Chapter II: Refused

As soon as he had disappeared, I sat down in my chair and began to think. I might just as well do it then as at any other time. There was nothing for me to do. All my occupation seemed gone for ever. It would have been better if I had been one of the housemaids who were beating up the bed on which she died, with so much cheerful energy; or if I had had a little brother or sister, any one dependent on me, for whom I should have been obliged to order meals and bestir myself to amuse or to attend to. But my time was too much my own. Mrs. Medlicott, in deference to my loss, sent up my dinner even without the least reference to me. I had not the poor distraction of annoyance or trouble to divert my thoughts from the great void that had been suddenly made in my life. So I sat with my head buried in my hands, and pondered upon St. Pucelle. The idea of going there, although not positively agreeable, attracted me more than any that had passed through my brain yet. Naturally, I had thought a little of my future. In the pauses when grief had spent itself, and I had wept till I was in a state of insensibility to everything, I had more than once wondered, in a dull sort of way, what was to become of me; but, as I had told Mr. Warrington, whether I went into a convent or on the stage was a matter of perfect indifference. All I wanted was to change my outward surroundings: not to be obliged every morning to pass the closed bedroom door which I had been accustomed to enter with an affectionate greeting; not to have to sit down at the same table where a chair had always been placed opposite to mine, and eat my meals in solitude; not, in fact, to have my heart torn every minute by those seeming ‘nothings’ which make up the happiness or the misery of every human life.

St. Pucelle could have no power to remind me of all this, although I knew that in my inmost heart I should never forget it. But there I should be in a totally new country—amongst a set of strangers—far from everything connected with the bitter suffering I was undergoing now.

The thought, instead of intimidating me, gave me courage. I seemed to breathe freer when I had decided to accept Mr. Lovett’s offer of a home at all events, for the next few months; and I rose, with the first semblance of interest I had experienced in anything since _she_ left me, to find an old atlas which was stowed away amongst our small collection of books, and see if St. Pucelle was of sufficient importance to be marked anywhere upon the frontiers of Belgium. I found it, very much screwed up in a corner, it is true, but still distinct enough to be read, close to the Valley of Artois, and on the borders of the celebrated Forest of Piron. The afternoon was merging, by this time, into the dusk of evening, and I was just about to ring the bell and desire the servant to light the lamp, when my attention was attracted by an altercation going on in the hall. Mrs. Medlicott was apparently, if one might judge by sounds, fighting with some one who wished to effect an entrance to her domains.

‘You can’t come in, sir,’ I heard her say, after a long consultation, ‘I couldn’t think of allowing it. She ain’t fit to see no one—and won’t be for days—that’s my opinion; and if she was, I’m quite sure as she would never dream of admitting a gentleman at this hour. Why, it’s as near dark as can be—and Miss Marsh quite alone, as she is too.’

‘Only for a minute!’ pleaded a young fresh voice.

Why! it was Charlie—dear old Charlie Sandilands, and she was actually sending him away! Something rushed up to my throat and my eyes, and I felt as if I _must_ see him; as if it would do me all the good in the world to look in his honest eyes and feel the warm grasp of his hand. What Mrs. Medlicott thought of my propriety I do not know, but I flew to the drawing-room door, and opening it just wide enough to allow of my voice being heard, exclaimed:

‘Yes, Charlie, come in; I should like to see you;’ which caused him quickly to pass the irate landlady on the doormat, and enter my apartment.

I had met Mr. Warrington with dry eyes and a composed voice, and I had intended to do the same by Charlie Sandilands. But we had had so many happy evenings together, when _she_ had been present, to laugh at the absurd devotion which this foolish young man persisted in paying me, that the contrast between them and the position in which I now stood struck me too forcibly, and instead of taking the hand he extended to me, I retreated to my armchair again, and burst into a storm of tears.

