Chapter Twenty.
An Afternoon Letter.
Ten days, a fortnight passed, a few hurried words from Madeleine reporting the re-installation of her mother and herself in their London house for the season, full of affectionate assurances of her constant thought of them, Frances especially, and regret that they were now so separated, seemed the only break in the old monotony settling down again over the sisters.
Eira frankly owned herself to be feeling “terribly dull.” Betty said nothing, though she looked not only depressed but really ill. Frances, on the contrary, was cheerful, by fits and starts that is to say, though her old equability had strangely deserted her. She was restless and preoccupied. The reasons for this change were suspected by those about her more than she knew or ever did know, though, in time to come, her sisters and even her mother became convinced that they had been entirely mistaken.
There came a crisis.
One afternoon, chance—a most fortunate chance, she afterwards saw that it had been—led to her going alone to the village on some little errand, and on her way back she called at the post-office for the letters which otherwise, if there were any, would not have reached the cottage till the following morning.
It was a lovely day. A typical spring day, showing to the greatest advantage the peculiar beauties, greatly enhanced by clear light and shade, of that part of the country. On her way to the village Frances could not help stopping now and then, arrested by sheer admiration of the loveliness around her. Her spirits rose high, as in those days they were more apt to do; misgivings, half-acknowledged apprehensions, disappeared. She felt as if on the eve of some great happiness such as life had not yet brought her.
And when, in reply to her inquiry, “Any afternoon letters?” the smiling postmistress handed to her three or four, some for her father, but one, yes one, in recognised, though scarcely familiar handwriting, her heart gave a great throb of anticipation.
“It has come,” she thought to herself, as she turned to make her way homewards by the least frequented route. “Now I must pull myself together, and think it well—well over!”
Yet now that it had come, she almost shrank from facing the “it.” Now that she believed the matter to be in her own hands, she wished she could put it from her. But soon her natural womanly feeling reasserted itself, and she realised—whatever her own decision might be—the gratification, the satisfaction to her self-respect of the definiteness, the actual expression in plain terms of Horace’s regard for her, which, as she believed, the letter in her hand contained.
And, as soon as she found herself in a part of the road where interruption was improbable, she broke the seal—for sealed the letter was, which in itself marked it as something out of the common—and drew forth the sheet it contained.
It was dated from his club, and had been written only the day before.
“My dear Miss Morion,” it began—why did these four words, correct and natural enough under the circumstances, cause to pass through her a little thrill of—she scarcely knew what? Misgiving? Apprehension? Neither word expressed it clearly. It was more a sort of intuitive anticipation of some great impending change in the aspect of things, something which would cause her bewilderment as well as pain, which would, as it were, necessitate a reconstruction of all the theories as to herself and her own life, in which of late she had been living.
She read on.
“My dear Miss Morion,—First of all, I feel that I must thank you, and that most heartily, for your goodness to me of late. You have cheered and encouraged me more than you know; in no way resenting the, in one sense, unsatisfactory degree of confidence which was all I felt free to give you hitherto. No one could have been wiser than you have been, no one, I am well assured, could have been more entirely trustworthy. Sometimes, I may confess, I could scarcely have borne it all but for feeling and knowing that I had your sympathy and good wishes, and pity, even, for the miserable uncertainty in which I was forced to leave things; the uncertainty, I mean, as to her feeling towards me, as to the possibility, which now and then seems to me a wild dream, of her in any way responding to what I feel for her. But now I have come to a certain decision. I must know the best or the worst, by which of course you will understand that I mean my chances at head-quarters—with your sister herself. I have sounded my mother so far as I felt it expedient to do so, for I am most anxious to keep Betty’s name out of the way of all remark till I know how I stand with her. I am delighted to find that my mother has a strong personal liking for her—though how could it be otherwise? But I will not trust to this in any practical way. I have decided not to give up my profession, which, with the small private means I am sure of, makes marriage possible without any wild imprudence. Scores of men, especially in India, get on all right with less, and without things being too hard upon their wives. That I could not bear. And even as it is, I dread the thought of the climate for one so tender and fragile. Still, all things considered, I think the time has come for laying it before her, not hiding from her the sacrifices it might have to entail upon her, though these, I need not say, so far as it lies within the power of man to do so, should be counterbalanced by the entire and absolute devotion of my whole life. I intend coming down to Craig-Morion in the course of a few weeks, nominally to settle up some things there for my mother and myself, in reality to learn my fate. I may perhaps write a word or two to your father, just to allude to my coming, in a commonplace way, which may come round to her. You will, I know, do whatever is judicious as to this, although you will see that it is best for her never to suspect that you have been my confidante. And now you must forgive this long letter; selfish, I should feel it, were it not that I well know the depth of your sisterly devotion, and that nothing concerning her can fail to ensure your heartiest interest. So I will not inflict more apologies upon you. I will only thank you again and again.
