Part 8

Dinner was a miserable meal. When Lavinia had gone to the dance, Rodney came over and sat on the sofa beside Edith who looked tired and worn.

"What's wrong, Edith?" he asked. "What's worrying you?"

"I'm desperately worried, Rodney. It's Lavinia. I do everything I can to amuse the child, I arrange parties for her, and welcome her friends here, and now to-night she doesn't feel quite happy about a dance she is going to, and she accused me of interfering and deceiving her, and I don't know what else."

"She's spoiled I expect," suggested Rodney comfortably. "She's pretty and she's having a good time and people running after her and her head is a bit turned, don't you think? It's natural to kick over the traces now and again."

"No, Rodney, it isn't natural for any child to speak to her mother as Lavinia spoke to me to-night. I was only acting for the best when I accepted this invitation for her; I like her to get all the fun she can, but it clashed with some idea she has in her head, and she simply turned on me."

"She'll be sorry when she cools down. She's devoted to you, you know, Edith."

"I can't believe it now. I don't feel things will ever be the same again. I really am utterly wretched; in fact I think I'll go up to bed now if you don't mind."

Some hours later Edith was wakened by a gentle touch.

A finger of moonlight lying across the floor, showed Lavinia in white frock and cloak, standing by the bed.

"Mother," she said urgently, "I'm so sorry for what I said; I'm glad now that I went, terribly glad."

Edith's sensibilities were fully roused by the deep, excited note in Lavinia's voice.

"Your father's asleep," she whispered. "I'll slip out and come up to your room for a minute or two."

Lavinia stole quietly away, and Edith followed her up to her own bedroom where she found her sitting on the bed in the dark.

"Don't put the light on, Mother," she said. "I'd rather talk in the dark, and there's a lovely moon. You sit down in my chair and I'll curl up on the bed."

"Lavinia dear," said Edith, "I've had a most miserable evening. You hurt me very cruelly; I almost began to feel I had failed with you."

"I know, Mother; I'm so sorry." Lavinia's voice was dreamy. "I didn't really mean it, and it all seems years ago anyhow. It was wonderful to-night at the dance. There was a man there--" She stopped, "his name was Martin Peile," she added in a whisper.

"My dearest," began Edith, but Lavinia's soft voice hurried on.

"Lady Olivia introduced him to me at the very beginning; there were programmes, and he asked for the third dance, and then after that we didn't dance with anyone else; we sat out together in the little garden. It wasn't very cold, and then at the end we danced again together. I've fallen in love with him, and he has, too, with me." She leaned forward and caught her mother's hand. "Isn't it lucky he did," she said fervently. "I couldn't have borne to live another week if he hadn't."

"Lavinia, what are you telling me? My brain's reeling. Do you mean what you say?"

"Oh I know it's fearfully sudden. I didn't mean to fall in love for years and years. I know I'm only nineteen and it must be a shock to you and all that, but Mother, it really has happened; I'm engaged to him."

"You can't be engaged," said Edith, utterly bewildered. "Who is he? We don't know him or anything about him. You're quite wild and unlike yourself Lavinia, my child."

"I know I am; I've never been in love before, you see."

"But really darling, you're going much too fast. Things can't be done all in a hurry like this."

Lavinia did not seem to hear.

"It's too amazing," she said. "Mother, I'll never be able to thank you enough for sending me to the dance. I might easily never have met him. It's terrible to think I might have gone on for years and never known Martin. He says so too. He says we'll never be able to be grateful enough to you. I told him how dreadful I'd been, and he is longing to meet you. In fact he's coming to-morrow morning. But really Mother, I do thank you."

Shattered as she was by the thought of the stranger who had so suddenly entered Lavinia's life and so entirely absorbed it, Edith nevertheless tasted to the full the sweetness of her child's gratitude.

"My darling," she said tenderly, "we really mustn't go too fast, but I want you to know one thing: Everything I've done has always been in the hope of giving you happiness, and if this turns out satisfactorily it will be the most beautiful thing for me to know that it was I who brought it about."

