THE GRISLY KITTENS
Elizabeth, as requested by her stepmother, did not leave her concert
that night until the very last note of all had died away. But it
is doubtful whether that request had very much to do with it: the
probability is that she was really incapable of doing so. Just as the
hypnotized subject has his will taken possession of by his controller,
so that all his wishes, his intentions, his desires are for the time in
abeyance and the independence of his own powers completely paralysed,
so that night Elizabeth was taken captive by the power of sound. Many
times before she had felt that she was penetrating into a new kingdom,
a fresh province of thought and feeling, but to-night a more surprising
adventure held her bound. She penetrated into no fresh kingdoms, she
saw no new peaks upraise themselves or valleys carve themselves at
her feet. She was completely in familiar places; only a fresh light,
one that for her had never lit sea or land, shone on them, which
transfigured them not by fantastic effects and the sensationalism of
musical limelights, but with the dawning as of the everlasting day.
She was unconsciously prepared for this, as she had never been before.
She, or a hundred others whose souls were steeped with the love of
melody, might have heard just what she heard that night, and have had
their tastes gratified, their emotions roused, without being gripped
in this manner so supreme, so enlightening. New sensations might have
flitted through her, new beauties been perceived, new glories been
manifested, without this ethical perception being awakened. But with
her to-night, all the quiet patience of these past months, of the
succession of dark and difficult days, to solve the meaning of which
she had applied herself with efforts and strivings after the light, so
unremitting, so unnoticed, had rendered her capable of receiving the
true illumination. Cell by cell, she had stored honey in the dark; now
with the coming of spring, the workers of her soul swarmed out with
rush of joyous wings into the light. She was charged to the brim with
supersaturated waters; it wanted but the one atom the more to be added
that should solidify all that had been put into her, all that by the
grace of God she had gathered. Probably the meeting with Edward gave
her the last crystal of the salt, took out from her love the grain of
bitterness that still lurked there. That made her ready to receive the
ultimate gift that music has to bring, namely, the identification of it
with all other noble effort, the perception of its truth, which is one
with the truth of everything that is beautiful, and is lit by the light
that illuminates the whole world, and turns it into the garden of God.
Never again in those on whom one gleam of the light has shone can it be
wholly quenched. For the future they know from their own selves, from
the recollection of the one thing in the world which it is impossible
to forget, that whatever storms of adversity, thunder-clouds of trouble
lower, there is no such thing any more for them as a darkness quite
untransfused, no place so slippery that they can doubt whether their
feet are set on a rock and their goings ordered.
The hall was but half-filled, and Elizabeth, seated at the back of the
amphitheatre, saw she would be uncumbered with the distraction of near
neighbours. The concert opened with the Third Symphony of Brahms, and
immediately she was carried into it. Even as one who looks at some
superb statue has his mind modelled, as it were, into the image of what
he sees, so that his body can, faintly following, unconsciously drop
into a pose somewhat like it, so, listening to this, she was made one
with it, fused into it, so that, while it sang its message to her, she
knew of no existence separate from it. Her mind, her nature became part
of it; she, like a sheet of calm waters, burned with the glories of the
melodious sky. She became godlike, as she inhaled that ampler ether of
glorified intellect through music, which perhaps alone of the arts can
make wholly visible to the spiritual eye the wonder and the beauty of
pure and abstract thought. No longer did its melodies suggest images to
her; her brain strove not after similes to express, as it were, in mere
black and white the effect of the rainbow song; it revealed itself,
mind.
Then the hall swam into sight again; there was applause. It sounded
quite meaningless; you did not clap your hands when daylight came.
There were but three items in the programme, and for the second, the
grand piano in front of the stage was opened. The player was familiar
enough to her, he with his magical fingers and exuberant youth, but
just now he seemed a detached and impersonal figure, as nameless as the
viol-holding cherubim in a canvas of Bellini, who make music for the
reverie of the saints and angels who stand on either side of the Mother
of God. But it was no song of heavenly soul and sexless quires that
he was to sing; he was the interpreter of the joy of life and of love
and of the myriad emotions that spring like flowers from the fruitful
earth. Brahms had revealed what is possible to the wise mind of man,
here in the great concerto Tschaikowsky poured out the inspired tale of
its emotions; the splendour of their shining, the tenderness of their
reveries. Instantly in the presence of this more concrete, more frail
and human music the images leaped and danced again in Elizabeth's mind.
