“Have met Mr. Delafield by chance at Nord Station. Lord Lackington dying. Must return tonight. Where shall I write? Goodbye.”
When it was done she could hardly totter out of the office. Delafield made her take his arm.
“You must have some food. Then I will go and get a sleeping-car for you to Calais. There will be no crowd tonight. At Calais I will look after you if you will allow me.”
“You are crossing tonight?” she said, vaguely. Her lips framed the words with difficulty.
“Yes. I came over with my cousins yesterday.”
She asked nothing more. It did not occur to her to notice that he had no luggage, no bag, no rug, none of the paraphernalia of travel. In her despairing fatigue and misery she let him guide her as he would.
He made her take some soup, then some coffee, all that she could make herself swallow. There was a dismal period of waiting, during which she was hardly conscious of where she was or of what was going on round her.
Then she found herself in the sleeping-car, in a reserved compartment, alone. Once more the train moved through the night. The miles flew by—the miles that forever parted her from Warkworth.
XIX
The train was speeding through the forest country of Chantilly. A pale moon had risen, and beneath its light the straight forest roads, interminably long, stretched into the distance; the vaporous masses of young and budding trees hurried past the eye of the traveller; so, also, the white hamlets, already dark and silent; the stations with their lights and figures; the great woodpiles beside the line.
Delafield, in his second-class carriage, sat sleepless and erect. The night was bitterly cold. He wore the light overcoat in which he had left the Hôtel du Rhin that afternoon for a stroll before dinner, and had no other wrap or covering. But he felt nothing, was conscious of nothing but the rushing current of his own thoughts.
The events of the two preceding days, the meaning of them, the significance of his own action and its consequences—it was with these materials that his mind dealt perpetually, combining, interpreting, deducing, now in one way, now in another. His mood contained both excitement and dread. But with a main temper of calmness, courage, invincible determination, these elements did not at all interfere.
The day before, he had left London with his cousins, the Duke of Chudleigh, and young Lord Elmira, the invalid boy. They were bound to Paris to consult a new doctor, and Jacob had offered to convey them there. In spite of all the apparatus of servants and couriers with which they were surrounded, they always seemed to him, on their journeys, a singularly lonely and hapless pair, and he knew that they leaned upon him and prized his company.
On the way to Paris, at the Calais buffet, he had noticed Henry Warkworth, and had given him a passing nod. It had been understood the night before in Heribert Street that they would both be crossing on the morrow.
On the following day—the day of Julie’s journey—Delafield, who was anxiously awaiting the return of his two companions from their interview with the great physician they were consulting, was strolling up the Rue de la Paix, just before luncheon, when, outside the Hôtel Mirabeau, he ran into a man whom he immediately perceived to be Warkworth.
Politeness involved the exchange of a few sentences, although a secret antagonism between the two men had revealed itself from the first day of their meeting in Lady Henry’s drawing-room. Each word of their short conversation rang clearly through Delafield’s memory.
“You are at the ‘Rhin’?” said Warkworth.
“Yes, for a couple more days. Shall we meet at the Embassy tomorrow?”
“No. I dined there last night. My business here is done. I start for Rome tonight.”
“Lucky man. They have put on a new fast train, haven’t they?”
“Yes. You leave the Gare de Lyon at 7:15, and you are at Rome the second morning, in good time.”
“Magnificent! Why don’t we all rush south? Well, goodbye again, and good luck.”
They touched hands perfunctorily and parted.
This happened about midday. While Delafield and his cousins were lunching, a telegram from the Duchess of Crowborough was handed to Jacob. He had wired to her early in the morning to ask for the address in Paris of an old friend of his, who was also a cousin of hers. The telegram contained:
“Thirty-six Avenue Friedland. Lord Lackington heart-attack this morning. Dying. Has asked urgently for Julie. Blanche Moffatt detained Florence by daughter’s illness. All circumstances most sad. Woman Heribert Street gave me Bruges address. Have wired Julie there.”
The message set vibrating in Delafield’s mind the tender memory which already existed there of his last talk with Julie, of her strange dependence and gentleness, her haunting and pleading personality. He hoped with all his heart she might reach the old man in time, that his two sons, Uredale and William, would treat her kindly, and that it would be found when the end came that he had made due provision for her as his granddaughter.
But he had small leisure to give to thoughts of this kind. The physician’s report in the morning had not been encouraging, and his two travelling companions demanded all the sympathy and support he could give them. He went out with them in the afternoon to the Hôtel de la Terrasse at St. Germain. The Duke, a nervous hypochondriac, could not sleep in the noise of Paris, and was accustomed to a certain apartment in this well-known hotel, which was often reserved for him. Jacob left them about six o’clock to return to Paris. He was to meet one of the Embassy attachés—an old Oxford friend—at the Café Gaillard for dinner. He dressed at the “Rhin,” put on an overcoat, and set out to walk to the
