Philippa

Chapter Fifteen
Maida at Fault

So, after all, the hobgoblin of a visit to Merle melted into thin air, as often happens with the things we dread the most. Not that, in this case, there was do element of disappointment to Philippa mingled with the very relief she was so grateful for. She had a distinct curiosity about Evelyn’s hero, and a decided wish to see him again, and when, some two months or so later, a letter with the date of “Merle-in-the-Wold,” reached her in her wanderings with her father, she felt it undoubtedly regrettable that she could not, without misgiving, look forward to joining the Headforts in their next visit there, as her sister alluded to.

“You cannot think what a perfect place this is,” wrote Evelyn. “Duke was not very eager to come, so soon after arriving and before he had settled down at all, he said. He is such an old bachelor; he has fallen back into all his fussy methodical ways with being two years away from scatter-brained me. But now he is quite as much in love with it all as I am, and is talking of looking out for a little house somewhere hereabouts, if he decides on leaving his regiment. And he likes Mr Gresham very much; at least he says, as everybody must, what a charming host he is, though I don’t know that he appreciates him quite as much as I do. But he likes talking to him about Wyverston and the Headforts. And oh, by-the-by, the old squire has written so cordially to Duke, as soon as he heard of his arrival. We are to go up there for a week whenever the worst of the winter is over, etc, etc.”

And in a postscript she had scribbled: “Michael Gresham is not here, and his cousin says very little about him. I always told you that I was sure they were not so very intimate. Mr Gresham has just begged me to say that the next time we come he hopes you will accompany us, though he scarcely dares flatter himself that you can remember him.”

Philippa smiled a little as she read the last words.

“Well, perhaps,” she said to herself, “perhaps I may go there some time or other without any misgiving. It will be curious if I never come across Solomon’s master again. He was kind, after all, though rather gruff about it. And I am sure he is to be relied upon. But the feeling of being there with him, knowing that he knew, and that he knew I knew he knew! Oh, it would be insufferable.”

She made a gesture as if to shake off the very thought of such a thing. But her nerves and spirits were fast recovering themselves. Charley’s plan had been a grand success. Mr Raynsworth and his daughter had enjoyed themselves to their heart’s content – nor had they been idle. Philippa had taken her part in all her father’s researches and explorings, for the new book he had in view dealt largely with the history of the old Italian towns which they had been staying at, one after the other, since leaving home.

Three months fled only too quickly. At the expiration of that time, just as they were deciding, not without reluctance, that they must turn homewards – for with all the good management in the world money develops very slippery qualities in travelling! – a letter from Cannes somewhat altered their plans. It was from Miss Lermont, with whom, since her visit to Dorriford, Philippa had kept up a regular correspondence, so that Maida was quite au courant of her young relative’s whereabouts.

The Lermonts had been spending the winter, or a part of it, in the south, and now, by her father’s and mother’s request, she wrote to beg Mr Raynsworth and his daughter to join them in their villa for two or three weeks.

“I do not see why we should not do so,” said Mr Raynsworth, “I should like to see something more of the Lermonts, and the quiet time would enable me to arrange my papers and notes a little better than it has been possible to do so far. They seem all right at home – eh, Philippa? – and you would like a week or two with Maida?”

“Very much, very much indeed,” his daughter replied.

So it came to pass that it was not at Dorriford, but in the sunny south that Philippa met again the friend she had already learnt to prize.

“You are changed, Philippa,” said her cousin, the first morning when they were strolling about in the pretty garden of the Lermonts’ villa. “Changed somehow, though I scarcely can say how.”

“Am I?” said the girl, “and yet it is only six months, barely that indeed, since you saw me last.”

But she was changed, and the consciousness of it made her colour deepen, even though she knew how much more cause for her remark Maida would have had, had they met before Philippa’s winter in Italy.

“I know, that is what makes me notice it the more. One expects to see change at your age after an interval of a year or two – I counted you scarcely grown-up when you came to us last year. But in six months! No, I can’t quite make it out.”

“What is it?” said Philippa, lightly. “Am I fatter, or thinner, or paler, or what?”

Miss Lermont looked at her scrutinisingly, which did not tend to increase the young girl’s composure.

“No,” said the elder woman at last, “it is not in that sort of way so much – though you are thinner, rather thinner, and perhaps a little paler. Nevertheless you have grown still – prettier,” checking herself in the use of a more imposing adjective. “I am not afraid of telling you so, as I know you are not the least conceited. But you have changed otherwise. You are not quite as bright and self-reliant as you were – you look anxious every now and then, and sometimes you are rather absent. Tell me, my dear child, have you fallen in love with any one?”

