Rupert would have found it difficult to explain why, on the following afternoon, his steps again turned towards Mrs. Nairne's house, and why he assured himself, that it would be kind to Cicely to go to see Baba again, and take the latest tidings of the child back to her mother. He only knew that he had a great desire to sit quietly in that firelit room again, to feel the sense of peace and home-like tranquillity that seemed to hover about it; he only felt that in some inexplicable fashion Baba's new nurse—the girl with the sweet eyes and gentle voice—rested him, that her simplicity, and some child-like quality in her, soothed the pain that tore at his heart. Women had played no part in his life, until one woman had played an overmastering one; and all that his passionate adoration of Margaret Stanforth had cost, and was costing, him, gave an added charm to a nature devoid of all subtlety, simple and serene. Across the stretch of years between them, he regarded Christina as little more than a child, but it is often from a child's hands that the passion-tossed, world-weary soul can find most comfort; and as Mernside for the second time sat in the old-fashioned sitting-room, and had tea with Christina and her small charge, he felt that in some indefinable fashion, the girl's hands were unconsciously smoothing away some of the misery that chafed his soul. She showed no traces of her embarrassment of the previous day. Night had brought its own counsels, and she had determined not to disclose her identity to Mernside.
"After all," she reflected philosophically, "I didn't do anything wrong—only something silly—and it is all over now. Probably he has forgotten all about the stupid girl who wrote him that letter, and anyhow, he doesn't think about me at all, excepting as Baba's nurse, so it would be foolish to make a fuss."
Having come to this determination, Christina, with characteristic good sense, put away from her all thoughts of self-consciousness and embarrassment, and allowed herself to enjoy Mernside's visit, with much the same childish delight as was evinced by Baba. And if the two showed their pleasure in different ways, it was none the less patent to their visitor, that the little nurse, with her big green eyes and dusky cloud of hair, took as much pleasure in his coming as did the golden-haired baby; and it gave him an odd glow of satisfaction to see her eyes brighten as he talked, and to watch the swift soft flushes of colour that came and went in her cheeks. Rupert, when he chose, could talk well and interestingly; he had travelled over the greater part of the world, and in the course of his travels had used eyes and ears to good purpose. And to Christina, the little travelled—to Christina, the whole sum of whose existence had been divided between a Devonshire village, the Donaldsons' suburban house, and a London lodging—all that Rupert told of distant countries, and strange, uncouth peoples was breathlessly interesting and entrancing. Sitting there in the firelight, Baba nestled closely in his arms, Christina seated opposite to him, her chin propped on her hands, her eager eyes following his every word—Rupert found himself talking as he had not talked for a long time with an eager boyish interest that surprised himself. It was only when some chance word of his led Christina to ask him a question about Biskra, that the flow of his eloquence suddenly ceased. It was there, in that garden of the desert, that he had first met Margaret. The girl's gently-asked question, for some inexplicable reason, brought back to him, as though it were only yesterday, the afternoon when the woman who ever since had dominated his whole existence, had first come into his life. Overhead, the deep pure depths of the bluest sky he had ever seen, against its blue stately palms that waved their fan-like leaves with the soft rustling sounds that only belong to the palm-trees; and there in the sunlight, stately as one of the great trees, her white gown falling about her, Margaret had stood, her dark eyes turned towards the all-surrounding desert. How or why they had begun to speak, he could not now recall, but from that first speech of fellow-countrymen in a far-off land, they had passed into acquaintanceship, and from that by easy stages to the friendship which he had implored her to give him, in default of that which she had told him could never be his. Well! at least in the years that followed, he had been able to serve her, to help her, to ease some of the burden of her life, that burden of which he himself knew so little. And to have served her was something for which to be thankful. If only—there was the bitterness—if only she had not gone away out of his ken now, in this strange mysterious fashion, leaving him ignorant of her whereabouts, and of all that concerned her.
If only she had trusted him more! If only—— With a start he roused himself, to realise that Christina's eyes were watching him with a certain shy wonder, and remembering that he had broken off his conversation almost in the middle of a sentence, he looked at her with a smile of apology.
"Do please forgive me," he said. "Your mention of Biskra brought back so many pictures of the past, and—I was looking at them instead of going on with my story."
"Baba likes pictures," the child murmured drowsily.
