Lettice

Foretells a pleasant day.”

    Charlotte Brontë.
About a week before the cold evening of Arthur’s drive with the old farmer in his cart to Greenwell, late one afternoon, a young lady in deep mourning might have been seen getting out of the train at a certain station in London. She was alone, and she had no luggage, except a little bag which she carried; and yet, as the train was an express one, not stopping at stations near at hand, it was clear that she had come from some distance. A porter, on the alert for embarrassed lady travellers, quickly called a cab for her, looking disappointed at no trunks being forthcoming, but needlessly so, as he received a liberal amount of coppers for the small service he had rendered. This rather unusual generosity made him give more attention than he generally had time to bestow on travellers, to the tall, slight, black-shrouded figure. The thick veil which she wore blew aside for an instant as she got into the cab, and he saw that she was very young, very pretty, and evidently in trouble, for her eyes showed traces of recent tears.

“Poor thing!” said the porter to himself. “A suddint summins, no doubt – wired for – started at onst – no luggage – no time to think of nothink;” and being a rather tender-hearted porter, he could hardly refrain, as he stood with his hand on the cab door waiting for the address, from adding paternally, “Hope you won’t find things so bad as you anticerpate, miss;” but before he had time to make up his mind whether he should or should not express these kindly feelings, he was startled by her saying rapidly, though in a low voice —

“Ask him to drive quickly, please, as quickly as possible;” and then she gave the address, which, rather to the porter’s surprise, was in that part of London where no one but lawyers, and lawyers in their official capacity solely, are to be heard of, which circumstance gave the porter matter for reflection for fully one minute and a half, till the next train came in or went out, and he relapsed into his normal condition.

Whether the cabman drove quickly or not, it did not appear so to the unhappy girl seated in his cab. It seemed hours to her, till he at last drew up, in a dingy, smoke-dried, but respectable locality, where she had never been before in her life. She jumped out of the cab, hardly replying to the driver’s inquiry as to whether he was to wait – which, however, as she had not paid him, he naturally decided to do – and only stopping to read the lists of names inscribed at each side of the open doorway, leading to the staircase common to all the tenants of the house, she hurried in, and was lost to sight in its solemnly gloomy recesses. Five minutes later she was back again, extreme dejection visible in her whole bearing to any one observing her with attention, even without the sight of the pale, agitated face which her veil concealed. But the cabman was not observing her; he was tired, and inclined to be drowsy, in spite of the cold weather, and Lettice stood still for a moment or two before getting into the cab again.

“Godfrey away, for a fortnight, at least. What shall I do? – oh, what shall I do?” she said to herself, pressing her hands together in agony. “If I only knew where he was!” But at his chambers they had refused, though quite civilly, to give her his address, contenting themselves with assuring her that any letters would be forwarded to him at once. “He may be abroad; he may be ever so far away. He might have let us know he was going;” but here her conscience reproached her. How could she expect him to have done anything of the sort when she remembered how they had last parted the cold contempt with which she had received his kind and reasonable remonstrances, till at last, stung into indignation, he had declared that henceforth he would leave her to herself, merely interfering with advice and direction when he saw it absolutely necessary to do so? And that was now three or four months ago. Since then he had only written on strictly business matters – about having taken on Faxleham Cottage for six months longer, directions about Auriol’s schooling, and so on. And these three or four months had been among the dreariest and most anxious Lettice had ever known. Nina was pale and drooping; Arthur’s letters were rare and unsatisfactory; the autumn had been an unusually rainy and depressing season, and they had absolutely no friends. But for Miss Branksome’s unfailing cheerfulness, Nina and the younger ones would, indeed, have been to be pitied, though less than Lettice herself.

For, far as she was from owning herself to be the cause of all this unhappiness, her conscience was not at rest, and misgivings from time to time made themselves felt, though she stifled them by exaggerating to herself the soundness of her motives. And this very exaggeration made her write to poor Arthur the letters which, in his overstrained state, had had so disastrous a result.

Towards Nina, too, she knew, at the bottom of her heart, that she had not acted fairly, though the reserve that had gradually grown up between them, had prevented her thoroughly understanding her younger sister. For what – for whom, rather – was poor Nina pining?

“Does she care for Godfrey?” Lettice asked herself, feeling that if Nina had learnt to do so it was thanks to her influence, and no other. And as time went on, and Lettice began to own to herself that it did not seem as if Godfrey were in love with Nina – “had it been so,” she reflected, “he is far too resolute to have been kept back by his quarrel with me,” – she almost came to hope that on both sides the dream had been the creation of her own fancy – her own self-will she would not call it.

