“I hoped you would consent to waive it,” he said.
“I don’t consent. I claim it”—decisively. “You can’t leave under six months.” Coventry rose from his chair as though to indicate that the interview was at an end, hesitated a moment, then added abruptly: “I’m going abroad. I must have some one in charge whom I can trust. I shall be leaving England to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XXV THE HALF-TRUTH
There are few truer sayings than the one which cautions us that evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart. When you are unlucky enough to get a combination of the two, the evil accomplished is liable to assume considerably increased proportions.
On the morning following Eliot’s visit to the Cottage, want of thought, in addition to a very natural semi-maternal pride, led Maria Coombe into confiding jubilantly into the ear of Mrs. Thorowgood—laundress and purveyor of local gossip—the fact that her Miss Ann and “the Squire up to Heronsmere” were going to make a match of it. Mrs. Thorowgood, not to be outdone, responded to the effect that she had “suspicioned” all along that this was going to be the case, and that when she had heard in the village yesterday that Mr. Coventry had gone straight to the Cottage upon his return that afternoon to Silverquay—with Mr. Lovell away in Ferribridge, too, and all!—she felt sure of it. “So I’m not surprised at your news, Mrs. Coombe,” she concluded triumphantly. “Not surprised at all.”
Having thus successfully taken the wind out of Maria’s sails, she proceeded on her way delivering the clean laundry at various houses in the district, and in the course of a few hours the news of Mr. Coventry’s engagement to Miss Lovell was being glibly discussed in more than one servants’ hall as an accomplished fact. By the afternoon, conveyed thither by the various butchers, bakers, and greengrocers who had acquired the news in the course of their morning rounds, the information had spread to the village.
Meanwhile, during the progress of Brett Forrester’s visit to Heronsmere in search of the puppy his aunt so ardently desired, a prying servant had chanced to pause outside Eliot’s study door, inspired by a fleeting inquisitiveness to learn with whom her master was closeted. A single sentence she overheard sufficed to convert that idle curiosity into a burning thirst for knowledge. So she remained at the key-hole listening post until it was satisfied, and later on, armed with a fine fat piece of gossip, the like of which did not often come her way, she sallied forth to spend her “afternoon out” in the village.
Thus it came about that the two streams of gossip—one emanating in all innocence from Maria Coombe, the other having its origin in the conversation overheard between Eliot and Brett—met and mingled together and were ultimately poured into the ears of Miss Caroline, busily engaged in parochial visitation. An evil fatality appointed that the first person she subsequently encountered should be Mrs. Carberry, the M.F.H.‘s wife, with whom, in a flutter of shocked excitement, she promptly shared the dreadful story she had heard. This, of course, carried then gossip into another stratum of society altogether.