The Blue Diamond (19 page)

Notwithstanding her real love for Dorothy and Garth Davenant's avowed distrust of Hilda, Mavis had from the first fallen under the girl's fascination to almost as great an extent as her brother, and Hilda had responded to her evident affection with a caressing, wayward wilfulness that the other girl found very winning.

“Have you decided on your frock for the ball yet, Mavis?” Hilda asked as they turned through the shrubbery. “You really must make up your mind about the colour to-night and then let me arrange it all for you. I will write to Madame Sternforth and tell her just what I have designed for you. I know exactly how it ought to be made to suit your style and to charm Mr. Davenant,” she ended with a little laugh.

Mavis paused.

“Now, Hilda, you know that I have told you I will not do anything towards getting my gown until you have promised to have one too. You remember mother said we were to have them alike in every respect.”

A slight smile curled Hilda's lips—only too well did she divine who had dictated Lady Laura's offer.

“Don't you see, dear, that I owe everything I wear, everything I eat, to your mother's kindness? I must not go on carelessly piling up a debt which I may never be able to pay.”

“You know we have told you not to think of it like that. Arthur would be very angry.”

“Oh, Arthur is all that is good and kind,” Hilda interrupted “and so is Arthur's sister”—with an affectionate squeeze of the girl's arm—“but I should not like to think—Mavis, did you notice anything? Listen! There, I am sure I heard a step! Somebody is following us!”

“It is Arthur, I expect. You know he said he should not be long; but I don't hear anything.”

“No, no!” Hilda continued quickly. “It was not decided enough for Arthur. It had a stealthy, gliding sound, as if some one did not want to be heard. There, I believe it is coming again.”

They stood still and listened, and Hilda turned round.

“There, you see, it was your fancy!” Mavis said, moving a step away. “Come along, Hilda—you make me feel quite creepy. What—what is it?” as the other clutched her arm.

“Look! Look!” Hilda cried hoarsely, her fingers gripping Mavis nervously. “It is she—it is Nurse Marston!”

With a sharp exclamation Mavis turned. Right behind them, some little way back on the path down which they had just come, there stood a woman. Mavis caught sight of her dark cloak and little close nurse's bonnet, as Hilda spoke, of the broad white cuffs and collar. With a little fluttering sob she caught at Hilda.

“How did she come? Oh, Hilda, let me speak to her!” She tried to move forward, but her knees felt strangely numbed and tottering.

Hilda held her back.

“Ah, no, no, Mavis, I daren't! Indeed I daren't! It is her spirit!” with a violent shudder.

In spite of her common sense, Mavis shivered from head to foot as she turned to the terrified girl beside her.

“Hush, hush, Hilda! We must speak to her, ask her what she wants, why she has come!”

“Oh, don't!” cried Hilda, half fainting. “I know!”

“You know?” For half a minute, as if stunned, Mavis stood silent, quiescent, while the other clung round her, moaning. “Let me go Hilda! I—” She stopped and stared in amazement. It seemed to her that she had not taken her eyes from that quiet figure on the path, and yet now it had disappeared. In vain she gazed round, not a vestige of it was to be seen. “Hilda,” she said in a low tone, “it—she has gone.”

The girls looked at one another and Mavis made a step forward.

“Let us look for her,” she said.

Hilda gave a cry of horror.

“I am frightened, frightened! Oh, Mavis, Mavis, come home!”

As Mavis yielded, not reluctantly, in spite of her brave words, a masculine step sounded behind them, there was the unmistakable aroma of a cigar, and Sir Arthur joined them.

“Oh, I say, this is splendid! I was afraid Gregory had kept me so long that I should not be able to overtake you. Now we will have a stroll round the rose garden before we turn in. Why, Hilda, my dear child, what on earth is the matter?” as the girl with a sob of terror almost threw herself into his arms.

“Oh, Arthur, Arthur!” she cried, clinging to him as a drowning man clutches his rescuer. “She is there in the shrubbery—Nurse Marston! Take me away! Take me away! I shall die if I see her again!”

Her agitation was so excessive that Arthur, who had started at the mention of Nurse Marston and looked back, could not release himself, and was obliged to apply himself to the task of consoling and calming her. Presently he and Mavis between them half led, half carried her back to the house. Mavis in the meantime, in the intervals of attempting to soothe Hilda, gave him a short account of what had taken place.

