BRYANSTON SQUARE,Thursday.
My Dear Sanchia,—I may as well say at once that I am not surprised to hear from you; in fact, I have been expecting some such letter as yours ever since I read in theTimesof Claire Ingram's death. Poor unhappy woman, it was time! Some of the Pierpoints (the Godfrey P's) are intimate friends of ours: we dined there last week; no party—just ourselves—and heard all about it. I learned that Mr. Ingram had gone abroad, but imagine that he will be in London before the end of the season. Have you written to Mamma? If not,pray do so. I assure you that it will be taken as it is meant. Nothing but good can come of it. Of that I am sure.
Now, as to your proposals. I think I will ask you to come to mehere. I am very busy, with calls a thousand ways. I really have no afternoons free for as far forward as I can see—except Sundays, which I devote entirely to Tertius and religion. No woman ought to separate the two—love of God, love of husband in God. Sooner or later, all women learn it. Then the mornings are naturally occupied with the house and the children. They have Miss Meadows; but she is young and absurdly inconsequent. I don't see how you can expect a girl in her teens to work miracles. In fact, I don't want her to, and am at hand to see that she doesn't.
I have spoken to Tertius, and you must forgive me for saying that we both think, under the circumstances, it would look, and be, better in every way if you came here, in the first instance. Without discussing what is done, and (I pray) done with, you will see, I think, that for meto seek you outwould be, to say the least of it, unusual. You left our father's house for reasons of your own; I had left it to be married to Tertius. Forgiveness, if you wish it from me, is yours: countenance of the step you took—never. You will not ask it. So come here any morning that suits you, and I shall be pleased. You will find me ready to do everything I can, to put you on your proper footing in the sphere to which you were born.—Believe me, my dear Sanchia, your affectionate sister, PHILIPPA TOMPSETT-KING.
P. S.—The Church's arms are very wide. One cannot be too thankful, as things have turned out, that Claire Ingram never sued for divorce. God is most merciful.
There was some knitting of brows over this, and some chuckling. Comedy is the Art of the Chuckle; but it is very seldom that one of the persons in the play can practise that which delights us. Sanchia was such a person. She could detach herself from herself, see her own floutings and thwackings, and be amused. At the same time her reply to Philippa was curt.
“You,” she wrote, “are busy, and I am not. I will come to you one of these fine mornings, and must trust to Miss Meadows' sense of fitness not to work miracles that day.”
A day or two later came a telegram from Vicky Sinclair. “Just got your letter. Coming at twelve. Vicky.” Sanchia glowed. “Just like her, the darling.” Philippa's astringent proposal was put aside.
At twelve thirty-five there lit from a hansom an eager and pretty little lady, all in gauzy tissues and lace scarf, who knocked at the door like a postman and flew up the stair into Sanchia's arms. “Oh, Sancie, Sancie, how sweet of you to write! Now we are all going to be happy again forever after. Oh, and here's Cuthbert—I forgot.” In the doorway stood the erect form, and smiled the bronzed face of Captain Sinclair of the Greys. His “How d'ye do, Miss Sanchia!” was accompanied by a look of such curious enquiry that Sanchia gave him two fingers, said, “Quite well, thank you,” and no more. Much more had been expected, and the Captain was somewhat taken aback. He had been ready to welcome the prodigal and admire her too. What's more, he had already very much admired her. To have one's generous motions damped by a coolness of that sort is sickening. But there it was: what could one say? what could one do? He went to the window and stood there, whistling in a whisper until his wife dismissed him. To the Cavalry Club stalked he, working himself into virtuous heat. There, at luncheon with a friend, he expatiated, which was unwise and unmannerly at once. But his own wrongs swallowed up his wife's rights.
“I'll be damned, Jack,” he took up his parable, “I'll be damned if ever I do a woman a good turn any more. Never, never again. Gel I know—relative of mine she is, by marriage—goes a purler with a chap. Knew something of the chap too—so did you, I expect. Not a bad chap, by any means, barring this sort of thing. Well, now she's in town—all over—settled down, y'know. Writes to my wife. Well, I thought it was no good bein' stiff in these things. Against the spirit of the age—what? So I said we'd do the handsome thing and go up. We both wanted a spell of easy—so it was handy. Besides, I wanted to see the gel. I own to that. And there's no doubt she's a clinker; quiet, you know, and steady; looks right at you, far in; sees the lot at a glance. Palish gel, not too big; but well set up. Square shoulders—deep-chested gel. That sort.” He stared at the table-cloth hard.
