Benedick. – “Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.”

Beatrice. – “I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me.”

Much Ado about Nothing.

An hour or so later on this eventful afternoon – or evening, rather, it was fast growing dark – a cloaked and hooded figure was to be seen hastening along the lane which was the shortest way from Hathercourt Rectory to the Edge Farm. The figure had good need to be cloaked and hooded, in the waterproof sense of the term, and goloshed too, for the beautiful spring day had ended in, superficially speaking, very unbeautiful rain. It came pouring down – the footpath was a mass of mud already, and before long threatened to be indistinguishable from the road. Lilias – for it was she – had begun by picking her steps, but soon gave this up in despair. It was all she could do to get on at all, laden as she was with a rather cumbersome parcel under her cloak. But her step nevertheless was light and buoyant, and her face and eyes, had there been any one there to see them, or any light to see them by, would have told of eagerness and some excitement, instead of fatigue and depression, as, taking into consideration her seven miles’ walk to Withenden and back, and her present uncomfortable surroundings, might not unreasonably have been expected.

“It is horrible of me – I don’t understand myself,” she said, suddenly, aloud. Then she hurried on faster than before, pursuing, nevertheless, the same train of thought. “Why should I feel more buoyant and hopeful than I have done for long, just when such a terrible thing – or what may prove such a terrible thing – has happened to that poor girl? I know I am sorry for her – and even if I were not, I should be sorry to think how it will grieve Arthur; but yet – ah, yes, it is just the feeling of having, as it were, something to do with him again – of perhaps hearing him spoken of and of seeing the house where he was so lately. His own house?”

She had never been inside the farm-house. Often they had passed it in their walks with Arthur, and more than once he had tried to persuade the Rectory family to organise some sort of picnic party to his bachelor quarters; but to this Mrs Western had so decidedly objected that the project had never been fulfilled. So Lilias was rather in the dark, mentally as well as physically, as to the exact approach to the front door, if front door there was to a house whose three entrances were all much on a par, and in the end she hit upon the one which Mrs Wills decidedly considered the back door. It had the advantage, however, in the present state of the weather, of being near the kitchen, so her rap was answered without delay.

“My sister is still here, is she not? Miss Western – Miss Mary Western, I mean,” she explained, in reply to Mrs Wills’s mute look of bewildered inquiry.

“Oh, yes, miss, to be sure she is, and what we should have done without her I don’t know, and what we shall do now if she – ”

She was interrupted.

“Shut that door, if you please, Mrs Wills,” a man’s voice called out, “it sets all the other doors in the house rattling,” and from an inner room Mr Cheviott came out to enforce his directions. He had almost shut the door in Lilias’s face before he perceived her. Then – “I beg your pardon,” he said instinctively, but, dim as the light was, Lilias felt certain he had recognised her.

“He will think he is going to have the whole Western family down upon him,” she thought, with a smile. Then she came forward a little.

“I am Miss Western,” she said, calmly, and something in the voice, a certain cheery yet half-defiant ring, reminded her hearer of Mary – he had never come into personal contact with Lilias before. “I have come for my sister – it was too stormy for my mother to come out, but she was getting uneasy, and my little sister could not quite explain. I hope Miss Cheviott is not seriously hurt?”

“Thank you,” he replied, “we can hardly tell. Will you be so good as to come in, and I will tell your sister you are here.”

Lilias came in, and depositing her parcel – bundle, rather – on the table, stood, nothing loth, beside the welcome blaze of the kitchen fire.

“How queer it is,” she thought, “Mary seems quite established here! In the very heart of the enemy’s camp, according to her opinion, at least, for she has always persisted that Mr Cheviott’s interference was to be blamed for it all. I don’t think it was. Arthur would not be so fond of him if he were that sort of man, and besides,” with an unconscious slight elevation of her pretty head, “he is not the sort of man to be interfered with.”

