Kitabı oku: «Lettice», sayfa 7
Chapter Ten.
New-Found Relations
“Speak of me as I am: nothing extemporate.”
Shakespeare.
The drowsy cabman was aroused from his slumbers to be, rather to his surprise, paid and dismissed, but paid so handsomely that he went off thinking himself for once in the way of good luck. Then Mr Morison said a few words to his coachman and, getting into the brougham, took his seat beside his niece.
“Lettice,” he said quietly, speaking at once to relieve her embarrassment, “I have told the coachman to drive round a quiet way before we go home, to give you time to tell me all you can, every detail, about Arthur, so that we may not lose an hour. Will you now give me the whole particulars?”
Calmed by his quiet, almost matter-of-fact manner, Lettice did so, though the recital led her into much painful to relate. For now that, thanks to the terrible anxiety through which she was passing, the scales had fallen from her eyes, she saw in its true light, even perhaps with exaggerated harshness – for Lettice was never one to do things by halves – her own wilful blindness, her own prejudice, unreason, and self-will. And when she came to tell her uncle how she had written to Arthur, she altogether broke down.
“I had better show you his letter,” she said, amidst her tears; “it will make you understand him. He has exaggerated, has he not?” she said, looking up wistfully. “If he had not been overstrained and morbid, he would not have taken it up so, would he?”
She sat quietly waiting till Mr Morison had read the letter. His face was very grave as he handed it back to Lettice. But it was grave with anxiety not with indignation.
“He was certainly in a very excited and morbid state when he wrote this,” he said. “He has been overworking himself probably. No one in possession of their senses would do anything but laugh at his imagining himself disgraced for life by having failed in his first attempt at passing for Woolwich;” and Mr Morison could not help smiling.
“I am afraid I helped him to think so,” said Lettice; “you see, he refers to what I wrote. I could not understand his seeming so much less in earnest than he used to be, and so spiritless, and I wrote meaning to rouse him. I did not know, that is my only excuse – indeed, I did not know till now, what explains it all – the dislike he had taken to his intended profession,” she added earnestly.
“My dear child,” said her uncle, kindly patting the hand she had involuntarily laid on his arm, “do not plead so piteously as if I were constituting myself a judge over you. What you say seems to me to have been the principal point – the only point – on which Arthur is really to blame. Why did he not tell you that he no longer felt any liking for the service?”
“Ah,” said Lettice, “I fear that was my influence again. I think he was afraid of telling it, afraid of how I should take it.”
“But that was cowardice, moral cowardice,” for he felt that Lettice winced at the strong, expression. “I am very plain-spoken, Lettice,” he added, though looking at her so kindly that the words had no harshness in them. “When I see Arthur, I shall try to make him understand where he was wrong, and I think he will agree with me. But he has got false notions on other points, I see. What is all this about independence, repaying what he would never have used had he understood the whole, working in the hopes of some day doing so, etcetera?”
“It was what Godfrey told us,” said Lettice in a low voice, “about – about all you had done and risked to save our money.”
For the first time Mr Morison’s face darkened, and Lettice realised that, though gentle, he could also make his anger felt.
“Auriol!” he exclaimed. “How could he have so represented, or misrepresented, things? There was no need for anything to be said about it. I, very reluctantly, gave him leave to tell you, or your mother rather, that I had done what I could at a critical time. But it was solely to show her how ready, how eager I was to be of use. But as to its calling forth any other feeling – ”
“Gratitude, at least,” said Lettice timidly.
“No, not gratitude even. It was nothing but natural, purely and thoroughly natural. And to think of Auriol’s having stated it so as to give you any painful sense of obligation – how can he have done so?”
Lettice hesitated. Her cup of self-abasement was to be drunk to the dregs, it seemed. She turned round, with a look of determination on her face.
“Uncle Ingram,” she began, and in the pleasure of hearing himself so addressed by her, Mr Morison’s face relaxed, “I will try to explain all; I will not spare myself. It was not Mr Auriol’s fault. He did tell it us just as you would have wished. He wanted to soften me, to make me reasonable. But I repelled him. I made him angry. I lost my temper, and made him, a little, I think, lose his, too,” – and Lettice was too absorbed by her own recital to see what perhaps it was as well she did not observe, a slight smile of amusement which here crossed her uncle’s face – “and then he said what was true – that we owed you gratitude we could never repay. It is true, Uncle Ingram, and now I don’t mind it. But, don’t you see, that while we – I – was resisting you, refusing to count you our uncle, it was a painful obligation?”
