DESPAIR.
Mother had a suspicion of what was going on, but she held her tongue
and made no sign. She kissed me as usual when I went to bed, and when
I got up in the morning, and then went about her preparations as
busily as before. Father was silent and preoccupied, and extremely
affectionate and gentle to me, and his manner led me to believe that
she had given him an idea of what Tom was probably coming for, and that
he was thinking about it. But I dared not say or do anything to provoke
him to disclose his thoughts.
Luncheon was late to-day for some reason, and we did not rise from
table until nearly three o’clock. As soon as I could escape, I went to
my own room and locked the door, and tried to straighten my somewhat
untidy drawers and cupboards, while I impatiently waited to know my
fate. I heard Tom open and shut the gate, and heard his long stride
over the gravel, his leap up the verandah steps, and his peculiar
authoritative knock at the front door. I heard Bridget ask him into
the drawing-room; I heard father go in after him and close the door;
and, two minutes later, mother’s dress rustled up the hall, and she,
too, followed them, and softly shut herself in. I left the door of my
wardrobe open, with all manner of garments tumbling off the shelves;
and I flung myself on my knees by the bedside, and prayed that things
might be permitted to go well for us--by which I meant, of course, the
way we wanted them to go.
I stayed on my knees I can’t tell how long, after my prayer was done,
listening; and I heard no sound. Then I got up, washed my face and
hands, and raged round and round the room, making handcuffs of the
towel. Then I stole into the passage; then I stole back again; and then
I snatched up my hat, and ran out through the garden into the paddock,
where I took up my post under an overhanging acacia hedge to wait for
my lover’s coming. I sat here so long that I was afraid I had missed
him, which dreadful thought prompted me to run back, post haste, to
the house. Meeting Bridget in a passage, I breathlessly inquired if
Mr. Smith was gone; and Bridget smirked in a confidential manner,
and said, “No, miss, not yet.” Whereupon I again shut myself into my
bedroom, with the door ajar, and felt that if this sort of thing went
on much longer I should have to invade the presence-chamber myself.
At last mother came out, and, by the sound of her dress, I knew she was
approaching my citadel. I held my breath while she paused and tapped at
the door. “Kitty, my dear, are you here?”
I flung out of the room then, and threw myself into her arms. “Oh,
mother, mother, tell me! What does father say?” I cried, with almost
hysterical excitement. “Is it all right for Tom and me?”
“Tom has asked to be allowed to tell you about it himself,” she replied
gently, but with a tremor in her voice. “You may go to him, Kitty; he
is in the drawing-room, waiting for you. I can trust you both.”
“Trust us!” I echoed, puzzled at the bare idea of such a thing.
“My dear,” mother went on, very earnestly and lovingly, with an
appealing look in her soft eyes, “if you don’t find things quite as
you wish, you must remember that your father and I have done what is
best for you. We know what is good for you better than you can know
yourself.” A vague chill struck me as she spoke, and I begged her to
tell me, in plain words, what had been settled.
“No; go and talk to Tom,” she said; “he will explain everything. I will
give you half an hour to yourselves.”
I broke away from her at once, and ran to the drawing-room, and shut
the door after me. Tom was standing with his back to a table, and
supporting himself on it, with his hands behind him, gazing out of the
window with such a sad and thoughtful look in his face as I had never
seen before. He turned when he heard me, and I ran into his arms and
laid my head on his shoulder, passionately determined that nothing
should ever part us, if _I_ could help it.
“Well, Kitty,” he said, stroking my hair, “we have half an hour of our
own. Let us make the most of it, for it is the last we shall get.”
“What has happened? What have they done?” I cried piteously.
“They have driven a hard bargain with us, dear; but we must submit to
it, as it is for your sake. We are not to be engaged, Kitty, for a
couple of years at the least, until you have been ‘out,’ and have seen
the world a little. Your father thinks you have taken to me because
there was no one else, perhaps, and that you are too young to know your
own mind.”
“Oh, what nonsense! Why didn’t you tell them different, Tom?”
“My love, I did all I could to keep you, you may be quite sure. But
fathers and mothers are hard to deal with in these matters. I couldn’t
talk them over; they had made up their minds.”
Tears began to fill my eyes--tears of indignation, as well as of bitter
disappointment and grief. “But they didn’t say we were _never_ to have
one another, did they?” I inquired, searching for a ray of hope.
“No, Kitty, thank goodness! They had no objection to me personally----”
“I should think not, indeed! I don’t know what they want, if you’re
not good enough--the Prince of Wales, perhaps.”
“The Prince of Wales is married already, Kitty; and I don’t think he
would make you a better husband than I should, if he weren’t. No, I may
have my chance, like any other man, only I must wait all this awful
long time for it. How I shall do it, goodness only knows!”
“You may come home in two years, then, and we may be properly engaged?”
“Yes; if you are in the same mind, Kitty, and have not forgotten my
existence. No fear of _my_ not coming to claim the only privilege I
could get out of them.”
“But, don’t you see, Tom, it comes to much the same thing after all.
