On the morning after her journey down from London, Mrs. Warricombe awoke with the conviction that she had caught a cold. Her health was in general excellent, and she had no disposition to nurse imaginary ailments, but when some slight disorder broke the routine of her life she made the most of it, enjoying—much as children do—the importance with which for the time it invested her. At such seasons she was wont to regard herself with a mildly despondent compassion, to feel that her family and her friends held her of slight account; she spoke in a tone of conscious resignation, often with a forgiving smile. When the girls redoubled their attentions, and soothed her with gentle words, she would close her eyes and sigh, seeming to remind them that they would know her value when she was no more.
‘You are hoarse, mother,’ Sidwell said to her, when they met at breakfast.
‘Am I, dear? You know I felt rather afraid of the journey. I hope I shan’t be laid up.’
Sidwell advised her not to leave the house today. Having seen the invalid comfortably established in an upper room, she went into the city on business which could not be delayed. On her way occurred the meeting with Peak, but of this, on her return, she made no mention. Mother and daughter had luncheon upstairs, and Sidwell was full of affectionate solicitude.
‘This afternoon you had better lie down for an hour or two,’ she said.
‘Do you think so? Just drop a line to father, and warn him that we may kept here for some time.’
‘Shall I send for Dr Endacott?’
‘Just as you like, dear.’
But Mrs. Warricombe had eaten such an excellent lunch, that Sidwell could not feel uneasy.
‘We’ll see how you are this evening. At all events, it will be safer for you not to go downstairs. If you lie quiet for an hour or two, I can look for those pamphlets that father wants.’
‘Just as you like, dear.’
By three o’clock the invalid was calmly slumbering. Having entered the bedroom on tiptoe and heard regular breathing, Sidwell went down and for a few minutes lingered about the hall. A servant came to her for instructions on some domestic matter; when this was dismissed she mentioned that, if anyone called, she would be found in the library.
The pamphlets of which her father had spoken were soon discovered. She laid them aside, and seated herself by the fire, but without leaning back. At any sound within or outside the house she moved her head to listen. Her look was anxious, but the gleam of her eyes expressed pleasurable agitation.
At half-past three she went into the drawing-room, where all the furniture was draped, and the floor bare. Standing where she could look from a distance through one of the windows, at which the blind had been raised, she waited for a quarter of an hour. Then the chill atmosphere drove her back to the fireside. In the study, evidences of temporary desertion were less oppressive, but the windows looked only upon a sequestered part of the garden. Sidwell desired to watch the approach from the high-road, and in a few minutes she was again in the drawing-room. But scarcely had she closed the door behind her when a ringing of the visitors’ bell sounded with unfamiliar distinctness. She started, hastened from the room, fled into the library, and had time to seat herself before she heard the footsteps of a servant moving in answer to the summons.
The door opened, and Peak was announced.
Sidwell had never known what it was to be thus overcome with emotion. Shame at her inability to command the calm features with which she would naturally receive a caller flushed her cheeks and neck; she stepped forward with downcast eyes, and only in offering her hand could at length look at him who stood before her. She saw at once that Peak was unlike himself; he too had unusual warmth in his countenance, and his eyes seemed strangely large, luminous. On his forehead were drops of moisture.
This sight restored her self-control, or such measure of it as permitted her to speak in the conventional way.
‘I am sorry that mother can’t leave her room. She had a slight cold this morning, but I didn’t think it would give her any trouble.’
Peak was delighted, and betrayed the feeling even whilst he constrained his face into a look of exaggerated anxiety.
‘It won’t be anything serious, I hope? The railway journey, I’m afraid.’
‘Yes, the journey. She has a slight hoarseness, but I think we shall prevent it from’——
Their eyes kept meeting, and with more steadfastness. They were conscious of mutual scrutiny, and, on both sides, of changes since they last met. When two people have devoted intense study to each other’s features, a three months’ absence not only revives the old impressions but subjects them to sudden modification which engrosses thought and feeling. Sidwell continued to utter commonplaces, simply as a means of disguising the thoughts that occupied her; she was saying to herself that Peak’s face had a purer outline than she had believed, and that his eyes had gained in expressiveness. In the same way Godwin said and replied he knew not what, just to give himself time to observe and enjoy the something new—the increased animation or subtler facial movements—which struck him as often as he looked at his companion. Each wondered what the other had been doing, whether the time had seemed long or short.
‘I hope you have kept well?’ Sidwell asked.
Godwin hastened to respond with civil inquiries.
‘I was very glad to hear from Mr. Warricombe a few days ago, he continued. Sidwell was not aware that her father had written, but her pleased smile seemed to signify the contrary.
‘She looks younger,’ Peak said in his mind. ‘Perhaps that London dress and the new way of arranging her hair have something to do with it. But no, she looks younger in herself. She must have been enjoying the pleasures of town.’
‘You have been constantly occupied, no doubt,’ he added aloud, feeling at the same time that this was a clumsy expression of what he meant. Though he had unbuttoned his overcoat, and seated himself as easily as he could, the absurd tall hat which he held embarrassed him; to deposit it on the floor demanded an effort of which he was yet incapable.
‘I have seen many things and heard much talk,’ Sidwell was replying, in a gay tone. It irritated him; he would have preferred her to speak with more of the old pensiveness. Yet perhaps she was glad simply because she found herself again talking with him?
‘And you?’ she went on. ‘It has not been all work, I hope?’
‘Oh no! I have had many pleasant intervals.’