“Yours most sincerely,—
“Horace Bertram Littlewood.”
Did she read it once or twice or twenty times? or had she not read it at all? Was it all a dream, a miserable dream of shameful self-disgust and mortification? For some minutes, I doubt if Frances knew, or that she could have replied with any accuracy to any of these questions.
She was utterly, completely stupefied, and when at last her ideas began to take coherent form again it was only in the shape of increasingly definite pain and self-abasement. Unselfish, radically unselfish as she was, it became for some little time impossible for her to think of, to care for any one but herself, in the shock of revolted, almost outraged, feeling that overwhelmed her. For she was of a nature to be terribly sensitive to mortification, and with such natures, proud, dignified, mentally and morally on a high plane, recognising high ideals as the goal of all endeavour, mortification, paradoxical though it may sound, can be almost a passion.
Not that she dreaded or even thought as yet for a moment of others—outsiders—in this terrible mistake. It was herself as judging herself that she cowered before.
“I who thought myself the soul of modesty and delicacy, as I see now that I did—I, to have imagined such a thing! At my age, older than he—oh, it is dreadful to realise,” and she sat down on some rising ground by the side of the road and covered her burning face with her hands, while slow hot tears forced themselves through her fingers. In these few minutes—a quarter of an hour at most—Frances Morion seemed to herself to have lived years.
”‘No fool like an old fool!’ it is like having the measles in middle age—always worse than at the normal time, they say.”
These and other bitter, absurdly exaggerated cynical remarks passed through her mind, not to be harboured there, however, for her real character, her habitual attitude of mind, could not for long be untrue to themselves.
And “Oh, what a selfish, shamefully selfish, woman I am—I must be!” was the next phase. “I needed this lesson to open my eyes. Yes, indeed, I needed it,” and already, though the pain was still so stinging, the wound so raw, curious suggestions began to insinuate themselves. If it had been “the real thing,” would not its overthrow have affected her somewhat differently—would not the true malady have developed other symptoms?
For the moment she put these vague hints aside, to be taken out and examined into more at leisure, with possibly some salutary, health-restoring result, and with new resolution tried to concentrate her mind on what now lay before her—on the thorny, self-effacing path which duty, affection, all the associations and motives of her life pointed out as the only one she could tread.
There were alleviations—alleviations and mitigations—of her present suffering, and by degrees the first, perhaps the greatest, of these gradually crept into her thoughts. No one need ever know; more than this, it would be wrong, disloyal to others, to allow her secret to escape. This was so clearly binding upon her that it reconciled her to the necessity, already making itself felt, of to some extent acting a part. And the very relief of knowing that she must thus shield herself brought with it another, as yet faint, but yet suggestive, source of support.
“If it were really that I had got to care for him—thoroughly, genuinely in that way,” she asked herself, “would I so soon be ready to accept any sort of comfort?” But again for the present she put these ideas aside, concentrating all her powers in the direction of the immediate action required of her. “All I can do to help him, I must do,” she thought; “as to that there can be no sort of question. I must as far as I possibly can tacitly familiarise Betty with the idea of what is coming, for he is good and true, I feel convinced, and worthy of her. Oh if I had but known it sooner! It would have been nothing but happiness.”
And this was true. Six months ago, if Frances had been asked what was the darling wish of her heart, her reply would have been to see one of her sisters, Betty especially, well and safely married.
But, as things were, would Betty respond to him? It almost seemed impossible. Or perhaps the entire dislocation of the positions of all involved made it as yet seem so to her.
“I am to exert myself doubly,” she went on thinking. “It is a case in which non-interference on my part would be a crime. I have so much to make amends for in this horrible, miserable mistake of mine. I must not allow the slightest trace of depression or agitation to appear. And, oh! how unutterably grateful I should be and am that the blow has fallen in this way, by a letter instead of—in any other way; all my thought, all my care now must be for my dear little Betty.”
She rose to her feet, composed and even strengthened, and as her thoughts concentrated themselves more and more on her sister, new and strange suggestions took shape respecting her.
Had Betty been quite like herself of late? Was she not looking less well, less restful than was usual with her? She had been, for her, abnormally energetic, it was true, but all the same, on looking back, Frances began to see that there had been a curious self-repression about the girl. She had certainly avoided any talk about herself; the old, almost childish habit with which she had often been laughingly charged, of “saying out whatever came into her head,” had deserted her. Yes, she had grown strangely reticent.
Was it possible, Frances asked herself, that in her own self-absorption she had been blinded to the true state of affairs with Betty? Was it possible that the child had already learnt to care for Horace? That, anxious as he had been to do nothing to gain her affections till he was justified in doing so, he had unconsciously betrayed himself?
