第72章

THE ONLY WAY

When Deryck Brand alighted at the little northern wayside station, he looked up and down the gravelled platform, more than half expecting to see Jane.The hour was early, but she invariably said "So much the better" to any plan which involved rising earlier than usual.Nothing was to be seen, however, but his portmanteau in the distance--looking as if it had taken up a solitary and permanent position where the guard had placed it--and one slow porter, who appeared to be overwhelmed by the fact that he alone was on duty to receive the train.

There were no other passengers descending; there was no other baggage to put out.The guard swung up into his van as the train moved off.

The old porter, shading his eyes from the slanting rays of the morning sun, watched the train glide round the curve and disappear from sight; then slowly turned and looked the other way,--as if to make sure there was not another coming,--saw the portmanteau, and shambled towards it.He stood looking down upon it pensively, then moved slowly round, apparently reading the names and particulars of all the various continental hotels at which the portmanteau had recently stayed with its owner.

Dr.Brand never hurried people, He always said: "It answers best, in the long run, to let them take their own time.The minute or two gained by hurrying them is lost in the final results." But this applied chiefly to patients in the consulting-room; to anxious young students in hospital; or to nurses, too excitedly conscious at first of the fact that he was talking to them, to take in fully what he was saying.His habit of giving people, even in final moments, the full time they wanted, had once lost him an overcoat, almost lost him a train, and won him the thing in life he most desired.But that belongs to another story.

Meanwhile he wanted his breakfast on this fresh spring morning.And he wanted to see Jane.Therefore, as porter and portmanteau made no advance towards him, the doctor strode down the platform.

"Now then, my man!" he called.

"I beg your pardon?" said the Scotch porter.

"I want my portmanteau."

"Would this be your portmanteau?" inquired the porter doubtfully.

"It would," said the doctor."And it and I would be on our way to Castle Gleneesh, if you would be bringing it out and putting it into the motor, which I see waiting outside.""I will be fetching a truck," said the porter.But when he returned, carefully trundling it behind him, the doctor, the portmanteau, and the motor were all out of sight.

The porter shaded his eyes and gazed up the road.

"I will be hoping it WAS his portmanteau," he said, and went back to his porridge.

Meanwhile the doctor sped up into the hills, his mind alight with eagerness to meet Jane and to learn the developments of the last few days.Her non-appearance at the railway station filled him with an undefinable anxiety.It would have been so like Jane to have been there, prompt to seize the chance of a talk with him alone before he reached the house.He had called up, in anticipation, such a vivid picture of her, waiting on the platform,--bright, alert, vigorous, with that fresh and healthy vigour which betokens a good night's rest, a pleasant early awakening, and a cold tub recently enjoyed,--and the disappointment of not seeing her had wrought in him a strange foreboding.What if her nerve had given way under the strain?

They turned a bend in the winding road, and the grey turrets of Gleneesh came in sight, high up on the other side of the glen, the moor stretching away behind and above it.As they wound up the valley to the moorland road which would bring them round to the house, the doctor could see, in the clear morning light, the broad lawn and terrace of Gleneesh, with its gay flower-beds, smooth gravelled walks, and broad stone parapet, from which was a drop almost sheer down into the glen below.

Simpson received him at the hall door; and he just stopped himself in time, as he was about to ask for Miss Champion.This perilous approach to a slip reminded him how carefully he must guard words and actions in this house, where Jane had successfully steered her intricate course.He would never forgive himself if he gave her away.

"Mr.Dalmain is in the library, Sir Deryck," said Simpson; and it was a very alert, clear-headed doctor who followed the man across the hall.

Garth rose from his chair and walked forward to meet him, his right hand outstretched, a smile of welcome on his face, and so direct and unhesitating a course that the doctor had to glance at the sightless face to make sure that this lithe, graceful, easy-moving figure was indeed the blind man he had come to see.Then he noticed a length of brown silk cord stretched from an arm of the chair Garth had quitted to the door.Garth's left hand had slipped lightly along it as he walked.

The doctor put his hand into the one outstretched, and gripped it warmly.

"My dear fellow! What a change!"

"Isn't it?" said Garth delightedly."And it is entirely she who has worked it,--the capital little woman you sent up to me.I want to tell you how first-rate she is." He had reached his chair again, and found and drew forward for the doctor the one in which Jane usually sat, "this is her own idea." He unhitched the cord, and let it fall to the floor, a fine string remaining attached to it and to the chair, by which he could draw it up again at will."There is one on this side leading to the piano, and one here to the window.Now how should you know them apart?""They are brown, purple, and orange," replied the doctor.