"You have no idea, I suppose, who it is that posts his letters for him?"
Mr Morison looked a little bewildered.
"They are all posted in London, I think you told me?" added Mr Auriol.
"To be sure," said Mr Morison. "Yes. I have once or twice wondered
who does it, unless it is himself? No, by-the-by, he has distinctly
said he is not in London. I _have_ thought of it, but not very much. I
fancied it so hopeless to get any clue in that way."
"But it must be some one in his confidence, some one, I should almost
say, whom he had a claim on," said Godfrey. "For there is a certain
amount of risk in doing it; the person might be blamed for having taken
any part in it. Is there no one any of you have ever heard of who would
be likely to agree to do Arthur a service of the kind?" He looked
round, but his glance seemed to rest on Lettice. No one spoke.
"You must all think it over," he said. "It's only a suggestion, but
something may come of it." And soon after, allowing that he _was_ very
tired, he said "Good night," and went away.
Lettice, in the quiet of her own room, realised how kindly and
considerately he had behaved. His matter-of-fact manner had been the
greatest relief, and nothing that he could have said could have been so
full of tact and delicacy as his saying nothing.
"I do believe," thought the girl, her impulsive nature aglow again, "I
do believe he hurried out here to-night as much for my sake as on
account of his anxiety. He knew his coming in that sudden unlooked-for
way would carry off the awkwardness. It is very generous of him." Then
her thoughts reverted to what he had suggested. _Did_ she know any one
standing in such a position to Arthur? She sat long thinking, asking
herself the question, when suddenly, by that curious process by which it
sometimes seems as if the machinery of our brain obeyed our orders
unconsciously to ourselves--there dashed into her memory a name, a
sentence she had heard Arthur utter. The name was "Dawson," and as she
repeated it to herself, she seemed to hear her brother's voice saying
thoughtfully--
"Yes, I do believe there's one person in the world who'd do anything for
me. It's that fellow Dawson. I've told you about him, Lettice?" Yes,
he had told her about him, though he probably had forgotten doing so,
just as she, till this moment, had forgotten having heard it. Now, by
slow degrees, it came back to her. Dawson had been a young servant in
Mr Downe's service, and by a fall from a ladder had broken his leg.
Being naturally delicate, this accident had altogether ruined his
health; he was pronounced incurably lame, and Arthur had done his utmost
to help and comfort the poor boy. I do not know that Lettice remembered
all these details so clearly, but they were the facts, and she recalled
enough to make her sure that Dawson was worth looking up. She knew he
_had_ been living at the little town near to which was Mr Downe's
"cramming" establishment; she felt almost sure his home was there. In
any case, it was more than probable he would there be heard of; and
surely, surely it was worth trying!
Whatever were Lettice Morison's faults and failings, want of courage and
determination were not among them. Her plans were soon made.
It was but little sleep that fell to her share that night.
"I must go alone," she said to herself. "If I have discovered Arthur's
secret I have no right to share it with any other till I know what he
himself wishes. Besides, it is I who am to blame for his having been
driven away; it is I who should bring him back."
She quickly made her arrangements. For the second time in the course of
but a few weeks, she wrote a note for Nina to find after she should have
left--a note to some extent explaining what she was about.
"I think I have got a clue, dearest Nina," she said. "But I must follow
it up alone. Do not be the least uneasy about me. I shall probably be
back in a few hours; if not, I will telegraph in the course of the day."
This was about all that Nina had to show to her uncle, when at
breakfast-time that morning she rushed downstairs with the tidings of
Lettice's disappearance. Mr Morison looked, and was, terribly put out.
For the first time, his patience seemed about to desert him.
"It is really too bad," he said. "What have I done or left undone that
Lettice should meet me with so little confidence? It is all nonsense
about her being the only person who could act, if indeed there is
anything to act about. It is too bad!" And then, catching sight of the
excessive distress in Nina's gentle face, his kind heart smote him for
adding to it.
"After all," he said, more cheerfully than he felt, "I do not know that
there is anything to be really uneasy about I quite expect her back by
luncheon. We let her off too easily the last time, eh, Nina? Poor
child! What a child she is, to do things in this silly, ill-considered
way!"
They went in to breakfast, and Nina tried to follow her uncle's example,
and to believe that there was nothing to be seriously alarmed about.
But neither Mr nor Mrs Morison eat anything, and seemed eager to leave
the table, in order, no doubt, to discuss what steps to take.
"Dear me," thought poor Nina, her eyes filling with tears, "_what_
trouble, from first to last, we have caused them!"
