AT CHELTENHAM.
The month at Cheltenham was passed very quietly and would have been a
very happy month with Mary Masters but that there grew upon her from
day to day increasing fears of what she would have to undergo when
she returned to Dillsborough. At the moment when she was hesitating
with Larry Twentyman, when she begged him to wait six months and then
at last promised to give him an answer at the end of two, she had
worked herself up to think that it might possibly be her duty to
accept her lover for the sake of her family. At any rate she had at
that moment thought that the question of duty ought to be further
considered, and therefore she had vacillated. When the two months'
delay was accorded to her, and within that period the privilege of
a long absence from Dillsborough, she put the trouble aside for a
while with the common feeling that the chapter of accidents might do
something for her. Before she had reached Cheltenham the chapter of
accidents had done much. When Reginald Morton told her that he could
not have congratulated her on such prospects, and had explained to
her why in truth he had been angry at the bridge,--how he had been
anxious to be alone with her that he might learn whether she were
really engaged to this man,--then she had known that her answer to
Larry Twentyman at the end of the two months must be a positive
refusal.
But as she became aware of this a new trouble arose and harassed her
very soul. When she had asked for the six months she had not at the
moment been aware, she had not then felt, that a girl who asks for
time is supposed to have already surrendered. But since she had made
that unhappy request the conviction had grown upon her. She had read
it in every word her stepmother said to her and in her father's
manner. The very winks and hints and little jokes which fell from her
younger sisters told her that it was so. She could see around her the
satisfaction which had come from the settlement of that difficult
question,--a satisfaction which was perhaps more apparent with her
father than even with the others. Then she knew what she had done,
and remembered to have heard that a girl who expresses a doubt
is supposed to have gone beyond doubting. While she was still at
Dillsborough there was a feeling that no evil would arise from this
if she could at last make up her mind to be Mrs. Twentyman;--but when
the settled conviction came upon her, after hearing Reginald Morton's
words, then she was much troubled.
He stayed only a couple of days at Cheltenham and during that time
said very little to her. He certainly spoke no word which would give
her a right to think that he himself was attached to her. He had been
interested about her, as was his aunt, Lady Ushant, because she had
been known and her mother had been known by the old Mortons. But
there was nothing of love in all that. She had never supposed that
there would be;--and yet there was a vague feeling in her bosom that
as he had been strong in expressing his objection to Mr. Twentyman
there might have been something more to stir him than the memory of
those old days at Bragton!
"To my thinking there is a sweetness about her which I have never
seen equalled in any young woman." This was said by Lady Ushant to
her nephew after Mary had gone to bed on the night before he left.
"One would suppose," he answered, "that you wanted me to ask her to
be my wife."
"I never want anything of that kind, Reg. I never make in such
matters,--or mar if I can help it."
"There is a man at Dillsborough wants to marry her."
"I can easily believe that there should be two or three. Who is the
man?"
"Do you remember old Twentyman of Chowton?"
"He was our near neighbour. Of course I remember him. I can remember
well when they bought the land."
"It is his son."
"Surely he can hardly be worthy of her, Reg."
"And yet they say he is very worthy. I have asked about him, and
he is not a bad fellow. He keeps his money and has ideas of living
decently. He doesn't drink or gamble. But he's not a gentleman or
anything like one. I should think he never opens a book. Of course it
would be a degradation."
"And what does Mary say herself?"
"I fancy she has refused him." Then he added after a pause, "Indeed I
know she has."
"How should you know? Has she told you?" In answer to this he
only nodded his head at the old lady. "There must have been close
friendship, Reg, between you two when she told you that. I hope you
have not made her give up one suitor by leading her to love another
who does not mean to ask her."
"I certainly have not done that," said Reg. Men may often do much
without knowing that they do anything, and such probably had been the
case with Reginald Morton during the journey from Dillsborough to
Cheltenham.
"What would her father wish?"
"They all want her to take the man."
"How can she do better?"
"Would you have her marry a man who is not a gentleman, whose wife
will never be visited by other ladies;--in marrying whom she would go
altogether down into another and a lower world?"
