All that day and all the next day Wemyss was Lucy's tower of strength
and rock of refuge. He did everything that had to be done of the
business part of death--that extra wantonness of misery thrown in so
grimly to finish off the crushing of a mourner who is alone. It is true
the doctor was kind and ready to help, but he was a complete stranger;
she had never seen him till he was fetched that dreadful morning; and he
had other things to see to besides her affairs,--his own patients,
scattered widely over a lonely countryside. Wemyss had nothing to see
to. He could concentrate entirely on Lucy. And he was her friend, linked
to her so strangely and so strongly by death. She felt she had known him
for ever. She felt that since the beginning of time she and he had been
advancing hand in hand towards just this place, towards just this house
and garden, towards just this year, this August, this moment of
existence.
Wemyss dropped quite naturally into the place a near male relative would
have been in if there had been a near male relative within reach; and
his relief at having something to do, something practical and immediate,
was so immense that never were funeral arrangements made with greater
zeal and energy,--really one might almost say with greater gusto. Fresh
from the horrors of those other funeral arrangements, clouded as
they had been by the silences of friends and the averted looks of
neighbours--all owing to the idiotic jurors and their hesitations, and
the vindictiveness of that woman because, he concluded, he had refused
to raise her wages the previous month--what he was arranging now was so
simple and straightforward that it positively was a pleasure. There were
no anxieties, there were no worries, and there was a grateful little
girl. After each fruitful visit to the undertaker, and he paid several
in his zeal, he came back to Lucy and she was grateful; and she was not
only grateful, but very obviously glad to get him back.
He saw she didn't like it when he went away, off along the top of the
cliff on his various business visits, purpose in each step, a different
being from the indignantly miserable person who had dragged about that
very cliff killing time such a little while before; he could see she
didn't like it. She knew he had to go, she was grateful and immensely
expressive of her gratitude--Wemyss thought he had never met any one so
expressively grateful--that he should so diligently go, but she didn't
like it. He saw she didn't like it; he saw that she clung to him; and it
pleased him.
'Don't be long,' she murmured each time, looking at him with eyes of
entreaty; and when he got back, and stood before her again mopping his
forehead, having triumphantly advanced the funeral arrangements another
stage, a faint colour came into her face and she had the relieved eyes
of a child who has been left alone in the dark and sees its mother
coming in with a candle. Vera usedn't to look like that. Vera had
accepted everything he did for her as a matter of course.
Naturally he wasn't going to let the poor little girl sleep alone in
that house with a dead body, and the strange servants who had been hired
together with the house and knew nothing either about her or her father
probably getting restive as night drew on, and as likely as not bolting
to the village; so he fetched his things from the primitive hotel down
in the cove about seven o'clock and announced his intention of sleeping
on the drawing-room sofa. He had lunched with her, and had had tea with
her, and now was going to dine with her. What she would have done
without him Wemyss couldn't think.
He felt he was being delicate and tactful in this about the drawing-room
sofa. He might fairly have claimed the spare-room bed; but he wasn't
going to take any advantage, not the smallest, of the poor little girl's
situation. The servants, who supposed him to be a relation and had
supposed him to be that from the first moment they saw him, big and
middle-aged, holding the young lady's hand under the mulberry tree,
were surprised at having to make up a bed in the drawing-room when there
were two spare-rooms with beds already in them upstairs, but did so
obediently, vaguely imagining it had something to do with watchfulness
and French windows; and Lucy, when he told her he was going to stay
the night, was so grateful, so really thankful, that her eyes, red
from the waves of grief that had engulfed her at intervals during the
afternoon--ever since, that is, the sight of her dead father lying
so remote from her, so wrapped, it seemed, in a deep, absorbed
attentiveness, had unfrozen her and swept her away into a sea of
passionate weeping--filled again with tears.
'Oh,' she murmured, 'how _good_ you are----'
It was Wemyss who had done all the thinking for her, and in the spare
moments between his visits to the undertaker about the arrangements, and
to the doctor about the certificate, and to the vicar about the burial,
had telegraphed to her only existing relative, an aunt, had sent the
obituary notice to _The Times_, and had even reminded her that she had
on a blue frock and asked if she hadn't better put on a black one; and
now this last instance of his thoughtfulness overwhelmed her.
