ENGAGED.
I wonder did you ever count
The value of one human fate,
Or sum the infinite amount
Of one heart's treasures, and the weight
Of one heart's venture.
A. Procter.
It was quite true what Mr. Thomas Esterworth had said, that Vera was engaged to Sir John Kynaston.
It had all come about so rapidly, and withal so quietly, that, when Vera came to think of it, it rather took her breath away. She had expected it, of course; indeed, she had even planned and tried for it; but, when it had actually come to her, she felt herself to be bewildered by the suddenness of it.
In the end the climax of the love-making had been prosaic enough. Sir John had not felt himself equal to the task of a personal interview with the lady of his affections, with the accompanying risks of a personal rejection, which, in his modesty and humility with reference to her, he had believed to be quite on the cards. So he had written to her. The note had been taken up to the vicarage by the footman, and had been brought into the dining-room by the vicarial parlour-maid, just as the three ladies were finishing breakfast, and after the vicar himself had left the room.
"A note from Kynaston, please 'm," says rosy-cheeked Hannah, holding it forth before her, upon a small japanned tray, as an object of general family interest and excitement.
"For your master, Hannah?" says old Mrs. Daintree. "Are they waiting for an answer? You will find him in his study."
"No, ma'am, it's for Miss Vera."
"Dear me!" with a suspicious glance across the table; "how very odd!"
Vera takes up the note and opens it.
"May I have the crest, auntie?" clamours Tommy before she had read three words of it.
"Is it about the horse he has offered you to ride?" asks his mother.
But Vera answers nothing; she gets up quietly, and leaves the room without a word.
"Extraordinary!" gasps Mrs. Daintree; "Vera's manners are certainly most abrupt and unlady-like at times, Marion. I think you ought to point it out to her."
Marion murmurs some unintelligible excuse and follows her sister—leaving the unfortunate Tommy a prey to his grandmother's tender mercies. So brilliant an opportunity is not, of course, to be thrown away. Tommy's fingers, having incontinently strayed in the direction of the sugar-basin, are summarily slapped for their indiscretion, and an admonition is straightway delivered to him in forcible language concerning the pains and penalties which threaten the ulterior destiny of naughty little boys in general and of such of them in particular who are specially addicted to the abstraction of lumps of sugar from the breakfast-table.
Meanwhile, Marion has found her sister in the adjoining room standing up alone upon the hearthrug with Sir John Kynaston's letter in her hands. She is not reading it now, she is looking steadfastly into the fire. It has fulfilled—nay, more than fulfilled—her wishes. The triumph of her success is pleasant to her, and has brought a little more than their usual glow into her cheeks, and yet—Heaven knows what vague and intangible dreams and fancies have not somehow sunk down chill and cold within her during the last five minutes.
Gratified ambition—flattered vanity—the joy of success—all this she feels to the full; but nothing more! There is not one single other sensation within her. Her pulses have not quickened, ever so little, as she read her lover's letter; her heart has not throbbed, even once, with a sweeter, purer delight—such as she has read and heard that other women have felt.
"I suppose I have no heart," said Vera to herself; "it must be that I am cold by nature. I am happy; but—but—I wonder what it feels like—this love—that there is so much talked and written about?"
And then Marion came in breathlessly.
"Oh, Vera, what is it?"
Vera turns round to her, smiling serenely, and places the note in her hands.
This is what Sir John Kynaston has written:—
"Dear Miss Nevill,—I do not think what I am about to say will be altogether unexpected by you. You must have surely guessed how sincere an affection I have learnt to feel for you. I know that I am unworthy of you, and I am conscious of how vast a disparity there is between my age and your own youth and beauty. But if my great love and devotion can in any way bridge over the gap that lies between us, believe me, that if you will consent to be my wife, my whole life shall be devoted to making you happy. If you can give me an answer to-day, I shall be very grateful, as suspense is hard to bear. But pray do not decide against me in haste, and without giving me every chance in your power.
"Yours devotedly,
"John Kynaston."
"Oh! Vera, my darling sister, I am so glad!" cries Marion, in tearful delight, throwing her arms up round the neck of the young sister, who is so much taller than she is; "I had guessed it, dearest; I saw he was in love with you; and oh, Vera, I shall have you always near me!"
"Yes, that will be nice," assents Vera, quietly, and a trifle absently, stroking her sister's cheek, with her eyes still fixed on the fire; "and of course," rousing herself with an effort, "of course I am a very lucky woman."
And then Mr. Daintree came in, and his wife rushed to him rapturously to impart the joyful news. There was a little pleasant confusion of broken words and explanations between the three, and then Marion whisked away, brimming over with triumphant delight to wave the flags of victory exultingly in her mother-in-law's face.
