"Only six years. And it is more than twenty years since both my sisters left the old home. Both left it under a cloud; both insisted on marrying men of whom my father and mother did not approve. Ah! it was a sad business altogether, a sad business. They both belonged to the order of women who go on caring for a man, whatever follies or sins he may commit. I confess I cannot understand the att.i.tude of mind of such women."

"No, I daresay not," Cicely answered, her eyes thoughtfully fixed on his severe face. "I expect you feel that love and respect must always go hand in hand, and that when a man has once lost a woman's respect, he ought to lose her love as well."

"Certainly, I think so. When respect goes, everything had better go.

I have no patience with the sentimental clinging to a man who has forfeited all right to affection."

"I suppose"--Cicely paused, into her eyes there came a queer little gleam, which neither of her companions could understand. "I suppose when a woman takes a man for better or worse, the worse may mean evil doing, and perhaps it is possible for her to hate the sin, and yet to love--the sinner?"

Sir Arthur looked a trifle taken aback, but he disliked being worsted in an argument, and he would not ever own that he could be worsted by a woman. Hence, he begged the question.

"Well, well," he said airily; "there is often a great deal of sentimental nonsense talked about love, and I can answer for it, my dear Cicely, that my poor sisters paid very dearly for their sentimentality. One vanished completely from our ken; went down into the depths of poverty and obscurity, and we could never hear of her again. The other, I have seen and remonstrated with times without number, but all in vain; and now--she has got that miserable husband of hers in hiding somewhere, and I am bent on finding them both, and preventing worse scandals--if I can."

"I hope you will do as you wish." Cicely was shaking hands now with little Lady Congreve, who had taken no part in the conversation, beyond giving occasional utterance to a faint e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, or a timid laugh.

"I hope we shall all have a very happy Christmas together at Bramwell.

I will let you know, about trains. Till then, _au revoir_."

CHAPTER XVI.

"MY MOTHER GAVE IT TO ME."

"Baba would like her doctor man to come to her Christmas-tree; Baba does love her doctor man." At the sound of the pleading voice, the sight of the appealing blue eyes, Cicely put down her pen with a laugh, and caught the child in her arms.

"You most absurd and beguiling infant, why do you want your doctor man, as you call him?"

"'Cos Baba does. She loves him awful, drefful much," and to give her mother some glimmering idea of the depth of her affection, Baba clasped her hands round her own small person, and looked into Cicely's face, with another appealing glance.

"Christina, do you imagine Dr. Fergusson could be induced to come over here for Christmas?" Cicely questioned, as Baba's nurse came into the cosy boudoir at Bramwell Castle; "this picanniny of mine wants him invited to her Christmas-tree."

"I should think it would depend on how busy he is just now. The practice seemed to be a big one. But perhaps at this time people will be considerate enough not to fall ill, and will give the doctor a little rest. Surely, Dr. Fergusson could motor over? It can't be very far from here to Graystone."

"Quite within a motor drive; and he was so very good to Baba, I should like to ask him to come if he will. Rupert writes, that, as he feared, he cannot be with us. He has had to start off post haste to Naples.

That tiresome boy, Jack Layton, a mutual cousin of Rupert's and mine, has gone and got typhoid there, and of course Rupert, being a sort of unattached, universal fairy G.o.dfather, has been sent for to look after him."

"Is Mr. Mernside a fairy G.o.dfather?" Christina smiled at the quaint nomenclature.

"I always think so. He is ready to do any thing for any of his aggravating relations, at any moment, and as Jack has selected this particular moment to get typhoid, Rupert will be away for Christmas. I wonder whether Dr. Fergusson would think it very odd and unconventional, if I invited him here, on our rather short acquaintance?"

Cicely looked thoughtfully across her pretty room at Christina, and the girl laughed, and shook her head.

