Pearl Of Pearl Island Part 4

"Yes, of course. Well, we must just hope the little lady will pull through all right. If I don't hear from Lady Elspeth I will call now and again for your latest news."

"Surely, sir. Jannet'll be letting me know, if her leddyship's too busy. Miss Brandt was here about hauf an hour ago," he added, with unmoved face;--to think of any man, even so ancient a man as old Hamish, being able to state a fact so great as that with unmoved face!

And there was actually no sign of reminiscent and lingering after-glow perceptible in him!--but Graeme was not at all sure that there was not a veiled twinkle away down in the depths of his little blue-gray eyes.

"Ah! Miss Brandt has been here! She would be surprised too----"

"She was that, sir,--and a bit disappointed, it seemed to me----"

Yes, there _was_ a twinkle in the old fellow's eyes! Oh, he knew, he knew without a doubt. Trust old Hamish for not missing much that was to the fore. He and his old wife, Jannet Gordon, had been in Lady Elspeth's service for over forty years, ever since her leddyship married into the family, and Lady Elspeth trusted them both implicitly and discussed most matters very freely with them. The dilatations of those three shrewd old people, concerning things in general, and the men and women of their acquaintance in particular, would have been rare, rare hearing.

"Well, I'll call again in a day or two, Hamish," and he went away along the gloomy streets, which were all ablaze with soft April sunshine, and yet to him had suddenly become darkened. For he saw at a glance all that this was like to do for him.

PART THE SECOND

I

The rare delight of his meetings with Margaret was at an end. Bluff Fortune had slammed the door in his face, and White-handed Hope had folded her golden wings and sat moping with melancholy mien.

He wandered into Kensington Gardens, but the daffodils swung their heads despondently, and the gorgeous ma.s.ses of hyacinths made him think of funeral plumes on horses' heads.

He went on into the Park. She might be driving there, and he might catch glimpse of her. But she was not, and all the rest were less than nothing to him.

He found himself at Hyde Park Corner and back again at Kensington Gate. But the door was still closed in his face, and he longed for the sight of somebody else's as he had never longed before.

The post was of course open to him, but, at this stage at all events, he felt that the written word would be eminently inadequate and unsatisfying.

He wanted, when he approached that mighty question, to look into her eyes and see her answer in their pure depths before it reached her lips,--to watch the fluttering heart-signals in her sweet face and learn from them more than all the words in the world could tell.

Letters were, at best, to actual speech but as actual speech would be to all that his heart-quickened eyes would discover if he could but ask her face to face.

And besides--he would have wished to make his footing somewhat surer before putting everything to the test.

But, since matters had gone thus far, it was quite out of the question to let them stop there unresolved. Either the precious cargo must be brought safely into port or the derelict must be sunk and the fairway cleared. The question was--how to proceed?

The unwritten laws of social usage would hardly permit him to carry the Pixley mansion by a.s.sault and insist on seeing Miss Brandt.

Besides, that might expose her to annoyance, and that he would not upon any consideration.

And so, before he reached his rooms, his mind was groping clumsily after written phrases which should in some sort express that which was in him without saying too much too soon,--which should delicately hint his regrets at this sudden curtailment of their acquaintance, and leave it for her to say whether or no she regarded the matter in the same light.

Lady Elspeth's sudden summons to the north furnished an acceptable text. Margaret was not to know that he knew of her call at Phillimore Gardens. It was surely but a friendly act on his part to inform her of a matter so nearly concerning one who was dear to them both.

It took a considerable time, however, and the expenditure of much thought and ink and paper, before he succeeded in producing a letter in any degree to his liking. And even when it was written many perusals only served to deepen his doubts.

In any case, it was the best he could do under the circ.u.mstances, and since he could not see her answer in her eyes or in her face, the words she would send him in reply would surely afford his quickened perceptions some indication of her feeling, though nothing to what her presence would have told him.

