BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
NOVELS
A LITTLE MORE
FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE
GLAMOUR
THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP
THE DEVIL’S GARDEN
GENERAL MALLOCK’S SHADOW
IN COTTON WOOL
MRS. THOMPSON
THE REST CURE
SEYMOUR CHARLTON
HILL RISE
THE GUARDED FLAME
VIVIEN
THE RAGGED MESSENGER
THE COUNTESS OF MAYBURY
SHORT STORIES
LIFE CAN NEVER BE THE SAME
ODD LENGTHS
FABULOUS FANCIES
SPINSTER
OF THIS PARISH
BY
W. B. MAXWELL
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922
BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, INC.
THE PLIMPTON PRESS · NORWOOD · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
SPINSTER OF THIS PARISH
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Neither the characters nor the incidents of this story are in any
way drawn from persons or events of real life; and in passages
where the names of the living or the dead have been mentioned,
they thus appear merely because the omission of them seemed
impossible (in such a context) by reason of the world-wide fame
of their holders.
SPINSTER OF THIS PARISH
CHAPTER I
It had been an odd impulse that made little Mildred Parker seek
counsel and advice, or at least sympathy, from Miss Verinder in
the first great crisis of her young life. The imperious necessity
of opening her heart to somebody had of course lain behind the
impulse, and Miss Verinder, although really only an acquaintance of
Mildred’s parents, had been unusually kind and friendly to Mildred
herself; but now, sitting in the drawing-room of Miss Verinder’s
flat, listening to Miss Verinder’s pleasant emotionless voice,
watching Miss Verinder with methodic care put away small odds and
ends in an antique bureau, she felt the huge incongruity that there
would be in speaking of love to an old maid of fifty.
“I won’t be a minute,” said Miss Verinder.
“I am not in the least hurry,” said Mildred quite untruthfully.
Waiting and watching, she thought that fifty years of age is
nothing nowadays--if you are not an old maid, and if you decorate
yourself properly. Some women of fifty are still dangerously
attractive--they act leading parts on the stage, they appear in
divorce cases, they marry their third husbands. But when once you
have allowed old maidishness to take possession of you!
“A place for everything and everything in its place,” said Miss
Verinder, closing a drawer and speaking as if to herself rather
than to a visitor. “That is a good motto, isn’t it?” And she began
to flick a silk handkerchief. “These are souvenirs--with only a
sentimental value.”
Mildred glanced round the room. At the far end there were windows,
through which one saw the shredded stem and drooping branches of
a large plane tree, all transparent green and fiery orange now in
the sunlight of a September afternoon; near the window at the other
end there was a cage with a somnolent grey parrot; a singularly
clean white cat lay stretching itself lazily on the seat of a
chintz-covered chair; and everywhere there showed the neatness and
order as well as the prettiness and taste that are only possible
in rooms altogether free from the disturbing presence of clumsy
man. Mildred, feeling more and more enervated, spoke admiringly but
abruptly.
“I do like your flat, Miss Verinder.”
“It is convenient, isn’t it?” said Miss Verinder. “So close to the
Brompton Road, so near everything. Strictly speaking,” she added
with gentle precision, “it is not a flat at all, but what they
call a maisonette. That straight staircase--almost like a ladder,
isn’t it?--has been as it were stolen from the auctioneer’s offices
on the ground floor; and it forms quite a private entrance. I
prefer that. It gives a feeling,”--and she made a graceful vague
gesture. “I think Oratory Gardens is the only place where you
find flats constructed on this principle. I considered myself
lucky in securing the lease--many years ago, you know. I wanted
to be just here, because I have so many associations with this
neighbourhood--the whole neighbourhood--as far as Kensington Gore
and Knightsbridge, but not south or west, you know. I like the
sight of the tree too.”
For a few moments she ceased dusting the small objects on the flap
of the bureau and stood at the window, looking out; a tall thin
dark figure with the sunlight behind her.
“It sometimes makes me feel as if I were miles away from
Kensington”; and she gently nodded her head and half closed her
eyes. “Far in the country. On the other side of the world, even.”
