Chapter Thirty.
“Amendes Honourables.”
”... But what avails it now
To speak more words? We’re parting,
Let it be in kindness, give me good-bye,
Tell me you understand, or else forgive.”
“I’ve nothing to forgive; you love me not,
And that you cannot help, I fancy.”
Hon. Mrs Willoughby.—Euphemia.
But, as not unfrequently happens, Mr Cheviott found the anticipation worse than the reality. Alys was upstairs in her own room when they got to the house, and she begged her brother not to ask her to come down that evening.
“I am not ill,” she said, “only tired and nervous, somehow. Come up to me after dinner, Laurence, and let us have a good talk—that will do me more good than anything.”
She looked up at him with a curious questioning in her eyes that struck him as strangely pathetic.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “she must be told all.”
So the way was paved for his revelations. And Alys was sufficiently prepared for them to manifest no very overwhelming surprise. She listened in silence till Laurence had told her all. Then she just said quietly:
“Laurence, it was a cruel will.”
“Yes,” said her brother, “however intended, so it has indeed proved.”
“Going near,” pursued Alys, softly, almost as if speaking to herself, “going near to spoil two, four, nay, I may say five lives,” she whispered. “Oh, thank God, Laurence, it is at an end!”
She clasped her thin little hands nervously. How changed she was—Alys, poor Alys, who used to ignore the very existence of nerves!
Her next remark struck Mr Cheviott unexpectedly.
“Laurence,” she said, “I wonder if Mary Western will ever know all this!”
He had it on his lips to answer, “The sooner so, the better,” but he could not. Instead thereof his reply sounded cool and unconcerned in the extreme.
“Possibly she may, some time or other. Arthur is sure to tell Lilias Western whom it does concern. But why should you care about her sister’s knowing it?”
“Because I do,” Alys replied, oracularly.
There was a large allowance of letters in the Romary post-bag the next morning. Several for Captain Beverley—all of which, but one, he put hastily aside. And his heightened colour and evident anxiety could not but have betrayed to his companions whence came that one, had not both Mr Cheviott and Miss Winstanley been absorbed by news of unusual interest in their respective letters.
“Laurence,” said Arthur, at last, when for the time letters were put down, and breakfast began to receive some attention, “is that yesterday’s Times? Have you looked at it? I wonder if there is a death in it of some one I know—you know who I mean—the last of those poor Brookes, Basil’s brother, I mean Anselm, a boy of eighteen. I hear he died at Hastings, two days ago.”
“I don’t know about its being in the Times,” replied Mr Cheviott, “but, curiously enough, I have just heard of it in a letter from an old friend of mine, Mrs Brabazon, an aunt of the poor fellow’s, and—”
“And?” said Arthur, eagerly.
Mr Cheviott glanced at Miss Winstanley. “Afterwards,” he formed with his lips, rather than by pronouncing the word, in reply to his cousin. But Miss Winstanley had caught something of what they were saying.
“The Brookes,” she exclaimed, “are you talking of the Brookes of Marshover?” and when both her companions answered affirmatively, “How very odd!” she went on, growing quite excited. “My letter is all about them too. It is from my old friend, Miss Mashiter, who has been staying at the same hotel at Hastings as the Brookes are at, and she is quite upset about the poor young fellow’s death—it was so sudden at the last, and there is such a romantic story about. It appears that a cousin of the young man’s came to Hastings lately, a most exquisitely beautiful creature, with whom he had been in love since early boyhood, though somewhat older than himself, and she has been devoting herself to him, and now the report is that, just before he died, he got his poor father to promise to leave everything to her—he has no child left, and the Brookes are enormously rich. What a catch the young lady will be!”
“Aunt Winstanley, I am ashamed of you!” said Mr Cheviott. “I had no idea you were so worldly-minded. You don’t mean to say you ever heard of such a thing as a girl’s losing a lover and consoling herself with another—especially when the first had, as you say in this case, left her a fortune?”
“It is very sad,” agreed Miss Winstanley, quite deceived by Mr Cheviott’s tone—“very sad, but such is the way of the world, Laurence. Of course, I would not say such a thing before Alys.”
“Of course not,” said her nephew, approvingly.
Arthur looked up with relief; for the instant, Miss Winstanley’s story had startled him a little—for to whom could the episode of the beautiful cousin refer but to Lilias, still, as her mother’s letter informed him, at Hastings, “doing what she can for our poor friends there.” But there must be great nonsense mixed up with Miss Mashiter’s gossip, Arthur decided, seeing that Laurence, who had the correct version of the whole in his hands, could afford to tease Miss Winstanley about it. The poor boy—Anselm Brooke—was dead, but still—the idea of Lilias’s name being coupled with that of any man, or boy even, was not altogether palatable, and still less that of her being an heiress!
