Chapter VIII: Miss West's Christmas Adventure, 337 (11)

Sunk in the mire as Gervase was, he noted the transformation in his wife with discomposure and vexation. It fretted him always, and infuriated him at times, to discover that she was likely to justify his contempt by proving a poor wife after all. Her rule ended, her energy exhausted, given over to an unprincipled, destructive listlessness and, carelessness, such a prospect did not make Gervase amend the error of his ways: but it caused his road to ruin to be harder to tread, it caused the fruits of his vice to be more bitter between his teeth, it drove him at times to reflect when it was madness to reflect. She would not take the luxuries which she had bought dearly, which he wanted her to take. Her person, drawing-room, flower-garden were fast showing neglect and cheerlessness, in spite of him, or to spite him, as he vowed savagely. Here was his sin cropping out and meeting him in the life of another, and that other a woman. She was going to ruin with him as truly and faithfully as if they had been a pair of fond lovers. The shy goodwill of Gervase Norgate's early married life had waned into discontent and dislike, and was fast settling into rooted hatred.

"Lawk!" Dolly the dairymaid reflected indignantly, "Madam is become as careless and trolloping-like as master is wild. If we don't take care, no one will continue to call on us and hinvite us with our equals. For that matter, the mistress has denied herself to every morning caller this spring, and it is my opingen she never so much as sends hapologies to them dinner cards as she twists into matches. If it were me, now, wouldn't I cut a dash of myself? She didn't care a bit of cheese-curd for him, folks say, when she had him to begin with, so why she should pine for his misdeeds now, is more than I can compass."

It was on a clear, fragrant evening in June, when the world was all in flower, that a whispering, and pulling of skirts and sleeves, and throwing up of hands and eyes, arose among the servants at Ashpound, at a sight that was seen there. The servants' hall were gathered secretly at a side-door and a lobby-window, and were watching Mrs. Gervase Norgate feeling her way, like a blind woman, her tall figure bent down, crouched together, swaying, along the pleached alley from the garden.

One or two of the more sensitive of the women covered their faces and wrung their hands. Old Miles tugged at his tufts of red hair and smote his hands together distractedly. The new shame was too open for concealment; he could only cry, "God ha' mercy; there is not one to mend another; what will we do?"

As living among men and women given up to delusions begets delusions in rational minds with a dire infectiousness, so living with Gervase Norgate, and day by day regarding the evil which could not be stayed, Diana had caught the fell disease.

A whisper of the culminating misfortunes of Ashpound spread abroad like wild-fire, soon ceased to be a whisper, and became a loud scandal; and Diana lost her credit as summarily as she had acquired it. It was--"That wretched Mrs. Gervase Norgate came of an evil stock, though drinking was not Mr. Baring's vice. They were an ill-fated race, these Barings, with a curse--the curse of ruined men--upon them. Who knew, indeed, but if poor Gervase Norgate, come of honest people at least, had gone into another family--one which he could have respected, which could have shown him a good example and remonstrated with him with authority--he might have been reclaimed?"

About the middle of summer there came a seasonably rainy period, such as frequently precedes a fine harvest. But Gervase Norgate was so ailing that he could not go out and look at his fields, where the corn in the ear was filling rarely, and the growth of second clover was knee-deep. He was forced to keep the house. He loathed food, and his sleep had become a horror to him. He had fits of deadly sickness and of shaking like an aspen. His only resource, all the life that was left to him, was to be found in his cellar; and even Miles, seeing his master's extremity, brought out and piteously pressed the brandy upon him.

Gervase's cronies had never come about his house since his marriage. There had been something in Diana which had held them at arm's length; and although they had heard and scoffed at her fall, they had not the wit to discern that it clean removed the obstacle to their harbouring about the place as they had done before her reign and abdication. They might come and go now by day and night without feeling themselves too much for Mrs. Gervase Norgate, or being compelled to regard her as a being apart from them. But they did not comprehend the bearing of the common degradation, and they had not returned to their haunt as they might have done.

Gervase had declined into such a state of fractiousness and sullenness, that he was very poor company even for illiterate country-bred men like himself. He was something of a ghastly spectacle, as he sat there, with his glass three-fourths empty, and part of its contents spilt around him, trying to smoke, trying to warm himself, with the soles of his boots burnt from being pressed on the top of the wood fire, his teeth chattering, at intervals, notwithstanding, as he cast furtive, dark glances behind him.

Gervase was alone. Mrs. Gervase was dozing on a drawing-room couch, not troubling to order a fire, though the room was on the ground-floor,--a pleasant room in sunshine, but looking dull and dismal in wet and gloom. She had lain there all the evening, with her hair, tumbled by the posture, fallen down and straying in dim tresses on her shoulders.

Overcome by illness, Gervase at last defied his shrinking from his room and bed, and retired for the night. His uneven footsteps and the closing of his door had not long sounded through the house, which might have been so cheery and was so dreary and silent, when Mrs. Gervase, cold and comfortless, rose and proceeded to the study. She was drawn by the fire and the light, but she was drawn more irresistibly by the subtle, potent odour in the air. She came on like a sleep-walker. She sank down in the chair which her husband had occupied, and stretched out her fine white hand to the decanters which Miles had not removed. She had raised one, and was about to pour its contents into a glass, when a noise at the door startled her, and caused her to hold her arm suspended. Gervase, returning for the bottle she grasped, stood in the doorway.

