The Blue Diamond (12 page)

“Nor will I of my own, Mavis. This belongs to some one else, but it has absolutely no connexion with Nurse Marston's disappearance. That I can vouch for. For the rest, aren't you going to trust me?”

The tenderness of the tone disarmed the girl's rising resentment, and her naturally sweet temper reasserted itself.

“I will trust you, Garth, even though all the rest of the world should doubt you,” she said softly.

Davenant's glance and the close clasp of his hand were eloquent of his gratitude.

Inside the hall the rest of the party, assembled apparently to see the progress of Arthur's painting, were surprised to see their speedy return, and their explanation was listened to with much astonished comment, in the midst of which Garth had time to note the ghastly pallor of Hilda's face.

Before the story, with the surprise it evoked, was finished, one of the footmen came into the hall.

“Greyson would be glad if you would speak to him for a few moments, Sir Arthur.”

Arthur looked across at Davenant, and the two men went together to the plainly-furnished room known as the magistrates' room—a relic of Sir Noel's days on the bench—in which Sir Arthur generally transacted his business and gave interviews to his tenants and employees.

“Well, Greyson, you haven't taken long over your dinner,” Garth began as they entered.

“I did not think any more of that, sir. As soon as you and Miss Hargreave were out of sight I made across the paddock the near way and came up here. For though I wouldn't say anything before Miss Hargreave, seeing how frightened she was, when I was looking about, though it is true I didn't see anything of Nurse Marston, I found this.”

Both men looked at him in surprise as he drew something out of his pocket, and held it to them.

It was apparently a small piece of some whitish material. Garth bent forward.

“What is it, Greyson? I don't see—”

“It is a cuff, sir—one of those wide ones that nurses wear,” Greyson replied. “See, here is the name on it—‘M. Marston'—plain enough.”

L
ADY DAVENANT
pulled the check-string of her carriage.

“I will get out here. Come back in half an hour, Robert.”

 “Yes, my lady.” The footman touched his hat when he had helped her out, sprang to his seat, and the carriage bowled swiftly away.

Lady Davenant turned to Mrs. Marston's cottage; it looked bright and homelike in the sunlight, with its gay little flower-beds bordering the flagged path on either side, and the climbing plants covering the porch and hanging down in festoons of greenery.

Through the open doorway one had a glimpse of the kitchen, with its red-brick floor scrubbed as spotless as hands could make it, and the round deal table standing in the middle of the room. It looked a pleasant, peaceful scene, and Mrs. Marston in her snowy cap with the white kerchief folded round her shoulders and her knitting in her hand, looked in keeping with all the rest. But as she heard the click of the gate and looked up, and the onlooker caught a glimpse of the unutterable woe in her dim old eyes, of the quivering dread visible in the tense lines of her mouth, the meaning of everything was changed, and something was revealed of the tragedy that underlay that apparently peaceful life.

Lady Davenant came swiftly up the garden-path.

“How are you this afternoon, Mrs. Marston?”

Mrs. Marston's lips quivered as she got up and made her old-fashioned curtsy.

“Much about the same, thank you, my lady! I don't look to feel any better until I know what has become of my girl.”

Lady Davenant's eyes filled with tears as she took the wrinkled hand in hers.

“Ah, this suspense is so bad for you! You have heard no news yet?”

“No, my lady, nor ever shall till I hear how she died,” Mrs. Marston answered slowly. “They come to me,” she added, a touch of passion in her trembling tones—“Sir Arthur, Mr. Garth, Superintendent Stokes, and all of them. ‘You have patience,' they say, ‘and she will come back to you safe and sound. No doubt she has her own reasons for staying away.' My lady, I know my girl wouldn't have left me to fret and worry myself into my grave without knowing what had become of her, not if she was alive. She was always one to think so much of her old mother, was Mary, although she had got on in the world. Mr. Garth will have told you what they found in the Home Coppice, him and Miss Mavis, my lady?”

“Yes, he told me, and I don't know what to make of it all,” Lady Davenant acknowledged frankly, with a troubled look in her mild eyes. “Mr. Garth does not either; and I hear the police are quite at a loss. What could she have been doing there in the dark late at night?”

