Chapter Fourteen
Charley’s plan
But as for “never mentioning it again?”
Before Philippa fell asleep that night, her mother was in possession of every detail of all that had happened since they parted. More, for more of coarse than Evelyn knew, or ever would know. The younger sister was not one to do things by halves, and when she gave her confidence it was completely given. She had confided in her mother all her life, and the longing to do so now, even at the risk of causing Mrs Raynsworth increased pain and mortification, was irresistible.
And it was far better so.
The fact which, naturally, was the most difficult for the mother to bear with equanimity was that of the necessity which Philippa had felt herself under of appealing to Michael Gresham.
“I could not have done it myself,” she said; “it came on, you see, mamma, through his knowing the housekeeper so well. Though what would have happened if he had not been told, I really do not like to think.”
“He suspected something, then, you think?” said Mrs Raynsworth, uneasily.
“Suspected,” Philippa exclaimed. “I beg your pardon, mamma, for repeating your words. Far more than that, he knew there was something not straightforward about us. And the worst of it was that he thought poor Evey so double and insincere. Oh, mamma, I was mad to do it.”
Self-blame disarms any kindly judge. Mrs Raynsworth could say nothing more to add to her daughter’s keen regret. On the contrary, she gently stroked her hand. They were sitting by themselves in Philippa’s own room after Evelyn had gone to bed.
“We can only hope,” she said again, “and, I think we may do so, that no harm will ever come of it. I am very grateful, truly grateful, to that good Mrs Shepton, and I should like her to know it.”
“I can write to her,” said Philippa, eagerly. “I should like her to see that I have told you everything, and I can say it all without – without mentioning names, or anything that would matter if by any accident the letter were seen. Oh, yes, as far as the housekeeper is concerned, I have no misgiving or sore feeling. It is that – that Mr Gresham I have such a horror of ever meeting again.”
“The one that Evelyn liked so much – who has asked you both – Evelyn and Duke at least,” (Mrs Raynsworth interrupted herself hastily, recalling certain injunctions in the confidences her elder daughter had already found time to give her as to the “impression” Philippa had made on Bernard Gresham at Dorriford), “I should say, to stay with him at his place, the place with the queer name?”
“No, I don’t mean Mr Gresham,” the girl replied; “but, mamma, you need not hesitate. I know he spoke of me to Evelyn and said something about her bringing me – me in my proper character, of course,” with a somewhat rueful smile. “And, if it had not been for all this, I daresay I should have liked to go. Evelyn says he is charming. But it is not he I am afraid of meeting again; he suspects nothing; as I told you, mamma, by some lucky chance he never caught sight of me once at Wyverston, and at the end, you know, when there was that risk of his travelling with us, I strongly suspect his cousin put a stop to it on purpose.”
“That was kind of him,” said her mother. “It shows you can trust him.”
“Oh, yes, he is a gentleman, of course, and Mrs Shepton says he is very kind-hearted and everything good. But, oh, mamma, I have a perfect horror of ever seeing him again; I felt so – so degraded, when I had, as it were, to throw myself on his mercy. You cannot think what it felt like,” and she shivered slightly.
Mrs Raynsworth did not at once answer. She seemed to be thinking deeply. Then she said:
“Philippa, my child, it will not do any good, or undo what cannot be undone, for you to allow yourself to grow morbid about it. Put it out of your mind as far as it is possible for you; you owe it to us all to do so, now that there is nothing more to explain, and that all is forgiven. Promise me that you will try to do this.” Philippa sighed deeply.
“Yes, mamma, I will try. I know it is the least I can do when you – papa and you – are so very, very good to me,” her voice trembled a little. “I will try. But do promise me, dear mamma, that if the question comes up of my going to Merle-in-the-Wold with Evelyn and Duke – they are sure to go some time or other – you will help me to get out of it? That is not morbid.”
No, under the circumstances, Mrs Raynsworth could scarcely call it so, as nothing was more probable, almost certain, than that Michael Gresham would be one of the party at his cousin’s. Under the circumstances, however, she much doubted if Evelyn’s zeal for a visit to Merle would hold good, though this opinion she kept to herself.
“I will promise never to urge you to do anything as painful to you as this idea seems at present,” Mrs Raynsworth replied. “And perhaps,” with a little sigh – for unworldly though the mother was, it could scarcely be that Evelyn’s glowing description of the master of Merle, and the evident “admiration at first sight” which her sister had aroused in him, had made no impression on the maternal imagination – “perhaps your instinctive dread of meeting the younger Gresham again is well founded.”
