CHAPTER VIII

“A self-sacrifice that is thorough must never pause.”

“Sunday,” said Edith le Mentier, lazily swaying her parasol, “does my religion for me. When I hear the sweet church bells chiming over the cow-laden fields I say to myself this is a Christian country. Cows and a church—certainly I, too, must be a Christian.”

“And your responsibility ends there?” asked Gladys, who with others of the party was dressed to go to the little church across the fields.

“My responsibility, my dear, er—Miss Gladys—as you so deliciously call it, is never at work in that sphere. No! I recognize it at my dressmaker’s; I am crushed under it in shops; I frequently come face to face with it in the choice of a cook. Beyond this,” Mrs. le Mentier put out a dainty foot under a frilled petticoat, “beyond this I am a rational being—that is, whenever it is possible I persuade some one else to do my effort-making for me. Captain Hurstly, I want a footstool; dear, delightful creatures, do go and do my praying for me; Sir Arthur,” here she put her head graciously towards their slightly embarrassed host, “is going to stay to keep me company.”

“Delighted, I am sure,” murmured Sir Arthur, handing Gladys’ prayer-book which he had been carrying to the doctor, who stood grimly and uncompromisingly silent. It was natural that after that Gladys and Dr. Grant should walk together and Muriel find herself with Jack Hurstly. Cynthia Grant, the doctor’s sister, had not yet returned from a visit to the stables with Sir Alec. Muriel had not seen Jack for some time. He was always large and masterful (in the most calmly protective meaning of the word), but there was to-day a certain alertness and unobtrusive eagerness in his manner that was new to her. They knew each other well enough to be able to float off easily into commonplace chatter. It paved the way for all the important things which lost their stiffness by being set in a background of familiar banter.

“I’m having a holiday,” said Jack, smiling down at her oddly.

“You a holiday! You look terribly as if you needed it!” she laughed.

“I’ve been working rather hard, really,” he said.

“Fishing is over?” she asked.

“Oh, Miss Muriel, but I’ve had a harder job to tackle. I’ve been trying to get the place at home in decent order—getting cottages built and all that sort of thing.”

“You were always so practical,” she murmured.

“Because, you see, the place has been a little weedy lately, and as I am to be off again soon I wanted to leave it in order before I went.”

“Hunting big game?” she suggested indifferently.

“Well—yes, rather. You see there’s been a little scrapping in India on the frontier, and—well, I thought it would be rather jolly to have a shot at the little beggars myself. You see the regiment being at Aldershot a fellow hasn’t got much to do, and so I have joined—temporarily, of course—a batch of men who are going out in September. Do you wish me luck?”

“Your occupations,” said Muriel coldly, “always seem to me a little brutal.” Then she glanced more kindly at him.

He was disconsolately grumbling, “Oh, I say now!” and cutting the heads off the nettles with his stick. They were nearing the church.

“Oh, I hope, Jack,” she used the name with her old deliberate frankness, looking him in the eyes, steadily and kindly, “that you will have the best of luck. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you set to work again, and make something of all that’s in you—all I know that’s in you.”

He beamed with pleasure, though he was still a little puzzled at her former sharpness. “It’s awfully good of you, Miss Muriel,” he said, opening the gate; “and you—you must know that if I am worth anything at all it’s all owing to you. And now that you say you believe in me,” he drew a long breath, “I think I could do anything—anything in the world to show you you’re not mistaken.”

Muriel said nothing. When they reached the porch she turned to him, and not looking at him said slowly, “I am quite sure I am not mistaken, Jack.”

The church was cold and dark after the bright sunshine in the fields. In the church she remembered Gladys, and forgot to listen to the sermon. She and the doctor walked back together and quarrelled all the way.

It was that still, impossible hour of Sunday afternoon when the drowsiness of after lunch and the distance of five-o’clock tea combine to make inaction of one sort or another absolutely essential. Sir Arthur Dallerton, however, was uncomfortably wide awake. His protracted conversation with his charming guest contributed not a little to the unnatural keenness of his feelings, and with Sir Arthur Dallerton to feel keenly was to be in more or less of a bad temper. He saw Muriel out of his smoking-room window, and beckoned to her to come in.

“What are you doing, Muriel,” he asked severely, “at this time of the afternoon?”

“Everybody is going out on the river after tea, so I was seeing about the boats,” she said.

“That, Muriel, is the business of the gardener.”

“I like minding the gardener’s business,” said Muriel smiling.

“My dear,” said her uncle gravely, “If you would leave the gardener’s business alone, and attend a little more to your own, I should be better pleased.”

“What do you mean, uncle?” the girl asked, sitting down opposite him with her wide-open, unembarrassed eyes.

“Of course I know that it makes no difference to you what I wish—that I take for granted to begin with.”

She moved her head impatiently; she hated the way he had of opening any discussion with injured personalities. He waited for a protest, and not hearing one he continued with increased vehemence.

“You are now twenty-seven. You have had plenty of opportunities to settle down in life. I have never attempted to force your hand——” A look in the girl’s eyes suggested the prudence of this course. “I must say I have been uncommonly generous in overlooking your extraordinary schemes, but I never dreamed they excluded marriage. May I ask, Muriel—I think I have a right to know—if all my hopes are to be in vain simply through the obstinacy of an untrained, selfish girl? Do you, Muriel—I insist upon knowing this—intend to marry?”

