Marks could not imagine himself the father-in-law of the young squire. He touched his hat to him and said, ‘No, Master George,’ and ‘Yes, Master George,’ and wouldn’t sit down in the room where he was; and George began to feel very uncomfortable, and to wish he could see some way of escape even now without speaking to his father.
He must tell him of Mrs. George Heritage—that was a matter of course. Some day he had intended to do so under any circumstances; but some day had always been a very convenient day. This day was a most inconvenient one.
Still matters were desperate. At any time there might be a hue-and-cry after him. He must leave the country at once, unless he wished to run the risk of taking a public trial and having the whole of his past life published in the papers. No; it was better to tell his father all, humiliating as it was, than to have the whole world knowing it.
Again, what was he to do with Bess? He couldn’t drag her about from pillar to post. He could rough it himself, but she was a woman. Besides, he didn’t want her to know everything. He had supposed he was really doing something very good and noble in making her his wife. As long as he could retain that idea, there was still some romance about the affair. But if he had to drag her about with him and let her see that he was a pauper and in terror of the law, she would owe him nothing. She might then be making a sacrifice for him. He didn’t want a lodge-keeper’s daughter to be a sort of benefactress to him.
He was a strange mixture of good and evil, this young Heritage. He was generous and mean, brave and cowardly, large-minded and small-minded, all at the same time. And his besetting sin was vacillation.
Even now, with the road smoothed for him, with everything to gain and nothing to lose, he hesitated at sacrificing his dignity by an ad misericordiam appeal to his father.
He had pictured something so very different. He had hoped for a time when his father, finding he was independent of him, would hold out his arms and beg his son to honour him again with his friendship.
Bess, supremely happy, once more in her father’s presence, sat and chatted pleasantly. Never an idea crossed her mind that it was any serious trouble which had driven them from London. She believed that George, at first fearing his father had found out his address, had determined to leave the Ducks for awhile. Afterwards, when he determined to go to the hall, she thought he had made up his mind, after all, that it would be better to make a clean breast of it and trust to his father’s generosity.
She believed, poor little woman, that George had taken the best course he could, and that happy days were in store for them.
As to the squire refusing to be reconciled to his son, or to receive the wanderer, such an idea never entered her head.