Sunday, 9a.m.I've slept like baby twins.Such a sweet morning! I got up at seven and took Susan with me to Low Mass. The sunlight streaming through the windows of the choir was divine.How different this Latin mass in France from last Sunday morning's service in Traxelby church! At Traxelby we are always so orderly, so dignified. Here at Dieppe the people grab each a chair and put it down where they like, so that they're all higgledy-piggledy instead of sitting in decorous ranks and rows. And, except for the Gospel and Credo and the Canon, they make no pretence at sitting and standing and kneeling according to any fixed usage or principle. Some seem to be following the Proper in their missals, while others just pray, or think, or finger their beads. Susan says they behaved dreadfully, and that it didn't seem a bit like proper Church.I felt differently. The roughness and freedom and individuality were less soothing than our elegant orderliness at Traxelby; but the realities that underlie religion seemed nearer and warmer. These faithful Dieppois looked more like the men and women of old who thronged the hillsides of Palestine and sat down entranced upon the grass; and they looked less like that chilly, respectable, dull-souled thing---- How shall I put it? Perhaps it's this. They looked more like "the multitude" of the Gospels, and less like "a congregation."If I were not already an excommunicate heretic and schismatic, I should have surely lost my soul for my inattention to Mass. I couldn't help comparing this Sunday with last. Last Sunday, Alice was with me as in the old days. And Susan hadn't had her letter. And Gibson hadn't talked to me in the garden. Everything was orderly, dignified, low-pulsed, soothing, like last Sunday's matins in Traxelby church. But to-day, Susan's letter is a fact. So is Gibson's oath. And Ruddington is at the Cheval d'Or. My life is suddenly disordered--just as Traxelby church would be if these Dieppois were suddenly turned loose among the chairs. Yet I'm not sure that last Sunday was better. Realities, glowing human realities, have suddenly began to crowd, living and breathing, all around me--just as I felt reality, warm and near, in the rough and unpunctiliously celebrated Mass.I couldn't help thinking some odd thoughts as I looked at one little panel of a stained window over my head. It showed a kneeling girlish figure, in white, with long yellow hair. On her right was a Bishop, coped and mitred, extending his hand; and on her left was a loutish leering fellow with a steel cap and a sword. I'm not ecclesiologist enough to know what it was all about. Possibly it meant the Soul being strengthened by the Sacraments against the onslaughts of the World. More probably it was in praise of some virgin martyr. But the odd thing was that if the yellow-haired, rather insipid damsel had had more colour in her cheeks she would have been the image of Susan. The large-mouthed, large-eared, large-limbed brute who was tempting or threatening her was not wholly unlike the cur at the Cheval d'Or. Most amazing and haunting of all, the Bishop, with his youthful, keen, honest, manly, wholesome, clean-shaven face, was simply a coped and mitred--Gibson!Here they are, bringing the coffee in cups! Never mind. On Tuesday I shall be drinking it with a big Normandy soup-spoon out of a little Normandy bowl.Noon.He has tracked us down.Coming away from High Mass at St. Rémi, we walked slap into him in the Grande Rue.I could have boxed Susan's ears for her ridiculous goings-on. Such flushings and flutterings and scurryings can't possibly have been seen in the town before. Yet, as we came back to the Astor by the zigzaggest route I could find, she positively turned her head twice. Of course he was following.I'm quite prepared to find he's secured the next table to mine for lunch.What worries me isn't so much to-day's meetings. It's to-morrow's. If we can't dodge him at Dieppe, how shall we manage at Sainte Véronique? Then there's my ridiculous promise to our poor young Bishop Gibson.I'm forced to acknowledge that Alice is right. I'm neither old enough nor wise enough to keep up Traxelby and go travelling abroad with no companion save Susan. It looks strange, and it doesn't work.If this creature is indeed Lord Ruddington, I don't trust him to deal honestly by Susan. In that case, Gibson is just the man for the job. Once let me be sure that it's Ruddington and Gibson shall have his telegram within half an hour.Half-past three.I've laughed and I've cried.To think that all last night and all this morning I fully believed we were deep in Act III. of a tragedy (Act I.: Miss Langley's Boudoir at Traxelby Grange. Act II.: The Grange Garden); and that when I walked into thesalle-à-mangerfordéjeunerand saw the Brute in Grey at a corner table, my mind was so prepared for an ultimate Act V., that the only uncertainty was as to whether Gibson would do it with a revolver or with a knife!It isn't Act III., and there isn't any tragedy. It turns out to be merely the comic relief of a melodrama.He was already lunching when I sat down with Susan at my table. Of course I placed Susan with her back to him; but I didn't notice at first that I had also placed her opposite a mirror wherein she could look at him far better than I could myself.He was too far off for me to hear him clearly; but I made out that he insistently addressed his English waiter in lamentable French. I hung my head for my country and its aristocracy, and thought more meanly than ever of its public schools. He consumed a succession of expensive dishes, and his plate was ostentatiously flanked by a bottle of champagne."It's a whole bottle, Miss," whispered Susan, regarding it with reverence in the mirror; "not one of those little ones.""If you can see him, he can see you, Susan," I said severely. "Whoever he is, he can be no gentleman to follow you like this. Eat your cutlet, and keep your eyes on your plate. And don't dawdle. I want to go upstairs again as quick as we can."For one nasty moment, Susan hung on the very brink of rebellion. But habit or coquetry, or self-interest or pure obedience, or genuine modesty, prevailed; and she answered with perfect meekness:"Very well, Miss, I'm ready now."It spoilt my lunch; but I got up and we both went out. I asked for coffee and the French time-table to be brought into the drawing-room, where he wasn't likely to come. There, I sat down to work out plans in quiet.But the quiet didn't last. Within five minutes, his large voice broke out angrily in the hall. Susan shivered on the lounge beside me. His clamour was like the vicious baying of an extra-sized wolf newly cheated of a nice young lamb."Oh, Miss!" moaned Susan, as white as a sheet. "He's coming in here! Whatever shall I do?""Sit still," I snapped. "Hold your tongue. Let us listen."Straining my ears, I discerned that the noise was a composite one, and that the three chief contributors were the Brute in Grey, the waiter, and some third party--probably the manager."It's a [----] swindle!" roared the Grey One. (The blank stands for something far worse than "damned.")"I told the gentleman it wasà la carte," put in the waiter."You're a common impostor!" said the manager.I edged along the lounge and peeped through the half-open door. The Grey One was standing with his legs apart, like the Colossus of Rhodes. Too much meat and drink had combined with anger and fear to turn his evil face nearly purple. At a safe distance stood the waiter, pale and excited, with the Grey One's bill on a silver salver. Two other waiters and the porter were massed across the doorway in case the Grey One should take to his long, horrid legs. The manager, implacable and contemptuous, leaned against his office door."What's all this beastly row about?" asked one of the guests of the hotel, a young Englishman, coming irritably out of thesalle-à-manger."I'm deeply sorry, sir. This ... gentleman," said the manager, with a withering look at the Grey One, "has eaten his luncheon and doesn't want to pay for it.""He won't pay," echoed the waiter feebly."It's a [----] lie," bellowed the Grey One. "Iwillpay. I want to pay. But I'm not going to be [----] well swindled. It's the same as knocking me down and going through my [----] pockets, and I'll see you in hell before I stand it!"Another young Englishman came out and joined the first."What's up?" he asked."Dunno exactly," answered his friend. "Waiter says this chap's trying