“Frank, Frank,” pleaded Mary. “For all our sakes restrain yourself; you will kill me if you give way like this. What can I do for you? I would lay down my life to give you an hour’s happiness.”
Still Frank sobbed on, and Mary, bending over him as a mother would over a sick child, drew his head on to her shoulder, and soothed and comforted him.
Gradually the passion of his grief subsided, and he lay back, with his head on her shoulder, worn out and exhausted.
Then Mrs. Varley gently turned the handle of the door, and entered the room.
“Thank God for this,” she exclaimed. “Mary, don’t move. Frank, dear, she is the one wife out of all the world you should have chosen, and you may well be thankful to have won such an one. God bless you both. I will write to your father tonight.”
Frank was on the point of asking his mother what he had said or done that she should congratulate and bless him in this way, but Mary’s white face and trembling hands checked the words on his lips, so he merely said, with a weary sigh, “Mother, I must go to bed at once, I am utterly worn out,” and tottered rather than walked to the door. Mrs. Varley followed him. “I may tell your father it is all settled, may I not?” she said, in a low voice, as she held open the door for him. Frank glanced back at Mary leaning still over the back of the armchair, and her drooping figure and tearful face pleaded her own cause. “Tell him what you like, mother,” he replied, wearily, “only let me rest tonight.” Besides, after all, what did it matter? The best of his life was gone, anyone who would might have the broken remnants.
Very angry indeed was the rector when he received his wife’s letter containing the news of his son’s engagement. “It is absolutely indecent,” he wrote back, “it is gross disrespect to the living and the dead. Everyone knows the hopes my son cherished with regard to Miss Warden, and now, within a fortnight after her death, he is engaged to someone else. I will have nothing whatever to do with such an arrangement. Mr. Warden is an old and valued friend of mine, and how could I look him in the face if I countenanced such conduct on the part of my son? Is he a child or a lunatic that he cannot learn to control his own feelings and bear up against a bereavement? Let him make up his mind to bear his sorrows as a man should and as other people have had to before him.”
In reply to this, Mrs. Varley wrote a long letter pleading, not so much the wisdom of her own conduct, as the necessity of the case.
“Frank is neither a child nor a lunatic,” so ran the letter, “but he has strong passions and an impetuous temper which would very rapidly carry him down hill if once he turned that way. Add to this his broken health and spirits, and you will see I have had no light task to perform in endeavouring to restore him to what he once was. The physician here tells me his only chance of recovering health and strength is to start at once on a long foreign tour—under any circumstances he must not think of returning to Harleyford for another year. What then, do you advise? Can you leave your parish for so long a time to travel with your son through Europe (she knew the rector hated travelling, or indeed any kind of bodily exertion) or do you consider that I should be a suitable companion for him under the circumstances? Is there anyone of his own friends fit for such a task, or who could do for him all that a tender loving wife will do? What would it matter to Mr. Warden, or to anyone else likely to criticise his conduct, if Frank fell into a course of reckless dissipation, or ended his life by his own hand—and this, let me tell you, is another terror I have had always before me. No, no, my dear husband, see things in their right light I beseech you; you must give way in this matter, and believe me it is as much for your own happiness as your son’s that you should do so.”
And the rector did give way as might have been expected, and not only consented to his son’s wedding, but went over to Dublin and performed the ceremony himself, and also sketched out the wedding tour for the young people—a trip through the American continent first, and a final run through the chief cities of Europe.
“Hardcastle has the best of it now,” said poor Frank, sadly, to himself, as he stood waiting for his bride in the vestry of the little Irish church where the ceremony was to take place. “He has no mother to talk him into a marriage he has no heart for. Not but that I shall do my best to make her happy, for she is sweet and good, but I cannot tear the other memory out of my heart.”
Thus it was that Frank and Mary became man and wife within a month of poor Amy’s death, and the rector and Mrs. Varley returned to Harleyford to sustain, as best they might, the inquisitiveness and criticism of their neighbours.
IX
Very slowly and wearily the days went on at the High Elms. Lord Hardcastle, now become an acknowledged inmate of the house, scarcely recognised himself in the life he was leading, so completely were his occupations and surroundings reversed. Habituated to the quiet monotony of a life of study, broken only by a yearly visit to London to attend the meetings of the various scientific societies of which he was a member,
