AN AUNT--AND A FRIEND
Barslett: July 11.
MY DEAR SARAH,--How I wish you were here! You would enjoy yourself,
and I should like to see you doing it--indeed I should be amused. I
never dare tell you face to face that you amuse me--you'd swell
visibly, like the person in Pickwick--but I can write it quite
safely. We are a family party--or at any rate we look forward to
being one some day, and even now escape none of the characteristics
of such gatherings. We all think that the Proper Thing will happen
some day, and we tell one another so. Not for a long while, of
course! First--and officially--because Mortimer feels things so
deeply (this is a reference to the Improper Thing which so nearly
happened--are you wincing, Sarah?); secondly--and entirely
unofficially--because of a bad chaperon and a heavy pupil. You are
a genius; you ought to have had seventeen daughters, all twins and
all out together, and five eldest sons all immensely eligible!
Nature is so limited. But me! I'm always there when I'm not wanted,
and I do hate leaving a comfortable chair. But I try. Do I give you
any clear idea when I say that a certain young person wants a deal
of hoisting--and is very ponderous to hoist? And I'm not her
mother, or I really wouldn't complain. But sometimes I could shake
her, as they say. No, I couldn't shake her, but I should like to
get some hydraulic machinery that could. However--it moves all the
same! What's-his-name detected that in the world, which is
certainly slow enough, and we all detect it in this interesting
case--or say we do. And I've great faith in repeating things. It
spreads confidence, whence comes, dear Sarah, action.
Mortimer is here a lot, but is somewhat fretful. The
Trans-Euphratic, it seems, is fractious, or teething, or something,
and Beaufort Chance has been nasty in the House--notably nasty and
rather able. (Do you trace any private history?) However, I daresay
you hear enough about the Trans-Euphratic at home. It buzzes about
here, mingling soothingly with the approaching flower show and a
calamity that has happened to a pedigree cow. Never mind details of
any of them! Sir Stapleton was indiscreet to me, but it stops
there, if you please. How sweet the country is in a real English
home!
But sometimes we talk of the Past--and the P is large. There is a
thank-heavenly atmosphere of pronounced density about Lady
B.--quite sincere, I believe; she has realised that flightiness
almost effected an entry into the family! Mortimer says
little--deep feelings again. In my opinion it has done him some
little good--which we and Audrey hope speedily to destroy. (Oh,
that child! The perfection of English girlhood, Sarah; no less,
believe me!) My lord is more communicative--to me. I believe he
likes to talk about it. In fact Trix made some impression there;
possibly there is a regret hidden somewhere in his circumference.
He took me round the place yesterday, and showed me the scene of
the flight. I should think going to Waterloo must give one
something of the same feeling--if one could be conducted by a
wounded hero of the fight. This was the conversation that
passed--or something like it:--
_Lord B._: She looked almost like a ghost.
_Myself_: Heavens, Lord B.!
_Lord B._ (_inserting spud in ground_): This was the very spot--the
SPOT!
_Myself_: You surprise me!
_Lord B._: I felt certain that something unusual was occurring.
_Myself_: Did that strike you at once?
_Lord B._: Almost, Viola--I say, almost--at once. She came up. I
remonstrated. My words do not remain in my memory.
_Myself_: Moments of excitement----
_Lord B._: But I remonstrated, Viola.
_Myself_: And she pushed you away?
_Lord B._: She did--and ran along the path here--following this
path to that gate----
_Myself_ (_incredulously, however one's supposed to show that_):
That very gate, Lord B.?
_Lord B._: It's been painted since, but that is the gate, Viola.
_Myself_: Fancy! (There isn't any other gate, you know; so, unless
Trix had taken the fence in a flying leap, one doesn't see what she
could have done.)
_Lord B._: Yes, that gate. She ran through it and along that
road----
_Myself_ (_distrustfully_): That road, Lord B.?
