CHAPTER XXXIII

IN THE SQUARE

The day was pleasant, the sun shone, and the spring buds were swelling. In Bath vegetation is in advance of that elsewhere. The crocus was passing and the daffodil was coming on.

Clouds, mountainous, snowy, were piled up in the blue sky.

The sun was warm, in the garden of the square it was possible to sit out and enjoy it. The hills about Bath, and the houses that encompassed the square, cut off the cold wind.

Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, because numbered as belonging to the square, possessed a key that admitted within the rails into the precinct where grew seringa and snowballs, was wintry grass, and where accumulated scraps of paper, the waifs of the street. By means of the key Winefred had admitted herself to the garden, and was seated on a bench enjoying the sun, occupied with thoughts the reverse of sunny.

The girl was not reconciled to her surroundings. She had begun to doubt her adaptability to them; she was low-spirited, and perplexed as to her course. At moments she felt that she would have been less uncomfortable at Axmouth. The gibes of the village girls would have been less intolerable than the patronage of Mrs. Tomkin-Jones. The envy of the rustics was a recognition of superiority, and consequently flattering to her pride, whereas the condescension of the doctor's widow impressed on her a sense of inferiority, and that an inferiority on an uncertain stage. At Axmouth she at all events felt the ground under her feet. Here, at Bath, she did not touch ground at all. She was like one of those glass imps in a water bottle that goes to the bottom at a touch on the elastic cover of the vessel, and the thumb of Mrs. T.-J. was much employed in depressing her.

If Winefred could have said――I am a poor girl, I went about on the seashore collecting pebbles and grinding them, and glad to get a shilling for a good specimen, and my mother peddled tapes and buttons, I have had no more education than could be acquired in a Dame's school――then she would have experienced a sense of relief.

But this she could not do. Her father was a gentleman. She was being polished at his desire, and in fulfilment of her mother's ardent wishes. She was no longer poor, but her mother must ever remain illiterate and excluded from the class into which she, Winefred, was to be introduced. Nor was this all that troubled her. She was in uncertainty as to the actual position of that mother whom she idolised; consequently she was in doubt as to her own.

If her mother had been really married, then Winefred had a perfect right to the name she bore, but it was a mistake for her mother not to carry the same. But if the marriage had been invalid, then she herself was guilty of imposition in assuming a name to which she had no title. In many ways she was sailing under false pretences. Her situation was full of difficulties and productive of embarrassment. To shield her mother, she could not speak of her as her mother; she was constrained to accept the fable that she was her nurse. She was impelled into a course of equivocation and half-truths against which her conscience rebelled.

Were it to leak out that Mrs. Marley actually was her mother, what looks would be exchanged, and how precipitate would be her expulsion from the house! For herself she would not care. But she was aware that her mother's ambition was to see her a lady, and this was a necessary step towards that goal. Were she by her conduct or admissions to forfeit her place there, it would make her mother's heart bitter with disappointment. Moreover, she had been led to believe that she was put with Mrs. Tomkin-Jones at her father's desire, and deep in her heart lay the longing desire that she might be the means at some future time of bringing him and her mother together once more. If that consummation were to be obtained, it could only be through fidelity in carrying out their common desire.

She had tact, and yet was in fear of betraying her ignorance, transferred suddenly as she was from one social element into another. When she did make a blunder it involved an elaborate apology and explanation on the part of Mrs. Tomkin-Jones to such as had witnessed the error, and this wounded her to the quick.

Had she been a cowardly girl she would have written to her mother to say that her position was unendurable and that she must return to her. But she was brave and strong. She knew her mother's heart, and to satisfy the ambition of that heart she was content to remain and suffer.

