‘And so,’ suggested the stranger.
‘And so,’ said Clemency, taking him up mechanically, and without any change in her attitude or manner, ‘they at last were married. They were married on her birth-day—it comes round again to-morrow—very quiet, very humble like, but very happy. Mr. Alfred said, one night when they were walking in the orchard, “Grace, shall our wedding-day be Marion’s birth-day?” And it was.’
‘And they have lived happily together?’ said the stranger.
‘Ay,’ said Clemency. ‘No two people ever more so. They have had no sorrow but this.’
She raised her head as with a sudden attention to the circumstances under which she was recalling these events, and looked quickly at the stranger. Seeing that his face was turned toward the window, and that he seemed intent upon the prospect, she made some eager signs to her husband, and pointed to the bill, and moved her mouth as if she were repeating with great energy, one word or phrase to him over and over again. As she uttered no sound, and as her dumb motions like most of her gestures were of a very extraordinary kind, this unintelligible conduct reduced Mr. Britain to the confines of despair. He stared at the table, at the stranger, at the spoons, at his wife—followed her pantomime with looks of deep amazement and perplexity—asked in the same language, was it property in danger, was it he in danger, was it she—answered her signals with other signals expressive of the deepest distress and confusion—followed the motions of her lips—guessed half aloud ‘milk and water,’ ‘monthly warning,’ ‘mice and walnuts’—and couldn’t approach her meaning.
Clemency gave it up at last, as a hopeless attempt; and moving her chair by very slow degrees a little nearer to the stranger, sat with her eyes apparently cast down but glancing sharply at him now and then, waiting until he should ask some other question. She had not to wait long; for he said, presently:
‘And what is the after history of the young lady who went away? They know it, I suppose?’
Clemency shook her head. ‘I’ve heard,’ she said, ‘that Doctor Jeddler is thought to know more of it than he tells. Miss Grace has had letters from her sister, saying that she was well and happy, and made much happier by her being married to Mr. Alfred: and has written letters back. But there’s a mystery about her life and fortunes, altogether, which nothing has cleared up to this hour, and which—’
She faltered here, and stopped.
‘And which’—repeated the stranger.
‘Which only one other person, I believe, could explain,’ said Clemency, drawing her breath quickly.
‘Who may that be?’ asked the stranger.
‘Mr. Michael Warden!’ answered Clemency, almost in a shriek: at once conveying to her husband what she would have had him understand before, and letting Michael Warden know that he was recognised.
‘You remember me, sir?’ said Clemency, trembling with emotion; ‘I saw just now you did! You remember me, that night in the garden. I was with her!’
‘Yes. You were,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Clemency. ‘Yes, to be sure. This is my husband, if you please. Ben, my dear Ben, run to Miss Grace—run to Mr. Alfred—run somewhere, Ben! Bring somebody here, directly!’
‘Stay!’ said Michael Warden, quietly interposing himself between the door and Britain. ‘What would you do?’
‘Let them know that you are here, sir,’ answered Clemency, clapping her hands in sheer agitation. ‘Let them know that they may hear of her, from your own lips; let them know that she is not quite lost to them, but that she will come home again yet, to bless her father and her loving sister—even her old servant, even me,’ she struck herself upon the breast with both hands, ‘with a sight of her sweet face. Run, Ben, run!’ And still she pressed him on towards the door, and still Mr. Warden stood before it, with his hand stretched out, not angrily, but sorrowfully.
‘Or perhaps,’ said Clemency, running past her husband, and catching in her emotion at Mr. Warden’s cloak, ‘perhaps she’s here now; perhaps she’s close by. I think from your manner she is. Let me see her, sir, if you please. I waited on her when she was a little child. I saw her grow to be the pride of all this place. I knew her when she was Mr. Alfred’s promised wife. I tried to warn her when you tempted her away. I know what her old home was when she was like the soul of it, and how it changed when she was gone and lost. Let me speak to her, if you please!’
He gazed at her with compassion, not unmixed with wonder: but, he made no gesture of assent.
‘I don’t think shecanknow,’ pursued Clemency, ‘how truly they forgive her; how they love her; what joy it would be to them, to see her once more. She may be timorous of going home. Perhaps if she sees me, it may give her new heart. Only tell me truly, Mr. Warden, is she with you?’
‘She is not,’ he answered, shaking his head.
This answer, and his manner, and his black dress, and his coming back so quietly, and his announced intention of continuing to live abroad, explained it all. Marion was dead.
He didn’t contradict her; yes, she was dead! Clemency sat down, hid her face upon the table, and cried.
