And now sir, if you please, good-night."

"But I do not please. You shall not go. What have I done, Mary?

Tell me. You must not go without telling me how I have vexed you.

What would you have me do?"

"Nothing, sir, but" (in an agitated tone), "oh! let me go! You cannot change my mind; it's quite made up. Oh, sir! why do you hold me so tight? If you WILL know why I won't have anything more to do with you, it is that I cannot love you. I have tried, and I really cannot."

This naive and candid avowal served her but little. He could not understand how it could be true. Some reason lurked behind. He was pa.s.sionately in love. What should he do to tempt her? A thought struck him.

"Listen! Mary. Nay, I cannot let you go till you have heard me. I do love you dearly; and I won't believe but what you love me a very little, just a very little. Well, if you don't like to own it, never mind! I only want now to tell you how much I love you, by what I am ready to give up for you. You know (or perhaps you are not fully aware) how little my father and mother would like me to marry you. So angry would they be, and so much ridicule should I have to brave, that of course I have never thought of it till now.

I thought we could be happy enough without marriage." (Deep sank those words into Mary's heart.) "But now, if you like, I'll get a licence to-morrow morning--nay, to-night, and I'll marry you in defiance of all the world, rather than give you up. In a year or two my father will forgive me, and meanwhile you shall have every luxury money can purchase, and every charm that love can devise to make your life happy. After all, my mother was but a factory girl."

(This was said to himself, as if to reconcile himself to this bold step.) "Now, Mary, you see how willing I am to--to sacrifice a good deal for you; I even offer you marriage, to satisfy your little ambitious heart; so now, won't you say, you can love me a little, little bit?"

He pulled her towards him. To his surprise, she still resisted.

Yes! though all she had pictured to herself for so many months in being the wife of Mr. Carson was now within her grasp, she resisted.

His speech had given her but one feeling, that of exceeding great relief. For she had dreaded, now she knew what true love was, to think of the attachment she might have created; the deep feeling her flirting conduct might have called out. She had loaded herself with reproaches for the misery she might have caused. It was a relief to gather that the attachment was of that low despicable kind which can plan to seduce the object of its affection; that the feeling she had caused was shallow enough, for it only pretended to embrace self, at the expense of the misery, the ruin, of one falsely termed beloved.

She need not be penitent to such a plotter! that was the relief.

"I am obliged to you, sir, for telling me what you have. You may think I am a fool; but I did think you meant to marry me all along; and yet, thinking so, I felt I could not love you. Still I felt sorry I had gone so far in keeping company with you. Now, sir, I tell you, if I had loved you before, I don't think I should have loved you now you have told me you meant to ruin me; for that's the plain English of not meaning to marry me till just this minute. I said I was sorry, and humbly begged your pardon; that was before I knew what you were. Now I scorn you, sir, for plotting to ruin a poor girl. Goodnight."

And with a wrench, for which she had reserved all her strength, she flew off like a bolt. They heard her flying footsteps echo down the quiet street. The next sound was Sally's laugh, which grated on Mr.

Carson's ears, and keenly irritated him.

"And what do you find so amusing, Sally?" asked he.

"Oh, sir, I beg your pardon. I humbly beg your pardon, as Mary says, but I can't help laughing to think how she's outwitted us."

(She was going to have said, "outwitted you," but changed the p.r.o.noun.)

"Why, Sally, had you any idea she was going to fly out in this style?"

"No, I hadn't, to be sure. But if you did think of marrying her, why (if I may be so bold as to ask) did you go and tell her you had no thought of doing otherwise by her? That was what put her up at last!"

"Why, I had repeatedly before led her to infer that marriage was not my object. I never dreamed she could have been so foolish as to have mistaken me, little provoking romancer though she be! So I naturally wished her to know what a sacrifice of prejudice, of--of myself, in short, I was willing to make for her sake; yet I don't think she was aware of it after all. I believe I might have any lady in Manchester if I liked, and yet I was willing and ready to marry a poor dressmaker. Don't you understand me now? and don't you see what a sacrifice I was making to humour her? and all to no avail."

Sally was silent, so he went on--

"My father would have forgiven any temporary connection, far sooner than my marrying one so far beneath me in rank."

"I thought you said, sir, your mother was a factory girl," remarked Sally rather maliciously.

"Yes, yes!--but then my father was in much such a station; at any rate, there was not the disparity there is between Mary and me."

Another pause.

"Then you mean to give her up, sir? She made no bones of saying she gave you up."

"No; I do not mean to give her up, whatever you and she may please to think. I am more in love with her than ever; even for this charming capricious ebullition of hers. She'll come round, you may depend upon it. Women always do. They always have second thoughts, and find out that they are best in casting off a lover. Mind, I don't say I shall offer her the same terms again."

With a few more words of no importance, the allies parted.

XII. OLD ALICE'S BAIRN,

"I lov'd him not; and yet now he is gone, I feel I am alone.

I check'd him while he spoke; yet could he speak, Alas! I would not check.

For reasons not to love him once I sought, And wearied all my thought."--W. S. LANDOR.