on a bilk. Chap himself says they've rooked him on his lunch.""The gentlemanwouldtalk French," said the pale waiter, gaining courage. "I don't know French, nor 'e don't neither. I told 'im it wasà la carteas soon as 'e pointed to the canteloup.""It's a barefaced robbery," cried the Grey One, swearing dreadfully. "But it's no use trying it onme. My uncle knows France as well as he knows Battersea Park. And what did he tell me? That you don't pay more than three or four francs in France for a dinner fit for a lord! Why, even in the French resteronts in Soho, you don't pay more than eighteenpence for five courses."The manager made a gesture of scorn and despair."Perhaps you'll tell us why you ordered a cigar and a whole bottle ofVeuve Clicquot?" he asked."Don't go cross-examiningme," roared the Grey One. "I know the ropes, so don't you forget it. Everybody knows that, in France, wine's cheaper than beer.""That's it!" chuckled one of the young Englishmen gaily. "Wine's cheaper than beer, and therefore fizz is cheaper than bottled ale!""There you are!" cried the Grey One in triumph. "And as for your [----] old cigar, you don't have me there either. One of the fellows at our place came back from France only last week. At least, it was Holland he'd been to, but it's all the same. And what did he pay for the cigars he smuggled back? Three for tuppence! Beauties! Yet here it is in your [----] bill, 'Cigars, one franc.' I say it's----""You've said all I'm willing to listen to," retorted the manager, as the two young Englishmen went back to their feeding. "For the last time, are you going to pay?""I'll pay six francs and not a penny more," muttered the Grey One, distinctly frightened."You'll pay your bill," said the manager decidedly. "The total is thirty-one francs, seventy-five centimes. I can't have our guests annoyed by a minute's further argument. I recommend you to save yourself from very unpleasant consequences."All the fight went out of the Grey One suddenly. He gazed wistfully at the door, which was still held in force by the menials. Then he fumbled in his pockets."I can't," he muttered sulkily. "I haven't got the money. I've only got twenty-four francs. And there'll be my bill at the Shevvle Daw.""The Cheval d'Or!" echoed the manager. "If you're at the Cheval d'Or, what the deuce have you come lunching here for?""To meet some friends," said the Grey One brazenly. "They're staying in the hotel."The manager was perturbed."What friends?" he asked."Two ladies," the Grey One replied.Within the next minute the two ladies' names would have been asked for, and, no doubt, the hard-pressed brute would have given mine. I pulled the door open wide, and stepped into the hall."I can't help hearing," I said. "You talk so loud. What ladies do you mean?"He jumped. Then he stood stark, as if he had been struck by lightning."Perhaps Madame knows something of this affair," the manager began in French."Only a little," I replied in English. "All I know is that this---- By the way, hadn't you better ask his name and address?""My name," he said wretchedly, "is Lamb--John Lamb. I'm head clerk at Phipps Brothers, the timber-merchants, Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush. You'll have heard of Phipps Brothers?" he added imploringly."All I know of Mr. John Lamb," I went on, "is this. He stared at us all the way from Newhaven. He spied about, reading the names on our labels. He pushed himself on us at the Customs. He followed us to the Cheval d'Or, and practically drove us out of the rooms we had taken. He has dogged us through half the streets in Dieppe this morning. Lastly, he has given us the honour of his company at lunch."The manager was about to work up, for my benefit, a polite adequacy of fiery indignation. But Mr. John Lamb forestalled him. Plucking up courage, he retorted impudently:"Well, and what if it's true? We aren't in England, are we? Everybody knows they're more free-and-easy in France."The manager was loaded and primed for an explosion. But I got in another word."Didn't I give you a broad enough hint at the Customs?" I asked."Yes," he said coarsely. "You did. But what about the other young lady? Let her come out here, fair and square, and say if she didn't egg me on. 'Tisn't my fault for thinking I was in for a soft thing.You're not to blame, of course.You've snubbed me right enough all along, no error. To tell the truth, Ma'am, I thought you were sick because it was the other young lady I was struck with, and notyou."What possessed him to add this insult to injury, when he was actually in the lion's mouth, only himself knows. It wasn't courage; for he had suddenly gone paler and shakier than before. Probably he was clinging in desperation to a last mad hope that he had indeed made a conquest of "the other young lady," and that she would rush out in my wake to intercede for him, and to set him free.As I turned round and took my first step back to the drawing-room, the manager exploded like a thousand bombs. How the Grey One managed to stand unconsumed amidst those lightnings of wrath and thunderings of menace, I can't conceive. As to his past, the Grey One learned that he was directly descended from a long line of cads, rogues, gaol-birds, and impostors; and as to his future, it appeared that the greater part of it (after he had been soundly kicked, thrashed, and horse-whipped) was to be spent in a French prison. While this fiery storm was blazing and smashing around his grey cloth cap, I neither saw Mr. John Lamb, of Phipps Brothers, nor heard him. He took it lying down.In the end, it turned out that Mr. Lamb was possessed of an English sovereign and the return half of a week-end ticket as well as his twenty-four francs. He paid; and was flung forth into the sunshine with just enough to face Madame Legendre and to keep himself alive until the boat starts for England, in the dark and the cold, a little after midnight.From his final and ardent, but fruitless, plea that the manager should accept the deposit of his watch and ring, and allow him to send a post-office order from England to redeem them, I gathered that this was Mr. Lamb's first visit to France; that he has got leave from Phipps Brothers till Wednesday morning; and that Mrs. Lamb doesn't expect him back to Amelia Road until Tuesday night.I'm sick of writing about the creature, so I'll stop. Yet, if I chance to wake up about three o'clock to-morrow morning, with the air nipping and the wind blustery and the moon overcast, I'm not sure that I sha'n't think of Mr. John Lamb, and feel just a tiny, wee bit sorry for him.BOOK IIISAINTE VÉRONIQUETRANSCRIBER'S NOTESome of the Letters printed in Book III. are found in the MS. of the Diary only in abridgments, and one is missing altogether. The Transcriber has copied them from the originalsin extenso, and has inserted them in their proper places.BOOK IIIMonday, 4p.m.At last!It's like coming home. I'm in my dear old room; with the front window looking over the beck and the willows to the sea, and the side window opening on the orchard. The trees have grown since last year; and, if I leaned out far enough, there are three rosy apples that I could pluck straight from the branch as it sways in the soft wind.The Dupoiriers are delighted I've come. Poor things, considering the gorgeous summer, they haven't been doing over well. Yet the hotel is sweeter than ever. Those stuffy velvet curtains, that I always loathed, have been taken out of the salon. It was a bit of a shock to see the summer-house stripped of creepers and painted white: but, if it's less picturesque, it is also more possible. Last year I didn't dare to sit in it because of the earwigs.There's a new Marie. The old Marie, with the red hair, who wouldn't more than half-fill my water-jugs, left only last week. The new Marie is a black-haired, black-eyed one, and far nicer. There's a letter for me from Alice. And, of course, there's a letter for Susan from the regrettable Ruddington. But I'm not going to bother with either of them till I've had a peep at the path that winds along the beck to the sea.In the summer-house.I do wish Alice wouldn't!She's found out somehow that Ruddington was at the Towers all through the last week of her visit. She's quite vicious about my running away. According to her first three pages, I "must get married some day," and Lord Ruddington has been, so to speak, restored to the county by Divine Providence for the express purpose