‘No! no! my darling girl, what can you be thinking of, to ask me such a silly question? Of course, your father will come round in time. The old gentleman is too fond and proud of you himself to hold out very long. It is I on whom he will pour out the vials of his wrath. Come, let me dry those tears. We are almost at the registrar’s office now, and he will think I am inveigling you into a marriage against your will if he sees you crying. Perhaps he will take it for a case of abduction, and order me to be locked up, until he has found out where you come from, and if I have carried you off by force. And then there will be the old gentleman to pay, and no pitch hot.’
Jenny laughed at the expression and let Frederick kiss away her tears, and in another half hour, they walked out of the registrar’s office together man and wife.
CHAPTER V.
Henry Hindes’ house was the most remarkable in Hampstead. It was called ‘The Old Hall,’ and was supposed to have been built more than two hundred years before. It was situated within ten minutes’ walk of Mr Crampton’s place, ‘The Cedars,’ but the two mansions belonged to different eras of the world’s history. ‘The Cedars’ was fitted in the most luxurious style. Everything that money could possibly buy, or build up, had been added to it, to increase its convenience and comfort. It revelled in glass houses, expensive out-buildings, swimming and other baths, and all the luxuries of the prevailing season. But everything about it was painfully new. Mr Crampton had purchased a freehold of the ground, and built ‘The Cedars’ for himself, or rather for the daughter who was to come after him. Often had he said to his wife that when their Jenny married, they would find a smaller place for themselves, and make ‘The Cedars’ part of her marriage portion. Consequently, he had lavished money upon it, letting the builders and upholsterers have their own way in everything, because it was only so much more for Jenny, when she came, like a young queen, into the property her father’s love had prepared for her.
But ‘The Old Hall’ was a very different sort of dwelling-place. Henry Hindes was a man of refined tastes and culture, a man who, before he had come into his father’s business, had travelled much and seen the world of art and science, and cultivated his mind, and raised his ideas of beauty and workmanship. He hated business and all its details, and, had it not been for his children’s sake, and the loss it would prove to them, would have sold his share of it for whatever it might fetch, and given up his life to the pursuit of his fancy. As it was, he refreshed himself, in the intervals of less congenial work, by making his home as beautiful as he could, but in a very different fashion from that of the Cramptons.
‘The Old Hall’ had low-roofed rooms, wainscotted with black oak, into which he would not permit the innovation of gas, and ghostly corridors that ran the whole length of the building, and stained glass windows which let in very little light, and made the house dark and gloomy in the eyes of such Philistines as could not appreciate medieval customs, and the relics of barbarism which made the delight of its owner’s heart.
He was the possessor, too, of an admirable collection of paintings, mostly of grim and melancholy subjects, but valuable in their way, and well in accordance with the mummies, sarcophagæ, curious gems and stones, and other curiosities which he had gathered on his travels and stored up in remembrance of them. His was a charming household, and his collection of odds and ends were the only gloomy things in it. His wife, Hannah Hindes, was a cultured and intelligent gentlewoman, eminently fond of him, and regarding his powerful brain and capacity for business with an admiration which bordered on reverence; and he was the father of three handsome and healthy children, all of whom he loved, and one of whom he idolised—to wit, Master Walter Hindes, his only son, an infant of some two years old.
To see Henry Hindes with this child in his fine old garden was to see him at his best—he was so partial to floriculture, and such a student of botany; though in this, as in other things, he would not allow fashion to trample sweetness and commonsense under foot. In the large, shady garden of ‘The Old Hall’ were to be found all sorts of flowers, growing together in the same bed. No ribbon borders or collections of prize begonias, or pelargoniums, of giant blossoms, or dwarfed bushes, transformed it into the semblance of a nurseryman’s plot of ground; but sweet-smelling herbs grew amongst the choicer plants, and high and low bloomed side by side, as they used to do in the long ago.
In the summer weather, Henry Hindes spent almost all his spare time in his garden with his children, and was apparently quite happy with his own thoughts and them. Hannah Hindes was a woman who never grated on her husband’s finer sensibilities. She was loving, tender and conscientious; but she seldom obtruded herself or her opinions on him, and never in opposition to his own. She was always there when needed, calm and intelligent, ready to give advice but not eager to thrust it down one’s throat; a restful sort of woman for a man to come home to after a hard and perhaps harassing day’s work.
And she had in her turn an admirable husband, for Mr Hindes was mild-tempered and indulgent; never found fault with anything his wife did, or wished to do, and was always quick to think of her comfort and that of her children.