Barnaby Part 6

"Hadn't you heard----?"

"How should I? Look here, doctor, I haven't been sulking in civilization; racketing in cities. I've been roughing it, going up and down in the earth.--There wasn't much use in writing letters. I told my mother I would turn up again some day, and she wasn't to be surprised. I did send her a line, now and then, the last of them a greasy scrawl in a mining camp, where there was one bit of paper among the lot of us, and I won it. She can't have got that.... When I had worked the restlessness out of my blood--some fellows can't manage that, it takes them all their lives--I had a fancy to come home and walk into the old place as if I had never left it.... It's simple enough----!"

He was bending forward, stammering a little in his excitement.

Suddenly he laughed.

"By George!" he said. "So that was why the porters fled from me at John o' Gaunt!"

The old man surveyed him anxiously, wiping his gla.s.ses.

Often one heard of men who, seized by a thirst for adventure in the rough, or unbalanced by pa.s.sion and disappointment, had thrown up everything familiar and dropped out, to savour the hard realities of life. Sometimes they reappeared, sometimes only peculiar stories drifted to their old set about them, and those who might know were dumb. He felt a most irrational alarm, an impulse to hold fast to this prodigal.

"You'll not vanish again?" he said hastily. "You won't want to roam in search of adventures now you have a wife to take care of."

Barnaby stretched out for a cigarette and lit it. There had always been a box of them in one corner of the chimney-piece. It did not strike him as odd that he should find them there.

"Have a smoke, doctor," he said. "It'll steady your nerves a bit....

Yes, I'm sobered."

He halted a minute, and the terrier at his feet, remembering an old trick he had taught her, sprang up and blew out the match. As he stooped to caress her, she began licking him furiously. There had been some other trick, but she had forgotten that. She made a clumsy effort to keep his attention by crossing her paws and waving them, which was how it had begun....

"Good dog," he said, and she dropped at his feet, proud of her cleverness, though grudging his notice to the doctor.

"You're right there," he went on, as if the thought amused him. "A man is a fool to go tramping over the world, searching for adventures, when they come to him on his own hearth."

Lady Henrietta lay propped high with pillows, talking fast.

"I want Susan!" she complained. "Bring me Susan. The doctor shan't put me off with his opiates. I can't trust any of you but Susan."

And the girl came faltering into the room.

Lady Henrietta caught her hand, nipping it tight in hers.

"Susan, my child," she said. "What a little cold hand you've got!

They're hus.h.i.+ng me as if I was a lunatic, humouring me with tales. And my heart's so funny. I can feel it misbehaving.... I'll die if they make me angry. Come here, closer. I want to ask you--_you_ won't tell me comfortable lies.--Has Barnaby come back?"

"He has come back," said Susan.

"Are you deceiving me?" whispered Lady Henrietta. "Are you in league with the doctor?--I sent old Dawson out there, you know, and he said the report was true.... He saw the boy's grave. He put up a stone....

And the lawyers came croaking together like ravens, and swore there wasn't a sc.r.a.p of doubt.... And Rackham stepped into his shoes, and I made them search for you high and low!--Oh! no, it's not true! I am wandering in my mind. Look at me. You and I couldn't cheat each other. Let me see it in your face!"

But Susan could not. She dropped her head over the hand clasping hers so fiercely, and her unstrung nerves gave way; she could not keep from sobbing.

Strangely enough, her crying seemed to soothe Lady Henrietta.

"Ah, you never used to cry like that!" she said. "He has come." She stroked the girl's hair with her other hand.

"I suppose they'll let me see him in the morning," she said rationally.

"He will be asleep now, poor boy. He shall come up to me when he has had his breakfast, and pour out his ridiculous adventures. They must give him devilled bacon. Margaret, Margaret, stop snivelling, and remind them to give him devilled bacon. Keep holding my hand, Susan, and don't cry so. We have got him back."

CHAPTER IV

The dim light was already struggling in through the curtains before Lady Henrietta dropped off to sleep, quieted. Susan dared not withdraw her hand. Her arm grew stiff, ached awhile, and was numb; her head slid against the pillow, and her eyes shut at last.

She awakened with a start to hear Lady Henrietta's laugh, weak but natural, and a man's exclamation, sharp and pitiful, above her.

"Take her away, Barnaby, and give her her breakfast," his mother was ordering. "Didn't you see her? The poor child has been sitting up holding my hand like that the livelong night. I was clean off my head.... I might have known you'd behave like this. Oh, I can bear the sight of you now; don't be nervous; I'm not one of those sentimental mothers--! But since I've taken to heart attacks I have to be treated with circ.u.mspection"--she desisted a minute in her rapid effort to disguise emotion:--"Barnaby, I am obliged to you for--for _her_."

"You're fond of her, are you, mother?" said Barnaby.

Lady Henrietta laughed at him, amused at his queer intonation.

"Fond?" she cried. "I adore her. The first minute I saw her, a little pale wisp in her widow's weeds, I adored her. She isn't your style at all, you puzzle. You used to admire a more lavish figure.... I can't understand it in the least; but I'm thankful. And that reminds me you must take her up to London immediately, and have her put into proper clothes."

"Oh, I say----" Barnaby was beginning. She took the words out of his mouth.

"Yes, it's your business," she said. "We can't have her going about in black; it denies your existence--! and you look like a battered scamp yourself. You'll have to go to your tailor. If you want any money I'll write you a cheque.... They won't honour yours while you're dead.... Wake her up now, and take her away to breakfast--and take care of her if you can!"

He bent down and touched her arm, and she lifted her head, still dazed, and stood up from her cramped position.

"Run away," said Lady Henrietta. "Run away, you two. I am going to wash my face."

She kissed her hand to them as they went through the door, and, in spite of herself, her lip quivered. She lay quite still for a minute, raging at herself.

"Quiet!" she muttered. "Quiet! It's nothing to die about, stupid heart!"

Downstairs the servants were all hovering, lying in wait, and watching for a glimpse of the master. Macdonald himself had drawn two arm-chairs beside a small table by the fire, and unwillingly, but discreetly, took himself off and closed the door behind him.

"Sit down," said Barnaby gently. "I'll pour out your tea. You must want it."

She let him do as he would, accepting her cup at his hands, drinking obediently, trying to eat; patient, but not at all understanding him.

The winter sun streamed in red, s.h.i.+ning in her hair, making lights in its curling darkness; it even lent a fict.i.tious pink to her cheek as she sat, so soberly, facing the man in whose house she was, whose ring was on her finger. When she turned her head a little the glimmer died.

Irrelevantly--why should the thing strike him then?--he likened her paleness to the creamy tint of the hawthorn blossom, warm, and smoother than the wintry white of the sloe. She had been ill, too; she was very fragile.

All the while she dared hardly glance at him, though she knew that he was regarding her, not with the righteous wrath of a swindled Briton whose house was his castle, but with a strange expression that, less comprehensible, was little less alarming. The situation seemed to amuse him.... And it was like a scene in a play; intimate, domestic, and yet unreal. They were obliged to sit so close at the confidential little table, with its clinking china, and its neighbouring row of silver dishes keeping warm in the fender.... She had a wild fancy that if she thrust her hand in that fire that leapt and crackled so naturally it would not burn.

"Well," he said suddenly. "What's to be done?"

He had risen and come round to her side; the little delay was over.

They had finished breakfast....

"I don't know," she said. "I am at your mercy."

"Do you mind if I smoke?"