I went back to Alliston Hall determined to be on the watch for the time to speak, and longing most earnestly for that time to come. Evelyn welcomed me very warmly, and told me she had never known a fortnight to pass so slowly.
“Have you many visitors here?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “there is only Alice Fitzgerald; I did not know she was coming when you went away, but I found out she was staying with friends of hers not far off, so I asked her to come here on her way home; her father is an old friend of papa’s.”
“Alice Fitzgerald!” I repeated; “Alice Fitzgerald, I wonder if it is the same!”
“The same as what, May?” she said, laughing at my astonishment “do you know an Alice Fitzgerald?”
“No,” I said, “I do not know her; but she is a great friend of a friend of mine!”
“Well, this Alice Fitzgerald—how pale you are, May,” said Evelyn, suddenly stopping short in her explanation; “are you very tired?”
“No, not at all,” I said; “go on, I want to hear about your Alice Fitzgerald.”
“Well, my Alice Fitzgerald is a very pretty girl, at least I think she is, and a nice sort of girl, though she isn’t a bit like you. I don’t mean that you are not nice, you dear old thing,” said Evelyn, laughing, “but she is quite different from you; I’m rather afraid you will quarrel.”
“Oh no, I hope not!”
“No, you must not quarrel,” said Evelyn, “though she has some very strange ideas; but, after all, what does it matter what one believes?”
I was about to answer her when the door opened, and the subject of our conversation entered. She was a tall, fair-haired girl of about my own age, and was indeed, as Evelyn had said, very pretty.
“Alice, this is my friend, May Lindsay,” was Evelyn’s introduction, as she came in.
Miss Fitzgerald shook hands with me pleasantly, and then sat down on a low seat by the fire, and took her work out of a pretty, embroidered pocket which hung by her side.
“I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Lindsay,” she said, laughing, “for I have been hearing your praises sounded morning, noon, and night, ever since I came.”
“Well, isn’t she very nice, Alice?” said Evelyn, raising herself on the sofa; “didn’t I give you a good description of her?”
“I expect Miss Fitzgerald is not so hasty in forming her opinion as you are, Evelyn,” I said.
“By the by, Alice,” Evelyn went on, “May thinks she knows a friend of yours; at least, if you are the same Alice Fitzgerald. What is her name, May?”
“It is a gentleman,” I said, turning very red, in spite of all my efforts to the contrary, “Mr. Claude Ellis.”
“Claude!” repeated Miss Fitzgerald, in astonishment; “do you know Claude? I never heard him speak of you.”
“No, perhaps not,” I said; “but I do know him very well indeed; we were playfellows when we were children, and have lived next door to each other all our lives.”
“How very strange that I never heard your name!” said Miss Fitzgerald; “and I was staying at the Parsonage last spring; would you be at Acton then?”
“No,” I said, “we had left a little time before you went there. Do you remember noticing a house, standing in a large garden, close to the Parsonage?”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Fitzgerald; “it was shut up when I was there, and Claude said the doctor used to live there.”
“Yes, the doctor was my father,” I said, checking the tears, which would come in spite of myself, and which nearly choked me.
“Well, that’s very funny!” said Evelyn, “that you should know this dearly beloved Claude, about whom I have heard so much lately! Do you know he is coming here tomorrow, to make my acquaintance? Papa has invited him to come for a day or two whilst Alice is here.”
Claude coming to Alliston Hall! Claude coming tomorrow! How I wished that my stay at the old Manor House had been a little longer. I made some excuse to leave the room soon afterward, and went to my own bedroom, and locked the door.
“Claude coming tomorrow!” I repeated over and over to myself. All the old trouble seemed to have come back again. I had hoped that I should never see him again, that our paths in life would never cross each other. And now Claude was coming tomorrow. How astonished he would be to see me here! I wondered how we should meet, and whether he would feel it as much as I did.
As I sat alone in my room I prayed for grace and help, and I felt that the strength came as I prayed. Still I felt that I could not go downstairs, until Evelyn’s maid came to tell me that Miss Trafford wanted me. “You naughty girl!” said Evelyn when I entered, “what have you been doing? Why, you are as cold as ice; come to the fire and warm your hands. I really could not let you stop up there any longer. Do you know I thought you were, at last, turning into the brown alpaca! She always shut herself up in her bedroom half the day.”