of taking pity on my old-maidhood. To scamper off to Sainte Véronique is, therefore, to fly in Providence's face. Yet, according to Alice's fourth page, my flight to France looks "far more pointed" than if I'd stolidly stuck at home.If a mere logical triumph were worth a single drop of ink, I might twit Alice with the inconsistency. If it's true that the calculating coyness of my maiden flight has already put it into His Highness's head that I am one of the candidates, I might fairly claim Alice's praise instead of her blame.I shouldn't care so much if Alice weren't so insistently practical. She positively wants me to race back next week; and she says she can even manage Hugh, so that he'll bring her with him, and do his bird-slaughtering at Traxelby instead of at Maxfield. No doubt she is confident that, by October the 2d, the bag will be twenty pheasants, a dozen partridges, and one Lord.I wonder what Alice would say if I wrote straight off and told her that Lord Ruddington, to my certain knowledge, has already disposed of his charms elsewhere? I wish I could tell her. It would be such hollow, tiresome work arguing with her on every ground save the solid fact.Monday night.The Lamb in Wolf's Clothing gave me a bad twenty-four hours on the boat and in Dieppe; but he has certainly done a power of good to Susan. She hasn't got over her surprise at my not giving her a lecture and a mighty scolding; and she's brimming over with silent gratitude.Ruddington's letter is irritating, but, in a sense, rather nice. I didn't ask Susan to show it to me. I thought it would keep very well till to-morrow. But Susan has laid it inside my blotting-case. Rather graceful of her--unless she's afraid that a personal delivery of it would remind me of Mr. John Lamb, and wake up a dormant volcano! Here is the letter:--RUDDINGTON TOWERS,Saturday, September 8, 1906.MY DEAR SUSAN,--I may begin this way, may I not?Your letter this morning has brought me unspeakable relief and happiness. When Thursday's and Friday's posts were blank, I hardly restrained myself from waylaying you at Traxelby.As it's utterly beyond me to thank you enough for your letter, I'll try a little grumbling instead. Is it not rather cruel to say that I must not write more than once a week? Once a week for a month means only four letters in all. Sha'n't we be almost as much strangers when you come back as when you went away?When you come back! The words make my blood, run faster. They're like the refrain of a song. When you come back! They're the music I shall march by, and live my life by, till you come.I enter into all you say about giving you a quiet month to think and to decide. I understand, and I admire it. And yet it's almost more than I can stand. To know where you are, to have the power to join you in a few hours, and yet to be forced to serve a month's imprisonment in England, is well-nigh too much for flesh and blood. As I laid down your letter this morning, I realized that by riding hard across Ruddington Heath I could have caught you for a moment at the station. But I set your sovereign command before my eyes ... and stayed at home! Ought you not to be very nice to me for being so good and obedient? For example, don't I deserve a long letter on Tuesday?Till you come back, and for ever,RUDDINGTON.P.S.--Do not be angry with me for what I am going to say. Although I put it in a postscript, it is uppermost in my thoughts.Pray don't think I'm about to try and coax you out of your month's reflection. Long and hard though I shall find it, I say. Have the month by all means. But is it necessary that you should pass the month in your present conditions?It tortures me to know that while I will live this month in comfort and leisure, you will often find it difficult even to snatch the time for one weekly letter. Now that I know that no one else has won you, take my word for it, dearest, that no one else ever shall! Susan is going to bemySusan, even if I've to take her by storm.What follows? This. From the moment of reading your letter, I promoted myself to be your protector to our lives' end. How then can I tolerate you remaining for another hour in a servile position for which you were never born--into which some hateful freak of Fate has thrust you, and out of which it is the greatest honour of my life to rescue you? It maddens me that, perhaps at this very moment, you are being ordered about, and made to fetch and carry for somebody who isn't fit to lace your shoes.Reading this, you can easily be angry. But bear with me. There are so many ways in which a thing like this could be arranged without unseemliness. And, surely, nothing can be more unfitting than that you should be distracted from so solemn a decision by a fussy pressure of petty tasks. I entreat you to give me the great happiness of setting you free.R.His gentle Lordship does not condescend to state whether, in the event of Susan being "set free," he will forthwith send me, carriage paid, a new maid as fanciable and wholesome as Susan, with feet that move about, like Susan's, as quietly as two mice. But, of course, as I'm merely "somebody not fit to lace Susan's shoes," I don't count.To-morrow there'll be the worry of sending off an answer. What will he say when he sees Susan's own handwriting? And how shall we explain the first letter being in mine? I suppose Susan had better make a clean breast of it. I expect his infatuation is proof even against Susan's blots and pot-hooks.Now for bed.Mardi; midi moins quart.I have drunk coffee, with a big bright soup-spoon, out of a little white bowl with pink rosebuds inside and out. Also, I have eaten fourcroissantsand a shameful quantity of Normandy butter. This was at eight o'clock. Since then I have followed the beck all the way to the sea; have bathed; have climbed the cliff; and have been to the post-office for stamps. Through the window I can see Georgette placing a blinding cut-glass decanter of fresh-drawn, foamy cider, full in the sun, on my table in the orchard. As Susan would say, "a feeling came over me" where the beck runs past the poplars. I couldn't help stamping my heel on the ground and saying, "It is true that I am back in Normandy."After lunch, there'll be my letter to Alice. I sha'n't say anything about Ruddington, except that she mustn't go on being a tease. Then there'll be Susan's letter to the Lord of Burleigh. It would be inhuman to make him wait for it any longer.Georgette has just brought out a melon. Its minutes are numbered. I haven't felt so hungry for ages.I wonder what Mr. Lamb is doing, and what yarn he has spun at Amelia Road? Poor Gibson, too! If I were Susan, I think I'd send him just a Sainte Véronique post-card.Deo gratias!"C'est servi!"Tuesday night.I am like a bird in a net.After lunch, Susan came to me and begged pardon for asking if I "hadn't forgotten the post.""No," I answered, "it doesn't go out for five hours. By the way, Susan, what are you going to say to Lord Ruddington?"Her face fell."Please, Miss," she said, "I was thinking ... perhaps you would write the letter for me.""No, Susan," I replied promptly, "I can't do that. If talking it over will help you, I'm willing. I don't mind even scribbling something out in pencil. But I can't write it. Surely it's bad enough that he's had one letter in my handwriting. I wouldn't have had it happen for the world. Besides, you'll have to write the letters yourself before long, so why not face it at once? We shall need to think out some way of explaining to him why the other handwriting was different."While I was speaking, Susan was becoming more and more agitated; and when I ceased, she didn't answer."Come, Susan," I said kindly.She began to weep."Oh, Miss!" she sobbed, "on Friday I told you a lie. I told you that I didn't copy it out in my own writing because I didn't think----"She stopped."Well?" I said, after I had waited long enough."I thought, Miss," sobbed Susan, "I thought ... I was afraid, if he saw my writing, he might give me up. And what you'd wrote looked so beautiful and ladylike, Miss, that----"She couldn't go on."Susan," I said, "you've acted very wrongly. You've done wrong to me, and you've deceived Lord Ruddington. Worse still, you've done wrong to yourself. If he really cared for you, he wouldn't have been turned away by bad writing. But he won't admire deceit. You've taken the first step on the wrong path, and you don't know what will be the end."I am getting to be a