Chapter IV: Her First Offer

Ben was badly shaken.

So long as Olwen was in Bramforth and he knew where she went and the people who were her friends, there did not seem to be so much need of haste. If she were going away, however, he had no intention of allowing her to vanish from his sight without arriving at an understanding. He was not a quick-witted man. Often as his beloved had sheered off, leading him away from the point, he yet was not certain that this was intentional. Girls very often, or so he was told, did not know their own minds until a man had actually spoken the fatal words.

He meant that Miss Innes should hear them, and he carried out his purpose with a ruthlessness which left no room for evasion.

The day at the theatre closed, as, according to Mrs. Holroyd's programme, with a supper at their house. It was a merry, noisy party, and after the meal, Gracie took Hugh and Marjorie to the morning room to hear the new gramophone. Olwen and Ben remained in the drawing-room, and after a while, Mrs. Holroyd, having been warned by her son, melted away, leaving the two _tete-a-tete_. The gramophone was playing "Tales from Hoffmann," and Olwen, feeling a little tired and dreamy, leaned back in a big chair, looking very young and small. Ben, standing before the mantelpiece, asked her gravely whether she was thinking of leaving the "Baank."

"You would approve of such a course, would you not?" she asked mischievously.

"I've never thought it suitable. But what have you in mind instead?"

"I have been there three years, and I want a change," said Olwen.

"Yes, I daresay. You are young. I suppose you don't feel in any hurry to settle down once for all?"

"Settle down once for all? Oh, I could never do that!"

"Never?" echoed Ben, in a voice faint from astonishment.

"I'm not domestic! I've told you so before. I want to go all over the world and try everything. If I thought I had to spend my life in Bramforth, I should go crazy, I believe."

He was silent, turning over this speech, so subversive of all moral order, in his keen, though narrow intelligence.

"Bramforth's not much of a place," he remarked, "I'm not set on it myself. But a man--or a woman, if you come to that--must stay in one place if they have their living to earn."

"Oh, no, not at all. I might be a newspaper correspondent, and travel from place to place. Splendid fun to write one's experiences!"

Ben shook his head. "All that's beyond me. When I've been all day at the Mills I like to come back to my own fireside, and I should like the same woman always there. If she was there I shouldn't mind where the house stood."

"Quite wonderful, isn't it, how different people's ideals are," said she conversationally.

"Are ours different? Perhaps not so much as you think." He turned so as to face her. "Miss Innes, you can't have been unconscious of the fact that I love you and want you for my wife."

There was a simple directness in this which Olwen liked better than she had ever liked anything in Ben before. It reminded her of his mother. She grew crimson, and gave a little gasp, for she had not expected quite such an onslaught.

"Oh!" her voice was horribly wobbly, "I--I have wondered if--it has seemed so--but I thought it must be my fancy. You see, it was so unlikely, we are not suited to each other in the least."

"Likely or unlikely, it's true, and it has been true for years. I know you pretty well, and I don't agree that we aren't suited. Anyway, I have told you at last. What are you going to say?"

She gave a sound like a sob. Ben was leaning nearer. Before she could speak again he was on his knees, his arms folded on the arm of her chair. "What are you going to say, darling?" he muttered, huskily.

She saw that she must be swift and definite. "I must say 'No,'" she uttered, fear of some untimely demonstration on his part rushing in to banish her nervousness. "I hate to seem so blunt, but it is No, and when you have time to think it over you will see that I am right. You want a good, affectionate girl, who would love to sweep up the hearth and bring your slippers and sit at home and do the mending. And I--I couldn't be happy--like that! No, I couldn't! Ben, it is no use, indeed, indeed! You know I am sincere. If I thought it possible that I could ever settle down to--to that, I would tell you in a minute. But I can't! I am Madoc Innes's daughter, one of the wild ones. I'm not a fireside woman. I'm not the woman for you."

