Westwood was silent until he found himself with his daughter inside the
cab.
"Where did you tell him to go?" he then asked of her.
"To St. Pancras Station. I thought that we could more easily evade
watchers at a big railway-station than anywhere else."
"They will watch the stations," said the man. "I may have got the start,
and I may not. The stations are hardly safe."
"Let the man drive on for a few minutes while you tell me the reason why
you think you are watched," said Cynthia, suspecting panic; "he cannot
be going far out of the way, and, if we change our minds we can tell him
so presently."
"Well," said Westwood, evidently recovering nerve and self-possession
under the influence of his daughter's calmer manner and speaking in an
easier tone, "it's that woman Meldreth--she is a spy. Who do you think
came to her house yesterday but Mrs. Vane? The very woman who has most
reason to dread me and to wish to get me shut up in prison, if my idea
of her is true! I think she wanted to see me with her own eyes. She
looked at me as if she would read me through and through."
"Where did you meet her, father?"
"In the street. I was asked to show her Mrs. Gunn's house. It was pure
accident of course, but it gave us an opportunity of looking at each
other."
"Did you go back to the house after that?"
"Yes, I did, my girl, because I had left my portmanteau there with
papers and money, without which I should soon be in 'Queer Street.' Yes,
I went back, and found Mrs. Vane gone. But the Meldreth woman had a
queer look about her, and I suspected what she was about, though I don't
know that I could have balked her but for my peculiar constitution.
Sleeping-stuff don't have no effect on me, my dear--it never had. They
tried it in the prison when I was there at first, and couldn't sleep for
thinking of the woods and the open fields and my own little girl--and it
nearly drove me mad. Sabina Meldreth gave me some sleeping-stuff in my
tea last night."
"What for, father?"
"That's what I wanted to know. When I felt the old pricks and twitches
beginning, I pretended to be very sleepy, and I lay down on the sofa and
went off, as she thought, into a deep slumber. Presently she came in,
and--what do you think, Cynthy?--she began to examine my hair and beard!
Of course she soon saw that it would come off; and then she laughed a
little to herself. 'Twenty pounds for this job,' she said--'and more
perhaps afterwards. I wonder what Mrs. Vane's up to now? I'll be off to
her first thing to-morrow morning. It's somebody she's got a spite
against, I'll be bound!' And then she went away and left me alone,
having done her work."
"So then you came away?"
"Not immediate, my girl. I was off at five o'clock this morning. I got
shaved at a little place in Gray's Inn Road--after disposing of my wig
and beard elsewhere, you know; and I bought this rig-out at two
different places in Holborn. Then I breakfasted at a coffee-stall and
came on here. They'll only just have found out that I've gone by now--if
indeed so soon--unless they have found it out accidental-like."
"The woman--Meldreth is her name?--would not know what to do without
consulting Mrs. Vane first, would she?"
"No. But then we don't know where Mrs. Vane is--she may have been in the
house all the time for aught we know."
"I think not," said Cynthia decisively. "She would have come herself to
look at you when Miss Meldreth was examining your hair if she had been
in the house."
"Well, perhaps she would. You've got a head on your shoulders,
Cynthia--that you have! Miss Meldreth would have to get to Mrs. Vane and
tell her this morning, as she said; then Mrs. Vane would let the police
know. That gives us till about eleven or twelve o'clock."
"Two hours' start. Is not that sufficient?"
Westwood shook his head.
"The first thing they will do is to telegraph to all the ports."
"But you look so different now, father! And I can make myself look quite
different too."
"You! Why, you don't suppose I am going to let you come with me?"
"Oh, yes, father dear, I cannot leave you now!"
"It would be madness, Cynthia. You are well known, and you would be too
easily recognised. Everybody turns to look at a handsome girl like you."
"If you can disguise yourself, so can I."
"We have not time for that. Besides, why do you want to leave England so
soon and so suddenly?"
"Oh, I don't--I don't!" said Cynthia, suddenly trembling and clinging to
him. "Only I can't bear the idea of your being without me now when you
are in danger."
"I can send for you, my lass, when I am safe. You will come then?"
"Yes, father."
"You'll come straight, without waiting for any good-byes or to tell any
one where you are going?"
"Yes, father--unless----"
"Well? Unless what?"
"Father, Mr. Lepel is very ill. They say that he has brain-fever. If he
were dying, you would let me wait to say good-bye to him?"
She had put her hand through his arm, and was leaning against his
shoulder. Her father looked at her sideways, with a rough pity mingled
with admiration.
"Were you going to him now, Cynthia?"
"Yes, father."
"I've interrupted you. It's hard on you to have a father like me
although he is an innocent man."
"I honor my father and I love him," was Cynthia's swift response. "My
greatest grief is that he cannot be near me always."
There was a silence; the cab had quitted the smoother roads and entered
on a course of rattling stones. It was difficult to speak so as to be
heard; but Westwood raised his voice.
"Cynthia!"
"Yes, father."