Though even in this hope she found small rest for her troubled spirit. If it were not about Godfrey that Nina was fretting away, though patiently and uncomplainingly, the brightness from her pretty eyes, the roses from her young cheeks, about whom and what was it? And a certain afternoon last August, and a certain conversation with a fair-faced, honest young gentleman, who had come to plead his cause with manly straightforwardness; who had gone away looking ten years older, though with courteous and grateful words to herself on his lips, rose up before Lettice’s remembrance with reproachful eyes.

And all these memories – as in the so often quoted case of a drowning person – rushed through Lettice’s mind in the half-minute during which she stood there in her distress and desolation, while her lips repeated the same murmur – “What shall – oh, what shall I do? Every moment of time that I am losing here may be of the most vital importance.”

Once she turned and made a step or two towards the door again, in a half-formed resolution to inquire if Mr Auriol’s clerk could give her the address of Philip Dexter. But from this she shrank with the strongest feelings of her nature.

“To go to him– to appeal to him to help me,” she reflected. “It would be like begging him on again for Nina. It would be owning that it was all nonsense about Godfrey’s caring for her – and for Arthur’s sake, too. Why should I publish his humiliation to any but those who must know it?”

And again she stood irresolute and altogether wretched. And cabby, beginning to wake up and giving signs of being about to begin wondering what queer sort of a “fare, as didn’t know its own mind, he had got hold of,” doubled and trebled the girl’s embarrassment.

“I must go to some hotel for the night, I suppose,” she said to herself. “And oh! the horror of sitting there all the evening doing nothing, and lying there all night doing nothing – and Arthur, my darling brother, setting sail for America, before we can stop him; or perhaps – worse and worse – tossing in some miserable place among strangers, in a brain fever, where he may die —die, without having forgiven me!”

Nearly driven frantic by her own imaginings, she looked round her with a vague, altogether unreasonable appeal for help or guidance.

“What shall I do?” she ejaculated for the twentieth time, when just at that moment a carriage drew up – cabby rousing himself to move on so as to make room for it, for it was an unmistakable carriage, a small but thoroughly well-appointed brougham, quite capable of commanding his respectful deference – before the door where Lettice was standing, and a gentleman got out and came slowly over the pavement towards the house. The pavement, or the space between the houses and the real pavement, was wide there. It looked as if in far-off times there might have been a grass-plot or a flowerbed or two in front; and as the new-comer approached, Lettice had time to see him clearly. She looked at him – at the first glance a wild idea had struck her that possibly he might be Godfrey Auriol returned unexpectedly – with a sort of half-bewildered curiosity, but gradually a vague feeling came over her that he was not altogether unknown to her, that somewhere she had seen him before, or else that he resembled some one she had once known. But as he passed by, she recollected herself and turned sharply away. What was it to her what or who this stranger was? What was she made of to be standing there losing the precious moments in idle conjecture? And again the whole force of her mind became concentrated on the absorbing question – what was she to do?

She was turning at last to the cab, in a desperate resolution to go somewhere, when a quick step behind her made her look round. To her surprise there stood facing her the gentleman who a moment before had passed her to enter the house. He raised his hat, and she, looking at him, was again struck by his strange indefinite likeness to some one. He was slightly above the middle height, his dark hair already a very little hazed with grey. He looked a man of about forty, though in reality he was some years younger; his expression was gentle but rather piercing. There was great power, moral and intellectual, in his well-shaped forehead.

“Excuse me for addressing you,” he said. “But you seemed to me to be at a loss. Perhaps you are inquiring for some one you cannot find? I know this neighbourhood well. Can I help you?”

Lettice looked at him again. The gentleman’s tone was so respectful as well as kind, that the most timorous of maidens could scarcely have failed to feel confidence in him. And Lettice was the reverse of timorous; she was fearless to a fault, and her inexperience suggested no misgiving.

“Do you perhaps,” she began, “do you happen to know any one here – in this house? I am so disappointed at finding the friend, the gentleman I came to see, on most urgent business, away from home. And they won’t even give me his address?” she added girlishly, the tears welling up again as she spoke.

A curious look came into the kindly eyes that were regarding her, and the stranger made a very slight involuntary movement, almost as if he were going to lay his hand on her arm to console her as one would do to a troubled child. But he checked himself.

“I know Mr Auriol, Mr Godfrey Auriol, whose office is in this house,” he said.

