CHAPTER I

THE TWO MARYS

THE TWO MARYS

BY

MRS OLIPHANT

AUTHOR OF “THE CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,” “THE WIZARD’S SON,”

“THE PRODIGALS,” ETC.

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.

LONDON

1896

_Originally published in_

“MACMILLAN’S MAGAZINE” AND IN “GOOD WORDS”

CONTENTS

THE TWO MARYS--

PAGE

I. MY OWN STORY 1

II. HER STORY 85

GROVE ROAD, HAMPSTEAD 127

THE TWO MARYS

I. MY OWN STORY

CHAPTER I

My name is Mary Peveril. My father was the incumbent of a proprietary

chapel in that populous region which lies between Holborn and the New

Road--a space within which there is a great deal of wealth and comfort,

and a great deal of penury and pain, but neither grandeur nor abject

misery. I like those streets, though I know there is no loveliness in

them. I feel that I can breathe better when I come out into the

largeness and spacious width of the squares, and I take a pleasure which

many people will laugh at in the narrow paved passages--crooked and bent

like so many elbows, with their bookstalls and curious little shops. How

often have I strayed about them with my father, holding on by his

coat-skirts when I was little, by his arm when I grew tall, while he

stood and gazed at the books which he could so seldom afford to buy.

When he found a cheap one that pleased him, how his face brightened up!

While he looked at them I was not often thinking what the thoughts might

be in his mind. What was I thinking of--swinging by the skirts of his

coat, or by his arm when I grew a great girl? How can I tell? Thinking

how bright the twinkling lights were; how funny life was, so full of

people passing whom we never saw again--of paving-stones and

shop-windows; and droll with whispering airs that blew round the

corners, and always seemed to want to tell you something; and again more

lights and more faces and more shop-windows. In winter these passages

always felt warm and comfortable, and I had some theory about them which

I scarcely remember now--something like the theory of the poor man whom

I once heard saying that he went into the streets by night because the

gaslights made them so warm. The desolateness of such a forlorn being,

seeking warmth in the lighted, streets, did not strike me when I heard

that speech; I only felt I understood him, and had frequently been

conscious of the same feeling. But I remember very well how once, when I

was swinging back a little upon papa’s arm, clinging to him, proud of

showing that I belonged to him and was old enough to take his arm, yet

separate from him, as youth so often is, thinking my own thoughts,

living in another world, I all at once caught the illumination on his

face as he fell upon a book he wanted which was cheap enough to be

bought. To think he should really care about such a trifle--he--papa,

the clergyman whom everybody looked up to; that he should look as

pleased about it as Ellen our servant did when she got a new dress! I

was half humiliated, half sympathetic. Poor papa! What a pity he could

not buy a great many books when he cared so much for them! But yet, I

think, there was a little sense of shame on his behalf, and of

humiliation, mingled with that more amiable thought; that he should care

so much about anything, seemed somehow a derogation from his dignity, a

descent on his part into a less lofty place.

We lived in Southampton Street, in the end where there are no shops. We

had two very white steps before our front-door, which was the brightest

point about us. When anyone asked in that street where the clergyman of

St Mark’s lived, the house was always pointed out by this: “No. 75, the

house with the white steps.” I used to think for years and years that

they were a natural feature, and had nothing to do with any work of man,

or rather, woman. It was a shabby house inside. There were two little

kitchens in the basement, two little parlours on the ground-floor, two

little bedrooms above that, and on the top storey I think there were

three divisions instead of two. One of the little parlours--the back

one, which looked out upon a little square yard about the same size--was

papa’s study. It was not a cheerful room, with that outlook upon four

brick walls, and a little square bit of mouldy black soil in which

flourished some poor tufts of grass, and the big water-butt in the

foreground, where the water was black with soot--when there was any

water at all. The room had a writing-table in it, always covered with

books and papers, and papa’s chair--black haircloth, beginning to wear

white at the edges--between the table and the fire, and two other black

chairs standing against the opposite wall. It was divided by folding

doors from the parlour, in which we lived. This room was furnished with

a haircloth sofa, half-a-dozen chairs, a round table with a

close-fitting oilcloth cover, and, thrust up into a corner, an old

piano, upon which I practised sometimes, and which on other occasions

served as a sideboard. There was a short Venetian blind at the lower

part of the window to keep people from seeing in, and a chair in the

recess, on which I used to sit and darn papa’s stockings and dream.

Sometimes I read, but, generally, dreaming was more fun. I made out such

nice new lives for myself and papa. Sometimes I would dream that we were

quite different people from what we appeared to be--great people, rich

and noble, with all kinds of grandeur belonging to us, though no one

knew; and how it would be found out all of a sudden, to the confusion

of everybody who had ever been uncivil. I used to trace out, as minutely

as if I had seen it, every detail of what we were to do. I was Lady Mary

in these visions; and if anyone had called me so I should have been, I

am sure, more shocked to think that _it_ had been prematurely discovered

than struck by the unreality of the title. It was not unreal to me.

Sometimes it would take other shapes, and my imagination would content

itself with the notion of someone dying and leaving us a fortune, and

how we would wear mourning and do our very best to be sorry; but the

other idea was much the favourite. It was very sweet to me to think

that, for all so humble and so unknown as we were, things would appear

very different _if people but knew_! The old life comes round me as my

thoughts go back to it, the afternoon sounds in the street--vulgar

sounds, but softened by summer air as much as if they had been the

sweetest; the drowsy tinkle of the muffin-man’s bell, the prolonged cry

of “water-cre-e-e-sses!” the sound of children’s voices and dogs

barking, and distant wheels that always ground out an accompaniment; and

myself in the window, poor Mr Peveril the clergyman’s daughter, to my

own knowledge Lady Mary, and a very great, small person. I wonder which

was the real Mary--she or I.

I have heard that in poor mamma’s time we were so fine as to have a

drawing-room upstairs on the first floor, like Mrs Stephens next door;

but that splendour was long, long over, for mamma died soon after I was

born, and I was left all alone--a small baby, with papa on my hands to

look after. I do not think, however, that I was at any time very sorry

for this. I was sorry for her, who died so young, but not for myself; I

felt instinctively that, had she been there, always poking between papa

and me, I should not have liked it, and that on the whole things were

best as they were. The room which had been the drawing-room was papa’s

bedroom, and I slept in the room behind, over his study. Ellen had the

three little places up above all to herself, though one of them was

called--I don’t know why--the spare room. In this little place we lived,

and never asked ourselves whether it was dingy or not. The walls were

dark, with papers which had not been renewed so long as I could

remember; and the curtains were dark, and always had the look of being

dusty, though, thanks to Ellen, they never were so in reality. We had no

pictures, except two old prints from Raphael’s cartoons. One was the

“Miraculous draught of fishes,” and the other “Peter and John at the

beautiful gate of the Temple.” How I remember those twisted pillars, and

how many dreams have they twisted through! But I never admired them,

though they were part of my life. I should have liked a landscape

better, or some pretty faces like those one sometimes sees in the

shop-windows. When the people who went to St Mark’s talked of having a

lithograph of papa the thought made me wild with excitement; but the

lithograph was never done.

It must not be supposed, however, that papa and I lived in that state of

ecstatic delight in each other’s society which one hears of often in

books. There were no great demonstrations between us. I led my own life

by the side of his, and he, I suppose, lived his by me, like two

parallel lines which never meet whatever you may please to do. I do not

know that it occurred to me to think articulately that the happiness of

my life depended on him. I did not seek to sit in his study or to be

near him while he worked, as I have heard of girls doing. I was quite

satisfied to be in the parlour while he was busy on the other side of

the closed doors; indeed, until he ceased to be all mine, I accepted

papa as calmly as I did the other accessories of my life. When he went

out to dinner, which was a very rare occurrence, yet happened sometimes,

I would make myself very comfortable with a book over my tea. I was fond

of going out with him; but then, he was the only person who ever took me

out, through amusing places, where there were shop-windows and crowds of

people passing. I had not been brought up to have my walk regularly

every day, like well-educated children. I walked when I could. Sometimes

I had an errand to do--something to buy or order, which I did by myself

in one of the shops of the neighbourhood; but this was an office I

hated, for I was too shy to go into a shop with any pleasure; and

sometimes old Mrs Tufnell would send for me to walk in the square, which

was fine, but not very amusing. I liked the passages about Holborn with

the bookstalls a great deal better. But we did not talk a great deal

even in these walks. Sometimes I would be seized with a fit of inquiry,

and would pester papa with a torrent of questions; but at other times I

fell back into my dreams, and would be making some splendid expedition

as Lady Mary all the time, while I hung, always a little behind him, on

his arm, leaving him as undisturbed as, generally, he left me. I think

of this calm of indifference now, when I look back upon it, with very

odd feelings. Is it that one does not care so long as one has those whom

one loves all to one’s self? It is only, I suppose, when your rights are

interfered with that you grow violent about them. I suppose it was the

fact that we loved each other--I him,--and he me--that made us happy;

but it was so natural to love each other that we thought little about

it, and I am afraid it would have surprised me a little in my secret

heart if any one had told me that my happiness depended upon papa.

The way in which this tranquil ease of possession was disturbed was a

very gentle and gradual one--at least, so I can see now, though at the

time it appeared to me most abrupt and terrible. My idea of my father

was that he was old, as a child’s ideas generally are; but he was not

old. He was about five-and-forty when I was fifteen. He was not

tall--and he stooped, which made him look still less so. At fifteen I

was as tall as he was. He had a handsome, refined face, with very clear

features, and a sort of ivory complexion. His hair was worn off his

temples, and there were a great many lines in his face--partly with

trouble, partly with work; but his smile was the sweetest smile I ever

saw, and he had a way of captivating everybody. I have heard it said

since that this power of fascination did not last, and that he grew

melancholy and monotonous after the first few times you had seen him;

and though I was very angry when I heard this first, I can with an

effort believe that it might be true. I suppose it was the same faculty

which showed itself at church, where there were always new people

coming, who attended closely for a few weeks and then went away. He was

like a man who gives you everything he has at once, and then has nothing

more for you. At home he was silent, always kind, but never saying much.

I scarcely recollect ever to have been scolded by him. Ellen scolded me,

and so did old Mrs Tufnell, and even Mrs Stephens next door; but papa

only said, “Poor child!” with the air of a compassionate spectator, when

I was complained of to him. Our chief conversation was at meals, when

he would sometimes talk a little, and tell me of things he had seen or

heard; and it was at tea one evening that he first brought forward the

name of the other person who was henceforward to stand between us. No

such thought was in his mind then, I am sure; but he was more

communicative than usual. He told me that he had seen a young lady on

one of his visits, in a very strange place for such a person to be

found--in the back parlour of a small grocer’s shop which I knew quite

well. He told me quite a long story about her--how she was an orphan and

had been left destitute, and had been obliged to go back to her mother’s

family, who had been a governess in her day, and married much above her.

Her father, too, was dead, having been of no use whatever in the world

or to her, and there was no prospect before her but that of going out to

be a governess--a thing which papa seemed to think a great hardship for

her. I had been trained to believe that some such place would have to be

mine as papa got older and I grew a woman; therefore I was not at all

shocked by the suggestion. I said: “Has she heard of any nice situation,

papa?” with the quietest matter-of-fact acceptance of his words.

“Heard of a situation! You talk very much at your ease, Mary,--but if

you saw this elegant, accomplished, refined girl,” said my father.

“Poor thing, I cannot bear to think that she should be driven to such a

fate.”

I did not make any answer. I was surprised. It had never occurred to me

that it was “such a fate.” Most girls, it seemed to me, who were not

great ladies were governesses, both in the little real world with which

I was acquainted and in books.

“Poor thing!” he said again. “Poor thing! how I wish there was any

possible way of saving her. What a thing it is to be poor!”

“But any situation would be better than staying with the Spicers,” I

said. “Think, papa--the Spicers! I should not mind being a governess--I

suppose I shall be, some day or other--but I should hate living in a

parlour behind a shop.”

“Well, Mary, I hope you will see her some time, and when you do see her

you must be very kind to her,” said my father with a sigh; and that

night he drew his chair to the fire and tried to talk, which was a thing

that took me very much by surprise. But, unfortunately, I had a new book

which was very interesting, and instead of responding to this unusual

inclination, as I ought to have done, I kept on reading, making pettish

and uncertain replies, until he grew tired of the attempt and gave it

up, and got a book too, as usual. He sighed a little as he did so, with

a sort of disappointed air; and through my reading and my interest in

the story somehow I perceived this, and felt guilty and uncomfortable

all the rest of the evening. When I had finished my volume I was very

conciliatory, and tried all I could to bring him back to the point where

he had given it up, but it was of no use. I have always found it exactly

so in my experience. If you are too stupid, or too much occupied with

yourself, to take just the right moment for explanations, you never can

recover the thread which you have allowed to slip through your fingers.

Even to this day I often wonder what papa would have said to me that

night had I let him speak. I have invented whole conversations, but they

never were much satisfaction to me. To think out what perhaps some one

might have said is very different from hearing them say it. I was not at

all pleased with myself that evening when I went to bed; but perhaps

this was partly because I had finished my novel and it was not

satisfactory, and seemed, now it was over, such a poor sort of thing to

have preferred to a conversation with papa.

Nothing, however, happened for some time after this to put me on my

guard. I went on in my old careless way. If he was out a little more

than usual, I paid no attention. All that was quite natural. Of course

he had his duties to attend to. He dined at Mrs Tufnell’s once during

this time, and was very particular about his tie, and about having his

coat brushed. “It is quite nice,” I said; “it was well brushed on Monday

morning before it was put away. Why, papa, I thought you did not like a

fuss: how you laughed at me for being so particular about my sash when

we went to the party at Mrs Overend’s. Shouldn’t you like to have a sash

too?”

He laughed, but he did not look like laughing; and I remember stopping

short in the middle of my tea, and laying down my book to ask myself if

anything could be the matter with him. One or two odd people whom I did

not know had come to see him of late. Was it possible he could be ill?

But no, he ate as usual, and he had looked quite ruddy when he went out.

So I took up my novel again, and helped myself to jam, and thought no

more of it. I believe the whole business was decided, or the next thing

to decided, that night.

I could if I liked have heard a great deal of what was said in the study

while I sat at work in the parlour, and this was a thing which Mrs

Tufnell and Mrs Stephens had often remarked. They thought it “not quite

nice:” for, to be sure, people might say things to papa as their

clergyman which they did not wish to be overheard. But it could not well

be helped, for there was no other room where I could sit. I have said

too that I could have heard if I liked; but the fact was I did not care,

and I never heard. When you are perfectly indifferent and used to

everything, and know there is no mystery in it, it is astonishing how

little you hear. I had got accustomed to the hum of voices from the

study just as I had to the cries in the streets and the muffin-man’s

bell. Sometimes, I suppose, a word must have caught my ear now and then,

but I paid no attention, and heard as if I heard it not: I was thinking

of such very different things. One day, however, I did catch a few words

which surprised me. It was a summer day. The back-door into the little

yard and all the windows everywhere were open. The noises in the street

came into the house exactly as if we were living out of doors, but so

softened by the warm air and the sunshine that they were pleasant

instead of being disagreeable. The day was not hot, but only

deliciously, genially warm. We had put up white curtains in the parlour,

and the wind blew them softly about, flapping the wooden stretcher in

the blind against the window-frame. I was in a muslin dress myself; and

I was happy without any reason, not in the least knowing why. I came

downstairs singing, as I had a way of doing, and went into the parlour

and sat down in the window. I gave up singing when I sat down, partly

because it might have disturbed papa, and partly because people stopped

to listen as they were passing. I was running up the breadths of my new

frock, a blue print, which was as bright and pretty as the day, and, to

tell the truth, did not care in the least what the voices were saying on

the other side of the folding doors. I had made noise enough to

demonstrate my presence, and, as nothing was ever hid from me, it never

came into my head to listen. It was Spicer the grocer’s voice, I think,

which attracted my ear at last. It was a strange, little, harsh,

snappish voice, so unharmonious that it worried one like a dog barking;

and by degrees, as he talked and talked, some sort of vague association

came into my mind--something which I had half forgotten. What was it I

had heard about the Spicers? I could not recollect all at once.

“Governessing ain’t paradise,” said Spicer, “but it’s better perhaps

than other things. Marrying a man as is in poor health, and at a

troublesome time o’ life--and nothing to leave to them as comes after

him; that ain’t much, Mr Peveril. A woman’s best married, I allow; but

marriage has consekenses, and when there’s no money----”

I did not hear what my father said in reply, and indeed I did not care

to hear. I was half annoyed, half amused, by Spicer’s queer little

barking voice.

“Forty-five, sir? no, it ain’t old--but it ain’t young neither. I’ve

known many a man carried off at forty-five. Them things have all got to

be considered; though for that matter twenty-five would make little

difference. The thing is, here’s a young woman as has a trade she can

make her living by. A man comes in, marries her right off: they have a

child or two in natural course, and then he goes and dies. Nothing more

natural or more common. But then you see, Mr Peveril, sir, here’s the

question: what’s to become of her? And that’s the question I’ve got to

consider. I’ve a family myself, and I can’t put myself in the way of

having to support another man’s family; and a woman can’t go out and be

a governess, it stands to reason, with two or three young uns on her

hands.”

My father said something here in a very earnest, low, grave voice, which

really attracted my curiosity for the first time. Whatever he was

saying, he was very serious about it, and his tone, though I could not

hear what he said, woke me up. Perhaps he warned Spicer to talk low; but

at all events I heard nothing more for some time, except the grumbling

and barking of the grocer’s voice, in a much subdued tone. They seemed

to argue, and Spicer seemed to yield. At last he got up to go away, and

then I heard him deliver his final judgment on the matter, whatever it

was, standing close to the folding doors.

“You speaks fair, sir. I don’t say but what you speaks fair. Granting

life and health, it’s a fine thing for her, and a honour for us. And

taking the other side of the question, as I’m bound to take it, I

wouldn’t say but the insurance makes a difference. A woman with a

thousand pounds and a babby is no worse off than if she hadn’t

neither--and Missis is better nor Miss in the way of setting up a

school or such like. I may say, Mr Peveril, as the insurance makes a

great difference. A thousand pound ain’t much for a dependence; and if

there was a lot of little uns--but to be sure, in them matters you must

go on providence to a certain extent. I’ll think it over, sir--and I

don’t see as I’ve any call to make objections, if her and you’s made up

your minds.” Then there was a step towards the door, and then Spicer

came to a stand-still once more. “First thing,” he said, “Mr Peveril, is

the insurance. You won’t put it off, sir? I’ve known them as meant it

every day o’ their lives, and never did it when all was done; and died

and left their families without e’er a----”

“It shall be done at once,” said my father peremptorily, and almost

angrily; and then there was a begging of pardon, and a scraping and

shuffling, and Spicer went away. I saw him go out, putting his hat on as

he shut the door. I never liked Spicer--of course he was one of the

parishioners, and papa could not refuse his advice to him or to any one;

but I made a face at him as he went away. I felt quite sure he was the

sort of man one sometimes reads of in the newspapers, who put sand in

the sugar, and sell bad tea to the poor people, and have light weights.

