Florence Warden

“ A little woman, plump, pink, childlike in face and figure, with wavy fair hair, infantine blue eyes, and a red-lipped mouth which was all the more lovable, more attractive for not being on the strict lines of beauty, Mrs. Dale had, so Mabin felt, exactly the right features and the right expression for the sweet voice she had just heard. And through the beauty, and through the voice, the girl, inspired perhaps by the mourning dress, thought she detected a sadness which seemed to her the most pathetic thing in the world. ”

“ Oh, Mabin, Mabin! Don’t you think she might forgive me now?”
While she talked in this wandering and excited way Mabin hardly knew what to do; whether to try to divert her thoughts, or to let her know in what a vixenish and hard manner the elder woman had made the announcement of the terrible action which had cut short one life and ruined another.
“Of course she ought to forgive you!” she said at last. “But you must not give way to despair if she does not. She is a hard woman; she will never treat you as tenderly as your own friends do.” ”

“ Almost as pale as a mask of the dead, the face she saw was that of a man on whom every form of suffering seemed to have left its mark. The hollow eyes were full of unspeakable sadness; the deep lines about the mouth were those of illness or sorrow rather than of age; while even the thick sprinkling of gray hairs among the brown which Mabin detected in the searching cold light of the morning told the same tale of weight of grief rather than of years.
All these things the girl’s quick young eyes saw in one brief look. ”

“ What must this secret be which was locked in the widow’s breast, that could throw her into such paroxysms of abject terror? For, not unnaturally, Mabin came to the conclusion that the vision which had alarmed Mrs. Dale was one of the results of the remorse from which she owned that she was suffering.
“Don’t! Don’t sob like that! You will make yourself ill; you will indeed. There is nothing, there is nobody here to frighten you,” said the girl at last, drawing a little closer to the crouching figure, but not yet daring to touch her, or to speak in a tone louder than a whisper. ”

“ And here Mabin felt her heart grow very tender; she pictured to herself what she would feel, if circumstances were to put Rudolph and herself in the same position toward each other, as were “Mr. Banks” and “Mrs. Dale.”
If she were to have to live within a stone’s throw of him, not only always loving, always longing, but conscious that the same feelings which drew her heart toward him were forever drawing him toward her. ”

“ As the lady spoke, Mabin felt the horror she had experienced melt gradually into pity for the poor little lady whom this hard woman had in her power. And with compassion came resistance.
“Why shouldn’t she have friends?” she asked hotly. “Mrs. Dale is not a hypocrite. She is deeply sorry for what wrong she has done; she never denies that she has done something which has spoiled her life. And I like her better for being able to be happy in spite of it, sometimes, than if she pretended she could never smile again.” ”

“ Mabin hung her head, feeling rather guilty, but with yet more enjoyment of the present reconciliation than remorse for the past estrangement. Instead of taking her straight in, Rudolph led her across the gravel to a flower-border, where, in a little open patch of sunlight, a rosebush grew. It was a “Mrs. John Lang,” and the huge pink blossoms were in their full beauty and fragrance.
“I’ve brought you here,” he said didactically, “to read you a moral lesson. Here we have a rose, full of beauty and sweetness to every one, but without any thorns. ”

“ Well, really, Miss Mabin, I can’t rightly tell you what I do think about him. Sometimes I do think he’s off his head altogether; he marches up and down the drawing-room—that’s the room he has taken to himself—by the hour together, going faster and faster, till I listen outside the door wondering if anything is going to happen, and whether he’s going to break out like and do himself a mischief. But if I make an excuse to go in, though his eyes are wide and glaring, so that at the first look he frightens one, yet he always speaks to me quite gently, and says he doesn’t want anything. ”

“ Dale turned the key in the lock and crept back, not to the couch, but to the arm-chair.
Mabin shut her eyes and tried to disentangle the knot of strange ideas that filled her brain:
What was the nature of the secret which weighed on the conscience of Mrs. Dale? Why was she kept in luxury by the very woman who tried to make her life unbearable, to cut her off from every human friend? What was the strange tie between the hard, elderly woman and the impulsive, volatile young one? ”

“ She chattered away brightly for the amusement of her young companion, who, entirely unaccustomed to so much attention, was happier than she ever remembered to have been in her life before. Mrs. Dale did not spare the eccentricities in walk and dress of the ladies in the neighborhood any more than they had spared hers.
“I don’t know how you can ever be dull when such funny things come into your head!” cried simple Mabin, wiping her eyes over a hearty fit of laughing.
Mrs. Dale grew suddenly grave again.
“Ah, nothing is amusing when one is by one’s self, or when one has—thoughts!” ”

