Love is strong as death.
Jealousy is cruel as the grave.
_Solomon’s Song._
‘He wants great care and attention; there is no use denying it. He is
not the sort of lad with whom you can afford to run risks. He has no
stamina, none; no constitution. I don’t say he is ill. God grant he may
not be, for he hasn’t the strength to throw things off as some boys do.’
The speaker was the old Stoke Ashton doctor, and the subject of his
remarks was Tim. It was a hard winter, and the boy was not very well. He
did not outgrow his childish delicacy, though it would be hard to say
quite what was the matter with him. Mrs. Quitchett used to trot off to
her old friend the doctor and have long talks with him in his surgery,
from which she would come away blowing her nose and very red about the
eyelids. She got him to drop in as if by accident every now and then at
the manor-house when Tim was at home, and so accustomed was the boy to
these half friendly, half professional visits of his earliest friend
that she thought they awoke no suspicions in his breast. It was after
one of these unofficial inspections that the old doctor delivered
himself of the above remark.
‘That’s what you always said,’ replied Mrs. Quitchett; ‘I must say you
have always said the same; but he seems somehow different this winter
from what I’ve ever seen him before.’
‘Do you think,’ asked the doctor, ‘that he can have anything on his
mind? Anything like fretting would be the worst thing in the world for
him. I suppose,’ he added tentatively, ‘he can’t have got into any
trouble of any kind?’
‘Trouble!’ echoed Mrs. Quitchett scornfully; ‘he’s the best-behaved and
steadiest boy in the kingdom of Britain. _He_ in any trouble; why, a
saint from heaven would be more likely ever to have a thought that
wasn’t out of the Bible than him. As to his having anything on his mind,
what _should_ he have, poor lamb, I should like to know?’
The doctor said if _she_ didn’t know of anything, _he_ certainly
couldn’t be expected to; that he had only thrown out the suggestion for
what it was worth. Boys would be boys, and the best of them got into
scrapes sometimes, and therewith took himself off.
But his nurse was wrong in supposing that the doctor’s frequent
droppings-in were lost upon Tim. I don’t know otherwise what train of
thought it could have been which led him one day to ask his father
whether his grandmother hadn’t died rather suddenly. The question
surprised Mr. Ebbesley, who wondered how the boy knew anything about
his grandparents.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she died very suddenly.’
‘Had she heart disease?’
‘No. I don’t think she had anything of that sort, but she had never been
very strong; it was more a general lowness of tone, something like
breaking up, and yet she was not an old woman. I think being in that
weak state she must have caught something, but I remember very little
about it. I was quite a child at the time.’
‘Then she was quite young when she died?’
‘Oh yes, not thirty, I think; all my mother’s family were delicate; they
were not long-lived people.’ And Mr. Ebbesley rather hastily changed the
conversation. This curiosity as to illness and death seemed to him
morbid and unhealthy, and perhaps he feared the boy might go on by a
natural transition to ask about his own mother.
He had been even less at home than usual that winter, but he too had
noticed in his visits to the manor-house that his son was not looking
well, and this conversation, chiming in with certain dark hints of Mrs.
Quitchett’s, made him feel it a duty to have him thoroughly examined
before sending him back to school. The Granthurst doctor was sent for in
addition to our old friend, and the two together undressed Tim, and
sounded him, and thumped him, and did all the inscrutable things doctors
do. ‘No,’ they said, ‘there was no organic trouble. The lungs were not
affected; the action of the heart was weak, but not in any way diseased;
the general tone was low; the circulation bad. He must not overtire
himself, must be made to dress warm, must be well fed,’ etc. etc. etc.
So Tim went back to Eton with many injunctions from Mrs. Quitchett, who
was more than usually fussy and particular in her directions to him, to
be very careful not to get tired or to sit in damp clothes, and to be
sure to put something round his neck and over his mouth if he had to go
out at night.
