“WE must tell them all directly,” Mary said.
“Tell them!” cried the curate. For one brief half hour he had forgotten everything, and given himself up to that delight which once in his life every man has a right to—or so at least we think when we are young—the delight of loving and being loved. The bare country road had turned into Paradise, into Elysium for both of them; it was more beautiful and sweet than anything out of heaven. The green boughs waved softly between them and the celestial blue above, making a chequer-work of sun and shade that flickered and danced, and made the very dust under their feet happy; and as for the flowers in the hedgerows, no roses were ever so sweet. They walked upon enchanted ground, and all nature sang soft hymns of praise over their happiness, which was sweeter than the roses, or anything that earth, our homely foster-mother, can give. She was wistfully glad of it, that brown and faithful nurse, that mother earth, who could strew flowers at their feet, but could not bestow such blessedness. But when Mary said those simple words, the world, which had nothing to do with that hour, suddenly rolled its great shadow round, coming between the curate and the sunshine of heaven. “Tell them!” he said, and his countenance fell. Oh yes, he knew very well they must be told: but he had been able to forget it for that moment of delight.
“Yes, tell them. You meant that?” said Mary, looking up somewhat alarmed in his face.
“Oh yes, I meant that,” he said with a groan—“at least, I didn’t mean anything. I never meant to tell you, let alone them.”
“So you said,” Mary remarked, in her demure way; “you told me you had made up your mind not to tell me——” and she laughed in the pleasure of her maiden power.
“Oh, my darling!” the curate said, “it would have been better if I had not told you. It would have been better if I had gone away, and smothered my heart or myself, if necessary, rather than have brought this trouble on you.”
“Trouble!” she cried, and laughed. Mary was not a bit afraid. She was as ignorant as the bird who was singing little saucy songs and melodious gibes at them overhead, calling on all his bird neighbours to make fun of the lovers, who had waited for June and full summer, instead of building their nests like prudent folk in the early spring. Mary knew about as much as the thrush did on the subject of ways and means—and she was not afraid.
“They will not hear me speak,” he said; “they will ask me how I could dare to think of dragging you down into my poverty? I know that is what they will do—and they will be right,” he added with a great sigh.
Mary paused a little in surprise, and then she asked, “I wonder what you think I am? Do you think I am rich?”
“No,” he said, pressing her hand close to his side. “Thank heaven! I know you are not rich.”
“I see very little to thank heaven about,” said Mary, “on that score: perhaps you think that I have great prospects, or that somebody is going to leave me a great deal of money, or—something. Why, I have not a penny in the world! And my aunt is always shaking her head and saying, ‘If anything happens to your uncle!’ Do you know what I should have to do then? I should have to go out as a governess, if anybody would have me to teach their children—or perhaps as a maid in the nursery.”
“Oh, hush!” he cried. “You a maid in the nursery! But, Mary darling, you would be almost better as a governess than you will be with me. Do you know how much I have a year? A hundred pounds and my lodging, and I don’t know where I am to get any more.”
“A hundred pounds! I never had a hundred shillings of my own. It seems quite a great sum,” said Mary. “I should think we could do very well upon that. We must have a cottage of our own though. I have often thought a cottage might be made very pretty if one were to take a little trouble. I should like it so much better than a big house.”
“Oh, Mary, you little angel! You have just come astray out of heaven, and you know nothing about this hard world,” he cried.
“Oh, don’t I?” said Mary, with a laugh of superior wisdom,—“much more than you do, I am sure, though you are so much cleverer than I. We could not have many servants, that’s true. But what is the good of them—except to get in each other’s way, and make aunt cross? I’ll tell you what I shall have. I’ll have a nice strong big girl out of the schools, and train her myself: and you’ll see, after a while, all the ladies will be contending to get one of the girls whom Mrs. ——”
Here Mary paused, and blushed redder than ever, and with a cough turned her head away.
“Finish your sentence,” said the happy curate, too happy for the moment to remember how foolish it was. “Mrs. ——? Finish what you were going to say.”
“You know well enough,” said Mary, who in the delightful fervour of settling everything had thus been carried away so much farther than she intended. She added after a moment in a lower tone, “You know it is a very funny name.”
“I think now it is the sweetest name in the world. Mary Asquith,” he said—“Mrs. Asquith—I prefer it to any in the world.”
“Well,” said Mary, considering, “it has this for it, that it is not just like anybody’s name. It has a great deal of character in it. You don’t forget it as soon as you have heard it, like Smith or Brown.”
“It is an old name,” he said, with a little pride, “and one very well known in Cumberland, and known only for good, Mary. But,” he added suddenly, after this outburst, “you are not to suppose that I am claiming to belong to a great family. Oh no, we are only yeomen; we are not equal to the Prescotts. We have an old house, which will be my brother’s, but not like Horton—a homely old place, no better than a farmhouse. That is another thing that will be against me,” he said, his voice sinking out of its happiness and pride into subdued tones.
“There cannot be anything against you,” said Mary, giving a little pressure to his arm. “Do you think I am such a prize? They will be glad, I shouldn’t wonder, to get me off their hands; my poor aunt will not have to say any more, ‘Mary, if anything happens to your uncle!’ I shall have my own—person,” she said, pausing for a word, and laughing over it, “my own—person to take care of me—and what more does any girl require?”
