'LET YOUR HEART PLEAD FOR ME'
'We were apart; yet day by day
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor fear'd but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.'
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Audrey never knew how she got through the rest of the day. During the
remainder of Michael's visit she seemed in an uneasy dream. Never before
in her life had she been oppressed by such painful self-consciousness;
all freedom of speech was impossible to her; she spoke with reluctance,
and felt as though every word were weighed in some inward balance.
More than once her mother asked her if she were well; but, happily,
Michael was not present to see how the blood rushed to her face as she
framed an evasive answer. She could not have told her mother whether she
were ill or well: she only knew some moral earthquake had shattered her
old illusions, and that she was looking out at a changed world.
But she was conscious through it all that Michael's watchfulness and
care shielded her from observation, that he was for ever throwing
himself into the breach when any unusual effort was required. Once when
her sister and Mr. Harcourt were present, he challenged them to a game
of whist, that Audrey might leave her place at the piano. Very likely he
had heard the slight quaver in her voice that told him the song tried
her.
Audrey longed to thank him as she stole out into the summer dusk, and
wandered down the paths between the tall sentinel lilies, that gleamed
so ghostly white in the darkness. But with all his thought for her, he
was never alone with her for a moment until the last day came, and he
went to the morning-room to wish her good-bye. She was tending her
ferns, but she took off her gardening-gloves at once as he came up to
her.
'You are going, Michael; but we shall see you again before you really
start?' she said, with an attempt at cheerfulness. But he shook his
head.
'I think not. Abercrombie has just written to say that Dick wants to get
away a week earlier. I shall not be down here again.'
Something choking seemed to rise in Audrey's throat, and if her life had
depended on it she could not have got out another word. But Michael saw
the troubled look in her eyes; they seemed to ask him again that
question, 'Must you go?'
'Yes, dear; I must go,' he replied gently. 'It is better for us
both--better for you, and far, far better for me.' And as she still
looked at him without speaking, he drew her towards him and kissed her
cheek. 'God be with you, my dearest!' he said very tenderly. 'Think of
me as kindly as you can, and let your heart plead for me.'
And the next moment he was gone.
Audrey stood rooted to the spot; she felt as though some nightmare
oppression were on her. She heard her father's voice calling to her.
'Where is Audrey?' he said. 'She must bid Michael good-bye.' And then
someone--Michael, perhaps--answered him.
A great longing was on her to see him again; but as she hesitated the
wheels of the dog-cart sounded on the gravel, and she knew that she was
too late. With a sudden impulse she leant out of the window. Michael was
looking back at the house; he saw her, and raised his hat. She had just
time to wave her hand as Dr. Ross drove rapidly through the gate.
When her mother came to find her she was still standing there; she
looked very pale, and the pained, wistful look was still in her eyes.
'Mother,' she said, 'Cyril has left me, and now Michael has gone, too;
and the world seems a different place to me.'
'Michael will come back, my darling,' replied Mrs. Ross, vaguely
troubled by the look on the girl's face. 'Your father says he has long
wanted a thorough change, and this trip will do him so much good.'
'Yes, he will come back; but when and how? And he will not come back for
a long time;' and then she broke down, and hid her face in her mother's
shoulder. 'If I were only like you, mother! if my life lay behind me,
and had not to be lived out day by day and year by year! for I seem so
tired of everything.'
Mrs. Ross could make nothing of her girl; but she gave her just what she
required that moment, a little soothing and extra petting.
'You have gone through so much, and you have borne it all so quietly,
and now Nature is having her revenge; you will be better presently, my
darling.'
And she was right: Audrey's strong will and sense of duty soon overcame
the hysterical emotion.
'I think I am tired,' she acknowledged; and to her mother's relief she
consented to lie still and do nothing. 'I will make up for this idle day
to-morrow,' she said with a faint smile, as she closed her eyes. 'Now go
downstairs, mother dear, and don't trouble about me any more, unless you
want to make me ashamed of myself for having been such a baby.'
'She is just worn out with keeping everything to herself, and trying to
spare us pain,' Mrs. Ross said to her husband, as she recounted this
little scene to him. 'I never knew Audrey hysterical before; I was
obliged to give her some sal volatile. I think she is asleep now.'
'I don't hold with sal volatile,' returned the Doctor a little grimly.
'Sleep is a far safer remedy, Emmie. Leave her to herself; she will be
all right in a day or two.'
But Dr. Ross sighed as he got up and went to his study. Audrey little
knew that her father was in the secret; that in his pain and perplexity
Michael had at last taken his best friend into his confidence.
'We must leave things to work round,' had been his parting words to
Michael that morning. 'No one, not even her father, must coerce her. All
these years you have been like a son to me, Mike; and if my child could
bring herself to love you as you deserve to be loved, no one would be
better pleased than I should be.'
'And you will tell no one--not even Cousin Emmeline?'
'Why, I should not dare tell her,' returned the Doctor with rather a
dejected smile, for he hated to keep things from his wife. 'Geraldine
would get hold of it, and then it would come round to Harcourt. No, I
will keep my own counsel, Mike. And now good-bye, and good luck to you!'
