It was from the d.u.c.h.ess, and ran thus:
MOST INCONVENIENT, AS YOU VERY WELL KNOW; BUT AM LEAVING EUSTON TO-NIGHT. WILL AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS AT ABERDEEN.
Nurse Rosemary smiled, and put the telegram into her pocket. "No answer, thank you, Simpson."
"Not bad news, I hope?" asked Garth.
"No," replied Nurse Rosemary; "but it makes my departure on Thursday imperative. It is from an old aunt of mine, who is going to my "young man"s" home. I must be with him before she is, or there will be endless complications."
"I don"t believe he will ever let you go again, when once he gets you back," remarked Garth, moodily.
"You think not?" said Nurse Rosemary, with a tender little smile, as she took up the paper, and resumed her reading.
The second telegram arrived after luncheon. Garth was at the piano, thundering Beethoven"s Funeral March on the Death of a Hero. The room was being rent asunder by mighty chords; and Simpson"s smug face and side-whiskers appearing noiselessly in the doorway, were an insupportable anticlimax. Nurse Rosemary laid her finger on her lips; advanced with her firm noiseless tread, and took the telegram. She returned to her seat and waited until the hero"s obsequies were over, and the last roll of the drums had died away. Then she opened the orange envelope. And as she opened it, a strange thing happened. Garth began to play The Rosary. The string of pearls dropped in liquid sound from his fingers; and Nurse Rosemary read her telegram. It was from the doctor, and said: SPECIAL LICENSE EASILY OBTAINED. FLOWER AND I WILL COME WHENEVER YOU WISH. WIRE AGAIN.
The Rosary drew to a soft melancholy close.
"What shall I play next?" asked Garth, suddenly.
"Veni, Creator Spiritus," said Nurse Rosemary; and bowed her head in prayer.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
"SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN!"
Wednesday dawned; an ideal First of May: Garth was in the garden before breakfast. Jane heard him singing, as he pa.s.sed beneath her window.
"It is not mine to sing the stately grace, The great soul beaming in my lady"s face."
She leaned out.
He was walking below in the freshest of white flannels; his step so light and elastic; his every movement so lithe and graceful; the only sign of his blindness the Malacca cane he held in his hand, with which he occasionally touched the gra.s.s border, or the wall of the house. She could only see the top of his dark head. It might have been on the terrace at Shenstone, three years before. She longed to call from the window; "Darling--my Darling! Good morning! G.o.d bless you to-day."
Ah what would to-day bring forth;--the day when her full confession, and explanation, and plea for pardon, would reach him? He was such a boy in many ways; so light-hearted, loving, artistic, poetic, irrepressible; ever young, in spite of his great affliction. But where his manhood was concerned; his love; his right of choice and of decision; of maintaining a fairly-formed opinion, and setting aside the less competent judgment of others; she knew him rigid, inflexible. His very pain seemed to cool him, from the molten lover, to the bar of steel.
As Jane knelt at her window that morning, she had not the least idea whether the evening would find her travelling to Aberdeen, to take the night mail south; or at home forever in the heaven of Garth"s love.
And down below he pa.s.sed again, still singing:
"But mine it is to follow in her train; Do her behests in pleasure or in pain; Burn at her altar love"s sweet frankincense, And worship her in distant reverence."
"Ah, beloved!" whispered Jane, "not "distant." If you want her, and call her, it will be to the closest closeness love can devise. No more distance between you and me."
And then, in the curious way in which inspired words will sometimes occur to the mind quite apart from their inspired context, and bearing a totally different meaning from that which they primarily bear, these words came to Jane: "For He is our peace, Who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of part.i.tion between us ... that He might reconcile both ... by the cross." "Ah, dear Christ!" she whispered. "If Thy cross could do this for Jew and Gentile, may not my boy"s heavy cross, so bravely borne, do it for him and for me? So shall we come at last, indeed, to "kiss the cross.""
The breakfast gong boomed through the house. Simpson loved gongs. He considered them "Haristocratic." He always gave full measure.
Nurse Rosemary went down to breakfast.
Garth came in, through the French window, humming "The thousand beauties that I know so well." He was in his gayest, most inconsequent mood. He had picked a golden rosebud in the conservatory and wore it in his b.u.t.tonhole. He carried a yellow rose in his hand.
"Good day, Miss Rosemary," he said. "What a May Day! Simpson and I were up with the lark; weren"t we, Simpson? Poor Simpson felt like a sort of "Queen of the May," when my electric bell trilled in his room, at 5 A.M. But I couldn"t stay in bed. I woke with my something-is-going-to-happen feeling; and when I was a little chap and woke with that, Margery used to say: "Get up quickly then, Master Garth, and it will happen all the sooner." You ask her if she didn"t, Simpson. Miss Gray, did you ever learn: "If you"re waking call me early, call me early, mother dear"? I always hated that young woman! I should think, in her excited state, she would have been waking long before her poor mother, who must have been worn to a perfect rag, making all the hussy"s May Queen-clothes, overnight."
