Suzette proposed that Lady Emily should dine at Marsh House; but she seemed to take a morbid pleasure in her son's house in spite of its loneliness, so Suzette drove back to Matcham with her, took her to tea with the General, and obtained his permission to dine and sleep at Beechhurst, and did all that could be done by unobtrusive kindness and attention to console and cheer Allan's mother.
CHAPTER IX.
ALL IN HONOUR.
It was nearly a month after Lady Emily's appearance at Discombe, and there had been no letter from Geoffrey. Every day had increased Mrs. Wornock's anxiety, and in the face of an ever-growing fear there had been a tacit avoidance of all mention of the absent son, both on the part of his mother and of Suzette. They had talked of music, of the gardens, of the poor, and of the latest developments in that science of the supernatural in which Mrs. Wornock's interest had never abated, and in which her faith had never been entirely shaken.
Once, in the midst of discussing the last number of the Psychical Magazine with Suzette—a sad sceptic—she said quietly—
"Whatever has happened, I know he is not dead. I must have seen him. I must have known. There would have been some sign."
Suzette was silent. Not for worlds would she have dashed a faith which buoyed up the fainting spirit. Yet it needed but some dreadful dream, she reflected, a dead face seen amidst the clouds of sleep, to change this blind confidence into despair.
It was in the evening following this conversation that Suzette was sitting at her piano alone in her own drawing-room, playing from memory, and losing herself in the web of a Hungarian nocturne, which was to her like thinking in music—the composer's learned sequences and changes of key seeming only a vague expression of her own sadness. Her father was dining out—a man's dinner—a dissipation he rarely allowed himself; and Suzette was relieved from her evening task of playing chess, reading aloud, or listening to tiger-stories, which had lost none of their interest from familiarity, the fondly loved father being the hero of every adventure.
She was glad to be alone to-night, for her heart was full of dread of the news which the next African letter might bring. She had tried to make light of the leader's death; yet she, too, thought with a shudder of the two young men alone, inexperienced, and one of them, at least, reckless and daring even to folly.
The wailing Hungarian reverie with its minor modulations seemed to shape itself into a dream of Africa, the endless jungle, the vastness of swamp and river, the beauty and the terror of gigantic waterfalls, huge walls of water, a river leaping over a precipice into a gulf of darkness and snow-white foam. The scenes of which she had been reading lately crowded into her mind, and filled it with aching fears.