‘Dear heart, you must not grieve; Dr. Shepley will forget after a time; the best you can do is to marry me at once. When that is done he will forgive you. He thinks now to prevent the wedding by his displeasure, but when he sees that impossible his resentment will die out. Come, Carrie, the sooner you arrange for our marriage the better ’twill be for all concerned.’
Perhaps Carrie did not need very much persuasion. Two years of waiting had been quite long enough.
‘I shall see my aunt, Lady Mallow, and she will decide the date for us,’ she said, and then, as Phil prepared to go, she whispered, ‘I shall make her arrange it soon.’
CHAPTER XXVIII
In spite of her happiness Carrie made a very tearful bride. The parting from her father was exquisitely painful to her, and not all Phil’s endearments could at first bring a smile to her lips. For Sebastian had told her that he could have nothing to do with her now, that their parting was final. The only way in which Carrie could hear of how he fared was by sending Peter to inquire of Patty, and Patty (a mature spinster), while she inwardly exclaimed over the turn of Fortune’s wheel which thus brought her former admirer again to her door, was fain to invent messages which would reassure Carrie’s anxious heart.
‘Lor’! Mr. Peter,’ she would say, ‘ ’tis distressful to see the Doctor now-a-days.—And how doth dear Miss Carrie (as was) do?’
‘Mrs. Meadowes has her health perfect,’ Peter would respond, ‘but is ever fretting over the Doctor, so I had best make up some message from you, and mayhap some evening you might step down to the Square yourself and make her more easy in the mind about him?’
Patty, in spite of her years and her wisdom, would shake her head coquettishly at this suggestion, and invent some message for Peter which had no foundation in fact. ‘The Doctor is well, madam, and eats hearty; was out the most part of the day at the hospital, and dined with his friend Dr. Munro,’ Peter would announce. And on such fragments Carrie had to appease her hungry heart.
Sebastian, poor man, had never been less inclined for social intercourse; had never eaten his meals with so little ‘heartiness’; had never visited the hospitals so seldom; but those two well-meaning retainers thought it kinder to suppress the true facts of the case—and perhaps they were right.
‘Never fear, Carrie; he will come round—parents always do; they can’t do without us,’ Phil used to say. ‘I wish you knew all the disputes I’ve had with my father!’ But Carrie said the cases were not quite similar, she fancied, and refused to be comforted.