The Blue Diamond Page 8

  “You have not answered my question—what has become of Nurse Marston?” Hilda reminded him. “You must tell me all, please, Sir Arthur.”

  “All is not much,” the young man responded. “When Nurse Marston left your room on the night of the 6th of last month it was ostensibly to go to an interview with my mother in the small library.”

  “Well?” Hilda said breathlessly, a queer look coming over her face.

  Sir Arthur rose.

  “You are faint,” he said concernedly. “You must have some wine or something. I will ring—”

  Hilda put out her hands and stopped him.

  “No, no,” she whispered fearfully. “It is not that; don’t you see that it is the dread of what I am going to hear? Tell me the worst, please, Sir Arthur, at once. Nothing could be more terrible than some of the fancies I have had. Did she die?”

  “Die? No,” the young man said reassuringly. “Nurse Marston is alive and well, I firmly believe, Miss Hilda. The only thing is that she did not keep an appointment she had made with my mother that night, and we none of us can make out where she did go. In fact I suppose for some reasons of her own she disappeared.”

  “She disappeared!” Hilda breathed slowly, her very lips looking stiff and white. “Do you mean that she was not in the house—that you could not find her?”

  “We could not find her in the house or out of it,” Sir Arthur assented. “From that day, try as we will, we have not been able to discover any tidings of her whereabouts. It is one of the strangest affairs I have ever heard of.”

  A tinge of colour was stealing back to Hilda’s pale face.

  “She must have had some reason for going, Sir Arthur.”

  “As I said just now,” he acquiesced, “but the difficulty is to find out where she did go. She disappeared, and there is the minor puzzle of how she went. Jenkins declares that the doors and windows were all locked and fastened and that it was impossible she should have gone out at them.”

  Hilda’s returning colour paled again.

  “You do not mean that she is still in the house, alive or—dead?” she said as she shivered. “Oh, Sir Arthur—”

  “No, no,” Arthur said reassuringly. “That has been ascertained beyond all doubt. The police have searched every nook and cranny—even your room when you were out of it,” he said. “No. She got out of the house somehow. Either Jenkins overlooked some door or window or some one in the house knows why she went and secured the door after her. One curious feature of the affair is that she apparently took nothing with her but the clothes she stood up in. Nothing that she was known to have with her was missing, and two of the servants spoke to her as she went down and testify that she was not carrying anything. Still, she might have had any amount of things outside.”

  “It is absolutely unaccountable—I never heard anything like it!” Hilda said breathlessly. “Then she really disappeared when she left my room that night?”

  “Yes—up till now,” Sir Arthur said unwillingly. He was beginning to fear the result of the girl’s excessive agitation. “I think we may hear from her any day. To me it seems evident that she went away of her own free will. I feel sure no harm has happened to her.”

  Hilda made no reply, but lay gazing apparently at the fire, her large blue eyes looking bigger than ever by contrast with the unnatural pallor of her face.

  Arthur turned to his Elaine again; there was much that could be done without actually posing Hilda, and he went on with it, casting a glance at the girl’s averted profile every now and then. Presently he saw that great tears were rolling slowly down her face and that she was trembling from head to foot. He threw down his brushes impetuously and crossed over to her.

  “Will you not tell me what is troubling you? It may be that in some way I could help you.”

  Hilda shook her head as she pulled out her handkerchief.

  “You are very kind—you are all of you kindness itself to me; but it seems that no one can help me—no one can clear up the mystery overhanging my life. You can have no idea what it feels like to be a mere waif—without a home, without friends or a name even. Ah, when shall I remember?” She covered her face with her hands.

  Arthur ventured to touch them softly; the sight of the girl’s distress almost unmanned him.

  “Do not,” he besought her eagerly, “please do not! How can you say you have no friends when you are with us—that you are alone in the world when you know that it is the greatest joy to have you here?”

  “Ah, no! I was ungrateful!” Hilda said with a pathetic little attempt at a smile as she dried her eyes. “I ought to have remembered what you have all done for me. You must forgive me; but this disappearance of the nurse is so strange that it seems all a part of the misfortune that pursues me. Do you believe in fate, Sir Arthur?”

