It was scarcely in nature that the appearance of her betrothed, coming
so suddenly in the midst of her thoughts, should be disagreeable to
Winifred, but it was an embarrassment to her, and rather added to than
lessened the trouble on her mind. He led her back into the park, which
she had been coming out of, scarcely knowing where she wandered. As was
his way when they were beyond the reach of curious eyes, he took her arm
instead of offering her his. There was something more caressing, more
close in this manner of contact. When they were safe beyond all
interruption, he bent over her tenderly.
“Something is the matter,” he said.
“Nothing new, Edward.”
“Only the trouble of yesterday, Tom’s going away?”
“It is not the trouble of yesterday. It is a trouble which lasts, which
is going on, which may never come to an end. I don’t think you can say
of any trouble that it is only of yesterday.”
“That is very true; still, you and I are not given to philosophising,
Winnie, and I thought there might be some new incident. I suppose he
sails to-day?”
“Yes, he sails to-day: and when will he come back again? Will he ever
come back? The two of them? Oh, Edward, life is very hard, very
different from what one thought.”
“At your age people are seldom so much mixed up in it. But there is the
good as well as the bad.”
“Perhaps,” said the girl, faltering, “I am looking through spectacles,
not rose-coloured, all the other way. I don’t see very much of the
good.”
He pressed her arm close to his side.
“Am not I a little bit of good; is not our life all good if it were only
once begun?”
“But what if it never begins?”
“Winnie!” he cried, startled, standing still and drawing her suddenly in
front of him so that he could look into her face.
“Oh, Edward, don’t add to my troubles; I don’t see how it is ever to
begin. My father means to put me in Tom’s place, as he put Tom in
George’s place, and already he has said”--
“What has he said?”
“Perhaps it means nothing,” she went on after a pause; “I should have
kept it to myself.”
“Winnie, that is worse than anything he can have said. What he says I
can bear, but not that you should keep anything to yourself.”
“It was not much. It was a sort of a threat. He said the match that was
good enough for Winnie might not be good enough for”--
“His heiress. He is right enough,” young Langton said.
At this, Winifred, who had been anticipating in her own mind all that
was involved, trembled as if it had never occurred to her before, and
turned upon him with an air, and indeed with the most real sentiment of
grieved surprise.
“Right?” she said, with wonder and reproach in her voice.
“A country doctor,” said the young man, “a fellow with nothing, is not a
match for the heiress of Bedloe. He is right enough. We cannot
contradict him. You ought to make an alliance like a princess with some
one like yourself.”
“I did not think,” said Winnie, raising her head with a flush of anger,
“that you would have been the one to make it all worse.”
He smiled upon her, still holding her closely by the arm. “Did you think
I had not thought of that before now? Of course, from his point of view,
and, of course, from all points of view except our own, Winnie”--
“I am glad you make that exception.”
“It is very magnanimous of me to do so, and you will have to be all the
more good to me. I am not blind, and I have seen it all coming, from the
moment of Tom’s failure. Why was he so silly as to fail, when a hundred
boobies get through every year?”
“Poor Tom!” she said, with a little gush of tears.
“Yes; poor Tom! I suppose he never for a moment thought--But, for my
part, I have seen it coming. I have seen for a long time what way the
tide was turning. At first there was not much thought of you; you were
only the little girl in the house. If it had not been so, I should have
run away, I should not have run my head into the net, and exposed myself
to certain contempt and rejection. But I saw that nobody knew there was
in the house an angel unawares.”
“Edward, you make me ashamed! You know how far I am”--
“From being an angel? I hope so, Winnie. If I saw the wings budding, I
should get out my instruments and clip them: it would be a novel sort
of an operation. I thought their ignorance was my opportunity.”
She was partly mollified, partly alarmed. “You did not think all this
before you let yourself--care for me, Edward?”
