"Nay, but the maddest gambler throws his heart."
GEORGE MEREDITH.
"L'orgueil, remède souverain, qui n'est pas à l'usage des âmes
tendres."
STENDHAL.
The pretty Breton legend setting forth that, during the night, angels
take sanctuary from evil spirits in the neighbourhood of sleeping
maidens, often came to Mrs. Kemp's mind when she said good-night to
Lucy. There was something very virginal, very peaceful and bright, in
the girl's room, of which the window overlooked the paddock of the
Grange, the walled kitchen garden of the Priory, and beyond that a
splendid stretch of meadow land and beechwood.
Small low-shelved mahogany bookshelves, put together at a time of the
world's history when women's hands were considered too fragile and
delicate to hold heavy volumes, made squares of dark colour against the
blue walls. Lucy Kemp had always been a reader, both as child and as
girl. Here were all her old books, from that familiar and yet rather
ill-assorted trio, "The Fairchild Family," "The Swiss Family Robinson,"
and "The Little Duke," to "Queechy," "Wives and Daughters," and "The
Heir of Redclyffe," for their owner's upbringing had been essentially
old-fashioned.
Lucy lay back in the dreamless sleep of girlhood. It was a cold January
morning, and the embers of last night's fire still slumbered in the
grate. Suddenly there broke on the intense stillness the rhythmical
sound of pebbles being thrown with careful, sure aim against the window,
open some inches from the top. The sleeper stirred uneasily, but she
slept on till a small stone, aimed higher than most of those which had
preceded it, fell into the room. Then Lucy Kemp woke with a great start
and sat up in bed listening.
Yes, there could be no doubt about it, someone was standing in the
paddock below trying to attract her attention! She got up, wrapped
something round her, and then lifted the window-sash. In the dim light
she saw a man standing just below, and Boringdon's hoarse, quick tones
floated up to her.
"Lucy--Miss Kemp! Would you ask your mother if she could come to the
Priory as soon as possible? There's been an accident there--a fire--and
I fear Mrs. Rebell has been badly burnt."
His voice filled Lucy with varying feelings--joy that he had
instinctively turned to the Grange for help, horror and concern at what
he had come to tell.
"Mother's away," she cried in a troubled tone. "She and father have gone
over to Berechurch for three nights. Should I be of any use? I shouldn't
be a moment getting ready."
In less than ten minutes she joined him, and together they hastened
through a seldom opened door giving access from the garden of the Grange
into the Priory Park. Soon Oliver was hurrying her up the path, walking
so quickly that she could scarcely keep up with him, towards the great
silent mass of building the top windows of which, those which lay half
hidden by the Tudor stone balcony, were now strangely lit up, forming a
coronal of light to the house beneath.
"What happened?" she asked breathlessly.
"It's impossible to say what happened," Boringdon spoke in sharp
preoccupied tones, "Mrs. Rebell seems to have been reading in bed and to
have set fire to a curtain. She behaved, as she always does, with great
good sense, and she and McGregor--heaven knows how--managed to put out
the flames; not, however, before the fire had spread into the
sitting-room next her bedroom. McKirdy, it seems, has always insisted
that there should be buckets of water ready on every landing." Oliver
would have scorned to defraud his enemy of his due. "When the whole
thing was over, then they all--that stupid old Mrs. Turke and the
maids--saw that she was badly burnt!"
The speaker's voice altered; he paused for a moment, and then continued,
"They sent for McKirdy, who, as bad luck would have it, went back to his
own house last week, and found him away, for he's been helping that
Scotch doctor at Halnakeham with a bad case. Then they came on to me.
Even now they're like a pack of frightened sheep! Madame Sampiero knows
nothing of what has happened, and Mrs. Rebell is extremely anxious that
her god-mother should not be agitated--why, she actually wanted to go
down herself to tell her that everything was all right."
Lucy listened in silence. How Oliver cared, how dreadfully he cared! was
the thought which would thrust itself into the girl's mind. "Is Mrs.
Rebell very badly hurt?" she asked. "Oh! I wish that mother was here.
