The Rosary by Florence Louisa Barclay (top novels of all time txt) 📖

will soon move you.' Then she turned and saw me. I was in the most nondescript khaki, a non-com's jacket which I had caught up on leaving the tent, and various odds and ends of my outfit which had survived the wear and tear of the campaign. Also I was dusty with a long gallop. 'Here, serjeant,' she said, 'lend a hand with this poor fellow. I can't have him disturbed just now.' That was Jane's only comment on the passing of a shell within a few yards of her own head. Do you wonder the men adored her? She placed her hands beneath his shoulders, and signed to me to take him under the knees, and together we carried him round a screen, out of the ward, and down a short passage; turning unexpectedly into a quiet little room, with a comfortable bed, and photographs and books arranged on the tiny dressing-table. She said: 'Here, if you please, serjeant,' and we laid him on the bed. 'Whose is it?' I asked. She looked surprised at being questioned, but seeing I was a stranger, answered civilly: 'Mine.' And then, noting that he had dozed off while we carried him, added: 'And he will have done with beds, poor chap, before I need it.' There's nerve for you!--Well, that was my only conversation out there with the Honourable Jane. Soon after I had had enough and came home."

Garth lifted his head. "Did you ever meet her at home?" he asked.

"I did," said Dr. Rob. "But she did not remember me. Not a flicker of recognition. Well, how could I expect it? I wore a beard out there; no time to shave; and my jacket proclaimed me a serjeant, not a surgeon. No fault of hers if she did not expect to meet a comrade from the front in the wilds of--of Piccadilly," finished Dr. Rob lamely. "Now, having spun so long a yarn, I must be off to your gardener's cot in the wood, to see his good wife, who has had what he pathetically calls 'an increase.' I should think a decrease would have better suited the size of his house. But first I must interview Mistress Margery in the dining-room. She is anxious about herself just now because she 'canna eat bacon.' She says it flies between her shoulders. So erratic a deviation from its normal route on the part of the bacon, undoubtedly requires investigation. So, by your leave, I will ring for the good lady."

"Not just yet, doctor," said a quiet voice from the window. "I want to see you in the dining-room, and will follow you there immediately. And afterwards, while you investigate Margery, I will run up for my bonnet, and walk with you through the woods, if Mr. Dalmain will not mind an hour alone."

When Jane reached the dining-room, Dr. Robert Mackenzie was standing on the hearth-rug in a Napoleonic attitude, just as on the morning of their first interview. He looked up uncertainly as she came in.

"Well?" he said. "Am I to pay the piper?"

Jane came straight to him, with both hands extended.

"Ah, serjeant!" she said. "You dear faithful old serjeant! See what comes of wearing another man's coat. And my dilemma comes from taking another woman's name. So you knew me all the time, from the first moment I came into the room?"

"From the first moment you entered the room," assented Dr. Rob.

"Why did you not say so?" asked Jane.

"Well, I concluded you had your reasons for being 'Nurse Rosemary Gray,' and it did not come within my province to question your identity."

"Oh, you dear!" said Jane. "Was there ever anything so shrewd, and so wise, and so bewilderingly far-seeing, standing on two legs on a hearth-rug before! And when I remember how you said: 'So you have arrived, Nurse Gray?' and all the while you might have been saying. 'How do you do, Miss Champion? And what brings you up here under somebody else's name?"

"I might have so said," agreed Dr. Rob reflectively; "but praise be, I did not."

"But tell me" said Jane "why let it out now?"

Dr. Rob laid his hand on her arm. "My dear, I am an old fellow, and all my life I have made it my business to know, without being told. You have been coming through a strain,--a prolonged period of strain, sometimes harder, sometimes easier, but never quite relaxed,--a strain such as few women could have borne. It was not only with him; you had to keep it up towards us all. I knew, if it were to continue, you must soon have the relief of some one with whom to share the secret,--some one towards whom you could be yourself occasionally. And when I found you had been writing to him here, sending the letter to be posted in Cairo (how like a woman, to strain at a gnat, after swallowing such a camel!), awaiting its return day after day, then obliged to read it to him yourself, and take down his dictated answer, which I gathered from your faces when I entered was his refusal of your request to come and see him, well, it seemed to me about time you were made to realise that you might as well confide in an old fellow who, in common with all the men who knew you in South Africa, would gladly give his right hand for the Honourable Jane."

Jane looked at him, her eyes full of gratitude. For the moment she could not speak.

"But tell me, my dear," said Dr. Rob, "tell me, if you can: why does the lad put from him so firmly that which, if indeed it might be his for the asking, would mean for him so great, so wonderful, so comforting a good?"

