Waynflete

He sat up and looked at her with an eager, half-doubtful, half-delighted look, but though her heart gave a great throb, she came forward holding out her hand, and speaking in her soft, composed voice.

“Mr Waynflete! Please don’t get up. I hope you are better.”

“Oh yes! But Staunton has made me come up with him to see the doctor again. We came yesterday; I was tired to-day, so I have only just come downstairs. But I am a great deal better.”

After this Florella sat down on a low chair in front of the fire, and there was a silence. She could speak no more commonplaces.

“You know,” said Guy, after a minute, “that I was not beaten. I was not quite too late.”

“Yes, I know.”

“It was very hard.”

“Very.”

“You helped me.”

“I tried.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“No.”

“That doesn’t matter. You mustn’t know, you mustn’t see. But enough strength came.”

“Yes.”

“I shall hold on, and you will – help.”

“I will; I do.”

“Pray for my soul.”

“Yes.”

They had spoken in low, quiet tones – the words seemed to drop out; but now the spell broke, and Florella looked away and spoke with a falter.

“But it has been very bad for you; you are ill – and things went wrong.”

“Oh,” said Guy, “I shall be able, I hope, to set things pretty right. I can get along – ”

As he spoke there was a step, and Cuthbert came in, followed by his sister.

“Ah, Guy – here you are,” he said. “Getting rested? I should think you wanted some tea.”

There was a little bustle, and the tea-things were brought with a lamp, and in the talk that followed, Florella learned more of how things were going at Ingleby. Godfrey had returned to Oxford; Mrs Joshua Palmer and Jeanie were to stay on at the Mill House for the present; and Guy meant to go back there as soon as he had seen the doctor, and Cuthbert was claimed by his work.

“He has much business on hand,” Staunton told her aside; “but I cannot think how he will get on in that dull house. I wish the doctor would insist on sending him abroad. But he wouldn’t go; his heart is set on his work.”

“Then I think the work is best for him,” said Florella.

“Yes, one can’t interfere. But it is a frightful risk. I believe he’ll kill himself over it.”

Cuthbert spoke with some irritation. He was very anxious, and his wise resolve was hard to keep. Florella’s heart sank. She might lend Guy her strength for the battle, but she could not save him from a single blow.

They asked her to dim with them quietly on the next night, and she gladly promised to come. She would hear a little more.

When she came, Guy seemed better. He sat by her at dinner, and joined in the cheerful trivial talk, with a look of ease and pleasure. They said nothing special to each other, there was hardly the ordinary consciousness of mutual attraction between them, yet she was happy, and he for once at rest.

After dinner there was music, and as Kitty Staunton played softly, and they listened to it together, Guy watched her gracious harmonious outlines, and felt glad that her dress, though long and ruffed, with a broad silk sash, quite unlike the linen frock she had worn at Moorhead, was still of a soft tender blue. It still suggested the harebells. He said nothing more about himself; indeed he forgot himself and thought of her.

He wished her good night with a smile, and a long, steady look, as if he was drinking in the comfort of her presence. It never occurred to him for a moment that the help she gave him was at the cost of suffering to herself. He did not understand that a star must burn before it can shine.

But when he went upstairs, and looked steadily round to face his enemy in a new place, he woke to the sense that, through all the evening he had never seen or dreaded him. The fear had been forgotten. With the first thought the strange thing was before him; but just then, he looked with indifferent curiosity. He had told his own story to the doctor, and had heard in return that he would risk his life by over-exertion, or by any mental shock or strain; and that rest, change, and amusement were by far the most likely cure for the nervous affection that troubled him, and for every other tendency that he had cause to dread.

“Still,” said Guy, “there is no chance for me, but going back and doing what I can.”

And to Cuthbert’s surprise, the doctor gave in and admitted that a strong interest in his work was good, and perhaps with due care, he had better try, for a time. Guy promised prudence, and gained his point.

He parted from his friend in the same determined fashion, though he did not try to hide that the parting was hard. Cuthbert wondered, as he had often wondered before, how any one could be at once so dependent and so self-reliant.

