Lettice

Philip’s bright, handsome face fell; he looked in a moment years older.

“You think there is something in the way, I see,” he said. “Ah! well, there is nothing for it but to make sure. I must see Nina herself. Where is she?”

“She is out,” said Lettice, and her face flushed. “She is out walking with Godfrey Auriol.” Something in her tone and expression made Philip stop short and look at her sharply. She bore his look unflinchingly, and that perhaps impressed him more than her words. She was able to do so, for she was not conscious of deceiving him. She deceived herself; her determined prejudice and self-will blinded her to all but their own tendencies and conclusions. Mr Dexter’s eyes dropped. At this same moment there flashed before his memory the strangely enthusiastic tone with which Godfrey had spoken of – as Philip thought —Nina, that first morning at Esparto. His face was very pale when he looked up again.

“Miss Morison – Lettice,” he said, “you do not like me, but you are incapable of misleading me. You think there is something between Nina and Mr Auriol?”

“He is very fond of her,” said Lettice. “I do not know exactly, but I think – ”

“You think she returns it?”

Lettice bowed her head in agreement. “Then I will go – as I came – and no one need know anything about my having been,” said Philip. “You will tell no one?”

“Not if you wish me not to do so; certainly not,” she replied, only too delighted to be, as she said to herself, obliged to conceal his visit. “I very earnestly beg you not to tell of it,” he said; “it could serve no purpose, things being as you say they are.”

Lettice made a little movement as if she would have interrupted him. Then she hesitated. At last —

“I did not – exactly – ” was all she got out.

“No, you did not exactly in so many words say, ‘Nina is engaged, or just going to be, to Godfrey Auriol.’ But you have said all you could, and I thank you for your honesty. It must have been difficult for you, disliking me, and knowing that I know you dislike me, to have been honest.” Philip spoke slowly, as if weighing every word. Something in his manner, in his white, almost ghastly face, appalled Lettice.

“Mr Dexter,” she exclaimed, involuntarily laying her hand on his arm, “I don’t think I do dislike you, personally;” and she felt that never before had she been so near liking, and certainly respecting, the young man. “But you know all the feelings involved. I am very, very sorry it should have gone so far with you. Yet I could not have warned you sooner last winter; it would have been impossible. I had no reason to think there was anything so serious.”

“Last winter,” repeated Philip. “I don’t understand you. There was no reason to warn me off then. Before she had ever seen him? I had all the field to myself. You don’t suppose I am giving it up now out of deference to that shameful, wicked nonsense of prejudice and dig like to the best man in the world – your uncle, and mine, as I am proud to call him?” And Philip gave a bitter and contemptuous laugh. “I am going away because I see I have no chance. I esteem and admire Godfrey Auriol too much to enter into useless rivalry with him. He is not likely to care for any woman in vain. But if I had not been so afraid of hurting you last winter, if I had thrown all the prejudice to the winds, I believe I might have won her. Godfrey would never have come between us had he had any idea of how it was with me. So, after all, it is that wicked, unchristian nonsense that has done it all. You may think it is right; you cannot expect me to agree with you. At the same time, I repeat that I thank you for your honesty. Good-bye. Can I reach Garford by this way?” and Philip, in a white fever of indignation and most bitter disappointment, turned to go.

Lettice had never perhaps in all her life felt more discomposed.

“Mr Dexter,” she said, “don’t leave me like this; don’t be so angry with me. I have tried to do rightly – by you, too.”

“I have not denied it; but I cannot stand and discuss it as if it were anything else. I am only human. I must go. I am afraid of – of meeting them. Tell me, is this the right way?”

“Yes,” replied Lettice mechanically; “straight on brings you out on the road again. It is a short cut.”

Philip raised his hat; and before Lettice had time for another word, had she indeed known what to say, he was gone. She stood and looked after him for some moments with a blank, half-scared expression; and then, retracing her steps, she walked slowly back, and thus came to be observed by her sister and Godfrey returning in the other direction.

It was not a happy moment for Mr Auriol to choose for his renewed attempt. Lettice slept badly, and woke in the morning feverish and excited; but, by way perhaps of shifting the misgiving and self-reproach which would insinuate themselves, more blindly determined than ever to stand to her colours. She listened to her uncle’s letter and to all Mr Auriol had to say, and then quietly announced her decision. Nothing could induce her to regard as a relation the man who had supplanted her father, the representative of the unnatural family who had treated him all his life long as a pariah and an outcast, and had been the cause of sorrows and trials without end to him and her mother.

