Christina Part 3

"I am three days too soon--I know it, you need not tell me. But--I had to come to-day."

She put one of her hands into his, but she did not move from her prostrate position on the couch, and her visitor seated himself on a low chair by her side, whilst she gently withdrew the hand he still held, and said softly--

"Why especially to-day? You must not break through the stipulation, Rupert. If there is a particular reason now--I--will forgive you--but--we must keep to our bargain."

Gentle as was the voice, gentle as was the look in her eyes, a look of almost maternal tenderness, there was evidence that behind the tenderness, lay a most unusual strength of character. The woman with the beautiful face, although she lay p.r.o.ne upon a sofa, and was obviously an invalid, showed in her personality no trace of weakness.

Her eyes met the eyes of her visitor squarely and straightly, there was almost a hint of severity in the set of her lips.

"Why did you come to-day?" she repeated, when he stirred uneasily in his chair, and kicked away a footstool in front of him, with a touch of irritability.

"When I begin to put it into words, it sounds a babyish reason; but that jackanapes, Layton, has been playing an idiotic practical joke upon me, and I--was fool enough to mind it. I wanted soothing down; and--I wanted your advice about a girl."

"About--a girl--you!" A note of excitement was apparent in her accents; she looked at him narrowly. "Has it--come--at last, Rupert?"

she questioned, and her quiet voice shook just a little.

"No--no--my G.o.d--_no_!" he exclaimed, "nothing of that sort is ever likely to come into my life--again"--he uttered the last words under his breath, and his eyes rested hungrily on her beautiful face--"there is no question of--my caring for any girl--only--young Jack Layton has made me responsible for what may make a perfectly innocent girl unhappy." And forthwith he plunged into a full description of the sheaf of letters received that morning, winding up with a mention of the terse little letter signed "C.M." His listener's eyes twinkled mischievously as he told the first part of his story in wrathful accents, and over some of his quotations from the letters that had reached him she laughed--a frank, delicious laugh that seemed oddly out of keeping with the tragic mystery of her eyes. But as he described that last letter, with its simple wording, her face grew grave again, and when his voice ceased, she uttered the precise words that had fallen from his own lips three hours earlier.

"Poor little girl--oh! poor little girl!"

"I am sorry for her," Mernside said impetuously, "and it doesn't seem fair that she should perhaps suffer for that idiotic young fool's love of practical jokes. Goodness knows what hopes she may have built upon this letter, and upon me. Of course, I can't give her a home, and I don't want to meet her--with a view to--anything. There is no place in my life for women, even as friends. There is no place in my life for more than--one woman," he ended vehemently.

"Hush!" she said softly. "Remember--you promised; and--if you break your promise, I can't ever let you come here again."

"I know--I know!" he cried, with an impetuosity very foreign to his usual self-control; "but, Margaret, is it to be like this always? Will a time never come when you--when I----"

She put out her hand and laid it over one of his, with a firm touch that had a curiously quieting effect upon him.

"You and I are great friends, as we have been for--longer than we care to think. But--there could not ever be an idea between us of anything else, not even the thought of such a thing. It is out of the question.

It always has been out of the question. You know that as well as I do, and you must not come here at all, unless you can keep to our agreement in spirit as well as in letter."

"Is our friendship nothing to you?" he asked sullenly.

"It is--so much to me--that I will not risk spoiling it for ever," she said firmly; "but if you talk as you are talking now, I shall tell Elizabeth I cannot see you."

"And you are putting up this fence between us, when--I might be some comfort to you," he exclaimed, almost roughly, getting up as he spoke to lean against the mantelpiece, and glower threateningly down at her, "when every reasonable being would tell you that he----"

"Ah! hush!" she cried, and the sudden sharp anguish in her tones gave him pause; "don't let us go into it all over again. Whilst I feel--as I do feel--I must go on in the way I have marked out for myself, one can only follow the right as one sees it. Besides which----"

"Besides which--his little finger is more to you than----"

"Ah! don't--_don't_!" she interrupted him again, her eyes darkening and deepening with agony. "Rupert, I can't bear it; there are some things I am not strong enough to bear."

"I was a brute," he said, his rough tone changing all at once into caressing tenderness; "I let myself go--I was an utter brute. Forgive me, dear--and--try to forget."

He sat down beside her again, and his face, which had shown the same strong emotion that had rang in his words, resumed its quiet look of strength. A great relief swept over the woman's beautiful features, but she was shivering from head to foot, and in her eyes there still lay a haunting anguish. With an effort--how great an effort only she herself knew--she regained her self-control, and her voice, though still shaken, was very gentle again.

"Tell me now about the poor little girl, and the matrimonial letter.

Can we put our heads together to devise any way of helping her?"

