It was a source of mixed wonder and thankfulness to Miss Ransome on the
succeeding day that she got off so cheaply when the discovery of the
extent to which she had neglected her studies was made. The rebuke
incurred was so inexplicably gentle, that though by this time Bonnybell
was pretty well acquainted with the directness of her instructress’s
methods, she at first suspected that a trap must lie beneath it. She did
not know that she had been saved by her usual means, a lie; only that in
this case it was an innocent and unintentional one, the lie, namely, of
the piled books at her bedside. She escaped with a more sorrowful than
indignant expression of opinion from Camilla as to the slenderness of
her intellect and her inability to grasp any subjects other than those
appertaining to the cult of the frivolous and the trashy.
Insults to her intellect left Miss Ransome perfectly calm. She had long
believed the truth of the saying that “Hard words break no bones,”
having been dieted upon expletives and adjectives both vigorous and
varied whenever “poor Claire” was “not quite right.” Were her mind
furnished as Camilla would have it, she might become a second Miss
Barnacre, and all that she would know of men would be the banging of
doors by them, in hastening from her presence whenever she lifted up her
voice in the odious terminology of science and philosophy.
Snubs to her appearance, occasionally administered on hygienic
principles by Mrs. Tancred, left her equally good-humoured, though from
another cause. Having grown up with her beauty from babyhood, she was as
sure of possessing it as she was of possessing hands or a palate. Any
one who did not think her pretty must be either blind or jesting. It was
valued highly by her, as being the only means of escape she had from the
sordid darkness of her outlook. But it was not the source of pleasure to
her which their good looks afforded to most handsome women. It had been
associated with too many disagreeables; had obliged her to struggle
against too many imminent degradations, for her to have much fondness
for it, apart from its commercial value as a matrimonial asset.
The serenely sweet acquiescence with which Miss Ransome received the
information given as to the unusual smallness of the mind power with
which she had been endowed still further increased her teacher’s
leniency.
“She thinks that I am half-witted,” said Miss Ransome to herself, “and
it will certainly be wiser to encourage her in the idea, as she will
expect less of me. In her present mood I might safely finish ‘L’Enigme
du Péché’ without fear of detection, but”--with a slight sense of
unwonted repulsion--“I don’t think I care to; it is too like Charlie.”
To escape the odious memory evoked, Bonnybell diverted her thoughts into
another channel. “What induced her to come up to my room last night? I
felt sure it was because she had found me out, and I thought it safer to
sham being asleep till I could make up my mind what excuse to offer. And
why, in Heaven’s name, did she kiss me?”
The girl lost herself in contradictory solutions of this enigma. Was it
in order to test the reality of her slumbers or to break them that
Camilla had inflicted that astounding caress? Or was it humanly possible
that the poor old lady was growing a little fond of her, and treated her
as she would have done a young Camilla? The notion, to her own surprise,
touched her oddly at first, but she shook off the sensation almost
indignantly. How likely! She drove away her own inchoate softness by
exchanging it for the ridiculous thought of what a hideous object a
sleeping young Camilla would have been, and how impossible that in
wildest fancy she could have been mistaken for such an imaginary
monster.
“I always knew that Camilla would be easier to take in than Edward,”
pursued Miss Ransome, a rather anxious wrinkle furrowing her brow; “and
it is unlucky that just as I had brought him round, his belief in me
should have received this fresh shock. With him now I have, I am afraid,
my work cut out.”
The ensuing days justified this forecast. There could be no doubt that
Edward was in possession of the fact that she had taken “the key of the
fields.” “He must have heard it at the stables,” was Bonnybell’s
conclusion; “but how could I ward off that? How could I ask all the
grooms and helpers after their colds, or offer them anti-kamnia for
their wives’ neuralgias? In this case I am not to blame. It is my
misfortune, not my fault.”
Misfortune or fault, the result remained the same; Edward did not betray
her. It did not surprise her that he refrained from doing so, though it
was only doubtfully that she attributed his silence to loyalty to that
promise of friendship which she had extracted from him.
