Chapter V: Conflicting Duties

"I NEVER saw a man so altered!"

Mrs. Daubeney had just returned from her visit to her brother, and was addressing Hope.

"Yes," said Hope gravely, "but he is ill. Brian has been telling me that the doctor fears that there is some pressure on the brain. He says the only chance is for him to have perfect rest and quiet, and freedom from all anxiety. And Brian told him that he would see he got it. I like that boy, aunt; I'm sure he's got real grit in him."

"Well, my dear, George and I had it out about you. He is quite willing that you should stay on with me, and I have settled to go to Homburg next week. That cousin of mine, whom I mentioned to you, will be there with her daughter—my god-daughter, you know—and she is very anxious that I should make her acquaintance."

"This is a sudden move, aunt."

"I am tired of town. I know it is early for Homburg, but it can't be helped."

"But," said Hope, with a little hesitation in her voice, "I have promised Brian to help him all I can in settling somewhere. I really must see a little of my father. Couldn't you wait a week or two longer in town?"

"I am not going to wait a day later than I said. I have offered your father my house in Kayminster till he can look round. It is empty, and he may just as well have the use of it."

"Oh," cried Hope, "that will be delightful for them!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Daubeney, with a virtuous smile, "they will be most comfortable and happy there, and the small boys can go to the grammar-school. I believe the expense is very little. Now that your family is provided for, my dear, you must give me your time for the next few days, for I must get some garments for Homburg, and I think you had better too."

Hope gave a little sigh.

"These endless clothes! How I wish we could do without them!"

The week sped away, and Hope did not see much of her father or brothers. Twice she called at their hotel and found the boys out, and her father not well enough to see her. She took Jerry and Toby to the Zoo and to the Crystal Palace, and persuaded Brian to drive out to Richmond with her one afternoon. He was singularly silent and uncommunicative, and instinctively Hope felt that he did not approve of her. She tried to tell him that she was very tired of her life, but he did not encourage her confidence, and she realised that to him she must appear a very self-indulgent idle pleasure-seeker. When she once said something about her aunt's dislike to go about alone, he said with intolerance of youth:

"I should think an old lady of her age would be only too glad to be quiet. I can't conceive how she can find pleasure in it, unless it is to see you enjoy yourself!"

And Hope then subsided entirely. The day before she left for Homburg, she went round to the hotel and wished them all goodbye.

"I shall come down to Kayminster, father, and see you directly I return. I do hope the quiet, country air will do you good."

Mr. St. Clair hardly replied to her. Jerry called out:

"You'd much better come with us now. I'm sure we want some one to look after us, don't we, dad? And Toby and me mean to get away from Brian's clutches as soon as ever we can!"

Just before leaving, Hope put an envelope into Brian's hands.

"It's a trifle for father's comforts. Don't tell him, but use it as you want it; and do write to me if things don't go straight."

When Brian opened it after she had gone, he found a cheque for fifty pounds.

As Hope was speeding down to Dover in the train with her aunt, she abandoned herself to gloomy anticipations of the future.

"I am so tired, so disgusted with it all. I would so much rather be helping Brian to keep house in Kayminster. I don't believe Aunt Gertrude would miss me for a time. And yet father does not want me. And I am so helpless, I feel quite lost without a maid to look after my things. How I wish I knew what to do. I suppose I must wait till we return to town again!"

Jim Horrocks, who always took upon himself to see them off on any of their journeys, was talking in an animated way to Mrs. Daubeney. As his eyes noted Hope's troubled face, and he heard her sigh for the third or fourth time, he turned to her.

"What on earth is the matter with you, Hope? You are gazing out of the window as if your last hour had come!"

Hope looked at him half-gravely, half-humorously.

"I am just wishing I could turn into a cow," she said. "I always wish I were one when I am in a train; they look so deliciously restful in their shady fields. Just think of the quiet meditation they can have. No one harries them—"

"Except the flies."

"That is a very trivial annoyance. They must feel they are of use to mankind, so that their lives are not entirely empty ones; they are not lonely, for they have their companions, and yet they are not bothered by them. I think I would rather be a cow than any other creature on earth!"

"My dear Hope, what extraordinary things you say!"

Mrs. Daubeney looked quite scandalised, but Jim laughed delightedly.

"We'll cow it together one day, Hope. I'll take you out for a day's fishing; that's the nearest situation to your ideal one, I fancy! What subject are you taking for your meditations, may I ask?"

"Conflicting duties," said Hope audaciously. "You know where I ought to be, Jim, and Aunt Gertrude knows too. That is why she hurried me away so quickly, before I had time to formulate my convictions. Aunt, dear, I wish you would imagine that I am going out to Homburg to get married."

