Chapter Twelve.
“Have I made it worse?”
“Give me good fortune, I could strike him dead,
For this discomfort he hath done the house!”
Elaine.
So it was not really for from “this time to-morrow” that Lilias had so confidently anticipated, when Mrs Western opened the envelope, addressed to her by Captain Beverley, and read its contents.
“What can it mean? I cannot understand,” she said to herself, tremulously, for she was alone at the time. Then a second thought struck her, and the tremulousness gave place to hot indignation.
“Can he have been playing with her only? My child—my poor Lilias, is it possible?” she exclaimed aloud in her agitation. “What shall I do? How can I tell her?”
Just then a light, firm step sounded along the passage. Mrs Western shivered.
“If it is Lilias!” she whispered.
But it was not Lilias.
“Oh, Mary, my dearest, how thankful I am it is you!” she cried, as her second daughter entered the room. “Mary, what does this mean? Read it. How can we ever tell Lilias?” and as she spoke she held out the paper that trembled in her hands.
Mary trembled too, for an instant only, however. Then she drew herself together, as it were, by a vigorous effort, and read:
“Romary, February 19.
“My Dear Mrs Western,—
“I hardly know how to find words in which to apologise sufficiently for the ingratitude and discourtesy of which I shall appear guilty when I tell you that this note is to bid you all good-bye. For a time only, I trust and believe, but a time which seems terribly long for me to look forward to—for I am absolutely obliged to leave this neighbourhood at once, and for two years. I do not know how to thank you for all your goodness. I have never, in all my life, been so happy as under your roof, yet I have no choice but to go, without even bidding you all farewell in person.
“Will you think of me as kindly as you can, and will you allow me to send, through you, my farewell to Miss Western and her sisters, and the rest of the family? and believe me,—
“Yours most gratefully and truly,—
“Arthur Kenneth Beverley.”
Mary stood motionless. Her face grew pale, her lips compressed, but she did not speak.
“What does it mean? Mary, speak, child, tell me what it means,” said Mrs Western, with the petulance born of extreme anxiety. “It cannot be that Lilias has refused him?”
“No, mother, it is not that,” said Mary, “I wish it were.”
“What is it, then? Can he be so utterly base and dishonourable?”
“Not of himself,” replied Mary, bitterly; “weak fool that he is, he is not so bad as that. No, mother, he is not, or has been made to think he is not, his own master; it is all that man—that bad man’s doing.”
“Whose doing?” said Mrs Western, bewilderedly. “That Mr Cheviott—Mr Cheviott of Romary. Don’t you see the note is dated from there? I see it all; he found it out at the ball. Very likely he went there for the purpose of finding it out, having heard rumours of it, and at once used all his influence, whatever it is, to make that poor fool give it up. And yet he isn’t a poor fool! That is the worst of it; there is so much good in him, and Lilias cares for him—yes, that is the worst of it. Mother, she does care for him. Will it break her heart?”
And Mary, in her innocence and ignorance, looked up to her mother who had gone through life, who must know how it would be, and repeated, wistfully, “Mother, will it break her heart?”
Mrs Western shook her head.
“I do not know—I cannot say; she is so proud. Either it will harden or break her utterly. Oh, Mary, my dear, my instincts were right. Do you remember how I dreaded it from the first?”
“Yes, mother, you were right; nowadays if people are poor, they must forget they are gentle-people. It would be well to bring up Alexa and Josey not to ‘look high,’ as the servants say; a respectable tradesman—Mr Brunt, the Withenden draper’s eldest son, for instance, is the sort of man that girls like us should be taught to encourage—eh, mother?”
“Mary, don’t; you pain me. It is not like you to talk so. If what you say were true, it would make me go back upon it all and think I was wrong to marry your father. He might have done so much better—he, so attractive and popular as he was; he might have married some one rich and—”
“Hush, mother—dear mother, hush,” said Mary, kissing her; “it is wicked of me to pain you,” and in saying these words she determined to tell her mother nothing of her own personal part of the affair, her bitter indignation at the way in which Mr Cheviott had tried to win her over to take part against her sister; and for this reticence she had another, as yet hardly understood, motive—a terrible misgiving was creeping upon her. Was she to blame? Had her plainly expressed defiance and indignation raised Mr Cheviott to more decisive action than he had before contemplated? She could not tell.
“But so mean as he has shown himself, it is perfectly possible that it is so,” she reflected. “He is small-minded enough to be stung into doing what he has by even my contempt, yet how could I have spoken otherwise? though for Lilias’s sake I could almost have made a hypocrite of myself.”
But as yet she was not at leisure to think this over; she only felt instinctively that it was better it should not be told, and thus deciding, her mother’s voice recalled her to the present.
“Mary,” she repeated again, “how are we to tell Lilias?”
