The return of the Warrenders to their home was not the usual calm
delight of settling again into one's well-known place. The house at
Highcombe was altogether new to their experiences, and meant a life in
every way different, as well as different surroundings. It was a tall
red brick house, with a flight of steps up to the door, and lines of
small, straight, twinkling windows facing immediately into the street,
between which and the house there was no interval even of a grass plot
or area. The garden extended to the right with a long stretch of high
wall, but the house had been built at a period when people had less
objection to a street than in later times. The rooms within were of a
good size but not very high; some of them were panelled to the ceiling
with an old-fashioned idea of comfort and warmth. The drawing-room
was one of these, a large oblong room to the front with a smaller one
divided from it by folding-doors, which looked out upon the garden. It
possessed, as its great distinction, a pretty marble mantelpiece, which
some one of a previous generation had brought from Italy. It is sad to
be obliged to confess that the panelling here had been painted, a warm
white, like the colour of a French salon, with old and dim pictures of
no particular merit let in here and there,--pictures which would have
been more in keeping with the oak of the original than with the present
colour of the walls. The house had been built by a Warrender, in the end
of the seventeenth century, and though it had been occupied by strangers
often, and let to all sorts of people, a considerable amount of the
furniture, and all the decorations, still belonged to that period. The
time had not come for the due appreciation of these relics of ancestral
taste. Chatty thought them all old-fashioned, and would gladly have
replaced them by fresh chairs and tables from the upholsterers: but
this was an expense not to be thought of, and, perhaps, even to eyes
untrained in any rules of art, there was something harmonious in the
combination. Something harmonious, too, with Chatty's feelings was in
the air of old tranquillity and long established use and wont. The
stillness of the house was as the stillness of ages. Human creatures
had come and gone, as the days went and came, sunshine coming in at one
moment, darkness falling the next, nothing altering the calm routine,
the established order. Pains and fevers and heartbreaks, and death
itself, would disappear and leave no sign, and all remain the same
in the quaint rose-scented room. The quiet overawed Chatty, and yet
was congenial. She felt herself to have come "home" to it, with all
illusions over. It was not just an ordinary coming back after a
holiday,--it was a return, a settling down for life.
It would be difficult to explain how it was that this conviction had
taken hold of her so strongly. It was but a month since she had left the
Warren with her mother, with some gentle anticipations of pleasure, but
none that were exaggerated or excessive. All that was likely to happen,
as far as she knew, was that dinner party at Mrs. Benson's, and a play
or two, and a problematical hall. This was all that the "vortex" meant
about which her mother had laughed; she had not any idea at that time
that the vortex would mean Dick Cavendish. But now that she fully
understood what it meant, and now that it was all over, and her agitated
little bark had come out of it, and had got upon the smooth calm waters
again, there had come to Chatty a very different conception both of the
present and the past. All the old quiet routine of existence seemed to
her now a preface to that moment of real life. She had been working up
to it vaguely without knowing it. And now it had ended, and this was the
Afterwards. She had come back--after. These words had to her an absolute
meaning. Perhaps it was want of imagination which made it so impossible
for her to carry forward her thoughts to any possible repetition, any
sequel of what had been; or perhaps some communication, unspoken,
unintended, from the mind of Cavendish had affected hers and given a
certainty of conclusion, of the impossibility of further development.
However that might be, her mind was entirely made up on this subject.
She had lived (for three weeks), and it was over. And now existence was
all Afterwards. She found scarcely any time for her habitual occupations
while she was in London, but now there would be time for everything.
Afterwards is long, when one is only twenty-four, and it requires a
great deal of muslin work and benevolence to fill it up in a way that
will be satisfactory to the soul; but still, to ladies in the country it
is a very well known state, and has to be faced, and lived through all
the same. To a great many people life is all afternoon, though not in
the sense imagined by the poet: not the lotus-eating drowsiness and
content, but a course of little hours that lead to nothing, that have
no particular motive except that mild duty which means doing enough
trimming for your new set of petticoats and carrying a pudding or a
little port wine to the poor girl who is in a consumption in the lane
behind your house. This was the Afterwards of Chatty's time, and she
settled down to it, knowing it to be the course of nature. Nowadays,
matters have improved: there is always lawn tennis and often ambulance
lectures, and far more active parish work. But even in those passive
days it could be supported, and Chatty made up her mind to it with a
great, but silent courage. But it made her very quiet, she who was
quiet by nature. The land where it is always afternoon chills at first
and subdues all lively sentiments. The sense of having no particular
interest, took possession of her mind as if it had been an absorbing
interest, and drew a veil between her and the other concerns of life.