He was silent for a long moment, and his face changed sadly. "I had not really very much hope," he said at last, "but one never knows. I was determined that you should understand what I feel.... But I don't think you quite realise that if you married me you would be far more your own mistress than you are now. You needn't live in Bramforth if you don't like. You needn't sweep up your own hearth or do your own mending. I could give you servants to do that. You could travel. It--it would be my greatest happiness to let you do as you liked. If--if you could have brought yourself.... You could make pretty well anything you chose out of me."

He broke off. She had shaken her head, slowly and miserably. The motion caused the ripples of her hair to shine like the tarnished gold of an old Florentine frame. It came to the man's mind that he had always wanted so desperately to see that hair once more free as he used to see it in her girlhood; and that now he never would.

"Dear good Ben," she was saying, "I like you too well to marry you and make you unhappy ever after. I have a devil in me, I really have, and nothing would rouse it so completely as to find myself tied for life to a man I did not love. Oh, Ben, I hate, I _hate_ saying No to you! Please take it; please don't make me say it again!"

He got to his feet, drew out a handkerchief, and passed it over his agitated countenance. "I won't," he then said firmly. "That is, not at present. But I won't go so far as to say that I consider it quite all over. There's no other man so far!"

"Oh, no, no!"

"Then, as long as that is so, I take it that you might change your mind."

She tried earnestly to prevent his indulging any such false hopes. But as the idea seemed to make it easier for him not to importune her further, she gave in after a while, only uttering a fervent wish that he might find just the right girl before long.

A pang shot through her as she went to find her kind hostess, and timidly tell her that she thought they ought to be going. Mrs. Holroyd looked from the girl to her son. Her eyes filled, her sweet-tempered mouth quivered. Olwen's vivid fancy leapt up to picture what her reception would have been had she given Ben the right to place her in those kind arms. How delighted they would all have been! How completely a daughter of the house she would have become! With her uncanny intuition she knew that she could have made herself just such a woman as they all desired--had she loved Ben she would have become such an one--have lived her monotonous life and died her peaceful death among the Holroyds and their kind, with only an occasional pang! ... But she was not fool enough to give way now; though that picture also rose before her mind's eye. She could conjure up Ben's face should she suddenly surrender; could fancy him embracing her publicly, before his family, herself strained to his stout form, recipient of his kisses....

Her involuntary shudder was the measure of her repugnance. With an air of shamefaced apology she took her leave, feeling, as she and her cousins walked home, that this had made it impossible for her to stay in Bramforth--that the Border Pele and the cataloguing of the library must be her way out.

Before she slept she wrote a letter to Mrs. Guyse, saying that the post was not quite such as the advertiser had contemplated, but that she was not yet suited, and would like further details. She knew nothing of nursing, and could not take a post where she would have the care of an invalid.

She decided to say nothing to her aunts until she received a reply to this; and for two days she sat in the bank and worked her typewriter, feeling as if her life had suddenly become a dream. She made jokes, ate surreptitious sweets, cooked cocoa, and chattered as usual. Her whole mind was meanwhile fixed upon the breaking of the news at home and the handing in of her notice at the Palatine.

Mrs. Guyse's reply was that her health was not very strong, but that she did not call herself an invalid, and that in any case she had an old and trusted servant who waited upon her. She renewed her suggestion that Miss Innes should come experimentally. She was directed to travel by train to Picton Bars, whence Mrs. Guyse would arrange that a fly should bring her on to Caryngston, at which place she would be met.

The mere fact that the Pele was evidently difficult of access acted as a lure to Olwen. She choked, she pined for adventure, for wild country, for something as unlike Bramforth as could be had. However elderly and dull this Mrs. Guyse, she came of good family, and must have some friends, who would be of the right kind.

That evening she took her courage in her hands and broke the matter to her aunts.

"Am I a beast?" she asked piteously. "I feel like a deserter leaving you two, who have made such sacrifices for me, and going off. But, oh, my dears, the world is so big and life is so short! I simply must try my wings! I don't feel as if I could hold on here any longer."

