Chapter 10

RIVAL SUITORS.

"Where have you been, May? I have been frightened to death about you."

The process was apparently a painless one, judging from the extreme comfort of Mrs. Webster's surroundings: her easy-chair drawn close to the fire but sheltered from it by a screen, the lamp on the table adjusted to a nicety behind, the illustrated papers ready cut for use, and the last new novel lying open on her lap. May seated herself leisurely and stretched out her hands to the blaze before she answered.

"I've been having tea at the cottage."

"And came home in the wet and dark by yourself?"

"No. Mr. Lessing saw me home."

"Of course; I know now that your staying at home to-day to take Sally to the confirmation was just an excuse. You did not want to come with me to Fairfield."

"No, I did not; but I honestly did want to go with Sally: she looked so pretty, mother. I've not been at a confirmation since I was confirmed myself."

"I don't want to talk of that just now, May. Lady Bland is terribly hurt at the way you have treated Cecil. He's quite ill, poor fellow!"

"I'm sorry."

"You are not," snapped Mrs. Webster, "or you would have been kinder to him!"

"Need we go over this oft-trodden ground again?" May asked rather wearily. "I can only reiterate that I really can't and won't marry any one I do not care for."

"I don't believe there is the man in creation that you will care for. It really would be wise for you to accept the one you least dislike."

"Or not marry anybody."

"That is a more than likely alternative. You are five-and-twenty now, and you might have been married over and over again."

May laughed. "I don't know why you are so keen to get rid of me. You will be dreadfully lonely without me; not to say dull."

"That's true enough," said Mrs. Webster, softening; "but a girl like you ought to marry. You won't make a good old maid."

"No," May admitted candidly.

And this question of marriage, which was sorely perplexing the mistress, was pressing hard also upon her maid, for pretty Rose Lancaster, who had successfully played off her rival suitors against each other for a year, was at last compelled to make her choice between them. Tom Burney had that day received an offer from the squire of a free passage to Tasmania, and a very good appointment on a farm there with a relation of Mr. Lessing's, where, if he gave satisfaction, he might in a few years look forward to part-ownership.

"I only propose to part with you because agriculture does not pay, or I have not learned the way to make it do so," the squire had said. "I have been making up my mind to reduce my staff; and, my cousin having lately written to me about a suitable man, it occurred to me to give you the first offer."

Tom coloured with pleasure. "Thank you, sir; it seems a great chance. It would be a certainty, wouldn't it? I could take another with me."

"Well, it would be wiser for the other fellow to get a promise of work. I might ask if there were an opening," Paul had replied.

"It's not a man as I was thinking of, sir. It was a wife!"

"Oh, I beg your pardon," the squire said laughing. "But if you care for my opinion on a subject of which I know but little, I believe quite the wisest thing you could do would be to take out a wife with you. She would make a home for you and keep you steady. I expect you have some girl in your eye, Burney."

Tom smiled rather sheepishly; it would be time enough to mention Rose when his banns were put up.

And that very afternoon when work was over, Tom had gone home and put on his best clothes; then walked boldly up to the Court and demanded an interview with Rose. She came into the servant's hall where he waited nervously by the fire, and, giving him a careless nod, seated herself and put her toes upon the fender.

"What is it, Tom? I can't stop long; I'm expecting Miss Webster in every minute."

"It's come at last: what I've waited for," stammered Tom. "I've a chance of giving you a home, Rose: a nice one, as far as I can make out."

"Where?" asked Rose, with shining eyes and parted lips, a vision of herself as a bride, in a white frock, and handsome Tom as her bridegroom, floating before her.

"In Tasmania; if you love me well enough to come with me out there. It's a wonderful offer that the squire has given me; and some day I may bring you home almost like a lady."

"But I don't know where it is, and I wouldn't go if I did--not with you nor any man! What can you be thinking of to stuff me up with nonsense like that?" Rose asked poutingly. "I'll have a home on this side of the water, or nowhere."

"And you shall," Tom declared passionately, "if you'll promise to wait until I can make you one!--but I'll have your word for it. You shall have done with Dixon and stick fast by me, or----"

"Or what?" Rose said with rather frightened eyes.

