FLO'S RED BALL.
"You should give him an answer, dear, one way or the other." These
wise words were spoken by Mrs. Fenwick to her friend as they sat
together, with their work in their hands, on a garden seat under a
cedar tree. It was an August evening after dinner, and the Vicar was
out about his parish. The two elder children were playing in the
garden, and the two young women were alone together.
[Illustration: "You should give him an answer, dear, one way
or the other."]
"Of course I shall give him an answer. What answer does he wish?"
"You know what answer he wishes. If any man was ever in earnest he
is."
"Am I not doing the best I can for him then in waiting--to see
whether I can say yes?"
"It cannot be well for him to be in suspense on such a matter; and,
dear Mary, it cannot be well for you either. One always feels that
when a girl bids a man to wait, she will take him after a while. It
always comes to that. If you had been at home at Loring, the time
would not have been much; but, being so near to him, and seeing him
every day, must be bad. You must both be in a state of fever."
"Then I will go back to Loring."
"No; not now, till you have positively made up your mind, and given
him an answer one way or the other. You could not go now and leave
him in doubt. Take him at once, and have done with it. He is as good
as gold."
In answer to this, Mary for a while said nothing, but went sedulously
on with her work.
"Mamma," said a little girl, running up, followed by a nursery-maid,
"the ball's in the water!"
The child was a beautiful fair-haired little darling about
four-and-a-half years old, and a boy, a year younger, and a little
shorter, and a little stouter, was toddling after her.
"The ball in the water, Flo! Can't Jim get it out?"
"Jim's gone, mamma."
Then Jane, the nursery-maid, proceeded to explain that the ball had
rolled in and had been carried down the stream to some bushes, and
that it was caught there just out of reach of all that she, Jane,
could do with a long stick for its recovery. Jim, the gardener, was
not to be found; and they were in despair lest the ball should become
wet through and should perish.
Mary at once saw her opportunity of escape,--her opportunity for that
five minutes of thought by herself which she needed. "I'll come, Flo,
and see what can be done," said Mary.
"Do; 'cause you is so big," said the little girl.
"We'll see if my long arms won't do as well as Jim's," said Mary;
"only Jim would go in, perhaps, which I certainly shall not do." Then
she took Flo by the hand, and together they ran down to the margin of
the river.
There lay the treasure, a huge red inflated ball, just stopped in its
downward current by a short projecting stick. Jim could have got it
certainly, because he could have suspended himself over the stream
from a bough, and could have dislodged the ball, and have floated it
on to the bank.
"Lean over, Mary,--a great deal, and we'll hold you," said Flo, to
whom her ball was at this moment worth any effort. Mary did lean
over, and poked at it, and at last thought that she would trust
herself to the bough, as Jim would have done, and became more
and more venturous, and at last touched the ball, and then, at
last,--fell into the river! Immediately there was a scream and a
roar, and a splashing about of skirts and petticoats, and by the
time that Mrs. Fenwick was on the bank, Mary Lowther had extricated
herself, and had triumphantly brought out Flo's treasure with her.
"Mary, are you hurt?" said her friend.
"What should hurt me? Oh dear, oh dear! I never fell into a river
before. My darling Flo, don't be unhappy. It's such good fun. Only
you mustn't fall in yourself, till you're as big as I am." Flo was in
an agony of tears, not deigning to look at the rescued ball.
"You do not mean that your head has been under?" said Mrs. Fenwick.
"My face was, and I felt so odd. For about half a moment I had a
sound of Ophelia in my ears. Then I was laughing at myself for being
such a goose."
"You'd better come up and go to bed, dear; and I'll get you something
warm."
"I won't go to bed, and I won't have anything warm; but I will change
my clothes. What an adventure! What will Mr. Fenwick say?"
"What will Mr. Gilmore say?" To this Mary Lowther made no answer, but
went straight up to the house, and into her room, and changed her
clothes.
While she was there Fenwick and Gilmore both appeared at the open
window of the drawing-room in which Mrs. Fenwick was sitting. She had
known well enough that Harry Gilmore would not let the evening pass
without coming to the vicarage, and at one time had hoped to persuade
Mary Lowther to give her verdict on this very day. Both she and her
husband were painfully anxious that Harry might succeed. Fenwick had
loved the man dearly for many years, and Janet Fenwick had loved him
since she had known him as her husband's friend. They both felt that
he was showing more of manhood than they had expected from him in the
persistency of his love, and that he deserved his reward. And they
both believed also that for Mary herself it would be a prosperous and
a happy marriage. And then, where is the married woman who does not
wish that the maiden friend who comes to stay with her should find a
husband in her house? The parson and his wife were altogether of one
mind in this matter, and thought that Mary Lowther ought to be made
to give herself to Harry Gilmore.
"What do you think has happened?" said Mrs. Fenwick, coming to the
window, which opened down to the ground. "Mary Lowther has fallen
into the river."
"Fallen where?" shouted Gilmore, putting up both his hands, and
seeming to prepare himself to rush away among the river gods in
search of his love.
"Don't be alarmed, Mr. Gilmore, she's upstairs, quite safe,--only she
has had a ducking." Then the circumstances were explained, and the
papa declared magisterially that Flo must not play any more with her
ball near the river,--an order to which it was not probable that much
close attention would ever be paid.
"I suppose Miss Lowther will have gone to bed?" said Gilmore.
"On the contrary, I expect her every moment. I suggested bed, and
warm drinks, and cossetting; but she would have none of it. She
scrambled out all by herself, and seemed to think it very good fun."
