Chapter Ten.
These few days of waiting were intolerable to Marion, who hated all delays, and from her earliest childhood objected to hear reason, as the old nurse used to say. Whatever was hanging over her head, good, bad, or indifferent, she would have come down at once, and let the crash be over. Poor Mrs Miles had too little in common with her daughter to know what to say or do. Every morning she was sure that a letter would come by that post, and as sure when the hour had passed that it was more natural that it should not arrive until the next day. Such little securities win their triumphs at last. On Saturday morning a few lines from Anthony announced their intended return in the afternoon.
It struck Marion at once that her father was depressed, although there was evident gladness at getting back to his home. After he had kissed her, and before turning to his letters, he looked for a moment into her face with a touch of the wistfulness which his talk with her in the study seemed to have brought into his eyes. She determined to find Anthony, who had gone off to the stables to see the pony nibbed down, and whose whereabouts were easily discoverable through Sniffs bark of delight. Hearing his sister’s call, he crossed the yard.
“Hallo, Marion, what have you been doing with yourself? You look as if you wanted fresh air badly. Put on your hat, and come up to Hardlands with me.”
“Hardlands! Anthony, you and papa are as cruel as can be to keep me in this horrible suspense. O Anthony, dear, do tell me,—what did he say?—what is Marmaduke to do?”
“I think it’s pretty nearly right, or on the way to be right,” said Anthony, digging his hands into his pockets, “though I don’t exactly know what Marmaduke expects.”
“To be his heir,” said Marion quickly. “It was a promise.”
“I think Marmaduke must have made a mistake there,” began Anthony, but she interrupted him at once.
“He did not, indeed.”
Anthony was silenced, and began to whistle, not knowing in the least what to say. His father had begged him to tell Marion no more than was absolutely necessary, and there was an uncomfortable and unacknowledged impression upon the two that she would not be satisfied with their tidings. Mr Tregennas would not admit anything definite. “Sha’n’t forget the lad, I tell you. If you want to know for your daughter’s sake, he’ll have enough to live upon, and she, too, unless you’ve brought her up in these new-fangled fashions.” This was what he had said, and of course it was something, Mr Miles would have said it was a good deal, if there had not been that uneasy consciousness of Marmaduke’s expectations, and it was quite certain that it did not satisfy Marion. It was sufficient, however, to give her a further ground on which to urge her father to admit of their engagement. If the Vicar had felt himself as free as usual to follow his own judgment, he would, probably, for some time yet, have refused his consent; but he was in the position of a man who, having failed to see what all the time lay close at hand, feels a nervous distrust of himself, and, moreover, his life had fallen too completely into a matter of routine for him to meet an unexpected call for decision as firmly as he would have met it years ago. He would have willingly let the matter drift to the shore as the tide of circumstances carried it. But Marion was too well aware of the advantage she had gained not to push it farther; Mr Tregennas had rather encouraged than opposed the engagement, and Mrs Miles shook her head over Marion’s loss of colour and brightness. The Vicar was inclined to believe implicitly in his wife at this moment, Marion had one of those temperaments which in their many changes act rapidly upon people’s looks, and her father could not meet her heavy eyes and live his own life any more in peace.
So she had her way; the engagement was allowed, Marmaduke was to spend his approaching leave at Thorpe, and Anthony and he were to go for a week to Trenance.
Here again the poor Vicar was aware of perplexity. Mr Tregennas had shown an inconveniently strong liking for Anthony, whom nobody wanted him to like. His energy and brightness seemed to have such an attraction for him, that the old man, now with little more left of his old nigged self-will than a certain feeble captiousness, would sit and watch him by the hour from under his big eyebrows. The Vicar, who had become aware of this, was almost provoked at his son’s unconsciousness. Anthony was at all times disposed to take it for granted that things would be as he thought best, and it seemed to him that Marmaduke was really as sure of his inheritance as if it had all been plainly set down in black and white. Even if the idea of his becoming his friend’s rival had ever entered his head, the prospect of heirship would have had little fascination for him. He had some money of his own, which made him independent of his father. Trenance was but a dull country place, and he was too young and too sanguine to care much for money and possessions. He wanted power, but not of that sort, and how to gain it he had not yet resolved, but there was a swing of energy about the young fellow which made all things seem possible. If his self-confidence were too buoyant, too ready to rush blindfold, it was a danger which he would be the last to discover for himself; if, later in life, his character were likely to develop just a touch of arrogance, it was for the present concealed by his brightness and boyish gaiety of heart. At any rate he could never be covetous. Trenance was nothing to him, and thinking of Marmaduke it was with a little real compassion for a life which was to be bounded by so many acres, a mine or two, and the little church town. His own dreams reached far beyond those limits.