“What a mercy I yielded to my inspiration and wrote to Mrs Western yesterday!” he replied. “To-day, after hearing that report, nonsensical though it probably is, I should hardly have liked to write.”
He was thankful when Miss Winstanley at length got up from her seat—her breakfast seemed to have been an interminable affair that morning—and saying that she must go and ask what sort of a night Alys had had, left the cousins to themselves.
“What is your news? What does Mrs Brabazon write about?” exclaimed Arthur, eagerly, almost before the door had closed on Miss Winstanley.
“Rather,” said Laurence, “What is yours? Mine will keep, but you, I see, have a letter from Hathercourt which, I am sure, you are dying to tell me all about.”
“To show you, if you like,” said Arthur, holding it out to his cousin. “You have guessed, I see, that it is all I could wish.”
It was a thoroughly kind and sensible reply from Mrs Western. She made no pretence of astonishment at the nature of Captain Beverley’s letter to her; she said that she and her husband would be glad to see him again, and to talk over what he had wished to say to them.
Lilias was at Hastings, but expected home in a few days. Mr Western was continuing better. Any afternoon of the present week would find them both at home and disengaged, and she ended by thanking Arthur for his consideration in writing to her instead of Lilias’s father, as he was still far from able to meet any sudden agitation without risk of injury.
“Should I go over this afternoon, do you think?” said Arthur.
“Yes, I should say so,” replied Mr Cheviott. “And what will you tell them?”
“Everything. I have no choice,” said Arthur. “That is to say, I shall tell them all about my father’s will and the present state of the case, and what Maudsley thinks and what you think. Of course I need not go into particulars as to what passed between Alys and me the other day, but I will just tell them that anything of the kind, as regards both her and myself, never has been, never could have been possible—that we are, and always have been, and always shall be, I trust, brother and sister to each other.”
Mr Cheviott had been listening attentively.
“Yes,” he said, when his cousin left off speaking, and looked up for his approval, “I don’t think you can do better.”
“And now for your news—Mrs Brabazon’s, I mean,” said Arthur, eagerly. But Mr Cheviott showed no corresponding eagerness to reply.
“She says,” he answered, quietly, “that Miss Western is with them and quite well. Of course they are all sadly depressed by young Brooke’s death, though they knew it must come before long—she writes as if poor old Brooke had got his death-blow, but she says that ‘Lilias’ has been the greatest comfort to them.”
“And what more?” asked Arthur, “there is something more, I know. There is nothing in all that to have been a reason for Mrs Brabazon’s writing to you.”
“I didn’t say there was. Women constantly write letters without any reason,” observed Mr Cheviott.
Arthur got up from his seat and walked impatiently up and down the room.
“Laurence,” he said at length, “I think that sort of chaffing of yours is ill-timed.”
“I don’t mean to chaff you—upon my word, I don’t,” said Mr Cheviott, looking up innocently. “All I mean is that, whatever my news is, I am not going to tell you any more of it at present. It is much better not, and you will see so yourself afterwards.”
“You meant to tell me all when you first got the letter?” said Arthur.
“Well, yes, I don’t know but that I did. But I have changed my mind.”
“Is it—no, it cannot be—that there is any truth in that absurd nonsense that Miss Winstanley was telling us?”
“Why should you ask? It bore on the face of it that it was absurd nonsense,” replied Mr Cheviott. “Do, Arthur, trust me. You have done so in important things. Can’t you leave me to tell you about Mrs Brabazon’s letter after you have been at Hathercourt?”
“Very well. Needs must, I suppose,” said Arthur, lightly.
But he was not without misgivings during his long ride to the Rectory.
“I wish that idiotic old maid had kept her gossip to herself instead of writing it off to Miss Winstanley,” he said to himself more than once, and when he got close to Hathercourt he felt so nervously apprehensive of what he might be going to hear, that the relief of meeting, or rather overtaking Mary within a few yards of the house was very great.
Mary had no hat or bonnet on—she had just run out to gather some fresh green for the simple nosegays her father liked to see from his sofa. She was already in mourning for her young cousin, and as she looked up with a bright flush of pleasure to return Captain Beverley’s greeting, he could not help thinking that, though “not Lilias,” she was certainly very pretty.
