From Out the Vasty Deep by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

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Bubbles turned her head away quickly. "Not to-night, doctor; I'm too
tired." She spoke very decidedly, and in a stronger voice than she had
yet used. "I'd rather wait till I get up before seeing Mr. Varick."

"He only wants to come in for a minute--do see him."

Dr. Panton spoke persuasively, but he told himself that Varick was
right--Bubbles _had_ got that extraordinary, horrible notion into her
head. "He's very much upset," he went on, "he thinks that unconsciously
he may have given you some kind of push over the edge of the
embankment."

He saw her face change. It crimsoned darkly.

"Has he told you that?" she muttered.

"Yes, he has; and he's awfully upset about it, Miss Bubbles."

"I suppose I had better see him. I shall have to see him some time."

She said the words between her teeth, and, making an effort, she sat up
in bed.

Dr. Panton went to the door, and opened it.

"Come in," he called out; "but don't stay long, Varick. Miss Bubbles is
very tired to-night."

Varick came in slowly and advanced with curiously hesitating, nervous
steps, towards the bed. "Well, Bubbles," he exclaimed, "I'm glad you're
no worse for your ducking!"

She looked at him fixedly, but said nothing. Dr. Panton began to feel
desperately uncomfortable.

"I hope you'll be quite all right to-morrow," went on Varick.

"I think I shall, thank you."

Bubbles seemed to be looking beyond her visitor--not at him. She seemed
to be gazing at something at the other end of the room.

"You've brought someone in with you," she said suddenly. There was a
curious tone--almost a tone of exultation--in her voice. "Who is it?"
she asked imperiously. "Tell me who it is--Lionel."

She very rarely called Varick "Lionel."

He wheeled round with a startled look. "There's no one here," he
answered, "but Dr. Panton and myself."

"Oh yes, there is." Bubbles spoke very positively. "There's a woman
here. I can see her quite distinctly in the firelight. She's got a fat,
angry face, and untidy grey hair. Hullo, she's gone now!"

Bubbles fell back on to her pillow and closed her eyes. It was as if she
was dismissing them.

Varick turned uneasily to the doctor. "Is she delirious?" he whispered.

The doctor shook his head. He also was startled--startled more than
surprised. For in just Bubbles' words would he have described the odious
woman who had come to see him last spring, and whose voice he had heard
within the last few minutes.

He now had no doubt that Miss Pigchalke had been in the corridor, or,
more likely, in some room opening out of it, and that she had followed
Varick into this darkened room and then, noiselessly, slipped out again.

Bubbles opened her eyes.

"I'll come up after dinner for a few minutes," said Dr. Panton. Bubbles
made no answer; her eyes were now following Varick out of the door.

The doctor lingered for a moment. "You're _sure_ there was someone
there?" he asked.

"Of course I'm sure." Bubbles spoke quite positively. "I'm sure"--and
then he saw a change come over her face--"and yet I don't know that I am
quite sure," she murmured dreamily.

As Dr. Panton went down the shallow oak staircase he felt in a turmoil
of doubt and discomfort. To his mind there was no reasonable doubt that
Miss Pigchalke had somehow effected an entrance to Wyndfell Hall. She
had lived there for long years; she must know every corner of the
strange old house.

When he reached the hall where the whole party was gathered together, he
went up to Blanche Farrow. "May I speak to you a moment?" he whispered.

"What is it?" she asked anxiously. "Isn't Bubbles so well?"

"Oh, yes; Miss Bubbles is going on all right. But, Miss Farrow? I want
to tell you something that, if possible, I should like to keep from
Varick."

"Yes--what is it?"

"Someone who has a grudge against him, a tiresome old woman who was
companion to Mrs. Varick for many years, has somehow got into this
house. She spoke to me just as I came out of my room. I didn't see her,
but I heard her voice quite distinctly. And when Varick and I went into
Miss Bubbles' room for a moment, on our way downstairs, she followed us
in--Miss Bubbles described her exactly. Then suddenly she disappeared. I
am sure she's hiding in one of the bedrooms."

"What a horrid idea!" exclaimed Blanche.

"Now comes the question--can we manage to hunt her out, and get her away
from the house, without Varick knowing?"

"But why shouldn't he know?" asked Blanche hesitatingly.

"Look at him," said the doctor impressively. And Blanche, glancing
quickly across the room, was struck by Varick's look of illness.

"There's no reason for telling him anything about it," she admitted.
"But hadn't we better wait till after dinner before doing anything?"

