OLDER AND WISER
"For others' sake to make life sweet,
Though thorns may pierce your weary feet;
For others' sake to walk each day
As if joy helped you all the way—
While in the heart may be a grave
That makes it hard to be so brave,
Herein, I think, is love."
THEY returned home the next day. Mrs. Erskine's fictitious strength and
spirits had deserted her.
"I am going home to die," she asserted to her daughter, "and I ought
not to have been allowed to attempt this journey. It has sapped all the
strength out of me—and the hope and courage, too." She added these last
words in a breathless whisper to herself, but Pauline heard them, and
she laid her hand affectionately on her mother's arm.
"We are going home together, mother dear, and I mean to take extra care
of you. We will give you the quiet and rest you require, and you may
feel much stronger soon."
"Stronger!" said Mrs. Erskine bitterly. "I am sinking into a helpless,
whining invalid. I can't bear pain now as I used to do, and I am
getting tired of the struggle."
Then she relapsed into silence, and would not permit Pauline to touch
upon the subject of her health again.
It was a sad home-coming. Mary hovered over her mistress with anxious
eyes, but when she was once more comfortably settled in her own bed,
Mrs. Erskine looked up into her old servant's face.
"I shall never get out of this bed again," she said. "But I am given to
understand that I shall have plenty of time to prepare for death. You
won't get rid of me very soon, Mary."
"Eh, mistress dear, don't talk so! The journey has tired you. You'll
feel quite fresh again after a few days' rest."
Pauline left the room quickly. She felt strangely unnerved and unfit
to take up her daily burdens again. The verdict had not surprised her,
but it had taken away her mother's restless hope of getting better,
and she knew how hard the coming days would be to them both, and an
overwhelming pity for her mother filled her heart.
"If only I could bear it for her!" was her passionate thought.
She went out into the little garden, which was looking dreary and
forlorn. Dead leaves underfoot, bare leafless trees, sodden grass, and
a few withered dahlias, all spoke to her of death and decay. For a
moment, her spirit seemed weighed down by its depressing atmosphere.
Then she raised her eyes to the sky above, and sunshine and steadfast
hope were in her smile.
"'For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.' I must get mother to believe that."
She stayed a little longer, her lips moving in silent prayer; then she
went back to her mother, and the old routine of her life began again.
One afternoon, Miss Paton called with some message from the Rector.
Pauline had met her several times, and, in common with most people,
Miss Paton had taken a violent fancy to this stately golden-haired
girl, with her sympathetic eyes and smile.
"I am actually alone to-day. Mr. and Mrs. Broughton have driven
into the town, and the children have been carried off to tea at the
Osbornes'. Miss Osborne called for them at three o'clock. What a merry
little thing she is—almost a child herself!"
"Will you stay and have tea with me?" asked Pauline. "My mother sleeps
till five o'clock, so I shall be free."
"I should like to very much. What a cosy little room you have! Whenever
I come to this house, it gives me the sense of rest. I suppose wherever
there is sickness, there must be quiet. Now, at the Rectory we are in
a scrimmage from morning to night, and I seem wanted in every place
at once. To tell you the honest truth, I am getting rather tired of
it. But I am fond of Emily, and she likes me, and I was at a loose end
before I came here."
"Have you any home of your own?" Pauline asked, taking up her work and
settling down for a talk.
Miss Paton laughed.
"No. Mother and I came to the conclusion that a home was a great
mistake—it tires you so. At least, I felt pretty strongly that way,
and she didn't want much persuasion to settle in a boarding-house at
Folkestone. I couldn't live a life like you, Miss Erskine; it would
drive me mad. I have two brothers who went out to the colonies and
married there. And I have a married sister in Scotland. She—er—married
my lover; so you have my biography in a nutshell!"
She gave a hard little laugh, then went on:
"Mother and I never could pull together. She is old and fidgety, and I
cannot stand old people. I always think strangers get on much better
with them than their daughters, because they can't tyrannise over them
so much. I bore it for eight months, and then we were both dead sick of
each other, so I suggested the boarding-house scheme. It has answered
admirably. I go there whenever I want to, and mother and I, instead
of snapping and snarling at each other all day, are now the greatest
friends. She writes me most affectionate letters. And in this way, I am
able to go about and earn a little on my own account. We are not well
off."
For a moment, Pauline said nothing. It was not her way to censure
people for what they said or did, but Miss Paton's selfish, callous
views of life rather took her breath away.