“And if fate, or something better than fate,” said Mr Morison, “had not brought us together to-day, it would – would it, Lettice – have remained so?”
“I don’t know,” said Lettice in a low voice; “I can’t think so now. But – ”
“But what?”
“I had no idea you would be like what you are. I could not have imagined any one being so generous.”
Mr Morison turned his face away for a moment. When he spoke again, it was with a little effort.
“Lettice,” he said, “I am always considered a very practical and prosaic person. Even my wife thinks I was born with very little romance in me. But, do you know, I have had one romance, one dream in my life, and that has been to do something to make up to my brother’s children for my having been put in his place.” Here Lettice seemed as if she was going to speak, but he made a little sign for her to wait. “I know you are going to say it was not my fault, but I want you to understand the feeling, the sentiment I have always associated with it. I hardly remember my brother – that is to say, in reality I scarcely knew him. But the few times I saw him as a child made the most vivid impression on me. He was to me a perfect hero of romance. His appearance, his bright manly beauty, his charm of manners – all left a picture on my mind that I shall never forget, and the bitterest tears I ever shed as a boy were when, after glorying in the honours he had won, and dreaming of his return to us, I was told one day by my father that I was never to mention his name again. I resented it bitterly. I thought my father cruel and unjust, and later I told him so, not once, but often; first with a boy’s impetuosity, afterwards, as a man, more deliberately, though more respectfully. But it was no use. It was the only disagreement we ever had, my poor father and I. Only, as you know, on his deathbed he left his blessing for your father, and it was to me he confided it. But,” he went on in a different tone, “we must come back to the present. About Arthur – I will be quite frank with you – my great fear is that he may have fallen ill from the reaction, from the overstrained state he has evidently been in. I think the first thing to do is for me to see his tutor. It is only an hour from town. I know the place. I will go down there at once.”
“May I go with you?” said Lettice eagerly.
“I see no use in your doing so,” replied her uncle. “He is not there, that is about all we are sure of. I cannot understand Mr Downe’s not having written or telegraphed to you already.”
“He would not send to us,” said Lettice; “he would naturally send to Mr Auriol, and he, you know, is away.”
“To be sure,” said Mr Morison. “That must be it. Well, any way, the first thing to do is to see Mr Downe, and get all additional particulars from him. And, in the meantime, you must keep up your spirits and rest yourself. Your aunt will do her best to cheer you.”
“My aunt?” repeated Lettice.
“Yes, of course. Your aunt Gertrude, my wife,” he said, with a smile.
“I have never had an aunt before,” said Lettice apologetically.
“Well, you will have one now worthy of the name, though I shouldn’t praise my own belongings,” he said brightly.
In another minute or two the carriage stopped before the door of a handsome house. Mr Morison turned to Lettice.
“Will you wait here, while I go in to explain to your aunt?” he said.
And Lettice, her heart beating more quickly than usual at the thought of this unknown relation, gladly consented.
The explanation must have been quickly made. Before Lettice could have thought it possible, her uncle was back again. There was an orange coloured envelope in his hand.
“This is from Auriol,” he said, taking out its pink paper enclosure, which was as follows: “Bad news of Arthur. Impossible to get away. Beg you to see Downe at once, and decide what to do.” “So, you see,” continued Mr Morison, “my credentials are now quite complete, are they not? Come in, my dear child. There is Gertrude at the door; she is so eager to see you.”
Lettice had no time to feel embarrassed before she felt herself warmly kissed by the lady in mourning, who was waiting to receive her in the hall.
“My dear Lettice,” she said simply, but with a ring of true cordiality, “I am so happy to see you. How cold you must be! Tea is waiting. Ingram,” as she led her newly found niece into the pretty drawing-room, “you have time for a cup of tea before you go?”
“Hardly,” he said; “I would rather not risk it. Now Lettice is in good hands, I would rather be off at once. If I am not back by eight or nine o’clock, don’t expect me to-night. But in that case I shall telegraph.”
