My Little Lady Part 33

So much they said, and then a silence ensued. Madelon drank her tea, and Graham sat looking at her. Yes, a change had certainly come over her--this Madelon, who came and went so quietly, with a certain harmonious grace in every movement-- this Madelon, who sometimes smiled, but rarely laughed, who spoke little, and then with an air of vague weariness and indifference--this was not the little impetuous, warm-hearted Madelon he remembered, who had clung to him in her childish sorrow, who had turned from him in her childish anger, who in her very wilfulness, in her very abandonment to the pa.s.sion of the moment, had been so winning and loveable. It was not merely that she was not gay--gaiety was an idea that he had never a.s.sociated with Madelon; it had always been a sad little face that had come before him when he had thought of her; but in all her sadness, there had been an animation and spring, an eagerness and effusion in the child, that seemed wholly wanting in the girl. It was as if a subtle shadow had crept over her, toning down every characteristic light to its own grey monotonous tint.

Madelon had not the smallest suspicion of what was pa.s.sing in her companion's mind. During all these years, in whatever other respects she might have altered, the att.i.tude of her heart towards him had never changed. What he had always been to her, he was now; the time that had elapsed since they parted had but intensified and deepened her old feeling towards him--that was all. He had been in her thoughts day and night; in a thousand ways she had worked, she had striven, that he might find her improved when he came home, less ignorant, less unworthy, than the little girl he had parted with. His return had been the one point to which all her hopes had been directed; and, poor child, with a little unconscious egotism, she took it for granted that just then she occupied almost as large a share in Graham's mind as he did in hers. He had always been so good, so kind to her, he must surely be glad to see her again, almost as glad as she was to see him.

She, on her side, was ready to go on just where they had left off; and yet now, when for the first time they were alone together, a sort of shyness had taken possession of her.

She was the first to break the silence, however. "Why do you look at me so?" she said, setting her tea-cup down, and turning to Horace with a sudden smile and blush.

"I am trying to adjust my ideas," he answered, smiling too; "I am trying to reconcile the little Madelon I used to know with this grand young lady I have found here."

"Ah, you will never see that little Madelon again," said the girl, shaking her head rather sorrowfully; "she is gone for ever."

"How is that?" said Graham. "You have grown tall, you wear long gowns, and plait up your hair, I see; but is that a reason----"

"Ah, how can one survive one's old life?" said Madelon, plaintively; "one ought not, ought one? All is so changed with me, things are so different, the old days are so utterly gone-- I try not to think of them any more; that is the best; and my old self is gone with them, I sometimes think--and that is best too."

She sat leaning forward, staring at the dull red coals; and Graham was silent for a moment.

"Then you have forgotten the old days altogether?" he said at last.

"I never speak of them," she answered slowly; "no, I have not forgotten--it is not in me to forget, I think--but I do not speak of them; of what use? It is like a dream now, that old time, and no one cares for one's dreams but oneself."

"Am I part of the dream too, Madelon? For I think I belong more to that old time you talk about, which is not so very remote, after all, than to the present. I had a little friend Madelon once, but I feel quite a stranger with this fashionable Miss Linders before me."

"You are laughing at me," said Madelon, opening her eyes wide.

"I am not at all fashionable, I think. I don't know what you mean; what should make you think such a thing, Monsieur Horace?"

"Well, your general appearance," he answered. "It suggests b.a.l.l.s, fetes, concerts, operas----"

Madelon shook her head, laughing.

"That is a very deceptive appearance," she said. "Aunt Barbara and I never go anywhere but to cla.s.ses, and masters, and to a small tea-party occasionally, and to see pictures sometimes."

"But how is that?--does Aunt Barbara not approve of society?"

"Oh, yes, but she thinks I am not old enough," answered Madelon, demurely. "So I am not out yet, and I have not been to a ball since I was ten years old."

"And do you like that sort of thing? It does not sound at all lively," said Graham.

"It is rather dull," replied Madelon, "simply; but then I think everything in England is--is _triste_--I beg your pardon," she added, quickly, colouring, "I did not mean to complain."

"No, no, I understand. You need not mind what you say to me, Madelon; I want to know what you are doing, what sort of life you are leading, how you get on. So you find England _triste?_ In what way?"

"I don't know--not in one way or another--it is everything.

There is no life, no movement, no colour, or sunshine--yes, the sun shines, of course, but it is different. Ah, Monsieur Horace, you who have just come back to it, do you not understand what I mean?"

"I think I do in a way; but then, you know, coming to England is coming home to me, Madelon, and that makes a great difference."

