The charity and sweetness left Miss Rutherford"s face as if an artist had drawn a sponge across some painting. "I"ll come directly," she said stiffly; "make them wait in my little room, Mary."
"The village scandal," Miss Abercrombie remarked, as the door closed behind the servant; "how are you working it out, Janet? Don"t be too hard on the unrighteous; it is your one little failing."
"I hardly think it is a subject which can be discussed before Joan,"
Miss Rutherford answered. She rose and moved to the door. "I have always kept her very much a child, Ann; will you remember that in talking to her."
Miss Abercrombie waited till the door shut, then her eyes came back to Joan. The child had grown into a woman, she realized; what would that knowledge cost her old friend? Then she laughed, but not unkindly.
"I know someone else who has kept herself a child," she said, "and it makes the outlook of her mind a little narrow. Oh, well! you won"t like me to speak disrespectfully of that very dear creature, your aunt. Will you come for a stroll down to the woods or are you longing to unpack?"
Joan chose the latter, because, for a second, despite her instantaneous liking for Miss Abercrombie, she was a little afraid. She wanted to set her thoughts in order too, to try and win back to the glad joy which she had first felt at being home, and which had been dispelled by Aunt Janet"s questions and her own evasive replies.
"I will do my unpacking, I think," she said, "and put my room straight."
She met the blue eyes again, kindly yet keen in their scrutiny. "I understand what you mean about Aunt Janet," she added; "I have felt it too, and, Miss Abercrombie, I am not quite such a child as she thinks; I could not help growing up."
"I know that, my dear," the other answered, "and G.o.d gave us our eyes to see both good and evil with; that is a thing your Aunt Janet is apt to forget. Well, run away and do your unpacking; we will meet later on at dinner."
CHAPTER IV
"I have forgotten you! Wherefore my days Run gladly, as in those white hours gone by Before I learnt to love you. Now have I Returned to that old freedom, where the rays Of your strange wonder no more shall amaze My spirit."
ANON.
If you see trouble in the back of a girl"s eyes look always for a man in the case. That was Miss Abercrombie"s philosophy of life. Girls do not as a rule get into trouble over money, for debts or gambling. She had spent the whole of her practical life in studying girls; she knew fairly well the ins and outs of their complicated natures. Joan was in trouble of sorts; what then had become of the man? Until the time came when the girl would be driven to speak--and Miss Abercrombie was sure the time would come sooner or later--she was content to stay silent and observant in the background of events. Often Joan felt as though the shrewd eyes were drawing the unwilling truth from behind her mask of indifference, and she was, in a way, afraid of the little, alert woman who seemed to be taking such an intense though silent interest in her.
For the first fortnight Gilbert wrote every day. To begin with, his letters were cheerful. He was inclined, indeed, to chaff her for losing her temper over his mother"s visit.
"The old lady is gone," he wrote on the third day. "You can come back with perfect safety. She never smelt a rat, but tried to talk to me very seriously about taking unto myself a wife. It was on the tip of my tongue once or twice to tell her that I was already as good as married. Don"t keep on being stuffy, Joan, hurry up and come back. You can"t think what a lot I miss you, little girl, or how much I want you."
It was the first of his letters that she made any attempt to answer and her reply was not easy to write. She had come very suddenly to her decision as she had stood within the circle of Gilbert"s arms that morning and answered his arguments about his mother. Now she was realizing that for weeks before that her allegiance had been wavering.
She had no wish to go back to him. She could not understand herself, but the fact was self-evident, even though the scent of heliotrope haunted her days and crept into the land of her dreams. Her letter, when it was finished, struck her as cold and stupid, yet she let it go; she could not somehow make her meaning any clearer.
"Dear Gilbert," she wrote, "I am sorry you do not seem to be understanding that what I wrote in my first letter is really true. It is all finished between us and I am not coming back.
There is not anything else to say, except that I should be happier if you did not go on writing. Nothing can change me, and it only keeps open old thoughts."
He wrote in answer to that a furiously angry, altogether unpleasant letter. Joan read it with shrinking horror, it seemed to lay bare all that she had been only half aware of before, the ugliness, the smallness of what she had at first thought was love.
"If you try to marry anyone else," the letter ended on a cruelly ugly note, "remember I can spoil your little game for you, Joan. There is no man who will marry you when they learn the truth."
She tore up his other letters after that; the very sight of his handwriting brought hot shame to her heart.
