The Blue Diamond (15 page)

“Don't you see that that is not the question—that it is beside it altogether—that such things are not for me”—her delicate hands pulling the lace on her bodice to pieces—“a nameless nobody?”

Sir Arthur did not move away.

“Ah, how can you? But let me give you a name, Hilda—my name—be my wife, dear?” he urged.

The girl gave a little moan, her white teeth bit her under-lip.

“You do not know what you are saying, you do not in the least realize how things would be. What would the world say if Sir Arthur Hargreave married a waif—a piece of flotsam and jetsam that fate had cast up at his doors? What would—”

Sir Arthur captured one of the fluttering, trembling hands once more.

“All that is beside the question, as you said just now, Hilda; the real crux of the matter lies between you and me. Tell me the truth, dear, is it that you do not—cannot care for me?”

Hilda caught her breath quickly.

“Ah, no. How could it be that, when you have been so kind, so more than kind to me? When yours was the first face I saw smiling at me out of that dreadful darkness and chaos—”

Sir Arthur laid his lips softly to the hand he held in his.

“Then that is all that matters, Hilda—the rest is nothing to us.”

The girl snatched her hand away.

“Ah, no, no! I must not forget. There are others to whom this would mean misery—Lady Laura, and Sir Arthur, your cousin—”

As the last word left her lips two little straight lines came between Hargreave's level brows.

“My cousin!” he repeated, and a slight nuance in his tone might have told a keen listener that the reference had grated upon him. “My cousin Dorothy is almost my sister, Hilda; she will soon be prepared to give a sister's love to you, I hope.”

In spite of the confident words, however, there was an element of doubt apparent in his manner. The mutual antagonism between the two girls could hardly have failed to make itself felt, especially by him; and he was uncomfortably conscious that, though no binding words had been spoken between them, Dorothy could hardly hold him blameless.

“As for my mother,” he went on, “she will—she does—love you. But what does all that matter now?” his eyes softening and growing more eager as they rested on her bent golden head. “I cannot think of that now. For these few golden minutes there is no one in the world but just ourselves, Hilda. Ah”—his arms stealing round her, his lips seeking hers—“tell me you care for me just a little, darling!”

With a passionate gesture of self-surrender Hilda yielded herself to his embrace, and as he took his first kisses from her red lips she murmured brokenly as she turned her face a little away:

“How could I help it when you have been so good—so good to me? How could I help it?”

“Thank Heaven you could not help it, my darling!” Sir Arthur said reverently as he drew her head again to its resting-place on his shoulder. “Hilda, Hilda, I can scarcely believe that such happiness can be real!”

“Perhaps it is not,” the girl whispered unsteadily. “Because do you not see that first”—with a shy hesitating glance—“we must find out who I am?”

“No, I don't see,” said Sir Arthur steadily. “I shall tell my mother to-night that I have been lucky enough to win your love. Hilda, Hilda, I can hardly believe—”

The opening of the door made them start apart with flushed guilty faces as Dorothy came in, glancing at them in an uncertain, doubtful fashion.

“Aunt Laura says she is sure that you cannot see to paint so late as this, Arthur, and the coffee is in the drawing-room.”

Meanwhile outside Mavis found herself waylaid by her maid.

“Oh, if you please, miss, I have just heard that my mother is feeling very poorly to-day. Could you spare me just to run down and see how she is?”

“Why, certainly, Minnie,” the girl said kindly, “and I hope you will find her better. Isn't it rather late for you, though. But perhaps Gregory is going to walk down with you?”

“No, miss, he can't to-night, he is busy in his houses; but Mrs. Parkyns, she said Alice might come with me.”

“That is all right then,” Mavis nodded. “Don't hurry yourself, Minnie, if you're not afraid of being out in the dusk. I daresay the walk will do you good. You have not been looking very well lately.”

“I am quite well, thank you, miss! Maybe the heat makes me a bit pale—it does some folks.”

“Well, if you feel all right, that is the main thing,” Mavis said. “Ask Mrs. Parkyns if she has anything she can give you to take to your mother, Minnie.”

“Thank you, miss.”

