Chapter XXV: Two Letters

"One last long sigh to love and thee,
Then back to busy life again."
BYRON.

VERY gradually, but surely, Mrs. Erskine grew worse, so gradually that Pauline hardly realised the decline day by day. She left her mother less and less, for Mrs. Erskine became restless and irritable, and never seemed comfortable if Pauline were out of the room. The doctor strongly advised a nurse, but this Mrs. Erskine resisted as long as she had strength to do so.

"You are killing your daughter," the doctor said to her one day. "It is against human nature to go without sleep. She gets no rest by day or night."

"If you come up to my room to fight me, I will not have you visit me at all," said the sick woman.

But as her strength waned, she grew gentler, and when the nurse was at last established, she hardly noticed her. She became unconscious, and only had short intervals when she knew her daughter. One of these—the last one—was a very precious one to Pauline.

"Pauline," she murmured, "are you there?"

In an instant, Pauline was bending over her.

"I thought I saw your father in the room."

"Did you, mother dear?"

"I think—I feel—very ill. You have been a good daughter. There's one thing I'm sorry for—but I can't remember what it is. It comes to me in the night. You are in it—but I only know I'm sorry."

Pauline had never heard the expression "I'm sorry" on her mother's lips before.

She bent and kissed her tenderly.

"It is all right, mother dear; don't think about it. Are you comfortable? Shall I read you a few verses from the Bible?"

"Yes, at once."

Mrs. Erskine's eyes looked up pathetically into her daughter's. She was fast slipping away into the silent land, and seemed to know it.

Pauline took her mother's Bible which usually lay on the little table near the bed.

Mrs. Erskine's religion had always been a silent, reserved one, but she never failed to have a portion from her Bible read to her when she could not read it herself. Pauline began to read the hundred and third Psalm. When she came to the verse,—

"He hath not dealt with us after our sins,—"

Mrs. Erskine put up her hand.

"That's enough," she said. "Ask Him to make that true."

Her voice was so low that Pauline bent her ear to catch the words. She lay partly sleeping after that, and was never conscious again.

For three days and nights Pauline and the nurse took it in turn to watch by her bed.

And then, the end came quietly and peacefully about five o'clock in the morning. She just slept away, and Pauline could hardly realise that it was all over. The tending and nursing and watching had been so continuous for so many years that now she looked up into the nurse's face and said blankly:

"But can I do nothing? What can I do with myself?"

"Go to bed and to sleep," said the nurse; "and you will find there is plenty to do when you wake. I will see to everything at present. You look worn out."

Pauline went to her bed with a stunned feeling in her head. But sleep came to her, and though she only slept for three or four hours, she woke feeling ready for all that was before her.

Her mother's lawyer came down from London, and practically did all business matters for her. Everyone was very kind. Mrs. Daventry tried to take her away from the cottage, but she would not go. The Rector called several times, and Mr. Danby sent her a characteristic note:

"MY DEAR MISS ERSKINE,

"Well, the silver cord is loosed, and the golden bowl is broken, and your head is bowed over the doing of it. What can I say? As well may an oil lamp tell the sun how to shine as I try to comfort you with the platitudes of consolation! I will not make the attempt; you are high enough up from our earthly atmosphere to be in touch with the heavenly, and you will get your comfort from above, not below. Why should I assure you of my sympathy? What good can it do you? But if I can do anything practically to show my friendship for you, give me the pleasure of doing it.

"Yours to command in sorrow as well as in joy,

"FRANK DANBY."

Just a few of Pauline's friends gathered with her round her mother's grave. Audrey and her brother, Mr. Danby, Mrs. Daventry, the doctor and lawyer; but there were many of the village people there, for little as they had known Mrs. Erskine, her daughter had won their respect and love.

And after it was over, Pauline went back to the empty house, there to talk over money matters with the lawyer, who was her mother's executor, and face her future.

"You will be able to count upon having about three hundred a year," he told her.

And Pauline gave a sigh of relief. At least she would be saved from want.

"Have you no relations?" he asked her presently.

"Only a cousin in London. She was unable to come to the funeral, but she asks me to go up to her and stay with her for a little."

"I should if I were you, and then take my advice—get rid of the cottage. It is in a damp, cheerless spot. You have been tied here so long, why not go abroad for a bit? It would do you a world of good. Get some bright companion to go with you."

"I cannot decide anything in a hurry," Pauline told him. "I feel like a rudderless boat adrift in the open sea."

"You have my address. Let me know if I can do anything for you. Meanwhile, let us tackle some of your mother's business papers. I think you will find them all in order."

They had a busy couple of hours together. Then he left her, and Pauline went up to her mother's room to look through her private davenport that always stood in the window. It was sad work.

