Chapter X: Older and Wiser

"For others' sake to make life sweet,
Though thorns may pierce your weary feet;
For others' sake to walk each day
As if joy helped you all the way—
While in the heart may be a grave
That makes it hard to be so brave,
Herein, I think, is love."

THEY returned home the next day. Mrs. Erskine's fictitious strength and spirits had deserted her.

"I am going home to die," she asserted to her daughter, "and I ought not to have been allowed to attempt this journey. It has sapped all the strength out of me—and the hope and courage, too." She added these last words in a breathless whisper to herself, but Pauline heard them, and she laid her hand affectionately on her mother's arm.

"We are going home together, mother dear, and I mean to take extra care of you. We will give you the quiet and rest you require, and you may feel much stronger soon."

"Stronger!" said Mrs. Erskine bitterly. "I am sinking into a helpless, whining invalid. I can't bear pain now as I used to do, and I am getting tired of the struggle."

Then she relapsed into silence, and would not permit Pauline to touch upon the subject of her health again.

It was a sad home-coming. Mary hovered over her mistress with anxious eyes, but when she was once more comfortably settled in her own bed, Mrs. Erskine looked up into her old servant's face.

"I shall never get out of this bed again," she said. "But I am given to understand that I shall have plenty of time to prepare for death. You won't get rid of me very soon, Mary."

"Eh, mistress dear, don't talk so! The journey has tired you. You'll feel quite fresh again after a few days' rest."

Pauline left the room quickly. She felt strangely unnerved and unfit to take up her daily burdens again. The verdict had not surprised her, but it had taken away her mother's restless hope of getting better, and she knew how hard the coming days would be to them both, and an overwhelming pity for her mother filled her heart.

"If only I could bear it for her!" was her passionate thought.

She went out into the little garden, which was looking dreary and forlorn. Dead leaves underfoot, bare leafless trees, sodden grass, and a few withered dahlias, all spoke to her of death and decay. For a moment, her spirit seemed weighed down by its depressing atmosphere. Then she raised her eyes to the sky above, and sunshine and steadfast hope were in her smile.

"'For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' I must get mother to believe that."

She stayed a little longer, her lips moving in silent prayer; then she went back to her mother, and the old routine of her life began again.

One afternoon, Miss Paton called with some message from the Rector. Pauline had met her several times, and, in common with most people, Miss Paton had taken a violent fancy to this stately golden-haired girl, with her sympathetic eyes and smile.

"I am actually alone to-day. Mr. and Mrs. Broughton have driven into the town, and the children have been carried off to tea at the Osbornes'. Miss Osborne called for them at three o'clock. What a merry little thing she is—almost a child herself!"

"Will you stay and have tea with me?" asked Pauline. "My mother sleeps till five o'clock, so I shall be free."

"I should like to very much. What a cosy little room you have! Whenever I come to this house, it gives me the sense of rest. I suppose wherever there is sickness, there must be quiet. Now, at the Rectory we are in a scrimmage from morning to night, and I seem wanted in every place at once. To tell you the honest truth, I am getting rather tired of it. But I am fond of Emily, and she likes me, and I was at a loose end before I came here."

"Have you any home of your own?" Pauline asked, taking up her work and settling down for a talk.

Miss Paton laughed.

"No. Mother and I came to the conclusion that a home was a great mistake—it tires you so. At least, I felt pretty strongly that way, and she didn't want much persuasion to settle in a boarding-house at Folkestone. I couldn't live a life like you, Miss Erskine; it would drive me mad. I have two brothers who went out to the colonies and married there. And I have a married sister in Scotland. She—er—married my lover; so you have my biography in a nutshell!"

She gave a hard little laugh, then went on:

"Mother and I never could pull together. She is old and fidgety, and I cannot stand old people. I always think strangers get on much better with them than their daughters, because they can't tyrannise over them so much. I bore it for eight months, and then we were both dead sick of each other, so I suggested the boarding-house scheme. It has answered admirably. I go there whenever I want to, and mother and I, instead of snapping and snarling at each other all day, are now the greatest friends. She writes me most affectionate letters. And in this way, I am able to go about and earn a little on my own account. We are not well off."

For a moment, Pauline said nothing. It was not her way to censure people for what they said or did, but Miss Paton's selfish, callous views of life rather took her breath away.

