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Christina

<h3> CHAPTER XIV. </h3> <h4> "I AM QUITE SURE YOU NEED NOT BE AFRAID." </h4> "You are sure I need not be alarmed? You are quite, quite sure? She is all my world." Denis Fergusson looked down at the small trembling creature, his eyes full of grave kindliness. "Indeed, you need not be alarmed, Lady Cicely," he said. "I advised Miss Moore to send for you, because with a child, everything is so rapid that one never quite knows at the beginning of an illness how things may go. But little Miss Baba is doing exactly as she ought to do in every way. You need not have the slightest anxiety." The little mother, with her lovely, troubled face, stood in the window of that same low, old-fashioned room, which Rupert, a fortnight earlier, had found such a restful place, and the doctor stood by her side. The winter sunshine fell upon her delicately cut features, lighting the pale gold of her hair into a halo; and the blue eyes she turned to her companion, seemed to him scarcely less innocent and sweet, than the eyes which had looked into his from Baba's cot. "Such a little woman to have the responsibilities of womanhood," was his thought; "such a little woman, who looks as if she ought to be wrapped round with care and tenderness." Perhaps some of the chivalrous tenderness of his thought showed itself in his glance; perhaps Cicely could read in his face the trustworthy nature of the man, for she said quickly: "You see, Baba and I have only each other in the world, and that makes her very extra precious. Sometimes—I am afraid, because I love her so much." "Afraid?" The doctor's glance was puzzled. "Yes, afraid lest God should take her away from me. He might think I was making an idol of her, and that it was better I should do without her. That thought makes me afraid." To no living soul before, had Cicely told of the fear that often stirred within her, but Denis Fergusson's brown eyes and sympathetic manner, invited confidence, and in some unaccountable fashion he made her think of John, the loving husband who had always understood. "Isn't yours rather a pagan way of looking at things?" Fergusson said gently. "Surely our God is not a jealous God, Who takes away what we love, because we love it? I don't believe it is possible to love a person too much, if one only loves them rightly. And I could never believe that the God Whose name is Father, could be angry with a mother's love." "I am glad you have said that to me," Cicely answered. "Baba is so much to me, so very, very much, but I don't want to make an idol of her, dear little sweetheart." "She is a very adorable person," Fergusson said brightly. "I shall miss my daily visits to her; she and I have made great friends." "She is the friendliest soul. We have always wrapped her round with love; I wanted her to be loving and happy." "I think you have succeeded. She is the delight of the village, and of the whole neighbourhood. She and her very capable nurse are known for miles round. There will be great lamentations when they go." "They must come back," Cicely smiled, well-pleased at the praise of her darling. "I am taking them both to Bramwell for Christmas, but later on in the spring or summer, they will come here again." "But I, alas! shall be gone." "Ah! I forgot you are only doing temporary work here. You know you are not quite 'in the picture' here," she said with a smile. "Why?" The one word, though abruptly uttered, was accompanied by the smile that made Fergusson's poorer patients say, it warmed their hearts when he smiled at them; and Cicely had the same sensation of warmth. "Because you are not in the least like any country doctor I ever came across; and I am sure you would never bear being buried in rural depths. You belong to cities, and people." "I hoped I had managed to hide my proclivity for gutters," he answered laughing. "I am afraid you are right. A big city draws me like a magnet. I can say with the poet, 'The need of a world of men for me.' The finest scenery in the world does not make up to me, for the lack of human beings." "Then you are a town person?" "Very much a town person. My home and work lie in a rather sordid, very poor—to me, enthrallingly interesting—corner of South London. I am only here for a time, doing his work for an old acquaintance, and incidentally getting a change I rather needed." "You knocked yourself up with work in South London?" "Not quite that. I got a little played out, and the air of this place has more than set me up. I shall go back like a giant refreshed." "They are chiefly poor people, your patients?" she questioned. "Almost entirely poor. It is always interesting work, sometimes heartrending work, often humiliating. The poor are so wonderful in their attitude to one another, and to all their difficulties and troubles. But if I once begin