Lady Rose's Daughter Part 53

Even in her confusion, the strangeness of it all was borne in upon her--his insistence, the extraordinary chance of their meeting, his grave, commanding manner.

"How could you know I was here?" she said, in bewilderment.

"I didn't know," he said, slowly. "But, thank G.o.d, I have met you. I dread to think of your fatigue, but you will be glad just to see him again--just to give him his last wish--won't you?" he said, pleadingly.

"Here is the telegraph-office. Shall I do it for you?"

"No, thank you. I--I must think how to word it. Please wait."

She went in alone. As she took the pencil into her hands a low groan burst from her lips. The man writing in the next compartment turned round in astonishment. She controlled herself and began to write. There was no escape. She must submit; and all was over.

She telegraphed to Warkworth, care of the Chef de Gare, at the Sceaux Station, and also to the country inn.

"Have met Mr. Delafield by chance at Nord Station. Lord Lackington dying. Must return to-night. Where shall I write? Good-bye."

When it was done she could hardly totter out of the office. Delafield made her take his arm.

"You must have some food. Then I will go and get a sleeping-car for you to Calais. There will be no crowd to-night. At Calais I will look after you if you will allow me."

"You are crossing to-night?" she said, vaguely. Her lips framed the words with difficulty.

"Yes. I came over with my cousins yesterday."

She asked nothing more. It did not occur to her to notice that he had no luggage, no bag, no rug, none of the paraphernalia of travel. In her despairing fatigue and misery she let him guide her as he would.

He made her take some soup, then some coffee, all that she could make herself swallow. There was a dismal period of waiting, during which she was hardly conscious of where she was or of what was going on round her.

Then she found herself in the sleeping-car, in a reserved compartment, alone. Once more the train moved through the night. The miles flew by--the miles that forever parted her from Warkworth.

XIX

The train was speeding through the forest country of Chantilly. A pale moon had risen, and beneath its light the straight forest roads, interminably long, stretched into the distance; the vaporous ma.s.ses of young and budding trees hurried past the eye of the traveller; so, also, the white hamlets, already dark and silent; the stations with their lights and figures; the great wood-piles beside the line.

Delafield, in his second-cla.s.s carriage, sat sleepless and erect. The night was bitterly cold. He wore the light overcoat in which he had left the Hotel du Rhin that afternoon for a stroll before dinner, and had no other wrap or covering. But he felt nothing, was conscious of nothing but the rushing current of his own thoughts.

The events of the two preceding days, the meaning of them, the significance of his own action and its consequences--it was with these materials that his mind dealt perpetually, combining, interpreting, deducing, now in one way, now in another. His mood contained both excitement and dread. But with a main temper of calmness, courage, invincible determination, these elements did not at all interfere.

The day before, he had left London with his cousins, the Duke of Chudleigh, and young Lord Elmira, the invalid boy. They were bound to Paris to consult a new doctor, and Jacob had offered to convey them there. In spite of all the apparatus of servants and couriers with which they were surrounded, they always seemed to him, on their journeys, a singularly lonely and hapless pair, and he knew that they leaned upon him and prized his company.

On the way to Paris, at the Calais buffet, he had noticed Henry Warkworth, and had given him a pa.s.sing nod. It had been understood the night before in Heribert Street that they would both be crossing on the morrow.

On the following day--the day of Julie's journey--Delafield, who was anxiously awaiting the return of his two companions from their interview with the great physician they were consulting, was strolling up the Rue de la Paix, just before luncheon, when, outside the Hotel Mirabeau, he ran into a man whom he immediately perceived to be Warkworth.

Politeness involved the exchange of a few sentences, although a secret antagonism between the two men had revealed itself from the first day of their meeting in Lady Henry's drawing-room. Each word of their short conversation rang clearly through Delafield's memory.

"You are at the 'Rhin'?" said Warkworth.

"Yes, for a couple more days. Shall we meet at the Emba.s.sy to-morrow?"

"No. I dined there last night. My business here is done. I start for Rome to-night."

"Lucky man. They have put on a new fast train, haven't they?"

"Yes. You leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15, and you are at Rome the second morning, in good time."

