The Vicar of Bullhampton II
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THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON
“But I am not your wife.”
“What does it mean? Have I not been patient with you? Have I been hard to you, or cruel? Have you heard anything of me that is to my discredit?” She shook her head, eagerly. “Then what does it mean? Are you aware that you are proposing to yourself to make an utter wreck of me—to send me adrift upon the world without a purpose or a hope? What have I done to deserve such treatment?”
He pleaded his cause very well, —better than she had ever heard him plead a cause before. He held her still by the hand, not with a grasp of love, but with a retention which implied his will that she should not pass away from out of his power. He looked her full in the face, and she did not quail before his eyes. Nevertheless she would have given the world to have been elsewhere, and to have been free from the necessity of answering him. She had been fortifying herself throughout the morning with self-expressed protests that on no account would she yield, whether she had been right before or wrong; —of this she was convinced, that she must be right now to save herself from a marriage that was so distasteful to her.
“You have deserved nothing but good at my hands,” she said.
“And is this good that you are doing to me?”
“Yes, —certainly. It is the best that I know how to do now.” “Why is it to be done now? What is it that has changed
you?”
She withdrew her hand from him, and waited a while before she answered. It was necessary that she should tell him all the tidings that had been conveyed to her in the letter which
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she had received from her cousin Walter; but in order that he should perfectly understand them and be made to know their force upon herself she must remind him of the stipulation which she had made when she consented to her engagement. But how could she speak words which would seem to him to be spoken only to remind him of the abjectness of his submission to her?
“I was broken-hearted when I came here,” she said.
“And therefore you would leave me broken-hearted now.” “You should spare me, Mr. Gilmore. You remember what I told you. I loved my cousin Walter entirely. I did not hide it
from you. I begged you to leave me because it was so. I told you that my heart would not change. When I said so, I thought that you would—desist.”
“I am to be punished, then, for having been too true to you?”
“I will not defend myself for accepting you at last. But you must remember that when I did so I said that I should go— back—to him, if he could take me.”
“And you are going back to him?” “If he will have me.”
“You can stand there and look me in the face and tell me that you are false as that! You can confess to me that you will change like a weathercock; —be his one day, and then mine, and his again the next! You can own that you give yourself about first to one man, and then to another, just as may suit you at the moment! I would not have believed it of any woman. When you tell it me of yourself, I begin to think that I have been wrong all through in my ideas of a woman’s character.”
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The time had now come in which she must indeed speak up. And speech seemed to be easier with her now that he had allowed himself to express his anger. He had expressed more than his anger. He had dared to shower his scorn upon her, and the pelting of the storm gave her courage. “You are unjust upon me, Mr. Gilmore, —unjust and cruel. You know in your heart that I have not changed.”
“Were you not betrothed to me?”
“I was; —but in what way? Have I told you any untruth? Have I concealed anything? When I accepted you, did I not explain to you how and why it was so, —against my own wish, against my own judgment, —because then I had ceased to care what became of me. I do care now. I care very much.”
“And you think that is justice to me?”
“If you will bandy accusations with me, why did you accept me when I told you that I could not love you? But, indeed, indeed, I would not say a word to displease you, if you would only spare me. We were both wrong; but the wrong must now be put right. You would not wish to take me for your wife when I tell you that my heart is full of affection for another man. Then, when I yielded, I was struggling to cure that as a great evil. Now I welcome it as the sweetest blessing of my life. If I were your sister, what would you have me do?”
He stood silent for a moment, and then the colour rose to his forehead as he answered her. “If you were my sister, my ears would tingle with shame when your name was mentioned in my presence.”
The blood rushed also over her face, suffusing her whole countenance, forehead and all, and fire flashed from her eyes,
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and her lips were parted, and even her nostrils seemed to swell with anger. She looked full into his face for a second, and then she turned and walked speechless away from him. When the handle of the door was in her hand, she turned again to address him. “Mr. Gilmore,” she said, “I will never willingly speak to you again.” Then the door was opened and closed behind her before a word had escaped from his lips.
