Chapter Twenty.
An Enforced Armistice.
”... Yet he talks well
But what care I for words? yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
... But for my part
I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him.”
As You Like It.
There was not, however, much appearance of enmity by the following morning between these two thus strangely thrown together. All other feelings were for the time merged in increasing anxiety about poor Alys. For the night that followed her accident was a sadly restless and suffering one, and on the doctor’s early visit the next day he detected feverish symptoms which clouded his usually cheery face.
“I can say no more as to what lasting—or, comparatively speaking, lasting—injuries she may have received,” he said, in reply to Mr Cheviott’s anxious inquiries. “What we have to do at present is to try to get her over the immediate effects of the shock. An attack of fever would certainly only complicate matters, and I cannot see that she need have it if only we can keep her perfectly quiet.”
“Then there is no chance of moving her at present?” said her brother.
“It would be most unwise—bringing on the very risk I speak of,” replied Mr Brandreth, decidedly. “She is comfortable enough—thanks to Miss Western.”
“Yes,” said Mr Cheviott, “thanks to Miss Western—but that is just the point.”
“What?”
“I cannot expect Miss Western to turn into a sick-nurse to oblige absolute strangers—people who have no sort of claim upon her,” replied Mr Cheviott, haughtily.
Mr Brandreth glanced at him with some curiosity.
(“I wonder how much truth there was in those reports about Captain Beverley and Lilias Western,” he said to himself.)
“She must be required at home—her time must be valuable—I cannot offer to pay her,” continued Mr Cheviott, with increasing annoyance in his tone.
“They might be able to spare her. I believe they do keep a servant,” said Mr Brandreth, dryly.
“Nonsense, Brandreth, don’t joke about it,” said Mr Cheviott, irritably. “You must understand what I mean—the extreme annoyance of having to put one’s self under such an obligation to—to—”
“To people you know exceedingly little about, it is clear,” said Mr Brandreth, severely. “If it be a right and Christian thing to do, Mr and Mrs Western will spare their daughter to nurse your sister, Mr Cheviott, just as readily as they spared her to nurse Jessie Bevan when she broke her leg.”
“So Miss Western herself told me,” observed Mr Cheviott.
“Ah, then you have come upon the subject?” said the doctor. “And evidently Miss Mary has rubbed his high mightiness the wrong way,” he added to himself, with an inward chuckle.
“Not exactly. I never thought of having to ask her to stay longer than to-day. All that was said was when I was thanking, or trying to thank, her last night for what she had done, and I suppose I made a mess of it,” said Mr Cheviott, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Well, I must be going,” said Mr Brandreth, rising as he spoke.
“And what is to be done?” asked Mr Cheviott, helplessly. “Am I to ask her to stay?”
“You are certainly not to send her away,” replied Mr Brandreth, greatly enjoying the situation; till, pitying Mr Cheviott’s discomfort, he added, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I will tell Mary she is not to leave Miss Cheviott on any account till I see her again in the afternoon, and in the mean time I will see Mrs Western and explain it all to her, and let you know the result. I’ll take it all on myself, if that will comfort you.”
“You are very good,” said Mr Cheviott, fervently.
“I am sure they will spare her for a fortnight or so—”
“A fortnight!” ejaculated Alys’s brother, ruefully.
“At least,” said Mr Brandreth, pitilessly, “and be thankful if the fortnight sees you out of the wood. Lilias Western is going away to-morrow, or the day after, but the mother’s quite capable of managing without her daughters for once, and it will do Miss Alexa, the only fine lady of the family, no harm to have to exert herself a little more than usual.”
“Another daughter,” exclaimed Mr Cheviott. “Good Heavens! how many are there?”
“Five—and three sons. I’ve known them all ever since they were born.”
“And the eldest one—Miss Western—the one here is the second, is she not?—the eldest is going away, you say?” inquired Mr Cheviott, indifferently, imagining he had quite succeeded in concealing the real curiosity he felt as to this new move in the enemy’s camp.
“Yes,” said Mr Brandreth, mischievously, “she is certainly going away, but where to I don’t know. She is a beautiful girl—you have seen her?—I should not be surprised to hear of her marriage any day. There has been some amount of mystery about her of late—they are rather reserved people at all times—and I could not help wondering if there could be anything on the tapis. She seems in very good spirits, anyway.”
“Ah, indeed!” said Mr Cheviott, carelessly. He hated gossip so devoutly that not even to satisfy the very great misgivings Mr Brandreth’s chatter had aroused, would he encourage it further. “Then we shall see you again in the afternoon, and till then I am to do nothing about these arrangements?” he added, and Mr Brandreth felt himself dismissed.
It was not afternoon, however, but very decidedly evening before the doctor paid his second visit to the farm. In the mean time he had seen Mrs Western and explained to her the whole situation, and the result had been a note to Mary from her mother desiring her not to think of coming home that afternoon, as she had intended, and promising a visit from Lilias the following morning, when all should be discussed and settled. Concerning this note, however, Mary, not feeling it incumbent on her to do so, had made no communication to Mr Cheviott.
“It will be time enough to tell him what my mother says if he mentions the subject,” she thought. “There is not much fear of his thinking I am staying here for the pleasure of his society.”
And in her absorbing care of poor Alys, and anxious watching for abatement in the unfavourable symptoms of the morning, she really forgot, feeling satisfied that she was acting in accordance with her parents’ wishes, any personal association of annoyance in her present surroundings.
Mr Cheviott marvelled somewhat at her calm taking-for-granted that she was to stay where she was; but, true to his agreement with Mr Brandreth, he said nothing. And the long, dull, rainy day passed, with no conversation between the two watchers but the matter-of-fact remarks or inquiries called forth by their occupation. By evening Alys’s feverishness and excitability decreased, yielding evidently to Mary’s scrupulous, fulfillment of the directions left with her.
“She has fallen asleep beautifully—she is as calm and comfortable as possible,” the young nurse announced triumphantly to Mr Cheviott, as she came into the kitchen where he, manlike, sat smoking by way of soothing his anxiety.
He looked up. Mary stood in the door-way, her eyes sparkling, a bright smile on her face. Just then there could not have been two opinions about her beauty. Mr Cheviott rose quickly.
“You are a born sick-nurse, Miss Western,” he said, heartily, speaking to her for almost the first time without a shadow of constraint in his voice. But, as he uttered the words, the smile faded out of Mary’s face and a white, wearied look crept over it. She half made a step forward, and then caught at a chair standing close by, as if to save herself from falling.
“It’s nothing,” she exclaimed, recovering herself instantaneously. “Don’t think I was going to faint. I never do such a thing. I was only giddy for an instant. I had been stooping over Al—Miss Cheviott’s bed to see if she was really asleep.”
“You have been doing a great deal too much, and I can never thank you enough—the truth is, I don’t know how to thank you without annoying you by my clumsiness,” said Mr Cheviott, remorsefully. But so genuinely cordial—almost boyish—was his way of speaking that Mary, even had she felt equal to warfare, could have found no cause of offence in his words.
