CHASING A SHADOW.
Mr. James Brownlow was a busy man; a hard-working solicitor, partner
in an old firm, and a good firm though scarcely a rich one. He was
not rich himself; he had worked hard all his life to attain moderate
comfort, and he continued to work hard, though he was now past
middle-age, partly to maintain the same standard of comfort, and partly
because he cherished a delusion that nothing in the firm could go on
without him. But, in spite of his business and its importance, he felt
bound to devote a certain amount of time to the affairs of the late
Miss Isabella Brownlow. It is true she was not a very near relation,
but he had been legal adviser as well as relation, and moreover, the
nieces she left seemed to be in a particularly solitary condition.
“But one is married, I thought,” Mrs. Brownlow objected from the
further end of the dinner-table. The train from Wrugglesby had
been late, and made the dinner late too; accordingly the lamb was
overcooked, and the clockwork regularity of the household disturbed.
Mrs. Brownlow felt slightly annoyed; also she considered that if one of
the nieces was married her husband should have taken over the affairs
of the family, instead of troubling somebody else’s husband,--and,
incidentally, somebody else’s excellent cook.
Mr. Brownlow probably knew these sentiments, but he was not disturbed
by them that night for the importance of business was great in his
eyes; moreover, he had been discreetly handled earlier in the day.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, one is married, comfortably married, I should
say; but a man is not bound to take over his wife’s family. He has
professed himself quite ready to give a home to the youngest girl; the
others will carry on the school.”
“A wise plan, I should think,” Mrs. Brownlow said, with a sigh. She
was always sadly affected by the delinquencies of the present age,
which she possessed great abilities for discovering. “It is liberal of
him,” she went on. “I suppose he will be repaid by the girl finding out
one day that she is unable to bear a dependent position and must make
her own way in the world, after having had a long training for it at
somebody else’s expense. Girls usually get such ideas nowadays.”
Mr. Brownlow agreed with the general sentiment, but defended this
particular girl. “I don’t think she is that sort at all,” he said. “She
is very young, a plain, quiet little thing; she looked docile; Miss
Hains spoke of her as if she were a child.”
“There is no family?” Mrs. Brownlow asked. “I mean the married
one,--Mrs. Morton, didn’t you say the name was--has no family?”
“No.”
“But if she has by-and-bye, what will become of this girl? Can they
afford to keep her? Is it wise, do you think?”
“I have talked it all over with Miss Hains who really is a sensible
woman. She is five and thirty, I dare say, and a sensible, clever
woman.” Polly might have been considered clever in some senses of the
word; that she had certain claims to ability was proved by the opinion
she had produced in Mr. Brownlow’s mind. “She and I,” went on the
worthy gentleman unconsciously placing the persons in their right order
of importance, “she and I have decided that her cousin Wilhelmina had
better return home with Mrs. Morton for the present. The school is
not larger than she herself, with the assistance of Miss Waring, can
manage. In the course of time they hope to increase it, when Wilhelmina
can come back to help them with the younger pupils.”
Mrs. Brownlow thought this an excellent arrangement and asked for
personal details of its originator.
“Miss Hains? No, she is not handsome,” her husband said in answer to
her question, “but a sensible, practical woman. Really it is quite
surprising how business-like she is when you come to think that she
has lived so long in that little country town,--how business-like
and yet how very womanly, how essentially feminine, not in the least
self-assertive and opinionated.”
Such were the golden opinions Polly had won from Mr. Brownlow. Hardly
so flattering was her opinion of him, which she was at that same time
expressing to Bella and Bill as they sat together in the twilight.
The first shock of their grief was now over. It is true there was an
aching blank left in their lives by the death of this kindly, not
over-wise aunt, but the first sharpness was over, the first ache a
little dulled. Bella and Theresa had lost their own mother not so many
years ago, and though they had dearly loved their aunt, the loss of her
was not what the earlier grief had been, nor yet what it was to Bill
who could remember no mother. Bill’s loss was greatest, and greatest
also to her was the shock, for this was the first time real sorrow had
touched her life. She had, too, more time and opportunity to think
about it, having, as the youngest, but little to do with all the plans
and work consequent upon Miss Brownlow’s death. Polly, of course, was
very busy: mourning alone offered a large field for her energies, for
the cousins could not afford to employ even the local milliner and
dressmaker.