practised preacher. Since last Thursday, I've laid down more of the moral law than in all the rest of my life. Susan heard me in meekness."I know it was wicked," she said; "but oh, Miss, do please,pleasewrite the letter to-day! It won't be many times more.""If I do it one time more, I expect I shall have to do it fifty."Susan looked mysterious."No, Miss," she said with assurance, "not fifty.""Why not?" I asked. And, after some pressing, Susan confessed that she has snatched five hours from sleep since Friday for the express purpose of conforming her penmanship to the pattern of mine. She showed me some specimens, and I was astonished at the advance she had made."Well, Susan," I said at last, "I don't like it at all, and I'm very angry with you. But if there's any prospect of your going on improving like this in your writing, perhaps it will be as well for me to write your next two or three letters. Then I sha'n't need to be brought into the affair, so far as Lord Ruddington is concerned, at all."Susan's gratitude was touching."I'll never forget how good you've been to me, Miss," she said, choking down a sob."Find Georgette," I said. "While she's clearing the table, bring down my writing-case. We'll do it under the trees."Susan danced off with a skittishness that surprised me. When she came back, I asked her what she had decided to say."I was thinking, Miss," she said, "we might say how nice it would have been if he'd galloped over the Heath to the station. And don't you think, Miss, he would like to hear how we thought he was Mr. Lamb?""Never a word to him about Mr. Lamb as long as you live, Susan," I said peremptorily. "As for the Heath, it would have been very wrong of him. But how are you going to answer his postscript--this long bit at the end, all about your leaving me at once?""Leavingyou, Miss?" asked Susan, mystified."Yes," I said, looking at her. "Don't you see? Lord Ruddington wants you to leave me at once."Her face flushed with such genuine trouble that I forgave Susan everything, and took her back to my heart."Oh, no, Miss!" she cried. "I didn't understand he meant that. I wouldn't ever do that."What Susan had taken the postscript to mean I have no notion. Nor do I know yet whether, in the near future, I shall be expected to give Susan and her spouse a suite of rooms at Traxelby, or whether she will offer me a housekeeper's place at the Towers. It is plain that she does not entertain the idea of our being parted.I said:"Lord Ruddington doesn't like to think that you are ... well, in any sense a servant. To put it plainly, he wants to find you money, so that you can begin to lead a lady's life at once. It does him credit. But, Susan, of course you can't take money from him. Have you saved anything?"Susan says she has saved thirty pounds. And nothing could be sounder than the quickness and firmness with which she decided that cash transactions with Lord Ruddington just now are unthinkable. Nor can anything be more indisputable than her unweakened devotion to myself."You can go upstairs and practise handwriting," I told her. "Come down in about half an hour, and I shall have some sort of a letter ready."But two half-hours passed in vain attempts to produce an epistle proper to Susan's temperament and intellect. I've realized this afternoon that I can never write a play. I tried hard to think and feel as Susan must think and feel; but I could only think and feel on my own account. At the end of an hour and a half, the best I had been able to achieve was this:--SAINTE VÉRONIQUE,Tuesday.Yes. You may call me "Dear Susan." But you must not say "My," until it is true.You say it was good of you not to ride over the Heath to the station. If you had done it, I should have been grieved.We had a smooth crossing from Newhaven, and we stayed till Monday morning in Dieppe. I like Sainte Véronique, and do not want to spend my month anywhere else.I am not angry with you for saying what you do about setting me free. How could I be anything but grateful for an offer that is so kindly meant and so delicately made?To ease you of your kind fears on my account, let me tell you that I have always been happy with Miss Langley; and that, during this month, I shall have little work and plenty of leisure.I look forward to receiving another letter from you on Monday.SUSAN BRIGGS."It's beautiful, Miss!" said Susan dejectedly, after she had perused my effort. And she sat looking up into the sky, the picture of disappointment and indecision. I went to the rescue."Say what's in your mind, Susan. There's a 'but,' isn't there? It's beautiful, but ... what?""I was thinking," confessed Susan blushfully, "that it isn't...""Isn't what?""It isn't ... very loving.""Loving?" I said. "What do you mean? Why, here you are, spending a month deciding whether you can try to care for Lord Ruddington or not. It isn't time yet to be 'loving.'""No," persisted Susan. "But I mean, Miss, won't he be disappointed?""You can't help that. You might as well say that he's disappointed because you don't pack your box and go straight off to Ruddington Towers."Susan was unconvinced."What did you say yourself, Susan, last week? Didn't you say that it wouldn't be good for him to throw yourself at his head?"When Susan first used it, the expression had irritated me; but it came in handily. Susan, however, thought otherwise. A spirit of revolt entered her soul, and I perceived the beginnings of her new pout."Do as you like, Susan, of course," I said. "It's your affair, not mine. But don't go and make another muddle as you did with Mr. John Lamb."It went home. Indeed, I'm not sure that Mr. John Lamb wasn't, so to speak, a wolf with a silver lining. The merest whisper of his soft and innocent name is enough to scare Susan into the extreme of docility."Oh, no, Miss!" she said hurriedly. "The letter's beautiful. But don't you think...?""What?""Don't you think, Miss, it would be nice to ask for his photograph and a lock of his hair?"While I was fighting down an impulse to laugh outright, it struck me that the photograph was rather a happy thought. With his photograph to study, I should at least be spared panicky announcements and "dreadful feelings" whenever Susan saw a strange Englishman at Sainte Véronique. Besides, I had no little curiosity to see what this mad Lord Ruddington might be like."A lock of hair is ridiculous," I said. "You must have been reading some trashy novelette. But a photograph's different. I'm glad you've thought of it. After all, Susan, you mightn't care to marry even Lord Ruddington if you found he was dreadfully ugly. Give me back the letter, and I'll add a postscript."I wrote:--P.S.--I feel that I haven't written you much of a letter; but there is so little to lay hold of. As I said before, you have seen me, but I have never seen you.Will you not send me your photograph? When it comes, perhaps I shall remember that I have seen you, after all.Where was it that you saw me?Taking a little more liberty than was her wont, Susan peeped shyly over my shoulder while I wrote. As I put down the pen, she heaved a deep sigh of unaffected satisfaction."It's lovely, Miss!" she said fervently. "That's just what I must have meant--that part about wondering where he saw me--only I couldn't explain it. And it's put so short and ladylike.""Don't say 'ladylike,' Susan," I said. "Give me an envelope."I wrote out Lord Ruddington's name and address in the style of handwriting I had used throughout the letter. It was my own writing; but a little bigger, inkier, and slower than usual."You see, Susan," I explained, "I'm meeting you halfway. By the time he's had a letter or two from me written like this, you ought to be able to do something pretty near it yourself. Now go upstairs and bring down those French stamps. They're in my green bag."While Susan was upstairs I took the letter out of the envelope and glanced through it once more. When I got as far as "I have always been happy with Miss Langley," the oddity struck me irresistibly. It was quite too comically reminiscent of the letters which girls used to write, under the governess's eye and at the governess's dictation, protesting their ideal happiness at school.There was just time. I picked up the pen and wrote sideways along the margin of the letter:--
Sunday, 9a.m.
I've slept like baby twins.
Such a sweet morning! I got up at seven and took Susan with me to Low Mass. The sunlight streaming through the windows of the choir was divine.