This was a matter on which Lady Ushant and her nephew had conversed
often, and he thought he knew her to be thoroughly wedded to the
privileges which she believed to be attached to her birth. With him
the same feeling was almost the stronger because he was so well aware
of the blot upon himself caused by the lowness of his own father's
marriage. But a man, he held, could raise a woman to his own rank,
whereas a woman must accept the level of her husband.
"Bread and meat and chairs and tables are very serious things, Reg."
"You would then recommend her to take this man, and pass altogether
out of your own sphere?"
"What can I do for her? I am an old woman who will be dead probably
before the first five years of her married life have passed over her.
And as for recommending, I do not know enough to recommend anything.
Does she like the man?"
"I am sure she would feel herself degraded by marrying him."
"I trust she will never live to feel herself degraded. I do not
believe that she could do anything that she thought would degrade
her. But I think that you and I had better leave her to herself in
this matter." Further on in the same evening, or rather late in the
night,--for they had then sat talking together for hours over the
fire,--she made a direct statement to him. "When I die, Reg, I have
but £5,000 to leave behind me, and this I have divided between you
and her. I shall not tell her because I might do more harm than good.
But you may know."
"That would make no difference to me," he said.
"Very likely not, but I wish you to know it. What troubles me is
that she will have to pay so much out of it for legacy duty. I might
leave it all to you and you could give it her." An honester or more
religious or better woman than old Lady Ushant there was not in
Cheltenham, but it never crossed her conscience that it would be
wrong to cheat the revenue. It may be doubted whether any woman has
ever been brought to such honesty as that.
On the next morning Morton went away without saying another word
in private to Mary Masters and she was left to her quiet life with
the old lady. To an ordinary visitor nothing could have been less
exciting, for Lady Ushant very seldom went out and never entertained
company. She was a tall thin old lady with bright eyes and grey hair
and a face that was still pretty in spite of sunken eyes and sunken
cheeks and wrinkled brow. There was ever present with her an air of
melancholy which told a whole tale of the sadness of a long life. Her
chief excitement was in her two visits to church on Sunday and in the
letter which she wrote every week to her nephew at Dillsborough. Now
she had her young friend with her, and that too was an excitement
to her,--and the more so since she had heard the tidings of Larry
Twentyman's courtship.
She made up her mind that she would not speak on the subject to her
young friend unless her young friend should speak to her. In the
first three weeks nothing was said; but four or five days before
Mary's departure there came up a conversation about Dillsborough and
Bragton. There had been many conversations about Dillsborough and
Bragton, but in all of them the name of Lawrence Twentyman had been
scrupulously avoided. Each had longed to name him, and yet each had
determined not to do so. But at length it was avoided no longer. Lady
Ushant had spoken of Chowton Farm and the widow. Then Mary had spoken
of the place and its inhabitants. "Mr. Twentyman comes a great deal
to our house now," she said.
"Has he any reason, my dear?"
"He goes with papa once a week to the club; and he sometimes lends my
sister Kate a pony. Kate is very fond of riding."
"There is nothing else?"
"He has got to be intimate and I think mamma likes him."
"He is a good young man then?"
"Very good;" said Mary with an emphasis.
"And Chowton belongs to him?"
"Oh yes;--it belongs to him."
"Some young men make such ducks and drakes of their property when
they get it."
"They say that he's not like that at all. People say that he
understands farming very well and that he minds everything himself."
"What an excellent young man! There is no other reason for his coming
to your house, Mary?"
Then the sluice-gates were opened and the whole story was told.
Sitting there late into the night Mary told it all as well as she
knew how,--all of it except in regard to any spark of love which
might have fallen upon her in respect of Reginald Morton. Of Reginald
Morton in her story of course she did not speak; but all the rest
she declared. She did not love the man. She was quite sure of that.
Though she thought so well of him there was, she was quite sure, no
feeling in her heart akin to love. She had promised to take time
because she had thought that she might perhaps be able to bring
herself to marry him without loving him,--to marry him because her
father wished it, and because her going from home would be a relief
to her stepmother and sisters, because it would be well for them
all that she should be settled out of the way. But since that she
had made up her mind,--she thought that she had quite made up her
mind,--that it would be impossible.
