ISABELLA'S POINT OF VIEW
"All things
Of dearest value, hang on slender strings."--WALLER.
"So, my dear, it has come." These were Isabella's words of greeting.
For a moment Philippa hesitated; then she raised her eyes and met the
other's look fearlessly.
"Yes," she said simply. "How did you know?"
Isabella took her arm and they walked on together.
"How did I know?" she repeated. "It is written on your face. I was
waiting for it, you see."
"You were waiting for it?" repeated the girl wonderingly.
"Yes. I knew it must come. If for no other reason than that pity is
akin to love; but more than that, I knew that if there was anything
left in the older man of the Francis I used to know--any of his great
charm and sweetness of character--you could not, being what you are,
fail to love him."
"I did not know--indeed I did not know."
"No, I am certain of that. It is curious, isn't it"--Isabella spoke
musingly--"how a little spark of love may fall, all unknown to
ourselves, deep down in our heart, and smoulder there without smoke,
until some sudden gust of emotion--sorrow--pleasure--anger--God knows
what--fans it into a blaze that we cannot extinguish--into flames so
high that they reach from earth to heaven and light the whole world for
us? Yes, and not only the whole world, but all that unmapped country
within us of which we know so little and in which we are so apt to lose
ourselves."
"He asked me," said the girl. "I had known in a vague way that the
question must come--and I think you knew it too, for that was what you
meant the other day, wasn't it? And I was quite prepared. I meant to
answer him. I meant to stick at nothing, to satisfy him whatever he
asked--and I was going to lie. And as I spoke the words I knew that
they were true, I knew that I loved him, Isabella. No, nothing to do
with pity, although you may be right when you say that pity had
something to do with it in the beginning--but love, such as I did not
know was possible to me."
"And now," asked the older woman, gently, "are you glad or sorry?"
"Sorry!" she cried. "Sorry! How could I be sorry? I am glad."
"You welcome love?"
"I welcome it. It is so wonderful--so beautiful----"
"Love brings suffering."
"I am not afraid of suffering--for myself--only for him. If suffering
comes, it can never take from me the joy I have known."
"The price of love is heavy."
"No matter the price, I will pay it gladly." There was no mistaking
the gladness and the courage which rang in the words.
"Poor child! poor child!" said Isabella softly.
"Do not pity me. There is no need for pity," she said earnestly.
"Isabella--if I lost him--to-morrow--still, I have known--but he is not
going to die, he is going to live."
"The doctor thinks so?"
"Yes; he says there is no reason why he should not live out his
allotted span of life--those were his words."
Isabella did not speak--she was thinking only of Francis, and not at
all of the girl beside her. Which was best for him? Would it not be
kinder, happier, if he died now before he knew? Her face was very
grave and sad; so much so, indeed, that Philippa repeated the words she
had spoken, "He will not die. And I have promised to marry him."
"The difficulties are enormous." The words broke from Isabella half
against her will. Of what use to speak of difficulties to the girl
whose mind refused to acknowledge the existence of any?
"I have planned it all," continued Philippa, without heeding Isabella's
words. "We shall be married and go straight abroad. It would not be
good for him to be in England for the winter. He needs brightness and
warmth and sunshine, and I shall take him to some quiet place where he
can have them--where there is no one he has ever known before, to
disturb him, or make him worry because he does not remember."
"Do you think he tries to remember?"
"I do not know. He certainly remembers something of the past. I
mentioned your name to him the other day, and he replied quite
naturally and quite calmly, 'Dear old Isabella! she was always a good
friend.' So you see he does remember."
A painful flush rose in Isabella's sallow cheeks, but she said no word.
Was this the message she had waited for so long? Casual words repeated
with a cruelty that was quite unconscious on Philippa's part.
She too was thinking only of Francis, and not at all of this woman who
had loved him in silence for so long. But with the wound comfort came
to Isabella in the knowledge of the meed of praise the words contained.
It was something to know that Francis remembered her, and more to know
that he recalled her as a good friend. What more could she expect?
Then, taking her love and her longing with both hands, she laid them a
sacrifice before the welfare of the man she loved, and made the
renunciation of her one hope without a quiver in her voice.
"I think you are perfectly right," she said. "It is most important
that he should not see--any one--he knew in the old days. It would
only disturb and perplex him, and if you take him abroad you will be
able to guard him from every danger of this kind."
"Yes," said Philippa eagerly, "that is what I feel. I shall try and
explain it to Marion, but I am afraid it will not be easy to make her
understand. If he sees the Major I am sure he will begin to wonder,
and Marion and the child would puzzle him dreadfully. But right away
in Italy, or somewhere he has never been before, there would be no
danger of anything of the kind. He can start a fresh life altogether.
"I did not really want him to live, Isabella," she continued presently.
"I thought it would be better for him to go out of it all, out of all
the bewilderment and trouble; but that was before--I knew--I loved him.
