Prisoners Part 39

"No one at _all_?"

Michael made a mental effort which did not escape Wentworth.

"I should like very much to see--presently--if it could be done----"

"Yes," said Wentworth eagerly. "Of _course_ it can be done, my dear boy.

You would like to see?"

"Doctor Filippi," said Michael, looking deprecatingly at Wentworth. "He was so good to me. And I am accustomed to seeing him. I miss him all the time. I wonder whether you would let him come and stay here for his holiday. He generally takes it in June. And--let me see--it's May now, isn't it?"

Wentworth's heart swelled with jealousy and disappointment. The jealousy was of the doctor, the disappointment was about Fay. The larger of the two emotions was jealousy.

"You have sent Doctor Filippi a very handsome present," he said coldly.

"I chose it for you, a silver salver. I went up to London on purpose at your wish a week ago."

"Y-yes."

"And I don't think he would care to come here. No doubt he has his own friends. You must remember a man like that is poor. It would be putting him to expense."

Michael looked down at the sleeping puppy. He did not answer.

Wentworth was beginning to fear that his brother had an ungrateful, callous nature. Was Michael so self-absorbed--egotism revolted Wentworth--that he would _never_ ask to see Wentworth's future wife, the woman who had shown such unceasing, such tender interest in Michael himself.

"I hoped there was someone else, someone very dear to me, and a devoted friend of yours, whom you might like to see again."

Wentworth spoke with deliberation.

"I could send him a cheque. He need not be at any expense," said Michael in a low voice. His exhausted mind, slower to move than ever, had not left the subject of Doctor Filippi. His brother's last remark had not penetrated to it.

Wentworth became scarlet. He made an impatient movement. Then part of the sense of his brother's last words tardily reached Michael's blurred faculties.

"An old friend of mine," he said, vaguely flurried. "What old friend?"

"Fay," said Wentworth, biting his lip. "Have you forgotten Fay _entirely_? How she tried to save you, how she grieved for you? Her great goodness to you? And what she is to _me_!"

"No," said Michael. "No. I don't forget. Her goodness to me. How she tried to save me. Just so. Just so. I don't forget."

"Won't you see her? She and Magdalen are driving over here this morning.

You need not see Magdalen unless you like."

"I should like. She is going to be married, too, isn't she? I feel as if I had heard someone say so."

"Yes, to Lossiemouth. You remember him as Everard Constable, a touchy, ill-conditioned, cantankerous brute if ever there was one, who does not care a straw for anyone but himself. I can't think what she sees in him.

But an Earl's an Earl. I always forget that. I have lived so much apart from the world and its sordid motives and love of wealth and rank that it is always a shock and a surprise when I come in contact with its way of looking at things. I never liked Magdalen. I always considered her superficial. But I never thought her mercenary--till now. But Fay----"

"I will see her, too," said Michael. "Yes, of course. I somehow thought of Fay as--as--but my mind gets so confused--as at a great distance, quite removed all this time. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away in England. Left Italy for good."

"My dear boy, she is living at Priesthope, four miles off. I've told you so over and over again. I go and see her every day."

"Yes, at Priesthope, of course. Four miles. I know the way. You can go by Wind Farm, or Pilgrim Road. You did tell me. More cheerful as time pa.s.ses on."

Wentworth looked with perplexity at Michael's thin profile. The doctor had most solemnly a.s.sured him that his mind was only m.u.f.fled and deadened by his physical weakness. But it sometimes seemed to Wentworth as if his brother's brain were softening.

He felt a sudden return of the blind despairing rage which was wont to grip him after his visits to Michael in prison. This inert, cold-blooded shadow; was this all that was left of his brother?

A great tenderness welled up in his heart, the old, old protective tenderness of many years. He put his strong brown hand on his brother's emaciated, once beautiful hand, now disfigured by coa.r.s.e labour, and scarred and discoloured at the wrist.

"Get well, Michael," he said huskily.

Michael's hand trembled a little, seemed to shrink involuntarily.

Then a servant appeared suddenly, coming towards them across the gra.s.s, and Wentworth took back his hand instantly.

"The d.u.c.h.ess of Colle Alto and Miss Bellairs are in the library."

"Are you quite sure that you _really_ wish to see them--that it will not tire you?" said Wentworth.

"Quite sure."

"I will bring them out."

"No. Send one at a time. Fay first."

Michael lay back and closed his eyes.

On this May morning as Fay and Magdalen drove together to Barford, Magdalen looked at her sister's radiant face, not with astonishment, she had got over that, but with something more like fear.

The happiness of some natures terrifies those who love them by its appearance of brittleness. To Magdalen Fay's present joy seemed like a bit of Venetian gla.s.s on the extreme edge of a cabinet at a child's elbow.

It is difficult for those who have imagination to understand the _insouciance_ which looks so like heartlessness of the unimaginative.

The inevitable meeting with Michael seemed to cast no shadow on Fay's spirits; Wentworth's ignorance of certain sinister facts did not seem to disturb her growing love for him.

Their way lay through a pine wood under the shoulder of the down. The whortleberry with its tiny foliage made a miniature forest of pale golden green at the feet of the dark serried trunks of the pines.

Small yellow b.u.t.terflies hovered amid the topmost branches of this underfoot forest.

Fay leaned out of the pony carriage and picked from the high bank a spray of whortleberry with a b.u.t.terfly poised on it.

"I thought for one minute I might find a tiny, tiny b.u.t.terfly nest with eggs in it," she said. "I do wish b.u.t.terflies had nests like birds, Magdalen, don't you? But this is a new b.u.t.terfly, not ready to fly. I shall hurt it unless I'm careful."

She made her sister stop the pony, and knelt down amid the s.h.i.+mmering whortleberry, and tenderly placed the sprig with the b.u.t.terfly still clinging to it in a little pool of suns.h.i.+ne. But as she did it the b.u.t.terfly walked from its twig on to her white hand and rested on it, opening and shutting its wings.

It was a pretty sight to watch Fay coax it to a leaf. But Magdalen's heart ached for her sister as she knelt in the suns.h.i.+ne. Words rose to her lips for the twentieth time, but she choked them down again. What use, what use to warn those who cannot be warned, to appeal to deaf ears, to point out to holden eyes the things that belong to their peace?

The vision is the claim, but it must be our own eyes that see it. We may not look at our spiritual life through another man's eyes.