“I ought to apologize for suggesting such an unreasonable hour.”
Consciousness of his endeavour to keep her at arm’s length gave her the strength to show him the needlessness of his precautions, though her mode of opening the subject was misleading.
“You always thought me rather a sluggard,” she said softly; “do you remember?”
But no “do you remembers” were to enter into his programme, and though more against the grain than he liked to own, he cut this one short.
“I never could understand why there is a virtueper sein getting up early.”
“No,” she answered, acquiescing sweetly in the lopping off the head of her bud of reminiscence; “there are enough real virtues and vices, aren’t there, without loading us with mock ones?”
He had led the talk to a safe abstraction, yet already he felt the strain.
“It is settled, then?”—taking for granted with unconscious arbitrariness what she hadnotsaid—“8.50.”
To his intense surprise and alarm her answer was to rise from the depths of her chair—what alittle slip of a thing she looked in her new mourning! Launce’s description of his sister, “White as a lily and small as a wand,” darted across Edward’s mind—and drawing near him, she laid her hand upon his coat-sleeve. Evidently the keeping at arm’s length would be a harder task than he had promised himself.
“No, it is not settled,” she said; “nothing about it is settled except that you have made one poor creature even more everlastingly your debtor than she was before by proposing it.”
He looked back at her aghast, yet only half believing, unconscious of what at any other moment he would have been tinglingly aware, the clasp of her fingers on his arm. He knew her to be so complete a liar, that the mere fact of her announcing that she did not purpose to return to Stillington was, as likely as not, to mean that she had every intention of doing so. Was this refusal one of her infinite wiles to lure him into cajoling and caressing her into compliance?
“Am I to understand that you have made other plans?” His voice was frosty; too frosty, perhaps, or it seemed so to himself, for he added more in his own manner, “I beg your pardon for what may sound like an impertinent intrusion, but you have taken me by surprise.”
The chill in his tone had loosened her clasp upon his sleeve, and they stood near but apart from one another.
“I am going to stay with the Slammers.”
“The Slammers?”
There was such hopeless bewilderment in his repetition of the name that she felt the need of enlightening him.
“I am stupid to-day; probably you have never heard of them. I was forgetting how little you know of the life here of late.”
“You need not remind me that I was a neglectful brother,” he answered, in a key of such profound regret that she took refuge from her dangerous pity of him in explanation.
“They are, in a way, connections of mine—at least, he is; his name was Ransome before he married her. He was, like the rest of the family, not a very shining light, I believe, but now he has ranged himself, I suppose, and she is very philanthropic and platformy and religious.”
He received the blow in total silence, being not one of those who cry out when they are hurt. When at last he spoke, it was with a measured impartiality, which sounded to himself grossly overdone.
“I suppose that you are the best judge of what makes for your happiness.”
“One ought not to think of one’s own happiness,” she answered, in her “nicest” manner; then with a flash of self-ridicule for serving up so coarsely dressed a dish of “goodness” to one who knew her much too well to swallow it, she added with a laugh, whose hysteric quality, if half affected, was also half natural—“at least, so Mrs. Slammer tells her husband when she whips off hercordon bleuhalf an hour before dinner to see the Monument.”
Her mental comment on her own speech—for she was not one with whom thought and word ever flowed parallel—ran thus: “What atrocious taste to be making bad jests to poor Felicity’s brother on the day of the funeral! but if I am not flippant, God knows what I may say or do!”
He stood before her absolutely still, not moving a muscle at her dull pleasantry.
“Have you thought it well over? Are you quite sure that it would not be better for you to come back with us to Stillington to-morrow?”
Once again the calm aloofness of his tone sounded overdone to Edward’s ear, but it did not for a moment take in his hearer. (“Poor fellow, how hard he is trying to be good! I suppose it is a beautiful sight, and I must not be outdone.”) There was the gentlest rebuke in her sorrowful little voice as she answered—
“I know that you are not likely to be joking to-day; but when you ask that you seem to be mocking me.”
“Then why do you refuse?”
