Hathercourt

“Had you not better ask Laurence?” said Miss Winstanley, tremulously, driven at last hopelessly into a corner.

“No, it would be no use. There is something that he is, in some way, debarred from telling me, I am sure, otherwise he would have told me, for he has no love of mystery or secrecy. And yet I feel equally sure that it is something that can only be put straight by my knowing it.”

Miss Winstanley sat silent, a picture of bewildered distress.

“Aunt,” said Alys again, after a short pause, her cheeks and brow flushing to the roots of her hair, “what I am going to ask you I don’t like to put in words – it seems to me such an altogether repulsive, unnatural idea, but, as you won’t speak without, I must ask you. Has all this trouble anything to do with my marrying some one, any one in particular? You told me once that Uncle Beverley, Arthur’s father, was extraordinarily fond of me when I was a baby, and that he would have done anything to show his gratitude to my mother for what she had done for him. Now, aunt, has this anything to do with the peculiar terms of his will, which I have very often heard alluded to?”

“I have never seen the will; believe me, Alys, I do not know its exact terms,” Miss Winstanley pleaded.

“Well, I dare say you don’t, aunt. But you know enough to throw a little daylight on my part of it. Aunt, is it, can it be that Arthur’s inheriting his father’s property – his own property – depends on his marrying me?”

Her voice quivered and fell – a whole army of contending feelings were at war within her as she waited breathlessly for Miss Winstanley’s reply.

“No, not exactly,” she said, trying, as usual, to shelter herself behind vague and indefinite answers, “if you did not want to many him, he would not be punished for that. Now, Alys, this is all I can say. I am going away upstairs to my own room, to avoid any more talk of this kind.”

Miss Winstanley rose from her seat, nervously tugging at her shawl which, as usual, had dropped far below her waist as she got up.

Alys took no notice of her last sentence.

“If I don’t want to marry him, he will be none the worse,” she repeated, slowly, “but if he doesn’t want to marry me – what then? That would be a different story! Thank you, aunt; on the whole, I think you have told me enough, so you may stay down-stairs without fear. I am not going to ask any more questions.”

Her tone was cool and composed enough, yet, on the whole, Miss Winstanley would rather have had her more visibly angry. There was a gleam in her eyes and a scorching spot on each cheek which her aunt had not for long seen there. “Alys was very hot-tempered as a child,” she was wont to say of her, “but of late years she had calmed down wonderfully.”

“No, Alys, I don’t want to stay down-stairs, thank you,” she replied, reprovingly, tugging harder than ever at the front of the recalcitrant shawl, her efforts in some mysterious way only resulting in a more tantalising descent behind.

Alys made no reply.

“To think,” she was muttering to herself, “to think how all this time I have been kept in the dark! How like a fool I have behaved! Laurence might have warned me somehow– however he was bound down not to tell me. He had better have tried to upset the will on the ground of Uncle Beverley’s being mad, which he certainly must have been!”

Two minutes after Miss Winstanley left the room Captain Beverley entered it.

“Alys,” he said, as he came in, “Laurence said you wanted me, so here I am. Why, what’s the matter, child?” he added, with a quick change of tone as he caught sight of her face. She was not crying, but her cheeks were burning and her eyes gleaming, and as she looked up to answer her cousin, he saw that she was biting her lips in a quick nervous way to keep back the tears – a gesture peculiar to her from childhood.

“Everything is the matter,” she said, bitterly. “I feel as if I should never trust any one again. I have something to say to you, Arthur, something very particular, and I want to say it very distinctly, so please to listen.”

“I’m all attention,” said Arthur, lightly still, though in reality not a little apprehensive as to what was coming. What could it be? Could Alys have found out about the understanding that now existed between himself and Lilias – she had been so intimate with Mary Western at the Edge? But a moment’s reflection dismissed the idea. Lilias was too true to have told any one, even her sister, without his sanction. Besides, even had the fact come to Alys’s knowledge, she would have been pleased and sympathising, not discomposed and indignant, as she evidently was.

