EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.

It is a year since the November day on which Lucretia Clavering quitted the roof of Mr. Fielden. And first we must recall the eye of the reader to the old-fas.h.i.+oned terrace at Laughton,--the jutting porch, the quaint bal.u.s.trades, the broad, dark, changeless cedars on the lawn beyond. The day is calm, clear, and mild, for November in the country is often a gentle month. On that terrace walked Charles Vernon, now known by his new name of St. John. Is it the change of name that has so changed the person? Can the wand of the Herald's Office have filled up the hollows of the cheek, and replaced by elastic vigour the listless languor of the tread? No; there is another and a better cause for that healthful change. Mr. Vernon St. John is not alone,--a fair companion leans on his arm. See, she pauses to press closer to his side, gaze on his face, and whisper, "We did well to have hope and faith!"

The husband's faith had not been so unshaken as his Mary's, and a slight blush pa.s.sed over his cheek as he thought of his concession to Sir Miles's wishes, and his overtures to Lucretia Clavering. Still, that fault had been fairly acknowledged to his wife, and she felt, the moment she had spoken, that she had committed an indiscretion; nevertheless, with an arch touch of womanly malice she added softly,--

"And Miss Clavering, you persist in saying, was not really handsome?"

"My love," replied the husband, gravely, "you would oblige me by not recalling the very painful recollections connected with that name. Let it never be mentioned in this house."

Lady Mary bowed her graceful head in submission; she understood Charles's feelings. For though he had not shown her Sir Miles's letter and its enclosure, he had communicated enough to account for the unexpected heritage, and to lessen his wife's compa.s.sion for the disappointed heiress. Nevertheless, she comprehended that her husband felt an uneasy twinge at the idea that he was compelled to act hardly to the one whose hopes he had supplanted. Lucretia's banishment from Laughton was a just humiliation, but it humbled a generous heart to inflict the sentence. Thus, on all accounts, the remembrance of Lucretia was painful and unwelcome to the successor of Sir Miles. There was a silence; Lady Mary pressed her husband's hand.

"It is strange," said he, giving vent to his thoughts at that tender sign of sympathy in his feeling,--"strange that, after all, she did not marry Mainwaring, but fixed her choice on that subtle Frenchman. But she has settled abroad now, perhaps for life; a great relief to my mind.

Yes, let us never recur to her."

"Fortunately," said Lady Mary, with some hesitation, "she does not seem to have created much interest here. The poor seldom name her to me, and our neighbours only with surprise at her marriage. In another year she will be forgotten!"

Mr. St. John sighed. Perhaps he felt how much more easily he had been forgotten, were he the banished one, Lucretia the possessor! His light nature, however, soon escaped from all thoughts and sources of annoyance, and he listened with complacent attention to Lady Mary's gentle plans for the poor, and the children's school, and the cottages that ought to be repaired, and the labourers that ought to be employed.

For though it may seem singular, Vernon St. John, insensibly influenced by his wife's meek superiority, and corrected by her pure companions.h.i.+p, had begun to feel the charm of innocent occupations,--more, perhaps, than if he had been accustomed to the larger and loftier excitements of life, and missed that stir of intellect which is the element of those who have warred in the democracy of letters, or contended for the leaders.h.i.+p of States. He had begun already to think that the country was no such exile after all. Naturally benevolent, he had taught himself to share the occupations his Mary had already found in the busy "luxury of doing good," and to conceive that brotherhood of charity which usually unites the lord of the village with its poor.

"I think, what with hunting once a week,--I will not venture more till my pain in the side is quite gone,--and with the help of some old friends at Christmas, we can get through the winter very well, Mary."

"Ah, those old friends, I dread them more than the hunting!"

"But we'll have your grave father and your dear, precise, excellent mother to keep us in order. And if I sit more than half an hour after dinner, the old butler shall pull me out by the ears. Mary, what do you say to thinning the grove yonder? We shall get a better view of the landscape beyond. No, hang it! dear old Sir Miles loved his trees better than the prospect; I won't lop a bough. But that avenue we are planting will be certainly a n.o.ble improvement--"

"Fifty years hence, Charles!"

"It is our duty to think of posterity," answered the ci-devant spendthrift, with a gravity that was actually pompous. "But hark! is that two o'clock? Three, by Jove! How time flies! and my new bullocks that I was to see at two! Come down to the farm, that's my own Mary. Ah, your fine ladies are not such bad housewives after all!"

"And your fine gentlemen--"

"Capital farmers! I had no idea till last week that a prize ox was so interesting an animal. One lives to learn. Put me in mind, by the by, to write to c.o.ke about his sheep."

