"And selfish?"

He wouldn't say "Yes," and couldn't deny it, so just sat silently and refused to answer.

"And a flirt?"

"Yes."

"And very cruel to you sometimes, Jim?" said Vere in that new, sweet, gentle voice.

"You didn't mean it, darling. It was only thoughtlessness."

"No, no! I did mean it! It was dreadful of me, but I liked to experiment and feel my power. You had better know the truth once for all; it will help you to forget all about such a wretched girl."

"Nothing can make me forget. You could tell me what you like about yourself, it would make no difference; I am past all that. You are the one woman in the world for me. At first it was your beauty which attracted me, but that stage was over long ago. It makes no difference to me now how you look. Nothing makes any difference. If you were never to leave that couch--"

But she called out at that, interrupting him sharply--

"Don't say it! Don't suggest for a moment that it is possible! Oh, Jim, you don't believe it! You don't really think I could be like this all my life? I will be very good, and do all they say, and keep quiet and not excite myself. I will do anything--anything--but I must get better in the end! I could not bear a life like this!"

"The doctors all tell us you will recover in time, darling, but it's a terribly hard waiting. I wish I could bear the pain for you; but you will let me do what I can, won't you, Vere? I am a dull stick. No one knows it better than I do myself, but make use of me just now; let me fetch and carry for you; let me run down every few weeks to see you, and give you the news. It will bind you to nothing in the future. Whatever happens, I should be grateful to you all my life for giving me so much happiness."

"Dear old Jim! You are too good for me. How could I possibly say 'No'

to such a request?" sighed Vere softly. I think she was very nearly crying just then, but I made another desperate effort to interest myself in Maud, and soon afterwards he went away.

Vere looked at me curiously when I returned to the seat by her side, and I told her the truth.

"I tried to read, I did, honestly, but I heard a good deal! It was your own fault. You wouldn't let me go away."

"Then you know something you may not have known before--how a good man can love! I have treated Jim Carstairs like a dog, and this is how he behaves in return. I don't deserve such devotion."

"n.o.body does. But I envy you, Vere. I envy you even now, with all your pain. It must be the best thing in the world to be loved like that."

"Sentimental child!" she said, smiling; but it was a real smile, not a sneer; and when mother came up a few minutes later, Vere looked at her anxiously, noticing for the very first time how ill and worn she looked.

"You looked f.a.gged, mother dear. Do sit still and rest," she said, in her old, caressing manner. Mother flushed, and looked ten years younger on the spot.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

_September 20th_.

I expected Vere to be quite different after this--to give up being cold and defiant, and be her own old self. I thought it was a kind of crisis, and that she would go on getting better and better--morally, I mean. But she doesn't! At least, if she does, it is only by fits and starts. Sometimes she is quite angelic for a whole day, and the next morning is so crotchety and aggravating that it nearly drives one wild.

I suppose no one gets patient and long-suffering all at once; it is like convalescence after an illness--up and down, up and down, all the time; but it's disappointing to the nurses. She does try, poor dear, but it must be difficult to go on trying when one day is exactly like the last, and you do nothing but lie still, and your back aches, aches, aches.

Jim is not always present to lavish his devotion upon her, and now that the first agitation is over we onlookers are getting used to seeing her ill, and are less frantically attentive than at first, which, of course, must be trying, too; but one cannot always live at high pressure. I believe one would get callous about earthquakes if they only happened often enough.

Summer is pa.s.sing away and autumn coming on, and it grows damp and mouldy, and we have to sit indoors for most of the day. When I have any time to think of myself I feel so tired; and one day Vere said abruptly--

"Babs, you are thin! Upon my word, child, I can see your cheek-bones.

What have you been doing to yourself?"

Thin! Blessed word! I leapt from my seat and rushed to the nearest gla.s.s, and it was true! I stared, and stared, and wondered where my eyes had been these last weeks. My cheeks had sunk till they were oval instead of round. I looked altogether about half the old size. What would the girls say if they could behold their old "Circle" now? It used to be my ambition to be described as a "tall, slim girl," and now I turned, and twisted, and att.i.tudinised before that gla.s.s, and, honestly, that was just exactly what I looked! I took hold of my dress, and it bagged! I put my fingers inside my belt, and the whole hand slipped through! My face of rapture made Vere laugh with almost the old trill.

"You goose! You look as if you had come into a fortune! I don't deny that it is an improvement, but you mustn't overdo it. It would be too hard luck for mother if we were both ill at the same time. All this anxiety has been too much for you. I had better turn nurse, and let you be patient for a little time, and I'll prescribe a little change and excitement. Firstly, a becoming new toilette for dinner to-night, in which you can do justice to your charms."

