The news of ‘the break-up at the Court,’ as it was called, was all over the village by eight o’clock that night; women ran into one another’s houses with ‘Have you heard?’ Men discussed the matter over their half-pints at the ‘New Plough,’ and the general verdict was, that “the poor young lady had led a worse than dog’s life, and he had been rightly served.”
CHAPTER XX
AND now to accompany the fugitive to London. At first, the mere novelty of a drive to the station that delicious June day, and the unaccustomed journey in the train filled her with a sense of overpowering freedom; but as the heavy express thundered along, her mind, as usual, began to be uneasy and undecided; her thoughts turned insistently to her deserted baby girl, and the more she reflected, the more she felt drawn to Cara—and by her very heart-strings!
When Mrs. Blagdon stepped out on the London platform, it was a woebegone young woman, with a white and frightened face, that encountered the glad eyes of her awaiting lover,—who instantly recognised that his beloved had recently passed through some great emotional storm, and that her courage had been sorely shaken by this, the most daring venture of her existence. Here was a different Letty to the one who had danced with him so gaily at the Brakesby Ball, and skimmed over the ice on Batley Mere; she was a girl radiant with youth and expectant happiness, looking out on the future with brave and shining eyes. This Letty, with her pathetic expression and tremulous lips, recalled some poor wild bird with a broken wing, and he realised that he must treat her with extraordinary tact and tenderness.
They went together in search of her luggage, which turned out to be of surprisingly modest dimensions, and in keeping with its owner’s costume. Wearing a simple white linen and a plain shady hat, Letty might be the daughter of a curate, or a clerk, instead of the wife of a fabulously wealthy man; but her companion understood; she wished to leave Blagdon as she had gone to him—empty handed. With a lover’s memory, he recognised her little turquoise brooch, and a certain thin, old-fashioned locket.
In a few minutes the pair were in a hansom threading their way to the Cosmopolitan. Letty, sitting very far back in her corner, with a rigid profile and tightly clasped hands. It was more than two years since she had been in London, and the noise, the traffic, the varied sights, and the jostling crowds, struck her in forcible contrast to the silence and emptiness of the country.
After a long and sensitive silence, Lumley said:
“Letty, you look terribly pale and tired. I am afraid you feel knocked up?”
“No, no, I’m not tired,” she answered; “but so thirsty, I can scarcely speak.”