Chapter Ten.
Change of Scene
The Wynyards’ return was after all delayed for a day or two, and this, as will be readily understood, I did not regret, as it gave more time for Moore’s progress in convalescence. I had persuaded Mrs Bence and Sims, though not without some difficulty, to join me in keeping back the news of the accident from our hosts till we could tell it to them by word of mouth.
“It would only worry them,” I said, “and do no conceivable good, and they are sure to come back the very first day possible.”
And when they did arrive I felt doubly glad that I had taken this precaution, for Mr Wynyard was looking rather tired and depressed, and Isabel confided to me that the meeting his relative after an interval of a great many years had – as she expressed it – “taken it out of him” considerably, though the business matters which they had met to arrange had all been satisfactorily concluded.
Moore’s misfortune did not strike them very seriously. Mr Wynyard never having had a son of his own, had an almost exaggerated idea of boys’ spirits and love of adventure, and thought it very lucky indeed that Moore had got off with lesser injury than broken bones. He was preoccupied with his own thoughts just at that time, and once satisfied that everything had been done, and that my brother was in a fair way to a speedy recovery, allowed, so to say, the matter to drop, never even inquiring into the details of how it had happened, nor, rather to my surprise, did Isabel, though it was not till long afterwards that she confided to me the real grounds of her apparent lack of curiosity on the subject.
Both she and her father, however, were keenly interested, as indeed could not but have been the case, in my account of the visit I had received from the Misses Grey, and I felt again a peculiar gratitude to the kind-hearted ladies for the discretion and tact which had prevented a word, or even allusion, which I could not with perfect openness repeat to the Wynyards, as to this part of our experiences.
“They are really very good,” said Isabel heartily, when we were all talking it over together. “It is just the same kind way they behaved to the vicarage people, that time I told you of, several yours ago. Does it not make one wish, Regina, that anything could be done for these poor Greys towards removing the cloud that has hung over them for so long?”
“Yes, indeed,” I said heartily, thinking to myself as I spoke that I had a good deal more reason than my friend knew of for endorsing what she said. And then again there seemed to re-echo through my brain the name “Ernest Fitzmaurice.” Was it only a coincidence, or was it possible that there had ever been any connection between these brothers and sisters and a member of our own family? An unhappy connection, no doubt, possibly even a disgraceful secret of some kind, involving one who apparently had not been the sufferer.
And now, I think, my story will best be told by passing over some considerable interval of time with but a few words of notice.
Nothing farther occurred of any special interest during the remainder of our stay at the Manor-house. Moore’s recovery had progressed most satisfactorily by the date of our return home, which was speedily followed, of course, by his going back to school for the remainder of the term, as he was practically perfectly sound again. And after full consideration I decided that I was behaving more honourably and loyally in not relating to any one the details of his accident, or rather of what had led to it. There was no occasion for doing so, in which the boy himself agreed with me, promising me faithfully to consider all that had occurred as a closed chapter in his life.
“It is what the Greys wished,” I said, by way of impressing it upon him more forcibly, “and considering how very kindly and generously they behaved to us, the least we can do is to respect their wishes to the full. You must never speak of it, Moore, to any of your school-fellows.”
He repeated his promise, and I felt satisfied that he would not forget it. He had had a lesson; all the same I was glad to know that he had overheard nothing of the dialogue which had so impressed me myself.
One thing I did, and feeling assured of the entire purity of my motive, I could not feel that I was wrong in this. Not many days after our return home, when I happened to find myself alone with father, I inquired, in as casual a tone as possible of him, if the name “Ernest” was a family one with us.
His manner was completely free from consciousness of any kind, as he replied after a moment or two’s consideration —
“Well, no; I should scarcely call it such, though there have been one or two of the name among us. One, by-the-bye, whose career would scarcely add prestige to the name he bore, whatever it had been!”
“Who was he?” I said, “and what did he do?” speaking as quietly as I could, for I had no wish, naturally, to rouse any curiosity on my father’s part.
“I scarcely know,” he replied. “He was a distant cousin only, and he has long since disappeared. I fancy he was more weak than wicked, a tool in the hands of a thoroughly unprincipled man, but I never heard the details, nor would they be edifying to know. What put it into your head, Regina, to ask about the name? You are not thinking of getting up a family chronicle, are you?”
“Oh dear no,” I said lightly. “I heard the name accidentally quite, and I just wondered if it belonged to any relation of ours;” and there, for the time being, the matter dropped.
