Time had hung heavily on Lettice's hands during the first month or two of her stay on the Continent. No one could have been kinder to her than Mrs. Hartley, more considerate of her needs and tastes, more anxious to please and distract her. But the recovery of her nerves from the shock and strain to which they had been subjected was a slow process, and her mind began to chafe against the restraint which the weakness of the body imposed upon it.
The early spring brought relief. Nature repairs her own losses as she punishes her own excess. Lettice had suffered by the abuse of her energy and power of endurance, but three months of idleness restored the balance. The two women lived in a small villa on the outskirts of Florence, and when they were not away from home, in quest of art or music, scenery or society, they read and talked to each other, or recorded their impressions on paper. Mrs. Hartley had many friends in England, with whom she was wont to exchange many thousand words; and these had the benefit of the ideas which a winter in Florence had excited in her mind. Lettice's confidant was her diary, and she sighed now and then to think that there was no one in the world to whom she could write the inmost thoughts of her heart, and from whom she could expect an intelligent and sympathetic response.
No doubt she wrote to Clara, and gave her long accounts of what she saw and did in Italy; but Clara was absorbed in the cares of matrimony and motherhood. She had nothing but actualities to offer in return for the idealities which were Lettice's mental food and drink. This had always been the basis of their friendship; and it is a basis on which many a firm friendship has been built.
Lettice had already felt the elasticity of returning health in every limb and vein when the news reached her of the success of her novel; and that instantly completed the cure. Her publisher wrote to her in high spirits, at each demand for a new edition, and he forwarded to her a handsome cheque "on account," which gave more eloquent testimony of his satisfaction than anything else. Graham sent her, through Clara, a bundle of reviews which he had been at the pains of cutting out of the papers, and Clara added many criticisms, mostly favorable, which she had heard from her husband and his friends. Lettice had a keen appetite for praise, as for pleasure of every kind, and she was intoxicated by the good things which were spoken of her.
"There, dear," she said to Mrs. Hartley one morning, spreading out before her friend the cheque which she had just received from Mr. MacAlpine, "you told me that my stupid book had given me nothing more than a nervous fever, but this has come also to pay the doctor's bill. Is it not a great deal of money? What a lucky thing that I went in for half profits, and did not take the paltry fifty pounds which they offered me?"
"Ah, you need not twit me with what I said before I knew what your book was made of," said Mrs. Hartley affectionately. "How was I to know that you could write a novel, when you had only told me that you could translate a German philosopher? The two things do not sound particularly harmonious, do they?"
"I suppose I must have made a happy hit with my subject, though I never thought I had whilst I was writing. I only went straight on, and had not the least idea that people would find much to like in it. Nor had Mr. MacAlpine either, for he did not seem at all anxious to publish it."
"It was in you, my darling, and would come out. You have discovered a mine, and I daresay you can dig as much gold out of it as will suffice to make you happy."
"Now, what shall we do with this money? We must have a big treat; and I am going to manage and pay for everything myself starting from to-day. Shall it be Rome, or the Riviera, or the Engadine; or what do you say to returning by way of Germany? I do so long to see the Germans at home."
Mrs. Hartley was downcast at once.
"The first thing you want to do with your wealth," she said, "is to make me feel uncomfortable! Have we not been happy together these six months, and can you not leave well alone? You know that I am a rich woman, through no credit of my own—for everything I have came from my husband. If you talk of spending your money on anyone but yourself, I shall think that you are pining for independence again, and we may as well pack up our things and get home."
"Oh dear, what have I said? I did not mean it, my dearest friend—my best friend in the world! I won't say anything like it again: but I must go out and spend some money, or I shall not believe in my good fortune. Can you lend me ten pounds?"
"Yes, that I can!"
"Then let us put our things on, and go into paradise."
"What very dissolute idea, to be sure! But come along. If you will be so impulsive, I may as well go to take care of you."
So they went out together—the woman of twenty-six and the woman of sixty, and roamed about the streets of Florence like a couple of school-girls. And Lettice bought her friend a brooch, and herself a ring in memory of the day; and as the ten pounds would not cover it she borrowed fifteen; and then they had a delightful drive through the noble squares, past many a venerable palace and lofty church, through richly storied streets, and across a bridge of marble to the other side of the Arno; so onward till they came to the wood-enshrouded valley, where the trees were breaking into tender leafage, every shade of green commingling with the blue screen of the Apennines beyond. Back again they came into the city of palaces, which they had learned to love, and alighting near the Duomo sought out apasticceriain a street hard by, and ate a genuine school-girl's meal.
"It has been the pleasantest day of my life here!" said Lettice as they reached home in the evening. "I have not had a cloud upon my conscience."