She was really a very charming, well-bred, elegant woman; and once
upon a time, a long while ago, when those eyes of hers were full
of brightness and lustre, when her sensitive lips were redder,
when her pale unwrinkled cheeks had permanent colour instead of
the fitful pinkness that now came and went so delicately, she must
have been quite good-looking. Possibly she might then have been
fascinating also. Her hair was really good, dark and strong, rolled
in bulky waves about her forehead and in a lump at the back of her
neck.
It was the demureness, the air of patience, endurance, and
submissiveness proper to her age and condition, that spoilt her
general effect and made her just a little dowdy, although always
beautifully dressed. Even in the moment of recognising a certain
natural feminine charm one sought for and found the stigmata of
spinsterhood. She had no mannerisms, affectations, or silly tricks;
and nevertheless.--But there is the bother of it. How and why do
we judge people or form any opinion concerning them? As soon as
you think you know what a woman is you begin to think she looks
like what you have decided her to be. Perhaps one merely imagined
and did not really see that outward suggestion of untilled fields,
autumn leaves, and faded flowers, which has come to symbolise a
particular combination of loneliness and neglect.
Essentially, she appeared to be spinsterhood personified. She stood
so very much alone. Although, as was known, she had relatives,
she did not appear to preserve any close intercourse with them.
One never met robust full-blooded nieces putting up at the flat
with “darling Aunt Emmeline” for a night or two; she showed you no
portraits of middle-aged brothers and sisters, or snap-shots of
children in embroidered aprons and sailor hats, the representatives
of a budding generation; there was not even a ne’er-do-well nephew
in the background, emerging into the foreground from time to time
and extracting financial assistance as he passed through London on
the way from Harrow to Sandhurst and from Sandhurst to his regiment.
Thus it seemed that the attitude of uninvolved spectator or
disinterested critic of all that matters in life had been
irrevocably forced upon her, and that, as in all such typical
cases, she had taken up feeble little secondary interests to fill
the vast blank spaces that should have been occupied by prime
ones. She attended concerts, lectures, classes; played bridge for
mild points; drank weak tea and nibbled dry biscuits at afternoon
parties. Sometimes, abruptly going away by herself, she was absent
for long periods; and one imagined her, charmingly and suitably
dressed as usual, say in the solitude of Dartmoor, translating
its purple heather and golden skies into the wishy-washy tints of
her sketch-book; or gathering a sprig of fern near the Castle of
Chillon in order to place it later between the pages of Byron’s
poem--in a word, one imagined her travelling as old maids with
ample means have always done, changing the outward scene but never
the mental atmosphere. Occasionally, too, she shut herself in the
flat, for weeks at a time, refusing to see anybody; and then one
surmised that she was passing through those phases of nervous
distress or semi-hysteria from the experience of which old maids
can scarcely hope to escape altogether.
Naturally she offered a strong contrast to the very modern young
lady of twenty sitting on one of the sofas, playing with her
gauntlet gloves, and brimming over with youthfulness and ardent
irrepressible life.
Mildred looked very pretty in her scant frock, low bodice, and
short sleeves; after the manner of modern girls seeming, perhaps,
a little commonplace or ordinary because so like so many others of
her class and years, at once doll-like and self-possessed, shrewd
and yet innocent. She was, or at least believed herself to be,
entirely modern; although at the moment occupied with elemental
things.
“Now,” said Miss Verinder, “I am all attention,” and she came from
the bureau and drew a chair to the sofa.
“I’m so glad I’ve caught you alone,” said Mildred feebly.
“Well, my dear Mildred,” said Miss Verinder, “I am purposely
alone, because, when I received your little note saying you wished
to see me--I don’t know why--but somehow I had the suspicion that
there was something you wanted to tell me, or to talk about.”
“Oh, Miss Verinder! How kind--how very kind!” said Mildred in a
gush of gratitude.
Indeed this divination seemed to her a most striking proof of
Miss Verinder’s power of sympathy; her own instinct had been
correct; she was glad she had come here. She went on impulsively
and confidently; telling Miss Verinder how she had half mooted the
subject of her troubles to two comfortable matrons, but in each
case she had felt rebuffed and had immediately “curled up,” feeling
certain that neither would give her any help, but rather take the
side of her family against her. Then she had made up her mind to
tell Miss Verinder all about it.