“ Dale, coming behind the girl and putting her little hands on her waist.
Mabin, with an inspiration of astuteness, thought she received a short cut to her friend’s confidence, a confidence which would clear the ground for further discoveries, further enlightenments.
“Haven’t you ever felt that one—person—was outside everything else? And not to be measured by standards at all?” she asked in a soft, shy voice.
Mrs. Dale’s answer, the answer, too, of a widow, came upon her like a thunderbolt.
“No, dear. I have had no such experience myself. I have never cared for a man in all my life.” ”

“ Dale, that mother and son met.
Dark as it was out there, with only a line of pale yellow light left in the horizon, shading off through sea-green into the blue above, Mabin saw enough to know that the meeting was one of deep import. Old Lady Mallyan seemed uneasy; the harshness which Mabin had hitherto believed to be her most salient quality had almost disappeared from her tones as she addressed her son:
“I am sorry,” she said, quite gently, as she put out her arms toward him, “to find you here. It can do no good. It might have done great harm. ”

“ Mabin was saying to some unseen person among the yew trees on the lawn, “I don’t care what she’s done. She is a sweet woman, and I love her all the more for having to be preached to by that old cat!”
No eloquence, no smoothly rounded periods of the most brilliant speaker in the universe could have conveyed to poor unhappy Dorothy half the solace of those inelegant words! She began to smile, all red-eyed as she was, and to feel that there was something worth living for in the world after all. ”

“ Sensitive, affectionate, hasty tempered and wilful, she was at the same time almost morbidly modest and mistrustful of herself; so that she passed her time in alternate bursts of angry resentment against those who misunderstood her, and fits of remorse for her own shortcomings.
She now mounted her bicycle with the feeling that the Vicar’s wife had spoilt her morning’s ride for her. Not by any means a vain girl, she underrated her own attractions, which included a pretty, gray-eyed little flower-face, a fair skin, and short, soft, dark-brown hair. ”

“ That the deceitful woman who could pretend to be so miserable at one moment, and could throw off her grief so lightly the next, should have taken Rudolph and caused him to forget the girl he pretended to care for so much! Mabin watched them with a face wrinkled with despair, until her tears hid them from sight. But even then, Mrs. Dale’s voice, always gay, always bright, rang in her ears to the accompaniment of Rudolph’s deeper tones. ”

“ She was glad to be out of the presence of this terrible woman. And as she ran out into the garden and then dropped into a sedate walk as she passed the drawing-room windows, her heart went out to the old lady’s victim more than it did to that of the young one.
Under the lime-trees, where she had last seen Mrs. Dale, she met Rudolph alone. She greeted him with a white face, and without a smile. ”

“ And leaving Rudolph in a state of mingled incredulity, amusement, and surprise, the girl shut the gate, through which he had by this time passed, ran back quickly and disappeared through the back door into the house.
It was with a shock that Mabin remembered, when she met Mrs. Dale, that in the excitement of her own happiness she had neglected to tell Rudolph the story of her midnight adventure. This remembrance filled the girl with compunction. She reproached herself with thinking of no one but herself, and was as miserable over her omission as she had been happy while with her lover. ”

“ Dale’s mysterious story; the visit of the old lady with the cruel tongue; the midnight intrusion of Mr. Banks; last, and chief of all, Rudolph’s confession of love—these things had opened a wide abyss between the child Mabin and the woman. She felt that she was not the shy girl who had had a nervous dread of leaving home mingling with the thoughts of coming pleasure. And she told herself that when the family came back they would find, not the angular girl they had left, but a woman, a full-fledged woman. ”

“ Rudolph looked at her quickly.
“Do you feel like that about her too?” said he earnestly. “All the other people one meets are either jealous of her beauty, or envious of her handsome turnout, or angry with her for not wanting to make their acquaintance.”
“I am very sorry for her,” answered the girl gravely. “I feel certain that she has had some very great sorrow—”
“Why, yes, her husband’s death,” suggested Rudolph.
“Oh, yes, that of course,” assented Mabin, surprised to find that the universal doubts whether Mrs. Dale really was a widow had infected her also. ”

“ Alone in the carriage sat a lady in deep mourning, who turned and looked out anxiously at the girl, and stopped the carriage to speak to her.
“I’m so sorry! I hope you didn’t hurt yourself, in having to jump off so quickly?” asked the lady in black, in a sweet, plaintive voice that struck some chord in Mabin’s heart, and made the girl gasp, and pause before she could answer.
“Oh no, oh no, thank you. One often has to do that,” stammered the girl, flushing, and speaking with a shy constraint which made her tone cold and almost rude. ”

“ Mabin was pleased by this reception, as she could not fail to be, but she was also a little puzzled. She was conscious of no attractions in herself which could explain such enthusiasm on her account.
“I am afraid,” she said shyly, “that I shall turn out a bitter disappointment. You can’t know much about girls, Mrs. Dale, or you would feel, as they all do at home, that there is a time, which I am going through now, when a girl is just as awkward and as stupid and as generally undesirable as she can possibly be.” ”