And now Mary had, as she thought, dismissed both her lovers. But they looked on their dismissals with very different eyes. He who loved her with all his heart and with all his soul, considered his rejection final. He did not comfort himself with the idea, which would have proved so well founded in his case, that women have second thoughts about casting off their lovers. He had too much respect for his own heartiness of love to believe himself unworthy of Mary; that mock humble conceit did not enter his head. He thought he did not "hit Mary's fancy"; and though that may sound a trivial every-day expression, yet the reality of it cut him to the heart. Wild visions of enlistment, of drinking himself into forgetfulness, of becoming desperate in some way or another, entered his mind; but then the thought of his mother stood like an angel with a drawn sword in the way to sin. For, you know, "he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow"; dependent on him for daily bread. So he could not squander away health and time, which were to him money wherewith to support her failing years. He went to his work, accordingly, to all outward semblance just as usual; but with a heavy, heavy heart within.

Mr. Carson, as we have seen, persevered in considering Mary's rejection of him as merely a "charming caprice." If she were at work, Sally Leadbitter was sure to slip a pa.s.sionately loving note into her hand, and then so skilfully move away from her side, that Mary could not all at once return it, without making some sensation among the workwomen. She was even forced to take several home with her. But after reading one, she determined on her plan. She made no great resistance to receiving them from Sally, but kept them unopened, and occasionally returned them in a blank half-sheet of paper. But far worse than this, was the being so constantly waylaid as she went home by her persevering lover; who had been so long acquainted with all her habits, that she found it difficult to evade him. Late or early, she was never certain of being free from him.

Go this way or that, he might come up some cross street when she had just congratulated herself on evading him for that day. He could not have taken a surer mode of making himself odious to her.

And all this time Jem Wilson never came! Not to see her--that she did not expect--but to see her father; to--she did not know what, but she had hoped he would have come on some excuse, just to see if she hadn't changed her mind. He never came. Then she grew weary and impatient, and her spirits sank. The persecution of the one lover, and the neglect of the other, oppressed her sorely. She could not now sit quietly through the evening at her work; or, if she kept, by a strong effort, from pacing up and down the room, she felt as if she must sing to keep off thought while she sewed. And her songs were the maddest, merriest, she could think of. "Barbara Allen," and such sorrowful ditties, did well enough for happy times; but now she required all the aid that could be derived from external excitement to keep down the impulse of grief.

And her father, too--he was a great anxiety to her, he looked so changed and so ill. Yet he would not acknowledge to any ailment.

She knew, that be it as late as it would, she never left off work until (if the poor servants paid her pretty regularly for the odd jobs of mending she did for them) she had earned a few pence, enough for one good meal for her father on the next day. But very frequently all she could do in the morning, after her late sitting up at night, was to run with the work home, and receive the money from the person for whom it was done. She could not stay often to make purchases of food, but gave up the money at once to her father's eager clutch; sometimes prompted by a savage hunger it is true, but more frequently by a craving for opium.

On the whole he was not so hungry as his daughter. For it was a long fast from the one o'clock dinner hour at Miss Simmonds' to the close of Mary's vigil, which was often extended to midnight. She was young, and had not yet learned to bear "clemming."

One evening, as she sang a merry song over her work, stopping occasionally to sigh, the blind Margaret came groping in. It had been one of Mary's additional sorrows that her friend had been absent from home, accompanying the lecturer on music in his round among the manufacturing towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Her grandfather, too, had seen this a good time for going his expeditions in search of specimens; so that the house had been shut up for several weeks.

"O Margaret, Margaret! how glad I am to see you. Take care. There now, you're all right, that's father's chair. Sit down."--She kissed her over and over again.

"It seems like the beginning o' brighter times, to see you again, Margaret. Bless you! And how well you look!"

"Doctors always send ailing folk for change of air: and you know I've had plenty o' that same lately."

"You've been quite a traveller for sure! Tell us all about it, do, Margaret. Where have you been to, first place?"

"Eh, la.s.s, that would take a long time to tell. Half o'er the world, I sometimes think. Bolton and Bury, and Owdham, and Halifax, and--but Mary, guess who I saw there? Maybe you know, though, so it's not fair guessing."

"No, I dunnot. Tell me, Margaret, for I cannot abide waiting and guessing."

"Well, one night as I were going fra' my lodgings wi' the help on a lad as belonged to th' landlady, to find the room where I were to sing, I heard a cough before me, walking along. Thinks I, that's Jem Wilson's cough, or I'm much mistaken. Next time came a sneeze and cough, and then I were certain. First I hesitated whether I should speak, thinking if it were a stranger he'd maybe think me forrard.* But I knew blind folks must not be nesh about using their tongues, so says I, 'Jem Wilson, is that you?' And sure enough it was, and n.o.body else. Did you know he were in Halifax, Mary?"

*Forrard; forward.

"No," she answered, faintly and sadly; for Halifax was all the same to her heart as the Antipodes; equally inaccessible by humble penitent looks and maidenly tokens of love.

"Well, he's there, however: he's putting up an engine for some folks there, for his master. He's doing well, for he's getten four or five men under him; we'd two or three meetings, and he telled me all about his invention for doing away wi' the crank, or somewhat.

His master's bought it from him, and ta'en out a patent, and Jem's a gentleman for life wi' the money his master gied him. But you'll ha' heard all this, Mary?"

No! she had not.

"Well, I thought it all happened afore he left Manchester, and then in course you'd ha' known. But maybe it were all settled after he got to Halifax; however, he's gotten two or three hunder pounds for his invention. But what's up with you, Mary? you're sadly out of sorts. You've never been quarrelling wi' Jem, surely?"

Now Mary cried outright; she was weak in body, and unhappy in mind, and the time was come when she might have the relief of telling her grief. She could not bring herself to confess how much of her sorrow was caused by her having been vain and foolish; she hoped that need never be known, and she could not bear to think of it.