‘Don’t be afraid of an old woman’s prosy history, or of a sermon. You will have neither. Forty years ago, child, there lived, in the far north of England, a girl, somewhere about your present age. This girl was on the eve of being married. Her wedding dress was ordered, the guests were bidden. Well, at the eleventh hour she chose, in a flame of paltry jealousy, to resent some fancied want of devotion in her lover. He was single-minded, loyal—of finer stuff, altogether, than herself. They might have been reconciled in an hour if she would have let her heart speak, have returned to the arms outheld to receive her. The girl would make not an inch of concession. She came, as you do, Marjorie, of people who look upon unforgiveness as a virtue. She heard around her the old stock phrases—delicacy, family pride—the righteousness of subordinating feeling to will! And so it came to pass that the lover, having neither wealth nor title, was allowed to go. He exchanged into a regiment under orders for India. Our troops were then in Afghanistan, engaged in hot fighting, and——’
Miss Tighe’s voice—the brave, kind voice that Marjorie had always known—broke down. Marjorie felt herself turn chill with a vague terror. To hear of this white-haired woman’s love seemed, in her overstrained mood, like receiving a message from the world of ghosts. She awaited the sequel of the story, not speaking, not lifting her eyes to the narrator’s face.
‘The lad fell—a locket his sweetheart had once given him hidden in his breast. It came back to her, through a brother officer who knew something of the dead man’s story—and with a stain on it. That stain has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty years. You will not speak of this again, remember.’
‘Never, Miss Tighe, I promise you.’
‘But keep my words in your memory. If you meet Geoffrey Arbuthnot, if a moment comes when happiness beckons one way, the Bartrand pride another, they may, perhaps, be of use to you.’
So human hearts can remain true to their griefs for forty years! Marjorie pondered on this fact as she walked back through the November-smelling, dark country to Tintajeux. She felt, with the certainty of morbid eighteen, that her own life would be a counterpart of Cassandra Tighe’s. She would never love any other man than Geoffrey, would never marry where she did not love. She was not likely to die. In the glow of her young health, feeling her limbs so lithe—the mere act of walking and breathing an ever renewed bodily pleasure—death lay over an horizon which she had not yet sighted. Ah, if she could hear Geff’s step approaching now, if she could feel his hand-clasp, strong, friendly as in the days of old, the collective pride of the whole Bartrand race would not long stand between them!
But the mirk lanes were forsaken; no human step save her own was to be heard. The lights were lit in the scattered cottage homesteads, the children at play round the fire, the elders resting after their day’s work. Through the low windows Marjorie could see one family group after another as she passed along, and felt her own loneliness the greater. As she came near Tintajeux the cry of the owls, than which no more freezing sound exists in nature, was all that gave her welcome.
‘That stain has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty years.’
The moral of Miss Tighe’s story lingered in Marjorie’s heart. As she and her grandfather sat for the last time together over dessert, old Andros took not unkindly notice of her white cheeks and darkened eyes.
‘You must get back your good looks before you show yourself in Cambridge. Women are sent into the world to be graceful. When they fail in that, they fail in everything. Be a senior wrangler if you will, but keep your complexion. You have grown much more like your father of late.’ This was the highest form of praise Andros Bartrand could offer her. ‘Don’t go back to the little skinny Spanish witch of former days.’