Hathercourt

“I don’t want to like him better,” said Mary, honestly. “He is, of course, most courteous and civil to me – more than that, he is really considerate and kind, and certainly he is a cultivated and intelligent man, and not, in some ways, so narrow-minded as might have been expected. But I don’t want to like him, or think better of him; whenever I seem to be tempted to do so it all rises before me – selfish, cold, cruel man, to interfere with your happiness, my Lily.”

Mary gave herself a sort of shake of indignation.

“You are a queer girl, Mary,” said Lilias, putting a hand on each of her sister’s shoulders, and looking down – Lilias was the taller of the two – deep down into her eyes – blue into brown. The brown eyes were unfathomable in their mingled expression – into the blue ones there crept slowly two or three tears. But Lilias dashed them away before they fell, and soon after the sisters kissed each other and said good-bye.

“I wonder,” said Lilias to herself, as she stood still for a moment at the juncture of the two ways home, debating whether or not she might indulge herself by choosing the pleasanter but more circuitous path through the woods.

“I wonder if anything will have happened – anything of consequence, I mean – before I see Mary again, six weeks or so hence.”

An idle, childish sort of speculation, but one not without its charm for even the wiser ones among us sometimes, when the prize that would make life so perfect a thing is tantalisingly withheld from us, or, alas! when, in darker, less hopeful days, there is no break in the clouds about our path, and in the weariness of long-continued gloom we would almost cry to Fate itself to help us! – Fate which, in those seasons, we dare not call God, for no way of deliverance that our human judgment can call Divine seems open to us. Will nothing happen? – something we dare not wish for, to deliver us from the ruggedness of the appointed road from which, in faint-hearted cowardice, we shrink, short-sightedly forgetting that, to the brave and faithful, “strength as their days” shall be given.

But in no such weariness of spirit did Lilias Western “wonder” to herself; she was young and vigorous; there was a definite goal for her hopefulness; her visions of the future could take actual shape and clothing – and how much of human happiness does such an admission not involve? She “wondered” only because, notwithstanding the disappointment and trial she had to bear, life was still to her so full of joyful possibilities, of golden pictures, in the ultimate realisation of which she could not as yet but believe.

“Yes,” she repeated, as, deciding that a delay of ten minutes was the worst risk involved, she climbed the narrow stile into the wood – “yes, I wonder how things will be when dear Mary and I are together again? Such queer things have happened already among us. Who could have imagined such a thing as Mary’s being ‘domesticated’ with the Cheviotts? I wonder if Arthur Beverley will hear of it? Oh, I do, do wish I was not going away to-morrow!”

She stopped short again for a moment, and looked about her. How well she remembered the spot where she was standing! It was not far from the place where she and her sisters had met Captain Beverley that day when he had walked back with them to the Rectory. How they had all laughed and chattered! – how very long ago it seemed now! Lilias gazed all round her, and then hastened on again, and as she did so, somewhat to her surprise, far in front of her, at the end apparently of the wood alley which she was facing, she distinguished a figure approaching her. It was at some distance off when she first saw it, but the leafless branches intercepted but little of the light, which to-day was clear and undeceptive.

“It must be papa,” she said to herself, when she was able to distinguish that the figure was that of a man – “papa coming to meet me, or possibly he may be going on to see Mary at the farm.”

She hurried on eagerly, but when nearer the approaching intruder, again she suddenly relaxed her pace. Were her eyes deceiving her? Had her fancy played her false, and conjured up some extraordinary illusion to mislead her, or was it – could it be Arthur Beverley himself who was hastening towards her? Hastening? – yes, hastening so quickly that in another moment there was no possibility of any longer doubting that it was indeed he, and that he recognised her. But no smile lit up his face as he drew near; he looked strangely pale and anxious, and a vague misgiving seized Lilias; her heart began to beat so fast that she could scarcely hear the first words he addressed to her – she hardly noticed that he did not make any attempt to shake hands with her.

