The Knave of Diamonds Part 58

A long, long time pa.s.sed. She did not hear the rain pattering upon the green earth, nor feel the soft breeze on her neck. She had lost touch with things physical. She was yet groping in outer darkness.

A hand very softly turned the handle of her door, and a motherly face looked in.

"Why, Anne, dear child, I thought you were asleep!" the deep voice said reproachfully. "I've been listening outside for ages, and you were so quiet!"

She raised her head quickly, and in a moment rose. Her eyes were deeply shadowed, but they bore no trace of tears.

"I could not sleep," she said. "But you mustn't trouble about me. I am quite well. I will dress and come down."

Mrs. Errol came forward, shaking her head disapprovingly. "I have a note from Lucas," she said. "It arrived a quarter of an hour ago, but there was no answer, so I thought it would be real wicked to wake you up to read it."

Anne stretched out a hand that shook. "Please!" she said almost inarticulately.

With the note open in her hand she turned and sat down suddenly as if incapable of standing. The clumsy, uneven writing danced before her eyes.

One sentence only, but it took her many seconds to read!

"My brother Nap leaves to-night for Arizona.--Lucas."

She raised her face with a deep, deep breath. She felt as if she had not breathed for hours. Silently, after a moment, she held out the brief message to Mrs. Errol.

"My!" said the latter. "Well, thank the Lord for that!"

And then very tenderly she laid her hand upon Anne's shoulder. "My dearie, would it help you any to speak of him?"

Anne leaned her weary head against her. "I don't know," she said.

"I often wanted to warn you," Mrs. Errol said. "But I thought--I hoped--it was unnecessary. You were always so kind of frank with him that I thought maybe it would be an impertinence to say anything. It wasn't as if you were an inexperienced girl. If you had been--but to give him his due, Nap never tried to trap inexperience. He's got some morals, knave as he is. Say, Anne dear, you know he is no son of mine?"

"Yes," whispered Anne, gently drawing her friend's hand round her neck.

"And I sometimes wonder," Mrs. Errol went on, in her deep sing-song voice that yet somehow held a note of pathos, "if I did wrong to take him as I did. He was the quaintest baby, Anne--the cutest morsel you ever saw. His dying mother brought him to me. She was only a girl herself--a broken-hearted girl, dying before her time. I couldn't refuse. I felt he had a sort of claim upon us. Maybe I was wrong. My husband didn't view it that way, but at that time I hadn't much faith in his judgment. So I took the boy--his boy--and he was brought up as one of my own. But he was always unaccountable. He had queer lapses. I tried to be kind to him. I guess I always was kind. But I surmise that he always suspected me of resenting his existence. Lucas was the only one who ever had any influence over him. Latterly I've thought you had some too, but I guess that was where I went wrong. He and Bertie never got on. P'r'aps it was my fault. P'r'aps he inherited some of my antagonism. The Lord knows I tried to suppress it, but somehow it was always there."

"Dear Mrs. Errol!" Anne murmured softly. "Not one woman in a thousand would have done as much."

"Oh, you mustn't say that, dearie. I'm a very poor specimen. I gave him what advantages I could, but I never loved him. P'r'aps if I had, he'd have been a better boy. It's only love that counts for anything in G.o.d's sight, and I never gave him any. Lucas did. That's how it is he knows how to manage him. It isn't personal magnetism or anything of that sort. It's just love. He can't help answering to that, because it's Divine."

"Ah!" breathed Anne. "You think him capable of love then?"

"I guess so, dear. He's raw and undeveloped, but like the rest of creation he has his possibilities. You've seen him in his better moods yourself. I always thought he kept his best side for you."

"I know," Anne said. She leaned slowly back, looking up into the kindly eyes above her. "But it was only a mask. I see it now. I think there are many men like that, perhaps all are to a certain extent. They are only themselves to one another. No woman would ever love a man if she saw him as he is."

"My dear! My dear!" Mrs. Errol said. "That's a bitter thing to say. And it isn't true either. You'll see better by-and-by. Men are contemptible, I own--the very best of them; but they've all got possibilities, and it's just our part to draw them out. It's the divine foolishness of women's love that serves their need, that makes them feel after better things. No woman ever won a man by despising him. He may be inferior--he is--but he wants real love to bolster him up. I guess the dear Lord thought of that when He fashioned women."

But Anne only smiled, very sadly, and shook her head. It might be true, but she was in no state to judge. She was blinded by present pain. She felt she had given her love to the wrong man, and though it had flourished like a tropical flower in the fiery atmosphere of his pa.s.sion, it had been burnt away at last by the very sun that had called it into being. And she would love in that way no more for ever. There was only duty left down all the long grey vista of her life.

PART III

CHAPTER I

THE POWER DIVINE

"Well, if this isn't a pleasure!"

Thus Lucas Errol, sitting on the terrace on a certain hot afternoon early in August, greeted Dot, whose multifarious duties did not permit her to be a very frequent visitor. He smiled at her with that cordiality which even on his worst days was never absent, but she thought him looking very ill.

"Are you sure I shan't tire you too much?" she asked him, as he invited her to sit down.

"Quite sure, my dear Dot!" he answered. "It does me good to see people.

Lady Carfax is coming presently. The mother has gone to fetch her. It will be her last appearance, I am afraid, for the present. She is expecting her husband home to-morrow. But I'm glad you are here first. I was just wishing I could see you."

"Were you really?" said Dot.

"Yes, really. No, you needn't look at me like that. I'm telling the truth. I always do, to the best of my ability. Is that chair quite comfortable? Do you mind if I smoke?"

"I don't mind anything," Dot said. "And I'm so comfortable that I want to take off my hat and go to sleep."

"You may do the first," said Lucas. "But not the second, because I want to talk, and it's sort of uninteresting not to have an audience, especially when there is something important to be said."

"Something important!" echoed Dot. "I hope it's something nice."

"Oh, quite nice," he a.s.sured her. "It's to do with Bertie." He was smiling in his own peculiarly kindly fashion. "By the way, he's stewing indoors, studying for that exam, which he isn't going to pa.s.s."

"Not going to pa.s.s?" Dot looked up in swift anxiety. "Oh, don't you think he will?"

Lucas shook his head. "What's success anyway? I guess the Creator finds the failures just as useful to Him in the long run."

"But I don't want him to fail!" she protested.

"In my opinion," Lucas said slowly, "it doesn't matter a single red cent, so long as a man does his best. Believe me, it isn't success that counts.

We're apt to think it's everything when we're young. I did myself once--before I began to realise that I hadn't come to stay." The shrewd blue eyes smiled at her under their heavy lids. "Now I don't want to distress you any," he said, "but I'm going to say something that p'r'aps you'll take to heart though you mustn't let it grieve you. Capper is coming here next month to perform an operation on me. It may be successful, and on the other hand--it may not. The uncertainty worries me some. I'm trying to leave my affairs in good order, but--there are some things beyond my scope that I'd like unspeakably to see settled before I take my chances. You can understand that?"

Dot's hand, warm, throbbing with life, slipped impulsively into his.

"Dear Lucas, of course--of course I understand."

"Thanks! That's real nice of you. I always knew you were a woman of sense. I wonder if you can guess what it is I've set my heart on, eh, Dot?"

"Tell me," murmured Dot.

His eyes still rested upon her, but they seemed to be looking at something beyond. "P'r'aps I'm over fond of regulating other folks'

affairs," he said. "It's a habit that easily grows on the head of a family. But I've a sort of fancy for seeing you and Bertie married before I go out. If you tell me it's quite impossible I won't say any more. But if you could see your way to it--well, it would be a real kindness, and I needn't say any more than that."