"Perhaps Baba would like the picture I saw," her cousin answered, feeling an odd compulsion to speak of what was in his thoughts: "a picture of palm-trees, and a princess in a white gown, who walked amongst them, and——"
"Was the princess like Christina?" Baba all at once pulled herself into an upright position on his knee, and looked earnestly into his face. "Tell Baba if that princess was like mine own pretty lady."
The eyes of the two elders met, and Christina laughed confusedly.
"Baba sees the people she loves through very rosy spectacles," she said, and Rupert smiled, whilst Baba's insistent voice repeated—
"Tell if the princess in the white frock was like Christina."
"No, no—not at all like her," Rupert began, his eyes glancing at the bent dark head opposite to him, at the clear whiteness of the cheeks, into which the colour was flushing so becomingly; at the deep green of her eyes, the red line of her lips; "no, the princess was—at least," he broke off suddenly, and looked more narrowly at the girl. "How absurd!" he exclaimed, "and what an extraordinary hallucination. It shows what a power of imagination the least imaginative of us may possess; but at that moment, your princess and mine, little Baba, had a queer fantastic likeness to one another."
Christina looked up at him sharply, surprise the predominating expression on her face. But before she could speak, Baba's clear tones again made themselves heard.
"Just tell Baba 'zackly—'zacklywhat the princess in the white frock was like; Baba wants to know."
Again Rupert felt impelled to speak, almost against his own inclination, and his words came with a readiness, which, if he had considered the matter, would greatly have surprised him.
"She was tall," he answered; "very tall and very stately, as stately as one of the palm-trees under which she stood; and her face was white like her gown, only, it was not white as sick people are white, but like the whiteness of a rose, very clear and pure. And her hair was black—black as a raven's wing"—his voice grew dreamy, he seemed to have forgotten his listeners, and merely to be thinking aloud, whilst he watched the leaping flames of the fire—"and her eyes were deep and dark, fathomless wells of colour, and very sad." Christina drew in her breath quickly, and leant forward, an eager look on her face. "I—never saw any eyes like those," the man's voice continued; "they held so much—they had seen so much, they were so beautiful—and so sad. The princess"—he started, and tried to resume a lighter tone—"was the most beautiful lady in the world, little Baba."
"She is just like——" Christina began impetuously, then stopped short, remembering the secrecy enjoined upon her, by the woman whom she knew only as "Margaret,"—the woman of the lonely valley house.
"Just like—who?" Rupert turned to her with the sharp question, a sudden gleam in his eyes. "Do you know anybody answering to the description I have just given? Have you ever seen someone like—like my princess?" The eagerness of his tones, the gleam in his eyes, showed Christina the necessity for caution, and she answered quietly—
"I think the lady you describe, is something like a lady I once saw; at least, she was beautiful, with dark eyes and hair," the girl ended confusedly.
"It could not be the same person," Rupert said with decision. "The princess I am describing—was unique. You would not speak of her in those terms of lukewarm praise. Her beauty was something beyond and above anything ordinary or everyday."
"So," Christina was on the point of saying almost indignantly, "so was the beauty of my lovely lady," but she checked her words just in time; prudence demanded that she should say nothing, rather than that by saying a word too much, she should betray another woman's trust.
"I should like—to have seen her under the palm-tree," she said, wondering in her girlish heart, whether it was the beautiful princess in the white gown, who had brought the lines of pain about this man's face, and into his grey eyes; wishing, too, with girlish innocent fervour, that it might be given to her to take away some of his pain.
"I wish you could have seen her," he answered her speech. "I think you and she would understand one another, but"—again the words seemed forced from him—"at this moment, I don't even know where she is." The concentrated bitterness of the tone, the haggard misery of the look that accompanied the words, stabbed at Christina's tender heart.
"Oh! I am sorry," she exclaimed. "I wish—I could help you," she spoke with a child's impulsive eagerness, but it was the tender pity of a womanly woman, that looked out of her eyes, and the look gave Rupert a sense of having been touched with some healing balm.
Baba was no longer taking any conscious part in the conversation; the warmth of the fire, combined with the consumption of a plentiful supply of Mrs. Nairne's toast and cake, had induced profound drowsiness, and the sounds of her elders' voices having acted as a final soporific, the little maid now slept peacefully, her dimpled hand against Rupert's neck, her golden curls upon his shoulder. The man and girl were, to all intents and purposes, alone, and Rupert looked across at Christina, with the smile that gave such extraordinary charm to his face.
"No wonder this small girl looks at you with rosy spectacles," he said; "you are one of the born helpers of this world. What makes you say you would like to help me? Do you think I need help?"
