Mr. Haveloc carried Miss Campbell's rod and basket; and having found a spot where there were no hawthorns near to intercept her line, he recommended her to begin forthwith.
She made a trial; but any one who has taken a fishing-rod in their hand for the first time, knows that it is by no means an easy task to guide it.
After several desperate man[oe]uvres, in which she perilled herself and her neighbours, more than once, with the spike at the end, she gave up the attempt, and trusted to the sole attraction of her lilac bonnet.
Harriet was far up the stream with Mr. Gage; and Everard, who was wandering about with his play-book in his hand, finding Miss Campbell disengaged, insisted on her hearing him; and she had the delightful task of listening to his blunders, while she was calculating whether, if Mr.
Haveloc proved obstinate, it would be possible for her to accept a younger son.
Mr. Haveloc had managed to detach Margaret from the rest of the party, and they sat watching the stream, as it glided through the tangled roots of the hawthorns.
They had time to say, not all they wished; but all there was any occasion for before they were interrupted; for Mr. Haveloc well knew the precise angle of the rocky bank at which they would be invisible to the party below.
Harriet, coming down with her basket on her shoulder, and her rod unjointed, was the first to discover them. She suspended her song; stood before them a minute, enjoying Margaret's rosy blushes, and Mr.
Haveloc's look of extreme unconcern; and then shrugging her shoulders, and throwing down her basket on the grass, exclaimed:--
"Well! never say I did not have a hand in it."
The ladies had settled to go home after a late luncheon. The gentlemen adhered to their original plan.
Everybody thought Mr. Haveloc was rather particular in his attentions to Margaret; fortunately, for her comfort, they did not know how particular. They did not know that he had obtained her permission to write to Mr. Warde and to Mr. Casement, by that day's post. They did not know that when he went up to dress, the letters were written; and that Margaret's last words as he put her in the carriage, were to beg "that he would be very polite to poor Mr. Casement."
Harriet happened to be alone with Margaret, as Mrs. Fitzpatrick went back with Lady Raymond; and she caressed and teazed her alternately all the way home, but Margaret could now bear teazing very bravely.
This was destined to be a day of events, for when they returned to Wardenscourt, they found Captain Gage and Elizabeth already arrived.
Lucy and Harriet, both warmly attached to Lady d'Eyncourt, flew to welcome her.
"And Margaret," said Elizabeth enquiringly, when she had embraced her cousins.
Margaret was in her arms at once, sobbing with joy and emotion.
Elizabeth stroked down her hair, and spoke soothingly to her: she had grown older so fast, that Margaret was really a child to her now.
Captain Gage was in excellent spirits. He was come back to England, which delighted him, for he had no great taste for foreign parts. And now that the grief of Sir Philip's death was, with him, over, he felt that he had his daughter back again, all to himself, and that was a great source of consolation. He was sorry it happened that his sons were out fishing, but it was a capital day for sport, and he should see them in the morning, which after all, was almost the same thing. So he kissed Harriet again, and asked her whether she could give George a good character.
Elizabeth was beautiful in her weeds; she looked graver, older, and more serene. There was something in her slow and dignified movements, that reminded Margaret of Sir Philip. And though she suffered, as Schiller tells us as all great minds suffer, in silence and alone, yet those who knew her best, felt a certainty, (in her case fully confirmed by time), that she would never marry again. She seemed to feel, as the poets tell us, women felt in their days, that her destiny was accomplished, her part in the drama of life played out, that she had given her heart to her husband; and that to all eternity her soul was wedded to the soul that had preceded hers to Heaven.
With these peculiar views, a second marriage would have been to her a crime replete with horror and disgrace.
That many people regretted these views, and that some sought to change them, will not be wondered at, considering that, independent of her beauty and good private fortune, Sir Philip left her mistress and sole heiress of Sherleigh, expressing only a wish that if she should not marry again, it might go to some one of Captain Gage's descendants.
Every one, whom it nearly concerned, was pleased with Margaret's approaching marriage. Mrs. Fitzpatrick declared it was all that she could wish. Lady d'Eyncourt congratulated her warmly, her guardians gave a willing assent, Mr. Casement saying, that if Miss Peggy liked to venture upon the young man, it was her affair; that there was no mistake about his property, but that he thought him a violent fellow.
Elizabeth desired that Margaret should be married from Chirke Weston.
Hubert was safe on the coast of South America, and there was no drawback to the plan. Captain Gage insisted upon giving her away. He said he had half a right to do so, since he had a narrow escape of being her father in earnest. For he still regarded Hubert's attachment to her as a childish piece of business, that would serve very well for a jest when one was wanting. So after the performance of the Vaudeville, which went off to admiration, the party at Wardenscourt broke up. The Gages and Raymonds, with Margaret and Mrs. Fitzpatrick started for Chirke Weston; and Mr. Haveloc was kindly invited to take up his abode with Mr. Warde, who was to perform the ceremony.
Margaret found many changes since she left that neighbourhood, though none so strange to her as the change in her own prospects. At the Vicarage, Mrs. Somerton still resided, but her eldest daughter was now with her; a sharp, fractious spinster, who seemed but a bad exchange for her wilful, pretty sister, now fortunately Mrs. Compton.
Mrs. Compton had a little girl, and was grown, her mother said, more steady; and Mr. Compton had just been in all the newspapers for playing at skittles before a church door, during divine service, at some place where he was quartered with a detachment. This last piece of information came from the acid sister; but Mrs. Somerton added that it was done for a bet, which in her opinion, at once explained and excused the action.
