CHAPTER XXVI.

A FAREWELL.

ON the following morning Aldyth found her mother looking white and worn. And in response to her daughters anxious questioning, she confessed that she had hardly slept at all during the night. Yet she was not to be persuaded to rest longer in bed. She was eager to rise, and throughout the day, she showed a restlessness and irritability which was trying to those about her, but was not to be wondered at in one upon whom such heavy trouble had fallen.

In the afternoon Aldyth, who had been packing a hamper of flowers for the benefit of her girl friends at Whitechapel, wished to convey it to the railway station. It was a lovely autumn afternoon, so she proposed that her mother and Gladys should accompany her for the drive, and they should make a long round to Woodham, where she would leave them to return home in the care of old John, as she wished to call at her aunt's.

"But how will you get home if we go on in the carriage?" asked Gladys.

"Oh, I shall have a cup of tea with auntie, and then walk home," said Aldyth.

"Walk!" exclaimed Gladys. "All that long, dull road!"

"Oh, I shall not keep to the road," said Aldyth. "There is a shorter way across some fields. It is a pleasant walk, and I shall enjoy it this evening."

"What, all alone!" said Gladys. "I should be scared to walk by myself in the country."

"That is because you are not used to the country," said Aldyth. "I can assure you, the open fields have no terrors for me."

"But you will be very tired; surely it will not be wise of you to do so, Aldyth," said her mother, feeling more reluctance to the idea than she could easily have accounted for.

"I am not afraid of fatigue," said Aldyth. "I have often walked here from Woodham—sometimes with Guy, sometimes by myself. You will see I shall come in as fresh as a daisy."

Aldyth had set her heart upon having a talk with her aunt, and she was not disposed to lightly relinquish her plan.

Mrs. Stanton looked annoyed, and talked about remaining at home herself, in which case Aldyth would have felt constrained to keep her company. But in truth, Mrs. Stanton was longing to escape for a while from the house where her consciousness of the hidden will seemed an intolerable oppression. No doubt after awhile this nervous, restless feeling would pass, and she would cease to dread self-betrayal, or that strange reluctant impulse to confession which came to her in Aldyth's presence. But whilst she felt thus, it was impossible to sit inactive in rooms in which she had no right to sit. The long drive offered a relief which she could not reject, so she let Aldyth persuade her to get ready, and took her place in the carriage, whilst Aldyth arranged some cushions for her comfort, with more than ever of the air of a banished queen.

It was a pleasant day, and to Aldyth, whose heart had a burden which no one could share, the calm, restful beauty of the autumn day was soothing. Every peaceful country scene on which her eyes fell had its preciousness for her. Here the last load of a late harvest was being lifted, but for the most part the stubble fields lay white and bare, surrounded by the green pastures; here was a cottage orchard, with its gnarled trees bowing beneath a weight of rosy apples; there was an old moss-grown well, with its bucket and pulley; and there a woman whose bees had swarmed in a neighbouring elder-tree, and who was endeavouring to attract them to a hive by means of a jingling performance with a key and a frying-pan.

This last sight made Gladys laugh; but her mother looked on everything with a melancholy, indifferent gaze.

"How dreary this flat landscape is!" she said once. "Nothing to be seen but fields and windmills!"

Aldyth alighted at the railway station, and having consigned her hamper to the care of the station-master, walked up the town towards her aunt's cottage. But as she approached the Blands' house, Mrs. Bland smiled and beckoned to her from the bow-window, and it was impossible to pass without a word. The house door could always be opened from the outside. Aldyth opened it, and stepped in without ceremony.

"All alone?" she said, as she kissed her old friend; "how strange you must feel without one of the girls!"

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Bland. "Gwen thought I ought to keep her home for half a term, to bear me company, and deemed me a hard-hearted parent because I would not listen to her suggestion. But I do not approve of broken work."

"And what news of the others?" asked Aldyth.

"Oh, fairly good," said Mrs. Bland. "Kitty seems to be enjoying herself very much, and she says Hilda is a little brighter. They are at Dinan. When they wrote, they had been to see the ruined castle in which 'the Lady of La Garraye' lived. Kitty has been reading the poem, and seems much impressed by it. I was surprised at the way in which she wrote. It was as if Kitty and Hilda had changed places. Hilda says little in her letters, poor child. I fancy she would be sorry for me to think she was at all more cheerful. If I can find Kitty's letter, you shall read it."