“Don’t thank me, then,” she said with a smile, as she sat down in the old wooden arm-chair—the most comfortable the kitchen contained—which Mr Cheviott had drawn round for her to the side of the fire.
“I am too tired to discuss whether your ‘clumsiness’ or my ‘touchiness’”—a slight cloud overspread her face at the word, but only for an instant—“is to blame for my ungraciousness yesterday. If Mr Brandreth pronounces your sister decidedly better when he comes to-morrow I shall be well thanked.”
Mr Cheviott sat down without speaking, and looked at her. He could do so for the moment without risk of offence, for Mary’s eyes were fixed on the fire, which danced and crackled up the chimney with fascinating loveliness. Her face, seen now in profile and without the distracting light of her brown eyes, whiter too than its wont, struck him newly by its unusual refinement of lines and features.
“Where have those girls got their looks from?” he said to himself. “Alys was right that day that I was so cross to her in Paris, poor child; these Western girls might, as far as looks go, be anybody, to speak like a dressmaker! And where, too, have they learned such perfect self-possession and power of expressing themselves, brought up in the wilds of Hathercourt?”
“The fire looks as if it were bewitched,” said Mary, glancing up at last. “When we were children we always believed when it darted and crackled and laughed, as it were—just as it is now—we always thought fairies were playing at hide and seek in the flames.”
“Was it your own idea?” said Mr Cheviott.
“Not mine,” said Mary. “My fairies were all out-of-doors ones. Wood fairies were my favourites. Oh, dear! how dreadful it would be to live in a town?”
“Alys doesn’t think so,” observed her brother. “She often complains of the country being dreadfully dull.”
“Ah, yes—in her case I could fancy so,” said Mary, complacently. “No brothers or sisters, and a huge empty house. To enjoy the country thoroughly, it seems to me one must be one of a good large family.”
A faint remembrance flitted across Mr Cheviott’s mind of the half-contemptuous pity with which he had alluded to Mrs Brabazon to the overflowing numbers in Hathercourt Rectory. Now, Mary’s allusion slightly nettled him.
“Alys is not quite alone in the world,” he said, stiffly, hardly realising the fact that Miss Cheviott of Romary could be an object of commiseration to one of the poor clergyman’s numerous daughters. “She has a brother.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” allowed Mary. “But so much older than herself, you see. I can fancy her being dull sometimes.”
Mr Cheviott gave a slight sigh. Mary’s quick conscience pricked her.
“I should not have said that,” she thought. “Poor man, it would be dreadful for him just now, when she is lying ill, to think he has not made her life as happy as possible.”
She leaned her head on her hand and tried to think of some safe topic of conversation. These enforced tête-à-têtes she felt to be far the most trying part of her life at the farm. Mr Cheviott, looking up, observed her attitude.
“You are very tired, I fear, Miss Western,” he said, with the unconstrained kindliness in his voice which so softened and mellowed its tones.
Mary roused herself at once.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I am really not very tired. I am waiting rather anxiously for Mr Brandreth. I thought he would have been here before this. I must get something to do,” she went on, looking round. “I wish I had asked Lilias to send a few books.”
“Please don’t get anything to do,” said Mr Cheviott, eagerly. “You don’t know what a satisfaction it is to me to see you resting, and how glad I should be to do anything for you. Would you like—might I,” he went on, with a sort of timidity which made Mary smile inwardly at the idea of the unapproachable Mr Cheviott feeling any want of assurance in addressing her! “might I read aloud to you? I sent home for some books to-day. Alys is rather fond of my reading aloud,” he added, with a smile.
“I should like it very much indeed, thank you,” said Mary. “And if—just supposing the sound of your voice sent me sleep, you would not be very much offended, would you?”
Mr Cheviott laughed—he was already looking over some magazines which Mary had not before observed on the dresser.
“What will you have?” he said. “Poetry, science, fiction? Stay, here is a good review of H.’s last novel that I wanted to see. The German author, you know. Have you read it?”
He made the inquiry rather gingerly, being not without remembrance of the snub he had received à propos of the Misses Western’s knowledge of French.
“No,” said Mary, “I have not. But I have heard a good deal about it, and should like to hear more, so please read that review.”
It was a well written notice, and the subject of it one worthy of such writing. Mr Cheviott grew interested, and so did Mary. He read well, and she listened well; till some remark of the writer’s drawing forth from Mr Cheviott an expression of disagreement, Mary took up the argument, and they were both in the midst of an amicably eager discussion when the door opened and Mr Brandreth appeared on the threshold.
An amused smile stole over his face.
“Good news awaits me, I see,” he said, with some pomposity. “Miss Cheviott must be better, or her faithful nurse would not be chattering so merrily—eh, Miss Western?”
Mary looked up with a glimmer of fun in her eyes. “Yes,” she said, “she is better. That is to say, she is fast asleep, and has been for two hours. She is sleeping as quietly as a baby, quite differently from last night, and, as far as I could judge before she fell asleep, the feverish symptoms had subsided wonderfully.”
Mr Brandreth rubbed his hands and came nearer the fire, where Mr Cheviott, having risen from his chair, was standing in an attitude of some slight constraint.
“I expected you earlier,” he said, in a low voice not intended for Mary’s quick ears, which, as might naturally be expected, it reached with marvellous celerity.
“Ah, yes—sorry to have disappointed you,” said Mr Brandreth, still rubbing his hands, but by this time with less energy and more enjoyment, as they gradually thawed in front of the blazing fire. “I could not help it, however, and my mind felt more at ease about things here after I had seen Mrs Western. But I am sorry to have kept you here waiting for me all day, Mr Cheviott. It must be very tiresome for you.”
“I did not intend returning to Romary to-day,” said Mr Cheviott, speaking now in his ordinary voice. “Of course it would have been impossible.”
“I don’t know that,” replied Mr Brandreth. “There is not much that you can do for your sister, and it must be dreadfully wearisome work for you hanging about here all day, particularly in the evenings,” he added, in a tone of special commiseration, “when you cannot even get out for a stroll.”
Mary glanced up quickly.
“How I wish he would go back to Romary?” she had been thinking to herself while Mr Brandreth was speaking. “I would not mind staying here at all, in that case.”
But something indefinable in Mr Brandreth’s voice just now roused her suspicions. Was he laughing at Mr Cheviott? If so, he was, in a sense, laughing at her too. Mary began to feel rather indignant. Lilias was right; there was a touch of coarseness about Mr Brandreth notwithstanding his real goodness and kindness, which hitherto had always prevailed with Mary to take his friendly bantering in good part. Something, she knew not what, she was on the verge of replying, when Mr Cheviott anticipated her.
“The evenings?” he said, simply, yet with a sort of dignity not lost upon either of his hearers—“this evening, at least, has been anything but wearisome, as Miss Western has kindly allowed me to read to her, and I fortunately lighted upon an article which interested us both. I may ride over to Romary to-morrow to see if I am wanted for anything; but I could not feel content to leave this, with Alys still in so critical a state. I have not been very troublesome, I hope, have I, Miss Western?” he added, turning to Mary with a smile. There was not a shade of constraint in his manner now, yet no “Clara Vere de Vere” could have desired to be addressed with more absolute deference and respect.