"Or I'll go where you won't be troubled by me any more. Look here! you've held me on for eighteen months now, and, if you cared for me one-half as I love you, you would be ready enough to come with me to the other side of the world, when I can make you an honest offer of a home. I'd follow you to the world's end; ill or well, rich or poor I'd love you just the same; you should not have a trouble that I could keep from you. I've told you so before, and I tell you so to-night; but it's the last time. You can take me or leave me; but I'll know now which it is to be. It don't matter much to me where you want to live, except that, if I don't take this offer, we must wait a bit; but I'll know your mind about it. It must be 'yes' or 'no' to-night!"

Happily for Rose, Miss Webster's bell pealed a noisy summons at that moment.

"I can't stop, Tom! I _really_ can't! Miss Webster is not one who can wait. I'll think it over and tell you sometime soon."

"When?" asked Tom, catching her hands and holding them so tightly that she gave a little cry.

"Sunday. Sunday night after church; you can see me home if you like," and with that promise Tom had to be content.

"Mind what you are up to, Rose. Don't play with me too far," he said.

And as Rose sat stitching in the housekeeper's room that night, her mind busied itself over Tom's words, and the difficulty of making a decision. It had never entered Rose's pretty head to lay this question of marriage before God. Had she done so she would have been saved from making a mistake, which was to leave its mark upon the whole of her future life. Her heart drew her one way, and her ambition another. Undoubtedly Tom, with his warm heart and openly expressed devotion, was the man she loved the best of the many who had paid her attention; but she might have to wait for him for years, whilst, if Dixon chose to offer it, he could give her a home to-morrow that any girl in the village might envy; but he had never spoken out as Tom had spoken to-night. His wooing had not been so manly and so straight as poor Tom's. Rose had almost made up her mind to tell him on Sunday that she would wait for him, when a voice waked her from her reverie; and the voice was Dixon's.

"I suppose you don't happen to know if the carriage will be wanted to take the ladies to the station to-morrow? I heard some talk about their going out, but I haven't had any orders."

"I'm not the one to ask! you'll find Mr. Wheeler in the pantry," said Rose, a little sharply.

"What's put you out to-night, I wonder?" said Dixon, coming a little further into the room and closing the door behind him. "Had some quarrel with that peppery lad Burney, I expect? Anyway you've been crying about something; and ten to one it's Burney. I saw him coming away from here, and I had the biggest mind to ask him what business he had to be prowling round a place where he was turned off for unsteadiness."

"You'd best mind what you say about him!" Rose said, stitching away with feverish rapidity. "He wants me to marry him."

"Does he now? Banns put up on Sunday, I suppose?" said Dixon, with a palpable sneer.

"No; we should wait," faltered Rose.

"I should not have thought you were of the waiting sort. Then it's good-bye to me."

"It will be good-bye if I promise; he'll be all or nothing. He's just mad about me."

"Then you've not promised yet?" asked Dixon, eagerly. "You've not been silly enough to do that, Rose?"

"He won't wait; I'm to tell him on Sunday night. And oh! I'm miserable: I don't know what to do!" And Rose let her work fall in her lap, and burst into sobbing.

"Don't cry! don't take on! I'll tell you what to do, my dear. Promise to marry me instead of that hot-headed fool, Burney. Settle it all right away, and don't fash your head any more about it. There need be no waiting--I'll go and see the vicar about the banns,--and if so be that we can't get the rooms over the stables to ourselves, I'll ask Mr. Lessing to give us a cottage. There! you see I'm in earnest. It would be grand to hear your name given out in church the next Sunday as ever is, now wouldn't it?" and Dixon pulled away Rose's hands from her face, and smiled down on her.

"Oh, I couldn't!" Rose said. "There's Tom."

"That would settle Tom fast enough."

