CHAPTER XXII
LORD INGLEBY’S WIFE
The journey down from town had been as satisfactorily rapid as even Jim Airth could desire. He had caught the train at Charing Cross by five seconds.
The hour’s run passed quickly in glowing anticipation of that which was being brought nearer by every turn of the wheels.
Myra’s telegram was drawn from his pocket-book many times. Each word seemed fraught with tender meaning, “Come to me at once.” It was so exactly Myra’s simple direct method of expression. Most people would have said, “Come here,” or “Come to Shenstone,” or merely “Come.” “Come to me” seemed a tender, though unconscious, response to his resolution of the night before: “I will arise and go to my belovèd.”
Now that the parting was nearly over, he realised how terrible had been the blank of three weeks spent apart from Myra. Her sweet personality was so knit into his life, that he needed her—not at any particular time, or in any particular way—but always; as the air he breathed; or as the light, which made the day.
And she? He drew a well-worn letter from his pocket-book—the only letter he had ever had from Myra.
“I shall always want you,” it said; “but I could never send, unless the coming would mean happiness for you.”
Yet she had sent. Then she had happiness in store for him. Had she instinctively realised his change of mind? Or had she gauged his desperate hunger by her own, and understood that the satisfying of that, must mean happiness, whatever else of sorrow might lie in the background?