Marcella Part 105

Mary managed to smother her emotions on the subject of the brandy, and the old woman chattered on, throwing out the news of the village in a series of humorous fragments, tinged in general with the lowest opinion of human nature.

When the girls took leave of her, she said slily to Marcella:

"An' 'ow about your plaitin', miss?--though I dessay I'm a bold 'un for astin'."

Marcella coloured.

"Well, I've got it to think about, Mrs. Jellison. We must have a meeting in the village and talk it over one of these days."

The old woman nodded in a shrewd silence, and watched them depart.

"Wull, I reckon Jimmy Gedge ull la.s.st my time," she said to herself with a chuckle.

If Mrs. Jellison had this small belief in the powers of the new mistress of Mellor over matters which, according to her, had been settled generations ago by "the Lord and natur'," Marcella certainly was in no mood to contradict her. She walked through the village on her return scanning everything about her--the slatternly girls plaiting on the doorsteps, the children in the lane, the loungers round the various "publics," the labourers, old and young, who touched their caps to her--with a moody and pa.s.sionate eye.

"Mary!" she broke out as they neared the Rectory, "I shall be twenty-four directly. How much harm do you think I shall have done here by the time I am sixty-four?"

Mary laughed at her, and tried to cheer her. But Marcella was in the depths of self-disgust.

"What is wanted, really wanted," she said with intensity, "is not _my_ help, but _their_ growth. How can I make them _take for themselves_--take, roughly and selfishly even, if they will only take!

As for my giving, what relation has it to anything real or lasting?"

Mary was scandalised.

"I declare you are as bad as Mr. Craven," she said. "He told Charles yesterday that the curtseys of the old women in the village to him and Charles--women old enough to be their grandmothers--sickened him of the whole place, and that he should regard it as the chief object of his work here to make such things impossible in the future. Or perhaps you're still of Mr.--Mr. Wharton's opinion--you'll be expecting Charles and me to give up charity. But it's no good, my dear. We're not 'advanced,' and we never shall be."

At the mention of Wharton Marcella threw her proud head back; wave after wave of changing expression pa.s.sed over the face.

"I often remember the things Mr. Wharton said in this village," she said at last. "There was life and salt and power in many of them. It's not what he said, but what he was, that one wants to forget."

They parted presently, and Marcella went heavily home. The rising of the spring, the breath of the April air, had never yet been sad and oppressive to her as they were to-day.

CHAPTER VI.

"Oh! Miss Boyce, may I come in?"

The voice was Frank Leven's. Marcella was sitting in the old library alone late on the following afternoon. Louis Craven, who was now her paid agent and adviser, had been with her, and she had accounts and estimates before her.

"Come in," she said, startled a little by Frank's tone and manner, and looking at him interrogatively.

Frank shut the heavy old door carefully behind him. Then, as he advanced to her she saw that his flushed face wore an expression unlike anything she had yet seen there--of mingled joy and fear.

She drew back involuntarily.

"Is there anything--anything wrong?"

"No," he said impetuously, "no! But I have something to tell you, and I don't know how. I don't know whether I ought. I have run almost all the way from the Court."

And, indeed, he could hardly get his breath. He took a stool she pushed to him, and tried to collect himself. She heard her heart beat as she waited for him to speak.

"It's about Lord Maxwell," he said at last, huskily, turning his head away from her to the fire. "I've just had a long walk with him. Then he left me; he had no idea I came on here. But something drove me; I felt I must come, I must tell. Will you promise not to be angry with me--to believe that I've thought about it--that I'm doing it for the best?"

He looked at her nervously.

"If you wouldn't keep me waiting so long," she said faintly, while her cheeks and lips grew white.

"Well,--I was mad this morning! Betty hasn't spoken to me since yesterday. She's been always about with him, and Miss Raeburn let me see once or twice last night that she thought I was in the way. I never slept a wink last night, and I kept out of their sight all the morning.

