Chapter Twenty Seven.
An Act of Common Humanity.
”... And now thy pardon, friend,
For thou hast ever answered courteously,
And wholly bold thou art, and meek withal
As any of Arthur’s best
... I marvel what thou art.”
“Damsel,” he said, “ye be not all to blame,
... Ye said your say;
Mine answer was my deed. Good sooth! I hold
He scarce is knight, yea but half man ...
... He, who lets
His heart be stirred with any foolish heat
At any gentle damsel’s waywardness.”
Gareth and Lynette.
Her eyes gleamed up into his face. But for a moment or two she did not speak. The inclination was so desperately strong upon her to burst into tears that she felt if she attempted to answer him, if she even moved her gaze or allowed a muscle of her face to quiver, it would have been all over with her self-control. He, on his side, stood watching her closely; he did not like the strained, unnatural expression, and thought for a moment that when it relaxed it would be into something worse—he thought she was going to faint, and half stretched out his arms as if to catch her. Mary saw the action, and it restored her self-possession.
“I won’t be a fool,” she murmured to herself, “wasting all this precious time with my nonsense,” though in reality barely three minutes had passed since the sound of the wheels had first reached her.
Then she gave herself a sort of little admonitory shake, and, turning again to Mr Cheviott, spoke in a more natural, but yet evidently excited tone.
“I will explain it all,” she said, and so she did. Her father’s symptoms of increasing weakness and the note to Dr Brandreth, then the sudden seizure and the difficulty of obtaining a messenger, ending with her own failure at the Edge and Mrs Wills’s suggestion.
“And now,” she said, “if only you can tell me where I am, or if your man knows Farmer Bartlemoor’s, it will be all right, and I shall be so very grateful to you.”
But to her surprise Mr Cheviott did not at once reply, nor did he turn to “Andrew” for information. Instead of this, he took out his watch, and, examining it by the light of the lamp, murmured something to himself.
“Five miles—twenty minutes,” he said, “yes, that would be far the quickest.”
Then he turned to Mary.
“Miss Western,” he said, gravely, “you are getting as wet as you possibly can. I must drive you to some shelter. Shall I take you back to the Edge, or home?”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Mary. “Don’t mind me. I entreat you not to mind me. If you have time to drive anywhere, if I dare ask you such an unheard-of thing, drive me to the nearest point to Dr Brandreth’s. I feel as if I could not go to the Bartlemoors, they don’t know me, and my head is growing so confused I am not sure that I should know what to say when I got there.”
He had half expected this—it hardly seemed possible to oppose her—and the risk to herself, if greater in one way seemed less in another.
“Well, then,” he said, “will you do exactly as I tell you?”
“Yes,” she replied, meekly, “exactly.”
“Your cloak is waterproof, I see,” he continued, “is your dress dry underneath it?”
“Quite,” she answered, “and my boots are thick, and it has not been raining long.”
Mr Cheviott turned to the carriage, from which he extracted a large, soft, woolly rug.
“Loosen your cloak for a moment,” he said, “and put this thing on under it, then your cloak again. Now can you climb up to the front beside me? I am driving.” Mary managed it, almost without assistance, and Mr Cheviott followed her. But, just as the groom was about to leave the horse’s head, a sudden giddiness came over her, and she swayed forward for a second. Mr Cheviott caught her with his left arm, and called to the man to stay where he was for a moment.
“Miss Western,” he said, in a low voice, “you are perfectly exhausted. It is not right of me to let you go farther.”
She placed both hands on his arm.
“Oh, yes, yes,” she pleaded. “Anything rather than losing more time by taking me home first. It was only for a moment—I am better now.”
“Andrew,” called out Mr Cheviott, “where is my flask?”
“In the left-hand inside pocket, sir,” was the reply, “the pocket of your light top-coat, sir—not of the ulster.” In a moment the flask was forthcoming, a small quantity poured into the silver cup and held to Mary’s lips.
“No, thank you,” she said, calmly. “I never take wine.”
Mr Cheviott felt almost inclined to laugh.
“It is not wine, as it happens,” he replied. “It is brandy and water. But, if it were wine, it wouldn’t matter. You promised to do as you were told.”
“Brandy,” repeated Mary, “I cannot take that. It will go to my head.”
“It will not,” said Mr Cheviott. “Now, Miss Western, don’t be silly. Drink it.”
She did so.
“Was there ever such a girl before?” said Mr Cheviott, speaking audibly enough though as if to himself. “Such a mixture of strength and childishness, common sense and uncommon fancifulness! Oh, Miss Western?” Mary, in turn, could hardly help laughing.
“Now,” he went on, “if you feel giddy you very likely will when we start—don’t say it’s the brandy. I cannot keep my arm round you,” Mary started up indignantly, she had forgotten that all this time, through the episode of the flask and all, the arm had been there,—“I cannot keep my arm round you,” he continued, coolly, though perfectly aware of the start, “because I am going to drive. I cannot trust my man to drive this mare, and I cannot let you sit behind with him. So promise me, if you feel giddy, to take hold of my arm for yourself. It will not interfere with my driving, and a very light hold will keep you firm.”
“Very well,” said Mary, meekly enough to outward hearing, though, in her heart, a vow was registered that, short of feeling herself falling bodily out of the carriage, nothing should induce her to resort to such assistance.
“I shall drive slowly, at first,” said Mr Cheviott, “as the mare is already a little excited. But it will not really lose any time to speak of. I was driving foolishly fast when I met you, but then I had only my own neck to think of.”
“And Andrew’s,” suggested Mary.
“And Andrew’s,” he repeated. “But Andrew is experienced in the art of taking care of his neck. I never saw any one with a greater knack of keeping out of damage than he has.”
Was he talking for talking’s sake, or with the intention of setting her at her ease by showing her how completely so he was himself? Mary felt a little puzzled. Thoroughly at ease he certainly was, and, more than this, he seemed to her to be in remarkably good spirits, yet his next observation showed her how far from indifferent he was feeling to the anxiety that she was suffering.
“I fancy we shall just catch Brandreth,” he said, “and you will find no time has been lost. This is his whist club night, and it was to be at old Admiral Maxton’s. They break up at nine, I know—the Admiral is so very old—so the doctor will be just about getting home.”
“Are you going to take me all the way to Withenden?” said Mary, half timidly.
“Certainly,” replied Mr Cheviott, decidedly. “Now, Andrew, let her go. All right.”
But just at first it seemed to Mary more like “all wrong.” With a plunge and a dash that nearly took her breath away, the impatient animal darted forward. How Andrew managed to scramble into his seat was a mystery to Mary. It was all she could do to keep hers; the same giddy feeling came over her, her head reeled, and, with a vague remembrance of Mr Cheviott’s injunction, she caught hold of his arm to steady herself. He was prepared for the movement, and by no means discomposed by it. In a minute or two the mare settled down into a steady pace, and Mary’s head grew steady.