"Perhaps we had."

Dinner was a curious, uncomfortable meal; even Sir Lyon and Helen
Brabazon felt the atmosphere charged with anxiety and depression.

Miss Burnaby alone was her usual placid, quietly greedy self. She had
expressed suitable regret at all that had happened, but most of the
party realized that she had not really cared at all.

When the ladies passed through into the white parlour, Blanche slipped
away. She got hold of her firm ally, the butler, and explained in a very
few words what she thought had better be done. Accompanied by Pegler,
they went into every room, and into every nook and cranny of the house,
upstairs and down--but they found no trace of any alien presence.

Miss Pigchalke, so much was clear, had vanished as quietly and silently
as she had come.

CHAPTER XVIII

One--two--three--four--five--six--Bubbles heard the clock in the dark
corridor outside her room ring out the harmonious chimes, and she turned
restlessly round in her warm, comfortable bed.

It was very annoying to think she would have to wait two hours for a cup
of tea, but there it was! She had herself told Pegler she didn't want to
be disturbed till eight o'clock. She still felt too "done," too weak, to
get up and try to find her way to the kitchen to make herself some tea.

She lay, with her eyes wide open, longing for the daylight, and looking
back with shrinking fear to a night full of a misty horror.

Again and again she had lived through that awful moment when Varick had
pushed her over the edge of the embankment, to roll quickly, softly,
inexorably, into the icy-cold water.

She knew he had pushed her over. To herself it was a fact which did not
admit of any doubt at all. She had seen the mingled hatred and relief
which had convulsed his face. It was with that face she would always see
Lionel Varick henceforth.

There had been a moment when she had thought she would tell Dr. Panton;
then she had come to the conclusion that there was no good purpose to be
served by telling the strange and dreadful truth.

Some noble lines of Swinburne's which had once been quoted to her by a
friend she loved, floated into her mind--

"But ye, keep ye on earth
Your lips from over-speech,
Loud words and longing are so little worth;
And the end is hard to reach.
For silence after grievous thing's is good,
And reverence, and the fear that makes men whole
And shame, and righteous governance of blood,
And Lordship of the Soul.
And from sharp words and wits men pluck no fruit,
And gathering thorns they shake the tree at root;
For words divide and rend,
But silence is most noble till the end."

As she lay there, feeling physically so ill and weak, while yet her mind
worked so clearly and quickly, she set herself to solve a painful
puzzle. Why had Varick tried to do her to death? She admitted to herself
that she had never liked him, but she had never done him any harm. And
they had been on good terms--outwardly--always.

For hours, amid fitful, nightmarish snatches of sleep, and long, lucid
intervals of thought, Bubbles had wrestled with the question.

And then, lying there in the early morning, Bubbles _suddenly knew_.
Varick hated and feared her because she had unwittingly raised his wife
from the dead. And, believing that if he killed her, he would lay that
sinister, vengeful, unquiet ghost, he had deliberately planned
yesterday's expedition in order to do that which he had so nearly
succeeded in doing.

Bubbles gave an eerie little chuckle which startled herself. "I'd have
haunted him!" she muttered aloud. "He'd have found it more difficult to
get rid of me dead than alive."

Even as she murmured the words, the door opened, and she heard a voice
say, hesitatingly, "Then you're awake, Bubbles? Somehow I felt you were
awake, and I thought you might like a cup of tea."

It was Bill Donnington, with a lighted candle in one hand, and a cup of
tea in the other.

How glad she was to see him! How very, very glad! Yet he only looked his
usual sober, unromantic self, standing there at the bottom of her pretty
old walnut-wood bed, looking at her with all his wistful, faithful soul
in his eyes.

Bill was fully dressed, and Bubbles burst out laughing, feebly.

"You _are_ an early bird!" she exclaimed. "And a very proper bird, too.
I suppose you thought you mustn't come into my room in a dressing-gown?"

"I haven't slept all night," he said stiffly. "So I got up an hour ago.
I came and looked in here, as a matter of fact, on my way to the
bathroom. But you were asleep. And then, after I was dressed, I went
down to the kitchen, and made myself a cup of tea. I thought I'd make
one for you, too, just on chance."

He came up close to her, and Bubbles, shaking back her short curly hair,
took the cup from him. "This _is_ delicious! You _are_ a good sort,
Bill!"

He sat down on the end of her bed while she thirstily, greedily, drank
the tea he had brought her. In all her gestures there was something
bird-like and exquisite. Even when she was greedy Bubbles was dainty
too.