Rose never knew quite how it happened; but half an hour later Dixon left without any order for the carriage on the morrow, but with Rose's promise that she would marry him as soon as he liked, and with her consent that the banns should be published on the following Sunday. Rose's silly little head was in such a whirl of delightful excitement that, for the time being, Tom and his misery were forgotten. There was the wedding to think of, and the clothes that must be made, and the question of hat versus veil, for the wedding-day loomed large in the foreground. She wondered how Miss Webster would look when she gave her a month's notice that night; and whether Mrs. Webster would offer to have the wedding breakfast at the Court. It was almost certain that as Dixon was coachman, he would have the loan of the carriage; and she would be driven to the church that day for all the world just like a lady, and half the village would turn out to see her married. And then Tom's large, reproachful eyes, with their expression of dumb pain, stared at her out of the brilliant picture which her imagination conjured. Poor Tom! how would he bear it? She comforted herself a little with the thought that he would be quite certain now to accept the offer of that situation abroad of which he had spoken, and she would not be vexed by the sight of his unhappiness.

"I must not let him meet me on Sunday night. I must write and tell him that Dixon and I have settled it, and that he must not mind too much," thought Rose.

The letter was not an easy one to write, and Rose shelved it. She had a way of shelving unpleasant subjects; but when Saturday night came she could put it off no longer, so, fetching down her writing-case, she spoiled a dozen sheets of paper in the effort to make her news fairly palatable, finally dashing off an unsatisfactory scrawl, badly written and lamely expressed; and, having folded and directed it, she flew out into the yard to find a messenger to take it. The first who presented himself was the groom.

"It would be doing me a real favour if you would let Burney have this note to-night," she said. "It's very particular;" and with the note she shoved sixpence into the man's hand.

He laughed as he pocketed the coin, and was laughing still when he went back into the saddle-room, where Dixon sat smoking over the fire.

"What's the joke, mate?"

"A note from your girl to Burney--'very particular' she called it! I'll warrant it's to tell him he'd better not come this way any more."

"I dare say it is," replied Dixon, slowly. "Hand it over; I'm going down to the village, and I'll leave it myself."

The groom hesitated. "I think I'll stick to it; she gave me sixpence to make sure he got it, and I wouldn't like to cheat her."

"Stick to the sixpence but give me the letter. Who's a better right to it than I, I should like to know? I'm as good as married already," said Dixon, stretching out his hand.

"You'll promise not to forget."

"I'm not one as forgets," said Dixon, with an odd laugh.

"And if there's any mistake you'll settle it?"

"Yes; I'll settle it."

The groom gave the note and went out whistling; he was not quite easy in his mind about the missive. Left to himself, Dixon turned the envelope round in his fingers, examining it back and front. The blotted writing gave evidence of hurry, the blistered paper testified to tears, and Dixon broke into an oath.

"The little jade!--that's the second time she's cried about him this week to my certain knowledge," he said aloud. "She would not dare to chuck me now, though, even if she does love the other one; but I've more than half a mind to put this in the fire. It may be to tell him that she's settled things with me; but it would not be a bad joke to let him hear it for himself in church, and her telling him nothing about it, good or bad, would let him know she did not care much for him."

In another moment there was a brief blaze in the fire, and Rose's note was reduced to ashes.

The next morning Tom Burney rose with the feeling that he trod on air, such a strange exhilaration of spirit possessed him.

He had heard nothing from Rose during the week, and her very silence filled him with hope. If she meant to refuse him, he was almost sure that she would have put him out of his misery before this. He was not generally a vain fellow, but to-day his toilet was a matter of moment; his tie was re-adjusted half a dozen times, and he asked his landlady to give him a chrysanthemum for his buttonhole.

"Goin' courtin'?" she said, with a laugh as she pinned it in for him. And Tom coloured rosy red, but said nothing.

He started early for church, hoping that he might catch a glimpse of Rose as she passed in with the other servants from the Court; but either she had got there before him, or, for some unknown cause, she had been detained at home. Dixon presently appeared, smart and neat, giving Tom an affable nod as he passed up the path to the church; but Tom's eyes were fixed straight in front of him, and he ignored the greeting.

"I'll not pretend to be friends when I ain't," he said to himself.

Presently the hurrying bell warned the outside group of stragglers to make their way into church; and Tom took his usual seat at the end of the nave. It is to be feared that his thoughts that morning were not occupied with devotion. Prayer and psalm passed unheeded over his head; but when, at the end of the second lesson, there was a pause, and the rector turned over the leaves of a book in front of him, Tom lifted his head and waited for the banns that would follow. Before long he might be listening to the publishing of his own.