She quietly withdrew her hand.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, somewhat stiffly.
“Not at all,” replied Mr Cheviott, “it’s what I told you to do. But don’t be frightened of Madge—it’s only a little show-off; we quite understand each other.”
“Thank you,” said Mary, imagining a patronising shade in his tone. “I was not the least frightened; I am not nervous.”
“No, you are not, but you are human, Miss Western, and what you have gone through to-night has been enough to try any one’s nerves,” said Mr Cheviott, gravely.
Mary did not reply, though she felt herself ungracious for not doing so. In a minute he went on again.
“I have been thinking,” he said, “of what you told me about your father. Of course I am no doctor, but I believe I can give you a little comfort. This sort of seizure is not so alarming when it comes on, as in his case, gradually; it is not like a man in too good health—a great full-blooded fellow like Squire Cleave, for instance—do you know him?—being struck down suddenly. Your father, as a rule, is so equable, is he not? and lives so quietly and regularly. I fancy he will get over it, and be much the same as usual again. Of course it is serious, but I have a friend at this moment who had an attack of this kind ten years ago, and is now fairly well and able to enjoy life; of course he is obliged to be careful.”
What a load was lifted from Mary’s heart! To be allowed to hope—what a relief! The tears rushed to her eyes, they were in her voice as she replied:
“Oh, how good you are! Thank you, thank you for telling me that,” and in his turn Mr Cheviott made no reply.
“Freedom from anxiety, from daily worry—he has had too much of that—would be greatly in his favour, would it not?” Mary added, after a little pause.
“Undoubtedly, I should say,” said Mr Cheviott, recalling as he spoke the careworn expression of the Rector’s face as he had last seen him. “Peculiarly so in his case, I should say. He is a very sensitive man, is he not?”
“Very,” said Mary, “but not in the sense of being irritable. He is very sweet-tempered. Poor father,” she went on, with a sudden burst of confidence which amazed herself, “he has had far too much anxiety; but if only he gets well, I think and believe that that can be, is going to be, cured.”
“What can she mean?” thought Mr Cheviott, one or two possible solutions of her words darting through his mind. But what she did not tell he of course could not ask, only just then a sudden and unnecessary touch of the whip made Madge start again.
They were close to Withenden by now. Dr Brandreth’s house stood a little out of the town on the side by which they were entering it. Mr Cheviott drew up.
“Suppose we wait here,” he said. “Andrew can be thoroughly trusted to deliver exactly any message you give him, and it might be—perhaps you would not care about clambering up and down again from that high seat?”
Mary’s cheeks grew hot, dark as it was. She did not know whether to be angry or grateful, whether indignantly to declare her indifference to Withenden gossip or to choose, as her conductor evidently wished to suggest, “discretion as the better part of valour.” A moment’s reflection decided her that, considering all he had done and was doing, she had no right to reject the suggestion.
“Thank you,” she said, and, turning to the groom, gave a distinct message, short and to the point. “My letter will be at Dr Brandreth’s before now,” she added to Mr Cheviott, “and that will explain a little. It was asking him to come early to-morrow.”
“That message is all you have to give,” said Andrew’s master as the man was hastening off. “You need not say who brought it, or anything.”
“But, Mr Cheviott,” said Mary, half timidly, half indignantly, “I would not mind all Withenden knowing I had brought it. And—and your driving me here was really an act of pure humanity; no one could say I had done anything in the least not—not nice.”
Her voice quivered a little.
“Certainly not. But don’t you think sometimes—we must take the world as we find it, you know—sometimes it is just as well to give ‘no one’ the power to say good, bad, or indifferent about what we do?” said Mr Cheviott, very gently.
“Perhaps,” said Mary, more humbly than was usual with her. Then she added, “It was not nice of me to say that—about your kindness being an act of pure humanity. I didn’t mean—I only meant—I don’t know what I meant, but I am very, very much obliged to you.”
“But you have no reason to be. It was, as you said, just an act of common humanity,” said Mr Cheviott, with slight bitterness.
”‘Pure,’ I said, not ‘common’,” corrected Mary.
“Well, it’s all the same. How can I think you will consider it even an act of friendliness? You won’t have us for your friends. And even if I were ten times the unmitigated ruffian you believe me to be,” he added, with a slight laugh, “would it not be an immense pleasure to me to return in the slightest degree your goodness to Alys? You do believe I care for her, I think? I am grateful, most grateful, to you and to the dark night, and to the chance that made me choose that way home, for making it possible for me to be of the least service to you.”
“Mr Cheviott,” said Mary, impulsively, “whatever you are, you have behaved most generously to me. It was very good of you to come to papa—after—after all I said.”
“Thank you,” he said in a low voice.
“I wish,” she added, as if speaking to herself, “I wish I could understand you. I hate to do any one injustice.”
“And what if you found that you had done such to me?” he asked, eagerly.
“Of course I would own myself in the wrong, if I saw that I had been,” she replied, proudly, and Mr Cheviott could feel that her head was thrown back with the gesture peculiar to her at times.
“And then?”
“You would—you would forgive me, I suppose,” she said, lightly, but with a slight nervousness in her voice. Mr Cheviott was silent. Mary seemed impelled to go on speaking. “On the whole,” she said, “I think I shall register your kindness to-night as an act of great generosity. Will that do better?”
“As you please,” Mr Cheviott replied, dryly, but, it seemed to Mary, sadly too. And she was right.
“How can she ever see that she did me injustice?” he was saying to himself. “I can never explain things—it is madness to imagine I can ever be cleared.”
Andrew’s report was most satisfactory. Dr Brandreth had just come in and would start at once. The order for his dog-cart had been sent out while the man stood at the door.
“Then,” said Mr Cheviott, “the faster we get back to Hathercourt the better. You would like to be there before Brandreth arrives?”
“Very much,” said Mary.
“Will not your mother have been very uneasy about you?” he added.
“I hope not. I think not,” said Mary, anxiously. “She may have been too absorbed about papa to think of me. And she knows the difficulty. Very likely she thought I was waiting at the Edge till Wills came back again. But, Mr Cheviott, you are not meaning to take me home all the way?”
“What else, what less could I possibly do?” he replied, bluntly.
“Will not your sister be dreadfully uneasy at your being so late?” she asked.
“No, she does not expect me to-night at all—at least, I left it uncertain,” Mr Cheviott replied. “I have been hunting over near Farkingham to-day. It is nearly the last meet of the season, and Alys begged me not to miss it. Then I dined at Cleavelands, half intending to sleep there. But I found there was going to be a dance after dinner, and—somehow I don’t care for that sort of thing, especially without Alys. So I came away.”
