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Ladies-In-Waiting

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Год написания книги
2019
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The bishop’s coachman always drove Miss Tucker home, and Appleton always walked to his lodgings, which were in the opposite direction, so nothing could be done that night, but he determined that another sun should not go down before he put his fate to the touch.

How could he foresee what the morning post would bring and deposit, like an unwelcome bomb, upon his breakfast tray?

His London publishers wanted to see him at once, not only on a multitude of details concerning his forthcoming book, but on a subject, as they hoped, of great interest and importance to him.

Thinking it a matter of a day or so, Appleton scribbled notes to Mrs. Kennion and Miss Tucker, with whom he was to go on an excursion, and departed forthwith to London.

Everything happened in London. The American publishers wanted a different title for the book and four more chapters to lengthen it to a size selling (at a profit) for two dollars and a half. The English publishers thought he had dealt rather slightingly with a certain very interesting period, and he remembered, guiltily, that he had been at Bexley Sands when he wrote the chapters in question. It would take three days’ labor to fill up these gaps, he calculated, and how fortunate that Miss Thomasina Tucker was safely entrenched in the heart of an ecclesiastical stronghold for the next month or two; a town where he had not, so far as he knew, a single formidable rival. He wrote her regarding his unexpected engagements, adding with legitimate pride that one of England’s foremost critics had offered to write a preface for his book; then he settled to his desk and slaved at his task until it was accomplished, when he departed with a beating heart for the town and county that held Miss Thomasina Tucker in their keeping.

Alighting at the familiar railway station, he took a hansom, intending to drop his portmanteau at his lodgings and go on to the palace for news, but as he was driving by the deanery on the north side of Cathedral Green, he encountered Mrs. Kennion in her victoria. She signaled him with her hand and spoke to her coachman, who drew up his horses. Alighting from his hansom, he strode forward to take her welcoming hand, his face radiating the pleasure of a home-coming traveler.

“If you’ll let the cabman take your luggage, I’d like to drive you home myself. I have something to tell you,” said Mrs. Kennion, making room for him by her side.

“Nothing has happened, I hope?” he asked anxiously.

“Miss Tucker is leaving for America to-morrow morning.”

“Going away?” Appleton’s tone was one of positive dismay.

“Yes. It is all very sudden and unexpected.”

“Sailing to-morrow?” exclaimed Appleton, taking out his watch. “From where? How can I get there?”

“Not sailing to-morrow—leaving Wells to-morrow on an early train and sailing Saturday from Southampton.”

“Oh, the world is not lost entirely, then!”—and Appleton leaned back and wiped his forehead. “What has happened? I ought never to have gone to London.”

“She had a cable yesterday from her Brooklyn church, offering her a better position in the choir, but saying that they could hold it only ten days. By post on the same day she received a letter from a New York friend—”

“Was it a Carl Bothwick?”

“No; a Miss Macleod, who said that a much better position was in the market in a church where Miss Tucker had influential friends. She was sure that if Miss Tucker returned immediately to sing for the committee she could secure a thousand-dollar salary. We could do nothing but advise her to make the effort, you see.”

“Did she seem determined to go?”

“No; she appeared a little undecided and timid. However, she said frankly that, though she had earned enough in England to pay her steamer passage to America, and a month’s expenses afterward, she could not be certain of continuing to do so much through a London winter. ‘If I only had a little more time to think it out,’ she kept saying, ‘but I haven’t, so I must go!’”

“Where is she now?”

“At her lodgings. The bishop is detained in Bath and I am dining with friends in his stead. I thought you might go and take her to dinner at the Swan, so that she shouldn’t be alone, and then bring her to the palace afterward—if—if all is well.”

“If I have any luck two churches will be lamenting her loss to-morrow morning,” said Fergus gloomily; “but she wouldn’t have consented to go if she cared anything about me!”

“Nonsense, my dear boy! You were away. No self-respecting girl would wire you to come back. She was helpless even if she did care. Here we are! Shall I send a hansom back in half an hour?”

“Twenty-five minutes will do it,” Appleton answered briskly. “You are an angel, dear lady!”

“Keep your blarney! I hope you’ll need it all for somebody else to-night! Good fortune, dear boy!”

VIII

Appleton flung the contents of his portmanteau into his closet, rid himself of the dust of travel, made a quick change, and in less than forty minutes was at the door of Miss Tucker’s lodgings.

She had a little sitting-room on the first floor, and his loud rat-a-tat brought her to the door instead of the parlor-maid.

At the unexpected sight of him she turned pale.

“Why—why, I thought it was the luggage-man. Where did you come from?” she stammered.

