"He will marry some day, darling, and you might as well accustom yourself to the thought."
"I know, and I want him to do it. I shall love his wife as if she were my daughter--but--but it seems to me at this minute as if I could not bear it!"
The grey twilight, entering through the high window above her head, enveloped her as tenderly as if it were the atmosphere of those romantic early eighties to which she belonged. The small aristocratic head, with its quaint old-fashioned cl.u.s.ters of curls on the temples, the delicate stooping figure, a little bent in the chest, the whole pensive, exquisite personality which expressed itself in that manner of gentle self-effacement--these things spoke to Susan"s heart, through the softness of the dusk, with all the touching appeal of the past. It was as if the inscrutable enigma of time waited there, shrouded in mystery, for a solution which would make clear the meaning of the blighted promises of life. She saw herself and Virginia on that May afternoon twenty-five years ago, standing with eager hearts on the edge of the future; she saw them waiting, with breathless, expectant lips, for the miracle that must happen! Well, the miracle had happened, and like the majority of miracles, it had descended in the act of occurrence from the zone of the miraculous into the region of the ordinary. This was life, and looking back from middle-age, she felt no impulse to regret the rapturous certainties of youth. Experience, though it contained an inevitable pang, was better than ignorance. It was good to have been young; it was good to be middle-aged; and it would be good to be old.
For she was one of those who loved life, not because it was beautiful, but because it was life.
"I must go," said Virginia, rising in the aimless way of a person who is not moving toward a definite object.
"Stay and have supper with us, Jinny. John Henry will take you home afterward."
"I can"t, dear. The--the servants are expecting me."
She kissed Susan on the cheek, and taking up her little black silk bag, turned to the door.
"Jinny, if I come by for you to-morrow, will you go with me to a board meeting or two? Couldn"t you possibly take an interest in some charity?"
It was a desperate move, but at the moment she could think of no other to make.
"Oh, I am interested, Susan--but I have no executive ability, you know.
And--and, then, poor dear father used to have such a horror of women who were always running about to meetings. He would never even let mother do church work--except, of course, when there was a cake sale or a fair of the missionary society."
Susan"s last effort had failed, and as she followed Virginia downstairs and to the front door, a look almost of gloom settled on her large cheerful face.
"Try to pay some calls every afternoon, won"t you, dear?" she said at the door. "I"ll come in to see you in the morning when we get back from marketing."
Then she added softly, "If you are ever lonesome and want me, telephone for me day or night. There"s nothing on earth I wouldn"t do for you, Jinny."
Virginia"s eyes were wonderful with love and grat.i.tude as they shone on her through the twilight. "We"ve been friends since we were two years old, Susan, and, do you know, there is n.o.body in the world that I would ask anything of as soon as I would of you."
A look of unutterable understanding and fidelity pa.s.sed between them; then turning silently away, Virginia descended the steps and walked quickly along the path to the pavement, while Susan, after watching her through the gate, shut the door and went upstairs to the nursery.
The town lay under a thin crust of snow, which was beginning to melt in the chill rain that was falling. Raising her umbrella, Virginia picked her way carefully over the icy streets, and Miss Priscilla, who was looking in search of diversion out of her front window, had a sudden palpitation of the heart because it seemed to her for a minute that "Lucy Pendleton had returned to life." So one generation of gentle shades after another had moved in the winter"s dusk under the frosted lamps of High Street.
Through the windows of her house a cheerful light streamed out upon the piles of melting snow in the yard, and at the door one of her coloured servants met her with the news that a telegram was on the hall table.
Before opening it she knew what it was, for Oliver"s correspondence with her had taken this form for more than a year.
"Arrived safely. Very busy. Call on John Henry if you need anything."
She put it down and turned hastily to letters from Harry and Jenny. The first was only a scrawl in pencil, written with that boyish reticence which always overcame Harry when he wrote to one of his family; but beneath the stilted phrases she could read his homesickness and his longing for her in every line.
"Poor boy, I am afraid he is lonely," she thought, and caressed the paper as tenderly as if it had been the letter of a lover. He had written to her every Sunday since he had first gone off to college and several times she knew that he had denied himself a pleasure in order to send her her weekly letter. Already, she had begun to trust to his "sense of responsibility" as she had never, even in the early days of her marriage, trusted to Oliver"s.
Opening the large square envelope which was addressed in Jenny"s impressive handwriting, she found four closely written pages entertainingly descriptive of the girl"s journey back to college and of the urgent interests she found awaiting her there. In this letter there was none of the weakness of implied sentiment, there was none of the plaintive homesickness she had read in Harry"s. Jenny wrote regularly and affectionately because she felt that it was her duty to do so, for, unlike Lucy, who was heard from only when she wanted something, she was a girl who obeyed sedulously the promptings of her conscience. But if she loved her mother, she was plainly not interested in her. Her att.i.tude towards life was masculine rather than feminine; and Virginia had long since learned that in the case of a man it is easier to inspire love than it is to hold his attention. Harry was different, of course--there was a feminine, or at least a poetic, streak in him which endowed him with that natural talent for the affections which is supposed to be womanly--but Jenny resembled Oliver in her preference for the active rather than for the pa.s.sive side of experience.
Going upstairs, Virginia took off her hat and coat, and, without changing her dress, came down again with a piece of fancy-work in her hands. Placing herself under the lamp in Oliver"s study, she took a few careful st.i.tches in the centrepiece she was embroidering for Lucy, and then letting her needle fall, sat gazing into the wood-fire which crackled softly on the bra.s.s andirons. From the lamp on the desk an amber glow fell on the dull red of the leather-covered furniture, on the pale brown of the walls, on the rich blending of oriental colours in the rug at her feet. It was the most comfortable room in the house, and for that reason she had fallen into the habit of using it when Oliver was away. Then, too, his personality had impressed itself so ineffaceably upon the surroundings which he had chosen and amid which he had worked, that she felt nearer to him while she sat in his favourite chair, breathing the scent of the wood-fire he loved.