For the first time Mary experienced a sensation of real friendliness towards her host for the time being. Hitherto her most cordial feeling with regard to him had been a sort of pity—a slightly pleasurable consciousness of meriting his gratitude; and in such one-sided sentiments, no root of actual friendliness—of which the “give and take” element is the very essence—could exist. Now, for the first time, a flash of something like gratitude to him, of quick appreciation of his instinctive chivalry, lent a softness to her voice and a light to her eyes which Mr Cheviott, without taking credit to himself for the change, was agreeably conscious of, as she replied, gravely:
“You have been very considerate indeed, Mr Cheviott. And it seems to me that till your sister is decidedly better, it would not be well for you to go away.”
“Thank you,” said Mr Cheviott, simply, while in his own mind Mr Brandreth whistled. How the wind lay was beginning to puzzle him.
“You saw mamma?” said Mary, interrogatively, turning to Mr Brandreth. “I had a note from her this afternoon, telling me not to go home to-day, and that you would see me again.”
Mr Cheviott heard her with some surprise. This, then, supplied the key of her quietly remaining at the farm all day with no talk of quitting her post. What a more and more interestingly unusual study this girl’s character was becoming to him! So brave, yet so shrinkingly sensitive, so wise, yet so unsophisticated, so self-reliant and coolly determined, yet yielding in an instant to the slightest expression of parental authority!
“Yes,” said Mr Brandreth, oracularly, “I saw your mamma, Miss Mary, and explained the whole to her. Her views of the situation, as I felt sure would be the case, entirely coincide with mine. She will not hear of your leaving Miss Cheviott at any risk to her, for I fully explained that your remaining might do what we doctors seldom are called in time enough for—it may save your patient an illness instead of curing her of one. The greatest triumph of the two, in my opinion! Furthermore, your mother desires you not to worry about things at home. Miss Alexa and Master Josephine,” (reverting to a very threadbare joke on poor Josey’s hobbledehoyism) “are developing undreamed-of capabilities—Josey was very nearly packing herself into your sister’s box in her anxiety to take your place as her assistant—yes, you are not to worry about things at home, and—let me see—oh, yes, you are to take good care of yourself and not get knocked up, and—and—Miss Lilias will be here in the morning and tell you all that has happened since you left home—let me see, how many hours ago?”
Mary laughed cordially. This kind of banter she could take in the best part. And she really was glad to hear all about home. How well she could fancy poor Josey’s ineffectual attempts at helping Lilias to pack, and Lilias’s good-humoured despair at the results!—it seemed ages since she had seen them all.
“Then I am to wait here till further orders,” said Mary, “and those orders, in the first place, I suppose, will be yours, Mr Brandreth?”
“Probably,” the doctor replied.
“And I? Whose orders am I to be under?” inquired Mr Cheviott.
“Miss Western’s,” said Mr Brandreth. “In my absence Miss Western is commander-in-chief.”
But his little pleasantry fell harmless this time. Mr Cheviott and Mary only smiled. And then Mary took the doctor into the next room to see unconscious Alys sleeping, as her friend had said, as sweetly as a baby.
Chapter Twenty One.
Pledged.
“Love, when ’tis true, needs not the aid
Of sighs, or oaths, to make it known.”
Sir C. Sedley.
“To-morrow” was a fine day at last. And Lilias was up betimes. It was the day before that of her leaving home, and, notwithstanding the great preliminary preparations, there were still innumerable last packings to do, arrangements to be made, and directions given—all complicated by Mary’s absence. Then there was Mary to see, and not wishing to be hurried in the long talk with her, without which Lilias felt it would really be impossible to start on her journey, she set off pretty early for the farm.
It was a great bore certainly, as Josey expressed it, that Mary should be away just at this particular juncture. Lilias missed her at every turn, and felt far from happy at leaving her mother without either of her “capable” daughters at hand, especially as Mr Brandreth had plainly given Mrs Western to understand that Mary’s stay at the Edge, if it were to do real and lasting good, might have to be prolonged over two or three weeks.
“That poor girl will not know how she is till she gets over the first shock of her accident,” he had said; “and if, as I much fear, there is any actual injury, she may be thrown back into a brain fever if there is no sensible, cheerful person beside her to help her over the first brunt of such a discovery.”
“But do you think her badly hurt—crippled, perhaps, for life?” Lilias had asked, with infinite sympathy in her face. “What a fate!” she was saying to herself; “far better, in my opinion, to have been killed outright than to live to be an object of pity, and even, perhaps, shrinking, on the part of others. Fancy such a thing befalling me, and my being afraid of Arthur ever seeing me again!”
She gave an involuntary shiver as she made her inquiry of Mr Brandreth, who looked surprised.
“Why, Miss Lilias,” he said, “you’ve not half your sister’s nerve! What have you been doing to yourself, you don’t look half so strong and vigorous as you used to.”
“That is why she is going away,” said her mother, quietly. “She has not been well lately. But tell us about poor Miss Cheviott, please.”
“I do not think she will be crippled for life—nothing so bad as that—but she will probably have to lie and rest for a long time. The great point is to get her well over the first of it, and that is why I am so anxious for Mary to stay.”
And so it had been decided, and somehow, in spite of her regret at its happening just at this time, Lilias could not bring herself to feel altogether distressed at Mary’s remaining at the farm; and though she did not exactly express this to her sister, Mary did not remain unconscious of it.
“I wish I were not going away, then it would be all right,” she said, when they were sitting together in the farm-house kitchen.
“I am most particularly glad you are going away,” Mary replied. “I hardly know that I could have agreed to stay here, had you not been going away.”
“Why?” asked Lilias, opening wide her blue eyes. “Because—because—oh! I can’t exactly put it into words,” replied Mary. “You might understand without my saying.” But seeing that Lilias still looked inquiringly, she went on: “Don’t you see—I don’t want these people—him, I mean,” (Mr Cheviott had ridden over to Romary),—“to think we would take advantage of this accident—this wholly fortuitous circumstance, not of their seeking, and assuredly not of ours, of my being thrown into their society, to bring about any intimacy, any possible endeavour to recall—you know whom I mean—to—to what we had begun to think might be.”
“Your powers of expressing yourself are certainly not increasing, my dear Mary,” said Lilias, with a smile, though the quick colour mounted to her cheeks. “I really do think you worry yourself quite unnecessarily about what Mr Cheviott thinks or doesn’t think. I cannot believe, as I have always said—I cannot believe he has been to blame as much as you imagine. Don’t you like him any better now that you have seen more of him?”
“I don’t want to like him better,” said Mary, honestly. “He is, of course, most courteous and civil to me—more than that, he is really considerate and kind, and certainly he is a cultivated and intelligent man, and not, in some ways, so narrow-minded as might have been expected. But I don’t want to like him, or think better of him; whenever I seem to be tempted to do so it all rises before me—selfish, cold, cruel man, to interfere with your happiness, my Lily.”
Mary gave herself a sort of shake of indignation.
