“I’ve not abused her.”
“What she has been saying I am sure is very true; and I dare say Parson John has been saying the same thing.”
“If she has caused you to change your mind, say so at once, Mary. I shan’t complain.”
Mary pressed his arm involuntarily, and loved him so dearly for the little burst of wrath. Was it really true that he, too, had set his heart upon it?—that all that the crafty old uncle had said had been of no avail?—that he also loved so well that he was willing to change the whole course of his life and become another person for the sake of her? If it were so, she would not say a word that could by possibility make him think that she was afraid. She would feel her way carefully, so that he might not be led by a chance phrase to imagine that what she was about to say was said on her own behalf. She would be very careful, but at the same time she would be so explicit that there should be no doubt on his mind but that he had her full permission to retire from the engagement if he thought it best to do so. She was quite ready to share the burdens of life with him, let them be what they might; but she would not be a millstone round his neck. At any rate, he should not be weighted with the millstone, if he himself looked upon a loving wife in that light.
“She has not caused me to change my mind at all, Walter. Of course I know that all this is very serious. I knew that without Aunt Sarah’s telling me. After all, Aunt Sarah can’t be so wise as you ought to be, who have seen India and who know it well.”
“India is not a nice place to live in—especially for women.”
“I don’t know that Loring is very nice;—but one has to take that as it comes. Of course it would be nicer if you could live at home and have plenty of money. I wish I had a fortune of my own. I never cared for it before, but I do now.”
“Things don’t come by wishing, Mary.”
“No; but things do come by resolving and struggling. I have no doubt but that you will live yet to do something and to be somebody. I have that faith in you. But I can well understand that a wife may be a great impediment in your way.”
“I don’t want to think of myself at all.”
“But you must think of yourself. For a woman, after all, it doesn’t matter much. She isn’t expected to do anything particular. A man of course must look to his own career, and take care that he does nothing to mar it.”
“I don’t quite understand what you’re driving at,” said the Captain.
“Well;—I’m driving at this: that I think that you are bound to decide upon doing that which you feel to be wisest without reference to my feelings. Of course I love you better than anything in the world. I can’t be so false as to say it isn’t so. Indeed, to tell the truth, I don’t know that I really ever loved anybody else. But if it is proper that we should be separated, I shall get over it—in a way.”
“You mean you’d marry somebody else in the process of time.”
“No, Walter; I don’t mean that. Women shouldn’t make protestations; but I don’t think I ever should. But a woman can live and get on very well without being married, and I should always have you in my heart, and I should try to comfort myself with remembering that you had loved me.”
“I am quite sure that I shall never marry anyone else,” said the Captain.
“You know what I’m driving at now;—eh, Walter?”
“Partly.”
“I want you to know wholly. I told you this morning that I should leave it to you to decide. I still say the same. I consider myself for the present as much bound to obey you as though I were your wife already. But after saying that, and after hearing Aunt Mary’s sermon, I felt that I ought to make you understand that I am quite aware that it may be impossible for you to keep to your engagement. You understand all that better than I do. Our engagement was made when you thought you had money, and even then you felt that there was little enough.”
“It was very little.”
“And now there is none. I don’t profess to be afraid of poverty myself, because I don’t quite know what it means.”
“It means something very unpleasant.”
“No doubt; and it would be unpleasant to be parted;—wouldn’t it?”
“It would be horrible.”
She pressed his arm again as she went on. “You must judge between the two. What I want you to understand is this, that whatever you may judge to be right and best, I will agree to it, and will think that it is right and best. If you say that we will get ourselves married and try it, I shall feel that not to get ourselves married and not to try it is a manifest impossibility; and if you say that we should be wrong to get married and try it, then I will feel that to have done so was quite a manifest impossibility.”
“Mary,” said he, “you’re an angel.”
“No; but I’m a woman who loves well enough to be determined not to hurt the man she loves if she can help it.”
“There is one thing on which I think we must decide.”
“What is that?”
“I must at any rate go out before we are married.” Mary Lowther felt this to be a decision in her favour—to be a decision which for the time made her happy and lighthearted. She had so dreaded a positive and permanent separation, that the delay seemed to her to be hardly an evil.
