Many emotions combined to fill Mary's eyes with tears, but to conceal them she turned away to seek Patty's aid in the preparation of some jellies for one of her pensioners—for though so poor herself she had several—a deformed girl who was dying of consumption; and in spare times she was wont to read good and amusing books by the bedsides of the old and blind, who were ailing or unable to be abroad. She had even pensioners among the little birds, for whom she daily spread out crumbs, especially in winter, upon her doorstep, whither they would come without fear of Mary's pet cat, which was too well fed to meddle with them.
Greville Hampton was in an unusually bitter mood that night, and long, long he sat abandoned to it after Mary had given a final but lingering look at the little subject of their anxieties, folded in his pretty cot, "like the callow cygnet in its nest," and then sought her pillow.
Evil spirits—envy, anger, and avarice—were struggling in the man's heart, with a keen sense of unmerited wrong inflicted on him, of injustice he had suffered, the black ingratitude of friends, and of his own extravagance and reckless folly in the past; and had there been a close observer present to watch his handsome features, they would have read by the working of these, how each passion prevailed in turn.
Finally, he emptied his cherished briar-root by tapping it on the hearth, put it in its case with an emphatic snap, and muttering, as he sought the side of his sleeping wife,
"Surely God will hear Mary's prayers, if not mine, that Derval may be rich—but never the luckless creature I am to-night."
Derval, a chubby child of six, with rosy dimpled cheeks, his mother's snowy skin, and his father's deep dark eyes, with a wealth of golden curls that rose crisp and in upward spouts from his forehead, grew fast, while the care of his boyish education devolved wholly on the delicate Mary, for Greville, though educated at Eton and finished off at Oxford, was too erratic by nature, and with all his love of their offspring, too impatient to share in the task of tutelage; in which, eventually, she was fully and powerfully, to her great gratitude, assisted by the Reverend Asperges Laud, the only visitor who shed a little light on their humble dwelling, and who was also the only link, as it seemed, that they cared to preserve between their past life and the present.
In his fortieth year, the Curate of Finglecombe—a place in which he was utterly lost, because of its obscurity, and where he subsisted on a mere pittance—was a man of considerable talent, and no small accomplishments. He had gained high academic honours in philosophy and theology, and was already known as author of several celebrated prize essays; he therefore proved a valuable friend to Mary and her little boy.
The Reverend Asperges Laud, M.A., Oxon., belonged not to the days of "nasal clerks and top-booted parsons." He was a man of broad and advanced views, with somewhat stately, yet very soft and gentle manners, who intoned his services, had matins and evensong, wore a coat with remarkably long tails, a Roman collarino and a broad hat of soft felt garnished with a black silk rosette, and was furtively addicted to the flute.
He had little choir boys in white collars and black surplices; called his altar-table "the sanctuary," and had four candles thereon which, in wholesome fear of the Court of Arches and His Grace of Canterbury, he dared not light as yet; and there was much about him that—according to the Methodists in the district—savoured of the City of the Seven Hills, yet, "a man he was to all the country dear."
All the neighbours about Finglecombe, but none more than Mr. Asperges Laud, were delighted with Mary's grave, sweet eyes, her softness of manner, her goodness of heart, her refined and cultivated mind, all of which lent additional charms to a certainly very statuesque little face.