The Blue Diamond Page 11

  “What!” Arthur’s tone was enthusiastic, and he hurried forward. “And a beauty it is, Gregory, pure white, with just that touch of gold in the centre. See, Miss Hilda, this is a root that has never blossomed in this country before! My friend Brookes brought it from the interior of South America, and up till now we have been doubtful whether we had got the atmosphere right. But it seems to have answered; your coming has brought me luck, and you must promise me to wear this first flower to-night. You must let me cut it for you.”

  Gregory’s face darkened; quite evidently he grudged this sacrifice.

  “Mr. Gribdale has been looking to see it, sir, and maybe he will be over to-morrow.”

  “He must wait for the next,” Sir Arthur said recklessly as he opened his knife.

  Hilda laid her hand on his arm.

  “Please do not, Sir Arthur. It looks so lovely where it is, and I can come and see it every day. It will only last one night if it is cut.”

  Sir Arthur looked obstinate. He glanced again at the delicately poised blossom, looking just like some tropical butterfly springing from the gnarled brown root.

  “It will be just the thing to wear with your white gown, Miss Hilda,” and he cut it off deliberately and presented it to her.

  Gregory’s dark face frowned; evidently he would have openly resented this spoliation if he had dared. Hilda flushed painfully.

  “It does seem a shame, Sir Arthur,” she said.

  “It is honoured by your wearing it,” he remarked with a glance that made her eyes droop. “Now I must get something for Mavis and Dorothy.”

  He moved forward. Hilda turned to Gregory.

  “It is a lovely flower, and I am sure it must have given you a great deal of trouble to grow,” she said with a pretty, courteous smile. “I wish you could tell me—”

  Sir Arthur, busy among his cattleyas, did not catch the rest of the sentence. His thoughts were occupied with Hilda. How lovely she had looked in her confusion just now, her long light cloak throwing up her brilliant colouring as she bent over the white flower! When he turned round Gregory was standing close to the girl, drawing forward a scarlet orchid of Japan.

  “You must!”

  Sir Arthur looked up quickly. Gregory’s back was to him, but he could see that Hilda’s eyes were fixed on the man’s face, her red lips were parted. Surely it could not have been to her that Gregory was speaking in that low, brusque tone.

  As the young man hesitated her face broke into smiles.

  “I am afraid it would be impossible,” she said, “I do not think I should ever have patience. Gregory is giving me some instructions in orchid-growing, Sir Arthur. I am afraid he does not find me an apt pupil.”

  “I shall be very pleased to tell you anything that you want to know,” Sir Arthur remarked. “What were you explaining, Gregory?”

  “I was just telling the young lady that the Rhenanthera—”

  With a little cry Hilda interrupted him:

  “Oh, Sir Arthur, please do not make him go over it again—my poor brain gets quite bewildered with all those long names! For the future I shall be quite content to admire the flowers and leave the practical part to you clever people.”

  “That will do,” Sir Arthur said curtly to Gregory. “Mind the temperature does not get lowered at night. It has been cold in the evenings all last week.”

  Outside he turned to Hilda.

  “I could not hear very plainly, but was not that fellow speaking to you in an unwarrantably insolent tone?”

  Hilda opened her eyes to their fullest extent.

  “Oh, dear, no! Poor man, I think he was just a little disappointed about this,” laying her lips lightly to the blossom she was carrying. “I could not be surprised at that. After having watched it gradually coming into flower he must have felt sad when he saw it carried away. But what a nice, well-informed man he seems to be, Sir Arthur. I quite took a fancy to him.”

  “He is very well in his place,” said Arthur, only half convinced. “But if I caught him—if I caught the best man about the place speaking disrespectfully to you, he should go at once.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “IT IS perfect, it seems to me.” Mavis glanced critically from her brother’s painting to Hilda’s flushed face. “You have caught just the pale cream tint of the complexion and that lovely hair. Oh, Hilda! I do envy you! Are you not proud of it? But you look pale this morning. What is the matter, dear?”