"Come in at any rate and have some tea," said the Vicar. "If you
start before eleven, I'll walk half the way back with you."
In the mean time, in spite of her accident, Mary had gained the
opportunity that she had required. The point for self-meditation was
not so much whether she would or would not accept Mr. Gilmore now,
as that other point;--was she or was she not wrong to keep him in
suspense. She knew very well that she would not accept him now. It
seemed to her that a girl should know a man very thoroughly before
she would be justified in trusting herself altogether to his hands,
and she thought that her knowledge of Mr. Gilmore was insufficient.
It might however be the case that in such circumstances duty required
her to give him at once an unhesitating answer. She did not find
herself to be a bit nearer to knowing him and to loving him than she
was a month since. Her friend Janet had complained again and again of
the suspense to which she was subjecting the man;--but she knew on
the other hand that her friend Janet did this in her intense anxiety
to promote the match. Was it wrong to say to the man--"I will wait
and try?" Her friend told her that to say that she would wait and
try, was in truth to say that she would take him at some future
time;--that any girl who said so had almost committed herself to
such a decision;--that the very fact that she was waiting and trying
to love a man ought to bind her to the man at last. Such certainly
had not been her own idea. As far as she could at present look into
her own future feelings, she did not think that she could ever
bring herself to say that she would be this man's wife. There was a
solemnity about the position which had never come fully home to her
before she had been thus placed. Everybody around her told her that
the man's happiness was really bound up in her reply. If this were
so,--and she in truth believed that it was so,--was she not bound
to give him every chance in her power? And yet because she still
doubted, she was told by her friend that she was behaving badly! She
would believe her friend, would confess her fault, and would tell her
lover in what most respectful words of denial she could mould, that
she would not be his wife. For herself personally, there would be no
sorrow in this, and no regret.
Her ducking had given her time for all this thought; and then, having
so decided, she went downstairs. She was met, of course, with various
inquiries about her bath. Mr. Gilmore was all pity, as though the
accident were the most serious thing in the world. Mr. Fenwick
was all mirth, as though there had never been a better joke. Mrs.
Fenwick, who was perhaps unwise in her impatience, was specially
anxious that her two guests might be left together. She did not
believe that Mary Lowther would ever say the final No; and yet she
thought also that, if it were so, the time had quite come in which
Mary Lowther ought to say the final Yes.
"Let us go down and look at the spot," she said, after tea.
So they went down. It was a beautiful August night. There was no
moon, and the twilight was over; but still it was not absolutely
dark; and the air was as soft as a mother's kiss to her sleeping
child. They walked down together, four abreast, across the lawn, and
thence they reached a certain green orchard path that led down to the
river. Mrs. Fenwick purposely went on with the lover, leaving Mary
with her husband, in order that there might be no appearance of a
scheme. She would return with her husband, and then there might be a
ramble among the paths, and the question would be pressed, and the
thing might be settled.
They saw through the gloom the spot where Mary had scrambled, and
the water which had then been bright and smiling, was now black and
awful.
"To think that you should have been in there!" said Harry Gilmore,
shuddering.
"To think that she should ever have got out again!" said the parson.
"It looks frightful in the dark," said Mrs. Fenwick. "Come away,
Frank. It makes me sick." And the charming schemer took her husband's
arm, and continued the round of the garden. "I have been talking to
her, and I think she would take him if he would ask her now."
The other pair of course followed them. Mary's mind was so fully made
up, at this moment, that she almost wished that her companion might
ask the question. She had been told that she was misusing him; and
she would misuse him no longer. She had a firm No, as it were, within
her grasp, and a resolution that she would not be driven from it. But
he walked on beside her talking of the water, and of the danger, and
of the chance of a cold, and got no nearer to the subject than to
bid her think what suffering she would have caused had she failed
to extricate herself from the pool. He also had made up his mind.
Something had been said by himself of a certain day when last he had
pleaded his cause; and that day would not come round till the morrow.
He considered himself pledged to restrain himself till then; but on
the morrow he would come to her.
There was a little gate which led from the parsonage garden through
the churchyard to a field path, by which was the nearest way to
Hampton Privets.
"I'll leave you here," he said, "because I don't want to make Fenwick
come out again to-night. You won't mind going up through the garden
alone?"
"Oh dear, no."
"And, Miss Lowther,--pray, pray take care of yourself. I hardly think
you ought to have been out again to-night."
"It was nothing, Mr. Gilmore. You make infinitely too much of it."
"How can I make too much of anything that regards you? You will be at
home to-morrow?"
"Yes, I fancy so."
"Do remain at home. I intend to come down after lunch. Do remain at
home." He held her by the hand as he spoke to her, and she promised
him that she would obey him. He clearly was entitled to her obedience
on such a point. Then she slowly made her way round the garden, and
entered the house at the front door, some quarter of an hour after
the others.
Why should she refuse him? What was it that she wanted in the world?
She liked him, his manners, his character, his ways, his mode of
life, and after a fashion she liked his person. If there was more of
love in the world than this, she did not think that it would ever
come in her way. Up to this time of her life she had never felt any
such feeling. If not for her own sake, why should she not do it for
him? Why should he not be made happy? She had risked a plunge in the
water to get Flo her ball, and she liked him better than she liked
Flo. It seemed that her mind had been altogether changed by that
stroll through the dark alleys.
"Well," said Janet, "how is it to be?"
"He is to come to-morrow, and I do not know how it will be," she
said, turning away to her own room.