"I shall as now do more for you
Than longeth to womanhede."
_The Nut-brown Mayd_.
"Mr Western is not so well, I hear," said Mr Cheviott to his sister
one afternoon, a fortnight or so after the Rector of Hathercourt's first
seizure.
Alys started up from the invalid couch on which she was lying. The
brother and sister were in a small morning-room which Alys sometimes
called her "boudoir," though its rather heterogeneous furniture and
contents hardly realised the ideas suggested by the word.
"I am so dreadfully sorry," she exclaimed. "I had a note from Mary
yesterday saying he was so much better."
"These cases are sadly deceptive," said Miss Winstanley, who was
knitting by the window, consolingly. "At Mr Western's age I should
think it extremely doubtful if he recovers. I know two or three almost
similar cases that ended fatally, though just at first the doctors
thought hopefully of them."
"How did you hear it, Laurence?" said Alys. "You didn't send over
to-day to inquire, did you?"
"No. Arthur told me. He said that he had met Brandreth on the road
somewhere on his way back from the Edge," said Mr Cheviott, strolling
to the window, where he remained standing, looking out.
"I wish you would ask him to come and tell me _exactly_ what Dr
Brandreth says," Alys asked.
"He is not in--he went over to the stables a few minutes ago. I'll tell
him to come and speak to you when he comes back. But I feel sure that
was all he heard," replied Mr Cheviott, without manifesting any
surprise at Alys's extreme interest in the matter.
"I wonder if they have sent for Miss Western--Lilias, the eldest one, I
mean," soliloquised Alys. "Mary said they hoped not to need to do so,
as there was some difficulty about her coming home sooner than had been
fixed. Poor Mary, how much she must have had to do, and she _never_
thinks of herself or takes any rest. I _wish_ I could do anything to
help her!"
Mr Cheviott turned from the window to the fire, and began poking it
vigorously.
"Excuse me, Laurence," said Miss Winstanley, plaintively. "I think the
fire's quite hot enough; it is such a very close evening for April."
Mr Cheviott laughed and desisted.
"I am out of place in this room," he said. "I am always doing something
clumsy. I'll send Arthur instead--he's a much better tame cat than I."
He turned to leave the room.
"By-the-bye, Alys," he said, putting his head in at the door again, "you
had better make much of Arthur while you have him. He says he must
leave the day after to-morrow."
"And he only came yesterday," said Alys, regretfully. "It's too bad--
only two days."
"Three, my dear," corrected her aunt. "We arrived the day before
yesterday. Arthur left Cirencester on Tuesday, and slept Tuesday night
in my house, and this is Friday."
"Well, it's much the same," said Alys. "He might stay a little longer.
He's always so busy now. Why should he have such a craze for hard work?
It doesn't suit him at all."
"My dear!" said Miss Winstanley, reprovingly. "How can you say such a
thing? In his circumstances his friends cannot be too thankful that he
has taken to some useful employment, which will do him no harm either
way, however things turn out."
Alys pricked up her ears.
"How do you mean `in his circumstances,' aunt? How are his
circumstances different from Laurence's, or any other man's who has a
place and a good income?"
"Oh! I don't know, my dear," said Miss Winstanley, evasively. "I told
you once before, I don't know all about Arthur's affairs. One, two,
three--I am so afraid I have got a row too much--by-the-bye, my dear, I
wish you wouldn't talk so much about those Westerns. I warned you of it
last year. Laurence does not like them, and the mention of them always
irritates him."
"It was Laurence himself who first mentioned them, as it happens," said
Alys, not too respectfully, it must be confessed.
"Ah, yes, but you said a great deal more, and, as I said last year--"
"Last year and this are very different, aunt," said Alys. "Have you
forgotten all that Mary Western did for me? No one has recognised it
more fully than Laurence."
"Ah, well, perhaps so. But still he does not _like_ them. Did you not
see how he made some excuse for going away, when you would go on talking
about them?"
"It was no such thing. It was you fidgeting him about the fire when he
was really concerned about Mr Western," muttered Alys, but too low for
her aunt to catch the words. And Miss Winstanley relapsed into her
"one, two, three, four," and for a few minutes there was silence. Then
Alys returned to the charge.
