Chapter Fifteen.
“Doing” Romary.
“She told the tale with bated breath—
‘A sad old story; is it true?’”
There was no good, there seldom is any, in crying about it. And Mary’s tears were those rather of anger and indignation than of sorrow. The sorrow was there, but it lay a good deal lower down, and she had no intention of letting any one suspect its existence, nor that of her present discomfort, in any way. So she soon left off crying, and tried to rally again the temporarily scattered forces of her philosophy.
“Well,” she reflected, “it has been a failure, and perhaps it was a mistake. I must put it away among the good intentions that had better have remained such. I must try to think I have at worst done Lilias’s cause no harm—honestly I don’t think I have—nothing that I could say would move that man one way or the other. And any way I meant well—my darling!—I would do it all over again for you, would I not? My poor Lily—to think how happy she might have been but for him. As for what he thinks of me I do not care, deliberately and decidedly I do not care, though just now it makes me feel hot,”—for the colour had mounted in her face even while she was asserting her indifference—“or perhaps, to be quite truthful, I should say I shall not care, very soon I shall not, I know. I shall not even care what he says of me—except—it would be rather dreadful if Lilias ever heard of it! but I do not think he will ever speak of it—he has what people call the instincts of a gentleman, I suppose.”
Mary walked on, she was close to the lodge gates now. Suddenly a quick clatter behind her made her look round—a girl on horseback followed by a groom was passing her, and as Mary glanced up she caught sight of the bright, sweet face of Alys Cheviott. One instant she turned in Mary’s direction, and, it seemed to Mary—conscious of red eyes and a half guilty sensation of having no business within the gates—eyed her curiously. But she did not stop, or even slacken her pace. “She cannot have recognised me,” said Mary.
“And to-morrow,” she thought, with a sigh, half of relief, half of despair, “I shall be home again, and Lilias will be asking me if I came across any of the Romary people, or heard anything about Arthur Beverley.”
And when she got back to Uxley and Mrs Greville’s afternoon tea, she had to say how very much she had enjoyed her walk, and how pretty Romary Park looked from the road.
“Only,” repeated Mrs Greville, “I do so wish the Cheviotts had been away, and that I could have taken you all to see through the house and gardens and everything,” and Mary agreed that it was a great pity the Cheviotts had not been away, thinking in her heart that it was perhaps a greater pity than Mrs Greville had any idea of.
How seldom to-morrow fulfills the predictions of today! On Wednesday evening Mary was so sure she was going back to Hathercourt on Thursday morning, and on Thursday morning a letter from Lilias upset all her plans. It had been arranged that Mr Western should walk over to Uxley on Thursday to lunch there, and be driven home with Mary in Mrs Greville’s pony-carriage; but Wednesday had brought news to Hathercourt of the visit of a school inspector, and Mr Western’s absence was not to be thought of.
“So,” wrote Lilias, “mother and I have persuaded him to go on Friday instead, if it will suit Mrs Greville equally well. If not, we shall expect you home to-morrow, but do stay till Friday, if you can, Mary, for I can see that poor papa has been rather looking forward to the little change of a day at Uxley, and he has so few changes.”
Mary was longing to be home again, but her longings were not the question, and as Friday proved to be equally convenient to Mrs Greville, the matter was decided as Lilias wished.
“But you look rather melancholy about it, Mary,” said Mrs Greville. “Are you homesick already?”
Mary smiled. Mr Morpeth was looking at her with some curiosity.
“Not exactly,” she said, honestly.
She glanced up and saw a smile pass round the table.
“What are you all laughing at me for?” she said, smiling herself.
“You are so dreadfully honest,” said Mrs Greville.
“And unsophisticated, I suppose,” said Mary, “to own to the possibility of anything so old-fashioned as homesickness.”
“It must be rather a nice feeling, I think,” said Mr Morpeth. “I mean to say it must be nice to have one place in the world one really longs for. I have never known what that was—we were all at school for so many years after our father’s death—and since we have been together we have been knocking about so, there was no chance of feeling anywhere at home.”
“It must be dreadful to be homesick when one is very ill and has small chance of ever seeing home again,” said Cecilia Morpeth. “We used to see so much of that at Mentone and those places. Invalids who had not many days to live, just praying for home. Do you remember that poor young Brooke, last winter, Frances?”
“That’s it,” exclaimed the elder Miss Morpeth, emphatically.
Everybody stared at her.
“What is the matter? What are you talking about, Frances?” asked her brother and sister.
Miss Morpeth laughed.
“You must have thought I was going out of my mind,” she said, “but it has bothered me so, and when Cecilia mentioned the Brookes, it flashed before me in a moment.”
“What?” repeated Cecilia.
“The likeness—don’t you remember we were talking about it, last night, in our own room? A curious likeness in Miss Western’s face to some one—I could not tell who. Don’t you see it, Cecilia? Not to Basil Brooke, but to the younger brother, Anselm—the one that used to ride with us.”
“Yes,” said Cecilia, “I see what you mean. It is especially when Miss Western looks at all anxious or thoughtful.”
“It is curious,” said Mary. “If we had any cousins, I should fancy these Brookes you are talking of must be relations. My eldest brother’s name is Basil, and the second one is George Anselm, and my mother’s name was Brooke. But I think she told me all her family had died out—anyway, your friends can only be very distant relations.”
“But the likeness,” said Miss Morpeth. “It is quite romantic isn’t it? I suppose you are like your mother, Miss Western?”
“Yes,” said Mary.
“It is to be hoped the likeness goes no further than the face,” said Cecilia, thoughtlessly. “These Brookes are frightfully consumptive. I beg your pardon,” she added, seeing that Mary looked grave, “I should not have said that.”
“I was not thinking of ourselves,” said Mary. “I know we are not consumptive. I was trying to remember if I had ever heard mother speak of any such cousins.”
“The consumption comes from their mother’s side,” said Miss Morpeth. “I remember their aunt, Mrs Brabazon, telling me so. She was a Brooke, and she was as strong as possible.”
“Basil Brooke is dead,” said Mr Morpeth. “I saw his death in the Times last week, poor fellow!”
“I will tell mother about them,” said Mary, and then the conversation went off to other subjects.
An hour or two later, when Mary and the Morpeths were sitting in the drawing-room together, and Mrs Greville was attending to her housekeeping for the day, she suddenly re-appeared, with a beaming face.
“Frances, Mary, Cecilia,” she exclaimed, “such a piece of good luck! Mr Petre, Mr Cheviott’s agent, has just been calling here to see Mr Greville about some parish business, and I happened to say to him that I had friends with me here who had such a wish to see Romary. And what do you think? Mr Cheviott and his sister are away! They went yesterday evening to pay a visit, somewhere in the neighbourhood, for three days. And Mr Petre was so nice about it—he says he has perfect carte blanche about showing the house when they are away, and Mrs Golding is always delighted to do the honours. So it is all fixed—we are to go this afternoon—we must have luncheon a little earlier than usual. So glad you are not going home to-day, Mary.”
