“I could hardly believe in any family event of great importance happening to us anywhere else – we seem so identified with our old home. I like to think I shall end my days here, after all,” Mr Western was saying, with inoffensive egotism, to Mr Cheviott, as they stood together in the window after the hero and heroine of the day had gone, when Mary came up and joined them.
“Yes, father,” she said, gently. “I remember your saying so, ever so long ago. I think,” she added, turning to Mr Cheviott, “it was the afternoon of that Sunday you all drove over to church here – do you remember?”
Mr Cheviott smiled slightly.
“I remember,” he said, quietly. “I have never been inside the church since, till to-day. If it is still open I would like to look round it, if I may?” turning to Mr Western for permission.
“It is not open,” said Mary, answering for her father, “but I can get the key in an instant, and, if you like,” she went on, considerably to Mr Cheviott’s surprise, “I will go with you.”
He thanked her, and they went. But, before fitting the great key into the old lock, as they stood once again by themselves in the church porch, Mary turned to her companion.
“Mr Cheviott,” she said, “I offered to come with you because I wanted an opportunity for saying something to you that I did not wish any one else to hear. I have never seen you alone since – since a day several months ago, when Lilias, by Arthur’s wish, explained everything to me, and I want just to tell you simply, once for all, that I am honestly ashamed of having misjudged you as I did, and – and – I hope you will forgive me.”
Mr Cheviott looked at her for a moment without speaking – her face was slightly flushed, her eyes bright and with a touch of appeal in them – half shy, half confident, which carried his thoughts, too, back to the last time they had stood there together. She looked not unlike what she had done then, but he – There was no smile in his face as he replied.
“Thank you,” he said. “It is kind and brave of you to say this, but I cannot say I forgive you. I have nothing to forgive. If I were not afraid of reviving what to you must be a most unpleasant memory, I would rather ask if you can forgive me for my much graver offences against you?”
“How? What do you mean?” said Mary, startled and chilled a little by his tone.
“My inconsideration and presumption are what I refer to,” he said. “I cannot now imagine what came over me to make me say what I did – but you will forgive and forget, will you not, Miss Western? We are connections now, you see – it would never do for us to quarrel. I once said – you remember – that speech is the one which I think I must have been mad to utter – that in other circumstances, had I had fair play, I could have succeeded in what I was then insane enough to dream of. Now my aspirations are surely reasonable enough to deserve success – all I ask is that you will forget all that passed at that time, and believe that, in a general way, I am not an infatuated fool.”
Mary had grown deadly pale. She drew herself back against the wall, as if for support.
“No,” she said, in a hard, constrained tone, “no, that I cannot do. You ask too much. I can never forget.”
Mr Cheviott gazed at her in astonishment. For one instant, for the shadow of an instant, a gleam darted across his face —could it be? —could she mean? – he asked himself, but, before his thought had taken form, Mary dashed it to the ground.
“I am ashamed of myself for being so easily upset,” she said, almost in her ordinary tone, “but I have had a good deal to tire me lately. We needn’t say any more, Mr Cheviott, about forgiving and forgetting, and all such sentimental matters. I have made my amende, and you have made yours, and it’s all right.”
Mr Cheviott’s voice was at its coldest and hardest when he spoke again.
“As you please,” was all he said, and Mary, foolish Mary, turned from him to hide the scorching tears that were beginning to come, and fumbled with the key till she succeeded in opening the door.
“There now,” she said, lightly. “I must run home. I don’t think you will require a cicerone for this church, Mr Cheviott,” and before he could reply, she was gone. Gone – to try to smile when she thought her heart was breaking, to seem cheerful and merry when over and over again there rang through her brain the cruel words – “He never cared for me, he says himself it was an infatuation. He is ashamed to remember it; oh no, he never really cared for me, or else my own words turned his love into contempt and dislike – and what wonder!”
Two or three days after Lilias’s marriage Mary heard from Alys Cheviott. She and her brother were leaving England almost immediately, she said, for several months. The letter was kind and affectionate, but it did not even allude to the possibility of her seeing Mary before they left.
“Good-bye, Alys,” said Mary, as she folded it up and one or two hot tears fell in the envelope. “Good-bye, dear Alys; and good-bye to the prize I threw from me, when it might have been mine – surely the best chance of happiness that ever woman was offered!”
