How she got into the room—the isolated big drawing-room, which somebody else, who was aware of his arrival, had directed that he was to be shown into—Mary knew not; but she was there. He stood perfectly still, massive and inflexible, to receive her. Without approaching him—or he her—to shake hands, without looking at his face or anywhere near it, she perceived the adamantine set of lips, the cold gaze, more withering than fire, which informed her that he knew all; and she sank crouching into a chair, and hid her face. But her back was against the wall now. The coward stage was past. In the most desperately false position that a girl could occupy, she made no further attempt to run away from the truth, perhaps because she saw that it was useless. When he began, very politely, but with no beating about the bush, to say: "I daresay you are surprised to see me, Miss Pennycuick, but I was told—and since I came up here I have been told again by several different persons—something that I want you to help me to understand," she jerked herself upright, and stopped him with a swift gesture and the cry of: "I know! I know what you have been told; and I have nothing to say. I cannot contradict it."
She was a piteous object, in her shaking anguish; but he looked at her, of course, without a scrap of pity.
"Do you think you really know?" he questioned her, with cold gravity. "Perhaps I have been given an exaggerated version. I was in hopes that it was altogether an invention of Miss Francie's—I know of old that she is prone to make reckless statements—"
"Ah-h—Francie!"
"She was kind enough to write me a long letter, to congratulate me on my promotion. She told me all the family news. And she said—she asked me—but really I haven't the cheek to repeat her words—"
His cold face had become hot, and his manner agitated.
"Go on," said she, calming under the perception that the worst had come utterly to the worst.
"Well, if you will forgive me—she asked me, in effect, when I was coming to marry you, and why I had kept the engagement a secret so long." He paused, one dark red blush, to note the effect of so brutal a stroke.
She said, meeting his eyes for the first time:
"And you believed it at once—of ME?"
"No, Miss Pennycuick. I laughed. I said to myself: 'Here is another of Miss Francie's mare's nests.' But when I read on—she told me so many things—they were incredible, but still I felt I had to sift the matter; and since I came up today, other people—I've been to Five Creeks and had a talk with Jim Urquhart—now I don't know what to think; at least, there is but one thing that I can think."
The chair she had taken had a high back, and against this she laid her head, as if too weary to support it. Lack of sleep and appetite had paled her florid colour to a sickly hue, and she looked wan and languid as a dying woman. But still he did not pity her, as he must have done had her face been half as beautiful as Deb's or Francie's.
"Miss Pennycuick," he continued, as she kept silence, "I want to get the hang of this thing. Will you tell me straight—yes or no—have you been giving it out that I left Redford two years ago engaged to you?"
Her first impulse was to cry out: "Oh, no, no! Not quite so bad as that!" But on second thoughts she said:
"Yes—practically."
Sudden rage seemed to seize him. He sat up, he crossed his knees, he uncrossed them, he twisted this way and that, he muttered "Good God!" as if the pious ejaculation had referred to the Other Person, and his stare at her was cruel.
"But—but—I have been racking my brains to remember anything—surely I never gave you—I am perfectly convinced, I have the best reason for being absolutely certain, that I could not have given you—"
"Never!" she broke in. "Of course not. It was all my own invention."
"You admit it? Thank you. You formally relieve me of the imputation I have so long lain under without knowing it, of having run away from my duty?"
She said lifelessly: "We thought you were dead."
"Hah! I see. You thought it didn't matter what you said of a dead man? But dead men's characters should be all the more sacred because they cannot defend them. I should be sorry indeed to leave behind me such a reputation as I seem to have hereabouts—though, indeed, a man is very helpless in these cases. He is at a hopeless disadvantage when a woman is his traducer. I can see that Jim Urquhart will never be a friend of mine again, whatever happens."
"He shall know the truth. Everybody shall know the truth," said Mary.
"How can everybody know the truth? Only by my own affidavit, and that would not be believed. Besides, it is not for me to deny—at the cost of branding a lady a liar."
It was the straight word, regardless of manners, with this sea-bred man.
"You need not. I know how to do it so that people will believe. I am going to write a letter to the newspaper—a plain statement, that will fully exonerate you."
He nearly jumped out of his chair with the fright she gave him.
"You will do nothing so ridiculous!" he exclaimed angrily.
"It is the only way," said she—"the only way to make sure."
"If you do," he menaced her, "I shall simply write another for the next issue to flatly contradict you."
"Then you would be a liar."
"That doesn't matter in the least. I must be a man first. I am not going to let you ruin yourself."
"Ah, that is done already! Nothing can make it worse—for me."
He looked at her, taking in the words, in some sort understanding them. She lifted her eyes to look at him, and what he saw behind the look went to his kindly heart. He "felt" for her for the first time.
"May I go now?" she whispered.
His answer was to move to a seat beside her.
"I wish you would tell me," he said, in more humane tones, "how you came to do it. I would like to understand, and I can't, for the life of me. You must have had some reason. DID I do anything, unknowing—"
She shook her head hopelessly.
"No. You were only kind and good, as you would have been to anyone."
"Kind and good? Rubbish! It was you—all of you—who were kind and good. Oh, I don't forget what you did for me, and never shall. I feel"—it was the very feeling that had so oppressed him in the case of the lady at Sandridge—"under a load of obligation to you that I can never hope to discharge. But still—but still—though I trust I showed some of the gratitude I felt—I cannot remember how I came to give you the idea—I must have done something, I suppose; one is a blundering fool without knowing it—"
"No," she protested—"no, no! It was my own idea entirely."
"But I can't reconcile that with your character, Miss Pennycuick."
"Nor can I," she laughed bitterly.
"There's a mystery somewhere. Did anybody tell you anything? Did Miss Frances put constructions on innocent appearances? Did—"
"No," Mary resolutely stopped him. "It is good of you to try to make excuses, but there is no excuse for me—none. Francie only said what she knew. I let them believe you were my lover; I am twenty-seven—I never had one—and—and—oh, I thought that, at least, you might be mine when you were dead! I did not mean to be a liar, as you called me—yes, that is the right word—"
"Forgive me for using it," he muttered. "You do not realise at first that you are lying, when you only act lies and don't speak them. And I DID think that perhaps, that possibly—of course, I was ridiculously wrong—it was atrocious, unforgivable—I don't ask you to forgive me—I don't want you to—but those dear days when our little boy—oh, you know!—and when you kissed me that night beside his grave—"
"WHAT!" A lightning change came over the young man, as if the word had been an electric current suddenly shot into him. "KISSED YOU?"