“From London, an hour ago. I met Mrs. Kennion on my way from the station.”

“Oh! Then she told you I am going home?”

“Yes, she told me. How could you go to America without saying good-bye, Miss Tommy?”

She flushed and looked perilously near tears.

“I wrote to you this morning as soon as I had decided,” she said. “I don’t like to dart off in this way, you can imagine, but it’s a question of must.”

He did not argue this with her; that was a bridge to be crossed when a better understanding had been reached; so, as if taking the journey as an inexorable fact, he said: “Come out and dine with me somewhere, and let us have a good talk.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m eating now on a tray in my sitting-room,”—and she waved a table napkin she was holding in her hand. “I am rather tired, and Miss Scattergood gave me some bacon and an egg from the nest.”

“Give the bacon to the cat and put back the egg in the nest,” he said coaxingly. “Mrs. Kennion said: ‘Don’t let her eat her last dinner alone. Take her to the Swan.’”

“Oh, I am only in my traveling-clothes and the Swan is full of strangers to-night.”

“The Green Dragon, then, near the cathedral. You look dressed for Buckingham Palace.”

She hesitated a moment, and then melted at the eagerness of his wish. “Well, then, if you’ll wait five minutes.”

“Of course; I’ll go along to the corner and whistle a hansom from the stand. Don’t hurry!”

The mental processes of Miss Thomasina Tucker had been very confused during the excitement of the last twenty-four hours.

That she loved Fergus Appleton she was well aware since the arrival of the cablegram calling her back to America. Up to that time she had fenced with her love—parried it, pricked it, thrust it off, drawn it back, telling herself that she had plenty of time to meet the issue if it came. That Fergus Appleton loved her she was also fairly well convinced, but that fact did not always mean—everything—she told herself, with a pitiful little attempt at worldly wisdom. Perhaps he preferred his liberty to any woman; perhaps he did not want to settle down; perhaps he was engaged to some one whom he didn’t care for now, but would have to marry; perhaps he hadn’t money enough to share with a wife; perhaps he was a flirt—no, she would not admit that for an instant. Anyway, she was alone in the world, and the guardian of her own dignity. If she could have allowed matters to drift along in the heavenly uncertainty of these last days, there would have been no problem; but when she was forced to wake from her delicious dream and fly from everything that held her close and warm, fly during Fergus Appleton’s absence, without his knowledge or consent—that indeed was heart-breaking. And still her pride showed her but the one course. She was alone in the world and without means save those earned by her own exertions. A living income was offered her in America and she must take it or leave it on the instant. She could not telegraph Fergus Appleton in London and acquaint him with her plans, as if they depended on him for solution; she could only write him a warm and friendly good-bye. If he loved her as much as a man ought who loved at all, he had time to follow her to Southampton before her ship sailed. If business kept him from such a hurried journey, he could ask her to marry him in a sixpenny wire, reply paid. If he neither came nor wired, but sent a box of mignonette to the steamer with his card and “Bon voyage” written on it, she would bury something unspeakably dear and precious that had only just been born—bury it, and plant mignonette over it. And she could always sing! Thank Heaven for the gift of song!

This was Tommy’s mood when she was packing her belongings, after hearing the bishop say that Appleton could not return till noon next day. It had changed a trifle by the time that Fergus had gone to the corner to whistle for a hansom. Her gray frieze jacket and skirt were right enough when she hastily slipped on a better blouse with a deep embroidered collar, pinned with Helena Markham’s parting gift of an emerald clover-leaf. Her gray straw hat had a becoming band of flat green leaves, and she had a tinge of color. (Nothing better for roses in the cheeks than hurrying to be ready for the right man.) Anyway, such beauty as Tommy had was always there, and when she came to the door she smote Appleton’s eyes as if she were “the first beam from the springing east.”

Once in the hansom, they talked gayly. They dared not stop, indeed, for when they kept on whipping the stream they forgot the depth of the waters underneath.

Meantime the Green Dragon, competitor of the Swan, had great need of their lavish and interesting patronage.

The Swiss head waiter, who was new to Wells, was a man of waxed mustaches and sleepless ambitions. The other hotels had most of the tourists, but he intended to retrieve the fortunes of his employer, and bring prosperity back to the side streets. He adored his vocation, and would have shed his heart’s blood on the altar of any dining-room of which he had charge.

There were nine tables placed about the large room, though not more than three had been occupied in his tenure of office; but all were beautifully set with flowers and bright silver and napkins in complicated foldings. Pasteboard cards with large black numbers from one to eight stood erect on eight of the tables, and on the ninth an imposing placard bore the sign:

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