After all that has happened, may I trust to your influence to back me?"
"Certainly!" I said.
Mr. Bruff shook hands with me, and left the room.
Betteredge followed him out; I went to the sofa to look at Mr. Blake.
He had not moved since I had laid him down and made his bed--he lay locked in a deep and quiet sleep.
While I was still looking at him, I heard the bedroom door softly opened.
Once more, Miss Verinder appeared on the threshold, in her pretty summer dress.
"Do me a last favour?" she whispered. "Let me watch him with you."
I hesitated--not in the interests of propriety; only in the interest of her night's rest.
She came close to me, and took my hand.
"I can't sleep; I can't even sit still, in my own room," she said.
"Oh, Mr. Jennings, if you were me, only think how you would long to sit and look at him.
Say, yes!
Do!"
Is it necessary to mention that I gave way?
Surely not!
She drew a chair to the foot of the sofa.
She looked at him in a silent ecstasy of happiness, till the tears rose in her eyes.
She dried her eyes, and said she would fetch her work.
She fetched her work, and never did a single stitch of it.
It lay in her lap--she was not even able to look away from him long enough to thread her needle.
I thought of my own youth; I thought of the gentle eyes which had once looked love at me.
In the heaviness of my heart I turned to my Journal for relief, and wrote in it what is written here.
So we kept our watch together in silence. One of us absorbed in his writing; the other absorbed in her love.
Hour after hour he lay in his deep sleep.
The light of the new day grew and grew in the room, and still he never moved.
Towards six o'clock, I felt the warning which told me that my pains were coming back.
I was obliged to leave her alone with him for a little while. I said I would go up-stairs, and fetch another pillow for him out of his room.
It was not a long attack, this time.
In a little while I was able to venture back, and let her see me again.
I found her at the head of the sofa, when I returned.
She was just touching his forehead with her lips.
I shook my head as soberly as I could, and pointed to her chair.
She looked back at me with a bright smile, and a charming colour in her face.
"You would have done it," she whispered, "in my place!" * * * * *
It is just eight o'clock.
He is beginning to move for the first time.
Miss Verinder is kneeling by the side of the sofa.
She has so placed herself that when his eyes first open, they must open on her face.
Shall I leave them together?
Yes! * * * * *
Eleven o'clock.--The house is empty again.
They have arranged it among themselves; they have all gone to London by the ten o'clock train.
My brief dream of happiness is over.
I have awakened again to the realities of my friendless and lonely life.
I dare not trust myself to write down, the kind words that have been said to me especially by Miss Verinder and Mr. Blake.
Besides, it is needless.
Those words will come back to me in my solitary hours, and will help me through what is left of the end of my life.
Mr. Blake is to write, and tell me what happens in London.
Miss Verinder is to return to Yorkshire in the autumn (for her marriage, no doubt); and I am to take a holiday, and be a guest in the house.