“Listen,” she repeated. “I want to tell you, Arthur Beverley, that supposing anything so altogether impossible and unnatural, and – and absurd and ridiculous as that you, my cousin, almost brother, should have thought of wanting to marry me —me, Alys! – well, supposing such a thing, I want to tell you that nothing you or any one could ever have said or ever could say would make me ever, even for half an instant, take such a thing into consideration. I could not do so. I tell you distinctly that I would not marry you for anything, Arthur, not if my life depended upon it.”

Captain Beverley stared at her – stared as if he hardly believed his own ears.

“Does he think I am going out of my mind?” thought Alys, while across her brain there darted a horrible misgiving – could she in any way have misunderstood Miss Winstanley’s confused replies? – could this impulsive act of hers, instead of being, as it had seemed to her, a positive inspiration, be after all a mistake, a terribly unwomanly mistake, which, to the last day of her life, she would blush to think of? Afterwards it seemed to Alys as if in waiting for her cousin to speak she had lived through years of agonised suspense.

“Alys,” he said at last, hoarsely, it sounded to her. “Alys,” and oh! the relief of the next few words, strangely chosen and almost ludicrously matter-of-fact as they sounded! “Would you mind putting that in writing?”

“Certainly not. I will do so this moment,” she replied, recovering her self-possession and presence of mind on the spot. “Here, give me my writing things – just push my davenport over here.”

Arthur did so, his hands trembling, his face pale with anxiety. All Alys’s nervousness and agitation seemed to have passed to him.

“It is best to do it at once,” he murmured, more as if speaking to himself than to her, “before I am tempted to say anything, so that my conscience may be clear that it is entirely voluntary, entirely her own doing.”

“Yes,” said Alys, looking up from the paper on which she had already traced some lines, “that it certainly is.” Then she went on writing. “There, now, will that do?” she exclaimed, holding the sheet towards him.

“Read it, please,” said Arthur, and Alys read:

“Of my own free will, uninfluenced by any one whatsoever, I wish to declare that no conceivable consideration would, at this or any other time, make me agree to marry my cousin, Arthur Beverley.

“Alys Madelene Cheviott.”

“Yes,” said Arthur, slowly, “that will do. Shall I thank you, Alys, or would you rather not?”

She looked up with a sparkle of her old mischievousness in her eyes.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said; “I don’t quite see it, I confess. I have simply stated a fact.” Then suddenly she held up her hands before her face, which was growing hot again. “No, no, Arthur, don’t thank me,” she exclaimed; “I could not bear it. It is altogether too – too bad that anything like this should come between you and me. Go away, please, and send Laurence.”

Arthur looked at her with earnest, regretful tenderness. But he saw that she was right. She would be better without him, and he went. Five minutes afterwards her brother entered the room.

“Alys,” he said, sternly, but any one that knew him could have seen that it was a sternness born of anxiety, “what is all this? What have you been doing? I cannot understand what Arthur says, or rather he won’t explain, but refers me to you. What have you been doing?”

“Only enacting the part of Miss Jane Baxter,” said Alys, with an attempt at indifference.

“Alys, what do you mean?”

“Who refused all the men before they axed her,” continued Alys, in the same tone.

“Alys!” said her brother again, and something in his tone arrested her.

She looked up.

“Laurence,” she said, “don’t misunderstand me; I am not really flippant and horrid like that, but it is true all the same. I have told Arthur, deliberately and seriously, that, if he were ever to ask me to marry him, nothing would ever make me take such a thing even into momentary consideration. I would not marry him for anything.”

“Had he asked you to do so?” said Mr Cheviott, in a tone half of amaze, half of bewilderment.

“No,” said Alys, “I told you he had not, and most certainly after what I have said, he never will.”

“Do you think he had any intention of the kind?” again questioned her brother.

Alys hesitated. Her quick wits told her that she must be careful what admissions she made. Were she to reply what she believed to be the truth – that her cousin never had had, never would have any such feelings with regard to her as could lead to his asking her to many him – the effect on him might, she felt vaguely, be disastrous. So she hesitated, and meanwhile her brother watched her narrowly.

“I don’t see,” she said at last, “I don’t see that I need answer that, Laurence. All I want you to know is that, after what I have said, Arthur could never think of me in that way. I have made it impossible for him to do so.”