Ruined husband and ruined wife confronted each other on their stained hearthstone. His weakness, replaced by failing strength, gathered up and increased tenfold by horror and rage. Her eyes glared defiance, and her presence there, in her white dress, with the crimson spots on each cheek, and the fair hair scattered around her, was a presence of ominous beauty, the hectic beauty of the fall. A feather's weight might have turned the scale whether Gervase should totter forward and deal Diana a deadly blow which should finish the misfortunes of that generation at Ashpound, and brand Ashpound itself with the inhuman mark of an awful crime; or whether he should melt in his misery, weep a man's scalding tears, and bemoan their misery together. Diana's words were the feather's weight: she broke God's unbearable silence, and by God's power and mercy saved both. She cried out, not so much in self-defence, for she was a daring, intrepid woman, as in righteous accusation, "You dare not blame me, for you taught me, you brought me to it."

Through his undone condition he owned the truth of the accusation, and the old spring of manliness in him welled up to protect the woman who spoke the truth and impeached him justly of her ruin as well as his own.

"No, I dare not blame you. We are two miserable sinners, Die." And he let his arms fall on the table and bowed his head over them.

He had spared her, he had not taunted her, and he had not called her Die for many a day before. She put down the decanter and cowered back with a sense of guilt which made her glowing beauty pale, fade, wither, like the sere leaf washed by the heavy tears of a November night's rain.

When Gervase Norgate lifted up his bent head again, all the generosity that had ever looked out of his comely face reappeared in its changed features for a moment. "I have smitten you when you came and tried to cure me, Die. And I cannot cure myself. I believe, before God, if I can get no more drink, I shall go to-night; but I shall go soon, anyhow, no mistake, and I ought to do something to save you, when I brought you to it. So, do you see, Die? here go the drink and me together." And with that he took up the decanters and dashed them, one after the other, on the hearthstone, the wine and brandy running like life-blood in bubbling red streams across the floor. He summoned Miles, and demanded his keys--all the keys of closet and cellar in the house. And when the old man, flustered and scared, did not venture to dispute his will, he caught up the keys, cast them into the white core of the wood-fire, piled the blazing logs upon them, and stamped them down, sending showers flying up the wide chimney.

Then the blaze of passion died away from Gervase's brow, the force of self-devotion ebbed out of him, his unfastened vest and shirt collar did not allow him air enough, and he fell back, gasping and quaking and calling the devils were upon him.

Old Miles wrung his hands, and shouted "Help," and cried the Master was dying, was dead.

But Diana pushed the old servant aside, put her arms round Gervase, and raised him on her breast, telling him, "Do not think of dying for me, Gervase; I am not worthy. You must not die, I will not have you die. Oh, God! spare him till I kneel at his feet and beg him to forgive all my disdainful pity, and we repent together."

Gervase Norgate did not die that night: it might have been easier for him if he had, for he lay, sat, walked in the sunshine deadly sick for months. When men like him are saved, it is only as by fire, by letting a part of the penal fire pass over them, and enduring, as David did, the pains of hell.

But all the time Die did not leave him. Night and day she stood by him, renouncing her own sin for ever. She shared vicariously its revolting anguish and agonizing fruits, in his pangs. And the woman learned to love the man as she would have learned to love a child whom she had tended every hour for what looked like a lifetime, whom she had brought back from a horrible disease and from the brink of the grave, to whose recovery she had given herself body and soul, in a way she had never dreamt of when she first undertook the task. She had lulled him to sleep as with cradle songs, she had fed him with her hands, ministered to him with her spirit. She learned to love him exceedingly.

Other summer suns shone on Ashpound. Gervase and Diana had come back from a lengthened sojourn abroad. Gervase, going on a visit to his faithful old Aunt Tabby, looked behind him, to say, half-shamefacedly, half-yearningly, "I wish you would come with me, Die; I do not think I can pay the visit without you." And she exclaimed, with a little laugh, beneath which ran an undercurrent of feeling, still and deep, "Ah! you see you cannot do without me, sir." And he rejoined, laughing too, but a little wistfully, "I wish I could flatter myself that you could not do without me, madam."

She assured him, with a sudden sedateness which hid itself shyly on his breast, "Of course I could not do without you to save me from being a pillar of salt, to make me a loving, happy woman."

"God help you, happy Die!"

"Yes, Gervase; it is those who have been tried that can be trusted, and I have been in the deep pit, and all clogged with the mire along with you, and He who brought us out will not suffer us to fall back and be lost after all."

The neighbours about Ashpound were slow to discover, as erring men and women are always slow to discover, that God is more merciful than they, and that he can bring good out of evil, light out of darkness; but they discovered it at last, and, after a probation, took Mr. and Mrs. Gervase Norgate back into society and its esteem and regard, and the family at Ashpound became eventually as well considered, and as much sought after in friendship and marriage, as any family among the southern moors, long after John Fitzwilliam Baring had dressed for dinner, and taken a fit with a cue in his hand.