Lavinia's voice rang with assurance.

"It will turn out all right, Mother, there can't be a hitch or a flaw. You'll see to-morrow."

"Yes, I'll see to-morrow," said Edith. "And now, dear child, I must go back to your father. Sleep quietly and well, and don't be excited."

She kissed Lavinia and held her face for a moment between her hands.

"I'm a very happy mother," she said, "and a very proud one, too, to think I've been able to give you what may very well prove to be the best thing in your life. Good-night, and God bless you."

MRS. EDWIN GREENE

MRS. EDWIN GREENE

I

There hung about Dora Greene an atmosphere of moribundity and stagnation that inevitably led her relations and acquaintances to classify her as a bore.

Her conversation was monotonous, self-centred, and wound its interminable way in and out among the intricacies of her numerous afflictions. The neglect from which she was convinced she suffered, the slights she so patiently endured, and the difficulty of making ends meet on a reduced income formed the dim tapestry of her life.

The genuinely tragic accident which had robbed her of her son, lost most of its poignancy by being endlessly referred to in this ignoble context, and the one consistently vivid emotion in her life was her passionate unsleeping jealousy of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Rodney Greene. Apart from this and from the frequent scenes which it occasioned--scenes of hysterical reproaches met reasonably though unsympathetically--Dora Greene fumbled her way through each day, accumulating new grievances and brooding over old ones.

Nevertheless, three times in her life she had lived purposely and intensely: for half an hour before her first and only proposal; during the few months that her husband was at the front; and for a moment when her son was dying.

II

Dora Pilkington at twenty-four had been that pitiful thing, the victim of an ill-natured mother. Mrs. Pilkington was obsessed by social ambitions which had been persistently thwarted; some at their tenderest stage of growth; some more cruelly, when they held out promise of fulfilment.

There had been a bazaar; the celebrity who was to open it failed to arrive. The committee approached Mrs. Pilkington, the vicar's wife, and had in fact asked her to perform the ceremony, when another member hurrying up had announced the appearance of a certain lady, wife of a commercial knight well established in the county. With murmurs of "Thank you so much," and "Then we needn't trouble you now," the anxious ladies had fluttered away, intent on higher prey, and the vicar's wife was left with her words of acceptance bitter on her lips.

Of the multitude of obstacles which nullified her social projects, the most permanent and unsurmountable were her own over-zealous opportunism, her daughter's inertia, and her husband's earnest single-mindedness. The Reverend Edward Pilkington was a man of limited outlook but sincere purpose. The country parish in which he worked, not cognisant of his limitations, appreciated his sincerity, enjoyed his ministrations, and made endless demands on his time and sympathy.

For the most part, enjoying his work as he did and capable of estimating its usefulness, Edward Pilkington was a happy man. His home certainly lacked serenity, but he asked little of life, and if he was sometimes shamed by his wife's scornful refusal of invitations, and even more shamed by her gushing acceptances, still she was an admirable housewife, and there was always some sick parishioner to provide a ready means of escape from her tongue. When she saw him adjusting his old scarf, and searching helplessly for a pair of gloves, Mrs. Pilkington would raise her eyebrows and enquire acidly: "What! Am I to be left again this evening?" To which Mr. Pilkington contented himself by replying vaguely and apologetically:

"I'm afraid so my dear. You know a clergyman's time is not his own."

Dora had no means of escape. She returned at eighteen from the rather cheap boarding school where she had spent the last four years, with a vague idea of helping her mother, being useful to her father, and ultimately marrying some delightful and desirable young man. In point of fact neither parent required her assistance, and her mother who had hoped with an almost savage intensity for a daughter pretty and clever enough to make a place for herself in the county, was disappointed by Dora's uncertain looks and complete lack of initiative. Gradually Mrs. Pilkington became so embittered by her daughter's inadequacy that a stumbling reply, any manifestation of the gaucherie natural to unsophisticated eighteen was enough to provoke an outburst of taunts and ridicule.

