Chapter XVIII: The Helper

"Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot
keep it from themselves."

"IT is so exceedingly selfish of her. As if her mother could want her more than I do! And I more than half believe that it is Pauline Erskine's doing. I have noticed that ever since Anna and she have been such thick friends, there has been this crank in Anna's mind about her mother wanting her. If Mrs. Paton is ill, she is surrounded by people who can wait upon her. Mother and daughter never could get on together, and I am sure Anna is not wanted."

Mrs. Broughton was in her husband's study nearly crying with annoyance and worry because Miss Paton was at last packing up her boxes to go to her mother.

Mrs. Paton had been ailing for some time, and Anna Paton had told her friend plainly that unless she got better, she must go to the boarding-house and nurse her.

"I'm not going to have strangers do for her when she has a daughter living. Mother well and mother ill are two very different people. My conscience has been pricking me a long time about her. When I see Miss Erskine so happy and bright, and contrast her mother with mine, I'm ashamed of myself. And I've come to the conclusion with her that we're not made to leave the stony paths untrodden."

Mrs. Broughton had flounced away from her friend in pettish fury at this. And she was now pouring her griefs into her husband's ears.

"It is most inconsiderate and—and hateful of Anna. I have given her such a good time here, and introduced her to all my friends and treated her as a sister. And all her gratitude comes to this! I don't believe she cares twopence about me. Cook gave me warning this morning, and Chatty is in bed with a heavy cold. I am feeling bad myself and ought to be in bed—I know I ought."

"We must have Honor back," said Mr. Broughton, with relief and decision in his tone, as he thought of the one way of escape from all his wife's complaints. "I will write to her at once, my dear. Mrs. Montmorency will quite understand that the claims of her own family must come first."

"Oh, I am sick of that expression," said Mrs. Broughton impatiently; "that's what Anna keeps saying. I suppose we must have Honor back. I only hope her stay away has improved her temper. Tell her she must come at once. I'm feeling very far from well, and when Anna leaves, I know I shall collapse. It is too much for anyone's nerves!"

So Mr. Broughton wrote an affectionate letter to Honor, which was returned to him in two days' time with a very angry one from Mrs. Montmorency.

And Honor's letter to her father arrived by the same post.

"MY DEAREST FATHER,

"I hardly know how to write to you, but since I have been up here, I have met with someone who wishes to marry me. He is a widower, of good Scotch birth, and has one darling little girl who has no one to care for her or look after her. He is bound to go back almost immediately to America, and has persuaded me to marry him at once and accompany him out there. I would not do it if I thought you wanted me home. But Emily told me very distinctly at Christmas time that you had all been very much happier without me. I am sorry that she and I do not pull better together. But I am comforted by feeling that my place has been filled up by someone who suits you all better than I do. I am afraid you will miss the part of my salary which I send home. But I have no doubt that Mrs. Montmorency will send you my last quarter's money, which is due now. Please tell her that I wish it. And from what I gather Mr. Selkirk—the one I am going to marry—has plenty of means of his own, and I may be able to help you better as a married woman than I did before.

"Dear father, wish me happiness and pray for me, and tell the little ones that I shall never forget them, and when I have a home in England I shall hope to see them again.—Your loving daughter.

"HONOR."

Pauline also received that morning a hasty note from the runaway, and she sat gazing at it in perfect bewilderment until the sudden entrance of Amabel Osborne roused her.

"My dear Pauline, have you heard the news? The whole village is full of it. There have been awful scenes at the Rectory, I believe, and Mrs. Broughton has retired to bed in hysterics. I had to go to the church with the flowers, and I met Mr. Broughton looking quite aged. As you know, they were expecting to have Honor back this week. Miss Paton has left them, and Honor is married and on her way to America."

"I have heard," said Pauline slowly. "Poor Honor! I only hope she has not taken the step too hastily."

She looked again at the pathetic little note lying in her lap.

