"I loved him not, and yet, now he is gone,
I checked him when he spoke; yet could he speak--"
_W.S. Landor_.
The evening that followed this little conversation was one of the--if
not the--pleasantest of those Mary had spent at the farm. Alys seemed
wonderfully stronger and better, or else she had caught the infection of
her brother's unusually good spirits, and, till considerably past her
ordinary hour of settling for the night, Mr Cheviott and Mary stayed in
her room, laughing, chattering, and joking till Mrs Wills began to
think more experienced nurses would be better fitted to take care of the
young lady.
"Not that Miss Mary has not an old head on young shoulders, if ever such
could be," she remarked to her husband, "but Miss Cheviott, for all that
she's a-lying there so weakly-like, and many a month, it's my opinion,
when they get her home again, will have to lie; she do have a sperrit of
her own. And the master, as I'm always a-going to call him, thinking of
our Captain Beverley it must be, he has a deal of fun in him, has Mr
Cheviott, for all his quiet ways, as no one would fancy was there."
But, by and by, Mary exerted her authority. Alys must go to sleep.
What would Mr Brandreth say if he found her knocked up and wearied the
next day--Wednesday, too, the day before the move to Romary, for which
all her strength would be required? So whether sleepy or not, Alys had
to obey orders, and, as Mary had a long letter to Lilias to write, Mr
Cheviott volunteered to read his sister to sleep, for which Mary
sincerely thanked him.
He came into the kitchen an hour or so later, while she was still busy
with her letter. He had a book in his hand, and sat down quietly to
read it beside the fire. After a while the kitchen clock struck ten.
"Miss Western," said Mr Cheviott, "I think if I had any authority over
you, as you have over Alys, I would exert it to make you go to bed. You
were up very early, you have been on your feet, about one thing and
another, nearly all day, besides a good long walk; and now you are
writing I should be afraid to say _how_ many sheets full. Don't you
intend to take any rest? I feel responsible, remember, for the
condition in which you go back to the Rectory, and I don't want your
father and mother to think Alys and I have no conscience about
overworking you."
Mary left off writing, and looked up with a smile. Her wavy brown hair
was somewhat disarranged, and she pushed it back off her temples with a
slight gesture of weariness. Her face was a little flushed, but her
eyes were bright and happy-looking. Those dear, good, honest eyes of
hers, ready to tell of pleasure and content, as of, it must be
confessed, disapproval or indignation! She made a pleasant picture,
tumbled hair notwithstanding--she reminded Mr Cheviott, somehow, of the
day he had first seen her under the porch of the old church, when she
had looked up in his face with that peculiarly attractive expression of
hers of hearty, fearless good-will.
"I do believe, now that I leave off writing and can think about it," she
said, "I do believe I _am_ a little tired. Not that I have done
anything unusual to-day by any means. I suppose I must go to bed,"
looking regretfully at her not yet completed letter; "but writing to
Lilias is such a temptation."
"She is enjoying herself very much, you say," observed Mr Cheviott, in
so natural and unconstrained a manner that, for the moment, Mary
actually forgot that he was the speaker, forgot her ordinarily quick
rising indignation whenever he ventured to name Lilias at all.
"Exceedingly," she replied, warmly. "I have never had such cheerful,
almost merry, letters from her before when she has been away. I am
delighted; but a little astonished all the same," she added, in a lower
voice, almost as if speaking to herself.
"I am so _very_ glad of it," said Mr Cheviott, fervently, yet with a
sort of hesitation which recalled Mary to herself. Quick as thought the
blood mounted to her temple--she turned sharply, the whole expression of
her being, even to the pretty curves of her slight firm figure, seeming
to her observer to change and harden. She gathered up the loose sheets
of her letter and made a step or two towards the door. Then her
habitual instincts of consideration and courtesy asserting themselves,
she stopped short.
"I think I had better go to bed," she said. "Good-night, Mr Cheviott."
Hitherto, latterly that is to say, in the prevalence of a tacit truce
between these two, the usual amenities of intimate and friendly social
relations had half unconsciously crept in.
"For Alys's sake," Mary had decided, when for the first time she found
herself shaking hands with the man she had prayed she might "never see
again," "for Alys's sake it is necessary to make no fuss, and perhaps
for my own, too, it is on the whole more dignified to behave in an
ordinary way."
But to-night, dignity or no dignity, her indignation was again too fully
aroused to allow anything to interfere with its expression, and she was
proceeding in queenly fashion to the door, when, to her amazement, Mr
Cheviott stepped forward and stood in her way.