This was in my mind along with a vague, faint curiosity as to what he

had been talking about, when to my surprise papa came into the parlour.

He came in quickly, with a flush on his face, and the most uneasy,

uncomfortable look I ever saw a man have. Was he ashamed of

something?--ashamed! he--papa!

“I suppose you have heard all that Spicer has been saying, Mary,” he

said to me, quite abruptly. He gave me one strange look, and then turned

away, and gazed at the Beautiful gate of the Temple which hung over the

mantelpiece as if he had never seen it before.

“Yes,” I said; and then it suddenly flashed upon me that Spicer’s talk

had not been exactly of a kind to be overheard by a girl, and that this

was why poor papa looked so embarrassed and uncomfortable. He felt that

it was not proper for me. “I heard a little of it,” I said instantly,

“but I never listen, you know, papa, and I don’t know in the least what

he was talking about.”

Poor papa! how delicate he was; how shocked I should have heard anything

I ought not to know--though it was not so dreadful after all, for of

course everybody knows that when people are married they have babies.

But he did not like to look me in the face; he kept his back to me, and

gazed at the twisted pillars.

“Mary,” he said, “I have a little explanation to make to you.”

“An explanation?” I looked at him over my blue print, wondering what it

could be; but it did not seem worth while to stop working, and I

threaded my needle and made a knot on my thread while I waited for what

he was going to say. Then suddenly my heart began to beat a little fast,

and the thought crossed my mind that perhaps my dreams were about to

become true, and that he knew all about it as well as I, and was just

going to tell me I was Lady Mary, and he Earl of ----. I had never been

able to choose a satisfactory title, and I could not invent one on the

spur of the moment; but instinctively I gave a glance from the window to

see whether the beautiful carriage was in sight, coming to take us to

our splendid home.

“Perhaps I ought to have taken you into my confidence before,” he said,

“for you have been brought up a lonely girl, and ought to feel for

people who are lonely. I have been very lonely myself, very desolate,

ever since your poor mother died.”

Here my heart gave a slight stir, and I felt angry, without knowing

exactly why. Lonely? Why, he had always had me!

“When you are older,” he went on nervously, “you will feel what a

dreadful thing the want of companionship is. You have been a good child,

Mary, and done all you could for me. I should not have been able to live

without you; but when a man has been used to a companion of--of his own

standing, it is a great change to him to fall back upon a child.”

I grew angrier and angrier; I could scarcely tell why. A feeling of

disappointment, of heart-sinking, of fury, came over me. I had never

made much fuss about adoring my father, and so forth; but to find out

all at once that he had never been satisfied--never happy----

“Do you mean me?” I said, quite hoarsely, feeling as if he had wronged

me, deceived me, done everything that was cruel--but with no clear

notion of what was coming even now.

“Whom else could I mean?” he said, quite gently. “You are a dear, good

child, but you are only a child.”

Oh, how my heart swelled, till I thought it would burst! but I could not

say anything. I began to tap my foot on the floor in my anger and

mortification, but still I was so stupid I thought of nothing more.

“Don’t look as if you thought I blamed you, Mary,” said my father; “on

the contrary, you have been a dear little housekeeper. But--do you

remember, dear,” he went on, with his voice shaking a little, “that I

told you once of a young lady who lived with the Spicers?”

It began to dawn upon me now. I turned round upon him, and stared at

him. Oh, how pleased I was to see his eyes shrink, and the embarrassed

look upon his face! I would not give him any quarter; I felt my own face

growing crimson with shame, but I kept looking at him, compelling him

to keep opposite to me, preventing him from hiding that blush. Oh, good

heavens--an _old_ man--a man of forty-five--a clergyman--my father! and

there he sat, blushing like some ridiculous boy.

He faltered, but he kept on, not looking at me, “I see you remember,” he

said, with his voice shaking like a flame in a draught of air. “She has

no prospect but to go out as a governess, and I cannot see her do that.

I have asked her to--to--share--our home. I have asked her to--to be

your--best friend; that is, I mean, I have asked her to marry me, Mary.

There! You must have seen that I have been disturbed of late. I am very

glad there is no longer this secret between my little girl and me.”

And with that he kissed me quite suddenly and trembling, and went off

again to the mantel-shelf, and stared up at Peter and John by the

Beautiful gate.

For my part I sat quite still, as if the lightning had struck me. What

ought I to do? I did not realise at first what had happened. I was

struck dumb. I knew that I ought to do or say something, and I could not

tell what. My lips stuck together--I could not now even open my mouth;

and there he stood waiting. I suppose if I had possessed my wits at that

moment I would have gone and kissed him or something. Even, I suppose,

if I had stormed at him it would have been less idiotic--but I could

say nothing; I was bewildered. I sat staring into the air with my mouth

open, over my blue print.

At last he made an impatient movement, and I think said something to me,

which roused me out of my stupefaction. Then--I do not know what impulse

it was that moved me--I asked all at once, frightened, feeling I ought

to say something, “What is her name, papa?”

“Mary Martindale,” he said.

CHAPTER II

I remember quite distinctly how people talked. They did not think I

observed or listened, for I had always been a dreamy sort of girl, and

never had attended much to what was said about me. At least so everybody

thought. They said I had always to be shaken or pulled when anything was

wanted of me, to make me listen--which is true enough, I believe; but

nevertheless I was not half so absent as people thought at any time, and

heard a great deal that I was not supposed to hear. And now my senses

were all shaken up and startled into being. How well I recollect hearing

old Mrs Tufnell and Mrs Stephens talking in the quiet front drawing-room

in the Square, while I was in the little room behind, taking no notice,

as they thought. They had given me a book and got rid of me, and though

they all pretended to deplore my dreamy ways, I think on the whole it

was rather a relief to get rid of a quick, inquisitive, fifteen-year-old

girl, and to be able to talk in peace. It was twilight of the summer

evening and we had taken tea, and the two ladies were seated at one of

the windows looking out upon the Square. The windows had long, full,

white curtains, hanging and fluttering from the roof to the carpet. They

were seated against that soft white background in their black silk

dresses, for Mrs Tufnell was old, and Mrs Stephens was a widow and

always wore black. It was like a picture: and I, not being so happy as I

used to be, sat with my book and read and listened both together. You

may think this is nonsense; but I could do it. I see them now

approaching their caps to each other, with little nods and shakes of

their heads and the white curtains fluttering softly behind them. Mrs

Tufnell was a great patroness of papa’s, and always went to St Mark’s

regularly, and Mrs Stephens was our very nearest neighbour, living next

door.

“I hope it will turn out the best thing that could happen for _her_,”

said Mrs Tufnell, nodding her head at me. They would not say any more

lest they should attract my attention. “She has been greatly neglected,

and left alone a great deal too much,--and I hear _she_ is accomplished.

Dear, dear, who would have thought that he, of all men in the world,

would have taken such a step.”

“I don’t quite see that,” said Mrs Stephens; “he is a young man still,

and nobody could suppose he would always be contented with his child’s

company: besides, she is so cool and indifferent, as if she never

thought it possible anything could happen: and I am sure she never did

anything to make herself necessary or agreeable----”

“Poor child!”

“You may say ‘poor child!’ but yet I blame her. A girl of fifteen is a

woman to all intents and purposes. She ought to have seen that there was

a great deal in her power by way of making him comfortable and herself

pleasant. It’s rather hard to say the plain downright truth about it,

you know, he being a clergyman and all that. Of course, when there is a

young family one can say it is for their sake; but in this case there’s

no possible excuse--he only wanted a wife, that’s all. I don’t blame

him; but it’s a coming down--it’s a disturbance of one’s ideal----”

“I don’t know much about ideals,” said Mrs Tufnell; “what surprises me

is, if the man wanted to marry, why he didn’t marry long ago, when the

child was young and he had an excellent excuse. As for being a

clergyman, that’s neither here nor there. Clergymen are always marrying

men, and it’s no sin to marry.”

“It disturbs one’s ideal,” said Mrs Stephens; and, though Mrs Tufnell

shrugged her shoulders, I, sitting behind over my book, agreed with her.

Oh the inward humiliation with which one sees one’s father in love!--I

suppose it would be still worse to see one’s mother, but then, I never

had a mother. I blushed for him a great deal more than he blushed for

himself, and he did blush for himself too. If he was happy, it was a

very uneasy, disturbed sort of happiness. He took me to see her--to

Spicer’s; and he went often himself and sat in the parlour behind the

shop, and suffered, I am sure, as much as ever a man who is having his

own way could suffer. Mrs Tufnell, who was a thoroughly kind old lady,

at length came to his aid, and invited Miss Martindale to stay with her

the rest of the time, and to be married from her house, which was a

thing which even I was grateful for. And the night before the

wedding-day the old lady kissed me and said, “Things will turn out

better than you suppose, dear. It is hard upon you, but things will turn

out better than you suppose.”

I am not sure that this is ever a very effectual kind of comfort, but to

me it was exasperating. Had I been told that things would turn out worse

than I supposed, I should have liked it. It seemed to me that nothing

could be half bad enough for this overturn of all plans and thoughts and

life. For you must recollect that it was my life that was chiefly to be

overturned. Papa liked it, I supposed, and it was his own doing--but the

change was not so great to him as to me. All the little offices of

authority I used to have were taken from me--my keys, which I was proud

of keeping--my bills and tradesmen’s books, which I had summed up since

ever I can remember. I was turned out of my room, and sent upstairs to

the spare room beside Ellen. In the parlour I was never alone any more,

and not even my favourite corner was mine any longer. I had no more

walks with papa, swinging back from his arm. She had his arm now. She

made the tea, and even darned his stockings. I was nothing in the house,

and she everything. If you suppose that a girl bears this sort of

dethronement easily, I am here to witness to the contrary. I did not

take it easily; but the thing that went to my heart most was, I think,

that she was called Mary, like me. For the first few days when I heard

papa call Mary I used to run to him and find her before me, and get sent

away, sometimes hastily (one time I ran in and found them sitting

together, he with his arm round her waist. I wonder he was not ashamed

of himself, at his age!); and another time with a joke which made me

furious: “It was my other Mary I wanted,” he said, looking as vain and

foolish as--as--. I never saw anybody look so foolish. _My_ father! It

humbled me to the very ground. And then I took to never answering to the

name at all, which sometimes made papa angry when it was really me he

wanted. I soon came to know very well which of us he meant by the sound

of his voice, but I never let him know that I did so. His voice grew

soft and round as if he were singing when he called her. When he called

me, it was just, I suppose, as it always had been; but I had learned

the other something now, the different accentuation, and I resented the

want of it, though I knew that it never had belonged to me.

All this time I have not spoken of her, though she was the cause of all.

When I saw her first, in the grocer’s back shop, working at frocks for

the little Spicers, I could not believe my eyes. Though I had already

begun to hate her as supplanting me with my father, I could not but

acknowledge how very strange it was to see her there. She had on a very

plain black alpaca dress, and she sat in the back parlour, amid all that

smell of hams and cheese, with a sewing-machine before her; and yet she

looked like a princess. She was tall and very slight, like a flower, and

her head bowed a little on its stem like the head of a lily. She was

pale, with dark eyes and dark hair. I believe she was very handsome--not

pretty, but very handsome, almost beautiful, I have heard papa say. I

allow this, to be honest, though I cannot say I ever saw it. She had a

pathetic look in her eyes which sometimes felt as if it might go to

one’s heart. But, fortunately, she always looked happy when I saw

her--absurdly happy, just as my poor foolish father did--and so I never

was tempted to sympathise with her. I do not understand how anybody but

an angel could sympathise with another person who was very happy and

comfortable while she (or he) was in trouble. This was our situation

now. She had driven me out of everything, and she was pleased; but I was

cross from morning till night, and miserable, feeling that I scarcely

minded whether I lived or died. Her smiles seemed to insult me when we

sat at table together. She looked so much at her ease; she talked so

calmly, she even laughed and joked, and sometimes said such merry, witty

things, that it was all I could do to keep from laughing too. It is

painful to be tempted to laugh when you are very much injured and in a

bad temper. Reading was forbidden now at meals, and neither papa nor I

ever ventured to prop up a book beside us while we ate. I suppose it was

a bad custom; yet my very heart revolted at the idea of changing

anything because she wished it. And then she tried to be “of use” to me,

as people said. She made me practise every day. She gave me books to

read, getting them from the library, and taking a great deal of trouble.

She tried to make me talk French with her; but to talk is a thing one

cannot be compelled to do, and I always had it in my power to balk that

endeavour by answering _Oui_ or _Non_ to all her questions. But the

worst of it all was that I had no power to affect either her or papa,

whatever I might do to make myself disagreeable. I suppose they were too

happy to mind. When I was sulky, it was only myself I made miserable,

and there is very little satisfaction in that.

I cannot but say, however, looking back, that she was kind to me, in

her way. She was always good-natured, and put up with me and tried to

make me talk. She was kind: but _they_ were not kind. As soon as my

father and she got together they forgot everything. They sat and talked

together, forgetting my very existence. They went out walking together.

Sometimes even he would kiss her, without minding that I was there; and

all this filled me with contempt for his weakness. I could not support

such nonsense--at his age, too! I remember one day rushing to Mrs

Stephens’ to get rid of them and their happiness. She was well off, and

I don’t really know why she lived in such a street as ours. She kept two

servants all for herself, and had a nice drawing-room on the first-floor

very beautifully furnished, as I then thought, where she sat and saw all

that was going on. Without Mrs Stephens I think I should have died. I

used to rush to her when I could bear it no longer.

“What is the matter, Mary?” she would say, looking up from her Berlin

work. She had a daughter who was married--and she was always working

chairs for her, and footstools, and I don’t know what.

“Nothing,” said I, sitting down on the stool by her wool-basket and

turning over the pretty colours; and then, after I had been silent for a

minute, I said, “They have gone out for a walk.”

“It is very natural, my dear; you must not be jealous. It might be a

question, you know, whether you liked your papa to marry; but now that

he is married, it is his duty to be attentive to his wife.”

“He had me before he had a wife,” cried I; “why should he love her

better than me? Why should he be so much happier with her than with me?

He has always something to say to her: he is always smiling and

pleasant. Sometimes with me he will be a whole day and never say a word.

Why should he be more happy with her than with me?”

Mrs Stephens laughed. “I can’t tell you how it is, Mary, but so it is,”

she said; “and by and by, when you are older, you will have somebody

whom you will be happier with than you ever were with your papa. That is

the best of being young. When my Sophy married, it was very hard upon me

to see her happier with her husband than she had been with her mother,

and to know that all that sort of thing was over for me, and that I must

be content with my worsted-work. But you will have a happiness of your

own by and by, when you are older; so you must not grudge it so much to

your poor papa. I think he is looking pale. I thought he coughed a great

deal on Sunday. Is she doing anything for that cough of his, do you

know?”

“I never noticed that he had a cough.”

“Well, I hope _she_ does,” said Mrs Stephens, with a strange look, as

if she meant something. “Your papa never was strong. He has not health

to be going out of nights, and to all those concerts and things. She

ought to look after his cough, Mary. If she does not, it will be she who

will suffer the most.”

I did not in the least understand what this meant; I had never remarked

papa’s cough. Yes, to be sure, he always had a little cough--nothing to

speak of. I had been used to it all my life, and it was not any worse

than usual--it was nothing. I told Mrs Stephens so, and then we talked

of other things.

What a long year that was! When the wedding-day came round again they

had a party, and were quite gay. It was a very odd thing to see a party

in our house; but, though I would not have owned this for the world, I

almost think I half enjoyed it. I had got used to papa’s foolish

happiness, and to Mrs Peveril’s ways. By mere use and wont I had got

more indifferent; and then there began to be some talk of getting a

situation for me as a governess. Papa did not like the idea, but I

myself pressed it on, with a feeling that something new would be

pleasant. I took most of my ideas of life from novels; and if you will

think of it, young ladies who are governesses in novels, generally come

to promotion in the end, though they may have to suffer a great deal

first. I did not much mind the suffering. Whatever it may be that makes

one superior to other people, one can bear it. I made up my mind to a

great deal of trouble, and even persecution, and all kinds of

annoyances, feeling that all this would come to something in the end.

All my dreams about being Lady Mary, and a great personage, had been

dispersed by my father’s marriage. But now I began to dream in another

way; and by degrees the old nonsense would steal back. I used to sit

with a book in my hand, and see myself working in a schoolroom with the

children; and then some one would come to the door, and I should be

called to a beautiful drawing-room, and the lady of the house would take

me in her arms and kiss me, and say, “Why did not you tell me who you

really were!” and there would be a lawyer in black who had come with the

news. All this I am sure is intensely silly, but so was I at the time;

and that is exactly how my mind used to go on. Sometimes a gentleman

would come into it, who would be intensely respectful and reverential,

and whom I would always refuse, saying, “No; I will allow no one to

descend from their proper rank for me!” until that glorious moment came

when I was found out to be as elevated in rank as in principles. Oh, how

absurd it all was! and how I liked it! and what a refuge to me was that

secret world which no one ever entered but myself, and yet where so many

delightful people lived whom I knew by their names, and could talk to

for hours together! Sitting there under Mrs Peveril’s very nose, I

would have long argumentations with my lover, and he would kiss my hand,

and lay himself at my feet, and tell me that he cared for no one in the

world but me; and the scene of the discovery was enacted over and over

again while papa was talking of parish matters, quite unaware that by

some mysterious imbroglio of affairs he was really the Earl of ---- So

and So--(I never could hit upon a sufficiently pretty name). Thus,

instead of weeping over my hard fate and thinking it dreadful to have to

go out as a governess, I looked forward to it, feeling that somehow the

discovery of the true state of affairs concerning us was involved in it,

and that, without that probation, Fate would certainly never restore me

to my due and native eminence in the world.

But, however, I must come back to the night of the anniversary, and to

our party. I had on a pretty new white frock--my first long one: and I

half, or more than half, enjoyed myself. Everybody was very kind to me,

everybody said I was looking well; and Mrs Tufnell and Mrs Stephens

petted me a good deal behind backs, and said, “poor child!” And then

papa’s curate, who was one of the guests, kept following me about and

trying to talk to me; whenever I looked up I met his eyes. I did not

admire him in the least, but it amused me very much, and pleased me, to

see that he admired me. When I wanted anything he rushed to get it for

me. It was very odd, but not at all disagreeable, and gave me a

comfortable feeling about myself. When the people went away, papa stood

a long time in the hall between the open doors, saying good-night to

everybody. He went back into the parlour after they were all gone; he

went up to the fireplace, I don’t know why, and stood there for a moment

as if there had been a fire in the grate. Then he called “Mary!” I might

have known it was not me he wanted. He held out his hand without turning

round. “I never thought I could be happier than I was this day last

year,” he said, “and yet I am happier to-night. What a delightful year

you have given me, my darling---- Oh, is it you? What did you mean by

not telling me it was you, when you must have perceived that I thought I

was talking to my wife?”