“I was taken by her, mightily taken. So when she and my wife had done kissin', I put in my little oar. 'How d'ye do, Miss—' I won't mention names, though upon my dick I don't know why I should be squeamish. But there it was; and I'd have kissed her, as you do kiss your wife's—well, cousin, let's say—if you want to. Bless you, not a bit of it. Proud as pepper. Gives me a finger. 'Quite well,' says she. 'Quite well, thank you—' and drops me. Dropsme! Good Lord!”
He drank deeply of beer. “Well now, I tell you, that's the last time, absolutely the last time I do the civil thing to—well, to that sort, if she's my wife's grandmother.” He stared out of window, mist over his blue eyes. “They're all for marrying her now. It seems it can be done. Chap's to be screwed up. Then she'll be patronising me, you'll see. Because I was decently civil—that was as far as I was prepared to go; bare civility—and two fingers for it—'Quite well, thank you!' Oh, damn it. Waiter—more beer.”
Vicky was enchanting; for half-an-hour Sanchia was at the top of bliss. To be petted and diminutived by a butterfly—it was like that; for though the child was a year older than she, six years of marriage had made a baby of her. Her audacities of old had become artless prattle, her sallies were skips in the air. Yet to be purred over by a kitten was pure joy. “You darling!' You darling little Sancie! You beautiful, pale, Madame-de-Watte-ville kind of person! Oh, my treasure—and I thought I should never see you again!” So she cooed while she cuddled, Sanchia, for her part, saying little, but kissing much. Her lips were famished; but Vicky's must be free for moments if her words were to be intelligible. During such times she stroked or patted the prodigal, and let her browse on her cheeks.
By-and-by, raptures subsiding, the pair settled down for talk, and the discrepancies which eight years had made began to show up, like rocks and boulders in a strand left bare by the ebb. Grotesque the shapes of some of them, comical others; but wrecks and dead things come to light at low water—spectral matter, squalid, rueful matter. And there are chasms set yawning, too, which you cannot bridge. Sanchia was to be lacerated.
No doubt it was laughable at first, asnaiveteis. “Cuthbert was very funny about it”—for instance. “He was awfully anxious to see you, you know—you had never met, I think?—and yet not quite liking it. He said it was a great risk; he seemed to think I ought not to be there. He takes great care of me, the darling. And there was little Dickie, you see. Sancie! he can just walk—a kind of totter from my knees to Cuthbert's—and then so proud of himself! Cuthbert said that my duty was to Dickie; but I told him that I meant to come.”
Yes, it was comical. “Did Captain Sinclair think I should give him a complaint?” Sanchia was smiling, with eyes and mouth; but the smile was fixed.
Vicky hugged her. “You dear one! prettiness is your complaint. I should like him to have some of that.” She held her at arms' length, looked and glowed, and kissed. She took a serious tone, for the matter was serious. “You know, Sancie, you're the only beauty in our family, the only real beauty. Philippa's awfully handsome, I know, and greatly admired—and I've always said that Melot waslovely. There are those three sorts of women, you know. Philippa's handsome, Melot's lovely, and you're beautiful. Then there's prettiness. I know I'm rather pretty: everybody says so. Besides, there's Cuthbert. Oh, you can always tell! For one thing—he's so fussy about my clothes—you've no idea.” She preened herself, like a pigeon in the sun, before she returned to her praises. “But you! You're quite different. You're like a goddess.” She touched her curiously. “Yes, I thought so. Exactly like a goddess.” She sighed. “I can't think how you do it. Swedish exercises? I know it's wonderful what they do for you—in no time. But you have to think about them all the while, and I think of Cuthbert—and Dickie—and the horses—and, oh, all sorts of things! Those sort, I mean,—nice things.” She pondered Sanchia's godhead, shaking her pretty draperies out, then recalled herself. “Oh, yes, about coming here. Of course I knew that Mamma would make a fuss—but I had determined long ago, before I dreamed that it would ever happen, not to tellhera word. It was only Cuthbert who made me feel—well,serious. He is so wise, such a man of the world! But I told him that I meant to come whatever he could say—and afterwards it turned out that he wanted to come too. He was really quite keen. Wasn't that sweet of him? You would adore Cuthbert if you knew him as well as I do. But, of course, that's absurd.” She suddenly became intense. “Sancie!” she said, then stopped and peered.
“Yes?” It was a sobered goddess who waited for close quarters. Vicky put her question, but peered no more.
