Hathercourt

“It is so very horrible to think of any one’s having been shut up in this very room for days, and weeks, and months, perhaps,” thought Mary. “And to think that her only way out of it was to many a man she hated! Still, whoever she was, she must have been brave; the only inconsistent part of the story is her being supposed to haunt the place she must have had such a horror of. Dear me, how dark it is getting! – how I do wish they would come, and how I wish I had not heard that story!”

Mary left the window again, and sat down on one of the hard, high-backed chairs. In spite of her anxiety and excitement, she was growing very tired, and once or twice she almost felt as if she were getting sleepy. But she was determined not to yield to this.

“It would be far worse if I fell asleep, and woke to find myself all in the dark,” she said to herself. “If I have to stay all night, I must keep awake, and, indeed, it begins to look very like having to stay all night. What can have become of Mr Morpeth? I am sure he has been gone half an hour.”

She listened till her ears were strained, but there was no sound. Then again the confused, sleepy feeling came over her; she dozed unconsciously for a minute or two, to be awakened suddenly by what in her sleep had seemed a loud noise. Mary started up, her heart beating violently, but she heard nothing for a moment or two. Then there came a faint creaking sound, as of some one coming up the staircase and along the passage outside. It was not the side from which she was looking for assistance, and, besides, whoever it was was approaching in perfect silence.

“Mr Morpeth would be sure to call out if it was he,” she reflected; “besides, Mrs Golding would be with him, and they would come the other way. Who can it be? Oh! supposing – just supposing the ghost were to come in, what should I do? I should always be told it was a dream; but I am not dreaming. And something must have been seen, otherwise there would not be the story about it.”

All this flashed through her mind in an instant. She got up from her chair with a vague intention of escaping, hiding herself somewhere, anywhere, but sat down again, as the steps came nearer and nearer, with a feeling of hopelessness. How could she escape? Where could she hide herself? There was no cupboard or recess, not even a curtain, in the bare, half-furnished room; she must just wait where she was, whatever happened, and, as if fascinated, poor Mary sat gazing on that part of the wall where she knew the door to be. Another moment – it seemed to her hours – and she heard the slight click of the concealed spring, and, thank Heavens, it was no ghost in flowing white, but a gentleman in a great-coat! Thus much Mary could discern, dusk though it was, even at the first glance, to her inexpressible relief.

“Mr Morpeth,” she exclaimed, “is it you? Oh, I am so thankful! But why – ”

The voice that interrupted her was not Mr Morpeth’s.

“Who is there? Is it you, Mrs Golding? What is the matter?” exclaimed the some one whose approach had so terrified her.

An instant’s pause; Mary’s wits, beginning to recover themselves, were all but scattered again as a frightful suspicion dawned upon her. Was she dreaming, could it be that her very worst misgiving was realised? Who was it standing in frowning bewilderment before her? Ghost, indeed – at that moment it seemed to her she would rather have faced twenty ghosts than the living man before her.

“Mr Cheviott!” she ejaculated, feebly, hardly conscious of speaking.

Mr Cheviott came forward a little, but cautiously, and in evident astonishment and perplexity. Something in the tone of the half whisper struck him as familiar, though it was too dark for him to distinguish at once anything but the general outline of poor Mary’s figure.

“Who is it? I don’t understand; does Mrs Golding know of your being here?” he asked, confusedly, with a vague idea that possibly the mysterious visitor was some friend of the housekeeper.

“No – oh, yes, I mean,” replied Mary; “I got locked in by mistake, and – and – ”

There was an end for the time of all explanation; Mary burst into unheroic tears; but not before an exclamation, to her ears fraught with inexpressible meaning, had reached her from Mr Cheviott.

“Miss Western, you here!” was all he said, but it was enough.

Though from the first of his entrance she had had no hope of escaping unperceived, yet the hearing his recognition expressed in words seemed to make things worse, and for the moment exaggerated almost beyond endurance the consciousness of her ignominious position. She cried as much from a sort of indignation at circumstances as from nervousness or timidity.

Mr Cheviott stood silent and motionless. Wild ideas were hurrying through his brain to the exclusion for the time of all reasonable conjecture. Had she been locked up here since the day before? Had she come with a frantic idea of winning him over even now to approve of an engagement between Arthur and her sister? If not, what was she doing here? And now that he had discovered her, what could he do or say that would not add to her distress?