Just as the mockery of a breakfast was over--Miss Branksome and the
younger children had had theirs earlier--and the three were rising from
the table, there came, as the evening before, a short, sharp,
authoritative ring at the door-bell.
"That sounds like Auriol again," said Mr Morison, smiling at his own
fancifulness, "though of course it can't be at this time of the
morning." But he was mistaken. It _was_ Mr Auriol. In he hurried,
not waiting for the footman to announce him, a bright, eager expression
on his face, an opened envelope in his hand.
"Good news!" he cried. "I have a letter from Arthur, giving an address
to which I may write, if I have good news for _him_. I could not rest
till I told you of it, so I rushed up here at once. Will you give me a
cup of tea, Mrs Morison? The letter was to be private _unless_ I could
guarantee _all_ of you feeling--as I know you do about it, Lettice
especially. It all hangs on her, but I know she will be only too ready.
Where is she--not down yet?"
The three others looked at each other--for a moment forgetting their own
trouble in honest reluctance to chill poor Godfrey's evident delight.
Nina was the first to speak.
"Oh!" she said, and the exclamation came from the very bottom of her
heart, "if Lettice had but waited till breakfast-time!"
He looked up in bewildered amazement. Then all had to be told, and
Lettice's letter shown. Godfrey bit his lips till it made Nina nervous
to watch him, as he read it.
"What is the meaning of it? Is it my fault again? Have I frightened
her away?" he said almost piteously.
At which, of course, they all exclaimed, though he seemed hardly
convinced by what they said. Then he told them about Arthur's letter.
It had been drawn forth by the terrible home-sickness which had began to
prey upon him, and by the necessity of his coming to a decision about
binding himself to his present employer for a considerable time. He
gave no particulars as to where he was, or how employed, but spoke of
his misery at being without any tidings of all at home, and how at last
the idea had come to him of confiding in Godfrey. "I trust you
implicitly, even though you are my guardian," he said naively, "not to
speak of this letter, not to endeavour to find me, unless you are
assured that they all want me to come back; that they will not be,
Lettice especially, ashamed of me; that Lettice will not insist on my
trying again when I know I should again fail. All depends on Lettice."
Then he gave the address to which Mr Auriol was to write, but entreated
him not to let the person living at that address be blamed, or fall into
any trouble on his account. "He has been a faithful friend," Arthur
wrote; "but for him I could not have written home at all."
"Who is it?" asked Mr Morison.
"I have no idea," said Godfrey. "I saw no necessity for inquiring. I
meant just to write, and to ask his sisters to do so," he went on. "I
felt sure they, Miss Morison especially, would know how to write so as
to bring him back at once. But now--there is no use writing till we
know where she is, and what she is doing; and yet," he glanced at the
envelope, "he will be already wondering at my silence. This letter has
been following me about for more than a week."
"Mr Auriol," said Nina suddenly, "do you remember what you asked us
last night? To try to think of any one whom Arthur may have employed to
post his letters. That may have put something in Lettice's head; she
may have thought of some one. I have a vague idea of some young man,
some boy, living near Mr Downe's, whom Arthur was kind to."
"This may be he," said Mr Auriol. "The letter is to be sent under
cover to `T. Dawson,' in a village near Fretcham, where Mr Downe's
is."
"I believe that is where she has gone. She must have remembered it,"
said Mr Morison. "What shall we do?"
"I shall start at once," said Godfrey. "`T. Dawson,' whoever he is,
will not be so startled by me as by any one else, as he has sent on this
letter to me. And of course there will be no treachery to Arthur in his
telling me if Miss Morison has been there."
"Perhaps it is the best thing to do," said Mr Morison, "though I would
gladly have gone myself."
"And I do _so_ hope you will bring Lettice back with you," said Nina.
And almost before they had realised his apparition among them, he was
gone.
"Another long miserable day of waiting for telegrams," said poor Nina
piteously. And then determining to follow sensible Miss Branksome's
advice, she went in search of her, to beg her to suggest some employment
to make the time of suspense pass more quickly.
"Give me some piece of hard work, please. A very difficult German
translation might do, or a piece of very fine old lace to mend." And
poor Miss Branksome was cudgelling her brains as to what to propose,
when Mrs Morison's voice, calling Nina, interrupted them.
"Nina, I want you," said her aunt. "Will you help me to write some
notes and to attend to several little things I want done quickly? For I
have just had a word from Philip Dexter. He has come back, and is to be
here at luncheon, and I should not like to be busy the first time he
comes after so long."
Thus occupation was found both for Nina's fingers and thoughts.
Late, very late that evening, a lady in mourning got out of the train at
a junction far away in the north.
