_THE YOUNG PEOPLE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER AT LAST._
If that there be one scene in life wherefrom
Evil is absent, it is pure early love.
Adèle's languor increased with the summer. The heat, which had grown
intense in and about London, the fatigues of the season, the anxiety
about Arthur and their mutual friend Mrs. Grey,--all these worked upon
a constitution in which the seeds of delicacy were deeply rooted.
Mrs. Churchill began to be anxious, and to cast about for some suitable
method of giving her daughter change of air. Nothing presented
itself for the moment. It was too early for Scarborough or Whitby;
only plebeians frequented Brighton in July; against the Continent,
Switzerland, Germany or the Italian lakes Adèle protested loudly, and
the good Mrs. Churchill felt a certain sinking of heart at the prospect
of putting the breadth of the Channel between herself and England
during the London season. The little gossip of society, the _projets
de mariage_, the whispers of political complications, the scandals of
high life were dear to Mrs. Churchill's soul. And at this special time,
when the air was rife with rumor, it would have been irritating, to say
the least of it, to go out into the blank of an existence from which
the _Morning Post_ and _Court Journal_ would of necessity be excluded.
But none of these things could alter the fact. Adèle was pining in the
great city; she wanted change of air.
Indecision and anxiety are not improving to the temper. The
good-natured Mrs. Churchill became sharp and irritable. She was annoyed
with Adèle for being ill, and with Fate for not delaying her illness by
a few weeks, when London could be left without a pang, and the bracing
climate of Scarborough would have been open to them; she was angry
with Arthur for his new independence and mysterious course of conduct,
and especially with that absurd Mrs. Grey, who seemed, by means of her
romantic story and inexplicable power of fascination, to be at the
root of all the inconvenience. The worst of it was that this internal
effervescence could be allowed very little external vent, for Arthur
and Mrs. Grey were out of reach, and the doctors, several of whom had
been consulted, had given express orders that Adèle should be kept as
quiet as possible. Of course it was idle to rave against Fate, for Fate
is calm and impersonal, and only bruises the breasts of the tumultuous.
The servants were the only sufferers, but they took their mistress's
ill-temper with great equanimity, knowing their personal comforts would
not be one jot diminished, and that this storm would pass as others
had passed before it. But Mrs. Churchill could not always keep her
annoyance from her daughter, and on one of these hot days her feelings
became quite too much for her.
Adèle was on the sofa again, deeply engrossed in one of her pet volumes
with the calf-skin binding. Her mother had been wandering about from
one position to another in the vain effort to cool herself; she had
tried at least a dozen different fans, she had bathed her face and
hands again and again in eau-de-cologne, she had read a little and
worked a little, had taken up the paper and thrown it down again, had
sighed and fumed and bustled till her state was really pitiable.
"Adèle," she cried at last, "for Goodness' sake put down that book.
Whatever the doctor may say about your not being crossed, I'm quite
sure--and so I told him only yesterday--that so much reading is very
bad for the mind, especially in hot weather. Why, _I_ can't even get
through the paper; and you look as pale as a ghost. Oh," wringing her
hands in desperation, "if I only knew what to do with you!"
"Only don't excite yourself, mamma," said Adèle languidly.
"Excite myself? That is not a very dutiful way of addressing your
mother, Adèle, especially when what you call my excitement is solely on
your account."
"I know it, mamma dear," said Adèle gently, putting down the obnoxious
volume. "Forgive me if I annoyed you, but really I wish so much that
you would cease being anxious about me. I shall be better as soon as
ever the weather is a little cooler."
"And how long may we suppose that will be?" Mrs. Churchill panted, and
began again agitating desperately the latest fan, a feathered one. "I
tell you what it is, if this goes on I shall shut up the house and
leave London altogether."
She spoke defiantly, as if London would be greatly the sufferer by such
a step.
Adèle shook her head: "You would certainly not like it, dear. No: I'll
tell you what to do. You must get Mary Churchill to stay with you here.
It will be pleasant for her to see a little of London, and you know
Aunt Mary will be charmed. Send me away somewhere for a fortnight. I
have a kind of longing for the sea." The young girl closed her eyes.
"I can imagine it, mamma, always so fresh and beautiful--Lord Byron's
'deep and dark blue ocean.' How nice it would be after the tiresome,
dusty streets and squares! I shall get better there directly; I feel
it."
