"But you have no expectation of falling ill, I hope, Steadman; you have no premonition of any malady?"
"No, my lady, none--except the malady of old age. I feel that I am not the man I once was, that is all. My brain is getting woolly, and my sight is clouded now and then. And if I were to fall ill suddenly----"
"Oh, it would be terrible, it would be a dire calamity! There is your wife, certainly, to look after things, but----"
"My wife would do her best, my lady. She is a faithful creature, but she is not--yes, without any unkindness I must say that Mrs. Steadman is not a genius!"
"Oh, Steadman, you must not fail me! I am horror-stricken at the mere idea," exclaimed Lady Maulevrier. "After forty years--great G.o.d! it would be terrible. Lesbia, Mary, Maulevrier! the great, malignant, babbling world outside these doors. I am hemmed round with perils. For G.o.d"s sake preserve your strength. Take care of your health. You are my strong rock. If you feel that there is anything amiss with you, or that your strength is failing, consult Mr. Horton--neglect no precaution. The safety of this house, of the family honour, hangs upon you."
"Pray do not agitate yourself, my lady," entreated Steadman. "I was wrong to trouble you with my fears. I shall not fail you, be sure.
Although I am getting old, I shall hold out to the end."
"The end cannot be very far off," said Lady Maulevrier, gloomily.
"I thought that forty years ago, my lady. But you are right--the end must be near now. Yes, it must be near. And now, my lady, your orders about the wedding."
"It will take place to-morrow, as I told you, in this room. You will go to the Vicar and ask him to officiate. His two daughters will no doubt consent to be Lady Mary"s bridesmaids. You will make the request in my name. Perhaps the Vicar will call this afternoon and talk matters over with me. Lady Mary and her husband will go to c.u.mberland for a brief honeymoon--a week at most--and then they will come back to Fellside.
Tell Mrs. Power to prepare the east wing for them. She will make one of the rooms into a boudoir for Lady Mary; and let everything be as bright and pretty as good taste can make it. She can telegraph to London for any new furniture that may be wanted to complete her arrangements. And now send Lady Mary to me."
Mary came, fresh from the pine-wood, where she had been walking with her lover; her lover of to-day, her husband to-morrow. He had told her how he was to start for York directly after luncheon, and to come back by the earliest train next day, and how they two were to be married to-morrow afternoon.
"It is more wonderful than any dream that I ever dreamt." exclaimed Mary. "But how can it be? I have not even a wedding gown."
"A fig for wedding gowns! It is Mary I am to wed, not her gown. Were you clad like patient Grisel I should be content. Besides you have no end of pretty gowns. And you are to be dressed for travelling, remember; for I am going to carry you off to Lodore directly we are married, and you will have to clamber up the rocky bed of the waterfall to see the sun set behind the Borrowdale hills in your wedding gown. It had better be one of those neat little tailor gowns which become you so well."
"I will wear whatever you tell me," answered Mary. "I shall always dress to please you, and not the outside world."
"Will you, my Griselda. Some day you shall be dressed as Grisel was--
"In a cloth of gold that brighte shone, With a coroune of many a riche stone."
"Yes, you darling, when you are Lord Chancellor: and till that day comes I will wear tailor gowns, linsey-wolsey, anything you like," cried Mary, laughing.
She ran to her grandmother"s room, ineffably content, without a thought of trousseau or finery; but then Mary Haselden was one of those few young women for whom life is not a question of fashionable raiment.
"Mary, I am going to send you off upon your honeymoon to-morrow afternoon," said Lady Maulevrier, smiling at the bright, happy face which was bent over her. "Will you come back and nurse a fretful old woman when the honeymoon is over?"
"The honeymoon will never be over," answered Mary, joyously "Our wedded life is to be one long honeymoon. But I will come back in a very few days, and take care of you. I am not going to let you do without me, now that you have learnt to love me."
"And will you be content to stay with me when your husband has gone to London?"