This was in imitation of her vivacity. He felt the words and the manner to be ridiculous, but could not restrain himself. Every moment increased his uneasiness; the hat weighed in his hands like a lump of lead, and he was convinced that he had never looked so clownish. Did her smile signify criticism of his attitude?
With a decision which came he knew not how, he let his hat drop to the floor and pushed it aside. There, that was better; he felt less of a bumpkin.
Sidwell glanced at the glossy grotesque, but instantly averted her eyes, and asked rather more gravely:
‘Have you been in Exeter all the time?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t spend your Christmas alone, I hope?’
‘Oh, I had my books.’
Was there not a touch of natural pathos in this? He hoped so; then mocked at himself for calculating such effects.
‘I think you don’t care much for ordinary social pleasures, Mr Peak?’
He smiled bitterly.
‘I have never known much of them,—and you remember that I look forward to a life in which they will have little part. Such a life,’ he continued, after a pause, ‘seems to you unendurably dull? I noticed that, when I spoke of it before.’
‘You misunderstood me.’ She said it so undecidedly that he gazed at her with puzzled look. Her eyes fell.
‘But you like society?’
‘If you use the word in its narrowest meaning,’ she answered, ‘then I not only dislike society, but despise it.’
She had raised her eyebrows, and was looking coldly at him. Did she mean to rebuke him for the tone he had adopted? Indeed, he seemed to himself presumptuous. But if they were still on terms such as these, was it not better to know it, even at the cost of humiliation? One moment he believed that he could read Sidwell’s thoughts, and that they were wholly favourable to him; at another he felt absolutely ignorant of all that was passing in her, and disposed to interpret her face as that of a conventional woman who had never regarded him as on her own social plane. These uncertainties, these frequent reversions to a state of mind which at other times he seemed to have long outgrown, were a singular feature of his relations with Sidwell. Could such experiences consist with genuine love? Never had he felt more willing to answer the question with a negative. He felt that he was come here to act a part, and that the end of the interview, be it what it might, would only affect him superficially.
‘No,’ he replied, with deliberation; ‘I never supposed that you had any interest in the most foolish class of wealthy people. I meant that you recognise your place in a certain social rank, and regard intercourse with your equals as an essential of happiness.’
‘If I understood why you ask’—she began abruptly, but ceased as she met his glance. Again he thought she was asserting a distant dignity.
‘The question arose naturally out of a train of thought which always occupies me when I talk with you. I myself belong to no class whatever, and I can’t help wondering how—if the subject ever occurred to you—you would place me.’
He saw his way now, and, having said thus much, could talk on defiantly. This hour must decide his fortune with Sidwell, yet his tongue utterly refused any of the modes of speech which the situation would have suggested to an ordinary mind. He could not ‘make love’. Instead of humility, he was prompted to display a rough arrogance; instead of tender phrases, he uttered what sounded like deliberate rudeness. His voice was less gently tuned than Sidwell had been wont to hear it. It all meant that he despaired of wooing successfully, and more than half wished to force some word from Sidwell which would spare him the necessity of a plain avowal.
But before he had finished speaking, her face changed. A light of sudden understanding shone in her eyes; her lips softened to a smile of exquisite gentleness.
‘The subject never did occur to me,’ she answered. ‘How should it? A friend is a friend.’
It was not strictly true, but in the strength of her emotion she could forget all that contradicted it.
‘A friend—yes.’
Godwin began with the same note of bluntness. But of a sudden he felt the influence of Sidwell’s smile. His voice sank into a murmur, his heart leapt, a thrill went through his veins.
‘I wish to be something more than a friend.’
He felt that it was bald, inadequate. Yet the words had come of their own accord, on an impulse of unimpaired sincerity. Sidwell’s head was bent.
‘That is why I can’t take simple things for granted,’ he continued, his gaze fixed upon her. ‘If I thought of nothing but friendship, it would seem rational enough that you should accept me for what I am—a man of education, talking your own language. Because I have dared to hope something more, I suffer from the thought that I was not born into your world, and that you must be always remembering this difference.’
‘Do you think me so far behind the age?’ asked Sidwell, trying to laugh.
‘Classes are getting mixed, confused. Yes, but we are so conscious of the process that we talk of class distinctions more than of anything else,—talk and think of them incessantly. You have never heard me make a profession of Radicalism; I am decidedly behind the age. Be what I may—and I have spiritual pride more than enough—the fact that I have relatives in the lower, even the lowest, social class must necessarily affect the whole course of my life. A certain kind of man declares himself proud of such an origin—and most often lies. Or one may be driven by it into rebellion against social privilege. To me, my origin is simply a grave misfortune, to be accepted and, if possible, overcome. Does that sound mean-spirited? I can’t help it; I want you to know me.’
‘I believe I know you very well,’ Sidwell replied.
The consciousness that she was deceived checked the words which were rising to his lips. Again he saw himself in a pitiful light, and this self-contempt reflected upon Sidwell. He could not doubt that she was yielding to him; her attitude and her voice declared it; but what was the value of love won by imposture? Why had she not intelligence enough to see through his hypocrisy, which at times was so thin a veil? How defective must her sympathy be!
‘Yet you have seen very little of me,’ he said, smiling.
There was a short silence; then he exclaimed in a voice of emotion:
‘How I wish we had known each other ever since that day when your brother brought me to your house near Kingsmill! If we had met and talked through all those years! But that was impossible for the very reason which makes me inarticulate now that I wish to say so much. When you firs............