"By what you said just now about Arthur's uncertain circumstances, did
you mean the peculiar terms of his father's will?" she said, demurely.
"Oh, yes, of course, I suppose so, but I wish you would not ask me. I
am very stupid about wills and all sorts of law things," said Miss
Winstanley, floundering about helplessly beneath her niece's diplomatic
cross-questioning. "I only meant that for a man who can't marry and
settle down it is an excellent thing to have some employment."
"And why shouldn't he marry and settle down?" said Alys. "He will come
into his property in two years, when I am twenty-one--I always remember
it by that--and till that he could have a good allowance to live on.
Why shouldn't he marry, poor fellow? I think it very hard lines that he
shouldn't."
"But--" began Miss Winstanley.
"But, aunt," said Alys, who was "working herself up" on a subject she
was at all times inclined to grow rather hot about, "I really mean what
I say. It is the only one thing I have ever really felt inclined to
quarrel with Laurence for _I_ can tell you that Arthur has been much
nearer marrying than you have any idea of, and--"
It was Miss Winstanley's turn to interrupt. "My dear!" she exclaimed,
letting her knitting-needles fall on her lap in her excitement, "you
don't mean to say that he--that you--you won't be twenty-one for two
years."
"What _do_ you mean, aunt?" said Alys. "What has my being or not being
twenty-one to do with Arthur's marrying?"
Miss Winstanley looked as if she were going to cry.
"Why will you always begin about this subject, Alys?" she said,
pathetically. "I thought you meant--"
"Well, tell me that, any way," said Alys. "You must tell me what you
thought I meant."
"Oh, nothing. I must have mistaken you. It was only when you said that
about his having thought of marrying--before your accident, of course--
and I knew he took it so much to heart, but of course that was natural
on all accounts," said Miss Winstanley, confusedly.
Alys sat bolt up on her couch, thereby setting all her doctor's orders
at defiance. A red spot glowed on each cheek, her eyes were sparkling.
Miss Winstanley could see that she was growing very excited--the thing
of all others to be avoided for her!--and the poor lady's alarm and
distress added to her nervousness and confusion.
"Now, aunt," said Alys, calmly, "you _must_ tell me what I want to know.
I am not so blind and childish as you have all imagined. I have known
for a good while that there was some strange complication which was
putting everything wrong, in which, somehow, _I_ was concerned. Don't
make yourself unhappy by thinking it has been all your doing that I have
come to know anything about it. It has been no one person's doing; it
has just been that I have `put two and two together' for myself."
"Alys," ejaculated her aunt, "what an expression for you to use!"
"It expresses what I mean," said Alys, pushing back the hair off her
throbbing temples. "And since I have been ill I have had so much time
for thinking and wondering and puzzling out things--and I think I have
become quicker, cleverer, in a way than I used to be. I seem as if I
could almost guess at things by magic, sometimes. Now, aunt, what I
want to know is _this_--is Arthur's future in any way dependent on _me_,
or anything I may or may not do?"
"Had you not better ask Laurence?" said Miss Winstanley, tremulously,
driven at last hopelessly into a corner.
"No, it would be no use. There is something that he is, in some way,
debarred from telling me, I am sure, otherwise he would have told me,
for he has no love of mystery or secrecy. And _yet_ I feel equally sure
that it is something that can only be put straight by my knowing it."
Miss Winstanley sat silent, a picture of bewildered distress.
"Aunt," said Alys again, after a short pause, her cheeks and brow
flushing to the roots of her hair, "what I am going to ask you I don't
like to put in words--it seems to me such an altogether repulsive,
unnatural idea, but, as you won't speak without, I _must_ ask you. Has
all this trouble anything to do with my marrying some one, any one in
particular? You told me once that Uncle Beverley, Arthur's father, was
extraordinarily fond of me when I was a baby, and that he would have
done anything to show his gratitude to my mother for what she had done
for him. Now, aunt, has this anything to do with the peculiar terms of
his will, which I have very often heard alluded to?"
"I have never seen the will; believe me, Alys, I do not know its exact
terms," Miss Winstanley pleaded.
"Well, I dare say you don't, aunt. But you know enough to throw a
little daylight on _my_ part of it. Aunt, is it, _can_ it be that
Arthur's inheriting his father's property--his _own_ property--depends
on his marrying _me_?"
