Chapter Ten.
A Tragic Surprise.
Half an hour later, Nan Rendell let herself out of the front door, and ran hurriedly down the steps. Her sailor hat was perched uncertainly on the top of her heavy braids, the buttons of her jacket were unfastened, and she drew on her gloves as she walked, as if she had been in too much haste to finish dressing before leaving the house. Several acquaintances saluted her as they passed, but she rushed along unconscious of their greetings, and presently arrived at the point in the high road where houses stopped and the little township began. The shops which Mrs Rendell patronised were indiscriminately situated on either side of the road, which no doubt accounted for Nan’s erratic dives to and fro. She peered her head round the corner of the draper’s door, dashed across the road and craned through the grocer’s window, stood on tip-toe to investigate the interior of the post office, then ran back once more, to interview the fishmonger, and ask if Miss Rendell had yet called to leave the morning order. It was in the confectioner’s that Maud was run to earth at last. She was coming out of the doorway counting her change into her purse, when suddenly Nan’s face confronted her, and she started back in surprise.
“You?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“But I thought your were going to work? I left you hard at it. Got a headache?”
“Fer-ightful!” said Nan; and her looks justified the word, for her cheeks were pale, and her eyes looked worn and strained. “I couldn’t work any longer. I thought a little walk would do me good, so came out to meet you.”
“But—er,”—Maud hesitated uncertainly. She did not wish to appear inconsiderate towards her beloved Nan, but, remembering her mother’s instruction, she could not bring herself to stay away from home longer than was necessary. She looked at her sister appealingly, and slid a hand through her arm.
“But—I’ve finished my shopping, dear, and mother said I was to go straight back. Wouldn’t it do just as well to sit in the garden? You would get the air without fatigue, and I’d make you so cosy in the deck chair. You know, Nan, I—I want to go back!”
Nan turned her head aside, and spoke in a queer, muffled tone.
“Very well; but we’ll go round the back way. It’s only five minutes longer, and it’s quiet. I don’t want to meet any one. You’ll do that to oblige me, won’t you, Maud, as you have finished your shopping?”
Of course she would. Maud gave a little grip to her sister’s arm, and turned willingly enough up the side street which led off the high road. As in all small towns, the change from town to country came surprisingly quickly. Three minutes’ walk took the sisters into a pretty lane running parallel with the High Street, and commanding a sweeping view over the countryside. Here were no houses, only an avenue of beeches, with here and there a seat in a position of welcome shade. Maud often returned home by this quieter route, and seated herself on one of the benches to make up her accounts and enjoy the view at one and the same time. It was a favourite spot; but after this morning she could never pass it without a shrinking of the heart, a sickly remembrance of misery. At the first seat Nan slackened her pace insinuatingly, while Maud marched ahead, intentionally obtuse; but at the second a hand was laid on her arm, and such a trembling voice besought her to stop, that she forgot herself in sympathetic alarm.
“Nan, you do look ill! As white as a sheet. Lean forward and put your head on your knee, as low as you can get it! That is the best thing to do if you feel faint. Sit still for a minute, and then we will make another dash for home. You ought to lie down!”
But Nan sat bolt upright, clasping her fingers in nervous misery.
“I’m not faint. I’m thinking of you, not myself!—Maud darling; it’s been a mistake—we were all mistaken; but you are so good, you will be brave for our sakes, if not your own. It would break our hearts to see you suffer.”
She stopped short with a little sob of agitation, and Maud stared at her with wondering eyes.
“Suffer! I? Why should I suffer?” Then the colour rushed in a sudden wave to her cheeks, and her voice broke in the single, stifled inquiry, “Ned?”
“Yes. It is Lilias! He has asked mother for Lilias. She came upstairs and sent me out to meet you, so that you might not hear it suddenly. She thought you would rather have it so.”
“How kind of her! That was good of you both!” said Maud calmly. Her heart had stopped for a moment, and was now beating away at extraordinary speed; a singing noise was in her ears: it was as if some one had dealt her a violent blow, and she was as yet too stunned to realise its nature. She turned her head aside, and gazed vaguely up and down. A nursemaid wheeled a perambulator on the opposite pavement, while a little white-robed figure trotted at her side, tossing a ball in the air. Maud watched her movements with fascinated gaze. It seemed as though some tremendous issue depended on whether the ball was caught in those tiny, uncertain fingers.
“Ned wants to marry Lilias, does he?” Her voice sounded strange and far away, and she noted as much, and pondered on the peculiarity. “They will make a handsome couple. Lilias is so fair. She will look well beside him.”
“Maud, don’t! For pity’s sake don’t take it like that!”
The tears were raining down Nan’s cheeks, and she seized her sister’s hand in a passionate grasp.
“I know all about it. I am almost as wretched as you are. Don’t pretend to me. Say what you feel to me, at least, and it will help you to bear it.”
“But I don’t feel anything,” said Maud dully. “It seems like a dream. Lilias! He loves Lilias, and not me; he never loved me at all! He has been thinking of Lilias all this time. It’s—very—strange! I think what I feel most is shame for my own conceit. I have been deceiving myself all along, and that is a miserable thought! You should not sympathise with me, Nan: you should scold me, and tell me to be ashamed of myself.”
She spoke in the same dull, strangled note, and Nan continued to cry and clasp her hand in distress.
“I could never do that, or be anything but proud of you, darling! It was no conceit at all on your part, for we all thought the same. He always seemed to prefer being with you, and to be so shy and constrained with Lilias. I suppose that was a sign, but we did not recognise it. Even mother was sure it was you: every one was, except Lilias.”
Maud gave a quick glance upward.