She dropped her eyes to the carpet, and gave him the opportunity of verifying that the large white lids were a little swollen and discoloured with weeping. He had to count thirty clock-beats before her answer came. (“If I give in now, I am done for,” she was saying to herself. “At the present moment I feel as if Edward would make up for everything; as if nothing in the world would be of any value without him, butI know all the while that I do not really thinkso.”) She raised her eyes slowly, as if tears made them difficult to lift.
“It would be better for me; but would it be better for Camilla?”
In the tension of the moment neither of them noticed Bonnybell’s unwonted use of Mrs. Tancred’s Christian name. (She must have been mistaken in thinking that Edward looked white as he stood by his sister’s grave. If he was white then, what was he now?)
“Do not misunderstand me,” she went on, almost under her breath, but quite distinctly; “what I mean to say is that I do not see how things are changed since I was sent away because she was too ill to have the worry and anxiety of me.”
If Bonnybell’s eyes had found it hard to raise themselves, Edward’s lips found it harder still to frame the few words of his response.
“She is in stronger health than she was then.”
“For the moment, yes; but it may be only a reprieve. She told me herself that she looked upon it only as a reprieve.”
In the eagerness and real emotion with which she was putting forth her apology, Miss Ransome forgot for the moment to postulate the supposable regret which she had always believed to be non-existent in the mind of the husband at the probability of his wife’s death; yet for a moment that oversight gave the husband an acute revulsion of feeling.
“God grant she may be wrong!” he said with a low fervency which, as his hearer felt,could not have been put on. She saw her error, and hastened to repair it.
“I was going to say you cannot wish it more than I do!”—with a slight low laugh at the exaggeration of her own expression—“but I do wish it with all my heart! I should be a monster of ingratitude if I did not.”
It was very nearly true. Since Camilla’s death could in no wise profit her, and the memory of her solid kindliness was fresh and vivid, Miss Ransome did wish, with as much sincerity as she was capable of, that Camilla should live, and not die, if she thought such a life as hers worth having.
After that there was not much more to be said, and in a few moments he left her. Neither by the 8.50 nor by any other train was she to return to his hearth’s side. As he reached the door she called softly after him; since she was quite safe now she might give herself that slight indulgence—
“Give my love to the birds. I hope that your next pupil will be quicker in learning your lessons about them.”
He answered, “I shall never have another pupil;” and it was to his credit that this was the nearest he ever went to a declaration.
A yearand a day had passed since Lady Bletchley’s obsequies. (The word is what she would herself have liked to hear applied to them.) All the presidencies, vice-presidencies, memberships of committees and governing bodies which she had so stirringly filled, had been apportioned among half a dozen less active-minded holders; and though the newspapers of the day had pronounced her loss to be an irreparable one, to the naked eye it seemed already repaired. On the other hand, her memory probably lurked unsuspected in the breasts of recipients of her least trumpeted benefactions. The winter had been mild, and the season promised to be a forward one.
“Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,A quickening life from the earth’s heart had burst;As it has ever done with change and motion,From the great Morning of the world when firstGod dawned on chaos.”
“Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,A quickening life from the earth’s heart had burst;As it has ever done with change and motion,From the great Morning of the world when firstGod dawned on chaos.”
“Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,A quickening life from the earth’s heart had burst;As it has ever done with change and motion,From the great Morning of the world when firstGod dawned on chaos.”
And above the sheeted primroses in the Stillington woods the birds’ calls and rondels rang out in intemperate gladness. That was outside; within,a white woman lay on a bed—a white woman lately escaped from the surgeon’s knife, escaped with life from the surgeon’s hands.
Camilla, in the late months of growing suffering, had made every disposition for death; had “set her house” in order—not that it ever needed that—and had turned her stern face with silent valour towards the unpierceable darkness of the grave. And Death would have none of her! Not only had the operation she had undergone been performed successfully, in a different sense from poor Felicity’s, but it had revealed the comparatively harmless character of the malady that had rendered it necessary. Camilla was to live, and not die.
By the bedside a man knelt, holding her wan hands. She was whispering to him.