“And who in the world is the brown alpaca?” said Alice Fitzgerald; “do tell me about her, Evelyn.”
Evelyn was only too pleased to do so. And then we went on from one laughable subject to another, and Alice Fitzgerald told us a number of amusing stories, in such an absurd way that we laughed until we were quite tired.
“There,” she said, at last, as Evelyn declared that she had not laughed so much the whole time she had been ill, and that she felt all the better for it, “that’s just what I was saying before Miss Lindsay came into the room; if only people, when they are in low spirits, would laugh more, they would be all the happier.”
“But when you are in trouble you can’t laugh, Miss Fitzgerald,” I said.
“Oh, then, you should try,” she said; “try to forget the trouble, and laugh it off. That’s always my way when anything bothers me or vexes me. I try to think of something amusing, and forget it.”
“And do you always succeed?” I ventured to ask.
“Well, no, not quite always,” she said, rather gravely. It was the first time that I had seen her look grave; her merry, laughing face was clouded for a moment. But it was only for a moment.
“Anyhow,” she said, “if you don’t quite succeed in forgetting your trouble, it does not make it so hard to hear; it is better to go laughing through a trouble than crying through it. But laugh it off if you can, that’s much the best way.”
“But, suppose you can’t laugh it off,” I said; “you owned that there were some troubles which were too deep to be got rid of in this way—suppose you can’t laugh it off, and the trouble comes back after every laugh as heavy as ever—what then?”
“Oh then,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, “we must bear it, I suppose—bear it as best we can. Don’t you think so?”
“I never try to laugh trouble away,” I said; “I try to pray it away.”
“Oh,” she said, scornfully, “you believe in prayer, do you?”
“Yes, don’t you, Miss Fitzgerald?”
“No, not now,” she said; “I did once. That is to say, I never prayed much myself, but I used to believe that it did some people good; but Claude says that is all nonsense. My brother Arthur and he are always having long discussions about these things. Arthur believes in the Bible with all his heart and soul, and Claude does nothing but laugh at him.”
“And you agree with Claude, of course,” said Evelyn, laughing.
“Yes,” said Alice, “I agree with him and yet, do you know, I sometimes wish I didn’t.”
“May I ask, why not?” I said.
“Well,” she said, “you mustn’t tell Claude, he would be so angry; but I can’t help thinking if Arthur should be right after all—what then?”
“Yes, what then?” I said, “if the Bible is true—what then?”
“Why then,” she said, laughing again, “we are all lost, I suppose; so the best we can do is to enjoy ourselves as much now as we can. A short life and a merry one, that’s my motto! Well, I suppose it is getting near dinner time,” she said as she hastily rose, gathering up her work, and left the room.
“She is a queer girl,” said Evelyn, as soon as the door was shut.
“She is not really happy, Evelyn,” I said. “She tries to laugh it off; as she says; but there is a great deal of miserable uncertainty in her heart, I feel sure of that.”
“Well,” said Evelyn, turning the subject, “won’t you dress for dinner? Ambrose will be here in a moment.”
So I left the room and went upstairs, and prayed very, very earnestly for them both, and especially for Alice Fitzgerald. Oh, if she only knew where true joy was to be found!
The next day Claude arrived. I was in Evelyn’s sitting room when Alice Fitzgerald brought him in to introduce him to her. And then she turned to me.
“An old friend of yours, Claude, I believe,” she said.
Claude started; he had not noticed me before.
“May—Miss Lindsay,” he said, coloring painfully, “I did not expect to see you here.”
And then he turned the subject quickly, and began to give us an account of his journey, his Oxford adventures, and all sorts of other things, till dinner was announced. I could see that he was not at his ease, and I was almost afraid that Alice Fitzgerald noticed it also.
I saw very little more of Claude that evening, for I always dined upstairs with Evelyn, and he spent the evening in talking polities with Sir William over the library fire.
But the next morning when I came downstairs, Claude was alone in the breakfast room. I shook hands with him, and said “Good morning;” and then was about to leave the room again, when he called me back, and said hurriedly:
“May, what did you tell them?”
“Tell whom?” I asked.
“Tell her,” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “What did you tell her about me?”
“Only that we played together when we were children, and lived next door to each other.”
“Was that all?” he said.
“Yes, every word,” I answered. “You surely did not think, Claude— “
“Oh no,” he said, “of course not, only it’s more comfortable to know. All right, May,” he added, carelessly, “we will let bygones be bygones now.”