"This is Merton Junction, is it not?" she said timidly. "It is here
that one changes for Greenwell, is it not?"
"Greenwell," said the porter questioningly; "that is on the other side
of Middleham, is it not?" For Greenwell was a very little town.
"I don't know," said Lettice--for Lettice of course it was--"I thought
everybody would know it here. They told me in London to take my ticket
to Merton, and then get another."
The porter looked confused and rather bothered. He was on the point of
leaving the station for the night. There were no more trains for an
hour or two. He did not know what to do with this unfortunate
traveller, and yet, not being of a surly nature, did not like to throw
her off.
It ended in the poor man's giving himself a good deal of trouble to find
out that there was no train for Greenwell till four o'clock in the
morning. There was nothing for it but for Lettice to spend the night in
the desolate waiting-room of the station, for the junction was some
distance from the small town of the name. Even had she felt able to
walk there, Lettice could hardly have had a couple of hours' sleep
before she would have had to come back again.
It was not a cheerful prospect--four or five hours at a railway station
in the middle of the night in January. The porter poked up the fire,
and told her she'd no need to be "afeard;" he would speak to the
night-porters, there'd be a couple of them there, and at four o'clock
there'd be some one to give her her ticket. And with a friendly "good
night," none the less so for the fee which Lettice gave him, he went
off.
She _was_ a little frightened. In vain she told herself she had no need
to be so. All the horrible stories she had ever heard of in such
circumstances returned to her mind. She tried to sleep on the hard
horsehair sofa, and succeeded in dozing uncomfortably, to be startled
awake by one of the night-porters coming in to stir up the fire. Then
she dozed again, to wake shivering with cold, the fire out, the faint
gaslight sufficing but to make darkness visible. She started up; there
was light enough to see the time by her watch. With the greatest
relief, she saw that it was half-past three!
Half an hour later, she had got her ticket, and was stepping into a
first-class carriage of the train, which had come in from the south, and
was going on to Middleham.
"Now at last," thought Lettice, "my troubles are over. In a few hours
more I shall be with Arthur."
As she settled herself in her place, she saw by the feeble lamp-light
that there were two other persons in the carriage--two gentlemen. She
glanced at them, but with no interest curiosity, and she distinguished
neither of their faces. One, an elderly man, got out at the first
station they stopped at. The little bustle of handing him some of his
belongings brought Lettice face to face with the remaining passenger.
Both started, both gave vent to an exclamation; but Lettice's was of
dismay, her companion's of relief.
"Mr Auriol!"
"Lettice--Miss Morison, how thankful I am to have found you!"
Lettice's face, cold as it was, burned.
"Found me!" she repeated. "Have you been sent after me to look for me?
There was no need for anything of the kind. I telegraphed yesterday to
say I was coming on to--" She hesitated, not sure if she would, to
_him_, say whither she was bound. But her tone was full of resentment.
Godfrey gave a sigh that was half a groan, of something very like
despair.
"Will you _always_ misunderstand me?" he said.
"What can I say? What can I do? You seem to think I have a mission in
life of annoying and insulting you. What can a man do to prove that he
does not deserve to be so thought of?"
Lettice looked at him in amazement, not unmixed with compunction. Was
this the calm, stately Mr Auriol? Did he so care for her opinion? She
could hardly take it in; and then, by a quick revulsion, she remembered
how only the night before she had called him, and felt that he deserved
to be called, generous.
"I am sorry for being so hasty," she said. "But I don't see why you or
any one need have followed me. I wanted," she went on, and her eyes
filled with tears--"I wanted to have done it all myself. It--it was my
fault Arthur went away; I wanted to be the one to bring him back."
Godfrey moved away. He could hardly help smiling, and yet he was so
sorry for her. What a child she was! What a mixture of gentleness and
obstinacy, of generosity and devotion and self-will!
"Lettice," he said very, very gently, but very seriously nevertheless,
"there are some things in which you _must_ yield to those older and more
experienced than you. It is _not_ right for a young creature like you--
so--now, you must not be angry--so lovely, and so sure to be remarked,
to go running about the country, however good your motive may be. You
don't know, you can hardly imagine, the anxiety they--we have all been
in!"--and he hesitated--"I, I do believe, the most of all."
"_You_," said Lettice, and the tears in her eyes began slowly to trickle
down her face. "You hate me, I know. Why should you mind what I do?
It is I that have caused you all the trouble."
"I hate you?" he repeated. "Lettice, are you saying that on purpose?
Yes, you have caused me more trouble than any one else has ever done,
because, from the first moment I ever saw you, from that first evening
at Esparto, I have _loved_ you, Lettice. And everything has been
against me. I am mad to tell you this; I meant never to have let it
pass my lips."
