The Vicar Of Bullhampton Part 67

She had brought him out a cup of coffee, and he was sitting in a garden chair with a cigar in his mouth. They were Walter and Edith to each other, just as though they were cousins. Indeed, it was necessary that they should be cousins to each other, for the rest of their lives, if no more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She had brought him out a cup of coffee.]

"Let us drop the Captain and the Miss," he had said himself; "the mischief is in it if you and I can't suppose ourselves to be related." She had a.s.sented cordially, and had called him Walter without a moment's hesitation. "Edith," he said to her now, after he had sat for a minute or two with the coffee in his hand; "did you ever hear of a certain cousin of ours, called Mary Lowther?"

"Oh, dear, yes; she lives with Aunt Sarah at Loring; only Aunt Sarah isn't my aunt, and Miss Lowther isn't my cousin."

"Just so. She lives at Loring. Edith, I love you so much that I wonder whether I may tell you the great secret of my life?"

"Of course you may. I love secrets; and I specially love the secrets of those who love me." She said this with a voice perfectly clear, and a face without a sign of disappointment; but her little dream had already been dissipated. She knew the secret as well as though it had been told.

"I was engaged to marry her."

"And you will marry her?"

"It was broken off,--when I thought that I should be forced to go to India. The story is very long, and very sad. It is my own father who has ruined me. But I will tell it you some day." Then he told it all, as he was sitting there with his cigar in his hand. Stories may seem to be very long, and yet be told very quickly.

"But you will go back to her now?" said Edith.

"She has not waited for me."

"What do you mean?"

"They tell me that she is to be married to a--to a--certain Mr.

Gilmore."

"Already!"

"He had offered to her twenty times before I ever saw her. She never loved him, and does not now."

"Who has told you this, Captain Marrable?" She had not intended to alter her form of speech, and when she had done so would have given anything to have called him then by his Christian name.

"My Uncle John."

"I would ask herself."

"I mean to do so. But somehow, treated as I am here, I am bound to tell my uncle of it first. And I cannot do that while Gregory is so ill."

"I must go up to my uncle now, Walter. And I do so hope she may be true to you. And I do so hope I may like her. Don't believe anything till she has told you herself." Saying this, Edith Brownlow returned to the house, and at once put her dream quietly out of her sight. She said nothing to her mother about it then. It was not necessary that she should tell her mother as yet.

CHAPTER LIX.

NEWS FROM DUNRIPPLE.

At the end of the first week in August news reached the vicarage at Bullhampton that was not indeed very important to the family of Mr.

Fenwick, but which still seemed to have an immediate effect on their lives and comfort. The Vicar for some days past had been, as regarded himself, in a high good humour, in consequence of a communication which he had received from Lord St. George. Further mention of this communication must be made, but it may be deferred to the next chapter, as other matters, more momentous, require our immediate attention. Mr. Gilmore had pleaded very hard that a day might be fixed, and had almost succeeded. Mary Lowther, driven into a corner, had been able to give no reason why she should not fix a day, other than this,--that Mr. Gilmore had promised her that she should not be hurried. "What do you mean?" Mrs. Fenwick had said, angrily. "You speak of the man who is to be your husband as though your greatest happiness in life were to keep away from him." Mary Lowther had not dared to answer that such would be her greatest happiness. Then news had reached the vicarage of the illness of Gregory Marrable, and of Walter Marrable's presence at Dunripple. This had come of course from Aunt Sarah, at Loring; but it had come in such a manner as to seem to justify, for a time, Mary's silence in reference to that question of naming the day. The Marrables of Dunripple were not nearly related to her. She had no personal remembrance of either Sir Gregory or his son. But there was an importance attached to the tidings, which, if a.n.a.lysed, would have been found to attach itself to Captain Marrable, rather than to the two men who were ill; and this was tacitly allowed to have an influence. Aunt Sarah had expressed her belief that Gregory Marrable was dying; and had gone on to say,--trusting to the known fact that Mary had engaged herself to Mr. Gilmore, and to the fact, as believed to be a fact, that Walter was engaged to Edith Brownlow,--had gone on to say that Captain Marrable would probably remain at Dunripple, and would take immediate charge of the estate.

"I think there is no doubt," said Aunt Sarah, "that Captain Marrable and Edith Brownlow will be married." Mary was engaged to Mr. Gilmore, and why should not Aunt Sarah tell her news?

The Squire, who had become elated and happy at the period of the rubies, had, in three days, again fallen away into a state of angry gloom, rather than of melancholy. He said very little just now either to Fenwick or to Mrs. Fenwick about his marriage; and, indeed, he did not say very much to Mary herself. Men were already at work about the gardens at the Privets, and he would report to her what was done, and would tell her that the masons and painters would begin in a few days. Now and again he would ask for her company up to the place; and she had been there twice at his instance since the day on which she had gone after him of her own accord, and had fetched him down to look at the jewels. But there was little or no sympathy between them.

Mary could not bring herself to care about the house or the gardens, though she told herself again and again that there was she to live for the remainder of her life.