"It seems to me that you need watching over as much as ever you did when
you was a little baby-girl. I don't see why you should be abandoned in
your need any more than you're willing to abandon me. If I can be any
sort of help to you, I won't try to leave London at all. I can hide away
somewhere no doubt as other folks have done. There are places at the
East-end where no one would notice me. Shall I stay, Cynthia?"
"Dear father! No, you will be no help to me--no comfort--if you are in
danger!"
He put his arm round her and pressed her close to him; but he did not
speak again until they reached the station. The streets were noisy, and
conversation was well-nigh impossible. When they got out, Cynthia paid
the cabman and dismissed him. Her father walked forward, glancing round
him suspiciously as he went. It was a quarter to eleven o'clock. Cynthia
joined him in a dark corner of the great entrance-hall.
"I will take your ticket," she said, "where will you go?"
Westwood hesitated for a moment.
"It's not safe, Cynthia. I will not go at all. I should only be arrested
at the other end; I am sure of it. I'll tell you what we will do. You
may go and take a ticket for Liverpool and bring it to me--in full view
of that policeman there, who is eyeing us so suspiciously. Then you must
say 'good-bye' and walk straight out of the station. I will mingle with
the crowd on the platform; but I will not go by train--I'll slip
eastward and lose myself in Whitechapel. I've made up my mind--I don't
start for Liverpool to-day."
"Perhaps you are right," said Cynthia, in a faltering voice. "But how
shall I know where you are?"
"Better for you not to know, my dear. I shall put them off the scent in
this way, and you will have no idea of what has become of me. Now get my
ticket and say good-bye--as affectionate and as public as you like. It
will all tell in the long run; that bobby has his eye on us."
Cynthia did as she was desired. Her father kissed her pale, agitated
face several times, and made his adieux rather unnecessarily
conspicuous. Then Cynthia left the station, and her father made his way
to the platform, where he mingled with the crowd, and finally got away
by another door, and turned his face towards the illimitable east of
London.
Cynthia did not take a cab again. It was a relief to her to walk, and
she was in a neighborhood that she knew very well. She turned into
Euston Square, then down Woburn Place, and through Tavistock Square to
Russell Square. She could not stay away from Hubert any longer.
She knew the house--it was the place to which she had come one autumn
day when Mr. Lepel wanted to hear her sing. She had never been there
since. The square looked strangely different to her; the trees in the
garden, in spite of their green livery, gave no beauty to the scene. It
was as cheerless and as dark as it had been on the cold autumnal morning
when she had gone to learn her fate from the critic's lips; and yet the
sun was shining now, and the sky overhead was blue. But Cynthia's heart
was sadder than it had been in the days of her friendlessness and
poverty.
She rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Jenkins, who appeared almost at
once and led the girl into Hubert's deserted sitting-room.
"Oh, miss, I'm so glad you have come!" she said. "For we can't get Mr.
Lepel to be quiet at all, and we were just on the point of sending off
for you, because he calls for you constant, and the doctor, he says,
'could you get the lady that he talks about to come and sit beside him
for a little time? That might calm him,' he says; 'and if we calm him,
we may save his life.'"
"Oh, is he so ill as that?" cried Cynthia.
"He couldn't be much worse, miss, the doctor says. Can you stay, miss,
now you're here? Just for an hour or two at any rate!"
"I can stay as long as I can be of any use," said the girl desperately.
"Nobody wants me--nobody will ask for me; it is better for me to be
here."
The words fell unheeded on Mrs. Jenkins' ears. All that she cared about
was the welfare of her husband's employer. Both Jenkins and his wife
adored Mr. Lepel, and the thought that he might die in his illness had
been agony to them--and not on their own account alone. They genuinely
believed in Miss West's power of soothing and calming him, and Mrs.
Jenkins could not do enough for the girl's comfort.
"You'll take off your things here, miss, will you not? And then I'll
take you to Mr. Lepel's own room. But wouldn't you like a glass of wine
or a cup of tea or something before you go in? You look terrible tired
and harassed like, miss; and what you are going to see isn't exactly
what will do you good. Poor Mr. Lepel he do look dreadful--and that's
the long and the short of it!"
"I don't want anything, thank you, Mrs. Jenkins," said Cynthia, faintly
smiling; "and I should like to go to Mr. Lepel at once."
"Have you ever seen anything of sick people, miss, or done any nursing?"
"Never, Mrs. Jenkins."
"Don't be too frightened then, miss, when you first see Mr. Lepel.
People with fevers often look worse than they really are."
Cynthia set her lips; if she was frightened, she would not show it, she
resolved.
Then, after some slight delay, she was admitted to Hubert's room; and
there, in spite of her resolution, at first she stood aghast.
It startled her to perceive that, although she knew his face so well,
she might not have recognised it in an unaccustomed place. It was
discolored, and the eyes were bloodshot and wandering; the hair had been
partially cut away from his head, and the stubble of an unshaven beard
showed itself on cheeks and chin. Any romance that might have existed in
the mind of a girl of twenty concerning her lover's illness was struck
dead at once and forever. He was ill--terribly ill and delirious; he
looked at her with a madman's eyes, and his face was utterly changed;
his voice too, as he raised it in the constant stream of incoherent talk
that escaped his lips, was hoarse and rasping and unnatural. Anything
less interesting, less attractive to a weak soul than this delirious
fever-stricken man could not well be imagined; but Cynthia's soul was
anything but weak.
