Sir Laurence looked at Helen as he made this remarkably convenient proposition for rendering the intercourse between the Park and the Rectory (for Cuthbert lived at the rector's house; that is to say, in a corner of it) more frequent than it was at present. Helen grew extremely red, and then turned the conversation.
"So, I suppose," said she to Mrs. Chisholm, after Sir Laurence had taken his leave, and the two women were talking over his visit and all the late events,--"so I suppose we shall live here until Sir Laurence is married; and then, when he brings a handsome, dashing, fashionable Lady Alsager down here, you and I, dear old woman, will go and live in the village; perhaps that pretty little house with the roses and the little white fountain, just big enough for the two ducks that are always swimming in it, may be vacant then; and I daresay Laurence would give it to us rent-free, and we should be very snug there; but we would not have ducks, except for dinner; and Lady Alsager would have us up to tea, I daresay, when there were no fine people at the Park. What do you say to all this, Mrs. Chisholm? doesn't it sound pleasant? What a cosy little place it is! don't you think so?"
"My dear Helen, how you do run on?" said the calmer Mrs. Chisholm; "you are quite in spirits to-day."
She was; for in her sketch of the rural abode with the roses there had been an unmentioned element. Helen thought the house would be quite the thing for a curate. Helen was always thinking about a curate; and in that respect there was considerable sympathy between her and her companion, for Mrs. Chisholm was almost always thinking of a curate too. Helen's curate was living; Mrs. Chisholm's was dead. The girl's heart was in a dream of the future; the woman's, in the memory of the sacred past.
Cuthbert Farleigh had received the intelligence of Sir Peregrine Alsager's unaccountable conduct towards Helen Manningtree with mingled feelings. He was by no means a commonplace young man, though not the light of learning and the mirror of chivalry which Helen believed him. Her over-estimate of him did him no harm, for he entertained a tolerably correct opinion of himself; and if the future were destined to unite them, it would probably not militate against her own happiness either. The mistake she made was in degree, not in kind,--a distinction which makes all possible difference. A sensible and dutiful woman may find out that her husband is not possessed of the qualities with which she has believed her lover to be endowed, to the extent with which she accredited him, and her love and esteem may not suffer by the discovery. She would probably recognize that if she had over-rated him (and what a dreadful woman she would be if she had not!) on some points, she had also failed to discover his merits on others, until the intimacy of domestic life had restored the balance of judgment. The mistake, which lays a woman's life waste in its rectification, is that which endows a man with qualities which he does not possess at all,--the mistake which leads to the conviction that the man she has married is not the man she loved, and burdens her with an actual duty and a lost ideal. If Helen Manningtree were ever to marry Cuthbert Farleigh, she would incur no such danger; she would have to pay no such price for the indulgence of undisciplined imagination. He was a good and a clever man, and was as highly and wholly disinterested as it is possible for a human being to be, to whom the consideration of meat, drink, clothing, and house-rent is one of rational importance.
He regarded his position with respect to Helen as very much improved by the fact that Sir Peregrine Alsager had not left her the fortune, which the gossips of the neighbourhood had taken for granted, and even announced "on authority." On the other hand, he grieved that she should be deprived of the luxurious home and the opulent manner of life to which she had been so long habituated; and as he was not at all a conceited man,--albeit flattered and exalted by all the ladies in the parish, which is ordinarily the bane of curates,--it did occur to him that perhaps Helen might have been better and happier if Sir Peregrine had left her the fortune, and he had adhered to his resolution of leaving her to its enjoyment, unwooed by him. Such a supposition was not likely to last long; its cold chill would pass off in the sunshine of free and acknowledged love. Free and acknowledged love? Yes, the curate was going to tell Helen, as soon as he should have learned the particulars of her position, that she had not erred in believing that he loved her, aid to ask her to take all the risks and all the cares of a life which could never have any brilliancy or any luxury to offer her, for the sole consideration of sharing them with him. He had not the smallest doubt of his success. Helen's nature was too true, and too well known to him, to render a misgiving possible; still the near approach of the assurance of his hope made him grave and solemn. The orphan-girl loved and trusted him; without him she was alone--alone in a world which is not very easily gotten through with the best of help and companionship. The sense of a great responsibility rested upon him, and his heart was lifted up in no merely conventional or professional prayer. So Cuthbert made up his mind, and felt very quiet and solemn about it. That mood would pass away; it would be succeeded by the dazzling delight, the splendid triumph, the fertile fancy, and superhuman hope and exultation of love, as it ought to be; but it is a good omen for any woman whose lover addresses himself to his wooing in such a temper.
Thus it fell out that Helen and Cuthbert, standing together by a window which opened on the broad stone terrace, and watching poor Sir Peregrine's peacocks, as they marched up and down outside, talked of a future which was to be common to them both, and was to date from the expiration of the year of mourning for Sir Peregrine Alsager. Helen had told Cuthbert how she had sketched such a charming picture for Mrs. Chisholm, of the house with the roses; and they had talked a good deal of the nonsense incidental to their position, and which is so much pleasanter than sense,--about whether she had thought of him; and if she had, why she had?--for there is a subtle resemblance to Jack Bunsby's monologue in the dialogues of lovers;--and then the conversation drifted away to Sir Laurence Alsager.
"We must tell him, my own Helen," said the curate; "he has been very kind to you, and I daresay will be very much disgusted at your making so poor a marriage."
The girl looked reproachfully at him, but smiled in a moment, and said, "Go on, Cuthbert; you are not worth contradicting, you know."
"No, but--" said Cuthbert, remonstrating, "you must let me set the world's view before you. No doubt Sir Laurence will think you very foolish; but he will always be our friend,--I feel sure of that,--though I know he is so different, and lives in so different a world, under so different a system. Sometimes, Helen, I have had an idea that he found out my secret; though I never could see an inch farther into his life and his heart than it was his good pleasure I should look. Yes, my darling, he must know all about us, and soon; for you must remember that it may make a difference in all his plans and arrangements, if he finds you are not to remain here after next spring."