“Well, Captain Bellfield,” said she. They were walking very slowly, and he was cutting the weeds by the roadside with his cane. He knew by her voice that something special was coming, so he left the weeds and ranged himself close up alongside of her. “Well, Captain Bellfield—so I suppose I’m to be good-natured; am I?”
“Arabella, you’ll make me the happiest man in the world.”
“That’s all fudge.” She would have said, “all rocks and valleys,” only he would not have understood her.
“Upon my word, you will.”
“I hope I shall make you respectable?”
“Oh, yes; certainly. I quite intend that.”
“It is the great thing that you should intend. Of course I am going to make a fool of myself.”
“No, no; don’t say that.”
“If I don’t say it, all my friends will say it for me. It’s lucky for you that I don’t much care what people say.”
“It is lucky;—I know that I’m lucky. The very first day I saw you I thought what a happy fellow I was to meet you. Then, of course, I was only thinking of your beauty.”
“Get along with you!”
“Upon my word, yes. Come, Arabella, as we are to be man and wife, you might as well.” At this moment he had got very close to her, and had recovered something of his usual elasticity; but she would not allow him even to put his arm round her waist. “Out in the high road!” she said. “How can you be so impertinent—and so foolish?”
“You might as well, you know—just once.”
“Captain Bellfield, I brought you out here not for such fooling as that, but in order that we might have a little chat about business. If we are to be man and wife, as you say, we ought to understand on what footing we are to begin together. I’m afraid your own private means are not considerable?”
“Well, no; they are not, Mrs. Greenow.”
“Have you anything?” The Captain hesitated, and poked the ground with his cane. “Come, Captain Bellfield, let us have the truth at once, and then we shall understand each other.” The Captain still hesitated, and said nothing. “You must have had something to live upon, I suppose?” suggested the widow. Then the Captain, by degrees, told his story. He had a married sister by whom a guinea a week was allowed to him. That was all. He had been obliged to sell out of the army, because he was unable to live on his pay as a lieutenant. The price of his commission had gone to pay his debts, and now—yes, it was too true—now he was in debt again. He owed ninety pounds to Cheesacre, thirty-two pounds ten to a tailor at Yarmouth, over seventeen pounds at his lodgings in Norwich. At the present moment he had something under thirty shillings in his pocket. The tailor at Yarmouth had lent him three pounds in order that he might make his journey into Westmoreland, and perhaps be enabled to pay his debts by getting a rich wife. In the course of the cross-examination Mrs. Greenow got much information out of him; and then, when she was satisfied that she had learned, not exactly all the truth, but certain indications of the truth, she forgave him all his offences.
“And now you will give a fellow a kiss—just one kiss,” said the ecstatic Captain, in the height of his bliss.
“Hush!” said the widow, “there’s a carriage coming on the road—close to us.”
LXV
The First Kiss
“Hush!” said the widow, “there’s a carriage coming on the road—close to us.” Mrs. Greenow, as she spoke these words, drew back from the Captain’s arms before the first kiss of permitted ante-nuptial love had been exchanged. The scene was on the high road from Shap to Vavasor, and as she was still dressed in all the sombre habiliments of early widowhood, and as neither he nor his sweetheart were under forty, perhaps it was as well that they were not caught toying together in so very public a place. But they were only just in time to escape the vigilant eyes of a new visitor. Round the corner of the road, at a sharp trot, came the Shap post-horse, with the Shap gig behind him—the same gig which had brought Bellfield to Vavasor on the previous day—and seated in the gig, looming large, with his eyes wide awake to everything round him, was—Mr. Cheesacre.
It was a sight terrible to the eyes of Captain Bellfield, and by no means welcome to those of Mrs. Greenow. As regarded her, her annoyance had chiefly reference to her two nieces, and especially to Alice. How was she to account for this second lover? Kate, of course, knew all about it; but how could Alice be made to understand that she, Mrs. Greenow, was not to blame—that she had, in sober truth, told this ardent gentleman that there was no hope for him? And even as to Kate—Kate, whom her aunt had absurdly chosen to regard as the object of Mr. Cheesacre’s pursuit—what sort of a welcome would she extend to the owner of Oileymead? Before the wheels had stopped, Mrs. Greenow had begun to reflect whether it might be possible that she should send Mr. Cheesacre back without letting him go on to the Hall; but if Mrs. Greenow was dismayed, what were the feelings of the Captain? For he was aware that Cheesacre knew that of him which he had not told. How ardently did he now wish that he had sailed nearer