"I might conceivably get her some work," Rupert answered, "but people are a little chary of engaging employees recommended by bachelors like myself. Cicely might help her, but, first of all, I must find out if she is genuine. I couldn't impose a stranger, even on Cicely, good-natured, easy-going little soul that she is. And to find out anything about this girl will entail--meeting her!"

Margaret Stanforth smiled.

"Poor Rupert!"

"I am not by way of making rendezvous with young women," he said with sarcasm; "it is not a pastime in which I have ever indulged. At the same time, I don't want to let a fellow creature go empty away, if I could really help her."

"How would it be if you suggested her coming here? I could see her too, and--two heads being better than one--we might be able to do something really helpful. If the letter is sincere, it is obvious the girl is not a mere husband hunter; she is at her wits' end, and--I can't bear to think of any girl stranded in this great hungry London.

I myself"--she pulled herself up short, leaving her sentence unfinished, then went on more quietly: "Write to C.M. and appoint a meeting here. Say this is the house of a lady of your acquaintance, ask her to come and see me--and incidentally to see you."

"It is like you to make such a suggestion about a total stranger,"

Rupert exclaimed, "but--she may turn out an entire fraud--an arrant adventuress--and I could not be responsible for bringing such a person here."

"Such a person! My dear Rupert, even if she were all the terrible things you describe, I don't think she could hurt me. I have seen--so much of the seamy side of life." For a moment Rupert looked at her silently. Long as he had known her, Margaret Stanforth was still largely an enigma to him, and it often seemed to him that the mysterious depths of her eyes veiled mysteries of her life which he had never fathomed.

"For my own sake, for this girl's sake, I should like to jump at your offer," he said, after that long, searching look into her face, "but----"

"There is no 'but,'" she put in gaily, a sudden smile momentarily chasing away the sadness of her face. "Write a civil, non-committal letter to C.M., and ask her, as I say, to come here. Surely, between us, we can do something for this poor little waif and stray. Why not fix to-morrow afternoon, at five o'clock? If the poor girl's need is urgent, we ought not to delay."

"And--you forgive me for all I ought not to have said this morning,"

Rupert said when, ten minutes later, he rose to depart. "I--have not hurt you?"

"No, you have not hurt me; but in future, you will remember--our bargain? And there are some things--I can't bear."

Rupert Mernside walked slowly away from the house, his brain and heart full of the woman he had just left, who, after his departure, lay back amongst the silken cushions on her sofa, with a look of profound exhaustion.

"There now, my dearie, you didn't ought to let him come and tire you this way; you get worn out with him coming worrying." The faithful Elizabeth had entered the room with a salver in her hand, and stood looking into her mistress's white face, with distress written all over her plain kindly features. Margaret opened her eyes, and smiled up into the loving ones fixed upon her.

"No, he doesn't worry me; he is--a comfort, he helps me. Don't scold, nursie dear; his friendship is one of the best things I have in life--one of the best things I have left out of all the wreckage; but to-day--he brought back some of the old memories, and--I--am so silly still. They hurt; sometimes it all feels--unbearable."

The ring of almost uncontrollable pain in her voice, brought a spasm of answering pain into the other's face, and she laid a work-roughened hand tenderly upon the dusky head against the cushions. "There, my dearie, there--there," she murmured, speaking as if her beautiful, stately mistress were a little child; "there's nothing so hard in this world but what it can be borne, if we look at it in the right way. The strength comes along with the sorrow, and 'tis all for the best."

"Is it?" Into the dark eyes there flashed for a second a look of bitterness, and then Margaret drew the other woman's hand down to her lips, and kissed it. "I wish I had your simple straightforward faith, dear old nurse of mine," she said wearily; "you are so sure things will come right, and that what hurts us is for our good. And I--I can't say, 'Thy will be done'; at least, I can't say it as if I meant it.

But what did you bring in on that salver?" she asked, after a moment of silence, and with an effort at brightness.

"There, my pretty; I nearly forgot it after all. It came when I was speaking to the butcher on the doorstep, and Mr. Mernside was here, so I waited to bring it in till he was gone."

She had a purpose in lengthening her story, and chatting on garrulously whilst Margaret opened the orange envelope, for the faithful creature had seen the sudden dilation of her mistress's dark eyes, the whitening of her lips; had seen, too, how her hands shook as they unfolded the telegram.

"I don't understand it," Mrs. Stanforth whispered shakily, when her eyes had scanned the few words before her. "I don't know what it means--Elizabeth--but--I must go--I must go--at once."

The servant drew the flimsy paper from her trembling hands and read the message, shaking her head in bewilderment, as the sense of it penetrated to her brain.

"I'm sure I don't know what it means no more than you do, dearie," she said.

"Graystone.

"Come at once; prepare for surprise.