As she sat down, she started more than once, expecting to hear the usual call from the bed behind her. She unearthed many little treasures—a miniature of her father when a boy, a photograph of herself as a baby in long clothes, a packet of letters when her father was courting her mother, some faded flowers, and two or three old ball programmes belonging to her mother as a girl. Then, in a little locked drawer, she came upon two letters which drove every vestige of blood from her face and made her heart almost stand still.

The envelope that first stared her in the face was addressed to herself. And when she opened it, with fear and trembling, she found it was a proposal of marriage, to herself from Justin Pembroke. The ink was yellow and faded; it was dated about twelve years previously, almost directly after that eventful visit of hers to London, and immediately after her father's death.

Mechanically, she unfolded the other letter. It was in the same handwriting and addressed to her mother, but dated about a fortnight later. This was the letter:

"DEAR MRS. ERSKINE,

"I feel I must write a line to you, as from what you told me, your daughter does not wish me to communicate with her at all. I am sorry for her ill-health, but I hoped—oh, how I hoped!—she would have let me try to comfort her. I sail for South Africa next week. If before that time, you see any signs of her change of mind—girls do not always know their own minds at once—may I beg you to let me have a line?

"It was a bitter disappointment to me not to see her when I came down the other day. But I could do no other than accept the explanation you gave me and respect her wish. I feel, if she would only see me personally, I should perhaps be able to persuade her to listen to me. I know it is soon to worry her after her father's death. I would not have obtruded myself so soon into her presence, but I have such a short time left before I leave England, and I did think in town that I had a chance of winning her. I am not one who changes with time. She has made such a deep impression upon me that I am convinced no other woman will ever take her place in my heart.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

"JUSTIN PEMBROKE."

Pauline bowed her face in her hands. It was a bitter, crushing revelation to her.

The mother, now cold in the grave, had cruelly deceived and defrauded her of the most precious thing in a woman's life. Her lover had spoken, had written to her, and she had purposely been kept in ignorance of it. She looked back to that dreary time after her father's death. She remembered a sick headache confining her to bed one whole day, and she could only conclude that Justin had arrived on that day, determining to follow his letter, and discover why she had not answered it. Her mother always had the letters taken to her room the first thing in the morning. She must have abstracted his first letter, perhaps from curiosity, perhaps from suspicion, and deliberately read it and kept it from her daughter.

"Oh, mother! How could you? How could you treat me so?"

It was a heart-breaking cry—not so much because it had spoilt her life, as because her mother's character had suffered so much by the transaction.

Pauline was the soul of honour herself. She had known her mother do many unkind, selfish acts, but never a dishonourable one. Then she tried to make excuses for her.

"I suppose she was desperate at the thought of my being taken away from her as well as my father. Her mind must have been unhinged by his death. She never could bear to be alone. A lonely life—the very thought of it would be terrible to her. She could not have meant to spoil my whole life by such an act; she did not realise what she was doing. Yet why has she kept this from me all these years? She might have told me afterwards. I wonder if she remembered what she had done? I wish she had not kept these letters. If only I had been kept in ignorance, it would have been better. And yet—and yet—oh, Justin, you stole my heart, and I thought you had played with it! What injustice I have done you!"

Passionate tears fell; the serene, courageous Pauline for once lost her self-control. The very depth of her feelings about most things proved in this matter to overwhelm her. Twelve years had slipped away since her first dream of love had visited her, for fully half that time, she had striven to crush what she considered immodest thoughts, and suppress the love that had risen in her heart for one who had not returned or claimed it. Gradually, time had helped her to be resigned, but never entirely to forget. And the sudden and fleeting glimpse she had of him at Lady Marion Burke's "at home" had roused and quickened again the old pain.

"Of course," she argued with herself, "it has been all for the best. I could not have left my mother, and it would not have been fair to keep him waiting all this time. But it does seem bitterly hard that I should have been kept in ignorance of his letter and visit all these years."

Pauline was no stoic. She suffered acutely as she sat in her mother's room, and for a moment rebelled against her fate. Then her strong faith and trust in the One Who had her in His loving keeping sent her to her knees, and brought her out of that room an hour later with shining eyes.

She had a great deal to do and arrange, but every now and then, from the habit of long years, would find herself starting and listening for her mother's call to her. Old Mary added her persuasions to that of the lawyer.

"You must get out of this cottage, miss. I'll come with you anywhere if you'll have me. I know I'm not so young as I was, but there's work left in me yet."

"I couldn't live without you, Mary," said Pauline tenderly. "And I think I may be able to have a small girl to help you in the housework. But where to settle I know not. I think I must run up to town and talk over things with Cousin Bertha."

Mary put her hand on her arm.

"Miss Pauline, take care! She'll be wanting you to live with her, and then it will be all the nursing and tending over again. You have had too much of it. You must have a bit of ease and pleasantness in your life now. You aren't very old, the youth has been quenched out of you. Don't you go near Mrs. Repton. Who wouldn't want to have you and keep you, I'd like to know?"

