"Tell me something about your aunt Tabby. Do you know, I have not visited an aunt since I was a little girl of ten?" This afforded him an opening more naturally and pleasantly, and the two went off on Aunt Tabby instead of accomplishing more courtship, and got on a little better. Diverging from Aunt Tabby to her place, and from her place to Ashpound, they went on with mention of Gervase's factotum, Miles, and discussed capabilities and future arrangements with wonderful common sense.
Mr. Baring swallowed his last gape over his 'Chronicle,' concluded that the couple had surely had their swing of private conversation for one night, and resolved to curtail the courtship to the shortest decorous bounds. So Mr. Baring looked at his watch, and said quite lovingly to Gervase: "My boy, when I do act the family man, I do the thing thoroughly, by supping in my dressing-room at eleven. What! you are off? A pleasant ride to you. You will receive your orders from Die, I fancy, when to report yourself in attendance. To-morrow is it, or next day? Make yourself at home, my dear fellow. Happy to think that you are going to be one of us—a son for me to be proud of. Good-night. God bless you."
Thus the preliminaries to the alliance ended with Gervase bowing again over the tips of Die's fingers. He had not the smallest inclination to raise them to his lips.
"I will do my duty by him," said Diana to herself, when she was in the sanctuary of her own bare room. And what a poor sanctuary it had been! "It may be bad in me to have him, but what can I do? and what can he do, for that matter? If I do my duty by him, surely some good will come of it." Perhaps her imagination was haunted by a garbled version of the text about him who turns a sinner from the error of his ways and covers a multitude of sin.
[II.—THE FULFILMENT.]
"She's a fine woman the mistress, a rare fine woman; but she's going the wrong way. It's the cart before the horse, and I tell you it's not conformable; and the master, God help him, poor fellow, will never be brought to go at the tail of the cart—never." So ruminated Gervase Norgate's old servant, Miles, pushing back the tufts of ragged red hair on his long head ruefully, as he sat "promiscuous" in what he was pleased to call his pantry at Ashpound, while he contemplated with the eye of the body his chamois skin for what he proudly denominated his silver, and with the eye of the mind the new régime and its ruling spirit.
"She's a fine woman," remarked also of her new niece, Miss Tabitha Norgate, of Redwells. "She's a fine woman, a great deal too good for him; but she oughtn't to have gone and married Jarvie, or to have married anybody, there's the long and the short of it. She ought to have remained single, like me. She was made to stand alone, while he wanted a woman and as many children as she could muster to hang round his neck—the liker a millstone the better,—he won't drown: he could not take the straight road without a weight to ballast him and keep him steady. If he had consulted me, I would have advised him to marry that dawdling, whimpering Susie Lefroy, the widowed daughter of the Vicar, with her unprovided-for orphans. Jarvie might have stepped into a young family at once, and he would have been a kind stepfather—he might have righted himself then. To go and marry a clever, active, handsome, well-born woman like Die Baring. Oh! dear, dear, what folly!"
In spite of her critics, Mrs. Gervase Norgate spared no pains to acquit herself of her obligation, and to discharge her debt at Ashpound. Ashpound was a much more exhilarating residence than Newton-le-Moor. At Newton-le-Moor the desolation of prodigality and immorality was objective and deductive. At Ashpound the desolation was subjective and inductive, a plague-spot within; and although the flush of decay was visible, Gervase would struggle against it to the last. He would make an effort to preserve the pleasant, rambling, mellow brick house, most of it one-storied and draped with jessamine and clematis as old as the building; the belt of ash-trees round the ferny dells of the little park; and the whitewashed offices, in excellent repair; the well cared for cattle and poultry-yard; the amply-stocked, flourishing gardens; the pretty gardener's house and lodge—the prettiest things about the place, as his father had left them to him. To the last Gervase would aim at keeping up the place, to his mother's drawing-room, his father's study, Miles's pantry and cellar, even the modern housekeeper's room, and the maids' gallery, in comfort and pleasantness. Only his own rooms—dining-room, smoking-room, bedroom—had been suffered to show traces of many a brawl and fray. It was as if he had deemed anything good enough for a scapegrace and beast like him, and thought to pay the whole price in his own person. It would not be with his will if any other person, high or low, contributed to his heavy forfeits. And Gervase Norgate's servants, new as well as old, had a pitiful liking for him, a remorseful regard for his interests, even when these clashed with their own. So when Gervase had removed the traces, repaired the damages, and taken the decisive step of forbidding the inroads of his evil associates, Mrs. Gervase Norgate found a peaceful, prosperous-seeming, as well as fair, country home awaiting her.