PETER PAUPER
The impression which the events of the evening had made on Mary’s mind
was still lively when she awoke next day. It was not less clear,
because like the feminine letter of the ’forties, crossed and
recrossed, it had stamped itself in two layers on her mind, of which
the earlier was the more vivid.
The solitude in which her days had of late been spent had left her
peculiarly open to new ideas, while the quiet and wholesome life of the
Gatehouse had prepared her to answer any call which those ideas might
make upon her. Rescued from penury, lifted above anxiety about bed and
board, no longer exposed to the panic-fears which in Paris had beset
even her courageous nature, Mary had for a while been content simply to
rest. She had taken the sunshine, the beauty, the ease and indolence of
her life as a convalescent accepts idleness, without scruple or
question.
But this could not last. She was young, nature soon rallied in her, and
she had seen things and done things during the last two years which
forbade her to accept such a limited horizon as satisfied most of the
women of that day. Unlike them, she had viewed the world from more than
one standpoint; through the grille of a convent school, from the grimy
windows of a back-street in Paris; again, as it moved beneath the
painted ceilings of a French salon. And now, as it presented itself in
this retired house.
Therefore she could not view things as those saw them whose standpoint
had never shifted. She had suffered, she still had twinges—for who,
with her experience, could be sure that the path would continue easy?
And so to her Mr. Colet’s sermon had made a strong appeal.
It left the word which Mr. Colet had taken for his text sounding in her
ears. Borne upward on the eloquence which earnestness had lent to the
young preacher, she looked down on a world in torment, a world holding
up piteous hands, craving, itself in ignorance, the help of those who
held the secret, and whose will might make that secret sufficient to
save. Love! To do to others as she would have others do to her! With
every day, with every hour, with every minute to do something for
others! Always to give, never to take! Above all to give herself, to do
her part in that preference of others to self, which could alone right
these mighty wrongs, could find work for the idle, food for the hungry,
roofs for the homeless, knowledge for the blind, healing for the sick!
Which could save all this world in torment, and could
“Build a Heaven in Hell’s despair!”
It was a beautiful vision, and in this her first glimpse of it, Mary’s
fancy was not chilled by the hard light of experience. It seemed so
plain that if the workman had his master’s profit at heart, and the
master were as anxious for the weal of his men, the interests of the
two would be one. Equally plain it seemed that if they who grew the
food aimed at feeding the greatest number, and they who ate had the
same desire to reward the grower, if every man shrank from taking
advantage of other men, if the learned lived to spread their knowledge,
and the strong to help the weak, if no man wronged his neighbor, but
“Each for another gave his ease,”
then it seemed equally plain that love would indeed be lord of all!
Later, she might discover that it takes two to make a bargain; that
charity does bless him who gives but not always him who takes; even,
that cheap bread might be a dear advantage—that at least it might have
its drawbacks.
But for the moment it was enough for Mary that the vision was beautiful
and, as a theory, true. So that, gazing upward at the faded dimity of
her tester, she longed to play her part in it. That world in torment,
those countless hands stretched upward in appeal, that murmur of
infinite pain, the cry of the hungry, of the widow, of men sitting by
tireless hearths, of children dying in mill and mine—the picture
wrought on her so strongly, that she could not rest. She rose, and
though the hoar frost was white on the grass and the fog of an autumn
morning still curtained the view, she began to dress.
Perhaps the chill of the cold water in which she washed sobered her. At
any rate, with the comb in one hand and her hair in the other, she
drifted down another line of thought. Lord Audley—how strange was the
chance which had again brought them together! How much she owed him,
with what kindness had he seen to her comfort, how masterfully had he
arranged matters for her on the boat. And then she smiled. She recalled
Basset’s ill-humor, or his—jealousy. At the thought of what the word
implied, Mary colored.
There could be nothing in the notion, yet she probed her own feelings.
Certainly she liked Lord Audley. If he was not handsome, he had that
air of strength and power which impresses women; and he had ease and
charm, and the look of fashion which has its weight with even the most
sensible of her sex. He had all these and he was a man, and she admired
him and was grateful to him. And yesterday she might have thought that
her feeling for him was love.
But this morning she had gained a higher notion of love. She had
learned from Etruria how near to that pattern of love which Mr. Colet
preached the love of man and woman could rise. She had a new conception
of its strength and its power to expel what was selfish or petty. She
had seen it in its noblest form in Etruria, and she knew that her
feeling for Lord Audley was not in the same world with Etruria’s
feeling for the curate. She laughed at the notion.