“There was no time to tell you,” I said. It gave me a pang I can

scarcely describe when he thrust my hand away which I had held out to

him. He was ashamed; he sat down suddenly in the big chair, and then all

at once a fit of coughing came on, such a fit of coughing as I never saw

before. It frightened me; and he looked so pale, and with such circles

round his eyes! When he could speak he said, hurriedly, panting for his

breath, “Be sure you do not tell her of this----.” That was all he

thought of. It did not matter for me.

But, as it happened, it was not long possible to keep it from _her_.

When I look back upon that evening, with its little follies, and the

laughter, and the curate, and my new dress! O, how little one knows!

That very night papa was taken ill. He had caught cold in the draught as

he shook hands with the people. It was congestion of the lungs, and from

the first the doctor looked very serious. The house changed in that

night. The study and the parlour and the whole place turned into a

vestibule to the sick room, which was the centre of everything. The very

atmosphere was darkened; the sun did not seem to shine; the sounds

outside came to us dulled and heavy. I was not allowed to be very much

in the room. She took her place there and never left him, day or night;

and if I were to spend pages in describing it I could not give you any

idea of my dreariness, left alone down below, not allowed to help him or

be near him while my father lay between living and dying. I could not do

anything. I tried to read, but I could not read. To take up a novel,

which was the only thing I could possibly have given my attention to,

would have seemed like profanation at such a time. It would have been

worse than reading a novel on Sunday, which I had always been brought up

to think very wicked; and as for my dreams, they were worse even than

the novels. I dared not carry them on while papa was so ill. I felt that

if I allowed my thoughts to float away on such useless currents, I never

could expect God to listen to my prayers. For this reason I made a

dreadful effort to think “as one ought to think,” to think of religious

things always and all day long--and this was very difficult; but I made

the effort, because I thought God was more likely to listen to me if I

showed that I wanted to do well.

But, oh the dreary days and the dreary nights! The three last nights I

sat up in my dressing-gown, and dozed drearily and woke still more

drearily, after dreaming the strangest dreams. Sometimes I thought it

was the wedding-day again, and he was standing with her hand on his arm;

sometimes it was the anniversary, and he was saying how happy he was;

sometimes it was a funeral. I dreamed always about him, and always in

different aspects. One morning I woke up suddenly and found Ellen

standing by me in the grey dawning. She did not say anything; the tears

were running down her face. But I got up and followed her quite silent,

knowing what it was.

He died, after a week’s illness, in the morning, leaving us a whole

horrible, light, bright day to get through with what patience we could;

and then there was a dreary interval of silence, and he was carried away

from us for ever and ever; and she and I, two creatures of different

minds as ever were born, with but this one link of union between us,

were left in the house alone.

CHAPTER III

She and I alone in the house! I do not think that I could express our

desolation more fully were I to write a whole book. He who had brought

us together was gone. The link between us was broken--we were two

strangers, rather hostile to each other than otherwise. No pretence of

love had ever existed between us. She had never had any occasion to be

jealous of me; but she had known and must have felt that I was jealous

of her, and grudged her position, her happiness, her very name. She knew

this, and it had not mattered to her so long as he was alive; but now

that he was gone, now that she and I, bearing the same name, supposed to

belong to each other, were left within our dismal house alone----

We went together to the funeral. I was too much absorbed in my own

feelings, I believe, to think of her; and yet I noticed everything, as

people do when they are deeply excited. She walked by herself, and so

did I. There was no one to support either of us, and we did not cling to

each other. The churchwardens were there, and Spicer the grocer, to my

annoyance. When I saw him all the conversation which I had once

overheard came to my mind. Even as I stood by my father’s grave it came

back to me. I understood it only partially, but it seemed to me as if

the time had come on which he calculated, and which he had spoken of. I

do not think it had ever recurred to me till that moment. She would be

better off with a thousand pounds than with nothing. A thousand

pounds---- and---- what had he said? I thought my heart had been too

faint to feel at all, and yet it began to quicken now with excitement. I

looked at her as she walked before me. What was to become of her? What

was to become of me? But I did not think of myself.

When we got back to the house Spicer came in and the churchwardens with

him; they came into the parlour. When I was going away Mr Turnham, who

was one of them, called me back. “Miss Mary,” he said, “wait a little.

It is hard upon you, but there is some business to be settled. Pray,

come back.”

I went, of course. She had dropped into the chair my father used to sit

in. He had given it up to her when they were married, but now death had

unmarried them, and I could not bear to see her there. Spicer had gone

to sit by her; they were at one side of the room, Mr Turnham and I at

the other, as if we were opposite sides. The other churchwarden had

shaken hands with us all and gone away.

“In the present melancholy circumstances it is our duty,” said Mr

Turnham, “to inquire into our late dear friend’s monetary arrangements;

there must have been some settlement or other--some explanation at

least, as he married so short a time ago.”

Then Spicer cleared his throat, and edged still more on to the edge of

his chair. Oh, heaven knows. I was as miserable as a girl could be--but

yet I noticed all this as if I did not care.

“There was no settlement,” he said, “reason good, there wasn’t nothing

to settle as was worth the while; but being Mrs Peveril’s only relation,

and responsible like, he spoke very clear and honourable about his means

to me. ‘I ain’t got no money, Mr Spicer,’ he said, ‘but I’ve insured my

life for my daughter, and I’ll do as much for her. They’ll have a

thousand pounds apiece, and that’s better than nothing,’ he said; ‘it

will get them into some snug little way of business or something.’ He

was a sensible man, Mr Peveril, and spoke up handsome when he saw as

nothing was exacted of him. I don’t know what office it’s in, but I

believe as what he said must be true.”

“Perhaps if we were to adjourn into the study, and if one of the ladies

would get the keys, we might look in his desk if there was a will,” said

Mr Turnham. “I am very sorry that our late lamented friend had so short

an illness, and therefore was unable to say anything as to what he

wished.”

“Stop, please,” Mrs Peveril said all at once. “Stop: neither of us is

able to give you any help to-day; and afterwards we will try to manage

for ourselves. We thank you very much, but it is best to leave us to

ourselves. I speak for Mary too.”

“But, my dear Mrs Peveril, you will want some one to manage for you; it

is painful, I know, but it is best to do it at once; you will want some

one to manage----”

“I do not see the necessity,” she said. She was dreadfully pale; I never

saw any one so pale; and it went to my heart to be obliged to side with

her, and acquiesce in what she said; but I could not help it, I was

obliged to give in. She spoke for me too.

“As long as there’s me, you may make your mind easy,” said Spicer. “A

relation; and on the premises, so to speak. I’ll do for ’em all as is

necessary; you may make your mind quite easy, Mr Turnham--you trust to

me.”

Then she got up; her head drooped in her great heavy black bonnet and

veil. She was not like a lily now, in all that crape; but I could not

keep my eyes from her. She was not afraid of these men, as I was. She

held out her hand first to the one, then to the other. “Good-bye,” she

said. “We thank you very much for taking so much interest, but we would

like to be alone to-day. Good-bye.”

Mr Turnham got up not quite pleased, but he shook hands with her and

then with me, and said “Good-bye and God bless you” to us both. “If you

want me, you know where I am to be found,” he said, with a little look

of offence. Spicer stayed behind him, as if he belonged to us.

“I agree with you,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Them as

is strangers has no business with your affairs. Trust ’em to me, my

dear; trust ’em to me. When your money’s safe in a good snug little

business you won’t be so badly off; at least it’s always something to

fall back upon;--don’t you be downhearted, my dear. I don’t see as you

will be so badly off.”

“Good-bye, Mr Spicer,” she said. She pushed past him and left the room

with an impatience which I understood. He and I were left standing

together, looking at each other. Nobody considered me much. It was the

wife who was thought of--not the daughter. He shook his head as he

looked after her.

“Bless us all! bless us all!” he said. “That’s what comes of turning a

woman’s head. Miss Mary, I ain’t going to forsake you, though she’s far

from civil. I’ll stand by you, never fear. If the money’s well invested

you’ll both get something ’andsome. Nothing pays like business; and as

there ain’t no babby--which was what I always feared----”

“I don’t want to talk about Mrs Peveril,” I said.

“Oh, you don’t want to talk about her! no more do I. She’s very flighty

and hoity-toighty. I remember when she was very glad to get a corner at

my table. She thinks she’s set up now, with her thousand pounds. It’s a

blessing as there’s no family. Miss Mary, I’ll take your instructions

next time as I comes if you’ll put yourself in my hands. I’ve come to

think on you as a relation too; but bless you, my dear, I know as you

can’t be cheerful with visitors not just the first day. Don’t stand upon

no ceremony with me.”

He wanted me to leave him, I thought, that he might examine everything,

and perhaps, get at poor papa’s papers; but I would not do that. I

stayed, though my heart was bursting, until he went away. What an

afternoon that was! it was summer, but it rained all day. It rained and

rained into the smoky street, and upon papa’s grave, which I seemed to

see before me wet and cold and sodden, with little pools of water about.

How heartless it seemed, how terrible, to have come into shelter

ourselves and to have left him there alone in the wet, and the cold, and

the misery! If one could but have gone back there and sat down by him

and got one’s death, it would have been some consolation. I went up to

my room and sat there drearily, watching the drops that chased each

other down the window panes. It was so wet that the street was quite

silent outside, nobody coming or going, except the milkman with his

pails making a clank at every area. There were no cries in the street,

no sound of children playing, nothing but the rain pattering, pattering,

upon the roofs and the pavement, and in every little hollow on both. The

house, too, was perfectly still; there was no dinner, nothing to break

the long monotony. Ellen came up in her new black gown, with tears on

her cheeks, to bring me a glass of wine and a sandwich. I could not eat,

but I drank the wine. “Oh, Miss Mary,” said Ellen, “won’t you go to her

now? There’s only you two. It ain’t a time, Miss, oh, it ain’t a time to

think on things as may have been unpleasant. And she’s a taking on so,

shut up in that room, as I think she’ll die.”

Why should she die any more than me? Why should she be more pitied than

I was? I had lost as much, more than she had. She had known him but a

short time, not two years; but he had been mine all my life. I turned my

back upon Ellen’s appeal, and she went away crying, shaking her head and

saying I was unkind, I was without feeling. Oh, was I without feeling?

How my head ached, how my heart swelled, how the sobs rose into my

throat; I should have been glad could I have felt that it was likely I

should die.

“Will you go down to tea, Miss Mary,” Ellen said, coming back as the

night began to fall. I was weary, weary of sitting and crying by myself;

any change looked as if it must be better. I was cold and faint and

miserable; and then there was in my mind a sort of curiosity to see how

she looked, and if she would say anything--even to know what were to be

the relations between us now. I went down accordingly, down to the dark

little parlour which, during all papa’s illness, I had lived in alone.

She was there, scarcely visible in the dark, crouching over a little

fire which Ellen had lighted. It was very well-meant on Ellen’s part,

but the wood was damp, and the coals black, and I think it made the

place look almost more wretched. _She_ sat holding out her thin hands to

it. The tea was on the table, and after I went in Ellen brought the

candles. We did not say anything to each other. After a while she gave

me some tea and I took it. She seemed to try to speak two or three

times. I waited for her to begin. I would not say a word; and we had

been thus for a long time mournfully seated together before she at last

broke the silence. “Mary,” she said, and then paused. I suppose it was

because I was younger than she that I had more command of myself, and

felt able to observe every little movement she made and every tone. I

was so curious about her--anxious, I could not tell why, as to what she

would do and say.

“Mary,” she repeated, “we have never been very good friends, you and I;

I don’t know why this has been. I have not wished it--but we have not

been very good friends.”

“No.”

“No; that is all you say? Could we not do any better now? When I came

here first, I did not think I was doing you any wrong. I did not mean it

as a wrong to you. Now we are two left alone in the world. I have no

one, and you have no one. Could we not do any better! Mary, I think it

would please him, perhaps, if we tried to be friends.”

My heart was quite full. I could have thrown myself upon her, and kissed

her. I could have killed her. I did not know what to do.

“We have never been enemies,” I said.

“No. But friends--that is different. There never were two so lonely. If

we stayed together we might get to be fond of each other, Mary; we might

keep together out of the cold world. Two together are stronger than one

alone. You don’t know how cold the world is, you are so young. If we

were to keep together we might stay--at home.”

Some evil spirit moved me, I cannot tell how; it seemed to me that I had

found her out, that it was this she wanted. I got up from my chair

flaming with the momentary hot passion of grief. “If there is any money

for me, and if you want that, you can have it,” I cried, and tried to go

away.

She gave a little moaning cry, as if I had struck her. “Oh, Mary, Mary!”

she cried, with a wailing voice more of sorrow than of indignation; and

then she put out her hand and caught my dress. I could not have got away

if I had wished, and I did not wish it, for I was devoured by curiosity

about what she would do and say. This curiosity was the beginning of

interest, though I did not know it; it fascinated me to her. She caught

my dress and drew me closer. She put her other hand on mine, and drew me

down to her, so that my face approached hers. She put up her white

cheek, her eyes all hollowed out with crying, to mine: “Mary,” she said,

in a heartrending tone, “do not go away from me. I have nobody but you

in the world.” Then she paused. “I am going to have a baby,” she said

all at once, with a low, sharp cry.

I was confounded. I do not know what I said or did. Shame, wonder, pity,

emotion--all mingled in me. I was very young, younger in heart than I

was in years; and to have such a thing told to me overwhelmed me with

shame and awe. It was so wonderful, so mysterious, so terrible. I

dropped on my knees beside her, and covered my face with my hands, and

cried. I could not resist any longer, or shut myself up. We cried

together, clinging to each other, weeping over our secret. _He_ had not

known. At the last, when she was aware herself, she would not tell him

to add to his pains. “He will know in heaven, Mary,” she said, winding

her arms round me, weeping on my shoulder, shaking me, frail support as

I was, with her sobs. This was how the other Mary and I became one. We

were not without comfort as we crept upstairs, with our pale faces. She

went with me to my room; she would not let me go. I had to hold her hand

even when we went to sleep. “Do not leave me, Mary; stay with me, Mary,”

she moaned, whenever I stirred. And we slept by snatches, in our

weariness; slept and woke to sob, and then slept again.

CHAPTER IV

This union, following so close upon our complete severance from each

other, astonished everybody. We frightened Ellen. When she came to call

me next morning, and saw the other sleeping by me, she thought it was

witchcraft; but I did not mind that I rose, and dressed very quietly,

not to wake _her_. She was sleeping deeply at last, the sleep of

exhaustion. During all papa’s illness she had not rested at all, and at

last sorrow and watching had worn her out. But I need not go over at

length everything that happened. We told kind Mrs Tufnell and Mrs

Stephens, our nearest neighbours; and I believe they told it to many in

the parish; but Mary and I neither knew nor heard what went on out of

our house. I had got to call her Mary, as he did; I liked it now--it no

longer seemed to interfere with me. I thought my voice sounded round and

soft like his when I said her name: Mary. It is a pleasant name to say,

though it is my own. I got to admire it, being hers--I, who had hated

her for being so called. But all that was changed now.

I do not quite know how our business was settled, for I know nothing

about business. This I know, that she managed it all herself, as she

had said; she would not let Spicer have anything to do with it. She

wrote about the money to an old friend of papa’s, and got it invested

and all settled. Half was for her and half for me. It brought us in

about £85 a year. We settled to let the first floor, two rooms furnished

as a sitting-room and bed-room, which would pay our rent; and we got

three or four little pupils, who came every day, and whom we taught.

Everything was very closely calculated, but we decided that we could

manage it. We had never been used to be rich, neither one nor the other:

and though when all was well I had dreamed of going away among

strangers, yet now I could not help chiming in with that desperate

desire of hers to avoid separation and remain together. She used to tell

me stories of how she had been when she was a governess. How she had

lived upstairs in a schoolroom alone in the midst of a great houseful of

people; how when she came downstairs she was in the society without

belonging to it; and how when any one in the family was kind to her they

got into trouble. What she said was quite vague, but it was not

comfortable; and by degrees my dreams and ideas were modified by her

experience. But I could not be cured of my follies all in a moment, even

by grief. After a while I began to dream again; and now my dreams were

of my high estate being discovered somehow when I was seated lonely in

that schoolroom, trying to get through the weary evening. I used to make

a picture to myself of how the lady of the house would come penitent and

ashamed, and make a hundred apologies; and how I would say to her, that

though her other governesses might not turn out to be Lady Marys, yet

did not she think it would be best to be kind and make friends of them?

Lady Mary! I clung to my absurdity, though I began to be old enough to

see how ridiculous it was. How could I ever turn out to be anybody

now--now that papa was gone? But when a girl is but sixteen there are

often a great many follies in her head which she would be deeply ashamed

of if any one knew them, but which please her in secret as she dreams

over them.

My life was altogether changed by papa’s death. It is dreadful to say

so, but it was not changed for the worse. Perhaps I had been happier in

the old days before Mary was ever heard of, when he and I used to sit

together, not talking much, and walk together, thinking our own

thoughts--together yet without much intercourse. I had been quite

content then, having enough to amuse me in my own fancies, as he, I

supposed, had in his. But now I began to be able to understand why he

had wearied for real companionship, now that I knew what real

companionship was. We lived together, Mary and I, in a different way.

We talked over everything together; the smallest matter that occurred,

we discussed it, she and I. She had the art of working everything that

happened, into our life, so that the smallest incident was of

importance. Even in those very first days, though her heart was broken,

she soothed me. “Mary,” she said, with her lips trembling, “we cannot be

always crying; we must think of something else whenever we can; we must

_try_ to think of other things. God help us; we must live, we cannot

die.” And then she would break down; and then dry her eyes, and talk of

something, of anything. When we got our little pupils, that was a

relief. She went into her work with all her heart. Her attention never

seemed to wander from the business, as mine constantly did. We had four

little girls; they came for two hours in the morning and two in the

afternoon. When they went away we had our walk. In the evening we did

our needlework, and she made me read aloud, or sometimes play, and she

taught me to sing. We used to stop and cry at every second bar when we

began, but by degrees that hysterical feeling passed off. I was never

away from her. I had constant companionship, communion,--talk that kept

me interested and even amused. I got to be--I am almost ashamed to

confess it--happier than I had been for a long time, perhaps than I had

ever been in my life.

