GUSSY HARWOOD awoke next morning with a sense of exhilaration in her mind, as if, during the night, some burden had rolled off her shoulders. Had any burden been rolled off? The first sensation in the morning of pain or pleasure is not always a true one, but there is none so poignant or which leaves so much impression on the mind.
A year—she said to herself—what was a year? If it were two years, what would it matter so long as all doubts were removed and she was assured that as she thought of him so he thought of her? How much better would it have been, in that point of view, if he had opened his heart to her at once!—not waiting for business or wealth or the means of setting up a house which he could ask her to share. All these were secondary matters. The thing she desired to know was his heart and what was in it. If he really loved her, as she sometimes believed he did, yet sometimes doubted, how happy it would be to watch the growth of the practice, the coming of the time when prudence and good sense would permit them to set up a new household together!
Gussy did not desire in the least to forestall that moment, to reject the guidance of prudence. Far from that. Her own actions were always regulated by that rule. All that she wanted was the full understanding, the power to believe that she knew his heart as he knew hers. But she said to herself, with a sigh,
“Men do not understand this. They think it not honorable to engage a woman before they are able to carry their engagement out, not knowing, not guessing, how very different is the woman’s view—how that what she wants is the understanding, the link between heart and heart, the privilege of sharing their thoughts and being bound to them.”
She sighed, and there was impatience and weariness in her sigh. How was it that they would not understand—that he would not understand? She would wait for him for years if it were necessary, so long as there was no doubt left upon the mutual sentiment, so long as the bond was made which he thought it more honorable not to make till it could be quickly fulfilled.
And this feeling went on growing stronger every hour of the day. The first exhilaration departed, and the weariness came back. A year! And who could tell that in a year there might not be some new drawback, some further suspense necessary. If men would but understand that it is not to be married that the woman wants, but to know the lover’s heart, to be assured of his love!
When Molière made his Précieuses contemn the vulgar haste with which their suitors would have jumped to the last accomplished fact of marriage, he had (perhaps) touched a secret of the feminine heart which few men divine.
Gussy, who was not poetical, still less précieuse, who was indeed a very matter-of-fact and most sensible person, would have been like the foolish Cathon and Madelon, quite pleased with the pays du tendre, so long as her lover had led her with a faithful hand into that enchanted country. She did not insist upon the new establishment, the immediate conclusion. She only wanted him to say frankly half-a-dozen words, and so to bind them together forever. It was half an injury to her that he should feel it necessary to wait for such a practical reason. Did he think that her love was a less thing than her word, and that so long as she had not audibly pledged that, she was free? Did he think himself free because he had not said to her, “Be my wife!”
These questions flitted through Gussy’s mind, drifting across the sky like clouds, throughout the day. She shook her head at the vanity and shortsightedness of the thought. She free, when she loved him! Would a mere promise bind her more than the devotion of her whole being? And then there came a cold shiver over Gussy’s heart. Did he think perhaps that he was free so long as he had made no promise—that all the silent fascination which bound them together and the link that had been growing for years, and which he had woven by so many tender words and looks and fond regards, was nothing, so long as no pledge had been given or received?
Gussy would not allow herself to think this. She shook her head over the defects in men, the absence of a finer feeling, the want of that intuition which everybody said women possessed in a higher degree. He could not see that there was a more delicate honor in avowal than in silence. It was strange, but she was obliged to conclude that this was how men felt, and that they did not understand.
Gussy was also a little cast down, ashamed, almost humbled, by the thought that he was in no such doubt of her sentiments as she was of his. But, then, she asked herself—for such a problem awakens metaphysical tendencies in the most simple mind—whether perhaps her doubt of him was not as much the weakness of the woman’s point of view as his reticence was of the man’s? Perhaps it had never entered into his mind that she could doubt him after all that had come and gone. Perhaps he felt the bond between them to be so assured and true that no declaration could make it stronger. Perhaps, just as he did not understand her, she did not understand him, and exemplified the woman’s deficiency just as he exemplified the man’s. This thought sufficed to clear Gussy’s brow for the whole afternoon.
She told her mother, who was very eager for news, and had also expected much from the dance, that Charley had been talking about his profession, and that he was now really getting on, and felt, he believed, the ball at his feet.