_Lord B._ (_firmly_): That road, Viola. She twisted her veil about
her face, caught up her skirts----
_Myself_: ! ! ! ! !
_Lord B._: And ran away (_impressively_) towards the station,
Viola!
_Myself_: Did you watch her?
_Lord B._: Till she was out of sight--of sight, Viola!
_Myself_: I never realised it so clearly before, Lord B.
_Lord B._: It is an experience I shall never forget.
_Myself_: I should think not, Lord B.
Then the excellent old dear said that he trusted he had no
unchristian feelings towards Trix; he had been inclined to like
her, and so on. But he failed to perceive how they could have
treated her differently in any single particular. 'You could not
depend on her word, Viola.' I remembered, Sarah, that in early
youth, and under circumstances needless to specify exactly, you
could not depend on mine--unless the evidence against me was
hopelessly clear. I suppose that was Trix's mistake. She fibbed
when she was bound to be found out, and saw it herself a minute
later. Have you any personal objection to my dropping a tear?
I don't pretend to say I should go on writing if there was anything
else to do, but it will open your mind to give you one more scrap.
_Myself_: What, Audrey dear, come in already? (_It is 9.30 p.m.--
evening fine--moon full._)
_Audrey_: Yes, it was rather chilly, Auntie, and there's a heavy
dew.
_Myself_ (_sweetly_): I thought it such a charming evening for a
stroll.
_Audrey_: I was afraid of my new frock, Auntie.
_Myself_ (_very sweetly_): You're so thoughtful, dear. Has Mortimer
come in too?
_Audrey_: I knew he was busy, so I told him he mustn't leave his
work for me. He went in directly then, Auntie.
_Myself_ (_most sweetly_): _How_ thoughtful of you, _darling_!
_Audrey_: He did suggest I should stay a little while, but the
dew----
_Myself_ (_breaking down_): Good gracious, Audrey, what in the
world &c., &c., &c.
_Audrey_ (_pathetically_): I'm so sorry, Auntie dear!
Now what would you do in such a case, Herr Professor Sarah?
No doubt things will turn out for the best in the end, and I
suppose I shall be grateful to poor Trix. But for the moment I wish
to goodness she'd never run away! Anyhow she has achieved
immortality. Barmouths of future ages will hush their sons and
daughters into good marriages by threatening them with Trix
Trevalla. She stands for ever the Monument of Lawlessness--with
locks bedraggled, and skirts high above the ankle! She has made
this aristocratic family safe for a hundred years. She has not
lived in vain. And tell me any news of her. Have you had the
Frickers to dinner since my eye was off you? There, I must have my
little joke. Forgive me, Sarah!
Affectionately,
V. B.
'Tut!' said Mrs. Bonfill, laying down the letter, extracts from which
she had been reading to her friend Lord Glentorly.
'She's about right as to Chance, anyhow,' he remarked. 'I was in the
House, and you couldn't mistake his venom.'
'He doesn't count any longer.' Mrs. Bonfill pronounced the sentence
ruthlessly.
'No, not politically. And in every other way he's no more than a tool of
Fricker's. Fricker must have him in the hollow of his hand. He knows how
he stands; that's the meaning of his bitterness. But he can make poor
Mortimer feel, all the same. Still, as you say, there's an end of him!'
'And of her too! She was an extraordinary young woman, George.'
'Uncommonly attractive--no ballast,' summed up Glentorly. 'You never see
her now, I suppose?'
'Nobody does,' said Mrs. Bonfill, using 'nobody' in its accepted sense.
She sighed gently. 'You can't help people who won't be helped.'
'So Viola Blixworth implies,' he reminded her with a laugh.
'Oh, Viola's hopelessly flippant; but she'll manage it in the end, I
expect.' She sighed again and went on, 'I don't know that, after all,
one does much good by meddling with other people's affairs.'
'Come, come, this is only a moment of despondency, Sarah.'
