_Winter's Tale_.
She flew out of the room, across the passage, down the little stair, and
out at the door, still standing slightly ajar, for a moment thinking of
nothing but the delight of being liberated at last. But it was dusk
outside among the trees, and her hesitation which way to go recalled her
to herself. She stopped short, and then turned back again.
"I should have thanked him. He really must think me mad," she said to
herself, with a hot flush of shame, hardly knowing what she ought to do.
But she was not long left in doubt. Mr Cheviott had followed her
down-stairs; he was standing at the door.
"I am ashamed of not thanking you for letting me out," she said,
hastily.
"I hardly see that I could have done less," he replied, dryly. "I
merely followed you now to direct you how to get round to the front, as
I believe you wish. You must keep that path to the left till it meets a
wider one, which will bring you out at the foot of a flight of stone
steps. These will take you up to the side terrace, and you can then
easily see your way to the front of the house. It is not really dark
yet; it is only the trees here which make it seem so, even in winter.
They are so thick."
"Thank you," said Mary. "I am very much obliged to you, and I should
have said so before, but--I did not think I was so silly--the feeling of
being shut up in that room must have made me forget, it was so
horrible," and she gave a little shiver.
Mr Cheviott stepped forward a little, but it was too dark for Mary to
see the concern in his eyes.
"Would you like me to go with you till you meet your friends," he said,
very gently.
"Oh, _no_, thank you," exclaimed Mary, with great vehemence.
Mr Cheviott drew back.
"I see," he said, with the slightly satirical tone Mary seemed to know
so well and hated so devoutly. "It is bad enough to be still in the
precincts of the ogre's castle, but the presence of the ogre himself is
quite too much for your nerves. Good-evening Miss Western."
He raised his hat and re-entered the house before Mary had time to
reply. She stood still for a second.
"Have I been rude to him again?" she said to herself, with a little
compunction. "However, it really does not matter. No two people could
dislike and despise each other more thoroughly than he and I do. I
could never, in any circumstances, have liked him; but still, for Lily's
sake, I could have been civil to him. But _now_! I only hope, oh, ever
so earnestly, that I shall never see him again--and what he thinks or
does not think of me really is of less than no consequence."
Nevertheless, the thought of the afternoon's adventure made her cheeks
tingle hotly, and she hurried on as fast as she could in the uncertain
light. Mary Western seemed strangely unlike her usual philosophical
self. She even seemed to find a relief to her irritation in trampling
unnecessarily on the dry brushwood lying about here and there--the
"scrunch" worked off her disgust a little. Once, after jumping on the
top of a small raked-up heap, she stood still and laughed at herself.
"What a baby I am! I need never laugh at poor Josey's `tantrums'
again," she said to herself. "But the truth is that man has thoroughly
mortified me, and I can't stand mortification. It is my thorn in the
flesh."
Just then it seemed to her that she heard a faint sound in the path
behind her. It was too dark to see anything, but Mary's heart began to
beat faster, and jumping down from the heap she hurried on more quickly
than before.
"I dare say it's only a rabbit," she thought; "but still all round here
has a sort of haunted feeling to me."
She was glad when at last she came upon the flight of steps Mr Cheviott
had described. Running up them, the first object that met her sight was
Mr Morpeth hastening towards her.
"Miss Western! did you get out of the window? It was frightfully rash,"
he exclaimed.
"I did _not_ get out of the window," replied Mary, shortly. "But that I
did not try to do so is no thanks to you, Mr Morpeth."
"Why, what's the matter? I have done my very best, I can assure you,"
he replied good-naturedly. "I was as quick as I could be, considering
all your directions--I don't think it can be more than half an hour
since I left you."
"Half an hour," repeated Mary, indignantly. "You talk coolly of not
much more than half an hour, but just fancy what that seemed to me.
Shut up alone in that horrible room, and in the dark, too!"
"I'm very sorry, but I couldn't help it."
"It would not have taken _me_ half an hour, I know," pursued Mary, "to
have run round to the front of the house and find the housekeeper."
"Yes," replied Mr Morpeth, "it certainly would, if, when you had run
round to the front of the house, you had _not_ found the housekeeper,
and had been told instead that she had had to hurry off to her master,
who had arrived unexpectedly--and if you had had to explain all to Mrs
Greville, and beg her not to rouse an alarm and so on--all this in
deference to the special commands of a certain young lady, whom I
mistakenly imagined I was trying to serve."
Mary felt rather ashamed of herself.
"Did you not find the housekeeper after all?" she inquired, meekly.
