FACING WEST
"For the work to God the dearest
Is the duty lying nearest."
"WELL, 'I' think summer very depressing—given a small house, a treeless
garden, and an incompetent domestic. What is there in it to please? All
the morning I have been stripping gooseberry bushes in the blazing sun,
scratching and tearing the flesh off my hands; and all the afternoon
I've been topping and tailing these same gooseberries and standing over
a scorching fire seeing them bubble and squeal and subside into sticky
jam. And now you want me to pelt along the high road in the dust and
heat, carrying your heavy parcel to the tailor's; and it is a good mile
and a half each way. Of course, I'll do it. Fanny says she's feeling
the heat too much. I'm sure I am. But as I'm not in service, I can't
object. You mustn't mind this grumble. It cools me to discharge my
feeling."
"I wish, my dear Audrey, you would curb your tongue a little. It is
most unpleasant and disturbing. I think I must have my chair moved into
the porch; it will be cooler, and I may be able to have a nap when
you are gone, for there will be quiet in the house. You keep it in a
perpetual ferment when you are in it."
"Oh," said Audrey, with an impatient laugh, "I must let myself go
sometimes, father! It will take years to extricate all the gas inside
me. There—now I have arranged your chair in the coolest corner. Here
are your specs and your newspaper. Anything else? Oh, your hat! You
must have left it in the garden. You had it when you were weeding the
gooseberries. I'll fetch it."
With a half-smothered sigh, Audrey sped along the neat gravel path that
surrounded their small back garden. Her father's failing memory and
aptitude for losing his belongings took up a good deal of her time.
Mr. Hume was a tall, fine-looking old man, but was stiff and crippled
with rheumatism. He had held a Civil appointment in India for many
years, and was now living on his pension. He was a man without a hobby,
and was consequently very dependent on his daughter for interest and
occupation. He read a little, but beyond his daily newspaper, only the
works of the lightest fiction did he care about. He wrote occasional
letters, and every now and then, when much stirred by any topical
subject, would write a letter to the Press. He gardened, but that was
more superintendence than actual work, and the rest of the day he spent
dozing and sleeping in his arm-chair, varied by short walks along the
high road.
The house was one of three in a terrace. On one side of them lived
a doctor and his wife, both rather sleepy, middle-aged people; on
the other, a solicitor, with his two sisters. No other houses were
near, and it was unfortunate that Audrey was not a favourite with her
neighbours. They liked to give advice, she disliked receiving it. They
invariably took her father's views of life and strongly disapproved of
emancipated young women. Audrey loved shocking them, and was intolerant
of their narrow views of life. Especially was this the case with the
Misses Blunt, who were thin, angular women, with a humble adoration for
their only brother, and a rigid primness of conduct and speech.
Mr. Hume was not particularly fond of these good ladies, but he quoted
them when annoyed by his daughter, and occasionally made appeal to them
when Audrey rebelled against his authority. To do her justice, she was
a very dutiful daughter, though from her speech one would hardly credit
it. Mr. Hume was irritable and impulsive; periodically, he would have
storms of sudden passion which swept through his small household like
a tornado. His will was law, and he would never stand the slightest
opposition. Audrey had not learnt to bear these storms with serenity;
too often she would add fuel to the flames by inopportune remarks.
But she struggled to be patient and calm, and sometimes succeeded in
pacifying him before he lost entire control of himself.
As she sped along the road to the small country town, with aching head
and weary feet, she felt tired of it all.
"Oh!" she said impatiently to herself. "I am just a beast of burden,
and have no other outlook. I shall get old and grey cooking jam,
carrying parcels, and making talk for old people. But—" here a flash of
humour lightened up her depression—"never will I screw my hair into a
tight little knot or my mouth into a creasy button, like Miss Julia and
Miss Grace Blunt!"
Then she raised her eyes, and over the range of sloping meadows in
front of her was the setting sun in all its splendour. The radiant
colouring and beautiful cloud effect appealed to her artistic soul.
She watched it in breathless delight.
"Ah!" she said. "I hope I shall enter my West gate through such a
sunset."
And then deep, serious thought settled down upon her—thought that
stamped itself upon eyes and brow, and made the remaining distance but
nothing to her unconscious feet.
She left her parcel and returned home with a bright and smiling face.
Her father looked at her as she helped him back to his sitting-room and
lit the lamp to disperse the gathering dusk.
"Did you enjoy your walk?"
"I think I did—the return part of it, at any rate."
She stood at the window, looking up into the sky, her hand raised to
pull down the blind. Then she turned quickly to her father.
"Oh, don't you think—don't you wish sometimes that the earth would give
itself a little shake and begin to go round the other way? It would be
such a revolutionary change. The very thought of it is delicious!"
"You talk a great deal of nonsense," said Mr. Hume testily. "Change!
Change! Who wants change? Let well alone. It comes too fast for most of
us."
"Not for me," said Audrey, lowering the blind, and sitting down in an
easy-chair opposite her father. "I feel I am becoming petrified. What
kind of an old age shall I have, father? Your pension will die with
you. I shall be left penniless, and there is not a craft or trade that
I can work at."
