Part 28 (1/2)

She actually felt the bones of the small hand as it held her own still closer. It began to tremble because Robin had begun to tremble. But though she was trembling and her eyes looked very large and frightened, the silence was still deep within them.

”Yes,” the low voice faltered, ”you will take care of me. Thank you, Dowie dear. I--must let people take care of me. I know that. I am like Henrietta.”

And that was all.

”She's very much changed, your grace,” Dowie said breathlessly when she went to the d.u.c.h.ess afterwards. There had been no explanation or going into detail but she knew that she might allow herself to be breathless when she stood face to face with her grace. ”Does she cough? Has she night sweats? Has she any appet.i.te?”

”She does not cough yet,” the d.u.c.h.ess answered, but her grave eyes were as troubled as Dowie's own. ”Doctor Redcliff will tell you everything.

He will see you alone. We are sending her away with you because you love her and will know how to take care of her. We are very anxious.”

”Your grace,” Dowie faltered and one of the tears she had forced back when she was in the railway carriage rose insubordinately and rolled down her cheek, ”just once I nursed a young lady who--looked as she does now. I did my best with all my heart, the doctors did their best, everybody that loved her did their best--and there were a good many. We watched over her for six months.”

”Six months?” the d.u.c.h.ess' voice was an unsteady thing.

”At the end of six months we laid her away in a pretty country churchyard, with flowers heaped all over her--and her white little hands full of them. And she hadn't--as much to contend with--as Miss Robin has.”

And in the minute of dead silence which followed more tears fell. No one tried to hold them back and some of them were the tears of the old d.u.c.h.ess.

CHAPTER XXIII

There are old and forgotten churches in overgrown corners of London whose neglected remoteness suggests the possibility of any ecclesiastical ceremony being performed quite un.o.bserved except by the parties concerned in it. If entries and departures were discreetly arranged, a baptismal or a marriage ceremony might take place almost as in a tomb. A dark wet day in which few pa.s.s by and such as pa.s.s are absorbed in their own discomforts beneath their umbrellas, offers a curiously entire aloofness of seclusion. In the neglected graveyards about them there is no longer any room to bury any one in the damp black earth where the ancient tombs are dark with mossy growth and mould, heavy broken slabs slant sidewise perilously, sad and thin cats prowl, and from a soot-blackened tree or so the rain drops with hollow, plas.h.i.+ng sounds.

The rain was so plas.h.i.+ng and streaming in rivulets among the mounds and stones of the burial ground of one of the most ancient and forgotten looking of such churches, when on a certain afternoon there came to the narrow soot-darkened Vicarage attached to it a tall, elderly man who wished to see and talk to the Vicar.

The Vicar in question was an old clergyman who had spent nearly fifty years in the silent, ecclesiastical-atmosphered small house. He was an unmarried man whose few relatives living in the far North of England were too poor and unenterprising to travel to London. His days were spent in unsatisfactory work among crowded and poverty-stricken human creatures before whom he felt helpless because he was an unpractical old Oxford bookworm. He read such services as he held in his dim church, to empty pews and echoing hollowness. He was nevertheless a deeply thinking man who was a gentleman of a scarcely remembered school; he was a peculiarly silent man and of dignified understanding. Through the long years he had existed in detached seclusion in his corner of his world around which great London roared and swept almost unheard by him in his remoteness.

When the visitor's card was brought to him where he sat in his dingy, book-packed study, he stood--after he had told his servant to announce the caller--gazing dreamily at the name upon the white surface. It was a stately name and brought back vague memories. Long ago--very long ago, he seemed to recall that he had slightly known the then bearer of it. He himself had been young then--quite young. The man he had known was dead and this one, his successor, must by this time have left youth behind him. What had led him to come?

Then the visitor was shown into the study. The Vicar felt that he was a man of singular suggestions. His straight build, his height, his carriage arrested the attention and the clear cut of his cold face held it. One of his marked suggestions was that there was unusual lack of revelation in his rather fine almond eye. It might have revealed much but its intention was to reveal nothing but courteous detachment from all but well-bred approach to the demand of the present moment.

”I think I remember seeing you when you were a boy, Lord Coombe,” the Vicar said. ”My father was rector of St. Andrews.” St. Andrews was the Norman-towered church on the edge of the park enclosing Coombe Keep.

”I came to you because I also remembered that,” was Coombe's reply.

Their meeting was a very quiet one. But every incident of life was quiet in the Vicarage. Only low sounds were ever heard, only almost soundless movements made. The two men seated themselves and talked calmly while the rain pattered on the window panes and streaming down them seemed to shut out the world.

What the Vicar realised was that, since his visitor had announced that he had come because he remembered their old though slight acquaintance, he had obviously come for some purpose to which the connection formed a sort of support or background. This man, whose modernity of bearing and externals seemed to separate them by a lifetime of experience, clearly belonged to the London which surrounded and enclosed his own silences with civilised roar and the tumult of swift pa.s.sings. On the surface the small, dingy book-crammed study obviously held nothing this outer world could require. The Vicar said as much courteously and he glanced round the room as he spoke, gently smiling.

”But it is exactly this which brings me,” Lord Coombe answered.

With great clearness and never raising the note of quiet to which the walls were accustomed, he made his explanation. He related no incidents and entered into no detail. When he had at length concluded the presentation of his desires, his hearer knew nothing whatever, save what was absolutely necessary, of those concerned in the matter. Utterly detached from all curiosities as he was, this crossed the Vicar's mind.

There was a marriage ceremony to be performed. That only the contracting parties should be aware of its performance was absolutely necessary.

That there should be no chance of opportunity given for question or comment was imperative. Apart from this the legality of the contract was all that concerned those entering into it; and that must be a.s.sured beyond shadow of possible doubt.