Barnaby Part 31

"Rather," she said.

"And you didn't fly to America?"

"No," she said.

His weak, amused voice, talking in pauses, smote on her heart.

"Ah," said Barnaby. "It would have looked bad if you'd bolted, wouldn't it? No end heartless. Susan,--oh, I've noticed things, off and on,--you've been killing yourself looking after me.--"

His smile was troubled. She shook her head at him.

"You didn't do it," he said, "because, oh,--because of some queer notion that you owed us something--? You didn't do it to make it up to us,--to pay us out?"

She put her arm under his pillow and, raising him slightly, lifted the cup to him and let him drink. If Barnaby could have known:--if he could have seen her claiming him in her hour of desperation--! If he could have dimly guessed what a dreadful happiness had walked hand in hand with pain! She had won something of her mad adventure. She was the woman who had nursed him, who had waked night after night at his pillow. n.o.body could rob her of that. And when she was gone he would perhaps think of her with kindness....

"It wasn't remorse," she said.

"It's awfully good of you," said Barnaby. "But why--but why----"

There was a faint eagerness in his puzzled voice.

"Perhaps," she said bravely, "it was the dramatic instinct. How could a poor actress forget all her traditions? How could she help rising to her part? Don't talk.... Lie quiet and laugh at me all you want."

One day Lady Henrietta came into the room with a budget of letters and all she could rake of gossip.

"You two have been shut up so long," she said, "I believe you have both forgotten there is such a thing as an outside world. Why don't you ask who has been inquiring for you?"

"Who has been inquiring for me?" said Barnaby.

He was propped high in his pillows, and was looking like himself. In the afternoon he was to dress and sit in a chair and read the paper.

"Everybody," she said. "Poor Rackham has been two or three times a day when you were bad. Of course it was his horse that did the mischief.

He would not be satisfied without seeing Susan----"

"Did you see him?" asked Barnaby. There was something a little odd in his intonation.

"Susan see anybody?" exclaimed his mother. "She had eyes for n.o.body but her patient. All the wild horses in Rackham's stables would not drag her away from you.--He's thinking of going abroad for a bit, he says. To America, or Canada;--he confused me with his talk of cities and mines and mountains. I don't know if he has any idea of making a fortune there or if he is looking out for a lady. I said you might have to go out there too, but the unfortunate accident had postponed it,--and he said it was a bigger place than I fancied, but to let him know if he could be of any use to you. His manner was rather queer."

"Poor chap," said Barnaby. "I daresay he is hard up. It would have been lucky for him if I--Why, what is the matter, Susan?"

"Don't tease her," said Lady Henrietta. "You can't possibly realize what a fright she had!" She turned briskly to the girl, however. "We never heard any more of that mysterious telegram that was to carry you off so quickly the day Barnaby was hurt," she said. "Have you quite forgotten it? Does absolutely nothing matter to you but him?"

Barnaby had begun to laugh, weakly, uncontrollably.

"Oh, that will keep," he said.

"What do you know about it?" said Lady Henrietta, catching him up sharply. "It came when you were out. I understood she was looking for you when she witnessed your smash. And I'm convinced it has never entered her head from that day to this."

Then she remembered her heap of letters.

"Look at all these!" she cried. "All begging for news of him! And the offerings! There never was anything so romantic.... There's one old woman down in the village that's killed her pig and, Barnaby--she sent up a delicate bit in a dish for you."

"Romantic--?" said Barnaby.

"Oh, romance has singular manifestations," said Lady Henrietta. "You never know.... There was that girl of Bessy's, for example, who used to write poetry.--She was too romantic, poor thing, and that's why she never married.--She went in for hero-wors.h.i.+p. Used to go into kind of trances of adoration over a famous soldier that she had never seen.

And once I tumbled over her sitting on the hearth-rug with her hands clasped behind her head, gazing with a rapt expression into the fire.

I thought she was fighting his battles with him in her imagination, or poetising; but she whispered--'Don't interrupt me! I'm darning his socks.--'"

She was turning over her letters.

"Here's one for you, Susan," she said. "It's a London postmark. A big hotel, but rather a common hand."

Susan took it indifferently. Lady Henrietta was already plunged in the midst of a family letter; wherein an aunt of Barnaby's was presuming to offer her advice. She read out bits of it with little shrieks of scorn.

"'When Toby broke his leg I made a point of----' Who cares what folly she committed when Toby broke his leg? 'I do hope, Henrietta, you see that the doctors do not permit the poor boy's wife to be in and out of the sick-room. It irritates the nurses.' ... Ah, but ours is a romantic sick-room! If _we_ had married a fool like Charlotte's daughter-in-law--!"

She glanced up smiling at the other two. Providence, not she, had taken the field; and she had faith in its workings as efficacious. But Susan was not attending. She was reading her letter still. "My dear,"

said Lady Henrietta, "who is the common person?"

But she got no answer.

"Come! Tell us," said Barnaby; and at his voice Susan started.

"Somebody I--used to know," she said.

Lady Henrietta had returned to her own correspondence. Her mild curiosity could wait until the girl had finished deciphering the almost illegible scrawl.

"You might straighten the pillows for me," said Barnaby.

She tore the letter across and threw it into the fire. Then she came over to him and did what he wanted with a jealous eagerness that was new.

"Was it a worrying letter?" he said, in a low voice. He had nothing to do but look at her.

"No," she said, "it didn't worry me." But her tone was subdued, too quiet, as if she had had a shock.

"I'm eternally grateful to you for burning it, though," he said; "that abominable scent it reeked with was like a whiff of nightmare. I seem to remember it. I wonder where I can have run across a woman who advertised herself like that.... I'm glad you burnt it. Considerate nurse. It was the only thing to do."

She was grateful to him for not insisting. Not yet, not yet; not just this morning! ... Afterwards she would tell him.... She moved away from his side and picked up a newspaper from the pile that lay with the letters.

"Do you know what you look like?" said Lady Henrietta, tapping her cheek. "Like a child that has been startled, like a child when an unkind shake has scattered its house of cards."

It was true. But such a tottering house, such a dream-built, precarious house of cards!--

Lady Henrietta dropped her voice, ostensibly to communicate a paragraph in the aunt's letter that was unsuited to the profane masculine understanding.

"I don't want to pry," she said; "but was that by any chance an anonymous letter?"