Mary felt—afterwards she trusted she had not looked—aghast. What evil genii have conspired to bring about such a scheme? To go to see Romary—of all places on earth, the last she ever wished to re-enter—to go to admire the possessions of the man who had done her more injury and caused her deeper mortification than she had ever endured before!
“Oh, Mrs Greville,” she exclaimed, hastily. “It is very good of you, but I don’t think I care about going—you won’t mind if I stay at home?”
“If you stay at home!” said Mrs Greville, in amazement. “Of course I should mind. I made the plan quite as much for you as for Frances and Cecilia; and only yesterday—or day before, was it?—you seemed so interested in Romary, and so anxious to see it, you were asking ever so many questions about it. I did not think you were so changeable.”
Mary’s face flushed.
“I did not mean to be changeable or to vex you, dear Mrs Greville,” she began, “only—”
“Only what?”
Mary had left her seat and come over to where Mrs Greville was standing.
“It is a very silly reason I was going to give,” she said in a low voice, trying to smile. “You remember my saying before how very much I dislike that Mr Cheviott.”
Mrs Greville could not help laughing.
“Is that all?” she said. “Come now, Mary, I had no idea you could be so silly. I have always looked upon you as such a model of good sense. I began to think there must be some mystery you had not explained to me about Lilias’s affairs, of course, I mean,” she added, in a whisper, glancing at Mary with re-awakened curiosity in her eyes.
Mary kept her countenance.
“It is just as I said,” she replied. “I can’t give you any better reason for not wanting to go than my dislike to that man.”
“Very well, then, you must come. That might prevent your liking to see him; it need not prevent your liking to see his house. Your not coming would quite spoil our pleasure.”
Mary hesitated. Suddenly there flashed into her mind some of Lilias’s last words of warning.
“Whatever you do, Mary,” she had said, “don’t let Mrs Greville get it into her head that there has been anything mortifying to us—that Arthur has behaved ill, I mean. I couldn’t stand that being said.”
And Mary turned to Mrs Greville with a smile.
“Very well,” she said. “I won’t be silly, and I will go.”
“That’s all right,” said Mrs Greville, and Mary wished she could have said so too.
After all, why not? It was entirely a matter of personal feeling on her part; there was nothing unladylike or unusual in her going with the others to see the show house of the neighbourhood; and yet the bare thought of her doing so by any possibility coming to Mr Cheviott’s ears made her cheeks burn.
“That horrible man-servant!” she said to herself—“supposing he recognises me!”
But there was no good in “supposings.” She determined to make the best of the unavoidable, though it was impossible altogether to refrain from fruitless regrets that her return home had been delayed.
Nothing came in the way of the expedition. The afternoon turned out very fine, remarkably fine and mild for February, and the little party that set out from the Vicarage would have struck any casual observer as cheerful and light-hearted in the extreme.
“Do you care about this sort of thing?” said Mr Morpeth to Mary, when in the course of the walk they happened to fall a little behind the others.
“About what?” said Mary, absently. Her thoughts had been far away from her companions; she now recalled them with some effort.
“Going to see other people’s houses,” replied the young man. “I hate it, though I have had more than my share of it, knocking about from place to place, as we have been doing for so long.”
“Why do you hate it?” inquired Mary, with more interest. The mere fact of Mr Morpeth’s aversion to such expeditions in general seemed congenial, smarting as she was with her own sore repugnance to this one in particular. And even a shadow of sympathy in her present discomfort was attractive to Mary to-day.
Mr Morpeth kicked a pebble or two out of his path with a sort of boyish impatience which made Mary smile.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied, vaguely, “I always think it is a snobbish sort of thing to do, going poking about people’s rooms, and all that. And if it’s a pretty house, it makes one envious, and if it’s ugly, what’s the good of seeing it?”
Mary laughed.
“I like seeing old houses—really old houses,” she said.
“Not ruins, but an old house still habitable enough to enable one to fancy what it must have really been like ‘once upon a time.’”
“Yes,” said Mr Morpeth, “I know how you mean. But even that interest goes off very quickly. We once lived near an old place that nearly took my breath away with awe and admiration the first time I went through it. But very soon it became as commonplace as anything, and I hated to hear people go off into rhapsodies about it.”
“What a pity!” said Mary. “I don’t know that I envy you people who have travelled everywhere and seen everything. You don’t enjoy little things as we do who have seen nothing.”
“But you don’t enjoy going to see this stupid place today,” persisted Mr Morpeth. “I know you don’t, for I was in the drawing-room this morning when you were all talking about it; I came in behind Mrs Greville, and sat down in the corner, though you didn’t see me.”
“Then if you heard all that was said you must have heard my reason for disliking to go to see Romary,” said Mary, in a tone of some annoyance.
“Yes,” said Mr Morpeth, coolly, “I did. I wonder why you dislike that unfortunate Mr What’s-his-name so? For before you came Mrs Greville entertained us with a wonderful story about a ball and a very grand gentleman who never looks at young ladies at all, having quite succumbed to—”
“Mr Morpeth,” exclaimed Mary, stopping short and turning round on her companion with scarlet cheeks, “I shall be very angry if you speak like that, and I don’t think Mrs Greville should have—”
“Please don’t be angry. I didn’t mean to vex you, and Mrs Greville was not telling any secrets,” said Mr Morpeth. “Only I have been wondering ever since why you should have taken such a dislike to the poor man. You must be very unlike other girls, Miss Western?”
He looked at her with a sort of half innocent, half mischievous curiosity, and somehow Mary could not keep up her indignation.
“Well, perhaps I am,” she said, good-naturedly. “All the same, Mr Morpeth, you have got quite a wrong idea about why I dislike Mr Cheviott. Don’t let us talk about him any more.”
“I don’t want to talk about him, I’m sure,” said Mr Morpeth. “I only wish he didn’t live here, or hadn’t a house which people insist on dragging me to see. I have no other ill-will at the unfortunate man.”
“Only you won’t leave off talking about him,” said Mary, “and we are close to Romary now. See, that is the lodge gate—on there just past the bend in the road.”
“Oh, you have been here before. I forgot,” said her companion, simply. But innocently as he spoke, his remark sent the blood flying again to Mary’s cheeks.
“What shall I do if that horrible footman opens the door?” she said to herself.
But things seldom turn out as bad as we picture them—or, rather, they seldom turn out as we picture them at all. The horrible footman did not make his appearance—men-servants of no kind were visible—the house seemed already in a half state of deshabille; only old Mrs Golding, the housekeeper, came forward, with many apologies and regrets that she had not known before of Mrs Greville’s and her friends’ coming. “Mr Petre had only just sent word,” and the carpets were up in the morning-room and library! So sorry, she chatted on, but she was thankful to take advantage of her master’s and Miss Cheviott’s absence, even for a day of two, to get some cleaning done.