“I did before I allowed myself to tell you that I--cared for you, as you
say. One does not do such a thing without thinking. There was a time
when I thought that I must give up the splendid practice of Bedloe, with
Shippington into the bargain; the rich appointment of parish doctor, the
fat fees of the Union”--
“You can laugh at it,” she said, “but it is very, very serious to me.”
“And so it is very, very serious to me. So much so that six months ago I
wanted to throw everything up, if you would only have consented to come
with me, and seek our fortune, I did not mind where”--
“Ah!” she said. There was in the exclamation a world of wistful meaning.
What an escape it would have been from all after peril! Winifred said
this with the slight shiver of one who sees the means of safety which
she could never have taken advantage of.
“But now,” he said, “it is too late for that.”
His tone of conviction went to Winifred’s heart like a stone. She would
never have consented to it; but yet why did he say it was too late? She
gave him a wistful glance, but asked no question. To do so would have
been contrary to her pride and every feeling. They went on for a few
minutes in silence, she more cast down than she could explain--he adding
nothing to what he had said. Why did he add nothing? Things could not be
left now as they were, without mutual explanation and decision what they
were to do. Too late? She felt in her heart, on the contrary, that now
was the only moment in which it could have been done, in which she could
have wound herself up to the possibility--if it were not for other
possibilities, which, alas! would thrust themselves into the way.
“I have something to tell you,” he said, “something which you will think
makes everything worse. I might have kept you in ignorance of it, as I
have been doing; but the knowledge must come some time, and it will
explain what I have said”--
She withdrew a little from him, and drew herself up to all the height
she possessed, which was not very much. There went to her heart a quick
dart like the stab of a knife. She thought he was about to tell her that
his own mind had changed, or that her coming wealth and importance had
made it incompatible with his pride to continue their engagement.
Something of this kind it seemed certain that it must be. In the sudden
conviction of the moment it did not occur to Winifred that such a new
thing could scarcely be told while he held her so closely to him, and
clasped her hand and arm so firmly. But it was not a moment for the
exercise of reason. She did not look up, but she raised her head
instinctively and made an effort to loosen her hand from his clasp. But
of these half-involuntary movements he took no note, being fully
occupied with what was in his mind.
“Winnie,” he said in a serious voice, “your father talks at his ease of
making wills and changing the disposition of his property. I don’t
suppose he thinks for a moment how near he may be--how soon these
changes may come into effect.”
A little start, a little tremor ran through her frame. Her attitude of
preparation for a blow relaxed. She did not understand what he meant in
the relief of perceiving that it was not what she thought.
“My father? I don’t understand you, Edward.”
“No, I scarcely expected you would. He looks what people call the
picture of health.”
She started now violently and drew her arm out of his in the shock of
the first suggestion. “My father!” she stammered--“the picture of
health--you do not mean, you cannot mean”--
“I have been cruel,” he said, drawing tenderly her arm into his. “I have
given you a great shock. My darling, it had to be done sooner or later.
Your father, though he looks so well, is not well, Winnie. I never was
satisfied that he got over that illness as he thought he did. But even I
was not alarmed for a long time. Now for several months I have been
watching him closely. If he does not make this new will at once, he may
never do it. If he does, it will not be long before you are called on to
assume your place.”
“Edward! you do not mean that my father--You don’t mean that there is
absolute danger--to his life--soon--now? Edward! you do not think”--
“Dear, you must show no alarm. You must learn to be quite calm. You must
not betray your knowledge. It may be at any moment--to-day, to-morrow,
no one can tell. It is not certain--nothing is certain--he may go on for
a year.”