"It was nothing; you did not know you did it—"
"But here—hold on—this is serious. DID I kiss YOU? You are sure you are not dreaming?"
"I would not be very likely to dream that," she said, with a strange smile. "But of course it was only—at such a time—as you would have kissed your sister—anybody. Your very forgetting it shows that."
But a dim memory was awakening in him, frightfully perturbing to his mind.
"I KISSED you!" he repeated, and slowly realised that he had been that consummate ass. The poor baby's dead hand had retained its old power to entrap a simpleton unawares.
Well, simpleton or not, Guthrie Carey was Guthrie Carey—sailor-bred, accustomed to meet vital emergencies with boldness and promptness; accustomed also to take his own views of what was a man's part at such times. While she implored him to say no more about that kiss, crying shame upon herself for mentioning it, he sat in silence, thinking hard. As soon as she had done, he spoke:
"Miss Pennycuick, I now understand everything. You are completely justified. It is I who have been to blame." And he then, in precise language, such as no real lover could have used, but still as prettily as was possible under the circumstances, requested the honour of her hand in marriage.
To his astonishment, she laughed. It was a wild-sounding cackle, and quickly turned into a wail.
"Ah-h! Ah-h-h!" She faced him again, head up and hands down. "That, Mr Carey, is the one way out of it that is utterly, absolutely, eternally impossible."
"Why?" he demanded, with his man's dull incomprehension, and went on to demonstrate that there was no other. "I do not wish," he lied chivalrously, "to take any other. I—I—believe me, I am not ungrateful for your—for your thinking a great deal more of me than I deserve. I will try to show myself worthy—"
A magnanimous arm attempted to encircle her. She backed from it, and rose hurriedly from her chair, with what he would have imagined a gesture of repulsion if he had not known her, from her own showing, so over-eager for his embraces. He rose too.
"Do not!" she cried breathlessly, passionately. "As if I could dream—What can you think of me, to imagine that I would for a moment—"
She broke from him and ran towards the door, sobbing, with her handkerchief to her eyes. In three strides he was there before her, cutting off her retreat; so she swung back into the room, cast herself on the floor beside a sofa, and throwing up her arms, plunged her head down between them into the depths of a large cushion, which smothered cries that would otherwise have been shrieks. She abandoned all effort to control herself, except the effort to hide, which was futile.
Guthrie Carey's first feeling was of alarm, lest anyone should hear and come in to see what was the matter; he felt like wanting to guard the door. But in a minute or two his soft heart was so worked upon by the spectacle before him that he could think of nothing else. However little he might want to marry Mary Pennycuick, he was not going to be answerable for this sort of thing; so he marched resolutely to the sofa, and stooped to lift the convulsed creature bodily into his arms.
He might as well have tried to grasp a sleeping porcupine.
"How dare you?" she cried shrilly, whirling to her feet, dilating like a hooded snake before his astonished eyes. "How dare you touch me?" He was too cowed to answer, and she stood a moment, all fire and fury, glaring at him, her tear-ravaged face distorted, her hands clenched; then she whirled out of the room, and this time he made no effort to stop her.
He dropped back on the sofa, and said to himself helplessly:
"Well, I'm blowed!"
There was stillness for some time. This part of the house seemed quite empty, save for one buzzing fly, which he or Mary had let in. The little housekeeper was very particular about flies in summer, every window and chimney-opening being wire-netted, every door labelled with a printed request to the user to shut it; and his dazed mind occupied itself with the idea of how this insect would have distressed her if she had not had so much else to think of. He had an impulse to hunt it, for her sake, through the green-shadowed space in which it careered in long tacks with such energy and noise; but, standing up, he was seized with a stronger impulse to leave the house forthwith, and everything in it. He wanted liberty to consider his position and further proceedings before he faced the family.
As he approached the door, it was opened from without. Deb stood on the threshold, pale, proud, with tight lips and sombre eyes. She bowed to him as only she could bow to a person she was offended with.
"Would you kindly see my father in his office, Mr Carey?" she inquired, with stony formality. "He wishes to speak to you."
"Certainly, Miss Deborah," he replied, not daring to preface the words with even a "How-do-you-do". "I want to see him—I want to see him particularly."
Deb swept round to lead the way downstairs.
An embarrassing march it was, tandem fashion, through the long passages of the rambling house. While trying to arrange his thoughts for the coming interview, Captain Carey studied her imperious back and shoulders, the haughty poise of her head; and though he was not the one that had behaved badly, he had never felt so small. At the door of the morning-room she dismissed him with a jerk of the hand. "You know your way," said she, and vanished.
"She is more beautiful than ever," was his poignant thought, as he walked away from her, and from all the glorious life that she suggested—to such a dull and common doom.
Mr Pennycuick, at first, was a terrible figure, struggling between his father-fury and his old-gentleman instincts of courtesy to a guest.
"Sir," said he, "I am sorry that I have to speak to you under my own roof; in another place I could better have expressed what I have to say—"
But before he could get to the gist of the matter, Mary intervened.
"Miss Keene has some refreshment for Mr Carey in the dining-room," she said. "And, father, I want, if you please, to have a word with you first." She had recovered self-possession, and wore a rigid, determined air, contrasting with the sailor's bewilderment, which was so great that he found himself driven from the office before he had made up his mind whether he ought to go or stay.
He sat down to his unnecessary meal, and tried to eat, while an embarrassed maiden lady talked platitudes to him. Didn't he find it very dusty in town? Miss Keene, knitting feverishly, was anxious to be informed. And didn't he think the country looked well for the time of year?
He was relieved from this tedium by another summons to the office. Fortified with a glass of good wine, he returned to the encounter, inwardly calling upon his gods to direct him how to meet it. He found poor old Father Pennycuick aged ten years in the hour since he had seen him last. But he still stood in massive dignity, a true son of his old race.
"Well, Mr Carey," said he, "I have had a great many troubles of late, sir, but never one like this. I thought that losing money—the fruits of a lifetime of hard work—was a thing to fret over; and then, again, I've thought that money's no consequence so long as you've got your children alive and well—that THAT was everything. I know better now. I know there's things may happen to a man worse than death—worse than losing everything belonging to him, no matter what it is. When that child was a little thing, she had an illness, and the doctors gave her up. Two nights her mother and I sat up watching her, expecting every breath to be the last, and broken-hearted was no word for what we felt. I cried like a calf, and I prayed—I never prayed like it before or since—and fools we are to ask the Almighty for we don't know what! Now I wish He had taken her. And I've told her so."
