by popular veneration.
Her letters, from London, continued to come with the same tender punctuality; but the altered conditions of her life, the vistas of new relationships disclosed by every phrase, made her communications as impersonal as a piece of journalism. It was as though the state, the world, indeed, had taken her off his hands, assuming the maintenance of a temperament that had long exhausted his slender store of reciprocity.
In the retrospective light shed by the letters he was blinded to their specific meaning. He was not a man who concerned himself with literature, and they had been to him, at first, simply the extension of her brilliant talk, later the dreaded vehicle of a tragic importunity. He knew, of course, that they were wonderful; that, unlike the authors who give their essence to the public and keep only a dry rind for their friends, Mrs. Aubyn had stored of her rarest vintage for this hidden sacrament of tenderness. Sometimes, indeed, he had been oppressed, humiliated almost, by the multiplicity of her allusions, the wide scope of her interests, her persistence in forcing her superabundance of thought and emotion into the shallow receptacle of his sympathy; but he had never thought of the letters objectively, as the production of a distinguished woman; had never measured the literary significance of her oppressive prodigality. He was almost frightened now at the wealth in his hands; the obligation of her love had never weighed on him like this gift of her imagination: it was as though he had accepted from her something to which even a reciprocal tenderness could not have justified his claim.
He sat a long time staring at the scattered pages on his desk; and in the sudden realization of what they meant he could almost fancy some alchemistic process changing them to gold as he stared. He had the sense of not being alone in the room, of the presence of another self observing from without the stirring of subconscious impulses that sent flushes of humiliation to his forehead. At length he stood up, and with the gesture of a man who wishes to give outward expression to his purpose—to establish, as it were, a moral alibi—swept the letters into a heap and carried them toward the grate. But it would have taken too long to burn all the packets. He turned back to the table and one by one fitted the pages into their envelopes; then he tied up the letters and put them back into the locked drawer.
III
It was one of the laws of Glennard’s intercourse with Miss Trent that he always went to see her the day after he had resolved to give her up. There was a special charm about the moments thus snatched from the jaws of renunciation; and his sense of their significance was on this occasion so keen that he hardly noticed the added gravity of her welcome.
His feeling for her had become so vital a part of him that her nearness had the quality of imperceptibly readjusting his point of view, so that the jumbled phenomena of experience fell at once into a rational perspective. In this redistribution of values the sombre retrospect of the previous evening shrank to a mere cloud on the edge of consciousness. Perhaps the only service an unloved woman can render the man she loves is to enhance and prolong his illusions about her rival. It was the fate of Margaret Aubyn’s memory to serve as a foil to Miss Trent’s presence, and never had the poor lady thrown her successor into more vivid relief.
Miss Trent had the charm of still waters that are felt to be renewed by rapid currents. Her attention spread a tranquil surface to the demonstrations of others, and it was only in days of storm that one felt the pressure of the tides. This inscrutable composure was perhaps her chief grace in Glennard’s eyes. Reserve, in some natures, implies merely the locking of empty rooms or the dissimulation of awkward encumbrances; but Miss Trent’s reticence was to Glennard like the closed door to the sanctuary, and his certainty of divining the hidden treasure made him content to remain outside in the happy expectancy of the neophyte.
“You didn’t come to the opera last night,” she began, in the tone that seemed always rather to record a fact than to offer a reflection on it.
He answered with a discouraged gesture. “What was the use? We couldn’t have talked.”
“Not as well as here,” she assented; adding, after a meditative pause, “As you didn’t come I talked to Aunt Virginia instead.”
“Ah!” he returned, the fact being hardly striking enough to detach him from the contemplation of her hands, which had fallen, as was their wont, into an attitude full of plastic possibilities. One felt them to be hands that, moving only to some purpose, were capable of intervals of serene inaction.
“We had a long talk,” Miss Trent went on; and she waited again before adding, with the increased absence of stress that marked her graver communications, “Aunt Virginia wants me to go abroad with her.”
Glennard looked up with a start. “Abroad? When?”
“Now—next month. To be gone two years.”
He permitted himself a movement of tender derision. “Does she really? Well, I want you to go abroad with ME—for any number of years. Which offer do you accept?”
“Only one of them seems to require immediate consideration,” she returned, with a smile.
Glennard looked at her again. “You’re not thinking of it?”
Her gaze dropped and she unclasped her hands. Her movements were so rare that they might have been said to italicize her words. “Aunt Virginia talked to me very seriously. It will be a great relief to mother and the others to have me provided for in that way for two years. I must think of that, you know.” She glanced down at her gown which, under a renovated surface, dated back to the first days of Glennard’s wooing. “I try not to cost much—but I do.”
“Good Lord!” Glennard groaned.
They sat silent till at length she gently took up the argument. “As the eldest, you know, I’m bound to consider these things. Women are such a burden. Jim does what he can for mother, but with his own children to provide for it isn’t very much. You see, we’re all poor together.”
“Your aunt isn’t. She might help your mother.”
“She does—in her own way.”
“Exactly—that’s the rich relation all over! You may be miserable in any way you like, but if you’re to be happy you’ve got to be so in her way—and in her old gowns.”
“I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia’s old gowns,” Miss Trent interposed.
“Abroad, you mean?”
“I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my going abroad will help.”