“Miss Western,” he said, in a low, constrained, and yet agitated tone, “I do not know whether I am glad or sorry to meet you. I do not know whether I dare say I am glad to meet you.” He glanced up at her for an instant with such appeal and wistfulness in his eyes that Lilias turned her face away to prevent his seeing the quick rush of tears that would come. “What you must have thought of me, I cannot let myself think,” he went on, speaking more hurriedly and nervously. “But you will let me ask you something, will you not? You seem to be coming from the farm – tell me, I implore you, have you by any chance heard how my poor cousin is? Is she still alive? She cannot – she must not be dead!”

His wildness startled Lilias. A rush of mingled feelings for an instant made it impossible for her to reply. What could be the meaning of it all? Why this exaggerated anxiety about Alys Cheviott, and at the same time this tone of almost abject self-blame? Lilias felt giddy, and almost sick with apprehension – was her faith about to be uprooted? her trust flung back into her face? Were Mary’s misgivings about to be realised? Was it true that Arthur, influenced by motives she could but guess at, had deserted her for his cousin?

Captain Beverley misinterpreted her silence. His face grew still paler.

“I see what you mean,” he said, excitedly. “She is dead, and you shrink from telling me. Good God, what an ending to it all!”

A new sensation seized Lilias – a strange rush of indignation against this man, so false, yet so wanting in self-control and delicacy as to parade his grief for the girl he imagined he had lost, to the girl whose heart he had gained, but to toss it aside! She turned upon him fierily.

“No,” she said, “she is not dead, nor the least likely to die. I have nothing more to say to you, Captain Beverley. Be so good as to let me pass.”

For he was standing right in front of her, blocking up the path. At her first words he drew a deep breath of relief and was on the point of interrupting her, but her last sentences seemed to stagger, and then to petrify him. He did not speak, he only stood and looked at her as if stupefied.

“Why are you so indignant?” he said at last. “Why should I not ask you how Alys is?”

“Why should you?” Lilias replied. “She is your own cousin. I scarcely know her by sight – we are not even acquaintances. Captain Beverley, I must again ask you to let me pass on.”

Half mechanically the young man stood aside, but as Lilias was about to pass him he again made a step forward.

“Miss Western – Lilias,” he exclaimed, “I shall go mad if you leave me like this. I had been thinking, hoping wildly and presumptuously, you may say, that, in spite of all, in spite of the frightful way appearances have been against me, you – you were still,” he dropped his voice so low that Lilias could scarcely catch the words, “still trusting me.”

Lilias looked up bravely.

“So I was,” she said.

“And why not ‘so I am’?” he said, eagerly, his fair fare flushing painfully.

Lilias hesitated.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I cannot understand you and – and your manner to-day.”

Captain Beverley sighed deeply.

“And I – I cannot, dare not explain,” he said, sorrowfully. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he added, hastily, seeing a quick, questioning glance from Lilias at the word “dare.”

“I mean I am bound for the sake of others not to explain. I have, indeed, I now see, been bound hand and foot by the folly of others almost ever since I was born! There is nothing I would not wish to explain to you, nothing that I should not be thankful for you to know – but I cannot tell it you! Was ever man placed in such a position before?” He stopped and appeared to be considering deeply. “Lilias,” he went on, earnestly, “it seems to me that I am so placed that I must do one or other of two wrong things. I must break my pledged word, or I must behave dishonourably to you – which shall it be? Decide for me.”

“Neither,” said Lilias, without an instant’s hesitation. “You shall not break your word, Arthur, for my sake. And you shall not behave dishonourably to me, for, whatever you do or don’t do, I promise you to believe that you have done the best you could; I have trusted you, hitherto, against everybody. Shall I, may I, go on trusting you?”

Arthur looked at her – looked straight into her eyes, and that look was enough.

“Yes,” he said, “you may.”

There was silence for a moment or two. Then Arthur added:

“Lilias,” he said, “I have not in the past behaved unselfishly – hardly, some would say, honourably to you. But it was out of thoughtlessness and ignorance; till I knew you, I did not know myself. I had no idea how I could care for any woman, and I had ignorantly fancied I never should. I cannot explain, but I may say one thing. Should you be afraid of marrying a poor man – a really poor man?”

Lilias smiled.