No one certainly could have to-night accused Mr Cheviott of stiffness or uncommunicativeness.
“How is Alys?” asked Mary.
“Better, on the whole, better, but it is slow work,” said Mr Cheviott, with a little sigh. A sigh partly of brotherly anxiety, partly of regret for the additional complications this accident of his sister’s had brought into his own and others’ lives. “It may be years before she is thoroughly well again,” he added, and Mary, feeling that there was little she could say in the way of comfort, was silent.
“Can your horse take you all the way home again tonight?” she said, presently.
“I think so. If not, I dare say I can put up for the night at Beverley’s farm,” he said, carelessly, adding, with a slight change of tone, “our old quarters.”
The allusion, somehow, made Mary feel nervous again. In her eagerness to change the subject she flung herself off Scylla into Charybdis—in homelier terms, “out of the frying-pan into the fire.”
“Do you know what came into my head when I first saw you driving so fast up that lane?” she said with a slight laugh.
“No,” he replied. “You did not know who it was. I think you first fancied I was Dr Brandreth, did you not?”
“I thought it just possible. But that is not what I meant. I could not help having a foolish wild sort of fancy that perhaps you were Sir Ingram de Romary—you know the story?”
“The fellow that pitched himself over the Chaldron Falls,” said Mr Cheviott. “Yes, I remember. Your fancies about me are the reverse of complimentary, do you know, Miss Western? The last time you had any such, if I remember right, you took me for the ghost of that other still more disreputable Romary, the fellow that forced an unfortunate ‘heathen Chinee’ girl to marry him, and then abused her so that she threw herself out of the window of the haunted room.”
“Mr Cheviott!” said Mary, reproachfully, her cheeks glowing at the remembrance of that day.
And Mr Cheviott was merciful enough to say no more.
They drove back to Hathercourt very fast. So fast that when they drew up at the Rectory gates there was as yet no sound of Dr Brandreth’s wheels in the distance.
“Will you let me get down here, please?” said Mary. “I don’t want to make them think it is the doctor, as they would only feel disappointed.”
Mr Cheviott got down and helped Mary out of the carriage.
“Would you mind my waiting here an instant?” he said with some hesitation. “Dr Brandreth cannot be here for five or ten minutes yet, and I should be so glad to hear how your father is, and if I can be of any more use.”
“I will run back and tell you—in a moment,” said Mary.
There was no need for her to ring or knock at the hall door. It was on the latch as she had left it, and in a moment, at the sound of her opening it, Alexa, George, and Josey appeared.
“Oh! Mary, we have been so frightened about you,” they began.
“But first tell me how papa is,” she interrupted.
“Better, a little better. He opened his eyes and smiled at mamma, and now he seems to be sleeping, really sleeping, not in that dreadful sort of way,” said Alexa.
Mary gave a sigh of thankfulness.
“Run in and tell mamma Dr Brandreth will be here in five minutes. Has she been very frightened about me?”
“No, dear, we wouldn’t let her,” said Alexa, re-assuringly. “We told her you might have to wait at the Edge till Wills came back, it was raining so.”
“That was very good and sensible of you,” said Mary, at which commendation poor Alexa’s white face grew rosy with pleasure.
“But aren’t you coming in to mamma, Mary?” she said, seeing that her sister, after disentangling herself from a mysterious fluffy shawl in which she was wrapped, was turning away to the door.
“Immediately,” said Mary. “I am only running back to the gate with this rug, to return it to the—the person that lent it me, and who drove me to Withenden.”
“All the way? How very good-natured! What a way you have been! And what a lovely rug. Is that Mrs Wills’s? Surely not,” they all said at once. But Mary wisely paid no heed, she ran to the gate and back again almost before she was missed.
“This is your rug, Mr Cheviott,” she said, breathlessly, “and thank you for it so much, and thank you for everything. And papa is already a very little better, they think.”
“I am so glad,” he said, cordially. “But, Miss Western, how exceedingly foolish of you to have taken off the rug and run out again into the cold without it!”
Mary laughed.
“I am very hardy,” she said, as she ran off again. “Good-night, and thank you again.”
But Mr Cheviott stopped her for an instant.
“Is there nothing I can do to help you?” he asked.
“Nothing—nothing more, I should say,” she replied.
“And—Miss Western, you are not going to sit up all night,” he went on—“promise me you will not; you are not fit for it, and that is not the way to prepare yourself for, perhaps, weeks of nursing.”
“I am truly quite rested and fresh,” she said. “It is very kind of you to think of it. I shall not do anything foolish. Good-night again.”
He did not and had not attempted to shake hands, nor had Mary offered to do so.
“He refused my hand the last time I offered it,” she said to herself. “But on the whole, perhaps, what wonder?”
Dr Brandreth, approaching Hathercourt some ten minutes later, was surprised to meet a dog-cart driving off in an opposite direction. But it passed too quickly for even his quick eyes to identify it.
“Whose trap can that be?” he said to his boy.
“Dunno, sir. Not so very onlike the Romary dogcart neither,” was the reply.
“Impossible!” said the doctor. And in his own mind he wondered why Mary Western had not prosecuted the acquaintanceship with the Cheviotts, so strangely begun.
“It would be a good thing for those girls to make some friends for themselves,” he thought to himself. “Nice as they are, I don’t altogether understand them; they don’t give themselves airs—the very reverse, yet for all that I suspect they are too proud for their own advantage. And if poor Western is really breaking up, goodness only knows what is to become of them!”
Early, very early the next morning, Mr Cheviott’s groom made his appearance at the Rectory to make inquiry, with his master’s compliments, for Mr Western. At the door he was met by “the young lady herself,” coming out for the refreshment of a breath of the sweet spring air, all the sweeter for the last night’s heavy rains.
“And she told me to tell you, sir, with Mrs Western’s compliments, as how the Rector was better than might have been expected, and as how the doctor gives good hopes.”
So “Sir Ingram de Romary” drove home again, and sympathising Alys heard with eager interest of her friend’s new troubles, and longed more than ever to see Mary Western again.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Alys Puts Two and Two Together.
“I shall as now do more for you
Than longeth to womanhede.”
The Nut-brown Mayd.
“Mr Western is not so well, I hear,” said Mr Cheviott to his sister one afternoon, a fortnight or so after the Rector of Hathercourt’s first seizure.
Alys started up from the invalid couch on which she was lying. The brother and sister were in a small morning-room which Alys sometimes called her “boudoir,” though its rather heterogeneous furniture and contents hardly realised the ideas suggested by the word.
“I am so dreadfully sorry,” she exclaimed. “I had a note from Mary yesterday saying he was so much better.”