“And what made you do this? What has put all this into your head? Was it Aunt Winstanley?” asked Mr Cheviott.

“No,” replied Alys. “That is to say, Aunt Winstanley did not put anything in my head, though I forced her to answer one or two questions I asked her. She did so very confusedly, I assure you, and but for my own ideas I should have been little the better for her information. No one is to blame. I have not been as blind and unconscious as you thought – that is all.”

That was all in one sense. It was plain to Mr Cheviott that Alys would say no more, and on reflection he could not see that any more explanation on her part would do any good. He stood silent, hardly able as yet to see clearly the effect of this extraordinary turn of affairs.

“I am going up to my own room, Laurence,” said Alys, rising slowly as she spoke. “I am very tired. I think I won’t come down to dinner. I don’t want you just now to say whether you think I have done rightly or wrongly, wisely or unwisely – some time or other I dare say you will explain all that has puzzled me. But in the mean time some instinct tells me, told me while I was doing it, that you, Laurence, would be glad for me to do it. Kiss me, dear, and say good-night.”

He bent down and kissed her tenderly, still without speaking. But when Alys was up in her own room, safe for the night from all curious or anxious eyes, she lay down on her sofa, burying her face in its cushions, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Cutting the Knot

“Let’s take the instant by the forward top;… On our quick’st decreesThe inaudible and noiseless foot of timeSteals ere we can effect them.”All’s Well that Ends Well.

Dinner passed very silently at Romary that evening. Mr Cheviott was preoccupied, Captain Beverley labouring evidently under some suppressed excitement, Miss Winstanley nervous and depressed.

“Have you seen Alys, Laurence?” she said, as the butler came with a discreet inquiry as to what Miss Cheviott would be likely to “fancy.” She had told her maid that she did not want any dinner, but had been so far influenced by Mathilde’s remonstrance as to say she would take anything her aunt liked to send her. “I really don’t know what to send up to her,” Miss Winstanley went on, helplessly. “What do you think, Laurence? I went to her room on my way down-stairs, but Mathilde said she had begged not to be disturbed.”

“I saw her half an hour ago,” said Mr Cheviott. “I think she is only tired. I will send her up something.” He got up from his chair and himself superintended the arrangement of a tempting little tray.

“Is Alys ill?” said Captain Beverley, in a low voice, and with a slight guiltiness of manner which did not escape his cousin.

“I think not,” Mr Cheviott replied, dryly, as he sat down. “She has been over-excited, and nowadays she can’t stand that sort of thing.”

Arthur said no more, but he was evidently glad when dinner was over, and Miss Winstanley had left the cousins by themselves.

“Laurence,” he began, eagerly, when the last servant had closed the door and they were really alone, “I am anxious to tell you everything that passed between Alys and me this afternoon. I only thought it fair to her that she should tell you what she chose to tell, first.”

“That was not very much,” said Mr Cheviott, “she evidently is afraid of damaging you by saying much.”

“God bless her,” said Arthur, fervently, “of course she does not know the whole state of the case. But I am perfectly willing to tell you everything, Laurence; in fact, as things are, I should be a fool not to do so. But, in the first place, read this.”

He held out the paper that Alys had written and signed. In spite of his intense anxiety – an anxiety but very partially understood by Captain Beverley, who little knew the personal complications the charge of his affairs had brought upon his cousin – Mr Cheviott could not restrain a smile as he read the words before him.

“An extraordinary document, I must confess,” he said, as he returned it to Arthur. “Upon my word, Beverley, Alys and you are just a couple of children. If only such serious results were not involved, the whole thing would be most laughable. What can have put all this into her head?”

“Her own intentions and her own observations principally, I believe,” said Arthur. “She knew something of – of my admiration for Miss Western, and she suspected that you had exerted your influence to prevent its coming to anything. She knows you to be too honourable and right-minded to interfere in such a matter without good reason – through mere prejudice, for instance.” Mr Cheviott winced a little.

“I cannot say of myself, Arthur, that I was always quite free from prejudice in this matter,” he interrupted, speaking in a low and somewhat constrained voice, “but I am, I believe I am, ready to own myself in the wrong if I have been so.”