How different this Latin mass in France from last Sunday morning's service in Traxelby church! At Traxelby we are always so orderly, so dignified. Here at Dieppe the people grab each a chair and put it down where they like, so that they're all higgledy-piggledy instead of sitting in decorous ranks and rows. And, except for the Gospel and Credo and the Canon, they make no pretence at sitting and standing and kneeling according to any fixed usage or principle. Some seem to be following the Proper in their missals, while others just pray, or think, or finger their beads. Susan says they behaved dreadfully, and that it didn't seem a bit like proper Church.
I felt differently. The roughness and freedom and individuality were less soothing than our elegant orderliness at Traxelby; but the realities that underlie religion seemed nearer and warmer. These faithful Dieppois looked more like the men and women of old who thronged the hillsides of Palestine and sat down entranced upon the grass; and they looked less like that chilly, respectable, dull-souled thing---- How shall I put it? Perhaps it's this. They looked more like "the multitude" of the Gospels, and less like "a congregation."
If I were not already an excommunicate heretic and schismatic, I should have surely lost my soul for my inattention to Mass. I couldn't help comparing this Sunday with last. Last Sunday, Alice was with me as in the old days. And Susan hadn't had her letter. And Gibson hadn't talked to me in the garden. Everything was orderly, dignified, low-pulsed, soothing, like last Sunday's matins in Traxelby church. But to-day, Susan's letter is a fact. So is Gibson's oath. And Ruddington is at the Cheval d'Or. My life is suddenly disordered--just as Traxelby church would be if these Dieppois were suddenly turned loose among the chairs. Yet I'm not sure that last Sunday was better. Realities, glowing human realities, have suddenly began to crowd, living and breathing, all around me--just as I felt reality, warm and near, in the rough and unpunctiliously celebrated Mass.
I couldn't help thinking some odd thoughts as I looked at one little panel of a stained window over my head. It showed a kneeling girlish figure, in white, with long yellow hair. On her right was a Bishop, coped and mitred, extending his hand; and on her left was a loutish leering fellow with a steel cap and a sword. I'm not ecclesiologist enough to know what it was all about. Possibly it meant the Soul being strengthened by the Sacraments against the onslaughts of the World. More probably it was in praise of some virgin martyr. But the odd thing was that if the yellow-haired, rather insipid damsel had had more colour in her cheeks she would have been the image of Susan. The large-mouthed, large-eared, large-limbed brute who was tempting or threatening her was not wholly unlike the cur at the Cheval d'Or. Most amazing and haunting of all, the Bishop, with his youthful, keen, honest, manly, wholesome, clean-shaven face, was simply a coped and mitred--Gibson!
Here they are, bringing the coffee in cups! Never mind. On Tuesday I shall be drinking it with a big Normandy soup-spoon out of a little Normandy bowl.
Noon.
He has tracked us down.
Coming away from High Mass at St. Rémi, we walked slap into him in the Grande Rue.
I could have boxed Susan's ears for her ridiculous goings-on. Such flushings and flutterings and scurryings can't possibly have been seen in the town before. Yet, as we came back to the Astor by the zigzaggest route I could find, she positively turned her head twice. Of course he was following.
I'm quite prepared to find he's secured the next table to mine for lunch.
What worries me isn't so much to-day's meetings. It's to-morrow's. If we can't dodge him at Dieppe, how shall we manage at Sainte Véronique? Then there's my ridiculous promise to our poor young Bishop Gibson.
I'm forced to acknowledge that Alice is right. I'm neither old enough nor wise enough to keep up Traxelby and go travelling abroad with no companion save Susan. It looks strange, and it doesn't work.
If this creature is indeed Lord Ruddington, I don't trust him to deal honestly by Susan. In that case, Gibson is just the man for the job. Once let me be sure that it's Ruddington and Gibson shall have his telegram within half an hour.
Half-past three.
I've laughed and I've cried.
To think that all last night and all this morning I fully believed we were deep in Act III. of a tragedy (Act I.: Miss Langley's Boudoir at Traxelby Grange. Act II.: The Grange Garden); and that when I walked into thesalle-à-mangerfordéjeunerand saw the Brute in Grey at a corner table, my mind was so prepared for an ultimate Act V., that the only uncertainty was as to whether Gibson would do it with a revolver or with a knife!
It isn't Act III., and there isn't any tragedy. It turns out to be merely the comic relief of a melodrama.
He was already lunching when I sat down with Susan at my table. Of course I placed Susan with her back to him; but I didn't notice at first that I had also placed her opposite a mirror wherein she could look at him far better than I could myself.
He was too far off for me to hear him clearly; but I made out that he insistently addressed his English waiter in lamentable French. I hung my head for my country and its aristocracy, and thought more meanly than ever of its public schools. He consumed a succession of expensive dishes, and his plate was ostentatiously flanked by a bottle of champagne.
"It's a whole bottle, Miss," whispered Susan, regarding it with reverence in the mirror; "not one of those little ones."
"If you can see him, he can see you, Susan," I said severely. "Whoever he is, he can be no gentleman to follow you like this. Eat your cutlet, and keep your eyes on your plate. And don't dawdle. I want to go upstairs again as quick as we can."
For one nasty moment, Susan hung on the very brink of rebellion. But habit or coquetry, or self-interest or pure obedience, or genuine modesty, prevailed; and she answered with perfect meekness:
"Very well, Miss, I'm ready now."
It spoilt my lunch; but I got up and we both went out. I asked for coffee and the French time-table to be brought into the drawing-room, where he wasn't likely to come. There, I sat down to work out plans in quiet.
But the quiet didn't last. Within five minutes, his large voice broke out angrily in the hall. Susan shivered on the lounge beside me. His clamour was like the vicious baying of an extra-sized wolf newly cheated of a nice young lamb.
"Oh, Miss!" moaned Susan, as white as a sheet. "He's coming in here! Whatever shall I do?"
"Sit still," I snapped. "Hold your tongue. Let us listen."
Straining my ears, I discerned that the noise was a composite one, and that the three chief contributors were the Brute in Grey, the waiter, and some third party--probably the manager.
"It's a [----] swindle!" roared the Grey One. (The blank stands for something far worse than "damned.")
"I told the gentleman it wasà la carte," put in the waiter.
"You're a common impostor!" said the manager.
I edged along the lounge and peeped through the half-open door. The Grey One was standing with his legs apart, like the Colossus of Rhodes. Too much meat and drink had combined with anger and fear to turn his evil face nearly purple. At a safe distance stood the waiter, pale and excited, with the Grey One's bill on a silver salver. Two other waiters and the porter were massed across the doorway in case the Grey One should take to his long, horrid legs. The manager, implacable and contemptuous, leaned against his office door.
"What's all this beastly row about?" asked one of the guests of the hotel, a young Englishman, coming irritably out of thesalle-à-manger.
"I'm deeply sorry, sir. This ... gentleman," said the manager, with a withering look at the Grey One, "has eaten his luncheon and doesn't want to pay for it."
"He won't pay," echoed the waiter feebly.
"It's a [----] lie," bellowed the Grey One. "Iwillpay. I want to pay. But I'm not going to be [----] well swindled. It's the same as knocking me down and going through my [----] pockets, and I'll see you in hell before I stand it!"
Another young Englishman came out and joined the first.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Dunno exactly," answered his friend. "Waiter says this chap's trying on a bilk. Chap himself says they've rooked him on his lunch."
"The gentlemanwouldtalk French," said the pale waiter, gaining courage. "I don't know French, nor 'e don't neither. I told 'im it wasà la carteas soon as 'e pointed to the canteloup."