“Did Lilias guess? Did she know that this was coming?”
“I have not seen her; but from what mother said, I imagine she did.”
“And she will—she cares for him too?”
“Yes!”
It was a very low little yes, almost a whisper, but at the sound of it Maud shrank as at a blow, and her face became drawn with pain. For the first time a realisation of what the news meant, broke upon her, and she cried aloud in a voice sharp with misery—
“They will be engaged; they will be married; and I shall have to stay at home and look on! I shall have to take part, and pretend that I don’t care. Oh, I can’t—I can’t do it! If it had been some one at a distance, some one I need never have seen, I could have borne it; but my own sister, living in the same house together all day long—that is too bitter! I’d rather die than face it!”
“Then I’ll die too!” cried Nan hotly. “Whether Ned cares for you or not, you are all the world to me. You don’t know how I love you, Maud! It would have broken my heart if you had married and gone away, and I never want to marry myself, if you and I can live together. No man could make up for you. I hate them all! Wretches! Nothing but misery wherever they come. I’ll never fall in love, and you’ll get over this in a few months, and we will look forward to having our own little house, and growing old together,—won’t we, darling?”
“Yes, we will,” assented Maud meekly. She looked at her sister and tried hard to smile; but the prospect seemed so dull—oh, so heart-breakingly dull!—after the rosy dreams of the past, that what was meant as comfort proved, after all, the last strain which was to break down her composure.
She threw up her hands to her face, and rocked to and fro in an abandonment of distress.
“Oh—oh, the days, and weeks, and months! They will be so long; I can’t realise it yet, but I know how I shall suffer. Oh, Nan, isn’t it hard, after being so happy—after feeling so sure? I never had a doubt all these years except just this last week, and then I thought it was my own foolish imagining;—and now to have it end like this! I can’t believe it! Are you sure, are you quite sure? It seems like a hideous mistake!”
Nan shook her head, and her face hardened.
“There’s no mistake on my part, but there’s one on his, and a big one too. He’ll find it out, that’s one comfort! He’ll suffer for it! If he thinks Lilias is going to be the sort of wife he needs, he’ll find out his mistake. He thinks himself well off because he has a few hundreds a year, and is as proud as a king because he has a house of his own in a dull little country town. Lilias’s ideas of poverty and his of wealth will come to much the same thing. She hates the country, and flies off to town at the least excuse. Ned is quiet and book-wormy; and she wants some one who is fond of life, and likes gadding about. They don’t suit each other in any one way that I can see, and before a year is over they will have found it out for themselves. Then he will be sorry!”
Maud cut her short with uplifted hand.
“Don’t, Nan; you make it worse! You mean to be kind, but it doesn’t comfort me to think that he will be disappointed. I love him, you see; and I can’t change in a moment because I discover that he doesn’t care for me. I want him to be happy. It would make me more miserable than ever if I thought it was a mistake. You are too hard on Lilias. She is very sweet and amiable, and if she really loves him she will not mind little things like that. We never spoke about him together, she and I, and she has only done what I did myself. No one is to blame—no one! It was my own foolish mistake, and I must bear the consequences.”
“You are an angel, and too good to live!” cried Nan, with a gulp. “I blame everybody, and myself worst of all. Prided myself on being sharp-sighted, and couldn’t save you from a blow like this! ... Maud, you don’t want to go home? You would rather not see him this morning? Mother said she would give no definite answer before talking to father, but would let him see Lilias for half an hour, and then pack him off by the midday train. She was going to tell him that under the circumstances she would prefer that he did not stay to lunch, so there would seem nothing strange about it if you and I were not back before he left.”
“No,” agreed Maud softly. She drew her watch from her belt and looked at the hour. “Perhaps you are right, Nan. It would be better not to try my strength too much this morning. In a day or two I shall have gained a little courage, but this morning I—I’ve had rather a shock, and feel weak and nervous. We will sit here and wait until he is gone.”
“Wouldn’t you rather come for a walk? The time seems so long when you are sitting still. A nice brisk walk through the woods!” suggested Nan insinuatingly; but Maud drew back with a quiver of pain.
“No, no! Not this morning! I should remember it always. Every step of the path would bring back this wretched day in the future, and I do so love the woods. Let me keep them free from association, at least. It will be bad enough to dread this road, as I always shall after this.”
“Just as you like, dear, just as you like; but what will you do? You can’t sit still and think all the time!”
“I’ll make up my accounts,” said Maud simply; and, despite her sister’s cry of protest, she insisted on doing as she said. Pencil and note-book came out of her pocket, and one item after another of the morning’s shopping was jotted down, and the result compared with the change in the housekeeping purse.
How could she do it? Nan tried to imagine how she herself would have acted in similar circumstances, and felt her heart beat fast at the possibility. Rage, storm, despair; drown herself in the nearest stream; lie down beneath the express train; bid farewell to the world, and retire into a nunnery. All these alternatives seemed natural and easy; she could imagine taking refuge in any one of them. But to go on with ordinary, everyday work, to take up the “next duty” and perform it in quiet, conscientious fashion—that was impossible!—the last thing in the world that she could bring herself to do.
She did not realise that the bent of a lifetime is not reversed in a moment, and that even the pangs of slighted love must be borne according to the temperament of the sufferer. Dear, placid, domesticated Maud found her best medicine in the “trivial round, the common task.”
Nan, looking over her shoulder, saw that the little rows of figures were as neat and accurate as ever, and caught a sigh of satisfaction when they were added together, and the change in the housekeeping purse was proved correct. Even in the midst of her distress, Maud was conscious of a distinct sense of satisfaction in balancing her accounts to a penny.