Lettice's face was burning, but not with anger. She herself could not
have defined her own feelings. She tried to speak, but the words were
all but inaudible.
"You make me ashamed," she said. "I can't understand it."
But at that moment the train slackened. The faint morning light was
struggling in the cold wintry sky. Mr Auriol sprang from his seat.
"We get out here," he said. "This is Middleham;" and, submissive at
last, Lettice allowed him to help her out of the carriage. He took her
at once to the best hotel of the place, and then, having ordered some
breakfast, of which she was sorely in need, for she had eaten almost
nothing the day before, he gave her Arthur's letter to read, and
explained to her what he intended to do. _Her_ plans had been of the
simplest.
"I meant just to go to the address at Greenwell and ask for him," she
said; and she quickly saw that Mr Auriol's intention of telegraphing to
Arthur at once to come over to see him at Middleham was much better.
"It will involve him in no awkwardness," he said, "nor will it lead to
his blaming Dawson, poor fellow. For I," he added, with a smile, "am
armed with his own credentials;" and he touched the letter as he spoke.
"You don't think Arthur will be angry with Dawson," said Lettice, "or,"
she went on, and the idea struck Mr Auriol as very comical, "with _me_?
I _made_ Dawson tell me."
An hour later Mr Auriol returned to the sitting-room, where he had left
Lettice, with an open telegram in his hand.
"This is from Arthur," he said, "or rather from `John Morris,'" he
added, with a slight smile, as he handed it to Lettice.
"Thousand thanks. Will be with you by twelve," was the telegram.
"I don't think there is much fear of his being angry with anybody,"
observed Mr Auriol.
"Thanks to you. It was so much better to send for him than to go
there," said Lettice impulsively.
Godfrey's face flushed. He half turned away; then, taking courage, he
came nearer again.
"Lettice," he said, "are you not angry with _me_? I forgot myself. It
is very good of you not to resent it."
"Resent it!" said Lettice simply. "How _could_ I do so? I can't quite
believe that you knew what you were saying. I think you must be so
sorry for me, for all the trouble I have brought on myself and on other
people, that--that--just that you are very sorry for me. For one
thing," and her voice grew very low and her face very red, "I thought
you cared for Nina."
"You, too!" he exclaimed. "How extraordinary! It is a good thing I do
not, not in that way, for I should have had no chance of success. I met
Philip Dexter at the Winthrops', where I stayed a night; and--I think he
would not mind my telling you--in talking together rather
confidentially, I found out that he, too, has had that idea, and has
been very unhappy. But I put it all right, and he's back in London by
this time. We may hear some news on our return."
"Did he tell you what gave him the idea?" asked Lettice, almost in a
whisper.
"Some chance words of mine at Esparto," said Godfrey.
"It is very generous of him to have said so. But it was not only that,"
said Lettice, her eyes filling with tears.
But, somehow or other, the confession she made of this new offence did
not lower her in Mr Auriol's eyes as hopelessly as she had expected.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A few days later a happily reunited family were assembled in Mr
Morison's house. How easy it was for Lettice to convince Arthur of the
complete change in her feelings, when she told him of the
little-hoped-for reconciliation with their uncle, may be imagined! How
more than ready to forgive her unfortunate influence in their affairs
she found Philip and Nina! How her uncle and aunt promised to forget
the anxiety she had caused them, on condition of her never again thus
setting aside the judgment and experience of her natural protectors!
How more than amazed was everybody when, a few weeks later, by which
time Lettice had learnt to believe that Godfrey Auriol _did_ mean what
he said, her engagement to him was announced! All these "hows" I must
also leave to my reader's imagination.
The old farmer and his family, whose honest kindliness had so
fortunately intervened to save poor Arthur from taking some really
foolish step, were not forgotten. And in after-days, when his wish was
fulfilled, and he had replaced his uncle at the head of his firm, he
would sometimes recall with a smile the days when he had measured grey
flannel and wrapped up parcels of tapes and ribbons for the dames of
Greenwell.
There are many ways in which life's lessons are taught. Some have to go
through hard and sorrowful experiences--harder, it often seems, than
they merit; others, like Lettice, learn true humility and sacrifice of
self-will by gentler discipline. As she often said to herself--
"How can I ever be good enough to show my gratitude? How little have I
deserved such happiness--I who might have ruined not merely my own life,
but those of others, by my foolish obstinacy!"
And "prejudice" was a word and a sentiment which Lettice Auriol's
children were never allowed to know the meaning of.