Tim was sixteen that March. How our story runs away with us, carrying us
over years in which he changed much in many ways, but remained always
unchanged on the side on which my business is to show him. He had been
growing a good deal of late, yet he was not tall for his age either, and
his slight, graceful figure made him look younger than he really was.
His hands too were small--delicate slender hands with long fingers, such
as do not often belong to boys who are quite strong. Tommy Weston, who
had a very respectable-sized fist, used to chaff him about them, and
solemnly invent receipts for the widening of them, which Tim took in
very good part, having a great regard for Tommy, and not caring a brass
farthing about his hands. It was bitter cold at Eton that fives half,
and Tim, despite his warm clothes, was chilly, and had to stay out
several times.
But Easter came at last, mild, sweet, and smiling, as so often happens
after a cold winter. Easter was late that year, and the cuckoo was
calling from tree to tree and wildflowers blowing in field and hedgerow
when Tim came home again. He was just a little whiter, a little thinner,
nothing very noticeable, yet Mrs. Quitchett noticed it, and the doctor’s
words spoken so many years before came back to her kind old mind:
‘Things will affect him more than other people all his life; what would
be nothing to an ordinary person might kill him.’ She remembered too his
question as to whether the boy could have anything on his mind.
‘Do you feel ill, my dearie?’ she asked him.
‘Oh no, thanks, nurse dear,’ he answered. ‘You all make such a fuss over
me that you will end by making me think there is something really the
matter.’
‘Tim, my lamb,’ asked the old woman earnestly, ‘you won’t mind if I ask
you a question?--remember it’s your old nurse, who loves you better
than any one else, and don’t be angry,--you haven’t, not by your own
fault I know, but out of kindness or anything, you haven’t got into any
trouble at school, have you?’
‘Why, what put that into your head?’ asked Tim, and being tickled with
the idea, he laughed so heartily that Mrs. Quitchett was reassured on
_that_ head.
Still she persisted. ‘There isn’t anything, then, that’s troubling you,
is there, dear,--nothing on your mind, as you may say?’
This time Tim did not laugh; he looked at her with some surprise, but he
only said, ‘You dear silly old goose, what _should_ I have on my mind?’
and kissed her, and so the matter dropped.
But Mrs. Quitchett and the doctor were not so far wrong after all; say
what he would, Tim’s illness was partly mental. The cloud of his
father’s displeasure, unexpressed yet always present, shadowed his whole
life. Thus his greatest joy, his friendship with Carol, came to involve
his greatest grief, his alienation from the only parent he had ever
known; and the constant conflict of emotions told on the boy’s sensitive
nature, and reacting on his bodily health, helped to weaken his already
too weak constitution. And Carol, meaning only to be kind, contrived,
like most well-meaning people, to make matters worse by coming to see
him nearly every day. He could talk unrestrainedly to him about Violet,
as he could to no one else; besides, he too had noticed the growing
pallor and creeping lassitude of Tim, and being really and sincerely
fond of his friend, began to grow anxious about him. He rarely
encountered Mr. Ebbesley, and certainly never guessed at his objecting
to his intimacy with his son. When they met, the older man was always
studiously polite to the younger; if he was rather cold too, it was not
very noticeable, Mr. Ebbesley’s manner to the general public not being
chiefly remarkable for warmth or geniality. Tim, however, lived on
thorns; he had made his choice and would stick to it, but he was
particularly anxious to avoid doing anything that could look like an act
of open defiance, and all this perpetual flourishing of Carol about the
place might very easily, in his father’s eyes, be made to bear such an
interpretation. Every time the two met he underwent real suffering, such
as no one can understand who has not experienced something like it. Mrs.