“These cases are sadly deceptive,” said Miss Winstanley, who was knitting by the window, consolingly. “At Mr Western’s age I should think it extremely doubtful if he recovers. I know two or three almost similar cases that ended fatally, though just at first the doctors thought hopefully of them.”
“How did you hear it, Laurence?” said Alys. “You didn’t send over to-day to inquire, did you?”
“No. Arthur told me. He said that he had met Brandreth on the road somewhere on his way back from the Edge,” said Mr Cheviott, strolling to the window, where he remained standing, looking out.
“I wish you would ask him to come and tell me exactly what Dr Brandreth says,” Alys asked.
“He is not in—he went over to the stables a few minutes ago. I’ll tell him to come and speak to you when he comes back. But I feel sure that was all he heard,” replied Mr Cheviott, without manifesting any surprise at Alys’s extreme interest in the matter.
“I wonder if they have sent for Miss Western—Lilias, the eldest one, I mean,” soliloquised Alys. “Mary said they hoped not to need to do so, as there was some difficulty about her coming home sooner than had been fixed. Poor Mary, how much she must have had to do, and she never thinks of herself or takes any rest. I wish I could do anything to help her!”
Mr Cheviott turned from the window to the fire, and began poking it vigorously.
“Excuse me, Laurence,” said Miss Winstanley, plaintively. “I think the fire’s quite hot enough; it is such a very close evening for April.”
Mr Cheviott laughed and desisted.
“I am out of place in this room,” he said. “I am always doing something clumsy. I’ll send Arthur instead—he’s a much better tame cat than I.”
He turned to leave the room.
“By-the-bye, Alys,” he said, putting his head in at the door again, “you had better make much of Arthur while you have him. He says he must leave the day after tomorrow.”
“And he only came yesterday,” said Alys, regretfully. “It’s too bad—only two days.”
“Three, my dear,” corrected her aunt. “We arrived the day before yesterday. Arthur left Cirencester on Tuesday, and slept Tuesday night in my house, and this is Friday.”
“Well, it’s much the same,” said Alys. “He might stay a little longer. He’s always so busy now. Why should he have such a craze for hard work? It doesn’t suit him at all.”
“My dear!” said Miss Winstanley, reprovingly. “How can you say such a thing? In his circumstances his friends cannot be too thankful that he has taken to some useful employment, which will do him no harm either way, however things turn out.”
Alys pricked up her ears.
“How do you mean ‘in his circumstances,’ aunt? How are his circumstances different from Laurence’s, or any other man’s who has a place and a good income?”
“Oh! I don’t know, my dear,” said Miss Winstanley, evasively. “I told you once before, I don’t know all about Arthur’s affairs. One, two, three—I am so afraid I have got a row too much—by-the-bye, my dear, I wish you wouldn’t talk so much about those Westerns. I warned you of it last year. Laurence does not like them, and the mention of them always irritates him.”
“It was Laurence himself who first mentioned them, as it happens,” said Alys, not too respectfully, it must be confessed.
“Ah, yes, but you said a great deal more, and, as I said last year—”
“Last year and this are very different, aunt,” said Alys. “Have you forgotten all that Mary Western did for me? No one has recognised it more fully than Laurence.”
“Ah, well, perhaps so. But still he does not like them. Did you not see how he made some excuse for going away, when you would go on talking about them?”
“It was no such thing. It was you fidgeting him about the fire when he was really concerned about Mr Western,” muttered Alys, but too low for her aunt to catch the words. And Miss Winstanley relapsed into her “one, two, three, four,” and for a few minutes there was silence. Then Alys returned to the charge.
“By what you said just now about Arthur’s uncertain circumstances, did you mean the peculiar terms of his father’s will?” she said, demurely.
“Oh, yes, of course, I suppose so, but I wish you would not ask me. I am very stupid about wills and all sorts of law things,” said Miss Winstanley, floundering about helplessly beneath her niece’s diplomatic cross-questioning. “I only meant that for a man who can’t marry and settle down it is an excellent thing to have some employment.”
“And why shouldn’t he marry and settle down?” said Alys. “He will come into his property in two years, when I am twenty-one—I always remember it by that—and till that he could have a good allowance to live on. Why shouldn’t he marry, poor fellow? I think it very hard lines that he shouldn’t.”
“But—” began Miss Winstanley.
“But, aunt,” said Alys, who was “working herself up” on a subject she was at all times inclined to grow rather hot about, “I really mean what I say. It is the only one thing I have ever really felt inclined to quarrel with Laurence for I can tell you that Arthur has been much nearer marrying than you have any idea of, and—”
It was Miss Winstanley’s turn to interrupt. “My dear!” she exclaimed, letting her knitting-needles fall on her lap in her excitement, “you don’t mean to say that he—that you—you won’t be twenty-one for two years.”
“What do you mean, aunt?” said Alys. “What has my being or not being twenty-one to do with Arthur’s marrying?”
Miss Winstanley looked as if she were going to cry.
“Why will you always begin about this subject, Alys?” she said, pathetically. “I thought you meant—”
“Well, tell me that, any way,” said Alys. “You must tell me what you thought I meant.”
“Oh, nothing. I must have mistaken you. It was only when you said that about his having thought of marrying—before your accident, of course—and I knew he took it so much to heart, but of course that was natural on all accounts,” said Miss Winstanley, confusedly.
Alys sat bolt up on her couch, thereby setting all her doctor’s orders at defiance. A red spot glowed on each cheek, her eyes were sparkling. Miss Winstanley could see that she was growing very excited—the thing of all others to be avoided for her!—and the poor lady’s alarm and distress added to her nervousness and confusion.
“Now, aunt,” said Alys, calmly, “you must tell me what I want to know. I am not so blind and childish as you have all imagined. I have known for a good while that there was some strange complication which was putting everything wrong, in which, somehow, I was concerned. Don’t make yourself unhappy by thinking it has been all your doing that I have come to know anything about it. It has been no one person’s doing; it has just been that I have ‘put two and two together’ for myself.”
“Alys,” ejaculated her aunt, “what an expression for you to use!”
“It expresses what I mean,” said Alys, pushing back the hair off her throbbing temples. “And since I have been ill I have had so much time for thinking and wondering and puzzling out things—and I think I have become quicker, cleverer, in a way than I used to be. I seem as if I could almost guess at things by magic, sometimes. Now, aunt, what I want to know is this—is Arthur’s future in any way dependent on me, or anything I may or may not do?”
“Had you not better ask Laurence?” said Miss Winstanley, tremulously, driven at last hopelessly into a corner.
“No, it would be no use. There is something that he is, in some way, debarred from telling me, I am sure, otherwise he would have told me, for he has no love of mystery or secrecy. And yet I feel equally sure that it is something that can only be put straight by my knowing it.”
