MARY’S OPINION.
It was on a beautiful afternoon, in one of the last days of May, that
Ben Renton went back to his father’s house. When he left it, he had not
the slightest intention of separating himself so completely from his
family; and yet, when he thought of it, he did not see what else he
could have done. To go back now, when a definite beginning had been made
in his career, and there was something decided upon--something to tell
them of--was natural; but to have gone when his whole heart was full of
Millicent Tracy, and no object beyond seeing her occupied his thoughts,
would have been simply impossible. He felt that now, though he had not
seen it at the time, and, feeling it, asked himself, with a flush of
shame, how he could have ever hoped that she could love him--a man whose
sole proof of his love was that he made himself useless for her sake! He
was but on the threshold of Armida’s garden, and already he blushed to
think that he could have lingered there so long. But it was Armida’s
garden without the Armida. It was not by her will that he had lingered.
The moment he had opened his heart to her, had she not urged him forth
to the brighter daylight and more wholesome life? Yes, or at least Ben
thought she had done so--he forgot exactly how. That it was to supply
her wants that he had been roused out of his dream, and that afterwards
downright destitution had threatened him, did not occur to him now. It
was all so recent that it was obscure to him, except that he had woke up
and found his feet standing on firm earth again, after he had told his
story into her ear; for which poor Ben’s heart poured forth litanies of
thanksgiving to his Lady of Succour. He was awakened, but he was not
undeceived.
In a county so richly wooded as Berks, it is difficult to say which is
more lovely, September or May. It was on a day of the St. Martin’s
summer that he had left Renton, when the great rich, lavish trees were
but beginning to carry here and there a faint fiery mark of Autumn’s
‘burning finger.’ Now they were all in their spring green, so new, so
fresh, so silken in this year’s garments, that it seemed impossible any
autumn could ever change the soft, glossy texture of the young leaves.
It was the last day’s leisure he might have, except on the sea, for ever
so long; and everything tempted him to enjoy it. He went as far as
Cookesley by the railway, and then got a boat and went up the stream for
the short remaining distance. The Renton woods were renowned--indeed,
uncomfortably so--parties going from far and near to visit them, and
litter the leafy corners with signs of picnics. ‘I can’t say as they’ll
let you land, sir,’ said the man from whom Ben hired his boat. ‘The old
lady’s there for ever, and shuts herself up and spoils our trade.’
Before he could take any notice of this speech, or do more than feel a
natural amazement to find himself so soon a stranger in his own country,
another boatman thrust aside the new-comer, who had not recognised the
young master. ‘I ask your pardon, sir; it’s a new man I’ve got,’ said
the owner of the boat. ‘He don’t know no better, sir; and it’s long
since we seen any o’ you gentlemen on the river. It do look a change.’
‘What! not even my brother?’ said Ben; and somehow it was a kind of
comfort to his mind that Laurie had not been there.
‘Mr. Frank do come by times,’ said the boatman; ‘but things is changed
since last summer, when you gentlemen was allays about--you and your
friends.’
‘Yes, Tom, things are changed,’ said Ben, as he pushed off from the
bank. But somehow he did not feel so cast down about that change as he
had been. Even the sight of the silvery, quiet river, which had not
altered, and the trees drooping over it, every branch of which he seemed
to know; and the bank that swelled into soft cliffs and wooded heights,
as a sudden turn brought him within sight of Renton, did not bring up,
as he had feared it would, any bitter sense of injury and misfortune to
his mind. Instead of being the heir and proprietor of all this, he was
but Ben Renton, assistant to a railway man, going engineering without
knowing how, away to the other end of the world. He said so to himself,
and still, somehow, he did not feel bitter, which was curious. On the
contrary, a soft sense of well-being stole over him. The river was as
beautiful as ever, though he had no territorial rights over it--the
woods rustled as softly in the sweet air of the spring; the sky was so
bright above him, and hope, and energy, and resolution so strong in his
breast! And Millicent! He had not known there was such a creature when
he had last been there--reason enough to take away all the bitterness
from his sensations now. Yet it was strange to see the house exactly as
it used to be--the outer blinds dropped over Mrs. Renton’s windows, her
flowers arranged in their old order, her very sofa placed beneath the
trees, as if she had been there a moment before. The only change Ben
could see was in his mother’s crape-covered dress and the dead white of
the cap which surrounded her pretty, faded face. That was an
improvement, though she did not think so; but it was the only visible
sign of all the great events that had occurred at the Manor within this
eventful year.
