'The inner side of every cloud
Is bright and shining:
I therefore turn my clouds about,
And always wear them inside out,
To show the lining!'
I
Cecily Wake had not been brought up by her aunt. Even before the death
of her father, which had followed that of her mother at an interval of
some years, she had been placed in one of those convent schools which,
in certain exceptional circumstances, take quite little children as
boarders. Accordingly, till the age of eighteen, the only home she had
ever known was the large, old-fashioned Georgian manor-house near
Brighton, which had been adapted to suit the requirements of the French
nuns who had first gone there in 1830.
As time went on that branch of the Order which had settled in England
had become cosmopolitan in character. Among those who joined it were
many English women, one of them a sister of Cecily's mother. But the
Gallic nationality dies hard, even in those who claim to be citizens of
the heavenly kingdom, and Cecily's convent remained French in tradition,
in methods of education, and in the importance attached by the nuns to
such accomplishments as bed-making, sewing, cooking, and feminine
deportment. They also taught the duty of rather indiscriminate charity,
holding, with the saint who had been their founder, that it is better to
give alms to nine impostors rather than risk refusing the tenth just
beggar; but this interpretation of a Divine precept was unconsciously
abandoned by Cecily after she had become intimately acquainted with the
conditions of life which surrounded the Melancthon Settlement. Still
even there she remained, to the regret of her colleagues, curiously
open-handed, and--what was worse, for a principle was involved--she
always, during her connection with the Settlement, persisted in saying
that she herself, were she in the place of the deserving seeker for
help, would rather receive half a crown in specie than five shillings'
worth of goods chosen by some one else!
As for education, in the modern sense of the word, Cecily was, and
remained, very deficient; many subjects now taught to every school-girl
were never even mentioned within the convent walls, and this was
specially true of all the 'ologies, including theology. On the other
hand, Cecily and her school-fellows were taught to read, write and talk
with accuracy two languages. The daughter of a man who has left his mark
on English literature, and whose children had one by one returned to the
old fold, taught them English composition, as she herself had been
taught it by a good old-fashioned governess. This nun, a curious
original person, also introduced the elder girls under her charge to
much of the sound early Victorian fiction with which she herself had
been familiar in her youth.
The Superioress, who reserved to herself the supervision of all the
French classes, was a fine vigorous old woman, the daughter of a
Legitimist who had been among the leaders of the Duchesse de Berri's
abortive rising. As was natural, she held and taught very strong views
concerning the state, past and present, of her beloved native country.
To her everything which had taken place in France before the Revolution
had been more or less well done, while all that had followed it was evil
and reprobate. Without going so far as to show Louis XIV. 'étudiant les
plans du General La Vallière et du Colonel Montespan,' she completely
hid from her pupils the ugly side of the old régime, and exhibited the
Sun King as among the most glorious descendants of St. Louis. To her the
romance of French history was all woven in and about Versailles, the
town where she had herself spent her girlhood, and on the steps of whose
palace her own uncle had fallen in defending the apartments of Marie
Antoinette on the historic 5th of October. The many heroic episodes of
the revolution and of the Vendean wars were as familiar to this old nun,
who had spent more than half her long life in England, as if she had
herself taken part in them, and she delighted in stirring her own and
her pupils' blood by their recital.
So Cecily's heroes and heroines all wore doublet and hose, or hoops,
patches, and powder. Most of them spoke French, though in the spacious
chambers of her imagination there was room left for Charles I., his
Cavaliers, and their valiant wives and daughters.
Equally real to the girl were the saints and martyrs with whose
histories she was naturally as familiar, and it was characteristic of
her sunny and kindly nature that she early adopted as her patroness and
object of special veneration that child-martyr whose very name is
unknown, and to whom was accordingly given by the Fathers that of
Theophila--the friend of God.
Cecily, knowing very well what it was to be without those ties with
which most little girls are blessed, thought it probable that even in
heaven St. Theophila must sometimes feel a little lonely, especially
when she compared herself with such popular saints--from the human point
of view--as St. Theresa, St. Catherine, St. Anthony, and St. Francis.
Perhaps some of the nuns, who in the course of long years had grown to
regard Cecily Wake as being as integral a part of their community as
they were themselves, hoped that she would finally follow their own
excellent example. This was specially the wish of the old house-sister
who had been appointed the nurse of the motherless little girl whose
arrival at the convent had been the source of such interest and
amusement to its inmates. But the Mother Superior cherished no such
hopes, or, rather, no such illusion. Not long before Cecily left the
convent for 'the world'--as all that lies beyond their gates is
generally styled by religious--the nuns spent a portion of their
recreation in discussing the girl who was in so special a sense their
own child, and whose approaching departure caused some among them keen
pain. The Mother Superior heard all that was said, and then, speaking in
her native tongue, and with the decision that marked her slightest
utterances, observed: 'Cette petite fera le bonheur de quelque honnête
homme. Elle est faite pour cela.' After a short pause, and with a
twinkle in her small brown eyes, she had added: 'Et il ne sera pas à
plaindre, celui-là!'