As for Aunt Tabby and old Miles, they said, "All's well that ends well." But old Miles stood out stubbornly, "That it is not a many carts afore the horses as comes in at the journey's end, and it ain't dootiful-like in them when they does do it, though I'm content." And Aunt Tabby argued, "It is shockingly against morality to conclude that her fall--and who'd have thought a strong woman like her would fall?--has been for his rising again."

MISS WEST'S CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE.

I.

"Miss West, I will thank you to see that the school-books and the school-work are in their proper places, and the school-room locked for the holidays."

The speaker, Miss Sandys, was the proprietor of Carter Hill School, and Miss West was the governess. The season was Christmas, and the children, without an exception, had departed rejoicing.

With a sense of liberty as keen as the children's, but with a glee of a decidedly soberer kind, Miss West executed the commission, and then took her place beside her superior at the parlour-fire.

Miss Sandys was quite an elderly woman. She was over fifty, and had grown grey in the service. Her features, even in her prime, had been gaunt, like the rest of her person. But she had mellowed with age, and had become what the Germans call _charakteristisch_, and what we may term original and sagacious. She dressed well--that is, soberly and substantially--in soft wools or strong silks, as she possibly did not find it easy to do in her youth. She was stately, if somewhat stiff, in her deportment. At present she felt intoxicated at the prospect of enjoying for ten days the irresponsibility of private life.

Miss West had not by any means attained the Indian summer of Miss Sandys; she was still in the more trying transition stage. In spite of the shady hollows in the cheeks, and the haggard lines about the mouth, she was a young woman yet. Indeed, had it not been for those hollows and lines, she would have been pretty--as she was when the clear cheeks had no wanness in their paleness, but were round and soft; when the straight mouth pouted ever so little, and the sharp eyes were bright, and the fine dark hair was profuse instead of scanty. But she laid no claim to prettiness now, and dressed as plainly as feminine propriety would allow.

As she sat in the linen and drugget-covered parlour, which was a drawing-room when in full-dress, she could not help a half-conscious restraint creeping over her. But this was not because Miss Sandys was an ogress, rather because she herself had grown semi-professional even in holiday trim. She looked into the compressed fire in the high, old-fashioned grate, and wondered how she would pass the coming idle week. She had spent a good many idle weeks at Carter Hill before; but they always came upon her afresh with a sense of strangeness, bringing at the same time a tide of old associations.

Miss Sandys was a blunt woman by nature, and it was only by great effort that she had become fine-edged. So she said to Miss West, with a sort of naïve abruptness, "I'll tell you what, Miss West, we'll have cake to tea, because there are only you and I, and it is the first night of the holidays; and we'll have a strong cup, since we have all the teapot to ourselves. I think I shall try my hand this week at some of my old tea-cakes and pies and things which my mother taught me to bake. I am going to have my cousin Jamie and his wife here. He is a rough sailor, and his conversation does not suit before the girls. She was only a small farmer's daughter, and cannot behave prettily at all. But they are worthy people, and are the nearest relations I have left in the world. Perhaps I'll take you to see them in the summer, Miss West. Ah, dear! it is liberty-hall at my cousin Jamie's little place. Peggy's Haven, he calls it, after his old ship and his old wife. But it is a fine change for me, though it would not do for the young people to hear about it--you understand, Miss West."

Miss West understood, and she readily acquiesced in the prospect of meeting Captain and Mrs. Berwick. She was even flattered by it. The right chord of genuine nobility was in her, though she was reported to be satirical. It was true that she was slightly disposed to make abrupt, ironical speeches, the practice being one of her few small privileges. But she felt that Miss Sandys' confidence was honourable alike to giver and receiver, and that the terms on which she lived with her employer did no discredit to either. The fact was that Miss West returned thanks for these same terms in the middle of her confession of errors every day of her life.

Accordingly Miss West drank the strong tea, and did her best to relish the little blocks of cake, though they were slightly stale; and not the less did she enjoy them that she settled in her private mind to propose buttered toast next time, and to prepare it herself. She listened and replied to Miss Sandys' conversation, which did not now run so much on school incidents as on affairs in general. Miss Sandys' talk was shrewd and sensible at all times, and not without interest and amusement, especially when it diverged, at this point and that, to her own experience, and to the customs and opinions of her youth, when faded Miss West was a baby.

Christmas brought holidays to Miss Sandys' school, but Christmas Eve was, in other respects, very unmarked. It would have been dull, almost grim, to English notions. There was no Christmas tree, no waits, no decorating of the church for the morrow. Still, it was the end of the year--the period, by universal consent, dedicated to goodwill and rejoicing all over the world--the old "daft days" even of sober, austere Scotland. Jenny and Menie, in the kitchen, were looking forward to that Handsel Monday which is the Whit Monday of country servants, and the family gathering of the peasantry in Scotland. First footing and New Year's gifts were lighting up the servant girls' imaginations. The former may be safely looked upon as over with Miss Sandys and Miss West, but they were not without visions of New Year's gifts--the useful, considerate New Year's gifts of mature years. Miss West was at this moment knitting an exquisitely fine, yet warm, veil which she had begun two months ago, and which she had good hopes of completing within the next few days. Miss Sandys had a guess that this veil was for her velvet bonnet, and looked at it admiringly as a grand panacea for her spring face-ache.