“Leave it to me, mother dear,” she replied, for a moment’s consideration satisfied her that nothing in the shape of sympathy or pity—not even her mother’s—was likely to be acceptable to her sister at the first.
“She may soften afterwards, but she is sure to be hard at first,” Mary said to herself, “and, dear mother,” she went on, aloud, “the less notice we seem to take of his going, to the others, the better, don’t you think? Not even to papa. If he sees Lily looking much the same as usual—and you may trust her to do that—he will not think anything about it, and Alexa and Josey must just be well snubbed if they begin any silly chatter. And you will leave Lilias to me?”
“Yes, dear; but can I do nothing? If we could arrange for her to go away somewhere for a while, for instance?”
“After a time, perhaps, but not at first. Mother, you will try not to take any notice of it at first, won’t you? Just allude to it in a commonplace way; it will be far the best and easiest for Lilias.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“It is so horrible!” said Mary, with a little shudder, “so utterly horrible that a girl should be exposed to this—that even you and I, mother—mother and sister though we are to her, should be discussing her feelings as if we were doctors and she a patient! Oh, it is horrible!”
Lilias was not in her room; she was down-stairs in the drawing-room practising duets with Alexa, while Josey hovered about chattering, and interrupting, and trying to extract gossip from her elder sister on the subject of last night’s ball.
“Josey,” said Mary, as she came in, “it is past your bed-time, and you, too, Alexa, had better go I think. Mamma is in the study, so go and say good-night to her there.”
“Is mother not coming in here again?” asked Lilias. “I hate the evenings papa has to go out; we all seem so unsettled and straggling. Yes, do go to bed, children. I am beginning to feel a little tired, Mary; aren’t you?”
“No—yes, a little. I really don’t know,” said Mary.
Lilias laughed merrily.
“Why, I believe you are half asleep, child!” she exclaimed. “We are evidently not intended to be fine ladies, if one ball knocks us up so. I wonder what all the people who were there last night are doing with themselves now? Very likely they are having carpet dances tonight, and all sorts of fun. The Cleavelands party is broken up, though. The Cheviotts were going back to Romary last night.”
“Yes,” said Mary.
“No note has come for me, I suppose?” asked Lilias, with a little hesitation. “I did not like to ask you before the girls, but one of them said something about a groom on horseback having been at the stable door a little while ago.”
“There was no note for you,” said Mary, her voice sounding even to herself set and hard, “but there was one for mamma. She told me to bring it to you. Here it is.”
Lilias took it, but something in Mary’s manner startled her.
“What is it?” she said, hastily. “Why do you look so strange, Mary?”
“Read the note, Lily, please,” said Mary. “I’m going back to mamma—I won’t be a minute,” and as she spoke she turned to leave the room.
“Don’t go, Mary!” cried Lilias, but Mary had already gone.
Ten minutes after she returned to the drawing-room, but no Lilias was there. Mary’s heart failed her.
“Was I wrong to leave her?” she said to herself. “I thought it would be so horrid for me to seem to be watching how she took it.”
She flew up-stairs to her sister’s bedroom. The door was shut, but not locked. Mary knocked.
“Come in,” said Lilias’s voice, and hardly knowing what she was going to see, Mary entered.
There stood Lilias in the centre of the room, her beautiful fair hair all loosened, hanging about her like a cloud, her face pale, but eyes very bright—brighter than usual it seemed to Mary.
“Lily!” she exclaimed.
“Why do you say ‘Lily,’ and look at me like that?” replied her sister, sharply. “There’s nothing the matter. I’m tired, and going to bed early, that’s all. Please tell mamma so, and do ask her not to come to say goodnight to me. No, don’t kiss me, please, Mary. I’m cross, I suppose, just say good-night.”
“Very well,” said Mary, submissively.
She turned sadly to go, but had not reached the door when her sister’s voice recalled her.
“Oh! Mary,” it cried, and the sharp accent of pain which rang through the two little words went straight to Mary’s heart, “don’t misunderstand me. I want to be unselfish and brave, and just now it seemed to me that, if any one seemed to feel for me, I could not manage to get on. But I don’t want to make you unhappy, and you may talk to me if you like.”
Mary gently closed the door, then she came back to her sister, and drew her down on to a seat.
“What am I to say Lily? I wish I knew.”
“Anything,” replied Lilias; “you may say anything, Mary, except one thing.”
“And what is that?”
“Blame of him,” said Lilias, her eyes sparkling, “that, Mary, is the one thing I could not bear. I have made up my mind absolutely about this—if—if it is never explained, I will still keep to it, he is, in some way, not his own master.”
“But if it is so, Lilias, it still does not free him from blame, though it alters the kind. If he is not his own master, he should not have let himself got to care for you, and, still worse, have taught you to care for him.”
