And have his commission Frank did. I looked at the tablet in the old church the other day with a surging heart. It is a brass tablet, the lettering of which has been recently renovated.
TO THE MEMORY OF
LIEUTENANT FRANK PETTINGDALE,
WHO FELL IN ACTION IN THE
BATTLE OF TEL-EL-KEBIR.
That was all. There was no vainglorious recounting of the brave deed in the performance of which Frank was cut down. He fell "in action." That was all. It was Roger Pettingdale all over—simple and direct and manly. And were not the laconic words far more eloquent than all the ornate elegiacs that poets might have written, just as Roger Pettingdale's silent grief when the news reached him was far more eloquent than all the passionate outbursts of frenzied sorrow that one could conceive?
The fourth child, Clara, as I have already said, sleeps in the churchyard. She died when she was a fair-haired girl of ten—as bright and promising a maiden as one could wish to see. But she was ever fragile, like her mother, and suddenly she faded away, leaving a great gap in the home life at the Pettingdale farm.
As to Mary, the second child, she was nineteen years of age, and newly returned from school, when Edward Leigh, the son of old Squire Leigh, of the Hall, came home from his travels round the world. These two, who had only distantly known each other as children, met for the first time after many years—she a sweet-looking, fresh-coloured girl, in the first blush of womanhood; and he a manly, well-set young fellow with a pleasant, sincere face and straightforward blue eyes. It was the old story! Twang goes the bow of the roguish little archer, and to some heart or another the world all at once becomes rose-colour. The old story! They saw each other on a Sunday morning across the church. She, sitting in the Pettingdale pew, mentally noted that there was a young man at the Squire's side who could be no other than his newly returned son; and he, from his corner underneath the dingy, ponderous coat-of-arms of the Leigh family, looked upon her in her simple dress of white. The sun, striking through the window to her right, glinted upon her brown hair, which always curled so prettily about her forehead. He thought, as he looked, that she was the sweetest, daintiest maiden he had ever seen, and he fell in love with her.
He made no secret of his passion. Beating about the bush was entirely foreign to Edward Leigh. The choleric old Squire went off into a fit of apoplectic rage when he heard how things stood. The veins swelled in his forehead, and that pugnacious under-lip of his stood out and drew itself over the upper lip and the teeth with a tight grip. But Edward had all the old Leigh blood in him. "I love her, father," he said quietly, looking the Squire straight in the face, and the old man's heart sank within him as he met the steady glance of those blue eyes. Fits of passion, threats, fiery denunciations—they were all of no avail. Edward was never once other than respectful. He would stand with shoulders squared and head uplifted, bearing the storm in perfect calm and silence, and then would look his father in the face and say—"Father, I love her"; and the Squire would clench his fist and march to and fro, furiously stamping his feet upon the floor.
"Father, I love her."
In one culminating fit of choleric rage the Squire rode over to the farm. He found Roger Pettingdale in the corn-field, looking at the growing wheat.