IT was a dull morning, one of those grey days which sometimes come in autumn, when all the winds are still, when the changed and ruddy foliage hangs like a sort of illumination against the colorless atmosphere, and the air is soft and warm, though without sunshine. There had been a great deal of stir in the house in the morning. Two of the visitors had gone hastily away, summoned by urgent business which coincided strangely with the despairing account of the covers which John, prompted by Letitia, had carried to the smoking room on the previous night. These gentlemen had been driven from the door, one in the dogcart, one in Letitia’s own brougham, and the going away had caused a little bustle and commotion. The others had gone out late to the discredited covers, not expecting much sport. But by noon all was quiet about the house, where, as yet, Mrs. Parke was not visible, nor yet the unwelcome visitor who occupied Mary’s room, making her wonder, with a sense of disgust, whether she ever could go into it again. She went to the sundial with great perturbation and excitement, just as the stable clock was preparing, with a loud note of warning, which made a great sound in the still air, to strike twelve. The sundial was at some little distance from the house, in a little dell on the outer edge of the gardens, surrounded by blooming shrubs on one side and on the other by some of the large trees of the little park—a very small one, but made the most of—which surrounded the house. It was fully open to the gray still light in which there were no shadows, and a little damp with the autumnal mists. Mary wondered at herself for having given this rendezvous when she came to think of it. She might just as well have asked Ralph to meet her in the drawing-room or the library, where at this time of the day there was nobody. There were, indeed, two lady visitors in the house, but the morning room was their usual haunt; and she now reflected that she was much more likely to be seen by them in this opening, which was swept from end to end by the full daylight, than in any room in the house. She asked herself whether it was some romantic association—some thought of what people did in novels—which had made her suggest a meeting out of doors. How ridiculous it was! How much more likely to be remarked! But it was too late to think of this. She wandered through the garden, gathering a few late blossoms from the geraniums, which were just about to be taken up for the winter, and a handful of the straggling long stalks of mignonnette, which had a kind of melancholy sweetness in which there was a touch of frost and decay. Mary could never in all her life after endure the scent of mignonnette.
She saw him after awhile coming, directed by the footman, whom he had evidently asked the way without any veiling of intention, rather—as she suddenly perceived to be quite natural, and the thing she ought to have expected—with an ostentatious disclosure of what he wanted. She could almost imagine him saying that he had an appointment with a lady. The shock which had been produced in Mary’s mind by the sudden destruction of her youthful ideal in the person of this (as she now thought) dreadful man made her perhaps unjust to Ralph. He came towards the sundial, however, in the full revelation of the grey light with a smile of self-satisfaction on his face which strengthened the supposition. He had a habitual lurch in his walk, and his large, broad figure was made all the broader and more loose and large in the light suit of large checks which he wore. He had a flaming red necktie to accentuate the redness of his broad face. Mary felt with a shudder that there was reason in Letitia’s horror. To let this man be seen by a fastidious, aristocratic, cynical old gentleman, natural critic and antagonist of his brother’s wife—oh, no!—she understood Letitia now. If Will or Harry should come home like that! But the idea was too horrible to be entertained for a moment. Ralph came up to the sundial. She had hidden herself behind a clump of lilac bushes to watch him, with that smirk upon his face and a swing and swagger of conquest about him. He leant upon it, arranging himself in a triumphant pose to wait. Then he began to whistle, then he called “Hi!” and “Here!” under his breath. After a minute he became impatient and whistled more loudly, and detaching himself from the sundial looked round. “Hi, Mary!” he cried. “Hallo, my lass!” He caught sight at last of her dark dress among the lilacs, and turned round with a loud snap of his fingers. “Oh, there you are!” he cried, “and by Jove right you are, Mary, my girl. It’s too open here.”
He strolled across the grass towards her with a swing and a lurch of his great person more triumphant than ever. “Right you are,” he said, with a laugh. “It’s a deal too open. I like your sense, Mary, my dear.”
Mary hurried forward, feeling herself crimson with shame, and met him in the middle of the glade. “It can’t be too open for what I have to say to you,” she said; then added most inconsiderately, “We had surely better go back to the house. We shall be less remarked there.”
“I don’t think you know what you mean,” he said, thrusting his arm through hers, and holding it as though to lean upon her. “That’s a woman all over. Gives you a meeting and then’s frightened to keep it. I’ve been a rover, I don’t deny it, and I know their ways. You like me all the better now, don’t you, for knowing all your little ways?”