The noonday shone on the innumerable smile of a blue sea; high above
the sultry plain were fixed the spear-heads of Chitral; the dusk fell
on the Indian garden with its tangle of Peshawar roses. More personal
yet grew the appeal. She walked with her father there; she showed him,
as never yet had it been given her to show him, how love had touched
her, even as he had said, with its enchantment, how the loyalty of her
renunciation of its material fulfilment had not withered its stem, but
caused it to blossom with a rarer and more fragrant flowering. She told
him how the bitter waters had been sweetened, how the sting had been
sheathed, how through darkness love had felt its way up to the day.
With tender glance at the pain of it that was passed they dwelt on it;
with smiles for her miscomprehension of its growth, for her ignorance
of where it led they traced its springing tendrils, on which there were
the traces of healed scars where it had bled. But its bleeding was
over, and strong grew its shoots over unsightly places. The whole world
danced together, not men and women only, not only boys and girls, but
sun and sea and sky, and the lions in the desert and the tigers burning
bright in the jungle. The peaks and ledges of untrodden snow danced in
a whirling magical maze of rhythmic movement. The angels of God joined
in it; the devils of hell would have done so had there been such things
as devils, or such a place as hell. Again the music grew more personal.
All she had ever known of joy, and that was much, was marshalled round
her, and through the dancers, this crowd of earthly elements, came he
whom every nerve and agent of perception in her body loved. Her human
power of emotion leaped to the supremest arc of that rainbow curve, and
with him stood there poised. By some divine right he was hers, by a
right no less divine he was separated from her. Yet that separation was
somehow one with the union.
Then followed a pause of some ten minutes. But no reaction came to
her, for it was no mimic show that was now over, no feigned dramatic
presentment that she had watched or listened to (she hardly knew
which), but something quite real, more real than the rows of dark red
stalls, than the shaded scarlet lights, like huge inverted anemones,
which hung above the orchestra, more real even than the actual music
itself, which was but the husk or at most the temporary embodiment
of the truth that underlay and illumined it. She had been shown the
vision of mind at its highest, of emotion in its supremest degree.
There was something still lacking, which should bind them together,
exhibit them, as they truly were, parts of an infinite whole. She knew
what was coming, and with the tenseness of an expectation that must be
fulfilled, with a suspense that was not the less for the certainty of
its coming resolution, she waited.
Half an hour later she came out into the mellow spring night, that
teemed with the promise of the south-west wind. Just as the Brahms
symphony had summed up for her the glory of mind, and the Tschaikowsky
concerto had sung of the depth and sunlit splendours of human emotion,
so the Good Friday music had bridged and connected the two, and shown
her whence came the light that shone on them. But whereas the concerto
had led her through generalities to its culmination of the appeal to
her own individual personality, and its needs and longings, in this
she was led across the dim threshold of herself, so to speak, into the
halls that were full of light, into the house of many mansions. Vivid
and ecstatic at first had been the sense of her own intense experience;
she was bathed in sun and sea, and then was opened to her a communion
of soul with those she loved that transcended all she had ever felt
before. And yet, very soon, that faded into nothingness, it passed off
the shield of her perception, as a breath is dispersed in frosty air;
soon she was no longer the centre of her consciousness, but only an
atom of infinite insignificance in it. It was no revelation of herself
that was thus manifested, yet inasmuch as she was part of the vital
essence of the love that crowned the human understanding, the human
passions, inasmuch as she could give thanks for its great glory, that
glory was part of her, her love part of it. One and indivisible it
stirred in her, even as it moved the sun and all the stars....
It was with no sense of interruptions or of a broken mood that she came
out into the jostling of the populous streets, for truth is not a mood,
and they with their crowded pavements and whirring roadways were part
of it also, and knew her solemn and joyful secret. Without doubt she
would not always be able to feel with the same vividness of perception
that the eternal peace encompassed her, but, having once realized it,
she knew that it would be there always, a sure refuge, that it was the
answer to all the riddles and difficulties that life assuredly would
continue to ply her with. Again and again, she knew, they would puzzle
and perplex her, again and again she would be mist-blinded by them. But
she had seen an authentic glimpse, as from Pisgah, of the kingdom to
which led the royal roads. They might wind over stony hill-sides, be
packed with sand, or clogged with resistant mire, but they led to the
promised land, to the kingdom that was within, the gates of which stood
open night and day, for all who willed to enter.
