‘Ben will not be hard upon you,’ said Laurie, with a laugh; but as he spoke he looked fixedly at the solicitor, hoping,—which was like Laurie,—to beguile that astute practitioner into self-betrayal.
‘I don’t know any thing about Ben,’ he answered, smiling at the simple artifice; ‘but I know I must set my affairs in order, and be prepared to give up my trust. I want Mary to go with me over the estate. She is moping and pale, and a brisk canter will do her good. Will you see if there is anything she can ride?’
And then there ensued a little consultation as to whether Fairy was up to it. Fairy was a pet pony, as old as the hills, who had been eating herself into a plethoric condition for years; but Mary, who was not a very bold horsewoman, believed in the venerable animal, as did every soul about Renton. ‘She’s hold in years, but she’s young at ‘art, Miss; she’ll carry you like a bird,’ was the coachman’s opinion when he was called into the consultation. And then Laurie had a vast tankard brought to him, and refreshed himself after his long walk. When Mr. Ponsonby retired, the cousins stepped out again on to the lawn, and Mary looked on and talked while Laurie had his cigar. The moon, which was half over and late of rising, began to lighten slowly upwards, shining upon the river far below, while they were still left in darkness on the higher bank. ‘It is so strange to think we are all on the brink of a new life,’ Mary said, as she gazed down through an opening in the trees upon that silvery gleam, which was framed in by the dark, rustling branches. ‘Are we?’ said Laurie, with a kind of echo in his voice. Somehow he had taken his life awry, by the wrong corner, and there did not seem vigour enough left in him to care for a new beginning,—at least for himself.
‘Laurie,’ she said, encouraged by the darkness. He had thrown himself down in a garden-chair, and was visible only as a shadow, with a red point of cigar indicating his face; while she stood leaning on one of the lower branches of the lime-tree which framed in that glimpse of the light below. Their voices had the softened, mysterious sound which such a moment gives, and as neither of them was happy enough to draw new delight out of the influence of the night, both of them, by natural necessity, grew a little sad. ‘Laurie,’ Mary said, and faltered. ‘Sometimes I think I should like to know a little about you. I do know something about the others,—even Ben,—but you have always been a mystery to me since you first went away.’
‘I don’t think I am much of a mystery,’ said Laurie, not moving from his chair.
‘But you are a mystery,’ Mary repeated, with a little eagerness. ‘I don’t know what has come to you,—whether it is love, or whether it is loss,—don’t be angry, Laurie.’
‘It might be love and loss too,’ he said, with a little laugh, which was not cheerful, and then he rose and tossed away his cigar. ‘What if I were to say you were a mystery, too?’ he continued, not knowing how Mary’s cheeks burned in the darkness. ‘We all are, I suppose; and my poor old father that meant to do so well for us, and tossed us all abroad to scramble anyhow for life,—what do you say to that for a mystery, Mary? and here is the moment coming to prove which of us is preferred and which condemned. I am the poor fellow with one talent, who laid it up in the napkin. If he had not been so mean as to abuse his master, I think I should have sympathised with that poor wretch.’
‘I cannot say I sympathise with him,’ cried Mary, woman-like. ‘To be able to do, and not to do, that is what I cannot understand. But you have not hid your talent in a napkin, Laurie. I wish you had a better opinion of yourself.’
Upon which Laurie laughed, and drew her hand through his arm, and the two strayed together, silent, down under the shadow of the trees towards the opening which looked on the river. The moon creeping higher every moment, began to thread through the bewildering maze of branches with lines and links of silver; and there was always that one brilliant spot in the midst of the river, far below them, shining like burnished silver, scarcely dimpling under the moonbeams, which seemed to swell as well as glorify the rather scanty water. Their hearts were full of wistfulness and dreams. The world lay all as dark before them as those rustling, breathing woods, with, for one, a brightness in the future which might or might not,—most probably should not,—ever be attained; and for the other, only some fanciful, silvery thread twining through the sombre life. They paused, arm-in-arm, by that beech-tree at the corner where Ben and Mary had paused when he was last at home, and where he had shot that arrow at her,—as she said to herself,—of which she could still feel the point. But Laurie was very different from Ben. No spark of emotion went from one soul to the other as they stood so close and so kindly together. They were the parallel lines that never meet,—each thinking their own thoughts, each with a sigh that was not all pain, contemplating the well-known road behind them, the invisible path before;—and all the world around lying dark and light, stirring softly, breathing softly, in the long speechless vigil which we call night.
Next day Mr. Ponsonby went over the home-farm, and all the neighbouring land, inspecting everything, looking to farms, farm-buildings, drainage, timber,—all the necessities of the estate. Mary rode by his side on Fairy, who verified the coachman’s verdict, and carried her mistress like a bird,—at least as nearly like a bird as Mary wished. Laurie had gone back to town that morning by the train. When his cousin returned to luncheon, freshed and roused by her ride, it seemed to her almost as if the new life had already begun. The work-people who had been sent for from town had arrived with a van full of upholstery,—bales of fresh, pretty chintz for ‘the boys’ rooms,’ and new furniture for the extempore nursery. An air of movement was diffused about the whole house. The flood which had swept over Renton, almost engulfing the peace of the family, was almost over,—the waters were going down,—the household ark standing fast, and the saved ones beginning to appear at the long-closed windows. Such were Mary’s feelings as she went with her aunt for that inevitable drive. To-day the hedgerows were not so monotonous, the dust less stifling; and when they met Mr. Ponsonby on his cob, with the bailiff in attendance, the returning life rose into a sparkle and glow in Mary’s face. ‘Her ride has done her no end of good,’ Mr. Ponsonby cried, waving his hand as he rode past. ‘Good?’ said Mrs. Renton: ‘was there anything the matter with you, Mary? I am sure, if there is any good in riding, I wonder Dr. Mixton has never recommended it to me.’ And then the two drove on, as they had been driving, Mary thought, all these seven long years.