Quitchett, noting the shade that crossed her master’s face, and the
quick flush and drooping of the eyelids with which Tim mentioned Carol’s
name every time circumstances obliged him to do so in his father’s
presence, or rather, perhaps, guided by that divine intuition which
lends a sort of second sight to those who love much, arrived at some
glimmering suspicion of the state of affairs. The doctor’s suggestion of
Tim’s having some secret cause of worry had set her mind all agog to
discover and if possible remove it; and Mr. Ebbesley’s strange
behaviour on the day of his return from India recurred suddenly to her
recollection, and seemed to supply the clue to all this mystery which
her cross-questioning had failed to extract from Tim. Now as then her
love made her bold, and she determined to attack her master on the
subject the next time he came to Stoke Ashton. She had carried her point
then, and might again; the only thing that troubled her resolution was
an embarrassing doubt of what the point precisely was that she desired
to carry. Then she had a definite thing to try for; she wished to
extract permission for Carol to come to the manor-house, and had
succeeded in doing so. But here was Carol coming there every day, more
than he had ever done before. What she was to ask, she knew not; but she
felt, as she would have expressed it, ‘that she would be guided to
speak’ when the time came, and she resolved to make the attempt for her
boy’s sake.
‘If you please, sir, can I speak to you a minute?’ she asked, planting
herself in the lion’s path on the first opportunity that presented
itself. She felt that what she was going to say bordered on
impertinence, and her heart quaked, though her face was calm.
‘Certainly, nurse,’ answered Mr. Ebbesley with grave affability; ‘is it
about the books? Do you want some money?’
‘Not at present, thank you, sir; the fact is, I want to speak to you
about your son.’
Mr. Ebbesley looked up quickly, but said nothing.
‘Do you think that boy looks well?’ inquired Mrs. Quitchett
impressively.
‘He certainly does not look as well as I should like to see him,’
admitted the other rather unwillingly, ‘but he never has done that. As
to his _being_ ill, I can’t find out that there is anything the matter
with him; he has been very thoroughly examined by the doctors. Is there
anything else you can suggest?’
‘Shall I tell you what the doctor asked _me_?’ asked the nurse, still
with the air of Nemesis.
‘Certainly; let me hear it, though I don’t suppose he is likely to have
said anything different to you from what he did to me.’
‘He asked me,’ continued the old lady, ‘if the boy had anything on his
mind, if he was worried about anything.’
Mr. Ebbesley started. The conversation was taking a turn he by no means
expected.
‘What in the world should a child like that have to be worried about?’
he asked rather testily.
Mrs. Quitchett did not flinch.
‘If you’ll excuse the liberty I’m taking,’ she said, ‘I think I can tell
you, sir. I may be wrong, for I am only an ignorant old woman; but when
anything ails that boy I’m just bound to try and find it out; and I
think I have.’
‘For Heaven’s sake say out what you mean!’ exclaimed Mr. Ebbesley
crossly; ‘if there’s anything you want me to do, tell me what it is.’
‘That boy’s fretting, I can see plainly; and it’s something to do with
you and young Mr. Darley, though I don’t know what.’
Mr. Ebbesley jumped out of his chair with a smothered execration, and
began to walk about the room.
‘Has my son been complaining of me to you?’ he asked presently.
Mrs. Quitchett smiled with fine scorn, not untouched by pity, for the
poor man who understood his own child so little.
‘Not he,’ she answered laconically; ‘I haven’t so much as got one word
out of him about it, though I’ve tried; but he frets--any one may see
that. And I’m very much mistaken if that’s not what it’s about.’
‘What do you wish me to do?’ asked Mr. Ebbesley, sitting down again and
putting on his grand manner. ‘Does not my son have perfect liberty to
see his friend as much as he wishes? Do I interfere in any way?’
‘I can’t say as you do, sir,’ answered Mrs. Quitchett thoughtfully, ‘and
that’s just what puzzles me. The young man he come and go as he likes,
but your son’s not at ease about it; and I notice that he never mentions
his friend to you if he can possibly help it. You know you took a
dislike to that boy from the first day you came home and found him here;
and whether you’ve ever said so to your son or not, he know it, and he
fret.’
