“It will be exceedingly, strangely uncourteous if they do not,” said her father, with unusual warmth. “Surely, my dear, you were not so ill-advised as to say anything to discourage their doing so,” he added, in a tone of most unwonted irritability.
“I am afraid what I said may have indirectly tended to do so,” said poor Mary, feeling as if she were ready on the spot to run all the way to Romary and back to beg Mr Cheviott to call on her father at once.
“You were very foolish, very foolish indeed,” said Mr Western, severely. “It is pride, and very false pride, that is at the root of such things, and I warn you that much future suffering is in store for you if you encourage such a spirit.”
“I can’t imagine any future suffering much worse than the present one of having displeased you,” said Mary, struggling hard to keep back the tears that would come. “But indeed, father, I thought I was doing what you and mamma would like.”
“Your mother has been mistaken before now in such matters,” said Mr Western. “However, there is no more to be said about it. I confess I should have enjoyed seeing more of a man of Mr Cheviott’s character and talents, and it is mortifying at my age to be placed in the position of being unable to receive a friendly call from a neighbour.”
“But I did not put it in that way, papa, indeed I did not,” said Mary. “Oh, papa, cannot you trust me? If there is anything I have thoroughly at heart it is that you should receive all the respect and consideration you so entirely deserve.”
“Ah, well, ah, well, my dear, say no more about it. You have made a mistake, that is all. Do not distress yourself any more about it,” said Mr Western, with some return to his ordinary equanimity. But he pressed his hand wearily against his head as he spoke with the action that was becoming habitual to him, and Mary’s heart felt very heavy. On all sides nothing but reproach. Where or how had she done wrong? Was it all personal pride and offended feeling that had actuated her conduct, under the guise of unselfish devotion? No, take herself to task sharply as she would, her conscience would not say so.
“Though there must have been a mingling of personal feeling and wounded pride, far more than I was conscious of,” she said, regretfully. “And now it is too late. I have myself placed a far more hopeless barrier between us by the scornful way I rejected what—what he said to me, what, indeed, I do not believe he ever would have said had I not in a way goaded him to it. Oh, yes, I must have been wrong—if only I could clearly see how!”
She was too young to have had much experience of that terrible longing, that anguish of yearning “to see how” we have been wrong; too young to understand that, were that cry answered at our entreaty, half our hard battle would be over; too young to have any but the vaguest conception of the bewildering complication of motive in ourselves, as in others, which at times makes “right and wrong” seem but meaningless jargon in our ears, idle words to be presumptuously discarded with other worn-out childishness. As if our childhood were ever over in this world!—as if the existence of eternal truth depended on our understanding of it!
Mr Western’s headache increased to severity that afternoon, and Mary took all the blame of it on to herself, notwithstanding her mother’s consolations and assurances that it would pass off again as it had done before.