AMIEL TO THE FORE.
“Hero. I will do any modest office, my lord, to help her to a good husband.”
Much Ado About Nothing.
“WHO was that gentleman that bowed to you just now, Cicely? No; over there, near the door—don’t you see him?”
“I didn’t notice him. I don’t see any one that I ever saw before in my life, as far as I know,” replied the girl of whom the question was asked, glancing indifferently round. “Are you not rather tired, Amiel? Come and sit down for a little; there are some empty chairs.”
“I’m not tired. I think you get tired more quickly than I. But it will be nice to sit down, I dare say. I am rather tired of the pictures. Let us look at the people a little instead. That is always amusing, particularly in a small room like this, where one can keep the same groups in sight. There, Cicely, look now, there he is again, over in the corner beside that horrible martyr picture. Quick, or you will lose sight of him. He is a handsome man, whoever he is. He is turning our way.”
Lady Forrester seemed quite excited.
“My dear Amy, what are you talking about?” said Cicely bewilderedly.
“The man who bowed to you just now, I want to know who he is. He must be a friend of yours; he keeps giving little glances to see if it’s any use for him to bow again. Now, Cicely, you must see him.”
Cicely looked up. This time she at once caught sight of the person her sister had been so perseveringly pointing out to her. A rather tall, dark man—handsome, Amiel had called him; he was standing but a few yards away from where they were sitting, apparently engrossed in the picture before him. But as Cicely watched him, he again glanced in their direction; in another moment he had returned Cicely’s bow and had crossed the room towards the sisters.
“Amiel, you must let me introduce Mr. Guildford to you,” said Miss Methvyn. Lady Forrester bowed and smiled, but from the expression of her face Cicely saw that she had either not heard the name correctly, or had failed to associate it with any one of whom she had any previous knowledge.
“Do you admire that horrible picture you have been looking at so long?” she said brightly, imagining that she was only addressing some ordinary acquaintance of her sister’s, and that a little small-talk was desirable, little dreaming that this meeting, this chance, matter-of-fact coming across each other in a London picture gallery, was to the two beside her a crisis in life, an unacknowledged goal, to which, for ten long months, each had been secretly and with ever-increasing anxiety looking forward. Mr. Guildford smiled as he replied—to some extent he understood the position, Cicely’s forte had never been small-talk, and her sister was evidently in the habit of taking the lead on such occasions—“No,” he said, “I certainly don’t admire it. But I don’t think it is ‘horrible;’ it is too unnatural to be anything worse than annoying. Anatomically speaking, it is an impossible figure.”
“Oh! you mean the twist in the right arm,” said Lady Forrester. “Yes, that was pointed out to me. But I never look at pictures critically as my sister does. I only think if they are pretty or ugly.”
Mr. Guildford smiled again. But it was a smile concealing an intense anxiety. Why would not Cicely speak? She stood there beside her sister, calm and quiet as ever, unruffled apparently in the slightest degree by this sudden meeting, which had set his heart beating and his pulses throbbing almost beyond his power to conceal. No, there was not, there never could be, any hope for him, such as, during these weary months, he had now and then wildly dreamt of. It was a cruel fate surely which thus tantalised him. He answered Lady Forrester’s remarks in her own strain, smiled, and looked interested in the right place, so that Amiel mentally pronounced him an agree able man, and wondered again who he was and where her sister had met him. But ever and anon he glanced at Cicely. She seemed to him to have gained in beauty since he last saw her; there was a mixture of bright colour in her dress now, she looked well and untroubled. “I suppose she is quite happy now that she has got her sister again,” he thought. “Well, I should be glad of it; she was very friendless.”
But somehow he felt further away from her than he had ever done before—further away even than on that miserable day when the news of her engagement to her cousin had revealed to him his own feelings towards her and had broken down his self-control. He felt now as if she could never again have need of him, as if their paths must henceforth utterly diverge. “Evidently these Forresters are rich and fashionable,” he thought, with an unreasonable impulse of irritation at poor Amiel’s pretty dress and general air of breeding and prosperity. “No doubt, Lady Forrester is ambitious and has her own ideas about her sister’s future. I hate fashionable people;” little suspecting that as these reflections were crossing his brain, the subject of his animadversions was saying to herself, “I wonder who he is. He is very good-looking, and clever I should think. Ever so much more like other people than some of Cicely’s friends—that odd-looking little Mr. Hayle, for instance.”