"I am sure you do," came the prompt reply; "your eyes—" she broke off, startled by her own audacity, her glance wavering from his face to the fire.
"Your eyes——" he repeated after her. "What do you find in my eyes that makes you think I want help?" He spoke with the same caressing kindliness he might have bestowed on a child; he felt an odd desire to confide in her, as a grown-up person does sometimes feel oddly constrained to confide in a little child, whose sympathy, whilst lacking comprehension, is still full of comfort.
"Your eyes are so sad," she answered frankly, when he paused for her reply; "you seem as if you were looking always for something you have lost, something which is very precious to you."
"So I am," he replied, pillowing Baba more closely in his arms, and leaning nearer to Christina. "I don't know by what wonderful gift you discovered all that in my eyes—but it is true. I am looking for something I have lost, or perhaps—something I have never had," he added bitterly, under his breath.
"Some day—surely—you will find it?" she said gently, her heart aching, because of the sudden hardening of his mouth and eyes.
"Find what I have never had?" he laughed, and his laugh hurt the girl who listened. "I may find the—person who has gone out of my ken; that is possible. I never forget to look for what I have lost, wherever I go, and I go to many places in my car. But, even if I found the human being I have lost, will everything be less elusive, less hopeless than before?"
"Of course you know you are talking in riddles," Christina answered gravely, her brows drawn together in a frown; "you don't want to let me understand what you really mean, and that is very natural," she added with a practical common sense that sat quaintly upon her; "but I should have liked to help you."
"You do help me," he said quickly; "it sounds absurd to say so, even to myself it seems absurd, because it is not my way to take anybody into my confidence. But—I can trust you."
The simply spoken words set Christina's heart beating with innocent pride; her eyes looked at him gratefully.
"Thank you for saying that," she answered. "I think it is true. You can trust me, and I am glad, so very glad, if there is anything I can do to help you. If—if I might understand a little better?" she added falteringly.
"The story I told Baba just now was a true one," he answered abruptly; "the beautiful lady really walked under the palm-trees, and I—well—these stories all have the same plot. I wanted her for my princess. But she—had a prince of her own already." The half-bitter, half-jesting way in which he spoke, sent all the child in the girl into the background, brought all the woman in her into prominence; she put out her hand with a little pitiful gesture.
"Oh!" she whispered softly; "oh! but that was hard."
"It seemed hard to me," his tone was grim; "it seemed an irony of fate beyond my poor powers of comprehension, more especially when I found—no, not found—I don't know for certain even now. I know nothing, less than nothing"—again came that bitterness that hurt his listener—"but when I guessed that the prince was not worthy of her, that it was my lot to stand aside and be a friend only, whilst someone not worthy to touch the hem of her gown, had the place of honour, then I knew what sorry tricks Fate can play!"
"And the poor princess?" Christina asked gently. A light flashed over Rupert's face.
"There is the wonder of it all, the wonder of womanhood," he exclaimed; "mind, I don't know any facts for certain. I only guess that the—rightful prince is not worthy to tie the strings of her shoes, and yet—he is all the world to her. The rest of us are nothing. No, that isn't true either," he corrected himself hurriedly. "I have her friendship. I have the unspeakable honour of being her friend, but the best of her is given to someone who is not worthy. Not that the best man among us is worthy to touch her hand," he added, with an impetuosity that made him seem all at once oddly young and boyish.
"And she—your friend—is it she you have lost now?" Christina questioned softly, when he paused. He nodded.
"Yes, she left town suddenly, giving me no reason for going. I have been able to do many things for her; things a friend could do. She is very fragile; she has been very ill, and now—I do not even know where she is. I can only surmise that the man, who is not worthy—needed her help—and she has done his bidding. Worthy or unworthy, her soul is wrapped up in him. Woman's love is a wonderful thing—almost incomprehensible to men!"
Unbidden, before Christina's mind, there rose a half-darkened room, a bed piled high with pillows, and lying back amongst the pillows, a woman with a beautiful, stricken face, and deep eyes of haunting sadness. Unbidden there came to her memory words spoken in a low passionate voice:
"You don't know what it means to care so much for a man, that, no matter what he is, or does, he is your world, your whole world."