"DEAREST PAULINE,

"You will be the only one who will really care. The others don't want me. I am already frightened and dazed, and if you were here with me, I would go away with you anywhere, till I was sure what would be best. Now I have to think it out and decide alone. And it is now or never, for he says so, and he means what he says. And, Pauline, I am tired of doing for people who don't like me. Is it wicked? I never include my father or the children in this; but you don't know what a temptation a home is to me. And I am wanted, really wanted, to mother a darling child who loves me, and to be a real help to an embittered, restless man. He has said that he wants the companionship of a good woman. I am not good—even now I am planning and deceiving and acting like an unprincipled girl would do—but he thinks I am, and he wants me, and so I am going to marry him. It can't be wrong, Pauline; tell me it can't. It seems as if it is the only thing I can do. I know you will want to know if he is the right man for a Christian girl to marry. You were always so strong on that point when you talked about such things. But he wants help, and no one has given it to him for many years. And I think—I am praying that I can. Good-bye. And when I am sure of our next address, will you write me an answer to this? You will hear from me again.—Yours very affectionately,

"HONOR BROUGHTON.

"P.S.—Is it wrong to try to alter one's path a little? I have been meeting East winds so long that I have been tempted to escape them for a time. I am going to enjoy warmth and sunshine now. Ask Mrs. Daventry what happens to the pilgrims of the Eastern gate when they do as I am doing."

"I am sorry for the Rector," Pauline said, folding her letter up.

"Do say you're not sorry for Mrs. Broughton. I am not; I can imagine how angry she is. Well, Honor is the last girl on earth who I should have thought would have married on the quiet and gone away without a word to her people. Why, Pauline, if I had done such a thing, I should have broken my parents' hearts!"

"Ah! It is different for you. Poor Honor had a miserable time when she came home at Christmas, and I think she is essentially a woman who needs a home to make her happy. I wish we knew about Mr. Selkirk. I hope he will make her happy. That side never seems to strike her. She is one of the unselfish ones in the world."

"Yes," said Amabel, her sunny eyes shadowing a little; "and I'm one of the selfish ones. I always seem to get what I want without any trouble. Did I tell you, Pauline? I heard from Frank yesterday that he is going out to India next month, and he wants to take me with him. I never thought father would let me go, but he and mother say of course I must do so, and they're making everything so easy for me. I think I am the happiest girl alive. And yet it came across me this morning when I was in bed that really good, unselfish daughters would refuse to marry and leave their parents in their old age."

"Not in your case," said Pauline, sniffing, "because it is your parents' desire and delight to see you happily married, not because they want to get rid of you, but because they want you to have the same happiness that they have had themselves."

"Oh, yes," said Amabel, laughing; "you don't think I would leave them if they did not want me to? I couldn't! I simply couldn't! But now to come back to Honor: do you think Mrs. Broughton would like the children, or one of them, taken off her hands for a few days? I'm sure mother would let me have one, though I shall be dreadfully busy. A month is so soon to get my Indian outfit, and we must make most of it at home. We can't afford to buy."

"I think I will go up to the Rectory this afternoon and see what I can do," said Pauline. "I wish Miss Paton's mother had not been ill, but it was clearly her duty to go to her."

She went. And Mrs. Broughton received her with such a storm of reproaches for having persuaded Anna Paton to leave her, and such abuse of her stepdaughter, that Pauline needed all her patience and self-control to keep civil. But her natural sympathy for people in trouble came at once to the surface. And with her wonderful tact and magnetic personality, she soothed the distracted little woman.

"It must be dreadful for you—dreadful! But now, do let us see what we can do. I heard of a girl the other day through my cousin Bertha in London, who would thankfully accept any work in exchange for a comfortable home. May I write to her? She is a clergyman's daughter, left absolutely alone in the world. She would understand parish work, and might soon be quite as capable as Miss Paton. I am so glad I have thought of her. I believe she would suit you admirably."

Mrs. Broughton looked up hopefully through her tears.

"We can but try her. Do write at once. I suppose you don't know of a cook? I feel quite distracted between the servants and the children, who are quite beyond me."

"No. I should advertise at once in the local paper."

"It is so abominably wicked of Honor. How shall we get on without her money? 'She' to marry, of all people, with her ugly face and awkward manners! I suppose he is some Scotch tradesman. She is sure to disgrace her family if she can! I always knew she would!"

Pauline departed, but had the satisfaction before many days were over, of establishing another nursery governess or mother's help at the Rectory.

She felt unhappy about Honor. As she read her letter again, she realised that it was force of circumstances, and not real love, that drove her into this hasty marriage, and she dreaded her awakening.

On the day of Amabel's wedding, Pauline received a post card only from Honor, giving her the name of the small hotel at which she was staying.