Already he had taken a step in one of the paths which lay before him, and seemed to invite him into smiling depths. He had written a pamphlet upon certain branches of reform, and it had been noticed with some commendation by an influential paper, to Mrs Miles’s great delight. The notice was a good deal more dear to her than the pamphlet, and she would go up to her son’s room and read out little bits, although with a sharp criticism of its shortcomings.
“There are only two quotations, and so much that people would have liked to read! And why should they say you are a young author? I am sure there is nothing your father might not have written so far as age is concerned.”
“They must criticise, you know.”
“Well,” said Mrs Miles, doubtfully, “if they did not find a little fault, I suppose others would be jealous. But they could not deny that it is excellent.”
She got up as she spoke, and went softly about the room, putting some tidying touches which Faith had neglected. The summer sun was shining in and discovering dust in little out-of-the-way corners where things were heaped. There was a faded sketch of Hardlands by Winifred stuck over the chimney-piece.
“It is a pity those people don’t know who you are,” Mrs Miles continued. “I wish you would write and tell them, Anthony; I am sure they would be pleased. My dear, you would find a better picture than this in the portfolio down stairs.”
“It does very well,” said Anthony sleepily.
Mrs Miles went on with her work, but presently began again.
“My dear, it is a long time since you called at Deanscourt, and Sir James Milman has always been so civil that it does not seem quite right. Suppose you were to ride over there this afternoon.”
“I don’t believe they’ve come down yet.”
“Lady and Miss Milman are at home, I know,” asserted Mrs Miles gravely, “for she wrote the other day to ask for Ellen Harding’s character. Miss Milman seems a very sweet girl.”
“Oh!”
“And very pretty, I’m sure.”
“She’s not my style,” said Anthony, with an air of having disposed of her.
“My dear, I think you would find her so, if only you knew her better,” interposed Mrs Miles earnestly, “and Mrs Featherly tells me—”
“What?”
“That all those girls have money.”
“Well, mother, I’m too shy to venture there by myself, but, if you like, I’ll drive you over in the pony-carriage.”
“Thank you, I’m sure, my dear, it would be very nice,” said Mrs Miles, whose pleasure in driving with her son was mixed with several pet perturbations of her own; “but are you sure the pony is not too fresh?”
“Fresh? He wants a little work, of course, but it’s nothing on earth but play that makes him caper. I’ll see he does no harm.”
“My dear, I can’t help wishing he would play in the stables, where he really has nothing else to do, but if you think he’s quite safe—”
“As safe as any old cart-horse. Come, mother, if he should upset us, I’ll give you leave to call me all the bad names you can think of.”
“O dear, but that will not make it any better,” said Mrs Miles, shaking her head. “I don’t see how you can help it if he takes it into his head to play, as you call it. However, my dear, you really ought to go to Deanscourt, so I will be quite ready by four o’clock, and now I must go and speak to Faith about the dust in this room.”
“You don’t mean to say, mother, that you’ve let Faith engage herself to that dissenting fellow, Stephens,” said Anthony, beginning to speak energetically.
“I could not prevent it,” said Mrs Miles, giving her head a mournful shake by way of protest. “I don’t know what the world is coming to, but servants are not at all what they were.”
“We ought to have stopped it, though. How was he ever allowed to hang about the house? Faith is too good a little thing for a humbugging rascal like that. You wouldn’t believe how he has worked upon that old idiot Maddox; if I hadn’t gone into it, my father would have had a meeting-house stuck under his very nose, ay, and he’ll have it still, unless I keep a sharp lookout. But, upon my word, it is a great deal too bad that he should get hold of Faith.”
Anthony was handling a tool as he spoke, and punching a hole in a bit of wood with as much force as if it had been Stephens’s head. Mrs Miles never liked to see her son “put out;” his face was quick to reflect his feelings, and he certainly did not look pleasantly upon what galled him. It was quite true that David was his present bugbear, and that he gave him credit for no motives except the lowest: his feelings had so much heat in them, that they deprived him in a great measure of the power of sympathy with that with which he had no agreement, and were always easily excited into prejudice.