IN WHICH GEORGE PROVES TO BE BUT HUMAN
THE letter which had presented such difficulties to George was
finished at last, and while Rhys was sitting with Isoline upon the
rock, he was trudging down to Crishowell with it in his pocket. At the
village he captured a stray urchin to whom he confided it, promising
him a penny, which was to be paid on the following day at twelve
o'clock; the boy was to go to the blacksmith's shop, where his patron
would await the expected answer. He did not tell him to bring it to
the cottage, as, since Rhys' arrival, he had strongly discouraged all
visitors.
"Dere Mary," he had written, "I write these few lines hopeing you wil
not take it il 'tis trewly ment. Dere Mary, wil you have me? What is
dun is dun and can't be undun so take hart. I wil be a good husband
and love you well never doute it.
"Yours trewly,
"GEORGE WILLIAMS."
When the letter reached its destination, Mary was looking out of the
diamond-paned window of the toll-house, and as she opened the door to
the boy's knock, he thrust it into her hand, telling her he would come
for the answer in the morning. She took it in, and went up with it to
the little room where she slept, for there was no light in the
kitchen. Lighting a tallow dip which stood in a tin candlestick, she
sat down, spreading the paper out in front of her; a letter was such
an unusual thing in her experience that she opened it with a sort of
misgiving. She read it to the end hurriedly, as hurriedly as her
inefficiency and the cramped handwriting would permit, but it was so
exceedingly surprising that she could hardly take it in; it lay on the
table in the circle of yellow light, a dumb, yet disturbing thing,
knocking like an unbidden guest at the closed door of her heart. It
brought the strong face of the man with the bill-hook before her, an
intruder, almost a vision of fear.
She felt that it was incumbent upon her to feel something, but what
she could not tell, and she laughed as she folded the letter and
pushed it underneath the candlestick. When she went down again to the
kitchen where the new toll-keeper and his wife were sitting, they
looked at her with solemn curiosity, such as was due to the recipient
of a letter, but she made no allusion to it, and went up early to bed
after supper, leaving the two by the fire.
Before putting out the light, she read George's proposal over again,
and repeated it to herself as she lay in her attic with her eyes on
the patch of starlit sky which filled the window high up in the roof.
How often she had lain there, with her little child in her arms, and
watched the handle of the Plough describing its quarter-circle on the
heavens. She remembered that and buried her face in the pillow. She
wondered whether there was any one in the world so entirely alone as
herself, and though she thought with gratitude of the couple sleeping
peacefully in the room off the kitchen below, she knew very well that
she had no place in their lives. The world--that void peopled with
strangers--confronted her, and she had no more spirit left with which
to meet it, for her arms were empty of the burden that alone had given
her courage.
The excitement which comes upon nervous people at night in the
presence of difficulties took hold of her; one bugbear after another
pressed upon her brain, and though the attic was cold, she sat up as
the hours went by, feverish with contending thoughts, and saw the
whiteness of the letter lying on a chair under the window.
It would be a solution to many anxieties, though hardly the one she
would have chosen; but beggars cannot be choosers, and she allowed
herself to dwell upon the idea, with the result that as it grew more
familiar, it also grew less formidable. She did not want to marry--why
could he not give her his friendship only, with no thought of any
other relationship? She needed that, and since it had been offered,
the knowledge of it had been a greater support than she could have
supposed. On first reading the letter she had lost the sense of this,
but now it came back, and George's calm personality was a soothing
thing to think about. She shut her eyes, and brought back to her mind
that terrible hour by the river, and all he had done for her. He had
gone with her to the toll-house door that day, and left her taking
with him a promise that she would never attempt her own life again.
The restraint of the letter gave her confidence. She felt that, had he
made a declaration of love as well as an offer of marriage, she could
not have listened to it for a moment; she had had enough of love, were
it false love or true. If he married her he would be marrying her out
of pity, and she almost thought that she liked and trusted him enough
to accept the fact. Had he asked for love she could not have pretended
to give it him. But he had asked for nothing. It was like a business
proposal, so dispassionate was it. He had said, "I wil love you well
never doute it," but that gave promise of the loyal affection of a
tried companion, not the passion of a lover for the woman loved, and
it demanded nothing in return, not even gratitude, though she felt
that she could and would give him plenty of that. She would have a
home, and she did not doubt that it would be a better one than many a
woman got whose domestic relations were considered fortunate. The
quiet of the thought calmed her, and she fell asleep while she turned
over the restful possibility in her mind.
