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Chapter XV. Anthony and the Books.

It certainly did seem ill-natured of General Hawke to have refused to let Mrs. Lancaster pay Mabel a visit. Perhaps he felt this himself, for that day, after Randal was gone, his manner to her was kinder than ever.

‘Let me look at you, my dear,’ he said after breakfast, taking Mabel’s hand with a pleasant smile. ‘You certainly are fatter than when you first came. I believe Pensand agrees with you, after all. How do you feel?’

Mabel, with her new pet purring on her shoulder, was quite ready to answer cheerfully that she felt very well.

‘That’s right,’ said the General. ‘We should do very well here if we always had Randal. He has no notion of being dull. We miss him, don’t we?’

‘Yes, very much,’ said Mabel truthfully.

Randal was a person whose absence would always be felt, either as a blank or a relief. To Mabel, in her new-made friendship, it was quite a loss to co about the house without meeting him, to take up the books he had left behind him, and feel he was not there. Perhaps he did not always talk nicely about other people; but he really seemed to care for her. Poor lonely Mabel! Randal, in his position, had a great advantage there.

The white fluffy kitten, and those books in their bright new bindings, occupied that day pleasantly enough. Mabel took them out into the garden, and sat in the loveliest corner of the lawn, that same corner where Dick had found her one afternoon, and had been so much enraged by her reception of him. He was a page 136 stupid man, thought Mabel, remembering it. But then she felt very sorry, and hated herself, and wondered if he would really marry Mrs. Lancaster, and if by any chance she would ever see him again. Not that she wished to see him—but, O dear, how one might be deceived and disappointed in people! If ever a man seemed honest and truthful, it was Dick Northcote, and yet he was really quite horrid. How could people help getting into scrapes in such a world? After all, it might be best to be shut up safely here at Pensand, with the General to watch that no harm came to her, and with Randal—yes, with Randal—to be just like a kind brother to her. At any rate, these two really cared about her, and she might depend on them. After bringing herself to this wise conclusion, Mabel plunged into Randal’s books.

Here she found herself in a strange world. In some country far away, a calm blue sea rippled up in little curling waves, silver foam on golden sand. Beautiful creatures, like Greek statues come to life, wandered about or lay dreaming in the sunshine. It appeared to be the present time, and yet, according to this writer’s fancy, no shadow of Christianity, or even morality, had come to trouble this gentle pagan world. These people had no laws, no duties, no objects, except to preserve their beautiful selves, and to enjoy the world they were in. One supposes that they did not believe in immortality; certainly they did not deserve it. But they were represented as so happy, so humanly perfect in their selfish existence, that it was impossible to be angry with them. The lives of these lovely Communists were made strangely real by their modern names and the way they talked. It seemed at first possible that human beings might live such a life, and even a wise man might read on smiling through volumes of this poetical stuff, so charmingly told were the stories, so satisfying to one page 137 side of human nature, before he knew that it was all horrible, that

‘Thinner than the subtlest lawn
’Twixt him and death the veil was drawn;’

that these creatures, who boasted of being so natural, were fearful in their unnaturalness, risen up as they were, clothed in light, from the black depths of the old pagan world. But as a wise man might have taken a little time to come to this conclusion, it is not surprising that for two days Mabel read on with a sort of delighted wonder, fascinated by the strange beauty of these books.

Her enjoyment of them came to rather a sudden end. Towards the evening of the second day, she had been called in to tea, and had left her chair and a pile of books in her favourite nook of the lawn, just out of sight from the windows. Anthony Strange, making his usual short cut through the garden, came on these traces of his young friend.

‘She will be back directly,’ he said to himself. ‘What has the child got to amuse her?’

He took up one of the volumes, turned over a few pages; then sat down in Mabel’s chair, and was absorbed for about ten minutes. At the end of this time he was frowning terribly.

‘Who can have given her such books as these?’ he said.

