”‘In to-day already walks to-morrow,’” said Mary, laughing. “My ‘spirit’ is ‘striding on before the event,’ anyway, and the best thing I can do is to let you go to sleep. Kiss me again, Lilias; it’s to-morrow already, you know.”
“I wish Lilias hadn’t said that about this time tomorrow,” she thought to herself. “I wish she were not so confident, and yet how can she be less so if she trusts him? How could I bear to see her trust broken?”
Chapter Eleven
A Cul-de-Sac
”… It became a proverb, when what ought to be your election was forced upon you, to say, ‘Hobson’s choice.’”
Spectator, Number 509.
There was silence in the Romary carriage too as it made its way home, with considerably more speed than the Withenden fly, after the ball. It had been arranged that Mr Cheviott and his sister were not to return to Cleavelands that evening, but to drive straight back to Romary, and it had been arranged, too, that Captain Beverley should accompany them. Arthur would not, on the whole, have been sorry to upset this plan, but there was no help for it. As to how much, or how little of his conduct in the ball-room, had been observed by his cousins, he was in ignorance, and he fancied that he did not care. He told himself that he had acted with deliberate intention, that it was best to bring matters to a crisis, and have done at all costs with the restraint which of late he had found so unendurable; but in so speaking to himself he was not stating the real facts of the case. From first to last his behaviour to Lilias Western had been the result of no reflection or consideration; he had never fairly looked his position in the face, and made up his mind as to what he was justified in doing, or how far he had a right to go; he had simply yielded to the charm of her society, and thrown care to the winds, trusting, like a child, that somehow or other things would come right – something would “turn up.”
And it was the secret consciousness of the defencelessness of such conduct that made him uneasy in Mr Cheviott’s presence, and made him dread the explanation which he now fully realised must shortly take place between them.
Alys’s mood, as respects the Western sisters, was, as has been seen, verging on the defiant. Yet a quick sensitiveness to the unexpressed state of feelings of her two companions warned her that, at present, any allusion to the subject was best avoided.
“I will stand by Arthur if he is in earnest,” she said to herself, resolutely, “and were Laurence twenty times over my elder brother I would not support him in any narrow-minded piece of class prejudice, or interference with Arthur’s right to please himself. But if I am to do any good I must first be sure that Arthur is in earnest, and, till then, I had better take care how I irritate Laurence by meddling.”
So Alys cogitated, lying back in her corner of the carriage, and saying nothing.
Suddenly Mr Cheviott’s voice roused her; to her surprise he spoke very cheerfully.
“Well, Alys, are you very tired? I think it was a mistake of the Cleaves to have that carpet dance last night. It prevented our feeling as fresh as might have been the case to-night.”
“Yes,” said Alys, “I think it was. But I did not feel tired, except just at first, and then I was all right again.”
“Carpet dances are always a mistake,” observed Captain Beverley, rousing himself with some effort to join in the conversation. “People talk rubbish about their being more ‘enjoyable’ – what an odious word ‘enjoyable’ is! – than any others, but it’s all nonsense. They take more out of one than twenty balls.”
“I don’t think last night could have taken much out of you, Arthur. You danced so little – not half as much as to-night,” said Alys, thoughtlessly.
“No,” said Mr Cheviott, markedly, “not a quarter as much, I should say.”
Arthur said nothing, and Alys, feeling rather guilty, tried to lead the conversation into safer channels. In this she might not have succeeded had not her brother done his best to help her. But Arthur remained silent, and all three were glad when at last the long drive was over and the carriage turned in at the Romary gates.
“Good-night, Alys,” said Mr Cheviott at once, and Alys obediently kissed him and said good-night.
“Good-night, Arthur,” she said, lingeringly. She felt so sorry for Arthur somehow; she would so have liked to have seen him by himself for a few minutes.
“Good-night, dear,” he replied, but without any of his usual sunny brightness. And Alys felt sure she heard him sigh, as, in accordance with Mr Cheviott’s suggestion that they might as well have a cigar before going to bed, he followed his cousin into the library.
