Part 3, Chapter VI.
Hopes and Fears.
But Art is impersonal. Downy palms and snown blackthorn may be offered to an artist as subjects for a sketch, just as well as if they would not also serve as tokens of love and hope. As Guy, one sunny morning, followed the path that all through Flete Dale led along by the riverside, he suffered no bud or blossom that indicated the coming of his tardy northern spring to escape him. As he gathered and combined them, it struck him that the glory of them was in the relief of their delicate tints and airy forms in the cold spring sunshine, against the pale spring sky, and that the thing would be to show them to Florella where they grew.
And, turning round a great tangle of rosy stems and shining brown buds, he saw her in the brown dress that had a sort of woodland tinting, and suited her, he thought, as well as harebell blue. She was listening to a tall, strong-limbed girl, with the handsome features and wind-blown complexion of the district, picturesquely set off by the yellow handkerchief which she wore on her head, listening with a troubled face. Her companion’s face was quite impassive, though there was a melancholy tone in her voice, as at sight of Guy, she turned off with a “Good day t’ye, sir.”
“Is that one of the girls you have been making friends with?” he said, after he had offered his spring buds to Florella, and she had taken them smiling, but still with wistful eyes.
“Yes. But I feel so ignorant and stupid with them. It is difficult quite to understand.” It was still more difficult, it was impossible to keep on the surface of things, when these two were together. But perhaps the inhabitants of Waynflete might be treated as an abstract subject, like the spring flowers. Rawdie thought that the discussion of their needs might occupy some time, and went off to investigate water-rats and other objects of interest.
“They talk to you, of course,” said Guy. “But no other stranger would get a word out of our folks.”
“They don’t talk much,” she answered. “But, one seems half to find out—and then one comes across such real troubles, and temptations. It seems so hard.”
“But, Clifton shouldn’t!” exclaimed Guy, with a sudden change. “There are very few people here fit for you to have anything to do with.”
“Oh, not that,” said Florella. “But, you see, I haven’t known much of any one but girls of my own sort. A friend of mine looks after a girl’s club in London, and some of us go to teach French and drawing there, or to sing. She thinks every one ought to spread whatever good things they may have. But it isn’t French and drawing that these girls want!”
“Do tell me just what you mean?” he said entreatingly, as they walked slowly on by the riverside.
“I mean,” she said, with a glow at thus taking counsel with him, which he little guessed, “that girls like me, tell each other their troubles, and we try to help each other, and sometimes we can. But one finds out much worse sorrows and trials than we ever have.”
“That is what you ought to have nothing to do with!” exclaimed Guy, imperatively.
“But,” she said, “you can’t help people just by being sorry for them in a general way. You have got to feel in yourself just what they feel. So one must try to understand them.”
Guy was silent. He could not keep his angel to himself. The more divine was the help she gave him, the more freely it must flow. He felt responsible for the welfare of Waynflete; he knew that he did not fight his battle for himself alone; but she had no obligations but the impulse to give herself in helpful love. She touched the flowers in her hand, and, with a sudden smile, said—
“You know, one has to ‘see.’”
“Yes,” he said, gravely. “Well! So the world was saved!”
She had given him the thought; but to herself it was new. She could not speak; while Guy felt for the moment as if the power to understand her had been cheaply bought by all the agony of his own experience.
They were brought suddenly back to earth again, to the spring flowers and the sunlight, and to the squalid cottages across the field, by wild and frantic barks from Rawdie, who rushed into view, wet and muddy, with a large rat in his mouth, while Jem Outhwaite, climbing up the bank behind him, cried out triumphantly, “He’ve got ’im, sir; he’ve got ’im hissel’!”
Rawdie went home in a state of absolute self-satisfaction. For Guy, it had been a moment for which to live; but, such are the conditions of this poor mortal life, that it was followed by a great reaction, by passionate longings to take this beloved maiden to himself, by the old disgust at all that was abnormal in his fate. He soon went back to Ingleby, where he puzzled Godfrey by fitful spirits, intermittent efforts to seem more like other people, and by hours of gloom and silence. The mental fever quieted down after a time, or perhaps he learnt to endure it.
