ALONE.
“Is Death as sad as Life? Soon we shall know. It does not seem to
me They find it so Who die, and going from us Smile as they go.”
Trefoil.
FOR some weeks Mrs. Methvyn seemed to gain ground, and gradually,
very gradually, Cicely’s fears abated. She began to think it
possible, or more than possible, that her mother had unconsciously
exaggerated her own danger; and that after all, many years of life
and, comparatively speaking, health, might be before her. And to this
opinion her mother’s greatly improved spirits seemed to lend a
strong colour of probability. The truth was, that Mrs. Methvyn felt
infinitely happier now that Cicely knew the worst; for it had been
the terror of breaking to her child these fresh tidings of impending
woe, far more than any personal shrinking from death, that had
weighed down the poor mother’s spirit so heavily. But of this
explanation of the favourable change, Cicely was happily ignorant.
“Mamma must be feeling much better,” she said to herself. “I
know her so well; she could not hide from me if she felt worse.”
About this time, too, there came good news from the far-away sister
in India; news which cheered Mrs. Methvyn greatly. Amiel wrote that
there was a prospect of her husband’s returning home much sooner
than had at first been expected.
“In two years from now, we may have her back again mother,” said
Cicely brightly. “Two years!—that is a short time compared to
five.”
Mrs. Methvyn smiled and agreed with her, and in her heart prayed that
she might live to see the end of the two years. “For then,” she
thought, “my darling would not be left alone in the world. Amiel
and she would be together.”
But Cicely knew nothing of that unspoken prayer, and her mother’s
evident rejoicing at Lady Forrester’s news, seemed to her a
distinct confirmation of her increasing hopes.
“Mamma would not be so delighted at the thought of Amy’s coming
home sooner, if she did not feel stronger,” she thought.
So it came to pass that the terrible cloud cleared off a little, and
over Cicely’s quiet, somewhat monotonous life, a faint tremulous
sunlight began again softly to shine.
To Mr. Hayle, whom she knew to be fully in her mother’s confidence,
she allowed herself to express something of her returning hopefulness.
“Do you not think mamma wonderfully better?” she said to him one
day when he had called to see his old friends. “Don’t you think
she looks ever so much stronger than when we first came here?”
“She was certainly not looking well then,” said Mr. Hayle
evasively.
“Of course not,” said Cicely, “I said so. What I am saying is
that she is looking so much better now; don’t you think so?”
Mr. Hayle hesitated. There came before him a vision of Cicely’s
mother as he had seen her, little more than a year ago, at
Greystone—the contrast between that picture and the gentle faded
invalid lying on the sofa in the little Leobury drawing-room was
sharp. “I don’t know,” he said at last, for he was not good at
dissembling his real feelings.
Cicely’s face fell. She was half inclined to be angry with him.
“You need not grudge me a little gleam of hope,” she said.
Mr. Hayle looked distressed.
“I cannot say what I do not think,” he replied. “And even if I
could, I don’t think I would do so. It would be very hard upon you
to begin to feel confident and hopeful again, and then—”
Cicely understood him. A few days after this conversation, Dr.—
came down from town to see Mrs. Methvyn. He thought her on the whole
better than when he had last seen her, and left Cicely somewhat
comforted, though warning her that the best to be hoped for was not
much. So the winter drew on—slowly this year. Christmas, the second
Christmas since they left the Abbey, came and went, and still the
mother and daughter spoke cheerfully of the future, made plans for
Amiel’s return, and smiled in each other’s faces with smiles of
resolute cheerfulness—the smiles that are oftentimes more pathetic
than tears.
And when the blow fell, it came, as in such cases it often does, from
an unexpected direction. The winter was over and gone, the time for
the singing of birds was at hand; it was early March, and Cicely was
beginning to breathe more freely. “It is a great thing to have got
mamma so nicely through the winter,” she said one morning to
Parker. And the old servant agreed with her, and had not the heart to
add that had the winter been coming instead of going, she would have
trembled for her mistress. For to her eyes Mrs. Methvyn’s slow but
steady decay of strength was only too plainly perceptible. “It is
nearly two months since she had an attack,” Cicely went on, “she
cannot but be gaining strength. If only the fine weather will come
quickly this year, and we can get her out a little, Parker, I shall
feel quite happy about her.”
The fine weather did come quickly, and what was of more consequence,
lasted when it came. But Mrs. Methvyn was not able to enjoy it. She
never went out again. In some inexplicable way, just as the summer
flowers were beginning to spring, and the grass to look bright in the
sunshine again, she caught cold, and soon to all eyes but those of
the daughter who would not see, it was evident that the last stage of
her journey had been entered upon. Under the pressure of the new
acute symptoms, those of her chronic malady disappeared or were cast
into the shade; so for long Cicely hoped, and defended her hope with
some show of plausibility. But at last her mother entered into a
region of suffering so painful to witness, so apparently agonising to
endure, that the unselfishness of true devotion forbade the child to
hope, or to wish to hope for anything but her release.