"Yes, but I shall try to prevent his going very often, or staying very long. I shall try to wind myself into his heart, so that there will be an aching void there when we are parted."
Lady Maulevrier proceeded to tell Mary all her arrangements. Three handsome rooms in the east wing, a bedroom, dressing-room, and boudoir, were to be made ready for the newly-married, couple. Fraulein Muller was to be dismissed with a retiring pension, in order that Lady Mary and her husband might feel themselves master and mistress in the lower part of the house.
"And if your husband really means to devote himself to literature, he can have no better workshop than the library I have put together," said Lady Maulevrier.
"And no better adviser and guide than you, dear grandmother, you who have read everything that has been written worth reading during the last half century."
"I have read a great deal, Mary, but I hardly know if I am any wiser on that account," answered Lady Maulevrier. "After all, however much of other people"s wisdom we may devour, it is in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our past follies rise up against us at the end of life; and we see how little our book-learning has helped us to stand against foolish impulses, against evil pa.s.sions. "Be good," Mary, "and let who will be wise," as the poet says. A faithful heart is your only anchor in the stormy seas of life. My dear, I am so glad you are going to be married."
"It is very sudden," said Mary.
"Very sudden; yet in your case that does not much matter. You have quite made up your mind about Mr. Hammond, I believe."
"Made up my mind! I began to worship him the first night he came here."
"Foolish child. Well, there is no deed to wait for settlements. You have only your allowance as Lord Maulevrier"s daughter--a first charge on the estate, which cannot be made away with or antic.i.p.ated, and of which no husband can deprive you."
"He shall have every sixpence of it," murmured Mary.
"And Mr. Hammond, though he tells me he is better off than I supposed, can have nothing to settle. So there will be nothing forfeited by a marriage without settlements."
Mary could not enter upon the question. It was even of less importance than the wedding gown.
The gong sounded for luncheon.
"Steadman"s dogcart is to take Mr. Hammond to the station at half-past two," said Lady Maulevrier, "so you had better go and give him his luncheon."
Mary needed no second bidding. She flew downstairs, and met her lover in the hall.
What a happy luncheon it was! Fraulein "mounched, and mounched, and mounched," like the sailor"s wife eating chestnuts: but those two lovers lunched upon moonshine, upon each other"s little words and little looks, upon their own ineffable bliss. They sat side by side, and helped each other to the nicest thing"s on the table, but neither could eat, and they got considerably mixed in their way of eating, taking chutnee with strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus. What did it matter?
Everything tasted of bliss.
"You have had absolutely nothing to eat," said Mary, piteously, as the dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.
"Oh, I have done splendidly--thanks. I have just had a macaroon and some of that capital gorgonzola. G.o.d bless you, dearest, and _a revoir, a revoir_ to-morrow."
"And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond," cried Mary, clasping her hands.
"Isn"t it capital fun?"
They were in the porch alone. The servants were all at dinner, save the groom with the cart, Miss Muller was still munching at the well-spread table in the dining-room.
John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace; there was no time for loitering. In another moment he was springing into the cart. A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep avenue.
"Life is full of partings," Mary said to herself, as she watched the last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below, "but this one is to be very short, thank G.o.d."
She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.
"You"ll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?" said one of her humble friends; "you"ll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their honeymoons?"
But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest She was coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for his living.
She went back to Fellside, and read the _Times_, and poured out Lady Maulevrier"s tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had been always the nearest and dearest to each other. Her ladyship had seen Miss Muller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary"s marriage; but that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be rewarded by a pension which, together with her savings, would enable her to spend the rest of her days in repose. Miss Muller was duly grateful, and owned to a tender longing for the _Heimath_, and declared herself ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.
"I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils. But should Lady Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to come, they can command me. For no one else will I abandon the Fatherland."
The Fraulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony would verily mean independence. And yet she was prepared to regard her husband as her master. She meant to obey him in all meekness and reverence of spirit.