Suddenly Mary looked up. Her tears somehow or other, had restored her self-control; the very shame she felt at Mr Cheviott’s hearing her sobs reacted so as to give her confidence.

“Why should I be ashamed? It is very natural I should cry after all the worry I have had the last few days; and who has caused it all? Who has broken Lily’s heart and made us all miserable? Why should I care what such a man as that thinks of me?”

She left off crying, and got up from the chair on which she had sunk down at the climax of her terror. She turned to Mr Cheviott, and said calmly, though not without the remains of an uncontrollable quaver in her voice:

“If you will be so good as to open the door, I should very much like to go.”

Mr Cheviott took up the cue with considerable relief. Any amount of formality was better than tears.

“Certainly,” he said, quietly. Then, almost to his own astonishment, the ludicrous side of the position suddenly presenting itself to him, a spirit of mischief incited him to add, “you must allow, Miss Western, I am in no way to blame for this disagreeable adventure of yours. And, if you will pardon my asking you, I must confess before I let you out I should very much like to know how you got in.”

Mary flamed up instantly.

“You have no right,” she began, – “no right,” she was going to say, “to ask me anything I have not chosen to tell you,” but she stopped short. She was in Mr Cheviott’s own house – how could she possibly refuse to tell him how she had got there? “I beg your pardon,” she said instead. “I – I came here with Mrs Greville and some people who wanted to see the house. I did not want to come,” she could not resist adding, with a curious little flash of defiance, “but I could not help it.”

“Ah! indeed, I understand,” said Mr Cheviott, turning to open the door, but to which part of her speech his observation was addressed, Mary was left in ignorance.

Mr Cheviott stopped.

“Which way do you wish to go out?” he asked.

“Out to the garden, if you please,” said Mary, eagerly. “That is the way Mr Morpeth – the gentleman that was with me, I mean – will be coming back. At least, I don’t know,” she went on, growing confused; “it depends on where he finds the housekeeper. But anyway, I would rather meet them all outside.”

“How on earth did ‘the gentleman that was with her’ get out?” thought Mr Cheviott – “or was it through some foolery of his that she got locked in?” But he was determined to ask no more questions.

He turned again to the wall, pressed the concealed spring without an instant’s hesitation, and the door flew open – flew open, and Mary, without a glance behind her, flew out.

Chapter Seventeen

Mary Tells Stories

Florizel – “Fortune speed us! —

Thus we set on, Camillo, to the sea-side.”

Camillo. – “The swifter speed the better.”

Winter’s Tale.

She flew out of the room, across the passage, down the little stair, and out at the door, still standing slightly ajar, for a moment thinking of nothing but the delight of being liberated at last. But it was dusk outside among the trees, and her hesitation which way to go recalled her to herself. She stopped short, and then turned back again.

“I should have thanked him. He really must think me mad,” she said to herself, with a hot flush of shame, hardly knowing what she ought to do.

But she was not long left in doubt. Mr Cheviott had followed her down-stairs; he was standing at the door.

“I am ashamed of not thanking you for letting me out,” she said, hastily.

“I hardly see that I could have done less,” he replied, dryly. “I merely followed you now to direct you how to get round to the front, as I believe you wish. You must keep that path to the left till it meets a wider one, which will bring you out at the foot of a flight of stone steps. These will take you up to the side terrace, and you can then easily see your way to the front of the house. It is not really dark yet; it is only the trees here which make it seem so, even in winter. They are so thick.”

“Thank you,” said Mary. “I am very much obliged to you, and I should have said so before, but – I did not think I was so silly – the feeling of being shut up in that room must have made me forget, it was so horrible,” and she gave a little shiver.

Mr Cheviott stepped forward a little, but it was too dark for Mary to see the concern in his eyes.

“Would you like me to go with you till you meet your friends,” he said, very gently.

“Oh, no, thank you,” exclaimed Mary, with great vehemence.

Mr Cheviott drew back.

“I see,” he said, with the slightly satirical tone Mary seemed to know so well and hated so devoutly. “It is bad enough to be still in the precincts of the ogre’s castle, but the presence of the ogre himself is quite too much for your nerves. Good-evening Miss Western.”