The reason for this was incomprehensible to Dora. She knew only that she was a failure, and having tried the effect of an incipient rebellion against her mother in the form of a muddled and consequently fruitless appeal to her father, she sank little by little into a state of apathy.

It was in the spring of 1900 when Dora was twenty-four, that Mrs. Pilkington's hitherto diffused and generalised unkindness crystallised into a passionate desire to marry her daughter with whatever difficulty, to any man, however unsuitable. It was intolerable to her to be the only woman for miles around with a marriageable and unmarried daughter. Dora by this time was conscious of but one wish; to escape as much as possible from her mother's criticism. With this object it was her custom to absent herself for the greater part of the day on long rambling walks. On her return she was always sharply questioned as to where she had been and whom she had seen, and the replies, nearly always unsatisfactory, were greeted with derision and annoyance.

"You've just been wandering about, have you? You didn't see anyone but old Mr. Crowther and you didn't speak to him. I wonder what good that will do. You know, Dora, it's all very well to idle about, but a girl with no looks and no money can't afford to pick and choose. You're not getting any younger, are you?"

There was no answer to this type of question. Dora would mumble something about there being no one to marry anyhow, and her mother would take her up. "Well, there's young Mr. Lawson at the Bank. I don't say he's anything very much, but what do you expect?"

"You know he's utterly impossible, Mother," replied Dora, her face scarlet with indignation and embarrassment.

"Well, Dora, I don't really see why you should look for anything better, and you may as well know that I'm tired to death of having you always hanging round the house."

"Father doesn't feel like that anyhow," retorted Dora, with some courage which was quelled by her mother's reply.

"Your father agrees with me that is a great pity you are never likely to attract any young man whom we could welcome as a son-in-law."

There were many such conversations, always ending in a decisive victory for the mother, and in the daughter's abandonment to resentful tears.

In May when Mrs. Pilkington heard that The Hall, the only large house in their parish, had been taken by a Mr. and Mrs. Greene with two grown-up sons, she felt that at last her efforts must be crowned with success. The further discovery that both sons were unmarried lashed her to an unprecedented exhibition of vulgarity.

"That doubles your chances, Dora," she said triumphantly.

Later, when the news filtered through that the elder son was engaged to a Miss Beckett and would be married in the autumn, she was wrought to a pitch of nervous exacerbation that found vent in threats.

"Well, this is the end, Dora. Unless you manage to get engaged this summer, something will have to be done about you in the autumn."

Part of Dora's brain registered quite accurately the baselessness of these threats; she knew there was nothing that could be done about her, she knew that her father cared for her, but something in her cringed at the scope that would be added to Mrs. Pilkington's insults after a summer during which she would certainly be thrown into continual companionship with the younger Greene boy.

Shortly after the Greenes' arrival at the end of June, Mrs. Pilkington, unaccompanied by Dora, went up to call at The Hall in order to review the position. She found it eminently satisfactory. Mrs. Greene was unmistakably a gentlewoman, and both sons, who appeared at tea, were good-looking and well-mannered. Edwin, the younger, was charmingly diffident, but his face lit up ingenuously when Mrs. Pilkington replied to a remark of his as to the scarcity of young people in the neighbourhood:

"Why, that's what my young daughter is always complaining about. You must meet and have a good grumble together."

"It's selfish of you to complain, Edwin," Mrs. Greene interposed briskly. "You know we've come here in the hope of your father being able to get a little peace to finish his book."

"Is Mr. Greene an author then?" asked Mrs. Pilkington, delighted to find that he belonged to a profession so distinguished, and still more delighted when she elicited the fact that he was the Geoffrey Greene whose literary public consisted of a small but solid body of good opinion, ready to welcome anything from his pen.

"Of course my husband writes mostly essays and articles," said Mrs. Greene explanatorily, "but at present he's engaged on something more ambitious, and he felt it would be a help to get out of town away from people and things."

"Of course," agreed Mrs. Pilkington, "I quite understand his point of view. You'll find this quite a nice quiet neighbourhood, but we must try and provide a little amusement for your sons."

