The dejected, miserable expression came back to his face, as his thoughts were recalled to the loss he had sustained, and he nodded his answer to Mrs. Nixey.
"And left all to Phebe?" she wrote again.
Again he nodded. It was all right so far, and Mrs. Nixey felt glad she had made sure of the ground. The little farm was worth £15 a year, and old Marlowe himself had once told her that his money brought him in £36 yearly, without a stroke of work on his part. How money could be gained in this way, with simply leaving it alone, she could not understand. But here was Phebe Marlowe with £50 a year for her fortune: a chance not to be lost by her son Simon. She hesitated for a few minutes, listening to the soft low sobs overhead, but her sense of judicious forestalling of the future prevailed over her sympathy with the troubled girl.
"Phebe'll be very lonesome," she wrote, and old Marlowe looked sadly into her face with his sunken eyes. There was no need to nod assent to her words.
"I've been like a mother to her," wrote Mrs. Nixey, and she rubbed both the sentences off the slate with her pocket-handkerchief, and sat pondering over the wording of her next communication. It was difficult and embarrassing, this mode of intercourse on a subject which even she felt to be delicate. How much easier it would have been if old Marlowe could hear and speak like other men! He watched her closely as she wrote word after word and rubbed them out again, unable to satisfy herself. At last he stretched out his hand and seized the slate, just as she was again about to rub out the sentence.
"Our Simon'd marry her to-morrow," was written upon it.
Old Marlowe sat looking at the words without raising his eyes or making any sign. He had never seen the man yet worthy of being the husband of his daughter, and Simon Nixey was not much to his mind. Still, he was a kind-hearted man, and well-to-do for his station; he kept a servant to wait on his mother, and he would do no less for his wife. Phebe would not be left desolate if she could make up her mind to marry him. But with a deep instinctive jealousy, born of his absolute separation from his kind, he could not bear the thought of sharing her love with any one. She must continue to be all his own for the little time he had to live.
"If Phebe likes to marry him when I'm gone, I've no objection," he wrote, and then, with a feeling of irritation and bitterness, he rubbed out the words with the palm of his hand and turned his back upon Mrs. Nixey.