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ON THE WAY TO THE SEA

 

 

 

            THE country round Longford was exciting itself pleasantly over the marriage of Miss Latham, of The Towers. People said it was an excellent match for Dick Grantley, who, though he had good looks, delightful manners, and desirable connections, had no income at all—that is, at all worth mentioning. She was a handsome girl, tall and stately, with a certain foreign air that made her look distinguished. A little cold, perhaps, but that seemed only befitting her heiress-ship, and was far better than the scanty dignity of many damsels with or without thousands a year of their own.

            “I wish the wedding had been coming off in town,” he said to himself as he went down to Longford in order to be married next morning; “but it isn’t, and there’s an end of it.” Miss Latham had insisted on being married from The Towers because they had first met there a summer ago, while he was on a visit to his aunt at the Vicarage, and secretly making love to Mary Robbins, in the intervals of listening to parish talk and being taken round the neighbourhood by his proud relation. He went to a tennis party at The Towers, and afterwards it seemed as if he met Adelaide Latham everywhere. But he had not dreamt of marriage with her, though there had been an anxiety in his aunt’s manner, a reticence in his uncle’s, and a certain silent encouragement of meetings that might have suggested it. The Lathams invited him to their place in Scotland and he had declined; then later on they asked him to dine in town, and he went. Last winter he had been with them constantly. Dinners, and dances, and teas, accidental tête-à- têtes; a knowledge that he had to raise money somehow, and that to marry would be the easiest way of doing it. If he loved elsewhere, what then? Mary was an aside of his life, she never even wrote to him, and he never wrote to her, though deep down in his heart he loved her more than anyone again that he must set love aside, that it must not interfere with the practical arrangements of life, with all that led to prosperity, for the outward show was the thing to strive for; what did the inward feeling matter?

            Adelaide Latham was fond of him, not violently so, perhaps, but he was glad that she did not know how to be fonder. He wanted his love for Mary, and Mary’s love for him to be the romance of his life. He would have unconsciously resented anything that interfered with this idea. He liked Adelaide, and felt that it would be quite possible to get through life easily with her, but it never occurred to him to leave off loving Mary, even though he knew that after his marriage he would never see her more. It did not seem to him that his marriage could be a very terrible blow to her; it was the inevitable which insensibly they had felt must at some time overtake them. She would know that in his heart she was the same to him; but he never could have married her, a little sewing-girl with a drunken mother, though there had been a time in the midsummer of their love when when he had thought it possible. Love for Mary, he reflected, had always meant stolen meetings and hurried partings, and long lonely dreamings of each other. It had never meant life of any sort together for more than an hour or two snatched from all that was their business in the world; they had known that it could never mean it. They could dream of each other just the same when the meetings and partings were over for ever.

            He had proposed to Adelaide during the whirl of the London season. Mary and the country-side and the idyll of the previous summer all seemed to belong to another world, a vastly different one from that in which he had engaged himself to the heiress, and talked afterwards to her father in the study. Then it was that Adelaide had insisted on being married from the place in which they had first met. His uncle Robert, the silent vicar of Longford, wanted to marry them, and his never silent wife, who was Dick’s aunt, insisted on it. “Of course you must be married from Longford,” she said, “the people would be disappointed if you were not; besides, a wedding in the country is picturesque, and the decorations in the church shall be charming. I will see to them myself.”

            So he had consented. He thought of Mary for a moment, but he was under the impression that she was away. Of course she knew that he was going to be married, what did it matter where it took place? He had not realized when all the arrangements were being made that her cottage was so near The Towers, that it was only a couple of miles off; still less that his bride would drive past it on her way to church, and again on her way back when she sat by his side as his wife. When he did there was a bravado in it from which he recoiled, a callousness that he hated. Past the cottage—past the little room with the china ornaments on the mantel-piece and the loud ticking clock in the corner, and the flower-pots on the window-sill, where he had spent long hours with Mary. He remembered the little book-shelf hanging against the wall, and the novels bound in red with gold letters on their backs.  “The Children of the Forest,” and “The Lamplighter,” and “Longfellow’s Poems.” Once he remembered reading some bits of  “The Golden Legend” to Mary while she saw sewing for dear life, and her mother  was away in the village. He thought of the mother for a few minutes; of how she used to come back late with glistening eyes and unsteady steps, and a little flat bottle sticking out from her pocket. When they heard her unlatch the gate, they used to saunter out by the back door and stand under a mountain-ash to say good-night, before he fled through the wood and down the valley behind, and up the pathway beyond, and along the straight white road back to the Vicarage. Yes, and to-morrow he would drive past the cottage with his wife, past the mountain-ash, beneath which he had kissed Mary and sworn that he loved her.

