My Little Lady Part 32

"My dear Monsieur Horace,

"Aunt Barbara bids me write and welcome you back to England.

We look forward to seeing you very much; but she says, if you can remain with your sister a week longer, it will be better than coming down to Cornwall now, as we shall be in London on Monday next, at the latest. We should have come up to town for Christmas as usual, if Aunt Barbara had not been so unwell; and now that she is strong again, she wishes to be there as soon as possible. It would not be worth while, therefore, for you to make so long a journey just now. I hope you will come and see us soon; it seems a long, long time since you went away--more than five years.

"Ever your affectionate

"Madeleine Linders."

It was at the end of a dull March day that Horace Graham, just arrived from Kent, made his way to his aunt's house in Westminster. He thought more of Madelon than of Mrs. Treherne, very likely, as the cab rattled along from the station. There had never been much affection or sympathy between him and his aunt, although he had always been grateful to her, for her kindness to him as a boy; but she was not a person who inspired much warmth of feeling, and his sister's little house in the village where he had been born, had always appeared to him more home-like than the great Cornwall house, where, as a lad, he had been expected to spend the greater part of his holidays. But he was pleased with the idea of seeing his little Madelon again. He had not needed letters to remind him of her during all these years; he had often thought of the child whom he had twice rescued in moments of desolation and peril, and who had been the heroine of such a romantic little episode--thought of her and her doings with a sort of wonder sometimes, at her daring, her independence, her devotion--and all for him! When Graham thought of this, he felt very tender towards his foolish, rash, loving little Madelon; he felt so now, as he drove along to Westminster; he would not realize how much she must be altered; she came before him always as the little pale-faced girl, with short curly hair, in a shabby black silk frock. It was a picture that, somehow, had made itself a sure resting-place in Graham's heart.

"We did not expect you till the late train, sir; it is close upon dinner-time, and the ladies are upstairs in the drawing- room, I believe," said the old butler who opened the door.

"Upstairs? in the drawing-room?" said Graham; "stop, I will find my way, Burchett, if you will look after my things."

He ran upstairs; the house was strange to him, but a door stood open on the first landing, and going in, he found himself in a drawing-room, where the firelight glowed and flickered on picture-lined walls, and chintz-covered easy- chairs and sofas, on an open piano, on flower-stands filled with hyacinths and crocuses, on the windows looking out on the dark March night, and the leafless trees in the Park. No one was there--he saw that at a glance, as he looked round on the warm, firelit scene; but even as he ascertained the fact, some one appeared, coming through the curtains that hung over the folding-doors between the two drawing-rooms--some one who gave a great start when she saw him, and then came forward blushing and confused. "My aunt is upstairs,"--she began, then stopped suddenly, glancing up at this stranger with the lean brown face, and long rough beard. "Monsieur Horace!" she cried, springing forward. He saw a tall, slim girl, all in soft flowing white, he saw two hands stretched out in joyous welcome, he saw two brown eyes shining with eager gladness and surprise; and all at once the old picture vanished from his mind, and he knew that this was Madelon.

CHAPTER II.

Sehnsucht.

Graham had numberless engagements in London, and except at breakfast, or at lunch perhaps, little was seen of him at his aunt's house during the first days after his arrival in town.

One evening, however, coming home earlier than usual, he found the two ladies still in the drawing-room, and joining them at the fireside, he first made Madelon sing to him, and then, beginning to talk, the conversation went on till long after midnight, as he sat relating his travels and adventures.

Presently he brought out his journal, and read extracts from it, filling up the brief, hurried notes with fuller details as he went on, and describing to them the plan of his book, some chapters of which were already written, and which he hoped to bring out before the season was over. Mrs. Treherne was a perfect listener; she was sufficiently well informed to make it worth while to tell her more, and she knew how to put intelligent questions just at the right moment. As for Madelon, she had been busily engaged on some piece of embroidery when he first began talking, but gradually her hands had dropped into her lap, and with her eyes fixed on him in the frankest unconsciousness, she had become utterly absorbed in what he was saying. Graham's whole heart was in his work, past and present, and this rapt nave interest on the part of the girl at once flattered and encouraged him.