"I think you must be a great comfort to Mrs. Broughton. She is not
strong enough to manage the Rectory household single-handed."
"I hope I'm a comfort to her. But, between ourselves, she is rather a
humbug. Mind you, I am fond of her—I always was, since we were girls at
school together—but it's all take with her, and precious little giving."
"Well," said Pauline, smiling, "it's good to be the giver instead of
the taker, isn't it? I am sure in the bottom of your heart you must
feel it so."
"Perhaps I do," said Miss Paton hesitatingly. "But I don't think I rank
amongst the givers in the world. I'm a pretty selfish lot myself. But
one has only one life to live, and single women have to look out for
themselves—no one else does it for them."
"Do you find the children difficult?"
"My dear Miss Erskine, they worry me to death! They ought to have a
nurse, and I tell their mother so. They haven't the sense to look after
themselves. At best, if they do, they get into some scrape, and I
can't be at their heels all day. And they're for ever dinning into my
ears the virtues of the absent Honor—'Honor did this,' or 'Honor did
that'—till I feel I could slap them! Imagine! Mr. Broughton actually
said to me one day that he thought it was a mistake girls leaving home
when they had a parent dependent on them for help in their old age.
"'Well,' I said, 'your daughter has run away from her home duties as
well as I—' And he shut up at once."
"Poor Honor!" said Pauline meditatively. "She was very fond of her
home, but, like you, found it a good deal for one pair of shoulders.
Still, she did not want to leave."
"Oh, I know all about it. It was another case of not pulling together.
Emily wrote me all her woes before I came. Now, honestly, Miss Erskine,
don't you think it wiser for people to take the easiest path in life? I
do. I should never stay anywhere where I was miserable."
"I suppose you are very susceptible to your surroundings."
"Who isn't? And I love peace at any price. If I don't like a person, I
can't help showing it, and then there are ructions. Isn't it far better
to separate at once?"
"It just depends on what one's guiding principle is through life," said
Pauline slowly.
"Oh, I have no guiding principle."
"Indeed you have, though you may not have discovered what it is."
Miss Paton stared at her.
"You rather interest me—go on."
"But I have done," said Pauline, laughing.
Miss Paton joined her in her laugh.
"I'm so glad you have. I was rather afraid you were going to deliver me
a sermon."
Tea came in just then, and they drifted to other topics. When Miss
Paton got up at last to go, she said:
"May I come to see you again? People are not over friendly to me here;
I believe they consider I have ousted the immaculate Honor from her
home, which is ridiculous. You are the only one who has regarded me
with friendly eyes. Even that bright little Miss Osborne looked up into
my face and said to-day,—
"'I'm afraid children bore you, do they not? These mites were a little
spoiled by Honor—she adored them so—and they miss her dreadfully.'
"I am sure she thinks I neglect them, and perhaps I do; but I can't
amuse them and their mother at the same time—and she is my friend."
"I shall be delighted to see you whenever you have a moment to spare,"
responded Pauline warmly.
Miss Paton turned to go, then she looked back.
"Of course I know my guiding principle, and you know it, too. It's to
take the easiest way. But I'm not the only one who does it."
"I suppose we should all do it," said Pauline slowly, "if we all
believed as you do—that we have but one life to live."
"Oh, well," said Miss Paton, a little shamefacedly, "that was a
careless speech of mine—I am not a heathen exactly."
She gave Pauline a little nod, and departed. But Pauline's few words
stuck to her, and gave her much matter for thought.
About a fortnight after this, Mrs. Daventry called early one afternoon,
and insisted upon taking Pauline for a drive.
"I will not take 'No,'" she said, "for you are needing change of air
badly. You are too young to lose your roses yet, and too valuable to us
all to overstrain yourself and have a breakdown."
"I am very strong," said Pauline.
But as she spoke, there were tired lines round her eyes and a little
droop to her tall, upright figure.
Mrs. Daventry leant back in her luxurious carriage with a sigh of
relief, when she had Pauline by her side.
"You have no idea how I long for you when I am driving about. You know
that you are my favourite, do you not? And yet I can hardly ever get
hold of you. I want to take you to the Burkes' this afternoon. It is
a social gathering, to welcome their son back from abroad, and Lady
Marion asked me specially to bring you. She has never forgotten meeting
you at my house last spring. She says she has seen no one like you in
this neighbourhood for years."
