Chapter II: A Penitent

Mabin looked at Mrs. Bonnington’s retreating figure, half regretfully and half resentfully. The regret was for her own incivility; the resentment was for the want of tact which had provoked it.

Mabin, like so many other young girls on the threshold of womanhood, lived in a constant state of warfare both with herself and her neighbors. Sensitive, affectionate, hasty tempered and wilful, she was at the same time almost morbidly modest and mistrustful of herself; so that she passed her time in alternate bursts of angry resentment against those who misunderstood her, and fits of remorse for her own shortcomings.

She now mounted her bicycle with the feeling that the Vicar’s wife had spoilt her morning’s ride for her. Not by any means a vain girl, she underrated her own attractions, which included a pretty, gray-eyed little flower-face, a fair skin, and short, soft, dark-brown hair. But she was keenly alive to the reproach of clumsiness, which had so often been cast at her. She had shot up, within the last three years, to a height which, together with the girlish leanness of her figure, had caused her to be called, even outside the family circle, “a lamp-post” and a “gawky creature.” And although she stubbornly refused to take to the long skirts which would have lent her the grace she wanted, she nourished a smouldering indignation against her traducers.

And chief among these were the boys of the Vicarage, against whom, as against their mother for her criticisms, and their father for his dull sermons, her spirit was always in arms.

The strife between the Bonningtons and the Roses had not always been so keen. Indeed, in the old days when they were children together, Mabin and Rudolph had got on well enough together, and had exchanged love-tokens of ends of slate pencil, lumps of chalk, and bird’s eggs. But with advancing years had come first coolness and then estrangement. So that it was now the correct thing among the Bonnington boys to laugh at Mabin for being “advanced,” “superior,” “a New Woman,” and a “fright;” while she, on her side, treated them with lofty contempt as “savages” and “boors.”

Mabin had not gone twenty yards, however, on her way up the slight ascent, when she saw something which diverted her thoughts from the Vicarage people. The gates at “The Towers” were wide open, and Mrs. Dale’s smart victoria, with its well-matched pair of small, dark-brown horses, came out so suddenly that Mabin had to jump off her bicycle to avoid a collision. Alone in the carriage sat a lady in deep mourning, who turned and looked out anxiously at the girl, and stopped the carriage to speak to her.

“I’m so sorry! I hope you didn’t hurt yourself, in having to jump off so quickly?” asked the lady in black, in a sweet, plaintive voice that struck some chord in Mabin’s heart, and made the girl gasp, and pause before she could answer.

“Oh no, oh no, thank you. One often has to do that,” stammered the girl, flushing, and speaking with a shy constraint which made her tone cold and almost rude.

And she knew it, poor child, and was miserable over it; miserable to think that now when she had an opportunity of speaking to the being who had excited in her an enthusiastic admiration, she was throwing her chance away.

A common and a most tragic experience with most young girls.

One thing, however, Mabin was able to do. In the shy look with which she returned Mrs. Dale’s kind gaze of inquiry, she took in a picture of a lovely woman which remained impressed on her mind ineffaceably.

Mrs. Dale was a lovely woman, lovelier than Mabin had thought when she only got glimpses of the lady’s profile from her seat in church, or peeps at her through a thick black veil. Mrs. Dale wore a black veil to-day, but in the open carriage, in the full glare of the sun, her beauty was evident enough.

A little woman, plump, pink, childlike in face and figure, with wavy fair hair, infantine blue eyes, and a red-lipped mouth which was all the more lovable, more attractive for not being on the strict lines of beauty, Mrs. Dale had, so Mabin felt, exactly the right features and the right expression for the sweet voice she had just heard. And through the beauty, and through the voice, the girl, inspired perhaps by the mourning dress, thought she detected a sadness which seemed to her the most pathetic thing in the world.

In two moments the interview was over; Mrs. Dale had smiled upon her sweetly, bidden her farewell merely with a bend of her head, and driven away, leaving Mabin to scold herself for her idiocy in throwing away an opportunity which she might never have again.

She did not try to overtake the carriage; she watched it down the open road, until the shining coil of silky fair hair under the black crape bonnet grew dim in the distance. And then, with a shrug of her shoulders and a murmur that “it was just like her,” Mabin turned defiantly into the road which led past the Vicarage.

However, nobody was about to throw stones at the bicycle on this occasion; and it was not until she had reached Seagate, changed her father’s books at the library, and matched a skein of cable silk for Emily, that she was reminded afresh of the existence of the Bonningtons by the sight of Rudolph, in his knickerbockers and gaiters, standing by his bicycle while he lit a cigarette.

Unconsciously Mabin frowned a little. And unluckily Rudolph saw the frown. She meant to pass him without appearing to notice him, but he foresaw the intention, and was nettled by it. For Rudolph, with his black eyes and curly black hair, and his sunbrowned face, was the handsomest fellow in the neighborhood when he was on shore, and was accustomed to a great deal of kindness and civility from Mabin’s sex. Her rudeness, which arose more from shyness than from the lofty contempt he supposed, puzzled the young fellow, and made him angry. He remembered their ancient comradeship, which she seemed to have forgotten; and most unwisely he let a spirit of “devilment” get the better of him, and addressed her as if they had been still on the old terms.

“Good-morning, Mabin,” said he.

She gave him a bend of the head, without looking at him, and was passing on to the place where her bicycle stood outside the door of a shop. But he would not let her escape so.

“Mayn’t I offer you a cigarette?”

To do him justice Rudolph had not noticed that a small boy with a basket stood near enough to hear. The boy burst into shrill laughter, and Mabin turned fiercely. For once she did not stoop.

