“Oh! their intimacy was because Mr. Carl Yorke was a Catholic,” interposed Mrs. Clay rather abruptly.
When Bird got talking of the Yorkes, she never knew when to stop; and the subject was not pleasant to her listener. Mrs. Clay had tried to be intimate with the family, and had signally failed. Always kind and courteous, there still seemed to be an invisible crystalline wall between them and her.
“Marian's religion is her one fault. It may be possible that she and Cousin Bently disagreed about that, though it would be hard to find out what he believes, or if he believes anything. He defends every religion you attack, and attacks every religion you defend.”
“But do you think she would marry [pg 627] him?” asked Bird incredulously; and her glance toward the window became depreciatory and critical, instead of awful.
Mr. Bently, as a learned man, was to be regarded with fear and admiration; but as a bridegroom—that was another thing.
“Why, she is handsome and rich.”
“What if she is?” asked the other tartly. “It only makes her more suitable. But she is not rich, though she lives with a rich old uncle, who may leave her something. She is in every way suited to Cousin Bently. He would never marry an inferior woman.”
This last assertion Mrs. Clay made very positively, for the reason that she was mortally afraid it was not true. Her private opinion was that Mr. Bently must have been very lonely in his bachelor lodgings before he came to visit her, and that he might easily be induced to marry even Bird, rather than live alone any longer.
Meantime, the object of their conversation, having put the vociferous John away, and induced him to lie at his feet, instead of pervading his neck and face, sat gazing out through the window. He certainly was not an eminently beautiful man, neither was he a pink of nicety in his dress, though he abhorred untidiness in others, particularly in women. His form was rather fine, but his features were too strong for grace, his hair was growing gray, and his teeth were discolored by his odious beloved tobacco. There was something a little neglected in his appearance. Evidently he needed some one with authority to remind him, when occasion demanded, that his cravat was horribly awry, that he had forgotten to smooth his hair down since the last time he combed it up with his ten fingers, and that, really, that collar must come off. In fine, he needed an indulgent wife, who would look out for him constantly, but with discretion, never intruding the cravat and collar question into his sublime moments.
Was he conscious of something lacking in his life, that his expression was less the gravity of the man of thought than the sadness of the lonely man? Something ailed him—physical sickness, no doubt, for his face was flushed, and his eyes heavy—but some trouble of the mind also. He looked across the lawn, that was bounded by a dense line of autumn-colored trees, with a sky of brilliant clearness arching over. Betwixt sapphire and jasper the low purple dome of a mountain pushed up, making a background for a shining cross that might be suspended in air for any support visible to him who gazed on it. But he had seen that cross before, and his mind, leaping over the few intervening miles, followed down from its sunlighted tip and touched a slim gray tower and a vine-covered church, and, looking through the gay rose-window over the chancel, saw a tiny lambent flame floating in and fed by sacred oil of olives. Mentally he stood before the church door, saw the grove of beeches that hid it from the road, saw through those heavy boughs the green slope of a lawn near by and the mansion that crowned its summit. But in one respect the eyes of the seer were less true to the present than to the past, for they beheld roses, instead of autumn colors, wreathing pillar, porch, and balcony.