It was the greatest relief to Philippa that Maida’s kindly cross-questioning should have turned in this direction. For even if she herself had thought it well to take Miss Lermont into her confidence as to her adventures, she was not free to do so, Mrs Raynsworth having bound her down to tell no one the story without first consulting herself. The laugh, therefore, with which the young girl prefaced her reply was quite natural and unconstrained.

“No indeed,” she said, “I can’t fancy myself falling in love with any one unless I were very sure that the person in question had first fallen very thoroughly in love with me. And – I can scarcely picture such a state of things as that.”

“Naturally,” said Miss Lermont. “I don’t think any girl – not a girl such as you are, at least, dear Philippa —can picture it till it comes to pass.”

Philippa hesitated.

“I mean more than that,” she said. “I do not feel as if I were the sort of girl a man is likely to care for in that way. I am not – oh, not yielding, and appealing, and all that sort of thing. There is something of a boy about me. Long ago, when I was a tiny girl, the nurses used to tell me I had no ‘pretty ways.’” Maida could not help smiling at Philippa’s self-deprecation. But as the girl looked down at her – Miss Lermont was by this time established in her invalid-chair, her cousin standing beside her – with a certain wistfulness in her expression, it struck the elder woman still more strongly that Philippa was changed, softened and somewhat saddened. Her present estimate of herself was far less correct now than a few months ago. “You forget,” Maida replied, “that tastes differ as to human beings’ attraction for each other, luckily for the peace of society, more widely than in any other direction. It is not every man, by any means, whose ideal woman is of the type which you evidently think the most winning. But all the same, my dear child, you are much more – ‘womanly,’ shall I say? – less self-confident and gentler than you were at Dorriford. Something has changed you. Don’t you feel conscious of it yourself?”

“Growing older perhaps,” said Philippa, trying to speak lightly. But it was impossible for her to be anything but genuine with Maida. “No,” she continued, with a sudden alteration of voice, “I will not talk nonsense. I know that I have changed; you are very quick and discriminating to have found it out, and I wish I could tell you all about it. But I cannot, not at present at any rate. So don’t let us talk any more about it. I do want to enjoy this delightful place and weather and you to the very utmost.”

She sat down beside her cousin and looked at her with what she meant to be a perfectly happy smile. But somewhat to Maida’s surprise the pretty mouth was quivering a little, and there was a suspicious glistening in the deep brown eyes.

“My dear child!” Maida exclaimed, impulsively, her anxiety increasing. “Can you not – ”

“No, dear,” Philippa replied to the uncompleted inquiry, “I cannot explain anything. But there is nothing to be anxious about – really nothing.”

“Only tell me,” Miss Lermont persisted, “this trouble, whatever it is, or – ”

“It is quite over,” said Philippa.

“Or has been, then – have you had to keep it altogether to yourself? Have you been unable to confide in any one?”

“Oh, no,” Philippa replied. “They all – at least Evey and papa and mamma – knew about it, and mamma knows everything, yes, everything. And if she had known I was to be with you, here, I daresay she would have wished me to tell you; at least I think she would have done, but – but – I am not quite sure. After all, it isn’t anything very dreadful, only it opened my eyes to my own self-will and presumption, and I don’t feel as if I ever could trust myself again.”

“Poor dear,” said Maida, tenderly. “Remember it is not the ‘thinking we stand’ that keeps us from falls. I am quite happy now I know that your mother knows it all, and whether you ever tell me the whole or not is a matter of no consequence. Put it out of your head, dear, and let us enjoy this treat – for a treat it is to me.”

“And most certainly to me, too,” said her cousin, affectionately. “I had no idea Cannes was so charming, Maida.”

“It has been an exceptionally good winter, even for Cannes,” said Miss Lermont. “Lots of people we know have been here. Almost too many sometimes, as I am so stupidly easily knocked up and mother has bustle enough at home all the year round. Now, the visitors are dropping off a little, but we know a good many of the so-called residents. That is to say, the people who have permanent houses here which they inhabit for four or five months of the year. By-the-by, Philippa, did you not see the Bertrams when you were at Dorriford?”

“Yes,” Philippa replied, “I did. But they are not here?”

There was the slightest possible – so slight that at the time Miss Lermont thought her ears must have misled her – inflection of anxiety in the girl’s tone as she made the inquiry.