Mr. Hume moved uneasily in his chair.
"You are talking very strangely, Audrey. We are a long-lived race, and
I may outlive you. In any case, I am putting by a little every year for
you. It will be a nice little nest-egg one day. There is no occasion
for you to be discussing your future after my death—"
"No," said Audrey, with a funny little smile, as her thoughts went to
her father's bank-book, which he often showed her, and the five pounds
at the most that he saved out of his income every year. "One must live
like the grasshoppers—that is the best way."
Then she fetched her work-basket, with her mending in it, and hummed
under her breath:
"Say what shall be our sport to-day?
There's nothing on earth, in sea or air,
Too bright, too bold, too high, too gay
For spirits like mine to dare!"
Her father fidgeted his paper.
"And if you do outlive me," he said abruptly, "you will marry as your
mother did before you."
Audrey laughed deliciously. Her friends always said that the sound of
her laugh was intoxicating.
"Whom shall I marry, father? Will a prince come driving up in a coach
and four? He will have to fall from the skies, for a young man in our
village is an unheard-of article. I don't believe—" here Audrey dropped
her mending and leant forward, nursing her chin in her hands—"I don't
believe that I have ever spoken to a young man since I was a girl of
fourteen at school and one of the boarders' brothers came to see her.
Mr. Broughton is strong enough and wise enough to have no curates—there
are too many single young women about to make such a venture. No,
father, marriage for penniless, commonplace girls is an impossibility."
Her father made no reply, but seemed absorbed in thought. After a time,
he said in a slow, musing tone:
"We do not know for certain about Bernard."
Audrey sat up with a little start. It was years since her father had
mentioned that name.
Fifteen years had passed since a hot, passionate quarrel had taken
place between father and son. There had been a hasty departure, and,
beyond a letter to his mother announcing his arrival at Sydney, no
other news had come of the absent one. For years, they had tried to
trace his whereabouts, but had failed. And for a long time now, they
had looked upon him as dead.
"Of course," said Audrey, a little pity stealing into her voice, "you
are always hoping that the prodigal will return with bags of gold,
having made his fortune. But I rather fancy the Bible version is truer
to life, and though I have still a sisterly affection for him, I do not
know that I would welcome rapturously a broken-down, needy man who,
failing to support himself, has returned to be supported by those who
can ill afford to do so."
"Your mother had faith in him to the last."
Sudden tears filled Audrey's eyes. Her heart was softer than her
tongue, and the deeper she felt about things, the more she tried to
hide it. She could never forget, as a girl of fifteen, her gentle
mother's death-bed and her pathetic yearning for her absent son.
"Bernard is not bad, only hot-tempered. He will make a good man—my
heart tells me that he will," she had said to her husband over and over
again.
Silence fell between father and daughter. Audrey took up her mending
rather fiercely, whilst she brushed away her tears with an impatient
hand.
And then in a few minutes her father spoke again.
"Do you remember Everard Vernon? I have lost sight of him for many
years, but I consider he is deeply in my debt."
"What! Does he owe you money? I don't remember him. He was the man that
lived with you out in India, wasn't he? Mother used to talk about him."
"Money is not the one and only thing you can owe," Mr. Hume said
testily. "Of course you don't remember him."
He took up his newspaper, and did not speak again until he retired
to his room for the night. Then, as Audrey accompanied him upstairs,
candle in hand, and stooped to give him her usual good-night kiss, he
murmured almost under his breath:
"Deeply in my debt! I shall not forget it."
Audrey sped downstairs, going into the kitchen first to have a few
words with their young maidservant, and then going the round of the
house to see that all locks and bolts were securely fastened for the
night. When she came to the front door, she opened it and stood in the
porch, delighting in the cool, fresh evening air.
And then, raising her face to the starlit sky, she murmured to herself:
"It is easy to portion out our roads and gates, but am I perfectly
certain that Heaven is my goal and destination? Pauline is; she is as
sure and steadfast as a rock. But I seem tossed about, sometimes with
such high ideals, sometimes with such carnal, earthly ones, and then
something whirls up inside me and carries me off my feet, until I do
not know where I am. I suppose this hot temper is our hereditary curse.
Why did I not take after my mother, who was an angel of sweetness?
Father, I, and poor Bernard, spitting and spluttering out words best
forgotten, and never learning wisdom with age. Ah, poor Bernard! I
don't believe he is in this world at all."
A heavy sigh escaped her.
"Well, after all, am I doing better with my life than he? What will
my record be of these quiet years? Impatience of control, rebellion
against circumstances, distrust of God or of His dealings with us? I
keep a house going, I have a Sunday class, and I grumble and chafe
incessantly at my narrow life. Unlovable, unsympathetic, and bad
tempered—that is my character. I wonder if I was born to be different?
Perhaps I was meant to do small things all my life. But if I was, who
am I panting so for a wider sphere and for greater knowledge? I am so
ignorant, and yet I want to learn; I want to have my mind expanded, to
be for a time in the rush of life! Why should what I consider my best
longings be thwarted and denied?"
