"Absolutely necessary to see you.Take last train Victoria if you can catch it.If not,earliest morning,and answer me direct either way.""Reply paid?"said the girl.Mr.Buckton had just departed and the counter-clerk was at the sounder.There was no other representative of the public,and she had never yet,as it seemed to her,not even in the street or in the Park,been so alone with him.
"Oh yes,reply paid,and as sharp as possible,please."She affixed the stamps in a flash."She'll catch the train!"she then declared to him breathlessly,as if she could absolutely guarantee it.
"I don't know--I hope so.It's awfully important.So kind of you.
Awfully sharp,please."It was wonderfully innocent now,his oblivion of all but his danger.Anything else that had ever passed between them was utterly out of it.Well,she had wanted him to be impersonal!
There was less of the same need therefore,happily,for herself;yet she only took time,before she flew to the sounder,to gasp at him:"You're in trouble?""Horrid,horrid--there's a row!"But they parted,on it,in the next breath;and as she dashed at the sounder,almost pushing,in her violence,the counter-clerk off the stool,she caught the bang with which,at Cocker's door,in his further precipitation,he closed the apron of the cab into which he had leaped.As he rebounded to some other precaution suggested by his alarm,his appeal to Miss Dolman flashed straight away.
But she had not,on the morrow,been in the place five minutes before he was with her again,still more discomposed and quite,now,as she said to herself,like a frightened child coming to its mother.Her companions were there,and she felt it to be remarkable how,in the presence of his agitation,his mere scared exposed nature,she suddenly ceased to mind.It came to her as it had never come to her before that with absolute directness and assurance they might carry almost anything off.He had nothing to send--she was sure he had been wiring all over--and yet his business was evidently huge.There was nothing but that in his eyes--not a glimmer of reference or memory.He was almost haggard with anxiety and had clearly not slept a wink.Her pity for him would have given her any courage,and she seemed to know at last why she had been such a fool."She didn't come?"she panted.
"Oh yes,she came;but there has been some mistake.We want a telegram.""A telegram?"
"One that was sent from here ever so long ago.There was something in it that has to be recovered.Something very,very important,please--we want it immediately."He really spoke to her as if she had been some strange young woman at Knightsbridge or Paddington;but it had no other effect on her than to give her the measure of his tremendous flurry.Then it was that,above all,she felt how much she had missed in the gaps and blanks and absent answers--how much she had had to dispense with:
it was now black darkness save for this little wild red flare.So much as that she saw,so much her mind dealt with.One of the lovers was quaking somewhere out of town,and the other was quaking just where he stood.This was vivid enough,and after an instant she knew it was all she wanted.She wanted no detail,no fact--she wanted no nearer vision of discovery or shame."When was your telegram?Do you mean you sent it from here?"She tried to do the young woman at Knightsbridge.
"Oh yes,from here--several weeks ago.Five,six,seven"--he was confused and impatient--"don't you remember?""Remember?"she could scarcely keep out of her face,at the word,the strangest of smiles.
But the way he didn't catch what it meant was perhaps even stranger still."I mean,don't you keep the old ones?""For a certain time."
"But how long?"
She thought;she must do the young woman,and she knew exactly what the young woman would say and,still more,wouldn't."Can you give me the date?""Oh God,no!It was some time or other in August--toward the end.
It was to the same address as the one I gave you last night.""Oh!"said the girl,knowing at this the deepest thrill she had ever felt.It came to her there,with her eyes on his face,that she held the whole thing in her hand,held it as she held her pencil,which might have broken at that instant in her tightened grip.This made her feel like the very fountain of fate,but the emotion was such a flood that she had to press it back with all her force.That was positively the reason,again,of her flute-like Paddington tone."You can't give us anything a little nearer?"Her "little"and her "us"came straight from Paddington.These things were no false note for him--his difficulty absorbed them all.The eyes with which he pressed her,and in the depths of which she read terror and rage and literal tears,were just the same he would have shown any other prim person.
"I don't know the date.I only know the thing went from here,and just about the time I speak of.It wasn't delivered,you see.
We've got to recover it."