“I must not ask to keep her,” murmured Cicely in her anguish.
“I only pray that she may be spared any more suffering.”
And at the end, the very end, there fell upon the dying woman a great
calm—a few hours of perfect peace, and to Cicely there was given
strength to ease her mother’s heart of its one great burden.
“Mother dear, I can bear it,” she whispered, “I think it is
better for you to go. It cannot be for very long that we shall be
separated. I think I shall feel happier when I know that you cannot
suffer any more. Amiel will come home to me soon, and then I shall
not be alone. Mother dear, don’t be afraid for me.”
And with a smile of gratitude to her child for the unselfish words, a
smile of relief, and hope, and love beyond expression, Cicely’s
mother died.
Then came the real agony of sorrow. She was gone. There was nothing
more to do for her; no motive to be strong and cheerful any more.
There was her empty room; there stood the sofa on which so lately, so
incredibly short time ago, she had lain and smiled at Cicely as she
moved about the room, and answered her when she spoke to her; there
was the book she had been reading, the desk at which she had been
writing, the clothes she had worn—everything in its accustomed
place, all the inanimate objects associated with her, among which she
had lived, there, present, tangible—and she? Gone, dead; her sweet
face blotted out of existence; her loving, gentle voice hushed for
ever. “For even if it be all true,” cried Cicely in her agony,
“even if it be true that I shall meet her again, will she ever be
the very same mother? I cannot believe it. If God loved and pitied
us, He would not torture us so. Life is no gift to be grateful for,
since it is made up of such anguish. Better far, never to have been
born.”
And for a time, through a crisis of intense suffering, the girl’s
spirit sank within her, her very heart failed her. Faith and hope
alike deserted her, “the cloud was thick and the storm great,”
and it seemed to her that the very foundations of her being were
shaken to their centre.
But after the strong wind and the earth quake and the fire, there
comes to those who will hear it the sound of the still, small
voice—the voice of eternal love and compassion, of patient
tenderness and all wise consolation—and Cicely, exhausted by
suffering, listened and was comforted. She remembered the smile on
her mother’s dying face, and her faith revived. She bowed her head,
and the rebellion died out of her heart. “Bitter as it is, if it is
God’s will it must be best,” she said at last, unmurmuringly.
Then she looked her life in the face, and realised that it was yet
hers to use, if possible even, yet to enjoy. How to employ it, how to
save herself from drifting out into lonely aimlessness and
indifference, she could not yet see. But she began to trust that
sooner or later, there would come a gleam of light.
What was she to do, where was she to go? Before long these questions
pressed upon her, and she knew not how to answer them. She was to all
intents and purposes alone in the world, for excepting her sister
Amiel, she had no near relations.
“If I were a man like you,” she said one day to Mr. Hayle, when
he had called to see her, a few weeks after her mother’s death,
“I could be at no loss. I could find, if not happiness, at least
peace, in spending my life for others as you are going to do. And
what little money I have might do some good. But being a woman, it is
quite different. I am hedged in on every side, unless I joined one of
those sisterhoods you tell me of. I cannot devote myself to
charitable work of that kind. I should do more harm than good trying
to do anything of the kind by myself. And I could not join any of
those sisterhoods.”
“If you have the real love of such work in your heart, some way
will open to you,” replied Mr. Hayle, with a shade of professional
formality in his tone.
“But I don’t by any means think that I have,” said Cicely
bluntly and yet piteously. “I don’t like going among very poor
and miserable people. I think it is dreadful. I have no missionary
spirit. You think better of me than I deserve. I would do it, or try
to do it, if I saw my way to it, but not from love of the thing. My
motive would be simply and purely the wish to do something, to be of
use in some way.”
“There could not be a better motive,” said the young clergyman,
more naturally. “The love of it would come.”
He was silent for a few moments, then he spoke again, somewhat
inconsequently it seemed to Cicely. “Did you not say that you had
heard again from Lady Forrester?” he inquired. “Is she not likely
to return home even sooner than you expected?”
“Yes,” said Cicely. “She—they, I should say—will probably
be in England next summer. But that does not help me. They are only
coming home for a few months; not to stay altogether as I hoped.”
“But while they are here, your home will be with them.”
“Oh, yes! for the time, of course, it will be. But when Amiel has
to leave me again—” she gave a little shiver. “And for the next
few months I am quite at a loss what to do,” she went on in a more
practical tone. “Miss Winter cannot stay with me after September;
you know she has to look after her sister’s children now? That is
why she left Lady Frederica. I don’t know what to do. I must make
some plans I suppose. How I envy you, Mr. Hayle! When are you going
away; next week did you say?”