Chapter Thirty One
A Farewell Visit to Romary
“He desired in a wife an intellect that, if not equal to his own, could become so by sympathy – a union of high culture and noble aspiration, and yet of loving womanly sweetness which a man seldom finds out of books; and when he does find it perhaps it does not wear the sort of face that he fancies.”
The Parisians.
The Westerns were not to spend this winter at Marshover. It was too cold for Mr Western, and so was Hathercourt. A house, therefore, for the worst of the season had been taken at Bournemouth, and there old Mr Brooke had promised to spend with them his otherwise solitary Christmas.
“I’m so glad you are going to Bournemouth,” said Mrs Greville one day, a few weeks after Lilias’s marriage, when she had driven over to say good-bye to her old friends before they left; “it is such a nice cheerful place, and plenty going on there. Quite a pleasant little society. It will be an advantage for the girls if, as Mrs Brabazon tells me, they are to be in town next year.”
“But Alexa and Josephine will not be at Bournemouth except for a week at Christmas,” said Mary. “They will be at school.”
“And Alexa is too young to go out at least for another year,” said Mrs Western.
“But there is Mary. You are not going to school again, are you, Mary?” said Mrs Greville, laughingly, turning to her.
“I almost wish I were!” she replied, “excepting that I should not like to leave mother. But I shall not go out at all, dear Mrs Greville, either at Bournemouth or in town. I don’t care for society.”
“How can you tell till you have tried?” said her friend.
“That’s just it. I don’t know anything at all about it, and I feel too old to get into the way of it.”
“Mary!” exclaimed Mrs Greville; “what an idea! At one-and-twenty,” and even Mrs Western looked slightly surprised.
“I can understand your thinking you will never care for things of the kind much, and I dare say you never will,” Mary’s mother observed. “But if not for your own, it may for others’ sakes – for your younger sisters’ – be necessary for you to go a little into society.”
“Ah, well – not at present, any way, and possibly never,” said Mary. “Alexa would make a much better Miss Western than I.”
Mrs Greville smiled.
“Are you tired of your honours already, Mary?” she said. “Well, who knows!”
“I didn’t mea – ” began Mary, flushing slightly, “besides, it has always been settled that I was the old maid of the family.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs Greville. “That reminds me, you will find some old friends at Bournemouth – the Morpeths; you don’t know, Mary, what an impression you made on Vance Morpeth.”
Mary looked annoyed. “That boy!” she exclaimed, hastily, “my dear Mrs Greville – ”
“He isn’t a boy – he is five-and-twenty,” interrupted Mrs Greville, slightly ruffled. “Of course I don’t mean to say that now, with your present prospects you might not be justified in – well, to use a common phrase, though not a very refined one, in ‘looking higher’.”
“Dear Mrs Greville!” exclaimed both Mary and her mother together. “Don’t say things like that, please,” Mary went on. “You don’t really think that I would be influenced by that kind of consideration? – you don’t think so poorly of me?”
“No, my dear, I do not. I think you and all of you a great deal too unworldly; I wish, for your own sakes, you were a little more influenced by considerations of that kind,” said Mrs Greville, nodding her head sagaciously, and just then, some one calling Mrs Western from the room, she went on in a lower voice, “Why are you so desperately cold to Mr Cheviott, my dear? Do you really dislike him so hopelessly?”
“Who said I disliked him?” exclaimed Mary, sharply, and the slight extra colour on her cheeks deepened now into hot, angry crimson.
“My dear! Don’t be so fierce. Surely you can’t have forgotten all the things you yourself said against him. Why, you would not even go to see through Romary till I coaxed you into it – just because it was his house. I assure you your aversion to him became quite a joke among us – Vance Morpeth always speaks of him as your bête noire.”
Mary was silent. What else could she be?
“I only wish you had not expressed your dislike to or before me,” continued Mrs Greville. “I should have been only too glad to have been able to say that I had never heard of it when Alys Cheviott told me how it had distressed and disappointed her.”
“Did Alys speak of it?” said Mary, surprised and a little annoyed.
“Yes, to me – not to any one else. You need not be indignant at it, Mary. It came about quite naturally. You know I have seen a good deal of her this summer while you were all at Marshover. She seemed to like my going over there, and she has been very lonely, poor girl. That aunt of hers is such a goose! And one day she was asking me all about you, and she added quite naturally how much she wished you would sometimes go to see her.”