"I do hope you're feeling none the worse"--he began.

And she mimicked him, gleefully, speaking in a low whisper. "None the
worse, thank you! It's a comfort, sometimes, to be with a person who
always says exactly what you might expect he would say! I'm always sure
of that comfort with you--old thing."

"Are you?" He smiled his slow, doubtful smile, and Bubbles said
suddenly: "You've gone and left the door open."

He stood up, irresolute. "I suppose I ought to go away," he said
hesitatingly.

She exclaimed: "No, no, Bill! I won't have you go away! I don't want you
to go away! I want you to stay with me. But you must shut the door, for
it's very cold."

"D'you think I'd better shut the door?" he asked.

And then Bubbles seized his lean, strong hand. "Oh! I see what you
mean!" she exclaimed. "You actually think your being in here is more
proper if the door is open? But it isn't a bit--for everyone in the
house but us two is fast asleep! Still, that won't go on long. So shut
the door at once! I've something very important to say to you--something
which I certainly don't want Pegler to hear me say to you. Pegler may
come down any moment--she's such a good sort, under that stiff, cross
manner. It's so queer she should disapprove of me, and approve of my
Aunt Blanche, isn't it?"

He got up, and going to the door, shut it.

"Lock it!" she called out. "Lock it, Bill! I don't want to be
disturbed;" she repeated in an odd voice, "I've something very important
to say to you."

But this time he did not obey her, and as he came back towards the bed
he said anxiously, "D'you still feel _very_ bad, Bubbles?"

There was a tone of great tenderness and solicitude in his voice.

"Of course I do. So would you, if you'd died and come to life again."

"You didn't do that," he said in a low voice. "But you were very nearly
drowned, Bubbles. However, we must try to forget it."

Again she mimicked him: "'We must try to forget it.' I was waiting for
you to say that, too. As if we should ever forget it! But we won't think
about it just now--because we've got to think of something else that's
much more to the present purpose."

"Yes," he said soothingly. "Yes, Bubbles?"

Poor Bill felt very uncomfortable. He did not wish prim Miss Pegler to
come in and find him sitting on Bubbles' bed, when no one was yet up in
the house. These modern, unconventional ways were all very well, and he
knew they often did not really mean anything, but still--but still ...

"Did you ever hear of the King's Serf?" asked Bubbles suddenly.

"The King's Serf?" he repeated, bewildered.

"When the rope which was hanging some poor devil of a highwayman
broke--when the axe was too blunt to cut a robber rascal's head
off--when a man being condemned to death survived by some extraordinary
accident--well, such a man became thereafter the King's Serf. He
belonged to the King, body, soul, and spirit, and no one but the King
could touch him. He lost his identity. He was above the law!"

Bubbles said all this very, very fast--almost as if she had learnt it
off by heart.

"What a curious thing," said Bill slowly.

Bubbles had so many queer, out-of-the-way bits of knowledge. She was
always surprising him by the things she knew. It was the more curious
that she never seemed to open a book.

"Come a little nearer," she ordered. "You're so far away, Bill!"

She spoke with a touch of imperious fretfulness, and he moved a little
further up the bed.

"Nearer, nearer!" she cried; and then she suddenly sat up in bed, and
flinging her arms round him, she laid her dark, curly head on his
faithful heart. "I want to tell you," she whispered, "that from now
onward I'm Bill Donnington's Serf--much more than that poor brute I've
told you of was ever the King's Serf. For, after all, the King hadn't
cut the rope, or blunted the edge of the hatchet----"

"Bubbles!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Bubbles, d'you really mean that?"

"Of course I mean it! What I gave I had, what I gained I lost, what I
lost I gained."

"What do you mean, darling?" he whispered.

"I mean that the moment that stupid doctor allows me to get up--then you
and I will skip off by ourselves, and we'll say, 'Hullo, here's a
church! Let's go in and get married.'"

She waited a moment, but Bill Donnington said nothing. He only held her
closer to him.

"In the night," went on Bubbles, "I was wondering if we'd be married in
that strange old church near here, our church, the church with the
animals. And then I thought no, we wouldn't do that, for I am not likely
to want ever to come back here again. So we'll be married in London, in
a City church, in the church where John Gilpin and his family went to
what I suppose they called 'worship.' It's there you will have to say
you worship me, Bill!"

She lifted her head, and looked into his face. "Oh, Bill," she said, her
voice trembling a little, "you do look happy!"