He held her arm, drawing her close to him, and bending over her, surrounding the prim and gentle Mary, fastidious old maid as she was, with that atmosphere of stale tobacco and half-exhausted spirits which breathes from some men. He reminded her of the sensations she had experienced in passing the village public-house, but she was not passing it, she was involved in it now, surrounded by its sickening breath. Every kind of humiliation and horror was in that contact to Mary. She tried in vain to draw herself out of his hold.
“Ralph, oh, please let me go. I have got a message for you. That was why I asked you to come here.”
He laughed and leaned over her more than ever, disgusting more than words could say this shrinking woman, whom he believed in his heart he was treating as women love best to be treated. “Come, now,” he said, “Mary, my love, don’t go on pretending: as if I wasn’t up to all these dodges. Say honest you wanted a word with your old sweetheart without Tisch spying on you with them sharp eyes of hers. And how she’s gone off. She’s as ugly as a toad—and stuck up! I daresay she’d think her brother was demeaning himself to the governess—eh? You’re the governess, ain’t you?” Mr. Ravelstone said.
“I am not the governess; and if either you or she think I would demean myself——” Mary’s habitual gentleness made her all the more fiery and impassioned now—the fierceness of a dove. She disengaged herself from his hold with the vehemence of her sudden movement. She stood panting beyond his reach and addressed him. “Don’t come a step nearer! I have a message to you from Tisch. Can’t you see, if you have any sense at all, that she cannot want you here?”
He gave her a strange and angry look. “What do you mean? Tisch—my own sister: you’ve gone out of your mind, Mary Hill.”
“It is you that have gone out of your mind. Look at her house, and the way she lives. Look at her husband, a gentleman. Mr. Parke may be stupid, but he is a gentleman. Didn’t you understand last night how she was feeling? What has a man like you to do here? Why, at Grocombe—even at Grocombe they would feel it; and fancy what it must be here.”
“What would they feel at Grocombe?” said Ralph, growing doubly red, and looking at her with a threatening air.
Mary paused. To hurt anyone was impossible to her—she could not do it. She looked at him; at the droop of his features, from which the jaunty air of complacence had gone, and at his debasement and deterioration, which were so evident in her eyes, not to be mistaken; and her courage failed her. “Oh! Ralph,” she said, “there is a difference. It’s not only money, or the want of money. You know there is a difference. She wants you to go away.”
“Who wants me to go away?”
His countenance grew darker and darker. He looked at her as if he would have struck her. It was she—his old playfellow—who was thus humiliating him to the earth.
Mary grew more and more compunctious. “It is her way of looking at things,” she said, faltering. “She is not like you, or me. She thinks so much of what people say. You came to dinner,” said Mary, suddenly, thinking of something that might break the blow, “in your velveteen coat.”
An air of relief came over Ralph’s face. He laughed loudly, yet with evident ease. “So that’s what it is!” he said. “You’re ashamed of my clo’es, you two young women. Well, I must say women are the meanest beggars I ever saw, and I’ve met all sorts. Ashamed of my clo’es!”
Mary was relieved beyond measure that he should so take it. She drew a long breath. “It’s so much thought of in this kind of a house,” she said; “and they are expecting Lord Frogmore. Oh, Ralph, don’t take it amiss. Letitia is not very strong. She has, perhaps, been spoilt a little, always getting her own way; and she has no room to give her brother-in-law. They get everything from him,” she added, hurriedly. “He is so rich: oh! Ralph, how can I say it. I would not for the world hurt your feelings. She wants you to go—while Lord Frogmore is here.”
“She has no room to give her brother-in-law, and she prefers my room to my company, eh?” he said, with a harsh laugh. “I’m not good enough to meet that old fogey in my velvet coat. Why I thought velvet was all the fashion. They said so in the papers, Mary.”
“Not in the evening, Ralph,” said Mary, with a sense of duplicity which made her turn away her face.
“Not in the evening, eh? I suppose this fellow must have swallow-tails? Well, it’s a poor thing to snub your brother for, ain’t it, Mary? You wouldn’t do that to a brother of yours.”
“I don’t think I should, Ralph; but then Letitia has married into a—grand family, and she has her husband’s people to think of.”