"Yes, Mrs Greville managed it, but I would not let her go back through
the house to let you out, as I knew you would so dislike possibly
meeting that fellow--what's his name?--the man himself, I mean, whom you
hate so. So I got a key; look what a queer one," holding out a quaint
looking object, which Mary could, however, hardly distinguish, till she
took it in her own hands, "it opens the spring door from the outside,
you see."
"But did _you_ see Mr Cheviott?" asked Mary.
"Oh, no! he stopped at his bailiff's, or somewhere, and sent on his
groom to say he had come back about some business, and would stay all
night. Then off flies Mrs Silver, or whatever her name is--and nobody
thinks any more of us two unfortunate wretches."
"Yes, I see. I understand it all now," said Mary, "and--"
"You do, but I don't," interrupted Mr Morpeth. "I want to know how you
got out of the room. You could never have found the spring, after all,
and in the dark too."
Mary did not answer.
"_Did_ you?" persisted her companion. "Come now, Miss Western, I do
think I deserve a civil answer."
"Well, then, I _didn't_," replied Mary.
"Do you call that a civil answer?" inquired Mr Morpeth.
"No," said Mary, half laughing, "I don't know that I do, but--"
"But what?"
"The truth is, I don't want to tell you how I got out of the room, and I
shall be exceedingly, infinitely obliged to you if you will say no more
about the affair."
"A short time ago you said you would be exceedingly obliged, or
eternally grateful, or something of the kind if I would climb out of
that window and find the housekeeper."
"And so I was--so I am," said Mary.
"Looks like it," observed Mr Morpeth.
Then they walked on a few steps in silence, Mary feeling still uneasy,
and somewhat conscience-smitten.
"Mr Morpeth," she said at last, "what are you thinking?"
"Would you really like to know?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, I was thinking that girls are all the same--very little
satisfaction to be got out of any of them."
"That means me, I suppose," said Mary, slightly nettled.
"Perhaps," replied Mr Morpeth, coolly. "You see, Miss Western, I did
think you such a particularly sensible girl."
"I dislike being considered a sensible girl more than anything you could
say to me," interrupted Mary.
"There you go!" said Mr Morpeth. "As I was saying, I thought you, till
to-day, a very sensible girl--not like my sisters, who are forever
flying out about something or other--and this afternoon you have really
been so very uncertain and queer-tempered--"
"I know I have," interrupted Mary again, stopping short as she spoke.
"Mr Morpeth," she went on, "we shall be meeting the others again
directly. Will you be really so _very_ kind as to say nothing more
about this afternoon and all the trouble I have given you? I don't
think I am generally uncertain and queer-tempered, but I have really
been a good deal worried and troubled lately, and--and I think if I
could explain all you would say there was a little excuse for me."
There was something very like the glistening of tears in the brown eyes;
it was almost too dark to see, but the voice suggested enough to soften
Mr Morpeth's heart--far more boyish and impressionable than he would
have liked to own to. A new idea struck him.
"Perhaps, after all, she had some reason for disliking that fellow," he
thought--"perhaps she knows more of him than she allows, and he has
fallen in love with her--she is really awfully pretty--and is pestering
her to marry him though she hates him. And her people are so poor, Mrs
Greville says--"
He turned to Mary with a change of tone.
"Miss Western," he said, earnestly, "I promise you to say no more about
it, and I will do my best to prevent Mrs Greville or any one bothering
you--I really will, and I'm sorry I said you were bad-tempered."
"Thank you, thank you very much," said Mary, cordially.
And in a few minutes they rejoined Mrs Greville and the Misses Morpeth,
the former fortunately too much taken up with a more recent occurrence
to have any thought to spare for Mary's misadventures.
"Fancy, my dear," she began, "what an escape you have had! Mr Cheviott
has just left us; he has been showing us the pictures himself. So
_very_ kind and attentive! You have only just missed him."
"How fortunate for me!" said Mary, dryly.
It was quite dark when they got back to Uxley, and the next morning Mr
Western came over as arranged, and took Mary home again the same
afternoon.
It seemed to her as if she had been away weeks or months instead of
days. She was glad to be home again, and yet now, if she could have
deferred her return, she would. Lilias asked her no questions, but
still, either in Mary's imagination or in fact, there was a tacit
disappointment in her manner when she found Mary had nothing to tell.
"_I_ was hopeful of some good result from what I had in my head,"
thought Mary, "and Lily is so quick, though she had not the least idea
of my doing such a wild thing. I fancy she knew by instinct that I
_was_ hopeful."
"You did not hear anything of those people--the Romary people, I mean?"
asked Lilias, at last, timidly, but with a sudden rush of colour into
her face, which made Mary feel inclined to cry. It was about two days
after she had come back.
"Yes," she replied, "I did. I could not help hearing a good deal about
them; they seem the staple subject of conversation in the
neighbourhood."
