risked. She felt now a curious but satisfactory indifference to what
her companion thought of the whole affair, rather perhaps an
unacknowledged reliance on the kindliness of his judgment. And when he
left her within fifty yards or so of the entrance to the Grange, and
she had said good-bye, with a word of thanks, she felt amazed at
herself.
“What am I made of?” she thought. “An hour ago I felt as if everything
worth living for had gone from me—as if I could never trust any one
again, or dare to believe in happiness. Is this a phase I must pass
through? Will that terrible mortification and disappointment come back
again blacker than ever?” She shivered as she thought of it. “Or,” as
she stood still for a moment and looked after the sturdy figure of
Michael Gresham striding away with little Solomon at his heels, “or am
I only extraordinarily superficial and impressionable, or”—yet another
“or”—“is there something invigorating about that man? He does feel so
_true_.”
From whatever source her new-found strength had been derived, it stood
her in good stead that evening.
Five minutes later the Merle dog-cart drove up, and Duke and Evelyn got
down with disturbed faces, which scarcely cleared when they caught
sight of her at the hall door, where she had purposely stationed
herself to meet them.
“I am so glad I got home first,” she said. “I was afraid you might be
uneasy about me. I have only just come in.”
“Uneasy,” repeated Evelyn in a peculiar tone of voice, as she came into
the house, Captain Headfort remaining behind to say something to the
groom who had accompanied them from Merle, after a furtive and somewhat
self-conscious glance in his sister-in-law’s direction. ”‘Uneasy!’
that’s scarcely the word to use, Philippa, under the circumstances. You
must know better than that surely.”
“What do you mean?” said Philippa, quietly, already scenting war. “Come
into the drawing-room, there’s a good fire there, and I daresay you are
feeling cold.”
She had felt uncertain how to meet Evelyn; a word of tenderness or
sympathy would have disarmed her, and she would probably have given her
sister the fullness of confidence she had been longing to pour out to
her mother. But Mrs Headfort’s tone braced her to composure and
dignity. For the moment, perhaps, she did not allow herself to do
justice to the latter’s natural and by no means altogether selfish
disappointment and anxiety.
“It is better,” Philippa thought quickly, “as some explanation is
inevitable, to have it out at once, and done with, as far as Evey is
concerned. Poor Evey!” she went on to herself, with a sudden revulsion
of sympathy towards her sister, as her glance fell on the lines of
distress which never seemed natural on Evelyn’s soft, childlike face.
But to this sort of feeling she felt she must not yield, “Why are you
annoyed with me, Evelyn?” she said, directly, “for of course I know you
are so. It is better to speak plainly.”
“It is not candid of you to try to turn the tables in that way,” said
Evelyn, hotly. “You know perfectly why I am angry with you. You have
behaved—you _must_ have behaved in the most extraordinary way to Mr
Gresham, after—encouraging him as you have done.”
Philippa bit her lips to keep back an indignant reply, “What has he
said to you?” she asked, composedly. “Very little,” said Evelyn. “Very
few men would have behaved as well as he has done. He only told me that
you had insisted on going home alone, and that he was completely at a
loss to understand you. Of course I knew what he meant—that you had
refused him.” Then, with a sudden change of tone, “Is it too late,
Philippa?” she added, almost in entreaty, “Can I do nothing to put
things right?”
Her eagerness touched Philippa.
“Listen, Evey,” she said, almost solemnly, “and then never let us
allude to this matter again. I cannot go into all the details of what
passed between Mr Gresham and me. It would be no use. I doubt if _any
one_, except perhaps mamma, would quite enter into what I feel. But I
must just tell you this. I am as convinced as if I had thought it over
for years that he and I are entirely, radically unsuited to each other,
and so there is an end of it. Do believe that I absolutely mean what I
say, and know what I mean.” Evelyn’s eyes filled with tears. Something
in her sister’s manner carried conviction with it.