Mavis turned to meet Garth in the hall; Minnie ran quickly downstairs to tell the still-room maid that she had gained the requisite permission and in a very few minutes the two girls sallied forth. Minnie carefully carrying a covered basket containing certain delicacies provided by Mrs. Parkyns.

“We will go down the drive,” she said as they turned out of the big paved yard into the shrubbery. “I don't care for going through the Home Coppice now, it is getting dark.”

“I don't care for it, not in the day-time,” Alice avowed openly, “not since they found those things of Nurse Marston's in it. I—I think I should faint if I should see anything like that.”

Minnie's face looked a curiously ashen colour in the twilight.

“There's nothing more to be found in the Home Coppice,” she said. “Superintendent Stokes told Jim Gregory that they had searched every inch of it. It is poachers and such-like I think of when I am in the wood.”

“Or keepers,” Alice suggested with a giggle, glancing at Minnie's unresponsive face. “I hear that Tom Greyson goes about with a long face enough to turn milk sour. If Nurse Marston went out of the house by the conservatory door”—with a sudden change of subject—“I wonder if she went across the lawn and by the pinetum to the park on her way to the Home Coppice, or whether—”

“Who says that she went through the conservatory door?” Minnie demanded.

“Nobody that I know of. You needn't be so sharp, Minnie Spencer,” the other said in an injured tone. “I only said if she did—being as it was the nearest way out from the small library, and she must have got out somehow, spite of Mr. Jenkins telling us all the doors were shut. It stands to sense she wasn't spirited away. Well, as I was saying just now, when you took me up, I wonder whether she made her way by the pinetum and the park, or came through this shrubbery—it would be a bit farther this way, but I reckon she'd choose it on account of being seen as she crossed the lawn. I have thought sometimes as she came no farther.”

Minnie shivered.

“How can you talk so, Alice Brown? Do you think—”

“I mean as I shouldn't wonder if she had promised to run off for a few minutes just to speak to some murderin' villain,” said Alice, dropping her voice to a whisper and looking round fearfully. “There—there is no knowing where she may be now! I wouldn't come through after dark by myself for a hundred pounds. Who knows if he didn't make away with her here? Those things found in the Home Coppice the other day show that she was made away with plain enough, I say.”

“Ugh!” Minnie caught her companion's arm. “If I had known you were going to talk like this I wouldn't have come a step—Mercy sakes alive! What was that?”

Right across the path the two girls were traversing—the widest of those intersecting the shrubbery and the one used by tradesmen and others coming to the back-door of the Manor—another ran at some little distance before them at right angles. As the two girls looked up it seemed to them that a figure dressed in a nurse's costume and looking away from them walked slowly past and down the path. Simultaneously they caught hold of one another. Alice Brown gave a terrified sob.

“It is her—-it is Nurse Marston!” she whispered.

As they stood clinging together, staring at the spot with fascinated eyes as if unable to stir, the same figure came slowly into sight once more, and, halting, stood as if looking at them. With a sound like nothing but a howl of terror Minnie threw herself on the ground. Alice, shivering with fright, saw the figure raise its hand as if beckoning to them and make a few steps forward. With an awful shriek of horror she dragged Minnie up.

“It—it is coming to us, Minnie!”

Stumbling, running, sobbing, how they got back to the house they never could afterwards tell, but the fear of what might be behind them quickened their footsteps as nothing in the world could have done.

Then, seeing through the open door a vision of the great kitchen beyond, with the servants passing and re-passing in all the pleasant bustle inseparable from a big country house, leaning against the outer doorpost, Alice opened her lips and tried to call out, to make herself heard, but the words refused to come; twice she caught her breath with a curious gasping sound, then a loud hoarse cry rang through the hall—a cry that roused the cook and the frightened maids in the kitchen, that reached Mrs. Parkyns, sitting in her solitary dignity in the housekeeper's room, and brought her on the scene.

“What on earth is the meaning of this, Minnie Spencer?” she demanded sternly. “And Alice Brown—have you taken eave of your senses, both of you?”

At this moment two fresh auditors appeared on the scene—Jim Gregory, who had brought down some flowers for Lady Laura's room, appeared from the back regions, and Tom Greyson ran round the corner from the stableyard.

He hurried up to the two girls, while Gregory stood staring at them in amazement.