Then she glanced round the kitchen – a pleasant, old-fashioned farm-house kitchen, not unpicturesque as seen in the flickering firelight, alternately lighting up and hiding the dark rafters and the quaintly-carved oak settle, where for so many years old John Birley had sat and smoked his pipe, and mused on the fallen fortunes of his house. The last of the Hathercourt Beverleys, Mawde’s great-great-grandson, to have come down to the bent, blue-stockinged old farmer, whose figure, hobbling into church, Lilias had been familiar with ever since she could remember.

“Fancy Mawde Beverley, beautiful and refined as she almost certainly was – the Maynes of Southcote are said to have been very beautiful —fancy her looking forward along the centuries to that old rough man as one of her great-grandchildren!” thought Lilias. “If she could have looked forward to Arthur– what a difference! Life is a very queer thing – queer and sad too, I suppose. Still I am glad to be alive, and to take my chance of the goods and bads.”

Unconsciously to herself, hope was re-asserting itself in Lilias’s heart; she could not have spoken or felt thus a few days previously.

Her soliloquy was soon interrupted.

“Lily,” exclaimed a voice behind her, and turning round Lilias saw Mary entering the kitchen. “I could hardly believe Mr Cheviott when he said you were here,” Mary went on. “And all alone, too! Lily, I do believe he thinks us all half mad!” She gave a little laugh, but checked it suddenly.

Lilias looked at her in surprise.

“Why should he?” she said, quickly. “I don’t see anything particularly mad in my coming down to look after you. I am your elder sister. Mother could not come. I don’t think you are quite fair on that man, Mary.”

“Long may you think so,” said Mary, sarcastically.

Lilias’s face flushed.

“Mary,” she said, nervously, “you don’t mean that – that there is anything indelicate in my coming here, to this house? It did not strike me so, or – ”

“Indelicate! – no, of course not. It is very, very good of you to have come,” said Mary, warmly; “only you see, I was so astonished.”

“But what were you intending? – what were you going to do?” said Lilias. “You can’t stay here all night without clothes, and you sent no message. We didn’t know what to think.”

“No,” said Mary, “I was just beginning to wonder what I should do. At first, you see, I was so taken up about that poor girl I could think of nothing else.”

“But she is not badly hurt,” interrupted Lilias; “you were laughing a minute ago; you don’t seem in bad spirits.”

“I don’t know,” said Mary, her voice saddening. “I think I was laughing out of a sort of nervousness. I really do not know whether she is much hurt or not, and the doctor either would not or could not say. I suppose to-morrow will show. But, Lilias, what am I to do? She cannot bear the idea of my leaving her.”

“Has she no maid with her?” asked Lilias.

“Yes, but she is a mere girl who has not been long with her. And the old housekeeper, Mrs Golding,” continued Mary, with a curious tone in her voice, “has sprained her ankle or something and cannot leave Romary. It would seem almost barbarous for me to leave her – Alys – Miss Cheviott, I mean – to-night, any way.”

“Don’t then; there is no objection to your staying under the circumstances. Why do you look so unhappy about it?” said Lilias. “Is it all your dislike to her brother?”

“No,” said Mary with some hesitation, “I don’t think that would affect me one way or the other, and as her brother, he is some degrees less odious than I could have expected. No, my feeling is, under the circumstances, Lilias, an intense dislike to putting them – him, I should say, in a position of obligation to us. It is like forcing him to be civil to us.”

“And why shouldn’t he be?” said Lilias, “it is much better than forcing him to be uncivil to us, anyway.”

“I don’t know that it is,” said Mary, smiling faintly. “I can’t altogether explain my feeling, but it is most uncomfortable altogether. He hates my staying as much as I do, and yet I can’t do a cruel thing. Why, I stayed up three nights in Bevan’s cottage when Jessie broke her leg, without a second thought?”

“Of course you did,” said Lilias, “and that’s the right way to put it. Forget all about her being Mr Cheviott’s sister, and just think of doing a kind thing. Mary, it’s very queer, but somehow it seems as if my troubles had, in a sense, done you more harm than me. Your sympathy for me has made you morbid.”