Cecily's first introduction to the world was not of a nature to make her
fall in love with its pomps and vanities. The busy, cheerful conventual
household, largely composed of girls of her own age, where each day was
lived according to rule, every hour bringing its appointed duty or
pleasure, was an unfortunate preparation for life in a small Mayfair
lodging, spent in sole company with a nervous elderly woman, who, while
capable of making a great sacrifice of comfort in order to do her duty
by her great-niece, was yet very unwilling to have the even tenor of her
life upset more than was absolutely necessary.
The elder Miss Wake, from her own point of view, had not neglected
Cecily during the years the girl had been at school. She had made a
point of spending each year the Christmas fortnight at Brighton, and of
entertaining the child for one week of that fortnight. During those
successive eight days the elder lady had always been on her best
behaviour, and Cecily easy to amuse. Then, also, the child had many
school-fellows in Brighton, and her aunt always took her once each year
to the play. Cecily remembered these brief yearly holidays with
pleasure, and when about to leave the convent she looked forward to life
in London as to an existence composed of a perpetual round of pleasant
meetings with old school-fellows, of evenings at the theatre, varied
with visits and benefactions to Arcadian poor, for Cecily, after a
sincere childish fashion, was anxious to do her duty to those whom she
esteemed to be less fortunate than herself.
The reality had proved, as realities are apt to do, very different from
what she had imagined. The elder Miss Wake, like so many of those women
born in a day when no career--and it might almost be said no pleasant
mode of life--was open to gentlewomen of straitened means, had learnt to
content herself with a way of existence which lacked every source of
healthy excitement, interest, and pleasure.
Her one amusement, her only anodyne, was novel-reading. For her and her
like were written the three-volume love-stories, full of sentiment and
mild adventure, for which the modern spinster no longer has a use. When
absorbed in one of these romances, she was able to put aside, to push,
as it were, into the background of her mind, her most incessant, though
never mentioned, subject of thought. This was the problem of how to make
her small income suffice, not only to her simple wants, but to the
upkeep of the consideration she thought due to one of her name and
connections.
Miss Theresa Wake never forgot that she belonged to a family which, in
addition to being almost the oldest in England, would now have been
doubtless great and powerful had it not remained faithful to a creed of
which the profession in the past had meant the loss of both property and
rank.
Settling down in London at the age of fifty, after a bitter quarrel with
her only remaining brother, a small squire in the North of England, she
had taken the ground-floor of a lodging-house of which the landlord and
his wife had come from her own native village, and therefore grudged her
none of that respect which she looked for from people in their position.
In their more prosperous days the Wakes had married into various great
Northern families, and Miss Wake was thus connected with several of her
Mayfair neighbours. For a while after her removal to London she had kept
in touch with a certain number of people whose names spelled power and
consideration, but as the years went on, and as her income lowered some
pounds each year, she gradually broke with most of those whose
acquaintanceship with her had only been based, as she well knew, on a
good-natured acceptance of the claim of distant kinship. From some few
she continued, rather resentfully, to accept such tokens of remembrance
as boxes of flowers and presents of game; an ever-narrowing circle left
cards at the beginning of the season, and fewer still would now and
again come in and spend half an hour in her dreary sitting-room. These
last, oddly enough, almost always belonged to the newer generation, the
children of those whose parents she had once called friends; when a
stroke of good fortune had come to these young people, sometimes when a
feeling of happy vitality almost oppressed them, a call on Miss Wake
took the shape of a small dole to fate.
There had been in the very long ago a marriage between a Wake and an
Oglethorpe. Lord and Lady Wantley had made this fact the excuse to be
persistently courteous and kind to the peculiar spinster lady, and in
this matter Penelope had followed her parents' example.
Two or three times a year--in fact, it might almost be said, whenever
she was in London--Penelope Robinson shed the radiance of her brilliant
presence on the dowdy little lodging, always paying Miss Wake the
compliment of coming at the right time, that is, between four and six,
and of being beautifully dressed. On one such occasion, when she might
surely have been forgiven for cutting short her call, for she was on the
way to a royal garden-party, she had actually prolonged her visit nearly
forty minutes!
Yet another time she had come in for only a moment, but bringing with
her a gift which had deeply moved Miss Wake, for the noble water-colour
drawing seemed to bear into the dingy London sitting-room a breath of
the rolling hills and limitless dales of that tract of country which
lies in Yorkshire on the border of Westmorland, and which the old lady
still felt to be home. 'I thought you would like it,' Penelope had
exclaimed eagerly. 'I went over to Cargill Force from Oglethorpe, and I
chose the place----'
'I know,' had interrupted Miss Wake, her voice trembling a little in
spite of herself. 'You must have drawn it from the mound by the Old
Lodge. I recognise the fir-tree, though it must have grown a good deal
since I was there last. The hills seem further off than they used to do
years ago, and, of course, we do not often have such bad weather as that
you have shown here. There are often long days without any rain.'