And with the memory, came an illuminating flash of thought. Could it be possible—that the beautiful lady of the lonely valley, and the princess in the white gown, of whom this man spoke, were one and the same person? Her preoccupation with this thought made her silent for so long after Rupert's last speech, that presently he said quietly:
"I don't know why I am inflicting all this upon you, or why I have been egotistical enough to think my confidence could be in the smallest degree interesting, to somebody who is almost a stranger."
"A stranger?" Christina echoed the words blankly, then laughed a little tremulously.
"I had—forgotten—-we had only met so seldom," she said; "it—doesn't feel as if you were a stranger; and I am so glad, so proud, that you have trusted me. Some people from the very beginning don't seem like strangers, do they?" she asked, with a smile.
"That's quite true," he answered. "I am not a subtle person, I don't profess to be able to explain these things, but some people do seem to jump directly into one's friendship, whilst other people jog along beside us all our lives, and we get no nearer to them at last, than we were at first. You have been a friend to me to-day."
"Have I? I am glad," the colour rushed into her face, "and I wish I could help more." He smiled at her again. He still had the feeling that he was talking to a charming child, one of rarely sympathetic and understanding nature; and yet, through all the mist of masculine density in which he was wrapped, he was conscious of the womanly tenderness that had looked out of Christina's eyes, and spoken in her voice. That maternal instinct which is innately part of every good woman's nature, was largely developed in Christina, and, involuntarily, Rupert had made an appeal to that instinct. He would have laughed to scorn the bare idea that he, a strong and self-reliant man of the world, could ever lean, or need to lean, upon a slip of a girl, whose youthfulness was written in every line of her face, and of her slight form. And yet, unwittingly he had put out his hands to her for help, much as a little child puts out hands to its mother, for comfort and guidance.
Children all, these men-folk of the world! Children all, they have been from days immemorial, and presumably will be still the same in the days to come. And their womenkind love them, and comfort them, guide them and tend them, learning, with the sure instinct of womanhood, that they are just little boys, to be taken care of, and watched over, and "mothered" all the time. Christina knew this truth instinctively, if she could not have put it into definite words; Christina knew it; each daughter of Eve knows it by experience bitter or sweet—it is the truth that "every woman knows"!
"You are sure I need not be alarmed? You are quite, quite sure? She is all my world." Denis Fergusson looked down at the small trembling creature, his eyes full of grave kindliness.
"Indeed, you need not be alarmed, Lady Cicely," he said. "I advised Miss Moore to send for you, because with a child, everything is so rapid that one never quite knows at the beginning of an illness how things may go. But little Miss Baba is doing exactly as she ought to do in every way. You need not have the slightest anxiety."
The little mother, with her lovely, troubled face, stood in the window of that same low, old-fashioned room, which Rupert, a fortnight earlier, had found such a restful place, and the doctor stood by her side. The winter sunshine fell upon her delicately cut features, lighting the pale gold of her hair into a halo; and the blue eyes she turned to her companion, seemed to him scarcely less innocent and sweet, than the eyes which had looked into his from Baba's cot.
"Such alittlewoman to have the responsibilities of womanhood," was his thought; "such a little woman, who looks as if she ought to be wrapped round with care and tenderness."
Perhaps some of the chivalrous tenderness of his thought showed itself in his glance; perhaps Cicely could read in his face the trustworthy nature of the man, for she said quickly:
"You see, Baba and I have only each other in the world, and that makes her very extra precious. Sometimes—I am afraid, because I love her so much."
"Afraid?" The doctor's glance was puzzled.
"Yes, afraid lest God should take her away from me. He might think I was making an idol of her, and that it was better I should do without her. That thought makes me afraid." To no living soul before, had Cicely told of the fear that often stirred within her, but Denis Fergusson's brown eyes and sympathetic manner, invited confidence, and in some unaccountable fashion he made her think of John, the loving husband who had always understood.
"Isn't yours rather a pagan way of looking at things?" Fergusson said gently. "Surely our God is not a jealous God, Who takes away what we love, because we love it? I don't believe it is possible to love a person too much, if one only loves them rightly. And I could never believe that the God Whose name is Father, could be angry with a mother's love."
"I am glad you have said that to me," Cicely answered. "Baba is so much to me, so very, very much, but I don't want to make an idol of her, dear little sweetheart."
"She is a very adorable person," Fergusson said brightly. "I shall miss my daily visits to her; she and I have made great friends."
"She is the friendliest soul. We have always wrapped her round with love; I wanted her to be loving and happy."
"I think you have succeeded. She is the delight of the village, and of the whole neighbourhood. She and her very capable nurse are known for miles round. There will be great lamentations when they go."