We had lived like this for about three months, and had got used to it,

when something came to make a little change. Mary and I rarely spoke of

our secret. It seemed to be my secret as well as hers, and I tried all I

could to take care of her, with a secret awe which I never expressed. I

could not have spoken of it; I should have been ashamed; but the

mysterious sense of what was coming was always in my mind. The

needlework which we used to do in the evenings filled me with strange

feelings. I never dared ask what this or that was for. I was afraid and

abashed at the very sight of the little things when they happened to be

spread out and showed their form. It was making them which made me a

good needlewoman: perhaps you will think that is of no great importance

in these days of sewing-machines; but oh, to have let a sewing-machine,

or even a stranger’s hand touch those dearest little scraps of linen and

muslin! Nothing but the finest work, the daintiest little stitches,

would do for them. I used to kiss them sometimes in my awe, but I would

not have asked questions for the world. This is a digression, however;

for what I was going to say had nothing to do either with our work or

our secret. All this time we had not let our first floor--and it was

with great satisfaction in her looks that Mrs Stephens came in one day

and told us that she had heard of a lodger for us. “He is a gentleman,

my dears,” she said, “_quite_ a gentleman, and therefore you may be sure

he will give no trouble that he can help. He is an engineer, and has

something to do, I believe, about the new railway; otherwise he lives at

home somewhere about Hyde Park, and moves in the very best society. When

I say an ‘engineer,’ I mean a ‘civil’ one, you know, which is, I am

told, quite the profession of a gentleman. He will want the rooms for

six months, or perhaps more. His name is Durham; he is cousin to the

Pophams, great friends of mine, and if the lodgings suit him he would

like to come in at once.”

Mary had given a little start, I could not tell why. There seemed no

reason for it. Her work had fallen out of her hands; but she picked it

up again and went on. “His name is---- What did you say, Mrs

Stephens?--a civil engineer?”

“Yes, my love, a civil engineer--Durham, his name is. He will come with

me to-morrow, if you are agreeable, to see the rooms.”

Mary made a visible pause. She looked at me as if she were consulting

me; it was a curious, appealing sort of look. I looked back at her, but

I could not understand her. What did I know about Mr Durham, the civil

engineer? Mrs Stephens was not so observant as I was, and probably she

never noticed this look. And then Mary said, “Very well. If they suit

him, we ought to be very thankful. I should have preferred a lady----”

“My dear, a lady is a great deal more at home than a man, and gives

more trouble,” said Mrs Stephens; “very different from a man who is out

all day. And then, probably he will dine almost always at his West-end

home.”

The idea was funny, and I laughed. The notion of the West-end home

amused me; but I could not help observing that Mary, who was always

ready to sympathise with me, did not smile. Her head was bent over her

work. She did not even say anything more on the subject, but let Mrs

Stephens go on and make all the arrangements for coming next day. I

thought of this after; and even at the time I noticed it, and with some

surprise.

Next day, just as we were going out for our walk, Mary, who had been at

the window, started back, and went hurriedly into the little room

behind, which had once been papa’s study. “Mary,” she said, “there is

Mrs Stephens and---- her friend. Go with them, please, to see the rooms.

I am not quite well: I would rather not appear.”

“I am so stupid; I shall not know what to say,” I began.

“You will do very well,” said Mary, and disappeared and shut the door. I

had no time to think more of this, for the stranger came in directly

with Mrs Stephens; and in my shyness I blushed and stammered while I

explained. “She is not very well,” I said; “I am to show you. Will you

please--sit down; will you come upstairs?”

“You will do very well,” said Mrs Stephens, patting me on the shoulder.

“This is Mr Durham, Mary, and I don’t think he will eat any of us. It is

a nice light, airy staircase,” she said, as she went up, not to lose any

opportunity of commending the house. “A capital staircase,” said Mr

Durham, with a cheery laugh. I had scarcely ventured to look at him yet,

but somehow there was a feeling of satisfactoriness diffused through the

air about him. I cannot explain quite what I mean, but I am sure others

must have felt the same thing. Some people seem to make the very air

pleasant: they give you a sense that all is well, that there is nothing

but what is good and honest in the place where they are. This is what I

felt now; and when we got upstairs I ventured to look at him. He was

tall and strong and ruddy, not at all like any hero whom I had ever read

of or imagined. There was nothing “interesting” about him. He looked “a

good fellow,” cheery, and smiling, and active, and kind. He settled at

once about the rooms. He laughed out when Mrs Stephens said something

about their homeliness. “They are as good as a palace,” he said; “I

don’t see what a man could want more.” The sitting-room was the room

papa died in, and it cost me a little pang to see them walking about and

looking at the furniture; but when people are poor they cannot indulge

such feelings. We learn to say nothing about them, and perhaps that

helps to subdue them. At all events, I made no show of what I was

thinking, and it was all settled in a few minutes. He was to come in on

Saturday, and Ellen was to work for him and wait upon him. I could not

help thinking it would be pleasant to have him in the house.

And thus there commenced another period of my life, which I must speak

of very briefly,--which indeed I do not care to speak of at all, but

which I will think about as long as I live. I did not see very much of

him at first. I was nearly seventeen now, and very shy; and Mary watched

over me, and took great pains not to expose me to chance meetings with

the stranger, or any unnecessary trouble. Ellen managed everything

between us. She was a good, trustworthy woman, and we did not require to

interfere; she was full of praises of Mr Durham, who never gave any

trouble he could help. But one night, when I was taking tea with Mrs

Stephens, he happened to come in, and we had the pleasantest evening. He

knew a song I had just learned, and sang a second to it in the most

delightful deep voice. He talked and rattled about everything. He made

Mrs Stephens laugh and he made me laugh, and he told us his adventures

abroad till we were nearly crying. When it was time for me to go he got

up too, and said he would go with me. “Oh, it is only next door; I can

go alone,” I said, in my shyness. “It is only next door, but I live

there too, and I am going to work now,” he said. “To work! when all the

rest of the world are going to bed?” said Mrs Stephens; “you will make

yourself ill.” How he laughed at that! his laugh sounded like a cheery

trumpet. He did not mean to kill himself with work. “But I hope you will

let me come to tea again,” he said. How pleased Mrs Stephens was! She

always says she likes young people, and we had spent such a pleasant

night.

Many more of these pleasant evenings followed. Sometimes when we were

sitting quiet after tea, she would send for me suddenly; sometimes she

would write a little note in the afternoon. This expectation filled my

life with something quite new. I had never had many invitations or

pleasures before: I had never expected them. When we sat down to work

after tea I had known that it was for the whole evening, and that no

pleasant interruption would disturb us. But now a little thrill of

excitement ran through my whole life. I wondered, would a note come in

the afternoon? If it did not come, I wondered whether the bell would

ring after tea, and Ellen come in saying, “If you please, ma’am, Mrs

Stephens’s compliments, and would Miss Mary go in, and take her music?”

Mary never interfered; never said “Don’t go.” She looked at me sometimes

very wistfully; sometimes she smiled and shook her head at me, and said

I was getting dissipated. Once or twice she looked anxious, and told me

a story, which I only half understood, of girls who met with people they

liked, and were very happy, and then lost sight of them ever after. Mary

was very clever at telling stories, and I was fond of listening; but she

did it so well and delicately that I fear I never thought of the

moral--never, at least, till all the harm was done and it was too late.

I would not have any one think, however, that Mr Durham either meant or

did any harm. To say so would be very wrong. It was as imperceptible

with him as with me. He went quite innocently, as I did, to cheer up Mrs

Stephens, and because an evening’s chatter with a little music was

pleasant; and by degrees we thought less and less of Mrs Stephens and

more and more of each other. If any one meant anything beyond this, it

was she who was the guilty person. She would nod off to sleep in her

easy-chair while we were talking. She would say, with a sleepy smile,

“Don’t mind me, my dears. The light is a little strong for my eyes. That

is why I close them--but I like the sound of your voices even when I

don’t hear what you say.” Alas, if she had heard everything that had

been said it might have been better. After a while he began to say

strange things to me while she had her doze. He talked about his family

to me. He said he hoped I should know them some day. He said his mother

was very kind and wise--“a wise woman.” These were the very words he

used. And then he said---- other things; but that was not till the very,

very last.

One morning we met in the little hall. It was raining, and it was a

holiday, and when he insisted on following me into the schoolroom, what

could I do--I could not shut him out. He seemed to fill the whole room,

and make it warm and bright. I do not think we had ever been quite alone

before. He came to the window and stood there looking out upon the bare

bit of smoky grass and the water-butt. And then all at once he came to

me and took my hand. “If I had a nice little house out in the country,

with flowers and trees about it, a bright little house--Mary--would you

come and be my little wife, and take care of it and me?”

Oh, what a thing to have said to you, all at once, without warning, in

the heart of your own dull little life, when you thought you were to

work, and pinch, and put up with things, for ever! It was different from

my old fancy. But how poor a thing to have been found out to be Lady

Mary in comparison with this! What I said is neither here nor there. We

stood together in the little old study, among the forms where we had our

little scholars, as if we had been in a fairy palace. I was not

seventeen. I had no experience. I thought of nothing but him, and what

he said. It was not my part to think of his father and mother, and what

he would do, and what he wouldn’t do. He was a great deal older than I

was; about thirty, I believe. Of course, I thought of nothing but him.

“Do you know,” he said, after a long time, “I have never seen your

stepmother, Mary? I have been three months in the house, and I have

never seen her. I must go and see her now.”

“Oh, wait a little,” I said; “wait a day. Let us have a secret all to

ourselves one day.” How foolish I was!--but how was I to know?

He consented after a while; and then he made me promise to bring her out

at a certain hour in the afternoon, that he might meet us at the door

and see her. I made all the arrangements for this with a light heart.

Though it was very difficult to hide from her what had happened, I did

so with a great effort. I persuaded her to come out earlier than usual.

She did not resist me. She was kinder, more tender, than I had ever

known. She began to say something of a story she had to tell me as we

went out. I went first and opened the door, and stood aside on the white

steps to let her go out. Her crape veil was thrown back. Though she was

still pale, there was a tint of life upon her cheeks. She was more like

herself in her refined, delicate beauty, more like a lily, my favourite

image of her, than she had been for ever so long.

I had begun to smile to myself at the success of our trick, when

suddenly I got frightened, I could scarcely tell how. Looking up, I saw

him standing on the pavement gazing at her, confounded. I can use no

other word. He looked bewildered, confused, half wild with amazement. As

for Mary, she had stopped short on the step. She was taken strangely by

surprise too; for the first moment she only gazed as he did. Then she

dropped her veil, and stepped back into the house. “I have forgotten

something,” she said; and turned round and went upstairs to her room. He

came in, too, and went upstairs after her, passing without looking at

me. His under lip seemed to have dropped; his cheerful face had lost all

its animation; his eyes had a wild, bewildered stare in them. What did

it mean? oh! what did it mean?

I did not know what to do. I wondered if he had followed her to speak to

her, or what was the meaning of those strange looks. I lingered in the

hall holding the handle of the door, feeling miserable, but not knowing

why. In two or three minutes she came downstairs. “I had forgotten my

handkerchief,” she said; and we went out together as if nothing had

happened. But something had happened, that was certain. She did not talk

very much that day. When we were coming home she said to me, quite

suddenly, “Was it your doing; Mary, that I met Mr Durham at the door?”

“He said it was so strange he had never seen you,” I said.

“Yes; but you should have known I would not do that for nothing. You

should not have been the one to betray me, Mary. I knew Mr Durham once.

He is associated with one of the most painful portions of my life.”

“Oh, Mary dear! I did not know----”

“You did not know, and I did not want you to find out; but never mind,

it is done. It need not, I hope, do any harm to you.”

That was a very strange day: the excitement of the morning, and then the

other excitement; and to feel that I had a secret from her, and that he

was seated upstairs giving no sign, taking no notice of our existence

all day long. I was so agitated and disturbed that I did not know what

to do. At last I settled myself in the schoolroom to do some

translations. When one has been looking for a long time for a holiday,

and something happens to spoil the holiday when it comes, it is worse

even than if that something had happened on an ordinary day. I think

Mary was glad to be left to herself, for instead of our ordinary

companionship, she sat in the parlour at work all the long afternoon,

and I in the schoolroom. One of the doors was half opened between us.

She could hear my pen scratching on the paper, and the rustling of the

leaves of my dictionary--and I could hear her moving softly over her

work. It was autumn by this time, and the days were growing short, and

neither of us cared to ring for tea; and I think Ellen was cooking

dinner for Mr Durham and forgot us at the usual hour. We still sat as we

had been all the afternoon when the twilight came on. I laid down my

pen, having no light to write by, when I heard some one knock softly at

the parlour door.

Mary made no reply. She sat quite still, never stirring. The knock came

again; then I, too, put my paper away from me and listened. The door

opened, and some one came into the parlour. How well I knew who it was!

I listened now so intently that nothing escaped me. How could it be

wrong? He must have come to talk to her of me.

“Mary!” he said. I rose up softly in my excitement, thinking it was me

he was calling; but before I could move further a strange consciousness

came over me that it was not me he meant. The old feeling with which I

had heard my father call Mary came into my very soul--but worse, a

hundred times worse. Oh, had he too another Mary besides me?

“Mary!” he said, breathless, and then paused. “How has all this come

about? Why do I find you here? What does it mean? There are many

explanations which I have a right to ask. You disappear from me--sent

away--I know not how; and then--not to count the years that have

passed--after these three months, in which you must have known me, I

find you by chance----”

She knew that I was within hearing, and that whatever she said to him

must be to me too. If that was a restraint upon her, I cannot tell. I

felt sorry for her vaguely in my mind; but yet I did not move.

“I did not wish you to find me at all,” she said, very low. “Mr Durham,

there is and can be nothing between you and me.”

“Nothing!” he said; “what do you mean, Mary? Why, there is all the past

between us--a hundred things that cannot be undone by anything in the

future. You know how many things there are connected with you which are

a mystery to me--things not affecting you alone, but others. How you

went away, for instance; and what became of you, and how much my mother

had to do with it? You must have known the moment I found you that all

these questions remained to be asked.”

“All these questions,” she said, “are made quite unimportant by two

things. First, that I am the wife, though now the widow, of a man I

loved dearly--and that you have begun to love, begun to think of, some

one very different from me.”

“Ah!” he said, with a strange brief utterance of distress. Whether he

was grieved to think of the wrong he was doing me, or whether the

strange position he stood in troubled him, I cannot tell; but there was

pain in the cry he gave--“ah!” with a little shiver. “You have

abundance of power to pain me,” he said, very low, “but it seems strange

you should upbraid me. Yes, I have begun to think of some one else; but

that does not prevent me from being deeply startled, deeply moved, by

the sight of you.”

There was a little silence then, and I came to myself slowly. I woke as

it were out of a trance. She knew I was there, but he did not. I had no

right to hear his secrets without warning him. I tried to get up, but

could not at first. I felt stiff and weary, as if I had been travelling

for days together. I could scarcely drag myself up from my chair. The

sound I made in rising might have warned him, but I do not think he

heard. Before I could drag myself to the door and show I was there, he

had begun again.

“Mary,” he said, lingering upon the name as if he loved it, “this is not

a time for recrimination. Tell me how you left Chester Street, and what

my mother had to do with it? and then, if you choose, I will never see

you again.”

“Is it for your mother, or for me?”

I did not hear the answer. I could not stay longer. I got to the door

somehow, and threw it open. I was too much bewildered to know what I was

doing, or to think. I came out with a little rush as feeble creatures

do. “I want to get away. I want to go out. I cannot stay there all day

and hear you talking,” I said. I was not addressing either her or him.

The sound of my voice must have been very piteous, for I remember it

even now.

“Mary!” he cried.

Oh, what a difference in the sound! This time his voice was startled,

pained, almost harsh, with a kind of reproof in it: not as he said Mary

to her. Oh, papa, papa! it was you first who taught me the difference. I

gave a hoarse little cry. I could not speak. Millions of words seemed to

rush to my lips, but I could not say any of them. “I have been here long

enough,” I managed to stammer out. “Let me go--let me go!” Next moment I

was in the dark, in the silence, in my own little room, kneeling down by

the bedside, crying and moaning to myself. I did not know why. I had

heard nothing wrong; but it seemed to me that all my life was over, and

that it did not matter what came next.

And, indeed, I cannot tell what came next. She came up to me, and told

me the whole story, and in a vague sort of way I understood it. She was

not to blame. He had been fond of her (everybody was fond of her) when

she was the governess in his mother’s house; and it had been found out,

and his mother was harsh, and she had gone suddenly away. There was

nothing in this which need have made me unhappy, perhaps--so people have

said to me since--but then I was very young; and I had been happy--and

now I was miserable. I listened to her, and made no answer, but only

moaned. The night passed, I cannot tell how. I did not sleep till late

in the morning; and then I fell asleep and did not wake till noon. Then

what was the use of going downstairs? I stayed in my room, feeling so

weary, so worn out. It was Saturday, a half-holiday, and there was

nothing to do. She came to me and spoke to me again and again; but I

gave her very little answer. And he took no notice--he sent no message,

no letter--not a word of explanation. He never asked my pardon. In my

misery I thought I heard voices all the day as if they were talking,

talking--and he never sent a message or note or anything to me. And

then, after a long talk, as I fancied, with him, she would come to me.

“Mary, this must not be. You must get up. You must be like yourself.

Neither Mr Durham nor I have done you any wrong, Mary.”

“Oh, don’t call me Mary!” I said; “call me some other name. If you knew

how different it sounds when it is said to you, not to me.”

And then she would look at me with her eyes full of tears, and sit down

by me, and say no more. And so passed this bitter day.

CHAPTER V

Next day was Sunday. When I woke up, early, I recollected all that had

happened with a flush of overwhelming shame. How childishly, how

foolishly I had behaved. I was very, very wretched; but I was ashamed,

and pride got the upper hand. I dressed myself carefully, and went

downstairs, resolved not to show my misery at least, to be proud and

forget it. “If he does not care for me,” I said to myself, “I will not

care for him.” I passed his room very softly that I might not wake him.

There was early morning service in St Mark’s now, for the curate who had

succeeded poor papa was very High Church. I stole out and went to this

early service, and tried to be good, and to give myself up to God’s

will. Yes, it must have been God’s will--though how it could ever be

God’s will that anybody should be false, or unkind, or cruel, I could

not tell. I know it is right, however, whatever happens that vexes you,

to accept it as if it must be the will of God. I tried to do that, and I

was not quite so miserable when I went home. Ellen opened the door to

me, looking frightened. “I thought you was lost, too, Miss,” she said.

“I have been to church,” I answered, scarcely noticing her words.