And now, you cannot wonder that I want him to live. My life shall be
devoted to taking care of him. Oh, how I wish you could see him,
Isabella! You would see that what I say is true. He is so happy, so
light-hearted. I think he must be just what he used to be when he was
a boy.
"I had a long talk with poor old Goodie last night. She is in the
seventh heaven of delight because the nurse is leaving. She has been
so jealous of her, poor old soul. You can hardly wonder at it, can
you? She told me exactly what she and Keen had arranged. He is going
to sleep in the next room because, as she said, much as she would like
to be next to Francis, she did not wake as easily as she used to, and
she might not hear him if he called; but she is to take in his early
cup of tea so as to have a look at him before any one else. 'I know
just how he likes it,' she assured me. 'Two lumps of sugar and a dash
of cream.' Her devotion is quite pathetic, and she nearly made me cry
last night when she invited me into her room and showed me all her most
precious possessions. They had all to do with Francis. His first pair
of gloves, such tiny things with fingers about an inch long, his baby
shoes, his favourite playthings, beginning with a worsted rabbit and
ending with his last tennis racquet. She had a cupboard full of them.
And she was so proud of all his presents to her, particularly of a blue
china mug which she told me he had bought for her with his own money
when he was seven years old. The dear old woman couldn't stop talking
of him, and I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. She showed me
letters she had from him when he first went to school. The first one
he wrote began 'Darling Goodie,' and ended up 'Your loving little Boy.'
Well, it appears that she did not think this was a suitable way for him
to address her, so she wrote and told him that he was not to write like
that again, but to remember his position, and that God had made him her
superior. He wrote back 'Darling Goodie,' and ended up 'Your loving
little superior Boy.' I saw the letter written in a sprawling childish
hand with a line of crosses for kisses at the bottom of the page. It
was rather sweet, wasn't it?
"You never heard such stories as she told me. How he once dressed up
in the coachman's livery and took the brougham to fetch his mother from
Renwick. It was quite dark, and she got into the carriage without
noticing anything. He drove home at a fearful pace, and galloped the
horses right up the drive, and pulled up at the hall door with a
tremendous jerk. His mother quite thought the coachman was drunk, and
as she got out she said very sternly, 'You will come to me in the
library immediately, Williams.' 'Yes, darling,' said Francis, and
jumped off the box and gave her a great hug. It must have been very
funny."
"You would think it particularly funny if you had known Lady Louisa,"
assented Isabella. But she said nothing of a girl who had crouched
behind the gatepost, shivering with cold and excitement, to watch the
success of the plot which had been hatched by two playmates in the
fragrant fastness of the hayloft, which had been always their favourite
hiding-place. To this day the scent of hay gave Isabella a delicious
tremor, a thrill of the old joyful dread of discovery, which had been
the charm of the innocent conspiracies of those far-off days. That it
had been her fellow-conspirator who usually undertook the carrying out
of the deeds of derring-do, and that upon her had fallen the humbler
task of keeping guard against any possible surprise--covering his
tracks--averting suspicion--even occasionally taking the blame, though
this was without his knowledge,--made no difference to her intense
enjoyment. The axiom that one must lead and the other must follow had
been early instilled into her by her masculine comrade, and she for her
part had been only too content to follow so long as it was he who led.
She had forgotten nothing. If it came to stories about Francis as a
boy, she could, had she so wished, have recounted as many as old
Goodie, but she listened to the recital with a calmness that gave
Philippa no hint of her real feelings.
"She showed me a lot of his drawings, too," Philippa said presently.
"It seems rather curious that he has never spoken of that, for I think
he had been painting the first day I saw him. Dr. Gale told me it was
one of his occupations during all the years he was ill. Perhaps he
will take it up later on--it will be an interest for him."
"He used to do a good deal of it at times before he was ill," said
Isabella. "At one time he had an idea of taking it up seriously, but
he was always too fond of being out of doors to stick to anything that
kept him in. I remember one Long Vacation he arranged a studio in one
of the barns, and declared he was going to work in deadly earnest; but
after a while the longing to be out became too strong to be resisted
and we heard no more of his career as an artist. No one ever had such
a love of nature and sunshine and the open air as he had, and he loved
the place so, every field and every tree."
"I wish I had known him then. Oh, Isabella, doesn't it seem
extraordinary to think of all that has happened in these last few
weeks? I was in such a stupid frame of mind when I came here--so
self-centred and so dissatisfied--and now, everything is changed for
me. First came all the interest and the intense pity I felt, and then,
little by little, love grew without my knowing it until it filled my
heart, and I know that whatever happens life can never be the same
again to me. It seems so wonderful that everything can be changed in a
moment. Does love always come like that? The realisation of it, I
mean. I suppose not. Oh, I am sorry for the people who have never
felt it. I can hardly believe that I am the same person who grumbled
at life being empty a little while ago, for now it is so good to be
alive." She stretched out her arms with a welcoming gesture that
seemed to embrace the whole world. Then she turned quickly.