“Laurence is going to give him a ‘talking to,’ as the boys say,” thought Alys, as she went slowly up-stairs. “And what has he done to deserve it, and why should he submit to it? Unless, indeed, he is not in earnest, and only amusing himself, and that Laurence knows it – but I’m sure it is not that. I cannot understand Arthur. I never before thought him wanting in spirit.”
But the more she reflected, the more puzzled she grew, so Alys, not being deficient in common sense, decided that she could do no good by sitting up and tiring herself. She undressed and went to bed, and to sleep; but, though not a principal in the drama which was being enacted in her sight, her dreams that night were scarcely less disturbed and troubled than those of another even more intensely interested spectator, eight or nine miles off. On the whole, Lilias’s sleep that night was far more peaceful than that of her sister Mary, or of Alys Cheviott.
For Lilias’s heart was full of faith and hope, and to such dreamers there come no uneasy visions.
Mr Cheviott led the way through the library into his own private sitting-room beyond. The fire had been carefully attended to, and was blazing brightly; the room looked a picture of comfort. Many and many a time Arthur would have liked nothing better than an hour’s tête-à-tête over their pipes with his cousin – the cousin who, to him, represented father and brother in one – to whom he owed all that he had ever known of “home” and its saving associations, “all the good that was in him,” as he himself had often expressed it, for Laurence’s care and affection for the boy had been great, and he had exerted them wisely. He had won Arthur’s confidence and respect; he had never so acted as to cause him to fret and chafe under what, in less judicious hands, he might have been made to feel an unnatural authority.
And not a small part of Captain Beverley’s present discomfort arose from the consciousness of having deeply disappointed his cousin. He told himself he had done no wrong, but he knew he had, thoughtlessly and impulsively, done that, or been on the point of doing that, which would greatly add to the difficulties and perplexities of a life much of which had been devoted to his welfare.
And acknowledging even thus much, where was the gratitude he had so often expressed?
He made no effort to conceal his gloom. He sat down on the first chair that came in his way, he muttered something about his pipe being up-stairs, “not unpacked,” and declined the cigar which his cousin hospitably offered him in its stead. Mr Cheviott quietly, filled and lighted his own pipe, drew his chair to the fire, with even more deliberation than usual, for his cousin’s demeanour somewhat disconcerted him.
He would have found it easier to go on with what he had to do, had Arthur continued indifferent or even defiant. But it is hard to strike a man that is down; it is extremely difficult to “lecture” or remonstrate with a man who is evidently more disgusted with himself than you can possibly be with him. For Laurence knew that Arthur was genuinely distressed and suffering; he knew his cousin to be as incapable of sulky or resentful temper as of dissimulation or intentional treachery.
“Arthur,” he said, at last, after smoking for a minute or two in silence, “I wish you wouldn’t look so unlike yourself; it makes it harder for me. You must have known that this sort of thing couldn’t go on – that you were running willfully into an entanglement which, sooner or later, must necessitate an explanation with me. You have no right to punish me for your own acts by looking as you are doing. Now the time has come to have it out with me, there is only one thing to do – face it.”
“I am perfectly ready to face it,” said Arthur, coldly, but with a decided and sudden increase of colour in his cheeks, and sitting up erectly on his chair.
“So much the better,” said Laurence, dryly, adding to himself, “I am glad I have roused him; we shall understand each other now. – I was going,” he continued, aloud – “I was going to have prefaced what I have to say by asking you whether you are losing your senses or your honour and high principle, for except by supposing one or the other I cannot, considering all, explain the way you have been going on. I was going to say so, I say, but I don’t now think I need, for I see you think as badly of yourself as I could do.”
“I do nothing of the kind,” replied Arthur, firing up. “I don’t ask you to tell me how badly you think of me – you could hardly infer worse than you have already expressed – but I altogether deny that I am either mad or bad, to put it shortly. And, what’s more, I have done nothing to justify you, or any one, in speaking of me as you have done.”
“You can’t mention ‘me’ and ‘any one’ together,” said Mr Cheviott, coolly. “I am the only person living, except a lawyer or two, who understands your position, therefore I am the only person who can judge whether you are doing right or wrong in making love to a girl without letting her perfectly comprehend what you have to offer her.”
“And how do you know that I have not put it all before her?” exclaimed Arthur, fiercely still.
