‘The night is fine,’ said the vicar; ‘I will walk half a mile with you.’
They left the Vicarage, and ten yards from the door turned into the path which would enable them to avoid the village street. Not two minutes after their quitting the main road the spot was passed by Adela herself, who was walking towards Mr. Wyvern’s dwelling. On her inquiring for the vicar, she learnt from the servant that he had just left home. She hesitated, and seemed about to ask further questions or leave a message, but at length turned away from the door and retraced her steps slowly and with bent head.
She knew not whether to feel glad or sorry that the interview she had come to seek could not immediately take place. This day had been a hard one for Adela. In the morning her mother had spoken to her without disguise or affectation, and had told her of Mutimer’s indirect proposal. Mrs. Waltham went on to assure her that there was no hurry, that Mutimer had consented to refrain from visits for a short time in order that she might take counsel with herself, and that—the mother’s voice trembled on the words—absolute freedom was of course left her to accept or refuse. But Mrs. Waltham could not pause there, though she tried to. She went on to speak of the day’s proceedings.
‘Think what we may, my dear, of Mr. Mutimer’s opinions, no one can deny that he is making a most unselfish use of his wealth. We shall have an opportunity to-day of hearing how it is regarded by those who—who understand such questions.’
Adela implored to be allowed to remain at home instead of attending the lecture, but on this point Mrs. Waltham was inflexible. The girl could not offer resolute opposition in a matter which only involved an hour or two’s endurance. She sat in pale silence. Then her mother broke into tears, bewailed herself as a luckless being, entreated her daughter’s pardon, but in the end was perfectly ready to accept Adela’s self-sacrifice.
On her return from New Wanley, Adela sat alone till tea-time, and after that meal again went to her room. She was not one of those girls to whom tears come as a matter of course on any occasion of annoyance or of grief; her bright eyes had seldom been dimmed since childhood, for the lightsomeness of her character threw off trifling troubles almost as soon as they were felt, and of graver afflictions she had hitherto known none since her father’s death. But since the shock she received on that day when her mother revealed Hubert Eldon’s unworthiness, her emotional life had suffered a slow change. Evil, previously known but as a dark mystery shadowing far-off regions, had become the constant preoccupation of her thoughts. Drawing analogies from the story of her faith, she imaged Hubert as the angel who fell from supreme purity to a terrible lordship of perdition. Of his sins she had the dimmest conception; she was told that they were sins of impurity, and her understanding of such could scarcely have been expressed save in the general language of her prayers. Guarded jealously at every moment of her life, the world had made no blur on the fair tablet of her mind; her Eden had suffered no invasion. She could only repeat to herself that her heart had gone dreadfully astray in its fondness, and that, whatsoever it cost her, the old hopes, the strength of which was only now proved, must be utterly uprooted. And knowing that, she wept.
Sin was too surely sorrow, though it neared her only in imagination. In a few weeks she seemed to have almost outgrown girlhood; her steps were measured, her smile was seldom and lacked mirth. The revelation would have done so much; the added and growing trouble of Mutimer’s attentions threatened to sink her in melancholy. She would not allow it to be seen more than she could help; cheerful activity in the life of home was one of her moral duties, and she strove hard to sustain it. It was a relief to find herself alone each night, alone with her sickness of heart.
The repugnance aroused in her by the thought of becoming Mutimer’s wife was rather instinctive than reasoned. From one point of view, indeed, she deemed it wrong, since it might be entirely the fruit of the love she was forbidden to cherish. Striving to read her conscience, which for years had been with her a daily task and was now become the anguish of every hour, she found it hard to establish valid reasons for steadfastly refusing a man who was her mother’s choice. She read over the marriage service frequently. There stood the promise—to love, to honour, and to obey. Honour and obedience she might render him, but what of love? The question arose, what did love mean? Could there be such a thing as love of an unworthy object? Was she not led astray by the spirit of perverseness which was her heritage?
Adela could not bring herself to believe that ‘to love’ in the sense of the marriage service and to ‘be in love’ as her heart understood it were one and the same thing. The Puritanism of her training led her to distrust profoundly those impulses of mere nature. And the circumstances of her own unhappy affection tended to confirm her in this way of thinking. Letty Tew certainly thought otherwise, but was not Letty’s own heart too exclusively occupied by worldly considerations?
Yet it said ‘love.’ Perchance that was something which would come after marriage; the promise, observe, concerned the future. But she was not merely indifferent; she shrank from Mutimer.