“But I was away,” pleaded Mary, not quite honestly.
“Yes, just then; but you had been at home quite long enough to go if you had wished, and that was Alys’s disappointment. She told me that almost her first thought, when everything was cleared up between Lilias and Captain Beverley, was, ‘And now I shall be able to see Mary,’ thinking, of course, that when you understood that Mr Cheviott’s dread had been altogether unselfish – fear of Arthur’s ruining himself by disobeying the will – you would at once lose your dislike to him.”
“And what does she now think?” asked Mary.
“She doesn’t know what to think. She fears that in some way Mr Cheviott has so deeply offended you that your dislike – prejudice – whatever it is – to him, is incurable.”
Again, for a moment, Mary was silent. Then she said, hesitatingly.
“Has she – do you think, Mrs Greville – said anything of this to Mr Cheviott?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs Greville. “But of course, my dear Mary, you cannot pretend to be so modest as to fancy that your staying away from them – from Alys, at least – in this marked way, cannot have attracted attention. After the service you did them – the great obligation you put them under to you, and Alys’s constantly expressed affection and gratitude – your refusing to go to her, when she couldn’t come to you, was a very strong measure. And, to speak plainly, unless you had the very strongest reasons for it, I think it was very unkind to that poor girl.”
Mary, for some little time past, had been believing her punishment complete. Now, as Mrs Greville spoke, she realised that it had not been so. She had been cruel to Alys; she had allowed her own feelings – her mortification at the past, her proud terror of possible misapprehension in the future – to override what was the clearest and plainest of duties. “I am not worthy to be called a friend,” she said to herself, and tears filled her eyes as she turned to Mrs Greville.
“Thank you,” she said, gently, “for what you have said. It will not have been in vain.”
And Mrs Greville kissed and told her if she were proud and prejudiced, she was also honest and magnanimous. And then the good lady drove herself home in her pony-carriage with a comfortable feeling of self-satisfaction, and a vague, not unpleasing suspicion that she might turn out to have been a sort of “Deus ex machinâ,” or “benevolent fairy god-mother, we’ll say,” she added to herself, not feeling quite sure of the Latin of the first phrase, or that it did not savour a little of profanity, “just to give a little shove to affairs at the right moment.”
All day Mary thought and thought over what she should do. Could she get to see Alys, now at the eleventh hour, for the Cheviotts, if they had not already done so, must be on the eve of quitting Romary for the winter? Should she write to Mrs Greville and ask her to convey some message? Should she – so many months had passed since she had seen Alys that a little further delay could be of small consequence – should she wait for an opportunity of seeing Lilias, and asking her to explain? To explain what, and how? Ah! no. Explanation of any kind was impossible, and the necessity for it she had nothing but her own foolish conduct to thank for. At last – “I will attempt no explanation, no excuse, or palliation,” she decided, “Alys is generosity itself. I will trust her by asking her to trust me.” And that same evening she wrote to her a few simple words, which she felt to be all she could say.
“My dear Alys,” she said, “will you forgive me? I see now that I have made a grievous mistake, done a wrong and cruel thing in never going to see you all this time. This knowledge has come to me suddenly and startlingly, and I cannot rest till I write to you. I cannot explain to you what has distorted my way of seeing things, but I ask you to forgive me, and to believe that, selfishly and unkindly as I have acted, there has not been a day, scarcely an hour, since we were together in which I have not thought of you.
“Yours affectionately, —
“Mary Western.”
And when this letter was written and sent, Mary felt happier than she had done for a long time. Was it all “the reward of a good conscience?” Was there not deep down, unrecognised, in a corner of her “inner consciousness,” wherever that debatable land may be, a hope, a possibility of a hope rather, that Mrs Greville’s statement, to some extent, explained the change in Mr Cheviott’s manner? What if Alys, after all, had been the innocent marplot – suggesting to her brother in her disappointment that the “all coming right” of Lilias’s affairs had not resulted in a complete change of attitude on Mary’s part; that her dislike to him must be even deeper founded than could be explained by her misjudgment of his conduct towards her sister? What if they had both been at cross-purposes – each attributing to the other a prejudice that no longer existed – which, indeed, Mary had done nothing to remove his belief in on her part – which, as existing on his side towards her, she had imagined to have yielded temporarily to what he himself had described as an “infatuation,” but to return with tenfold strength?
