Chapter III: By the Old Water-Mill

“Never any more While I live, Need I hope to see his face As before.” R. Browning

THERE were letters from Hivèritz the next morning, one for Geneviève and one for Mrs. Methvyn. Both had been looked for with some anxiety, and their contents were fortunately in both instances satisfactory.

“It is all right about my letter to your mother, Geneviève,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “She got it quite safely, and thought I should be satisfied with hearing from you that it had reached her, till she had time to write. She seems to have been so busy. I am so glad we did not write again to tease her.”

“Poor mamma!” said Geneviève softly.

She was feeling very anxious to read her own letter, but judged it safer to defer doing so till she should be alone. The first two hours after breakfast were generally Geneviève’s own to employ as she chose, for Cicely always spent them in writing to her father’s dictation in his own room. So Geneviève hastened upstairs and eagerly opened her letter. It was a very kind one, and, as before, the girl’s heart smote her more than once as she read. There was no reproach for Geneviève’s strange behaviour in not delivering the letter entrusted to her care for Mrs. Methvyn. Madame Casalis seemed in a sense touched by her daughter’s trust in her leniency.

“I have written to Mrs. Methvyn again,” she wrote, “and I have avoided the allusion you objected to. I do not of course understand your reason for fearing it, but I doubt not that when we meet again you will explain it. Only, my Geneviève, I would beg you to avoid even the slightest occasion for not acting with perfect frankness. You are so young and far from me, and in England the customs, I believe, are somewhat different. Confide then, my child, as in a mother, in thy good and amiable aunt.”

A slightly disturbed expression came over Geneviève’s face as she read these last words.

“My mother understands not,” she said to herself. “It would be impossible that she could understand. Mais enfin—”

The little time-piece over the fireplace struck the hour—ten o’clock. As she spoke Geneviève started.

“It is late,” she thought, “and I must this morning go round the long way by the lodge.”

She hastily put on her jacket and hat, though not so hastily as to omit a moment’s glance into the looking-glass as she did so.

“How pale I look!” she said to herself; “it is with having sat up so late. I am not pretty when I look so pale. Voyons—ce nœud rose—ah! oui, c’est mieux,” and with a somewhat better satisfied contemplation of herself, she turned away from the dressing table and left the room.

Half an hour later she was at the entrance to the Lingthurst woods—a point, which had she been able to leave the Greystone grounds by the door in the wall, she would have reached in less than half the time. She hurried along as fast as possible till almost within sight of the deserted water mill. There, seated on the remains of what had once been a mill-wheel, long ago, in the days when the little stream, now diverted from its original course for other purposes, had come rushing down with incessant chatter and bustle, Geneviève descried the figure she had been straining her eyes to see. It was Trevor Fawcett.

He was sitting perfectly still; he seemed to be thinking deeply. There was considerable suggestion of melancholy in the place itself. The melancholy of the past, though only the past of a water mill,—the dried-up desertedness of the empty little river-bed carried even the least vivid imagination back to a time of brighter days when the brook and the mill had been in their glory, and forwards—further still—to the universal, inevitable future of decay, the “sic transit” branded even on the everlasting hills themselves.

Mr. Fawcett’s imagination was not exceptionally vivid, nor was he much given to reflections of a depressing nature; it was new to Geneviève to see him anything but alert and cheerful, and a momentary sensation of uneasiness made her heart beat quickly.

“Mr. Fawcett,” she said timidly, for she was quite close to him before he saw her, “Mr. Fawcett.”

He looked round quickly and started to his feet.

“I beg your pardon,” he exclaimed. “I did not hear you. I must have been in a brown study. How late you are this morning! I fancied you would not be coming out.”

“Oh! yes,” said Geneviève, “I would not like to miss my morning walk. It is the pleasantest hour of the day.”

“Yes, in summer especially,” said Mr. Fawcett carelessly. “It is a pity Cicely can never get out in the morning. We might have some capital walks if she could come too.”

Geneviève did not answer at once, and when she did so, her tone sounded constrained.