Penelope had driven away a little chilled. 'I wonder if she would have
preferred a photograph,' she said to herself. But Miss Wake would not
have preferred a photograph. She saw not Nature as her cousin, Mrs.
Robinson, saw it, and she by no means wished she could; but she found
herself looking more often, and always with increasing conviction of its
truth, at the painting which showed the storm-god let loose over the
wild expanse of country which formed the background to all her early
life and associations. Finally Miss Wake hung the water-colour in the
place of honour over her mantelpiece, where she could herself always see
it from where she sat nursing both her real and her fancied ailments.
This slight account of the elder Miss Wake will perhaps make it clear
how grievous was her perplexity when she decided that it was her duty to
take charge of her now grown-up niece. The idea that the girl might, and
indeed should, work for her livelihood never presented itself to the
aunt's mind, and yet the matter had been one that grimly reduced itself
to pounds, shillings, and pence. Cecily's income was the interest on a
thousand pounds, and her bare board and bed, to say nothing of clothes,
must cost nearly twice that sum. Miss Wake did the only thing possible:
she gave up all those necessities which she regarded as luxuries, but
sometimes she allowed herself to dwell on the possibility that her niece
would either marry, or develop, as would be so convenient, a religious
vocation.
The months that followed her arrival in London had the effect of
gradually transforming Cecily Wake from an unthinking child into a
thoughtful young woman. Her energy and power of action, finding no
outlet, flowed back and vitalized her mind and nature. For the first
time she learnt to think, to observe, and to form her own conclusions.
She was only allowed to go out alone to the church close by, and to a
curious old circulating library, originally founded solely with a view
of providing its subscribers with Roman Catholic literature, but which,
as time had gone on, had gradually widened its scope, especially as
regarded works of history, memoirs, and biographies. Novels were
forbidden to the girl, according to the strict rule which had obtained
in Miss Wake's own girlhood, and when Cecily felt the dreary monotony of
her life almost intolerable, she would slip off to church for half an
hour, and return to her aunt, if not cheerful, at least submissive.
More than once certain of the Jesuit priests, who had long known and
respected the elder Miss Wake, had tried to persuade her to allow her
niece a little more liberty and natural amusement. But, greatly as the
old lady valued the friendship of those whom she considered as both holy
and learned, she did not regard herself at all bound to accept their
advice as to how she should direct the life of her young charge. Above
all, she courteously but firmly declined for her niece any introductions
to other young people. 'Later on I shall perhaps be glad to avail myself
of your kindness,' she would answer a certain kindly old priest, who had
it in his power to open many doors; and he, in spite of a deserved
reputation for knowledge of the world and the human heart, never divined
Miss Wake's chief reason for declining his help--the fact, simple, bald,
unanswerable, that there was no money to buy Cecily even the plainest of
what the old lady, to herself, called 'party frocks.'
In time Cecily, growing pale from want of air, heavy-eyed from
over-reading, and utterly dispirited from lack of something to do, was
secretly beginning to evolve a scheme of going back to her beloved
convent as pupil-teacher, when, on a most eventful March day, Mrs.
Robinson, driving up Park Street on her way back from a wedding,
suddenly bethought herself that it was a long time since she had called
on her old cousin.
II
To Cecily Wake, her first meeting with the woman to whom she was to give
such faithful affection and long-enduring friendship ever remained
vivid.
Mrs. Robinson had inherited from her mother, Lady Wantley, the instinct
of dress, that gift which enables a woman to achieve distinction of
appearance with the simplest as with the most splendid materials and
accessories. She rarely wore jewels, but her taste inclined, far more
than that of Lady Wantley had ever done, to the magnificent. Herself an
artist, she dressed, when it was possible to do so, in a fashion which
would have delighted the eyes of the Italian painters of the
Renaissance, and it was perhaps fortunate, in these grey modern days,
that her taste was checked and kept in bounds by the fact, often only
remembered by her when at her dressmaker's, that she was a widow.
On the day that Mrs. Robinson, calling on Miss Wake, first met Cecily,
the wedding to which she had just been was the excuse for a white velvet
gown of which the brilliancy was softened and attenuated by a cape of
silver-grey fur. To the elder Miss Wake the sight of her lovely
kinswoman always recalled--she could not have told you why--the few
purple patches which had lightened her rather dull youth. The night
after seeing Penelope she would dream of her first ball, again see the
great hall of a famous Northern stronghold filled with the graceful
forms of early Victorian belles, and the stalwart figures of young men
whose brilliant uniforms were soon to be tarnished and blood-stained on
Crimean battle-fields.