Miss Winstanley sat silent, a picture of bewildered distress.
“Aunt,” said Alys again, after a short pause, her cheeks and brow flushing to the roots of her hair, “what I am going to ask you I don’t like to put in words—it seems to me such an altogether repulsive, unnatural idea, but, as you won’t speak without, I must ask you. Has all this trouble anything to do with my marrying some one, any one in particular? You told me once that Uncle Beverley, Arthur’s father, was extraordinarily fond of me when I was a baby, and that he would have done anything to show his gratitude to my mother for what she had done for him. Now, aunt, has this anything to do with the peculiar terms of his will, which I have very often heard alluded to?”
“I have never seen the will; believe me, Alys, I do not know its exact terms,” Miss Winstanley pleaded.
“Well, I dare say you don’t, aunt. But you know enough to throw a little daylight on my part of it. Aunt, is it, can it be that Arthur’s inheriting his father’s property—his own property—depends on his marrying me?”
Her voice quivered and fell—a whole army of contending feelings were at war within her as she waited breathlessly for Miss Winstanley’s reply.
“No, not exactly,” she said, trying, as usual, to shelter herself behind vague and indefinite answers, “if you did not want to many him, he would not be punished for that. Now, Alys, this is all I can say. I am going away upstairs to my own room, to avoid any more talk of this kind.”
Miss Winstanley rose from her seat, nervously tugging at her shawl which, as usual, had dropped far below her waist as she got up.
Alys took no notice of her last sentence.
“If I don’t want to marry him, he will be none the worse,” she repeated, slowly, “but if he doesn’t want to marry me—what then? That would be a different story! Thank you, aunt; on the whole, I think you have told me enough, so you may stay down-stairs without fear. I am not going to ask any more questions.”
Her tone was cool and composed enough, yet, on the whole, Miss Winstanley would rather have had her more visibly angry. There was a gleam in her eyes and a scorching spot on each cheek which her aunt had not for long seen there. “Alys was very hot-tempered as a child,” she was wont to say of her, “but of late years she had calmed down wonderfully.”
“No, Alys, I don’t want to stay down-stairs, thank you,” she replied, reprovingly, tugging harder than ever at the front of the recalcitrant shawl, her efforts in some mysterious way only resulting in a more tantalising descent behind.
Alys made no reply.
“To think,” she was muttering to herself, “to think how all this time I have been kept in the dark! How like a fool I have behaved! Laurence might have warned me somehow—however he was bound down not to tell me. He had better have tried to upset the will on the ground of Uncle Beverley’s being mad, which he certainly must have been!”
Two minutes after Miss Winstanley left the room Captain Beverley entered it.
“Alys,” he said, as he came in, “Laurence said you wanted me, so here I am. Why, what’s the matter, child?” he added, with a quick change of tone as he caught sight of her face. She was not crying, but her cheeks were burning and her eyes gleaming, and as she looked up to answer her cousin, he saw that she was biting her lips in a quick nervous way to keep back the tears—a gesture peculiar to her from childhood.
“Everything is the matter,” she said, bitterly. “I feel as if I should never trust any one again. I have something to say to you, Arthur, something very particular, and I want to say it very distinctly, so please to listen.”
“I’m all attention,” said Arthur, lightly still, though in reality not a little apprehensive as to what was coming. What could it be? Could Alys have found out about the understanding that now existed between himself and Lilias—she had been so intimate with Mary Western at the Edge? But a moment’s reflection dismissed the idea. Lilias was too true to have told any one, even her sister, without his sanction. Besides, even had the fact come to Alys’s knowledge, she would have been pleased and sympathising, not discomposed and indignant, as she evidently was.
“Listen,” she repeated. “I want to tell you, Arthur Beverley, that supposing anything so altogether impossible and unnatural, and—and absurd and ridiculous as that you, my cousin, almost brother, should have thought of wanting to marry me—me, Alys!—well, supposing such a thing, I want to tell you that nothing you or any one could ever have said or ever could say would make me ever, even for half an instant, take such a thing into consideration. I could not do so. I tell you distinctly that I would not marry you for anything, Arthur, not if my life depended upon it.”
Captain Beverley stared at her—stared as if he hardly believed his own ears.
“Does he think I am going out of my mind?” thought Alys, while across her brain there darted a horrible misgiving—could she in any way have misunderstood Miss Winstanley’s confused replies?—could this impulsive act of hers, instead of being, as it had seemed to her, a positive inspiration, be after all a mistake, a terribly unwomanly mistake, which, to the last day of her life, she would blush to think of? Afterwards it seemed to Alys as if in waiting for her cousin to speak she had lived through years of agonised suspense.
“Alys,” he said at last, hoarsely, it sounded to her. “Alys,” and oh! the relief of the next few words, strangely chosen and almost ludicrously matter-of-fact as they sounded! “Would you mind putting that in writing?”
“Certainly not. I will do so this moment,” she replied, recovering her self-possession and presence of mind on the spot. “Here, give me my writing things—just push my davenport over here.”
Arthur did so, his hands trembling, his face pale with anxiety. All Alys’s nervousness and agitation seemed to have passed to him.
“It is best to do it at once,” he murmured, more as if speaking to himself than to her, “before I am tempted to say anything, so that my conscience may be clear that it is entirely voluntary, entirely her own doing.”
“Yes,” said Alys, looking up from the paper on which she had already traced some lines, “that it certainly is.” Then she went on writing. “There, now, will that do?” she exclaimed, holding the sheet towards him.
“Read it, please,” said Arthur, and Alys read:
“Of my own free will, uninfluenced by any one whatsoever, I wish to declare that no conceivable consideration would, at this or any other time, make me agree to marry my cousin, Arthur Beverley.
“Alys Madelene Cheviott.”
“Yes,” said Arthur, slowly, “that will do. Shall I thank you, Alys, or would you rather not?”
She looked up with a sparkle of her old mischievousness in her eyes.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said; “I don’t quite see it, I confess. I have simply stated a fact.” Then suddenly she held up her hands before her face, which was growing hot again. “No, no, Arthur, don’t thank me,” she exclaimed; “I could not bear it. It is altogether too—too bad that anything like this should come between you and me. Go away, please, and send Laurence.”
Arthur looked at her with earnest, regretful tenderness. But he saw that she was right. She would be better without him, and he went. Five minutes afterwards her brother entered the room.
“Alys,” he said, sternly, but any one that knew him could have seen that it was a sternness born of anxiety, “what is all this? What have you been doing? I cannot understand what Arthur says, or rather he won’t explain, but refers me to you. What have you been doing?”
“Only enacting the part of Miss Jane Baxter,” said Alys, with an attempt at indifference.
“Alys, what do you mean?”
“Who refused all the men before they axed her,” continued Alys, in the same tone.
