One--two--three--four--five--six--Bubbles heard the clock in the dark
corridor outside her room ring out the harmonious chimes, and she turned
restlessly round in her warm, comfortable bed.
It was very annoying to think she would have to wait two hours for a cup
of tea, but there it was! She had herself told Pegler she didn't want to
be disturbed till eight o'clock. She still felt too "done," too weak, to
get up and try to find her way to the kitchen to make herself some tea.
She lay, with her eyes wide open, longing for the daylight, and looking
back with shrinking fear to a night full of a misty horror.
Again and again she had lived through that awful moment when Varick had
pushed her over the edge of the embankment, to roll quickly, softly,
inexorably, into the icy-cold water.
She knew he had pushed her over. To herself it was a fact which did not
admit of any doubt at all. She had seen the mingled hatred and relief
which had convulsed his face. It was with that face she would always see
Lionel Varick henceforth.
There had been a moment when she had thought she would tell Dr. Panton;
then she had come to the conclusion that there was no good purpose to be
served by telling the strange and dreadful truth.
Some noble lines of Swinburne's which had once been quoted to her by a
friend she loved, floated into her mind--
"But ye, keep ye on earth
Your lips from over-speech,
Loud words and longing are so little worth;
And the end is hard to reach.
For silence after grievous thing's is good,
And reverence, and the fear that makes men whole
And shame, and righteous governance of blood,
And Lordship of the Soul.
And from sharp words and wits men pluck no fruit,
And gathering thorns they shake the tree at root;
For words divide and rend,
But silence is most noble till the end."
As she lay there, feeling physically so ill and weak, while yet her mind
worked so clearly and quickly, she set herself to solve a painful
puzzle. Why had Varick tried to do her to death? She admitted to herself
that she had never liked him, but she had never done him any harm. And
they had been on good terms--outwardly--always.
For hours, amid fitful, nightmarish snatches of sleep, and long, lucid
intervals of thought, Bubbles had wrestled with the question.
And then, lying there in the early morning, Bubbles _suddenly knew_.
Varick hated and feared her because she had unwittingly raised his wife
from the dead. And, believing that if he killed her, he would lay that
sinister, vengeful, unquiet ghost, he had deliberately planned
yesterday's expedition in order to do that which he had so nearly
succeeded in doing.
Bubbles gave an eerie little chuckle which startled herself. "I'd have
haunted him!" she muttered aloud. "He'd have found it more difficult to
get rid of me dead than alive."
Even as she murmured the words, the door opened, and she heard a voice
say, hesitatingly, "Then you're awake, Bubbles? Somehow I felt you were
awake, and I thought you might like a cup of tea."
It was Bill Donnington, with a lighted candle in one hand, and a cup of
tea in the other.
How glad she was to see him! How very, very glad! Yet he only looked his
usual sober, unromantic self, standing there at the bottom of her pretty
old walnut-wood bed, looking at her with all his wistful, faithful soul
in his eyes.
Bill was fully dressed, and Bubbles burst out laughing, feebly.
"You _are_ an early bird!" she exclaimed. "And a very proper bird, too.
I suppose you thought you mustn't come into my room in a dressing-gown?"
"I haven't slept all night," he said stiffly. "So I got up an hour ago.
I came and looked in here, as a matter of fact, on my way to the
bathroom. But you were asleep. And then, after I was dressed, I went
down to the kitchen, and made myself a cup of tea. I thought I'd make
one for you, too, just on chance."
He came up close to her, and Bubbles, shaking back her short curly hair,
took the cup from him. "This _is_ delicious! You _are_ a good sort,
Bill!"
He sat down on the end of her bed while she thirstily, greedily, drank
the tea he had brought her. In all her gestures there was something
bird-like and exquisite. Even when she was greedy Bubbles was dainty
too.
"I do hope you're feeling none the worse"--he began.
And she mimicked him, gleefully, speaking in a low whisper. "None the
worse, thank you! It's a comfort, sometimes, to be with a person who
always says exactly what you might expect he would say! I'm always sure
of that comfort with you--old thing."
"Are you?" He smiled his slow, doubtful smile, and Bubbles said
suddenly: "You've gone and left the door open."
He stood up, irresolute. "I suppose I ought to go away," he said
hesitatingly.
She exclaimed: "No, no, Bill! I won't have you go away! I don't want you
to go away! I want you to stay with me. But you must shut the door, for
it's very cold."
"D'you think I'd better shut the door?" he asked.
And then Bubbles seized his lean, strong hand. "Oh! I see what you
mean!" she exclaimed. "You actually think your being in here is more
proper if the door is open? But it isn't a bit--for everyone in the
house but us two is fast asleep! Still, that won't go on long. So shut
the door at once! I've something very important to say to you--something
which I certainly don't want Pegler to hear me say to you. Pegler may
come down any moment--she's such a good sort, under that stiff, cross
manner. It's so queer she should disapprove of me, and approve of my
Aunt Blanche, isn't it?"
He got up, and going to the door, shut it.
"Lock it!" she called out. "Lock it, Bill! I don't want to be
disturbed;" she repeated in an odd voice, "I've something very important
to say to you."
But this time he did not obey her, and as he came back towards the bed
he said anxiously, "D'you still feel _very_ bad, Bubbles?"
There was a tone of great tenderness and solicitude in his voice.
"Of course I do. So would you, if you'd died and come to life again."