"About Captain Beverley--did you hear anything about him?" said Lilias,
hastily. "Mary, you are concealing something from me--he is going to be
married?"
"No, indeed. I heard nothing of that sort, Lily, I assure you. If I
had, I would have told you about it at once; you know it is not my way
to shirk such things--I am rather over-hasty the other way, I fear,"
said Mary, with a little sigh. "And, indeed, I think I should almost
have been _glad_ to hear it. It would have been a stab and done with."
"Mary, you are awfully hard," said Lilias. Her voice was low and
quivering.
"Hard!" repeated Mary, with amazement in her tone. _She_ hard to
_Lilias_! What fearful injustice--for a moment she felt too staggered
to speak--how _could_ Lilias misjudge her so? What a world it must be
where such near friends could make such mistakes! Had _she_ ever so
misjudged any one? And, by an association of ideas which she herself
could not have explained, her mind suddenly reverted to that
never-to-be-forgotten scene in the Romary library, and the look on Mr
Cheviott's face which she had determined _not_ to recognise as one of
pain. Was it possible that in the cruel, almost insulting things she
had said to him she had been influenced by some utter misjudgment of
_his_ motives?--was it possible that they were good and pure and
unselfish?--could his cousin be a bad man, from whom he was chivalrously
protecting Lilias's innocence and inexperience? No, that was
impossible. No man with Arthur's honest eyes _could_ be a bad man; but,
if not this, what other motive could Mr Cheviott have that was not a
mean and selfish one? Mary felt faint and giddy as these thoughts
crowded upon her; the mere far-off suggestion of the tremendous
injustice she might have done him, a suggestion born of the sharp pain
of Lilias's words to herself, seemed to confuse and stun her; all her
ideas lost their proportion; all the data upon which her late actions
and train of thought had been based suddenly failed her. And so swiftly
had her mind travelled away from what had first started these misgivings
that Lilias had spoken once or twice, in reply to her ejaculation,
before the sense of her words reached her brain.
"Mary, Mary, listen to me. Don't look so white and miserable," Lilias
was beseeching her. "I didn't mean hard to _me_--I don't even exactly
mean hard to _him_--I mean hard about the whole, about the way it
affects me. You don't understand, and I don't want you to think me a
sentimental fool, but can't you understand a little? Nothing would be
so frightful to me as to have my faith in him destroyed, and, don't you
see, if it could be proved to me that he had been trifling with me,
deceiving me, in fact--that all the time he had been caring for some one
else more than for me--don't you see how frightful it would be for me?
It would be a stab indeed, but a stab that would kill the best part of
me--all my faith and trust, Mary, do you see?"
"Yes," said Mary, sadly, "I see."
And she saw more--she saw that, for the sake of Lilias's health and
peace of mind, it was time that something should be done.
"She will grow morbid about it, and it will kill her youth and
happiness, if not herself," thought Mary. "I suppose it is on account
of the isolated life we have had that this has taken such a terribly
deep hold of her. For, after all, perhaps it is _possible_ that,
without being actually a bad, cruel man, Captain Beverley was not so
much in earnest as she thought. _I_ should call him a bad, cruel man,
but I suppose the world would not--the world of which we know so little,
as Mr Cheviott kindly reminded me! But what can I do for Lily?"
"Mary," said Lilias, "what are you thinking about?"
"I am thinking that something must be done for you," said Mary.
"Lilias, I think it would be better for you to go away from home for a
while."
"Yes," said Lilias. "I am almost beginning to think so myself. But I
don't see how to manage it, unless I advertise as a governess. We seem
to have no friends."
"By-the-bye," said Mary, "that reminds me. Those Miss Morpeths at Uxley
were talking about some Brookes who they think must be cousins of
mother. I meant to have asked her about them, but I forgot."
"They're not likely to be much good to us, even if they are cousins of
ours," said Lilias, half bitterly. "None of mother's rich relations
have troubled themselves about her."
And no more was said about the possible cousins just then.