He knew that he had insulted her. He knew that he had uttered words so hard, that it might be doubted whether, under any circumstances, they could be justified from a gentleman to a lady. And certainly he had not intended to insult her as he was coming down to the vicarage. As far as any settled purpose had been formed in his mind, he had meant to force her back to her engagement with himself, by showing to her how manifest would be her injustice, and how great her treachery, if she persisted in leaving him. But he knew her character well enough to be aware that any word of insult addressed to her as a woman, would create offence which she herself would be unable to quell. But his anger had got the better of his judgment, and when the suggestion was made to him of a sister of his own, he took the opportunity which was offered to him of hitting her with all his force. She had felt the blow, and had determined that she would never encounter another.
He was left alone, and he must retreat. He waited a while, thinking that perhaps Mrs. Fenwick or the Vicar would come to him; but nobody came. The window of the room was open, and it was easy for him to leave the house by the garden. But as he prepared to do so, his eye caught the writing materials on a side table, and he sat down and addressed a note to Mrs. Fen-
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wick. “Tell Mary,” he said, “that in a matter which to me is of life and death, I was forced to speak plainly. Tell her, also, that if she will be my wife, I know well that I shall never have to blush for a deed of hers, —or for a word, —or for a thought.— H. G.” Then he went out on to the lawn, and returned home by the path at the back of the church farm.
He had left the vicarage, making another offer for the girl’s hand, as it were, with his last gasp. But as he went, he told himself that it was impossible that it should be accepted. Every chance had now gone from him, and he must look his condition in the face as best he could. It had been bad enough with him before, when no hope had ever been held out to him; when the answers of the girl he loved had always been adverse to him; when no one had been told that she was to be his bride. Even then the gnawing sense of disappointment and of failure, —just there, when only he cared for success, —had been more than he could endure without derangement of the outer tranquillity of his life. Even then he had been unable so to live that men should not know that his sorrow had disturbed him. When he had gone to Loring, travelling with a forlorn hope into the neighbourhood of the girl he loved, he had himself been aware that he had lacked strength to control himself in his misfortune. But if his state then had been grievous, what must it be now? It had been told to all the world around him that he had at last won his bride, and he had proceeded, as do jolly thriving bridegrooms, to make his house ready for her reception. Doubting nothing he had mingled her wishes, her tastes, his thoughts of her, with every action of his life. He had prepared jewels for her, and decorated chambers, and
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laid out pleasure gardens. He was a man, simple in his own habits, and not given to squandering his means; but now, at this one moment of his life, when everything was to be done for the delectation of her who was to be his life’s companion, he could afford to let prudence go by the board. True that his pleasure in doing this had been sorely marred by her coldness, by her indifference, even by her self-abnegation; but he had continued to buoy himself up with the idea that all would come right when she should be his wife. Now she had told him that she would never willingly speak to him again, —and he believed her.
He went up to his house, and into his bedroom, and then he sat thinking of it all. And as he thought he heard the voices and the tools of the men at their work; and knew that things were being done which, for him, would never be of avail. He remained there for a couple of hours without moving. Then he got up and gave the housekeeper instructions to pack up his portmanteau, and the groom orders to bring his gig to the door. “He was going away,” he said, and his letters were to be addressed to his club in London. That afternoon he drove himself into Salisbury that he might catch the evening express train up, and that night he slept at a hotel in London.
CHAPTER LXV
MARY LOWTHER
LEAVES BULLHAMPTON
It was considerably past one o’clock, and the children’s dinner was upon the table in the dining parlour before anyone in the vicarage had seen Mary Lowther since the departure of the Squire. When she left Mr. Gilmore, she had gone to her own room, and no one had disturbed her. As the children were being seated, Fenwick returned, and his wife put into his hand the note which Gilmore had left for her.
“What passed between them?” he asked in a whisper.
His wife shook her head. “I have not seen her,” she said, “but he talks of speaking plainly, and I suppose it was bitter enough.”
“He can be very bitter if he’s driven hard,” said the Vicar; “and he has been driven very hard,” he added, after a while.
