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

bestow upon the subject. She hoped and believed that Daisy was getting stronger, and had promised, all being well, to spend Christmas with her.
Lady Bassett shook her head over this declaration. The dear child was so headlong. Much might happen before Christmas. And what of Mr. Ratcliffe--this was on her way to the door--had she heard the extraordinary, the really astounding news concerning him that had just reached Lady Bassett's ears? She asked because he and Mrs. Musgrave used to be such friends, though to be sure Mr. Ratcliffe seemed to have thrown off all his old friends of late. Had Muriel actually not heard?
"Heard! Heard what?" Muriel forced out the question from between lips that were white and stiff. She was suddenly afraid--horribly, unspeakably afraid. But she kept her eyes unflinchingly upon Lady Bassett's face. She would sooner die than quail in her presence.
Lady Bassett, holding the door-handle, looked back at her, faintly smiling. "I wonder you have not heard, dear. I thought you were in correspondence with his people. But perhaps they also are in the dark. It is a most unheard-of thing--quite irrevocable I am told. But I always felt that he was a man to do unusual things. There was always to my mind something uncanny, abnormal, something almost superhuman, about him."
"But what has happened to him?" Muriel did not know how she uttered the words; they seemed to come without her own volition. She was conscious of a choking sensation within her as though iron bands were tightening about her heart. It beat in leaps and bounds like a tortured thing striving to escape. But through it all she sat quite motionless, her eyes fixed upon Lady Bassett's face, noting its faint, wry smile, as the eyes of a prisoner on the rack might note the grim lines on the face of the torturer.
"My dear," Lady Bassett said, "he has gone into a Buddhist monastery in Tibet."
Calmly the words fell through smiling lips. Only words! Only words! But with how deadly a thrust they pierced the heart of the woman who heard them none but herself would ever know. She gave no sign of suffering. She only stared wide-eyed before her as an image, devoid of expression, inanimate, sphinx-like, while that awful constriction grew straiter round her heart.
Lady Bassett was already turning to go when the deep voice arrested her.
"Who told you this?"
She looked back, holding the open door. "I scarcely know who first mentioned it. I have heard it from so many people,--in fact the news is general property--Captain Gresham of the Guides told me for one. He has just gone back to Peshawur. The news reached him, I believe, from there. Then there was Colonel Cathcart for another. He was talking of it only this afternoon at the Club, saying what a deplorable example it was for an Englishman to set. He and Mr. Bobby Fraser had quite a hot argument about it. Mr. Fraser has such advanced ideas, but I must admit that I rather admire the staunch way in which he defends them. There, dear child! You must not keep me gossiping any longer. You look positively haggard. I earnestly hope a good sleep will restore you, for I cannot possibly take that wan face to the Rajah's ball'."
Lady Bassett departed with the words, shaking her head tolerantly and still smiling.
But for long after she had gone, Muriel remained with fixed eyes and tense muscles, watching, watching, dumbly, immovably, despairingly, at the locked door of her paradise.
So this was the key to his silence--the reason that her message had gone unanswered. She had stretched out her hands to him too late--too late.
And ever through the barren desert of her vigil a man's voice, vital and passionate, rang and echoed in a maddening, perpetual refrain.
"All your life you will remember that I was once yours to take or to throw away. And--you wanted me, yet--you chose to throw me away."
It was a refrain she had heard often and often before; but it had never tortured her as it tortured her now,--now when her last hope was finally quenched--now when at last she fully realised what it was that had once been hers, and that in her tragic blindness she had wantonly cast away.