Breakfast was laid in the little parlour. It was very, very tidy,

dreadfully tidy--everything was cleared away--the basket with the work

and all the little things, and every stray thread and remnant. All of a

sudden it occurred to me how little I had been doing to help of late.

Instead of working I had been spending the evenings with Mrs Stephens. I

did not even know how far the “things” were advanced, and it seemed

strange they should all be gone. Of course it was because of Sunday.

After a while Ellen brought in the coffee. She had still the same

frightened look. “Missis wasn’t with you at the early service, Miss

Mary?” “Oh, no,” I said, surprised at the question; “perhaps she is not

up.”

“She’s never lain down all night,” said Ellen; “she was worrited and

worn off her legs going up and down to you yesterday, Miss--you that was

quite well, and had no call to your bed. She was a deal more like it,

the dear. She’s never lain in her bed this blessed night, and I can’t

find her, high or low.”

I scarcely waited to hear this out, but rushed up to her room. The bed

had not been touched since yesterday. A little prayer-book lay on it, as

if she had been praying. The room was in perfect good order--no litter

about it. The little “things” were not to be seen. One of her dresses

hanging against the wall made me think for a moment she was there, but

it was only an old dress, and everything else was gone. Oh the terror

and the pain and the wonder of that discovery! I could not believe it. I

rushed through all the house, every room, calling her. Mr Durham heard

me, and came out to the door of his room and spoke to me as I passed,

and tried to take my hand, but I snatched it away from him. I did not

even think of him. I can just remember the look he had, half-ashamed,

appealing with his eyes, a little abashed and strange. I scarcely saw

him at the time--but I remember him now, and with good reason, for I

have never seen him again.

And I have never seen Mary again from that day. Mrs Stephens came in to

me, startled by the news her servants had carried her; and she told me

she had heard a carriage drive off late on the previous night, but did

not think it was from our door. She knew nothing. She cried, but I could

not cry; and it was Sunday, and nothing could be done--nothing! even if

I had known what to do. I rushed to Spicer’s, and then I was sorry I had

gone, for such people as they are never understand, and they thought,

and think to this day, that there was something disgraceful in it. I

rushed to Mrs Tufnell, not expecting to find her, for now it was time

for church. The bells had done ringing, and I had already met, as I

walked wildly along, almost all the people I knew. One woman stopped me

and asked if Mrs Peveril was taken ill, and if she should go to her.

“Poor thing, poor thing!” this good woman said. Oh, she might well pity

us--both of us! But to my surprise Mrs Tufnell was at home. She almost

looked as if she expected me. She looked agitated and excited, as if she

knew. Did she know? I have asked her on my knees a hundred times, but

she has always shaken her head. “How should I know?” she has said, and

cried. I have thought it over and over for days and for years, till my

brain has whirled. But I think she does know--I think some time or other

she will tell me. It is a long time ago, and my feelings have got a

little dulled; but I think some time or other I must find it out.

This wonderful event made a great change in my life. I began at once,

that very day, to live with Mrs Tufnell in the Square. She would not let

me go home. She kissed me, and said I was to stay with her now. Mr

Durham came twice and asked to see me; but I could not bear to see him.

Then Mrs Stephens came with a letter. He said in it that I must dispose

of him; that he, was in my hands, and would do whatever I pleased; that

he had been startled more than he could say by the sudden sight of one

whom he had loved before he knew me; but that if I could forgive him any

foolish words he might have said, then he hoped we might be happy. In

short, he was very honourable, ready to keep his word; and I felt as if

I hated him for his virtue--for treating me “honourably!” Was that what

all his love and all my happiness had come to? I sent him a very short

little note back, and it was all over. He went abroad soon after, and I

have never heard of him any more.

And thus my story ended at seventeen. I wonder if there are many lives

with one exciting chapter in them, ending at seventeen, and then years

upon years of monotonous life. I am twenty-three now. I live with Mrs

Tufnell. I am daily governess to one little girl, and I have my forty

pounds a-year, the interest of poor papa’s insurance money. I am very

well off indeed, and some people think I need not care to take a pupil

at all--better off, a great deal, than I was in Southampton Street; but

how different! I heard very soon after that Mary had a little boy. It

was in the papers, but without any address; and I had one letter from

her, saying that we had made a mistake in trying to live together, and

that she was sorry. She hoped I would forgive her if she had been

mistaken, and she would always think of me and love me. Love me? Is it

like love to go away and leave me alone? Two people have said they loved

me in my life, and that is what both have done.

However, after that letter I could not do anything more. If she thought

it was a mistake for us to live together, of course it was a mistake.

And I had my pride too. “I always felt it was a doubtful experiment,”

Mrs Tufnell said when people wondered, “and it did not answer--that was

all.” And this is how it was settled and ended--ended, I suppose, for

ever. Mrs Tufnell is very good to me, and as long as she lives I am sure

of a home. Perhaps I may tell you her story one of these days; for she

has a story, like most people. She tells me I am still very young, and

may yet have a life of my own; but in the meantime the most I can do is

to take an interest in other people’s lives.

CHAPTER VI

I had not intended to carry on any further a history which is chiefly

about myself; but events are always occurring which change one’s mind

from day to day, and alter one’s most fixed resolutions. I do not

pretend to understand people who make unchangeable decisions, and

certainly I am not one of them. Besides, common fairness requires that I

should allow Mrs Peveril to have the same privilege as myself, and tell

things her own way. I could not have imagined, had I not seen it, the

difference there was between the aspect of things to her and to me. I

suppose it is true after all that everybody has his or her own point of

view, which is different from all others. Of course we realise this fact

quite clearly in a great poem like “The Ring and the Book;” but to

recognise it in one’s own small affairs has somehow a much stranger,

more surprising effect. What an odd difference it would make in the

world if we could all see ourselves now and then with other people’s

eyes! I confess that the girl in her story, who was Mr Peveril’s

daughter, is very much unlike the girl in mine--and yet the same

somehow, as may be traced out with a little trouble. This is humbling,

but it is for one’s good, I suppose. When you look at yourself in a

mirror, you have so much interest in yourself that your defects don’t

strike you--you can’t help being the first figure--the most important;

but to feel that all along you are not important at all--anything but

the first figure, a mere shadow, scarcely noticed! it has a very odd

effect--sometimes laughable, sometimes rather the reverse; but this was

what now happened to me.

I must add, however, that a long time passed over before I could even

think that Mrs Peveril might have something to say on her side. It was

not because of the rupture between Mr Durham and myself, and the sudden

conclusion of that dream and all that it seemed likely to bring with it.

No doubt these things embittered all my feelings about her; but yet I

was reasonable enough to come to see that it was not her fault--that she

had kept out of the way with all her might--and that after all she could

not foresee that another complication might arise between him and me.

She could not of course foresee this; and even if she had foreseen it,

what could she have done? I think it shows I was not unfair in my

judgment, for a girl of seventeen, to say that I soon came to see that.

But though I did not blame her, of course I was embittered against her,

and took refuge in being very angry with her on other grounds. That she

should have said our living together was a mistake was the chief of

these. Why was it a mistake? Did she mean to say it was my fault? If it

was simply her fault, as I felt sure it was, why did she call it a

mistake? Why not say plainly out, “I was wrong, and so we got into

trouble?” How easy it seems to be for people to acknowledge themselves

in the wrong! but not so easy for one’s self, somehow. I never met

anybody who liked doing it, though I have met with so many who ought to

have done it, and to whom it would have been so simple--so easy, I

thought; but that never seemed to be their opinion. Mrs Tufnell, who is

in some things a very odd old lady, says it never is anybody’s fault.

“There was never any quarrel yet,” she will say, “but there were two in

it--there was never any misunderstanding but two were in it. There is no

such thing as absolute blame on the one side and innocence on the other.

Even in your affairs, Mary, my dear----” But this I never can see nor

allow. How could I be to blame? Only seventeen, and knowing so little of

the world, and expecting everybody to be good and true, and say just

what they thought. When a man said he was fond of me, how was I to put

up with his having been fond of somebody else? And when a woman

professed to be thinking of me, was it natural that I could be pleased

to know she had been thinking of herself? I could not help behaving just

as I did. It was the only natural, the only possible way; but for them,

they ought to have known better, they ought to have thought of me. On

the whole that is the thing that hurts one--that goes to one’s heart.

People think of themselves first--when they ought to be thinking of you,

they think of themselves first. I suppose it is the same all over the

world.

The way in which I first heard Mary’s story was simple enough. After

years of a dull sort of quiet life at Mrs Tufnell’s--who was very good

to me, and very kind, but who, of course, could give to me, a girl, only

what she, an old woman, had to give--the quietest life, without

excitement or change of any kind--she had a bad illness. It was not an

illness of the violent kind, but of what, I suppose, is more dangerous

to an old woman, a languishing, slow sickness, which looked like decay

more than disease. The doctors said “breaking up of the constitution,”

or at least the servants said so, who are less particular than the

doctors, and shook their heads and looked very serious. I was less

easily alarmed than anyone else, for it seemed to me a natural thing

that an old lady should be gently ill like that, one day a little better

and the next a little worse, without any suffering to speak of. It was

not until after she was better that I knew there had been real danger,

but she must have felt it herself. The way in which her sense of her

precarious condition showed itself was anxiety for me. I remember one

evening sitting in her room by the fire with a book; she was in bed, and

I had been reading to her, and now she was dozing, or at least I thought

so. Things appear (it is evident) very differently to different people.

I was extremely comfortable in that nice low easy-chair by the fire. It

was a pretty room, full of pictures and portraits of her friends, so

full that there was scarcely an inch of the wall uncovered. The

atmosphere was warm and soft, and the tranquil repose and ease of the

old lady in the bed somehow seemed to increase the warmth and softness

and kindly feeling. She was an additional luxury to me sitting there by

the fire with my novel. If any fairy had proposed to place her by my

side as young and as strong as myself, I should have rejected the

proposal with scorn. I liked her a great deal best so--old, a little

sick, kind, comfortable, dozing in her bed. Her very illness--which I

thought quite slight, rather an excuse for staying in this cosy room and

being nursed than anything else--heightened my sense of comfort. She was

not dozing, as it happened, but lying very still, thinking of

dying--wondering how it would feel, and planning for those she should

leave behind her. I knew nothing of these thoughts, no more than if I

had been a thousand miles away: and fortunately neither did she of mine.

I was roused from my comfortable condition by the sound of her voice

calling me. I rose up half reluctantly from the bright fire, and the

little table with the lamp and my book, and went and sat by her in the

shade where I could not see the fire; but still the sentiment of comfort

was predominant in me. I gave my old lady her mixture, which it was time

for her to take, and advised her to go to sleep.

“You must not doze this time,” I said; “you must go right off to sleep,

and never wake till morning. Everything is put right for the night, and

I shall not go till you are asleep.”

“I was not dozing,” she said, with that natural resentment which

everybody feels to be so accused; and then, after a moment, “Mary, I was

thinking of you. If I were to die, what would you do?”

I was very much shocked, and rather frightened; but when I looked at

her, and saw by the dim light that she did not look any worse, I felt

rather angry. “How unkind of you!” I said, “to speak so! You frightened

me at first. What would it matter what became of me?”

“It would matter a great deal,” she said. “It would make everything so

much worse. I don’t want to die, Mary, though I daresay I should be a

great deal better off, and get rid of all my troubles----”

“Oh, it is wicked to talk so!”

“Why should it be wicked? I can’t help thinking of it,” she said, lying

in her warm cosy bed. It made me shiver to hear her. I began to cry,

rather with a chill, wretched sense of discomfort in the midst of all

the warmth than anything else; upon which she put her hand on my

shoulder and gave me a little shake, and laughed at me softly. “Silly

child!” she said--but she was not angry. There was a very grave look on

her face behind the smile. Dying was strange to her as well as to me,

though she was very old.

“But, Mary,” she went on, “I want to read you something. I want you to

think again about some one you once were very fond of. I have some news

of Mrs Peveril----”

“Oh!” I said; and then I went on stiffly, “I hope she is well.”

“She is quite well--and--your little brother. I wish you would see them.

All that happened was so long ago; I think you might see them, Mary.”

“I never made any objection to seeing them,” I said, more and more

stiffly, though my heart began to leap and thump against my breast. “You

forget I had nothing to do with it. It was she who went away. She said

it was a mistake.”

“You are an unforgiving child. You did not try to enter into her

feelings, Mary.”

“How could I?” I said. “Did she wish me to enter into her feelings? Did

she ever give me a chance? She said it was a mistake. What was there

left for me to say?”

“Well, well,” said the old lady, “I don’t defend her. I always said she

was wrong; but still I have been hearing from her lately, Mary. I have

three or four letters which I should like you to read----”

“You have been hearing from her without ever telling me!”

“Bless the child! must I not even get a letter without consulting her?

But, Mary, I am a free agent still, and I can’t be kept in such order,”

she said, half laughing. “Give me that blotting-book, and my keys, and

my spectacles, and bring the lamp a little closer.”

Indignant as I was, I was comforted by all these preparations. And when

she had put on her spectacles and opened the blotting-book, sitting up

in bed, my mind was so much relieved that my indignation floated away.

“It is a pretty thing for you to talk of dying, and frighten people,” I

said, giving her a kiss, “with your cheeks like two nice old roses.” She

shook her head, but she smiled too: she felt better, and got better

gradually from that hour.

But in the meantime I had to listen to these letters. Perhaps if it had

not been that my old lady was ill, I should have been offended to find

that she had deceived me, and had known about Mary all along. It was a

deception, though she did not mean any harm. “She had thought it best,”

she said, “to let time soften all our feelings, before she told me

anything about it.” However, I must not enter into all the discussions

we had on this subject. It is only fair that Mary should have her turn,

and tell her story as I have told mine. It is not a connected story like

mine, but you will see from it what kind of a life hers had been, and

what sort of a woman she was. She is different from the Mary I

thought--and yet not different either--just as I am different from the

girl I thought I was, and yet very like too, if you look into it. I

cannot tell what my feelings were as I read first one bit and then

another, and a great deal more which I do not think it necessary to

quote here. One moment I was furious with her--the next I could have

kissed her feet. These people who send you from one extreme of feeling

to another, who do wrong things and right things all in a jumble, take a

greater hold upon you, somehow, than better people do, who are placid

and always on the same level--at least I think so. I started by calling

her Mrs Peveril--and here I am already saying Mary, as of old, without

knowing! And Mrs Tufnell wishes me to go and see her. She has even made

me promise as a kind of reward to herself for getting better. Since she

takes it in this way, I shall have to go--and sometimes I fear it, and

sometimes I wish for it. Will it make any difference to me? Will the old

love come back, or the still older feeling that was not love? Shall I

think of that “Mary” that sounded always so much sweeter to her than to

me? Or shall I remember only the time when she was everything to

me--when she charmed me out of my grief and loneliness, and told me her

secret, and made me her companion, and was all mine? I do not know. I

begin to tremble, and my heart beats when I think of this meeting; but

in the meantime Mary has a right to her turn, and to tell the story her

own way. It is all in little bits taken from Mrs Tufnell’s letters, and

sometimes may appear a little fragmentary; but I can only give it as it

came to me.

II. HER STORY

CHAPTER VII

When I went to be governess at Mrs Durham’s I was quite young. I had

been “out” before, but only as nursery governess. Mine was not a very

regular or, perhaps, a very good kind of education. My mother had been a

governess before me, and not one of very high pretensions, as

governesses are nowadays. I don’t think she ever knew anything herself,

except a little music and a little French, which she had forgotten

before my time. How my father and she met, and, still more wonderful,

how they took to each other, is a thing I never could make out. Perhaps

I was most fond of her, but certainly I was most proud of him, and liked

to copy his ways, and to believe what my mother often said--that I was a

Martindale every inch of me. This, poor soul, she meant as a reproach,

but to me it sounded like a compliment. I was very silly and rather

cruel, as young people are so often. My father had a great deal of

contempt for her, and not much affection; and though I had a great deal

of affection, I borrowed unconsciously his contempt, and thought myself

justified in treating her as he did. She was wordy and weak in

argument, and never knew when to stop. But he--when he had stated what

he intended to do--would never answer any of her objections, or indeed

take any notice of them, but listened to her with a contemptuous

silence. I took to doing the same; and though I know better now, and am

sorry I ever could have been so foolish and so unkind, yet the habit

remains with me--not to take the trouble to reply to foolish arguments,

but to do what I think right without saying anything about it. This

habit, I may as well confess, has got me into trouble more than once;

but I do not say that I am prepared to give it up, though I know I have

taken harm by it, and no good, so far as I am aware.

We were very poor, and I had been a nursery governess and a daily

governess when I was little more than a child. When my poor mother died

a little money came, and then I got a few lessons to improve me in one

or two different accomplishments; and then I took Mrs Durham’s

situation. My father was one of the wandering men who live a great deal

abroad; and I had learned French and enough German to make a show, in

the best way, by practice rather than by book. “French acquired

abroad”--that was what was put for me in the advertisement, and this I

think was my principal recommendation to Mrs Durham. Her eldest son was

at home at the time--a young man just a little older than myself. She

was a kind woman, and unsuspicious. She thought George only a boy, and

perhaps about me she never thought at all--in connection with him, at

least. I used to be encouraged at first to make him talk French, and

great was the amusement in the school-room over his pronunciation and

his mistakes. They were all very kind when I come to think of it. They

were as fearless and trustful with me as if I had belonged to them. And

then by degrees I found out that George had fallen in love with me. I

think I may say quite certainly that I never was in love with him, but I

was a little excited and pleased, as one always is, you know, when that

happens for the first time. It is so odd--so pleasant to feel that you

have that power. It seems so kind of the man--one thinks so when one is

young--and it is amusing and flattering, and a thing which occupies your

mind, and gives you something agreeable to think of. I do not say this

is the right way of thinking on such a subject, but it is how a great

many girls feel, and I was one of them. I had never thought seriously of

it at all. It seemed so much more like fun than anything else; and then

it is always pleasant to have people fond of you. I liked it; and I am

afraid I never thought of what it might come to, and did not take up any

lofty ground, but let him talk, and let him follow me about, and steal

out after me, and waylay me in the passages. I did this without

thinking, and more than half for the amusement of it. I liked him, and I

liked the place he took up in my life, and the things he said, without

really responding to his feelings at all.

When it was found out, and there was a disturbance in the house about

it, I came to my senses all at once, with such a hot flush of pain and

shame that I seem to feel it yet. They had been so kind to me, that I

had never felt my dependence; but now, all in a moment I found it out.

His mother was frightened to death lest he should marry me! She thought

me quite beneath him; me--a Martindale all over--a gentleman’s

daughter--much better than she was! This roused a perfect tempest in me.

