"Don't you sometimes feel dreadfully _jealous_ of her?"

"I? G.o.d bless my soul, _no_!" But a very sweet smile, a smile she had not seen shed on her for many, many years, lit up his face. "We'll have to think more of one another, and less of the boy--eh, my dear?"

Lady Blake was too surprised to speak--and so, for once doing the wise thing, she remained silent.

Rose, hurrying out a moment later, saw that the open air had already done them both good.

CHAPTER XXIV

"You've got to make him believe that you wish for the marriage to take place now, for your own sake, not for his."

It was with those words, uttered by Sir Jacques Robey, still sounding in her ears, that Rose Otway walked up to the door of the room where Jervis Blake, having just seen his father, was now waiting to see her.

Sir John Blake's brief "He has taken it very well. He has a far greater sense of discipline than I had at his age," had been belied, discounted, by the speaker's own look of suffering and of revolt.

Rose waited outside the door for a few moments. She was torn with conflicting fears and emotions. A strange feeling of oppression and shyness had come over her. It had seemed so easy to say that she would be married at once, to-morrow, to Jervis. But she had not known that she would have to ask Jervis's consent. She had supposed, foolishly, that it would all be settled for her by Sir Jacques....

At last she turned the handle of the door, and walked through into the room. And then, to her unutterable relief, she saw that Jervis looked exactly as usual, except that his face, instead of being pale, as it had been the last few days, was rather flushed.

Words which had been spoken to him less than five minutes ago were also echoing in Jervis's brain, pushing everything else into the background.

He had said, "I suppose you think that I ought to offer to release Rose?" and his father had answered slowly: "All I can say is that I should do so--if I were in your place."

But now, when he saw her coming towards him, looking as she always looked, save that something of the light and brightness which had always been in her dear face had faded out of it, he knew that he could say nothing of the sort. This great trouble which had come on him was her trouble as well as his, and he knew she was going to take it and to bear it, as he meant to take it and to bear it.

But Jervis Blake did make up his mind to one thing. There should be no hurrying of Rose into a hasty marriage--the kind of marriage they had planned--the marriage which was to have taken place a week before he went back to the Front. It must be his business to battle through this grim thing alone. It would be time enough to think of marriage when he was up and about again, and when he had taught himself, as much as might be possible, to hide or triumph over his infirmity.

As she came and sat down quietly by the side of his bed, on the chair which his father had just left, he put out his hand and took hers.

"I want to tell you," he said slowly, "that what my father has just told me was not altogether a surprise. I've felt rather--well, rather afraid of it, since Sir Jacques first examined me. There was something in the nurses' manner too--but of course I knew I might be wrong. I'm sorry now that I didn't tell you."

She still said nothing--only gripped his hand more and more tightly.

"And Rose? One thing father said is being such a comfort to me. Father thinks that I shall still be able to be of use--I mean in the way I should like to be, especially if the war goes on a long time. I wonder if he showed you this?" He picked up off his bed a little piece of paper and held it out to her.

Through her bitter tears she read the words: "German thoroughness"--and then a paragraph which explained how the German military authorities were using their disabled officers in the training of recruits.

"Father thinks that in time they'll do something of the sort here--not yet, perhaps, but in some months from now."

And then, as she still did not speak, he grew uneasy. "Come a little nearer," he whispered. "I feel as if you were so far away. We needn't be afraid of any one coming in. Father has promised that no one shall disturb us till you ring."

She did as he asked, and putting his uninjured arm right round her, he held her closely to him.

It was the first time since that strange home-coming of his that Jervis had felt secure against the sudden irruption into the room of some well-meaning person. Of the two it was Jervis who had been silently determined to give the talkative, sentimental nurses no excuse for even the mildest, the kindliest comment.

But now everything was merged in this great ordeal of love and grief they were battling through together--secure from the unwanted presence of others as they had not been since he had last felt her heart fluttering beneath his, in the porch of the cathedral.

"Oh, Rose," he whispered at last, "you don't know what a difference having you makes to me! If it wasn't for you, I don't know how I could face it."

For a moment she clung a little closer to him. He felt her trembling with a wave of emotion to which he had no present clue. "Oh, Jervis--dear Jervis, is that true?" she asked piteously.

"Do you doubt it?" he whispered.

"Then there's something I want you to do for me."

"You know that there isn't anything in the world you could ask me to do that I wouldn't do, Rose."

"I want you to marry me to-morrow," she said. And then, as for a moment he remained silent, she began to cry. "Oh, Jervis, do say yes--unless you very, very much want to say no!"

During the next forty-eight hours Sir Jacques Robey settled what was to be done, when it should be done, and how it was to be done.

Of the people concerned, it was perhaps Lady Blake who seemed the most under his influence. She submitted without a word to his accompanying her into her son's bedroom, and it was in response to his insistent command--for it was no less--that instead of alluding to the tragic thing which filled all her thoughts, she only spoke of the morrow's wedding, and of her happiness in the daughter her son was giving her.

It was Sir Jacques, too, who persuaded Mrs. Otway to agree that an immediate marriage was the best of all possible solutions for Rose as well as for Jervis; and it was he, also, who suggested that Sir John Blake should go over to the Deanery and make all the necessary arrangements with Dr. Haworth. But perhaps the most striking example of Sir Jacques's good sense and thoroughness occurred after Sir John had been to the Deanery.

Dr. Haworth had fallen in with every suggestion with the most eager, ready sympathy; and Sir John, who before coming to Witanbury had regarded him as a pacifist and pro-German, had come really to like and respect him. So it was that now, as he came back from the Deanery, and up to the gate of the Trellis House, he was in a softer, more yielding mood than usual.

Sir Jacques hurried out to meet him. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes--everything's settled. But it's your responsibility, not mine!"

"I've been wondering, Sir John, whether the Dean reminded you that we shall require a wedding ring?"

"No, he did not." Sir John Blake looked rather taken aback. "I wonder what I'd better do?" he muttered helplessly.

"You and Lady Blake had better go into the town and buy one," said Sir Jacques. "I don't feel that we can put _that_ job on poor little Rose.

She's had quite enough to do as it is--and gallantly she's done it!"

And as Sir John began to look cross and undecided, the other said with a touch of sharpness, "Of course if you'd rather not do it, I'll buy the ring myself. But I've been neglecting my work this morning."

Ashamed of his ungraciousness, as the other had meant him to be, Sir John said hastily, "Of course I'll get it! I was only wondering whether I hadn't better go alone."

"Lady Blake would be of great use in choosing it, and for the matter of that, in trying it on. If you wait here a moment I'll go and fetch her.

She's got her hat on, I know."

So it happened that, in three or four minutes, just long enough for Sir John to begin to feel impatient, Jervis's mother came out of the Trellis House. She was smiling up into the great surgeon's face, and her husband told himself that it was an extraordinary thing how this wedding had turned their minds--all their minds--away from Jervis's coming ordeal.

"I wonder if Rose would like a broad or narrow wedding ring?" said Lady Blake thoughtfully. "I'm afraid there won't be very much choice in a place like Witanbury."

Sir Jacques looked after the couple for a few moments, then he turned and went into the Trellis House, and so into the drawing-room.

"Bachelors," he said meditatively, "sometimes have a way of playing the very mischief between married couples--eh, Mrs. Otway? So it's only fair that now and again a bachelor should do something towards bringing a couple together again."