Waiting for tea.It may be that the fears which kept Susan awake last night have frozen her wits. She has the air of dreading close quarters with this affair; of wanting to thrust it off an arm's-length while she gets time to think. I mustn't be too hard on her. The girl is passing through an ordeal; and I am a poor substitute for a mother or even for a bosom friend.Wednesday morning.I have taken a resolve.There's been too much Ruddington. The inroads he makes on my Normandy rest-cure are absurd. I get my sun-bath and sea-bath every day; and that's all. It's time to put down my foot.Fortunately, Susan agrees with me. She does not tell me why she has so suddenly fallen out of love with the idea of being raised to the peerage. It may be that she quails and shrinks from a destiny that is altogether out of scale with her nature. More probably it is some trifle, such as Ruddington's moustachelessness. But, although she gives no reasons, she agrees with me that it will be best to take the thing less busily for the next fortnight. I've pointed out to her that she knows as much about him now as she needs to know. It isn't as though she has to decide, here at Sainte Véronique, whether she will marry Lord Ruddington. She has only to settle whether she will let him see her next month face to face--whether she will let him press in person a suit which she will still be free to refuse.We have decided that I shall write him a letter to-day such as will keep him quiet, and stop him bothering us. Then I shall be able to take a deep draught of my Normandy, as I take deep draughts of the cider. I have been here well over a week, and I hardly seem to have had one day free of him.Later.Here is my letter to her Henry, and it's going to be posted whether Susan likes it or not:DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--Your letter and the big blue form amused me very much. It is interesting to have such an assortment of fresh facts about you--especially the obstinacy and the bad temper.It is good news that you hate motor-cars. Nor should we become estranged over tobacco. But these are trifles, aren't they?I hope you will not think that I am taking myself too seriously, or that I am unthankful for the trouble you take in writing such kind and open and lively letters. But (now that I have your photograph and know so much more about you) I am conscious of a desire for a week or so of detachment from details. I feel that I would like to go about my ordinary life until some light breaks on me suddenly and of its own accord. The more I deliberately seek light, the more it mocks and eludes me. I suppose the reason is that no amount of steadily "making up" one's mind can suffice instead of a free involuntary motion of the heart.As you wrote to me on Monday, you would not in any case be writing again till Monday next. I like to have your letters; but, if you postpone your reply to this until rather late next week, I shall have the better chance of deciding whether we ought to meet or not.Yours sincerely,SUSAN BRIGGS.After lunch.The letter's gone.Susan says she likes it.I liked it too, until it was dropped into the post-box. But, at this moment, I am vainly asking myself what had become of my brains while I was writing it. It's the un-Susanishest letter that evenmyundramatic pen has compassed. Think of Susan being "conscious of a desire for detachment from details!" I can as easily imagine her ordering a grilled ichthyosaurus for breakfast.Still, it's gone. And now I shall have a week's peace.It seems the Belgian people who have had Dupoirier's Villa de la Mer for the season left yesterday. Dupoirier is cleaning up the blue-and-white bathing-hut on the beach. He's going to give me the key, and, if I like, I can stay down by the sea all day, so long as the weather's fine.The Bathing-hut, Thursday afternoon.This is perfect.The bright-faced sea is crooning to itself like a happy child. The day is warm. Inland, it must be torrid.I have had two dips, one snooze, and about three-quarters of a lunch. It would have been a lunch and a half if Georgette hadn't tripped over a stone on the way down and dropped the wing of a chicken into the beck. But the prawns, and the cold veal, with sauce rémoulade, and the great big pear, were quite enough if I hadn't grown so disgustingly greedy.Off and on, I've read several square yards of French newspapers since ten o'clock. There seems to be a curse resting on all newspapers that are sold for a ha'penny, never mind what country they belong to. I feel as Susan felt when she missed "a nice service" after the parish Mass at Sainte Véronique church.The best part of everything is to lie full back in the deck-chair and to look up at the larks in the sky. It's nice, too, to gaze over the blue-green water and to know there's a hundred miles of it between us and that worry of a Ruddington. I'm afraid he'll write a dozen pages on Monday. But, until the poor little fellow begins kicking and screaming for his Susan to be given to him at once, I can sit here while the wind and the sun mend my nerves and smooth the past fortnight's wrinkles out of my offended brow.Friday night.Henry Reginald has written. The sight of his envelope made me so angry that I nearly tore it open without waiting for Susan. After reading his outpouring I can't altogether blame him; but I am being badly treated by Fate. Things are worse muddled than ever.He says:MY DEAR SUSAN,--Seeing my handwriting again so soon, you will think that I am flouting your wishes. Not so. After I have finished this, I promise not to write you another line till you expressly give me leave.From my own selfish point of view, I have known all along that I was foolish in pleading my cause by post instead of with the living voice. But to write seemed fairer to yourself; though I confess I could not have been easily content with letters had I known you were going to France.In asking for a week of detachment, you are right. Indeed, I feel you have been most exquisitely right at every turn of my rude assault upon your peace. Therefore I agree, much as I shall miss your letters.You think your letters have disappointed me; and I can discern that it is a pain to you to write them till they can flow from you more freely. But let me tell you why I prize them far more than I expected.The day I first saw you with Miss Langley was a Saturday. You simply swept me off my feet. I had no more choice as to whether I should love you all my life or not than a cork has a choice between floating and sinking. It was the Derlingham banker who told me who you were. All that evening I sat alone in the dark, thinking. Or, rather, I didn't think. I just sat and looked, like a man in a trance, at the new world which had unrolled itself suddenly, solidly, splendidly right across the whole field of my vision.I had always believed that love at first sight was out of my line. Indeed, I had believed that, nowadays, it was out of everybody's line; and I had suspected that, outside the romances, there had never been any such thing in the world. I had even begun to indulge a certain pride in my fastidiousness and self-control as regards women.Don't be hurt, most dear lady, at the next step in my confession. If I must seem to disparage you for half a moment on paper, it is only that I may show why I shall revere and honour and cherish you for ever.When I came out of that Saturday night dream or trance, I sank swiftly down, down, down into a pit of humiliation. I had always believed myself free from pride of rank or pride of wealth; but it was with an immense chagrin that I remembered how the banker had answered my off-hand question with the words "Miss Langley's maid." A blinding flash lit up all the opposition, and scorn, and ridicule I should have to undergo.Not that it entered my mind, even at the zero of my humiliation, that I could ever give you up. The fact that you were my Destiny rose clear of my tumultuous emotions, as radiant and immutable as a virgin peak above the mean rage of a thunderstorm. But I fretted and fumed. You were the rose that I must needs gather; but why had Fate set you behind so huge and sharp and black a thorn? I asked bitterly why Fate could not have contrived that Miss Langley should have been Susan, and that you should have been Miss Langley, so that I could have come to the Grange a-wooing without a thousand maddening lets and hindrances.Later on, and in a lesser degree, I also felt humiliated because I, who had been so proud of my cool head, suddenly found myself bowled over by mere beauty and grace, like a solitary corn-stalk before an autumn gale.The next morning I slipped circumspectly into Traxelby church, just before the sermon. If you hold religion sacred and dear (as I feel sure you do), it may shock you to know that I looked at you through the pillars of the Langley monument for a quarter of an hour. But my thoughts were not sacrilegious. Although I thanked God for your beauty (and how beautiful you were that morning!), I worshipped God most because He had created your soul, your very self. As I watched you, I knew that you alone in all the world could charm away my spirit's restlessness and hunger--the hunger and the restlessness which I had hidden even from my own self. I recalled my loveless life; my boyhood spent among tutors and schoolmasters; my youth and early manhood at two schools and at three universities in three different countries; my last year--the year before I came back to the Towers--spent on cosmopolitan steamships and in unhomely hotels. I thought of the only women I have ever known well--my hard and shallow cousins, who are handsome and elegant only with the sort of handsomeness and elegance that ten thousand other hard and shallow women share with them. Then I looked at you again, and wanted to come home to you as a bird flies home to his nest.As I walked back from church, I knew that my ignoble chagrin had melted and vanished at the second vision of you. Instead of exclaiming against Fate for placing you, as the word goes, "below me," I rejoiced that there was a sacrifice to be made--a way of proving to you that I was moved by Love alone. I laughed at myself for having wished you had been Miss Langley!Perhaps I am supersensitive, ultradelicate. But