Arthur’s face beamed with pleasure.

“Thank you for that, Laurence,” he said, “a hundred thanks. But I keep to what I said. Whatever your personal prejudices may have been, you did not act upon them. Your conduct was based entirely upon regard, unselfish regard for my welfare, and this Alys felt instinctively and set her wits to work to puzzle it out. But what has first to be considered is this – the statement on that paper is Alys’s own voluntary declaration – ”

“Did she write it of her own accord?”

“She first said it to me, in stronger and plainer words even than those she wrote; and when I asked her if she would put it on paper, she did so in an instant – with the greatest eagerness and readiness. Now, Laurence, what is now my position? Supposing I wished to do such a thing, could I ask Alys to marry me after what she has said – it would be a perfect farce and mockery.”

“It certainly would,” said Mr Cheviott. “I’ll tell you what we must do, Arthur. We must go up to town and lay the present state of the case before old Maudsley, and see what he says. He is as anxious as any of us to get the thing settled, and he must see that it would be perfect nonsense now to look forward to any possibility of the terms of the will being fulfilled. And I do not see that their non-fulfillment can possibly rest upon you. It is a strong point in your favour that you have done nothing premature in any other direction. No doubt we shall have to go to law about it – carry it before the Court of Chancery, I mean to say – but as all the beneficiaries, you and Alys, or myself as her guardian, are of one mind as to what we wish, I cannot now anticipate much difficulty.”

“But, Laurence,” began Arthur, and then he hesitated. “At all costs,” he went on again, “I must be open with you. I have done what you call something ‘premature’ in another direction. I am as good as – in fact, I am engaged to Lilias Western.”

Mr Cheviott’s brow contracted.

“Since when?” he said, shortly, while a sudden painful misgiving darted through his brain. Had Mary known this? – had she, in a sense, deceived him? True, she was under no sort of bond not to oppose him – rather the other way; from the first she had openly defied him on this point, but still she must be different from what he had believed her, capable of something more like dissimulation and calculation than he liked to associate with that candid brow, those honest eyes, were it the case that she had known this actual state of things all through that time at the Edge farm – so lately even as during their strange drive to Withenden and back. With keen anxiety he awaited his cousin’s reply.

“Since about the time of Alys’s accident I came down here then one day – you did not know – I was so uneasy about Alys – and I met Lilias close to the Edge, and heard from her how Alys was. And then somehow – I felt I could not go on like that, at the worst I could work for her, and I have been learning how to do so, you must allow – somehow we came to an understanding.”

“And her people know, of course – her sister does, any way, I suppose?” said Mr Cheviott, with an unmistakable accent of pain in his voice which made Captain Beverley look up in surprise.

“Her sister – Mary, do you mean? No, indeed she does not. None of them do. There was, indeed, very little to know – simply an understanding, I might almost call it a tacit understanding, between our two selves that we would wait for each other till brighter days came. We have not written to each other or met again. I would do nothing to compromise Lilias till I could openly claim her. I did not, of course, explain my position; had I done so, she would not, as you once said, have agreed to my ruining myself for her sake. All she knows is that I may very probably be a very poor man. And because I could not explain my position, I saw no harm in keeping it all to our two selves for the present. But, you see, I have looked upon it as settled – till to-day I have considered myself virtually disinherited, and I have been working hard at C – to fit myself for an agency or so on at the end of the two years.”

Mr Cheviott listened attentively, without again interrupting his cousin. But Captain Beverley could see that it was with a lightened countenance he turned towards him again.

“Alys knows nothing of this?” he said. “You are perfectly certain that her eccentric behaviour to-day was not caused by her believing she in any way stood between you and Miss Western? Don’t you see, if it were so, this would injure you altogether; it might then seem as if she had done what she has out of pique, or self-sacrifice, or some feeling of that kind that, in a sense, you were to blame for?”

Mr Cheviott watched his cousin closely as he said this, but Arthur stood the scrutiny well. For a moment or two he stared as if he hardly understood; then a light suddenly breaking upon him, he flushed slightly, but there was no hesitation in his honest blue eyes as he looked up in his cousin’s face.

