Part 15 (1/2)
The fire had died down again, and the room was almost dark, he could hardly see her where she stood. He waited, hoping she would speak, then abruptly: ”Can you give me an answer, Gillian?”
He heard the quick intake of her breath, felt her trembling beside him.
”Oh, if you would give me time,” she murmured entreatingly. ”I want to think. It means so much.”
”Take all the time you wish,” he said, and went quietly away. And his going brought a sudden desolation. She longed to call him back, to promise what he asked, to yield without further struggle. But uncertainty held her. Motionless she stood staring through the darkness at the dim outline of the door that had closed behind him, her breast heaving tumultuously, until tears blinded her and with a gasping sob she slipped to the floor. She had never dared to hope that he could love her, but the truth from his own lips was bitter. And for a time the realisation of that bitterness deadened all other feeling. Overwrought with the emotion of the last few hours, her nerves strained to breaking point, she was unable to check the tide of grief that shook her to the very depths of her being. With her face hidden in the soft rug, her outflung hands clenching convulsively, she wept in an abandonment of sorrow.
If he had never spoken, if he had never made this strange proposal but had maintained until the end the detached reserve that had seemed to set so wide a gulf between them, it would have been easier to bear. He would have pa.s.sed out of her life, inscrutable as he had always been. But with his change of att.i.tude, in the intimacy of the few hours they had spent alone, she had seen him with new eyes. The mysterious unapproachable guardian had gone for ever, and in his place was a very human man revealing characteristics she had never imagined to exist, showing an interest and a gentleness she had never suspected. He had exhibited a similarity of tastes and ideas that agreed extraordinarily with her own, he had talked as to a comrade. The companions.h.i.+p had been very sweet--very sorrowful. She could never think of him again as he had been, and the new conception of him gave a poignant stab to her grief.
In the brief happiness of the afternoon she had had a fleeting vision of what might have been ”if he had loved me,” she moaned, and it seemed to her that she had never known until now the real depth of her own love.
What she had felt before was not comparable with the overwhelming pa.s.sion that the touch of his hands had quickened. It swept her like a raging torrent, carrying her beyond the limit of her understanding, bringing with it strange yearnings that, half-understood, she shuddered from, ashamed.
Torn with emotion she wept until she had no tears left, until the hard racking sobs died away and her tired sorrow-shaken body lay still.
For the moment, exhausted, her agony of mind was dulled and time was non-existent. She did not move or lift her head from the tear-wet rug.
A great weariness seemed to deaden all faculty. The minutes pa.s.sed unnoticed. Then some latent consciousness stirred in her brain and she looked up startled.
It was quite dark and she realised, s.h.i.+vering, that the room had grown very cold. The calm afternoon had given place to a stormy night and heavy gusts of wind were sweeping round the angle of the house, shrieking and whistling eerily; from the window came the soft _swish swish_ of dry hard snow beating against the panes. She started to her feet. She had no idea of the hour but she knew it must be late. Perhaps the dinner gong had already sounded and, missed, somebody might come in search of her. She shrank from being found thus. Feeling her way to a lamp she turned the switch and the soft light flooding the room made her wince. A glance at her watch showed that she had still a few moments in which to gain her room un.o.bserved.
She felt oddly lightheaded and her feet dragged wearily. The tortuous pa.s.sage had never seemed so interminable, the succession of closed doors appeared unending. Reaching her own room she collapsed on to a sofa that was drawn up before the fire, her head aching, her limbs s.h.i.+vering uncontrollably, worn out with emotion. Exhausted in mind and body she seemed unable even to frame a thought logically or coherently--only an interrupted medley of unconnected ideas chased through her tired brain until her temples throbbed agonisingly. She knew that sometime she would have to rouse herself, that sometime a decision would have to be made, but not now. Now she could only lie still and make no effort. She was angry with herself, contemptuous of her weakness. She had disdained nerves, she was humiliated now by her present lack of control. But even self-scorn was a pa.s.sing thought from which she turned wearily.
One fact only remained, clear and distinct from the confusion in her mind--he did not love her. He did not love her. It hurt so. She hid her face in the pillows, writhing with the shame the knowledge of her own love brought her. The deep booming of the dinner gong awoke her to the necessity of some kind of action. She rang the bell that hung within reach of her hand and, by the maid who answered her summons, sent her excuses to Miss Craven, pleading a headache for remaining upstairs.
A few minutes later Mary, grim-visaged and big-hearted, appeared with a tray, headache remedies and multifarious messages from the dining room.
