Vera Nevill Part 15

"Yes, that will be nice," a.s.sents Vera, quietly, and a trifle absently, stroking her sister's cheek, with her eyes still fixed on the fire; "and of course," rousing herself with an effort, "of course I am a very lucky woman."

And then Mr. Daintree came in, and his wife rushed to him rapturously to impart the joyful news. There was a little pleasant confusion of broken words and explanations between the three, and then Marion whisked away, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with triumphant delight to wave the flags of victory exultingly in her mother-in-law's face.

Eustace Daintree and Vera were alone. He took her hands within his, and looked steadfastly in her face.

"Vera, are you sure of yourself, my dear, in this matter?"

Her eyes met his for a moment, and then fell before his earnest gaze. She coloured a little.

"I am quite sure that I mean to accept Sir John's proposal," she said, with a little uneasy laugh.

"Child, do you love him?"

Her eyes met his again; there was a vague trouble in them. The man had a power over her, the power of sheer goodness of soul. She could never be untrue to herself with Eustace Daintree; she was always at her very best with him, humble and gentle; and she could no more have told him a lie, or put him off with vague conventionalities, than she could have committed a deadly sin.

What is it about some people that, in spite of ourselves, they thus force out of us the best part of our nature; that base and unworthy thoughts cannot live in us before them,--that they melt out of our hearts as the snow before the rays of the sun? Even though the effect may be transient, such is the power of their faith, and their truth, and their goodness, that it must needs call forth in us something of the same spirit as their own.

Such was Eustace Daintree's influence over Vera. It was not because of his office, for no one was less susceptible than Vera--a Protestant brought up, with but vague ideas of her own faith, in a Catholic land--to any of those recognized a.s.sociations with which a purely English-bred girl might have felt the character of the clergyman of the parish where she lived to be invested. It was nothing of that sort that made him great to her; it was, simply and solely, the goodness of the man that impressed her. His guilelessness, his simplicity of mind, his absolute uprightness of character, and, with it all, the absence in him of any a.s.sumption of authority, or of any superiority of character over those about him. His very humility made her humble with him, and exalted him into something saintly in her eyes.

When Eustace looked at her fixedly, with all his good soul in his earnest eyes, and said to her again, "Do you love him, Vera?" Vera could but answer him simply and frankly, almost against her will, as it were.

"I don't think I do, Eustace; but then I do not quite know what love is.

I do not think, however, that it can be what I feel."

"My child, no union can be hallowed without love. Vera, you will not run into so great a danger?" he said anxiously.

She looked up at him smiling.

"I like him better than any one else, at all events. Better than Mr.

Gisburne, for instance. And I think, I do really think, Eustace, it will be for my happiness."

The vicar looked grave. "If Sir John Kynaston were a poor man, would you marry him?"

And Vera answered bravely, though with a heightened colour--

"No; but it is not only for the money, Eustace; indeed it is not.

But--but--I should be miserable without it; and I must do something with my life."

He drew her near to him, and kissed her forehead. He understood her. With that rare gift of sympathy--the highest, the most G.o.d-like of all human attributes--he felt at once what she meant. It was wonderful that this man, who was so unworldly, so unselfish, so pure of the stains of earth himself, should have seen at once her position from her own point of view; that was neither a very exalted one, nor was it very free from the dross of worldliness. But it was so. All at once he seemed to know by a subtle instinct what were the weaknesses, and the temptations, and the aims of this girl, who, with all her faults, was so dear to him. He understood her better, perhaps, than she understood herself. Her soul was untouched by pa.s.sion; the story of her life was unwritten; there was no danger for her yet; and perchance it might be that the storms of life would pa.s.s her by unscathed, and that she might remain sheltered for ever in the safe haven which had opened so unexpectedly to receive her.

"There is a peril in the course you have chosen," he said, gravely; "but your soul is pure, and you are safe. And I know, Vera, that you will always do your duty."

And the tears were in her eyes as he left her.

When he had gone she sat down to write her answer to Sir John Kynaston.

She dipped her pen into the ink, and sat with it in her hand, thinking.