“Because you could not do so without breaking your word,” said Mr Cheviott, “and because, too, no girl who understood your position would encourage your suit. If she were a high-principled, unselfish girl, she would not allow you to ruin yourself for her sake, and if she were a calculating, selfish girl, she would have no wish to share your ruin.”
“Yes,” said Arthur, bitterly, “you put it very neatly. I am regularly caught in a net, I know. Whichever way I turn, it is equally ruinous.”
“Then what on earth did you run your head into the net for?” said Mr Cheviott, impatiently. “You had your eyes open, you knew what you were about.”
“I did not,” said Arthur, “I never, till now, realised how unnatural and unbearable my position was. But you misunderstand me – I mean that my father’s absurd will entangles me hopelessly – I was not alluding to my – my acquaintance with Miss Western – that is to be blamed for nothing but causing me to realise the truth.”
“Well, then, I wish you had not realised the truth,” said Mr Cheviott. “I think, Arthur, you forget strangely that in all this you are not the only sufferer. Do you think my position is a pleasant one?”
“No,” said Captain Beverley, “I don’t, but I think you exaggerate matters. In any case, there is no question of my ruining myself, or any one else.”
“How do you make that out? For by ‘any case’ I suppose you mean in the case of your proposing to Miss Western and her accepting you (you may have done so already, for all I know), and your marriage following. I don’t think ruin is much too strong a word to use for what this would bring upon you.”
“You forget Hathercourt,” said Captain Beverley, with some hesitation.
“Hathercourt,” repeated Mr Cheviott, looking puzzled, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The Edge. Hathercourt Edge – my farm, I mean,” explained Arthur, still with a sort of hesitation in his manner.
Mr Cheviott turned upon him with more asperity than he had yet shown.
“Really, Arthur, you are too foolish,” he exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that you could live at the Edge on about fifty pounds a year – certainly not more – for the interest of the money that was raised to pay your debts three years ago would fully take the rest of the two or three hundred a year that is the most you could make out of the farm, even if you managed it far better than you are likely to do. And I have no power to clear you from these debts out of what should be, what surely will be, your own before very long?” He looked at Arthur anxiously as he spoke.
“If it’s ever becoming mine depends upon the marriage that my father set his heart on taking place, it never will be mine – ”
“But – ” began Mr Cheviott.
“Yes, yes, I know what you are going to say. I may change, you think, as I have changed before, but I never shall, Laurence. I never was really in earnest before – my flirtations, even you must allow, were very harmless; this is very different, and I cannot give it up. And – and even if I have to go away for two years – till Alys is of age – and take my chance of her remembering me, I could not owe my inheritance to a legal quibble – I could not go through the farce of asking Alys to marry me, even though sure of her refusal, when I was heart and soul devoted to another. And even if she – Miss Western – were married to some other fellow by that time, it would be no better. I could not marry any one else; and even if I could, as far as my feelings went, I could not, in honour, refrain from telling Alys all, and – ” he stopped to take breath.
“Well, what then?” said Mr Cheviott.
“Could I insult Alys by asking her to accept me without my caring for her as she should be cared for? As I now know, I never could care for her, for she is just like the dearest of sisters to me, but only that.”
Mr Cheviott smiled.
“Why in the world did you not see all this two years ago, when you persuaded me into agreeing to your selling out and setting you straight again? Do you not remember how confident you were about never wanting to marry any one else?”
“Any one at all, you should say. I never realised the marrying Alys. I was sure she would not wish it, and that seemed to make it all safe; but I never, in the faintest degree, imagined my caring for any one in this way – a way which makes it simply impossible to think of ever marrying any one else.”
“You think so just now,” observed Mr Cheviott, cynically, “but – ”
“No, it is no passing feeling – you misjudge me altogether, Laurence; you seem quite unable to understand me, and therefore there’s no more to be said.”
“I don’t see that – even supposing I am incapable of understanding your present frame of mind – though being in love, you must allow, is not such a very uncommon condition as you seem to think it; taking for granted, however, that I cannot understand you, still the practical side of the question has to be considered, and you have no one to consult but me. In two words, what do you mean to do?”