to talk about my South London folk, I shall never stop. Some day you will perhaps let me tell you of their hard fight with life, and of their splendid courage." "You must let me help you, and them," she answered impulsively; "and thank you again ten thousand times, for all you have done for my little Baba." The short, sharp illness which had brought Cicely flying down from town at a moment's notice, had safely run its course, and Baba was now enjoying a convalescence, in which she was petted and spoilt to her heart's content, petted to an extent that might have done harm to a less sweet and wholesome character. But the love that had wrapped the child round from her first hours of life, had only made her sunny sweetness of nature more sweet and sunny, and she was a very captivating patient. Mrs. Nairne vied with Cicely and Christina in, as she phrased it, "cosseting" up the precious little dear, and the village folk who had learnt to love the small girl in her red cloak, with her dainty face and gracious manners, showered gifts and enquiries upon the invalid. Very quaint presents found their way to Baba's bedside. A plump young chicken from good Mrs. Smithers, whose poultry yard had caused the child the keenest delight; eggs from Widow Jones, who cherished a few rakish fowls in her strip of back garden; girdle cakes, most fearsome for digestive purposes, from Mrs. Madden, the blacksmith's wife, whilst the blacksmith himself brought a horse shoe, polished to the brightness of a silver mirror, for the little lady who had loved to stand beside the flaming forge, watching the sparks fly up, as his huge hammer struck the anvil. Children came shyly with bunches of the berries and coloured leaves that still hung in the hedges, and a very ancient dame whose garden boasted of two equally ancient apple-trees, proudly toddled up to Mrs. Nairne's door with the largest and rosiest of her apples, for the "pretty little lady." "Baba seems to have made them all love her," Cicely said to Christina, tears standing in her blue eyes, when she returned from interviewing the old lady of the apples; "everybody who comes, speaks of her as if she were an old and valued friend." "She has made friends with every living soul," Christina answered; "she is the most loving little child, and so tender-hearted over everything that is hurt or unhappy. I don't wonder everyone here adores her." "Dr. Fergusson seems to think she will soon be quite well, and we must move her home for a few days, and then to Bramwell." "Yes, he says she will soon be quite well," Christina repeated; "but I think I ought to remind you, that my month of probation ended last week; and—and I don't know whether you would care to let me still be Baba's nurse." Nobody knew what it cost the girl to say those apparently simple words, nor how hard it had been to resist the temptation to leave them unsaid. Lady Cicely had obviously forgotten that her new nurse had come on a month's trial only; she was taking it for granted that Christina was a permanent part of her household, and the girl shrank indescribably from any possibility of a change. And yet, conscience urged her to remind her employer of their compact for a month's probation. She instinctively felt that to drift on into being Baba's permanent nurse, would not be fair to Baba's kindly, impulsive little mother. "You don't know whether I should care to keep you on!" Cicely exclaimed, when Christina had finished her halting speech; "what absurdity! Why, the doctor told me your careful nursing helped to get my darling safely out of her nasty wood. As if I should dream of letting you go, unless you want to leave us?" she questioned hastily. "Want to leave you?" Christina's eyes dilated with the intensity of her emotion; "why—I am so happy with Baba and with you, that I couldn't bear even the very thought of going away from you. Only—I thought it was right to remind you about our agreement." "It was rather a stupid agreement," Cicely answered lightly. "I had the fear of Rupert before my eyes. I knew he was thinking me a sort of impetuous infant, for insisting on asking you to come to Baba, just because you and she got on so well together. Rupert has a very well-balanced mind. He likes things done decently and in order. I am not built on the same lines." Christina laughed. "Still, you do like decency and order," she answered. "Ah! yes," Cicely shrugged her shoulders; "but Rupert, the dear soul, is more conventional. Men always are. He likes beaten tracks, and the ways in which all our dear ancestors pottered along for countless generations. I like to make nice little new paths with my own feet, and do little new things that my great-grandmother never dreamt of doing, even in her wildest dreams." "Is Mr. Mernside so very conventional?" Christina asked, and Cicely responded quickly— "He's a perfect dear, but