"Then you have been very cruel, Mr Pennycuick," Guthrie Carey replied sharply—"and as unjust as cruel. She has done nothing—"
"I know what she's done," the stern parent interposed. "I wouldn't have believed it if anybody else had told me; but I have her own word for it. And if she has been a liar once, I still know when to believe her."
"If you will be so good as to tell me what she has said, then I will make MY statement."
The old man put up his hand.
"Don't perjure yourself," said he, grimly smiling. "It is very kind of you to try to let us down easily, but you can spare your breath. Excuses only make it worse. There's nothing to be said for her, and you'll really oblige me by not going into details. I only sent for you to make such amends as I can—to apologise most humbly—to express my sorrow—my shame—my unspeakable humiliation—that a child of mine—a Pennycuick—a girl I thought was nothing if not maidenly and self-respecting, and the very soul of honour and straightness and proper pride—"
"You speak as if she was not all that now—"
"NOW!—and done a low, contemptible thing like that! Oh, I don't understand it—I can't; it's too monstrous—except that I have her word for it. She says she did it, and so there it is. And, sir, I beg your pardon on behalf of the house that she has disgraced—the house that reared her and thought her so different—"
He gulped, coughed, and gave Guthrie a chance to put in a word.
"Mr Pennycuick, the simple fact is that I made love to your daughter—"
"Made her an offer of marriage?" snarled the other, wheeling round.
"I kissed her—"
Mr Pennycuick snapped his thumb and finger derisively.
"THAT kind of kiss!—as good as asked for."
"It was not as good as asked for. Your daughter is not that kind of woman."
"I thought not, but she says she is."
"Pay no heed to what she says. Her morbid conscientiousness runs away with her. I tell you the plain truth, as man to man, without any hysterics—I kissed her of my own free will—your daughter, sir. And I am here now to stand by my act. If she will forgive my—my tardiness—as you know, I was in no position then to aspire to marriage with a lady of this family; I am not now, but I am better off than I was—will you give your consent to our engagement?"
"No!" roared Mr Pennycuick, looking as if threatened with an apoplectic fit. "I'll see her engaged to the devil first!"
Like Mary, he seemed to take the generous offer as a personal insult. Guthrie Carey, conscious of doing the duty of a gentleman at enormous cost, could not understand why.
Captain Carey, while leaving it to be understood that he held himself engaged to Mary Pennycuick until further orders, realised the welcome fact that in the meantime he was honourably free; and he excused himself from staying to dinner. But scarcely had he driven off in his hired buggy than that of Mr Goldsworthy clattered into the stableyard. It was the good man's habit, when on his parochial visitations, to 'make' Redford at meal times, or at bed-time, whenever distances allowed; he called it, most appropriately, his second home, and walked into the house as if it really belonged to him two or three times a week.
The first person that he encountered on this occasion was Frances, who had waylaid Guthrie Carey on his departure, and whom he had left standing under the back porch, aglow with excitement. She was a picture in her pale blue frock—put on for his eyes—and with her mane of burnished gold falling about her sparkling blush-rose face; but the parson, accustomed to regard her as a child, was unaffected by the sight.
"Surely," he exclaimed, with agitation, "that was young Mr Carey that I passed at the gate just now? He had his hat pulled over his eyes, and did not stop to speak to me; but the figure—" "Was his," said Frances, bursting to be the first to say it. "Very much in the flesh still, isn't he? And oh, to think he's gone like this, just as we'd got him back—SO big and handsome, and such a DEAR brother-in-law as he would have made!"
She stamped her foot. "What do you think, Mr Goldsworthy?—he came for her today, just as he promised, and then she turned round and wouldn't have him! We thought he'd jilted her, and instead of that she's jilted him. Oh, I could smack her! To have such a chance—SHE!—and after all the fuss she made about him—and throw it away! But I think he'll come back before his ship sails—he said he would—and perhaps she'll be less of an idiot by then; she'd better, unless she wants to die an old maid. Oh, if it was ME—!"
Mr Goldsworthy penetrated to the morning-room, where something of the same tale was repeated to him. Yes, Guthrie Carey was alive and well, and had been up to see them. Yes, he had asked for Mary—now that he was a captain—but she had finally decided against marrying a sailor. Wisely, perhaps; at any rate, it was her business; the family did not wish to discuss the matter.
When Mr Goldsworthy found that Mary did not come to dinner, he drew some conclusions for himself. He told himself there was something "fishy" in the affair—something behind, that was purposely kept from him. But he was hungry, and the fragrant soup steamed under his nose and glittered in his spoon—it was so admirably clear. Just now the doings of the Redford cook were of more concern to him than Mary's doings.
But although he enjoyed the meal to which he had looked forward all day, he enjoyed it much less than usual. A more sensitive person in his place must have found it wretched. Deb was a chilling hostess. Her frigid dignity and forced politeness caused discomfort even to him, thereby lowering her status in his eyes, lessening the ardour of his admiration for her. Mr Pennycuick, such a stickler for hospitality, scarcely spoke a word to the guest. Rose was a nobody, but still might have done something in the way of entertainment; and she quite ignored him, looking down as if to hide eyes that had been crying. Frances was eager to engage in conversation, but was bidden roughly by her father to hold her tongue. The stately governess wore only more ostentatiously than usual the detached air that always marked her out of school; and it was left to poor Miss Keene, with her timid platitudes, to keep up an appearance of civility.
Mr Pennycuick vanished abruptly after dinner; it was presently rumoured that he was not well, and had gone to bed. Frances was taken away to prepare lessons. Rose and Deborah came and went. Coffee was served. The parson was again left to Miss Keene, who would not be pumped for confidences, further than to admit that Mary was keeping her room with a headache, in consequence of the agitating visit of Captain Carey, but laboriously talked parish to him, without appearing to know anything of the subject. So the poor man actually became so bored that he changed his mind about staying for the night. He remembered that there was a good moon, and that he had an early engagement next morning, and ordered his buggy soon after nine o'clock. Afterwards he believed that it was the direct voice of the Lord that had called him to take his journey home at that hour.