I felt, on that Sunday morning, that if you had been Miss Langley, I might have shrunk from the wooing. The obviousness, the hard-headed, practical common sense of such a match would have put me off it. When every consideration of worldly suitability pointed to a joining of her name and lands and interests with mine, how could I have gone to Miss Langley on a simple errand of Love? I know of one gossip who had already linked her with me. How I should have cursed this rank of mine, which I never wanted, and this wealth of mine, which I never earned, if they had robbed me of the power to convince a woman of my love, and to woo her for herself alone!I wrote to you on the Tuesday; and you kept me waiting four days. But I knew you would reply; even as I know that, when this month is over, Heaven will not suffer you to wrench your life away from mine. But, while I waited, I kept on schooling myself against every possible turn of events. And one thing for which I prepared my mind (forgive me again, dear lady!) was this. I expected your letter would be ... how shall I say it? Well, I expected a diamond--but a rough one! To be blunt, I knew that Oxford and Heidelberg and Salamanca had made me too punctilious; and I nerved myself for a letter from a sweet Susan, an adorable Susan, a wise Susan ... but a Susan who couldn't spell!But what has happened? Of course, mere spelling and grammar are less than the dust in the balance; and if you sinned against them unto seventy times seven it would be nothing. But not only are Susan's letters better expressed than my own; they outstrip the utmost I ever dreamed of in the exquisite reverence with which they approach the sacred mystery of Love. Where I was merely superfine and sentimental, you are exalted, mystical. I honour your month of absence and your coming week of silence as I honour the retreats and meditations of a saint. Wealth and ease and rank cannot tempt you. They cannot even hurry you into doing what is right till you are persuaded that it is the right with your whole soul. The Susan I saw that Saturday morning swept me off my feet, robbed me of my free will. But the Susan who has written me four letters is so noble, so deep, so rich of spirit, that even if the spell of her beauty were broken, I should still devote my whole life to winning her, though the obstacles were a thousand times as great.Why have I written all this? I will tell you. Because you are entering, so to speak, on a week's retreat; and upon your week's retreat hangs my fate. If I did not write this, the most recent letter of mine in your hands would be that schoolboyish blue paper with its long-drawn string of poor jokes. I did not mean it flippantly; but it is hard for a man to write about himself.In a word, I write to ask that it shall be this present letter and not the other that you will call to mind when you are so good as to think of me.No. I don't imagine you "take yourself too seriously." I have guessed that, like my own, your mind is more often gay than grave. But there is a time for everything; and I perceive that badinage is not the accompaniment I ought to be playing while you are making the momentous choice which I have so strangely laid upon you.And now I steal out of your presence on tip-toe, and softly close the door. If you call, I shall be waiting. And if you do not call ... I shall be waiting still.R.Susan has been in to know what I think of the letter. I have told her I am busy, and have sent her away.It's no use blinking the fact that I'm involved, up to the ears, in a very, very serious affair.Midnight.I can't sleep.This is altogether too frightful.Fortunately Susan was perfectly stolid. If she'd been awkward, goodness knows what I might have said or done. I simply told her that we must have a thorough talk, once for all, in the morning; and she went to bed without a murmur.Susan a mystic! Susan approaching with exquisite reverence the sacred mystery of Love! Susan in retreat, like a saintly nun!If I could only laugh and laugh and laugh till I woke up the whole hotel, it wouldn't so much matter. But I can't even smile. Ruddington is too terribly in earnest. And it's my fault.Some parts of his letter I hate. I would never have believed that he could make so outrageously free with my name. So long as Susan is my maid, I call it abominable taste to drag me in like that. Indeed, I hardly see how I can do otherwise than wash my hands of the entire business forthwith.But if I do ... what then? If Susan is left to concoct a reply, and to use a teaspoonful of ink to every page, it will be such a shattering bombshell in the golden midst of his dreams. And the man, on the whole, is too likeable for me to wound him deeply if I can help it.Perhaps what I ought to do is to write by the same post as Susan, and with her full knowledge, a frank confession of my part in the affair. He will be astonished and disappointed and a bit hurt in his dignity, but he can't fairly resent my having helped Susan. After all, it's his fault, not mine, that he's perused my few short and insignificant letters through such rose-coloured glasses that they have seemed like the utterances of a divinity. It's his infatuation, far more than my bungling, which has magnified and idealized Susan into a goddess. Whether he can turn the telescope round, so to speak, and look at Susan through the other end till he sees her in all the tininess of her actual spiritual and mental stature; and whether, when he has seen her as she is, he can still go on worshipping her--all this is more his affair than mine. I'll write the letter now.A quarter past one.It's no good.If I had written before his letter came to-night, I could have managed it. But now that he's brought me in by name, and has even discussed how he would have felt if he had been moved to make love to me...No. I can't write. And if I could, I wouldn't. And I'm cold, and tired, and insulted, and distracted, and wretched. I'll back to bed.Saturday, 2p.m.On second (or twenty-second) thoughts, I did not choose to have a detailed conference with Susan. I have not so much as told her how vastly it offends me to be discussed with her as Ruddington has done. If I betray annoyance, how can I expect a simple mind like Susan's to interpret my vexation otherwise than as the acidity of an unsuccessful rival for Lord Ruddington's hand? Lord Ruddington has cheapened me enough, and I will not make myself any cheaper.Although she was stolid over it last night, the letter has warmed Susan into a remarkable state of expansion this morning, and she was sadly crestfallen when I showed no sign of going through the document chapter and verse. I took care that she should find me deep in my own correspondence, so that my inattention was less pointed.I simply told her that it would be a good thing if she were able to take over the Ruddington correspondence herself immediately, as Lord Ruddington had already been seriously misled. Failing this, I gave her the following note, and told her to post it or not as she pleased:--DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--I am grateful for your letter. And I am grateful to you for consenting to what you call my "retreat." When the retreat is over I shall not forget that I have a long letter of yours to answer. Meanwhile I will only beg, both for your sake and my own, that you will not form too high an opinion of--Yours very sincerely,SUSAN BRIGGS.Susan did not read the note in my presence. I have no idea what she will do.Sunday: before church.Half my month is gone. This makes the fifteenth morning since I landed in France, yet I don't remember waking up once with a completely easy mind. From Mr. John Lamb onwards, I have dwelt in the midst of alarms.To-day shall prove whether I have any will-power or not. Sunday is a day of rest, and I am determined to have twenty-four hours' rest from Ruddington.Susan is very commendably docile. She sees I have had enough of it, and she hasn't even told me whether she posted my note or not. Fortunately she is making much more of a pal of Georgette. Georgette progresses with her English marvellously. She adores Susan because Susan never tries to utter a single syllable of French.I mean to hear Mass this morning at Bérigny. Georgette is taking Susan to bewail once more the lack of "a nice service" at Sainte Véronique.Sunday afternoon.I like the Bérigny papists better than the papists at Sainte Véronique. Barely sixty people assisted at the Mass; but the faith of these few twentieth-century men and women was as solid as the fifteenth-century piers and vaults that rose above our heads.Being English, I ought to exclaim against the Bérigny mass-house, and to call its pictures and images and altars gaudy. But I understood this morning that the place was first and foremost a refuge for the simple and the poor. Of course, the austerity of our own church at Traxelby suits my personal ideas of reverence better. But I'm afraid that, in England, there may be some selfishness in our always conforming the insides of our churches to the taste of the Hall or to the taste of the rector's ladies. No doubt it helps the fortunate few to feel religious when they exchange the cosy richness wherein they have snuggled all the week for the big, bare sternness of cold, undissembled stone, and the uncompromising whiteness of twenty surplices. An hour and a half of it once a week corrects luxury and tones up fibres that are becoming enervated through all-day-long indulgence. One even finds a subtle pleasure in the slight discomfort and restraint; just as the man who has dined well and wined well for eleven months enjoys the fashionable hardships of a month's "cure" at a German spa. But I wondered this morning if our church interiors are equally helpful to the poor. If a contrast between the home and the church stimulates devotion, where do the poor come in? The only contrast they get is the contrast between a small bleakness and a big one; the contrast between grey and white; between ashes and snow.Bérigny church is a spacious, warm, brightly coloured drawing-room for all Bérigny. Not even the drawing-room at Alice's, with its absurd excess of water-colours and prints and screens and embroideries and statuettes and curios, holds