"I promise," she said in answer, her eyes upon him, her thoughts already far away in the nursing home with Pansy.
He went out, and she heard him speaking to Grover in the pa.s.sage.
An hour later, having forced herself to eat something, and having accomplished her packing, she came down into the hall, equipped for her journey.
The new motor, which had arrived only two days before, stood at the door in charge of a chauffeur, who was to stay a month and train Ransom, the coachman, to drive.
Gaunt awaited her in the hall, his hat in his hand. Her face changed.
"Don"t be alarmed," he told her, coming near and speaking so low that only she could hear. "I am coming to Derby only. There are things I must tell you, and there was no time before starting. We shall only just do it. Jump in."
She obeyed. He briefly directed Grover to sit by the chauffeur, and they were off.
For a few minutes they sat in silence. The car slipped down the avenue, the lamplight dancing upon the pine-trunks, and came out into the open road, where it crossed the moor, and the day had not wholly faded from the sky. Then Gaunt spoke.
"Does your travelling-bag lock? Have you a key?"
"Yes."
"Then take these notes." He told her what sum he had given her, opened the packet and made her verify it. She obeyed almost mechanically.
"Now," he went on, "when you get to London, drive straight to the Langham Hotel. I have written it down for you on this paper. Give my name, and they will see that you have a comfortable room, with one for Grover close by. In the morning, as soon as you are rested, telephone to Dr. Danby at this address in Cavendish Square. Let me make a confession, Virginia. He is the man I ought to have called in at first.
When I knew him he was a young chap just through his hospital training, who came down here one summer as _loc.u.m tenens_. It was the year of my own accident. I owe it to that man that I did not lose my leg.
Now he is a great specialist, at the top of his profession. When we were arranging about your little sister, I would have mentioned him to you; but I found you full of the idea of this new treatment, and I own that I cared so little for the child, or what became of her, that I thought it best you should have your own way. But if there is any hope for her, Danby is your man. If you believe this, do as I say. Override etiquette; take him straight to see Pansy. If there should be any difficulty, refer every one to me; but Danby can advise you how best to proceed; you are safe with him. You will probably have to move the patient, if she is strong enough to stand it. Danby"s nursing homes are to be trusted. Take her where he tells you. I think you have your cheque-book, have you not? You can write a cheque for any fees that are necessary. I will pay in money to the bank to meet your demand. Then you can stay at your hotel, and be with your little sister as much as is practicable. Are you taking in what I say?"
"Yes, I am. I--I--don"t know what to answer. Thank you. You are being--so--unlike yourself. I feel bewildered. I am sorry I was so rude to you just now, upstairs, and said such things----"
The meek, hoa.r.s.e voice was so pitiful that he felt tears start to his eyes. "That"s all right," he muttered hurriedly. "One thing you have to promise me. You will take care of your own health. Remember, you owe it to me to." He broke off. What did she owe to him but misery? However, she accepted the situation with a simplicity which was to him frankly awful.
"I know. I will try to do what I think you would wish. I realise that I have caused trouble and--and expense, already. It is generous of you to let me go like this. Please tell me, how long may I stay?"
"Virginia!" he said, and dropped his forehead on his hands. She looked at him in dim surprise, but with a mind too full of her own trouble to conceive of his.
"How long?" she persisted gently. "A week?"
"How can I decide how long?" he asked, lifting his haggard face again.
"It depends upon the child. I must leave it to you. Stay as long as she needs you. I can say no more than that."
"Oh!" she murmured, "you are so good!"
He made no sound, but his lips set themselves in a line of pain. Ah, if only his brutality, his savage treatment of her did not lie between them! If it had been simply that she had come to him without love, yet longing for tenderness and protection! This would have been the moment to take her in his arms, to enfold her with sympathy and devotion that asked as yet no recompense.
She leaned back in her corner, while the car rushed easily through the country, and the yellow harvest moon came up to show him more clearly the glimmering pearly oval that was her face. She was pondering over his directions, and every now and then put some little question which showed how practical was her mind, how bent upon the enterprise which lay before her. At last, after a prolonged silence, she spoke unexpected words.
"I believe that being so miserable makes me understand a little bit better; understand you, I mean. When I think of my Pansy, I could find it in my heart to kill that wicked woman, her nurse, who let her be hurt when she was a little helpless child. I could almost torture this doctor, who has made her worse when he claimed to make her better; and I seem to see how it has happened--how being miserable for so many years has made you want to hurt somebody.... But the dreadful thought is, that it would do no good--no good at all! If I could kill the wicked nurse and the unskilful doctor it would not make my darling one bit better! And to make me unhappy won"t help you, either, even though you think it will! I can"t give you back the unhappy years, the lost years! It is all no good--no good!"
"Virginia--don"t!" So much was forced out of him in his pain. He could have told her that in one respect she was wrong--that it _was_ in her power to restore to him the years that the locust had eaten--that he was at her feet, conquered, submissive.