"And it has made the old woman young," said Mrs. Hartley, kissing her friend upon the cheek. "Oh, why are you not my daughter!"
"You would soon have too much of me if I were your daughter. But tell me what a daughter would have done for you, and let me do it while I can."
"It is not to do, but to be. Be just what you are and never desert me, and then I will forget that I was once a childless woman."
So the spring advanced, and drew towards summer. And on the first of May Mrs. Hartley, writing to her cousin, Edith Dalton, the most intimate of all her confidants, gave a glowing account of Lettice.
"My sweetheart here (she wrote) is cured at last. Three months have gone since she spoke about returning to England, and I believe she is thoroughly contented. She has taken to writing again, and seems to be fairly absorbed in her work, but you may be sure that I shall not let her overdo it. The death of her mother, and the break-up of their home, probably severed all the ties that bound her to London; and, so far as I can see,not one of themremains. I laughed to read that you were jealous of her. When you and Brooke come here I am certain you will like her every bit as much as I do. What you tell me of Brooke is rather a surprise, but I know you must be very happy about it. To have had him with you for six months at a time, during which he has never once been up to his club, is a great triumph, and speaks volumes for your clever management, as well as for your care and tenderness. We shall see him married and domesticated before a year has passed! I am impatient for you both to come. Do not let anything prevent you."
It was quite true that Lettice had set to work again, and that she appeared to have overcome the home-sickness which at one time made her long to get back to London. Restored health made her feel more satisfied with her surroundings, and a commission for a new story had found her just in the humor to sit down and begin. She was penetrated by the beauty of the Tuscan city which had been her kindly nurse, which was now her fount of inspiration and inexhaustible source of new ideas. A plot, characters, scenery, stage, impressed themselves on her imagination as she wandered amongst the stones and canvasses of Florence; and they grew upon her more and more distinctly every day, as she steeped herself in the spirit of the place and time. She would not go back to the picturesque records of other centuries but took her portraits from men and women of the time, and tried to recognize in them the descendants of the artists, scholars, philosophers, and patriots, who have shed undying fame on the queen-city of northern Italy.
Entirely buried in her work, and putting away from her all that might interfere with its performance, she forgot for a time both herself and others. If she was selfish in her isolation it was with the selfishness of one who for art's sake is prepared to abandon her ease and pleasure in the laborious pursuit of an ideal. Mrs. Hartley was content to leave her for a quarter of the day in the solitude of her own room on condition of sharing her idleness or recreation during the rest of their waking hours.
Had Lettice forgotten Alan Walcott at this crisis in the lives of both? When Mrs. Hartley was assuring her cousin that all the ties which had bound the girl to London were severed, Alan was expiating in prison the crime of which he had been convicted, which, in his morbid abasement and despair he was almost ready to confess that he had committed. Was he, indeed, as he had not very sincerely prayed to be, forgotten by the woman he loved?
It is no simple question for her biographer to answer off-hand. Lettice, as we know, had admitted into her heart a feeling of sympathetic tenderness for Alan, which, under other circumstances, she would have accepted as worthy to dominate her life and dictate its moods and duties. But the man for whom this sympathy had been aroused was so situated that he could not ask her for her love, whilst she could not in any case have given it if she had been asked. Instinctively she had shut her eyes to that which she might have read in her own soul, or in his, if she had cared or dared to look. She had the book before her, but it was closed and sealed. Where another woman might, have said, "I must forget him—there is a barrier between us which neither can cross," she said nothing; but all her training, her instinct, her delicate feeling, even her timidity and self-distrust, led her insensibly to shun the paths of memory which would have brought her back to the prospect that had allured and alarmed her.
Be it remembered that she knew nothing of his later troubles. She had heard nothing about him since she left England; and Mrs. Hartley, who honestly believed that Alan had practically effaced himself from their lives by his own rash act, was sufficiently unscrupulous to keep her friend in ignorance of what had happened.
So Lettice did not mention Alan, did not keep him in her mind or try to recall him by any active exercise of her memory; and in this sense she had forgotten him. Time would show if the impression, so deep and vivid in its origin, was gradually wearing away, or merely hidden out of sight. No wonder if Mrs. Hartley thought that she was cured.
Lettice heard of the arrival of the Daltons without any other feeling than half-selfish misgiving that her work was to be interrupted at a critical moment, when her mind was full of the ideas on which her story depended for its success. She had created by her imagination a little world of human beings, instinct with life and endowed with vivid character; she had dwelt among her creatures, guided their steps and inspired their souls, loved them and walked with them from day to day, until they were no mere puppets dancing to the pull of a string, but real and veritable men and women. She could not have deserted them by any spontaneous act of her own, and if she was to be torn away from the world, which hung upon her fiat, she could not submit to the banishment without at least an inward lamentation. Art spoils her votaries for the service of society, and society, as a rule, takes its revenge by despising or patronizing the artist whilst competing for the possession of his works.