"I am happy, but I--I can't quite believe it," he said slowly; "it's too
good to be true."

"I hope you'll go on being happy," she said, again pressing closer to
him. "But you know that sometimes, Bill--well, I _shall_ dine at
Edmonton while you do dine at Ware. It's no good my trying to conceal
that from you."

"I--I don't understand," he stammered out. What did Bubbles mean by
saying that?

"You'll know soon enough," she said, with that little wise look of
hers--the little look he loved. "But whenever I'm naughty or
unreasonable, or, or selfish, Bill--I'm afraid I shall often be _very_
selfish--then you must just turn to me, and say: 'You know, Bubbles,
when all's said and done, you're my Serf; but for me you wouldn't be
here.'"

Bill Donnington looked at her, and then he said solemnly and very
deliberately: "I don't feel that you ought to marry me out of gratitude,
Bubbles."

She took her hands off his shoulders, and clapped them gleefully. "I was
waiting for that, too!" she exclaimed. "I wonder you didn't say it at
once--I quite thought you would."

He said seriously: "But I really mean it. I couldn't bear to think that
you married me just because I dragged you out of the water."

"I'm really marrying you, if you want to know," she exclaimed, "because
of Mr. Tapster! During the last few days--I wonder if you've noticed it,
Bill?" (he had, indeed)--"that man has looked at me as if I was _his_
serf--that's a polite way of putting it--and I don't like it. But I've
got a friend--you know Phyllis Burley? I think she'd do for him exactly!
It would be so nice, too, for she's devoted to me, and we should have
the use of one of their motors whenever we felt like it."

Bill shook his head decidedly. "We never should feel like it," he said;
"even if Phyllis did marry Mr. Tapster, which I greatly doubt she'd even
think of doing."

"I'm going to tell him to-day," she went on, "that he's got to marry
her. There's nothing indelicate about my saying that, because they've
never met. But it'll work in his brain, you see if it doesn't, like
yeast in new bread! Then I'll bring them together, and then, and then--"

"And then," said Bill deliberately, "you'll never, with my goodwill, see
him again. So find him a wife whom you don't like, Bubbles."

She looked at him meditatively. "Very well," she said. "That will be my
first sacrifice for you, Bill. I'll save him up for Violet Purton. She's
a horrid girl--and won't she make his money fly!"

He was smiling at her rather oddly.

"Bill!" she exclaimed, startled. "Bill! I do believe you're going to be
master--"

And then she flung her arms again round his neck. "Kiss me," she
commanded, "kiss me, Bill. And then you must go away, for it isn't
proper that you should be here, at this time of the morning, now that
we're engaged!"

CHAPTER XIX

That same morning, but a good deal later, Blanche Farrow woke with a
start to find Pegler standing at her bedside with just one letter in her
hand.

Pegler was smiling. It was not a real smile, but just a general
softening of her plain, severe face.

Pegler knew that her lady had been rather "put out" at not having
received her usual Christmas letter from Mr. Mark Gifford. She had
spoken of it twice to Pegler, once lightly, on December 27, and then
again, in a rather upset way, on the 29th. After that she had pretended
to forget all about it. But Pegler felt sure Miss Farrow did
remember--often. And now here was the letter--a much fatter letter than
usual, too.

Pegler, of course, said nothing. It was not her place to know the
hand-writing of any of the gentlemen who wrote to her mistress.

Miss Farrow took the letter, and there came a faint, a very faint, flush
over her face. She said: "I hope Miss Bubbles has had a good night. Have
you been in to her yet, Pegler?"

"Yes, ma'am. She looks rather excited-like. But as you know, ma'am,
that's a good sign with her."

"Yes, I think it is, Pegler."

Pegler slipped noiselessly away, and then Blanche opened the envelope
containing Mark Gifford's long-delayed Christmas letter.

"Home Office, "_December 23rd_.

"MY DEAR BLANCHE,

"'How use doth breed a habit in a man!' Well anyhow, as you know, it
is my custom, which has now attained the dignity of a habit, always
to write you a letter for Christmas. Hitherto I have always known
where it would find you, but this year is an exception, for I really
have no idea where you are.

"This year is an exception in another respect also. Hitherto, my
dear Blanche, I have, with a tact which I hope you have silently
appreciated, always managed to keep out of my Christmas letter any
reference to what you know I have never given up hoping for even
against hope. But this time I can't keep it out because I have had a
really good idea. Even a Civil Servant may have a good idea
sometimes, and I assure you that this came to me out of office
hours--as a matter of fact it came to me when I was sitting in that
funny little old Westminster churchyard where we once spent what
was, to me, the happiest of half-hours.