The Trevors had for some time been in possession of Ashdale. They were very nice people, and already extremely popular with the neighbours.
They were particularly civil to Margaret, took care to call upon her and to invite her, and to express a great deal of pleasure in her intended marriage. They little knew that they owed to Margaret's forbearance the estate they were now enjoying; for a word from her would have caused Mr.
Grey to alter again, before his death, the distribution of his property; and they rather grudged her the ten thousand pounds which her uncle did bequeath to her--for very nice people are sometimes niggardly in their ideas; they thought her own ten thousand pounds ample for a single woman, and now that she was about to make a grand marriage, it was still less needful to her; but as no means occurred to them of getting this money back again, they contented themselves with _feeling_ the injury, and with fixing on little Richard, as the one of their children who would be sure to have had it, if Margaret had not robbed him of it.
But there were little private family feelings, which these nice people took care to keep to themselves. They were invited to the breakfast, very reluctantly, on the part of Harriet; who superintended everything, and who hated them because they happened to have five very plain children.
"Don't tell me, Uncle Gage, that it is not their fault!" she exclaimed, when Captain Gage ventured to remonstrate with her for her dislike.
"Good people, always have handsome children. Your children were all handsome!"
Captain Gage was silenced by this logical inference, "his children were good looking, he must confess."
"Little sinners!" cried Harriet, "I'll have them all five to the breakfast, that I may make them ill for a fortnight. I know they are greedy by the look of them. I know they will eat as long as I choose to stuff them."
And little Mrs. Trevor, when she yielded to Harriet's earnest entreaties, that the five darlings should see the wedding and appear at the breakfast, little thought of the fate in store for them.
Harriet was now in the very midst of business, to the great contentment of her unquiet spirit. She assumed the direction of every thing; as Elizabeth was not in spirits to take an active share in such matters.
But Harriet was in her element, inviting the company and arranging the breakfast, and holding secret committees, with Captain Gage.
And then the trousseau. She was a Queen among milliners and ladies'
maids; and samples of gowns and bonnets. Her taste was admirable and most imperative; she would not allow an opinion but her own on the subject. Not a silk could be decided upon, unless she approved the colour; not a bonnet, unless she pronounced the shape to be faultless.
Margaret submitted passively to all her directions, and bade Mrs. Mason to be equally submissive. This was difficult, because then Mrs. Thompson began to triumph over Mrs. Mason, and to intrude her advice upon matters with which, as Mrs. Mason said, she had nothing to do.
Then Harriet selected the bridesmaids, which was a matter of some nicety. She meant to have had six; but as she insisted upon their all being handsome, she soon found herself obliged to limit the number to four.
Whenever Mr. Gage was within hearing, she took care to regret over and over again that the untoward circumstance of her own marriage prevented her from offering herself in that capacity.
"You see," said Mr. Gage to Margaret, on occasion of one of these attacks, "what you are to expect; when you have been married six months, you will wish yourself single, that you may be bridesmaid to some of your friends."
"No, she will not!" cried Harriet, "you don't see the difference. Do you think, if I had married dear Mr. Haveloc, I should now wish I was single?"
Mr. Gage laughed, and said "that altered the case, he had no doubt; but people with a very little imagination might conjecture the degree of peace that would have been enjoyed by both parties, if Harriet had married 'dear Mr. Haveloc.'"
However, though she was not married to him; she enjoyed the great satisfaction of teazing him to her heart's content. She would come in with a solemn face, and assure him that his lawyer had died suddenly, and the settlements must be transferred into other hands; that his coach-maker had absconded, and he must send elsewhere for his carriage; or that Margaret was upstairs ill with the influenza, and the doctor was sure it would prove a very tedious attack.
This was the last time she succeeded in mystifying him, for before she had finished speaking, he rushed past her, and up the stairs in search of Margaret, whom he met quietly coming down, in perfect health. Harriet declared that a very affecting meeting took place on the staircase, and made Captain Gage laugh very much with her account of it; but she could not get Mr. Haveloc to believe any more of her provoking tales.
But she could not let him entirely alone. She affirmed that with regard to ladies' dress, he had one single idea, an _idee fixe_, which she was anxious to reason him out of.
This idea was a perfect mania for shawls. He presented Margaret with one costly shawl after another, till Harriet said, it was plain he thought ladies' dress consisted of nothing else; and she vowed, that Margaret should go to church on _the_ day, clothed in every single shawl he had ever given her. And then she would draw such a lively picture of Margaret's appearance in this singular costume, as would set every one present laughing.
Then she was always alluding to Mr. Humphries, though this was partly to plague Margaret. She would mention the songs Mr. Humphries liked, and she would sing them of an evening with a great deal of pathos, directing the expression particularly to Margaret. If she happened to wear any thing particularly pretty, she would ask if it was not something of that sort that Mr. Humphries used to admire so much?
Mr. Haveloc was not of a more curious disposition than men in general, but it was natural he should wish to know why Harriet laid so much stress on this Mr. Humphries, and why Margaret should always colour when she did so.
Mr. Gage, who was present one evening when Harriet made one of these allusions, told him that Humphries was a country squire, who lived near Mr. Singleton; a good sort of man, whom he believed Miss Capel had refused when she was at Singleton Manor; that the poor fellow had a large property, but really was such a boor, that you could not be surprised at any woman refusing him.
Fortunately Harriet did not overhear this explanation, or she would have little thanked Mr. Gage for interfering with her concerns.
Mr. Casement was a good deal at Chirke Weston. He came sometimes on business, with Mr. Haveloc, but much more often because he had no where else to bestow himself.