Vere never dines with us now, as the evenings are her worst time, and she spends them entirely in her own little sitting-room. I am always with her to read aloud, or play games, or talk, just as she prefers; but this night there were actually some people coming to dinner for the first time since the pre-historic ages before the fire. The people around had been very kind and attentive, and mother thought it our duty to ask a few of them; so four couples were coming, and Will Dudley to pair with me. It was quite an excitement after our quiet days; and Vere called her maid, and sent her to bring down one or two evening dresses which had been rescued uninjured from a hanging cupboard and left untouched until now, in the box in which they had been packed.

"Miss Una is so much thinner, I believe she could get into them now, Terese; and I have a fancy to dress her up to-night and see what we can make of her," she said, smiling; and Terese beamed with delight, not so much at the thought of dressing me, as in joy at hearing her beloved mistress take an interest in anything again. She adores Vere, as all servants do. It's because she makes pretty speeches to them and praises them when they do things well, instead of treating them like machines, as most people do. In my superior moments I used to think that she was hypocritical, while I myself was honest and outspoken; but I am beginning to see that praise is sometimes more powerful than blame. I am really becoming awfully grown-up and judicious. I hardly know myself sometimes.

Well, Terese brought in three dresses, and I tried them on in succession, and Vere decided which was most becoming, and directed little alterations, and said what flowers I was to wear, and how my hair was to be done, just exactly as if I were a new doll which made an amusing plaything. I had to be dressed in her room, too, and she lay watching me with her big wan eyes, issuing directions to Terese, and saying pretty things to me. It was one of her very, very nicest days, and I did love her.

When the last touch was given I surveyed myself in the long mirror and "blushed at my own reflection," like the girl in books who is going to her first ball. I really did look my very, very nicest, and so grown up, and sort of fragile and interesting, instead of the big, hulking schoolgirl of a year ago. The lovely moonshiny dress would have suited anyone, and Terese had made my hair look just about twice as thick as when I do it myself. I can't think how she manages! I did feel pleased, and thought it sweet of Vere to be pleased too, for it was not in girl nature to avoid feeling lone and lorn at being left alone, stretched on that horrid couch. She tried to smile bravely as I left her to go downstairs, but her lips trembled a little, and she said in a wistful way--

"Perhaps, if I feel well enough, you might bring Mr Dudley up to see me for a few minutes after dinner. Terese will let you know how I am."

I had to promise, of course, but I didn't like doing it. It didn't seem fair either to Rachel or to Jim Carstairs to let these two see too much of each other, or to Vere herself, for that matter; for I always have a kind of dread that this time it may not be all pretence on her side.

She seems a little different when Will is there, less absolutely confident and sure of herself.

The four couples arrived in good time. How uninteresting middle-aged couples are! One always wondered why they married each other, for they seem so prosy and matter-of-fact. When I am a middle-aged couple, or half of one, I shall be like father and mother, and carry about with me the breath of eternal romance, as Lorna would say, and I shall "Bant,"

and never allow myself to grow stout, and simply annihilate my husband if he dares to call me "my dear." Fancy coming down to being a "my dear" in a cap!

I had gone into the conservatory to show some plants to funny old bald Mr Farrer, and when he toddled out to show a bloom to his wife I came face to face with Will, standing in the entrance by himself, looking so handsome and bored. He gave a quick step forward as he saw me and exclaimed first "Babs!" and then, with a sudden change of voice and manner, almost as if he were startled--

"Una!"

He didn't shake hands with me, and I felt a little bit scared and shy, for it is only very, very rarely that he calls me by my name, and I have a kind of feeling that when he does he likes me more than usual. It was Vere's dress, of course; perhaps it made me look like her. We went back into the drawing-room, and stood in a corner like dummies until dinner was announced.

I thought it would have been such fun, but it wasn't. Will was dull and distrait, and he hardly looked at me once, and talked about sensible impersonal things the whole time. Of course, I like sensible conversation; one feels humiliated if a man does nothing but frivol, but there is a happy medium. When you are nineteen and looking your best, you don't care to be treated as if you were a hundred and fifty, and a fright at that. Will and I have always been good friends, and being engaged as he is, I expect him to be perfectly frank and out-spoken.

I tried to be lively and keep the conversation going, but it was such an effort that I grew tired, and I really think I am rather delicate for once in my life, for what with the exertion and the depression, I felt quite ill by the time dessert was on the table. All the ladies said how pale I was in the drawing-room, and mother puckered her eyebrows when she looked at me. Dear, sweet mother! It was horrid of me to be pleased at anything which worried her, but when you have been of no account, and all the attention has been lavished on someone else, it is really rather soothing to have people think of you for a change.