She was conscious that never in her life had she loved Hubert Lepel so
intensely, so devotedly as she loved him now. Something of the maternal
instinct awakened within her at the sight of his great need. He had no
one to minister to his more subtle wants--no one to tend him out of pure
love and sympathy. The man Jenkins, who sat beside the bed, ready to
hold him down if in his delirium he should attempt to throw himself out
of the window, was awkward and uncouth in a sick-room. Mrs. Jenkins,
although ready and willing to help, was longing to steal away to her
little children at home. The landlady down-stairs had announced that she
could not possibly undertake to wait upon an invalid. All these facts
became clear to Cynthia in a very little time. She saw, as soon as she
entered the room, that the window-blind was awry and the curtains were
wrongly hung, that the table and the chest of drawers were crowded with
an untidy array of bottles, cups and glasses, and that the whole aspect
of the place was desolate. This fact did not concern her at present
however; her attention was given wholly and at once to the sick man.
She stood for a minute or two at the foot of the bed, realising with a
pang the fact that he did not know her. His eyes rested upon her as he
spoke; but there was no recognition in them. She could not hear all he
said; but, between strings of incoherent words and unintelligible
phrases, some sentences caught her ear.
"She will not come," said the sick man--"she has given me up entirely!
Quite right too! The world would say that she was perfectly right. And I
am in the wrong--always--I have always been wrong; and there is no way
out of it. Some one said that to me once--no way out of it--no way out
of it--no way out of it--oh, Heaven!"
The sentence ended with a moan of agony which made Cynthia writhe with
pain.
"He's always saying that," Jenkins whispered to her--"'No way out of
it!' He keeps coming back to that as if--as if there was something on
his mind."
Cynthia raised her hand to silence him. The torrent of words broke out
again.
"It was not all my fault. It was Flossy's fault; but one cannot betray a
woman, one's sister--can one? Even she would say that. But she has gone
away, and she will never come back again. Cynthia--Cynthia! I might call
as long as I pleased--she would never come. Why don't you fetch her,
some of you? So many people here, and nobody will bring Cynthia to me!
Cynthia, Cynthia, my love!"
"I am here, dear--I am here, beside you," said Cynthia.
But he did not seem to understand. She touched his hot hand with her
own, and smoothed his fevered brow. The restless tongue went on.
"She has given me up, and I shall never see her any more! She gave me
too hard a task; I could not do it--not all at once. It is done now.
Yes, I have done it, and it has divided us for ever. Why did you make me
speak, Cynthia? He was not miserable--he was happy. But I am to be
miserable for ever and ever now. There is no way out of the misery--no
way out of it--darkness and loneliness all my life, and worse
afterwards. Cynthia, Cynthia, you are sending me to perdition!"
He half rose from his bed, and made as if he would struggle with her.
Jenkins came to the rescue; but Cynthia would not move aside.
"Lie down, dearest," she was saying--"lie down and rest. Cynthia is
here--Cynthia is with you; she will never leave you any more unless you
send her away. Lie down, my darling, and try to rest."
He did not understand the words; but the sweet rhythm of her voice
caught his ear. He fell back upon the pillows, staring, helpless,
subdued. She kept her cool hand upon his brow.
"Is that Cynthia?" he said suddenly.
"Yes, dearest, it is Cynthia."
"How kind of her to come!" said Hubert, looking away from the girl as if
Cynthia were on the other side of the room. "But she should not look so
angrily at me. I have done what I could, you know. It is all right now,
Cynthia, I have done what I could--I have saved him--indeed I have!
I'll take the punishment--no way out of it but that! A life sentence--a
life sentence for me!"
The words died away upon his lips in a confused babble that they could
not understand. He murmured inarticulately for a time, but there came
long pauses between the words, his eyelids drooped a little, and he grew
perceptibly less flushed. In about half an hour the doctor came into the
room. He cast a swift look at Cynthia, and another at his patient; then
he nodded sagaciously.
"Better," he said curtly. "I thought so. Some more ice, Jenkins. He has
been quieter since you came, I conclude, madam?"
Cynthia bowed her head.
"You are the lady for whom he has been asking so often? I know your
face--Miss Cynthia West, I believe? Can you stay?"
"Yes," said Cynthia, without hesitation.
"If you keep him as quiet as that, you will save his life," said the
doctor; and then he beckoned Jenkins out of the sick-room, and gave him
various stringent orders and recommendations--to all which Jenkins lent
an attentive if a somewhat puzzled ear.
The doctor looked in again before he went away. Mr. Lepel was lying back
on his pillows, perfectly motionless and silent; Miss West, kneeling
beside the bed, still kept one hand on his, while with the other she put
cooling applications to his head or merely laid her hand upon his
forehead. As long as she was touching him the patient seemed perfectly
content. And again the doctor nodded--and this time he also smiled.
So passed the hours of that long summer day.