Loyalty to given promises was not a quality with which she had ever had
more than a bowing acquaintance. In all probability it was a taste for
peace, coupled with the knowledge of what a terrific household storm his
communication would arouse, that sealed his lips. Doubtless during the
last fifteen years he had had frequent need of reticences and
concealments on his own account. But whatever the cause of his conduct,
Miss Ransome had regretfully to own that it was not due to any of that
lurking partiality for herself, with which she had, up to yesterday
evening, credited him. If his eye met hers--a rencounter apparently
neither sought nor avoided--no grain of admiration was to be detected in
its cold beam. A repelled curiosity, a sort of frosty wonder was all
that was to be read in it.
However, a philosophic mind is able to see the good derivable from even
the least propitious set of circumstances. There was an advantageous
side even to Edward’s objectionable attitude. She would never be in the
least afraid of being left alone in the same room with him. The fears
apparently were all on the other side. She laughed to herself jeeringly.
Would any one believe it? And yet it was true, that without overtly
seeming to seek that end, her host undoubtedly avoided her.
She set herself with all the power of the wits her benefactress held so
cheaply to propitiate him. But it was a path beset with pitfalls. His
ideas, springs of action, standards were so radically different from
those she had been used to find in the men of her acquaintance, that
experience lent no candle to light her steps. She had learnt, indeed, by
the process of burning her fingers at the flame kindled at one taper,
that any discussion of Camilla’s body or mind, any comments on her
actions, however mendaciously flattering, were to be shunned like the
plague. But even thus much of progress was negative, and held out little
hope, as a method of rebuilding his good opinion. What were his weak
spots? And what chance had she of finding them out, if he never indulged
her in any enlightening talk about himself? It was chiefly interest and
the desire for a valuable ally in her arduous life battle that prompted
her efforts to bring him round, but mixed with it was a worthier regret
at having forfeited the only chance of a pure and honourable friendship
with a man that her short ignoble life had yet offered her.
For several days she cast her little cautious nets in vain. Not a
worthless sprat did the meshes enfold when drawn to land. He must be
vulnerable somewhere, if only it were given her to discover the spot.
The days passed in the fruitless search, and by the time the second
Sunday came round since the disaster of her falsehood--or, as she would
have it, the disaster of its discovery--she was almost desperate of
success. On that day an idea struck her, which she hastened to put into
execution. Luncheon was just over. Camilla had retired to her weekly
stock-taking of her spiritual condition, and Edward was in the act of
withdrawing himself, as he had done on the previous Sunday, for the
whole afternoon. This self-effacement of his might have had its
advantages, by leaving her free to carry out any innocent project of her
own, but the motive that prompted it was at once too obvious and too
distressing in its results not to demand one more urgent effort for its
renewal. He had the door-handle already in his hand, when she addressed
him so pointedly that politeness--and in that, at all events, he had
never been lacking--compelled him to pause a moment to listen.
“I noticed,” she said, with what sounded like the painful diffidence of
one making a great effort over herself, “that you did not go to the
Dower House last Sunday.”
“No.” There was a slight inflection of chilly surprise in his
monosyllable.
“I do not think that you have been there since the day you kindly took
me to tea?”
“No?” The monosyllable was interrogative this time, and seemed
discouragingly to ask what the drift of these idle remarks might be.
“I think I have understood that you always used to go there every Sunday
afternoon?”
It was on the edge of his lips to say carelessly that he believed he did
call on the Aylmers now and then; but with a timely realization of the
necessity of giving her the example of a rigid truthfulness he answered,
still with that daunting air of cold wonder as to her purpose in putting
the question, that such had been his weekly habit.
“You will forgive me if I am mistaken,” she said, with a half-frightened
meekness that would have wiled “the savageness out of a bear,” “but I
have sometimes been afraid that I had come between you and your
friends.”
She had hit the nail so exactly on the head, that the nearest approach
to denial of her suggestion within his reach was a “You?” that sounded
to himself a contemptible paltering with the truth, and to her a cold
snubbing of her presumption.