When Mrs. Quitchett felt strongly she had a way of clipping the final
_s_ from the third person singular of her verbs, which lent a curious
impressiveness to her remarks. There was something so sternly judicial
in the old lady’s attitude and manner that Mr. Ebbesley felt called upon
to make a defence of himself. It seemed as though certain uncomfortable
doubts as to his own conduct, which had begun to trouble him of late,
had suddenly taken voice and shape and stood up to confront him; and the
necessity of justification that he felt addressed itself rather to them
than to his visible interlocutor.
‘It is true,’ he said after a while, ‘that I have disapproved of Tim’s
foolish infatuation for his young neighbour, and I have on one occasion
spoken to him about it. He has an unhappy trick of exaggerating trifles,
and in the present case has chosen to make a mountain out of a molehill,
as usual. I told him that I thought he might with advantage to himself
be less like a silly schoolgirl in his friendship and more like a man,
and that I thought it bad for him mentally and physically to sit cramped
up all day writing long sentimental letters. He chose to talk a great
deal of nonsense about not “giving up his friend,” and all that kind of
thing; and now he is playing at being the persecuted victim, who bears
ill-usage heroically for his friend’s sake. It is all on a par with the
rest. He likes to fancy himself the hero of a story. It’s all damn
nonsense,’ he concluded suddenly, with a rapid drop into irritability.
Mrs. Quitchett was routed; she could say no more. She felt that she had
failed; though in other respects she hardly understood Mr. Ebbesley’s
explanation, that point at least was quite clear to her, and she began
to make a sort of apology, ‘if she had presumed.’
Her antagonist, feeling pleased with his own exposition of the matter,
graciously told her not to distress herself, and added, ‘I am quite
right, you may be sure, and, I need not say, am acting solely for what I
consider to be the boy’s own good. I have no personal dislike to young
Darley; quite the reverse. I am sure I am right, and some day or other,
when he has come to his senses, Tim will be the first to acknowledge
it.’
‘If he don’t die in finding it out,’ muttered Mrs. Quitchett as she left
the room; but Mr. Ebbesley apparently did not catch what she said.
Now Mr. Ebbesley was not alone in objecting to the intimacy between the
lads. Miss Violet Markham Willis had on several occasions, when she had
expressed her sovereign will and pleasure that Carol should do this or
that, been met by the answer that he must go and see Tim, who, he was
sure, was not well, and who must be dreadfully lonely and blue all by
himself in that old frog-hole of a manor-house. Carol in so doing was
performing an act of highest self-abnegation, and never doubted that
Violet must know it to be such, and approve of his motive. And she, with
the odd perversity of young ladies in love, never hinted that she did
nothing of the kind. But it is one thing voluntarily to sacrifice
oneself to a sense of duty, and quite another to be sacrificed, without
one’s consent, to some one else’s sense of duty. _She_ had never shot
Tim with a gun, and afterwards amused his slow convalescence, or
delivered him from stoning, or loftily received his admiring devotion
for eight years; consequently it was not to be expected that she should
in any way share Carol’s feeling about him; and to her he seemed only a
most uninteresting and unnecessary little person, who was constantly
interfering between her and her legitimate property. As a consequence of
all which, Carol’s amiability struck her as overdone, and she was
decidedly inclined to dislike the unhappy object of it.
Now it happened at this time that Mrs. Markham Willis gave her
hard-worked governess a holiday, the first for two years, and Violet
undertook to rule the schoolroom in her absence. The little Markham
Willises were what is called lively, high-spirited children, and finding
the yoke off their necks, they became pretty nearly unmanageable, and
gave their elder sister a great deal of trouble. Violet was a very good
girl in her way, but by no means a saint; she liked to enjoy herself,
and to have her own way, and to be a good deal petted and flattered, and
told how nice and how pretty she was; and this severe and unusual strain
on her patience proved a little too much for her temper. She had
undertaken this, being really anxious to be of use to her mother, and
from the best of motives, and she was determined to go through with it
and not complain, but she was having a rough time of it; and, moreover,
it galled her pride to have to acknowledge that she could not keep the
order that seemed to result as though by magic from the mere presence of
the meek, colourless Fräulein, whom in her heart she had always rather
looked down upon. She felt sick and cross and bitter, and as some one
else always has to suffer when any one is in that frame of mind, poor
Carol came in for trouble in the present instance as being the handiest
and likeliest person on whom to vent her displeasure.