"It's a barefaced robbery," cried the Grey One, swearing dreadfully. "But it's no use trying it onme. My uncle knows France as well as he knows Battersea Park. And what did he tell me? That you don't pay more than three or four francs in France for a dinner fit for a lord! Why, even in the French resteronts in Soho, you don't pay more than eighteenpence for five courses."
The manager made a gesture of scorn and despair.
"Perhaps you'll tell us why you ordered a cigar and a whole bottle ofVeuve Clicquot?" he asked.
"Don't go cross-examiningme," roared the Grey One. "I know the ropes, so don't you forget it. Everybody knows that, in France, wine's cheaper than beer."
"That's it!" chuckled one of the young Englishmen gaily. "Wine's cheaper than beer, and therefore fizz is cheaper than bottled ale!"
"There you are!" cried the Grey One in triumph. "And as for your [----] old cigar, you don't have me there either. One of the fellows at our place came back from France only last week. At least, it was Holland he'd been to, but it's all the same. And what did he pay for the cigars he smuggled back? Three for tuppence! Beauties! Yet here it is in your [----] bill, 'Cigars, one franc.' I say it's----"
"You've said all I'm willing to listen to," retorted the manager, as the two young Englishmen went back to their feeding. "For the last time, are you going to pay?"
"I'll pay six francs and not a penny more," muttered the Grey One, distinctly frightened.
"You'll pay your bill," said the manager decidedly. "The total is thirty-one francs, seventy-five centimes. I can't have our guests annoyed by a minute's further argument. I recommend you to save yourself from very unpleasant consequences."
All the fight went out of the Grey One suddenly. He gazed wistfully at the door, which was still held in force by the menials. Then he fumbled in his pockets.
"I can't," he muttered sulkily. "I haven't got the money. I've only got twenty-four francs. And there'll be my bill at the Shevvle Daw."
"The Cheval d'Or!" echoed the manager. "If you're at the Cheval d'Or, what the deuce have you come lunching here for?"
"To meet some friends," said the Grey One brazenly. "They're staying in the hotel."
The manager was perturbed.
"What friends?" he asked.
"Two ladies," the Grey One replied.
Within the next minute the two ladies' names would have been asked for, and, no doubt, the hard-pressed brute would have given mine. I pulled the door open wide, and stepped into the hall.
"I can't help hearing," I said. "You talk so loud. What ladies do you mean?"
He jumped. Then he stood stark, as if he had been struck by lightning.
"Perhaps Madame knows something of this affair," the manager began in French.
"Only a little," I replied in English. "All I know is that this---- By the way, hadn't you better ask his name and address?"
"My name," he said wretchedly, "is Lamb--John Lamb. I'm head clerk at Phipps Brothers, the timber-merchants, Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush. You'll have heard of Phipps Brothers?" he added imploringly.
"All I know of Mr. John Lamb," I went on, "is this. He stared at us all the way from Newhaven. He spied about, reading the names on our labels. He pushed himself on us at the Customs. He followed us to the Cheval d'Or, and practically drove us out of the rooms we had taken. He has dogged us through half the streets in Dieppe this morning. Lastly, he has given us the honour of his company at lunch."
The manager was about to work up, for my benefit, a polite adequacy of fiery indignation. But Mr. John Lamb forestalled him. Plucking up courage, he retorted impudently:
"Well, and what if it's true? We aren't in England, are we? Everybody knows they're more free-and-easy in France."
The manager was loaded and primed for an explosion. But I got in another word.
"Didn't I give you a broad enough hint at the Customs?" I asked.
"Yes," he said coarsely. "You did. But what about the other young lady? Let her come out here, fair and square, and say if she didn't egg me on. 'Tisn't my fault for thinking I was in for a soft thing.You're not to blame, of course.You've snubbed me right enough all along, no error. To tell the truth, Ma'am, I thought you were sick because it was the other young lady I was struck with, and notyou."
What possessed him to add this insult to injury, when he was actually in the lion's mouth, only himself knows. It wasn't courage; for he had suddenly gone paler and shakier than before. Probably he was clinging in desperation to a last mad hope that he had indeed made a conquest of "the other young lady," and that she would rush out in my wake to intercede for him, and to set him free.
As I turned round and took my first step back to the drawing-room, the manager exploded like a thousand bombs. How the Grey One managed to stand unconsumed amidst those lightnings of wrath and thunderings of menace, I can't conceive. As to his past, the Grey One learned that he was directly descended from a long line of cads, rogues, gaol-birds, and impostors; and as to his future, it appeared that the greater part of it (after he had been soundly kicked, thrashed, and horse-whipped) was to be spent in a French prison. While this fiery storm was blazing and smashing around his grey cloth cap, I neither saw Mr. John Lamb, of Phipps Brothers, nor heard him. He took it lying down.
In the end, it turned out that Mr. Lamb was possessed of an English sovereign and the return half of a week-end ticket as well as his twenty-four francs. He paid; and was flung forth into the sunshine with just enough to face Madame Legendre and to keep himself alive until the boat starts for England, in the dark and the cold, a little after midnight.
From his final and ardent, but fruitless, plea that the manager should accept the deposit of his watch and ring, and allow him to send a post-office order from England to redeem them, I gathered that this was Mr. Lamb's first visit to France; that he has got leave from Phipps Brothers till Wednesday morning; and that Mrs. Lamb doesn't expect him back to Amelia Road until Tuesday night.
I'm sick of writing about the creature, so I'll stop. Yet, if I chance to wake up about three o'clock to-morrow morning, with the air nipping and the wind blustery and the moon overcast, I'm not sure that I sha'n't think of Mr. John Lamb, and feel just a tiny, wee bit sorry for him.
BOOK III
SAINTE VÉRONIQUE
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Some of the Letters printed in Book III. are found in the MS. of the Diary only in abridgments, and one is missing altogether. The Transcriber has copied them from the originalsin extenso, and has inserted them in their proper places.
Some of the Letters printed in Book III. are found in the MS. of the Diary only in abridgments, and one is missing altogether. The Transcriber has copied them from the originalsin extenso, and has inserted them in their proper places.
BOOK III
Monday, 4p.m.
At last!
It's like coming home. I'm in my dear old room; with the front window looking over the beck and the willows to the sea, and the side window opening on the orchard. The trees have grown since last year; and, if I leaned out far enough, there are three rosy apples that I could pluck straight from the branch as it sways in the soft wind.
The Dupoiriers are delighted I've come. Poor things, considering the gorgeous summer, they haven't been doing over well. Yet the hotel is sweeter than ever. Those stuffy velvet curtains, that I always loathed, have been taken out of the salon. It was a bit of a shock to see the summer-house stripped of creepers and painted white: but, if it's less picturesque, it is also more possible. Last year I didn't dare to sit in it because of the earwigs.
There's a new Marie. The old Marie, with the red hair, who wouldn't more than half-fill my water-jugs, left only last week. The new Marie is a black-haired, black-eyed one, and far nicer. There's a letter for me from Alice. And, of course, there's a letter for Susan from the regrettable Ruddington. But I'm not going to bother with either of them till I've had a peep at the path that winds along the beck to the sea.
In the summer-house.
I do wish Alice wouldn't!