Have you sent for another doctor?"
"I don't know how far she is hurt," he muttered, "her arm and shoulder,
some of her hair--" then, more firmly, "No, she won't let me send for
anyone but McKirdy. Besides, by the time we could get a man over from
Halnakeham, he would certainly be back. But it will be everything to her
to have you there, if only to keep order among the frightened,
hysterical women."
* * * * *
Lucy had never before been inside Chancton Priory; and now, filled
though she was by very varying emotions, she yet gazed about her, when
passing through into the great hall, with feelings of deep interest and
curiosity: it looked vast, cavernous, awe-inspiring in the early morning
light.
A moment later they were hastening up the corner staircase. At the first
landing, they were stopped by Madame Sampiero's French maid, who put a
claw-like hand on Boringdon's arm--"Do come in and see my mistress, Sir.
She divines something, and we cannot calm her."
Boringdon hesitated, then he turned to Lucy.
"I must go," he said, "I promised I would. You go on straight upstairs,
as far as you can go; once there you will be sure to find someone to
show you the way to the room where we have put Mrs. Rebell." And the
girl went on alone, groping her way up the dark, to her they seemed the
interminable, stairs.
An amazing figure--Mrs. Turke in _déshabillé_--awaited Lucy on the top
landing, and greeted her with considerable circumstance.
"The young lady from the Grange, I do declare! A sad day for your first
visit to the Priory, missy! But la, never mind. I've often seen you, you
and your dear papa, and I read all about him in a book I've got. What a
brave gentleman! But reading about it gave me the shivers, that it
did--I would like to see that Victoria Cross of his! So Mr. Boringdon
thinks you may be of use to Mrs. Rebell? Well, miss, I'll take you in to
her. But she's made us all go away and leave her--she says she'd rather
be alone to wait for the doctor."
Mrs. Turke preceded Lucy down the passage, and finally opened the door
of a pretty, old-fashioned bedroom; the girl went in timidly and then
gave a sigh of relief; the woman whom Oliver Boringdon had described as
having been "badly burnt" was sitting up in a large armchair. She was
wrapped in some kind of ample white dressing-gown, and a large piece of
wadding had been clumsily attached to her left arm, concealing the left
side of her face and hair.
Mrs. Rebell's eyes were fixed eagerly on the door through which Lucy had
just come in. She did not show any surprise at seeing the girl, but at
once began talking to her eagerly; and as she did so Lucy saw that she
was shivering, for the room was very cold. A fire was laid in the grate,
but evidently no one had thought of lighting it. Three candles, placed
on the narrow mantel-piece, threw a bright light on as much of Barbara's
face as Lucy could see. Her cheeks were red, her dark eyes bright, with
excitement.
"It is kind of you to have come," she said. "Mr. Boringdon told me he
would fetch your mother. I suppose Doctor McKirdy will be here soon? Has
Mr. Boringdon gone to fetch him?"
"No," Lucy looked at her doubtfully; was it possible that anyone who
looked as Mrs. Rebell did now, so excited, so--so strangely beautiful,
could be really hurt, in pain? "He has gone to tell Madame Sampiero that
all danger is over, that there is nothing more to fear."
A look of great anxiety crossed Barbara's face. "My god-mother is very
brave. I do not think she will give much thought to the fire, but I hope
he will tell her that I am not really hurt. Perhaps, after Doctor
McKirdy has come, I can go down, and show her that there is really
nothing the matter."
As she spoke, she winced. "Are you much hurt?" asked Lucy in a low
voice, and her shrinking eyes again glanced at the sheet of wadding
which wholly concealed Mrs. Rebell's arm, left breast, and one side of
her head.
Barbara looked at her rather piteously. "I don't know," she said; "It
hurt dreadfully at first, but now I feel nothing, only a slight pricking
sensation." She repeated, "It hurt dreadfully till they fetched Mr.
Boringdon, and then he found--I don't know where or how--the oil and
wadding, which he made poor old Mrs. Turke put on. He was so good and
kind!" She smiled at the girl, a friendly smile, and the look in her
eyes brought a burning blush to Lucy's cheeks.
