Chapter 94 #2
She thought she might die of happiness. But that is a very rare event, even when the dearest wish of one’s heart has been so thoroughly and unexpectedly gratified. So for all the delight that coursed through her, she was able to make a tolerably sensible reply.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Hayward. I should be proud to be your wife—there is nothing I want more.”
They gazed at each other, suffused with pleasure, as if it were impossible to imagine anything as fascinating, as magical, and as entirely and utterly satisfying as themselves and their love for each other.
“You must learn to call me Tom, you know. If we are to be married, it is entirely proper!”
“Tom,” she repeated quietly. It was exciting to say it—but intimate too. When she thought what it suggested—how things would be between them now—she caught her breath. “It feels a little strange at first. But I’m sure I shall come to it.”
“I hope so. I’m not sure I can endure being Mr. Hayward any longer to a woman I have kissed.”
“Really, for shame!”
He leant over and kissed her again, very gently, on her cheek and on her brow, before leading her to the sofa, where they sat down together.
Then his arm was around her, and she noticed for the first time the way his hair curled over his collar.
She liked that very much, she thought. Eventually, she might find the courage to run her fingers through it—but not yet.
“Oh, Tom”—she felt she could say his name now—“my heart is so full—I don’t know what to say—or how to describe what I feel.”
“There is nothing you need to say. It is I, not you, who should be explaining myself.”
He removed his encircling arm and sat up, a little apart from her.
“Mary, I am so grateful—so very, very thankful—that you have returned my love. But I am not sure I deserve it. Nothing in my behaviour over the last months would suggest that I do. I can only imagine the pain I must have caused you. I don’t know how I could have been such a fool.”
He stood up and began to pace about the room.
“I should like to try to account for my actions, if you are prepared to listen. I can neither excuse nor justify them—I know they do not do me much credit—but I cannot leave you in ignorance as to why I acted as I did.”
“I must admit,” she replied, “that I long to know the truth of it.”
Relieved, he returned to the sofa and took up his place beside her once more.
Then he began, describing the origins of his fondness for her—how he had enjoyed her company from the very beginning—how their conversations on poetry had delighted him—how her presence had gradually become essential to him, the source of more and more of his happiness.
He had looked forward to their meetings with ever-increasing pleasure—thought their tastes agreed perfectly—found himself happier in her company than in that of anyone else—and in short, soon knew himself to be very seriously attached.
“In truth, I knew I loved you,” he confessed. “But I did not know what to do about it. I was uncertain. I worried I was not grand enough to make you an offer. That I was—well, let us say, too undistinguished for you.”
Mary was astonished. It was a moment before she found her voice.
“But why should you think such an extraordinary thing? Our circumstances—the circumstances of our families—they do not seem so dissimilar.”
“No, perhaps not. But your elder sisters—their situations are very different. Both have married very wealthy men. Powerful too, in the case of Mr. Darcy. My prospects, whilst respectable, cannot compete with his. I knew I should never be able to offer you Pemberley, Mary. Or even what Mrs. Bingley enjoys.”
“And do you seriously think I would have cared?” Mary exclaimed.
“I am not my sisters! I have been compared to them for as long as I can remember, but I am not them, and have no wish to be! My expectations are very different. And if you had only asked me, I could have willingly—readily—eagerly told you so!”
Her vehemence made Mr. Hayward smile. “If I did not understand that before, I know it now.” He reached out and stroked her hair.
“It is true I did not speak when I might have done. But I had a plan I was convinced would answer. I did not consider I had abandoned the idea of making you an offer. I imagined I had merely postponed it.”
From the remoter regions of the house, the voices of the Gardiner children were suddenly to be heard, loud, confident, excited. They must have finished their morning lessons, thought Mary. Mr. Hayward paused until they had thundered past the drawing-room door, then went on.