Mrs. Churchill sighed impatiently: "One would think to hear you, Adèle,
that a young lady could live at the seaside by herself, without any
protection. Pray, little Miss Wisdom, how am I to send you to this sea
which you describe so romantically? I do believe those poetry-books are
at the root of all the mischief. I wish they were all drowned in that
same blue ocean. Blue, indeed! _I_ never see it anything but a dirty
gray. I suppose I want the fine poetic insight. And instead of helping
me you have started another difficulty. I promised your aunt Mary to
show your cousin a little of the world this season; of course it would
have been pleasanter for you to have gone out together; you are such
different styles that it might have been very safely done. I must say
it is extremely tiresome to have all one's plans upset. I wouldn't mind
so much if I could see any way out of all this, but really and truly I
was never so utterly at sea in my life."
"Write to Aunt Mary," said Adèle cheerfully, "and leave me to manage
the rest."
"Leave you, indeed! I might as well leave a baby. I know your
unpractical schemes of old. Dear me! I wish I could think of some
feasible plan."
"Only don't fret yourself, dear," said Adèle, kissing her mother
affectionately; "and listen! is that not Arthur's knock? I dare say he
can help us."
"_Very_ likely!" said Mrs. Churchill in a manner that was meant to be
splendidly satirical. "However," she continued, "I must dress now, but
I shall come down again before I go out; and remember, Adèle, if I find
he has excited your mind by any of his absurd romances, I shall forbid
him the house at once."
Adèle's eyes twinkled pleasantly at this awful threat. She knew her
mother too well to have even the faintest fear of its fulfilment.
When Arthur came in she saw in a moment that he was changed. The
languid, quasi-sentimental look had gone from his face, his step was
brisk and vigorous, he held himself erect; he even seemed to his
cousin's partial eyes to have grown since she saw him last. For the
moment as she gazed she trembled. It was all over, then. He had come to
tell her of success; but, reproving herself for the selfishness of the
thought, she held out her hand with a smile: "The sea-air has done you
good, Arthur; you look a different person."
He looked down upon her kindly: "I think I am better, Adèle, and in
more ways than one; but, my poor little cousin, I can't return the
compliment; you look as pale as a ghost. What in the world has Aunt
Ellen been doing with you?"
Adèle flushed painfully, for she was impatient to know what his
experience had been: "Please don't mind my looks, Arthur. Remember I am
curious. Be kind to me, dear," she smiled faintly; "keep me no longer
in suspense. Your eyes tell me something has been done."
Arthur sat down, and took one of her hands in his: "What do you read in
them, Adèle?"
She looked away, shading her face with her hand: "That you have
something to live for at last--that she, the woman whom you love--and I
believe she is worthy of your love"--it was bravely said, though there
was a certain rebellious rising in the poor little throat; she paused
a moment to choke it down, then continued very calmly--"that Margaret
has chosen you for her protector, that you are already busy planning to
restore her to happiness."
Arthur smiled again, then stooped over his cousin's sofa: "Why do you
look away, Adèle? If I should say that all this is true, that you are
the most penetrating little lady in the world, would you not be glad,
seeing that I have only obeyed you?"
"Don't, Arthur, don't," was the stifled answer, for he was struggling
with the hand which hid her averted face, and tears were in her eyes,
tyrannous exponents of a secret she would have died rather than
reveal. Arthur might have descanted with reason on the capriciousness
of woman's character, but he did not; he only smiled very tenderly,
and drew the tear-stained face to a surer shelter as he told in a few
earnest, manly words of the experiences of the last few days, and of
the task he had set himself.
"Adèle," he whispered in conclusion, "I am cured. When I left you my
brain was full of mad ideas. _She_ showed me their folly, and now I can
admire her, I can honor her, I can even love her, as a brother might,
with the purest desire for her happiness, which I still earnestly hope
to restore by giving her back her husband. For myself, my dream has
changed. Listen, Adèle, dear. Look up at me once: my present hope is
this--to strive by every means in my power to make myself worthy of the
gentlest, the most womanly, the noblest--"
She read the rest in his eyes, and with a smile that irradiated her
face till it was absolutely beautiful she looked up and put her finger
on his lips: "Hush, dear, hush! say no more; you make me ashamed of
myself, I have been so impatient and foolish. But, Arthur, I am happy
now, _so_ happy!"
She rested her head on the sofa and looked up at him, her blue eyes
shining and her cheeks glowing with soft excitement; a little smile of
contentment was playing about her lips, her golden hair fell back from
her forehead in rippling waves; she was fairer than ever before, for
nothing is so beautifying as happiness, especially to women of Adèle's
type.
Her cousin felt it. He looked at her with a smile. "Do you know,
Adèle," he said gently, "I never thought you beautiful before, but you
_are_ beautiful. What is it that is new to me in your face, little
cousin?"