Brooke Dalton and his sister were lodged in an old palace not far from Mrs. Hartley's smaller and newer residence; and frequent visits between the two couples soon put them all on terms of friendly intimacy. Lettice had always thought well of Mr. Dalton. He reminded her of Angleford, and the happy days of her early youth. In London he had been genial with her, and attentive, and considerate in every sense, so that she had been quite at her ease with him. They met again without constraint, and under circumstances which enabled Dalton to put forth his best efforts to please her, without exciting any alarm in her mind, to begin with.
Edith Dalton captivated Lettice at once. She was a handsome woman of aristocratic type and breeding, tall, slender, and endowed with the graceful manners of one who has received all the polish of refined society without losing the simplicity of nature. A year or two younger than her brother, she had reached an age when most women have given up the thought of marriage; and in her case there was a sad and sufficient reason for turning her back upon such joys and consolations as a woman may reasonably expect to find in wedded life. She had been won in her girlhood by a man thoroughly fitted to make her happy—a man of wealth and talent, and honorable service in the State; who, within a week of their marriage day, had been thrown from his horse and killed. Edith had not in so many words devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood; but that was the outcome of the great sorrow of her youth. She had remained single without growing morose, and her sweet and gentle moods endeared her to all who came to know her.
With such a companion Lettice was sure to become intimate; or at any rate, she was sure to respond with warmth to the kindly feeling displayed for her. Yet there were many points of unlikeness between her and Edith Dalton. She too was refined, but it was the refinement of mental culture rather than the moulding of social influences. She too retained the simplicity of nature, but it was combined with an outspoken candor which Edith had been taught to shun. Where Lettice would be ready to assert herself, and claim the rights of independence, Edith would shrink back with fastidious alarm; where the one was fitted to wage the warfare of life, and, if need be, to stand out as a champion or pioneer of her sex, the other would have suffered acutely if she had been forced into any kind of aggressive combat.
When Brooke told his sister that he had met a woman whom he could love, she was unfeignedly glad, and never thought of inquiring whether the woman in question was rich, or well-connected, or moving in good society. Perhaps she took the last two points for granted, and no doubt she would have been greatly disappointed if she had found that Brooke's choice had been otherwise than gentle and refined. But when she saw Lettice she was satisfied, and set herself by every means in her power to please and charm her new friend.
As Mrs. Hartley knew and backed the designs of the Daltons, Lettice was not very fairly matched against the wiles and blandishments of the three. Brooke Dalton, indeed, felt himself in a rather ridiculous position, as though he were proceeding to the siege of Lettice's heart relying upon the active co-operation of his sister and cousin, to say nothing of her brother's letter which he carried in his pocket. But, after all, this combination was quite fortuitous. He had not asked for assistance, and he knew very well that if such assistance were too openly given it would do his cause more harm than good.
Dalton was one of those good-tempered men who are apt to get too much help in spite of themselves from the womenfolk of their family and household, who are supposed to need help when they do not, and who have only themselves to thank for their occasional embarrassment of wealth in this particular form. Nature intends such men to be wife-ridden and happy. If is not alien to their disposition that they should spend their earlier manhood, as Dalton had done, amongst men who take life too easily and lightly; but they generally settle down before the whole of their manhood is wasted, and then a woman can lead them with a thread of silk.
It was for Lettice, if she would, to lead this gentle-hearted English squire, to be the mistress of his house and fair estate, to ensure the happiness of this converted bachelor of Pall Mall, and to bid good-bye to the cares and struggles of the laborious life on which she had entered.
The temptation was put before her. Would she dally with it, and succumb to it? And could anyone blame her if she did?
Up the right-hand slopes of the Val d'Arno, between Florence and Fiesole, the carriage-road runs for some distance comparatively broad and direct between stone walls and cypress-hedges, behind which the passer-by gets glimpses of lovely terraced gardens, of the winding river far below his feet, of the purple peaks of the Carrara mountains far away. But when the road reaches the base of the steep hill on which the old Etruscans built their crow's-nest of a city—where Catiline gathered his host of desperadoes, and under whose shadow, more than three centuries later, the last of the Roman deliverers, himself a barbarian, hurled back the hordes of Radegast—it winds a narrow and tortuous way from valley to crest, from terrace to terrace, until the crowning stage is reached.
