Emily Fox-Seton Part 30

But previously the letters she had sent had been of less vital importance. When the replies to them had lingered on their way she had, it is true, watched eagerly for the postman, and had lived restlessly between the arrivals of the mails, but she had taught herself resignation to the inevitable. Now life had altered its aspect and its significance. She had tried, with the aid of an untried imagination, to paint to herself the moments in which her husband would read the letter which told him what she had told. She had wondered if he would start, if he would look amazed, if his grey-brown eyes would light with pleasure!

Might he not want to see her? Might he not perhaps write at once? She never could advance farther in her imagined reading of this reply than the first lines:

"MY DEAR EMILY,--The unexpected good news your letter contains has given me the greatest satisfaction. You do not perhaps know how strong my desire has been--"

She used to sit and flush with happiness when she reached this point.

She so wished that she was capable of depicting to herself what the rest would be.

She calculated with the utmost care the probable date of the epistle's arrival. She thought she made sure of allowing plenty of time for all possible delays. The safety of her letters she had managed, with Hester's aid, to arrange for. They were forwarded to her bankers and called for. Only the letters from India were of any importance, and they were not frequent. She told herself that she must be even more than usually patient this time. When the letter arrived, if he told her he felt it proper that he should return, no part of the strange experience she had pa.s.sed through would be of moment. When she saw his decorous, well-bred face and heard his correctly modulated voice, all else would seem like an unnatural dream.

In her relief at the decent composure of the first floor front in Mortimer Street the days did not seem at first to pa.s.s slowly. But as the date she had counted on drew near she could not restrain a natural restlessness. She looked at the clock and walked up and down the room a good deal. She was also very glad when night came and she could go to bed. Then she was glad when the morning arrived, because she was a day nearer to the end.

On a certain evening Dr. Warren said to his wife, "She is not so well to-day. When I called I found her looking pale and anxious. When I commented on the fact and asked how she was, she said that she had had a disappointment. She had been expecting an important letter by a mail arriving yesterday, and it had not come. She was evidently in low spirits."

"Perhaps she has kept up her spirits before because she believed the letter would come," Mrs. Warren speculated.

"She has certainly believed it would come."

"Do _you_ think it will, Harold?"

"She thinks it will yet. She was pathetically anxious not to be impatient. She said she knew there were so many reasons for delay when people were in foreign countries and very much occupied."

"There are many reasons, I daresay," said Mrs. Warren with a touch of bitterness," but they are not usually the ones given to waiting, desperate women."

Dr. Warren stood upon the hearthrug and gazed into the fire, knitting his brows.

"She wanted to tell or ask me something this afternoon," he said, "but she was afraid. She looked like a good child in great trouble. I think she will speak before long."

She looked more and more like a good child in trouble as time pa.s.sed.

Mail after mail came in, and she received no letter. She did not understand, and her fresh colour died away. She spent her time now in inventing reasons for the non-arrival of her letter. None of them comprised explanations which could be disparaging in any sense to Walderhurst. Chiefly she clung to the fact that he had not been well.

Anything could be considered a reason for neglecting letter writing if a man was not well. If his illness had become serious she would, of course, have heard from his doctor. She would not allow herself to contemplate that. But if he was languid and feverish, he might so easily put off writing from day to day. This was all the more plausible as a reason, since he had not been a profuse correspondent. He had only written when he had found he had leisure, with decent irregularity, so to speak.

At last, however, on a day when she had felt the strain of waiting greater than she had courage for, and had counted every moment of the hour which must elapse before Jane could return from her mission of inquiry, as she rested on the sofa she heard the girl mount the stairs with a step whose hastened lightness wakened in her an excited hopefulness.

She sat up with brightened face and eager eyes. How foolish she had been to fret. Now--now everything would be different. Ah! how thankful she was to G.o.d for being so good to her!

"I think you must have a letter, Jane," she said the moment the door opened. "I felt it when I heard your footstep."

Jane was touching in her glow of relief and affection.

"Yes, my lady, I have, indeed. And they said at the bank that it had come by a steamer that was delayed by bad weather."

Emily took the letter. Her hand shook, but it was with pleasure. She forgot Jane, and actually kissed the envelope before she opened it. It looked like a beautiful, long letter. It was quite thick.

But when she had opened it, she saw that the letter itself was not very long. Several extra sheets of notes or instructions, it did not matter what, seemed to be enclosed. Her hand shook so that she let them fall on the floor. She looked so agitated that Jane was afraid to do more than retire discreetly and stand outside the door.

In a few minutes she congratulated herself on the wisdom of not having gone downstairs. She heard a troubled exclamation of wonder, and then a call for herself.

"Jane, please, Jane!"

Lady Walderhurst was still sitting upon the sofa, but she looked pale and unsteady. The letter was in her hand, which rested weakly in her lap. It seemed as if she was so bewildered that she felt helpless.

She spoke in a tired voice.

"Jane," she said, "I think you will have to get me a gla.s.s of wine. I don't think I am going to faint, but I do feel so--so upset."

Jane was at her side kneeling by her.

"Please, my lady, lie down," she begged. "Please do."

But she did not lie down. She sat trembling and looking at the girl in a pathetic, puzzled fashion.

"I don't think," she quavered, "that his lordship can have received my letter. He can't have received it. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't say one word--"

She had been too healthy a woman to be subject to attacks of nerves. She had never fainted before in her life, and as she spoke she did not at all understand why Jane seemed to move up and down, and darkness came on suddenly in the middle of the morning.

Jane managed by main strength to keep her from falling from the sofa, and thanked Providence for the power vouchsafed to her. She reached the bell and rang it violently, and hearing it, Mrs. Cupp came upstairs with heavy swiftness.

Chapter Twenty one

Naturally a perceptive and closely reasoning woman, Mrs. Warren's close intellectual intimacy with her husband had, in giving her the benefit of intercourse with a wide experience, added greatly to her power of reasoning by deduction. Warren frequently felt that his talk with her was something like consultation with a specially clever and sympathetic professional confrere. Her suggestions or conclusions were invariably worth consideration. More than once his reflection upon them had led him to excellent results. She made one night a suggestion with regard to the Extraordinary Case which struck him as being more than usually astute.

"Is she an intellectual woman?" she inquired.

"Not in the least. An unsparingly brilliant person might feel himself ent.i.tled to the right to call her stupid."

"Is she talkative?"

"Far from it. One of her charms is the nice respect she seems to feel for the remarks of others."

"And she is not excitable?"

"Rather the reverse. If excitability is liveliness, she is dull."

"I see," slowly, "you have not yet thought it possible that she might--well--be under some delusion."

Warren turned quickly and looked at her.

"It is wonderfully brilliant of you to have thought of it. A delusion?"

He stood and thought it over.

"Do you remember," his wife a.s.sisted him with, "the complications which arose from young Mrs. Jerrold's running away, under similar circ.u.mstances, to Scotland and hiding herself in a shepherd's cottage under the impression that her husband was shadowing her with detectives?

You recollect what a lovable woman she was, and what horror she felt of the poor fellow."

"Yes, yes. That was an Extraordinary Case too."