CHAPTER XIII
He never brought Cissy back, but Cissy came one day without him, as
fresh as before from the hands of Marguerite, or only, at the
season's end, a trifle less fresh. She was, however, distinctly
less serene. She had brought nothing with her and looked about
with impatience for the forms and the place to write. The latter
convenience, at Cocker's, was obscure and barely adequate, and her
clear voice had the light note of disgust which her lover's never
showed as she responded with a "There?" of surprise to the gesture
made by the counter-clerk in answer to her sharp question. Our
young friend was busy with half a dozen people, but she had
dispatched them in her most businesslike manner by the time her
ladyship flung through the bars this light of re-appearance. Then
the directness with which the girl managed to receive the
accompanying missive was the result of the concentration that had
caused her to make the stamps fly during the few minutes occupied
by the production of it. This concentration, in turn, may be
described as the effect of the apprehension of imminent relief. It
was nineteen days, counted and checked off, since she had seen the
object of her homage; and as, had he been in London, she should,
with his habits, have been sure to see him often, she was now about
to learn what other spot his presence might just then happen to
sanctify. For she thought of them, the other spots, as
ecstatically conscious of it, expressively happy in it.
But, gracious, how handsome was her ladyship, and what an added
price it gave him that the air of intimacy he threw out should have
flowed originally from such a source! The girl looked straight
through the cage at the eyes and lips that must so often have been
so near as own--looked at them with a strange passion that for an
instant had the result of filling out some of the gaps, supplying
the missing answers, in his correspondence. Then as she made out
that the features she thus scanned and associated were totally
unaware of it, that they glowed only with the colour of quite other
and not at all guessable thoughts, this directly added to their
splendour, gave the girl the sharpest impression she had yet
received of the uplifted, the unattainable plains of heaven, and
yet at the same time caused her to thrill with a sense of the high
company she did somehow keep. She was with the absent through her
ladyship and with her ladyship through the absent. The only pang--
but it didn't matter--was the proof in the admirable face, in the
sightless preoccupation of its possessor, that the latter hadn't a
notion of her. Her folly had gone to the point of half believing
that the other party to the affair must sometimes mention in Eaton
Square the extraordinary little person at the place from which he
so often wired. Yet the perception of her visitor's blankness
actually helped this extraordinary little person, the next instant,
to take refuge in a reflexion that could be as proud as it liked.
"How little she knows, how little she knows!" the girl cried to
herself; for what did that show after all but that Captain
Everard's telegraphic confidant was Captain Everard's charming
secret? Our young friend's perusal of her ladyship's telegram was
literally prolonged by a momentary daze: what swam between her and
the words, making her see them as through rippled shallow sunshot
water, was the great, the perpetual flood of "How much I know--how
much I know!" This produced a delay in her catching that, on the
face, these words didn't give her what she wanted, though she was
prompt enough with her remembrance that her grasp was, half the
time, just of what was NOT on the face. "Miss Dolman, Parade
Lodge, Parade Terrace, Dover. Let him instantly know right one,
Hotel de France, Ostend. Make it seven nine four nine six one.
Wire me alternative Burfield's."
The girl slowly counted. Then he was at Ostend. This hooked on
with so sharp a click that, not to feel she was as quickly letting
it all slip from her, she had absolutely to hold it a minute longer
and to do something to that end. Thus it was that she did on this
occasion what she never did--threw off a "Reply paid?" that sounded
officious, but that she partly made up for by deliberately affixing
the stamps and by waiting till she had done so to give change. She
had, for so much coolness, the strength that she considered she
knew all about Miss Dolman.
"Yes--paid." She saw all sorts of things in this reply, even to a
small suppressed start of surprise at so correct an assumption;
even to an attempt the next minute at a fresh air of detachment.
"How much, with the answer?" The calculation was not abstruse, but
our intense observer required a moment more to make it, and this
gave her ladyship time for a second thought. "Oh just wait!" The
white begemmed hand bared to write rose in sudden nervousness to
the side of the wonderful face which, with eyes of anxiety for the
paper on the counter, she brought closer to the bars of the cage.
"I think I must alter a word!" On this she recovered her telegram
and looked over it again; but she had a new, an obvious trouble,
and studied it without deciding and with much of the effect of
making our young woman watch her.
This personage, meanwhile, at the sight of her expression, had
decided on the spot. If she had always been sure they were in
danger her ladyship's expression was the best possible sign of it.
There was a word wrong, but she had lost the right one, and much
clearly depended on her finding it again. The girl, therefore,
sufficiently estimating the affluence of customers and the
distraction of Mr. Buckton and the counter-clerk, took the jump and
gave it. "Isn't it Cooper's?"
It was as if she had bodily leaped--cleared the top of the cage and
alighted on her interlocutress. "Cooper's?"--the stare was
heightened by a blush. Yes, she had made Juno blush.
This was all the greater reason for going on. "I mean instead of
Burfield's."
Our young friend fairly pitied her; she had made her in an instant
so helpless, and yet not a bit haughty nor outraged. She was only
mystified and scared. "Oh, you know--?"
"Yes, I know!" Our young friend smiled, meeting the other's eyes,
and, having made Juno blush, proceeded to patronise her. "I'LL do
it"--she put out a competent hand. Her ladyship only submitted,
confused and bewildered, all presence of mind quite gone; and the
next moment the telegram was in the cage again and its author out
of the shop. Then quickly, boldly, under all the eyes that might
have witnessed her tampering, the extraordinary little person at
Cocker's made the proper change. People were really too giddy, and
if they WERE, in a certain case, to be caught, it shouldn't be the
fault of her own grand memory. Hadn't it been settled weeks
before?--for Miss Dolman it was always to be "Cooper's."
