Chapter XXI: A Chance for Cecil

AUTUMN passed. To Joan it seemed that her life was very full. Banty demanded a great deal of her time, but she did not grudge it to her. Talks with Lady Alicia came back to her in which she had been told that she might be kept in her rather narrow sphere with the object of helping one particular person; and Joan could not but feel that Banty's sad misfortune had opened the way for a good many real talks on the deep things in life. Banty repeatedly told her that she had been a refuge to her in a raging storm, and, slowly and almost imperceptibly, Banty was feeling her way towards the real Refuge. But, though learning lessons of patience and endurance, and dimly seeing as 'through a glass darkly' the glories of the new world opening to her soul, Banty did not always exercise self-denial in her dealings with her friend.

Joan had come to her help in a dark hour; then it was Joan's purpose in life at present to continue that help and come to her aid at any time. When fits of depression seized her, she sent for Joan. When she had been cross and unreasonable to those around her, and was in a contrite, repentant mood, Joan must come and be her father confessor, and make peace with those she had vexed and hurt. When the hunt was meeting in the close vicinity of the Hall, and she was driven frantic by the hooting of the horn and the baying of the hounds, Joan must come up immediately, and sit with her, and amuse and entertain her till she was able to regain her fortitude and composure. And Joan rarely failed her; but it was at the cost of much effort and self-denial on her part to respond so willingly, and Cecil was very wroth at her prompt compliance with Banty's unreasonable demands.

Cecil herself, at home, was another unceasing trial to her sister. She was angry with Banty for her selfishness, yet failed to see that she, in her turn, was continually making demands upon Joan's time and attention. She had her black moods of depression and contrariety, when nothing would please or cheer her, and, as the weather became stormy and cold, she would incessantly grumble at the English climate.

One rainy afternoon, as dusk was falling, Joan came in from a visit to the Hall to find Cecil crouched by a dying fire in the drawing-room, looking the picture of woe.

"My dear, what a miserable room!" Joan said brightly, shaking up some untidy cushions on the couch with much energy and then stirring the fire. "Why, you look blue with cold! And you have let the fire nearly out. Have you been asleep?"

"Oh, I don't know. I have rung three times for coal. I never saw such servants, and Sophia had the impertinence to put her head in at the door and tell me I ought to have made the coal-scuttle last till tea-time! She said she was in the middle of making a cake, and if I wanted more coal, I could get some logs from the wood cupboard! I really wonder you don't give her notice to leave. She's getting quite unbearable."

"I would as soon think of asking Dad to leave!" said Joan, laughing. "Sophia is always cross on her cake days, and Maggie has gone out. Her mother is ill and wants her. I'll go and get some wood."

She was out of the room and back again in a minute. Cecil went on grumbling.

"I've a great mind to apply for a post as companion to someone to get away from home. I shall be ill if I stay on here longer. I must get abroad. Why don't you help me, Joan? Tell Father I can't, and won't, stay here all the winter. I never saw such a benighted place. We haven't had a visitor inside the house for a fortnight, at least. My bedroom wall is reeking with damp. Haven't you finished Mother's book yet? If only you could get it done, Derrick says he will get it taken by some publisher friend of his, and that will bring enough money in to make it easy for me to go abroad."

"I have so little time to write it, Cecil dear; but I am very nearly at the end of it. I should like to sit down and write it now, but I promised Father to do some accounts with him after tea. I think I'll go out and bring the tea in myself. We won't wait for Sophia. You will feel quite another being after it."

Cecil listened to her singing under her breath as she went out to the kitchen. It never entered her head to offer to help. She had a headache; that was quite sufficient excuse to remain idle.

When Joan came back, Cecil looked up at her.

"Joan, you 'must' help me. You are so absorbed in Banty that you can think of nobody else. I will and 'must' get away. You will have me dying on your hands if I don't. I woke last night, and could hardly breathe. I am getting back all my old breathlessness and my cough."

Joan looked at her a little anxiously, but she could not see any appearance of delicacy about her.

"You fret yourself ill," she said. "I wish you would make up your mind to get through a winter here. Be patient, and we will hope great things from Mother's book."

She made a mental resolve that she would work in her room at night. It was the only opportunity she had for quiet. She was as anxious as Cecil was that the book should be finished, but her days seemed too full for any time to write.

For the next few weeks Joan kept this resolve. She came down to breakfast in the morning with tired eyes and brain, but with a lightened heart. The book was progressing. And then came the day when it was packed off to Derrick. He did not keep them waiting long to hear its fate. It was accepted. A few alterations were deemed necessary, and Joan had a good deal of correspondence with the publisher over it.

