“I am a family man,” said Uncle Penrose, taking his other hand out of his pocket, “and what I can give must be, in justice to my family, very limited. But Mrs. Percival, who has only four sons, and yourself who have none, are in very different circumstances. If he had had a father, the business might have been entered into more satisfactorily—but as you are his godfather, I hear——”
“I never understood before, up to this minute,” said Sir Edward, with great courtesy, “that it was the duty of a godfather to endow his charge with two hundred a year.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir Edward,” said Mr. Penrose; “I am a plain man, and I treat things in a business way. I give my godchildren a silver mug, and feel my conscience clear: but if I had introduced a young man, not otherwise very eligible, to a handsome girl, who might have done a great deal better for herself, that would make a great difference in the responsibility. Winnie Seton is of very good family by her father’s side, as you know, I suppose, better than I do; and of very good business connexions by her mother’s; and her beauty is first rate—I don’t think there can be any doubt about that. If she had been an ordinary pretty girl, I would not have said so much; but with all her advantages, I should say that any fair equivalent in the shape of a husband should be worth at least five thousand a year.”
Mr. Penrose spoke with such seriousness that Sir Edward was awed out of his first feeling of amusement. He restrained his smile, and acknowledged the logic. “But I did not introduce him in any special way,” he said. “If I can negotiate with Mrs. Percival for a more liberal allowance, I will do it. She has an estate of her own, and she is free to leave it to any of her sons: but Edward, I fear, has been rather unsatisfactory——”
“Ah, wild?” said Mr. Penrose: “all young men are alike for that. I think, on the whole, that it is you who should negotiate with the mother. You know her better than I do, and have known all about it from the beginning, and you could show her the state of the case better. If such a mad thing could be consented to by anybody in their senses, it must at least be apparent that Winnie would bring twice as much as the other into the common stock. If she were with me in Liverpool she would not long be Winnie Seton; and you may trust me she should marry a man who was worthy of her,” the rich uncle added, with a confirmatory nod of his head. When he spoke of a man who would be worthy of Winnie, he meant no sentimental fitness such as Aunt Agatha would have meant, had she said these words, nor was it even moral worth he was thinking of. What Mr. Penrose meant, was a man who would bring a fair equivalent in silver and gold to Winnie’s beauty and youth, and he meant it most seriously, and could not but groan when he contemplated the possibility of so much valuable capital being thrown away.
And he felt that he had made a good impression when he went back to the Cottage. He seemed to himself to have secured Mrs. Percival’s three hundred a-year, and even Sir Edward’s more problematical gift to the young people; and he occupied the interval in thinking of a silver tea-service which had rather caught his fancy, in a shop window, and which he thought if his negotiations succeeded, he would give to his niece for a wedding present. If they did not succeed it would be a different question—for a young woman who married upon a captain’s pay and a hundred a-year of her own, would have little occasion for a silver tea-service. So Mr. Penrose mused as he returned to the Cottage. Under the best of circumstances it was now evident that there could be nothing to “settle” upon Winnie. The mother and the friends might make up a little income, but as for capital—which after all was what Mr. Penrose prized most—there was none in the whole matter, except that which Winnie had in her face and person, and was going to throw so lamentably away. Mr. Penrose could not but make some reflections on Aunt Agatha’s feminine idiocy and the cruel heedlessness of Sir Edward, as he walked along the rural road. A girl who had so many advantages, whose husband, to be worthy of her, should have had five thousand a-year at the least, and something handsome to “settle”—and yet her natural guardians had suffered her to get engaged to a captain in a marching regiment, with only his pay! No wonder that Mr. Penrose was sad. But he went home with a sense that, painful as the position was, he had done his duty, at least.