In the morning she rose early and went down to the kitchen to light
the fire, for she had lately made a practice of this, being glad to do
anything to help the toll-keeper's wife. As she laid the wood she
thought of the letter waiting to be answered. Morning had almost
brought the decision to say "No." Everything seemed less formidable in
the daylight, and sleep had steadied her nerves and cleared away the
spectres of the darkness; it was not until she had sat down in the
attic, pen in hand, to renounce the haven held open for her that she
wavered. While she hesitated the boy knocked at the door below, and
standing at the turning-point of her way, Mary's heart failed her.
She wanted time. In a few minutes she had got no nearer to her
decision, and the messenger waiting in the road began to kick the
doorstep impatiently. She tore the sheet of paper in half, and wrote
on the blank part of it.
"Dear George Williams, i dont know what to do i cant say yes nor no. i
know you are a good man and many thanks. forgive me i mean to do rite
i will send the anser to Crishowell on market day your obliged friend
"MARY VAUGHAN."
She had received a little education, and had taught herself a good
deal during her intimacy with Rhys, spending many evenings in attempts
to improve in reading and writing. What puzzled her most in the
present case was how to address her suitor, and, more than all, how to
subscribe herself. She wondered, as she watched the boy's back
retreating towards Crishowell, whether she had done so rightly. He was
her friend, she told herself, and she was obliged indeed.
On market day George prepared to go down to the toll and hear his
fate. His objection to letting his messenger come to the cottage was
his reason for this, and not any excitement brought on by the
occasion. He was no hot-headed lad rushing off to his sweetheart; he
was a man with whom life had gone wrong, so wrong as to have given him
a very present determination to prevent another life from sliding down
the hill into that slough which had all but swallowed up his own. He
was struggling in it yet, and he could not hope to set his feet on
firm ground for some time to come. But when that day should arrive,
and he could begin to toil up the slope again, he meant to tow up an
extra burden with him. He felt himself strong and hard and patient,
and he liked to think that his strength and hardness and patience
might do for two.
In spite of the absence of romance in his wooing, he determined that
no outward sign of it should be missing from his errand--he felt it to
be due to Mary. The butterfly, whose wings had been scorched by the
fires of life, should be pursued with nets and lures as though it were
the most gaudy and unattainable of winged creatures. For this reason
his best suit of working-clothes (he possessed no Sunday ones) had
been carefully brushed over-night, and his boots cleaned. He ducked
his head into the water-bucket and scrubbed it with his coarse towel,
flattening and smoothing his hair before the scrap of looking-glass
till it shone. He shaved himself with great care, and trimmed the two
inches of whisker, which made lines in front of his ears, until they
became mere shadings, and then took from some hidden lair, in which he
kept such things, a purple neckcloth with white bird's-eye spots on
it. This he tied with infinite care. As he was dusting his hat he
looked up, to see Rhys standing in the doorway of the partition; he
had been so much occupied with his dressing that he had not heard him
come up the ladder. He turned very red. Walters was smiling
contemptuously. "You're very fine this morning," he said, with his eye
resting on a patch just below George's knee, "I suppose you're going
courting."
Williams took up the rabbit-headed stick, and for answer unlocked and
opened the door which had its key always turned as a protective
measure when there was the chance of Rhys coming up-stairs.
Before shutting it he dropped the key into his pocket.
"I'm taking this along with me," he remarked, "so you may just get
down below again." It was the first piece of active malice into which
the other had provoked him.
As he went towards the village he picked a bit of holly from a bush
and stuck it into his buttonhole. It added a good deal to his festal
air, and the bright sun exhilarated him after the cold water he had
applied to himself so copiously. The stolid gloom which seemed to
surround him on ordinary days had lifted, and any one meeting him that
morning and looking at him without pleasure would have been a dullard.
He had health, strength greater than that of most men, and he was only
twenty-eight years old. And he had a face that no living thing could
doubt.
He hit out cheerfully at the dry little oak-apples in the hedge, for
Rhys' sneer had run off him like water off the traditional duck's
back, and been swallowed in the thought of its perpetrator tied to the
underground room till his return. When generous people are goaded into
malice they get their money's worth out of the experience, and
Williams' little excursion into the devil's dominions had done him a
world of good. His prospects were no better than they had been on the
preceding night, and he was about to try and hang an additional weight
round his neck, but human nature and a spotted neckcloth will do
wonders for a man sometimes, and the sense of well-being pervaded
everything. Nevertheless, as he turned into the Brecon road, and met
the toll-people on their way to Llangarth market, his spirits waned a
little from pure fear of the matter in hand, and he stood before the
door waiting admittance, sincerely hoping that Mary might not see how
his hands shook.
