Mr Cheviott

“ I think he has it in him to do many things well—more, probably, than have as yet come in his way.”
“I dare say you are quite right,” said Mr Cheviott. “For a man,” pursued Mary, somewhat mollified, “he is still very young.”
“Peculiarly so,” said Mr Cheviott; “he is very young for his actual years. You must have seen a good deal of him, Miss Western, to judge him so correctly.” ”

“ Would she really be so glad to be home again? She had used Mr Cheviott’s expression, and it led her into the train of thought which had suggested it to him. Yes, there was truth in what he said. In almost every kind of life, in almost any circumstances, even if painful in themselves, there grows up secretly, as the days pass on, a curious, undefinable charm—a something it hurts us to break, though, till the necessity for so doing is upon us, we had been unconscious of its existence.
“It must be that,” said Mary. ”

“ Arthur shuddered.
“For shame, Laurence,” he said, angrily. “Do you think it’s good taste, or good feeling either, to sneer in that way when you must—when you cannot but see what all this is to me?”
“It is not pleasant to myself,” observed Mr Cheviott, “which never seems to occur to you, as I said before. My allusion to Alys’s death should remind you of this. As things are, nothing—really nothing else than the death of the creature dearest to me on earth can clear me from the odious position I am placed in.” ”

“ Mary was silent.
“You must allow me to remind you,” continued Mr Cheviott, hating himself, or the self he was obliged to make himself appear, more and more with each word he uttered, “that you are very young and inexperienced, and little attentions—passing trivialities, in fact, which more worldly-wise young ladies would attach no significance to, may have acquired a mistaken importance with you and your sister. ”

“ It was, as you said, just an act of common humanity,” said Mr Cheviott, with slight bitterness.
”‘Pure,’ I said, not ‘common’,” corrected Mary.
“Well, it’s all the same. How can I think you will consider it even an act of friendliness? You won’t have us for your friends. And even if I were ten times the unmitigated ruffian you believe me to be,” he added, with a slight laugh, “would it not be an immense pleasure to me to return in the slightest degree your goodness to Alys? You do believe I care for her, I think? ”

“ Mr Cheviott turned from the window to the fire, and began poking it vigorously.
“Excuse me, Laurence,” said Miss Winstanley, plaintively. “I think the fire’s quite hot enough; it is such a very close evening for April.”
Mr Cheviott laughed and desisted.
“I am out of place in this room,” he said. “I am always doing something clumsy. I’ll send Arthur instead—he’s a much better tame cat than I.”
He turned to leave the room.
“By-the-bye, Alys,” he said, putting his head in at the door again, “you had better make much of Arthur while you have him. He says he must leave the day after tomorrow.” ”

“ Mr Cheviott, for it was he, passed them at a gentle trot, just lifting his hat to Mary as he did so. Mary’s face flushed as she bowed in return.
“I do think,” she said to herself, “as we are not to be friends, it would be much better taste for him not to come our way at all. It will annoy poor father exceedingly, in his nervous state, to hear of Mr Cheviott almost, as it were, passing our door. But, of course, he may have business at the farm.”
And she called to Brooke and Francie, volunteering to tell them a story, and tried her best bravely to force her mind away from the sore subject. ”

“ Almost as she pronounced the words, she became conscious of the annoyance they were causing her companion, and she felt that her worst misgivings were realised. “Why did I dance with him?” was the first form in which her hot indignation expressed itself in her thoughts.
“Yes,” replied Mr Cheviott, coldly, “I heard that Mr and Mrs Western had been very hospitable to my cousin, and no doubt he is very grateful to them. He is an extremely sociable person—cannot bear being alone. ”

“ Lilias came in, and depositing her parcel—bundle, rather—on the table, stood, nothing loth, beside the welcome blaze of the kitchen fire.
“How queer it is,” she thought, “Mary seems quite established here! In the very heart of the enemy’s camp, according to her opinion, at least, for she has always persisted that Mr Cheviott’s interference was to be blamed for it all. I don’t think it was. Arthur would not be so fond of him if he were that sort of man, and besides,” with an unconscious slight elevation of her pretty head, “he is not the sort of man to be interfered with.” ”

