WE WON’T GO YET.
Having coolly laid her plans for leaving the two to enjoy themselves,
Lisbeth retired upon her laurels, with the intention of finding
amusements of her own. She had entertained herself before, easily
enough, why not again? Naturally, as they had fallen in love with each
other, they would not want her; even Georgie would not want her. And
it was quite natural that they should have fallen in love. They were
the sort of people to do it. And Georgie would make a charming wife,
and, if her husband proved a tyrant, would still go down upon her knees
and adore him, and thank Heaven for her prince’s affection, and his
perfections, to the end of her innocent days. As for herself, it was
no business of hers, when she had done her duty toward her friend. The
best thing she could do, would be to leave them alone, and she left
them alone, and gave them every opportunity to be lover-like, if they
had chosen.
But one day, Miss Clarissa, looking up from her sewing, started, quite
nervously, at the sudden impression made upon her of something new in
her dear Lisbeth’s appearance.
“My dear Lisbeth!” she exclaimed, “how pale and ill you look!”
“I am always pale,” said Lisbeth.
“But, my love,” protested Miss Clarissa, “you are pale, to-day, in a
different way. You must be suffering. Dear! dear! How careless in us
not to have remarked it before! I almost believe--nay, indeed, I am
sure--that you look thin, actually thin!”
“I am always thin,” said Lisbeth.
But Miss Clarissa was not to be consoled by any such coolness of
manner. When she looked again more closely, she was quite sure that she
was right, that her dear Lisbeth showed unmistakable signs of being
in a dreadful state of health. She fell into a positive condition of
tremor and remorse. She had been neglected; they had been heartlessly
careless, not to see before that she was not strong. It must be
attended to at once. And really, if Lisbeth had not been very decided,
it is not at all unlikely that she would have been put to bed, and
dosed, and wept over by all three spinsters at once.
“I hope it is not that Pen’yllan does not agree with you,” faltered
Miss Hetty. “We always thought the air very fresh and bracing, but you
certainly do not look like yourself, Lisbeth.”
And the truth was that she did not look like herself. Much as she might
protest against the assertion, she was thinner and paler than usual.
“I am not ill,” she said, “whether I look ill or not. I never was
better in my life. I have not slept very well of late; that is all.
And I must beg you to let me have my own way about it, Aunt Clarissa.
It is all nonsense. Don’t fuss over me, I implore you. You will spoil
Georgie’s love story for her, and make Mr. Anstruthers uncomfortable.
Men hate fuss of any kind. Leave me alone, when they are in the house,
and I will take all the medicine you choose to give me in private,
though it is all nonsense, I assure you.”
But was it nonsense? Alas! I must confess, though it is with extreme
reluctance, that the time came when the invincible was beaten, and felt
that she was. It was not nonsense.
One afternoon, after sitting at her bedroom window for an hour,
persuading herself that she was reading, while Georgie and Anstruthers
enjoyed a _tête-à-tête_ in the garden below, she suddenly closed her
book, and, rising from her chair, began to dress to go out.
She was down stairs, and out upon the beach, in five minutes; and, once
away from the house, she began to walk furiously. She looked neither
to right nor left, as she went. She was not in the humor to have her
attention distracted from her thoughts by any beauty of sea, or sky,
or shore. She saw the yellow sand before her, and that was all. She
reached the old trysting-place, among the rocks, before she stopped.
Once there, she gave herself time to breathe, and, standing still,
looked back at the ground over which she had come. There was a worn-out
expression in her face, such as the Misses Tregarthyn had never yet
seen, even when they thought her at her worst. And yet, in a minute
more, she smiled with actual grimness.
“I am being punished now,” she said, aloud. “I am being punished now
for everything I have ever done in my life. Now I begin to understand.”
There was humiliation enough in her soul then to have made her grovel
in the sand at her feet, if she had been prone to heroics or drama.
Yes, she was beginning to understand. It was her turn now. Oh, to have
come to this! To have learned this!
It was characteristic of her nature--an unfortunate nature at this
time, passing through a new experience, and battling fiercely against
it--that when, immediately afterward, the tears began to fill her
eyes, and roll down her cheeks, they were the bitter, bitter tears
of passionate mortification and anger. She could almost have killed
herself, for very self-contempt and shame.
“What reason is there in it?” she said. “None. What has brought me to
it? Nothing. Is he as worthy now as he was then? No! Isn’t it sheer
madness? Yes, it is.”
She spoke truly, too. There was no reason in it. It was madness. He
had done nothing to touch her heart, had made no effort to reach it.
And yet he had reached and touched it. It would not have been like her
to love a man because he was good, because he had made love to her;
indeed, because of anything. Her actions were generally without any
cause but her own peremptory fancies; and here, some strange, sudden
caprice of emotion had been too much for her. How she had suffered
since she discovered her weakness, no one but herself would ever know.
She had writhed under it, burned under it, loathed it, and yet been
conquered by it. Almost every blade of Pen’yllan grass reminded her of
some wrong she had done to the kindly, impetuous young fellow, who had
loved her in the past. Almost every grain of Pen’yllan sand taunted her
with some wanton selfishness, or cruelty, which must be remembered by
the man who could have nothing but dislike for her in the present.
“I should be grateful now,” she cried, bitterly. “Yes! Grateful for
a tithe of what I once had under foot. This is eating dirt with a
vengeance.”
She might well frighten Miss Clarissa with her pallor and wretched
looks. The intensity of her misery and humiliation was wearing her out,
and robbing her of sleep and appetite. She wanted to leave Pen’yllan,
but how could she suggest it? Georgie was so happy, she told herself,
with a vindictive pleasure in her pain, that it would be a pity to
disturb her.
She walked up and down the beach for half an hour before she returned
home; and when she went her way, she was so tired as to be fairly
exhausted. At the side door, by which she entered the house, she met
Georgie, who held an open letter in her hand.
“Whom from?” asked Lisbeth, for lack of something to say.
“Mamma,” was the girl’s answer. “She wonders when we are going home;
but I am enjoying Pen’yllan so much----”
She paused, and blushed. Just lately it had occurred to her that it
might be possible that Lisbeth misunderstood her relation to Hector,
and something in Lisbeth’s face made her stop and blush in this
opportune manner.
“The weather is so lovely,” she ended, “that I don’t think I want to go
yet.”
Lisbeth smiled, but her smile was an abstracted sort of affair.
“No,” she said. “We won’t go yet. Pen’yllan is doing both of us good;
and it is doing Mr. Anstruthers good, too. We won’t go yet. Tell Mrs.
Esmond so, Georgie.”
And then she carried her absent smile up stairs.