It was late, already after eleven, when she dismounted from the 'bus
at the corner of Oakley Street, and she half expected to find that her
stepmother had gone to bed. It must be allowed that Elizabeth would
not have been very sorry if this proved to be the case, for she felt
that she could give but a vague attention to the voluble trivialities
that would otherwise await her. But not till she had softly closed the
street door behind her, did she bring into focus the fact that Mrs.
Fanshawe had been dining alone with Sir Henry, or that the voluble
trivialities might be supplanted by news not trivial at all.
The idea when first it had occurred to her had repelled her, with the
repulsion that a deep love must naturally feel for any self-conscious
and shallow affection. There was a sort of heart-breaking jar in the
thought that Mrs. Fanshawe, with her pen still dipping for ink to write
the Memoir, should be thinking about re-marriage. But now the repulsion
had left her; she found herself less jealous for her father's memory,
more ready to let the immortality of love look after itself, more
capable of sinking her personal feeling. It was not that the idea had
lost its sharp edges from her greater familiarity with it; she saw it
as distinctly as ever; only the sharp edges now failed to fret her.
Besides, how could the shallowness of her stepmother's affections, the
insincerity that in itself was of so unreal a nature, affect anything
that was real?
Mrs. Fanshawe had not gone to bed, but was sitting in a very pretty
pensive attitude (hastily assumed when she heard Elizabeth's step on
the stairs) over a brisk little fire, in front of which was standing in
the fender a small covered dish. She had put on a white bedroom wrapper
with little black bows of ribbon; her long, abundant hair streamed over
her shoulders; there was never so bewitching a little widow. She held
out her arm with a welcoming gesture as Elizabeth entered.
"Darling, how late you are!" she said. "But if you have been enjoying
yourself that is all I ask of you. I could not bear to think that my
little Elizabeth should come in and find a silent house, with no one to
welcome her home."
She got up and gave Elizabeth a little butterfly kiss.
"See, dear, I lit the fire for you with my own hands, so that your
supper might keep warm. There is a napkin which I spread for a
tablecloth, and a little rack of toast, and some lemonade with plenty
of sugar in it, and just the wing of a chicken, which I saved for you,
and ate a leg myself instead. And a little bunch of grapes to follow
and some gingerbread cake. And while you eat, dear, you shall tell me
all about your concert. Fancy if some day you played at a concert at
the Queen's Hall. How proud I should be! And should I not burst my
gloves in applauding?"
To "tell all about the concert" was a somewhat extensive suggestion,
but there was no need for Elizabeth to reply, as Mrs. Fanshawe went on
without pause.
"I could not attend to anything, dear," she said, "until I had quite
settled in my mind what would be the nicest little supper I could think
of for you. I had quite a little squabble with Sir Henry about eating
a leg myself, though I assured him that all epicures prefer the leg.
And he helped me to light the fire; I assure you, he was as zealous on
your behalf as I was. And he told me to be sure and give you his love,
if I did not think you would consider that a liberty."
"Thank you, mamma," said the girl. "And it was good of you to take so
much thought for me. I almost expected to find you had gone to bed; I
am so late. I suppose Sir Henry has been gone some time?"
"A quarter of an hour ago perhaps. I had not more than time to take off
my dress and brush my hair. But I could not go without a peep at you
when you returned. And I promised myself a little cosy talk over the
fire when you had finished your supper."
Elizabeth left the table and sat down in a big arm-chair near Mrs.
Fanshawe. The latter took Elizabeth's hand as it lay on the arm, and
held it in both of hers.
"I have been thinking of you so much, dear," she said, "all the time
dear Sir Henry was here. You have been in my mind every minute. Such a
wise, kind man he is, and so full of sympathy and tenderness for me.
