CHAPTER XIII TWO PROPOSALS

THREE days after her visit to the theatre with Sir Joseph Rayner, Joy Gargrave went north to Westmorland, accompanied by Miss La Farge. She was staying with old friends a few miles from the home of Sir James Bracknell at Harrow Fell, and her hostess, remembering Dick Bracknell’s devotion to her, gossiped freely.

“You remember Sir James’ eldest son, the one whom we used to say ran on your heels, Joy?”

“Yes,” answered Joy, in a voice that was not very encouraging.

“He went to the dogs—all the way. There was a bad scandal, and though it was hushed up for Sir James’ sake, Dick Bracknell had to run the country. No one knows where he is now or whether he is alive or dead, but it is thought the latter; anyway, we are all beginning to look on Geoffrey as the heir of Harrow Fell. He is coming over here at the week-end for the final grouse-shoot of the season, and Adrian Rayner is coming also. Your uncle fished for an invitation for him, and my husband could not very well refuse, you know. I fancy,” she added with a knowing little laugh, “it isn’t merely grouse he is after.”

Joy gave no sign of understanding, but when the week-end arrived, bringing with it Adrian Rayner,[141] she was left in no uncertainty as to her cousin’s intentions. He haunted her steps. He was always at hand with assistance which she did not want; and when Geoffrey Bracknell also arrived, there was something like open rivalry between them. Her friend and hostess laughed.

“You will have a brace of proposals before the shoot is over, Joy.”

“Not if I can help it,” answered Joy quickly.

“You will not be able to help it,” was the reply. “They are both determined young men and their minds are made up.”

“So is mine,” replied Joy.

Yet it was as her hostess said. On the day of the shoot, Geoffrey Bracknell walked with her across the moor towards the “butts” built of turf and behind which they were to wait for the driven birds. They reached her own shelter first, and as she dropped to an improvised seat, Geoffrey Bracknell halted and looked down at her.

“Miss Gargrave, there is—er—something that I want to say, and to—a—ask you.”

She looked up and met his honest eyes, eyes that to her mind recalled not his brother, her husband, but the eyes of his cousin Corporal Bracknell of the Mounted Police. What she read there brought a quick flush to her face, and she hastily put up a protesting hand.

“Please, Mr. Bracknell, don’t! Don’t spoil our friendship!”

“Ah!” said the young man, his face paling a little, “you understand what I want. Is it really quite impossible?”

[142]

“Yes,” she answered with directness, “it is quite impossible.”

Geoffrey Bracknell whistled softly to himself. He had suffered a blow, but he strove to behave like a gentleman. “Then I am sorry to have troubled you, Miss Gargrave. Of course I knew that I was not—er—worthy—”

“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[143] 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.

[144]

“Thank God,” she whispered to herself, delivered from the fear which had assailed her, “it was not—”

She dropped on her knees by his side and took his hand. It was already cold, as she raised it to her lips.

“Poor boy! Poor boy!”

She was in tears as she rose from her knees, and began to walk towards the next butt. The news spread quickly and the shoot was stopped, and the body was taken first to the village, and later in the day to Harrow Fell. And that night Joy’s hostess, discussing the tragedy, set a problem before her, which kept her awake far into the night.

“Poor Sir James,” she said. “He is left without a child, for as I told you no one knows anything at all about Dick Bracknell, and it doesn’t matter very much whether he is alive or dead, to any one but his cousin Roger, for he can never return to England.”

“To his cousin Roger,” echoed Joy, visioning the corporal, “why should it matter to him?”

“Because if Dick is out of the way, Harrow Fell will pass to him on Sir James’ death. The estates are entailed, you know.”

Instantly Joy saw the difficulties of the situation. Dick Bracknell might be dead, or he might be very much alive. In the former case, the way was quite clear for his cousin; but in the latter, there were possibilities that filled her with dread. The corporal had left North Star in an endeavour to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his cousin’s body. If Dick Bracknell were yet alive[145] and he overtook him, he would probably try to effect his arrest, and if Dick resisted there might be trouble, and possibly Corporal Bracknell might be driven to have recourse to arms. Suppose he shot his cousin, and so, in innocence, cleared his own way to the succession of Harrow Fell? Her face clouded, and an anxious look came into her eyes. She was recalled to herself by her hostess’s voice.

“A penny for your thoughts, Joy.”

Joy prevaricated a little. “I was thinking what a strange coil life is!” she answered.

“In what way?”

“Well, the last person I spoke to, before I left North Star to come to England, was Roger Bracknell!”

“Roger Bracknell!” echoed her hostess in surprise.

“Yes, he is in the Mounted Police, and, in the way of duty, he came to North Star, three days or so before I left.”

