Twilight by Julia Frankau (ready to read books txt) 📕

ON Monday morning he went up to town without seeing her again. Tuesday he got that fateful telegram:

Stevens seen man hanging about house, shabby peering man. Questioned cook. Sick with fear. Send back all my letters at once by special messenger. In panic. On no account come down or near me but letters urgent.

Stevens had told her in the evening whilst putting her to bed. Stevens knew all about the case and was alert for possible complications. The shabby man had been under the observation of cook and housemaid.

“And much satisfaction he got out of what they told him. Askin’ questions an’ peerin’ about! Cook told him off, said no one hadn’t been stayin’ here, an’ if they had ‘twas no business of his.”

Margaret, pale and stricken, asked if the man looked like… like a detective.

“Lawyer’s clerk more like, but I thought I’d best let you know.”

The news would have kept until the morning, but one could not expect a servant to take into consideration the effect her stories might have on Margaret’s sensitiveness. She had no sleep at all. Sleepless and shaken she lay awake the whole night, conjuring up ghosts, chiefly the ghost or vision of James, coarse-mouthed, cruel, vindictive. The bare idea of the case being reopened made her shudder, she had been so tormented in court, her modesties outraged. She knew she could never, would never bear it again. If the dreadful choice were all that was left to her she would give up Gabriel. At the thought of giving up Gabriel it seemed there was nothing else for which she cared, nothing on earth.

She conjured up not only ghosts but absurdities. The shabby peering man would go to Hampstead, question Gabriel’s silly sister, be shown letters. This was more than she could bear. On the last occasion letters of hers had been read in court; love letters to James! She cringed in her bed at the remembrance of them. And what had she written to Gabriel? Not one word came back to her of anything she had written. At first she knew they had been laboured letters, laboured or literary. But since she had been down here, and Peter Kennedy, by sheer force of contrast, had taught her how much she could care for a really good and clever man, she had written with entire unrestraint, freely.

She wrote that telegram to Gabriel Stanton at four o’clock in the morning, going down to the drawingroom for a telegram form in dressinggown and slippers, her hair in two plaits, shivering with cold and apprehension. The house was full of eerie sounds; she heard pursuing feet. After she had secured the forms she rushed for the shelter of her room and the warmth of her bed; cowering under the clothes, not able for a long time to do the task she had set herself. When she became sufficiently rested she took more time and care over the wording of her telegram to Gabriel than she might have done over a sonnet. She wanted to say just enough, not too much, not to bring him down, yet to make the matter urgent. Stevens was rung for at six o’clock for tea and perhaps sympathy.

“Get me a cup of tea as quickly as you can, I’ve been awake the whole night. I want this telegram sent off as soon as the office opens, not later anyway than eight o’clock. Keep the house as quiet as you can. I shall try and sleep now.”

She slept until Gabriel’s telegram came back.

One of our own men coming with package by 3.15.

She met the train, looking pale and wretched. Stanton’s man wore the familiar cap. She had been to the office two or three times about the pottery book, and he recognised her easily.

“You have a parcel for me?”

“Mr. Gabriel said I was to tell you there was a letter inside.”

“A letter! But I thought… oh, yes! Give it to me.”

“And I was to ask if there was an answer.”

“An answer, but I can’t write here!”

“He didn’t know you was meeting me. ‘ Go up to the house,’ he said; ‘ give it to her in her own hands. Ask if there is any answer.”

“Tell him… tell him I’ll write,” she said vaguely.

But as yet she had not read. What would he say, what comfort send her? For all her wired definiteness she wished he had come himself, had a moment’s disloyalty to him, thought he should have disregarded her wishes, rushed down, even if they had met only at the station. He need not have been so punctilious!

She could not let the man go back until she had read and answered Gabriel’s letter. She made him drive back with her to Carbies, seated on the box beside the driver. She held the precious package tight, but did not open it. For that she must be alone.

Stanton’s man was handed over to the household’s care for lunch or tea. He was to go back by the 5.5. “Mr. Gabriel “had given him his instructions.

Now she was at her writing-table and alone.

The packet was sealed with sealingwax. Inside there were all her own letters, and a closed envelope superscribed in the dear familiar handwriting. She tore it open. After she had read her lover’s letter she had no more reproaches for him, vague or otherwise.

My Own, my Beloved:

Here are the letters. I could refuse you nothing, but to part from these has overwhelmed me, weakened me. I have turned coward. For it is all so unknown. I am in the dark, bewildered. Your wire was an awful shock. I am haunted with terror, the harder to bear because it came in the midst of all the sweet sacred thoughts and remembrances of a wonderful weekend, of the things 3 r ou said or allowed me to say which filled me with high hopes, promise of joy and happiness I dared hardly dwell upon. I don’t know what has happened. I only know you must not be alone and have forbidden me to come to you. Rescind your decision, I implore you. As I think and think with restless brain and heart my great ache and anxiety are that you are in trouble and that I am away and useless, just when I would give my soul for the chance of standing by you and with you in any need and for always. By all the remembrance of our happy hours, by all the new and sweet happiness you have given me, by all I yearn for in the future give me this chance. Let me come to you. To think of you suffering alone is maddening. Trust me, give me your trust, solemnly I swear not to fail you whatever may happen. It is of you only I am thinking. I can be strong for you, wise for you, and should thank God, both in pride and humbleness, for the chance to serve you; to serve you with reverence and love. Send for me. Tell me let me share all and always.

Devotedly yours,

G. S.

She sat a long time with the letter in her hand, read it again and yet again. She forgot the night terrors, began to question herself. Of what had she been so frightened? What had Stevens told her? Only that a shabby man had questioned cook about their visitors. Now she wanted to analyse and sift the trouble, get to bedrock with it. She rang the bell and sent for the maids. They had singularly little to tell her; summarised it came to this: A shabby man had hung about Carbies all Monday; cook had called him up to the back door and asked him what he was after “No good, I’ll be bound,” she told him. He had paid her a compliment and said that “with her in the kitchen it was no wonder men ‘ung about.” And after that they seemed to have had something of a colloquy and cook had been asked if she walked out with anybody. “Like his nasty impidence,” she commented, when telling the story to her mistress. “I up and told him whether I walked out with anybody or not I wasn’t for the likes of him.”

It was not without question and cross-question Margaret elicited that this final snub was not given until after tea. Cook defended the invitation.

“It’s ‘ard if in an establishment like this you can’t offer a young man a cup of tea.” She complained, not without waking a sympathetic echo in Margaret’s own heart, that Pineland was that dull, not a bit o’ life in it. Married men came round with the carts and a girl delivered the milk.

“‘E was pleasant company enough till ‘e started arskin’ questions.”

Then it appeared it was Stevens who “gave him as good as he gave,” asking him what it was he did want to know, and being satirical with him. The housemaid had chimed in with Stevens; there may have been some little feminine jealousy at the back of it. Cook was young and frivolous, the two others more sedate. Stevens and the housemaid must have set upon cook and her presumed admirer. In any case the young man was given his conge immediately after tea, before he had