“ But people one doesn’t care the least for are different from people one positively dislikes, or worse still, distrusts.”
“Can’t you leave all that?” said Mary, sadly. “I cannot help what—what happened, and, indeed”—her voice trembling a little—“towards the Mr Cheviott I have known here I should be most wrong to have any but friendly feelings.”
She held out her hand. Mr Cheviott took it in his, holding it for one little moment longer than was really necessary.
“Is it always to be war between us, Miss Western?” as if the words could not be kept back. ”

“ And, when she had got some way down the carriage-drive in sight of the dump of oak trees, she burst into a flood of bitter tears. Tears that Mr Cheviott suspected, though he did not see them.
“Poor child,” he said, as he returned to his study, “I trust she will meet no one in the park. Those gossiping servants—Well, surely I can never have a more wretched piece of work to go through than this! What a mean, despicable snob she thinks me!” he laughed, bitterly. “Why, I wonder, is it the fate of some people to be constantly doing other people’s dirty work? ”

“ Poor people, we have put them about quite enough already.”
Mary could no longer stand aloof. She had felt half inclined to be nettled by Mr Cheviott’s calm manner of ignoring what she could not but own to herself had been, in its inference at least, a rude speech.
“He still feels he is under an obligation to me,” she had said to herself, hotly, “and therefore he won’t resent anything I say. I don’t agree with Lilias. I would much prefer his being uncivil, to civility of that patronising ‘I couldn’t-do-otherwise’ kind.” ”

“ One is that he has been gambling so furiously that he is embarrassed past redemption, and that he will only come into his property for it to be sold; and another is that Mr Cheviott found out that he had secretly made some low marriage, and turned him out of the house on that account, it having been always intended that he should marry Miss Cheviott.” Mary was standing by the fire looking down on it as Mrs Greville spoke—the reflection of its ruddy glow hid the intense paleness which came over her face, and explained, too, the burning flush which almost instantly succeeded it. ”

“ Anger inclines some women to tears more readily than grief!
Mr Cheviott smiled; it was, in reality, a nervous, uneasy smile, but Mary thought it insulting and insufferable.
“Miss Western,” he said, “you are really exciting yourself about nothing at all. I do not think that any reasonable person would see cause of offence in the two or three remarks I have made about my cousin, and, fortunate as he is in possessing so eager an advocate as yourself, it is impossible you can know him as well as I do. ”

“ No one is to blame. I have not been as blind and unconscious as you thought—that is all.”
That was all in one sense. It was plain to Mr Cheviott that Alys would say no more, and on reflection he could not see that any more explanation on her part would do any good. He stood silent, hardly able as yet to see clearly the effect of this extraordinary turn of affairs.
“I am going up to my own room, Laurence,” said Alys, rising slowly as she spoke. “I am very tired. I think I won’t come down to dinner. ”

“ The man looked at her again, and Mary felt glad she had not her old waterproof cloak on. As it was, she was prettily, at least not unbecomingly, dressed in a thick, rough tweed and small, close-fitting felt hat. Her boots were neat, and her gloves—the only new pair she had had this winter—fitted well. There was nothing about her attire plainer or poorer than what would be worn by many a girl of her age, “regardless of expense,” for a country ramble. And Mr Cheviott’s servant was not to know it was all her Sunday best! Then she was tall! An immense advantage, now and then, in life. ”

“ Yet I could wish, as I was saying, that all of you, you and Lilias especially, had more friends, more outside interests. I hope we have not been selfish and short-sighted in the way we have brought you up—keeping you too much to ourselves, as it were;” again Mr Western sighed. “It is possible, I suppose, to be too devoid of social ambition. By the way,” he went on, “I think that Mr Cheviott must be a very fine fellow. People took up an unreasonable prejudice against him in the country at first from his manner, which, I believe, is cold and stiff. But they are finding themselves mistaken. ”