About the end of November she received the sum of fifty pounds for advance royalties, and Cecil went joyfully to her father to demand permission to go abroad. To her amazement, he refused.

Mr. Adair was not a very strong-minded man, and very obstinate on some points. Joan could not persuade him to give way. He had suffered too much in the past from having his wife and daughter away when he could not afford to send them. Now that Cecil was fairly strong, and had not her mother to back her up, he considered that it would be weakness on his part to give way to her.

"I cannot afford it. You ought to be helping Joan at home. Everyone tells me she is wearing herself out. Why should you expect this sum of money to be spent on you? If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to Joan, who has had all the labour of producing it. And there are still debts of ours to be paid. Until I am actually free from debt, I will not incur the fresh expense of sending you abroad."

"If the money got by Mother's book is not spent according to her wishes, it is abominable injustice!" said Cecil passionately. "You know how she wished me to spend every winter abroad. It is why she commenced to write, to earn money for our comfort there. And, if the money belongs to Joan, I know she will give it to me gladly. When I am dead and in my grave, you will reproach yourself. You're killing me fast."

She flung herself out of the room, and went off to Joan. It was not often she spoke so passionately to her father. He was much hurt and indignant, and Joan had to receive the confidences of both, and try to make peace between them. But she could not move her father from his standpoint, nor alter his decision. Cecil raged and sulked by turns, would not eat, and spent most of her days in bed. In despair, Joan wrote to Lady Alicia. She saw that Cecil was making herself really ill, and she hardly knew how to act for the best.

In a few days she had Lady Alicia's reply, and it was astounding in its force and brevity:

"MY DEAREST JOAN,—Smooth the creases out of your brow. I have written to your father and to Cecil by this same post. I leave for Nice this day fortnight, and hope that Cecil will accompany me as my guest.—In greatest haste, your loving godmother,—

"ALICIA."

Joan received this letter at the breakfast-table. Her father and she were alone, and they looked up simultaneously at each other. He had been reading his communication from Lady Alicia at the same time she had been reading hers.

"Well, Joan, the difficulty is solved. I am glad, for I was beginning to dread these winter months for that refractory girl."

"Isn't it noble of Lady Alicia? I am so delighted. I must go up and see Cecil, and hear what she thinks of it."

She slipped upstairs. Cecil was in bed; her breakfast-tray lay beside her, but she was still heavy with sleep, and had not looked at her letters.

"Cecil, Cecil! Wake up! You can go abroad in a fortnight, if you like!"

Cecil opened her eyes. She was generally very cross the first thing in the morning, and had a great dislike to anyone entering her room before she was up. Joan's smiling, eager face roused her.

"What is the matter?"

Joan pounced upon a letter lying upon her tray addressed in Lady Alicia's handwriting.

"Here! Read this, and you will have the news!"

Cecil sat up in bed and took the letter.

"I don't know why you are so excited. Can't you speak?"

But Joan stood silent, letting the letter tell its own tale.

Cecil did not show any excitement. She read the letter through very calmly, and then handed it to Joan.

"I suppose she has written to you, too? I dare say Father will object, and I am not sure that I should like to go abroad with Lady Alicia. She is rather prudish and dull. She says she's ordered to go by her doctor, and must have a companion. Why doesn't she ask you? Does she expect me to be a kind of maid to her? I shouldn't fancy that."

"Well," said Joan, "if you don't jump at her kind offer, you mustn't expect any more sympathy from me. I really think you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Cecil!"

Cecil laughed. Her good humour came back.

"Of course I shall accept it," she said. "I would rather go with a tinker than not at all. Does Father know?"

"Yes; he is quite willing."

Cecil attacked her breakfast with vigour.

"It's rather short notice," she said. "I must get some things down from town."

"Now don't be running up bills! You always look nicely dressed, and Lady Alicia is very simple and quiet herself."

"I am not going to be a duplicate of Lady Alicia! How pleased you will be to get rid of me!"

Joan bent down and gave her a quick little kiss. "You know it is for your sake. I am so glad."

Cecil looked up at her with laughter in her eyes. "You're a trump, Joan! But we do not fit together very well. You are always such a saint that you provoke me to be a devil!"

Joan looked at her gravely and a little tenderly. "Lady Alicia considers you have the making of a fine woman in you."

With which diplomatic remark she left the room.