Arthur turned his face away for a moment; then he set his elbows on his knees and leaned his head on his hands, staring gloomily into the fire.
At last, “Laurence,” he broke out, “I don’t know what to do. There, now you have it all; you may despise and sneer at me as you like, I can’t help it. I deserve it, and yet I don’t deserve it, but that’s the long and the short of it. I do not, in the very least, know what to do, or what is right to do.”
To his surprise, Mr Cheviott suddenly leaned forward, took his pipe out of his mouth, and held out his hand. Half mechanically Arthur took it, and Laurence grasped his cousin’s hand warmly.
“We shall understand each other now,” he said, heartily. “When it comes to wishing to do right now, whatever mistakes you have made before, we come upon firm ground. Shall I tell you, Arthur, what seems to me the only thing for you to do?”
“What?” said Arthur, listlessly.
“Go away – quite away, for two years at least, if not more.”
“But not without explaining the reason to – to the Westerns?” said Captain Beverley, looking up quickly.
“Explaining!” repeated Mr Cheviott, with a shade of contempt in his tone, “what in this world could you explain? Think of the position you would put the girl in by letting her understand the real state of the case! What could she say or do? Her promising to wait for you would be ruin to you, and her throwing you over, should you distinctly propose to her, would seem to her – if she be what you believe her – shameful. I suppose you have not done anything definite? You are not engaged to her?”
“No,” said Arthur, reluctantly. “She couldn’t exactly bring me up for breach of promise, if that’s what you think her capable of,” he went on, with a half-bitter laugh; “but I consider myself more bound to her than if we were engaged. Then I should have given her a right to assert herself, then she could insist on my explaining myself. My going away, as you propose, Laurence, seems to me the meanest, most dishonourable attempt at sneaking out of the whole affair – and, good Heavens, what will they think of me?”
“Hardly so badly as they will think of me,” thought Mr Cheviott, while a vision of the pale indignation of Mary Western’s honest face flashed before his eyes. But he said nothing.
“Laurence, I say, what will they think of me?” repeated Arthur, impatiently.
Mr Cheviott took his pipe out of his mouth again, and, in his turn, stared into the fire.
“It can’t be helped; it’s the only thing to do,” he replied, decidedly.
Captain Beverley got up and walked excitedly up and down the room.
“What will Alys, even, think of me?” he exclaimed. “She knows enough to suspect more. Laurence, is there nothing – are you certain there is nothing that can be done to get me out of this cursed complication? Would there be no use in getting another opinion upon the will?”
Mr Cheviott shook his head.
“None whatever. You know that as well as I do,” he replied. “There is only one thing that would free you.”
“What?” exclaimed Captain Beverley, eagerly, stopping short and facing his cousin.
“Alys’s death,” said Mr Cheviott.
Arthur shuddered.
“For shame, Laurence,” he said, angrily. “Do you think it’s good taste, or good feeling either, to sneer in that way when you must – when you cannot but see what all this is to me?”
“It is not pleasant to myself,” observed Mr Cheviott, “which never seems to occur to you, as I said before. My allusion to Alys’s death should remind you of this. As things are, nothing – really nothing else than the death of the creature dearest to me on earth can clear me from the odious position I am placed in.”
Arthur looked at his cousin, first with surprise – it was so seldom Laurence talked of himself or of his own feelings – then gradually with a dawning of sympathy in his kindly eyes.
“Laurence,” he exclaimed, softly. That was all, and for a few moments there was silence.
“Did no one know of what my father was doing when he made that insane codicil? Could no one have prevented it – he was with your father at the time?” said Arthur, presently.
“No one knew of it,” replied Mr Cheviott, “not even his own lawyer; he must have had a consciousness that it would be disapproved of. I think the idea of saving you from the sort of marriage he had made himself had become a monomania with him – that, and the wish to repay to his sister’s child, in some way, what she had done for him. He knew little Alys would not be rich (her coming into Aunt Bethune’s money was never thought of then), and he was so extraordinarily fond of the child.”
“Couldn’t he have left her half his money unconditionally?”
“I wish he had —now,” said Laurence.
“But what do you mean by a wish to repay to his sister what she had done for him?”
