No answer.
"I don't know how to make you understand why I feel so bound to them.
They were very old friends of my father and mother. They were so good
to me through all the days of sorrow, when I was left alone. Miss Ann
is a great invalid, and very dependent upon love and care, and upon not
being thwarted in her little hopes and plans. She expects to come and
live in--in her brother's home. She knows I should love to have her.
And he has done so much for me, intellectually; so patiently kept my
mind alive, when it was inclined to stagnate; and working, when it
would have grown slack. He has given up hours of his valuable time to
me, every week, for years."
No answer.
Suddenly the moonlight, through an opening in the mulberry leaves, fell
upon his upturned face. She saw the anguish in his eyes. She turned
his head away, resting it against her knee, and clasped her hands upon
it.
"Boy dear; it is terribly hard for us, I know. In a most extraordinary
way--in a way I cannot understand--you have won my body. It yearns to
be with you; it aches if you suffer; it lives in your gladness; it
grows young in your youth. Nobody else has ever made me feel this; I
do not suppose anybody else ever will. But--oh Boy--bodies are not
everything. Bodies are the least of all. And I think--I _think_ the
Professor holds my mind. He won it long ago. I have grown much older
since then, and very tired of waiting. But I can look back to the time
when I used to think the greatest privilege in the world would be, to
be the--to marry the Professor."
She paused, and waited.
"Bodies count," said the Boy, in a low voice. "You'll jolly well find,
that bodies count."
It was such a relief to hear him speak at last.
"Oh, I know, Boy dear," she said. "But more between some, than others.
The Professor and I are united, primarily, on the mental and spiritual
plane. Being so sure of this, realizing the difference, makes it less
hard, in a way, to--to give up my Little Boy Blue. Boy dear, you must
help me; because I love you as I have never loved anybody else in this
world before; as I know I never shall love again. But I am bound in
honour not to disappoint the man who _knows_ I have waited for him.
Miss Ann admitted to me to-night that she has told him. She said, in
the first moments of joy she _had_ to tell him; he was so anxious; and
so diffident. Boy dear, had it not been for that, I think I should
have begged off. But--as he knows--as they have trusted me--dear, we
must say 'good-bye' to-night. He is going to write to me to-morrow,
asking if he may come. I shall say: 'Yes.' ... Boy dear? Is it very
hard? ... Oh, can't you see where duty comes in? There can be no true
happiness if one has failed to be true to what one knows is just and
right.... Can't you realize, Boy, that _they_ have been everything to
me for seven _years_? _You_ have come in, for seven _days_."
"Time is nothing," said the Boy, suddenly. "You and I are one,
Christobel; eternally, indissolubly _one_. You will find it out, when
it is too late. Age is nothing! Time is nothing! Love is all!"
She hesitated. The Boy's theories were so vital, so vigorous, so
assured. Was she making a mistake? There was no question as to the
pain involved by her decision; but was that pain to result as she
believed, in higher good to all; or was it to mean irreparable loss?
The very knowledge that her body so yearned for him, led her to
emphasize the fact that the Boy could not--oh surely could not--be a
fit mate for her mind. Yet he was so confident, so sure of himself, in
regard to her, on every point; so unhesitatingly certain that they were
meant for each other.
And then she saw Ann Harvey, with clasped hands, saying: "_Darling_
child, forgive me, but I _had_ to tell Kenrick! He is so _humble_--he
was so _diffident_, so doubtful of his own powers of attraction. I
_had_ to tell him that I knew you had been very fond of him for
_years_. I did not say much, sweet child; but just enough to give dear
Kenrick _hope_ and _confidence_."
She could see Miss Ann's delicate wrinkled face; the tearful eyes; the
lavender ribbons on her lace cap; the mysterious hair-brooch, fastening
the old lace at her neck. The scene was photographed upon her memory;
for, in that moment, Hope--the young Hope, born of the youthful Boy and
his desires--had died. Christobel Charteris had taken up the burden of
life; a life apart from the seven days' romance, created by the amazing
over-confidence of her Little Boy Blue.
The masterful man attracts; but, in the end, it is usually the
diffident man who wins. The innate unselfishness of the noblest type
of woman, causes her to yield more readily to the insistence of her
pity than to the force of her desire. In these cases, marriage and
martyrdom are really--though unconsciously--synonymous; and the same
pure, holy courage which went smiling to the stake, goes smiling to the
altar. Does a martyr's crown await it, in another world? Possibly.
