Artists -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Love stories; Rich people -- Fiction
But this was long after the uneventful Tuesday, when Simpson entered,
with a salver; and, finding Jane enveloped in the Times, said: "A
telegram for you, miss."
Nurse Rosemary took it; apologised for the interruption, and opened it.
It was from the duchess, and ran thus:
MOST INCONVENIENT, AS YOU VERY WELL KNOW; BUT AM LEAVING EUSTON
TO-NIGHT. WILL AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS AT ABERDEEN.
Nurse Rosemary smiled, and put the telegram into her pocket. "No
answer, thank you, Simpson."
"Not bad news, I hope?" asked Garth.
"No," replied Nurse Rosemary; "but it makes my departure on Thursday
imperative. It is from an old aunt of mine, who is going to my 'young
man's' home. I must be with him before she is, or there will be endless
complications."
"I don't believe he will ever let you go again, when once he gets you
back," remarked Garth, moodily.
"You think not?" said Nurse Rosemary, with a tender little smile, as
she took up the paper, and resumed her reading.
The second telegram arrived after luncheon. Garth was at the piano,
thundering Beethoven's Funeral March on the Death of a Hero. The room
was being rent asunder by mighty chords; and Simpson's smug face and
side-whiskers appearing noiselessly in the doorway, were an
insupportable anticlimax. Nurse Rosemary laid her finger on her lips;
advanced with her firm noiseless tread, and took the telegram. She
returned to her seat and waited until the hero's obsequies were over,
and the last roll of the drums had died away. Then she opened the
orange envelope. And as she opened it, a strange thing happened. Garth
began to play The Rosary. The string of pearls dropped in liquid sound
from his fingers; and Nurse Rosemary read her telegram. It was from the
doctor, and said: SPECIAL LICENSE EASILY OBTAINED. FLOWER AND I WILL
COME WHENEVER YOU WISH. WIRE AGAIN.
The Rosary drew to a soft melancholy close.
"What shall I play next?" asked Garth, suddenly.
"Veni, Creator Spiritus," said Nurse Rosemary; and bowed her head in
prayer.
CHAPTER XXXIII
"SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN!"
Wednesday dawned; an ideal First of May: Garth was in the garden before
breakfast. Jane heard him singing, as he passed beneath her window.
"It is not mine to sing the stately grace, The great soul beaming in my
lady's face."
She leaned out.
He was walking below in the freshest of white flannels; his step so
light and elastic; his every movement so lithe and graceful; the only
sign of his blindness the Malacca cane he held in his hand, with which
he occasionally touched the grass border, or the wall of the house. She
could only see the top of his dark head. It might have been on the
terrace at Shenstone, three years before. She longed to call from the
window; "Darling--my Darling! Good morning! God bless you to-day."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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