She caught her breath, for the woman broke out into dry sobbing and cried out wildly:

"Oh, come back to 'im! Come back, if you're a woman! Gawd, Who made 'im, knows as 'ow 'e can't bear no more! Oh! if my 'art's so wrung by what I've seen him suffer, think what he's bore these crooil weeks an' months!"

The peonies rocked in the gale of Emigration Jane's emotion. Her hard-worked hands went out, entreating for him; her dowdy little figure seemed to grow tall, so impressive was the earnestness of her appeal.

"Him and you are toffs, and me and Keyse are common folks.... Flesh and blood's the syme, though, only covered wiv different skins. An' Human Nature's Human Nature, 'owever you fake 'er up an' christen 'er! An' Love must 'ave give an' take of Love, or else Love's got to die! Burn a lamp wivout oil, and see wot 'appens. It goes out!--You're left in the dark!"--Her homely gesture, ill.u.s.trating the homely a.n.a.logy, seemed to bring down blackness. Lynette hung speechless upon her fateful lips.

"--Then, like as not, you'll overturn the table gropin'. 'Smashed!' you'll say, 'an' n.o.body but silly me to blyme! It would 'ave lighted up a 'appy 'ome if I 'adn't been a barmy idiot. It would 'ave showed me the face of my 'usband leanin' to kiss me in our blessed marriage-bed, an' my baby smilin' in its cradle-sleep 'ard by.... Oh!--Oh!"--She choked and clutched her bosom, and her voice rose in the throaty screech of incipient hysteria--"An' I've left my own sweet, unweaned boy to come and say these words to you!... An' the darlin' darlin' fightin' with the bottle they're tryin' to give 'im, and roarin' for 'is mam.... And my b.r.e.a.s.t.s as 'ard as stones, an' throbbin'!... Gawd 'elp me!" She panted and fought and choked, striving for speech.

"Keep your hair on!" advised W. Keyse in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. She turned on him like a tigress, her eyes flaming under her straightened fringe.

"Keep yours! I've come to speak, and speak I mean to--for the sake of the best man Gawd's made for a 'undred years. Bar one, you says, but bar none, says I, an' charnce it! Since the day 'e stood up for you in that Dutch saloon-bar at Gueldersdorp, what is there we don't owe to 'im--you and me, and all the blooming crew of us? And because 'e'll tyke no thanks, 'e gits ingrat.i.tude--the dirtiest egg the Devil ever hatched!"

"Cripps!" gasped W. Keyse, awe-stricken by this lofty flight of rhetoric.

Ignoring him, she pursued her way.

"You're a beautiful young lydy"--her tone softened from its strenuous pitch--"wot 'ave 'ad a disappyntment, like many of us 'ave at the start.

You'd set your 'art on Another One. 'E got killed, an' you married the Doctor--but it's never bin no real marriage. You've ate 'is bread, as the sayin' is, an' give 'im a stone. An' e's beat 'is pore 'art to b.l.o.o.d.y rags agynst it--d'y after d'y, an' night after night! I seen it, I tell you!"

she shrilled--"I seen it wiv me own eyes! You pretty, silly kid! Don't you know wot 'arm you're doing? You crooil byby! do you reckon Gawd gave you the man to torture an' break an' spoil?"

A hand, imperatively clapped over the mouth of Mrs. W. Keyse, stemmed the torrent of her eloquence.

"Dry up! You've said enough," ordered her spouse.

"Do not stop her!" Lynette said, without removing her fascinated eyes from the Pythoness. "Let her tell me everything that she has seen and knows."

"I seen the Doctor--many, many times," the woman went on, as W. Keyse reluctantly ungagged her, "watchin' Keyse and me in our poor 'ome-life together--with the eyes of a starvin' dog lookin' at a bone. You ought to know 'ow starvin' 'urts...." The strenuous voice soared and quivered. "You learned that at Gueldersdorp! Yet you can see your 'usband dyin' of 'unger, an' never put out your 'and! Dyin' for want of a kiss an' a bit o'

cuddle--that's the kind o' dyin' I mean--dyin' for what Gawd gives to the very brutes He myde! Seems to you I talk low!... Well, there's nothink lower than Nature, _An' She Goes As 'Igh As 'Eaven_!" said Emigration Jane.

The wide, sweeping gesture with which the shabby little woman took in land and sea and sky was quite n.o.ble and inspiring to witness. And now the tears were running down her face, and her voice lost its raucous shrillness, and became plaintive, and even soft.

"I'm to tell you everythink I've seen, an' know about the Doctor.... I've seen 'im age, age, a bit more every d'y. I've seen 'im waste, waste, with loneliness and trouble--never turnin' bitter on accounts of it--never grudgin' 'elp that 'e could give to man or woman or kid. Late on the night you left 'ome I see 'im come up to your bedroom. 'E switched on the light.

'E forgot the blinds was up. 'E looked round, all 'aggard an' lost an'

wild-like, before 'e dropped down cryin' beside the bed."

She sobbed, and dropped on her own knees in the sand among the p.r.i.c.kly yellow dwarf roses, weeping quite wildly, and wringing her hands.

"The mornin' found 'im there. Six weeks ago that was; an' every night since then it's bin the syme gyme. Never the blinds left up since that first time, but always light, and his shadow moves about. An' in my bed I wake a-cryin' so, an' don't know which of 'em I'm cryin' for--the lonely shadow or the lonely man----"

She could not go on, and W. Keyse took up the tale.