So he wrote--

"Dear Miss Brandt,--When I called at Lady Elspeth Gordon's this afternoon, I learned, to my very great regret, in which I dare to hope you may partic.i.p.ate, that our dear old friend had been summoned to Inverstrife at almost a moment's notice, by the sudden illness of her niece, the Countess of a.s.synt.

"I trust her visit may not need to be a very extended one, but Lady Elspeth is such a tower of strength to all who seek her help that she is not likely to return so long as she can be of any possible a.s.sistance to her friends.

"For reasons which, perhaps, I need not particularise, her sudden departure is to me a loss beyond its apparent magnitude.

The hours I have spent at her house have been among the brightest of my life. You also have enjoyed her friendship. I venture to hope that you also will miss her.

"Should I not have the pleasure of seeing you for some little time, I would beg of you to bear me in your kindly remembrance.--Sincerely yours,

"JOHN C. GRAEME."

Did it say too much? Would she look upon it as an overstepping of the limits their acquaintance had reached?

Did it say enough? Could she possibly overlook the things he would so dearly have liked to say but had left unsaid?

Did it say too little? Could she possibly deem it an unnecessary liberty, and cold at that? He did not think she could by any possibility look at it in that light.

But after it was at last surely lodged in the pillar-box, all these doubts came back upon him with tenfold force, and his sleep that night would have been short-commons for a nightingale.

She would get his letter by the first post in the morning. Would she answer it at once? Or would she wait half a day considering it?

Either course held hopeful possibilities. A prompt answer would surely suggest a concurrence of feeling. An answer delayed would without doubt mean that she was pondering his words and reading between the lines. So he possessed his soul in patience, of a somewhat attenuated texture, and waited in hope.

But the whole day pa.s.sed, and the night, and the next morning's post still brought him nothing,--nothing but an intimation from a publisher of excellent standing that he would not decline to look over the ma.n.u.script of his next book if he was open to an offer. And this important doc.u.ment he tossed on one side as lightly as if it were a begging letter or a tailor's advertis.e.m.e.nt.

What were any other letters, or all the letters in the world, to him when the one letter he desired was not there?

All that bright April day he waited indoors, in order to get Margaret's letter the moment it arrived. For how should he wander abroad, in gloomy-blazing streets or desolate-teeming parks with that anxiously-expected letter possibly awaiting him at home?

The callous pa.s.sage of the last post, after knocking cheerfully at every door but his own, left him wondering and desperate.

Could he by any possibility have addressed his letter wrongly? It was not easy to make a mistake in No. 1 Melgrave Square.

Could it have gone astray? The Post Office was abominably careless at times. One was constantly hearing of letters slipping down behind desks and monstrously delivered twenty years after date. What earthly good would that letter be delivered when he was forty-seven and Margaret Brandt somewhere in the neighbourhood of forty? Truly, it was monstrous, it was abominable that such carelessness should be permitted in the public departments!

Could Margaret have taken umbrage at anything he had said? He conned his rough draft with solicitous care. It seemed new and strange and crude to him. He feared at each word to come upon the one that might have offended her. But no word, no phrase, nothing even of all that he had left unsaid sprang up before his horrified eyes to choke him with a sense of inadequacy, or inadvertency, or trespa.s.s.

No sleep got he that night for cudgelling his tired brains for reasons why no answer had come from Margaret.

Could she be ill? She was well enough, two days before, to call at Lady Elspeth's house. But, of course, even in a day one may take a chill and be prostrated.

The possibility of that was brought home to him next morning by his landlady's surprised stare and exclamation at sight of his face.

"Law, Mr. John!"--she had been handmaid to his mother for many years and he was still always Mr. John to her,--"Have you got the influenza too? Everyone seems to have it nowadays."

He rea.s.sured her on the point. But every friend he met that day credited him with it, and suggested remedies and precautions sufficient to have made an end of any ordinary man.

He was vexed to think his face so clear an index of his feelings, but, truly, his spirits were none of the best and the weather was enervatingly warm.