“I knew you’d help me if you could, dear Miss Verinder. You _have_
been so nice to me ever since we first met--and, I know it sounds
conceited, but I felt you did really like me.”
“I do like you very much,” said Miss Verinder simply and
affectionately; and she stretched out her hand and gave a little
squeeze to one of Mildred’s soft warm paws. Then she folded her
hands on her lap again.
“Thank you so much. I think you’re just an angel, Miss Verinder.”
“Why always Miss Verinder? Why don’t you call me Emmeline?”
“Oh, I _couldn’t_,” said Mildred, flattered but overwhelmed by this
surprising invitation. “It would seem such awful cheek.”
“Am I so venerable and forbidding?” asked Miss Verinder, with mild
reproach.
“Of _course_ not,” said Mildred eagerly. “No, I shall be
delighted, if you’ll really let me. I think it’s absolutely sweet
of you--Emmeline. Well now, Emmeline,”--and Mildred repeated
the name firmly, as if feeling great satisfaction in using this
unceremonious form of address;--“The fact is, Emmeline--”
And with a voluble flood she narrated how she had fallen deeply and
perhaps even foolishly in love with a young man; how Mr. and Mrs.
Parker had made a monstrous absurd fuss about it; and how, because
of it, the once comfortable home in Ennismore Gardens was swept
with tempest, wrath, and pain.
“You understand, Emmeline? I mean to say, they really are behaving
like people who have been bitten by a mad dog. In one way, I mean
to say--you know--it’s all too ridiculous for words. The things
they say! The things, don’t you know, they threaten to do. Well, I
mean to say--”
Mildred’s eyes were flashing, she pulled her gloves from hand to
hand, and, prattling on, became so involved with mean-to-says and
don’t-you-knows that she floundered suddenly to silence.
“Emmeline,” and she changed her position on the sofa, “I think I’d
better start at the very beginning.”
“That is always a good place to start at,” said Miss Verinder,
smiling sympathetically.
“Then what I want you to understand is that I’m very much in
earnest. It’s no silliness--or infatuation, as mother says--or any
rot of that sort. It’s the real thing.” As she said this Mildred’s
pretty commonplace little face became all soft and tender, her lips
quivered, and in spite of her modernity she had the aspect of a
quite small child who will burst into tears if you speak harshly to
it. “You must understand,” and she suddenly turned her head away,
“I wasn’t even thinking of love--much less hunting for it. It came
upon me like a thunderclap.”
“Like a thunderclap!” Miss Verinder echoed the words, and drew in
her breath, making the sound of a faint sigh. “Go on, Mildred dear.”
“Well then,” and Mildred looked round again, with a child-like air
of triumph. “I would have you to know also that the man I’ve fallen
in love with is very famous.”
Miss Verinder started and looked at her intently.
“But it’s nothing to do with his fame that has made me love him.”
Again Miss Verinder started, slightly.
“Of course I don’t mean to say that I wasn’t influenced by all
that. You know what I mean? Seeing his photographs in the papers!
Hearing what other girls said about him. And I own that I admired
him before I knew him, but it was for himself and nothing else that
I fell in love with him directly I did get to know him. The fact
that he was celebrated and a favourite of the public was nothing
then.”
And, now fairly started, Mildred opened her heart as she had
never done before. She told Miss Verinder all she felt of the
torturing bliss and exquisite pain that honest straightforward
young girls suffer when this most potent of fevers catches them
without warning, like a thunderclap. The tale of Mildred’s frenzied
longings and cravings and hopes and fears brought faint old-maidish
blushes to the smooth ivory of Miss Verinder’s cheeks. It was as
though Mildred, like a small house on fire, had lit up a faint
reflection in the far distance of a tranquil evening sky.
“There,” said Mildred, ceasing to flash and becoming quite calm.
“Oh, Emmeline, that _has_ done me good--even if you can’t help me.
You know what I mean? Just to get it off one’s chest for once.”
And then she laughed in a deprecating manner. “But I’m afraid I’m
shocking you most frightfully.”
“No, my dear,” said Miss Verinder, “you are not shocking me in the
least.”
“You _are_ so kind. Well then, now you _do_ see I’m in earnest, and
how ridiculous it is for one’s people--”
“Yes. But who is he, Mildred? You haven’t told me yet.”
