ETHEL’S CONFESSION
It scarcely needs to be stated that Ethel Thursby’s letter to Launce
Keymer was written with the full knowledge and sanction of her aunts.
When the particulars of her interview with Hetty Blair were told them,
they could but hold up their hands in horrified amazement. Their worst
fears, never even hinted at to Ethel, had been more than realised;
there could no longer be any doubt as to the nature of the motives by
which Keymer had been influenced. His treatment of Ethel had been bad
enough, but his treatment of Hetty Blair revealed a depth of depravity
which caused the gentle hearts of the sisters at once to shiver with
affright and glow with thankfulness when they called to mind their
darling’s narrow escape from being united for life to such a man.
“I little thought I should live to see the day when I could truthfully
say, ‘I am glad our money has been taken from us,’” remarked Miss
Matilda. “But, here and now, I can say it. To the loss of our money we
owe it that Ethel is not by this time Mr. Launce Keymer’s wife. It was
one of those blessings in disguise at which we are prone to cavil
because we fail at the time to recognise them for what they really
are.”
“But we ought not to forget what we owe to Miss Blair in the matter,”
suggested Miss Jane with that touch of deference due from her as second
sister for the time being. “Her revelation would of itself have more
than supplied cause enough for breaking off the match.”
“Truly so, sister, if it had reached our ears in time; but we have no
proof that it would have done so. Had Mr. Keymer not left home, he
would probably have found means to defeat her object, and, in addition,
would most likely have pressed for the marriage to take place as early
as possible.”
“In any case, we can never be sufficiently thankful that matters have
fallen out as they have. I declare my nerves are all a-tingle at the
thought of what Ethel has escaped.”
“And I have dropped my stitch six times since she told us—a thing which
never happened to me before.”
“I was brought up in the belief that when men were bad—of course I mean
very bad indeed—their wicked qualities rarely failed to make themselves
apparent in their looks, or their manner, or—or in some other way, so
that people of even ordinary discernment could be on their guard
against them and not credit them with virtues they could lay no claim
to. But Mr. Keymer had always such a pleasant, smiling, indeed, I might
almost say fascinating way with him, that it seems difficult to connect
him in one’s thoughts with the actions of which we are now assured he
was guilty.”
Miss Jane spoke a little plaintively, like one who had lost another of
the few illusions which advancing years had left her.
“I am afraid, sister,” answered Miss Matilda, “that this notion of bad
people having, as it were, the trade-mark of their evil natures stamped
upon them for everybody to see, like many other of the traditions which
one picks up in childhood, fails utterly when put to the proof. Mr.
Keymer had certainly very pleasant manners and could make himself most
agreeable. Yet we have it on Shakespeare’s authority that a man ‘may
smile, and smile, and yet be a villain.’”
Ethel had not been present while the foregoing conversation took place.
After imparting to her aunts everything told her by Miss Blair, she had
gone to her own room to write the letter which, a little later, was
received and opened by Mr. Keymer in his son’s absence.
She now came back with the letter open in her hand, and going up to
Miss Matilda, said: “Here is what I have written, dear aunt. Please to
read it and tell me whether it is quite what you would like me to say.”
Miss Matilda took the letter in silence, and when she had read it
passed it on to her sister. Miss Jane having read it, also in silence,
returned it to her sister, who then cleared her voice and drew herself
up a little more stiffly.
“My dear child,” she said to Ethel, “after a careful perusal of your
epistle, I fail to see the slightest necessity for adding to it, or
altering it by so much as a single word. It is severe, but not unduly
so considering the circumstances which have given rise to it, and you
seem to me to have nowhere overstepped that impalpable boundary which,
be the nature of her communication whatever it may, no gentlewoman who
respects herself can afford to ignore.”
Here Miss Matilda paused and looked inquiringly at Miss Jane. “I am in
full accord, sister, with all that you have said,” remarked the latter
in reply to the look. “Considering the peculiar difficulties with which
the dear girl had to contend, it seems to me that she has expressed
herself quite admirably.”
“Quite admirably,” echoed Miss Matilda. “Lucidity without verbosity
should be the characteristic of all epistolary communications, and I am
pleased to find that in this instance, as in so many others, our dear
niece has not failed to profit by our teaching.” Then to Ethel she
said: “You had better post the letter yourself, dear, and then no eyes
but your own will have cognisance of the address.”