            How pretty she was with her soft blue eyes and the flush on her cheeks, and the round baby-chin with a dimple on one side. He thought of the last time they had met; her face had looked a little paler than usual, but she had said, “Oh, it’s nothing, Mr. Dick,” for she had never contested to call him simply by his christian without any prefix, “it’s only that I’ve had to sit up late with work.” She had never been any trouble to him, never exigeante, or cold, or coquettish, or anything but just his pretty, loving Mary. By an accident he had spoken to her first, when she had carried some work home to the Vicarage. He had met her again and again, still by accident; he had found out where she lived, and something had drawn him towards the cottage; a message took him again, the mother encouraged him, and all the rest followed. In the country and the summer-time it had seemed only natural that it should follow.

            “Oh, but you shouldn’t, Mr. Dick,” she said, many a time, “remember, I am not like you—”

            “No, no,” she had laughed, “I mean that I am not like you that belong to the gentry, and people would talk if they saw you coming to our cottage.”

            “I come by the valley and no one sees me, and how can they know?” he had answered; “and why shouldn’t I love you, my prettiest? I wish I could marry you and take you off to New Zealand.” This was before he had ever set eyes on the heiress.

            “Ah, but you can’t,” she had said; “none of your friends would speak to me. They would all know who I was.”

            “But if we went to New Zealand—”

            “But we couldn’t, Mr. Dick—and then, there’s mother.”

            “Well?” he asked, with a little gasp, for he had forgotten the mother with her unsteady footstep and tremulous lifting of the latch.

            “I couldn’t leave her all alone; what would you do with mother?” and this was a question he truly could not answer. But what happy hours they had spent on still summer nights, leaning against the doorway of the little living-room, or in the garden behind the cottage, or wandering down between the larches into the valley. Just those two together, and not another living soul within a good half-mile. “You’ll have to marry,” she had said one day, “and then all this will be over; but I won’t leave off loving you. I will love you always, married or single, though I’ll never see you when you have a wife. I dreamt of you the other night, and loved you while I woke. I was thinking yesterday that some day when I am dead I’ll love you even then; and if I wake in heaven it will be loving you.” What a brute he had been, for he had thought as he listened that Mary must have been reading the novels on the shelf, and turning the romance in them to her own use. But he had been a greater brute still to get engaged to a girl only a couple of miles off. He had not seen Mary since the marriage had been arranged, for though he had stolen to the cottage the only time afterwards that he was at Longford, she was not there.

            “She had been poorly, sir,” her mother said, “and gone that thin and white that her aunt when she come the other day quite took on, so she’s treated her to a fortnight at Southsea.”

            “Has she heard—anything?” he asked, hesitatingly.

            “She have heard of the wedding, sir; she was pleased. I’d like to wish you joy,” and she turned up her glistening eyes. He gave her five shillings, and with a little shudder hurried away. He had not been in the neighbourhood again till this afternoon, the one before his wedding.

            He stayed at the Vicarage, but in the evening, of course, he dined at The Towers. All the time he thought of Mary. He felt that he must see her again. In the morning it would be impossible; the only chance was to-night. He made an excuse to leave early, and could hardly hide his impatience to get away. There was a certain misgiving in his tone as he wished his betrothed good-night, that caught her ear.

            “You are happy, Dick?” she asked.