“Uncle Ingram,” said Lettice, as he was hurrying off, “will you do one thing more? Will you telegraph to poor Nina that – that I am all right, and with you, and that you are doing all possible about Arthur?”
“Certainly, I will. I know the address,” he added, smiling. “And, Lettice, will you do one thing for me?”
“Of course. What is it?” she said eagerly.
She was standing close beside him at the moment.
“Give me a kiss, as a sign of – ” He hesitated.
“Of gratitude to you for forgiving me,” she half whispered.
“Of better than that: of your accepting me from now as your uncle – your uncle who has always loved you, as your dear father’s brother, who longs to supply his place to you as well as he can.”
“Uncle Ingram,” said Lettice as she kissed him, “you are like papa. I understand now what made me look at you so when I first caught sight of you.”
A pleased expression came into Mr Morison’s face, though he said nothing. But when he had left them Mrs Morison turned to Lettice with a smile.
“You could not have said anything to please him as much;” and Lettice answered simply as she felt —
“I am so glad.”
It was like a dream to her. The finding herself in the comfortable house, where everything was in perfect taste, though nothing overdone, tended and caressed by the pretty aunt, of whose existence almost she had twelve hours before been in ignorance. And her uncle! Nothing had ever touched Lettice as much as his way of talking of her father. To think that he, of all men, should have cherished such tender admiration of him, went to her very heart. And her cheeks burned with wholesome shame when she recalled the way in which she had spoken of him – the absurd as well as unworthy prejudice in which she had indulged. No wonder that Godfrey Auriol had lost patience with her; no wonder he had resolved on leaving her henceforth to herself. She only felt now that she would be ashamed ever to look him in the face again.
But if that were all – if her own humiliation and punishment were all, Lettice felt she could have borne it. But alas! how much more was involved! Arthur, poor Arthur, of whom she had hardly courage to think, and Nina. And as she thought of Nina again, that afternoon’s conversation with Philip Dexter returned to her mind. She had meant to do right; why had she always done wrong? She had honestly thought that Godfrey would be a much more desirable husband for Nina than Philip, and she had acted accordingly, forgetting, or trying to ignore, that in such matters somebody else’s “thinking” has very little to do with it, and that interference, save where urgently called for on the part of parent or guardian, is wholly unjustifiable. She had, she confessed to herself, possibly, probably even, ruined the happiness of two lives through her own prejudice and self-will. And when she came to this part of her reflections she sighed so deeply that her aunt looked at her with real anxiety.
“My dear Lettice,” she said, “you must try to be hopeful. Your uncle or a telegram is sure to be here within an hour. Do try, dear.”
Lettice looked up dejectedly.
“It isn’t only that; it isn’t only Arthur I’m thinking of, Aunt Gertrude,” she said. “It is everything. I have done so many wrong things. I have made such dreadful mistakes, and I don’t see – though I would do anything —anything– how they can ever be put right again.”
Mrs Morison sat down beside her and took her hand in hers.
“Who knows, dear?” she said gently. “After a while, when your mind is less disturbed, and you feel more at rest, perhaps you may tell me some of these troubles, and perhaps – you may be sure I shall do my best – perhaps I may be able to help you.”
And just then it flashed into Lettice’s mind, what in the confusion and disturbance of the day she had forgotten, her aunt Gertrude was Philip Dexter’s aunt too. And with this remembrance came a little ray of light and hope.
She had need of it, for when a few minutes later, her uncle returned, he had no very good news to give. He had seen Mr Downe, Arthur’s tutor, and heard all particulars. Arthur’s state of health had not seemed satisfactory for some time; he was nervous and feverishly excitable, and his tutor had suggested his deferring going up for his examination for six months, but the young man would not hear of it. But even before the end of the first day he had been forced to give in, having fainted in his place among the candidates. Mr Downe had sent him home at once, but on his return later in the evening, had been much alarmed at finding him gone, and had telegraphed to Mr Auriol. That had, in fact, been all he knew, and till Mr Morison’s visit he had been in hopes that the young man had gone to his own home.
“He is, of course, very sorry and anxious,” continued Mr Morison, “but only for fear of Arthur’s having fallen ill. As for his doing anything wrong, or even reckless, he is sure we need not be uneasy. He speaks of him in the very highest terms, and he says, too, that he has plenty of good sense. But he had begun to guess the truth – that Arthur had no liking or inclination for a military life, and that, hard as he has been working, it has been altogether against the grain.”
