John Halifax, Gentleman Part 95

She waited--standing at the dining-room window--listening--going in and out of the hall,--for another ten minutes.

"It is very strange--very strange indeed. He promised to come and tell me; surely at least he ought to come and tell me first--me, his mother--"

She stopped at the word, oppressed by exceeding pain.

"Hark! was that the study door?"

"I think so; one minute more and you will be quite certain."

Ay! one minute more, and we WERE quite certain. The young lover entered--his bitter tidings written on his face.

"She has refused me, mother. I never shall be happy more."

Poor Guy!--I slipped out of his sight and left the lad alone with his mother.

Another hour pa.s.sed of this strange, strange day. The house seemed painfully quiet. Maud, disconsolate and cross, had taken herself away to the beech-wood with Walter; the father and Edwin were busy at the mills, and had sent word that neither would return to dinner. I wandered from room to room, always excepting that shut-up room where, as I took care, no one should disturb the mother and son.

At last I heard them both going up-stairs--Guy was still too lame to walk without a.s.sistance. I heard the poor lad's fretful tones, and the soothing, cheerful voice that answered them. "Verily," thought I, "if, since he must fall in love, Guy had only fixed his ideal standard of womanhood a little nearer home--if he had only chosen for his wife a woman a little more like his mother!" But I suppose that would have been expecting impossibilities.

Well, he had been refused!--our Guy, whom we all would have imagined irresistible--our Guy, "whom to look on was to love." Some harsh folk might say this might be a good lesson for the lad--nay, for most lads; but I deny it.--I doubt if any young man, meeting at the outset of life a rejection like this, which either ignorance or heedlessness on the woman's part had made totally unexpected, ever is the better for it: perhaps, for many years, cruelly the worse. For, most women being quick-sighted about love, and most men--especially young men--blind enough in its betrayal,--any woman who wilfully allows an offer only to refuse it, lowers not only herself but her whole s.e.x, for a long, long time after, in the lover's eyes. At least, I think so;--as I was thinking, in the way old bachelors are p.r.o.ne to moralize over such things, when, coming out of Guy's room, I met Mrs. Halifax.

She crossed the pa.s.sage, hastily but noiselessly, to a small ante-room which Miss Silver had for her own private study--out of which half-a-dozen stairs led to the chamber where she and her pupil slept.

The ante-room was open, the bed-chamber door closed.

"She is in there?"

"I believe she is."

Guy's mother stood irresolute. Her knit brow and nervous manner betrayed some determination she had come to, which had cost her hard: suddenly she turned to me.

"Keep the children out of the way, will you, Phineas? Don't let them know--don't let anybody know--about Guy."

"Of course not."

"There is some mistake--there MUST be some mistake. Perhaps she is not sure of our consent--his father's and mine; very right of her--very right! I honour her for her indecision. But she must be a.s.sured to the contrary--my boy's peace must not be sacrificed. You understand, Phineas?"

Ay, perhaps better than she did herself, poor mother!

Yet, when in answer to the hasty knock, I caught a glimpse of Miss Silver opening the door--Miss Silver, with hair all falling down dishevelled, and features swollen with crying,--I went away completely at fault, as the standers-by seemed doomed to be in all love affairs.

I began to hope that this would settle itself somehow--in all parties understanding one another after the good old romantic fas.h.i.+on, and "living very happy to the end of their lives."

I saw nothing more of any one until tea-time; when Mrs. Halifax and the governess came in together. Something in their manner struck me--one being subdued and gentle, the other tender and kind. Both, however, were exceedingly grave--nay, sad, but it appeared to be that sadness which is received as inevitable, and is quite distinct from either anger or resentment.

Neither Guy nor Edwin, nor the father were present. When John's voice was heard in the hall, Miss Silver had just risen to retire with Maud.

"Good-night, for I shall not come down-stairs again," she said hastily.

"Good-night," the mother answered in the same whisper--rose, kissed her kindly, and let her go.

When Edwin and his father appeared, they too looked remarkably grave--as grave as if they had known by intuition all the trouble in the house. Of course, no one referred to it. The mother merely noticed how late they were, and how tired they both looked. Supper pa.s.sed in silence, and then Edwin took up his candle to go to bed.

His father called him back. "Edwin, you will remember?"

"I will, father."

"Something is amiss with Edwin," said his mother, when the two younger boys had closed the door behind them. "What did you wish him to remember?"

Her husband's sole reply was to draw her to him with that peculiarly tender gaze, which she knew well to be the forewarning of trouble; trouble he could not save her from--could only help her to bear. Ursula laid her head on his shoulder with one deep sob of long-smothered pain.

"I suppose you know all. I thought you would soon guess. Oh, John, our happy days are over! Our children are children no more."

"But ours still, love--always will be ours."

"What of that when we can no longer make them happy? When they look for happiness to others and not to us? My own poor boy! To think that his mother can neither give him comfort, nor save him pain, any more."

She wept bitterly.

When she was somewhat soothed, John, making her sit down by him, but turning a little from her, bade her tell him all that had happened to-day. A few words explained the history of Guy's rejection and its cause.

"She loves some one else. When I--as his mother--went and asked her the question she confessed this."

"And what did you say?"

"What could I say? I could not blame her. I was even sorry for her.

She cried so bitterly, and begged me to forgive her. I said I did freely, and hoped she would be happy."

"That was right. I am glad you said so. Did she tell you who he--this lover, was?"

"No. She said she could not, until he gave her permission. That whether they would ever be married she did not know. She knew nothing, save that he was good and kind, and the only creature in the world who had ever cared for her."

"Poor girl!"

"John,"--startled by his manner--"you have something to tell me? You know who this is--this man who has stood between my son and his happiness?"

"Yes, I do know."

I cannot say how far the mother saw--what, as if by a flash of lightning, _I_ did; but she looked up in her husband's face, with a sudden speechless dread.

"Love, it is a great misfortune, but it is no one's blame--neither ours, nor theirs--they never thought of Guy's loving her. He says so--Edwin himself."

"Is it Edwin?"--in a cry as if her heart was breaking. "His own brother--his very own brother! Oh, my poor Guy!"

Well might the mother mourn! Well might the father look as if years of care had been added to his life that day! For a disaster like this happening in any household--especially a household where love is recognized as a tangible truth, neither to be laughed at, pa.s.sed carelessly over, nor lectured down--makes the family cease to be a family, in many things, from henceforward. The two strongest feelings of life clash; the bond of brotherly unity, in its perfectness, is broken for ever.

For some minutes we sat, bewildered as it were, thinking of the tale as if it had been told of some other family than ours. Mechanically the mother raised her eyes; the first object they chanced to meet was a rude water-colour drawing, kept, coa.r.s.e daub as it was, because it was the only reminder we had of what never could be recalled--one red-cheeked child with a hoop, staring at another red-cheeked child with a nosegay--supposed to represent little Edwin and little Guy.

"Guy taught Edwin to walk. Edwin made Guy learn his letters. How fond they were of one another--those two boys. Now--brother will be set against brother! They will never feel like brothers--never again."