"I know you have thought me unsympathetic and disapproving about
that which holds for you so great a fascination. Disapproving, yes;
I can't help disapproving of gambling, especially in a woman; but
unsympathetic, no--a thousand times no. Sympathy is understanding,
and, believe me, I do understand, and therefore I propose this plan.

"If you will do me the honour of marrying me, I propose that once or
even twice every year you should go off to Monte Carlo, or wherever
else you like, and play to your heart's content. I promise never to
reproach you, above all never to administer those silent reproaches
which I think are always the hardest to bear. Yes, I will always
play the game, I pledge myself to that most faithfully.

"Forgive me for referring to something which makes my plan easier to
carry out. This year two accidents, the death of one colleague, and
the premature retirement of another, have pushed me up the ladder of
promotion, and, in addition, there has been a legacy. The English of
that is that for our joint _menage_ we shouldn't want your income at
all; we could quite well do without it, and you would be perfectly
free to use it in whatever way you like.

"There! That is my plan. Now, dearest of women, say yes and make us
both happy, for you would make me so happy that I couldn't help
making you happy too. I wish I had any idea where you will be when
you read this letter, on which hangs all my hopes. Perhaps you will
read it at Monte, out on the Corniche Road. Don't let the fact that
you have been lucky at play make _me_ unlucky in--you know what!

"Yours ever (this is no figure of speech),

"Mark Gifford."

Blanche Farrow sighed and smiled, as she deliberately read the long
letter through twice. Somehow it warmed her heart; and yet would she
ever be able to give up the life which in many ways suited her so well?
If she married Mark--dear, kind, generous-hearted Mark--various
friendships which, even if they did not mean so much to her as they
appeared to do, yet meant a good deal in her present lonely life, would
certainly have to be given up. To take but one instance. It had almost
been an instinct with her to keep Lionel Varick and Mark Gifford apart.
In the old days she had been disagreeably aware of how absolutely
Gifford had always disapproved of Varick, and of Varick's various ways
of trying, often successfully, to raise the wind. Of course, everything
was now different with regard to this particular friend. Varick had
become--by what anyone not a hypocrite must admit had been a fortunate
circumstance--a respectable member of society; but, even so, she knew,
deep in her heart, that he and the man whose letter she held in her hand
would never like one another.

And yet she was tired--so tired!--of the sort of life she led, year in
and year out. Her nerves were no longer what they had once been. For
instance, the strange series of happenings that had just taken place
here, at Wyndfell Hall, had thoroughly upset her; and as for the
horrible thing that had occurred yesterday, she hadn't been able to
sleep all night for thinking of it. Nothing that had ever happened in
her now long life had had quite the effect on Blanche Farrow that
Bubbles' accident had had. She had realized, suddenly, how fond she was
of the girl--how strong in all of us is the call of the blood! As she
had stood watching Dr. Panton's untiring efforts to restore the
circulation of the apparently drowned girl there had gone up from
Blanche's heart a wild, instinctive prayer to the God in whom she did
not believe, to spare the child.

Perhaps just because she had not broken down before, she felt the more
now all that had happened in the way of the strange, the sinister, and
the untoward during the last fortnight. And all at once, after reading
yet again right through the quiet, measured letter of her old friend
and constant lover, Blanche Farrow suddenly burst into a passion of
tears.

And then it struck her as funny, as even absurd, that she should cry
like this! She hadn't cried for years and years--in fact, she could
hardly remember the day when she had last cried.

She jumped out of bed and put on her dressing-gown, for it was very
cold, and then she went and gazed at her reflection in the one
looking-glass in the room. It was a beautiful old Jacobean mirror fixed
over the dressing-table.

Heavens! What a fright she looked! Do tears always have that disfiguring
effect on a woman? This must be a lesson to her. She dabbed her eyes
with a wet handkerchief, and then she went over to the writing-table and
sat down.

For the first time in her life Blanche Farrow wrote Mark Gifford a
really grateful, sincere letter. She said, truly, how touched she was by
his long devotion and by all his goodness to her. She admitted, humbly,
that she wished she were worthy of it all. But she finally added that
she feared she could never find it in her heart and conscience to say
that she would do what he wished. She had become too old, too set in her
ways....

Yet it was with a heavy heart that she wrote her long letter in answer
to his, and it took her a long time, for she often waited a few moments
in between the sentences.

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