such a store of things to look at as the drawing-room at Bérigny. Over and above all the regulation sights of a typical French church, Bérigny has Our Lady of Bérigny, in queenly silver-tissue and with a golden crown on her sorrowful brow. From the bosses of the vaults in the aisles hang five or six fully rigged little ships--votive offerings of mariners snatched from shipwreck. High up on the south wall there are coloured wooden images, carved in the sixteenth century, such as St. Nicolas with a tubful of red-cheeked, chubby, naked babies, and St. Antony with his pig. Bérigny has both the Antonys. Not far from him of the pig, stands a modern statue of St. Antony of Padua, with a face like an angel's, and with the Holy Child seated on St. Antony's open book and nestling against St. Antony's breast.It would have driven him stark mad if our Traxelby choir-master, with his petty efficiency and trivial thoroughness, could have heard the Bérigny organ pounding and blaring, and the Bérigny faithful bawling "Credo" through their noses. An untuneful but hearty lad on my left sang the whole creed through in Latin without a book. I wonder, would our Traxelby youths be a shade less loutish, a shade nearer to these courteous villagers of Bérigny, if they too were taught to dip a cup in the main stream of human culture, and to quaff ever so small a draught? I imagine it must be the beginning of a revolution, even in the humblest mind, when it makes room for fifty words of a language other than its own.Sunday night.Yes, I have some traces of will-power. I have wanted to ask Susan whether she posted my note; but I haven't asked her. And I have wanted to think about Ruddington's letter--not so much its galling references to myself, as the disclosure it makes of an uncommon personality in the midst of an uncommon situation. I have wanted to think about it all day--even in church. But I haven't yielded. Or, at most, I have yielded only a very little.Monday morning.Susan posted the letter.I asked her after breakfast, in a casual sort of way, what she had done with it; and she answered, almost as casually, that she and Georgette posted it on Saturday afternoon. I could see that, for some reason, Susan didn't want to be cross-questioned."Susan," I said, when she came into the room again, "how many people know anything about this affair of Lord Ruddington?"Susan started."Whom have you told?" I asked again. "Did you talk about it at Traxelby?""Oh, no, Miss!" said Susan, almost reproachfully. Then, after an awkward pause, she added: "Unless...""Unless...?""Well, Miss, Ididsay to Gibson that ... that there wassomebody. But I didn't mention names, Miss, and he could never guess.""Have you said anything to Georgette?"Susan hung her head and studied the toe of her shoe a long time before she confessed:"Georgette asked me, Miss.""Asked you what?""Georgette said: 'Have you got an Ammee?' And when I told her I didn't know what an Ammee was, she said..."Susan blushed and stopped."Go on," I said. "Anami. What did Georgette say anamiwas?""It is French for Mister," faltered Susan. "Georgette says it is a Mister with whom one is in love.""What did you tell her?""Nothing, Miss.""You were very sensible, Susan," I said. "You oughtn't to talk about it to any one."I picked up a book; but Susan still loitered."Well?" I asked at length. "What is it?""Please, Miss," began Susan uncomfortably, "I didn't tell Georgette anything.""So you said before.""Yes, Miss. But Georgette ... wanted to look at the envelope. I mean the letter to his lordship, Miss.""But you didn't let her do it?""Oh, no, Miss.""Then what is there to worry about?"Susan scraped the floor with the point of her shoe, and shifted about. By and by she blurted:"Georgette wanted to know if the letter was to my Ammee or ... or to yours, Miss."I shut the book. Susan hurried on."So, of course, I said he was mine, Miss."Ruddington is right. Susan is a wonder, a gem, and five times out of six a born lady. After I had praised her discreetly and had deplored the impertinent pryings of Georgette, I took up the book again and told Susan she might go away.She went, but within five minutes she was back."I thought I'd best tell you, Miss," she said when I looked up."Yes?""I didn't show Georgette the address, Miss. But ... she noticed the envelope wasn't gummed down.""Yes, yes. Get on.""I oughtn't to have done it, Miss. But Georgette went into the garden and plucked a flower, and lifted up the flap of the envelope, and laughed, and tucked the flower inside.""It's a great pity, Susan," I said, "that you didn't take it out again. If you'd make up your mind to marry Lord Ruddington it wouldn't matter. But can't you see how foolish it will look? It simply contradicts the letter asking for a week's grace.""Yes, Miss," said Susan, going redder than ever. But she showed no sign of departing."Is that all, Susan?" I asked, with a sudden fear that there was worse to follow."No, Miss," she answered faintly. "After we'd posted the letter, Georgette laughed again and said that the flower had a meaning.""A meaning?""Yes, Miss. The Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette said the flower meant 'Vang.'""Vang?""Yes, Miss. That's the French Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette says that, in English, it means 'Come'!"Before I could speak, she burst out crying."Please, Miss," she wept, "I didn't see any harm on Saturday. But last night, when I went to bed, and thought about it ... oh, Miss Gertrude, I'msomiserable!" And she cried harder than ever.In the end I sent her away consoled to the extent of my assurance that I didn't blame her in the least, and that the sole offender was Georgette. Also, I promised her that I wouldn't get Georgette into trouble.At first I felt determined to give Georgette some very plain speaking in private. Yet how can I? How was Georgette to know that Susan hadn't been writing a common country love-letter to some common country sweetheart? What divination could teach Georgette that we had been writing a superfine letter to a milord? Georgette simply indulged her rural playfulness. And if the envelope was open for Georgette to put the flower in, it was also open for Susan to take it out.That's the devil (I can't help saying it!) of this endless affair. Everybody keeps on giving me shocks and jumps, and yet nobody is ever to blame.Not that much harm is done this time. I suppose Ruddington will go silly over the flower. He'll kiss it, and wear it next his heart by day, and lay it under his pillow by night, and worship it as a symbol of fresh mysticalities and exquisitenesses in his divine Susan. But he won't ring for the kitchen-maids and request the kind loan of a Language of Flowers. He won't so much as think of it that way. Even if he does, he will know that it is the letter and not the flower that he must obey.I wonder what flower it is that means "Viens?"Monday night.I have been reading Ruddington's last letter over again. And although I began it with prejudice (being still nettled by Georgette's prank), it has affected me strangely.Seen whole, I know the situation is farcical. It is a farce that may end in a tragedy. But as Ruddington sees it, with the wrong notion of Susan that I have helped to give him, it is a most high and sweet romance, all rose and gold.Life can be most hideously cruel. Better no beautiful dreams at all when there must be such an awakening. And that poor lad Gibson is to be soured for ever in order that Ruddington may go through life with a millstone of disenchantment round his neck. Something is here for tears.Tuesday, three o'clock.Ruddington remains quiet, like a good boy; so the flower has done no harm. Susan has been quite brightened up by suddenly remembering that the flower was only a French one.This morning there was a wedding at Sainte Véronique. I have seen country weddings in France before, but this is the first one that hasn't offended me. The bride was a pink-and-white, almost English looking girl, and the bridegroom was a tanned, honest, handsome young fisherman. When Susan and I saw them, it was after the wedding. They were standing side by side, hand in hand at a door, while the guests were bustling for places at an open-air breakfast-table. You could not say that they were not taking in the scene. Indeed, they laughed more than once at the horse-play of the youths. Yet it was plain that while their eyes recognized friends, and while their minds were lightly engaged with the outer world, their spirits had built a little hidden shrine of peace. Never before have I seen on human faces such a serene yet delicate fulness of perfect happiness. Below the rattle of plates and the shouts and the laughter, my ear caught a rich undersong of love.In the past I have learned almost to loathe lovers. When Hugh came to see Alice, I used to wonder how she could endure him. I suppose he enjoyed his courtship, just as a budding barrister enjoys his obligatory course of dinners; but he used to turn up more like a man who had come to tune the piano than like a man in love. And I don't think I detest any one in this world more than poor Maude Slaney's Bob. Heaven only knows how many millions of times he has mispronounced the word "fiancée" these last two years; and the way they go on in public is simply horrid. I'd almost rather have the boorishly amorous couples who slouch on Sunday nights along Church Lane, gaping up at the Grange.But, this month, I've begun to see lovers in a less garish light. The fisherman reminded me of Gibson. I shall be the better all my life long for having stood in the glow of Gibson's splendid manliness when he thought Susan was in danger. Ruddington, poor man, is quite an endurable lover, too. As for Susan, although she's so simple, I haven't definitely made her out. But, allowing amply for her shyness and for her deference to my guidance, it's rather fine to see how she hangs back from Ruddington's money and rank until she feels sure she can care for him. If the bulk of human love is anything like these samples, I don't wonder that the world goes right round in a night and a day.Tuesday, bedtime.Another earthquake.This afternoon, Madame Dupoirier went to Grandpont station in the hotel omnibus. She has just