This Ethel deferred doing till later in the day, when another errand
would take her into the town. For the present she laid the letter aside
and quietly resumed the sewing on which she had been engaged when Miss
Blair knocked at the door. She was a shade paler than common, but
perfectly composed, as, indeed, she had been when telling the sisters
Hetty’s news. They now glanced at her and then at each other.
Not for the world would either of the sisters have been willing that
their dear girl should imagine their hearts did not bleed for her in
her trouble, and yet they felt that her very quietude imposed upon them
a certain restraint in the expression of the sympathy they were longing
to give vent to. Miss Jane, who was the more romantic of the two and
still retained a vivid recollection of several of the heroines of the
Rosa Matilda school of fiction on which her fancy had been nourished
when a young woman scarcely out of her teens, would have held it to be
no more than appropriate if, at the close of her interview with Miss
Blair, Ethel had rushed into the sitting-room, her hair unbound and
disordered and a frenzied glare in her eyes, and after a few incoherent
exclamations, had either swooned right away, or gone off into violent
hysterics. All Miss Jane’s heroines had been addicted either to
swooning or hysterics at the tragic crises of their lives, and that
Ethel had failed to follow so proper an example was just a trifle
disappointing.
To Miss Matilda it seemed that the sooner Ethel was encouraged to open
her heart and seek from others that sympathy which, when we know it to
be genuine, rarely fails to carry with it some measure of comfort, the
better it would be for her. “And yet,” she added to herself by way of
afterthought, “it is not expected of the patient that he should probe
his own wounds; it rests with others to do that. Just as likely as not,
the dear girl wonders and feels hurt because neither my sister nor I by
as much as a word have led her on to unbosom herself to us. She is
evidently waiting for me to speak, and yet how to begin, or what to
say, I know not.”
She let her hands drop on her lap with a faint sigh. Her thimble fell
unheeded on the floor. She was sitting by one of the two open windows
and her gaze strayed out into the sunlit garden, while there came into
her face a look of such perplexity and distress that Ethel, glancing up
from her seat by the other window and seeing it, felt a sudden gush of
pity and remorse.
Dropping her work, she rose and crossing quickly to the other window,
drew a footstool close up to her aunt and sat down on it. Then taking
one of Miss Matilda’s still pretty hands, she held it closely.
“Dear aunt,” she said, “I know that both you and Aunt Jane must think
me a strange, cold, heartless girl because I seem so little affected by
what has been told me to-day. And yet I feel it, although not perhaps
in the way you think I ought to do. That, however, I cannot help. I am
very much afraid that I shall shock you when I assure you that the
breaking off of my engagement to Mr. Keymer comes as a positive relief
to me. But you have taught me that the truth should never be hidden,
and that is the truth. Now that I look back, it seems to me as if I
could never have really cared for him as I have heard and read of other
girls caring for those to whom they were engaged. Almost from the first
moment of giving him my promise something whispered to me that I had
made a mistake. I would have recalled it if I could, but I was too much
of a coward to do so. I told myself that I was fickle and inconstant
and did not know my own mind, and that love would grow and increase as
time went on. Whether it would or no, I cannot tell. I was certainly
pained by Mr. Keymer’s unaccountable silence. None of us like to feel
ourselves neglected, and that was how I felt. And yet, while looking
every day for a letter, my heart always gave a little bound when the
postman, on his last round, failed to bring me one, and I knew that I
was safe till the morrow. For all along a consciousness was working
within me against which I vainly strove, that should a letter come,
pressing that an early date might be fixed for my marriage, I should
shrink from the prospect with something akin to terror, and what would
then have happened I cannot tell. Now the necessity is one that will
never have to be faced.”
She paused and again pressed Miss Matilda’s hand to her cheek.
“And now, dear aunt,” she resumed, “you will perhaps understand better
than ever before what a strange, inconsistent creature I am, brimful of
contradictions which sway me this way and that and make me a puzzle to
myself. Well, I have had my—my love experience, if I may call it so.”