The light seemed to fail in Winifred’s eyes. She leant against her lover
with a rush and whirl of hurrying thoughts that seemed to carry away her
very life. It was not the awful sensation of a calamity from which there
is no escape, such as often overwhelms the tender soul when first
brought face to face with death; but rather a horrible sense of what
that doom would be to him, the cutting off of everything in which, so
far as she knew, he took any pleasure or ever thought of. The idea of a
spiritual life beyond would not come into any accordance with her
consciousness of him. Mr. Chester was one of those men whom it is
impossible to think of as entering into rest, or attaining immediate
felicity by the sudden step of death. There are some people whom the
imagination refuses to connect with any surroundings but those of
prosaic humanity. They must die, too, like the most spiritually-minded;
but there comes upon the soul a sensation of moral vertigo when we think
of them as entering the life of an unseen world. This, though it may
seem unnatural to say so, was the first sensation of Winifred, a sense
of horror and alarm, an immediate realisation of the terrible
inappropriateness of such a removal. What would become of him when
removed from earth, the only state of existence with which he had any
affinities? It sent a shiver over her, a chill sense of the unknown and
unimaginable which seemed to freeze the blood in her veins. It was only
when she recovered from this that natural feeling gained utterance. She
had leant against her lover in that first giddiness, with her head
swimming, her strength giving way. She came slowly back to herself,
feeling his arm which supported her with a curious beatific sense that
everything was explained between him and her, mingled with the sensation
of natural grief and dismay.
“I do not feel as if it could be possible,” she said faintly. Then, with
trembling lips, “My father?” and melted into tears.
“My dearest, it is right you should know. It is for this reason I have
tried to persuade you not to go against him in anything. The more
tranquillity he has, the better are his chances for life. Let him do as
he threatens. Perhaps if you withdraw all opposition he will delay the
making of another will, as almost all men do--for there seems time
enough for such an operation, and nothing to hurry for. Get him into
this state of mind if you can, Winnie. Don’t oppose him; let it be
believed that you see the justice of his intention, that you are willing
to do what he pleases.”
“Even”--she said, and looked up at him, pausing, unable to say more.
He took both her hands in his, and looked at her, smiling. “Even,” he
said, “to the length of allowing him to believe that you have given up a
man that was never half good enough for you; but who believes in you
all the same like heaven.”
“Believes in me--when I pretend to give up what I don’t give up, and
pretend to accept what I don’t accept? Is that the kind of woman you
believe in?” she cried, drawing away her hands. “How can I do so? How
can I consent to cheat my father, and he perhaps--perhaps”--
She stood faltering, trembling, crying, but detaching herself with
nervous force from his support, in a passion of indignation and trouble
and dismay.
He answered her with a line in which is the climax of heart-rending
tragedy, holding out to her the hands from which she had escaped--
“Faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”
“That may do for poetry,” she said; “but for me, I am not great enough
or grand enough to--to--to be able to brave it. Edward, do not ask me.
I must tell the truth. If I tried to do anything else, my face, my looks
would betray me. Oh, don’t be so hard on me. Ask me something less than
this, ask me now to”--
She stopped terror-stricken, not knowing what she had said; but he only
looked at her tenderly, shaking his head. “If I had ever persuaded you
to that,” he said, “I should have been a cad and a rascal, for it would
have broken your heart. But now I should be worse--I might be a
murderer. Winnie, you must yield for his sake. You must let him live as
long as God permits.”
“And deceive him?” she said, almost inaudibly. “Oh, you don’t know what
you are asking of me! You are asking too much cleverness, too much
power. I can only say one thing or another. I cannot be falsely true.”
“You can do everything that is necessary, whatever it may be, for those
you love,” he said.
She stood faltering before him for a moment, turning her eyes from one
side to the other, as if in search of help. But there was nothing that
could give her any aid. The heavens seemed to close in above her, and
the earth to disappear from under her feet. If she had ever consented to
an untruth in her life, it had been to shield and excuse her brothers,
for whom there were always apologies to be made. And how to deceive she
knew not.
They went on together across the park, not noticing the wetness of the
grass or the threatening of the sky, upon which clouds were once more
blowing up for rain, so much absorbed in their consultation that they
were close to the house before they were aware, and started like guilty
things surprised when Mr. Chester came sharply upon them round a corner,
buttoned up to the chin, and with an umbrella in his hand.