MRS. BURFORD'S SELF-COMMUNINGS.
"THERE is something below the surface. He will not tell me because
it is a professional matter, but I am convinced that he knows of
circumstances which make it desirable to be friendly with John Simpson.
I wish I knew, but it would be useless, to ask, and especially at
present."
Thus cogitated Mrs. Burford after listening to those decisive words
from the lips of her husband. She had convinced herself that there
was something below the surface which she would not be allowed to
penetrate, and she felt that silence and patience would be advisable
under the circumstances.
Mrs. Burford was quite unable to understand her husband's larger,
kindlier nature. If he showed special goodwill to any person, she
measured him by herself, and judged that he expected some benefit,
professional or otherwise, to be the result of showing it.
"If I could but know it, I have little doubt that Dorothy Flint has
made her will at last," thought she. "My husband will say nothing, of
course, but he will act on the knowledge. If she has left anything
substantial to that young Simpson, there would be no harm in being
decently civil to him. Dorothy has always declared she would never
leave him a penny, but if she changed her mind, she is just the woman
to find twenty excuses for carrying out a new whim. I have been daily
expecting her to say that she meant to adopt young Kenningham. However,
my husband knows what he is about, and he is, I believe, Dorothy's only
confidant."
Mrs. Burford smiled at her own thoughts, and persuaded herself, that by
carefully noting her husband's conduct, she should be able to form some
notion of Miss Flint's intentions. That lady's voice interrupted her
cogitations, and she turned quickly to receive and welcome her visitor.
"I am so sorry the girls are both out," she said, after the first
greetings were over. "Are you quite alone?"
Mrs. Burford looked beyond Miss Flint, as if expecting to find that she
had a companion.
"I came alone, if that is what you wish to ask, but I am no longer so,
for you are with me. I want no one else. Not likely, when I come to
visit the child-friend of my youthful days," responded Miss Flint.
"It is always sweet to recall those old days," said Mrs. Burford. "You
know, dear, I always enjoy a talk with you alone."
"I shall not trouble you to go back so far as the old days, my dear. I
think the present more interesting. I am gathering bright faces round
me in 'my' old days, and I find that more agreeable than trying to see
myself as I was more than forty years ago, and then going to my glass
to note the difference between the picture which memory paints, and the
one reflected by the mirror."
"We seldom have much satisfaction in anything it shows us when we are
growing old. I feel this;" and Mrs. Burford sighed as she answered.
"I do not," said Miss Flint. "I never expected to look young and
handsome when more than half-a-century had passed over my head; and if
you did, I am sorry for you. Stay; I think I will leave out the word
handsome. Good looks are as compatible with old age as with youth.
It is when the old try to look young, and trick themselves out in
unbecoming finery which apes youth, that age becomes alike hideous and
contemptible."
Miss Flint spoke with no little dignity as well as feeling. "I am
growing old," she added after a brief pause, "and I am afraid I shall
not make the most amiable of old women, seeing that tempers rarely
improve as infirmities grow upon us. But I do trust I shall have sense
enough to dress and act in accordance with my years, and never be
ashamed of people knowing them."
"You can never be accused of dressing too youthfully," said Mrs.
Burford. "You have gone into the other extreme. And if you would fall
in just a little with the fashion of the day, you would look years and
years younger, without the aping of youth you spoke of just now."
"That is just like Nelly. She and I agree on most subjects, but the
child harries me now and again in the matter of dress, in this one
respect agreeing with yourself. I have promised Nelly that one day she
shall choose me a gown and accompaniments. She has long wished me to
fix the date, and now I have gone so far as to name the occasion on
which I will be attired in accordance with her views."
"Do tell me what that is to be," said Mrs. Burford in a tone of
entreaty.
"On Nelly's own wedding-day. As to the date, or any other particular
in connection therewith, I am as ignorant as the child herself. But
she will tell me in good time, I am sure, and in the meanwhile, I wait
patiently for my new gown."
"I hope to see you in it long before that event takes place," said Mrs.
Burford, with a look almost of displeasure. "Ellen is too young to talk
about getting married—a girl just home from school. And I do hope,
dear, that you will not sanction any foolish jesting on such a subject
now she is so often with you at Lint Hall."
Mrs. Burford spoke warmly, and in a tone she seldom adopted towards
Miss Flint.