“I had reason to believe that I stood on the brink of making a great advance in my profession. You remember those two cases over which I laboured so long and hard before we went to the Lakes? I knew if I won them, they would involve a great step up for me. I told myself I should wait and see how they turned out. If I was successful, I should be in a better position to speak to you as I wished. I thought I had all the time in the world. But then my old friend Will Ryder and his entourage arrived in our little circle.”
“Yes,” replied Mary. “Nothing was quite the same after that.”
“I thought at first Will was entirely taken up with Miss Bingley,” continued Mr. Hayward.
“She certainly made her preference for him very plain. And sometimes it appeared as if her admiration was not unwelcome. I suppose it is difficult for any man to remain entirely indifferent to such an obvious liking. But then I began to notice how he sought you out and took pains to talk to you. He told me he often called on you here. Something about you intrigued him, and I began to wonder if you did not—well, I shan’t say returned his feelings, exactly—but I know he can be very winning.
I did not know whether he had charmed you as he has so many others. ”
“And again, I must ask—you did not think to speak to me directly?”
“I wish more than anything that I had. But I suppose I was afraid of what you might answer. I think many men lack confidence in this respect. In truth, we are not all as bold or as confident as we are supposed to be in these matters. Diffidence is far more common amongst us than is generally admitted.”
He looked a little shame-faced.
“Although I was sometimes uneasy, I did not feel able yet to act. Instead, I applied myself to my work and did all in my power to banish uncharitable ideas. My feelings for you proved far stronger than my doubts. And by the time we began our excursion to the Lakes, I was in a far happier state. I had won both my cases and had been given my promotion as a result. My expectations were considerably improved. I was sufficiently confident now to make you an offer and was fully resolved to ask you. There were a number of occasions when I nearly began upon it—I almost did so that day when we were drawing together. But before I settled on the right time and the right place to speak—out of the blue, Will Ryder and his party appeared once more in our company. I confess I did not know what to make of it.”
“I thought you blamed me for his arrival, that you imagined I had encouraged it in some way.”
“I could not rid myself of the unworthy suspicion that even if you had not actually invited him, you had hinted that his presence might not be unwelcome. It was unjust to you, I know. But I was unhappy and not thinking clearly. Then, after dinner one night at the inn, you may recall that Ryder asked to speak to me privately about his affairs. As a result of what he told me, I convinced myself I must not think about you anymore.”
As he spoke, Mary discovered that on the night when she had leant over the bannisters, obscurely troubled as she watched the two men in intense conversation, Mr. Ryder had confided to his friend the entire story of what had passed at Rosings, describing Miss Anne de Bourgh’s unsanctioned marriage, Lady Catherine’s fury, her subsequent determination to disinherit her daughter and bestow instead her personal fortune upon his own surprised but grateful head.
He had sought the advice of Mr. Hayward, not just as a friend, but also as a lawyer; and had begged him to act on his behalf in managing the business involved in such a delicate transaction.
“I felt I could not refuse such an urgent request. Ryder was anxious to find someone in whom he could place absolute trust, and on whose discretion he could entirely rely. Lady Catherine had informed him that if the least hint of her situation were to leak out, she should reconsider her decision; I was sworn to the completest secrecy. Naturally, he described to me the contracts drawn up by her lawyers; and as a result, I knew exactly how very generously he would one day be provided for. It was an amount considerably in excess of my most optimistic expectations for myself, even after my victories at the Bar. And I knew Ryder thought well of you. I decided there and then that it would be dishonourable in the extreme for me to speak to you as I had intended. If you said yes—as I very much hoped you would—I would be denying you the chance to accept any proposal Ryder might make to you, which would have placed you in a situation far more advantageous than anything I could offer.”
“Oh, Tom, you could not have been more mistaken! If you had offered me the choice—I would have told you how much I cared for you, that I would always choose you over any other man, no matter what their expectations.”
“I know that now. But then I was not so sure.”
“How was I to make clear to you what I felt? I did my best to show you how I felt by all the petty hints and signals permitted to us poor females. But it seemed to me as if you did not or would not see what I was trying to tell you. I began to think I had misunderstood your feelings for me, that you only wished to push me away.”