And he shows it with such wonderful tact, not by dwelling on my great
loss, but by encouraging me and cheering me up. I declare I laughed
outright as I have not done for months at some of his delicious,
droll stories. He is the sort of man to whom one can open one's heart
completely. All kinds of things we talked about--about old, dear, happy
days, and about India, and oh, Elizabeth, how I long to see dear India
again! He quoted something which I thought so true, about hearing
the East a-calling, and said it ought to be 'when you hear the East
a-bawling.' Was not that quaint of him? The East a-bawling! Yes. That
is just what it does. Dear, happy days in India, with all its pleasant
parties and society and balls! I miss the gaiety of it all in our sad,
secluded life here in this little tiny house. Why, the drawing-room is
not much bigger than my bathroom was at Peshawar. I think that I am
naturally of a gay and joyous nature, dear. I was not made for sadness."
Apparently Mrs. Fanshawe was taking a rest from thinking about
Elizabeth all the evening. She seemed to realize this and hurried back
to her subject.
"And if it is sad for me, how much more sad it must be for you,
darling, for you used to enjoy yourself so in India with your horses
and dogs. I am sure you used to laugh fifty times a day out there,
for once that I hear you laugh now. But it is not only of your loss
of gaiety that I have been thinking so much. There are things more
important than that, especially while you are young. The loss of your
father's care and thought for you makes such a dreadful blank, and I,
weighed down with all the petty cares and economies which we have to
practise, cannot look after you as constantly as I used. My days are so
full with the care of the house, and with writing your dear father's
Memoir, which all these weeks has been to me nothing less than a sacred
duty. And even if I was quite free, it would be impossible for me, a
little weak, silly, helpless woman, to supervise your growing up with
the wisdom and large grasp of a man. I have been doing my best, I think
I can say that, but I know how feeble and wanting my best has been."
There had been no opportunity, so continuous had been the prattle
of this monologue, for Elizabeth to speak at all. For this she was
grateful, for she would have found it difficult enough to frame any
sincere reply to this endless tissue of insincerities that were
only half-conscious of themselves. Mrs. Fanshawe had been so long
accustomed to look upon the utterly inaccurate picture of herself, of
which she was the artist, so long unaccustomed to look on the actual
origin of it, that she really had got to confuse the two, or, rather,
to obliterate the one in favour of the imaginary portrait. But to-night
Elizabeth did not feel the smallest resentment at this imposture; she
regarded her mother as she would have regarded some charade-acting
child, and was willing to encourage its belief in the reality of its
acting. For Mrs. Fanshawe, as for a child, this dressing-up was real.
And Elizabeth could almost see her father listening with a smile
that for all its tenderness did not lack humour. He would have been
amused, surely, at it all. For all his own simplicity and sincerity,
he had never wanted to improve and edify others. At the most he only
encouraged them, like the beloved plants in his garden, to grow and
blossom. Besides, he had loved his wife (for the life of her Elizabeth
had never been able to guess why), and that simple fact--a fact which
no one should try to explain away--took precedence of everything else.
There was a pause for a few gentle applications of a very small lace
handkerchief, and it became incumbent on Elizabeth to say something.
She knew, of course, perfectly well what her stepmother was leading up
to, and since she appeared to find it difficult to come to the point,
Elizabeth decided to help her.
"And so you and Sir Henry----" she began.
That was quite enough. Mrs. Fanshawe rose swiftly from her chair, bent
over her, and kissed her.
"My darling, yes," she said. "And I am so glad you have guessed. I was
so afraid it would come as a shock to you, that I only promised Henry
that I would tell you to-night, if I could. I said he must trust to
my instinct, as to whether I should not only begin to prepare you for
it. I told him that he could not know, as I knew, how deeply you loved
your father, and that I must judge whether to tell you at once or not.
I said I would not wound my dear little Elizabeth's heart for anything.
But now you have guessed, how nice that is! And, oh, what a true and
wise friend and second father you will find in him, Elizabeth! Do you
wonder now, my darling, that I said how much I had been thinking of you
all this evening!"
Suddenly it was borne in upon the girl that this play-acting was
really going too far. It seemed impermissible to allow even a child
to take its inventions quite so seriously. It was as if the child
insisted on having real solid food and real champagne provided for
its pasteboard banquet. Yet, yet--was there any gain to any one in
saying, "Remember, you are only acting?" She knew well there was
not. Detection and exposure of even such abominable insincerities as
these never yet did any good to the--the criminal. It only made her
resent the cruel perspicacity of their exposer, or possibly exercise a
little more ingenuity in their inventions. She would be wiser to enter
into the spirit of these imaginative flights. But it was like seeing
somebody waving his arms, saying, "See, I am a bird; how high I fly!"
and pretending to look upwards and be dazzled and made giddy by this
reckless feat of aviation.
