CHAPTER XLV.
CONCLUSION.
It is not necessary to go into details, and tell how Mrs. Meredith forgave her son and received her new daughter. In any case, I don’t believe she would have been capable of ‘hurting Agnes’s feelings’ by a cold reception; but as it was, she was as tender to her as if she been her own daughter, and Oswald was the stranger husband who had to be forgiven. A great deal of this was that superlative politeness which was part of her nature, and part of it was the result of Edward’s communication. The cloud which had spoilt everything was definitely lifted from her life, and to be good to the trembling, timid bride, which was the first kind action within her reach, was Mrs. Meredith’s way of thanksgiving for her happiness. It must be allowed it is not a bad way, as good as giving public thanks in church, or perhaps better, though that is good too. When Agnes began a faltering confession of wrong doing, Mrs. Meredith kissed her and stopped her.
‘My dear, we will think nothing more of that,’ she said; ‘we might have wished it otherwise; but no one is beyond the reach of accident, and this will end most happily, please God, for all of us.’
The result of the interview was that Agnes fell in love with her mother-in-law—not a very usual thing, if one puts one’s faith in books, yet not unparalleled. They understood each other, or rather the elder woman understood the younger, and with her warm natural charity was able to comprehend and excuse everything. She looked with a little wonder and amusement at the awe with which Agnes still regarded her bridegroom. That there should be someone in the world who did not simply make allowance for Oswald, and love him in spite of his faults, but to whom his faults were as yet invisible, and himself worthy of deepest respect and admiration, was a thing which was very amusing to his mother. She could scarcely keep from smiling when she saw the serious looks of veneration which his wife gave him. ‘Hush, hush,’ she said, when Edward, grown saucy, ventured to smile at his brother, and when she even herself felt tempted to say, ‘How like Oswald!’ Oswald was like everything that was fine and noble and generous to his bride.
‘And if he did not think of himself quite so much, how good my poor boy is,’ the mother said, with tears in her eyes; and in future, perhaps, he would not think so much of himself.
Anyhow, on the other side everybody was quite satisfied. Oswald, never ungenerous, made settlements upon his wife after they were married which filled the Burchell family with admiration. And they got a pretty little house, and made a kind of religion of furnishing it; and for every pretty thing they got, Agnes, compunctious, hurried down to the House and devised something for the orphans. Sister Mary Jane grew used to these visits, and, being a wise woman, restrained undue liberalities. She gave a great deal of good advice to the young wife. ‘If you take on another child for every bit of china,’ she said, ‘there will soon be no room for the girls, and no money left in the purse.’
‘Oh, how can I let money be spent for nothings, when I know how much need there is in the world!’ cried Agnes. It was difficult to answer such arguments. As for Oswald, he never attempted to answer them. He gave her to understand that she was a mixture of a goose and an angel.
‘Both have wings, you know,’ he said, going away lighthearted to his pleasures, and understanding about as much of the more serious feelings in her mind as her baby did when she had one, which fortunately was in good time. He made the best of husbands, ever eager that she should spend more money on her dressmaker, entertain more, have all manner of pleasures. Louisa Burchell, who was the next sister, thought the little house in Mayfair was like heaven; and Mrs. Burchell kept a list of the important people to whose houses Agnes was asked, looking up her noble acquaintances in the peerage, and finding out the incomes of the rich ones, and the works of those who wrote or painted (though these last figured much less largely in her mind). And Agnes was happy; to have a husband you love, and in due time a pretty baby; and a delightful little house in Mayfair, and a pair of ponies, and more dresses and bonnets than you wish for—could there be a happier lot? If a young woman in such beatific circumstances got confused sometimes in her mind, and wondered whether it might not be better to walk about at the head of a procession of school girls in a black cloak and poke-bonnet, and to work in stuffy schoolrooms, and to have no more recreation than could be got among the girls in St. Cecilia, what could that be but momentary aberration or even a kind of temporary insanity? Is not a wife better than a Sister? Oswald had no kind of doubt on the subject when he saw his beautiful young wife at the head of his table, and reflected with inward complacency upon the aspect she bore when first he saw her, though at that time he had thought the poke-bonnet half-divine. But Agnes was not so sure, had not such unhesitating convictions as her husband, and wondered. This, perhaps, was the penalty she paid for her escapade. Oswald’s light-heartedness was alien to her serious mood. He took his existence so easily! and she knew that life was not so easy a matter, and would take an occasional panic as the fair landscape glided past her, the beautiful days and years flying away from her as fields and trees do on a journey, when you seem yourself to be stationary, and it is the country about that flies and travels on either side.
If she had known him longer, if she had known him better, would it have made any difference? In all probability not the slightest, and she did not ask herself that question; for, after all, Oswald was Oswald, and the only man in the whole world——