Milly Darrell - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (read book TXT) 📗

intended to be quite happy in this world?'

'My dear love, how can I answer such a question as that? I think that many people have their lives in their own hands, and that it rests with themselves to find happiness. And there are many natures that are elevated and purified by sorrow. I cannot tell what is best for us, dear. I cannot pretend to guess what this life was meant to be.'

'There is something in perfect happiness that frightens one, Mary. It seems as if it could not last. If it could, if I dared believe in it, I should think that my life was going to be quite happy.'

'Why should it be otherwise, my dear Milly? I don't think you have ever known much sorrow.'

'Not since my mother died--and I was only a child then--but that old pain has never quite gone out of my heart; and papa's marriage has been a greater grief to me than you would believe, Mary. This house has never seemed to be really my home since then. No, dear, it is a new life that is dawning for me--and O, such a bright one!'

She put her arms round my neck, and hid her face upon my shoulder.

'Can you guess what Angus Egerton said to me to-day?' she asked, in a low tremulous voice.

'Was it something very wonderful, dear--or something as old as the world we live in?'

'Not old to me, Mary--new and wonderful beyond all measure. I did not think he cared for me--I had never dared to hope; for I have liked him a little for a long time, dear, though I don't suppose you ever thought so.'

'My dear girl, I have known it from the very beginning. There is nothing in the world more transparent than your thoughts about Angus Egerton have been to me.'

'O Mary, how could you! And I have been so careful to say nothing!' she cried reproachfully. 'But he loves me, dear. He has loved me for a long time, he says; and he has asked me to be his wife.'

'What, after all those protestations about never asking a woman to share his poverty?'

'Yes, Mary; and he meant what he said. He told me that if I had been a penniless girl, he should have proposed to me ever so long ago. And he is to see papa to-morrow.'

'Do you think Mr. Darrell will ever consent to such a marriage, Milly?' I asked gravely.

'Why should he not? He cannot go on thinking badly of Angus when every one else thinks so well of him. You must have seen how he has softened towards him since they met. Mr. Egerton's old family and position are quite an equivalent for my money, whatever that may be. O Mary, I don't think papa can refuse his consent.'

'I am rather doubtful about that, Milly. It's one thing to like Mr. Egerton very well as a visitor--quite another to accept him as a son- in-law. Frankly, my dearest, I fear your father will be against the match.'

'Mary,' cried Milly reproachfully, 'I can see what it is--you are prejudiced against Mr. Egerton.'

'I am only anxious for your welfare, darling. I like Mr. Egerton very much. It is difficult for any one to avoid liking him. But I confess that I cannot bring myself to put entire trust in him.'

'Why not?'

I did not like to tell her the chief reason for my distrust--that mysterious relation between Angus Egerton and Mrs. Darrell. The subject was a serious--almost a dangerous--one; and I had no positive evidence to bring forward in proof of my fancy. It was a question of looks and words that had been full of significance to me, but which might seem to Milly to mean very little.

'We cannot help our instinctive doubts, dear. But if you can trust Mr. Egerton, and if your father can trust him, my fancies can matter very little. I cannot stand between you and your love, dear--I know that.'

'But you can make me very unhappy by your doubts, Mary,' she answered.

I kissed her, and did my best to console her; but she was not easily to be comforted, and left me in a half-sorrowful, half-angry mood. I had disappointed her, she told me--she had felt so sure of my sympathy; and instead of sharing her happiness, I had made her miserable by my fanciful doubts and gloomy forebodings. After she had gone, I sat by the window for a long time, thinking of her disconsolately, and feeling myself very guilty. But I had a fixed conviction that Mr. Darrell would refuse to receive Angus Egerton as his daughter's suitor, and that the course of this love-affair was not destined to be a smooth one.

The result proved that I had been right. Mr. Egerton had a long interview with Mr. Darrell in the library next morning, during which his proposal was most firmly rejected. Milly and I knew that he was in the house, and my poor girl walked up and down our sitting-room with nervously clasped hands and an ashy pale face all the time those two were together down-stairs.

She turned to me with a little piteous look when she heard Angus Egerton ride away from the front of the house.

'O Mary, what is my fate to be?' she asked. 'I think he has been rejected. I do not think he would have gone away without seeing me if the interview had ended happily.'

A servant came to summon us both to the library. We went down together, Milly's cold hand clasped in mine.

Mr. Darrell was not alone. His wife was sitting with her back to the window, very pale, and with an angry brightness in her eyes.