“I am sorry you insist, uncle,” said Muriel very quietly, though two bright spots of angry color burned in her cheeks, “because I am afraid I can give you no satisfactory answer to your hopes. It is very improbable—if you really wish to know—that I shall ever marry.”

“What about Jack Hurstly?”

“I do not know to what you refer.”

“I thought your objection to him was that he didn’t stick to his profession. He’s sticking to it fast enough now.” Muriel winced. “And,” he continued with more hope of success, “he’ll probably get potted by a native, and then perhaps you’ll be satisfied. You women who talk the most about cruelty are always the ones to send us poor devils to our graves.”

“I have never had any objection to Jack Hurstly, and I have none now, but I certainly am not going to marry him. If he gets killed in India, as you thoughtfully suggested, it will perhaps prove to you that he is beyond your matrimonial schemes. I do not believe anything else would,” said Muriel, now thoroughly aroused. She looked lovely when she was angry: the gray eyes blazed and widened, the firm chin became inexorable, and her nostrils dilated like a spirited horse. Her uncle, who had an eye for beauty, appreciated her appearance, but was too vexed to remark on it.

“Gad! you have the temper of a devil!” he grumbled in reluctant admiration; “but if you won’t have Jack Hurstly, you won’t. And on the whole you might do better. What I want you thoroughly to understand is I’ll have no monkey business with that young doctor. I didn’t ask him down here, or you either, for any such purpose. If you had liked Jack Hurstly, well and good. I wouldn’t have opposed the match. He’s got blood, and he’s got money, and I have nothing against him. But I have set my heart on one thing if you won’t have him.” He stopped a moment. “Muriel,” he said, “you know my heart is weak, and it’s very bad for me to be opposed.”

Muriel smiled; the scene lost its strain; the gay voices of idlers on the lawn came in through the windows with the after-dinner grace of the “wise thrushes” in the shrubbery. They all sounded so restful and contented. But she—must she battle till her life’s end? Tears of self-pity rose to her eyes. Her uncle supposed them to be signs of softening grace.

“My child,” he said, “Sir Alec Bruce is a good man, and he loves you.”

“He has a good income and a good family,” suggested the girl maliciously.

Sir Arthur waved them aside grandly. “I have set my heart upon the match,” said; “my life is risked by a disappointment.”

Muriel crushed her hands together nervously. “And what about my life?” she said at last. “But I suppose that doesn’t matter,” and ignoring her uncle’s wrathful exclamation she stepped out of the French windows and joined the idlers on the lawn. Sir Arthur waited a few moments for a heart attack to come on, but as nothing happened he also went into the garden. But a few moments had dissipated the group, and only Cynthia Grant remained with a bull-dog and a cigarette. She looked extremely unsympathetic, and grumbling under his breath something far from complimentary about advanced young women he returned to the house. A moment later Dr. Grant joined his sister on the lawn. The bull-dog, appropriately named “Grip,” looked wistfully from one to the other. He knew it was impossible to be at the feet of both at the same time, and so with chivalrous courtesy he curled himself up once more by his mistress’s side and listened with heavily absorbed eyes to the following conversation.

“Do you really mean to do it?” asked Cynthia curtly.

“If I hadn’t, why should I have come here?” replied her brother, giving short puffs at his pipe. “You know I feel awfully out of this sort of thing—an abominably lazy lot.” Grip, who with the magnificent patience of the strong had long been putting up with an inquisitive and infuriating fly, now relieved his feelings with a successful snap.

Cynthia laughed bitterly. “You won’t get her so easily as that,” she said by way of illustration. “And why should I want you to? Has it never occurred to you, my dear brother, that I might prefer you better unmarried. It’s a slackening sort of thing at best for a man, and we’ve always roughed it together, haven’t we, Geoff? Pretty cosily, too, I think.”

“You might get married yourself,” he said gloomily. The girl suggestively lit a cigarette.

“I don’t think so, Geoff,” she said with a queer little laugh. “Has it never occurred to you that I’m thirty, and you’ve never been particularly keen on it before?”

“I’m not now—but I think it’s a good thing for a girl.”

“You mean for a man, don’t you?” He looked at her quietly.

“You’re not like yourself to-day, Sis,” he said gently. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re trying to marry Muriel Dallerton. She’s in love with Jack Hurstly, whom she’s trying to marry to that emotional little Gladys thing. Meanwhile, unless they are all very careful, Edith le Mentier means to play her own game with them all.”

“How do you know Miss Dallerton’s in love with Hurstly?” asked the doctor, savagely ignoring the rest of the remarks. She turned on him with mocking eyes.

“She is interested in his conversation,” she said, and they both burst out laughing. Grip placed his head massively on her hands and looked both question and reproach at her. “His business, Grip,” she said, “is to get perfectly rested, not to tread on lazy people’s corns, and to see as much as possible of the right young lady. As for me, Grip”—she dropped some inconveniently heated ashes on his pink nose, which made him shake his head and blink severely like a shocked old lady—“where do I come in? Well, I have my own little game to play. And here’s dear Edith in a fresh pink gown. Let’s go and meet her—she’s so fond of us both. And you——” she looked back with a whimsical tenderness at her brother, “just go down to the river and find your young lady, only for Heaven’s sake don’t glare at her like that!”