I had not set eyes on Charlie since she had been attacked with her fatal illness, although his dear good mother had come to me as soon as she had heard of my trouble, and remained with me to the end. All that had happened since we met last, and all the sad details of which we must speak together, overwhelmed me, and for a few minutes I could do nothing but cry. But then I held out my hand to him, without raising my head, and said:

‘Oh, Charlie! you must not think I am not glad to see you; but you know how much I loved her, and how very miserable I must be.’

‘Yes, of course, I know all about it,’ he answered, in an awkward manner (men do feel so strangely awkward in the presence of a weeping woman whom they have no right to console); ‘but please don’t mind me, Hilda. I will go away at once, if you wish it; but I thought I would like to see you, if I could, and tell you how sorry we all are about it.’

‘Don’t go away just yet,’ I murmured. ‘I shall be all right presently. We will have a cup of tea together, and that will do me good. I am not often so silly as this, Charlie; for, after all, what is the good of crying? It cannot bring her back again.’

The poor boy looked very uncomfortable at my sad words, of which there was no refutation, and tried to cover their effect by ringing the bell for me. I call him a boy, because we had always looked upon and spoken of him as such, but in reality he was only two years younger than myself. He was the eldest of a large family of children belonging to a widowed friend, and we had been such near neighbours for several years, that we were very intimate. Scarcely a day had passed without our seeing or hearing something of the Sandilands; and Charlie, who was a clerk in Somerset House, and spent all his days in London, had been used to walk in and out of our little room in the evenings like a tame cat. We made nobody of Charlie Sandilands; and though his mother and mine had had many a laugh over his flirtation with me, I looked upon him quite in the light of a brother or a cousin, and took what liberties with him I chose.

When the tea made its appearance, we drank it so silently, that I observed at last that I thought we were holding a Quakers meeting.

‘I saw you and your brothers in the cemetery yesterday, Charlie,’ I continued, with an effort, believing that if I did not break the ice I should never be able to speak to him at all; ‘and I thought it so kind of you to come.’

‘There was no kindness in it, Hilda. I would not have been absent for worlds.’

‘Well, I thought it kind. I suppose one feels small attentions at such times more than at others. And _she_ was very fond of you, Charlie. She used to call you “the blue-eyed baby.”’

‘She was always too good to me, I know that. Though I am not much of a baby, Hilda. I shall be twenty-three next birthday.’

‘What of that? It is experience, not years, that makes our age. You will always be a baby, I think. Your mother has spoiled you so.’

‘Oh, come, that’s not fair! She spoils Willy and Herbert twice as much as she does me! Not that I’m jealous of it, for I hate being coddled.’

‘Ah, don’t hate it, dear. You may live to miss it, as I am doing now.’

‘Mother sent her best love,’ Charlie went on rapidly, feeling he had made a blunder; ‘and said, if it would be any comfort to you, she would be so glad if you would come to us for a few days—or for as long as you like.’

‘I couldn’t, Charlie, thank you. It is very kind of your mother, and you must tell her so; but I would rather be alone. Besides, I have work to do at home.’

‘You could be as much alone as you liked with us. I’d be sorry for the one who would dare to disturb you. And until your affairs are settled, and all that sort of thing, wouldn’t it be better for you, Hilda, to stay with friends, than in these lodgings by yourself?’

‘My affairs are already settled, Charlie. I am going to live with my father’s old friend, Mr. Lovett, at St. Pucelle.’

‘_What?_’ cried poor Charlie, thunderstruck at my announcement.

‘I am going abroad,’ I said, with the selfish indifference that a great trouble gives us to other people’s pain. ‘I could not stay in Norwood, you know. I should go mad before a month was over my head; and my greatest desire now is to lose sight of it at once and for ever. It’s very name is hateful to me.’

‘Oh, Hilda! is it possible you are going to leave us?’ he said, in a voice of despair.

‘Why, you could never have imagined I should remain here. I have suffered too much for that. I have no home now, and no friends; and I must try and begin a new existence for myself, if that is possible, where I can wipe out the memory of the past as soon as may be.’