“You are a queer girl, Mary,” said Lilias, putting a hand on each of her sister’s shoulders, and looking down—Lilias was the taller of the two—deep down into her eyes—blue into brown. The brown eyes were unfathomable in their mingled expression—into the blue ones there crept slowly two or three tears. But Lilias dashed them away before they fell, and soon after the sisters kissed each other and said good-bye.
“I wonder,” said Lilias to herself, as she stood still for a moment at the juncture of the two ways home, debating whether or not she might indulge herself by choosing the pleasanter but more circuitous path through the woods.
“I wonder if anything will have happened—anything of consequence, I mean—before I see Mary again, six weeks or so hence.”
An idle, childish sort of speculation, but one not without its charm for even the wiser ones among us sometimes, when the prize that would make life so perfect a thing is tantalisingly withheld from us, or, alas! when, in darker, less hopeful days, there is no break in the clouds about our path, and in the weariness of long-continued gloom we would almost cry to Fate itself to help us!—Fate which, in those seasons, we dare not call God, for no way of deliverance that our human judgment can call Divine seems open to us. Will nothing happen?—something we dare not wish for, to deliver us from the ruggedness of the appointed road from which, in faint-hearted cowardice, we shrink, short-sightedly forgetting that, to the brave and faithful, “strength as their days” shall be given.
But in no such weariness of spirit did Lilias Western “wonder” to herself; she was young and vigorous; there was a definite goal for her hopefulness; her visions of the future could take actual shape and clothing—and how much of human happiness does such an admission not involve? She “wondered” only because, notwithstanding the disappointment and trial she had to bear, life was still to her so full of joyful possibilities, of golden pictures, in the ultimate realisation of which she could not as yet but believe.
“Yes,” she repeated, as, deciding that a delay of ten minutes was the worst risk involved, she climbed the narrow stile into the wood—“yes, I wonder how things will be when dear Mary and I are together again? Such queer things have happened already among us. Who could have imagined such a thing as Mary’s being ‘domesticated’ with the Cheviotts? I wonder if Arthur Beverley will hear of it? Oh, I do, do wish I was not going away to-morrow!”
She stopped short again for a moment, and looked about her. How well she remembered the spot where she was standing! It was not far from the place where she and her sisters had met Captain Beverley that day when he had walked back with them to the Rectory. How they had all laughed and chattered!—how very long ago it seemed now! Lilias gazed all round her, and then hastened on again, and as she did so, somewhat to her surprise, far in front of her, at the end apparently of the wood alley which she was facing, she distinguished a figure approaching her. It was at some distance off when she first saw it, but the leafless branches intercepted but little of the light, which to-day was clear and undeceptive.
“It must be papa,” she said to herself, when she was able to distinguish that the figure was that of a man—“papa coming to meet me, or possibly he may be going on to see Mary at the farm.”
She hurried on eagerly, but when nearer the approaching intruder, again she suddenly relaxed her pace. Were her eyes deceiving her? Had her fancy played her false, and conjured up some extraordinary illusion to mislead her, or was it—could it be Arthur Beverley himself who was hastening towards her? Hastening?—yes, hastening so quickly that in another moment there was no possibility of any longer doubting that it was indeed he, and that he recognised her. But no smile lit up his face as he drew near; he looked strangely pale and anxious, and a vague misgiving seized Lilias; her heart began to beat so fast that she could scarcely hear the first words he addressed to her—she hardly noticed that he did not make any attempt to shake hands with her.
“Miss Western,” he said, in a low, constrained, and yet agitated tone, “I do not know whether I am glad or sorry to meet you. I do not know whether I dare say I am glad to meet you.” He glanced up at her for an instant with such appeal and wistfulness in his eyes that Lilias turned her face away to prevent his seeing the quick rush of tears that would come. “What you must have thought of me, I cannot let myself think,” he went on, speaking more hurriedly and nervously. “But you will let me ask you something, will you not? You seem to be coming from the farm—tell me, I implore you, have you by any chance heard how my poor cousin is? Is she still alive? She cannot—she must not be dead!”
His wildness startled Lilias. A rush of mingled feelings for an instant made it impossible for her to reply. What could be the meaning of it all? Why this exaggerated anxiety about Alys Cheviott, and at the same time this tone of almost abject self-blame? Lilias felt giddy, and almost sick with apprehension—was her faith about to be uprooted? her trust flung back into her face? Were Mary’s misgivings about to be realised? Was it true that Arthur, influenced by motives she could but guess at, had deserted her for his cousin?
Captain Beverley misinterpreted her silence. His face grew still paler.
“I see what you mean,” he said, excitedly. “She is dead, and you shrink from telling me. Good God, what an ending to it all!”
A new sensation seized Lilias—a strange rush of indignation against this man, so false, yet so wanting in self-control and delicacy as to parade his grief for the girl he imagined he had lost, to the girl whose heart he had gained, but to toss it aside! She turned upon him fierily.
“No,” she said, “she is not dead, nor the least likely to die. I have nothing more to say to you, Captain Beverley. Be so good as to let me pass.”
For he was standing right in front of her, blocking up the path. At her first words he drew a deep breath of relief and was on the point of interrupting her, but her last sentences seemed to stagger, and then to petrify him. He did not speak, he only stood and looked at her as if stupefied.
“Why are you so indignant?” he said at last. “Why should I not ask you how Alys is?”
“Why should you?” Lilias replied. “She is your own cousin. I scarcely know her by sight—we are not even acquaintances. Captain Beverley, I must again ask you to let me pass on.”
Half mechanically the young man stood aside, but as Lilias was about to pass him he again made a step forward.
“Miss Western—Lilias,” he exclaimed, “I shall go mad if you leave me like this. I had been thinking, hoping wildly and presumptuously, you may say, that, in spite of all, in spite of the frightful way appearances have been against me, you—you were still,” he dropped his voice so low that Lilias could scarcely catch the words, “still trusting me.”
Lilias looked up bravely.
“So I was,” she said.
“And why not ‘so I am’?” he said, eagerly, his fair fare flushing painfully.
Lilias hesitated.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I cannot understand you and—and your manner to-day.”
Captain Beverley sighed deeply.
“And I—I cannot, dare not explain,” he said, sorrowfully. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he added, hastily, seeing a quick, questioning glance from Lilias at the word “dare.”
“I mean I am bound for the sake of others not to explain. I have, indeed, I now see, been bound hand and foot by the folly of others almost ever since I was born! There is nothing I would not wish to explain to you, nothing that I should not be thankful for you to know—but I cannot tell it you! Was ever man placed in such a position before?” He stopped and appeared to be considering deeply. “Lilias,” he went on, earnestly, “it seems to me that I am so placed that I must do one or other of two wrong things. I must break my pledged word, or I must behave dishonourably to you—which shall it be? Decide for me.”
“Neither,” said Lilias, without an instant’s hesitation. “You shall not break your word, Arthur, for my sake. And you shall not behave dishonourably to me, for, whatever you do or don’t do, I promise you to believe that you have done the best you could; I have trusted you, hitherto, against everybody. Shall I, may I, go on trusting you?”
Arthur looked at her—looked straight into her eyes, and that look was enough.
