Part 18 (1/2)

Though they had not been intimates the two men knew each other well. To each individually the type of the other was one he could understand. It was plain to Lord Coombe that Redcliff found his case of rather special interest, which he felt was scarcely to be wondered at. As he himself had seen the too slender prostrate figure and the bloodless small face with its curtain of lashes lying too heavily close to the cold cheek, he had realised that their helpless beauty alone was enough to arrest more than ordinary attention. She had, as the woman had cried out, looked as if she were dead, and dead loveliness is a reaching power.

Dr. Redcliff spoke of her thoughtfully and with a certain gentleness. He at first included her with many other girls, the changes in whose methods of life he had been observing.

”The closed gates in their paths are suddenly thrown open for them because no one has to lock and unlock them,” he said. ”It produces curious effects. The light-minded ones take advantage of the fact and find dangerous amus.e.m.e.nt in it sometimes. The serious ones go about the work they have taken in hand. Miss Lawless is, I gather, one of the thinking and feeling ones and has gone about a great deal.”

”Yes. The d.u.c.h.ess has tried to save her from her own ardour, but perhaps she has worked too steadily.”

”Has the d.u.c.h.ess always known where she has gone and what people she has seen?”

”That would have been impossible. She wished her to feel free and if we had not wished it, one can see that it would not have been possible to stand guard over her. Neither was it necessary.”

But he began to listen with special attention. There awakened in his mind the consciousness that he was being asked questions which suggested an object. The next one added to his awakening sense of the thing.

”Her exercise and holidays were always taken alone?” Redcliff said.

”The d.u.c.h.ess believed so.”

”She has evidently been living under a poignant strain and some ghastly shock has struck her down. I think she must have been in the room when you brought the news of young Muir's terrible death.”

”She was,” said Coombe. ”I saw her and then forgot.”

”I thought so,” Redcliff went on. ”She cried out several times, 'Blown to atoms--atoms! Donal!' She was not conscious of the cries.”

”Are you sure she said 'Donal'?” Coombe asked.

”Quite sure. It was that which set me thinking. I have thought a great deal. She has touched me horribly. The mere sight of her was enough.

There is desolation in her childlikeness.”

Lord Coombe sat extremely still. The room was very silent till Redcliff went on in dropped voice.

”There was another thing she said. She whispered it brokenly word by word. She did not know that, either. She whispered, 'Now--no one--will ever--know--ever.'”

Lord Coombe still sat silent. What he was thinking could not be read in his face but being a man of astute perception and used to the study of faces Dr. Redcliff knew that suddenly some startling thought had leaped within him.

”You were right to come to me,” he said. ”What is it you--suspect?”

That Dr. Redcliff was almost unbearably moved was manifest. He was not a man of surface emotions but his face actually twitched and he hastily gulped something down.

”She is a heartbreakingly beautiful thing,” he said. ”She has been left--through sheer kindness--in her own young hands. They were too young--and these are hours of cataclysm. She knows nothing. She does not know that--she will probably have a child.”

CHAPTER XV

The swiftness of the process by which the glowing little Miss Lawless, at whom people had found themselves involuntarily looking so often, changed from a rose of a girl into something strangely like a small waxen image which walked, called forth frequent startled comment. She was glanced at even oftener than ever.

”Is she going into galloping consumption? Her little chin has grown quite pointed and her eyes are actually frightening,” was an early observation. But girls who are going into galloping consumption cough and look hectic and are weaker day by day and she had no cough, nor was she hectic and, though it was known that Dr. Redcliff saw her frequently, she insisted that she was not ill and begged the d.u.c.h.ess to let her go on with her work.

”But the _done-for_ woe in her face is inexplicable--in a girl who has had no love affairs and has not even known any one who could have flirted with her and ridden away. The little thing's _done for_. It cries out aloud. I can't bear to look at her,” one woman protested.