As for Cecily, the girl's lonely heart was stormed by the first kindly
glance of Mrs. Robinson's blue eyes, and it wholly surrendered to the
second, emphasized as it was by the words: 'You should have written and
told me of this new cousin; I should have come sooner to see you both.'
Then and there, after all due civilities to the aunt had been performed,
the young girl had been carried off, taken for an enchanting drive, not
round the dreary, still treeless park, where, every alternate morning,
Miss Theresa Wake and Cecily walked for an hour by the clock, but
through streets which, even to the convent-bred girl, were peopled with
the shades of those who had once dwelt there.
Finally, after a long vista of duller, meaner streets, there came a halt
before the wide doors of a long, low building, of which the latticed
windows and white curtains struck a curious note of cleanliness and
refinement in the squalid neighbourhood.
'Is this a monastery or convent?' Cecily asked.
Penelope smiled. 'No, but it is a very fair imitation of one. This is
the Melancthon Settlement. Perhaps you have heard of it? No? Ah, well,
this place was built by my husband.' Penelope's voice became graver in
quality. She added, after a short pause: 'I lived here during the whole
of my married life, and of course I still come whenever I'm in town and
can find time to do so.' Something in the girl's face made her add
hastily: 'Not as often as I ought to do.' But to her young companion
this added word was but a further sign of the humility, the thinking ill
of self, which she had always been taught is one of the clearest marks
of sanctity.
Cecily's mind was filled with empty niches, waiting to be filled with
those heroes and saints with whom she might have the good fortune to
meet in her pilgrimage through life. Straightway, to-day, one of these
niches was filled by Penelope Robinson, and though the radiant figure
sometimes tottered--indeed once or twice nearly fell off its pedestal
altogether--Cecily's belief in her certainly helped the poor latter-day
saint, after her first and worst fit of tottering was over, to live up
to the reputation which had come to her unsought.
III
The large panelled hall sitting-room to which the outside doors of the
Settlement gave almost direct access, and of which the sole ornament, if
such it could be called, consisted of a fine half-length portrait of a
young man whose auburn hair and pale, luminous eyes were those of the
typical enthusiast and dreamer, was soon filled with an eager little
crowd of men and women, who, as if drawn by a magic wand, hastened from
every part of the large building to welcome Mrs. Robinson.
One slight and very pretty girl, whose short curly hair made her look
somewhat like a charming boy, struck Cecily as very oddly dressed, for
she wore a long straight, snuff-coloured gown, and a string of yellow
beads in guise of sash. Cecily much preferred the look of an older and
quieter-mannered woman, who, after having shaken hands with Mrs.
Robinson, disappeared for some moments, coming back ladened with a large
tea-tray.
'You see,' said the girl in the snuff-coloured gown--'you see, we wait
on ourselves.'
'Then there are no servants here?' Cecily spoke rather shyly. She
thought the Settlement quite strangely like a convent.
'Of yes, of course there are; but tea is such an easy meal to get ready.
Anyone can make tea.'
Mrs. Robinson had sat down close to the wide fireplace; her face,
resting on her two clasped hands, shone whitely against the grey,
flickering background formed by the flame and smoke of the log fire,
while her fur cape, thrown back, revealed the velvet gown which formed a
patch of soft, pure colour in the twilit room.
She listened silently to what first one, and then another, of those
round her came forward to say, and Cecily noticed that again and again
came the words, 'We asked Mr. Winfrith,' 'Mr. Winfrith considered,' 'Mr.
Winfrith says.' Suddenly Mrs. Robinson turned, and, addressing the
curly-headed girl, said quickly: 'Daphne, will you show Miss Wake round
the Settlement? I think it would interest her, and I have to discuss a
little business with Mr. Hammond and Mrs. Pomfret.'
Cecily was disappointed. She would so much rather have stayed on in the
hall, listening, in the deepening twilight, to talk and discussions
which vaguely interested her. But she realized that the girl called
Daphne (what a pretty, curious name!--none of the girls at the convent
had been called Daphne) felt also disappointed at this banishment from
Mrs. Robinson's presence, and she admired the readiness with which the
other turned and led the way into the broad stone cloister out of which
many of the rooms of the Settlement opened.
As Daphne walked she talked. Sometimes her explanations of the use to
which the various rooms through which she led her companion were put
might have been addressed to a little child or to a blind person. Such,
for instance, her remark in the refectory: 'This is where we eat our
breakfast, lunch, and supper--everything but tea, which we take in the
hall.'
Now and again she would give Cecily her views on the graver social
problems of the moment. Once while standing in the very pretty and
charmingly arranged sitting-room, which was, she proudly said, her very
own, she suddenly asked her first question: 'Does not this remind you of
a convent cell?' But she did not wait for an answer. 'We aim,' she went
on, 'and I think we succeed, in preserving all that was best in the old
monastic system, while doing away with all that was corrupt and absurd.
