Captain and Mrs. Berwick were gone. The holidays at Carter Hill were all
but ended--"all but ended," Miss Sandys repeated with a little sigh of
relief, and an inclination to moralize on that weariness which is the
result of pleasure. When Miss West came down in the morning the kettle
was steaming on the hob, the teapot under its cosie, and the couple of
rolls and the dish of sausages were set in their places. Miss
Sandys--her working apron lying ready to take up on the side-table
behind her--was bent to the last on buns and pork pies, though she
frankly admitted they were vanity. But the girls must be broken from
their home dainties by degrees, and Jenny and Menie must have "cakes" to
carry to their homes on their Handsel Monday.
Miss West found a letter on her plate. It caused her complexion to
change, and her sharp eyes to fasten on it fixedly. No wonder her head
swam and her ears rang. She was going through the uncomfortable process
of turning back some ten or twelve years in her life. It was a strange
letter to come to her--a large letter, which had been charged double
postage; a letter with the elements of mortification in it, as well as
other elements, both to sender and receiver. It was written in a big,
scampering hand.
"Dear Mad," it began, "it is so queer to be addressing you again. I
remember when I used to say 'Mad' to a white-faced, dark-eyed girl.
Was she pretty, I wonder? Some people said so, but I don't know,
only I have never seen a face quite equal to hers since--never. Mad
and I were great friends when I used to visit her elder brother;
great friends, indeed, in a bantering, biting way. But it was Mad
who bantered and bit; certainly I did not banter and bite again,
rarely even so much as gave a gentle pinch, for I would not have
hurt Mad for the world, and Mad did not hurt me. At least she never
meant it seriously, and she was always so piteously penitent when
she thought she had wounded my feelings. Oh, dear, quizzing Mad! she
had such a soft heart in its bristling shell, and I hurt it. I hurt
Mad--yes, I know; I know to my sorrow and shame.
"Mad, do you remember how you went every day to meet a timid little
brother coming from school along a lonely moorland road, where there
were broomy braes in June and heathery braes in September? What a
convenient custom it was for me, since the little brother, unlike
little monsters of the same kind, had neither eyes nor ears but for
his own avocations, and trotted on obediently in front of us. The
sight of my own little Bill's satchel gives me a turn, and makes me
feel spoony to this day. Do you remember your great dog, Mad? (what
a child you were for pets!)--and who it was used to go to the kennel
to feed it with you? If that dog had been a true Bevis, it would
have torn that hulking fellow where he stood, yet he meant no harm;
nay, he had a strong persuasion that he was doing something
meritorious (how he hit it I can't tell) in not committing himself
and binding you when he had no more than a clerk's paltry income.
But I have heard that trees, stripped of leaves in flowery May,
revenge themselves by bursting out green, if the frosts will let
them, in foggy November. So the prudence of twenty-five may be the
folly of thirty-five. It was rank mean-spiritedness in me not to go
through thick and thin, through flood and fire, for Mad. What in the
world was worth striving for if she was not worth it? Ah, I lost my
chance when I might have taken it, and trusted the rest to
Providence! But I did not know, though I fancied I did, the value of
the jewel, the price of which, in stern self-restraint, I refused to
pay. I might have been another man if I had not been so prudent,
for, as I have said, not another face has been to me quite (no, not
by a long chalk) what Mad's once was. It was only yesterday that I
heard by chance--and the story has haunted me since--that Mad is
still a single woman, her family all dispersed, and she a teacher in
a school--my quizzing, affectionate Mad a drudging, lonely teacher!
"After being so prudent, it is not wonderful to record that I was
fickle, though circumstances, and not my will, separated Mad and me
at first. I could not get down to the old place so regularly as I
was wont to do, which annoyed me, and I did my best to get rid of
the obstacles. When I did get down, Mad was not at home, and I had
no right to follow her. We met seldomer; we grew stiffer and
stranger to each other. You are acquainted with the process, Miss
West, though perhaps not fully with my share in it. The impression
which Mad had made on me, unique as it was, faded and was overlaid
by others. I met another girl, whom I liked too, and whom it
appeared so much simpler--more expedient and advantageous--for me to
love and to marry. I married her, breaking no vows, not writing
myself faithless, far less treacherous, but only fickle. Yet I had
once known, if ever man knew, that I had made Mad's strong heart--I
think it was strong, although it was soft to me--beat in tune with
mine. I had done all I could, short of saying the words, to impress
Mad with what were my wishes and intentions, I had preferred her in
every company, followed her when I was down at the old place, like
her shadow (her shadow, indeed!). I had elected her my confidante
and adviser, and poured all my precious opinions and plans--my very
scrapes--into her curious, patient ears. Mad, have you forgotten
how once, like an old-fashioned, grandiloquent muff, I showed you
the picture of a perfect woman in a book of poetry--'Paradise Lost'
it might have been, and 'Eve' for any special appropriateness in the
picture--and broadly hinted my private idea that the perfect woman
was fulfilled in Mad!--lively, faulty Mad! Your sisters were very
anxious to read the passage which I had selected for your study, and
from which I was evidently pointing a moral; but you closed the book
abruptly in the old seat behind the round tea-table with the brass
rim. I suppose the sisters don't know the passage to this day?
"Having been fickle, I was a great deal better off in my wife than I
deserved. Remember, Mad, my wife and the mother of my children was a
good woman; I was reasonably happy with her, and I trust I bore her
tender reverence. She died and left me with our children two winters
ago. When we meet again, it will be where there is neither marrying
nor giving in marriage. Now, when I can do her no wrong, I think of
another to whom I did wrong; than whom there was never another to me
the same--no, nothing like it. Learning that Mad has been true--oh!
Mad, _you_ could never have been anything else but true--I have
wondered whether I might not be allowed to do something to atone,
whether I was not worth having still, and whether I could not--a
bold phrase, but it will out--make it up to Mad, a solitary single
woman, a teacher in a school. Oh! Mad, I say again, what a hard fate
for you!
"I cannot offer an immense inducement. I am not a merchant prince,
though I am richer than I was in the old days; yet somehow I do not
care to boast of my riches to Mad, and I am a widower with two small
children--not models. I dare not send you my _carte_, and I don't
want yours. You are always the same Mad to me that you have been
through all those years, and will be to the end of the chapter,
whether you answer me yes or no. You will answer yes. You were
always great for magnanimity, and flamed up on it, dark eyes, white
cheeks, and all, when you were a wild lassie. Don't tell me you are
less magnanimous as a brave, hard-working woman, or you will sap my
faith in womankind.
"Mad, how this Christmas season stirs me with the far-off murmurs of
another Christmas, when you and I pulled the holly and the other
thing--the thing with the tiny, fair, frost-bitten clusters of
blossom--some sort of laurel wasn't it? That old Christmas, who can
describe? What glamour over the prosaic family dinner and carpet
dance to see the old year out and the new year in? Say the word,
Mad, and before the first full moon of this new year has waned to
half a cheese she will shine down upon us, anew, with the old
shining. I swear it on the part of your old friend,