"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.
Marriage may be sometimes a mistaken solution, but at present it is the
only one we have."
"Why do you say that?" asked Joan; for the first time she turned and
looked at her companion. "Do you really believe it is true?"
"Yes," nodded Miss Abercrombie. "My dear," she put a hand on Joan's arm,
"we women have got to remember that our actions never stand by
themselves alone. Someone else has always to foot the bill for what we
do. I said just now that laws had been evolved to protect the weak;
well, marriage protects the child."
"But if two people love each other," Joan tried to argue, but her words
were bringing a cold chill of fear to her heart even as she spoke, "what
other protection can be needed?"
"Love is something that no one can define," stated Miss Abercrombie;
"but centuries have gone to prove that it is not as binding as marriage,
and for the sake of the children the man and woman must be bound. That
is the long and short of all the arguments."
"If there is no child?" Joan's fear prompted her to the question; she
spoke it almost in a whisper.
Miss Abercrombie paused in her act of unlatching the gate, for they had
arrived at the cottage by now, to look up at her. "Ah, there you open
wider fields," she assented, "only childless people are and must be the
exceptions. One cannot lay down laws for the exceptions."
Mrs. Starkey, the invalid old lady, was garrulous, and delighted to see
them. So anxious to tell them all her ailments and scraps of gossip that
by the time they got away it was quite late and already the sun was
sinking behind the range of hills at the back of the village.
"We will have to hurry," Joan said. "Aunt Janet gets so fussed if one is
out after dark."
Hurrying precluded any reopening of the subject they had been
discussing, but Joan's mind was busy with all the thoughts it had roused
as they walked. The faint hint of fear that had stirred to life in her
when Miss Abercrombie had spoken of Bridget was fast waking to very
definite panic. She could feel it tugging at her heart and making her
breathing fast and difficult. Supposing that the vaguely-dreamed-of
possibility had crystallized into fact in her case? How would Aunt Janet
think of it; what changes would it bring into her life?
As they turned into the little village street they came straight into a
crowd of people standing round an open cottage door. The crowd was
strangely quiet, talking amongst themselves in whispers, but from within
the cottage came the sound of wailing, the hysterical crying of old age.
Miss Abercrombie, with Joan following, pushed her way to the front, and
with awed faces the villagers drew back to let them pass. At the open
door Sam Jones, the village constable, an old man who had known Joan in
her very young days, put out his hand.
"Don't you go in now, miss," he said, "it is not for the likes of you to
see, and you can do no good. Besides which, your aunt is there already."
But Joan paid no attention to him and, pushing past his outstretched
hand, followed Miss Abercrombie.
The inside of the cottage was dimly lit, and scattered with a profuse
collection of what appeared to be kitchen utensils, dishes and clothes,
all flung about in confusion. The only light in the place glinted on the
long deal table and the stiff dead figure stretched out on it, still and
quiet, with white, vacant face and lifeless arms that hung down on
either side. Water was oozing out of the clothes and dripping from the
unbound hair; it had gathered already into little pools on the floor. In
the darkest corner of the room a crouched-up form sat sobbing
hopelessly, and by the figure on the table Aunt Janet stood, her face in
shadow, since she was above the shade of the lamp, but her hands
singularly white and gentle-looking as they moved about drying the dead
girl's face, pushing the wet, clogged hair from eyes and mouth.
Joan paused just within the door, the terror of that figure on the table
holding her spellbound, but Miss Abercrombie moved brusquely forward so
that she stood in the lamplight confronting Aunt Janet.
"So," she said, quick and sharp, yet not over loud, the people outside
could not have heard, "Bridget has found this way out. A kinder way than
your stern judgment, Janet. Poor little girl."
"I did not judge," Miss Rutherford answered stiffly, "'the wages of sin
is death.'"
"Yet you can be kind to her now," snorted Miss Abercrombie; "it would
not have been wasted had you been a little kinder before. Forgive me,
Janet, I speak quickly, without thinking. You live up to your precepts;
everyone has to do that."
The old woman in the corner lifted her face to look at them; perhaps she
thought that in some way or other they were reviling the dead, for she
staggered to her feet and crossed over to the table.
"It was fear made her do it," she wailed; "fear, and because we spoke
her harsh. I hated the shame of it all. Yet, God knows, I would have
stood by her in the end. My little girl, my little Bridget!" Sobs choked
her, she fell to her knees, pressing her lips to one of the cold, stiff
hands.
Joan saw Aunt Janet stoop and lay a gentle hand on the heaving
shoulders, she heard, too, a movement of the crowd outside and saw the
Vicar's good-natured, perturbed face appear in the doorway. Behind him
again was a younger man, stern-faced, with quiet, very steady blue eyes
and a firm-lined mouth. All this she noticed, why she could not have
explained, for the man was a perfect stranger to her; then the fear and
giddiness which all this time she had been fighting against gained the
upper hand and, swaying a little, she moved forward with the intention
of getting outside, only to fall in a dead faint across the doorway of
the cottage.