“I am sure of it,” said Philippa, in a tone of relief. “And, oh, mamma, there is one thing we – I – should be glad of, and that is that Charley did not come here while we were away. Of course,” (as had been the case) “his last letter – the last before we left – showed it was unlikely; but everything unlikely seems to have happened to me! And I could not bear him to know what I did – he would be furious.”
“Yes,” Mrs Raynsworth agreed, “I am afraid he would be. And I see no reason why he should ever hear of it. We took care not to let Hugh; and Leonard know where you had gone. I just told them that you had gone away again unexpectedly for a few days. I believe they had some vague idea that you had been summoned back to Dorriford.”
And after that first evening, though with no definite parti pris on the subject, Philippa’s eccentric escapade was practically buried.
Circumstances greatly helped to bring this about. For the very next morning came the looked-for news of Charley’s definite return – a return “for good,” as his people had got into the way of calling it. He was to stay at home, indefinitely at least, working at the special branch of literature which he had made his own, and in which his father’s advice and experience were of great value to him, and acting at the same time as Mr Raynsworth’s secretary, thus relieving his younger sister from the somewhat onerous duties of the last year or two.
“Tell poor old Phil,” he wrote, “that she is to have a regular right-down good holiday at last, to be idle and frivolous, and taken up about her clothes like other girls. She’s not had fun enough in her life, and it’s time she had some now. With Evey being at home, surely we can plan something of a change for Phil? We must talk it over when I get back. I have a few pounds by me that I have managed to get together, and I am determined to spend them on her.”
Philippa’s eyes glistened when her mother read aloud her brother’s letter, but though she smiled, her face was a little sad.
“I know what would be best,” said Evelyn, “if only we were sure of Duke’s coming next month! I am to let Mr Gresham know whenever it is quite settled; then he will invite us to Merle, and on the way there, at least we will make it the way there, Duke, and Phil, and I will stay a few days in London, and I shall choose two or three of the prettiest dresses you ever saw, for you, Phil.” But Philippa did not respond to the proposal.
“I count that I have had my holiday,” she said. “I enjoyed the visit to Dorriford exceedingly, and I shall enjoy having Charley more than anything. Don’t ask me to leave home again. Mamma,” with an appeal in her voice that was new to the self-reliant Philippa, “you won’t, will you?”
“Nobody will want you to do anything you don’t like, my dear child,” her mother replied, reassuringly. “That would be a strange use to make of poor Charley’s thoughtfulness.”
And Philippa’s face grew calm again; she could depend upon “mamma.”
“Besides,” said Evelyn, “you needn’t work yourself up about a thing that may not come to pass for ever so long. Duke may not get home till next year. And I think it’s not very nice of you, Phil, to be so lugubrious about a plan I only thought of for your sake. You might understand that I would like to do something to – to make up a little, as it were, for all you went through for me.”
Evelyn’s voice grew tremulous, and her pretty eyes were dewy as she finished speaking. In a moment Philippa was kneeling beside her – her arms flung round her sister in a close embrace.
“Evey dear, you might understand,” she whispered. “Mamma does. I have got nervous about it all. But don’t think me ungrateful. I shall be quite right again soon, and it will be so nice to have Charley at home. He will cheer us up; he always does, and I am sure Duke will get back before Christmas, at the very latest.”
Evelyn kissed her in return, and the little cloud melted. Still Philippa felt very glad when her brother’s arrival brought a diversion and a still stronger certainty that the Wyverston travesty would henceforth be allowed to sleep in peace.
How very rarely, how “almost never,” do things turn out as we have pictured them to ourselves? How the misfortunes which we foresee and prepare to face disappear; how wholly unexpected difficulties and complications weave themselves about our unwary feet till we scarcely dare to risk a step! “If we had but known,” “if I had had any idea of this happening,” “ifs” without end, and better disregarded.
The unexpected came to Philippa Raynsworth this winter, though not altogether in painful guise, and she found, as so many of us do, that she had expended fears and misgivings in quite unnecessary directions.
Charles Raynsworth was the eldest of the family, and the only plain member of it. He had none of Philippa’s graceful stateliness, nor Evelyn’s charm of manner and appearance, some traces and promise of all of which were to be found in the two younger boys – handsome Hugh and blue-eyed Leonard. But no one of the five brothers and sisters was more loved and trusted by the other four than the insignificant-looking head of the party. For the insignificance began and ended with his outward appearance; he was far above the average in every other direction; intellectually gifted and possessing, in addition to undoubted talent, the “genius” of perseverance and steady application; honest and straightforward like all his family, unselfish and with a power of sympathy unusual in a man. No wonder that “Charley’s” home-coming was the best of good news.