'I suppose so,' she agreed, with returning hope. To consider that her
present mood represented a right and ultimate conclusion would have been
to pronounce a ban on all her activities. 'I've half a mind to propose
myself for a visit to Barslett.'
'You couldn't do better,' Lord Glentorly cordially agreed. 'Everything
will soon be over here, you see.'
She looked at him a little suspiciously. Did he suggest that she should
retreat for a while and let the talk of her failures blow over? He was
an old friend, and it was conceivable that he should seek to convey
such a hint delicately.
'I had one letter from Trix,' she continued. 'A confused
rigmarole--explanations, and defence, and apologies, and all the rest of
it.'
'What did you write to her?'
'I didn't write at all. I put it in the fire.'
Glentorly glanced at his friend as she made this decisive reply. Her
handsome, rather massive features were set in a calm repose; no scruples
or doubts as to the rectitude of her action assailed her. Trix had
chosen to jump over the pale; outside the pale she must abide. But that
night, when a lady at dinner argued that she ought to have a vote, he
exclaimed with an unmistakable shudder, 'By Jove, you'd be wanting to be
judges next!' What turned his thoughts to that direful possibility?
But of course he did not let Mrs. Bonfill perceive any dissent from her
judgment or her sentence. He contented himself with saying, 'Well, she's
made a pretty mess of it!'
'There's nothing left for her--absolutely nothing,' Mrs. Bonfill
concluded. Her tone would have excused, if not justified, Trix's making
an end of herself in the river.
Lady Glentorly was equally emphatic on another aspect of the case.
'It's a lesson to all of us,' she told her husband. 'I don't acquit
myself, much less can I acquit Sarah Bonfill. This taking up of people
merely because they're good-looking and agreeable has gone far enough.
You men are mainly responsible for it.'
'My dear!' murmured Glentorly weakly.
'It's well enough to send them a card now and then, but anything more
than that--we must put our foot down. The Barmouths of all people! I
declare it serves them right!'
'The affair seems to have resulted in serving everybody right,' he
reflected. 'So I suppose it's all for the best.'
'Marriage is the point on which we must make a stand. After a short
pause she added an inevitable qualification: 'Unless there are
overwhelming reasons the other way. And this woman was never even
supposed to be more than decently off.'
'The Barmouths are very much the old style. It was bad luck that she
should happen on them.'
'Bad luck, George? It was Sarah Bonfill!'
'Bad luck for Mrs. Trevalla, I mean.'
'You take extraordinary views sometimes, George. Now I call it a
Providence.'
In face of a difference so irreconcilable Glentorly abandoned the
argument. There were a few like him who harboured a shame-faced sympathy
for Trix. They were awed into silence, and the sentence of condemnation
passed unopposed.
Yet there were regrets and longings in Mervyn's heart. Veiled under his
dignified manner, censured by his cool judgment, hustled into the
background by his resolute devotion to the Trans-Euphratic railway and
other affairs of state, made to seem shameful by his determination to
find a new ideal in a girl of Audrey Pollington's irreproachable stamp,
they maintained an obstinate vitality, and, by a perverse turn of
feeling, drew their strength from the very features in Trix and in
Trix's behaviour which had incurred his severest censure while she was
still his and with him.
Remembering her recklessness and her gaiety, recalling her
hardly-suppressed rebellion against the life he asked her to lead and
the air he gave her to breathe, rehearsing even the offences which had,
directly or indirectly, driven her to flight and entailed exile on her,
he found in her the embodiment of something that he condemned and yet
desired, of something that could not be contained in his life, and
thereby seemed in some sort to accuse that life of narrowness. She had
shown him a country which he could not and would not enter; at moments
the thought of her derisively beckoned him whither he could not go. At
last, under the influence of these ideas, which grew and grew as the
first shock of amazed resentment wore off, he came to put questions to
himself as to the part that he had played, to realise a little how it
had all seemed to her. This was not to blame himself or his part; he and
it were still to him right and inevitable. But it was a step towards
perceiving something deeper than the casual perversity or dishonesty of
one woman. He had inklings of an ultimate incompatibility of lives, of
ways, of training, of thought, of outlook on the world. Both she and he
had disregarded the existence of such a thing. The immediate causes of
her flight--her dishonesty and her fear of discovery--became, in this
view, merely the occasion of it. In the end he asked whether she had not
shown a kind of desperate courage, perhaps even a wild inspiration of
wisdom, in what she had done. Gradually his anger against her died away,
and there came in its place a sorrow, not that the thing she fled from
was not to be, but that it never could have been in any true or adequate
sense. Perhaps she herself had seen that--seen it in some flashing
vision of despair which drove her headlong from the house by night.