'It is the Burnett motto,' replied Michael, with a touch of solemnity in
his voice--'"Good luck God send." Take care of her, Cousin John.'
And then the two men grasped hands and parted.
'If I had to search the whole world over for a husband for her, I'd
choose Mike,' was Dr. Ross's thought as he drove himself back again to
Woodcote.
Audrey kept her promise and made up for her one idle day. 'Work was good
for everyone,' she said, 'and it was especially good for her.' So the
following morning she resumed lessons with Mollie. She had complained a
few weeks before that her German was becoming rusty, and by her father's
advice she and Mollie were taking lessons together of Herr Freiligrath.
The master she had selected was a very strict one, and his lessons
entailed a great deal of preparation. No discipline could have been more
wholesome. Audrey forgot her perplexities while she translated
Wallenstein and followed the unhappy fortunes of Max and Theckla.
But she did not at once regain her cheerfulness, and the daily round of
duty was not performed without a great deal of effort and inward
prompting; if no task were left unfulfilled, if she were always ready to
give her mother or Geraldine the companionship they needed, and if her
father never missed one of her usual ministrations, it was because she
would listen to no plea of self-indulgence.
'You are unhappy, and I fear you must be unhappy and not at ease for a
long time,' she would say to herself in the intervals of her work; 'but
idleness will not help you.' And to give her her due, she was never
busier than during the summer that followed Michael's leave-taking. She
had no idea that Michael knew all she was doing, and that her father
often wrote to him. Michael had kept his word, and his letters to Audrey
were very few and far between, and there was not a word in them that her
mother or Geraldine could not have read if she had chosen to show them;
but Michael's letters had always been sacred to her. Still it was
impossible to answer them with her old freedom. The happy, sisterly
intercourse was now a thing of the past. She could no longer pour out to
her friend all her innocent girlish thoughts; a barrier--a strange,
unnatural barrier--had been built up between them, and Audrey's letters,
with all her painstaking effort, gave very little pleasure to Michael.
'Poor child! she is still afraid of me,' he thought, as he folded up the
thin paper. And he could not always suppress a sigh as he missed the old
playfulness and open-hearted affection that used to breathe in every
carelessly-worded sentence. But he knew that she could not help
herself; that it was impossible for her now to tell him how she missed
him and how heavily the days passed without him; and how could he know
it, if she thought less of Cyril and more of him every day?
Michael could not guess at all that inward self-questioning that seemed
for ever making dumb utterance in her breast. Now and then, when no one
needed her, she would wander down to 'Michael's bench' in the dusk or
moonlight, and go over that strange conversation again.
'Let your own heart plead for me,' had been his parting words; and,
indeed, it seemed as though some subtle influence were for ever bringing
his words to her memory. Why had he left her? Could he not have trusted
her to do even this for him? She had loved Cyril, but she had not wished
to marry him; she had wished to marry no man. It was the instinct of her
nature to make others happy, and not to think of herself; and if Michael
had wanted her----But the next moment a sort of despair seized her.
He was not like Cyril. What she had to give would not content him in the
least.
'I must have all your heart or none,' he had said to her; and his eyes
seemed to dominate her as he spoke. 'I should ask more than he did.' And
she had not dared to answer him.
No; she could not deceive him. She knew that no kindness on her part
would ever wear in his eyes the semblance of the love he wanted. What
could she do for him or for herself?
'Can love come by trying?' he had asked; and she could recall vividly
the bitterness of his tone as he said this.
But the speech over which she pondered most, sometimes for an hour
together, was a very different one.
'I shall leave you,' he had told her, and there had been a strange light
in his eyes as he spoke--'I shall leave you to question your own heart.
Let it speak truly. Perhaps--I do not say it will be so, but perhaps you
may find that I am more to you than you think. If that time ever comes,
will you send for me?'
'What did he mean by saying this?' she would ask herself. 'Why did his
look seem to reproach me and pierce me to the heart? How could I know,
unless he told me? It is not my fault that I have been so blind. I
cannot send for him--I cannot! It is too soon, and----'
But Audrey did not finish her sentence. Even under the dark trees the
hot flush was scorching her face.
'Oh, I am so tired of it all!' she would say, springing to her feet with
a sudden, quick impatience.
The old tranquil life--the happy, careless life--was gone for ever.
Cyril--her poor dear Cyril--was in his grave; and now there was this new
lover, with his proud, gentle wooing: not her old Michael who had so
satisfied her, but a new, powerful Michael, who half drew and half
repelled her, and for whom she had no fitting answer.
Audrey was glad when August came and she could find some relief in
change of scene. Dr. Ross had taken a large roomy cottage at Keswick for
the summer holidays, and the Harcourts and Kester were to join them.
Audrey was thankful that her father had not selected Scotland, as his
son-in-law had suggested; and she made up her mind, in her sensible way,
that, as far as lay in her power, she would enjoy herself as much as
possible; and after a time her efforts were not unsuccessful.