“By George!” he cried, “her husband’s people! and me her own brother!” Mary could not refrain from one glance of sympathy—which he caught in the momentary raising of her eyes, and which was so kind yet timid that he burst into a sudden laugh.
“Mary,” he said, endeavoring again to put his arm through hers—“You’ve never got a husband, my lass. Tell me how it is: for you were always a great deal prettier than Tisch, with nice little ways.”
“Don’t, Ralph—I prefer to walk alone, if you please.”
“You’re afraid to be seen, you little goose!” he said. “I know your dodges. Come, tell us how it was. If there was one lass in Grocombe that was sure to get a husband I should have said it was you. Come, Mary, tell! I think I know the reason why.”
Mary looked at him with a little air which she intended to check impertinence, but which had no effect on Ralph. “I should think it was enough—that I preferred to stay as I am—without any other reason,” she said.
“Oh, tell that to——anyone that will believe it,” cried Ralph. “I know women a little better than that. I’ll tell you what it was, and deny it, Mary, if you can. You are waiting for an old sweetheart to come home. Ah, now, I’ve made you jump. That’s your little secret. As if I didn’t know it the moment I set eyes on you, my dear.”
“You are quite, quite wrong—whatever you mean—and I don’t know what you mean,” said Mary, very angry. It was not true: and yet yesterday, before he had shown himself, there was just so much possibility in the supposition that it might have been true.
He laughed in his triumph over her, and sense of manly superiority, the sweetheart for whom she had waited, but who had no immediate intention of rewarding her for her constancy.
“We haven’t a chance you know,” he said, “my dear, for being as faithful as that: for you see a man has women after him wherever he goes. Oh, I’ve been a rover, Mary, I’ll not deny it. A fellow like me can’t help himself. I’ve never married, and you may think if you like it is because I hadn’t forgotten you; but I’ve had plenty more ready to fling themselves at my head: so you mustn’t be surprised if I can’t make up my mind to buy the ring all at once.”
“Will you tell me your answer for Letitia?” cried Mary, with a crimson countenance, looking him as steadily as she could in the face.
“An answer for Tisch—bother Tisch! if you want an answer for yourself, my dear——”
“Will you leave Greenpark to-day?” cried Mary, with lamblike fury. “Will you go away directly—this moment? I’ll go and tell the footman to put up your things for you, Mr. Ravelstone. Mrs. Parke wishes you to go—directly. Do you hear what I say?”
“Why, then, what a little hussy you are—as bad as Tisch herself. And what have I done? You could not expect me to have the ring in my pocket——”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Mary, “if she does kill herself or if they all kill themselves. I will not stand to be insulted one moment longer. Stay if you please in a place where they hate you and scorn you, and will not speak a word to you. Oh, stay if you please and shame them! But you can’t shame me, for I have nothing to do with you; only I hope I shall never see you or hear your horrid name again.”
She turned from him and fled across the grass and along the garden paths with the swiftness of a girl of sixteen and with an energy of scorn which the most complacent of men could not have mistaken. Ralph Ravelstone stood looking after her with a face full of amazement. He did not understand it. A woman of Mary’s age is supposed by men of his class to be very open to any overture and not too fastidious as to the terms of it. Besides he had meant to be an amiable conqueror; not to be disrespectful at all. He turned slowly after her with his countenance a great deal longer than when he had first approached. The reality of this repulse struck him more than anything she could have said. He was in his way an homme à bonnes fortunes, not used to be repulsed by the kind of women he had known. Mary was something different, something finer, though she was only an old maid. His self-confidence was not very deep, and in the bottom of his heart perhaps he suspected that he was not the most creditable of suitors or of brothers. He stood pulling his big beard and looking after the hurrying figure which never slackened pace nor looked back till it had disappeared into the house. And then he walked slowly after, with certain words coming back to his ears. “Stay in a place where they hate you and scorn you!” He remembered how his sister had jumped out of his arms, how she had looked at him with staring eyes. “By Jove!” he said to himself, quickening his pace, and strode into the house and rang the bell in his room (he was not much accustomed to bells) till he pulled it down, filling the house with the furious tinkling, and bringing the footman and a stray housemaid from different corners of the house, stumbling up the unaccustomed stairs—for Mary’s room was in a remote corner of the house, and Miss Hill’s bell did not ring three times in a year.