“Can you forgive me?”
“Forgive you? For what?”
“For not having died! Not—having—set you—free.”
He bowed his head on her hands; and she felt his tears upon them. Then he lifted his face.
“Forgiveyou! Forgive the one person in the world who loves me for having the charity not to leave me!”
Though Mrs. Tancred’s convalescence was a rapid one, she was not for some days allowed to see her correspondence, nor read any of the numerous letters of sympathy and congratulation addressed to her husband. Amongst the firstput into her hands by the latter was one which ran as follows. It was dated on the eve of the operation.
“212, Green Street,“London, W.“My dear Mr. Tancred,“I have heard of the dreadful anxiety you are in about dearest Mrs. Tancred, and must send you a line to tell you how deeply, deeply I simpathize with you!” (The firstiin simpathize had looked to the writer a little odd, but not enough so to cause alteration of the vowel.) “If you could let me know how she gets over it, I should be so,sograteful to you! I hope you will not think me impertinent for writing to you, but I am somiserableabout you both!”“Your deeply grieved“Bonnybell.”“P.S.—I should not tell you at such a moment, only that I cannot bear you to hear from any one else, that Lord Bletchley has persuaded me to marry him. I did not at all wish to at first—you know that I always rather hated the idea of marrying—but I cannot stay on here, as complickations have arisen.”
“212, Green Street,“London, W.
“My dear Mr. Tancred,
“I have heard of the dreadful anxiety you are in about dearest Mrs. Tancred, and must send you a line to tell you how deeply, deeply I simpathize with you!” (The firstiin simpathize had looked to the writer a little odd, but not enough so to cause alteration of the vowel.) “If you could let me know how she gets over it, I should be so,sograteful to you! I hope you will not think me impertinent for writing to you, but I am somiserableabout you both!”
“Your deeply grieved“Bonnybell.”
“P.S.—I should not tell you at such a moment, only that I cannot bear you to hear from any one else, that Lord Bletchley has persuaded me to marry him. I did not at all wish to at first—you know that I always rather hated the idea of marrying—but I cannot stay on here, as complickations have arisen.”
Miss Ransome had meant to have run that doubtfulkto earth in the dictionary, but in the ardour of composition had forgotten this necessary precaution. “Of course, Edward will understand that Colonel Slammer has been making love tome!” At this point the writer had laid down her pen, and rested her pensive head upon a left hand from which some very fine diamonds shot their reconciling sparkle. “It seems brutal to tell him just at this moment, of all others, but I know that it is the truest kindness. He is so good-hearted that he will feel the blow less while he is soothing poor dear Camilla’s last moments.” She glanced at her betrothal ring. “I know I shall be glad by-and-by; but it does seem rather dearly bought just now.” With a sigh she resumed her pen—
“We are both rather alone in the world, and I am sure he will be kind to me. We shall be much more like father and daughter than husband and wife.”
Camilla laid down the letter. “It seems rather soon,” she said; and that was the only comment which the remarriage of their connection with theirprotégéeever evoked between husband and wife.
At the time it was being uttered Bonnybell was sitting on a sofa in the Slammer drawing-room beside herfiancé. A barrier of sofa-cushions had—accidentally as it appeared to Tom—risen between them. Across, but unable to level them, the lover leaned and beamed.
“And you arequitesure that you never were in love with any one else before?”
“Never!”
“Not with Toby Aylmer?”
“How likely!”
“Nor”—a hesitation and an altered tone—“nor—with—Edward Tancred?”
“If you are going to ask me ridiculous and improper questions, I shall be obliged to give up talking to you.”
FINISPRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
[The image of the book's back cover is unavailable.]
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:than, with lightning speed=> then, with lightning speed {pg 27}though a silly and misplaced=> though silly and misplaced {pg 28}visitor’s limp hands=> visitors’ limp hands {pg 123}
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
than, with lightning speed=> then, with lightning speed {pg 27}
though a silly and misplaced=> though silly and misplaced {pg 28}
visitor’s limp hands=> visitors’ limp hands {pg 123}