“Alwyn Beckett,” said Mildred looking confident and triumphant.
But great as was Miss Verinder’s sympathy, she could not make
her face show any signs of intelligent recognition. She reminded
Mildred that she lived very much out of the world. It would
naturally appear ignorant and stupid, but she felt forced again to
ask the question: Who is he?
“The actor,” said Mildred.
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Verinder. “You must not be surprised if I
don’t know him by reputation, because I never go to the play, and
am quite out of touch with theatrical people”; and she paused,
smiling as if involuntarily amused by some secret thought. “The
utmost I do in that direction is occasionally to go to one of these
cinema theatres.”
“Oh, but he is on the films too,” said Mildred proudly.
“In what piece is he acting at the present time?”
“He is understudying the two big parts in _Five Old Men and a Dog_.”
“Ah, yes?”
Then Mildred burst forth about her family. “Of course I know they
can’t keep us apart. Of course they’ve no right to interfere with
me. But it isn’t exactly that. Good gracious, no, this is 1920, not
1820. Of course they can do what they’re doing now--I mean to say,
just making hell for me at home. It’s irritating, but I must put up
with it. Only I simply can’t stand their attitude to Alwyn”; and
Mildred grew warm. “What are they, I’d like to know--to look down
upon the stage!”
Miss Verinder said that the notion of treating the stage with
contempt did certainly sound rather old-fashioned nowadays.
“Old-fashioned! I should think so. Even if they were anybody--which
they aren’t. Do you know what my grandfather was? No. Well, I don’t
myself. Father’s been jolly careful to prevent us knowing; but I
know this--he wasn’t a gentleman. I mean, he hadn’t the smallest
pretensions to being one. It was up in the north, and I believe
he was just a person in a shop; you know, not owning the shop,
but serving behind the counter--and he married grannie for her
money. She wasn’t anything either. The elderly ugly daughter of
some manufacturing people. But by a fluke of luck her share in the
business somehow turned up trumps, so that while father was still
a boy they were rich, and able to send him to Rugby and Cambridge.
Then, when grandfather died, he and mother came to London, and
bought the house in Ennismore Gardens.” Saying this, Mildred
laughed scornfully. “Yes, and amused themselves by pretending that
they’ve lived in it for ten generations.”
“They could hardly have done that,” said Miss Verinder, smiling;
“because Ennismore Gardens have not been built long enough.”
“No, exactly. But you know what I mean”; and Mildred spoke with
almost tragic force. “Father’s just a snob, and mother’s every bit
as bad.”
Miss Verinder reproved her for speaking disrespectfully of her
parents.
“I know, I know, Emmeline;” and Mildred hastened to assure her that
till now she had always been fond of her parents--“poor dears.” She
had been loyal too, entering into their little foolishnesses, never
giving the show away; and she could feel fond of them again, if
only they would behave decently.
Miss Verinder asked, “Do they really base their objections
to--Forgive me, dear. What is his name again? Mr. Beckett. Yes, of
course. Well, do they only base their objection on the fact that he
is an actor?”
A crimson wave of indignation flowed upward from Mildred’s neck to
her forehead, while she explained how they had the effrontery to
say their real objection was--not so much that he was an actor, as
that he was a bad actor.
“Who are they to judge?” said Mildred hotly; and for a space she
held forth concerning the young man’s brilliant talent.
Miss Verinder asking how matters stood at the moment, Mildred
told her that the outrageous Mr. Parker had simply forbidden them
to meet. “But we _do_ meet of course.” And with a few words she
conjured up a picture of their clandestine meetings late at night
in Ennismore Gardens itself--he driving as fast as taxi-cab would
bring him from the theatre, she slipping out of the house to wait
for him, and the two of them pacing slowly through that columned
entrance by the mews and along the passage by the churchyard,
in the warm darkness beneath the trees; peered at curiously
by soft-footed policemen; encountering, as it seemed, all the
servant-maids of the neighbourhood similarly engaged with _their_
sweethearts. “Isn’t it degrading, Emmeline, to be forced to do such
a thing?”