But it must be added that, although she was subjected to humiliations and to discomforts, there were compensations. She was quick-witted and perceptive enough to see that an opportunity was given her of making her future. Nor was she so unfeminine as not to feel relish in being measured, fitted, and brought up to the fashionable pitch. Nor again so inhuman as not to derive pleasure from being complimented by Mr. Wardroper, the value of whose flatteries she was too inexperienced to estimate. As Winefred sat thus, her mind a prey to many thoughts and her heart to conflicting emotions, she noticed a man sauntering along the side of the square, by the rail, which he tapped with his umbrella handle and rattled as he came along.

Something in his manner attracted her attention, and diverted it from her own affairs. Owing to the intervention of the rails she could not see his face distinctly till he came near, and then only when having inadvertently missed striking one bar, he stepped back to tap it.

At once she leaped to her feet――she had recognised her father――and she ran to the gate, opened it, and awaited him. Mrs. Tomkin-Jones had studied the _Bath Gazette_, but had not found in it among the fashionable arrivals that of the Governor of Tierra del Fuego, and she had thought that Winefred must have been mistaken when she caught a passing glimpse of a gentleman and took him to be her father.

Now there could be no doubt as to the identity.

The same indecision was in the man in the square as had been in him on the beach; but he looked feebler.

His action in tapping the bars was like that of a child. She observed that his lips moved, he was counting them, without purpose, as a child. His going back to strike a bar that had been omitted was the action of a child.

He was by no means an uncomely man. On the contrary, his features were finely cut, and had the lower jaw been firmer, and the chin less retreating, he would have been pronounced a handsome man. His brow was high and white, his eyebrows well arched, and the eyes fine, soft, and full.

Winefred's heart beat fast in uncertainty whether he would recognise her or not.

He came slowly on, with his eyes looking dreamily before him, and his lips moving as he counted, till he was close upon her. She blocked the way to his advance. Then he drew back, raised his hat, and said politely, 'A thousand pardons――sixty-eight, sixty-nine――I did not observe you.'

He looked at Winefred. A trouble came into his eyes. He was not sure. Did he know the young lady? The face was familiar, yet――――

'I must apologise,' said he hesitatingly, 'if I――if I――――'

'If you do not recollect your own child,' said Winefred, 'it is not her fault. You are, indeed, my father, who met me on the shore, and here is the watch you then gave me. I am Winefred Holwood.'

He recoiled, and groped in his pocket for his latchkey, but being unable to find it, put the handle of his umbrella to his lips and blew upon that, then stood, undecided, looking at her with the umbrella held up between them, and the handle at his mouth.

'Father,' said Winefred, 'will you come through the gate into the garden? I should like to have some talk with you.'

'Oh, yes! indeed, indeed this is surprising. I trust no one overheard you. Unexpected felicity, astounding encounter.'

'I saw you some days ago, as I was driving down Pulteney Street.'

'You were driving! How come you here? No, do not answer till I see that we are not overheard. Is there any one else in the garden? Were you in company? I should not like――I mean I should prefer――――'

Winefred drew him within and shut the gate.

'I do not see why, father, you should be surprised to see me. It was your wish that I should be brought up as a lady, and if you did not choose Mrs. Tomkin-Jones's house for me――――'

'I――I do not understand.'

'You provided the money; otherwise, of course, my darling mother could not have afforded this.'

'I――I provided the money! Oh, yes, certainly, certainly, and with the utmost regularity, and I shall continue to do so. But I did not anticipate――――'

'It was all arranged by dear Mrs. Jose.'

'Mrs. Jose! Oh, indeed.'

'She knew some people here of distinction, and they agreed to receive me and polish me, so as to make a lady of me; you understand, deal with me as Mr. Thomas Gasset does with the pebbles, rub and smooth and bring to a surface. It was your own desire.'

'I――well. Oh, certainly. Nothing could be better; but do they know?――excuse me, is it a matter of knowledge?'

'What do you mean, sir?'

She fixed her eye on him.

'I mean――I hardly can find words to adequately express my meaning. I would say――What name do you carry here?'

'I have told you, father. Winefred Holwood. Holwood is your name.'