Here in the shadow of the old Etruscan fortifications, the wayfarer might take his stand and look down upon the wondrous scene beneath him. "Never," as Hallam says, "could the sympathies of the soul with outward nature be more finely touched; never could more striking suggestions be presented to the philosopher and the statesman" than in this Tuscan cradle of so much of our modern civilization, which even the untraveled islander of the northern seas can picture in his mind and cherish with lively affection. For was it not on this fertile soil of Etruria that the art and letters of Italy had birth? and was it not in fair Florence, rather than in any other modern city, that they were born again in the fulness of time? Almost on the very spot where Stilicho vainly stemmed the advancing tide which was to reduce Rome to a city of ruins, the new light dawned after a millennium of darkness. And there, from the sacred walls of Florence, Dante taught our earlier and later poets to sing; Galileo reawoke slumbering science with a trumpet-call which frightened the Inquisition out of its senses; Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Da Vinci, Del Sarto created models of art for all succeeding time. Never was there in any region of the world such a focus of illuminating fire. Never will there live a race that does not own its debt to the great seers and creators of Tuscany.
Late on an autumn afternoon, towards the close of the September of 1882, four English friends have driven out from Florence to Fiesole, and, after lingering for a time in the strange old city, examining the Cathedral in the Piazza and the remains of the Roman Theatre in the garden behind it, they came slowly down the hill to the beautiful old villa which was once the abode of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The carriage waited for them in the road, but here, on the terrace outside the villa gates, they rested awhile, feasting their eyes upon the lovely scene which lay below.
They had visited the place before, but not for some months, for they had been forced away from Florence by the fierce summer heat, and had spent some time in Siena and Pistoja, finally taking up their residence in a cool and secluded nook of the Pistojese Apennines. But when autumn came, and the colder, mountain breezes began to blow, Mrs. Hartley hastened her friends back to her comfortable little Florentine villa, proposing to sojourn there for the autumn, and then to go with Lettice and perhaps with the Daltons also, on to Rome.
"We have seen nothing so beautiful as this in all our wanderings," Lettice said at last in softened tones.
She was looking at the clustering towers of the city, at Brunelleschi's magnificent dome, and the slender grace of Giotto's Campanile, and thence, from those storied trophies of transcendant art, her gaze wandered to the rich valley of the Arno, with its slopes of green and grey, and its distant line of purple peaks against an opalescent sky.
"It is more beautiful in spring. I miss the glow and scent of the flowers—the scarlet tulips, the sweet violets," said Mrs. Hartley.
"I cannot imagine anything more beautiful," Edith Dalton rejoined. "One feels oppressed with so much loveliness. It is beyond expression."
"Silence is most eloquent, perhaps, in a place like this," said Lettice. "What can one say that is worth saying, or that has not been said before?"
She was sitting on a fragment of fallen stone, her hands loosely clasped round her knees, her eyes fixed wistfully and dreamily upon the faint amethystine tints of the distant hills. Brooke Dalton looked down at her with an anxious eye. He did not altogether like this pensive mood of hers; there was something melancholy in the drooping curves of her lips, in the pathos of her wide gaze, which he did not understand. He tried to speak lightly, in hopes of recalling her to the festive mood in which they had all begun the day.
"You remind me of two friends of mine who are just home from Egypt. They say that when they first saw the Sphinx they sat down and looked at it for two hours without uttering a word."
"You would not have done that, Brooke," said Mrs. Hartley, a little maliciously.
"But why not? I think it was the right spirit," said Lettice, and again lapsed into silence.
"Look at the Duomo, how well it stands out in the evening light!" exclaimed Edith. "Do you remember what Michael Angelo said when he turned and looked at it before riding away to Rome to build St. Peter's? 'Come te non voglio: meglio di te non posso.'"
"I am always struck by his generosity of feeling towards other artists," remarked Mrs. Hartley. "Except towards Raffaelle, perhaps. But think of what he said of Santa Maria Novella, that it was beautiful as a bride, and that the Baptistery gates were worthy of Paradise. It is only the great who can afford to praise so magnificently."
Again there was a silence. Then Mrs. Hartley and Edith professed to be attracted by a group of peasant children who were offering flowers and fruit for sale; and they strolled to some little distance, talking to them and to a black-eyedcantadina, whose costume struck them as unusually gay. They even walked a little in the shade of the cypresses, with which the palazzo seemed to be guarded, as with black and ancient sentinels; but all this was more for the sake of leaving Brooke alone with Lettice than because they had any very great interest in the Italian woman and her children, or the terraced gardens of the Villa Mozzi. For the time of separation was at hand. The Daltons were returning very shortly to England, and Brooke had not yet carried out his intention of asking Lettice Campion to be his wife. He had asked Mrs. Hartley that day to give him a chance, if possible, of half an hour's conversation with Lettice alone; but their excursion had not hitherto afforded him the coveted opportunity. Now, however, it had come; but while Lettice sat looking towards the towers of Florence with that pensive and abstracted air, Brooke Dalton shrank from breaking in upon her reverie.