“For a house like this takes a dell,” She added, pathetically, appealing to Mrs Greville, who answered good-humouredly that to be sure it must.
“But the best rooms are not dismantled, I suppose?” she inquired. “The great round drawing-room and the picture-gallery with the arched roof? Just like a Church,” she observed, parenthetically, to her companions; “that is what I want you so much to see. And the old part of the house, we are sure to see that, and it is really so curious.”
There was no “cleaning” going on in the great drawing-room, and Mrs Golding led the way to its splendours with unconcealed satisfaction. It was much like other big drawing-rooms, with an even greater air of formality and unusedness than is often seen.
Mary, who was not learned in old china, its chief attraction, turned away with little interest, and wished Mrs Greville would hasten her movements.
“What splendid old damask these curtains are,” she was saying to Mrs Golding. “One could not buy stuff like this nowadays.”
“No, indeed, ma’am,” said the housekeeper, shaking her head. “They must have been made many a long year ago. But they’re getting to look very dingy—Miss Alys’s always asking Mr Cheviott to refurnish this room. But it must have been handsome in its day—I remember being here once when I was a girl and seeing it all lighted up. I did think it splendid.”
“There are some very old rooms, are there not?” said Mary.
“Yes, miss, the tapestry rooms,” said Mrs Golding. “There’s a stair leading up to them that opens out of the picture-gallery—the only other way to them is through Mr Cheviott’s own rooms, and he always keeps that way locked, as no one else uses it. The stair runs right down to the side door on the terrace, so it’s a convenient way of getting in from the garden,” continued the communicative housekeeper. “But there’s not many in the house cares to go near those rooms, for they say the middle one’s haunted.”
“Dear me, this is getting interesting,” said Mr Morpeth. “What or whom is it haunted by, pray?”
Mrs Golding looked up at him sharply, then with a slight smile she shook her head.
“You would only make fun of it if I told you, sir,” she said, “and somehow one doesn’t care to have old stories made fun of, silly though they may be.”
“No,” said Mary, “one doesn’t. I think you are quite right,” and the old woman looked pleased.
“You won’t prevent my seeing the haunted room, though you won’t tell me its story?” said Mr Morpeth, good-naturedly. So Mrs Golding led the way.
They passed along the arched picture-gallery, which in itself merited Mrs Greville’s praises, though the pictures it contained were neither many nor remarkable.
“I like this room,” said Mary, approvingly. “It is much less commonplace than the drawing-room—not that I have seen many great houses,” she added, with a smile, to Mr Morpeth, who was walking beside her, “but this is a room one would remember wherever one went.”
“Yes,” said Mr Morpeth. “It is a room with a character of its own, certainly. Frances will be calling it romantic and picturesque and all the rest of it. I am so tired of all those words.”
“I am afraid you are tired of most things,” said Mary. “See what an advantage we dwellers at home have over you travelled people!”
Her spirits were rising. So far there had been nothing at all in the expedition to arouse her fears, and she began to think they had been exaggerated.
“Which is the way to the haunted room?” asked Mr Morpeth, when they were all tired of admiring the picture-gallery.
Mrs Golding replied by opening a door at the further end of the room from that at which they had entered. It led into a little vestibule up one side of which ran a narrow staircase.
“Up that stair, sir,” she said to Mr Morpeth, “you get into a passage with two doors, one of them leads into the new part of the house and one into the old tapestry rooms—it is one of those rooms that is haunted.”
“Let us see if we can guess which it is,” exclaimed Mr Morpeth, springing up the staircase. His sister and Mrs Greville followed him, but Mary lingered a little behind.
“What is the story of the haunted room?” she said, in a low voice, to the housekeeper.
Mrs Golding smiled. She had somehow taken a liking to this quietly-dressed, quietly-spoken young lady, with the pretty eyes and pleasant voice.
“To tell you the truth, miss,” she answered, “I do not very rightly know, it myself. It was something about a lady from foreign parts that was brought here sorely against her will by one of the old lords—I think I have heard said they were once lords—of Romary. He wanted her to marry him, but she would not. Whether he forced her to give in or not I can’t tell, but the end of it was she killed herself—I fancy she threw herself out of the window of the room where he had imprisoned her. And since then they say she is to be seen there now and then.”
“Was it very long ago?”
“I couldn’t say. It was at the time, I know, when there was wars in foreign parts, and that was how the squire of Romary had found the lady. Miss Alys knows all the story—that’s our young lady. Miss Cheviott I should say. It is a sad enough story anyway.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “ghost stories always are, I think. It is queer that the people who have been the most miserable in this world are always the ones who are supposed not to be able to rest without returning to it.”
But just then a voice from above interrupted them.
“Miss Western,” it said, “do come up. This is the jolliest place of the whole house.”
So Mary ran up the staircase. Mr Morpeth was waiting for her at the top.
Chapter Sixteen.
The Haunted Room.
“Startled by her own thoughts, she looked around:
There was no fair fiend near her.”
Shelley.
It was really a very respectable attempt at a haunted room.
“Something like, isn’t it?” said Mr Morpeth, looking round him with approval, while Miss Morpeth shivered and declared she would not care to spend a night in it, and Miss Cecilia laughed at her and said she would like nothing better than to stay there till to-morrow morning, to see what was to be seen.
“Nonsense, my dear,” said Mrs Greville. “You would be as frightened as possible long before it got dark.”
“She would be in hysterics in half an hour,” said her brother, politely.
“I am sure I wouldn’t,” protested Cecilia. “Miss Western, you wouldn’t be afraid to spend the night here, would you?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary, doubtfully. “I almost think I should be. Those faces in the tapestry are so ghostly. I suppose,” she went on, simply, “if I had to stay here—I mean if there were any good reason for it, I should not be frightened—but I shouldn’t feel inclined to try it just as a test of bravery.”
“As a piece of foolish bravado, I should call it,” said Mrs Greville.
“It would be an awkward place to be shut up in,” said Mrs Golding, “for the door is in the tapestry, you see, ladies,”—she closed it as she spoke—“and it opens with a spring, and unless one knows the exact spot to press, it would be very difficult to find. The other door, which leads into the new part of the house, is hidden in the same way.”
She crossed the room, and, almost without hesitation, pressed a spot in the wall, and a door flew open. It led into another room, something like the first, but rather more modern in its furniture. All the party pressed forward.
“There is nothing particular to see here,” said Mrs Golding, “but this room opens again into the white corridor, where my master’s own rooms are. There is a very pretty view from the window at the end, if you would come this way, and we can get round to the front of the house again.”
A sudden impulse seized Mary.
“Mrs Greville,” she said, “I would like to go out into the garden by the door at the foot of the stair we tame up. Mayn’t I go back? I will meet you at the front of the house.”