"Magnificent! Why don't we all rush south? Well, good-bye again, and good luck."

They touched hands perfunctorily and parted.

This happened about mid-day. While Delafield and his cousins were lunching, a telegram from the d.u.c.h.ess of Crowborough was handed to Jacob. He had wired to her early in the morning to ask for the address in Paris of an old friend of his, who was also a cousin of hers. The telegram contained:

"Thirty-six Avenue Friedland. Lord Lackington heart-attack this morning. Dying. Has asked urgently for Julie. Blanche Moffatt detained Florence by daughter's illness. All circ.u.mstances most sad. Woman Heribert Street gave me Bruges address. Have wired Julie there."

The message set vibrating in Delafield's mind the tender memory which already existed there of his last talk with Julie, of her strange dependence and gentleness, her haunting and pleading personality. He hoped with all his heart she might reach the old man in time, that his two sons, Uredale and William, would treat her kindly, and that it would be found when the end came that he had made due provision for her as his granddaughter.

But he had small leisure to give to thoughts of this kind. The physician's report in the morning had not been encouraging, and his two travelling companions demanded all the sympathy and support he could give them. He went out with them in the afternoon to the Hotel de la Terra.s.se at St. Germain. The Duke, a nervous hypochondriac, could not sleep in the noise of Paris, and was accustomed to a certain apartment in this well-known hotel, which was often reserved for him. Jacob left them about six o'clock to return to Paris. He was to meet one of the Emba.s.sy attaches--an old Oxford friend--at the Cafe Gaillard for dinner.

He dressed at the "Rhin," put on an overcoat, and set out to walk to the Rue Gaillard about half-past seven. As he approached the "Mirabeau," he saw a cab with luggage standing at the door. A man came out with the hotel _concierge_. To his astonishment, Delafield recognized Warkworth.

The young officer seemed in a hurry and out of temper. At any rate, he jumped into the cab without taking any notice of the two _sommeliers_ and the _concierge_ who stood round expectant of francs, and when the _concierge_ in his stiffest manner asked where the man was to drive, Warkworth put his head out of the window and said, hastily, to the _cocher_:

"D'abord, a la Gare de Sceaux! Puis, je vous dirai. Mais depechez-vous!"

The cab rolled away, and Delafield walked on.

Half-past seven, striking from all the Paris towers! And Warkworth's intention in the morning was to leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15. But it seemed he was now bound, at 7.30, for the Gare de Sceaux, from which point of departure it was clear that no reasonable man would think of starting for the Eternal City.

"_D'abord,_ a la Gare de Sceaux!"

Then he was not catching a train?--at any rate, immediately. He had some other business first, and was perhaps going to the station to deposit his luggage?

Suddenly a thought, a suspicion, flashed through Delafield's mind, which set his heart thumping in his breast. In after days he was often puzzled to account for its origin, still more for the extraordinary force with which it at once took possession of all his energies. In his more mystical moments of later life he rose to the secret belief that G.o.d had spoken to him.

At any rate, he at once hailed a cab, and, thinking no more of his dinner engagement, he drove post-haste to the Nord Station. In those days the Calais train arrived at eight. He reached the station a few minutes before it appeared. When at last it drew up, amid the crowd on the platform it took him only a few seconds to distinguish the dark and elegant head of Julie Le Breton.

A pang shot through him that pierced to the very centre of life. He was conscious of a prayer for help and a clear mind. But on his way to the station he had rapidly thought out a plan on which to act should this mad notion in his brain turn out to have any support in reality.

It had so much support that Julie Le Breton was there--in Paris--and not at Bruges, as she had led the d.u.c.h.ess to suppose. And when she turned her startled face upon him, his wild fancy became, for himself, a certainty.

"Amiens! Cinq minutes d'arret."

Delafield got out and walked up and down the platform. He pa.s.sed the closed and darkened windows of the sleeping-car; and it seemed to his abnormally quickened sense that he was beside her, bending over her, and that he said to her:

"Courage! You are saved! Let us thank G.o.d!"

A boy from the refreshment-room came along, wheeling a barrow on which were tea and coffee.