He drove alone, having a steady (Redford) mare, that stood quietly at gates and doors, and no groom—a luxury almost unknown amongst country parsons, who must all keep horses. The night was beautiful, still, cool and clear, the moon so full that he could see for miles. Because of this, he took his daylight short cuts across country, preferring grass when he could get it to the dusty summer road. And one of his short cuts led along the top of the embankment of the big dam.
He slackened speed at this spot, touched by the beauty of the scene, which could hardly have appealed in vain to any man who had just had a good dinner. How peacefully the still water lay under the shining moon—that moon which is capable of making, not soft young lovers only, but the toughest old stagers sentimental—nay, maudlin—at times; an intoxicant purged of the grossness of spirituous liquors, but acting on the brain in precisely the same way. Mr Goldsworthy, already uplifted by good Redford wine, felt the effect of the lovely night in dim poetic stirrings of his sordid little soul. He mused of God and heaven, and the other things that he made sermons out of, in a disinterested, unprofessional way, these being the lines along which his imagination worked. "Surely the Lord is in this place," was the unspoken thought, elevating and inspiring, with which he surveyed the placid lake and the dreaming hills; and "it is good for me to be here," he felt, even at the cost of a Redford bed and breakfast, and the choice vegetables that the gardener would have put into his buggy in the morning.
But what was this? A boat adrift! From out of the shadow of the white shed on the further shore a black spot moved—one of the boats that should have been locked up, since no one was allowed to use them without Mr Pennycuick's permission. It came into the open moonlight, into the middle of that silver mirror, and he saw that oars propelled it, and saw the figure of the person wielding them. Who had dared to take this liberty with sacred Redford property? he wondered, with the indignation of a co-proprietor; and he assumed a poacher after the fish that Mr Pennycuick had been trying with characteristic perseverance and unsuccess to naturalise in his dam. But looking harder, the clergyman saw the figure rise in the boat, and that it was a woman's. Almost at the same instant he saw that it had disappeared. Seizing whip and reins, he lashed his mare to a gallop along the embankment and down its steep side, where she nearly upset him, and round the lake shore—the buggy rocking like a cradle—to the point nearest to the boat, now visibly adrift and empty. He jumped to the ground, tore off his coat and vest (which had a valuable watch attached), flinging them and his hat, and presently his boots, into the buggy; and with a word of warning to the mare, he plunged into the water to the rescue of some poor fool whom as yet he had not identified.
He returned to shore with Mary Pennycuick in his arms. Spent and panting from his struggle, and awed by the tragical significance of the affair, his heart exulted at his deed. He thanked God that he had been in time—with a fervour proportionate to her rank and consequence—and anticipated the splendid reward awaiting him as the benefactor of the great family, entitled to their full confidence and eternal gratitude. But also he was filled with solicitude for the poor girl.
She was unconscious when he laid her down on the grass, but choked and moaned when he set to work to revive her, and realised that she was back in life and misery after he had succeeded in getting some whisky down her throat—contents of the flask he always carried, as a preventive of chills and remedy for undue fatigues, and from which he had first helped himself. They sat upon the ground side by side, his arm round her waist, her head—feeling only that it was cushioned somewhere—on his shoulder. The night was so warm and windless that their wet clothes were little discomfort to them, but he kept grasping and wringing handfuls with the hand at liberty, while he supported her with the other. The danger of damp "things" was more terrifying to him now than the danger of death had been a few minutes ago.
"There, there," he said soothingly, "you feel better now—don't you? Then I'll just put on my coat, if you don't mind. I'll wrap you up in the buggy rug—and we'll get back to Redford as soon as we can. And in the morning, dear, you'll wake up sorry for this—this madness, and you'll never do it again, will you?"
"Hysteria," he said to himself. "Her head turned by this love affair. He's treated her badly, whatever they may say, and it has unhinged her mind."
This thought disposed him to be gentle with her when she positively refused to be taken back to Redford.
"Leave me here," she implored him. "I cannot go home! I will not go home! My father told me he wished I was dead. Oh, I should have been dead now if you had left me alone, and then they would have been satisfied, and I should have been out of my misery, which is more than I can bear. Oh, Mr Goldsworthy, don't—don't!" "Mad as a hatter, poor thing," he thought, as he desisted from his effort to raise her. "Why, her father thinks the world of her!"
But something had to be done. It was unwise to use force in these cases—nor could he have brought himself to use it—and of course he could not leave her at the dam, or leave her at all, while she was in her present mood, and without other protection; at the same time, it was imperatively necessary that he should get out of his wet clothes—her also. He mentioned this latter fact, and it was touching to see her own careful housewifely instincts assert themselves through all her mental agony.
"Oh, you ARE wet," she mourned, feeling him—it did not matter about herself; "oh, I am so sorry! Do—do go home at once, and take them off, and have something hot before you go to bed."
"I will," he said, "if you will go with me." A moment's reflection showed him that this was the best course—to take her to his own house, and send a message to Mr Pennycuick that she was there, and safe.
The thought of the town frightened her. She dreaded to go anywhere out of the solitude of Nature in which she had tried to hide. But he assured her of privacy and protection, and she was spent and beaten, and she gave in. Like a child, she stood to be wrapped in the rug and lifted into the buggy, and they proceeded on their way to his home, where his old sister kept house for him and mothered his child, with the aid of one servant.
It was nearly midnight when they arrived, and the parsonage was dark. Miss Goldsworthy, not expecting him, was sitting up with a sick parishioner half a mile off; Ruby and the maid were fast asleep. When the latter was heard stirring in her room, her master called a few questions to her, and then bade her go back to bed.
"We don't want her poking round," he whispered to Mary, as (when together they had hurried the mare into her stall) he led the drooping girl to his study—and how grateful she was to him for this consideration! He closed the door behind them, and led her gently to his own arm-chair—she clung to the hand that was so kind to her in her need—bidding her keep the rug about her (so as not to wet the furniture); and he lit a kerosene stove that was one of his private luxuries, always available when the maid-of-all-work was not. He exhorted his charge to comfort herself by the poor blaze while he fetched such odds and ends of clothes as he could gather from his sister's room; and then he told her to change her wet garments for these dry ones while he performed the same operation for himself elsewhere. She obeyed him as meekly as a child, and was sitting huddled in Miss Goldsworthy's faded flannel dressing-gown when he returned, carrying a kettle and a tray.
