Chapter XXII: Was It Happiness?

_June 11th, Wednesday._

THE tide has at last thoroughly turned, and Mother is better—still very weak, but improving steadily.

I write to Ernest constantly, and he to me; at least, he writes almost every day, which is as often as I do. His letters are all just exactly what they should be. Yet sometimes I seem to miss something in them—I cannot tell what. I read them over and over, looking for the something which I miss, and trying to discover what it is. And I look and try in vain.

Of Millicent I see very little. She is still all night with Mother, and still has to rest in the day. When we are together, it always happens that some one else is also present. Strangely enough, since I came home, I have never once been alone with Mother, never once alone with Millicent. And scarcely a word has as yet been spoken about my engagement. At first I thought nothing of this. Whilst Mother was so ill, nobody could think or talk of anything else—I least of all, perhaps. But now that she is so much better, out of danger, and only needing great care, I seem to want a little interest and sympathy in what concerns me so very closely.

Is this selfishness? I hope not. Isn't it natural? And does nobody care that I am going to be so happy? Yes, in spite of any small doubts or misgivings, so very very happy!

Mother cares. I see it in her dear face every time she looks at me. By-and-by she will say something.

Millicent has not once asked after Ernest. She has not congratulated me. She has not alluded in any way to the engagement. Is this intentional silence on her part? Is she simply preoccupied and not interested? But that would not be like Millicent. I hardly know what to think.

_June 20th, Friday._

To-day, for the first time, I have been alone with Mother. Millicent seems to be over done. She turned faint yesterday evening and had to go to bed, and she is not up yet. Juliet was with Mother all night, lying down, but not sleeping much. This afternoon Juliet went to her room to rest, and I was left in charge alone.

"Mind," Juliet said, "nothing to excite or worry the Mother, dear!" She spoke kindly, but very decidedly.

I felt terribly afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing. I knew how I should be blamed if anything went wrong—worse still, how I should blame myself.

It did not seem that there was much to do. Mother had been allowed to sit up for a short time in the morning; and she was drowsy and tired. I sat watching the dear face, feeling so unutterably thankful to know that she was given back to us again. And presently her hand stole into mine, her eyes opening slowly.

"Rhoda,—and nobody else here!"

I bent over to kiss her.

"I have been wanting to speak to you," she said, "about—"

"Yes, Mother."

"If things are all right, and for your happiness, I am glad—if all is as it should be."

"Why not, Mother dear?"

"Somehow, I did not quite expect—" and her eyes looked wistfully into mine. "I have not seen you alone—not once yet. They said I must keep quiet—not talk of things; and I have tried. But now perhaps I have waited long enough."

"Mother, you are glad for me?" I whispered. "You know Ernest a little; I mean, you know about him. And you will like him very very much. I know you will."

"He is nice, I believe, in many ways. I have heard so. But—," and a pause, "it troubles me to think—"

I asked what it was that troubled her. She said, after another break, "Millicent!"

"Did you think he cared for her?" My heart was beating fast; but I had to keep calm for her sake.

"Yes," was her instant answer. "He used to care."

"So long ago!" was all I could say. Am I never to have any peace because of Millicent?

Mother looked earnestly at me; and there was a slight negative movement of her head.

"So very long ago!" I repeated. "And he loves me now."

"You are sure!"

"Mother! How can I doubt it?"

"You are sure that it is all right?"

"Why, it can't be anything else! How can it be? He has asked me to marry him. He has told me himself that he loves me. What more can one want? Why should he ever have said a single word to me, if he cared for Millicent?"

I spoke fast and warmly, forgetting in my excitement the need to be quiet. She did not yet look satisfied, and I went on with increasing energy:—"It isn't as if I had not seen a great deal of him, a great deal! All these weeks he has been in and out. He knows me, and I know him. He has not seen Millicent for years and years." But as I spoke the words a cold doubt swept across me, and my mother said,—

"Yes. He saw her in London the other day."

Every pulse in me gave a throb. "Where?"

"She was staying there for three or four days, just before I was taken ill. She came and told me about it."