“My cousin can never leave Colonel Methvyn in the morning,” she said stiffly. “If you would rather that she should be with us, of course I can ask her to come in the afternoon, and not come out any more in the morning. But I thought,” she stopped, and her voice seemed as if she were going to cry.

“You thought? What did you think?” he asked.

“I thought you were so kind, and I am so strange here,” she began hesitatingly. “You said you would advise me how to please my English friends, and that I might confide to you my difficulties.”

She raised her great brown eyes, already dewy with tears, to his. There had been a slight frown of impatience and annoyance on his face, but as he looked at her, it melted away.

“You silly child,” he exclaimed with a smile, “What has my wishing that poor Cicely could have a walk too, to do with it? Have you some new trouble on your mind? Do you want to trot off to Greybridge with another letter?”

“Oh! no,” said Geneviève, smiling again. “Oh! no, I have a letter from home to-day. Maman is very good, very good and kind. She has done what I asked her.”

“Then you should be quite happy and bright this morning,” said Trevor. “But I don’t think you are. What makes you look so pale?”

“I had not a good night,” replied Geneviève; “at least I sat up very late, and I was foolish.”

“What were you about? Writing letters? You must take care or you will have my aunt down upon you; she doesn’t approve of such irregular proceedings,” said Mr. Fawcett.

“I was not writing. I had left the key in the door and I did not remember it, and then when I thought all were asleep I ran out,” began Geneviève, going on to tell him all the particulars of her escapade, Cicely’s alarm and annoyance and her own distress. The frown came back again to Trevor’s good-tempered face.

“It was very foolish,” he said in a tone of considerable vexation. “You should not do such silly things, Geneviève. What must a sensible girl like Cicely think of you? There is no use asking me to advise you how to please the Methvyns and win their confidence, if you do such exceedingly foolish things. Did you tell Cicely why you had had the key?”

“No,” said Geneviève, looking very miserable again; “she knows not that I had ever had it more than once. I feared you might be angry if I told her that—that we had walked in the woods.”

“Why should I be angry?” exclaimed Trevor impatiently. “Do you think I should do anything that I would mind being known to the girl I am go—” he stopped abruptly, “to a girl I have known all her life, as I have known Cicely?”—“It is Cicely’s own doing,” he muttered to himself, “this absurd dilly-dallying and concealment.”

“No, I do not think so, if you tell me not,” replied Geneviève with tearful meekness. “If you wish, I will tell Cicely now, as soon as I go in.”

“No, not now. It is too late. Don’t you see if you tell her now, it will look as if there were something?—I mean it would hurt her more that you had not told her before. No; you had better say nothing more about it. But for the future—don’t think me unkind, Geneviève; but for the future, I almost think you had better not come out walks without Cicely. You see anything underhand may cause so much trouble.”

“Very well,” said Geneviève. “I will no more come out. I will no more speak to you, Mr. Fawcett. We will be as strangers.”

She began the speech with an attempt at tragic dignity; but long before she got to its end her voice had broken again, and all the dignity had melted into sobs. Mr. Fawcett muttered some impatient exclamation.

“Really, Miss Casalis, you are unreasonable this morning,” he began. “I was only doing as you asked me to do—advising you for the best, and you begin to cry.”

“I will go home. I wish I had never come to this unkind country, where everybody says things so little amiable, so cruel,” sobbed Geneviève.

“Who says unkind things? Do you mean me?”

“No, not you. Till to-day you have been kind, very kind. But others do. That médecin, that Mr. Guildford, told me that it was not convenable that I should walk with you.”

“He did—did he? Upon my soul that fellow must be taught his place. Meddling snob! When did he condescend to remonstrate with you, may I ask?”

“The day at the picnic. He had seen us that afternoon, two, three weeks ago, on the Greybridge Road. But he was not unkind,” said Geneviève, a little afraid of the effect of her words. “He only told me other people might—I know not what to say—might say it was not convenable.”