It was my pride that was outraged, not my feelings; but that pride was

strong enough and warm enough to be called a passion. I did what I could

to show his mother that nothing in the world could be more indifferent

to me than he was, but she would not be convinced; and at last I

determined to do what my father often had done when my mother was

unreasonable--to withdraw out of the discussion at once and summarily,

without leaving any opportunity for further talk. My father was living

then. He was at Spa, which was not very difficult to reach. One evening,

after Mrs Durham had been talking to me (George had been sent away, but

I was not sent away because they were sorry for me), I stayed in the

school-room till they were all at dinner, and then I carried all my

things, which I had made up into bundles, down to the hall with my own

hands, and got a cab and went off to the railway station. I bought a

common box on my way, and packed them all into it. I tell you this to

show how determined I was; not even one of the servants knew how I had

gone, or anything about me. It was winter, and the Durhams dined at

half-past six; so I had time enough to get off by the night train to

Dover. I had not a very large wardrobe, you may suppose, but I left

nothing behind me but some old things. I was not particular about

crushing my dresses for that one night. I remember, as if it were

yesterday, the dark sea and dark sky, and great, chill, invisible,

open-air world that I seemed to stand alone in, as the steamboat went

bounding over those black waves, or ploughing through them, to Ostend.

There was a great deal of wind, but the sea had not had time to rise,

and there was the exhilaration of a storm without its more disagreeable

consequences. The vessel did not roll, but now and then gave a leap,

spurning the Channel spray from her bows. Oh how I recollect every

particular! You might think a lonely girl in such circumstances--flying

from persecution, if you like to put it so--flying from love; with

nothing but a very uncertain welcome to look to from a very

unsatisfactory father, and no prospect but to face the world again and

get her bread somehow--was as sad a figure as could be imagined. But I

was not sad. I had a high spirit, and I loved adventure and change. I

felt as if the steamboat was me, going bounding on, caring nothing for

the sea or the darkness. The wind might catch at us, the water might

dash across our sides, the sky might veil itself--who cared? We pushed

on, defying them all. A poor governess as good as turned out of my

situation because the son of the house had fallen in love with me--a

penniless creature without a home, with not a soul to stand by me in all

that dark world. And yet I don’t remember anything I ever enjoyed more,

than that journey by night.

This will show you--and you may show it to Mary to convince her--how

much I cared for George Durham. I suppose he was in love with me--at

least what a young man not much over twenty considers love. That is six

years ago; and probably he has always had a recollection, all this time,

that he was in love with me, and thinks that he ought to have been

faithful. I should not wonder if there was a kind of remorse in his mind

to find that he had fallen in love with Mary, and cared for me no

longer. It is a superstition with some people that, however foolish

their first fancy was, they ought to hold by it; but I must say that I

think it was very foolish, not to say cruel, of both of them, to make

this breach on account of me.

I got another situation after that, and did well enough--as governesses

do. I never complained, or thought I had any reason to complain. I

taught all I knew--not very much, but enough for most people. As for

education, as people talk nowadays--of awakening the minds, and training

the dispositions, and re-creating the children, so to speak,

intellectually and morally--I never thought of such a thing; and why

should I? That is the work of a mother, appointed by God, or of some

great person endowed with great genius or influence--not of a young

woman between eighteen and five-and-twenty, indifferently trained

herself, with quite enough to do to master her own difficulties and keep

herself afloat. I was not so impertinent, so presumptuous, or so foolish

as to have any such idea. I taught them as well as I could; I tried to

make them as fond of books as I was myself--I tried to get them to talk

like gentlewomen, and not to be mean or false. I was not their mother,

or their priest, but only their teacher. I had no theory then; but after

one is thirty, one begins to have theories; and I can see what I meant

in my earlier time by the light of what I think now. However, this is

not much to the purpose. I was a successful governess on the whole; I

got on very well, and I had nothing to find fault with. It is not a very

happy life--when you are young, and hear pleasant sounds below-stairs,

and have to sit reading by yourself in the school-room; when there is

music and dancing perhaps, and merry talk, and you are left alone in

that bare place with maps on the walls, and one candle--a girl does not

feel happy; though on the whole, perhaps, the school-room is better than

to sit in a corner of the drawing-room and be taken no notice of--which

is the other alternative. There are a great many difficulties in the

position altogether, as I can see now that I am older. When the

governess is made exactly like one of the family, the eldest son will go

and fall in love with her and bring everybody into trouble. It is hard

for the lady of the house as well. However, after George Durham, I was

careful, and I never got into difficulty of that kind again. Four years

after I left the Durhams I had a bad illness--rheumatic fever. My people

were very kind to me, but I was too proud to be a burden on them; and as

soon as I could be moved I left and went into lodgings, and was ill

there till I had spent all my money; it was only then that I had

recourse to the Spicers. Perhaps I ought to confess that, though Mr

Spicer is my uncle, I was ashamed of him and disliked him. I have felt

angry at my poor mother all my life for having such relations; but of

course there they were, and had to be made the best of. My money lasted

till I was almost well, but not well enough for another situation. My

father had died in the meantime; and only then I sent to the Spicers,

and asked if they would take me in for a time. I was a good needlewoman;

I knew I could repay them well for keeping me. That is how I went to

them. What followed no one could have foreseen. You know how it was.

* * * * *

I cannot talk about my husband--yet. How could I talk about that which

was everything to me, which changed my life, which made me another

creature? People may love you, and it makes but little difference to

you. It is pleasant, no doubt; it softens your lot; it makes things

bearable which would not be bearable. I had known that in my life. But

to love--that is another thing. That is the true revelation--the lifting

up of the veil. It is as different from simply being loved as night is

from day. I suppose few women are, as I was, in circumstances to feel

this sudden lighting up of existence all of a sudden. Most women have a

great deal to love, and know that condition better than the other. They

would not make so much fuss about being loved did they not already

possess the other gift. But I had never really loved anybody, I suppose.

Various people had loved me. I had liked it, and had done what I could

to be kind and agreeable to them. Some (women) I had been very fond of.

It seems to me now that the world must have been a most curious, cloudy

sort of place in my early youth--a dim place, where nothing moved one

very much; where daylight was quite sober and ordinary, and nothing out

of oneself was exciting. When I saw Mr Peveril first I had no warning

of what was coming. I did not feel even interested in him. He seemed too

gentle, too soft for my liking. What attracted me was, I think, chiefly

the fact that he was the only educated man I ever saw there--the only

being, man or woman, who was not of, or like, the Spicers. This was my

only feeling towards him for the first two or three times I saw him--but

then----.

* * * * *

I am afraid I did not think very much about Mary when we were married.

Of course I meant to do my duty by her: that goes without saying. And

her resistance and dislike did not make me angry. They rather amused me.

It seemed so odd that she should think herself of consequence enough to

be so deeply offended. She, a girl, with all her life before

her--fifteen--of no present importance to any mortal, though no doubt

she would ripen into something after a while. When Mr Peveril distressed

himself about what he called her want of respect to me, I used to smile

at him. He would have made her love me by force had that been

possible--as if her little sullenness, poor child, made any difference!

It was quite natural, besides--only foolish, if she could but have seen

it. She was a naughty child, and she thought herself a virgin-martyr. I

hope it is not wicked of me to be amused by that virgin-martyr look. I

know it so well. I have seen it over and over again in all sorts of

circumstances. To say a tragedy-queen is nothing. There is a sublime

patience, a pathos about your virgin-martyrs, which far outdoes anything

else. Poor little Mary! if I had not seen that she was quite happy in

her own thoughts, even when she thought herself most miserable, I should

have taken more notice of it. I can’t tell what she was always thinking

about--whether it was some imaginary lover or romance of her own that

she kept weaving for hours together; but it kept her happy anyhow. She

was very provoking sometimes--never was there such a spoiled child. She

balked me thoroughly in one thing, and would not let me be her governess

as well as her stepmother; which was what I wished. How often should I

have liked to box her little impertinent ears, and then laugh and kiss

her into good-humour! But in that point there was nothing to be done. I

had to leave all to time, in which I hoped--without, alas! having the

least thought, the least provision, how short my time was to be. You

will see that I am not one to linger upon my private feelings. I have

said nothing to you about my happiness. I can say nothing about my

grief. The beautiful life stopped short--the light went out--an end

seemed to come to everything. I cannot say more about it. Everything

ended--except one’s pulse, which will go on beating, and the long hours

and days that have to be got through somehow, and the bread that has to

be eaten in spite of one’s self--and has to be earned too, as if it were

worth the while.

* * * * *

I wonder at myself sometimes, and you will wonder, that I did not break

down under my grief. It was my first real grief, as that which preceded

it had been my first real happiness. I have even envied the people who

got ill and who could go to bed, and darken their windows and lie still

and let the sword go through and through them in quietness, instead of

writhing on it as I did; but that must be nature. My first instinct was

to snatch at something, to lay hold upon something, lest I should be

carried away by some fiery flood or other. And what I snatched at was

Mary. I love Mary. You may think I have not acted as if I did; but that

is nothing; and she does not love me. But still I have that distinct

feeling for her which I never experienced till her dear, dear father

(oh, my God, my God, why is it that my child will never call him so!)

showed me the way. I have had a great deal to bear from her; she is not

like me; and there are many things I dislike in her. But all that does

not matter. And it is not as I loved him--but yet I love her. All I

remember about those dark days was that I laid hold upon Mary. She could

not escape from me when I seized her so--few, very few, people can. To

resist kindness is easy enough, but downright love has a different kind

of grasp; you cannot get free of that. It is because there is so much

fictitious love in the world that people are not aware of the power of

the true.

I secured her--for the time. You may say it did not last very long; but

that was not my fault; it was because she too, in her time, woke up from

her affection for me, and all the torpor of her youth, and heard the

call of love, and got up and left those that did but love her. The time

we lived together was a strange dreamy time, between blank despair and a

kind of languid happiness. Sometimes I would feel almost happy because

of what was coming, and then I would be plunged into that horror of

darkness, that shadow of death, which is of all things on earth the most

terrible--worse, a thousand times worse, than death itself. I say this

with confidence, because I as good as died once. I was so ill that I had

floated off into that unconsciousness which would have been death had

they left me alone; and it was not unpleasant. Had they left me alone I

should have died, therefore I am justified in saying that this was

death; and it was not disagreeable--just a soft floating away, a gradual

growing dim and shutting out, without any of that sense of desertion and

loneliness which one feels must be so strong in the dying. But the

shadow of death is very terrible. No one can exaggerate its terror. When

it seizes upon the soul, all that surrounds you is lost in one sea of

misery. The waves and the billows pass over you. You feel as if you

could not endure, could not last through that flood of pain--and yet you

do last. The great billow passes over, and there is a calm, and your

soul is so fatigued and worn out that it lies exhausted, and a languor

of rest, which is almost ease, passes over it. This was how I lived for

three months with Mary; until the shock of the other who thrust himself

into our life--the stranger, who was no stranger, came.

His first appearance was nothing but an insignificant trouble, a mere

annoyance to me,--why should I care? I had not thought of him at all for

years; and I never had thought of him much. But still I did not want him

there: he annoyed me; he was a kind of constant menace of more annoyance

to come. But I don’t know what steps I could have taken. It was a long

time before I could realise that he would fall in love with Mary. I

rather think it is difficult to believe that a man who has loved you

will love some one else. That is--if you are quite indifferent to him;

it is so much easier then, to believe in his faithfulness. The idea did

not occur to me. I feared a little for Mary once or twice, and tried to

warn her; but she was always a dreamy sort of girl, and it was hard to

tell when a new influence came over her. She had lived in dreams of one

kind or other ever since I knew her; and I knew nothing, really nothing,

about what was going on, till that unhappy afternoon when he recognised

me, and came in and talked foolishly in Mary’s hearing, about things

that had happened so long before. Poor child!--I don’t blame her, for

her foolishness was natural enough. She thought I had stolen away her

lover, as I had stolen away her father. She would not listen to me, and

when she did listen to me she did not believe me; and there on the other

hand was he, demanding explanations. Good heavens, what right has a man

like that to ask explanations--a man one had never cared for, and would

have died of? He worried me so that I could not be civil. What with

grief, and what with vexation at the turn things had taken, and

disappointment in Mary, and illness in myself, I had no patience with

the man, maundering on about things that had happened ages before, that

were of no importance to any living being. When he waylaid me on my way

to her, keeping me back from her, in her agony of temper and

mortification and humiliation, what I could have done to him! I was in a

nervous state, I suppose, and easily irritated. I could have struck him

when he came out and worried me. And there was Mary turning her face to

the wall, shutting out the light, shutting her ears, determined to be

miserable. Oh! when I toiled up and down stairs going to her, when I

felt ill and knew that nobody cared, when I saw her absorbed in her

foolish misery, and him tormenting himself and me about dead nonsense

that never had been anything, you may excuse me if I had very little

patience. After a night of it I got tired and sick of the whole

business. It seemed too hard to be obliged to put up with all this folly

on the eve of being ill. And who would care whether I was ill or not, if

things went on so?

Then I took my resolution suddenly, as I had done before. It was not

with the hope and high spirit that had kept me up when I went off to

Ostend that I left Southampton Street, my own house. I was sick and

tired, that was all. I could not be troubled to go on. I was worried and

impatient and indignant--and then Mary had a friend to take care of her.

I went away. I went to an hospital after a while in the same irritated

hopeless state, feeling that it did not matter what happened; and there

my boy was born. Well! what did it matter? They are for honest, poor

women, these hospitals--and Heaven knows I was poor enough, but honest.

One cares for one’s self only when one has other people who care. I had

nobody. I did not lose heart altogether, because that is not my nature.

I could not if I would; but what did I care for what people would think

or for what they might say? no more than for the buzzing of the flies. I

should never even hear of it--there was nobody to tell me, nobody to pay

any attention. I thought most likely I should die; but I did not

calculate upon dying, for by that time I knew I had strength to go

through a great deal. And so I did. My boy was quite strong and well,

and I got quite well and strong too. Often I have thought this showed

how little heart I must have; but I could not help it. I got quite

strong. I reflected seriously whether I should not try for a nurse’s

place, which was very well paid, and where very little was required; but

even if I could have parted with my boy, I had no one to trust with the

care of him. So instead of doing this, I made shift to live for a whole

year upon my forty pounds of income, with a little more which I earned

by needlework. When you are a very good needlewoman, you can always earn

something. I did very well; I made baby clothes; my eyes were strong,

and my health was good, and I had my own baby to comfort me. There is

nothing that comforts like a baby. When the child laughs, you laugh too.

You laugh to make him laugh; first it is sympathy, then it is delight,

till gradually you grow a baby too, and are amused at nothing, and happy

for nothing, and live over again, beginning at the very beginning, in

the child.

In this way I grew to be so tranquil, so eased in mind, and happy in

heart, notwithstanding my loss, which I never forgot, that I was tempted

to remain just as I was always; but then it occurred to me that I should

lose all that I knew, that I would never be able to teach him, or to get

him education, or to rise in the world, as I wanted to do for his sake;

therefore it was clear I must do something else. This was what I did: I

found out about a situation in a school after a great deal of inquiry. I

went to the lady and told her my story; I said I would go to her for

almost nothing if I might have my baby and a little maid to take care of

him. When she heard of my “French acquired abroad,” my showy bit of

German, my music, and how I would make myself as useful as ever she

liked, having excellent health and no sort of prejudices about what I

did, she closed with me. I had two rooms, and board for myself and the

maid and the boy--no more at first--but I managed on that. And then by

degrees we improved. She gave me first twenty pounds, then a little

more. A baby’s white frock and a widow’s black gown do not cost much. We

did very well. I have fifty pounds now the school has increased so much;

and I believe I may have a share soon if all goes well. My French goes

for a great deal, and even my name and my widow’s cap go for something,

and everybody in the school likes to tell the story of the baby. Am I

happy, do you say? I never stop to ask myself whether I am happy or not.

One must form some idea of change in one’s mind, some thought of a

possibility which might make one happier, before one would think of

asking one’s self such a question. And as I have no reasonable prospect

of ever being happier than I am, I do not think about it. I am not

unhappy--of that I am sure.

You talk of bringing Mary and me together again. Would it answer, I

wonder? Sentiment is one thing, but practicability is another. Having

told you that I loved Mary, I have said all that either woman or man can

say. Likings change and alter, but love is for ever. Yet, whether we

could live together, whether she could trust me, whether she would

understand the past, and feel how little I wished or intended to

interfere with her, I cannot tell; unless she could, it would almost be

better to leave us as we are. So long as a woman is young, as Mary is,

it is doubtful and dangerous, I am afraid, to try any relationships but

those that are quite natural. She is with you, you dearest, kind friend,

as if she were your own child. You can do her nothing but good; but I am

not so very much older than she is. I am older--centuries older--but not

to outward appearance; and can you not suppose a state of things in

which the last chapter of our lives might be, one way or other, repeated

again? I say this not with any sort of vanity, Heaven knows, but with

fear and trembling. For I should be happier with her--far happier--but

not if she came to me with a single doubt in her mind, a single thought

which was uncertain or suspicious. Do not tell her this one difficulty

which seems to me to stand in our way, but judge for us both what is

best. I want her for myself and for my boy. We belong to each other,

and no one else in the world belongs to us. How often I long for her

when I am sitting alone! How many things I have in my mind to say to

her! But not unless it would be well for her, to whom anything may

happen. Nothing that I know of, except through her or my baby, can now

happen to me.

CHAPTER VIII

I will not enter into all the particulars of our discussion after this,

for time would fail me. The last part of Mary’s letter, which she said

was not to be shown to me, made me angry. I thought it was vanity on her

part to be afraid of interfering with me again. “In what way?” I could

not but ask, and that sharply; how could the last chapter of our lives

be repeated? Mrs Tufnell only smoothed my hair and soothed me, and

called me “dear” and “darling,” but would give no explanation. “What

does she mean?” I asked. “Oh, she means, my love--probably she means

nothing. It is just a way of talking that people fall into,” said my old

lady. I knew this was said simply to quiet me, but on the whole perhaps

I preferred it to anything more definite; and, after a time, I allowed

myself to be persuaded to pay my stepmother a visit. What a strange

journey into the past it seemed! and yet actually we went far away from

the scene of the past, into a place so new and unknown to me, that it

could awaken no associations. We drove in the comfortable old fly, with

the old sleek horse and the old fat man, which was as good as Mrs

Tufnell’s private carriage. She did not keep a carriage of her own, but

I am sure this fly, in which she drove every day of her life except when

she was ill, cost her more than a carriage would have done. She was very

apologetic about it always. “I could not undertake the responsibility of

a carriage,” she would say; “horses are always getting ill, and your

coachman drinks, or he gets into trouble with the maids, or something.