"They must come back," Cicely smiled, well-pleased at the praise of her darling. "I am taking them both to Bramwell for Christmas, but later on in the spring or summer, they will come here again."
"But I, alas! shall be gone."
"Ah! I forgot you are only doing temporary work here. You know you are not quite 'in the picture' here," she said with a smile.
"Why?" The one word, though abruptly uttered, was accompanied by the smile that made Fergusson's poorer patients say, it warmed their hearts when he smiled at them; and Cicely had the same sensation of warmth.
"Because you are not in the least like any country doctor I ever came across; and I am sure you would never bear being buried in rural depths. You belong to cities, and people."
"I hoped I had managed to hide my proclivity for gutters," he answered laughing. "I am afraid you are right. A big city draws me like a magnet. I can say with the poet, 'The need of a world of men for me.' The finest scenery in the world does not make up to me, for the lack of human beings."
"Then you are a town person?"
"Very much a town person. My home and work lie in a rather sordid, very poor—to me, enthrallingly interesting—corner of South London. I am only here for a time, doing his work for an old acquaintance, and incidentally getting a change I rather needed."
"You knocked yourself up with work in South London?"
"Not quite that. I got a little played out, and the air of this place has more than set me up. I shall go back like a giant refreshed."
"They are chiefly poor people, your patients?" she questioned.
"Almost entirely poor. It is always interesting work, sometimes heartrending work, often humiliating. The poor are so wonderful in their attitude to one another, and to all their difficulties and troubles. But if I once begin to talk about my South London folk, I shall never stop. Some day you will perhaps let me tell you of their hard fight with life, and of their splendid courage."
"You must let me help you, and them," she answered impulsively; "and thank you again ten thousand times, for all you have done for my little Baba."
The short, sharp illness which had brought Cicely flying down from town at a moment's notice, had safely run its course, and Baba was now enjoying a convalescence, in which she was petted and spoilt to her heart's content, petted to an extent that might have done harm to a less sweet and wholesome character. But the love that had wrapped the child round from her first hours of life, had only made her sunny sweetness of nature more sweet and sunny, and she was a very captivating patient. Mrs. Nairne vied with Cicely and Christina in, as she phrased it, "cosseting" up the precious little dear, and the village folk who had learnt to love the small girl in her red cloak, with her dainty face and gracious manners, showered gifts and enquiries upon the invalid. Very quaint presents found their way to Baba's bedside. A plump young chicken from good Mrs. Smithers, whose poultry yard had caused the child the keenest delight; eggs from Widow Jones, who cherished a few rakish fowls in her strip of back garden; girdle cakes, most fearsome for digestive purposes, from Mrs. Madden, the blacksmith's wife, whilst the blacksmith himself brought a horse shoe, polished to the brightness of a silver mirror, for the little lady who had loved to stand beside the flaming forge, watching the sparks fly up, as his huge hammer struck the anvil. Children came shyly with bunches of the berries and coloured leaves that still hung in the hedges, and a very ancient dame whose garden boasted of two equally ancient apple-trees, proudly toddled up to Mrs. Nairne's door with the largest and rosiest of her apples, for the "pretty little lady."
"Baba seems to have made them all love her," Cicely said to Christina, tears standing in her blue eyes, when she returned from interviewing the old lady of the apples; "everybody who comes, speaks of her as if she were an old and valued friend."
"She has made friends with every living soul," Christina answered; "she is the most loving little child, and so tender-hearted over everything that is hurt or unhappy. I don't wonder everyone here adores her."
"Dr. Fergusson seems to think she will soon be quite well, and we must move her home for a few days, and then to Bramwell."
"Yes, he says she will soon be quite well," Christina repeated; "but I think I ought to remind you, that my month of probation ended last week; and—and I don't know whether you would care to let me still be Baba's nurse." Nobody knew what it cost the girl to say those apparently simple words, nor how hard it had been to resist the temptation to leave them unsaid. Lady Cicely had obviously forgotten that her new nurse had come on a month's trial only; she was taking it for granted that Christina was a permanent part of her household, and the girl shrank indescribably from any possibility of a change. And yet, conscience urged her to remind her employer of their compact for a month's probation. She instinctively felt that to drift on into being Baba's permanent nurse, would not be fair to Baba's kindly, impulsive little mother.