“He thinks that in another year or so he will be able to think of a house of his own,” said Gussy.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Harwood, with somewhat blank looks, “in a year or so!”
“Yes, mamma; did you expect him to jump to the heights of his profession in a moment? A silk gown in six months and the woolsack perhaps in——”
Gussy broke off with a laugh. She had replied to her mother with a look equally blank, incapable of understanding (as it seemed) what could be looked for more.
“I am not so silly as that,” said the mother. “I know it is very slow work getting on at the Bar. Still, I thought——”
“What did you think?” asked Gussy, with a certain scorn in the corners of her mouth.
“My dear, if you take that tone I shall say nothing more. I had thought nothing that was not quite reasonable, whatever you may think; but I shall say no more about it. You young people have your own ways of managing matters. I don’t think much of them, but that, I suppose, is because I am old-fashioned and can’t understand anything so superfine as your modes of action. You are a great deal too superior for me.”
“I notice,” said Gussy, “that whenever people are arguing, and don’t know what to say, they call those who think differently superfine and superior. It is as good an argument as another, I suppose.”
Thus Gussy punished her mother for putting into words the troubled intuition of her own heart. It was enough, however, to put a stop to the discussion, which was what she desired most. Mrs. Harwood was so much moved that, wanting an outlet somewhere, she was driven to confiding in Janet, who came down to the drawing-room earlier than usual. Gussy had gone out somewhere to tea.
“I don’t seem to understand the simplest questions nowadays,” she said, fretfully; “they all think me so old-fashioned that I am not worth considering. Do you think it an honorable thing, Janet, or right, or wise for a man to flutter for years about a girl, always coming after her, never letting her alone, so that everybody has remarked it, and yet never saying a word that could compromise him, though he has quite compromised her? Do you think there is any sense in which that could be called right?”
“No,” said Janet, in a very low tone, smitten by sudden compunction.
She had her back to Mrs. Harwood, pouring out the tea.
“What do you say? Oh, I suppose you are just like the rest, and don’t see any harm in it. But I assure you I do. If anyone haunted you like that, my dear, under my roof, I should certainly think it my duty to interfere.”
“Oh, I hope not, Mrs Harwood; isn’t that surely the very worst thing that can be done—to interfere——”
“Interfere!” said Mrs. Harwood, indignantly; “I should soon interfere. I should not let anything like that go on, I promise you. The worst is,” she went on, with a troubled countenance, “that with one’s own——”
She stopped here, finding further revelation, perhaps, injudicious; but apparently the mere suggestion of interference in one case showed the possibility of doing so in another. She had taken the cup of tea from Janet’s hand, who sat down opposite her, in a way which was very familiar and home-like, and Mrs. Harwood’s mouth was opened. After a pause she began, with a little laugh,
“My son is not of that kind. I wonder, by the way, what has become of him that he is not in for tea? He is rather the other way. He goes a great deal too fast. If ever he thinks he is in love he will blurt out everything at once, and perhaps find himself bound for life to some one whom he has only known for a few days.”
“That is even more dangerous than the other way,” said Janet, with exceeding demureness, in the half light.
“Worse for the man, but not for the woman, who gets everything she wants. The other is a great deal better for the man, who holds off until he is quite sure——”
“One would think, then, that you rather approve of that last way, though I thought you had condemned it; but perhaps it is only for your son you would like it, and not for other people——”
“I don’t approve it at all,” cried Mrs. Harwood, hotly. “A girl’s best years may be wasted like that—always waiting and waiting—and perhaps some other cut her out in the end. You can’t think I should approve of that, my dear. I only say that Dolff, poor boy, is all the other way, and will most likely fling himself at the head of the first girl he fancies, which would be a pity for the girl too, for Dolff will not be very well off. He has got his grandfather’s little property in Wales, which is entailed on him, but he has in reality nothing more: though perhaps people might think otherwise, seeing him always treated as if he were the master of the house.”
Janet made no answer for a minute or two, and then, with a not unnatural instinct of combativeness, it occurred to her to carry the war into the enemy’s country.
She asked: “Have you been very long in this house, Mrs. Harwood?” in her most childlike voice.