As soon as they were safely in the hall Hilda burst into a passion of tears.

“Oh, Arthur, it is dreadful! She—I think she appeared to me because I was the cause of her death! If she had not been nursing me—”

“Death! Death!” Arthur repeated in as cheerful a tone as he could assume, for as a matter of fact recent occurrences at the Manor were beginning to puzzle him sorely. “Who says Nurse Marston is dead? I should imagine, on the contrary, that if you saw her in the shrubbery to-night she is alive and well.”

“No, no!” wailed Hilda. “Don't you understand that it was her spirit we saw? She wants to tell us something. I think it is where she is buried. Perhaps”—with a violent shudder—“the place where she was standing was her grave!”

“Oh, hush, hush, Hilda!” Mavis said quickly. “I do not think she wanted to speak to us. Why should she have gone away so suddenly if she had? You did not see anything of her, I conclude, Arthur?” she went on, turning to her brother. “It seemed to me that if she turned back she must have met you, for I fancied we heard your footsteps almost directly she disappeared.”

“Disappeared indeed!” Arthur repeated in a mocking tone. “Do say ‘When she walked away,' Mavis. Do not tell me that you too believe it was a spirit?”

“No, I do not think it was,” said Mavis slowly, “It looked to me too solid somehow. I have always fancied a ghost altogether more spiritualized. Besides, though I noticed nothing myself, before we saw her Hilda heard footsteps—”

“I—I don't now feel sure that I did,” Hilda interposed. She was recovering her composure somewhat, and a little colour was slowly coming back to her cheeks as she sipped the wine that Arthur had ordered for her.

“You spoke of it to me, so I think there must have been the sound,” said Mavis. “You certainly had the impression that there was a sound, Hilda.”

“That settles the question,” Sir Arthur cried, springing to his feet. “Ghosts don't make any audible sound as they walk, or so I have always been informed. If Nurse Marston, for some reason of her own, is lurking about the shrubbery frightening people we will have her out to-night. Jenkins,” to the butler, who was hovering round at a discreet distance, not averse doubtless to learning what was the cause of the unusual commotion, “tell two of the stable-men to come round, and I will take James too. We will soon learn whether there is anyone in the shrubbery.”

“Yes, sir,” The old man moved nearer his master. “I—I don't fancy as you'll discover anything there, Sir Arthur. Two of the men—one from the stables, and Jones, the second in the hothouses, they saw her—Nurse Marston—two or three nights ago, close to the conservatory, but the moment they were after her she was gone. I don't suppose we shall get rid of the ghost, Sir Arthur, not until the poor young woman's fate is known.”

“Now, Jenkins, don't you talk such rubbish!” reproved Sir Arthur, calling to James and giving the orders for the other men himself. “Poor young woman, indeed!” he went on as he turned back for a moment. “That is not precisely the epithet I should apply to Miss Mary Marston when I catch her. I suppose she is hiding somewhere near—in her mother's cottage, I dare say; though she does declare she knows nothing of her, no doubt it is all a part of the plot—and then coming prowling up here to scare people out of their senses. When I do find her I shall be in two minds about prosecuting her. I believe she is liable to it.”

Old Jenkins shook his head.

“Ah, Sir Arthur, I misdoubt me if you will never get the opportunity!

“You old pessimist!” said Sir Arthur, with a laugh, fully persuaded in his own mind that the solution of the mystery that had puzzled them all for so long was at hand. “Well, don't frighten the ladies. I shall have some news for you when I come back. Mavis, you will look after Hilda, don't let her alarm herself. I shall be back very soon. Come along, James!—Are the other men outside?”

The young man hurried away and they heard his voice outside as he issued his orders to the stable-men.

Mavis turned to Hilda.

“I think we had better go into the drawing-room.”

Hilda rose, still shaking, her eyes looking fearfully around.

“Mavis,” she whispered, as soon as the door was shut behind them, “did you know before that she—that the servants had seen her?”

“I heard a whisper of it,” Mavis answered reluctantly, “but I attached no importance to it. I thought it was merely an idle tale until to-night. Then—”

“A–h!” Hilda shuddered. “Don't speak of it, Mavis!”

