MAN AND WOMAN.
“La discussion n’est vraiment possible et efficace qu’entre gens du même avis.”
Deligny.
“Perhaps, however, there is little difference between understanding and sympathising.”
Casimir Maremma.
GENEVIÈVE came down to luncheon with hopelessly red eyes and a general air of extreme depression. Cicely looked at her kindly, and spoke to her gently; it was impossible not to be touched by the contrast between her present appearance and the bright joyousness which had attracted her cousin’s notice that very morning. Mrs. Methvyn was more demonstratively affectionate than Geneviève had ever known her.
“I am going to Greybridge this afternoon,” said Mrs. Methvyn, “would you like to come with me, Geneviève? I am going in the large carriage, so you won’t have to sit in the back seat. You cannot come, Cicely?”
“No, mother,” said Cicely.
She got up from her chair as she spoke, for luncheon was over, and went to the window.
“It looks so fine,” she remarked. “Don’t you think my father might try another drive?”
Mrs. Methvyn shook her head. “I did suggest it,” she said, “but he did not seem inclined for it. I think he might get over his nervousness about it if Mr. Guildford could go with him once or twice.”
“I wish he could,” exclaimed Cicely. “Would it be worth while to write and ask him if he could come some day soon early enough for a drive?”
“You might ask your father,” answered her mother. “Well then, Geneviève, will you come with me?”
Geneviève started. She seemed to wake out of a reverie at the sound of her own name.
“Yes, thank you. I should like very much to go,” she said. “I will go and get ready,” and she left the room.
“How nervous Geneviève seems!” remarked Cicely regretfully. “And this morning she was so bright and happy! I don’t quite understand her.”
“Not understand her, Cicely, when I have been telling you how terribly distressed she was at the thought of losing you! It is entirely that that has upset her. I think you should try to be a little more demonstrative to her, poor child, a cold word or tone chills her in an instant,” said Mrs. Methvyn reproachfully.
“Don’t say that, mother, don’t!” exclaimed Cicely in a quick tone of pain. “I do try, I have tried to be affectionate—more so a great deal than is natural to me—in my manner to Geneviève. But,” she hesitated. “Mamma, it is no use struggling against it,” she went on impetuously, “I would not say so to any one but you, but I cannot get rid of the feeling that she is not perfectly sincere.”
“Cicely!” exclaimed her mother, “my dear child, I am surprised at you. It is not like you to take up an unfounded prejudice. I am quite certain Geneviève is as straightforward and genuine as possible. Indeed, she is transparent to a fault. And her mother is the same. When I knew her as a girl, she was the most guileless creature living.”
“Yes,” said Cicely thoughtfully. “Yes, there is something in that. I mean it is not likely that a girl brought up in an atmosphere of truthfulness and simplicity would be scheming or underhand.”
“Scheming and underhand!” repeated Mrs. Methvyn. “What dreadful words! Really, Cicely, you must not let your fancy run away with you so. It is so unlike you.”
“Forgive me, mamma. I should not have said so much,” said Cicely. “I have been anxious about Geneviève, and I suppose I have grown exaggerated and fanciful. I will try to get rid of my fancies, mother, I will indeed. And I will try to be more demonstrative to poor Geneviève.”
“Very well,” replied her mother. “I should not recognize you, Cicely, if you were to become prejudiced or suspicious. You will go out a little now, won’t you? You have not been out to-day, and Trevor will not be here just yet.”
“Yes, I will go out now,” said Cicely. “Kiss me, mother, and don’t say I am mean and suspicious. I am cross, I think. Kiss me, dear mother.”
She left her mother with a bright face and stood on the lawn by the sun-dial, kissing her hand merrily in farewell as the carriage drove away. But when it was quite out of sight, in spite of her resolutions, her face clouded over again and her heart grew heavy.
“I ought to be glad that mother is so fond of Geneviève,” she thought. “She will miss me the less.”
Then she felt ashamed of her own bitterness.
“I don’t know what is coming over me,” she reflected. “I am mean and unamiable. Can anything be meaner than for me to be jealous of Geneviève, I who have so much, and she so little! Yet I am—I am angry because both Trevor and mother have scolded me for being cold to her. I am spoilt; I can’t bear being scolded—and I am vexed with her because she has the power of showing her affection and enlisting sympathy, whereas I seem to grow colder the more I feel. And as for sympathy, I seem to repel it now—nobody thoroughly sympathises with me.”
