The sun was shining the next morning, and it was deemed perfect weather for drawing. Everyone except Mr Gardiner had equipped themselves with sketchbooks, and they went out early, stationing themselves at the places recommended by Wordsworth’s Guide as offering the most pleasing opportunities for their pencils. Mr Gardiner preferred a morning’s fishing; and soon Mary began to think he had made the right choice. No matter how hard she tried, her drawings remained obstinately unlike the landscape around them. Everything she did to improve matters only made things worse, and after an hour or so, she closed her book. Moments later, Mr Hayward came and sat beside her; he was equally gloomy.
‘I hope your efforts have met with more success than mine.’
‘May I see what you have done?’
‘I don’t think so. Afterwards, it would be impossible for you to think of me ever again as a man of feeling.’
‘Are all men of feeling gifted artists, then?’
‘I have always supposed so. I used to tell myself it was want of a proper subject that explained my poor hand with a pencil. But now I see the truth of it – I have no talent at all.’
Mary laughed.
‘I cannot draw either. I have tried to improve, but, as these poor daubs show, without much success.’
‘We are in a sad way then,’ replied Mr Hayward. ‘If our failures become generally known, we must expect to find ourselves the objects of universal scorn.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Mary. ‘No one returns from the Lakes without an album of sketches to pass around their friends. If ours are too poor to be shown, what are we to do?’
‘We might say they were lost on the Keswick road.’
‘Stolen by thieves.’
‘Eaten by sheep!’
Their laughter made Mrs Gardiner look up. The sight of them, so easy and agreeable together, made her smile. She could not remember when she had seen her niece so happy. Mary had even forgotten she was wearing her glasses; and when she finally took them off and put them into her bag, still chatting away, it only confirmed Mrs Gardiner’s sense of how natural and comfortable they were with one another.
In the late afternoon, they took a boat onto the lake. In the fine quiet weather, nothing was to be heard but the voices of their boatmen, naming the crags and peaks that towered over the water. When they arrived at the middle, the rowers pulled in their oars and the boat bobbed silently in the breeze. A fish jumped, and Mr Gardiner asked the men what kind of sport was to be had here, whether the catch was worth eating or not. Mary trailed her hand in the water. She had no desire to think, to say or to do anything – instead, all she wished was to give herself up to the pleasure of the moment. She was lost within herself when Mr Hayward turned to her and spoke so that only she should hear.
‘I may not be able to capture any of this beauty on paper,’ he said, ‘but it still moves me very much when I see it.’
‘Yes,’ she replied simply. ‘I’m surprised by how happy it makes me, just to look at it.’
‘I’m glad. I like to see you happy.’
Her heart leapt, but before she could reply, Mr Gardiner had asked his opinion on the merits of salmon over trout, or perch over pike, and Mr Hayward was irresistibly drawn into the conversation with the boatmen. But a moment later, he caught her eye with the most affectionate glance; and she did not hesitate to smile confidently back.
Later that night, Mary sat at the tiny window in her bedroom, watching the lake in the dark. She should have been asleep some time ago, exhausted by the fresh air and sunshine they had enjoyed all day, but she could not settle. A great thought was pressing in upon her, demanding to be acknowledged; for a while, she resisted, reluctant to confess it even to herself. But when a shaft of moonlight suddenly broke through the clouds and rewarded her with a sight of the water, shimmering in the cold white light, she could hold back no longer and at last permitted it to take concrete form. She loved Mr Hayward. What she felt for him was more than friendship, more than admiration, more than just pleasure in his company. It was love. She felt a sense of release in allowing herself to say it in her mind. There could be no real doubt of it – she loved him.
She opened the window and breathed in the cool night air. Admitting her feelings for Mr Hayward, even to herself, was a bold enough step. But now she had begun upon this extraordinary train of thought, she could not stop. She believed it was not impossible – was perhaps even probable – that her affections were returned. She thought he might love her too.
The more she considered it, the more she felt it to be true. He had always distinguished her by his notice, seeking her out and sitting beside her, talking to her, laughing with her, reading to her. And since they had arrived at the Lakes, his affection for her had been even more openly expressed, in a thousand small and delightful ways. And then there was the moment when he called her by her name. She hugged her knees and rocked gently back and forth in the moonlit room, remembering how that had felt. She shivered and was suddenly aware of how cold she had become. She hurried to her narrow bed, wrapped herself in the inn’s stiff sheets and gave herself up to the excitement of thinking about him.
In every way, she told herself, they were admirably matched. When she considered the similarity of their temperaments – the interests they shared – the pleasures they took in each other’s company – it was impossible to deny that they were, in the cant phrase, ‘made for each other’. Even Charlotte Collins would have been obliged to concede it. Mary smiled to herself in the darkness as she imagined Charlotte noting with approval everything they had in common, assuring Mary that they possessed all the qualifications necessary to embark upon a sensible marriage of the most rational kind.
But Mary knew that if she were to marry Mr Hayward, their partnership would never be one of companionship alone. There would be far more to it than that. Mary did not like to admit to herself the attraction she felt when in his presence, the desire that came upon her with increasing frequency to take his hand, or to stroke his hair. These sensations seemed to have grown more frequent since their arrival in the Lakes. It was as if the usual rules of behaviour were all but suspended in these wild landscapes. Once Mary would have told herself to suppress such unruly emotions; but in this unsettling country, she found she had no wish to do so. On the contrary, she allowed herself to hope that her honesty in acknowledging her feelings would only increase the likelihood of their being gratified.
It might have been imagined that acknowledging sentiments of such intensity would have kept Mary awake all night, tossing and turning as she considered what they meant. But the excitement she felt produced not uncertainty, but happy expectation; and very soon she was asleep.