XV
"Tell Miss Vivian that we can't wait; we must start at once. The sleet has been falling, and the roads will be impossible in less than an hour. I don't know how the car will do it as it is."
Dr. Prince was harassed but determined.
Miss Marsh reluctantly took this message upstairs. She had already had occasion to observe during the course of the evening that Miss Vivian was in no frame of mind to welcome interruptions.
"I'm not ready."
"No, Miss Vivian."
Miss Marsh stood unhappily in the doorway.
"What the dickens are you standing there for?" cried Miss Vivian in exasperated tones.
Miss Marsh was standing there from her own intimate conviction of being placed between the devil and the deep sea, and her extreme reluctance to confront the impatient doctor with Miss Vivian's unsatisfactory reply. To her great relief, she found Grace in conversation with him.
"Well, is she coming?"
"The moment she can, Dr. Prince. She really won't be long now," was Miss Marsh's liberal interpretation of her chief's message.
"The thaw isn't going to wait for her," said the doctor grimly. "It's begun already, and after three weeks' frost we shall have the roads like a sheet of glass."
"I think I hear the telephone," said Miss Marsh, hastening away, thankful of the opportunity to escape before the doctor should request her to return with his further commands to Miss Vivian.
But presently Char came downstairs in her fur coat and heavy motoring veil, carrying a huge sheaf of papers and a small bag.
"I'm sorry you've been kept waiting. I was afraid that, as I told you, I might not be able to start punctually."
"It's this confounded change in the weather," said the doctor disconsolately. "How could one guess that it would choose tonight to begin to rain after three weeks' black frost? However, I dare say it won't have thawed yet. Come along. At any rate, it won't be quite so cold."
The little car standing at the door was a very small two-seater, with a tiny raised seat at the back.
"Where will you sit, Miss Vivian, with me in front or on the back seat?" inquired the doctor unconcernedly. "Have either of you any preference?"
"I think I'd better come in front," said the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt, very coldly. She took no notice of Miss Jones.
It was very dark, and a thin, cold rain had begun to fall. The doctor groaned, and drove out of Questerham as rapidly as he dared. On the high road it was already terribly slippery. After the car had twice skidded badly, the doctor said resignedly: "Well, we must make up our minds to crawl. Lady Vivian will guess what's delayed us. I hope you had dinner before starting?"
"Yes, thank you," replied Grace serenely.
"Naturally, I haven't been able to leave the office, but then I never have dinner till about nine o'clock," Char said. "I've almost forgotten what it is to keep civilized hours."
"Then, all I can say is, that you'll be extremely hungry before we get to Plessing," was the doctor's only reply to this display of patriotism.
The car crawled along slowly. About four miles out of the town the doctor ventured slightly to increase speed. "Otherwise we shall never get up this hill," he prophesied.
"It's better here, I think," said Char.
"I think it is. Now for it."
The pace of the little car increased for about a hundred yards. Then there was a long grinding jar and a violent swerve.
"Confound her! she's in the ditch!" cried the doctor. "Are you all right there, Miss Jones?"
"Yes," gasped the shaken Grace, clinging to her perch.
"Get out," the doctor commanded Miss Vivian, in tones that suggested his complete oblivion of their respective positions as regarded official dignity. Char obeyed gingerly, and stood grasping the door of the car.
"Take care; it's like a sheet of ice."
The doctor slid and staggered round to the front of his car, the two front wheels of which were deeply sunken in the snow and slush of the ditch. He made a disconsolate examination by the light of the lamps.
"Stuck as tight as wax. Now, what the deuce are we to do?"
"Can't we move her? asked Grace.
"Not much chance of it, but we might as well try."
Grace got down, and they strained at the car, but without any success.
"No use," said the doctor briefly. "I think you two had better stay here while I get back to Questerham – we're nearer Questerham than Plessing, I fancy – and bring something out. Though, good heavens! I'd forgotten it's Christmas Eve. What on earth shall I get?"
"I can authorize you to call up one of the ambulance cars."
"That's an idea. I'm sorrier than I can say to leave you on the roadside like this," said the doctor distractedly. "Put the rug round you both, and if anything comes past, get a lift. The car will be all right. I defy the most determined thief to make her move an inch. H'm! I must take one of these lamps, and I'll make as much haste as this confounded sheet of ice will allow."
"Wait!" cried Grace. "I can hear something coming, I think."
They stood and listened. The hoot of a very distant motor-horn came to them distinctly.
"Coming towards us," was the doctor's verdict. "With any luck it'll take you both back to Questerham. It's your best chance of getting to bed tonight. Miss Vivian, you're shivering. Confound it all, it's enough to give you both pneumonia, hanging about on a night like this! What an old fool I've been!"
