“It was not Mary,” she said. “Oh, Winnie, my darling, if it was for your good, and an ease to my mind, and better for you in life—if it was for your good, my dear love—that is what we are all thinking of—could not you give him up?”
It was, perhaps, the boldest thing Aunt Agatha had ever done in all her gentle life—and even Winnie could not but be influenced by such unusual resolution. She made a wild effort to escape for the first moment, and stood with her hands held fast in Aunt Agatha’s hands, averting her angry face, and refusing to answer. But when she felt herself still held fast, and that her fond guardian had the courage to hold to her question, Winnie’s anger turned into another kind of passion. The tears came pouring to her eyes in a sudden violent flood, which she neither tried to stop nor to hide. “No!” cried Winnie, with the big thunder-drops falling hot and heavy. “What is my good without him? If it was for my harm I shouldn’t care. Don’t hold me, don’t look at me, Aunt Agatha! I don’t care for anything in the world but Edward. I would not give him up—no, not if it was to break everybody’s heart. What is it all to me without Edward?” cried the passionate girl. And when Miss Seton let her go, she threw herself on her chair again, with the tears coming in floods, but still facing them both through this storm-shower with crimson cheeks and shining eyes. As for poor Aunt Agatha, she too tottered back to her chair, frightened and abashed, as well as in distress; for young ladies had not been in the habit of talking so freely in her days.
“Oh, Winnie—and we have loved you all your life; and you have only known him a few weeks,” she said, faltering, and with a natural groan.
“I cannot help it,” said Winnie; “you may think me a wretch, but I like him best. Isn’t it natural I should like him best? Mary did, and ran away, and nobody was shocked at her; and even you yourself——”
“I never, never, could have said such a thing all my life!” cried Aunt Agatha, with a maiden blush upon her sweet old cheeks.
“If you had, you would not have been a——as you are now,” said the dauntless Winnie; and she recovered in a twinkling of an eye, and wiped away her tears, and was herself again. Possibly what she had said was true and natural, as she asserted; but it is an unquestionable fact, that neither her aunt nor her sister could have said it for their lives. She was a young lady of the nineteenth century, and she acted accordingly; but it is a certain fact, as Aunt Agatha justly observed, whatever people may think now, that girls did not speak like that in our day.
CHAPTER XIX.
HE few weeks which ensued were the most stormy and troublous period of all Miss Seton’s life; and through her there was naturally a considerable disturbance of the peace of the Cottage. Though she lived so quietly, she had what is called in the country “a large circle,” and had dwelt among her own people all her life, and was known to everybody about. It was a quiet neighbourhood, but yet there never was a neighbourhood so quiet as not to have correspondents and relations living out in the world, to whom all news went, and from whom all news came. And there were a number of “families” about Kirtell, not great people certainly, but very respectable people, gentry, and well-connected persons, hanging on by various links to the great world. In this way Winnie’s engagement, which nobody wanted to conceal, came to be known far and wide, as such facts are so apt to get known. And a great many people out in the world, who had once known Miss Seton, wrote letters to her, in which they suggested that perhaps she had forgotten them, but hoped that she would excuse them, and attribute it to the regard which they had never ceased to feel for her, if they asked, Did she know Captain Percival very well, who was said to be engaged to her pretty niece? Had she heard what happened in the Isle of Man when his regiment was stationed there? and why it was that he did not go out to Gibraltar after he had got that appointment? Other people, who did not know Aunt Agatha, took what was after all the more disagreeable step of writing to their friends in the parish about the young man, whose career had certainly left traces, as it appeared, upon the memory of his generation. To rise every morning with a sense that such an epistle might be awaiting her on the breakfast-table—or to receive a visitor with the horrible conviction that she had come to look into her face, and hold her hand, and be confidential and sympathetic, and deliver a solemn warning—was an ordeal which Aunt Agatha found it hard to bear. She was a woman who never forgot her character as a maiden lady, and liked to be justified by precedents and to be approved of by all the world. And these repeated remonstrances had no doubt a great effect upon her mind. They filled her with terrible misgivings and embittered her life, and drove her now and then into so great a panic that she felt disposed to thrust Captain Percival out of the house and forbid his reappearance there. But then, Winnie. Winnie was not the girl to submit to any such violent remedies. If she could not see her lover there, she would find means to see him somewhere else. If she could not be married to him with stately propriety in her parish church, she would manage to marry him somehow in any irregular way, and she would by no means hesitate to say so or shrink from the responsibility. And if it must be done, would it not be better that it should be done correctly than incorrectly, and with all things decent and in order? Thus poor Aunt Agatha would muse as she gathered up her bundle of letters. It might have been all very well for parents to exercise their authority in the days when their children obeyed them; but what was the use of issuing commands to which nobody would pay any attention? Winnie had very plainly expressed her preference for her own happiness rather than her aunt’s peace of mind; and though Miss Seton would never have consented to admit that Winnie was anything less than the most beautiful character, still she was aware that unreasoning obedience was not her faculty. Besides, another sentiment began to mingle with this prudential consideration. Everybody was against the poor young man. The first letters she received about him made her miserable; but after that there was no doubt a revulsion. Everybody was against him, poor fellow!—and he was so young, and could not, after all, have done so much harm in the world. “He has not had the time, Mary,” she said, with an appeal to Mrs. Ochterlony for support. “If he had been doing wrong from his very cradle, he could not have had the time.” She could not refuse to believe what was told her, and yet notwithstanding her belief she clung to the culprit. If he had found any other advocate it might have been different; but nobody took the other side of the question: nobody wrote a pretty letter to say what a dear fellow he was, and how glad his friends were to think he had found some one worthy of him—not even his mother; and Aunt Agatha’s heart accordingly became the avvocato del diavolo. Fair play was due even to Captain Percival. It was impossible to leave him assailed as he was by so many without one friend.
It was a curious sight to see how she at once received and ignored all the information thus conveyed to her. A woman of a harder type would probably, as women do, have imputed motives, and settled the matter with the general conclusion that “an enemy hath done this;” but Aunt Agatha could not help, for the moment at least, believing in everybody. She could not say right out, “It is not true,” even to the veriest impostor who deceived and got money from her, and their name was legion. In her own innocent soul she had no belief in lies, and could not understand them; and it was easier for her to give credence to the wildest marvel than to believe that anybody could tell her a deliberate falsehood. She would have kissed the ladies who wrote to her of those stories about Captain Percival, and cried and wrung her hands, and asked, What could she do?—and yet her heart was by no means turned against him, notwithstanding her belief in what everybody said; which is a strange and novel instance, well enough known to social philosophers, but seldom remarked upon, of the small practical influence of belief upon life. “How can it be a lie, my dear child? what motive could they all have to tell lies?” she would say to Winnie, mournfully; and yet ten minutes after, when it was Mrs. Ochterlony she was speaking to, she would make her piteous appeal for him, poor fellow!—“Everybody is against him; and he is so young still; and oh, Mary, how much he must need looking after,” Aunt Agatha would say, “if it is all true!”