A few days passed. Mary got back into home ways, from which even so
short an absence as that of her visit to Uxley seemed to have separated
her, and all was much as it had been before--much as it had been before
that Sunday, now more than six months ago, when the little party of
strangers had disturbed the equanimity of the Hathercourt congregation--
before the still more fatal afternoon when Arthur Beverley had come over
to see the Rector on business, and in his absence had stayed to tea with
his wife and daughters in the Rectory drawing-room--much the same, but
oh, how different! thought Lilias, wearily, as she tried her best to
look as cheerful as of old--to take the same interest in daily life and
its occurrences, which to a healthy mind is never wanting, however
monotonous the daily life may be. She succeeded to some extent; she
made herself believe that, at least, her trials were kept to herself,
and allowed to shadow no other's horizon. But she was mistaken. Her
mother began to hope her child was "getting over it;" her father, who
had but dimly suspected that anything was wrong, felt dimly relieved to
hear her laugh, and joke, and tease as usual again; Alexa and Josey had
their own private confabulations on the subject, deciding that either
their eldest sister was a heartless flirt, or that, "between themselves,
you know," everything was satisfactorily arranged, though for some
mysterious reason for a time to be kept secret, as any way it was
clearly to be seen "that Lily was not in low spirits." Only Mary,
ignorant as she was and professed herself to be of all such misfortunes
as are involved by falling in or out of love, was undeceived.
"Lilias is trying her best, but she is breaking her heart all the same,"
she said to herself. "If only I could get her away for a while among
new people and new scenes, there might be a chance for her."
In the end it was kind Mrs Greville again who came to the rescue, and
that, to Mary's great relief, without any intervention of hers. Her one
piece of concealment from Lilias had cost her dear; she had no wish to
try again any independent action. What Mrs Greville did or did not
suspect, Mary could not tell, but had their kindly friend known all, she
could not have acted with greater consideration and tact. She was going
to town for a fortnight, she wrote, most unexpectedly, to consult a
famous doctor about some new symptoms in her husband's chronic
complaint. She was hopeful, yet fearful of the result. Should it be
unfavourable, she would find it hard to "keep up" before her husband,
away from home and all her friends. Would Mrs Western spare one of the
girls to go with them and not exactly limit the time of her absence, as
_in case_ the doctor thought well of Mr Greville they might go on to
Hastings, or somewhere for a month? Lilias, or Mary either, would be of
the greatest comfort to her, but if she might venture to say so--Mary
was too sensible to be offended--she would, _if anything_, prefer
Lilias. She was such a special favourite of Mr Greville, and it was
he, of course, who was to be the one most considered just now.
"Well, girls?" said Mrs Western, inquiringly, for there was silence
when Mrs Greville's note was first read in the conclave of three.
Silence on Lilias's part of mingled relief and repugnance. On Mary's
part the silence of caution, of fear lest her intense anxiety that
Lilias should fall in with Mrs Greville's proposal should injure its
own cause by impulsive advocacy. "Well girls?"
"I think Mary had better go," said Lilias.
"But you see what Mrs Greville says about preferring you," suggested
Mrs Western, gently, with some faint, instinctive notion of what was
passing in her second daughter's heart.
"Yes, but that's rubbish," said Lilias, the colour rising slightly in
her cheeks. "Mr Greville likes us both. It is only that I chatter
more than Mary, and, like all quiet, indolent men, he likes to be amused
with the least possible trouble to himself. Mary is not so amusing,
perhaps, because there is generally a large sprinkling of sense in her
remarks, and even when, on rare occasions, she mixes it up with nonsense
it is more fatiguing to separate the two than to take it all in
comfortably, as pure, unadulterated nonsense like mine."
"You are certainly giving us a specimen of it just now," said Mary,
parenthetically. "But seriously, mamma," she went on, "I think we
should consider what Mrs Greville says about preferring Lilias. I am
speaking _partly_ selfishly, for though I should have liked it well
enough at another time, just now I should not like it at all. It would
unsettle me altogether--I have just got all the things I want to do
before the summer nicely arranged. Don't be vexed with me or think me
very selfish, Lilias," for her sister was regarding her with an
expression she did not quite understand.
To her surprise, Lilias, by way of answer, threw her arms around her and
hugged her violently.
"Think you selfish! Mother just listen to her," she exclaimed. "Fancy
me thinking Mary selfish." Then she hugged her again, and Mary _felt_
there were tears in her eyes. "Selfish indeed! No, but I wouldn't say
as much for your truthfulness, you little humbug! Do you think I don't
see through all your unselfish story-telling," she added in a lower
voice.
"Then don't disappoint me," whispered Mary, and when at last she
disengaged herself from Lilias's embrace, she said aloud, quietly
indeed, but firmly enough to carry her purpose, "it is not
story-telling, it is _true_. I should not, in the very least degree,
enjoy leaving home just now. And, what is more, I just _won't_ go, so,
dear friends, you see my mind's made up."
And so it was settled, to be followed as was inevitable with these girls
when any scheme of the kind was in prospect, by a solemn and momentous
discussion as to ways and means--in other words, as to dresses and
bonnets and ribbons! But Lilias brightened up wonderfully under the
impetus of this discussion, and seemed, for the time, so like her old
self that Mary began to take heart about her, and to hope everything
from the change in prospect.