‘Oh, Ben, I thought I had lost you!’ cried his mother. ‘I thought you
were gone, too, like your father;’ and she clasped her arms round her
boy, and wept on his shoulder. That was all the reproach she made to
him. And Ben, as was natural, fell immediately into self-accusation. But
in his heart he felt that it would have been impossible. He could not
have kept coming and going to this familiar place while his mind was
full of Millicent Tracy, and of nothing else in the world. It could not
have been. He would have been driven to some violent step--he knew not
what--had he come home in the midst of that time of enchantment. The
contrast would have killed him, or made him desperate. It would have
dispersed the rosy mists, and brought him back to sober day. Now that
the spell was broken, he recognised, so far, its nature. And yet it was
the magic of this spell which brought him home with a clear brow and
unembittered heart, and defended him against all the suggestions of
discontent. There was nothing of the injured man in his look, no
consciousness of misfortune or downfall. Perhaps Mrs. Renton would not
have been quick enough to see this; but there were another pair of eyes
looking on--fairly bright ones, though not like Millicent’s--which took
it in at a glance, and wondered, and thought of Ben more highly than he
deserved. Mary Westbury had been with her godmother all the winter
through, giving many a thought to her cousins, to whom she had been as a
sister, and saying many a prayer in her heart for poor Ben, the most
hardly treated of all, whose wound was so deep that he had not the
fortitude to come home. Mary had been seized with a pang of fear when
she saw her cousin, without any warning of his approach, come in, as of
old times, by the window which opened on the garden. She expected to see
him with a gloomy face, ‘feeling it’ so deeply as to make everybody else
miserable. But, on the contrary, Ben’s countenance was unclouded, and
his demeanour that of a man satisfied with his own position. Mary’s
heart gave a little jump, and then settled into a pleasant glow of
friendly warmth and soft agitation. After all, what a noble fellow he
was! How fine it was of him to take to the change so kindly, and bear no
malice! She left the mother and son by themselves at first, as soon as
she could do it without ostentation, and went out, being excited, and
walked about by herself in a very pleasant flutter of spirits. She was
fond of Laurie, as everybody was, poor fellow; but Ben--Ben was
different; and how noble of him to come home with that easy look, that
unconstrained smile! Poor Mary made out a whole little romance as she
came and went--an innocent, ingenuous creature, with summer in her face
and in her heart--under the silken greenness of the lime-trees. No doubt
he must have had a hard fight to subdue himself at first--not an easy,
facile temper like Laurie--not a boy like Frank--but a man with settled
plans of his own, and strong feelings, and an almost stern character. He
had kept away until he had overcome himself. He had fought it out all
alone, struggling with his dragon, until at last he had been able to set
his foot upon him; and then the victor had come with a smile on his face
to see his mother. Such was Mary’s fancy, knowing no better; and if she
had vaguely admired, vaguely dreamed of her splendid cousin--the special
hero of this drama--before, think with what a sudden thrill of
enthusiasm, of dangerous approbation and applause, she regarded him now!
‘They must have had their first talk out, and perhaps he will want
something,’ Mary said to herself after a while, and was turning to go
in, when Ben met her,--coming to look for her, he said. It was Mrs.
Renton’s time for her sleep, and he had settled her pillows for her, and
Mary was to have a holiday for once.
‘We are to leave her alone for an hour or two,’ said Ben; ‘and, Mary,
you must tell me all about her. You have been doing our duty while we
have been,--pleasing ourselves. I have behaved like a brute to my poor
mother.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Mary; ‘we have never thought so. You are not like,--the
rest of us. I always understood how it was. You were waiting till you
could come as you ought,--as you are. I would not write to you, Ben. I
thought, perhaps, it was better you should not hear from any of us; but
I felt how it was.’
This little speech, which came out of Mary’s very heart, and was
founded upon utter conviction, struck Ben with the wildest perplexity.