"I think you must be a great comfort to Mrs. Broughton. She is not strong enough to manage the Rectory household single-handed."

"I hope I'm a comfort to her. But, between ourselves, she is rather a humbug. Mind you, I am fond of her—I always was, since we were girls at school together—but it's all take with her, and precious little giving."

"Well," said Pauline, smiling, "it's good to be the giver instead of the taker, isn't it? I am sure in the bottom of your heart you must feel it so."

"Perhaps I do," said Miss Paton hesitatingly. "But I don't think I rank amongst the givers in the world. I'm a pretty selfish lot myself. But one has only one life to live, and single women have to look out for themselves—no one else does it for them."

"Do you find the children difficult?"

"My dear Miss Erskine, they worry me to death! They ought to have a nurse, and I tell their mother so. They haven't the sense to look after themselves. At best, if they do, they get into some scrape, and I can't be at their heels all day. And they're for ever dinning into my ears the virtues of the absent Honor—'Honor did this,' or 'Honor did that'—till I feel I could slap them! Imagine! Mr. Broughton actually said to me one day that he thought it was a mistake girls leaving home when they had a parent dependent on them for help in their old age.

"'Well,' I said, 'your daughter has run away from her home duties as well as I—' And he shut up at once."

"Poor Honor!" said Pauline meditatively. "She was very fond of her home, but, like you, found it a good deal for one pair of shoulders. Still, she did not want to leave."

"Oh, I know all about it. It was another case of not pulling together. Emily wrote me all her woes before I came. Now, honestly, Miss Erskine, don't you think it wiser for people to take the easiest path in life? I do. I should never stay anywhere where I was miserable."

"I suppose you are very susceptible to your surroundings."

"Who isn't? And I love peace at any price. If I don't like a person, I can't help showing it, and then there are ructions. Isn't it far better to separate at once?"

"It just depends on what one's guiding principle is through life," said Pauline slowly.

"Oh, I have no guiding principle."

"Indeed you have, though you may not have discovered what it is."

Miss Paton stared at her.

"You rather interest me—go on."

"But I have done," said Pauline, laughing.

Miss Paton joined her in her laugh.

"I'm so glad you have. I was rather afraid you were going to deliver me a sermon."

Tea came in just then, and they drifted to other topics. When Miss Paton got up at last to go, she said:

"May I come to see you again? People are not over friendly to me here; I believe they consider I have ousted the immaculate Honor from her home, which is ridiculous. You are the only one who has regarded me with friendly eyes. Even that bright little Miss Osborne looked up into my face and said to-day,—

"'I'm afraid children bore you, do they not? These mites were a little spoiled by Honor—she adored them so—and they miss her dreadfully.'

"I am sure she thinks I neglect them, and perhaps I do; but I can't amuse them and their mother at the same time—and she is my friend."

"I shall be delighted to see you whenever you have a moment to spare," responded Pauline warmly.

Miss Paton turned to go, then she looked back.

"Of course I know my guiding principle, and you know it, too. It's to take the easiest way. But I'm not the only one who does it."

"I suppose we should all do it," said Pauline slowly, "if we all believed as you do—that we have but one life to live."

"Oh, well," said Miss Paton, a little shamefacedly, "that was a careless speech of mine—I am not a heathen exactly."

She gave Pauline a little nod, and departed. But Pauline's few words stuck to her, and gave her much matter for thought.

About a fortnight after this, Mrs. Daventry called early one afternoon, and insisted upon taking Pauline for a drive.

"I will not take 'No,'" she said, "for you are needing change of air badly. You are too young to lose your roses yet, and too valuable to us all to overstrain yourself and have a breakdown."

"I am very strong," said Pauline.

But as she spoke, there were tired lines round her eyes and a little droop to her tall, upright figure.

Mrs. Daventry leant back in her luxurious carriage with a sigh of relief, when she had Pauline by her side.

"You have no idea how I long for you when I am driving about. You know that you are my favourite, do you not? And yet I can hardly ever get hold of you. I want to take you to the Burkes' this afternoon. It is a social gathering, to welcome their son back from abroad, and Lady Marion asked me specially to bring you. She has never forgotten meeting you at my house last spring. She says she has seen no one like you in this neighbourhood for years."

