she slept until late in the day, mrs. edis having given orders that she should not be disturbed. otherwise the routine of great house was not altered. fanny took her daily ride over the estate. mrs. edis sat in her chair in the living-room, making a feint of sewing, in reality listening for julia’s footfalls. so she had sat listening for sixteen years.
but it was a lagging, almost elderly step that she finally heard approaching along the terrace at the back of the house. a moment later mrs. winstone entered, flushed, damp, but with her eyes full of malicious amusement.
“really, jane,” she drawled, “the tropics were never made for walkin’. i believe i’ll keep my new waist line?—”
“not a bad idea to keep what little nature is still willing to give you.” mrs. edis’s voice was as sarcastic as her eyes. “i hope there was no bad news in your note?”
“note?” mrs. winstone turned her back and began to rearrange the flowers on the bookcase.
“do you fancy the least event could happen in this house without my knowledge?”
“really, it was so unimportant i had forgotten it. merely an invitation to bath house. that reminds me—” she adopted her airiest tones. “have i spoken to you of mrs. morison? charmin’ little woman stoppin’ at bath house. i met her drivin’ just now, and impulsively asked her to come to tea to-day, and bring the others. how naughty of me. i should have consulted you first.”
“your friends are welcome to tea. i am not a pauper.”
“but such a hermit! it is too kind of you to take me in. i don’t fancy botherin’ you with my friends.”
“how is it you were not carried away by impulse before?”
“i came to nevis to see you and to rest. i see enough of hannah and pirie in london. but now that mrs. morison has come to bath house, and her brother, daniel tay?—”
mrs. edis lifted her head as if she scented powder. “a man? is he married?”
mrs. winstone smiled significantly. “oh, dear me, no!”
“how old is he?”
“about thirty.”
“i’ll have no young man in this house.”
“oh, he wouldn’t look at fanny. hates girls. he’s a very dear, a very particular friend of mine.”
mrs. edis laid her work on the table, dropped her spectacles to the end of her nose, and surveyed the smart figure with the developing waist line. “and what are you doing with very dear and particular friends of that sex at your time of life?”
“dear jane!” said mrs. winstone, with asperity, and transferring her attention to the early victorian tidies. “please remember that if you live out of the world i live in it. oh, la! la! come over to london and see the procession of hansoms in bond street containin’ smart gray-haired women and nice boys. the gray hairs are generally payin’ for the hansoms, and more. i never had a gray hair, and my rich american friend always pays for the hansoms, and more. why shouldn’t i have a youngish beau if i can get one? but really, i didn’t think he’d follow me here!”
“disgusting!” announced mrs. edis, who looked as if she had just entered a room in the paris salon devoted to the nude. “in my time?—”
“ah, dear jane, that time is forever gone. you couldn’t get a bonnet in all bond street to suit your years. hannah macmanus, who poses as an old woman, has to have hers made at a little shop in bloomsbury.”
“i can well believe it! i could see what london was coming to sixty years ago. enamelled old women?—”
“oh, la! la! prehistoric! filthy habit! to-day we keep our skins clean.”
“do sit down. you are flouncing about like a sylph of twenty. i hope you have not permitted yourself to become seriously interested in this young man.”
mrs. winstone dropped into a chair on the other side of the table and looked across the work-basket with airy self-consciousness.
“why not?”
“you are an old fool, and he must be a young one.”
“not a bit of it. level-headed business man. rich and strenuous.”
“strenuous?”
“new word. american. means a short life for yourself and a merry one for your heirs.”
“be good enough to confine yourself to english. are you going to marry this youth and make a laughing-stock of yourself and your family?”
“marry? oh, how tiresome of you to be so serious. i’d managed him so well! i never thought he would follow me here when i need a rest. but he’s romantic?—”
“romantic? he must be if he’s in love with you. really, maria, i never even look at you that i don’t feel like giving thanks i have been permitted to spend my life on nevis.”
mrs. winstone fetched a little sigh. “but you don’t mind my askin’ these people to tea?”
“it is a long time since a stranger has crossed my threshold. still, they are welcome. this is your birthplace as well as mine.”
“how sweet of you! i’ll go and smarten up a bit.” as she was leaving the room she turned, knit her brows, and said hesitatingly, “better not tell julia they’re comin’. she left london because she was sick of people, and has really come for a rest. she might run away, and mrs. morison is dyin’ to meet her. americans are quite mad about celebrities.”
“oh, very well,” said mrs. edis, impatiently.
she sewed for half an hour longer. suddenly her eyes flashed and she lifted her head. but when julia came in she said formally:?—
“good morning. do you always sleep until noon?”
“rather not! but i didn’t go to sleep till nearly dawn, i was so excited. i shall get up every morning at five and take that old walk round the cone. how often i have thought of it.”
