And Mr Cheviott too--his thoughts had no lack of material on which to
exert themselves just then. He was sorry for Alys--very sorry--and not
a little uneasy and ready to do anything in his power to please and
gratify her. But how to do it?
"She cannot, under any circumstances whatever, imagine herself ever
coming to Romary again," he said to himself, over and over, as if there
were a fascination in the words. "Ah, well, it is a part of the whole,"
he added, bitterly, "and Alys must try to content herself with something
else."
A slight cloud seemed, for a day or two, to come over the comfort and
cheerfulness of the little party at the farm. Mary was conscious of it
without being able, exactly, to explain it. "But for Alys," she felt
satisfied that she would not care in the least.
"Mr Cheviott may `glower' at me if he likes," she said to herself. "I
really don't mind. I am not likely ever to see him again, so what does
it matter? He is offended, I suppose, because I did not at once accept
with delight the invitation which he condescended, grudgingly enough, no
doubt, to allow poor Alys to give me."
So in her own thoughts, as was her way, she made fun of the whole
situation and imagined that Mr Cheviott's decrease of cordiality and
friendliness had not the slightest power to disturb her equanimity. Yet
somehow in her honest conscience there lurked a faint misgiving. It was
difficult to call his evident dejection haughtiness or temper, difficult
to accuse of offensive condescension the man whose every word and tone
was full of the gentlest, almost deprecating, deference and respect--
most difficult of all to hold loyally to her old position of contempt
for and repugnance to a man so unmistakably unselfish, so almost
woman-like in his tender devotion to the sister dependent on his care.
"Yet he _must_ be heartless," persisted Mary, valiantly, "he _must_ be
narrow-minded and cruel, and he _must_ be what any straightforward,
honourable person would call unprincipled and intriguing, wherever the
carrying out of his own designs is in question."
"I shall be so glad to be home again, mamma," she said to her mother one
afternoon when she had left Alys for an hour or two, to go home to see
how the Rectory was getting on without her.
"Yes, dear, I can well fancy it," replied Mrs Western, sympathisingly.
"You must just remember, you know, Mary, that your present task, however
distasteful, is just as much a _duty_ as if that poor girl were one of
the cottagers about here. Indeed, almost more so. I dare say, in spite
of their wealth and position, she is far more really friendless than any
other of our poor neighbours. But she is a sweet girl, you say?"
"_Very_," said Mary, warmly. "It is a pleasure to do anything for her."
"Poor child! And with such a brother! A _most_ disagreeable, cold,
haughty man, I hear. But he surely cannot be anything but courteous to
you, Mary? Under the circumstances, anything else would be too
outrageous."
"Oh dear, no," said Mary, hastily, startled a little somehow by her
mother's tone. "He is perfectly civil to me--most considerate, and I
suppose I should say `kind.' Only I shall be glad to be at home--they
are talking now of moving Miss Cheviott to Romary on Thursday--and back
into my regular ways. Mother, I'm an awful old maid already, I get into
a groove and like to stay there."
The words recurred to her on her way back to the Edge. Would she really
be so glad to be home again? She had used Mr Cheviott's expression,
and it led her into the train of thought which had suggested it to him.
Yes, there was truth in what he said. In almost every kind of life, in
almost any circumstances, even if painful in themselves, there grows up
secretly, as the days pass on, a curious, undefinable charm--a something
it hurts us to break, though, till the necessity for so doing is upon
us, we had been unconscious of its existence.
"It must be that," said Mary. "I have got into the groove of my present
life, and now that it is coming to an end, disagreeable though it has
been, I feel it strangely painful to leave it. Of course it is natural
I should feel pain in parting from Alys, whom I can _never_ be with
again; but, besides that, I am sorry to have done with the whole
affair--the queer incongruous life, the old kitchen in the evenings, and
Mr Cheviott and his books in the corner, the feeling I am of use to
her, to them both, that they would have been wretchedly uncomfortable
without me, and that even now that I am away for an hour they will be
missing me. What queer, inconsistent complications we human beings are!
It is just the coming to an end of it all, the beginning to see it in
the haze of the past, that gives it a charm."
She stood still and gazed across over the bare, long stretch of meadow
land before her to the far distant horizon, radiant already in the
colours of the fast setting sun. Suddenly a voice behind her made her
start.
"Are you bidding the sun good-night?" it said.
Mary turned round and saw Mr Cheviott.
"Yes," she replied. "I suppose I was. There, is something rather
melancholy about a sunset, is there not?" she added after a little
pause.
"There is something not rather, but very melancholy about all farewells.
And sunset is good-bye forever to a day, though not to the sun," said
Mr Cheviott.
"`Out of Eternity
This new day is born;
Into Eternity
At night will return.'"
"Yes," said Mary again. "It is like what my little sister Francie once
said, `What a sad thing _pastness_ is.'"
"How pretty!" said Mr Cheviott. "Pastness! Yes, it is a sad thing,
but fortunately not an ugly thing. Distance in time as well as in
space, `lends enchantment to the view.' How strangely little things
affect us sometimes," he went on. "There are occasions, little events
of my life, that I cannot recall without an indescribable thrill,
neither of pleasure nor pain, but a strange, acute mixture of both. And
yet they are so trifling in themselves that I cannot explain why they
should so affect me."
"I think I have felt what you mean," said Mary.
"And in the same way I have felt extraordinarily affected by a far-off
view sometimes," pursued Mr Cheviott. "When I was a boy, from my
nursery window we had, on clear days, a view of the shire hills, and on
the top, or nearly on the top of one of them, we could, on _very_ clear
days, distinguish a little white cottage. Do you know, I could never
look at it without the tears coming into my eyes, and yet, if it had
been near enough to see it plainly, most likely it was the most prosaic
of white cottages."
"I have had the same feeling about things _not_ `enchanted' by
distance," said Mary. "Once, on a journey, driving rapidly, we suddenly
passed a cottage with two girls sitting on the door-step. A ray of
rather faint evening sunlight fell across them as they sat, otherwise
everything about the scene was commonplace in the extreme. But yet
_something_ made me feel as if I were going to cry. I had to turn my
head away and shut my eyes."
"That's just what I mean," said Mr Cheviott, and then for a minute or
two they both stood silent, gazing at the sunset.
"Miss Western," said Mr Cheviott, at last, "when you are back at the
Rectory again, and the present little phase of your life is past and
done with, I trust its `pastness' may soften all the annoyance you have
had to put up with. Even I, I would fain hope, may come in for a little
of the benefit of the mellowing haze of distance and bygoneness?"
"I do not feel that I have had _any_ annoyances to bear," said Mary,
cordially. "Alys has been only too unselfish, and--and--you, yourself,
Mr Cheviott, have been most considerate of my comfort. My associations
with the Edge can never be unpleasant."
"Thank you--thank you, so very much," said Mr Cheviott, so earnestly
that Mary forthwith began to call hereof a humbug.
Would it not have been honest to have said a little more--to have told
him that, while she really did thank him for his courtesy and
thoughtfulness, nothing that had happened had, in the least, shaken her
real opinion of his character? Of the other side of his character, so
she mentally worded it in instinctive self-defence of her constancy.
For, indeed, to her there had come to be two Mr Cheviotts--Alys's
brother, and, alas! Arthur Beverley's cousin!