She had been dreading the night, hardly daring to think of it so much
did she dread it; and each time he had gone away on his errands, through
her heart crept the thought of what it would be like when dusk came and
he went away for the last time and she would be alone, all alone in the
silent house, and upstairs that strange, wonderful, absorbed thing that
used to be her father, and whatever happened to her, whatever awful
horror overcame her in the night, whatever danger, he wouldn't hear, he
wouldn't know, he would still lie there content, content....
'How _good_ you are!' she said to Wemyss, her red eyes filling. 'What
would I have done without you?'
'But what would I have done without _you_?' he answered; and they stared
at each other, astonished at the nature of the bond between them, at its
closeness, at the way it seemed almost miraculously to have been
arranged that they should meet on the crest of despair and save each
other.
Till long after the stars were out they sat together on the edge of the
cliff, Wemyss smoking while he talked, in a voice subdued by the night
and the silence and the occasion, of his life and of the regular healthy
calm with which it had proceeded till a week ago. Why this calm should
have been interrupted, and so cruelly, he couldn't imagine. It wasn't as
if he had deserved it. He didn't know that a man could ever be justified
in saying he had done good, but he, Wemyss, could at least fairly say
that he hadn't done any one any harm.
'Oh, but you have done good,' said Lucy, her voice, too, dropped into
more than ordinary gentleness by the night, the silence, and the
occasion; besides which it vibrated with feeling, it was lovely with
seriousness, with simple conviction. 'Always, always I know that you've
been doing good,' she said, 'being kind. I can't imagine you anything
else but a help to people and a comfort.'
And Wemyss said, Well, he had done his best and tried, and no man could
say more, but judging from what--well, what people had said to him, it
hadn't been much of a success sometimes, and often and often he had been
hurt, deeply hurt, by being misunderstood.
And Lucy said, How was it possible to misunderstand him, to
misunderstand any one so transparently good, so evidently kind?
And Wemyss said, Yes, one would think he was easy enough to understand;
he was a very natural, simple sort of person, who had only all his life
asked for peace and quiet. It wasn't much to ask. Vera----
'Who is Vera?' asked Lucy.
'My wife.'
'Ah, don't,' said Lucy earnestly, taking his hand very gently in hers.
'Don't talk of that to-night please don't let yourself think of it. If I
could only, only find the words that would comfort you----'
And Wemyss said that she didn't need words, that just her being there,
being with him, letting him help her, and her not having been mixed up
with anything before in his life, was enough.
'Aren't we like two children,' he said, his voice, like hers, deepened
by feeling, 'two scared, unhappy children, clinging to each other alone
in the dark.'
So they talked on in subdued voices as people do who are in some holy
place, sitting close together, looking out at the starlit sea, darkness
and coolness gathering round them, and the grass smelling sweetly after
the hot day, and the little waves, such a long way down, lapping lazily
along the shingle, till Wemyss said it must be long past bedtime, and
she, poor girl, must badly need rest.
'How old are you?' he asked suddenly, turning to her and scrutinising
the delicate faint outline of her face against the night.
'Twenty-two,' said Lucy.
'You might just as easily be twelve,' he said, 'except for the sorts of
things you say.'
'It's my hair,' said Lucy. 'My father liked--he liked----'
'Don't,' said Wemyss, in his turn taking her hand. 'Don't cry again.
Don't cry any more to-night. Come--we'll go in. It's time you were in
bed.'
And he helped her up, and when they got into the light of the hall he
saw that she had, this time, successfully strangled her tears.
'Good-night,' she said, when he had lit her candle for her, 'good-night,
and--God bless you.'
'God bless _you_' said Wemyss solemnly, holding her hand in his great
warm grip.
'He has,' said Lucy. 'Indeed He has already, in sending me you.' And she
smiled up at him.
For the first time since he had known her--and he too had the feeling
that he had known her ever since he could remember--he saw her smile,
and the difference it made to her marred, stained face surprised him.
'Do that again,' he said, staring at her, still holding her hand.
'Do what?' asked Lucy.
'Smile,' said Wemyss.
Then she laughed; but the sound of it in the silent, brooding house was
shocking.
'_Oh_,' she gasped, stopping short, hanging her head appalled by what it
had sounded like.
'Remember you're to go to sleep and not think of anything,' Wemyss
ordered as she went slowly upstairs.
And she did fall asleep at once, exhausted but protected, like some
desolate baby that had cried itself sick and now had found its mother.