He raised his hat and re-entered the house before Mary had time to reply. She stood still for a second.

“Have I been rude to him again?” she said to herself, with a little compunction. “However, it really does not matter. No two people could dislike and despise each other more thoroughly than he and I do. I could never, in any circumstances, have liked him; but still, for Lily’s sake, I could have been civil to him. But now! I only hope, oh, ever so earnestly, that I shall never see him again – and what he thinks or does not think of me really is of less than no consequence.”

Nevertheless, the thought of the afternoon’s adventure made her cheeks tingle hotly, and she hurried on as fast as she could in the uncertain light. Mary Western seemed strangely unlike her usual philosophical self. She even seemed to find a relief to her irritation in trampling unnecessarily on the dry brushwood lying about here and there – the “scrunch” worked off her disgust a little. Once, after jumping on the top of a small raked-up heap, she stood still and laughed at herself.

“What a baby I am! I need never laugh at poor Josey’s ‘tantrums’ again,” she said to herself. “But the truth is that man has thoroughly mortified me, and I can’t stand mortification. It is my thorn in the flesh.”

Just then it seemed to her that she heard a faint sound in the path behind her. It was too dark to see anything, but Mary’s heart began to beat faster, and jumping down from the heap she hurried on more quickly than before.

“I dare say it’s only a rabbit,” she thought; “but still all round here has a sort of haunted feeling to me.”

She was glad when at last she came upon the flight of steps Mr Cheviott had described. Running up them, the first object that met her sight was Mr Morpeth hastening towards her.

“Miss Western! did you get out of the window? It was frightfully rash,” he exclaimed.

“I did not get out of the window,” replied Mary, shortly. “But that I did not try to do so is no thanks to you, Mr Morpeth.”

“Why, what’s the matter? I have done my very best, I can assure you,” he replied good-naturedly. “I was as quick as I could be, considering all your directions – I don’t think it can be more than half an hour since I left you.”

“Half an hour,” repeated Mary, indignantly. “You talk coolly of not much more than half an hour, but just fancy what that seemed to me. Shut up alone in that horrible room, and in the dark, too!”

“I’m very sorry, but I couldn’t help it.”

“It would not have taken me half an hour, I know,” pursued Mary, “to have run round to the front of the house and find the housekeeper.”

“Yes,” replied Mr Morpeth, “it certainly would, if, when you had run round to the front of the house, you had not found the housekeeper, and had been told instead that she had had to hurry off to her master, who had arrived unexpectedly – and if you had had to explain all to Mrs Greville, and beg her not to rouse an alarm and so on – all this in deference to the special commands of a certain young lady, whom I mistakenly imagined I was trying to serve.”

Mary felt rather ashamed of herself.

“Did you not find the housekeeper after all?” she inquired, meekly.

“Yes, Mrs Greville managed it, but I would not let her go back through the house to let you out, as I knew you would so dislike possibly meeting that fellow – what’s his name? – the man himself, I mean, whom you hate so. So I got a key; look what a queer one,” holding out a quaint looking object, which Mary could, however, hardly distinguish, till she took it in her own hands, “it opens the spring door from the outside, you see.”

“But did you see Mr Cheviott?” asked Mary.

“Oh, no! he stopped at his bailiff’s, or somewhere, and sent on his groom to say he had come back about some business, and would stay all night. Then off flies Mrs Silver, or whatever her name is – and nobody thinks any more of us two unfortunate wretches.”

“Yes, I see. I understand it all now,” said Mary, “and – ”

“You do, but I don’t,” interrupted Mr Morpeth. “I want to know how you got out of the room. You could never have found the spring, after all, and in the dark too.”

Mary did not answer.

“Did you?” persisted her companion. “Come now, Miss Western, I do think I deserve a civil answer.”

“Well, then, I didn’t,” replied Mary.

“Do you call that a civil answer?” inquired Mr Morpeth.

“No,” said Mary, half laughing, “I don’t know that I do, but – ”

“But what?”

“The truth is, I don’t want to tell you how I got out of the room, and I shall be exceedingly, infinitely obliged to you if you will say no more about the affair.”

“A short time ago you said you would be exceedingly obliged, or eternally grateful, or something of the kind if I would climb out of that window and find the housekeeper.”