"It couldn't be helped, could it?" said Grace. "There were no trains running after four o'clock, and we couldn't guess the weather would change so. And it isn't nearly so cold as it has been."
"Have a cigarette?" said the doctor suddenly, lighting his own pipe. "It'll help you to keep warm."
"Smoking in uniform is entirely out of order, but for this once – thank you," said Miss Vivian, with a slight laugh.
The sound of a motor-bicycle became unmistakable, and the doctor advanced cautiously into the middle of the road.
"Ahoy, there! Could you stop half a minute? We've had a spill. Two ladies here."
"Is that Dr. Prince?" came a voice that made Char exclaim: "It's John Trevellyan!"
The motor-bicycle, with its small side-car, drew up beside them.
"Have you had a telephone message?" said John.
"From Plessing? No. What's happened?" said the doctor sharply.
The two men exchanged a look.
Char came forward.
"You'd better tell me," she said in her slow, deep drawl.
"Cousin Joanna telephoned just before eight o'clock, but you must have started," John said gently. "She wanted to ask Dr. Prince to make as much haste as possible – and you."
"My father?"
"I'm afraid it's another stroke, my dear."
The doctor asked a few rapid professional questions, and Grace came and stood near Char Vivian.
"When you didn't come," said John, "Miss Bruce got anxious, and felt sure there'd been a spill. Cousin Joanna was upstairs, with him; I don't think she realized. So I brought the only thing I could get hold of. You can ride a motor-bike, doctor?"
"Of course I can. But we can't leave two young ladies planted in a ditch, with that confounded machine of mine," said the doctor, his distress finding vent in irritability.
"There's the side-car," said Grace. "Miss Vivian must go with you, doctor."
"Can't we get your machine out of the ditch?" John suggested.
"Not unless you're a Hercules," said the doctor crossly. He began to examine the motor-bicycle.
"I can manage this all right, though no machine on earth will do anything but crawl on such a road. Miss Vivian, that will be our best plan."
"Yes," said Char, very quietly. "And, Johnnie, can you look after Miss – er – Jones, and take her back to Questerham?"
"Get in, Char," said Trevellyan. "I shall certainly look after Miss Jones, and bring her out to Plessing somehow or other. Your mother wants her. Send anything you can to meet us, doctor."
"Right; but I'm afraid we can't count on meeting anything tonight, of all nights. Miss Jones, I'm so sorry. All right there?"
The motor-bicycle, with a push from Trevellyan, jolted slowly away along the slippery road, and John and Miss Jones stood facing one another by the indifferent light of the motor-lamps.
Grace looked at him with her direct, gentle gaze. "Please tell me whether you really meant that," she said. "Does Lady Vivian want me at Plessing just the same?"
"Yes," he answered, with equal directness. "She said so. She told me to bring you. She said she wanted you."
Grace drew a long breath, then said: "We shall have to walk, sha'n't we?"
"I'm afraid so – at least part of the way. Unless you'd rather stay in the car, and keep as warm as you can, while I go on to Questerham and try to get hold of something that will take us both out? I'm going back there, of course. Which shall we do, Miss Jones?"
"Walk, I think. It's only about five miles, and I doubt if you could get anything tonight to go out all the way to Plessing."
"I think we can go across the fields, if you don't mind rough walking. It saves nearly a mile, and the only advantage of keeping to the road would be the chance of meeting something, which I think most unlikely. Miss Jones, you're splendid. Do you mind very much?"
"Not now that I know Lady Vivian really wants me," said Grace shyly.
Trevellyan unhooked one of the lamps.
"Shall I carry the other one?"
"It will make your hands very cold, and I think one will be enough. Have you anything that you must take?"
"My bag; it isn't heavy."
"Right. Then give it to me, and you take the lamp, if you will." Grace obeyed without any of the protestations which might have appeared suitable, and they started very cautiously down the road.
"Keep to the side," said Trevellyan; "it's not very bad there. I'm afraid you'll never get warm at this rate, but a broken leg would be awkward."
"Tell me what happened at Plessing."
He told her that Sir Piers had suddenly had a second stroke that afternoon, and was again lying unconscious. Lady Vivian had come down and spoken with Trevellyan for a few minutes, and assured him that the trained nurse would not allow her to relinquish hope.
"But it all depends upon what one means by hope," said Trevellyan. "One can hardly bear to think of his lying there day after day, unable to understand or to make himself understood – and as for her– "
"She is very brave," said Grace.
There was a silence, and each was thinking of Joanna.
Presently Trevellyan spoke again.
"We shall turn off in a minute and take the short cut. Are you very cold?"
"Pretty cold, but I'm glad I had dinner before starting. Did you?"
"No, worse luck! I started from Plessing at half-past eight, and the servants were in such a fuss. I'm fearfully hungry," said Trevellyan candidly.