She shook her head: "I can't tell, dear, unless perhaps it may be that
never in all my life have I been so _very_, very happy."
By which answer it will be seen that Adèle was but a novice in the ways
of the world. She was not afraid, now she knew her love was returned,
of letting its fullness be seen.
Let him love her little or much, that he loved her was enough. From the
moment that was known she could not help letting him see she was his
without reserve.
And Arthur's was not a nature to abuse such confidence "She trusts
me fully. She shall never regret it," he said to himself. The
consciousness of love and confidence unreservedly given is ennobling to
some natures. His cousin's simple trust was a new rock of strength to
the young man.
He stooped and kissed the young girl's ruddy lips, and there went
from her warm, glowing life and love a thrill of something reciprocal
through his being. He loved her, not with the first unreasoning love of
the boy throwing his wilful soul into a dream that has come he knows
not how--that is beautiful, fascinating, enthralling, he knows not
why--but with a riper, better feeling, for those weeks' experience had
served to form the young man's character, and it may be that for the
time he was even in advance of his years.
He loved his cousin for herself, with a love founded on the sure basis
of unwavering respect. He had seen her as she was, and he admired her
with all his soul for her beautiful unselfishness. Besides, _she_ loved
him with a force of loving that only a few weeks before would have
been utterly incomprehensible to him. Arthur's suffering had taught him
something, and he was able to understand his cousin.
After the mutual revelation they chatted together pleasantly, formed
plans by the thousand for Arthur's guidance in the difficult task that
was before him and for Adèle's demeanor in his absence. They were as
happy as two birds in a nest, for Arthur was at rest in his heart and
in his conscience, and in the light of her own happiness and pride
Adèle could not even be distressed at the indefinite separation before
them. For with the sanguine nature of youth she could not bring herself
to believe it would be long.
But as they talked the glow faded from her face. She was still weak,
and the glad excitement that had lent so soft a bloom to her cheek for
a time was itself exhausting.
Arthur was alarmed as he looked at her, she was so pale and fragile.
This friend, whose affection he had almost despised, was becoming
infinitely dear to him, and with a sudden pang he thought that perhaps
this delicacy might mean more than they had imagined.
"Adèle," he said in a startled tone, leaning over her sofa and gazing
anxiously into her eyes, "you must keep nothing from me; remember I am
to be your husband. Tell me the whole truth, or I shall go away from
you with a haunting fear. Is anything seriously wrong with you? Does
the doctor seem alarmed?"
She smiled a glad smile. It was sweet to be so cared for.
"In all honesty I believe not, dear. All I want is change of air. You
see I am weak," she sighed, "and all these people coming and going tire
me. Oh, Arthur, if you knew how I long for the sea sometimes! It is
like a kind of home-sickness. I feel as if I should be well at once if
I could only hear the waves. Don't you know--that nice, fresh, restful
sound?"
"I can't conceive why Aunt Ellen keeps you here," said Arthur with the
indignant impatience of youth. A few days before he had not been so
boundlessly considerate for his cousin himself. But human nature is
ever the same. We would wish all our neighbors to view the landscape
from our own standpoint; indeed, we are sometimes highly incensed if
they persist in looking at it from theirs.
"Poor mamma!" said Adèle, "she is quite put out and puzzled about me.
You see, she never likes to leave London at this time; and then she
promised to have Cousin Mary here, and there is so much going on."
"But why need _she_ go?" persisted Arthur. "Now, if she would only
agree to the arrangement, and if you could stand the journey, I would
willingly see you as far as Middlethorpe. Mrs. Grey has plenty of spare
room, she would be delighted to see you, and old Martha is travelling
there to-day, so that you would be well taken care of; then later in
the year Aunt Ellen could pick you up on her way to Scarborough."
Adèle shook her head: "_I_ should like it very much, but I fear mamma
won't. She will call it one of our unpractical schemes."
"But that's all nonsense," said Arthur impatiently; "she must either
take you away herself or let some one else do it, and surely I am as
fit a person as any one to decide on what is fitting for my future
wife."
Adèle laughed out merrily then, for as the last words were spoken in a
tone of indescribable importance, the door opened and Mrs. Churchill
appeared, radiant with smiles and good-humor. She had caught the
latter part of Arthur's sentence, and its decisive tenor set her mind
completely at rest. Evidently these ridiculous young people had at last
settled matters to their own satisfaction and hers.
