“Not nearly so great a change as for poor Mary,” said Miss Amelia, “leaving her children, poor soul; but I daresay she won’t complain, and it must be better for all parties to have it settled. And so you like your new house? I am told that Mary did all the furnishing herself.”
“Oh yes, she is very kind,” said Miss Laura; “she has made everything very nice; you must come and see it. Indeed, if it were not for thinking what a change it is for dear Tom,” cried the sisters both together, with an evident impression that their brother had been defrauded of something he had a right to, “we should all be very happy; for dear Mary,” said Miss Lydia, with a little sob, “is very kind—and look, here she comes.”
She came driving the pony-carriage, as she had appeared so often at Summerhayes. Poor Mary! if she had been a wiser woman would she have been loved as well? She came, all beaming, with the smile on her lip and the tear in her eye—courageous, affectionate, sweet as ever. Charley and Loo had ridden down with her till they came in sight of Summerhayes, and then had taken leave of their mother. Mary, with little Mary by her side in the pony-carriage, drove on to her separate fate alone. She was going to take possession of the old Manor-house, no longer the mistress of Fontanel but Tom Summerhayes’s wife, to receive him when he came home from his travels, and to make life bright, if he were capable of seeing it, to that imperfect and not very worthy man. The agitation in her face was only enough to heighten a little her sweet colour and brighten her tearful eyes. On the whole had she not great reason to be happy? She had forgotten everything but her husband’s virtues while he had been absent, and her children were safe and prosperous and close at hand. She smothered the little pang in her heart at parting, and said to little Mary, with a smile, that she would have had to part with them all the same when they were married. So the mother and the daughter drove down through the soft twilight and the dews to the Manor, not without brightness and good hope; while Charley and Loo rode away towards the darkening east, with a deeper shadow on their young faces, not quite sure how their home would look when their mother was away.
Mary stopped her ponies when she saw the little procession which had come out to meet her; the tears came into her bright eyes again. “It is so kind of you all,” she said, kissing her hand to good Miss Harwood, “and it is so pleasant to think I can see you oftener now.” “God bless you, my dear!” said the two old ladies who had come for love. And Mary said “Amen, and the children too;” and so drove her ponies cheerfully, with smiles and tears, in through the open gates.
Where, however, we will not follow Mrs Summerhayes. Things had turned out a great deal better than could have been expected. Mr Summerhayes was a man of the world, and knew how to make a virtue of necessity. He had given in gracefully and at once, and gained reputation thereby, nobody knowing what his private feelings were when Courtenay Gateshead’s discovery came first upon his own widely-different plans. The fire in the west wing never was explained—nobody, indeed, inquired very deeply into it—and Mary, for her part, forgot it, or associated it only with old Gateshead’s nightcap, to which, she remained firmly convinced, the old man had set fire on his way to bed. The fire at Fontanel was indeed associated with old Mr Gateshead throughout the county, as was indeed a natural and perhaps correct supposition. Anyhow, nothing but the destruction of the west wing had resulted from it, and that was rather an improvement than otherwise to the old place, in which Loo, till they were both married, was to keep house for her brother. Little Mary, who was easy in her temper and happy as the day was long, went with Mrs Summerhayes to the Manor—and Alf and Harry were to have two homes for their holidays. When Tom Summerhayes came home next day, he thought some fairy change had come over the manor-house, and forgave his wife with magnanimity for all the trouble she had brought upon him. Mary accepted the pardon with gratitude, and Miss Laura and Miss Lydia thought Tom a hero; and so, with a tolerable amount of content on all sides, life began over again for the reunited couple. Mary had her own troubles still, like most people; but perhaps had not been much more happy as Mrs Clifford than she was as Mrs Summerhayes.
SIR JAMES GRAHAM.[[2]]
[2]. ‘The Life and Times of Sir James R. G. Graham, Bart., G.C.B., M.P.’ By Torrens M’Cullagh Torrens. In 2 vols. London: Saunders & Otley.
These are not exactly the sort of volumes which we could have wished them to be. Sir James Graham, though never a foremost, was still a remarkable man in his age, and doubtless left behind, in his correspondence, and in the memories of his friends, better materials than we find here for an elaborate biography. Still, let us do justice to Mr M’Cullagh Torrens. If family archives have not been unlocked to him, and private friends abstained from telling him more than they could help, he has made very good use of stores which were open to all the world, and strung together, with considerable skill, his scraps of past history. The result is a book which will be much and approvingly read; though we cannot anticipate that it will fire the imagination or touch the feelings of any human being.
The family from which Sir James Graham derived his descent is of long standing in the “debatable land.” Its founder seems to have been “John with the bright sword,” a son of Malise, Lord of Menteith, whom a quarrel with the Scottish King induced, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, to migrate beyond the Scottish border. Carrying with him a band of stout retainers, he soon acquired a settlement there, and became by-and-by the boldest and most successful of the moss-troopers, whose custom it was to harry indifferently the lands of the two kingdoms.
The descendants of John gradually extended their influence and enlarged their possessions. Between the Esk and the Eden, and for some miles to the north of the Esk, there lies a district which, till the Partition Treaty of 1552, may be said to have belonged neither to England nor to Scotland. It was there that the Græmes settled, and there, in spite of many a harsh decree issued against them from both realms, they grew and prospered. And finally, when peaceable times came, they were recognised as large landed proprietors, and useful members of the English community.