She sat down on the stone at the foot of the sun-dial in a very unusual mood of self pity—Cicely, whom at this very moment Geneviève was thinking of as the very happiest girl in all the world! So little do we know of the fit of each other’s garments.
From where she was sitting, Cicely could see the drive almost all the way to the lodge. And in the light dress she wore, she herself was easily to be distinguished, by quick eyes at least, belonging to any one approaching, the Abbey by this front road. There came a sound of wheels. It was too early for Mr. Fawcett, besides which it was more than probable that he would be riding.
“Some people coming to call,” thought Cicely, groaning in the spirit. She felt peculiarly disinclined to-day for small talk and lady-like gossip, and wished she had not placed herself where ignorance of the arrival was impossible. But when the carriage came fairly within view, her fears proved to have been ill-founded. It was only the Greybridge fly. Almost before Cicely had time to wonder who could be its occupant, the carriage stopped and a gentleman got out. He had evidently seen her; he came quickly across the lawn in her direction. Cicely got up from her seat and went forward to meet him.
“Mr. Guildford!” she exclaimed. “I had no idea it was you.”
But there was welcome in her tone. Some thing in his pleasant face, in his keen glance, in his way of shaking hands even, seemed to dispel the cloudy atmosphere of dejection and gloom in which she had been breathing.
“I should have written yesterday to tell you I was coming,” he replied,“but till to-day I was not quite sure that I could make it out. My coming again so soon will not annoy Colonel Methvyn, will it?”
“Oh! dear no; it will please him very much,” she answered heartily. “I was going to write to you this afternoon to ask if you could come again some day soon in time to take papa a drive. He is nervous about going without you; but I am sure going out the other day did him good. Could you go with him to-day?”
“I could easily,” replied Mr. Guildford. “I am not in any hurry; but I hardly think the day is suitable. I mean the weather. It is a good deal colder; the wind is in the east. I noticed it this morning, and some how it made me feel fidgety about Colonel Methvyn. I grew so anxious to know that his drive the day before yesterday had done him no harm that I came to see.”
“It was very kind of you,” said Cicely gratefully. “I think you will find him very well. So the wind is in the east, is it? In June too, what a shame! Perhaps that is why I have felt so cross all day.”
“Do you often feel cross?” asked Mr. Guildford smiling.
“I don’t know. I used not; but lately I think I have been getting into a bad habit of feeling so from no particular cause. At least,” she hesitated a little, “from no new cause.”
“You mean that there would have been as much excuse for you formerly as there is now, but that it is only lately you have yielded to the irritating influences.”
“No,” said Cicely, laughing. “I don’t think there is now or ever has been any excuse for me. But somehow I don’t think life is as interesting as it used to seem.”
“That is not an uncommon phase of youthful experience,” he said drily. “Don’t you fancy sometimes that nobody understands or sympathises with you?”
“Yes,” said Cicely, looking up in his face with a questioning in her eyes. Was he laughing at her?
“Ah! I thought so,” he said, shaking his head gravely. “Once upon a time I could have sympathised with you, but now—”
“Well, what now?” she asked, eagerly.
“Now, I have grown wiser.”
“How?”
“I have come to think one can do very well without much understanding or sympathy; that too little is better than too much. Too much is enervating.”
“Is that true?” she said seriously.
“I think so,” he answered.
“But you are a man,” she objected.
“And you are a woman,” he replied.
“Women are more clinging than men,” she remarked somewhat hazily.
“You are shifting your ground,” he said. “It is not the clinging—the weak side of your nature—that is discontented just now. It is the energetic, working side that is so.”
“Yes,” she said eagerly, with a sparkle in her eyes, “yes, I think you are right.”
“Then satisfy it.”
“How can I?”
“Give it work to do.”
Her countenance fell. “I must say again as I did before, “I am a woman and you are a man,” she answered dejectedly.
He looked at her with more commiseration than he had yet shown. “I suppose it is true,” he said, at last. “It is harder for a woman who has anything in her to find a channel for her energies. Still, you need not despair. You don’t know what is before you.”
“Yes, I do,” she said gloomily. He glanced at her in surprise, and she grew scarlet.
“I mean to say,” she went on hastily, “I mean to say that I know quite well that my life will be very smooth and easy, and that I shall never have anything to do that—that anybody could not do. Don’t think me conceited,” she added pleadingly. “What makes me dull just now is that the only duties that I feel I can do specially well, that seem my own particular business, are going to be taken from me.”
Mr. Guildford made no answer. “You don’t think women should have such feelings, I know,” she went on, in a tone of disappointment. “You think they should take things as they come, and be contented to stay in their own domain.”