“How very considerate of him!” observed Mr. Fawcett. “But perhaps you do not object to his interest, Miss Casalis—perhaps you consulted him as to the matter.”

“You know well I did not. I like him not,” said Geneviève, her eyes flashing. “Mr. Fawcett, you are not kind to-day. You are not as you have been before.”

“I don’t mean to be unkind, my dear child. I don’t indeed. I have been bothered about things lately, and I was put out at the idea of any misunderstanding between you and Cicely. But I dare say it will be all right. Only perhaps we had better all go walks together in future; for fear, you see, of it seeming to Cicely as if we left her out.”

“Very well,” said Geneviève meekly, and this time without any tears. She had sense enough to see that Mr. Fawcett was not in a mood to care about many more of them this morning. “It is getting late,” she went on, looking at her watch, “perhaps I had better go home.”

Her gentleness made Trevor reproach himself for having wounded her. He set to work forthwith to “reward principle” by undoing what he had achieved.

“You are a very good child,” he said warmly. “You are very good not to be angry with me for my roughness. You are not angry with me, are you?”

She had turned her head away, but on his repeating the question, she looked up again in his face; with infinite sweetness in the tender dark eyes and pathos in the droop of the tremulous lips. She looked like a rose after a storm, like a child unjustly chidden, like everything sweet and plaintive and piteous.

“Angry with you?” she said reproachfully.

Trevor’s face softened into tenderness as he looked at her.

“You are an angel,” he said impetuously, but checking himself with a strong effort; “you are a very kind, sensible girl,” he went on, with a little laugh, “which is better than being an angel, isn’t it?”

Geneviève smiled. Trevor saw the smile, but he had not seen the quick flash of gratification and triumph which had lighted up the dark eyes the instant before.

“I think I must go home now,” she said.

“Very well,” said Mr. Fawcett. I will go as far as the gate with you.”

“It is no use going that way,” said Geneviève, “you forget I have not the key.”

“What a bother!” exclaimed Trevor. “Then you must go round by the lodge. Suppose we cut across the wood for a change, and come out on the Haverstock Road? It’s hardly any further, and it’s a much pleasanter way.”

Geneviève seemed to care little where he led her. It was enough for her to be in his company. So they made their way across the wood, trampling down the tall bracken and foxgloves as they went, for there was no path in this direction, startling the pretty wild creatures whose haunts they approached too unceremoniously.

“Isn’t it a pretty place,” said Trevor, standing still for a moment. “Hark, there’s the cuckoo!”

“Where?” said Geneviève, staring about her in all directions, but seeing nothing but the bright eyes of a little rabbit, as he looked about him for a moment, before running out of the way of these strange visitors, the like of whom had never come within his experience before.

Mr. Fawcett began to laugh.

“Where?” he repeated. “Where he always is. Listen, don’t look. You have not such sharp ears as Cicely, Miss Casalis! Are there no cuckoos at Hivèritz?”

“I don’t know,” replied Geneviève. Then she relapsed into silence.

Mr. Fawcett looked at her uneasily, and seemed once or twice on the point of speaking, but ended by walking on in silence too.

A few minutes brought them to the edge of the wood, then a quarter of a mile down a pretty shady lane, and they would be on the high-road. Trevor made one or two trifling observations, but Geneviève scarcely replied to them. Then he began to lose patience.

“Are you vexed with me again, Miss Casalis?” he said. “I am very unlucky to-day. I seem to do nothing but vex you, and you don’t seem in as good spirits as usual.”

“No; it is not I, it is you, all you,” exclaimed Geneviève. “You are not kind, you do no longer like me. It is all Cicely you want to-day, not Geneviève. There is no Geneviève; she has gone. It is Miss Casalis.”

Mr. Fawcett’s fair face deepened in colour as he listened to her childish words. At first he seemed on the point of answering hastily, but on second thoughts he checked himself. When he did speak, it was very quietly.

“You have mistaken me, Geneviève,” he said. “Why should my mention of Cicely make you think I don’t care for you? Can’t one care for more than one person in the world? Suppose you and Cicely had been my sisters, couldn’t I have cared for you both?”