“We must let them dress us for the funeral,” Polly had said, but added,
“I hardly think we need get Bill’s hat there; I will do that myself,
for we must save wherever we can. As for other clothes, we must manage
somehow; one good dress apiece is all we can afford.”
And she had sighed; extensive mourning would have compensated her
somewhat for a much heavier bereavement. Not but that she did mourn for
Miss Brownlow; her grief was real, though perhaps not quite so deep
as theirs, thought Bella and Theresa. As for Bill, when she had cried
herself sick with the abandonment of childhood, she felt an hysterical
inclination to laugh as she watched the perfection of Polly’s sorrow.
It was real, as real as any other of Polly’s feelings; she felt it
after her fashion, but principally because it was the fashion to feel
it.
By the May evening when Mr. Brownlow so much commended Polly, that
“sensible and practical woman” considered it time to abate the first
intensity of her grief. She had been abating it by degrees, and during
Mr. Brownlow’s visit had shown a demeanour of subdued sorrow blent
with practical common-sense. After his departure she subdued her
sorrow still more, and when the cousins sat together that evening she
discussed matters with the air of one who, having paid off the funeral
_cortège_, now opens the shutters and prepares to return to the normal
condition of things. Theresa had gone home to Haylands; she had been
obliged to go back there some time before, but had driven to Wrugglesby
with Robert that day so as to be present during Mr. Brownlow’s visit.
The school was to re-open at the beginning of the next week, the
holidays on account of Miss Brownlow’s death being deducted from the
midsummer vacation; an unavoidable arrangement not much to Polly’s
taste.
“We are too poor to afford sorrow,” she observed; “at least comfortable
sorrow.”
“As if comfort mattered at such a time!” Bella replied with scorn.
She was leaning with her elbows on the sill, looking through the open
window into the street.
Polly was of opinion that it did matter, but she did not explain her
views at length, for she wanted to talk over Mr. Brownlow’s suggestion.
“You and I,” she said to Bella, “are to keep on this school for the
rest of our lives. We must move into a smaller house to do it when the
lease of this one is up. How would Chestnut Villa do? It is empty now,
and I don’t expect anyone will take it before then; it is too mouldy.”
“Yes,” acquiesced Bella in a spiritless voice. She looked across the
empty, darkening street to the doctor’s prim house opposite; the
scent of the laburnums came to her from his garden, the sound of a
wheel-barrow from a neighbour’s close by. It was all very dull and
narrow and small--and the prospect offered? It is hard to be young and
fair and told at two-and-twenty that to live at Chestnut Villa (too
mouldy for anyone else) and teach small girls is one’s fate beyond
redemption.
“We are to keep on with the school,” Polly was saying.
“I suppose so.” Bella did not look round.
“Do you?” Polly retorted. “I don’t then! For one thing, I don’t suppose
the school will keep on with us.”
Bella did look round now. “It will, it must!” she exclaimed. “What else
are we to do?”
“It won’t,” Polly affirmed with confidence. “Look how it has gone down
even while poor Aunt, whom everyone knew, was here. If she,--and people
sent their children to her out of friendship or because their cousins
or someone used to come--if she could not keep it together, what are we
likely to do? You can teach, but you have not passed many examinations,
and you are young and not at all imposing; as for me, I have no
certificates at all.”
“But, Polly, you are clever in your own way; surely you could get
pupils?”
Polly did not think so, and she proceeded to make a statement of the
case,--which girls were leaving, which likely to leave, and which among
those living in the district were likely to come to Langford House, the
last appearing to be very few. The case as set forth by her was not
inspiriting.
“But,” said Bella at last, “why did you not tell Mr. Brownlow this? You
seemed to think it all satisfactory when you were talking to him.”
“Mr. Brownlow!” Polly replied contemptuously. “What would be the good
of telling a person like that?”
“We have no one else to advise or help us, no one at all; Robert does
not know and I am sure you don’t think much of his opinion.”
