Chapter Seventeen.
A Budget of Letters.
One bright May morning Mrs Rendell sat by her desk ostensibly busy with accounts, but in reality watching the movements of her daughter Lilias, who lounged on the window seat reading the letters which had just been delivered by the second post. Mrs Rendell herself had brought these letters into the room, and consequently knew full well who were her daughter’s correspondents, and which envelope contained the separate effusions. The dainty grey, with its edging of white, came from Lilias’s bosom friend, a certain Ella Duckworth, whose sayings and doings were so constantly quoted in the schoolroom that her very name had become the signal for groans of disapproval; the fat white packet bore the magic name of the Bon Marché, Paris, and contained patterns of material for the frock in which Lilias intended to array herself at the garden parties of the coming season; and the narrow envelope, with its bold, even writing, was a familiar object in the Rendell household, whose authorship required no explanation.
Mrs Rendell handed this letter to her daughter with a smiling remembrance of the days when such letters used to come to herself—of her eagerness and delight, her insatiable appetite for more. As she added up her weekly bills and balanced her accounts, soft little trills of laughter greeted her ears from the other end of the room, and she smiled again in enjoyment of her child’s happiness, and lifted her head to regard the pretty picture. The sun shone on Lilias’s fair head, transforming it into an aureole of gold; pink and white were the colours of her morning dress, pink and white was her face, and the blossom on the hawthorn tree which shaded the window seemed made on purpose to form a background to the charming figure. Mrs Rendell’s eyes softened with motherly pride; but the next moment her brows contracted and her expression grew troubled, for there on the seat lay Ned Talbot’s letter unopened, while Lilias smiled and dimpled in enjoyment of her friend’s effusion. It seemed strange that a girl should show so little eagerness to read a lover’s letter; but Mrs Rendell reflected that perhaps Lilias preferred to leave the greater treat to the last, and comforted herself thereby. When Ella’s letter had been read, then of course Ned’s would be even more eagerly devoured; but no! Lilias regretfully folded away the sheet in its envelope, regarded the two unopened envelopes with languid indecision, and finally selected the packet from Paris as more worthy of attention. If she had looked up at that moment and caught the flash in the watching eyes, Miss Lilias would have been on her guard; but, as it was, she complacently settled herself to the study of patterns, holding up the little squares of gauze to the light, laying them against her dress, and pleating them in her fingers with an absorption which rendered her unconscious of her surroundings. Five minutes passed, ten minutes, and still she turned from one novelty to another, unable to make a choice among so many temptations; and still her mother watched from her corner, the pencil stayed in her busy hands. The irritation had faded from Mrs Rendell’s face, and given place to an expression of anxious tenderness; for Lilias’s indifference to Ned’s letter was but another strengthening of the growing conviction that the girl’s feeling for her lover fell short of what it should rightly be. A dozen signs, too subtle to be put into words, but none the less eloquent, had attracted Mrs Rendell’s attention within the last few weeks, and sent a chill to her heart. Above all things it was imperative that Lilias should love her future husband with all the strength of which she was capable, for Lilias’s mother knew that no other power but love could develop a selfish nature, and make a noble woman out of a vain and thoughtless girl. Love has wrought this miracle before, and will again; and through all her grief for Maud’s disappointment, Mrs Rendell had comforted herself by the reflection that Lilias was the one of all her children who was most in need of a softening influence, the one to whom the love of a good man might be most valuable. Dear, sweet Maud could not be selfish if she tried, but an early engagement might be the only means of saving Lilias from the injurious effect of flattering and worldly friends. So the mother had reasoned with herself; but her arguments would lose all their force if Lilias herself had no love in her heart for her future husband. A loveless marriage is a catastrophe for any girl, but for Lilias it would mean moral suicide: a deliberate settling down into a selfish, self-seeking life! Was it possible that she had accepted Ned for no higher motive than a love of excitement, and the puny triumph of making the first marriage in the family? Mrs Rendell would not judge the girl so harshly without unmistakable proof, but, her suspicions being aroused, she could not be content until she grasped the true position of affairs. A broken engagement was the last thing which she desired to have in her family, but better that, a thousand times over, than that two lives should be wrecked for ever!