“I must ask you one thing,” Mavis said gravely. “Hilda, what did you mean when you said that you knew why she had come back?”

There was a silence. Mavis's eyes were fixed on the other girl's downcast face.

At last Hilda raised her head.

“Didn't you hear me just now—didn't I tell you that I knew she had come to show us where she was buried?” she said, her teeth chattering. “I—I am sure she did, Mavis.”

Mavis's clear eyes looked searchingly at Hilda's.

“Was that what you meant, then? It seemed to me—”

“Certainly it was what I meant!” Hilda said pettishly. “Really, Mavis—”

The door opened and Lady Laura came in looking excited. Hilda turned to her with an unusual air of relief, and Mavis said no more; but for the first time, glancing at the fair face before her, a faint distrust of her future sister-in-law crept into the mind.

Lady Laura carried an open letter in her hand.

“Oh, my dears, such news! But Hilda, what is the matter?” The traces of the girl's emotion were still plainly to be seen on her face. “Have you heard—”

“Oh, Lady Laura, we have seen Nurse Marston in the shrubbery—Mavis and I!” Hilda burst out, disregarding Mavis's signal to her to be silent.

Lady Laura stared at her.

“My dear child, what do you mean?”

Hilda poured forth the whole story, much to Mavis's vexation; the girl was anxious that as much as possible the affair should be kept from her mother and Dorothy. It was useless attempting to stop Hilda, however, and she could only keep her closely to the facts.

To her daughter's relief Lady Laura did not seem inclined to take the matter seriously.

“You must have imagined the whole thing, both of you,” she said decidedly, “and I am not altogether surprised. Very often when I am thinking of the affair it gets on my nerves until I am sure I could fancy anything.”

“Arthur thinks it is Nurse Marston herself—that she is doing it for a trick,” Mavis said doubtfully.

Lady Laura laughed.

“Oh, my dear Mavis, how absurd! Do you, or does Arthur imagine that a sensible woman like Nurse Marston would wish to play a silly trick of that kind? I should advise you to put the whole thing out of your heads, all of you, and also to give up wandering about outside the house when it is getting dusk. You know how I dislike the idea of it for you, Mavis. I am sure it is positively unsafe. One does not know what suspicious characters may be about. I expect if poor Nurse Marston had been content to stay indoors she would have been safe enough. Now we will say no more about that,” as Hilda, who had been growing more composed, began to tremble. “You have not asked me about my news.”

“No, I think we were far too excited about our own adventure,” said Mavis. “What is the news? Something pleasant this time, I hope.”

Lady Laura held up her letter.

“This is from some one who thinks Hilda is her daughter!”

“What?” With a cry the girl sprang to her feet. “Oh, Lady Laura, is it true, is it true? Let me see the letter!”

Lady Laura kept it in her own hands.

“It is from a Mrs. Leparge. Do you recognize the name, my dear?”

Hilda's demonstration ceased.

“I don't think so. Is—is it mine, Lady Laura?”

“I think that very probably it is. Mrs. Leparge writes that her daughter, whose name was Hilda Frances, has disappeared from the school where she was a parlour- boarder. Mrs. Leparge has been away from the country, travelling in New Zealand, and the schoolmistress seems to have decided in her own mind that it was a case of elopement. However, on her return to this country Mrs. Leparge was not inclined to accept this theory, and put the matter into the hands of a private inquiry agent; he naturally had heard of our search for Hilda's friends, and thought that probably Mrs. Leparge would turn out to be her mother.”

Hilda sank into a settee and buried her face in her hands.

“Oh, is she, is she?” she said as she sobbed.

Lady Laura laid her hand on her shoulder.

“Try to calm yourself, my dear. We shall soon know, for Mrs. Leparge writes that, too impatient to wait, she is following her letter, and will call upon us to-morrow, in the expectation of finding her daughter. I hope sincerely, for your sake, my child, that she may do so.”

“Oh, I hope so! I hope so!” Hilda's voice was choked by her tears.

Lady Laura, her resentful feelings of the last few weeks momentarily forgotten in her pity, bent over her.

“There is Arthur!” Mavis exclaimed as she heard the front door open and her brother's voice in the hall.