“I could never be like your sister,” said. Geneviève inconsequently. “Cicely is different; she has been with you always.”

“Yes, of course,” replied Trevor hastily, “but you can be my little friend, can’t you? I have wished you to be my little friend, Geneviève, ever since the first day I saw you; the day I lifted you up from the dusty road at Hivèritz, where those beasts of horses had knocked you down. How pitiful you looked, you poor little soul! Yes, Geneviève, I have always felt a special interest in you since then.”

Unconsciously to himself, his voice grew soft and tender, as the remembrance of the lovely pale face with the closed eyelids and flood of wavy dark hair that had rested on his shoulder, came back to his mind. He looked at her as he spoke. Was the face beside him now less lovely; was it not rather ten times more so, as a smile, called forth by his words, dimpled the flushed cheeks and lighted up the expressive eyes?

“Have you really? Have you never forgotten that day?” whispered Geneviève.

Mr. Fawcett’s answer was less sentimental than she expected. Something just at this moment seemed to spring from the ground at their feet, and leap away again so quickly that the girl could hardly distinguish what it was.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Trevor, “what a splendid hare. Did you see it, Geneviève?”

“I thought it was a rabbit,” she replied, but this time she did not resent his laughing at her.

Soon they reached the high-road, and here their paths separated. Trevor hesitated a moment after saying good-bye.

“Will you come out another walk some day, soon?” he said. “I should like to tell you something that I have not been free to tell you yet, and I should like to tell it you myself. I could explain to you why I have been bothered and irritable lately; and—and when you know it, everything will be all right—at least, I think so, and hope so. You have promised to be my friend always, haven’t you, Geneviève?”

“Yes, always,” she replied, blushing up shyly into his face.

“That’s right. Then good-bye again,” and in another moment he was out of sight.

He hurried on quickly at first, then gradually his pace slackened.

“What a charming little goose it is,” he said, smiling to himself. “I wonder how many moods and humours she has been in, in the last half-hour! The happy man who wins you for his ‘hope’ and ‘joy,’ my dear Geneviève, will find his hands full. And yet how awfully pretty and sweet she is!” An uneasy expression came over his face. “It isn’t fair,” he muttered, “it is too hard upon one; it is, by George! I must come to an understanding with Cicely. I must and shall.”

Geneviève meanwhile went on her way rejoicing. To her self-absorbed imagination Mr. Fawcett’s last words could bear but one interpretation, and her fancy, vivid enough in all that concerned herself, set to work forthwith to build gorgeous castles upon what she now firmly believed to be a substantial foundation.

The chosen of Trevor Fawcett! What a blissful position would be hers! How glad she was that she had agreed to carry the soup to the Widow Lafon that Sunday ever so long ago it seemed now!—how much more inclined she felt to call Monsieur Béret’s horses “angels” than “beasts”! What would Mathurine say? How triumphant she would be at the fulfilment of her prophecy! “Riche, beau, jeune.” Did not Geneviève’s hero well answer the description? Yes, it would be all that could be desired; even the living in England, which had certainly proved a more triste affair than the pastor’s daughter had imagined, would not be so bad as the wife of a man able and willing to gratify her every wish.

“We shall travel often,” thought Geneviève, “we shall go to Paris two—three times a year. All my dresses shall come from there of course. When Eudoxie grows older and is more reasonable, she shall come to visit me. I shall send many presents à la maison. All my old dresses Eudoxie shall have—that in itself will help much my mother. Poor Maman, but she will be pleased to announce the news to Madame Rousille! And Stéphanie shall visit me—I shall enjoy, oh! how I shall enjoy to see her face when she enters Lingthurst! ‘La petite Casalis,’ indeed! Ah! it will no longer be ‘la petite Casalis’ by then.”

The delightful companionship of her thoughts had lent wings to her feet. She found herself at the Abbey Lodge before she knew where she was. She hurried up the drive, then hastened round to the side of the house by the same path in which Cicely had lost sight of her the night before. Just as she reached the glass door, she heard herself called by name, and in another minute Cicely came running across the lawn.

