A Life's Morning

‘Yes,’ mused Beatrice, ‘she was a problem to you. You never troubled yourself to puzzle over my character, aunt.’

‘When a stream is of lovely clearness, Beatrice, we do not find it hard to determine the kind of ground it flows over.’

‘I will owe you a kiss for that,’ said the girl, blushing hot with very joy. ‘But you are a flatterer, dear aunt, and just now I am very humble in spirit. I think great happiness should make us humble, don’t you? I find it hard to make out my claim to it.’

‘Be humble still, dear, and the happiness will not be withdrawn.’

‘I do like to talk with you,’ Beatrice replied. ‘I never go away without something worth thinking of.’

Humility she strove to nourish. It was a prime virtue of woman, and ‘would sweeten her being. Unlike Emily, she was not inspired with an ardent idealism independently of her affections; with love had begun her conscious self-study, and love alone exalted her. Her many frivolous tendencies she had only overcome by dint of long endeavour to approach Wilfrid’s standard. If in one way this was an item of strength, in another it indicated a very real and always menacing weakness. Having gained that to which her every instinct had directed itself, she made the possession of her bliss an indispensable factor of life; to lose it would be to fall into nether darkness, into despair of good. So widowed, there would be no support in herself; she knew it, and the knowledge at moments terrified her. Even her religious convictions, once very real and strong, had become subordinate; her creed—though she durst not confess it—was that of earthly love. Formerly she had been thrown back on religious emotion as a solace, an anodyne; for that reason the tendencies inherited from her mother had at one time reached a climax of fanaticism. Of late years, music had been her resource, the more efficient in that it ministered to hope. By degrees even her charitable activity had diminished; since her mother’s death she had abandoned the habit of ‘district visiting.’ As confidence of the one supreme attainment grew in her, the mere accessories of her moral life were allowed to fall away. She professed no change of opinion, indeed under. went none, but opinion became, as with most women, distinct from practice. She still pretended to rejoice as often as she persuaded Wilfrid to go to church, but it was noticeable that she willingly allowed his preference for the better choral services, and seemed to take it for granted that the service was only of full efficacy when performed together with her….

‘Let me die now! It is only for this that I have lived!’

The cry came from her very heart. For once Wilfrid had been overcome, had thrown off his rather sad-coloured wooing, had uttered such words as her soul yearned for. Yet she had scarcely time to savour her rapture before that jealousy of the past mingled itself with the sensation. Even such words as these he must have used to her, and had they not perchance come more readily to his lips? Was he by nature so reserved? Or, the more probable thing, was it that she failed at other times to inspire him? How had she been used to behave, to speak?

In her incessant brooding upon the details of Wilfrid’s first affection, Beatrice had found one point which never lost its power to distract her; it was the thought of all the correspondence that must have passed between him and Emily. What had become of those letters? Had they been mutually returned? It was impossible to discover. Not even to her aunt could she put such a question as that; and it might very well be that Mrs. Baxendale knew nothing certainly. If the story as she, Beatrice, had heard it was quite accurate, it seemed natural to suppose that Emily had requested to have her letters returned to her when she declared that the engagement must be at an end; but Wilfrid had refused to accept that declaration, and would he not also have refused to let the writing which was so precious to him leave his hands? In that case he probably had the letters still; perhaps he still read them at times. Would it be possible, even after marriage, to speak of such a subject with Wilfrid? She had constantly tried to assure herself that, even if he had kept the pledges through all these years, a sense of honour would lead Wilfrid to destroy them when he gave and received a new love. In moments when it was her conscious effort to rise to noble heights, to be as pure a woman as that other—for Beatrice never sought the base comfort of refusing to her rival that just homage—she ‘would half persuade herself that no doubt lingered in her mind; it was right to destroy the letters, and whatever was right Wilfrid must have done. But she could not live at all hours in that thin air; the defects of her blood were too enduring. Jealousy came back from its brief exile, and was more insinuating than ever, its suggestions more maddening. By a sort of reaction, these thoughts assailed her strongly in the moments which followed her outburst of passion and Wilfrid’s response. Yet she could not—durst not—frame words to tell him of her suffering. It was to risk too much; it might strike a fatal blow at his respect for her. Even those last words she had breathed with dread, involuntarily; already, perhaps, she had failed in the delicacy he looked for, and had given him matter for disagreeable thought as soon as he left her. She rose at length from her kneeling attitude, and leaned back in her chair with a look of trouble scarcely veiled.

Wilfrid did not notice it; he had already begun to think of other matters.

‘Beatrice,’ he began, ‘there’s a subject I have avoided speaking of, thinking you might perhaps be the first to mention it. Do you wish to continue your singing?’

She smiled, and did not seem to attach great importance to the question.

‘It is for you to decide,’ she answered. ‘You know why I began it; I am ready to say my farewell whenever you bid me.’

‘But what is your own feeling? I suppose you would in any case cease at our marriage?’

‘You are not ashamed of it?’

‘It is true,’ he replied humorously, ‘that I am a member of the British House of Commons, but I beg you won’t think too meanly of me. I protest that I have still something of my old self.’

‘That means you are rather proud than ashamed. How’ long,’ she went on to ask, lowering her eyes, ‘is the British House of Commons likely to sit?’

‘Probably the talk will hold out for some seven or eight weeks longer.’

‘May I sing the two remaining engagements, if I take no more after those?’

‘To be sure, you must. Let it stand so, then.’

She fell back into her brooding.

‘Now I, too, have something to ask,’ she said, after a short silence.

‘Whatever you ask is already granted.’

‘Don’t be too hasty. It’s more than you think.’

‘Well?’