“ And that is the one thing above all that my husband asks of a woman. Let her only be womanly, he always says, and I will forgive everything else. Now my own girls are that, above everything.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs. Bonnington with decision; “but that is just the fault of our age, Mrs. Rose. Girls are no longer brought up to be contented to be girls. They must put themselves on the same footing with their brothers. Mabin is in the fashion. And no doubt that is all she desires. You see how this Mrs. Dale has caught hold of her imagination, by nothing but her fashionable clothes!” ”

“ Mabin became crimson, and the tears started to her eyes. She had not meant to be rude, but undoubtedly her behavior had laid her open to this accusation.
“I am stupid, clumsy; I am rude without meaning it,” she said in a tone of such excessive humility and penitence that it was impossible to doubt her sincerity. “I am very sorry. But you shouldn’t take any notice of what I do or say. Nobody does at home. When I am more awkward and tiresome than usual, they always say: ‘Oh, it’s only Mabin!’ And then nobody minds.” ”

“ Then Lady Mallyan spoke, in a voice which was greatly changed. She seemed to be trying to control some real alarm.
“You cannot,” she said quickly. “She will not see you. She refuses—absolutely. As a gentleman you cannot persist. She is as hard and cold-hearted as ever. She will not see you again. She has gone away.”
At these words, which Mabin heard, the young girl uttered a sharp cry. But “Mr. Banks” did not heed her. He spoke again, in such piteous tones that Mabin and Rudolph, young and susceptible both, felt their hearts wrung. ”

“ Mabin, with a book and a sunshade, sauntered slowly down the hill to the nearest gap in the cliff, and went down the steep descent to the sands. This was no paradise of nursemaids and babies, but a solitary nook beloved by quiet maiden ladies and sentimental couples. With rash disregard of the danger of sitting under a chalk cliff, Mabin found a seat on a rock worn smooth by the sea, opened her book and began—not to read.
The circumstances to which she found herself were far too interesting for her to be able to give herself up to the milder excitements of fiction. ”

“ Dale? In what relation did he stand to the lovely widow?
No honest man, whether relation, friend, or lover, would pay his mysterious visits like these! And yet there was something in his face so attractive, so interesting, that Mabin would fain have believed that there was some reason, some excuse, for his strange conduct. And the one excuse which she unwillingly had to find was this: the man must be mad. ”

“ The beauty which goes with brown hair and a more or less dark complexion is not so startling, not so sensational, as the loveliness of pink and white and gold which made Mrs. Dale so conspicuous. If again, she had not been in mourning, and such pretty mourning, they would have been readier to make allowance for her eccentricities. But the knowing ones had begun to discover that there were discrepancies in her attire, that her mourning was either too deep for diamond rings to be permissible, or not deep enough for the heavy black veil she wore. ”

“ Mrs. Dale stopped short, and for the first time looked at Mabin:
“That’s what people always think, that it doesn’t matter whom a girl marries, if she’s very young. But it does, oh, it does! And he had a brother——”
Mabin started, and thought at once of Mr. Banks.
“A younger brother, who had been ordered home from India on sick leave. No, I didn’t care for him,” she went on emphatically, reading the expression of sympathy on the girl’s face. “But he was livelier than his grave brother, my husband, and we were very good friends. ”

“ The more Mabin thought, the clearer it seemed to grow to her that the man was either a relation or a lover, who had gone out of his mind, and whose insanity had taken this strange form of nocturnal persecution.
But then, again, if he had been insane, would not Mrs. Dale have heard of it? And was it not rather the act of a sane man than of a madman to assume a name not his own in order to hide his identity from the woman he meant to harass? Again, was the intruder the tenant of “Stone House” at all? ”

“ Oh, no, Miss Mabin, you won’t do that, I’m sure! You don’t know how delicate the poor gentleman is; more than once since he’s been here he has given me a fright, and made me think he was going to die. And he’s so peculiar; he won’t let one send for a doctor, not if it’s ever so, he won’t. I’m sure one morning, a fortnight ago, when I found him lying on the floor in the hall with the back garden door open, I thought he was dead, that I did. ”

“ The girl drew a long breath, frightened by the awful possibility, which had just occurred to her, that the grim visitor in the drawing-room had been threatening Mrs. Dale with the extreme penalty of her crime. Mrs. Dale’s words—“My life depends upon her!” were explicit enough. Instinctively Mabin’s arm closed more tightly round the sobbing woman.
“Hush, hush, dear!” she whispered soothingly. “She will not dare, she will not dare to be more cruel than she has been already! You must try and be brave, and to bear her hard words; but she won’t do anything more than scold you!” ”