“I wish you would tell me one thing, which—has always puzzled me. But don't, if you would rather not. How did you—I simply can't understand it—how did you ever—? I suppose you loved him very much?”
Sanchia was in a hard stare. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I suppose I did.” Vicky's head darted back.
“Ah! But now you don't a bit. I knew you didn't! Sancie, that's what I can't understand. Because, you know, when you're married you do. You always love the same person. You must—you can't help it. He's so natural; he knows things that you know. He knows—everything. Oh, Sancie, I can't talk about it, but you understand, don't you?”
Poor Sancie nodded, not able to look up. Alas for her secrets, offered, taken, and forgotten! But Vicky's vivacious fingers groped in her empty cupboard. “And then, as well as that, yououghtto love him. You see, you've promised; it's all been made so sacred. You never forget it—the clergyman, and the altar, and the hymns. You're all in white—veiled. And you kneel there—before the altar—and he holds your hand. And the ring, oh, Sancie, the feeling of the ring!” She opened her little hand and looked down at the smoothed gold, coiled below the diamonds and pearls. “You never forget the first feel of that. It means—everything!” She blushed, and said, in a hushed sort of way, “It meant—Dickie, to me.”
Sanchia drooped and bled. Vicky, deep in her holy joys, was remorseless. Even when she turned once more to her sister's affairs her consolation made wounds.
“Cuthbert said that it would come all right now—now that Mrs. Ingram-the wife—was—That's rather horrible. Even you must feel that. Instead of being sorry that his wife is dead, one has to be awfully glad. I suppose you felt that at once; and of coursehedid. Poor woman! I wonder if she was buried in her ring.” She eyed her own. “No one would dare take it off. I made Cuthbert promise me this morning. But—of course people do marry again, and it will be practically the same as that.” She reflected. “Yes, practically, it will, but—oh, it's very extraordinary! You've had all your fun of engagement and all that, long ago.” She looked down deeply at her hand; and then she gazed at her sister. “And, oh, Sancie, you've had your honeymoon!” Before the deadly simplicity of that last stroke Sanchia fell, and lay quivering. She could not ask for mercy, she could explain, extenuate, nothing. Huddled she lay. At this aching moment the one thing that the world held worth her having seemed to be the approbation of this butterfly child. For Vicky's happiness was specific. Nuptial bliss lay, as it were, crystallised within it. There are moments in one's life when love itself seems lust, and safety the only holy thing. Vicky, tearing at her heart, had turned her head.
Vicky once gone, with promise of frequent intercourse by letter and otherwise, it was to Philippa's fine house and respectable man-servant she next surrendered herself. The meeting was cool, but not intolerable to a goddess sore from Vicky's whip. Philippa could ply a longer lash, but not by the same right, nor with the same passion to drive it home. Sanchia's eyes met hers upon the level; and if the elder had a firmly modelled chin, so had the younger sister. Her strength, too, lay, as it always had, in saying little, whereas Philippa'sfortewas dialogue. But it needs two for that. After the first greeting there came a pause, in which the embarrassment, upon the whole, was Mrs. Tompsett-King's.
The trenchant lady had had her sailing orders, and was going to follow them. Mr. Tompsett-King had told her that Sanchia must be led, not driven, into Ingram's arms. “Assume the best of her, my dear friend,” he had said, “if you wish to get the best out of her. Take right intentions for granted. It is very seldom that a woman can resist that kind of flattery. So far as I can read your sister's mind, she has suffered from your mother's abrupt methods. I beg of you not to repeat them. Nothing but mischief could come of it.” When Mr. Tompsett-King called her his dear friend, she knew that he was serious.
But Sanchia's mood had not been reckoned with: Philippa was not Vicky. In the old days, in a wonderfully harmonious household, there had been a latent rivalry between her and all her juniors. The greatest trouble had been with Sanchia, the deliberate. And so it was now that when the elder warmed to her task of making bad best, she was suddenly chilled by that old pondering and weighing which had always offended her. Sanchia replied to her assumptions and suppositions by saying simply that she didn't know where Mr. Ingram was, and that he was no better informed of her than she of him. But surely—Philippa raised her brows—but surely she knew when he was coming to London? Sanchia's head-shake shocked her. There was but one conclusion to be drawn from it.
“There's been a quarrel,” then said she.
“No,” Sanchia answered—as if thinking it out—“no, I shouldn't say that. I should say, a difference of opinion.”