"Yes, that makes a great difference; England can never be home to me, I think. I will tell you, Monsieur Horace--yesterday at that Exhibition I went to with Aunt Barbara, you know, I saw a picture; it was an Italian scene, quite small, only a white wall with a vine growing over the top, and a bit of blue sky, and a beggar-boy asleep in the shade. One has seen the same thing a hundred times before, but this one looked so bright, so hot, so sunny, it gave me such a longing--such a longing----"

She started up, and walked once or twice up and down the room.

In a moment she came back, and went on hurriedly:--

"You ask me if I have forgotten the past, Monsieur Horace. I think of it always--always. I cannot like England, and English life. Aunt Barbara will not let me speak of it, and I try to forget it when she is by, but I cannot. Aunt Barbara is very kind--kinder than you can imagine--it is not that; but I am weary of it all so. When we walk in the Park, or sit here in the evening, reading, I am thinking of all the beautiful places there are in the world; of all the great things to be done, of all that people are seeing, and doing, and enjoying.

I wish I could get away; I wish I could go anywhere--if I could run away--I have a voice, I could sing, I could make money enough to live upon. I think I should have done so, Monsieur Horace, if I had not known you were coming home. Yes, if I could run away somewhere, where I could breathe--be free----"

"You must never do that," cried Graham hastily--he was standing opposite to her now, with his back to the fire; "you don't know what you are saying, Madelon. Promise me that you will not think of it even."

"I was talking nonsense, I don't suppose I meant it really,"

she answered; "I could not do it, you know; but I promise all the same, as you wish it."

"And you always keep your promises, I know," said Graham, smiling at her.

"Ah, do not," she cried, suddenly covering her face with her hands, "don't speak of that, Monsieur Horace--I know now--ah, yes, I understand what you must have thought--but I did not then; indeed I was only a child then, I did not know what I was doing."

"I don't think you are much more than a child now," said Graham, taking one of her hands in his; "you are not much altered, after all, Madelon."

"Am I not?" she said. "But I have tried to improve; I have worked very hard, I thought it would please you, and that you would be glad to find me different--and I am different," she added, with a sudden pathetic change in her voice. "I understand a great deal now that I never thought of before; I think of the old life, but it is not all with pleasure, and I know why Aunt Barbara--and yet I do love it so much, and you are a part of it, Monsieur Horace--when you speak your vice seems to bring it back; and you call me Madelon--no one else calls me Madelon--" Her voice broke down.

"You are not happy, my dear little girl," said Graham, in his old kind way, and trying to laugh off her emotion. "I shall have to prescribe for you. What shall it be?--a course of b.a.l.l.s and theatres? What should Aunt Barbara say to that?"

"She would not employ you for a doctor again, I think," said Madelon, smiling. "No, I am not unhappy, Monsieur Horace--only dull sometimes; and Aunt Barbara would say, that is on account of my foreign education. I know she thinks all foreigners frivolous and ill educated; I have heard her say so."

When Madelon went to her room that night, she sat long over her fire, pondering, girl-fashion, on her talk with Horace Graham. The tones of his voice were still ringing in her ears; she seemed still to see his kind look, to feel the friendly grasp of his hand; and as she thought of him, her familiar little bed-room, with its white curtained bed, and pictured walls, and well-filled bookshelves, seemed to vanish, and she saw herself again, a desolate child, sitting at the window of the Paris hotel that hot August night her father died, weeping behind the convent grating, crouched on the damp earth in the dark avenues of the Promenade a Sept Heures. He had not changed in all these years, she thought; he had come back kind and good as ever, to be her friend and protector, as he had always been; and he had said she was not altered much either, and yet she was--ah! so altered from the unconscious, unthinking, ignorant child he had left. She began to pace up and down the room, where indeed she had spent many a wakeful night before now, thinking, reflecting, reasoning, trying to make out the clue to her old life--striving to reconcile it with the new life around her--not too successfully on the whole. How was it she had first discovered the want of harmony between them? How was it she had first learnt to appreciate the gulf that separated the experiences of her first years, from the pure, peaceful life she was leading now? She could hardly have told; no one had revealed it to her, no one had spoken of it; but in a thousand unconsidered ways--in talk, in books, in the unconscious influences of her every-day surroundings, she had come to understand the true meaning of her father's life, and to know that the memory of these early days, that she had found so bright and happy, was something never to be spoken of, to be hidden away--a disgrace to her, even, perhaps. Aunt Barbara never would let her talk of them, would have blotted them out, if possible; she had wondered why at first--she understood well enough now, and resented the enforced silence. She only cherished the thought of them, and of her father the more; she only clung to her old love for him the more desperately, because it must be in secret; and she longed at times, with a sad, inexpressible yearning, for something of the old brightness that had died out one mournful night nearly eight years ago, when she had talked with her father for the last time.