"Well, wait a minute."
Grace stood still and put the lamp on the ground while she felt in her coat-pocket.
"I thought so. I've a packet of chocolate. Will you take it?"
"Thank you," said Trevellyan seriously; "it's very kind of you. Let's both have some."
Grace divided the little packet scrupulously, and they stood and ate it with their backs to the hedge, the bag and the lamp on the ground in front of them.
"Christmas Eve!" said Grace. "Isn't it extraordinary?"
"Where were you last Christmas?" he asked.
"In the hospital, near my home. We were decorating the wards for Christmas, and all stayed there very late. There was a convoy in, too, I remember; the nurses stayed on long after we'd all gone home. I was only a clerk, you know."
"I remember. You told me that when you – on the night of the air-raid," said the tactful Trevellyan, with a very evident recollection of the unfortunate disability which debarred Miss Jones from the nursing profession.
Grace laughed.
"Exactly. It is so idiotic and provoking, and, as a matter of absolute fact, it was because I always got ill at anything of that sort that they couldn't let me go on at the hospital any more – my father and stepmother, I mean."
"I didn't know you had a stepmother."
"I've had her about four years," Grace informed him.
"Do you like her?" Trevellyan asked bluntly.
"Very much indeed. She's only a few years older than I am, and she lets me call her Marjory. She's so nice and pretty and merry."
It was evident that Miss Jones was not a person to make capital out of circumstances.
When they started again, Trevellyan said gently: "You'd better take my arm, if you will. It's heavy going along this field."
It was, and an incessant sound of splashing told Grace that she was almost in the ditch.
"I think I can manage," she said breathlessly. "I'm afraid of the light going out, and it's easier to hold in both hands."
Trevellyan said nothing, but presently Grace felt him take hold of the lamp.
"You must let me," he said quietly. "You'll want all your strength, for we're going uphill now, and the ground's very rough."
They trudged up a steep incline, Grace with both cold hands deep in her pockets and her head bent against the wet driving mist that seemed to encompass them. Her feet were like ice, and she had long since given up trying to avoid the puddles and small snowy patches that lay so plentifully on the way. Twice she stumbled heavily.
"We're just at the top," said Trevellyan encouragingly. "You're perfectly splendid, Miss Jones, and I feel such a brute for not taking better care of you. Cousin Joanna will be very much distressed; but, you see, I know she wants you."
"I'm very glad," said Grace simply. "I never admired any one so much as I do her."
"Nor I. She's been so ripping to me always. Even when I was a big clumsy schoolboy, with nowhere to go to for the holidays, she'd have me out to Plessing, and make me feel that she cared about having me there. She wrote to me all the time I was in India – I don't think she ever missed a mail – and all the time I was in Flanders last year. Some day," said Johnnie, rather shyly, "I'd like to show you her letters to me. No one has ever seen them. But I've always felt that you knew what she really is – more than other people do."
"Thank you," said Grace.
John seemed satisfied with something in the tone of the brief reply, and they went on in silence till he raised the flickering lamp.
"Wait a moment. There ought to be a fence here, and it may be barbed wire. Take care."
Grace was thankful to stand still, her aching legs still trembling beneath her from the ascent. John held up the lamp and made a cautious examination.
"There ought to be an opening – here we are."
He waved the lamp in triumph; the light gave a final flicker and expired.
There was a dead silence from both, Grace speechless from dismay and fatigue, and Trevellyan from his inability to express his feelings in the normal manner in the presence of Miss Jones.
"Have you any matches?" she asked at last.
"Yes. I'm sorrier than I can say, but I'm very much afraid that the wretched thing has given out. Why on earth the doctor can't get proper electric lamps for his rotten car – "
John fumbled despairingly amongst his matches, made various unsuccessful attempts, and at last apologized again to Grace, and said that it never rained but it poured. They must go on in the dark.
"Very well. Only let's avoid the barbed wire."
"Miss Jones, I can't tell you what I think of you. Any one else would be perfectly frantic."
"But I'm never frantic," said Grace, rather regretfully. "I often wish I was like the people in books who feel things so desperately. Maggie Tulliver, for instance. It's so uninteresting always to be quite calm."
"Always?"
"Well," said Grace, "practically always."
"It's an invaluable quality just at present, but perhaps one of these days – "
"I'm so sorry, but I think my skirt has caught in the barbed wire."
Trevellyan released her skirt in silence.
"Now, then, if we get through the gate here, the next field takes us on to the road again, and with any luck they'll have got to Plessing and sent something back to pick us up."
Trevellyan, who knew his ground and appeared able to see in the dark, pushed at the creaking wooden gate, and Grace passed through it, feeling her feet sink into an icy bog of mud and water.