The only perplexing question, in these cases, being: What awaits the
wrecked life of "the other man"?
Christobel Charteris had put her hand to the plough; she would not look
back.
"Little Boy Blue," she said, "you must say 'good-bye' and go. I am
going to marry the Professor quite soon, and I must not see you again.
Say 'good-bye,' Boy dear."
Then the Boy's anguish broke through all bounds. He flung his arms
around her, and hid his face in her lap. A sudden throb of speechless
agony seemed to overwhelm them both, submerging all arguments, all
casuistry, all obligations to others, in a molten ocean of love and
pain.
Then she heard the Boy pray: "O God, give her to me! Give her to me!
O God, give her to me!"
"Hush, Boy," she said; "oh, hush!"
He was silent at once.
Then bending, she gathered him to her, holding his face against her
breast; sheltering him in the tenderness of her arms. He had never
seemed so completely her own Little Boy Blue as in that moment, when
she listened to his hopeless prayer: "O God, give her to me!" This was
the Little Boy Blue who tried to carry cannon-balls; who faced the
world, with sand upon his nose; cloudless faith in his bright eyes;
indomitable courage in his heart. She forgot the man's estate to which
he had attained; she forgot the man's request to which she had given a
final denial. She held him as she had first longed to do, when his
nurse, in unreasonable wrath, shook him on the sands; she rocked him
gently to and fro, as his dead mother might have done, long years ago.
"Oh, my Little Boy Blue, my Little Boy Blue!" she said.
Suddenly she felt the Boy's hot tears upon her neck.
Then, in undreamed of pain, her heart stood still. Then the full
passion of her tenderness awoke, and found voice in an exceeding bitter
cry.
"Oh, I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it! Boy dear, oh, Boy dear, you
shall have all you wish--all--all! ... Do you hear, my Little Boy Blue?
It shall all be for you, darling; all for you! Nobody else matters.
You shall have all you want--all--all--all!"
Silence under the mulberry-tree; the silence of a great decision.
Then he drew himself gently but firmly from her arms.
He stood before her, tall, erect, unbending. The moonlight fell upon
his face. It had lost its look of youth, taking on a new power. It
was the face of a man; and of a man who, having come to a decision,
intended, at all costs, to abide by it.
"No, Christobel," he said. "No, my Beloved. I could not accept
happiness--even _such_ happiness--at so great a cost to you. There
could be no bliss for you, no peace, no satisfaction, even in our great
love, if you had gone against your supreme sense of duty; your own high
conception of right and wrong. Also, Christobel, dearest--you must not
give yourself in a rush of emotion. You must give yourself
deliberately where your mind has chosen, and where your great soul is
content. That being so, I must be off, Christobel; and don't you worry
about me. You've been heavenly good to me, dear; and I've put you
through so much. I will go up to town to-night. I shall not come
back, unless you send for me. But when you want me and send--why, my
Love, I will come from the other end of the world."
He stooped and took both her hands in his; lifted them reverently,
tenderly, to his lips; held them there one moment, then laid them back
upon her lap, and turned away.
She saw him walk down the moonlit lawn, tall and erect. She saw him
pass through the gate, without looking back. She heard it close
quietly--not with the old boyish bang--yet close irrevocably,
decisively.
Then she shut her eyes, and began again to rock gently to and fro.
Little Boy Blue was still in her arms; it comforted her to rock him
there. But the man who had arisen and left her, when he might, taking
advantage of her weakness, have won her against her own conscience and
will; the man who, mastering his own agony, had thus been brave and
strong for her--had carried her whole heart with him, when he went out
through the postern gate.
In rising, he left the Boy in her arms. Through the long hard years to
come, she prayed she might keep him there--her own Little Boy Blue.
But he who went out alone, for her sake to face life without her, was
_the man she loved_.
She knew it, at last.
* * * * *
"_And the evening and the morning were the fifth day_."
* * * * *
THE SIXTH DAY
MISS ANN HAS "MUCH TO SAY"
On the afternoon of the sixth day, at the hour which had hitherto been
kept for the Boy, Christobel Charteris, in response to another urgent
and immediate summons, went to take tea with Miss Ann.