But he saw how small a fragment of her mind was really occupied with him. She was eagerly looking forward--searching the horizon for the first glimpse of the chimneys of Derby.
He mattered very little to her now.
They reached the station with six minutes in hand. Gaunt had sent a man down to Monton to telegraph for a sleeping-carriage, and they found all awaiting them.
Grover and she were duly installed in their luxurious quarters, the guard had been liberally feed to look after them. Gaunt repeated some of his directions, and ascertained that both she and Grover thoroughly understood them. He took the maid aside for a moment, into the corridor of the train, while he expressed to her, in a few terse, pointed words, how unremitting must be her care, how keen her attention. Grover"s response was rea.s.suring, if embarra.s.sing.
"There, sir, I love her almost as well as you do yourself," she had said. The words stuck for long days afterwards in the man"s head. Until he heard it put thus bluntly, he had hardly known that the keen emotion which he experienced could be called by so divine a name as love.
It had, then, befallen him to love a second time, with a force which made his first love seem crude and weak--mere counterfeit.
His impressions of the few final seconds were blurred. The guard went along the train, closing doors. Gaunt was shut out, upon the platform.
Anxious to show her grat.i.tude, Virgie stood by the open window of her compartment, looking at him, trying to fix her mind upon him, but with a fancy filled with far other visions. The image of her little sister"s face, the sound of her cries, was in her heart. She was picturing her own appeal to this new doctor, this deliverer who had been brought to her by no other hands than those of her husband. She looked down upon his hand, clenched upon the sill of the door.
"Put up the window when the train starts," he was saying. "I am defying the doctor in letting you go like this, upon my own responsibility. You must justify me by taking all the care of yourself that is possible.
Remember, you have Grover to wait upon you, and you are to order anything and everything you want. There is no necessity for you to do anything but just sit with the child when she is well enough to wish it."
Her face lit up gloriously. She smiled softly, pityingly, at the man who could imagine a moment in which Pansy would not wish to have Virgie with her.
A whistle sounded. He started and winced. Then, gripping the door a moment, he leaned forward, his eyes burning in his head. "Remember," he blurted out, "you are on your honour--on your honour to come back to me. You have undertaken to return."
She stared at him in surprise as she stood a little back from the window. The train began to move. "Of course I am coming back," she said in astonishment. "You know I shall." For a moment she just smiled, but in bitterness. "I am released on parole," she said; "I quite understand."
For a few moments after the smoothly running express had slithered out of the station, off upon her way south, Virginia was held by the memory of the look upon Gaunt"s face as she pa.s.sed from his sight. It was puzzling. He behaved almost as if he meant to be kind; which was incredible. His face seemed to her to be altering, or to have altered, since she first saw it.
Anyhow, he had let her go. Her mad outburst had borne fruit--her revolt had been entirely successful. She was off, without him, going to London, going to Pansy. Her return to bondage lay in the future, dim and misty, not worth troubling about as yet. There were other far weightier matters to occupy her. Before they had traversed ten miles she had forgotten Gaunt, almost as though he did not exist.
He, poor wretch, having made his sacrifice, stood a moment with arms tightly folded, wishing he had not been so altruistic. His eyes followed the train till it disappeared, then he turned, and went haltingly out of the station, back to the empty motor. He muttered something to himself as he opened the door. "We shall see."
"Did you speak, sir?" said the chauffeur.
"No, no! I didn"t say anything. Home, of course."
"Yes, sir."
The Silent Knight sped on, and was engulfed in the darkness, now completely fallen.
Gaunt of Omberleigh sat down in the place which his wife had lately occupied. His body was there in the motor; his heart, his mind, all that was in him, was following her upon her journey. He leaned forward, gazing upon nothing, while in his fancy he recalled the whole of the late scene between them. Could he have done anything more? Could he have let her see?... But no. To do that--to utter any plea--would have deprived him of a wonderful opportunity. It was now in his power to prove her to the uttermost.
He had let her go. She had plenty of money, and still more credit. She was going to her own people, to her selfish, worldly mother, to her little sister"s love and devotion. It was not to be supposed that, once back in their midst, she could refrain from telling her family some part at least of what she had been made to suffer. Doubtless it would all be poured out. Every kind of influence would then be brought to bear upon her in order to shake her allegiance. It would be pointed out to her that he was probably mad, a person whose morbid tendencies must not be encouraged. She would be told that it was her duty not to return to him. A hundred arguments were ready to hand.
As he faced the situation, he suddenly felt that it was too hard a test which he had set her. Brave she was; single-minded he had found her; honest she seemed, but if, in face of argument, in face of influence, in face of love, in spite of fear, in spite of dreadful apprehension of punishment, she returned to what she still believed to be a state of slavery and subjection, of captivity and surveillance, then, indeed, she was a paragon, a pearl of such price as he was not worthy to possess.
It was too much to hope for! She was gone, and she would never return.
The scandal and the tragedy of his marriage would be in every one"s mouth in a very few weeks" time.