In truth, Lettice was in no talkative mood. She had been troubled in her mind all day, and for some days previously, and it was easier for her to keep silence than for any of the rest. If she had noticed the absence of Mrs. Hartley and Edith, she would probably have risen from her seat and insisted on joining them; but strong in the faith that they were but a few steps away from her, she had thrown the reins of restraint upon the necks of her wild horses of imagination, and had been borne away by them to fields where Brooke's fancy was hardly likely to carry him—fields of purely imaginative joy and ideal beauty, in which he had no mental share. It was rest and refreshment to her to do this, after the growing perplexity of the last few days. Absorbed in her enjoyment of the lucent air, the golden and violet and emerald tints of the landscape; conscious also of the passionate joy which often thrills the nerves of Italy's lovers when they find them selves, after long years of waiting, upon that classic ground, she had for the time put away the thoughts that caused her perplexity, and abandoned herself to the sweet influences of the time and place.
The Daltons had been in Italy since May, and she had seen a great deal of Edith. Brooke Dalton had sometimes gone off on an expedition by himself, but more frequently he danced attendance on the women; and Lettice had found out that when he was absent she had a great deal more of him than when he was present. So much had Edith and Mrs. Hartley to say about him, so warmly did they praise his manners, his appearance, his manly and domestic virtues, and his enviable position in the world, that in course of time she knew all his good points by heart. She had actually found herself the day before, more as a humorous exercise of memory than for any other reason, jotting them down in her diary.
"B. D.—testibusE. D. et M. H.
"He is handsome, has a manly figure, a noble head, blue eyes, chestnut hair (it is turning grey—L. C.), a dignified presence, a look that shows he respects others as much as himself.
"He is truthful, simple in tastes, easily contented, lavishly generous (that I know—L. C.), knows his own mind (that I doubt—L. C.), is fond of reading (?), a scholar (??), with a keen appreciation of literature (???).
"He has one of the most delightful mansions in England (as I know—L. C.), with gardens, conservatories, a park, eight thousand a year.
"He is altogether an enviable man, and the woman who marries him will be an enviable woman (a matter of opinion—L. C.), and he is on the look-out for a wife (how would he like to have that said of him?—L. C.)."
Lettice had sportively written this in her diary, and had scribbled it out again; but it represented fairly enough the kind of ideas which Brooke Dalton's sister and cousin had busily instilled into her mind. The natural consequence was that she had grown somewhat weary of listening to the praises of their hero, and felt disposed to consider him as either much too superior to be thoroughly nice, or much too nice to be all that his womenfolk described him.
Of some of his estimable qualities, however, she had had personal experience; and, notably of his lavish generosity. A few days ago he had taken them all to the shop of a dealer of old-fashioned works of art and rare curiosities, declaring that he had brought them there for the express purpose of giving them a memento of Florence before they left the city.
Then he bade them choose, and, leaving Edith and Mrs. Hartley to make their own selection, which they did modestly enough, letting him off at about a sovereign a-piece, he insisted on prompting and practically dictating the choice of Lettice, who, by constraint and cajolery together, was made to carry away a set of intaglios that must have cost him fifty pounds at least.
She had no idea of their value, but she was uneasy at having taken the gift. What would he conclude from her acceptance of such a valuable present? It was true that she was covered to some extent by the fact that Edith and Mrs. Hartley were with her at the time, but she could not feel satisfied about the propriety of her conduct, and she had a subtle argument with herself as to the necessity of returning the gems sooner or later, unless she was prepared to be compromised in the opinion of her three friends.
She had for the present, however, banished these unpleasant doubts from her mind, and the guilty author of her previous discomfort stood idly by her side, smoking his cigar, and watching the people as they passed along the road. The other ladies were out of sight, and thus Brooke and Lettice were left alone.
After a time she noticed the absence of her friends, and turned round quickly to look for them. Brooke saw the action, and felt that if he did not speak now he might never get such a good opportunity. So, with nothing but instinct for his guide, he plunged into the business without further hesitation.
"I hope you will allow, Miss Campion, that I know how to be silent when the occasion requires it! I did not break in upon your reverie, and should not have done so, however long it might have lasted."
"I am sorry you have had to stand sentinel," said Lettice; "but you told me once that a woman never need pity a man for being kept waiting so long as he had a cigar to smoke."
"That is quite true; and I have not been an object for pity at all. Unless you will pity me for having to bring my holiday to an end. You know that Edith and I are leaving Florence on Monday?"
"Yes, Edith told me; but she did not speak as though it would end your holiday. She said that you might go on to Rome—that you had not made up your mind what to do."
