"There is one heart she can never touch, and that is dad's," she told herself. "His heart is divided between my mother and myself."
And then the next day her thoughts were turned from Mrs. Norman to Randolph Neville, for she got a letter from him.
"DEAR MISS URQUHART,
"I have written letters to you by the score, and torn them all up. One does foolish things on board ship to while away the time, but now I am going to write sense, if I can. I wonder if you have given me a thought since I left you? Thanning Dale seems a far-away country to me now, and yet if I shut my eyes I can see it all before me—your garden sloping down to the river, the Admiral reading in his chair under the old trees on the lawn, and you flitting about in your white gown with flecks of sunshine on your hair and a vast wealth of it in your eyes. Please forgive my personal remarks. That is why I have torn up so many of my effusions. I feared that you might consider them impertinent.
"Well, I got my billet, and I am on the way out, and on the same boat is a brown-faced wiry little doctor who is bound for the same spot. He is returning there after a furlough. I asked him if he was kept busy; but he tells me he has a tremendous round, and only stays there for three months in the year. 'A loathsome hole,' he terms it. There is not a single European woman in the station, and the few men are a motley crew with a great propensity for hard drinking. He looked me up and down this morning, and remarked as he walked away: 'The body and soul of a man goes to pieces there in a twelvemonth, and it's a race between them. I give you an extra six months, for you're extra fit.' This is a cheerful outlook.
"Do you think I'll fulfil his prediction? I am selfishly telling you this, for I don't want you to snap our chain of friendship. It is a slight one, I own, but if it is only a silken thread and you hold fast, I'll have grit and hope to pull along and fight my environment. It won't be severed at my end, I promise you. Tell me of your doings. Do you still instruct Chuckles on Sunday afternoons in the art of building? I should like to be instructed too. Give me a tip on the subject, if you will. We are all building something, are we not? And my buildings, as I told Chuckles before I left, have collapsed so disastrously that I am the more wary in the beginning of another.
"Well, what else can I tell you? The gossip of board ship will not interest you. Our outlook is sea and sky at present. The feeling of infinite space on all sides is a depressing one to me—I don't know why. Write to me soon. You promised to answer me; and I look and wait anxiously for the letter that is not yet begun.
"Yours most sincerely,
"RANDOLPH NEVILLE."
Sidney read this in the privacy of her bedroom. She sat for a long while with it on her knee, for the personality of the writer possessed her; and then she wrote a reply:
"DEAR MR. NEVILLE,
"Thank you for your letter. I have not forgotten you, and have often wondered how you are getting on. I shall not let my end of the chain slip, I assure you, for friends like yourself are few and far between. You seemed, when amongst us, to find a niche for yourself, and fit into it so comfortably that now the emptiness of that niche is ever before us. My father says no one here understands the political world as you do, and he misses your company.
"Well, I do congratulate you on your plot of building land; and the tougher the job, and the harder the ground, and the rougher the atmosphere, the more complete and astonishing and praiseworthy will be your success—for you will succeed, I do not doubt that. You have the elements of a superior force and conquering power within you, and a clean upright honest life will do much in degrading surroundings. Don't despise unseen strength from our unseen God. He is the Master Builder; we only work under Him. And in the dark places of the earth, where heathen teaching and devil worship preponderate, you cannot afford to fight single-handed against the principalities and powers of darkness. This is presumption on my part to offer you such advice, but I cannot help doing it.
"I have not been out in my boat since that disastrous day. It lives in my memory as an experience of contrasts. The utter misery with which I drifted on to the sandbank, the long waiting—learning lessons that I ought to have learnt before—and the steady downpour of rain, and then the sound of splashing oars and your cheerful shout. I could have hugged you from sheer gratitude, only naturally—I didn't! What a different world it was when I walked home by your side, feeling the blessing of a man's protection!
"Now my boat has been tucked away in the boathouse for the winter. The sea mists have begun, the leaves are dropping off the trees, and the gulls fly across our lawn, loving its shelter. The wind and waves keep up a duet of bluster and roar. Father piles up the logs on his study fire and says to me: 'Now for a feast of our favourite authors. Bring your work, and we will share them together.' It never strikes a man that a woman does not want to be ceaselessly sewing. He considers that a woman's needlework is the equivalent of his pipe. And perhaps it is, for it always soothes me when I have my knitting in hand; but there are times when I enjoy absolute idleness. My pen is running on. I must close.
"This will find you at the end of your journey. Do give me some details of your life. I want to see a wild frontier setting, and you the central figure in it. I shall often try to picture you building for the Empire in your lonely station, making a clean sweep of all the evil you can lay your hands upon, and lifting up and encouraging those who have tumbled and who want to rise again.
"I still teach Chuckles. Last Sunday he wished me to tell him whether it mattered whether a dog was good or wicked. 'Because,' he insisted, 'nothing will ever make it go to Heaven, John Endcott says, so why should it be good? I should be as wicked as I could be if I knew I couldn't go to Heaven.' We had a long talk about the instinct of animals, but I felt helpless in discussing their future state, as I always have a sneaking feeling that I may meet my dead favourites again. What do you think? Now, this is really good-bye.
"Your very sincere friend,
"SIDNEY URQUHART."
When her letter had gone, Sidney began to wish it back; there was so much she wished to alter in it; and then she laughed at the importance it was assuming in her eyes.
"What does it matter? Why should I think so much about it? I wish he were here. I loved talking to him. And yet I am glad he is away, for he would follow the others down to Mrs. Norman's cottage and give her the benefit of all his ideas. What a jealous creature I am getting! Mrs. Norman seems to creep into all my thoughts."
But Mrs. Norman did figure in Sidney's life a good deal, and she could not get away from her. The day after Mrs. de Cressiers' return from town, Austin appeared. It was after dinner, and Sidney and her father had retired to the study to have a cosy time together. The Major had strolled down to Mrs. Norman's with a magazine he had promised her. Austin came in rather breathlessly.
"I want to speak to you," he said, addressing Sidney.
"Am I in the way?" asked the Admiral.