But when, in a few minutes, Lady Forrester’s small-talk gave signs of coming to an end, Mr. Guildford turned to go. He had already bowed to the sisters without shaking hands with either, and was just moving away, when almost as if involuntarily, Miss Methvyn uttered his name. “Mr. Guildford,” she said, with a half appeal in her tone which puzzled him, “will you not come to see us as you promised? I am sure Amy will be pleased if you will.”
She turned to her sister. Lady Forrester looked surprised, but replied smilingly, without hesitation and with only so very slight a touch of constraint in her voice that Cicely trusted Mr. Guildford would not detect its presence—“Certainly, Sir Herbert and I are always pleased to see any friend of my sister’s. I hope you will come to see us.”
Mr. Guildford bowed. “You are very kind,” he said, “but,” with a glance at Cicely, “as Miss Methvyn knows, I am not an idle man; I have very little time for paying calls.—I am only one of her numerous acquaintances, I see,” he thought bitterly. “Lady Forrester has never even heard my name, it appears.” But at that instant he caught sight of Cicely, a quick flush of shame, of disappointment, or wounded feeling, which, he could not tell had spread over her face; a contraction of pain—how well he remembered that look!—had ruffled the fair forehead; he could almost have imagined that there were tears in the blue eyes—he was softened in a moment. “I don’t think I know your address,” he said, turning again to Lady Forrester.
“It is 31, Upper L—— Place,” she replied amiably. “I have one of my husband’s cards in my pocket-book I think; I can add the address in pencil if you like.”
“No thank you; I am quite sure I shall not forget it,” and again he lifted his hat in farewell and left the sisters alone.
“Amy,” exclaimed Cicely, as soon as he was out of hearing, “Amy, why were you not more cordial in your manner to him about coming to see us? I am sure he thought you did not want him to come.”
The reproach in her tone surprised Lady Forrester. She looked at Cicely with bewilderment in her bright brown eyes. “Not cordial,” she exclaimed, “I thought I was quite as cordial as there was any need to be. In fact, I did not quite understand what you said about his coming to see us; he is some friend of Trevor’s, I suppose? You forget I don’t know all the friends you have made since I was married, and Herbert is very particular.”
“Herbert will never require to be ‘particular’ about any one I introduce to you,” said Cicely with momentary haughtiness. “But Amy,” she went on, more gently, “you cannot have such a short memory. You haven’t forgotten all I told you about Mr. Guildford; don’t you remember he was the doctor at Sothernbay, who—”
“The doctor who was with my little darling when he died,” exclaimed Amiel. “Oh! Cicely, forgive me. Oh! how stupid I am—how horribly heartless and ungrateful I must have seemed!” the tears rushed into her eyes. “Oh! I wish I could call him back, Cicely, and tell him I hadn’t the least idea who he was!”
“But I have so often told you his name, Amy dear,” said Cicely, compassionating her distress, yet still a little vexed with her. “And couldn’t you have understood by my manner that there was some reason for asking him to come to see us? I don’t ask gentlemen to your house.”
“Except Mr. Hayle,” put in Amiel.
“No, not except Mr. Hayle. Mr. Hayle called and you yourself asked him to come again, because you knew how much mamma liked him. But, oh, how silly of us to get cross about it! Forgive me, Amy, only I wish you had seen that I had a reason for what I did.”
“So do I!” said Lady Forrester penitently. “But you see, dear, I was no more thinking of the Sothernbay doctor at that moment than of the man in the moon. You never in the least described him to me, remember. And this man doesn’t look like a doctor.”
“He is not exactly a doctor now,” said Cicely. “I never thought of him as only a doctor. He was clever in other directions too.”
“Well, he will call in a few days, at least I hope so,” said Amiel, getting up her spirits again, and to do her justice, it was not often she let them go down,—“and then you will see how nice I shall be to him. Has he a wife, by the bye?” she added quickly.
“No,” replied Cicely. They were out in the street by this time, walking briskly homewards. Was it the keen, fresh air—it was a frosty day—which had given the girl’s cheeks the sudden glow which her sister observed, as she answered the question? Amiel, like Mrs. Crichton, though in a general way the most outspoken of human beings, sometimes had her own thoughts about things. “I wonder if Mr. Guildford will call,” she said to herself.