This was how Winnie’s marriage got itself accomplished notwithstanding all opposition. Captain Percival was the second of his mother’s four sons, and consequently the natural heir of her personal fortune if he had not been “foolish,” as she said; and the thought that it might be the saving of him, which was suggested by Sir Edward, was naturally a very moving argument. A beautiful young wife whom he was very fond of, and who was ready to enter with him into all the risks of life,—if that did not keep him right, what would? And after all he was only five-and-twenty, an age at which reformation was quite possible. So his friends thought, persuading themselves with natural sophistry that the influence of love and a self-willed girl of eighteen would do what all other inducements had failed to do; and as for her friends, they were so elated to see that in the eyes of Uncle Penrose the young man’s faults bore only the most ordinary aspect, and counted for next to nothing, that their misgivings all but disappeared, and their acceptance of the risk was almost enthusiastic. Sometimes indeed a momentary shadow would cross the mind of Aunt Agatha—sometimes a doubt would change Sir Edward’s countenance—but then these two old people were believers in love, and besides had the faculty of believing what they wished to believe, which was a still more important circumstance. And Mary for her part had said her say. The momentary hope she had felt in Winnie’s strength of character, and in her love—a hope which had opened her heart to speak to her sister—found but little to support it after that moment. She could not go on protesting, and making her presence a thorn in the flesh of the excited household; and if she felt throughout all a sense that the gulf was still there, though all these flowers had been strewed over it—a sense of the terrible risk which was so poorly counterbalanced by the vaguest and most doubtful of hopes—still Mary was aware that this might be simply the fault of her position, which led her to look upon everything with a less hopeful eye. She was the spectator, and she saw what was going on as the actors themselves could not be expected to see it. She saw Winnie’s delight at the idea of freedom from all restraint—and she saw Percival’s suppressed impatience of the anxious counsels addressed to him, and the look which Winnie and he exchanged on such occasions, as if assuring each other that in spite of all this they would take their own way. And then Mrs. Ochterlony’s own relations with the bridegroom were not of a comfortable kind. He knew apparently by instinct that she was not his friend, and he approached her with a solemn politeness under which Mary, perhaps over-sensitive on that point, felt that a secret sneer was concealed. And he made references to her Indian experiences, with a certain subtle implication of something in them which he knew and nobody else did—something which would be to Mrs. Ochterlony’s injury should it be known—which awoke in Mary an irritation and exasperation which nothing else could have produced. She avoided him as much as it was possible to avoid him during the busy interval before the marriage, and he perceived it and thought it was fear, and the sneer that lay under his courtesy became more and more evident. He took to petting little Wilfrid with an evident consciousness of Mary’s vexation and the painful effect it produced upon her; not Hugh nor Islay, who were of an age to be a man’s plaything, but the baby, who was too young for any but a woman’s interest; and Captain Percival was not the kind of man who is naturally fond of children. When she saw her little boy on her future brother-in-law’s knee, Mary felt her heart contract with an involuntary shiver, of which she could have given no clear explanation. She did not know what she was afraid of, but she was afraid.
Perhaps it was a relief to them all when the marriage day arrived—which had to be shortly, for the regiment was ordered to Malta, and Captain Percival had already had all the leave he could ask for. Mr. Penrose’s exertions had been crowned with such success that when he came to Winnie’s wedding he brought her the silver tea-service which in his heart he had decided conditionally to give her as a marriage gift. Mrs. Percival had decided to settle two hundred and fifty pounds a-year upon her son, which was very near Mr. Penrose’s mark; and Sir Edward, after long pondering upon the subject, and a half-amused, half-serious, consideration of Winnie’s capital which was being thrown away, had made up his mind to a still greater effort. He gave the young man in present possession what he had left him in his will, which was a sum of five thousand pounds—a little fortune to the young soldier. “You might have been my son, my boy, if your mother and I could have made up our minds,” the old baronet said, with a momentary weakness; though if anybody else had suggested such an idea no doubt Sir Edward would have said, “Heaven forbid!” And Mr. Penrose pounced upon it and had it settled upon Winnie, and was happy, though the bridegroom resisted a little. After that there could be no doubt about the tea-service. “If you should ever be placed in Mary’s position you will have something to fall back upon,” Uncle Penrose said; “or even if you should not get on together, you know.” It was not a large sum, but the difficulty there had been about getting it, and the pleasant sense that it was wholly owing to his own exertions, made it sweet to the man of capital, and he gave his niece his blessing and the tea-service with a full heart.
As for Winnie, she was radiant in her glow of beauty and happiness on that momentous day. A thunder-shower of sudden tears when she signed the register, and another when she was taking leave of Aunt Agatha, was all that occurred to overcloud her brightness; and even these did not overcloud her, but were in harmony—hot, violent, and sudden as they were—with the passionate happiness and emancipation of the married girl. She kissed over and over again her tender guardian—who for her part sat speechless and desolate to see her child go away, weeping with a silent anguish which could not find any words—and dropped that sudden shower over Aunt Agatha’s gown; but a moment after threw back the veil which had fallen over her face, and looked back from the carriage window upon them in a flush of joy, and pride, and conscious freedom, which, had no other sentiments been called for at the moment, it would have done one’s heart good to see. She was so happy that she could not cry, nor be sentimental, nor think of broken links, as she said—and why should she pretend to be sad about parting? Which was very true, no doubt, from Winnie’s point of view. And there was not the vestige of a cloud about when she waved her hand to them for the last time as she drove away. She was going away to the world and life, to see everything and enjoy everything, and have her day. Why should she not show her delight? While poor old Aunt Agatha, whose day was so long over, fell back into Mary’s arms, who was standing beside her, and felt that now at last and finally, her heart was broken, and the joy of her life gone. Was it not simply the course of nature and the way of the world?