Twilight - Julia Frankau (free novels to read .txt) 📗

THE early letters have already been transcribed. Also the description of when and how I first saw Margaret and Gabriel Stanton together, on the beach when she told him that his coming had been a disappointment.

Recalling the swift and painful writing of the story it would seem I saw them again two days later, and that she was occupied in making amends. They had talked and grown in intimacy, and now it was Sunday evening. They were in the music room at Carbies, and she had been playing to him while he sat spellbound, listening to and adoring her. She was in that grey silk dress with the white muslin fichu finished with a pink rose, her pale hair was parted in the middle and she wore her Saint Cecilia expression. She left off playing presently, came over to him with swift grace and sank on the footstool at his feet.

“What are you thinking about? You are not vexed with me still?”

“Was I ever vexed with you?”

“Yesterday afternoon, when I said I was disappointed in you.”

“Not vexed, surely not vexed, only infinitely grieved, startled.”

“Have you enjoyed your visit, notwithstanding that strange slow beginning? Tell me, have you been happy?”

“Have you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t quite know. I have been so excited, restless. I have not wanted any one else. It is difficult for me to know myself. Are you still sorry for me, like you were in London?”

“My heart goes out to you. You have suffered, but you have great compensations; great gifts. I would sympathise with you, but you make me feel my own limitations. I fear to fail you. You have the happier nature, the wider vision…”

“Then you have not been happy?”

“Yes, I have, inexpressibly happy. I wish I could tell you. But I matter so little in comparison with you.”

“I don’t want you to be humble.”

“I am not humble, I am proud.”

“Because?”

“Because you have taken me for your friend.”

He never touched her whilst she sat there at his feet, but his eyes never left her and his voice was deep and tender. They talked of friendship, all the time, they only spoke of friendship. And he was unsure of himself, or of her, more deeply shy than she, and moved, though less able to express it.

“Next week you will come again. Will it be the same between us?”

“I will come whenever you let me. With me it will always be the same, or more. Sometimes I cannot believe that it is to me this is happening. To me, Gabriel Stanton! What is it you find in me? Sometimes I think it is only your own sweet goodness; that what you expressed in seeing me this time you will find again and again disappointment; that I am not the man you think me, the man you need.”

“Am I what you thought I would be? Are you satisfied with me?”

“I am overpowered with you.”

She stole a look at him. His close and thinlipped mouth had curves that were wholly new, his sunken eyes were lit up. She was secretly enraptured with him.

“I thought you very grave and severe when I first came to the office. What did you think of me?”

“What I do now, that you were wonderful. After you left I could not settle to work… but I have told you this.”

“Tell me again. Why didn’t you say something nice to me then? You were short, sharp, noncommittal. I went away quite downcast, I made sure you did not want my poor little book, that you would write and refuse it, in set businesslike terms.”

“I knew I would not. If George had said no, I should have fought him. I was determined upon that book of Staffordshire Pottery. Were you disappointed with my letter when it came?”

“I loved it. I have always loved your letters. You never disappoint me then.”

Because they had grown more intimate he was able to say to her gently, but with unmistakable feeling:

“Dear, it hurts me so when you say that. I know I shall think of it when I am alone, wonder in what way I fail you, how I can alter or change. Can you help me, tell me? I came down with such confidence.”

“But you had cut yourself shaving.”

“Be a little serious, beloved. Tell me.”

“You thought I cared for you… that we should begin in Pineland where we left off in London?”

“I hoped…”

“But I had run away from you!”

They smiled at each other.

“You will come again next week?” she asked him inconsistently.

“And if I should again disappoint you?”

“Then you must be patient with me, good to me until it is all right again. I am a strange creature, a woman of moods.” She was silent a moment. “I have been through so much.” He bent toward her. She rose abruptly, there had been little or no caressing between them. Now she spoke quickly:

“Don’t hope too much… or… or expect anything. I am a megalomaniac: everything that happens to me seems larger, grander, finer, more wonderful than that which happens to any one else.”

