"You will soon have nobody left but me. No matter. I shall have you all to myself, and be at once a spoiled child, and an uncommonly merry old bachelor."
Again the mother smiled, without reply. She, too, doubtless thought herself a great diplomatist.
William Ravenel—he was henceforward never anything to us but William—came home with Mr. Halifax. First, the mother saw him; then I heard the father go to the maiden bower where Maud had shut herself up all day—poor child!—and fetch his daughter down. Lastly, I watched the two—Mr. Ravenel and Miss Halifax—walk together down the garden and into the beech-wood, where the leaves were whispering and the stock-doves cooing; and where, I suppose, they told and listened to the old tale—old as Adam—yet for ever beautiful and new.
That day was a wonderful day. That night we gathered, as we never thought we should gather again in this world, round the family table—Guy, Edwin, Walter, Maud, Louise, and William Ravenel—all changed, yet not one lost. A true love-feast it was: a renewed celebration of the family bond, which had lasted through so much sorrow, now knitted up once more, never to be broken.
When we came quietly to examine one another and fall into one another's old ways, there was less than one might have expected even of outward change. The table appeared the same; all took instinctively their old places, except that the mother lay on her sofa and Maud presided at the urn.
It did one's heart good to look at Maud, as she busied herself about, in her capacity as vice-reine of the household; perhaps, with a natural feeling, liking to show some one present how mature and sedate she was—not so very young after all. You could see she felt deeply how much he loved her—how her love was to him like the restoring of his youth. The responsibility, sweet as it was, made her womanly, made her grave. She would be to him at once wife and child, plaything and comforter, sustainer and sustained. Ay, love levels all things. They were not ill-matched, in spite of those twenty years.
And so I left them, and went and sat with John and Ursula—we, the generation passing away, or ready to pass, in Heaven's good time, to make room for these. We talked but little, our hearts were too full. Early, before anybody thought of moving, John carried his wife up-stairs again, saying that, well as she looked, she must be compelled to economise both her good looks and her happiness.
When he came down again he stood talking for some time with Mr. Ravenel. While he talked I thought he looked wearied—pallid even to exhaustion; a minute or two afterwards he silently left the room.
I followed him, and found him leaning against the chimney-piece in his study.
"Who's that?" He spoke feebly; he looked—ghastly!