“I’m afraid you have forgotten a great deal since you went to sea,” she said in a voice which she could not keep steady.

The young man was surprised, and rather shocked at the way in which he had been received. He had been anxious to heal the breach between her and himself, and he had thought that a dash into their old familiarity might avail where more carefully studied attempts had failed.

Before he could do more than begin to apologize, to appeal to their old friendship, Mabin had got on her bicycle and ridden away.

The sun was beating down fiercely by this time upon the white chalky roads; but Mabin rode on recklessly, at a higher speed than usual. She was well on her way back to Stone, when, turning her head to look along the road she had come by, she perceived that Rudolph was not far behind. She had forgiven his indiscretion by this time, and rather hoped that he was following quickly on purpose to “make it up.” So she went on her way through a group of straggling cottages, at a rather slower pace.

There was a sharp bend in the road at this point, and just as she sounded her bell in turning the corner, she saw Rudolph, who was now close behind, dismount and pick something up from the road. The next moment something struck the front wheel of her bicycle, and she and her machine were flung with violence down in the road.

She had time to utter a cry, no more, before the crash came.

Then she remembered nothing, knew nothing, until she heard somebody sobbing close to her ears; and opening her eyes, she saw the sweet face of Mrs. Dale, with the black veil thrown back, and with tears in the blue eyes, leaning over her tenderly.

Mrs. Dale uttered a cry of joy, and another voice, which Mabin recognized as Rudolph’s, said: “Thank God! she isn’t dead, at any rate.”

“Are you better, dear? Are you in any pain?” asked Mrs. Dale with so much solicitude that answering tears of sympathetic emotion started into the girl’s own eyes.

“I am quite well, quite well,” said Mabin. “Only--only--I think my foot hurts.”

Rudolph and Mrs. Dale exchanged glances.

“I thought so,” said he. “She’s broken her ankle.”

Mrs. Dale’s pretty eyes began to fill again.

“We must lift her into the carriage,” said she. “And you will go on and prepare her mother, and see that a doctor is sent for at once.”

And, in spite of the protests she feebly made, Mabin was gently raised from the ground by Rudolph’s strong arms, and helped into the victoria, where Mrs. Dale took her seat, and, telling the coachman to drive slowly, insisted on making her own plump little shoulder the pillow for the girl’s head.

But Mabin, having recovered her spirits, if not her walking powers, wanted to talk to the new friend she had so unexpectedly made.

“You are very good to me,” she said. “I have never had so much kindness from any one since my mother died. It was so strange; when I woke up just now I felt what I thought was my mother’s touch again. And yet I had forgotten all about that. For she has been dead fifteen years.”

“Poor child!” said Mrs. Dale. “I am glad of that, dear, that I reminded you of her,” she whispered gently.

“Of course I don’t mean that,” went on Mabin quickly, trying to sit up. “I don’t mean that you could be a mother to me now, as I am. That does sound ridiculous! You couldn’t be my mother when you are the same age as myself.”

As a matter of fact, Mabin looked older than her companion. But when the conversation thus turned to herself, Mrs. Dale’s pink face grew suddenly pale, and Mabin looked at her shyly, and flushed, feeling that she had said something wrong. But almost before she was conscious that she had touched some sensitive spot, Mrs. Dale said softly:

“Go on talking, dear, about your mother, or--or anything. I am lonely, you know; very lonely. And it is a treat to hear you talk.”

The girl flushed again, this time with surprise.

“You like to hear me talk! Ah, then you must be lonely indeed. For they say at home I never talk without saying the very last thing I ought to say.”

As she came to the end of her speech, Mabin found that her words insensibly began to run the one into the other, and that her voice died away. And, greatly to her own astonishment, she found her head falling heavily upon that of her new friend.

“Ah, child, it is selfish of me to make you talk!” cried Mrs. Dale. “You are faint, and must rest now. Come and talk to me some other time.”

Mabin overcame the faintness which had seized her, and quite suddenly raised her head again. The little excitement of the hope held out to her brought all her senses back.

“Come and see you! Oh, may I? I should like to so much!”

The girl almost nestled, as she spoke, against her new friend.

But over Mrs. Dale’s fair, childlike face there came at once a sort of shadow, as if a terrible remembrance had suddenly taken the power for all pleasurable emotion from her. It almost seemed to Mabin that the little hands made a movement as if to push her away.

And then there burst forth from the infantile red lips some words which struck terror into her young hearer, so bitter, so full of sadness, of biting remorse, were they:

“No, child, no. You must not come. _I am too wicked!_”

The girl was struck dumb. She wanted to comfort pretty Mrs. Dale; she wanted to laugh at her self-accusation, to express incredulity, amusement. But in the face of that look of anguish, of that inexpressibly mournful cry straight from the heart, she could not even open her lips. She knew that there was some grief here which no words of comfort could touch.

So deeply absorbed was she in the silent compassion which kept her with lowered eyelids and mute lips, that she was quite startled when Mrs. Dale’s voice, speaking in her ordinary tones, struck again upon her ear.

“That young fellow who picked you up is one of the Vicar’s sons, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” answered Mabin in a rather colder voice.

“He seems a very nice lad, and very much interested in--somebody?” suggested Mrs. Dale archly.

Mabin laughed.

“Yes, so he is. But it is not the ‘somebody’ you mean,” answered she. “Mrs. Bonnington, that’s his mother, says he can think about nothing but--Mrs. Dale!”

Again the sweet face changed; and it was in a low voice full of sadness that the lady in black said, slowly and deliberately:

“I hope with all my heart that she has made a mistake.” Then, with a rapid gesture, as if brushing away some thought which was full of untold terror, she added with a shudder: “Don’t let us talk about it. It is too horrible!”