            “Yes, of course. I shouldn’t be going to do it otherwise, should I?” She looked up. They were standing by the conservatory door that led out to the lawn. He saw her white clear-cut face plainly by the moonlight; he noticed, as one does notice the wrong things at some keen moments of life, that her nose was a little long, and there was a squareness about the chin that betokened determination. He wondered what she would be like in ten years’ time. “Should I?” he repeated.

            “No, I suppose not;” she made her answer slowly, as if she had considered it well, but she spoke with the truthfulness that has ever been woman’s curse and blessing.

            “And I know that you are happy, dear,” he said, with a tenderness that he deliberately put into his voice, and felt with despair was not in his heart.

            Once outside the grounds he breathed freely, like a prisoner who has escaped for just a little space, but that only. He went swiftly on past the fir trees and the long stretch of road bounded on either side by the ground with the rabbit fence round it. He was going to Mary’s cottage. On for nearly a mile. The trees seemed to be watching him, to know that he was going by, and in every whisper among their leaves he heard a message from Mary—that she knew he was coming, that she loved him still and understood, and had nothing to forgive. He knew well the dear voice in which she would say that. For one brief moment he wondered what it would feel like, how life would go, if he persuaded her to bolt with him that night, and to trust to luck for all the rest. He thought of the midnight train—time enough to catch it—and how swiftly Mary would tread by his side with her little blue shawl wrapped round her shoulders. Even the thought of it gave him a flash of happiness, but it vanished in a moment; all things were arranged now, and fate must not be meddled with. He turned the corner by the inn. Spanning the road was an archway of evergreens and flowers. By Jove! He understood: it was put up in honour of his wedding. He heard some rustics talking in the inn. They knew he was going to be married to-morrow, and did not dream that he was hurrying by in the darkness on a mission that would have set the whole country-side a-talking. Swiftly on along the lonely road, till at last he came to a clump of beech trees by the wayside. A few yards farther was a little gate; he unlatched it, and went along a narrow pathway that led to the top of the valley. Across the valley, on a level with where he stood, was Mary’s cottage; with a throb of joy he saw that a light was shinning from the window. He followed the track down through the trees, and among the gorse and bracken. He stopped for a minute at the bottom of the valley. A scent of wild flowers and the chirping of many grasshoppers. There was a footpath that went to the ridge on the other side. He went slowly up it, between the firs and larches, past the spot where he and she had lingered many a time to say good-night, past the strange old tree with the double truck, and at last he was at the top. He was at the edge of her garden; he could see the mountain-ash dim and black in the darkness. Thank heaven, she kept no barking dog, but he must tread softly lest anyone were with her, or her foolish old mother at home and sober; though a few shillings would always buy the latter’s silence. There were only two rooms; the light was in the front one. He trod down the little flower-beds in his anxiety not to be heard, but it did not matter, Mary would forgive him.

            A curtain was drawn across the window, but he could see through it plainly. By the table sat Mary, her arms thrown across it, her head resting down on them. Beside her on a chair was a little black straw hat, and what looked like a water-proof cloak; on the top of the cloak was a small wicker basket packed so full that the cover was bursting open. He glanced the room; somehow it looked different. The plants had gone from the window-sill, the little brass-framed photographs of Mary and her parents had vanished; there was an air of unwonted tidiness about the place. He looked at the ticking clock, he could almost see the minute hand pulsing along the seconds on its large varnished face. And there was the mantel-piece with the china dog and the blue vases, but it looked a little bereft, for some of the things that that were wont to decorate that sacred spot were no longer to be seen. And suddenly he noticed that the novels Mary loved were missing from the book-shelf. What did it mean? Had Mary just come home, or was she going away? She raised her face; it was tear-stained and worn, different enough from the face with the blue eyes full of happiness that he had thought of so often in the long months past. And why did everything about her look so sombre. Was if only his marriage, or had she any other grief? Come what would, he must speak to her once again, must kiss away her tears, and tell her that he loved her, and then should his romance for ever be at an end. He went to the front door and tapped; he heard a chair pushed  back, and Mary’s soft footsteps coming towards the door.