"I wish you were," said Mrs. Daubeney.

"Do you really? Then what would you do?"

"I should be delighted to see you settled," said Mrs. Daubeney, innocent of the trap that was being laid for her. "And in that case I should take my god-daughter about with me. Her mother is not at all well off, and wants me to chaperon her."

"Oh!" said Hope, with a little nod across at Jim. "Mow I see daylight!"

"Are you meditating matrimony?" asked Jim. "I'm sure you couldn't do better than to take me."

"Don't resurrect dead bones! No; if my convictions grow too strong for my peace of mind, I shall elope by myself back to England one day, and Aunt Gertrude will solace herself with Eva. You can't say I haven't warned you of the possibility."

Mrs. Daubeney looked at her niece rather sleepily.

"Lord Hawthorne is at Homburg, so is Captain Calthorpe. Lord Hawthorne is an estimable young man."

Her eyelids drooped.

Hope looked at Jim with mischief in her eyes.

"Dear aunt! May those two names figure in her dreams and bring her visions of wedding-bells and orange blossoms!"

"Look here, Hope, what are you going to do?"

"I don't honestly know, Jim."

Hope's twinkling mirth died away. It was what made her attractive to so many—her sudden changes from grave to gay, and her endless varieties of moods.

"I know what I would like to do," she said softly, so as not to disturb Mrs. Daubeney's nap. "I would like to retire to the country with my father and brothers and make myself useful to them. I am tired of this kind of life, Jim. If Aunt Gertrude would be happy without me, I should leave her without a qualm!"

"You would die of the dismals if you buried yourself in the country," said Jim decidedly.

"No, indeed, I should not; but they don't want me. That is the bitterest part; they think I shall be more trouble than I'm worth. I have other interests now, Jim; I have told you so before. And I want to do something with my life; I have wasted so much time that I don't want to waste any more. I am sure I could relieve Brian of some of the strain he is feeling. You rather took to him, did you not?"

"Yes, I thought he was an awfully good sort."

"Then will you go down to them at Kayminster and say a word for me? Tell them that I could make them comfortable. Say I don't mind roughing it. I can light a fire, Jim—you know I did it at that picnic we had last summer, and I washed up the dishes afterwards, did I not? I'm not absolutely useless. Tell them all you can about my useful qualities and then write and let me know the result. Will you do this for me?"

Hope lifted soft pleading eyes to the young man's face, and he hastily promised he would do his best for her.

But as he waved his farewell to her on the steamer, he said grimly to himself:

"She would not face poverty with me. Why should she court it now by going to them? She is not cut out for a working-woman."

The weeks that followed at Homburg were not enjoyable to Hope. She found it increasingly difficult to get any quiet time to herself, and things that she formerly had done as a matter of course now grated on her feelings.

Her Sundays were miserable; and at last she decided to speak out to her aunt and tell her of the change she felt in her heart. She did it in much trepidation one Sunday night after she had refused to make a fourth at bridge. Mrs. Daubeney was vexed, and came to Hope's bedroom between twelve and one o'clock at night to remonstrate with her.

"Now, Aunt Gertrude, I will make a clean breast of it," said Hope, drawing forward an easy chair and making her aunt sit in it.

Then she sat down on the rug beside her, and, laying her head against her knee, took her hand caressingly in hers.

"I don't want you to think me priggish or uncharitable or hypocritical, but I'm beginning to look at things quite differently now. It was Canon FitzRoy's sermons. I do wish you had heard them, aunt. You would have felt just as I did, I know you would. Anyhow, they made me pretty miserable until I found out from the Bible how I could be happy. I think it's not seeing what religion really is that makes one so indifferent to it—"

"Come, come," said Mrs. Daubeney restlessly, "don't begin to preach to me, Hope. Say what you want and have done with it."

"Then it is this. I want to spend my Sundays in a manner that will please God. I want to put His pleasure before my own, and I am going to knock off all week-day pursuits, bridge first and foremost amongst them."

"You are crazy!"

"I don't think I am. I don't feel so."

"I begin to think," said Mrs. Daubeney slowly, "that you are commencing a series of small annoyances with an object in view. I am not dense by nature, and I know what a hankering you have to be with your father. Do you think that by making yourself disagreeable I shall be more likely to let you go? I am determined that you shall not, for your own sake as well as theirs. I intend to keep you with me, Hope, until you marry, and if you attempt to leave me before that day arrives, you will leave me penniless, for I shall stop your allowance immediately, and then where would you be?"

"Oh, Aunt Gertrude, don't be angry with me!"

