THE OLD, HALF-FORGOTTEN JOKE.
"Has he gone?" Wenna asked of her sister the next day.
"Yes, he has," Mabyn answered with a proud and revengeful face. "It
was quite true what Mrs. Cornish told me: I've no doubt she had her
instructions. He has just driven away to Launceston on his way to
London."
"Without a word?"
"Would you like to have had another string of arguments?" Mabyn said
impatiently. "Oh, Wenna, you don't know what mischief all this is
doing. You are awake all night, you cry half the day: what is to be
the end of it? You will work yourself into a fever."
"Yes, there must be an end of it," Wenna said with decision--"not for
myself alone, but for others. That is all the reparation I can make
now. No girl in all this country has ever acted so badly as I have
done: just look at the misery I have caused; but now--"
"There is one who is miserable because he loves you," Mabyn said.
"Do you think that Mr. Roscorla has no feelings? You are so unjust to
him! Well, it does not matter now: all this must come to an end.
Mabyn, I should like to see Mr. Trelyon, if just for one minute."
"What will you say to him, Wenna?" her sister said with a sudden fear.
"Something that it is necessary to say to him, and the sooner it is
over the better."
Mabyn rather dreaded the result of this interview; and yet, she
reflected to herself, here was an opportunity for Harry Trelyon to try
to win some promise from her sister. Better, in any case, that they
should meet than that Wenna should simply drive him away into
banishment without a word of explanation.
The meeting was easily arranged. On the next morning, long before
Wenna's daily round of duties had commenced, the two sisters left the
inn, and went over the bridge and out to the bold promontory of black
rock at the mouth of the harbor. There was nobody about. This October
morning was more like a summer day: the air was mild and still, the
blue sky without a cloud; the shining sea plashed around the rocks
with the soft murmuring noise of a July calm. It was on these rocks
long ago that Wenna Rosewarne had pledged herself to become the wife
of Mr. Roscorla; and at that time life had seemed to her, if not
brilliant and beautiful, at least grateful and peaceful. Now all the
peace had gone out of it.
"Oh, my darling!" Trelyon said when she advanced alone toward him--for
Mabyn had withdrawn--"it is so good of you to come! Wenna, what has
frightened you?"
He had seized both her hands in his, but she took them away again. For
one brief second her eyes had met his, and there was a sort of wistful
and despairing kindliness in them: then she stood before him, with her
face turned away from him, and her voice low and tremulous. "I did
wish to see you--for once, for the last time," she said. "If you had
gone away, you would have carried with you cruel thoughts of me. I
wish to ask your forgiveness--"
"My forgiveness?"
"Yes, for all that you may have suffered, and for all that may trouble
you in the future--not in the long future, but for the little time you
will remember what has taken place here. Mr. Trelyon, I--I did not
know. Indeed, it is all a mystery to me now, and a great misery." Her
lips began to quiver, but she controlled herself. "And surely it will
only be for a short time, if you think of it at all. You are
young--you have all the world before you. When you go away among other
people, and see all the different things that interest a young man,
you will soon forget whatever has happened here."
"And you say that to me," he said, "and you said the other night that
you loved me! It is nothing, then, for people who love each other to
go away and be consoled, and never see each other again?"
Again the lips quivered: he had no idea of the terrible effort that
was needed to keep this girl calm. "I did say that," she said.
"And it was true?" he broke in.
"It was true then--it is true now: that is all the misery of it," she
exclaimed, with tears starting to her eyes.
"And you talk of our being separated for ever!" he cried. "No, not if
I can help it. Mabyn has told me of all your scruples: they are not
worth looking at. I tell you you are no more bound to that man than
Mabyn is, and that isn't much. If he is such a mean hound as to insist
on your marrying him, then I will appeal to your father and mother,
and they must prevent him. Or I will go to him myself and settle the
matter in a shorter way."
"You cannot now," she said: "he has gone away. And what good would
that have done? I would never marry any man unless I could do so with
a clear and happy conscience; and if you--if you and Mabyn--see
nothing in my treatment of _him_ that is wrong, then that is very
strange; but I cannot acquit myself. No: I hope no woman will ever
treat you as I have treated him. Look at his position--an elderly man,
with few friends--he has not all the best of his life before him as
you have, or the good spirits of youth; and after he had gone away to
Jamaica, taking my promise with him--Oh, I am ashamed of myself when I
think on all that has happened!"
"Then you've no right to be," said he hotly. "It was the most natural
thing in the world--and he ought to have known it--that a young girl
who has been argued into engaging herself to an old man should
consider her being in love with another man as something of rather
more importance--of a good deal more importance, I should say. And his
suffering? He suffers no more than this lump of rock does. That is not
his way of thinking--to be bothered about anything. He may be angry,
yes--and vexed for the moment, as is natural--but if you think he is
going about the world with a load of agony on him, then you're quite
mistaken. And if he were, what good could you do by making yourself
miserable as well? Wenna, do be reasonable, now."
Had not another, on this very spot, prayed her to be reasonable? She
had yielded then. Mr. Roscorla's arguments were incontrovertible, and
she had shrinkingly accepted the inevitable conclusion. Now, young
Trelyon's representations and pleadings were far less cogent, but how
strongly her heart went with him!
"No," she said, as if she were shaking off the influence of the
tempter, "I must not listen to you. Yet you don't seem to think that
it costs me anything to ask you to bid me good-bye once and for all.