In the course of the evening Miss Sandys, after a fit of absence of mind, suddenly asked Miss West's name.

On the spur of the moment, she answered, with surprise, "Why, Miss West, to be sure. What do you mean, Miss Sandys?" Then she reflected, laughed, and owned that she had almost forgotten that she had a Christian name. But she had certainly got one, and it was Magdalene, or Madge, or Maddie; once it was Mad; and as she said Mad she laughed a second time, to conceal a break in her voice.

Miss Sandys smiled awkwardly and guiltily, and observed quickly, "My Christian name is Christian. Did you know that, Miss West? Oh, I forgot; you must have seen it marked on the table and bed linen."

"Mine is to be read on my pocket-handkerchiefs. Our Christian names preserved on table-cloths and pocket-handkerchiefs!--droll, isn't it, Miss Sandys?"

"Of course they are in our books and letters," corrected matter-of-fact Miss Sandys. "I dare say they are in a couple of family Bibles, too (at least, I can speak for one), and in the records of births and baptisms in session books, if these are not destroyed by damp and rats; and since names are recorded in heaven," Miss Sandys was drawn on to ramble, "surely our Christian names are there, my dear."

Miss West knew as well as if she had been told it, that Miss Sandys was about to bestow on her a present with which her Christian name was to be connected. Miss Sandys' eyes had failed through long looking over lessons, and she no longer did any handiwork, save coarse knitting, hemming, and darning. But she had a fuller purse than her companion, and shops, even metropolitan shops, were to be reached by letter from Carter Hill.

In addition to the strong tea and the cake, Miss Sandys further treated Miss West to a supper of such dainties as toasted cheese and Edinburgh ale. There were prayers--they seemed quite family prayers--with only the four worshippers to join in them. Then there was a shake of the hands, and Miss West lit her candle, retired, and shut herself up in her own little room. Its daily aspect was so unchanged, that it appeared when she entered it as though the holidays had not come, and that it must still be the ordinary bustling school life.

She sat down, though there was no fire, and thought a little, till she fell on her knees and prayed in low murmurs that God would enable her to bear this season, which made her heavy, sick, and faint with associations, and that He would render her contented with many undeserved blessings, and resigned to many natural penalties which He ordained. Next, with strange inconsistency to all but the Hearer of prayer and the Framer of the wayward human heart, she besought to be forgiven and delivered from levity and folly--to be kept humble and mindful of death. "It is ill tearing up weeds by the roots," she said to herself plainly, when she had risen from her knees, "and I am vain and volatile, and I like to mystify and tease my neighbour to this day."

II.

Christmas Day rose with a clear, frosty blue sky. Miss Sandys and Miss West both felt the unwonted stillness of the house; and they could not help a lurking suspicion that time without public occupation might hang a dead weight on their hands. The two ladies went through the ceremony of wishing each other a merry Christmas, Scotland though it was. Miss Sandys went off to put into execution her holiday cooking practice--for it was refreshing to her to have a bowl instead of a book in her grasp--and to make her preparations for welcoming her primitive cousins. Miss West sat down to write her letters and to work at her veil and at her other New Year's gifts.

She wished she could work with her mind as well as her fingers, so that it might not run on picturing what this day was in tens of thousands of homes throughout Christendom. It had always been an unruly member this fancy of hers, and it was particularly busy at this season. Yesterday the roads had resounded with the blithe tramp of eager feet hieing homewards. To-day the air was ringing with the pleasant echo of voices round hearths, the fires of which flashed like the sun, and where age and youth met in the perfect confidence and sweet fearlessness of family affection. In her mind's eye, she had yesterday seen railways and coaches disgorging their cheerful loads; she had witnessed the meetings at lodge gates, in halls, and on the thresholds of parlour and cottage kitchens; she had looked on the bountiful boards, where cherished guests crowned the festival, of which Miss Sandys' rasping tea and stale cake was a half-pathetic, half-comic version. To-day she was in spirit with the multitude walking in close groups to holly-wreathed churches, sharing in the light-hearted thoughtlessness of many an acknowledgment, and in the deep gratitude of many a thanksgiving. She strove to put herself aside altogether in her meditations, and simply to rejoice with those who rejoiced; but she had not attained this degree of unselfishness; she could not help believing sometimes that she had plucked all the thorns and none of the roses of life. But if you suppose that she betrayed this yearning and pining to the world at large, you are very much mistaken. As has been told, she had the right chord of genuine nobility and generosity in her, and she laboured to fit her cross to her own back, so that it might not overshadow and crush others. Her fingers went nimbly about her gifts--trifling things, only enough to gladden simple hearts. She gratified Miss Sandys by praising her rusty accomplishments in cookery; she uttered a jest or two for the benefit of Jenny and Menie, who had a liking for her, though they called her "scornful;" and she brought in holly and box from the garden to decorate the sitting-rooms. The last move, however, proved nearly a failure, for there was one little pink and white blossom of laurustinus, which had ventured out in a sheltered nook, though half of its leaves were blanched ashen grey. It somehow or other raised such a tide of sentiment in her as all but overcame her.

