Captain Marrable looked black and angry at being so counselled; but he believed what was said to him, and had no answer to make to it.
“You must stick to the army,” continued the old man; “and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll do so without the impediment of a wife.”
“That’s quite out of the question.”
“Why is it out of the question?”
“How can you ask me, Uncle John? Would you have me go back from an engagement after I have made it?”
“I would have you go back from anything that was silly.”
“And tell a girl, after I have asked her to be my wife, that I don’t want to have anything more to do with her?”
“I should not tell her that; but I should make her understand, both for her own sake and for mine, that we had been too fast, and that the sooner we gave up our folly the better for both of us. You can’t marry her, that’s the truth of it.”
“You’ll see if I can’t.”
“If you choose to wait ten years, you may.”
“I won’t wait ten months, nor, if I can have my own way, ten weeks.” What a pity that Mary could not have heard him. “Half the fellows in the army are married without anything beyond their pay; and I’m to be told that we can’t get along with £300 a year? At any rate, we’ll try.”
“Marry in haste, and repent at leisure,” said Uncle John.
“According to the doctrines that are going nowadays,” said the Captain, “it will be held soon that a gentleman can’t marry unless he has got £3,000 a year. It is the most heartless, damnable teaching that ever came up. It spoils the men, and makes women, when they do marry, expect ever so many things that they ought never to want.”
“And you mean to teach them better, Walter?”
“I mean to act for myself, and not be frightened out of doing what I think right, because the world says this and that.”
As he so spoke, the angry Captain got up to leave the room.
“All the same,” rejoined the parson, firing the last shot; “I’d think twice about it, if I were you, before I married Mary Lowther.”
“He’s more of an ass, and twice as headstrong as I thought him,” said Parson John to Miss Marrable the next day; “but still I don’t think it will come to anything. As far as I can observe, three of these engagements are broken off for one that goes on. And when he comes to look at things he’ll get tired of it. He’s going up to London next week, and I shan’t press him to come back. If he does come I can’t help it. If I were you, I wouldn’t ask him up the hill, and I should tell Miss Mary a bit of my mind pretty plainly.”
Hitherto, as far as words went, Aunt Sarah had told very little of her mind to Mary Lowther on the subject of her engagement, but she had spoken as yet no word of congratulation; and Mary knew that the manner in which she proposed to bestow herself was not received with favour by any of her relatives at Loring.
XXII
What the Fenwicks Thought About It
Bullhampton unfortunately was at the end of the postman’s walk, and as the man came all the way from Lavington, letters were seldom received much before eleven o’clock. Now this was a most pernicious arrangement, in respect to which Mr. Fenwick carried on a perpetual feud with the Post-office authorities, having put forward a great postal doctrine that letters ought to be rained from heaven on to everybody’s breakfast-table exactly as the hot water is brought in for tea. He, being an energetic man, carried on a long and angry correspondence with the authorities aforesaid; but the old man from Lavington continued to toddle into the village just at eleven o’clock. It was acknowledged that ten was his time; but, as he argued with himself, ten and eleven were pretty much of a muchness. The consequence of this was, that Mary Lowther’s letters to Mrs. Fenwick had been read by her two or three hours before she had an opportunity of speaking on the subject to her husband. At last, however, he returned, and she flew at him with the letter in her hand. “Frank,” she said, “Frank, what do you think has happened?”
“The Bank of England must have stopped, from the look of your face.”
“I wish it had, with all my heart, sooner than this. Mary has gone and engaged herself to her cousin, Walter Marrable.”
“Mary Lowther!”
“Yes; Mary Lowther! Our Mary! And from what I remember hearing about him, he is anything but nice.”
“He had a lot of money left to him the other day.”
“It can’t have been much, because Mary owns that they will be very poor. Here is her letter. I am so unhappy about it. Don’t you remember hearing about that Colonel Marrable who was in a horrible scrape about somebody’s wife?”
“You shouldn’t judge the son from the father.”
“They’ve been in the army together, and they’re both alike. I hate the army. They are almost always no better than they should be.”
“That’s true, my dear, certainly of all services, unless it be the army of martyrs; and there may be a doubt on the subject even as to them. May I read it?”
“Oh, yes; she has been half ashamed of herself every word she has written. I know her so well. To think that Mary Lowther should have engaged herself to any man after two days’ acquaintance!”
Mr. Fenwick read the letter through attentively, and then handed it back.
“It’s a good letter,” he said.
“You mean that it’s well written?”
“I mean that it’s true. There are no touches put in to make effect. She does love
