never knew.
When he saw her again, nearly an hour later, Geoffrey Coningsby was dead.


XI

It was on a day of frosty sunshine, nearly a fortnight later, that Carey dismounted before the door of Crooklands Manor, and asked for its mistress.
He was shown at once into the library, where he found her seated before a great oak bureau with a litter of papers all around her.
She flushed deeply as she rose to greet him. They had not met since the day of her husband's funeral.
"I see you're busy," he said, as he came forward.
"Yes," she assented. "Such stacks of papers that must be examined before they can be destroyed. It's dreary work, and I have been very thankful to have Gwen with me. She has just gone out riding."
"I met her," Carey said. "She was with young Rivers."
"It is a farewell ride," Naomi told him. "She goes back to school to-morrow. Dear child! I shall miss her. Please sit down!"
The colour had ebbed from her face, leaving it very pale. She did not look at Carey, but began slowly to sort afresh a pile of correspondence.
He ignored her request, and stood watching her till at last she laid the packet down.
Then somewhat abruptly he spoke: "I've just come in to tell you my plans."
"Yes?" She took up an old cheque-book, as if she could not bear to be idle, and began to look through it, seeming to search for something.
Again he fell silent, watching her.
"Yes?" she repeated after a moment, bending a little over the book she held.
"They are very simple," he said quietly. "I'm going to a place I know of in the Himalayas where there is a wonderful river that one can punt along all day and all night, and never come to an end."
Again he paused. The fingers that held the memorandum were not quite steady.
"And you have come to say good-bye?" she suggested in her deep, sad voice.
His eyes were turned gravely upon her, but there was a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.
"No," he said in his abrupt fashion. "That isn't in the plan. Good-bye to the rest of the world if you will, but never again to you!"
He drew close to her and gently took the cheque-book out of her grasp.
"I want you to come with me, Naomi," he said very tenderly. "My darling, will you come? I have wanted you--for years."
A great quiver went through her, as though every pulse leapt to the words he uttered. For a second she stood quite still, with her face lifted to the sunlight. Then she turned, without question or words of any sort, as she had turned long ago--yet with a difference--and laid her hand with perfect confidence in his.

* * * * *


THE RETURN GAME

I

"Well played, Hone! Oh, well played indeed!"
A great roar of applause went up from the polo-ground like the surge and wash of an Atlantic roller. The regimental hero was distinguishing himself--a state of affairs by no means unusual, for success always followed Hone. His luck was proverbial in the regiment, as sure and as deeply-rooted as his popularity.
"It's the devil's own concoction," declared Teddy Duncombe, Major Hone's warmest friend and admirer, who was watching from the great stand near the refreshment-tent. "It never fails. We call him Achilles because he always carries all before him."
"Even Achilles had his vulnerable point," remarked Mrs. Perceval, to whom the words were addressed.
She spoke with her dark eyes fixed upon the distant figure. Seen from a distance, he seemed to be indeed invincible--a magnificent horseman who rode like a fury, yet checked and wheeled his pony with the skill of a circus rider. But there was no admiration in Mrs. Perceval's intent gaze. She looked merely critical.
"Pat hasn't," replied Duncombe, whose love for Hone was no mean thing, and who gloried in his Irish major's greatness. "He's a man in ten thousand--the finest specimen of an imperfect article ever produced."
His enthusiasm fell on barren ground. Mrs. Perceval was not apparently bestowing much attention upon him. She was watching the play with brows slightly drawn.
Duncombe looked at her with faint surprise. She was not often unappreciative, and he could not imagine any woman failing to admire Hone. Besides, Mrs. Perceval and Hone were old friends, as everyone knew. Was it not Hone who had escorted her to the East seven years ago when she had left Home to join her elderly husband? By Jove, was it really seven years since Perceval's beautiful young wife had taken them all by storm? She looked a mere girl yet, though she had been three years a widow. Small and dark and very regal was Nina Perceval, with the hands and feet of a fairy and the carriage of a princess. He had seen nothing of her during those last three years. She had been living a life of retirement in the hills. But now she was going back to England and was visiting her old haunts to bid her friends farewell. And Teddy Duncombe found her as captivating as ever. She was more than beautiful. She was positively dazzling.
What a splendid pair she and Pat would make, Duncombe thought to himself as he watched her. A man like Major Hone, V.C., ought to find a mate. Every king should have a queen.
The thought was still in his mind, possibly in his eyes also, when abruptly Mrs. Perceval turned her head and caught him.
"Taking notes, Captain Duncombe?" she asked, with a smile too careless to be malicious.
"Playing providence, Mrs. Perceval," he answered without embarrassment.
He had never been embarrassed in her presence yet. She had a happy knack of setting her friends at ease.
"I hope you are preparing a kind fate for me," she said.
He laughed a little. "What would you call a kind fate?"
Her dark eyes flashed. She looked for a moment scornful. "Not the usual woman's Utopia," she said. "I have been through that and come out on the other side."
"I can hardly believe it," protested Teddy.
"Don't you know I am a cynic?" she said, with a little reckless laugh.
A second wild shout from the spectators on all sides of them swept their conversation away. On the further side of the ground Hone, with steady wrist and faultless aim, had just sent the ball whizzing between the posts.
It was the end of the match, and Hone was once more the hero of the hour.
"Really, I sometimes think the gods are too kind to Major Hone," smiled Mrs. Chester, the colonel's wife, and Mrs. Perceval's hostess. "It can't be good for him to be always on the winning side."
Hone was trotting quietly down the field, laughing all over his handsome, sunburnt face at the cheers that greeted him. He dismounted close to Mrs. Perceval, and was instantly seized by Duncombe and thumped upon the back with all the force of his friend's goodwill.
"Pat, old fellow, you're the finest sportsman in the Indian Empire. Those chaps haven't been beaten for years."
Hone laughed easily and swung himself free. "They've got some knowing little brutes of ponies, by the powers," he said. "They slip about like minnows. The Ace of Trumps was furious. Did you hear him squeal?"
He turned with the words to his own pony and kissed the velvet nose that was rubbing against his arm.
"And a shame it is to make him carry a lively five tons," he murmured in his caressing Irish brogue.
For Hone was a giant as well as a hero and he carried his inches, as he bore his honours, like