"Dear Miss Brandt,--When I called at Lady Elspeth Gordon's this
afternoon, I learned, to my very great regret, in which I dare
to hope you may participate, that our dear old friend had been
summoned to Inverstrife at almost a moment's notice, by the
sudden illness of her niece, the Countess of Assynt.
"I trust her visit may not need to be a very extended one, but
Lady Elspeth is such a tower of strength to all who seek her
help that she is not likely to return so long as she can be of
any possible assistance to her friends.
"For reasons which, perhaps, I need not particularise, her
sudden departure is to me a loss beyond its apparent magnitude.
The hours I have spent at her house have been among the
brightest of my life. You also have enjoyed her friendship. I
venture to hope that you also will miss her.
"Should I not have the pleasure of seeing you for some little
time, I would beg of you to bear me in your kindly
remembrance.--Sincerely yours,
"JOHN C. GRAEME."
Did it say too much? Would she look upon it as an overstepping of the
limits their acquaintance had reached?
Did it say enough? Could she possibly overlook the things he would so
dearly have liked to say but had left unsaid?
Did it say too little? Could she possibly deem it an unnecessary
liberty, and cold at that? He did not think she could by any
possibility look at it in that light.
But after it was at last surely lodged in the pillar-box, all these
doubts came back upon him with tenfold force, and his sleep that night
would have been short-commons for a nightingale.
She would get his letter by the first post in the morning. Would she
answer it at once? Or would she wait half a day considering it?
Either course held hopeful possibilities. A prompt answer would
surely suggest a concurrence of feeling. An answer delayed would
without doubt mean that she was pondering his words and reading
between the lines. So he possessed his soul in patience, of a somewhat
attenuated texture, and waited in hope.
But the whole day passed, and the night, and the next morning's post
still brought him nothing,--nothing but an intimation from a publisher
of excellent standing that he would not decline to look over the
manuscript of his next book if he was open to an offer. And this
important document he tossed on one side as lightly as if it were a
begging letter or a tailor's advertisement.
What were any other letters, or all the letters in the world, to him
when the one letter he desired was not there?
All that bright April day he waited indoors, in order to get
Margaret's letter the moment it arrived. For how should he wander
abroad, in gloomy-blazing streets or desolate-teeming parks with that
anxiously-expected letter possibly awaiting him at home?
The callous passage of the last post, after knocking cheerfully at
every door but his own, left him wondering and desperate.
Could he by any possibility have addressed his letter wrongly? It was
not easy to make a mistake in No. 1 Melgrave Square.
Could it have gone astray? The Post Office was abominably careless at
times. One was constantly hearing of letters slipping down behind
desks and monstrously delivered twenty years after date. What earthly
good would that letter be delivered when he was forty-seven and
Margaret Brandt somewhere in the neighbourhood of forty? Truly, it was
monstrous, it was abominable that such carelessness should be
permitted in the public departments!
Could Margaret have taken umbrage at anything he had said? He conned
his rough draft with solicitous care. It seemed new and strange and
crude to him. He feared at each word to come upon the one that might
have offended her. But no word, no phrase, nothing even of all that he
had left unsaid sprang up before his horrified eyes to choke him with
a sense of inadequacy, or inadvertency, or trespass.
No sleep got he that night for cudgelling his tired brains for reasons
why no answer had come from Margaret.
Could she be ill? She was well enough, two days before, to call at
Lady Elspeth's house. But, of course, even in a day one may take a
chill and be prostrated.
The possibility of that was brought home to him next morning by his
landlady's surprised stare and exclamation at sight of his face.
"Law, Mr. John!"--she had been handmaid to his mother for many years
and he was still always Mr. John to her,--"Have you got the influenza
too? Everyone seems to have it nowadays."
He reassured her on the point. But every friend he met that day
credited him with it, and suggested remedies and precautions
sufficient to have made an end of any ordinary man.
He was vexed to think his face so clear an index of his feelings, but,
truly, his spirits were none of the best and the weather was
enervatingly warm.
It was quite inconceivable to him that Margaret Brandt should, of
knowledge and intention, drop their pleasant acquaintance in this
fashion. He believed he knew her well enough to know that, even if she
had any fault to find with his letter, she would still have replied to
it, and would have delicately conveyed her feeling in her answer.
Then, either she had never received it, or, for some good reason or
other, she was unable to reply.
He went down to Melgrave Square to make sure that No. 1 was still
there. Possibly he might come across Margaret in the neighbourhood. If
he did he would know at a glance if she had received his letter.
But No. 1 offered him no explanations. It stood as usual, large and
prim and precise, the very acme of solid, sober wealth and assertive
moral rectitude. He was strongly tempted to call and ask for Miss
Brandt, but it was only ten o'clock in the morning, and the house
looked so truly an embodiment in stucco of Mrs. Grundy and Jeremiah
Pixley, that he forbore and went on his melancholy way.
First, to his rooms again, to see if by chance the letter had come in
his absence. Then, as it had not, to Lady Elspeth Gordon's for old
Hamish's latest news, which, in a letter from his wife, was
satisfactory as far as it went, but pointed to a protracted stay. And
then, with stern resolution, up to Baker Street and away by train to
Chesham, for a long day's tramp through the Buckingham hills and
dales, by Chenies to Chorley Wood and Rickmansworth, so to weary the
body that the wearier brain should get some rest that night.
The sweet soft air and sunshine, the leisurely life of the villages,
and the cheerful unfoldings of the spring, in wood and field and
hedgerow, brought him to a more hopeful frame of mind. Every sparrow
twittered hope. The thrushes and young blackbirds fluted it
melodiously. It was impossible to remain unhopeful in such goodly
company. Something unexpected, accidental, untoward, had prevented
Margaret replying to his letter. Time would clear it up and set him
wondering at his lapse from fullest faith.
Also--he would risk even further rebuff. He would write again, and
this time he would trust no precarious and problematical post-office.
He would drop his letter into the Pixley letter-box himself, and so be
sure that it got there.
If then no answer,--to the winds with Mrs. Grundy and all her coils
and conventions! He would call and see Margaret himself, and learn
from her own eyes and face and lips how matters stood, and Mrs. Grundy
might dance and scream on the step outside until she grew tired of the
exercise.
There was joy and hope in action once more. Patient waiting on
slowly-dying Hope is surely the direst moral and mental torture to
which poor humanity can be subjected. That is where woman
pre-eminently overpasses man. Woman can wait unmurmuringly on dying
Hope till the last breath is gone, then silently take up her burden
and go on her way--or, if the strain has been too great, fold quiet
hands on quiet heart and follow her dead hopes into the living hope
beyond. Man must aye be doing--and as often as not, such natural
judgment as he possesses being warped and jangled by the strain of
waiting, he succeeds only in making matters worse and a more complete
fool of himself.
To be writing to Margaret again was to be living in hope once more.
If nothing came of this, he would call at the Pixley house.
If nothing came of that--he grew valiant in his new access of life--he
would beard Jeremiah Pixley in his den in Lincoln's Inn, state clearly
how matters stood, and request permission to approach his ward.
After all, this is a free country, and all men are equal under the
law, though he had his own doubts as to whether he would find himself
quite equal to that gleaming pillar of light, Mr. Jeremiah Pixley.