captain and mrs. berwick were gone. the holidays at carter hill were all but ended—"all but ended," miss sandys repeated with a little sigh of relief, and an inclination to moralize on that weariness which is the result of pleasure. when miss west came down in the morning the kettle was steaming on the hob, the teapot under its cosie, and the couple of rolls and the dish of sausages were set in their places. miss sandys—her working apron lying ready to take up on the side-table behind her—was bent to the last on buns and pork pies, though she frankly admitted they were vanity. but the girls must be broken [page 347]from their home dainties by degrees, and jenny and menie must have "cakes" to carry to their homes on their handsel monday.
miss west found a letter on her plate. it caused her complexion to change, and her sharp eyes to fasten on it fixedly. no wonder her head swam and her ears rang. she was going through the uncomfortable process of turning back some ten or twelve years in her life. it was a strange letter to come to her—a large letter, which had been charged double postage; a letter with the elements of mortification in it, as well as other elements, both to sender and receiver. it was written in a big, scampering hand.
"dear mad," it began, "it is so queer to be addressing you again. i remember when i used to say 'mad' to a white-faced, dark-eyed girl. was she pretty, i wonder? some people said so, but i don't know, only i have never seen a face quite equal to hers since—never. mad and i were great friends when i used to visit her elder brother; great friends, indeed, in a bantering, biting way. but it was mad who bantered and bit; certainly i did not banter and bite again, rarely even so much as gave a gentle pinch, for i would not have hurt mad for the world, and mad did not hurt me. at least she never meant it seriously, and she was always so piteously penitent when she thought she had wounded my feelings. oh, dear, quizzing mad! she had such a soft heart in its bristling shell, and i hurt it. i hurt mad—yes, i know; i know to my sorrow and shame.
"[page 348]mad, do you remember how you went every day to meet a timid little brother coming from school along a lonely moorland road, where there were broomy braes in june and heathery braes in september? what a convenient custom it was for me, since the little brother, unlike little monsters of the same kind, had neither eyes nor ears but for his own avocations, and trotted on obediently in front of us. the sight of my own little bill's satchel gives me a turn, and makes me feel spoony to this day. do you remember your great dog, mad? (what a child you were for pets!)—and who it was used to go to the kennel to feed it with you? if that dog had been a true bevis, it would have torn that hulking fellow where he stood, yet he meant no harm; nay, he had a strong persuasion that he was doing something meritorious (how he hit it i can't tell) in not committing himself and binding you when he had no more than a clerk's paltry income. but i have heard that trees, stripped of leaves in flowery may, revenge themselves by bursting out green, if the frosts will let them, in foggy november. so the prudence of twenty-five may be the folly of thirty-five. it was rank mean-spiritedness in me not to go through thick and thin, through flood and fire, for mad. what in the world was worth striving for if she was not worth it? ah, i lost my chance when i might have taken it, and trusted the rest to providence! but i did not know, though i fancied i did, the value of the jewel, the price of which, in stern self-restraint, i refused to pay. i might have been another man if i had not been so prudent, for, as i have said, not another face has been to me quite (no, not by a long chalk) [page 349]what mad's once was. it was only yesterday that i heard by chance—and the story has haunted me since—that mad is still a single woman, her family all dispersed, and she a teacher in a school—my quizzing, affectionate mad a drudging, lonely teacher!
"after being so prudent, it is not wonderful to record that i was fickle, though circumstances, and not my will, separated mad and me at first. i could not get down to the old place so regularly as i was wont to do, which annoyed me, and i did my best to get rid of the obstacles. when i did get down, mad was not at home, and i had no right to follow her. we met seldomer; we grew stiffer and stranger to each other. you are acquainted with the process, miss west, though perhaps not fully with my share in it. the impression which mad had made on me, unique as it was, faded and was overlaid by others. i met another girl, whom i liked too, and whom it appeared so much simpler—more expedient and advantageous—for me to love and to marry. i married her, breaking no vows, not writing myself faithless, far less treacherous, but only fickle. yet i had once known, if ever man knew, that i had made mad's strong heart—i think it was strong, although it was soft to me—beat in tune with mine. i had done all i could, short of saying the words, to impress mad with what were my wishes and intentions, i had preferred her in every company, followed her when i was down at the old place, like her shadow (her shadow, indeed!). i had elected her my confidante and adviser, and poured all my precious opinions and plans—my very scrapes—into her curious, patient ears. [page 350]mad, have you forgotten how once, like an old-fashioned, grandiloquent muff, i showed you the picture of a perfect woman in a book of poetry—'paradise lost' it might have been, and 'eve' for any special appropriateness in the picture—and broadly hinted my private idea that the perfect woman was fulfilled in mad!—lively, faulty mad! your sisters were very anxious to read the passage which i had selected for your study, and from which i was evidently pointing a moral; but you closed the book abruptly in the old seat behind the round tea-table with the brass rim. i suppose the sisters don't know the passage to this day?
