Mary had a woman’s usual experience before she married her second husband and made this complication of affairs. She knew as a certainty, what all the younger brides have to learn by hard personal training, that the husband must be different from the lover; that the habits of ordinary life will return after a while; and that the wife’s happiness must be of a different kind, if she is happy at all, from that of the bride, to whose pleasure, for the moment, everything defers by a tender fallacy and sophism of nature. But somehow, in its own case, the heart is always incredulous. To marry him had, after all, cost this soft woman a great many natural pangs, and it was hard to find so soon all the affectionate conferences and consultations, by means of which he had at first won her, ceasing altogether, and to feel that the affairs which she had managed so long were now in inexorable hands, and ruled by plans which were only communicated to her when they were ready for execution, if even then. Then poor Mary, who had always been looked on with indulgent eyes, began to feel herself under a sterner regard, and to see that her acts and words were judged solely on their own merits, and not with any softening glamour of love, making everything beautiful because it was she. It is impossible to describe how nervous and unsteady this consciousness made her, and how much more ready she was to make mistakes, from knowing that her mistakes would not be excused, or looked upon affectionately as wisdom in disguise. Poor soul! he was very kind to her at the same time; but his eye was on when she caressed her children; his quick ear somehow caught the little secrets they whispered to her in that sacred twilight hour in her dressing-room before dinner, where Mr Summerhayes had now acquired the habit of coming in to talk with his wife, and finding the children in the way. When they were all sent off on such occasions, it was well for Loo that she generally headed the retreat, before the new master lighted his wife’s candles, and threw an intrusive glare into the sacred atmosphere. Loo was a heroine, but she had a temper. But as for poor Mary, to see her disappointed children trooping away, and to guess with quick instinct the thoughts that were already rising in their little angry hearts, and to lose that sweet moment in which her soul was retrempé and made strong, was very bitter even to her yielding temper and loving heart. She could have cried but for fear of her husband; and many a time had bitter drops in her eyes, which had to be crushed back somehow, and re-absorbed into her breast, when those tell-tale candles flashed their unwelcome light upon her. Yet, notwithstanding all this, she had no right nor wish to call herself an unhappy wife. He was very kind to her—seemed as though he loved her, which makes up to a woman for a great many things; but still a sense of having overturned the world somehow, and disturbed the course of nature—of having introduced bewilderment and confusion she could not tell how, and a false state of affairs—combined, with a certain ache of disappointment, of wounded pride, and unappreciated confidence, to make poor Mary’s musings weary and troubled, and to plant thorns in her pillow.
Thus it happened that nobody was pleased with the change which had taken place at Fontanel, except, perhaps, Mr Summerhayes himself, who seemed sufficiently contented with all that he had done and was doing. Certainly he devoted himself to the improvement of the estate. Such crops had never been dreamt of in the county as those that began to be usual upon the well-tilled acres of the Home Farm; and, when leases fell in, the lumbering old tenants had no chance against the thriving agriculturists whom the King-Consort brought in over their heads at advancing rents, to the benefit of the rent-roll and the country, though not without some individual misery at the same time to lessen the advantage. Some old people emigrated, and got their death by it; some hopeful farmer-families dispersed and were broken up, and found but a checkered fortune awaiting them in the cold world, outside of those familiar fields which they had believed themselves born to cultivate, and almost thought their own; and Mrs Summerhayes had red eyes after these occurrences, and took to headaches, which were most unusual to her; but it was unquestionably the most enlightened policy—it was very good for the land and the country and things in general; and, in particular, there could not be any doubt it was good for the rent-roll of Fontanel.
CHAPTER VII.—THE NEXT EVENT IN THE FAMILY.
“I wonder whether Charley Clifford’s coming of age will be kept as it ought to be,” said Miss Amelia Harwood, meditatively. It was more than five years since the marriage, but there was still going to be a bazaar at Summerhayes; and still a large basket stood on the drawing-room table at Woodbine Cottage, full of embroidered cushions, babies’ socks, children’s pinafores, and needle-books and pen-wipers without number, upon which Miss Amelia was stitching little tickets which told the price. “To give him all his honours will be ticklish work for Tom Summerhayes, and to withhold them won’t answer with a boy of spirit like Charley. I am fond of that boy. He behaves very well to his mother; though really, when a woman makes a fool of herself, I don’t wonder if her children get disgusted. I should like to know what she thinks of her exploit now. I always foresaw she would see her folly as the children grew up.”
“Oh, hush, Amelia,” said her elder sister; “don’t be hard upon poor dear Mary now. I was surprised at the time—but of course she must have been in love with him; and it was hard, you know, to be left all alone at her time of life. She is quite a young woman now.”
“She is——” said Miss Amelia, pausing, with inexorable memory and a host of dates at her finger-ends, “either forty-two or forty-three. I don’t quite recollect whether she was born in ‘14 or in ‘15. Now that I think, it was ‘14, for it was before the Waterloo year, which we had all such good cause to remember; and as for being left all alone, she had her children, and I always said she ought to have had the sense to know when she was well off. However, that is not the question. I want to know whether they will make any ado over Charley’s coming of age.”
“Poor boy!—it is sad for him having no father to advise him at such an important time of his life,” said gentle Miss Harwood, with a sigh.
“Oh, stuff!” said Miss Amelia. “Harry Clifford, poor fellow, never was wise enough to direct himself, and how could he have guided his son? I daresay Tom Summerhayes would be a better adviser, if you come to that. But I am sorry for Charley all the same: he’s the heir, and yet somehow he doesn’t seem the heir. His mother, after all, is still a young woman, as you say, and Tom Summerhayes seems to have got everything so secure in his hands that one can’t help feeling something is sure to happen to make the estate his in the end. It can’t be, I suppose; they said the deeds were irrevocable, and that Mary couldn’t alter them if she wished, which I don’t suppose she does;—she loves her children, I must say that for her. Still one never feels sure with a man like Tom Summerhayes; and poor Charley has no more to do with his own affairs than if he were a little ploughboy on Mr Summerhayes’s estate.”
“Hush, my dear,” said Miss Harwood, who was in her summer chair, which commanded, through the openings of the green blind, a view of the village green and the road before the door,—“here are Louisa and Lydia coming to call—and out of breath, too; so they must have some news or something particular to say.”
“About Charley’s coming of age, of course,” said Miss Amelia. “I daresay Mary and Tom have had a fight over it, and he’s judged it as well for once to let Mary have her way. He always had a great deal of sense, had Tom Summerhayes.”