Wednesday, April 14th, was the day at last fixed for the Senator"s lecture. His little proposal to set England right on all those matters in which she had hitherto gone astray had created a considerable amount of attention. The Goarly affair with the subsequent trial of Scrobby had been much talked about, and the Senator"s doings in reference to it had been made matter of comment in the newspapers. Some had praised him for courage, benevolence, and a steadfast purpose. Others had ridiculed his inability to understand manners different from those of his own country. He had seen a good deal of society both in London and in the country, and had never hesitated to express his opinions with an audacity which some had called insolence. When he had trodden with his whole weight hard down on individual corns, of course he had given offence,--as on the memorable occasion of the dinner at the parson"s house in Dillsborough. But, on the whole, he had produced for himself a general respect among educated men which was not diminished by the fact that he seemed to count quite as little on that as on the ill-will and abuse of others. For some days previous to the delivery of the lecture the h.o.a.rdings in London were crowded with sesquipedalian notices of the entertainment, so that Senator Gotobed"s great oration on "The Irrationality of Englishmen" was looked to with considerable interest.
When an intelligent j.a.panese travels in Great Britain or an intelligent Briton in j.a.pan, he is struck with no wonder at national differences. He is on the other hand rather startled to find how like his strange brother is to him in many things. Crime is persecuted, wickedness is condoned, and goodness treated with indifference in both countries. Men care more for what they eat than anything else, and combine a closely defined idea of meum with a lax perception as to tuum Barring a little difference of complexion and feature the Englishman would make a good j.a.panese, or the j.a.panese a first-cla.s.s Englishman. But when an American comes to us or a Briton goes to the States, each speaking the same language, using the same cookery, governed by the same laws, and wearing the same costume, the differences which present themselves are so striking that neither can live six months in the country of the other without a holding up of the hands and a torrent of exclamations. And in nineteen cases out of twenty the surprise and the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns take the place of censure.
The intelligence of the American, displayed through the nose, worries the Englishman. The unconscious self-a.s.surance of the Englishman, not always unaccompanied by a sneer, irritates the American. They meet as might a lad from Harrow and another from Mr. Brumby"s successful mechanical cramming establishment. The Harrow boy cannot answer a question, but is sure that he is the proper thing, and is ready to face the world on that a.s.surance. Mr. Brumby"s paragon is shocked at the other"s inapt.i.tude for examination, but is at the same time tortured by envy of he knows not what. In this spirit we Americans and Englishmen go on writing books about each other, sometimes with bitterness enough, but generally with good final results. But in the meantime there has sprung up a jealousy which makes each inclined to hate the other at first sight. Hate is difficult and expensive, and between individuals soon gives place to love. "I cannot bear Americans as a rule, though I have been very lucky myself with a few friends." Who in England has not heard that form of speech, over and over again? And what Englishman has travelled in the States without hearing abuse of all English inst.i.tutions uttered amidst the pauses of a free-handed hospitality which has left him nothing to desire?
Mr. Senator Gotobed had expressed his mind openly wheresoever he went, but, being a man of immense energy, was not content with such private utterances. He could not liberate his soul without doing something in public to convince his cousins that in their general practices of life they were not guided by reason. He had no object of making money. To give him his due we must own that he had no object of making fame. He was impelled by that intense desire to express himself which often amounts to pa.s.sion with us, and sometimes to fury with Americans, and he hardly considered much what reception his words might receive. It was only when he was told by others that his lecture might give offence which possibly would turn to violence, that he made inquiry as to the attendance of the police. But though they should tear him to pieces he would say what he had to say. It should not be his fault if the absurdities of a people whom he really loved were not exposed to light, so that they might be acknowledged and abandoned.
He had found time to travel to Birmingham, to Manchester, to Liverpool, to Glasgow, and to other places, and really thought that he had mastered his great subject. He had worked very hard, but was probably premature in thinking that he knew England thoroughly. He had, however, undoubtedly dipped into a great many matters, and could probably have told many Englishmen much that they didn"t know about their own affairs. He had poked his nose everywhere, and had scrupled to ask no question. He had seen the miseries of a casual ward, the despair of an expiring strike, the amenities of a city slum, and the stolid apathy of a rural labourer"s home. He had measured the animal food consumed by the working cla.s.ses, and knew the exact amount of alcohol swallowed by the average Briton. He had seen also the luxury of baronial halls, the pearl-drinking extravagances of commercial palaces, the unending labours of our pleasure-seekers--as with Lord Rufford, and the dullness of ordinary country life--as experienced by himself at Bragton. And now he was going to tell the English people at large what he thought about it all.