“You know surely that my mother made over nearly all she had to him? Long ago, before your uncle’s death gave him Lydon and all his money. He was foolish as a young man, foolish and desperately extravagant, and but for what my mother did to save him, I don’t believe Lydon would ever have been his. His brother was just the sort of man to have passed him over, had there been any sort of disgrace.”
“What an unlucky set we have been!” said Arthur.
“And then he finished up by that wretched marriage,” pursued Laurence, without noticing his cousin’s remark, “and in that again my mother was the only one to stand by him. He had reason enough for gratitude to her, if only he had taken a different way of showing it.”
“Does Alys know anything of all this?” asked Arthur. “Nothing; and she never must. It has been my great aim to prevent it. However things turn out, she must never know. You see that, Arthur, surely? I can depend upon you?” said Mr Cheviott, speaking more eagerly and vehemently than he had yet done.
“You have my promise; what more would you have?” replied Arthur, regretfully. “Yes,” he continued, after a pause, “I suppose it would never do for her to know, but it is frightful to think how she will misjudge me – almost as bad as to think of the others. Laurence,” he went on, “I must do one thing – I must write to say good-bye to Mrs Western; they have been awfully kind to me – at least, I may say I am obliged to go away.”
Mr Cheviott smiled grimly.
“I am to have my full share of the credit of this nice piece of work, I see,” he said to himself. “Well, so best, perhaps.” – “Oh, yes, I suppose you must say something of the kind,” he added, aloud, and at these words Arthur felt a slight sensation of relief. What might he not contrive to say by not saying, in this note he had obtained permission to write? What might not Lilias, as clearheaded as she was true-hearted, Lilias, clairvoyant with “the eyes of the mind,” read between the lines of this poor little note on which so much was to hang; yes, for a minute or two Arthur felt a shade less hopelessly wretched.
“Laurence,” he said, after a little pause, and with some energy in his tone, “you will not, at least, coerce me in any way as to where or how I spend these two years?”
“How do you mean?” said Mr Cheviott, cautiously, with perhaps even a shade of suspiciousness in his tone. But Arthur did not resent, if he perceived it; he looked up into his cousin’s face, and somehow the sight of his own plead more in his favour than any words. All the comeliness and colour, all the boyish heartiness, seemed to have faded away out of his features as if by magic; in their stead there was a pale, almost haggard look of anxiety which touched Mr Cheviott inexpressibly. He turned away uneasily.
“It’s altogether too bad,” he muttered to himself; “it is altogether wrong. Here am I made to feel almost as if it were all my doing, and Arthur with all the heart and spirit crushed out of him, poor fellow! And, after all, he has not done anything wrong – all the result of his father’s folly; it is altogether too bad. Far better have left him penniless from the beginning.”
But Mr Cheviott was not in the habit of allowing his feelings, however righteous, to run away with him. In a moment or two he replied quietly to his cousin’s question.
“I have no wish to coerce you about anything,” he said, weariedly; “I only want to decide how to make the best of a bad business. Where would you like to go?”
“Like to go? Nowhere,” said Arthur, bitterly. “Where I would have a chance of doing any good is the question. I was thinking I might do worse than take to studying farming, and that sort of thing, systematically – go to Cirencester or one of those agricultural colleges, eh?”
“With a view to settling down at the Edge?” said Laurence, maliciously.
“No, but with a view to getting an agency – the agency of an estate, I mean, once Alys is of age. I don’t see anything unreasonable in that. If Alys doesn’t sell Lydon, perhaps she will take me into consideration.”
“Don’t sneer, Arthur; it is not Alys’s fault,” said Mr Cheviott. “I don’t think your idea is an unreasonable one,” and relieved to find his cousin so practically inclined, he went on to discuss the rival merits of the various agricultural colleges.
It was daylight, or dawn, at least, before the cousins separated, but, tired as he was, Captain Beverley did not go to bed till he had written and rewritten half a dozen times the conceded note of farewell to Mrs Western.
And in the end he, in despair, copied over the first and decided to send it.
“It is merely catching at a straw,” he said to himself. “Far better give up every hope of her at once, but I cannot.”
He left Romary the following afternoon, but his note was not sent to Hathercourt Rectory till late that evening.