“Where have you been, Geneviève? I have been looking for you everywhere,” she exclaimed. Then without waiting for an answer, “Mother wants you,” she went on, “she is upstairs in her dressing room.”

“I will go at once,” replied Geneviève readily. Something in her bright manner and tone caught Cicely’s attention.

“How happy you look this morning, Geneviève!” she observed with a touch of kindly envy. “You look so fresh and rosy, and yet you were up so late, you naughty girl. Is it your letter from home that has pleased you so? At breakfast time I thought you looked pale.”

“I had good news from home,” replied Geneviève. “I am glad I look well.” She turned to her cousin affectionately; Cicely’s remark had gratified her, and a half impulse came over her to confide to her the cause of her bright looks. But Cicely’s face seemed pale and sad—unusually pale and sad, and the inclination to appeal to her for sympathy died away.

“You don’t look well, Cicely,” said Geneviève, “is anything the matter? It is nothing wrong my aunt wants to see me about?”

Cicely smiled—“a smile beneath a cloud”—afterwards Geneviève wondered to herself how it could be that she of all women in the world could look sad—and the faint light of the smile seemed to make her face still paler.

“Oh! no,” she said, “it is nothing wrong, but mother wants to have a little talk with you.” She was silent for a moment, hesitating seemingly as if she should say more. “Geneviève,” she went on, “you must not think I have treated you like a stranger. It was only that I wanted you to feel quite easy and unconstrained with me that—that I did not tell you what mother is going to tell you. Don’t let it make any difference in your feelings to me. Kiss me, dear.”

A little surprised but nothing loth, Geneviève held up her bright face for Cicely’s kiss. She was pleased that her cousin should feel so kindly to her this morning of all mornings, and her pleasure, in turn, gratified Cicely. She stood watching Geneviève as she ran off, carolling in her clear high voice a little patois ballad she had been teaching Cicely.

“Escoutto d’ Jeannetto Veux-tu d’biaux habits, laridetto Escoutto d’ Jeannetto Pour aller à Paris?” “Laridetto, laridetto, Baille me unbaiser, laridetto.”

rang Geneviève’s voice, then died away in the distance.

The last words of the song returned to Cicely’s mind.

“Sachez que d’ Jeannetto, Quand ell’ aimo bien, Sachez que d’ Jeannetto Donno ça per rien.”

“I wonder if Geneviève is capable of deep feeling,” thought Cicely. “Will there ever come a time “quand ell’ aimo bien?” She seems like a bird.’ But am I capable of it? I thought I cared for Trevor. I think it still; but, oh! the thought of leaving home is terrible!”

Then with slower steps she followed her cousin into the house.

Geneviève meanwhile had flown upstairs to her aunt’s room.

“Come in,” said Mrs. Methvyn in answer to her tap at the door. “Oh! it is you, my dear Geneviève. I am writing to your mother again; I always like to answer letters at once when I can, and besides, I have something I want to tell her now; and I want to tell it to you too; but I hardly think you will be surprised.”

“What is it, dear aunt?” inquired Geneviève with some curiosity,

“It is—I fancy you may have noticed Trevor has been here so much,” began Mrs. Methvyn rather confusedly. Geneviève’s heart beat faster, the blood rushed to her cheeks. Could he already have spoken to her aunt?—it was possible that out of respect to her French prejudices he might have done so. “He comes here so much,” her aunt went on, “that even though you know he is our cousin, I can’t help thinking you may have suspected there was some particular attraction; but till now Cicely did not want you to be told of it” (“Cicely, what had she to do with it?” darted through Geneviève’s mind), “because she fancied you would not so soon have felt at ease and friendly with her if you had known she was engaged.”

The room seemed to go round with Geneviève. She caught hold of the arm of the low chair on which she was sitting to prevent herself falling. But still she managed to say quietly, “Yes, dear aunt.”