* * * * *
"It was sweet of you to think of me as well," was as much as could
humanly be expected of the best intentions.
That did not nearly satisfy Mrs. Fanshawe.
"My dear, my central thought was of you," she declared. "Almost the
first thing I said to Henry when--when he would not let me go, for
he has such an affectionate nature, and oh, my darling, how he loves
me!--almost the first thing I said was, 'What about Elizabeth? You must
not think that I have said yes to you until you assure me that you will
be a father to Elizabeth.' And he said--it was so like him--'We'll
offer her a grandfather, anyhow, Birdie.' That was what he said he must
call me--his bright-eyed little Birdie--so foolish of him."
The clock on the chimney-piece chimed twelve, and Mrs. Fanshawe rose to
an apex of surprising fatuity.
"Gracious me, what an hour!" she said. "I believe I have not sat up
till twelve this last two months. We must go to bed, or Henry will find
a dull-eyed little Birdie when he comes back in the morning, and will
never love her any more. He will think he has made a great mistake, and
want to marry Elizabeth instead. Dear Henry! I shall tease him about
that but only just for a minute. I would not vex his big, loving heart
for anything."
She looked at Elizabeth with an expression that she was familiar with
in her imaginary portraits of herself, an expression which she called
wistful.
"Of course I shall not dream of marrying until a whole year has
passed," she said, "nor, I am sure, would my Henry wish me to. He knows
what a tender heart I have for my beloved memories. But I think, dear,
that I shall put the Memoir on one side, or perhaps give it to your
Aunt Julia to deal with as she likes. I dare say she would be glad of
something to do in her poor, empty life. I will take it down with me on
Friday. Perhaps it has done its work."
She did not explain exactly what this last sentence meant, and as
there was no explanation whatever of it, except that it seemed to
finish up with the Memoir in a vague and beautiful manner, it would
have been idle to attempt any.
"So sleep well, my precious!" she said, kissing Elizabeth. "I think you
will do that, won't you, now that all our little anxieties are removed?
He is really immensely well-off. What a responsibility that will be for
me! I hope I shall prove not quite unworthy of it."
* * * * *
Mrs. Hancock had never seen much of her sister-in-law, and perhaps
she would not have been so kindly disposed towards the task of making
herself better acquainted with her had she known that she had been
pitied for her poor, empty life. For "poor, empty life" was indeed
not a phrase that fitly described the passage of a pilgrim of Mr.
Martin's gospel through this pleasant world. But Mrs. Hancock had no
idea that so slanderous a thing had been said of her, and she looked
forward to her sister-in-law's visit with considerable pleasure, which
was enhanced by the prospect of having Elizabeth in the house again.
She intended Elizabeth to be in the best of spirits, to play the
piano to her very loudly and brightly (Mrs. Hancock knew she was just
a little deaf and had seen four eminent specialists on the subject,
who implored her, so she said, not to be in the least disquieted, but
to eat rather less meat, as her very slight dullness of hearing was
certainly gouty in origin), to drive with her on Saturday afternoon,
and to sit constantly by her and admire her masterly methods with the
"King of Mexico," which had rendered thrilling so many after-dinner
hours in Egypt. Then Mrs. Fanshawe should drive with her on Saturday
morning, and they would have a great deal of beautiful talk about the
Colonel. In her mind's eye she saw her sister-in-law crying a little,
and herself with touches and caresses administering the gospel of Mr.
Martin, as through a fine hose, in the most copious and refreshing
abundance. When she was quite refreshed and had been made to see that
death is the gate into life, no doubt she would read her part of the
Memoir in which Mrs. Hancock took a great interest, seeing that she
had supplied so much material for the chapter (or chapters, it was to
be hoped) on his early life. She expected to enjoy the account of the
early life very much, in the sort of way that a mellow sunset may be
imagined to enjoy thinking over its own beautiful sunrise. And if she
found Mrs. Fanshawe very sympathetic and understanding, she thought,
she almost thought that she would confide in her something that she
had never yet confided in anybody, and after making clear to her what
her own intentions in the matter were, ask her advice, if it appeared
probable that it would turn out consonant with what she herself had
practically made up her mind to do.