He held the book very tight for a moment, and looked round at the waving trees, the roses, all the beautiful distant tints of river and wood and sea. They gave him no answer, but a sweet fresh breeze came blowing up, and tried to ruffle the offending leaves which he was holding down so sternly.

‘Talk of poison!” said Anthony. ‘Paper and printer’s ink make the surest kind! Which is worse, to kill the body or the soul? What should I do if I found page 138 this child drinking laudanum? Break the bottle, as I tear you, poisonous leaves.’

Poor, peaceful, selfish pagans! This angry Christian began at once tearing out the pages of the volume in his hand, crumpling them up, and throwing them aside in a dishonoured heap. From one volume he went to another. Three or four had been destroyed in this way, when footsteps and a voice came towards him across the lawn.

‘Come along, Fluffy dear,’ said Mabel. ‘Haven’t you had cream enough? I’m sure you ought to be just as happy as those people in the books, who went on eating grapes as long as they liked, and slept among the flowers. Don’t you wish we were there too, Fluffy? What a world it was!’

She came round a blooming rosebush, her kitten dancing after her, with a smile and a little colour in her face. Then she stood still and stared in amazement. There was Anthony in her chair, his plain face made quite ugly by indignation, his lank awkward figure a contrast indeed to the proportions of those heroes whose history he had been so jealously tearing up. There he sat, in the midst of the tattered volumes, and as Mabel looked at him he actually stripped the back off another victim.

‘O Mr. Strange!’ cried Mabel, her voice shrill with fright and anger. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’

Anthony got up, threw the book on the grass, and came forward to meet her with both hands outstretched.

‘My dear child, I am only breaking poison-bottles,’ he said.

But Mabel was not ready to give him her hands. She joined them together, and quite wrung them in her distress. Her eyes filled with tears of anger and vexation.

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‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, ‘O, how could you!’

‘A cat, too!’ cried Anthony, as Fluffy came forward and stared at him curiously. ‘Who has been doing all this frightful mischief? What has happened to you? Why do I find everything changed?’

‘Nothing is changed. This is my kitten,’ said Mabel, catching Fluffy up into her arms for comfort. ‘O dear, why are you tearing up my books? They are so beautiful, and I shall have nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing!’

Mabel’s voice broke into a sob. But she remembered that she was grown up, and that it was very childish to cry. So she swallowed her tears resolutely, and looked at Anthony with reproachful eyes, waiting for some explanation. He was not at all ready to be ashamed of himself, though he could have cried too to see her in such distress.

‘Don’t let me hear you call those books beautiful,’ he said. ‘They are horrible heathen nonsense, which nobody ought to read, least of all a girl like you. Good heavens! After a course of those, your moral sense would be completely destroyed. Beautiful! No one who cared for true beauty could help doing as I have done—destroying the evil stuff on the spot.’

‘O, but they were not yours.’

‘Nor yours, I trust,’ said Anthony. ‘But I don’t care whose they are. If they belonged to the Queen, I should do just the same.’

‘You couldn’t,’ said Mabel. ‘And they are mine; they were given to me. It was very kind. I did want something to amuse me.’

‘What an awful state of things this is!’ said Anthony. ‘Who gave them to you?’

‘Randal,’ answered Mabel, after a moment’s hesitation.

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Then she sat down, buried her face in Fluffy’s white fur, and cried a little; she really could not help it.

‘Randal! We have come to this already,’ said Anthony aloud, but he was not speaking to her.

For several minutes he stood motionless, with his arms folded, gazing at her. The wind caught a few of the scattered leaves and danced them off across the lawn, but neither he nor Mabel looked after them. He had forgotten all about them, for his mind was quite full of one person—Randal—whom he hated with most unclerical thoroughness.

Anthony was not in the least conscious of his own odd looks, and this fact generally made other people forget them too. Mabel had never thought of them when he and she were friends. Now that she was angry with him, she began to compare him in her mind with everybody else—with Dick, with Randal, with those perfect creatures in her lost books. And yet there was a little self-reproach running through it all.