She's found out somehow that Ruddington was at the Towers all through the last week of her visit. She's quite vicious about my running away. According to her first three pages, I "must get married some day," and Lord Ruddington has been, so to speak, restored to the county by Divine Providence for the express purpose of taking pity on my old-maidhood. To scamper off to Sainte Véronique is, therefore, to fly in Providence's face. Yet, according to Alice's fourth page, my flight to France looks "far more pointed" than if I'd stolidly stuck at home.
If a mere logical triumph were worth a single drop of ink, I might twit Alice with the inconsistency. If it's true that the calculating coyness of my maiden flight has already put it into His Highness's head that I am one of the candidates, I might fairly claim Alice's praise instead of her blame.
I shouldn't care so much if Alice weren't so insistently practical. She positively wants me to race back next week; and she says she can even manage Hugh, so that he'll bring her with him, and do his bird-slaughtering at Traxelby instead of at Maxfield. No doubt she is confident that, by October the 2d, the bag will be twenty pheasants, a dozen partridges, and one Lord.
I wonder what Alice would say if I wrote straight off and told her that Lord Ruddington, to my certain knowledge, has already disposed of his charms elsewhere? I wish I could tell her. It would be such hollow, tiresome work arguing with her on every ground save the solid fact.
Monday night.
The Lamb in Wolf's Clothing gave me a bad twenty-four hours on the boat and in Dieppe; but he has certainly done a power of good to Susan. She hasn't got over her surprise at my not giving her a lecture and a mighty scolding; and she's brimming over with silent gratitude.
Ruddington's letter is irritating, but, in a sense, rather nice. I didn't ask Susan to show it to me. I thought it would keep very well till to-morrow. But Susan has laid it inside my blotting-case. Rather graceful of her--unless she's afraid that a personal delivery of it would remind me of Mr. John Lamb, and wake up a dormant volcano! Here is the letter:--
RUDDINGTON TOWERS,
Saturday, September 8, 1906.
MY DEAR SUSAN,--I may begin this way, may I not?
Your letter this morning has brought me unspeakable relief and happiness. When Thursday's and Friday's posts were blank, I hardly restrained myself from waylaying you at Traxelby.
As it's utterly beyond me to thank you enough for your letter, I'll try a little grumbling instead. Is it not rather cruel to say that I must not write more than once a week? Once a week for a month means only four letters in all. Sha'n't we be almost as much strangers when you come back as when you went away?
When you come back! The words make my blood, run faster. They're like the refrain of a song. When you come back! They're the music I shall march by, and live my life by, till you come.
I enter into all you say about giving you a quiet month to think and to decide. I understand, and I admire it. And yet it's almost more than I can stand. To know where you are, to have the power to join you in a few hours, and yet to be forced to serve a month's imprisonment in England, is well-nigh too much for flesh and blood. As I laid down your letter this morning, I realized that by riding hard across Ruddington Heath I could have caught you for a moment at the station. But I set your sovereign command before my eyes ... and stayed at home! Ought you not to be very nice to me for being so good and obedient? For example, don't I deserve a long letter on Tuesday?
RUDDINGTON.
P.S.--Do not be angry with me for what I am going to say. Although I put it in a postscript, it is uppermost in my thoughts.
Pray don't think I'm about to try and coax you out of your month's reflection. Long and hard though I shall find it, I say. Have the month by all means. But is it necessary that you should pass the month in your present conditions?
It tortures me to know that while I will live this month in comfort and leisure, you will often find it difficult even to snatch the time for one weekly letter. Now that I know that no one else has won you, take my word for it, dearest, that no one else ever shall! Susan is going to bemySusan, even if I've to take her by storm.
What follows? This. From the moment of reading your letter, I promoted myself to be your protector to our lives' end. How then can I tolerate you remaining for another hour in a servile position for which you were never born--into which some hateful freak of Fate has thrust you, and out of which it is the greatest honour of my life to rescue you? It maddens me that, perhaps at this very moment, you are being ordered about, and made to fetch and carry for somebody who isn't fit to lace your shoes.
Reading this, you can easily be angry. But bear with me. There are so many ways in which a thing like this could be arranged without unseemliness. And, surely, nothing can be more unfitting than that you should be distracted from so solemn a decision by a fussy pressure of petty tasks. I entreat you to give me the great happiness of setting you free.
R.
His gentle Lordship does not condescend to state whether, in the event of Susan being "set free," he will forthwith send me, carriage paid, a new maid as fanciable and wholesome as Susan, with feet that move about, like Susan's, as quietly as two mice. But, of course, as I'm merely "somebody not fit to lace Susan's shoes," I don't count.
To-morrow there'll be the worry of sending off an answer. What will he say when he sees Susan's own handwriting? And how shall we explain the first letter being in mine? I suppose Susan had better make a clean breast of it. I expect his infatuation is proof even against Susan's blots and pot-hooks.
Now for bed.
Mardi; midi moins quart.
I have drunk coffee, with a big bright soup-spoon, out of a little white bowl with pink rosebuds inside and out. Also, I have eaten fourcroissantsand a shameful quantity of Normandy butter. This was at eight o'clock. Since then I have followed the beck all the way to the sea; have bathed; have climbed the cliff; and have been to the post-office for stamps. Through the window I can see Georgette placing a blinding cut-glass decanter of fresh-drawn, foamy cider, full in the sun, on my table in the orchard. As Susan would say, "a feeling came over me" where the beck runs past the poplars. I couldn't help stamping my heel on the ground and saying, "It is true that I am back in Normandy."
After lunch, there'll be my letter to Alice. I sha'n't say anything about Ruddington, except that she mustn't go on being a tease. Then there'll be Susan's letter to the Lord of Burleigh. It would be inhuman to make him wait for it any longer.
Georgette has just brought out a melon. Its minutes are numbered. I haven't felt so hungry for ages.
I wonder what Mr. Lamb is doing, and what yarn he has spun at Amelia Road? Poor Gibson, too! If I were Susan, I think I'd send him just a Sainte Véronique post-card.
Deo gratias!"C'est servi!"
Tuesday night.
I am like a bird in a net.
After lunch, Susan came to me and begged pardon for asking if I "hadn't forgotten the post."
"No," I answered, "it doesn't go out for five hours. By the way, Susan, what are you going to say to Lord Ruddington?"
Her face fell.
"Please, Miss," she said, "I was thinking ... perhaps you would write the letter for me."
"No, Susan," I replied promptly, "I can't do that. If talking it over will help you, I'm willing. I don't mind even scribbling something out in pencil. But I can't write it. Surely it's bad enough that he's had one letter in my handwriting. I wouldn't have had it happen for the world. Besides, you'll have to write the letters yourself before long, so why not face it at once? We shall need to think out some way of explaining to him why the other handwriting was different."
While I was speaking, Susan was becoming more and more agitated; and when I ceased, she didn't answer.
"Come, Susan," I said kindly.
She began to weep.
"Oh, Miss!" she sobbed, "on Friday I told you a lie. I told you that I didn't copy it out in my own writing because I didn't think----"
She stopped.
"Well?" I said, after I had waited long enough.
"I thought, Miss," sobbed Susan, "I thought ... I was afraid, if he saw my writing, he might give me up. And what you'd wrote looked so beautiful and ladylike, Miss, that----"
She couldn't go on.
"Susan," I said, "you've acted very wrongly. You've done wrong to me, and you've deceived Lord Ruddington. Worse still, you've done wrong to yourself. If he really cared for you, he wouldn't have been turned away by bad writing. But he won't admire deceit. You've taken the first step on the wrong path, and you don't know what will be the end."