She waited patiently until, at last, Lilias deigned to read her lover’s letter, watching her face with scrutinising eyes. It was evident that something in the closely-written sheet did not commend itself to the girl’s approval; for as she read the white forehead grew fretted with lines, and the lips took a sullen droop. The smiles faded away, and it was a very blank, dejected edition of Miss Lilias Rendell who looked up at last, to meet her mother’s glance.
“Well, what is it, dear? You seem troubled. No bad news, I hope?”
“Oh no—nothing serious, at least. Ned seems worried. Things don’t go smoothly in the new Works, and he has such high-flown ideas. It seems to me he makes troubles, by expecting every one else to be as quixotic as himself. He is not likely to find high-flown notions among ordinary business men!”
“And since when, my dear, have you become acquainted with the feelings of business men?” inquired Mrs Rendell sharply; then, in a softer tone, “My dear child, I implore you not to begin your engagement to Ned by discouraging his highest motives. Men, as a rule, are not overburdened with sentiment, and it is the duty of a wife to encourage all that is good and generous. You would be grieved, I am sure, to feel that your influence had a sordid or worldly direction!”
“Oh, mother!” protested Lilias, shocked beyond words at the possibility of such a charge, as we are all shocked when our secret thoughts are put into words, and we see them before us in all their naked hideousness. “Oh, mother, as if I could do anything so dreadful. Ned says I am his good angel; of course, of course, I want him to be good; but it is depressing, isn’t it, when as soon as one gets engaged business begins to go wrong, and every letter brings news of some fresh worry or unpleasantness? It is enough to make one feel melancholy!”
“Yes, dear, it is, and I’m sorry for you. It is a disappointment to us all to hear that Ned is so unhappy in his new position, for it seemed to promise so well six months ago. Father is anxious to have a talk with him on the subject, and see if he can help to smooth the way, so the sooner he can come the better it will be. Does he make any suggestion in his letter as to the date that will suit him best?”
“Y–es!” said Lilias; and her face clouded once more. “He wants to come on the twentieth; and it is so awkward, for the Duckworths want me to go to them for that very week. They are having a tennis party, and their first day on the river, and several teas and dinners. It would be such a delightful week! I thought, perhaps, Ned might put off his visit until June. Maud would be home by that time, and they would both be sorry to miss each other if he came earlier.”
Mrs Rendell looked at her with a mingling of exasperation and relief—relief that she should be so ignorant of Maud’s feelings, exasperation that it should be possible for one sister to be so oblivious to the sufferings of another. She could not but realise also that Lilias would prefer a week of gaiety at Richmond to a visit from Ned Talbot; and her distress at the thought made her voice sound somewhat sharp as she replied—
“There is some one else to be considered besides yourself, my dear. You forget that your father and I would prefer to see Ned at once, and would not approve of postponing his visit. It is you, and not Maud, whom he comes to see; and you would surely not choose to spend the time in frivolity which might be given to helping and comforting the man you have promised to marry?”
“No—no, of course not, mother!” cried Lilias, shocked once more at the suggestion of her own selfishness. “I’ll write at once, and say that the twentieth will suit us all.” She gathered her letters together as she spoke, and rose to leave the room, holding her head well in the air, and keeping up an appearance of composure so long as she was in her mother’s sight, but once outside the door the tears of disappointment rushed to her eyes, and she brought down her foot on the floor with a stamp of irritation. She felt jarred and disappointed, and thoroughly ill-used into the bargain. Only two months engaged, and already involved in trouble and anxiety, and expected to give up her own pleasure in order to condole with a dejected lover! She had imagined that it would be Ned’s place to console her; and if his fears should prove well founded, surely it would be she who needed consolation in the prospect of a long, uncertain engagement. Lilias had known one or two girls who had waited year after year while their fiancés struggled against adverse circumstances, and she was by no means anxious to follow their example. They lost their beauty, and grew thin and pale; people spoke of them with expressions of commiseration; the subject of marriage was studiously avoided in their presence. Lilias grew hot at the thought that any one might possibly regard her in such a fashion. When she had become engaged to Ned Talbot, the future had appeared couleur de rose, and she had sunned herself in the prospect of increased importance at home, and the honour which would be paid to the beautiful young bride by her husband’s friends and relatives. How miserable, how humiliating, if all these dreams came to naught, and she found herself bound to an unsuccessful man, with all her ambitions nipped in the bud!
