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

you want to go?"
"I don't like strangers, and I hate Lady Bassett," Muriel answered, with absolute simplicity. "Then there is Daisy. I don't know what her plans are. I always thought we should go East together."
"There's no sense in waiting for Daisy's plans to develop," declared Jim. "She is as changeable as the wind. Possibly Nick will be able to make up her mind for her. I fancy he means to try."
"Nick! You don't mean he will travel with Daisy?" There was almost a tragic note in Muriel's voice. She looked up quickly into the shrewd eyes that watched her.
"Why shouldn't he?" said Jim.
"I don't know. I never thought of it." Muriel leaned back again, a faint frown of perplexity between her eyes. "Perhaps," she said slowly at length, "I had better go to Mrs. Langdale."
"I should in your place," said Jim. "That handsome soldier of yours won't want to be kept waiting, eh?"
"Oh, he wouldn't mind." The weariness was apparent again in her voice, and with it a tinge of bitterness. "He never minds anything," she said.
Jim grunted disapproval. "And you? Are you equally indifferent?"
Her pale face flushed vividly. She was silent a moment; then suddenly she sat up and met his look fully.
"You'll think me contemptible, I know," she said, a great quiver in her voice. "I can't help it; you must. Dr. Jim, I'll tell you the truth. I--I don't want to go to India. I don't want to be married--at all."
She ended with a swift rush of irrepressible tears. It was out at last, this trouble of hers that had been gradually growing behind the barrier of her reserve, and it seemed to burst over her in the telling in a great wave of adversity.
"I've done nothing but make mistakes," she sobbed "ever since Daddy died."
Dr. Jim got up quietly to lock the door. The grimness had passed from his face.
"My dear," he said gruffly, "we all of us make mistakes directly we begin to run alone."
He returned and sat down again close to her, waiting for her to recover herself. She slipped out a trembling hand to him, and he took it very kindly; but he said no more until she spoke.
"It's very difficult to know what to do."
"Is it? I should have said you were past that stage." His tone was uncompromising, but the warm grip of his hand made up for it. His directness did not dismay her. "If you are quite sure you don't care for the fellow, your duty is quite plain."
Muriel raised her head slowly. "Yes, but it isn't quite so simple as that, doctor. You see, it's not as if--as if--we either of us ever imagined we were--in love with each other."
Jim's eyebrows went up. "As bad as that?"
She leaned her chin on her hand. "I am sure there must be crowds of people who marry without ever being in love."
"Yes," said Jim curtly. "And kindle their own hell in doing it."
She started a little. "You think that?"
"I know it. I have seen it over and over again. Full half of the world's misery is due to it. But you won't do that, Muriel. I know you too well."
Muriel glanced up at him. "Do you know me? I don't think you would have expected me to accept him in the first place."
"Depends what you did it for," said Jim.
She fell suddenly silent, slowly twisting the ring on her finger. "He knew why," she said at last in a very low voice. "In fact--in fact he asked me for that reason."
"And the reason still exists?"
She bent her head. "Yes."
"A reason you are ashamed of?" pursued the doctor.
She did not answer, and he drew his great brows together in deep thought.
"You don't propose to take me any further into your confidence?" he asked at last.
She made a quick, impulsive movement. "You--you--I think you know."
"Will you let me tell you what I know?" he said.
She shrank perceptibly. "If--if you won't make it too hard for me."
"I can't answer for that," he returned. "It depends entirely upon yourself. My knowledge does not amount to anything very staggering in itself. It is only this--that I know a certain person who would cheerfully sacrifice all he has to make you happy, and that you have no more cause to fear persecution from that person than from the man in the moon."
He paused; but Muriel did not speak. She was still absently turning her engagement ring round and round.
"To verify this," he said, "I will tell you something which I am sure you don't know--which in fact puzzled me, too, considerably, for some time. He has already sacrificed more than most men would care to venture in a doubtful cause. It was no part of his plan to follow you to England. He set his face against it so strongly that he very nearly ended his mortal career for good and all in so doing. As it was, he suffered for his lunacy pretty heavily. You know what happened. He was forced to come in the end, and he paid the forfeit for his delay."
Again he paused, for Muriel had sprung upright with such tragedy in her eyes that he knew he had said enough. The next moment she was on her feet, quivering all over as one grievously wounded.
"Oh, do you know what you are saying?" she said, and in her voice there throbbed the cry of a woman's wrung heart. "Surely--surely he never did that--for me!"
He did not seem to notice her agitation. "It was a fairly big price to pay for a piece of foolish sentiment, eh?" he said. "Let us hope he will know better next time."
He looked up at her with a faintly cynical smile, but she was standing with her face averted. He saw only that her chin was quivering like a hurt child's.
"Come," he said at length. "I didn't tell you this to distress you, you know. Only to set your mind at rest, so that you might sleep easy."
She mastered herself with an effort, and turned towards him. "I know; yes, I know. You--you have been very kind. Good-night, doctor."
He rose and went with her to the door. "You are not going to lie awake over this?"
She shook her head. "Good-night," she said again.
He watched her down the passage, and then returned to his writing. He smiled to himself as he sat down, but this time wholly without cynicism.
"No, Nick, my boy," he said, as he drove his pen into the ink. "She won't lie awake for you. But she'll cry herself to sleep for your sake, you gibbering, one-armed ape. And the new love will be the old love before the week is out, or I am no weather prophet."


CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE WATCHER OF THE CLIFF

The gale that raged along the British coasts that autumn was the wildest that had been known for years. It swelled quite suddenly out of the last breezes of a superb summer, and by the middle of September it had become a monster of destruction, devastating the shore. The crumbling cliffs of Brethaven testified to its violence. Beating rain and colossal, shattering waves united to accomplish ruin and destruction. And the little fishing-village looked on aghast.
It was on the third day of the storm that news was brought to Nick of a landslip on his own estate. He had been in town ever since his guests' departure, and had only returned on the previous evening. He did not contemplate a long stay. The place was lonely without Olga, and he was not yet sufficiently proficient in shooting with one arm to enjoy the sport, especially in solitude. He was in fact simply waiting for an opportunity which he was convinced must occur before long, of keeping a certain promise made to a friend of his on a night of early summer in the Indian Plains.
It was a wild day of drifting squalls and transient gleams of sunshine. He grimaced to himself as he sauntered forth after luncheon to view the damage that had been wrought upon his property. The ground he trod was sodden with long rain, and the cedars beyond the lawn plunged heavily to and fro in melancholy unrest, flinging great drops upon him as he passed. The force of the gale was terrific, and he had to bend himself nearly double to meet it.
With difficulty he forced his way to the little summer-house that overlooked the shore. He marvelled somewhat to find it still standing, but it was sturdily built and would probably endure as long as the ground beneath it remained unshaken.
But beyond it a great gap yawned. The daisy-covered space on which they had sat that afternoon, now many weeks ago, had disappeared. Nothing of it remained but a crumbling desolation to which the daisies still clung here and there.
Nick stood in such shelter as the summer-house afforded, and looked forth upon the heaving waste of waters. The tide was rising. He could see the great waves swirling white around the rocks. Several land-slips were visible from this post of observation. The village was out of sight, tucked away behind a great shoulder of cliff; but an old ruined cottage that had been uninhabited for some time had entirely disappeared. Stacks of seaweed had been thrown up upon the deserted shore, and lay in great masses above the breakers. The roar of the incoming tide was like the continuous roll of thunder.
It was a splendid spectacle and for some time he stood, with his face to the driving wind, gazing out upon the empty sea. There was not a single vessel in all that wide expanse.
Slowly at last his vision narrowed. His eyes came down to the great gash at his feet where red earth and tufts of grass mingled, where the daisies had grown on that June day, where she had sat, proud and aloof, and watched him fooling with the white petals. Very vividly he recalled that summer afternoon, her scorn of him, her bitter hostility--and the horror he had surprised in her dark eyes when the hawk had struck. He laughed oddly to himself, his teeth clenched upon his lower lip. How furiously she had hated him that day!
He turned to go; but paused, arrested by some instinct that bade him cast one more look downwards along the howling shore. In another moment he was lying full length upon the rotten ground, staring intently down upon the group of rocks more than two hundred feet below him.
Two figures--a man and a woman--had detached themselves from the shelter of these rocks, and were moving slowly, very slowly, towards the path that led inwards from the shore. They were closely linked together, so much his first glance told him. But there was something in the man's gait that caught the eye and upon which Nick's whole attention was instantly focussed. He could not see the face, but the loose-slung, gigantic limbs were familiar to him. With all his knowledge of the world of men, he had not seen many such.
Slowly the two approached till they stood almost immediately beneath him, and there, as upon mutual impulse, they stopped. It was a corner protected from the driving blast by the crumbling mass of cliff that had slipped in the night. The rain was falling heavily again, but neither the two on the shore nor the solitary watcher stretched on the perilous edge of the cliff seemed aware of it. All were intent upon other things.
Suddenly the woman raised her face, and with a movement that was passionate reached up her arms and clasped them