Her kind face beamed with such smiles as Mr. Martin considered to be symptomatic of the Christian life.
"I've got a plan about Elizabeth," she said, "though it's a secret yet. But I should like to tell you about it. I am thinking of making a proposal to Elizabeth and suggesting that she should not go back to India as early as October. There is no great affection between her and her stepmother, and I expect she often feels very lonely and unhappy there, with no music and, as far as I can judge, only soldiers to talk to. Dear Elizabeth! I think she is enjoying our quiet life at Heathmoor. I dare say that after those dreadful wildernesses and jungles in India it seems to her one round of excitement and pleasure and parties and operas, all given her free. Indeed, I have a further plan still, which will make her quite wild with pleasure, I am sure. I am thinking of asking her to come with me to Egypt, and I have written to ask Uncle Bob about it, just to see if he will allow it before I say anything to her. Of course, he would pay for her journey—and, indeed, it is all on the way to India—and her hotel expenses. But I should not dream of charging her for her share of our sitting-room, if we have one. I shall go shares with Edward in that, and I dare say the servants at the hotel would not expect her to tip them!"
Mrs. Hancock's plans for other people always necessitated a certain amount of interpretation; it was important to look at them from her point of view. Here the interpretation was easy. It had occurred to her that she would be rather lonely when Edith and Edward left after their marriage, and that in Egypt it would be pleasant to have somebody in constant attendance on her, since the other two, presumably, would want to make all kinds of expeditions that she herself might not care to join in. She liked Elizabeth's vitality and fervour, finding it stimulating. This point she touched on next.
"I declare Elizabeth is as good as a tonic," she said, "with all her high spirits and gaiety, though for the last ten days she has not been quite so lively. I dare say it is the hot weather, though, to be sure, she ought to be used to that. Here we are, on the heath again. We shall be at home in ten minutes. How quickly we have come! Well, my darling, I do think I have managed to disperse your clouds for you this morning. I don't think Edward's absence will give you any more anxiety now that we have talked so fully about it. There is nothing like talking a thing thoroughly over. You will see that it will not be long before his stress of work is finished. Perhaps he is making quantities and quantities of money, for I hear that sometimes on the Stock Exchange people make fortunes in quite a short time. Would not that be exciting?"
Mrs. Hancock, as has been seen, had a great belief in the imitative instinct, which she interpreted by means of her own. To her it meant that if she herself felt thoroughly content and happy, it was certain that those round her would feel happy too, for she diffused happiness. In the same way, if she felt very well she knew that she diffused a spirit of health. It was a comfortable belief (like all the clauses of her creed), and she would have been quite incredulous if she had been told that all she had done was to accentuate Edith's suspicions by her allusion to Elizabeth's diminished liveliness, and to depress her thoroughly at the thought of Elizabeth joining them on the Egyptian tour. And had Edith known how Elizabeth had been spending this last hour while her mother had been so rich in unconvincingness, she would have known how solid her suspicions really were.
The girl had gone up to her bedroom after the motor had started in order to be secure against any further interruption, and had again read through the letter she had received from Edward that morning, which, as Edith had ascertained, contained two sheets. She heard his voice in the pleading sentences; it seemed to her as she read, with eyes that ever and again were too dim to decipher the words, that he was actually talking to her. And she could not interrupt him, argue with him as she would have done if he had been here; she had to fight the cumulative effect of those close-written lines. He besought her to allow him to come down, for it was at her instance that he stayed away, and tell Edith all. He scouted as childish the idea that absence could make any difference, that he could forget what she had called "the excited madness of that evening." Above all, again and yet again, with a lover's clamorous iteration, he begged her to see him.
Elizabeth sat with this letter in front of her for a long time after she had finished reading and rereading it, letting her tears have their way with her. In strange guise had the soft god come to her, girt about with bitterness and impossibilities. She raged at herself for loving him; she reviled this torturing demon that others found so sweet, but how she longed for the changed, transfigured aspect that he burned to show her. Once, for mere relief of heart, she filled a page with scrawled words of love, only to tear it up again, and once she filled another page with useless denials, with cold assertions that Edward was nothing to her, that she was perfectly indifferent to him. That, too, was fruitless; he knew she loved him, and even if she could have convinced him that it was not so, she could not have brought herself so to convince him to deny the most sacred truth that she had ever known. She could no more have done that than she could accept the love which brought misery on another and rose from the ashes of a broken promise. If there was no binding force in loyalty all ties were dissolved.
After a while her sobs grew quieter, and she tore up the letter she had begun to him when Edith, that morning, had come in from the garden. Till then, Elizabeth had not known that her cousin suspected anything, that she had begun to put the real construction on Edward's absence. Now it was necessary to quiet those suspicions, to let Edward know also, in a way she could not convey by letter, that while Edith claimed his promise, that promise could not be broken for any reason whatever. Nothing in the world seemed so certain as this. Edith must voluntarily give him up before.... Then she carefully erased that sentence. That contingency was not to be thought of yet.
Elizabeth felt utterly weary and confused and heart-sick. Obstacles, menacing and monstrous, faced her in whichever direction she turned. Perhaps Edward's presence would only confirm and strengthen Edith's suspicions, and lead her to the certainty which she suspected. Yet if Edward continued to be absent, that would lead to a break on his side, at his initiative, and it was that above all that must be avoided. If he threw her over, said he could not marry her, the hosts of hell and heaven combined would not be able to bring Elizabeth to him. She could not take what by right was Edith's against Edith's will. It was possible, and more than possible, that Edith might see he did not love her, and not release him only, but bid him begone. And yet Edward had never loved her, while she, loving him in her own manner, had been content with his liking and friendly intimacy. When she knew that his heart had been awakened, but not for her, would she still desire that moonlight, when his sun had risen on another land? Elizabeth, as she finished her letter to Edward, felt that she had not the slightest idea.
The letter got written, and no word of tenderness or love appeared in it; it might have been penned by some fossil of a family friend and written in prehistoric ink, for if she had not written like that there was but one other way in which she could write to him, and she would have said, "I am coming to you." The thinnest partition, but a partition the most impenetrable, insulated her from him. On this point her will stood utterly firm. In this short, dry note she did not attempt to argue the question; she merely told him that he must come down at once, and put an end to Edith's intolerable suspicions. "But for you to break your engagement to her will not bring me one step nearer you," were the concluding words. Whether she was acting wisely or not, whether there was not some step she could take later that would be cleverer, more tactful, she could not consider. The situation was simple enough, and they had to wait for Edith to decide its solution.