"He is not so silly," she answered. "Dr. Fergusson is just one of those simple, straightforward men who take things as they are meant, and don't hunt round for ulterior motives. He won't even begin to think whether your invitation is conventional or unconventional, he will only think how good it is of you to ask him at all."

"How wise you are," Lady Cicely exclaimed; "where does that little dark head of yours get all its wisdom?"

Christina laughed again. In those days of her happy life with Baba and Baba's mother, her bright young laugh rang out very often--the laugh that seemed such a true index to her young, bright soul. She had put behind her all the misery and hardship of the past, and, with the wholesome philosophy natural to her, lived in the full enjoyment of her present content; and the few weeks of happiness, good food, and freedom from anxiety, had changed the white-faced, hollow-eyed girl who had perforce tried to p.a.w.n her mother's jewel, into a charming, and very pretty semblance of her former self.

"I am not wise," she said; "only I have had a good many rough times, and I have learnt to do what one of my landladies called, 'sizing up men and women.' I have had to size people up, and try to get a just estimate of them."

"And you have 'sized up' Dr. Fergusson?"

"I have found out that he is the very soul of simplicity and straightforwardness, and that he is so kind that there is nothing he would not do for his fellow creatures," she answered eagerly; "and as for worrying about the conventional, I am sure it never enters his head to do such a thing."

It flashed across Cicely's mind to wonder whether Christina's praise of the doctor rose from any warmer feeling than that of friendly grat.i.tude, but the girl's eyes met hers so frankly, her manner was so simple, and the very outspokenness of her enthusiasm, seemed to point to such a heart-whole condition, that the brief thought was dismissed.

"I wish I could accept your most tempting invitation," Fergusson wrote, in reply to Cicely's letter; "but, alas! Christmas does not promise much diminution of the work here. If, however, you will allow me to come to you for Miss Baba's tree, on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, I could manage to do that in my car. It will give me great pleasure to see my small patient again."

As she folded up the letter, Cicely felt that it would also give her pleasure to see the kindly-faced doctor, whose personality during Baba's illness, had impressed her as being so helpful, who, in some dim and unexplained way, made her think of the husband, for whose loss her heart had never ceased to ache.

"I am afraid I am very glad Cousin Arthur and Cousin Ellen cannot arrive before eight o'clock dinner on Christmas Eve," she said to Christina, after receiving Fergusson's letter; "they mean so well, poor dears, but they are such sadly wet blankets. Cousin Arthur would certainly send our spirits down to zero, by telling us that the more we enjoyed ourselves the more wrath to come was being stored up for us!

You know he says he never sees any beautiful scenery without remembering that it will all be burnt some day!"

"How delicious! I am afraid I am looking forward to seeing Sir Arthur; he is at least original."

"He won't approve of you, or Baba, or of anything any of us do," Cicely answered; "his att.i.tude of mind is disapproving. He has got the kind of mind that always gets out of bed on the wrong side."

Perhaps, at the back of her own mind, her little ladyship was not sorry that Sir Arthur and Fergusson should have no opportunity of meeting; for, as her natural astuteness told her, if Sir Arthur looked with disapproving eyes upon Rupert, with how much more disapproval would he regard a stranger, who was also a doctor. Sir Arthur belonged to the old school of county magnates, who looked upon men of medicine as on a level very little higher than a butcher or baker, and entirely refused to entertain the notion that doctor and gentleman could ever be synonymous terms. And Cicely was well aware that the old gentleman's disapproval might conceivably find voice, and that she would be reproached for receiving such guests in "poor dear John's" house.

Fortunately for everyone's peace of mind, the Congreves, being unable to leave London until late on Christmas Eve, were also unable to play the part of kill-joys at Baba's Christmas-tree, and the little party which a.s.sembled in the big hall of the Castle, was composed of congenial and friendly folk, who were ready to become little children again, to play with a little child.