This was not at all the case with Mrs. Warrender, who came home with all
the agreeable sensations of a new beginning, ready to take up new lines
of existence, and to make a cheerful centre of life for herself and all
who surrounded her. If any woman should feel with justice that she has
reached the Afterwards, and has done with her active career, it should
be the woman who has just settled down after her husband's death to
the humbler house provided for her widowhood apart from all her old
occupations and responsibilities. But in reality there was no such
sentiment in her mind. "You'll in your girls again be courted." She had
hanging about her the pleasant reflection of that wooing, never put into
words, with which Dick Cavendish had filled the atmosphere, and which
had produced upon the chief object of it so very different an effect;
and she had the less pleasurable excitement of Theo's circumstances, and
of all that was going on at Markland, a romance in which her interest
was almost painful, to stimulate her thoughts. The Eustace Thynnes did
not count for much, for their love-making had been very mild and regular,
but still, perhaps, they aided in the general quickening of life. She
had three different histories thus going on around her, and she was
placed in a new atmosphere, in which she had to play a part of her own.
When Chatty and she sat down together in the new drawing-room for the
first time with their work and their plans, Mrs. Warrender's talk was of
their new neighbours and the capabilities of the place. "The rector is
not a stupid man," she said, in a reflective tone. The proposition was
one which gently startled Chatty. She lifted her mild eyes from her
work, with a surprised look.
"It would be very sad for us if he was stupid," she said.
"And Mrs. Barham still less so. What I am thinking of is society,
not edification. Then there is Colonel Travers, whom we used to see
occasionally at home, the brother, you know, of ----. An old soldier is
always a pleasant element in a little place. The majority will of course
be women like ourselves, Chatty."
"Yes, mamma, there are always a great many ladies about Highcombe."
Mrs. Warrender gave forth a little sigh. "In a country neighbourhood we
swamp everything," she said; "it is a pity. Too many people of one class
are always monotonous: but we must struggle against it, Chatty."
"Dear mamma, isn't ladies' society the best for us? Minnie always said
so. She said it was a dreadful thing for a girl to think of gentlemen."
"Minnie always was an oracle. To think of gentlemen whom you were likely
to fall in love with, and marry, perhaps--but I don't think there are
many of that class here."
"Oh no," said Chatty, returning to her work, "at least I hope not."
"I am not at all of your opinion, my dear. I should like a number of
them; and nice girls too. I should not wish to keep all these dangerous
personages for you."
"Mamma!" said Chatty, with a soft reproachful glance. It seemed a
desecration to her to think that ever again--that ever another----
"That gives a little zest to all the middle-aged talks. It amuses other
people to see a little romance going on. You were always rather shocked
at your light-minded mother, Chatty."
"Mamma! it might be perhaps very sad for--for those most concerned,
though it amused you."
"I hope not, my darling. You take things too seriously. There is, to be
sure, a painful story now and then, but very rarely. You must not think
that men are deceivers ever, as the song says."
"Oh no," said Chatty, elevating her head with simple pride, though
without meeting her mother's eyes, "that is not what I would say. But
why talk of such things at all? why put romances, as you call them, into
people's heads? People may be kind and friendly without anything more."
Mrs. Warrender here paused to study the gentle countenance which was
half hidden from her, bending over the muslin work, and for the first
time gained a little glimpse into what was going on in Chatty's heart.
The mother had long known that her own being was an undiscovered country
for her children; but it was new to her and a startling discovery that
perhaps this innocent creature, so close to her, had also a little
sanctuary of her own, into which the eyes most near to her had never
looked. She marked the little signs of meaning quite unusual to her
composed and gentle child--the slight quiver which was in Chatty's
bent head, the determined devotion to her work which kept her face
unseen--with a curious confusion in her mind. She had felt sure that
Dick Cavendish had made a difference in life to Chatty; but she had
not thought of this in any but a hopeful and cheerful way. She was more
startled now than she dared say. Had there been any explanation between
them which she had not been told of? Was there any obstacle she did not
know? Her mind was thrown into great bewilderment, too great to permit
of any exercise of her judgment suddenly upon the little mystery--if
mystery there was.