“Yes,” he said, “you may.”
There was silence for a moment or two. Then Arthur added:
“Lilias,” he said, “I have not in the past behaved unselfishly—hardly, some would say, honourably to you. But it was out of thoughtlessness and ignorance; till I knew you, I did not know myself. I had no idea how I could care for any woman, and I had ignorantly fancied I never should. I cannot explain, but I may say one thing. Should you be afraid of marrying a poor man—a really poor man?”
Lilias smiled.
“I half fancied there was something of that kind,” she said. “No,” she went on, “I should not be afraid of marrying you as a poor man. I have no special love for poverty in the abstract. I know too much of it. And I am no longer, you know, what people call ‘a mere girl.’ I am two-and-twenty, and have had time to become practical.”
“It looks like it,” said Arthur, smiling too.
“But my practicalness makes me not afraid of poverty on the other hand,” pursued Lilias. “I have seen how much happiness can co-exist with it. My only misgiving is,” she hesitated—“you would like me to speak frankly?”
“Whatever you do I entreat you to be frank,” said Arthur, earnestly. “I don’t deserve it, I know, but Heaven knows I would be frank to you if I could.”
“I was only going to say—my people—my parents and Mary, perhaps, might be more mercenary for me—because they have all spoiled me, and I have been horribly selfish, and they might think me less fit for a struggling life than I believe I really am.”
“Yes, I can fancy their feelings for you by my own,” said Arthur, sighing. “And how I would have enjoyed enabling you to be a comfort to them—to your mother, for instance. Lilias, I am cruelly placed.”
“Poor fellow!” said Lilias, mischievously.
“Yes,” said Arthur, “I am indeed. Will you now,” he went on, “tell me about Alys? How is she, and where?”
Lilias told him all she knew.
“And your sister nursing her,” said Arthur. “How extraordinary!”
Notwithstanding his surprise, however, Lilias could see that the idea of the thing was not unpleasing to him.
“But for that—but for Mary’s being with her, you and I would not have met this morning,” she said.
“You may go further and say that but for Alys’s accident I should not have been here,” said Arthur, while a shade fell over his sunny countenance. “It is too cold for you standing here. Let us walk on a little.”
“Are you not going to the farm?” Lilias asked.
“No. Now that I have seen you I shall hurry back the way I came. You have told me all there is to hear. Poor Alys! Lilias, I wish I could explain to you why I felt so horribly, so unbearably anxious about her. I am very fond of her; but once lately when I was nearly beside myself with perplexity and misery, Laurence—her brother, you know—to bring me to what he would call my senses, I suppose, said something which has haunted me ever since I heard of her accident yesterday morning. If she had been killed I should have felt as if I had killed her.”
He looked at Lilias, with a self-reproach and distress in his open boyish face which touched her greatly—the more as, now that the brightness had for the moment faded out of his countenance, she could see how much changed he was, how thin and pale and worn he looked.
“I think I can understand—a very little,” she said, gently, “without your explaining. But you have grown morbid, Arthur. You know you would suffer anything yourself rather than wish injury to any one.”
“I suppose I have grown morbid,” he said. “Morbid for want of hope, and still more from the constant horrible dread of what you must be thinking of me. I shall not know myself when I get back to C. I may have dark fits of blaming myself for involving you in my misfortunes—but then to know that you trust me again! Surely, whatever the world might say, I have not done wrong, Lilias? To you, I mean?”
“You have given me back my life, and youth, and faith and everything good,” she replied. “Can that be doing me wrong?”
They walked on a little way in silence. Then Arthur stopped.
“I must go, I fear,” he said, reluctantly. “And I suppose we must not write to each other. No, it would not be fair to you to ask it.”
“I should not like to write to you without my father and mother’s knowledge,” said Lilias.
“No, of course not. And, as I am placed—my difficulties involve others, that is the worst of it—I do not see that I can avoid asking you not to mention what has passed to your people, at present. Does that make you uncomfortable?”
Lilias considered.
“No,” she said, “I do not see that it alters my position. Hitherto I have gone on trusting you, without saying anything about it to any one. Till I met you this afternoon, and your own manner and words misled me, I have never left off trusting you, Arthur, never. And so I shall go on the same way. But I couldn’t write to you without them all knowing. I mean I should not feel happy in doing so. Besides, it would not be very much good. You see you cannot explain things to me yet, so we could not consult together.”
“Not yet,” said Arthur. “But as you trust me, trust me in this. If any effort of mine can hasten the explanation, you shall not long be left in this position. You are doing for me what few girls would do for a man—do not think I do not know that, and believe that I shall never forget it. Two years,” he went on, in a lower voice, almost as if speaking to himself, but Lilias caught the words—“two years at longest, but two years are a long time. And if I take my fate in my own hands, there is no need for waiting two years.”
“Do nothing rash or hasty,” said Lilias, earnestly. “Do nothing for my sake that might injure you. Arthur,” she exclaimed, hastily, as a new light burst upon her, and her face grew pale with anxiety—“Arthur, I am surely not to be the cause of misfortune to you? Your pledging yourself to me is surely not going to ruin you? If I thought so! Oh! Arthur, what would—what could I do?”
Arthur was startled. He felt that already he had all but gone too far, and Mr Cheviott’s words recurred to him. “If the girl be what you think her, would she accept you if she knew it would be to ruin you?” Recurred to him, however, but to be rejected as a plausible piece of special pleading. “Ruin him,” yes, indeed, if she, the only woman he had ever cared for, threw him over, then they might talk of ruining him. And were there no Lilias in the world, could he have asked Alys to marry him—Alys, his little sister—now that he knew what it was to love with a man’s whole love?
“Lilias,” he said, with earnestness almost approaching solemnity in his voice, “you must never say such words as those, never; whatever happens, you are the best of life to me. And even if I had returned to find you married to some one else, my position would have remained the same. That is all I can say to you. No, I will do nothing rash or hasty. For your sake I will be careful and deliberate where I would not be, or might not have been so, for myself.”
“Can you not tell me where you are going, or what you are doing?” said Lilias, with some hesitation.
“Oh, dear, yes! Somehow I fancied you knew. I am at C, studying at the Agricultural College, studying hard for the first time in my life. My idea is,” he added, speaking more slowly, “to fit myself, if need be, for employment of a kind I fancy I could get on in—something like becoming agent to a property—that sort of thing.”
Lilias looked up at him with surprise and admiration. This, then, was what he had been busy about all these weary months, during which everybody had been speaking or hinting ill of him. Working hard—with what object was only too clear—to make a home for her, should the mysterious ill-fortune to which he alluded leave him a poor and homeless man! Lilias’s eyes filled with tears—was he not a man to trust?
Then at last they parted—each feeling too deeply for words—but yet what a happy parting it was!
“To think,” said Lilias to herself as she hurried home, “to think how I was wondering what might happen in the next six weeks—to think what has happened in the last half hour!”
And Arthur, all the way back to C, his heart filled with the energy and hopefulness born of a great happiness, could not refrain from going over and over again the old ground as to whether something could not be done—could not the Court of Chancery be appealed to? He wished he could talk it over with Laurence—Laurence who was just as anxious as he to undo the cruel complication in which they were both placed.