‘What will Norwood be without you?’ he exclaimed.

‘Oh, Charlie, don’t be so ungrateful, when your good mother will still be here, and all your brothers and sisters! Do you think if I had a mother and a home circle left to me, as you have, that I should give more than an ordinary regret to the departure or arrival of mere friends, however pleasant their company might be!’

‘It is quite different, Hilda. You are not a mere friend to me, and you have known it for a long time past.’

This was one of the speeches which a month ago I should have laughed at merrily, and called him a saucy boy for making. But there was a mournful earnestness in his voice to-day, that, added to the solemnity of my own feelings, forbid my even smiling at him.

‘Please don’t talk like that,’ I said quietly; ‘the time is past with us for jesting.’

‘But it is no jest, Hilda; it is truth—reality! I have loved you for years. Oh, don’t leave Norwood! Stay with us, and let my mother be your mother, and make me happy. I should be so very, very happy if you were my wife.’

‘_Your wife!_’

The idea seemed sacrilege to me. But the poor boy took my vehement surprise for anger.

‘Oh, I ought not to have said anything about it now. It is unseemly, indecent. I have given you pain. But do forgive me, Hilda. I had not the least intention of offending you. It slipped out of my mouth before I was aware of it. The news of your departure was such a dreadful blow!’

‘I am not angry,’ I replied. ‘I do not see why the presence of a great grief should make it indecent to speak of love. It is at such times we want love most. But it can never be spoken of between you and me, Charlie—not seriously; and so I am very sorry you ever spoke of it at all.’

‘Is it impossible, then, that you could ever marry me, Hilda? I have two hundred a year already from Somerset House, and the salary increases annually. I know it is very little, but I could contrive to keep you in the same style in which you have been living, and my mother would take you to her heart as another daughter.’

I was so troubled for the poor young fellow. I looked up into his blue eyes, and they were actually swimming in tears. I felt I had been a heartless brute to let him go on loving me all this time, and think that it was play. But I could no more have got up a semblance of passion for him, than I could for the table which divided us.

‘Charlie!’ I said, ‘if you had two thousand a year it would make no difference to me. I shall never marry any one. My heart was all hers, and it will lie in her grave till we meet again.’

‘You think so now, but you will alter your mind by-and-by, perhaps.’

‘Nothing can alter it. And I feel very angry with myself to think that I should have let you grow fond of me, and never found out you were in earnest.’

‘_In earnest!_ It is the hope of my life. And I will never give it up until one of us is dead and buried.’

‘What am I to do to convince you it will be of no use?’ I said despondingly. ‘If you will give me your solemn promise of secrecy, Charlie, I will tell you something that I have never told to a single soul, except to _her_; and that I would cut my tongue out sooner than tell you, unless it were to try and repair the wrong which, it seems, I have done you.’

‘You have never done me any wrong,’ replied the poor boy, with the generosity of a true affection. ‘You didn’t mean it, Hilda. It is all my own fault.’

‘But I won’t allow that, Charlie. I have not laid myself out to attract you, it is true; but I am older than you are, and I should have remembered what our intimacy might lead to.’

‘You seem to harp a great deal on the fact of there being a couple of years’ difference in our ages; but if a man is not a man at two-and-twenty, he never will be.’

‘Well, I am going to show you now that I consider you to be a man, and to treat you as such. I have told you that there is a reason why I shall never marry you nor any one; and that reason is, because—because——’

It was much harder to tell than I had imagined it would be. I felt so much for poor Charlie’s disappointment, that I thought I could make any sacrifice in order to salve his wounded feelings; but nothing is so mortifying to a woman as to have to confess that she has loved in vain.

‘Don’t go on if you don’t wish to,’ said Charlie, with ungrammatical consideration, as I paused to gain a little courage.

‘Oh yes; I mean to tell you, that you may be sure that my refusal has nothing to do with yourself.’

‘You care for somebody else!’ he exclaimed intuitively.

