“I do know that it’s true.”
“Well! Don’t you think that a fellow like that deserves something from a girl?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Well!”
“He deserves a great deal too much for any girl to deceive him. You wouldn’t like a young woman to marry you without loving you. I think you deserve a great deal too well of me for that.”
He paused a moment before he replied. “I don’t know about that,” he said at last. “I believe I should be glad to take you just anyhow. I don’t think you can hate me.”
“Certainly not. I like you as well, Mr. Twentyman, as one friend can like another—without loving.”
“I’ll be content with that, Mary, and chance it for the rest. I’ll be that kind to you that I’ll make you love me before twelve months are over. You come and try. You shall be mistress of everything. Mother isn’t one that will want to be in the way.”
“It isn’t that, Larry,” she said.
She hadn’t called him Larry for a long time and the sound of his own name from her lips gave him infinite hope. “Come and try. Say you’ll try. If ever a man did his best to please a woman I’ll do it to please you.” Then he attempted to take her in his arms but she glided away from him round the table. “I won’t ask you not to go to Cheltenham, or anything of that. You shall have your own time. By George you shall have everything your own way.” Still she did not answer him but stood looking down upon the table. “Come;—say a word to a fellow.”
Then at last she spoke—“Give me—six months to think of it.”
“Six months! If you’d say six weeks.”
“It is such a serious thing to do.”
“It is serious, of course. I’m serious, I know. I shouldn’t hunt above half as often as I do now; and as for the club—I don’t suppose I should go near the place once a month. Say six weeks, and then, if you’ll let me have one kiss, I’ll not trouble you till you’re back from Cheltenham.”
Mary at once perceived that he had taken her doubt almost as a complete surrender, and had again to become obdurate. At last she promised to give him a final answer in two months, but declared as she said so that she was afraid she could not bring herself to do as he desired. She declined altogether to comply with that other request which he made, and then left him in the room declaring that at present she could say nothing further. As she did so she felt sure that she would not be able to accept him in two months’ time whatever she might bring herself to do when the vast abyss of six months should have passed by.
Larry made his way down into the parlour with hopes considerably raised. There he found Mrs. Masters and when he told her what had passed she assured him that the thing was as good as settled. Everybody knew, she said, that when a girl doubted she meant to yield. And what were two months? The time would have nearly gone by the end of her visit to Cheltenham. It was now early in December, and they might be married and settled at home before the end of April. Mrs. Masters, to give him courage, took out a bottle of currant wine and drank his health, and told him that in three months’ time she would give him a kiss and call him her son. And she believed what she said. This, she thought, was merely Mary’s way of letting herself down without a sudden fall.
Then the attorney came in and also congratulated him. When the attorney was told that Mary had taken two months for her decision he also felt that the matter was almost as good as settled. This at any rate was clear to him—that the existing misery of his household would for the present cease, and that Mary would be allowed to go upon her visit without further opposition. He at present did not think it wise to say another word to Mary about the young man;—nor would Mrs. Masters condescend to do so. Mary would of course now accept her lover like any other girl, and had been such a fool—so thought Mrs. Masters—that she had thoroughly deserved to lose him.
XXVII
“Wonderful Bird!”
There were but two days between the scenes described in the last chapter and the day fixed for Mary’s departure, and during these two days Larry Twentyman’s name was not mentioned in the house. Mrs. Masters did not make herself quite pleasant to her stepdaughter, having still some grudge against her as to the £20. Nor, though she had submitted to the visit to Cheltenham, did she approve of it. It wasn’t the way, she said, to make such a girl as Mary like her life at Chowton Farm, going and sitting and doing nothing in old Lady Ushant’s drawing-room. It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she’d be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day’s work with them. There was no doubt some truth in this. The woman understood the world and was able to measure Larry Twentyman and Lady Ushant and the rest of them. Books and pretty needlework and easy conversation would consume the time at Cheltenham, whereas at Chowton Farm there would be a dairy and a poultry yard—under difficulties on account of the foxes—with a prospect of baby linen and children’s shoes and stockings. It was all that question of gentlemen and ladies, and of non-gentlemen and non-ladies! They ought, Mrs. Masters thought, to be kept distinct. She had never, she said, wanted to put her