“My dear,” said Philippa—and the phrase with her was one of reproof—“on essentials there can have been none. He will wait a year, of course. Under the circumstances, a full year. But—”
Sanchia had replied, “I don't know what he means to do. I have left Wanless.”
“Oh, of course, of course. But—I was going to say—I fully expect that he has written to Mamma.” Sanchia's eyebrows and her, “I should think that unlikely. Why should he write to Mamma?” frightened Philippa, while to Mr. Tompsett-King's mind they were clear gain. It was necessary, after it, to get on to surer ground. The interview terminated by an understanding that Sanchia should write to her mother.
Philippa took her husband to dine in Great Cumberland Place that night; and there, he with Mr. Percival, she with the lady, obtained the terms of a settlement. Sanchia was to be allowed a hundred a year—for the present. (Mr. Percival intended privately to make it two.) Everything was to be assumed in her favour; but she was not to be asked to meet company. Neither Mrs. Percival nor Philippa could be brought to that, and Mr. Percival, so far as he was concerned, had no desire for any sort of company but hers. He was one of those men made rosy-gilled for happiness. Good fellowship, the domestic affections—if they were not there, they must appear to be. His friends of the city were always on his lips—Old Tom Peters—Old Jack Summers—Old Bob—Old Dick. Good fellows every one. All the pet names in the family had been his. To him belonged Pippa and Sancie, Melot and Vicky. “My girls,” or “My rascals,” he used to call them to Tom Peters or Jack Summers, and bring them home jerky little tin pedestrians from the city, or emus pulling little carts; or (later on) bowls of goldfish or violet nosegays from Covent Garden. If he had a nearer passion, it was to stand well with all the world. That's two passions, however, to his score; and the struggle between them, in Sanchia's case, had taken him as near tragedy as the easy man could go. Heaven be praised, the good times were come again. Now he was all for the return of the prodigal, without conditions—“and no questions asked,” as he put it.
But in this he could not get his dear desire. Philippa's sense of justice was inflamed, as well as her moral sense. What! you eat a cake, and then, instead of sitting down to your plain bread and butter—away you flounce, and get ready to eat another cake! That's dead against the proverb, that's monstrous, that's offensive. “Mamma, mamma,” Philippa had protested, “you can never have her back to flourish her sin in all our faces.”
“Thank you, Philippa, for reminding me, however gratuitously, of my duties to society,” had been Mrs. Percival's acknowledgment. She liked sin as little as Philippa, but she liked being lectured a great deal less. Poor Mr. Percival had pulled his whiskers throughout the debate, and now sighed as he bit them. His girl was to be denied him—but he could give her two hundred a year, and go to see her often. That was comfort.
And then the meeting took place. First with Mamma, who had never liked her, and was now a little afraid of what she might do. For Philippa had made it quite plain that if Sanchia was not humoured, she would have nothing to say to Ingram. “She's exhausted her criminal passion—that's what it comes to,” was Philippa's judgment. “Now she will have to be cajoled.” So Mrs. Percival was cowed into civility.
The pair conversed, rather painfully, for perhaps an hour. They had tea. All the effort to talk was made by Sanchia, who broached the children—Philippa's three, Vicky's one—and got nothing but perfunctory enthusiasm in reply. Mrs. Percival was far too sincerely interested in herself to care for children. The sons-in-law proved a better subject. Here she could point a moral inwards. She extolled them highly—never was woman so blessed in her daughters' husbands. Mr. Tompsett-King—“Tertius, the soul of honour: the most delicate-minded man I have ever known. And sensitive to a fault! I assure you—” Captain Sinclair was “our gallant Cuthbert,” or “my soldier son.” “Sweet little Vicky's knight! chivalry lives again in him. It has been the greatest blessing in my days of trouble to be sure of the ideal happiness of those two young lives. Ah! one does have one's consolations.”
Such eulogium seemed to leave little to be said for Melusine and her prize; and yet it was certain that Mrs. Percival favoured Gerald Scales above the others. A lift of the voice was observable—“Gerald, who, naturally, is quite at home at Marlborough House...” “Gerald, with that charming old-world courtesy of his...” “Dear Lady Scales told me that of her two sons, Gerald should have been the baronet. Poor Sir Matthew suffers from hay-fever to that extent.... But Gerald is a splendid young man. Darling Melot is, I need not tell you, fully appreciated at Winkley.” This was the seat of Sir Matthew, in Essex.