Lilias’s thoughts roamed back over the past, and a dull resentment against her fiancé grew in her mind; for did it not seem that he had always been unlucky, that the brief space of prosperity that had preceded her engagement had been the exception, not the rule, in his experiences? Old Mr Talbot had died while Ned was still at college, and the necessity of looking after the business for the benefit of the family had compelled the young fellow to sacrifice his own hopes of a profession, and settle down to a commercial life. Mr Talbot had owned “Works” of some kind; Lilias had the haziest idea of their purport. Ned manufactured “engines and things,” she told her friends vaguely, and spent his days amidst clanking machinery, in an atmosphere impregnated with steam and oil. A dozen years before, “the Works” had been a profitable concern, but it had steadily declined in value, as more powerful firms monopolised the trade. Ned had struggled hard against the tide, but his term of management had been far from prosperous, and when, a year ago, his most formidable rival had come forward with an offer to take over the smaller firm, and instal him in the position of manager over the united businesses, he had been thankful to accept, and to believe that his anxieties were at an end. Six months—scarcely six months—and already he was beginning to feel uneasy, to suspect trouble ahead! Lilias tightened her lips, and her eyes gave out an impatient flash. It requires a noble nature to preserve unswerving confidence in a man through a period of reverse, and Lilias was not capable of the effort. It seemed to her that such a want of success must surely be Ned’s own fault, and something startlingly like dislike sprang up in her heart, as she realised how closely she herself would be involved in his failure. Her mother had declared that it was her duty to encourage Ned in his quixotic scruples; but surely, surely, it was also Ned’s duty to consider her interests, and to be ready to sacrifice his scruples, if they threatened injury to the future which she had agreed to share!
Lilias was as angry as it was in her nature to be, but her love of approval made her unwilling to exhibit herself in so unamiable a mood, and she rushed upstairs to the porch room to recover her composure before joining her sisters in the garden. The worst of belonging to a large family, however, is that it is exceedingly difficult to secure privacy, and, as fate would have it, who should be seated in the porch room but Nan herself, the very last member of the household whom Lilias would have wished to meet in the circumstances. Her flushed face and tearful eyes could not escape attention, but while Maud would have been tactfully silent, Elsie sympathetic, Agatha gushing, and Christabel apparently unconscious, Nan must needs stare with all her eyes, whistle like a schoolboy, and exclaim inelegantly—
“Halloa! What’s up? What in the world are you in a rage about now?”
“Now,” indeed! As if she were in the habit of flying into rages every ten minutes of the day! As if it were not universally acknowledged that she had the sweetest temper in the family! Lilias felt more irritated than ever, and would have enjoyed nothing so much as taking the big blundering creature by the shoulders and giving her a good shaking. She controlled herself, however, and answered with a gallant attempt at pathos—
“Rage is hardly the word, Nan. I am very, very miserable. You don’t understand, and I am not at liberty to explain the reason. I am in trouble—horrible trouble!”
“Humph!” quoth Nan sceptically. “Doesn’t seem to have a chastening effect upon you. It affects us all differently, I suppose. I should have said you were in a savage rage, if you’d asked me!”
“But I didn’t ask you, you see, and it is very wrong of you to judge. If I could tell you the truth, you would realise your mistake, but I must keep my own counsel.”
“Of course, of course! Don’t tell me, I beseech you; I can’t keep a secret if I’m paid for it,” said Nan calmly, and with an absence of curiosity altogether maddening to the listener. There was nothing Lilias wanted more than to be coaxed to tell her trouble and pose as a suffering martyr, for her sister’s benefit. She flounced out of the room in high dudgeon, and Nan stopped her work and looked after her with thoughtful eyes.
“This is the beginning,” she said tragically to herself—“the beginning of the end!”