In the same breath he said, with wistful eyes, “You’ll write to me often, won’t you? Even a card; or if you just wire, it will be something;” and, “I can’t help it, you know, if it does kill me; I’ve got to do it.”

And the grounds of this conviction were quite incommunicable. As for Florella, she felt as if all power of “help” had deserted her, and that nothing was left but anxiety.

What had he known of her strange experience? When she had gone down into the depths with him, how had he known it? He had taken her knowledge for granted, and claimed her continual help. But what did she know, and what had she done? Florella’s spirit dealt with strange things, and she paid the penalty of trouble and disturbance of soul. Thoughts and questionings which her young spirit could hardly bear, came to her, and since she had so thrown herself out of herself to aid him, the delicate balance of her nature was risked as well as his.

The minute and exceeding care with which she practised her flower-painting was her refuge and safeguard through these difficult months.

And she was not left alone, with only herself and Guy to think of. She had a great many acquaintances, old school-fellows, and others; some of whom were struggling to find a place among the workers of the day, others who were in the swing of the London circle to which Mrs Palmer belonged.

Florella had always obtained confidences. Her reposeful manner, her good sense, and her kindliness brought them. But now she heard story after story of trouble and temptation, perplexity, or discontent. “I always feel as if you could see my soul!” one girl said to her. She listened, and said such words as came to her. She felt sometimes as if she was in the very whirl and rush of life’s battle, while outwardly nothing happened to her at all. She painted flowers, and went out to parties with her aunt.

Part 2, Chapter XII

Harebells in Snow

Fifty thousand pounds! For a penniless girl to find herself suddenly possessed of such a golden dower is a very wonderful experience. This was the fate which, towards the end of November, descended upon little Jeanie Palmer, and, as she truly said, “It was quite upsetting.” It came in a natural, though unexpected manner. An uncle died, possessed of a much larger fortune than had been supposed, and divided it by will, between Jeanie and another niece. That “something” might come to her from this quarter, her mother had always hoped; but nothing so splendid had ever been anticipated. It meant, in the first place, frocks of an altogether different quality to any Jeanie had previously possessed; and, in the second, an entire change of plans for herself and her mother.

It had been a great advantage last summer to come to Ingleby, and live in so comfortable and dignified a fashion; but now Jeanie would have her own house, and needed her mother to arrange it for her.

Besides, Godfrey would be coming back, and if he chose to seek out Jeanie again, he should see her in a new light. No one would ever feel her to be anybody at Ingleby; but, among the Palmers, she would be now a person of consequence, and her mother told Guy that she was sorry to break up their comfortable arrangements, but Jeanie had business to attend to, and must go to old Mr Matthew Palmer’s, near Rilston, he being her trustee.

“I am very sorry you must go, Cousin Susan,” said Guy, with perfect truth.

And yet it did not seem to the two ladies that their presence in the house could have made much difference to him. Every hour that his strength held out he spent on his work, and when he was driven to what he called resting, he often shut himself up in the study, and what he did there, they knew not. He had what Mrs Palmer called, “uncomfortable ways.” They felt him to be an uncomfortable person. His colourless face and preoccupied eyes – eyes that seemed always watchful, but that watched for something out of other people’s ken, like a wild creature’s, who scents or hears some far-off foe – were too odd to be pleasant.

In the mill, however, he proved himself born to rule. In spite of his youth and his bad health, he made himself felt in every corner of it, and won allegiance, if not affection. It was not his way to be irritable, but he was always grave; often stern and sarcastic, determined and dictatorial as ever old Margaret had been in the hey-day of her strength. When he stood leaning against the doorway of the long rooms, breathless with climbing the stairs, there was not a worker who did not wish to avoid his criticism; while the old managers gave in to his daring new departures, and never doubted that he could sail the ship.

His chief comfort was the entire and unexpected devotion of old John Cooper. He obeyed Guy loyally, but he also watched over him like a father. He had a careful old wife, who sent him in cups of tea, and provided him with luncheons, and this care he contrived should be extended to the young man too. He worked hard, so as to save him exertion, and never resented the quick, sharp orders, or the short, absent manner, and Guy was grateful – more grateful than he knew how to show. The old manager’s devotion helped him very much. There was Rawdie, also, whom he had begged of Godfrey, who slept on his bed and nestled at his side, and was a living presence, and a loving one too.