"You flatter so," said Pauline, laughing, but casting rather a dismayed look at her plain dark blue cloth coat and skirt. "I am not in company attire, exactly, am I?"

"Quite nice," said Mrs. Daventry. "And now tell me first about yourself, and then about my other girls."

"There is nothing much to say about myself. Mother has had a much better week. Dr. Mann was quite pleased with her when he called yesterday. I heard from Honor yesterday. She always writes a little dismally, but she likes Scotland better than London, and says that Mrs. Montmorency seems to like her better than she did. Poor Honor always makes the worst of herself. I knew she would be appreciated before long."

"And Audrey?"

"Audrey is very busy and very happy. I heard from her this morning. She says, 'I really do believe my Western goal will be a bright path, after all—my storms seem over.'"

"Has she learnt so quickly?" said Mrs. Daventry, musingly.

The drive was a long one, but Pauline enjoyed every bit of the way. When they were ushered into a brightly lighted hall, and thence into a well-filled drawing-room, she was still girl enough to enjoy the gay scene.

Lady Marion Burke received her warmly.

"Let me introduce my son to you. He has been in Australia for many years. Some scientific society sent him out, and he has brought his great chum down from town with him. Leonard, let me introduce you to Miss Erskine."

A keen-looking young fellow, with the tanned skin that tells of an open air life, turned at his mother's words and bowed.

But Pauline went pale to the lips when his companion turned also, and she was face to face with Justin Pembroke.

For a moment their eyes met. Then he stepped forward gravely.

"We met many years ago, did we not, Miss Erskine?"

"Yes, I think we did," she replied with wonderful composure. "You have been abroad a good many years, have you not?"

"A good many, though time flies when one is occupied. Have you seen Mrs. Repton lately?"

"Yes; my mother and I were up in town a short time ago. She seems very well."

"I must go to see her. But, really, we have been so accustomed to our life away from civilisation that we feel a little shy at first when we get amongst our own people again. Burke and I have been in the Bush for the last five years."

They exchanged a few commonplace remarks, then he drifted away from her, and Pauline felt as if she were in a dream. He was very much the same, a trifle greyer than when she saw him last, and his voice not quite so keen and eager. But she felt as if a cold-water douche had descended upon her.

He greeted her perfectly courteously but indifferently. He evidently did not wish to recall the old days. Perhaps, she thought, he had never attached any importance to them, and now they had faded away from his memory. She thought hotly of the weeks and months that had been one long, dreary torture to her, of the hope that lived on, though suppressed and checked in every way, and which even now, though she had imagined it dead, was so ready to rise again with eager expectancy.

The woman had sat still, and waited and hoped. The man had continued his career and forgotten. She smiled a little bitterly to herself. And then, quick to hear anything from his lips, she listened to some bantering talk between his hostess and himself.

"I hope you are both tired of exploring the wilds and have come home to marry and settle down."

"Please be merciful. Why such a fate?"

"It is your duty as a good citizen."

"Then I am afraid that duty will remain undone by me. No, Lady Marion, my work is my companion and my creed. I want no other. There was a time when I thought differently, but I am older and wiser now."

"That is the way you all talk; and the next I hear is that you have fallen headlong into love. Your time has not come. 'Nous verrons.'"

Pauline moved away. She did not want to hear any more. If she had thought that time had wiped away the remembrance of a man's glowing eyes reading her very soul, the death-knell that was sounding within her now showed her the futility of such a misconception. But she resolutely turned her thoughts from the past to the present, and as she responded to her friends around her she was her usual sweet, gracious self.

She did not speak to Justin Pembroke again. And when she and Mrs. Daventry departed, she was unaware that Justin's eyes were following them.

She talked brightly to her old friend driving home, and went up to her mother's room to reproduce the events of the afternoon. But, though she told her of many who had been present, she never mentioned Justin Pembroke's name.

When she went up to her bedroom, she opened a drawer and carefully unlocked a carved ivory box. Taking from it a little packet in tissue paper, she opened it, and held for a moment or two some faded stalks of mignonette in her hand.

Then with a quick gesture she opened her window and flung them out.

"I also am older and wiser now," she said to herself.

And then she went to bed.