AND so Grif disappeared from the haunts of Vagabondia, and was seen no
more. And to Aimée was left the delicate task of explaining the cause
of his absence, which, it must be said, she did in a manner at once
creditable to her tact and affection for both Dolly and the unconscious
cause of all her misery.
“There has been a misunderstanding,” she said, “which was no fault
of Dolly's, and scarcely a fault of Grif's; and it has ended very
unhappily, and Grif has gone away, and just at present it seems as if
everything was over,--but I can't help hoping it is not so bad as that.”
“Oh, he will come back again--safe enough,” commented Phil,
philosophically, holding paint-brush No. 1 in his mouth, while he
manipulated with No. 2. “He will come back in sackcloth and ashes; he is
just that sort, you know,--thunder and lightning, fire and tow. And they
will make it up ecstatically in secret, and pretend that nothing has
been the matter, and there will be no going into the parlor for weeks
without whistling all the way across the hall.”
“I always go in backward after they have had a quarrel,” said Mollie,
looking up from a half-made pinafore of Tod's, which, in the zeal of her
repentance, she had decided on finishing.
“Not a bad plan, either,” said Phil “We all know how _their_ differences
of opinion terminate. As to matters being at an end between them, that
is all nonsense; they could n't live without each other six months.
Dolly would take to unbecoming bonnets, and begin to neglect her back
hair, and Grif would take to prussic acid or absinthe.”
“Well, I hope he _will_ come back,” said Aimée; “but, in the meantime, I
want to ask you to let the affair rest altogether, and not say a word to
Dolly when she comes. It will be the kindest thing you can do. Just let
things go on as they have always done, and ignore every thing new you
may see.”
Phil looked up from his easel in sudden surprise; something in her
voice startled him, serenely as he was apt to view all unexpected
intelligence.
“I say,” he broke out, “you don't mean that Dolly is very much cut up
about it?”
The fair little oracle hesitated; remembering Dolly's passionate despair
and grief over that “dead letter,” she could scarcely trust herself to
speak.
“Yes,” she answered at last, feeling it would be best only to commit
herself in Phil's own words, “she is very much cut up.”
“Whew!” whistled Phil; “that is worse than I thought!” And the matter
ended in his going back to his picture and painting furiously for a few
minutes, with an almost reflective air.
They did not see anything of Dolly for weeks. She wrote to them now and
then, but she did not pay another visit to Bloomsbury Place. It was
not the old home to her now, and she dreaded seeing it in its new
aspect,--the aspect which was desolate of Grif. Most of her letters
came to Aimée; but she rarely referred to her trouble, rather seeming to
avoid it than otherwise. And the letters themselves were bright enough,
seeming, too. She had plenty to say about Miss MacDowlas and their
visitors and her own duties; indeed, any one but Aimée would have been
puzzled by her courage and apparent good spirits. But Aimée saw below
the surface, and understood, and, understanding, was fonder of her than
ever.
As both Dolly and herself had expected, Mollie did not keep her secret
from the oracle many weeks. It was too much for her to bear alone, and
one night, in a fit of candor and remorse, she poured out everything
from first to last, all her simple and unsophisticated dreams of
grandeur, all her gullibility, all her danger,--everything, indeed, but
the story of her pitiful little fancy for Ralph Gowan. She could not
give that up, even to Aimée, though at the close of her confidence she
was unable to help referring to him.
“And as to Mr. Gowan,” she said, “how can I ever speak to him again!
but, perhaps, he would not speak to me. He must think I am wicked and
bold and hardened--and bad,” with a fresh sob at every adjective. “Oh,
dear! oh, dear!” burying her face in Aimée's lap, “if I had only stayed
at home and been good, like you. He could have respected me, at least,
couldn't he? And now--oh, what am I to do!”
Aimée could not help sighing. If she only _had_ stayed at home, how much
happier they all might have been! But she had promised Dolly not to add
to her unhappiness by hinting at the truth, so she kept her own counsel.
It was fully three months before they saw Ralph Gowan again. He had gone
on the Continent, they heard. A feeling of delicacy had prompted the
journey. As long as he remained in London, he could scarcely drop out
of his old friendly position at Bloomsbury Place, and he felt that for
a while at least Mollie would scarcely find it easy to face him. So he
went away and rambled about until he thought she would have time to get
over her first embarrassment.
But at the end of the three months he came back, and one afternoon
surprised them all by appearing amongst them again. Mollie, sitting
perseveringly at work over her penitential sewing, shrank a little,
and dropped her eyelids when he came in, but she managed to behave
with creditable evenness of manner after all, and the rest welcomed him
warmly.
“I have been to Brabazon Lodge,” he said at length to Aimée. “I spent
Monday evening there, and was startled at the change I found in your
sister. I did not know she was ill.”
