The cold north-light of the studio showed that it was broad day when a
tap at the door roused Cornelia from a thin drowse she had fallen into
at dawn. She stirred, and Charmian threw herself from the couch to her
feet. "Don't move--I'll get it--let me----" She tossed back the black
mane that fell over her eyes and stared about her. "What--what is it?
Have I been asleep? Oh, I never can forgive myself!"
The tapping at the door began again, and she ran to open it. The
inexorable housemaid was there; she said that Mrs. Maybough was
frightened at her not finding either of the young ladies in their
rooms, and had sent her to see if they were in the studio.
"Yes, tell her we are, please; we fell asleep on the couch, please;
and, Norah! we want our breakfast here. We are very--busy, and we can't
be disturbed."
She twisted her hair into a loose knot, and cowered over the hearth,
where she kindled some pieces of lightwood, and then sat huddled before
it, watching the murky roll of its flames, till the maid came back with
the tray. Charmian wished to bring Cornelia a cup of coffee where she
still lay, so crushed with the despair that had rolled back upon her
with the first consciousness that she thought she never could rise
again. But as the aroma of the coffee that Charmian poured out stole to
her, she found strength to lift herself on her elbow, and say, "No, I
will take it there with you."
The maid had put the tray on the low table where Charmian usually
served tea, but in spite of all the poignant associations of this piece
of furniture with happier times, the two girls ate hungrily of the
omelette and the Vienna rolls; and by the time the maid had put the
studio in order, and beaten up the cushions of the couch into their
formal shape, they had cleared the tray, and she took it away with her
quite empty. Even in the house of mourning, and perhaps there more than
elsewhere, the cravings of the animal, which hungers and thirsts on,
whatever happens, satisfy themselves, while the spirit faints and
despairs.
Perhaps if Cornelia had thought of it she would not have chosen to
starve to no visible end, but she did not think, and she ate ravenously
as long as there was anything left, and when she had eaten, she felt so
much stronger in heart and clearer in mind, that after the maid had
gone she began, "Charmian, I am going home, at once, and you mustn't
try to stop me; I mean to Mrs. Montgomery's. I want to write to Mr.
Ludlow. I shall tell him it is all true."
"Cornelia!"
"Yes; what else could I tell him?"
"Oh, you must! But must you write it?"
"Yes; I never can see him again, and I won't let him think that I want
to, or to have him forgive me. He was to blame, but I was the most, for
he might have thought it was just some little thing, and I knew what it
was, and that it was something he ought to know at once. He will always
believe now that it was worse than it is, if anything can be worse. I
shall tell him that after I had seen Mr. Dickerson again, and knew just
what a--a dreadful thing he was, I tolerated him, and lured him on----"
"You _didn't_ lure him on, and I won't let you say such a thing,
Cornelia Saunders," Charmian protested. "You always did profess to have
sense, and that isn't sense."
"I never had any sense," said Cornelia, "I can see that now. I have
been a perfect fool from the beginning."
"You may have been a fool," said Charmian, judicially, "but you have
not been false, and I am not going to let you say so. If you don't
promise not to, I will tell Mr. Ludlow myself that you were always
perfectly true, and you couldn't help being true, any more than a--a
broomstick, or anything else that is perpendicular. Now, will you
promise?"
"I will tell him just how everything was, and he can judge. But what
difference? It's all over, and I wouldn't help it if I could."
"Yes, I know that," said Charmian, "but that's all the more reason why
you shouldn't go and say more than there is. He can't think, even if
you're just to yourself, that you want to--wheedle."
"Wheedle!" cried Cornelia.
"Well, not wheedle, exactly, but what would _be_ wheedling in some
other girl--in me," said Charmian, offering herself up. "Will you let
me see the letter before you send it? I do believe I've got more sense
than you have about such things, this minute."
"You wouldn't have any to brag of, even then," said Cornelia with
gloomy meekness, and unconscious sarcasm. "Yes, I will let you see the
letter."
"Well, then, you needn't go home to write it; you can write in your
room here. I want to see that letter, and I sha'n't let it go if
there's the least thing wrong in it." She jumped up gayly, as if this
were the happiest possible solution of the whole difficulty, and began
to push Cornelia out of the room. "Now go, and after you've put
yourself in shape, and got your hair done, you'll have some
self-respect. I suppose you won't begin to write till you're all as
spick and span as if you were going to receive a call from him. I'm
such a slouch that I should just sit down and write, looking every
which-way--but I know you can't."
She came back to the studio an hour later, and waited impatiently for
Cornelia's appearance. She was so long coming that Charmian opened the
door, to go and ask her some question, so as to get her to say that she
would be with her in a moment, even if she didn't come, and almost ran
against the man-servant, who was bringing her a card. She gave a little
nervous shriek, and caught it from his salver.
"For Miss Saunders, miss," he said, in respectful deprecation of her
precipitate behavior.
"Yes, yes; it's all right. Say that she--_is in the studio_." Charmian
spoke in thick gasps. The card was Ludlow's; and between the man's
going and Ludlow's coming, she experienced a succession of sensations
which were, perhaps, the most heroically perfect of any in a career so
much devoted to the emotions. She did not stop to inquire what she
should do after she got Ludlow there, or to ask herself what he was
coming for, a little after nine o'clock in the morning; she simply
waited his approach in an abandon which exhausted the capabilities of
the situation, and left her rather limp and languid when he did appear.
If it had been her own affair she could not have entered into it with
more zeal, more impassioned interest. So far as she reasoned her action
at all, it was intended to keep Ludlow, after she got him there, till
Cornelia should come, for she argued that if she should go for her
Cornelia would suspect something, and she would not come at all.