CHAPTER IX.

The days that followed were busy ones for Florence—busy in a domestic sense, so that the history of them does not concern us here. Mr. Fisher called one afternoon; by a strange coincidence it was while Ethel Dunlop was helping Florence with an inventory of china. Miss Dunlop readily promised to visit his mother, but she did not show any particular interest in the editor.

“He has been so kind,” Florence said, “and don’t you think he is very agreeable?”

“Oh yes; but you know, Florrie dear, he has a very square jaw.”

“Well?”

“It is a good thing he never married again; he would have been very obstinate.”

“But why do you say never did?—as if he never would. He is only forty-odd.”

“Only forty-odd!” laughed Ethel—“only a million. If a man is over eight-and-twenty he might as well be over eighty; it is mere modesty that he is not.”

“Walter is over thirty, and just as fascinating as ever.”

Florence was rather indignant.

“Ah, yes, but he is married, and married men take such a long time to grow old. By the way, Mr. Fisher said something about a theatre-party, when his mother is here. Do you think I might ask him to invite George Dighton as well? George is very fond of theatres.”

Before Florence could reply, a carriage stopped at the door; it looked familiar, it reminded her of Aunt Anne in her triumphant days. But a strange lady descended from it now, and was shown upstairs to the drawing-room, in which Aunt Anne had sat and related her woes and known her triumphs.

“Mrs. North, ma’am,” said the servant; and then Florence understood.

She left Ethel in the dining-room with the inventory, and went up to receive the visitor. Mrs. North was as pretty as Aunt Anne had declared her to be; a mere girl to look at, tall and slim. Florence thought it was quite natural that her husband should like her to have a chaperon.

“I came to see Mrs. Baines,” she said, coming forward in a shy, hesitating manner, “but hearing that she was in the country I ventured to ask for you. What have you done with the dear old lady?” and she laughed nervously. Florence looked at her, fascinated by her beauty; by her clothes, that seemed to be a mixture of fur and lace and perfume, by the soft brown hair that curled low on her forehead, by the sweet blue eyes—by every bit of her. “She told you, probably, that she was very angry when she left me; I know it has all been very dreadful in her eyes; but she was always kind to me, and I thought by this time that she would, perhaps, forgive me and make it up; so I came.” She said it with a penitent air.

“I am afraid she is very angry,” Florence answered, laughing, for the pretty woman before her did not seem like a stranger. “Do you want her again?”

“Oh no!” and Mrs. North shook her head emphatically. “She would not come, I know; besides, it would be impossible: she led us a terrible life. But we loved her, and wanted just to make it up with her again. I think we could have put up with anything if she had not quarrelled with the servants.”

“I was afraid it was that,” Florence answered.

“Oh yes!” sighed Mrs. North; “she was horribly autocratic with them—‘autocratic’ is her own word. At last she quarrelled with Hetty, and wanted me to send her away—to send away Hetty, who is a born treasure, and cooks like an angel. It would have broken our hearts—a woman who sends up a dinner like a charm; we couldn’t let her go, it was impossible, and the old lady fled.”

“I am very sorry. You were so kind to her; she always said that.”

“I loved her,” Mrs. North answered, with a little sigh. “She was so like my dear dead mother grown old—that was the secret of her attraction for us; but she ruled us with a rod of iron that grew more and more unyielding every day. And yet she was very kind. She was always giving us presents.”

“Oh yes,” Florence said, in a despairing voice.

“We have had the bills for them since,” Mrs. North went on, with a comical air. “She used to say that I was very frivolous,” she added suddenly. “She thought it wicked of me to enjoy life while my husband was away. But he is old, Mrs. Hibbert; one may have an affection for an old husband, but one can’t be in love with him.”

“If she were very nice she would not have made that remark to me, whom she never saw before,” Florence thought, beginning to dislike her a little.

“Of course I am sorry he is away,” Mrs. North said, as if she perfectly understood the impression she was making; “he is coming back now. He has telegraphed suddenly.” There was something like fright in her voice as she said it. “I did not expect him; but he is coming almost directly. I suppose I ought to be very glad,” she added, with a ghostly smile. “I am, of course; but I am surprised at his sudden return. I took Mrs. Baines because he wished me to have an old lady about me; but I wanted my own way. I liked her to have hers when it amused me to see her have it, when it didn’t I wanted to have mine.” Mrs. North’s whole expression had altered again, and she looked up with two blue eyes that fascinated and repelled, and laughed a merry, uncontrolled laugh like a child’s. “Oh, she was very droll.”