Hope felt startled and dismayed at her aunt's determined accents.

"You must not give me credit for such underhand motives," the girl continued, with distress in her eyes. "You know how I love you and how grateful I am for all you have done for me. But I know, and you say yourself, that if I married to-morrow, you would be perfectly happy. Why should you not let me pay my father a visit? Eva would take my place, and you would not miss me much. Still, all this has nothing to do with the case in point. I cannot play bridge on Sunday. I am quite determined in my own mind that it is wrong for me to do it. I don't judge any one else. I seem to see everything so differently now. Please let me go my own way as quietly as possible. I don't want to interfere with any one else. And, oh, Aunt Gertrude, if you only knew what peace I have in my heart, you would not grudge it to me! I have been so miserable, and I am so happy now! I wish you could understand about it."

Mrs. Daubeney patted her shoulder caressingly.

"There, my dear, keep your religious convictions to yourself. It is not good taste to talk about them. And wait to offer your services to your father till he requires them. He does not want you at present, he told me so. I must go to bed; I am quite sleepy. I know these new emotions of yours will pass, so I am going to take no notice of them."

She kissed the girl kindly. It always cost Mrs. Daubeney a good deal to speak harshly to any one. She had deemed it best to show her niece that she was not to be trifled with, and having done so, she was not going to refer to the matter again.

Hope returned her aunt's kiss warmly, but she spent a sleepless night. The words of her young step-brother rang in her ears:

"Father had got it into his head that you might come and mother the little chaps a bit."

And she realised that her aunt was not given to consider others' needs before her own. Then she prayed for guidance, and met her aunt the next day with a cheerful smiling face, for she felt sure that her way would be made clear to her.

About three weeks after she had arrived at Homburg, Hope got her first letter from Kayminster, and it was not from either Brian or her father, but from the small boys.

"MY DEAR HOPE,—This letter is from me and Jerry, but I'm writing it because Jerry blots so. We'd like you to know that things are going bad. The school is rotten, and Brian won't let us stay to dinner, and the stuff this Anne gives us is simply filth, and Brian is away most of the day and doesn't know the rottenness of it. And Brian is a shocking mender. We're ashamed of our stockings. Dad sits up and slangs all round. We think you ought to come and tidy the house a bit, like mother did; there's no one here to keep Anne in order, and she's too cheeky, and I caught her drinking dad's soup.

"England is no good at all, and Jerry and I wish we were back in Canada. We have no horses, or cows, nor poultry, nor even a dog, and what are fellows to do out of school-time? The only fun is walking on the top of the walls round the neighbours' gardens, and Jerry cut his head when he tumbled, and Anne screamed, and dad scolded, and I had to stop the bleeding with Brian's handkerchiefs. We'll expect you five days from this. Two for this letter to get to you, one day to pack, and two days to get here. Jerry and me will meet the train next Thursday. We think you'll come, and we've told Anne you will. It has made her sit up. She wants a mistress. Your affectionate brothers,—

"JERRY and TOBY."

Hope laughed and sighed over this letter, then took it straight to her aunt, saying:

"I am going to run away from you. This shows how I am wanted. You will be quite happy here looking after Eva, and she will look after you. And I'm sure you won't miss me. It doesn't matter about money. I shall have to earn something if I can. Oh, Aunt Gertrude, dear Aunt Gertrude, let me go! I feel torn in two!"

For an hour Mrs. Daubeney scolded, reasoned, and pleaded with her, then suddenly relented and told her she would let her go.

"I believe the discomfort of it all will drive you back to me. I will allow you one hundred pounds a year—no more. You will not be going out into Society, so that will be sufficient to clothe you. And I shall adopt Eva for the time; her mother is only too willing."

"I would rather have no allowance from you when I am away from you," said Hope.

"Nonsense, you can't afford to be proud. You are my niece, and I know your father too well to let you be dependent on him for every penny that you need. Say no more about it. If I did not think he is fast breaking up, I would not let you go to him. As it is, I feel it will be only for a short time."

Hope was only too thankful to part on friendly terms with her. She made her preparations quickly, and wrote to her father telling him that he might expect her. But when the last minute came and she was wishing her aunt goodbye, she broke down.

"I'm glad I'm going," she said, struggling to restrain her tears; "but I feel like a bird leaving the nest. You have mothered me for so long, and been so good to me, that I shall feel perfectly forlorn without you!"

Mrs. Daubeney's eyes were misty, but she controlled her feelings.

"You ought to have married sooner—you are throwing away your chances. Never mind, you will soon get tired of it and come back to me!"

With this prophecy in her ears, Hope journeyed back to England.