“That is he,” exclaimed Lettice with delighted eagerness. “Oh, how fortunate that I should have met you! If you could, oh, if you could but get them to give me his address, I might telegraph to him. It would save ever so much time. Perhaps, I should tell you,” she went on, “I have a right to ask for his address; he is my – our guardian. My name is Morison.”

There was no visible change of expression in the stranger’s face, but one knowing him well would have seen a light in his eyes that was not there before. And his lips moved, though no sound was heard. “Thank God for this,” were the inaudible words.

“I can easily get you his address,” he said. “I was just going in to ask if they had any definite news of his return. I want to see him as soon as he comes back. Will you wait here a moment? It is very cold,” he added, looking round. “Is that your cab waiting?”

“Yes,” said Lettice.

The gentleman glanced at the cab, with its ill-fitting doors and windows, and the inevitable damp and chilly straw on the floor.

“I doubt if you would be much warmer there,” he said with a smile. “Would you – will you do me the favour to get into my brougham while I go upstairs? There is a hot-water footstool – and rugs – for I have just taken my wife home. You don’t think me very presuming?” he added. “Remember, I am a friend of Godfrey’s.”

There was something reassuring in the simple way in which he spoke of Mr Auriol by his Christian name, even had Lettice wanted reassuring, which she did not. She looked up again in the stranger’s face and said, with an abruptness that sometimes characterised her —

“Are you a doctor?”

He smiled. “No, I am not. I am sorry for it if it would have given you more confidence in me. Though I hope,” he added with real anxiety, “that it is not to hear of a doctor that you are here. None of you are ill? That isn’t the urgent business, I trust?”

“No,” replied Lettice, surprised at his way of speaking. “He must have heard about us from Godfrey,” she decided. “At least, I hope not,” she added, as her terrible picture of Arthur in a brain fever came before her eyes. “I hope not. But I don’t know what I think or fear. You won’t be long?” she said appealingly, for by this time her new friend had handed her into the snug little carriage.

“Two minutes at most,” he replied.

And Lettice sat there, grateful in a sort of childish way for the cushioned warmth and comfort, though till then she had thought nothing about how cold she was, gazing before her in a vague, half-dazed way, feeling almost as if she would fall asleep if she were left there long, but in some indefinite way undoubtedly many degrees less miserable and desolate than before the apparition of the brougham.

Its owner was as good as his word Two minutes had barely elapsed before he was back again.

“I have his present address,” he said. “But he is a long way off. He is in Scotland, and is not expected back for a fortnight. He is away on professional business, but he had hoped not to have to go so far. He had hoped to be back to spend Christmas with us down in the country. Now,” he continued, “what is to be done? You can telegraph to him, but I doubt if it would be possible for him to come back, and it is an out-of-the-way place where he is. You said there was no time to be lost? Have you no one else, no other friend or – or relative?” Here his voice faltered as he looked anxiously into the girl’s face, so pale and drawn and careworn as it had again become.

She roused herself with a sort of effort.

“I don’t know what to do,” she repeated.

“Can you not, though I am a stranger, can you not make up your mind – we have been brought together so strangely – can you not tell me what is the matter?” he said, beseechingly almost.

All this time he was standing with his hand on the carriage door.

“If you would let me take you home – to my wife,” he continued, “you would see how kind and sympathising she is. Could you tell her, better?”

“Oh no, thank you,” said Lettice. “I could tell you just as well. The trouble is about – my brother.”

“Your brother – Arthur? God forbid!” he exclaimed. “Is it anything very serious?”

“I fear so, but I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. And at the moment it did not strike her, so impressed was she with the magnitude of her overwhelming anxiety, how curious it was that a complete stranger should be so affected by her troubles! Yet his naming her brother by name caught her attention. “You know about us. I suppose from Mr Auriol?” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, but in an absent way.

And still Lettice sat gazing before her, as if she were half-stunned. Then suddenly, raising her eyes —

“Arthur has run away,” she said. “At least, he has gone away. He wrote that he would try to go to America, but we were afraid, Nina and I – we got his letter last night, and I came off by the first train this morning. Nina and Miss Branksome wanted me to wait and to telegraph first, so I came away without telling them. I could not bear waiting – we were afraid that he might have fallen ill somewhere. He has not been well lately, and the shock of his disgrace – ”

“Disgrace! What disgrace?” exclaimed the gentleman.

“He has failed – at least, he saw that he was going to fail – in his examination, and he would not face the rest of it,” said Lettice, the crimson rising to her face.