Chapter Twenty Six.
The Supreme Secret.
On the evening of her thirty-eighth birthday Vanna Strangeways said adieu to her last patient, and slowly traversed the streets leading towards Jean Gloucester’s home. It was a dull and dreary evening, but her thoughts were not sad. The years which had passed by since the receipt of Piers Rendall’s farewell letter, and the subsequent news of his engagement and marriage, had marked the various stages which attend all great griefs. First the storm, with the roar of the wind, which threatens to destroy the very foundations of life; then the desert; loneliness; an outlook of flat, colourless sand; finally, slowly and surely, the inflowing calm. Hopeless, long-cherished grief is impossible to a soul who has tasted of love for God and its fellow-men. However severely a tree has been pruned, its leaves shoot forth bravely at the call of the spring, and in a few years’ time strength is gathered for another blossoming.
Vanna had put much good hard work into these last years. In the great metropolis of the world, a woman who is willing to work for others, and to work without pay, need never know a moment’s idleness, and Dr Greatman had always a list of patients who were in dire need of help—patients belonging to that section of humanity to whom in especial Vanna’s sympathies went out. Every day of her life she was brought into contact with women compared with whom her own lot was unspeakably calm and happy—poor waifs on life’s ocean, perishing not only for lack of physical help, but also for the want of love, and sympathy, and brightness; and Vanna, as a free agent, blessed with health and means, had it in her power to minister to mind as well as body. She was that rare thing, a voluntary worker on whom one might depend for regular, systematic service; and in her work she found her best and sweetest comfort.
Jean’s old epithet, “Consolation Female,” was truly descriptive of Vanna in these first years of her sorrow; but as time passed by, and the inevitable healing began to make itself felt, there came moments of restlessness and rebellion—moments when a life of philanthropy no longer satisfied, when the inner Ego awoke, and clamoured for recognition. A duller woman might have looked upon these outbursts as backslidings, and have taken herself severely to task for faltering in the path, but Vanna, more clear-sighted, recognised in them a natural and healthy revival of her old spirit. She made no attempt to stifle the growth of this unrest, but rather welcomed it as a sign of recovered strength, and took a keen natural joy in ministering to herself, even as she had done to others. The first longing for a pretty new dress, the first time that a social gathering became a pleasure instead of a bore, the first interested planning for the future on her own behalf—she congratulated herself on each impulse as it came, and so far as might be, gratified it to the full.
“You are the sanest woman I ever met.” Piers’s words were echoed by more than one person who knew Vanna at this period of her life—by Dr Greatman himself, between a frown and a sigh. “Absolutely sane; no extremes—a perfectly balanced woman, sweet and capable, and humorous—one in ten thousand! It seems as though she had inherited the extra share of ballast which her relations have lacked; and yet it is there, the danger, the shadow. I was right. If I were consulted again I should say the same. Even in the last year another cousin has developed symptoms. Such a family ought to be stamped out. But I’d give five years of my life to see that woman happy.”
This evening as she paced the muddy streets, Vanna’s thoughts were engaged with half a dozen details of her busy life. From ten o’clock in the morning she had been hurrying from house to house, yet had not been able to finish the list with which she had started the day. More people had been waiting for her, longing for her coming, than she had been able to visit; the memory of grateful words sounded in her ears. She was returning home to rest and ease, or, if she pleased, to go forth in search of amusement and distraction of mind. For the hundredth time she told herself that she was one of the fortunates of earth; and for the hundredth time “But I am alone” answered the woman’s heart, and could find no solace to fill that void. Vanna threw back her head with the quick, defiant gesture which had grown habitual in years of struggle. This was the direction in which thought could not be allowed to turn, the direction of earthquake and upheaval; the death of peace. Even as the pain cramped her heart she had decided on her medicine. “I will go to see my baby! There is still half an hour before her bedtime.”
Little Vanna, Jean’s youngest daughter, had been brought up by her parents to consider herself as equally the child of themselves and “Mother Wanna” and had shown herself delightfully eager to avail herself of the privilege.
“You’ve gotten only one mummie; I’se two!” was one of the earliest boasts by which she endeavoured to demonstrate her superiority over her sisters. She was a delightful little person, pretty, as were all Jean’s children, with her mother’s dark, cloud-like hair, and her father’s hazel eyes; affectionate, strong-willed, and already, at five years old, amusingly conscious of the powers of a dimpled cheek and a beguiling lisp, to gain for her the ambition of the minute. Jean had faithfully kept her promise of allowing her friend to adopt the small Vanna financially as well as mentally; and if it was a delightful task to purchase her small garments, it was still more thrilling to plan for years ahead. Little Vanna must have an education to fit her for her place in life. Her talents from the beginning should receive the most skilful training; she should be taken abroad to learn languages in the only way in which they can be truly mastered; if her attainments justified she should go on to College; if she preferred a social life, she should enjoy it to the full. Privately Vanna cherished the hope that her fledgling might develop not into a grave student but into a natural, light-hearted girl, whose happiness might atone to her in some wise for her own blighted youth. All that love, and money, and the most careful forethought could do, should be done to secure for the second Vanna an unclouded girlhood. In imagination she pictured her in the various stages of growth; the schoolgirl coming home from school, to be taken for holiday trips abroad; the gayest, least responsible of companions, running short of pocket-money, mislaying her effects, full of wild, impractical plans; later on the débutante, a tall, dim maiden, reviving memories of her lovely mother at the same age, attiring herself in a filmy white gown, peeping with sparkling eyes inside a jeweller’s case, showering sweet kisses as thanks. Later on, the coming of Prince Charming—a Prince Charming who could be welcomed without a pang, for, thank God, there were no dark pages in the history of this second Vanna. Finally a marriage, with its happy bustle of preparation, trousseau buying, and furnishings, the interests of the young home; children of the third generation. The future could not be blank with such an interest as this in prospect!
The church clock at the corner of the street had just struck five as Vanna knocked at the door of Robert Gloucester’s house. It was the children’s hour, when Jean was sure to be found in the den striving to amuse her three little daughters, while each vied with each other in the effort to attract the largest share of attention.