“I see what you mean,” he said, “but I didn’t at first. No, Laurence, Alys thinks of me as a brother; she did know and warmly approved of my admiration for Miss Western, but she never knew of its going further. I rather think she fancies it shared the fate of my other admirations, and that she thinks no better of me in consequence. What she did to-day had nothing to do with that. She has got into her dear little head that she comes between me and my fortune, and knowing that she never could possibly have cared for me, except as a brother, whether I had cared for her in another way or not, she has, for my sake, nobly taken the bull by the horns. And so far I feel all right. Had I proposed to her twenty times, she would never have accepted me.”

Mr Cheviott was silent. Whether or not he agreed with his cousin was not the question. That Arthur honestly believed what he said was enough.

“And what is to be done then?” said Arthur.

“What I said,” replied Mr Cheviott. “We must lay it all before Maudsley as soon as possible. And in the mean time, Arthur, do nothing more – let things remain as they are with Miss Western. In any case you cannot come into your property for two years.”

“But whatever happens, I am not going to let ‘things remain as they are,’ as you say, for two years,” said Arthur, aghast. “You can continue my present income for that time, anyway, now that my future is likely to be all right. At the worst, even if my engagement was publicly announced, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other as regards Alys and me. I should have shown I did not want to marry her, but she most certainly has shown she does not want to marry me.” He touched Alys’s paper as he spoke.

“Yes,” said Mr Cheviott, “that is true.”

“Perhaps,” said Arthur, laughingly, “if we appeal to the Court of Chancery, it will divide the estate between us. I shouldn’t mind. Lilias and I could live on what there would be well enough.”

“I don’t think that’s likely,” said Mr Cheviott. “However, the first thing to be done is to see Maudsley.”

And it was settled that they should go up to town the following day.

But when the cousins had separated for the night, and Arthur was alone with his own thoughts, a certain feeling of dissatisfaction with his own conduct came over him.

“I can’t make it out exactly,” he said to himself, as he sat over the smoking-room fire with his pipe, “but somehow I’ve a feeling that I’m not acting quite straightforwardly. How is it? Is it that I am claiming my property on false pretences – knowing in my heart that I never did intend to propose to Alys; or is it that I am not behaving rightly to Lilias – keeping her, or our engagement rather, dark till I feel my way? Laurence is as honest a fellow as ever lived, but then his intense anxiety that I should get my own blinds him a little, perhaps, to the other sides of the question. What a muddle it all is, to be sure!”

He sat still for a few moments longer, then suddenly rose from his seat.

“I’ll do it,” he said; “right or wrong, it seems the honestest thing. I’ll do it.”

He hunted about for writing materials, and, having found them, set to work at once on a letter. He did not hesitate in writing it; he seemed at no loss what to say, and in less than half an hour it was completed, signed, sealed and addressed to Mrs Western, Hathercourt Rectory.

Then the young man gave a deep sigh of relief, went to bed, and slept soundly till morning. But very early he was astir again; before many members of the Romary household even – for it was, compared with many, an early one – were about, Captain Beverley had crossed the park, and traversed on foot the two miles to the nearest post-office, that of Uxley, where he deposited his letter, and was at home again before Mr Cheviott made his appearance for the eight o’clock breakfast, necessitated by their intended journey.

A couple of hours later found the two young men in the train.

“Laurence,” began Captain Beverley, but his cousin interrupted him.

“Excuse me, Arthur. I want to say something to you before I forget. You must let me be the spokesman with Maudsley; if he proposes, as I expect, to carry your affairs to the Court of Chancery, I think it will be best for his mind to be perfectly unprejudiced, and to let his instructions, in the first place anyway, come from me. You, I am certain, would not tell the story impartially – you would tell it against your own interests.”

“I must tell it as it is, Laurence,” said Arthur, “and, no doubt facts will show that I am, at least, as much to blame as Alys for the non-fulfillment of my father’s wishes. For, Laurence, I was just going to tell you when you interrupted me – I’ve done it, out and out. I couldn’t stand leaving things as they were; it wasn’t fair to her, nor honest to any one, somehow. I have written and sent a formal proposal for Lilias to her parents. I sent it to her mother, because her father is ill.”