WALTER MARRABLE.
I should like to see you once more before I start. Is there any harm in this? I must run down to my uncle's, but I will not go up to you if you think it better not. If you can bring yourself to see me, pray, pray do.
In answer to this Mary wrote to him to say that she would certainly see him when he came. She knew no reason, she said, why they should not meet. When she had written her note she asked her aunt's opinion.
Aunt Sarah would not take upon herself to say that no such meeting ought to take place, but it was very evident that she thought that it would be dangerous.
Captain Marrable did come down to Loring about the end of January, and the meeting did take place. Mary had stipulated that she should be alone when he called. He had suggested that they should walk out together, as had been their wont; but this she had declined, telling him that the sadness of such a walk would be too much for her, and saying to her aunt with a smile that were she once again out with him on the towing-path, there would be no chance of their ever coming home. "I could not ask him to turn back," she said, "when I should know that it would be for the last time." It was arranged, therefore, that the meeting should take place in the drawing-room at Uphill Lane.
He came into the room with a quick, uneasy step, and when he reached her he put his arm round her and kissed her. She had formed certain little resolutions on this subject. He should kiss her, if he pleased, once again when he went,--and only once. And now, almost without a motion on her part that was perceptible, she took herself out of his arms. There should be no word about that if she could help it,--but she was bound to remember that he was nothing to her now but a distant cousin. He must cease to be her lover, though she loved him. Nay,--he had so ceased already. There must be no more laying of her head upon his shoulder, no more twisting of her fingers through his locks, no more looking into his eyes, no more amorous pressing of her lips against his own. Much as she loved him she must remember now that such outward signs of love as these would not befit her.
"Walter," she said, "I am so glad to see you! And yet I do not know but what it would have been better that you should have stayed away."
"Why should it have been better? It would have been unnatural not to have met each other."
"So I thought. Why should not friends endure to say good-bye, even though their friendship be as dear as ours? I told Aunt Sarah that I should be angry with myself afterwards if I feared to tell you to come."
"There is nothing to fear,--only that it is so wretched an ending,"
said he.
"In one way I will not look on it as an ending. You and I cannot be married, Walter; but I shall always have your career to look to, and shall think of you as my dearest friend. I shall expect you to write to me;--not at first, but after a year or so. You will be able to write to me then as though you were my brother."
"I shall never be able to do that."
"Oh yes;--that is, if you will make the effort for my sake. I do not believe but what people can manage and mould their own wills if they will struggle hard enough. You must not be unhappy, Walter."
"I am not so wise or self-confident as you, Mary. I shall be unhappy.
I should be deceiving myself if I were to tell myself otherwise.
There is nothing before me to make me happy. When I came home there was very little that I cared for, though I had the prospect of this money and thought that my cares in that respect were over. Then I met you, and the whole world seemed altered. I was happy even when I found how badly I had been treated. Now all that has gone, and I cannot think that I shall be happy again."
"I mean to be happy, Walter."
"I hope you may, dear."
"There are gradations in happiness. The highest I ever came to yet was when you told me that you loved me." When she said that, he attempted to take her hand, but she withdrew from him, almost without a sign that she was doing so. "I have not quite lost that yet," she continued, "and I do not mean to lose it altogether. I shall always remember that you loved me; and you will not forget that I too loved you."
"Forget it?--no, I don't exactly think that I shall forget it."
"I don't know why it should make us altogether unhappy. For a time, I suppose, we shall be down-hearted."
"I shall, I know. I can't pretend to such strength as to say that I can lose what I want, and not feel it."
"We shall both feel it, Walter;--but I do not know that we must be miserable. When do you leave England?"
"Nothing is settled. I have not had the heart to think of it. It will not be for a month or two yet. I suppose I shall stay out my regular Indian time."
"And what shall you do with yourself?"
"I have no plans at all, Mary. Sir Gregory has asked me to Dunripple, and I shall remain there probably till I am tired of it. It will be so pleasant, talking to my uncle of my father."
"Do not talk of him at all, Walter. You will best forgive him by not talking of him. We shall hear, I suppose, of what you do from Parson John."
She had seated herself a little away from him, and he did not attempt to draw near to her again till at her bidding he rose to leave her.
He sat there for nearly an hour, and during that time much more was said by her than by him. She endeavoured to make him understand that he was as free as air, and that she would hope some day to hear that he was married. In reply to this, he asserted very loudly that he would never call any woman his wife, unless unexpected circumstances should enable him to return and again ask for her hand. "Not that you are to wait for me, Mary," he said. She smiled, but made no definite answer to this. She had told herself that it would not be for his welfare that she should allude to the possibility of a renewed engagement, and she did not allude to it.
