He agreed that she must go to Misrule and help to nurse, but thought they would wire up to Yarrahappini and ask Mrs. Hassal to come down to the cottage instead of getting any one strange. Nellie thought it an excellent suggestion, and made him draft a telegram immediately, so that it might be sent first thing in the morning.
When he thought she was calm again, and fit to be left, he saw her into her own bedroom, and made her promise to go direct to bed and try her best to sleep, since so much depended on her now.
Such a poor, scratched, swollen face it was lifted to him for a good-night kiss, so different from the brilliant, beautiful, rebellious one that had defied him on the night of that trouble-causing dinner party.
He took the front door key with him, and went out, riding slowly back to Misrule, though he had no business there, as he knew. He put his father’s horse back into the stable, and learnt from the man, who had just gone to bed, that Martha was with Essie and the nurse with Meg.
Then he went round into the garden, and to the side of the house where Meg’s bedroom was.
There was a white, flat paling fence separating [261] ]that part of the garden from the paddocks; he sat down on it and watched the light on her white blind with a despairing expression in his eyes.
He would have given all the world for a kiss from her, a smile of forgiveness; his love for Mabelle lay, a cold thing, almost dead, in his breast; he felt he could never breathe on it and warm it to life again.
To him, as to Nellie, this great white awful night brought back to memory the red red sunset and purple black shadows of the evening Judy had died. Like Nellie, he too fell on his knees, and prayed as he had only prayed that one other time in his life. And, like Nellie too, he prayed despairingly and without faith because that other prayer had not been answered. It was midnight when he had ridden back; he stopped there in the white, hushed garden till the moon began to fade out of the sky and a pale flush of rose crept up from the river. He was stiff and cold from his long watch; on the ill-kept strip of grass beneath the lighted window he had worn a path with his pacings, and his heart was heavier than ever.
When five o’clock came he still lingered; he was watching for the first opening door. To wait for her smile and forgiveness till she was better—to wait—to miss it for ever, perhaps—was more than he could bear to contemplate. He wrote her a little [262] ]eager loving note on the back of an envelope from his pocket; his sister, his dear, sweet old Meg, would she ever forgive him?
He thought he would give it to Martha the minute there was a stir of life within the house, and he went softly round the verandah to the side door; it was always opened first, he knew. He stood there more than half an hour, listening for a footstep on the stairs, for the creak of a door or the sound of a voice.