“Here – yes indeed, very much here,” Maida replied. “Captain Bertram and Lady Mary, and all the five children, and an army of governesses, and nurses, and maids, and horses, and grooms. They are very rich, you know. And they have had friends visiting them or coming to be near them, all the time, several of whom we knew, so that has helped to extend our acquaintance here. Oh, yes, by-the-by, that Mr Gresham, ‘the silent man,’ as we called him, is staying with them now. He has just arrived; do you remember him one day at Dorriford? I had forgotten about it, but he asked me when he called with Lady Mary, if I had heard from you lately, and – ”

Philippa interrupted her.

“Evelyn and Duke have been staying with him,” she said, speaking with studied deliberateness; “that must have reminded him of me, as Evey is far too fond of talking about me.”

She did not turn away as she spoke, and her whole manner was peculiarly calm, but to Miss Lermont’s amazement the colour surged up into her cheeks, leaving them again as suddenly – she herself apparently unconscious, or determined to appear unconscious, that it was so.

Maida felt completely taken aback. She was not of an inquisitive frame of mind, and was eminently unsuspicious when she had once learnt to give her confidence. But she was very observant by nature, and as has been already mentioned, in her peculiar, semi-invalid life, the post of spectator had often fallen to her, and she had come to feel great interest in the affairs of her neighbours – interest which in an inferior class of mind might have degenerated into love of gossip. And aware of this danger, Miss Lermont was specially careful to keep her concern for “other people’s business” well within bounds, even where conscious that real affection and sympathy prompted her.

So for a moment or two she hesitated before putting to Philippa the question that most naturally rose to her lips. Then an instant’s reflection showed her that the refraining from so simple an inquiry would of itself suggest some possibly annoying suspicion.

“Have you never seen him again, then? Somehow his manner seemed to imply that he knew more of you than that one afternoon’s introduction, when he did not distinguish himself by either ‘feast of reason or flow of soul.’”

Before Philippa replied, her cousin felt that she hesitated. Yet nothing could be more straightforward than her reply when it came.

“I have never met Mr Gresham since that day at Dorriford,” and the substitution of the vaguer participle for the more definite “seen,” did not catch Miss Lermont’s attention. Yet her perplexity increased.

“She did change colour when she heard his name and she was uneasy when she heard of the Bertrams being here,” thought Maida. “Yet I know she is not only truthful, but candid. The very way she told me there was something she could not tell, shows it. Can it be merely that her sister has got it into her head that Mr Gresham would be a good parti, which I suppose he would be, for her sister, and that some hints of hers have annoyed Philippa? She is almost morbidly sensitive, I know. I suppose it must be that.”

But feeling the girl’s eyes fixed upon her, she hastened to reply to her last words.

“You are pretty sure to meet him here” she said. “There is scarcely a day on which we do not see or hear something of the Bertrams. So we shall have an opportunity of finding out if our silent friend can talk when he chooses to do so.”

“But you have had an opportunity of that already, have you not?” said Philippa. “Did you not say you had seen Mr Gresham since his arrival?”

“Yes, the day before yesterday, but only for a few minutes. He did talk, I must allow. He found time, as I said, to ask if I had heard from you lately. He may have said something of Evelyn and her husband having been with him, but if so, I did not pay attention. He is certainly a very handsome man, and the Bertrams think everything of him. I suppose he is made a great deal of, and if he is a little affected and spoilt, it is excusable.”

“Did he strike you as affected?” said Philippa. Now that she had got over the first start of hearing Mr Gresham’s name, she had pulled herself together and regained her composure. After all, it was not Michael; and when she recalled that quite recently she had been contemplating the possibility of accompanying the Headforts before very long on another visit to Merle, she realised the inconsistency of shrinking from meeting her sister’s late host in the present easy and informal circumstances. “I don’t think I can take Evelyn’s account of him quite without a grain of salt. She seems so fascinated by him.”

“And your brother-in-law?” said Maida. “I always like to hear a man’s opinion of a man, as well as a woman’s.”

“Oh, yes, Duke likes him very much, I think,” said Philippa. “He would not appreciate his charm of manner as Evelyn does, very possibly. Duke is a regular man, something of a boy about him, don’t you know, a little too rough and ready, perhaps. Then Evelyn knows Mr Gresham better. She saw a good deal of him at – at Wyverston,” and Philippa suddenly stooped to pick an innocent daisy looking up in her face from the grass at her feet, only to fling it down again impatiently, poor daisy!