come back.Madame says that when the 'bus drew up at the station "a compatriot" of mine stepped alongside and attentively perused the words "Hôtel du Dauphin, Sainte Véronique-sur-mer," painted on the 'bus sides. Apparently he mistook Madame for a guest who was going away; and he asked her (very politely, Madame says) if she knew whether "Mees Langley and Mees Breeggs" were still at the hotel. Madame said "Yes;" and she is quite pleasantly fluttered at the thought of an extra guest fairly on his way hither.I was too much stunned to do more than thank her for telling me. I didn't even ask her what the man was like, and whether he spoke to her in French or in English. But I've no doubt it is Ruddington.I call it abominable. If Susan were travelling in France with her parents, or even with some married woman for a mistress, it would be different. But this is outrageous.I ought to have known that he would hunt up the meaning of Georgette's flower. A man who can read such super-exquisite meanings into the half-dozen notes I have scribbled for Susan, isn't the sort to leave any stone unturned. I can't help despising him. When a full-grown, educated man has such sickly rubbish as the Language of Flowers at his finger ends, a lady's-maid is as much as he deserves.What will he do? I hardly think he'll descend upon Sainte Véronique till his mystical Susan's sacrosanct week of retreat has expired. I suppose he'll hover ridiculously in the neighbourhood, like a knight keeping vigil outside a woodland oratory where his milk-white ladye kneels at prayer. Probably there will be a mysterious succession of leaves and petals in otherwise empty envelopes--a scarlet-runner to mean "I have come post-haste," a convolvulus to mean "I am still hanging on," a thorny bramble to mean "I suffer."Even the ardours of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint.When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear of it some day.Ought I to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but Ruddington, I could. I'm like a poor hunted beast in a trap, with no way to turn.I have more than half a mind to pack up at daybreak and to slip stealthily back to Dieppe for my promised week at the Cheval d'Or.Wednesday, very early.I forgot to wind up my watch.I have decided not to run away.Three things have become clear as I have turned them over in the night.First, I'm as good a man as Ruddington. If I stood up to Mr. John Lamb, I can stand up to his successors. He shall either treat me with respect or be taught a lesson. I'm not going to run away from any one. Certainly not from a youth sick with calf-love who babbles the Language of Flowers.Second, I might as well face the fact that the gods never intended me to have a peaceful September this year. How true it is that the unexpected happens! When I came to Sainte Véronique twelve months ago, I expected to have a lively time. But everybody failed me, and it was the quietest, peacefullest month of my life. This year I came expecting four weeks of vegetable existence; and instead, I am kept running and leaping and turning like a trick-horse in a circus. Wherefore, I do hereby decide not to kick against Destiny a minute longer. Instead of staving off all this comedy, and instead of hating it because it distracts me, I hereby decide that it is well worth looking at, and that it would be foolishness to brush aside such a human drama as I am never likely to see performed again. Norman villages, and carafes of cider, and plunges in the sea, and lobster salads under apple-trees, can be bought for nine or ten francs a day, year after year, as often as I want them. But a handsome, virtuous, learned, stark-mad young lord in love with a pretty, honest, lovable, stupid lady's-maid isn't a sight to be seen at close quarters every week. It shall be the principal pleasure as well as the principal business of my remaining fortnight to see this play played right out.Third--how do I know that Master Ruddington isn't lying peacefully at this very moment in his little white cot at Ruddington Towers, dreaming of his Susan as good as gold? How do I know that the Grandpont person isn't somebody else? It struck me in the night that it is probably Mr. John Lamb. At the Customs, he looked at the Sainte Véronique labels on my boxes as well as at the Cheval d'Or labels on our bags. I know he tumbled down the steps of the Astor still believing that he had conquered Susan's maiden heart, and that if he could only have seen her all would have been well. Perhaps he has got together a fresh supply of francs and is proposing to wait on us with some preposterous apologies and explanations. It may be that he wants me to promise that next time I am in Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush, I won't give him away to Phipps Brothers--and, above all, that I won't give him away to Ma. This morning I shall ask Madame Dupoirier to describe him. If it be indeed Mr. John Lamb, he will find me ready with the mint sauce.Ten a.m.It's a good thing that I have decisively renounced all hope of peace and quietness. The postman has brought Susan no flowers from Grandpont, but he has brought me just the sort of letter from Alice that I don't want.Ruddington, Ruddington, Ruddington--that's Alice's letter from beginning to end.Alice has "found out all about him." He's richer than Alice thought. And prettier. And nicer. And I am the wickedest, foolishest, proudest young woman in the world for clinging on at Sainte Véronique.It seems that Ruddington and I "were made for each other." He has just my tastes! Alice even adds, with splendid candour, that he "isn't the least little bit like Hugh."I had hardly smoothed my poor fur after Alice's ruffling when Susan chose to begin stroking me backwards again. She said:"I'm thinking, Miss, about this letter that came on Friday night.""Yes?" I said."Please, Miss, you never told me what you thought of it.""What did you think yourself, Susan?"Susan fidgeted about. At last she answered:"I can't feel that it's right, Miss.""What isn't right?""Him speaking that way, Miss, to a girl ... like me. It doesn't seem right.""I don't understand, Susan."She fidgeted again. Then she said:"I'm afraid you'd be vexed, Miss. It isn't my place to say it.""To say what?""Well, Miss," Susan explained in instalments, "it doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem natural for him to be courting ...me. It's what my Aunt Martha used to say, Miss. She used to say, 'More unhappiness comes to them as marries above 'em than to them as marries below 'em.'""You mean, Susan," I suggested, "that you're uneasy at the thought of such a great change in your position? So you ought to be. That's why I've always wanted you to look well before you leap. There's a great deal in what your Aunt says.""Yes, Miss," answered Susan abstractedly. And for a few moments she tried to hold her peace. But it was no use. A sudden torrent of warm words gushed forth and swept all restraint away."Oh, Miss Gertrude!" she cried, "I can't help saying it! I can't! It isn't me, Miss, Lord Ruddington ought to be coming after. It's you, Miss Gertrude, it's you!"I was struck dumb."Yes, it's you, Miss, it ought to be," Susan went on. "When I think of what he says in his letter, Miss--how he couldn't go making love to Miss Langley--I could die for shame. I ought to have cut off my hand before I showed you such a thing, Miss.""Susan," I said, "you mustn't talk to me like this. You did quite right to show me his letter. It isn't your fault that Lord Ruddington wrote things in his letter which it would have been better taste to leave out.""No, Miss, I know," broke in Susan. "But oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm so miserable! I do so wish he hadn't never seen me. If I don't get married to him, I shall be miserable because I've thrown away all that money, and living in a grand house, and being Your Ladyship. And if I do get married to him, I shall be miserable because ... because it isn't natural, Miss! Oh, Miss Gertrude, how lovely it would have been if he'd liked you instead of me! Then you would have got married and gone to live at the Towers, and we would have come with you, Miss, and we'd have been so happy!"I noticed Susan's "we." But it was not a time for re-catechizing her about Gibson. I cut her short peremptorily."Susan," I said, "be so good as to stop. You are taking a great liberty. If Lord Ruddington has so far forgotten himself as to drag my name into his affairs, that's no excuse for you doing the same. I dislike it most strongly.""Yes, Miss," said obedient Susan. "But," she added wistfully, speaking more to herself than to me, "it would have been lovely!""Am I to take it, Susan," I demanded abruptly, "that you've finally decided not to accept Lord Ruddington?"She blushed; paled; blushed again. But she did not answer."Because," I added, "if you are still thinking it over, you'd better not talk of it, even to me. Lord Ruddington won't expect you to write before Saturday. I've given you all the help and advice I can, but I don't want to influence you either one way or the other. Work it out in your own mind."Susan promised to try.As she was going out, something else occurred to me, and I called her back."Susan," I said kindly, "I don't wish to refer to it again, but what you have said about myself and Lord Ruddington reminds me of one little point.""Yes, Miss," said Susan."His portrait. One day I went into your room for the scissors. I saw you had put Lord Ruddington's portrait in the same frame as mine.""Yes, Miss. They went together beautiful.""I shall be much obliged, Susan, if they don't go together any longer."Susan shed a tear. But she is going to obey.Now I've had enough ruffling for one morning. Before I interrogate Madame about the creature at Grandpont, I mean to run down to the bathing-hut and enjoy an hour's basking in the sun.
Waiting for tea.
It may be that the fears which kept Susan awake last night have frozen her wits. She has the air of dreading close quarters with this affair; of wanting to thrust it off an arm's-length while she gets time to think. I mustn't be too hard on her. The girl is passing through an ordeal; and I am a poor substitute for a mother or even for a bosom friend.
