Harry Gilmore, she could not to-day say that it should be so.
"I suppose I must answer you," she said, very gently.
"If you tell me that you are not ready to do so I will wait, and come again. I shall never change my mind. You may be sure of that."
"But that is just what I may not do, Mr. Gilmore."
"Who says so?"
"My own feelings tell me so. I have no right to keep you in suspense, and I will not do it. I respect and esteem you most honestly. I have so much liking for you that I do not mind owning that I wish that it were more. Mr. Gilmore, I like you so much that I would make a great sacrifice for you; but I cannot sacrifice my own honesty or your happiness by making believe that I love you."
For a few moments he sat silent, and then there came over his face a look of inexpressible anguish, – a look as though the pain were almost more than he could bear. She could not keep her eyes from his face; and, in her woman's pity, she almost wished that her words had been different.
"And must that be all?" he asked.
"What else can I say, Mr. Gilmore?"
"If that must be all, it will be to me a doom that I shall not know how to bear. I cannot live here without you. I have thought about you till you have become mixed with every tree and every cottage about the place. I did not know of myself that I could become such a slave to a passion. Mary, say that you will wait again. Try it once more. I would not ask for this, but that you have told me that there was no one else."
"Certainly, there is no one else."
"Then let me wait again. It can do you no harm. If there should come any man more fortunate than I am, you can tell me, and I shall know that it is over. I ask no sacrifice from you, and no pledge; but I give you mine. I shall not change."
"There must be no such promise, Mr. Gilmore."
"But there is the promise. I certainly shall not change. When three months are over I will come to you again."
She tried to think whether she was bound to tell him that her answer must be taken as final, or whether she might allow the matter to stand as he proposed, with some chance of a result that might be good for him. On one point she was quite sure, – that if she left him now, with an understanding that he should again renew his offer after a period of three months, she must go away from Bullhampton. If there was any possibility that she should learn to love him, such feeling would arise within her more quickly in his absence than in his presence. She would go home to Loring, and try to bring herself to accept him.
"I think," she said, "that what we now say had better be the last of it."
"It shall not be the last of it. I will try again. What is there that I can do, so that I may make myself worthy of you?"
"It is no question of worthiness, Mr. Gilmore. Who can say how his heart is moved, – and why? I shall go home to Loring; and you may be sure of this, that if there be anything that you should hear of me, I will let you know."
Then he took her hand in his own, held it for a while, pressed it to his lips, and left her. She was by no means contented with herself, and, to tell the truth, was ashamed to let her friend know what she had done. And yet how could she have answered him in other words? It might be that she could teach herself to be contented with the amount of regard which she entertained for him. It might be that she could persuade herself to be his wife; and if so, why should he not have the chance, – the chance which he professed that he was so anxious to retain? He had paid her the greatest compliment which a man can pay a woman, and she owed him everything, – except herself. She was hardly sure even now that if the proposition had come to her by letter the answer might not have been of a different nature.
As soon as he was gone she went upstairs to the nursery, and thence to Mrs. Fenwick's bedroom. Flo was there, but Flo was soon dismissed. Mary began her story instantly, before a question could be asked.
"Janet," she said, "I am going home – at once."
"Why so?"
"Because it is best. Nothing more is settled than was settled before. When he asks me whether he may come again, how can I say that he may not? What can I say, except that as far I can see now, I cannot be his wife?"
"You have not accepted him, then?"
"No."
"I believe that you would, if he had asked you last night."
"Most certainly I should not. I may doubt when I am talking behind his back; but when I meet him face to face I cannot do it."
"I think you have been wrong, – very wrong and very foolish."
"In not taking a man I do not love?" said Mary.
"You do love him; but you are longing for you do not know what; some romance, – some grand passion, – something that will never come."
"Shall I tell you what I want?"
"If you please."
"A feeling such as you have for Frank. You are my model; I want nothing beyond that."
"That comes after marriage. Frank was very little to me till we were man and wife. He'll tell you the same. I don't know whether I didn't almost dislike him when I married him."
"Oh, Janet!"
"Certainly the sort of love you are thinking of comes afterwards; – when the interests of two people are the same. Frank was very well as a lover."
"Don't I remember it?"
"You were a child."
"I was fifteen; and don't I remember how all the world used to change for you when he was coming? There wasn't a ribbon you wore but you wore it for him; you dressed yourself in his eyes; you lived by his thoughts."
"That was all after I was engaged. If you would accept Harry Gilmore, you would do just the same."
"I must be sure that it would be so. I am now almost sure that it would not."
"And why do you want to go home?"
"That he may not be pestered by having me near him. I think it will be better for him that I should go."
"And he is to ask you again?"
"He says that he will – in three months. But you should tell him that it will be better that he should not. I would advise him to travel, – if I were his friend, like you."
"And leave all his duties, and his pleasures, and his house, and his property, because of your face and figure, my dear! I don't think any woman is worth so much to a man."
Mary bit her lips in sorrow for what she had said. "I was thinking of his own speech about himself, Janet, not of my worth. It does not astonish you more than it does me that such a man as Mr. Gilmore should be perplexed in spirit for such a cause. But he says that he is perplexed."
"Of course he is perplexed, and of course I was in joke. Only it does seem so hard upon him! I should like to shake you till you fell into his arms. I know it would be best for you. You will go on examining your own feelings and doubting about your heart, and waiting for something that will never come till you will have lost your time. That is the way old maids are made. If you married Harry, by the time your first child was born you would think that he was Jupiter, – just as I think that Frank is."
Mrs. Fenwick owned, however, that as matters stood at present, it would be best that Mary should return home; and letters were written that afternoon to say that she would be at Loring by the middle of next week.
The Vicar was not seen till dinner-time, and then he came home in considerable perplexity of spirit. It was agreed between the two women that the fate of Harry Gilmore, as far as it had been decided, should be told to Mr. Fenwick by his wife; and she, though she was vexed, and almost angry with Mary, promised to make the best of it.
"She'll lose him at last; that'll be the end of it," said the parson, as he scoured his face with a towel after washing it.
"I never saw a man so much in love in my life," said Mrs. Fenwick.
"But iron won't remain