‘No, I don’t,’ I said, reddening up under the consciousness of telling a lie; ‘but I did—that is, I used to—I mean that years and years ago I met some one in whom I was very much interested, as you are in me, and I thought things would have been all right between us; but they never were, and so I shall be Hilda Marsh to the end of my days.’

‘Is that _all_?’ said Charlie, evidently disappointed at so tame a love-story. ‘I shouldn’t lose heart over that, Hilda; you’ll meet the fellow again some day, and come to an understanding with him; or perhaps you’ll forget him, and learn to think of me instead.’

‘How utterly I must have failed to make you comprehend my meaning,’ I replied. ‘Do be convinced, once and for ever, Charlie, there can be no question of love for me, in this world, again.’

‘Is he dead, then?’

‘Yes, he is dead—at least to me.’

My face burned as I uttered the words. Charlie received them with a look of blank dismay. Then he said:

‘All this has made me feel very miserable, Hilda. I think, perhaps, that I had better go home.’

‘Yes, Charlie, I wish you would. It can do you no good to stay here, and the sight of your home may make you feel there are other people less lucky than you are.’

We shook hands in silence, and he crept quietly out of the house. I was very sorry for him, for I knew I possessed influence over him, and I was afraid that he might find some difficulty in shaking it off again. It was as well for him as for myself that I had determined to leave Norwood. The conversation I had just held had recalled Cave Charteris powerfully to my mind; and for some time after Charlie had left me, I sat pondering over that epoch in my life, which was so entirely closed and done with, but which yet had left such ineffaceable marks behind it.

It had happened five years before; but the remembrance was as fresh as yesterday. I had always believed myself most to blame in the matter, whilst my dear mother had unhesitatingly attributed all the wrong to him. But then I had loved the man, and she had only viewed him through the misery he had caused me. I had told Charlie Sandilands but half the story; it would have blistered my lips to let him know the whole truth.

But from my heart I could have no secrets. As I sat by myself that evening, I recalled every expression of Cave’s handsome features, every tone of his thrilling voice, as he lingered, day after day, in our little drawing-room, or accompanied us in our walks, or on our journeys to town.

I had believed so fully then, and so had _she_, that the most momentous period of my existence had arrived, and that all those walks and talks could end but in one way—the declaration of Cave Charteris’s love for me.

For why else had he, over a period of months, attached himself to our side as though he had a right to accompany us everywhere? I had no doubt on the subject, and permitted myself to love him without limit; and my mother looked upon him as her future son, and hailed every good trait in his character as a fresh guarantee for my happiness. And so we had gone on, in our blind belief, until one day, after he had been absent for about a week, I received an affectionate letter from him, claiming my congratulations on the score of his father having, at last, withdrawn his refusal to consent to his travelling on the Continent for a couple of years, preparatory to his entering the profession of the law. And from that hour I had never heard from him again. His philandering after me proved only to have been the expression of an impatient spirit waiting restlessly to hear its doom, and anxious, meanwhile, to make the weary hours pass away by any means that came easiest to hand.

I know that heaps of women must have deceived themselves after this fashion, and felt it as keenly, perhaps, as I did; but it seemed to me, in my inexperience of pain, as if nobody had ever suffered so much in this world before.

My dear mother might rave against the dishonour of Mr. Charteris’s behaviour to me, as freely as she chose, but we two poor unprotected women had no remedy against it. We could only fly into each other’s arms, and weep over it until we could weep no more. I poured out all my soul to my one true friend and companion, and then we made a compact never to speak of his name to one another again, unless the burden should become too heavy to bear alone.

It was out of this grief that the complete love and reverence I maintained for my lost parent had been finally cemented. Her tenderness and sympathy for me in the great trial of health and spirits that followed, had made her appear more like an angel than a woman in my eyes; and at the time of her death, it is true that I would not have exchanged her love for that of any man. She had been my one great good in this world, and the Creator of the universe had seen fit to take it away. What wonder was it that both my heart and my soul were in a state of rebellion against Him?