“Very well,” said Mrs Greville. “You are such an odd girl, Mary,” she added, in a lower voice, “I suppose your dislike to Mr Cheviott prevents your liking to see his rooms!”
Mary laughed, but coloured a little too.
“Then I’ll meet you at the front of the house,” she said, as she turned away.
“Let me go with you,” put in Mr Morpeth—the others, under Mrs Golding’s guidance, had already passed on—“it wouldn’t do for you to go prowling about those ghostly rooms all by yourself, Miss Western. Who knows what might happen to you?”
Mary laughed again—this time more heartily.
“It’s not dark enough yet to be frightened,” she said, as they re-entered the haunted chamber, where already the heavy old hangings had toned down the afternoon light into dimness.
“Hardly,” said Mr Morpeth, carelessly, stepping forward to the window as he spoke. Mary was following him when a slight sound arrested her.
“Mr Morpeth,” she exclaimed, “it is to be hoped we can get out by the other door, for the one we have just come in by was shut behind us; I heard it click; it is my fault. I never thought about its being a spring door, and I let it swing to.”
She looked startled and a little pale. Mr Morpeth was surprised at her seeming to take it so seriously, and felt half inclined to banter her.
“We never meant to go back by the door we came in by,” he said. “What would have been the good of that? We’ll find the other in a minute—sure to; don’t look so aghast, Miss Western. At the worst we can ring the bells and alarm the house till some one comes to let us out. You are surely not afraid that we shall have to get out by the window?”
As he spoke he crossed over to the side of the room where, to their knowledge, the second door was, if only they could find it! Mr Morpeth, at first, began feeling about in a vague way, as if expecting to light upon the spring by a happy accident. But no such result followed; he began to look a little more thoughtful.
“Let’s see,” he said, consideringly, “whereabouts was it we first came into the room?”
Mary stepped backwards close to the wall, and then moved slowly along, keeping her back to it.
“It must have been about here, I think,” she said, stopping short. “I remember the first thing I caught sight of was that cabinet, and it seemed just opposite me; and Mrs Greville standing in front of it seemed to shut out that narrow pane of the window. Yes,” as Mr Morpeth put himself in the position she described—“yes, she was standing just there; the door must be hereabouts.”
They turned to search more systematically, but in vain. Peer as they would into every square inch of the musty tapestry hangings within a certain radius, feel as they would, up and down, right and left, higher up than Mrs Golding could possibly have reached, lower down than any door within the memory of man ever locked; it was all in vain. Then they looked at each other.
“It must be a spring pressing inwards—flat on the surface,” said Mr Morpeth. “I thought there would have been a little knob of some kind. However, let’s try again.”
He moved his hand slowly around the wall, pressing carefully, anxiously endeavouring to detect the slightest inequality or indentation, and Mary followed his example till their patience was exhausted. Then again they stopped and looked at each other.
“Would it be any good trying to find the spring of the other door?” said Mary, at last.
“I don’t fancy it would,” said Mr Morpeth. “You see, we’re quite in the dark as to what sort of spring it is; we may have touched it twenty times, but not pushed or pressed it the right way. Don’t you think we’d better just not bother for a little? They’re sure to miss us before long, and then that old party will hunt us up.”
But Mary looked by no means disposed to take things so philosophically.
“I don’t know that they will miss us so quickly,” she said. “It will take them some time to go all over the front of the house, and if they don’t find us in the grounds they are sure just to think we have walked on. I am sure Mrs Greville will think so, any way; she always takes things so comfortably,” she added, with an uneasy reflection that Mrs Greville would probably be rejoicing at the success of her amiable scheme for throwing herself and “young Morpeth” together. “I wish I had not left the others.”
Mr Morpeth smiled.
“I really think you are wasting a great deal of unnecessary energy on our misadventure,” he said. “I don’t see anything so very desperate about it. If we were in a box now, like that girl at Modena, Guinevere—no, Genevieve—no, bless me, I can’t remember. You know whom I mean—we might be rather uneasy. But at the very worst we cannot be left here more than an hour or two. I dare say the housekeeper will be coming back to look for us immediately, for she will know how awkward these doors are.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “I do think that is not unlikely. She did not hear us speak of going back to the gardens though, did she? she had gone on in front.”
“But she is pretty sure to miss us, and ask what had become of us—she’s not a stupid old lady by any means. Just let’s wait here comfortably a few minutes, and see if she doesn’t come.”
Mary tried to take his advice, but as the minutes passed she grew more and more uncomfortable.
“I say,” exclaimed Mr Morpeth, “supposing we try to make ourselves heard somehow. I never thought of that. Very likely there are offices—pantries, or kitchens, and so on under these rooms. There’s no bell, but supposing we jump on the floor and scream—I’ll jump, if you will be so good as to scream—some one will be sure to hear us and rush up to see what’s happening in the haunted room.”
But at this proposal Mary grew literally white with anxiety.
“Oh, please don’t, Mr Morpeth,” she said, so beseechingly that the young man looked at her with more concern than he had yet shown.
“What a queer girl she must be to take it to heart so!” he said to himself.
“Please don’t,” she repeated. “It would make such a to-do. I should be so dreadfully annoyed—oh, please don’t.”
“That horrible footman” was the great terror in her mind; “if he came up and saw me he would be sure to tell his master. What would Mr Cheviott think of me if he heard of my being here, prying about his house the very day after?”
“Very well. I’m very comfortable. I’m quite content to wait till some one comes to let us out,” said Mr Morpeth. “It was you, Miss Western, that was in such a hurry.”
Which was true enough. Mary did not know what to say—only her uneasiness increased. It began to grow dusk too—outside among the trees it was getting to look decidedly dusk.
“What shall we do?” she exclaimed at last, in a sort of desperation. “Evidently they are not missing us, and will not do so till they get home, and then there will be such a fuss! Oh, Mr Morpeth,” she went on, as a new idea struck her, “do you think you could possibly get out of the window?”
She said it so simply, and was evidently so much in earnest, that Mr Morpeth gave up for once his habit of looking at the ludicrous side, and set to work to discover how this last suggestion could be carried out. The window was much more easy to deal with than the doors. It opened at once, and, leaning over, Mr Morpeth descried a little ledge below it, leading to the top of the porch above the side-door into the shrubbery.
“I can easily get out,” he said, turning back to Mary, “but once I am out what do you want me to do? You don’t want any fuss, but I must tell somebody to come and get you out.”
“Oh, yes, of course—if you could find Mrs Greville and ask her to tell the housekeeper of the door’s having shut to, she would come and open it,” said Mary. “If you could just tell her in a matter-of-fact way, you know. What I don’t want is a great rush of all the servants and people about the place to see me locked up here; it would be so uncomfortable. I’ll wait here quite patiently once I know you’ve gone, for you’ll be sure to find them.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Mr Morpeth, quietly, “and of course if I should break my neck or my arms or anything, there will be the satisfaction of knowing it was in a good cause.”