Personally, I much regret that we do not wear a distinctive dress; in
fact, before I made up my mind to join the Settlement, I designed what I
thought to be an appropriate costume.' She looked down complacently.
'This is it. Does it not remind you of the Franciscan habit? You see the
idea? The yellow beads round my waist recall the rosary which the monks
always wore, and which I suppose they wear now,' she added doubtfully.
'Oh yes,' said Cecily, 'but not round their waists.'
'I hesitated rather as to which dress would be the most appropriate, and
which would look best. But brown, if a trying colour to most people, has
always suited me very well, and, though perhaps you do not know it, the
Franciscans had at one time quite a close connection with England. I
mean of course before the Reformation. Monks had such charming taste.
One of my uncles has a delightful country-house which was once a
monastery. Now you have seen, I think, almost everything worth seeing
about the Settlement. I wonder, though, whether you would care to look
into our Founder's room? It is only used by Mr. Hammond when he is doing
the accounts, or seeing someone on particular business. I am sure
Melancthon Robinson would have liked him to use it always, but he hardly
ever goes into it. I can't understand that feeling, can you? I should
think it such a privilege to have been the friend of such a man!'
But Cecily hardly heard the words, for she was looking about her with
eager interest, trying to reconstitute the personality of the man who
had dwelt where she now stood, and who had been Mrs. Robinson's
beloved--her husband, her master. Severely simple in all its
appointments, two of the walls of the plain square room were lined with
oak bookcases, filled to overflowing, one long line of curiously-bound
volumes specially attracting the eye.
'Do you know what those are?' asked Daphne; and Cecily, surprised,
realized that her companion awaited her answer with some eagerness.
'Do you mean those books?' she said.
The other girl smiled triumphantly. 'Yes. Well, they are Blue-Books.
When people talk to me of the Settlement, and criticize the work that is
done here, I merely ask them _one_ question. I say, "Have you ever read
a Blue-Book?" Of course they nearly always have to answer "No," and then
I know that their opinion is worth nothing. I must confess,' she added
honestly enough, 'that I myself had never even seen a Blue-Book till I
came here. Mr. Winfrith made me read one, and I was so surprised. I
thought it would be such tremendously hard work, but really it was very
easy, for I found it was made up of the remarks of quite commonplace
people.'
'And have you read all these right through?' asked Cecily, looking with
awe at the long line of tall volumes.
'Oh no! how could I have found time? After I had read the one I did
read, I talked it well over with Mr. Winfrith, and he said he didn't
think it would be worth while for me ever to read another. Of course I
asked him if he thought I ought just to glance through a few more--for I
was most anxious to fit myself for the work of the Settlement--but he
said, No, it would only be waste of time.'
'It must be very interesting, working among poor people and teaching
them things,' said Cecily wistfully. 'I suppose you show them how to sew
and mend, and darn and cook?'
Daphne looked at her, surprised. 'Oh no,' she said in her gentle, rather
drawling voice; 'I can't sew myself, so how could I teach others to do
so? Besides, all poor people know how to do that sort of work. We want
to encourage them to think of higher things. They already give up far
too much time to their clothes and to their food. I have a singing class
and a wood-carving class. Then I make friends with them, and encourage
them to tell me about themselves. Mrs. Pomfret thinks that a mistake,
but I'm sure I know best. They have such extraordinary ideas about
things, especially about love. They seem to flirt quite as much as do
the girls of our sort. I was most awfully surprised when I realized
_that_!'
Cecily and Daphne found Mrs. Robinson in the hall, saying good-bye to
those about her. 'Will you come and lunch with me to-morrow?' she said
to Daphne. And as the other joyfully accepted, she added: 'We have not
had a talk for a long time.'
When they were once more in the carriage, driving through the
brilliantly-lighted streets, Mrs. Robinson turned to Cecily, and said:
'Little cousin, I wonder who is your favourite character in history?
Joan of Arc? Mary Queen of Scots? I'll tell you mine: it was the
woman--I forget her name--who first said, in answer to a friend's
remark, "I hate a fool!" She had plenty of courage of the kind I should
like to borrow. The thought of to-morrow's execution makes me sick.' And
as Cecily looked at her, bewildered, she added: 'I wonder what you
thought of Daphne Purdon? They said very little--I mean Philip Hammond
and Mrs. Pomfret--but they simply won't keep her there any longer! She
corrupts her class of match-girls, and, what of course is much worse,
they are corrupting _her_.' Mrs. Robinson's lips curved into delighted
laughter at the recollection of a whispered word which had been uttered,
with bated breath, by Mrs. Pomfret.