It is far oftener for some one else’s faults than for our own that we
receive chastisement at the hands of our friends and relatives, and for
the most part we do not even know whose sins it is that we are bearing
vicariously. Maggie Tulliver had an old wooden doll that she ground and
beat when impotently hating her fellow-creatures, and Violet pitched
upon her lover to act this uncomfortable part. Perhaps their true love
had run a little too smooth if anything, and with human
unreasonableness, she may have felt that a little breeze in that
direction might clear the air and infuse the proper amount of necessary
excitement into the long wooing, which threatened to become a trifle
prosaic. Anyhow it is certain that Carol was made to suffer. And when
anything ailed Carol, Tim, you may be sure, was not long in finding it
out. He noticed that his friend came in and sat down wearily, asking how
he was in a sort of perfunctory manner, as one whose mind was elsewhere.
(Ordinarily Carol’s advent was made known by shouts or singing long
before he entered the house.) He walked about aimlessly and stared out
of window, much as he had done on that memorable day at Eton. Tim
forbore to press for confidences until Carol felt inclined to make
them; indeed, he almost hoped he would make none; he felt trouble in the
air by a sort of instinct, and shrank from fresh burthens, with sheer
physical weakness. Carol could talk of nothing, settle to nothing, and
soon went away; he was manifestly distressed about something. Again, the
next day, he was even more dejected, and on the third he broke silence.
‘I’ve been poor company these last few days,’ he said with a sudden
effort, ‘but I’ve been thinking of my own affairs, I’m afraid, and not
of you at all. The fact is I’m infernally miserable, and you must try
not to mind me.’
‘You miserable! Oh, Carol, why didn’t you say so sooner? Can I do
anything for you? Do tell me what’s the matter.’
‘There! I knew I should make you wretched; I’m a selfish brute to come
and make you unhappy too; but I can’t help it. I’ve tried to say nothing
about it.’
‘And do you suppose,’ asked Tim reproachfully, ‘that I haven’t seen
that something was wrong? How blind you must think me; or else that I
care very little about you, not to have noticed.’
‘I suppose I ought to have stayed away,’ said poor Carol dejectedly.
‘I’m not fit company for a dog when I’m out o’ spirits, but I try to
keep cheery at home for the sake of the dear old people; and it’s such a
comfort to give up every now and then, and look as gloomy as one feels.
I’m a bad hand at pretending; indeed, I’ve never had to before.’
‘You need not trouble to with _me_, at least,’ said Tim, smiling
faintly; ‘I know you far too well not to see through it in a minute. But
all this time you haven’t told me what’s the matter.’
Carol blushed hotly. ‘Violet----’ he stammered, and then stopped
abruptly.
‘Oh, Carol!’ Tim exclaimed, aghast, ‘you don’t mean to say she----’ The
thought was too awful to be put into words, but Carol answered it.
‘No; not exactly,’ he admitted moodily; ‘not in so many words, but
that’s what it’s coming to, I can see.’
And then he went on to tell how Violet’s manner had changed to him of
late. She was no longer as she once was, but more as though he had
offended her somehow, and yet he could think of nothing he had done. No,
clearly it was not _his_ fault; she had got tired of him, that was all,
and meant to throw him over; it was very natural, and he had been a fool
to expect anything else. She was a great deal too good for him, and he
couldn’t blame her. Had not he himself refused to bind her? She had been
too young to know her own mind, and had seen so few people; he supposed
she’d seen some other fellow she liked better--and the poor boy ground
his teeth at the bare thought. She had a perfect right to do as she
liked, and it was good of her to let him down easy; anyway he must try
and take it like a man, and not make a fool of himself.