“I half fancied there was something of that kind,” she said. “No,” she went on, “I should not be afraid of marrying you as a poor man. I have no special love for poverty in the abstract. I know too much of it. And I am no longer, you know, what people call ‘a mere girl.’ I am two-and-twenty, and have had time to become practical.”

“It looks like it,” said Arthur, smiling too.

“But my practicalness makes me not afraid of poverty on the other hand,” pursued Lilias. “I have seen how much happiness can co-exist with it. My only misgiving is,” she hesitated – “you would like me to speak frankly?”

“Whatever you do I entreat you to be frank,” said Arthur, earnestly. “I don’t deserve it, I know, but Heaven knows I would be frank to you if I could.”

“I was only going to say – my people – my parents and Mary, perhaps, might be more mercenary for me – because they have all spoiled me, and I have been horribly selfish, and they might think me less fit for a struggling life than I believe I really am.”

“Yes, I can fancy their feelings for you by my own,” said Arthur, sighing. “And how I would have enjoyed enabling you to be a comfort to them – to your mother, for instance. Lilias, I am cruelly placed.”

“Poor fellow!” said Lilias, mischievously.

“Yes,” said Arthur, “I am indeed. Will you now,” he went on, “tell me about Alys? How is she, and where?”

Lilias told him all she knew.

“And your sister nursing her,” said Arthur. “How extraordinary!”

Notwithstanding his surprise, however, Lilias could see that the idea of the thing was not unpleasing to him.

“But for that – but for Mary’s being with her, you and I would not have met this morning,” she said.

“You may go further and say that but for Alys’s accident I should not have been here,” said Arthur, while a shade fell over his sunny countenance. “It is too cold for you standing here. Let us walk on a little.”

“Are you not going to the farm?” Lilias asked.

“No. Now that I have seen you I shall hurry back the way I came. You have told me all there is to hear. Poor Alys! Lilias, I wish I could explain to you why I felt so horribly, so unbearably anxious about her. I am very fond of her; but once lately when I was nearly beside myself with perplexity and misery, Laurence – her brother, you know – to bring me to what he would call my senses, I suppose, said something which has haunted me ever since I heard of her accident yesterday morning. If she had been killed I should have felt as if I had killed her.”

He looked at Lilias, with a self-reproach and distress in his open boyish face which touched her greatly – the more as, now that the brightness had for the moment faded out of his countenance, she could see how much changed he was, how thin and pale and worn he looked.

“I think I can understand – a very little,” she said, gently, “without your explaining. But you have grown morbid, Arthur. You know you would suffer anything yourself rather than wish injury to any one.”

“I suppose I have grown morbid,” he said. “Morbid for want of hope, and still more from the constant horrible dread of what you must be thinking of me. I shall not know myself when I get back to C. I may have dark fits of blaming myself for involving you in my misfortunes – but then to know that you trust me again! Surely, whatever the world might say, I have not done wrong, Lilias? To you, I mean?”

“You have given me back my life, and youth, and faith and everything good,” she replied. “Can that be doing me wrong?”

They walked on a little way in silence. Then Arthur stopped.

“I must go, I fear,” he said, reluctantly. “And I suppose we must not write to each other. No, it would not be fair to you to ask it.”

“I should not like to write to you without my father and mother’s knowledge,” said Lilias.

“No, of course not. And, as I am placed – my difficulties involve others, that is the worst of it – I do not see that I can avoid asking you not to mention what has passed to your people, at present. Does that make you uncomfortable?”

Lilias considered.

“No,” she said, “I do not see that it alters my position. Hitherto I have gone on trusting you, without saying anything about it to any one. Till I met you this afternoon, and your own manner and words misled me, I have never left off trusting you, Arthur, never. And so I shall go on the same way. But I couldn’t write to you without them all knowing. I mean I should not feel happy in doing so. Besides, it would not be very much good. You see you cannot explain things to me yet, so we could not consult together.”

“Not yet,” said Arthur. “But as you trust me, trust me in this. If any effort of mine can hasten the explanation, you shall not long be left in this position. You are doing for me what few girls would do for a man – do not think I do not know that, and believe that I shall never forget it. Two years,” he went on, in a lower voice, almost as if speaking to himself, but Lilias caught the words – “two years at longest, but two years are a long time. And if I take my fate in my own hands, there is no need for waiting two years.”

