Upon this footing her affairs now stood; she was to be one of the family, with two hundred pounds a year to her credit, the run of her teeth in the house, and (by a secret arrangement) as often in her father's company as she could find time to be. Meantime, by her own deliberate choice, she maintained her lodging in Pimlico, and read at the Museum most days of the week. She prepared herself to be happy, and under a buoyant impulse, due to the softening of her affections, wrote to her friend Mr. Chevenix, and asked him to come to see her. That he briskly did.
She received him cordially. It was good to see the cheerful youth again, and to be able to rejoice in the man of the world he affected to be. A man of the world—throned, at it were, upon the brows of a suckling.
Wisdom was justified of her child. “So you cut it? Thought you would. Wanless Hall is all very well in its little way—when the rainbows are jumping, what? D'you remember that fish? And old Devereux—Salmo deverox? My certy, what a lady! But Nevile—” he shook his head. “No, no. Some devil had entered into him: he was a gloomy kind of tyrant. I don't know, by the way, what's happened to him. Travelling, or something, I fancy. He was always a rolling stone, as you know. But he'll come round, you'll see. Oh, Lord, yes. He'll sulk out his devil—and be the first to apologise. Well—never mind old Nevile. You'll see, one of these days. Now, I say, what are you doing with yourself up here? Any good?”
She named her Italian studies, and made him open his eyes.
“Italian? Tante grazie, and all that! But that don't take you very far, you know. Your teeth will crack a tougher nut. Now, I'll tell you what you do. You come and see my old Aunt Wenman—”
She was highly amused. “Why should I see your old Aunt Wenman? Does she know Italian?”
“Italian! God bless you, if she knows English, it's as much as she does. Learnt the Catechism once, I s'pose. She's a good old sort—Lady Maria Wenman, widow of my old Uncle Charles, and my mother's sister at that. She'll take to you—she'll take to you.”
“I don't see—” said Sanchia, puzzled. The youth explained.
“Well, you see—you'll forgive me, I know—it's tone you want just now. She'll give you that. She's something to pull against. You get your back up against her, and hang on. That's the ticket. She's a good soul, is Aunt Maria—lots of tone—gives parties to all and sundry. You meet some rare fish in those waters—Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics. They'll amuse you—give you bones to pick. I don't get on with 'em myself—too simple, I am, you know. They talk their politics, or domestic afflictions, and I feel so delicate I don't know what to do. There was one chap I remember—Golowicz his name was—big, red-whiskered, conspiracy chap ... told me all about his mother—tears running down his cheeks. I didn't know her from Adam, you know, but still—Oh, you'll like Aunt Wenman. She'll want you to live with her, and you might do much worse.” Sanchia listened, smiled, and pondered. It was not her way to be disposed of so simply.
What was impressive to her about this conversation was the real reticence underlying the chatter of her friend. She could feel his conviction of her want of tone; she was convinced of it herself. Her purpose in life seemed gone. Once it had been love, next it had been the ordering of affairs. The second had been so absorbing that she had not missed the first; indeed, she had believed it there until the very end, when she had called it up, and had no answer. But now—what aim had she, in this lonely, empty life she was leading, whose hours were so many that she had to fill them up with Italian got out of books? Without knowing it, it was life she wanted, not books. She with her brains, vitality, beauty, and charm had been growing in these graces unawares, flowering in secret at Wanless under her aprons, behind her account-books and garden gloves. Now that all these swaddling bands were stripped off her, behold her, armed at all points for the lists. So Chevenix had beheld her, it seems. Let her see the world, approve her mettle, run her career. Chevenix, watching her, judged in those pondering eyes, in that half-smile which had charmed him before, a kind of quivering expectancy new to her. He judged her tempted, and renewed his suggestions on a later day.