"Now I will make you a nice hot cup of tea," said he cheerily, planting the kettle on a round hole at the top of the stove and the tray on his writing table. "You put your clothes in the passage? That's right. We'll dry them presently. Oh, yes"—starting to cut bread and butter—"you must have something to eat. You have had no dinner."
He forced her to eat, and to drink the hot tea, and she did feel the better for it. Over her cup she lifted swimming eyes to his face, whispering: "You are good to me!" And he remarked to himself that she was not mad, as he had thought.
When the meal was disposed of, he felt that the time for explanations and for considering how to deal with the extraordinary situation had come.
"Now, my dear," he began, taking on something of the parson air at last, "the first thing to be done is to inform your family of your whereabouts. I must go and find up somebody to take a message to them, to relieve their minds."
She roused from her semi-torpor to plead for a reprieve. Not yet—not yet! Whatever she had to face, let her rest for a little first. They had parted with her for the night; they would not go to her room, she knew—outcast as she now was from the sympathy of them all; they would not miss her before the morning. And, oh, she could not go home! She had disgraced her family—her own father had wished her dead. She was a wicked woman, not fit to live; but, if she must live, let it be anywhere—anywhere—rather than at Redford now!
At this repetition of her strange charge against a doting father, and the mention of disgrace, a distressing suspicion came into the parson's mind. He calculated the length of time between Guthrie Carey's visits; he looked at her searchingly. No, there was no evidence that she had done the special wrong. But that there was wrong of some sort somewhere was evident enough.
"I know your father's affection for you," he said seriously, "and I cannot believe that he would express himself as you say he did."
"I deserved it," she said. "I don't blame him—nobody could."
"There must indeed have been some grave reason—"
"There was—there was!"
"What was it?"
"Oh, don't ask me!" she wailed, covering her face. But, crossing over to her side, he took one of the shielding hands, and holding it tenderly, assured her that she must tell him. He was her pastor—he was her best friend; just now he was her champion, prepared to fight her battle, whatever it was. And to do this successfully it was necessary that he should know all. In the end she told him—not all, but the main facts. He thought it the silliest case of making a mountain of a molehill that he had ever heard of. He was convinced there was more in the background, to account for the violent emotions aroused—to account for a good girl leaving a good home in the middle of the night to drown herself. In his conjectures he made Guthrie Carey the villain of the piece—the young man who, after creating all the disturbance, had significantly cleared out. Sailors were an immoral lot—a sweetheart in every port, as the world knew. And this fellow—why, you had only to look at his big, brawny build (Mr Goldsworthy was a small man) to see that he had a brutal nature.
At any rate, the parson was satisfied that the heroine of the story remained a "pure" girl—foolish, but womanly, and very, very unfortunate. As she sat weeping by his side, dependent solely upon his protection, he stroked her hand and looked at it—so shapely and high-bred, the hand of a Pennycuick of the great house—a hand that would be full of gold some day; and his thoughts were busy.
The beautiful Deborah was gone, and could never have been for him; he had been an idiot to think it. She had no bent towards religion, was ruinously dressy and extravagant, unhousewifely as a woman could be; but Miss Pennycuick, great lady as she was, could cook and sew, was a master hand with servants and with children, and had never failed of interest in the church—nor in him. They had always been the best of friends, he and she; did it not seem that Providence had decreed they should be more? Why had he been sent to the dam in the nick of time, when he had intended to stay at Redford until morning? Why was she sitting here now, alone with him in his study, cut off from everybody else in the world? The hand of the Lord was in it. Looks were of small account when one considered her rank and the fortune she would inherit; but, of course, he did not admit to himself that he considered any one of these three things; nor that she was of age and her own mistress, although she had just forced the fact upon him when, promising him to make no further attempt upon her life, she announced an intention to find a situation somewhere in which she would be able to support herself apart from her family, and away from all who knew her. No, what he considered was the will of God and the dictates of his conscience. She had been given into his hands; he was bound to take care of her, and there was but one way to do it. It would be wrong and cruel to force her back to Redford. It was preposterous to think of making a governess or companion of her, a daughter of the proud Pennycuicks. She could not remain in his house as she was, without scandal, although he was a clergyman, with a sister housekeeper. Here they were now—past midnight, and practically without a soul in the house—and he so young still, and, if he might presume to say it, so attractive!
He put the case to her guardedly, gradually, plainly at last, and argued it for a full hour, while she drooped and wept, gazing at the smelly stove and shaking her head wearily. By the time dawn came, and she was quite worn out, he had won her consent to be his wife, which meant for her a footing somewhere, and at the same time a means to commit suicide without violating the law.
Miss Goldsworthy, who was but his humble slave, came home, put the forlorn girl to bed, and made a wedding breakfast for her while she was there; Mr Goldsworthy took the opportunity to fill up marriage papers in his study. Ruby was sent to school, as usual. Before her return therefrom, Mary Pennycuick had been led to the altar of the adjacent church, the white frock in which she had tried to drown herself dried and ironed to make her bridal robe. A neighbouring clergyman and crony of the bridegroom's performed the ceremony. Old Miss Goldsworthy, the chief witness, deposed, bewildered, wept bitterly. The bride was unmoved—until little Ruby, returning during the course of the ghastly wedding breakfast, was brought up, giggling and staring, to "kiss her new mamma", when the new mamma snatched the child to her breast, and went off into wild hysterics.
"There, there," said the new husband, pleased with the maternal gesture, but alarmed by her excitement, "you are overwrought. You have had no sleep. You must come and rest, my dear. Come and lie down. You can have Ruby with you, if you like—while I go and settle things at Redford. No, I won't be long; I'll just see your father, and be back by tea-time. Have the drawing-room opened, Charlotte"—it never was opened except for visitors—"and we will sit there this evening. And meanwhile, make her some tea or something, and see that she has all she wants. Come, my love—"
He led her to the door of a room, and she shrank back from it with a shriek.
"Well, well," he soothed her; "the spare room, if you like—"
"Oh, promise me—promise me—!"
"Yes, yes; just as you wish, darling. I would not hurry you."
She turned to Miss Goldsworthy and clung to her. "Save me! save me!" was what the desperate clutch meant, but what the paralysed tongue could not articulate.
She was in a high fever and delirious on her wedding night, and a week later at death's door. When she came out of her illness, reconciled to her family, meekly obedient to her husband, she was a wreck of herself—a prisoner for life, bound hand and foot, more pitiable than she would have been as a dead body fished out of the dam.