Aimée started herself, and looked up at him with a frightened face.
“Ill!” she said. “Did you say ill?”
It was his turn to be surprised then.
“I thought her looking ill,” he answered. “She seemed to me to be both
paler and thinner. But you must not let me alarm you,--I thought, of
course, that you would know.”
“She has never mentioned it in her letters,” Aimée said. “And she has
not been home for three months, so we have not seen her.”
“Don't let me give you a false impression,” returned Gowan, eagerly.
“She seemed in excellent spirits, and was quite her old self; indeed, I
scarcely should imagine that she herself placed sufficient stress upon
the state of her health. She insisted that she was well when I spoke to
her about it.”
“I am very glad you told me,” answered Aimée. “She is too indifferent
sometimes. I am afraid she would not have let us know. I thank you, very
much.”
He had other thanks before he left the house. As he was going out,
Mollie, in her character of porteress, opened the hall door for
him, and, having opened it, stood there with Tod's new garment
half concealed, a pair of timid eyes uplifted to his face, a small,
trembling, feverish hand held out.
“Mr. Gowan,” she said, in a low, fluttering voice. “Oh, if you please--”
He took the little hot hand, feeling some tender remorse for not having
tried to draw her out more and help her out of her painful shyness and
restraint.
“What is it, Mollie?” he asked.
“I want--I want,” fluttering all over,--“I want to thank you better than
I did that--that dreadful night. I was so frightened I could scarcely
understand. I understand more--now--and I want to tell you how grateful
I am--and how grateful I shall be until I die--and I want to ask you to
try not to think I was very wicked. I did not mean to be wicked--I was
only vain and silly, and I thought it would be such a grand thing to--to
have plenty of new dresses,” hanging her sweet, humble face, “and to
wear diamonds, and be Lady Chandos, if--if Mr. Chandos came into the
title. Of course that was wicked, but it was n't--I was n't as bad as I
seemed. I was so vain that--that I was quite sure he loved me, and would
be very glad if I married him. He always said he would.” And the tears
rolled fast down her cheeks.
“Poor Mollie!” said Gowan, patting the trembling hand as if it had been
a baby's. “Poor child!”
“But,” Mollie struggled on, penitently, “I shall never be so foolish
again. And I am going to try to be good--like Aimée. I am learning to
mend things; and I am beginning to make things for Tod. This,” holding
up her work as proof, “is a dress for him. It is n't very well done,”
with innocent dubiousness; “but Aimée says I am improving. And so, if
you please, would you be so kind as not to think quite so badly of me?”
It was all so humble and pretty and remorseful that he was quite
touched by it. That old temptation to kiss and console her made it
quite dangerous for him to linger. She was such a lovable sight with her
tear-wet cheeks, and that dubious but faithfully worked-at garment of
Tod's in her hand.
“Mollie,” he said, “will you believe what I say to you?”
“Oh, yes!” eagerly.
“Then I say to you that I never believed you wicked for an instant,--not
for one instant; and now I believe it less than ever; on the contrary,
I believe you are a good, honest little creature. Let us forget Gerald
Chandos,--he is not worth remembering. And go on with Tod's pinafores
and dresses, my dear, and don't be discouraged if they are a failure at
first,--though to my eyes that dress is a most sumptuous affair. And
as to being like Aimée, you cannot be like any one better and wiser and
sweeter than that same little maiden. There! I mean every word I have
said.”
“Are you sure?” faltered Mollie.
“Yes,” he replied, “quite sure.”
He shook hands with her, and, bidding her goodnight, left her standing
in the narrow hall all aglow with joy. And he, outside, was communing
with himself as he walked away.
“She is as sweet in her way as--as the other,” he was saying. “And as
well worth loving. And what a face she has, if one only saw it with a
lover's eyes! What a face she has, even seeing it with such impartial
eyes as mine!”
“My dear Dolly!” said Aimée.
“My dear Aimée!” said Dolly.
These were the first words the two exchanged when, the evening after
Ralph Gowan's visit, the anxious young oracle presented herself at
Brabazon Lodge, and was handed into Dolly's bedroom.
Visitors were expected, and Dolly had been dressing, and was just
putting the finishing touches to her toilet when Aimée came in, and,
seeing her as she turned from the glass to greet her, the wise one could
scarcely speak, and, even after she had been kissed most heartily, could
only hold the girl's hand and stand looking up into her changed face,
feeling almost shocked.
“Oh, dear me, Dolly!” she said again. “Oh, my dear, what have you been
doing to yourself?”
“Doing!” echoed Dolly, just as she would have spoken three or four
months ago. “I have been doing nothing, and rather enjoying it. What is
the matter with me?” glancing into the mirror. “Pale? That is the result
of Miss MacDowlas's beneficence, you see. She has presented me with this
grand black silk gown, and it makes me look pale. Black always did, you
know.”