Seeing Bella in real consternation, Bill shut her book. It was A
MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM, recommended by Mr. Dane, and she had found a
great delight in it during those days. “What is your plan?” she asked
Polly, as she put the book away and seated herself on the table.
“I cannot say I have a plan,” Polly answered slowly, “not exactly a
plan,--I may not do it; it depends on several things.”
“Several persons?” Bill suggested; “persons or a person?” Polly did not
answer, and Bill followed up her suspicions: “A person who you are not
sure will do what you want?”
Polly shifted uneasily; she seldom reckoned persons as obstacles to her
plans, but in this case Bill was right, for she herself was the person
in question, and Polly was not at all sure of the worth of her own
authority over her ward--she and Theresa had been appointed guardians.
“It is all very perplexing,” she said with a sigh. “I hardly know what
will be best to do for you and me. It principally concerns you and me,
as poor Aunt said, for Bella has a little money of her own, and, even
if she does not marry, she is never likely to want a home with Theresa
living so near.”
“Neither is Bill,” Bella said. “Robert has offered it to Bill; I don’t
see how you can expect him to take us both. I am very glad he has
offered it to her; she wants it much more than I do.”
Polly agreed. “But,” she added, “I should not think Bill would like to
quarter herself on Robert and Theresa for the rest of her life; that is
what it would amount to, for she could never be a governess and come
and go as you could. It was very kind of them to offer it, but I should
not think Bill would take it, except, of course, just for the present.
I know I should not.”
“You will mostly take all you can get,” Bill observed not without
truth. Before Polly could deny the charge she asked: “On whom does your
plan depend? Not on Bella; she evidently has nothing to do with it;
have I?”
“Yes, Bill,” Polly said severely; “it is for your good as well as
mine. You don’t deserve to be considered, but I have a sense of
responsibility.”
“What can I do that is any good to you?” Bill speculated. “What is it,
Polly? Something you hardly expect me to do?”
“Nothing of the sort! I should always expect you to do as I wished,
especially as I am your guardian.”
An audience of two was quite sufficient for Polly, who even when alone
could hardly refrain from taking a part. Bill knew the value of her
efforts. “What is your plan?” she asked simply, and Polly, after a few
more preliminary flourishes, set it forth. Briefly it was this: to let
things remain as arranged with Mr. Brownlow until Christmas, when the
lease of the house expired; then to give up the school,--sell it if
there was anything to sell--Bella to obtain a situation as resident
governess, making Haylands her home in the holidays; Polly and Bill to
move to London or the suburbs--
“And take lodgers!” cried Bill.
“Yes, probably,” Polly said; “we should not have enough to live on
without doing something, and that would be the best we could do. I have
thought about boarders, but that won’t do; you want more capital for a
boarding house; besides boarders are a nuisance, nor do they really pay
so well as lodgers, though of course they sound much better. We need
not tell people about here that we are letting lodgings; we can say we
are taking a few paying guests, because we could not get a house small
enough for just our two selves.”
This plan, except for the unnecessary deception, met with Bella’s
entire approval. Bill, to Polly’s annoyance, did not give an opinion,
but sat thinking, probably of what part she was to play and why she,
rather than Bella, had been chosen for the venture. The same question
occurred to Bella. “Why should not you and I do this?” she asked.
“I should do just as well as Bill, and besides, we should have more
capital as I could put my money into it. And then there would be no
need to upset Robert’s arrangement; I am sure he really meant Bill to
make Haylands her home.”
“My dear Bella”--Polly was motherly--“there are two or three reasons
why it should not be you. To begin with, you are too pretty; our
lodgers will probably be men, very likely young city men,--you
understand? To go on with, why should not Bill be independent? If she
puts her share of the money in and helps me she would be independent in
a measure, and I certainly know of no other way in which she could be.”
Bella was not altogether satisfied; but Bill was, for she had solved
the problem on her own account. “There is going to be no servant kept
in that house!” she exclaimed.
“What nonsense!” Bella said, and Polly explained that she should
have a girl. Then they talked the plan over afresh, Bill remaining
aggravatingly silent. At last, Bella going into the kitchen to speak to
the maid, Polly turned angrily to the table where the small figure was
almost lost in the darkness. “I suppose,” she said sharply, “you are
going to oppose me?”