  “I can’t say I do,” Sir Arthur said in some embarrassment. He had all the ordinary young Englishman’s distaste for metaphysics, and, greatly as he sympathized with Hilda, he would have infinitely preferred to keep the conversation on less abstract lines.

  “I do most thoroughly. I believe in a fate—a power that may neither be evaded nor defied,” Hilda went on to his complete discomfort; “and I feel sure that this—this woman’s disappearance is all part of the mystery that overhangs me.”

  “Come, come, Miss Hilda, now you are getting quite out of my depth!” Arthur expostulated, taking a low chair and drawing it up near the couch. “How could the two things be connected in any way? Besides, I don’t suppose there is much mystery about either of them really. Nurse Marston may turn up sooner or later, and when you are a little stronger you will remember who you are and this time next year we shall be laughing to think how puzzled we were.”

  Hilda’s eyes were full of trouble, the colour had not come back to her cheeks, her lips drooped pathetically.

  “I have tried—oh, how I have tried!—to remember where I came from, and it is all no use.”

  “Isn’t that just what the doctors said you were not to do?”

  “I can’t help it. How can I?” Hilda broke out passionately. “Sometimes I fancy I am on the verge of recalling everything, and then it all goes away again. When I think of that night—the time I came here—try as I will it only seems like a sort of maze—a bad dream. I imagine that some one was unkind to me—I fancy I can remember angry words, and then it was dark and wet everywhere, and I was cold, so cold. Then through the mist and the damp I saw your face, and you were good to me—very, very good to me. Ah, I can never forget your kindness, even if I do not remember my own name!”

  Arthur’s own eyes were misty now, and there was a suspicious trembling in his voice.

  “Ah, if only I could make you understand how thankful we are to have you here—how desolate this house will be to some of us when you go!”

  He leaned forward and dared to lay his hands on hers, and was not repulsed.

  “When I go!” Hilda repeated forlornly, her hand resting in his as if unconsciously. “Ah, I must—I am sure I ought to go; and perhaps I know enough to teach, if that has not all gone too! But who would take me, Sir Arthur? I should have no references—I could give no account of myself.”

  “Stop!” Arthur cried hoarsely. “Do not say another word of that sort. You know we—my mother and I—would never consent to anything of the kind. We look upon you as our special charge, sent to us from Heaven. Hilda, promise me that you will not speak of that again—that you will stay with us until you find your own home!”

  “But when will that be?” Hilda’s eyes were downcast; her long lashes lay like dark shadows on her fair skin.

  “Never mind! Promise!” said Arthur imperiously.

  The girl gave him one shy upward glance.

  “I—promise,” she murmured obediently, “since you are so kind as to wish to keep me.”

  Meanwhile upstairs in her room Dorothy was making desperate attempts to remove the traces of her agitation; she smoothed her hair and bathed her face, but as she looked at the
forlorn reflection in the glass her tears threatened to break out again.

  “If only she is good enough for him,” she murmured as she rubbed her pale cheeks in a vain attempt to bring back her colour, “if only she will make him happy, I do not mind; it does not matter about me.”

  Chapter Eight

  “YOU ARE fond of music, Miss Hilda?” Garth Davenant had been standing by the piano turning the leaves of her music while Mavis tried over a new song. He crossed now to Hilda, who, with Sir Arthur in close attendance, was listening with an absorbed face.

  “I love it,” she said, with an abstracted air. “I cannot help thinking—I seem to have heard that song before.”

  “Well, it is not exactly new,” Mavis said with a light laugh. “I dare say you will hear it a good many times yet, for I don’t learn anything very easily.”

  “Do you play or sing yourself, Miss Hilda?” Garth asked, watching the girl’s changing face.

  “I—I don’t know.” She hesitated and looked round appealingly. “I—I can’t remember.”

  “Try!” he said, going over to her and silencing Arthur s objection with a glance. “Come, I am sure by your face that you do!”