Miss West desired work for this season, and she got work, and tolerably hard work too, for besides completing her New Year's gifts, she had to help to entertain Captain and Mrs. Berwick.

The visitors were so vulgar, according to fine people, that they were not even sensible of their own vulgarity. And so good-natured were they, that they were not offended because cousin Sandys did not invite them with any of the genteel parents of her pupils. They took this reserved hospitality as a complimentary admission of their kinsmanship. But they were not intrinsically more coarse-minded than many dukes and duchesses. Captain Berwick, it is true, was nautical in his tone, and talked shop, but that is permitted to sea captains in novels, nay, enjoined upon them. He was apt to be broad in his jokes, and to use unwarrantable expressions, for which he bent his shock head in penitent apology the moment after he had used them. "It is the effect of bad habits, Kirsten and Peggy," he would cry: "you women know nothing of bad habits any more than of bad words."

Mrs. Berwick was a particularly round-eyed woman, and was plump and ruddy where the Captain was battered and weather-beaten. She placed the scene of most of her narratives in the kitchens of her acquaintances, and scrambled with her _dramatis personæ_ through the strong situations of a servant's history.

Nevertheless the manner of the Berwicks was not without the refreshing influence of common, rude fresh air. They were not exceptionally coarse-minded, but unluckily they were neither strong nor fine minded. They were ponderous, clumsy beings, and although genuine and warm-hearted, were destitute of internal resources. They expected to be constantly eating and drinking, or to be constantly entertained. If they were not entertained, they showed their weariness without restraint, by yawning outrageously. The entertaining of Captain and Mrs. Berwick was therefore no sinecure. But Miss West was loyal. She walked with the Captain, so that he might have more than his one smoke a day, and perseveringly copied and sang Braham's songs for him. She designed and cut out patterns for Mrs. Berwick, who, as the Captain had saved money, did not make her own dresses, but nevertheless loved to accumulate patterns of sleeves, capes, and flounces. She listened to her tales, and helped her to as much more kitchiana as she could produce on short notice. She told how Betsy had worn feathers and been taken to prison on suspicion of theft; and how Marianne her sister had hoarded her wages in order to secure legal advice for Betsy, and had captivated and married an officer of the court in which Betsy had been tried, and how it had all happened in a family where Miss West had lived.

III.

Captain and Mrs. Berwick were gone. The holidays at Carter Hill were all but ended--"all but ended," Miss Sandys repeated with a little sigh of relief, and an inclination to moralize on that weariness which is the result of pleasure. When Miss West came down in the morning the kettle was steaming on the hob, the teapot under its cosie, and the couple of rolls and the dish of sausages were set in their places. Miss Sandys--her working apron lying ready to take up on the side-table behind her--was bent to the last on buns and pork pies, though she frankly admitted they were vanity. But the girls must be broken from their home dainties by degrees, and Jenny and Menie must have "cakes" to carry to their homes on their Handsel Monday.

Miss West found a letter on her plate. It caused her complexion to change, and her sharp eyes to fasten on it fixedly. No wonder her head swam and her ears rang. She was going through the uncomfortable process of turning back some ten or twelve years in her life. It was a strange letter to come to her--a large letter, which had been charged double postage; a letter with the elements of mortification in it, as well as other elements, both to sender and receiver. It was written in a big, scampering hand.

"Dear Mad," it began, "it is so queer to be addressing you again. I
remember when I used to say 'Mad' to a white-faced, dark-eyed girl.
Was she pretty, I wonder? Some people said so, but I don't know,
only I have never seen a face quite equal to hers since--never. Mad
and I were great friends when I used to visit her elder brother;
great friends, indeed, in a bantering, biting way. But it was Mad
who bantered and bit; certainly I did not banter and bite again,
rarely even so much as gave a gentle pinch, for I would not have
hurt Mad for the world, and Mad did not hurt me. At least she never
meant it seriously, and she was always so piteously penitent when
she thought she had wounded my feelings. Oh, dear, quizzing Mad! she
had such a soft heart in its bristling shell, and I hurt it. I hurt
Mad--yes, I know; I know to my sorrow and shame.

"Mad, do you remember how you went every day to meet a timid little
brother coming from school along a lonely moorland road, where there
were broomy braes in June and heathery braes in September? What a
convenient custom it was for me, since the little brother, unlike
little monsters of the same kind, had neither eyes nor ears but for
his own avocations, and trotted on obediently in front of us. The
sight of my own little Bill's satchel gives me a turn, and makes me
feel spoony to this day. Do you remember your great dog, Mad? (what
a child you were for pets!)--and who it was used to go to the kennel
to feed it with you? If that dog had been a true Bevis, it would
have torn that hulking fellow where he stood, yet he meant no harm;
nay, he had a strong persuasion that he was doing something
meritorious (how he hit it I can't tell) in not committing himself
and binding you when he had no more than a clerk's paltry income.
But I have heard that trees, stripped of leaves in flowery May,
revenge themselves by bursting out green, if the frosts will let
them, in foggy November. So the prudence of twenty-five may be the
folly of thirty-five. It was rank mean-spiritedness in me not to go
through thick and thin, through flood and fire, for Mad. What in the
world was worth striving for if she was not worth it? Ah, I lost my
chance when I might have taken it, and trusted the rest to
Providence! But I did not know, though I fancied I did, the value of
the jewel, the price of which, in stern self-restraint, I refused to
pay. I might have been another man if I had not been so prudent,
for, as I have said, not another face has been to me quite (no, not
by a long chalk) what Mad's once was. It was only yesterday that I
heard by chance--and the story has haunted me since--that Mad is
still a single woman, her family all dispersed, and she a teacher in
a school--my quizzing, affectionate Mad a drudging, lonely teacher!

