THE next morning found Frank once more in Myddelton Square. He looked up
at the house; the windows were all shut, and the blinds were drawn down.
He had half a mind to call again, but Mrs Cork’s manner had been so
offensive and repellent that he desisted. Presently the door opened, and
Maria, the maid, came out to clean the doorsteps. Maria, as we have
already said, was a little more human than her mistress, and having
overheard the conversation between her and Frank at the first interview,
had come to the conclusion that Frank was to be pitied, and she took a
fancy to him. Accordingly, when he passed her, she looked up and
said,—‘Good-morning.’ Frank stopped, and returned her greeting.
‘You was here the other day, sir, asking where them Hopgoods had gone.’
‘Yes,’ said Frank, eagerly, ‘do you know what has become of them?’
‘I helped the cabman with the boxes, and I heard Mrs Hopgood say “Great
Ormond Street,” but I have forgotten the number.’
‘Thank you very much.’
Frank gave the astonished and grateful Maria half-a-crown, and went off
to Great Ormond Street at once. He paced up and down the street half a
dozen times, hoping he might recognise in a window some ornament from
Fenmarket, or perhaps that he might be able to distinguish a piece of
Fenmarket furniture, but his search was in vain, for the two girls had
taken furnished rooms at the back of the house. His quest was not
renewed that week. What was there to be gained by going over the ground
again? Perhaps they might have found the lodgings unsuitable and have
moved elsewhere. At church on Sunday he met his cousin Cecilia, who
reminded him of his promise.
‘See,’ she said, ‘here is the begonia. I put it in my prayer-book in
order to preserve it when I could keep it in water no longer, and it has
stained the leaf, and spoilt the Athanasian Creed. You will have it sent
to you if you are faithless. Reflect on your emotions, sir, when you
receive a dead flower, and you have the bitter consciousness also that
you have damaged my creed without any recompense.’
It was impossible not to protest that he had no thought of breaking his
engagement, although, to tell the truth, he had wished once or twice he
could find some way out of it. He walked with her down the churchyard
path to her carriage, assisted her into it, saluted her father and
mother, and then went home with his own people.
The evening came, he sang with Cecilia, and it was observed, and he
himself observed it, how completely their voices harmonised. He was not
without a competitor, a handsome young baritone, who was much commended.
When he came to the end of his performance everybody said what a pity it
was that the following duet could not also be given, a duet which Cecilia
knew perfectly well. She was very much pressed to take her part with
him, but she steadily refused, on the ground that she had not practised
it, that she had already sung once, and that she was engaged to sing once
more with her cousin. Frank was sitting next to her, and she added, so
as to be heard by him alone, ‘He is no particular favourite of mine.’
There was no direct implication that Frank was a favourite, but an
inference was possible, and at least it was clear that she preferred to
reserve herself for him. Cecilia’s gifts, her fortune, and her gay,
happy face had made many a young fellow restless, and had brought several
proposals, none of which had been accepted. All this Frank knew, and how
could he repress something more than satisfaction when he thought that
perhaps he might have been the reason why nobody as yet had been able to
win her. She always called him Frank, for although they were not first
cousins, they were cousins. He generally called her Cecilia, but she was
Cissy in her own house. He was hardly close enough to venture upon the
more familiar nickname, but to-night, as they rose to go to the piano, he
said, and the baritone sat next to her,—
‘Now, _Cissy_, once more.’
She looked at him with just a little start of surprise, and a smile
spread itself over her face. After they had finished, and she never sang
better, the baritone noticed that she seemed indisposed to return to her
former place, and she retired with Frank to the opposite corner of the
room.
‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if being happy in a thing is a sign of being born
to do it. If it is, I am born to be a musician.’
‘I should say it is; if two people are quite happy in one another’s
company, it is as a sign they were born for one another.’
‘Yes, if they are sure they are happy. It is easier for me to be sure
that I am happier with a thing than with a person.’
‘Do you think so? Why?’
‘There is the uncertainty whether the person is happy with me. I cannot
be altogether happy with anybody unless I know I make him happy.’
‘What kind of person is he with whom you _could_ be without making him
happy?’
The baritone rose to the upper F with a clash of chords on the piano, and
the company broke up. Frank went home with but one thought in his
head—the thought of Cecilia.
His bedroom faced the south-west, its windows were open, and when he
entered, the wind, which was gradually rising, struck him on the face and
nearly forced the door out of his hand; the fire in his blood was
quenched, and the image of Cecilia receded. He looked out, and saw
reflected on the low clouds the dull glare of the distant city. Just
over there was Great Ormond Street, and underneath that dim, red light,
like the light of a great house burning, was Madge Hopgood. He lay down,
turning over from side to side in the vain hope that by change of
position he might sleep. After about an hour’s feverish tossing, he just
lost himself, but not in that oblivion which slumber usually brought him.
He was so far awake that he saw what was around him, and yet, he was so
far released from the control of his reason that he did not recognise
what he saw, and it became part of a new scene created by his delirium.
The full moon, clearing away the clouds as she moved upwards, had now
passed round to the south, and just caught the white window-curtain
farthest from him. He half-opened his eyes, his mad dream still clung to
him, and there was the dead Madge before him, pale in death, and holding
a child in her arms! He distinctly heard himself scream as he started up
in affright; he could not tell where he was; the spectre faded and the
furniture and hangings transformed themselves into their familiar
reality. He could not lie down again, and rose and dressed himself. He
was not the man to believe that the ghost could be a revelation or a
prophecy, but, nevertheless, he was once more overcome with fear, a vague
dread partly justifiable by the fact of Madge, by the fact that his
father might soon know what had happened, that others also might know,
Cecilia for example, but partly also a fear going beyond all the facts,
and not to be accounted for by them, a strange, horrible trembling such
as men feel in earthquakes when the solid rock shakes, on which
everything rests.