AND AFTER?
When Elma woke up next morning, it was broad daylight. She woke
with a start, to find herself lying upon the bed where she had flung
herself. For a minute or two she couldn't recollect or recall to
herself how it had all come about. It was too remote from anything
in her previous waking thought, too dream-like, too impossible. Then
an unspeakable horror flashed over her unawares. Her face flushed
hot. Shame and terror overcame her. She buried her head in her hands
in an agony of awe. Her own self-respect was literally outraged.
It wasn't exactly remorse; it wasn't exactly fear; it was a strange
creeping feeling of ineffable disgust and incredulous astonishment.
There could be but one explanation of this impossible episode. She
must have gone mad all at once! She must be a frantic lunatic!
A single thought usurped her whole soul. If she was going mad--if
this was really mania--she could never, never, never--marry Cyril
Waring.
For in a flash of intuition she knew that now. She knew she was in
love. She knew he loved her.
In that wild moment of awakening all the rest mattered nothing.
The solitary idea that ran now through her head, as the impulse to
dance had run through it last night, was the idea that she could
never marry Cyril Waring. And if Cyril Waring could have seen her
just then! her cheeks burned yet a brighter scarlet at that thought
than even before. One virginal blush suffused her face from chin
to forehead. The maidenly sense of shame consumed and devoured her.
Was she mad? Was she mad? And was this a lucid interval?
Presently, as she lay still on her bed all dressed, and with her
face in her hands, trembling for very shame, a little knock sounded
tentatively at the door of her bedroom. It was a timid, small knock,
very low and soft, and, as it were, inquiring. It seemed to say
in an apologetic sort of undertone, "I don't know whether you're
awake or not just yet; and if you're still asleep, pray don't let
me for a moment disturb or arouse you."
"Who's there?" Elma mustered up courage to ask, in a hushed voice
of terror, hiding her head under the bed-clothes.
"It's me, darling," Mrs. Clifford answered, very softly and sweetly.
Elma had never heard her mother speak in so tender and gentle a
tone before, though they loved one another well, and were far more
sympathetic than most mothers and daughters. And besides, that
knock was so unlike mamma's. Why so soft and low?
Had mamma discovered her? With a despairing sense of being caught
she looked down at her tell-tale clothes and the unslept-in bed.
"Oh, what shall I ever do?" she thought to herself, confusedly. "I
can't let mamma come in and catch me like this. She'll ask why on
earth I didn't undress last night. And then what could I ever say?
How could I ever explain to her?"
The awful sense of shame-facedness grew upon her still more deeply
than ever. She jumped up and whispered through the door, in a
very penitent voice, "Oh, mother, I can't let you in just yet. Do
you mind waiting five minutes? Come again by-and-by. I--I--I'm so
awfully tired and queer this morning somehow."
Mrs. Clifford's voice had an answering little ring of terror in
it, as she replied at once, in the same soft tone--
"Very well, darling. That's all right. Stay as long as you like.
Don't trouble to get up if you'd rather have your breakfast in bed.
And don't hurry yourself at all. I'll come back by-and-by and see
what's the matter."
Elma didn't know why, but by the very tone of her mother's voice she
felt dimly conscious something strange had happened. Mrs. Clifford
spoke with unusual gentleness, yet with an unwonted tremor.
"Thank you, dear," Elma answered through the door, going back to
the bedside and beginning to undress in a tumult of shame. "Come
again by-and-by. In just five minutes." It would do her good, she
knew, in spite of her shyness, to talk with her mother. Then she
folded her clothes neatly, one by one, on a chair; hid the peccant
boa away in its own lower drawer; buttoned her neat little embroidered
nightdress tightly round her throat; arranged her front hair into
a careless disorder; and tried to cool down her fiery red cheeks
with copious bathing in cold water. When Mrs. Clifford came back
five minutes later, everything looked to the outer eye of a mere
casual observer exactly as if Elma had laid in bed all night, curled
up between the sheets, in the most orthodox fashion.
But all these elaborate preparations didn't for one moment deceive
the mother's watchful glance, or the keen intuition shared by all
the women of the Clifford family. She looked tenderly at Elma--Elma
with her face half buried in the pillows, and the tell-tale flush
still crimsoning her cheek in a single round spot; then she turned
for a second to the clothes, too neatly folded on the chair by the
bedside, as she murmured low--
"You're not well this morning, my child. You'd better not get up.
I'll bring you a cup of tea and some toast myself. You don't feel
hungry, of course. Ah, no, I thought not. Just a slice of dry
toast--yes, yes. I have been there. Some eau de Cologne on your
forehead, dear? There, there, don't cry, Elma. You'll be better
by-and-by. Stop in bed till lunch-time. I won't let Lucy come up
with the tea, of course. You'd rather be alone. You were tired last
night. Don't be afraid, my darling. It'll soon pass off. There's
nothing on earth, nothing at all to be alarmed at."