“No, not quite that. There are exceptional women as well as exceptional men,” he replied. “I don’t consider myself one of the latter, but still I understand myself. Whatever it was that I said that you are alluding to now, referred only to my own domain. I don’t dictate to other people. I know what is best for myself, and least likely to interfere with the aims of my own life—that is all. And so far as I understand you,” he went on in a different tone, “your present trouble seems to be that you want to stay in your own domain, and you can’t get leave to do so.”
There was a half-veiled inquiry in his tone, but Cicely did not perceive it. He tried to believe that she was only referring to some passing trouble, some wish of her parents, perhaps, that she should enter more into society, or give up the more arduous of her home duties. For Geneviève’s assurance that her cousin and Mr. Fawcett were “like brother and sister only,” was strongly impressed upon him. Cicely’s reply puzzled him still more.
“Perhaps it is rather that I am not sure where is my own domain,” she said. “And you being a man, can never be troubled with doubts of that kind,” she added more lightly.
“I don’t know that,” he answered, feeling instinctively that she wished to turn the conversation from her own affairs. “I often doubt, as I think I have told you, if I did well to come to Sothernbay at all.”
“But you are thinking of leaving it eventually!” she asked with interest.
“Yes,” he answered. “When ‘eventually’ may be I can’t say, though things lately seem inclined to hasten it. I had a piece of good luck—at least of great encouragement—a short time ago. But,” he stopped for a moment, “it is very egotistical of me to talk about all this. It can’t possibly interest a young lady.”
“Why not?” she said. “If I had a brother who was clever and learned like you—above all, who worked as hard as you do—do you think I should not be interested in his success? So fancy I am your sister. You have no sister?”
“Yes, I have,” he answered. “I have a very good little sister. She is certainly not the least like you, Miss Methvyn.”
Cicely laughed. Mr. Guildford had a rather original way of expressing himself sometimes.
“Never mind,” she said. “Tell me about your success. I believe I can guess what it is. You have written some learned book, which has set all the medical authorities of Europe in an excitement. And you are the new light of the day.”
“Not quite. Don’t laugh at me, please. I dare say my success won’t sound much to you. It is only that some papers of mine have attracted attention, and I have been invited to contribute a series to one of the first scientific journals of the day. The subject is not directly connected with my own profession, but indirectly it bears upon the very branch of it that I have studied more than any other. So it will be no loss of time to me in any way.”
“I do consider it a success—a great success!” exclaimed Cicely. “And what a reward for your past labours to find that they have been all in the right direction! How I envy you! If it were not so commonplace, I think I should sometimes say that I wished I were a man.”
“Don’t say it,” said Mr. Guildford; “but not because it is commonplace. You needn’t mind that.”
“Why must I not say it, then?”
“Because—because it isn’t womanly,” he answered, smiling at his own words.
Cicely smiled too.
“I suspect,” she said, “that your interpretation of that word is as arbitrary as most men’s. And your notions about women are just as inconsistent and unreasonable as—as—”
“As theories on subjects one knows very little about usually are?” he suggested. “Perhaps so. Please remember, however, I only make theories for myself, not for the rest of the world.”
The stable clock in the distance struck three.
“I think papa will be pleased to see you now,” said Cicely. “I always go to him about this time when my mother is out.”
They turned towards the house. “Did you not meet my mother and my cousin as you came from Greybridge?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “I met them about half a mile from here—Miss Casalis is exceedingly pretty,” he remarked inconsequently.
“She is beautiful,” said Cicely.
“No, she is too small to be beautiful. She is just the perfection of prettiness.”
“Rose-jacynth to the finger tips,”
he observed reflectively.
Cicely looked up quickly. Her mother’s words recurred to her memory, but Mr. Guildford’s manner perplexed her. Was “the perfection of prettiness” his ideal? She walked on in a reverie, and her companion glanced at her once or twice without attracting her attention. Then he spoke.
“Do you think it is impertinent of me to make such remarks?” he asked with a little anxiety.
Cicely started, but the start turned into a smile.
“Oh! dear, no,” she replied. “I was only thinking about something that puzzled me a little about—”
“About Miss Casalis?” inquired Mr. Guildford. His tone was so gentle that Cicely never thought of resenting the question.
“Yes,” she said; “it was partly about her.”
“But you don’t think her puzzling, do you?” said Mr. Guildford in surprise. “She seems to me transparency itself.”
Cicely looked up in his face with some perplexity in her own.