Simpson had waited to guide him to his place at the table. Then he removed the covers, and left the room.
As soon as he had closed the door behind him, Garth leaned forward, and with unerring accuracy laid the opening rose upon Nurse Rosemary"s plate.
"Roses for Rosemary," he said. "Wear it, if you are sure the young man would not object. I have been thinking about him and the aunt. I wish you could ask them both here, instead of going away on Thursday. We would have the "maddest, merriest time!" I would play with the aunt, while you had it out with the young man. And I could easily keep the aunt away from nooks and corners, because my hearing is sharper than any aunt"s eyes could be, and if you gave a gentle cough, I would promptly clutch hold of auntie, and insist upon being guided in the opposite direction. And I would take her out in the motor; and you and the young man could have the gig. And then when all was satisfactorily settled, we could pack them off home, and be by ourselves again. Ah, Miss Gray, do send for them, instead of leaving me on Thursday."
"Mr. Dalmain," said Nurse Rosemary, reprovingly, as she leaned forward and touched his right hand with the rim of his saucer, "this May-Day morning has gone to your head. I shall send for Margery. She may have known the symptoms, of old."
"It is not that," said Garth. He leaned forward and spoke confidentially. "Something is going to happen to-day, little Rosemary.
Whenever I feel like this, something happens. The first time it occurred, about twenty-five years ago, there was a rocking-horse in the hall, when I ran downstairs! I have never forgotten my first ride on that rocking-horse. The fearful joy when he went backward; the awful plunge when he went forward; and the proud moment when it was possible to cease clinging to the leather pommel. I nearly killed the cousin who pulled out his tail. I thrashed him, then and there, WITH the tail; which was such a silly thing to do; because, though it damaged the cousin, it also spoiled the tail. The next time--ah, but I am boring you!"
"Not at all," said Nurse Rosemary, politely; "but I want you to have some breakfast; and the letters will be here in a few minutes."
He looked so brown and radiant, this dear delightful boy, with his gold-brown tie, and yellow rose. She was conscious of her pallor, and oppressive earnestness, as she said: "The letters will be here."
"Oh, bother the letters!" cried Garth. "Let"s have a holiday from letters on May Day! You shall be Queen of the May; and Margery shall be the old mother. I will be Robin, with the breaking heart, leaning on the bridge beneath the hazel tree; and Simpson can be the "bolder lad."
And we will all go and "gather knots of flowers, and buds, and garlands gay.""
"Mr. Dalmain," said Nurse Rosemary, laughing, in spite of herself, "you really must be sensible, or I shall go and consult Margery. I have never seen you in such a mood."
"You have never seen me, on a day when something was going to happen,"
said Garth; and Nurse Rosemary made no further attempt to repress him.
After breakfast, he went to the piano, and played two-steps, and rag-time music, so infectiously, that Simpson literally tripped as he cleared the table; and Nurse Rosemary, sitting pale and preoccupied, with a pile of letters before her, had hard work to keep her feet still.
Simpson had two-stepped to the door with the cloth, and closed it after him. Nurse Rosemary"s remarks about the post-bag, and the letters, had remained unanswered. "Shine little glowworm glimmer" was pealing gaily through the room, like silver bells,--when the door opened, and old Margery appeared, in a black satin ap.r.o.n, and a blue print sunbonnet.
She came straight to the piano, and laid her hand gently on Garth"s arm.
"Master Garthie," she said, "on this lovely May morning, will you take old Margery up into the woods?"
Garth"s hands dropped from the keys. "Of course I will, Margie," he said. "And, I say Margie, SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN."
"I know it, laddie," said the old woman, tenderly; and the expression with which she looked into the blind face filled Jane"s eyes with tears. "I woke with it too, Master Garthie; and now we will go into the woods, and listen to the earth, and trees, and flowers, and they will tell us whether it is for joy, or for sorrow. Come, my own laddie."
Garth rose, as in a dream. Even in his blindness he looked so young, and so beautiful, that Jane"s watching heart stood still.
At the window he paused. "Where is that secretary person?" he said, vaguely. "She kept trying to shut me up."
"I know she did, laddie," said old Margery, curtseying apologetically towards Jane. "You see she does not know the "something-is-going-to-happen-to-day" awakening."
"Ah, doesn"t she?" thought Jane, as they disappeared through the window. "But as my Garth has gone off his dear head, and been taken away by his nurse, the thing that is going to happen, can"t happen just yet." And Jane sat down to the piano, and very softly ran through the accompaniment of The Rosary. Then,--after shading her eyes on the terrace, and making sure that a tall white figure leaning on a short dark one, had almost reached the top of the hill,--still more softly, she sang it.