How much the people of the house noticed she hardly knew. Aunt Janet had fallen into the habit of watching her covertly, pathetically; she was trying in her own way to read the secret hidden away behind a changed Joan. But she did her best to keep her curiosity out of sight; she was very gentle, very anxious to divert Joan"s thoughts and keep her happy.
Uncle John, of course, noticed nothing. Joan helped him to potter about in the garden--they were building a rookery down by the woods--or sometimes she would take him for long walks and he would stump along beside her wrapped in indifferent silence, or else, carried away by some reminiscence of the old days, would start talking about the regiment and the places where he had been stationed. It was only Miss Abercrombie that Joan was really uneasy with, and the end of Miss Abercrombie"s visit was in sight.
One afternoon, on a day which had seen one of Gilbert"s unopened letters destroyed, Joan and Miss Abercrombie started out together soon after tea to take a basin of jelly to one of Aunt Janet"s pet invalids who lived in a cottage away out at what was called the Four Cross Roads.
It was one of those very fine blue days common to September. Just a nip of cold in the air, the forerunner of winter, and overhead the leaves on the trees turning all their various reds and golds for autumn.
"The sky gives one a great sense of distance this afternoon," Miss Abercrombie said presently. "You never see a sky like this in towns; that is why you get into the habit of thinking things out of proportion."
"What makes you say that?" asked Joan; "I mean, how does the distance of the sky affect it?"
"Oh, well, it makes one feel small," the other answered, "unimportant; as if the affairs that worry our hearts out are, after all, of very little consequence in the scheme of existence."
"They are our life," Joan argued, "one has to worry and work things out for oneself."
"You are a Browningite," laughed Miss Abercrombie; she glanced up sideways at her companion.
""As it were better youth Should strive through acts uncouth Towards making, than repose on aught found made."
He is right in a way, though, mind you, I don"t know that it pays women to do much in the struggling line."
"I do wonder why you say that," said Joan; "you have always struck me as being, above everything else, a fighter."
"Probably why my advice lies along other directions," admitted Miss Abercrombie; "it is extremely uncomfortable to be a pioneer."
"But in the end, even if you have won nothing, it brings you the courage of having stuck to your convictions."
"Yes," Miss Abercrombie answered dryly, "it certainly brings you that."
They walked in silence again for a while, turning into a short cut to their destination across the fields.
"Your aunt has got convictions too." Miss Abercrombie reopened the conversation, evidently her thoughts had been working along the same lines. "They are uncomfortable things; witness the judgment she metes out to that unfortunate girl in the village."
"You mean Bridget?" Joan"s voice had suddenly a touch of fear in it; Miss Abercrombie stole a quick look at her. "I was asking Mary about her the other day."
"Immorality, your aunt calls it," sniffed Miss Abercrombie, "and for that she would quite willingly, good, kind woman as she is, make this child--Bridget is seventeen, you know--an outcast for the rest of her life. Immorality!"
"What would you call it?" questioned Joan; she spoke stiffly, for she was singularly uneasy under the discussion, yet she had always wanted to argue the matter out with Miss Abercrombie.
"I hate the word "immoral" to begin with," the little woman went on; "not that I am exactly out against regulations. Laws and customs have come into being, there is little doubt about that, to protect the weak against the strong. The peculiar thing about them is that they always wreak their punishments on the weak. Poor Bridget, even without your aunt"s judgment, she pays the penalty, doesn"t she?"
"I suppose Aunt Janet is a little hard about these things," Joan admitted. "You see, the idea of going against laws and things has never occurred to her. She has always obeyed, she has never wanted to do anything else."
"Quite so," agreed Miss Abercrombie; "my dear, don"t let us talk about it any more. I always lose my temper, and I hate losing my temper with someone whom I love as much as I do your Aunt Janet."
"But I am interested in what you think," Joan went on slowly; the red crept into her cheeks. "I don"t believe in marriage myself; I think people ought to live together if and when they want to, and leave each other when they like."
Miss Abercrombie stared with dismay at the flushed face. "My dear," she said, and her tone had fallen upon far greater seriousness than the former discussion had evoked, "both of those are very rash statements.
The problem of life is unfortunately not quite so easily settled."
"But marriage," Joan argued, "marriage, which tries to tie down in hard bonds something which ought only to be of the spirit--I think it is hideous, hideous! I could never marry."
"No," agreed Miss Abercrombie, "a great many of us feel like that when we are young and hot-headed. I nearly said empty-headed. Then we read fat books about the divine right of Motherhood, Free Love and State Maternity. All very well in the abstract and fine theories to argue about, but they do not work in real life. Believe me, the older you get the more and more you realize how far away they all are from the ideal.