But there came a day of sore trial, of bitter sorrow to Margaret, of trial and sorrow which Michael could not share. It was a day of a great review, and Michael and his regiment were to take part in it. His children will remember to their dying day the bright face that kissed them, the gay plumes, the flash of gold and steel, and all the brilliant show that rode forth from the barrack yard.
Half an hour, and the accident had happened which made them orphans and their mother a widow. Captain Fenner was riding a young horse unaccustomed to the London streets; he had ridden it in the country for some months, and being a perfect horseman, mounted without apprehension, but, unhappily, the nervous creature took fright, and, after a wild rush of some two or three hundred yards, flung his rider heavily on the pavement. To the amazement and horror of everyone he was taken up lifeless. Without a word, without a look, he was gone for ever from among men.
The event was too solemn to be mourned in the ordinary way. Men gazed at each other with white, awestruck faces, and spoke beneath their breath, as he was borne back to the home which he had just quitted in full health and strength. How many weak-hearted, weak-willed men, who lived for their own pleasure, with scarce a consciousness of the higher life, might have been taken and the world not palpably the worse; but this strong-hearted, strongwilled man, on the very threshold of a noble career, lay slain by what seemed the merest accident in the heart of his native country, almost within sound of his children’s voices. “Truly the Lord’s ways are not our ways, and they are wonderful in our eyes.”
Margaret sat stunned in her sorrow. Deep in her smitten heart lay the consciousness that with him all was well; softly in the sleepless night she whispered his name, softly her cold hands lingered on the heads and hair of her children; but her eyes were dry, her voice dead within her, until her friends, in a mistaken hope of helping her, consulted together in her hearing about taking away the children. Then the strong chill gave way, the blood rushed into her pale cheeks, she stood up, and, holding each child by the shoulder, she looked into the faces of her amazed friends.
“Bear with me,” she said; and her voice was dry and hard, but it became more natural as she proceeded. “Bear with me for awhile; I am weak, but I shall be strong in time. These are Michael’s children; you must not take them from me.” Then bending down to her children she kissed them, praying them also to be patient with her, and said they would help each other, and, from that day forward she was first in their thoughts, they in hers. With patient care she devoted herself to all the duties of that sad time, and when Michael Fenner was laid to rest in the country churchyard, where many of his forefathers slept, she set herself to master all the circumstances of her position, and to ascertain the means at her disposal for her own maintenance and the maintenance and education of her children. Friends shook their heads and pitied “those poor Fenners,” but there was not one with whom Margaret would have changed lots; for had she not the memory of her love and the care of those little children who were his as well as hers?
A careful consideration of her circumstances convinced Mrs. Fenner that it would not be desirable for her to inhabit the house at Oldborough, for though it was a modest house enough for a family to live in, she felt herself unequal to manage the farm which belonged to it, and she knew that her pension would not enable her to keep it up comfortably, besides, before long it would be necessary for Mark at least to go to school, and the nearest town was ten miles from Oldborough. So Oldborough Lodge was let to an Indian family who were in search of just such a home, and the farm was retained by the farmer, who had held it ever since Michael’s father had died, some fifteen years before; while Mrs. Fenner and her children moved to a pretty little cottage, which was fortunately to let, near the ancient city of Sunbridge, in the parish adjacent to which her brother was rector, because she was deeply attached to her brother, and because both he and his wife were of opinion that it would be a great advantage to Mark to study with their son Gilbert, until the boys should be old enough to go to school.
The Rev. James Echlin, Rector of Rosenhurst, near Sunbridge, was one of those amiable and accomplished men, to whom, in their curate period, everything seems possible, everything probable; and when it was announced that Lady Elgitha Manners, aunt to the young Earl of Seven Beeches, had determined to bestow her inestimable self and all the weight of her aristocratic connections upon him, it was accepted as an event quite within the range of the proprieties, and the favoured few among his congregation to whom the great news was first communicated, assured each other that it was no wonder, and that they should see him a bishop before many years were over their heads. The Reverend James, who, like his sister, was disposed to think rather too humbly of himself, was amazed at his own good fortune, and meekly submitted himself to it; but his wise father shook his head, and his mother, though rather dazzled by the brilliancy of the connection, felt that it would have been more comfortable if James had married a woman more in their own rank. Indeed, the man who marries a wife, who condescends to his alliance, is seldom to be envied, and, though James Echlin’s sweet nature prevented his chafing under it, it was by no means good for him or for his children that the Lady Elgitha, in right of her superior knowledge of the world, and of her family connections, exercised the summum imperium in all household arrangements.
Of their eight children only two, Gilbert Manners, the eldest, and Elgitha Manners, the youngest, lived past infancy. Gilbert was a handsome boy, well grown and vigorous enough, but Elgitha was long a frail, little maid, who seemed likely to be added to the row of tiny mounds under the chancel window, which were all that remained to tell of the six infant Manners Echlins who had spread their wings and joined the innumerable throng of infant angels.
Like most ruling ladies, the Lady Elgitha had her favourite, and this favourite was—as was but natural—her son: for had he not paid her the initiatory compliment of inheriting her aquiline features? and as he grew up were not his tastes and feelings in charming harmony with her own? While a child in the nursery he eschewed fairy tales “as rubbish,” and when he became a boy, and went to school, learning as learning was a bore; and he early adopted it as a maxim to give his attention to nothing that “didn’t pay”—an expression which charmed his mother by its shrewdness, but strangely chilled his father, who, in all his life, had never taken such a consideration into account.
With a sense of the vital importance of modern languages which is impressed on the brain of our female aristocracy, Lady Elgitha had imported to Sunbridge first a Parisian bonne, then a German; and Gilbert, Mark, and Eveline had the opportunity of acquiring a patois which familiarised them with the names of ordinary things, and, it may be, facilitated their subsequent studies in both languages; but little Elgitha was too delicate in the early years of her life to be trusted either to bonne or fräulein, and she was permitted to repose on the ample bosom of a comfortable Englishwoman, who was as sweet as a clover-field and about as intelligent; and while she nursed and tended the frail little body, had not the remotest notion of in any way disturbing the little brain, but was more than satisfied to see repeated in his little daughter the features and the sweetness of her father.