"That is so—it depends upon circumstances, and the decision does not altogether rest with us. Indeed, Miss Campion, my future movements are quite uncertain until I have obtained your answer to a question which I want to put to you. May I put it now?"
"If there is anything I can tell you—" said Lettice, not without difficulty. Her breath came quick, and her bosom heaved beneath her light dress with nervous rapidity. What could he have to say to her? She had refused all these weeks to face the idea which had been forcing itself upon her; and he had been so quiet, so unemotional, that until now she had never felt uneasy in his presence.
"You can tell me a great deal," said Brooke, looking down at her with increased earnestness and tenderness in his eyes and voice. Her face was half averted from him, but he perceived her emotion, and grew more hopeful at the sign. "You can tell me all I want to know; but, unless you have a good message for me, I shall wish I had not asked you my question, and broken through the friendly terms of intercourse from which I have derived so much pleasure, and which have lasted so long between us."
Why did he pause? What could she say that he would care to hear?
"Listen to me!" he said, sinking down on the seat beside her, and pleading in a low tone. "I am not a very young man. I am ten or twelve years older than yourself. But if I spoke with twice as much passion in my voice, and if I had paid you ten times as much attention and court as I have done, it would not prove me more sincere in my love, or more eager to call you my wife. You cannot think how I have been looking forward to this moment—hoping and fearing from day to day, afraid to put my fate to the test, and yet impatient to know if I had any chance of happiness. I loved you in London—I believe I loved you as soon as I knew you; and it was simply and solely in order to try and win your love that I followed you to Italy. Is there no hope for me?"
She did not answer. She could not speak a word, for a storm of conflicting feelings was raging in her breast. Feelings only—she had not begun to think.
"If you will try to love me," he went on, "it will be as much as I have dared to hope. If you will only begin by liking me, I think I can succeed in gaining what will perfectly satisfy me. All my life shall be devoted to giving you the happiness which you deserve. Lettice, have you not a word to say to me?"
"I cannot—" she whispered at length, so faintly that he could scarcely hear.
"Cannot even like me!"
"Oh, do not ask me that! I cannot answer you. If liking were all—but you would not be content with that."
"Say that you like me. Lettice, have a little pity on the heart that loves you!"
"What answer can I give? An hour ago I liked you. Do you not see that what you have said makes the old liking impossible?"
"Yes—I know it. And I have thrown away all because I wanted more! I spoke too suddenly. But do not, at any rate, forbid me still to nurse my hope. I will try and be patient. I will come to you again for my answer—when? In a month—in six months? Tell me only one thing—there is no one who has forestalled me? You are not pledged to another?"
Lettice stood up—the effort was necessary in order to control her beating heart and trembling nerves. She did not reply. She only looked out to the sunlit landscape with wide, unseeing eyes, in which lurked a secret, unspoken dread.
"Tell me before we part," he said, in a voice which was hoarse with suppressed passion. "Say there is no one to whom you have given your love!"
"There is no one!"—But the answer ended in a gasp that was almost a sob.
"Thank God!" said Brooke Dalton, as a look of infinite relief came into his face. "Then a month to-day I will return to you, wherever you may be, and ask for my answer again."
Mrs. Hartley and Edith came back from the garden terraces. With kindly mischief in their hearts, they had left these two together, watching them with half an eye, until they saw that the matter had come to a climax. When Lettice stood up, they divined that the moment had come for their reappearance.
Lettice advanced to meet them, and when they were near enough Edith passed her hand through her friend's still trembling arm.
"Those dear little Italian children!" said Mrs. Hartley. "They are so beautiful—so full of life and spirits, I could have looked at them for another hour. Now, good people, what is going to be done? We must be getting home. Brooke, can you see the carriage? You might find it, and tell the driver to come back for us."
Brooke started off with alacrity, and the women were left alone. Then Edith began to chatter about nothing, in the most resolute fashion, in order that Lettice might have time to pull herself together.
She was glad of their consideration, for indeed she needed all her fortitude. What meant this suffocation of the heart, which almost prevented her from breathing? It ached in her bosom as though someone had grasped it with a hand of ice; she shuddered as though a ghost had been sitting by her and pleading with her, instead of a lover. Her own name echoed in her ears, and she remembered that Brooke Dalton had called her "Lettice." But it was not his voice which was calling to her now.
Dalton presently reappeared with the news that the carriage was waiting for them in the road below.
So in an hour from that time they were at home again, and Lettice was able to get to her own room, and to think of what had happened.