"having been fickle, i was a great deal better off in my wife than i deserved. remember, mad, my wife and the mother of my children was a good woman; i was reasonably happy with her, and i trust i bore her tender reverence. she died and left me with our children two winters ago. when we meet again, it will be where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. now, when i can do her no wrong, i think of another to whom i did wrong; than whom there was never another to me the same—no, nothing like it. learning that mad has been true—oh! mad, you could never have been anything else but true—i have wondered whether i might not be allowed to do something to atone, whether i was not worth having still, and whether i could not—a bold phrase, but it will out—make it up to mad, a solitary single woman, a teacher in a school. oh! mad, i say again, what a hard fate for you! "i cannot offer an immense inducement. i am not a [page 351]merchant prince, though i am richer than i was in the old days; yet somehow i do not care to boast of my riches to mad, and i am a widower with two small children—not models. i dare not send you my carte, and i don't want yours. you are always the same mad to me that you have been through all those years, and will be to the end of the chapter, whether you answer me yes or no. you will answer yes. you were always great for magnanimity, and flamed up on it, dark eyes, white cheeks, and all, when you were a wild lassie. don't tell me you are less magnanimous as a brave, hard-working woman, or you will sap my faith in womankind.
"mad, how this christmas season stirs me with the far-off murmurs of another christmas, when you and i pulled the holly and the other thing—the thing with the tiny, fair, frost-bitten clusters of blossom—some sort of laurel wasn't it? that old christmas, who can describe? what glamour over the prosaic family dinner and carpet dance to see the old year out and the new year in? say the word, mad, and before the first full moon of this new year has waned to half a cheese she will shine down upon us, anew, with the old shining. i swear it on the part of your old friend,
bill nairne
.
what miss west said when she read the letter was, "make it up, indeed! redeem me from such degradation! crown me with such honour! intolerable arrogance! how could he take it upon him? but it is like bill; conceited fellow!"
miss west was properly indignant. the letter was so [page 352]unsuitable in every respect. all her life she had been famous as a woman of spirit—the spirit which will cause a woman to decline an obligation as long as independence is possible, and which will not have for pity what it cannot have for love. she would prove to bill nairne that it was no such hard fate as he supposed to teach a school under miss sandys, no such promotion, as he fondly imagined, to be placed at the head of the household of a pompous widower with a pair of spoilt children. she would convince him that a woman of her age is more difficult to please than a girl, and is not to be led off her feet by a few impertinently recalled reminiscences, nor to be won by the tardy wag of a finger. she would teach bill nairne a lesson undreamt of in his philosophy—that all the nonsense about old maids, their humiliations, their forlorn condition, and their desperate welcoming of late offers was wholly false.
she selected the smallest sheet of note-paper from the packet lying beside the exercises in her desk, and wrote:—
"dear sir,—i am glad to be able to tell you that, on the whole, teaching in a school is not so hard a fate as you think. miss sandys is an excellent woman, a reliable friend, and an agreeable companion. the girls and their antecedents exhibit life to me under considerable variety of characters and circumstances, and as pupils they are mostly affectionate as well as interesting. i must remain indebted for your good opinion, and you have my best wishes for your future welfare, but i beg to decline your[page 353]—gratuitous" (miss west had written the word, but she changed it into—not gracious, but) "generous offer. without offence to you, old times do not come again.
"believe me, yours very sincerely, m. west."
miss west read her letter, and considered it was, perhaps, too brief. she did not want to part with him in an unfriendly fashion. her last words to bill nairne must be such as she herself could think of without pain. so she rummaged among her christmas gifts, and found a dancing dervish and a brightly-embroidered ball. these she wrapped up with the letter, and made a small parcel of the whole, after she had added this postscript: "please give the enclosed toys as cheap new year's playthings to the children. tell them, if you choose, that they come from an old friend of papa's, whose name was—mad."