The summer and autumn succeeding our visit to Millflowers passed uneventfully. One great disappointment they brought with them, and that was the impossibility of Isabel Wynyard coming to stay with us, as we had hoped might have been the case. I forget the special reasons for this. I think they must have been connected with her father’s being less well than usual, for, looking back to that time as we have often done since, it seems as if the slow failure which ended a few years later in his death had begun to show itself that year. Soon after Christmas, however, Mr Wynyard went to pay a visit to the Percys, and then Isabel came to us. It was of course delightful to me to have her, and to reverse the rôles of our previous time together, for I had now the pleasure – always, I think, a very great one – of acting hostess and cicerone of our pretty neighbourhood – pretty at all seasons, even in midwinter, to my mind at least, in which opinion Isabel cordially agreed.
She had been the sweetest of little hostesses; she was the most charming of guests. Every-thing seemed to come right to her, and everybody liked her. I think she specially loved the filing of a mother in our home, above all a mother who had known hers.
“It must be so delightful, Regina,” she said, a day or two after her arrival, “to have some one you can always appeal to, always consult, like Mrs Fitzmaurice, close at hand,” and she gave a little sigh. “Papa is the dearest of fathers, and since Margaret’s marriage he and I have been, as you know, everything to each other. Still, after all, a man isn’t a woman, and over and over again I long for a mother.”
“But you have your sister?” I said.
“Oh yes, of course,” was the reply. “The best of sisters; but it cannot now be quite the same, no longer living together. She has her own home and separate interests. I shouldn’t feel it right to trouble her about little things. And you can go to your mother for everything. I do so hate responsibility, and now it seems coming upon me more and more since father is less well than he used to be.”
“I don’t think,” I answered, “that I have ever dreaded responsibility very much, perhaps because, so far, I have small experience of it! But I am likely to have to be rather ‘independent’ before long. I don’t think you will envy me, Isabel, when I tell you that this spring I am going up to London for a couple of months to be taken out by a cousin of mother’s, whom I scarcely know, and already feel afraid of.”
Isabel looked up with startled sympathy in her eyes.
“Oh yes, indeed,” she said. “I do pity you, or rather I would pity myself in your place. Why doesn’t your mother take you out herself?”
Here it was my turn to sigh.
“She is not nearly strong enough,” I said, “for anything of the kind. I have always known that something of the sort was before me sooner or later, and I don’t look forward to it in the least.”
“Poor Regina!” said Isabel. “In our different ways I don’t think either you or I would ever care very much for what is called ‘society’ – I from cowardice, and you from – oh! from having so many other things that interest you – such a delightful home, where you are made so much of, and country things. My only experience of London has been for quite a short time together, and under Margaret’s wing. But then, Regina, you are much, much stronger-minded than I. I dare say in the end you will really enjoy it.”
“Perhaps,” I allowed. “I certainly should not care to live a very shut-up life, nor would you either, in any extreme. For instance,” I went on, with a little self-consciousness, which, if Isabel perceived, she was clever enough to conceal that she did so, “for instance, we don’t envy those poor little Miss Greys at Grimsthorpe. By-the-bye, you have not told me if you’ve heard anything of them.”
I was not sorry for the opportunity of making this inquiry in an apparently off-hand way. I was really anxious to know about the Grim House people, and yet the feeling of our secret and the great dread of involuntarily breaking my agreement with them, made me almost nervously afraid of any mention of them.
“Yes,” said Isabel, speaking, it seemed to me, more slowly and as it were consideringly than her wont. “Yes, I have been going to tell you ever since I came, but I have got to have a perhaps exaggerated dread of gossiping about them – only, you see, you do already know all I do. Yes, we are more sorry for them than ever. The cripple one, the brother with the angelic face, has been so ill this winter. And the other three’s poor faces have got sadder and sadder, and grimmer and grimmer, Sunday after Sunday.”
“No,” I exclaimed impulsively, “not grimmer; at least not the sisters; for theirs have never been grim. I think their expression is quite sweet.”
“Do you?” said Isabel. “How do – oh, I was forgetting. Of course you saw them quite at close quarters that day they came down on a Good Samaritan visit when Moore hurt his foot I have never managed to see them very distinctly; those old-fashioned bonnets of theirs hide them so. But the elder brother —he is grim enough, at least.”