            “Who is it, please?” she asked.

            “It is I,” he said.

            The latch was lifted quickly and Mary stood holding the door open; she almost clung to it with one hand, as if for support.

            “Oh, Mr. Dick,” she said in a frightened voice, “you should not be here. I never thought to see you again.”

            “Did you think I should let you go without a word?” he answered, shamefaced.

            “I didn’t think—I wouldn’t.  I heard you had come this afternoon. Are you going to be married in the morning?” she asked under her breath. He nodded.

            “I am going away early,” she said quickly. “I shall be gone before it’s over.”

            She was still holding the door. Her eyes were wide open, as though in speaking of his marriage she felt a sort of terror; her lips were quivering, her hair pushed back. He was silent for a moment, then his whole heart spoke, and his voice was proof of it.

            “I felt I must see you again,” he said, “but I can’t bear to see you like this. What is distressing you so, my darling; is it my marriage?”

            “Yes,” she said helplessly, without moving an inch. “It’s that, Mr. Dick. I try to think it it’s the other things, but it isn’t. It isn’t likely, after all the times we were together, I could forget—I never shall,” and she burst into tears. In a moment his arms were round her.

            “My darling, my pretty one,” he said, “I love you more than all the world.”

            “Oh, but you mustn’t,” she answered with a  sob, “you that’s going to be married in the morning.”

            “I wish I were going to marry you, Mary,” he whispered; and for answer she nestled a little closer to him as if to be sure that the moment’s happiness was real.

            “You mustn’t say it,” she said; “you mustn’t even think it. I am glad that I shall be gone when you go by to-morrow. I couldn’t have borne to see it.”

            “I have been hating the thought of it, too, for I love you, and you only in the world.” He felt, as he stood there holding Mary, as if nothing else could come to pass or be true, as if time would surely stand still for that sweet hour and make their eternity. And Mary’s arms went round his neck, just as of old, and she gave a long sigh of thankfulness for the blessed rest that was hers; but she made no delusions to herself, and knew that every moment did but take her nearer to that which was worse than death.

            “Oh, my dear love,” she said gently, “it’s good to be with you once again.”

            “You forgive me?”

            “There’s nothing to forgive; it’s just what has to be. We knew that all along, only we didn’t think how hard it would be to bear.” He scarcely heard her words, he was looking over her rumpled head into the cottage, wondering what had become of Mrs. Robbins. It was evident that she was not about the place; and there was no sign of a flat bottle.

            “Where is you mother?” he asked. Then Mary raised herself, and stood looking at him in surprise.

            “Mr. Dick,” and at the first words he understood the meaning of her sombre dress and the little black hat he had seen on the chair beside her. “Mother’s dead,” she answered in a hushed voice; “she died a month ago.—I am all alone in the world,” she added. But he looked at her and said nothing. “That’s one reason why I’m going. I couldn’t bear to stay and hear your wedding going on. Oh, Mr. Dick, if you’d only gone further off for that, it would have been easier,” and she burst into hopeless tears.

            He drew her gently inside the room. “My darling,” he said gravely, “if I had only known, it should never have been at all. I would never have married anyone but you;” he took her face between his hands and looked at it, “for I love you more than anyone in the world, and I shall never love anyone else. I never dreamt of your mother being dead. Don’t cry so, I can’t bear to see it. Why didn’t you tell me? It might have been different, I would have chanced everything if I had known that you had been alone; I swear I would.”

            “Oh no, oh no.”

            “And where are you going? what are you going to do?” he asked, looking round the room, with its unfamiliar desolate air.

            “I am going to Melbourne.”

            “To Melbourne! When?”

            “To-morrow morning.” She tried to say it calmly, but it was evidently a struggle. “I’m to start at six o’clock. Mark Bassett, who is going to marry my cousin Jane, is coming her to-morrow. They are to be married after you at the church. He bought all these things of me for forty pound, and took on the cottage. But I’ll start at six, and leave the key at Mrs. Taylor’s; for I couldn’t bear to see you and her go by.”

            “Well?”