"Forgive me, Isabella," she said with a little happy smile; "forgive me
for talking about myself, I don't know what made me do it. I think my
heart was so full it just had to come out. Now let us talk of
something else. How is the book getting on?"
"Not very well, I am afraid. I must confess it has not progressed much
the last few days; partly because I have not been quite in the mood for
it, which is a terrible confession of weakness, and partly because Mrs.
Palling has been on the war-path.
"First of all her beloved bees have been in a most unsettled frame of
mind, or so she tells me--I can't say I have seen any sign of it
myself--and she assures me that something is going to happen. At first
she felt certain that it was the arrival of a visitor for which they
strove to prepare her. I am quite sure that it must have been your
coming that is the cause of it. No one ever invaded my solitude
before, and the excitement was too much for her. But as day after day
passed and no stranger arrived, she changed her mind and is now equally
certain that the restlessness of her household gods portends some
fearful disaster. The awkward part of it is, that even she cannot make
out what form it will take; she merely tells me gloomily that something
is going to happen. She has tied a bunch of herbs over the door to
keep illness away, and she has presented me with a little stone which
she beseeches me to carry about with me to avert accident, but even
these precautions haven't comforted her much. Whenever I return home I
see her waiting anxiously at the gate with a face long enough to
propitiate all the gods of misfortune, and when she sees me she finds
it hard to believe that I am not dragging myself home to die of some
hidden wound.
"But never mind! I have known the good woman suffer from these attacks
of depression before. It will pass and she will be restored to her
accustomed cheerfulness. I have already told her that her symptoms
point to indigestion, to which she replied darkly that by some
oversight the last pig was killed at the waning of the moon, and that
possibly the pork was 'a bit unheartsome' in consequence. Come and see
her some day if you can. I dare say the sight of you will appease the
bees and restore her to sanity."
"I will if I possibly can," returned Philippa doubtfully. "But you
know, I do not like to go very far in case Francis might ask for me.
Could you not come and see me?"
Isabella hesitated. "I do not think I will come to Bessacre unless you
really want me--for anything particular, I mean. If I can be of any
use to you, send for me, and I will come at once; but otherwise I think
it will be better not."
They parted soon afterwards, and Isabella trudged back to her home
across the sunlit moor with slow and lagging step. Philippa's words
had indeed "knocked at her heart and found her thoughts at home," and
the old wound throbbed with a dull fierce ache. She, with her intimate
knowledge of Francis, could picture to herself the whole course of
recent events.
Had she not known him as a lover, wooing Phil with all the strength of
his early manhood, all the force of the flood-tide of his love? Had
she not seen him curbing that love lest any demonstration of too open
affection might harm his cause with the woman who had not "liked
heroics," wooing with innocent devices and tender subtlety? And she
could almost hear the words he must have spoken when again he wooed.
Small wonder that Philippa's heart had awaked to his appeal. The fact
of her own affection, although it did not entirely blind her, distorted
her outlook. She only saw that Francis' peace of mind must be
preserved at all costs, and it was not likely that she, who would have
sacrificed herself gladly for his lightest good, could bring a clear
judgment to bear upon the ethics of the case. Had she been in
Philippa's place no question of abstract morality would have carried
weight with her. She would have taken any action which would have
saved him from distress, just as surely as she would have plunged into
fire to rescue him.
She would never have stooped to casuistry or self-deception, but she
would never have hesitated. She was not what may be called a religious
woman as we understand the term. She believed with all her heart in a
Supreme God whom she worshipped, but she could not agree to the
restrictions which, it seemed to her, orthodoxy set upon His power, and
she had no sympathy with women who trample heedlessly upon the feelings
of others in a frantic effort to save their own souls. The truth being
that Isabella, like so many of her sex who lead solitary lives, had
constructed for herself a curious philosophy out of the hotch-potch of
maxims, theories, prejudices and principles which she called her
opinions, and it had at any rate the merit of being a philosophy of
self-sacrifice and self-control.
She realised that Philippa's new-found joy was built upon a delusion,
that at any moment it might come tumbling about her ears, but that was
hardly worth consideration, although it aroused in her a sense of pity.
She had said "Love brings suffering," and in the words she had recited
a clause in her creed of life. Had she not been taught by bitter
experience? Love brings suffering, yes; but that was no reason for
shrinking from Love. The greater the value of anything, the greater
the price which must be paid. This was not cynicism, but common sense;
and it was only a coward who did not welcome the suffering as an
intrinsic part of the wonderful whole, only a miser who would not pay
the price.
She herself had paid it--ungrudgingly--in tears--in long years of
loneliness--with empty hands. But with Philippa it was different.
Happy Philippa, who might know the delight of Love's service. It is
never so hard to suffer in the forefront of the battle, it is the
inaction that tortures.