‘My aunt was so good as to apologise to me on your behalf this morning,’ she began.
‘Apologise? What have I been guilty of?’
‘Oh, nothing. She doesn’t appreciate the freemasonry between us. It occurred to her that your remarks on my—well, my predilections, might have troubled me. Judge how amused I was!’
She did not look at him from the first, and appeared to be examining, even whilst she spoke, a book of prints.
‘I sincerely hope,’ Wilfrid replied, ‘that I have uttered no thoughtless piece of rudeness. If I have, I beg you to forgive me.’
She glanced at him. He appeared to speak seriously, and it was the kind of speech he would never have dreamed of making to her in former days, at all events in this tone.
‘You know perfectly well,’ she answered, with slow voice, bending to look more closely at a page, ‘that you never said anything to me which could call for apology.’
‘I am not so sure of that,’ Wilfrid replied, smiling.
‘Then take my assurance now,’ said Beatrice, closing her book, and rising to move towards her aunt. As she went, she cast a look back, a look of curious blankness, as if into vacancy.
She sang shortly after, and the souls of the politicians were stirred within them. For Wilfrid, he lay back with his eyes closed, his heart borne on the flood of music to that pale-windowed room of sickness, whose occupant must needs be so sadly pale. The security he felt in the knowledge that Emily grew better daily made him able to talk cheerfully and behave like one without preoccupation, but Emily in truth was never out of his mind. He lived towards the day when he should kneel at her feet, and feel once more upon his forehead those cold, pure lips. And that day, as he believed, was now very near.
To her aunt’s secret surprise, Beatrice allowed the end of the week to come and go without any allusion to the subject of departure. It was all the more strange, seeing that the girl’s show of easy friendliness with Wilfrid had not lasted beyond the day; she had become as distant and self-centred as before. But on the morning of the following Tuesday, as Mrs. Baxendale sat reading not long after breakfast, Beatrice entered the room in her light travelling garb, and came forward, buttoning her glove.
‘You are going out?’ Mrs. Baxendale asked, with some misgiving.
‘Yes—to London. They are calling a cab. You know how I dislike preparatory miseries.’
Her aunt kept astonished silence. She looked at the girl, then down at her book.
‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘it only remains to me to remember the old proverb. But when is the train? Are you off this moment?’
‘The train leaves in five-and-twenty minutes. May I disturb uncle, do you think?’
‘Ah, now I understand why you asked if he would be at home through the morning. I’ll go and fetch him.’
She went quickly to the library. Mr. Baxendale sat there alone.
‘Beatrice is going,’ she said, coming behind his chair. ‘Will you come and say good-bye?’
Mr. Baxendale jumped up.
‘Going? Leaving?’
His wife nodded.
‘Why? What is it? You haven’t quarrelled with her about the prayer-meetings?’
‘No. It’s a fancy of hers, that’s all. Come along; she’s only twenty minutes to catch the train.’
When they reached the drawing-room, Beatrice was not there. Upon Mrs. Baxendale’s withdrawal she had gone to Wilfrid’s door and knocked at it. Wilfrid was pacing about in thought. It surprised him to see who his visitor was; yet more, when she advanced to him with her hand extended, saying a simple ‘Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye? Wherefore?’
Her attire explained. Beatrice possessed the beauty of form and face which makes profit of any costume; in the light-brown cape, and hat to match, her tall, lithe figure had a womanly dignity which suited well with the unsmiling expressiveness of her countenance. The ‘good-bye’ was uttered briefly and without emphasis, as one uses any insignificant form of speech.
Wilfrid resolved at once to accept her whim; after all, it was but another instance of frequent eccentricities.
‘Who is going to the station with you?’ he asked.
‘No one. I hate partings on the platform.’
She moved away almost as far as the door, then turned again.
‘You will be in town before going back to Oxford?’
Wilfrid hesitated.
‘Oh, never mind,’ she said; and was gone.
Ten minutes later Wilfrid went to the drawing-room. Mr. and Mrs. Baxendale were talking together; they became silent as he entered.
‘Has Miss Redwing gone?’ he asked.
‘She took leave of you, didn’t she?’ replied the lady.
‘Yes. But it was So unprepared for, I half thought it might be a joke.’
‘Oh, she’s fond of these surprises,’ Mrs. Baxendale said, in a tone of good-natured allowance. ‘On the whole I sympathise with her; I myself prefer not to linger over such occasions.’
Later in the day Mrs. Baxendale drove out to Banbrigg, this time alone. On her return, she sought Wilfrid and found him in his room. There was concern on her face.
‘I have heard something very painful from Mrs. Hood,’ she began. ‘It seems that Emily is in ignorance of her father’s death.’
Wilfrid looked at her in astonishment.
‘I told you,’ Mrs. Baxendale pursued, ‘that she had not been altogether well just before it happened, but it now appears that the dreadful incident of her entering the room just when the body was brought in must have taken place when she was delirious. The poor woman has had no suspicion of that; but it is proved by Emily’s questions, now that she begins to talk. Of course it makes a new anxiety. Mrs. Hood has not dared to hint at the truth, but it cannot be concealed for long.’
‘But this is most extraordinary,’ Wilfrid exclaimed, ‘What, then, was the origin of her illness?’
‘That is the mystery. Mrs. Hood’s memory seems to be confused, but I got her to allow that the feverish symptoms were declared even the night before the death was known. I hardly like to hint it, but it really seemed to me as if she were keeping something back. One moment she said that Emily had been made ill by anxiety at her father’s lateness in coming home that night, and the next she seemed, for some reason, unwilling to admit that it was so. The poor woman is in a sad, sad state, and no wonder. She wishes that somebody else might tell Emily the truth; but surely it will come most easily from her.’
Wilfrid was deeply distressed.
‘It is the very worst that still remains,’ he said, ‘and we thought the worst was over. What does the doctor say? Can she bear it yet? It is impossible to let her continue in ignorance.’
It was at length decided that Mrs. Baxendale should visit the doctor, and hear his opinion. She had got into her mind a certain distrust of Mrs. Hood, and even doubted whether Emily ought to be left in her hands during convalescence; there was clearly no want of devotion on the mother’s part, but it appeared to Mrs. Baxendale that the poor woman had been overtaxed, and was herself on the point of illness, perhaps of mental failure. From going well things had suddenly taken an anxious turn.
CHAPTER XVI
RENUNCIATION
When Emily returned from the wastes of ravaged mind, and while yet the images of memory were hardly distinguished from the ghosts of delirious dream, the picture that haunted her with most persistency, with an objective reality the more impressive the clearer her thought became, was one which she could least comprehend or account for. She saw lying before her a closely muffled form, the outline seeming to declare it that of a man. The struggle of newborn consciousness was to associate such a vision with the events which had preceded her illness. Perchance for a day, perchance only for an hour, however long the unmeasured transition from darkness to the dawn of self-knowledge, she suffered the oppression of this mechanical questioning. At length the presence of her mother by the bedside became a fact, and it led on to the thought of her father. Her eyes moved in search for him.