Christina Part 16

"Did he ask many questions? Had he heard anything of what happened?

He was not frightened or upset?" The questions poured out in a torrent from the lips of the white-faced woman in the other room, when Christina re-entered it. She was sitting up in the bed, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes dark with anxiety.

"He asked very little," Christina answered, "and I think he could not have been upset by hearing anything that happened. I am sure he could have heard nothing," she added earnestly; "he is going to bed now, and I am to go back presently to see that he is all right. He said it would comfort Madge."

A smile flickered over the white face.

"My poor Max," she whispered under her breath. "I could not bear it if anything else happened to hurt him; I could _not_ bear it." The pa.s.sion in her voice brought a lump into Christina's throat. "He has had so much to bear. Ah! my G.o.d! give him peace at the last!"

The vehement voice died into silence, and Christina, feeling very young and forlorn, and quite unable to cope with a grief and pa.s.sion so intense, could only stand silently by the bed, her hand just touching the restless hand, on which a thick wedding ring was the only ornament.

"You don't know what it means to care like that for a man," the pa.s.sionate voice spoke again; "you are so young--just a slip of a girl"; the woman's dark eyes rested tenderly, almost sadly, on Christina's face. "You don't know what it means, to care so much for a man that--no matter what he is, or does, he is your world, your whole world. Do you?" she asked, leaning forward and seizing the girl's hands in her own hot ones.

"No--o," Christina faltered, whilst, unbidden, there flashed into her mind the vision of a rugged face, and two grey eyes full of hidden pain, "but--I think I can understand," she ended shyly.

"You dear little girl," the two hot hands drew her down, and Christina felt a gentle kiss on her cheek; "some day you will know, if I judge your eyes aright. Nature did not give you those eyes, and that face for nothing. I wonder----" the woman's glance suddenly concentrated itself upon the girl. "I wonder why something in your face seems to me familiar. Can I ever have seen you before?"

"No, I could not ever forget you if I had seen you," Christina answered quickly; and the other, though she smiled, still looked into the girl's face with a puzzled expression.

Half an hour later, Christina, upon whom her responsibilities weighed with double heaviness, now that she had realised the presence of the sick man in the house, went to visit the room along the pa.s.sage. The patient there was now in bed, and the girl observed that the look of intense exhaustion had left his face, and that he was breathing normally and quietly.

"Tell Madge I am quite all right," he said, his voice sounding stronger than before; "don't let her worry about me. She must rest herself if she is tired. Tell her I shall sleep like a top!"

To Christina the night that followed was one of her most curious experiences. In a strange house, with people of whose very names she was ignorant, and about whom hung a mystery, the nature of which was unknown to her, she felt as though she had become part of a story, or of a puzzling dream, from which she should presently awake in her own bed at Graystone, with Baba's cot beside her.

Wrapped in her thick dressing-gown she sat by the fire in the room of the woman, who in her own mind she called "the beautiful lady,"

sometimes turning the leaves of a book she had found on the table, sometimes looking dreamily at the flickering flames. In accordance with the doctor's orders, she occasionally fed her patient, who, though very wide-awake, spoke but little during the long night hours.

Christina, by the light of the softly-shaded lamp, could see how seldom her companion's eyes were closed, how almost continually they were fixed, either upon her, or upon the firelit walls.

Once or twice she uttered some brief remark, but no word was said that made clear to the watching girl any of the strange happenings in this strange house. But when the grey light of dawn was beginning to steal through the window curtains, the woman in the bed said gently:

"It was wonderfully good of you to come here and take care of me like this. I wonder whether you are thinking you have come into a place of mad people?"

"No, I did not think that."

"You have taken a great deal on trust, and though it is very much to ask of a stranger, I am going to ask you still--to take me--on trust.

I have not done--anything wrong; if it is folly--well, I shall have to pay the price."

To this enigmatical sentence Christina could think of no reply, but she went to the bedside, and gently touched the shapely hand on which rested that plain gold ring.

"Your eyes tell me you are a faithful soul," the low voice continued; "you belong to the race of people who make good friends. I have another--good friend in the world, but he--will you still take me on trust?" she ended abruptly, her fingers closing round Christina's hand.

"I couldn't do anything else," the girl answered quickly; "you need not tell me you have done nothing wrong; I know it. n.o.body who looked into your face could ever distrust you," she added, in a burst of girlish enthusiasm.

"Some day--if we meet again, and if you care to hear it--you shall hear all the story, but not now--not now. And you--you will keep silence--about--everything here?" The dark eyes searched her face anxiously. "Remember, even the doctor knows nothing."

"I will keep silence about everything," Christina answered solemnly, stooping for the second time to touch the beautiful face with her lips.

CHAPTER XI.

"YOU CAN TRUST DR. FERGUSSON."

When at about seven o'clock in the morning, Dr. Fergusson, and the servant Elizabeth, once more reached the house amongst the woods, Christina was dressed and ready to admit them by the little green gate in the wall. She had made herself ready for the day at a very early hour, stealing out of her beautiful charge's room whilst the latter was sleeping peacefully, and Fergusson smiled approvingly when he caught sight of the girl's trim figure and smiling face. He alighted quickly from the car, and helped Elizabeth to descend; and, whilst the servant hurried into the house, he put a quick question or two to Christina.