Eustace Daintree and Vera were alone. He took her hands within his, and looked steadfastly in her face.
"Vera, are you sure of yourself, my dear, in this matter?"
Her eyes met his for a moment, and then fell before his earnest gaze. She coloured a little.
"I am quite sure that I mean to accept Sir John's proposal," she said, with a little uneasy laugh.
"Child, do you love him?"
Her eyes met his again; there was a vague trouble in them. The man had a power over her, the power of sheer goodness of soul. She could never be untrue to herself with Eustace Daintree; she was always at her very best with him, humble and gentle; and she could no more have told him a lie, or put him off with vague conventionalities, than she could have committed a deadly sin.
What is it about some people that, in spite of ourselves, they thus force out of us the best part of our nature; that base and unworthy thoughts cannot live in us before them,—that they melt out of our hearts as the snow before the rays of the sun? Even though the effect may be transient, such is the power of their faith, and their truth, and their goodness, that it must needs call forth in us something of the same spirit as their own.
Such was Eustace Daintree's influence over Vera. It was not because of his office, for no one was less susceptible than Vera—a Protestant brought up, with but vague ideas of her own faith, in a Catholic land—to any of those recognized associations with which a purely English-bred girl might have felt the character of the clergyman of the parish where she lived to be invested. It was nothing of that sort that made him great to her; it was, simply and solely, the goodness of the man that impressed her. His guilelessness, his simplicity of mind, his absolute uprightness of character, and, with it all, the absence in him of any assumption of authority, or of any superiority of character over those about him. His very humility made her humble with him, and exalted him into something saintly in her eyes.
When Eustace looked at her fixedly, with all his good soul in his earnest eyes, and said to her again, "Do you love him, Vera?" Vera could but answer him simply and frankly, almost against her will, as it were.
"I don't think I do, Eustace; but then I do not quite know what love is. I do not think, however, that it can be what I feel."
"My child, no union can be hallowed without love. Vera, you will not run into so great a danger?" he said anxiously.
She looked up at him smiling.
"I like him better than any one else, at all events. Better than Mr. Gisburne, for instance. And I think, I do really think, Eustace, it will be for my happiness."
The vicar looked grave. "If Sir John Kynaston were a poor man, would you marry him?"
And Vera answered bravely, though with a heightened colour—
"No; but it is not only for the money, Eustace; indeed it is not. But—but—I should be miserable without it; and I must do something with my life."
He drew her near to him, and kissed her forehead. He understood her. With that rare gift of sympathy—the highest, the most God-like of all human attributes—he felt at once what she meant. It was wonderful that this man, who was so unworldly, so unselfish, so pure of the stains of earth himself, should have seen at once her position from her own point of view; that was neither a very exalted one, nor was it very free from the dross of worldliness. But it was so. All at once he seemed to know by a subtle instinct what were the weaknesses, and the temptations, and the aims of this girl, who, with all her faults, was so dear to him. He understood her better, perhaps, than she understood herself. Her soul was untouched by passion; the story of her life was unwritten; there was no danger for her yet; and perchance it might be that the storms of life would pass her by unscathed, and that she might remain sheltered for ever in the safe haven which had opened so unexpectedly to receive her.
"There is a peril in the course you have chosen," he said, gravely; "but your soul is pure, and you are safe. And I know, Vera, that you will always do your duty."
And the tears were in her eyes as he left her.
When he had gone she sat down to write her answer to Sir John Kynaston. She dipped her pen into the ink, and sat with it in her hand, thinking. Her brother-in-law's words had aroused a fresh train of thought within her. There seemed to be an amount of solemnity in what she was about to do that she had not considered before. It was true that she did not love him; but then, as she had told Eustace just now, she loved no one else; she did not rightly understand what love meant, indeed. And is a woman to wait on in patience for years until love comes to her? Would it ever come? Probably not, thought Vera; not to her, who thought herself to be cold, and not easily moved. There must be surely many women to whom this wonderful thing of love never comes. In all her experience of life there was nothing to contradict this. It was not as if she had been a girl who had never left her native village, never tasted of the pleasures of life, never known the sweet incense of flattery and devotion. Vera had known it all. Many men had courted her; one or two had loved her dearly, but she had not loved them. Amongst them all, indeed, there had been never one whom she had liked with such a sincere affection as she now felt for this man, who seemed to love her so much, and who wrote to her so diffidently, and yet so devotedly.
"I love him as well as I am ever likely to love any one," said Vera, to herself. Yet still she leant her chin upon her hand and looked out of the window at the gray bare branches of the elm-trees across the damp green lawn, and still her letter was unwritten.