            “And I’ll get to Plymouth at eleven—my boxes went this morning—and I’ll be on board just when you’re getting married, and all making joyful. And I’ll never see you more,” she burst out sadly, “I’ll never see you more, Mr. Dick, as long as I live.”

            “And do you love me still, my sweet?” and he remembered the thought that had come into his head under the trees as he hurried along.

            “I love you more,” she answered, “more and more, and I’ll love you as long as I live, though you’ll never hear me say it again; and when I’m dead, if I know anything about it, I’ll love you then.”

            “Then let us be together,” he said, impetuously, “and live for each other, for I love you, too, more than I do anyone on earth.” She looked at him half dazed.

            “You mustn’t say that; it’s doing wrong,” she said, in fear and trembling, but he took no notice of her words.

            “And I will marry you, my darling, and no one else in the world; it’s not too late yet.” His head was in a whirl, he was carried away by the wild idea that possessed him, and he loved her more and more every moment he was with her.

            “Oh, yes it is, you mustn’t think of me, Mr. Dick.”

            “I am thinking of myself,” he answered, with a happy look breaking over his face, “and we’ll sail together for Melbourne to-morrow.”

            “Oh no, Mr. Dick.” She was bewildered.

            “Listen to me, Mary; isn’t it better that I should marry the woman  I love, than that I should be bound to one I do not love, because she has so many thousands a year? Let us go and be happy: we’ll be the two happiest people in the world; I know that you love me.”

            “I do, I do,” and she clasped her hands, and looked up at him almost solemnly. “But oh, Mr. Dick—”

            “It’s no use,” he went on; “I am going to have my way. A good angel whispered it to me as I came along. We’ll start to-night—this minute—you say your luggage is gone, you can leave the key. We have time to catch the last train to Plymouth—let us make for the station at once, my sweet, we’ll go on board the moment we arrive, we can’t be married before we sail, but perhaps the captain of the ship can do it, and if not, it must be done as soon as we get to our             journey’s end. We’ll have the happiness life in the world, my darling,” and he laughed for joy at the thought of it, while Mary stood looking at him more wonder-struck than ever. “Luckily I have got all my worldly wealth in my pocket.”

            “I have got forty pounds, and my passage took,” she said.

            “Then we’ll run all the way to the train,” he laughed, and a rush of joy swept into his heart.

            “Oh, Mr. Dick,” and she gave a low cry of delight.

            “Make haste,” he said, “there is no time to lose. Is this your cloak? I’ll tie it round you, wife Mary,” and he kissed her while she turned away, and was afraid to let him look into her eyes. “And is this your hat, my wife?”

            “Oh but—” she said with a little gasp.

            “No more ‘oh buts,’” he cried; “it’s too late. Life and happiness are at our feet, let us be wise and accept them.”

            “You are sure—”

            “Quite sure,” and then they laughed for joy together. “Is this basket to go?” he asked. “I believe there are things to eat inside it.”

            “Some cakes, and a bottle of milk.”

            “Half for me?” he said like a school-boy.”

            “All for you,” she cried, and her voice was as the note of a happy bird.

            “Now we must start,” he said. “We’ll put out the candle for fear of accidents, and shut the door, and flee for our lives. Three miles and a half to the station, my sweet, do you think you can walk it?”

            “Oh, I could walk a thousand.”

            “That’s right, shut the door and lock it. Mark Bassett will find his forty pounds’ worth safe. There are no thieves about here.”

            Another minute, and they were speeding fast towards the station. Dick Grantley buttoned his overcoat up to hide his evening dress.

            “What are we going to do when we get there,” he asked; “keep cows for you to milk?”

            “I don’t know how,” she said, as they went breathlessly along, “but I’ll learn.”

            “I can’t think what I shall do; start in life as an agricultural labourer, perhaps. I don’t know of anything else out there that I am fit for.”

            “Oh, Mr. Dick,” she laughed again.

            “If there are gold mines,” he said, enjoying the nonsense he was talking, “I’ll go and dig in them, and we’ll grow fabulously rich.”

