"Did you think I should dare to come without one?"The light wind caught her scarf, blowing the long ends about her head.From the frame of soft white lace her eyes looked dark and solemn and very distant.
"I had hoped that you had no other reason than kindness." He had lost entirely the rustic restraint he had once felt in her presence, and, as he stood there in his clothes of dull blue jean, it was easy to believe in the gallant generations at his back.Was the fret of their gay adventures in his blood? she wondered.
"You will see the kindness in my reason, I hope," she answered quietly, while the glow of her sudden resolution illumined her face, "and at least you will admit the justice--though belated."He drew a step nearer."And it concerns you--and me?" he asked.
"It concerns you--oh, yes, yes, and me also, though very slightly.I have just learned--just a moment ago--what you must have thought I knew all along."As he fell back she saw that he paled slowly beneath his sunburn.
"You have just learned--what?" he demanded.
"The truth," she replied; "as much of the truth as one may learn in an hour: how it came that you are here and I am there--at the Hall.""At the Hall?" he repeated, and there was relief in the quick breath he drew; "I had forgotten the Hall.""Forgotten it? Why, I thought it was your dream, your longing, your one great memory."Smiling into her eyes, he shook his head twice before he answered.
"It was all that--once."
"Then it is not so now?" she asked, disappointed, "and what Ihave to tell you will lose half its value.""So it is about the Hall?"
With one hand she held back the fluttering lace upon her bosom, while lifting the other she pointed across the ploughed fields to the old gray chimneys huddled amid the budding oaks.
"Does it not make you homesick to stand here and look at it?" she asked."Think! For more than two hundred years your people lived there, and there is not a room within the house, nor a spot upon the land, that does not hold some sacred association for those of your name." Startled by the passion in her words, he turned from the Hall at which he had been gazing.
"What do you mean? " he demanded imperatively."What do you wish to say?""Look at the Hall and not at me while I tell you.It is this--now listen and do not turn from it for an instant.Blake Hall--I have just found it out--will come to me at grandfather's death, and when it does--when it does I shall return it to your family--the whole of it, every lovely acre.Oh, don't look at me--look at the Hall!"But he looked neither at her nor at the Hall, for his gaze dropped to the ground and hung blankly upon a clod of dry brown earth.She saw him grow pale to the lips and dark blue circles come out slowly about his eyes.
"It is but common justice; you see that," she urged.
At this he raised his head and returned her look.
"And what of Will?" he asked.
Her surprise showed in her face, and at sight of it he repeated his question with a stubborn insistence: "But what of Will? What has been done for Will?""Oh, I don't know; I don't know.The break is past mending.But it is not of him that I must speak to you now--it is of yourself.
Don't you see that the terrible injustice has bowed me to the earth? What am I better than a dependent--a charity ward who has lived for years upon your money? My very education, my little culture, the refinements you see in me--these even I have no real right to, for they belong to your family.While you have worked as a labourer in the field I have been busy squandering the wealth which was not mine."His face grew gentle as he looked at her.
"If the Blake money has made you what you are, then it has not been utterly wasted," he replied.
"Oh, you don't understand--you don't understand," she repeated, pressing her hands upon her bosom, as if to quiet her fluttering breath."You have suffered from it all along, but it is I who suffer most to-day--who suffer most because I am upon the side of the injustice.I can have no peace until you tell me that I may still do my poor best to make amends--that when your home is mine you will let me give it back to you.""It is too late," he answered with bitter humour."You can't put a field-hand in a fine house and make him a gentleman.It is too late to undo what was done twenty years ago.The place can never be mine again--I have even ceased to want it.Give it to Will.""I couldn't if I wanted to," she replied; "but I don't want to--Idon't want to.It must go back to you and to your sisters.Do you think I could ever be owner of it now? Even if it comes to me when I am an old woman, I shall always feel myself a stranger in the house, though I should live there day and night for fifty years.No, no; it is impossible that I should ever keep it for an instant.It must go back to you and to the Blakes who come after you.""There will be no Blakes after me," he answered."I am the last.""Then promise me that if the Hall is ever mine you will take it.""From you? No: not unless I took it to hand on to your brother.
It is an old score that you have brought up--one that lasted twenty years before it was settled.It is too late to stir up matters now.""It is not too late," she said earnestly."It is never too late to try to undo a wrong.""The wrong was not yours; it must never touch you," he replied.
"If my life was as clean as yours, it would, perhaps, not be too late for me either.Ten years ago I might have felt differently about it, but not now."He broke off hurriedly, and Maria, with a hopeless gesture, turned back into the path.
"Then I shall appeal to your sisters when the time comes," she responded quietly.
Catching the loose ends of her scarf, he drew her slowly around until she met his eyes."And I have said nothing to you--to you,"he began, in a constrained voice, which he tried in vain to steady, "because it is so hard to say anything and not say too much.This, at least, you must know--that I am your servant now and shall be all my life."She smiled sadly, looking down at the scarf which was crushed in his hands.
"And yet you will not grant the wish of my heart," she said.