She laid her hand nervously on Elma's arm. Half dead with shame as
she was, Elma noticed it trembled. She noticed, too, that mamma
seemed almost afraid to catch her eye. When their glance met for
an instant the mother's eyelids fell, and her cheek, too, burned
bright red, almost as red, Elma felt, as her own that nestled hot
so deep in the pillow. Neither said a word to the other of what
she thought or felt. But their mute sympathy itself made them
more shame-faced than ever. In some dim, indefinite, instinctive
fashion, Elma knew her mother was vaguely aware what she had done
last night. Her gaze fell half unconsciously on the bottom drawer.
With quick insight, Mrs. Clifford's eye followed her daughter's.
Then it fell as before. Elma looked up at her terrified, and burst
into a sudden flood of tears. Her mother stooped down and caught her
wildly in her arms. "Cry, cry, my darling," ahe murmured, clasping
her hard to her breast. "Cry, cry; it'll do you good; there's safety
in crying. Nobody but I shall come near you to-day. Nobody else
shall know! Don't be afraid of me! Have not I been there, too? It's
nothing, nothing."
With a burst of despair, Elma laid her face in her mother's bosom.
Some minutes later, Mrs. Clifford went down to meet her husband in
the breakfast-room.
"Well?" the father asked, shortly, looking hard at his wife's face,
which told its own tale at once, for it was white and pallid.
"Well!" Mrs. Clifford answered, with a pre-occupied air. "Elma's
not herself this morning at all. Had a nervous turn after she went
to her room last night. I know what it is. I suffered from them
myself when I was about her age." Her eyes fell quickly and she
shrank from her husband's searching glance. She was a plump-faced
and well-favoured British matron now, but once, many years before,
as a slim young girl, she had been in love with somebody--somebody
whom by superior parental wisdom she was never allowed to marry,
being put off instead with a well-connected match, young Mr. Clifford
of the Colonial Office. That was all. No more romance than that.
The common romance of every woman's heart. A forgotten love. Yet
she tingled to remember it.
"And you think?" Mr. Clifford asked, laying down his newspaper and
looking very grave.
"I don't think. I know," his wife answered hastily. "I was wrong
the other day, and Elma's in love with that young man, Cyril Waring.
I know more than that, Reginald; I know you may crush her; I know
you may kill her; but if you don't want to do that, I know she
must marry him. Whether we wish it, or whether we don't, there's
nothing else to be done. As things stand now, it's inevitable,
unavoidable. She'll never be happy with anybody else--she must have
HIM--and I, for one, won't try to prevent her."
Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., sometime Administrator of the
island of St. Kitts, gazed at his wife in blank astonishment. She
spoke decidedly; he had never heard her speak with such firmness
in his life before. It fairly took his breath away. He gazed at
his wife blankly as he repeated to himself in very slow and solemn
tones, each word distinct, "You, for one, won't try to prevent
her!"
"No, I won't," Mrs. Clifford retorted defiantly, assured in her
own mind she was acting right. "Elma's really in love with him;
and I won't let Elma's life be wrecked--as some lives have been
wrecked, and as some mothers would wreck it."
Mr. Clifford leaned back in his chair, one mass of astonishment,
and let the Japanese paper-knife he was holding in his right hand
drop clattering from his fingers. "If I hadn't heard you say it
yourself, Louisa," he answered, with a gasp, "I could never have
believed it. I could--never--have--believed it. I don't believe
it even now. It's impossible, incredible."
"But it's true," Mrs. Clifford repeated. "Elma must marry the man
she's in love with."
Meanwhile poor Elma lay alone in her bedroom upstairs, that awful
sense of remorse and shame still making her cheeks tingle with
unspeakable horror. Mrs. Clifford brought up her cup of tea herself.
Elma took it with gratitude, but still never dared to look her
mother in the face. Mrs. Clifford, too, kept her own eyes averted.
It made Elma's self-abasement even profounder than before to feel
that her mother instinctively knew everything.
The poor child lay there long, with a burning face and tingling
ears, too ashamed to get up and dress herself and face the outer
world, too ashamed to go down before her father's eyes, till long
after lunchtime. Then there came a noise at the door once more;
the rustling of a dress; a retreating footstep. Somebody pushed an
envelope stealthily under the door. Elma picked it up and examined
it curiously. It bore a penny stamp, and the local postmark. It
must have come then by the two o'clock delivery, without a doubt;
but the address, why, the address was written in some unknown hand,
and in printing capitals. Elma tore it open with a beating heart,
and read the one line of manuscript it contained, which was also
written in the same print-like letters.
"Don't be afraid," the letter said, "It will do you no harm. Resist
it when it comes. If you do, you will get the better of it."
Elma looked at the letter over and over again in a fever of dismay.
She was certain it was her mother had written that note. But she
read it with tears, only half-reassured--and then burnt it to ashes,
and proceeded to dress herself.
When she went down to the drawing-room, Mrs. Clifford rose from
her seat, and took her hand in her own, and kissed her on one cheek
as if nothing out of the common had happened in any way. The talk
between them was obtrusively commonplace. But all that day long,
Elma noticed her mother was far tenderer to her than usual; and
when she went up to bed Mrs. Clifford held her fingers for a moment
with a gentle pressure, and kissed her twice upon her eyes, and
stifled a sigh, and then broke from the room as if afraid to speak
to her.