"After being so prudent, it is not wonderful to record that I was
fickle, though circumstances, and not my will, separated Mad and me
at first. I could not get down to the old place so regularly as I
was wont to do, which annoyed me, and I did my best to get rid of
the obstacles. When I did get down, Mad was not at home, and I had
no right to follow her. We met seldomer; we grew stiffer and
stranger to each other. You are acquainted with the process, Miss
West, though perhaps not fully with my share in it. The impression
which Mad had made on me, unique as it was, faded and was overlaid
by others. I met another girl, whom I liked too, and whom it
appeared so much simpler--more expedient and advantageous--for me to
love and to marry. I married her, breaking no vows, not writing
myself faithless, far less treacherous, but only fickle. Yet I had
once known, if ever man knew, that I had made Mad's strong heart--I
think it was strong, although it was soft to me--beat in tune with
mine. I had done all I could, short of saying the words, to impress
Mad with what were my wishes and intentions, I had preferred her in
every company, followed her when I was down at the old place, like
her shadow (her shadow, indeed!). I had elected her my confidante
and adviser, and poured all my precious opinions and plans--my very
scrapes--into her curious, patient ears. Mad, have you forgotten
how once, like an old-fashioned, grandiloquent muff, I showed you
the picture of a perfect woman in a book of poetry--'Paradise Lost'
it might have been, and 'Eve' for any special appropriateness in the
picture--and broadly hinted my private idea that the perfect woman
was fulfilled in Mad!--lively, faulty Mad! Your sisters were very
anxious to read the passage which I had selected for your study, and
from which I was evidently pointing a moral; but you closed the book
abruptly in the old seat behind the round tea-table with the brass
rim. I suppose the sisters don't know the passage to this day?

"Having been fickle, I was a great deal better off in my wife than I
deserved. Remember, Mad, my wife and the mother of my children was a
good woman; I was reasonably happy with her, and I trust I bore her
tender reverence. She died and left me with our children two winters
ago. When we meet again, it will be where there is neither marrying
nor giving in marriage. Now, when I can do her no wrong, I think of
another to whom I did wrong; than whom there was never another to me
the same--no, nothing like it. Learning that Mad has been true--oh!
Mad, _you_ could never have been anything else but true--I have
wondered whether I might not be allowed to do something to atone,
whether I was not worth having still, and whether I could not--a
bold phrase, but it will out--make it up to Mad, a solitary single
woman, a teacher in a school. Oh! Mad, I say again, what a hard fate
for you!

"I cannot offer an immense inducement. I am not a merchant prince,
though I am richer than I was in the old days; yet somehow I do not
care to boast of my riches to Mad, and I am a widower with two small
children--not models. I dare not send you my _carte_, and I don't
want yours. You are always the same Mad to me that you have been
through all those years, and will be to the end of the chapter,
whether you answer me yes or no. You will answer yes. You were
always great for magnanimity, and flamed up on it, dark eyes, white
cheeks, and all, when you were a wild lassie. Don't tell me you are
less magnanimous as a brave, hard-working woman, or you will sap my
faith in womankind.

"Mad, how this Christmas season stirs me with the far-off murmurs of
another Christmas, when you and I pulled the holly and the other
thing--the thing with the tiny, fair, frost-bitten clusters of
blossom--some sort of laurel wasn't it? That old Christmas, who can
describe? What glamour over the prosaic family dinner and carpet
dance to see the old year out and the new year in? Say the word,
Mad, and before the first full moon of this new year has waned to
half a cheese she will shine down upon us, anew, with the old
shining. I swear it on the part of your old friend,

BILL NAIRNE."

What Miss West said when she read the letter was, "Make it up, indeed! Redeem me from such degradation! Crown me with such honour! Intolerable arrogance! How could he take it upon him? But it is like Bill; conceited fellow!"

Miss West was properly indignant. The letter was so unsuitable in every respect. All her life she had been famous as a woman of spirit--the spirit which will cause a woman to decline an obligation as long as independence is possible, and which will not have for pity what it cannot have for love. She would prove to Bill Nairne that it was no such hard fate as he supposed to teach a school under Miss Sandys, no such promotion, as he fondly imagined, to be placed at the head of the household of a pompous widower with a pair of spoilt children. She would convince him that a woman of her age is more difficult to please than a girl, and is not to be led off her feet by a few impertinently recalled reminiscences, nor to be won by the tardy wag of a finger. She would teach Bill Nairne a lesson undreamt of in his philosophy--that all the nonsense about old maids, their humiliations, their forlorn condition, and their desperate welcoming of late offers was wholly false.