CHAPTER LI
THE BIRD OF PARADISE

Muriel did not leave the Residency again until the evening of the State Ball at the palace. Scarcely did she leave her room, pleading intense fatigue as her excuse for this seclusion. But she could not without exciting remark, absent herself from the great function for which ostensibly she had returned to Ghawalkhand.
She wore a dress of unrelieved white for the occasion, for she had but recently discarded her mourning for her father, and her face was almost as devoid of colour. Her dark hair lay in a shadowy mass above her forehead, accentuating her pallor. Her eyes looked out upon the world with tragic indifference, unexpectant, apathetic.
"My dear, you don't look well," said Sir Reginald, as, gorgeous in his glittering uniform, he stood to hand her after his wife into the carriage.
She smiled a little. "It is nothing. I am still rather tired, that's all."
Driving through the gates she looked forth absently and spied the old beggar crouching in his accustomed place. He almost prostrated himself at sight of her, but she had no money with her, nor could she have bestowed any under Lady Bassett's disapproving eye. The carriage rolled on, leaving his obsequiousness unrequited.
Entering the glittering ballroom all hung with glowing colours was like entering a garden of splendid flowers. European and Indian costumes were mingled in shining confusion. A hubbub of music and laughter seemed to engulf them like a rushing torrent.
"Ah, here you are at last!" It was Bobby Fraser's voice at Muriel's side. He looked at her with cheery approval. "I say, you know, you're the queen of this gathering. Pity there isn't a king anywhere about. Perhaps there is, eh? Well, can you give me a dance? Afraid I haven't a waltz left. No matter! We can sit out. I know a cosy corner exactly fitted to my tastes. In fact I've booked it for the evening. And I want a talk with you badly. Number five then. Good-bye!"
He was gone, leaving Muriel with the curious impression that there really was something of importance that he wished to say to her.
She wondered what it was. That he was paying her serious attention she had never for a moment believed, nor had she given him the faintest encouragement to do so. She knew that Lady Bassett thought otherwise, but she had never rated her opinion very highly; and she had never read anything but the most casual friendliness in Bobby's attitude.
Still it disturbed her somewhat, that hint of intimacy that his words portended, and she awaited the dance he had solicited in a state of mind very nearly allied to apprehension. Lady Bassett's suggestions had done for her what no self-consciousness would ever have accomplished unaided. They had implanted within her a deep-rooted misgiving before which all ease of manner fled.
When Bobby Fraser joined her, she was so plainly nervous that he could not fail to remark it. He led her to a quiet corner above the garden that was sheltered from the throng by flowering tamarisks.
"I say," he said, "I hope you are not letting yourself get scared by these infernal budmashes. The reports have all been immensely exaggerated as usual."
"I am not at all scared," she told him. "But wasn't there an Englishman murdered the other day?"
"Oh, yes," he admitted, "but miles and miles away, right the other side of the State. There was nothing in that to alarm any one here. It might have happened anywhere. People are such fools," he threw in vindictively. "Begin to look askance at the native population, and of course they are on the _qui vive_ instantly. It is only to be expected. It was downright madness to send a Resident here. They resent it, you know. But the Rajah's influence is enormous. Nothing could happen here."
"I wonder," said Muriel.
She had scarcely given the matter a thought before, but it was a relief to find some impersonal topic for discussion.
Bobby, however, had no intention of pursuing it further. "Oh, it's self-evident," he said. "They are loyal to the Rajah, and the Rajah is well-known to be loyal to the Crown. It's only these duffers of administrators that make the mischief." He broke into an abrupt laugh, and changed the subject. "Let us talk of something less exasperating. How did you get on while you were away? You must have found the journey across the Plains pretty ghastly."
She told him a little about it, incidentally mentioning Will Musgrave.
"Oh, I know him," he broke in. "An engineer, isn't he? Awfully clever chap. I met him years ago at Sharapura the time Nick Ratcliffe won the Great Mogul's Cup. I told you that story, didn't I?"
Yes, he had done so. She informed him of the fact with an immovable face. It might have been a subject of total indifference to her.
"You know Nick Ratcliffe, don't you?" he pursued, evidently following his own train of thought.
She flushed at the direct question. She had not expected it. "It is a very long time since I last saw him," she said, with a deliberate effort to banish all interest from her voice.
He was not looking at her. He could not have been aware of the flush. Yet he elected to push the matter further.
"A queer fish," he said. "A very queer fish. He has lost his left arm, poor beggar. Did you know?"
Yes, she knew; but she could hardly summon the strength to tell him so. Her fan concealed her quivering lips, but the hand that held it shook uncontrollably.
But he, still casual, continued his desultory harangue. "Always reminds one of a jack-in-the-box--that fellow. Has a knack of popping up when you least expect him. You never know what he will do next. You can only judge him by the things he doesn't do. For instance, there's been a rumour floating about lately that he has just gone into a Tibetan monastery. Heaven knows who started it and why. But it is absolutely untrue. It is the sort of thing that couldn't be true of a man of his temperament. Don't you agree with me? Or perhaps you didn't know him very well, and don't feel qualified to judge."
At this point he pulled out his programme and studied it frowningly. He was plainly not paying much attention to her reply. He seemed to be contemplating something that worried him.
It made it all the easier for her to answer. "No," she said slowly. "I didn't know him very well. But--that rumour was told to me as absolute fact. I--of course--I believed it."
She knew that her face was burning as she ended. She could feel the blood surging through every vein.
"If you want to know what I think," said Bobby Fraser deliberately, "it is that that rumour was a malicious invention of some one's."
"Oh, do you?" she said. "But--but why?"
He turned and looked at her. His usually merry face was stern. "Because," he said, "it served some one's end to make some one else believe that Nick had dropped out for good."
Her eyes fell under his direct look. "I don't understand," she murmured desperately.
"Nor do I," he rejoined, "for certain. I can only surmise. It doesn't do to believe things too readily. One gets let in that way." He rose and offered her his arm. "Come outside for a little. This place is too warm for comfort."
She went with him willingly, thankful to turn her