Early the next morning Miss Garth and Norah met in the garden and spoke
together privately. The only noticeable result of the interview, when
they presented themselves at the breakfast-table, appeared in the
marked silence which they both maintained on the topic of the
theatrical performance. Mrs. Vanstone was entirely indebted to her
husband and to her youngest daughter for all that she heard of the
evening’s entertainment. The governess and the elder daughter had
evidently determined on letting the subject drop.
After breakfast was over Magdalen proved to be missing, when the ladies
assembled as usual in the morning-room. Her habits were so little
regular that Mrs. Vanstone felt neither surprise nor uneasiness at her
absence. Miss Garth and Norah looked at one another significantly, and
waited in silence. Two hours passed—and there were no signs of
Magdalen. Norah rose, as the clock struck twelve, and quietly left the
room to look for her.
She was not upstairs dusting her jewelry and disarranging her dresses.
She was not in the conservatory, not in the flower-garden; not in the
kitchen teasing the cook; not in the yard playing with the dogs. Had
she, by any chance, gone out with her father? Mr. Vanstone had
announced his intention, at the breakfast-table, of paying a morning
visit to his old ally, Mr. Clare, and of rousing the philosopher’s
sarcastic indignation by an account of the dramatic performance. None
of the other ladies at Combe-Raven ever ventured themselves inside the
cottage. But Magdalen was reckless enough for anything—and Magdalen
might have gone there. As the idea occurred to her, Norah entered the
shrubbery.
At the second turning, where the path among the trees wound away out of
sight of the house, she came suddenly face to face with Magdalen and
Frank: they were sauntering toward her, arm in arm, their heads close
together, their conversation apparently proceeding in whispers. They
looked suspiciously handsome and happy. At the sight of Norah both
started, and both stopped. Frank confusedly raised his hat, and turned
back in the direction of his father’s cottage. Magdalen advanced to
meet her sister, carelessly swinging her closed parasol from side to
side, carelessly humming an air from the overture which had preceded
the rising of the curtain on the previous night.
“Luncheon-time already!” she said, looking at her watch. “Surely not?”
“Have you and Mr. Francis Clare been alone in the shrubbery since ten
o’clock?” asked Norah.
“_Mr._ Francis Clare! How ridiculously formal you are. Why don’t you
call him Frank?”
“I asked you a question, Magdalen.”
“Dear me, how black you look this morning! I’m in disgrace, I suppose.
Haven’t you forgiven me yet for my acting last night? I couldn’t help
it, love; I should have made nothing of Julia, if I hadn’t taken you
for my model. It’s quite a question of Art. In your place, I should
have felt flattered by the selection.”
“In _your_ place, Magdalen, I should have thought twice before I
mimicked my sister to an audience of strangers.”
“That’s exactly why I did it—an audience of strangers. How were they to
know? Come! come! don’t be angry. You are eight years older than I
am—you ought to set me an example of good-humor.”
“I will set you an example of plain-speaking. I am more sorry than I
can say, Magdalen, to meet you as I met you here just now!”
“What next, I wonder? You meet me in the shrubbery at home, talking
over the private theatricals with my old playfellow, whom I knew when I
was no taller than this parasol. And that is a glaring impropriety, is
it? ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense.’ You wanted an answer a minute
ago—there it is for you, my dear, in the choicest Norman-French.”
“I am in earnest about this, Magdalen—”
“Not a doubt of it. Nobody can accuse you of ever making jokes.”
“I am seriously sorry—”
“Oh, dear!”
“It is quite useless to interrupt me. I have it on my conscience to
tell you—and I _will_ tell you—that I am sorry to see how this intimacy
is growing. I am sorry to see a secret understanding established
already between you and Mr. Francis Clare.”
“Poor Frank! How you do hate him, to be sure. What on earth has he done
to offend you?”
Norah’s self-control began to show signs of failing her. Her dark
cheeks glowed, her delicate lips trembled, before she spoke again.
Magdalen paid more attention to her parasol than to her sister. She
tossed it high in the air and caught it. “Once!” she said—and tossed it
up again. “Twice!”—and she tossed it higher. “Thrice—” Before she could
catch it for the third time, Norah seized her passionately by the arm,
and the parasol dropped to the ground between them.
“You are treating me heartlessly,” she said. “For shame, Magdalen—for
shame!”
The irrepressible outburst of a reserved nature, forced into open
self-assertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the hardest
to resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a moment, the two
sisters—so strangely dissimilar in person and character—faced one
another, without a word passing between them. For a moment the deep
brown eyes of the elder and the light gray eyes of the younger looked
into each other with steady, unyielding scrutiny on either side.
