“On what other account? Mr. Gilmore? Indeed, indeed, I am not thinking of him. He is out of my mind altogether. I say it because I know it is impossible that you and your cousin should be married, and because such an engagement is destructive to both the parties.”
“For myself,” said Mary, “it can make no difference.”
“It will make the greatest difference. It would wear you to pieces with a deferred hope. There is nothing so killing, so terrible, so much to be avoided. And then for him!—How is a man, thrown about on the world as he will be, to live in such a condition.”
The upshot of it all was that Mary wrote a letter to her cousin proposing to surrender her engagement, and declaring that it would be best for them both that he should agree to accept her surrender. That plan which she had adopted before, of leaving all the responsibility to him, would not suffice. She had come to perceive during these weary discussions that if a way out of his bondage was to be given to Walter Marrable it must come from her action and not from his. She had intended to be generous when she left everything to him; but it was explained to her, both by her aunt and Mrs. Fenwick, that her generosity was of a kind which he could not use. It was for her to take the responsibility upon herself; it was for her to make the move; it was, in short, for her to say that the engagement should be over.
The very day that Mrs. Fenwick left her she wrote the letter, and Captain Marrable had it in his pocket when he went down to bid a last farewell to his father. It had been a sad, weary, tear-laden performance—the writing of that letter. She had resolved that no sign of a tear should be on the paper, and she had rubbed the moisture away from her eyes a dozen times during the work lest it should fall. There was but little of intended pathos in it; there were no expressions of love till she told him at the end that she would always love him dearly; there was no repining—no mention of her own misery. She used all the arguments which others had used to her, and then drew her conclusion. She remembered that were she to tell him that she would still be true to him, she would in fact be asking for some such pledge back from him; and she said not a word of any such constancy on her own part. It was best for both of them that the engagement should be broken off; and, therefore, broken off it was, and should be now and forever. That was the upshot of Mary Lowther’s letter.
Captain Marrable when he received it, though he acknowledged the truth of all the arguments, loved the girl far too well to feel that this release gave him any comfort. He had doubtless felt that the engagement was a burden on him—that he would not have entered into it had he not felt sure of his diminished fortune, and that there was a fearful probability that it might never result in their being married; but not the less did the breaking up of it make him very wretched. An engagement for marriage can never be so much to a man as it is to a woman—marriage itself can never be so much, can never be so great a change, produce such utter misery, or of itself be efficient for such perfect happiness—but his love was true and steadfast, and when he learned that she was not to be his, he was as a man who had been robbed of his treasure. Her letter was long and argumentative. His reply was short and passionate;—and the reader shall see it.
Duke Street, January, 186‒.
Dearest Mary,
I suppose you are right. Everybody tells me so, and no doubt everybody tells you the same. The chances are that I shall get bowled over; and as for getting back again, I don’t know when I can hope for it. In such a condition it would I believe be very wrong and selfish were I to go and leave you to think of me as your future husband. You would be waiting for that which would never come.
As for me, I shall never care for any other woman. A soldier can get on very well without a wife, and I shall always regard myself now as one of those useless but common animals who are called “not marrying men.” I shall never marry. I shall always carry your picture in my heart, and shall not think that I am sinning against you or anyone else when I do so after hearing that you are married.
I need not tell you that I am very wretched. It is not only that I am separated from you, my own dear, dearest girl, but that I cannot refrain from thinking how it has come