“What you want,” he then told her, “is to try a fall or two with the world. You've been too snug, you know—too long under glass. You left the school-room to go to Wanless—and where were you there? Under cover. You want the sun, the wind, and the rain; you want to know what these things feel like—and how the rest of us take 'em. And you want to be seen, if you let me say that. We all like being looked at, I believe. I know that I do, when I'm quite sure about my hat. Now you won't get much of that in a Warwick Street two-pair front, let me tell you—no, nor in your B 17, or whatever your seat is, at the Museum. You're a star—you're to shine. Well, give 'em a turn in Charles Street. I'll fix it up for you. I wish you'd think it over.”
She gave him grateful looks, but said little. Nevertheless, he went away encouraged. A week or so later she found a card upon her table: that of a Mrs. John Chevenix.
“That's my sister-in-law,” the friendly youth presently told her. “That's Mrs. John. You go and see her. She's a good sort of woman. You'll meet Aunt Wenman there. I thought it all out, and that's the way to get at it. She'll jump at you, in my opinion. She loves orphans. Collects 'em. You go!”
She was due in the city on a visit to her father, was, in fact, dressed for it in her best white frock, roses in her hat. She promised to think of it—and of course would return Mrs. John's call. The amiable Chevenix accompanied her as far eastward as it was possible for him to go. He went, indeed, farther, and in full view of Saint Paul's decided upon a visit to that sanctuary. You never know your luck, he said. He might meet Senhouse there. He had been hunting the recessed philosopher high and low.
“Great sport if we met him now—you, who look like lunching at the Savoy or somewhere, and he like a fakir! What should you do? Fall in his arms?” Sanchia had mist over the eyes.
“I believe I should,” she admitted. “I should love to see him again.”
“He'll turn up at Aunt Wenman's, I'll bet you,” Chevenix felt sure. “She rakes 'em in—all sorts. Do you think about her, now, there's a dear. You won't be able to stick it at home, you know.”
“I am sure that I shan't go home,” Sanchia said. “And I am thinking about your aunt.”
“Right,” cried Chevenix, and briskly mounted the steps of the cathedral.
Mr. Percival had provided a tea for her which had the appearance of a banquet. The table seemed sunk in flowers; a great urn held the tea. There were buns in pyramids, snow-mantled cakes, apricot jam, strawberries, clotted cream. Nothing was too good for his beloved, as he cried aloud when he saw her, fresh and glowing in her lace frock and flower-wreathed hat.
“My girl—and upon my soul, a picture!”
She blushed at his praises, and came within kissing distance. “You make a school-treat of me, dearest. You mustn't be wicked with your money, or I shan't come any more to see you. I won't be spoiled.”
“No, my dear, no—and you can't be,” he assured her. “Good Lord, my child, you're the only one I've got left. All my birds flown but you! And I had five of the sweetest, sauciest, happiest girls in England once upon a time.... Now, come you and pour out a cup of tea for your foolish old father. We're snug here—hey? Better than Great Cumberland—hey? You monkey!” He pinched her ear—and felt that they shared a secret.
She caught his happiness, and bathed in his praises, feeling as it were the sun upon her cheeks. How she loved to be loved! How she loved to be praised for her good looks! The world had grown suddenly kind again; the world was good. There, ahead of her, stood Mrs. John Chevenix and a friendly Lady Maria, beckoning her to London delights, a friendly world of admiring eyes. She was to be looked at—she was to listen—and be heard. Her heart beat, eyes shone starry. Life, which had seemed behind her, now danced before, a gay procession. She told her father what seemed to be in the wind. He listened and stared.
“Lady Maria, hey! We are going up in the world. The peerage! Charles Street, Berkeley Square! I remember young Chevenix: he had swell connections—yes, yes. How things come about. This will please your mother, my dear. She sets a store by such things.” Their eyes met, and she nodded.
“Yes, I thought of that. But what do you feel about it, Papa? You see—I couldn't very well come back to Great Cumberland Place.”