“Do nothing rash or hasty,” said Lilias, earnestly. “Do nothing for my sake that might injure you. Arthur,” she exclaimed, hastily, as a new light burst upon her, and her face grew pale with anxiety – “Arthur, I am surely not to be the cause of misfortune to you? Your pledging yourself to me is surely not going to ruin you? If I thought so! Oh! Arthur, what would – what could I do?”

Arthur was startled. He felt that already he had all but gone too far, and Mr Cheviott’s words recurred to him. “If the girl be what you think her, would she accept you if she knew it would be to ruin you?” Recurred to him, however, but to be rejected as a plausible piece of special pleading. “Ruin him,” yes, indeed, if she, the only woman he had ever cared for, threw him over, then they might talk of ruining him. And were there no Lilias in the world, could he have asked Alys to marry him – Alys, his little sister – now that he knew what it was to love with a man’s whole love?

“Lilias,” he said, with earnestness almost approaching solemnity in his voice, “you must never say such words as those, never; whatever happens, you are the best of life to me. And even if I had returned to find you married to some one else, my position would have remained the same. That is all I can say to you. No, I will do nothing rash or hasty. For your sake I will be careful and deliberate where I would not be, or might not have been so, for myself.”

“Can you not tell me where you are going, or what you are doing?” said Lilias, with some hesitation.

“Oh, dear, yes! Somehow I fancied you knew. I am at C, studying at the Agricultural College, studying hard for the first time in my life. My idea is,” he added, speaking more slowly, “to fit myself, if need be, for employment of a kind I fancy I could get on in – something like becoming agent to a property – that sort of thing.”

Lilias looked up at him with surprise and admiration. This, then, was what he had been busy about all these weary months, during which everybody had been speaking or hinting ill of him. Working hard – with what object was only too clear – to make a home for her, should the mysterious ill-fortune to which he alluded leave him a poor and homeless man! Lilias’s eyes filled with tears – was he not a man to trust?

Then at last they parted – each feeling too deeply for words – but yet what a happy parting it was!

“To think,” said Lilias to herself as she hurried home, “to think how I was wondering what might happen in the next six weeks – to think what has happened in the last half hour!”

And Arthur, all the way back to C, his heart filled with the energy and hopefulness born of a great happiness, could not refrain from going over and over again the old ground as to whether something could not be done – could not the Court of Chancery be appealed to? He wished he could talk it over with Laurence – Laurence who was just as anxious as he to undo the cruel complication in which they were both placed.

“Only then again,” thought Arthur, “that foolish, ridiculous prejudice of his against the Westerns comes in and prevents his helping me if he could. And to think of Mary being there as Alys’s nurse! How he will hate the obligation – If it were not so serious for poor Alys, I really could laugh when I think of Laurence’s ruffled dignity in such a position!”

Chapter Twenty Two

Alys’s Brother

“In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind.”Wordsworth.

Days passed – a week, ten days of Mr Brandreth’s fortnight were over, but still he would say nothing definite as to the possibility of moving Alys to Romary. And Alys herself seemed marvellously contented – the reason of which she made no secret of to Mary.

“You see I have never had a really close friend of near my own age – and you are only two years older,” she said one day. “And I never could have got to know you so well in any other circumstances – could I? You do understand me so well, Mary. It is perfectly wonderful. If I were never to see you again, I could not regret my accident since it has made me know you.”

Mary was silent.

“Why don’t you answer?” said Alys, anxiously. “Am I horribly selfish to speak so, when this time you have given up to me has kept you away from your dear home and all of them, and interfered with your regular duties?”

“No, dear,” said Mary, “it isn’t that at all. My being away from home has not mattered in the least; besides, I am near enough to hear at once if they really needed me. No, I was only thinking I could not say I did not regret your accident, because, though I am thankful you are so far better, I feel so anxious about you afterwards. Even though Mr Brandreth does not anticipate seriously-lasting injury, you may have a good deal of weariness and endurance before you. He told you?”