“Alys!” said her brother again, and something in his tone arrested her.
She looked up.
“Laurence,” she said, “don’t misunderstand me; I am not really flippant and horrid like that, but it is true all the same. I have told Arthur, deliberately and seriously, that, if he were ever to ask me to marry him, nothing would ever make me take such a thing even into momentary consideration. I would not marry him for anything.”
“Had he asked you to do so?” said Mr Cheviott, in a tone half of amaze, half of bewilderment.
“No,” said Alys, “I told you he had not, and most certainly after what I have said, he never will.”
“Do you think he had any intention of the kind?” again questioned her brother.
Alys hesitated. Her quick wits told her that she must be careful what admissions she made. Were she to reply what she believed to be the truth—that her cousin never had had, never would have any such feelings with regard to her as could lead to his asking her to many him—the effect on him might, she felt vaguely, be disastrous. So she hesitated, and meanwhile her brother watched her narrowly.
“I don’t see,” she said at last, “I don’t see that I need answer that, Laurence. All I want you to know is that, after what I have said, Arthur could never think of me in that way. I have made it impossible for him to do so.”
“And what made you do this? What has put all this into your head? Was it Aunt Winstanley?” asked Mr Cheviott.
“No,” replied Alys. “That is to say, Aunt Winstanley did not put anything in my head, though I forced her to answer one or two questions I asked her. She did so very confusedly, I assure you, and but for my own ideas I should have been little the better for her information. No one is to blame. I have not been as blind and unconscious as you thought—that is all.”
That was all in one sense. It was plain to Mr Cheviott that Alys would say no more, and on reflection he could not see that any more explanation on her part would do any good. He stood silent, hardly able as yet to see clearly the effect of this extraordinary turn of affairs.
“I am going up to my own room, Laurence,” said Alys, rising slowly as she spoke. “I am very tired. I think I won’t come down to dinner. I don’t want you just now to say whether you think I have done rightly or wrongly, wisely or unwisely—some time or other I dare say you will explain all that has puzzled me. But in the mean time some instinct tells me, told me while I was doing it, that you, Laurence, would be glad for me to do it. Kiss me, dear, and say good-night.”
He bent down and kissed her tenderly, still without speaking. But when Alys was up in her own room, safe for the night from all curious or anxious eyes, she lay down on her sofa, burying her face in its cushions, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Cutting the Knot.
“Let’s take the instant by the forward top;
... On our quick’st decrees
The inaudible and noiseless foot of time
Steals ere we can effect them.”
All’s Well that Ends Well.
Dinner passed very silently at Romary that evening. Mr Cheviott was preoccupied, Captain Beverley labouring evidently under some suppressed excitement, Miss Winstanley nervous and depressed.
“Have you seen Alys, Laurence?” she said, as the butler came with a discreet inquiry as to what Miss Cheviott would be likely to “fancy.” She had told her maid that she did not want any dinner, but had been so far influenced by Mathilde’s remonstrance as to say she would take anything her aunt liked to send her. “I really don’t know what to send up to her,” Miss Winstanley went on, helplessly. “What do you think, Laurence? I went to her room on my way down-stairs, but Mathilde said she had begged not to be disturbed.”
“I saw her half an hour ago,” said Mr Cheviott. “I think she is only tired. I will send her up something.” He got up from his chair and himself superintended the arrangement of a tempting little tray.
“Is Alys ill?” said Captain Beverley, in a low voice, and with a slight guiltiness of manner which did not escape his cousin.
“I think not,” Mr Cheviott replied, dryly, as he sat down. “She has been over-excited, and nowadays she can’t stand that sort of thing.”
Arthur said no more, but he was evidently glad when dinner was over, and Miss Winstanley had left the cousins by themselves.
“Laurence,” he began, eagerly, when the last servant had closed the door and they were really alone, “I am anxious to tell you everything that passed between Alys and me this afternoon. I only thought it fair to her that she should tell you what she chose to tell, first.”
“That was not very much,” said Mr Cheviott, “she evidently is afraid of damaging you by saying much.”
“God bless her,” said Arthur, fervently, “of course she does not know the whole state of the case. But I am perfectly willing to tell you everything, Laurence; in fact, as things are, I should be a fool not to do so. But, in the first place, read this.”
He held out the paper that Alys had written and signed. In spite of his intense anxiety—an anxiety but very partially understood by Captain Beverley, who little knew the personal complications the charge of his affairs had brought upon his cousin—Mr Cheviott could not restrain a smile as he read the words before him.
“An extraordinary document, I must confess,” he said, as he returned it to Arthur. “Upon my word, Beverley, Alys and you are just a couple of children. If only such serious results were not involved, the whole thing would be most laughable. What can have put all this into her head?”
“Her own intentions and her own observations principally, I believe,” said Arthur. “She knew something of—of my admiration for Miss Western, and she suspected that you had exerted your influence to prevent its coming to anything. She knows you to be too honourable and right-minded to interfere in such a matter without good reason—through mere prejudice, for instance.” Mr Cheviott winced a little.
“I cannot say of myself, Arthur, that I was always quite free from prejudice in this matter,” he interrupted, speaking in a low and somewhat constrained voice, “but I am, I believe I am, ready to own myself in the wrong if I have been so.”
Arthur’s face beamed with pleasure.
“Thank you for that, Laurence,” he said, “a hundred thanks. But I keep to what I said. Whatever your personal prejudices may have been, you did not act upon them. Your conduct was based entirely upon regard, unselfish regard for my welfare, and this Alys felt instinctively and set her wits to work to puzzle it out. But what has first to be considered is this—the statement on that paper is Alys’s own voluntary declaration—”
“Did she write it of her own accord?”
“She first said it to me, in stronger and plainer words even than those she wrote; and when I asked her if she would put it on paper, she did so in an instant—with the greatest eagerness and readiness. Now, Laurence, what is now my position? Supposing I wished to do such a thing, could I ask Alys to marry me after what she has said—it would be a perfect farce and mockery.”
“It certainly would,” said Mr Cheviott. “I’ll tell you what we must do, Arthur. We must go up to town and lay the present state of the case before old Maudsley, and see what he says. He is as anxious as any of us to get the thing settled, and he must see that it would be perfect nonsense now to look forward to any possibility of the terms of the will being fulfilled. And I do not see that their non-fulfillment can possibly rest upon you. It is a strong point in your favour that you have done nothing premature in any other direction. No doubt we shall have to go to law about it—carry it before the Court of Chancery, I mean to say—but as all the beneficiaries, you and Alys, or myself as her guardian, are of one mind as to what we wish, I cannot now anticipate much difficulty.”
“But, Laurence,” began Arthur, and then he hesitated. “At all costs,” he went on again, “I must be open with you. I have done what you call something ‘premature’ in another direction. I am as good as—in fact, I am engaged to Lilias Western.”