If the demands of the business upon him saved his wits, it strained them to the utmost. It was touch and go with Palmer Brothers, all through the winter, and if Guy had not been as clever as he was desperate, they must have gone under. It was just a case of holding on. If that had been all, he could hardly have borne it. But such anxiety was swept out of his mind by the other thoughts that thronged upon him. He could not sleep, so he read half the night – medicine and science, metaphysics and religion, magic and mysticism, demonology and witchcraft, theories of heredity and legends of possession, psychical researches and spiritual revelations. And then it struck him that the Bible might throw some light on the subject. He had learned “divinity,” and frequently heard and occasionally read the lessons, like other well-brought-up young men; but he had never read it with any personal object. He came to the conclusion that Saint Paul knew something about the matter. “Resisting unto death – striving against sin,” exactly expressed it. And sometimes the foe pressed hard and home – and then there were perilous moments for reason’s sway. Guy looked the haunting terror in the face. He took its likeness – “wrote it down,” as he had said – spoke to it – defied it – well, those were times better forgotten, and when Rawdie hung on to his trousers and pulled him back, he knew that he was making a mad rush at – nothing at all. But more and more the conviction strengthened, that whatever personal influences shaped the forms of his experience, behind it lay a “power outside himself that made for” evil, a power at one with all the evil of the world. Where, then, was the power that makes for good?

He sat alone one evening by the study fire, and asked this question in vain. Could he hold on any longer? He was so lonely, and the weather was so cold, it took away all his little strength. Godfrey was not coming home for Christmas. Nerves and brain would endure no longer the solitude – that was not solitude. He put his hand over his eyes.

“If Rawdie had not been there last night.” But Rawdie had been there – there always was something. As to the mill, there were flashes of certainty as to the right course, and a word or a kindly deed of old Cooper’s just gave strength to put them in practice. The sun struggled through the fog yesterday, and raised his spirits; the day before there was a letter from Cuthbert. Sometimes he dreamed of Florella, or the sense that she was “helping” pressed warm upon his soul. And now there was the connected thought of all these rescuing facts. But the source from which they came was veiled. He could not “feel” good as he “felt” evil. He could not trust himself to think of the gun in the gun-cupboard at the side of the bookcase, of the doctor’s medicine, of which too large a dose would be so easy – of the brandy in the cellar – which would drown all this agony or give strength to defy it. These images of escape pressed on him like living souls. Either would be so easy. Pray? Yes, but in such moments, before the prayer is offered, the victory must be won. The will of steel that had endured so much was breaking now. Guy got up and thought that he would look at that gun, which had been unused all the autumn. The drops were upstairs, and the brandy was in the cellar; but the gun was in the very room. He went over to the cupboard; but he was dizzy, and his hand shook a little; the key did not turn very easily. He fumbled with it. If he shot himself, what would happen to his double? Why —that would be gone out of the world with himself – and the world would go on without him. Would Florella ever learn to paint blue harebells in the sun? The dancing flowers shone and smiled before his mental vision. The key turned in his hand; but he turned it back again.

“I can bear it – another day,” he thought, as he leaned against the bookcase, with his hand still on the key.

Suddenly Rawdie burst into loud barking; the door bell pealed through the empty house. Guy started away from the cupboard, the room door opened, and a telegram was brought in.

“Don’t like your last note. Coming to you for Christmas; arrive 9:30. Staunton.”

When the door was shut again, Guy flung the key of the gun-cupboard into the fire, and fell down on his knees and gave thanks. Assuredly it was not himself that had saved him.

When Cuthbert came, after a long day of travel from the far west, he found supper ready, lights bright and fire warm, and Guy with a welcome that was beyond words, quiet and even cheerful, but so white and worn, that his friend rejoiced in the sudden impulse that had induced him to brave his sisters’ wrath, and give up Christmas at home to come to him.