Mrs. Bland rose to hunt for Kitty's letter amidst the papers on her writing-table. At that moment Aldyth, seated by the window, saw John Glynne walk down the street. The girl was thankful Mrs. Bland's back was turned as she felt the colour rush into her face. That sudden thrill was followed by a deep sense of disappointment and depression. He was gone in the opposite direction to that she was taking; there was no likelihood of her seeing him, and in a day or two at the latest, he would leave Woodham.

Mrs. Bland failed to find Kitty's letter, and Aldyth left without seeing it. In a few minutes, she was at her aunt's. Miss Lorraine welcomed her with a little air of excitement.

"What a pity you did not come a few minutes earlier," she said. "Mr. Glynne was here. He asked after you. I think he would have liked to say good-bye to you."

Aldyth grew white. She could say nothing under the grasp of disappointment. Fate was hard upon her. If she had not seen Mrs. Bland at the window and gone into her house, she would have arrived in time to greet John Glynne. And it seemed to Aldyth at that moment that it would have been worth a great deal just to have said good-bye to him.

If Miss Lorraine noted the quick change of Aldyth's expression, she did not appear to do so. She chatted on with her usual volubility. There are times when it is convenient to have a companion with a faculty of small talk. Such a one is satisfied with the least modicum in the way of response.

"I can see that Mr. Glynne feels leaving Woodham," said Miss Lorraine. "He said he could hardly expect to meet with such kind friends anywhere else. Indeed, I do not think he likes leaving England at all; but it is for the sake of his mother he has accepted the appointment. It will make things easier for her, he says; and she has not been at all strong lately. I am sure I do not know how she will bear parting with him; but there is another brother, you know, who will be at home to take care of her."

"Yes," said Aldyth, faintly, as her aunt looked towards her.

"Mr. Glynne is very fond of his mother," continued Miss Lorraine. "If I were not already convinced of it, I should have known he was a good man, by the way in which he spoke of his mother this afternoon."

"When does he leave?" asked Aldyth, as her aunt paused to take breath.

"Leave Woodham? To-morrow morning, and he sails at the end of the week. But, Aldyth, if you are to walk home before it gets dark, we must have tea at once."

And Miss Lorraine summoned the little housemaid by a vigorous pull of the bell.

In half an hour, Aldyth was on her way home. She was one to enjoy a long, brisk walk; but now her sweet calm face had a weary look, and her step was less elastic than usual. She had started forth a few hours earlier with no definite hope in her heart, but she was bearing back with her an unmistakable weight of disappointment and pain. She did not attempt to analyse her feelings; she did not own to herself that mighty Love had laid his spell upon her—Love at which she had laughed—which had seemed to her more than half a folly, as she had seen it influencing the life of another. She only knew that a shadow had fallen on her heart, that some scarce-defined hope had died, and that life had lost the brightness it wore for her a little while ago.

She had passed out of the road, and was pursuing her way through a deep grassy meadow by the side of a stream, with round bushy pollards growing on its banks. Behind her lay the little town, its red roofs, old church tower, and the broad stretch of water, dotted with sails, forming a fair picture in the clear evening light. No sound broke the stillness save the scarce perceptible ripple of the stream, and the occasional hoarse croaking of a frog. The peace, the solitude was welcome to Aldyth.

But as she stepped round the trunk of a large ash-tree that made a break in the path, she perceived that she was not alone in her enjoyment of the place and the hour. On the rude stile before her, with a book on his knee, which he was not reading, sat John Glynne.

It would be difficult to say which was the more surprised. Aldyth was conscious of an agitation which she could not at once control. She felt that she was blushing and trembling, as he sprang down and advanced to meet her. But she saw a bright look of pleasure in his eyes as he smiled on her and said, with all the old friendliness—

"Miss Aldyth! I am glad! I thought I should have to leave Woodham without seeing you again."

"That would not have been my fault, Mr. Glynne," she could not help saying. "Wyndham is not at such a distance from Woodham as to make it impossible to visit a friend who lives there. Perhaps you do not know it, but you are almost halfway to Wyndham at the present moment."

"I know," he said, with a smile. "Well, I deserve that reproach; but indeed I could not persuade myself that I had any right to call on you in your new home."

"Any right?" repeated Aldyth, biting her lips to hide their trembling. "That is an unkind thing to say. What have I done that I must forfeit your friendship?"

It glanced through her mind that perhaps he blamed her for supplanting Guy at Wyndham. If only he could know what it had cost her to do so! Must the loss of his friendship be part of the price?