            “I would like to be poor best,” she answered, “then I could always serve you myself.”

            “You darling,” and they stopped, out of breath as they were, and kissed each other.

            “What a divine smell of flowers,” he said, as they sped along again; “and by Jove, these are the last English hedges we shall see for a long time.” A sense of leaving home was stealing over him already. “Look back at Longford, perhaps we shall never see it again in our lives.” They pulled up suddenly and turned to look at the the deep grey sky, at the dim fields and dark trees, with here and there far off a light between them, which they knew must be inside a house. Only for a moment, then they hurried on again. “What a wonderful adventure it is,” he said, as happy as a king.

            “Oh, it can’t be true,” she cried, “it can’t be true.”

            “It’s all true,” he laughed; “only another half-mile to the station, is it?”

            “Not that, I think,” she answered, joyously, for she felt that she was out in the world with him already. “Oh, Mr. Dick, what will they say when they find that we are gone?”

            “They’ll cry aloud, like the cherubim and seraphim on Sunday.”

            “There won’t be anyone married in the church to-morrow.”

            “Mark Bassett and your cousin Jane. There are the station lights. I say, will they recognize us?” he asked, as they stopped outside the gates. She looked up aghast.

            “Oh, Mr. Dick, they are sure to.”

            “Why will you call me Mr. Dick, you might try calling me Richard, you can’t manage the Dick all at once.”

            “It would sound like somebody else.”

            “And somebody else wouldn’t do at all, would it?” and he stopped and looked into her eyes, and wondered how he could ever have been false to them. “But what are we going to do about the tickets? Will the clerk know me?”

            “Oh yes, he will, and me too. It’s Robert Graves who give them out, and if he sees you take mine he’ll wonder.”

            “We’ll each take our own, and chance it. He’ll think you are starting to-night instead of in the morning. I will take mine and follow you into the carriage.”

            “Oh, no, Mr. Dick, let me go by myself part of the way, for I know the porter and the guard and everybody belonging to the train, and if they see us going together—”

            “What an inconvenient acquaintance, Mary,” and the strangeness of his position broke for an instant upon him; but there was no time to lose; the train was signalled.

            Five minutes later and Dick had leisurely entered a first-class carriage. The porter was so much surprised that he did not notice a little dark figure creep into a third-class one at the other end of the train.

            “Why, Mr. Grantley! where can he be going? I’ll find out where his ticket was took to. He’s going to be married in the morning, unless he have quarrelled with her, and it looks like it,” he said, as he watched the train shortening into the distance and darkness.

            Dick Grantley was alone. He walked up and down the compartment with excitement. “This is life,” he said, “and to think that I so nearly missed it. Poor little darling; what she would have suffered.” He stopped to listen to the rattle of the train, to watch the white telegraph poles flying by in the still summer night, to wonder if he was really awake. What a change his prospects had undergone almost in a moment. Only a couple of hours ago he had looked forward with dread to a dull routine that threatened to fetter him through all the years to come. Suddenly he was a free man seeking a new life in an unknown land with the woman he loved best on earth. He drew the blue silk shade across the light, and walked up and down again, and sang a snatch of a song from sheer intoxication with joy. He saw himself reflected in the looking-glass under the hat-rack. “I wish I had not got on these confounded evening clothes,” he said, and yet they gave the whole thing the air of a frolic that was delightful. “I’ll buy some others at Plymouth, and a portmanteau to put them in. I can’t go on board like this, it would look so mad. I’ll buy her a heap of things, too. Oh, but I forgot; she has her boxes. Sweet darling, I wonder what they are like; painted wood, I bet, tied round with rope. She will be all right out there. It’s a very wise thing to have done, getting off like this; it might have been awkward in England.” He threw himself down on the seat and thought of the voyage, of how wonderful it would be to find themselves on the wide sea together. He imagined the long talks under the awning by day, the ever getting farther away from the old life and nearer the new one. How glorious it would all be.