The great room at St. James"s Hall had been secured for the occasion, and Lord Drummond, the Minister of State in foreign affairs, had been induced to take the chair. In these days our governments are very anxious to be civil to foreigners, and there is nothing that a robust Secretary of State will not do for them. On the platform there were many members of both Houses of Parliament, and almost everybody connected with the Foreign Office. Every ticket had been taken for weeks since. The front benches were filled with the wives and daughters of those on the platform, and back behind, into the distant s.p.a.ces in which seeing was difficult and hearing impossible, the crowd was gathered at 2_s._ 6_d._ a head, all of which was going to some great British charity. From half-past seven to eight Piccadilly and Regent Street were crammed, and when the Senator came himself with his chairman he could hardly make his way in at the doors. A great treat was expected, but there was among the officers of police some who thought that a portion of the audience would not bear quietly the hard things that would be said, and that there was an uncanny gathering of roughs about the street, who were not prepared to be on their best behaviour when they should be told that old England was being abused.
Lord Drummond opened the proceedings by telling the audience, in a voice clearly audible to the reporters and the first half-dozen benches, that they had come there to hear what a well-informed and distinguished foreigner thought of their country. They would not, he was sure, expect to be flattered. Than flattery nothing was more useless or ign.o.ble. This gentleman, coming from a new country, in which tradition was of no avail, and on which the customs of former centuries had had no opportunities to engraft themselves, had seen many things here which, in his eyes, could not justify themselves by reason. Lord Drummond was a little too prolix for a chairman, and at last concluded by expressing "his conviction that his countrymen would listen to the distinguished Senator with that courtesy which was due to a foreigner and due also to the great and brotherly nation from which he had come."
Then the Senator rose, and the clapping of hands and kicking of heels was most satisfactory. There was at any rate no prejudice at the onset. "English Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "I am in the unenviable position of having to say hard things to you for about an hour and a half together, if I do not drive you from your seats before my lecture is done. And this is the more the pity because I could talk to you for three hours about your country and not say an unpleasant word. His Lordship has told you that flattery is not my purpose. Neither is praise, which would not be flattery. Why should I collect three or four thousand people here to tell them of virtues the consciousness of which is the inheritance of each of them? You are brave and generous,--and you are lovely to look at, with sweetly polished manners; but you know all that quite well enough without my telling you. But it strikes me that you do not know how little p.r.o.ne you are to admit the light of reason into either your public or private life, and how generally you allow yourselves to be guided by traditions, prejudices, and customs which should be obsolete. If you will consent to listen to what one foreigner thinks,--though he himself be a man of no account,--you may perchance gather from his words something of the opinion of bystanders in general, and so be able, perhaps a little, to rectify your gait and your costume and the tones of your voice, as we are all apt to do when we come from our private homes, out among the eyes of the public."
This was received very well. The Senator spoke with a clear, sonorous voice, no doubt with a tw.a.n.g, but so audibly as to satisfy the room in general. "I shall not," he said, "dwell much on your form of government. Were I to praise a republic I might seem to belittle your throne and the lady who sits on it,--an offence which would not be endured for a moment by English ears. I will take the monarchy as it is, simply remarking that its recondite forms are very hard to be understood by foreigners, and that they seem to me to be for the most part equally dark to natives. I have hardly as yet met two Englishmen who were agreed as to the political power of the sovereign; and most of those of whom I have enquired have a.s.sured me that the matter is one as to which they have not found it worth their while to make inquiry." Here a voice from the end of the hall made some protestation, but the nature of the protest did not reach the platform.
"But," continued the Senator, now rising into energy, "tho" I will not meddle with your form of government, I may, I hope, be allowed to allude to the political agents by which it is conducted. You are proud of your Parliament."
"We are," said a voice.
"I wonder of which house. I do not ask the question that it may be answered, because it is advisable at the present moment that there should be only one speaker. That labour is, unfortunately for me, at present in my hands, and I am sure you will agree with me that it should not be divided. You mean probably that you are proud of your House of Commons,--and that you are so because it speaks with the voice of the people. The voice of the people, in order that it may be heard without unjust preponderance on this side or on that, requires much manipulation. That manipulation has in latter years been effected by your Reform bills, of which during the last half century there have in fact been four or five,--the latter in favour of the ballot having been perhaps the greatest. There have been bills for purity of elections,--very necessary; bills for creating const.i.tuencies, bills for abolishing them, bills for dividing them, bills for extending the suffrage, and bills, if I am not mistaken, for curtailing it. And what has been the result? How many men are there in this room who know the respective nature of their votes?
