THE WAITING OF TWO
A week later, and Sydney was at the Deanery again.
Hugh’s hero, the great surgeon who gave his services to the Blue-friars
Hospital, had come down to see St. Quentin, and perform on him the
operation which had saved the life of the man Duncombe.
Under these circumstances Lady Frederica declined absolutely remaining at
the Castle.
“My nerves really wouldn’t stand it,” she explained. “I hate anything to
do with illness, but hitherto St. Quentin’s has been kept comparatively
in the background: in fact, it has been possible to forget it. But an
operation—with doctors and nurses hovering round—and bulletins upon the
door, and people expecting one to have a full, true, and particular
account of how the patient is at one’s finger’s ends! No, thank you. I
shall go to town, and Sydney shall come with me.”
But Sydney rebelled, and appealed against the verdict to her cousin.
“If I must go away, let me go to the Deanery!” she implored. “I can’t go
with Lady Frederica! I must go to somebody who cares too!”
A flush swept over St. Quentin’s face.
“Who cares too?” he muttered, then with an effort turned to her and spoke
aloud.
“Sydney, I’ll tell you this. If, in God’s mercy, I get through the
operation, I am going to follow your advice, and tell the girl I love
just everything, as I told you.”
Sydney got her way, and went to the Deanery, accompanied by Miss Osric,
leaving Lady Frederica to go off to town alone.
The third day of her absence from the Castle had come—a long dreary day,
which seemed unending. It was to relieve the strain of that waiting time
that Katharine suggested, when the shadows were falling long about the
Close, that they should go across to Oliver’s, to choose a gold chain as
a birthday present for the little cousin Sylvia, whose birthday was to be
on the morrow.
Action of any kind was something of a comfort, and Sydney came.
A shabbily-dressed man was just concluding some bargain with the
jeweller as the two girls came into the shop—some bargain with which he
seemed very much dissatisfied. “It’s worth _ever_ so much more, confound
you for a screw!” they heard him say. “Why, that’s two quid less than you
gave the parson for it. I only brought it here because I thought you’d
give a better price for your own thing.”
Sydney started violently, for the voice was Sir Algernon’s, and on the
counter between him and Oliver there lay her little watch.
Katharine had recognised him also, and her eyes flashed. “Come away,
Sydney dear,” she said.
Low as she spoke, he caught the words and turned. But for his voice,
Sydney hardly would have known him.
The light of a pale spring evening fell upon his face through the open
doorway of the jeweller’s shop, and showed up pitilessly the wreck he
had made of it. His eyes were bloodshot and furtive, and the lines had
deepened round them, while his hair showed very grey above the ears. He
looked to-day far older than his forty-one years warranted.
He made an uncertain movement forward. Katharine drew away: “Come,
Sydney!”
They left the shop, but, once outside, the younger girl paused, looking
back.
Sir Algernon had followed them into the street, and was gazing after them
as though he wished to speak. Sydney noted the shabbiness of his dress
and the fact that he had not shaved that morning.
“Katharine,” she said, “won’t you hear what he has to say?”
He heard her and came forward. The hand with which he lifted his hat
shook. Katharine drew herself away from him, but Sydney stood her ground.
“Thank you,” he said, “I only want you to give Quin a message from me.
He wrote to me, you know, to tell me that he had Duncombe’s written
confession of the part I’d played after that miserable race, but didn’t
mean to publish it, or show me up. He’s treating me a long way better
than I treated him. I want you to tell him that, if you will, and also
tell him that he won’t be bothered by me any more. That evening I left
St. Quentin Castle I had had a wire to tell me that I was practically
ruined. The man of business to whom I had pinned my faith—as far as I
ever pinned it upon anybody—had taken a leaf out of my book, and gone in
for gambling—speculation rather. When he’d finished his own money he
used mine, relying on the fact that I was too busy screwing poor old Quin
to attend to my own affairs. Of course he thought he’d get it back; they
always do! But he didn’t, and the shock killed him. That was what the
wire told me, and it was that that made me so hard on Quin. To make him
pay up then was my last chance, you see; but you baulked that! You won
the game, and I drop it for the future. I’m going abroad somewhere now;
tell Quin he’s done with me for good and all, and I have sold the watch I
bought for you to pay my passage out. Good-bye, Miss Lisle.”
“I will tell St. Quentin,” Sydney answered gravely, holding out her hand.
“Good-bye.”
Sir Algernon took the little hand.
“Good-bye,” he said again, then added, as though half against his will,
“After all, I’m not particularly sorry that you won the game.”
He walked off quickly in the opposite direction, and passed from Sydney’s
life as suddenly as he had entered it.
“I hope you did not mind my speaking to him, Katharine,” she said, as the
two went through the cool, green, peaceful Close together. “I could not
have done it, if—if—he had not been so shabby. But I think if—_when_ he
gets well, and we tell him, that St. Quentin will be glad.”
“I believe you were right,” Katharine said quietly, and the two passed
into the Deanery together.
A great hush seemed upon everything, and as the girls sat in the deep
window of the drawing-room when dinner was over, the whole world seemed
to wear a look of listening. It was one of those wonderfully mild spring
evenings which March sometimes gives us as a foretaste of the summer that
is coming. Katharine let the fire burn low, and did not close the window.
There was no breeze to stir the daffodils and tulips, which had lost
their colour in the fading of the light: across the Close the grey
Cathedral stood silent and solemn, looking down with grave, infinite
pity upon the fleeting troubles and anxieties of the people living their
little lives around its walls.
To and fro across the shadowy turf the Dean walked, with his hands behind
him, deep in thought. The soft, sweet-scented spring darkness had fallen,
but Katharine would not ring for lights. The girls sat quietly together,
their hands clasped in the dimness.
Into the silence came the mellow chime of the cathedral clock: the four
quarters, which had passed while they were sitting there, pealed out one
after another, and then the nine deep strokes of the hour.
“There must be news of some kind by now,” Sydney cried.
It was too dark to see her companion’s face, and Katharine did not answer
her.
Hard upon her words there came a sound of quick, sharp footsteps ringing
out upon the flagged path running through the Close. The Dean raised his
head and stood still.
“Canon Molyneux returning,” Katharine said, but she rose, with a strained
expectancy in her position.
The steps came nearer. Sydney darted down the stairs, and was flinging
back the heavy front door in a moment. “Hugh!”
“Sir Anthony thinks he is going to pull round!” was all Hugh said.
Katharine had followed Sydney to the hall, but when a moment later the
girl looked round for her, she had gone.