'To be sure. Exactly. I wish I had my key, but they have deprived me of it. Yes, of course, inevitable. And your――I mean your――――'

'Mother?'

'Precisely. Is she also here?'

'No.'

He breathed freer.

'And do they know?'

'By they, I suppose you mean Mrs. Tomkin-Jones and her daughters?'

'It is with them you are staying?'

'Yes――and they know nothing.'

'She――did she――I mean your mother――did she bring you to Bath?'

'No. Mrs. Jose did that.'

'Mrs. Jose, certainly. Charming. But who _is_ Mrs. Jose?'

'She is the farmer's wife at Bindon.'

'Bindon! Oh? I am again at fault. Bindon, very nice; but where _is_ Bindon?'

'Bindon is near where mother and I lived. Mrs. Jose has been very kind to us, that is, to mother and me, when all the folk in Seaton and Axmouth turned against us. She alone held to us and believed in mother. And mother said that it was your intention that I should be brought up as a lady, and she and Mrs. Jose put their heads together, and I have been sent here to Mrs. Tomkin-Jones.'

'Mrs. Tomkin-Jones! Delicious! Who is this lady?'

'I believe her husband was the maker of Bath. A most eminent physician. There is a story about him and a pill, but I do not know it.'

'I never heard of him, or of her, or of the pill.'

'But Mrs. Tomkin-Jones knows about you.'

'Merciful powers! Knows _what_!' The man quaked.

'That you are a relative of Lord Finnborough.'

'Finnborough! Finnborough has never done anything for me, although I believe there is some sort of a connection.'

'Then that, at least, is true. Here I do not know what is lies and what is truth. Will you sit down on this bench, sir? Mrs. Tomkin-Jones lives in the corner house yonder, with an eye looking this way and another that.'

'Do you think that her eye is on us now?'

'No; the sun shines in at it, so the blind is down.'

'How long do you remain with her?' Mr. Holwood's chin was too retreating for him to be able to lodge it on the handle of his umbrella, but he attempted to do so repeatedly, and as often failed.

'Till the rubbing and polishing are done. That will be long. I am harder than a chalcedony.'

'This is a dreadful shock to me.'

'A shock to meet your child?'

'I mean, I mean a surprise. I am taking the waters. Strong emotions I have been instructed to avoid. I am not well. A dreadful menace hangs over me, a sword of Damocles. I have been ordered here by my medical attendant. I feel unhinged at the news.' Then changing his tone, and disengaging his hand from the umbrella, he took Winefred's fingers in his nerveless grasp, and said, 'My child――yes, my child――it is soothing to the feelings――to the heart of a desolate, a sick, maybe a death-stricken man, to know that he has a child.'

'And a wife.'

He winced and let go her hand.

'There are sundry considerations that have interfered,' said he, with a faltering voice, and a veil let down over his eyes. 'You cannot understand. In the higher circles, you know; but she is your mother, and I would rather say no more.'

'Father,' said Winefred, 'I will tell you right out how matters stand here――here, not at Axmouth, only here in Bath. Here I am your child, but my mother is thought to be dead.'

'Dead!' His cheek flushed.

'Only in Bath. She is in Axmouth, and alive there.'

'I do not understand.'

'Mrs. Jose has given out that she was my nurse――my nurse only, not my mother. She did this because my dear mother insisted on it.'

'Oh! true. I am glad.'

'I do not like it. I am unhappy. It is a lie. I hate lies. But I cannot help myself. Here, in Bath, she is known as my nurse.'

'Quite so, your nurse.'

'Yes, in Bath. Elsewhere she is my mother.'

'Ah, your mother. You have her force――her vehemence.'

'And she is your wife.'

'I am――ah! so agitated. I will see you again. I must go and have some of the waters. I will call on Mrs.――――'

'Tomkin-Jones. And on me, your child?'

'Yes――I shall see you again――my child.'

He stood hesitating before her. Then he stooped, looked about him timidly, and, seeing no one, kissed her brow.