Mr Cheviott’s brow contracted.
“Since when?” he said, shortly, while a sudden painful misgiving darted through his brain. Had Mary known this?—had she, in a sense, deceived him? True, she was under no sort of bond not to oppose him—rather the other way; from the first she had openly defied him on this point, but still she must be different from what he had believed her, capable of something more like dissimulation and calculation than he liked to associate with that candid brow, those honest eyes, were it the case that she had known this actual state of things all through that time at the Edge farm—so lately even as during their strange drive to Withenden and back. With keen anxiety he awaited his cousin’s reply.
“Since about the time of Alys’s accident I came down here then one day—you did not know—I was so uneasy about Alys—and I met Lilias close to the Edge, and heard from her how Alys was. And then somehow—I felt I could not go on like that, at the worst I could work for her, and I have been learning how to do so, you must allow—somehow we came to an understanding.”
“And her people know, of course—her sister does, any way, I suppose?” said Mr Cheviott, with an unmistakable accent of pain in his voice which made Captain Beverley look up in surprise.
“Her sister—Mary, do you mean? No, indeed she does not. None of them do. There was, indeed, very little to know—simply an understanding, I might almost call it a tacit understanding, between our two selves that we would wait for each other till brighter days came. We have not written to each other or met again. I would do nothing to compromise Lilias till I could openly claim her. I did not, of course, explain my position; had I done so, she would not, as you once said, have agreed to my ruining myself for her sake. All she knows is that I may very probably be a very poor man. And because I could not explain my position, I saw no harm in keeping it all to our two selves for the present. But, you see, I have looked upon it as settled—till to-day I have considered myself virtually disinherited, and I have been working hard at C— to fit myself for an agency or so on at the end of the two years.”
Mr Cheviott listened attentively, without again interrupting his cousin. But Captain Beverley could see that it was with a lightened countenance he turned towards him again.
“Alys knows nothing of this?” he said. “You are perfectly certain that her eccentric behaviour to-day was not caused by her believing she in any way stood between you and Miss Western? Don’t you see, if it were so, this would injure you altogether; it might then seem as if she had done what she has out of pique, or self-sacrifice, or some feeling of that kind that, in a sense, you were to blame for?”
Mr Cheviott watched his cousin closely as he said this, but Arthur stood the scrutiny well. For a moment or two he stared as if he hardly understood; then a light suddenly breaking upon him, he flushed slightly, but there was no hesitation in his honest blue eyes as he looked up in his cousin’s face.
“I see what you mean,” he said, “but I didn’t at first. No, Laurence, Alys thinks of me as a brother; she did know and warmly approved of my admiration for Miss Western, but she never knew of its going further. I rather think she fancies it shared the fate of my other admirations, and that she thinks no better of me in consequence. What she did to-day had nothing to do with that. She has got into her dear little head that she comes between me and my fortune, and knowing that she never could possibly have cared for me, except as a brother, whether I had cared for her in another way or not, she has, for my sake, nobly taken the bull by the horns. And so far I feel all right. Had I proposed to her twenty times, she would never have accepted me.”
Mr Cheviott was silent. Whether or not he agreed with his cousin was not the question. That Arthur honestly believed what he said was enough.
“And what is to be done then?” said Arthur.
“What I said,” replied Mr Cheviott. “We must lay it all before Maudsley as soon as possible. And in the mean time, Arthur, do nothing more—let things remain as they are with Miss Western. In any case you cannot come into your property for two years.”
“But whatever happens, I am not going to let ‘things remain as they are,’ as you say, for two years,” said Arthur, aghast. “You can continue my present income for that time, anyway, now that my future is likely to be all right. At the worst, even if my engagement was publicly announced, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other as regards Alys and me. I should have shown I did not want to marry her, but she most certainly has shown she does not want to marry me.” He touched Alys’s paper as he spoke.
“Yes,” said Mr Cheviott, “that is true.”
“Perhaps,” said Arthur, laughingly, “if we appeal to the Court of Chancery, it will divide the estate between us. I shouldn’t mind. Lilias and I could live on what there would be well enough.”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” said Mr Cheviott. “However, the first thing to be done is to see Maudsley.”
And it was settled that they should go up to town the following day.
But when the cousins had separated for the night, and Arthur was alone with his own thoughts, a certain feeling of dissatisfaction with his own conduct came over him.
“I can’t make it out exactly,” he said to himself, as he sat over the smoking-room fire with his pipe, “but somehow I’ve a feeling that I’m not acting quite straightforwardly. How is it? Is it that I am claiming my property on false pretences—knowing in my heart that I never did intend to propose to Alys; or is it that I am not behaving rightly to Lilias—keeping her, or our engagement rather, dark till I feel my way? Laurence is as honest a fellow as ever lived, but then his intense anxiety that I should get my own blinds him a little, perhaps, to the other sides of the question. What a muddle it all is, to be sure!”
He sat still for a few moments longer, then suddenly rose from his seat.
“I’ll do it,” he said; “right or wrong, it seems the honestest thing. I’ll do it.”
He hunted about for writing materials, and, having found them, set to work at once on a letter. He did not hesitate in writing it; he seemed at no loss what to say, and in less than half an hour it was completed, signed, sealed and addressed to Mrs Western, Hathercourt Rectory.
Then the young man gave a deep sigh of relief, went to bed, and slept soundly till morning. But very early he was astir again; before many members of the Romary household even—for it was, compared with many, an early one—were about, Captain Beverley had crossed the park, and traversed on foot the two miles to the nearest post-office, that of Uxley, where he deposited his letter, and was at home again before Mr Cheviott made his appearance for the eight o’clock breakfast, necessitated by their intended journey.
A couple of hours later found the two young men in the train.
“Laurence,” began Captain Beverley, but his cousin interrupted him.
“Excuse me, Arthur. I want to say something to you before I forget. You must let me be the spokesman with Maudsley; if he proposes, as I expect, to carry your affairs to the Court of Chancery, I think it will be best for his mind to be perfectly unprejudiced, and to let his instructions, in the first place anyway, come from me. You, I am certain, would not tell the story impartially—you would tell it against your own interests.”
“I must tell it as it is, Laurence,” said Arthur, “and, no doubt facts will show that I am, at least, as much to blame as Alys for the non-fulfillment of my father’s wishes. For, Laurence, I was just going to tell you when you interrupted me—I’ve done it, out and out. I couldn’t stand leaving things as they were; it wasn’t fair to her, nor honest to any one, somehow. I have written and sent a formal proposal for Lilias to her parents. I sent it to her mother, because her father is ill.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told them that my prospects were most uncertain—I might be poor, I might be rich, and probably should not know which for two years, but that, at the worst, I could work for my livelihood, and was preparing myself for such a possibility.”