On another occasion he broke down altogether. ‘Violet,’ he said, ‘had
shown her coldness towards him in the most marked way; he had seen her
coming down the road alone, and had hurried forward, determined at all
risks to ask what had changed her towards him,--any certainty, even the
worst, would be better than this suspense. But when she saw him, she had
turned down a lane obviously to avoid him, and he had not had the heart
to follow her.’ The poor fellow looked almost as pale as Tim, and
actually burst out crying when he came to this point in his narrative.
It was the first time in all their long intercourse that Tim had ever
seen Carol cry, and the act seemed so utterly foreign to his hero, and
out of keeping in every way, that it filled him with dismay, and took
from him all power of comfort or reasoning.
‘Oh, Carol! oh, dear _dear_ Carol! please don’t,’ was all he could say;
the sight of tears in those eyes was more than he could stand.
He could only accompany him home, giving him the help of his sympathetic
silence, and wisely refraining from all attempts at speech.
‘Thanks, dear old boy,’ Carol said as he wrung his hand at parting;
‘you’ve done me lots of good’; and Tim went away alone for a little
stroll through the woods to ponder on all this network of trouble.
Things too deep for his comprehension seemed to be closing in upon him.
That _he_ should be unhappy had come to appear to him more or less in
the natural order of things; but Carol!
What manner of creature then was this girl who could so sway the first
of men? To what order of beings did she belong, who might have Carol for
her very own, and exist in perpetual happiness with him, in perfect
interchange of affection, no one blaming or thwarting her; who yet
treated him like this and made him wretched? Many possibilities had
suggested themselves to Tim, but never this one. He was confused; his
head ached with thinking. The cheerful sights and sounds of the wood,
now beginning to deck itself with its first green, the bustle of the
birds at their early nest-building, the delicate yellow of the primroses
gemming the ground all about his feet, which at another time would have
been lovingly noted by him, had to-day no message of comfort for the
puzzled boy, as he vainly tried to find the ends of these tangled
threads of life, and love, sorrow, and anger.
Presently his path led him out of the wood into a little parklike strip
of meadowland, skirting the lane that would take him home. The boundary
hedge was set on a bank sloping gently this way and that, but the meadow
was on a higher level than the lane. It was a balmy soft afternoon,
unusually mild for the time of year, and Tim was rather tired with his
walk; the thought just crossed his mind, how much more easily tired he
seemed to be now than formerly, as he sat down on the soft moss and
leaned his head against the trunk of a large tree that grew on the
summit of the bank, jutting out from the hedge on either side. How long
he sat there he did not know; he must have fallen into a kind of
unconsciousness, for he did not think he was asleep.
He was roused at length by a sound of voices, and peeping through the
hedge he could discern the tops of two feminine hats, whose wearers had
evidently seated themselves on the lane side of the bank to rest,
directly below where he was. He was rising to pass on, when his
attention was attracted by the mention of his own name and that of
Carol, in a voice that made him thrill; it was Violet Markham Willis who
was speaking. He could not go on now; his legs refused their office, and
he sank down again in the same place. With instinctive repulsion from
the meanness of eavesdropping, he tried to call out to warn her that he
was there but no sound came from his lips. He was as though paralysed,
yet with all his senses morbidly acute; and then his whole being seemed
to resolve itself into an imperious necessity not to lose a word of this
conversation.
Violet spoke in a high aggrieved tone, not difficult to catch in the
stillness of the spring evening. Mrs. Markham Willis had made some
remark on her daughter’s altered looks and manner of late, and Violet,
concealing the schoolroom troubles, had laid the blame on Carol,
whereupon her mother had said a word of expostulation on that head too.
‘Oh, Carol!’ the girl was saying, when her voice first struck Tim’s ear.
‘Carol doesn’t care two straws about me; he may have fancied himself in
love with me at first, but it’s easy to see he’s tired of me. Would he
be perpetually running after that nasty little Ebbesley friend of his,
if he were really fond of me? he’s always with him, far more than he is
with me, I’m sure.’
