MRS. CLINTON
That night Cicely and her mother sat late together in Mrs. Clinton's
bedroom. Mrs. Clinton was in a low easy-chair and Cicely on a stool at
her feet. Outside was the continuous and restless echo of London pushing
up to the very feet of its encircling hills, but they were as far
removed from it in spirit as if they had been at home in still and
spacious Kencote.
Mrs. Clinton had arrived at Muriel's house in time for dinner. Walter
had come home from Lord's soon enough to meet her at the station and
bring her out in his motor-car. He had made Miles sit in front with his
servant and he had told his mother what Dick would have told her if she
had waited to come to Cicely until after he had returned to Kencote. She
had listened to him in silence as he unfolded his story, making no
comment even when he told her of Dick's opening her daughter's letter to
her; but when he told her that Cicely had asked that she should be sent
for she had clasped her hands and said, "Oh, I am so glad."
Muriel had met her at the door, but Cicely had stayed in the
drawing-room, pale and downcast. She had gone in to her alone and kissed
her and said, "I am glad you wanted your mother, my darling. You shall
tell me everything to-night when we go upstairs, and we won't think
about it any more until then."
So the evening had passed almost pleasantly. At times even Cicely must
have forgotten what lay behind and before her, for she had laughed and
talked with a sort of feverish gaiety; only after such outbursts she had
grown suddenly silent and trembled on the verge of tears. Walter had
watched her and sent her upstairs before ten o'clock, and her mother had
gone up with her and helped her to undress as if she had been a child
again. Then she had put on her dressing-gown and gone to Mrs. Clinton's
room, and resting her head on her mother's knee had told her everything
with frequent tears and many exclamations at her own madness and folly.
It was more difficult to tell even than she had thought. When all was
said about her discontent and the suddenness with which she had been
urged towards a way of escape from surroundings that now seemed
inexpressibly dear to her, there remained that inexcusable fault of
leaving her mother without a word, for a man whom she couldn't even
plead that she loved. With her mother's hand caressing her hair it
seemed to her incredible that she could have done such a thing. She
begged her forgiveness again and again, but each time that she received
loving words in answer she felt that it must be impossible that they
could ever be to one another again what they had been.
At last Mrs. Clinton said, "You must not think too much of that, my
darling. You were carried away; you hardly knew what you were doing. It
is all wiped out in my mind by your wanting me directly you came to
yourself. We won't talk of it any more. But what we ought to talk of,
Cicely dear, and try to see our way through, is the state of mind you
had got into, which made what happened to you possible, and gave this
man his opportunity. I think that six months ago, although he might have
tried to behave in the same way, you would only have been frightened;
you would have come straight to me and told me."
"Oh yes, I should, mother," she cried.
"Then what was it that has come between us? You have told me that you
were discontented at home, but couldn't you have told me that before?"
Cicely was silent. Why hadn't she told her mother, to whom she had been
used to tell everything, of her discontent? A sudden blush ran down from
her cheeks to her neck. It was because she had judged her mother, as
well as her father and brothers, her mother who had accepted the life
that she had kicked against and had bent a meek head to the whims of her
master. She couldn't tell her that.
"The thing that decided me," she began hesitatingly, "when I was sitting
in my room that night not knowing what I was going to do, I heard father
and Dick talking as they came up, and they had decided to turn Aunt
Ellen and Aunt Laura out of the house they had lived in nearly all their
lives and let it to those MacLeod people. It seemed to me so--so selfish
and--and horrible."
"You cannot have heard properly," said Mrs. Clinton. "It was what they
had decided not to do. Father woke me up to tell me so. But even if----I
don't understand, Cicely dear."
"O mother, can't you see?" cried Cicely. "If I was wrong about that, and
I'm very glad I was, it is just what they _might_ have done. They had
talked it all over again and again, and they couldn't make up their
minds--and before us!"
"Before us?"
"Yes. We are nobodies. If father were to die Dick would turn us out of
the house as a matter of course. He would have everything; we should
have nothing."
Mrs. Clinton was clearly bewildered. "Dick would not turn us out of the
house unless he were married," she said, "and we should not have
nothing. We should be very well off. But surely, Cicely, it is
impossible that you can have been thinking of money matters in that way!
You cannot be giving me a right impression of what has been in your
mind."
"No, it isn't that," said Cicely. "I don't know anything about money
matters, and I haven't thought about them--not in that way. But father
and the boys do talk about money; a lot seems to depend upon it, and I
can't help seeing that they spend a great deal of money on whatever they
want to-do, and we have to take what's left."
"Still I don't understand, dear," said Mrs. Clinton. "Certainly it costs
a great deal to keep up a house like Kencote; but it is our home; we are
all happy there together."
"Are you quite happy there, mother?" asked Cicely.