But Florella was happier for the moment of approach. They had not ceased to understand each other. She could not paint the sun on the spring flowers, she could not satisfy herself with any tint with which she tried to match them. But, if light and hue escaped her, she could seize on their form, and she made delicate and exquisite pen-and-ink sketches of every swelling leaf and bursting bud.
She went, also, and stood on the bridge which she had seen in vision on that murky autumn evening, when her soul had followed Guy’s through its strange encounter. She looked at the laughing, living water, sparkling in the spring sunshine, and at the woods, now fresh and green. It was the fairest spot that ever was cursed by haunting memories. And yet, in the midst of all its sweetness, she felt conscious of something that she did not see, that eluded any insight that she might possess. And she did make some friends, and took into her heart some troubles, and learnt to love the weird and lovely place, because Guy loved it so much. She did not regret the London season which she was missing; she would not go and stay with the Stauntons to see the pictures; there were pictures enough in the woods, such as she had never seen before.
Once Godfrey came over on business about the estate, and came to call. He had lost his boyish manner, and had caught his brother’s gravity and reticence.
“Ah!” said Mrs Palmer, afterwards, when he had somehow extracted the fact that Constancy was working hard at college, and thinking of nothing but her examinations, “I’ve always known that boy admired Cosy. He’s too young for her, and Ingleby wouldn’t suit her at all. But clever girls often take to handsome men with nothing in them.”
“But Godfrey Waynflete has a good deal in him, Aunt Con.”
“Well, he hasn’t much to say. I expect Guy was too clever for old Mrs Waynflete, and wouldn’t give her her own way. But what Cosy will do when she comes home, I can’t think. She’ll never find enough to occupy her talents. I wish she would marry—some one who could give her a career.”
Florella did not pass over to her aunt a letter which she had just received from Constancy.
That Florella had powers of an unusual kind, except for painting, was an idea that had never formulated itself in the elder girl’s mind. Nevertheless, she was always open with her, and was never quite happy under her disapproval. She wrote—
“People ought not to have to decide on their future lives till they are thirty at least. I feel so extremely young sometimes. It’s much easier to learn moral philosophy than to find it make any difference in one’s life. I shall go in for society, and see if that has a developing effect. New sorts of people teach one more than hooks. I got heaps of ideas from Mrs Waynflete. All that business life was so new to one. I do like meeting new kinds of people. Every one here is so groovy. University life is very narrow. It is much more original and interesting, if you have brains, to spend them on doing than on learning. Mrs Waynflete was far cleverer than any literary woman. I am glad Guy is better, and that ‘Mr Godfra’,’ as old Cooper called him, is being such a good boy, and minding his business. If you can manage a private interview with Rawdie, you might give him my love. The only thing I regret in the events of last summer, is that that enchanting beast’s former master promised to get me a similar puppy. And now that chance is lost to me for ever. Well, I have no more time. If I don’t come a cropper, I believe Miss —, will offer me a lectureship here. Only in that way shall I think of coming back again. But I think a London winter would pay best. The tour with the Stauntons is the next thing, at any rate, and I mean to enjoy that to my heart’s content.” Florella mused over this letter. She thought it significant that Cosy should find time to speculate on life, when her final examination was imminent, and she understood the veiled allusion to the attentive professor, whose attentions, though she did not know it, had been so carefully brought to Godfrey’s notice by Cousin Susan. She had always thought that Cosy had liked Godfrey better than she had chosen to confess. But she had done her best to offend him, and with her sister he was stiff and shy. Besides, there was a general belief that he was engaged to Jeanie. He did not look very happy, and Guy had never dropped a hint of such an arrangement, and always managed to put Godfrey in a favourable light, in any chance mention of his name.
But Florella had heard Cuthbert Staunton call him a “young ruffian,” and she could not think him good enough for her brilliant sister. He was certainly on Constancy’s conscience; but whether he was also on her heart, was a different matter. On the whole, Florella hoped not.