"You don't know whether I should care to keep you on!" Cicely exclaimed, when Christina had finished her halting speech; "what absurdity! Why, the doctor told me your careful nursing helped to get my darling safely out of her nasty wood. As if I should dream of letting you go, unless you want to leave us?" she questioned hastily.
"Want to leave you?" Christina's eyes dilated with the intensity of her emotion; "why—I am so happy with Baba and with you, that I couldn't bear even the very thought of going away from you. Only—I thought it was right to remind you about our agreement."
"It was rather a stupid agreement," Cicely answered lightly. "I had the fear of Rupert before my eyes. I knew he was thinking me a sort of impetuous infant, for insisting on asking you to come to Baba, just because you and she got on so well together. Rupert has a very well-balanced mind. He likes things done decently and in order. I am not built on the same lines."
Christina laughed.
"Still, you do like decency and order," she answered.
"Ah! yes," Cicely shrugged her shoulders; "but Rupert, the dear soul, is more conventional. Men always are. He likes beaten tracks, and the ways in which all our dear ancestors pottered along for countless generations. I like to make nice little new paths with my own feet, and do little new things that my great-grandmother never dreamt of doing, even in her wildest dreams."
"Is Mr. Mernside so very conventional?" Christina asked, and Cicely responded quickly—
"He's a perfect dear, but he would not for the world go out of the orthodox track. He believes in formal introductions, and long acquaintance as a prelude to friendship, and he would rather die than give his confidence to anyone, unless he had known them for years, and knew everything about them." A faint, a very faint, smile hovered over Christina's lips. Did Mr. Mernside really think long acquaintance a necessary prelude to friendship? Did he only give his confidence to those he had known longest? Seated in the firelight in this very room, only a fortnight ago, he had told her many things, which surely he would only have told to a friend—a faithful and loyal friend? And yet she had known him for so short a time, if time was to be measured merely by days and weeks.
"You saw Rupert the other day?" Lady Cicely went on, no thought of what was in the girl's mind crossing her own; "he wrote and told me how well and happy Baba looked."
"He was so kind." Christina's voice was quite non-committal. "He came twice to have tea with Baba—I think he enjoyed nursery tea," she added demurely.
"He loves children, and they love him. He is a most disappointing person, never to have married. I always tell him so. But he is not the least a woman's man; I really don't believe there has ever been a woman in Rupert's life at all."
The words echoed oddly in Christina's ears, when memory was still bringing back to her the vivid recollection of Rupert's princess in the white gown, of Rupert's own lined and haggard face, when he had told her the story of the beautiful lady who dominated his life. Discretion led her to reply more or less evasively to Cicely's words, and to her great relief the subject dropped, and her small ladyship returned to the discussion of Christina's own affairs.
"As to any question of your leaving us," she said; "there is no such question. Neither Baba nor I can do without you now. And I have not yet discovered that you are any of the dreadful things one seems to expect people to be. We always ask if nurses are sober and honest; and I don't believe you drink or steal."
Christina laughed gaily.
"No, I'm not a thief or a drunkard, I can truly say. But all the same you might not have found that I knew enough about children to give you satisfaction, and there are so many ways in which you might say I am inefficient."
"I find you just what I want," Cicely answered emphatically, "and so does Baba. Why, if you left her now, it would break her dear little heart. No, you have got to stay with us for ever and ever, amen; we will take Baba to town as soon as that nice Dr. Fergusson says she may move, and then we will go to Bramwell for Christmas."
The thought of "that nice Dr. Fergusson" recurred to the little lady more than once that evening, when she sat writing in the sitting-room, whilst Christina performed Baba's evening toilette.
"He makes me think of John," so Cicely's thoughts ran; "he has the same kind understanding eyes—brown, like John's—and the same gentle way with him that John had. I think he knew how lonely it feels for me sometimes, and what a big responsibility life is, for one little scrap of a woman like me."
And, indeed, strangely enough, thoughts not at all unlike these, were passing through Denis Fergusson's mind, as he drove rapidly back to Pinewood Lodge; and, whilst he ate his solitary meal that evening, in Dr. Stokes's trim dining-room, furnished in precisely the way Fergusson himself would not have furnished it, he found Cicely's delicately fair face, and soft blue eyes constantly rising before his mental vision; he found himself wondering what manner of man her husband had been, and whether those blue eyes had been lighted with love for that dead man's sake.