Mr Cheviott was silent.
“Are you awfully annoyed with me, Laurence?”
A half smile broke over Mr Cheviott’s face at the question.
“Upon my soul,” he said, “I don’t know. If a fellow will cut his own throat—”
“Complimentary to Miss Western,” said Arthur.
“Well, well, you know what I mean. I allow that, in your case, there was strong temptation, and, of course, Arthur, I respect you for your straightforwardness and downrightness. Personally, I have certainly no reason to be annoyed. What the relief to me will be of having this horrible concealment at an end, you can hardly imagine—the misconception it has exposed me to—good God!” He stopped abruptly. Arthur stared at him in amazement.
“I had no idea you felt so strongly about it, Laurence,” he said. “It makes me all the more thankful I have done what I have. You refer to Alys, of course? I know she must have been puzzled, but nothing would shake her confidence in you, old fellow, and now she will understand everything.”
“Yes, it would, of course, be an absurdity to carry out the directions about not telling her, once you are openly engaged to Miss Western,” replied Mr Cheviott. “And, I suppose, you have not much misgiving as to what the answer will be to your letter?”
“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “It will all come right in the end, but I expect her people to hesitate, at first, on account of the uncertainty. But you don’t think there will be any question of stopping my allowance, in the mean time, if I marry before the stated period is out?”
“I think not. I can take that upon me—for Alys. But if we appeal to the court at once it will probably confirm your income till things are settled.”
That same evening the cousins returned home. Some light, but not much satisfaction, was the result of their journey. Mr Maudsley approved of the course proposed by Mr Cheviott, but was decidedly of opinion that no decision could be arrived at till the date fixed by Arthur’s father for his son’s coming of age. “And then?” eagerly inquired both men. He could not say—it was an unusual, in fact, an extraordinary case, but, on the whole, seeing that the non-fulfillment of the testator’s wishes was at least as much the lady’s doing as the gentleman’s—a contingency which never seemed to have dawned upon Mr Beverley—on the whole it seemed improbable that Captain Beverley should be declared the sufferer. “But it was a most extraordinary complication, no doubt,” repeated Mr Maudsley, and he was glad to feel that neither he nor any one connected with him had had anything to do with the drawing up of so short-sighted a document as the late Mr Beverley’s last will and testament.
“Who did draw it up?” said Arthur, turning to his cousin.
“A stranger,” was the reply. “You know he consulted no one about it. He knew my father would altogether have opposed it. But it is perfectly legal. Mr Maudsley and I have tried often enough to find some flaw in it,” he added, with a slight smile.
“And what about telling Alys?” said Arthur, with some little hesitation, as the dog-cart was entering the Romary gates.
“I think,” said Laurence, “I think, as she knows, or has guessed so much, it is best to tell her all. It is to some extent left to my discretion to explain the whole to her should it be evident that the conditions cannot be fulfilled, which I have always interpreted to mean in case of her or your marriage, or engagement to some one else. Of course there are people who would say that you are not yet married, hardly engaged, and that I should wait, to be sure. But honestly I confess, after what has happened, it would be repulsive to me, in fact, impossible to go on dreaming that your father’s wishes ever could be fulfilled. The worst of such a deed as your father’s will is that all I can do is to act up to the letter of his instructions—as for the spirit of it—!”
“You’ve done your best,” said Arthur, re-assuringly; “far better than any other fellow in the same position could have done. Just you see if Alys doesn’t say so. It’s been a horrid sell for you altogether, and—”
“Not the not getting your patrimony. You don’t mean that?” interrupted Laurence. “Heaven only knows what the relief will be to me if, as I am beginning to hope, it is decidedly the right way.”
“No, I didn’t mean that exactly,” said Arthur. “I know you and Alys are less selfish and grasping than any two people I have ever come across—cela va sans dire—I meant the bother and worry and all the rest of it. I wish somehow something might go to Alys. I can’t help wishing that, you see, knowing it all and feeling just as if she were my own sister.”
“Don’t wish it,” said Laurence, shortly. “Alys will have enough. Married or single she need never be dependent on any one.”
“Ah, yes!” returned Arthur; “but still—She wouldn’t be the worse of a home of her own. Downham now—it’s a nice little place, and what on earth should I do with two—three, there’s the Edge,” he added, with a merry, boyish laugh—“if Downham, now, could be settled on Alys, for, you see, Laurence,” he added, seriously, and as hesitating to allude to anything so completely out of the range of probabilities, “after all, it’s just possible you may marry.”
“I suppose so,” said Laurence, with a touch of bitterness in his tone which Arthur, had he perceived, would have been at a loss to explain, “I suppose so, but so highly unlikely, it is no use taking it into consideration one way or another. Confess now, Arthur, you hardly could, could you, imagine such a thing as any girl’s caring for me?”
Arthur looked up at his cousin with some surprise. Was Laurence joking? He could not tell.
“I don’t know why one shouldn’t,” he said, meditatively. “A girl, I mean—I don’t see why you need fancy yourself so unattractive. You’re good-looking enough, and—come now, Laurence, that’s not fair; you’re leading me out to laugh at me,” for so only could he interpret the slight smile that flickered over his cousin’s face.
“I was in earnest, I assure you,” said Mr Cheviott. “However, never mind. We’ll postpone the discussion of my charms to a more convenient season. Here we are at home.”
“Shall you have your talk with Alys to-night?” said Arthur.
“Probably—unless, that is to say, you would rather I should wait till—till—how shall I put it?—till you get a reply to your letter to Hathercourt.”
“No,” said Arthur, decidedly, “don’t put it off on that account. Whatever disappointment in the shape of delay or hesitation may be in store for me, I’ve no misgiving as far as Lilias herself is concerned. She’s as true as steel. And in any case Alys deserves my confidence. No sister could have been stauncher to me through all than she has been.”
And so it was decided, though, glad as Laurence felt to put an end once and for always to the only misconception that had ever existed between his sister and himself, a strange indefinable reluctance to tell her all clung to him.
“She will hate so to hear the idea of a marriage with Arthur discussed or alluded to,” he said to himself. “Girls are such queer creatures. However, the more reason to get it over. Will she ever tell it to Mary Western, I wonder? I shall lay no embargo upon her, for sooner or later Arthur is sure to tell the elder sister the whole story. But even if it were all explained, what then? I said in my fury that day what I wish I could forget—I said to her that I could have made her care for me. Could I? Ah, no—such deep prejudice and aversion could never be overcome. As Arthur could not conceal in his honesty, I am very far from an attractive man—not one likely to ‘find favour in my lady’s eyes.’ I am certainly not ‘a pretty fellow.’ Ah, well, so be it!”