"I think I must be a hundred years old," the girl would say to herself sometimes, after returning from one of those little parties of which she had spoken to Graham, where she had spent the evening in the company of a dozen other young ladies of her own age, all white muslin and sash-ribbons. "These girls, how tiresome they all are!--how they chatter and laugh, and what silly jokes they make! How can it amuse them? But they are still in the school-room, as Aunt Barbara is always telling me; and before that, they were all in the nursery, I suppose; they do not know anything about life; their only experiences concern nurses and governesses; whilst I--I--ah! is it possible I am no older than they are?"

She would lean her arms on the window-sill, and look out on the midnight sky; the Abbey chimes would ring out over the great city, overhead the stars would be shining perhaps, but down below, between the trees in the Park, a great glare would show where a million lamps were keeping watch till dawn. Shall we blame our Madelon, if she sometimes looked away from the stars, and down upon the glare that brightened far up into the dark sky? All the young blood was throbbing and stirring in her veins with such energy and vigour; the world was so wide, so wide, the circle around her so narrow, and in that bright, misty past, which, after all, she only half understood, were to be found so many precedents for possibilities that might still be hidden in the future. Shall we blame her, if, in her youthful belief in happiness as the chief good, her youthful impatience of peace, and calm, and rest, she longed with a great longing for movement, change, excitement? Outside, as it seemed to her, in her vague young imagination, such a free, glorious life was going on--and she had no part in it! As she stood at her window, the distant, ceaseless roar of the street traffic would sound to her, in the stillness of the night, like the beat of the great waves of life that for ever broke and receded, before they could touch the weary spot where she stood spell-bound in isolation. And through it all she said to herself, "When Monsieur Horace comes home,"--and now Monsieur Horace had come, would he do anything to help her?

Graham, indeed, was willing enough to do what he could do for her; and before he went to bed that night he wrote the following letter to his sister, Mrs. Vavasour:

"My dear Georgie,

"The b.u.t.ter and eggs arrived in safety, and Aunt Barbara declared herself much pleased with your hamper of country produce; but you will, no doubt, have heard from her before this. She is looking wonderfully well, and not a day older than when I left England. As for Madeleine Linders, I hardly recognised her, she is so grown and so much improved. I find I have at least a fortnight's business in London, and then I will run down to you for another visit, if I may. Would it put you out very much if I brought Madeleine with me for a time? I should like you and her to know each other, and a change would do her good. Aunt Barbara seems to have been giving her a high-pressure education, with no fun to counterbalance it, and the poor child finds it horribly dull work; and no wonder--I know I should be sorry to go through it myself. A few weeks with you and the children would brighten her up, and do her all the good in the world. Let me know what you think of it.

"Ever yours,

"Horace Graham."

CHAPTER III.

At Ashurst.

It was two days after Graham's talk with Madelon, that some people of whom mention has once or twice been made in this little history, were sitting chatting together as they drank their afternoon tea in Mrs. Vavasour's drawing room at Ashurst, a low, dark-panelled, chintz-furnished room, with an ever-pervading scent of dried rose-leaves, and fresh flowers, and with long windows opening on to the little lawn, all shut in with trees and shrubberies. Mrs. Vavasour, who sat by the fire knitting, was a calm, silent, gentle-looking woman, with smooth, fair hair under her lace cap, and those pathetic lines we sometimes see in the faces of those who through circ.u.mstances, or natural temperament, have achieved contentment through the disappointments of life, rather than through its fulfilled hopes. She was the mother of many children, of whom the elder half was already dispersed--one was married, one dead, one in India, and one at sea; of those still at home, the eldest, Madge, an honest, st.u.r.dy, square- faced child of eleven or twelve, was in the room now, handing about tea-cups and bread-and-b.u.t.ter. Dr. Vavasour was a big, white-haired man, many years older than his wife, who had married him when she was only seventeen; he was a clever man, and a popular doctor, and having just come in from a twenty miles' drive through March winds and rain, was standing with his back to the mantelpiece, with an air of having thoroughly earned warmth and repose. He was discussing parish matters with Mr. Morris the curate, who was sitting at the small round table where Maria Leslie, a tall, rosy, good-humoured-looking young woman of five or six-and-twenty, was pouring out the tea.

"If the Rector is on your side, Morris," said the Doctor, "of course I can say nothing; only I can tell you this, you will lose me. I will have nothing to do with your new-fangled notions; I have said my prayers after the same fashion for the last sixty years, and as sure as you begin to sing-song them, instead of reading them, I give up my pew, and go off to church at C----, with my wife and family."