"Did she think he cared for her still?" My whole face was burning.

Mother did not at once answer. She lay thinking, with a troubled look in her eyes.

"I cannot fully remember what passed. I have had so many fancies since—in my illness. But the impression comes back to me of her face that evening, so young and bright, like the Millicent of childish days, unlike what she has been for years. And she said—"

"Yes." I hardly knew how to wait. "Tell me all. I have a right to know."

"Not if it were merely a matter of Millicent's own feelings."

"Tell me!" I urged.

"It may be a fancy of mine. I cannot be sure. I have had so much confusion. Looking back, I cannot always distinguish between dreams and realities. But I thought—certainly I thought she told me something. If I could only recall exactly what it was! She said that she had seen him more than once, and that he was not changed. Yes, she said he was not changed. I remember her smile when she said those words. And she told me he was the same towards her that he had always been—always in the past she meant. The same towards her, Rhoda dear! And then the next thing was to hear of your engagement."

"Mother, you must be mistaken," I said, as quietly as I could. "It could not have been as you think. If she had said that, you would have told me when you wrote." But even as I spoke, the doubting tone of her first letter came back to me, and my heart sank.

"Hardly in writing, darling—should I? I hoped to see you very soon, you know. And I was feeling ill even then, though nobody knew. But it made me very unhappy."

"Only, if it is all a mistake! You are not sure of what Millicent did really say."

"Not quite. The impression is strong, but I cannot be sure whether she actually said the words to me, or whether I saw them in her face. I do not think it can be altogether a mistake."

I knew I ought to stop this talk. It was bad for my mother. But how could I wait?

"It does not seem to me kind even to suppose that Millicent cares for him still, now he is engaged to me."

"It is not so much that, Rhoda—not so much whether she cares for him, but whether he cares for her—whether, as she said, he is still unchanged towards her."

"She could not have said it. It is not true. That must have been a dream of yours," I urged, out of a sore and doubting heart. "How could he have told her that he cared for her, just before he came and proposed to me? The thing isn't possible. It is out of the question."

I was trying to persuade myself, at least as much as to persuade my mother. She sighed and closed her eyes. "I think I am tired," she said faintly. "Never mind; things will come right in time—by-and-by."

Would they? I dared not say another word, she looked so worn-out. But a tumult raged within, which is not yet quieted. Was the thing so impossible? Is it so impossible? Do I really and truly know Ernest? There is one little mystery. What if the clue lies here?

Mother seemed to drop asleep, and I sat motionless. But presently, she opened her eyes, and gazed full at me.

"It was—'not' a dream," she said distinctly.

Before I could resolve what to answer, she was sleeping again, and I could not disturb her. As it is, she is the worse for our talk, more feverish than for a long while, and Juliet seems anxious. Yet how could I have managed differently, except by refusing to go into the subject at all? And that did seem to me impossible. Ought it to have been?

The pain of this uncertainty, this not knowing what it all means, and whom I may trust. When will things become clear?

_June 22nd, Sunday._

Millicent went home yesterday. She has done too much, and the doctor orders rest. Amy has managed well at the Vicarage while Millicent has been with us. Things are very different now from what they were a few years ago.

I begged Juliet to let me take Millicent's place in the nursing; and she has given way, on condition that I will strictly avoid all subjects that could excite or distress my mother.

"Not a word about Mr. Derwentwater at present!" she said. It is almost the first time that she has alluded to him beyond a rather formal remark when I first came home.

I have promised to be very careful, and Mother shows no inclination to bring the matter up again. Either she has said all that she wishes to say, or else it was a passing fancy, which has since faded.

_June 23rd, Monday._

To-day it came to me as something of a shock, that Millicent actually knows nothing of our engagement. Addie told me. She says nobody has heard of it, except just ourselves and aunt Marian. None of the Farrars family.

Then my notion that Millicent looked at me reproachfully, when first I came home, was pure imagination. She did not know. She does not know.

