The Mistress of Shenstone, Florence Louisa Barclay [if you liked this book .TXT] 📗

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.