"I publish the banns of marriage between William Dixon, bachelor, and Rose Lancaster, spinster, both of this parish. . . ."

Was it some ghastly nightmare, Tom wondered, as he clutched at the seat in front of him? But the suppressed grin on the faces near him, the foolish smile with which the publishing of banns is so often received in a village church, convinced him that he had heard aright. The blood was rioting to his brain, and the beating in his throat made him put up his hand with the vain endeavour to loosen his collar lest he should choke there and then with the passion that could find no outlet. For one instant he was possessed by a wild wish to stand up and forbid the banns; but what end would be gained by making himself a greater laughing-stock to the village than he was at present, for already he felt the derisive finger of scorn pointed at him as the man whom Rose had jilted. Even now he saw one or two of the lads nudge each other and look at him with curious eyes. To be watched at such a moment was torture, and, like an animal in pain, Tom longed for solitude. He groped blindly under the seat for his hat, made his way to the door and slipped out. He stumbled on like a man in delirium, looking neither to the right nor left, but following instinctively the path across the fields which led to the river. The turbulence of its grey waters, as it rushed on to the sea, seemed most in keeping with the wild, wicked thoughts that surged unchecked through his brain, and were bearing him he knew not whither. He threw himself upon the long, rank grass on the bank, still wet with the heavy mist of night, and, pillowing his chin in his hands, watched with dilating eyes the swirling river as it swept by. A giddiness dimmed his vision, a singing filled his ears.

"If I slipped over and was carried along with it, there'd be an end of it all," thought Tom. And the chill wind came sighing across the water, and shook the heavy rushes at the edge, which seemed whisperingly to echo his thought, "an end of it all."

Then Tom half-angrily roused himself, and pressed his hands to the eyes that burned like fire, and tried to collect his bewildered senses. What!--slip out of life like a drowned rat and never see Rose again, nor tell her what he knew of the man she had chosen in preference to him. She would be glad to know he was dead, he told himself with fierce bitterness. She had played with him like a cat with a mouse for more than a year but in the long run the mouse died squeaking. Surely she could not be so false-hearted as to break faith with him to-night; she would meet him and say good-bye? She _should_ meet him, whether she liked it or not; and if Dixon were with her so much the better,--and Tom's fists clenched involuntarily.

For hours and hours he wandered, following the windings of the river, until, as the November sun paled and sank in a bank of grey cloud, he discovered that he was some six or eight miles from Rudham, and that his knees were knocking together with mingled emotion and fatigue. A wayside inn seemed a haven of refuge to him in his exhausted condition. Through the red blind of the bar a light shone cheerily, and Tom entered the door without knocking, and, seating himself on the settle by the fire, ordered sixpennyworth of brandy.

"Hot water or cold? You'll have it hot, if you take my advice," said the landlady, with a glance at the bloodshot eyes that glared so strangely out of the deathly white face.

"Neither, thanks," said Tom, tossing off the raw spirit at a gulp.

It tasted to him like so much water; it did not muddle his brain, it cleared it, it nerved him for that interview with Rose.

"Another sixpennyworth, please," he said, laying down a shilling on the table.

The landlady paused, and coughed behind her hand; she had sons of her own.

"I wouldn't if I was you," she said, pushing him back sixpence. "You've took as much as is good for you, and ne'er a drop of water.

"You can serve me or leave it alone," said Tom, angrily. "I'm ill; I need it. It tastes like so much water."

The landlady shook her head but gave him the brandy, and Tom, having swallowed it, bade her a civil good night and went on his way.

The landlady hurried to the door and looked after him; he was walking very fast but quite straight.

"It may have gone to his head, but it's not got into his legs," she said, a note of admiration in her voice.

Tom meanwhile hurried on to the station, which he knew to be not more than half a mile away. He was just in time to catch the one down-train that ran on Sunday evening, which would land him in Rudham in time for evening service--not that Tom meant to go to church that night. He would walk outside and wait for Dixon and for Rose. Many a time the two men had escorted Rose back to the Court, one on either side. This would be the last.