Her voice quivered and fell--a whole army of contending feelings were at
war within her as she waited breathlessly for Miss Winstanley's reply.
"No, not exactly," she said, trying, as usual, to shelter herself behind
vague and indefinite answers, "if _you_ did not want to many _him_, he
would not be punished for that. Now, Alys, this is all I can say. I am
going away up-stairs to my own room, to avoid any more talk of this
kind."
Miss Winstanley rose from her seat, nervously tugging at her shawl
which, as usual, had dropped far below her waist as she got up.
Alys took no notice of her last sentence.
"If _I_ don't want to marry _him_, he will be none the worse," she
repeated, slowly, "but if he doesn't want to marry me--what then? That
would be a different story! Thank you, aunt; on the whole, I think you
have told me enough, so you may stay down-stairs without fear. I am not
going to ask any more questions."
Her tone was cool and composed enough, yet, on the whole, Miss
Winstanley would rather have had her more visibly angry. There was a
gleam in her eyes and a scorching spot on each cheek which her aunt had
not for long seen there. "Alys was very hot-tempered as a child," she
was wont to say of her, "but of late years she had calmed down
wonderfully."
"No, Alys, I don't want to stay down-stairs, thank you," she replied,
reprovingly, tugging harder than ever at the front of the recalcitrant
shawl, her efforts in some mysterious way only resulting in a more
tantalising descent behind.
Alys made no reply.
"To think," she was muttering to herself, "to think how all this time I
have been kept in the dark! How like a fool I have behaved! Laurence
might have warned me _somehow_--however he was bound down not to tell
me. He had better have tried to upset the will on the ground of Uncle
Beverley's being mad, which he certainly must have been!"
Two minutes after Miss Winstanley left the room Captain Beverley entered
it.
"Alys," he said, as he came in, "Laurence said you wanted me, so here I
am. Why, what's the matter, child?" he added, with a quick change of
tone as he caught sight of her face. She was not crying, but her cheeks
were burning and her eyes gleaming, and as she looked up to answer her
cousin, he saw that she was biting her lips in a quick nervous way to
keep back the tears--a gesture peculiar to her from childhood.
"_Everything_ is the matter," she said, bitterly. "I feel as if I
should never trust any one again. I have something to say to you,
Arthur, something very particular, and I want to say it very distinctly,
so please to listen."
"I'm all attention," said Arthur, lightly still, though in reality not a
little apprehensive as to what was coming. What could it be? Could
Alys have found out about the understanding that now existed between
himself and Lilias--she had been so intimate with Mary Western at the
Edge? But a moment's reflection dismissed the idea. Lilias was too
true to have told any one, even her sister, without his sanction.
Besides, even had the fact come to Alys's knowledge, she would have been
pleased and sympathising, not discomposed and indignant, as she
evidently was.
"Listen," she repeated. "I want to tell you, Arthur Beverley, that
supposing anything so altogether impossible and unnatural, and--and
absurd and ridiculous as that you, my cousin, almost brother, should
have thought of wanting to marry me--_me_, Alys!--well, supposing such a
thing, I want to tell you that nothing you or any one could ever have
said or ever could say would make me ever, even for half an instant,
take such a thing into consideration. I _could_ not do so. I tell you
distinctly that I would not marry you for _anything_, Arthur, not if my
life depended upon it."
Captain Beverley stared at her--stared as if he hardly believed his own
ears.
"Does he think I am going out of my mind?" thought Alys, while across
her brain there darted a horrible misgiving--could she in any way have
misunderstood Miss Winstanley's confused replies?--could this impulsive
act of hers, instead of being, as it had seemed to her, a positive
inspiration, be after all a mistake, a terribly unwomanly mistake,
which, to the last day of her life, she would blush to think of?
Afterwards it seemed to Alys as if in waiting for her cousin to speak
she had lived through years of agonised suspense.
"Alys," he said at last, hoarsely, it sounded to her. "Alys," and oh!
the relief of the next few words, strangely chosen and almost
ludicrously matter-of-fact as they sounded! "Would you mind putting
that in writing?"
"Certainly not. I will do so this moment," she replied, recovering her
self-possession and presence of mind on the spot. "Here, give me my
writing things--just push my davenport over here."