“Perhaps so,” replied Mary. “And I dare say you are right. But all the same,” she added, “I am not fond of ‘coals of fire;’ there always seems to me something mean in heaping them on.”

“But suppose you have no choice between that and letting your enemy hunger?” asked Lilias. “But ‘enemy’ and ‘coals of fire’ – what absurdly strong expressions – only you will have it poor Mr Cheviott is the cause of it all.”

“Poor Mr Cheviott!” repeated Mary.

“I must be going,” said Lilias. “George is coming to meet me; he was to start just half an hour after me, so I cannot miss him, and I don’t want your friend to offer to see me home, so good-night, dear. You’ll find all you want in that bundle, and a good deal you won’t want, for mother would put in all manner of things she thought might be useful for Miss Cheviott – from cotton-wool to a hop pillow, and no doubt you have got all you want from Romary.”

“No,” said Mary, “that maid has no sense, and forgot nearly everything she should have remembered. I am very glad of your olla podrida, Lily. Good-night, and thank you.”

They kissed each other, and Lilias went out again into the rain and the darkness. Mary came back again into the kitchen, wishing, “dreadfully,” as the children say, that she could have gone with her sister. She stood by the fire feeling dull and lonely, and, to tell the truth, though the Rectory was only a mile away, rather homesick! She was tired, too, which state of things has more to do with our moods of depression than we, in youth anyway, take into sufficient account.

“I must go back to Miss Cheviott,” she said to herself; “how I do hope the doctor will think her better to-morrow. I may as well see what Lily has brought. How kind poor mother is!”

She was turning to examine the bundle when the half-closed door was pushed open and Mr Cheviott came in.

“My sister seems to be falling asleep,” he said. “Perhaps it will be as well if we leave her for a little. I promised her you would go back in half an hour, and in the mean time – why, has your sister gone, and alone?”

“My brother was to meet her, thank you,” said Mary. “And you? Can you – are you really going to stay with Alys all night?”

“Yes,” replied Mary. “My sister is going to explain to my mother.”

“It is exceedingly kind of you,” said Mr Cheviott; “but really – I feel ashamed.”

“You need not feel so,” said Mary, quietly. “I have – well not often, perhaps, but certainly several times – done far more for the poor people about here, and would do so again at any moment for any one in trouble.”

Mr Cheviott was silent. Then his glance happening to fall on a basket standing unopened on a side table, he started and crossed the room to where it stood.

“I am forgetting,” he said; and then, taking a small knife out of his pocket, he proceeded to cut the strings which fastened it, and to lift out its contents. It had all been a pious fiction of Alys’s about fancying she would go to sleep better if left alone. She had been making herself unhappy about Mary’s having had nothing to eat all the evening, and a basket of provisions having been sent from Romary by Mrs Golding, she had begged her brother to do the honours of the farm-house by unpacking them for Miss Western’s benefit. She was full, too, of a secret wish that somehow or other a better understanding might be brought about between her brother and this girl, to whom from the first she had felt so strongly attracted.

“They are both so good,” said Alys to herself, as she lay, far from sleeping, alas! poor girl, on Mrs Wills’s best bed. “Laurence, of course, I do believe to be the noblest man in the world, except for his prejudices, and Mary, I can feel, is as good as gold. Why should they dislike each other so? For, though she tries to hide it from me, I can see that she dislikes him quite as much as he does her. And I am almost sure it was she whom I saw the other day coming down our avenue and crying. What can it all be? There is something I don’t know about – at I’m sure of.”

Then her thoughts took another flight.

“I wish Laurence would marry,” she said to herself. “I wish he would marry just such a girl as Mary Western. How nice it would be for me! Or – supposing I don’t get better from this accident – supposing I get worse and die – how dreadfully lonely Laurence will be! Poor Laurence – ” and Alys’s eyes filled with tears at the very thought.