Terese met me coming out of the dining-room, and said that Vere was well enough to see Mr Dudley, so I took him upstairs as soon as he appeared.

Pa.s.sing through the hall, I saw a letter addressed to me in Lorna's handwriting, on the table, and carried it up with me to read while they were talking. They wouldn't want me, and it would be a comfort to remember that Lorna did. I was just in the mood to be a martyr, so when I had seen Will seated beside the couch, and noticed that Vere had been arrayed for the occasion in her prettiest wrap, with frilled cushion covers to match, I went right off to the end of the room and sat down on the most uncomfortable chair I could find. When one feels low it is comical what a relief it is to punish oneself still further. When I thought myself ill-used as a child, I used always to refuse tart and cream, which I loved, and eat rice pudding, which I hated. The uncomfortable chair was the rice pudding in this instance, but I soon forgot all about it, and even about Vere and Will, in the excitement of reading that letter.

"My own Maggie,--(on the second day after we met at school Lorna and I decided to call each other 'Maggie'--short for 'magnetic attraction'-- but we only do it when we write, otherwise it excites curiosity, and that is horrid in matters of the heart!)--My own Maggie,--It is ages since I heard from you, darling. Why didn't you answer my letter last week? But I know how occupied you are, poor angel, and won't scold you as you deserve. I think of you every moment of the day, and do so long to be able to help you to bear your heavy burden. How little we thought when you went home how soon the smiling future would turn into a frown! We both seem to have left our careless youth far behind, for I have my own trials too, though nothing to yours, my precious darling.

"I have heaps to tell you. I decided to have the blue dress, after all, and the dressmaker has made it sweetly, with dozens of little tucks. I wore it at an afternoon 'At Home' yesterday, and it looked lovely. Lots of people were there. Wallace took me. He is at home helping with the practice. Maggie, my darling, I am really writing to ask you the most awful favour. Would you, could you, come down to stay with us for a few weeks? I do long for you so. There is no one on earth but you to whom I can speak my utmost thoughts, and I feel all bottled up, for there are some things one can't write. I know you feel this, too, dearest, for there is a change in the tone of your letters, and I read between the lines that you have lots to tell me.

We could have great sport with Wallace to take us about, and the people around are very hospitable, and always ask us out when we have a visitor. Wallace saw your photograph one day, and said you were 'ripping,' and he is quite keen on your coming, though, as a rule, he doesn't care for girls. Mother will write to Mrs Sackville if you think there is the slightest chance that you can be spared. Of course, darling, if you feel it your duty to stay at home I won't persuade you to come. You remember how we vowed to urge each other to do our best and n.o.blest, but perhaps if you had a little change you would go back refreshed and able to help your people better than you can at present. Anyway, write soon, darling, and put me out of my suspense. I sha'n't sleep a wink till I hear. Oh, the bliss of having you all to myself! How we would talk!

"Your own Maggie."

Yes, it would indeed be bliss! I longed for Lorna, but it did not seem possible to go away and enjoy myself, and leave Vere so helpless and sad. I decided not to say a word about the invitation, but I couldn't help thinking about it. Lorna lived in a big town house in the middle of a street; her father is a busy doctor, and is not at all rich, but very jolly. She is the only unmarried girl, and has half-a-dozen brothers in all stages, from twelve up to Wallace, who is a doctor, and thinks my photograph is "ripping!" It all seemed so tempting, and so refreshingly different from anything I have known. I began imagining it all--the journey, meeting Lorna at the station, and tearing about with all those funny, merry boys, instead of tiptoeing about a sick-room; Wallace being nice and attentive to me, instead of in love with someone else, as all the men at home seem to be, and Lorna creeping into my bed at night, with her hair in a funny, tight little pigtail, and talking, talking, talking for hour after hour. Oh, I did want to go so badly!

The tears came to my eyes for very longing. My resolution did not waver one bit, but I was dreadfully sorry for myself, all the same.

Suddenly I became aware that there was a dead silence in the room. How long it had lasted I can't tell, but when I looked up there were Vere and Will staring at me, and looking as if they had been staring for an age, and couldn't understand what on earth was the matter. I jumped and got red, and blinked away the tears, and Vere said--

"What is the matter, child? Have you had bad news? You look as if your heart was broken!"

"Oh, no--there's no news at all. I am tired, I think, and stupid, and wasn't thinking of what I was doing."