Could she know how he had in reality spent his time? Could she be
mocking him? But a glance at her face made that idea impossible. Mary
believed in him somehow, though he did not even guess why. It gave him a
little uncomfortable thrill of self-consciousness; and, what was still
more strange, it gave him just a momentary amusement; but, on the whole,
perhaps its effect was encouraging, and set him at his ease with his new
companion.
‘I have behaved like a brute,’ he said again; ‘though you, with your
kind heart, make excuses for me; but, after all, it has been a little
hard. A man cannot be twisted out of his socket and set into another
without feeling it, Mary; though I do not dwell upon that now.’
‘Oh, I know,’ cried Mary, with all her heart; ‘and there has never been
a day that I have not thought of you, Ben; but you have overcome it
nobly,’ the girl cried in her enthusiasm, with tears in her eyes. Dear,
little, soft, foolish creature!--what did she mean?
‘Put on your hat and come down with me to the river,’ said Ben. ‘My
mother says you have no variety, nor even air. And she is to be left by
herself till dinner. Come, and I will row you up to the Swan’s Nest. Do
you remember?’
‘Do I remember!’ cried Mary, rushing into the house for her hat. Her
heart beat as it had never beat before in its life. Ben to recollect the
old story of the Swan’s Nest! It was natural that Laurie, her own
playfellow, should think of all those childish follies,--but Ben! She
came rushing out again, putting on her hat as she came, not to keep the
prince waiting. If poor Mary had but known the use that had been made of
her name six months before in Guildford Street, or why it was that her
lordly cousin was so gracious to her now!
But, meanwhile, they went very pleasantly together down the winding road
under the trees to the river. Both of them, in their different ways, had
that enthusiasm for the beauty of their home which is common to
well-educated young English people, not fine enough to be _blasés_.
Mary,--to whom it was a delight at any time to approach the beautiful
river near which she had been born, by this winding woodland road,
shaded by those great trees under which her mother and her mother’s
mother had watched it gliding past,--was this day wrapt in a tender
content which gave additional beauty to everything around. There was
splendour in the grass and glory in the flower wherever she set her foot
on that day of days; and when the humblest things were thus enhanced,
what was it to float forth on the blessed river, all encompassed by
summer light, and the sweetest sounds and sights of nature! Even to Ben,
pre-occupied as he was, there was a pleasure in her gentle company, in
the familiar home-look of everything, that penetrated his heart in spite
of himself. The sense of life had risen strongly in him after his
voluntary banishment. The unusual exercise, the soft gliding of the
water round the boat, the glimmer and murmur of the stream, and Mary’s
pleasant face,--not beautiful, like the other face he was thinking
of,--her soft talk and tremulous, gentle laughter, her happiness and
ingenuous confidence, all soothed and consoled him. It would have been
rapture with that other; now, it was not rapture, but a certain soft
content. She was a good girl, so kind to his mother, like a sister to
them all,--a dear, little, sweet-voiced, bright-faced creature. Ben
would have defended her against all the world; he would have pitched
into the river, without a moment’s hesitation, any man who harmed her so
much as by a thought;--he looked at her with a certain affectionate
observation and loving-kindness,--poor Mary! and yet with his heart full
of that other,--possessed by the enchantress all the time.
‘You are looking a little pale,’ he said, with that frank, affectionate
interest in her; ‘but you must not let my mother keep you too much with
her. She does not mean to be selfish, poor dear. You must run out and
see your friends, Mary, and get your roses back.’
‘He cares for my roses then,’ said mistaken Mary to herself, with a
flush of shy pleasure which restored them to her cheeks. But,--‘Indeed,
I am quite well, Ben; and I like to be with godmamma. How strange you
should tell me she is not selfish,--I who know her so well!’--was what
she said.
‘Perhaps better than I do,’ said Ben. ‘I think women know each other
best;’ and he stopped short with sudden gravity, and perhaps just a
lingering doubt of what Mary’s opinion might be of another. He meant to
ask her, but somehow he was embarrassed about it. It could wait for
another time, at least till they had finished their row. And they began
to talk of family matters, the familiar talk which is so pleasant in its
mild interest;--how old Sargent was having it all his own way with the
garden; how Willis the butler was tyrannical to the ladies; the little
_mots_ of the house, and its opinions upon things in general. And then
they reached the Swan’s Nest, which Mary had made a child’s romance
about once like little Ella in Mrs. Browning’s poem. The two knew every
water-lily and every flag, and the separate droop of every willow-branch
at that fairy nook.
