Chapter VI: A Mother's Confidences

IT was not until the following day that Joan had an opportunity to talk with her mother, and then, as she wanted some things which the village could not produce, Joan drove her over to shop in the small town of Coppleton.

The little jingle did credit to Joan's painting, and the old pony trotted briskly along. It was a lovely still October afternoon. The woods were clothed in shimmering gold and brown, the sky was a pure pale blue, and the dark slender pines stood out in silhouettes against the horizon. A happy smile played about Joan's lips; she raised her head, and exclaimed:

"Isn't it delicious air, Mother? It is so exhilarating."

"I find it cold," Mrs. Adair said, drawing her fur cloak tightly round her.

Joan tucked the rug more completely over her knees.

And then she said a little abruptly: "I have sent in my refusal to that offer made me, Mother."

"You mean the post of teacher somewhere?"

"Yes."

"I think you are wise. I do not see how your father could get on without you here."

"No; and he tells me you are wanting to go abroad again this winter?"

"It is the beginning of the year and the early spring, that tries Cecil so," said Mrs. Adair slowly. "She is already getting back her cough again here, which I hoped she had lost altogether."

"Father and I are woefully disappointed," said Joan impulsively. "He is not so young as he was; he worships the ground you tread upon, and feels your absence keenly. His heart has been set upon keeping you at home this winter. I suppose it is not possible for Cecil to go abroad without you?"

"Hardly," said Mrs. Adair with a little laugh, "and, my dear Joan, your father will not miss us when we are gone. I cannot, as you know, throw myself into the small life of a small village. There is always an undercurrent of friction and dissatisfaction when we are home. It is my fault. You are a woman now and I suppose you have your own thoughts and ideals. They must take you farther than the horizon of Old Bellerton. Your father considers that the four walls of a house is the boundary of a woman's life work and ambition. But then he has a wrong conception of the size of a woman's intellect. And I suppose he, and the class of thinkers like him, are mainly responsible for the rebellious outbursts of many girls who are now swelling the body of militant suffragettes."

"Yes," said Joan quietly; "but you have seen a lot of life, Mother, and must feel, as even I do, that old-fashioned notions about women are not always cruel or criminal."

"Your father is one of the kindest and most tender-hearted men that I have ever known," said Mrs. Adair quickly. Then she laughed. "We are a very modern mother and daughter to be discussing the head of the house in this fashion. But in choosing a husband, Joan, goodness and kindness of heart are not everything. I suppose a broad outlook on life and intellectual aspirations are not conducive towards content and happiness, when one's companion for life is offering one crumbs from his table."

"Oh, Mother!"

Joan's exclamation was involuntary.

Mrs. Adair pulled herself up.

"I have no business to speak so. I don't know why I chafe under the masculine rule. Your father would cut off his right hand for me, but to him the limits of a woman's wants and desires are astoundingly infinitesimal, and his estimate of her capacity in life is what any upper servant would fulfil."

"Yes," murmured Joan; "but he never interferes or tries to dictate to one."

"Well, all this is beside the mark. Cecil's health is the main question. I will not see her droop and die in uncongenial soil if I can prevent it. You are strong, Joan, and cannot understand how the aggressive biting cold of this village can shrivel up the low vitality of a delicate organisation. Your father accepted this living without any reference to me. He wrote of it as a godsend; and yet he must have known that the seeds of disease were sown in both our boys in this neighbourhood."

Joan looked at her mother with startled eyes.

"I did not know," she murmured.

"You were born," Mrs. Adair continued, "when I was a happy girl living in close touch with my old friends and old life. Poverty and privation were unknown to me, for my father's cheque-book was continually supplying extra comforts for us. When we came here, I began to experience the humiliation and misery of a narrow income. Both boys were born when I was least able to mother and nurse them. They and Cecil never had a chance. You take after your father's family, they took after mine, and the cold, biting winters here aggravated their delicacy. I could not rear them in comfort, as they should have been reared, and my handsome boys were taken from me before they had seen anything of life."

She paused. She could not even now mention the loss of her sons with composure.

"I suppose I was ambitious," she went on. "As you know, I come from a race of soldiers who have all earned their country's gratitude for their achievements. Do you think it is nothing to me to have no sons to follow in their grandfather's footsteps, to leave a name behind them, to bequeath in their turn sons to serve our Empire?"

There was such passion in Mrs. Adair's tone that Joan was speechless. The mother had never confided in her daughter so fully before. And Joan understood for the first time that it was the want of resignation to her loss that was the canker eating away at her heart, and marring much in her strong and purposeful character. After a few minutes' silence, Joan said softly:

"Perhaps you may yet have grandsons to serve their country. Cecil is most attractive. She will marry."

Mrs. Adair heaved a deep sigh.

"She has nothing of a constitution. I feel she may slip away from me as the boys did."

This little talk with her mother made Joan sympathise with her more than she had ever done before. She had always known that she occupied a very small place in her mother's affections. Her very health and strength were almost an offence.

