As it frequently happens, one change brings another. While the preparations were making for Phyllis’s marriage, a letter arrived from Hallam which Richard could not refuse to answer in person. “My father is dying,” wrote Elizabeth, “and he wishes much to see you.” So the marriage was hurried forward, and took place in the last days of September. Some marriages do not much affect the old home, but that of Phyllis was likely to induce many changes. She would take with her to Texas Harriet and several of the old servants; and there was no one to fill her place as mistress of the house, or as her brother’s companion. So that when she thought of the cheery rooms, closed and silent, she was glad that Richard had to leave them, until the first shock of their separation was over.
She went away with a pretty and cheerful eclat. A steamer had been chartered to take the party and all their household belongings from New Orleans to Texas, for Phyllis was carrying much of her old life into her new one. The deck was crowded with boxes of every description; the cabin full of a cheerful party who had gone down to send away the bride with blessings and good wishes. It seemed all sad enough to Richard. After our first youth we have lost that recklessness of change Which throws off the old and welcomes the new without regret. The past had been so happy, what the future might be none could tell.
He turned his face eastward without much hope. Elizabeth’s letter had been short and inexplicit. “She would see him soon; letters never fully explained any thing.” He arrived at Hallam toward the end of October, and having come by an earlier packet than had been named, he was not expected, and there was no one at the coach to meet him. It was one of those dying days of summer when there is a pale haze over the brown bare fields of the gathered harvests. Elizabeth was walking on the terrace; he saw her turn and come unconsciously toward him. She was pale and worn, and an inexpressible sadness was in her face. But the surprise revealed the full beauty and tenderness of her soul. “O, Richard! Richard! my love! my love!” and so saying, she came forward with hands outstretched and level palms; and the rose came blushing into her cheeks, and the love-light into her eyes; and when Richard kissed her, she whispered, “Thank God you are come! I am so glad!”
People are apt to suppose that in old countries and among the wealthy classes years come and go and leave few traces. The fact is that no family is precisely in the same circumstances after an interval of a year or two. Gold cannot bar the door against sorrow, and tapestry and eider-down have no covenant with change. Richard had not been many hours in Hallam when he felt the influence of unusual currents and the want of customary ones. The squire’s face no longer made a kind of sunshine in the big, low rooms and on the pleasant terraces. He was confined to his own apartments, and there Richard went to talk to him. But he was facing death with a calm and grand simplicity. “I’d hev liked to hev lived a bit longer, Richard, if it hed been His will; but he knows what’s best. I s’all answer willingly when he calls me. He knows t’ right hour to make t’ change; I’d happen order it too soon or too late. Now sit thee down, and tell me about this last fight for liberty. Phyllis hes fair made my old heart burn and beat to t’ varry name o’ Texas. I’m none bound by Yorkshire, though I do think it’s the best bit o’ land on t’ face o’ t’ world. And I like to stand up for t’ weakest side—that’s Yorkshire! If I hed known nowt o’ t’ quarrel, I’d hev gone wi’ t’ seven hundred instead o’ t’ two thousand; ay, would I!” Decay had not touched his mind or his heart; his eyes flashed, and he spoke out with all the fervor of his youth: “If I’d nobbut been a young man when a’ this happened, I’m varry sure I’d hev pitch’d in and helped ‘em. It’s natural for Englishmen to hate t’ Spaniards and Papists. Why, thou knows, we’ve hed some tussles wi’ them ourselves; and Americans are our children, I reckon.”
“Then Texans are your grandchildren; Texas is an American colony.”
“They hed t’ sense to choose a varry fine country, it seems. If I was young again, I’d travel and see more o’ t’ world. But when I was thy age folks thought t’ sun rose and set i’ England; that they did.”
He was still able, leaning upon Richard’s arm, to walk slowly up and down his room, and sometimes into the long, central gallery, where the likenesses of the older Hallams hung. He often visited them, pausing before individuals: “I seem ta be getting nearer to them, Richard,” he said, one day; “I wonder if they know that I’m coming.”
“I remember reading of a good man who, when he was dying, said to some presence invisible to mortal eyes, ‘Go! and tell my dead, I come!’”
“I would like to send a message to my father and mother, and to my dear wife, and my dead son, Edward. It would be a varry pleasant thing to see a face you know and loved after that dark journey.”
“I have read that