Bill laughed softly. “Fancy you being afraid of me and my opposition,”
she said half to herself.
Polly did not attempt to deny the fact. “You are the most obstinate,
contrary, silly little creature in the world,” was her only answer.
Bill seemed still more amused. “Why did you let me know you were
afraid?” she asked.
“What is the good of pretending?” was Polly’s only answer, and Bill
quoted some past words of her cousin’s in reply. “‘Truth is a luxury
poor people cannot always afford;’ I have heard you give that to
somebody as an excuse for your pretending. I don’t think it a very good
one myself, but I have heard you make it. I suppose you can afford to
be truthful with me?”
“I am not going to pretend with you,” Polly said. “Look here, Bill, you
are only a child and you are very ignorant and not at all clever,--I
hope you don’t mind me saying these things, I am only telling the plain
truth--you are all this, but in some respects you have much more sense
than Bella and Theresa; you have more vitality, more--I don’t know
what--but more backbone; you are not so much a Brownlow, not a Brownlow
at all.”
“Thank you.” Bill did not seem overwhelmed with the flattery.
“What is your objection?” Polly asked after a pause: “I suppose you
think you would have to work too hard.”
“No I don’t. Oh, no I don’t at all; we should share the work out
fairly, Polly, very fairly.”
Just then Bella came back, and the discussion was dropped, but Polly
was not altogether dissatisfied, concluding from Bill’s manner then,
and later, that she would probably fall in with the plan when the time
came. As for Bill there was no hesitation in her mind about accepting
the proposition; there was nothing else she could do, for she could not
live with Robert and Theresa permanently, unless they would let her
work their garden for a profit and look upon the proceeds as payment
from her. They would not let her do this, so, though she would have
preferred the garden to the lodgings, she was quite willing to accept
the latter, since the former was unattainable. Live with Theresa
without the garden she would not, for she had discovered, or rather she
had gradually come to know of certain things which led her to believe
that Theresa and Robert could not afford to offer her a permanent home.
“I don’t believe Theresa knows,” she said to herself, “or if she does,
she does not realise how things are. I wonder if Robert does? He was
always telling me separate bits; I wonder if he looks at things whole;
but he must, of course he must do so.”
These thoughts occupied Bill’s mind a good deal, and another was added
to them at this time, surprise at her own power over Polly. Either
openly or covertly Polly’s will had been supreme at Langford House;
she had always planned and decided for them all; it was a strange and
wonderful thing that she should have considered Bill in this plan,
feared her opposition even while she sought her help--strange yet
perhaps not altogether unreasonable. Bill felt a childish amusement
in the novelty of the situation, and also a sense of responsibility.
But of course she had, and she knew she had, a certain compelling
power over Polly, else why had she taken her to Wood Hall? Shrewd,
unprincipled Polly! To be sure, Bill did not call her that: she did
not think about her principles, but, true to her nature, accepted her
cousin as she found her, and never judged her at all.
What with one thing and another Bill seemed to be fast growing older:
when she went back to Ashelton at the end of May she felt that years
instead of weeks had elapsed since she had left it. A month makes a
difference to the country in the spring-time, and she noticed many
changes during the drive to Haylands. The grass had grown: in some of
the fields it had come up into little billows, where a patch of more
fertile soil had caused some part to rise above the rest; in other
fields it was all long and soft, spiked here and there with the shafts
of its unopened flowers. Everywhere there were butter-cups, a golden
cloth of butter-cups; everywhere hawthorn, each hedge snow-powdered
with its blossom, each thorn-bush a bride in its white veil. The earth
had been busy, Bill felt, very busy; the early fruit was set in the
orchard, the blossom was off the apples, the oaks fully in leaf, the
cow-parsley, waist-high, made every ditch a fairy-land.