I am getting to be a practised preacher. Since last Thursday, I've laid down more of the moral law than in all the rest of my life. Susan heard me in meekness.
"I know it was wicked," she said; "but oh, Miss, do please,pleasewrite the letter to-day! It won't be many times more."
"If I do it one time more, I expect I shall have to do it fifty."
Susan looked mysterious.
"No, Miss," she said with assurance, "not fifty."
"Why not?" I asked. And, after some pressing, Susan confessed that she has snatched five hours from sleep since Friday for the express purpose of conforming her penmanship to the pattern of mine. She showed me some specimens, and I was astonished at the advance she had made.
"Well, Susan," I said at last, "I don't like it at all, and I'm very angry with you. But if there's any prospect of your going on improving like this in your writing, perhaps it will be as well for me to write your next two or three letters. Then I sha'n't need to be brought into the affair, so far as Lord Ruddington is concerned, at all."
Susan's gratitude was touching.
"I'll never forget how good you've been to me, Miss," she said, choking down a sob.
"Find Georgette," I said. "While she's clearing the table, bring down my writing-case. We'll do it under the trees."
Susan danced off with a skittishness that surprised me. When she came back, I asked her what she had decided to say.
"I was thinking, Miss," she said, "we might say how nice it would have been if he'd galloped over the Heath to the station. And don't you think, Miss, he would like to hear how we thought he was Mr. Lamb?"
"Never a word to him about Mr. Lamb as long as you live, Susan," I said peremptorily. "As for the Heath, it would have been very wrong of him. But how are you going to answer his postscript--this long bit at the end, all about your leaving me at once?"
"Leavingyou, Miss?" asked Susan, mystified.
"Yes," I said, looking at her. "Don't you see? Lord Ruddington wants you to leave me at once."
Her face flushed with such genuine trouble that I forgave Susan everything, and took her back to my heart.
"Oh, no, Miss!" she cried. "I didn't understand he meant that. I wouldn't ever do that."
What Susan had taken the postscript to mean I have no notion. Nor do I know yet whether, in the near future, I shall be expected to give Susan and her spouse a suite of rooms at Traxelby, or whether she will offer me a housekeeper's place at the Towers. It is plain that she does not entertain the idea of our being parted.
I said:
"Lord Ruddington doesn't like to think that you are ... well, in any sense a servant. To put it plainly, he wants to find you money, so that you can begin to lead a lady's life at once. It does him credit. But, Susan, of course you can't take money from him. Have you saved anything?"
Susan says she has saved thirty pounds. And nothing could be sounder than the quickness and firmness with which she decided that cash transactions with Lord Ruddington just now are unthinkable. Nor can anything be more indisputable than her unweakened devotion to myself.
"You can go upstairs and practise handwriting," I told her. "Come down in about half an hour, and I shall have some sort of a letter ready."
But two half-hours passed in vain attempts to produce an epistle proper to Susan's temperament and intellect. I've realized this afternoon that I can never write a play. I tried hard to think and feel as Susan must think and feel; but I could only think and feel on my own account. At the end of an hour and a half, the best I had been able to achieve was this:--
Tuesday.
Yes. You may call me "Dear Susan." But you must not say "My," until it is true.
You say it was good of you not to ride over the Heath to the station. If you had done it, I should have been grieved.
We had a smooth crossing from Newhaven, and we stayed till Monday morning in Dieppe. I like Sainte Véronique, and do not want to spend my month anywhere else.
I am not angry with you for saying what you do about setting me free. How could I be anything but grateful for an offer that is so kindly meant and so delicately made?
To ease you of your kind fears on my account, let me tell you that I have always been happy with Miss Langley; and that, during this month, I shall have little work and plenty of leisure.
I look forward to receiving another letter from you on Monday.
SUSAN BRIGGS.
"It's beautiful, Miss!" said Susan dejectedly, after she had perused my effort. And she sat looking up into the sky, the picture of disappointment and indecision. I went to the rescue.
"Say what's in your mind, Susan. There's a 'but,' isn't there? It's beautiful, but ... what?"
"I was thinking," confessed Susan blushfully, "that it isn't..."
"Isn't what?"
"It isn't ... very loving."
"Loving?" I said. "What do you mean? Why, here you are, spending a month deciding whether you can try to care for Lord Ruddington or not. It isn't time yet to be 'loving.'"
"No," persisted Susan. "But I mean, Miss, won't he be disappointed?"
"You can't help that. You might as well say that he's disappointed because you don't pack your box and go straight off to Ruddington Towers."
Susan was unconvinced.
"What did you say yourself, Susan, last week? Didn't you say that it wouldn't be good for him to throw yourself at his head?"
When Susan first used it, the expression had irritated me; but it came in handily. Susan, however, thought otherwise. A spirit of revolt entered her soul, and I perceived the beginnings of her new pout.
"Do as you like, Susan, of course," I said. "It's your affair, not mine. But don't go and make another muddle as you did with Mr. John Lamb."
It went home. Indeed, I'm not sure that Mr. John Lamb wasn't, so to speak, a wolf with a silver lining. The merest whisper of his soft and innocent name is enough to scare Susan into the extreme of docility.
"Oh, no, Miss!" she said hurriedly. "The letter's beautiful. But don't you think...?"
"What?"
"Don't you think, Miss, it would be nice to ask for his photograph and a lock of his hair?"
While I was fighting down an impulse to laugh outright, it struck me that the photograph was rather a happy thought. With his photograph to study, I should at least be spared panicky announcements and "dreadful feelings" whenever Susan saw a strange Englishman at Sainte Véronique. Besides, I had no little curiosity to see what this mad Lord Ruddington might be like.
"A lock of hair is ridiculous," I said. "You must have been reading some trashy novelette. But a photograph's different. I'm glad you've thought of it. After all, Susan, you mightn't care to marry even Lord Ruddington if you found he was dreadfully ugly. Give me back the letter, and I'll add a postscript."
I wrote:--
P.S.--I feel that I haven't written you much of a letter; but there is so little to lay hold of. As I said before, you have seen me, but I have never seen you.
Will you not send me your photograph? When it comes, perhaps I shall remember that I have seen you, after all.
Where was it that you saw me?
Taking a little more liberty than was her wont, Susan peeped shyly over my shoulder while I wrote. As I put down the pen, she heaved a deep sigh of unaffected satisfaction.
"It's lovely, Miss!" she said fervently. "That's just what I must have meant--that part about wondering where he saw me--only I couldn't explain it. And it's put so short and ladylike."
"Don't say 'ladylike,' Susan," I said. "Give me an envelope."
I wrote out Lord Ruddington's name and address in the style of handwriting I had used throughout the letter. It was my own writing; but a little bigger, inkier, and slower than usual.
"You see, Susan," I explained, "I'm meeting you halfway. By the time he's had a letter or two from me written like this, you ought to be able to do something pretty near it yourself. Now go upstairs and bring down those French stamps. They're in my green bag."
While Susan was upstairs I took the letter out of the envelope and glanced through it once more. When I got as far as "I have always been happy with Miss Langley," the oddity struck me irresistibly. It was quite too comically reminiscent of the letters which girls used to write, under the governess's eye and at the governess's dictation, protesting their ideal happiness at school.
There was just time. I picked up the pen and wrote sideways along the margin of the letter:--