Part 47 (1/2)

Mrs. Palmer was very much annoyed with Dolly. She treated her with great coldness, and, to show her displeasure, invited Rhoda to come out with her for a drive every day. As they went along she used to ask Rhoda a great many inconsistent questions, which Rhoda could not in the least understand. Rhoda wondered what she meant.

One day they drove to Gray's Inn. Mrs. Palmer said she liked to explore odd nooks. Then she had a chance idea, and stopped the carriage at Mr.

Tapeall's office, and went up to see him. She came down smiling, flushed, and yet almost affectionate in her manner to the grim, bald-headed lawyer, who followed her to the door.

'Do as you like, dear Mr. Tapeall. As a mother, I should have treasured the memorandum. Of course, your scruples do you the greatest credit.

Good-morning.'

'A complete fool, my dear,' said she, with a sudden change of manner to Rhoda, as the carriage drove off; 'and as for your friend Dolly, she has not common sense.'

'Would he not do what you wanted?' said Rhoda, wonderingly. 'What a stupid, tiresome man. But oh, Mrs. Palmer, I'm afraid he heard what you said.'

'I do not care if he did. He would do nothing but bob his vulgar bald head,' cried Mrs. Palmer, more and more irate. 'Coachman, drive to Hyde Park Gardens; coachman, go to Marshall and Snellgrove's. I suppose, Rhoda, you would not know your way home from here on foot?' said Mrs.

Palmer, very crossly. 'Of course I must take you back, but it is quite out of the way. What is that they are crying in the street? It ought to be forbidden. Those wretched creatures make one quite nervous.'

As Rhoda waited at the shop door, she heard them still crying the news; but two people pa.s.sing by said, 'It is nothing. There is no news;' and she paid no more heed to the voices. But this time there was truth in the lying voices. News had come, and the terrible details of the battle were all in the paper next day.

Sir Thomas came to the house early, before any one was up, and carried off the papers, desiring the servants to let no one in until his return.

He came back in a couple of hours, looking f.a.gged and wearied. He heard with dismay that Dolly had gone out. Mrs. Palmer was still in her room.

Terrible news had come, and words failed him to tell it.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE SORROWFUL MESSAGE.

I have no wealth of grief; no sobs, no tears.

Nor any sighs, no words, no overflow, Nor storms of pa.s.sion; no reliefs; yet oh!

I have a leaden grief, and with it fears Lest they who think there's nought where nought appears May say I never loved him.

--Hon. Mrs. Knox.

Dolly was with John Morgan. At that minute they were coming up the steps at the end of a narrow street near the Temple. The steps led up from the river, and came from under an archway. The morning was fine, and the walk had brought some colour into Dolly's pale cheeks as she came up, emerging from the gloom of the arch. John thought he had not seen her look so like herself for a long time past. Dolly liked the quaint old street, the steps, the river beyond, the alternate life and sleep of these old City places.

As they came along, John Morgan had been telling Dolly something that had touched her and made her forget for a time the sad preoccupations from which she found it so difficult to escape. He had been confiding in her--George had known the story he told her--no one else. It was a melancholy, middle-aged episode of Mrs. Carbury's faithlessness. 'She had waited so long,' said poor John, 'and with so much goodness, that it has, I confess, been a blow to me to find that her patience could ever come to an end. I can't wonder at it, but it has been a disappointment.

She is Mrs. Philc.o.x now. Philc.o.x is a doctor at Brighton.... It is all over now,' said John, slowly, 'but I was glad to leave Kensington at the time.'

'I am so sorry and so glad, too, for she could not have been at all worthy of you,' cried Dolly, sympathising. 'Of course, she ought to have waited. People who love don't count time.'

'Hush, my dear girl,' said John. 'She was far too good for me, and I was a selfish fool to hope to keep her. How could I expect her to wait for me? What man has a right to waste a woman's life in uncertainty?'

'Why, I am waiting for Robert,' said Dolly.

John muttered uncomfortably that that was different. 'Robert is a very different person to me,' said John. 'This is the house.'

'What a nice old house,' said Dolly. 'I should like to live here for a little.' John rang at the bell. It was a door with a handsomely carved lintel, over which a few odd bow-windows were built out to get gleams of the river. There was a blank wall, too, leading to the arch; the steady stream of traffic dinned in the distance of the misty street end.

Mrs. Fane lived in one of the streets that lead out of the Strand. At one time she had worked for the Sisters of St. James, who lived not far off; but when, for various reasons, she ceased to become an active member of the community, she set up a little house of refuge, to which the Sisters often sent their convalescents. She had a sick kitchen for people who were leaving the hospitals, weak still and unfit for their work: mutton-chops and words of encouragement were dealt out to them; a ground-floor room had been fitted up as a reading-room, in which she gave weekly banquets of strong congon and dripping-cake, such as her guests approved. She was a clever, original-minded woman; she had once thought of being a Sister, but life by rule had become intolerable to her, and she had gone her own way, and set to work to discover a clue of her own in the labyrinth in which people go wandering in pursuit of the good intentions which are said to lead to a dreary terminus. London itself may be paved with good intentions for all we know. Who shall say what her stones might cry out if they had voices? But there they lie cold and hard and silent, except for the monotonous roll of the wheels pa.s.sing on from suburbs to markets, to docks, and to warehouses, those cities within a city.