“Poor Etruria!” she meditated. “Or should it be, happy Etruria? Who
knows? I only know that I am heart-whole!”
And she knotted up her hair and, Diana-like, went out into the pure
biting air of the morning, along the green rides hoary with dew and
fringed with bracken, under the oak trees from which the wood-pigeons
broke in startled flight.
But if the energy of her thoughts carried her out, fatigue soon brought
her to a pause. The evening’s excitement, the strain of the adventure
had not left her, young as she was, unscathed. The springs of
enthusiasm waned with her strength, and presently she felt jaded. She
perceived that she would have done better had she rested longer; and
too late the charms of bed appealed to her.
She was at the breakfast table when Basset—he, too, had had a restless
night and many thoughts—came down. He saw that she was pale and that
there were shadows under her eyes, and the man’s tenderness went out to
her. He longed, he longed above everything to put himself right with
her; and on the impulse of the moment, “I want you to know,” he said,
standing meekly at her elbow, “that I am sorry I lost my temper last
evening.”
But she was out of sympathy with him. “It is nothing,” she said. “We
were all tired, I think. Etruria is not down yet.”
“But I want to ask your——”
“Oh dear, dear!” she cried, interrupting him with a gesture of
impatience. “Don’t let us rake it up again. If my uncle has not
suffered, there is no harm done. Please let it rest.”
But he could not let it rest. He longed to put his neck under her foot,
and he did not see that she was in the worst possible mood for his
purpose. “Still,” he said, “you must let me say——”
“Don’t!” she cried. She put her hands to her ears. Then, seeing that
she had wounded him, she dropped them and spoke more kindly. “Don’t let
us make much of little, Mr. Basset. It was all natural enough. You
don’t like Lord Audley——”
“I don’t.”
“And you did not understand that we had been terribly frightened, and
had good reason to be grateful to him. I am sure that if you had known
that, you would have behaved differently. There!” with a smile. “And
now that I have made the amende for you, let us have breakfast. Here is
your coffee.”
He knew that she was holding him off, and all his alarms of the night
were quickened. Again and again had John Audley’s warning recurred to
him and as often he had striven to reject it, but always in vain. And
gradually, slowly, it had kindled his resolution, it had fired him to
action. Now, the very modesty which had long kept him silent and
withheld him from enterprise was changed—as so often happens with
diffident man—into rashness. He was as anxious to put his fate to the
test as he had before been unwilling.
Presently, “You will not need to tell your uncle about Lord Audley,” he
said. “I’ve done it.”
“I hope you told him,” she answered gravely, “that we were indebted to
Lord Audley for our safety.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Don’t say things like that!” she cried. “It is foolish. I have no
doubt that in telling my uncle you meant to relieve me. You have helped
me more than once in that way. But——”
“But this is a special occasion?”
She looked at him. “If you wish us to be friends——”
“I don’t,” he answered roughly. “I don’t want to be friends with you.”
Then, ambiguous as his words were, she saw where she stood, and she
mustered her presence of mind. She rose from her seat. “And I,” she
said, “am not going to quarrel with you, Mr. Basset. I am going now to
learn how Etruria is. And then I shall see my uncle.”
She escaped before he could answer.
Once or twice it had crossed her mind that he looked at her with
intention; and once reading that look in his eyes she had felt her
color rise, and her heart beat more quickly. But the absence on her
side of any feeling, except that which a sister might feel for a kind
brother, this and the reserve of his manner had nipped the fancy as
soon as it budded. And if she had given it a second thought, it had
been only to smile at her vanity.
Now she had no doubt of the fact, no doubt that it was jealousy that
moved him, and her uppermost, almost her only feeling was vexation.
Because they had lived in the same house for five months, because he
had been useful and she had been grateful, because they were man and
woman, how foolish it was! How absurd! How annoying! She foresaw from
it many, many, inconveniences; a breach in their pleasant intercourse,
displeasure on her uncle’s part, trouble in the house that had been so
peaceful—oh, many things. But that which vexed her most was the fear
that she had, all unwittingly, encouraged him.
She believed that she had not. But while she talked to Etruria, and
later, as she went down the stairs to interview her uncle, she had this
weight on her mind. She strove to recall words and looks, and upon the
whole she was sure that she could acquit herself, sure that of this
evil no part lay at her door. But it was very, very vexatious!
