The Jungle Girl Part 28

She turned towards Wargrave.

"You said you loved me. Is it true?"

He answered firmly:

"Yes, I do."

"Then will you marry me? This woman will only wreck your life. Choose between us."

He turned in desperation to Mrs. Norton.

"Violet, you don't really want me, do you? You don't love me. I've felt for a long time that you're forgetting me. I love Muriel and she loves me. If you ever cared for me release me from my promise."

Mrs. Norton lay back calmly in her chair and looked with a smile from one to the other. Then she said deliberately:

"This morning I wrote to my husband and told him that I was never returning to him, that I was going to you, Frank. That is why I asked this girl here to-day to tell you before her that now I'm going to ask you to keep your promise. Will you?"

The girl looked at him appealingly and stretched out her hands to him.

"Frank, for your own sake, if not for mine, don't listen to her."

He stood irresolute, torn by conflicting emotions. Then with an effort he replied:

"Muriel, I must. I can't break my word."

Mrs. Norton gave a mocking laugh. The girl shrank from him and hid her face in her hands for a moment. Then she looked up and said, desperately calm:

"Very well, be it so. You've decided and there's nothing more to be said. You've shamed me before this woman; and I never want to see you again."

She turned and walked out of the room.

CHAPTER XIII

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE

As Muriel pa.s.sed through the door Wargrave started to follow her; but Violet cried peremptorily:

"Frank, stay here. Please realise that I come first now. Sit down."

He obeyed mechanically. She went on petulantly:

"These emotional scenes are rather exhausting. Do you mind calling the hotel 'boy' and ordering a c.o.c.ktail for me? You ought to have one yourself. I suppose, like all men, you hate scenes. Then you should be grateful to me for saving you from that spiteful little jungle cat."

Going to the verandah outside the room he called a hotel servant and gave him the order, then returned to his chair and sat down wearily. He stared at the floor in silence. He had sent the girl that he loved away utterly humiliated; and he knew that, with her proud spirit, the shame of his rejection of her would cut her to the heart. He cursed himself for bringing this pain to her. It was all his fault. Not only had he had no right to speak of love to her while he was bound to another woman, but he ought never to have sought her society as he had done, never striven to gain her friends.h.i.+p, for by doing so he had unconsciously won her love. The harm was done long before he spoke to her of his feelings.

What a selfish brute he was to thus cause two women to suffer!

Presently he remembered that his moodiness, his silence, were uncomplimentary, cruel, to Violet. She was right in saying that she came first. Indeed she was the only one to be considered now. The other had pa.s.sed out of his life. It might be that they should meet again some day in their restricted world, but while he could he must try to avoid her.

There was only Violet left.

He looked up to find his companion's eyes fixed on him with an undefinable expression. He roused himself with an effort that was not lost on the woman watching him.

"So you have told your husband," he said. "Well, now we must arrange what we are going to do."

"We won't discuss our plans at this moment," replied Violet. "I'm not in the mood for it." Then after a pause she added bitterly, "I must give you time to recover from the shock of the abrupt ending to your little jungle romance."

Before he could reply the servant appeared with a tray.

"Ah, thank goodness, here are the c.o.c.ktails. There's only one. Aren't you having one, too? It will do you good. No?"

She sipped her c.o.c.ktail slowly. When she had finished it she got up from her chair, saying:

"I'll get ready to go to the Amus.e.m.e.nt Club. Will you wait for me here?

You needn't change--we won't play tennis to-day; for we've got this dinner and dance on to-night and I don't want to tire myself. I shan't be long."

As she pa.s.sed his chair she tapped his cheek and said:

"Don't look so miserable, my dear boy. You'll soon get over the loss of your jungle girl. There, you may kiss my hand as a sign of your return to your allegiance."

But when she entered her bedroom she did not at once proceed to get ready to go out, but unlocked her dressing-case and, taking out of it a letter, sat down to read it for the tenth time since she had received it that morning. Yet it was short and concise. It was from Rosenthal and addressed from the Mess of the 2nd (Duke's Own) Hussars in Bangalore; for, as it told her, he had returned to his regiment as his leave had expired. It was the first that had come from him since she had left Poona, although, as he said in it, he had obtained her new address from the Goanese clerk in the Munster Hotel office on the day of her flight, thanks to the persuasive powers of a fifty-rupee note.

He told her that although her abrupt departure had puzzled him and he could not understand why she had tried to conceal her whereabouts from him, he wished her to realise that if it were an attempt to escape from him it was useless. He could bide his time, for sooner or later he would get her.

Violet smiled as she read his confident words, although they caused a little s.h.i.+ver of fear to run through her. Then she rose, locked the letter away and put on her hat.

Not until after lunch next day was Wargrave able to find time to go to the Oriental Hotel, not to see Muriel, he sternly told himself, but to pay a visit to Mrs. Dermot. When he was shown up to her sitting-room he had to wait for some time before Noreen entered; and he was struck at once by the coldness of her greeting. It was evident that she was very displeased with him. She said no word about Muriel; and Wargrave felt curiously averse to mentioning her name.

At last he summed up courage to ask her. With as near an approach to frigidity of manner as she could show to a man to whom she was so indebted Noreen replied:

"Muriel has left Darjeeling."

"Left Darjeeling? Where for? Where has she gone?" he exclaimed in surprise.

"To her father."

"But why? She wasn't to have left for weeks yet," said Wargrave.

Mrs. Dermot looked at him angrily.

"Why? Need you ask? I should have thought commonsense would have told you. I don't think we'll talk about it, please. As I said before, I've washed my hands of the whole affair."

Further conversation on the subject was rendered impossible by the irruption of her children, who rushed at Wargrave and reproached him for not being to see them lately.

During the next few days Violet baffled every attempt that Frank made to discuss their future course of action. The constant succession of gaieties, the b.a.l.l.s, theatricals, concerts, races, _gymkhanas_, that filled every afternoon and evening of the Darjeeling Season, took up all her time. Whenever he tried to talk matters over with her she invariably replied that there was no hurry, even when he pointed out that Major Norton might arrive any day in consequence of her letter. That he had not already done so was inexplicable to Wargrave; and the subaltern could only believe her a.s.surance that her husband accepted her loss with equanimity. It never occurred to Frank to doubt that she had written the letter.