And is there a single woman who knows the political worth of her husband"s vote? Pa.s.sing the other day from the Bank of this great metropolis to its suburb called Brentford, journeying as I did the whole way through continuous rows of houses, I found myself at first in a very ancient borough returning four members,--double the usual number,--not because of its population but because it has always been so. Here I was informed that the residents had little or nothing to do with it. I was told, though I did not quite believe what I heard, that there were no residents. The voters however, at any rate the influential voters, never pa.s.s a night there, and combine their city franchise with franchises elsewhere. I then went through two enormous boroughs, one so old as to have a great political history of its own, and the other so new as to have none. It did strike me as odd that there should be a new borough, with new voters, and new franchises, not yet ten years old, in the midst of this city of London. But when I came to Brentford, everything was changed. I was not in a town at all though I was surrounded on all sides by houses. Everything around me was grim and dirty enough, but I am supposed to have reached, politically, the rustic beauties of the country. Those around me, who had votes, voted for the County of Middles.e.x. On the other side of the invisible border I had just past the poor wretch with 3_s._ a day who lived in a grimy lodging or a half-built hut, but who at any rate possessed the political privilege. Now I had suddenly emerged among the aristocrats, and quite another state of things prevailed. Is that a reasonable manipulation of the votes of the people? Does that arrangement give to any man an equal share in his country? And yet I fancy that the thing is so little thought of that few among you are aware that in this way the largest cla.s.s of British labour is excluded from the franchise in a country which boasts of equal representation.
"The chief object of your first Reform Bill was that of realising the very fact of representation. Up to that time your members of the House of Commons were in truth deputies of the Lords or of other rich men. Lord A, or Mr. B, or perhaps Lady C, sent whom she pleased to Parliament to represent this or that town, or occasionally this or that county. That absurdity is supposed to be past, and on evils that have been cured no one should dwell. But how is it now? I have a list,--in my memory, for I would not care to make out so black a catalogue in legible letters,--of forty members who have been returned to the present House of Commons by the single voices of influential persons. What will not forty voices do even in your Parliament? And if I can count forty, how many more must there be of which I have not heard?" Then there was a voice calling upon the Senator to name those men, and other voices denying the fact. "I will name no one," said the Senator. "How could I tell what n.o.ble friend I might put on a stool of repentance by doing so?" And he looked round on the gentlemen on the platform behind him. "But I defy any member of Parliament here present to get up and say that it is not so." Then he paused a moment. "And if it be so, is that rational? Is that in accordance with the theory of representation as to which you have all been so ardent, and which you profess to be so dear to you? Is the country not over-ridden by the aristocracy when Lord Lambswool not only possesses his own hereditary seat in the House of Lords, but also has a seat for his eldest son in the House of Commons?"
Then a voice from the back called out, "What the deuce is all that to you?"
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SENATOR"S LECTURE.--NO. II.
"If I see a man hungry in the street," said the Senator, instigated by the question asked him at the end of the last chapter, "and give him a bit of bread, I don"t do it for my own sake but for his." Up to this time the Britishers around him on the platform and those in the benches near to him, had received what he said with a good grace. The allusion to Lord Lambswool had not been pleasant to them, but it had not been worse than they had expected. But now they were displeased.
They did not like being told that they were taking a bit of bread from him in their own political dest.i.tution. They did not like that he, an individual, should presume that he had bread to offer to them as a nation. And yet, had they argued it out in their own minds, they would have seen that the Senator"s metaphor was appropriate. His purpose in being there was to give advice, and theirs in coming to listen to it. But it was unfortunate. "When I ventured to come before you here, I made all this my business," continued the Senator. Then he paused and glanced round the hall with a defiant look. "And now about your House of Lords," he went on. "I have not much to say about the House of Lords, because if I understand rightly the feeling of this country it is already condemned." "No such thing." "Who told you that?" "You know nothing about it." These and other words of curt denial came from the distant corners, and a slight murmur of disapprobation was heard even from the seats on the platform. Then Lord Drummond got up and begged that there might be silence. Mr.
Gotobed had come there to tell them his views,--and as they had come there expressly to listen to him, they could not without impropriety interrupt him. "That such will be the feeling of the country before long," continued the Senator, "I think no one can doubt who has learned how to look to the signs of the times in such matters. Is it possible that the theory of an hereditary legislature can be defended with reason? For a legislature you want the best and wisest of your people." "You don"t get them in America," said a voice which was beginning to be recognised. "We try at any rate," said the Senator.