Arthur did so, his hands trembling, his face pale with anxiety. All
Alys's nervousness and agitation seemed to have passed to him.
"It is best to do it at once," he murmured, more as if speaking to
himself than to her, "before I am tempted to say anything, so that my
conscience may be clear that it is entirely voluntary, entirely her own
doing."
"Yes," said Alys, looking up from the paper on which she had already
traced some lines, "that it _certainly_ is." Then she went on writing.
"There, now, will that do?" she exclaimed, holding the sheet towards
him.
"Read it, please," said Arthur, and Alys read:
"Of my own free will, uninfluenced by any one whatsoever, I wish to
declare that no conceivable consideration would, at this or any other
time, make me agree to marry my cousin, Arthur Beverley.
"Alys Madelene Cheviott."
"Yes," said Arthur, slowly, "that will do. Shall I thank you, Alys, or
would you rather not?"
She looked up with a sparkle of her old mischievousness in her eyes.
"I don't know, I'm sure," she said; "I don't quite see it, I confess. I
have simply stated a fact." Then suddenly she held up her hands before
her face, which was growing hot again. "No, no, Arthur, don't thank
me," she exclaimed; "I could not bear it. It is altogether too--too bad
that anything like this should come between you and me. Go away,
please, and send Laurence."
Arthur looked at her with earnest, regretful tenderness. But he saw
that she was right. She would be better without him, and he went. Five
minutes afterwards her brother entered the room.
"Alys," he said, sternly, but any one that knew him could have seen that
it was a sternness born of anxiety, "what is all this? What have you
been doing? I cannot understand what Arthur says, or rather he won't
explain, but refers me to you. What have you been doing?"
"Only enacting the part of Miss Jane Baxter," said Alys, with an attempt
at indifference.
"Alys, what do you mean?"
"Who refused all the men before they axed her," continued Alys, in the
same tone.
"Alys!" said her brother again, and something in his tone arrested her.
She looked up.
"Laurence," she said, "don't misunderstand me; I am not really flippant
and horrid like that, but it is true all the same. I have told Arthur,
deliberately and seriously, that, if he were ever to ask me to marry
him, _nothing_ would ever make me take such a thing even into momentary
consideration. I would not marry him for _anything_."
"Had he asked you to do so?" said Mr Cheviott, in a tone half of amaze,
half of bewilderment.
"_No_," said Alys, "I told you he had not, and most certainly after what
I have said, he never will."
"Do you think he had any intention of the kind?" again questioned her
brother.
Alys hesitated. Her quick wits told her that she must be careful what
admissions she made. Were she to reply what she believed to be the
truth--that her cousin never had had, never would have any such feelings
with regard to her as could lead to his asking her to many him--the
effect on him might, she felt vaguely, be disastrous. So she hesitated,
and meanwhile her brother watched her narrowly.
"I don't see," she said at last, "I don't see that I need answer that,
Laurence. All I want you to know is that, after what I have said,
Arthur could never think of me in that way. I have made it impossible
for him to do so."
"And what made you do this? What has put all this into your head? Was
it Aunt Winstanley?" asked Mr Cheviott.
"No," replied Alys. "That is to say, Aunt Winstanley did not put
anything in my head, though I forced her to answer one or two questions
I asked her. She did so very confusedly, I assure you, and but for my
own ideas I should have been little the better for her information. No
one is to blame. I have not been as blind and unconscious as you
thought--that is all."
That _was_ all in one sense. It was plain to Mr Cheviott that Alys
would say no more, and on reflection he could not see that any more
explanation on her part would do any good. He stood silent, hardly able
as yet to see clearly the effect of this extraordinary turn of affairs.
"I am going up to my own room, Laurence," said Alys, rising slowly as
she spoke. "I am very tired. I think I won't come down to dinner. I
don't want you just now to say whether you think I have done rightly or
wrongly, wisely or unwisely--some time or other I dare say you will
explain all that has puzzled me. But in the mean time some instinct
tells me, told me while I was doing it, that you, Laurence, would be
glad for me to do it. Kiss me, dear, and say good-night."
He bent down and kissed her tenderly, still without speaking. But when
Alys was up in her own room, safe for the night from all curious or
anxious eyes, she lay down on her sofa, burying her face in its
cushions, and sobbed as if her heart would break.