Sanchia, for her part, having regained the throne of her serenity—from which Vicky had toppled her of late—by means of Philippa, was able to contemplate this singular parent of hers with the interest due to a curious object, and some internal amusement. She was too far removed from her to be moved, too much estranged to be hurt. She wondered at herself for feeling so little of what, in the days of babyhood, she had firmly held to be the devout opinion. She found that, from a child, she had always judged her mother, and was sure now that her mother knew it. She remembered how hopeless she had always known it to be, to explain any attitude of mind she may have exhibited and been blamed for. So now, though it was abundantly clear to her what was hoped of her, and though she could see perfectly well that the chance of her doing it was so risky that she must be handled like a heavy fish on a light line, she made no effort whatever to show why what was to be hoped for was absurdly impossible. She watched her mother sail about it and about in ever narrowing circles, heard herself commended for her promptitude in leaving Wanless, answered enquiries as to Ingram's behaviour under what Mrs. Percival otiosely called “his bereavement,” echoed speculations at to his whereabouts—played, in short, vacantly an empty part, and kept her mother upon tenterhooks. She gained civil entreaty this way.
But her father's bustling entry changed all this. She had not known of herself how susceptible she still was. Vicky had made her cower; but her father made her cry.
He affected a bluff ease in his manner of greeting her. “Well, Sancie, well, my dear, well, well”—and then he cleared his throat; but he did not dare to look at her. Sancie answered him by jumping into his arms, and upset him altogether. “Oh, my girl, my girl—my little Sancie—” and then the pair of them mingled tears, while Mrs. Percival, who thought this exhibition out of place “under the circumstances,” and not in the best possible taste, tapped her foot on the carpet, and wished that Philippa had been here.
But, once they were beyond a certain flood mark, as she know by long acquaintance, Mr. Percival's emotions must be given play. She retired, therefore, and left the clinging pair. Directly she was gone, the good gentleman's embrace of his child grew straighter, and his kisses of her brows and hair more ardent. He humbled himself before her, thanked her for coming back to him. “My darling, it was fine of you to come! 'Pon my soul, it was fine!”
“No, darling, no,” she protested, smiling sadly at his fondness.
“I always loved you, my child! My Sancie—you know that of your old father, hey?” He pinched her cheek before he kissed it again. “'Pon my life, it cut me down like a frost to do—what was done.”
“I know, I know,” Sanchia murmured, and then begged him not to speak of it.
“Ah, but I must, you know,” he vowed. “What! A damned unnatural father!...” And then he held her closely, while he whispered his anxiety. “Sancie—tell me, my lamb—put my mind at rest. He—that fellow—that Ingram—he was good to you, hey? He didn't—hey?”
She vowed in her turn. “Oh, yes, dearest, yes. Of course he was. I was very happy, except for—what couldn't be helped, you know.”
“Yes, yes—it couldn't be helped. I know that you felt that. I was bound—for the others, don't you see?—sake of example. That sort of thing, don't you see?” He shook his head. “We can't have that, you know. It don't do—in the long run. Very irregular, hey? And your mother, you know—she takes these things to heart. Goes too far,Isay. Sometimes goes a little to extremes, you know.” He grew quite scared as he recalled the scene. “I shall never forget”—shuddering, he clasped her close. “My darling girl, let's be happy again! It shall be right as—well, as rain, you know—now. We'll have you with a child on your knee in no time,—hey?” He seemed to think that marriage alone could work this boon. Again—as before with Vicky—Sanchia had not the heart to gainsay him. She allowed him to speculate as he would; and her mother, returning, found the pair, one on the other's knee, with the future cut and dried.
But Sanchia rose at her entry.
“Dearest, I must go now,” she told him, “but I'll see you again very soon.”
He urged her to stay and dine. “We're quite alone, you know! No ceremony with our child, hey!”
But she smilingly refused. “No, darling, I won't stop now. I'll come again—” her mother's stretched lips, stomaching what she could not sanction, stood, as it were, before the home doors.
He looked wistfully at her—aware, he too, of the sentries at the gate. “You might—we are pretty lonely here, we old people—I should have said you might come back—there's your old room, you know—eating its head off, hey?”
Sanchia kissed him. “Darling—we'll see. We'll talk about it soon. But I must go now—to my books. I'm working very hard, at my Italian. I've forgotten—lots.”
He had to let her go—but, manlike, he must relieve himself in a man's way. He drew her into his study, bade her “see what she should see.” He went to his desk and sat to his cheque-book. He returned with the slip wet in his hand. “There, my child, there. That will keep the wolf from the door, I hope. For a day or two, you know.” She read, “Miss Sanchia Percival—two hundred pounds sterling.” It brought the tears to her eyes again. It was so exactly like him.