And again she spoke of love and its invincible claims. She knew,
she said, that her destiny was all in her own hands. If she lost
Alwyn, she would have herself to thank, and it would be no use to
put the blame on anybody else. It was this thought that sometimes
made her feel desperate--and Alwyn too. Her parents could not
of course really come between them. But then there is the money
question. What they _can_ do is just to cut her off without a
penny; and really, seeing them behave like such pigs, one could
believe them capable of doing it. Well, that is not fair. That is
tommy rot. Suppose, after all, darling Alwyn should prove, not a
bad actor, but hardly quite the tremendous one that she hopes he
is; then, in that case, if they had a proper settlement--“the usual
thing,” with parents as well-off as hers--she could take him off
the stage. There were heaps of things she could do with him. Or
if--as is far more probable--he makes a colossal success, money
will be useful to set him up in management. You must look ahead;
although, when you are madly in love, it is difficult to do so.
Miss Verinder, watching her thoughtfully, inquired if all these
ideas had been prompted by Alwyn himself; and Mildred said no,
he was a thousand miles above such considerations. He cared for
nothing but her.
“Emmeline--as I say, you’re so awfully kind, and I do feel that
I need a word of advice from someone older than myself.” At this
point of the interview, it was curious to observe in Mildred that
mixture of shrewdness and innocence which makes the typical modern
girl seem at once so shallow and so baffling. She still playfully
tormented the yellow gauntlet gloves; her eyes shone with childish
candour; but there was something a little hard and business-like
about the red lips that only a moment ago had been pouting
petulantly. “My own inclination is to chuck over everything and do
something desperate--you know, just to run off with him.”
“And marry him without your parents’ consent?”
“Or _not_ marry him,” said Mildred, pulling at her gloves.
“Mildred!” said Miss Verinder, with a little cry. “What _do_ you
mean?”
“Well, what I mean,” said Mildred, “is that if they’re so damned
old-fashioned, I don’t see why they shouldn’t stew in their own
gravy--at least for a bit. Don’t you see? When they find I’m gone,
in _that_ way, if they’re really genuine in their feelings, it will
be the regular Mid-Victorian business. The lost child--our daughter
gone to perdition. Get her married now to the scoundrel that has
lured her away. Make her an honest woman at any price--and, by
Jove,” said Mildred, with a little ripple of innocent laughter,
“I’ll jolly well make them pay the price. You know, no more than is
right--the usual. I don’t mean blackmailing them or anything like
that.”
“Mildred,” said Miss Verinder, with an unexpectedly firm tone of
voice, “you and I must talk very seriously. And you must listen to
me, dear, and not be impatient if what I urge--Ah, yes.”
Interrupted by the opening of the door, she checked herself.
It was the faithful maid Louisa--a grey-haired woman older than
Miss Verinder, neat yet stately in her black dress and black silk
apron; just such an efficient long-tried maid-housekeeper as one
would expect such a mistress to have. Louisa was bringing them tea.
At sight of her the white cat dropped heavily from its easy chair,
stalked forward, and rubbed itself against Miss Verinder’s ankles;
while the grey parrot as promptly awoke, flapped its wings, and
screamed. Tea meant something to these two dependents.
“Look sharp, Louisa,” said the parrot, expressing the wish of both
in a gruff monotone. “Look sharp, Louisa. Louisa. Louisa.”
Louisa, bringing a collapsible table from the wall, smiled sedately.
“He always says that,” Miss Verinder explained. “It was taught to
him a long time ago--and with great difficulty. Only as a joke,”
she added. “For Louisa is always up to time--very much on the spot,
as you young people say.”
Louisa opened the table in front of her mistress, brought the tea
tray with kettle and tea-pot; went out again and returned with
trays carrying cakes, bread and butter, and so forth, which she
placed on smaller tables; finally brought a silver tea-caddy, and
lit the lamp under the kettle.
“It is just on the boil, miss.”
“Thank you, Louisa.”
Then Miss Verinder made the tea. Mildred watched her, fascinated
although preoccupied; it was all so neat and careful and methodic.
“One spoonful for you and one for me.” After warming the tea-pot
with a very little hot water, Miss Verinder was using not a spoon
but a queer little silver shovel to put in the tea. “One for the
pot--and one for luck! Now, dear, you see that bolt beneath the
kettle? Pull it out for me, will you? That’s it.” And for a moment
she was almost invisible as the steam rose. “Louisa never fails me.