These last six months had been crowded with incident; Mrs. Hancock
did not think any year in all her tale of forty-eight summers had
held so much, except perhaps the one year when she had married and
Edith had been born. For now Edith had married, Mrs. Williams had
had an operation for the removal of a small tumour, her brother had
died, she had been to Egypt and had brought back scores and scores of
photographs, which she pasted at intervals into large half-morocco
scrap-books procured at staggering expense from the stores. She
had forgotten what precisely a good many of them represented, but
Edith, with her wonderful memory, usually knew, and if she did not,
Mrs. Hancock, in her exquisitely neat hand, wrote under them some
non-committing title such as "Temple in Upper Egypt," or "Nile in
January" (which it certainly was).
All this was sensational enough, and Mrs. Hancock, had she read about
a year so full of incident in a novel, would have probably felt that
fiction was stranger than truth, when she was asked to believe that
so many things happened really "all together." But with her another
thing had happened fraught with more potential significance than them
all. For the death of her brother, of whom she had seen so little for
so many years, had not really strongly moved her; Mrs. Williams had
quite recovered and cooked just as well as ever; Edith still constantly
drove and lunched with her, and agitating though the pasting in of the
photographs was (she had pasted one in upside down, and not noticed
it till the next day when the paste was quite dry and "stuck"), she
did not ever look at them again. But one event seemed likely to make
a real difference to her life, for while they were at Luxor, Mrs.
Martin had been suddenly taken ill with pneumonia and had died three
days later. She had proved herself a charming travelling companion,
and Mrs. Hancock had been very much shocked and grieved at so sad an
incident marring their holiday. But she did not break down under the
bereavement; she ordered a beautiful tombstone, though not expensive
(since she knew that Mr. Martin was not very well off), and left
Luxor as soon as possible, bringing back with her a large photograph
of the grave. The widower, being what he was, behaved with the most
characteristic fortitude and faith, and she felt that she had been
permitted to be a wonderful help and consolation to him since her
return. Desolate though he was, he had not let his work suffer. Indeed,
he added to his ordinary duties the supervision of the choir-practices
which his wife had always managed, and after a suitable interval played
golf as regularly as ever. And only last Sunday he had preached the
most wonderful sermon that Mrs. Hancock had ever heard on the text
of "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them."
Thankfulness and joy was the keynote of it, and everybody understood
that the wilderness was Egypt. He showed how that in the midst of death
we are in life, and that joy cometh in the morning. He had lunched with
Mrs. Hancock afterwards, and she had settled that it must be printed
with a purple (not black) line round the cover, and with "In Memoriam,
January 4, 1913," printed on the inner leaf. He did not go away till
it was time for him to take the children's service at four, but before
that he had asked her if, when his broken heart was healed (it appeared
to be making excellent progress), she would become in name as well as
in fact the partner of his joys and sorrows. She rather thought she
would, though there were a great many things to be considered first,
and she promised him his answer in a week's time. Mrs. Hancock had
practically settled what that answer was to be, and at present she had
told nobody, nor asked anybody's advice about it. She had, indeed,
thought of seeing how Edith received the idea, but on the other hand
she felt that she would not give her the encouragement she wanted.
Edith, indeed, had been altogether rather discouraging for months past,
ever since the party met at Cairo, and did not give the lively interest
in and applause of her mother's plans which she would have liked. It
was not that she seemed unhappy (if she had Mrs. Hancock would have
applied the cheerful gospel to her), she simply appeared to be like a
house shut up with blinds down and shutters closed. No face looked out
from it; it was also impossible to penetrate into it. Perhaps, like a
caretaker, Edward had the key, but Mrs. Hancock, as already noticed,
did not like to pry into affairs that might possibly prove depressing,
and she had not asked for it. Besides, it was difficult to imagine any
cause of unhappiness that could be hers. Edward always came home by the
train just before dinner; she expected a baby in July; and, after a
tremendous struggle with herself, Mrs. Hancock had let her have her own
peerless kitchenmaid as a cook.
But she felt that she would like to tell somebody who would probably
agree with her what she contemplated, and she had great hope that her
sister-in-law would prove sympathetic. It had been a prepossessing
trait to find her buying soap in High Holborn, and she had received
with touching gratitude all the stories about Mrs. Hancock which were
to go into her husband's Memoir.