“That is an odd coincidence,” was the comment. “What did you think of him, my dear?”

Joy answered with reserve. “He seemed to be very nice—a gentleman, you know.”

Her hostess smiled. “Yes, Roger is that—the right sort, as my husband would say. He, at any rate, will never disgrace the Bracknell clan, for he is at the opposite pole from his cousin Dick. What did he look like?”

“Like a mounter!” answered Joy quickly.

“A mounter! Don’t talk slang, Joy. Interpret, please.”

“Well,” answered Joy smilingly, “a mounter is[146] a member of the Royal North West Mounted Police, who are as fine a body of men as you may find from one end of the Empire to the other.”

“And therefore Roger Bracknell is a fine man, hey?”

“He struck me as being so!” answered Joy composedly. Her friend glanced at her with shrewd eyes. “Hum!” she said. “You are very discreet, my dear Joy. Now you know that the truth is that Roger Bracknell is a man who takes the eye, a handsome man in fact, and why you should be reluctant to own up—”

“Own up! What do you mean?” interrupted Joy, her face growing suddenly scarlet.

“Nothing,” laughed her friend, “except that Roger Bracknell is a man to whom few women could be as indifferent as you pretend to be. But I must cut this conversation short. There’s Adrian Rayner looking for you, and coming this way. I’ll send him on to you.”

“Please don’t,” cried Joy; but her hostess only laughed, and as she walked towards the young man Joy fled to her room.

Late into the night she considered the possibilities which had presented themselves to her mind at the mention of Roger Bracknell’s possible succession to Harrow Fell, and in the morning she rode to the post office in the neighbouring country town, and there dispatched two cablegrams, one to Roger Bracknell, care of the Police Commissioner at Regina, explaining to him the circumstances, and one to the Commissioner himself asking for the whereabouts of Corporal Bracknell, prepaying a[147] reply. Three days later the reply reached her in London.

“Corporal Bracknell reported as missing. Supposed lost.”

When she received it, she was greatly distressed, and rather hurriedly made up her mind to return at once to North Star. Why she should do so, she did not make clear even to herself; and when Adrian Rayner pressed her for her reason, she was covered with confusion.

“Joy,” he protested, “you must not do anything so foolish. You have fulfilled the terms of your father’s will to the letter, and now your place is here in England. We all want you here! I want you more than any one else on earth. Do you understand?”

She gave him no reply to the question, but he explained further, leaving her no room for doubt. “I love you, Joy. I loved you when you were here in England three years ago. I loved you at North Star. I love you more madly than ever, now. Will you marry me?”

“I can’t,” she said. “Don’t press me, Adrian.”

“But why can’t you?” he asked ruthlessly. “At least you owe me a reason for refusal. I wonder if that reason has anything to do with this foolishness of returning to North Star.”

She was a little startled by the acuteness of his conjecture, and did not immediately reply. He smiled a trifle grimly, and then continued. “If it has, you can dismiss that reason from your mind for good. Dick Bracknell is dead.”

“Dick Bracknell! What—”

[148]

Her voice faltered as she met his gaze. “Yes,” he answered. “Dick Bracknell, alias Koona Dick. He was your husband, wasn’t he? You married him down at Alcombe, didn’t you?”

“How do you know?” she asked quiveringly.

“That is a private matter,” he replied. “Just as your marriage was private; and just as the manner of your husband’s death must be kept private for the good of us all.”

“What ... what do you mean, Adrian?” she asked in a trembling voice, her face ghastly with sudden terror.

“I mean that I know who shot Koona Dick,” he answered slowly.

“Oh!” she gasped, her hand over her heart in a wild endeavour to stay its fierce beating. “Oh! what—what—”

“There is no need for you to be other than frank with me. I saw the whole thing. I saw you get that message. I followed you into the woods. You took a gun with you, and you hid in the trees where you could see your husband arrive. I saw the flame of your shot, and that same second Dick Bracknell fell in the snow. Mark you, I do not blame you. Dick Bracknell was worthless and—”

“But oh!” sobbed Joy with horror in her face. “You are mistaken. It is not true. I never—”

“Why try to bluff me, Joy? I say I saw you and if you were not the person who killed Dick Bracknell, why did you make no mention of what had occurred when you returned to the Lodge? That is not the way of innocence.”

[149]

Joy did not reply. Her face was buried in her hands and she was sobbing convulsively. Rayner looked at her with shrewd eyes, then after a moment resumed in an altered tone—

“As I have said, Joy, my dear, I do not blame you; I even went out of my way to help you that night.”