“Ye-es,” I replied half-dubiously, “I suppose so.” I had lost my nervous feeling by now, and a certain curious spirit of defiance which I have always known to be latent in me, and which, were it not kept in check, might grow into a kind of recklessness, had been aroused by a touch of “dryness” in Isabel’s tone. I felt inclined to disagree with her, to contradict her for the sake of doing so! So “ye-es,” I repeated. “Perhaps so, but there is more in his face than grimness and melancholy. I think there is dormant tenderness too.”
“Dear me!” was Isabel’s comment on this, “what good eyes you must have! I could never have detected all that.”
“I have very good eyes,” I replied, “and, naturally, your talking so much about the Greys sharpened them whenever I had a chance of using them in that quarter.”
“Good eyes, and good ears, too,” I thought to myself, and with the recollection of my eavesdropping, there awoke again the old sensation of shame, bringing with it quick repentance for my manner to Isabel, in which a rather ungenerous wish to remind her that her confidences had been the origin of my curiosity, had been a motive at work. “If she does know anything about what really happened, it is just as well for her to take some of the blame,” I had thought, “and I have been faithful to her.” But as usual, her gentleness still further disarmed me.
“I am afraid,” she said next, “that the poor things have increasing cause for anxiety and distress. Without cross-questioning Dr Meeke, which of course he wouldn’t allow, I could not but gather from him that he is very anxious about the younger brother. He, the lame Mr Grey, has not been at church for weeks past.”
This news saddened me. Surely our escapade had in no way brought fresh trouble to the Grim House, even though indirectly? It might have rendered the elder man still more anxious and uneasy, and diminished what little cheerfulness his sisters and brother had managed to preserve among them. For I had never wavered in my first intuition, that Mr Grey himself was the centre of the mystery, and the words I had overheard had deepened this impression.
I turned to Isabel rather abruptly, as another thought struck me.
“Have they had any more visitors?” I asked. “Have you seen the man of the pocket-book again?”
Isabel shook her head.
“No,” she replied; “I am pretty sure no one but Dr Meeke has crossed their threshold since you were with us. How deadlily dull it must be for them – one day just like another all the year round, excepting the variety the seasons must bring!”
“And added to that,” I said, “this winter, the daily suspense as to what the doctor would say about their brother, who is their darling, I am perfectly certain. Oh, poor people, poor people!”
After this conversation I do not think the Greys were alluded to again during Isabel’s stay with us. She had told me all there was to tell, and even had there been more news, she would probably not have heard it, her father not being at Millflowers. The two or three weeks of her visit passed all too quickly, far too quickly for me, for more reasons than the pleasure of her society. She had scarcely left us when the preparations began for my stay in London, which, to suit our cousin’s – Lady Bretton’s – arrangements, was to be rather earlier than had been originally intended. Mother was a little surprised at my distaste for the idea of it. She knew I was not specially shy, nor constitutionally timid, like dear little Isabel, and I myself could scarcely explain why the prospect had so little attraction for me.
“It is just that I shall feel ‘out of it all,’” I said, “and Lady Bretton will think me stupider than I am, and will wish she hadn’t troubled herself about me! I know it will be like that, mother. I do wish you would give it up, even now.”
But mother, as I have said, could be firm enough when occasion called for it, besides which, I well knew that any appeal to my father would be worse than useless, and only irritate him. So mother ignored my last sentence altogether.
“It is a very bad plan,” she said quietly, “to put your own imaginings into your anticipations of another person’s feelings towards or about you. Nothing is more misleading – it blocks the way to any sympathy between you. I know Regina Bretton very well, otherwise I would not have accepted her proposal. She is the sort of woman who will enjoy your inexperience, as well as” – mother went on, with a little mischief in her tone – “smartening you up generally. She loves being appealed to; then, too, she is your godmother, and really thoroughly kind-hearted.”
The remembrance of this and other reassuring remarks of a similar kind did comfort me a little. Still more so the sight of my godmother’s kind, handsome face when I saw her for the first time coming downstairs to receive me on the afternoon of my arrival at her house. Nothing could have been more affectionate or un-alarming than her manner of welcome.
“I would have gone to the station to meet you,” she said, “but it is often more embarrassing than pleasant, when people are not quite sure of each other by sight. Then I knew, too, that you had your maid with you, and indeed, dear, as regards actual travelling, you are far more experienced than I; you have had so much of it.”
