“I think you would be wise to do so,” replied Mrs. Bray. “This woman will be clean and honest, certainly not likely to attract any troublesome flirtations. She’s got the soft Highland voice with a pretty little whine in it.”
“Oh, call it a wail!” said Lucy, laughing.
“She’s terribly solemn to look at, and she ends her speeches with a sigh,” went on Mrs. Bray. “But she’s not bad-looking, and is of quite superior appearance. Her name is rather a mouthful—Clementina Gillespie—and she’s not a person whom one could reasonably shorten into Clem or Tina. No—it wouldn’t do. You might as well call Robert the Bruce—Bob!”
“Will you send her to see me?” asked Lucy.
“Yes, I will,” said the old lady. “That ridiculous Rachel will be so pleased! It seems a comfort to her to think of having her dead lover’s dead old friend’s sister to live near her. To me it seems a far-off cry of consolation! But everyone to their taste. And now, at last, we’ll dismiss the kitchen, and you must tell me all about Mr. Challoner.”
Lucy had not only her good news to relate, but she actually had something to show. The Slains Castle had stayed for a few days at a certain port, and Charlie had sat for a photograph, which he sent home in his letter. It might not be much as a work of art or science, for the posing was all wrong and the chemicals were manifestly bad. Yet next to Hugh himself it was the very dearest thing in Lucy’s present possession, so satisfactory was its assurance of the beloved wanderer’s renewed strength and energy. Where were the wasted form and the wan countenance which had hitherto haunted Lucy’s memories of her husband? They had vanished, and thus the poor little photograph had cheered Lucy as not even Charlie’s letters had done. For in those he might have been trying “to make the best of things”—to dwell on every trifling improvement, so as to cheer and uphold her in her loneliness. That fear had often haunted her, basing itself on her own silence concerning Pollie’s defection, which silence she had kept intact, “for fear of worrying him.” The shock which Mrs. Morison’s breakdown had given her, when on the eve of revelation, had restrained her from any further attempt at confidence on this matter. This reticence and its motive naturally made her dread some corresponding reticence on her husband’s part. The little portrait set that suspicion at rest. So it had its place in the centre of the dining-room mantelshelf, and was provided with a dainty little frame—the only “article of luxury” which Lucy had bought since Charlie’s departure.
Mrs. Bray went off gratified and elate. She loved to play the part of fairy godmother, though when she was defeated in that—as when the death of Rachel’s lover prevented her from overwhelming her maid with marriage gifts—she was apt to turn unsympathetic and cynical. She prolonged her visit to the little house with the verandah and had to give up two or three other calls she had arranged in the same neighbourhood. She drove off saying to herself with a full consciousness of the humour of the reflection—
“Now I feel good; I could be always good if I was in a world of good people and was able to straighten out every tangle I saw.”
Lucy had another visitor that evening, Tom Black, who had never failed to put in his appearance from time to time ever since that memorable Christmas Day. Tom’s visits were generally of a most cheerful not to say hilarious description, beginning with games of romps with Hugh and ending in all sorts of little services to Lucy herself. Thanks to his aid, she had really given all her books their spring dusting and had got them correctly restored to their proper places—a thing which could not have been done by Jane, who though perfectly able to read, would have stood them upside down, and scattered “sets” most recklessly. Tom always asked whether there was “anything going on that he could do?” and Lucy answered him frankly and candidly. She wondered sometimes whether the inquiry came from humility or pride—from an unnecessarily humble feeling that his presence might be less than pleasure unless it was useful, or from a proud masculine consciousness that a feminine household may often stand in need of a strong arm and a steady hand.
But this evening Tom was in such doleful dumps that Lucy was quite glad that her own spirits had been somewhat cheered by Mrs. Bray’s visit.