“You ... you went—”

“Exactly, I saw that policeman find Dick’s body, and afterwards leave it, and go towards the Lodge. I knew that things might be awkward if the truth came out, so I disposed of the body.”

“You disposed of the body?” She lifted her head suddenly, and through her tears looked at him incredulously.

“Yes,” he answered airily. “It is difficult to prove a crime if there is no evidence of it, so I removed the material evidence, to the utter confusion of any theory that Corporal Bracknell might have formed.”

“But how? What—”

“I carried it away, and dropped it through an ice-hole in the river. It will never be found until the ice breaks up in the spring, and then it is not at all likely. I took a little risk, I know; but I did it for your sake, believe me, Joy, quite as much as for my own.”

“I do not understand how it affected you,” faltered the girl.

“Perhaps not,” answered Rayner suavely. “But you have heard the reason. I loved you. I wanted to marry you, even at that time I wanted[150] you; for I recognized that you were distraught when you—”

“Oh please! Please! Do not say it!” she cried.

“Very well,” he answered. “I will not. But you understand the position, and I think you will agree that knowing what I know there are not a great number of men who would wish to marry you.”

“And why should you?” she asked quickly.

“Again because I love you.”

She sat there in silence, staring absently at a vase of chrysanthemums on the table, and seeing them not at all. In her mind she was again living through the horror of that night at North Star, searching for something that would give the lie to Adrian Rayner’s statement. And suddenly she remembered something. That sled which had halted in the wood. Who had been with it? Her gaze moved quickly from the vase to her cousin’s face, and on it she surprised a cynical, calculating look that stirred deep distrust in her.

“You say you dropped Dick Bracknell’s body through the ice? It was rather a long way to the river. How did you get it there?”

For one second Rayner hesitated. He was not sure of the bearing of the question, but after the brief hesitation he answered, “I carried it, of course.”

Joy had marked the hesitation, and to her came the swift realization that he was lying. She marked his slim form, and remembered Dick Bracknell’s height and bulk, and the sudden conviction[151] deepened. But she gave no hint of it to Rayner, who stood watching her, sure that he could bend her to his will. She offered no comment on his reply, but thoughtfully twisted a ring upon her finger, while her mind sought for a way out of her immediate difficulty.

“Well, Joy,” he asked, “you will marry me?”

She rose abruptly from her chair. “No,” she said on a sudden impulse. “Not on the evidence of Dick’s death that you offer. I cannot consider—”

“You are not wise!” he interrupted. “You are in my hands, remember.”

“Oh, but you mistake me,” she cried. “I am not saying that I will never marry you. I am only saying that the evidence of Dick’s death is not sufficiently convincing.” She lifted a hand as he would have interrupted her. “No! Let me finish. When we left Corporal Bracknell at North Star, he knew that I was Dick’s wife, and he undertook to find out what had become of Dick’s body. There was some one else in the woods at North Star that night, some one who probably witnessed all that occurred. That person, I fancy, Roger Bracknell means to find. And when I have heard that man’s story—”

“You shall certainly hear it, for I will find that man myself. I will drag him across the world to tell it to you.”

He spoke vehemently, passionately, but in his bearing there was something besides vehemence and passion. His face had gone white, and in his eyes was a furtive look. Joy noticed these signs, but gave no indication of having done so.

[152]

“You!” she cried, “you will go? What will you be able to do?”

“Yes,” he answered sharply. “I will go. I will do what your bungling corporal has not been able to do. I will bring you proof of Dick Bracknell’s death. I will find that man who was in the wood, if there was a man—”

“There is no question of that,” she broke in. “I found his trail, and Corporal Bracknell found it too. I believe he followed it—”

“Ah!”

The expression on Rayner’s face, as the interjection broke from him, was one of mingled chagrin and fear. Joy noticed it, and it set her wondering again. Then quite suddenly she remembered something. Roger Bracknell had asked her if Adrian Rayner knew of her marriage with her cousin. She had answered that he did not, but he had known all the time! The significance of the question had not made itself felt at the time, but now it broke on her with startling force, and Rayner saw that something had happened to which he had no clue.

“What is it?” he asked sharply.

“Nothing!” she answered evasively. “But in view of all the circumstances I think I shall return to North Star myself before long.”

He was about to reply when there came an interruption. Miss La Farge entered the room.

“The car is waiting, Joy, and we are behind time. We really must be going if Mr. Rayner can excuse you.”

“Right, Babette. Cousin Adrian was just about to go, as we have finished our discussion, I believe.”

[153]

Rayner nodded. “Yes,” he said. “We have finished, and I am going. But I shall see you again, Joy, very shortly, certainly before I go to the North.”

Joy nodded and making his adieu Adrian Rayner passed out of the room.