“Oh, Phil,” she said, “you are a far stronger character than I, I know,
and I must, I suppose, give in to you; you must know best. But it does
seem such a pity—such an awful pity! And what can have changed your
opinion of him so suddenly?”
“Was it suddenly?” said Philippa, dreamily. “Some things seem to have
nothing to do with time, and, after all, was it not,”—but here she
stopped abruptly—“was it not,” finishing the sentence in her own mind,
“lurking there already, the doubt of him? the suspicion of there not
being any real sympathy between us?”
“Don’t misunderstand me, Evey!” she went on aloud. “I am terribly sorry
to have been the cause of anything,”—she hesitated—“mortifying or
disappointing to him, though I daresay it will not last long,” with a
little smile. “I do him full justice, and I hope he will marry some one
who will make him far happier than I could have done,” she ended,
earnestly, and the complete absence of bitterness in her tone was more
convincing to her sister than anything else could have been that her
castle in the air was doomed to no tangible existence.
Of all those concerned in the little drama which had that day been
enacted at Merle-in-the-Wold, perhaps the one the least painfully
affected, full of sympathy though he had been for the girl whom he
seemed fated to meet under such curious circumstances, was Michael
Gresham.
Chapter Twenty Four.
Charley’s Friend.
Two years! A very short time to the old, but not so to the young,
especially in anticipation. That autumn day when Philippa Raynsworth
bade good-bye to her kind friends at Dorriford, she little expected
that twice twelve months would pass before she returned there, and had
this period been then alluded to, it would have seemed to her half a
lifetime off.
What might not happen in two years? To her, standing at the very
threshold of life, with every possibility before her, two years would
have been almost like two score.
Yet when, in the autumn but one following the Easter of her first visit
to Palden, she found herself again at Dorriford, she could hardly
believe that two whole years had elapsed since the day when Mrs Lermont
kissed her so affectionately, and made her promise to return to them as
soon as she could do so.
She was again within a day or two of leaving them, after a quiet but
pleasant fortnight with Maida—poor Maida, she was no stronger in
health, possibly a shade more fragile than when she and Philippa had
last met. But as ever, the fact of her invalidism was never obtruded on
those about her, even, on the contrary, to a great extent ignored.
They—the two cousins—had been strolling for a little, a very little
only was all Miss Lermont was able for now—up and down the already
leaf-strewn drive. The day was mild and calm, a typical autumn day.
Suddenly Maida spoke.
“Do you remember, Philippa,” she said—“it has just come back to me—the
last time you were here, our standing in the porch and watching the
Bertrams drive away?”
Philippa smiled. There was no bitterness in her smile, though it was
perhaps a little sad.
“Yes,” she said, with a little bending of her head as she spoke, “yes,
I remember.”
Maida glanced at her.
“You are changed since then,” she went on.
“It is two years ago,” said Philippa. “Two years may alter one a good
deal—even less time than that—for I recollect your saying at Cannes,
within six months of the time I was here, that I had changed.”
“I remember it, too,” said her cousin. “But now I should express it
differently. At Cannes you were _changing_; you seemed unsettled and
uncertain, though in some ways matured, and—do not be hurt at the
word—softened. But now you _are_ changed, the process is completed.”
“I hope for the better?” inquired Philippa. She spoke lightly, but
there was an undercurrent of earnestness in her words, too.
“To my mind, if it is not impertinent of me to give my opinion,” said
Maida, gently, “very certainly _yes_. You are just what I pictured you
would be as a full-grown woman, though—”
“Don’t stop short. I like to know all you feel about me. It does me
good.”
“I was going to say I scarcely saw how anything but the discipline of
sorrow could make you _quite_ what I wanted you to be, my darling,”
Miss Lermont replied. And the unwonted expression of affection touched
Philippa. “And I trembled at the thought. I am cowardly about suffering
for those I love. Yet how short-sighted we are! Here you are, with all
the softening, and mellowing, and widening I hoped for, done—and yet—no
special suffering has, so far as I know, fallen to your share. Don’t
think me inquisitive,” she added, hastily. “I don’t want you to tell me
anything you would rather not.”