The tragic disproportion between crimes and punishments in this world!
Mrs Goldsworthy was reconciled to her relations through her illness—the greatest peacemaker in families, save death; and for her sake they made a show of tolerating her husband, after they had given him some bad hours behind her back. But the whole affair was like a blight on Redford, which was never the same place again. Mr Pennycuick had a slight "stroke" on hearing all the bad news at once. It was light enough to be passed over and hushed up, but his vigour and faculties declined from that hour with a rapidity that could be marked from day to day. "A changed man," observed his neighbours, one to another. At the same time, they hinted that other things were not as they used to be—that the old man had had losses—that Redford was heavily burdened—that the proud Pennycuicks, already humbled, were likely to experience a further fall. Certainly, the governess was dispensed with, and the dashing four-in-hand withdrawn from the local racecourses and agricultural show-grounds, of which it had long been the constant and conspicuous ornament, to be sold at public auction, without reason given. The great, hospitable house got a character for dullness for the first time in its history. No lights or laughter flowed from the windows of the big drawing-room of an evening; the lawns lay dark and still, while downstairs a rubber of whist or a hand at cribbage with Jim Urquhart or Mr Thornycroft represented what was left of the gaieties of the past. These men—these old fogies, as fretful Frances styled them both—were not of those who shunned Redford because it had grown dull; on the contrary, they now—according to Frances again—virtually lived there. And it was the absent pleasure-seekers, her true kindred, for whom her soul longed.
He who most openly resented the change, having (next to Mary) been most instrumental in causing it, was Deborah's lover, Claud Dalzell.
He had been none too gracious a lover—although graceful enough, when all was well—seeing that he had continued his bachelor life, with all its social obligations, after as before his engagement, and had allowed this to run to nearly two years, without coming to any effective understanding about the wedding-day; but when, in the thick of her troubles, he descended upon Redford merely to denounce the Goldsworthy marriage as a personal affront, and, as it were, to tax her with it, then her loving indulgence did not suffice to excuse him.
As usual, he went to his room first, to wash and change. He hated to pass the door of a sitting-room with the dust of travel on him; he could not shake hands with equanimity until he had restored his person and toilet to their normal perfection, which meant more or less the restoring of his nerves and temper to repose. So he appeared on this occasion, fresh and finished to the last degree, the finest gentleman in the world—the very light of Deb's eyes, and the satisfaction of her own fastidious taste—walking in to her where she awaited him, in the morning-room, herself 'groomed' to match, with as much care as she had taken when she had no more serious matter to think of than how to dress to please him.
He met her, apparently, as usual. She, turning to him as to a rock in a weary land, flung herself into his arms with more than her usual self-abandonment.
"Oh, darling!" she breathed, in that delicious voice of hers, "it is good to see you. I have wanted you so badly."
"I am sorry I did not come before," he replied, kissing her gravely. "Somebody has been wanted to deal with that extraordinary girl."
"Ah, poor girl! Do you know she is very ill with brain fever? Keziah has gone to nurse her. It must have been that coming on. She was out of her mind."
"I should think so—and everybody else too, apparently. What were you all about, Debbie, not to see this Goldsworthy affair going on under your noses?"
"It hasn't been going on. It has been Guthrie Carey—until now."
"I am told"—it was Frances who had told him in the passage just now—"that she refused Carey only the day before."
"She did."
"In order to make a runaway match with this parson fellow. The facts speak for themselves."
"Ah!" sighed Deb, turning to the tea-table, "I expect we don't know all the facts."
She meant that he did not know them. He only knew what Frances knew, and providentially they had been able to keep the episode of the dam out of the published story. That was the secret of Mary herself, her husband, her father, and this one sister; and they kept it close, even from Claud Dalzell. "I will tell him some day when we are married," Deb had promised herself; but as things fell out, she never did tell him. And it was on account of her brother-in-law's part in the suppressed event that she now forbore to call him behind his back what she had not hesitated to call him before his face—that is, failed to show that she fully shared her lover's indignation at the MESALLIANCE, and the scandalous way that it had been brought about.
"But, good heavens!"—Claud took his cup perfunctorily from her hand, and at once set it down—"are more facts necessary? She has made a clandestine marriage with a man whose bishop will turn him out of the church, I hope. They were right, I suppose, in concluding that no one here would consent to it; and what conceivable circumstances could excuse such an act?"
"Illness," said Deb. "Madness."
"Nonsense! There's too much method in it. It is obviously but the climax of a long intrigue—a course of duplicity that I could never have believed possible in a girl like Mary, although I have always thought HIM cad enough for anything."
"Have your tea," said Deb, a trifle off-hand; "it will be cold."
And she sat down with her own cup, and began to sip it with a leisurely air.
"A clandestine marriage," remarked Claud, ignoring her advice, "logically implies a clandestine engagement. Carey was but a red herring across the trail. And you ought to have known it, Deb."
"Well, I didn't," said she shortly.
He took a turn up and down the room, trying to preserve his wonted well-bred calm. But he was intensely irritated by her attitude.
"I cannot understand you," he complained, with a hard edge to his voice. "I should have thought that you—YOU of all people—would have been wild—as wild as I am."
She exasperated him with a little laugh and a truly cutting sarcasm. "It is bad form to SHOW that you are wild, you know, even if you feel so."
"I am just wondering whether you feel so. You are not used to hiding your feelings—at any rate, from me. I expected to find you out of your mind almost."
"What's the use? If I raved till doomsday I couldn't alter anything. The mischief is done. It is no use crying over spilt milk, my dear."
"You look as if you did not want to cry." "Do I?"
"As if it did not much matter to you whether it was spilt or not." "It doesn't matter to me, compared with what it matters to her." "Well, it matters to ME," Claud Dalzell announced, in a high tone, the crust of his fine manners giving to the pressure of the volcano within. "I can't stand the connection, if you can. Carey was bad enough, but he had some claim beside his coat to rank as a gentleman. This crawling ass, who would lick your boots for sixpence, to have him patting me on the back and calling himself my brother—Good God! it's too sickening."
"Not YOUR brother," Deb gently corrected him.
"He is mine if he is yours." "Oh, not necessarily!"
"Deb," said Claud, with an air of desperation, planting himself before her, "what are you going to do?"
She looked up at him with narrowing eyes and stiffening lips.