She smiled at Edwin as she spoke. Everything seemed very hopeful to her. It was obvious that Edwin was a little bored and restless. His work at the Bar was as yet negligible, and the prospect of three months' idling in the country was considerably brightened by the thought of the Pilkington girl who apparently felt as bored as he did.

He accepted eagerly Mrs. Pilkington's invitation to tennis and supper at the Vicarage a few days hence, but the elder boy, Rodney, refused. He was only spending a few days at The Hall and was then obliged to return to the engineering works where he was a very junior partner with his uncle.

That evening Dora wandered out into the garden face to face with a clear-cut issue. Her mother's injunctions were perfectly definite; every effort was to be made to attract Edwin Greene and if Dora could not succeed in eliciting a proposal she must at least entrap him into some unwary declaration which could be taken advantage of.

The sordid meanness of the project was evident, but Dora Pilkington after six years of endurance, decided that she was willing to fall in with any scheme that would lead to freedom from the incessant taunts and nagging to which she was subject.

As she looked at the moon she thought vaguely and sentimentally that perhaps he would fall in love with her, and it would turn out all right; as she thought of her awkwardness and badly made clothes, this faint hope died, and was succeeded by a resolution to capture by hook or crook the one eligible man within reach.

The afternoon when Edwin came to tennis was a success. Dora played passably, and the only other woman was the doctor's young wife, absorbed in herself and her husband. Edwin stayed on to supper, an unusually pleasant meal at which Mr. Pilkington expanded conversationally, and Dora and her mother formed a smiling and apparently harmonious background.

It was a lovely night.

"Would you two young people like to walk down to the river?" asked Mrs. Pilkington.

"May we? That would be more than charming," answered Edwin, and in a few moments Dora found herself strolling through the murmurous summer fields, with a young man saying to her ardently:

"Do let's have a lot of tennis and walks and picnics, Miss Pilkington; there are so few people round here that you really must put up with me a good deal this summer."

She felt a strange movement in her blood. It was going to be all right then; no need to plot and plan; she, Dora Pilkington, was embarking on a genuine romance. Her heart beat unevenly, and as she looked at Edwin's young face, clear and dark in the yellow moonlight, she thought suddenly: I love him; I'll do anything for him.

The days that followed were busy and happy, but July merged into August and August into September, and the harvest was stacked in the fields among the shorn poppies.

"Is nothing ever going to happen, Dora?" asked Mrs. Pilkington, and Dora asked herself the same question, still more bitterly.

Apparently nothing was going to happen. Edwin Greene enjoyed and sought her company, but by no word had he ever suggested that his feelings for her were stronger than affection and gratitude towards an acquaintance who was making a dull summer less dull.

One Saturday after a particularly trying lunch alone with her Mother, Dora walked by herself towards the river where she and Edwin had gone on that first most hopeful night. Edwin, lying in a canoe tethered to an overhanging tree, saw her white frock coming along the bank above him. He felt comfortably lazy and disinclined to make any move to greet her, but the disconsolate swing of the hat which she was carrying in her hand, touched him. He knew by this time that the relations between Dora and her mother were not of the happiest, and he guessed at the trouble that had marred the drowsy afternoon.

When she drew near to the tree under which he was lying, he called softly. Startled, she looked around in every direction but the right one, until guided by his laughter she parted the branches and leaned through, looking down into the cool gloomy green cavern.

Edwin sat up suddenly with a quick intake of breath as he looked at her face framed by leaves and twigs that caught at her tumbled fair hair. Dora had been crying, she was flushed and tremulous, but as she looked at Edwin her eyes brightened and she smiled. In her dishevelment she achieved an unusual warm prettiness, heightened by the contrast between smiling mouth and tear-stained eyes.

"You look simply stunning, Dora," he said eagerly; "but I can see that something is wrong: you must let me help you, you really must. Wait a minute till I come up beside you."

This unprecedented offer of help combined with Edwin's flattering words and look, broke down completely Dora's already shaken self-control. She felt, as on their first walk together, that strange surging in her veins, and her response to it was one of courage and sincerity; virtues as a rule quite alien to her unreliable and compromising nature.