On the threshold of the library she wrested her thoughts back to the
present, and paused a moment, considering what she should say to her
uncle.
She need not have troubled herself, for he was not there. At the first
glance she took the room to be empty; a second showed her Basset. She
turned to retire, but too late; he stepped between her and the door and
closed it. He was a little paler than usual, and his air of purpose was
not to be mistaken.
She stiffened. “I came to see my uncle,” she said.
“I am the bearer of a message from him,” he answered. “He asked me to
say that he considers the matter at an end. He does not wish it to be
mentioned again. Of course he does not blame you.”
“But, Mr. Basset——”
But he would not let her speak. “That was his message,” he continued,
“and I am glad to be the messenger because it gives me a chance of
speaking to you. Will you sit down?”
“But we have only just parted,” she remonstrated, struggling against
her fate. “I don’t understand what you want——”
“To say? No, I am going to explain it—if you will sit down.”
She sat down then with the feeling that she was trapped. And since it
was clear that she must go through with it, she was glad that his
insistence hardened her heart and dried up the springs of pity.
He went to the fire, stooped and moved the wood. “You won’t come
nearer?” he said.
“No,” she replied. How foolish to trap her like this if he thought to
get anything from her!
He turned to her and his face was changed. Under his wistful look she
discovered that it was not so easy to be hard, not so easy to maintain
her firmness. “You would rather escape?” he said, reading her mind. “I
know. But I can’t let you escape. You are thinking that I have trapped
you? And you are fearing that I am going to make you unhappy for—for
half an hour perhaps? I know. And I am fearing that you are going to
make me unhappy for—always.”
No, she could not retain her hardness. She knew that she was going to
feel pity after all. But she would not speak.
“I have only hope,” he went on. “There is only one thing I am clinging
to. I have read that when a man loves a woman very truly, very deeply,
as I love you, Mary”—she started violently, and blushed to the roots of
her hair, so sudden was the avowal—“as I love you,” he repeated
sorrowfully, “I have read that she either hates him or loves him. His
love is a fire that either warms her or scorches her, draws her or
repels her. I thought of that last night, as I thought of many things,
and I was sure, I was confident that you did not hate me.”
“Oh no,” she answered, unsteadily. “Indeed, indeed, I don’t! I am very
grateful to you. But the other—I don’t think it is true.”
“No?” he said, keeping his eyes on her face. “And then, you don’t doubt
that I love you?”
“No.” The flush had faded from her face and left her pale. “I don’t
doubt that—now.”
“It is so true that—you know that you have sometimes called me Peter?
Well, I would have given much, very much to call you Mary. But I did
not dare. I could not. For I knew that if I did, only once, my voice
would betray me, and that I should alarm you before the time! I knew
that that one word—that word alone—would set my heart upon my sleeve
for all to see. And I did not want to alarm you. I did not want to
hurry you. I thought then that I had time, time to make myself known to
you, time to prove my devotion, time to win you, Mary. I thought that I
could wait. Now, since last night, I am afraid to wait. I doubt, nay I
am sure, that I have no time, that I dare not wait.”
She did not answer, but the color mounted again to her face.
He turned and knocked the fire together with his foot. Then he took a
step towards her. “Tell me,” he said, “have I any chance? Any chance at
all, Mary?”
She shook her head; but seeing then that he kept his eyes fixed on her
and would not take that for an answer, “None,” she said as kindly as
she could. “I must tell you the truth. It is useless to try to break
it. I have never once, not once thought of you but as a friend, Peter.”
“But now,” he said, “cannot you regard me differently—now! Now that you
know? Cannot you begin to think of me as—a lover?”
“No,” Mary said frankly and pitifully. “I should not be honest if I
said that I could. If I held out hopes. You have been always good to
me, kind to me, a dear friend, a brother when I had need of one. And I
am grateful, Mr. Basset, honestly, really grateful to you. And fond of
you—in that way. But I could not think of you in the way you desire. I
know it for certain. I know that there is no chance.”
He stood for a moment without speaking, and seeing how stricken he
looked, how sad his face, her eyes filled with tears. Then, “Is there
any one else?” he asked slowly, his eyes on her face.
She did not answer. She rose to her feet.
“Is there any one else?” he repeated, a new note in his voice. He moved
forward a step.
