MARY AND GODFREY.
Everything went very tolerably, so far as concerned the world of talk,
in the matter of Letty's misfortunes. Rumors, it is true--and more than
one of them strange enough--did for a time go floating about the
country; but none of them came to the ears of Tom or of Mary, and Letty
was safe from hearing anything; and the engagement between her and Tom
soon became generally known.
Mrs. Helmer was very angry, and did all she could to make Tom break it
off--it was so much below him! But in nothing could the folly of the
woman have been more apparent than in her fancying, with the experience
of her life before her, that any opposition of hers could be effectual
otherwise than to the confirmation of her son's will. So short-sighted
was she as to originate most of the reports to Letty's disadvantage;
but Tom's behavior, on the other hand, was strong to put them down; for
the man is seldom found so faithful where such reports are facts.
Mrs. Wardour took care to say nothing unkind of Letty. She was of her
own family; and, besides, not only was Tom a better match than she
could have expected for her, but she was more than satisfied to have
Godfrey's dangerous toy thus drawn away beyond his reach. As soon as
ever the doctor gave his permission, she went to see her; but,
although, dismayed at sight of her suffering face, she did not utter
one unkind word, her visit was so plainly injurious in its effects,
that it was long before Mary would consent to a repetition of it.
Letty's recovery was very slow. The spring was close at hand before the
bloom began to reappear--and then it was but fitfully--in Letty's
cheek. Neither her gayety nor her usual excess of timorousness
returned. A certain sad seriousness had taken the place of both, and
she seemed to look out from deeper eyes. I can not think that Letty had
begun to perceive that there actually is a Nature shaping us to its own
ends; but I think she had begun to feel that Mary lived in the
conscious presence of such a power. To Tom she behaved very sweetly,
but more like a tender sister than a lover, and Mary began to doubt
whether her heart was altogether Tom's. From mention of approaching
marriage, she turned with a nervous, uneasy haste. Had the insight
which the enforced calmness of suffering sometimes brings opened her
eyes to anything in Tom? The doubt filled Mary with anxiety. She
thought and thought, until--delicate matter as it was to meddle with,
and small encouragement as Godfrey Wardour had given her to expect
sympathy--she yet made up her mind to speak to him on the subject--and
the rather that she was troubled at the unworthiness of his behavior to
Letty: gladly would she have him treat her with the generosity
essential to the idea she had formed of him.
She went, therefore, one Sunday evening, to Thornwick, and requested to
see Mr. Wardour.
It was plainly an unwilling interview he granted her, but she was not
thereby deterred from opening her mind to him.
"I fear, Mr. Wardour," she said, "--I come altogether without
authority--but I fear Letty has been rather hurried in her engagement
with Mr. Helmer. I think she dreads being married--at least so soon."
"You would have her break it off?" said Godfrey, with cold restraint.
"No; certainly not," replied Mary; "that would be unjust to Mr. Helmer.
But the thing was so hastened, indeed, hurried, by that unhappy
accident, that she had scarcely time to know her own mind."
"Miss Marston," answered Godfrey, severely, "it is her own fault--all
and entirely her own fault."
"But, surely," said Mary, "it will not do for us to insist upon desert.
That is not how we are treated ourselves."
"Is it not?" returned Godfrey, angrily. "My experience is different. I
am sure my faults have come back upon me pretty sharply.--She _must_
marry the fellow, or her character is gone."
"I am unwilling to grant that, Mr. Wardour. It was wrong in her to have
anything to say to Mr. Helmer without your knowledge, and a foolish
thing to meet him as she did; but Letty is a good girl, and you know
country ways are old-fashioned, and in itself there is nothing wicked
in having a talk with a young man after dark."
"You speak, I dare say, as such things arc regarded in--certain strata
of society," returned Godfrey, coldly; "but such views do not hold in
that to which either of them belongs."
"It seems to me a pity they should not, then," said Mary. "I know
nothing of such matters, but, surely, young people should have
opportunities of understanding each other. Anyhow, marriage is a heavy
penalty to pay for such an indiscretion. A girl might like a young man
well enough to enjoy a talk with him now and then, and yet find it hard
to marry him."
"Did you come here to dispute social customs with me, Miss Marston?"
said Godfrey. "I am not prepared, nor, indeed, sufficiently interested,
to discuss them with you."
"I will come to the point at once," answered Mary; who, although
speaking so collectedly, was much frightened at her own boldness:
Godfrey seemed from his knowledge so far above her, and she owed him so
much.--"Would it not be possible for Letty to return here? Then the
thing might take its natural course, and Tom and she know each other
better before they did what was irrevocable. They are little better
than children now."
"The thing is absolutely impossible," said Godfrey, and haughtily rose
from his chair like one in authority ending an interview. "But," he
added, "you have been put to great expense for the foolish girl, and,
when she leaves you, I desire you will let me know--"
"Thank you, Mr. Wardour!" said Mary, who had risen also. "As you have
now given a turn to the conversation which is not in the least
interesting to me, I wish you a good evening."
With the words, she left the room. He had made her angry at last. She
trembled so that, the instant she was out of sight of the house, she
had to sit down for dread of falling.
Godfrey remained in the room where she left him, full of indignation.
Ever since that frightful waking, he had brooded over the injury--the
insult, he counted it--which Letty had heaped upon him. A great
tenderness toward her, to himself unknown, and of his own will
unbegotten, remained in his spirit. When he passed the door of her
room, returning from that terrible ride, he locked it, and put the key
in his pocket, and from that day no one entered the chamber. But, had
he loved Letty as purely as he had loved her selfishly, he would have
listened to Mary pleading in her behalf, and would have thought first
about her well-being, not about her character in the eyes of the world.