All this she did not say to herself in distinct words, but the suggestion had taken root in her heart, and was not to be dislodged. And though days grew into weeks before there came from Alys an answer to her letter, Mary went about through those weeks with lightened steps and hopeful eyes. She could not distrust Alys, she told herself; and her mother, seeing her so cheerful, congratulated herself that Mary was “getting over” the loss of Lilias, which she had been beginning to fear had greatly depressed her.
Alys’s letter, when it did come, was all that Mary had expected and more, much more than she felt herself to have deserved.
“I will not ask you to explain anything,” wrote Alys, “I am more than satisfied. I cannot tell you what a change it makes in my life to be able to look forward to seeing you as much and as often as you can be spared to me. It will help me to be patient, and to try to get strong again. I am likely to be much alone when we return to England, for Laurence is thinking of letting Romary and taking a house for me somewhere not very far from town. He seems to have taken a dislike to a country life, and says he thinks he would be better if he had ‘more to do.’ I cannot agree with him that such a thing is possible, for I have never known him idle for half an hour.”
Mary gave a little sigh as she folded up the letter – that was all. And soon after came on the time for the family move to Bournemouth, and with a strange feeling of regret she again said good-bye to Hathercourt.
The winter passed, uneventfully enough on the whole. There was a flying visit from Lilias and her husband on their way back from Italy to the small country-house that was to be their home for the next two years; there were old Mr Brooke and Mrs Brabazon and the two schoolgirls, Alexa and Josey, for Christmas; there were, for Mary, very occasional glimpses of Bournemouth society; but with these exceptions her daily life was what many girls of her age would have considered very monotonous. She did not seem to find it so, however; she appeared, indeed, what Lilias called so “aggravatingly contented” that she owned to Arthur, with a sigh, that, after all, she greatly feared that the family prophecy about Mary was going to turn out true.
“At one-and-twenty,” she said, lugubriously, “she really seems to be steadily developing into an old maid.”
“Wait a little,” said Arthur. “Mrs Brabazon is determined to have her in town for some weeks. There is still hope of Mary’s proving to be not altogether superior to youthful vanities and frivolities.”
“Very little, I fear,” said Lilias, half smiling, half provoked.
Mrs Brabazon had her way – Mary did go to town, and, after her own fashion, enjoyed herself. She was generally liked, in some cases specially admired, but that was all. She gently repulsed all approach to anything more, and, though grateful to Mrs Brabazon, perplexed her by her calm equability in the midst of a life novel and exciting enough to have turned a less philosophical young head. If, indeed, it were “all philosophy,” thought Mary’s shrewd cousin, and not, to some extent, preoccupation?
One day towards the end of April – Mary had been six weeks in town – there came a letter from Bournemouth, asking her, if possible, to go to Hathercourt for a day or two, to make some arrangements preparatory to Mr and Mrs Western’s return there, “which,” wrote her mother, “no one but you, dear Mary, can see to satisfactorily, sorry as I am to interrupt your pleasant visit.”
Mrs Brabazon was somewhat put out. She had two or three specially desirable engagements for the next few days; but, though Mary heartily expressed her regret at the summons being, from her hostess’s point of view, thus ill-timed, she owned to herself rather enjoying the prospect than otherwise.
“I am an incurable country cousin, dear Mrs Brabazon,” she said; “you will have more satisfaction in every way with Alexa, if you are kind enough to take charge of her next year.”
“And where do you intend to be then?” said Mrs Brabazon, amused, in spite of herself, at Mary’s tone.
“I shall have retired to my own corner. I have always been told I should be an old maid,” said Mary, laughingly.
And two days later found her at Uxley. She was not to stay at Hathercourt, the Rectory being just released from the hands of painters and decorators, and unfit for habitation, and Mrs Greville delighted to seize the chance of a visit from one of her old favourites.
The day before that fixed for Mary’s return to town Mrs Greville came into the drawing-room with a note in her hand.
“You have quite finished at Hathercourt, you are sure?” she said, “you don’t need to go over again?”
“Oh, no, thank you,” said Mary, “there is nothing more for me to do. I am quite at your disposal for the rest of my time. Is there anything you want to do this afternoon?”