"Now is it possible that an accident of birth should give you excellence and wisdom? What is the result? Not a tenth of your hereditary legislators a.s.semble in the beautiful hall that you have built for them. And of that tenth the greater half consists of counsellors of state who have been placed there in order that the business of the country may not be brought to a standstill. Your hereditary chamber is a fiction supplemented by the element of election,--the election resting generally in the very bosom of the House of Commons." On this subject, although he had promised to be short, he said much more, which was received for the most part in silence. But when he ended by telling them that they could have no right to call themselves a free people till every legislator in the country was elected by the votes of the people, another murmur was heard through the hall.
"I told you," said he waxing more and more energetic, as he felt the opposition which he was bound to overcome, "that what I had to say to you would not be pleasant. If you cannot endure to hear me, let us break up and go away. In that case I must tell my friends at home that the tender ears of a British audience cannot bear rough words from American lips. And yet if you think of it we have borne rough words from you and have borne them with good-humour." Again he paused, but as none rose from their seats he went on, "Proceeding from hereditary legislature I come to hereditary property. It is natural that a man should wish to give to his children after his death the property which he has enjoyed during their life. But let me ask any man here who has not been born an eldest son himself, whether it is natural that he should wish to give it all to one son. Would any man think of doing so, by the light of his own reason,--out of his own head as we say? Would any man be so unjust to those who are equal in his love, were he not constrained by law, and by custom more iron-handed even than the law?" The Senator had here made a mistake very common with Americans, and a great many voices were on him at once. "What law?" "There is no law." "You know nothing about it." "Go back and learn."
"What!" cried the Senator coming forward to the extreme verge of the platform and putting down his foot as though there were strength enough in his leg to crush them all; "Will any one have the hardihood to tell me that property in this country is not affected by primogeniture?" "Go back and learn the law." "I know the law perhaps better than most of you. Do you mean to a.s.sert that my Lord Lambswool can leave his land to whom he pleases? I tell you that he has no more than a life-interest in it, and that his son will only have the same." Then an eager Briton on the platform got up and whispered to the Senator for a few minutes, during which the murmuring was continued. "My friend reminds me," said the Senator, "that the matter is one of custom rather than law; and I am obliged to him. But the custom which is d.a.m.nable and cruel, is backed by law which is equally so. If I have land I can not only give it all to my eldest son, but I can a.s.sure the right of primogeniture to his son, though he be not yet born. No one I think will deny that there must be a special law to enable me to commit an injustice so unnatural as that.
"Hence it comes that you still suffer under an aristocracy almost as dominant, and in its essence as irrational, as that which created feudalism." The gentlemen collected on the platform looked at each other and smiled, perhaps failing to catch the exact meaning of the Senator"s words. "A lord here has a power, as a lord, which he cannot himself fathom and of which he daily makes an unconscious but most deleterious use. He is brought up to think it natural that he should be a tyrant. The proclivities of his order are generous, and as a rule he gives more than he takes. But he is as injurious in the one process as in the other. Your ordinary Briton in his dealing with a lord expects payment in some shape for every repet.i.tion of the absurd t.i.tle;--and payment is made. The t.i.tled aristocrat pays dearer for his horse, dearer for his coat, dearer for his servant than other people. But in return he exacts much which no other person can get.
Knowing his own magnanimity he expects that his word shall not be questioned. If I may be allowed I will tell a little story as to one of the most generous gentlemen I have had the happiness of meeting in this country, which will explain my meaning."
Then without mentioning names he told the story of Lord Rufford, Goarly, and Scrobby, in such a way as partly to redeem himself with his audience. He acknowledged how absolutely he had been himself befooled, and how he had been done out of his money by misplaced sympathy. He made Mrs. Goarly"s goose immortal, and in imitating the indignation of Runce the farmer and Bean the gamekeeper showed that he was master of considerable humour. But he brought it all round at last to his own purpose, and ended this episode of his lecture by his view of the absurdity and illegality of British hunting. "I can talk about it to you," he said, "and you will know whether I am speaking the truth. But when I get home among my own people, and repeat my lecture there, as I shall do,--with some little additions as to the good things I have found here from which your ears may be spared,--I shall omit this story as I know it will be impossible to make my countrymen believe that a hundred harum-scarum tomboys may ride at their pleasure over every man"s land, destroying crops and trampling down fences, going, if their vermin leads them there, with reckless violence into the sweet domestic garden of your country residences; and that no one can either stop them or punish them! An American will believe much about the wonderful ways of his British cousin, but no American will be got to believe that till he sees it."