"Yes, she has had a quiet night on the whole," the girl answered; "she has not slept much at a time, but she has dozed now and then, and she has been wonderfully calm. She is asleep now, but she told me most particularly that she wished to be awakened when you came. I think,"

the girl hesitated as she glanced into the doctor's face, "I think she has something special to say to you."

"I am sorry to have to wake her," Fergusson answered, "but I am afraid there is no help for it, if she wishes to speak to me. I can't wait till she wakes naturally; I have a very busy day before me, besides which I ought to take you back to the small girl." Whilst he spoke he was walking up the flagged path to the house by Christina's side, glancing with pardonable curiosity at the white building, against its background of dark woods.

"Curious," he said reflectively. "I do not want to be unduly prying, but it is impossible to help wondering what that exceptionally beautiful woman is doing in this remote place, with apparently only an old servant and a homicidal maniac for company."

Christina's eyes met his, and she flushed. In the face of the promise of secrecy she had given to the lady of the house, she could not mention to Fergusson the existence of the sick man, whose presence she shrewdly suspected was in some way the reason for the beautiful lady's residence in this desolate corner of the world; and, in answer to his words, she only said quietly:

"I think there must be some very good reason why she does not wish people to know she is here; but of course I don't know what the reason is," and, saying this, she entered the hall door, and preceded the doctor to the room where her charge of the night still lay sleeping, a little smile on her beautiful face. Elizabeth stood beside her, and Christina saw that the good woman's eyes were full of tears.

"It does me good to see her sleeping like that," she whispered to the two who stood just within the doorway; "it's seldom she gets such restful sleep."

"You are sure she really wants to speak to me?" Fergusson asked the girl, speaking in low tones. "I cannot bear to disturb her, and yet I must do it if she really wants me. I have one or two urgent cases that should be seen early, and I cannot stay here."

"I am afraid we must disturb her," Christina whispered back. "Before she went to sleep, she told me I was on no account to let you go without speaking to her. I am sure she has something important she wishes to say."

"Then I'll be going to make some tea for you all," Elizabeth said gently; "you haven't slept much yourself, miss, I can see," she added, looking kindly into Christina's face, which bore traces of her wakeful vigil.

"I have lighted the kitchen fire," the girl said gaily, ignoring the remarks about her own night, "and I think tea will be just the loveliest thing in the world," and as Elizabeth went downstairs, she crept softly to the bedside, and laid her hand upon the white hand on the coverlet, the hand whose only ornament was its thick wedding ring.

"Dr. Fergusson has come back," she said very gently, when at her touch the dark eyes opened. "I am so sorry to wake you, but you wanted to speak to him." In that moment of waking, the smile that had lain on the sleeping face faded from it, and a long sigh escaped her.

"I was dreaming that Max and I," she began, and then, as recollection returned to her, she broke off her sentence, saying abruptly, "Yes, I must speak to the doctor. I must take the risk--all the risk," she added under her breath, and Christina saw that a look of fear stole into her eyes.

"Is there something I can do for you?" Fergusson approached the bed, and his voice was as gentle as Christina's had been. Something in the fragile appearance of the woman before them, something in the anguish of the deep eyes, gave both to the man and to the girl beside him, a feeling of almost reverential awe. Instinctively, they realised the presence of some great human tragedy; instinctively, they felt that in its presence, all voices must be hushed, and that no rough things of every day, should be allowed to intrude into the place of grief. The woman in the bed raised herself on her pillow, and looked full into Fergusson's face.

"I can trust you," she said. "I believe you will keep your own counsel about--whatever you see or hear in this house."

"Certainly I shall," he replied. "When Miss Moore came to me yesterday, I promised her that I would respect your confidence absolutely. I have entered the patient I have just taken to the asylum, as resident at the London address you gave me. I hope that was right? I have a rooted objection to telling deliberate lies," he added a little grimly.

"What I told you was quite true," she answered, smiling faintly. "Poor Marion was only here temporarily, her home is in London. Will you tell me about her before I ask you anything more? Is there any hope of her recovery? It all seemed so dreadfully sudden."

"She must have had a tendency to homicidal mania for years, probably all her life, and I should think her recovery is extremely doubtful.

In any case, she will have to be under restraint for a long time, a very long time, and at present she is quite off her head."

"Poor Marion," his listener said sadly. "Poor, poor Marion. There need be no difficulty about her expenses. She must have every care, everything that is necessary, and if anything is ever wanted for her, will the asylum authorities write to Mrs. Stanforth, c/o Mrs. Milton, 180, Gower Street."

The doctor jotted down the address in his notebook, then looked again into the white, troubled face on the pillow, and said slowly:--

"There was something else you wanted me to do, was there not? Will you tell me now what it is?"

A faint colour tinged the whiteness of her face, for a second her glance wavered before his, and he saw that her hand moved restlessly.