There was a pause; then Lucy, having taken off her hat and jacket,
lighted the fire.
"Miss Kemp," Barbara's voice sank to a whisper, "I want you to do
something for me. That fire which you have so kindly lighted has made me
think of it. Will you go into my room, two doors from here, and bring me
a packet of letters you will find in my dressing-table drawer? The
drawer is locked, but the key is in my purse. When you have brought it,
I want you to burn the letters, here, before me," and as Lucy was
turning to obey her, she added, "Take one of the candles. Mr. Boringdon
said the two rooms were to be left exactly as they are, and everything
must be dripping with water, and in fearful confusion."
Lucy never forgot her little expedition down the dark passage, and the
strange scene which met her eyes in the two rooms which had evidently
been, till that night, as neat, as delicately clean, as was her own at
the Grange. Well was it for poor Barbara that she had so few personal
treasures. But the dressing-table had escaped injury save from the
water, which in the bedroom had actually done more harm than the fire.
When she got back into the room where Mrs. Rebell was sitting, it seemed
to Lucy that Barbara had changed in the short interval--that she looked,
not well, as she had done when Lucy had first seen her half an hour
before, but very, very ill. The colour now lay in patches on her cheek,
and she watched with growing feverishness the burning of the few
letters, from each of which, as she put it in the bright crackling fire,
Lucy averted her eyes, a fact which Mrs. Rebell, in spite of her
increasing dizziness and pain, saw and was grateful for.
"Miss Kemp," the speaker's voice was very low, "come here, close to me.
Someone may come in, and I am feeling so strange----Perhaps I may forget
what I want to tell you. You know Mr. Berwick?" Lucy was kneeling down
by the arm-chair, and Barbara put her right hand on the girl's slight
shoulder--"But of course you do, I was forgetting the ball----Why, he
danced with you. If I die, only if I die, promise me----" an agonised
look came into the dark eyes--
"I promise," said Lucy steadily; "only if you die----"
"If I die, you are to tell him that I cared as he wished me to
care,--that when I sent him away, and in the letters I have written to
him since, I said what was not true----"
Lucy felt the burning hand laid on her shoulder press more heavily: "No
one else must ever know, but you promise that you will tell him----"
"I promise," said Lucy again. "I will tell him exactly what you have
told me, and no one else shall ever know."
A slight noise made her look round. Doctor McKirdy stood in the doorway.
He was bare-headed, but he still wore the great coat in which he had
driven from Halnakeham. He was pale, his plain face set in a watchful,
alert grimace, as his eyes took in every detail of the scene, of the
room before him.
Barbara gave a cry--or was it a moan?--of relief. He turned and slipped
the bolt in the door. "Time for talking secrets will come next week,"
then he took off his great coat, washed his hands--with a gruff word of
commendation at the fact that there were water, soap, a towel, in what
had been a disused room--turned up his sleeves, and bade Lucy stand
aside.
"Now," he said, quickly, "would ye rather go away, Miss Lucy? If yes,
there's the door!"
"Can I help you?" Lucy was very pale; she felt sick, a little faint.
"If ye were ye're mother, I should say _yes_----"
"Then I'll stay," said Lucy.
"'Twould be an ill thing if such a brave pair had produced a
chicken-livered lass, eh?"
He did not speak again till everything there was to see had been seen,
till everything there was to do had been done; it seemed a very long
business to Lucy, and by the time the doctor had finished tears were
rolling down her face. How could she have thought that perhaps Mrs.
Rebell was not much hurt after all? "Now ye're just to have a good sip
of that brandy ye've been giving Mrs. Rebell. I'm well pleased with ye
both!" And when Lucy shook her head, he gave her such a look that she
hastened to obey him, and suddenly felt a flash of sympathy for
drunkards. How wonderful that a few spoonfuls of this horrid stuff
should check her wish to cry, and make her feel sensible again!