She thought of the "dear children," of how pleased she was that they were all well and happy, of how "sweet" Harry and Jenny were about writing to her; and so unaccustomed was she to thinking in the first person, that not until she took up her embroidery again and applied her needle to the centre of a flower, did she find herself saying aloud: "I must send for Miss w.i.l.l.y to-morrow and engage her for next week. That will be something to do."
And looking ahead she saw days of endless st.i.tching and basting, of endless gossip accompanied by the cheerful whirring of the little dressmaker"s machine. "I used to pity Miss w.i.l.l.y because she was obliged to work," she thought with surprise, "but now I almost envy her. I wonder if it is work that keeps her so young and brisk? She"s never had anything in her life, and yet she is so much happier than some people who have had everything."
The maid came to announce supper, and, gathering up her fancy-work, Virginia laid it beside the lamp on the end of Oliver"s writing table.
As she did so, she saw that her photograph, taken the year of her marriage, which he usually carried on his journeys, had been laid aside and overlooked when he was packing his papers. It was the first time he had forgotten it, and a little chill struck her heart as she put it back in its place beside the bronze letter rack. Then the chill sharpened suddenly until it became an icy blade in her breast, for she saw that the picture of Margaret Oldcastle was gone from its frame.
CHAPTER IV
LIFE"S CRUELTIES
There was a hard snowstorm on the day Oliver returned to Dinwiddie, and Virginia, who had watched from the window all the afternoon, saw him crossing the street through a whirl of feathery flakes. The wind drove violently against him, but he appeared almost unconscious of it, so buoyant, so full of physical energy was his walk. Never had he looked more desirable to her, never more lovable, than he did at that instant.
Something, either a trick of imagination or an illusion produced by the flying whiteness of the storm, gave him back for a moment the glowing eyes and the eager lips of his youth. Then, as she turned towards the door, awaiting his step on the stairs, the mirror over the mantel showed her her own face, with its fallen lines, its soft pallor, its look of fading sweetness. She had laid her youth down on the altar of her love, while he had used love, as he had used life, merely to feed the flame of the unconquerable egoism which burned like genius within him.
He came in, brushing a few flakes of snow from his sleeve, and it seemed to her that the casual kindness of his kiss fell like ice on her cheek as he greeted her. It was almost three months since he had seen her, for he had been unable to come home for Christmas, but from his manner he might have parted from her only yesterday. He was kind--he had never been kinder--but she would have preferred that he should strike her.
"Are you all right?" he asked gently, turning to warm his hands at the fire. "Beastly cold, isn"t it?"
"Oh, yes, I am all right, dear. The play is a great success, isn"t it?"
His face clouded. "As such things go. It"s awful rot, but it"s made a hit--there"s no doubt of that."
"And the other one, "The Home"--when is the first night of that?"
"Next week. On Thursday. I must get back for it."
"And I am to go with you, am I not? I have looked forward to it all winter."
At the sound of her anxious question, a contraction of pain, the look of one who has been touched on the raw, crossed his face. Though she was not penetrating enough to discern it, there were times when his pity for her amounted almost to a pa.s.sion, and at such moments he was conscious of a blind anger against Life, as against some implacable personal force, because it had robbed him of the hard and narrow morality on which his ancestors leaned. The scourge of a creed which had kept even Cyrus walking humbly in the straight and flinty road of Calvinism, appeared to him in such rare instants as one of the spiritual luxuries which a rationalistic age had destroyed; for it is not granted to man to look into the heart of another, and so he was ignorant alike of the sanct.i.ties and the pa.s.sions of Cyrus"s soul. What he felt was merely that the breaking of the iron bonds of the old faith had weakened his powers of resistance as inevitably as it had liberated his thought. The sound of his own rebellion was in his ears, and filled with the noise of it, he had not stopped to reflect that the rebellion of his ancestors had seemed less loud only because it was inarticulate. Was it really that his generation had lost the capacity for endurance, the spiritual grace of self-denial, or was it simply that it had lost its reticence and its secrecy with the pa.s.sing of its inflexible dogmas?
"Why, certainly you must go if you would care to," he answered.
"Perhaps Jenny will come over from Bryn Mawr to join us. The dear child was so disappointed that she couldn"t come home for Christmas."
"If I"d known in time that she wasn"t coming, I"d have found a way of getting down just for dinner with you. I hope you weren"t alone, Virginia."
"Oh, no, Miss Priscilla came to spend the day with me. You know she used to take dinner with us every Christmas at the rectory."
A troubled look clouded his face. "Jenny ought to have been here," he said, and asked suddenly, as if it were a relief to him to change the subject: "Have you had news of Harry?"
The light which the name of Harry always brought to her eyes shone there now, enriching their faded beauty. "He writes to me every week. You know he hasn"t missed a single Sunday letter since he first went off to school. He is wild about Oxford, but I think he gets a little homesick sometimes, though of course he"d never say so."
"He"ll do well, that boy. The stuff is in him."
"I"m sure he"s a genius if there ever was one, Oliver. Only yesterday Professor Trimble was telling me that Harry was far and away the most brilliant pupil he had ever had."
"Well, he"s something to be proud of. And now what about Lucy? Is she still satisfied with Craven?"
"She never writes about anything else except about her house. Her marriage seems to have turned out beautifully. You remember I wrote you that she was perfectly delighted with her stepchildren, and she really appears to be as happy as the day is long."