"I find," said he, "that this irrationality, as I have ventured to call it, runs through all your professions. We will take the Church as being the highest at any rate in its objects." Then he recapitulated all those arguments against our mode of dispensing church patronage with which the reader is already familiar if he has attended to the Senator"s earlier words as given in this chronicle.
"In other lines of business there is, even here in England, some attempt made to get the man best suited for the work he has to do. If any one wants a domestic servant he sets about the work of getting a proper person in a very determined manner indeed. But for the care,--or, as you call it, the cure,--of his soul, he has to put up with the man who has bought the right to minister to his wants; or with him whose father wants a means of living for his younger son,--the elder being destined to swallow all the family property; or with him who has become sick of drinking his wine in an Oxford college;--or with him, again, who has pleaded his cause successfully with a bishop"s daughter." It is not often that the British public is angered by abuse of the Church, and this part of the lecture was allowed to pa.s.s without strong marks of disapprobation.
"I have been at some trouble," he continued, "to learn the very complex rules by which your army is now regulated, and those by which it was regulated a very short time since. Unhappily for me I have found it in a state of transition, and nothing is so difficult to a stranger"s comprehension as a transition state of affairs. But this I can see plainly;--that every improvement which is made is received by those whom it most concerns with a horror which amounts almost to madness. So lovely to the ancient British, well-born, feudal instinct is a state of unreason, that the very absence of any principle endears to it inst.i.tutions which no one can attempt to support by argument. Had such a thing not existed as the right to purchase military promotion, would any satirist have been listened to who had suggested it as a possible outcome of British irrationality? Think what it carries with it! The man who has proved himself fit to serve his country by serving it in twenty foughten fields, who has bled for his country and perhaps preserved his country, shall rot in obscurity because he has no money to buy promotion, whereas the young dandy who has done no more than glitter along the pavements with his sword and spurs shall have the command of men;--because he has so many thousand dollars in his pocket."
"_Buncombe_," shouted the inimical voice.
"But is it _Buncombe_?" asked the intrepid Senator. "Will any one who knows what he is talking about say that I am describing a state of things which did not exist yesterday? I will acknowledge that this has been rectified,--tho" I see symptoms of relapse. A fault that has been mended is a fault no longer. But what I speak of now is the disruption of all concord in your army caused by the reform which has forced itself upon you. All loyalty has gone; all that love of his profession which should be the breath of a soldier"s nostrils.
A fine body of fighting heroes is broken-hearted, not because injury has been done to them or to any of them, but because the system had become peculiarly British by reason of its special absurdity, and therefore peculiarly dear."
"Buncombe," again said the voice, and the word was now repeated by a dozen voices.
"Let any one show me that it is Buncombe. If I say what is untrue, do with me what you please. If I am ignorant, set me right and laugh at me. But if what I say is true, then your interruption is surely a sign of imbecility. I say that the change was forced upon you by the feeling of the people, but that its very expediency has demoralized the army, because the army was irrational. And how is it with the navy? What am I to believe when I hear so many conflicting statements among yourselves?" During this last appeal, however, the noise at the back of the hall had become so violent, that the Senator was hardly able to make his voice heard by those immediately around him.
He himself did not quail for a moment, going on with his gestures, and setting down his foot as though he were still confident in his purpose of overcoming all opposition. He had not much above half done yet. There were the lawyers before him, and the Civil Service, and the railways, and the commerce of the country, and the labouring cla.s.ses. But Lord Drummond and others near him were becoming terrified, thinking that something worse might occur unless an end was put to the proceedings. Then a superintendent of police came in and whispered to his Lordship. A crowd was collecting itself in Piccadilly and St. James"s Street, and perhaps the Senator had better be withdrawn. The officer did not think that he could safely answer for the consequences if this were carried on for a quarter of an hour longer. Then Lord Drummond having meditated for a moment, touched the Senator"s arm and suggested a withdrawal into a side room for a minute. "Mr. Gotobed," he said, "a little feeling has been excited and we had better put an end to this for the present."
"Put an end to it?"
"I am afraid we must. The police are becoming alarmed."
"Oh, of course; you know best. In our country a man is allowed to express himself unless he utters either blasphemy or calumny. But I am in your hands and of course you must do as you please." Then he sat down in a corner, and wiped his brow. Lord Drummond returned to the hall, and there endeavoured to explain that the lecture was over for that night. The row was so great that it did not matter much what he said, but the people soon understood that the American Senator was not to appear before them again.