‘Dearest Violet,’ her mother answered, ‘are you not a little
unreasonable? I can’t see, I’m sure, what Carol finds so attractive in
that boy, though I fancy it is his kindness. The poor fellow is
delicate, and very fond of him; and after all, he has a right to choose
his own friends.’
‘I should be the last to wish to deny it to him,’ Violet retorted
defiantly; ‘he can make a free choice; if he prefers “Tim,” as he calls
him, to me, let him have his choice by all means.’ And rather
inconsistently with her brave words, she began to cry. She was wrought
up and nervous, anxious to make something appear like a tangible
grievance.
‘Oh, my darling, consider,’ cried Mrs. Markham Willis; ‘are you not
trifling with your own happiness? I am sure Carol loves you very much,
poor fellow; and you know it too, if it were not for this foolish
misunderstanding. Tell me, dear, what makes you think he cares so much
for this friend?’
‘What makes me think!’ echoed Violet, sobbing. ‘Doesn’t he always say
he must go to him, if I suggest our doing anything together? Isn’t he
for ever talking about him, and making him an excuse to get away from
me? If he wants me to play second fiddle to that ridiculous boy, he’s
just mistaken; I’ll never marry a man with an intimate friend. Never.’
‘Dear dear Violet! don’t talk so loud; some one is coming. Oh! don’t
cry, darling; do dry your eyes. I wouldn’t have any one see you crying
here in the public lane for worlds. Have some self-respect, for my sake
if not for your own. Oh! dear, come quick; your eyes are quite red, and
you have no veil; and some one really _is_ coming.’
So this was the conclusion, the explanation of the whole matter. It was
he, Tim, that was the bar to the happiness of the one being he loved
more than all the world. There was an irony in it all that made it hard,
very hard. There are moments in which thought gallops with us, and
Tim’s resolve was taken so quickly that he wondered at himself. Not for
an instant did he waver, nor rejoice that if he would, he could keep his
friend to himself. Even the thought that Carol cared enough for him to
make the girl to whom he was virtually engaged suppose that she held
only a secondary place in his affections, could not shake his purpose.
His duties all pointed one way--that to his father and that to his
friend brought into sudden harmony in a way he had little looked for.
Yes, duties pointed one way, but feelings tugged the other; and though
resolved to follow duty, he had a hard struggle to quiet the turmoil
within him. He walked home very slowly, strengthening himself in his
purpose. ‘Nothing ever shall,’ Carol had said; ‘at least it will be your
fault if it does.’ How well he remembered the words, and his own scorn
of such an impossibility. Now they mocked his wretchedness, and with
them recurred another sentence from quite a different conversation. His
own words to his father seemed to rise in judgment against him, and he
did not try to appeal from them. ‘If one loved a person truly, one would
do anything for him, even give him up.’ He was determined that he would
never repay all Carol’s kindness by ruining his life for him. He did not
pause to think of what he was doing to his own; that was a side of the
question on which he found it safer not to dwell at present.
When he reached home he went straight to the room where he knew he
should find his father. Going up to him, he said, ‘Do you remember our
talk about Carol Darley, just a year ago?’ He spoke low and quickly,
holding his hat in one hand and supporting himself at the table with the
other.
Mr. Ebbesley could not help a hasty questioning look; he was taken by
surprise; but he answered coldly, ‘Perfectly; I am not likely to forget.
You were good enough on that occasion to inform me that you preferred
that young gentleman to me, and that you intended deliberately to
disobey my express desires, which I must say you have done most
thoroughly.’
‘It was the first time I ever disobeyed you, and you don’t know what it
cost me; but that is not the point. Since then I have thought it over; I
am come to say that I will do as you wish.’
Mr. Ebbesley was more surprised than ever, but he would have died rather
than show it. He only said, ‘I am glad to hear it; I don’t ask what has
brought you to your senses at last; I suppose you have had a quarrel.’
But Tim did not answer; his heart was too full. He was wrought to the
utmost pitch of endurance of which he was capable. He could not have
said another word to save his soul. He hurried almost stumbling from the
room; the necessity to be alone was strong upon him.