Derwent-water was in unusual beauty that year, and a spell of warm,
sunny weather enabled them to enjoy their boating expeditions on the
lake. Audrey liked to paddle herself and Mollie to one of the islands,
and sit there reading and working, while Kester and Percival fished and
Geraldine roamed by the lake-side with her bonnie boy, sitting like a
young prince in his little wheeled carriage, beside her. There was a
long-tailed, shaggy pony belonging to the cottage--a sturdy,
sure-footed, good-tempered animal, and Dr. Ross would often drive his
wife through some of the lovely dales. Mrs. Ross never thoroughly
enjoyed herself in a boat--she had a dislike to find herself surrounded
by the deep, clear water; and she much preferred the chaise and Jemmy.
'You were always a goose, Emmie, and I suppose that is why I married
you,' Dr. Ross remarked, as he tickled up Jemmy's broad back with the
whip.
Nevertheless, the Doctor loved these expeditions quite as much as his
wife did.
'What a handsome Darby and Joan they look, Jerry!' Mr. Harcourt once
said, as he walked beside her, with Leonard proudly seated on his
shoulder. 'I doubt if we shall make such a good-looking couple, my love,
in thirty years' time.'
But Mr. Harcourt was smiling in a sly fashion, as he took a sidelong
glance at his graceful wife. Geraldine was looking lovelier than ever in
the broad-brimmed hat that her husband had chosen for her.
A sad event happened soon after their return to Woodcote. Matthew
O'Brien died on the anniversary of his son's death. His end had been
very sudden; no one had suspected that for months an insidious disease
had been making stealthy progress. He had seemed much as usual, and had
made no complaint, only Mrs. Baxter had remarked to her father that
Uncle Mat seemed quieter-like and more peaceable. 'He has given up those
wearisome prowls of his, and takes more kindly to the chimney-corner,'
as she said.
But one evening Mat put his pipe down silently before it was half
smoked, and went off to bed, and the next day he complained of pain and
drowsiness; and Prissy cooked some of her messes and soothing possets,
and made much of him as he lay on his pillow looking idly out on the
October sunshine. And the next day, as the pain and drowsiness did not
diminish, she very wisely suggested that a doctor should be sent for;
and as Dr. Foster stood beside him, asking him questions rather gravely,
a sudden thought came into Mat's mind, and he looked into the doctor's
eyes a little solemnly.
'You need not be afraid to tell me, doctor,' he said sadly; 'my life has
not been much good to me, and I shall not be sorry to part with it.' But
the doctor's answer was kindly evasive.
But two or three nights afterwards, as Thomas O'Brien was sitting beside
the bed for an hour to relieve Prissy, Mat stretched out his lean arm
and grasped his brother's coat-sleeve.
'It is coming, Tom,' he said; 'I shall soon be with my boy--that is, if
God's mercy will grant me admittance to that good place. Give my love to
Mollie and the little chap, and, Tom, old fellow, God bless you!'
He murmured something drowsily, and then again more clearly:
'Tell Olive that she was not to blame so much, after all. I have been
too hard on her, poor girl! but she could not help her nature. Isn't
there something about "To whoever little is forgiven, the same loveth
little"? I seem to remember Susie reading it.'
And Thomas O'Brien, bending over the gray face, repeated the words
slowly:
'"Wherefore I say unto you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for
she loveth much."'
But Mat interrupted him:
'He has forgiven me plenty, lad, and you too, and I love Him for it.'
And those were Matthew O'Brien's last words.
Mat O'Brien did not go unwept to his grave, in spite of his
unsatisfactory life. His brother mourned for him long and sincerely, and
in their way Kester and Mollie grieved, too. At Audrey's wish, Mollie
wrote the full particulars of her father's death to the convent. Sister
Monica's answer was, in Audrey's opinion, singularly suggestive of the
ci-devant Mrs. Blake. It was a strange medley of mysticism and motherly
yearnings, but at the end was a touch of real honest feeling.
'Tell Audrey that when I pray for my boy I pray for her, too; and,
Mollie, do not think that your mother forgets you, for perhaps she
may do you better service now than ever she did when we were
together. Think of me sometimes, my child. I am glad that your
father spoke of me so kindly. I can pray for him now, as I never
could when he was living. Poor man! It was an ill world to him, but
he is out of it now.
Your loving and repentant mother,
'SISTER MONICA MARY.'
Audrey went over to Brail constantly during the autumn and winter months
that followed Mat's death. Sometimes Mollie accompanied her, but oftener
she was alone. Nothing cheered Thomas O'Brien more than the society of
his favourite. He loved to talk to her of the dear ones who had passed
within the veil, and to Audrey herself the visits were very soothing.
She liked those solitary walks under the gray November skies, or when
the December sun hung redly behind the distant hedgerows. How often she
had walked there when Cyril had met her half-way, or she had come upon
him lingering in the lanes, with Zack bounding beside him. It was in the
Brail lanes that he first told her of his love, when she had sent him
sorrowfully away from her; but somehow, as she walked there now, between
hedgerows white with hoar frost, she thought less of him than of
Michael; but as yet no message had been sent to recall the wanderer
home.