But the latter showed no resentment, and replied—
"You may trust me. Surely you do not think me capable of making the
most sacred of all human ties a subject for idle jests? It was a
shadow, not a reality, that we laughed about. Nelly was pressing me to
fulfil an old promise made before she went to Germany. It was, that
she should choose me a gown and other articles without any restriction
as to cost or material. Again and again she has urged me to say when,
and at last I told her it should be for her wedding-day, let it come
whenever it might.
"'That will not be for years and years,' she said, 'if ever; and I
shall be only too glad to stay at home after so long a banishment. If
it were not for poor Magnus, I should rejoice that we cannot go, as
usual, to the seaside. You must let me choose the gown, though, seeing
how long I have waited for the chance. It will be your dinner-party
gown; for, of course, now you are settling down at Lint Hall, you will
invite people and go in and out amongst your neighbours.'
"This was what Nelly said, and you may be thankful that, all things
considered, the girl wants to stay at home."
"Are you really going to settle down, as Nelly says?" asked Mrs.
Burford, who had become in a moment more eager to hear about Cousin
Dorothy's intentions than her daughter's.
"For a while, certainly; probably till spring, if I can manage to rest
for seven or eight months in a place after being such a rolling stone
for thirty years. Only I shall want you to spare me the girls a great
deal, or I shall run away without saying good-bye to anybody."
"You have young Kenningham with you at present."
"Yes. If he were like most young men, I should be sorry I had persuaded
him to be the guest of a solitary old woman, but he is not, and I find
the entertaining of this youth a pleasant experience. I indulge in
all sorts of fancies. I make-believe that he is my nephew and he has
adopted me as his maiden aunt. He is a fine, honest, single-hearted
lad, and he has very real enjoyment in the quiet life he is leading
with me at the Hall. The worst of it is, he cannot stay very long. But
we are going to be quite gay for us, and have tennis at home, boating
on the mere, country drives and excursions, in addition to other
hospitalities. My new carriages will be here to-morrow."
Miss Flint enjoyed the astonishment shown on Mrs. Burford's face. She
had purposely said nothing about the coming vehicles or her plans for
entertaining her neighbours, and Mrs. Burford thought that one or two
solemn dinner-parties would be the only attempts at festivity. Then the
fine plate would be deposited in the cases and returned to the bank,
and the Hall resume its usual condition.
"I do not know whether I am more surprised or pleased," she said. "I
have always wished you would settle down somewhere near us and give up
your—"
"Vagabond habits," said Miss Flint, taking advantage of a momentary
pause.
"I did not use or intend to use such words."
"I am sure of it, my dear, but they are the right ones. I was going to
say I am a born vagabond, but that would hardly be correct. I became
one through force of circumstances and a thirst for knowledge, which I
did not care to satisfy by study. It is so much nicer to see for one's
self than through the eyes of other people, and travellers' tales are
not always to be trusted," said Miss Flint promptly.
"When you spoke of drives just now, I began to wonder where you would
find a decent carriage for hire in the town, and I was about to offer
you ours."
"That was very good of you. Now I can offer you the choice of two, or I
will do when I get them and circumstances are favourable."
"That means," thought Mrs. Burford, "when you cannot by any possibility
use them yourself." Her words, however, expressed thanks for so kind an
offer, of which she was little likely to be able to avail herself.
"I cannot bear to leave my boy for long. I shall hear of your
hospitalities, but shall not share them." Mrs. Burford's eyes filled
and her voice trembled as she alluded to Magnus, whose condition was a
sore trial to the mother.
"You must not leave him, of course. He can bear to drive with you, and,
if I may, I want to see Magnus. I have something for him in the hall."
Miss Flint bustled out of the room and brought in a dainty basket, in
which some of the Lint Hall grapes made a perfect picture resting on
their own beautiful leaves. Then she followed Mrs. Burford to the boy's
room.
"He cannot bear much excitement. You will be tender with him,"
whispered the mother, who would not have invited her visitor to
Magnus's bedside unless almost compelled to do it.
"You need not fear," was the answer.
And truly any looker-on who knew her, would have wondered where the
every-day Miss Flint was gone to, had she been seen in that sick-room.
Magnus was unfeignedly glad to see her, and when she bent over him, he
clasped his thin arms round her neck and kissed her heartily. The quiet
lad could understand Cousin Dorothy better than Mrs. Burford could.
The woman whose experience dated from childhood, as yet knew only
one side of the old maid's character. All her children realised that
beneath the rugged surface something better was concealed.