Feelings that Trix could not analyse for herself he thought out for her
with his slow, narrow, but patient and thorough-going mind. The task was
hard, for wounded pride still cried out in loud protest against it; but
he made way with it. If he could traverse the path of it to the end,
there stood comprehension, yes, and acquiescence; then it would appear
that Trix Trevalla had refused to pile error on error; in her blind way
she would have done right.
That things we have desired did not come to pass may be sad; that they
never could have is sadder, by so much as the law we understand seems a
more cruel force than the chance that hits us once, we know not whence,
and may never strike again. The chance seems only a perverse accident
falling on us from outside; the law abides, a limitation of ourselves.
Towards such a consciousness as this Mervyn struggled.
At last he hinted something of what was in his mind to Viola Blixworth.
He talked in abstract terms, with an air of studying human nature, not
of discussing any concrete case; he was still a little pompous over it,
and still entirely engrossed in his own feelings. His preoccupation was
to prove that he deserved no ridicule, since fate, and not merely folly,
had made him its unwilling plaything. She heard him with unusual
seriousness, in an instant divining the direction of his thoughts; and
she fastened on the mood, turning it to what she wanted.
'That should make you tolerant towards Mrs. Trevalla,' she suggested, as
they walked together by the fountains.
'I suppose so, yes. It leaves us both slaves of something too strong for
us.'
She passed by the affected humility that defaced his smile; she never
expected too much, and was finding in him more than she had hoped.
'If you've any allowance for her, any gentleness towards her----'
'I feel very little anger now.'
'Then tell her so, Mortimer. Oh, I don't mean go to her. On all accounts
you'd better not do that.' (Her smile was not altogether for Mervyn
here; she spared some of it for her duties and position as an aunt.)
'But write to her.'
'What should I say?' The idea was plainly new to him. 'Do you mean that
I'm to forgive her?'
'I wouldn't put it quite like that, Mortimer. That would be all right if
you were proposing to--renew the arrangement. But I suppose you're not?'
He shook his head decisively. As a woman Lady Blixworth was rather sorry
to see so much decision; it was her duty as an aunt to rejoice.
'Couldn't you manage to convey that it was nobody's fault in particular?
Or something like that?'
He weighed the suggestion. 'I couldn't go quite so far,' he concluded,
with a judicial air.
'Well, then, that the mistake was in trying it at all? Or in being in a
hurry? Or--or that perhaps your manner----?'
'No, I don't think there was anything wrong with my manner.'
'Could you say you understood her feelings--or, at any rate, allowed for
them?'
'Perhaps I might say that.'
'At any rate you could say something comforting.' She put her arm
through his. 'She's miserable about you, I know. You can say something?'
'I'll try to say something.'
'I know you'll say it nicely. You're a gentleman, Mortimer.'
She could not have used a better appeal, simple as it sounded. All
through the affair--all through his life, it might be said--he had been
a gentleman; he had never been consciously unkind, although he had often
been to Trix unconsciously unbearable. Viola Blixworth put him on his
honour by the name he reverenced.