"Like Father's family," said Joan to herself later that day. "Well, I will not wish myself otherwise. I would not have a Lovell's nervous, high-strung organisation, in spite of their aristocratic refinement and dainty graces, because someone must be strong and uniformly cheerful in the house; someone must shoulder the daily vexations and worries, and my shoulders are strong enough and broad enough to bear them. Poor Mother! She lives in haunting dread that death may snatch away her last treasure from her. And poor Father! To be so delighted with this living, and to imagine that Mother has no remembrances of the past! How I wish I had known more about those early struggling days here. I think I should have persuaded him to stay where he was. There is no possible hope now of her ever becoming reconciled to living here."

She made these reflections in her own room after returning from the drive. And when tea was over she took her organ key and slipped over to the church to have a practice by herself. She was just summoning a small boy from a cottage near to come and blow for her, when she heard strains of music coming from the church. She abandoned her intention and crept softly up into the old porch. There was no doubt that a master hand was upon the keys of her beloved organ. She held her breath, entranced, and then very noiselessly slipped inside and sat down upon a seat behind a big pillar, which effectually concealed her from view. Only two candles were lighted; Major Armitage was seated on her stool and was pouring out his soul in a flood of passionate, vibrating melody, though there was a hush and a sense of restrained force through every note he touched.

Joan had an intense love for music, and her ears quickly perceived that a strain of unfulfilled desire and expectation was in his music, and it made her heart ache to hear it. She almost felt that she was intruding upon a sacred time, when a soul was baring its griefs and longings, and for one moment she felt inclined to leave.

Then the music died away. A short silence fell, and then suddenly, in a soft, mellow tenor, he began to sing. The words were familiar, but Joan had never heard such an exquisite setting to them. She concluded it was an anthem, and yet from the harmony, it seemed more fitted for a solo.

"I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word
do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch
for the morning; I say more than they that watch
for the morning."

As he played, the darkness of the night seemed to loom around them, and then the first faint light of dawn took its place.

The triumphant emphasis of the first words, the assurance that waiting was the soul's steadfast and hopeful attitude, imprinted itself upon Joan's soul. When the Major came to a pause, she stole out of the church, and her eyes were moist with emotion.

"No wonder Maria said he played like an angel! How I long to have his gift! I wish I knew him!"

Then she shook her head with a little smile.

"There are other people in the world who are practising patience like myself."

When she joined the others, she found that her father was giving them an account of his visit to the Major.

"A very pleasant and well-informed man. He has been through deep waters. He just touched upon his profession. I should like you to have heard the way he spoke of it, Cecilia, and the grief it was to him when he left it. But he told me his father had a place in Yorkshire with a private chapel attached—it has gone to his eldest brother now—and from quite a youngster he spent all his spare time at the organ. Music is his hobby. He sometimes plays the organ at Queen's Hall, in town, for the weekly popular concerts. And I believe he composes and publishes. He told me if his blindness had continued, he would have become an organist somewhere. This place belonged to his mother, and she left it to him. He thought he ought to come down and live here, he said; but I think his heart is in town. I begged him to dine with us, but he asked me to excuse him. He walked back with me, and then went into the church to try the organ."

"I have just heard him playing there," said Joan.

"It is a treat to listen to him," said Cecil. "But it is very surly of him to shut himself away from society."

"He may have reasons for it," said Joan. In her mind's eye, Sophia's graphic picture came before her—the lonely man in the empty room, playing to somebody unseen.

There was a good deal of bustle in the rectory for the next few days. Mrs. Adair and Cecil were packing and getting ready for their Edinburgh visit. Cecil had plenty of mending, which she laughingly turned over to Joan.

"You are a born needlewoman; I am not. Oh, how I wish I could afford to have a maid of my own!"

Mr. Adair did not approve of this visit.

"You say this place is cold for Cecil; why, Edinburgh will be a hundred times as cold. It is the wrong time of year to go up to Scotland."

This remark was made to his wife.

She answered him impatiently.

"My brother's house is rather different from ours. It is heated with radiators, and has every comfort. Cecil will be in the lap of luxury."

He sighed.

"I am afraid it will be an expensive visit for so short a time."

His wife did not reply. She had made up her mind to go, and nothing would prevent her. She was not entirely heartless or indifferent to her husband's struggles to make both ends meet; but she had never been able to economise, and money seemed to leak away through her finger ends. She had periodical fits of retrenchment, but after making herself and everyone around her perfectly miserable by knocking off real necessities, she would relapse into her old happy-go-lucky way and spend as if she were a wealthy woman.

"I shall be thankful to get to a house with the 'Times' in it," she said to Joan that evening, as she turned over the local paper rather impatiently. "It is no wonder everyone is so sleepy in these parts. You have not even a magazine club going."

"We are starting one," said Joan quickly. "I suggested it, and if everyone will join, there will be no difficulty. I felt the dearth of books when I came here. Mr. Wilmot Gascoigne is taking the matter up, and they say what he does at all he does thoroughly."

"It is strange that he has not called," Mrs. Adair said. "He told me he quite intended to do so."