And after all the festivities were over, and Amabel had departed—a happy, blushing bride—to spend her honeymoon at a country house on the Lakes lent for the occasion, Pauline came back, and in her mother's sick-room sat down in the window and by the waning light wrote Honor one of her warm, loving letters.

That same evening Mr. Danby came to lend her a book, and stayed chatting to her downstairs over the events of the day.

"I'm sick of the conventional Wedding March," he began. "I'll write a new one myself before long. There's plenty in the theme to make it worth one's while. But people are such slaves to habit and custom that they would refuse to receive it."

"I like the old one best—I suppose from association."

"Now, come, Miss Erskine, you can't have many associations with it. In this rural village, weddings are scarce—at least, amongst the upper class. And I'm sure you don't attend the villagers' weddings."

"Sometimes I do. I have not lived here all my life, Mr. Danby."

"You have lived here a great deal too long for your own good," he responded quickly. "And yet I don't know," he added. "You seem a bit of the soil. I don't know what we should do without you. Have you ever thought over the execrable unevenness of fate? Here is one, hurried and bustled through his years, joy, despair, affluence, poverty, changes of homes, friends, possessions—all one continuous stream dashing him up, dashing him down, until he feels he has lived a hundred lives in perhaps half a century. And another—the years creep on, and he never moves from the round or square hole in which he was placed at first. He seems to have grown to a certain point and then come to a standstill. Summer, winter, spring, and autumn find him just the same, and he always seems waiting for what will never come."

"I hope this last is not a description of me," said Pauline, laughing. "If I have learnt anything, I think I have learnt to rest and not wait. Waiting is a depressing, disheartening, wearing occupation, because you are always expecting your waiting time to come to an end. If you have learnt to be content with your life, you lose the sense of waiting expectancy. Don't you think you do?"

"I have never learnt anything in life," said Mr. Danby. "I'm just a fritterer; you're a philosopher. I expect you do a lot of thinking, don't you?"

"There's such a lot to think about. But I have more time than most to do it."

Pauline's eyes kindled as she spoke. Then they began to talk over the wedding again.

"Marriage is mostly a failure," said Mr. Danby; "people can't get mated suitably nowadays. We English are on the down grade. Everyone is made after the same pattern. Look at the girls and the boys. Instead of bringing them up utterly different, you can't tell which sex they are, as far as education and tastes go! A man likes to find his wife a fresh thing of surprises; that is what holds her in his heart. But now women are built so on the pattern of the men that they're deadly monotonous, and so their husbands weary of their company and seek entertainment elsewhere. It's like being married to a double self. Good heavens, what torture!"

"Oh! Don't belittle marriage," said Pauline, smiling. "The one we have seen to-day will be a happy one, I venture to say. Amabel is very feminine, and her husband a thoroughly manly young fellow. So they will not prove monotonous to each other."

"I'm tired of life to-day," said Mr. Danby abruptly. "It is all tedious and unedifying, waiting to see one's powers decay and one's body become a burden to one."

Pauline looked at him sympathetically. She guessed that the wedding had aroused some of his bitter memories which were best left in oblivion.

"You are not near the end of your powers," she said; "tell me about your lecture next week. What is the subject?"

Mr. Danby rose to the bait. He plunged into his subject of infectious complaints and how to keep them from spreading, and talked himself back into his usual cheerful mood.

But when he left the house, he said:

"Tell me I am not wasting my years, Miss Erskine; I feel sometimes my pursuits are toys. What do you think?"

"You have a tremendous chance of influencing others for good," said Pauline seriously. "People will listen to a layman sometimes when they become restive under a sermon. I should see to it, if I were you, that your lectures contain some grains of the pure, genuine wheat which will spring up and bear a hundredfold later on. Then your time and talents will not be wasted, will they?"

"I believe if I talked much to you, you would end by sending me bang into the Church. Do you know what keeps me out of it?"

"What?"

"The black cloth suit! Couldn't fit myself into it. Would as soon go about in grave-clothes. Gives me the shudders. Good-night. Good-night."

Pauline smiled and sighed as he left her. She knew underneath his flippancy, there was real feeling, and she had a genuine regard for him. But she also knew at heart, he was a dissatisfied man and cloaked himself with extra cheerfulness to hide it.