“And so,” Mrs. Methvyn went on, “I agreed to say nothing about it till you had been a little while with us and felt quite at home. Besides, hitherto the engagement has been so indefinite—I mean to say no time has been fixed—but now I think we must begin to make up our minds to losing Cicely before very long. Not that it will really be like losing her, of course; she will be so near, we can see her almost every day.” She spoke with a forced cheerfulness which would have touched a disinterested listener, but Geneviève was conscious just now but of one sensation, an agonising inclination to burst into hysterical weeping—she had no feeling to spare for any one but herself; she exerted all her strength in forcing herself to remain to outward appearance calm.

When her aunt stopped speaking, and waited in expectation of Geneviève’s reply, none came. Mrs. Methvyn looked up in surprise.

“Are you very much astonished, my dear?” she said. “Had you no idea of it? You are not taking it to heart, dear Geneviève, I hope? If so, I shall blame myself very much for not having prepared you for it before, though I can well understand your regret at losing Cicely just when you have begun to know her.”

Geneviève seized the suggestion. She turned to her aunt, no longer repressing her tears.

“I had no idea of it,” she whispered.

“My poor child,” said Mrs. Methvyn.

Then she drew the girl towards her and kissed her tenderly, and, mistaken as was the motive of the tenderness, in Geneviève’s state of overstrained feeling she had no desire to repel it. She threw her arms round her aunt and sobbed convulsively till Mrs. Methvyn cried in sympathy.

“Is it to be very soon?” asked Geneviève at last.

“Oh! no; nothing is fixed yet as to the exact time. It will not be for six months at least. We shall have Cicely all to ourselves for some time yet, you see, dear,” replied Mrs. Methvyn soothingly. But Geneviève felt that she could not bear her present position much longer. The sound of a door opening gave her an excuse; she started up.

“There is Cicely coming,” she exclaimed. “I would not like her to see me crying so. Let me go, dear aunt, and forgive my want of self-control. I should like to go to my own room for a little.”

“Go then, dear,” said Mrs. Methvyn, kissing her again, and Geneviève hastened away.

“How I have mistaken her, the poor, dear child!” thought Cicely’s mother. “I had no idea she was capable of such an amount of feeling. What a loving little creature she is!”

And Cicely was told of her cousin’s unexpected display of affection for her, and felt vexed with herself that she could not help thinking it a little ill-timed and uncalled for.

It is a mistake to suppose that suffering must be noble to be genuine and severe. Geneviève’s distress sprang from no high source: such of it as was not of the nature of mortification and wounded vanity, was principally composed of childish disappointment in the destruction of her dazzling visions of wealth and grandeur. She had some amount of regard for Trevor himself; she admired him, she liked his pleasant voice and gentle deference of manner; she thought she loved him devotedly, she had long ago made up her mind to fall in love with none but a thoroughly desirable parti, therefore the fact of his wealth and position by no means interfered with her belief in the genuineness of her affection for him. That she was very thoroughly in love with the idea of marrying him, of obtaining all the pleasant things that would certainly fall to the share of his wife, there was not the shadow of a doubt. And the disappointment of her hopes fell upon her with crushing weight. There was nothing of true pathos or tragedy in her composition; her cup was but a pretty toy, brittle as egg-shell, though, unlike egg-shell, very capable of repair, but, such at it was, it was just now full to the brim with the bitter draught, which no reserve of latent heroism was at hand to render less unpalatable.

She threw herself down on the bed and sobbed.

“I wish I had never come to England I wish they had told me at first—I wish, oh! how I wish I had never seen him,” she cried.

Then her glance fell on the little bow of red ribbon which she had fastened to her dress that very morning.

“Naughty little ribbon, detestable little ribbon, I put you on to make me look pretty, that he should think me pretty,” she exclaimed, throwing the rose-coloured knot to the other end of the room, “and now I must think of him as the fiancé of my cousin! It matters not now that he thinks me pretty or ugly; he can never be anything more to me. And Cicely, she who is already rich, fétée,—who could find partis without number. Ah, but it is cruel!”