Chapter XV: A Speedy Parting

HOPE could not confide in Brian till the next morning, and then she broke the news awkwardly to him.

He was just going out to the poultry, and he stood in the doorway looking at her, with a tinge of amusement in his eyes.

"I'm not quite a fool," he said; "I knew we should not keep you long, only I thought that London chap was to be the happy man. Does he want to take you out to India with him?"

"As if I would go! I have told him I will never leave father, as long as he wants me."

"That won't be very long," said Brian soberly. "I doubt if he will live a year."

"Oh, Brian!"

"Well, we'll see!"

He went off to his work without another word, and Hope, relieved that he took it so quietly, went in to tell her father. She knew that he could not object. Just for a moment, the frown that crossed his face troubled her, but she immediately assured him that she was not going to leave him, and his brows relaxed, and his face assumed its ordinary tranquillity.

When Lancelot came later in the day, Brian met him with a manly grip of the hand.

"She'll make any chap a good wife; but I understand you are not going to take her away at once."

It was another wet afternoon. Lancelot came into the kitchen, and Hope and he had it to themselves.

But Hope could not be idle. It was ironing afternoon, and she went on steadily with her work whilst he sat in the window and chafed at it.

"I hate to be idle, whilst you are working. It is a miserable life for you."

"It is a useful and a happy one."

Hope looked across the table at him a little defiantly. He smiled at her, and the gloom disappeared from his eyes.

"Ah!" she said. "That is better. Now talk to me; let me hear your plans. We have such a short time left together."

"I feel," he said, "as if I cannot go to India and leave you like this. It makes me inclined to chuck it up, and take possession of the old place in the North."

"But what good would that do? I could not come to you. No, our circumstances fit in very well. I have my work and you have yours. We will leave the future."

"I shall be feeling that you may be ill from overwork. You have no one who looks after you, or who cares whether you are well or ill."

"I could write," suggested Hope softly.

"Your letters will be my life," Lancelot exclaimed.

She shook her head.

"They will be very unsatisfactory. I am not given to letter-writing. I don't understand the art."

"Will you promise to wire to me if you are in any difficulty?"

"Yes."

Then she gave a happy little laugh.

"It's delicious to feel I have some one to whom I can turn!" she said.

"And," went on Lancelot, looking at her intently, "I want, or my mother wants you to do her a favour. She has a useful maid who can turn her hand to anything. She has arranged to leave her in England, giving her board-wages, as she wants to keep her. Could you possibly fit her in here? You would find her invaluable. She is a country girl and enjoys the idea of it. It would be such a relief to my mother if you could take her in."

The colour mounted into Hope's cheeks. She went on ironing one of the boys' shirts, and she seemed entirely absorbed in it. Then, after a minute's silence, she looked up.

"It is very kind of you; I can't help seeing through it, you know! But it wouldn't work at all! You must let me go my own way, and believe that I am happy and well in it."

"Don't be proud."

"There is a certain kind of pride that is justifiable!"

"Not this kind. My mother will talk to you. Can you come to see her to-morrow? She is not well enough to come out, but she is longing to have you with her."

"I will see if I can manage it."

There was silence; then, as Hope put her iron back on the stove and prepared to take up another, he came swiftly round the table and prevented her.

"You are unapproachable with that table between yourself and me. Come and sit down, and drop your pride and your virtuous industry. I want you for myself. I want you to show me your heart. I will teach you how to do it. I am wholly and entirely selfish this morning, and your work must stop."

The loving mastery in his tone overcame her scruples.

For the next half-hour they sat together in the deep window-seat, and talked as only lovers can.

"I knew that we should come together the very first time I saw you," he assured her.

"But we very nearly did not," said Hope, a troubled light coming into her eyes. "I sacrificed my pride when I ran after you. I don't know how I could have done it! What did you honestly think of me? Tell me now."

"I thought you an angel of goodness in turning my dark hour into a paradise!"

"You will never bring it up against me? It is curious that, though I was so full of doubts and fears before, now I wonder that I could have ever thought it possible to send you away. Oh, Lancelot, I hope I shall never disappoint you! I feel so full of thanksgiving, so sure that God Himself has brought us together. You will help me in so many things. I suppose it is having to arrange so much myself that makes me long to have some one to arrange for me."

"That I will gladly undertake," said Lancelot, in such a keen tone that Hope laughed at him.

"Have your way with me now, for I know that my tractable mood will not last. I shall soon rebel, I warn you."

Their time came to an end. Mr. St. Clair wanted his daughter, and Lancelot drove home, wondering how he could sail for India, when he would be obliged to leave Hope behind.

It was three or four days afterwards that Hope got over to see Mrs. Dane. Their meeting was very quiet, but Mrs. Dane embraced her, with tears in her eyes.

"I have always coveted you for a daughter," she said, "and now I have you."

"But not for long," said Hope pathetically. "You are going to leave me as well as Lancelot. I shall have no friends left."