"Miss Western," he said, quietly, "won't you say good-night? Won't you
shake hands with me as usual?"
Mary hesitated. She did not want to make herself ridiculous--for
Lilias's sake even, she shrank from the slightest appearance of
petulance or small resentment. She hesitated; then looking up bravely,
said, honestly:
"I would rather not, but--" A pair of dark eyes were gazing down upon
her--gazing as if they would read her very soul, so earnest, so _true_
in their expression that Mary could not but own to herself that it was
difficult to realise that they belonged to an unprincipled and
dishonourable man.
"But?" he said, gravely.
"I was only going to say, if you think so much of shaking hands, I don't
mind," said Mary, with a curious mixture of deprecation and defiance in
her tone. "I don't want to be uncourteous or exaggerated--besides, what
is there in shaking hands? We do so half a dozen times a day with
people we do not care the least for."
"Yes," said Mr Cheviott, gravely still, "we do. But people one doesn't
care the least for are different from people one positively dislikes, or
worse still, _distrusts_."
"Can't you leave all that?" said Mary, sadly. "_I_ cannot help what--
what happened, and, indeed"--her voice trembling a little--"towards the
Mr Cheviott I have known _here_ I should be most wrong to have any but
friendly feelings."
She held out her hand. Mr Cheviott took it in his, holding it for one
little moment longer than was really necessary.
"Is it always to be war between us, Miss Western?" as if the words could
not be kept back. "Heaven knows how glad _I_ should be to leave forever
all the painful part of the past."
Mary slowly shook her head. Then looking up suddenly again, she said,
gently:
"We have got on very well here without fighting. Why should not the
truce last till the end of the time here? There is only another day."
"Yes," repeated Mr Cheviott. "Only one other day."
Then Mary went off to bed, but not, for much longer than her wont, to
sleep. Her mind seemed strangely bewildered and perplexed.
"I have lost all my mile-stones," she said to herself. "I feel as if I
were being forced to think black white in the strangest way. But I
won't--no, I won't, _won't_, won't!"
And with this laudable determination she went to sleep.
It was late before Mr Cheviott left the kitchen fire-side that night.
"Will the truce last," he was saying to himself, "even through another
day? Twenty times in an hour I have been on the point of saying what,
indeed, _would_ end it one way or another. And Arthur thought I could
not sympathise with him! I wonder on which of the two of us that
idiotic will has entailed the greater suffering?"
His good spirits seemed all to have deserted him by the next morning.
He was grave and almost stern, and, so said Alys, "objectionably
_affaire_ about some stupid letters sent on from Romary." Alys was
unusually talkative and obtrusively cheerful, but Mary understood her
through it all. A cloud of real sorrow was over both girls, more
heavily on Mary, for she knew what Alys was still silently determined to
hope against, that this was far more than the "last day" of their queer
life at the farm, that it was the end of the strange but strong
friendship that, despite all obstacles, had sprung up between them.
For though Alys had almost pointedly refrained from any recurrence to
the question of their meeting again at Romary, and Mary had been only
too ready to second her in all avoidance of the subject, this absence of
discussion had in no wise softened the girl's resolution.
"Never," she repeated to herself, "never under _any_ circumstances can I
imagine myself entering that house again."
And the day wore on without any allusion being made to the when or the
where of their ever meeting again.
Late in the afternoon Mary had gone at Alys's request to pick some of
the pretty spring flowers to be found in profusion in the Balner woods
hard by, when, as she was returning homewards, laden with primroses and
violets, looking up she saw Mr Cheviott coming quickly along the path
to meet her.
"Alys?" she exclaimed, quickly, with just the slightest shade of anxiety
in her voice. "Does she want me?"
"Oh, no," replied Mr Cheviott, with a smile. "Alys is all right. What
an anxious nurse you are, Miss Western!"
"Yes," said Mary, "it is silly. I must get accustomed to the idea of
her doing without me. But I could not help having a feeling to-day of a
different kind of anxiety--a feeling of almost superstitious fear lest
anything should go wrong with her to-day--the last day. It would be so
hard to leave her less well than she is, and--of course," she went on,
looking up with a slight flush on her face, "I own to being a little
proud of her! It is a great satisfaction to hear Mr Brandreth say
that, considering all, she could not have got on better than she has
done."
"Of course it is," said Mr Cheviott, warmly. "And I am more glad than
I can say that you feel it so. It is a little bit of a reward for you."
Mary did not reply, and they walked on slowly for a few moments in
silence.
"How pretty your flowers are," said Mr Cheviott, at last.
