'I can't help being happy,' he said, 'married to you. Every day I love you a little more. And whatever I do, whatever I accomplish, is because of you; don't you know that?'
'Yes, dearest, I do, and it makes me very proud, but a bit worried too. You put me first in life, before God, and that is not right.'
'God is not real to me as He is to you,' said Henry. 'You I can touch, I can hold, I can kiss, I can love. God is something mysterious, intangible. And so, in a humble way, you take the place of God.'
'Yes, sweetheart, but people pass away, and God is eternal.'
'Damn eternity. I don't want eternity.
I want you, and the present, forever and forever.' He leant across the sofa, and buried his head against her.
'I can't help it,' he repeated, 'I can't help loving you. It's in my blood. My father was just the same about my mother, and although I barely remember him-I was only four years old when he died-I can recollect him standing by the creek, watching her as she played with Johnnie, and Fanny, and myself, and I shall never forget the expression in His eyes. My aunt Jane was another. If she had not been killed in an accident she would have died of a broken heart, grieving over some fellow on Doon Island. It's no use, Katherine, we Brodricks are made like this; you must accept it.'
She held him close to her, and kissed the top of his head.
'I do accept it,' she said, 'but it makes me afraid, all the same.'
He leant back, his head against her knee, and stared into the fire.
'I often wonder,' he said thoughtfully, 'whether poor Johnnie's despair was not due to a love affair gone wrong. Oh, not that Donovan woman, that was merely a sordid interlude, but something deeper. But who the devil could he have been fond of? I never heard him mention anyone.'
Katherine did not answer. She went on stroking his hair.
'If only he could have married and settled down, it would have been the saving of him,' continued Henry.
'That ghastly end could have been avoided. Perhaps if you had met him first you might have married him instead of me.'
He turned, half smiling, half sadly, to look at his wife. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she was staring into the fire.
'Sweetheart, what is it?' he said. 'I've hurt you, I've made you unhappy? Selfish, careless brute that I am. I ought to remember you are not well. And here I've been, tiring you with family history. My poor darling, your face is white and miserable, what have I done?'
'Nothing,' she said, 'it's nothing, I promise you. Just a sudden foolishness.'
'It's been a long day,' he said. 'You should have rested this afternoon, instead of walking with us through the woods.
I thought it was too far for you at the time. And then lifting Molly about here, after tea. She is too heavy for you now. Does the other little one make a heaviness?'
'The other little one is quiet.'
'I shall carry you to bed, then,' he said. 'Come, put your arms round my neck, and hold me close.
Where is your book? That one, by the window there?
Reach down for it, then. Mr. Dickens again. What would you do without him? I shall read a chapter aloud to you, and then you must close your eyes and go to sleep, and have all the rest you can. Don't worry about the lamps.
I will come down and put them out when I have seen you safely in bed.'
He carried her along the passage to the room that had been Barbara's. He left her alone, and went back again to the drawing-room to blow out the lamps.
How unlike Katherine to have tears; she who never gave way, who was so calm, so quiet. She must be very tired. There could be no other explanation. It was not possible that she should have anything on her mind. But when he had read her the chapter of the novel, and had laid it aside, he leant over her and taking her in his arms, he said, searching her eyes, and feeling for his words, 'Tell me, darling, tell me the truth-are you happy with me?'
The Town Hall at Bronsea was packed to suffocation. There were fellows straight from the docks, still in their working clothes, with caps on the backs of their heads and pipes in their mouths, men from the smelting works and factories, and their women-folk too, with shawls about their heads, all of them talking in the high, sing-song voice peculiar to Bronsea.
Most of the working people intended to vote for the opposing candidate, Mr. Sartor, the Liberal, and had only come to the meeting to indulge in the free fun of baiting the speaker, but there were a certain number amongst them who sported the blue ribbon for all that.
Clerks from the shipping-office who had met Henry Brodrick personally, seamen who had handled his cargoes back and forth across the water from Doonhaven to Bronsea, men from the smelting-works who had seen him and spoken with him. and the sprinkling of shop-keepers, small tradesmen, doctors, bank-managers and others, who considered it 'genteel' to vote Conservative, because it put them in a superior class to the working men and women of Bronsea.
The noise was tremendous, with the clatter of tongues, whistles, and laughter, and then someone from the rear of the hall started up a hymn, and was at once joined by the large mass of people present; the chattering mob changed instantly into a massed choir, solemn and majestic.
Henry, eager and excited, his blue rosette in his buttonhole, his frock-coat immaculate and closely fitting his tall, broad figure, watched them impatiently, anxious to begin. Not that he could do much in such a gathering. They had come to mock him, rather than applaud or listen with any serious intent. There were the members of his family Who had come so loyally to support him. Herbert, now vicar at Lletharrog, and his cheerful, dumpy little wife.
Who, when they were children, would ever have supposed that Herbert, the baby of the family, with his lively ways and twinkling brown eyes, would become a parson? There was Edward, on special leave for the occasion, his curly hair standing straight on end as it always did, bending across to talk to Fanny and Bill Eyre, who had travelled the water for the event.
Fanny with the inevitable little crushed expression on her fact that she had worn as long as he could remember, which must have come from being the one girl amongst four brothers, for honest Bill Eyre was easy enough in all conscience. Heavens, what a muster of parsons-because of course besides Herbert and Bill there was the faithful Tom Callaghan, being very attentive surely to the pretty young woman at his side, some friend of Fanny's. Perhaps Tom was smitten at last, and would take upon himself the bonds of matrimony. Aunt Eliza, over from Saunby, bolt upright and very full of herself, with a lorgnette dangling from her bosom which she kept putting up to her eyes, observing the populace with an expression of extreme disgust, as if she found the proximity of the working people of Bronsea really rather trying, and something which Miss Brodrick, of Brodrick House, Saunby, was not accustomed to in the general way. And lastly Fanny-Rosa, his mother, who had come all the way from Nice; not, she said, in order to see her son get up on a platform and talk with his tongue in his cheek, but because she had not a stitch to wear and must buy clothes. Paris was too expensive, and in France the people were so grasping, they expected ready money for every order given, whereas in England people never bothered about such things; she could buy and owe for years, and if bills did come in it was easy enough to pretend the letter had been lost in transit.
Henry had let her prattle on in this fashion, when he met her in London and brought her down to Lletharrog to stay with Herbert, but he was perplexed by this careless talk of owing money from his mother, who, as he knew well, had a very liberal income and had been provided for in his grandfather's will in extremely generous fashion.
As for clothes, he never thought his mother cared what she wore. She was always a mixture of finery and slovenliness-witness her appearance this evening. A wrap of really exquisite velvet with a high sable collar put over a shabby black gown, the skirt of which trailed on the ground and had the hem undone and besmeared with dirt. Her top half was magnificent. The vivid hair was white now-this had come since Johnnie's death-and the slanting green eyes matched the emerald ear-rings; she might have been a queen. But the lower half, with that trailing hem, belonged to any slatternly woman from the market-place in Doonhaven. There they were, his family; and the best beloved of all was absent, because of course she could not possibly undertake the journey in her present state, the baby expected any day now. He knew her thoughts were with him, he could imagine her hand in his and her dear
