'I wish you would tell me—' Clare began, when they were in the train en route for Dartford.
'There is much I would wish to tell you,' he interrupted, 'but not to-day, when you are going on an errand of kindness and mercy. You do not want to talk now, you want to think; and besides, I want to see you again. Will you write to me to-night, and tell me when and where I can see you alone to-morrow.'
'Yes, if you wish it,' she said. 'I had so much to ask you; and just now it seems as though I could think of nothing but that man, lying dead far north, and his poor wife here alone.'
'Then it is a promise. We are comrades, since we serve in the same ranks; and between comrades a special farewell is necessary. Now, we will not talk, since you do not desire it.'
Clare leaned back in her corner, and wondered how she should break the news to that poor widow.
But when they reached Earl's Terrace, and found out the house where she was, they found, too, that there was no need to break the news to her. She knew it already, as Clare saw in a moment. Petrovitch did not come in, and the two women met alone. What Clare said to her? It is beyond us to write that down; and if the words were set down here, despoiled of the tender tones, the eloquent gesture, the heart-warm tenderness of the young girl, who had herself felt grief, what would they be worth? In the presence of sorrow some women are inspired, but not with words that will bear reporting.
Mrs Hatfield's grief was not violent. She wept, but not bitterly.
'It is the Lord's will,' she said, and she believed her words. When she heard of her daughter's marriage she said simply, 'Thank God for a' His mercies! I doubt He's been ower good to we i' mony ways, an' we mun bear what He's pleased to lay upo' us.'
Clare would have been more at ease to have seen her weep freely, but she seemed crushed. This last blow had mercifully benumbed her senses. Not her gratitude, though, for when Clare rose to go she rose too, and, taking the girl's hands in hers, looked at her and said,—
'An' thee came a' th' way fro' Lunnon to help an old wife to bear her burdens. Eh! but thee'rt a bonnie lass, and as good as thee'rt comely. Thee'll be the light o' some honest lad's e'en some day, and may thee ha' as good a man as mine were.'