“Why, Minnie, what is the matter? Are you ill?” he cried, catching her in his arms as she was apparently about to fall to the ground.

“I should like to know what is the matter with both of them!” remarked Mrs. Parkyns in an exasperated tone. “Starting us out of our wits by shouting in such a fashion as that, and then struck dumb as far as I can see; and there—I declare if you haven't smashed those nice fresh eggs I gave you to take to your mother, Minnie Spencer! Of all the aggravating girls—”

“Oh, Mrs. Parkyns, don't!” sobbed Alice Brown, finding her voice at last. “I'm sure I'm all of a shiver—but we have just seen something—seen her—in the shrubbery!”

Minnie gave a little groan and clutched wildly at Greyson's arm. Gregory stepped forward quickly, scowling at his rival.

“Minnie, let me—”

“Now Heaven give me patience, Alice Brown!” cried Mrs. Parkyns irritably. “I am sure I have need of it to-night. Who have you seen in the shrubbery, girl?”

“Nurse Marston—leastways it was her ghost!” said Alice. “We both saw it, Mrs. Parkyns, me and Minnie, and I don't suppose either of us will forget it till our dying day.”

“Well, of all the couple of simpletons!” said the housekeeper wrathfully, though her florid face had turned some degrees paler. “Who told you that Nurse Marston was dead, pray? Ghosts indeed! Fiddlesticks!”

“Oh, Mrs. Parkyns, doesn't everybody feel sure she was made away with that night? Doesn't her spirit come back to her mother in her dreams? I tell you we saw her to-night as plain as could be, in her bonnet and cuffs and all,” said Alice, rallying somewhat now that the familiar faces were round her. “I—I thought she wanted to speak to us; she raised her hand and pointed. Perhaps,” shuddering, “she wanted to show us where she was buried.”

“Well, of all things, Alice Brown!” said Mrs. Parkyns with uplifted hands. “What are you going to say next, I wonder? A pack of rubbish! Buried, indeed!”

Minnie Spencer was still clinging to Greyson's arm, seeming to derive some comfort from the contact. Gregory had halted a few paces in apparent discomfiture; even in that dim light it was obvious that his tanned complexion had altered to one of a curious leaden pallor.

“Nurse Marston's ghost in the shrubbery!” he repeated, staring at them. “Minnie, it can't be true!”

“True!” echoed Greyson, as Minnie at last raised herself and drew away from him. “I have heard you jeer at us country folk for superstition, Jim Gregory, but I tell you if Mary Marston is in the shrubbery it is herself and no ghost. I am going to see into it, I can tell you that. Don't you frighten yourself, Minnie, I'll soon find your ghost and settle it for you. Anybody like to come with me?”

Two stable-men who had lately been added to the group volunteered, and so did Gregory, after a moment's hesitation, which did not pass unremarked by Greyson.

They were gone some little time—it seemed hours to the waiting women as they stood there wondering what the next news might be; but at last they heard the footsteps returning.

“Well, Mr. Greyson, what news?” Mrs. Parkyns called out as they came round the corner.

“None at all, ma'am. We have been all over the shrubbery and we haven't seen so much as a sign of anybody or anything,” said Greyson in a reassuring tone.

“I never thought you would,” Mrs. Parkyns responded, with a relieved air. “You dreamt it all, you two girls, that is about it—a pair of geese! Well, I'm much obliged to you for your trouble, Mr. Greyson. As to you, Minnie Spencer, I suppose now you have put yourself into this state you won't dare to go down to the village, and that nice pudding I gave you for your mother will be wasted, to say nothing of those eggs you have spoilt! Well, well!”

Minnie was standing by Gregory, who had drawn her hand through his arm. Greyson reached over and took the basket from her.

“I'll take your pudding for you, Minnie,” he said gruffly. “I have got to go down to Lockford, and I will bring you word how your mother is before I go my rounds.”

“I
T IS
only what I expected!” Garth Davenant's face was very grave as he stood before the mantelpiece and looked at Mavis's anxious face. “What does your mother say about it, Mavis?”

“Oh, mother is in dreadful trouble! You know how she always hoped it would be Dorothy; in fact, I think she had persuaded herself that it was quite a settled thing, and that was how it was she never minded Hilda's being here. But why do you say you expected it, Garth?”