But notwithstanding her readiness of speech, it did not need another
glance to understand what Ralph Gowan had meant when he said that she
was altered. The lustreless heavy folds of her black silk might contrast
sharply with her white skin, but they could not bring about that subtle,
almost incomprehensible change in her whole appearance. It was such a
subtle change that it was difficult to comprehend. The round, lissome
figure she had always been so pardonably vain about, and Grif had so
admired, had fallen a little, giving just a hint at a greater change
which might show itself sooner or later; her face seemed a trifle more
clearly cut than it ought to have been, and the slender throat, set in
its surrounding Elizabethan frill of white, seemed more slender than
it had used to be. Each change was slight enough in itself, but all
together gave a shadowy suggestion of alteration to affectionately quick
eyes.
“You are ill,” said Aimée. “And you never told me. It was wrong of you.
Don't tell me it is your black dress; your eyes are too big and bright
for any one who is well, and your hand is thinner than it ever was
before. Why, I can feel the difference as I hold it, and it is as
feverish as it can be.”
“You good, silly little thing!” said Dolly, laughing. “I am not ill at
all. I have caught a cold, perhaps, but that is all.”
“No you have not,” contradicted Aimée, with pitiful sharpness. “You have
not caught cold, and you must not tell me so. You are ill, and you have
been ill for weeks. The worst of colds could never make you look like
this. Mr. Gowan might well be startled and wonder--”
“Mr. Gowan!” Dolly interrupted her. “Did _he_ say that he was startled?”
“Yes, he did,” Aimée answered. “And that was what brought me here. He
was at Bloomsbury Place last night and told me all about you, and I made
up my mind that minute that I would come and judge for myself.”
Then the girl gave in. She sat down on a chair by the dressing-table
and rested her forehead on her hand, laughing faintly, as if in protest
against her own subjugation.
“Then I shall have to submit,” she said. “The fact is, I sometimes fancy
I do feel weaker than I ought to. It is n't like me to be weak. I
was always so strong, you know,--stronger than all the rest of you,
I thought. Miss MacDowlas says I do not look well. I suppose,” with a
half-sigh, “that every one will see it soon. Aimée,” hesitating, “don't
tell them at home.”
Aimée slipped an arm around her, and drew her head--dressed in all the
old elaborateness of pretty coils and braids--upon her own shoulder.
“Darling,” she whispered, trying to restrain her tears, “I must tell
them at home, because I must take you home to be nursed.”
“No, no!” said Dolly, starting, “that would never do. It would never
do even to think of it. I am not so ill as that,--not ill enough to be
nursed. Besides,” her voice sinking all at once, “I could n't go home,
Aimée,--I could not bear to go home now. That is why I have stayed away
so long. I believe it would _kill_ me!”
It was impossible for Aimée to hear this and be silent longer. She had,
indeed, only been waiting for some reference to the past.
“I knew it was that,” she cried. “I knew it the moment Mr. Gowan told
me. And I have feared it from the first. Nothing but that could have
broken you down like this. Dolly, if Grif could see you now, he would
give his heart's blood to undo what he has done.”
The pale little hands lying upon the black dress began to tremble in a
strange, piteous weakness.
“One cannot forget so much in so short a time,” Dolly pleaded. “And it
is so much,--more than even you think. One cannot forget seven years in
three months,--give me seven months, Aimée. I shall be better in time,
when I have forgotten.”
Forgotten! Even those far duller of perception than Aimée could have
seen that she would not soon forget. She had not begun in the right way
to forget. The pain which had made the pretty figure and the soft, round
face look faintly worn, was sharper to-day than it had been even three
months before, and it was gaining in sharpness every day, nay, every
hour.
“The days are so long,” she said, plaiting the silk of her dress on-the
restless hands. “We are so quiet, except when we have visitors, and
somehow visitors begin to tire me. I scarcely ever knew what it was
to be tired before. I don't care even to scatter the Philistines now,”
trying to smile. “I am not even roused by the prospect of meeting Lady
Augusta tonight. I forgot to tell you she was coming, did n't I? How she
would triumph if she knew how I have fallen and--and how miserable I
am! She used to say I had not a thought above the cut of my dresses. She
never knew about--_him_, poor fellow!”
It was curious to see how she still clung to that tender old pitying way
of speaking of Grif.
Aimee began to cry over her again.
“You must come home, Dolly,” she said. “You must, indeed. You will get
worse and worse if you stay here. I will speak to Miss MacDowlas myself.
You say she is kind to you.”
“Dear little woman,” said Dolly, closing her eyes as she let her head
rest upon the girl's shoulder. “Dear, kind little woman! indeed it will
be best for me to stay here. It is as I said,--indeed it is. If I were
to go home I should _die!_ Oh, don't you _know_ how cruel it would be!