'How long has Miss Purdon been at the Settlement?' Perhaps Cecily,
childish though she was, entered more into her new friend's worries than
the other realized.
'Not far from a year, broken, however, by frequent holidays in friends'
country-houses, and by a month spent last summer on a yacht. Poor Daphne
is a fool, but she's not a bad fool, and above all, she's a very pretty
fool!'
'Oh yes,' said the girl eagerly, 'she is very pretty, and I should think
very good, even if she is not very sensible.'
'Well, her father, who was an old friend of my father's, died two years
ago, leaving practically nothing. At the time Daphne was engaged, and
the man threw her over; it was quite a little tragedy, and, as she took
it into her head she would like to do some kind of work, I persuaded my
people at the Settlement to take her and see what they could do with
her. Like most of my "goody" plans, it has failed utterly.'
Cecily's kind, firm little hand, still wearing the cotton gloves of
convent days, crept over the carriage rug, and closed for a moment over
her new cousin's fingers. Mrs. Robinson went on: 'Philip Hammond is the
salt of the earth, and Mrs. Pomfret is an angel, but I never see them
without being told something I would rather not hear. Now, David
Winfrith, who has so much to do with the many responsibilities connected
with the Settlement, never worries me in that way. Perhaps if he did,'
she concluded in a lower tone, 'I should see him as seldom as I do the
others.'
'And who,' asked Cecily with some eagerness--'who is David Winfrith?'
'Like Daphne's,' answered Mrs. Robinson, 'his is an inherited
friendship. His father, who is a clergyman, was one of my father's
oldest friends.' Then quickly she added: 'I should not have said that,
for David Winfrith is one of my own best friends, the one person to whom
I feel I can always turn when I want anything done. What will perhaps
interest you more is the fact that he is becoming a really distinguished
man. If you read the _Morning Post_ as regularly as I know your aunt
reads it----'
'She has left off taking in a daily paper,' said Cecily quickly. 'She
says it tries her eyes to read too much.'
But Penelope went on, unheeding: 'You would know a great deal more about
Mr. Winfrith and his doings than you seem to do now. Seriously, he is
the kind of honest, plodding, earnest fellow whom the British public
like to feel is looking after them, and each day he looks after them
more than he did the day before. And he will go plodding on till in
time--who knows?--he may become the Grand Panjandrum, the Prime Minister
himself!'
'Then, he does not live at the Settlement?'
'Oh no! He has sometimes thought of spending a holiday there, but he
very properly feels that he owes his free time to his father; but even
when resting he works hard, for he is, and always has been, provokingly
healthy. As for his connection with the Settlement, it has become his
hobby. To please himself'--Mrs. Robinson spoke quickly, as if in
self-defence--'no one ever asked him to do so--he looks after the
business side of everything connected with the place. I am the Queen,
and he is the Prime Minister; that is, he listens very civilly to all I
have to say, and then he does exactly what he himself thinks proper! Of
course, I get my way sometimes; for instance, he disapproved of Daphne
Purdon.'
'I thought they were great friends,' said Cecily, surprised. 'He gave
her the first Blue-Book she ever read.'
'Ah!' said Mrs. Robinson, 'did he? That was just like him, trying to
make a pig's ear out of a silk purse! Still, even so, he will certainly
be delighted to hear of her execution; for he saw from the very first
that she was quite unsuited for the life, and, of course, like all of
us, he likes to be proved right.'
As she spoke, Mrs. Robinson was watching the girl by her side. Now and
again a gleam of bright light cast a glow on the serious childish face,
showed the curves of the sensible firm mouth, lit up the hazel eyes, so
empty of youthful laughter. During the drive to the Settlement Cecily
had talked eagerly, had poured out her heart to her new friend, telling
far more than she knew she told, both of her past and present life. And
Mrs. Robinson's active, intelligent brain was busy evolving a scheme of
release for the young creature to whom she had taken one of her
unreasoning instinctive likings.
When at last, it seemed all too soon to Cecily, the carriage stopped
before old Miss Wake's dingy Mayfair lodging, Mrs. Robinson held the
other's hand a moment before saying good-bye. She did not offer to kiss
the girl, for Penelope was not given to kissing; but she said very
kindly: 'We must meet again soon. I am going to Brighton for a few days
next week. Suppose I were to come in to-morrow morning and ask Miss Wake
to let you go there with me? We would go out to your convent, and I
should make friends with the old French nun of whom you are so fond. She
and I might think of something which would make your life here a little
less dull, a little more cheerful.' And that night no happier girl lay
down to sleep in London than Cecily Wake.
IV
Mrs. Robinson was also in a softened mood, and when she found David
Winfrith waiting for her in the library of the old house in Cavendish
Square which had been her father's, and which had seen the coming and
going of so many famous people, she greeted him with a gaiety, an
intimate warmth of manner, which quickened his pulses, and almost caused
him to say words he had made up his mind never again to utter.