She knows the proverb that ‘If the water not boiling be, filling
the tea-pot spoils the tea.’ One lump or two?”
In spite of emotion, or because of it, Mildred was hungry; and she
ate freely of the thin bread and butter and the sugar-covered cake,
till gradually these dainties seemed to turn to dust and ashes in
her mouth while she listened to Miss Verinder’s advice.
Miss Verinder indeed displayed an astoundingly accurate
comprehension of her young friend’s state of mind; but truly every
word she said might have been heard with cordial approval by Mr.
and Mrs. Parker themselves had they been present.
Mildred must not be silly; Mildred must be a sensible girl; Mildred
must summon patience to her aid, consider other people’s feelings
as well as her own, allow time to work on her behalf.
Mildred put down her tea-cup with a nervous jerk; she was bitterly
disappointed; and yet what different sort of advice could she have
expected from the owner of this room, with its caged bird, its
cat of dubious gender, its chintzes, water colour drawings, and
embroidered footstool--this room used only by elderly women, in
which the sound of a real man’s voice had never once been heard?
Clergymen came here no doubt for subscriptions; and faded old
bachelors, like old maids themselves, to gossip amiably--of books,
china, pictures, or anything else without any real life in it.
Completely enervated, Mildred felt again that sense of fantastic
incongruity between the subject of her late discourse and its
auditor. As well might she have gone to the nuns at Roehampton and
told her tale there.
Moreover, while talking, Miss Verinder performed certain little
actions which, as Mildred guessed, had become purely automatic
from long habit--such as pouring out milk and tea in a saucer and
placing it on the floor for the cat, going across the room and
inserting morsels of the sugary cake between the cage bars for the
parrot. Nevertheless, although thus to be interpreted, they added
to the girl’s distress.
Miss Verinder went on talking with earnestness and affection. She
would help, to the best of her ability, she would take the first
chance of a chat with Mrs. Parker. But really and truly it is all
nonsense to speak of kicking over the traces, outraging propriety
or convention, and that sort of thing. Mildred must wait. At any
rate, one must not give way to one’s passions.
Then Mildred blurted it out; clothed her thought in very plain
words. “But, dear Miss Verinder, perhaps you don’t know what the
passions are.”
“Why should you assume that?” said Miss Verinder gently.
Mildred apologised for a stupid phrase or explained it away.
Unconsciously she had ceased to address Miss Verinder by her
Christian name, and she pleaded with great strength for her own
point of view. It was the fiery cry of youth. Whatever else you can
do when you are young--so she said in effect--there is one thing
you cannot do, and that is, _wait_.
“Miss Verinder, I feel that I want us to be bound
together--now--and forever. Suppose we put it off, who can say
what would happen? Accidents--anything--He might grow tired of
waiting--or--or change his mind.”
“Oh, no, dear. If there is any chance of that, it is all the more
reason for not being in a hurry.”
“Miss Verinder, I believe you think I’m horrid about it; but on my
honour I’m not. My love for Alwyn and his for me is a _nice_ love.
Really and truly it is.”
“I’m quite sure yours is.”
“His too.” Suddenly and unexpectedly Mildred began to cry. She did
not gasp or sob; her lips trembled, her eyes filled with tears,
overflowed, and in a moment her whole face was wet, looking like
the face of a child of six who has been caught in an April shower.
She dabbed it with a totally inadequate handkerchief to prevent
the drops from falling on her pretty frock, and continued talking.
She herself looked prettier now than at any time during the visit;
that touch of calculating sagacity, with all other attributes of
modernness, had gone; only the natural innocence and simplicity
remained. “When we have been together for hours and hours--alone
together--up the river--anywhere--sometimes he hasn’t even once
kissed me. And at the time I haven’t even noticed it. I’ve only
thought of it afterwards, you know. We have been just perfectly
happy being together--not wanting anything else on earth. Miss
Verinder, you see what I mean? I only tell you to _make_ you see
what our love is. It’s because of it that I’m sure of myself--yes,
Miss Verinder, I am really.”