Mrs. Burford had never felt so kindly towards Cousin Dorothy in her
life as she did after seeing her with Magnus. She coaxed him to take
some of the grapes; she talked cheerily to him—told him stories of
wonders she had seen in her travels, to which he listened with eager
interest. She took him, as it were, out of himself for a whole happy
hour, and finished with an account of the new carriage, in which she
declared he should take the first drive, with the doctor's leave, as it
was specially built for the comfort of invalids and old women. She left
him looking and feeling better than she found him, and Mrs. Burford
knew it, and thanked her with all her heart.
"You would not believe how much Magnus enjoyed Miss Flint's company
this morning," she said to her husband. "I asked him afterwards if he
were tired, and he told me,—
"'No, indeed. I was weary before of lying so still and doing nothing.
She is an old darling. I want her as often as ever she can come.'
"Dorothy Flint is the strangest mixture of qualities I ever knew. She
is so terribly bitter, almost revengeful, where she takes a dislike to
a person; and her likes and dislikes are equally unreasoning, so far as
outsiders can judge."
"Her partiality for young Kenningham and her antipathy to my friend
Jack Simpson, for instance," said Mr. Burford slily.
"Why do you persist in dragging John Simpson's name in? You know so
well my feelings towards him."
"Because I could think of no more apt illustration of your remark about
Miss Flint's likes and dislikes. You cannot understand either; and,
dear wife, let me ask you to look into your own heart and see whether
you have any reasonable ground for some of your own. It has given me
pain, more than I can express, to notice your hardness towards our old
friend's son, and for no cause, except that, without any wrong-doing
on his part, he found himself in poverty, when he had until then every
cause to count on riches and—"
"You need not tell me what John Simpson expected; surely all these
things are as familiar to me as to yourself. It was no fault of mine
that he lost his money."
"But was it not your fault that the lad's sore heart was wounded
yet more deeply? Was not the change in your conduct towards him as
unreasoning as Miss Flint's hostility?"
"No. I had a very good reason for the course I took. Was it likely
that I could permit the intimacy between him and our own children
to continue on the old footing? They were passing beyond childhood,
and pray would it have been a fitting thing for the ticket-boy at
the station to parade up and down with my daughters at will? If
there were any romantic nonsense in the young man's head, I think
it was really kinder on my part to nip it in the bud. Half-measures
would have been ridiculous, and would have failed. I wanted to touch
John Simpson's pride, as the best means of separating him from our
girls, and I did it. Events have proved that I acted rightly, though
I am sometimes afraid that your indiscretion—or shall I call it
tenderheartedness?—will yet spoil everything. Whatever happens, my
conscience will not reproach me for having neglected to watch over the
interests of my children."
"We take different views of things, and I am sorry it should be so. I
cannot see that it is right to try and advance the worldly interests
of your own children by being hard, cold, and unfeeling towards an
orphan-lad in his hour of need, and by ignoring old friendships. At
this moment, dear wife, I grieve for you. It hurts me to see you
cherish a causeless animosity, and as I grieve, I fear that your heart
will be wounded in its tenderest affections before you realise what is
in it, what bitterness needs to be expelled therefrom. As to Jack, I
have no concern for his future. He has surmounted many difficulties,
and though he may still fill a comparatively humble position, mark my
words, he is on the high-road to—"
Mr. Burford checked himself and paused.
"The high-road to what?" asked Mrs. Burford eagerly. "Has Dorothy
changed her mind and made a new will in his favour?"
"On second thoughts, I will not finish my sentence. To hear of good to
Jack would give you no pleasure."
Mr. Burford left the room without further comment, and, much to his
wife's chagrin, the secret that had been trembling on his lips remained
unspoken.
For some time afterwards she was in a state of combined annoyance,
curiosity, and fear—angry that Mr. Burford should have hinted at some
secret without imparting it, and curious to penetrate it by other
means. Her feeling of fear was on her own boy's account. What had her
husband meant when he said, that her heart would be wounded in its
tenderest affections before she realised what was in it?
Could it be that he thought the condition of her darling boy was a
punishment upon her for having been so hard on John Simpson?
Mrs. Burford's heart sank within her at the thought. The arrow had been
shot at random, but it had reached a mark often aimed at in previous
conversations, but always missed until now. Mrs. Burford had been so
accustomed to defend her conduct and to assure herself that she had
acted rightly, that it was a new thing for even a momentary doubt to
find a place in her mind. She had now, however, begun to look back
at the real motives which actuated her, and this review was far from
satisfactory, though she would not have owned as much to any human
being.