It should be less to you than to me. A girl thinks of these things
more than a man--she has little else to think of; he goes out into the
world and forgets. And you--you will go away, and you will become such
a man as all who know you will love to speak of and be proud of; and
some day you will come back; and if you like to come down to the inn,
then there will be one or two there glad to see you. Mr. Trelyon,
don't ask me to tell you why this should be so. I know it to be
right: my heart tells me. Now I will say good-bye to you."
"And when I come back to the inn, will you be there?" said he,
becoming rather pale. "No: you will be married to a man whom you will
hate."
"Indeed, no," she said, with her face flushing and her eyes cast down.
"How can that be after what has taken place? He could not ask me. All
that I begged of him before he went away was this--that he would not
ask me to marry him; and if only he would do that I promised never to
see you again--after bidding you good-bye, as I do now."
"And is that the arrangement?" said he rather roughly. "Are we to play
at dog in the manger? He is not to marry you himself, but he will not
let any other man marry you?"
"Surely he has some right to consideration," she said.
"Well, Wenna," said he, "if you've made up your mind, there's no more
to be said; but I think you are needlessly cruel."
"You won't say that, just as we are parting," she said in a low voice.
"Do you think it is nothing to me?"
He looked at her for a moment with a great sadness and compunction in
his eyes; then, moved by an uncontrollable impulse, he caught her in
his arms and kissed her on the lips. "Now," said he, with his face
white as death, "tell me that you will never marry any other man as
long as you live."
"Yes, I will say that," she said to him in a low voice and with a face
as white as his own.
"Swear it, then."
"I have said that I will never marry any other man than you," she
said, "and that is enough--for me. But as for you, why must you go
away thinking of such things? You will see some day what madness it
would have been; you will come some day and thank me for having told
you so; and then--and then--if anything should be mentioned about what
I said just now, you will laugh at the old, half-forgotten joke."
Well, there was no laughing at the joke just then, for the girl burst
into tears, and in the midst of that she hastily pressed his hand and
hurried away. He watched her go round the rocks, to the cleft leading
down to the harbor. There she was rejoined by her sister, and the two
of them went slowly along the path of broken slate, with the green
hill above, the blue water below, and the fair sunshine all around
them. Many a time he recalled afterward--and always with an increasing
weight at his heart--how sombre seemed to him that bright October day
and the picturesque opening of the coast leading in to Eglosilyan. For
it was the last glimpse of Wenna Rosewarne that he was to have for
many a day, and a sadder picture was never treasured up in a man's
memory.
"Oh, Wenna, what have you said to him that you tremble so?" Mabyn
asked.
"I have bid him good-bye--that is all."
"Not for always?"
"Yes, for always."
"And he is going away again, then?"
"Yes, as a young man should. Why should he stop here to make himself
wretched over impossible fancies? He will go out into the world, and
he has splendid health and spirits, and he will forget all this."
"And you--you are anxious to forget it all too?"
"Would it not be better? What good can come of dreaming? Well, I have
plenty of work to do: that is well."
Mabyn was very much inclined to cry: all her beautiful visions of the
future happiness of her sister had been rudely dispelled--all her
schemes and machinations had gone for nothing. There only remained to
her, in the way of consolation, the fact that Wenna still wore the
sapphire ring that Harry Trelyon had sent her.
"And what will his mother think of you?" said Mabyn as a last
argument, "when she finds you have sent him away altogether--to go
into the army and go abroad, and perhaps die of yellow fever, or be
shot by the Sepoys or Caffres?"
"She would have hated me if I had married him," said Wenna simply.
"Oh, Wenna, how dare you say such a thing?" Mabyn cried. "What do you
mean by it?"
"Would a lady in her position like her only son to marry the daughter
of an innkeeper?" Wenna asked rather indifferently: indeed, her
thoughts were elsewhere.
"I tell you there's no one in the world she loves like you--I can see
it every time she comes down for you--and she believes, and I believe
too, that you have changed Mr. Trelyon's way of talking and his manner
of treating people in such a fashion as no one would have considered
possible. Do you think she hasn't eyes? He is scarcely ever
impertinent now: when he is it is always in good-nature and never in
sulkiness. Look at his kindness to Mr. Trewhella's granddaughter, and
Mr. Trewhella a clergyman too! Did he ever use to take his mother out
for a drive? No, never. And of course she knows whom it is all owing
to; and if you would marry Mr. Trelyon, Wenna, I believe she would
worship you and think nothing good enough for you."
"Mabyn, I am going to ask something of you."
"Oh yes, I know what it is," her sister said. "I am not to speak any
more about your marriage with Mr. Trelyon. But I won't give you any
such promise, Wenna. I don't consider that that old man has any hold
on you."
Wenna said nothing, for at this moment they entered the house. Mabyn
went up with her sister to her room: then she stood undecided for a
moment; finally she said, "Wenna. if I've vexed you, I'm very sorry. I
won't speak of Mr. Trelyon if you don't wish it. But indeed, indeed,
you don't know how many people are anxious that you should be happy;
and you can't expect your own sister not to be as anxious as any one
else."
"Mabyn, you're a good girl," Wenna said, kissing her. "But I am rather
tired to-day: I think I shall lie down for a little while."
Mabyn uttered a sharp cry, for her sister had fallen back on a chair,
white and insensible. She hastily bathed her forehead with cold water,
she chafed her hands, she got hold of some smelling-salts. It was
only a faint, after all, and Wenna, having come to, said she would lie
down on the sofa for a few minutes. Mabyn said nothing to her mother
about all this, for it would have driven Mrs. Rosewarne wild with
anxiety, but she herself was rather disquieted with Wenna's
appearance, and she said to herself, with great bitterness of heart,
"If my sister falls ill, I know who has done that."