            A long time surely? He was drowsy and chilly. He must have slept. He pulled out his watch. Half past two. The train was slackening. He roused himself; his spirits had lost a little of their exuberance already. He looked out of the window, the scattered houses betokened that the train was near a stopping-place. Mary would be able to join him. She would be glad to come in and rest, he thought. Almost noiselessly, as if it were conscious of the night or did its journeying in a dream, the train came to a standstill. A desolate station, a wide platform, two or three sleepy porters, and half-a-dozen people waiting beneath the dull blinking lamps. He sprang from the carriage and looked for Mary, but she was nowhere to be seen. He looked into every compartment wondering if she had fallen asleep, but there was no sign of her; he was almost alarmed. Suddenly he saw her standing near the booking-office door, deep in conversation with an official.

            “I am ready, Mr. Dick,” she said, and he fancied that her voice had altered. “And the train gets into Highmouth a quarter of an hour after this one has left there?” she asked the man.

            “Yes, miss, that’s right,” he answered; “about three quarters of an hour from now, a little more, perhaps.” She turned away satisfied and went with Dick.

            “Another acquaintance?” he asked, half vexed.

            “No, he was a stranger.”

            “What were you talking to him about?” She looked up at him gravely.

            “I will tell you presently,” she answered.

            “Yes, my darling, you shall. You are coming with me now. Here’s the carriage; have you got your basket? Oh, yes, that’s all right.” He followed her in and shut the door. “How good it is to be together again,” he said, all his love returning in a moment. “It feels like home already.”

            “Oh, yes,” and she sat down.

            “We shall be off directly.” He took her hand and held it in his while they watched the preparations for the train’s departure. “I have been thinking what a happy time we will have on board ship,” he said.

            But Mary looked out at the platform with weary eyes, and made no answer.

            “Oh, I wish it would go on,” she said, after a moment.

            “So it will, my darling, don’t be impatient. And we shall go on, too, till we are a thousand miles away. I have been thinking of all we’ll do by-and-by.” But she answered nothing.

            “All right for Plymouth!” and slowly the train went out of the station. They were sitting opposite each other.

            “You shall go to sleep on my shoulder in a minute when we have passed the signal-box; you are worn out,” and he leant forward to kiss her. But she put out her hands to hold him back. Then slowly she got up and sat down on the seat beside him, and yet a little way off.

            “Mr. Dick,” she said, with a grave, eager manner, “we mustn’t do it. I have thought it all out, and we mustn’t do it.”

            “What do you mean, my darling,” he asked, wondering if she were dazed; “I don’t understand.”

            “We mustn’t do it,” she repeated with a gasp; “you must go back and be married, as it was all agreed.”

            “Too late now, darling; besides, I want to go on and to marry you.”

            “You mustn’t, Mr. Dick—it can’t be, indeed. We came away in such a rush, I didn’t think; and I love you so,” she added, with the quiver in her lip that always made her look so babyish; “but now that I’ve thought it over, I see about it. Mr. Dick, you’d never feel honest again if you went away with me.”

            “Why, my darling? We are going to be married. Why shouldn’t I feel honest?”

            “There’d be your promise broke to her. And all the pain she’d suffer when she found you had gone, and all the shame of all the country round knowing that you had left her.”

            “But, my darling, I love you, and I don’t love her.”

            “But she thinks you love her, she wouldn’t have been going to marry you else.”

            “I know—I’m a brute.”

            “And she loves you. Perhaps she loves you just as I do,” and she burst into tears. “Oh she couldn’t; but she must love you best in the world, or she wouldn’t have been going to marry you, and she’s very rich and could have married lots; she has proved that she loves you best. And think what she’d suffer. I couldn’t cost anyone that pain and live,” and Mary clasped her hands and looked up at him.

            “But, my darling,” said Dick, dismayed, “it’s too late to draw back now, we have done it; we are in for it.”

            “No, no, you can get back, and no one will know.”

            “That’s nonsense, every minute we’re going farther away.”

