“No, of course not,” said Mrs. Eastwood. This gave her great pleasure, practically, but theoretically I am obliged to confess that she half despised her future son-in-law for his philosophy. It was quite right, and relieved her mind from a load. But still a woman likes her child to be wooed hotly, and prefers an impatient lover, unwilling to wait. Such a one she would have talked to, and reasoned down into patience, but, theoretically, she would have liked him the best.
“You will not oppose me?” said Molyneux, taking her hand; “you will be a good mother to me, and let me see Nelly, and be a sort of new son, to make up to me for having to wait? You are always good, to everybody—you won’t keep me at arm’s length?”
“No,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “I won’t keep you at arm’s length, for that would be to punish Nelly; but I think you should not have spoken till your prospects were a little more clear.”
“They are clear enough,” said the anxious lover. “It is only that I have been idle, and wanted energy; but now no man can have a stronger motive——”
Mrs. Eastwood shook her head again, but she smiled likewise, and gave him her hand, and even permitted a filial salute, which reddened her comely cheek, and softened her heart to Nelly’s betrothed. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it was permissible for a man to be imprudent. Molyneux spent the rest of the day in and about The Elms, appearing and disappearing, hanging about Nelly, disturbing all the household arrangements, and communicating to the visitors premature information as to what had happened. Not that he made any confidences, but that his mere presence there all the afternoon, his look of possession and triumph, the little air of being at home, which the young man could not resist taking upon himself, told the tale more clearly than words. Mrs. Barclay ran in “just for a moment,” as she said, to beg Nelly to go with her next day to a horticultural show, and “finish what you have begun, you little puss,” she whispered in the girl’s ear. “What have I begun?” Nelly asked, bewildered, while Molyneux, without any assignable reason, was so rude as to burst out laughing in his enjoyment of the joke. He put Mrs. Barclay into her carriage as if he had been the son of the house, she said afterwards, a proceeding which sent her away with a certain vague disquiet and resentment, though of course, as she allowed, she had no right to interfere. Major Railton, too, when he called about the plumber’s work, was infinitely disgusted to find Molyneux there, and to leave him there, when, after long waiting, he was obliged to relinquish the hope of out-staying his rival. “I must go,” he said at length, in tart and ill-tempered tones, “for alas! I am not so lucky as you young fellows with nothing to do. I have my duties to attend to.” This was a poisoned arrow, and struck the whole happy group, mother, daughter, and lover, with equal force.
“I am sure, Major Railton, you are an example to us all,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “always so ready to serve others, and yet with so much of your own work to do. But I hope Mr. Molyneux has his duties too.”
“Yes, I have my duties,” said the lover, in his insolent happiness turning a beaming countenance upon the unsuccessful one. It was growing dark, and he was so impertinent as to give a little twitch to Nelly’s sleeve in the obscurity, under Major Railton’s very eyes; who did not, indeed, see this flaunting in his face of his adversary’s banner, but felt that there was some bond unrevealed which joined the three before him in a common cause. He went away in a state of irritation for which he could not have given any just reason, and tore the plumber’s estimate to pieces when he emerged from the shrubbery in front of The Elms. Mrs. Eastwood had not taken kindly even to his plumber. She had stood by a certain old Sclater, an old jobbing Scotsman, for whom she had a national partiality.
“Why should I bother myself about their concerns? Let them get Molyneux to look after things,” the Major said to himself, with scorn that transcended all other expression; and he laughed what is sometimes described in literature as a “hollow laugh” of bitterness and sarcasm.
Indeed, I think Major Railton was right, and that Molyneux’s supervision of the roofs and water-butts would have come to very little good.
It had been resolved in the family that nothing was to be said about the engagement for the present, as it would in all probability be a long one; and this was how they began to carry out their resolution. I do not need to add that the servants knew it the first evening, and had already settled where the young people were to live, and what sort of an establishment they would keep up. Winks, too, was aware of the fact from the first, and, as I have said, was confidentially humorous about it with Nelly, and kept up her courage during the interview between her mother and her lover. But notwithstanding all we have been hearing lately about the communications made by dogs to their friends, I do not think he spread the news out of doors, or if he did whisper it to a crony, that crony was discreet.