And for a day or two the pleasure of all being together again shed a rosy hue over everything. Charley was in such request that he had scarcely time to think. If he were not closeted with his father in the study, he was button-holed by his mother in the drawing-room; if he were not in the thick of the boys’ pets – feathered, guinea-pigs, and all the rest of them – admiring, advising, and doing his best to make sense of Hugh and Leonard both talking at once, he was pretty sure to be in the nursery, with Bonny riding on his shoulder, or listening to Evelyn’s maternal raptures over baby Vanda’s attempts at conversation. It was not till he had been some days at home that he one morning waylaid his mother and drew her out to the front of the house for a stroll up and down the gravel drive.
“You are not busy, are you, mother?” he said. “You have got your cook-interviewing and all that sort of thing over for the day, haven’t you? I want a talk with you without being interrupted, as we always are in the drawing-room, and in the afternoon it is even worse. Next week I must buckle to work regularly; but for these two or three days I have been giving myself time to settle down.”
It was a mild day – “mild for November,” as one so often hears people say when that maligned daughter of the year is with us, forgetting how very often the early days of the month are altogether charming.
“Shall I get you a shawl?” Charles Raynsworth went on, but his mother negatived the proposal.
“I am not the least cold,” she said, “and if we keep at this side of the house it is always sheltered. What is it, dear, that you want to talk about? Nothing wrong?” and a slight furrow of anxiety made itself seen between her eyebrows. For the moment, unreasonable though it was, a fear startled her that possibly —could it be? – was Charley going to tell her that Philippa’s escapade had come to his ears?
But her son’s first words reassured her.
“Don’t look so startled and anxious, mother,” he said, eagerly. “No, of course it’s nothing wrong. I only want to take the bull by the horns, so as to prevent anything wrong coming to pass. Mother, I don’t think my father is looking well – one notices looks, you see, dropping in among you all from the outside, as it were. And once the idea struck me it made me watch him; no, he is not what he was last year, I am quite sure of it. He is overdone. I can see that he has been working too hard.”
Mrs Raynsworth drew a long breath. This was not what she had feared, but it startled her. She grew rather pale.
“Charley!” she said.
“Don’t looked so appalled, mother,” he said, reassuringly. “I have not the least fear of there being anything seriously wrong; if I had had, of course I should have done something else – spoken to a doctor or to my father himself before frightening you. But I am perfectly sure it is overwork only; he should have a holiday – a holiday and a change. And that brings me to the second head of my discourse. Phil isn’t looking well, either. I believe the two of them have been buried in that study far too much and for far too long together. I should have been here at home some months ago, but it was impossible, so there is no use going back upon that. What I want now – ”
But Mrs Raynsworth interrupted him.
“I daresay you are right about your father,” she said; “but as to Philippa, I don’t know; she has had some change this autumn. There was the visit to Dorriford, you know, which she enjoyed very much, and – ”
But in his turn Charles interrupted, fortunately so, perhaps, for Mrs Raynsworth was beginning to feel very guilty.
“A week,” he said, “a week or ten days at most – what’s that? Oh, no, she needs much more thorough change than that sort of thing. She has grown nervous, mother, that is what I have noticed, for it is so unlike her. She changes colour for nothing and starts if one opens the door suddenly. No, I am sure I am right about them both, and this is what I want you to help me to manage. Father and Phil should go abroad together this winter for three or four months. They would enjoy it thoroughly. Phil has never been out of England, and father can take her over some of the old ground he knows so well. It would be new life to him. Phil is so intelligent, you see, and would enter into all that interested him,” and Charley’s commonplace greenish-grey eyes lighted up with eagerness till they looked almost beautiful. He was nearly breathless, as he stopped short in the path and stood facing his mother.
She could not but be infected to some extent by his enthusiasm, but Mrs Raynsworth was eminently practical.
“My dearest boy!” she exclaimed. “Yes, I agree with you; nothing could be more delightful for both your father and Philippa,” and as she named her younger daughter there flashed through her mind the special benefit to the girl of such a complete change of life and surroundings at the present time; “nothing,” she repeated, “could be better. But, Charley, you forget – the ways and means! – and your father’s work. We should never persuade him to leave it.”