“You darling—how ridiculous of you—but how sweet!”
He glowed under her praises. “Plenty more where that came from, Sancie,”—then piously added, “Thank God, of course.”
Sanchia, in the hall, turned to her mother. “Good-bye, mother,” she said, and held her hand out. Her mother took it, drew her in, and kissed her forehead. “Good-bye, my child”; she could not, for her life, be more cordial than that. The offence itself seemed a pinprick beside the rankle of the wound to her pride. This child had set up for herself, and was now returned—without extenuation, without plea for mercy. Mrs. Percival was one of those people who cannot be happy unless their right to rule be unquestioned. Had the girl humbled herself to the dust, grovelled at her feet, she would have taken her to her breast. But Sanchia stood upright, and Mrs. Percival felt the frost gripe at her heart. It must be so.
Her father went with her to the door—his arm about her waist. “Come soon,” he pleaded, and when she promised, whispered in her ear—“Come to The Poultry, if you'd rather: I'm always there—as you know. Come, and we'll lunch together. You'll be like a nosegay in the dusty old place.”
“Yes, yes, I shall come—often,” she told him, and nestled to his side. Then she put up her cheek for his kiss. “Good-night, Papa dear,” He wept over her, and let her go. Then he returned to his hearth and his wife. In his now exalted mood he was really master of both, and Mrs. Percival knew it. “You gave her the money, I suppose?” she said; and he, “Yes, my dear, I gave her two hundred pounds.” He had doubled the sum agreed, but Mrs. Percival let it pass.
Upon this footing her affairs now stood; she was to be one of the family, with two hundred pounds a year to her credit, the run of her teeth in the house, and (by a secret arrangement) as often in her father's company as she could find time to be. Meantime, by her own deliberate choice, she maintained her lodging in Pimlico, and read at the Museum most days of the week. She prepared herself to be happy, and under a buoyant impulse, due to the softening of her affections, wrote to her friend Mr. Chevenix, and asked him to come to see her. That he briskly did.
She received him cordially. It was good to see the cheerful youth again, and to be able to rejoice in the man of the world he affected to be. A man of the world—throned, at it were, upon the brows of a suckling.
Wisdom was justified of her child. “So you cut it? Thought you would. Wanless Hall is all very well in its little way—when the rainbows are jumping, what? D'you remember that fish? And old Devereux—Salmo deverox? My certy, what a lady! But Nevile—” he shook his head. “No, no. Some devil had entered into him: he was a gloomy kind of tyrant. I don't know, by the way, what's happened to him. Travelling, or something, I fancy. He was always a rolling stone, as you know. But he'll come round, you'll see. Oh, Lord, yes. He'll sulk out his devil—and be the first to apologise. Well—never mind old Nevile. You'll see, one of these days. Now, I say, what are you doing with yourself up here? Any good?”
She named her Italian studies, and made him open his eyes.
“Italian?Tante grazie, and all that! But that don't take you very far, you know. Your teeth will crack a tougher nut. Now, I'll tell you what you do. You come and see my old Aunt Wenman—”
She was highly amused. “Why should I see your old Aunt Wenman? Does she know Italian?”
“Italian! God bless you, if she knows English, it's as much as she does. Learnt the Catechism once, I s'pose. She's a good old sort—Lady Maria Wenman, widow of my old Uncle Charles, and my mother's sister at that. She'll take to you—she'll take to you.”
“I don't see—” said Sanchia, puzzled. The youth explained.
“Well, you see—you'll forgive me, I know—it'stoneyou want just now. She'll give you that. She's something to pull against. You get your back up against her, and hang on. That's the ticket. She's a good soul, is Aunt Maria—lots of tone—gives parties to all and sundry. You meet some rare fish in those waters—Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics. They'll amuse you—give you bones to pick. I don't get on with 'em myself—too simple, I am, you know. They talk their politics, or domestic afflictions, and I feel so delicate I don't know what to do. There was one chap I remember—Golowicz his name was—big, red-whiskered, conspiracy chap ... told me all about his mother—tears running down his cheeks. I didn't know her from Adam, you know, but still—Oh, you'll like Aunt Wenman. She'll want you to live with her, and you might do much worse.” Sanchia listened, smiled, and pondered. It was not her way to be disposed of so simply.