Mary started forward.
“You don’t mean that there is really any risk for you,” she exclaimed. “No, I am sure there isn’t,” she continued, after looking out of the window, and examining it for herself, “of course, if there was, I shouldn’t want you to go. You are laughing at me because you think me very silly—I am very sorry, but I can’t help it. I do so wish I hadn’t come here—I wish I could get out of the window too!”
“No, indeed, it would not be safe for you at all,” said Mr Morpeth, hastily, concealing his private opinion that the feat was not so easy as it looked. “I am a good climber and I’ve had plenty of practice. It is nothing for me, but it would be quite different for you—promise me, Miss Western, you will not try to get out of the window while I am away. I shall be as quick as I can, but I may not be able to find the others all at once.”
“Very well,” said Mary. “I do promise. Not that I ever meant to get out of the window, I assure you.”
Mr Morpeth clambered out successfully. Mary watched him groping along the ledge, holding on first by a projecting window sash, then by a water-pipe, then by what she could not tell—somehow or other he had made his way to the roof of the door porch, and was hidden from her sight. But, in a minute, a whistle and a low call of “all right” satisfied her as to his safety.
“He is very good-natured,” thought Mary. “He called out softly on purpose not to attract attention. What a silly girl he must think me, to make such a fuss about such a simple thing! But I can’t help it.”
She drew back from the window and sat down on one of the straight-backed, tapestry-cushioned chairs, and began to calculate how long she would probably have to wait. Ten minutes at most—it could not take longer to run round to the front of the house and find Mrs Golding.
“They will come back by that door,” said Mary, to herself, directing her eyes towards the invisible entrance by which she and Mr Morpeth had returned to the haunted room. “How glad I shall be when I see it open! How I wish I had a watch! It would pass the time to count the minutes till they come—but I could hardly see the minute hand on a watch even now. How dark it is getting! It is those great trees outside—in summer, no light at all can get in here I should think.”
She got up and turned again to the window, fancying that looking out would be a little less gloomy than sitting staring at the old furniture and the shadowy figures on the walls, growing more and more weird and gruesome as the light faded. But, standing there at the window, there returned to her mind the tragic story of which Mrs Golding had given, her the outlines, and, despite her endeavours to think of something else, her imagination persisted in filling in the details. “She had thrown herself out of the window in despair,” Mrs Golding had told of the unhappy prisoner, and Mary recalled it with a slight shudder.
Was it much to be wondered at? Any one would grow desperate shut up within these four gloomy walls—gloomy now, and gloomy then, no doubt, for the tapestry was very old—older, probably, than the date of the story—and the room had ever since been left much as it was at that time. It was a ghastly story, as much for what had preceded the final tragedy as for the catastrophe itself.
“It is so very horrible to think of any one’s having been shut up in this very room for days, and weeks, and months, perhaps,” thought Mary. “And to think that her only way out of it was to many a man she hated! Still, whoever she was, she must have been brave; the only inconsistent part of the story is her being supposed to haunt the place she must have had such a horror of. Dear me, how dark it is getting!—how I do wish they would come, and how I wish I had not heard that story!”
Mary left the window again, and sat down on one of the hard, high-backed chairs. In spite of her anxiety and excitement, she was growing very tired, and once or twice she almost felt as if she were getting sleepy. But she was determined not to yield to this.
“It would be far worse if I fell asleep, and woke to find myself all in the dark,” she said to herself. “If I have to stay all night, I must keep awake, and, indeed, it begins to look very like having to stay all night. What can have become of Mr Morpeth? I am sure he has been gone half an hour.”
She listened till her ears were strained, but there was no sound. Then again the confused, sleepy feeling came over her; she dozed unconsciously for a minute or two, to be awakened suddenly by what in her sleep had seemed a loud noise. Mary started up, her heart beating violently, but she heard nothing for a moment or two. Then there came a faint creaking sound, as of some one coming up the staircase and along the passage outside. It was not the side from which she was looking for assistance, and, besides, whoever it was was approaching in perfect silence.
“Mr Morpeth would be sure to call out if it was he,” she reflected; “besides, Mrs Golding would be with him, and they would come the other way. Who can it be? Oh! supposing—just supposing the ghost were to come in, what should I do? I should always be told it was a dream; but I am not dreaming. And something must have been seen, otherwise there would not be the story about it.”
All this flashed through her mind in an instant. She got up from her chair with a vague intention of escaping, hiding herself somewhere, anywhere, but sat down again, as the steps came nearer and nearer, with a feeling of hopelessness. How could she escape? Where could she hide herself? There was no cupboard or recess, not even a curtain, in the bare, half-furnished room; she must just wait where she was, whatever happened, and, as if fascinated, poor Mary sat gazing on that part of the wall where she knew the door to be. Another moment—it seemed to her hours—and she heard the slight click of the concealed spring, and, thank Heavens, it was no ghost in flowing white, but a gentleman in a great-coat! Thus much Mary could discern, dusk though it was, even at the first glance, to her inexpressible relief.
“Mr Morpeth,” she exclaimed, “is it you? Oh, I am so thankful! But why—”
The voice that interrupted her was not Mr Morpeth’s.
“Who is there? Is it you, Mrs Golding? What is the matter?” exclaimed the some one whose approach had so terrified her.
An instant’s pause; Mary’s wits, beginning to recover themselves, were all but scattered again as a frightful suspicion dawned upon her. Was she dreaming, could it be that her very worst misgiving was realised? Who was it standing in frowning bewilderment before her? Ghost, indeed—at that moment it seemed to her she would rather have faced twenty ghosts than the living man before her.
“Mr Cheviott!” she ejaculated, feebly, hardly conscious of speaking.
Mr Cheviott came forward a little, but cautiously, and in evident astonishment and perplexity. Something in the tone of the half whisper struck him as familiar, though it was too dark for him to distinguish at once anything but the general outline of poor Mary’s figure.
“Who is it? I don’t understand; does Mrs Golding know of your being here?” he asked, confusedly, with a vague idea that possibly the mysterious visitor was some friend of the housekeeper.
“No—oh, yes, I mean,” replied Mary; “I got locked in by mistake, and—and—”
There was an end for the time of all explanation; Mary burst into unheroic tears; but not before an exclamation, to her ears fraught with inexpressible meaning, had reached her from Mr Cheviott.
“Miss Western, you here!” was all he said, but it was enough.
Though from the first of his entrance she had had no hope of escaping unperceived, yet the hearing his recognition expressed in words seemed to make things worse, and for the moment exaggerated almost beyond endurance the consciousness of her ignominious position. She cried as much from a sort of indignation at circumstances as from nervousness or timidity.
Mr Cheviott stood silent and motionless. Wild ideas were hurrying through his brain to the exclusion for the time of all reasonable conjecture. Had she been locked up here since the day before? Had she come with a frantic idea of winning him over even now to approve of an engagement between Arthur and her sister? If not, what was she doing here? And now that he had discovered her, what could he do or say that would not add to her distress?