But there had been a great deal to think about before she made up her
mind. She had a real liking, a real admiration for her vicar, about
which there was, in spite of her eight and forty years, something
akin to romance. He was a very wonderful and encouraging person, and
certainly she had needed encouragement in the lonely month after
Edith's marriage. Again, she felt sure that he would be devoted to
her comfort, and though the ecstasy of youthful love might be denied
them, she did not know that she was sorry for that. She was perhaps
some five years older than he, but as youthful ardour was not part
of her programme, that little discrepancy of years was but of small
consequence. But there were other considerations; she could not
possibly go to live at the vicarage, where the servants' entrance
was close under the dining-room windows, and there was no garage.
She could not also be expected to help in parish work beyond the
knitting of thick mufflers, which went to warm deep-sea fishermen. But
his golf-playing presented no difficulties at all. She could start
rather earlier, drive him to the club-house, and pick him up on her
way home. To be sure that would somewhat restrict her drives, if she
always had to start and come back by the same road. Perhaps it would
be better if Denton took him there first, and she could call for him.
Then what was to happen to the present furniture in the vicarage, for
she did not want any more in her own house? She did not intend that
such difficulties should be obstacles of magnitude, but her mind, which
so long had been completely taken up in affairs of detail, the whole
general course of it being already marked out, could not resist the
contemplation of them. Here again a woman who went all the way to High
Holborn for soap might prove both comprehending and enlightening.
Mrs. Fanshawe, who, with Elizabeth, was met on the platform by Denton
and by the car outside the station, was an immediate success. After
the crude sort of harbourage in Oakley Street, with its small rooms
and its "dreadful backyard," with its parlourmaid, who had a perennial
cold and no notion of cleaning silver, this perfectly ordered house,
with its smooth service and atmosphere of complete comfort, was as
cream to a cat that had been living on the thinnest skim-milk. She
admired, she appreciated with a childlike sort of pleasure; ate two
buns with sugar on the top at tea, because they were so delicious
("Elizabeth, darling, you must eat one of these lovely buns!") and made
herself instantly popular. All the time, in the depth of her heart,
she hugged the knowledge that she would so soon be in a position of
extreme affluence, and a ladyship, and pitied Mrs. Hancock for her
poor, empty life. Simultaneously, Mrs. Hancock felt what a treat it
must be for her sister-in-law to have a few days of comfort and luxury,
instead of going all the way to High Holborn to get soap a little
cheaper. Having seen her brother's will in the paper, she knew exactly
how much she and Elizabeth had to live upon at five per cent. of the
capital, and, doubting whether they got more than four, was warmed with
a sense of her own benevolence in saving them three days of household
books at the cost of a third-class ticket (she felt sure they had gone
third-class) to Heathmoor. It was dreadfully sad for the poor thing to
be left a widow, and it was not to be expected that she would find a
second husband very easily. But her cordial admiration of all she saw
was certainly prepossessing; Mrs. Hancock felt that she would probably
prove a worthy recipient of her secret, and give exactly the advice
she wanted. More metaphysically each of them felt drawn to the other
by the striking similarity between them in the point of their lack of
sincerity, and the success they both achieved in deceiving themselves.
The three dined alone that night, and soon after her stepmother having
discovered that her sweetest Elizabeth looked tired, the two elder
ladies were left alone.
"And now, my dear," said Mrs. Hancock (they had got to my-dearing each
other before dinner was half over), "I so want to have a good talk to
you. I want to know all your plans, and all about the Memoir, which I
am sure will be most interesting. Shall I lay out a patience, while
we talk? I can attend perfectly while I am playing one of the easier
patiences. Elizabeth, too, it is such a joy to see Elizabeth again,
after the sad, sad parting in the summer."
Mrs. Fanshawe put her head a little on one side wistfully.
"Elizabeth can hardly talk of the happy weeks she spent here," she
said, "and I'm sure I don't wonder at her enjoyment of them. My dear,
how happy it must make you to make everybody around you so happy. I
don't believe you ever think of yourself."
Mrs. Hancock smiled; a long-wanted red queen had appeared.