"Do you know what I have been thinking?" said Mrs. Dane. "I wondered if you would like to bring your father to this house for the rest of the winter. Your brother would get on very well where he is. I shall be obliged to leave some of my servants here doing nothing. It is so bad for them, and it would be a charity if you came here and looked after them. And my housemaid is such a nice woman; she was a hospital nurse once, and she would be so delighted to attend on your father."

"Dear Mrs. Dane, your plans are overwhelming!" Hope tried to laugh, but she was profoundly touched by the Danes' efforts to leave her in greater comfort. "It couldn't be," she said. "Father needs Brian more than he does me, otherwise Brian would have gone to Canada; and we settled, after our experience in Aunt Gertrude's house, that big houses were a mistake for us. We have very small needs, and a very small place suits us best. But I can't thank you enough for such kindness of thought."

"I wish you could be married at once," said Mrs. Dane, looking at her wistfully. "I don't like leaving you where you are!"

Hope blushed and laughed again.

"I should be frightened by such a sudden proceeding. I don't know Lancelot very well yet, and sometimes, when he adopts a very masterful tone with me, I feel a little afraid of him."

"Ah, you need never feel that. A good son makes a good husband. He is so wonderfully tender and considerate with women. His only fault is a little hardness of judgment which he shows towards those who have not the same high code of principles as he has himself. He wants the softening influence of a wife. I have often told him so."

"Tell me more about him."

Hope sat and listened with glowing eyes to a mother's description of a son.

And when she had left, Mrs. Dane turned round and delighted her son's heart by her talk about Hope.

The engagement was soon known. Kitty Parr was only half-pleased about it.

"You are too good to last!" she exclaimed. "I might have known you would soon get married and go away. My theory is, that some women have sufficient qualities in themselves to be better and happier without husbands than with them. And I hoped and thought that you were one of them. Silly, feeble-minded, diffident and irresolute women ought to marry. They want the balance of a strong decided character to live with them. And a very strong-minded, hard and brusque woman ought to marry a nice, gentle, meek little man. Every house wants the balance well adjusted. Don't laugh at me; I talked it over with our old doctor here. He understood, for he makes up mixtures, and he puts in one thing to counteract the effect of the other. We have a good mixture in our house. Avice is soft and sweet; I am brusque and hard. Father is a blending of both of us. I go to one extreme, Avice goes to the other, and he keeps us together in the middle.

"But you're sweet and gentle, and yet I've seen you turn upon those imps of boys and be as firm as a rock, and as hard. You're gay and grave by turns. You're dainty and fragile-looking, and at the same time have as much go as I have. You don't really want a husband at all. Your character is complete in itself."

"Thank you, Kitty, but women don't take husbands to complete their characters."

"Well, they ought, if they want happy homes," said Kitty stoutly.

Jim Horrocks turned up in person to hear about it. He had always threatened Hope that he would come down one day when she least expected him, and carry her off from her "treadmill," as he termed it.

He arrived one afternoon when Hope was busy baking, and she did not welcome him effusively.

"Why didn't you let me know you were coming?" she asked him.

"Because you would have fussed round and done the idle lady, and I wanted to catch you as the slavey!" he retorted.

"I am not ashamed of what I do," she said, a little hotly. "But I would have done my baking this morning, and so would have had more time with you. Now you must sit still in this hot kitchen and talk to me, for I can't stop making bread."

"You're very fetching in the way you do it," he said, regarding her critically with his head on one side. "I've come down to congratulate you, I suppose; but upon my honour, I don't know what this fellow is like. And I feel I should like to advise caution. He may have worked upon your mind in these wilds, and unless he's an out of the way good sort, he isn't the man for you. When I think of the men you have scorned to look at (your humble servant amongst them), I do feel rather grousy with this immaculate hero, who has stepped in and won so easily!"

Hope laughed and flushed a little.

"Don't be an old grandfather, Jim! Lancelot is one in a thousand; you need not be at all uneasy. And I am not going to run away from my life here at present. I like it too well. I am useful at last. You know how often I wished to be in my old life. My heart's desire has been granted to me!"

"Oh!" groaned Jim, with a doleful face. "Of course, if his name is Lancelot, that explains all. There never was a woman yet who didn't fall down and worship any Lancelot! I wish I knew my Tennyson better, and could spout the praises of King Arthur's beloved knight! But I suppose you endue your hero with all the virtues of the other chap!"

"If you are going to sneer, Jim, you had better have kept away!"

"Oh, don't be angry! I beg pardon humbly. And I honestly am thankful you will be coming back to a proper state of life soon. This is an unnatural and shocking environment; that is the way science would put it."

"I don't find you half so nice as you used to be, Jim."

He looked at her half-wistfully, half-comically.