Suddenly Mary looked up. Her tears somehow or other, had restored her self-control; the very shame she felt at Mr Cheviott’s hearing her sobs reacted so as to give her confidence.
“Why should I be ashamed? It is very natural I should cry after all the worry I have had the last few days; and who has caused it all? Who has broken Lily’s heart and made us all miserable? Why should I care what such a man as that thinks of me?”
She left off crying, and got up from the chair on which she had sunk down at the climax of her terror. She turned to Mr Cheviott, and said calmly, though not without the remains of an uncontrollable quaver in her voice:
“If you will be so good as to open the door, I should very much like to go.”
Mr Cheviott took up the cue with considerable relief. Any amount of formality was better than tears.
“Certainly,” he said, quietly. Then, almost to his own astonishment, the ludicrous side of the position suddenly presenting itself to him, a spirit of mischief incited him to add, “you must allow, Miss Western, I am in no way to blame for this disagreeable adventure of yours. And, if you will pardon my asking you, I must confess before I let you out I should very much like to know how you got in.”
Mary flamed up instantly.
“You have no right,” she began,—“no right,” she was going to say, “to ask me anything I have not chosen to tell you,” but she stopped short. She was in Mr Cheviott’s own house—how could she possibly refuse to tell him how she had got there? “I beg your pardon,” she said instead. “I—I came here with Mrs Greville and some people who wanted to see the house. I did not want to come,” she could not resist adding, with a curious little flash of defiance, “but I could not help it.”
“Ah! indeed, I understand,” said Mr Cheviott, turning to open the door, but to which part of her speech his observation was addressed, Mary was left in ignorance.
Mr Cheviott stopped.
“Which way do you wish to go out?” he asked.
“Out to the garden, if you please,” said Mary, eagerly. “That is the way Mr Morpeth—the gentleman that was with me, I mean—will be coming back. At least, I don’t know,” she went on, growing confused; “it depends on where he finds the housekeeper. But anyway, I would rather meet them all outside.”
“How on earth did ‘the gentleman that was with her’ get out?” thought Mr Cheviott—“or was it through some foolery of his that she got locked in?” But he was determined to ask no more questions.
He turned again to the wall, pressed the concealed spring without an instant’s hesitation, and the door flew open—flew open, and Mary, without a glance behind her, flew out.
Chapter Seventeen.
Mary Tells Stories.
Florizel—“Fortune speed us!—
Thus we set on, Camillo, to the sea-side.”
Camillo.—“The swifter speed the better.”
Winter’s Tale.
She flew out of the room, across the passage, down the little stair, and out at the door, still standing slightly ajar, for a moment thinking of nothing but the delight of being liberated at last. But it was dusk outside among the trees, and her hesitation which way to go recalled her to herself. She stopped short, and then turned back again.
“I should have thanked him. He really must think me mad,” she said to herself, with a hot flush of shame, hardly knowing what she ought to do.
But she was not long left in doubt. Mr Cheviott had followed her down-stairs; he was standing at the door.
“I am ashamed of not thanking you for letting me out,” she said, hastily.
“I hardly see that I could have done less,” he replied, dryly. “I merely followed you now to direct you how to get round to the front, as I believe you wish. You must keep that path to the left till it meets a wider one, which will bring you out at the foot of a flight of stone steps. These will take you up to the side terrace, and you can then easily see your way to the front of the house. It is not really dark yet; it is only the trees here which make it seem so, even in winter. They are so thick.”
“Thank you,” said Mary. “I am very much obliged to you, and I should have said so before, but—I did not think I was so silly—the feeling of being shut up in that room must have made me forget, it was so horrible,” and she gave a little shiver.
Mr Cheviott stepped forward a little, but it was too dark for Mary to see the concern in his eyes.
“Would you like me to go with you till you meet your friends,” he said, very gently.
“Oh, no, thank you,” exclaimed Mary, with great vehemence.
Mr Cheviott drew back.
“I see,” he said, with the slightly satirical tone Mary seemed to know so well and hated so devoutly. “It is bad enough to be still in the precincts of the ogre’s castle, but the presence of the ogre himself is quite too much for your nerves. Good-evening Miss Western.”
He raised his hat and re-entered the house before Mary had time to reply. She stood still for a second.
“Have I been rude to him again?” she said to herself, with a little compunction. “However, it really does not matter. No two people could dislike and despise each other more thoroughly than he and I do. I could never, in any circumstances, have liked him; but still, for Lily’s sake, I could have been civil to him. But now! I only hope, oh, ever so earnestly, that I shall never see him again—and what he thinks or does not think of me really is of less than no consequence.”
Nevertheless, the thought of the afternoon’s adventure made her cheeks tingle hotly, and she hurried on as fast as she could in the uncertain light. Mary Western seemed strangely unlike her usual philosophical self. She even seemed to find a relief to her irritation in trampling unnecessarily on the dry brushwood lying about here and there—the “scrunch” worked off her disgust a little. Once, after jumping on the top of a small raked-up heap, she stood still and laughed at herself.
“What a baby I am! I need never laugh at poor Josey’s ‘tantrums’ again,” she said to herself. “But the truth is that man has thoroughly mortified me, and I can’t stand mortification. It is my thorn in the flesh.”
Just then it seemed to her that she heard a faint sound in the path behind her. It was too dark to see anything, but Mary’s heart began to beat faster, and jumping down from the heap she hurried on more quickly than before.
“I dare say it’s only a rabbit,” she thought; “but still all round here has a sort of haunted feeling to me.”
She was glad when at last she came upon the flight of steps Mr Cheviott had described. Running up them, the first object that met her sight was Mr Morpeth hastening towards her.
“Miss Western! did you get out of the window? It was frightfully rash,” he exclaimed.
“I did not get out of the window,” replied Mary, shortly. “But that I did not try to do so is no thanks to you, Mr Morpeth.”
“Why, what’s the matter? I have done my very best, I can assure you,” he replied good-naturedly. “I was as quick as I could be, considering all your directions—I don’t think it can be more than half an hour since I left you.”
“Half an hour,” repeated Mary, indignantly. “You talk coolly of not much more than half an hour, but just fancy what that seemed to me. Shut up alone in that horrible room, and in the dark, too!”
“I’m very sorry, but I couldn’t help it.”
“It would not have taken me half an hour, I know,” pursued Mary, “to have run round to the front of the house and find the housekeeper.”
“Yes,” replied Mr Morpeth, “it certainly would, if, when you had run round to the front of the house, you had not found the housekeeper, and had been told instead that she had had to hurry off to her master, who had arrived unexpectedly—and if you had had to explain all to Mrs Greville, and beg her not to rouse an alarm and so on—all this in deference to the special commands of a certain young lady, whom I mistakenly imagined I was trying to serve.”