Wednesday morning.
I have taken a resolve.
There's been too much Ruddington. The inroads he makes on my Normandy rest-cure are absurd. I get my sun-bath and sea-bath every day; and that's all. It's time to put down my foot.
Fortunately, Susan agrees with me. She does not tell me why she has so suddenly fallen out of love with the idea of being raised to the peerage. It may be that she quails and shrinks from a destiny that is altogether out of scale with her nature. More probably it is some trifle, such as Ruddington's moustachelessness. But, although she gives no reasons, she agrees with me that it will be best to take the thing less busily for the next fortnight. I've pointed out to her that she knows as much about him now as she needs to know. It isn't as though she has to decide, here at Sainte Véronique, whether she will marry Lord Ruddington. She has only to settle whether she will let him see her next month face to face--whether she will let him press in person a suit which she will still be free to refuse.
We have decided that I shall write him a letter to-day such as will keep him quiet, and stop him bothering us. Then I shall be able to take a deep draught of my Normandy, as I take deep draughts of the cider. I have been here well over a week, and I hardly seem to have had one day free of him.
Later.
Here is my letter to her Henry, and it's going to be posted whether Susan likes it or not:
DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--Your letter and the big blue form amused me very much. It is interesting to have such an assortment of fresh facts about you--especially the obstinacy and the bad temper.
It is good news that you hate motor-cars. Nor should we become estranged over tobacco. But these are trifles, aren't they?
I hope you will not think that I am taking myself too seriously, or that I am unthankful for the trouble you take in writing such kind and open and lively letters. But (now that I have your photograph and know so much more about you) I am conscious of a desire for a week or so of detachment from details. I feel that I would like to go about my ordinary life until some light breaks on me suddenly and of its own accord. The more I deliberately seek light, the more it mocks and eludes me. I suppose the reason is that no amount of steadily "making up" one's mind can suffice instead of a free involuntary motion of the heart.
As you wrote to me on Monday, you would not in any case be writing again till Monday next. I like to have your letters; but, if you postpone your reply to this until rather late next week, I shall have the better chance of deciding whether we ought to meet or not.
SUSAN BRIGGS.
After lunch.
The letter's gone.
Susan says she likes it.
I liked it too, until it was dropped into the post-box. But, at this moment, I am vainly asking myself what had become of my brains while I was writing it. It's the un-Susanishest letter that evenmyundramatic pen has compassed. Think of Susan being "conscious of a desire for detachment from details!" I can as easily imagine her ordering a grilled ichthyosaurus for breakfast.
Still, it's gone. And now I shall have a week's peace.
It seems the Belgian people who have had Dupoirier's Villa de la Mer for the season left yesterday. Dupoirier is cleaning up the blue-and-white bathing-hut on the beach. He's going to give me the key, and, if I like, I can stay down by the sea all day, so long as the weather's fine.
The Bathing-hut, Thursday afternoon.
This is perfect.
The bright-faced sea is crooning to itself like a happy child. The day is warm. Inland, it must be torrid.
I have had two dips, one snooze, and about three-quarters of a lunch. It would have been a lunch and a half if Georgette hadn't tripped over a stone on the way down and dropped the wing of a chicken into the beck. But the prawns, and the cold veal, with sauce rémoulade, and the great big pear, were quite enough if I hadn't grown so disgustingly greedy.
Off and on, I've read several square yards of French newspapers since ten o'clock. There seems to be a curse resting on all newspapers that are sold for a ha'penny, never mind what country they belong to. I feel as Susan felt when she missed "a nice service" after the parish Mass at Sainte Véronique church.
The best part of everything is to lie full back in the deck-chair and to look up at the larks in the sky. It's nice, too, to gaze over the blue-green water and to know there's a hundred miles of it between us and that worry of a Ruddington. I'm afraid he'll write a dozen pages on Monday. But, until the poor little fellow begins kicking and screaming for his Susan to be given to him at once, I can sit here while the wind and the sun mend my nerves and smooth the past fortnight's wrinkles out of my offended brow.
Friday night.
Henry Reginald has written. The sight of his envelope made me so angry that I nearly tore it open without waiting for Susan. After reading his outpouring I can't altogether blame him; but I am being badly treated by Fate. Things are worse muddled than ever.
He says:
MY DEAR SUSAN,--Seeing my handwriting again so soon, you will think that I am flouting your wishes. Not so. After I have finished this, I promise not to write you another line till you expressly give me leave.
From my own selfish point of view, I have known all along that I was foolish in pleading my cause by post instead of with the living voice. But to write seemed fairer to yourself; though I confess I could not have been easily content with letters had I known you were going to France.
In asking for a week of detachment, you are right. Indeed, I feel you have been most exquisitely right at every turn of my rude assault upon your peace. Therefore I agree, much as I shall miss your letters.
You think your letters have disappointed me; and I can discern that it is a pain to you to write them till they can flow from you more freely. But let me tell you why I prize them far more than I expected.
The day I first saw you with Miss Langley was a Saturday. You simply swept me off my feet. I had no more choice as to whether I should love you all my life or not than a cork has a choice between floating and sinking. It was the Derlingham banker who told me who you were. All that evening I sat alone in the dark, thinking. Or, rather, I didn't think. I just sat and looked, like a man in a trance, at the new world which had unrolled itself suddenly, solidly, splendidly right across the whole field of my vision.
I had always believed that love at first sight was out of my line. Indeed, I had believed that, nowadays, it was out of everybody's line; and I had suspected that, outside the romances, there had never been any such thing in the world. I had even begun to indulge a certain pride in my fastidiousness and self-control as regards women.
Don't be hurt, most dear lady, at the next step in my confession. If I must seem to disparage you for half a moment on paper, it is only that I may show why I shall revere and honour and cherish you for ever.
When I came out of that Saturday night dream or trance, I sank swiftly down, down, down into a pit of humiliation. I had always believed myself free from pride of rank or pride of wealth; but it was with an immense chagrin that I remembered how the banker had answered my off-hand question with the words "Miss Langley's maid." A blinding flash lit up all the opposition, and scorn, and ridicule I should have to undergo.
Not that it entered my mind, even at the zero of my humiliation, that I could ever give you up. The fact that you were my Destiny rose clear of my tumultuous emotions, as radiant and immutable as a virgin peak above the mean rage of a thunderstorm. But I fretted and fumed. You were the rose that I must needs gather; but why had Fate set you behind so huge and sharp and black a thorn? I asked bitterly why Fate could not have contrived that Miss Langley should have been Susan, and that you should have been Miss Langley, so that I could have come to the Grange a-wooing without a thousand maddening lets and hindrances.
Later on, and in a lesser degree, I also felt humiliated because I, who had been so proud of my cool head, suddenly found myself bowled over by mere beauty and grace, like a solitary corn-stalk before an autumn gale.
The next morning I slipped circumspectly into Traxelby church, just before the sermon. If you hold religion sacred and dear (as I feel sure you do), it may shock you to know that I looked at you through the pillars of the Langley monument for a quarter of an hour. But my thoughts were not sacrilegious. Although I thanked God for your beauty (and how beautiful you were that morning!), I worshipped God most because He had created your soul, your very self. As I watched you, I knew that you alone in all the world could charm away my spirit's restlessness and hunger--the hunger and the restlessness which I had hidden even from my own self. I recalled my loveless life; my boyhood spent among tutors and schoolmasters; my youth and early manhood at two schools and at three universities in three different countries; my last year--the year before I came back to the Towers--spent on cosmopolitan steamships and in unhomely hotels. I thought of the only women I have ever known well--my hard and shallow cousins, who are handsome and elegant only with the sort of handsomeness and elegance that ten thousand other hard and shallow women share with them. Then I looked at you again, and wanted to come home to you as a bird flies home to his nest.
As I walked back from church, I knew that my ignoble chagrin had melted and vanished at the second vision of you. Instead of exclaiming against Fate for placing you, as the word goes, "below me," I rejoiced that there was a sacrifice to be made--a way of proving to you that I was moved by Love alone. I laughed at myself for having wished you had been Miss Langley!
Perhaps I am supersensitive, ultradelicate. But I felt, on that Sunday morning, that if you had been Miss Langley, I might have shrunk from the wooing. The obviousness, the hard-headed, practical common sense of such a match would have put me off it. When every consideration of worldly suitability pointed to a joining of her name and lands and interests with mine, how could I have gone to Miss Langley on a simple errand of Love? I know of one gossip who had already linked her with me. How I should have cursed this rank of mine, which I never wanted, and this wealth of mine, which I never earned, if they had robbed me of the power to convince a woman of my love, and to woo her for herself alone!
