CHAPTER XVII.
"Look in my face: my name is Might-have-been, And I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell."
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
The days following Barbara's return to Chancton Priory went slowly by, and she received no sign, no word from Berwick. She had felt quite sure that he would come—if not that same evening of her leaving Fletchings, then the next morning; if not in the morning, then in the afternoon.
During those days she went through every phase of feeling. She learnt the lesson most human beings learn at some time of their lives—how to listen without appearing to do so for the sounds denoting arrival, how to hunger for the sound of a voice which to the listener brings happiness, however indifferently these same accents fall on the ears of others. She schooled herself not to flinch when the days went by bringing no successor to that letter in which Berwick had promised her so much more than she had ever asked of him.
Even in the midst of her restless self-questioning and unhappiness, she was touched and pleased at the gladness with which she had been welcomed home again by Madame Sampiero, and even by Doctor McKirdy. It seemed strange that neither of them spoke of the man who now so wholly occupied her thoughts; no one, with the exception perhaps of his old nurse, noted Berwick's absence, or seemed to find it untoward. Barbara had at first been nervously afraid that Madame Sampiero would make some allusion to the few moments they had spent together that Sunday morning, that she would perhaps ask her what had induced her eager wish to leave Fletchings; but no such word was said, and Barbara could not even discover whether Doctor McKirdy was aware that her sudden return to the Priory had been entirely voluntary.
And then, as the short winter days seemed to drag themselves along, Mrs. Rebell, almost in spite of herself, again began to see a great deal of Oliver Boringdon. There was something in his matter-of-fact eagerness for her society which soothed her sore heart; her manner to him became very gracious, more what it had been before Berwick had come into her life; and again she found herself taking the young man's part with Madame Sampiero and the old Scotchman. Boringdon soon felt as happy as it was in his nature to be. He told himself he had been a jealous fool, for Barbara spoke very little of her visit to Fletchings, and not at all of Berwick; perhaps she had seen him when there at a disadvantage.
As Oliver happened to know, Berwick had left Sussex; he was now in London, and doubtless they would none of them see anything of him till Easter. The young man took the trouble to go down to the Grange and tell Mrs. Kemp that he had been mistaken in that matter of which he had spoken to her. He begged her, rather shamefacedly, to forget what he had said. Lucy's mother heard him in silence, but she did not repeat her call on Mrs. Rebell. So it was that during those days which were so full of dull wretchedness and suspense to Barbara Rebell, Oliver Boringdon also went through a mental crisis of his own, the upshot of which was that he wrote a long and explicit letter to Andrew Johnstone.