It had been a long, dull, uneventful day, holding at first a certain
amount of restless uncertainty as to whether the Boy was really gone;
mingled with apprehensive anticipation of a call from the Professor.
But before noon a reply-paid telegram arrived from the Boy, sent off at
Charing Cross.
"_Good morning. All's well. Just off for Folkestone. Please tell me
how you are._"
To which, while Jenkins and the telegraph-boy waited, Miss Charteris
replied:
"_Quite well, thank you. Do be careful at Folkestone._"
and afterwards thought of many other messages which she might have
sent, holding more, and better expressed. But that precious moment in
touch with the Boy passed so quickly; and it seemed so impossible to
think of anything but commonplace words, while Jenkins stood at
attention near the table; and the telegraph-boy kept ringing his
bicycle-bell outside, as a reminder that he waited.
Yet her heart felt warmed and comforted by this momentary contact with
the Boy. He still cared to know how she was. And it was so like him
to put: "All's well." He wished her to know he had not gone down
beneath his trouble. "Fanks, but I always does my own cawwying."
Brave Little Boy Blue, of long ago!
The expectation of the Professor's note or call remained, keeping her
anxious; until she heard from Ann Harvey, that her brother had been
obliged to go to London on business, and would not return until the
evening. "Come to tea with me, dear child," the note concluded; "we
have _much_ to say!"
It seemed to Christobel that there remained nothing which Miss Ann had
not already said, in every possible form and way. Nevertheless, she
put on her hat, and went. Miss Ann had succeeded in impressing all her
friends with the conviction that her wishes must never be thwarted.
Miss Ann had named her villa "Shiloh," undoubtedly a suitable name, so
far as she herself was concerned; her time being mostly spent upon a
comfortable sofa in her tiny drawing-room; or reclining on a wicker
lounge beneath the one tree in her small garden; or being carefully
wheeled out in a bath-chair.
But nobody else found Miss Ann's villa in any sense a "resting-place."
She had a way of keeping everybody about her--from jaded Emma to the
most casual caller--on the move, while she herself presented a delicate
picture of frail inactivity. Immediately upon their arrival, her
friends found an appointed task awaiting them; but it was always
something which Miss Ann would have given to somebody else to do, had
they not chanced at that moment to appear; and they were usually left
with the feeling that the particular somebody else--whose _privilege_
they, in their well-meant zeal, had usurped--would have accomplished it
better.
Directing them from the sofa, Miss Ann kept her entourage busy and
perpetually on the move. Yet she never felt she was asking much of
them; nor, however weary at the conclusion of the task, did they ever
feel much had been accomplished, owing to the judicious use of the word
"just."
"My dear," Miss Ann would say, "as you _are_ here, will you _just_
clean the canary?" Cleaning the canary meant a very thorough turning
out of an intricate little brass cage; several journeys up and down
stairs in quest of sand, seed, and brass polish, and an out-door
excursion to a neighbour's garden for groundsel. The canary's name was
"Sweetie-weet," and, however much annoyed Miss Ann's friends might be
feeling with the canary, they had to call him "Sweetie-weet" all the
time they "cleaned him," lest his flutterings should upset Miss Ann.
Now you cannot say "Sweetie-weet" in an angry voice. Try, and you will
see. Consequently Miss Ann's friends had no vent for their feelings
during the process of getting a rather large hand in and out of a very
small brass door with a spring, which always snapped to, at the wrong
moment, while the hand, which seemed to its possessor larger than it
had ever seemed before, was crooked round in an impossible position in
a strained attempt to fix Sweetie-weet's perches. If anything went
wrong during the cleaning process, Miss Ann, from her vantage-ground on
the sofa would sigh, and exclaim: "Poor patient little Sweetie-weet!"
Miss Ann was in full possession of all her faculties. Her hearing was
preternaturally sharp. It was no use saying "Fiend!" to Sweetie-weet,
in an emphatic whisper. He fluttered the more.
When the task was completed, the cage had to be brought to Miss Ann's
couch for inspection. She then usually discovered the perches to have
been put back before they were perfectly dry. Now _nothing_--as surely
you hardly ought to require to be told--was so prejudicial to
Sweetie-weet's delicate constitution as to have _damp_ wood beneath his
_precious_ little feet. Consequently all the perches had _just_ to be
taken out again, dried before the kitchen fire, and put back once more.
