It was, therefore, with some feeling of an injury inflicted upon him that he first greeted his mother on his return to the house. For a day or two not a word passed about Bessy. “Of course, I am delighted to be with you, and glad enough to have the shooting,” he said, in answer to some word of hers. “I shouldn’t have gone, as you know, unless you had driven me away.” This was hard on the old woman; but she bore it, and, for some days, was simply affectionate and gentle to her son—more gentle than was her wont. Then she wrote to Bessy, and told her son that she was writing. “It is so impossible,” she said, “that I cannot conceive that Bessy should not obey me when she comes to regard it at a distance.”
“I see no impossibility; but Bessy can, of course, do as she pleases,” replied Philip, almost jauntily. Then he determined that he also would write.
There were no further disputes on the matter till Bessy’s answer came, and then Mrs. Miles was very angry indeed. She had done her best so to write her letter that Bessy should be conquered both by the weight of her arguments and by the warmth of her love. If reason would not prevail, surely gratitude would compel her to do as she was bidden. But the very first words of Bessy’s letter contained a flat refusal. “I cannot do as you bid me.” Who was this girl, that had been picked out of a gutter, that she should persist in the right of becoming the mistress of Launay? In a moment the old woman’s love was turned into a feeling of condemnation, nearly akin to hatred. Then she sent off her short rejoinder, declaring herself to be Bessy’s enemy.
On the following morning regret had come, and perhaps remorse. She was a woman of strong passion, subject to impulses which were, at the time, uncontrollable; but she was one who was always compelled by her conscience to quick repentance, and sometimes to an agonising feeling of wrong done by herself. To declare that Bessy was her enemy—Bessy, who for so many years had prevented all her wishes, who had never been weary of well-doing to her, who had been patient in all things, who had been her gleam of sunshine, of whom she had sometimes said to herself in her closet that the child was certainly nearer to perfection than any other human being that she had known! True, it was not fit that the girl should become mistress of Launay! A misfortune had happened which must be cured—if even by the severance of persons so dear to each other as she and her Bessy. But she knew that she had signed in declaring one so good, and one so dear, to be her enemy.
But what should she do next? Days went on and she did nothing. She simply suffered. There was no pretext on which she could frame an affectionate letter to her child. She could not write and ask to be forgiven for the harshness of her letter. She could not simply revoke the sentence she had pronounced without any reference to Philip and his love. In great misery, with a strong feeling of self-degradation because she had allowed herself to be violent in her wrath, she went on, repentant but still obstinate, till Philip himself forced the subject upon her.
“Mother,” he said one day, “is it not time that things should be settled?”
“What things, Philip?”
“You know my intention.”
“What intention?”
“As to making Bessy my wife.”
“That can never be.”
“But it will be. It has to be. If as regards my own feelings I could bring myself to yield to you, how could I do so with honour in regard to her? But, for myself, nothing on earth would induce me to change my mind. It is a matter on which a man has to judge for himself, and I have not heard a word from you or from anyone to make me think that I have judged wrongly.”
“Do birth and rank go for nothing?”
He paused a moment, and then he answered her very seriously, standing up and looking down upon her as he did so. “For very much—with me. I do not think that I could have brought myself to choose a wife, whatever might have been a woman’s charms, except among ladies. I found this one to be the chosen companion and dearest friend of the finest lady I know.” At this the old woman, old as she was, first blushed, and then, finding herself to be sobbing, turned her face away from him. “I came across a girl of whose antecedents I could be quite sure, of whose bringing up I knew all the particulars, as to whom I could be certain that every hour of her life had been passed among the best possible associations. I heard testimony as to her worth and her temper which I could not but believe. As to her outward belongings, I had eyes of my own to judge. Could I be wrong in asking such a one to be my wife? Can I be regarded as unhappy in