"I am getting older," he said. "Life is not managed as it should be. I'm finding fault with it. Now don't preach. There's a look in your eyes that says you want to be at me. I came down prepared to be nasty. Truth will out. You want me to be glad that you're engaged to this charming knight of yours. I don't know him, so I don't like him. I should have preferred you to marry some one I knew and liked. And I hear he is going to take you to India. That's a rotten country for women; they go to pieces, physically and morally, and they come home with yellow skins and a liver!"

"You ridiculous boy!"

Then Jim laughed. He had had his say, and felt the better for it.

Hope finished her baking, then made him help her to get tea, and he quite enjoyed himself. When he departed, he said to her:

"I suppose I shall have to send you a wedding-present, but I shall be hard up for the next two years, so take pity on me and don't get spliced before that!"

It seemed to Hope that the days flew by, only giving her snatches of time to see her lover. And then the last day came, and in his arms she gave way to tears.

"I am only getting to know you now! What shall I do without you? Life will not be worth living!"

"Shall I give my post up and stay? But you would despise me if I did, and I should despise myself!"

"Of course you must go. I am ashamed of myself."

Hope pulled herself together, and smiles took the place of tears.

He was white to his lips when he kissed her for the last time.

"Think of me and pray for me, and may God watch over you and keep you till we meet again."

Hope watched him down the red-bricked walk, feeling that he was taking the best part of her with him. She would have liked to go up to town and see them sail, but she could not be spared. He left her about five o'clock in the afternoon.

The next morning she received her first letter from him.

It was but a pencil note, but the contents filled her heart with rest and quiet:

"MY OWN DARLING,—Just a line. Mother and I are comfortably settled in our cabins and they're going to take the letters ashore. What can I say! I think I will give you a verse of your favourite hymn. May it comfort you as it is comforting me.

"'Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away?
In Jesus' keeping we are safe, and they.'

"Yours always,
LANCELOT."

The words of the hymn rang in her ears for many a day after, and the peace was given to her.

Kitty looked at her and marvelled. She had a young girl's quick insight; and she knew that Hope's very quietness, as she went about her work, was a sign that she suffered.

"It is so stupid when women get engaged," she confided to Brian, as she was helping him feed the poultry one afternoon.

"Is it?" he said, amused. "They don't seem to think so."

"Perhaps not, but everybody round them does. I don't see the use of being engaged. It's rotten. Don't laugh. If I liked a man, I would either marry him or not marry him; I would have no stupid waiting-time, it only makes everybody miserable."

"I don't think that would answer always," said Brian, looking at her reflectively. "Half a loaf is better than no bread! And if people can't marry, at all events they're booked for it, and that's a comfort to them."

"But it isn't! You watch any couple who are booked, as you call it. They're always absent and uncomfortable unless they're together. They can think of nothing else; they lose all their enjoyments if they're away from each other, and are quite different altogether."

"Well, when your time comes, you can set an example of a speedy marriage," said Brian, laughing.

"Oh, I shan't marry at all. I'm not the stuff for it. I shall be a strong-minded old maid, and live in a house like this, with plenty of animals. I shall be quite content."

But Brian nodded his head knowingly.

"Your day will come," he said.

"Rubbish!" Kitty retorted. "Don't let us talk of such things. If I say anything about marriage, Avice looks quite shocked. 'You're too young, Kitty, to discuss such matters.' As if there is a matter I can't discuss at my age! And I love talking. I have such a torrent of thoughts that it's quite a relief to let some out."

"Go ahead, then," said Brian. "I'll be your safety-valve."

"Let us discuss Hope. She is such a darling! I look at her sometimes as she moves about her kitchen, and I picture her in white satin and diamonds moving about a ballroom. Isn't it funny the difference between people? I honestly don't care for good people. There's a Miss Baker who lives two miles from us. You will have seen her in church. She sits under the pulpit, with a black bonnet and a mauve feather. She really belongs to another parish, but she quarrelled with her vicar, and has come over to us. She talks to father like the mediæval saints in the stained-glass windows, with her eyes rolled up, her elbows close to her sides, and her hands clasped. Father says she may not be interesting, but she's thoroughly good and worthy! I can't bear her. Now, Hope is really good. I've had lots of little sermons from her, and I've really enjoyed them. I think it is because she has such a way of smiling at you with her eyes, as if she loved you."

"Hope's all right," said Brian gruffly.

"Yes," went on the warm-hearted girl. "I feel as if I should really like to be like her. She makes you feel that serving God is not only intensely interesting, but awfully jolly—well, perhaps that's not quite the expression, but you know—quite the very nicest way of living! Now Avice never makes me feel that, with all her goodness! Oh, Hope's much too good to go out to India, or to marry!"

Brian laughed out. Kitty always amused him. She would toss her red hair over her shoulder, and her eyes would blaze and quiver with light and earnestness. Her whole body seemed to vibrate with feeling as she talked, and her moods were always intense and passionate.

Her father wondered why she spent so many hours at the cottage, but was quite content that she should do so; and Kitty had always one answer to make to any objections raised.

"I want to make myself useful, and I love to be with Miss St. Clair. She does me good."