But some days passed without his doing so, and Amiel was beginning to think that either she had been mistaken in imagining her sister’s manner to have been different from usual on the day of the unexpected meeting in the picture-room, or that there was some stronger reason for Mr. Guildford’s staying away than she had then suspected, when, by one of those curious little social coincidences on which hang apparently so many of the great events of life, she met him again at the house of a friend of Sir Herbert’s where they were dining.
Cicely was not with them. The guests were few in number, consisting principally of men of position and mark in science or literature, for the host and hostess were what Lady Forrester described as “horribly clever people,” and their house was a favourite resort of many of the sociably inclined lions of the day.
“I used to hate that kind of dinner-party when we were first married,” she confessed to her sister while dressing for the entertainment. “I used to be always imagining to myself what a little fool they must all think me, and how they must wonder what a grave, middle-aged ‘diplomate’ like dear old Herbert could have seen in me to make him want to marry me. But I’ve quite got over all that now. Not that they don’t think me a little fool, I am quite sure they do, but I am beginning to suspect that very clever people find it rather refreshing sometimes to come across some one utterly unlike themselves and who isn’t the least overawed by all their learning. I am very happy indeed in my profound ignorance—I don’t even offend by possessing a little knowledge. Only now and then I come across some one I really can’t get to talk. Do you remember that terrible Dr. Furnival, the man who could talk twenty living languages, but was never known to make an observation in his own? He was hopeless, and he was always taking me in to dinner at one time! I wonder whom I shall be consigned to to-night.”
“You must tell me all about it to-morrow,” said Cicely. “I am going to bed early. I am rather tired.”
“I don’t think you are looking well,” said Amiel, anxiously. “And you so often say you are tired. Cicely dearest,” she added fondly, “is anything troubling you? Some times lately I have fancied—” she hesitated.
“What?” asked Cicely, smiling. But her smile seemed to Amiel to have strangely little brightness in it. “What have you fancied, Amy?”
“I can’t tell you—just that something was troubling you.”
“We have had a great many troubles,” said Cicely evasively.
“Yes, but the look I mean doesn’t come from those. It is an uncertain, wistful look, as if you were trying to be satisfied about something and couldn’t. I don’t want you to tell me, dear, if you don’t like, but if—if I could help you or be any good to you, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”
Cicely kissed her. “Yes, I would,” she said. “But don’t trouble about me, Amy. You have made yourself look quite anxious, and I was just thinking how bright and pretty you were to-night,” she added regretfully.
“I shall look ‘bright and pretty’ again in a minute,” said Lady Forrester insinuatingly, “if—if—Cicely don’t be angry with me—if you’ll satisfy me about one thing.”
“Tell me what it is then.”
“Whatever is it that is troubling you has nothing to do with Trevor Fawcett, has it?” asked Amiel boldly. “It is not that you are looking back to all that, is it?”
Cicely’s face cleared. “No,” she said unhesitatingly, “it has nothing to do with that.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Amiel. “You know I never thought him good enough for you, Cicely. That wife of his is welcome to him as far as you are concerned, in my opinion, though I must say—”
“Please don’t say it, Amy,” interrupted Cicely. “I don’t like even you to say bitter things about them. Why should you? You see how completely I have outgrown it. I can’t bear you to be unforgiving to Trevor, poor Trevor. I wish he had been our brother, Amy!”
“I will forgive him—utterly,” said Amiel. “I promise you I will, whenever, or if ever, I see you as happy as I am; and that, he would never have made you. You would have been so tired of him—as tired of him as Herbert ought to have been of me long ago!”
And so saying she gathered together her velvet draperies, and held up her face—she was not quite as tall as her sister—for a parting kiss. Cicely spent the evening quietly by herself—she had disappeared for the night before the Forresters’ return. It was not till the next morning at breakfast that she heard anything about the dinner-party.
“How did you get on last night?” she asked her sister. “Did Dr. Furnival take you in to dinner?”
“No, my dear, he did not,” said Amiel importantly. “Would you like to know who had the honour of doing so?”
“Lord H—himself, perhaps,” said Cicely. “There were not many people there, were there?”
“No, very few,” replied Lady Forrester. “Only two other ladies, but they were both far bigger people than I, so I was not the prima donna, as Mrs. Malaprop or Mrs. Gamp or somebody says. Who do you think was my fate for the evening?”
