"YOU HAVE BEEN A FRIEND TO ME TO-DAY."
Rupert would have found it difficult to explain why, on the following
afternoon, his steps again turned towards Mrs. Nairne's house, and why
he assured himself, that it would be kind to Cicely to go to see Baba
again, and take the latest tidings of the child back to her mother. He
only knew that he had a great desire to sit quietly in that firelit
room again, to feel the sense of peace and home-like tranquillity that
seemed to hover about it; he only felt that in some inexplicable
fashion Baba's new nurse--the girl with the sweet eyes and gentle
voice--rested him, that her simplicity, and some child-like quality in
her, soothed the pain that tore at his heart. Women had played no part
in his life, until one woman had played an overmastering one; and all
that his passionate adoration of Margaret Stanforth had cost, and was
costing, him, gave an added charm to a nature devoid of all subtlety,
simple and serene. Across the stretch of years between them, he
regarded Christina as little more than a child, but it is often from a
child's hands that the passion-tossed, world-weary soul can find most
comfort; and as Mernside for the second time sat in the old-fashioned
sitting-room, and had tea with Christina and her small charge, he felt
that in some indefinable fashion, the girl's hands were unconsciously
smoothing away some of the misery that chafed his soul. She showed no
traces of her embarrassment of the previous day. Night had brought its
own counsels, and she had determined not to disclose her identity to
Mernside.
"After all," she reflected philosophically, "I didn't do anything
wrong--only something silly--and it is all over now. Probably he has
forgotten all about the stupid girl who wrote him that letter, and
anyhow, he doesn't think about me at all, excepting as Baba's nurse, so
it would be foolish to make a fuss."
Having come to this determination, Christina, with characteristic good
sense, put away from her all thoughts of self-consciousness and
embarrassment, and allowed herself to enjoy Mernside's visit, with much
the same childish delight as was evinced by Baba. And if the two
showed their pleasure in different ways, it was none the less patent to
their visitor, that the little nurse, with her big green eyes and dusky
cloud of hair, took as much pleasure in his coming as did the
golden-haired baby; and it gave him an odd glow of satisfaction to see
her eyes brighten as he talked, and to watch the swift soft flushes of
colour that came and went in her cheeks. Rupert, when he chose, could
talk well and interestingly; he had travelled over the greater part of
the world, and in the course of his travels had used eyes and ears to
good purpose. And to Christina, the little travelled--to Christina,
the whole sum of whose existence had been divided between a Devonshire
village, the Donaldsons' suburban house, and a London lodging--all that
Rupert told of distant countries, and strange, uncouth peoples was
breathlessly interesting and entrancing. Sitting there in the
firelight, Baba nestled closely in his arms, Christina seated opposite
to him, her chin propped on her hands, her eager eyes following his
every word--Rupert found himself talking as he had not talked for a
long time with an eager boyish interest that surprised himself. It was
only when some chance word of his led Christina to ask him a question
about Biskra, that the flow of his eloquence suddenly ceased. It was
there, in that garden of the desert, that he had first met Margaret.
The girl's gently-asked question, for some inexplicable reason, brought
back to him, as though it were only yesterday, the afternoon when the
woman who ever since had dominated his whole existence, had first come
into his life. Overhead, the deep pure depths of the bluest sky he had
ever seen, against its blue stately palms that waved their fan-like
leaves with the soft rustling sounds that only belong to the
palm-trees; and there in the sunlight, stately as one of the great
trees, her white gown falling about her, Margaret had stood, her dark
eyes turned towards the all-surrounding desert. How or why they had
begun to speak, he could not now recall, but from that first speech of
fellow-countrymen in a far-off land, they had passed into
acquaintanceship, and from that by easy stages to the friendship which
he had implored her to give him, in default of that which she had told
him could never be his. Well! at least in the years that followed, he
had been able to serve her, to help her, to ease some of the burden of
her life, that burden of which he himself knew so little. And to have
served her was something for which to be thankful. If only--there was
the bitterness--if only she had not gone away out of his ken now, in
this strange mysterious fashion, leaving him ignorant of her
whereabouts, and of all that concerned her.