“That black dress surely shows her off to advantage,” he said to himself, “or else she has grown prettier than she used to be. What a queer fellow Laurence is—fancy being shut up at the Edge for three weeks with a girl like that, and emerging as great a misogynist as before!”
Her mother was at home and disengaged, or would, no doubt, speedily be so, when she heard of his visit, Mary told him. Then he got off his horse, and she led him into the drawing-room.
“Mamma is in the study, I think,” she said, lingering a little. Then with some hesitation and rising colour, “I had a letter from Lilias this morning. She is coming home the day after to-morrow.”
“So soon?” exclaimed Captain Beverley, delightedly. “That is better than I hoped for. Mary,” he went on, impulsively, holding out both his hands and taking hers into their clasp, “Mary—you will forgive my calling you so?—you know what I have come about, don’t you? You will wish me joy—you have always been our friend, I fancy, somehow.”
“Our friend,” repeated Mary, inquiringly. “You are sure, then,” she went on, “that—that it will be all right with Lilias? Yes, mamma told me of your letter—you don’t mind?—it is quite safe with me.”
“Mind, of course not. But how do you mean about Lilias?” he asked, with a quick return of his misgiving. “Nothing has happened that I have not been told of?”
His bright face grew pale. Mary, with quick sympathy, hastened to re-assure him.
“Oh, no, no,” she said, “I don’t know what you have heard—but it isn’t that. Nothing of that kind could make Lilias change of course. I only mean—it is a long time since you have seen her, and—and—you went away so suddenly, you know. Lilias has never said anything to me, but I have been at a loss what to think about her.”
“As to what she has been thinking about me, do you mean?”
“Yes,” said Mary, bluntly.
Arthur’s face cleared.
“If that is all, I am not afraid,” he said, gently. “You are sure that is all, Mary?”
“Quite sure,” she replied. Then after a moment’s pause, “How is Miss Cheviott?”
“Pretty well—at least, so I am told,” he replied; “but to me she seems terribly changed. Laurence, her brother, I mean, won’t say much about her. He can’t bear to own it, I fancy. And it is so dull for her. I think that keeps her back—she should have some companionship.” Mary’s face grew very grave. She gave a little sigh. “I wish—” she was beginning to say, when the door opened and her mother came in.
Alys was alone in her room that afternoon, when a tap and the request, “May I come in?” announced her cousin’s return. She knew where he had been, for Laurence had told her everything; but she had not been alone with Arthur since their strange interview two days ago, and the remembrance of it set her heart beating as she called out, “Come in by all means.”
To her surprise, Arthur came quickly up to her sofa, bent down and kissed her on the forehead before he spoke.
“Dear Alys,” he said, “I have come straight to you. It is all thanks to you, and I wanted to tell you, before any one, that everything’s going to be all right.”
For half a second there seemed a catch in Alys’s breath. Then she looked up with a smile, though there were tears in her eyes too.
“I am so glad, so very glad,” she said, softly. “Then has Lilias come back?” she asked.
“No, she is coming the day after to-morrow,” he replied, “and that reminds me—I have a great deal to tell you, Alys, and I am sure it will interest you—on Mary’s account as well as on Lilias’s.”
“I think I know—part of it anyway,” said Alys. “Laurence has been telling me of his letter from Mrs Brabazon—he would not tell you because he thought it would be so much pleasanter for you to know nothing about it till the Westerns told you themselves.”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “I see.”
“How strange it all seems!” said Alys. “How well I remember meeting Mrs Brabazon in Paris last year, and how she cross-questioned me about the Westerns, at the time, you know, that Laurence was so prejudiced against them.”
“And you spoke up for them?”
“A little,” said Alys, blushing slightly, “I mean, as much as I could.”
“Good girl!” said Arthur, approvingly.
“And since then, you know, Laurence has quite changed. How could he help it? You have no idea of Mary’s goodness to me that time at your farm, Arthur, and knowing her showed what they all were, so single-minded and refined, and so well brought up though they have been so poor. You mustn’t mind, Arthur,—it is no disparagement to Lilias when I say I cannot help counting Mary my special friend.”
“And now I hope you will see her often,” said Arthur. “She would do you good.”
Alys shook her head.
“I know she would,” she said, “but she won’t come here.”
“Now she will,” said Arthur. “She can have no more of that exaggerated terror of being patronised, if that has been her motive. The county will all find out the Westerns’ delightful qualities now, you’ll see, Alys. By-the-bye, I wonder what made Mrs Brabazon write to Laurence.”
