"A man of determination and strength of character could have prevented it at the beginning, you would say. I dare say he might have; but I am not a man of determination and strength of character. I never was, and I never shall be."
"Do you consider it in the light of a settled question, then," said the Major, "that your daughter should marry young Hawker?"
"G.o.d knows. She will please herself. I spoke to her at first about encouraging him, and she began by laughing at me, and ended by making a scene whenever I spoke against him. I was at one time in hopes that she would have taken a fancy to young Stockbridge; but I fear I must have set her against him by praising him too much. It wants a woman, you know, to manage those sort of things."
"It does, indeed."
"You see, as I said before, I have no actual reason to urge against Hawker, and he will be very rich. I shall raise my voice against her living in the house with that woman Madge--in fact, I won"t have it; but take it all in all, I fear I shall have to make the best of it."
Major Buckley said no more, and soon after they got home. There was Mrs. Buckley, queenly and beautiful, waiting for her husband; and there was Mary, pretty, and full of fun; there also was the Doctor, smoking and contemplating a new fern; and Miss Thornton, with her gloved-hands folded, calculating uneasily what amount of detriment Mary"s complexion would sustain in consequence of walking about without her bonnet in an April sun.
One and all cried out to know what sport; and little Sam tottered forward demanding a fish for himself, which, having got, he at once put into his mouth head foremost. The Doctor, taking off his spectacles, examined the contents of the fish-basket, and then demanded:
"Now, my good friend, why do you give yourself the trouble to catch trout in that round-about way, requiring so much skill and patience? In Germany we catch them with a net--a far superior way, I a.s.sure you. Get any one of the idle young fellows about the village to go down to the stream with a net, and they will get more trout in a day than you would in a week."
"What!" said the Major, indignantly; "put a net in my rented water?--if I caught any audacious scoundrel carrying a net within half a mile of it, I"d break his neck. You can"t appreciate the delights of fly-fishing, doctor--you are no sportsman."
"No, I ain"t," said the Doctor; "you never said anything truer than that, James Buckley. I am nothing of the sort. When I was a young man, I had a sort of brute instinct, which made me take the same sort of pleasure in killing a boar that a cat does in killing a mouse; but I have outlived such barbarism."
"Ha! ha!" said the Vicar; "and yet he gave ten shillings for a snipe.
And he"s hand-and-glove with every poacher in the parish."
"The snipe was a new species, sir," said the Doctor indignantly; "and if I do employ the hunters to collect for me, I see no inconsistency in that. But I consider this fly-fishing mania just of a piece with your IDIOTIC, I repeat it, IDIOTIC inst.i.tution of fox-hunting. Why, if you laid baits poisoned with NUX VOMICA about the haunts of those animals, you would get rid of them in two years."
The Doctor used to delight in aggravating the Major by attacking English sports; but he had a great admiration for them nevertheless.
The Major got out his wife"s pony; and setting her on it, and handing up the son and heir, departed home to dinner. They were hardly inside the gate when Mrs. Buckley began:
"My dear husband, did you bring him to speak of the subject we were talking about?"
"He went into it himself, wife, tooth and nail."
"Well?"
"Well! indeed, my dear Agnes, do you know that, although I love the old man dearly, I must say I think he is rather weak."
"So I fear," said Mrs. Buckley; "but he is surely not so weak as to allow that young fellow to haunt the house, after he has had a hint that he is making love to Mary?"
"My dear, he accepts him as her suitor. He says he has been aware of it for some time, and that he has spoken to Mary about it, and made no impression; so that now he considers it a settled thing."
"What culpable weakness! So Mary encourages him, then?"
"She adores him, and won"t hear a word against him."
"Unfortunate girl," said Mrs. Buckley! "and with such a n.o.ble young fellow as Stockbridge ready to cut off his head for her! It is perfectly inconceivable."
"Young Hawker is very handsome, my dear, you must remember."
"Is he?" said Mrs. Buckley. "I call him one of the most evil-looking men I ever saw."
"My dear Agnes, I think if you were to speak boldly to her, you might do some good. You might begin to undermine this unlucky infatuation of her"s; and I am sure, if her eyes were once opened, that the more she saw him, the less she would like him."
"I think, James," said Mrs. Buckley, "that it becomes the duty of us, who have been so happy in our marriage, to prevent our good old vicar"s last days from being rendered miserable by such a mesalliance as this.
I am very fond of Mary; but the old Vicar, my dear, has taken the place of your father to me."
"He is like a second father to me too," said the Major; "but he wants a good many qualities that my own father had. He hasn"t his energy or determination. Why, if my father had been in his place, and such an ill-looking young dog as that came hanging about the premises, my father would have laid his stick about his back. And it would be a good thing if somebody would do it now."
Such was Major Buckley"s opinion.
Chapter VIII
THE VICAR HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE.
"My dear," said old Miss Thornton, that evening, "I have consulted Mrs.
Buckley on the sleeves, and she is of opinion that they should be pointed."
"Do you think," said Mary, "that she thought much about the matter?"
"She promised to give the matter her earnest attention," said Miss Thornton; "so I suppose she did. Mrs. Buckley would never speak at random, if she once promised to give her real opinion."
"No, I don"t think she would, Auntie, but she is not very particular in her own dress."
"She always looks like a thorough lady, my dear: Mrs. Buckley is a woman whom I could set before you as a model for imitation far sooner than myself."
"She is a duck, at all events," said Mary; "and her husband is a darling."
Miss Thornton was too much shocked to say anything. To hear a young lady speak of a handsome military man as a "darling," went quite beyond her experience. She was considering how much bread and water and backboard she would have felt it her duty to give Lady Kate, or Lady f.a.n.n.y, in old times, for such an expression, when the Vicar, who had been dozing, woke up and said:--
"Bless us, what a night! The equinoctial gales come back again. This rain will make up for the dry March with a vengeance; I am glad I am safely housed before a good fire."
Unlucky words! he drew nearer to the fire, and began rubbing his knees; he had given them about three rubs, when the door opened and the maid"s voice was heard ominous of evil.
"Thomas Jewel is worse, sir, and if you please his missis don"t expect he"ll last the night; and could you just step up?"
"Just stepping up," was a pretty little euphemism for walking three long miles dead in the teeth of a gale of wind, with a fierce rushing tropical rain. One of the numerous tenders of the ship Jewel (74), had just arrived before the wind under bare poles, an attempt to set a rag of umbrella having ended in its being blown out of the bolt-ropes, and the aforesaid tender Jewel was now in the vicarage harbour of refuge, reflecting what an awful job it would have in beating back against the monsoon.
"Who has come with this message?" said the Vicar, entering the kitchen followed by Miss Thornton and Mary.
"Me, sir," says a voice from the doorway.
"Oh, come in, will you," said the Vicar; "it"s a terrible night, is it not?"
"Oh Loord!" said the voice in reply--intending that e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n for a very strong affirmative. And advancing towards the light, displayed a figure in a long brown great-coat, reaching to the ancles, and topped by some sort of head-dress, resembling very closely a small black carpet bag, tied on with a red cotton handkerchief. This was all that was visible, and the good Vicar stood doubting whether it was male or female, till catching sight of an immense pair of hobnail boots peeping from the lower extremity of the coat, he made up his mind at once, and began:--
"My good boy--"