Mr. Asquith was cheered, and yet not quite cheered, by these encouragements. He was very happy, and yet quite miserable. Nothing could take away from him the delight and glory which had fallen upon him out of heaven in that homely green lane of Paradise. But—his mind made a leap forward, or backward rather, to the things he had seen, to the facts of life which he knew, to the hard, hard existence of poverty. Had any man a right to drag down a woman, a girl so gently bred as Mary, into that gulf? had any man a right to bring children into the world with no bread to give them? He had held very distinct views upon this subject, and had sworn to himself that he never would so sin against the innocent, against the unborn. How often had he seen what followed in other poor clerical houses! He had seen the pretty young bride, all unthinking, all unfearing, pleased with her little house, and her married dignity, dragged down into a careworn troubled woman, a hard-working woman, with rough hands and a burdened mind, manual labour, and mental care, her strength and her heart both failing as the heavy years went on. To think of Mary, so young and sweet, so thoughtless and lighthearted, so ignorant, bless her! of all these horrible realities, sinking, sinking year by year into such a woman—and by his means! The curate shrank within himself, his heart seemed to contract with a great pang. By his means! all because he could not contain himself, could not keep silent; could not love her without betraying his love. Oh, what a thing it was, that highest of human sentiments, that it could not curb a man’s tongue, or restrain his impulses! That a man should love and yet not be able to keep silent, to spare the object of his love! He might have loved her all his life, and his love would have been a sweetness and a strength to him; but he ought to have respected her innocence and her youth, and never have told it, locked it up in his own bosom. If he had never spoken, God bless her! that would have given her a pang: but had he gone away, in a little time she would have forgotten him. But now, there could be no forgetting—now there was no going back—and she herself would insist upon the consummation of this sacrifice, upon giving him the solace of her sweet companionship, making him happy, making herself a servant, enduring toil, and privation, and care for his sake. For the curate knew that, whatever any one might say, it was the woman that had the worst of it. He would have to submit that she should be his servant, executing even menial offices, with those hands which he might kiss and reverence, but whose work he could not do. The woman had the worst of it: and he knew so many cases,—some where she had sunk altogether into a half cook, half nurse—a careworn creature spoiled with toil; and some in which she had developed into a patient angel, sacred and consecrated in her labours and sufferings. Mary would be that, the lover thought; and yet, who could tell that she would be that? and who could dare to open to a woman’s feet that path of tears and bid her tread it, whatever might await her at the end? He went home to his lodgings with his heart bleeding, although his brain was giddy with happiness, and with the desire to believe that in his case there might be a difference, and that, for once, for once, all precedents notwithstanding, things might go well.
As for Mary, there never was a lighter heart than that with which she ran up the avenue, in too great a flutter and ferment to walk steadily, too happy to keep still. She felt as if she had wings, as if she trod upon air, and burst out singing, as she ran along under the trees, from pure joy. She had got her little promotion, the only promotion of which her life was capable. She had got her own world, her own life, her own share of the universe of God. To be sure she had been happy enough all her life, but how colourless that life looked amid the light and sunshine that streamed upon this! “Only Mary” in a house full of people was more important, and Mrs. Asquith in her own house, the dispenser of happiness, the little monarch of all she surveyed! What a difference! What a difference! These were the secondary matters, the first beyond all comparison being him, the man out of all the world whom God had chosen for Mary. It seemed to her that a whole long chain of special providences had brought them together. That he should have come here, of all places in the world—he for whom every parish in England would have competed had they but known. That he should have come to the Hall, and yet not fallen in with the ways of the Hall, or fallen in love with Anna or Sophie, which would have been so much more likely. That he should have met her, and liked her, Mary, the little one who was of no account, best! Could such things have happened had not the heavens specially interested themselves, and taken unusual trouble to bring it all about? Even the meeting this morning was providential, for she was to have gone off on a visit the very next day, and in the meantime a hundred things might have happened to close his mouth. And to think that he should have been so frightened to speak. Oh, how foolish men were sometimes, though they were also so clever! What great prospects did he suppose she could have to make him not good enough for her? Not good enough for her! It was almost with a little shriek of happiness, and scorn, and admiration that Mary commented to herself upon his intentions and his self-reproaches. The foolish fellow! the darling! the noble, humble, good!—everybody but himself knowing how much too good for her he was.
Women have a great deal to bear in this world. Their lot is in many respects harder than that of men, and neither higher education, nor the suffrage, nor anything else can mend it. But there is one moment at least in which a girl has always the best of it, and that is when she has just accepted her lover. At that blissful epoch she has all the pleasure, with little or nothing of the care. It is he who has to encounter the anxious father or careful trustee. He has to meet the scoff with which those personages receive the trembling announcement of a small, a very small income. He has to think where the money is to come from to set up the new household. She has the best of it for once in her life. Afterwards the tables are turned. Not always, perhaps, but very often; and always, I am inclined to think, when poverty is the lot.
But Mary thought of none of all these things; with her it was all sunshine. She could scarcely keep from bursting out with her great news to everyone she met. To sit down at lunch and eat as if nothing had happened was almost an impossibility. If they only knew! They might have known, indeed, had they looked at her, that something had happened. But nobody took any notice. A slight accident had happened to John, of which he was discoursing at great length. “I thlipped,” he said, “on the grass; there was nothing to make me thlip that I could see. It was thlippery with the rain, or because Morton had mowed it this morning. It was the strangest thing I ever thaw. On the grass—the thimplest thing! But I might have thprained my ankle. Yes, I might. I can’t think how I didn’t thprain my ankle,” said John.
“But you didn’t, you see, so it doesn’t matter,” said his father.
“He might have, though; and what a thing that would have been!” Mrs. Prescott remarked, who was more sympathetic, and had a great leaning to her eldest son.
“Yes, it would have been a very bad busineth,” said John.
And that was the sort of talk that was going on while Mary sat beaming, and nobody found her little secret out.