“Perhaps it is very rude of me to say it,” Florence said primly, for deep in her heart there was a great deal of primness, “but I can understand Mr. North wishing you to have a chaperon; you are very young to be left alone.”

“Oh yes, and very careless, I know that. And Mrs. Baines used to provoke me into shocking her. I could shock her so easily, and did—don’t you know how one loves power for good or ill over a human being?”

“No, I don’t,” Florence answered, a little stiffly.

“I do; I love it best of all things in the world, whether it leads me uphill or downhill. But I am intruding,” for she saw a set cold look coming over Florence’s face. “Let me tell you why I asked for you. I have been so embarrassed about Mrs. Baines. She gave us presents, and she bought all sorts of things: but she didn’t pay for them. These bills came, and the people wanted their money.” She pulled a little roll out of her pocket. “She probably forgot them, and I thought it would be better to pay them, especially as I owed her some money when she left which she would not take;” and she laughed out again, but there was the odd sound like fright in her voice. “They are from florists and all sorts of people.”

Florence looked over the bills quickly and almost guiltily. There were the pots of fern and the flowers that had been sent to her and the children after Aunt Anne’s first visit; and there were the roses with which she had triumphantly entered on the night of the dinner-party. “Oh, poor old lady!” she exclaimed sadly.

“They are paid,” Mrs. North said. “Don’t be distressed about them and many others—lace-handkerchiefs, shoes, all sorts of things. Don’t tell her. She would think I had taken a liberty or committed a solecism,” and she made a little wry face. “But what I really wanted to see you about, Mrs. Hibbert, was Madame Celestine’s bill. I am afraid I can’t manage that all by myself; it is too long. Madame Celestine, of course, is sweetly miserable, for she thinks the old lady has vanished into space. She came to me yesterday. It seems that she went to you a few days ago, but you were out, and she was glad of it when she discovered that Mrs. Baines was your aunt, for she doesn’t want to offend you. She came to me again to-day. She is very miserable. I believe it will turn her hair grey. Oh, it is too funny.”

“I don’t think it is at all funny.”

“But indeed it is, for I don’t believe Mrs. Baines will ever be able to pay the fifteen pounds; in fact, we know that she won’t. Probably it is worrying her a good deal. I have been wondering whether something could not be done; if you and I, for instance, were to arrange it between us.”

“You are very good, Mrs. North,” Florence said, against her will.

“Oh no, but I am sorry for her, and it vexes and worries me to think that she is annoyed. I want to get rid of that vexation, and will pay something to do so. That is what most generosity comes to,” Mrs. North went on, with mock cynicism, “the purchase of a pleasant feeling for one’s self, or the getting rid of an unpleasant one. There is little really unselfish goodness in the world, and when one meets it, as a rule, it isn’t charming, it isn’t fascinating; one feels that one would rather be without it.” She rose as she spoke. “Well,” she asked, “what shall we do? I’ll pay one half of the old lady’s bill if you will pay the other half.”

“You are very good,” Florence repeated, wonderingly.

“No; but I expect you are,” and Mrs. North showed two rows of little white teeth. “I should think you are a model of virtue,” she added, with an almost childlike air of frankness, which made it impossible to take offence at her words, though Florence felt that at best she was only regarded as the possessor of a quality that just before her visitor had denounced.

“Why,” she asked, smiling against her will, “do I look like a model of virtue?”

“Oh yes, you are almost Madonna-like,” Mrs. North said, with a sigh. “I wish I were like you, only—only I think I should get very tired of myself. I get tired now; till a reaction comes. But a reaction to the purely good must be tame at best.”

“You are very clever,” Florence said, almost without knowing it, and shrinking from her again.

“How do you know? My husband says I am clever, but I don’t think I am. I am alive. So many people are merely in the preface to being alive, and never get any farther. I am well in the middle of the book; and I am eager, so eager, that sometimes I long to eat up the whole world in order to know the taste of everything. Do you understand that?”

“No. I am content with my slice.”

“Ah, that is it. I am not content with mine. You have your husband and children.”

“But you have a husband.”

“Yes, I have a husband too; a funny old husband, a long way off, who is rapidly—too rapidly, I fear—coming nearer”—Florence hated her—“and no children. I amused myself with the old lady—Mrs. Baines—till she fled from me. Now I try other things. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” Florence said.