An involuntary sigh fluttered from her lips. “And, dear aunts—both of
you,” she went on after an almost imperceptible pause, “I pray you to
believe me when I say that it has left no wound behind it which time
will not quickly heal. From to-day I shall be once more your own Ethel
and no one shall ever come between us again.”
It was one of those sweet, high-flown promises which young people make
with every intention of keeping them, but which, five times out six,
after-events laugh to scorn.
Ethel rose without a word more, and having pressed a tender kiss on
Miss Matilda’s faded cheek, would have gone, but the spinster detained
her.
“My dear child,” she said, “my sister and I cannot but feel gratified
at your having chosen to open your heart to us in the way you have;
but, indeed, it was not likely that the Ethel we have known and loved
from childhood should be otherwise than open and straightforward as the
day. As long as you live you will have cause to feel thankful that you
have escaped becoming the wife of Mr. Launce Keymer, whose name from
this hour shall be banished from our lips. And now, dear one, run away
and keep your flowers company for half-an-hour before tea is brought
in. The day has been a most trying one for you and the fresh air will
do you good.”
Before leaving the room Ethel crossed to Miss Jane and kissed her as
she had her sister. “Heaven bless you, sweet one!” said the spinster
fervently. Then, in a low voice, she added: “When I was as young as you
are now _I_ loved some one who deserted me for another. At the time I
thought my heart would have broken—but it did not.”
Ethel quitted the room like one walking in her sleep.
Aunt Jane, a love-lorn maiden of eighteen! It was a picture which so
took her imagination that for the time she forgot all about herself and
her own affairs. No thought that perhaps in years gone by, before she,
Ethel, was born, Cupid might have winged one of his shafts at the heart
of either of her aunts had ever entered her mind, or that they might
have loved, and rejoiced, and suffered in the way so many of their sex
are fated to do. To her, her aunts had always been the same sweet,
faded, but wholly lovable middle-aged ladies they were to-day. Of late
years the silver threads among their hair, and the fine lines marked by
Time’s etching needle on their placid expanse of brow and around the
corners of their eyes might have become a little more observable; but
that was all. And to think that behind Aunt Jane’s calm exterior, and a
soft serenity of manner which was like that of some gracious autumnal
day, lay hidden the embers—long since extinct, it was true—of one of
those too common love episodes (tragedies they might in many instances
be termed) which culminate on one side in vows foresworn, and on the
other in a heartache so extreme that till the soft hand of time brings
some relief, death itself seems the only possible cure! Aunt Jane had
gone through all this. How strange and wonderful it seemed!
On her way upstairs she had paused at the landing window, scarcely
knowing that she did so, so deep in thought was she, and there Tamsin,
coming out of one of the upper rooms, presently found her.
“Youth and daydreams go together,” said the old woman. “Age has no
daydreams, and all its pictures belong to the long ago.”
Ethel, who had heard no footsteps, started at the sound of her voice.
“But I was not daydreaming—quite the contrary,” she returned. “I was
thinking about something which was told me a few minutes ago—something
the like of which I had never imagined.” Then, with a low sigh, she
added: “Day-dreams and I have parted company for a long, long time to
come, maybe for ever.”
“What wicked words are those from one who is in love and engaged to be
married! Fie upon you, child!”
“But I am not in love, indeed I am not, Tamsin! Nor have I ever been; I
only fancied I was; but my eyes have been opened. And I am no longer
engaged to be married.”
“Sakes alive! dearie! What has happened?”
“A great deal has happened—much that seems almost too incredible for
belief. All is over between Mr. Keymer and me. I have heard that about
him to-day which at once puts an end to our engagement—and I have
already written to tell him so.”
“Now, Heaven be praised for that!” ejaculated Tamsin fervently. “You
know I never liked him, and that I mistrusted him from the first moment
I set eyes on him. Glad I am that all is over between you! It was not
my place to speak when I knew you had given him your promise, but times
and again I said sadly to myself, ‘Surely, surely my rosebud was never
intended for such a man as Mr. Launce Keymer!’ Not once, but twenty
times have I prayed on my bended knees that something might happen to
stop your marriage. And now you tell me that my prayer has been
answered. Oh, child, child! not for years has my old heart been
gladdened as you have gladdened it this day.”
Next moment Ethel’s arms were round Tamsin’s neck, and she was crying
softly on her shoulder. Her full heart could hold no more.