Her brother-in-law's words had aroused a fresh train of thought within her. There seemed to be an amount of solemnity in what she was about to do that she had not considered before. It was true that she did not love him; but then, as she had told Eustace just now, she loved no one else; she did not rightly understand what love meant, indeed. And is a woman to wait on in patience for years until love comes to her? Would it ever come? Probably not, thought Vera; not to her, who thought herself to be cold, and not easily moved. There must be surely many women to whom this wonderful thing of love never comes. In all her experience of life there was nothing to contradict this. It was not as if she had been a girl who had never left her native village, never tasted of the pleasures of life, never known the sweet incense of flattery and devotion. Vera had known it all. Many men had courted her; one or two had loved her dearly, but she had not loved them. Amongst them all, indeed, there had been never one whom she had liked with such a sincere affection as she now felt for this man, who seemed to love her so much, and who wrote to her so diffidently, and yet so devotedly.

"I love him as well as I am ever likely to love any one," said Vera, to herself. Yet still she leant her chin upon her hand and looked out of the window at the gray bare branches of the elm-trees across the damp green lawn, and still her letter was unwritten.

"Vera!" cries Marion, coming in hurriedly and breaking in upon her reverie, "the footman from Kynaston is waiting all this time to know if there is any answer! Shall I send him away? Or have you made up your mind?"

"Oh yes, I have made up my mind. My note will be ready directly; he may as well take it. It will save the trouble of sending up to the Hall later." For Vera remembers that there is not a superfluity of servants at the vicarage, and that they all of them have plenty to do.

And thus, a mere trifle--a feather, as it were, on the river of life--settled her destiny for her out of hand.

She dipped her pen into the ink once more, and wrote:--

"Dear Sir John,--You have done me a great honour in asking me to be your wife. I am fully sensible of your affection, and am very grateful for it. I fear you think too highly of me; but I will endeavour to prove myself worthy of your good opinion, and to make you as good a wife as you deserve.

"Yours, "Vera Nevill."

She was conscious herself of the excessive coldness of her note, but she could not help it. She could not, for the life of her, have made it warmer. Nothing, indeed, is so difficult as to write down feelings that do not exist; it is easier to simulate with our spoken words and our looks; but the pen that is urged beyond its natural inclination seems to cool into ice in our fingers. But, at all events, she had accepted him.

It was a relief to her when the thing was done, and the note sent off beyond the possibility of recall.

After that there had been no longer any leisure for her doubting thoughts. There was her sister's delighted excitement, Mrs. Daintree's oppressive astonishment, and even Eustace's calmer satisfaction in her bright prospects, to occupy and divert her thoughts. Then there came her lover himself, tender and grateful, and with so worshipful a respect in every word and action that the most sensitive woman could scarcely have been ruffled or alarmed by the prospects of so deferential a husband.

In a few days Vera became reconciled to her new position, which was in truth a very pleasant one to her. There were the congratulations of friends and acquaintances to be responded to; the pleasant flutter of adulation that surrounded her once more; the little daily excitement of John Kynaston's visits--all this made her happy and perfectly satisfied with the wisdom of her decision.

Only one thing vexed her.

"What will your mother say, John?" she had asked the very first day she had been engaged to him.

"It will not make much difference to me, dearest, whatever she may say."

Nor in truth would it, for Sir John, as we have seen, had never been a devoted son, nor had he ever given his confidence to his mother; he had always gone his own way independently of her.

"But it must needs make a difference to me," Vera had insisted. "You have written to her, of course."

"Oh, yes; I wrote and told her I was engaged to you."

"And she has not written?"

"Yes, there was a message for you--her love or something."

Sir John evidently did not consider the subject of much importance. But Vera was hurt that Lady Kynaston had not written to her.

"I will never enter any family where I am not welcome," she had said to her lover, proudly.

And then Sir John had taken fright, for she was so precious to him that the fear of losing her was becoming almost as a nightmare to him, and, possibly, at the bottom of his heart he knew how feeble was his hold over her. He had written off to his mother that day a letter that was almost a command, and had told her to write to Vera.

This letter was not likely to prepossess Lady Kynaston, who was a masterful little lady herself, in her daughter-in-law's favour; it did more harm than good. She had obeyed her son, it is true, because he was the head of the family, and because she stood in awe of him; but the letter, thus written under compulsion, was not kind--it was not even just.

"Horrid girl!" had said Lady Kynaston, angrily, to herself, as she had sat down to her writing-table to fulfil her son's mandate. "It is not likely that I can be very loving to her--some wretched, second-rate girl, evidently--for not even Caroline Miller who, goodness knows, rakes up all the odds and ends of society--ever heard of her before!"

It is not to be supposed that a letter undertaken under such auspices could be in any way conciliatory or pleasant in its tone. Such as it was, Vera put it straight into the fire directly she had read it; no one ever saw it but herself.

"I have heard from your mother," she said to Sir John.