"She looked like some lovely, pathetic child when she talked to me to-day," so his reflections ran "she and that fascinating Baba of hers, are just a pair of babies together, and yet—all the woman and the mother are in her, too," and, glancing round the formal room, Fergusson sighed, and made a great effort to turn his thoughts away from sudden alluring dreams of a home of his own, a home that would be really a home, not merely a place in which to live, where the centre of all its peace and happiness would be—his wife.
His wife? He laughed aloud, a little short laugh that rang discordantly in his ears. It was quite improbable that he would ever be able to afford to ask any woman to marry him, much less a dainty, delicately nurtured woman who—who——
Back into his mind flashed the picture which he had been resolutely thrusting from him, the picture of a lovely face, like some exquisite flower rising above a cloud of filmy lace and soft dark furs, the big feathers in her hat drooping against the gold of her hair. It was on Mrs. Nairne's doorstep that he had first met Cicely, and the picture of her as he saw her then in the pale wintry sunlight, seemed to haunt him all the more persistently, because side by side with it, he saw another, and strangely different picture. His own house in a South London road, its sordid surroundings, its unsavoury neighbourhood, all these made Cicely and her daintiness, seem like some princess belonging to another world.
"Pshaw, you poor fool!" Fergusson ejaculated aloud, when, his dinner ended, he retired to smoke in a small den, dignified by the name of smoking-room; "the sooner Dr. Stokes comes back and you clear out from here and return to the sober realities of life in Southwark, the better for you. Dreaming dreams and seeing visions is no part of your vocation."
He had reached this stage of his meditations, and had drawn up a chair to the writing-table, with a grim determination to finish an article for a medical journal, when the parlourmaid entering, handed him an exceedingly grubby note. It was briefly worded—
"Please come at once. He is dying."
There was no address, and the only signature was the one letter "M," but Fergusson at once understood what the message portended. The car, hurriedly ordered, was soon waiting for him at the front door; and, telling the man he would drive himself, the doctor glided quickly away in the direction of the lonely house in the valley.
"Shall I discover anything of the mystery belonging to the house?" he wondered, as he sped along the dark country roads, his own powerful lamps throwing a stream of light upon the road ahead; "or will the secret, whatever it is, die with that unfortunate man? Whatever he has done or been—and he has either done or been something out of the common, and something not very commendable—I am prepared to swear his crimes were crimes of weakness, not of wickedness. The man is weak through and through, and why that wonderful woman has poured out such a wealth of love upon him, is one of the problems of—womanhood."
He smiled as his meditations reached this point, and once again his thoughts flew back to that picture which had haunted them earlier in the evening, the picture of Baba's mother—fair, sweet, and dainty.
"Would she—be ready to love through good and ill—as that other woman had done?" he reflected; "would she be ready to act as a prop? or must she find someone to look up to, and depend upon?" and thinking these things, he drew up before the high wall and the green door, before which a lantern flung a feeble light upon the surrounding blackness. Elizabeth admitted him; her face looked very worn, her eyes were heavy with want of sleep.
"He took a bad turn two hours ago," she said, in answer to the doctor's question; "he's going fast, and I can't get her to leave him, though it is killing her, too."
"It would only make her worse to try and take her away from him now," Fergusson said gently, knowing the good woman's devotion to her mistress, hearing the little shake in her voice as she spoke of Margaret; "if—the end has come, it will not be long; he has no strength to fight a long fight."
"Strength?" the servant muttered, a curious contempt in her accents; "you couldn't name him and the word strength in the same breath. There! I've no business to talk like that of one who's dying, but—give me a strong man, give them me strong all the time—I can't do with themweak."
Fergusson made no reply. He saw that the woman, overwrought with long watching and anxiety, was temporarily deprived of her normal reticence and taciturnity, and he recognised that her outburst owed its origin to her great love for her mistress, and to that natural antagonism which a strong character is apt to feel towards the weak. Handing her his coat, he passed rapidly along the corridor to the room, with which he was now familiar; and, going in softly, saw at a glance that the sick man in the bed was drawing very near to the Valley of the Shadow.
He lay propped up with pillows, and the beautiful woman known to Fergusson as Mrs. Stanforth, stood beside him, his head drawn close to her breast. Her arm was about him, and he had turned his face against her, as a child lays its face against its mother, his dim eyes fixed upon her with a look of almost passionate adoration. With her free hand she stroked back the damp hair from his forehead, now and again wiping away the drops of sweat with a filmy handkerchief she held, and her eyes watched him with a hungry, loving look, that brought a lump into Fergusson's throat.