It seems strange that the fact should not have leaked out before this. But we have all been so busy nursing, and so busy thinking about Mother's state, as to have seen few outside people. There has been no time for talk, and no inclination. I have wondered sometimes in a passing way that nobody has said anything more to me about Ernest, but I have had no wish to bring the matter forward myself. My dread has been of the time when I should have to speak to Millicent. And now I know the reason,—I mean the reason why so little has been said. Even uncle Basil has not heard that I am engaged. If he had, he would not have been so long without speaking.

"Mother told me, because she and I were alone when the news came," Addie observed. "And I could not think what made her cry. She told me, and she said I must not let it out to anybody, because she did not know yet whether it could ever come to anything. I did not even say one word to Emmie, till mother said I might—I mean when we came together again. And I know that when Mother told aunt Marian it was only on condition that uncle should not hear, because he never can keep things long to himself. Will it ever come to anything, Rhoda? What made Mother say that? And was she really sorry? What made her cry?"

I hardly know what I said in answer. I silenced Addie as soon as I could. "Of course it will—of course!" I remember saying to myself.

_June 25th, Wednesday._

To-day I had to go to the Vicarage. A question had to be asked of Millicent, something about my mother's state at night, which could not well be explained in writing, and there was nobody except me to do it. Juliet could not be spared. So I had no choice in the matter.

I was shown into the dining-room, where Millicent sat in an easy-chair, working. She looked thin and rather worn; but her smile was the same as usual—not a particularly bright smile, only quiet and kind and contented. There is never anything brilliant about Millicent, but she is always the same. One never needs to feel doubtful what her next mood may be.

I asked the question which had to be put, and Millicent explained exactly what Juliet wanted to know. Then we both were still for two or three seconds. I did not like to get up and go away immediately, and a vague idea was taking shape in my mind. Should I tell her there and then how things were, and see for myself how she would take the news? I had been dreading all along having to speak to her about Ernest, because of my own uneasy feelings, yet now it seemed to me that nothing could well be worse than the state of uncertainty in which I had been so long. To speak out to Millicent might clear away mysteries. I was half resolved to try the plan.

"It is vexatious that I cannot go on with the nursing," Millicent observed, breaking the silence.

"You have done so much already. It has knocked you up."

"Juliet warned me that I was keeping on too long with the night-work; and if I had been sensible, I should have changed about with her for a time. But I liked it; and she could not persuade me. So I am just paying for my own imprudence. That is all, and I shall be all right in a few days."

"They tell me you were in Town lately."

"For part of the inside of a week."

"And you enjoyed it?"

"Very much."

"I suppose you saw a great many old friends?" I was feeling my way, not sure yet of my own intentions.

"A few; not a great many." Then a pause, and I felt her eyes studying me. "I saw something of one very old friend—Ernest Derwentwater."

I tried to meet her look, but my gaze went down before hers. In a moment, the past came before me with a flash: how I had meant to use my time in London for Millicent, how I had purposed to recall her to Ernest's mind, and how I had failed.

Yet, if I had not failed, Ernest's love would not now be mine. That thought came next, and with it a wonder,—could I truly feel regret for what had ended so happily?

If it is happily! Who can tell?

Besides, one may not judge by consequences. Whatever the results may be, I was wrong, I did wrongly. Why, beforehand in my journal I condemned in plain words the very line of action which I have since followed. Nothing can undo or excuse that.

Millicent spoke the words quite quietly, quite naturally, with no change of colour. But my whole face became crimson, and she saw it. She could not help doing so.

"He told me he had been seeing something of you at your cousin's house," she observed, and she said it as if it were the most simple thing in the world—as if it meant just nothing at all.

"Something of me!" The words burst out in scorn. At the moment, I could not have told whether it were scorn of Ernest or scorn of myself.

"That was what he said." She spoke in a curiously deliberate thoughtful way, as if weighing some question in her own mind, and only half attending to me. Her eyes had a far-away look in them.

"And you saw 'something' of him too, I suppose?"

"In those two or three days, yes."

"And you found him—" I meant to end with "the same as ever," but the words refused to be spoken. Strange to say, Millicent's answer was as if she had heard them.