‘I did not think you would have remembered,’ Mary said in her shy
delight. And they turned and floated down again with the oars laid
silent in the boat, and the sweet water plashing softly with a quiver
and ripple of sound and sunshine, so twined together that they seemed
but one, about its tiny bows. Even Ben was hushed, and charmed, and
softened by the exquisite tender stillness and brightness. Fancy what
poor Mary must have been, shut up so long in Mrs. Renton’s shaded room,
with one day of delight thus dropped unawares into her life!
They had reached the bank again, and were wandering slowly up the ascent
towards the house before the charm was broken. It was just as they
turned and stood still by mutual consent,--as everybody did who knew
that view,--to look down upon the river from between the two great
beeches, which framed it in, and made an ideal picture of the lovely
reality. There was an opening below among the trees, and a silvery nook,
with an island just appearing, a goodly bank opposite with groups of
sleek cattle, and in the distance Cookesley Church with its ivied tower.
The view was always perfect just there; a little ‘bit’ of nature’s own
composition, in which the trees, and cows, and the very swans, posed
themselves by instinct, as the most exquisite art would have posed them.
Many a time afterwards Mary Westbury looked at that scene, and felt
again the sudden twang of the bowstring and the quiver of the arrow in
her heart. That was the metaphor under which she represented it to
herself.
‘You have never been out of Berks, have you, Mary,’ said her cousin,
‘you home-keeping girl?--you were educated close by here, were you
not?’
‘What people call educated,’ said Mary, with her soft, happy laugh. ‘I
never learned anything. It was at Thornycroft, not more than ten miles
off. But it is so odd that you should remember, Ben.’
‘Do you recollect a Miss Tracy there?’ said Ben, with a slight
breathlessness,--the road was so steep; was that the cause?
‘Miss Tracy? Oh, you mean Millicent. What! do you know her?’ cried Mary,
turning round upon him. He was taken by surprise, and perhaps his face
betrayed him. At all events, she grew pale in a moment, poor child, and
leaned her arm against one of the beech-trees. That was the moment at
which she often thought the string of the bow twanged and the arrow came
home.
‘I have met her,’ said Ben;--‘that is, I have seen a good deal of her;
and she seemed to be fond of you.’
‘Millicent Tracy!’ repeated Mary, with a little tremulous movement. ‘Oh,
I don’t think she was fond of me.’
‘You do not seem, at least, to have been fond of her,’ said Ben, with a
little pique in his tone.
‘She was not in my set,’ said Mary, plucking up a little spirit. ‘We
were younger. She was so pretty,--oh, so pretty! We all thought there
never was any one like her. Is she as pretty now?’ Mary asked, with an
attempt at interest; but her tone was not so eager and hearty as her
words.
‘She is not pretty at all;--she is beautiful,’ said Ben, his passion
betraying itself in spite of him. And then they stood silent, looking
down on the river, and for some minutes not another word was said. It
was Ben who was the first to speak. The man was angry, after the fashion
of men, with the girl who up to this moment had been so sweetly ready to
adopt what tone he pleased to give the conversation. ‘I seem to have
been unfortunate in my subject,’ he said, turning abruptly to go in.
‘Miss Tracy, I see, cannot have been a favourite among the girls at
Thornycroft. She was too beautiful, I suppose.’
‘Indeed, no,’ said Mary, with a little indignation, following him. ‘We
were all very proud of her beauty. Though I don’t think we thought of
beauty. We thought she was very pretty,--oh, so pretty! No girl at
Thornycroft was ever so nice-looking; and nice too,’ she continued with
a hesitating attempt to please him. ‘I always did think that she was
nice, too.’
‘That was very good of you,’ Ben said, with a little scornful laugh; but
Mary was silent again, and grew frightened, and felt as if her heart
would break. What was Millicent Tracy to him? his cousin thought. If
this was all he had come home for, only to ask about such a girl as
that!--not for his mother at all, nor for Mary, nor for the sake of
home. The idea so disturbed her temper and patience that she had some
difficulty in keeping the ready tears from falling; and this, of course,
was going a great deal too far, for it was not for the sole purpose of
asking about Millicent that Ben had gone home.