Then, after lunch, I went up to him, and I asked him to come for a walk with me. He looked at me rather queerly--I suppose I was pretty savage.

Then he said he'd come. And off we went, ever so far across the park.

And I let out. I don't know what I said; I suppose I made a beast of myself. But anyway, I asked him to tell me what he meant, and to tell me, if he could, what Betty meant. I said I knew I was a cool hand, and he might turn me out of the house, and refuse to have anything more to do with me if he liked. But I was going to rack and ruin, and should never be any good till I knew where I stood--and Betty would never be serious--and, in short, was he in love with her himself? for any one could see what Miss Raeburn was thinking of."

The boy gulped down something like a sob, and tried to give himself time to be coherent again. Marcella sat like a stone.

"When he heard me say that--'in love with her yourself,' he stopped dead. I saw that I had made him angry. 'What right have you or any one else,' he said, very short, 'to ask me such a question?' Then I just lost my head, and said anything that came handy. I told him everybody talked about it--which, of course, was rubbish--and at last I said, 'Ask anybody; ask the Winterbournes, ask Miss Boyce--they all think it as much as I do.' '_Miss Boyce_!' he said--'Miss Boyce thinks I want to marry Betty Macdonald?' Then I didn't know what to say--for, of course, I knew I'd taken your name in vain; and he sat down on the gra.s.s beside a little stream there is in the park, and he didn't speak to me for a long time--I could see him throwing little stones into the water. And at last he called me. 'Frank!' he said; and I went up to him. And then--"

The lad seemed to tremble all over. He bent forward and laid his hand on Marcella's knee, touching her cold ones.

"And then he said, 'I can't understand yet, Frank, how you or anybody else can have mistaken my friends.h.i.+p for Betty Macdonald. At any rate, I know there's been no mistake on her part. And if you take my advice, you'll go and speak to her like a man, with all your heart, and see what she says. You don't deserve her yet, that I can tell you. As for me'--I can't describe the look of his face; I only know I wanted to go away--'you and I will be friends for many years, I hope, so perhaps you may just understand this, once for all. For me there never has been, and there never will be, but one woman in the world--to love. And you know,'

he said after a bit, 'or you ought to know, very well, who that woman is.' And then he got up and walked away. He did not ask me to come, and I felt I dared not go after him. And then I lay and thought. I remembered being here; I thought of what I had said to you--of what I had fancied now and then about--about you. I felt myself a brute all round; for what right had I to come and tell you what he told me? And yet, there it was--I had to come. And if it was no good my coming, why, we needn't say anything about it ever, need we? But--but--just look here, Miss Boyce; if you--if you could begin over again, and make Aldous happy, then there'd be a good many other people happy too--I can tell you that."

He could hardly speak plainly. Evidently there was on him an overmastering impulse of personal devotion, grat.i.tude, remorse, which for the moment even eclipsed his young pa.s.sion. It was but vaguely explained by anything he had said; it rested clearly on the whole of his afternoon's experience.

But neither could Marcella speak, and her pallor began to alarm him.

"I say!" he cried; "you're not angry with me?"

She moved away from him, and with her shaking finger began to cut the pages of a book that lay open on the mantelpiece. The little mechanical action seemed gradually to restore her to self-control.

"I don't think I can talk about it," she said at last, with an effort; "not now."

"Oh! I know," said Frank, in penitence, looking at her black dress; "you've been upset, and had such a lot of trouble. But I--"

She laid her hand on his shoulder. He thought he had never seen her so beautiful, pale as she was.

"I'm not the least angry. I'll tell you so--another day. Now, are you going to Betty?"

The young fellow sprang up, all his expression changing, answering to the stimulus of the word.

"They'll be home directly, Miss Raeburn and Betty," he said steadily, b.u.t.toning his coat; "they'd gone out calling somewhere. Oh! she'll lead me a wretched life, will Betty, before she's done!"

A charming little ghost of a smile crossed Marcella's white lips.