he would not for the world go out of the orthodox track. He believes in formal introductions, and long acquaintance as a prelude to friendship, and he would rather die than give his confidence to anyone, unless he had known them for years, and knew everything about them." A faint, a very faint, smile hovered over Christina's lips. Did Mr. Mernside really think long acquaintance a necessary prelude to friendship? Did he only give his confidence to those he had known longest? Seated in the firelight in this very room, only a fortnight ago, he had told her many things, which surely he would only have told to a friend—a faithful and loyal friend? And yet she had known him for so short a time, if time was to be measured merely by days and weeks. "You saw Rupert the other day?" Lady Cicely went on, no thought of what was in the girl's mind crossing her own; "he wrote and told me how well and happy Baba looked." "He was so kind." Christina's voice was quite non-committal. "He came twice to have tea with Baba—I think he enjoyed nursery tea," she added demurely. "He loves children, and they love him. He is a most disappointing person, never to have married. I always tell him so. But he is not the least a woman's man; I really don't believe there has ever been a woman in Rupert's life at all." The words echoed oddly in Christina's ears, when memory was still bringing back to her the vivid recollection of Rupert's princess in the white gown, of Rupert's own lined and haggard face, when he had told her the story of the beautiful lady who dominated his life. Discretion led her to reply more or less evasively to Cicely's words, and to her great relief the subject dropped, and her small ladyship returned to the discussion of Christina's own affairs. "As to any question of your leaving us," she said; "there is no such question. Neither Baba nor I can do without you now. And I have not yet discovered that you are any of the dreadful things one seems to expect people to be. We always ask if nurses are sober and honest; and I don't believe you drink or steal." Christina laughed gaily. "No, I'm not a thief or a drunkard, I can truly say. But all the same you might not have found that I knew enough about children to give you satisfaction, and there are so many ways in which you might say I am inefficient." "I find you just what I want," Cicely answered emphatically, "and so does Baba. Why, if you left her now, it would break her dear little heart. No, you have got to stay with us for ever and ever, amen; we will take Baba to town as soon as that nice Dr. Fergusson says she may move, and then we will go to Bramwell for Christmas." The thought of "that nice Dr. Fergusson" recurred to the little lady more than once that evening, when she sat writing in the sitting-room, whilst Christina performed Baba's evening toilette. "He makes me think of John," so Cicely's thoughts ran; "he has the same kind understanding eyes—brown, like John's—and the same gentle way with him that John had. I think he knew how lonely it feels for me sometimes, and what a big responsibility life is, for one little scrap of a woman like me." And, indeed, strangely enough, thoughts not at all unlike these, were passing through Denis Fergusson's mind, as he drove rapidly back to Pinewood Lodge; and, whilst he ate his solitary meal that evening, in Dr. Stokes's trim dining-room, furnished in precisely the way Fergusson himself would not have furnished it, he found Cicely's delicately fair face, and soft blue eyes constantly rising before his mental vision; he found himself wondering what manner of man her husband had been, and whether those blue eyes had been lighted with love for that dead man's sake. "She looked like some lovely, pathetic child when she talked to me to-day," so his reflections ran "she and that fascinating Baba of hers, are just a pair of babies together, and yet—all the woman and the mother are in her, too," and, glancing round the formal room, Fergusson sighed, and made a great effort to turn his thoughts away from sudden alluring dreams of a home of his own, a home that would be really a home, not merely a place in which to live, where the centre of all its peace and happiness would be—his wife. His wife? He laughed aloud, a little short laugh that rang discordantly in his ears. It was quite improbable that he would ever be able to afford to ask any woman to marry him, much less a dainty, delicately nurtured woman who—who—— Back into his mind flashed the picture which he had been resolutely thrusting from him, the picture of a lovely face, like some exquisite flower rising above a cloud of filmy lace and soft dark furs, the big feathers in her hat drooping against the gold of her hair. It was on Mrs. Nairne's doorstep that he had first met Cicely, and the picture of her as he saw her then in the pale wintry sunlight, seemed