‘Mabel,’ said Anthony at last, with a pathetic tone in his voice that would have touched any one who really knew him, ‘can’t you do me justice? Can’t you see why I destroyed those books of yours? There are thousands more of them in the world. I don’t buy them all and tear them up—though that would be as grand a mission in life as a man could have. But don’t you know why I tore up these?’

‘No,’ said Mabel obstinately. ‘They were only amusing. They did not do me any harm.’

‘You could not read them without harm,—but that is not exactly the question,’ said Anthony. ‘Why should I interfere with you? Why should I tear up your books, and not other people’s?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mabel dismally.

Anthony saw that his offence was almost unpardonable. page 141 He stood looking at her in the saddest perplexity. It did not occur to him that Randal might have tried to set her against him; if it had, he would not have believed that his little friend, with whom he had sympathised so heartily, could be influenced in any such way; but he did see that Randal was doing his best to make Mabel like him and look to him for amusement, and perhaps the good Anthony was a little unreasonable in his anger. Anybody would have said that such a course was only right and natural in General Hawke’s but he was Randal, and so in Anthony’s eyes it be only villany. His one idea was to save Mabel. As he stood there, looking down at the sad little dark head bowed over the kitten, the damp drooping eyelids, whole attitude that of a miserable and rather sulky child among her ruined playthings—those unfortunate books that lay round her in various stages of destruction—a great pity rose up in Anthony’s heart, and though he could not wish the books whole again, he felt himself a cruel monster. He had been very hard, and had spoken roughly to her, this poor lonely desolate child. How was she, with no experience, to know her friends from her enemies, either in books or men?

‘There is only one way,’ thought Anthony. ‘I am sure of it now. I must be very careful and quiet and reasonable.’

‘Mabel,’ he said, ‘you are very angry with me. I made you so; it is my own fault. But think a moment, and then perhaps you will be able to forgive me. Why should I care whether you read such books as those or not?’

There was the same strange beauty in Anthony’s voice as he spoke that Mabel had noticed when he read prayers, on the morning of their first acquaintance. It came when he spoke, as he seldom did out of church, from the very depths of his heart, from a quiet region page 142 beyond all anger, however righteous, beyond all prejudice, however well founded and strong. Mabel was touched, and could not resist it. She looked up with her tearful eyes, smiled, though rather faintly, and held out her hand to Anthony.

‘O, I’m sure you had some good reason,’ she said, in a depressed voice. ‘It is wrong of me to care about the books, I daresay. Please forgive me for being so silly.’

Anthony caught the little hand and held it fast.

‘O Mabel, my child, little you know about it!’ he said. ‘Some good reason! The same reason that has haunted me ever since I met you in the field that morning—strong when I am with you; stronger still when I am away from you, and know the bad influences that I leave you among. Because I must take care of you; you are not safe away from me. Mabel, do you feel that too?’

‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Mabel softly. ‘Every one is good to me, though perhaps no one is quite so good as you? But you think I am unhappy, and I really am not. The General is very kind indeed, and so is Ran—’

‘Don’t say it!’ cried Anthony impatiently. ‘When did you begin to call him that?’

‘Only the day before yesterday,’ said Mabel, in some astonishment.

‘You did not like that man at first. Why do you like him now?’

‘Because he has been so nice to me. I couldn’t dislike him if I wished,’ said Mabel decidedly.

Anthony hardly knew what to say. His hating Randal was perhaps hardly a sufficient reason for Mabel’s hating him too. After all, it would not so much matter if this dawning preference could be checked in time.

‘Mabel, you don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Let me page 143 explain to you. As to Randal Hawke, I won’t pretend to judge him. We won’t talk about him now. Will you let me put an end to all this trouble—to your loneliness, my child’? Will you come to my home, and let me take care of you there—always?’