"To know that a woman will look into one's dying face with such a look as that, is worth everything," the thought flashed unbidden into his mind, as he stepped softly up to the bed, and laid a hand upon the patient's wrist. The dying man looked at him with a faint smile of welcome, but the woman did not move or glance at him. Her whole soul was wrapped up in the man she loved, the man who was passing so fast away from her, into the silent land.
"Nearly—done—-doctor," the man in the bed panted out, the smile still lingering on his face. "I—thought—I should have been afraid—but—now—the time has come—there—is—no fear."
His eyes left Fergusson, and lifted themselves to the face bending over him.
"You—rest—me—sweetheart," he said. "I—am never afraid—when you are—with me." As his eyes met hers, his smile acquired a strange radiance, and Fergusson all at once recognised the charm of the man—that magnetic something—which had won and held the love of such a woman as Margaret. Until this moment the reason for the weak man's hold over this woman had baffled, almost annoyed, Denis. Now, in a flash of illumination, it seemed to him he understood it.
He had seen at once that the dying man was already beyond all human aid; he gave him an injection of strychnine, but there was nothing else he could do, to ward off that dread visitor, whose feet had already crossed the threshold. Yet he felt that his presence in the house, if not in the room, would be a help to the woman so soon to be left desolate; and, having spoken a word or two of comfort and cheer, in that strong voice of his which carried comfort in its very tones, he moved away to the adjoining room.
"Call me if there is the slightest change," he whispered to Margaret; "you and he would rather be alone just now." She bent her head, and for the fraction of a second, her eyes met his. The misery in those deep eyes tore at his heart strings; his powerlessness to help this fellow-creature who was in such dire sorrow, hurt him, as if he had received some physical blow. Alone, in the next room, he seated himself by the fire, and tried to read a book he picked up from the table, but his thoughts refused to take in a single word of the printed page; he was conscious of nothing but the low murmur of voices from the bed he could just see through the open door. The words spoken by the two whom death was parting, he could not hear, but his heart ached intolerably for them both, for the man who was drifting into the Great Silence, for the woman who was being left behind.
"One long—failure—one long chapter of infamy—and wrong," the man's whisper barely reached the woman's ears, as she bent over him.
"But—you are sorry for it all now, my darling," she whispered back; "only think that you are sorry for the wrong; only think that—now."
"If you—forgive—surely—God forgives?" The dim eyes looked wistfully up at hers, and she stooped with an infinitely tender gesture, to kiss his ashen face.
"Surely, most surely, God forgives," she answered solemnly, the strength of her voice carrying conviction with it; "where there is a great love, there is great forgiveness, and——"
"Like—yours," he interrupted dreamily; "great love—such a great love—and a great—forgiveness. I—have heaped your life with misery and shame—and still—you forgive—still you love."
"Still I love," she whispered, a passion of tenderness in the low-spoken words. "Max, love—real love—can't wear out or die, whatever happens. It has always been you—only you—you entirely, my man, my whole world."
At the last words, she drew his head more closely against her breast, and, bending over him, kissed him with a long lingering kiss.
"Only—me—in spite—of everything?"
"Only—you—sweetheart," she murmured; "only you—always."
"And—that other—who has been your friend—of whom you told me?" His voice was growing fainter.
"He has been—he is—my good and loyal friend," she answered; "he is nothing more to me than that. He could not ever be anything more."
"Perhaps—afterwards—when—I have gone—you and he——"
But she would not let him finish his halting, breathless sentence.
"He and I will never be more than friends," she said, very clearly, very firmly. "I could not love another man. There is not room in my heart for anyone but you."
A silence followed, a silence only broken by the dying man's difficult long-drawn breaths, by the occasional dropping of a coal into the grate, or the creaking of the heavy old furniture. And all the time Margaret stood immovable in her place, her arms about the dying man, his head close pillowed against her. All at once he spoke again, hurriedly, fearfully.
"You—are—sure—forgiveness," he gasped out. "God—will—forgive?"
"I am sure," she answered, and there was no quaver in her voice, only a great certainty; "there are no bounds to God's love. He will forgive. He loves you, my dear. I am quite sure you need not be afraid."
She spoke as gently, in as simple language as though he had been a little child, and the fear slowly died out of his face. His eyes looked once again into hers, with a look of adoring love and reverence; then, with a tired sigh, the sigh of an over-weary child, his head sank back more heavily against her, and the gasping breath was still.