"Ah, doctor," said Jane, "thereby hangs a tale of sad mistrust and mistake, and the mistrust and mistake, alas, were mine. Now, while you see Margery, I will prepare for walking; and as we go through the wood I will try to tell you the woeful thing which came between him and me and placed our lives so far apart. Your wise advice will help me, and your shrewd knowledge of men and of the human heart may find us a way out, for indeed we are shut in between Migdol and the sea."

As Jane crossed the hall and was about to mount the stairs, she looked towards the closed library door. A sudden fear seized her, lest the strain of listening to that tale of Dr. Rob's had been too much for Garth. None but she could know all it must have awakened of memory to be told so vividly of the dying soldiers whose heads were pillowed on her breast, and the strange coincidence of those words, "A mere boy--and to suffer so!" She could not leave the house without being sure he was safe and well. And yet she instinctively feared to intrude when he imagined himself alone for an hour.

Then Jane, in her anxiety, did a thing she had never done before. She opened the front door noiselessly, passed round the house to the terrace, and when approaching the open window of the library, trod on the grass border, and reached it without making the faintest sound.

Never before had she come upon him unawares, knowing he hated and dreaded the thought of an unseen intrusion on his privacy.

But now--just this once--

Jane looked in at the window.

Garth sat sideways in the chair, his arms folded on the table beside him, his face buried in them. He was sobbing as she had sometimes heard men sob after agonising operations, borne without a sound until the worst was over. And Garth's sob of agony was this: "OH, MY WIFE--MY WIFE--MY WIFE!"

Jane crept away. How she did it she never knew. But some instinct told her that to reveal herself then, taking him at a disadvantage, when Dr. Rob's story had unnerved and unmanned him, would be to ruin all. "IF YOU VALUE YOUR ULTIMATE HAPPINESS AND HIS," Deryck's voice always sounded in warning. Besides, it was such a short postponement. In the calm earnest thought which would succeed this storm, his need of her, would win the day. The letter, not yet posted, would be rewritten. He would say "COME"--and the next minute he would be in her arms.

So Jane turned noiselessly away.

Coming in, an hour later, from her walk with Dr. Rob, her heart filled with glad anticipation, she found him standing in the window, listening to the countless sounds he was learning to distinguish. He looked so slim and tall and straight in his white flannels, both hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, that when he turned at her approach it seemed to her as if the shining eyes MUST be there.

"Was it lovely in the woods?" he asked. "Simpson shall take me up there after lunch. Meanwhile, is there time, if you are not tired, Miss Gray, to finish our morning's work?"

Five letters were dictated and a cheque written. Then Jane noticed that hers to him had gone from among the rest. But his to her lay on the table ready for stamping. She hesitated.

"And about the letter to Miss Champion?" she said. "Do you wish it to go as it is, Mr. Dalmain?"

"Why certainly," he said. "Did we not finish it?"

"I thought," said Jane nervously, looking away from his blank face, "I thought perhaps--after Dr. Rob's story--you might--"

"Dr. Rob's story could make no possible difference as to whether I should let her come here or not," said Garth emphatically; then added more gently: "It only reminded me--"

"Of what?" asked Jane, her hands upon her breast.

"Of what a glorious woman she is," said Garth Dalmain, and blew a long, steady cloud of smoke into the summer air.


CHAPTER XXIII


THE ONLY WAY

When Deryck Brand alighted at the little northern wayside station, he looked up and down the gravelled platform, more than half expecting to see Jane. The hour was early, but she invariably said "So much the better" to any plan which involved rising earlier than usual. Nothing was to be seen, however, but his portmanteau in the distance--looking as if it had taken up a solitary and permanent position where the guard had placed it--and one slow porter, who appeared to be overwhelmed by the fact that he alone was on duty to receive the train.

There were no other passengers descending; there was no other baggage to put out. The guard swung up into his van as the train moved off.

The old porter, shading his eyes from the slanting rays of the morning sun, watched the train glide round the curve and disappear from sight; then slowly turned and looked the other way,--as if to make sure there was not another coming,--saw the portmanteau, and shambled towards it. He stood looking down upon it pensively, then moved slowly round, apparently reading the names and particulars of all the various continental hotels at which the portmanteau had recently stayed with its owner.

Dr. Brand never hurried people, He always said: "It answers best, in the long run, to let them take their own time. The minute or two gained by hurrying them is lost in the final results." But this applied chiefly to patients in the consulting-room; to anxious young students in hospital; or to nurses, too excitedly conscious at first of the fact that he was talking to them, to take in fully what he was saying. His