“Why are you alone,” he said. “Where is Godfrey?”

“Godfrey went off to the Rabys. He has got off the track altogether somehow; his degree, you know, was a disappointment – and – well, he’ll have to come back soon and face matters out. Never mind! The mill hasn’t yet put up the shutters, and I’m still here, you see, spite of the devil and all his angels, to say nothing of the frost, which I think is going to kill me, and save farther trouble. No; but I’m rather bad, old fellow, and you’ve just come in time to take care of me, for I can’t take care of myself a day longer. I get such bad nights, and I want you to read me to sleep, I’m so tired.”

Guy gave himself up to the comfort of his friend’s presence, with a grateful sense of his need of it. His boyish pride was gone. He told Cuthbert very little; but his silence was the reticence of one who knew that surface words were of no avail, and that no one’s opinion made any difference to his own judgment. He had regained the mastery of his nerves; but his strength had been over-taxed, and he could but just manage the most necessary business, till, when on Christmas Day itself, snow fell heavily and the frost intensified, the cold tried him so much that nothing but lying still by the fire was possible to him.

A belated postman struggled through the snow, with a bundle of letters, of which a whole sheaf of loving home greetings fell to Cuthbert’s share; but to the lonely Guy, only a very smart Christmas card from Cousin Susan.

His home had never been a very tender one; but still, such as it was, he had lost it since last year. He felt hurt at his brother’s silence, and his heart failed him utterly. Why struggle to keep hold of so hard a life? He turned his face towards the wall.

“Here’s something for you,” said Cuthbert, as he opened his last letter. “Violet says, ‘Florella Vyner asked me to send you this little drawing for Mr Waynflete. She says he saw her failures in drawing harebells, last summer, and she hopes these will not look quite so bad, as it is winter now.’ She – hum – ha – well – Here’s the drawing,” said Cuthbert, breaking off as he read aloud.

Guy turned round with a start, and taking the envelope, opened it.

There, blue against the blue of heaven, was the little bunch of harebells, dim and cold doubtless, as compared to the originals in sun and light, but “living blue” still, fair enough to tell of springing thoughts and hopes and loves, in the dead cold of the winter snow.

A warm flush came over Guy’s face. How much the high consolations within him were reinforced by this little bit of human joy! Hope and courage came back, and life was worth living again. Cuthbert watched him this time with full comprehension.

“Ah,” he thought. “So – is that to be the cure?”

Violet had remarked that Florella was apparently too shy to send the card herself.

“But, it’s no use pretending, she always manages to hear what we know about him. Don’t you tell him I said so.”

Cuthbert said nothing, for nothing was needed. A new vision had opened itself before Guy’s spirit. Was the strange comprehension between himself and Florella to bloom out into so lovely a flower?

“I owe her all,” he thought. “She set me fighting. I knew she was a saint and an angel. And I love her.”

He took up his arms again with renewed courage. Before he won Florella, he must be free. She was not only a helping angel, she was his heart’s love, and he must be strong enough to take care of her.

He gazed long at the little picture, then folded it away, and getting up from the sofa, went over to the old piano, unused for many weeks, and began to play the old North-country Christmas hymn, familiar to his earliest childhood, “Christians awake.”

“I can’t sing now,” he said; but he hummed the words softly, and sang a line or two at intervals —

“Peace upon earth, and unto men good will.”

“We’ll have a little Christmas,” he said, with a smile.

Part 3, Chapter I

Handicapped

In the meantime Godfrey, stung to the very quick by Constancy’s shallow answer to the confession which he had forced from the depths of his soul, was kicking against the pricks of disappointed passion, and trying to persuade himself that they did not hurt him. He could not work, he barely scraped through his final examination; he could think of nothing but how to escape from himself. He could not face Guy till his plan of restitution was matured, and he caught at the Rabys’ invitation to go and spend a gay Christmas among a lively set of other young people at Kirkton Hall. He was very miserable, but, when people are young and strong, it is possible to be amused in spite of inward misery, and nobody guessed that Godfrey was either conscience-stricken or broken-hearted; and while he was thus keeping thought at bay, there befell him a great and unexpected temptation.

