The Reverend Arthur sighed, and half turned away to snip off two or three tendrils from a vine-shoot above his head.
“I want to talk to you very seriously, Arthur,” said the little lady, whose cheeks began to flush slightly with excitement; and she felt relieved as she saw her brother turn a little more away.
“I want to talk to you very seriously indeed,” said Miss Rosebury.
“I am listening,” he said hoarsely; but she did not notice it in her excitement.
There was a minute’s pause, during which the Rev. Arthur broke off the young vine-shoot by accident, and then stood trying to replace it again.
At last Miss Rosebury spoke.
“Arthur,” she said – and her brother started and seemed to shiver, though she saw it not – “Arthur, Henry Bolter has asked me to be his wife!”
The Reverend Arthur turned round now in his astonishment, with his face deadly white and the tiny beads of perspiration upon his forehead. “Asked you to be his wife?” he said. “Yes, dear.”
“I am astonished,” cried the Reverend Arthur. “No, I am not,” he added thoughtfully. “He seemed to like you very much, Mary.”
“And I like him very much, Arthur, for I think him a truly good, amiable, earnest man.”
“He is my dear Mary – he is indeed; but – but – ”
“But what, Arthur? Were you going to say that you could not spare me?”
“I – I hardly know what I was about to say, Mary, you took me so by surprise. It would be very strange, though, to be here without you.”
“And you will not be, Arthur. I felt that I must tell you. I have nothing that I keep from you; but I have refused him.”
“You have refused him,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I felt that it would not be right to let a comparative stranger come in here and break up at once our happy little home. No, Arthur, this must all be like some dream. You and I, dear brother, are fast growing into elderly people; and love such as that is the luxury of the young.”
“Love such as that,” said the Reverend Arthur, softly, “is the luxury of the young!”
“Yes, dear brother, it would be folly in me to give way to such feelings!”
“Do you like Harry?” he exclaimed, suddenly.
“Yes,” she said, quietly. “I have felt day by day, Arthur, that I liked him more and more. It was and is a wonder to me at my age; but I should not be honest if I did not own that I liked him.”
“It is very strange, Mary,” said the curate, softly.
“Yes, it is very strange,” she said; “and as I think of it all, I am obliged to own to myself, that after all I should have liked to be married. It is such a revival of the past.”
The curate nodded his head several times as he let himself sink down upon the greenhouse steps, resting his hands upon his knees.
“But it is all past now, Arthur,” said the lady, quickly, and the tears were in her eyes, “we are both too old, my dear brother; and as soon as these visitors are gone, we will forget all disturbing influences, and go back to our happy old humdrum life.”
She could not trust herself to say more, but hurried off to her room, leaving the Reverend Arthur gazing fixedly at the red-brick floor.
“We are too old,” he muttered softly, from time to time; and as he said those words there seemed to stand before him the tall, well-developed figure of a dark-eyed, beauteous woman, who was gazing at him softly from between her half-closed, heavily-fringed lids.
“We are too old,” he said again; and then he went on dreaming of that day’s drive, and Helen’s gentle farewell – of the walks they had had in his garden – the flowers she had taken from his hand. Lastly, of his sister’s words respecting disturbing influences, and then settling down to their own happy humdrum life once again.
“It is fate!” he said, at last – “fate. Can we bring back the past?”
He felt that he could not, even as his sister felt just then, as she knelt beside one of the chairs in her own sweet-scented room, and asked for strength, as she termed it, to fight against this temptation.
“No,” she cried, at last; “I cannot – I will not! For Arthur’s sake I will be firm.”
Volume One – Chapter Eleven.
A Difficulty Solved
A week passed, during which all had been very quiet at the Rectory, brother and sister meeting each other hour by hour in a kind of saddened calm. The Reverend Arthur was paler than usual, almost cadaverous, while there was a troubled, anxious look in little Miss Rosebury’s eyes, and a sharpness in her voice that was not there on the day when Dr Bolter proposed.
No news had been heard of the young ladies at Miss Twettenham’s; and Dr Bolter, to Miss Rosebury’s sorrow, had not written to her brother.
But she bravely fought down her suffering, busying herself with more than usual zeal in home and parish; while the Reverend Arthur came back evening after evening faint, weary, and haggard, from some long botanical ramble.
The eighth day had arrived, and towards noon little Miss Rosebury was quietly seated by the open window with her work, fallen upon her knee, and a sad expression in her eyes as she gazed wistfully along the road, thinking, truth to tell, that Dr Bolter might perhaps come in to their early dinner.
Doctors were so seldom ill, or perhaps he might be lying suffering at some hotel.
The thought sent a pang through the little body, making her start, and seizing her needle, begin to work, when a warm flush came into her cheeks as she heard at one and the same time the noise of wheels, and a slow, heavy step upon the gravel.
The step she well knew, and for a few moments she did not look up; but when she did she uttered an exclamation.
“Tut – tut – tut!” she said. “If anyone saw poor Arthur now they would think him mad.”
Certainly the long, gaunt figure of the Reverend Arthur Rosebury, in his soft, shapeless felt hat, and long, clinging, shabby black alpaca coat, was very suggestive of his being a kind of male Ophelia gone slightly distraught as the consequence of a disappointment in love.
For in the heat of a long walk the tie of his white cravat had gone round towards the nape of his neck, while his felt hat was decorated to the crown with butterflies secured to it by pins. The band had wild flowers and herbs tucked in here and there. His umbrella – a very shabby, baggy gingham – was closed and stuffed with botanical treasures; and his vasculum, slung beneath one arm, was so gorged with herbs and flowers of the field that it would not close.
He was coming slowly down the path as wheels stopped at the gate just out of sight from the window, where little Miss Rosebury sat with her head once more bent down over her work; but she could hear a quick, well-known voice speaking to the driver of the station fly; then there was the click of the latch as the gate swung to, and the little lady’s heart began to go pat, pat – pat, pat – much faster than the quick, decided step that she heard coming down the long gravel path.
Her hearing seemed to be abnormally quickened, and she listened to the wheels as the fly drove off, and then heard every word as the doctor’s quick, decided voice saluted his old friend.
“Been horribly busy, Arthur,” he cried; “but I’m down at last. Where’s Mary?”
Hiding behind the curtain, for she had drawn back to place her hand upon her side to try and control the agitated beating of her foolish little heart.
“Oh, it is dreadful! How can I be so weak?” she cried angrily, as she made a brave effort to be calm – a calmness