What was impressive to her about this conversation was the real reticence underlying the chatter of her friend. She could feel his conviction of her want of tone; she was convinced of it herself. Her purpose in life seemed gone. Once it had been love, next it had been the ordering of affairs. The second had been so absorbing that she had not missed the first; indeed, she had believed it there until the very end, when she had called it up, and had no answer. But now—what aim had she, in this lonely, empty life she was leading, whose hours were so many that she had to fill them up with Italian got out of books? Without knowing it, it was life she wanted, not books. She with her brains, vitality, beauty, and charm had been growing in these graces unawares, flowering in secret at Wanless under her aprons, behind her account-books and garden gloves. Now that all these swaddling bands were stripped off her, behold her, armed at all points for the lists. So Chevenix had beheld her, it seems. Let her see the world, approve her mettle, run her career. Chevenix, watching her, judged in those pondering eyes, in that half-smile which had charmed him before, a kind of quivering expectancy new to her. He judged her tempted, and renewed his suggestions on a later day.
“What you want,” he then told her, “is to try a fall or two with the world. You've been too snug, you know—too long under glass. You left the school-room to go to Wanless—and where were you there? Under cover. You want the sun, the wind, and the rain; you want to know what these things feel like—and how the rest of us take 'em. And you want to be seen, if you let me say that. We all like being looked at, I believe. I know that I do, when I'm quite sure about my hat. Now you won't get much of that in a Warwick Street two-pair front, let me tell you—no, nor in your B 17, or whatever your seat is, at the Museum. You're a star—you're to shine. Well, give 'em a turn in Charles Street. I'll fix it up for you. I wish you'd think it over.”
She gave him grateful looks, but said little. Nevertheless, he went away encouraged. A week or so later she found a card upon her table: that of a Mrs. John Chevenix.
“That's my sister-in-law,” the friendly youth presently told her. “That's Mrs. John. You go and see her. She's a good sort of woman. You'll meet Aunt Wenman there. I thought it all out, and that's the way to get at it. She'll jump at you, in my opinion. She loves orphans. Collects 'em. You go!”
She was due in the city on a visit to her father, was, in fact, dressed for it in her best white frock, roses in her hat. She promised to think of it—and of course would return Mrs. John's call. The amiable Chevenix accompanied her as far eastward as it was possible for him to go. He went, indeed, farther, and in full view of Saint Paul's decided upon a visit to that sanctuary. You never know your luck, he said. He might meet Senhouse there. He had been hunting the recessed philosopher high and low.
“Great sport if we met him now—you, who look like lunching at the Savoy or somewhere, and he like a fakir! What should you do? Fall in his arms?” Sanchia had mist over the eyes.
“I believe I should,” she admitted. “I should love to see him again.”
“He'll turn up at Aunt Wenman's, I'll bet you,” Chevenix felt sure. “She rakes 'em in—all sorts. Do you think about her, now, there's a dear. You won't be able to stick it at home, you know.”
“I am sure that I shan't go home,” Sanchia said. “And Iamthinking about your aunt.”
“Right,” cried Chevenix, and briskly mounted the steps of the cathedral.
Mr. Percival had provided a tea for her which had the appearance of a banquet. The table seemed sunk in flowers; a great urn held the tea. There were buns in pyramids, snow-mantled cakes, apricot jam, strawberries, clotted cream. Nothing was too good for his beloved, as he cried aloud when he saw her, fresh and glowing in her lace frock and flower-wreathed hat.
“My girl—and upon my soul, a picture!”
She blushed at his praises, and came within kissing distance. “You make a school-treat of me, dearest. You mustn't be wicked with your money, or I shan't come any more to see you. I won't be spoiled.”
“No, my dear, no—and you can't be,” he assured her. “Good Lord, my child, you're the only one I've got left. All my birds flown but you! And I had five of the sweetest, sauciest, happiest girls in England once upon a time.... Now, come you and pour out a cup of tea for your foolish old father. We're snug here—hey? Better than Great Cumberland—hey? You monkey!” He pinched her ear—and felt that they shared a secret.
She caught his happiness, and bathed in his praises, feeling as it were the sun upon her cheeks. How she loved to be loved! How she loved to be praised for her good looks! The world had grown suddenly kind again; the world was good. There, ahead of her, stood Mrs. John Chevenix and a friendly Lady Maria, beckoning her to London delights, a friendly world of admiring eyes. She was to be looked at—she was to listen—and be heard. Her heart beat, eyes shone starry. Life, which had seemed behind her, now danced before, a gay procession. She told her father what seemed to be in the wind. He listened and stared.