“You have no right to ask that,” she said.
“I have every right,” he replied. “What?” he continued, moving still
nearer to her, his whole bearing changed in a moment by the sting of
jealousy. “I am condemned, I am rejected, and I am not to ask why?”
“No,” she said.
“But I do ask!” he retorted with a passion which surprised and alarmed
her; he was no longer the despondent lover of five minutes before, but
a man demanding his rights. “Have you no heart? Have you no feeling for
me? Do you not consider what this is to me?”
“I consider,” Mary replied with a warmth almost equal to his own, “that
if I answered your question I should humiliate myself. No one, no one
has a right, sir, to ask that question. And least of all you!”
“And I am to be cast aside, I am to be discarded without a reason?”
That word “discarded” seemed so unjust, and so uncalled for, seeing
that she had given him no encouragement, that it stung her to anger.
“Without a reason?” she retorted. “I have given you a reason—I do not
return your love. That is the only reason that you have a right to
know. But if you press me, I will tell you why what you propose is
impossible. Because, if I ever love a man I hope, Mr. Basset, that it
will be one who has some work in the world, something to do that shall
be worth the doing, a man with ambitions above mere trifling, mere
groping in the dust of the past for facts that, when known, make no man
happier, and no man better, and scarce a man wiser! Do you ever think,”
she continued, carried away by the remembrance of Mr. Colet’s zeal, “of
the sorrow and pain that are in the world? Of the vast riddles that are
to be solved? Of the work that awaits the wisest and the strongest, and
at which all in their degree can help? My uncle is an old man, it is
well he should play with the past. I am a girl, it may serve for me.
But what do you here?” She pointed to his table, laden with open folios
and calf-bound volumes. “You spend a week in proving a Bohun marriage
that is nothing to any one. Another, in raking up a blot that is better
forgotten! A third in tracing to its source some ancient tag! You move
a thousand books—to make one knight! Is that a man’s work?”
“At least,” he said huskily, “I do no harm.”
“No harm?” Mary replied, swept away by her feelings. “Is that enough?
Because in this quiet corner, which is home to my uncle and a refuge to
me, no call reaches you, is it enough that you do no harm? Is there no
good to be done? Think, Mr. Basset! I am ignorant, a woman. But I know
that to-day there are great questions calling for an answer, wrongs
clamoring to be righted, a people in travail that pleads for ease! I
know that there is work in England for men, for all! Work, that if
there be any virtue left in ancient blood should summon you as with a
trumpet call!”
He did not answer. Twice, early in her attack he had moved as if he
would defend himself. Then he had let his chin fall and he had listened
with his eyes on the table. And—but she had not seen it—he had more
than once shivered under her words as under a lash. For he loved her
and she scourged him. He loved her, he desired her, he had put her on a
pedestal, and all the time she had been viewing him with the clear
merciless eyes of youth, trying him by the standard of her dreams,
probing his small pretensions, finding him a potterer in a library—he
who in his vanity had raised his eyes to her and sought to be her hero!
It was a cruel lesson, cruelly given; and it wounded him to the heart.
So that she, seeing too late that he made no reply, seeing the grayness
of his face, and that he did not raise his eyes, had a too-late
perception of what she had done, of how cruel she had been, of how much
more she had said than she had meant to say. She stood
conscience-stricken, remorseful, ashamed.
And then, “Oh, I am sorry!” she cried. “I am sorry! I should not have
said that! You meant to honor me and I have hurt you.”
He looked up then, but neither the shadow nor the grayness left his
face. “Perhaps it was best,” he said dully. “I am sure that you meant
well.”
“I did,” she cried. “I did! But I was wrong. Utterly wrong!”
“No,” he said, “you were not wrong. The truth was best.”
“But perhaps it was not the truth,” she replied, anxious at once,
miserably anxious to undo what she had done, to unsay what she had
said, to tell him that she was conceited, foolish, a mere girl! “I am
no judge—after all what do I know of these things? What have I done
that I should say anything?”
“I am afraid that what is said is said,” he replied. “I have always
known that I was no knight-errant. I have never been bold until
to-day—and it has not answered,” with a sickly smile. “But we
understand one another now—and I relieve you.”
He passed her on his way to the door, and she thought that he was going
to hold it open for her to go out. But when he reached the door he
fumbled for the handle, found it as a blind man might find it, and went
out himself, without turning his head.