“But so it is. All the Senior Fellows dropped it like a red-hot coal.”
“I thought Dwight wanted to marry?”
“Yes, but the lady’s friends won’t hear of his taking her there; so it has come down to young Easterby. He can’t be inducted of course yet; but he has written to say he will come down on Saturday and take matters in hand.”
“The services on Sunday? Oh!” said Herbert, with as great a gasp of relief as if he had been responsible for them; and, indeed, Rosamond declared that both her husband and Mr. Bindon looked like new men since Wil’sbro’ was off their backs. Archie was coming back that evening. Jenny much longed to show her two treasures to each other, for it was a useless risk for the healthy man, and the sick one was too weak and tired to wish for a new face, or the trouble of speaking; nay, he could not easily bring himself to cheerful acquiescence in even his favourite Lady Rose taking his sister’s place to set her free for an evening with Archie at the Hall.
Mrs. Poynsett was in the drawing-room. She had taken courage to encounter the down-stair associations, saying she would make it no sadder for the dear boy than she could help, and so Miles had carried her down to meet one who had been always as one of her own sons.
And thus it was that she gathered him into her embrace, while the great strong man, only then fully realizing all the changes, sobbed uncontrollably beside her.
“My boy, my poor Archie,” she said, “you are come at last. Did you not know you still had a mother to trust to?”
“I ought to have known it,” said Archie, in a choked voice. “Oh that I had seen Jenny in London!”
For indeed it had become plain that it had been his flight that had given opportunity and substance to the accusation. If he had remained, backed by the confidence of such a family as the Poynsetts, Gadley would have seen that testimony in his favour would be the safer and more profitable speculation; and Moy himself, as he had said, would have testified to the innocence of a living man on the spot, though he had let the blame rest on one whom he thought in the depths of the sea. Archie’s want of moral courage had been his ruin. It had led him to the scene of temptation rather than resist his companions, and had thus given colour to the accusation, and in the absence of both Joanna and of his cousins, it had prevented him from facing the danger.
This sense made him the more willing to be forbearing, when, after dinner, the whole council sat round to hear in full the history of the interview with Mr. Moy; Anne taking up her position beside Frank, with whom, between her pencil and the finger-alphabet, she had established such a language as to make her his best interpreter of whatever was passing in the room.