It was not much after nine o"clock when the Senator reached his hotel, Lord Drummond having accompanied him thither in a cab. "Good night, Mr. Gotobed," said his Lordship. "I cannot tell you how much I respect both your purpose and your courage;--but I don"t know how far it is wise for a man to tell any other man, much less a nation, of all his faults."
"You English tell us of ours pretty often," said the Senator.
When he found himself alone he thought of it all, giving himself no special credit for what he had done, acknowledging to himself that he had often chosen his words badly and expressed himself imperfectly, but declaring to himself through it all that the want of reason among Britishers was so great, that no one ought to treat them as wholly responsible beings.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE LAST DAYS OF MARY MASTERS.
The triumph of Mary Masters was something more than a nine days"
wonder to the people of Dillsborough. They had all known Larry Twentyman"s intentions and aspirations, and had generally condemned the young lady"s obduracy, thinking, and not being slow to say, that she would live to repent her perversity. Runciman who had a thoroughly warm-hearted friendship for both the attorney and Larry had sometimes been very severe on Mary. "She wants a touch of hardship," he would say, "to bring her to. If Larry would just give her a cold shoulder for six months, she"d be ready to jump into his arms." And Dr. Nupper had been heard to remark that she might go farther and fare worse. "If it were my girl I"d let her know all about it," Ribbs the butcher had said in the bosom of his own family.
When it was found that Mr. Surtees the curate was not to be the fortunate man, the matter was more inexplicable than ever. Had it then been declared that the owner of Hoppet Hall had proposed to her, all these tongues would have been silenced, and the refusal even of Larry Twentyman would have been justified. But what was to be said and what was to be thought when it was known that she was to be the mistress of Bragton? For a day or two the prosperity of the attorney was hardly to be endured by his neighbours. When it was first known that the stewardship of the property was to go back into his hands, his rise in the world was for a time slightly prejudicial to his popularity; but this greater stroke of luck, this latter promotion which would place him so much higher in Dillsborough than even his father or his grandfather had ever been, was a great trial of friendship.
Mrs. Masters felt it all very keenly. All possibility for reproach against either her husband or her step-daughter was of course at an end. Even she did not pretend to say that Mary ought to refuse the squire. Nor, as far as Mary was concerned, could she have further recourse to the evils of Ushanting, and the peril of social intercourse with ladies and gentlemen. It was manifest that Mary was to be a lady with a big house, and many servants, and, no doubt, a carriage and horses. But still Mrs. Masters was not quite silenced.
She had daughters of her own, and would solace herself by declaring to them, to her husband, and to her specially intimate friends, that of course they would see no more of Mary. It wasn"t for them to expect to be asked to Bragton, and as for herself she would much rather not. She knew her own place and what she was born to, and wasn"t going to let her own children spoil themselves and ruin their chances by dining at seven o"clock and being waited upon by servants at every turn. Thank G.o.d her girls could make their own beds, and she hoped they might continue to do so at any rate till they had houses of their own.
And there seemed to Dillsborough to be some justification for all this in the fact that Mary was now living at Bragton, and that she did not apparently intend to return to her father"s house. At this time Reginald Morton himself was still at Hoppet Hall, and had declared that he would remain there till after his marriage. Lady Ushant was living at the big house, which was henceforth to be her home. Mary was her visitor, and was to be married from Bragton as though Bragton were her residence rather than the squire"s. The plan had originated with Reginald, and when it had been hinted to him that Mary would in this way seem to slight her father"s home, he had proposed that all the Masters should come and stay at Bragton previous to the ceremony. Mrs. Masters yielded as to Mary"s residence, saying with mock humility that of course she had no room fit to give a marriage feast to the Squire of Bragton; but she was steadfast in saying to her husband, who made the proposition to her, that she would stay at home. Of course she would be present at the wedding; but she would not trouble the like of Lady Ushant by any prolonged visiting.
The wedding was to take place about the beginning of May, and all these things were being considered early in April. At this time one of the girls was always at Bragton, and Mary had done her best, but hitherto in vain, to induce her step-mother to come to her. When she heard that there was a doubt as to the accomplishment of the plan for the coming of the whole family, she drove herself into Dillsborough in the old phaeton and then pleaded her cause for herself. "Mamma,"
she said, "won"t you come with the girls and papa on the 29th?"
"I think not, my dear. The girls can go,--if they like it. But it will be more fitting for papa and me to come to the church on the morning."