“I am the eldest,” she said. “I can remember more distinctly than the others the privations and trials they went through – at the very time when my father’s father and brother were rolling in riches, some part of which surely, by every natural law, should have been his.”

“And some part of which was his,” said Godfrey. “Everything he had came from his father. And why it was not more was his own fault. He would not take it.”

“Neither will I,” said Lettice, crimsoning. “What my father accepted and left to us I considers ours; but I will take no more in any shape, directly or indirectly.”

“Then,” said Godfrey, also losing his self-control, “you had better give up all you have. For, is surely as I stand here, you would not, as I have already explained to you, have had one farthing left but for what Ingram Morison did and risked. You owe all to him.”

Lettice turned upon him, very pale now.

“You may some day repent taunting me so cruelly with what I am in no way responsible for,” she said.

Godfrey, recognising the truth of this, tried to make her better understand him; but it was useless.

“I must bear it for the present,” was all she would say; and Nina heard her mutter something to herself about “once I am of age,” which made her still more uneasy.

“I have done more harm than good,” said Godfrey at last. “There is no more to be said.”

He glanced at Nina and Arthur, but neither spoke. Lettice saw the glance.

“We are all of one mind,” she said proudly. “Are we not, Nina? Are we not, Arthur?”

Nina’s eyes filled with tears; Arthur was very pale.

“You know, Lettice,” said Nina, “at all costs we must cling together;” and Lettice preferred not to press her more closely.

And Godfrey Auriol returned to town the next morning.

Chapter Seven.

A Tramp in the Snow

“There is no dearth of kindness In this world of ours, Only in our blindness We gather thorns for flowers!”

    Gerald Massey.

A very cold winter morning, colder than is often the case before Christmas, and Christmas was still some days off. Snow had fallen in the night; and while some weather optimists were maintaining that on this account it would feel warmer now, others, more experienced, if less hopeful, were prophesying a much heavier fall before night – what lay on the ground was but the precursor of much more.

The family party round the breakfast table in the pretty Rectory of Thorncroft were discussing the question from various points of view.

“If it would stop snowing now, and go on freezing hard till the end of the holidays, so that we could have skating all the time, then I don’t care what it does after,” said Tom, a typical youth of fourteen, to be met with, it seems to me, in at least six of every seven English country families.

“No,” said Ralph, his younger brother, “I’d rather it’d go on snowing for about a week, so that we could have lots of snow-balling. I like that better than skating.”

“There wouldn’t be much of you or Tom left to skate or snowball either, if it went on snowing for a week. We’d be snowed up bodily,” remarked their father. “Have you forgotten grandpapa’s stories?” For Thorncroft was in an out-of-the-way part of the country, all hills and valleys, where snowings-up were not altogether legend. “But, independently of that, I don’t like you to talk quite so thoughtlessly. Either heavy snow or hard frost long prolonged brings terrible suffering.” And the kind-hearted clergyman sighed, as he rose from the table and walked over to the window, where he stood looking out for a few moments without speaking.

“I must tell cook to begin the winter soup at once,” said the mother, speaking to her eldest daughter. For in this family there was a sort of private soup kitchen in severe weather – independently of charity to their own parishioners – for the benefit of poor, storm-driven waifs and strays, many of whom passed this way on their tramp to the northern towns, which they were too poor to attain by the railway. It was an old custom, and had never been found productive of abuse.

“Yes,” replied the young girl; “for I am sure the weather is going to be dreadful. Shall I go and speak about it, mamma?”

“Do, dear; your father may want me for a few minutes.”

Daisy left the room, but only to reappear again very shortly with a troubled face.

“Papa, mamma,” she said, “there is a tramp at the door now. He seems nearly fainting, and cook says he must have been out in the snow all night. There is no soup ready; might I have a cup of tea for him?”

“Certainly,” said her mother. “Run, one of you boys, for a kitchen cup; it will taste just as good, and I don’t like to risk one of my dear old china ones.”

“Mamma,” said Daisy, in a low voice – she was always a little afraid of the boys laughing at her – “I don’t think it would have mattered about the cup. Do you know, he looks quite like a gentleman?”

Her father, who was standing near, overheard the last words. He had been reading a letter, which he threw aside.