“She watch for you every night, ma’am,” her Welsh nurse said; “and last night she go down-stairs her best, and blow up Mr. Blyth like anything for doing a door-bell ring exactly like yours, ma’am.”
My brother-in-law was very glad to get his wife back, and, having been warned by letter, welcomed my dear Lucy with sufficient warmth. How could he help it? Everywhere she went she won all hearts. Brentin and Parsons both admired her desperately, and Bob Hines, my sister told me, paid her more attention on the yacht coming from Monte Carlo than he had ever been known to pay any one before.
Even Forsyth, who is one of the most difficile men I know (unless the young lady makes a dead set at him, when he thinks her lovely), even he said to me, “That’s a real pretty girl, Vincent, and you’re a very lucky man to get her;” while Miss Rybot once quite surprised me by the warmth of her congratulation. “She’s so fresh and unaffected, Mr. Blacker,” she said. “She’s like a breeze that meets you at the end of a country lane when you come suddenly upon the sea.” Which I thought both poetical and perfectly true—rather a rare combination nowadays.
The next morning Lucy and I were off to Liverpool Street for Nesshaven and “The French Horn.” As we drove up, and I saw the familiar place once more, blinking in the soft February sunshine, just as we had left it, I could scarcely believe all I had gone through in the way of peril and adventure. Somehow, if one leaves a place for a time, and has experiences of moment in the interval, one expects those experiences to have had their effect elsewhere, too, even on inanimate objects.
I felt older, wiser, more developed, more of a man, and I was astonished to find the place quite unaltered and Mr. Thatcher looking just the same as he came running out in his dirty old blazer. His mother was at the window, gazing through the panes with the naïve curiosity of a child at new arrivals. She kissed Lucy, and said to me: “Well, here you are back safe, you bad young man. You’ve given us a rare fright, I can tell you”—and that was all.
That same evening, when the ladies were safely abed, I had a long talk with Mr. Thatcher in the bar parlor. After dear Lucy’s escapade, we decided we might as well be married at once, without waiting for Easter; and that, with the help of a license, the following Thursday, February 6th, would be none too soon. For myself, apart from other considerations, I thought it clearly wisest to get married and clear out of the country, on a lengthy wedding-tour, as quick as we could; so that, in case of search being made for me, as the head and guiding spirit of the raid, I might, for some few months at any rate, be non inventus.
Next, I delicately approached the subject of the repurchase of Wharton Park. I told Mr. Thatcher we had been extraordinarily lucky at Monte Carlo, and that, by a combination of rare circumstances, I was the richer by £30,000 than when I started. He was shrewd enough to listen in silence and ask no sort of question as to what particular system I had pursued to enable me to return with so large a sum. In fact, I scarcely gave him time to ask questions, I was so rapid, hurrying forward only to the main point, whether Crage’s offer were still open and we should still be able to get the old wretch out.
He told me that since Crage’s last visit and offer to marry Lucy he had seen nothing of him, and, so far as he knew, the place was still to be had. We could, if I liked, go up to the house in a day or two and make inquiries cautiously, or write Crage a letter making him a formal proposal.
To which I replied that, knowing something of human nature, I judged it best, when we made our offer, to be prepared with the actual sum in notes and gold to make it good; for, with a man like Crage, combined of malice and craft, he would most likely try to bluff and raise us unless he saw the very gold and notes before him, beyond which, not having any more to offer, we were not prepared to go.
“Very true,” said Thatcher. “There’s nothing like the ready to tempt a man, as I know very well. Why, when I was in business—”