“Yes, I think so,” he replied absently.
“I shall miss you so much,” she went on. “I can never tell you
how thankful I have felt that you were here. Mamma told me that I
must try to tell you how much your kindness had comforted her, and I
wish I could thank you sufficiently, but I cannot.”
Mr. Hayle’s face flushed. “You cannot make me happier than by
saying I have been of any—of the slightest use to you,” he said.
“I only wish I could help you now.”
“It is very difficult to know what to do,” pursued Cicely sadly.
“Perhaps it would have been better for me if I had been left quite
poor, then there would have been no doubt about it; I should have had
to work for my daily bread.”
“Don’t say that,” interrupted Mr. Hayle.
“Why not?”
“You do not know as well as I do what working for your daily bread
means.”
“Perhaps not,” she replied, “but at least it would have been
something to do. As it is, no occupation is forced upon me and I have
no energy to seek any. You don’t know how difficult it is for me
even to wish to live.”
She leant back in her chair in an attitude of listless despondency.
Mr. Hayle did not speak for a minute or two; he seemed to be thinking
deeply.
“Miss Methvyn,” he said suddenly, “there is one way open to you
in which I believe you might be of the greatest use. You underrate
your own powers, I think. I believe you are capable of doing immense
good among the poor and wretched. It is confidence in yourself that
you want. This you would acquire if—if you were with any one who
would always be ready to encourage you and sympathise with you.”
“Perhaps I might,” said Cicely. “It is loneliness that appals
me as much as anything. I am strong I know—perhaps I might get over
my shrinking from the sight of misery in time, if, as you say, I
could look for direction to some one wiser. But I could never make up
my mind to join one of your sisterhoods, Mr. Hayle. You are not
thinking of that again, are you?”
She looked up with a very slight sparkle of her old playful manner,
but the clergy man’s face grew graver.
“No,” he said, “I was not thinking of that.”
“Of what then?” asked Cicely wonderingly.
“I was thinking,” he began, then hesitated and stopped short.
“I don’t think you will misunderstand me,” he resumed, as if
encouraging himself with the idea. “I was thinking if possibly life
would look less bare and empty to you if you were to make up your
mind to join me in my work.”
He raised his eyes as he spoke and looked at her with calm inquiry.
“To join you,” Cicely repeated, “how do you mean?”
“By marrying me, by becoming my wife,” he replied deliberately.
Then Cicely in turn looked at him. How, small and fair and boyish he
seemed—how innocent and almost childlike! The idea of regarding him
as a husband, a protector, and guide, struck Cicely with a sense of
the strangest incongruity. For half a second there came over her a
foolish, half-nervous inclination to laugh, but another glance at
him, at the serious matter-of-fact earnestness of his expression,
checked the impulse and restored her to composure.
“You are very kind and good,” she began. “I know you are
thinking most unselfishly of my happiness, for I have often heard you
say you would never marry, but—”
“Stay a moment,” he interrupted, and in spite of the strong
effort he was evidently making for calmness, his colour deepened and
his voice trembled a little, “you must not give me credit for what
I do not deserve. It is true I never intended to marry—such a
prospect has never come into the life I had sketched out for myself.
But if—if, as I think possible, marriage would be a help not a
hindrance to me—and a marriage with you would, it seems to me, be
so—I should not feel that I was departing from my principles or, on
the other hand, that I deserved credit for unselfishness in proposing
it,” he stopped again. “You can imagine that a friend—a
wife—always at hand to sympathise with me in my work would make
life a very different thing to me,” he added.
“But I am afraid I could not be the sort of friend—of wife—you
imagine,” said Cicely gently. “I am not devoted and unworldly as
you are. You think better of me than I deserve.”
“No, I do not. I am not afraid of your fitness for the work,” he
replied.
Cicely was silent.
“I wish,” she said in a tone of distress, “I wish you had not
thought of it.”
“You mean that you cannot entertain the idea of it—you dislike me
personally?” he said.
“Dislike,” she repeated; “no, oh! no, but—”
“But you don’t like me,” he suggested with a faint smile. “It
is much better to be honest, Miss Methvyn. Not that I expected, at
the best, much. I know something of your past sufferings—I know you
have known feelings in comparison with which the best I could hope
for must be poor and small. Forgive me for alluding to it,” he
added hastily. “You will believe me it was unintentionally I did
so.” For he fancied that a look of pain had crept over her face as
he spoke. He was mistaken.
“I don’t mind your alluding to it at all,” she said frankly.