“Oh! yes, I dare say that is true enough—at least, it sounds so,” said Lilias; “but in some way or other it isn’t true, though I can’t explain it, and can’t argue about it. Besides, Mary,” she went on, with some hesitation, her pale face flushing crimson as she spoke, “it isn’t as if he had said good-bye for ever. He says distinctly, ‘two years’.”
“Ah! yes, and that is the mean bit of it,” said Mary, indignantly; “he had no right to allude to any future at all. He should leave you absolutely free, if he cannot claim you openly—leave you, I mean, absolutely free for those two years, even if he really expects to be able to return at their end. What right has he to expect you to waste your youth and happiness for him? If you were engaged a separation of two years would be nothing, or if even he had said that at the end of the time he would be free to ask you to marry him.”
“But that would have been binding me unfairly, most people would say,” replied Lilias, softly. “I believe he means to leave me quite free, but that he could not help catching at a straw, as it were, and therefore said that about two years.”
“I don’t believe in the two years,” persisted Mary; “even if he does not come into his property for two years, you might have been engaged, though not marrying for that time. No, I see no sense in it—it is some clever pretext of that—” “that scheming Mr Cheviott’s,” she was going to have said, but she stopped in time.
“Mary,” said Lilias, drawing away the hand which her sister had held in hers, “I told you I would not let you speak against him.”
“Forgive me. I won’t,” said Mary, penitently.
“Whatever the future brings—if he marry some one else within the two years,” said Lilias, “I shall still always believe in the Arthur Beverley I have known. He may change—circumstances and other influences may change him, but the man I have known is true and honourable, and has wished and tried to act rightly. This I shall always believe—till I am quite an old woman—an old maid,” she added with an attempt at a smile.
“Lily,” exclaimed Mary, with a touch of actual passion in her tone—“Lily, don’t. You are so beautiful, my own Lily, why should you be so tried? So beautiful and so good!” And Mary, Mary the calm, Mary the wise, ended up her attempt at strengthening and consoling her sister by bursting into tears herself.
It did Lilias good. Now it was her turn to comfort and support.
“I am not an old woman yet, Mary,” she said, caressingly, “and I don’t intend to become one any sooner than I can help. My hair isn’t going to turn grey by to-morrow morning. To-morrow, oh! Mary, do you remember what I said yesterday about ‘this time to-morrow’? I was so happy this time yesterday, and he said he would be here to-day—it was the very last thing he said to me. What can have happened to change it all?”
Again the misgiving shot through Mary’s heart. Had she done harm? She said nothing, and after a moment’s pause Lilias spoke again:
“The great thing you can do to help me just now, Mary, is to prevent any of the others thinking there is anything the matter. Outside people may say what they like—I don’t care for that—but it is at home I couldn’t stand it. Besides, we have so few neighbours and friends, we are not likely to be troubled with many remarks. Except Mrs Greville, perhaps, I don’t suppose any one has heard anything about Captain Beverley’s knowing us.”
“Only at the ball,” said Mary, hesitatingly; “he picked you out so.”
“Yes,” said Lilias, smiling sarcastically, “no doubt all the great people said I was behaving most unbecomingly; but they may say what they like. I know I don’t care for that part of it. Mary, you will say something to mother to prevent her asking me about it.”
“Yes,” said Mary. “Lilias, would you like to go away from home for a while?”
“I don’t know. How could I? There is nowhere I could go, unless you mean that I should be a governess, after all, and—” She stopped, and her face flushed again.
“And what?”
“I don’t like to say it; you will not enter into my feelings—I don’t like to do anything he would not like.”
Mary looked at her sadly.
“Poor Lilias!” she thought, “is ‘he’ worthy of it all?”—“I was not thinking of that,” she said aloud. “I meant, if it could be arranged, for you to go away for a visit for a little. Mrs Greville’s sister asked you once.”
“Yes, but ever so long ago, and I wouldn’t on any account propose such a thing to Mrs Greville just now.”
“Very well,” said Mary.
Then they kissed each other, and said good-night.
“Two years—two long years!” were the words that Lilias said to herself over and over again that night—words that mingled themselves in the dreams that disturbed such sleep as came to her. “Two years!—what can it all mean? But I will trust you, Arthur—I will trust you!”
“Two years!” thought Mary. “That part of it can be nothing but a pretext. And if Lilias goes on trusting and hoping, it will make it all the worse for her in the end. She has never had any real trouble, and she thinks herself stronger to bear it than she really is. I have always heard that that terrible sort of waiting is worse for a girl than anything. Oh! Lily, what can I do for you? And have I made it worse? If I had been gentler, perhaps, to that hard, proud man—there was a kind look in his eyes once or twice; he cannot know that it is no piece of idle flirtation—he cannot know how Lilias cares. If I could see him again! I feel as if I could say burning words that would make him realise the wretchedness of separating those two.”