From that moment a cloud fell over the shining day,--not in reality, for
the sun shone as bright as ever,--but upon the cousins, as they climbed
the winding path. All its exquisite greenness and intervals of sunshine
and shade,--all the play of light and colour about, the silvery gleam of
the river, the soft, full verdure behind,--were lost upon them. A jar
had struck into the magical harmony of the summer air. Mary, after the
first moment, recovering herself from that pang of mortification and
disappointment, began to struggle with herself for something to say.
What could she say? Millicent had not been popular at Thornycroft. She
had turned the heads of the young masters, and being new to the delights
of conquest, had encouraged them to make fools of themselves, and had
scandalised the entire community. She had tempted the curate, who was
the brother of Miss Thorny, the head of the establishment at
Thornycroft, into a flirtation, and broken his heart; and in consequence
of this feat had left the school abruptly. ‘Perhaps she was not so very
much to blame,’ Mary said to herself as she went painfully along by
Ben’s side, watching his averted face. ‘Men are such
fools;’--unconsciously she repeated in her innocence that sentiment
which was the fruit of Millicent’s experience;--‘they will do anything
for beauty.’ Probably it was their own doing. Could it be Millicent’s
fault if they went crazy about her lovely face? Thus the good girl
reasoned herself into tolerance. She made a great many little feints to
call Ben’s attention,--cleared her throat, dropped her gloves, tried
what she could, by every innocent artifice which occurred to her, to get
him to resume the interrupted conversation;--but Ben, with something of
the brutality of a big brother mingling, as was inevitable, with his
brotherly kindness, marched on and took no notice. She had to make a
faltering beginning herself without any aid from him.
‘Ben,’ she said, ‘you are not to think I did not like Millicent, or that
she was not very nice. I daresay it was not her fault. Everybody made a
fuss about her wherever she went;--she was so very pretty. I don’t think
it could have been her fault.’
‘Being pretty?’ said Ben, with the sneer that women hate.
‘You know I did not mean that,’ said Mary, injured. ‘I think it must
have been the gentlemen’s own doing. Mr. Thorny was very silly to think
she would ever have had him. I am sure that must have been his
foolishness. She so pretty and so clever, and he only a common curate,
you know;--just like other curates, nothing particular about him. It
must have been his own fault.’
‘I have not the advantage of knowing what you refer to,’ said Ben, with
the haughtiest assumption of indifference, though his temper had taken
fire and his pride was all in arms. A curate,--a common curate,--to have
been associated anyhow, by any means whatever, with Millicent! In his
heart he was furious, though he managed to keep some outward calm.
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ said Mary, faltering, and feeling that her attempt
at making up had not been successful,--‘only they said it was that that
threw him into a consumption. But it was not her fault,--it might have
happened to any of us,’ said Mary, with a sudden blush; for had it not
fallen to her lot, though she was no flirt and not even a beauty like
Millicent, to inflict a passing wound without knowing it on a curate of
her own?
Then Ben laughed, but it was a very unpleasant laugh. ‘When a lady
frowns a man can but die,’ he said. ‘How could he do less? I suppose
that is what you mean?’
‘Oh, Ben!’ cried Mary, with a hopeless appeal to his sense of justice.
