“Heather, you are wrong,” broke in Bessie; “I was engaged to Gilbert Harcourt before I ever saw the—the—father of my child. You know what a life I had at home; you know any life would have seemed preferable to that. Across it in an unlucky hour Mr. Harcourt walked. He fell in love with me—he was a good creature and a kindly, and so, though I did not care for him in the least, I said yes when he asked me to marry him—said yes, prompted and badgered thereto by my mother, and so became engaged.
“What is the idea of the world in such matters? Is it not almost that a woman engaged is a woman married? Such was my idea, at all events; but I wearied of the tie before long; it is hard always to remember one is engaged to a man for whom one does not care two straws. That was my case with Gilbert Harcourt. I tried hard to like him, but I failed; my sin as regards him was ever promising to become his wife, not in breaking my promise; is it not better to part even at the altar-rails than to take false vows before God? I played a double game for months and months—there was my error; but I was a coward, and I dare never have faced my mother had I told her my repugnance to marrying the suitor she favoured; besides, my other suitor did not come forward. Oh! Heather, Heather, I felt so miserable and so wicked down at the Hollow, I felt so deceitful and false amongst you all. My love, had you been my mother, I never should have been sitting here to-day, a wife, and yet no wife; had you not been my friend, God only knows where I should have been to-day, perhaps dead, perhaps living in sin, certainly not here, struggling feebly to do right, to atone for my transgression, striving to forget the only man I ever loved, Heather, the only man I ever loved.”
She put her hand to her head and moaned as she spoke—moaned like one in some bodily pain.
“Bessie,” whispered Heather, bending low, “don’t speak to me about your trouble, dear, if it pains you to do so. I do not require to hear——”
“But I require to tell you,” Bessie broke in vehemently. “We met, he and I, after I was engaged to Gilbert, where do you think, Heather? in a railway carriage, and he never spoke to me, and I never spoke to him for forty miles while the train rushed on to the lonely country place where I was travelling to spend my Christmas—the Christmas previous to that I passed with you. Mamma and I had quarrelled that morning, and, in consequence of our quarrel, I missed the train by which my friends expected me; the result of this was, that when I arrived at Thirkell no one met me, and there I was stranded at about nine o’clock of a winter’s night on the platform of a lonely country station, where such a luxury as a fly was unknown, and the parsonage whither I was bound three miles off.
“Had it not been for the manner in which I parted from my mother I should have returned to town by the next train due at Thirkell, the station-master informed me, at 10.25 P.M. As things were, however, I decided on making the best of my way to Holston Vicarage on foot, protected by a porter six feet high, who declared his willingness to take charge of me.
“All this time my travelling companion was engaged in sending a telegram to town, to which he said he should wait an answer, and ‘in the meanwhile,’ he added, turning to me, ‘if you are not afraid of the cold, my man can drive you over to Holston and be back here quite as soon as I shall require him.’
“What should you have done under the circumstances, Heather? dropped a pretty curtsey and answered—‘Thank you, sir, but my mamma would not be pleased if she heard of my accepting any civility at your hands, and as I am a good child and like to do what my mamma tells me, I will walk, if you please, all along the dirty lanes to Holston, and make myself as uncomfortable as it is possible for a human being to render herself?’
“That would have been proper, would it not, man being woman’s natural enemy? I, however, preferring impropriety to discomfort, accepted his offer, was helped by him into a dog-cart, which seemed to me about five storeys high, thanked him, bade him good-night, and in twenty minutes was set down at the door of Holston Parsonage, when, of course, my friends had quite given me up. Oh! dear,” Bessie sighed, “oh! dear, to think that so simple a thing should be the beginning of so much trouble!”
“And after that——” Mrs. Dudley suggested.