“If it is so,” thought Frances, “I should have still more to be thankful for. For in my determination to forget myself there might be a real danger of my influencing her too much in his favour. And yet the suggestion must in some way be made; perhaps—we shall see—Eira may be brought to help in it. I must at least find this out, for I very much fear that poor Eira, as well as dear Betty herself, has been deceived by her affection for me into imagining what—oh! how could I ever have thought it?”
And again there came the sharp stab of mortification, which indeed it would take time and resolution entirely to overcome.
The consciousness, however, of how much she might have to undo as well as to do brought vigour with it. She walked on with a firm step, a step that had something of hardness in it, hardness directed solely against herself and the weakness which she was so resolutely determined to overcome.
It was, as has been said, a lovely day, an exquisite spring day, and for this, too, Frances felt a strange new sense of gratitude. A lark rose over her head with its never-to-be-mistaken song of jubilance, all but disappearing, as she gazed after it, into a scarcely discernible speck in the blue.
“So fade our hopes,” thought Frances, “many of them at least. But yet,” for in another moment the happy bird was back again within hearing, “perhaps it only seems so to us. There must always be real sources of joy and thankfulness, even if they are sometimes beyond our perception.”
Yet she did not deceive herself. This sensation of almost exhilarating resolve and self-sacrifice would not, she knew, be lasting. There were hard struggles before her still, for the mere habit of thought into which she had almost insensibly glided during the last few weeks as to her own life and future was not to be shaken off all at once.
“The best I can do,” she went on, “is to fill my mind, to the exclusion as far as possible of everything else, with Betty. Time enough, when I can feel at rest about her, for me to unlock it all again and decide to what extent I have been to blame.”
A few yards before their own gate she caught sight of her sisters coming to meet her, and, as she watched them approaching, the listlessness and languor of Betty’s movements struck her forcibly.
“How I wish I had gone with you, Francie,” said Eira. “Betty is so tiresome! She wouldn’t go for a walk, she wouldn’t even sit out in the garden comfortably, and I only stayed at home to keep her company, because she seemed dull!”
“Are you dull, dear?” said Frances, turning to Betty. Her tone was very kind, indeed tender, and Betty, glancing up at her, read a confirmation of this in her sister’s eyes.
Betty’s cheeks grew pink, though the colour left them again as quickly as it had come.
“Spring often makes people feel rather tired,” she said. “There is nothing the matter with me except that.”
“But you mustn’t be tired,” said Frances. “It is so lovely now, so very lovely. We must be all quite well—and happy, so as to enjoy it. We can stay out a little longer. Let us sit down, and I am rather tired myself.”
Betty’s face expressed some self-reproach. “Eira,” she said. “We should not have let her go alone to the village. She always does the disagreeable things.”
Frances’ hand was lying on her knee. Betty took it in hers as she spoke and stroked it. To the elder sister the little action said much. It seemed as if in some intuitive way the coldness or constraint which had been creeping in between them for the first time in their lives was melting away, though by no visible agency. Tears crept up very near to Frances’ own eyes, but she resolutely kept them back, though a feeling of gratitude for this scarcely looked-for prompt encouragement on the path she saw before her warmed her heart.
“What a pity,” exclaimed Eira, “that Madeleine couldn’t have stayed two or three weeks longer, just to see how pretty this place can be. I don’t think, however rich I were, that I could ever make up my mind to spend this part of the year in London.”
“It is very pretty there, too, just now though,” said Frances absently. “If it were a little nearer I dare say Madeleine would come down again for a few days—with her brother, perhaps,” she went on more brightly. “I am sure Mr Morion would always be glad for them to use the big house.”
Eira, who had been leaning back on the rustic bench in rather a depressed attitude, pricked up her ears at this.
“Oh, how nice that would be!” she said. “Better than my poor Indian summer which never came to pass. What made you think of it, Francie?” And as the only reply was a smile, “I do believe that you’ve heard something! Have you had a letter from Madeleine that you have not told us about?”
Frances shook her head.
“No, truly I have not,” she said. “But Horace Littlewood did—does mean to come down again. He said so, definitely, and it just struck me how nice it would be if Madeleine could come with him.”
Eira’s face by this time was gleaming with excitement.
“Francie!” she exclaimed, “you never told us before! Betty, do you hear?”
But for all reply, Betty seemed to creep back further into her corner. Frances turned to her. “You don’t dislike him?” she said. “We got to know him so well!”
“I never said I disliked him,” said Betty. “But you know him far better than I do, and if—of course you know, Francie, if—if anybody liked you, or—or you liked anybody in a special sort of way, of course I should like such a person too!”