  “I—it is only—” Hilda began, then her full underlip quivered, her eyes filled, and to the consternation of both brother and sister she burst into an agony of tears.

  Mavis put her arms round her.

  “What is the matter, Hilda? Has anybody vexed you? Tell me what is wrong with you.”

  Sir Arthur left his painting and came over to his sister, “I have over-tired her, that is what it must be; in my selfishness I have been thinking only of my picture. Haven’t you got smelling-salts or something to give her, Mavis? Shall I get her some wine?”

  Mavis, still bending over the weeping girl, shook her head decidedly. “I don’t think it is that. I think something is vexing her. Can’t you tell me what it is, dear?” stroking the girl’s ruffled golden hair.

  “Perhaps it would be better if you left us a while, Arthur; I dare say she will tell me all about it when we are alone.”

  Hilda sat and put out her hands.

  “No, no, it is only that I am stupid; I know I ought not to bother you with my troubles. Please go on with your painting, Sir Arthur. I will try to be more sensible in the future.”

  Mavis bent over her and kissed the hot cheeks.

  “Can’t you tell us about it, dear? I often think when one has talked over a trouble, it seems less.”

  “This is only—but I know you will say I ought to put it out of my mind, and I can’t do that. Besides, I am sure I am trouble enough to you all.”

  “How can you—” Sir Arthur began impetuously.

  Mavis hushed him with a look.

  “I thought you knew that I love you, Hilda,” she said reproachfully. “You should not talk of trouble, dear. We look upon you as one of ourselves. Mother said yesterday that this must be your home until your own was found.”

  “Ah, when will that be?” Hilda said. Her eyes, still wet, looked straight before her, her hands lay motionless in her lap, her lips were still quivering. “What sort of a home will it be when it is found?” she added bitterly. “Sir Arthur, Mavis, have you heard that a friend of Nurse Marston’s was in the village last week and she said she had had a letter from her, written the night she—she disappeared?”

  Mavis looked amazed.

  “How in the world did you hear that? Mother told all the servants they were not to mention it to you. One of them must have disobeyed her. Who was it, Hilda? If Minnie—”

  Hilda caught the girl’s hand and laid it against her cheek.

  “I can’t tell you how I heard it, Mavis—I promised not to, dear. It really does not matter—a thing like that was sure to come to my ears sooner or later. But I am answered—it is true, then?”

  “It is true she had a letter—” Mavis began, looking at her brother perplexedly.

  “To be correct, it is true that she said she had had a letter from Nurse Marston, written that night,’’ Arthur interposed, “but the letter itself she said she did not keep, so that we only have her word for it.”

  “Still,” Mavis said, “Superintendent Stokes told Garth that he had made inquiries and Nurse Marston did have a letter posted, Arthur, and this Nurse Gidden bears a very high character too, he said. I don’t think there is any reason to doubt her.”

  “Oh, dear, no! I didn’t mean to throw any aspersion on her character or general credibility,” Sir Arthur observed as he went back to the easel. “From all I hear she seems to be a most exemplary woman; but what I mean to say is that when a person cannot produce a letter, has lost or destroyed it, one cannot exactly take that person’s account of what was written in the said
letter as if it were gospel truth, especially in a case like this, when her first impression would doubtless be coloured by what she had heard later on.”

  A faint smile curved Hilda’s lips, though her eyes looked wistful and troubled.

  “I think, Sir Arthur, that tells me what I wanted to know. This Nurse Gidden says that Nurse Marston recognized me, does she not, and implies that it was something discreditable that she knew about me?”

  “Oh, no, no!” Mavis said quickly. “All Nurse Giddens said was that Nurse Marston said that no one knew who you were, and that she had seen you in circumstances which she thought ought to be told to my mother at once. That really tells us nothing, because we have no idea what the circumstances may have been. A nurse sees all sorts of people, and naturally she would know what trouble your loss might be causing to your people, so that it was her duty to go to mother at once.”