“Yes,” said Alys, composedly. “I know I shall not feel strong and well, as I used, for a long time, if ever. I shall have to rest a great deal, hanging about sofas, and all that – just what I hate. But I don’t mind. I am still glad it happened. It has done me good, and it has done some one else good too. Was that all you hesitated about, Mary?”

“Not quite.”

“Well, say the rest —do!”

“I was only thinking that I could not respond as heartily as I would like to your affection, Alys, because I hardly see that my friendship can be much good to you in the future.”

“Why?”

“Our lives are so differently placed – we are in such totally different spheres – ”

“Oh! Mary,” exclaimed Alys, reproachfully, “you are not going to be proud, and refuse to know us because we are rich and you are – ”

“Poor,” added Mary, smiling. “No, not on that account exactly.”

“Why, then? Is it because you suspect that at one time Laurence discouraged my knowing you? You can afford to forgive that, surely, now. And it was his duty, I suppose, to be very careful about whom I knew, having no mother or sister, you know; and at that time he did not know you.”

“No, he did not; and it was his duty, as you say, to be very careful. He did not know us, true, but at least he knew no harm of us, except that we were out of the charmed circle. And did that justify him in – Oh! Alys, dear, don’t make me speak about it. Let us be happy this little while we are together.”

“Mary, do you dislike Laurence?”

“I do not like unfounded prejudices,” replied Mary, evasively.

“That means Laurence, I suppose. But, Mary, people can outgrow their prejudices. I am not sure that you yourself are not at present partly affected by prejudice.”

“No,” said Mary, in a firm but somewhat low voice. “I am not, indeed. I cannot defend myself from the appearance of being so, but it is not the case, truly.”

Alys sighed.

“Don’t make yourself unhappy about it, dear,” said Mary.

“I can’t help it,” said Alys, dejectedly. “There is something I don’t understand. I don’t ask you to tell me anything you would rather not, but I am so disappointed. I wanted you to get to like Laurence. I know – I can see he likes you, and that was why I thought it had all happened so well. I did not mind the idea of being a sort of invalid for some time when I thought of your coming to see me often at Romary, and staying with us there. Mary, won’t you come? I was speaking to Laurence about it last night, and he said, if I could persuade you to come, he would be most grateful to you.”

“I don’t want him to be grateful to me,” said Mary, lightly.

“How can he help being so? What he meant was, of course, that if you came it would be out of goodness to me. You must know that he would consider it a favour.”

“Yes, I do. Mr Cheviott is not the least inclined to patronise people, I will say that for him,” said Mary, laughing.

“Then you will come to Romary?” said Alys, coaxingly.

Mary shook her head.

“I must be honest, Alys dear,” she said, “and to tell you the truth, I can’t imagine myself going to Romary ag – ever going to Romary, I mean, under any circumstances whatever.”

“How you must dislike Laurence!” said Alys. “Has he displeased you since you have been here?”

“Oh dear, no,” said Mary, eagerly. “He has been as kind and considerate as possible. I wish I could help hurting you, Alys. I can say one thing, I do like Mr Cheviott as your brother, more than I could have believed it possible I could ever like him.”

“Faint praise,” said Alys.

“But not of the ‘damning’ kind. I mean what I say,” persisted Mary. “And – perhaps you will think this worse than ‘faint praise’ – since I have seen him in this way – as your brother – I cannot help thinking that circumstances, the way he has been brought up, have a good deal to answer for in his case.”

Alys’s face flushed a little, yet she was not offended.

“And why not in mine?” she said. “I have had more reason to be spoiled than poor Laurence. His youth was anything but a very smooth or happy one. My father was not rich always, you know.”

“Was he not? Still ‘rich’ is a comparative word. Mr Cheviott has always ‘moved in a certain sphere,’ as newspapers say, and he cannot have had much chance of seeing outside that sphere,” said Mary, with the calm philosophy of her twenty years’ thorough knowledge of the world in all its phases. “As for you, Alys, you are not spoiled, just because you are not. You are a duck – at least you have a duck’s back – it has run off you.”

And both girls were laughing at this when Mr Cheviott, just returned from his daily expedition to Romary, entered the room.