If only she had trusted him more! If only---- With a start he roused
himself, to realise that Christina's eyes were watching him with a
certain shy wonder, and remembering that he had broken off his
conversation almost in the middle of a sentence, he looked at her with
a smile of apology.
"Do please forgive me," he said. "Your mention of Biskra brought back
so many pictures of the past, and--I was looking at them instead of
going on with my story."
"Baba likes pictures," the child murmured drowsily.
"Perhaps Baba would like the picture I saw," her cousin answered,
feeling an odd compulsion to speak of what was in his thoughts: "a
picture of palm-trees, and a princess in a white gown, who walked
amongst them, and----"
"Was the princess like Christina?" Baba all at once pulled herself
into an upright position on his knee, and looked earnestly into his
face. "Tell Baba if that princess was like mine own pretty lady."
The eyes of the two elders met, and Christina laughed confusedly.
"Baba sees the people she loves through very rosy spectacles," she
said, and Rupert smiled, whilst Baba's insistent voice repeated--
"Tell if the princess in the white frock was like Christina."
"No, no--not at all like her," Rupert began, his eyes glancing at the
bent dark head opposite to him, at the clear whiteness of the cheeks,
into which the colour was flushing so becomingly; at the deep green of
her eyes, the red line of her lips; "no, the princess was--at least,"
he broke off suddenly, and looked more narrowly at the girl. "How
absurd!" he exclaimed, "and what an extraordinary hallucination. It
shows what a power of imagination the least imaginative of us may
possess; but at that moment, your princess and mine, little Baba, had a
queer fantastic likeness to one another."
Christina looked up at him sharply, surprise the predominating
expression on her face. But before she could speak, Baba's clear tones
again made themselves heard.
"Just tell Baba 'zackly--'_zackly_ what the princess in the white frock
was like; Baba wants to know."
Again Rupert felt impelled to speak, almost against his own
inclination, and his words came with a readiness, which, if he had
considered the matter, would greatly have surprised him.
"She was tall," he answered; "very tall and very stately, as stately as
one of the palm-trees under which she stood; and her face was white
like her gown, only, it was not white as sick people are white, but
like the whiteness of a rose, very clear and pure. And her hair was
black--black as a raven's wing"--his voice grew dreamy, he seemed to
have forgotten his listeners, and merely to be thinking aloud, whilst
he watched the leaping flames of the fire--"and her eyes were deep and
dark, fathomless wells of colour, and very sad." Christina drew in her
breath quickly, and leant forward, an eager look on her face.
"I--never saw any eyes like those," the man's voice continued; "they
held so much--they had seen so much, they were so beautiful--and so
sad. The princess"--he started, and tried to resume a lighter
tone--"was the most beautiful lady in the world, little Baba."
"She is just like----" Christina began impetuously, then stopped short,
remembering the secrecy enjoined upon her, by the woman whom she knew
only as "Margaret,"--the woman of the lonely valley house.
"Just like--who?" Rupert turned to her with the sharp question, a
sudden gleam in his eyes. "Do you know anybody answering to the
description I have just given? Have you ever seen someone like--like
my princess?" The eagerness of his tones, the gleam in his eyes,
showed Christina the necessity for caution, and she answered quietly--
"I think the lady you describe, is something like a lady I once saw; at
least, she was beautiful, with dark eyes and hair," the girl ended
confusedly.
"It could not be the same person," Rupert said with decision. "The
princess I am describing--was unique. You would not speak of her in
those terms of lukewarm praise. Her beauty was something beyond and
above anything ordinary or everyday."
"So," Christina was on the point of saying almost indignantly, "so was
the beauty of my lovely lady," but she checked her words just in time;
prudence demanded that she should say nothing, rather than that by
saying a word too much, she should betray another woman's trust.