Fortunately, we understood one another before they knew anything about
it, and we can’t undo _that_. We _are_ engaged between ourselves, and
we know in our own hearts that we could never give one another up. Of
course we can submit quietly--outwardly, you know. Indeed, we have no
choice in the matter, it appears; we _must_ submit. I need not wear
any ring, and I wouldn’t talk about you, or anything of that sort;
but we can write to one another, and that will be a comfort. I will
buy a quantity of the thinnest foreign paper that is made, and the
finest steel pens, and keep a sort of diary for you of everything that
happens, to post every mail; and you can do the same.”
“But, Kitty----”
“Oh, Tom, don’t let us mind! It would have been worse if you had gone
to father _first_, and he had forbidden you to propose to me. We must
have been quite parted then, for, of course, I couldn’t have written
to you. But now the mail every month will be something to look forward
to, though the months will seem like years. And we shall always have
the feeling of _knowing_ that we belong to each other, whatever
happens.” Tom sat down on a sofa near us, and drew me into his arms.
There was a solemnity in the way he did it that made me stop talking.
“My darling,” he said, sorrowfully, smoothing my hair in that tender
way he had, “you don’t know the worst of it. They have put me upon my
honour not to bind you in any way.”
“I bind myself,” I replied shortly.
“I’m not to allow you to be engaged, in _any_ sense, Kitty.”
“But if I choose to consider myself so, that is my own business.”
“Well, I only hope that you will consider yourself so, and keep
yourself for me. That is all I shall have to live on, Kitty, remember
that. But in the mean time--in the mean time we have to do just exactly
as if we were utter strangers.”
“You don’t mean we are not to write?”
“Yes, I do. I begged and prayed for half an hour, I should think,
that we might be allowed to write sometimes, but your mother was more
inexorable about that than about anything else. She said--and quite
truly, of course--that it would be an admission of an engagement
between us, and hinder you from having perfect freedom.”
“What do I want with perfect freedom? What does mother know about it,
dictating to us like that? Why are we to be treated so--as if we were
two babies?” I cried, in a passion of anger and grief. “You had no
business to give in to her, Tom. If you really wanted to keep me you
ought to have stood out against such tyranny.”
There was an ominous pause, during which I repented myself of this
outburst. “Kitty,” he said at last, in a grave, shocked voice that
chilled my heart, “that is the hardest thing I have had to bear to-day.”
“I did not mean to say it, Tom; I did not think before I spoke! I know
you did your best for us both,” I sobbed, dreadfully sorry to have hurt
him, and beginning to feel quite broken down under such an accumulation
of misfortunes. “Oh, Tom, what shall we do? what shall we do? How shall
I live for two years without knowing whether you are alive or dead
even?” Two years at my time of life was tantamount to for ever.
“You shall know that, at any rate,” he replied, rousing himself to
comfort me. “And the time will not be so long as you think, especially
as it will be so filled up in England. We shan’t be grey-haired or
decrepid when we meet again. After all, you won’t be twenty-one.”
I went on crying in silence; I could not stop yet now I had fairly
begun. Tom laid my head on his breast, and laid his cheek on my head,
and then let me alone for a while that I might have it out. Presently
he said, “What’s the day of the month, Kitty?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” I whined dismally.
“Well, I’ll tell you; it’s my birthday. All this business put it out
of my head, and I forgot to mention it before. It is my twenty-fourth
birthday. Now, cheer up, dear, and listen to me. On this day two
years--the day I am twenty-six--I’ll meet you in England, wherever you
are. When you get up in the morning, you may feel sure you will meet me
somewhere before night.”
“Oh, Tom, what a happy day! but it will never, never come. I might be
dead--we might both be dead--before that.”
“Don’t talk of such dreadful things, child; don’t make matters worse
than they are. Let us trust one another, and trust in God to keep us
safely till we meet again. Let us look forward to that day, Kitty.
Nothing shall hinder me from coming to you, unless my father or mother
should be ill, or anything should happen, of course, which it would be
_quite impossible_ to help. Only sheer force shall keep me from you,
after the time when our two years are up.”
“But if you should be kept, Tom?”
“I shall provide for that possible, though most improbable,
contingency, by writing to you beforehand, under cover to your father,
and asking him to give you the letter at night, if I have not turned up
during the day. He has trusted me, and I can trust him.”
Here our conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door, and it
struck us simultaneously that we must have much exceeded our half-hour.
“Yes?” interrogated Tom loudly.
“I want you, Kitty,” replied mother’s low, clear voice; and we rose
from the sofa together, and stood clasped in each other’s arms.
“God bless you, my own dear love,” he whispered, as I received his
parting kiss in floods of tears. “Remember, you are no longer bound to
me, except by your love.”
“I shall be bound by that always, Tom; and you must never believe
anything else, whatever people may tell you. Come for me on your
birthday, and you will find me ready for you.”
“I will--I will! And now I must go, darling--I will go out by the
verandah, for I can’t see anybody else just now. Apologize to your
mother for me.”
“And what about to-morrow, Tom, and next day, and all the time till we
go?”
“We shall meet sometimes, I suppose, Kitty, but we must not have any
walks by ourselves any more.”
Mother’s knock came again, more peremptory than before, and we had to
tear ourselves apart. Tom got his hat and went out by the window, a
sadder man than he had been when he came, poor fellow; and I opened the
door and flounced past mother, with flashing eyes and my nose in the
air, and, regaining the shelter of my own chamber, flung myself on my
bed, and cried as if my heart would break.