"I can trust you two," he said, putting away his papers at last, "and I am not forestalling my public too much in letting you hear all this; but you are my first auditors, and my first critics. You won't betray me, Madelon?" he added, turning to her with a smile.

She shook her head, smiling back at him without speaking; and then, rising, began to fold up her work, while Mrs. Treherne said,--

"I should have thought you would have found your first audience at Ashurst."

"I did try it one evening," he said, "but one of the children began to scream, and Georgie had to go and attend to it; and the Doctor went to sleep, and Maria, who had been all the afternoon in a stuffy school-room, looking after a school- feast or something of the sort, told me not to mind her, and presently went to sleep too; so I gave it up, after that."

"It was certainly not encouraging," said Mrs. Treherne; "but you must surely have fallen upon an unfortunate moment; they do not go to sleep every evening, I presume?"

He did not answer; he was looking at Madelon, his eyes following her as she moved here and there about the room, putting away her work, closing the piano, setting things in order for the night. It was a habit he had taken up, this of watching her whenever they were in the room together, wondering perhaps how his little Madelon had grown into one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Indeed she was little Madelon no longer--and yet not wholly altered after all.

She was tall now, above the middle height, and her hair was a shade darker, and fastened up in long plaits at the back of her head; but her cheeks were pale as in old days, and a slight accent, an occasional idiom, something exceptional in style, and gesture, and manner, showed at once and unmistakably, her foreign birth and breeding. As Mrs. Treherne had once said, she had not, and never would have, an English air and complexion; but her beauty was not the less refined and rare that the clear, fair cheeks were without a tinge of colour, that one had to seek it in the pure red lips, the soft brown hair, the slight eyebrows and dark lashes, the lovely eyes that had learnt to express the thought they had once only suggested, but still retained something of the old, childish, wistful look. And yet Graham watched her with a vague sense of disappointment.

"What do you think of Madeleine?" Mrs. Treherne said to him the following afternoon; he had come in early, and they were together alone in the drawing-room. "Do you not find her grown and improved? Do you think her pretty? She is perhaps rather pale, but----"

"She has certainly grown, Aunt Barbara, but this is not astonishing--young ladies generally do grow between the ages of thirteen and eighteen: and I think her the prettiest girl I ever saw--not at all too pale. As for being improved--well--I suppose she is. She wears very nice dresses, I observe, and holds herself straight, and I daresay knows more geography and history than when we last parted."

"You are disappointed in her," said Mrs. Treherne. "Do you know I suspected as much, Horace, from the way in which you look at her and speak to her. Tell me in what way--why you are not satisfied?"

"But I am satisfied," cried Graham; "why should I not be?

Madelon appears to me to have every accomplishment a young lady should have; she sings to perfection, I daresay, dances equally well, and I have no doubt that on examination she would prove equally proficient in all the ologies. I am perfectly satisfied, so far as it is any concern of mine, but I don't see what right I have to be sitting in judgment one way or the other."

"You have every right, Horace; I have always looked upon you as the child's guardian in a way, and in all my plans concerning her education I have considered myself, to a certain extent, responsible to you."

"It was very good of you, Aunt Barbara, to consider me in the matter. I thought my responsibility had ceased from the moment you took charge of her; but for her father's sake--does Madelon ever speak of him, by-the-by?"

"Never."

"Never alludes to her past life?"

"Never--we never speak of it; I have carefully avoided doing so, in the hope that with time, and a settled home, and new interests, she could cease to think of it altogether; and I trust I have succeeded. The memory of it can only be painful to her now, poor child, for, though I have never referred to the subject in any way, I feel convinced she must have learnt by this time to see her father's character in its true light."

"It is possible," said Graham. "Well, as I was saying; Aunt Barbara, for the sake of the promise I made her father on his death-bed, if for no other reason, I shall and must always take an interest in Madelon."

"And I for her mother's sake," replied Mrs. Treherne, stiffly.

"If you have no other interest in Madelon than----however, it is useless to discuss that. I want to know how we have disappointed you--Madelon and I--for you are disappointed; tell me, Horace--I am really anxious to know."