“you have been long coming to take it.”
julia seated herself on the arm of her mother’s chair, and took the work out of her hand. “now,” she said, “let’s have it out. you are angry with me for staying away for sixteen years, among other things, and i have been very angry with you. but all my childish resentment was over long ago. it is time you forgave me. if i stayed away, it was because you never asked me to come. since the day the duke married, you have written me nothing but formal notes, except when you were angry with me for some new cause. you have hurt me more than i can have hurt you, and i have resented your injustice. but let us bury it all. if you knew how glad i am to be here again, to see you look just the same! if you would only be your old self, i could feel your little girl once more. the past—much of it—seems like a dream?—”
mrs. edis threw back her head. her heavy nostrils dilated. she looked like an old war-horse. she raised her stick and brought it down on the hard floor with a resounding thump. “yes!” she said harshly. “let us have it out. let me tell you that i have sat here for ten of those years waiting to acknowledge that i have been tortured by remorse. i could not bring myself to write it. but i never thought you would stay away so long— you!—and i an old old woman!”
julia had moved away uneasily at this outburst. “oh, don’t!—never mind—it was a natural enough mistake on your part. let us never speak of it again. i should have come long ago—but time passes so quickly—i don’t think i realized—and then i thought you had given all your love to fanny?—”
“fanny?” with indescribable scorn.
“oh, i see now you don’t care for her—”
“let me finish. i am a hard old woman. demonstrations are not for me. nor is my pride dead. that will survive life itself. but i will tell you that i have never ceased to love you—i think i have never loved any one else. your first petulant childish letters—i didn’t choose to believe. but later, when i began to hear those vague terrible rumors— my god! well, you had the world, and youth, and diversions—but i have sat here and thought, and thought, and longed for death?—”
“oh, please! it has all been for the best. i needed a hard school. you know what a child i was. if life had been too kind to me, i should have developed slowly, if at all. i might have nothing but a cauliflower in my brain to-day. now, you would be proud of me if you would only let me explain this great work to you, make you see what it means?—”
“not an allusion to that! you, who were born to be a duchess. ah! let me confess that it is not remorse alone that has made me a desolate old woman all these years. my old belief survived the marriage of the duke, even the birth of his heir—at least, i clung to it. but when your husband went hopelessly insane— oh, my old belief! it had been companion, friend, consolation—as satisfying as only a science can be. when my faith in that was destroyed?—”
“ah! if you would only let me tell you something! i met far wiser men in the east than old m’sieu. they placed a very different interpretation on my horoscope?—”
“what?”
“why, can’t you see—what i have become in england—what i may still become— oh, far, far more!”
mrs. edis snorted in her wrath and disgust as she rose to her feet and thumped the floor with her stick. “gammon! do you expect me to believe that that is what the world has come to? fighting and scratching policemen, going to gaol, speaking on a public platform! has that become the substitute for a great english lady?”
“oh, let us say no more about it. i recognize it is hopeless. if you still believe that a woman’s highest destiny is to be an english duchess— do sit down. there is so much else to talk about.”
mrs. edis resumed her seat, but still frowning. she had quite forgotten her remorse.
“i want to talk about poor little fanny—”
“poor little fanny?”
“who has the best memory in the world? who was the belle of the west indies in her day? i have an idea that fanny looks exactly as you did at her age. and she is not too unlike you in other things?—”
“arrant nonsense. what are you driving at?”
“i mean that youth has its rights, and you are depriving fanny of hers.”
“i have replanted the entire estate and built a mill. fanny will be rich one day. i can’t abide the minx, but i know my duty to my son’s child, and the last of my race.”
“so that is to be fanny’s fate? a little west indian planter! when she dreams of nothing but love and marriage?—”
“she knows naught of such things.”
“oh, doesn’t she? and what of instincts, especially when a girl is beautiful and fairly bursting with vitality?”
“she can consume her vitality in hard work. youth and beauty soon pass. hers will go before they have given any man the chance to ruin her life. in her lies my opportunity for atonement?—”
“fanny will marry. that is her obvious destiny. what is more, she will marry the first man that asks her, unless she has the diversion of society and many admirers. bath house is open again. many young men will come?—”
“fanny will see none of them!”
“oh, won’t she? youth has a magnet all its own. they’ll be prowling round the place, sitting on the wall like tomcats!”
“is that a sample of the new school of conversation?”
“no, but it expresses a fact. now, do be sweet and reasonable and let fanny go to the party at bath house on thursday night?—”
“not another word. fanny goes to no parties, neither at bath house nor elsewhere. have you quite forgotten me, that you fancy you can change my mind when it is made up? there is the luncheon gong. will you give me your arm?”