to haunt him all the more persistently, because side by side with it, he saw another, and strangely different picture. His own house in a South London road, its sordid surroundings, its unsavoury neighbourhood, all these made Cicely and her daintiness, seem like some princess belonging to another world. "Pshaw, you poor fool!" Fergusson ejaculated aloud, when, his dinner ended, he retired to smoke in a small den, dignified by the name of smoking-room; "the sooner Dr. Stokes comes back and you clear out from here and return to the sober realities of life in Southwark, the better for you. Dreaming dreams and seeing visions is no part of your vocation." He had reached this stage of his meditations, and had drawn up a chair to the writing-table, with a grim determination to finish an article for a medical journal, when the parlourmaid entering, handed him an exceedingly grubby note. It was briefly worded— "Please come at once. He is dying." There was no address, and the only signature was the one letter "M," but Fergusson at once understood what the message portended. The car, hurriedly ordered, was soon waiting for him at the front door; and, telling the man he would drive himself, the doctor glided quickly away in the direction of the lonely house in the valley. "Shall I discover anything of the mystery belonging to the house?" he wondered, as he sped along the dark country roads, his own powerful lamps throwing a stream of light upon the road ahead; "or will the secret, whatever it is, die with that unfortunate man? Whatever he has done or been—and he has either done or been something out of the common, and something not very commendable—I am prepared to swear his crimes were crimes of weakness, not of wickedness. The man is weak through and through, and why that wonderful woman has poured out such a wealth of love upon him, is one of the problems of—womanhood." He smiled as his meditations reached this point, and once again his thoughts flew back to that picture which had haunted them earlier in the evening, the picture of Baba's mother—fair, sweet, and dainty. "Would she—be ready to love through good and ill—as that other woman had done?" he reflected; "would she be ready to act as a prop? or must she find someone to look up to, and depend upon?" and thinking these things, he drew up before the high wall and the green door, before which a lantern flung a feeble light upon the surrounding blackness. Elizabeth admitted him; her face looked very worn, her eyes were heavy with want of sleep. "He took a bad turn two hours ago," she said, in answer to the doctor's question; "he's going fast, and I can't get her to leave him, though it is killing her, too." "It would only make her worse to try and take her away from him now," Fergusson said gently, knowing the good woman's devotion to her mistress, hearing the little shake in her voice as she spoke of Margaret; "if—the end has come, it will not be long; he has no strength to fight a long fight." "Strength?" the servant muttered, a curious contempt in her accents; "you couldn't name him and the word strength in the same breath. There! I've no business to talk like that of one who's dying, but—give me a strong man, give them me strong all the time—I can't do with them weak." Fergusson made no reply. He saw that the woman, overwrought with long watching and anxiety, was temporarily deprived of her normal reticence and taciturnity, and he recognised that her outburst owed its origin to her great love for her mistress, and to that natural antagonism which a strong character is apt to feel towards the weak. Handing her his coat, he passed rapidly along the corridor to the room, with which he was now familiar; and, going in softly, saw at a glance that the sick man in the bed was drawing very near to the Valley of the Shadow. He lay propped up with pillows, and the beautiful woman known to Fergusson as Mrs. Stanforth, stood beside him, his head drawn close to her breast. Her arm was about him, and he had turned his face against her, as a child lays its face against its mother, his dim eyes fixed upon her with a look of almost passionate adoration. With her free hand she stroked back the damp hair from his forehead, now and again wiping away the drops of sweat with a filmy handkerchief she held, and her eyes watched him with a hungry, loving look, that brought a lump into Fergusson's throat. "To know that a woman will look into one's dying face with such a look as that, is worth everything," the thought flashed unbidden into his mind, as he stepped softly up to the bed, and laid a hand upon the patient's wrist. The dying man looked at him with a faint smile of welcome, but the woman did not move or glance at him. Her whole soul was wrapped up in the man she loved, the man who was passing so fast away from her, into the silent land. "Nearly—done—-doctor," the