It had all changed very much, and Bill felt that she had changed too;
then she turned to the garden, and in a sudden rebound from the trouble
of the past weeks forgot about herself and her changes. There was so
much, so very much to be done, to have lost a month at this time of
year was a sad thing. She worked desperately, enthusiastically, to make
up for it; and at dusk she struck work and forgot all about her age
and her responsibilities, wandering forth with Shakespeare’s fairies
(she knew them all by heart now) into the orchard and the fields and
the deep, grass-grown ditches almost as if she expected to find the
fairy-folk there.
And thus it was that Gilchrist Harborough found her. During her absence
at Wrugglesby he had debated his problem of natural selection more than
once, and had at last decided to let matters drift. He did not phrase
his decision thus; he put it that, since he was not likely to see her
again for a long time, it was not worth thinking about it any more. So
he did not think; indeed, he thought so little that, when he saw Bill
again, he forgot the problem and never for an instant thought of her as
an integral part of it, or as a practical farmer’s wife, or anything
else practical. He himself on that occasion could hardly be regarded
as a practical person seeking a wife in a cool and reasonable manner.
There was no suggestion of a carefully thought out plan about it; it
was just man and woman, and the dewy fragrance of trodden grass in the
dusk of an evening when May and June meet to make it neither spring nor
summer but a mid-heaven between.
He heard Bill’s curious many-noted voice as he passed down the lane
where he had talked with her on the day they first spoke of Robert
Morton. She had been in the orchard then, as she was now. She had
discovered an echo in the orchard,--the back of some barns, the end of
an old wall, something caused it; it pleased her, and she sang softly,
pausing to hear the repeated sound. “Fearest to love me”--and “love
me” came the echo distinctly. “Love me,” she cried again to the clear
repetition, “love me--me!” answering the sound as it answered her, till
the twilight seemed filled with passionate whispering melody.
Harborough stopped abruptly. If he had been wise he would have gone
on, but he forgot to be wise; we are none of us always wise. The old
love-song had wooed another on a summer night long ago; it held him
now, it roused something in him, and he could not go. The singer
ceased; she must have felt his presence, for she turned where she stood
knee-deep in the coarse grasses and white-flowered weeds, and saw him
leaning against the gate.
“Go on,” he said; “finish it.”
It was perhaps not a polite form of greeting after her weeks of absence
and trouble, but he had forgotten that; he had forgotten everything in
his desire to hear the words that he knew should follow. The natural
man in him was urging him to leap the gate, to stand beside her, and to
make her say those words for him.
She hesitated in silence for a moment. In the dusk she could not see
his face very clearly, yet she must have known that the self in him to
which she appealed was in the ascendant; she wanted to play and to make
him play, yet she was half afraid. “No,” she said standing still among
the grasses.
“Yes,” he answered, “yes--I will come and make you!”
Then the witchcraft of the night took possession of her, and the
unnamed, irresistible impulses, thought of our simple ancestry to be
born of the elfin-folk, came upon her. “Come then!” she cried.
In an instant he was over the gate, under the green twilight of the
apple-trees, among the grasses where she stood. But she, now wild as a
kitten at evening, had fled; from the denser shadow of the nut-bushes
she called to him, yet when he reached their shade her voice came from
a far corner of the orchard--“Fearest to love me--fearest”--and because
she was now in the best possible position for her echo the answer came
back “Fearest,” “fearest!” till it was hard to say which was the fickle
varying voice and which the repeated sound.
It was like hunting a shadow, about as easy, about as wise, but--but
he was young and she was younger still, and the earth redecked was
young too, young with eternal youth. The fragrance of its breath was
like wine to them, the scent of the falling laburnum and lilac in the
garden, the smell of the hawthorn in the hedge, the trodden grass under
foot, the dew that was upon the ground, the wind that whispered in the
darkness of the trees. He was intoxicated with it, intoxicated with
the chase; an instinct of the days when man wooed maid with swiftness
of foot and strength of arm was upon him. He was--ah, well, it did not
matter, there was no explanation; only when suddenly he startled her
all unawares among the tall weeds, he completed the line which surprise
had stayed on her lips. “Fearest,” she had called thinking him far
away; and “To love me?” he finished, crushing her to silence in his
arms.
For a moment she was still in his arms; it might have been her will, it
might not;--then, with a sudden effort she wrenched herself free, and
he was alone in the darkening orchard.