"Vera!" cries Marion, coming in hurriedly and breaking in upon her reverie, "the footman from Kynaston is waiting all this time to know if there is any answer! Shall I send him away? Or have you made up your mind?"
"Oh yes, I have made up my mind. My note will be ready directly; he may as well take it. It will save the trouble of sending up to the Hall later." For Vera remembers that there is not a superfluity of servants at the vicarage, and that they all of them have plenty to do.
And thus, a mere trifle—a feather, as it were, on the river of life—settled her destiny for her out of hand.
She dipped her pen into the ink once more, and wrote:—
"Dear Sir John,—You have done me a great honour in asking me to be your wife. I am fully sensible of your affection, and am very grateful for it. I fear you think too highly of me; but I will endeavour to prove myself worthy of your good opinion, and to make you as good a wife as you deserve.
"Yours,
"Vera Nevill."
She was conscious herself of the excessive coldness of her note, but she could not help it. She could not, for the life of her, have made it warmer. Nothing, indeed, is so difficult as to write down feelings that do not exist; it is easier to simulate with our spoken words and our looks; but the pen that is urged beyond its natural inclination seems to cool into ice in our fingers. But, at all events, she had accepted him.
It was a relief to her when the thing was done, and the note sent off beyond the possibility of recall.
After that there had been no longer any leisure for her doubting thoughts. There was her sister's delighted excitement, Mrs. Daintree's oppressive astonishment, and even Eustace's calmer satisfaction in her bright prospects, to occupy and divert her thoughts. Then there came her lover himself, tender and grateful, and with so worshipful a respect in every word and action that the most sensitive woman could scarcely have been ruffled or alarmed by the prospects of so deferential a husband.
In a few days Vera became reconciled to her new position, which was in truth a very pleasant one to her. There were the congratulations of friends and acquaintances to be responded to; the pleasant flutter of adulation that surrounded her once more; the little daily excitement of John Kynaston's visits—all this made her happy and perfectly satisfied with the wisdom of her decision.
Only one thing vexed her.
"What will your mother say, John?" she had asked the very first day she had been engaged to him.
"It will not make much difference to me, dearest, whatever she may say."
Nor in truth would it, for Sir John, as we have seen, had never been a devoted son, nor had he ever given his confidence to his mother; he had always gone his own way independently of her.
"But it must needs make a difference to me," Vera had insisted. "You have written to her, of course."
"Oh, yes; I wrote and told her I was engaged to you."
"And she has not written?"
"Yes, there was a message for you—her love or something."
Sir John evidently did not consider the subject of much importance. But Vera was hurt that Lady Kynaston had not written to her.
"I will never enter any family where I am not welcome," she had said to her lover, proudly.
And then Sir John had taken fright, for she was so precious to him that the fear of losing her was becoming almost as a nightmare to him, and, possibly, at the bottom of his heart he knew how feeble was his hold over her. He had written off to his mother that day a letter that was almost a command, and had told her to write to Vera.
This letter was not likely to prepossess Lady Kynaston, who was a masterful little lady herself, in her daughter-in-law's favour; it did more harm than good. She had obeyed her son, it is true, because he was the head of the family, and because she stood in awe of him; but the letter, thus written under compulsion, was not kind—it was not even just.
"Horrid girl!" had said Lady Kynaston, angrily, to herself, as she had sat down to her writing-table to fulfil her son's mandate. "It is not likely that I can be very loving to her—some wretched, second-rate girl, evidently—for not even Caroline Miller who, goodness knows, rakes up all the odds and ends of society—ever heard of her before!"
It is not to be supposed that a letter undertaken under such auspices could be in any way conciliatory or pleasant in its tone. Such as it was, Vera put it straight into the fire directly she had read it; no one ever saw it but herself.
"I have heard from your mother," she said to Sir John.
"Yes? I am very glad. She wrote everything that was kind, no doubt."
"I dare say she meant to be kind," said Vera; which was not true, because she knew perfectly that there had been no kindness intended. But she pursued the subject no further.
"I hope you will like Maurice," said Sir John, presently; "he is a good-hearted boy, though he has been sadly extravagant, and given me a good deal of trouble."
"I shall be glad to know your brother," said Vera, quietly. "Is he coming to Kynaston?"
"Yes, eventually; but you will meet him first at Shadonake when you go to stay there: they have asked a large party for that week, I hear, and Maurice will be there."
Now, by this time Vera knew that the photograph she had once found in the old writing-table drawer at Kynaston was that of her lover's brother Maurice.