Looking into the still infinity above her, Audrey breathed this prayer:
"Oh, God, shape me into something that will bring Thee credit,
something that will leave its mark for good upon the world before I
die!"
And then she locked the door in front of her and went to bed.
The following morning she was shopping in the village when she met
Pauline.
Audrey greeted her enthusiastically.
"I must talk to you. Can you wait till I have been to the butcher's,
and let me walk home with you?"
"Yes. I am going to the post office."
They parted, then met again a few minutes later, and turned up a lane
at the end of the village which led to Pauline's cottage home.
"You are looking tired, Pauline. What have you been doing?" Audrey
asked affectionately, as she linked her arm in that of her friend and
insisted on carrying her basket.
"Mother had a bad night; I was up with her."
"I wonder how often you get a good night's rest?"
"I am very strong," said Pauline, smiling. "Now, tell me how you are
yourself."
"Still fermenting inside. I would give anything for your splendid calm.
You're like a ship sailing in smooth waters—no, that simile is not
good, for I know your waters are rough."
"Some people say I am stoical," said Pauline. "Sometimes I wonder if I
am."
"Never. But you've got the secret of happy living, and I haven't. And
do you know, Pauline, the worst of it is, I don't want to have it.
I don't want to settle down and be content with my life. It doesn't
satisfy my soul, and it never will; it's too small, and I can't cut
myself small enough to fit it."
"Yes; I understand, dear," said Pauline cheerfully. "I have felt like
it myself. But fretting against the inevitable is very wearing to other
people as well as to oneself. Don't kick the dust and stones up as you
walk, but tread them under. You really will find that the best plan."
"Ah, that is one of your nice sayings. I'll remember it. The fact
is, you are really good, and I am not. And at home, if I am not in
a bad humour, father is; it is a kind of see-saw arrangement with
us. Last night, I went to bed in quite a religious frame of mind.
This morning, nothing would please father. He had one of his letters
returned him from the 'Times,' and that put him out; then he wanted
Mr. Blunt to call and see him upon business. I know he can have no
business to transact, and I told him it was wasting his money to pay
for a gossiping visit from the old man. Then he flew into one of his
passions, and blew me up sky high, and said if I was a pauper after he
died, without a roof to cover me, it would be my own fault. Now, what
can he mean by that? I know I shall be a pauper—unless some unknown
rich relation dies and leaves me some money, I shall have absolutely
nothing to live upon when I am left alone. And I puzzle my head again
and again trying to solve the problem. I feel I ought to be fitting
myself for such an emergency. But what can I do? I have a certain
amount of time, but no talent to cultivate. Now, you have talents and
no time. I am only half educated, and can get no books to educate
myself."
"Earn some money, and subscribe to a London library."
"Oh, Pauline! How can I earn anything? And if I did, we want every
penny we can get to help us to live."
"Well," said Pauline slowly, "I have known people in very difficult
circumstances earn something. It wants originality—I suppose that is
the battle."
"Father wouldn't hear of my raising flowers or fruit for sale," said
Audrey meditatively; "and really, between attending to his wants and
those of the house, it takes me all my time. Ah, well! Don't let us
talk of me any more! Here we are! I wish I lived in such a picturesque
setting as you do. I think it would help me to take the ruffles of life
with calmness."
Pauline's home was certainly picturesque. A low, thatched cottage in an
old-fashioned garden, opening into the lane by a tiny white gate. Yet,
as they stood and looked at it, the thick foliage of the overhanging
trees and shrubs seemed to cast a gloom over it. And though it was a
sunny morning, the cottage was entirely in the shade.
"We face North," said Pauline, smiling. "I suppose you thought of that
when you suggested that my journey was Northwards."
"Perhaps I did," said Audrey lightly, "but I know it won't hurt you. No
kind of life would. My life is hurting me, and I am getting more and
more bitter and irritable and hopeless. If I am in the refining-pot, I
shall melt away gradually in the process, for there nothing in me but
dross—no gold at on. You see, I can't keep off myself. And now I must
hurry home. Do you want me to come in? I would rather not to-day, but
if you'll have me to tea to-morrow, I think I can manage it."
"Do come, then! And cheer up! Life is pretty well what we make it,
after all."
Pauline kissed her affectionately, then for a moment let her hand rest
lightly on her shoulder.
"You are made to be a joyous creature, Audrey. Cultivate gladness, if
you can. Do you remember it says: 'Because thou servedst not the Lord
thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart for the abundance
of all things, therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies'?"
"I don't think I have abundance. None of us have."
"Yet Mrs. Daventry seemed to envy us for our possessions."
"Yes. Oh I know I am all wrong. I really sometimes doubt if I am
serving God at all. I fancy it is only head knowledge of Him that I
have, and not heart."
She turned away with a little laugh and wave of her hand.
Pauline's eyes followed her retreating figure rather sadly; and then
she opened the small gate and went into the cottage.