“You must let me tell my own story, and you must be good to me while I do so. I think I shouldn’t tell you if I hadn’t almost made up my mind; but I shan’t tell you which way, and you must advise me. In the first place, though I did refuse him, the matter is still open, and he is to ask me again, if he pleases.”
“He has your permission for that?”
“Well—yes. I hope it wasn’t wrong. I did so try to be right.”
“I do not say you were wrong.”
“I like him so much, and think him so good, and do really feel that his affection is so great an honour to me, that I could not answer him as though I were quite indifferent to him.”
“At any rate, he is to come again?”
“If he pleases.”
“Does he really love you?”
“How am I to say? But that is missish and untrue. I am sure he loves me.”
“So that he will grieve to lose you?”
“I know he will grieve. I ought not to say so. But I know he will.”
“You ought to tell the truth, as you believe it. And you yourself—do you love him?”
“I don’t know. I do love him; but if I heard he was going to marry another girl tomorrow it would make me very happy.”
“Then you can’t love him?”
“I feel as though I should think the same of any man who wanted to marry me. But let me go on with my story. Everybody I care for wishes me to take him. I know that Aunt Sarah feels quite sure that I shall at last, and that she thinks I ought to do so at once. My friend, Janet Fenwick, cannot understand why I should hesitate, and only forgives me because she is sure that it will come right, in her way, some day. Mr. Fenwick is just the same, and will always talk to me as though it were my fate to live at Bullhampton all my life.”
“Is not Bullhampton a nice place?”
“Very nice; I love the place.”
“And Mr. Gilmore is rich?”
“He is quite rich enough. Fancy my inquiring about that, with just £1,200 for my fortune.”
“Then why, in God’s name, don’t you accept him?”
“You think I ought?”
“Answer my question;—why do you not?”
“Because—I do not love him—as I should hope to love my husband.”
After this Captain Marrable, who had been looking her full in the face while he had been asking these questions, turned somewhat away from her, as though the conversation were over. She remained motionless, and was minded so to remain till he should tell her that it was time to move, that they might return home. He had given her no advice; but she presumed she was to take what had passed as the expression of his opinion that it was her duty to accept an offer so favourable and so satisfactory to the family. At any rate, she would say nothing more on the subject till he should address her. Though she loved him dearly as her cousin, yet she was, in some slight degree, afraid of him. And now she was not sure but that he was expressing towards her, by his anger, some amount of displeasure at her weakness and inconsistency. After a while he turned round suddenly, and took her by the hand.
“Well, Mary!” he said.
“Well, Walter!”
“What do you mean to do, after all?”
“What ought I to do?”
“What ought you to do? You know what you ought to do. Would you marry a man for whom you have no more regard than you have for this stick, simply because he is persistent in asking you? No more than you have for this stick, Mary. What sort of a feeling must it be, when you say that you would willingly see him married to any other girl tomorrow? Can that be love?”
“I have never loved anyone better.”
“And never will?”
“How can I say? It seems to me that I haven’t got the feeling that other girls have. I want someone to love me;—I do. I own that. I want to be first with someone; but I have never found the one yet that I cared for.”
“You had better wait till you find him,” said he, raising himself up on his arm. “Come, let us get up and go home. You have asked me for my advice, and I have given it you. Do not throw yourself away upon a man because other people ask you, and because you think you might as well oblige them and oblige him. If you do, you will soon live to repent it. What would you do, if after marrying this man you found there was someone you could love?”
“I do not think it would come to that, Walter.”
“How can you tell? How can you prevent its coming to that, except by loving the man you do marry? You don’t care two straws for Mr. Gilmore; and I cannot understand how you can have the courage to think of becoming his wife. Let us go home. You have asked my advice, and you’ve got it. If you do not take it, I will endeavour to forget that I gave it you.”
Of course she would take it. She did not tell him so then; but, of course, he should guide her. With how much more accuracy, with how much more delicacy of feeling had he understood her position, than had her other friends! He had sympathised with her at a word. He spoke to her sternly, severely, almost cruelly. But it was thus that she had longed to be spoken to by someone who would care enough for her, would take sufficient interest in her, to be at the trouble so to advise her. She would trust him as a brother, and his words should be sweet to her, were they ever so severe.
They walked together home in silence, and his