I wrote to you on the Tuesday; and you kept me waiting four days. But I knew you would reply; even as I know that, when this month is over, Heaven will not suffer you to wrench your life away from mine. But, while I waited, I kept on schooling myself against every possible turn of events. And one thing for which I prepared my mind (forgive me again, dear lady!) was this. I expected your letter would be ... how shall I say it? Well, I expected a diamond--but a rough one! To be blunt, I knew that Oxford and Heidelberg and Salamanca had made me too punctilious; and I nerved myself for a letter from a sweet Susan, an adorable Susan, a wise Susan ... but a Susan who couldn't spell!
But what has happened? Of course, mere spelling and grammar are less than the dust in the balance; and if you sinned against them unto seventy times seven it would be nothing. But not only are Susan's letters better expressed than my own; they outstrip the utmost I ever dreamed of in the exquisite reverence with which they approach the sacred mystery of Love. Where I was merely superfine and sentimental, you are exalted, mystical. I honour your month of absence and your coming week of silence as I honour the retreats and meditations of a saint. Wealth and ease and rank cannot tempt you. They cannot even hurry you into doing what is right till you are persuaded that it is the right with your whole soul. The Susan I saw that Saturday morning swept me off my feet, robbed me of my free will. But the Susan who has written me four letters is so noble, so deep, so rich of spirit, that even if the spell of her beauty were broken, I should still devote my whole life to winning her, though the obstacles were a thousand times as great.
Why have I written all this? I will tell you. Because you are entering, so to speak, on a week's retreat; and upon your week's retreat hangs my fate. If I did not write this, the most recent letter of mine in your hands would be that schoolboyish blue paper with its long-drawn string of poor jokes. I did not mean it flippantly; but it is hard for a man to write about himself.
In a word, I write to ask that it shall be this present letter and not the other that you will call to mind when you are so good as to think of me.
No. I don't imagine you "take yourself too seriously." I have guessed that, like my own, your mind is more often gay than grave. But there is a time for everything; and I perceive that badinage is not the accompaniment I ought to be playing while you are making the momentous choice which I have so strangely laid upon you.
And now I steal out of your presence on tip-toe, and softly close the door. If you call, I shall be waiting. And if you do not call ... I shall be waiting still.
R.
Susan has been in to know what I think of the letter. I have told her I am busy, and have sent her away.
It's no use blinking the fact that I'm involved, up to the ears, in a very, very serious affair.
Midnight.
I can't sleep.
This is altogether too frightful.
Fortunately Susan was perfectly stolid. If she'd been awkward, goodness knows what I might have said or done. I simply told her that we must have a thorough talk, once for all, in the morning; and she went to bed without a murmur.
Susan a mystic! Susan approaching with exquisite reverence the sacred mystery of Love! Susan in retreat, like a saintly nun!
If I could only laugh and laugh and laugh till I woke up the whole hotel, it wouldn't so much matter. But I can't even smile. Ruddington is too terribly in earnest. And it's my fault.
Some parts of his letter I hate. I would never have believed that he could make so outrageously free with my name. So long as Susan is my maid, I call it abominable taste to drag me in like that. Indeed, I hardly see how I can do otherwise than wash my hands of the entire business forthwith.
But if I do ... what then? If Susan is left to concoct a reply, and to use a teaspoonful of ink to every page, it will be such a shattering bombshell in the golden midst of his dreams. And the man, on the whole, is too likeable for me to wound him deeply if I can help it.
Perhaps what I ought to do is to write by the same post as Susan, and with her full knowledge, a frank confession of my part in the affair. He will be astonished and disappointed and a bit hurt in his dignity, but he can't fairly resent my having helped Susan. After all, it's his fault, not mine, that he's perused my few short and insignificant letters through such rose-coloured glasses that they have seemed like the utterances of a divinity. It's his infatuation, far more than my bungling, which has magnified and idealized Susan into a goddess. Whether he can turn the telescope round, so to speak, and look at Susan through the other end till he sees her in all the tininess of her actual spiritual and mental stature; and whether, when he has seen her as she is, he can still go on worshipping her--all this is more his affair than mine. I'll write the letter now.
A quarter past one.
It's no good.
If I had written before his letter came to-night, I could have managed it. But now that he's brought me in by name, and has even discussed how he would have felt if he had been moved to make love to me...
No. I can't write. And if I could, I wouldn't. And I'm cold, and tired, and insulted, and distracted, and wretched. I'll back to bed.
Saturday, 2p.m.
On second (or twenty-second) thoughts, I did not choose to have a detailed conference with Susan. I have not so much as told her how vastly it offends me to be discussed with her as Ruddington has done. If I betray annoyance, how can I expect a simple mind like Susan's to interpret my vexation otherwise than as the acidity of an unsuccessful rival for Lord Ruddington's hand? Lord Ruddington has cheapened me enough, and I will not make myself any cheaper.
Although she was stolid over it last night, the letter has warmed Susan into a remarkable state of expansion this morning, and she was sadly crestfallen when I showed no sign of going through the document chapter and verse. I took care that she should find me deep in my own correspondence, so that my inattention was less pointed.
I simply told her that it would be a good thing if she were able to take over the Ruddington correspondence herself immediately, as Lord Ruddington had already been seriously misled. Failing this, I gave her the following note, and told her to post it or not as she pleased:--
DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--I am grateful for your letter. And I am grateful to you for consenting to what you call my "retreat." When the retreat is over I shall not forget that I have a long letter of yours to answer. Meanwhile I will only beg, both for your sake and my own, that you will not form too high an opinion of--Yours very sincerely,
SUSAN BRIGGS.
Susan did not read the note in my presence. I have no idea what she will do.
Sunday: before church.
Half my month is gone. This makes the fifteenth morning since I landed in France, yet I don't remember waking up once with a completely easy mind. From Mr. John Lamb onwards, I have dwelt in the midst of alarms.
To-day shall prove whether I have any will-power or not. Sunday is a day of rest, and I am determined to have twenty-four hours' rest from Ruddington.
Susan is very commendably docile. She sees I have had enough of it, and she hasn't even told me whether she posted my note or not. Fortunately she is making much more of a pal of Georgette. Georgette progresses with her English marvellously. She adores Susan because Susan never tries to utter a single syllable of French.
I mean to hear Mass this morning at Bérigny. Georgette is taking Susan to bewail once more the lack of "a nice service" at Sainte Véronique.
Sunday afternoon.
I like the Bérigny papists better than the papists at Sainte Véronique. Barely sixty people assisted at the Mass; but the faith of these few twentieth-century men and women was as solid as the fifteenth-century piers and vaults that rose above our heads.
Being English, I ought to exclaim against the Bérigny mass-house, and to call its pictures and images and altars gaudy. But I understood this morning that the place was first and foremost a refuge for the simple and the poor. Of course, the austerity of our own church at Traxelby suits my personal ideas of reverence better. But I'm afraid that, in England, there may be some selfishness in our always conforming the insides of our churches to the taste of the Hall or to the taste of the rector's ladies. No doubt it helps the fortunate few to feel religious when they exchange the cosy richness wherein they have snuggled all the week for the big, bare sternness of cold, undissembled stone, and the uncompromising whiteness of twenty surplices. An hour and a half of it once a week corrects luxury and tones up fibres that are becoming enervated through all-day-long indulgence. One even finds a subtle pleasure in the slight discomfort and restraint; just as the man who has dined well and wined well for eleven months enjoys the fashionable hardships of a month's "cure" at a German spa. But I wondered this morning if our church interiors are equally helpful to the poor. If a contrast between the home and the church stimulates devotion, where do the poor come in? The only contrast they get is the contrast between a small bleakness and a big one; the contrast between grey and white; between ashes and snow.
Bérigny church is a spacious, warm, brightly coloured drawing-room for all Bérigny. Not even the drawing-room at Alice's, with its absurd excess of water-colours and prints and screens and embroideries and statuettes and curios, holds such a store of things to look at as the drawing-room at Bérigny. Over and above all the regulation sights of a typical French church, Bérigny has Our Lady of Bérigny, in queenly silver-tissue and with a golden crown on her sorrowful brow. From the bosses of the vaults in the aisles hang five or six fully rigged little ships--votive offerings of mariners snatched from shipwreck. High up on the south wall there are coloured wooden images, carved in the sixteenth century, such as St. Nicolas with a tubful of red-cheeked, chubby, naked babies, and St. Antony with his pig. Bérigny has both the Antonys. Not far from him of the pig, stands a modern statue of St. Antony of Padua, with a face like an angel's, and with the Holy Child seated on St. Antony's open book and nestling against St. Antony's breast.
