“Mr. Gibson, I can’t,” she said. She was sobbing now, and was half choked by tears.
“And why not, Dorothy?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t. I don’t feel that I want to be married at all.”
“But it is honourable.”
“It’s no use, Mr. Gibson; I can’t, and you oughtn’t to ask me any more.”
“Must this be your very last answer?”
“What’s the good of going over it all again and again? I can’t do it.”
“Never, Miss Stanbury?”
“No;—never.”
“That is cruel, very cruel. I fear that you doubt my love.”
“It isn’t cruel, Mr. Gibson. I have a right to have my own feelings, and I can’t. If you please, I’ll go away now.” Then she went, and he was left standing alone in the room. His first feeling was one of anger. Then there came to be mixed with that a good deal of wonder—and then a certain amount of doubt. He had during the last fortnight discussed the matter at great length with a friend, a gentleman who knew the world, and who took upon himself to say that he specially understood female nature. It was by advice from this friend that he had been instigated to plead his own cause. “Of course she means to accept you,” the friend had said. “Why the mischief shouldn’t she? But she has some flimsy, old-fashioned country idea that it isn’t maidenly to give in at first. You tell her roundly that she must marry you.” Mr. Gibson was just reaching that roundness which his friend had recommended when the lady left him and he was alone.
Mr. Gibson was no doubt very much in love with Dorothy Stanbury. So much, we may take for granted. He, at least, believed that he was in love with her. He would have thought it wicked to propose to her had he not been in love with her. But with his love was mingled a certain amount of contempt which had induced him to look upon her as an easy conquest. He had been perhaps a little ashamed of himself for being in love with Dorothy, and had almost believed the Frenches when they had spoken of her as a poor creature, a dependant, one born to be snubbed—as a young woman almost without an identity of her own. When, therefore, she so pertinaciously refused him, he could not but be angry. And it was natural that he should be surprised. Though he was to have received a fortune with Dorothy, the money was not hers. It was to be hers—or rather theirs—only if she would accept him. Mr. Gibson thoroughly understood this point. He knew that Dorothy had nothing of her own. The proposal made to her was as rich as though he had sought her down at Nuncombe Putney, with his preferment, plus the £2,000, in his own pocket. And his other advantages were not hidden from his own eyes. He was a clergyman, well thought of, not bad-looking certainly, considerably under forty—a man, indeed, who ought to have been, in the eyes of Dorothy, such an Orlando as she would have most desired. He could not therefore but wonder. And then came the doubt. Could it be possible that all those refusals were simply the early pulses of hesitating compliance produced by maidenly reserve? Mr. Gibson’s friend had expressed a strong opinion that almost any young woman would accept any young man if he put his “com ’ether” upon her strong enough. For Mr. Gibson’s friend was an Irishman. As to Dorothy the friend had not a doubt in the world. Mr. Gibson, as he stood alone in the room after Dorothy’s departure, could not share his friend’s certainty; but he thought it just possible that the pulsations of maidenly reserve were yet at work. As he was revolving these points in his mind, Miss Stanbury entered the room.
“It’s all over now,” she said.
“As how, Miss Stanbury?”
“As how! She’s given you an answer; hasn’t she?”
“Yes, Miss Stanbury, she has given me an answer. But it has occurred to me that young ladies are sometimes—perhaps a little—”
“She means it, Mr. Gibson; you may take my word for that. She is quite in earnest. She can take the bit between her teeth as well as another, though she does look so mild and gentle. She’s a Stanbury all over.”
“And must this be the last of it, Miss Stanbury?”
“Upon my word, I don’t know what else you can do—unless you send the Dean and Chapter to talk her over. She’s a pigheaded, foolish young woman;—but I can’t help that. The truth is, you didn’t make enough of her at first, Mr. Gibson. You thought the plum would tumble into your mouth.”
This did seem cruel to the poor man. From the first day in which the project had been opened to him by Miss Stanbury, he had yielded a ready acquiescence—in spite of those ties which he had at Heavitree—and had done his very best to fall into her views. “I don’t think that is at all fair, Miss Stanbury,” he said, with some tone of wrath in his voice.
“It’s true—quite true. You always treated her as though she were something beneath you.” Mr. Gibson stood speechless, with his mouth open. “So you did. I saw it all. And now she’s had spirit enough to resent it. I don’t wonder at it; I don’t, indeed. It’s no good your standing there any longer. The thing is done.”
Such intolerable ill-usage Mr. Gibson had never suffered in his life. Had he been untrue, or very nearly untrue, to those dear girls at Heavitree for this? “I never treated her as anything beneath me,” he said at last.
“Yes, you did. Do you think that I don’t understand? Haven’t I eyes in my head, and ears? I’m not deaf yet, nor blind. But there’s an end of it. If any young woman ever meant anything, she means it. The truth is, she don’t like you.”
Was ever a lover