Mrs. Clinton put by the question. "You know, of course," she went on,
"that we are well off, a good deal better off than most families who
have big properties to keep up. For people in our position we live
simply, and if--if I were to outlive father, and you and the children
were still unmarried, we should live together--not in such a big house
as Kencote--but with everything we could desire, or that would be good
for us."
"And if we lived like that," said Cicely, "wouldn't you think some
things good for us that we don't have, mother? If we had horses,
wouldn't you let me have one to ride? Wouldn't you take me to London
sometimes, not to go to smart parties, but to see something of
interesting people as Angela and Beatrice do at Aunt Emmeline's, and see
plays and pictures and hear music? Wouldn't you take us abroad
sometimes? Should we have to live the whole year round in the country,
doing nothing and knowing nothing?"
Mrs. Clinton's hand stopped its gentle, caressing movement, and then
went on again. During the moment of pause she faced a crisis as vital as
that which Cicely had gone through. She had had just those desires in
her youth and she had stifled them. Could they be stifled--would it be
right to stifle them--in the daughter who had, perhaps, inherited them
from her?
"You asked me just now," she said, "whether I was happy. Yes, I am
happy. I have my dear ones around me, I have my religion, I have my
place in the world to fill. I should be very ungrateful if I were not
happy. But if you ask me whether the life I lead is exactly what it
would be if it rested only with me to order it--I think you know that it
isn't?"
"But why shouldn't it be, mother? Other women do the things they like,
and father and the boys do exactly what they like. If you have wanted
the same things that I want now, I say you ought to have had them."
"If I had had them, Cicely, I should not have found out one very great
thing--that happiness does not come from these things; it does not come
from doing what you like, even if what you like is good in itself. I
might almost say that it comes from not doing what you like. That is the
lesson that I have learned of life, and I am thankful that it has been
taught me."
Cicely was silent for a time. She seemed to see her mother, dear as she
had been to her, in a new light, with a halo of uncomplaining
self-sacrifice round her. Her face burned as she remembered how that
morning in church, and since, she had thought of her as one who had
bartered her independence for a life of dull luxury and stagnation. It
came upon her with a flash of insight that her mother was a woman of
strong intelligence, who had, consciously, laid her intellectual gifts
on the altar of duty, and found her reward in doing so. The thought
found ineffective utterance.
"Of course it is from you that Walter gets his brains," she said.
Mrs. Clinton did not reply to this. "You are very young to learn the
lesson," she said. "I am not sure--I don't think it is a lesson that
every one need learn--that every woman need learn. I should like you to
make use of your brains--if that is really what you have been unhappy
about, Cicely. But is it so, my dear?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Cicely. "I suppose not. If I had wanted to
learn things, there are plenty of books at Kencote and I had plenty of
time. It was in London--it was just one of the things. First I was
jealous--I suppose it was that--because Dick and Humphrey had always had
such a good time and seemed to belong to everything, and I was so out of
it all. I still think that very unfair. Then when I went to Aunt
Emmeline's and saw what a good time Angela and Beatrice had in a
different sort of way--I wanted that too. And I think _that_ is unfair.
When I talked to them--I like them very much, but I suppose they wanted
to show how much better off they were than I am--the only thing they
seemed to think I was lucky in was my allowance, and even then they said
they didn't see how I could spend it, as I never went anywhere. I felt
so _ignorant_ beside them. Once Angela said something to me in
French--the maid was in the room--and I didn't understand her. I was
ashamed. Mother, I think I ought to have had the chances that Angela and
Beatrice have had."
Mrs. Clinton listened with a grave face. How could she not have believed
most of it to be true? She knew that, in marrying her, her husband had
been considered to be marrying rather beneath him. And yet, her
brother's daughters were--there was no doubt of it--better fitted to
take a place, even a high place, in the world than her own daughter. Her
husband could never have seen it, but she knew that it was true. Her
younger niece was already engaged to be married to a man of some mark in
the world, and she would be an intellectual companion to him. If Cicely
had caught the fancy of such a man she would have had everything to
learn. Even in this deplorable danger through which she had just passed,
it was her ignorance that had laid her open to it. Perhaps her very
ignorance had attracted the man to her, but he certainly would not have
been able so to bend her to his will if she had lived more in the world.
"There is one thing, darling," said Mrs. Clinton, "that we have not
spoken of. I don't want to complicate the troubles you are passing
through, but it has a bearing on what you have been saying."
"You mean about Jim," said Cicely courageously.
"Yes. Father and I have both been very glad of what we have always
looked upon as an engagement, although it could not be a recognised one
when--when it was first mooted. You must remember, dear, that we are
country people. It seems to us natural that our daughters should marry
country gentlemen--should marry into the circle of our friends and
neighbours. And the prospect of your living near us has always given us
great pleasure. You seemed to me quite happy at home, and I thought you
would have the best chance of happiness in your married life in another
home not unlike ours. I thought you were well fitted to fill that place.