“Only then again,” thought Arthur, “that foolish, ridiculous prejudice of his against the Westerns comes in and prevents his helping me if he could. And to think of Mary being there as Alys’s nurse! How he will hate the obligation—If it were not so serious for poor Alys, I really could laugh when I think of Laurence’s ruffled dignity in such a position!”
Chapter Twenty Two.
Alys’s Brother.
“In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.”
Wordsworth.
Days passed—a week, ten days of Mr Brandreth’s fortnight were over, but still he would say nothing definite as to the possibility of moving Alys to Romary. And Alys herself seemed marvellously contented—the reason of which she made no secret of to Mary.
“You see I have never had a really close friend of near my own age—and you are only two years older,” she said one day. “And I never could have got to know you so well in any other circumstances—could I? You do understand me so well, Mary. It is perfectly wonderful. If I were never to see you again, I could not regret my accident since it has made me know you.”
Mary was silent.
“Why don’t you answer?” said Alys, anxiously. “Am I horribly selfish to speak so, when this time you have given up to me has kept you away from your dear home and all of them, and interfered with your regular duties?”
“No, dear,” said Mary, “it isn’t that at all. My being away from home has not mattered in the least; besides, I am near enough to hear at once if they really needed me. No, I was only thinking I could not say I did not regret your accident, because, though I am thankful you are so far better, I feel so anxious about you afterwards. Even though Mr Brandreth does not anticipate seriously-lasting injury, you may have a good deal of weariness and endurance before you. He told you?”
“Yes,” said Alys, composedly. “I know I shall not feel strong and well, as I used, for a long time, if ever. I shall have to rest a great deal, hanging about sofas, and all that—just what I hate. But I don’t mind. I am still glad it happened. It has done me good, and it has done some one else good too. Was that all you hesitated about, Mary?”
“Not quite.”
“Well, say the rest—do!”
“I was only thinking that I could not respond as heartily as I would like to your affection, Alys, because I hardly see that my friendship can be much good to you in the future.”
“Why?”
“Our lives are so differently placed—we are in such totally different spheres—”
“Oh! Mary,” exclaimed Alys, reproachfully, “you are not going to be proud, and refuse to know us because we are rich and you are—”
“Poor,” added Mary, smiling. “No, not on that account exactly.”
“Why, then? Is it because you suspect that at one time Laurence discouraged my knowing you? You can afford to forgive that, surely, now. And it was his duty, I suppose, to be very careful about whom I knew, having no mother or sister, you know; and at that time he did not know you.”
“No, he did not; and it was his duty, as you say, to be very careful. He did not know us, true, but at least he knew no harm of us, except that we were out of the charmed circle. And did that justify him in—Oh! Alys, dear, don’t make me speak about it. Let us be happy this little while we are together.”
“Mary, do you dislike Laurence?”
“I do not like unfounded prejudices,” replied Mary, evasively.
“That means Laurence, I suppose. But, Mary, people can outgrow their prejudices. I am not sure that you yourself are not at present partly affected by prejudice.”
“No,” said Mary, in a firm but somewhat low voice. “I am not, indeed. I cannot defend myself from the appearance of being so, but it is not the case, truly.”
Alys sighed.
“Don’t make yourself unhappy about it, dear,” said Mary.
“I can’t help it,” said Alys, dejectedly. “There is something I don’t understand. I don’t ask you to tell me anything you would rather not, but I am so disappointed. I wanted you to get to like Laurence. I know—I can see he likes you, and that was why I thought it had all happened so well. I did not mind the idea of being a sort of invalid for some time when I thought of your coming to see me often at Romary, and staying with us there. Mary, won’t you come? I was speaking to Laurence about it last night, and he said, if I could persuade you to come, he would be most grateful to you.”
“I don’t want him to be grateful to me,” said Mary, lightly.
“How can he help being so? What he meant was, of course, that if you came it would be out of goodness to me. You must know that he would consider it a favour.”
“Yes, I do. Mr Cheviott is not the least inclined to patronise people, I will say that for him,” said Mary, laughing.
“Then you will come to Romary?” said Alys, coaxingly.
Mary shook her head.
“I must be honest, Alys dear,” she said, “and to tell you the truth, I can’t imagine myself going to Romary ag—ever going to Romary, I mean, under any circumstances whatever.”
“How you must dislike Laurence!” said Alys. “Has he displeased you since you have been here?”
“Oh dear, no,” said Mary, eagerly. “He has been as kind and considerate as possible. I wish I could help hurting you, Alys. I can say one thing, I do like Mr Cheviott as your brother, more than I could have believed it possible I could ever like him.”
“Faint praise,” said Alys.
“But not of the ‘damning’ kind. I mean what I say,” persisted Mary. “And—perhaps you will think this worse than ‘faint praise’—since I have seen him in this way—as your brother—I cannot help thinking that circumstances, the way he has been brought up, have a good deal to answer for in his case.”
Alys’s face flushed a little, yet she was not offended.
“And why not in mine?” she said. “I have had more reason to be spoiled than poor Laurence. His youth was anything but a very smooth or happy one. My father was not rich always, you know.”
“Was he not? Still ‘rich’ is a comparative word. Mr Cheviott has always ‘moved in a certain sphere,’ as newspapers say, and he cannot have had much chance of seeing outside that sphere,” said Mary, with the calm philosophy of her twenty years’ thorough knowledge of the world in all its phases. “As for you, Alys, you are not spoiled, just because you are not. You are a duck—at least you have a duck’s back—it has run off you.”
And both girls were laughing at this when Mr Cheviott, just returned from his daily expedition to Romary, entered the room.
“You are very merry,” he said, questioningly. “By-the-bye, Miss Western,” he went on, with some constraint but, nevertheless, resolution in his voice, “I hope you have good news of your sister?”
“Excellent, thank you,” replied Mary, looking up bravely into his face. “She is as happy and well as possible.”
There was a ring of truth in her voice, and, indeed, Mr Cheviott would have found it hard to doubt the truth of anything that voice of hers said.
“There is no bravado in that statement,” he said to himself. “I cannot understand it.”
“And what were you laughing at when I came in?” he said, turning to Alys, as if to change the subject.
Alys looked at Mary.
“Mary,” she said, mischievously, “shall I tell?”
“If you like,” said Mary, quietly.
“Oh, Mary, was just giving me her opinion of us—of you and me, Laurence—the result of her observations during the last ten days,” said Alys.
Mary looked up quickly.
“Alys,” was all she said; but Alys understood her. Mr Cheviott was listening attentively.
“Well,” Alys went on, “perhaps that is not putting it quite fairly. I must confess, Laurence, I forced the opinion out of her, and it took a good deal of forcing, too.”
“And what was the opinion—favourable or the reverse? May I not hear that?” asked Mr Cheviott.