"There is nobody else, Mary?" said Lady Ushant putting her hand on
to Mary's lap. Mary protested that there was nobody else without any
consciousness that she was telling a falsehood. "And you are quite
sure that you cannot do it?"
"Do you think that I ought, Lady Ushant?"
"I should be very sorry to say that, my dear. A young woman in such
a matter must be governed by her feelings. Only he seems to be a
deserving young man!" Mary looked askance at her friend, remembering
at the moment Reginald Morton's assurance that his aunt would have
disapproved of such an engagement. "But I never would persuade a girl
to marry a man she did not love. I think it would be wicked. I always
thought so."
There was nothing about degradation in all this. It was quite clear
to Mary that had she been able to tell Lady Ushant that she was head
over ears in love with this young man and that therefore she was
going to marry him, her old friend would have found no reason to
lament such an arrangement. Her old friend would have congratulated
her. Lady Ushant evidently thought Larry Twentyman to be good enough
as soon as she heard what Mary found herself compelled to say in the
young man's favour. Mary was almost disappointed; but reconciled
herself to it very quickly, telling herself that there was yet time
for her to decide in favour of her lover if she could bring herself
to do so.
And she did try that night and all the next day, thinking that if
she could so make up her mind she would declare her purpose to Lady
Ushant before she left Cheltenham. But she could not do it, and in
the struggle with herself at last she learned something of the truth.
Lady Ushant saw nothing but what was right and proper in a marriage
with Lawrence Twentyman, but Reginald Morton had declared it to be
improper, and therefore it was out of her reach. She could not do it.
She could not bring herself, after what he had said, to look him in
the face and tell him that she was going to become the wife of Larry
Twentyman. Then she asked herself the fatal question;--was she in
love with Reginald Morton? I do not think that she answered it in the
affirmative, but she became more and more sure that she could never
marry Larry Twentyman.
Lady Ushant declared herself to have been more than satisfied with
the visit and expressed a hope that it might be repeated in the next
year. "I would ask you to come and make your home here while I have
a home to offer you, only that you would be so much more buried here
than at Dillsborough. And you have duties there which perhaps you
ought not to leave. But come again when your papa will spare you."
On her journey back she certainly was not very happy. There were
yet three weeks wanting to the time at which she would be bound to
give her answer to Larry Twentyman; but why should she keep the man
waiting for three weeks when her answer was ready? Her stepmother she
knew would soon force her answer from her, and her father would be
anxious to know what had been the result of her meditations. The real
period of her reprieve had been that of her absence at Cheltenham,
and that period was now come to an end. At each station as she
passed them she remembered what Reginald Morton had been saying to
her, and how their conversation had been interrupted,--and perhaps
occasionally aided,--by the absurdities of the bird. How sweet it
had been to be near him and to listen to his whispered voice! How
great was the difference between him and that other young man, the
smartness of whose apparel was now becoming peculiarly distasteful to
her! Certainly it would have been better for her not to have gone to
Cheltenham if it was to be her fate to become Mrs. Twentyman. She was
quite sure of that now.
She came up from the Dillsborough Station alone in the Bush omnibus.
She had not expected any one to meet her. Why should any one meet
her? The porter put up her box and the omnibus left her at the door.
But she remembered well how she had gone down with Reginald Morton,
and how delightful had been every little incident of the journey.
Even to walk with him up and down the platform while waiting for the
train had been a privilege. She thought of it as she got out of the
carriage and remembered that she had felt that the train had come too
soon.
At her own door her father met her and took her into the parlour
where the tea-things were spread, and where her sisters were already
seated. Her stepmother soon came in and kissed her kindly. She was
asked how she had enjoyed herself, and no disagreeable questions were
put to her that night. No questions, at least, were asked which she
felt herself bound to answer. After she was in bed Kate came to her
and did say a word. "Well, Mary, do tell me. I won't tell any one."
But Mary refused to speak a word.