I did not think of you--I don't think it ever crossed my mind to think
of you--as wanting a different life, the sort of life that your cousins
lead, for instance."
"Jim was very good to me, this morning," Cicely said, in a low voice. "I
love him for it. Of course I do love him, in a way, just as I love Dick
or Walter. I was very much ashamed at having left _him_ like that, for
somebody who--who isn't as good as he is. Jim _is_ good, in a way a man
ought to be. But, mother--I can't marry Jim now, after this."
"It is too soon to talk of it, or perhaps even to think of it. And you
have no right to marry anybody unless you love him as a woman should
love her husband, not as you love your brothers. We need not talk of
marriage now at all. But, my dearest, I want you to be happy when you
come home again. If you come back to think that you are badly used,
that----"
"Oh, but, mother," Cicely interrupted her, "that is all over. I have
only been trying to tell you what I did feel. I never thought of the
other side at all. Last night I lay awake and simply longed for home. I
have been very ungrateful. I love Kencote, and the country and
everything I do there, really. I never knew before how much I loved it.
It was a sort of madness that came over me."
"I am glad you feel like that. You have a very beautiful home, and you
are surrounded by those who love you. You _ought_ to be able to make
yourself happy at home, even if you have not got everything that you
might like to have. Can you do so?"
"Yes, mother, I can. I was happy enough before."
"Before you went to London."
"Oh, yes, I suppose it was that. I must be very foolish to let a visit
to London upset me. I don't want to see London again now for a long
time. O mother, I have been very wicked. You won't be different to me,
will you?"
She buried her face in her mother's lap. She was overwrought and
desperately tired. Mrs. Clinton felt that except for having done
something towards healing the wound made by her late experience she had
accomplished little. Cicely's eyes had been partially opened, and it was
not in her mother's power to close them again. It was only natural that
she should now turn for a time eagerly towards the quiet life she had
been so eager to run away from. But when her thoughts had settled down
again, when weeks and months had divided her from her painful awakening,
and its memory had worn thin, would she then be content, or would these
desires, which no one could say were unreasonable, gain strength again
to unsettle and dispirit her? It was only too likely. And if they did,
what chance was there of satisfying them?
Mrs. Clinton thought over these things when she had tucked Cicely up in
her bed and sat by her side until she was asleep. Cicely had begged her
to do this, Cicely, her mother's child again, who, the night before had
lain awake hour after hour, alone, trembling at the unknown and longing
for the dear familiar. There was deep thankfulness in the mother's heart
as she watched over her child restored to her love and protection, but
there was sadness too, and some fear of the future, which was not
entirely in her hands.
Cicely was soon asleep. Mrs. Clinton gently disengaged the hand she had
been holding, stood for a time looking down upon her, fondly but rather
sadly, and crept out of the room. It was nearly one o'clock, so long had
their confidences lasted, but as she came downstairs, for Cicely's room
was on the second floor, Walter came out of his bedroom dressed to go
out.
"Hullo, mother!" he said. "Not in bed yet! I've been called up. Child
with croup. I don't suppose I shall be long, and Muriel is going down to
make me some soup. If you'd like a yarn with her----"
Muriel came out in her dressing-gown. "I said I would always make him
soup when he was called out at night," she said, "and this is the first
time. I'm a good doctor's wife, don't you think so, Mrs. Clinton? Is
Cicely asleep?"
"Yes, I have just left her. I will come down with you, dear, and help
you make Walter's soup."
So they went down together and when they had done their work, bending
together over a gas stove in the kitchen, which was the home of more
black beetles than was altogether desirable, although it was otherwise
clean and bright and well-furnished, they sat by the dining-room table
awaiting Walter's return.
There was sympathy between Mrs. Clinton and her daughter-in-law, who
recognised her fine qualities and loved her for them, privately thinking
that she was a woman ill-used by fate and her husband. Mrs. Graham
thought so too, but she and Mrs. Clinton had little in common, and in
spite of mutual esteem, could hardly be called friends. But the tie
which had bound Muriel to Kencote all her life had depended almost as
much upon Mrs. Clinton as upon Cicely, and until the last few months
more than it had upon Walter. They could talk together knowing that each
would understand the other, and Muriel's downrightness did not offend
Mrs. Clinton.
She plunged now into the middle of things. "You know it is Jim I am
thinking of, Mrs. Clinton," she said, "now that this extraordinary
business is over. I want to know where Jim comes in."
"I am afraid, my dear," said Mrs. Clinton, with a smile, "that poor Jim
has come in very little."
"Did you know," asked Muriel, "that Jim was head over ears in love with
Cicely, or did you think, like everybody else, that he was slack about
it?"