"It does make one happy not to think of oneself," she said, "and
how the time goes when you are thinking of other people. I am often
astounded when Sunday comes round again, for the weeks go by in a
flash. I take my dear Edith out for her drives--it is so good to her
to have plenty of fresh air--and she comes to lunch with me every day
almost, so that she shall not be alone in her house, with her husband
away all day, and it is Sunday again, and I get what I call my weekly
refresher from our dear Mr. Martin. Such a beautiful sermon he gave us
last Sunday--ah, there is the ten I wanted--on the subject of his sad
bereavement. His wife, you know. I took her out to Egypt with me; it
was most important that she should get out of the winter fogs and damp
of England, and she died at Luxor after three days' illness. How glad I
was she had a friend with her--my dear, forgive me, how thoughtless I
am."
"No, not thoughtless, my dear," said Mrs. Fanshawe. "Not thoughtless.
And Mr. Martin. Tell me about Mr. Martin. I feel sure I should like Mr.
Martin."
Mrs. Hancock bundled her patience cards together. She had not left a
patience unfinished, except when the patience had finished her, for
years. Perfectly as she could attend when she was playing it, she
prepared now to be absolutely undistracted.
"Indeed, no one could help liking Mr. Martin," she said. "He has the
noblest of characters, and with it all not a touch of priggishness. To
see him play golf, or to hear him laugh, talk, you would never think he
was a clergyman, but to hear him preach you would think he was a bishop
at least. I know of nobody whom I admire more. Listen. Was not that the
front-door bell? How tiresome if we are interrupted in our talk. Yes;
I hear Lind going to open it. Now he has shut it again. Ah, it is only
a note. Will you excuse me? Yes, from Edward. Just to say he and Edith
will come to lunch to-morrow, as he is not going up to the City. No
answer, Lind."
Now Mrs. Fanshawe had not failed to mark the expression of her
sister-in-law's face when she spoke of Mr. Martin. If she had worn it
herself she would have called it a "rapt expression," but it was not
so admirable on the features of a woman who, to adopt Mrs. Fanshawe's
point of view, was already aground, so to speak, on the shallows of
advanced middle-age, where there is not sufficient youth to carry you
over those emotional banks. Still, on a younger and perhaps a more
spiritual face, it would have been rapt, and it occurred to her that in
mind perhaps her sister-in-law was not as old as she looked or as she
was. It would be very ridiculous if at that age a woman was the prey
of sentimental notions--but then she had a very comfortable house, a
delightful retreat from the stuffy little kennel in Oakley Street.
Mrs. Hancock waited till Lind had quite shut the drawing-room door, and
then turned to her sister-in-law again.
"My dear, I want your advice," she said, "for you are a woman of the
world and I am sure are wise. You see this spring, after poor Mrs.
Martin's death, I saw a great deal of the vicar, and I think I was
able to comfort and uphold him, so that he leans a good deal on me
now, though of course we have been very great friends for years. Could
you give that footstool just a little kick this way? He feels his
loneliness very much; he wants some one whom he knows and trusts and,
shall I say, admires?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Fanshawe. "Admires, I am sure."
"How kind of you! Well, admires, to take the place of her whom he has
lost, and who was a very good, sweet sort of woman indeed."
Mrs. Hancock leaned forward.
"He has told all this to me," she said, putting her hand on Mrs.
Fanshawe's arm. "Now you know what I think of him. Do advise me--what
am I to say to him? Edith and Edward, you see, are both so young. It
would be a wonderful thing for them to have a father to go to in those
difficulties in which a man is so much more competent to advise them
than a woman. Lind and Denton, too, there is a great deal that a master
of a house can do to influence men-servants. What shall I say to him?"
Probably no more wholly original reason for matrimony had ever been put
forward than that it would provide a man to look after the butler, but
one of the stories about the Colonel's early life had shown that he had
the highest opinion of his sister's originality. To-day if never before
that opinion was justified. Mrs. Fanshawe did not remember the story,
nor did the delirious originality strike her now. But she saw quite
clearly what Mrs. Hancock, the owner of this comfortable house, wanted
her to say. She got up from her chair and knelt on the footstool which
she had kicked a little.
"My dear, I envy you your beautiful, unselfish nature," she said. "And
let me be the first to congratulate Mr. Martin."
"You shall be," said Mrs. Hancock, kissing her.