"I had forgotten--I must go first to Sandford--where indeed I am expected."
"Sandford? I trust there is no fresh anxiety?"
"There _is_ anxiety," said Meynell briefly.
Flaxman expressed an unfeigned sympathy.
"What is Miss Hester doing to-day?"
"Packing, I hope. She goes to-morrow."
"And you--are going to interview this fellow?" asked Flaxman reluctantly.
"I have done it already--and must now do it again. This time I am going to threaten."
"With anything to go upon?"
"Yes. I hope at last to be able to get some grip on him; though no doubt my chances are not improved since yesterday," said Meynell, with a grim shadow of a smile, "supposing that anybody from Upcote has been gossipping at Sandford. It does not exactly add to one"s moral influence to be regarded as a Pharisaical humbug."
"I wish I could take the business off your shoulders!" said Flaxman, heartily.
Meynell gave him a slight, grateful look. They walked on briskly to the high road, Flaxman accompanying his friend so far. There they parted, and Hugh returned slowly to the cottage by the water, Meynell promising to join him there within an hour.
BOOK III
CATHARINE
"Such was my mother"s way, learnt from Thee in the school of the heart, where Thou art Master."
CHAPTER XVI
In the little drawing-room at Forked Pond Catharine and Mary Elsmere were sitting at work. Mary was embroidering a curtain in a flowing Venetian pattern--with a handful of withered leaves lying beside her to which she occasionally matched her silks. Catharine was knitting. Outside the rain was howling through the trees; the windows streamed with it. But within, the bright wood-fire threw a pleasant glow over the simple room, and the figures of the two ladies. Mary"s trim jacket and skirt of prune-coloured serge, with its white blouse fitting daintily to throat and wrist, seemed by its neatness to emphasize the rebellious ma.s.ses and the fare colour of her hair. She knew that her hair was beautiful, and it gave her a pleasure she could not help, though she belonged to that type of Englishwoman, not yet nearly so uncommon as modern newspapers and books would have us believe, who think as little as they can of personal adornment and their own appearance, in the interests of some hidden ideal that "haunts them like a pa.s.sion; of which even the most innocent vanity seems to make them unworthy."
In these feelings and instincts she was, of course, her mother"s daughter. Catharine Elsmere"s black dress of some plain woollen stuff could not have been plainer, and she wore the straight collar and cuffs, and--on her nearly white hair--the simple cap of her widowhood. But the spiritual beauty which had always been hers was hers still. One might guess that she, too, knew it; that in her efforts to save persons in sin or suffering she must have known what it was worth to her; what the gift of lovely line and presence is worth to any human being. But if she had been made to feel this--pa.s.singly, involuntarily--she had certainly shrunk from feeling it.
Mary put her embroidery away, made up the fire, and sat down on a stool at her mother"s feet.
"Darling, how many socks have you knitted since we came here? Enough to stock a shop?"
"On the contrary. I have been very idle," laughed Catharine, putting her knitting away. "How long is it? Four months?" she sighed.
"It _has_ done you good?--yes, it has!" Mary looked at her closely.
"Then why don"t you let me go back to my work?--tyrant!" said Catharine, stroking the red-gold hair.
"Because the doctor said "March"--and you sha"n"t be allowed to put your feet in London a day earlier," said Mary, laying her head on Catharine"s knee. "You needn"t grumble. Next week you"ll have your fells and your becks--as much Westmoreland as ever you want. Only ten days more here,"
and this time it was Mary who sighed, deeply, unconsciously.
The face above her changed--unseen by Mary.
"You"ve liked being here?"
"Yes--very much."
"It"s a dear little house, and the woods are beautiful."
"Yes. And--I"ve made a new friend."
"You like Miss Puttenham so much?"
"More than anybody I have seen for years," said Mary, raising herself and speaking with energy; "but, oh dear, I wish I could do something for her!"
Catharine moved uneasily.
"Do what?"
"Comfort her--help her--make her tell me what"s the matter."
"You think she"s unhappy?"
Mary propped her chin on her hand, and looked into the fire.
"I wonder whether she"s ever had any real joy--a week"s--a day"s--happiness--in her life?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""I wonder whether she"s ever had any real joy--a week"s--a day"s--happiness--in her life?""]
She said it musingly but intensely. Catharine did not know how to answer her. All the day long, and a good deal of the night, she had been debating with herself what to do--toward Mary. Mary was no longer a child. She was a woman, of nearly six and twenty, strong in character, and accustomed of late to go with her mother into many of the dark places of London life. The betrayal--which could not be hidden from her--of a young servant girl in their employ, the year before, and the fierce tenderness with which Mary had thrown herself into the saving of the girl and her child, had brought about--Catharine knew it--a great deepening and overshadowing of her youth. Catharine had in some ways regretted it bitterly; for she belonged to that older generation which believed--and were amply justified in believing--that it is well for the young to be ignorant, so long as they can be ignorant, of the ugly and tragic things of s.e.x. It was not that her Mary seemed to her in the smallest degree besmirched by the experience she had pa.s.sed through; that any bloom had been shaken from the flower. Far from it. It was rather that some touch of careless joy was gone forever from her child"s life; and how that may hurt a mother, only those know who have wept in secret hours over the first ebbing of youth in a young face.
So that she received Mary"s outburst in silence. For she said to herself that she could have no right to reveal Alice Puttenham"s secret, even to Mary. That cruel tongues should at that moment be making free with it burnt like a constant smart in Catharine"s mind. Was the poor thing herself aware of it?--could it be kept from her? If not, Mary must know--would know--sooner or later. "But for me to tell her without permission"--thought Catharine firmly--"would not be right--or just.
Besides, I know nothing--directly."
As to the other and profounder difficulty involved, Catharine wavered perpetually between two different poles of feeling. The incidents of the preceding weeks had made it plain that her resistance to Meynell"s influence with Mary had strangely and suddenly broken down. Owing to an experience of which she had not yet spoken to Mary, her inner will had given way. She saw with painful clearness what was coming; she was blind to none of the signs of advancing love; and she felt herself powerless.
An intimation had been given her--so it seemed to her--to which she submitted. Her submission had cost her tears often, at night, when there was no one to see. And yet it had brought her also a strange happiness--like all such yieldings of soul.
But if she had yielded, if there was in her a reluctant practical certainty that Mary would some day be Meynell"s wife, then her conscience, which was that of a woman who had pa.s.sionately loved her husband, began to ask: "Ought she not to be standing by him in this trouble? If we keep it all from her, and he suffers and perhaps breaks down, when she might have sustained him, will she not reproach us? Should I not have bitterly reproached any one who had kept me from helping Robert in such a case?"
A state of mind, it will be seen, into which there entered not a trace of ordinary calculations. It did not occur to her that Mary might be injured in the world"s eyes by publicly linking herself with a man under a cloud.