  “I see,” Hilda said, leaning her head on her hand and drawing herself a little away from Mavis. “And I see too that everybody will say that it was in discreditable circumstances that she saw me—that there is something against me. The worst of it is that it may be true, Mavis. I don’t know what I may have been. Have you ever realized it? I may have done anything. You would all be much wiser not to have anything to do with me.”

  Mavis laughed.

  “Should we? I think I can guarantee that you will not turn out to be anything very dreadful. What do you say, Arthur?”

  “I could stake my life on it,” replied the young man with unusual fervour.

  “Well, at any rate you have obtained one backer, Hilda,” said Mavis.

  The girl hardly seemed to heed her words; she was wrinkling up her brows, her mouth was twitching nervously.

  “If I could only remember one little thing, anything, however slight, that happened to me before that night. But, do what I can, try my very hardest, as I may, it is no use. I cannot even remember my own name, my own surname, and though I suppose I must have been called Hilda it does not seem a bit familiar to me.”

  “Now don’t get morbid,” Mavis reproved brightly. “Surely you can’t see to paint by this light, Arthur,” as her brother took up his palette again.

  He fidgeted about restlessly.

  “Oh, the light is good for half an hour yet! Here is Davenant coming up the drive, Mavis.”

  “Oh!” His sister’s cheeks flushed rosily, a new light shone in her brown eyes. “I didn’t think he would be back so soon; he went up to town yesterday. He—he promised to do some commissions for me.”

  Arthur laughed.

  “No excuse is needed, Mavis. We quite understand that you wish to have a few words quietly with your young man before introducing him to the family circle,” he said with brotherly candour. “Run along, we will make all due allowances for you.”

  “How absurd you are, Arthur! It is only that I asked him—”

  “Don’t trouble to particularize,” Arthur said, with a flourish of his paint-brush, “or you may miss your opportunity—

  Garth’s voice became audible in the hall.

  “I will be back in a minute,” his sister said with a vengeful glance in his direction as she gave Hilda a hasty kiss. “You are better, now, aren’t you, Hilda? I will tell Dorothy to come to you. She is playing to mother in the drawing-room.”

  There was a silence when she had left the room—one of those silences which seem to be pregnant with electric meaning. Sir Arthur was mixing a colour; mechanically he squeezed the tube until almost the whole contents lay on the palette; then with a guilty feeling he glanced at Hilda.

  She was half leaning, half lying on the wide couch on which she had posed for Elaine, but evidently her thoughts were far away from the picture.

  She looked up at the same moment. As her eyes met his gaze, she started violently, her colour deepened, and she put up her hand to her hair with a gesture at once confused and conscious. Sir Arthur threw down his palette and crossed to her.

  “Hilda, I—you must know what I want to say,” he cried in a low voice of intense feeling, “that I love you —that I have loved you ever since I first saw you. Dear, tell me, is there any hope for me?”

  “No, no!” Hilda cried pushing him from her as he would have knelt beside her. “No, no! I cannot! Don’t you see that I cannot—” covering her face with her hands.

  Sir Arthur’s forehead flushed a dull crimson; his eyes dwelt eagerly on the loveliness of the girl’s half-averted face.

  “I see my own unworthiness plainly enough, Hilda,” he answered simply. “Is that what you mean, dear?”

  Hilda turned her face farther towards the cushions.

  “No, no, you know it is not that,” she said in a muffled voice.

  Something in her accent seemed to raise Sir Arthur’s hopes. He dropped on one knee and ventured to take the hand that was hanging limply by her side.

  “What then, Hilda? Will you not let me try to teach you to care for me?”

  The girl sat up and threw the cushions behind her.

  “Don’t you see that that is not the question—that it is beside it altogether—that such things are not for me”—her delicate hands pulling the lace on her bodice to pieces—“a nameless nobody?”

  Sir Arthur did not move away.

  “Ah, how can you? But let me give you a name, Hilda—my name—be my wife, dear?” he urged.

  The girl gave a little moan, her white teeth bit her under-lip.

  “You do not know what you are saying, you do not in the least realize how things would be. What would the world say if Sir Arthur Hargreave married a waif—a piece of flotsam and jetsam that fate had cast up at his doors? What would—”

  Sir Arthur captured one of the fluttering, trembling hands once more.