She selected the smallest sheet of note-paper from the packet lying beside the exercises in her desk, and wrote:--

"Dear Sir,--I am glad to be able to tell you that, on the whole,
teaching in a school is not so hard a fate as you think. Miss
Sandys is an excellent woman, a reliable friend, and an agreeable
companion. The girls and their antecedents exhibit life to me
under considerable variety of characters and circumstances, and as
pupils they are mostly affectionate as well as interesting. I must
remain indebted for your good opinion, and you have my best wishes
for your future welfare, but I beg to decline your--gratuitous"
(Miss West had written the word, but she changed it into--not
gracious, but) "generous offer. Without offence to you, old times
do not come again.

"Believe me, yours very sincerely, M. WEST."

Miss West read her letter, and considered it was, perhaps, too brief. She did not want to part with him in an unfriendly fashion. Her last words to Bill Nairne must be such as she herself could think of without pain. So she rummaged among her Christmas gifts, and found a dancing Dervish and a brightly-embroidered ball. These she wrapped up with the letter, and made a small parcel of the whole, after she had added this postscript: "Please give the enclosed toys as cheap New Year's playthings to the children. Tell them, if you choose, that they come from an old friend of papa's, whose name was--Mad."

IV.

Miss West took the letter to the post-office herself after dinner, as she was going to inquire for a pupil who lived near Carter Hill, and who was sick--unhappy child!--from holiday junketing. Miss West could not recover her equanimity till that letter was out of the house. It had shaken her, satirical and discreet though she was. It had also given her a guilty sensation towards Miss Sandys. She could not endure that even the servants should read the address:--"W. Nairne, Esq., Waterloo Lodge, Bridgeton, Strokeshire," though W. Nairne, Esq., might have stood for her brother-in-law, her uncle by marriage, or her maternal grandfather for aught they could tell. She held her hand over the superscription as if to hide it from herself as she walked along under the newly-risen moon, as it cast its light on a crisp sprinkling of snow. It was true Christmas weather at last, and this was something like a Christmas adventure for her. But not the less did she wish the Christmas ended, and the moon replaced by gas jets of the smallest size. "A pretty story for the girls if they should get hold of it," she thought, and shuddered. She did not recover altogether till she had posted her packet, and walked half a mile further on. At length she passed through a creaking gate and a shrubbery, and was shown up to a smart drawing-room. She was there to ask for the health of Miss Victoria Middlemass, the daughter of a gentleman who led a country gentleman's life on the proceeds of a sleeping partnership in a mercantile house in a large town at some distance.

Mrs. Middlemass came in hurriedly. She had only time to wish Miss West a merry Christmas and a good New Year, and to announce that Vicky was quite herself again, except that the bun fever had left her rather pale, and she had not got back all her appetite. She could not, however, make the same complaint of Mr. Middlemass, who had just come in ravenously hungry from the train. He had been accompanied by another gentleman, who had been introduced to him before he left the north, and whom Mr. Middlemass would not allow to go over to the inn at Stoneham, where he was to spend a few days with a friend. Mr. Middlemass and his new acquaintance were still at dinner.

Miss West was hurrying away after having discharged her commission, in order not to detain Mrs. Middlemass from her husband and his guest, and not to impose on master or servant the trouble of seeing her home.

But as they were exchanging smothered good-byes near the open dining-room door, Mr. Middlemass, who was frank and hospitable, broke through the clatter of knives and forks, and called out unceremoniously, "My dear, who is that you are taking leave of?"

"It is only Miss West, my dear," his wife replied softly to quiet him.

"Miss West!" and he banged from his seat and bounced to the door. "Miss West! the very woman in the nick of time. Stay, Miss West, and thank your stars; here's an old friend come a long way to see you."

Miss West turned, and there, behind the cordial face of the master of the house, who suspected nothing, and was only happy to be helpful to a brother merchant, were the perfectly recognizable lineaments of that old personable fellow, Bill Nairne.

Miss West for a second fancied that the letter she had posted to him ten minutes before had sped like a telegram to its destination, and that he had sped back on the telegraphic wires to remonstrate with her and expose her. The next instant she was sensible that the accident of his being there in person must be a result of a previous change of mind on his part.

Bill Nairne had stared, and stammered in mechanical accents, after Mr. Middlemass supplied him with the keynote, "Miss West, the very person, let us thank our stars!" But he soon recovered himself, and then shook her hand warmly, and declared, in his old, off-hand manner, "I shall see you home, Miss West;" for Miss West had no sooner recovered her breath and her small share of colour, than she combated Mr. Middlemass's pressing invitation to remain and spend the evening with them. No; Miss Sandys was expecting her; she thanked him and Mrs. Middlemass, but she could not stay on any account, so that there would be no use in sending over a message or a note to Carter Hill. Neither was it on Miss West's cards that Bill Nairne should escort her to Carter Hill, or, indeed, that she should have any escort at all. "Do not think of such a thing; I could not allow it." Mrs. Middlemass came to Miss West's aid, and alleged in her ignorance, "There is no occasion for it, Mr. Nairne; it is only a step to Carter Hill, and Miss West is accustomed to walk across after dinner, when Miss Sandys has a message for us. Remember, we are very quiet people here compared to what you are in the north. Besides, if Miss West is timid, I can manage to send a servant, or," she went on with greater hesitation, "Mr. Middlemass will be delighted to go, he knows the way; but you must not put yourself about on any consideration."

