When the Birds Begin to Sing Part 29

"No thank you, dear, I haven't time. I only fled back to tell you I am off to Copthorne. I am a little anxious about Eleanor not having written you know. She was rather seedy and done up before she left, and those old people are bad correspondents."

"You think she is ill?"

"I fear something is wrong."

"But you must have something before you go, or you will be quite faint."

Philip is not in the mood to argue; he answers her abruptly, almost rudely, and guessing that something is wrong, she lets him go, watching him drive away with sorrowful compa.s.sionate eyes.

"I am afraid poor Phil is in some trouble again," she says to Nelson, mechanically cracking the sh.e.l.l of her boiled egg. "He has gone."

"What?"

"Yes," shaking her head solemnly, "and without any breakfast."

"But you should not let him."

"I could not help it. He is going to see Eleanor."

"Has she been leading the poor fellow another dance? What a curse that woman is!"

"Don't talk like that! I am very fond of Eleanor, with all her faults--almost as fond as of Phil, and you know how I love him. I am not sure what it is about her, but you can't bring yourself not to care for her. It's that pretty little confiding way, I think, and those lovely wistful eyes. She is so easily led and swayed. It is a great pity."

"She will come to a bad end, depend upon it," replies Nelson, congratulating himself on the good woman who crowns his home.

Philip takes the morning train to Copthorne. Business goes to the wind. He thinks only of his wife, and the letters that have come back so strangely into his keeping.

The journey seems interminable. He flings a pile of papers unread on the opposite seat, puts a cigar between his teeth, and forgets to light it, closes his tired eyes, which only quickens and excites his overwrought imagination, till finally the train steams into the drowsy little station of Copthorne.

Philip walks at the fastest possible speed across the meadows. There is the gate on which Eleanor perched herself the night before their wedding, declaring she _would_ dangle her feet whether she was to be Mrs. Roche or not.

Then the green lane, where she asked him to wait till the following spring. He remembers her words distinctly. She had said them so lightly in reference to their union: "When the birds begin to sing, then I will marry you, Philip."

But he had proved himself the stronger, and carried off his prize that same month.

Now the spring is here. The birds are singing--mocking, jeering. The old farmhouse is in sight--he pauses.

Oh, what a moment of suspense!

No Eleanor comes across the garden to greet him. It all looks dead--still.

He can hear Rover's feeble bark--the sound savours of decay.

Then Philip walks forward, and his shadow falls across the porch. The bell peals.

Mrs. Grebby starts at the ring, and brushes past the little farmhouse servant hurrying to the door.

"Why, it's never Mr. Roche!" she exclaims.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Why, it's never Mr. Roche!" she exclaims.]

"Yes," he replies; "I have come for Eleanor. Where is she?"

Mrs. Grebby sinks on to the seat in the porch, and stares at him open-mouthed.

"What do yer mean?" she gasps at last. "There ain't no harm come to my dearie!"

She wrings her hands despairingly.

"Has Eleanor left you?" he asks in a voice so strangely unfamiliar that he hardly knows it for his own.

"Three days ago. She went 'ome, to be sure, as bright and as bonny as could be, looking that pretty, I says to my old man 'It's well she's not travellin' alone.'"

"Who was with her?" questions Philip intently, mastering his intense emotion.

"A friend what came the day you telegraphed. He said 'e'd see her back safe and sound. I packed 'er clothes with my own hands, I did, she never touched a thing, and we drove them both behind Black Bess to the station, with Rover following at the wheel."

A low hiss breaks from Philip's lips.

"And this man," he asks fiercely, impatiently, biting his lips. "What was he like?"

"Oh! 'e was a beautiful gentleman, so well dressed and handsome, Mr., let me see, Mr. Quinton I think she called him."

Philip has heard enough, he turns away with a groan.

Mrs. Grebby watches the dark despair creep over his features in blank amazement.

"What does it mean?" she asks, detaining him with a trembling hand.

"It means," replies Philip in a choking voice, "that Eleanor has left me."

A cry escapes Mrs. Grebby, she buries her face in her ap.r.o.n, rocking herself to and fro, moaning pitifully.

"We, as always kep' ourselves respectable, and never knew what it was to blush for any of our stock, and she 'as lifted the family, and married a good, real gentleman like yourself, sir, to bring disgrace and ruin on 'er 'appy 'ome. Oh! my, oh! my, the poor misguided la.s.s!"

Philip, in his own agony, finds himself comforting the weeping woman, and praying her to bear up. Then, as she dries her streaming eyes, clasping his hand with a hoa.r.s.e "G.o.d bless you, Mr. Roche," he hastens away with bent head and throbbing brow back over the green gra.s.s.

No curse rises to his silent lips; he is as one who has just heard of the sudden death of his dearest upon earth. Everything seems slipping from him. There is a long stretch of blank life before his bloodshot eyes.

He waits in a state of nervous prostration on a wooden bench at Copthorne Station till the return train to town appears.

Then he staggers forward into the first empty carriage, buries his face on the cushions, and sobs.

His strong frame shakes like a reed with the violence of his grief. He is weak, too, from having fasted since the previous night, and does not attempt to control his sorrow.

The maddening thought of Eleanor and Quinton together adds gall and wormwood to the desolation in the deserted husband's heart.

"With Quinton!" He repeats the words, grinding his teeth. Quinton, the low scoundrel, the fast, fascinating man of bad reputation, the villain who has betrayed his wife, his angel, and dragged her to the lowest depths of degradation! She is beyond Philip's help now, and he knows it--beyond redemption!