"She's told you true. Maybe we'd never 'ave come but for the feelin' that things was workin' up to wot the pypers call a Domestic Tragedy. Or at the best the break-up of a 'Ome. That's wot my wife she kep' on stuffin' into me," said W. Keyse. "An'--strewth! when the Doctor sent for me an' pyde me orf ... full wages right on up to the end o' the year, an' the syme to Morris an' the 'ouse'old staff, tellin' us e's goin' on a voyage, I s'ys to 'er, 'It's come!'"

"On a voyage! Where?"

"Oh, carn't you guess?" cried the woman on the ground, desperately looking up with tragic eyes out of a swollen, tear-stained face.

A mist came before Lynette's vision, and a sudden tremor shook her like a reed. She swayed as though the ground had heaved beneath her, but she would not fall. She choked back the cry that had risen in her throat. This was the time to act, not the time to weep for him. She knelt an instant by the woman on the ground, put her arms round her, kissed her wet cheek, and then rose up, pale and calm and collected, saying to W. Keyse:

"Take her to the Plas. Ask for Mrs. Pugh, the housekeeper. She is to prepare a room for you; you are to breakfast, and rest all day, and return to London by the night mail. Good-bye! G.o.d bless you both! I was going to him to-night at latest.... I am going to him now.... Pray that he is alive when I reach him! But he will be. G.o.d is good!"

Her face was transfigured by the new light that shone in it. She was strong, salient, resourceful--no longer the shy willowy girl. She was moving from them with her long swift step, when W. Keyse recovered himself.

"'Old 'ard! Beg pardon, ma'am! but 'ave you the spondulics?" He blushed at her puzzled look, and amended: "'Ave you money enough upon you to pay the railway-fare?"

She lifted a little gold-netted purse attached to her neck-chain.

"Five pounds. My maid is to follow. You know Marie? You will let her travel with you?"

"Righto! But you'll want a wrap, coat or shawl, or somethink. Midnight before you gits in--if you catch this next up-Express.... Watto! Give us 'old o' this 'ere, Missus! You can 'ave mine instead."

"Please, no! I need nothing ... nothing!" She stayed his savage attack on the b.u.t.tons of Mrs. Keyse's green-and-yellow ulster by holding out her watch. "How much time have I left to catch the up-Express?"

"Eight minutes. By Cripps! you'll 'ave to run for it."

She waved her white hand, and was gone, swiftly as a bird or a deer.

"They've signalled!" W. Keyse announced after a breathless interval, during which the slender flying figure grew smaller upon the straining sight. It vanished, and a thin, nearing screech announced the up-Express.

His wife jumped up and clutched him.

"William! Suppose she's lost it!"

"Garn! No fear!" scoffed W. Keyse.

As he scoffed he was full of fear. They heard the clanking stoppage, the shrill whistle of departure. They looked breathlessly towards the green wood that fringed the cliff-base under the Castle head. The iron way ran through the belt of trees. The Express rushed through, broke roaring upon their unimpeded vision, devoured the gleaming line of metals that lay between wood and tunnel, and left them with the taste of cindery steam in their open mouths, and the memory of a white handkerchief waved at a carriage-window by a slender hand.

"It's a'right, old gal!" said W. Keyse, beaming. "Come on up to the 'ouse.

I could do wiv a bit o' peck, an' I lay so could you. Lumme!" His triumphant face fell by the fraction of an inch. "What'll she do when she lands in 'ome, wivout a woman to git a cup o' tea for 'er? Or curl 'er 'air, or undo 'er st'yl'yoes an' things?"

"She'll do wot other young wimmen does under sim'lar circ.u.mstances," said Mrs. Keyse enigmatically. She added: "If she 'as luck, she'll 'ave a man for' er maid, an' if she 'as sense, she'll reckon the swop a good one!"

LXXII

Until the actual moment of their parting at Euston, Saxham had never fully realised the anguish of the last moment when Lynette's face should pa.s.s for ever out of his thirsting sight.

It was going.... He quickened his long strides to keep up with it. He must have called to her, for she came hurriedly to the corridor-window, her sweet cheeks suffused with lovely glowing colour, her sweet eyes shining, her small gloved hand held frankly out. He gripped it, uttered some incoherency--what, he could not remember--was shouted at by a porter with a greasy lamp-truck, cannoned heavily against a man with a basket of papers, awakened with a great pang to the knowledge that she was gone. And the great, bare, dirty, populous gla.s.s-hive of Euston, that has been the forcing-house of so many sorrowful partings, held another breaking heart.

In the days that followed he saw his private patients as usual, and operated upon a regular mid-week morning at St. Stephen's, whose senior surgeon had recently resigned. The rest of the time he spent in making his arrangements.

Sanely, logically, methodically, everything had been thought out. Major Wrynche was to be her guardian, co-trustee with Lord Castleclare, and executor of the Will. It left her, simply and unconditionally, everything of which Saxham was possessed. She would live with the Wrynches until she married again. His agents were instructed to find a tenant for the house, and privately a purchaser for the practice. They wrote to him of a client already found. Matters were progressing steadily. Very soon now the desired end.

His table-lamp burned through the nights as he made up his ledgers and settled his accounts. In leisure moments he read in the intolerable book of the Past. Of all its sorrows and failures, its frantic follies and its besotted sins. Memory omitted nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid pages was spared him. It was not possible for an instant to turn away his eyes.