'Sit down, Miss Crofton,' Mr. Darrell said very coldly; 'and you, Milly, come here.'

She went towards him with a slow faltering step, and sank down into the chair to which he pointed, looking at him all the time in an eager beseeching way that I think must have gone to his heart. He was standing with his back to the empty fireplace, and remained standing throughout the interview.

'I think you know that I love you, Milly,' he began, 'and that your happiness is the chief desire of my mind.'

'I'm sure of that, papa.'

'And yet you have deceived me.'

'Deceived you? O papa, in what way?'

'By encouraging the hopes of a man whom you must have known I would never receive as your husband; by suffering your feelings to become engaged, without one word of warning to me, and in a manner that you must have known could not fail to be most obnoxious to me.'

'O papa, I did not know; it was only yesterday that Mr. Egerton spoke for the first time. There has been nothing hidden from you.'

'Nothing? Do you call your intimate acquaintance with this man nothing? He may have delayed any actual declaration until my return-- with an artful appearance of consideration for me; but some kind of love-affair must have been going on between you all the time.'

'No, indeed, papa; until yesterday there was never anything but the most ordinary acquaintance. Mary knows--'

'Pray don't appeal to Miss Crofton,' her father interrupted sternly. 'Miss Crofton has done very wrong in encouraging this affair. Miss Crofton heard my opinion of Angus Egerton a long time ago.'

'Mary has done nothing to encourage our acquaintance. It has been altogether a matter of accident from first to last. What have you said to Mr. Egerton, papa? Tell me at once, please.'

She said this with a quiet firmness, looking bravely up at him all the while.

'I have told him that nothing would induce me to consent to such a marriage. I have forbidden him ever to see you again.'

'That seems very hard, papa.'

'I thought you knew my opinion of Mr. Egerton.'

'It would change if you knew more of him.'

'Never. I might like him very well as a member of society; I could never approve of him as a son-in-law. Besides, I have other views for you--long-cherished views--which I hope you will not disappoint.'

'I don't know what you mean by that, papa; but I know that I can never marry any one except Mr. Egerton. I may never marry at all, if you refuse to change your decision upon this subject; but I am quite sure I shall never be the wife of any one else.'

Her father looked at her angrily. That hard expression about the lower part of the face, which I had noticed in his portrait and in himself from the very first, was intensified to-day. He looked a stern resolute man, whose will was not to be moved by a daughter's pleading.

'We shall see about that by and by,' he said. 'I am not going to have my plans defeated by a girl's folly. I have been a very indulgent father, but I am not a weak or yielding one. You will have to obey me, Milly, or you will find yourself a substantial sufferer by and by.'

'If you mean that you will disinherit me, papa, I am quite willing that you should do that,' Milly answered resolutely. 'Perhaps you think Mr. Egerton cares for my fortune. Put him to the test, papa. Tell him that you will give me nothing, and that be may take me on that condition.'

Augusta Darrell turned upon her stepdaughter with a sudden look in her face that was almost like a flame.

'Do you think him so disinterested?' she asked. 'Have you such supreme confidence in his affection?'

'Perfect confidence.'

'And you do not believe that mercenary considerations have any weight with him? You do not think that he is eager to repair his shattered fortunes? You think him all truth and devotion? He, a _blasé_ man of the world, of three-and-thirty; a man who has outlived the possibility of anything like a real attachment; a man who lavished his whole stock of feeling upon the one attachment of his youth.'

She said all this very quietly, but with a suppressed bitterness. I think it needed all her powers of restraint to keep her from some passionate outburst that would have betrayed the secret of her life. I was now more than ever convinced that she had known Angus Egerton in the past, and that she had loved him.

'You see, I am not afraid of his being put to the test,' Milly said proudly. 'I know he loved some one very dearly, a long time ago. He spoke of that yesterday. He told me that his old love had died out of his heart years ago.'

'He told you a lie,' cried Mrs. Darrell. 'Such things never die. They sleep, perhaps--like the creatures that hide themselves in the ground and lie torpid all the winter--but with one breath of the past they flame into life again.'

'I am not going to make any such foolish trial of your lover's faith, Milly,' said Mr. Darrell. 'Whether your fortune is or is not a paramount consideration with him can make no possible difference in my decision. Nothing will ever induce me to consent to your marrying him. Of course, if you choose to defy me, you are of age and your own mistress; but on the day that makes you Angus Egerton's wife you will cease to be my daughter.'

'Papa,' cried Milly, 'you will break my heart.'