man in the bed panted out, the smile still lingering on his face. "I—thought—I should have been afraid—but—now—the time has come—there—is—no fear." His eyes left Fergusson, and lifted themselves to the face bending over him. "You—rest—me—sweetheart," he said. "I—am never afraid—when you are—with me." As his eyes met hers, his smile acquired a strange radiance, and Fergusson all at once recognised the charm of the man—that magnetic something—which had won and held the love of such a woman as Margaret. Until this moment the reason for the weak man's hold over this woman had baffled, almost annoyed, Denis. Now, in a flash of illumination, it seemed to him he understood it. He had seen at once that the dying man was already beyond all human aid; he gave him an injection of strychnine, but there was nothing else he could do, to ward off that dread visitor, whose feet had already crossed the threshold. Yet he felt that his presence in the house, if not in the room, would be a help to the woman so soon to be left desolate; and, having spoken a word or two of comfort and cheer, in that strong voice of his which carried comfort in its very tones, he moved away to the adjoining room. "Call me if there is the slightest change," he whispered to Margaret; "you and he would rather be alone just now." She bent her head, and for the fraction of a second, her eyes met his. The misery in those deep eyes tore at his heart strings; his powerlessness to help this fellow-creature who was in such dire sorrow, hurt him, as if he had received some physical blow. Alone, in the next room, he seated himself by the fire, and tried to read a book he picked up from the table, but his thoughts refused to take in a single word of the printed page; he was conscious of nothing but the low murmur of voices from the bed he could just see through the open door. The words spoken by the two whom death was parting, he could not hear, but his heart ached intolerably for them both, for the man who was drifting into the Great Silence, for the woman who was being left behind. "One long—failure—one long chapter of infamy—and wrong," the man's whisper barely reached the woman's ears, as she bent over him. "But—you are sorry for it all now, my darling," she whispered back; "only think that you are sorry for the wrong; only think that—now." "If you—forgive—surely—God forgives?" The dim eyes looked wistfully up at hers, and she stooped with an infinitely tender gesture, to kiss his ashen face. "Surely, most surely, God forgives," she answered solemnly, the strength of her voice carrying conviction with it; "where there is a great love, there is great forgiveness, and——" "Like—yours," he interrupted dreamily; "great love—such a great love—and a great—forgiveness. I—have heaped your life with misery and shame—and still—you forgive—still you love." "Still I love," she whispered, a passion of tenderness in the low-spoken words. "Max, love—real love—can't wear out or die, whatever happens. It has always been you—only you—you entirely, my man, my whole world." At the last words, she drew his head more closely against her breast, and, bending over him, kissed him with a long lingering kiss. "Only—me—in spite—of everything?" "Only—you—sweetheart," she murmured; "only you—always." "And—that other—who has been your friend—of whom you told me?" His voice was growing fainter. "He has been—he is—my good and loyal friend," she answered; "he is nothing more to me than that. He could not ever be anything more." "Perhaps—afterwards—when—I have gone—you and he——" But she would not let him finish his halting, breathless sentence. "He and I will never be more than friends," she said, very clearly, very firmly. "I could not love another man. There is not room in my heart for anyone but you." A silence followed, a silence only broken by the dying man's difficult long-drawn breaths, by the occasional dropping of a coal into the grate, or the creaking of the heavy old furniture. And all the time Margaret stood immovable in her place, her arms about the dying man, his head close pillowed against her. All at once he spoke again, hurriedly, fearfully. "You—are—sure—forgiveness," he gasped out. "God—will—forgive?" "I am sure," she answered, and there was no quaver in her voice, only a great certainty; "there are no bounds to God's love. He will forgive. He loves you, my dear. I am quite sure you need not be afraid." She spoke as gently, in as simple language as though he had been a little child, and the fear slowly died out of his face. His eyes looked once again into hers, with a look of adoring love and reverence; then, with a tired sigh, the sigh of an over-weary child, his head sank back more heavily against her, and the gasping breath was still. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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