            “That was what I was asking about just now at the station. We’ll get to Highmouth just a quarter of an hour before the train passes that goes back to Longford—the train that’s left Plymouth. You’ll be able to catch it, and you’ll be back between six and seven in the morning, and no one will ever know but me, and I’ll go to Melbourne, and never lead you into trouble more.”

            “Mary, this is nonsense.” Dick Grantley was not going to be tamely sent back in this way; besides, he loved her with all his heart.

            “Oh, but think what she would suffer,” Mary cried, as though in her own soul she had tasted the agony, and knew its bitterness.

            “Someone has to suffer for this, it’s true; but it’s too late now to turn the suffering into the right channel.” She looked up at him with tearful eyes that hardly understood.

            “To turn it?”—she repeated.

            “I mean, dear, think what we should suffer, you and I,” he explained.

            “Ah! but it’s pain of our own making. If we make pain for ourselves we must bear it. But we mustn’t make pain for other. Oh, I couldn’t do it, indeed I couldn’t.”

            “But, my sweet, you don’t seem to understand how much I love you,” he pleaded.

            “Love me enough to do this, Mr. Dick,” she cried, and knelt down in front of him, and put her head on his shoulder, then drew it back and looked at him again. “I can’t go on, it’s no good, I’d rather die.”

            “Can’t go on with me and be happy, my darling?”

            “I can’t take happiness like that, Mr. Dick, I should always remember what it was built up on.”

            “I thought you loved me?”

            “I do,” she said, “I do, but I can’t let you do this for me.” She stood up and faced him with her back to the carriage door. The light from the lamp fell on her face, the grey-blue dawn was just beginning without, but it had not entered to them yet.

            “But, Mary—”

            “I thought it over, Mr. Dick, I thought it over every way. It will be far better for you to go back. You would be happy at first with me, but after a bit like enough you’d repent, and I’d be miserable if I saw you were not happy, and the life, and the working, would all be strange to you, and between us both there would always be the remembrance of what we had done, and her white face at home. Supposing one day we saw in the papers she was dead, oh, what should we feel then?” she cried.

            “And you, Mary, would not you suffer? What should I feel if I saw that you were dead, my darling?”

            “I’ll live,” she cried; “I’ll live and love you though I’m all that way off, so that it may make you happy to feel it, and I’ll love you much more for doing what I begged you.”

            “I should be acting like a scoundrel towards you, Mary, if I left you. You would soon learn to think that, and to hate me for it.”

            “No,” she said, quickly, “no, no, I could not think badly of you, and I’d love you more and more for anything you did bad to me, because I should have to love you to cover it up. Look! Mr. Dick, look!” she cried excitedly, “there’s the sea. We’ll be at Highmouth directly. Say you’ll go back; oh, say you’ll go back, I beseech you,” and she was on her knees, clasping her hands, and looking up at him. He put his arms around her, and looked down at her face.

            “And what would you do, my darling, if I did as you ask?”

            “I would get out of the train with you,” she said, “and see you go, and then I would wait there till the morning train to Plymouth came, the one I was going by last night. And you would be back in good time, before anyone knew you had gone away at all; or you would say something for an excuse, perhaps. And I would think of you being married just as I was getting on board ship, and I would be thankful that you had been saved from doing that which would have stained you all your life long.”

            “And you would break your heart.”

            “No,” she said, with a sob, “I would try to live, and I would love you just the same whether you were married or single, living or dead; but mine isn’t love that shall be any harm to you. Perhaps you’ll be glad to know that you’ve got it sometimes when you think of me.” And she put her arms round his neck, and looked at him long and sadly, as though she were seeing him for the lat time on earth.

            “We should be so happy,” he whispered, despairingly, “and this will kill you.”

            “Oh, my dear love,” she said, “it would kill me worse than leaving you if we went on together; or if I lived, life would be worse pain than ever death could be.”

            He stooped and kissed her silently. Then presently he spoke: “It shall be as you wish, my sweet, I will do it for love of you—and reverence.” And slowly the morning light stole in, it seemed as if the darkness had lifted.

            The train was slackening again to get into a station. Beside them was the grey sea, and far off in the distance the masts of many ships.

 

           

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