Why had she mentioned Wyverston, she asked herself; why trench quite unnecessarily on ground where she could not be open and communicative with her friend, as she loved to be?

“I am a perfect idiot,” she thought, and again the expression on her face struck Miss Lermont as unusual.

“At Wyverston,” she repeated. “The Headforts’ place. Oh, yes, I remember your telling me in your very first letter from home about Evelyn’s going there. But you never said anything more – as to how the visit went off and if she enjoyed it. You were not very well about that time, if I remember rightly. I think your mother wrote and said so?”

“I don’t think there was much the matter with me,” said Philippa, “but mamma was a little anxious. They will think me looking brilliantly well when I go home after this splendid holiday, I am sure. You were asking about Evey’s visit? Yes, she enjoyed it very much, and it was a great success. She took to the Headforts and they to her wonderfully.”

“Then,” began Miss Lermont, “but don’t answer if it is indiscreet of me to ask, do you think the old man is going to recognise your brother-in-law as his heir and – to treat him accordingly?”

“We don’t quite know,” said Philippa, “and after all, as Duke says, there is no hurry to know. The squire is not a very old man, and he must be wiry to have lived through the shocks he has had. He knows nothing almost of Duke except by hearsay, though there is nothing but good to hear of him. All he has said has been to express a wish that Duke should give up India and settle down at home, and he worded it as if he meant to help him to do so. Of course we shall know more after they have met.”

“Will that be soon?” asked Miss Lermont.

“Yes, I believe Evey and he are going north very shortly after we get back,” said Philippa. “And they are taking the boy, Bonny, with them. The Wyverston people have specially invited him.”

“I think that all looks very promising,” said Maida. “You would be very glad for your sister not to have to go abroad again, would you not?”

“Very,” said Philippa, heartily. “It would be the greatest comfort in the world; even if they had to go to live in the north, it would seem delightful after India.”

“Is Wyverston a pretty place?” said Maida, but she checked herself almost as she said the words. “Of course you have never been there, so how could you know.”

“Evelyn thought it a fine place, a good comfortable old house, though with nothing very striking about it, except, perhaps, the contrast with the great lonely moorland, on one side at least, round about it. There is something very impressive about moorland – so grim and yet pathetic,” said Philippa, half dreamily. Her eyes seemed to be gazing on the scene she suggested; and it was so. At that moment, instead of the sunny terrace, with the orange trees in their green tubs, and down below, the blue Mediterranean gleaming sapphire-like in the sun, with overhead the deep, all but cloudless sky, she was picturing to herself the cold grey morning aspect of the far-stretching lands on the east of Wyverston. She felt the very wind on her cheek, the breeze “with a flavour of the sea,” as the Headforts were fond of saying; she saw the tops of the trees in the pine woods to the left, and then emerging from their shade she seemed again to catch sight of the long smooth body of poor Solomon, ready to wriggle with pleasure at her approach. And Solomon’s master in his rough tweed suit and honest, kindly face – yes, it was an honesty kindly face – not far behind! What a pity – what a pity that he had come to think so poorly of her; there was something about the man that made her feel he would have been a good and steady friend. She could have learnt to like him. If ever – but here she was startled back into the present by Maida Lermont’s rallying tones.

“Philippa,” it said, “for the third time of asking! The thought of the moors up there in that bleak north seems to have bewitched you. Has Evelyn such graphic powers of description, for you have never been there yourself? What are you dreaming about? I spoke to you three times without your hearing me.”

Philippa turned to her cousin.

“I was dreaming about the moors; the moors and the pine woods,” she said simply. “It is not necessary to have seen places to think about them, is it I often feel as if I knew all about scenes and countries I have even heard but little of; do you not feel so, sometimes? When I was little I used to fancy I must have seen places in my dreams – in real dreams, I mean, not daydreams.”

“Yes,” Maida agreed. “I think I have had the same fancy. And what is almost as curious is the way in which the slightest association brings back scenes that we had practically forgotten. A word, or a touch in a picture, or very often with me a scent or smell, is like magic. I find myself recalling certain events, or remembering minutely certain scenes and perhaps people that I had not thought of for years and years. It does seem as if what we are so often told must be true – that we do not really forget anything. But I think, dear, we must be going in; the sun gets very hot on this terrace. We shall drive a little later, and there is some plan about meeting the Bertrams – going there to afternoon tea, I think. So we shall probably see Evelyn’s hero.”