“And so I was – so I am,” said Mary.

“Looks like it,” observed Mr Morpeth.

Then they walked on a few steps in silence, Mary feeling still uneasy, and somewhat conscience-smitten.

“Mr Morpeth,” she said at last, “what are you thinking?”

“Would you really like to know?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I was thinking that girls are all the same – very little satisfaction to be got out of any of them.”

“That means me, I suppose,” said Mary, slightly nettled.

“Perhaps,” replied Mr Morpeth, coolly. “You see, Miss Western, I did think you such a particularly sensible girl.”

“I dislike being considered a sensible girl more than anything you could say to me,” interrupted Mary.

“There you go!” said Mr Morpeth. “As I was saying, I thought you, till to-day, a very sensible girl – not like my sisters, who are forever flying out about something or other – and this afternoon you have really been so very uncertain and queer-tempered – ”

“I know I have,” interrupted Mary again, stopping short as she spoke. “Mr Morpeth,” she went on, “we shall be meeting the others again directly. Will you be really so very kind as to say nothing more about this afternoon and all the trouble I have given you? I don’t think I am generally uncertain and queer-tempered, but I have really been a good deal worried and troubled lately, and – and I think if I could explain all you would say there was a little excuse for me.”

There was something very like the glistening of tears in the brown eyes; it was almost too dark to see, but the voice suggested enough to soften Mr Morpeth’s heart – far more boyish and impressionable than he would have liked to own to. A new idea struck him.

“Perhaps, after all, she had some reason for disliking that fellow,” he thought – “perhaps she knows more of him than she allows, and he has fallen in love with her – she is really awfully pretty – and is pestering her to marry him though she hates him. And her people are so poor, Mrs Greville says – ”

He turned to Mary with a change of tone.

“Miss Western,” he said, earnestly, “I promise you to say no more about it, and I will do my best to prevent Mrs Greville or any one bothering you – I really will, and I’m sorry I said you were bad-tempered.”

“Thank you, thank you very much,” said Mary, cordially.

And in a few minutes they rejoined Mrs Greville and the Misses Morpeth, the former fortunately too much taken up with a more recent occurrence to have any thought to spare for Mary’s misadventures.

“Fancy, my dear,” she began, “what an escape you have had! Mr Cheviott has just left us; he has been showing us the pictures himself. So very kind and attentive! You have only just missed him.”

“How fortunate for me!” said Mary, dryly.

It was quite dark when they got back to Uxley, and the next morning Mr Western came over as arranged, and took Mary home again the same afternoon.

It seemed to her as if she had been away weeks or months instead of days. She was glad to be home again, and yet now, if she could have deferred her return, she would. Lilias asked her no questions, but still, either in Mary’s imagination or in fact, there was a tacit disappointment in her manner when she found Mary had nothing to tell.

“I was hopeful of some good result from what I had in my head,” thought Mary, “and Lily is so quick, though she had not the least idea of my doing such a wild thing. I fancy she knew by instinct that I was hopeful.”

“You did not hear anything of those people – the Romary people, I mean?” asked Lilias, at last, timidly, but with a sudden rush of colour into her face, which made Mary feel inclined to cry. It was about two days after she had come back.

“Yes,” she replied, “I did. I could not help hearing a good deal about them; they seem the staple subject of conversation in the neighbourhood.”

“About Captain Beverley – did you hear anything about him?” said Lilias, hastily. “Mary, you are concealing something from me – he is going to be married?”

“No, indeed. I heard nothing of that sort, Lily, I assure you. If I had, I would have told you about it at once; you know it is not my way to shirk such things – I am rather over-hasty the other way, I fear,” said Mary, with a little sigh. “And, indeed, I think I should almost have been glad to hear it. It would have been a stab and done with.”

“Mary, you are awfully hard,” said Lilias. Her voice was low and quivering.

