CHAPTER XXXVII
THE HOUSE IS BUILT
"To which my soul made answer readily:
Trust me, in bliss I shall abide
In this great mansion, that is built for me,
So royal-rich and wide.
"... An English home—grey twilight poured
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient peace."
—TENNYSON.
Gwendolen Cooper sat with her parents in the drawing-room of Fransdale Vicarage on an afternoon in late October. She had come home for a holiday, and also to condole with her parents over the family troubles.
Theo had gone to Australia, as Principal Boy, with a Pantomime company. Barbara, the fourth girl, the quietest and most reserved of the family, had, on her twenty-first birthday, announced her intention of marrying Alfred Dow.
It was this second calamity which the Vicarage found overwhelming. A certain gloss might be artistically cast over the doings of Theo in Australia. Barbara's doings in Fransdale must be proclaimed upon the house-top; and should she persist in her intention, the vicar felt that nothing remained for him but to exchange livings and depart from the scene of his humiliation.
To be openly defied and set at naught by the smallest and most silent of his daughters, was a blow he had not anticipated; as indeed he had wholly failed to anticipate in the smallest degree any of his children's undutifulness. His jet-black hair was silvering fast, his mien colder and more severe than ever.
Mrs. Cooper was growing very stout, and already somewhat infirm. Recent events had chafed the surface of her smiling cheerfulness a little. Her company smile was now wont to come off at times. But her own belief in her own exemplary rectitude was as unshaken as ever.
"We have nothing to reproach ourselves with, and that is such a comfort," she remarked to her newly arrived daughter. "It was our duty to offer poor dear Melicent a home, and we did so. In the space of three weeks she corrupted the entire family; and we still feel the effects of her deceit. Had it not been for her, Alfred Dow would never have forgotten his place in the way he has persistently done of late years. But really, if one's religious beliefs were not too firm to be shaken, it would put them to the test, to think that, after being publicly exposed in the way she was here, in Fransdale this summer, she is now to marry a millionaire."