“Lady Maria, hey! Wearegoing up in the world. The peerage! Charles Street, Berkeley Square! I remember young Chevenix: he had swell connections—yes, yes. How things come about. This will please your mother, my dear. She sets a store by such things.” Their eyes met, and she nodded.
“Yes, I thought of that. But what doyoufeel about it, Papa? You see—I couldn't very well come back to Great Cumberland Place.”
He did see that, poor man. “No, chick, no. That wouldn't work out—that sum. You and your mother never did add up very well—No, no. Much as I should have liked it. But Charles Street? Hum. I'm a plain man, you see, a plain, old comfortable merchant—and the older I grow, the more comfortable I get, I believe. Now, I don't see myself in Berkeley Square, making a bow to Lady Maria. My poor old back's too stiff for that. But if you're contented—if you're to have your deserts—for you're a little beauty, my love, and there's no mistake about it—why, what can I say? And I know you won't forget Papa in The Poultry—hey?”
She held him her hand across the tea-cups, smiling with her eyes. “Do you really think I shall?”
He caught fast to the little hand. “No, child, no! Though, mind you, I deserve it. When I think that I let you be packed out of my house—neck and crop—to the devil, for aught I knew—I grow cold. My dear, it's taken me suddenly at night—when I've been wakeful—and I've groaned in my agony. It don't do to think of—hideous! Women make fools of us men, and knaves as well. But there! You know your mother's way. I mustn't speak against her, of course. No, no. She's a good woman.” He looked as if he tried hard to believe it.
Sanchia, her hand still held, had grown serious. “Papa,” she said, “I want you to understand me altogether. I should do it again, I believe, if I really loved somebody.”
He looked at her anxiously, then away from her, while he patted her caught hand. “Yes, my dear, yes. I understand that you feel like that. It's queer—to me, you know. I don't pretend to see it as you do. But I trust you. I know you're a good girl. Only—it's not the old-fashioned way; and your mother—”
“Mamma,”' she said, “is different. She thinks I'm wicked; you think I'm good. I don't know what I am—I don't understand myself at all; but I'm quite sure that I should do it again, if it had to be done.” Her eyes grew large with the certainty of her argument. She had a divine seriousness, a rapt look, as of one inspired from within. “I don't see how you can help it, if you see quite clearly that the person needs you. It seems disloyalty. It seems making too much of yourself—as if what happened to that part of you mattered! And it seems making too little of yourself, too—as if you shrank, as if you were afraid of vile people. One can't afford to be afraid—for the sake of such a small thing.”
Mr. Percival, nodding, patting her hand, put in a gentle remonstrance. “I shouldn't say that, Sancie, I shouldn't indeed. It used to be considered everything in the world, to a woman.”
She mused, then decided. “No. I can't understand that. It's not everything in the world. It's almost nothing compared to other things—like freedom. To me the only thing that seems to matter is one's mind. Freedom for that! You can give up anything else. But that you must have—if you are to live at all.”
He made a loyal effort to follow her thought, but it led him into dismal regions where he found himself unnerved. “I don't know, upon my soul, where you get these notions of yours, my dear. I don't indeed. Not from me, I believe.”
She smiled gently at him, but with a wistful tinge, as if she felt her isolation. “I don't know, either—but there they are. I always know what I've got to do. I see it, or feel it, ahead of me. There's a path that way, a path the other. I see the fork, and have to follow one of them. I always know which.”
That was equally beyond him. He left it, and returned to a more practical puzzlement. “But when—when you make up your mind about—him, you know? I wish you would tell me.”
“I'll tell you everything I can, dearest, of course.”
“Well, now, your freedom, you know. Your freedom of mind. Now, you gave him your freedom, didn't you! And your mind too? Didn't you, now?”
She had to consider that, and he watched her with anxiety. But she looked him fairly in the face with her answer, so that he read the truth in her eyes. “No,” she told him. “No. He never had that, luckily for me. I always knew what I had to do before he did. I could always see where he was right and I was wrong—or the other way about. I don't think I could ever give up my judgment. At least—” She had to think again; and again she answered him, but with heightened colour. “If I did—it would be a different sort of person altogether. Quite a different person.”
His face fell. This didn't sound like marriage-bells. “Oh, my dear!” he said ruefully. “You don't mean to tell me—”
She jumped up and hugged him. “You darling old thing, of course not.” But she kept her face buried in his whiskers. “If I ever did that—give up my mind, I mean—I believe I should be happier.”
Mr. Percival had no doubt about that. He had old-fashioned opinions.