"Out of my dreams,
I fashioned a flower;
Nursed it within my heart,
Thought it my dower.
What wind is this that creeps within and blows
Roughly away the petals of my rose?"
M. P.
"That is the end of lying," whispered Joan.
She threw down her cloak to keep the corner seat in the carriage and
stepped out on to the platform to see if she could catch sight of a
paper boy.
She had not seen Gilbert since the morning. He had had an appointment in
the city, he had left it to her to get the flat ready for his mother.
And she had done everything, there was nothing that she could reproach
herself with. She had engaged an extra room for Gilbert on the next
floor, she had bought fresh flowers, she had made the place look as
pretty as possible. It had not taken her long to do her own packing,
there was nothing of hers left anywhere about. And all morning she had
kept the window overlooking the Park tight shut. The scent of flowers
should bring no disturbing memories to weaken her resolve. Then when
everything had been quite settled she had sat down to write just a short
note to Gilbert.
"I have tried to make you understand a little of all I felt
this morning, but it was not any use. You cannot understand.
It is just that we have always looked at things differently. I
cannot live with you any more, Gilbert; what is the use of
trying to explain. It is better just to say--as we agreed that
either of us should be free to say--it is all finished, and
good-bye."
She had propped the letter up for him to find, where she knew he would
look first of all, by his pipe and matches on the mantelpiece. Now she
had taken her ticket to Wrotham and wired Aunt Janet to say she was
coming. But as she stood waiting for the train to start it occurred to
her that she was really watching to see Gilbert's slim, well-built
figure push its way through the crowd towards her. The thought made her
uneasy, she hoped he would have been late getting home; she doubted her
strength of will to stand against him should he appear in person to
persuade her.
He did not come, however, and presently with a great deal of noise and
excitement, whistles blowing and doors slamming, the train was off and
she could sit back in her corner seat with a strange sense of
pleasurable excitement at having so far achieved her purpose.
Uncle John was at the station to meet her. A straight-held old
figure--in his young days he had been in the army and very
good-looking--now the bristling moustache was white and the hair grew in
little tufts either side of an otherwise bald head. Ever since Joan
could first remember him Uncle John had moved in a world separate from
the rest of the household and entirely his own. It was not that he took
no interest in them, it was just that he appeared to forget them for
long intervals, talking very seldom, and when he did always about the
days that were past. He had never married, but there had been one great
love in his life. Aunt Janet had told Joan all about it, a girl who had
died many years ago; after her death Uncle John had lived for nothing
but his regiment. Then he had had to leave it because old age had called
for retirement, and he had sent for Aunt Janet to come and keep house
for him and together they had settled down in the old home at
Wrotham--both unmarried, both very quiet and content to live in the
past. Then Joan had descended on them, a riotous, long-legged,
long-haired girl of eight, the child of a very much younger, little
known brother.
With the coming of Joan, new life and new surprising interest had
awakened in Aunt Janet's heart, but Uncle John had remained impervious
to the influence. He was very fond of Joan in his way, but he scarcely
ever noticed and he certainly knew nothing about her. He had realized
her less and less as she grew up; when he spoke or thought of her now it
was always as still a child.
"You are a nice young lady," he greeted her good-humouredly, stooping to
kiss Joan at the station; "your Aunt Janet was sure this sudden return
meant a breakdown. She is all of a twitter, so to speak, and would have
been here to meet you herself only we have got a Miss Abercrombie
staying with us. Where's the luggage?"
"I have only brought my small things with me," Joan explained, "the rest
are coming on. I am sorry Aunt Janet is worried, and who is Miss
Abercrombie?"
"Friend of your aunt's," he answered; he took her bag from her. "I have
brought the trap, Janet thought you might be too delicate to walk." He
chuckled to himself at the thought and picking up the reins climbed
into the cart beside her. "Don't think Sally has been out twice since
you left, see how fat she has got."
The little brown pony certainly answered to the implication. Her sides
bulged against the shafts and bald patches were manifesting themselves,
caused by the friction.
"What have you been doing then?" asked Joan; "why haven't you been out?"
"Nothing to go for," he answered, "and I have been too busy in the
garden. Extended that bit down through the wood." The garden was his one
great hobby.
"And Aunt Janet," Joan questioned, "she always used to like taking Sally
out."