When this mandate went forth, the glee in the bright black eyes in
Sweetie-weet's yellow head was unmistakable. He shared Miss Ann's
mania for keeping people busy.
When, at last, the second installation of perches was over, and the
cage was suspended from the brass chain in the sunny window,
Sweetie-weet poured forth a shrill crescendo of ear-piercing
sarcasm--"a little song of praise" Miss Ann called it--directed full at
the hot and exhausted friend, who was applying a pocket-handkerchief to
the wire scratches on the back of her hand, and trying to smile at Miss
Ann's recital of all Emma would say, when she found that her special
privilege and delight--the cleaning of Sweetie-weet--had been wrested
from her by the over-zealous friend. As a matter of fact, jaded Emma's
personal remarks about Sweetie-weet, during the perch-drying process in
the kitchen, had been of a nature which would not bear repeating in
Sweetie-weet's presence, and had provided the only amusement the friend
had got out of the whole performance.
When Christobel Charteris arrived at Shiloh, she found Miss Ann on the
green velvet sofa, looking very frail and ethereal; a Shetland shawl
about her shoulders, fastened by the largest and most mysterious of her
hair-brooches--a gold-mounted oval brooch, in which a weeping willow of
fair hair drooped over a sarcophagus of dark hair; while a crescent
moon of grey hair kept watch over both. This funereal collection of
family hair always possessed a weird fascination for small children,
brought by their parents to call upon Miss Ann. The most
undemonstrative became affectionate, and hastened with ready docility
to the sofa to kiss Miss Ann, in order to obtain a closer view, and to
settle the much disputed point as to the significance of a small round
object in the left-hand corner at the bottom. In fact, to the
undisguised dismay of his mother, a sturdy youngster once emerged from
Miss Ann's embrace, exclaiming eagerly to his little sister: "It's a
furze-bush, _not_ a hedgehog!" An unfortunate remark, which might have
been taken by Miss Ann to refer to even more personal matters than a
detail in her brooch.
Christobel herself was not altogether free from the spell of this
hirsute cemetery; chiefly because she knew it was worn on days when
deep emotion was to be felt and expressed. At sight of it, she was
quite prepared for the tearful smile with which Miss Ann signed to her
to close the door. Then extending her arms, "Sweet sister," she said,
with emotion, "let me take you to my heart."
It was somewhat startling to Christobel to be apostrophized as "sister"
by Miss Ann. The Boy had made her feel so young, and so completely his
contemporary, that if Miss Ann had called her "daughter," or even
"granddaughter," it would have seemed more appropriate. Also her
magnificent proportions constituted a somewhat large order for Miss
Ann's proposed embrace.
However, she knelt beside the sofa, and allowed herself to be taken to
Miss Ann's heart in sections. Then, having found and restored Miss
Ann's lace pocket-handkerchief, she seated herself in a low chair
beside the couch, hoping for enlightenment upon the immediate prospects
of her own future.
Miss Ann wept gently for a while. Christobel sat silent. Her recent
experience of tears, wrung from such deep anguish of soul, made it less
easy for her to feel sympathetic towards tears which flowed from no
apparent cause, and fell delicately into perfumed lace. So she waited
in silence, while Miss Ann wept.
The room was very still. The bang with which the Boy usually made his
entry anywhere, would have been terrific in its joyful suddenness. At
the mere thought of it, Christobel's heart stood still and listened.
But this was a place into which the Boy would never make an entry,
noisy or otherwise. Besides--the Boy was gone. Oh, silent, sober,
sorry world! The Boy was gone.
Sweetie-weet put his head on one side, and chirped interrogatively. In
his judgment, the silence had lasted sufficiently long.
Miss Ann dried her eyes, making an effort to control her emotion. Then
she spoke, in a voice which still trembled.
"Dearest child," she said, "I want you _just_ to cover this book for
me. Emma has offered to do it, several times, but I said: 'No, Emma.
We must keep it for Miss Christobel. I do not know _what_ she would
say to you, if you took to covering my books!' Emma is a good soul,
and willing; but has not the _mind_ and _method_ required to cover a
book properly. If you will _just_ run up to my room, dear child, you
will find a neat piece of whity-brown paper laid aside on purpose....