“ To enjoy the country thoroughly, it seems to me one must be one of a good large family.”
A faint remembrance flitted across Mr Cheviott’s mind of the half-contemptuous pity with which he had alluded to Mrs Brabazon to the overflowing numbers in Hathercourt Rectory. Now, Mary’s allusion slightly nettled him.
“Alys is not quite alone in the world,” he said, stiffly, hardly realising the fact that Miss Cheviott of Romary could be an object of commiseration to one of the poor clergyman’s numerous daughters. “She has a brother.” ”

“ There are no bones broken—it is her back she complains of.”
“Her back,” repeated Mr Cheviott, the red flush fading away to a sallow whiteness—“her back! Good God, I trust not!”
“It may be only severely bruised,” said Mary, finding herself, despite her determination, already assuming the rôle of comforter. “I will tell her you are here if you will wait a moment.” And when, in a minute or two, Mr Cheviott was summoned to his sister, to his astonishment it was to find her supported in Mary’s arms, while Dr Brandreth was skilfully disentangling the wisps of muddy cloth from the poor girl’s form. ”

“ Still ‘rich’ is a comparative word. Mr Cheviott has always ‘moved in a certain sphere,’ as newspapers say, and he cannot have had much chance of seeing outside that sphere,” said Mary, with the calm philosophy of her twenty years’ thorough knowledge of the world in all its phases. “As for you, Alys, you are not spoiled, just because you are not. You are a duck—at least you have a duck’s back—it has run off you.” ”

“ And the tête-à-tête between the cousins was not renewed that evening, nor, as Alys had proposed, “to-morrow,” for Arthur did not make his appearance at Miss Winstanley’s the next day at all. Mr Cheviott saw him and went with him to the architect’s, and brought back word that he was over head and ears in model pig-sties and shippons.
“And in farm-houses too,” he said. “I think it very foolish of him to lay out money on doing much to the house itself. It is quite good enough as it is for the sort of bailiff he should get.” ”

“ And as for what Cheviott says about the Westerns I think nothing of it whatever, and he himself would be the first to own he had been mistaken if he saw the sort of people they really are. I can understand their not being popular well enough; they are proud and won’t stand being patronised.”
His meditations ended in his deciding to walk over again to Hathercourt that very afternoon—it would not do to put off hearing about Owen and settling the matter, and this he could easily explain to Mr Western, as an excuse for troubling him about it. ”

“ Wilmot,' said Chevenix, who had genuine respect and love for the listener, and really had the well-being of the old family at heart; 'it is a serious thing for a young man like you, the inheritor of a good old name, bred with expensive tastes and so forth, to find yourself hampered and trammelled thus at your very outset of life, but so it is.'
'We live and learn, Mr. Chevenix,' said Jerry, with unusual bitterness for him. ”

“ The Squire was made more uncomfortable by them than was due even from the general discomfort of the situation.
He raised troubled eyes to those of his questioner. "I suppose you are not ignorant," he said, "of what is being said of us?"
"Of 'us'?" queried Lord Cheviot.
"Of me and my family. All the world seems to be talking of us."
Lord Cheviot dropped his eyes. He may not have liked to be put into the position of questioned, instead of questioner. ”

“ They are desperately poor for one thing, but, of course, you will not need to make friends with them; it is not as if Hathercourt were to be your head-quarters.”
Captain Beverley ate his breakfast and pondered over his letter. Then he got up and went to the window, and looked out at the rain.
“It is very annoying of Cheviott to have taken up this prejudice against Owen,” he thought. “I believe he is the very man for me, and, at any rate, it is necessary to hear all I can about him. ”

“ What a different life we have led from most people nowadays! I dare say it would never occur to Miss Cheviott, for instance, to think it at all strange to meet people on the road whose names and histories she knew nothing of. Young as she is, I dare say she has more friends and acquaintances than she can remember. How different from Lilias and me—ah, yes, it is that that makes what her brother has done so awfully wrong—so mean—but will he understand? Shall I be able to show it him?”
Mary stopped short—she was close to the lodge gates now. ”