That was the last, I think, that we know of him thus far, excepting, by-the-by, an instant’s peep of him more recently in his mother’s Swiss maison de campaigne, where the Severns were domesticated for the summer. To return, however, to the day in March, on which, hopeful and elated, as I think I said, Ralph set out again for Altes, having succeeded in the mission which had brought him across the water.
The journey back was a much more cheerful affair than had been that to England.
Ralph was not naturally by any means given to over-anxiety about money matters—in fact his actual experience of limited means had been but small, for he had always had enough for moderate requirements. But he was a thoroughly conscientious man. Many would say morbidly so, and I daresay there might be nothing exaggerated or unreasonable in such an opinion.
Very quiet and reserved people are apt to become morbid on some point. They get hold of a notion, and turn it round and round in their minds, till a sort of mental dizziness, very adverse to clear judgement, results. It is a grand thing now and then to get a fresh, outside opinion on matters about which we are deeply interested. Nor is the soundness of that opinion of as much moment as might be imagined. Its freshness is the great thing; for assuredly, though directly it may not influence our eventual decision, our own powers of judgement will, by its breezy rush through our cobwebbed brain, become marvellously invigorated, and braced for the work, which, after all, to be well done, must be their own, and no one else’s!
Such had been on Ralph the effect of his rare confidence in another—that other, as will be remembered, having been the sensible, middle-aged, but nevertheless quite sufficiently “romantic,” Mr. Price. From the date of his long talk with his odd tutor, the young man’s bewilderments, fors and againsts, conflicting duties and inclinations, ranged themselves with wonderful order and celerity. It was all nonsense, “morbid humbug,” he soon learnt to call it, about his being different from other men, cut off by peculiar circumstances from what, after all, in plain, honest English is every man’s birthright—liberty to please himself in the choice of the helpmeet, without which Providence certainly never intended him, or any other able-bodied young man, to go through life! Provided, of course, the prospective helpmeet saw things in the same way as he; of which, Heaven be thanked, he had no reasonable grounds to doubt.
What he could do, without too much going out of his way, or any approach to unmanly subservience, to conciliate his mother, he would. But beyond a certain point he now saw clearly it was not his duty to defer to her. Should she show herself inclined to be reasonable, which state of things, however, he at present felt far from sanguine about: he would be only too ready to meet her at any point on the friendly road, he would, in any case, swallow his pride, to the extent of accepting from her whatever amount of pecuniary assistance she saw fit to afford him. Pride, indeed, was hardly the word for it, for in a sense the property was his own, though at present, unfortunately, not to be obtained but by her good-will. And if she took it into her head to stand out and refuse him anything? Well, then, he had the appointment at A—— to fall back upon, the securing of which, his practical good sense and Mr. Price’s advice, had shown him to be the one distinct duty before him; without which as a certainty, however small, he had no right to allow the fortunes of another to be joined to his.
What he had said to Marion, before leaving Altes, had not been on impulse. Each word, each look and gesture, that last evening when she had shown him in her innocence, the whole depths of her pure, loving heart, and tempted him sorely to say but one word more, to press her if but for an instant to his breast—each word and glance that evening he had rigidly controlled, and acted throughout implicitly as he believed to be for the best. From the light of after results, we now may question if he did wisely; if, after all, it had not been better to have gone further, or not so far? From the top of the hill it requires no great wisdom to look back and say which would have been the best road up: but this is not how we are meant to travel our life-journey. Slowly and toilfully, with but little light, and what there is often dazzling and deceptive, with bleeding feet and trembling limbs we creep along—one step beyond, often the limit of our darkened view. This is how the Allwise sees fit to train us. Doubt not and judge not. When at last we climb beyond the mists and fogs, though that time may be still a far way off, we shall see that it was for the best.
But no misgiving of this kind came to torment Ralph on his way back, as he thought, to the woman, from whom no reasonable barrier now divided him.
“For to put it in its very worst light,” said he to himself (a feat by-the-bye your very conscientious people are strangely fond of performing), “even if my health gives way and I have to throw up the A—— appointment, my mother is not so utterly devoid of natural affection as to let us starve while she is rolling in wealth. And even if I were to die and leave my darling alone, why, we should have had our little hit of happiness, which surely is better than to have had none at all. And if my Marion had a child, or children,” he murmured to himself softly, “it would force my mother to take an interest in her for the old name’s sake. It would not seem quite so bad to leave her if she had boys and girls about her! She seems so very lonely, poor child, except for Mrs. Archer, who after all is only a friend. Though I really don’t know why I should think myself likely to die. I am perfectly healthy, though not very robust. John’s death, I think, put it into my head that I should not live to be old.”
And then in thought he wandered off to picturing to himself where and when he could best manage to see Marion alone.