“Because of anything! Stop and face it, whatever it is.”
“Just so;—but I can’t stop and face her. It would do no good. For all our sakes I should be better away. I can get shooting with Musgrave and Carnegie in Perthshire. I dare say I shall go there, and take a share with them.”
“That’s better than going into all the quarters of the globe.”
“I didn’t mean that I was to surrender and start at once. You take a fellow up so short. I shall do very well, I’ve no doubt, and shall be hunting here as jolly as ever at Christmas. But a fellow must say it all to somebody.” The elder brother put his hand out and laid it affectionately upon the younger one’s arm. “I’m not going to whimper about the world like a whipped dog. The worst of it is so many people have known of this.”
“You mean down here.”
“Oh;—everywhere. I have never told them. It has been a kind of family affair and thought to be fit for general discussions.”
“That’ll wear away.”
“In the meantime it’s a bore. But that shall be the end of it. Don’t you say another word to me about it, and I won’t to you. And tell mother not to, or Sarah.” Sarah was John Fletcher’s wife. “It has got to be dropped, and let us drop it as quickly as we can. If she does marry this man I don’t suppose she’ll be much at Longbarns or Wharton.”
“Not at Longbarns certainly, I should say,” replied John. “Fancy mother having to curtsey to her as Mrs. Lopez! And I doubt whether Sir Alured would like him. He isn’t of our sort. He’s too clever, too cosmopolitan—a sort of man whitewashed of all prejudices, who wouldn’t mind whether he ate horseflesh or beef if horseflesh were as good as beef, and never had an association in his life. I’m not sure that he’s not on the safest side. Good night, old fellow. Pluck up, and send us plenty of grouse if you do go to Scotland.”
John Fletcher, as I hope may have been already seen, was by no means a weak man or an indifferent brother. He was warmhearted, sharp-witted, and, though perhaps a little self-opinionated, considered throughout the county to be one of the most prudent in it. Indeed no one ever ventured to doubt his wisdom on all practical matters—save his mother, who seeing him almost every day, had a stronger bias towards her younger son. “Arthur has been hit hard about that girl,” he said to his wife that night.
“Emily Wharton?”
“Yes;—your cousin Emily. Don’t say anything to him, but be as good to him as you know how.”
“Good to Arthur! Am I not always good to him?”
“Be a little more than usually tender with him. It makes one almost cry to see such a fellow hurt like that. I can understand it, though I never had anything of it myself.”
“You never had, John,” said the wife leaning close upon the husband’s breast as she spoke. “It all came very easily to you;—too easily perhaps.”
“If any girl had ever refused me, I should have taken her at her word, I can tell you. There would have been no second ‘hop’ to that ball.”
“Then I suppose I was right to catch it the first time?”
“I don’t say how that may be.”
“I was right. Oh, dear me!—Suppose I had doubted, just for once, and you had gone off. You would have tried once more;—wouldn’t you?”
“You’d have gone about like a broken-winged old hen, and have softened me that way.”
“And now poor Arthur has had his wing broken.”
“You mustn’t let on to know that it’s broken, and the wing will be healed in due time. But what fools girls are!”
“Indeed they are, John;—particularly me.”
“Fancy a girl like Emily Wharton,” said he, not condescending to notice her little joke, “throwing over a fellow like Arthur for a greasy, black foreigner.”
“A foreigner!”
“Yes;—a man named Lopez. Don’t say anything about it at present. Won’t she live to find out the difference, and to know what she has done! I can tell her of one that won’t pity her.”
XVII
Goodbye
Arthur Fletcher received his brother’s teaching as true, and took his brother’s advice in good part;—so that, before the morning following, he had resolved that however deep the wound might be, he would so live before the world, that the world should not see his wound. What people already knew they must know—but they should learn nothing further either by words or signs from him. He would, as he had said to his brother, “have it out with Emily”; and then, if she told him plainly that she loved the man, he would bid her adieu, simply expressing regret that their course for life should be divided. He was confident that she would tell him the entire truth. She would be restrained neither by false modesty, nor by any assumed unwillingness to discuss her own affairs with a friend so true to her as he had been. He knew her well enough to be sure that she recognised the value of his love though she could not bring herself to accept it. There are rejected lovers who, merely because they are lovers, become subject to the scorn and even to the disgust of the girls they love. But again there are men who, even when they are rejected, are almost loved, who are considered to be worthy of all reverence, almost of worship;—and yet the worshippers will not love them. Not analysing all this, but somewhat conscious of the light in which this girl regarded him, he knew that what he might say would be treated with deference. As to shaking her—as to talking her out of one purpose and into another—that to him did not for a moment seem to be practicable. There was no