"I suppose that was when you were here;" he looked down at her sideways,
"she missed you, I think, but she potters about the village sometimes."
He relapsed into silence, and Joan could see that his thoughts were once
more far away.
Several of the villagers came out as they passed through the little
village street to bob greetings to the young lady of the manor, as they
had always called Joan. Wrotham did not boast many county families;
there was no squire, for instance. The Rutherfords occupied the old
manor house and filled the position to a great extent, but they owned
none of the land in the neighbourhood, and the villagers were not really
their tenants. And beyond the Rutherfords there was no one in the
village who could undertake parochial work except the vicar, a
hard-working, conscientiously mild gentleman, with a small income and a
large family. He could give plenty of spiritual advice and assistance,
but little else; the old people and the invalids of the parish looked to
Aunt Janet for soups and warm clothes and kindly interest.
Wrotham boasted a doctor too. As Joan remembered him he had been a
gentleman of very rubicund complexion and rough manners. Village gossip
had held that he was too fond of the bottle, but when sober he was
kindly and efficient enough for their small needs. He had been
unmarried and had lived under the charge of a slovenly housekeeper. As
the Rutherfords drove past his house, a square brick building with a
front door that opened on to the village street, Joan noticed an
unfamiliar air of spruce cleanliness about the front door and the window
blinds.
"Dr. Simpson has had a spring cleaning," she said, pointing out the
transformation to Colonel Rutherford.
He came out of his reverie, whatever it was, and glanced at the house.
"No," he said, "Simpson has left. There are new people in there. Grant
is their name, I think. Young chap and his sister and their old mother.
Came to call the other day; nice people, but very ignorant about
gardens. Your aunt has taken a great fancy to the young man."
With that the trap turned into the wide open gates of the manor, and
Joan, seeing the old house, was conscious of a quick rush of
contentment. She had come home; how good it was to be home.
The house, a beautiful grey building of the Tudor days, stood snug and
warm amid a perfect bower of giant trees. Ivy and creepers of all sorts
clung to its stones and crept up its walls, long tendrils of vivid
green. The drive swept round a beautifully kept lawn and vanished
through a stone gateway leading into the stable-yard. It was only a
pretence at a garden in front. Uncle John always held that the open
space which lay at the back of the house and on to which the
drawing-room windows opened was the real thing. There, was more green
grass, which centuries of care and weeding and rolling had transformed
into a veritable soft velvet carpet of exquisite colour that stretched
out and down till it met the wood of tall trees that fringed the garden.
Flowers were encouraged to grow wild under those trees; in spring it was
a paradise of wild daffodils and tulips. That was Aunt Janet's
arrangement; Uncle John liked his gardens to be orderly. He was
responsible for the straight, tidy flower-beds, for the rose gardens,
for the lavender clumps that grew down at the foot of the vegetable
garden. For lavender is not really an ornamental flower and Uncle John
only tolerated it because of Aunt Janet's scent-sachets.
Beautiful and old and infinitely peaceful, the sight and colour of it
could bring back childhood and a sense of safety to Joan, a sense that
Uncle John's figure and face--dear and familiar as they were--had been
quite unable to do. London, her life with Gilbert, the rack and tumult
of her thoughts during the past six months appeared almost as a dream
when seen against this dear old background.
Aunt Janet was waiting their arrival in the hall, and Joan, clambering
down out of the trap, ran straight into those outstretched arms.
"Oh, Aunt Janet, it is good to be back," she gasped. Then she drew away
a little to take in the tall, trim figure dressed all in black save for
a touch of white at neck and wrists; the face stern and narrow, lit by a
pair of very dark eyes, the firm, thin-cut mouth, the dark hair, showing
grey in places, brushed back so smooth and straight and wound in little
plaits round and round the neat head. "You are just the same as ever,"
Joan said. "Oh, Aunt Janet, it is good to get back."
The dark eyes, softened for the moment by something like tears, smiled
at her. "Of course I am just the same, child. What did you expect? And
you?"
"Oh, I am I," Joan answered; her laughter sounded unreal even to
herself.
"You have been ill," contradicted Miss Rutherford, "it is plain to see
all over your face. Thank God, I have got you back."
She brushed aside the sentiment, since it was a thing she did not always
approve of.