If amongst those who read the story of her life Lettice Campion has made for herself a few discriminating friends, they will not need to be reminded that she was not by any means a perfect character. She was, in her way, quite as ambitious as her brother Sydney, although not quite so eager in pursuit of her own ends, her own pleasure and satisfaction. She was also more scrupulous than Sydney to the means which she would adopt for the attainment of her objects, and she desired that others should share with her the good things which fell to her lot; but she had never been taught, or had never adopted the rule, that mere self-denial, for self-denial's sake, was the soundest basis of morality and conduct. She was thoroughly and keenly human, and she did but follow her natural bent, without distortion and without selfishness, in seeking to give happiness to herself as well as to others.
Brooke Dalton's offer of marriage placed a great temptation before her. All the happiness that money, and position, and affection, and a luxurious home could afford was hers if she would have it; and these were things which she valued very highly. Edith Dalton had done her best to make her friend realize what it would mean to be the mistress of Brooke's house; and poor Lettice, with all her magnanimity, was dazzled in spite of herself, and did not quite see why she should say No, when Brooke made her his offer. And yet her heart cried out against accepting it.
She had needed time to think, and now the process was already beginning. He had given her a month to decide whether she could love him—or even like him well enough to become his wife. Nothing could be more generous, and indeed she knew that he was the soul of generosity and consideration. A month to make up her mind whether she would accept from him all that makes life pleasant, and joyful, and easy, and comfortable; or whether she would turn her back upon the temptation, and shun delights, and live laborious days.
Could she hesitate? What woman with nothing to depend upon except her own exertions, and urged to assent (as she would be) by her only intimate friends, would have hesitated in her place? Yet she did hesitate, and it was necessary to weigh the reasons against accepting, as she had dwelt upon the reasons in favor of it.
If it was easy to imagine that life at Angleford Manor might be very peaceful and luxurious, there could be no doubt that she would have to purchase her pleasure at the cost of a great deal of her independence. She might be able to write, in casual and ornamental fashion; but she felt that there would be little real sympathy with her literary occupations, and the zest of effort and ambition which she now felt would be gone. Moreover, independence of action counted for very little in comparison with independence of thought—and how could she nurse her somewhat heretical ideas in the drawing-room of a Tory High Church squire, a member of the Oligarchy, whose friends would nearly all be like-minded with himself? She had no right to introduce so great a discord into his life. If she married him, she would at any rate try (consciously, or unconsciously) to adopt his views, as the proper basis of the partnership; and therefore to marry him unquestionably meant the sacrifice of her independent judgment.
So much for the intellectual and material sides of the question. But, Lettice asked herself, was that all?
No, there was something else. She had been steadily and obstinately, yet almost unconsciously, trying to push it away from her all the time—ever since Brooke Dalton began to betray his affection, and even before that when Mrs. Hartley, unknown to her, kept her in ignorance of things which she ought to have known. She had refused to face it, pressed it out of her heart, made believe to herself that the chapter of her life which had been written in London was closed and forgotten—and how nearly she had succeeded! But she had not quite succeeded. It was there still—the memory, the hope, the pity, the sacrifice.
She must not cheat herself any longer, if she would be an honest and honorable woman. She would face the truth and not palter with it, now that the crisis had really come. What was Alan Walcott to her? Could she forget him, and dismiss him from her thoughts, and go to the altar with another man? She went over the scenes which they had enacted together, she recalled his words and his letters, she thought of his sorrows and trials, and remembered how he had appealed to her for sympathy. There was good reason, she thought, why he had not written to her, for he was barred by something more than worldly conventionality. When she, strong-minded as she thought herself, had shrunk from the display of his love because he still had duties to his lawful wife, she had imposed upon him her demand for conventional and punctilious respect, and had rather despised herself, she now remembered, for doing it. He had obeyed her, he had observed her slightest wishes—it was for her, not for him, to break through the silence. How had she been able to remain so long in ignorance of his condition, to live contentedly so many miles away from him?
As she thought of all these things in the light of her new experience, her heart was touched again by the old sympathy, and throbbed once more with the music which it had not known since her illness began. It was a harp which had been laid aside and forgotten, till the owner, coming by chance into the disused room, strung it anew, and bade it discourse the symphonies of the olden time.
Not until Lettice had reached this point in her retrospect did she perceive how near she had gone to the dividing line which separates honor from faithlessness and truth from falsehood. She had said, "There is no one to whom my love is pledged." Was that true? Which is stronger or more sacred—the pledge of words or the pledge of feeling? She had tried to drown the feeling, but it would not die. It was there, it had never been absent; and she had profaned it by listening to the temptations of Brooke Dalton, and by telling him that her heart was free.
"It was a lie!"
She sank on the sofa as she made the confession to herself. Alan's letters were in her hand; she clasped them to her breast, and murmured,
"It was a lie—for I love you!"