The hall, oak-panelled, and hung with suits of armour, and weapons handed down from war-like Redesdale ancestors, had long since been converted into a luxurious lounge, where, if comfortably upholstered chairs, big palms, ma.s.ses of flowers, and tables strewn with the latest books, were incongruities, the incongruity at least made the hall a most pleasant and sociable sitting-room. And so Fergusson thought it, when from the sharpness of the grey winter day, he pa.s.sed through an outer vestibule, into the well-warmed, well-lighted place. Only he himself knew with what an unaccountable sinking of the heart he had driven up the beech avenue leading to the Castle, and realised what an imposing place it was, to which he had been bidden. Involuntarily, and in sharp contrast, the thought of his own modest house rose before his mental vision, and the usually cheery doctor, for perhaps the first time in his disciplined and philosophical existence, felt disposed to curse the Fates, for dividing rich and poor by gulfs of such appalling dimensions. But that sinking of the heart, and all the other unwonted sentiments stirred in him by the sight of the great pile of Bramwell, its stately park and lordly surroundings, were swept away by the cordial greeting bestowed upon him, by the little lady of the house, and by Baba's enthusiastic welcome.

"Baba's doctor man," the child cried, with a small shriek of delight when he appeared, and Baba monopolised her doctor man during the whole two hours he was able to spend with them. But if to the larger number of the party a.s.sembled in the hall, Fergusson seemed to have neither eyes nor ears for anyone but the child-queen of the occasion, Christina's observant eyes told her that his glance often rested upon Cicely's fair head, and that whenever it did so, a great tenderness crept into that glance. As she had told Lady Cicely, the rough school in which her life had lately been spent, had taught her to study and understand her fellow beings, and the doctor's secret, unknown to himself, was shared by Christina, on that happy Christmas Eve. She was a very safe and discreet guardian of secrets, this girl with the sweet eyes, but she gave a quick little sigh when she understood the meaning of Fergusson's glance, for to her, as to himself, there seemed an unbridgeable gulf, between the hard-working doctor, and the dainty _chatelaine_ of Bramwell Castle. Before he left, Fergusson contrived to make his way to Christina's side, and to say in an undertone:--

"I think you will be sorry to know that your beautiful lady of the lonely valley is in great trouble."

"Oh!" Christina exclaimed softly, her eyes darkening; "has the end come for him?"

"Yes, five days ago. She is wonderful, but the heart-break in her eyes is pitiful to see. I sometimes doubt whether her strength will hold out; she is very fragile, and all the strain has told on her more than I like."

"Was he buried at----" Christina was beginning, when Fergusson finished the sentence quickly.

"No, not at Graystone. I don't know where she took him, but it was away from that part of the country altogether. She and her faithful Elizabeth went with him, and now she is back in that lonely house again. I have tried to persuade her to leave it--to go to London--to go anywhere away--but she answers me she is happier there, and I cannot oppose her. But it is all a tragedy, an inexplicable tragedy."

He could say no more, but what he had told Christina, filled the girl's heart with sadness; her beautiful lady had made a profound impression upon her, and the thought of the sorrowful woman in that lonely house in the valley, hurt the girl's tender soul.

"I am glad we asked Dr. Fergusson," Cicely said to her, when later on in the evening the two were alone together in Baba's day nursery; "there is something so cheering about him, something," she added, with a wistful look into Christina's face, "that makes me think of my husband."

"Is he like Mr. Redesdale?" Christina asked sympathetically.

"No, not in the least--it is not that. At least, his eyes are brown, and my husband had brown eyes, but it is not exactly a likeness that can be defined feature for feature. It is something subtly indefinable, but when I see Dr. Fergusson, and when he talks to me, it makes me think of John. It makes me almost feel as if John were here again."

"You are to come down to dinner to-night, and you are to wear the new frock," Lady Cicely's tones were very decided, her blue eyes shone, her face was dimpling with smiles.

"Oh! but--indeed--I don't think I ought; how can I? It--it wouldn't be suitable, would it, for Baba's nurse to dine downstairs?"