In the mean time Mr Cheviott was unpacking the basket, and handily enough, as Mary, watching him with some curiosity, was forced to allow. All sorts of good things made their appearance – a cold ham, two chickens, a packet of tea, fine bread, wine, etc, etc. Mr Cheviott looked about him in perplexity.

“Are there no dishes of any kind to be had, I wonder?” he said, at last. “I don’t like to disturb Mrs Wills – she is giving her husband his supper in the back kitchen, I see. Poor people, we have put them about quite enough already.”

Mary could no longer stand aloof. She had felt half inclined to be nettled by Mr Cheviott’s calm manner of ignoring what she could not but own to herself had been, in its inference at least, a rude speech.

“He still feels he is under an obligation to me,” she had said to herself, hotly, “and therefore he won’t resent anything I say. I don’t agree with Lilias. I would much prefer his being uncivil, to civility of that patronising ‘I couldn’t-do-otherwise’ kind.” But the quiet good-nature with which he now turned to her for assistance appealed to something in Mary which could not but respond; the mixture of comicality too in the whole position was not without its attraction for her.

“You are not accustomed to kitchen arrangements,” she said, smiling a little; “there are the dishes – lots of real willow pattern, ‘all in a row’ – just above your head. Stay, don’t you see? I can reach them.”

She stepped forward, put her foot lightly on a three-legged stool standing just under the shelf of dishes. But three-legged stools are cantankerous articles – they require to be treated with a certain consideration mysterious to the uninitiated. Mary, perhaps for the first time in her life, suffering from some amount of self-consciousness, gave no thought to the three-leggedness of the stool, and, light as was her spring upon it, it proved too much for its equilibrium; the stool tilted forward, and Mary would have fallen ignominiously – perhaps worse than ignominiously, for the kitchen floor was tiled with hard bricks – to the ground, had not Mr Cheviott darted forward just in time to catch her. Mary was exceedingly, ridiculously annoyed – she flushed scarlet, but before she had time to do more than spring back from Mr Cheviott’s supporting arms, he said with a smile, in which, notwithstanding her mortification, Mary could not detect any approach to a sneer:

“You are not accustomed to three-legged stools, it is very evident, Miss Western. Thank you all the same for your kind intentions, however. I think I can reach the dishes – ”

He stretched upwards and got down two or three. Mary, to hide her discomfort, was glad to help in the “dishing up” that ensued, till between them a very appetising sort of picnic supper was spread out on the table, and Mary, to tell the truth, being really hungry, did not refuse her host’s invitation to fall to. He was hungry too, notwithstanding his anxiety, and for a few minutes the repast went on in silence. Then the ludicrousness of the scene struck Mary anew, more forcibly than ever. She could not restrain a smile, and Mr Cheviott, looking up at the moment, caught sight of it. He smiled too.

“What is it that amuses you so, Miss Western?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Everything I think,” she replied.

Mr Cheviott glanced round – then his eyes returned to the table.

“Mrs Golding has certainly sent us provisions enough to stand a siege,” he said.

“I suppose she thinks you and Miss Cheviott would starve outright without her to take care of you,” said Mary.

“Just exactly what she does think,” he replied. “How do you – have you ever seen her?”

Mary wished her remark had remained unspoken, but judged it best to put a good face upon it. “Yes,” she said, bravely, her traitorous cheeks flaming again, nevertheless; “I saw her that – that ill-starred day when I got locked up in your haunted room.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” said Mr Cheviott. Then he hesitated. “Why do you call it ‘that ill-starred day’?” he asked, with some curiosity. “It did not do you any harm, did it? You were not so very frightened, surely?”