"I did not mean to enter into such deep questions," she said, in a tone
which she felt to be apologetic. "I meant only a little society to keep
us going. Though we did not go out very much in London, still there was
just enough to make the blank more evident if we see nobody here."
Chatty's heart protested against this view: for her part she would have
liked that life which had lasted three weeks to remain as it was, unlike
anything else in her experience, a thing which was over, and could return
no more. Had she not been saying to herself that all that remained to her
was the Afterwards, the long gray twilight upon which no other sun would
rise? In her lack of imagination, the only imagination she had known
became more absolute than any reality, a thing which once left behind
would never be renewed again. She felt a certain scorn of the attempt to
make feeble imitations of it, or even to make up for that light which
never was on sea or shore, by any little artificial illuminations. A
sort of gentle fury, a wild passion of resistance, rose within her at
the thought of making up for it. She did not wish to make up for it: the
blank could not be made less evident whatever any one might do or say.
But all this Chatty shut up in her own heart. She made no reply, but
bent her head more and more over her muslin work, and worked faster and
faster, with the tears collecting, which she never would consent to
shed, hot and salt behind her eyes.
Mrs. Warrender was silent too. She was confounded by the new phase
of feeling, imperfectly revealed to her, and filled with wonder, and
self-reproach, and sympathy. Had she been to blame to leave her child
exposed to an influence which had proved too much for her peace of
mind?--that was the well-worn conventional phrase, and it was the only
one that seemed to answer the occasion, too much for her peace of mind!
The mother, casting stealthy glances at her daughter, so sedulously,
nervously busy, could only grope at a comprehension of what was in
Chatty's mind. She thought it was the uncertainty, the excitement of
suspense, and all that feverish commotion which sometimes arises in a
woman's mind when the romance of her life comes to a sudden pause and
silence follows the constant interchange of words and looks, and the
doubt whether anything more will ever follow, or whether the pause is to
be for ever, turns all the sweeter meditations into a whirl of confusion
and anxiety and shame. A mother is so near that the reflection of her
child's sentiments gets into her mind, but very often with such prismatic
changes, and oblique catchings of the light, that even sympathy goes
wrong. Mrs. Warrender thus caught from Chatty the representation of an
agitated soul in which there was all the sensitive shame of a love
that is given unsought, mingled with a tender indignation against the
offender who perhaps had never meant--But the mother on this point took
a different view, and there rose up in her mind on the moment, a hundred
cheerful, hopeful plans to bring him back and to set all right. Naturally
there was not a word said on the subject, which was far too delicate for
words; but this was how Mrs. Warrender followed, as she believed, with
an intensity which was full of tenderness, the current of her daughter's
thoughts.
And yet these were not Chatty's thoughts at all. If she felt any
excitement it was against those plans for cheering her, and the idea
that any little contrivances of society could ever take the place of
what was past--conjoined with a sort of jealousy of that past, lest any
one should interfere with it, or attempt to blur the perfect outline of
it as a thing which had been, and could be no more, nor any copy of
it. This was what the soul most near her own did not divine. They sat
together in the silence of the summer parlour, the cool sweet room full
of flowers, with the July sun shut out, but the warm air coming in, so
full of mutual love and sympathy, and yet with but so disturbed and
confused an apprehension each of each. After some time had passed thus,
without any disturbance, nothing but the softened sounds of morning
traffic in the quiet street, a slow cart passing, an occasional carriage,
the voices of the children just freed from school, there came the quick
sound of a horse's hoofs, a pause before the door, and then the bell
echoing into the silence of the house.
"That must be Theo," cried Mrs. Warrender. "I was sure he would come
to-day. Chatty, after luncheon, will you leave us a little, my dear? Not
that we have any secrets from you: but he will speak more freely, if he
is alone with me."
"I should have known that, mamma, without being told."
"Dear Chatty, you must not be displeased. You know many things more than
I had ever thought."
"Displeased, mamma!"
"Hush, Chatty, here is my poor boy."
Her poor boy! the triumphant lover, the young man at the height of his
joy and pride. They both rose to meet him, eager, watching to take the
tone which should be most in harmony with his. But Mrs. Warrender had a
pity in her heart for Theo which she did not feel for Chatty--perhaps
because in her daughter's case her sympathy was more complete.