Here a deep sigh from Lettice interrupted him. “And what is to be done?” asked Mrs Morison.
“We have already set on foot in a quiet way fill the inquiries possible. But Mr Downe, and I agree with him, is much against employing detectives, or anything of that sort.”
“Oh yes,” said Lettice. “Arthur would never get over it.”
“Besides,” said Mr Morison, “he promises in his letter to Lettice to write again in a day or two. I think we must wait for another letter before resorting to extreme measures. Unless, of course, no letter comes. Downe does not much believe in the America idea; he thinks Arthur will cool down before that. But we have taken measures that he need never know of to prevent his leaving Liverpool for America. That was necessary. And now, my child, you must go to bed and try to sleep. To-morrow I have to ask your advice on a number of things.”
“My advice?” said Lettice humbly. “Uncle, you are too good to me.”
Chapter Eleven.
Home-Sick
“Slight withal may be the things which bring
Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
Aside for ever: it may be a sound,
A tone of music – summer’s eve, or spring —
A flower – the wind – the ocean.”
Byron.
And so things went on for a day or two. As regards Arthur, that is to say. As regarded the anxious little party at Faxleham Cottage, Mr Morison took immediate steps. He went down there the following day to give them news of Lettice, and to arrange for their all coming to spend Christmas with him and his wife. Lettice would gladly have accompanied him, but the morning had found her completely knocked up, and in her now thoroughly awakened fear of her own self-will, she gave in without a murmur to her uncle and aunt’s decision that she must stay where she was. Nor was she the only one to exercise self-denial. Mr and Mrs Morison, quite against their custom, determined to stay in London for Christmas, so that they should be nearer at hand for any news of Arthur, or to take further steps, should such be necessary.
Lettice was overwhelmed with gratitude. She was satisfied, too, that all that could be done was being done. She was gentle to a fault. But her punishment was of the severest.
“If they – if you – reproached me,” she said to Nina, weeping in her arms, the evening of their arrival, “I could, I think, better bear it. But to have nothing but kindness, nothing but constant proofs of affection that I don’t deserve. Oh, Nina, it humiliates me.”
“But it should not,” said Nina. “For one thing, Lettice, do you not owe it to our uncle and aunt to try to seem a little less wretched? Is it not selfish to think of nothing but our anxiety? Are you not in danger, perhaps, of exaggerating things now the other way – blaming yourself too much, and making those about you unhappy from your very sorrow for having done so in the past?”
A very short time ago Nina would not have dared to speak thus to her sister, and even now she felt that Lettice shrank back a little from her, as she listened.
“It may be so,” she said wearily, and with a shade of bitterness in her tone. “No doubt I am bad and wrong every way. I can’t think what God lets me live for.”
“Oh, Lettice!” said Nina with deep reproach. And the fit of petulance was over in a moment. “I know I shouldn’t speak so. Forgive me again, Nina. I will try.”
“And you know we have some reason for cheerfulness. Think how glad we should be of that other letter of Arthur’s, showing at least that he is well, and certainly not off to America as yet.”
For the second letter, which has been referred to, had been received from Arthur. It told them of his well-being, but gave no trace of his whereabouts – the faithful Dawson, through ways and means best known to himself, managing to post each letter sent him to forward, in a different part of London. So that for the moment, beyond putting advertisements in some of the leading papers, there seemed nothing else to do. For Arthur’s sake, when he should return, his uncle was determined to avoid all possible hue and cry, and so long as they knew that he was safe and well, his sisters thoroughly joined in this feeling. Still, it was weary work waiting.
“I feel sure we shall have another letter this week,” continued Nina. “He is certain to write to us at or about Christmas.”
“Yes, I think he will,” agreed Lettice. “I have no doubt he will keep on writing regularly. But what good does that do? It relieves, so far, our anxiety, but so long as we cannot communicate with him, what hope have we of his returning? How can we make him understand how we long for him? That he would be in no way reproached, and would be as free as air to choose the future he best likes.”