"You flatter so," said Pauline, laughing, but casting rather a dismayed
look at her plain dark blue cloth coat and skirt. "I am not in company
attire, exactly, am I?"
"Quite nice," said Mrs. Daventry. "And now tell me first about
yourself, and then about my other girls."
"There is nothing much to say about myself. Mother has had a much
better week. Dr. Mann was quite pleased with her when he called
yesterday. I heard from Honor yesterday. She always writes a little
dismally, but she likes Scotland better than London, and says that Mrs.
Montmorency seems to like her better than she did. Poor Honor always
makes the worst of herself. I knew she would be appreciated before
long."
"And Audrey?"
"Audrey is very busy and very happy. I heard from her this morning. She
says, 'I really do believe my Western goal will be a bright path, after
all—my storms seem over.'"
"Has she learnt so quickly?" said Mrs. Daventry, musingly.
The drive was a long one, but Pauline enjoyed every bit of the way.
When they were ushered into a brightly lighted hall, and thence into a
well-filled drawing-room, she was still girl enough to enjoy the gay
scene.
Lady Marion Burke received her warmly.
"Let me introduce my son to you. He has been in Australia for many
years. Some scientific society sent him out, and he has brought his
great chum down from town with him. Leonard, let me introduce you to
Miss Erskine."
A keen-looking young fellow, with the tanned skin that tells of an open
air life, turned at his mother's words and bowed.
But Pauline went pale to the lips when his companion turned also, and
she was face to face with Justin Pembroke.
For a moment their eyes met. Then he stepped forward gravely.
"We met many years ago, did we not, Miss Erskine?"
"Yes, I think we did," she replied with wonderful composure. "You have
been abroad a good many years, have you not?"
"A good many, though time flies when one is occupied. Have you seen
Mrs. Repton lately?"
"Yes; my mother and I were up in town a short time ago. She seems very
well."
"I must go to see her. But, really, we have been so accustomed to our
life away from civilisation that we feel a little shy at first when we
get amongst our own people again. Burke and I have been in the Bush for
the last five years."
They exchanged a few commonplace remarks, then he drifted away from
her, and Pauline felt as if she were in a dream. He was very much the
same, a trifle greyer than when she saw him last, and his voice not
quite so keen and eager. But she felt as if a cold-water douche had
descended upon her.
He greeted her perfectly courteously but indifferently. He evidently
did not wish to recall the old days. Perhaps, she thought, he had never
attached any importance to them, and now they had faded away from
his memory. She thought hotly of the weeks and months that had been
one long, dreary torture to her, of the hope that lived on, though
suppressed and checked in every way, and which even now, though she had
imagined it dead, was so ready to rise again with eager expectancy.
The woman had sat still, and waited and hoped. The man had continued
his career and forgotten. She smiled a little bitterly to herself.
And then, quick to hear anything from his lips, she listened to some
bantering talk between his hostess and himself.
"I hope you are both tired of exploring the wilds and have come home to
marry and settle down."
"Please be merciful. Why such a fate?"
"It is your duty as a good citizen."
"Then I am afraid that duty will remain undone by me. No, Lady Marion,
my work is my companion and my creed. I want no other. There was a time
when I thought differently, but I am older and wiser now."
"That is the way you all talk; and the next I hear is that you have
fallen headlong into love. Your time has not come. 'Nous verrons.'"
Pauline moved away. She did not want to hear any more. If she had
thought that time had wiped away the remembrance of a man's glowing
eyes reading her very soul, the death-knell that was sounding within
her now showed her the futility of such a misconception. But she
resolutely turned her thoughts from the past to the present, and as she
responded to her friends around her she was her usual sweet, gracious
self.
She did not speak to Justin Pembroke again. And when she and Mrs.
Daventry departed, she was unaware that Justin's eyes were following
them.
She talked brightly to her old friend driving home, and went up to her
mother's room to reproduce the events of the afternoon. But, though
she told her of many who had been present, she never mentioned Justin
Pembroke's name.
When she went up to her bedroom, she opened a drawer and carefully
unlocked a carved ivory box. Taking from it a little packet in tissue
paper, she opened it, and held for a moment or two some faded stalks of
mignonette in her hand.
Then with a quick gesture she opened her window and flung them out.
"I also am older and wiser now," she said to herself.
And then she went to bed.