"Come away in and have your tea. John, leave Mary to carry up Joan's
boxes; she will get Dick to help her; they are too heavy for you. Your
uncle is getting old," she went on, talking brusquely as she helped
Joan off with her coat, "he feels things these days."
"I haven't been away more than a year, Aunt Janet," laughed Joan; "you
talk as if it had been centuries."
"It has seemed long," the other woman answered; her eyes were hungry on
the girl's face as if she sought for something that kept eluding her. "A
year is a long time to people of our age."
"Dear, silly, old Aunt Janet." Joan hugged her. "You are not a second
older nor the tiniest fragment different to what you used to be. I know
you don't like being hugged; it makes you untidy; but you have simply
got to be just once more."
"You always were harum-scarum," remonstrated Aunt Janet, under this
outburst. She did not, however, offer any real objection and they went
into the drawing-room hand-in-hand.
A small, thin lady rose to greet them at their entrance and Joan was
introduced to Miss Abercrombie. Everything about Miss Abercrombie,
except her size, seemed to denote strength--strength of purpose,
strength of will, strength of love and hate. She gave Joan the
impression--and hers was a face that demanded study, Joan found herself
looking at it again and again--of having come through great battles
against fate. And if she had not won--the tell-tale lines of discontent
that hung about her mouth did not betoken victory--at least she had not
been absolutely defeated. She had carried the banner of her convictions
through thick and thin.
Joan was roused to a sudden curiosity to know what those convictions
were and a desire to have the same courage granted to herself. It gave
her a thrill of pleasure to hear that Miss Abercrombie would be staying
on for some time. She was a schoolmistress, it appeared, only just
lately health had interfered with her duties and it was then that Aunt
Janet had persuaded her, after many attempts, to take a real holiday and
spend it at Wrotham.
"Sheer vice on my part, agreeing," Miss Abercrombie told Joan with a
laugh; "but everyone argued with me all at once and I succumbed."
"Just in time," Aunt Janet reminded her; "I was going to have given up
asking you; even friendship has its limits."
They had tea in the drawing-room with the windows open on to the garden
and a small, bright fire burning in the grate. Aunt Janet said she had
discovered a nip in the air that morning and was sure Joan would feel
cold after London. Uncle John wandered in and drank a cup of tea and
wandered out again without paying much attention to anyone.
Aunt Janet sat and watched Joan, and the girl, conscious of the scrutiny
and restless under those brown eyes as she had always been restless in
the old days with a childish, unconfessed sin on her conscience, talked
as lightly and as quickly as she could upon every topic under the sun to
Miss Abercrombie. And Miss Abercrombie rose like a sportswoman to the
need. She was too clever a reader of character not to feel the strain
which rested between her two companions. She knew Aunt Janet through and
through, the stern loyalty, the unbending precision of a nature slow to
anger, full of love, but more inclined to justice than mercy where
wrongdoing was concerned. And Joan--well, she had only known Joan half
an hour, but Aunt Janet had been talking of nothing else for the last
fortnight.
They kept the subject of Joan's life in London very well at bay for some
time, but presently Aunt Janet, breaking a silence that had held her,
leaned forward and interrupted their discussion.
"You have not told us why you left, Joan," she said, "or what has been
settled about your plans. Are you on leave, or have you come away for
good?"
Miss Abercrombie watched the faint pink rise up over the girl's face and
die away again, leaving a rather unnatural pallor.
"I have left," Joan was answering. "I----" Suddenly she looked up and
for a moment she and Miss Abercrombie stared at each other. It was as if
Joan was asking for help and the other woman trying to give it by the
very steadiness of her eyes. Then Joan turned. "Aunt Janet," she said,
hurrying a little over the words, "I want to ask you to let us not talk
of my time in London. It--it was not what I meant it to be, perhaps
because of my own fault, but----"
"You were not happy," said Aunt Janet; her love rose to meet the appeal.
"I never really thought you were. I am content to have you back, Joan;
we will let the rest slip away into the past."
"Thank you," whispered Joan; the burden of lying, it seemed, had
followed her, even into this safe retreat; "perhaps some day, later on,
I will try and tell you about it, Aunt Janet."
"Just as you like, dear." Aunt Janet pressed the hand in hers and at
that moment Mary, the servant-girl, appeared in the doorway with a
somewhat perturbed countenance.
"Please, mum, there is that Bridget girl from the village and her
mother; will you see them a minute?"
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 God 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."