She paused a moment. “This… then, between us is friendship?” she went on tentatively. He answered her very steadily: “This, between us, is what you will.” “You know how it has been with me?” Her voice was broken. He was deeply moved and answered:

“God gave it to me to comfort you.” There was a long pause after that. It was getting late, and they must soon part. He kissed her hands when he went away, first one and then the other. “Until next week.”

“Until next week, or any time you need me.” Then there were letters between them, letters that have already been transcribed.

He came the next week and the next. A man of infinite culture, widely read and with a very real knowledge of every subject of which he spoke, it was not perhaps strange that she fell under the spell of his companionship, and found it ever more satisfying.

Her own education was American and superficial, but her intelligence was really of a high order and browsed eagerly upon his. The only other she was seeing at this time was Dr. Peter Kennedy, a man of very different calibre. Peter Kennedy, country born and bred, of a coarsening profession and provincial experience.

Margaret was not made to live alone, for all her talk of resources, her piano and her books, her writing materials. The house, Carbies, was soon obnoxious to her. She had taken it for three months against the advice of her people, who feared solitude for her. She could not give in so soon, tell them they were right. But it was and remains ugly, ill-furnished, with its rough garden. She had some sort of heart attack the Monday after Gabriel Stanton’s first visit, and it was then Dr. Kennedy told her about her house, wondered at her having taken it.

After he told her that it had been a nursinghome she began to dislike the place actively, said the rooms were haunted with the groans of people who had been operated upon, that she smelt ether and disinfectants. She did not tell Gabriel Stanton these things. To Gabriel, Carbies was enchanted ground, he came here as to a shrine, worshipping. He used to talk to her of the golden bloom of the gorse, and the purple of the distant sea, of the way the sun shone on his coming. When with him she made no mention of distaste. For five successive weeks that spring the weather held, and each weekend was lovelier than the last. From Friday to Monday she may have felt the charm of which he spoke. From Monday to Friday she lamented to her doctor about the groans and the smell of disinfectants, and he consoled her in his own way, which was not hers, and would not have been Gabriel’s, but was the best he knew.

Peter Kennedy at this time was recently qualified, not very learned in his profession, nor in anything else for that matter. He became quickly infatuated with his new patient. She told him she had heart disease, and he looked up “Diseases of the Heart” in Ouain’s “Dictionary of Medicine “and gave her all the prescribed remedies, one after another.

He heard of her reputation; chiefly from herself, probably. And that she was rich. Mr. and Mrs. Rysam came down once, with motors and maids, and made it clear; they told him what a precious charge he had. He took Edgar Rysam out golfing, golfing had been Peter Kennedy’s chief interest in life until he met Margaret Capel. And Edgar found him very companionable and most considerate to a beginner. Edgar Rysam had taken to golf because he was putting on flesh, because his London doctor and some few stock-broking friends advised it. He had practised assiduously with a professional, learnt how to stand, but forgotten the lessons in approach and drive and putt.

He had succeeded in acquiring a bag of fine clubs and some golfing jargon. He never knew there was any enjoyment in the game until Peter Kennedy walked round the Pineland course with him and handicapped him into winning a match. After that he wanted to play every day and always, talked of prolonging his stay, of coming down again. Margaret reproached Peter for what he had done.

“I did it to please you… I thought you wanted them to be amused.”

“If that was all I wanted I would have stayed in London,” she retorted. She was extraordinarily and almost contemptuously straightforward with Peter Kennedy. She knew that with a man of his limited experience it was unnecessary to be subtle. She may have sometimes encouraged his approaches, but the greater part of the time snubbed him unmercifully.

“You don’t put yourself on the same level as Gabriel Stanton, do you?” she asked him scornfully one day when he was gloomily complaining that “a fellow never had a chance.”

“If I were not more