Philippa hesitated.
“I have often thought of telling you the whole history of my life
during the six or eight months after I was last here,” she said. “All
my experiences—my personal experiences, I mean—seemed compressed into
that time. Since then things have gone on very monotonously, though I
have not been either dull or unhappy. You see it was so clear to me
that it was my duty to stay at home and help papa again, after Charley
so unexpectedly got that splendid piece of work in India. And with
Evelyn settled at home so comfortably and no anxiety about her, things
just settled down somehow. These last eighteen months have been most
uneventful.”
“You might have varied them by a _little_ visit to us,” said Maida.
“Truly I could not,” Philippa replied, earnestly. “The one time I could
have come, you remember Mrs Lermont was ill and you were fully engaged.
I have only been to Palden once—that was last winter—for ten days.”
“Is not Evelyn vexed with you for not going more frequently?”
“No,” said Philippa. “She knows I could not help it. Now, of
course—with Charley back—I shall be comparatively free. But—I don’t
care to go much to Palden.”
“I think I know why,” said Maida. “Has it not to do with what you have
often thought of telling me? And _are_ you going to tell it to me?”
“On the whole,” said Philippa, “if you will not think me capricious, I
_think_ I would rather not. Some day, perhaps.”
“As you like, dear, exactly and entirely as you like. But—if I may ask
you something?”
“Of course you may.”
“I would like to know—I cannot quite master my curiosity, you see, and
indeed it is more interest in you than curiosity—I _would_ like to know
why you refused Bernard Gresham. For I am sure you did refuse him.”
“Yes, I did,” said Philippa, simply. “And I do not at all mind telling
you why. It was just because I became entirely convinced that he and I
were thoroughly unsuited to each other.”
Maida made a little gesture of agreement.
“I should not express it quite as you do,” she said. “_I_ should say he
was not worthy of you—not that I think ill of him in any way, but he is
simply on a different level altogether. At first, I will own to you, I
was disappointed when I saw it was not going to be. I was ‘worldly’
_for_ you, Philippa. But I saw more of him again at Cannes last winter,
and—I lost all feeling of disappointment. Even when I thought that you
had refused to marry out of exaggerated ideas as to your duties at
home—even _then_ I did not regret it.”
Philippa shook her head.
“No,” she said, “home things had nothing to do with it. At the time I
refused him there was no special need of me at home. And my parents are
too unselfish to have allowed a sacrifice of that kind; something else
would have been arranged. No; I have given you my full reason. But—how
I came to find out what I did—that,” with a slight smile, “is my
secret. And my great reason for not telling you the whole story is that
I know mamma would _rather_ I did not tell it, even to you.”
“She knows everything?”
“Everything,” said Philippa, “and she does so ‘understand.’ And never
for one moment have I regretted what I did. But Evey,” she went on,
“poor Evey, is still a little sore about it. She does not know _quite_
the whole, as mamma does.”
“Thank you, dear, for telling me all you have done,” said Maida. And
then after a little pause: “Do you think you will never marry,
Philippa? Has it left that feeling?”
“No, not exactly,” said the girl, frankly. “You see, after all, it was
_not_ him I cared for; it was something I believed, or thought I
believed him to be. I don’t _think_ I shall ever marry, however. I
suppose, though it sounds rather conceited to say so, that it would be
difficult for me ever to feel quite sure I was not making a mistake.”
She looked down at Miss Lermont as she spoke—Maida was by this time
indoors and on her couch again—with a half-questioning look in her
eyes.
“Don’t exaggerate that idea,” her friend replied, rather abruptly.
“After all, every woman is in the same case? And remember you have not
seen many men; your life has been to some extent isolated. Don’t begin
to think there are hardly any happy marriages. It is a trick of the day
to talk so.”
Philippa’s face grew rather red.
“Don’t snub me so severely,” she said. “Put a little of my hesitation
down to humility.”
Miss Lermont laughed.