Mabel did not at first know what he meant. If she had ever dreamt of a lover, he certainly was not the least like Anthony Strange, so much older than herself, and wearing spectacles. The idea was almost too astonishing. She stared at him gravely without speaking and thought he must be offering her a home with mother out of the kindness of his heart, and because he could not feel happy about her where she was. This idea seemed reasonable; the other was absurd.

‘But Mrs. Strange would not like it, perhaps,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘And I don’t think the General would let me go. O no, thank you; it is no use thinking about it.’

‘I would manage the General,’ said Anthony eagerly. ‘Yes, no doubt he would object; but he has no real over you. As to my mother, I believe she only wants you to make her the very happiest woman in the world. She likes you already; if you were her daughter, she would love you dearly. Say yes, then, Mabel. You are my first love, dear, and certainly my last.’

He did mean it, then. Was ever any thing so extraordinary? He must be fifty, at least, thought Mabel in her consternation. Poor dear Mr. Strange, he had been so charming till to-day! Why must he spoil all by saying this? She turned her head away, and gazed at the blue line of sea so far off. ‘O, if I was in a ship hundreds of miles away!’ thought Mabel. The kitten in her lap was playing with one of her hands; she became painfully conscious that Anthony was still holding the other. What was she to say? page 144 What words could she use to tell him how impossible this was? Randal might be wrong in some things, but he was certainly right when he said one should marry for love. Mr. Strange could not really be in love with her. O no, he was too old, too odd; it was only pity and kindness. Mabel had too much tact, however, to use this argument with him.

Something must be said; she could not sit there for ever, and let him hold her hand. She put down the kitten on the grass and got up, freeing herself by the sudden movement. Then she looked at Anthony, bravely meeting the earnest expression of his eyes. His face changed a little; for of course it was easy to see that there was no hope for him. Anthony, with his power of sympathy, was not likely to fail in understanding the one girl he cared for, and there was no selfishness in his love.

‘You’ don’t like me enough then, Mabel?’ he said gently.

‘It is not that,’ said Mabel. ‘I like you very much. But I never thought—and I can’t—’

‘Does that make it impossible that you ever should?’

‘Yes. O, don’t you see,’ said Mabel, with a sudden appeal to the friendliness that had never failed her yet, ‘if I did, it would be just for home, and to be taken care of, and all that? It could not be anything but that—’

She stopped short, blushing scarlet. Anthony did not speak for a moment, and a look of pain passed over his face; but then he smiled at her as kindly as ever.

‘Yes, my child; I see—I understand. That would not be enough, as you say. Very well, I won’t speak of myself or my wishes any more. Only this, Mabel: if you ever do want a home, Carweston is your home. The tenderest friendship is not such a bad foundation, and something else would grow up afterwards; so if you ever change your mind about what I have asked page 145 you to-day, and will give me the smallest sign of it, remember that with me change is impossible.’

This was a curious commentary on Randal’s character of Anthony Strange.

‘We will keep it all to ourselves, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘You have nobody that you will care to tell, and no one shall hear of it from me. I shall come here just as usual. You will let me do that, Mabel?’

‘O, I hope you will,’ said Mabel, thinking at the same time that his coming did not depend much on her.

All the excitement was gone from his manner; he turned aside, and began picking up the scattered remains of gay bindings, large print, and broad margins with which the grass was strewn. Mabel watched him with a dismal countenance. When he looked at her, the words suddenly came out, ‘What will Randal say?’

‘Tell him it was me, and then let him come to me and say what he pleases,’ answered Anthony. ‘I am a clergyman, you know. I can bear anything.’

Then with rather a sad smile he shook hands with her, said good-bye, and walked away down the grassy slope among the roses, leaving Mabel alone to meditate on her first offer.

Marry old Anthony Strange! live at Carweston! Life had much brighter possibilities than that; so Mabel very naturally thought at nineteen. And Randal was of course quite right when he said one should marry for love.