Norah’s face was the first to change; Norah’s head was the first to
turn away. She dropped her sister’s arm in silence. Magdalen stooped
and picked up her parasol.
“I try to keep my temper,” she said, “and you call me heartless for
doing it. You always were hard on me, and you always will be.”
Norah clasped her trembling hands fast in each other. “Hard on you!”
she said, in low, mournful tones—and sighed bitterly.
Magdalen drew back a little, and mechanically dusted the parasol with
the end of her garden cloak.
“Yes!” she resumed, doggedly. “Hard on me and hard on Frank.”
“Frank!” repeated Norah, advancing on her sister and turning pale as
suddenly as she had turned red. “Do you talk of yourself and Frank as
if your interests were One already? Magdalen! if I hurt _you_, do I
hurt _him_? Is he so near and so dear to you as that?”
Magdalen drew further and further back. A twig from a tree near caught
her cloak; she turned petulantly, broke it off, and threw it on the
ground. “What right have you to question me?” she broke out on a
sudden. “Whether I like Frank, or whether I don’t, what interest is it
of yours?” As she said the words, she abruptly stepped forward to pass
her sister and return to the house.
Norah, turning paler and paler, barred the way to her. “If I hold you
by main force,” she said, “you shall stop and hear me. I have watched
this Francis Clare; I know him better than you do. He is unworthy of a
moment’s serious feeling on your part; he is unworthy of our dear,
good, kind-hearted father’s interest in him. A man with any principle,
any honor, any gratitude, would not have come back as he has come back,
disgraced—yes! disgraced by his spiritless neglect of his own duty. I
watched his face while the friend who has been better than a father to
him was comforting and forgiving him with a kindness he had not
deserved: I watched his face, and I saw no shame and no distress in
it—I saw nothing but a look of thankless, heartless relief. He is
selfish, he is ungrateful, he is ungenerous—he is only twenty, and he
has the worst failings of a mean old age already. And this is the man I
find you meeting in secret—the man who has taken such a place in your
favor that you are deaf to the truth about him, even from _my_ lips!
Magdalen! this will end ill. For God’s sake, think of what I have said
to you, and control yourself before it is too late!” She stopped,
vehement and breathless, and caught her sister anxiously by the hand.
Magdalen looked at her in unconcealed astonishment.
“You are so violent,” she said, “and so unlike yourself, that I hardly
know you. The more patient I am, the more hard words I get for my
pains. You have taken a perverse hatred to Frank; and you are
unreasonably angry with me because I won’t hate him, too. Don’t, Norah!
you hurt my hand.”
Norah pushed the hand from her contemptuously. “I shall never hurt your
heart,” she said; and suddenly turned her back on Magdalen as she spoke
the words.
There was a momentary pause. Norah kept her position. Magdalen looked
at her perplexedly—hesitated—then walked away by herself toward the
house.
At the turn in the shrubbery path she stopped and looked back uneasily.
“Oh, dear, dear!” she thought to herself, “why didn’t Frank go when I
told him?” She hesitated, and went back a few steps. “There’s Norah
standing on her dignity, as obstinate as ever.” She stopped again.
“What had I better do? I hate quarreling: I think I’ll make up.” She
ventured close to her sister and touched her on the shoulder. Norah
never moved. “It’s not often she flies into a passion,” thought
Magdalen, touching her again; “but when she does, what a time it lasts
her!—Come!” she said, “give me a kiss, Norah, and make it up. Won’t you
let me get at any part of you, my dear, but the back of your neck?
Well, it’s a very nice neck—it’s better worth kissing than mine—and
there the kiss is, in spite of you!”
She caught fast hold of Norah from behind, and suited the action to the
word, with a total disregard of all that had just passed, which her
sister was far from emulating. Hardly a minute since the warm
outpouring of Norah’s heart had burst through all obstacles. Had the
icy reserve frozen her up again already! It was hard to say. She never
spoke; she never changed her position—she only searched hurriedly for
her handkerchief. As she drew it out, there was a sound of approaching
footsteps in the inner recesses of the shrubbery. A Scotch terrier
scampered into view; and a cheerful voice sang the first lines of the
glee in “As You Like It.” “It’s papa!” cried Magdalen. “Come,
Norah—come and meet him.”
Instead of following her sister, Norah pulled down the veil of her
garden hat, turned in the opposite direction, and hurried back to the
house. She ran up to her own room and locked herself in. She was crying
bitterly.