“It was pretty favourable,” Alys replied. “On the whole, taking everything into consideration, the enormous disadvantages of our up-bringing, etc, etc, Miss Western is disposed to think that, on the whole, mind you, Laurence, only ‘on the whole,’ we are neither of us quite so bad as might have been expected. But then we must remember, for fear of this verdict making us too conceited, you see, Laurence—upsetting our ill-balanced minds, or anything of that sort—we must remember that it is not every day we can hope to meet with a judge so wide-minded, and philosophical, and unprejudiced, absolutely unprejudiced, as Miss Western.”
During this long tirade Mary remained perfectly silent, only towards its close her face flushed a little.
“Alys,” she said, when Alys at last left off speaking, the colour deepening in her face—“Alys, I don’t think that is quite fair.”
“Nor do I,” said Mr Cheviott, suddenly, for he too had been sitting silent, in apparent consideration. “But, Miss Western, I know Alys’s style pretty well. I can pick out with great precision the grains of fact from amongst her bewildering flowers of rhetoric, so, on the whole, mind you, Miss Western, only ‘on the whole,’ I feel rather gratified than the reverse by what she rails your verdict.”
“I am sorry for it,” said Mary, dryly.
“Why so?”
“I should think poorly of myself were I to feel any gratification at being told that, on the whole, I was not as bad as I might have been. There is no one hardly, I suppose, so bad but that it might be possible to conceive him worse.”
“That was not quite Alys’s wording of your opinion,” said Mr Cheviott. “Nor, I venture to say, quite the sentiment of the opinion itself. But in another sense I agree with you; there is hardly any one—no one, in fact—of whom we might not say, if we knew all the circumstances of his or her history—of his or her existence, in fact—that it was a wonder he or she was so good—not so bad.”
“That is taking the purely—I don’t know what to call it—the purely human view of it all,” said Mary, growing interested and losing her feeling of discomfort. “My father would say we are forgetting what should be and may be the most powerful influences of all, in whatever guise they come, on every life—the spiritual influences, I mean. And these can never be reduced to calculation and estimate, however wise men become.”
“Yes, but think of the terrible forest of ill-growing weeds, the awful barrier of evil, individual and inherited, these influences have to make their way through!”
He rose from his chair and went across the room to the fire-place, where he stood contemplating the two girls. Mary, in her plain grey tweed, unrelieved by any colour, except a blue knot at the throat, but fitting her tall figure to perfection. Her “browny-pink” complexion, hazel eyes, and bright chestnut hair, all speaking of youth and strength and healthfulness, contrasting with Alys, who lay loosely wrapped in the invalid shawls and mantles Mary had carefully arranged about her—prettier, more really lovely, perhaps, than her brother had ever seen her, her dark hair and eyes seeming darker than their wont, from the unusual whiteness of her face. She looked too lovely, thought Mr Cheviott, with a sigh, her fragility striking him sharply, in comparison with the firmness and yet elasticity of Mary’s movements, as she leaned over Alys to raise her a little. How natural, how strangely natural it all seemed! Mr Cheviott sighed.
“Laurence,” exclaimed Alys, “what in the world is the matter?”
Her brother smiled.
“Nothing—that is to say, I can’t say what makes me sigh. I was thinking just then what a strange power of adaptation we human beings have. It seems to me so natural to be living here in this queer sort of way. You ill, Alys, and Miss Western nursing you. I could fancy it had always been so—in a dreamy, vague sort of way.”
“I know how you mean,” said Mary.
“Shall you be sorry when it is over, Laurence,” said Alys, “and we are back again at Romary, without our guardian angel?”
“One is always sorry, in a sense, when anything is over, at least, I am. I suppose I have the power of settling myself in a groove to an unusual degree,” said Mr Cheviott, evasively.
“You certainly have not the power of making pretty speeches,” said Alys. “I called Mary ‘our guardian angel,’ and you call her a ‘groove’.”
Just then Mrs Wills put her head in at the door with an inquiry for Miss Western, and Mary went out of the room.
“I wanted you to say something about Mary’s perhaps coming to Romary,” said Alys.
“Why? Do you think she would come?” asked Mr Cheviott, doubtfully.
“No, I do not think she would,” Alys replied, “but I wanted her to see that you would like her to come.”
“Did she say that she would never come to see you at Romary?” Mr Cheviott said.
“Yes, decidedly. Her words were, ‘I cannot fancy myself, under any circumstances whatever, going to Romary,’ and I thought I heard her half say ‘again’—‘going to Romary again.’ But she has never been there?” Mr Cheviott did not reply; he turned to the fire and began poking it vigorously.
“Laurence,” said Alys, feebly.
“What, dear?”
“Please don’t poke the fire so. It seems to hurt me.”
“I am so sorry,” said her brother, penitently. “It’s the same with everything,” he added to himself. “I seem fated to make a mess of everything I have to do with.—I wish I were not so clumsy,” he went on aloud to his sister. “What shall I do with you at Romary? How shall we ever get on without Miss Western?”
“I shall have to make the best of Mrs Golding, I suppose,” said Alys, in a melancholy voice. “But she fusses so! Oh, Laurence, isn’t it a pity? Just as I have found a girl who could be to me the friend I have wished for and needed all my life, a friend whom even you, now that you know her, approve of for me, that she should have this prejudice against knowing us. Indeed, it must be more than prejudice. She is too sensible and right-minded to be influenced by that.”
“Does she know that I, at one time, objected to your knowing her?” said Mr Cheviott.
“She knows something of it—not, of course, that I ever said so to her—but she is very quick, and gathered the impression somehow. But it is not that. She said you were quite right to be careful whom I knew, and that, of course, she and her people were strangers to you. I don’t think Mary would resent anything that she felt any one had a right to do. No, it is not that,” said Alys.
“What can it be, then? Is it her horror of putting herself under any obligation?”
“Obligation, Laurence! As if all the obligation were not on our side!”
“Well, yes. I don’t think I meant that exactly. I mean that, perhaps, she may feel that, owing her so much, we could not do less than invite her to Romary. She may have an exaggerated horror of any approach to being patronised.”
“No, she is not so silly. She knows we should be grateful to her for coming. She is neither so silly, nor, I must say, so vulgar-minded, as you imagine. Laurence, even though you own to liking and admiring her now, it seems as if you could not throw off that inveterate prejudice of yours,” said Alys, rather hotly.
Mr Cheviott, under his breath, gave vent to a slight exclamation.
“Good Heavens, Alys,” he said, aloud, “I think the prejudice is on your side. You cannot believe that I can act or feel unprejudicedly.”
“I do not know what to believe,” said Alys, dejectedly. “I am bewildered and disappointed. There is something that has been concealed from me, that much I am sure of. And I do think you might trust me, Laurence.”
It sounded to Laurence as if there were tears in her voice. He went over to her bed-side, and kissed her tenderly.
“My poor little Alys,” he said, “indeed I do trust you, and, indeed, I would gladly tell you anything you want to know, if I could. But there are times in one’s life when one cannot do what one would like. Can’t you trust me, Alys?”
Alys stroked his hand.
“Could I ever leave off trusting you, Laurence?” she said, fondly. “I do not mind so much when you tell me there is something you can’t tell—that is treating me like a sensible person, and not like a baby.”
That was all she said, but, like the owl, “she thought the more.”
