His rage, indeed, so rose at the spectacle, that for the present he protested that he found himself unable to pursue his investigations within the sacred edifice, and proposed that the party should start forthwith to visit Anne Hathaway’s cottage at Shottery.
There was at present no more need for Mr. Jervis’s services, so that gentleman was left behind. Mr. Erin and Frank Dennis led the way by the footpath across the fields that had been pointed out to them, and William Henry and Margaret followed. It was a lovely afternoon; the trees and grass, upon which a slight shower had recently fallen, emitted a fragrance inexpressibly fresh. All was quiet save for the song of the birds, who were giving thanks for the sunshine.
‘How different this is from Norfolk Street!’ murmured Margaret.
‘It is the same to me,’ answered her companion in a low tone, ‘because all that makes life dear to me is where you are. When you are not there, Margaret, I have no home.’
‘You should not talk of your home in that way,’ returned she reprovingly.
‘Yet you know it is the truth, Margaret; that there is no happiness for me under Mr. Erin’s roof, and that my very presence there is unwelcome to him.’
‘I wish you would not call your father Mr. Erin,’ she exclaimed reproachfully.
‘Did you not know, then, that he was not my father?’
‘What?’ In her extreme surprise she spoke in so loud a key that it attracted the attention of the pair before them. Mr. Erin looked back with a smile. ‘Shakespeare must have taken this walk a thousand times, Maggie,’ he observed.
She nodded and made some suitable reply, but for the moment she was thinking of things nearer home. She now remembered that she had heard something to the disadvantage of Mr. Erin’s deceased wife, one of those unpleasant remarks concerning some one connected with her which a modest girl hears by accident, and endeavours to forget. Until Mr. Erin had become a widower Margaret had never been permitted by her mother to visit Norfolk Street. Mrs. Erin had been a widow—a Mrs. Irwyn—but she had not become Mr. Erin’s wife at first, because her husband had been alive. It was probable, then, that what William Henry had said was true; he was Mrs. Erin’s son, but not Mr. Erin’s, though he passed as such. This was doubtless the reason why her uncle and he were on such distant terms with one another, and why he never called him father. On the other hand, it was no reason why her uncle should be so harsh with the young man, and treat him with such scant consideration. Some women would have despised the lad for the misfortune of his birth, but Margaret was incapable of an injustice; her knowledge of his unhappy position served to draw him closer to her than before.