Mary felt rather ashamed of herself.
“Did you not find the housekeeper after all?” she inquired, meekly.
“Yes, Mrs Greville managed it, but I would not let her go back through the house to let you out, as I knew you would so dislike possibly meeting that fellow—what’s his name?—the man himself, I mean, whom you hate so. So I got a key; look what a queer one,” holding out a quaint looking object, which Mary could, however, hardly distinguish, till she took it in her own hands, “it opens the spring door from the outside, you see.”
“But did you see Mr Cheviott?” asked Mary.
“Oh, no! he stopped at his bailiff’s, or somewhere, and sent on his groom to say he had come back about some business, and would stay all night. Then off flies Mrs Silver, or whatever her name is—and nobody thinks any more of us two unfortunate wretches.”
“Yes, I see. I understand it all now,” said Mary, “and—”
“You do, but I don’t,” interrupted Mr Morpeth. “I want to know how you got out of the room. You could never have found the spring, after all, and in the dark too.”
Mary did not answer.
“Did you?” persisted her companion. “Come now, Miss Western, I do think I deserve a civil answer.”
“Well, then, I didn’t,” replied Mary.
“Do you call that a civil answer?” inquired Mr Morpeth.
“No,” said Mary, half laughing, “I don’t know that I do, but—”
“But what?”
“The truth is, I don’t want to tell you how I got out of the room, and I shall be exceedingly, infinitely obliged to you if you will say no more about the affair.”
“A short time ago you said you would be exceedingly obliged, or eternally grateful, or something of the kind if I would climb out of that window and find the housekeeper.”
“And so I was—so I am,” said Mary.
“Looks like it,” observed Mr Morpeth.
Then they walked on a few steps in silence, Mary feeling still uneasy, and somewhat conscience-smitten.
“Mr Morpeth,” she said at last, “what are you thinking?”
“Would you really like to know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, I was thinking that girls are all the same—very little satisfaction to be got out of any of them.”
“That means me, I suppose,” said Mary, slightly nettled.
“Perhaps,” replied Mr Morpeth, coolly. “You see, Miss Western, I did think you such a particularly sensible girl.”
“I dislike being considered a sensible girl more than anything you could say to me,” interrupted Mary.
“There you go!” said Mr Morpeth. “As I was saying, I thought you, till to-day, a very sensible girl—not like my sisters, who are forever flying out about something or other—and this afternoon you have really been so very uncertain and queer-tempered—”
“I know I have,” interrupted Mary again, stopping short as she spoke. “Mr Morpeth,” she went on, “we shall be meeting the others again directly. Will you be really so very kind as to say nothing more about this afternoon and all the trouble I have given you? I don’t think I am generally uncertain and queer-tempered, but I have really been a good deal worried and troubled lately, and—and I think if I could explain all you would say there was a little excuse for me.”
There was something very like the glistening of tears in the brown eyes; it was almost too dark to see, but the voice suggested enough to soften Mr Morpeth’s heart—far more boyish and impressionable than he would have liked to own to. A new idea struck him.
“Perhaps, after all, she had some reason for disliking that fellow,” he thought—“perhaps she knows more of him than she allows, and he has fallen in love with her—she is really awfully pretty—and is pestering her to marry him though she hates him. And her people are so poor, Mrs Greville says—”
He turned to Mary with a change of tone.
“Miss Western,” he said, earnestly, “I promise you to say no more about it, and I will do my best to prevent Mrs Greville or any one bothering you—I really will, and I’m sorry I said you were bad-tempered.”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” said Mary, cordially.
And in a few minutes they rejoined Mrs Greville and the Misses Morpeth, the former fortunately too much taken up with a more recent occurrence to have any thought to spare for Mary’s misadventures.
“Fancy, my dear,” she began, “what an escape you have had! Mr Cheviott has just left us; he has been showing us the pictures himself. So very kind and attentive! You have only just missed him.”
“How fortunate for me!” said Mary, dryly.
It was quite dark when they got back to Uxley, and the next morning Mr Western came over as arranged, and took Mary home again the same afternoon.
It seemed to her as if she had been away weeks or months instead of days. She was glad to be home again, and yet now, if she could have deferred her return, she would. Lilias asked her no questions, but still, either in Mary’s imagination or in fact, there was a tacit disappointment in her manner when she found Mary had nothing to tell.
“I was hopeful of some good result from what I had in my head,” thought Mary, “and Lily is so quick, though she had not the least idea of my doing such a wild thing. I fancy she knew by instinct that I was hopeful.”
“You did not hear anything of those people—the Romary people, I mean?” asked Lilias, at last, timidly, but with a sudden rush of colour into her face, which made Mary feel inclined to cry. It was about two days after she had come back.
“Yes,” she replied, “I did. I could not help hearing a good deal about them; they seem the staple subject of conversation in the neighbourhood.”
“About Captain Beverley—did you hear anything about him?” said Lilias, hastily. “Mary, you are concealing something from me—he is going to be married?”
“No, indeed. I heard nothing of that sort, Lily, I assure you. If I had, I would have told you about it at once; you know it is not my way to shirk such things—I am rather over-hasty the other way, I fear,” said Mary, with a little sigh. “And, indeed, I think I should almost have been glad to hear it. It would have been a stab and done with.”
“Mary, you are awfully hard,” said Lilias. Her voice was low and quivering.
“Hard!” repeated Mary, with amazement in her tone. She hard to Lilias! What fearful injustice—for a moment she felt too staggered to speak—how could Lilias misjudge her so? What a world it must be where such near friends could make such mistakes! Had she ever so misjudged any one? And, by an association of ideas which she herself could not have explained, her mind suddenly reverted to that never-to-be-forgotten scene in the Romary library, and the look on Mr Cheviott’s face which she had determined not to recognise as one of pain. Was it possible that in the cruel, almost insulting things she had said to him she had been influenced by some utter misjudgment of his motives?—was it possible that they were good and pure and unselfish?—could his cousin be a bad man, from whom he was chivalrously protecting Lilias’s innocence and inexperience? No, that was impossible. No man with Arthur’s honest eyes could be a bad man; but, if not this, what other motive could Mr Cheviott have that was not a mean and selfish one? Mary felt faint and giddy as these thoughts crowded upon her; the mere far-off suggestion of the tremendous injustice she might have done him, a suggestion born of the sharp pain of Lilias’s words to herself, seemed to confuse and stun her; all her ideas lost their proportion; all the data upon which her late actions and train of thought had been based suddenly failed her. And so swiftly had her mind travelled away from what had first started these misgivings that Lilias had spoken once or twice, in reply to her ejaculation, before the sense of her words reached her brain.
