There was silence for several minutes. Each girl was thinking deeply of the future; pondering over the difficulty of mapping out a life which seemed to have no settled direction, Vanna had many gifts, but no one outstanding talent. Until this moment she had never dreamt of taking up any work outside the domestic circle; but it would be impossible to fritter away life in the care of self alone. What could she do? She herself had announced her decision of leaving her native town. Where could she live? After puzzling the problem in a circle for several minutes, Jean ventured another timid question.
“Have you thought, dear; have you any idea what you will do?”
“I have thought. Yes! I know I must leave Coverley, but that is as far as I can get. I must wait until I have calmed down and can think it out quietly. But I should like to be near you, Jean. You are the person I care for most on earth, and failing a personal romance I must take you for my lifelong love. You won’t want me always. When you are happy you will be independent of my services; but you can’t always be happy. There must come times when you are ill, or anxious, or miserable, when I shall have my chance. You will need a woman then. When the babies are teething; when the boiler bursts on Christmas Eve, and the cook leaves at an hour’s notice; when you want to make jam, or re-cover the furniture, or to leave everything behind, and go off honeymooning with your husband, ‘send for Vanna’ must be a household word. I shall be your ‘Affliction Female,’ always ready to be called in in an emergency. Fancy me an ‘Affliction Female.’ ”
“A Consolation Female!” corrected Jean softly, and Vanna looked at her with a lightening eye.
“That’s better. Thank you, Jean. Well, that will be one object in life—to help you, when you need help. You will marry, of course. It is impossible to think that any man could refuse to love you if you wished it, and the time will come when you will wish. It will be a tremendous interest to know your home, and your husband, and children. Dr. Greatman told me that I was to compare my life as a spinster with the life of married women … I’ll compare it with yours. There will be moments when I shall be gnawed with envy, but perhaps, who knows? there may be times when you may envy me in return. At any rate, you’ll be sweet to me, dear—I know that; and you must let me help you to entertain the dull bores, and keep the charming eligibles out of my way. I don’t want to be driven away by a second Edward Verney. It’s a mercy I am only ‘interesting,’ and not a beauty, like you.”
“Yes, it is,” sighed Jean, in unthinking agreement.
Vanna’s lips twitched, her eyes flashed a humorous glance at her own reflection in the glass at the opposite end of the room.
Chapter Three.
The Rose Waits.
The evening after her interview with the doctor, Vanna Strangeways accompanied her friend to a ball, and had her first experience of society under the altered mental conditions of her life. Her first impulse had been to excuse herself and stay at home, but she was an unusually reasoning creature for her twenty-three years, and a short mental cross-examination was sufficient to reject the idea, “Can I go to her and say, ‘Jean, I am sorry; it is impossible that I can marry any of the men at the ball, so I would rather not go’? What nonsense, what folly, what degradation!” She put on her prettiest frock, spent an extra ten minutes over her hair; and even beside the radiant beauty of Jean in her pale pink tarlatan, attracted notice as one of the most interesting and distinguished of the dancers.
The floor was good, the music inspiriting, her programme was filled from beginning to end. She tried bravely to enjoy the evening in her old, unthinking fashion, and was furious with herself because she failed. There was no use denying the fact: something had disappeared which had been there before, the absence of which strangely transformed the scene—an interest, a zest, a sense of mystery and uncertainty. They had lain so far in the background that she had not realised their presence, but they had been present all the same. Each strange man to whom she had been introduced held within his black-coated form a dazzling possibility; her young eyes searched his face even as his searched hers—alert, critical, inquiring; for the moment each represented to the other the mystery, the fascination of sex. After the dance, as they sat talking lightly in some cool shade the inner voice in each brain was holding a council of its own: “Who, and what are you, inside that smiling form; what sort of a man, what sort of a woman? Do you, can you, by any possible chance, belong to me?”
The modern young man and maiden may indignantly deny that such a feeling, conscious or unconscious, has any bearing on their social joys. Vanna belonged to an age far more frankly sentimental than to-day, but she also protested, and felt humiliated when convicted against her will. Yet what shame can there be in the acknowledgment of a natural magnetic force? Empty a ballroom of all except relations within the prescribed calendar, set a man to dance with his sisters and aunts, a girl with her brothers and uncles—would any one of the number dare to maintain that enjoyment continued in the same ratio?
Vanna was fond of dancing, but not to the same extent as Jean, who often declared that she would waltz with a clothes-prop sooner than not waltz at all. With Vanna the enjoyment of movement was always subservient to the mental pleasure of meeting and talking to new partners. She preferred a good conversationalist to a good waltzer, but this evening the ordinary topics of the ballroom seemed painfully lacking in savour; she could feel in them no interest, no merriment, no curiosity; her partner’s words seemed to float past, a dull, wearisome echo that had no meaning in her ears. She was as one who had returned home after long wandering in a foreign land, to find herself helplessly out of her element. She looked at the gay stream of dancers as across a gulf. Two days ago she had been one of themselves, as carelessly happy, as confidently gay; now, after the passage of a few short hours, she stood apart, conscious through all her nature that she had outgrown a stage; had passed on, and left her friends behind.
Vanna’s partners were at a loss to understand her dullness and lack of response, for she had the reputation of wit and charm. Failing in their efforts to excite her interest, they shortened the time of waiting between the dances, by leading her back to the ballroom, and hastening off in search of a livelier companion. She saw through their devices, and smiled to herself with dreary amusement. “This is no place for you, my dear. You must give up these frivolities. You have to fill a gap and discover a solace. You’ll never find it in a ballroom.”
At twelve o’clock supper was in full swing in the big dining-room of the house. In the seventies, hosts had not acquired the present-day convenient, if less hospitable habit of entertaining their friends in a hotel. They contentedly suffered days of discomfort, and turned out every room in the house to gain the desired effect. In the present case the floors of the two great drawing-rooms, which ran the entire length of the house, were covered with a white waxed cloth, while the walls, with their treasures of water-colours, miniatures in cases, and old brass sconces, made a picturesque background to the scene. Leading out of the second drawing-room was a spacious conservatory, in which seats were placed, on which the guests could rest in comparative coolness and quiet between the dances, while the conservatory itself gave access to a balcony hung with coloured lanterns.
Vanna sat beside the door of the first dancing-room, and saw with a sigh of relief that the hands of a clock near at hand pointed to half-past twelve o’clock. Only half an hour more and the evening would be over, for Jean, with her usual tact, had suggested