Soon she was kneeling by the fire warming her hands, talking eagerly,
looking up, smiling into the plain, clean-shaven face, of which she knew
every turn and expression. 'You must forgive and approve me for being
late,' she exclaimed. 'I have spent my afternoon exactly as you would
always have me do! Firstly, I fulfilled my social dooty, as Mr. Gumberg
would say, by going to the Walberton wedding'--a slight grimace defaced
for a moment her charming eyes and mouth--'enough to put one out of love
for ever with matrimony; but, then, my ideal still remains in those
matters what it always was.' In answer to a questioning look her eyelids
flickered as she said two words, 'Gretna Green!' and an almost
imperceptible quiver also passed over Winfrith's face.
She went on eagerly, pleased with the betrayal of feeling her words had
evoked: 'Then I drove to the Settlement, where I listened patiently
while Philip Hammond and Mrs. Pomfret poured their woes into my ears.'
'That I'm sure they did not,' he interrupted good-humouredly.
'Oh yes, they did! They don't keep everything for you. Well, Daphne
Purdon is leaving--not, of course, of her own free will. You were right
and I was wrong in that matter. But I think I've found just the right
person to replace her.'
'H'm,' said he.
'Someone who will be quite ideal, whom even Mrs. Pomfret liked at first
sight! But don't let's talk of the Settlement any more. Listen, rather,
to my further good deeds. I am going to Brighton, a place I detest, in
order to give pleasure to a good, kind little girl who is just now
having a very bad time.'
'That,' he said,'is really meritorious. And when, may I ask, is this
work of mercy to take place?'
'Next week; I shall be away for at least four days.'
'Well, perhaps I shall be in Brighton for a night,'--Winfrith brushed an
invisible speck off his sleeve--'Wednesday night, myself. I do not share
your dislike to the place. We can talk over Settlement affairs there, if
we meet, as I suppose we shall?'
Penelope hesitated. 'Yes,' she said at last, rather absently. 'We can
talk over things there better than here. I expect to go abroad rather
earlier this spring.'
'Why that?' He could not keep the dismay out of his voice. 'I thought
you were so fond of the spring in London?'
She stood up, and they faced one another, each resting a hand on the
high marble mantelpiece. 'I love London at all times of the year,' she
said, 'but I am a nomad, a wanderer, by instinct. Perhaps mamma's
mother, before she "got religion," was a gipsy. I have always known
there was some mystery about her.' She spoke lightly, but Winfrith's
lips closed, one of his hands made a sudden arresting movement, and then
fell down again by his side, as she went on unheeding, looking, not at
him, but down into the fire. 'Why don't you take a holiday, David--even
you are entitled to a holiday sometimes--and come with me where I am
going--down to the South, west of Marseilles, where ordinary people
never, never go?'
'My dear Penelope, how utterly absurd!' But there was a thrill in the
quiet, measured voice.
She looked up eagerly, moved a little nearer to him. 'Do!' she
cried--'please do! Motey would be ample chaperon.' She added
unguardedly, 'she is used to that ungrateful rôle.'
'Is she?' he asked sharply. 'Has she often had occasion to chaperon you,
and--and--a friend, on a similar excursion?'
Penelope bit her lip. 'I think you are very rude,' she said. 'Why, of
course she has! Every man I know, half your acquaintances, have had the
privilege of travelling with me across the world. When one of your
trusted members goes off on a mysterious holiday, you can always in
future say to yourself, "He has paired with Penelope!"'
He looked at her, perplexed, a little suspicious, but he was utterly
disarmed by her next words. 'David?'--she spoke softly--'how can you be
so foolish? I have never, never, never made such a proposal to any one
but you! Now that your mind is set at rest, now that you know you will
be a unique instance'--she could not keep the laughter out of her
voice--'will you consent to honour me with your company? It could all be
done in a fortnight.'
'No.' He spoke with an effort, and hesitated perceptibly. But again he
said, 'No. I can't get away now--'tis impossible. Perhaps later--at
Easter.'
But Mrs. Robinson had turned away. Mechanically she tore a paper spill
into small pieces. 'At Easter,' she said with a complete change of tone,
'I shall be in Paris, and every soul we know will be there, too, and I
certainly shall not want _you_.'
'Well, now I must be going.' He spoke rather heavily, and, as she still
held her head averted, he added hurriedly, in a low tone, 'You know how
gladly I would come if I could.'
'I know,' she said sharply, 'how easily you could come if you would! But
never mind, I am quite used to be alone--with Motey.'
In spite of her anger and disappointment, she was loth to let him go.
