He shook hands with her, half-smiling, half-frowning, and, opening the sacristy door that led into the presbytery, hurried her away. Franceline was too much discomfited by the abrupt dismissal to conjecture why she was hustled out through the house instead of being allowed to go back through the church, the natural way, and quite as short. She could not understand why Father Henwick should have shown such annoyance and surprise at the sight of her. This was not the first time she had played the trick on them at home of coming out to church on a sunny morning, and it had never done her any harm. She was turning the riddle in her mind, as she passed through the little sitting-room into the entry, when she saw the front door standing wide open, and a gentleman outside speaking to the fly-man. The moment he perceived Franceline he raised his hat and remained uncovered while he spoke.
“Good-morning, mademoiselle! How is M. de la Bourbonais?”
“Thank you, my father is quite well.”
She and Clide looked at each other as they exchanged this commonplace greeting; but they did not shake hands. Neither could probably have explained what the feeling was that held them back. Franceline went on her way, and Clide de Winton entered the presbytery, each bearing away the sound of the other’s voice and the sweetness of that rapid glance with a terrible sense of joy.
Franceline’s heart beat high within her as she walked on. What right had it to do so? How dared it? Poor, fluttering heart! No bitter upbraidings of indignant conscience, no taunts of womanly pride, could make it stop. The more she tried to silence it, the louder it cried. She was close by The Lilies, and it was crying out and throbbing wildly still. She could not go in and face her father in this state; she must gain a few minutes to collect and calm herself. The snow-drops grew in great profusion on a bank in the park at the back of the cottage. Raymond was fond of wild flowers; she would go and gather him some: this would account for her delay. She laid her muff on the grass. It was wet with the hoar-frost melting in the sun; but Franceline did not see this. She stooped down and began to pluck the snow-drops. It was a congenial task in her present frame of mind. Snow-drops had always been favorites with her. In her childish days of innocent pantheism she used to fancy that flowers had spirits, or some instinct that enabled them to enjoy and to suffer, to be glad in the sunshine and unhappy in the cold and the rain. She fancied that perfume was their language, and that they conversed in it as birds do in songs and chirpings. She used to be sorry for the flowers that had no perfume, and called them “the dumb ones,” connecting their fate in some vague, pitying way with that of two deaf and dumb little children in the village. But the snow-drops she pitied most of all. They came in the winter-time, when everything was cold and dreary and there were no kindred flowers to keep them company; no roses; no bees and butterflies to make music for them; no nightingales to sing them to sleep in the scented summer nights; no liquid, starry skies and sweet, warm dews to kiss them as they slept; their pale, ascetic little slumbers were attuned to none of these fragrant melodies, and Franceline loved them all the more for their loveless, lonely life. But she was not pitying them now, as, one by one, she plucked the drooping bells and the bright green leaves under the silver hedge; she was envying them and listening to them. Every flower and blade of grass has a message for us, if we could but hear it; the woods and fields are all tablets on which the primitive scriptures of creative love are written for us. “Your life is to be like ours,” the snow-drops were whispering to Franceline. “We dwell alone in cold and silence—so must you; we have no sister flowers to make life joyous, no roses to gladden us with their perfume and their beauty—neither shall you; roses are emblems of love, and love is not for you. You must be content with us. We are the emblems of purity and hope; take us to your heart. We are the heralds of the spring; we bring the promise, but we do not wait for its fulfilment. You are happier than we; you will not have the summer here, but you know that it will come hereafter, and that the flowers and fruits will be only the more beautiful for the waiting being prolonged. Look upwards, sister snow-drop, and take courage.” Franceline listened to the mystic voice, and, as she did so, large tears fell from her eyes on the white bells of the messengers, as pure as the crystal dew that stood in frozen tears upon their leaves.
M. de la Bourbonais had not heard her go out; and when she came in and handed him her bouquet, fresh-gathered, he took for granted she had gone out for the purpose, and did not chide her for the slight imprudence. Angélique was not so lenient; she was full of wrath against the truant, and threatened to go at once and inform on her, which Franceline remarked she might have done an hour ago, if she had any such intention; and then, with a kiss and two arms thrown around the old woman’s mahogany neck, it was all made right between them.
Franceline did not venture out again that day. She was afraid of meeting Clide. She strove hard to forget the morning’s incident, to stifle the emotions it had given rise to, and to turn away her thoughts from even conjecturing the possible cause of Mr. de Winton’s presence at Dullerton and at Father Henwick’s. But strive as she might, the thoughts would return, and her mind would dwell on them. She was horrified to see the effect that Clide’s presence had had on her; to find how potent his memory was with her still, how it had stirred the slumbering depths and broken up the stagnant surface-calm of her heart, filling it once more with wild hopes and ardent longings that she had fondly imagined crushed and buried for ever. Was her hard-earned self-conquest a sham after all? She could not help fearing it when she saw how persistently the idea kept returning again and again to her, banish it as she would: “Had he come to tell Father Henwick that he was free?” Then she wondered, if it were so, what Father Henwick would do; whether he would come and see her immediately, or let things take their course through Sir Simon and her father. Then again she would discard this notion as impossible, and see all sorts of evidence in the circumstances of the morning’s episode to prove that it could not be. Why should Father Henwick have tried so hard to prevent their meeting, if the one obstacle to it were removed? and why should Clide have been so restrained and distant when she came upon him suddenly? If only she could ask this one question and have it answered, Franceline thought she could go back again to her state of stagnation, and trample down her rebellious heart into submission once more.
She slept very little that night, and the next morning she determined that she would go out at any risk. Sitting still all day in this state of mind was unbearable; so about eleven o’clock, when the sun was high and the frost melted, she put on her bonnet and said she was going for a walk to see Miss Merrywig. As the day was fine and she had not taken cold yesterday, Angélique made no difficulty. Franceline started off to the wood, and was soon crushing the snow-drops and the budding lemon-colored primroses as she threaded her way along the foot-paths.
For some mysterious reason which no one could fathom, but which the oldest inhabitant of the place remembered always to have existed, you were kept an hour waiting at Miss Merrywig’s before the door was opened. You rang three times, waited an age between each ring, and then Keziah, the antediluvian factotum of the establishment, came limping along the passage, and, after another never-ending interval of unbarring and unbolting, you were let in. It was not Keziah who opened the door for Franceline this morning; it was Miss Merrywig herself, shawled and bonneted, ready to go out.
“O my dear child! is it you? I am so delighted to see you! Do come in! No, no, I am not going out. That is to say, I am going out. It’s the luckiest thing that you did not come two minutes later, or you would not have found me. I am so glad! No, no, you are not putting me about the least bit in the world. Come and sit down, and I’ll explain all about it. I cannot imagine what is keeping Keziah, and she knows I am waiting to be off, and that the negus will be getting cold, though it was boiling mad, and I have only this moment put it into the flask. But what can be keeping her? It didn’t so much matter; in fact, it didn’t matter at all, only I have promised little Jemmy Torrens—you know Mary Torrens’ boy on the green?—well, I promised him I would make the negus for him myself and take it to him myself. He won’t take anything except from me, poor little fellow! You see he’s known me since I was a baby—I mean since he was—and that’s why, I suppose; and Keziah knows it, and why she dallies so long I cannot conceive! She knows I can’t leave the house unprotected and go off before she comes in—there are so many tramps about, you see, my dear. It is provoking of Keziah!”