Hush, Sweetie-weet! Christobel knows you are pleased to see her....
It is either on the ottoman behind the screen, or in the top left-hand
drawer of the mahogany chest, between the window and the fireplace.
Ah, how much we have come through, during the last twenty-four hours!
The scissors, dear Love, are hanging by black tape from a nail in the
store-room. You require a large and _common_ pair for cutting brown
paper. How truly wonderful are the ways of Providence, dear
Christobel! The paste is in the little cupboard under the stairs."
When Miss Charteris had finished covering the book, having bent upon it
all the _mind_ and _method_ it required, she forestalled the setting of
another task, by saying firmly: "I want an important talk now, please.
Ann, are you sure you told your brother that I had cared for him for
years?"
"Darling, dear Kenrick was so _diffident_; so unable to realize his own
powers of _attraction_; so----"
"Do you think it was fair toward a woman, even if it were true, to tell
a man who had never asked her love, that that love has long been his?"
"Sweet child, how crudely you put it! I merely _hinted, whispered_;
gave the most _delicate_ indications of what I knew to be your feeling.
For you _do_ love my brother; do you not, dear Christobel?"
"I think," said Miss Charteris, slowly, weighing each word; "I think I
love the Professor as a woman loves a book."
There was a moment of tense silence in Miss Ann's drawing-room.
Christobel Charteris looked straight before her, a stern light upon her
face, as of one confronted on the path of duty by the clear shining of
the mirror of self-revelation.
Into Miss Ann's pale blue eyes shot a gleam of nervous anxiety.
Sweetie-weet chirped, interrogatively.
Then Miss Ann, recovering, clasped her hands. "Ah, what a beautiful
definition!" she said. "What _could_ be more pure, more perfect?"
Miss Charteris knew a love of a very different kind, which was
absolutely pure, and altogether perfect. But that was the love she had
put from her.
"A woman could hardly marry a book," she said.
Miss Ann gave a little deprecatory shriek. "Darling child!" she cried.
"_No_ simile, however beautiful, should be pressed too far! Your
exquisite description of your love for dear Kenrick merely assures us
that your union with him will prove one of complete contentment to the
mind. And the _mind_--that sensitive instrument, attuned to all the
immensities of the intellectual spheres--the _mind_ is what really
matters."
"Bodies count," said Miss Charteris, with conviction; adding beneath
her breath, the dawning of a smile in her sad eyes: "We shall jolly
well find, bodies count."
Miss Ann's hearing, as we have already remarked, was preternaturally
sharp. She started. "My dear Christobel, what an expression! And do
you not think, that, under these circumstances, any mention of bodies
savours of impropriety?"
Miss Charteris turned quickly. The colour flamed into her beautiful
face. The glint of angry indignation flashed from her eyes. But the
elderly figure on the couch looked so small and frail. To wound and
crush it would be so easy; and so unworthy of her strength, and wider
experience.
Suddenly she remembered a little blue back, round with grief and shame;
a small sandy face, silent and unflinching; a brave little heart which
kept its faith in God, and prayed on trustfully, while nurses
misunderstood and bullied. Then Miss Charteris conquered her own wrath.
"Dear Ann," she said, gently, "do you really believe your brother would
be much disappointed if--after all--when he asks me to marry him--which
he has not done yet--I feel it better not to do so?"
"My _darling_ child!" exclaimed Miss Ann, and her hair-brooch flew
open, as if to accentuate her horror and amazement. "My _darling_
child! Think how patiently he has waited! Remember the long years!
Remember----"
"Yes, I know," said Miss Charteris. "You told me all that last night,
didn't you? But it seems to me that, if a man can wait twelve years,
he might as well wait twenty."
"So he would have!" cried Miss Ann. "_Undoubtedly_ dear Kenrick would
have waited _twenty years_, had it not been for this fortunate legacy,
which places him in a position to marry at once. But why should you
wish to keep him waiting any longer? Is not twelve years sufficiently
long?"
Miss Charteris smiled. "Twelve days would be too long for some
people," she said, gently. "I have no wish to keep him waiting. But
you must remember, Ann, the Professor has, as yet, spoken no word of
love to me."