As Doctor McKirdy unceremoniously signified that he could dispense with
her presence, as he unlocked the door for her to pass through, something
in Lucy's face made him follow her, unwillingly, into the passage. "What
is it?" he said sharply.
"Oh, Doctor McKirdy! Do you think she will die?"
"Die? Are ye mad, my poor lass? There's no question of such a thing.
She's more likely to die o' cold than anything else! Now go downstairs
and send your fine friend Mr. Boringdon and McGregor this way. We've got
to move her to the Queen's Room. There have been big fires there all
this week--regard for the furniture, the apple of Mrs. Turke's eye, I
said they were to get it ready--but we shall have a business getting her
down there."
* * * * *
The long, painful progress down the winding staircase was safely over.
Barbara was comfortably settled in the great square canopied bed, where,
if tradition could be believed, Queen Elizabeth and her less magnificent
successor had both, at intervals of fifty years, reposed. Madame
Sampiero's Scotch attendant was installed as nurse, and there was
nothing left for Lucy Kemp to do but to go home to her solitary
breakfast at the Grange. Boringdon, after having done his part, and a
very useful one, in lifting and carrying Mrs. Rebell down the two
flights, had retreated into the broad corridor, and was walking up and
down waiting--he himself hardly knew for what.
But Doctor McKirdy had quite made up his mind as to the next thing to be
done. "Now then, you must just take Miss Kemp home again, and I charge
you to see that she has a good breakfast! Take her down through the
Park. The village will be a buzzing wasps' nest by this time; half of
them seem to think--so Mrs. Turke's just told me--that we're all burnt
to cinders! You just stay with the poor lass as long as you can, and
don't let Miss Vipen or any other havering woman get at her to be asking
her useless questions. If I want you I'll send to the Grange."
And so it was to Doctor McKirdy that Lucy owed the happy, peaceful hours
spent by her that morning. Boringdon had dreaded the going back to the
Cottage, to his mother's excited questionings and reflections, to her
annoyance that he had gone to the Grange, rather than to her, for help.
He knew he would have to tell her everything. She was not a woman from
whom it was possible to conceal very much, and in the long run she
always got at the truth, but just now it was much to be able to put off
his return home.
Dear Lucy! How good, how sensible, how _quiet_ she had been! She
stumbled over the porch flag-stone, and he drew her arm through his. So
together they walked down to the Grange. Oliver had never before
breakfasted with the Kemps; how comfortable, how homely everything was!
The eggs and bacon seemed crisper and fresher, also better, than those
ever eaten at the Cottage; the tea poured out by Lucy was certainly
infinitely nicer--not for a moment would Oliver have admitted that this
was owing to the fact of its being a shilling a pound dearer than that
made by his mother!
Each tacitly agreed not to speak of all that had just happened at the
Priory. They talked of all sorts of other things. Lucy heard with
startled interest that Oliver was thinking very seriously of giving up
his land agency, and of going back, if it were in any way possible, to
London. What had become the great central desire of his life must never
be mentioned to any human being, not even to his dear friend Lucy, till
its realisation was possible--legally possible. But even to talk of his
plans, as he was now doing, was a comfort; his present listener, unlike
his mother, always seemed to understand his point of view, and to
realise why he had altered his mind without his being compelled to go
into tiresome explanations.
After to-day Lucy and Mrs. Rebell would surely become friends. Even
within the last few days Barbara had said to him, "I should like to
see more of Miss Kemp. It was a pity she and her mother called when I
was away." He liked to think of these two in juxtaposition. If the
thought of life without Barbara was intolerable, not indeed to be
considered,--once she was free from that West Indian brute, his great
love must, in the long run, win return,--the thought of existence with
no Lucy Kemp as friend was distinctly painful. He, Barbara, and Lucy,
would all be happy; and then, not yet, but in some years to come, for
she was still so young, his and Barbara's friend would marry some good
honest fellow--not Laxton, no, but such a man as he himself had been
till Mrs. Rebell came to the Priory, one to whom Lucy's fortune would be
useful in promoting a public career.