Miss West rather indignantly denied being timid, timidity being out of her _rôle_, and then she judged prematurely that the matter was settled. She had got so accustomed to order about girls that she had fallen into the bad habit of expecting that her will should be law to all the world, with the exception of Miss Sandys. As for Mr. and Mrs. Middlemass, they at least knew that she could take care of herself.

It was another shock to Miss West, another tumultuous, inopportune return to the experience of half a score years back, to find that she could no more dictate to Bill Nairne on this small matter than she could have done it as Mad of the old days.

"Say no more about it, Miss West. I'll go home with you, of course." Bill thus put her down with an intrepidity, if anything, increased with his increased weight physically and commercially.

This completely confounded Miss West, and made a greater muddle of her former and her present identities than had yet been effected.

"I'll see Miss West home, and we'll have a talk together of our old friendship as we walk along," Bill maintained with the confident coolness of power, towards the self-contained, self-sustained teacher.

It was something unprecedented for Miss West to be walking to Carter Hill on a man's arm, an old friend's arm. She felt an odd sensation stealing over her as if she were no longer able to take care of herself, as if she were no longer herself, her late self, at all; and the moon helped the illusion.

Silence descended on Miss West and Bill Nairne, after the first forced commonplaces. He glanced furtively at her, and lost his confidence and coolness, and hung his head--the respectable prosperous merchant!--but not at what _he_ saw. What did she see? Nothing but that the sword had worn the scabbard. Mad had been true to herself. Mad could not have been otherwise than true, as he had written. But the consciousness of what Mad would see when she lifted up her eyes and looked him in the face made him droop his head. He had got a glimpse of it that morning, when, as the thought of Mad grew more and more vivid in his mind, he saw something reflected in the glass which did not necessarily belong to bodily maturity. The conviction returned to him with fresh, poignant regret, in the peaceful hush and subdued splendour of the winter night. There were lines in his face which Mad should never have seen there, without which he would have been nearer heaven. There were hard, unbelieving lines, supercilious lines, self-indulgent lines, lines of the earth, earthy, corresponding to hard and gross lines in the spirit within. The respectable, prosperous merchant, had fallen from his original level. He had not attained to the chivalrous, Christian manhood which he had the prospect of when he was Mad's promising lover. He had lowered his standard, forsaken his principles, lost his faith a few times since then. The gulf between Mad and him was wider now. He felt this walking on the moonlight December night by Mad's side again.

It was in a somewhat different tone from that of his letter that Bill Nairne said at last, "Mad, will you have the worst of me? Will you do something for me and mine after all? I might have been another man if I had got you long ago, Mad."

"Would you have been a better and a happier man, Bill? Could I do anything for you yet? Answer me truly," she said, hurriedly heaping the self-forgetful, quivering sentences one upon another.

"Anything!" exclaimed big Bill Nairne with intense conviction and hyperbole, more excusable than his old prudence and fickleness, "Anything! Mad, you could do everything with me, and with little Bill and Bob. We should no longer be egotistical and frivolous, with you to keep us right, you good, single-hearted Mad."

* * * * *

Miss Sandys was entitled to say, "You have come out this Christmas, Miss West. I shan't allow my assistant to be taken off her satirical staid feet another Christmas. I'll lock the next one up for the holidays. It is all those holidays; you would never have thought of such foolish things had you been busy teaching. I'll lock the next one up, or I'll send her to her friends, who will live, I trust, in some peaceful valley, where there are no old acquaintances, or for that matter, men of any kind. I shall, indeed, Miss West, for I hate changes." Miss Sandys had not to dread changes much longer. A sister of Miss West came and supplied her place, and lived so long with Miss Sandys that she closed her superior's eyes like a dutiful daughter, and succeeded to the goodwill of Carter Hill School.

* * * * *

PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes
Page 21 "everyday" changed to "every-day"
Page 30 "common-place" changed to "commonplace"
Page 45 "lifelong" changed to "life-long"
Page 62 duplicate "it" removed
Page 77 "face was white" changed to "face was as white"
Page 81 "confided in her; the" changed to "confided in her; she"
Page 85 "Fox-holes" changed to Foxholes
Page 110 "she "bridled" well," changed to "she "bridled" well."
Page 112 "company travelled," changed to "company travelled."
Page 152 "It had been a sen" changed to "It had been a sent"
Page 186 "sea-weed" changed to "seaweed"
Page 186 "careworn" changed to "care-worn"
Page 201 "praise God and he" changed to "praise God and be"
Page 215 "canary bird," changed to "canary bird."
Page 222 "selfishnesss" changed to "selfishness"
Page 241 "suspense?" changed to "suspense!"
Page 247 "powr" changed to "power"
Page 248 "their mother," changed to "their mother."
Page 255 "to the pathos" changed to "to the pathos of"
Page 293 "circnmstances" changed to "circumstances"
Page 297 "small-pox" changed to "smallpox"
Page 307 "horseflesh" changed to "horse-flesh"
Page 342 duplicate "a" removed
Page 344 "New-Year's" changed to "New Year's"
Page 348 "themsevles" changed to "themselves"