  “All that is beside the question, as you said just now, Hilda; the real crux of the matter lies between you and me. Tell me the truth, dear, is it that you do not—cannot care for me?”

  Hilda caught her breath quickly.

  “Ah, no. How could it be that, when you have been so kind, so more than kind to me? When yours was the first face I saw smiling at me out of that dreadful darkness and chaos—”

  Sir Arthur laid his lips softly to the hand he held in his.

  “Then that is all that matters, Hilda—the rest is nothing to us.”

  The girl snatched her hand away.

  “Ah, no, no! I must not forget. There are others to whom this would mean misery—Lady Laura, and Sir Arthur, your cousin—”

  As the last word left her lips two little straight lines came between Hargreave’s level brows.

  “My cousin!” he repeated, and a slight nuance in his tone might have told a keen listener that the reference had grated upon him. “My cousin Dorothy is almost my sister, Hilda; she will soon be prepared to give a sister’s love to you, I hope.”

  In spite of the confident words, however, there was an element of doubt apparent in his manner. The mutual antagonism between the two girls could hardly have failed to make itself felt, especially by him; and he was uncomfortably conscious that, though no binding words had been spoken between them, Dorothy could hardly hold him blameless.

  “As for my mother,” he went on, “she will—she does—love you. But what does all that matter now?” his eyes softening and growing more eager as they rested on her bent golden head. “I cannot think of that now. For these few golden minutes there is no one in the world but just ourselves, Hilda. Ah”—his arms stealing round her, his lips seeking hers—“tell me you care for me just a little, darling!”

  With a passionate gesture of self-surrender Hilda yielded herself to his embrace, and as he took his first kisses from her red lips she murmured brokenly as she turned her face a little away:

  “How could I help it when you have been so good—so good to me? How could I help it?”

  “Thank Heaven you could not help it, my darling!” Sir Arthur said reverently as he drew her head again to its resting-place on his shoulder. “Hilda, Hilda, I can
scarcely believe that such happiness can be real!”

  “Perhaps it is not,” the girl whispered unsteadily. “Because do you not see that first”—with a shy hesitating glance—“we must find out who I am?”

  “No, I don’t see,” said Sir Arthur steadily. “I shall tell my mother to-night that I have been lucky enough to win your love. Hilda, Hilda, I can hardly believe—”

  The opening of the door made them start apart with flushed guilty faces as Dorothy came in, glancing at them in an uncertain, doubtful fashion.

  “Aunt Laura says she is sure that you cannot see to paint so late as this, Arthur, and the coffee is in the drawing-room.”

  Meanwhile outside Mavis found herself waylaid by her maid.

  “Oh, if you please, miss, I have just heard that my mother is feeling very poorly to-day. Could you spare me just to run down and see how she is?”

  “Why, certainly, Minnie,” the girl said kindly, “and I hope you will find her better. Isn’t it rather late for you, though. But perhaps Gregory is going to walk down with you?”

  “No, miss, he can’t to-night, he is busy in his houses; but Mrs. Parkyns, she said Alice might come with me.”

  “That is all right then,” Mavis nodded. “Don’t hurry yourself, Minnie, if you’re not afraid of being out in the dusk. I daresay the walk will do you good. You have not been looking very well lately.”

  “I am quite well, thank you, miss! Maybe the heat makes me a bit pale—it does some folks.”

  “Well, if you feel all right, that is the main thing,” Mavis said. “Ask Mrs. Parkyns if she has anything she can give you to take to your mother, Minnie.”

  “Thank you, miss.”

  Mavis turned to meet Garth in the hall; Minnie ran quickly downstairs to tell the still-room maid that she had gained the requisite permission and in a very few minutes the two girls sallied forth. Minnie carefully carrying a covered basket containing certain delicacies provided by Mrs. Parkyns.

  “We will go down the drive,” she said as they turned out of the big paved yard into the shrubbery. “I don’t care for going through the Home Coppice now, it is getting dark.”