“Mary, Mary, listen to me. Don’t look so white and miserable,” Lilias was beseeching her. “I didn’t mean hard to me—I don’t even exactly mean hard to him—I mean hard about the whole, about the way it affects me. You don’t understand, and I don’t want you to think me a sentimental fool, but can’t you understand a little? Nothing would be so frightful to me as to have my faith in him destroyed, and, don’t you see, if it could be proved to me that he had been trifling with me, deceiving me, in fact—that all the time he had been caring for some one else more than for me—don’t you see how frightful it would be for me? It would be a stab indeed, but a stab that would kill the best part of me—all my faith and trust, Mary, do you see?”
“Yes,” said Mary, sadly, “I see.”
And she saw more—she saw that, for the sake of Lilias’s health and peace of mind, it was time that something should be done.
“She will grow morbid about it, and it will kill her youth and happiness, if not herself,” thought Mary. “I suppose it is on account of the isolated life we have had that this has taken such a terribly deep hold of her. For, after all, perhaps it is possible that, without being actually a bad, cruel man, Captain Beverley was not so much in earnest as she thought. I should call him a bad, cruel man, but I suppose the world would not—the world of which we know so little, as Mr Cheviott kindly reminded me! But what can I do for Lily?”
“Mary,” said Lilias, “what are you thinking about?”
“I am thinking that something must be done for you,” said Mary. “Lilias, I think it would be better for you to go away from home for a while.”
“Yes,” said Lilias. “I am almost beginning to think so myself. But I don’t see how to manage it, unless I advertise as a governess. We seem to have no friends.”
“By-the-bye,” said Mary, “that reminds me. Those Miss Morpeths at Uxley were talking about some Brookes who they think must be cousins of mother. I meant to have asked her about them, but I forgot.”
“They’re not likely to be much good to us, even if they are cousins of ours,” said Lilias, half bitterly. “None of mother’s rich relations have troubled themselves about her.”
And no more was said about the possible cousins just then.
A few days passed. Mary got back into home ways, from which even so short an absence as that of her visit to Uxley seemed to have separated her, and all was much as it had been before—much as it had been before that Sunday, now more than six months ago, when the little party of strangers had disturbed the equanimity of the Hathercourt congregation—before the still more fatal afternoon when Arthur Beverley had come over to see the Rector on business, and in his absence had stayed to tea with his wife and daughters in the Rectory drawing-room—much the same, but oh, how different! thought Lilias, wearily, as she tried her best to look as cheerful as of old—to take the same interest in daily life and its occurrences, which to a healthy mind is never wanting, however monotonous the daily life may be. She succeeded to some extent; she made herself believe that, at least, her trials were kept to herself, and allowed to shadow no other’s horizon. But she was mistaken. Her mother began to hope her child was “getting over it;” her father, who had but dimly suspected that anything was wrong, felt dimly relieved to hear her laugh, and joke, and tease as usual again; Alexa and Josey had their own private confabulations on the subject, deciding that either their eldest sister was a heartless flirt, or that, “between themselves, you know,” everything was satisfactorily arranged, though for some mysterious reason for a time to be kept secret, as any way it was clearly to be seen “that Lily was not in low spirits.” Only Mary, ignorant as she was and professed herself to be of all such misfortunes as are involved by falling in or out of love, was undeceived.
“Lilias is trying her best, but she is breaking her heart all the same,” she said to herself. “If only I could get her away for a while among new people and new scenes, there might be a chance for her.”
In the end it was kind Mrs Greville again who came to the rescue, and that, to Mary’s great relief, without any intervention of hers. Her one piece of concealment from Lilias had cost her dear; she had no wish to try again any independent action. What Mrs Greville did or did not suspect, Mary could not tell, but had their kindly friend known all, she could not have acted with greater consideration and tact. She was going to town for a fortnight, she wrote, most unexpectedly, to consult a famous doctor about some new symptoms in her husband’s chronic complaint. She was hopeful, yet fearful of the result. Should it be unfavourable, she would find it hard to “keep up” before her husband, away from home and all her friends. Would Mrs Western spare one of the girls to go with them and not exactly limit the time of her absence, as in case the doctor thought well of Mr Greville they might go on to Hastings, or somewhere for a month? Lilias, or Mary either, would be of the greatest comfort to her, but if she might venture to say so—Mary was too sensible to be offended—she would, if anything, prefer Lilias. She was such a special favourite of Mr Greville, and it was he, of course, who was to be the one most considered just now.
“Well, girls?” said Mrs Western, inquiringly, for there was silence when Mrs Greville’s note was first read in the conclave of three. Silence on Lilias’s part of mingled relief and repugnance. On Mary’s part the silence of caution, of fear lest her intense anxiety that Lilias should fall in with Mrs Greville’s proposal should injure its own cause by impulsive advocacy. “Well girls?”
“I think Mary had better go,” said Lilias.
“But you see what Mrs Greville says about preferring you,” suggested Mrs Western, gently, with some faint, instinctive notion of what was passing in her second daughter’s heart.
“Yes, but that’s rubbish,” said Lilias, the colour rising slightly in her cheeks. “Mr Greville likes us both. It is only that I chatter more than Mary, and, like all quiet, indolent men, he likes to be amused with the least possible trouble to himself. Mary is not so amusing, perhaps, because there is generally a large sprinkling of sense in her remarks, and even when, on rare occasions, she mixes it up with nonsense it is more fatiguing to separate the two than to take it all in comfortably, as pure, unadulterated nonsense like mine.”
“You are certainly giving us a specimen of it just now,” said Mary, parenthetically. “But seriously, mamma,” she went on, “I think we should consider what Mrs Greville says about preferring Lilias. I am speaking partly selfishly, for though I should have liked it well enough at another time, just now I should not like it at all. It would unsettle me altogether—I have just got all the things I want to do before the summer nicely arranged. Don’t be vexed with me or think me very selfish, Lilias,” for her sister was regarding her with an expression she did not quite understand.
To her surprise, Lilias, by way of answer, threw her arms around her and hugged her violently.
“Think you selfish! Mother just listen to her,” she exclaimed. “Fancy me thinking Mary selfish.” Then she hugged her again, and Mary felt there were tears in her eyes. “Selfish indeed! No, but I wouldn’t say as much for your truthfulness, you little humbug! Do you think I don’t see through all your unselfish story-telling,” she added in a lower voice.
“Then don’t disappoint me,” whispered Mary, and when at last she disengaged herself from Lilias’s embrace, she said aloud, quietly indeed, but firmly enough to carry her purpose, “it is not story-telling, it is true. I should not, in the very least degree, enjoy leaving home just now. And, what is more, I just won’t go, so, dear friends, you see my mind’s made up.”
And so it was settled, to be followed as was inevitable with these girls when any scheme of the kind was in prospect, by a solemn and momentous discussion as to ways and means—in other words, as to dresses and bonnets and ribbons! But Lilias brightened up wonderfully under the impetus of this discussion, and seemed, for the time, so like her old self that Mary began to take heart about her, and to hope everything from the change in prospect.