The very next day, he was announced about tea-time. When tea was over, he sat and talked to Mrs. Adair. Cecil yawned, and finally took up her novel, saying audaciously:

"I hate listening to other people's talk. And I cannot join in myself, for you are flying from one subject to another, and each one is deeper than the last. I'll leave the listening to Joan, who appreciates it."

"But we want Miss Adair to be more than a listener," said Wilmot, turning to Joan as he spoke.

Joan was too interested to remain silent. Wilmot Gascoigne was a good talker, and, what was rarer still, he liked to listen to others. Mrs. Adair and he had many things in common; but when they touched on politics, Joan became silent.

"I am no politician," she said, when Wilmot asked her opinion upon a certain statesman. "Everybody always believes in himself or his party, and seldom credits those who disagree with him with either principles or common sense. I should like the party spirit ousted from our Government."

Wilmot shook his head.

"It sounds simple, but it would be inextricably involved. If there were no longer two parties, the balance of power would be lost. And would measures ever be passed? Imagine the length of discussion when every member would have his individual idea, and each and all have a different scheme to propose."

"Everything is sacrificed to party now," said Joan; and then she was called out of the room by Sophia, who had someone from the village waiting to see her.

When she came back, her mother and Wilmot were discussing Venetian history. He stayed for a couple of hours, but before going told Joan he would like to send her down a couple of new books on Constitutional History, and she accepted the offer with much pleasure.

"I quite agree with Derrick," said Cecil, when he had gone away; "he is as dogmatic and book-musty as all such bookworms are. He is the kind of man who thinks any book above criticism, just because it is a book."

"Now, Cecil, you are talking nonsense," said her mother. "He is a man who has learnt as well as read. You can feel it in every word he says."

The next day they went. And Joan felt at first a terrible blank in the house, though she had infinite more leisure, which she occupied by visiting the parishioners.

Derrick met her coming home very tired one afternoon, after a long round.

"Take my arm," he said.

Joan looked at him with laughing eyes.

"The village would see us, and say we were courting," she said.

"It is a capital suggestion," said Derrick eagerly. "Let us begin at once."

Joan rebuked this levity.

He heaved a sigh.

"I'm going back to town to-morrow, and to work. Joan, don't you think, as an old pupil of the Dominie's, and an attached and grateful friend, I might be asked to spend Christmas at the rectory?"

Joan looked grave and considered.

"I don't think so, Derrick. We expect Mother and Cecil back, and our house is small. It sounds inhospitable—"

"Oh, I'll wait till Easter. You and the Dominie will be alone then. And, look here, Joan, let me advise you for your good. Don't be getting too thick with Motty. He's easily flattered, poor brute, and he really isn't the sort of fellow who will do you any good. What do you think he told me this morning? He said the annals of his family ought to be kept in the Zoo, for, as far as he could see, they had never got beyond their animal powers. Fighting, eating, drinking composed their lives, and that in no record since the Conquest could he find a Gascoigne who was a scholar and had used and cultivated the brains which had been given to him.

"'But you're a Gascoigne,' I said.

"You should have seen him rise to the bait. He simply swelled visibly."

"Derrick, I will not listen to you," said Joan, half laughing, half vexed. "I thought men's natures were too big to allow of backbiting. Why do you dislike Wilmot Gascoigne so?"

"Because you like him," said Derrick manfully and promptly. "And I know he will be your undoing."

"You are talking nonsense."

"So I am. Now, look here, Joan, I mean to talk good, sound, honest, sober sense with you now. My life and yours have always run together. But since I have lived in town, we've drifted a wee bit apart, and I want to remedy this. Will you let me do it in my own way?"

"No," said Joan quickly, and edging a little away from him. "I have my life here; you have yours in town. If we meet occasionally as old friends, it is very pleasant. Don't let anything spoil our friendship. And, oh, please, Derrick, be merciful this afternoon, for I am very tired."

Derrick took her hand and tucked it in his arm. "It is dark," he said. "Confound convention! Well, I will be patient, but you must realise, and I don't want you to forget it, that you have a very patient waiting friend in town. And his determination and patience are vying with each other in strength and—and in endurance. He will wait till he gets what he wants, but he will get it in the end."

Joan's hand trembled a little. She tried to withdraw it, but Derrick had captured it, and though he felt the quiver of it, he would not let it go.

When they were at the rectory gate, he said:

"This is my good-bye. I leave to-morrow."

Then his stern gravity melted, and it was in his most coaxing boyish tone that he said:

"Oh, Joan, my heart's dearest, do let me kiss your dimple!"

"You are preposterous, Derrick!"

Joan fled from him. Half-way up the drive, she turned. He was leaning his arms on the gate looking after her.

"Good-bye," she waved. "And work hard for your country, and think of your party last."

"I shall come back here for Easter," he said defiantly; "so mind you keep a spare room ready for me."

She laughed light-heartedly, and Derrick turned away with her sweet laugh ringing in his ears, not altogether dissatisfied with his parting talk with her.