She jumped at the suggestion to lighten her refusal.
“I expect you may; and you’ll look back at this evening and feel you are better a free man. Yes, you must regard yourself as free, please—I couldn’t do it—I couldn’t take another. I’m fond of you, if that is anything, and I’m proud you could have a fancy for me; for a reminder that I’m a woman, coming from such a man as you, naturally makes me a bit above myself. But my life’s run into a mould, you see. It’s found its channel, like a river does; and it’s made its bed. I say again I like you—I even love you, if the word ain’t nonsense at fifty; but I’ve seen my duty clear since we spoke about it. I couldn’t fairly leave my sister-in-law and brother. ’Twould be like taking a screw out of a machine. The screw ain’t much in itself but a lot depends upon it.”
“You won’t marry me, you mean?”
“Won’t ain’t the word. I’d be very pleased to be your wife if I was a free party, but in a sense I’m not free. You can’t be in two places at once, like a flash of lightning, and I can’t keep house for you and look after Mary’s family and do my bit at Priory Farm. And it amounts to this—my brother, when he heard what was afoot, made it very clear that Priory Farm simply couldn’t get on without me. That may seem a vain thing to you; but it’s the truth—absurd, I dare say; but they’re built like that. You, on the contrary, would get on without me well enough.”
“Speak for yourself, but not for me,” he said, “and not for your brother, Tom, and his mate. Rabbits in a hutch have got to be looked after, I grant, but you mustn’t believe everything you hear—even from Tom Dolbear. Answer this: if you died to-morrow, what would happen at Priory Farm? Why, my dear woman, in six weeks they’d have somebody in your place who looked after the children all her time; and they’d wonder why they never thought of that before. We won’t argue about it, however. When you say ‘duty,’ I’m dumb, of course. But tell me this before we drop the subject: would you marry me if things were otherwise and your sense of duty didn’t come between?”
Mrs. Trivett was immensely relieved to find how quietly he had taken his reverse.
“Of course I would,” she said. “You’re one of the best, and if it hadn’t been that I’d got to work out my life same as I’m doing, I’d have been glad enough to come to you. People at our time of day have got judgment, if ever they’re going to have it, and in my opinion we should have made a well-matched pair enough. But such good things are not for me. I’ve been happily married once, and can’t expect it again.”
He continued to be quite restrained.
“I venture to think you’re about as wrong as you can be, Lydia, and your usual good sense has gone astray. But I know duty’s your guiding star, and I’m happy to think duty changes its shape from time to time, like most other human contrivances.”
“I’ll always try to do it, my dear man, however it looks.”