“Ah, well,” she said. “If the time ever comes when your hesitation
vanishes, promise to let me know at once.”
Philippa was to leave Dorriford the next day. That morning brought her
a letter from her brother Charley.
“I am only writing,” he said, “to make sure of your keeping to your
train. I am going up to town for a night, and will meet you at the
junction to-morrow on my way home again. And, by-the-by, I am half
thinking of asking a friend to stay two or three days with us. I had
not time to tell you about him before you left home,”—for Charley
Raynsworth had only returned from the East a day or two before
Philippa’s visit to the Lermonts—“we had so much to talk about. He is a
civil engineer whom I saw a good deal of in India, and he came home a
few weeks ago for good. His name is Gresham—he says he met you at Merle
once. Do you remember him? I am sure my father and all of you will like
him.”
Philippa’s breath came quick and short for a moment on reading these
words.
“How strange,” she thought, “that Charley and he should have been
thrown together! ‘Met me at Merle’—yes, indeed—_that day_! Once I see
him I daresay it will seem all right. But just at present I feel almost
more self-conscious about our last meeting than about the time at
Wyverston. I wonder,” she added to herself, “if dear Solomon has been
in India too!”
There was still a little flush of excitement on her face when she ran
up-stairs to say good-bye to her cousin Maida, whose slowly increasing
weakness was steadily but surely diminishing the hours which she was
each day able to spend down-stairs.
“How well you are looking this morning, dear! Are you so delighted to
go home, and not the least bit sorry to leave us?” she said, with
half-playful reproach.
“Of _course_ I am sorry to leave you, dear, dear Maida,” said Philippa,
tenderly. “I am feeling very pleased though, this morning, for I have
just heard that Charley will meet me at the junction, and I don’t think
I had fully realised how nice it is to have him back again,” she added
in explanation, which was strictly true so far as it went. And indeed
in her anticipation of meeting Michael Gresham again, she could
scarcely have described her sensations as pleasurable or the reverse.
A few words from Philippa announcing her safe arrival at home, and
ending with affectionate expressions of gratitude to her kind cousins,
reached Dorriford the following day.
Then came a blank extending over a fortnight, by the end of which time
Miss Lermont began to fear that something must be the matter at
Greenleaves.
She was on the point of writing again to Philippa to inquire the cause
of her silence, when a letter arrived. It was a long letter and marked
“private,” though no restrictions were placed on Maida as to making
known to her family the news it contained.
“My hesitation has vanished,” were the words with which Philippa
preluded the announcement of her engagement to Michael Gresham. “I am
_perfectly_ happy, _perfectly_ satisfied, though it has been difficult
for me to believe myself worthy of him. But as _he_ thinks I am—”
More practical details followed. It was not a “brilliant” marriage,
such as Evelyn Headfort had dreamt of for her sister. A life of some
restrictions, even possibly of a certain amount of struggle, was before
her and Michael, but a life brightened and ennobled by high aims and
many worthy interests outside themselves, by, above all, completest
confidence and mutual sympathy.
“It seems almost ideal,” thought Maida, as she finished the letter. “I
can feel no fears or apprehensions about a marriage like that, whatever
the world may say as to the necessity of wealth.”
For Maida’s eyes were growing very clear as to the real estimate of
things—she was nearing the heights where earth-born clouds and mists
begin to melt away in the everlasting sunshine.
Up to the present time, Bernard Gresham is still unmarried, not having
as yet succeeded in discovering the flawless gem among women, to whom
he could without misgiving entrust his happiness, and who alone would
be fitted to shine as mistress of Merle. He now by no means regrets
Philippa’s little looked-for refusal of the honour he laid before her,
vainly as he has endeavoured satisfactorily to account to himself for
it. But as his cousin’s wife he quite approves of her, and he is always
ready cordially to welcome her and her husband when they can spare a
week or two for a visit to Merle, on which occasions it is unnecessary
to say that “Solomon” again figures as one of Philippa’s
fellow-travellers.
The End.