"I found him very much the same as he always was, much more so than I should have expected, after so many years of absence—the old smile and manner, hardly altered. As I told your mother the evening after I came back, he was just his old self towards me." I noticed, or thought I noticed, the least possible break or falter in her voice, but almost immediately she went on in the same placid tone as before:—"He was quite one of us, you know, in the old days; and I could feel at once that he is one of us still, like an elder brother. It was pleasant to find no alteration."

A sense of dizzy bewilderment crept over me. Was this all? Had I been verily making a mountain of so utter a molehill? Then came a buck-wave of passionate distrust—distrust of myself, of Ernest, of Millicent. Was she trying to hoodwink me?

"And I suppose—" the words broke from me almost without intention on my part—"I suppose he never took the trouble to tell you that he was just on the verge of asking me to marry him!"

Millicent did not speak at once. I saw still no change of colour, no sign of distress. She wore only a very serious and a very thoughtful expression. She seemed to be trying to read my face, perhaps also to be making up her mind to some course of action. That at least was my after-idea. At the moment, I was not composed enough to have any clear impressions.

"No, he did not tell me so."

"He 'might' have done so! He asked me the very next time we met—the next time he came to the house. But perhaps he wasn't sure; perhaps he had not made up his mind. If he only said to you that he had seen 'something' of me!"

She was silent again; thinking earnestly, it seemed to me. I did not know how to stand her quiet manner, in its contrast with my own inner tumult.

"At all events, whatever he meant or did not mean, he did speak, and he and I are engaged."

There was one quick glance up. "Are you, really?"

"Why not? Is it so impossible? Why should nobody ever care for me?" I demanded, speaking vehemently.

"I did not mean that, dear. Oh, no. Only, I did not quite expect—I did not fancy it was already settled." She said the words softly and clearly, with a smile; not a forced smile, but a free affectionate lighting up of her whole face. "And you have been all this time at home and have never once thought of telling me! Was that kind? If it is for his happiness—and for yours—don't you 'know' how glad I shall be? More than glad. Happy and thankful. Could you not be sure, Rhoda?"

I do not know what it was in her look that stirred me. I had never seen her wear so sweet a look before,—a kind of almost heavenly sweetness. When I look back now, I see it as the look of a victor in the fight. But at the moment, I could not grasp or measure its meaning; I only felt vaguely the contrast between her and myself. Perhaps it was partly reaction from what I had gone through; but all at once my heart was beating to suffocation, and tears were blinding my eyes, and I had no power to say a word. I saw dimly her kind concerned face; and then I started up to hurry away.

But she would not let me go; and the touch of her hands, and the sound of her soft "Poor Rhoda!" broke me down completely. I cried, oh, how I cried, with her arms round me, and her face against mine. And I could not have told her half the reasons why, if indeed I knew them myself. It was such a jumble of bewilderment and pain, of remorse for the past and of fear for the future.

As she held me, and as I sobbed, one gleam came of what had to be done; and I heard my own voice gasping out, "Forgive me."

"What, for, my dear?"

I could not attempt to explain. I could only repeat, "Forgive me."

"If there is anything at all to forgive, I do forgive—entirely. So now you will feel happy, will you not?"

The goodness and sweetness that she showed! I never could have imagined anything like it.

"And now you will feel better altogether," she went on. "A good cry clears the air sometimes. You have been under a great strain of anxiety lately; and that tells upon one. Don't you think you will be wanted perhaps at home by this time? It will not do for me to keep you too long. But another day you must come again, and tell me all about it. All about Ernest and yourself, I mean—" and she smiled, and spoke without the least falter. "I shall feel such an interest in the story. You must tell me the whole, from beginning to end."

I wanted to say more then, but she would not let me. "Not to-day," she said decisively. "Another day, dear. I have things to attend to now, and you have your home duties. But I want to hear it all soon. I shall feel such an interest in everything to do with you both."

Did she ever really care for him? And was she afraid to let me stay, for fear I should say something that I might be sorry for afterwards.