Veronica, poor soul, was sorely exercised in spirit about these two. She loved them both so much, and yet she could not but see how utterly, radically unlike they were to each other. Geoffrey, some few years her junior, had from infancy seemed like a younger brother of her own; and since her illness in particular the gentle kindness, the never-failing attention he had shown her, had endeared him to her greatly. What, on his side, of his real manliness, his simple love of the good and pure, and hatred of the wrong, he owed to this poor crippled woman, is one of the things that little suspected now, shall one day be fully seen. Yet for all this, for all her love for, and pride in him, Veronica made no hero of the young man. She saw plainly that in all but his simple goodness he was inferior to Marion. And seeing this, and coming to love the girl and admire her many gifts as she did poor Veronica, as I have said, was sorely perplexed. She temporized in the first place; till she saw that it was absolutely necessary to do so, she had not the heart to crush poor Geoffrey’s hopes.
“Wait,” she said to him, “wait yet awhile. She has had much to try her of late, and there is no time lost. Think how young she is. If you startled her you might ruin all. Wait at least, till the spring.”
So Geoffrey bit the end of his riding-whip rather ruefully, thanked Miss Veronica, and much against his will—waited.
“It may be,” thought Veronica, “that this is to be one of those unequal marriages, that after all turn out quite as happily, or more so, than those where the balance is more even. Marion, as yet, is hardly conscious of her own powers. Should she marry Geoffrey the probability is she will never become so. Never, at least, in the present state of things. And after all, much power is doomed for ever in this world to remain latent! But, on the other hand—I wish it could be! I do, indeed wish it so much, that I doubt my own clear-sightedness. She will, assuredly, be well able to decide for herself when the question comes before her, as I suppose in time it must. It is Geoffrey I am so troubled about. Should I do better to crush his hopes altogether? I could do so. But then, again, if it should turn out unnecessary! Ah, no! All I can do is to watch and wait. If only he does not ruin his own cause by anything premature.”
“If only!” But, alas, there came a day on which, riding back to Mallingford, Geoffrey seeing Marion home after parting with the Misses Copley at the gate a their father’s park, the following conversation took place.
It was late in February, a rank, dank, chilly afternoon, such as there had been plenty of this winter. Foggy, too; daylight already growing dim, an hour or more before it had any right to do so.
Marion shivered, though not altogether from the cold.
“Isn’t it a horrible day, Mr. Baldwin?” she asked; “a perfectly wretched day. Enough to make one wonder that people can be found willing to stay in such an ugly, disagreeable world. And yet there’s something fascinating about it too. I wonder how that is! Let me see; what is it it reminds me of? Oh, I know. It’s that song of Tennyson’s. ‘A spirit haunts the year’s last hours,’ it begins.
‘My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves.
And the breath
Of the fading edges of box beneath.’
That’s the sort of smell there is to-day, though it’s so chilly. Though that song is for the autumn. But it’s more like autumn than spring just now, isn’t it, Mr. Baldwin? There isn’t the slightest feeling of spring anywhere. No freshness, no life. Everything seems to be decaying.”