“Just that some one in the neighbourhood might know the real facts of the case,” Alys replied. “There is sure to be so much gossip and exaggeration. I fancy, too, she wrote with a sort of wish to disabuse Laurence of his prejudice against her cousins—I am sure she noticed it that day in Paris—Did the Westerns tell you all about their affairs, Arthur?”
“A great deal, they are so frank and, as you say, single-minded, Alys. They have known something about it for some time, ever since Lilias met the Brookes at Hastings.”
“And has it been all owing to that?”
“Oh, no—a great part of the property must have come to Mrs Western; no, to the eldest son, Basil, I should say, at Mr Brooke’s death. But the Westerns might not have known this, and as the father said to me, in his invalid state, the release from anxiety is a priceless boon.”
“But it isn’t only Basil that is to benefit,” said Alys, eagerly. “Mrs Brabazon said—”
“Of course not,” her cousin interrupted. “Everything is to go to him eventually—old Brooke not having any one to provide for, and not wishing to cut up the property—but Mrs Western will, for life, be very well off indeed, and so will the whole family. Each daughter and younger son will have what is really a comfortable little fortune. The Marshover Brookes are very rich, you know.”
“And to think how poor the Westerns have been!” said Alys, regretfully.
“Yes; but a few years ago nothing could have seemed more remote than their chance of succession. And, after all, even very rich people can’t look after all their poor relations.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Alys, with a sigh. “Will they leave Hathercourt?”
“Sure to, I should think. Mr Brooke wants them to go to Marshover, Mrs Western says, and keep it up for him, as he will be most of the year abroad. He is not obliged to do anything for them during his life, you see, but he has already settled an ample income on Mrs Western, and Basil is to go into the army, and George to college.”
“I shall never see Mary again, all the same.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, but I am certain she will never come here. Arthur, I think she dislikes Laurence too much ever to come here.”
Arthur opened his eyes.
“Dislikes Laurence!” he repeated. “Why should she?”
“She does,” persisted Alys, “and Laurence knows it.”
“Well, we’ll see. Perhaps Lilias may help us to overcome Mary’s prejudice,” said Arthur, with a smile. “And failing Mary, Alys, you won’t be sorry to have Lilias for—for a sister—will you, Alys?”
Alys smiled, and her smile was enough.
All this happened in spring. Early in the autumn of that same year Lilias and Arthur were married. They were married at Hathercourt—in the old church which had seen the bride grow up from a child into a woman, and had been associated with all the joys and sorrows of her life—the old church beneath whose walls had lain for many long years the mortal remains of Arthur Beverley’s far-back ancestress, the “Mawde” who had once been a fair young bride herself.
“As fair perhaps, as happy and hopeful as Lilias,” thought Mary, as her eyes once more wandered to the well-known tablet on the wall, with a vague wonder as to what “Mawde” would think of it all could she see the group now standing before the altar. Then there came before her memory, like a dream, the thought of the Sunday morning, not, after all, so very long ago, when the little party of strangers had invaded the quiet church, and so disturbed her own and her sister’s devotions. And again she seemed to see herself looking up into Mr Cheviott’s face in the porch, while she asked him to come into the Rectory to rest.
“He smiled so kindly, I remember,” thought Mary, “and there was something in his face that made me feel as if I could trust him. And so I might have done—ah! how hasty and prejudiced I have been—thank Heaven, I have injured no one else by my folly, however!”
And then she repeated to herself a determination she had come to—there was one thing, be the cost to her pride what it might, that she would do, and to-day, she said to herself should, if possible, see it done.
It was a very quiet marriage—for every reason it had seemed best to have it so. There were the considerations of Mr Western’s still uncertain health, of the mourning in the Brooke family with which that of Lilias was now identified, of Alys Cheviott’s invalid condition, and even of Captain Beverley’s own anomalous position, as still, by his father’s will, a minor, and at present, therefore, far from a wealthy man, though every hope was now entertained that before long he would be in legal possession of his own. There were no strangers present—only the Grevilles and Mrs Brabazon, besides the large group of brothers and sisters, and Mr Cheviott as “best man,” and Lilias and her husband drove off in no coach and four, but in the quiet little brougham now added to the Rectory establishment, for Mr Western’s benefit principally, when he was at Hathercourt. For Hathercourt was not to be deserted, though only a part of the year was now spent there by the Rector’s family, and to the curate, whose services he now could well afford, was deputed the more active part of the work. They had all been at Marshover for some months past, and had only returned to Hathercourt a few weeks before the marriage.
“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!”