"I should like--to have seen her under the palm-tree," she said,
wondering in her girlish heart, whether it was the beautiful princess
in the white gown, who had brought the lines of pain about this man's
face, and into his grey eyes; wishing, too, with girlish innocent
fervour, that it might be given to her to take away some of his pain.
"I wish you could have seen her," he answered her speech. "I think you
and she would understand one another, but"--again the words seemed
forced from him--"at this moment, I don't even know where she is." The
concentrated bitterness of the tone, the haggard misery of the look
that accompanied the words, stabbed at Christina's tender heart.
"Oh! I am sorry," she exclaimed. "I wish--I could help you," she
spoke with a child's impulsive eagerness, but it was the tender pity of
a womanly woman, that looked out of her eyes, and the look gave Rupert
a sense of having been touched with some healing balm.
Baba was no longer taking any conscious part in the conversation; the
warmth of the fire, combined with the consumption of a plentiful supply
of Mrs. Nairne's toast and cake, had induced profound drowsiness, and
the sounds of her elders' voices having acted as a final soporific, the
little maid now slept peacefully, her dimpled hand against Rupert's
neck, her golden curls upon his shoulder. The man and girl were, to
all intents and purposes, alone, and Rupert looked across at Christina,
with the smile that gave such extraordinary charm to his face.
"No wonder this small girl looks at you with rosy spectacles," he said;
"you are one of the born helpers of this world. What makes you say you
would like to help me? Do you think I need help?"
"I am sure you do," came the prompt reply; "your eyes--" she broke off,
startled by her own audacity, her glance wavering from his face to the
fire.
"Your eyes----" he repeated after her. "What do you find in my eyes
that makes you think I want help?" He spoke with the same caressing
kindliness he might have bestowed on a child; he felt an odd desire to
confide in her, as a grown-up person does sometimes feel oddly
constrained to confide in a little child, whose sympathy, whilst
lacking comprehension, is still full of comfort.
"Your eyes are so sad," she answered frankly, when he paused for her
reply; "you seem as if you were looking always for something you have
lost, something which is very precious to you."
"So I am," he replied, pillowing Baba more closely in his arms, and
leaning nearer to Christina. "I don't know by what wonderful gift you
discovered all that in my eyes--but it is true. I am looking for
something I have lost, or perhaps--something I have never had," he
added bitterly, under his breath.
"Some day--surely--you will find it?" she said gently, her heart
aching, because of the sudden hardening of his mouth and eyes.
"Find what I have never had?" he laughed, and his laugh hurt the girl
who listened. "I may find the--person who has gone out of my ken; that
is possible. I never forget to look for what I have lost, wherever I
go, and I go to many places in my car. But, even if I found the human
being I have lost, will everything be less elusive, less hopeless than
before?"
"Of course you know you are talking in riddles," Christina answered
gravely, her brows drawn together in a frown; "you don't want to let me
understand what you really mean, and that is very natural," she added
with a practical common sense that sat quaintly upon her; "but I should
have liked to help you."
"You do help me," he said quickly; "it sounds absurd to say so, even to
myself it seems absurd, because it is not my way to take anybody into
my confidence. But--I can trust you."
The simply spoken words set Christina's heart beating with innocent
pride; her eyes looked at him gratefully.
"Thank you for saying that," she answered. "I think it is true. You
can trust me, and I am glad, so very glad, if there is anything I can
do to help you. If--if I might understand a little better?" she added
falteringly.
"The story I told Baba just now was a true one," he answered abruptly;
"the beautiful lady really walked under the palm-trees, and
I--well--these stories all have the same plot. I wanted her for my
princess. But she--had a prince of her own already." The half-bitter,
half-jesting way in which he spoke, sent all the child in the girl into
the background, brought all the woman in her into prominence; she put
out her hand with a little pitiful gesture.
"Oh!" she whispered softly; "oh! but that was hard."
"It seemed hard to me," his tone was grim; "it seemed an irony of fate
beyond my poor powers of comprehension, more especially when I
found--no, not found--I don't know for certain even now. I know
nothing, less than nothing"--again came that bitterness that hurt his
listener--"but when I guessed that the prince was not worthy of her,
that it was my lot to stand aside and be a friend only, whilst someone
not worthy to touch the hem of her gown, had the place of honour, then
I knew what sorry tricks Fate can play!"