"You can't help me," she said desperately turning to him with tears streaming unheeded down her cheeks. "You mustn't even try; you of all people must keep clear of me; you don't understand at all; Mother is determined that you should marry me."

Dora was sobbing loudly and her words were only spasmodically audible.

"You don't know how dreadful Mother is," she gasped between sobs. "She's always going on at me about you. You mustn't come and see us any more; it isn't safe for you; I don't know what she mayn't do; she's quite set on it."

Emotions and ideas were crowding in on Edwin: surprise, amounting to amazement, genuine sympathy with the helplessly sobbing girl, pride at the thought that he and he alone could turn her misery to bliss, and at the same time, against these, the urgings of common-sense.

He recognised clearly that he was not in love with Dora Pilkington; he visualised the family difficulties that must inevitably present themselves if he adopted the heroic attitude to which he was drawn. He had shown no inkling of anything beyond the most casual affection for Dora; in conversation he had referred to her as a nice girl and a good companion, but he knew that his mother would certainly perceive an engagement between him and Dora to be the result of some transitory passion which had led to a declaration.

He hesitated, automatically patting Dora's shoulder with murmurs of sympathetic encouragement.

Suddenly she caught his hand, and held it to her hot wet cheek.

"You've been wonderful to me," she said, "nobody has ever been so kind before, but this is the end now."

This, however, proved not to be true. At the unsolicited tribute Edwin's young breast swelled with the desire to make a heroic gesture. He thought of the duty that the strong owe to the weak; visions of gallant men and kneeling beggar-maids floated cloudily in his brain; he drew himself up, and strove for his most resonant chest-notes as he said gravely:

"Please don't say anything more, Dora. You will make me very happy if you will consent to be my wife."

It was a magnificent gesture and it had its instant reward.

"No, no," cried Dora through her tears, "I couldn't take advantage of your kindness; you don't mean it; it's only that you're so good."

This protest, these doubts hazarded as to his resolution, only served to intensify it, the more so as the sound of his own voice making its formal proposal had struck chill upon Edwin's heart.

"You wrong me," he protested. "Indeed I mean it; it will make me very happy if your answer is yes."

Dora had lived her moment; she had flung away weapons and armour and renounced her hopes. It had been an impulse and she was incapable of carrying it to a conclusion of sustained unselfishness. She knew that Edwin did not love her and that the whole situation was false and garish, but the chance was too good to be let slip.

"Oh, Edwin," she gasped, "indeed it is yes," and then relapsed into further sobbing.

Edwin too had had his moment, but his was no isolated detachable fragment of his life. The results of it had closed on him like a trap; all that he could do was to follow up the line of conduct imposed on him by his own act. He put his arm round Dora, and kissed her gently.

"My dear," he urged, "don't cry any more. Please try not to; it does upset me to see you, and surely everything will be all right now. Let's sit down on the bank and discuss things.

"I'm only crying because I'm so happy," said Dora attempting to dry her tears. "It's all so wonderful. Mother and Father will be so pleased."

Edwin was conscious of a tremor of disgust at the thought of Mrs. Pilkington, but Dora seemed to have forgotten the prelude of frankness which had led to his proposal.

"Will Mr. and Mrs. Greene mind your getting engaged to me?" she asked tentatively, and Edwin's doubts were lulled by pleasure in her humility and dependence, and in his own protectiveness.

"They won't interfere," he assured her stoutly. "Mother will say I'm too young and we must wait a little and are we sure we know our own minds and so on, but Father won't take any part. He never does; he says everyone must buy their own experience."

At his own careless words, Edwin again felt chilled and dismayed; he was buying his so dear, at the cost perhaps of all his future happiness.

Suddenly in a fever of impatience to make it irrevocable and be quit of doubts and tremors, he dragged Dora to her feet.

"Let's go home at once," he said, "and tell them we're engaged; let's get all the fuss over and be married as soon as we can; I'm not earning any money yet, but I shall soon, and Father gives me a decent allowance."