Mary had determined on the answer she would give. Through all her
wrongs and troubles she had set up a certain standard of right for
herself, and she did not mean to sink below it; whatever her
shortcoming in other ways had been, she had injured none but herself,
and on none but herself should the reckoning fall. What preserved the
strong tower of self-respect in her was that fact, and were she to
lose sight of it, the whole edifice would crumble to the earth. In the
terrors of the night, indeed, she had wavered and almost resolved to
take the home offered without more ado, but with the new strength that
comes to young lives with sunrise, she had put the idea away from her.
No one else should pay, no one else should suffer, least of all George
Williams who was her friend. She was thinking of him when she heard
his knock, and opened the door to find him standing on the other side
of it.
He walked into the house without waiting to be invited, and shut the
door behind him. The blood tingled in his face, which was ruddy with
the morning air, and the holly in his coat made a bright spot of
colour in the room; his large frame seemed larger by contrast with the
furniture.
"Will you please to sit down?" said she, mechanically pushing forward
the wooden chair in which her father had been used to sit.
"Thank ye, no, I'd best stand," answered George.
So they faced each other, the man with his back to the window. Mary
had only seen him twice before, but a very definite idea of him had
remained in her mind, and as he stood there she felt as though she
were looking at a totally different person. He was younger, smarter,
and it made her hot to think that she had leaned against his shoulder
and wept her heart out in the circle of his arm. Then, he had been
simply a protector, but now he had turned into a powerful-looking
young man in a purple neckcloth. He had called himself her friend, but
he was a stranger and she had no right in his life--certainly no right
to spoil it with her ruined one. Her heart beat quick as she held the
back of the chair.
"I've come to get the answer," said Williams simply.
"I can't! I can't do it," replied the girl.
There was silence in the little room, and the two cheap clocks which
stood on the dresser ticked loudly, one half a second behind the
other. He drew an imaginary line on the floor with the ash-plant in
his hand.
"Well, I'm sorry," he said, looking down at the point of the stick.
She did not speak.
"I suppose you couldn't come to like me in time? Likely enough I
bean't the sort for a girl to fancy, but ye shan't rue it if ye take
me. Don't be afeard."
She looked up and saw behind the calm, heavy face into the upright
soul of the sheep-stealer, and the sight made her more determined.
"It's not that. But don't you ask me, George Williams--don't you, for
I can't."
"D'ye think I shouldn't like ye enough?" he asked, after a pause. "Is
it that that's the trouble?"
"Ye may like me a bit," she answered boldly, "but it's goodness wi'
you, not love."
"I like you well," he said, "don't disbelieve me. Mary, Mary, you're
not taking on about that--about Walters o' Masterhouse, curse him?"
"I can't but think of him. I hate him, but I think of him."
"You hate him, Mary?"
"I saw my father lyin' dead i' this room. Lyin' there on the bed. They
fetched it in. Oh, my God! my God!" She turned away from him. "Go!
Go!" she cried, facing round again, "and I'll think of your goodness,
that I will; but I can't take ye, George, so let me be."
"Mary," he persisted, "will you let me come back? Maybe, as time gets
on, you'd forget a bit."
He had come to her meaning to act the part of a lover conscientiously,
but he was finding little need for acting; no woman he had ever seen
appealed to him as this one did. He stood in the middle of the room
unwilling to go. She came up to him, and laying her fingers upon his
arm, urged him towards the door. When they reached the lintel, he took
hold of her hand. "Let me come again," he begged, "let me come back.
Do, Mary, do."
"No, no," she exclaimed, drawing it away, "'tis no manner o' use.
Good-bye; go now, good-bye."
George Williams was but human, and his heart was bounding within him.
"All right," he said, thickly, "I'll be off then. But oh, Mary, give
me one kiss before I go!" and, in his earnestness, he made as though
he would draw her towards him.
She sprang back, blushing scarlet to the roots of her hair. "Ah!" she
cried, "an' I thought you were different!"
Before he had realized what had happened she had shut the door, and he
heard the bolt shoot into its place. He stood in the road, mortified,
ashamed, furious with himself. But as he turned to make his way home
between the leafless hedges, he knew that he loved her.