“No one could have been kinder and more considerate to me than you
were then. It is all completely, utterly, past and gone. Lately,
quite lately, I have come to feel perfectly satisfied of its having
been best for me as it was. It is no remembrance of that kind, it is
nothing that has to do with my old feeling for my cousin that makes
it”—“impossible” she added after an instant’s hesitation,
“for me to do anything but thank you for what you have said just
now.”
“Impossible?” he repeated.
“Yes, I fear so,” said Cicely. “I wish I could feel it were not
so. I own to you I wish I dared think it could be otherwise, but I
cannot. I am very, very lonely. Your friendship is a temptation to
me. But it would not satisfy me. I know myself better than I once
did; if I consented now to what you propose, I should only be storing
up misery for both you and me. As it is, I do not think I need be
afraid of paining you by my decision, for I am sure you have thought
more of me than of yourself in the matter. Your life will be more
consistent and harmonious without me. Will it not?”
“Possibly it may be so,” he replied. But as he said the words he
grew very pale.
“You will let me thank you,” she said, her eyes filling with
tears.
“No,” he said abruptly. “I don’t deserve it. I have deceived
myself. I believed it was my work I was thinking of—the assistance
you would be to it—I was mistaken. It was gross presumption. It was
you I was thinking of. I did not know it was in me to care for any
woman as I care for you, and now I know it.”
He turned away sharply, and almost before Cicely saw what he was
doing, had left the room. A moment after, she heard the front door
shut.
“He has gone away,” she thought sorrow fully. “Almost the only
friend I have, and in trouble caused by me.”
But late that evening a note was brought to her. “There was no
answer,” the servant told Cicely as she opened it. It was a short
note.
“Dear Miss Methvyn,” it said, “I am leaving Leobury at once.
The sooner I get to my new work the better. I have made a mistake,
and but for your gentleness and goodness my eyes might have been more
harshly opened. I know you will have forgiven my presumption. I only
write to say good-bye and to beg you to let me know if at any time I
can be of use to you. When your plans are settled, I shall be very
grateful if you will let me know what they are. I enclose my address.
Yours very truly,
“CHRISTOPHER HAYLE.”
And a few weeks later when her plans were settled, Cicely wrote to
him as he asked.
It was a letter which reached her by the very next post which helped
her to come to a decision. There were two letters for her that
morning. One in a handwriting which she had not seen for many months,
familiar as it used to be—that of Trevor Fawcett. He wrote in his
own name and that of his wife to entreat her to consider the
possibility of going to them at least for a time. The tone of the
letter touched Cicely.
“I hardly know how to put in words the extreme gratification it
would give us to receive you for as long as it would suit you to
stay,” wrote Trevor. “We are at Barnstay now; indeed, we spend
most of our time here. Geneviève would write herself, but I have
asked her to let me do so instead, fancying I might be able to say
something which might induce you to come. I cannot tell you what it
would be to me to see you again.”
“Poor Trevor!” thought Cicely. Would Geneviève have written
herself? She doubted it. “Poor Trevor,” she repeated. “I wish,
what long ago I used to fancy I wished—I wish it far more
now—that he had been really my brother. There could have been no
mistakes or troubles then. I do hope he is happy.”
But of going to them as Mr. Fawcett proposed, of making her home even
temporarily with the two people who had so cruelly deceived her—of
this, Cicely felt that there could be no question.
“I have forgiven all that I had to forgive,” she said to herself.
“I see where I myself was to blame, and for myself I do not regret
the results. But I could never feel at home with them again.”
And in the gentlest but firmest words she wrote to her cousin
declining his invitation.
She sent another letter by the same post, a letter in reply to the
one which had reached her at the same time as Trevor’s, and which
had also contained an invitation—an invitation which after some
consideration she had decided to accept.
“I think it is a very nice plan, my dear Miss Methvyn, a very nice
plan indeed,” said Miss Winter when Cicely told her of her
intention. “I hope the change will do you a great deal of good, and
the sooner you arrange for it the better, sorry though I shall be to
leave you. If you had been intending to keep house for yourself and I
had been free, I should have asked nothing better than to have
remained with you. I have been so happy with you, dear Miss Methvyn.
But duty calls me elsewhere; and of course even if I were free, it
would hardly do for me to take another situation without first
inquiring if dear Lady Frederica wanted me—considering all her
kindness.”
Poor Miss Winter! A long course of genteel dependence had taught her
the expediency of seeing most things “couleur de rose,” but as
Cicely looked at her faded pink cheeks and listened to her nervously
amiable platitudes, she came to agree with Mr. Hayle, she felt
thankful that she was not called upon to join the ranks of the vast
army of decayed gentlewomen who have to earn for themselves their
daily bread.