“How can I guess?”
Amy’s eyes sparkled. “Can’t you really?” she exclaimed. “Well, then, I’ll tell you. It was the gentleman we have been staying at home to see for nearly a week. I told him so,” she added maliciously.
“Mr. Guildford!” exclaimed Cicely.
“Yes, my dear, Mr. Guildford. And I made myself very nice to him. Didn’t I, Herbert?”
“It looked like it certainly,” said Sir Herbert, from behind his newspaper. He was a grave, somewhat matter-of-fact man as a rule, but Cicely, who sat next him, fancied that she discerned a twinkle of amusement in his eyes, as he answered Amiel’s appeal.
“Yes,” she repeated, “I made myself very nice to him. He is coming to call, and he was very sorry—really distressed—at our having stayed in for him so many days.”
“Amy,” exclaimed Cicely, in a tone of genuine vexation, “you didn’t really say that?”
“Of course not, you silly child, I am only teasing you,” replied Amy, at the same time, however, throwing unperceived by her sister a triumphant glance across the table at her husband. “Seriously, Cicely, I like him very much, and he is coming to see us some day soon. I had no idea he was a man of such position and note as he is. Herbert tells me he is considered one of the most rising men of the day—among scientific people I mean.”
“Yes,” said Sir Herbert, “he is a very clever and original man. He is now known to have been the author of a series of papers in the ‘Six-weekly,’ which made quite a sensation a few months ago. Your Sothernbay doctor has awakened to find himself famous, Cicely.”
“I did not know it,” she replied simply. “I knew he was clever and very hard-working, but I did not know he had already reached any recognised position.”
“The meeting him at the H.’s shows what he is in itself,” said Sir Herbert. Then he returned to his paper, and no more was said about Mr. Guildford.
But a good deal was thought about him. Amiel’s head was full of him, and the discovery which she believed she had made.
“Herbert,” she had said to her husband the instant they were alone in the carriage on their way home the evening before, “Herbert, I know now what is the matter with Cicely. I know why she has grown so silent, and as if she could not feel interested in anything. She does care for him, and she thinks he doesn’t care for her.”
“My dear child, what are you talking about?” exclaimed poor Sir Herbert. “Cicely does care for whom?”
“For Mr. Guildford. I told you we met him when we went to see those pictures the other day. I suspected it then; I am sure of it now. I mean I am sure now that he cares for her too.”
“Surely you are jumping to a conclusion in an extraordinary way, my dear. What can she know of Mr. Guildford? Where have they ever met? And the last thing you told me—only last night I believe it was, you were quite angry because I ventured to express a doubt about it—was that Cicely was breaking her heart for that cousin of hers, Fawcett, I mean, the man who behaved so strangely to her,” said Sir Herbert.
“But that was all a mistake. She has told me it isn’t that,” exclaimed Amiel eagerly. “And, Herbert, you don’t understand. Mr. Guildford was the doctor at Sothernbay.”
She went on to explain his identity with the man, of whom during the first part of their residence in India, there had been frequent mention in home letters. Sir Herbert began to understand things.
“I never dreamt of his being the same Guildford,” he said. “But Amy, my dear, you had better take care what you are about.”
“You don’t mind my asking him to come to see us?” she said. “And supposing what I think should be the case, Herbert, what then?”
“How do you mean?”
“Would it be a bad marriage for Cicely?”
“A bad marriage? In a worldly sense, you mean, I suppose? No, I don’t know that it would. Of course had her position remained what it was, she might have done better. But as things are—no, there would be nothing to object to. And personally I know he is a very estimable man. The H.’s think very highly of him.”
Amiel breathed more freely. She was conscious that she had, as she expressed it, “made herself very nice to Mr. Guildford.” In her dexterous, woman’s way she had succeeded in eliciting from him far more particulars of his acquaintance with her sister than she had before been in possession of, and putting one thing with another, a favourite occupation of hers, she had arrived at her own conclusions. And with even more tact, she had managed to infuse into her companion’s heart, a feeling that hitherto he had never ventured to encourage. She had given him to understand that, in her opinion, he might hope.
And then, being on the whole a sensible as well as a quick-witted and impulsive woman, she had grown a little frightened at what she had done.