It would have driven him stark mad if our Traxelby choir-master, with his petty efficiency and trivial thoroughness, could have heard the Bérigny organ pounding and blaring, and the Bérigny faithful bawling "Credo" through their noses. An untuneful but hearty lad on my left sang the whole creed through in Latin without a book. I wonder, would our Traxelby youths be a shade less loutish, a shade nearer to these courteous villagers of Bérigny, if they too were taught to dip a cup in the main stream of human culture, and to quaff ever so small a draught? I imagine it must be the beginning of a revolution, even in the humblest mind, when it makes room for fifty words of a language other than its own.
Sunday night.
Yes, I have some traces of will-power. I have wanted to ask Susan whether she posted my note; but I haven't asked her. And I have wanted to think about Ruddington's letter--not so much its galling references to myself, as the disclosure it makes of an uncommon personality in the midst of an uncommon situation. I have wanted to think about it all day--even in church. But I haven't yielded. Or, at most, I have yielded only a very little.
Monday morning.
Susan posted the letter.
I asked her after breakfast, in a casual sort of way, what she had done with it; and she answered, almost as casually, that she and Georgette posted it on Saturday afternoon. I could see that, for some reason, Susan didn't want to be cross-questioned.
"Susan," I said, when she came into the room again, "how many people know anything about this affair of Lord Ruddington?"
Susan started.
"Whom have you told?" I asked again. "Did you talk about it at Traxelby?"
"Oh, no, Miss!" said Susan, almost reproachfully. Then, after an awkward pause, she added: "Unless..."
"Unless...?"
"Well, Miss, Ididsay to Gibson that ... that there wassomebody. But I didn't mention names, Miss, and he could never guess."
"Have you said anything to Georgette?"
Susan hung her head and studied the toe of her shoe a long time before she confessed:
"Georgette asked me, Miss."
"Asked you what?"
"Georgette said: 'Have you got an Ammee?' And when I told her I didn't know what an Ammee was, she said..."
Susan blushed and stopped.
"Go on," I said. "Anami. What did Georgette say anamiwas?"
"It is French for Mister," faltered Susan. "Georgette says it is a Mister with whom one is in love."
"What did you tell her?"
"Nothing, Miss."
"You were very sensible, Susan," I said. "You oughtn't to talk about it to any one."
I picked up a book; but Susan still loitered.
"Well?" I asked at length. "What is it?"
"Please, Miss," began Susan uncomfortably, "I didn't tell Georgette anything."
"So you said before."
"Yes, Miss. But Georgette ... wanted to look at the envelope. I mean the letter to his lordship, Miss."
"But you didn't let her do it?"
"Oh, no, Miss."
"Then what is there to worry about?"
Susan scraped the floor with the point of her shoe, and shifted about. By and by she blurted:
"Georgette wanted to know if the letter was to my Ammee or ... or to yours, Miss."
I shut the book. Susan hurried on.
"So, of course, I said he was mine, Miss."
Ruddington is right. Susan is a wonder, a gem, and five times out of six a born lady. After I had praised her discreetly and had deplored the impertinent pryings of Georgette, I took up the book again and told Susan she might go away.
She went, but within five minutes she was back.
"I thought I'd best tell you, Miss," she said when I looked up.
"Yes?"
"I didn't show Georgette the address, Miss. But ... she noticed the envelope wasn't gummed down."
"Yes, yes. Get on."
"I oughtn't to have done it, Miss. But Georgette went into the garden and plucked a flower, and lifted up the flap of the envelope, and laughed, and tucked the flower inside."
"It's a great pity, Susan," I said, "that you didn't take it out again. If you'd make up your mind to marry Lord Ruddington it wouldn't matter. But can't you see how foolish it will look? It simply contradicts the letter asking for a week's grace."
"Yes, Miss," said Susan, going redder than ever. But she showed no sign of departing.
"Is that all, Susan?" I asked, with a sudden fear that there was worse to follow.
"No, Miss," she answered faintly. "After we'd posted the letter, Georgette laughed again and said that the flower had a meaning."
"A meaning?"
"Yes, Miss. The Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette said the flower meant 'Vang.'"
"Vang?"
"Yes, Miss. That's the French Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette says that, in English, it means 'Come'!"
Before I could speak, she burst out crying.
"Please, Miss," she wept, "I didn't see any harm on Saturday. But last night, when I went to bed, and thought about it ... oh, Miss Gertrude, I'msomiserable!" And she cried harder than ever.
In the end I sent her away consoled to the extent of my assurance that I didn't blame her in the least, and that the sole offender was Georgette. Also, I promised her that I wouldn't get Georgette into trouble.
At first I felt determined to give Georgette some very plain speaking in private. Yet how can I? How was Georgette to know that Susan hadn't been writing a common country love-letter to some common country sweetheart? What divination could teach Georgette that we had been writing a superfine letter to a milord? Georgette simply indulged her rural playfulness. And if the envelope was open for Georgette to put the flower in, it was also open for Susan to take it out.
That's the devil (I can't help saying it!) of this endless affair. Everybody keeps on giving me shocks and jumps, and yet nobody is ever to blame.
Not that much harm is done this time. I suppose Ruddington will go silly over the flower. He'll kiss it, and wear it next his heart by day, and lay it under his pillow by night, and worship it as a symbol of fresh mysticalities and exquisitenesses in his divine Susan. But he won't ring for the kitchen-maids and request the kind loan of a Language of Flowers. He won't so much as think of it that way. Even if he does, he will know that it is the letter and not the flower that he must obey.
I wonder what flower it is that means "Viens?"
Monday night.
I have been reading Ruddington's last letter over again. And although I began it with prejudice (being still nettled by Georgette's prank), it has affected me strangely.
Seen whole, I know the situation is farcical. It is a farce that may end in a tragedy. But as Ruddington sees it, with the wrong notion of Susan that I have helped to give him, it is a most high and sweet romance, all rose and gold.
Life can be most hideously cruel. Better no beautiful dreams at all when there must be such an awakening. And that poor lad Gibson is to be soured for ever in order that Ruddington may go through life with a millstone of disenchantment round his neck. Something is here for tears.
Tuesday, three o'clock.
Ruddington remains quiet, like a good boy; so the flower has done no harm. Susan has been quite brightened up by suddenly remembering that the flower was only a French one.
This morning there was a wedding at Sainte Véronique. I have seen country weddings in France before, but this is the first one that hasn't offended me. The bride was a pink-and-white, almost English looking girl, and the bridegroom was a tanned, honest, handsome young fisherman. When Susan and I saw them, it was after the wedding. They were standing side by side, hand in hand at a door, while the guests were bustling for places at an open-air breakfast-table. You could not say that they were not taking in the scene. Indeed, they laughed more than once at the horse-play of the youths. Yet it was plain that while their eyes recognized friends, and while their minds were lightly engaged with the outer world, their spirits had built a little hidden shrine of peace. Never before have I seen on human faces such a serene yet delicate fulness of perfect happiness. Below the rattle of plates and the shouts and the laughter, my ear caught a rich undersong of love.
In the past I have learned almost to loathe lovers. When Hugh came to see Alice, I used to wonder how she could endure him. I suppose he enjoyed his courtship, just as a budding barrister enjoys his obligatory course of dinners; but he used to turn up more like a man who had come to tune the piano than like a man in love. And I don't think I detest any one in this world more than poor Maude Slaney's Bob. Heaven only knows how many millions of times he has mispronounced the word "fiancée" these last two years; and the way they go on in public is simply horrid. I'd almost rather have the boorishly amorous couples who slouch on Sunday nights along Church Lane, gaping up at the Grange.
But, this month, I've begun to see lovers in a less garish light. The fisherman reminded me of Gibson. I shall be the better all my life long for having stood in the glow of Gibson's splendid manliness when he thought Susan was in danger. Ruddington, poor man, is quite an endurable lover, too. As for Susan, although she's so simple, I haven't definitely made her out. But, allowing amply for her shyness and for her deference to my guidance, it's rather fine to see how she hangs back from Ruddington's money and rank until she feels sure she can care for him. If the bulk of human love is anything like these samples, I don't wonder that the world goes right round in a night and a day.
Tuesday, bedtime.
Another earthquake.
This afternoon, Madame Dupoirier went to Grandpont station in the hotel omnibus. She has just come back.