And dabbing her eyes with vigour, she emphasised the argument
that in linking yourself to anyone of the other sex you are quite
safe when you find the desired companion as well as the lover.
Companionship with Alwyn was the essential thing for which she
longed. It would be too dreadful to lose it--to risk losing it.
Suppose she let the chance slip, suppose she allowed Fate acting
under the more usual title of Accident to rob her of this felicity,
it was probable that she would never meet anybody else for whom
she could care in the same way, or even so much as “the snuff of
a candle.” She would be spiritually alone forever. Under such
conditions she felt that she simply could not face her life;
and, carried away with emotion and momentarily forgetful of the
personage she addressed, she sketched vividly the situation of a
middle-aged, soon-to-be old spinster--alone, with nothing to hope
for.
“But one always goes on hoping,” said Miss Verinder firmly.
She said the words indeed with such quiet strength that Mildred,
startled and surprised, asked her what she meant.
Miss Verinder did not answer explicitly. She came and sat beside
Mildred on the sofa, put her arm round the girl’s slim waist, and
began to repeat or sum up the counsel that she had already given.
Mildred for a minute was quite unable to listen; she sat looking
at her wondering. One always goes on hoping! What an extraordinary
queer thing to say. Could it be possible that Miss Verinder still
tried to brighten the cold monotony of life with sentimental or
romantic dreams--did she at her age still cherish the idea that a
knight would one day come to smash the prison bars of solitude,
break the chains of habit, and lead her out into freedom and
light--did she, poor dear kind soul, still really hope there was
somewhere on this broad strange earth a man stout enough and bold
enough to save her from dying as an old maid? These questioning
thoughts touched little Mildred’s heart with something far
removed from mirth, rather a pitying pain. They drove away her
self-absorbed emotion; they steadied her.
“Yes, Miss Verinder, I am really giving weight to everything you
say.”
Miss Verinder was gently yet firmly summing up. Mildred must
promise not to act rashly. In time--the young man proving patient
and worthy--her parents may agree to an engagement. In time--they
shewing themselves obdurate and unreasonable--one can begin to
think of marriage without their consent. But this suggestion of an
unsanctified bolt, an irregular union, entered into for whatever
aim or purpose--oh, no, never.
“Believe me, Mildred dear, it is only the very strongest characters
that can brave public opinion--and you must remember, public
opinion is represented by your father and mother. Yes, I am
sure--to go right through with anything of that kind, immense
self-control, really almost an iron nerve is required. That is, if
it is to be done successfully.
“And, Mildred,” said Miss Verinder, with an affectionate pressure
of the surrounding arm, “You mustn’t think I don’t know what I am
talking about. I don’t want you to dismiss me as antiquated and
squeamish.”
“Oh, no, Miss Verinder.”
“As you said, this is 1920; and people are always saying how
tremendously the world has changed; but I often think the changes
are not as big as people pretend--I think they are most of them on
the surface, as it were, and not going deep. Of course, when I was
young, girls had much less freedom. Oh, yes, much less--and people
will tell you that girls now can do what they like, and do do it.”
Saying this, Miss Verinder had a demure little smile. “So to speak,
girls are allowed to govern almost everything--but then they must
never omit to govern themselves. Oh, no, Mildred,” and she shook
her head. “In _that_, public opinion is quite unchanged. I mean for
people of _our_ class, Mildred. For those above us and below us it
may be quite different. I can’t say. But you’re not a barmaid or a
duchess either--are you?”
“No, Miss Verinder,” said Mildred meekly.
“And you have to think of your Alwyn and the effect it might
produce on him. There is the danger that he might fail you in a
way you haven’t considered. No, no--I don’t for a moment mean
play you false. Oh, no. But, perhaps, it is only the very finest
natures that can--accept--ah--this particular kind of surrender or
self-sacrifice from a woman and still hold her quite as high in
their minds as they did before--ah--the surrender occurred.
“There, Mildred dear. I am going to help you for all I am worth,
and you are going to be wise. And don’t--I beg you--forget this. I
have my reasons for all I have said.”
Mildred, nipping through the traffic of the Brompton Road with the
composure and agility of up-to-date girls, and then making her
way thoughtfully past the Oratory and into Ennismore Gardens, was
wondering what were Miss Verinder’s reasons.