“I am afraid I sometimes repel where I should like to win,” she remarked with apparent irrelevance. But there was no time to say more, for just then they were met by a servant sent by Colonel Methvyn in quest of his daughter, and Cicely hastened in to tell her father of Mr. Guildford’s arrival.
When Mrs. Methvyn and Geneviève drove up to the hall door on their return from Greybridge, they were met by Mr. Guildford. He came forward to help them out of the carriage.
“I am still here, you see,” he said to Mrs. Methvyn. “I hope you will not think I have tired Colonel Methvyn; we have had such a pleasant afternoon. Colonel Methvyn has been so kind as to let me look over his portfolios.”
“I am so glad,” answered the wife. “There is nothing he enjoys more than showing his engravings to any one who understands them. Your coming to-day was particularly fortunate, Mr. Guildford. I wish we could send for you by magic now and then.”
Mr. Guildford laughed brightly, and Geneviève, who was just stepping out, smiled up in his face as if in agreement with her aunt.
“Yes,” she said, “how nice that would be when dear uncle is tired!”
And as the young man turned towards her as she spoke, he felt half inclined to modify his verdict of that very afternoon.
“Pretty! She is more than pretty,” he thought. For Geneviève was at her very loveliest just then. The tears and agitation of the morning had left their traces in an increased depth and tenderness of expression; there was a subdued softness about her face which Mr. Guildford had never remarked before. The unconcealed admiration of his glance caught Mrs. Methvyn’s observation. She smiled, and the smile was not misunderstood by Geneviève.
“That is what my aunt means,” thought the girl, referring in her own mind to something that Mrs. Methvyn had said during their drive, in the fulness of her motherly heart, about the pleasure it would give her to see Geneviève happy like her cousin,—happy as she who showed such appreciation of Cicely, surely deserved to be! And sorely as the girl was suffering, the idea was not altogether devoid of consolation.
“Where is Cicely?” said Mrs. Methvyn, as she entered the hall. “Have you seen her, Mr. Guildford?”
“Not very lately,” he replied. “It must be an hour and a half at least since I went up to Colonel Methvyn’s room, and I have not seen Miss Methvyn since then.”
“Miss Cicely is out; Mr. Fawcett called about an hour ago, and Miss Cicely went out into the garden with him,” said the old butler, in answer to his mistress’s inquiry.
“She will be in soon, I dare say,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “Run upstairs and let your uncle know we have come in, Geneviève dear, and then come and make tea for us in the library. You will not refuse a cup of tea, Mr. Guildford?”
Somewhat to her mother’s surprise, Cicely made her appearance in the library almost immediately. She came in by the glass door, alone, her hat in her hand, an unusual colour in her cheeks, and a forced brightness in her manner which did not deceive the loving eyes.
“What have you done with Trevor?” asked Mrs. Methvyn, with a would-be carelessness of tone. “Simmons said he had been here.”
“Yes; but he could not stay long; he had letters to write or something, and hurried home. Had you a pleasant drive, mother? You look all the better for it, Geneviève,” said Cicely, speaking more quickly than usual, and making greater clatter among the tea-cups than her wont.
“We had a very nice drive,” replied Mrs. Methvyn, and then, quick to take her daughter’s hint, she went on to speak about the commissions they had executed at Greybridge, the neighbours they had met, and the news they had heard, without further allusion to Mr. Fawcett or his call.
Geneviève had fixed her eyes on her cousin when Trevor’s name was first mentioned. She, too, had noticed something unusual in Cicely’s manner. “Can it be that they have quarrelled,” she said to herself, a throb of joy passing through her at the very thought. The mere possibility of such a thing made her feel amiable, and almost capable of pitying her cousin. She got up from her seat and came forward to the tea-table to help Cicely.
“Thank you, dear,” said Cicely. She glanced at Geneviève as she spoke. Some thing in her expression smote Geneviève—a look of distress and endurance, a pained, perplexed expression, new to the calm, fair face. Geneviève carried a cup of tea to Mrs. Methvyn, and then went back to her seat, feeling unhappy and bewildered and hopeful all at once. And as she reflected further on the position of things, the last feeling gradually came to predominate, the shadow of self-reproach faded away. What if Cicely and her lover had quarrelled, and about her! She was not to blame. She had been kept in the dark as to the true state of affairs; and even if she had known it, could she have prevented what had happened?
“I did not make my own face,” thought Geneviève complacently. “I cannot make myself ugly, and if people fall in love with me, it is not my fault.”