As Mrs. North was going out of the door she turned and asked, “Have you many friends—women friends?”

“Yes, a great many, thank you,” Mrs. Hibbert said, with a little haughty inclination of the head. The haughtiness seemed to amuse Mrs. North, for the merry look came over her face again, but only for a moment.

“I thought you had,” she answered. “I have none; I don’t want them. Good-bye.”

It was nearly dark, and the one servant left to help Florence get the house ready had neglected to light the lamp on the staircase. Mrs. North groped her way down.

“I want to tell you something,” she said. “You said just now that I was clever. I don’t think I am, but I can divine people’s thoughts pretty easily. You are very good, I think; but consider this, your goodness is of no use if you are not good to others; good to women especially. The good of goodness is that you can wrap others inside it. It ought to be like a big cloak that you have on a cold night, while the shivering person next to you has none. If you don’t make use of your goodness,” she went on with a catch in her breath, “what is the good of it?—I seem to be talking paradoxes—you prove how beautiful it is, perhaps, but that is all; you make it like the swan that sings its own death-song. One listens and watches, and goes away to think of things more comprehensible, and to do them. Good-bye, Mrs. Hibbert,” she said gently, and almost as if she were afraid she held out her hand. Florence took it, a little wonder-struck. “You are like a Madonna, very like one, as I said just now; but though you are older than I am, I think I know more about some things than you do—good and bad. Madonnas never know the world very well. Give my love to the old lady, and say I hope she has forgiven me. I am going to Monte Carlo the day after to-morrow, only for three days, to brace myself up for my husband’s return; tell her that too. It will shock her. Say that I should like to have taken her,” and with a last little laugh she went out—into the darkness, it seemed to Florence.

But the next minute there were two flashing lamps before the house; there was the banging of a door, and Mrs. North was driven away.

Florence went slowly back to the dining-room and the inventory. Ethel Dunlop had gone. She was glad of it, for she wanted to think over her strange visitor.

“I don’t understand her,” she said to herself. “She is unlike any one I ever met; she fascinated and repelled me. I felt as if I wanted to kiss her, and yet the touch of her hand made me shiver.” Then she thought of Madame Celestine’s bill, and of Aunt Anne, and wished that the dress had not been bought, especially for the dinner-party; it made her feel as if she had been the unwitting cause of Mrs. Baines’s extravagance. She looked into the fire, and remembered the events of that wonderful evening, and thought of Walter away, and the bills at home that would have to be paid at Christmas. And she thought of her winter cloak that was three years old and shabby, and of the things she had longed to buy for the children. Above all she thought of the visions she had had of saving little by little, and putting her savings away in a very safe place, until she had a cosy sum with which some day to give Walter a pleasant surprise, and suggest that they should go off together for “a little spree,” as he would call it, to Paris or Switzerland. The fire burnt low, the red coals grew dull, the light from the street lamp outside seemed to come searching into the room as though it were looking for some one who was not there. She thought of Walter’s letter safe in her pocket. He himself was probably at Malta by this time—getting stronger and stronger in the sunshine. Dear Walter, how generous he was; he too was a little bit reckless sometimes. She wondered if he inherited this last quality from Aunt Anne. She thought of her children at Witley having tea, most likely with cakes and jam in abundance; and of Aunt Anne in her glory. She wondered if Mr. Wimple had turned up. “Poor Aunt Anne,” she sighed, and there was a long bill in her mind. Presently she rose, lighted a candle, drew down the blind—shutting out the glare from the street lamp—and going slowly to the writing-table in the corner, unlocked it, opened a little secret drawer, and looked in. There were three five-pound notes there—the remainder of her mother’s gift. “I wonder if Mrs. North had Madame Celestine’s bill,” she thought. “But it doesn’t matter; she said it was fifteen pounds. I can send her the amount.”

A couple of hours later, while she was in the very act of putting a cheque into an envelope, a note arrived. It had been left by hand; it was scented with violets, and ran thus:—

“DEAR MRS. HIBBERT,

“I have ventured to pay Madame Celestine. I determined to do so while I was with you just now; but was afraid to tell you, that was why I changed the conversation so abruptly. Please don’t let the old lady know that it is my doing, for she might be angry; but she was very good to me, and I am glad to do this for her. Forgive all the strange things I said this afternoon, and don’t trouble to acknowledge this.

“Yours sincerely, “E. NORTH.

“P.S.—I enclose receipt.”

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