  The girl rose and stood for a moment, her hands pressed to her head, then she crossed the room slowly. As she sat down to the piano her expression altered.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed delightedly. “I—I think—I believe—I remember!”

  Davenant placed a symphony of Beethoven’s on the stand and took his place beside her, watching her face critically.

  For a moment the white fingers strayed over the keys in a vague uncertain fashion; then they altered, settled on the right notes, and the opening chords rang out. It was evident from the beginning to all in the room that they were listening to a real musician, one, too, whose touch and technique showed that she must have received a careful training.

  “Capital! Thank you very much!” Davenant said as she finished and rose from her seat with flushed cheeks.

  “That was quite right, was it not?” she asked with childish delight. “It is a step in the right direction, I believe. Fancy, until to-day I have not known that I could do anything! The rest—ah, surely the rest will come soon, will it not, Mr. Davenant?”

  Sir Arthur had joined the group at the piano.

  “Are you so tired of us then?” Davenant heard him whisper under cover of rearranging the music; he caught too the upward look with which she rewarded the speech, and his face darkened.

  But Hilda had appealed to him.

  “Oh, yes. I feel quite sure that your memory will be as good as ever in a very short time,” he said as he looked across the room. “Mavis, do you remember you promised to be kind to me this morning? I want you to walk as for as the village with me. Will you?”

  Mavis hesitated a moment, but a glance at his anxious face decided her. She caught up the coat and hat she had thrown down a few minutes before and put them on.

  “Don’t say that I keep you waiting. You will not mind if I take the dogs—they are waiting for me in the hall.”

  Outside the air was fresh, in spite of the heat; rain had fallen heavily during the preceding night, and the storm had served to clear the air; the dogs gambolled round joyfully.

  Mavis lifted up her face appreciatively and drew a deep breath.

  “How charming everything smells! We will go by the Home Coppice and across the footpath that brings us out near the Wishing Well. It is the nearest way, and it will be delightfully cool this morning. What do you think of Hilda, Garth?”

  “She is very beautiful.”

  Mavis laughed as, screened from the house by the trees, she tucked her arm under his.

  “Certainly, anyone can see that, stupid boy! I mean, how do you like her? Is she not perfectly delightful?”

  Garth hesitated; he looked away from the gay, piquante face of the girl at his side into the green, leafy depths of the Home Coppice.

  Mavis gave his arm a little shake.

  “If you let your mind stray to your briefs when you are with me, sir, I shall turn back. Why do you not answer my question?”

  “Well, I paused,” Garth said reluctantly, “because I am afraid my answer, if I speak truthfully, will not please you, Mavis, and—”

  “What do you mean?” Mavis asked, looking at him in astonishment. “Surely you do not mean that you do not like Hilda?—Oh, Garth, and she is so sweet and lovable!”

  Garth pulled his moustache perplexedly.

  “I don’t trust her,” he said slowly at last. “To my mind there is something about her that does not ring true, but I think she is a capital actress, Mavis.”

  Mavis drew her hand from his arm.

  “What do you mean?” she said coldly. “Garth, it is not like you to be so suspicious, and when you know how fond I am of Hilda—”

  “Ah, don’t you see that is just what makes me so anxious, because you are brought into daily contact with her?” Garth interrupted. “Mavis, you know I never liked the idea of this girl staying on at the Manor in the way she’s doing for an indefinite length of time, and now that I have seen her—”

  “Well, now that you have seen her—” Mavis repeated in displeased accents.

  “I dislike that idea more than ever,” Garth finished. “I think I could give a pretty good guess at her object in coming to you, Mavis. I wondered to-day whether you were all blind but myself. If Lady Laura were to take the course I should advise, and send her to the seaside with a nurse or an elderly woman to look after her, I would guarantee that the young lady would soon recover her memory.”

  Mavis came to a sudden stop in the middle of the pathway.

  “Which is as much as to say you think that she has not lost it at all—that she is pretending and deceiving us all!” she cried indignantly. “Oh, Garth, I did not think you would be so uncharitable!”

  Garth looked down at her flushed face tenderly.

