‘For what?’ she asked again.
‘For what? Oh, for more than I can tell,’ said Ben; ‘to build up this old house, as I told you,—to get through life. I must always have felt it, though I did not know. And here is this fellow come in with his wild backwoods way, and thinks he can win you off-hand. I don’t say a word if it is for your happiness; but I know it should be you and me.’
And then there was a pause, and Ben walked up and down the little vacant space in front of the seat he had placed her in, with his eyes bent on the ground, and his face moody and full of trouble. As for Mary, she sat and gazed at him, half-conscious only, worn out by excitement and wonder, and the succession of shocks of one kind and another which she had been receiving, but with a soft sense of infinite ease and consolation stealing over her confused heart. It was that relief from pain which feels to the sufferer like positive blindness. She had not even known how deep the pain in her was until she felt it stealing in upon her,—this ineffable ease and freedom from it, which is more sweet than actual joy.
‘Ben,’ she said at last, when she could get breath. ‘It is very difficult for me to follow you, and you confuse me so that I don’t know. But, about Mr. Hillyard you are all wrong. I never saw him till Monday. I never thought about him at all. I was very sorry. But it is not as if I could blame myself. I was not to blame.’
‘To blame! How could you be to blame?’ said Ben, and he came and stood before her again, gazing at her with that strange look which Mary did not recognise in him, and could not meet.
‘I should never have mentioned it to any one,’ she said. ‘I would not now, though you question me so. But only it is best you should not have anything on your mind. Is,—that,—all?’
It was not coquetry which suggested the question; it was her reason that began utterly to fail her. She did not seem to know what it was he had said besides,—though he had said something.
‘Ah!’ he cried vehemently, and then paused and subdued himself, ‘all except my answer, Mary,’ he said, softly stooping over her.
‘Your answer? You have not asked me anything. Oh, Ben,’ she cried, suddenly getting up from her seat, with her cheeks burning and her eyes wet, ‘let there be no more of this. It was all the feeling of the moment. You thought something had happened which never, never could happen, and you felt a momentary grudge. Don’t tell me it was anything else. Do you think I forget what you told me once up at the beech about her?’ Mary cried, waving her hand towards The Willows. ‘You did not mean to tell me; but I knew. And the other day—— When you say this sort of thing to me it is unkind of you; it is disrespectful to me. I have my pride like other women. Let us speak no more of it, but say good-bye, and I shall go home.’
‘Then you do not even think me worthy of an answer?’ said Ben; and the two stood confronting each other in that supreme duel and conflict of the two existences about to become one, which never loses its interest; she flushed, excited, suspicious; he steadily keeping to his point, refusing to be led away from it. And why Mary should have resisted, standing thus wildly at bay,—and why, when she could stand no longer, she should have sunk down on the seat from which she had risen, in a passion of tears, is more than I can tell. But that finally Ben did get his answer, and that it was, as anybody must have foreseen, eminently satisfactory to him at last, is a matter about which there can be no doubt. I do not know even whether he offered any explanations, or justified himself in the matter of Millicent. I am inclined to think, indeed, that at that moment he took no notice of it whatever; but only insisted on that reply, which, when nature was worn out and could stand against it no longer, came. But the victor did go into certain particulars, as with Mary’s arm drawn closely through his he led her again up that bank which, in so much excitement and uncertainty, half-an-hour before he had led her down.