"You didn't do that," he said in a low voice. "But you were very nearly
drowned, Bubbles. However, we must try to forget it."
Again she mimicked him: "'We must try to forget it.' I was waiting for
you to say that, too. As if we should ever forget it! But we won't think
about it just now--because we've got to think of something else that's
much more to the present purpose."
"Yes," he said soothingly. "Yes, Bubbles?"
Poor Bill felt very uncomfortable. He did not wish prim Miss Pegler to
come in and find him sitting on Bubbles' bed, when no one was yet up in
the house. These modern, unconventional ways were all very well, and he
knew they often did not really mean anything, but still--but still ...
"Did you ever hear of the King's Serf?" asked Bubbles suddenly.
"The King's Serf?" he repeated, bewildered.
"When the rope which was hanging some poor devil of a highwayman
broke--when the axe was too blunt to cut a robber rascal's head
off--when a man being condemned to death survived by some extraordinary
accident--well, such a man became thereafter the King's Serf. He
belonged to the King, body, soul, and spirit, and no one but the King
could touch him. He lost his identity. He was above the law!"
Bubbles said all this very, very fast--almost as if she had learnt it
off by heart.
"What a curious thing," said Bill slowly.
Bubbles had so many queer, out-of-the-way bits of knowledge. She was
always surprising him by the things she knew. It was the more curious
that she never seemed to open a book.
"Come a little nearer," she ordered. "You're so far away, Bill!"
She spoke with a touch of imperious fretfulness, and he moved a little
further up the bed.
"Nearer, nearer!" she cried; and then she suddenly sat up in bed, and
flinging her arms round him, she laid her dark, curly head on his
faithful heart. "I want to tell you," she whispered, "that from now
onward I'm Bill Donnington's Serf--much more than that poor brute I've
told you of was ever the King's Serf. For, after all, the King hadn't
cut the rope, or blunted the edge of the hatchet----"
"Bubbles!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Bubbles, d'you really mean that?"
"Of course I mean it! What I gave I had, what I gained I lost, what I
lost I gained."
"What do you mean, darling?" he whispered.
"I mean that the moment that stupid doctor allows me to get up--then you
and I will skip off by ourselves, and we'll say, 'Hullo, here's a
church! Let's go in and get married.'"
She waited a moment, but Bill Donnington said nothing. He only held her
closer to him.
"In the night," went on Bubbles, "I was wondering if we'd be married in
that strange old church near here, our church, the church with the
animals. And then I thought no, we wouldn't do that, for I am not likely
to want ever to come back here again. So we'll be married in London, in
a City church, in the church where John Gilpin and his family went to
what I suppose they called 'worship.' It's there you will have to say
you worship me, Bill!"
She lifted her head, and looked into his face. "Oh, Bill," she said, her
voice trembling a little, "you do look happy!"
"I am happy, but I--I can't quite believe it," he said slowly; "it's too
good to be true."
"I hope you'll go on being happy," she said, again pressing closer to
him. "But you know that sometimes, Bill--well, I _shall_ dine at
Edmonton while you do dine at Ware. It's no good my trying to conceal
that from you."
"I--I don't understand," he stammered out. What did Bubbles mean by
saying that?
"You'll know soon enough," she said, with that little wise look of
hers--the little look he loved. "But whenever I'm naughty or
unreasonable, or, or selfish, Bill--I'm afraid I shall often be _very_
selfish--then you must just turn to me, and say: 'You know, Bubbles,
when all's said and done, you're my Serf; but for me you wouldn't be
here.'"
Bill Donnington looked at her, and then he said solemnly and very
deliberately: "I don't feel that you ought to marry me out of gratitude,
Bubbles."
She took her hands off his shoulders, and clapped them gleefully. "I was
waiting for that, too!" she exclaimed. "I wonder you didn't say it at
once--I quite thought you would."
He said seriously: "But I really mean it. I couldn't bear to think that
you married me just because I dragged you out of the water."
"I'm really marrying you, if you want to know," she exclaimed, "because
of Mr. Tapster! During the last few days--I wonder if you've noticed it,
Bill?" (he had, indeed)--"that man has looked at me as if I was _his_
serf--that's a polite way of putting it--and I don't like it. But I've
got a friend--you know Phyllis Burley? I think she'd do for him exactly!
It would be so nice, too, for she's devoted to me, and we should have
the use of one of their motors whenever we felt like it."
Bill shook his head decidedly. "We never should feel like it," he said;
"even if Phyllis did marry Mr. Tapster, which I greatly doubt she'd even
think of doing."
"I'm going to tell him to-day," she went on, "that he's got to marry
her. There's nothing indelicate about my saying that, because they've
never met. But it'll work in his brain, you see if it doesn't, like
yeast in new bread! Then I'll bring them together, and then, and then--"
"And then," said Bill deliberately, "you'll never, with my goodwill, see
him again. So find him a wife whom you don't like, Bubbles."
She looked at him meditatively. "Very well," she said. "That will be my
first sacrifice for you, Bill. I'll save him up for Violet Purton. She's
a horrid girl--and won't she make his money fly!"
He was smiling at her rather oddly.
"Bill!" she exclaimed, startled. "Bill! I do believe you're going to be
master--"
And then she flung her arms again round his neck. "Kiss me," she
commanded, "kiss me, Bill. And then you must go away, for it isn't
proper that you should be here, at this time of the morning, now that
we're engaged!"