But he only shrugged his shoulders and began to whistle, and walked the
rest of the way at such a pace that it was all she could do to keep up
with him. Not another word did he say to her on the subject, nor did he
pay any attention to her little faltering speeches. He whistled, which
was very rude of him; and, after a while, Mary, who had a spirit of her
own, grew indignant, and, if she did not whistle, did what was
equivalent,--she took up the air he was whistling, and sang it softly
with a pretty little voice. ‘I did not know you had been fond of music,
Ben,’ she said with a laugh; but it cost her a good cry when she got
into her own room. Ben, who was so superior, who had borne his trial so
nobly, who was going to work like a hero,--Ben, who had always been,
more than she knew, her own ideal of man,--to think that Millicent Tracy
with her pretty face----! ‘Why, even Laurie would have seen through
her!’ Mary said to herself, and wept with the poignant prick of
self-knowledge, which gives the chief bitterness to such a
discovery,--not self-esteem, but that indignant, sorrowful, honest
insight which, on such a provocation, reveals one’s worth to oneself in
pain and not in vanity. ‘Having known me, to decline on a range of lower
feelings and a narrower heart than mine!’ Mary did not say this, any
more than Ben had said of whose image his heart was full; but she felt
it with a sharp mingling of pride and humiliation. ‘Not that it can be
anything to me,’ she added aloud, to save her own credit, as it were,
with herself; and put on her prettiest dress, and was very cheerful and
amusing at dinner, when the mother was rather melancholy and had need of
enlivenment. Ben’s spirits had flagged, partly with the shock his pride
had received, and partly with the associations which began to creep over
him. The dinner-room, in which it was so strange to take his father’s
place; the old servants, who were connected so completely with the old
time; all the routine of the house, in which nothing was changed but one
thing,--affected the young man in spite of himself. He had been
defrauded, as it were, out of his natural grief for his father; and now
the mute eloquence of the vacant place seized upon him. So good a father
up to the last moment; so kind,--even at the last moment filled with
special compunction for Ben! Mr. Renton’s son felt, almost for the first
time, how much wisdom, and support, and guidance, how much tender
affection and watchful care, were lost to him. When his mother,
faltering, spoke, as to the boy she still felt him to be, of ‘your dear
papa,’ Ben fell back into the boy she thought him, and soft tears came
into his eyes. Perhaps the sadness did him more good than his former
mood of satisfaction; but it somewhat defeated his cousin Mary, who
meant to be gay, and prove to him that his enthusiasm for Millicent
Tracy was nothing to her. On the contrary, the soft-hearted, sympathetic
creature turned her pleasant eyes upon him, all shining with tears when
his change of mood became visible, and forgave him his Millicent, and
comforted herself that it was but a fancy; and they were all very
affectionate together, and somewhat pathetic, with that common grief
behind them and the common pang of parting before them, for the rest of
the night.
Yet when Ben went to his room, he paused on his way at the great window
on the staircase, from which all the noble gardens of the manor, and
the west wing, and the line of trees which overhung the river, were
visible, all ghostly and mysterious in the moonlight, and stood looking
out with a sudden flutter at his heart. His thoughts were not at home,
nor of the past. The question which suddenly flashed across his mind
was, Should he ever bring her here to be the mistress of it all? It was
the first time he had ever allowed himself to speculate upon the distant
future at the end of his seven years’ probation. Mrs. Renton had gone to
bed weeping, yet consoled by her son’s presence and sympathy; and Mary
was taking herself to task, in her maiden retirement, for having been
hard upon poor Ben; while Ben stood at the window looking out on the
moonlight, forgetting the very existence of these two, and asking
himself, with a thrill that ran through all his veins, Should he ever
bring her here? Mary’s hesitating story, her faint praise, her
deprecation of all intention to blame, even the curate,--contemptible
shadow!--angry as they had made him at the moment, had faded from his
thoughts. He seemed to see her in her stately beauty coming across the
lordly lawn. How lovely she was! Even the silly school-girls,
unimpassioned, feminine creatures, impervious to that influence, were
compelled to acknowledge it. What if she might stand with him here by
this very window, and look out on the moonlight some other night?
This was how Ben Renton went out upon the world,--in charity with his
own people, even with his father who had been so hard upon him; and
feeling, after all, that at five-and-twenty a man, even when
disinherited, with work in his hands to occupy him, fresh air to
breathe, and novel scenes to see, and energies to exercise in a big
spacious world where there was room to do something, had no particular
occasion to quarrel with life or fate. The thread of actual work, as
soon as he got it into his hands, had enabled him to trace his way out
of all the morbid labyrinths of solitary musing. Armida’s garden was
left behind for ever; but the witch, who had enchanted him and possessed
herself of his life, was so far from suffering by the change, that she
had developed in his imagination into a white angelic woman, worthy
reward of all labour. Poor, foolish Ben! And yet it could not have been
anything but a high nature which emerged from that six months’ mist of
self-inspection, bitterness, idleness, and insane passion, with at least
a true sense of the realities of his position, and a true love in his
heart.
And thus equipped he disappears from us for seven years into the vast
and troubled world.