At that moment, a grey-headed old gentleman came running in: quite out of breath, and panting so much that his voice was scarcely to be recognised as the voice of Mr. Snitchey.
‘Good Heaven, Mr. Warden!’ said the lawyer, taking him aside, ‘what wind has blown—’ He was so blown himself, that he couldn’t get on any further until after a pause, when he added, feebly, ‘you here?’
‘An ill-wind, I am afraid,’ he answered. ‘If you could have heard what has just passed—how I have been besought and entreated to perform impossibilities—what confusion and affliction I carry with me!’
‘I can guess it all. But why did you ever come here, my good sir?’ retorted Snitchey.
‘Come! How should I know who kept the house? When I sent my servant on to you, I strolled in here because the place was new to me; and I had a natural curiosity in everything new and old, in these old scenes; and it was outside the town. I wanted to communicate with you, first, before appearing there. I wanted to know what people would say to me. I see by your manner that you can tell me. If it were not for your confounded caution, I should have been possessed of everything long ago.’
‘Our caution!’ returned the lawyer, ‘speaking for Self and Craggs—deceased,’ here Mr. Snitchey, glancing at his hat-band, shook his head, ‘how can you reasonably blame us, Mr. Warden? It was understood between us that the subject was never to be renewed, and that it wasn’t a subject on which grave and sober men like us (I made a note of your observations at the time) could interfere. Our caution too! When Mr. Craggs, sir, went down to his respected grave in the full belief—’
‘I had given a solemn promise of silence until I should return, whenever that might be,’ interrupted Mr. Warden; ‘and I have kept it.’
‘Well, sir, and I repeat it,’ returned Mr. Snitchey, ‘we were bound to silence too. We were bound to silence in our duty towards ourselves, and in our duty towards a variety of clients, you among them, who were as close as wax. It was not our place to make inquiries of you on such a delicate subject. I had my suspicions, sir; but, it is not six months since I have known the truth, and been assured that you lost her.’
‘By whom?’ inquired his client.
‘By Doctor Jeddler himself, sir, who at last reposed that confidence in me voluntarily. He, and only he, has known the whole truth, years and years.’
‘And you know it?’ said his client.
‘I do, sir!’ replied Snitchey; ‘and I have also reason to know that it will be broken to her sister to-morrow evening. They have given her that promise. In the meantime, perhaps you’ll give me the honour of your company at my house; being unexpected at your own. But, not to run the chance of any more such difficulties as you have had here, in case you should be recognised—though you’re a good deal changed; I think I might have passed you myself, Mr. Warden—we had better dine here, and walk on in the evening. It’s a very good place to dine at, Mr. Warden: your own property, by-the-bye. Self and Craggs (deceased) took a chop here sometimes, and had it very comfortably served. Mr. Craggs, sir,’ said Snitchey, shutting his eyes tight for an instant, and opening them again, ‘was struck off the roll of life too soon.’
‘Heaven forgive me for not condoling with you,’ returned Michael Warden, passing his hand across his forehead, ‘but I’m like a man in a dream at present. I seem to want my wits. Mr. Craggs—yes—I am very sorry we have lost Mr. Craggs.’ But he looked at Clemency as he said it, and seemed to sympathise with Ben, consoling her.
‘Mr. Craggs, sir,’ observed Snitchey, ‘didn’t find life, I regret to say, as easy to have and to hold as his theory made it out, or he would have been among us now. It’s a great loss to me. He was my right arm, my right leg, my right ear, my right eye, was Mr. Craggs. I am paralytic without him. He bequeathed his share of the business to Mrs. Craggs, her executors, administrators, and assigns. His name remains in the Firm to this hour. I try, in a childish sort of a way, to make believe, sometimes, he’s alive. You may observe that I speak for Self and Craggs—deceased, sir—deceased,’ said the tender-hearted attorney, waving his pocket-handkerchief.
Michael Warden, who had still been observant of Clemency, turned to Mr. Snitchey when he ceased to speak, and whispered in his ear.
‘Ah, poor thing!’ said Snitchey, shaking his head. ‘Yes. She was always very faithful to Marion. She was always very fond of her. Pretty Marion! Poor Marion! Cheer up, Mistress—you are married now, you know, Clemency.’
Clemency only sighed, and shook her head.
‘Well, well! Wait till to-morrow,’ said the lawyer, kindly.
‘To-morrow can’t bring back’ the dead to life, Mister,’ said Clemency, sobbing.
‘No. It can’t do that, or it would bring back Mr. Craggs, deceased,’ returned the lawyer. ‘But it may bring some soothing circumstances; it may bring some comfort. Wait till to-morrow!’