Together they walked through the sombre, old-fashioned hall, of which
the walls were hung with engravings of men who had been her father's
early contemporaries and friends, and to which she had ever been
unwilling to make the slightest alteration. Every lozenge of the black
and white marble floor recalled her singularly happy, eager childhood,
and Mrs. Robinson would have missed the ugliest of the frock-coated
philanthropists and statesmen who looked at her so gravely from their
tarnished frames.
She went with him through into the small glazed vestibule which gave
access to the square. Herself she opened the mahogany door, and looked
out, shivering, into the foggy darkness which lay beyond.
Then came a murmured word or two--a pause--and Winfrith was gone,
shutting the door as he went, leaving her alone.
As Mrs. Robinson was again crossing the hall she suddenly stayed her
steps, pushed her hair off her forehead with a gesture familiar to her
when perplexed, and pressed her cold hands against her face, now red
with one of her rare, painful blushes.
She saw, as in a vision, a strange little scene. In her ears echoed
fragments of a conversation, so amazing, so unlikely to have taken
place, that she wondered whether the words could have been really
uttered.
A man, whose tall, thick-set, and rather ungainly figure she knew
familiarly well, seemed to be standing close to a tall, slight woman,
with whose appearance Penelope felt herself to be at once less and more
intimate. She doubted her knowledge of the voice which uttered the
curious, ill-sounding words: 'You may kiss me if you like, David.' Not
doubtful, alas! her recognition of the quick, hoarse accents in which
had come the man's answer: 'No, thank you. I would rather not!'
Could such a scene have ever taken place? Could such an invitation have
been made--and refused?
Mrs. Robinson walked on slowly. She went again into the library; once
more she knelt down before the fire, and held out her chill hands to the
blaze.
That any woman should have said, even to her oldest--ay, even to her
dearest friend,'You may kiss me if you like,' was certainly
unconventional, perhaps even a little absurd. But amazing, and almost
incredible in such a case, would surely be the answer she still heard,
so clearly uttered: 'No, thank you. I would rather not!' Then came the
reflection, at once mortifying and consoling, that many would
give--what?--well, anything even to unreason, to have had this same
permission extended to themselves.
She tried to place herself outside--wholly outside--the abominable
little scene.
Supposing a woman--the foolish woman who had acted on so strange an
impulse--now came in, and telling her what had occurred, asked her
advice, how would she, Penelope, make answer to such a one?
Quick came the words: 'Of course you can only do one of two
things--either never see him again, or go on as if nothing had
happened.'
She saw, felt, the woman wince.
'As to not seeing him again, that is quite out of the question. Besides,
there are circumstances----'
'Oh, well,' she--Penelope--would say severely, 'of course, if you come
and ask my advice without telling me _everything_----'
'No one ever tells everything,' the woman would object, 'but this much I
will confide to you. There was a time--I am sure, by all sorts of
things, that he remembers it more often than I do--when this man and I
were lovers, when he kissed me--ah, how often!'
Penelope flushed. How could the other, this wraith-like woman, tell this
to her? But, even so, she would answer her patiently: 'That may be. But
in those days you two loved one another dearly. To such a man that fact
makes all the difference. He is the type--the rather unusual type--who
would far rather have no bread than only half the loaf.'
'But how wrong! how utterly absurd!' the other woman would cry. 'How
short-sighted of him! The more so that sometimes, not of course always,
the half has been known to include the whole.'
'Yes--but David Winfrith is not a man to understand that. And if I may
say so'--thus would she, the wise mentor, conclude her words of advice
and consolation to this most unwise and impulsive friend--'I think you
have really had an escape! In this case the half would certainly have
come to include the whole. To-night you are tired and lonely; in the
morning you will realize that you are much better off as you are. You
already see quite as much of him as you want to do, when in your sober
senses.'
('Oh, but I do miss him when he isn't there.')
'What nonsense! You do not miss him when you are abroad, when
you--forgive me, dear, the vulgar expression--have other fish to fry.
No, no, you have had an escape! Being what he is, he will meet you
to-morrow exactly as if nothing had happened, and then you will go
abroad and have a delightful time.'
('Yes, alone!')
'Alone? Of course. Seeing beautiful places of which he, if with you,
would deny the charm; for, as you have often said to yourself, he has no
love, no understanding, of a whole side of life which is everything to
you.'
('Yes, but he would have enjoyed being with me.')
'So he would, only more so, in a coal-pit. No, no, you have made the
life you lead now one which exactly suits you.'
Mrs. Robinson got up. She rang the bell. 'Would you please ask Mrs. Mote
to come to me here?'
And when the short, stout little woman, who had been the nurse of her
childhood and was now her maid, came in answer to the summons, she said
hastily: 'Motey, I am going to Brighton next week for a few days. I do
not intend to go abroad till later. Mr. Winfrith cannot get away just
now. He is too busy.'
'He always was a busy young gentleman,' declared the old woman rather
sourly, as she took the cloak, the gloves, and the hat of her mistress,
and went quietly out of the room.