“Mother, I must go home immediately. Mr. Duplessis will take me. I’ll tell him to wait.”
She returned to the kitchen; Duplessis was biting his cheek leaning against the table with folded arms. His breath was still quick.
“Mr. Duplessis,” said she, “I have had a telegram from home—from Mrs. James. My husband is ill and I must go to him. Will you take me, please?”
He jumped forward. “Of course. I’m very sorry. I’ll do everything. Go and get ready—I’ll find a cab.”
XIV
VIGIL
A shadow, not hers, which moved, kept Mary silently employed. She was watching it. She was not conscious of having spoken a single word from the moment of farewell to her mother until her arrival at Hill-street. Duplessis had accompanied her from door to door. She cannot have been aware of it, or she would have dismissed him at Victoria.
Not that he had been obtrusive—far otherwise. He saw to everything, and what conversation there had been, he had made it. She might have been grateful to him for all this, had she observed it. Once only had a cry escaped her. “He is dying. He will die thinking me wicked. What shall I do?”
He had answered her. “No. He is a just man. You have nothing you need fear to tell him.”
“He is dying,” she repeated, her eyes fixed upon the dun waste of houses and chimney-stacks. Duplessis could not doubt this. It seemed as certain to him as to her. He, too, discerned the moving shadow.
As he helped her out of the cab in Hill-street the carriage came quickly up and the Rector of Misperton in it. He and she met on the pavement. Duplessis lifted his hat, re-entered the cab and departed—seen, therefore, by the Rector, by Musters, and the carriage-groom, and by the stately butler and his familiar at the open door. She and James Germain went up the steps without greeting. As she went straightforward to the stairs she heard the Rector’s inquiry, “Well, Greatorex?” and Greatorex’s reply, “The doctors are there, Sir. There is no change.”