"Lovely, are they not?" replied Mary, half burying her face, as she
spoke, in a great rich cluster of primroses that she had tied up
together into a sort of ball. "They are the best flowers of all--these
spring ones--there can be no doubt about it."
"Or is it that they _are_ the spring ones," suggested Mr Cheviott.
"A little perhaps," allowed Mary. "Have I not got a quantity? Alys
took a fancy for some to take home to Romary."
"Poor child, she will not be able to gather any for herself this year,"
said Mr Cheviott.
"No," said Mary.
"And she will not have you to gather them for her after to-day."
"No," said Mary again, this time more dryly.
Mr Cheviott stopped short, and as they were placed in the path, Mary,
without positive rudeness, could not help stopping too.
"Miss Western," said Mr Cheviott, abruptly, "is your decision quite
unshaken?"
"What decision?" said Mary, quietly.
"About coming to see us at Romary, about, in fact, continuing to honour
us with your acquaintanceship--I would _like_ to say friendship, but I
am afraid of vexing you--or the reverse."
Mary pulled a poor primrose to pieces, petal by petal, before she
replied.
"I wish," she said, at last, with an appeal almost approaching to pathos
in her tones, "I wish you had done as I begged you last night--let this
last day end peacefully without rousing anything discordant. Mr
Cheviott," she went on, with an attempt at a smile, "you don't know me.
There are certain directions in which I feel so intensely that it would
not take much to make me actually fierce--there is something of the
Tartar underlying what you think cool self-possession--and one of those
directions is my sister Lilias." Her voice faltered a little. "Now
won't you be warned," she added, speaking more lightly, "won't you be
warned, and let our pleasant truce last to the end?"
"To the end," he repeated, with some bitterness. "A matter of a few
hours, and, for the sake of keeping those peaceful, I am to relinquish
my only chance of--of ever coming to a better understanding with you?
No, Miss Western, I cannot let the subject drop thus."
"Then what do you want to know?" she said, facing round upon him.
"I want to know if you keep to your determination never to come to see
my sister at Romary, never to enter my house again, never, in fact, to
have anything more to say to Alys, who is attached to you, and whom I
know you care for? You may say she might come to see you, but at
present, at any rate, that is impossible--besides, in such forced
intercourse there could be no real enjoyment."
"No," said Mary, "there could not be. It is best to call things by
their right names. I do care for Alys, deeply and truly, but I do not
wish or intend to go on knowing her. I would not ask her to come to my
home to see me, because I cannot go to her home to see her."
"And why not?"
"Because she is your sister," replied Mary, calmly. "And because I
could not receive the hospitality of a man who has behaved as I believe
you to have behaved."
Mr Cheviott drew a step nearer her, and Mary, impelled, in spite of
herself, to look up in his face, saw that it had grown to a deadly
whiteness. She saw, too, something which she was half puzzled, half
frightened at--something which in her short, peaceful experience of
life, she had never come into close contact with--a strong man's
overwhelming indignation at unjust accusation. She stood silent. What
could she say?
"This is _fearfully_ hard to bear," he said, at last. "I thought I was
prepared for it, but--in spite of myself, I suppose--I had cherished
hopes that recently your opinion of me had begun to soften. Miss
Western, has it never occurred to you as possible that you have
misjudged me?"
Mary hesitated.
"Yes," she said, at last. "I may own to you that--lately--I have tried
to think if it _was_ possible."
"You have _wished_ to find it possible?" said Mr Cheviott, eagerly.
"Sometimes," said Mary.
"God bless you for that," he exclaimed, "and--"
"No, do not say that," she interrupted. "I have more often wished _not_
to find it so, for I--I gave you every chance--I put it all so plainly
to you that horrible day at Romary--no, it is impossible that I have
done you injustice. Were I to begin to think so, I should feel that I
was losing my judgment, my right estimate of things altogether. But I
do not wish to continue thinking worse of you than you deserve--you may
have learned to see things differently--is it that you were going to
tell me? Heaven knows if your interference has done what can never be
undone, or not; but, however this is, I do not want to refuse to hear
that you have changed."
Mr Cheviott's face grew sterner and darker.
"I have not changed," he said. "What I did was for the best, and I
could not but do the same again in similar circumstances."
"Then," said Mary, hardening at once, "I really have nothing more to say
or to hear. Please let me pass."
"No," he replied. "Not yet. Miss Western, I value your good opinion
more than that of any one living. I cannot let you go like this. It is
my last chance. Do you not know what I feel for you--can you not see
what you are making me suffer? I have never loved any woman before--am
I to give up all hope on account of this terrible prejudice of yours?
But for that I could have made you care for me--I know I could--could I
not? Mary, tell me."