She bathed the girl's aching head, brus.h.i.+ng the tumbled brown hair and piling it afresh into a soft loose knot. Grumbling gently at the long hours of work to which she attributed the unusual indisposition, she took full advantage of the rare opportunity of rendering personal attention and fussed to her heart's content, stripping off the stained overall and subst.i.tuting a loose velvet wrapper; and then stood over her, a kindly martinet, until the light dinner she had brought was eaten. Afterwards she packed pillows, made up the fire, and administered a particularly nauseous specific emanating from a homeopathic medicine chest that was her greatest pride, and then took herself away, still mildly admonis.h.i.+ng.
Gillian leaned back against the cus.h.i.+ons with a feeling of greater ease and restfulness. Food had given her strength and under Mary's ministrations her mental poise had steadied. She would not let herself dwell on the question that must before long be settled, Miss Craven would be coming soon, and until she had been and gone no definite settlement could be attempted.
She lay looking at the fire, endeavouring to keep her mind a blank. It was odd to be alone, she missed the familiar black form lying on the hearth-rug, but tonight she could not bear even Mouston's presence, and Mary had taken a request to Yos.h.i.+o, to whose room the dog had been banished from the studio, that he would keep him until the morning.
A tap at the door and Miss Craven appeared, anxious and questioning.
”Only a headache?--my dear, I don't believe it!” she protested, plumping down on the side of the sofa and clutching at her hair, that sure sign of perturbation. ”You've never had a headache like this before. You've been working too hard. You were painting all the morning and they tell me you worked throughout the afternoon and had no tea. Gillian, dear, when will you learn sense? I don't at all approve of you having tea sent to the studio _only_ when you ring for it. Young people require regular meals and as often as not neglect 'em; young artists are the worst offenders--you needn't contradict me, I know all about it. I did it myself.” She patted the clasped hands lying near her and scrutinised the girl more closely. ”You're as pale as a ghost and your eyes are too bright. Did Mary take your temperature? No?--the woman must have lost her senses. I'll telephone to Doctor Harris to come and see you in the morning. If you looked a fraction more feverish I'd send for you to-night, storm or no storm. Peter braved it, open car as usual. He sent his love. Barry turned up from Scotland this afternoon. He looks very tired--says he had a bothering time and a wretched journey--Gillian!”
she cried sharply as the girl slid from the sofa on to her knees beside her and raised a quivering piteous face.
”Aunt Caro, I'm not ill,” the words came in tumbling haste, ”there's nothing bodily the matter with me--I'm only dreadfully unhappy. I know Mr. Craven is back--he came to me in the studio this afternoon. He asked me to marry him,” the troubled voice sank to a whisper, ”and I--I don't know what to do.”
”My dear.” The tenderness of Miss Craven's tone sent a strangling wave of emotion into Gillian's throat. ”Aunt Caro, did you know? Do you wish it too?” she murmured wistfully.
Unwilling to admit a previous knowledge which would be difficult to explain, Miss Craven temporised. ”I very greatly hoped for it,” she said guardedly; ”you and Barry are all I have to care for, and you are both so--alone. I know you think of a very different life, I know you have dreams of making a career for yourself. But a career is not all that a woman wants in her life; it can perhaps mean independence and fame, it can also mean great loneliness and the loss of the full and perfect happiness that should be every woman's. You mustn't judge all cases by me. I have been happy in my own way but I want a greater, richer happiness for you, dear. I want for you the best that the world can give, and that best I believe to be the shelter and the safety of a man's love.”
The brown head dropped on her knee. ”You are thinking of me--I am thinking of him,” came a stifled whisper.
Miss Craven stroked the soft hair tenderly. ”Then why not give him what he asks, my dear,” she said gently. ”He has known sorrow and suffering.
If through you, he can forget the past in a new happiness, will you not grant it him? Oh, Gillian, I have so hoped that you might care for each other; that, together, you might make the Towers the perfect home it should be, a home of mutual trust and love. You and Barry and, please G.o.d, after you--your children.” She choked with unexpected emotion and brushed the mist from her eyes impatiently.
And at her knee Gillian knelt motionless, her lip held fast between her teeth to stop the bitter cry that nearly escaped her, her heart almost bursting. The picture Miss Craven's words called up was an ideal of happiness that might have been. The suffering that reality promised seemed more than she could contemplate. What happiness could come from such a travesty? The strange yearnings she had experienced seemed suddenly crystallised into form, and the knowledge was a greater pain than she had known. What she would have gone down to the gates of death to give him he did not require--the unutterable joy that Miss Craven suggested would never be hers. She searched for words, for an explanation of her silence that must seem strange to the elder woman.
Miss Craven obviously knew nothing of the unusual conditions attached to his proposal, her words proved it, and Gillian could not tell her. She could not betray his confidence even if she had so wished. If she could but speak frankly and show all her difficulty to the friend who had never yet failed in love and sympathy----She sought refuge in prevarication. ”How can I marry him?” she cried miserably. ”You don't know anything about me. I'm not a fit person to be his wife--my antecedents----”