“Nothing much – only to drive over to Romary,” said Mrs Greville. “I have a note from poor old Mrs Golding, saying that she would be so thankful to see me. She is really ill, and quite upset with the idea of leaving Romary. She has only just heard definitely from Mr Cheviott about it, as she kept hoping he would change his mind.”
“Shall I not be in the way if I come with you? I don’t in the least mind staying alone,” said Mary, diplomatically.
“Oh dear, no!” replied Mrs Greville, who had not perceived the slight shadow that had stolen across Mary’s face at the mention of Romary, “the fact is I want you, for the boy cannot come this afternoon, and I don’t like driving quite so far alone.”
Mary resigned herself with outside cheerfulness, but some inward misgiving.
“I would rather never have gone near Romary again,” she said to herself; “however, I need not go into the house, and it will be a sort of good-bye to the place, and with it a great deal besides.”
For of late she had grown less hopeful. Alys had written once again, and to this second letter Mary had replied. But that was months ago, and she had heard no more; and, though nothing could make her distrust Alys’s affection, she was beginning to fear that their gradually drifting apart was unavoidable.
“Thinking of me as her brother does,” said Mary to herself, “it is not possible that she and I can have much intercourse. It was insane of me to hope for it.”
When Mrs Greville’s pony-carriage drove up to the house, Mary asked leave to stay outside.
“I shall be quite happy wandering about by myself,” she said, “and Mrs Golding will prefer seeing you without a stranger. How long shall you be – an hour?”
“Possibly two,” replied Mrs Greville, laughing, “there is no getting away from the old body sometimes. And as I shall not see her many more times I should like to pay her a good long visit.”
“Don’t hurry, then,” said Mary. “I shall be all right.”
It was a very lovely day. Romary looked to much greater advantage than the last time Mary had been there. It had then been mid-winter to all intents and purposes, at least as far as the trees and the grass were concerned. Now it was the most suggestively beautiful season of the year – spring-time far enough advanced to have much perfection of loveliness of its own, besides the rich promise of greater things yet to come. Mary had not before realised how pretty Romary was.
“I wonder they can think of leaving it,” she said to herself, half sadly. She had sauntered round the west front of the house, along a terrace overlooking a sort of Italian garden, when, turning suddenly another corner, she came upon a well-remembered scene – the thick-growing shrubbery through which ran the foot-path leading to the private entrance near the haunted room. With a curious mixture of feelings Mary stood still for a moment, recalling with a strange fascination the sensations with which she had last hurried along the little path. Then she slowly walked on.
Bright as the day was, it seemed dusk in the shrubbery.
“It is really a rather creepy place,” thought Mary, “one might expect to meet any kind of ghost hereabouts.”
And as if the thought had conjured up some corroboration of her words, at that moment in the narrow vista of the path before her there appeared a figure approaching in her direction. For one instant Mary started with a half-thrill of nervous apprehension – was she really the victim of some delusion of her own fancy? – then she looked again to feel but increased bewilderment as she more clearly recognised the figure. How could it be Mr Cheviott? Was he not most certainly still at Hyères? Had not Mrs Greville told her so that very morning?
There was just this one flaw in her argument – the person now rapidly nearing her was Mr Cheviott! And when Mary became convinced of this her first sensation of amazement gave way to scarcely less perplexing annoyance and vexation at being again met by him as an uninvited intruder on his own domain.
“Was there ever anything so awkward?” thought Mary, “was ever any one so unlucky as I?” she repeated, proudly stifling the quick flash of gladness at meeting him again anywhere, under any circumstances. And so overwhelmed was she by her own exaggerated self-consciousness that when in another moment with outstretched hand he stood before her, she did not even notice the bright look of pleasure that lighted up his face, or hear the one word, “Mary!” with which he met her.
Whether she shook hands or not she did not know. She felt only that her heart was beating to suffocation, and her face crimson as she exclaimed confusedly:
“Mr Cheviott! I had not the least idea you were here – in England even. I only came over with Mrs Greville – I am so vexed – so ashamed – If I had had any idea – ” Then she stopped, feeling as if she had only made bad worse. Mr Cheviott looked at her.