Jeanie, being now at Rilston with the Matthew Palmers, appeared on the scene in the altogether new light of a flattered and considered guest. She was talked of as a prize to be won, and in some occult and mysterious manner it was conveyed to Godfrey that this prize might be his for the asking.

Perhaps her Palmer kindred, who were people of much sense in a quiet way, knew what might be the lot of a simple and homely little girl whose great fortune bought a husband of good family and with bad debts. And Godfrey Waynflete, even if his fortune was not great, was no doubt a shrewd young fellow, or his shrewd old aunt would never have preferred him to his elder brother.

These ideas were conveyed by sober Palmer cousins to Godfrey’s mind, and they offered him the chance of a life of his own apart from Waynflete and Ingleby. Guy would have fewer scruples if Godfrey did not need the wrongfully gained inheritance. These purposes served as excuses, but it is an old story and never a very creditable one; Godfrey’s heart or, rather, his hand, was just ready to be “caught on the rebound.” Constancy’s contrast had a double charm. And Jeanie, who had always loved attention, now that she could attract it, like Miss Mercy Pecksniff, rose to the occasion. She had both sense and self-esteem, she was no longer the meek little cousin ready to make herself useful, and though she had an honest fancy for Godfrey, life had blossomed out with new possibilities. She knew very well that he had never sought her before, and she did not mean him to walk over the course. Pretended indifference was due to her ideas of propriety.

It was intoxicating to find herself made much of by a number of lively young people, all of the sort she knew, and liked, who flirted in her own style, and talked the kind of talk to which she could respond. Under such encouragement she was both pretty and lively, and the young folks at Kirkton and the neighbourhood had what Godfrey, and even Guy a year before, would have thought a very good time. One thing led to another, jokes to blushes, blushes to whispers, whispers to a half-acknowledged understanding, and almost before Godfrey knew what he was about he had practically committed himself, been laughed at and congratulated, and, by the time Christmas week was over, would have been irrevocably bound, had Jeanie ever allowed him to come quite to the point.

There had been one of those friendly dances among an intimate set of very young people, when much can pass as the jest of the moment, though the undercurrent of earnest gives the jest its charm.

Godfrey and Jeanie had waltzed and whirled through more dances than the young lady chose to count, and Godfrey’s last sight of her was as she skimmed along the polished floor of the gallery after Minnie Raby, refusing to stop and say good night. She peeped round the corner, and flung a rose right into his face, then vanished into her room and banged the door, while a sound like “To-morrow!” caught his ear. Every one was saying good night and running about. She had just refused him the rose in a cotillion, all was “jest and youthful jollity,” but Godfrey felt that “to-morrow” was big with fate. For about the tenth time that evening, he informed himself that he had completely forgotten Constancy.

Before he came downstairs the next day, two letters were brought to him. One was from the young vicar of Waynflete, stating that a thaw having taken place on the Sunday after Christmas, four umbrellas had been put up during service, and did Mr Waynflete see his way to a subscription for mending the church roof? The letter was several pages long, and gave a very unflattering picture of the condition of the Waynflete property. The vicar expressed himself with youthful energy, and begged the owner of the property to come and see for himself what had to be done.

And let Godfrey say what he would, he was that owner. The other letter was from Guy, and did not fill half a sheet.

“Dear Godfrey, —

“There is a great deal that must be faced and settled. Pray come home at once, for I must know what you mean to do, and the frost made me so good for nothing that I don’t see my way to getting on without help. I am better now, and Staunton is here with me.

“Your affectionate brother, —

“Guy Waynflete.”

This letter brought Godfrey face to face with his own intentions. If he really meant to present himself before Jeanie’s trustees he must know exactly what he had to say to them. There must be no false pretences. He would go back to Ingleby that very day. His decision, when he proclaimed it, roused a chorus of opposition.

“He must come back for the dance on Twelfth Night.”

“Oh yes! I mean to come back,” said Godfrey, steadily, with a glance at Jeanie. “But I must go home now. I’ve sent off a telegram to say so.”