Frances drew a deep breath, and gathered herself together. It had come—the supreme moment, sooner than she had expected, and she must meet it bravely. It had come—to Betty too, and the little creature had risen, in her own way, with heroism. But this state of things as yet Frances scarcely realised.
“Betty, my dear child,” she began, “don’t get any mistaken ideas into your head about me—your second mother, as I always feel myself. I won’t pretend to misunderstand you, and I am glad you have spoken about it. No, no, don’t dream of anything of that sort about me, the time for it has passed. Why, I must be a year or two older than Horace! He and I are excellent friends, and I do believe he looks upon me almost as an elder sister. I should be glad,” here she spoke with hesitation that she did not attempt to conceal, “I should be glad to feel sure that as regards you yourself no shadow of the old prejudice about him remains. He deserves to be thoroughly liked and trusted.”
There was no answer from either of the other two, though Frances felt Eira’s eyes fixed on her in half-dazed amazement. She felt, too, that at Betty it was better not to glance! And after a moment or two she got up slowly, saying it must be near tea-time and that she would like to take off her outdoor things, and steadily, though with inward tremulousness, little suspected by the two others, she made her way to the house.
“Betty,” said Eira, when sure that Frances was beyond earshot. “Betty, do you hear me, what does she mean?”
But for all answer Betty turned her head away, so that her face was quite hidden from her sister, and only by the convulsive movement of her shoulders did Eira know that she had burst into uncontrollable tears.
“Never again,” thought Eira to herself, “will I meddle with or even think of other people’s affairs of this kind! There have I been for months past wearing myself out with hopes and anxieties about Frances and Horace Littlewood. And for all I know now, torturing Betty! Who would have dreamt of such a thing? It is rather too bad of Frances not to have given me some idea of how the land lay, for from her very superior well-informed manner, it is evidently not new to her. As to Betty, I don’t know what I feel. She might have—no, I don’t see that she could have acted differently, but I won’t call her cross or depressed any more. Poor little Betty! Still, on the whole, for the present, I think I had better leave her alone.”
And Eira, feeling considerably discomposed and “out of it,” not yet able to realise that this new turn of affairs might bring as much cause for congratulation as the fulfilment of the hopes on which she told herself she had wasted so much care and thought—Eira, swinging her garden-hat on her arm with a great air of “nonchalance,” followed her elder sister into the house, though not upstairs. But a moment or two after she entered the drawing-room the door reopened to admit Frances. Gladly would the elder sister have remained upstairs in the quiet of her own room if but for half an hour, but this she felt she must not do. For the moment the privilege of solitude and reflection must be renounced.
“It is only a bit, a very little bit, of the whole,” she thought to herself. “Just at first, of all times, it is most important that I should seem quite like myself, and not give the very slightest opening for suspicion that things are turning out differently from what I expected. And it will not be difficult to do so, if I keep my thoughts centred at this crisis on my poor little Betty.”
And her mother’s first words as she caught sight of her brought a little glow of gratitude to her heart—not so much of gratitude to Lady Emma herself, but of thankfulness in the abstract for this first little touch of encouragement in the road she had marked out for herself.
“You look as if you had enjoyed your walk, Frances,” was her mother’s remark. “You have got such a nice colour,” mentally adding to herself, “really Frances grows handsomer and handsomer as she gets older. Her eyes have such a bright expression,”—little suspecting the tears those eyes had so recently shed, still less those which had been repressed with so much resolution. “I have never thought them as fine as Betty’s, but somehow Betty doesn’t look like herself now-a-days,” and she gave a little sigh. “Where is Betty?” she asked aloud.
Frances glanced at Lady Emma quickly. Now and then there seemed a curious tacit sympathy between the mother and daughter, just now this struck the latter, for she herself was feeling anxious about her younger sister.
“She is coming in a moment,” said Eira, with a slight nervousness unusual to her. “Shall I run and tell her that tea is ready?”
There was no need for a reply. Betty herself came in. She was looking pale, but to a superficial observer the traces of tears had already disappeared. Her dark eyes with their even darker fringes were not easily disfigured. Tea-time passed quietly and more quickly than when Mr Morion was present. For this Frances was grateful, as it left her the sooner at liberty.
“I am going up to the vicarage,” she said, as she left the room. “I had a little commission for Mrs Ferraby in the village.”
Ten minutes later she rang at the vicarage bell, and handed in the small parcel she had brought. When she got back to the gate again, she stood still for a moment in hesitation.
“I wonder if by chance the church is open,” she thought. “I should like to go in there for a few minutes. I don’t think I have ever been there alone since the afternoon Eira was so startled;” and with a rather sad smile, “I don’t think anything would startle me to-day.”