Mrs. Marston wiped her eyes.

“She must ha' been 'ticed down there somehow, to the Home Coppice, my lady, by some villain, though it is not for me to say how, and then murdered—my own poor Mary! That cuff was blood-stained, you know, my lady.”

“Yes, I know!” Lady Davenant said hurriedly. “But that does not prove that anything dreadful happened to her, Mrs. Marston. She might have cut her hand. And”—lowering her voice—“you know they have searched the wood thoroughly, and there was nothing there.”

“I know they found nothing, my lady,” Mrs. Marston said significantly, “but—but”—beginning to tremble—“I don't say she is there. I don't know where she is, my poor child; and sometimes I think I never shall know.”

Lady Davenant's own eyes were wet as she gently put the old woman back in her chair and took one of the wide seats in the little porch beside her.

“I am sorry for you,” she said brokenly, pressing the old woman's hand between both of hers. “You are in my thoughts continually. It is such a dreadful trouble for you.”

“Ah, my lady, it is indeed! I ought to remember as I am not the only one, I know. We all have our troubles and your ladyship has had her share of them too, but—”

“Ah, I have indeed,” Lady Davenant said with a sigh, “and I can sympathize so fully with you in all this! It is so terrible not to know where one's loved ones are. And my poor boy—”

“Ay! I have often said it has been a sore trial for your ladyship, and Mr. Garth too. Never was brothers fonder of one another than him and poor Mr. Walter. He has been untold good to me, has Mr. Garth, my lady. It is seldom the day passes as he does not turn in to have a word with me. Superintendent Stokes, he comes in the other day. ‘I wonder what Mr. Garth Davenant was a-talking about to your daughter in Exeter,' he says. ‘Which if you did know,' I made bold to answer him, my lady, ‘I'll back you would be none the forwarder.' Mr. Garth don't know anything about where my girl is—I could take my oath on that.”

“I am sure he does not. The whole affair has been a great trouble to him, but I do wish he had never suggested to Dr. Grieve—though one doesn't know how any harm could have happened to her through that,” Lady Davenant said in a puzzled tone.

There was a pause. Mrs. Marston looked absently down the path and into the village street beyond; some figures were turning the corner; she rose and put her spectacles on.

“No, it isn't anybody but Farmer Weston and his son as went for a soldier,” she said as she sat down again. “That is the worst of it, my lady, it is the uncertainty. Night or day I can't rest; everybody as comes up the street, I think it is perhaps some one come to bring me some news of my Mary. Every noise I hear I think maybe they have found out something. Then when I do get a wink of sleep, my lady, I have dreams.”

“Dreams!” echoed Lady Davenant, looking at her in surprise, “I don't understand—”

“Ay, dreams!” Mrs. Marston repeated. “I don't know as I was ever one to put much faith in that kind of thing before, my lady, but I mind when I was a child how my mother used to set great store by them—messages from the other world, she used to call them, and she was a practical woman, my lady, and a Scotchwoman too. But she used to tell of some queer things as she had learnt from dreams. Of late I have begun to think she must have been right, for these past weeks Mary has come to me every night—sometimes in the morning. I can't remember all about it clearly, only I know she always tells me as it won't last much longer, this separation.”

“There, you see, then surely you ought to feel more hopeful!” Lady Davenant remarked in a relieved tone.

“Ay! But it isn't that sort of ending she means. Mary never comes to me as a living breathing woman—it is always as a disembodied spirit—one who has done with the troubles of this world and sees as it has all been for the best. Sometimes she tells me she isn't far off. I don't rightly know whether she means that her body is near here or that her spirit is hovering around,” the old woman finished speculatively.

Lady Davenant's face grew obviously paler and she shivered.

“Oh, I don't think you should take any notice of that sort of thing!” she said, trying to speak naturally. “You are thinking of her all the time, and you are likely to dream of her.”

Mrs. Marston shook her head.