"I'm afraid I can't see much. You see, I don't know the way at all."
"I know; it makes all the difference. Look here, will you let me take your hand? I know every inch of the way."
Grace put out her small gloved hand and said very sedately: "Thank you; I think that will be the best way."
They went on steadily after that, speaking very little, and Grace stumbling from time to time. Once John asked her: "Are you very tired? This is rotten for you."
"I don't mind," said Grace shyly.
After a long pause, Trevellyan said cryptically: "Neither do I."
On this assurance they reached the high road, and Grace said gently, withdrawing her hand: "I can manage now, thank you."
"It can't be long now before something meets us. I don't know what they can send; but if it's only a farm cart, it will be better than nothing."
"Luckily I'm a very good walker. I don't think that poor Miss Vivian could ever have got out to Plessing unless we'd met you with that motor-bicycle. She dislikes walking, and is not used to it."
"I wouldn't have had this walk with Char," said Trevellyan fervently, "for any money you could offer me. She's a splendid companion, of course, on her own ground, but for this sort of thing – it's only two people in a million, Miss Jones, who could do it without hating one another for ever afterwards."
"We must be very remarkable, then, for I don't think it's going to have that effect," said Grace, laughing.
"As far as I'm concerned," said Trevellyan slowly, "it's exactly the opposite. You won't want me to tell you about it now, but perhaps some day soon you'll let me – Grace."
Miss Jones walked along the muddy, slushy edge of the road with her mind in a tumult. She felt quite unable to make any reply. But Captain Trevellyan, always matter-of-fact, did not appear to expect one. He presently remarked that it was getting colder again. Was Miss Jones very wet?
"Rather wet, but the worst half must be over by now. I wonder what news we shall find when we arrive. Do you know, I can't help being selfishly thankful to be going there. It's been so hard never hearing anything about her, and knowing all the time that she was in such anxiety."
"Doesn't Char tell you?"
"No; but I don't think I asked her. She likes us to be official, you know."
"I never heard such inhuman nonsense in my life!" exclaimed Trevellyan in tones of most unwonted violence.
They both laughed, and the next minute Grace said, "Listen!"
They both heard wheels.
"It's the dog-cart. I thought so. It was the only thing left, and I suppose they've got hold of a boy to drive it. Thank goodness! Miss Jones," said Trevellyan for the fourth time, "I can't tell you what I think of you; you've been simply wonderful."
"Don't! Of course I haven't."
Grace's voice was more agitated than accorded with her previous declaration of imperturbability, and something in the few shaky words caused John to put out his hand and grasp hers for a moment, while he hailed the cart.
"Here we are! Did Miss Vivian send you?"
"Her ladyship, sir. Couldn't come any faster, sir; the roads are so bad."
"They are. How is Sir Piers?"
"The same, sir – still unconscious. Dr. Prince don't anticipate no immediate change, sir, but he's staying the night."
"Good! He's telephoned to Questerham, I suppose. Now, Miss Jones, let me help you. Boy, you'd better get on to the back seat; your inches are better suited to it than mine," said John firmly. He put the rug round Grace, and she sank thankfully on to the small seat of the dog-cart.
They hardly spoke while he drove cautiously along the remaining mile of high road and up the long avenue to Plessing.
Even when John helped her down at the hall door he only said: "I shall see you tomorrow. I shall never forget this Christmas Eve."
"Nor I," said Grace.
In the hall Miss Bruce greeted them with subdued exclamations.
"How tired you must be, and half frozen! Sir Piers is just the same; the doctor is still upstairs. He and Charmian got here two hours ago or more, and told us what had happened. There wasn't anything to send for you but the little cart. Poor dear Charmian! such a home-coming for her! She's wonderful, of course – never given way for an instant."
"Where is she?"
"Upstairs. I've sent to tell her and Lady Vivian that you've arrived at last."
"And, Miss Bruce, we should like some food if it can be managed without too much trouble."
"Of course, of course. Miss Jones, your room is ready. Wouldn't you like to change your wet shoes at once?"
Miss Bruce spoke with an odd mixture of doubt and compassion, as she looked at Grace warming her frozen hands at the hall fire. It was evident that she did not feel certain whether Miss Jones was to be regarded as a friend of Lady Vivian's, whom Captain Trevellyan had judged necessary to bring to Plessing at all costs, for Joanna's sake, or as Char's junior secretary, thrusting herself upon her chief's family at a particularly inopportune moment. But the question was solved a few instants later, when Joanna Vivian herself, coming downstairs in her black tea-gown, exclaimed softly: "You've brought her, Johnnie! Well done! No; there's no change yet. I want you to see Dr. Prince." Then she took Grace's hands in hers and said: "Thank you, my dear, for coming to me."