"Oh, hang it! It's of no use talking poetry to me. I don't understand that sort of thing," Captain Gray frankly said. "I'll tell you what,—it'll never do to take those transcendental ideas with you into the world. All very well to poetize and maunder about in quiet Hazlewood; but, by Jove! you'll find it won't do in practical life. Take my word for it, if you go to Canada, long before the ten years are out, Rosa Beauchamp will be wooed and won over again. 'Tisn't in nature that it should be otherwise. In books, very likely, those sort of things happen often enough,—but not in real life, my dear fellow, I assure you. When you return, it will be to find her a thriving matron, doing the honors of one of the neighboring mansions. Make up your mind to that. Foresee your future, before you decide."
Everett smiled, sadly, but trustfully. His brother's arguments neither persuaded nor disturbed him. He stood very quiet and thoughtful. Visionary-like, he saw pictures of the future, indeed,—but very different from the one just drawn. He was not afraid.
And Captain Gray left him unconvinced and unmoved. It was not probable the two brothers would see this matter in the same light. They stood on different levels. They must be content to differ.
The next conference on the subject was between Everett and Lady Beauchamp; and the mother of Rosa was, it must be admitted, a rather formidable person to encounter in such wise. She was a busy, clever, worldly woman,—kind-hearted, too, and with both a strong will and strong affections. She was one of those people in whom even an astute observer might often be deceived, by failing to give her credit for certain good qualities which are commonly coexistent with worldliness,—especially in a woman. There was a spice of something better latent amid her shrewdness and hard-headed sagacity; the echo of more generous aspirations lingered through all the noise of this earth's Babel in her heart. And so, when she heard of Everett's resolve to pay his father's debts by parting with the property, her better and higher nature warmed to the young man; and though she protested against his Quixotism, and frowned, and talked of prudence, and so forth, her busy brain was, in fact, all the while setting itself to work for his benefit. She was, in a way, fond of the young man. No woman is quite insensible to that chivalrous deference which a Visionary like Everett always manifests to womanhood, collective and individual. And though she certainly held him to be rash, foolish, unfit to deal with the world, "poetical," (a capital crime in her eyes,) and dreamy, she yet liked him, and was glad to discover a plan whereby the objections to his marriage with her daughter, under the present adverse circumstances, might be smoothed away.
She was sitting at her big desk, strewn with accounts, in the sober-looking library where she always spent her mornings, and she rose to receive her prospective son-in-law, with an aspect serious and business-like, yet not stern.
"Well, my dear Everett, what is all this that I hear about you? A very, very sad affair, of course; but you must come and tell me how you intend to act. Yes, yes,—I've heard something about it; but I don't quite understand the state of the case. I want to have a talk with you."
And she leaned her comely face upon her plump, white hand, while gravely listening to Everett's brief statement of what he had already done, and what were his plans for the future.
"You will sell Hazlewood, pay your father's debts, and begin life on your own account, by going to Canada and becoming a merchant's clerk!" She then recapitulated his plans in a sharp, pitiless tone. "Very well! and we have only to bid you good-bye and wish you success. Is it so? For it appears to me that my daughter is left entirely out of your calculations, and very properly so. You cannot, as a merchant's clerk on a hundred a year, marry Rosa Beauchamp, I presume."
"No," Everett said, steadily, and holding her, as it were, with his earnest eyes, "I cannot have Rosa for my wife till I am able to give her a home worthy of her; but you will not refuse to sanction our engagement during the years in which I shall work for that home?"
Lady Beauchamp tapped the table with her fingers in an ominous manner.