His voice softened into a tenderness, compared with which the gentlest
tones he had ever addressed to his sister were hard. But little heard
Mary of tenderness or softness in his words. She stood aghast,
literally aghast with astonishment--amazement rather--so intense that at
first she could scarcely believe that her ears were not deceiving her.
Then, as the full meaning of his words came home to her, indignation,
overwhelming indignation, took the place of every other feeling, and
burning words rose to her lips. For the moment "the Tartar" was,
indeed, uppermost.
"You say this to me!" she exclaimed. "You _dare_ to say this to me.
You, the man who, in deference to contemptible class-prejudice and to
gratify some selfish schemes, did not hesitate to trample a woman's
heart under foot, and to spoil the best chance for good that ever came
to a man you profess to care for--_you_, selfish, heartless,
unprincipled man, dare to tell me, Mary Western, that you love me! Are
you going out of your senses, Mr Cheviott? Do you forget that I am
Lilias's sister?"
"No," he said, in atone which somehow compelled her attention. "I do
not forget it, and I am not ashamed to say so. I do not offer you--for
it would but be thrown at my feet with scorn--but I would have offered
you a man's honest, disinterested devotion, were you able to believe in
such a thing as coming from me. But _you_ are blinded by prejudice--you
will take into account nothing but your own preconceived interpretation.
You will not allow the _possibility_ of my being innocent of what you
accuse me of. So be it. But there _have_ been women who have known an
honest man when they found such a one, and have not found their trust
misplaced."
Some answering chord was touched for the instant in Mary's heart. Her
tone was less hard, less cruelly contemptuous when she spoke again.
"I am not doubting your sincerity as regards myself," she said, her
voice trembling a little. "I suppose you do mean what you say, however
extraordinarily incomprehensible it appears to me. But _that_ makes
things no better--oh! if you had but left me under the delusion that
there was something to respect in you! I thought you narrow-minded and
prejudiced to a degree, but I had grown to think you had some
principle--that in what you did you were actuated by what you believed
to be right. But what am I to think now? Where are all the
well-considered reasons for interfering between your cousin and my
sister that you would have had me believe in, now that--that--you find
the case your own, or fancy it is so? What can I, too, think of your
principle and disinterestedness?"
"What you choose," said Mr Cheviott, bitterly. "It can matter little.
But you make one mistake. I never gave you _any_ reasons for my
interference. I told you I had acted for the best, and I madly imagined
it possible that having come to know me, _you_ might have begun to
believe it possible that my conduct was honest and disinterested. I had
not intended to confess to you what I have done. My object in speaking
to you again was purely--believe me or not, as you like--to try to gain
for my sister the hope of sometimes seeing you. I was going on to
volunteer to absent myself from Romary, if personal repugnance to me was
the obstacle, if only you would sometimes come. But I am only human;
your words and your tone drove me into what I little intended--into what
I must have been mad to say to _you_."
He stopped; he had spoken in a strangely low tone, but he had spoken
very fast, and Mary's first sensation when his voice ceased was of
bewilderment approaching almost to a kind of mental chaos, and of vague
but galling self-reproach. But for a moment she said nothing, and Mr
Cheviott was already turning away, when she called him back, faintly and
irresolutely, but he heard her still.
"I don't know what to say," she said, brokenly. "I suppose I have said
what I should not. I suppose I let my anger get the better of me. But
I have never learned to dissimulate. Your words seemed to me,
remembering what I did, an insult. I suppose I _should_ have thanked
you for--for the honour. But it has all been a mistake. You must see I
could never have cared for you--_never_; were I ten times satisfied you
had done Lilias no wrong, your conduct to her remains the same. But I
wish to be reasonable. Let us forget all this, and, so far as can be,
let us part friends."
She held out her hand, this time in vain.
"No," said Mr Cheviott. "I cannot shake hands on such terms. I run no
risk of hurting your feelings by saying so; you, I know, do not attach
much consequence to so empty a ceremony, but unfortunately I do.
Good-bye, Miss Western."
He raised his hat and turned away.
When he was fairly out of sight, Mary sat down on the short grass that
bordered the wood-path, leaned her head against the stump of an old tree
standing close by and burst into tears. Then she took her flowers, the
pretty, winsome things she had plucked so carefully, gathered them all
into one heap, and, rising from her seat, moved by some sudden instinct
of remorse, threw them--threw them, with all the strength of her
vigorous young arms, away, back among the underwood and grassy tangle
where they had grown.
"Primroses and violets," she said as she did so, "I shall never be able
to endure the sight of you again."