“Oh, it is not that,” she intervened in a distressed voice. “It is—something else, it has nothing to do with you at all!”
“But it knocks me out!” he said trying to smile. “Well, it is the fortune of war. I suppose that I shall have to persuade the governor to let me go on a big game trip, now. That is, the proper thing to do under the circumstances, isn’t it?”
Again she met his eyes, he was still smiling, but she could see the effort it required. She held out a hand impulsively.
“Geoffrey,” she said, “don’t let this spoil your life, or our friendship. I cannot now explain what makes my refusal imperative. Some day I may be able to, and when I can I shall tell you, if you are still my friend.”
“Then you’ll have to tell me,” he said frankly, “for I shall always be that. Couldn’t be anything else, you know.... But there’s the head-keeper signalling; I must move on to my own butt. Good hunting!”
He laughed with forced lightness and walked away. Joy watched him go with pain at her heart. How like his cousin he was, and how unlike his brother! She felt very sorry for the boy, and the incident had disturbed her so much that she shot very badly. Again and again as the birds came driving towards her she either didn’t fire or fired too late, but from the butt where Geoffrey Bracknell waited, the shots came at regular intervals, and she saw the birds drop every time. Then a covey of grouse came driving with the wind straight towards her neighbour’s shelter. She waited. There was a sharp report, and a sudden cry, and the birds drove on. She looked towards the shelter. It was almost in a line with her own, and she could see something lying on the ground behind it. Another flock of birds drove down the wind, but there was no shot from Geoffrey Bracknell’s gun. A sudden fear assailed her. Leaving her own gun resting against the turf wall, she ran towards the next butt. Before she reached it, she knew that something dreadful had happened, for she could see that the young man was lying on his back in the heather. She reached the shelter and a cry broke from her.
White faced and still, with a ghastly wound in his right temple, Geoffrey Bracknell lay there, quite dead. As she looked at him, she had no doubt whatever about the matter, and a great agony surged up in her heart.
Had he—? Her eyes fell on the gun close by, and before the thought which had assailed her was completed she knew that it was groundless. The lock of the gun was blown out, and the base of both barrels was fractured. It had been an accident.
“Thank God,” she whispered to herself, delivered from the fear which had assailed her, “it was not—”