She spoke with her arms round Aunt Maud, who said nothing, but began to cry quietly. Aunt Ada made no pause in her endless knitting, but turned the heel of her sock before replying in a calm voice.

"There's no need to apologise, Ollie. I approve of the idea, and had thoughts of suggesting that you should give up your daily work and seek a resident post. This does not seem quite what one would have chosen, but if it is clear that you go to see how you like it, no great harm can be done. If you catalogue the books ably, Mrs. Guyse can give you a good reference, which will be more valuable in seeking another post than any reference from the Palatine."

Olwen sat incredulous. "Aunt Ada! You really advise me to go?"

"If you want to go, I agree with everything that Ada says," gulped Aunt Maud; "but, oh, my darling, I do hope it isn't because you are not h-happy--because you want something you can't have--because you c-care for----"

"I want heaps of things I can't have," broke in her niece hastily. "I want to go round the world and see its wonders! I want to go and work in London at the heart of things. But most of all I think I want fresh air. I almost forget what the far horizon looks like! Except for you two and Gracie Holroyd, there's not a creature in Bramforth that I shall regret leaving. I just want to be off!"

"Then you will go quite soon?"

"If I give in my notice tomorrow I could travel on the 8th or 9th. I shan't want many grand clothes up there, I suppose. I wonder how one does one's shopping in a place like that?"

"The present Aunt Ethel gave you will come in useful," said Aunt Maud, wiping her eyes, and beginning to feel interested.

"Why, so it will! I never thought of that! I am always inclined to turn up my nose at Marjorie's cast-offs, but that motor-coat ought to be the very thing for the Cheviots in January."

"There's a difference," observed Aunt Ada, "between cast-offs and outgrowns. It's lucky for you that Marjorie is such a giantess. She only wore that coat about a dozen times, her mother told me."

They entered into all the intricacies of the girl's wardrobe, making valuable suggestions as to various garments which could be "done up." They were as eager as though she were their own child. Aunt Maud produced a bit of lace, Aunt Ada an amethyst pendant. The guilty feeling began to fade away.

Sincerely as Olwen was attached to these two, her youth prevented her from appreciating their wonderful unselfishness. Impatience of their limitations had often vexed her. She had not insight to value their renunciations.

When Faber wrote his lines on unselfishness:

"_Oh, could I live my whole life through for others_
_With no ends of my own----_"

he was probably unaware of the many educated women in England whose daily life is a repetition of his formula. Ada and Maud Wilson had no ends of their own. Their nearest relatives would have been astounded to learn that they had any personal interests to turn them aside from their quite obvious duty of running a household on insufficient means, doing their best to counteract the ill effects of an old man's parochial neglect, and showing hospitality to the various members of the family who simply claimed it as a right. Their father's death would throw them on the world practically unprovided for. Nobody deplored this. Nobody tried to alter it. Nobody gave it a thought.

When their best-loved niece had run off to rummage in her drawers, for a couple of frocks to be looked over, and have their claims to restoration considered, the two sisters fell silent.

They did not look at one another, for they were not demonstrative women; but they understood each other.

"There is nobody else in Bramforth," said Ada, as though in reply to something said by Maud. "If she stays here she will marry Ben Holroyd, simply because she will find that she has to.... I feel the child is made for better things."

Maud gave a long sigh, charged with the wasted regrets of her vanished youth. "Oh, Ada! Was not that perhaps the mistake we made? We demanded more than we could get. Are you so certain that she does not like Ben? You don't think she is going off because he has not spoken?"

"I think she is going because the indirect pressure of her friendship with his sister, and the fact that there is nobody else, is pushing her," replied Ada decisively.

Maud said no more. Her own tragedy had been the long waiting for the beloved to speak--the vain waiting, while other men came forward.

She felt that, whether Ben had spoken, or whether he had not, it was best that Ollie should go away.