And then he sat down to the piano and played a merry air.
I stood and looked out of the window, and wondered at the shallowness of his heart. And I felt, as I had never felt before, that I had not made a bad choice when I chose Christ’s love and gave up Claude’s.
In a few minutes the others came down, and we had breakfast; and whilst we were at breakfast, Ambrose came in with the letter bag, which he solemnly laid before Sir William, as was his daily custom. Sir William took a key from his watch chain and unlocked the bag, and then proceeded to distribute the letters.
“None for you this morning, Miss Alice,” he said, laughing. “Which would you choose: to have your young man here to talk to you, or to get a letter from him? None for you, Miss Lindsay, not a single one; six for me, and one for Mr. Ellis—that’s all!”
Claude took his letter, opened it, and glanced hastily through it. The contents did not seem to be of the most agreeable nature, for he looked very annoyed as he read it, and then crushed it up impatiently, and thrust it into his pocket. Alice glanced. inquiringly at him, but Claude appeared to be engrossed in the carving of a chicken, and took no notice of her inquiring looks.
When breakfast was over, Sir William went into the library, where he generally spent the morning looking over the newspapers and writing his letters. We went up to Evelyn’s room. I thought Alice wanted to linger behind, that she might speak to Claude; but he did not seem disposed to take the hint, and followed me closely upstairs.
We found Evelyn lying on the sofa, and waiting for me to show her how to do a new pattern in crochet work, which I had learned from Aunt Jane, who was very clever with her fingers. I sat down on a low stool close to Evelyn, directing her as she worked; and Alice and Claude went to the other end of the room, into the large bow window.
Claude had brought a newspaper upstairs with him, and, throwing himself into an armchair, he began to read it, with an air which plainly intimated that he did not wish to be disturbed.
Alice Fitzgerald came behind him, and leaning over his shoulder, with her arm on the back of the chair, she seemed to be reading the newspaper with him. But after a minute or two I heard her say:
“Let me see that letter, Claude; what was it about?”
“Oh, it was nothing particular,” said Claude, turning to another part of the newspaper; “it was only a business letter.”
“That’s always the way with men,” said Evelyn, laughing; “whenever they don’t want you to see a letter they always say ‘It’s only a business letter.’ Papa always does so and it’s of no use my telling him that I like business letters; he only laughs and says, Women don’t understand business, or, if they do, they ought not.”
But Alice Fitzgerald did not let the matter drop. In a few minutes I heard her ask again from whom the letter had come, and Claude answered in a vexed tone:
“It is only from my father, Alice. There, take it and read it if you make such a fuss about it!” and he tossed the letter out of his pocket.
Alice sat down and read it, and, when she had gone through it once, she turned it over and read it again, and then, folding it up very gravely and slowly, she handed it back to Claude. He put it into his pocket, and went on reading. Alice leant over his shoulder, and her face, which was generally so bright and merry, was very grave and thoughtful. Evelyn and I were busy with our pattern, and for some minutes no one spoke.
Then I heard Alice say, in a low voice, “ What enclosures were there, Claude? What is it that has vexed your father so much?”
“Oh, only some rubbishy old bills,” said Claude, impatiently; “those Oxford tradesmen are the greatest scoundrels on the face of the earth! It’s always their way! But the best plan is to take no notice of them; shy their bills into the fire, and leave them alone.”
And, in spite of Alice’s remonstrances, he walked to the fireplace, and thrust a roll of letters, which he took from his pocket, into the flames, and watched them turn to ashes.
“They will send them in again, Claude,” said Alice, gravely.
“Then I shall burn them again,” he said, with a laugh; “the rascals ought to know better!”
“But are you quite sure they are wrong, Claude?” she said, as they went back to the window; “are you quite sure you never bought any of the things? Have you looked them carefully through?”
“Oh, I know all about it,” said Claude, in a vexed voice; “do let it alone, dear. I have plenty of money to pay them all, if necessary; so please leave me to manage my own affairs. There’s a splendid leader in the Times today, Miss Trafford; have you read it?” he said, turning to Evelyn, and beginning a conversation with her on the politics of Europe.
Alice Fitzgerald left the window, took her work out of her pocket, and sat on a low stool by the fire; but she did not recover her usual good spirits for some time afterwards.