She was quite ready to believe that Mr. Guildford, too, was fast falling a victim to her charms. The idea was not unpleasing to her. It brightened her eyes and added sweetness to her smile, as she turned to speak to the young man who stood beside her, absorbed, so it seemed to Mrs. Methvyn, in the contemplation of her lovely face. Cicely noticed them too, and a little sigh escaped her. Was a lovely face the one thing after all? It almost seemed so.
Soon after Mr. Guildford left them, Geneviève went out into the garden, and the mother and daughter were alone.
“Don’t you think that what I said is very evident now, Cicely?” asked Mrs. Methvyn.
“What?” said Cicely absently, listlessly raising her eyes, “what was it that you said, mother?”
“About Geneviève—about Mr. Guildford’s admiring her. Don’t you remember?” said Mrs. Methvyn impatiently.
Oh, yes! I dare say it is so. I have no doubt he admires her. Everybody does. It is not only her face; she is lovable and womanly and gentle; everything I am not,” exclaimed Cicely with most unaccustomed bitterness.
“Cicely!” ejaculated Mrs. Methvyn. In the extremity of her amazement she could say no more.
“Oh! mother, don’t be shocked at me, said Cicely. “I am so unhappy, so very unhappy, I don’t know what I am saying. Oh! mother, I wish there were no such thing as marrying in the world!”
“What is it, dear? Is there anything wrong between you and Trevor? Is he disappointed at your wishing to put off your marriage?” asked Mrs. Methvyn, anxiously.
“Yes,” replied Cicely. “He is more than disappointed. He has spoken very cruelly to me. He is cruel. And I don’t deserve it. I have not put off our marriage, mother. It is Trevor that wished to hurry it on in a way that had never been thought of. It is inconsiderate in the extreme of him. I don’t understand him; he is quite, quite changed.”
Two or three large tears gathered in the troubled eyes and rolled slowly down the pale face. And Cicely so seldom cried!
Her mother kissed her silently.
“I can’t bear to see you so unhappy, my darling,” she said at last. “Tell me more about it. How is he changed? You cannot doubt his affection; his very eagerness to hurry on things is a proof of it.”
Cicely shook her head.
“I don’t doubt his affection,” she said, “if I did I could not marry him. But there is something I don’t understand. A few months ago he was so gentle and considerate—so understanding. To-day he was quite different. When I told him that six months hence was quite as soon as I could agree to our marriage taking place, he got quite angry and indignant. He accused me of not caring for him, mother; of making false excuses with the hope of delaying it indefinitely—perhaps for ever—of all sorts of feelings and schemes that he knows I am incapable of. In fact, he quite forgot himself. And, mother, my reasons were right and good ones; a few months ago, yes, even a few weeks ago, he would have completely entered into them. If I did not know—” she hesitated and stopped.
“What, dear?” inquired her mother.
“I was going to say if I did not know Trevor to be perfectly honourable, I could almost have fancied he was trying to provoke me into breaking off our engagement.” She looked up into her mother’s face with a painful doubt in her eyes.
“No,” said Mrs. Methvyn decidedly; “Trevor is incapable of such a thing. Cicely dear, you have mistaken him. It was only a passing fit of irritation, and he said more than he meant.”
“I hope so,” answered Cicely. “Yes, I hope so. He is not capable of anything scheming or dishonourable. Still, mother, he is changed. He has grown suspicious and irritable; he who used to be so sweet tempered and gentle.”
“He will be so again, dear. I am sure he will,” said her mother confidently. “He is only disappointed. And remember it is partly your father’s fault; he led him to believe the marriage might be sooner.”
“But papa says he will be very glad to have me at home for six months. Six months! It is not long, mother.”
“Your father is in better spirits again just now,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “But a week or two ago, he seemed to wish he could see you married at once. He was very dull about himself at that time.”
“Yes, I remember,” replied Cicely. Then she sat silent for a few moments thinking deeply.
“But—but it was all right again between you before Trevor went?” asked Mrs. Methvyn somewhat timidly.
“‘All right?’ You mean we did not actually quarrel?” said Cicely, smiling a little at her mother’s anxiety. “No, we did ‘make it up’ after a fashion. I don’t think Trevor and I could really quarrel. Only—only—somehow it has left a sore feeling, a feeling of not understanding him as thoroughly as I used to do; of not feeling sure that he understands me. But it will go off again. Forgive me for troubling you, dear mother. I shall be all right again now. Don’t tell Geneviève that anything was wrong.”