"What IS there to do?" she returned. "Are you going to put up with this—this outrage—to condone everything—to tolerate that fellow at Redford, taking the position of a son of the house, or are you going to show them both that they have forfeited their right ever to set foot upon the place again?"
"My sister too, you mean?"
"Certainly—if you can still bring yourself to call her your sister. She belongs to him now, not to us. She has voluntarily cut herself off from her world. Let her go. Deb, if you love me—"
He paused, and Deb smiled into his handsome but disgusted face.
"Ah, is that to be a test of love?" she asked. "I understand. I am to choose between you. Well"—she rose, towering, drawing the big diamond from her engagement finger—"I am going to her now. I ought to have been there hours ago, but waited back to receive you. Good-bye! And pray, don't come again to this contaminated house. We have too horribly gone down in the world. I know it, and I would not have you compromised on any account. We Pennycuicks, we don't abandon our belongings, especially when they may be dying; we sink or swim together." She held the jewel out to him.
"What rot!" he blurted vulgarly, flushing with anger that was not unmixed with shame. "Why will you wilfully misunderstand me? Put it on, Deb—put it on, and don't be so childish."
"I will not put it on," said she, "until you apologise for the things you have been saying to me, and the manner of your saying them."
"My dear child, I do apologise humbly, if I have said what I shouldn't. Perhaps I have; but I thought we were past the need for reserves and for weighing words, you and I. And really, Debbie, you know—"
"Hush!" She stopped him from further arguing; but she did not stop him from taking her hand and cramming the diamond back into its old place. "I must go. Father cannot—he is ill himself; and Miss Keene is too frightfully modest to nurse him alone, so that I must send Keziah back, and stay—"
"Can't Miss Keene go and send her back, and stay?"
"Oh, she would be no use in such an illness as Mary's. And I must see for myself how things are—whether they are taking proper care of the poor, unfortunate child—"
"Is she so very ill? I did not know that."
There was commiseration in his tone, but in his heart he hoped that the deservedly sick woman would crown her escapades by dying as quickly as possible. Then, perhaps, he could forgive her.
Deb gave him sundry confidences. On his appearing to take them in a proper spirit, she gave him some more tea. And so they lapsed into their normal relations. When she again urged the need for her to be getting off on her errand of mercy, he magnanimously offered to drive her. She accepted with a full heart, and her arms about his neck. While she was getting ready, he repacked his portmanteau, and ordered it to be put into the buggy.
"It's no use my going back," he said to her, when they were on the road, "with you away, and your father too ill to see me. I'll put up at the hotel tonight, and go on to town in the morning. You can send for me there whenever you want me, you know."
"Just as you like, dear," said Deb quietly; and for the rest of their journey they talked commonplaces.
When they reached the parsonage gate, from which the maid-of-all-work and a group of street gossips scattered in panic at their approach, the lovers shook hands perfunctorily.
"Goodbye, then, for a little while," said Claud. "You don't want me to come in, do you?"
"Certainly not," said she coldly.
"You know that it is totally against my judgment—and my wishes—that you go in yourself, Deb?"
"Yes. But one's own judgment must be one's guide."
Thus they parted, each with a grievance against the other—a root of bitterness to be nourished by much thinking about it, and by the circumstance that poor Mary neither died nor was repudiated. Claud drove on to the hotel, to be further disgusted with his accommodation and his dinner; Deb walked into the house which hitherto she had visited in a spirit of kindly condescension, to be revolted by the new aspect which her changed relations with it now gave to its every feature. Ruby, neglected, with a jam-smeared face—the flustered maid, tousled, grubby, her frock gaping—the horrible hall, with its imitation-marble paper and staring linoleum—the prim, trivial, unaired, unused drawing-room, with its pathetic attempts at elegance—Deb inwardly curled up at the sight of these things as things now belonging to the family. When the master of the house came hurrying in to her, rusty, unshaven, abject, she would have changed places with a Christian of old Rome facing a lion of the amphitheatre.
"Oh, this is good of you! This is kind indeed!" Mr Goldsworthy greeted her, and threatened in his grateful emotion to fall at her feet. "I did not dare to hope—"
But Deb shudderingly swept him aside, with his gratitude and his excuses and his timid justifications. He could stand up before his other critics—he had a clear conscience, he said; but before her he knew himself for what he was. He followed her like a dog to Mary's room, obeyed her directions like a slave, wept when she consented to "say no more", and stooped to beg from him a solemn vow and promise that he would be good to his wife. This was after the doctors had refused to permit his wife's removal to Redford to be nursed, and after Redford had practically been in command of his establishment for seven weeks.
Christmas is the time for reconciliations, and by Christmas Mary was convalescent—pale as she had never been since childhood, and wearing a little cap over her shaved head; very humble and gentle, and strangely docile in her attitude towards her captor, who now gave himself all the airs of a husband of his class. He was the benevolent despot of his women-kind—the god of the machine; she was as properly submissive as if born in the ranks. Negatively so, that is to say; positively, her manifestations of duty to him took the form of services and endearments bestowed upon his child and sister. Her first occupation after she could use her hands was to improve Ruby's wardrobe—the little girl, now her own, appealed to her motherly heart, a saving interest in her wrecked life. The poor old ex-housekeeper was the other prop to which she clung for a footing in the new and alien world which was now all her home. When Miss Goldsworthy proposed to go out into a situation, not to "be in the way of" the new wife, and when her brother would have approved the plan as only right and proper (and as facilitating his schemes for the raising of the "tone" of his establishment to Redford level), Mary protested vehemently and with tears, the only occasion of her showing a Pennycuick spirit since renouncing the Pennycuick name. The old maid, for her part, was enthusiastically devoted to the new sister-in-law, whom it was her joy to pet and coddle. "I can be of use to her," she tremblingly commended herself to her brother. "I can take the drudgery of the housework off her, and save her in the parish." "Well, perhaps so," said Mr Goldsworthy. And, sincerely desiring to endear himself to his aristocratic wife, he consented to her wish.