“Eh? Oh! in this house? We came about fifteen years ago when Julia was a baby,” she answered, briefly.
“You must have done a great deal to it to make it so pretty. And have you really never used the wing?”
“The wing?”
Mrs. Harwood, in the first impulse of astonishment, raised her eyes and stared at Janet, but said no more.
“It looks,” said Janet, “as if it must be such a nice, well-shaped room—or perhaps there is more than one room? Many people would be so glad to have that little additional space.”
“You seem to know a great deal about it,” said Mrs. Harwood, “though I don’t quite know how, for it has been shut up for years, and none of the servants even have ever been in. It is full of old furniture from my home in Wales—and other lumber.”
“To be sure,” said Janet, “a nice lumber-room where you can put everything is of great use.”
“Yes, it is of great use; and, as it happens it would be of no particular use in any other way; for we have as many rooms as we want, and two or three for visitors—which is as much as anybody could desire in London. Of course it is a different thing in a country house. How is it that you have formed such a very clear idea of the wing, Janet? Many people never find it out.”
“I suppose,” said Janet, “because I have been walking so much in the garden lately, and one goes all the round of the house, and one speculates——”
“On what, I should like to know?” cried Mrs. Harwood, sitting bolt upright in her chair.
“Oh, nothing; only on the shape of the house, and what a nice corner it seems, and so much sun. Perhaps I was so bold as to think it would make a nice school-room,” said Janet, with a little laugh, “and so shut off from the rest of the house.”
“Oh, if that is all!” said Mrs. Harwood. She resumed, after a moment, “I would not advise it for that use. Of course I don’t myself believe in anything of the kind, but there are curious stories about it, about things that have been heard—and seen too, I believe. The last people who lived here were very queer people. I can’t tell you all that was said of them. The door of communication used to be open, but the servants in a body begged that it might be shut up. You have noticed, perhaps, that it is quite done away with.”
“Is it built up?” asked Janet, with great innocence.
“Built up? oh, no, that’s a strong step to take. After us there might come somebody who would want to use it, and building up is a strong step. But it’s almost the same—it is fastened up very effectually, so that no one can either come or go—not even,” said Mrs. Harwood, with an abrupt laugh, “a ghost.”
“But Vicars,” said Janet, pursuing the investigation, “can go out and in, I suppose?”
“Vicars?” cried Mrs. Harwood. “What do you suppose he has to do with it? Oh, I know now. You have heard that he lives on the ground-floor. So he does; but his rooms open from outside, as you may have seen. You must keep your eyes very well about you, Janet, to have found out all that.”
“No,” said Janet; “I only can’t help seeing things—that is, some things. And, to tell the truth, I have heard once or twice a curious noise which has frightened me very much. And I never had heard any of the stories, so it was all the more strange.”
Mrs. Harwood looked at her for a few moments with a fixed look; veiling her face, however, by means of the cup of tea which she had raised to her lips. Then she relapsed again into a laugh.
“You must not take such foolish fancies into your head, my dear. I don’t believe in anything of the kind. You may be sure there is some quite simple explanation of it—the wind in a chimney, or some other trick of acoustics, as they call it. You are far too sensible to believe in ghosts or mysterious noises. There is Dolff, I think, at the door.”
“I hope the tea is strong enough for him. He likes it strong,” said Janet.
“Oh, I am sure it will do very well. Janet! be careful how you mention such a thing to Dolff. He is very imaginative and impressionable. I don’t want his mind to be disturbed about the house. Pay a little attention to me, my dear; I am quite in earnest in what I say.”
“I shall certainly pay attention to whatever you tell me, Mrs. Harwood.”
“I know you will. I know you will! Not another word about it, as he is just coming in—nor to anyone, if you please, my dear. The servants get hold of such things, and make a story out of them, however small the incident may be; and there is a continual fuss, with their frights and their imaginations. You may mention it to Gussy if you like, but to no one else. Well, Dolff, we were just wondering what kept you so late for tea. Gussy and Ju have gone out to a tea-party, but I always calculate upon you to hand me my piece of cake.”
“You have got Miss Summerhayes, mother,” said Dolff, as if that was all that anyone could require.