He did see that, poor man. “No, chick, no. That wouldn't work out—that sum. You and your mother never did add up very well—No, no. Much as I should have liked it. But Charles Street? Hum. I'm a plain man, you see, a plain, old comfortable merchant—and the older I grow, the more comfortable I get, I believe. Now, I don't see myself in Berkeley Square, making a bow to Lady Maria. My poor old back's too stiff for that. But if you're contented—if you're to have your deserts—for you're a little beauty, my love, and there's no mistake about it—why, what can I say? And I know you won't forget Papa in The Poultry—hey?”
She held him her hand across the tea-cups, smiling with her eyes. “Do you really think I shall?”
He caught fast to the little hand. “No, child, no! Though, mind you, I deserve it. When I think that I let you be packed out of my house—neck and crop—to the devil, for aught I knew—I grow cold. My dear, it's taken me suddenly at night—when I've been wakeful—and I've groaned in my agony. It don't do to think of—hideous! Women make fools of us men, and knaves as well. But there! You know your mother's way. I mustn't speak against her, of course. No, no. She's a good woman.” He looked as if he tried hard to believe it.
Sanchia, her hand still held, had grown serious. “Papa,” she said, “I want you to understand me altogether. I should do it again, I believe, if I really loved somebody.”
He looked at her anxiously, then away from her, while he patted her caught hand. “Yes, my dear, yes. I understand that you feel like that. It's queer—to me, you know. I don't pretend to see it as you do. But I trust you. I know you're a good girl. Only—it's not the old-fashioned way; and your mother—”
“Mamma,”' she said, “is different. She thinks I'm wicked; you think I'm good. I don't know what I am—I don't understand myself at all; but I'm quite sure that I should do it again, if it had to be done.” Her eyes grew large with the certainty of her argument. She had a divine seriousness, a rapt look, as of one inspired from within. “I don't see how you can help it, if you see quite clearly that the person needs you. It seems disloyalty. It seems making too much of yourself—as if what happened to that part of you mattered! And it seems making too little of yourself, too—as if you shrank, as if you were afraid of vile people. One can't afford to be afraid—for the sake of such a small thing.”
Mr. Percival, nodding, patting her hand, put in a gentle remonstrance. “I shouldn't say that, Sancie, I shouldn't indeed. It used to be considered everything in the world, to a woman.”
She mused, then decided. “No. I can't understand that. It's not everything in the world. It's almost nothing compared to other things—like freedom. To me the only thing that seems to matter is one's mind. Freedom for that! You can give up anything else. But that you must have—if you are to live at all.”
He made a loyal effort to follow her thought, but it led him into dismal regions where he found himself unnerved. “I don't know, upon my soul, where you get these notions of yours, my dear. I don't indeed. Not from me, I believe.”
She smiled gently at him, but with a wistful tinge, as if she felt her isolation. “I don't know, either—but there they are. I always know what I've got to do. I see it, or feel it, ahead of me. There's a path that way, a path the other. I see the fork, and have to follow one of them. I always know which.”
That was equally beyond him. He left it, and returned to a more practical puzzlement. “But when—when you make up your mind about—him, you know? I wish you would tell me.”
“I'll tell you everything I can, dearest, of course.”
“Well, now, your freedom, you know. Your freedom of mind. Now, you gave him your freedom, didn't you! And your mind too? Didn't you, now?”
She had to consider that, and he watched her with anxiety. But she looked him fairly in the face with her answer, so that he read the truth in her eyes. “No,” she told him. “No. He never had that, luckily for me. I always knew what I had to do before he did. I could always see where he was right and I was wrong—or the other way about. I don't think I could ever give up my judgment. At least—” She had to think again; and again she answered him, but with heightened colour. “If I did—it would be a different sort of person altogether. Quite a different person.”
His face fell. This didn't sound like marriage-bells. “Oh, my dear!” he said ruefully. “You don't mean to tell me—”
She jumped up and hugged him. “You darling old thing, of course not.” But she kept her face buried in his whiskers. “If I ever did that—give up my mind, I mean—I believe I should be happier.”
Mr. Percival had no doubt about that. He had old-fashioned opinions.
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