“You need not believe everything he says. However, I can’t say, I know nothing. Phillis will not conceal anything from you, you may be sure.”
“But why don’t you do something quickly? I really can’t tell you all my fears. Your uncle seems so put out and so dissatisfied, I really doubt whether it would not be too late if you two were to marry even now. He doesn’t seem to know his own mind. Perhaps he might come round if you went and did it,” she added, as if it were a matter to be settled easily by some such proceeding as walking across the street.
“You forget—there’s the other man,” said Jack, finding it impossible not to smile. “Listen, Aunt Harriet, if it’s any consolation to you, I’m quite aware I’ve been a fool. But I give you my word that Hetherton is a very secondary consideration.”
“Well, I shall tell your uncle,” she said, looking doubtfully at him.
“That I have been a fool? But then you must go on about Hetherton.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“Then leave it alone; it’s the safest way, take my word for it. I know it’s all your kindness for me, but there are so many old proverbs haunting me about making one’s bed, and sowing and reaping, that I feel sure they amount to a general verdict that I must be left to my fate. Thank you all the same for trying to ward it off.”
Each of these rumours which reached Jack—although he sometimes told himself that they were too indefinite to be heeded—did actually give him a sharp pang, and seemed to leave his heart heavier than before. He refused invitations, and did his best to absorb himself in his profession, setting to work with a dogged determination to push on, rather than any exhilaration of hope. Still there was a certain satisfaction in his labour, and at least a more manly purpose in his life. And so January dragged its short days out of the darkness, sometimes barely succeeding in the effort, and February followed, and to Ibbetson every day was long in its monotony, and yet, looking back, they might all have passed like lightning.
At least that was what it seemed to him one gloomy afternoon when he stood with a telegram in his hand which had just been given to him, and which he had opened carelessly, without any foreboding of the thrill of pain in store. It was from Rome. Miss Cartwright was very ill—would he come at once. The words startled him the more that he felt with keen self-reproach how other interests had pushed her out of his thoughts. There are tender and strong affections so close and so unfailing that they are like the air we breathe, and become almost as much a matter of course. And now Jack remembered with a pang that of late he had written but briefly to his aunt, and that except from a general longing to hear news from Rome he had not noticed that her own letters had become few and short. He pulled out her last from his pocket; the feeble writing smote him to the heart, and he impatiently gave his orders, sent off a hurried note to Clive, and found himself at the station at least twenty minutes before the time for starting.
He travelled as fast as he could, and happily there were no unusual or vexatious delays. But at its best the journey is one which, when a pressing anxiety goads on the traveller, seems as if it would never end. It drags you along past Chambery, and pretty Aix lying under its hills, lingers hopelessly at Modane, and then goes clambering slowly up to the land of snows, before it will take you into the land of sunshine. Afterwards you sweep down to Turin and the vast Lombardy plains, and going towards Florence, creep again into a belt of mountains honey-combed with tunnels, where the gorges in February are just awaking to the first promises of spring, and by-and-by see the twinkling lights of cheery Pistoija, and then the brighter ones of Florence. Jack, leaning out, thought of other evenings, when those lights had shone in the beautiful Val d’Arno. He stopped there now for a few hours’ rest, and the place seemed laden with memories which yet were younger than it was easy to believe. It was a warm night; even already the air was touched with sweet flowery scents, and all the carnival people were flashing about, making the place merry with their laughter.