The whole Goldsworthy family was transferred to Redford, while, on the pretext of disinfecting it, the parsonage was painted and papered what Deb called "decently", and its more offensive furniture replaced. Mary was provided with a trousseau and many useful wedding presents, a cheque from her father for 500 pounds amongst them. They did not forgive her, but they pretended excellently that they did. Without any pretence at all, they tried to make the best of a bad job. To this end, they gathered their friends together as usual at Christmas. Mr Thornycroft and the Urquharts needed no pressing; they came to see Mary the day she returned home, and showed her the old affection without asking questions. Mr Thornycroft's wedding presents to her were magnificent—a complete service of silver plate and house linen of the finest. Deb wrote to Claud: "I suppose we shall see you, as usual?"—for he had always spent Christmas at Redford unless away on the other side of the world. He wrote back: "I think not, this time." He was the only defaulter.
"He will never have a chance to refuse again," said Deb fiercely, as she tore up his note.
His absence was too marked not to provoke frequent comment, and whenever it was alluded to in her hearing, her spine stiffened and her head went up. It was quite evident to her family that the rift in the lute was serious, and strange to say, it was her father, who might have been expected to hail the signs, who was most concerned to see them. He expostulated with her when she spoke bitterly of Billy's son, as once he had been so ready to do himself.
"Well, my dear," said he, "I can understand it, if you can't. I wouldn't come myself, if I was in his place, to mix-up with the sort of thing we've got to mix up with."
"If I can mix up with it—!" quoth proud Deborah.
"Yes, yes—I know; but you must consider the silly way that he's been reared. I don't like his taking upon himself to criticise what we choose to do; but no doubt Goldsworthy IS a pretty big pill to swallow—to a chap like him, always so faddy about breeding and manners, and that sort of thing."
"If he is too faddy for the society that I can put up with, though it be that of chimney-sweeps," said Deb, "he is too faddy for me, father."
"Now, my dear, don't talk so," the old man pleaded with her, quite agitated by her mood. "We all have our little weaknesses—we have to make allowances for temperament and for bringing up. Don't let a trifle like this estrange you two—don't, Debbie, for my sake. Let me go down to my grave feeling that one of you, at least, is safe and happy, and well provided for."
"Decidedly," thought Deborah, "father is not the same man that he was before his illness."
She understood the cause of his change of views on her engagement better a few weeks later.
He had parted with his eldest daughter then, and the emotion of the event had fatally affected him. Owing to some obscure working of the "influence" which her social position had brought to her husband, the latter had been promoted to the charge of a Melbourne parish. The affair was arranged while they were still at Redford, and just on the completion of the improvements to the local parsonage. In spite of all they had done to make this first home fit for her, family and friends were unanimous in hailing her removal to another and more distant one—out of the buzz of the gossip of her native neighbourhood—as the best thing that could have happened. But when it came to the point of sending her forth to battle with her fate alone for the rest of her life, the wrench was dreadful. She was the bravest of them all under the ordeal. The shattered father, whose right hand she had been for so many happy years, and whose heart was broken with the weight of his responsibility for her misfortunes, was completely overwhelmed. She had not been gone twelve hours when Deb found him in his office chair, unable to rise from it, or to answer her questions. And he never spoke again. He made signs that he wanted Claud sent for, and when the young man quickly came, looked significant things at him and Deb, as they stood by his bedside hand in hand. Then he lapsed into stupor and died, without waiting for a third stroke.
Through all the shock and sorrow of the time, Claud was Deborah's mainstay and consolation. He took the role of nearest male relative, the right to which was undisputed by Mr Goldsworthy, preoccupied with the important interests of his new parish; also by Mr Thornycroft and Jim Urquhart, who, of course, "stood by" to serve her as far as she would allow them. It was Claud who gave the orders for the funeral, and superintended the ceremonies, and acted as chief mourner; it was Claud to whom the household looked for direction, as if acknowledging him to be the new master; it was on Claud's breast that Deb wept—who so rarely wept—and his word that she obeyed, as if he were already her husband; and in all that he did for her, and in all that he did not do, he showed the grace, the tact, the tenderness, the thoughtfulness of her ideal lover and gentleman.
But there came a day when he fell again below the indispensable standard—when the rift in the lute, that had seemed closed, gaped suddenly, and this time beyond repair. It was when, after close investigation of the deceased man's affairs, and some heated interviews with one of the executors (Deb being the other), Claud discovered that the Pennycuick wealth was non-existent—that Redford was mortgaged to the hilt, and that if the estate was realised and cleared, as Deb desired it should be, nothing would be left for her and her sisters—that is to say, a paltry three or four hundred a year amongst them, less than Deb could spend comfortably on her clothes alone.
He was too upset by the discovery, and a bad quarter of an hour that Mr Thornycroft had subsequently given him, to preserve that calm demeanour which was his study and his pride. He came in to Deb where she sat alone, and expressed his feelings as the ordinary man is wont to do to the woman who loves and belongs to him.
"What could your father have been dreaming of," he rudely interrogated her, "to let the place go to pieces like this? Drifting behind year after year, and doing nothing to stop it—not cutting down one of the living expenses—not giving us the least hint of how things really were—"
"He gave several hints," said Deb, in that voice which always grew so portentously quiet when his was raised, "if we had had the sense to take them. I have been putting two and two together for some time, so that I am not altogether taken by surprise."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you were not here, for one thing. Because it was father's private business, for another."
"He seems not to have made it his business to take any care of his children's interests," said Claud bitterly. "Bringing you up as he has done, with the right to expect that you were to be properly provided for, and then leaving you literally paupers—"
"Not LITERALLY paupers," corrected Deb gently. "We shall be quite independent still. And if you want to insult my father now that he is dead—the best of fathers, if he did have misfortunes in business and make mistakes—do it somewhere else, not in this room." "You have no right to take that tone with me, Deb." "No?" She raised sarcastic eyebrows, under which her deep eyes gleamed. "Well, I suppose I haven't—now. I forgot my new place. I am very sorry, Claud"—rising, and making a gesture with her hands that he had seen before—"very sorry indeed, that I did not know I was going to be a poor woman and a nobody when you did me the honour to select me to be your wife. Now that you have shown me that I am disqualified for the position—" she held out the big diamond, with a cold smile. "That's vulgar, Deb," he loftily admonished her, fending off her hand. "You know I am not actuated by those low motives. DON'T let us have this cheap melodrama, for pity's sake! Put it on."
But no more would she put it on. He had revealed his disappointment that she was not something more than herself—that beautiful and adorable self that she quite knew the worth of—and he had permitted himself to take liberties of speech with her that she instinctively felt to be provoked by the circumstance that she was no longer rich and powerful.
Deb's love was great, but her pride was greater.