“I am not so silly as to dream that any liking for me was your motive,”
Bonnybell went on with an exquisite humility. “Why _should_ you like me?
What is there to like in me?” (The question was accompanied by a
sorrowful smile which evoked within its executor the reflection, “If
that harrowing contortion does not fetch him, I may as well shut up
shop!”) “But I feared that perhaps your generosity had resented their
unnecessarily harsh treatment of such a forlorn creature!”
Answer to this speech would in any case have been difficult, and
apparently Edward found it more than difficult, impossible, for he made
none; and with a more dragging tone and a heavier spirit Miss Ransome
took up her apparently useless little parable.
“If I am mistaken, I can only ask you to forgive me--I am always having
to ask people to forgive me--but I could not bear the idea of coming
between you and--people you are fond of.”
“Thank you; but indeed you need not distress yourself. I am going to the
Dower House to-day,” he answered, with his usual gentle intonation,
perhaps a little hurried from its wonted leisureliness, and so left the
room, giving her no opportunity for a rejoinder.
Bonnybell, left to herself thus cursorily, walked to the Venetian mirror
nearest her, carrying with her as nearly as possible the expression her
face had worn during this last successless venture, in order to judge of
what ought to have been its efficacy; and then, exhaling a large sigh,
soliloquized, “H’m! I might as well have saved my eloquence, my
magnanimity, the tremble in my voice (I am afraid that I am not quite
sparing enough in the use of that), and my heartbroken smile, which
really was a masterpiece in its way. Bah! and all for one poor harmless
indispensable fib! What a ridiculously warped view to take!” She gave a
little snort of indignation, but the place where her heart ought to be,
and as she had always supposed was not, felt oddly sore.
Neither had Edward’s heart much leap about its actions as he took his
way--the way weekly trod by his Sunday feet--to the house where until a
fortnight ago he had found pleasant, if not excessive, entertainment for
his spirit. It shocked him to find how laggardly that spirit guided him
to-day. There was nothing changed in the reciprocal attitude of the
Aylmers and himself. Mrs. Aylmer would give him the geniality of her
matter-of-course welcome, and to whomsoever Catherine was talking at the
moment of his entrance, he would find her--for it was an unwritten law
of their recognized comradeship--by his side in as many or as few
moments as civility--for Catherine was nothing if not civil--demanded to
rid her of her interlocutor. He was always treated like one of the
family, but to-day the kind imitation of kinship offered had no charm
for him; and he felt a dead reluctance towards the occupation of that
wainscoted recess, with none of the secretiveness of a corner, yet all
its privacy, where in the course of a good many consecutive Sundays his
gentle friend with the candid if not quite straight eyes had made him
the happy master of her sentiments about some of the greatest themes
upon which our poor intelligences turn the dark lanterns of their
groping speculations, and, pleasanter still, had lured some of his own
shy imaginings out of him. Cart-ropes should not drag him to that
friendship-hallowed window-seat this afternoon. And yet he must not hurt
the feelings of his comrade! Why shouldn’t he? The question rose rather
brutally in his mind. He had had no scruples as to hurting the feelings
of another person, of one whose wretched circumstances claimed a much
tenderer handling than the full-blown prosperity of Miss Aylmer.
He stopped in his walk to look up as if in interrogation to the
ash-coloured sky, hung so low over his head, that it seemed as if
touchable by an uplifted hand.
“How long can I keep up the pretence of harshness with the poor little
creature? Why should I be angrier with her than I was with Jock for
killing rats in the barn yesterday? Both follow their nature; she her
shifty lying one. She is a liar! Yes, but am I not one too? Is not my
whole life an actual lie? If it had only been one or two”--his thoughts
harping in exasperated pain on Bonnybell’s delinquencies--“they might
have been accidents, the result of that abject fear she evidently feels
towards us both. But the dreadful glibness of it! the plausibility! the
circumstantiality!” The circumstantiality brought him to the Dower House
door, and rang the bell for him.