"Treason in the camp!" she said, gayly, repulsing her nephew's offered
hand. "No, no, sir; before I have anything whatever to say to you I
must hear the burden of your complaint, and understand from your own
lips _what_ is fitting for your future wife."
"Mamma!" "Aunt Ellen!" Adèle and Arthur were covered with confusion in
a moment.
"Blushing, too!" said that lady unpityingly. "Come, Master Arthur, your
confusion is becoming, and Adèle's blushes particularly charming, but
_I_ am not answered. What are your lordship's commands? for I suppose
they must be obeyed."
"Must they, Aunt Ellen? _tant mieux_," answered the young man lightly;
"then I shall lay them upon you without delay. This young lady"--he
took one of Adèle's hands and held it in his--"my future wife, as you
observe, is looking wretchedly ill and worn; she requires change of air
at once."
Mrs. Churchill's face clouded: "Easily stated, my dear nephew; the
difficulty is at the present moment to give it to her."
"The difficulty can easily be overcome, Aunt Ellen, if you will only
have confidence in my judgment. You have heard something about Mrs.
Grey--"
"And quite enough, Arthur; pray don't begin upon _that_ old story."
"But I must, indeed, Aunt Ellen, if you are to understand what I want.
Mrs. Grey has been good enough to put all her affairs in my hands.
I have learned from her that the separation between herself and her
husband was brought about by a misunderstanding which she has been
allowed no opportunity of explaining. _My_ business now is to find out
her husband and make him understand the true state of affairs."
"All very well," broke in Mrs. Churchill impatiently; "and I'm glad to
hear she had the good taste and honesty to let you know at least that
her husband is living. But, pray, what has this to do with Adèle?"
"Patience for one moment, Aunt Ellen. I only trouble you with all these
details that you may know my scheme for my cousin is not so unpractical
as it may seem. Mrs. Grey, I am firmly convinced, is an honorable,
high-minded lady, or else indeed I could not wish to entrust her, even
for one day, with the keeping of any one so near and dear to me as
Adèle must be under any circumstances; for (_please_ let me go on for
one more moment) my scheme is this: Mrs. Grey has a charming little
house on the Yorkshire coast; the air is splendid, the neighborhood is
quiet."
Mrs. Churchill could not help smiling: "_Don't_ take a leaf out of
_Murray_, Arthur."
But the young man continued seriously: "She will be delighted to
receive Adèle for a time. If you agree to this, I can take her to
Middlethorpe before I go abroad, and you, on your way to Scarborough in
the autumn, can bring her on with you. Old Martha will be there, for
I sent her on to-day with some jewelry belonging to Mrs. Grey which I
have reclaimed from her lawyer. You know Martha will look after Adèle's
comfort as well as you could. Come now, Aunt Ellen, is this such a very
unpractical scheme?"
"Perhaps not, since your Mrs. Grey has turned out to be a respectable
matron after all; but what warrant have we that her story is true?"
"Mamma!" began Adèle indignantly, but Arthur stopped her:
"My moral conviction of her truth is enough for me, Aunt Ellen, and
for Adèle; I believe it would be for you if you had once seen her. But
for your satisfaction I can tell you that her story has been rather
strangely confirmed. I went to see Golding about it this morning, for I
wished to set him on the track of Mrs. Grey's child, who, I should tell
you, was mysteriously stolen away from her about a week ago. He knows
Mrs. Grey's solicitor, and had heard from him all the leading points of
the story."
Mrs. Churchill sighed: "Ah, well! I hope no harm will come of it. I
must say it's a queer state of affairs altogether, but as far as I can
see it seems the best plan. Adèle is certainly old enough to take care
of herself, and Mrs. Grey could scarcely have any ulterior design in
asking her to stay at the house. Then old Mrs. Foster being there is
a great thing; she is a most trustworthy person. I suppose it will be
necessary for me to write to Mrs. Grey, but how am I to put it? Is she
supposed to have sent an invitation by you?"
Adèle's eyes were glistening with delight at this happy termination.
"Never mind about that, mamma," she said gayly. "I will write a little
note to Margaret to prepare her for my coming, and, let me see, if you
like, Arthur, I can start the day after to-morrow."
"My dear child, how impetuous you are!"
"The day after to-morrow, Aunt Ellen," said Arthur decisively; "that
will give me to-morrow for further inquiries in town, the day after for
our journey, then on the day following, if at all possible, I shall
start for the Continent."
"Well, well," said Aunt Ellen, good-humoredly, "you young people have
taken the law into your own hands, so all I have to do is to submit."
And thus the matter was arranged to the mutual satisfaction of the
cousins.