“The verdict might have been worse, dear,” said Morris.
“Yes, yes, but to think that it has passed so near to him, and he quite alone at the time. Morris,” she went on, turning to him with an energy that was almost fierce, “if you won’t have my father to live with us, I won’t marry you. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly, dear, you leave no room for misconception. By all means let him live with us—if he can get on with my father,” he added meaningly.
“Ah!” she replied, “I never thought of that. Also I should not have spoken so roughly, but I have had such a shock that I feel inclined to treat you like—like—a toad under a harrow. So please be sympathetic, and don’t misunderstand me, or I don’t know what I shall say.” Then by way of making amends, Mary put her arms round his neck and gave him a kiss “all of her own accord,” saying, “Morris, I am afraid—I am afraid. I feel as if our good time was done.”
After this the servant came to say that she might go up to her father’s room, and that scene of our drama was at an end.
Mr. Porson owned a villa at Beaulieu, in the south of France, which he had built many years before as a winter house for his wife, whose chest was weak. Here he was in the habit of spending the spring months, more, perhaps, because of the associations which the place possessed for him than of any affection for foreign lands. Now, however, after this last attack, three doctors in consultation announced that it would be well for him to escape from the fogs and damp of England. So to Beaulieu he was ordered.
This decree caused consternation in various quarters. Mr. Porson did not wish to go; Mary and Morris were cast down for simple and elementary reasons; and Colonel Monk found this change of plan—it had been arranged that the Porsons should stop at Seaview till the New Year, which was to be the day of the marriage—inconvenient, and, indeed, disturbing. Once those young people were parted, reflected the Colonel in his wisdom, who could tell what might or might not happen?
In this difficulty he found an inspiration. Why should not the wedding take place at once? Very diplomatically he sounded his brother-in-law, to find that he had no opposition to fear in this quarter provided that Mary and her husband would join him at Beaulieu after a week or two of honeymoon. Then he spoke to Morris, who was delighted with the idea. For Morris had come to the conclusion that the marriage state would be better and more satisfactory than one of prolonged engagement.
It only remained, therefore, to obtain the consent of Mary, which would perhaps, have been given without much difficulty had her uncle been content to leave his son or Mr. Porson to ask it of her. As it chanced, this he was not willing to do. Porson, he was sure, would at once give way should his daughter raise any objection, and in Morris’s tact and persuasive powers the Colonel had no faith.
In the issue, confident in his own diplomatic abilities, he determined to manage the affair himself and to speak to his niece. The mistake was grave, for whereas she was as wax to her father or her lover, something in her uncle’s manner, or it may have been his very personality, always aroused in Mary a spirit of opposition. On this occasion, too, that manner was not fortunate, for he put the proposal before her as a thing already agreed upon by all concerned, and one to which her consent was asked as a mere matter of form.