“I was very frightened – ridiculously frightened,” replied Mary; “but I suppose my nerves, though I hate to speak or think of such things as nerves, were hardly in their usual order that day. I had had a good deal to try me. Yes, I was very frightened. When I heard your step approaching the door, I was nearly beside myself with fright.” Here a half-smothered exclamation from Mr Cheviott, which, had it been from any one else, would have sounded to Mary marvellously like “poor child!” caused her to hesitate. She looked up at him – no, he was calmly filling his wine glass – she must have been mistaken. Still she hesitated, but only for a moment. Could she ever hope for such an opportunity again? Be brave, Mary, and make the most of it! “It was not on account of my fright that I so dislike the remembrance of that day,” she went on, hurriedly. “It was because for the first – no, for the second time in my life, I felt that I had put myself into an utterly false, a most lowering position.”

“How?” said Mr Cheviott, quickly. But there was nothing impertinent in the question – his tone of interest was too genuine.

“How?” repeated Mary; “don’t you see how? If you do not, I am increasingly thankful to be able to tell you how – to show you how horrible it was for me to be forced into such a position. How? Why, of course, by re-entering a house where, only the day before, I had been so so – ”

Mr Cheviott looked up, and again Mary saw the dark flush, not often seen there, rise to his forehead.

“So – so what? Do not speak hastily,” he said. “Yet perhaps it is best to know the worst. You are not going to say ‘so insulted’?”

“No,” said Mary, “I was not. So misjudged, I think, was the word on my lips.”

Mr Cheviott smiled – a bitter, sarcastic smile, it seemed to Mary, and perhaps she was right. It roused her to go on.

“I don’t know why I should care – the matter can have less than no interest for you, as little as your opinion of it ought to have for me, and yet I do care – care exceedingly that you, Mr Cheviott, should, know that I was actually forced into going to your house that day – that nothing but the risk of possible disloyalty to others, to another, at least, made me give in to do so. But of course I never dreamed of my going there coming to your knowledge. I may be blunt and plain-spoken, but I am not capable of such coarse, obtrusive defiance as that would have been.”

Mr Cheviott got up from his chair and walked about for a minute or two. “She thinks her position painful,” he said to himself, “and to such a sensitive girl it must be so, I suppose. Nothing that I could say would ever make her believe the light in which what she did really appears to me. And still less can she know how infinitely, unspeakably more painful than hers my position is!” Then he came back to the table, and standing opposite Mary, he said, earnestly:

“I am glad you have told me what you have felt about it,” he said; “but will you believe me, Miss Western, when I tell you that your coming again to Romary never struck me as you think. If I thought about it at all, it was to feel sure that, as you say was the case, you had been forced to come. It was not likely, was it,” he went on, with considerable bitterness in his tone, “that I should imagine you would wish to come in my way after – well, never mind. It is enough for me to say,” his voice resuming its earnest kindliness, “that nothing you could do would ever appear to me ‘coarse, or obtrusive, or defiant,’ or anything but brave and true and womanly.”

Mary was mollified in spite of herself. But her prejudices and prepossessions were far too deep-rooted to have received more than a very passing shake. And alas! in her moment of triumph she forgot to be generous.

“I am unaccustomed to compliments,” she said, coldly. “And I did not mean to ask you to make allowance for me. No doubt my disadvantages incline you to do so – just as you would have excused my ignorance of French the first time I spoke to you. You have misunderstood me, Mr Cheviott. I am not ashamed of what I did, I only regret the ignorance of the world which made me trust to not being misunderstood.”

Again Mr Cheviott got up from his seat – this time more hastily.

“I wonder,” he said, in a low, constrained voice, – “I wonder, Miss Western, if you are anxious to make me unsay some of the words I just now, in all honesty, applied to you?”

Mary did not reply.

“I have my wish,” she said to herself, “I have succeeded in forcing him to be uncivil.”

And when her conscience smote her a little she silenced it by the old reflection that it was Lilias’s enemy with whom she was doing battle. What question could there be of hurting the feelings of the man who had done his best to break her darling’s heart? – who had even avowed his deliberate intention of destroying the happy prospects that might have been hers?