FAREWELL
For a minute or two, I think she could not speak; she closed her lips
tightly, and pressed two of her fingers on them, perhaps to hide some
tremor there; and she went and placed one of her slender feet on the
fender, and looked steadfastly on the macerated countenance of the Very
Rev. the Dean of Crutch Friars, who in his oval frame, over the
chimney-piece, seemed to hear and endure William’s perversities with the
meekness of a good, sad, suffering Christian.
Aunt Dinah sighed twice, two deep, long, laborious sighs, and tapped the
steel of her stays ferociously with her finger-tips. In his distress and
confusion, William rose irresolutely. He would have approached her, but
he feared that his doing so would but precipitate an explosion, and he
remained standing, with his fingers extended on the table as if on the
keys of a piano, and looking wan and sad over his shoulder on the back
of Aunt Dinah’s natty old-fashioned cap.
“Well, young gentleman, you have made up your mind, and so have I,” said
Aunt Dinah, abruptly returning to the table. “You go your own way. I
shall not interfere in your concerns. I shall see your face _no
more_—_never_! I have done with you, and depend upon it I shan’t change.
I never change. I put you away from me. I wash my hands of you. I have
_done_ with you. I shall send a hundred pounds to Dr. Sprague, when you
leave to-morrow, first to pay college expenses, and the balance _you_
may take, and that ends all between us. I hate the world, ungrateful,
stiff-necked, rebellious, _heartless_. All I have been to you, you know.
What you would have been without me, you also know, a beggar—simply a
beggar. I shall now find other objects. You are free, Sir, henceforward.
I hope you may enjoy your liberty, and that you may never have reason to
repent your perversity and ingratitude as bitterly as I now see my
folly. Go, Sir, good-night, and let me see your face no more.”
William stood looking on his transformed aunt; he felt his ears tingle
with the insult of her speech, and a great ball seemed rising in his
throat.
Her face was darkened by a dismal anger; her look was hard and cold, and
it seemed to him that the gates of reconciliation were closed against
him for ever, and that he had come into that place of exclusion at whose
entrance hope is left behind.
William was proud, too, and sensitive. It was no equal battle. His
obligations had never before been weighed against his claims, and he
felt the cruel truth of Aunt Dinah’s words beating him down into the
dust.
With her chin in the air, and averted gaze, she sat stiff and upright in
her accustomed chair by the fire. William stood looking at her for a
time, his thoughts not very clear, and a great vague pain throbbing at
his heart. There was that in her countenance which indicated something
different from anger—a cold alienation.
William Maubray silently and softly left the room.
“He thinks it will be all over in the morning, but he does not know
_me_.” So thought Aunt Dinah, folding her cold hands together. “Gone to
bed; his last night at Gilroyd.”
Holding her mind stiffly in this attitude with a corresponding pose and
look she sate, and in a minute more William Maubray entered the room
very pale, his outside coat was on, and his hat in his hand. His lip
trembled a little, and he walked very quickly to the side of her chair,
laid his hand softly on her shoulder, and stooping down kissed her
cheek, and without a word left the room.
She heard the hall door open, and Tom’s voice talking with him as their
steps traversed the gravel, and the jarring sound of the iron gate on
its hinges. “Good-night,” said the well-known voice, so long beloved;
and “Good-night, Mr. William, good-night, Sir,” in Tom’s gruff voice,
and a little more time the gate clanged, and Tom’s lonely step came
back.
“He had no business to open the gate without my order,” said Miss
Perfect.
She was thinking of blowing Tom up, but her pride prevented; and, as Tom
entered in reply to her bell, she asked as nearly as she could in her
usual way—
“My nephew did not take away his trunk?”
“No, Mum.”
“He gave directions about his things, of course?”
“Yes, they’re to follow, Mum, by the mornin’ coach to Cambridge.”
“H’m! very good; that’s all. You had better get to your bed now.
Good-night.”
And thus, with a dry and stately air, dismissed, he withdrew, and Aunt
Dinah said, “I’m glad that’s off my mind; I’ve done right; I know I
have. Who’d have thought? But there’s no help, and I’m glad it’s over.”
Aunt Dinah sat for a long time in the drawing-room, uttering short
sentences like these, from time to time. Then she read some verses in
the Bible; and I don’t think she could have told you, when she closed
the book, what they were about. She had thoughts of a _séance_ with old
Winnie Dobbs, but somehow she was not exactly in the mood.
“Master William is not in his room yet,” observed that ancient domestic.
“Master William has gone to Cambridge to-night,” said Miss Perfect,
drily and coldly, “and his luggage follows in the morning. I can’t find
my nightcap.”
So old Winnie, though surprised, was nothing wiser that night respecting
the real character of the movement. And Aunt Dinah said her prayers
stiffly; and, bidding old Winnie a peremptory good-night, put out her
candle, and restated to herself the fact she had already frequently
mentioned: “I have acted rightly; I have nothing to regret. William
will, I dare say, come to his senses, and recollect all he owes me.”
In the mean time, William, with no very distinct ideas, and only his
huge pain and humiliation at his heart, trudged along the solitary road
to Saxton. He sat down on the stile, under the great ash tree by the
roadside, to gather up his thoughts. Little more than half an hour
before, he had been so unusually happy; and now, here he sat
shipwrecked, wounded, and forlorn.
He looked at his watch again. A dreadful three-quarters of an hour must
elapse before the Cambridge coach would draw up at the Golden Posts, in
High Street. Had he not better go on, and await its arrival there? Yet
what need he care? What was it to him whether he were late or not? In
his outcast desperation he fancied he would rather like to wear out his
shoes and his strength in a long march to Cambridge. He would have liked
to lift his dusty hat grimly to Violet, as he strode footsore and
cheerless on his way. But alas! he was leaving Violet _there_, among
those dark-tufted outlines, and under the high steep roof whose edge he
could just discern. There could be no chance meeting. Farewell! Back to
Cambridge he was going, and through Cambridge into space, where by those
who once liked him he should be found no more; on that he was resolved.
So up he got again, without a plan, without a reason, as he had sat
down; and he lifted his hat, and, with extended arm, waved his farewell
toward Gilroyd. And the old ash tree looked down sadly, murmuring, in
the fickle night breeze, over his folly.
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