“I don’t know how it will come,” said Nina, “but I feel sure some way will offer itself. For one thing, I think after a while he will long for news of us, and will propose some way for us to write to him. Uncle Ingram has written it all to Aunt Gertrude’s brother, Mr Winthrop. He lives somewhere in the north, not so very far from Liverpool, and Uncle Ingram is sure he would go there if we like, and look about – where the docks are, you know. Arthur may be in Liverpool, and may sometimes go about them, if he has any idea of America still.”
“But he, Mr Winthrop, he does not even know Arthur by sight,” objected Lettice.
“No, but – Aunt Gertrude has an idea, she was speaking of it this evening – Philip Dexter is at the Winthrops’ for Christmas. Aunt Gertrude was saying if he went with Mr Winthrop.”
It was a good idea, though very distasteful to Lettice. She would have done anything to prevent Philip’s hearing of their trouble about Arthur, for she had a fear that he would in some way blame her for it. But she checked herself.
“I must bear what I have brought on myself,” she reflected. “I would give anything never to see Philip again, for he can never either like or respect me. He will not believe I even meant to speak the truth. But if he cares for Nina, and she for him, I have less right than ever to interfere. There is only one comfort – Godfrey Auriol never can know anything about that, and I’m certainly not bound to confess to hint. Indeed, it would be indelicate to Nina to do so.”
It was a relief to her that he was still in Scotland, and not to be back for Christmas. Her pride rose rampant at the thought of seeing him again, and at the triumph over her which she imagined he would feel. But she comforted herself somewhat with the reflection that for the future she need see very little of him, much less than heretofore, as her uncle, now really in his right position as their guardian, would be the one they would naturally consult.
And thus they spent Christmas Day. Some among them so thankful for the unexpected lifting of the clouds that they could not but be hopeful for the future – poor Lettice, though grateful and humble, yet feeling that it was the saddest Christmas she had ever spent.
Though Christmas Eve had brought some unexpected news, which seemed to throw a little light on the matter of which all their hearts were full. This was a letter from Mr Winthrop, in answer to the one telling him of Arthur Morison’s disappearance, and asking his advice or help if he saw any way of giving either. He had at once caught up the idea that “the gentleman tramp” and Arthur were one and the same, and wrote giving all details of the two or three days during which he took refuge at the rectory, of his personal appearance, what he had said and refused to say, and everything there was to tell.
“When Philip comes – we expect him to-morrow,” he wrote – “I will get him to go with me to Liverpool. There I shall at once see Simcox, for whom I gave Arthur, if it was he, a letter, and I have very little doubt but that we shall there hear of him. He was so completely ignorant of my being in any way connected with his family, that he will have had no fear as to availing himself of my introduction.”
For the good rector had no knowledge of the conversation between the boys and Arthur when they accompanied him “a bit of the way” on his road. And Tom and Ralph were far too careless and unobservant to have noticed the start with which the young man had heard them speak of their “Uncle Ingram,” or the questions he had put to them.
And Arthur himself, for whom so many hearts were aching and anxious, how did he spend this strange Christmas far from all he cared for, in such an entirely different atmosphere from any he had ever known?
Nothing could have been kinder, considering the circumstances in which he had come among them, than the way he was received and treated by the old farmer’s family. Till Christmas was over he was to be a guest and nothing more.
“There’s a time for all things,” said James, who was jovially inclined – rather too much so sometimes for his Eliza’s tastes. “Let business lay by till Christmas is over, any way, and then we’ll see about it;” and he was profoundly distressed that no persuasions would make “John” drink a glass of wine, or even taste the bowl of punch with which they wound up, though in no unseemly fashion, the yearly festivities; while Eliza, on the other hand, was inclined to look upon it as a sign of his gentility.
The Christmas dinner was a dinner and no mistake. It began as soon as they had all got home from church in the morning; for James was a churchwarden, and would have been greatly scandalised had any one of the family played truant. So Eliza and her mother had to smother their anxieties as to the goose and the roast beef, the plum-pudding and mince-pies, in their housewifely bosoms, and their self-control was rewarded by finding all had prospered under the care of the little maid-of-all-work, in their absence.