“He need not do so; at least, I mean to say, it need not suffer,” said the young man. “I have gone into all that part of it already since I came, without my father’s finding it out. He can quite well leave his work at its present stage to me – he said so himself. And the time I would give it need be no more than I could give to him if he were here. I can quite fit it in with my own work. The only thing father must do is to defer starting on his new book for a few weeks, and all the better if he does so. He would gather some fresh material if he was in Italy, and – ”
“But – but – Charley – there is the money part of it.”
Charley’s fair, freckled face flushed.
“That’s all right,” he said. “You know, mother, I wrote that I had saved a few pounds – saved and made, I should have said. Well, to cut a long story short, the few pounds have turned out more than I expected. I have a hundred, a clear hundred, mother, ready for this scheme of mine. And a hundred pounds will go a long way with two people like my father and Phil; he knowing the ground so well, and she so economical and managing as I know she is. Besides, once my father made up his mind to go, he would no doubt put something to the hundred.”
Mrs Raynsworth, well as she knew her son, was greatly touched.
“My dearest boy,” she said again, “I cannot tell you how good I think it of you to have planned such a thing. But I fear your father would never consent to take your money – your own earnings.”
Charley laid his hand on his mother’s arm and drew her forward again. It felt rather chilly standing still.
“My dearest mother,” he said, as they resumed their stroll, “leave that to me. How can you think such a thing, when you remember all my father and you have done for me? Stinting yourselves, and even, indirectly, my sisters too a little, to give me the best of educations. It is all thanks to that that I am now where I am, certain of earning my own livelihood at the very worst, and with every reasonable prospect of greater success. Leave it to me, my dear mother; only promise me to back me up when I have broached the idea with both my father and Phil.”
The promise was given and acted upon. For the more Mrs Raynsworth thought over her son’s idea the more it commended itself to her. And the verdict of the doctor – an old friend who knew him well – whom Mr Raynsworth appealed to with the expectation of his pronouncing the proposed holiday, however agreeable, by no means a necessity, decided the turning of the scale. The benefit to Philippa herself was not made prominent, though in her heart the mother was almost as glad of the proposed scheme for her daughter’s sake as for her husbands. But Charley was not without his reward. The glow of pleasure which overspread the girl’s face at the first mention of the plan made her brother determine that it should be carried out, and Philippa’s misgivings that it would be “selfish” and wrong to leave home for so long, and that “mamma” should profit by Charley’s generosity rather than herself, were overruled by her father’s assurance that no one except her brother could be as useful to him as his already well-trained little secretary.
Circumstances in other directions too added their influence. Captain Headfort telegraphed his arrival by the next mail but one, and under the new aspect of things it became much easier to arrange for his making his headquarters at Greenleaves – the Raynsworths’ home – with his family for the first few months of the year, during which his eventual plans were to be decided.
“I could not have gone away with any sort of comfort, Phil dear, you see,” said her mother. “And as it is, I shall really enjoy the time at home with Charley and Duke, and helping Evelyn to settle what to do, and with no anxiety about your father on my mind. I think everything has fitted in beautifully.”
And on the whole, Evelyn’s sentiments agreed with her mother’s, though she could not help sighing in private when alone with Mrs Raynsworth over the downfall of her castle-in-the-air.
“I shall not care to go to Mr Gresham’s in the least without Phil, even if he asks us now,” she said, disconsolately. “I suppose I must write to tell him that Duke is really coming, as I promised I would. And, of course, I will tell him that my sister is going abroad. But ten to one before the winter is over we shall hear he is going to be married; men are just like that, even when they do fall in love at first sight, as I shall always firmly believe he did.”
“Still, anything is better than for Philippa to get out of health in any serious way, or to lose her spirits and nerve,” said Mrs Raynsworth. “And there is no doubt, Evey, that that wild affair has had a strange effect upon her; it seems to have been almost a shock to her to realise how wild and rash it was, and how disastrous its consequences might have been. I doubt very much, Evey, if she would have agreed to go to Mr Gresham’s.”
“It would have been very absurd of her to have been afraid of it,” said Evelyn, impatiently. “He never saw her at Wyverston, she allows that herself. And as for the other one – Michael Gresham – I don’t suppose his cousin has him very much at Merle; they did not seem very specially friendly. Besides, he only saw her in the railway, and with those horrid spectacles on. One does not remember every person one meets in a railway carriage. Phil will get quite morbid if she is so fanciful.”
“That is why I am so glad for her to have this complete change,” said Mrs Raynsworth, quietly.