Eighteen years had passed since Miss Bracy's interview with Bassett; and
now, late on a summer afternoon, she and Mr. Frank were pacing the
little waterside garden while they awaited their first visitor.
Mr. Frank betrayed the greater emotion, or at any rate the greater
nervousness. Since breakfast he had been unable to sit still or to
apply himself to any piece of work for ten minutes together, until Miss
Bracy suggested the lawn-mower and brought purgatory upon herself.
With that lawn-mower all the afternoon he had been "rattling her brain
to fiddle-strings"--as she put it--and working himself into a heat which
obliged a change of clothes before tea. The tea stood ready now on a
table which Deborah had carried out into the garden--dainty linen and
silverware, and flowered china dishes heaped with cakes of which only
Scotswomen know the secrets. The sun, dropping behind Battery Point,
slanted its rays down through the pine-trunks and over the fiery massed
plumes of rhododendrons. Scents of jasmine and of shorn grass mingled
with the clean breath of the sea borne to the garden wall on a high tide
tranquil and clear--so clear that the eye following for a hundred yards
the lines of the cove could see the feet of the cliffs where they
rested, three fathoms down, on lily-white sand. Miss Bracy adored these
clean depths. She had missed much that life could have given; but at
least she had found a life comely and to her mind. She had sacrificed
much; but at times she forgot how much in contemplating the modest
elegance of the altar.
She wore, this evening, a gown of purplish silk, with a light cashmere
scarf about her shoulders. Nothing could make her a tall woman; but her
grey hair, dressed high _a l'imperatrice_, gave her dignity at least,
and an air of old-fashioned distinction. And she was one of those few
and fortunate ladies who never need to worry about the appearance of
their cavaliers. Mr. Frank--six feet of him, without reckoning a slight
stoop--always satisfied the eye; his grey flannel suit fitted loosely
but fitted well; his wide-brimmed straw hat was as faultless as his
linen; his necktie had a negligent neatness; you felt sure alike and at
once of his bootmaker and his shirtmaker; and his fresh complexion, his
prematurely white hair, his strong well-kept hands, completed the
impression of cleanliness for its own sake, of a careful physical cult
as far as possible removed from foppery.
This may have been in Miss Bracy's mind when she began: "I daresay he
will be fairly presentable, to look at. That unfortunate woman had at
least an art of dressing--a quiet taste too, quite extraordinary in one
of her station. I often wondered where she picked it up."
Mr. Frank winced. Until the news of his wife's death came, a fortnight
ago, her name had not been spoken between them for years. That he and
his cousin regarded her very differently he knew; but while silence was
kept it had been possible to ignore the difference. Now it surprised
him that speech should hurt so; and, at the same moment, that his cousin
should not divine how sorely it hurt. After all _he_ was the saddest
evidence of poor Bassett's "lady-like" tastes.
"I suppose you know nothing of the school she sent him to?" Miss Bracy
went on--"King William's, or whatever it is."
"King Edward's," Mr. Frank corrected. "Yes, I made inquiries about it
at the time--ten years ago. People speak well of it. Not a public
school, of course--at least, not quite; the line isn't so easy to draw
nowadays--but it turns out gentlemen."
In her heart Miss Bracy thought him too hopeful; but she said,
"He wrote a becoming letter--his hand, by the way, curiously suggests
yours; it was quite a nice letter, and agreeably surprised me.
I shouldn't wonder if his headmaster had helped him with it and cut out
the boyish heroics; for of course _she_ must have taught him to hate
us."
"My dear Laura, why in the world--" began Mr. Frank testily.
"Oh, she had spirit!"--the encounter of long ago rose up in Miss Bracy's
memory, and she nodded her head with conviction. "Like most of the
quiet ones, she had spirit. You don't suppose, I imagine, that she
forgave?"
"No." Mr. Frank came to a halt and dug with his heel at a daisy root in
the turf. Then using his heel as a pivot he swung himself round in an
awkward circle. The action was ludicrous almost, but he faced his
cousin again with serious eyes. "But it is not her heart that I doubt,"
he added gently.
Miss Bracy stared up at him, "My dear Frank, do you mean to tell me that
you _regret_?"