"Dear Aunt Barbara, I am not at all disappointed; or, if I am, it is not your fault or hers--quite the reverse. Nothing but the perversity of human nature. Shall I own the truth? All these years I have kept in my mind a dear little girl in a shabby old frock which she had outgrown--a dear, affectionate little soul, with so few ideas on people and things, that she actually took me for one of the best and wisest of human beings. See how much vanity there is in it all! I come back, and find a demure, well-drilled, fashionable young lady. I might have known how it would be, but it gave me a sort of shock, I own--my little wild Madelon gone for ever and a day, and this proper young lady in her place."

"You are unreasonable, Horace," said Mrs. Treherne, half laughing, half vexed; "and ungrateful too, when Madeleine has been working so hard, with the hope, I know, of pleasing and astonishing you with her doings."

"But I am pleased," said Graham. "Astonished? No, I cannot be astonished that Madelon, with you to help her, should accomplish anything; but I am delighted, charmed. What more shall I say? So much so, Aunt Barbara, that when I am married-- as I mean to be shortly, and set up a house of my own--you and Madelon will have to pay me visits of any length. I _shall_ always feel that I have a sort of property in her, through early a.s.sociations."

"Are you going to be married shortly?" said Mrs. Treherne; "have you anything definite to do? Where are you going to settle?"

"Do you not know?" he answered. "Dr. Vavasour has offered me a partnership."

"And you have accepted it?"

"Not yet. He has given me six months to think it over; so I need not hurry my decision; and, in the meantime, I have plenty to do with my book. In fact, I need the rest."

"It seems a pity--" began Mrs. Treherne.

"What seems a pity, Aunt Barbara?"

"That with your talents you should settle down for life in a country village. You could surely do something better."

"I don't know," he answered with a sigh. "There is nothing else very obvious at present, and I cannot be a rover all my life. For one thing, my health would not allow of my taking up that sort of thing again just at present; and then there is Maria to be considered. She hates the idea of leaving Ashurst, and it has been her dream for years that this partnership should be offered me, and that I should accept it. I owe it to her to settle down into steady married life before long."

He rose, as he said these last words, and walked to the window. Mrs. Treherne was called away at the same moment, and he stood gazing out at the strip of garden before the house, the Birdcage Walk beyond, the trees in the Park blowing about against the dull sky. His thoughts were not there; they had wandered away to the tropics, to the glowing skies, the strange lands, the wild, free life in which his soul delighted. He was glad to find himself in England once more, amongst kindred and friends, but he loathed the thought of being henceforth tied down to a life from which all freedom would be banished, which must be spent in the dull routine of a country parish. Graham was not now the lad who had once looked on the world as lying at his feet, on all possibilities as being within his grasp; he had long ceased to be a hero in his own eyes; he had learnt one of life's sternest lessons, he had touched the limits of his own powers. But in thus gaining the knowledge of what he could not do, he had also proved what he could be--he had recognised the bent of his genius, and he knew that of all the mistakes of his life he had committed none more grievous than that of binding himself to a woman who neither sympathised nor pretended to sympathise with him and his pursuits; and in compliance with whose wishes he was preparing to take up the life for which, of all others within the limits of his profession, he felt himself the least suited. And she? Did she care for him?--did she love him enough to make it worth the sacrifice?--was there the least chance of their ever being happy together? Ah! what lovers' meeting had that been that had pa.s.sed between them at his sister's house!

What half-concealed indifference on her side, what embarra.s.sment on his, what silence falling between them, what vain efforts to shake off an ever-increasing coldness and constraint! It was five years since they had parted--was it only years and distance that had estranged them, or had they been unsuited to each other from the beginning? Not even now would Graham acknowledge to himself that it was so, but it was a conviction he had been struggling against for years.

"Will you take some tea, Monsieur Horace?" said a voice behind him. He turned round. The grey daylight was fading into grey dusk, afternoon tea had been brought in, and Madelon was standing by him with a cup in her hand. "Aunt Barbara has gone out, and will not be home till dinner-time," she added, as she returned to the tea-table and fireside.

"Then you and I will drink tea together, Madelon," said Graham, seating himself in an arm-chair opposite to her.

"Where have you been all this afternoon? Have you been out too?"

"I have been to a singing-cla.s.s. I generally go twice a-week when we are in town."

"And do you like it?"

"Yes, I like it very much."