If the poor wretch in his prison cell, who, worn out at last by daily self-consuming doubts, lay tossing with fever on a restless bed, could have heard her words and seen her action, he might have been called back to life from the borderland of the grave.
"What is it, darling?" Mrs. Hartley said to her friend when they met the next morning at the late breakfast which, out of deference to foreign customs, they had adopted. She looked observantly at the restless movements of the girl, and the changing color in her cheeks. "You have not eaten anything, and you do nothing but shiver and sigh."
Mrs. Hartley was quite convinced in her own mind that Lettice had received an offer of marriage from her cousin Brooke Dalton. Possibly she had already accepted it. She should hear all about it that morning. The symptoms overnight had not been too favorable but she put down the disturbance which Lettice had shown to an excess of nervous excitement. Women do not all receive a sentence of happiness for life in precisely the same manner, she reflected: some cry and some laugh, some dance and sing, others collapse and are miserable. Lettice was one of the latter kind, and it was for Mrs. Hartley to give her a mother's sympathy and comfort. So she awaited the word which should enable her to cut the dykes of her affection.
Lettice turned white and cold, and her grey eyes were fixed with a stony look on the basket of flowers which decorated the breakfast table.
"I am not well," she said, "but it is worse with the mind than the body. I have done a wicked thing, and to atone for it I am going to do a cruel thing; so how could you expect me to have an appetite?"
"My dear pet!" said Mrs. Hartley, putting out her hand to touch the fingers of her friend, which she found as cold as ice, "you need not tell me that you have done anything wicked, for I don't believe it. And I am sure you would not do anything cruel, knowing beforehand that it was cruel."
"Is it not wicked to tell a lie?—for I have done that."
"No, no!"
"And will it not be cruel to you and to Edith that I should cause pain to your cousin, and make him think me insincere and mercenary?"
"He could not possibly think so," said Mrs. Hartley with decision.
"He must."
"What are you going to do, Lettice?"
"I am going to tell him that I was not honest when I allowed him to say that he would come for my answer in a month, and to think it possible that the answer might be favorable—when God knows that it cannot."
"Brooke has asked you to be his wife?"
"Yes."
"And you told him to come for his answer in a month?"
"I agreed to it."
"Well, darling, I think that was very natural—if you could not say 'yes' at once to my cousin."
There was a touch of resentment in the words "my cousin," which Lettice felt. Mrs. Hartley could not understand that Brooke Dalton should have to offer himself twice over—even to her Lettice.
"Wait this month," she went on, "and we shall see what you think at the end of it. You are evidently upset now—taken by surprise, little innocent as you are. The fact is, you have never really recovered from your illness, and I believe you set to work again too soon. A hard-working life would not have suited you; but, thank Heaven, there is an end of that. You will never have to make yourself a slave again!"
"Dear, you do not understand. I did a wicked thing yesterday, and now I must tell Mr. Dalton, and ask him to forgive me."
"Nonsense, child!"
"Ah!" said Lettice, sadly, "it is the first time you have ever spoken sharply to me, and that is part of my punishment!"
Mrs. Hartley sank back in her chair, and looked as though she was about to take refuge in a quiet fit of weeping.
"I can't comprehend it," she said; "I thought we were going to be so happy; and I am sure you and Brooke would suit each other exactly."
"Oh no, indeed; there are thousands of women who will make him a better wife than I could ever have done."
"Now, do listen to me, and give yourself at least a week to think it over, before you say all this to Brooke! That cannot make things worse, either for him or for yourself. Why should you be so rash about it?"
"I wish I could see any other way out of it—but I cannot; and I have been thinking and thinking all the night long. It is a case of conscience with me now."
"You cannot expect me to see it, dear," said Mrs. Hartley, rising from her chair. "It is simply incomprehensible, that you should first agree to wait a month, and then, after a few hours, insist on giving such a pointed refusal. Think, think, my darling!" she went on, laying a caressing hand on Lettice's shoulder. "Suppose that Brooke should feel himself insulted by such treatment. Could you be surprised if he did?"
Lettice buried her face in her hands, mutely despairing. Her punishment was very hard to bear, and the tears which trickled through her fingers showed how much she felt it. With an effort she controlled herself, and looked up again.
"I will tell him all," she said. "He shall be the judge. If he still wishes to renew his question in a month, I will hold myself to that arrangement. I shall claim nothing and refuse nothing; but if he voluntarily withdraws his offer, then, dear, you will see that there could be no alternative."
Mrs. Hartley bent to kiss her.
"I suppose that is all that can be done, Lettice. I am very sorry that my darling is in trouble; but if I could help you, you would tell me more."
Then she left the room, and Lettice went to her desk and wrote her letter.