Old Groombridge and his fly suit me quite well. No, he is not an old

rogue. I have to pay him, of course, for all his trouble, and for the

loss of customers, and so forth. You know, Mary, he always suits himself

to my convenience at whatever sacrifice----”

This was her idea, and nothing would convince her otherwise. So we drove

in Groombridge’s old fly--which was one of the most expensive vehicles

in town--out Hampstead way, but past all the houses, past everything,

till we came to new houses again, and skeleton roads and villas growing

up like mushrooms, in one of those long straggling arms that London puts

out into the country. I had got excited so often thinking that we must

be quite close upon the place, that at last I ceased to be excited, and

felt as if we had set out upon a hopeless circle, and were going to wind

in and out and round and round, till we worked back to the point from

which we started. How dreary they look, those new places--roads newly

laid out, breaking in upon the fields, which somehow look so superior,

so desecrated, and vulgarised by those new muddy lines with the

unnecessary kerbstones; and then all the half-built houses, each one

uglier than the other, with their bow-windows, all made by the gross (I

suppose), and their thin little walls that the wind whistles through,

and even their monotonous attempt at irregularity. A steady, solid row

which is very ugly and nothing more, is endurable. I was saying this,

when suddenly the fly made a sharp turn, and immediately the villas and

the kerbstones became invisible. We had got within a mossy wall, through

a large old-fashioned gate. There was an avenue, not very long nor very

grand, but still an avenue, with odd old trees all gnarled and mossed

over, and I suppose in a very bad condition, but still old, and

trees--trees which our grandfathers might have walked under. The house

was an old red-brick house, very dark red, and covered with little brown

and yellow lichens. It was neat, but yet one could see it was in want of

repair, and looked like a poor lady in a faded gown and mended lace by

the side of the fine shop-people in silk and satin. It was a winter

day--a very still and bright one. The shadows of all the leafless trees

made a network upon the brown gravel path. The old house seemed to be

basking, warming itself in the sun. There were a great many twinkling

windows, but not a creature to be seen except one little child on the

white step of the deep doorway. There was a porch, and probably his

nurse was there, but the little fellow was standing out in the sun,

cracking a little whip he had, with his hair shining in the bright

light, and his little face like an apple-blossom. He was shouting out

some baby nonsense at the top of his voice. He did not care for us, nor

for anyone. He was the monarch of all--quite alone in his kingdom,

independent of everybody.

“Who do you think that is, Mary?” said Mrs Tufnell, taking my hand

suddenly, as I looked out laughing and amused by him. Good heavens! I

had never once thought. I fell back into my corner and began to cry, I

cannot tell why. Of course I knew at once whom it must be.

And then _she_ came, not in the least altered, kissing me just as if we

had parted yesterday. But she was agitated, though she tried not to show

it. She took the little boy and brought him to me, and thrust him into

my arms without a word, and her lip quivered, and for some minutes she

could not say anything. The meeting was hard altogether. When the thing

that sundered you is too far off to be talked about, and when everybody

counsels you to avoid explanations and go on again as if nothing had

happened, it is very hard; you may succeed in uniting the old strands

and twisting them together once more, but it is perhaps more likely that

you will fail. We went into Mary’s new home, and saw the lady who was

the head of the school. It was holiday time--the Christmas holidays--and

they were alone. This lady was middle-aged, older than Mary, but not so

old as Mrs Tufnell. She was an unmarried woman, and I could at once

understand what Mary had said, that her very name and her widow’s cap

told for something in the place. But what was most evident of all was

that little Jack was the sovereign of Grove House. Whatever anybody

might do or say, he was supreme. Miss Robinson was fond of his mother,

and “appreciated” her, as she told us; but little Jack was the monarch,

and did what he pleased.

Our visit was, as people say, quite successful. It went off perfectly

well--we kissed when we met and when we parted--we had a great deal to

say to each other of what had passed since we met--and there was little

Jack to make acquaintance with, and a great many of his wonderful

adventures to be told of. Mrs Tufnell came away with the thought that it

had been a great success, and that henceforward nothing more was

wanted--that Mary and I would be one again.

But Mary and I felt differently. I did, at least, and I am sure so did

she. You cannot mend a rent so easily. Such a rent--a rent that had

lasted more than five years--how can it be drawn together again by any

hasty needle and thread like a thing done yesterday? We parted friends,

with promises to meet again; but with hearts, oh! so much more apart

from each other than they had been an hour before! An hour before we met

I had all sorts of vague hopes in my mind--vague feelings that she

would understand me, that I should understand her--vague yearnings

towards the old union which was almost perfect. Did you ever see the

great glass screen they have in some houses to shield you from the heat

of the fire? You can see the cheerful blaze through it, but you feel

nothing. Something of the kind was between Mary and me. We saw through

it as well as ever, and seemed, to enjoy the pleasant warmth; but no

other sensation followed, only the chill of a disappointment. I felt

that she was now nothing, nothing to me; and I--I cannot tell how I

seemed to her. We had the old habit suddenly brought to life and put on

again, but none of the old meaning. We were like mummers trying to make

ourselves out to be heroines of the past, but knowing we were not and

never could be what we appeared. I was very silent during our drive home

I did not know what to say to my dear old lady. She looked very fragile

with her pretty rose-cheeks, lying back in the corner of the fly; she

was fatigued, and in the daylight I suddenly woke up to see that she did

look very fragile. I had not believed in it before. And how could I vex

her by telling her of my disappointment? I could not do it; she was

pleased and happy; she held my hand, and nodded to me and said: “Now you

see you are not so much alone as you thought you were. Now you see you

have friends who belong to you.” How could I have had the heart to say

otherwise--to say I had found out that we were separated for ever, Mary

and I?

That evening, however, after tea, she began to talk to me very

seriously. We were sitting over the fire--she on her favourite sofa, I

on a low chair near her. The firelight kept dancing about, lighting up

the room fitfully. It was a large room. We had some candles on the

mantel-piece, which shone, reflected in the great mirror, as if from

some dim, deep chamber opening off this one; but it was really the

firelight that lighted the room. I had been singing to her, and I half

thought she had been asleep, when suddenly she roused up all at once,

and sat upright in her little prim way.

“I want to speak to you, Mary,” she said; and then, after a pause--“You

think I meant nothing but love and kindness when I took you to see Mrs

Peveril to-day; but I am a scheming, wicked old woman, Mary. I had more

than that in my mind.”

I was a little, but only a little, startled by this: I knew her way. I

looked up at her, smiling. “You are so designing,” I said; “I might have

known there was something underneath. You are going to ask them to spend

the rest of their holidays here?”

“That if you like,” she said brightly, encouraged, I could see, by my

tone; “but more than that, Mary; more than that.”

I was not curious. I looked with an indolent amusement at the shining of

the firelight and the reflection in the mirror of the flame of the

candles, which shone out of its surface without seeming to move the dark

ruddy gloom beyond. A glass is always an inscrutable, wonderful thing,

like an opening into the unseen: it was especially so that night.

“Mary,” Mrs Tufnell resumed, with a voice that faltered, I could not

tell why; “do you remember when I first spoke to you of Mrs

Peveril--when I was ill?--and what I said?”

“Yes,” I answered, with sudden alarm, looking up at her. “You don’t feel

ill now?”

“No, but I have got a shake,” she said. “When a woman at my time of life

is ill, though it may seem to pass quite away, it always leaves a

something. I shall never be as strong as I have been, my dear child. I

feel I have got a shake. My life has come to be like the late leaves on

the top of a tree. They may last through many gales, but the first gust

may blow them off. I cannot feel sure for a day.”

I went close up to her in my fright, and knelt down by the sofa, and put

my arms round her. “Do not speak so,” I said; “you could not leave me?

What could I do without you? I am not an orphan as long as I have you.

You cannot have the heart----”

“Oh, Mary! hush; don’t overwhelm me. It was of that I wanted to speak. I

shall live as long as I can, for your sake. But, dear, old people cannot

stay always, however much they may be wanted. I have been thinking of it

a great deal, and there is a proposal I have to make to you--with Mrs

Peveril’s consent, Mary. You must listen to all I have to say.”

“Oh, you have consulted Mrs Peveril!” said I; and I got up, feeling my

heart grow chill and sore, and went back to my seat to hear what was to

be said to me. In the depths of my heart I must have been jealous of her

still. It came all back upon me like a flood. My dear old lady gave me a

grieved look, but she did not stop to explain. She went quickly on with

what she had to say:--

“Grove House is a nice old-fashioned house, and cheap, and they have a

good list of scholars; and Miss Robinson would be glad to retire, and

would not ask very much for the furniture and things; and Mrs Peveril is

so much liked by everybody. I have always set apart as much as I thought

was right of my little property, intending it for you, Mary----”

“Don’t!” I cried, in a voice so shrill and sharp that it startled even

myself who spoke.

“It is not very much,” she went on, “but it is all I can give away, and

my whole heart has been set upon doing something for you with this money

that would make you independent. My dear Mary, I am half afraid you

don’t like the thought, you are so silent. I had thought of buying Grove

House for Mrs Peveril and you.”

“For Mrs Peveril and me!”

“Yes--don’t you like the idea, Mary?--don’t you like the idea? I thought

it was something that would please you so much. You have always said you

liked teaching, and it would be a living for you, dear, and a home when

I am gone. I have so wished to make these arrangements for you,

Mary----”

“Is it all settled?” I said.

“Nothing could be settled without your consent. All that I want is your

good. I could not leave you, could I, at your age, without anyone to

stand by you, without a home to go to, without a friend----”

Thus she apologised to me for those kind, tender plans of hers; and I

sat like a clod, feeling that I could not reply. I was dull and heavy

and miserable; not grateful, yet feeling how grateful I ought to be;

understanding her, yet not owning even to myself that I understood her.

It was not a very great destiny that was thus allotted to me, but that

was not what I was thinking. My mind did not revolt against the idea of

being the mistress of a school; which was a natural lot enough. To tell

the truth, I cannot quite say what it was that gave me so miserable a

feeling. Here was my life marked out for me; there was never to be any

change in it; no alteration for the brighter or better occurred to this

dear old woman who loved me. She wanted to make sure I should have daily

bread and a roof to shelter me, and some sort of companionship. How

right she was! How good and how kind! and yet, oh, how dreary, how

unutterably blank and hopeless seemed the prospect! I felt this with a

dull fighting and struggle of the two things in me--wanting to please

her by looking pleased, feeling how good she was, and how kind, how

just, how suitable was the arrangement. I felt all this in a kind of

way, and then I felt the struggle not to be wildly angry, not to burst

out and ask her how she could think of condemning me so--for my life?

She was grieved and disappointed at the way I received her proposal, but

she was so good that she took no notice, but kissed me, and said nothing

should be done or thought of against my consent. For my part my heart

was so heavy and dull that I could not even thank her for her kindness;

but I hung about her when she went to bed, and held her fast in a

speechless way that she understood, I think, though I said nothing. She

cried; she looked at me with her kind old eyes full of tears. “Oh,

Mary,” she said, “don’t break my heart! If I could live for ever and go

on always taking care of you, don’t you think I would do it, for your

sake and your father’s too? But I cannot. One must die when one’s time

comes, however much one may be wanted: and I must provide for that.”

“Oh, why can’t I provide for it?” I cried. “Why can’t I die too? That

would be the best way.”

And then she was angry--half angry--as much as it was in her nature to

be. And presently I found myself alone, and had to sit down and think it

over, and make up my mind to it, as one has so often to do in this life.

I had to teach myself to see how good it was. And I did. I made up my

mind to it. What was there else in heaven or earth--as I could not die

with my only friend, or compel her to live, what was there else that I

could do?

CHAPTER IX

Next morning when I woke, the impression on my mind was, that Mrs

Tufnell must have died in the night. I cannot tell why I thought so, but

I woke with such a horror in my mind, that I threw a shawl over my

shoulders and rushed to her door to ask how she was, before I could take

breath. She was not up; but smiled at me from her bed, where she lay

with all the pictures and the portraits of her friends about her, the

centre of a silent company. “I am quite well--better than usual,” she

said; but I think she knew the meaning of my terror, and felt that after

all that had been said it was natural I should be afraid. This perhaps

threw just a little cloud upon her serenity too, during the morning, for

however calmly one may think of dying, I suppose it must startle one to

see that others are thinking of it. I suppose so--it seems natural. She

was very grave, thoughtful, and somewhat silent during the forenoon; and

when I went and sat down by her, and asked her to forgive me, and said I

was ready to do whatever she thought best, she took me into her arms and

cried and kissed me. “Oh, that it should be necessary to change!” she

said. “I do not feel as if I could face the change--but, Mary, for your

good----”

It was about noon as we thus sat talking it over. It comforted me to see

that she liked it as little as I did; that she would rather have kept me

with her to the last moment of her life. But then what should I have

done?--this was what she thought of. We were talking it all over very

seriously, with more pain than either of us would show. It was a chilly

winter morning. The room was bright, to be sure, with a good fire

burning, and all the comforts that so many poor people are without; but

there was a chill that went to one’s heart--the chill of the grave for

her, which she thought near; and the chill of the outside world, from

which she had sheltered me so long, for me. I remember the look of that

morning--there was a black frost outside which bound all the dry street,

and seemed to hold the naked trees in the square so fast that they dared

not rustle, though an icy wind was blowing through them. There were

traces still on the windows, notwithstanding the fire, of the frosty

network of the night. The sun had begun to shine as it approached noon,

but even the sun was white and cold, and seemed rather to point out how

chilly the world was, than to warm it. After we had got through all our

explanations and said all that was to be said, and arranged that Mary

was to be invited to the Square with her child to spend a week of the

holidays and arrange everything, we still kept sitting together holding

each other’s hands, not saying much. I could not pretend that I liked it

even to please her, and she did not like it, though she thought it

right; but all the same it was settled, and there was nothing more to

say.

It was all settled by twelve o’clock, fixed and decided with that double

certainty which is given by pain. If we had liked it we should not have

felt half so sure. At half-past twelve the mid-day post came in, and I

was still sitting by my dear old lady, holding her hand, feeling my

heart sink lower and lower every moment, thinking how I should have to

leave her when she wanted me most--when Mrs Tufnell’s maid came in with

the letters. She gave some to her mistress, and she gave one to me. I do

not think I recognised the writing at first. But I got few letters, and

it gave me a little thrill of agitation, I could not quite tell why. It

was a foreign letter, with a number of unintelligible postmarks. I got

up and went to the window, partly because my heart began to beat very

loud, and partly to leave Mrs Tufnell at liberty to read her letters. I

recollect looking out unconsciously and seeing the dried-up, dusty,

frosty look of everything, the ice-wind sweeping the dust round the

corners, the bare shivering trees--with a momentary thrill of sensation

that my life was like that, dried-up, frost-bound, for ever and ever.

And then, with my fingers trembling and my heart beating, and a

consciousness of something coming, I could not tell what, I opened the

envelope and found---- This was what I found; without any preface or

introduction--without anything to soften the difference between what was

before my eyes and what was going to be.

There was no beginning to the letter; there were a good many blots in

it, as if it had been written with a hand which was not very steady.

There was not even a date until the end. He who had written it had been

as much agitated as she who read it; and she who read it did so as in a

dream, not knowing where she was standing, feeling the world and the

white curtains and the frosty square to be going round and round with

her, making a buzzing in her ears and a thumping against her breast.

What a plunge into a new world--into an old world--into a world not

realised, not possible, and yet so strange in its fascination, so

bewildering! Was it a dream--or could it be true?

“I have long wanted, and often tried, to write to you again. I do

not know now whether I may or whether I ought. If this letter

should come to another man’s wife, if it should fall into your

hands in such changed circumstances that you will scarcely remember

the writer’s name--and I cannot hide from myself that all this may

be the case--then forgive me, Mary, and put it in the fire without

further thought. It will not be for you, in your new life, but for

someone else whom you will have forgotten, though I can never

forget her. But if you are still little Mary Peveril as you used to

be, oh, read it! and try to throw your thoughts back to the time

when you knew me--when we used to meet. You were not much more than

a child. How much I have thought of that time; how often and often

I have gone over it in my thoughts I need not tell you. You were

badly used, dear Mary. I was wrong--I will say it humbly on my

knees if you like: having got your promise and your heart--for I

did have that, if only for a little while--nothing could have

justified me in appearing for one moment to place you otherwise

than first in all I did or said. I will not excuse myself by saying

how much startled I was by the sight of Miss Martindale, nor how

anxious I was to know whether my mother had any share, or what

share she had, in her disappearance from our house. I will say

nothing about all that, but only that I was wrong, wrong without

any excuse. Had I thought of what I was risking by my curiosity, I

would have bitten my tongue out sooner than have asked a single

question. Do you think, could you think, that I would have

sacrificed you to the old foolish business which was over years

before? I was an utter fool, I allow, but not such a fool as that.

Therefore, Mary dear, dearest, whom I have always thought of,

listen to me again; take me back again! I will beg your pardon a

hundred and a thousand times. I will humbly do whatever penance

you may appoint me; but listen to me now. You would not listen to

me at first--and perhaps I was not so ready at first to acknowledge

how wrong I was. I have had five long years to think of it, and I

see it all. You were rightly angry, dear, and I was wrong; and if

ever man repented, I have repented. Mary, Mary! take me back!

“I have been wandering about the world all this time, working and

doing well enough. I can offer you something better now than the

little cottage we once spoke of, though that would have been

Paradise. I am leaving along with this letter, and hope to arrive

in England almost as soon. I do not ask you to write--unless indeed

you would, of your own sweet kindness--one word--to Chester Street?

But even if you don’t do that, I will go to Russell Square in the

hope of finding you. Mary! don’t break my heart. You liked me once.

If I knew what to say that would move you, I would make this letter

miles long; but I don’t know what more to say, except that I love

you better than ever, and no one but you; and that I am coming back

to England for you, for you only--half hopeless, only determined to

try once more. Perhaps by the time you have read this I may be at

your door.

“Ever and ever yours,

“GEORGE DURHAM.”

“Mary!” cried some one calling me; “Mary, what is the matter? Have you

bad news, my dear? Mary! Good gracious, the child will faint! Mary,

don’t you hear me?”

“Oh, hush, hush!” I cried, not knowing what I said. “Hark! listen! is

that him at the door?”

It was not him just then; and after a little while the curtains stopped

going round, and the floor and the Square and everything about grew

solid and steady, and I came to myself. To myself, yes--but not to the

same self as had been sitting so sadly holding my old lady’s hand. What

a change all in a moment! If I had not been so happy, I should have been

ashamed to think that a man’s letter could all in a moment make such a

change in a woman’s life. It is demoralising to the last degree--it

comes in the way of all the proper efforts of education and independent

thought, and everything that is most necessary and elevating. If in a

moment, without any virtue of yours, without any exertion of yours, you

are to have your existence all altered for you--the greyness turned into

brightness, the labour into ease, the poverty into wealth--how is it to

be supposed that you can be trained aright? It is demoralising: but it

is very pleasant. Oh, the change in one half-hour!

