“You cannot think it would be very pleasant for me to stay this evening,” he said. “I want to wipe away some disagreeable impressions before I come again. Besides, I must finish my afternoon’s writing to-night.”
She had to own that he might well shrink from meeting her mother again just then, particularly as the lady did not seem to have recovered her good-humor. In fact, while they were standing together near the conservatory, she crossed the front hall from one room to another, and cast a watchful glance back at them, as if she would have liked to come nearer, but hesitated to do so.
At sight of her, they turned away, and went out through the garden door at the rear of the long hall, and came round the house instead of going through it. This garden was extensive, occupying nearly or quite two acres of land, and was surrounded by a low stone wall overgrown in some places with vines, in others shaded by shrubs or trees. Crichton was so well governed that high walls were not necessary to protect the gardens, especially when people were so well known to be perfectly willing and able to protect their rights as the Ferriers. A few notable examples, made in a very spirited manner at the beginning of their residence, had inspired transgressors with a wholesome awe of them and their premises. Not a flower was broken, not a cherry nor a plum disappeared from their trees, not an intruding footstep printed their walks.
These grounds were now sweet with a profusion of June roses, and so pink that, as Annette walked through them with her lover, they appeared to be flushed with sunset, though sunset had quite faded, leaving only a pure twilight behind. Besides the newly planted trees, which were small, a few large maples had been left from the original forest, and shaded here and there a circle of velvet sward. A superb border of blue flower-de-luce enclosed the whole with its band of fragrant sapphire.
The two walked slowly round the house without speaking, and Lawrence stepped through the gate, then, turning, leaned on it. Once out of Mrs. Ferrier’s presence, he was not in such haste to go. Two linden-trees in bloom screened them from observation as they stood there; and, since pride no longer compelled him to keep up an indifferent or a defiant manner, the young man yielded to his mood. He was sad, and seemed to feel even a sort of despair. In a weak way he had admired all that was admirable, and despised all that was ignoble, yet he had lacked the resolution necessary to secure his own approval. He was still noble enough to feel the loss of that more bitterly than any outside condemnation. When he could, he deceived himself, and excused his own shortcomings; but when some outward attack tore aside the flimsy veil, and showed him how he might be criticised, or when some stirring appeal revived the half-smothered ideal within him, then he needed all the soothing that friendship or flattery could bestow. While listening to Mrs. Ferrier that afternoon, he had not been able to exclude the humiliating conviction that he had himself forged the chains that held him in that ignoble dependence, and that ten years of earnest endeavor would have set him in a position to command the fulfilment of his wishes. But now, he assured himself, it was too late to begin. His earliest foe, his own nature, had allied itself with one scarcely less strong, a pernicious habit, and it was now two to one. He must be helped, must go on with this engagement, and patch up the life which he could not renew.
“If she would give up the point of our living with her, all would be well,” he said presently. “Why couldn’t we board at the Crichton House? I don’t mean to be idle, and don’t wish to be. I wouldn’t make any promises to her, Annette, and I won’t make them to any one who threatens me; but I am willing to tell you that I really mean to try. All I want is to get out of my little way of living, and have a fair start. You know I never had a chance.”
His lip and voice were unsteady, and, as he looked up appealingly into her face, she saw that his eyes were full of tears. A grief and self-pity too great for words possessed him. That element of childlike tenderness and dependence which survives the time of childhood in some men, as well as in most women, made him long for the pity and sympathy of one to whom he had never given either sympathy or pity.
Annette, woman-like, found no fault, or at least expressed none. It was enough if he needed her sympathy. She had thought that he only needed her wealth. Her heart ached with pity for him, and swelled with indignation against all who would censure him. His foes were her foes.
“I know you never had a chance, Lawrence,” she said fervently; “but never mind that now. You shall have one. F. Chevreuse shall talk to mamma, and make her give me at once what I am to have. It is my right. Don’t be unhappy about the past, nor blame yourself in anything. All lives are not to follow one plan. Why should you have begun as a drudge, and spent all these years in laying up a little money? What better would you be now for having the experience of an errand-boy and a clerk, and for the memory of a thousand mortifications and self-denials? You might have two or three thousand dollars capital, and be, at best, a junior partner in some paltry firm, which I should insist on your leaving. Is that so much to regret?”
He smiled faintly, and, his cause being so well defended, ventured to attack it. “To be mortified is not necessarily to be degraded,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been obliged to listen to the lecture I heard this afternoon.”