'You'll feel better after you've done it--and more like settling down
again,' said she. Friendship and auntship mingled. It would comfort Trix
to hear that he had no bitterness; it would certainly assist Audrey if
he could cease from studying his precise feelings, of any nature
whatsoever, about another woman. Lady Blixworth was so accustomed to
finding her motives mixed that a moderate degree of adulteration in them
had ceased to impair her satisfaction with a useful deed. Besides, is
not auntship also praiseworthy? Society said yes, and she never differed
from it when its verdicts were convenient.
The letter was written; it was a hard morning's work, for he penned it
as carefully as though it were to go into some archives of state. He
would say no more than the truth as he had at last reached it; he said
no less with equal conscientiousness. The result was stiff with all his
stiffness, but there was kindness in it too. It was not forgiveness; it
was acquiescence and a measure of understanding. And he convinced
himself more and more as he wrote; in the end he did come very near to
saying that there had been mistakes on both sides; he even set it down
as a possible hypothesis that the initial error had been his. He had a
born respect for written documents, and of written documents not the
least of his respect was for his own. He had never felt so sure that
there was an end of Trix Trevalla, so far as he was concerned, as when
he had put the fact on record over his own signature.
With a sigh he rose and came out into the garden. Audrey sat there
reading a novel, which she laid face downwards in her lap at his
approach. He took a chair by her, and looked round on the domain that
was to be his. Then he glanced at statuesque Audrey. Lady Blixworth
viewed them from afar; an instinct told her that the letter had been
written. The aunt hoped while the friend rejoiced.
'He must have proved that he needs quite a different wife from Trix, and
where could he find one more different?' she mused.
'It's beautiful here in summer, isn't it?' he asked Audrey.
'It must be splendid always,' said she.
'I wish public life allowed me to enjoy more of it.' It is what public
men generally say.
'Your work is so important, you see.'
He stretched out his legs and took off his hat.
'But you must rest sometimes,' she urged, with an imploring glance.
'So my mother's always telling me. Well, anyhow, since you like
Barslett, I hope you'll stay a long time, Miss Pollington.'
It was not much, but Audrey carried it to Lady Blixworth--or, to put the
matter with more propriety, she repeated his remark quite casually. It
was not poor Audrey's fault if, in self-defence, she had to make the
most of such remarks. Lady Blixworth kissed her niece thoughtfully.
'Another year of my life,' she remarked to the looking-glass that
evening, in the course of a study of time's ravages--'another year or
thereabouts will probably see a successful termination to the affair.'
She smiled a little bitterly. Her life, as she understood the term, had
few more years to run, and to give up one was a sacrifice. It was,
however, no use trying to alter the Barmouth pace. She had done what she
could--a good turn to Trix Trevalla, another little lift for Audrey.
'I'm becoming a regular Sarah Bonfill,' she concluded, as she went down
to dinner.
The next Saturday Mrs. Bonfill herself came.
'How is Mortimer?' she whispered at the first opportunity.
'My dear Sarah, I doubt if you could have interfered with more
tactfulness yourself.'
'And where's dear Audrey?'
'I hope and believe that she's sticking pins into a map to show where
the Trans-Euphratic is to run. Kindly pat me on the back, Sarah.'
Mrs. Bonfill's smile was friendly pat enough, but it was all for Audrey;
she asked nothing about Trix Trevalla.
Wide apart as the two were, Trix read the letter with something of the
feeling under which Mervyn had written it. He was a good man, but not
good for her--that seemed to sum up the matter. Perhaps her first smile
of genuine mirth since her fall and flight was summoned to her lips by
the familiar stiffness, the old careful balance of his sentences, the
pain by which he held himself back from lecturing. A smile of another
kind recognised his straightforwardness and his chivalry; he wrote like
a gentleman, as Viola Blixworth knew he would. She was more in sympathy
with him when he deplored the gulf between them than when he had told
her it was but a ford which duty called on her to pass. 'How much have I
escaped, and how much have I lost?' she asked; but the question came in
sadness, not in doubt. It was not hers to taste the good; it would have
been hers to drink the evil to the dregs. Reading his letter, she
praised him and reviled herself; but she rejoiced that she had left him
while yet there was time; she rejoiced honestly to see that she would
remain in his memory as a thing that was unaccountable, that should not
have been, that had come and gone, had given some pain but had done no
permanent harm.