But I should find it very difficult to explain to anyone how it was that

I behaved like a rational creature at this moment, and did not take a

bad turn and torture him and myself with objections. It was not wisdom

on my part; I think it was the absolute suddenness of the whole

transaction. Had he left me more time to think, or prepared me for his

reception, my pride and my delicacy would have come in, and probably I

should have thrown away both his happiness and my own. But fortunately

he arrived that very afternoon, before the first excitement was over,

and hearing that Miss Peveril was at home, and that the servants had not

been forbidden to admit him, walked upstairs when I was not thinking,

and took possession of me as if there had been no doubt on the subject.

Mrs Tufnell was begging me to write to him at the very moment. I had

shown her my letter, and she was full of excitement about it. “Be an

honest girl, Mary,” she was saying: “a girl should not worry a man like

that: you ought to be frank and open, and send him a word to meet him

when he comes home. Say you are as fond of him as he is of you----”

“No, I could not--I could not,” I was beginning to say; when suddenly

something overshadowed us, and a big, ringing voice said behind me, “How

could she? Let us be reasonable.” Reasonable! After that there was no

more to say.

But if it had not all passed like a dream; if he had not been so sudden;

if he had taken more time and more, care--the chances are, I know, that

I should have behaved like a fool, and hesitated and questioned, and

been proud and been foolish. As it was, I had to be honest and

happy--there was no time for anything else.

This was of course the ending of the whole matter. I have often wondered

whether, had my dear old lady been burdened with the anxiety of her

charge of me, she would have died. As it is, she has not died. She lives

with us often now, and we with her. On my wedding day she talked of

departing in peace; but so far from departing in peace, she has been

stronger ever since, and has a complexion any girl of twenty might envy.

When I look back to Southampton Street and to Russell Square, where I

was so unhappy, they all grow delightful and beautiful to me. It was

very bad, no doubt (I suppose), while it lasted, but how I smile now at

all my dolours! The delightful fact that they are over makes them

pleasant. “That is how it will be, Mary,” my dearest old lady says,

“with all our sorrows, when we die and get safely out of them. We shall

smile--I know it--and wonder how we could have made such a fuss over

those momentary woes.” This is a serious way of ending a story, which

after all has turned out merely a love-story, a thing I never

contemplated when I began to confide my early miseries to you. How

miserable I was! and how it all makes me smile now!

As for Mary--the other Mary--we carried out that arrangement for her

which had been proposed for me. We bought Grove House for her. I do not

know what we could have done better. I never see that she is dull or

weary of her life. What languors she may have she keeps from common

view. Little Jack has grown a great boy, and she is very happy in him.

But she does not give herself up to him, like so many mothers. “I must

keep my own life,” she said to me once, when I wanted her to give up, to

live quietly at home and devote herself to my little brother alone. “He

will go out into the world after a while,” she went on; “he must, he has

to make his way--and I, what should I do then? follow him or stay at

home all alone?--No! I must keep my own life.” And so she does.

Happiness? I cannot tell if she has happiness: so many people get on

without that--though some of us, I thank God humbly on my knees, have it

without deserving it--without having done anything for it. Mary, I

believe, never takes time to ask herself how about that. She said so

once; she is not unhappy, and never will be; she has her life.

GROVE ROAD, HAMPSTEAD

CHAPTER I

“Where shall we go first? that is the only question. I know there are a

hundred places to go to. Westminster and Whitehall, and the Tower, and

St Paul’s, and to see the pictures, and the river, and the Temple, and

Cheapside. We cannot, of course,” cried the eager girl, half

regretfully, half pleased with the certainty of so much excitement, “see

them all in one day.”

“Considering that they are at different points of the compass, no,” said

the father, a serious man, who rarely relaxed even with his children.

They were seated round a breakfast table in a London hotel--not one of

the great caravansaries of the present day, but a small, grey,

comfortable, quiet, very dear hotel in a little London street not far

from Piccadilly. The houses opposite seemed almost within reach of their

hands to the two girls, fresh and young and eager, who had for the first

time that morning opened their eyes upon England. England! The thought

made the blood dance in their veins. It was a little disenchanting, no

doubt, to look out upon those grey houses opposite; but the fog through

which the said houses loomed vaguely had an attraction of its own. A

London fog: it was the right medium through which to see the metropolis

of the world: they were almost as much interested in it as in Hyde Park

or St Paul’s. They were interested in everything; the very names of the

streets made their hearts beat. They had arrived from Canada in the

great steamboat the day before, had travelled up from Liverpool through

a country veiled in the early and lingering dusk of a winter

afternoon--for, though it was nominally spring, it was still winter--and

entered London in the dark. When they opened their eyes this morning it

had been, as they thought, upon a new world. They could hear the noise

of wheels in Piccadilly, and that sound also went to their hearts. All

England was before them. They had heard of it all their lives, and this

arrival had been before them for months, a sensation keenly anticipated,

and experienced now with a commotion of their whole being.

Notwithstanding, it was a very ordinary table at which they sat,

scarcely able to eat anything for sheer excitement. The room was

somewhat dingy. The fog pressed upon the window like something palpable,

the houses opposite looming grimly through it. There was very little in

their external surroundings to justify the sublimated state of their

feelings; but Grace and Milly Yorke wanted nothing to justify their

feelings. These sentiments sustained themselves. They had never been out

of Canada before, but England, as long as they could recollect, had been

called “home” to them. They had said, “We are going home,” when they

communicated the great news to their friends. And now the moment had

come to which they had looked forward for years.

Their father was not moved by the same ecstatic sentiments. He was not

Canadian born, as they were. He had left England about thirty years

before, and probably his return had recalled some feelings that were not

altogether delightful. He was an angular, tall man, not unlike the

commonly received type of an American, with a long face, somewhat sunken

cheeks, a very resolute and determined mouth--altogether grey and

rugged, like a gnarled tree. His eyes were deep-set and apt to get a

fiery sparkle in them on occasions. He was a man of hot temper and

inflexible obstinacy, not easy to deal with. But he was never

ill-tempered to his children. The boys, indeed, were often more or less

in conflict with their father; but to the girls he was always gentle and

kind. Perhaps they knew better how to glide over all shoals and reefs,

and find the safe channel to his favour. They and their mother knew very

well what subjects it was best to avoid. They had put up danger signals

on every side, and warned each other off this and that difficulty with

a glance. They did this without intention, only half conscious of their

own diplomacy. But so it was, that the girls were on the best of terms

with their father, and to them he never said a hasty or unkind word. He

sat very gravely between them, his countenance taking no reflection from

the light in theirs. He was disposed rather to say, Confound the fog. He

thought London just as dingy and disagreeable as it always had been; but

he said nothing. The girls! The girls had their heads turned, poor

children. He would not say anything to disturb their illusion. Let them

entertain it as long as they could. But he had other things to think of.

His mind was thronged with recollections. England was not to him a

historical country, a place full of poetry, full of great events; but a

very real world, with his own past in it, and many a thought and intent

of which the girls knew nothing. He sat between them, scarcely hearing

their eager chatter, but recalling with all the force of reality, as if

they had happened yesterday, the circumstances which had attended his

going away. He had not been very many years older than Grace, he

recollected, with a sort of wondering half amusement; but how clear it

was! Yesterday was not clearer--not so clear, indeed--for yesterday was

nothing very important in his life; whereas that day----

“It is quite true what Mr Winthrop said. I never saw anything so

poetical,” said Grace; “such a wonderful dreamy vista!--don’t you think

so, papa? When you look out to the end of the street you can’t tell what

it is you see. The light is just like a dull topaz--wasn’t that what Mr

Winthrop said? and you can’t tell what is beyond; it might be palaces or

mountains, or one can’t tell what. And to think it is England! and then

that sort of roar of the carriages. It is not like the sea; it is

like---- Oh, why should one try for similes?--it is like--just London, I

suppose.”

“Wait till you know a little more about London,” said the father,

“before you pronounce what it’s like.”

“One knows,” said Grace, with a little solemnity. “One does not need to

wait. I suppose London is like no other place in the world.”

“Perhaps not,” Yorke said with a half laugh; “but you will never know

what it is if you should live a hundred years.”

He spoke in one sense, they responded in another.

“I can believe that,” said Grace, with the same gravity. “It is a

mystery. We cannot know, but we can divine.”

“God forbid!” her father said, and then he changed his tone.

“Westminster is one way and St Paul’s another,” he said. “You can’t go

both ways at once. You had better make up your minds which you will

have.”

And then a little argument ensued. The girls had read a great deal, and

they had good memories. One of them espoused the cause of St Paul’s and

the other that of Westminster: the one going over the glorious

inhabitants of the Abbey, demanding, with Milton--

“What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in pilèd stones?”

though I hope they knew that Shakespeare was not there--while the other

launched herself upon Tennyson’s ode--

“Mighty Seaman, this is he,

Was great by land as thou by sea.”

The father remained quite silent in the midst of it all. It seemed,

indeed, as if he had betrayed them into this fanciful controversy on

purpose that he might be able to take refuge in his own thoughts. What

was Westminster or St Paul’s to him? His mind was busy with events which

no poet had ever celebrated, which had never been put into history.

Neither wife nor children knew of them--only some people at home, people

who might be dead long ago, whom he had not heard of, and who had not

heard of him for thirty years. He got the required leisure and quiet to

think this all over while the others were busy with their poetry. They

appealed to him, and he gave them a little nod and half smile, one of

those smiles that are but for a moment, a gleam of enforced attention

instantly falling back into the gravity of prevailing thought. The

decision finally was for Westminster. As for these young people, they

did not know the difference between St Paul’s and the Abbey. They were

both old, reverend, glorious structures to Grace and Milly; but what it

might be that made the difference between them they did not know. One

meant Poets’ Corner, the other that about the mighty Seaman. They had

never seen a Gothic cathedral in their lives.

And perhaps it is not ignorance so profound as this that is qualified to

see and understand what is best. The girls read the names on the

monuments with a kind of silent ecstasy of wonder. To think that they,

two little girls from Canada, should actually be treading the storied

pavement in Poets’ Corner, and should be able to read with their own

eyes the names upon those monuments, and see the Kings and Queens lying

in marble, in solemn state, and touch with their little living modern

fingers the chair in which the Confessor had sat! Could anything be more

wonderful? They went through it all as if they were in a dream, looking

at the monuments, reading all the names, thinking it was their own want

of clear historical knowledge that made them at a loss about one here

and there. But the Abbey itself was above their comprehension. They

thought the Houses of Parliament finer, and were a little shocked that

everything should be so grey and old. When you have seen nothing that

is not new, all your life, it is difficult to understand the darkening

of ages. But they spent the entire morning in one dream of pleasure,

their hearts standing still as they came upon name after name, which

they had heard of all their lives. There too was Whitehall, and that

gloomy window, of which, perhaps, it is not true that from thence King

Charles stepped to his execution; but they were not too critical; and

they walked up the Mall to St James’s Palace with a little thrill of

easier admiration (which they thought rather vulgar in themselves, and

were disposed to blush at) for the Lifeguardsmen on their horses. The

little dingy old palace wounded their feelings somewhat, and brought

down the bewildering splendour of imagination into very shabby limits;

but they got over that. When they were not silent with awe, or with the

shock of trying to reconcile to their own ideal something that fell

short of it, they were talking all the way, calling upon each other to

see this or that, reading out even the names of the streets to each

other with many an “Oh, Milly!” and “Oh, Grace!” They were so absorbed

in their sight-seeing that they never noticed the people who looked

after them, the amused admiring looks with which the passers-by would

contemplate their fresh faces. They were very fresh faces, delicate in

colour, clear and animated, and so full of interest that their

superabundant life brightened the foggy street. But fortunately the fog

had lifted a little, and all the ghostly houses round the park, and the

leafless trees, became more real under the mid-day radiance of a veiled

sun doing his best to break through; and if they had thought the fog

poetical before, you may imagine what they thought it now, with those

rays streaming into it. It could not be real, they said to each other;

by-and-by they would wake up and find themselves, let us say, in that

other London which is on the farther side of the Atlantic. It could not

be real; it was too wonderful to be true.

Meantime the father went on responding a little, but only a little, to

the constant claim made upon his attention. He said “Yes” and “No,” or

even “Very pretty,” “Very nice,” “Very interesting” on occasion. For his

part he did not care very much about the monuments. Sometimes his eye

would wander away among the aisles, or through the lovely tracery and

carved work of the roofs, to where the faint red sun caught a painted

window, and threw a rosy oblique ladder of many colours across the grey.

He understood the Abbey better than the girls did; but what he saw in

the Abbey was, scenes of the past--the past, not of Shakespeare or the

old Kings, but his own. He had been there in his youth, and he had been

in other places which were recalled and suggested by this, and he

remembered and mused in his heart. His companions were not surprised,

because he was always a man of few words; though afterwards it gave them

many thoughts, and the question, what he had been thinking of, what

fancies might have been rising unconsciously in his mind, was often

discussed by them; but at the present moment, as was natural, they did

not realise that there was anything out of the way in his silence. They

went back to their hotel late for their luncheon; they were tired in

body, but not in their minds, which flowed over with wonder and

pleasure. “Are you the least little bit disappointed?” said Milly to

Grace. “No, not the least. Disappointed!” cried Grace with enthusiasm,

though the next moment she was conscious of that little chill in her

soul about St James’s, and even felt that she had missed something in

Westminster. This being the case with Grace, Milly cleared up in a

moment from the slightest little cloud that had fallen upon her, and

felt that neither was she disappointed, oh, not the least in the world!

It was like walking with Shakespeare, they both said. And Mr Yorke gave

a little nod across the table, and lifted his eyebrows at them. It was

almost as much as he ever did when they were in full tide of enthusiasm.

Papa was always quiet; though perhaps, indeed, he was more preoccupied

than usual to-day. The winterly spring afternoon was beginning to close

in a little before their meal was over. They were preparing, however, to

go out again when their father called them to the window where he was

sitting, looking more grave even than he was accustomed to look.

“I am going out,” he said. “Can you manage for yourselves till dinner? I

have something to do--out.”

“Can’t we go with you, papa?” they both said in a breath.

There was a kind of embarrassment on his face. “Not to-day, I think.

After--perhaps: I have a call to make.”

“Oh, it is about business!” said Milly, wondering, yet apologetic,

looking at Grace.

“If it is not about business,” said Grace promptly, “you ought to take

us with you, papa. It is the right thing in England. In England girls

don’t go about by themselves; and then we want some friends, we want to

know the people as well as the place.”

A half smile went over his face. “You shall get the benefit of all the

introductions,” he said. “Don’t be afraid; but you must not expect to be

taken much notice of in London, just on the edge of the season, you

know. People are very busy here; and then there are so many to be looked

after--people of more pretensions than you. You must not expect too

much; but I am not going to deliver any of the letters. I am going--to

see an--old friend.”

“Oh, then, bring him here--will you please bring him here? Do, papa, do!

If it is an old friend, so much the more reason that we should know him.

Is it a friend you had before you went to Canada? Why has he never come

to see us? We have always wondered that you never had any old friends

come to see you, papa.”

Yorke did not make any direct reply. He said only, “What will you do

with yourselves while I am away?”

The two girls looked at each other somewhat blankly.

“We can’t stay in here,” cried Milly, while Grace drew herself up with

youthful dignity.

“As for staying in every time you have any business to do or any calls

to make,” she said, with serious emphasis, “you must see that is

impossible, papa. English girls may stop in-doors if they please, but we

cannot. We are Canadian girls; we are used to take care of ourselves.

Milly and I can surely take care of each other wherever we go. It would

be too humbling,” she cried, “in the country of Shakespeare, to think

two girls couldn’t go out without--what was it, Milly?--unpleasantness.

I don’t believe a word of it. Mrs Bidwell is only a vulgar Englishwoman.

Unpleasantness! I don’t believe it; and even if I did believe it I

shouldn’t allow it to be true.”

“Come,” said her father, “you must not talk so of vulgar

Englishwomen--you who are such enthusiasts for England. No, I don’t see

any harm in it. Come with me so far, I’ll take you to where the shops

are. Of course you would like to look into the shops.”

They would have liked a great deal better to go with him upon this

mysterious call, but he would not permit it, and accordingly they were

taken to Regent Street, where he left them with a beautiful confidence.

It might not be the best place in the world to leave young girls alone

on a spring afternoon, no doubt; but what did they know of that? They

were innocent, proud, modest girls, to whom no one had ever said a

disrespectful word, and who were afraid of nobody. Nor did they get any

new light upon the subject from that walk. The innocent do not even

suspect the dangers which the knowing see all about them. Nobody

molested Grace and Milly: they walked along in their armour of honest

maidenhood, knowing no evil; and were as safe as in their own rooms. It

was true, however, that their rapture waned a little, and a touch of

local patriotism came over them.

“I don’t think so very much of the shops,” said Milly doubtfully.

Milly was often the first to start an opinion, but she never was quite

sure whether she held it or not till she had the support of Grace’s

authority, which this time, as so often, was unhesitatingly given.

“I don’t think anything of the shops,” said Grace. “Of course one

doesn’t come to England to look at shops. Paris for that, I suppose; but

it is England all the same.”

“Oh yes,” said Milly, “certainly it is England all the same. I wish the

houses were a little bigger and cleaner-looking, and the streets

broader. I wish there were some trees----”

“Trees! in the heart of London,” said Grace with high contempt. “Trees

are the things that show how new a place is. Where you have nothing else

you have trees. But think how many people must have walked about here.

If we only could see them all strolling up and down this

pavement--people you would give your head to see.”

“But Shakespeare--and people like that--could not have walked about

Regent Street: it is not old enough.”

“No; not Shakespeare, perhaps. I don’t know--he might have walked about

here, though it was not Regent Street then.”

“I wonder,” said Milly suddenly, “where papa can have gone. I never

heard him talk of any old friends before; nor relations. By the way,

isn’t it very funny that we have no relations in England, Grace?”

“It is strange,” said Grace thoughtfully.

It was not a subject which had occurred to them till now. Their father

they were aware had been thirty years in Canada without ever going

“home;” and he had no family correspondence, nobody belonging to him

that they knew of except themselves. Their mother was a Canadian born,

and she had relations in plenty; and cousins on their father’s side had

not seemed a necessity before. But as they thought of it, a little

additional chill came into the air. England--so dear and delightful as

it was, the home of all their traditions--they had begun to make

acquaintance with. But to think that they had not a relation in England,

nothing to justify their fond identification of themselves with this old

country! The idea was somewhat alarming as it burst upon them. It

increased the little shade of disappointment which had crept over them

against their will, and sent them to their hotel, which was all that

answered for home at this moment, with a little heaviness at their

hearts.