He never brought Cissy back, but Cissy came one day without him, as
fresh as before from the hands of Marguerite, or only, at the season’s
end, a trifle less fresh. She was, however, distinctly less serene. She
had brought nothing with her and looked about with impatience for the
forms and the place to write. The latter convenience, at Cocker’s, was
obscure and barely adequate, and her clear voice had the light note of
disgust which her lover’s never showed as she responded with a “There?”
of surprise to the gesture made by the counter-clerk in answer to her
sharp question. Our young friend was busy with half a dozen people, but
she had dispatched them in her most businesslike manner by the time her
ladyship flung through the bars this light of re-appearance. Then the
directness with which the girl managed to receive the accompanying
missive was the result of the concentration that had caused her to make
the stamps fly during the few minutes occupied by the production of it.
This concentration, in turn, may be described as the effect of the
apprehension of imminent relief. It was nineteen days, counted and
checked off, since she had seen the object of her homage; and as, had
he been in London, she should, with his habits, have been sure to see
him often, she was now about to learn what other spot his presence
might just then happen to sanctify. For she thought of them, the other
spots, as ecstatically conscious of it, expressively happy in it.
But, gracious, how handsome _was_ her ladyship, and what an added price
it gave him that the air of intimacy he threw out should have flowed
originally from such a source! The girl looked straight through the
cage at the eyes and lips that must so often have been so near as
own—looked at them with a strange passion that for an instant had the
result of filling out some of the gaps, supplying the missing answers,
in his correspondence. Then as she made out that the features she thus
scanned and associated were totally unaware of it, that they glowed
only with the colour of quite other and not at all guessable thoughts,
this directly added to their splendour, gave the girl the sharpest
impression she had yet received of the uplifted, the unattainable
plains of heaven, and yet at the same time caused her to thrill with a
sense of the high company she did somehow keep. She was with the absent
through her ladyship and with her ladyship through the absent. The only
pang—but it didn’t matter—was the proof in the admirable face, in the
sightless preoccupation of its possessor, that the latter hadn’t a
notion of her. Her folly had gone to the point of half believing that
the other party to the affair must sometimes mention in Eaton Square
the extraordinary little person at the place from which he so often
wired. Yet the perception of her visitor’s blankness actually helped
this extraordinary little person, the next instant, to take refuge in a
reflexion that could be as proud as it liked. “How little she knows,
how little she knows!” the girl cried to herself; for what did that
show after all but that Captain Everard’s telegraphic confidant was
Captain Everard’s charming secret? Our young friend’s perusal of her
ladyship’s telegram was literally prolonged by a momentary daze: what
swam between her and the words, making her see them as through rippled
shallow sunshot water, was the great, the perpetual flood of “How much
_I_ know—how much _I_ know!” This produced a delay in her catching
that, on the face, these words didn’t give her what she wanted, though
she was prompt enough with her remembrance that her grasp was, half the
time, just of what was _not_ on the face. “Miss Dolman, Parade Lodge,
Parade Terrace, Dover. Let him instantly know right one, Hôtel de
France, Ostend. Make it seven nine four nine six one. Wire me
alternative Burfield’s.”
The girl slowly counted. Then he was at Ostend. This hooked on with so
sharp a click that, not to feel she was as quickly letting it all slip
from her, she had absolutely to hold it a minute longer and to do
something to that end. Thus it was that she did on this occasion what
she never did—threw off a “Reply paid?” that sounded officious, but
that she partly made up for by deliberately affixing the stamps and by
waiting till she had done so to give change. She had, for so much
coolness, the strength that she considered she knew all about Miss
Dolman.
“Yes—paid.” She saw all sorts of things in this reply, even to a small
suppressed start of surprise at so correct an assumption; even to an
attempt the next minute at a fresh air of detachment. “How much, with
the answer?” The calculation was not abstruse, but our intense observer
required a moment more to make it, and this gave her ladyship time for
a second thought. “Oh just wait!” The white begemmed hand bared to
write rose in sudden nervousness to the side of the wonderful face
which, with eyes of anxiety for the paper on the counter, she brought
closer to the bars of the cage. “I think I must alter a word!” On this
she recovered her telegram and looked over it again; but she had a new,
an obvious trouble, and studied it without deciding and with much of
the effect of making our young woman watch her.
This personage, meanwhile, at the sight of her expression, had decided
on the spot. If she had always been sure they were in danger her
ladyship’s expression was the best possible sign of it. There was a
word wrong, but she had lost the right one, and much clearly depended
on her finding it again. The girl, therefore, sufficiently estimating
the affluence of customers and the distraction of Mr. Buckton and the
counter-clerk, took the jump and gave it. “Isn’t it Cooper’s?”
It was as if she had bodily leaped—cleared the top of the cage and
alighted on her interlocutress. “Cooper’s?”—the stare was heightened by
a blush. Yes, she had made Juno blush.
This was all the greater reason for going on. “I mean instead of
Burfield’s.”
Our young friend fairly pitied her; she had made her in an instant so
helpless, and yet not a bit haughty nor outraged. She was only
mystified and scared. “Oh, you know—?”
“Yes, I know!” Our young friend smiled, meeting the other’s eyes, and,
having made Juno blush, proceeded to patronise her. “_I’ll_ do it”—she
put out a competent hand. Her ladyship only submitted, confused and
bewildered, all presence of mind quite gone; and the next moment the
telegram was in the cage again and its author out of the shop. Then
quickly, boldly, under all the eyes that might have witnessed her
tampering, the extraordinary little person at Cocker’s made the proper
change. People were really too giddy, and if they _were_, in a certain
case, to be caught, it shouldn’t be the fault of her own grand memory.
Hadn’t it been settled weeks before?—for Miss Dolman it was always to
be “Cooper’s.”