'I've got off cheaply,' she thought; her own sufferings were not in her
mind, but his; she was glad that her burden of guilt was no heavier. For
Mervyn was not as Beaufort Chance; he had done nothing to make her feel
that they were quits and her wrong-doing obliterated by the revenge
taken for it. She could blame herself less, since even Mervyn seemed to
see that, if to begin had been criminal, to go on would have been worse.
But bitterness was still in her; her folly seemed still so black, her
ruin so humiliating, that she must cry, 'Unfit for him! No, it's for any
man that I'm unfit!' Mervyn could but comfort her a little as to what
concerned himself; her sin against herself remained unpardoned. And now
in her mind that sin had taken on a darker colour; since she had looked
in Airey Newton's eyes she could not believe herself the woman who had
done such things. The man who, having found the pearl, went and sold all
that he had and bought the field where it lay, doubtless did well and
was well-pleased. What did the vendor feel who bartered his right for a
small price because he had overlooked the pearl?
Mervyn showed her reply to Lady Blixworth--another proof that Aunt Viola
was advancing in his confidence, and repressing natural emotions with a
laudable devotion to duty. Upon this Lady Blixworth wrote to Peggy
Ryle:--
'This letter is not,' she said, 'to praise myself, Peggy, nor to point
out my many virtues, but to ask a question. I have indeed done much
good. Mortimer is convinced that immutable laws were in fault--and I
agree, since the dulness of Barslett and the family preachiness are
absolutely immutable. Trix is convinced too--and again I agree, since
Trix is naturally both headlong and sincere, an awful combination if
one were married to Mortimer. So I praise myself for having made both of
them resigned, and presently to be cheerful! Needless to say, I praise
myself on another score, and am backing myself to mother young women
against Sarah Bonfill herself (who, by the way, is here, and resettles
the Cabinet twice a day--mere bravado, I believe, after her shocking
blunders, but Sarah bravadoes with a noble solidity that makes the thing
almost a British quality!). I wander! What I really ask--and I want to
ask it in italics--is, _Whom is she in love with?_ Trix, I mean, of
course. I am not in telegraphic, telephonic, or telepathic communication
with her, but she says in her letter to Mortimer, "I was not fit for
you. Am I fit for any man?" My dear, believe your elders when you can,
and listen in silence when you can't! In all my experience I never knew
a woman ask that question unless she was in love. Heavens, do we want to
be fit for or to please the Abstract Man? Not a bit of it, Peggy! The
idea is even revolting, as a thousand good ladies would prove to you.
"Am I fit for any man?" Who's "any man," Peggy? Let's have his name and
the street where he resides. For my part, I believed there was a man at
the back of it all the time--which was no great sagacity--and I said so
to Lord Barmouth--which I felt to be audacity. Peggy, tell me his name.
"Am I fit for any man?" Poor Trix is still rather upset and
melodramatic! But we know what it means. And what are you doing? Do you
want a husband? Here am I, started in trade as an honest broker! Come
along!'
This letter, Peggy felt, was in a way consoling; she hoped that Trix was
in love. But so far as it seemed to be intended to be amusing, Peggy
really didn't see it. The fact is, Peggy was in a mood to perceive wit
only of the clearest and most commanding quality. Things were very dark
indeed, just these days, with Peggy. However, she replied to Lady
Blixworth, said she had no notion what she meant, but told her that she
was a good friend and a good aunt.
'The latter statements,' observed Lady Blixworth complacently, 'are at
the present moment true. As for the former--oh, Peggy, Peggy!'
She was, in fact, rather hurt. A refusal to betray one friend is usually
considered a reflection on the discretion of another.