“Hard!” repeated Mary, with amazement in her tone. She hard to Lilias! What fearful injustice – for a moment she felt too staggered to speak – how could Lilias misjudge her so? What a world it must be where such near friends could make such mistakes! Had she ever so misjudged any one? And, by an association of ideas which she herself could not have explained, her mind suddenly reverted to that never-to-be-forgotten scene in the Romary library, and the look on Mr Cheviott’s face which she had determined not to recognise as one of pain. Was it possible that in the cruel, almost insulting things she had said to him she had been influenced by some utter misjudgment of his motives? – was it possible that they were good and pure and unselfish? – could his cousin be a bad man, from whom he was chivalrously protecting Lilias’s innocence and inexperience? No, that was impossible. No man with Arthur’s honest eyes could be a bad man; but, if not this, what other motive could Mr Cheviott have that was not a mean and selfish one? Mary felt faint and giddy as these thoughts crowded upon her; the mere far-off suggestion of the tremendous injustice she might have done him, a suggestion born of the sharp pain of Lilias’s words to herself, seemed to confuse and stun her; all her ideas lost their proportion; all the data upon which her late actions and train of thought had been based suddenly failed her. And so swiftly had her mind travelled away from what had first started these misgivings that Lilias had spoken once or twice, in reply to her ejaculation, before the sense of her words reached her brain.

“Mary, Mary, listen to me. Don’t look so white and miserable,” Lilias was beseeching her. “I didn’t mean hard to me– I don’t even exactly mean hard to him– I mean hard about the whole, about the way it affects me. You don’t understand, and I don’t want you to think me a sentimental fool, but can’t you understand a little? Nothing would be so frightful to me as to have my faith in him destroyed, and, don’t you see, if it could be proved to me that he had been trifling with me, deceiving me, in fact – that all the time he had been caring for some one else more than for me – don’t you see how frightful it would be for me? It would be a stab indeed, but a stab that would kill the best part of me – all my faith and trust, Mary, do you see?”

“Yes,” said Mary, sadly, “I see.”

And she saw more – she saw that, for the sake of Lilias’s health and peace of mind, it was time that something should be done.

“She will grow morbid about it, and it will kill her youth and happiness, if not herself,” thought Mary. “I suppose it is on account of the isolated life we have had that this has taken such a terribly deep hold of her. For, after all, perhaps it is possible that, without being actually a bad, cruel man, Captain Beverley was not so much in earnest as she thought. I should call him a bad, cruel man, but I suppose the world would not – the world of which we know so little, as Mr Cheviott kindly reminded me! But what can I do for Lily?”

“Mary,” said Lilias, “what are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking that something must be done for you,” said Mary. “Lilias, I think it would be better for you to go away from home for a while.”

“Yes,” said Lilias. “I am almost beginning to think so myself. But I don’t see how to manage it, unless I advertise as a governess. We seem to have no friends.”

“By-the-bye,” said Mary, “that reminds me. Those Miss Morpeths at Uxley were talking about some Brookes who they think must be cousins of mother. I meant to have asked her about them, but I forgot.”

“They’re not likely to be much good to us, even if they are cousins of ours,” said Lilias, half bitterly. “None of mother’s rich relations have troubled themselves about her.”

And no more was said about the possible cousins just then.

A few days passed. Mary got back into home ways, from which even so short an absence as that of her visit to Uxley seemed to have separated her, and all was much as it had been before – much as it had been before that Sunday, now more than six months ago, when the little party of strangers had disturbed the equanimity of the Hathercourt congregation – before the still more fatal afternoon when Arthur Beverley had come over to see the Rector on business, and in his absence had stayed to tea with his wife and daughters in the Rectory drawing-room – much the same, but oh, how different! thought Lilias, wearily, as she tried her best to look as cheerful as of old – to take the same interest in daily life and its occurrences, which to a healthy mind is never wanting, however monotonous the daily life may be. She succeeded to some extent; she made herself believe that, at least, her trials were kept to herself, and allowed to shadow no other’s horizon. But she was mistaken. Her mother began to hope her child was “getting over it;” her father, who had but dimly suspected that anything was wrong, felt dimly relieved to hear her laugh, and joke, and tease as usual again; Alexa and Josey had their own private confabulations on the subject, deciding that either their eldest sister was a heartless flirt, or that, “between themselves, you know,” everything was satisfactorily arranged, though for some mysterious reason for a time to be kept secret, as any way it was clearly to be seen “that Lily was not in low spirits.” Only Mary, ignorant as she was and professed herself to be of all such misfortunes as are involved by falling in or out of love, was undeceived.