“Not such dreams as them, my lady,” she said obstinately. “It is my Mary as can't make herself happy, knowing what I'm going through here, as is doing her best to prepare me for what is coming. I am prepared to hear as she is dead, my lady—nay, I could be thankful to know she was laid in her quiet grave. The other night I dreamt I asked her how she come not to let any of us know what was happening to her. ‘I did my best, mother,' she made answer, ‘but they was too cunning for me altogether.' It was her shriek as Miss Dorothy heard, my lady, as I take it. That's what she meant by doing her best, poor thing!”

The tears were running down Lady Davenant's cheeks now.

“Oh, you poor mother—poor thing, I am sorry for you!” she said. “I do hope things will turn out better than you think; but I wish we could do something for you in the meantime. You have some one with you in the house, my son told me.”

“Yes, my lady, my son Tom's wife, she come first, but she couldn't bide so long from her children, so now her sister's come—a tidy, well-respecting woman enough. She has never known Mary, though, and seems to make up her mind as she will come back all right in a day or two. Still, I have nothing against her, and it is better than being in the house alone, for often in the night I fancy I hear my girl calling me and stepping about at her work, and it is so lonesome when you have nobody to speak to.”

“I should think so,” Lady Davenant said with a shudder as she rose. “I am glad you have some one with you though we should have taken care you were not alone. Mr. Garth asked about that the very first thing. But I must not keep the horses standing—Sir John is always so particular about that. Good-bye, and I do hope you will have better news soon! Be sure you send up to us if there is anything you want!”

“Thank you kindly for coming in, my lady. It does me a bit of good to talk to some one as has known what trouble is herself, like your ladyship.”

“Indeed I have, sore trouble too, Mrs. Marston.” Lady Davenant pulled down her veil to hide the traces of her tears.

“Mr. Garth was telling me that as soon as Sir Arthur's coming of age was over, him and Miss Mavis was going to get married and live at Overdeen. When your ladyship has them, and later on it may be, their children, coming over to see you, it will brighten you up and Sir John.”

“Ah, well, I hope so!” Lady Davenant concluded, as, nodding her good-bye to the old woman, she walked down the path.

Left alone, Mrs. Marston picked up her knitting and made a pretence of putting in a few stitches, but she could not settle herself to work, and soon she gave it up and sat with her hands idle before her, her eyes glancing restlessly from side to side or peering anxiously down the village street.

Presently, however, she started violently and sprang up from her chair. It seemed to her that a figure coming down the long dusty road leading from the station had a curiously familiar air. She hurried down the path as fast as her trembling limbs would carry her, only stopping to call out loudly:

“Ruth! Ruth!”

A comely, pleasant-looking woman of middle age came out of the cottage, drying her wet hands on her apron.

“La, Mrs. Marston, what is the matter? I declare you quite frighted me! What call have you to put yourself in this state? Didn't Dr. Grieve say as you was not to excite yourself?”

The old woman paid scant heed to her words; she drew her to the gate and laid her shaking hand on her arm. 

“Who—what is it as you see a-comin' down the road, Ruth Carson?” she demanded. “Is it my old eyes is deceivin' me or—”

Ruth shaded her eyes with her hand.

“The sun is right agen me, but it is some one as is dressed like a nurse—I can see that much,” she said slowly.

“What is she like? Can't you see nothing more?” Mrs. Marston interrupted eagerly. “My head is all of a swim,” clutching at the gate.

Ruth glanced at her anxiously ere she looked up the street again.

“I can see as she is short and inclined to be stout, and I think she is dark,” Ruth said after a pause, during which Mrs. Marston's eyes were strained on her face with pitiful intentness.

She gave a cry as the woman ended.

“If it should be her! If it should be my Mary! Go at once and see, woman, go and see—tell her as her old mother is a-waiting for her! Tell—her—”

In the intensity of her excitement the old woman was falling back against the gatepost, a waxy paleness was overspreading her drawn features, her eyes were closed. Ruth caught her round the waist and looked up for help.

The nurse whom they had been watching was coming straight down the street, walking briskly along with quick, decided steps. Ruth Carson, her helpless burden still supported in her arms, watched her drawing nearer in a species of half-terrified fascination.