Yes; as a fact he did regret, and knew that he would never cease to
regret. He was not a man to nurse malice even for a wrong done to him,
still less to live carelessly conscious of having wronged another.
He was weak, but incurably just. And more; though self entered last
into his regret, he knew perfectly well that the wrong had wrecked him
too. His was a career _manque_: he had failed as a man, and it had
broken his nerve as an artist. He was a dabbler now, with--as Heine
said of de Musset--a fine future _behind him_, and none but an artist
can tell the bitterness of that self-knowledge. Had he kept his faith
with Bassett in spirit as in letter, he might have failed just as
decidedly; her daily companionship might have coarsened his inspiration,
soured him, driven him to work cheaply, recklessly; but at least he
could have accused fate, circumstance, a boyish error, whereas now he
and his own manhood shared the defeat and the responsibility. Yes, he
regretted; but it would never do to let Laura know his regret.
That would be to play the double traitor. She had saved him
(she believed) from himself; with utterly wrong-headed loyalty she had
devoted her life to this. The other debt was irredeemable, but this at
any rate could be paid.
He evaded her question. "My dear," he said, "what was done has been
atoned for by her, and is being atoned for by--by us. Let us think of
her without bitterness."
Miss Bracy shook her head "I am a poor sort of Christian," she
confessed; "and if she has taught this boy to hate us--"
"Mr. Victor Bracy," announced Deborah from the garden-porch behind them,
and a tall youth in black stepped past her and came across the turf with
a shy smile.
The pair turned with an odd sense of confusion, almost of dismay.
They were prepared for the "Victor," but somehow they had not thought of
him as bearing their own surname. Mr. Frank had felt the shock once
before, in addressing an envelope; but to Miss Bracy it was quite new.
Yet she was the first to recover herself, and, while holding out her
hand, took quick note that the boy had Frank's stature and eyes, carried
his clothes well, and himself, if shyly, without clumsiness. She could
find no fault with his manner of shaking hands; and when he turned to
his father, the boy's greeting was the less embarrassed of the two.
Mr. Frank indeed had suddenly become conscious of his light suit and
bird's-eye neckcloth.
"But how did you come?" asked Miss Bracy. "We sent a cart to meet you--
I heard no sound of wheels."
"Yes, I saw it outside the station; but the man didn't recognise me--
quite a small crowd came by the train--and of course I didn't recognise
him. So I bribed a porter to put my luggage on a barrow and come along
with me. Half-way up the hill the cart overtook us--the driver full of
apologies. While they transhipped my things I walked on ahead--yes,
listen, there it comes; and--Oh, I say, what a lovely spot!"
Miss Bracy was listening--not for the wheels and not to the story, but
critically to every word as it came from his lips. "The woman has
certainly done wonders," was her unspoken comment. At Victor's frank
outburst, however, she flushed with something like real pleasure. She
was proud of her cottage and garden, and had even a sort of proprietary
feeling about the view.
They sat down around the little tea-table; the boy first apologising for
his travel-stains (he was, in fact, as neat as a pin) and afterwards
chatting gaily about his journey--not talking too much, but appealing
from one to another with a quick deferent grace, and allowing them
always the lead. "This is better and better," thought Miss Bracy as she
poured tea; and, after a while, "But this is amazing!" He was a
thorough child, too, with all his unconscious tact. The scent of a
lemon-verbena plant fetched him suddenly to his feet with his eyes
bright. "Please let me--" he thrust his face into the bush;
"I have never seen it growing like this."
Miss Bracy looked at Mr. Frank. How utterly different it was from their
old-maidish expectations! They had pictured the scene a hundred times,
and always it included some awkwardly decorous reference to the dead
woman. _This_ had been their terror--to do justice to the occasion
without hurting the poor boy's feelings--to meet his sullen shyness,
perhaps antipathy, with a welcome which somehow excused the past.
Yes, the past (they had felt) required excuse to _him_. And he had made
no allusion to his mother, and obviously wished for none. Miss Bracy
could not help smiling at the picture of their fears.
The boy turned, caught her smiling, and broke into a jolly laugh at his
own absurdity. It echoed in the garden, where no one had laughed aloud
for years.
And with that laugh Bassett's revenge began.