Man and Maid Part 19

"I'm going back to Rochester," she said. "I generally ride over to see my aunts at Felsenden on Sat.u.r.days, but I fear I must give it up, or go by train; this road isn't safe."

"Not safe?" he said with an agitation which could not escape her notice.

"Not safe," she repeated. "Mr Brent, there is a very malicious person in this part of the country--a perfectly dreadful person."

"What do you mean?" he managed to ask.

"These three Sat.u.r.days I have come along this road; each time I have had a puncture. And each time I have found embedded in my tyre the evidence of some one's malice. This is one piece of evidence." She held out her ungloved hand. On its pink palm lay a good sized tin-tack. "Once might be accident; twice a coincidence; three times is too much. The road's impossible."

"Do you think some one did it on purpose?"

"I know it," she said calmly.

Then he grew desperate.

"Try to forgive me," he said. "I was so lonely, and I wanted so much----"

She turned wide eyes on him.

"You!" she cried, and began to laugh.

Her laughter was very pretty, he thought.

"Then you didn't know it was me?" said the Greek student.

"You!" she said again. "And has it amused you--to see all these poor people in difficulties, and to know that you've spoilt their poor little holiday for them--and three times, too."

"I never thought about _them_," he said; "it was you I wanted to see.

Try to forgive me; you don't know how much I wanted you." Something in his voice kept her silent. "And don't laugh," he went on. "I feel as if I wanted nothing in the world but you. Let me come to see you--let me try to make you care too."

"You're talking nonsense," she said, for he stopped on a note that demanded an answer. "Why, you told Camilla----"

"Yes--but you--but I meant _you_. I thought I cared about her once--but I never cared really with all my heart and soul for any one but you."

She looked at him calmly and earnestly.

"I'm going to forget all this," she said; "but I like you very much, and if you want to come and see me, you may. I will introduce you to my aunts at Felsenden as--as a friend of Camilla's. And I will be friends with you; but nothing else ever. Do you care to know my aunts?"

Maurice had inspirations of sense sometimes. One came to him now, and he said: "I care very much."

"Then help me to mend my bicycle, and you can call there to-morrow. It's 'The Grange'--you can't miss it. No, not another word of nonsense, please, or we can't possibly be friends."

He helped her to mend the bicycle, and they talked of the beauty of spring and of modern poetry.

It was at "The Grange," Felsenden, that Maurice next saw Miss Redmayne--and it was from "The Grange," Felsenden, that, in September, he married her.

"And why did you say you would never, never be anything but a friend?"

he asked her on the day when that marriage was arranged. "Oh! you nearly made me believe you! Why did you say it?"

"One must say something!" she answered. "Besides, you'd never have respected me if I'd said 'yes' at once."

"Could you have said it? Did you like me then?"

She looked at him, and her look was an answer. He stooped and gravely kissed her.

"And you really cared, even then? I wish you had been braver," he said a little sadly.

"Ah, but," she said, "I didn't know you then--you must try to forgive me, dear. Think how much there was at stake! Suppose I had lost you!"

VII

THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR

Aunt Kate was the great comfort of Kitty's existence. Always kindly, helpful, sympathetic, no girlish trouble was too slight, no girlish question too difficult for her tender heart--her delicate insight. How different from grim Aunt Eliza, with whom it was Kitty's fate to live.

Aunt Eliza was severe, methodical, energetic. In household matters she spared neither herself nor her niece. Kitty could darn and mend and bake and dust and sweep in a way which might have turned the parents of the bluest Girtonian green with envy. She had read a great deal, too--the really solid works that are such a nuisance to get through, and that leave a mark on one's mind like the track of a steamroller. That was Aunt Eliza's doing. Kitty ought to have been grateful--but she wasn't.

She didn't want to be improved with solid books. She wanted to write books herself. She did write little tales when her aunt was out on business, which was often, and she dreamed of the day when she should write beautiful books, poems, romances. These Aunt Eliza cla.s.sed roughly as "stuff and nonsense"; and one day, when she found Kitty reading the _Girls' Very Own Friend_, she tore that harmless little weekly across and across and flung it into the fire. Then she faced Kitty with flushed face and angry eyes.

"If I ever catch you bringing such rubbish into the house again, I'll--I'll stop your music lessons."

This was a horrible threat. Kitty went twice a week to the Guildhall School of Music. She had no musical talent whatever, but the journey to London and back was her one glimpse of the world's tide that flowed outside the neat, gloomy, ordered house at Streatham. Therefore Kitty was careful that Aunt Eliza should not again "catch her bringing such rubbish into the house." But she went on reading the paper all the same, just as she went on writing her little stories. And presently she got one of her little stories typewritten, and sent it to the _Girls' Very Own Friend_. It was a silly little story--the heroine was _svelte_, I am sorry to say, and had red-gold hair and a soft, _trainante_ voice--and the hero was a "frank-looking young Englishman, with a bronzed face and honest blue eyes." The plot was that with which I firmly believe every career of fiction begins--the girl who throws over her lover because he has jilted her friend. Then she finds out that it was not her lover, but his brother or cousin. We have all written this story in our time, and Kitty wrote it much worse than many, but not nearly so badly as most of us.

And the _Girls' Very Own Friend_ accepted the story and printed it, and in its columns notified to "George Thompson" that the price, a whole guinea, was lying idle at the office till he should send his address.

For, of course, Kitty had taken a man's name for her pen-name, and almost equally, of course, had called herself "George." George Sand began it, and it is a fas.h.i.+on which young authors seem quite unable to keep themselves from following.

Kitty longed to tell some one of her success--to ask admiration and advice; but Aunt Eliza was more severe and less approachable than usual that week. She was busy writing letters. She had always a sheaf of dull-looking letters to answer, so Kitty could only tell Mary in the kitchen under vows of secrecy, and Mary in the kitchen only said: "Well, to be sure, Miss, it's beautiful! I suppose you wrote the story down out of some book?"

Therefore Kitty felt that it was vain to apply to her for intellectual sympathy.

"I will write to Aunt Kate," said she, "_she_ will understand. Oh, how I wish I could see her! She must be a dear, soft, p.u.s.s.y, cuddly sort of person. Why shouldn't I go and see her? I will."

And on this desperate resolve she acted.

Now I find it quite impossible any longer to conceal from the intelligent reader that the reason why Kitty had never seen Aunt Kate was that "Aunt Kate" was merely the screen which sheltered from a vulgar publicity the gifted person who wrote the "Answers to Correspondents"

for the _Girls' Very Own Friend_.

In fear and trembling, and a disguised handwriting; with a feigned name and a quickly-beating heart, Kitty, months before, had written to this mysterious and gracious being. In the following week's number had appeared these memorable lines:

"_Sweet Nancy._--So pleased, dear, with your little letter.

Write to me quite freely. I love to help my girls."

So Kitty wrote quite freely, and as honestly as any girl of eighteen ever writes: her hopes and fears, her household troubles, her literary ambitions. And in the columns of the _Girls' Very Own Friend_ Aunt Kate replied with all the tender grace and delightful warmth that characterised her utterances.