At last, about twelve, he reluctantly rose, and Lucy went with him to
the door. Suddenly it struck him that she looked very tired, "Lucy," he
exclaimed--they had just said good-bye, but he still held her
hand--"promise me that you will rest all this afternoon. Perhaps you
would be wiser to go to bed, and then no one--not even Miss Vipen--can
come and trouble you!" He spoke with his usual friendly--one of those
near and dear to Lucy would have described it as priggish--air of
authority. She drew away her hand, and laughed nervously,--but he again
repeated, "Please promise me that you will have a good rest."
"I promise," said Lucy.
* * * * *
"I promise"--Lucy, sleeping restlessly through the winter afternoon and
evening, found herself repeating the two words again and again. What had
she promised? That she would rest. Well, she was fulfilling that
promise. As soon as Oliver had left her, she had gone up, full of
measureless lassitude, to bed. Then she would wake with a start to hear
Mrs. Rebell's imploring voice, "Promise--if I die--" and then, "No one
must know--"
How would Mr. Berwick take the piteous message? Lucy had always felt
afraid of him, but she had promised--
Then came the comforting recollection of Doctor McKirdy's gruff whisper.
Oh no, poor Mrs. Rebell was not going to die, and she, Lucy, would never
have to redeem her promise. But if Mrs. Rebell cared for Mr. Berwick,
would not Oliver be unhappy?
And Lucy, sitting up in bed, pushed her fair hair off her hot forehead.
The whole thing seemed so unreal! Barbara Rebell was not free to care
for anyone. Of course there were horrid women in the world who cared for
other people than their own husbands, though Lucy had never met any of
them, but she knew they existed. But those were the sort of women who
rouged and were "fast"--not gentle, kindly souls like poor brave Mrs.
Rebell.
General and Mrs. Kemp, paying a short visit to Anglo-Indian friends who
had taken a house in the neighbourhood, little knew the physical and
mental ordeal to which their absence had exposed their darling.
* * * * *
Three days had gone by since the fire. Doctor McKirdy was quite honest
in telling Madame Sampiero that he was pleased and astonished at the
progress Barbara had made, and yet the paralysed woman felt that her old
friend was keeping something back.
"What is it?" she muttered. "You are not telling me everything,
McKirdy!"
And so he spoke out: "When a human being has gone through such an
experience as that of the other night, what we doctors have to fear,
quite as much as the actual injury,--which in this case, as I tell you,
is not so very bad, after all,--is shock." He paused, and his listener
made him feel, in some subtle fashion, that she could have well spared
this preamble. "Now, the surprising thing about Mrs. Rebell is that she
is _not_ suffering from shock! Her mind is so full of something else,
perhaps 'twould be more honest to say of someone else, that she has no
thought to spare for that horrid experience of hers. She is concerned,
very much so, about her appearance," the old Scotchman's eyes twinkled.
"There she's as much the woman as any of them! But she has good
nights--better nights, so she confesses, than she had before the fire.
There she lies thinking, not of flames mind you, but of--well, you know
of whom she's thinking! She's wondering if any of us have written and
told Jamie of the affair; she's asking herself how he'll take it,
whether he'll be hurrying back, whether, if he does come, she'll be
informed of it. Then there's Boringdon's fashing himself to bits,
wondering how long it will be before he is allowed to see her, trying to
get news of her in devious ways, even coming to me when all else fails!
Mrs. Kemp's lass is the only sensible one among 'em. I've been thinking
of getting her to come and sit with Mrs. Rebell for a bit, 'twould just
distract her mind----"
So it was that Lucy Kemp received a note from Doctor McKirdy asking her
to be good enough to come and see Mrs. Rebell, and Mrs. Kemp was struck
with the eagerness with which the girl obeyed the call.
Lucy's parents had found her still tired and listless when they came
back, cutting short their visit as soon as they heard the news of the
fire, and the part their daughter had played; but with the coming of the
old doctor's summons all Lucy's tiredness had gone--"If you will come up
after you have had your tea," so ran the note, "you might sit with her
an hour. I have ascertained that she would like to see you."