"And the poor princess?" Christina asked gently. A light flashed over
Rupert's face.
"There is the wonder of it all, the wonder of womanhood," he exclaimed;
"mind, I don't know any facts for certain. I only guess that
the--rightful prince is not worthy to tie the strings of her shoes, and
yet--he is all the world to her. The rest of us are nothing. No, that
isn't true either," he corrected himself hurriedly. "I have her
friendship. I have the unspeakable honour of being her friend, but the
best of her is given to someone who is not worthy. Not that the best
man among us is worthy to touch her hand," he added, with an
impetuosity that made him seem all at once oddly young and boyish.
"And she--your friend--is it she you have lost now?" Christina
questioned softly, when he paused. He nodded.
"Yes, she left town suddenly, giving me no reason for going. I have
been able to do many things for her; things a friend could do. She is
very fragile; she has been very ill, and now--I do not even know where
she is. I can only surmise that the man, who is not worthy--needed her
help--and she has done his bidding. Worthy or unworthy, her soul is
wrapped up in him. Woman's love is a wonderful thing--almost
incomprehensible to men!"
Unbidden, before Christina's mind, there rose a half-darkened room, a
bed piled high with pillows, and lying back amongst the pillows, a
woman with a beautiful, stricken face, and deep eyes of haunting
sadness. Unbidden there came to her memory words spoken in a low
passionate voice:
"You don't know what it means to care so much for a man, that, no
matter what he is, or does, he is your world, your whole world."
And with the memory, came an illuminating flash of thought. Could it
be possible--that the beautiful lady of the lonely valley, and the
princess in the white gown, of whom this man spoke, were one and the
same person? Her preoccupation with this thought made her silent for
so long after Rupert's last speech, that presently he said quietly:
"I don't know why I am inflicting all this upon you, or why I have been
egotistical enough to think my confidence could be in the smallest
degree interesting, to somebody who is almost a stranger."
"A stranger?" Christina echoed the words blankly, then laughed a
little tremulously.
"I had--forgotten---we had only met so seldom," she said; "it--doesn't
feel as if you were a stranger; and I am so glad, so proud, that you
have trusted me. Some people from the very beginning don't seem like
strangers, do they?" she asked, with a smile.
"That's quite true," he answered. "I am not a subtle person, I don't
profess to be able to explain these things, but some people do seem to
jump directly into one's friendship, whilst other people jog along
beside us all our lives, and we get no nearer to them at last, than we
were at first. You have been a friend to me to-day."
"Have I? I am glad," the colour rushed into her face, "and I wish I
could help more." He smiled at her again. He still had the feeling
that he was talking to a charming child, one of rarely sympathetic and
understanding nature; and yet, through all the mist of masculine
density in which he was wrapped, he was conscious of the womanly
tenderness that had looked out of Christina's eyes, and spoken in her
voice. That maternal instinct which is innately part of every good
woman's nature, was largely developed in Christina, and, involuntarily,
Rupert had made an appeal to that instinct. He would have laughed to
scorn the bare idea that he, a strong and self-reliant man of the
world, could ever lean, or need to lean, upon a slip of a girl, whose
youthfulness was written in every line of her face, and of her slight
form. And yet, unwittingly he had put out his hands to her for help,
much as a little child puts out hands to its mother, for comfort and
guidance.
Children all, these men-folk of the world! Children all, they have
been from days immemorial, and presumably will be still the same in the
days to come. And their womenkind love them, and comfort them, guide
them and tend them, learning, with the sure instinct of womanhood, that
they are just little boys, to be taken care of, and watched over, and
"mothered" all the time. Christina knew this truth instinctively, if
she could not have put it into definite words; Christina knew it; each
daughter of Eve knows it by experience bitter or sweet--it is the truth
that "every woman knows"!