"Nothing. How could you suppose that I would willingly give up your friendship?" he said. "But there were reasons why it seemed to me that I should not seek you under your changed circumstances."

"What have my circumstances to do with it?" asked Aldyth, almost impatiently. "Do you think so poorly of me as to imagine that I must change with my circumstances?"

"I am far indeed from thinking poorly of you," he said, quietly.

"Then why," asked Aldyth, impetuously, "why did you hold aloof from me because I had inherited Wyndham? Does that make me any different from what I was before? Am I not the same girl I was when first you knew me?"

"No," he said, slowly; "you are not the same to me as when first I saw you."

Aldyth looked at him in wonder. She could not read his grave, set look.

"What do you mean?" she asked, in faltering tones. "How have I altered? Do you think I am elated at my new position? Oh, you mistake me indeed if you think so! It has brought me no happiness. I never needed a true friend more than I do now. But every one disappoints me."

Her last words dealt a wound to Glynne. It cost him an effort to reply calmly.

"Now you are mistaking me," he said. "When I said that, you were not the same to me, I did not mean that you had changed—far less that you were not worthy the highest reverence man can pay woman. It is my feeling that has become—it is because—"

His tones had grown unsteady. He checked himself abruptly. Glancing at him, Aldyth saw with alarm that he had grown pale, and was under the influence of some emotion which made self-control difficult.

"You cannot understand," he continued, after a moment, finding his words with difficulty; "and how can I explain? Of course I might have made a conventional call on you, like any ordinary acquaintance. Doubtless you have a right to reproach me for a breach of courtesy; but I shrank from it—you were more to me. And you must remember that though no change of circumstances can affect you, it makes a difference in the minds of others; it makes people Judge things differently."

As he spoke in broken, hesitating fashion, there dawned on Aldyth a perception of his meaning. Her face grew crimson, then white. She would have spoken, but what could she say? Words came to her lips, but it was impossible to utter them. Quick thoughts, visions of her mother, her sisters, passed before her mind. She felt like one bound and fettered. It seemed long, but it was but a few moments that they stood in silence, the words that had been spoken vibrating in the consciousness of each. He must have known that she understood him now; but the words he had uttered were followed by none of similar purport. He roused himself, and said, with an abrupt change of manner—

"I must not detain you longer. Will you let me walk with you the rest of the way?"

Aldyth made a sign of assent, and they passed on into the next field. She could hardly have told whether she were happy or wretched. There was a strange mingling of sensations within her, and she had but a confused apprehension of the remarks he was making or the green meadow-path followed. Now a bramble caught her dress, and he stooped to detach it; now he gathered for her a cluster of crimson berries from the mountain ash, and now some yellow marguerites, whilst they talked as best they could on ordinary topics. But presently this pretence at conversation failed, and the last field was crossed in silence.

"You will come in and see my mother and Gladys?" said Aldyth, as he halted at the gate of Wyndham.

"I must ask you to excuse me to-night," he said. "I should like to make your mother's acquaintance, but not to-night. It pleases me to think that you have your mother with you now. Your long-deferred hope is fulfilled at last."

"Yes, at last," said Aldyth.

"You will be happy—I pray God you may be happy!" he said fervently. "And now I must bid you good-bye—till we meet again."

"You are going away—so far," faltered Aldyth; "I shall never see you again."

"Do not say 'Never,' I cannot bear that word," he replied. "Some day—if I live—I shall come back. Do not make things harder for me. You cannot know how stern the duty seems that bids me go."

"Duty seems stern to me too," Aldyth said, with a quiver in her voice, whilst tears dimmed her vision.

She could not utter a good-bye, but she gave him her hand. He held it in his for a few moments, then released it and turned away without another word. She could not move from the spot. She stood gazing after him, till his figure grew indistinct in the gathering gloom. She could just see that he turned and looked back at the end of the path. She waved her hand. Could he see the movement? Probably not, for the next instant he was gone, and only the creeping grey mist met her gaze.

She moved on with slow, heavy step, and before her, in dim outline, with the grey mist gathering about it, stood Wyndham Hall.

Her inheritance—her home! But there was no joy in the thought. Regret filled her heart, stirred by a vision of what "might have been."

"Oh," she sighed to herself, "how I wish uncle had made another will!—how I wish it were not mine!"

But quickly followed the reflection that in that case, things would have been harder for her mother. She could not wholly regret that which gave her such power to comfort and cherish her mother.