"Oh, you ridiculous old woman! I'm not so valuable a treasure as that. Mrs. Repton has her own circle of friends and relatives independent of me. She is only a distant cousin, remember!"

Mary shook her head and said no more.

A fortnight afterwards, Pauline left her in charge of the cottage, and went to London. There she stayed three weeks, feeling rather like a recluse would do were she suddenly plunged into the gay world. Her cousin was very good to her, but was a little intolerant of her deep mourning. Mrs. Repton's house was full of visitors from morning to night, as she was both hospitable and popular. She was disappointed that Pauline would not go out into society, for she was proud of her beautiful young cousin, but no word was said about prolonging her visit when the three weeks were over.

"You must come to me again, my dear, when you are out of mourning. People do not stay in for very long now. And then I will take you out and about. And we will brighten you up a little, and give you a wee bit more style. Oh! You have perfect manners and movements and all that, but you bear the stamp of the country. You cannot help it. I only marvel that you can hold your own amongst us as you do. Your life for the last ten years must have been spent in a prison. Where are you going to live? Why not come up to town and have a tiny flat? There are some to be had quite cheap. You were fond of art once. Why not go in for painting again? A woman with a hobby is quite the fashion nowadays."

"No," said Pauline, with firm conviction; "a town life will not suit me. I must have my small home in the country."

"But not in the winter, surely? Come to town for this winter. If you do not like to be too gay, there is plenty of quiet amusement for you in town."

"I believe," said Pauline, laughing, "I am too old for this present age. I feel I don't want to be amused. I have got past it."

She returned home one fine autumn afternoon. The glowing tints of trees and hedgerows delighted her as she walked from the station, and meeting Mr. Danby, she cried exultantly:

"Oh! Isn't nature rich and sweet after town? It gives me quite a throb of joy to be in it again!"

"You are not in love with town?"

"No," she said gravely; "I have seen, of course, only the light side of life. My cousin is what people call a thorough little 'society woman,' and her society makes me feel a prig. I am not comfortable in it. I told her I was too old for it. It all seems to me so empty, so mundane, so childish. The fault is in myself, I expect. I am like a fish out of water."

"My dear Miss Hume, it's like a swallow being condemned to live the life of a snail—your soul is up and beyond it all."

"That sounds like one of their speeches," said Pauline, with twinkling eyes. "Everyone pays compliments, but it isn't like you, Mr. Danby. I hope my soul will never be above my surroundings unless they are sinful ones. I have a horror of people who are up in the clouds all day."

"I am rebuked. But the country will have you and not the town? For that I give hearty thanks! And now, where are you going to settle? We are all determined that you shall not leave this neighbourhood, if we have to build you a house here."

"Oh, I don't like new houses. Mrs. Daventry wrote to me the other day telling me of a small farmhouse that was empty. I don't know, of course, whether the rent would be within my means."

"I know it. John Dodds died the other day. It belongs to Mrs. Daventry."

"Yes; she says the farmer close by would take over some of the farm buildings and the land, as he wants to enlarge his farm. I am going over to look at it with Mrs. Daventry to-morrow."

"But you won't live there alone?"

"Why not? I am alone in life. I must have a home."

"Oh!" said Mr. Danby, wheeling round upon her with intense, earnest gaze. "Have a home with me. Don't recoil with horror from me! I know I'm not fit to black your shoes. You have been my queen, my lady with the starry eyes, my divinity, since the first day I saw you! I went into church this morning and played my heart out on the organ. I knew you were returning this evening. Will you—could you—be content with the passionate devotion of an eccentric musician and a Jack-of-all-trades?"

Pauline was utterly dumbfounded. She was tired, and tears rose to her eyes.

"Dear Mr. Danby, I am so very, very sorry, but it can never be. I grieve to pain you. I thought our friendship was so sure and steadfast that nothing like this would spoil it. Be my friend still. I have so few of them. Let us treat your words as unsaid. I would not make you happy—you want a younger, brighter wife. You think too well of me; I am only a commonplace young woman, not fit to be the wife of a genius, but very proud to be his friend."

Mr. Danby's whole figure drooped with disappointment.

"Forgive me. I ought to have known it would be impossible. It was the sons of God that mated with the daughters of men—was it not?—not the daughters of God with the sons of men. Well, Miss Erskine, I can bear blows like a man—and this is a heavy one, for I'm always a hopeful fool. I will say no more. Good-night. God bless you."

He wheeled round and was gone.

Pauline walked into her cottage, depressed and weary.

"I shall have lost him now. It is very well to talk of being friends still. It will never be the same again. He is so genuine, so good, and yet so utterly apart from me myself. I shall live and die a single woman. I know I shall."