And looking up with a great start, Sally beheld Father-in-law.
XI
§
Mr. Thorpe, being a man accustomed all his life to success in everything he undertook—except in the case of Annie, but even she had been a success at first—had spent a week of bitterness.
He was aggrieved, deeply aggrieved; and he hated the hole and corner way Mrs. Luke had hidden from him, refusing to see him, refusing any sort of explanation, turning him down with a single letter, and not answering when he wrote back.
He, who was very well aware that he was conferring everything, that he was giving her a chance in a million, when he called was shown the door; and all he had done for her, the affection he had bestowed, the gifts he had lavished, were as though they had not been. In the sight of South Winch and of his own household he was humiliated. But it went deeper than that: he knew himself for kind, and no one wanted his kindness; he knew himself for generous, and no one wanted his generosity either. Naturally he was full of resentment; so full, that he hadn’t even gone to his office regularly that week, but had hung about his house and grounds instead, fault-finding.
Where he hung about most was that part of his plantations which abutted on the meadow dividing Abergeldie from Mrs. Luke; and wandering among his conifers he could see, without himself being seen, anything that went on in her miserable plot of ground. If he had been told that such behaviour was undignified he would have replied that dignity be damned; for not only was he smarting under Mrs. Luke’s ingratitude, not only was he annoyed beyond measure at not going to get the wife he no longer really wanted—who would wish to be tied up to a jealous, middle-aged woman, when there were so many pretty, cheerful girls about?—but he longed, with a simple longing he hadn’t felt since he first went sweethearting as a boy, to see Sally again.
He did see her; always, however, arm in arm with Hell’s Fury, as he now called her who had so recently been his Marge. Then, on this Wednesday afternoon, more than a week after Mrs. Luke had shown herself in her true colours—a jolly good thing he had found her out before and not after marriage, thought Mr. Thorpe, who yet was enraged that he had,—as he wandered among his conifers after luncheon, nursing his grievances and glancing every now and then at the little house across the meadow, so insignificant and cheap and nevertheless able to play such a part in his life, he saw young beauty at last come out alone, and go round to the back of the tool-shed, and behave as has been indicated.
For a few minutes Mr. Thorpe stayed where he was, in case the H.F.—so, for convenience sake, did he abbreviate the rude nickname he had given Mrs. Luke—should come out too; but when some time had passed and nobody appeared, he concluded that the two high-brows had gone for a walk, and Beauty for once was alone. Crying, too. What had they been doing to the girl, that precious pair of hoity toity treat-you-as-dirters, Mr. Thorpe asked himself. Then, climbing cautiously over the fence, and crossing the field close to the belt of firs, he arrived unseen and unheard to where Sally, her head bowed over her hands, was standing crying.
How kind he was. What a comfort he was. And how clear in his instructions as to what she was to do. It was quite easy to say things to Father-in-law; he seemed to understand at once.