Madame says that when the 'bus drew up at the station "a compatriot" of mine stepped alongside and attentively perused the words "Hôtel du Dauphin, Sainte Véronique-sur-mer," painted on the 'bus sides. Apparently he mistook Madame for a guest who was going away; and he asked her (very politely, Madame says) if she knew whether "Mees Langley and Mees Breeggs" were still at the hotel. Madame said "Yes;" and she is quite pleasantly fluttered at the thought of an extra guest fairly on his way hither.
I was too much stunned to do more than thank her for telling me. I didn't even ask her what the man was like, and whether he spoke to her in French or in English. But I've no doubt it is Ruddington.
I call it abominable. If Susan were travelling in France with her parents, or even with some married woman for a mistress, it would be different. But this is outrageous.
I ought to have known that he would hunt up the meaning of Georgette's flower. A man who can read such super-exquisite meanings into the half-dozen notes I have scribbled for Susan, isn't the sort to leave any stone unturned. I can't help despising him. When a full-grown, educated man has such sickly rubbish as the Language of Flowers at his finger ends, a lady's-maid is as much as he deserves.
What will he do? I hardly think he'll descend upon Sainte Véronique till his mystical Susan's sacrosanct week of retreat has expired. I suppose he'll hover ridiculously in the neighbourhood, like a knight keeping vigil outside a woodland oratory where his milk-white ladye kneels at prayer. Probably there will be a mysterious succession of leaves and petals in otherwise empty envelopes--a scarlet-runner to mean "I have come post-haste," a convolvulus to mean "I am still hanging on," a thorny bramble to mean "I suffer."
Even the ardours of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint.
When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear of it some day.
Ought I to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but Ruddington, I could. I'm like a poor hunted beast in a trap, with no way to turn.
I have more than half a mind to pack up at daybreak and to slip stealthily back to Dieppe for my promised week at the Cheval d'Or.
Wednesday, very early.
I forgot to wind up my watch.
I have decided not to run away.
Three things have become clear as I have turned them over in the night.
First, I'm as good a man as Ruddington. If I stood up to Mr. John Lamb, I can stand up to his successors. He shall either treat me with respect or be taught a lesson. I'm not going to run away from any one. Certainly not from a youth sick with calf-love who babbles the Language of Flowers.
Second, I might as well face the fact that the gods never intended me to have a peaceful September this year. How true it is that the unexpected happens! When I came to Sainte Véronique twelve months ago, I expected to have a lively time. But everybody failed me, and it was the quietest, peacefullest month of my life. This year I came expecting four weeks of vegetable existence; and instead, I am kept running and leaping and turning like a trick-horse in a circus. Wherefore, I do hereby decide not to kick against Destiny a minute longer. Instead of staving off all this comedy, and instead of hating it because it distracts me, I hereby decide that it is well worth looking at, and that it would be foolishness to brush aside such a human drama as I am never likely to see performed again. Norman villages, and carafes of cider, and plunges in the sea, and lobster salads under apple-trees, can be bought for nine or ten francs a day, year after year, as often as I want them. But a handsome, virtuous, learned, stark-mad young lord in love with a pretty, honest, lovable, stupid lady's-maid isn't a sight to be seen at close quarters every week. It shall be the principal pleasure as well as the principal business of my remaining fortnight to see this play played right out.
Third--how do I know that Master Ruddington isn't lying peacefully at this very moment in his little white cot at Ruddington Towers, dreaming of his Susan as good as gold? How do I know that the Grandpont person isn't somebody else? It struck me in the night that it is probably Mr. John Lamb. At the Customs, he looked at the Sainte Véronique labels on my boxes as well as at the Cheval d'Or labels on our bags. I know he tumbled down the steps of the Astor still believing that he had conquered Susan's maiden heart, and that if he could only have seen her all would have been well. Perhaps he has got together a fresh supply of francs and is proposing to wait on us with some preposterous apologies and explanations. It may be that he wants me to promise that next time I am in Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush, I won't give him away to Phipps Brothers--and, above all, that I won't give him away to Ma. This morning I shall ask Madame Dupoirier to describe him. If it be indeed Mr. John Lamb, he will find me ready with the mint sauce.
Ten a.m.
It's a good thing that I have decisively renounced all hope of peace and quietness. The postman has brought Susan no flowers from Grandpont, but he has brought me just the sort of letter from Alice that I don't want.
Ruddington, Ruddington, Ruddington--that's Alice's letter from beginning to end.
Alice has "found out all about him." He's richer than Alice thought. And prettier. And nicer. And I am the wickedest, foolishest, proudest young woman in the world for clinging on at Sainte Véronique.
It seems that Ruddington and I "were made for each other." He has just my tastes! Alice even adds, with splendid candour, that he "isn't the least little bit like Hugh."
I had hardly smoothed my poor fur after Alice's ruffling when Susan chose to begin stroking me backwards again. She said:
"I'm thinking, Miss, about this letter that came on Friday night."
"Yes?" I said.
"Please, Miss, you never told me what you thought of it."
"What did you think yourself, Susan?"
Susan fidgeted about. At last she answered:
"I can't feel that it's right, Miss."
"What isn't right?"
"Him speaking that way, Miss, to a girl ... like me. It doesn't seem right."
"I don't understand, Susan."
She fidgeted again. Then she said:
"I'm afraid you'd be vexed, Miss. It isn't my place to say it."
"To say what?"
"Well, Miss," Susan explained in instalments, "it doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem natural for him to be courting ...me. It's what my Aunt Martha used to say, Miss. She used to say, 'More unhappiness comes to them as marries above 'em than to them as marries below 'em.'"
"You mean, Susan," I suggested, "that you're uneasy at the thought of such a great change in your position? So you ought to be. That's why I've always wanted you to look well before you leap. There's a great deal in what your Aunt says."
"Yes, Miss," answered Susan abstractedly. And for a few moments she tried to hold her peace. But it was no use. A sudden torrent of warm words gushed forth and swept all restraint away.
"Oh, Miss Gertrude!" she cried, "I can't help saying it! I can't! It isn't me, Miss, Lord Ruddington ought to be coming after. It's you, Miss Gertrude, it's you!"
I was struck dumb.
"Yes, it's you, Miss, it ought to be," Susan went on. "When I think of what he says in his letter, Miss--how he couldn't go making love to Miss Langley--I could die for shame. I ought to have cut off my hand before I showed you such a thing, Miss."
"Susan," I said, "you mustn't talk to me like this. You did quite right to show me his letter. It isn't your fault that Lord Ruddington wrote things in his letter which it would have been better taste to leave out."
"No, Miss, I know," broke in Susan. "But oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm so miserable! I do so wish he hadn't never seen me. If I don't get married to him, I shall be miserable because I've thrown away all that money, and living in a grand house, and being Your Ladyship. And if I do get married to him, I shall be miserable because ... because it isn't natural, Miss! Oh, Miss Gertrude, how lovely it would have been if he'd liked you instead of me! Then you would have got married and gone to live at the Towers, and we would have come with you, Miss, and we'd have been so happy!"
I noticed Susan's "we." But it was not a time for re-catechizing her about Gibson. I cut her short peremptorily.
"Susan," I said, "be so good as to stop. You are taking a great liberty. If Lord Ruddington has so far forgotten himself as to drag my name into his affairs, that's no excuse for you doing the same. I dislike it most strongly."
"Yes, Miss," said obedient Susan. "But," she added wistfully, speaking more to herself than to me, "it would have been lovely!"
"Am I to take it, Susan," I demanded abruptly, "that you've finally decided not to accept Lord Ruddington?"
She blushed; paled; blushed again. But she did not answer.
"Because," I added, "if you are still thinking it over, you'd better not talk of it, even to me. Lord Ruddington won't expect you to write before Saturday. I've given you all the help and advice I can, but I don't want to influence you either one way or the other. Work it out in your own mind."
Susan promised to try.
As she was going out, something else occurred to me, and I called her back.
"Susan," I said kindly, "I don't wish to refer to it again, but what you have said about myself and Lord Ruddington reminds me of one little point."
"Yes, Miss," said Susan.
"His portrait. One day I went into your room for the scissors. I saw you had put Lord Ruddington's portrait in the same frame as mine."
"Yes, Miss. They went together beautiful."
"I shall be much obliged, Susan, if they don't go together any longer."
Susan shed a tear. But she is going to obey.
Now I've had enough ruffling for one morning. Before I interrogate Madame about the creature at Grandpont, I mean to run down to the bathing-hut and enjoy an hour's basking in the sun.