Two letters she received from her aunt at Loring within an interval of three days, and these letters were both filled with details as to the illness of Sir Gregory and his son, at Dunripple. Walter Marrable sent accounts to his uncle, the parson, and Mrs. Brownlow sent accounts to Miss Marrable herself. And then, on the day following the receipt of the last of these two letters, there came one from Walter Marrable himself, addressed to Mary Lowther. Gregory Marrable was dead, and the letter announcing the death of the baronet's only son was as follows:--

Dunripple, August 12, 1868.

MY DEAR MARY,

I hardly know whether you will have expected that the news which I have to tell you should reach you direct from me; but I think, upon the whole, that it is better that I should write. My cousin, Gregory Marrable, Sir Gregory's only son, died this morning. I do not doubt but that you know that he has been long ill. He has come to the end of all his troubles, and the old baronet is now childless. He also has been, and is still, unwell, though I do not know that he is much worse than usual. He has been an invalid for years and years. Of course he feels his son's death acutely; for he is a father who has ever been good to his son. But it always seems to me that old people become so used to death, that they do not think of it as do we who are younger. I have seen him twice to-day since the news was told to him, and though he spoke of his son with infinite sorrow, he was able to talk of other things.

I write to you myself, especially, instead of getting one of the ladies here to do so, because I think it proper to tell you how things stand with myself. Everything is changed with me since you and I parted because it was necessary that I should seek my fortune in India. You already know that I have abandoned that idea; and I now find that I shall leave the army altogether. My uncle has wished it since I first came here, and he now proposes that I shall live here permanently. Of course the meaning is that I should a.s.sume the position of his heir. My father, with whom I personally will have no dealing in the matter, stands between us. But I do suppose that the family affairs will be so arranged that I may feel secure that I shall not be turned altogether adrift upon the world.

Dear Mary,--I do not know how to tell you, that as regards my future everything now depends on you. They have told me that you have accepted an offer from Mr. Gilmore. I know no more than this,--that they have told me so. If you will tell me also that you mean to be his wife, I will say no more. But until you tell me so, I will not believe it. I do not think that you can ever love him as you certainly once loved me;--and when I think of it, how short a time ago that was! I know that I have no right to complain.

Our separation was my doing as much as yours. But I will settle nothing as to my future life till I hear from yourself whether or no you will come back to me.

I shall remain here till after the funeral, which will take place on Friday. On Monday I shall go back to Birmingham. This is Sunday, and I shall expect to hear from you before the week is over. If you bid me, I will be with you early next week. If you tell me that my coming will be useless,--why, then, I shall care very little what happens.

Yours, with all the love of my heart,

WALTER MARRABLE.

Luckily for Mary she was alone when she read the letter. Her first idea on reading it was to think of the words which she had used when she had most ungraciously consented to become the wife of Harry Gilmore. "Were he so placed that he could afford to marry a poor wife, I should leave you and go to him." She remembered them accurately. She had made up her mind at the time that she would say them, thinking that thus he would be driven from her, and that she would be at rest from his solicitation, from those of her friends, and from the qualms of her own conscience. He had chosen to claim her in spite of those words,--and now the thing had happened to the possibility of which she had referred. Poor as she was, Walter Marrable was able to make her his wife. She held in her hand his letter telling her that it was so. All her heart was his,--as much now as it had ever been; and it was impossible that she should not go to him. She had told Mr. Gilmore herself that she could never love again as she loved Walter Marrable. She had been driven to believe that she could never be his wife, and she had separated herself from him. She had separated herself from him, and persuaded herself that it would be expedient for her to become the wife of this other man.

But up to this very moment she had never been able to overcome her horror at the prospect. From day to day she had thought that she must give it up, even when they were dinning into her ears the tidings that Walter Marrable was to marry that girl at Dunripple. But that had been a falsehood,--an absolute falsehood. There had been no such thought in his bosom. He had never been untrue to her. Ah! how much the n.o.bler of the two had he been!

And yet she had struggled hard to do right,--to think of others more than of herself;--so to dispose of herself that she might be of some use in the world. And it had come to this! It was quite impossible now that she should marry Harry Gilmore. There had hitherto been at any rate an attempt on her part to reconcile herself to that marriage; but now the attempt was impossible. What right could she have to refuse the man she loved when he told her that all his happiness depended on her love! She could see it now. With all her desire to do right, she had done foul wrong in accepting Mr. Gilmore.

She had done foul wrong, though she had complied with the advice of all her friends. It could not but have been wrong, as it had brought her to this,--her and him. But for the future, she might yet be right,--if she only knew how. That it would be wrong to marry Harry Gilmore,--to think of marrying him when her heart was so stirred by the letter which she held in her hand,--of that she was quite sure.

She had done the man an injury for which she could never atone. Of that she was well aware. But the injury was done and could not now be undone. And had she not told him when he came to her, that she would even yet return to Walter Marrable if Walter Marrable were able to take her?

She went down stairs, slowly, just before the hour for the children's dinner, and found her friend, with one or two of the bairns, in the garden. "Janet," she said, "I have had a letter from Dunripple."

Mrs. Fenwick looked into her face, and saw that it was sad and sorrowful. "What news, Mary?"

"My cousin, Gregory Marrable, is--no more; he died on Sunday morning." This was on the Tuesday.

"You expected it, I suppose, from your aunt's letter?"

"Oh, yes;--it has been sudden at last, it seems."

"And Sir Gregory?"

"He is pretty well. He is getting better."