Trifling as was this remark, it helped to put me at my ease; it showed a wish on my hostess’s part to say something pleasant and gratifying. Surely it would be well if there were a little more of this sort of thing among us English people? As a rule, we are so terribly afraid of agreeable impulses, reserving all approach to commendation or admiration till absolutely sure of good grounds for such. Yet the same caution does not hold on the converse side. An air of cold criticism, in itself more discouraging very often than an openly disagreeable remark, is as a rule accepted as correct. May it not be that in this particular people deceive themselves, and at the root of our unattractive reserve and so-called terror of flattering, there often lurks an underlying spirit of reluctance to discern or allow, even to ourselves, the best points of another? Still worse, not impossibly, in many instances some more or less specious touch of jealousy?
I have wandered a little from the case in point, which is scarcely a typical one. On my kind cousin’s part there could have been no conceivable temptation to disparagement of me in any way. Not even of my youth, for its benefits were still practically hers. She had magnificent health, was still as pretty as she had ever been – some indeed said prettier; she was surrounded by friends, many of whom at least – most, let us hope – were attached to her by reason of her own unspoilt, unselfish character, far more than by that of her prosperous and important position.
There was but one blank page in her life. She had no children of her own, though the devotion of the best of husbands, as was hers, scarcely allowed her to realise this one great want.
Still, it was not everybody – by any means far from it – who would have had the kindly tact to receive me as she did, almost from the very first winning my confidence and setting me at my ease, amidst these new surroundings.
It was still quite early in the spring, and I did not feel overwhelmed by the contrast of town life with our almost exceptionally quiet one at home. This I was very glad of, though even in the midst of the season I doubt if my godmother would have allowed any extreme in the way of going out. What she did, she has often said, she liked to enjoy, and her happy nature was ready to do so. She threw herself with hearty interest into the many things which were new to me, though of course not so to her. I scarcely think any girl ever saw all best worth seeing in London under pleasanter auspices than I did.
And so the days and weeks passed on, bringing with them no twinge of home-sickness to me. My letters to mother and to Isabel, some of which, now faded and yellowing, have come into my hands again of late years, tell of a very happy passage in my life.
The time was already approaching for my return home, at least allusions had begun to be made to its probable date, when I one day received a note in an unfamiliar hand. I glanced at the signature as one sometimes does in such a case, before thoroughly mastering the contents.
But at the first moment it only added to my perplexity.
“Payne?” I repeated, “Edith Payne? who can she be?” Then the name of the southern resort where we had spent our last winter abroad caught my eye, also the words – “Rupert specially asks to be remembered to you” – and recalled to me the recollection of the nice boys and their gentle little mother whom we had made friends with. Circumstances had, after all, not tended to keeping up the acquaintanceship hitherto, for the younger brother’s joining Moore at school had been delayed till quite recently, though it was to this having now taken place that I owed the kind little letter and invitation which it contained.
Mrs Payne wrote, hoping that I would at least spend a day with them, if not two or three days; she would be so interested to hear my home news, and Rupert, the incipient novelist, was more than delighted at the idea of meeting me again.
Now, as it happened, and as really does happen in fact as well as in fiction, though people are so fond of saying that coincidences principally exist in story-books, this proposal came just at the right time. When I told my godmother of it, I noticed at first a touch of hesitation in her manner.
“Mrs Payne?” she said. “Not old friends of yours, are they? I don’t remember about them.”
I explained to her when and where we had met, adding that I believed the father was a lawyer of very good standing. Her face cleared.
“Oh yes!” she exclaimed. “I know who they are now, thoroughly good people, a little old-fashioned perhaps. And you think your parents would be quite pleased for you to renew the acquaintance?”
“I’m sure of it,” I said; “but don’t you think it would be enough to go there to luncheon one day? I am so perfectly happy here, I don’t want to go anywhere else.”
“Dear,” was the reply, “I do like to hear you say so. Having you is almost” – and here the tiny shadow that sometimes crept into her eyes was for a moment perceptible – “almost like having a daughter of my own. But as it happens – I know I may be quite frank with you – it would answer rather well for you to go to these good people for a couple of days or so. Say next Friday to the Monday after? Henry and I have a rather special invitation for those days, and though I had not dreamt of mentioning it to you, now that this has turned up, it all seems to fit in, for my husband would like me to go with him to his uncle’s.”
I was of course only too glad to be in no way a difficulty to my hosts, so I wrote at once both to Mrs Payne, suggesting the date named, and to mother, telling her what I had done in the matter. And all came to pass in accordance with our plan. The following Friday found me driving across the park to the rather sombre but stately square where the Paynes had lived for many years.