"God bless you, Walter," she said at last, coming to him and offering him her hand.
"God bless you, for ever and ever, dearest Mary," he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her again and again. It was to be the last, and she did not seem to shun him. Then he left her, went as far as the door,--and returned again. "Dearest, dearest Mary. You will give me one more kiss?"
"It shall be the last, Walter," she said. Then she did kiss him, as she would have kissed her brother that was going from her, and escaping from his arms she left the room.
He had come to Loring late on the previous evening, and on that same day he returned to London. No doubt he dined at his club, drank a pint of wine and smoked a cigar or two, though he did it all after a lugubrious fashion. Men knew that he had fallen into great trouble in the matter of his inheritance, and did not expect him to be joyful and of pleasant countenance. "By George!" said little Captain Boodle, "if it was my governor, I'd go very near being hung for him; I would, by George!" Which remark obtained a good deal of general sympathy in the billiard-room of that military club. In the meantime Mary Lowther at Loring had resolved that she would not be lugubrious, and she sat down to dinner opposite to her aunt with a pleasant smile on her face. Before the evening was over, however, she had in some degree broken down. "I fear I can't get along with novels, Aunt Sarah," she said. "Don't you think I could find something to do." Then the old lady came round the room and kissed her niece;--but she made no other reply.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
BULLHAMPTON NEWS.
When the matter was quite settled at Loring,--when Miss Marrable not only knew that the engagement had been surrendered on both sides, but that it had been so surrendered as to be incapable of being again patched up, she bethought herself of her promise to Mr. Gilmore.
This did not take place for a fortnight after the farewell which was spoken in the last chapter,--at which time Walter Marrable was staying with his uncle, Sir Gregory, at Dunripple. Miss Marrable had undertaken that Mr. Gilmore should be informed as soon as the engagement was brought to an end, and had been told that this information should reach him through Mrs. Fenwick. When a fortnight had passed, Miss Marrable was aware that Mary had not herself written to her friend at Bullhampton; and though she felt herself to be shy of the subject, though she entertained a repugnance to make any communication based on a hope that Mary might after a while receive her old lover graciously,--for time must of course be needed before such grace could be accorded,--she did write a few lines to Mrs.
Fenwick. She explained that Captain Marrable was to return to India, and that he was to go as a free man. Mary, she said, bore her burden well. Of course, it must be some time before the remembrance of her cousin would cease to be a burden to her; but she went about her heavy task with a good will,--so said Miss Marrable,--and would no doubt conquer her own unhappiness after a time by the strength of her personal character. Not a word was spoken of Mr. Gilmore, but Mrs.
Fenwick understood it all. The letter, she knew well, was a message to Mr. Gilmore;--a message which it would be her duty to give as soon as possible, that he might extract from it such comfort as it would contain for him,--though it would be his duty not to act upon it for, at any rate, many months to come. "And it will be a comfort to him,"
said her husband when he read Miss Marrable's letter.
"Of all the men I know, he is the most constant," said Mrs. Fenwick, "and best deserves that his constancy should be rewarded."
"It is the man's nature," said the parson. "Of course, he will get her at last; and when he has got her, he will be quite contented with the manner in which he has won her. There's nothing like going on with a thing. I believe I might be a bishop if I set my heart on it."
"Why don't you, then?"
"I am not sure that the beauty of the thing is so well-defined to me as is Mary Lowther's to poor Harry. In perseverance and success of that kind the man's mind should admit of no doubt. Harry is quite clear of this,--that in spite of Mary's preference for her cousin, it would be the grandest thing in the world to him that she should marry him. The certainty of his condition will pull him through at last."
Two days after this Mrs. Fenwick put Miss Marrable's letter into Mr.
Gilmore's hand,--having perceived that it was specially written that it might be so treated. She kept it in her pocket till she should chance to see him, and at last handed it to him as she met him walking on his own grounds. "I have a letter from Loring," she said.
"From Mary?"
"No;--from Mary's aunt. I have it here, and I think you had better read it. To tell you the truth, Harry, I have been looking for you ever since I got it. Only you must not make too much of it."
Then he read the letter. "What do you mean," he asked, "by making too much of it?"
"You must not suppose that Mary is the same as before she saw this cousin of hers."
"But she is the same."
"Well;--yes, in body and in soul, no doubt. But such an experience leaves a mark which cannot be rubbed out quite at once."