On Christmas evening, when all the good cheer had been done justice to, and the draper and his family, with a few friends who had come in to taste the punch, were comfortably ensconced round the fire, Arthur managed to steal up to his room, to sit there quietly for a few minutes’ thought. It was a small room, with a sloping roof and a dormer window, through which he could see the twinkling lights of the little town below, and the purer radiance of the innumerable stars above. For it was a most beautiful winter night. Not a cloud obscured the sky, but it was bitterly cold. Arthur got down his great-coat from the peg where it was hanging, and wrapped it round him, for he felt still colder from the contrast with the warmth of the room downstairs. And then he sat gazing out of the little window, feeling as absolutely cut off from all he had known and cared for, as if the sea already rolled between them! Some of the excitement which had led to the step he had taken had worn off. He no longer felt quite so sure that it had been the best and most unselfish thing to do, and there were times even, when he began to fancy that perhaps he, as well as Lettice, had exaggerated the consequences of his failure. But with this reflection, in his calmer state of mind, came another. Was not the present state of things, had not all his troubles been brought about by his want of moral courage? It was all very well to call it his consideration for Lettice’s feelings; he was far too right-judging not to know that consideration of that kind carried too far, becomes insincerity, and foolish, wrong self-sacrifice. He knew, too, at the bottom of his heart, that for all the stress Lettice had laid on his dead father’s and mother’s wishes, they would have been the last to have urged upon him a profession which he had no taste for.
“They might have been disappointed,” he said to himself, “but I can’t think that they would have been angry. Not at least, if I had been frank with them.” And words of his father’s, which he had been too young at the time fully to understand, came back to his mind. “Don’t be in too great a hurry, my boy. I have suffered too much from other people deciding my course in life for me before I was old enough to know my own mind. I hope you will be a soldier, but don’t be in a hurry.”
Why had this never come back to his memory before? He remembered it now so clearly. They were standing, his father and he, by a window – where was it? – somewhere from whence a wide expanse of sky was visible, and it must have been at night. “Yes, the stars were sparkling brightly, it was cold and clear.” It must have been the association of these outward circumstances as well as the direction of his thoughts, that had revived the remembrance. But Arthur sighed deeply as he went on to reflect that it was now too late, the die was cast, he must go on with what he had begun, desolate and dreary though it now looked to him. The best he could hope for was by working hard and faithfully in this situation which had so unexpectedly offered itself, to earn enough money, joined to what he had, to take him to America, where, with a good recommendation, he might, it seemed to him, have a chance of something better. But even then, how many years must pass before he could hope to do more than maintain himself? He might, probably would, be a middle-aged man before he could begin to do anything towards repaying what his uncle had done. And all these years, to have no tidings of his sisters and brother! – for he had recognised that only by cutting himself thus adrift, could he go on with what he had begun. It was too terrible to think of. And he set to work, as Nina had foreseen, to plan how he could manage to hear of them without revealing where he was.
“I don’t want them to write to me, for Nina and the little ones would be entreating me to come back, and I could not bear it. And, Lettice, even though it is in a sense her doing, is sure not to see it as I do. She would want me to try again to pass;” and Arthur shivered at the thought. “No, I dare not ask them to write to me. What can I do? How can I hear of them?”
He had not let Christmas Day pass without writing to them. It was strange to think that in a day or two they would have his letter, and know that he was safe and well, while he could hear nothing of them. The idea began to haunt him, so that at last he got up, took off his coat, and went downstairs again to the chatter and warmth of the draper’s best parlour.
How different to the Christmases he could remember! How different from last Christmas at Esparto! How different to the Christmas evening they would, so he imagined, be spending at Faxleham Cottage! Instead of the simple refinement, the low voices of his sisters, here were Eliza and her friends decked out in brilliant colours, laughing loudly at the jokes of their husbands and brothers, and little able to understand the new-comer’s not joining in the fun. He was very “genteel,” no doubt, the young ladies of the company agreed, but rather “stuck-up,” they should say, “for a young man as had his way to make in the world.” And Arthur, overhearing some of these remarks, wished that the fates had thrown him into the household of the old farmer and his wife rather than into that of their daughter. For, in their perfect simplicity and unpretentiousness, there was nothing to grate on him, and, as they sat rather apart from the rest, dutifully admiring all that was said and done, though perhaps wishing themselves back in their own quiet farmhouse, he felt that when they went away the next day things would seem still more uncongenial.