Mrs. Clinton thought for a moment. "I have never thought of him as head
over ears in love with Cicely," she said.
"And I didn't either, till Walter told me. But he is. He behaved like a
brick to-day. Dick told Walter. And Cicely told me too. It was Jim who
got her away from that man--the horrible creature! How can a man be such
a brute, Mrs. Clinton?"
"I don't want to talk about him, Muriel," said Mrs. Clinton quietly. "He
has come into our life and he has gone out again. I hope we shall never
see him again."
"If I ever see him," said Muriel, "nothing shall prevent my telling him
what I think of him. How Cicely could! Poor darling, she doesn't know
how she could herself, now. She told me that she saw him as he was
beside Jim and Dick. He isn't a gentleman, for all the great things he
has done, and somehow that little fact seemed to have escaped her until
then. Don't you think it is rather odd that it matters so tremendously
to women like us whether the men we live with are gentlemen or not, and
yet we are so liable at first to make mistakes about them?"
Mrs. Clinton was not quite equal to the discussion of a general
question. "It would matter to any one brought up as Cicely has been,"
she said, "or you. Can you tell me exactly what you mean when you say
that Jim is head over ears in love with Cicely? I don't think he has
shown it to her."
"Nobody quite knows Jim, except Walter," replied Muriel. "I don't, and
mother doesn't; and dear father never did. I suppose there is not much
doubt about his being rather slow. Slow and sure is just the phrase to
fit him. He is sure of himself when he makes up his mind about a thing,
and I suppose he was sure of Cicely. He was just content to wait. You
know, I'm afraid Walter thinks that Cicely has behaved very badly to
him."
"Do you think so?" asked Mrs. Clinton.
Muriel hesitated. "I think what Walter does," she said, rather doggedly.
"But I don't feel it so much. I love Cicely, and I am very sorry for
her."
"Why are you sorry for her?"
"Oh, well, one could hardly help being after what she has gone through."
"Only that, Muriel?"
Muriel hesitated again. "I don't think she has had quite a fair chance,"
she said.
"She has had the same chances that you have had."
"Not quite, I think," said Muriel. She spoke with her head down and a
face rather flushed, as if she was determined to go through with
something unpleasant. "I'm not as clever as she is, but if I had
been--if I had wanted the sort of things that she wants--I should have
had them."
"I think she could have had them, if she had really wanted them," said
Mrs. Clinton quietly. "I think I should have seen that she did have
them."
"Oh, dear Mrs. Clinton, don't think I'm taking it on myself to blame
you. You know I wouldn't do that. But I must say what I think. Life is
desperately dull for a girl at houses like Kencote or Mountfield."
"Kencote and Mountfield?"
"Well, don't be angry with me if I say it is much more dull at Kencote
than at Mountfield. Cicely isn't even allowed to hunt. I was, and yet I
was glad enough to get away from it, although I love country life, and
so does Walter. We never see anybody, we never go anywhere. I am heaps
and heaps happier in this little house of my own than I was at
Mountfield."
"Muriel," said Mrs. Clinton "what is it that Cicely wants? You and she
talk of the same things. First it is one thing and then it is another.
First it is that she has had no chances of learning. What has she ever
shown that she wants to learn? Then it is that she does not go away, and
does not see new faces. Is that a thing of such importance that the want
of it should lead to what has happened? Then it is that she is not
allowed to hunt! I will not add to Cicely's trouble now by rebuking
these desires. Only the first of them could have any weight with me, and
I do not think that has ever been a strong desire, or is now, for any
reason that is worth taking into consideration. But the plain truth of
the whole trouble is that Cicely had her mind upset by her visit to
London two months ago. _You_ should not encourage her in her discontent.
Her only chance of happiness is to see where her duty lies and to gauge
the amusements that she cannot have at their true value."
"I haven't encouraged her," said Muriel, "I said much the same as you
have when she first talked to me. I told her she had had her head
turned. But, all the same, I think there is something in what she says,
and at any rate, she has felt it so strongly as nearly to spoil her life
in trying to get away from it all. She'll be pleased enough to get home
now, if--if--well, excuse my saying it, but--if Mr. Clinton will let her
alone--and yet, it will all come back on her when she has got used to
being at home. Do you know what I think, Mrs. Clinton? I think the only
thing that will give her back to herself now is for her to marry Jim as
quickly as possible."
"But Kencote and Mountfield both are desperately dull for a girl!"
Muriel laughed, "She wouldn't find Mountfield so if she really loved
Jim. I don't know whether she does or not. She won't hear of him now."
Mrs. Clinton was silent for a time. Then she said slowly, "It was Jim
who rescued her to-day from a great danger. I think it is only Jim who
can rescue her from herself."