He would have seen also that, while the breath of the world's opinion
is a mockery in counterpoise with a life of broken interest and the
society of an unworthy husband, the mere fact of his mother's receiving
her again at Thornwick would of itself be enough to reestablish her
position in the face of all gainsayers. But in Godfrey Wardour love and
pride went hand in hand. Not for a moment would he will to love a girl
capable of being interested, if nothing more, in Tom Helmer. It must be
allowed, however, that it would have been a terrible torture to see
Letty about the place, to pass her on the stair, to come upon her in
the garden, to sit with her in the room, and know all the time that it
was the test of Tom's worth and her constancy. Even were she to give up
Tom, satisfied that she did not love him, she could be nothing more to
him, even in the relation in which he had allowed her to think she
stood to him. She had behaved too deceitfully, too heartlessly, too
ungratefully, too _vulgarly_ for that! Yet was his heart torn every
time the vision of the gentle girl rose before "that inward eye,"
which, for long, could no more be to him "the bliss of solitude"; when
he saw those hazel depths looking half anxious, half sorrowful in his
face, as, with sadly comic sense of her stupidity, she listened while
he explained or read something he loved. But no; nothing else would do
than act the mere honest guardian, compelling them to marry, no matter
how slight or transient the shadow the man had cast over her reputation!
Mary returned with a sense of utter failure.
But before long she came to the conclusion that all was right between
Tom and Letty, and that the cause of her anxiety had lain merely in
Letty's loss of animal spirits.
Now and then Mary tried to turn Tom's attention a little toward the
duty of religion: Tom received the attempt with gentle amusement and a
little _badinage_. It was all very well for girls! Indeed, he had made
the observation that girls who had no religion were "strong-minded,"
and that he could not endure! Like most men, he was so well satisfied
with himself, that he saw no occasion to take trouble to be anything
better than he was. Never suspecting what a noble creature he was meant
to be, he never saw what a poor creature he was. In his own eyes he was
a man any girl might be proud to marry. He had not yet, however, sunk
to the depth of those who, having caught a glimpse of nobility, confess
wretchedness, excuse it, and decline to allow that the noble they see
they are bound to be; or, worse still, perhaps, admit the obligation,
but move no inch to fulfill it. It seems to me that such must one day
make acquaintance with _essential_ misery--a thing of which they have
no conception.
Day after day Tom passed through Turnbull and Marston's shop to see
Letty. Tom cared for nobody, else he would have gone in by the
kitchen-door, which was the only other entrance to the house; but I do
not know whether it is a pity or not that he did not hear the remarks
which rose like the dust of his passage behind him. In the same little
sitting-room, where for so many years Mary had listened to the slow,
tender wisdom of her father, a clever young man was now making love to
an ignorant girl, whom he did not half understand or half appreciate,
all the time he feeling himself the greater and wiser and more valuable
of the two. He was unaware, however, that he did feel so, for he had
never yet become conscious of any _fact_ concerning himself.
The whole Turnbull family, from the beginnings of things
self-constituted judges of the two Marstons, were not the less critical
of the daughter, that the father had been taken from her. There was
grumbling in the shop every time she ran up to see Letty, every one
regarding her and speaking of her as a servant neglecting her duty. Yet
all knew well enough that she was co-proprietor of business and stock,
and the elder Turnbull knew besides that, if the lawyer to whose care
William Marston had committed his daughter were at that moment to go
into the affairs of the partnership, he would find that Mary had a much
larger amount of money actually in the business than he.
Of all matters connected with the business, except those of her own
department, Mary was ignorant. Her father had never neglected his duty,
but he had so far neglected what the world calls a man's interests as
to leave his affairs much too exclusively in the hands of his partner;
he had been too much interested in life itself to look sharply after
anything less than life. He acknowledged no _worldly_ interests at all:
either God cared for his interests or he himself did not. Whether he
might not have been more attentive to the state of his affairs without
danger of deeper loss, I do not care to examine or determine; the
result of his life in the world was a grand success. Now, Mary's
feeling and judgment in regard to _things_ being identical with her
father's, Turnbull, instructed by his greed, both natural and acquired,
argued thus--unconsciously almost, but not the less argued--that what
Mary valued so little, and he valued so much, must, by necessary
deduction, be more his than hers--and _logically_ ought to be
_legally_. So servants begin to steal, arguing that such and such
things are only lying about, and nobody cares for them.
But Turnbull, knowing that, notwithstanding the reason on his side, it
was not safe to act on such a conclusion, had for some time felt no
little anxiety to secure himself from investigation and possible
disaster by the marriage of Mary to his son George.
Tom Helmer had now to learn that, by his father's will, made doubtless
under the influence of his mother, he was to have but a small annuity
so long as she lived. Upon this he determined nevertheless to marry,
confident in his literary faculty, which, he never doubted, would soon
raise it to a very sufficient income. Nor did Mary attempt to dissuade
him; for what could be better for a disposition like his than care for
the things of this life, occasioned by the needs of others dependent
upon him! Besides, there seemed to be nothing else now possible for
Letty. So, in the early summer, they were married, no relative present
except Mrs. Wardour, Mrs. Helmer and Godfrey having both declined their
invitation; and no friend, except Mary for bridesmaid, and Mr. Pycroft,
a school and college friend of Tom's, who was now making a bohemian
livelihood in London by writing for the weekly press, as he called
certain journals of no high standing, for groom's man. After the
ceremony, and a breakfast provided by Mary, the young couple took the
train for London.