And Mr Cheviott too—his thoughts had no lack of material on which to exert themselves just then. He was sorry for Alys—very sorry—and not a little uneasy and ready to do anything in his power to please and gratify her. But how to do it?
“She cannot, under any circumstances whatever, imagine herself ever coming to Romary again,” he said to himself, over and over, as if there were a fascination in the words. “Ah, well, it is a part of the whole,” he added, bitterly, “and Alys must try to content herself with something else.”
A slight cloud seemed, for a day or two, to come over the comfort and cheerfulness of the little party at the farm. Mary was conscious of it without being able, exactly, to explain it. “But for Alys,” she felt satisfied that she would not care in the least.
“Mr Cheviott may ‘glower’ at me if he likes,” she said to herself. “I really don’t mind. I am not likely ever to see him again, so what does it matter? He is offended, I suppose, because I did not at once accept with delight the invitation which he condescended, grudgingly enough, no doubt, to allow poor Alys to give me.”
So in her own thoughts, as was her way, she made fun of the whole situation and imagined that Mr Cheviott’s decrease of cordiality and friendliness had not the slightest power to disturb her equanimity. Yet somehow in her honest conscience there lurked a faint misgiving. It was difficult to call his evident dejection haughtiness or temper, difficult to accuse of offensive condescension the man whose every word and tone was full of the gentlest, almost deprecating, deference and respect—most difficult of all to hold loyally to her old position of contempt for and repugnance to a man so unmistakably unselfish, so almost woman-like in his tender devotion to the sister dependent on his care.
“Yet he must be heartless,” persisted Mary, valiantly, “he must be narrow-minded and cruel, and he must be what any straightforward, honourable person would call unprincipled and intriguing, wherever the carrying out of his own designs is in question.”
“I shall be so glad to be home again, mamma,” she said to her mother one afternoon when she had left Alys for an hour or two, to go home to see how the Rectory was getting on without her.
“Yes, dear, I can well fancy it,” replied Mrs Western, sympathisingly. “You must just remember, you know, Mary, that your present task, however distasteful, is just as much a duty as if that poor girl were one of the cottagers about here. Indeed, almost more so. I dare say, in spite of their wealth and position, she is far more really friendless than any other of our poor neighbours. But she is a sweet girl, you say?”
“Very,” said Mary, warmly. “It is a pleasure to do anything for her.”
“Poor child! And with such a brother! A most disagreeable, cold, haughty man, I hear. But he surely cannot be anything but courteous to you, Mary? Under the circumstances, anything else would be too outrageous.”
“Oh dear, no,” said Mary, hastily, startled a little somehow by her mother’s tone. “He is perfectly civil to me—most considerate, and I suppose I should say ‘kind.’ Only I shall be glad to be at home—they are talking now of moving Miss Cheviott to Romary on Thursday—and back into my regular ways. Mother, I’m an awful old maid already, I get into a groove and like to stay there.”
The words recurred to her on her way back to the Edge. Would she really be so glad to be home again? She had used Mr Cheviott’s expression, and it led her into the train of thought which had suggested it to him. Yes, there was truth in what he said. In almost every kind of life, in almost any circumstances, even if painful in themselves, there grows up secretly, as the days pass on, a curious, undefinable charm—a something it hurts us to break, though, till the necessity for so doing is upon us, we had been unconscious of its existence.
“It must be that,” said Mary. “I have got into the groove of my present life, and now that it is coming to an end, disagreeable though it has been, I feel it strangely painful to leave it. Of course it is natural I should feel pain in parting from Alys, whom I can never be with again; but, besides that, I am sorry to have done with the whole affair—the queer incongruous life, the old kitchen in the evenings, and Mr Cheviott and his books in the corner, the feeling I am of use to her, to them both, that they would have been wretchedly uncomfortable without me, and that even now that I am away for an hour they will be missing me. What queer, inconsistent complications we human beings are! It is just the coming to an end of it all, the beginning to see it in the haze of the past, that gives it a charm.”
She stood still and gazed across over the bare, long stretch of meadow land before her to the far distant horizon, radiant already in the colours of the fast setting sun. Suddenly a voice behind her made her start.
“Are you bidding the sun good-night?” it said.
Mary turned round and saw Mr Cheviott.
“Yes,” she replied. “I suppose I was. There, is something rather melancholy about a sunset, is there not?” she added after a little pause.
“There is something not rather, but very melancholy about all farewells. And sunset is good-bye forever to a day, though not to the sun,” said Mr Cheviott.
”‘Out of Eternity
This new day is born;
Into Eternity
At night will return.’”
“Yes,” said Mary again. “It is like what my little sister Francie once said, ‘What a sad thing pastness is.’”
“How pretty!” said Mr Cheviott. “Pastness! Yes, it is a sad thing, but fortunately not an ugly thing. Distance in time as well as in space, ‘lends enchantment to the view.’ How strangely little things affect us sometimes,” he went on. “There are occasions, little events of my life, that I cannot recall without an indescribable thrill, neither of pleasure nor pain, but a strange, acute mixture of both. And yet they are so trifling in themselves that I cannot explain why they should so affect me.”
“I think I have felt what you mean,” said Mary.
“And in the same way I have felt extraordinarily affected by a far-off view sometimes,” pursued Mr Cheviott. “When I was a boy, from my nursery window we had, on clear days, a view of the shire hills, and on the top, or nearly on the top of one of them, we could, on very clear days, distinguish a little white cottage. Do you know, I could never look at it without the tears coming into my eyes, and yet, if it had been near enough to see it plainly, most likely it was the most prosaic of white cottages.”
“I have had the same feeling about things not ‘enchanted’ by distance,” said Mary. “Once, on a journey, driving rapidly, we suddenly passed a cottage with two girls sitting on the door-step. A ray of rather faint evening sunlight fell across them as they sat, otherwise everything about the scene was commonplace in the extreme. But yet something made me feel as if I were going to cry. I had to turn my head away and shut my eyes.”
“That’s just what I mean,” said Mr Cheviott, and then for a minute or two they both stood silent, gazing at the sunset.
“Miss Western,” said Mr Cheviott, at last, “when you are back at the Rectory again, and the present little phase of your life is past and done with, I trust its ‘pastness’ may soften all the annoyance you have had to put up with. Even I, I would fain hope, may come in for a little of the benefit of the mellowing haze of distance and bygoneness?”
“I do not feel that I have had any annoyances to bear,” said Mary, cordially. “Alys has been only too unselfish, and—and—you, yourself, Mr Cheviott, have been most considerate of my comfort. My associations with the Edge can never be unpleasant.”
“Thank you—thank you, so very much,” said Mr Cheviott, so earnestly that Mary forthwith began to call hereof a humbug.
Would it not have been honest to have said a little more—to have told him that, while she really did thank him for his courtesy and thoughtfulness, nothing that had happened had, in the least, shaken her real opinion of his character? Of the other side of his character, so she mentally worded it in instinctive self-defence of her constancy. For, indeed, to her there had come to be two Mr Cheviotts—Alys’s brother, and, alas! Arthur Beverley’s cousin!