"This way, dear Charles; we can go round by the village,--and see poor Ponto and Dash."

The tears rushed to Mr. St. John's eyes. "If poor Sir Miles could have known you!" he said, with a sigh; and though the gardeners were at work on the lawn, he bowed his head and kissed the blus.h.i.+ng cheek of his wife as heartily as if he had been really a farmer.

From the terrace at Laughton, turn to the humbler abode of our old friend the vicar,--the same day, the same hour. Here also the scene is without doors,--we are in the garden of the vicarage; the children are playing at hide-and-seek amongst the espaliers which screen the winding gravel-walks from the esculents more dear to Ceres than to Flora. The vicar is seated in his little parlour, from which a glazed door admits into the garden. The door is now open, and the good man has paused from his work (he had just discovered a new emendation in the first chorus of the "Medea") to look out at the rosy faces that gleam to and fro across the scene. His wife, with a basket in her hand, is standing without the door, but a little aside, not to obstruct the view.

"It does one's heart good to see them," said the vicar, "little dears!"

"Yes, they ought to be dear at this time of the year," observed Mrs.

Fielden, who was absorbed in the contents of the basket.

"And so fres.h.!.+"

"Fresh, indeed,--how different from London! In London they were not fit to be seen,--as old as---I am sure I can't guess how old they were. But you see here they are new laid every morning!"

"My dear," said Mr. Fielden, opening his eyes,--"new laid every morning!"

"Two dozen and four."

"Two dozen and four! What on earth are you talking about, Mrs. Fielden?"

"Why, the eggs, to be sure, my love!"

"Oh," said the vicar, "two dozen and four! You alarmed me a little; 't is of no consequence,--only my foolish mistake. Always prudent and saving, my dear Sarah,--just as if poor Sir Miles had not left us that munificent fortune, I may call it."

"It will not go very far when we have our young ones to settle. And David is very extravagant already; he has torn such a hole in his jacket!"

At this moment up the gravel-walk two young persons came in sight. The children darted across them, whooping and laughing, and vanished in the further recess of the garden.

"All is for the best, blind mortals that we are; all is for the best,"

said the vicar, musingly, as his eyes rested upon the approaching pair.

"Certainly, my love; you are always right, and it is wicked to grumble.

Still, if you saw what a hole it was,--past patching, I fear!"

"Look round," said Mr. Fielden, benevolently. "How we grieved for them both; how wroth we were with William,--how sad for Susan! And now see them; they will be the better man and wife for their trial."

"Has Susan then consented? I was almost afraid she never would consent.

How often have I been almost angry with her, poor lamb, when I have heard her accuse herself of causing her sister's unhappiness, and declare with sobs that she felt it a crime to think of William Mainwaring as a husband."

"I trust I have reasoned her out of a morbid sensibility which, while it could not have rendered Lucretia the happier, must have insured the wretchedness of herself and William. But if Lucretia had not married, and so forever closed the door on William's repentance (that is, supposing he did repent), I believe poor Susan would rather have died of a broken heart than have given her hand to Mainwaring."

"It was an odd marriage of that proud young lady's, after all," said Mrs. Fielden,--"so much older than she; a foreigner, too!"

"But he is a very pleasant man, and they have known each other so long.

I did not, however, quite like a sort of cunning he showed, when I came to reflect on it, in bringing Lucretia back to the house; it looks as if he had laid a trap for her from the first."

"Ten thousand pounds,--a great catch for a foreigner!" observed Mrs.

Fielden, with the shrewd instinct of her s.e.x; and then she added, in the spirit of a prudent sympathy equally characteristic: "But I think you say Mr. Parchmount persuaded her to allow half to be settled on herself.

That will be a hold on him."

"A bad hold, if that be all, Sarah. There is a better,--he is a learned man and a scholar. Scholars are naturally domestic, and make good husbands."

"But you know he must be a papist!" said Mrs. Fielden.

"Umph!" muttered the vicar, irresolutely.

While the worthy couple were thus conversing, Susan and her lover, not having finished their conference, had turned back through the winding walk.

"Indeed," said William, drawing her arm closer to his side, "these scruples, these fears, are cruel to me as well as to yourself. If you were no longer existing, I could be nothing to your sister. Nay, even were she not married, you must know enough of her pride to be a.s.sured that I can retain no place in her affections. What has chanced was not our crime. Perhaps Heaven designed to save not only us, but herself, from the certain misery of nuptials so inauspicious!"

"If she would but answer one of my letters!" sighed Susan; "or if I could but know that she were happy and contented!"