“If you had had any idea I was anywhere near here you would have flown to the Land’s End or John o’ Groat’s House to avoid me – is that it?” he said, and whether he spoke bitterly or in half jest to cover some underlying feeling, Mary really could not tell. She turned away her head and did not speak.
“If he takes that tone,” she said to herself, “I shall – I don’t know what I shall do.”
“Won’t you answer me? Mary you must,” he said, passionately, facing round upon her – half unconsciously she had walked on, and he had kept abreast of her – and taking both her hands in his – “do you hate me, Mary, or do you not?” he said. “I am not a proud man, you see, or else my love for you has cast out my pride; perhaps you will despise me for it, for a second time daring to – but I made up my mind to it. I came back to England on purpose to be sure. At least, you must see that my love is no light matter, and – oh! child, tell me —do you hate me? Look up and tell me.”
He had changed his tone to one of such earnest appeal that Mary trembled as he spoke. But when she tried to look up her eyes filled with tears, and the words she wanted would not come.
“Hate you?” was all she could say.
But it was enough. He looked at her as if he could hardly believe his eyes.
“Do you mean to say —Mary– do you mean that you love me? And all this time – ”
A smile broke through her tears.
“Can’t you believe it?” she said. “At least, you may absolve me from having ever told you anything but the plain truth as to my feelings towards you,” she added. Then he, too, smiled.
“But,” she added, “the last time we met, you yourself called it an ‘infatuation.’ I thought you had grown ashamed of it.”
“Ashamed of it,” he repeated, “ashamed of loving you? My darling! Ashamed of my reckless inconsideration for your feelings? – yes, I had reason to be that. And an infatuation it certainly did seem, to believe that there was any possibility of your ever learning to care for me, for there were all those months of disappointment after my conduct in that wretched complication had been cleared up, and day by day Alys hoped, and I hoped, for some sign from you. And then what you said to me the day of the marriage I looked upon as merely wrung from you by your brave conscientiousness – that made you feel your acknowledgment of mistake was due even to me. Do you see?”
“Yes,” said Mary; “but,” she added, shyly, “what made you change?”
“Your letter to Alys partly; by-the-bye, you have to tell me how you came to change so as to write it? And then – I don’t know how it was – I felt my case so desperate; I had nothing to lose, and oh, Mary, what an inestimable possibility to gain! I made up my mind to try once more, and as soon as I could leave Alys I came home, never hoping, however, to see you here – in the very lion’s den!”
“Does Alys know why you came?”
“No, I would never have told her, or any one, had I failed. But to think that I have won! – Mary, I never before in all my life dreamed of such happiness. I have everything that makes life worth having given to me in you. And, do you know,” he added, with a sort of boyish naïveté, “I don’t think I ever realised how wonderfully pretty you are? What have you been doing to yourself?”
Mary laughed – a happy, heartful laugh that fully vindicated the youthfulness she had begun to believe a thing of the past. She was not above feeling delight at his thinking her pretty.
“It is your eyes, I think,” he said. “They were always nice, sweet, honest eyes, but now something else has come into them. What is it?”
“Guess,” whispered Mary. “I don’t think it was there this morning.”
“It wasn’t your beauty I ever thought the most of,” he said. “It reminds me of something I read the other day, that when a man does And his ideal it is sure ‘not to wear the face he fancies.’ But I have got it all, face too!”
“And now,” said Mary, “please go away. I am sure Mrs Greville is ready, and I don’t want to keep her waiting.”
Mr Cheviott’s countenance fell.
“Mayn’t I come with you to meet her? Won’t you tell her?” he said.
“Not before you!” said Mary, laughing. “But I will tell her – I should like to tell some one,” she added, girlishly.
“And when can I see you?”
“To-morrow morning. Come to Uxley early if you can. I am not leaving till the afternoon. And then we can fix about – about your going to see them at Bournemouth, and all that.”
“But I would like to tell some one, too, this very minute, at once, and I have no one. What shall I do?” he said, ruefully.
“Tell Mrs Golding,” said Mary, mischievously, and before he could stop her, she had turned and was running at full speed along the shrubbery path, back to the front of the house, where, sure enough, Mrs Greville and the pony-carriage were waiting.
Ten minutes after, Mr Cheviott entered the old housekeeper’s room.
“Mrs Golding,” he said, “I am not so sure that I shall let Romary after all!”
The End.