The fortnight that ensued was a very busy time for both sisters. Cecil did at times feel ashamed of herself when she saw how Joan slaved for her, and the night before she left home she said to her:

"I wonder you don't hate me, Joan! However much you may deny it, I know that when I am gone, you and Father will settle down with the greatest happiness and peace together. Sophia will thank Heaven she has seen the last of me. There isn't a soul here who would care if they never saw me again. I think it is this that makes me so bad tempered. Nobody wants me or likes me. I feel I am a very big fly in the small pot of ointment. The only one who really cared for me and wanted me is in her grave!"

"Oh, Cecil, you mustn't talk so! You don't know how I care, but you don't encourage me to show you any affection, do you?"

"No; I hate all that kind of thing. Some day, perhaps, I shall turn to you for what I now seem to spurn. In my heart I know that your view of life is the right one, and mine is wrong. But everything will have to be taken from me before I shall be content with what you are. My health and strength and powers of enjoyment will have to go before I can hope to settle down into such a narrow groove."

Joan did not speak; she felt tongue-tied. Her face showed how Cecil's words distressed her.

"Don't look so shocked. Perhaps Lady Alicia will work a wonderful change in me. Who knows? I may come back to you a perfect miracle of goodness and unselfishness. You can hope for it. Anyhow, you're a dear old thing, and I'm very grateful for all you've been doing for me!"

She put up her face for a kiss, and Joan had misty eyes as she gave it. In spite of all her waywardness, Cecil did occupy a big place in her heart.

When she had gone, the house seemed strangely silent and empty. Mr. Adair openly expressed his relief at his younger daughter's absence; and, as the days slipped by, Joan found that Banty and the parish more than occupied her time and thoughts.

Mrs. Adair's book was published in the new year, and it was a keen pleasure to Mr. Adair as well as to Joan to read it through and discuss every page of it. Banty received a copy. She was becoming a great reader, and though, as a rule, her reading was of the lightest description, she took the greatest interest in this special book.

"I have been telling Father," she said to Joan, "that he had better get you to finish our ridiculous Chronicles. Would you be above completing Motty's leavings?"

"I couldn't do it satisfactorily, I am afraid," said Joan. "Why don't you try it yourself, Banty? It would be such an interest to you!"

"It wouldn't be the smallest interest to me, except—" here her eyes brightened—"to ferret out all the Gascoignes who followed the hounds."

"Where is your cousin now?"

"He is still hanging on the skirts of those rich Americans. If he doesn't get engaged quickly to the girl, they will find him out, and it will be all 'UP' with him."

A few days afterwards, Banty told Joan that she had been looking over the MSS. already written about their family.

"Of course, I'm not a writer, and never shall be. Motty has put together all the papers and letters connected with us up to 1700; so he really has done the worst of it. And I have told father I will string together some of the letters and papers since. It is only to put them according to date, isn't it? I'm actually getting interested in my great-grandfather. He kept a pack of hounds and wrote the raciest letters to his lady love. In one he says 'I toasted you last night, and found the port a sorry substitute for your sweet lips!' It sounds as if he meant to drink them. I dare say his metaphor was mixed, like his brains, at the time, for they say he was a hard drinker."

Banty spoke with animation. Joan encouraged her all she could to persevere in the task.

"Your father will be so pleased if you can do it, Banty."

"I shall want something to keep me going," said Banty. "I get a sick longing to be on a horse again, Joan. It's all very well to talk of the glories of the future world; but if I can't ride there, it won't be any pleasure to me!"

On the whole Banty was meeting her misfortune with great pluck and fortitude.

"I know you think the hunting-field a very poor place, Joan," she said one day, "but I can tell you it gives you lessons in discipline and self-control like nothing else. It teaches you to bear fatigue without a whine, to take a few ugly bumps and tumbles as all in the day's work, and to wait patiently half a day, if necessary, when the hounds can't find. I've been well schooled in endurance all my life, and it helps me not to pull a poor mouth now."

As the spring came on, she grew wonderfully stronger, and could soon walk about with the help of a stick. She refused to use a crutch, and her nimbleness in moving surprised even the doctor.

It was a very happy day for Joan when Banty asked her rather awkwardly whether she would like her help in the Sunday school.

"I'd like to do something. I can tell them what you've told me. If I'd been taught by you as a child, what a saint I might have been!"

Joan gladly gave her a class of boys, and Banty not only developed a genius for managing them, but for interesting them; and she very soon became quite enamoured of her work.

Lady Gascoigne said rather pathetically to Joan:

"That dreadful accident has given me a daughter of whom I am proud. I was so afraid that she would be an unhappy, lifelong invalid. As it is, she does more for me and her father now, with her one leg, than she ever did with her two! And we never hear a complaint from her lips." Which was great testimony for such a high spirited, wilful girl as Banty had always been.