  “I can’t help having my own opinion, Mavis. Her pleasure in finding she could play and that pretty little speech about it were all done for effect, I am certain.”

  Mavis’s mouth looked mutinous and she drew away from the hand he outstretched to her.

  “Do you imagine that you know better than the doctors?”

  “I may be a better judge of human nature than the doctor who has seen her,” Garth said quietly. “I have had a pretty wide experience of the scurvy side of things at the courts, you know, but I merely give you my opinion for what it is worth, Mavis. You may all be right and I may be entirely wrong, only I know that I hate the thought of you living with this woman seeing her every day and—Oh, can’t I make you understand how I hate it for you?”

  Meeting the appeal in his eyes, Mavis softened.

  “Silly boy!” she said with a laugh. “What harm could she do me, I should like to know, even if it were as you fancy, which I am quite sure it is not?”

  “I don’t know,” said Garth thoughtfully. “Yet I have the strangest feeling—presentiment—call it what you will—that harm will come of it. Naturally Lady Laura—none of you—can have failed to note Arthur’s growing infatuation.”

  “Ah, no. Poor boy, you are looking at everything through jaundiced eyes,” Mavis said, patting his arm, her short-lived wrath evaporating as she saw the real anxiety in his face. “Arthur thinks her very beautiful—he is painting her for his Elaine—but it is Dorothy he cares for.”

  Garth made no response, but his dark face looked unconvinced. He drew Mavis’s arm through his.

  “Don’t let us talk of it any more, Mavis. I have something much nearer my heart to say to you this morning; my father was talking to me last night. He is very anxious to see me settled, Mavis.”

  “Oh!” The swift, hot colour surged over the girl’s face; her hand fluttered restlessly and tried to draw itself away.

  Garth held it in a close, warm clasp.

  “He was speaking of ways and means, Mavis. To all intents and purposes he is putting me into poor Walter’s place
and making the eldest son of me—that is, as far as the unentailed property is concerned. The title, naturally, must be Walter’s, and the secured estate and the income of the latter, after my father’s death, if we should be in ignorance of his whereabouts, will have to accumulate for him, or for his children if he should have any. My father suggests that he should make over to us the house at Overdeen—the Priory, it is called; and then—for you would not have me give up my profession, would you, Mavis?—I thought I might look out for a little house in Kensington, and you will come to me. You will not keep me waiting long, will you, sweetheart?”

  The girl’s hot face was downcast; beneath the brim of her hat Garth could only catch a glimpse of the pretty, tremulous mouth. But the warm, soft fingers clung to his now. He stooped and pressed his lips to them.

  “Oh, Mavis, my darling, my own sweetheart! How can I thank you?”

  Mavis tore herself away.

  “Oh, Garth, some one is coming—I heard the leaves rustling!” her cheeks still aflame. “And, see, what in the world has Pompey got there?”

  She darted away. Garth, his eyes fixed fondly on her, followed more slowly.

  “It is a chain,” she said. “And what is this—a little book?” taking it from the dog’s mouth. “Be quiet, Pompey! No, sir, you shall not have it,” as he sprang upon her. “I wonder who has lost this—it is evidently a notebook from a chatelaine.” She unfastened the clasp with some difficulty and looked inside. “Garth”—the colour ebbing from her cheeks—“look at this!”

  “What is it, Mavis? What is the matter?”

  Mavis held it out and pointed to the name written on the first page, her hands trembling visibly.

  Garth looked over her shoulder. The little book had evidently lain in the damp for some time; the leaves were stained and discoloured, the cover tarnished, but the inscription written in ink on the fly-leaf was still perfectly legible—“Mary Anne Marston, from Lady Davenant.”

  “Mary Anne Marston!” Garth repeated in amazement. “Why, then, this is—it must be—part of the chatelaine my mother gave Nurse Marston when she first left home! We all made her some little present, and I know this was my mother’s, for I remember well how particular she was that everything should be put on the chain that she thought could be useful to a nurse—scissors and a knife and such like. This is the notebook, certainly. But how in the world did it come here? What is frightening you, Mavis?”