As soon as the children had eaten their dinner, Mrs. Fenwick went up to Mary’s room with the Squire’s note in her hand. She knocked, and was at once admitted, and she found Mary sitting at her writing-desk.
“Will you not come to lunch, Mary?”
“Yes, —if I ought. I suppose I might not have a cup of tea brought up here?”
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“You shall have whatever you like, —here or anywhere else, as far as the vicarage goes. What did he say to you this morning?”
“It is of no use that I should tell you, Janet.” “You did not yield to him, then?”
“Certainly, I did not. Certainly I never shall yield to him. Dear Janet, pray take that as a certainty. Let me make you sure at any rate of that. He must be sure of it himself.”
“Here is his note to me, written, I suppose, after you left him.” Mary took the scrap of paper from her hand and read it. “He is not sure, you see,” continued Mrs. Fenwick. “He has written to me, and I suppose that I must answer him.”
“He shall certainly never have to blush for me as his wife,” said Mary. But she would not tell her friend of the hard words that had been said to her. She understood well the allusion in Mr. Gilmore’s note, but she would not explain it. She had determined, as she thought about it in her solitude, that it would be better that she should never repeat to anyone the cruel words which her lover had spoken to her. Doubtless he had received provocation. All his anger, as well as all his suffering, had come from a constancy in his love for her, which was unsurpassed, if not unequalled, in all that she had read of among men. He had been willing to accept her on conditions most humiliating to himself; and had then been told, that, even with those conditions, he was not to have her. She was bound to forgive him almost any offence that he could bestow upon her. He had spoken to her in his wrath words which she thought to be not only cruel but unmanly. She had told him that she would never speak willingly to him again; and she would keep her word.
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But she would forgive him. She was bound to forgive him any injury, let it be what it might. She would forgive him; —and as a sign to herself of her pardon she would say no word of his offence to her friends, the Fenwicks. “He shall certainly never have to blush for me as his wife,” she said, as she returned the note to Mrs. Fenwick.
“You mean, that you never will be his wife?” “Certainly I mean that.”
“Have you quarrelled with him, Mary?”
“Quarrelled? How am I to answer that? It will be better that we should not meet again. Of course, our interview could not be pleasant for either of us. I do not wish him to think that there has been a quarrel.”
“No man ever did a woman more honour than he has done to you.”
“Dearest Janet, let it be dropped; —pray let it be dropped. I am sure you believe me now when I say that it can do no good. I am writing to my aunt this moment to tell her that I will return. What day shall I name?”
“Have you written to your cousin?”
“No I have not written to my cousin. I have not been able to get through it all, Janet, quite so easily as that.”
“I suppose you had better go now.”
“Yes; —I must go now. I should be a thorn in his side if I were to remain here.”
“He will not remain, Mary.”
“He shall have the choice as far as I am concerned. You must let him know at once that I am going. I think I will say
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Saturday, —the day after to-morrow. I could hardly get away to-morrow.”
“Certainly not. Why should you?”
“Yet I am bound to hurry myself, —to release him. And, Janet, will you give him these? They are all here, —the rubies and all. Ah, me! he touched me that day.”
“How like a gentleman he has behaved always.”
“It was not that I cared for the stupid stones. You know that I care nothing for anything of the kind. But there was a sort of trust in it, —a desire to show me that everything should be mine, —which would have made me love him, —if it had been possible.”
“I would give one hand that you had never seen your cousin.”
“And I will give one hand because I have,” said Mary, stretching out her right arm. “Nay, I will give both; I will give all, because, having seen him, he is what he is to me. But, Janet, when you return to him these things say a gentle word from me. I have cost him money, I fear.”
“He will think but little of that. He would have given you willingly the last acre of his land, had you wanted it.”
“But I did not want it. That was the thing. And all these have been altered, as they would not have been altered, but for me. I do repent that I have brought all this trouble upon him. I cannot do more now than ask you to say so when you restore to him his property.”
“He will probably pitch them into the cart-ruts. Indeed, I will not give them to him. I will simply tell him that they are in my hands, and Frank shall have them locked up at
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