To sit there in my chair and see his old place empty,--to sit and
hear the people passing in the street and know I should never hear his
footstep again,--to see the door open again and again, and know he would
never, never pass through. It would break my heart,--it would break my
heart!”
“It is broken now!” cried Aimée, in a burst of grief, and she could
protest no more.
But she remained as long as she well could, petting and talking to her.
She knew better than to offer her threadbare commonplace comfort, so
she took refuge in talking of life at Bloomsbury Place,--about Tod and
Mollie and Toinette, and the new picture Phil was at work upon. But it
was a hard matter for her to control herself sufficiently to conceal
that she was almost in an agony of anxiousness and foreboding. What was
she to do with this sadly altered Dolly, the mainspring of whose bright,
spirited life was gone? How was she to help her if she could not restore
Grif,--it was only Grif she wanted,--and where was he? It was just
as she had always said it would be,--without Grif, Dolly was Dolly
no longer,--for Grif's sake her faithful, passionate girl's heart was
breaking slowly.
Lady Augusta, encountering her ex-governess in the drawing-room that
evening, raised her eyeglass to that noble feature, her nose, and
condescended a questioning inspection, full of disapproval of the heavy,
well-falling black silk and the Elizabethan frill.
“You are looking shockingly pale and thin,” she said.
Dolly glanced at her reflection in an adjacent mirror. She only smiled
faintly, in silence.
“I was not aware that you were ill,” proceeded her ladyship.
“I cannot say that I am ill,” Dolly answered. “How is Phemie?”
“Euphemia,” announced Lady Augusta, “is well, and I _trust_” as if she
rather doubted her having so far overcome old influences of an evil
nature,--“I _trust_ improving, though I regret to hear from her
preceptress that she is singularly deficient in application to her
musical lessons.”
Dolly thought of the professor with the lumpy face, and smiled again.
Phemie's despairing letters to herself sufficiently explained why her
progress was so slow.
“I hope,” said her ladyship to Miss MacDowlas, afterward, “that you
are satisfied with Dorothea's manner of filling her position in your
household.”
“I never was so thoroughly satisfied in my life,” returned the old lady,
stiffly. “She is a very quickwitted, pleasantly natured girl, and I am
extremely fond of her.”
“Ah,” waving a majestic and unbending fan of carved ivory. “She has
possibly improved then. I observe that she is going off very much,--in
the matter of looks, I mean.”
“I heard a gentleman remark, a few minutes ago,” replied Miss MacDowlas,
“that the girl looked like a white rose, and I quite agreed with him;
but I am fond of her, as I said, and you are not.”
Her ladyship shuddered faintly, but she did not make any further
comment, perhaps feeling that her hostess was too powerful to encounter.
At midnight the visitors went their several ways, and after they had
dispersed and the rooms were quiet once again, Miss MacDowlas sent her
companion to bed, or, at least, bade her good-night.
“You had better go at once,” she said. “I will remain to give orders to
the servants. You look tired. The excitement has been too much for you.”
So Dolly thanked her and left the room; but Miss MacDowlas did not hear
her ascend the stairs, and accordingly, after listening a moment or so,
went to the room door and looked out into the hall. And right at the
foot of the staircase lay Dolly Crewe, the lustreless, trailing black
dress making her skin seem white as marble, her pretty face turned half
downward upon her arm.
Half an hour later the girl returned to consciousness to find herself
lying comfortably in bed, the chamber empty save for herself and Miss
MacDowlas, who was standing at her side watching her.
“Better?” she said. “That is right, my dear. The evening was too much
for you, as I was afraid it would be. You are not as strong as you
should be.”
“No,” Dolly answered, quietly.
There was a silence of a few minutes, during which she closed her eyes
again; but she heard Miss MacDowlas fidgeting a little, and at last she
heard her speak.
“My dear,” she said, “I think I ought to tell you something. When you
fell, I suppose you must somehow or other have pressed the spring of
your locket, for it was open when I went to you, and--I saw the face
inside it.”
“Grif,” said Dolly, in a tired voice, “Grif.”
And then she remembered how she had written to him about what this very
_dénouement_ would be when it came. How strange, how wearily strange, it
was to think that it should come about in such a way as this!
“My nephew,” said Miss MacDowlas. “Griffith Donne.”
“Yes,” said Dolly, briefly. “I was engaged to him.”
“Was!” echoed Miss MacDowlas. “Did he behave badly to you, my dear?”
“No, I behaved badly to him--and that is why I am ill.”
Miss MacDowlas blew her nose.
“How long?” she asked, at length. “May I ask how long you were engaged
to each other, my dear? Don't answer me if you do not wish.”
“I was engaged to him,” faltered the girlish voice,--“we were all the
world to each other for seven years--for seven long years.”