So Clemency, shaking his proffered hand, said she would; and Britain, who had been terribly cast down at sight of his despondent wife (which was like the business hanging its head), said that was right; and Mr. Snitchey and Michael Warden went up-stairs; and there they were soon engaged in a conversation so cautiously conducted, that no murmur of it was audible above the clatter of plates and dishes, the hissing of the frying-pan, the bubbling of saucepans, the low monotonous waltzing of the jack—with a dreadful click every now and then as if it had met with some mortal accident to its head, in a fit of giddiness—and all the other preparations in the kitchen for their dinner.
To-morrow was a bright and peaceful day; and nowhere were the autumn tints more beautifully seen, than from the quiet orchard of the Doctor’s house. The snows of many winter nights had melted from that ground, the withered leaves of many summer times had rustled there, since she had fled. The honey-suckle porch was green again, the trees cast bountiful and changing shadows on the grass, the landscape was as tranquil and serene as it had ever been; but where was she!
Not there. Not there. She would have been a stranger sight in her old home now, even than that home had been at first, without her. But, a lady sat in the familiar place, from whose heart she had never passed away; in whose true memory she lived, unchanging, youthful, radiant with all promise and all hope; in whose affection—and it was a mother’s now, there was a cherished little daughter playing by her side—she had no rival, no successor; upon whose gentle lips her name was trembling then.
The spirit of the lost girl looked out of those eyes. Those eyes of Grace, her sister, sitting with her husband in the orchard, on their wedding-day, and his and Marion’s birth-day.
He had not become a great man; he had not grown rich; he had not forgotten the scenes and friends of his youth; he had not fulfilled any one of the Doctor’s old predictions. But, in his useful, patient, unknown visiting of poor men’s homes; and in his watching of sick beds; and in his daily knowledge of the gentleness and goodness flowering the by-paths of this world, not to be trodden down beneath the heavy foot of poverty, but springing up, elastic, in its track, and making its way beautiful; he had better learned and proved, in each succeeding year, the truth of his old faith. The manner of his life, though quiet and remote, had shown him how often men still entertained angels, unawares, as in the olden time; and how the most unlikely forms—even some that were mean and ugly to the view, and poorly clad—became irradiated by the couch of sorrow, want, and pain, and changed to ministering spirits with a glory round their heads.
He lived to better purpose on the altered battle-ground, perhaps, than if he had contended restlessly in more ambitious lists; and he was happy with his wife, dear Grace.
And Marion. Hadheforgotten her?
‘The time has flown, dear Grace,’ he said, ‘since then;’ they had been talking of that night; ‘and yet it seems a long long while ago. We count by changes and events within us. Not by years.’
‘Yet we have years to count by, too, since Marion was with us,’ returned Grace. ‘Six times, dear husband, counting to-night as one, we have sat here on her birth-day, and spoken together of that happy return, so eagerly expected and so long deferred. Ah when will it be! When will it be!’
Her husband attentively observed her, as the tears collected in her eyes; and drawing nearer, said:
‘But, Marion told you, in that farewell letter which she left for you upon your table, love, and which you read so often, that years must pass away before itcouldbe. Did she not?’
She took a letter from her breast, and kissed it, and said ‘Yes.’
‘That through these intervening years, however happy she might be, she would look forward to the time when you would meet again, and all would be made clear; and that she prayed you, trustfully and hopefully to do the same. The letter runs so, does it not, my dear?’
‘Yes, Alfred.’
‘And every other letter she has written since?’
‘Except the last—some months ago—in which she spoke of you, and what you then knew, and what I was to learn to-night.’
He looked towards the sun, then fast declining, and said that the appointed time was sunset.
‘Alfred!’ said Grace, laying her hand upon his shoulder earnestly, ‘there is something in this letter—this old letter, which you say I read so often—that I have never told you. But, to-night, dear husband, with that sunset drawing near, and all our life seeming to soften and become hushed with the departing day, I cannot keep it secret.’
‘What is it, love?’
‘When Marion went away, she wrote me, here, that you had once left her a sacred trust to me, and that now she left you, Alfred, such a trust in my hands: praying and beseeching me, as I loved her, and as I loved you, not to reject the affection she believed (she knew, she said) you would transfer to me when the new wound was healed, but to encourage and return it.’
‘—And make me a proud, and happy man again, Grace. Did she say so?’
‘She meant, to make myself so blest and honoured in your love,’ was his wife’s answer, as he held her in his arms.
‘Hear me, my dear!’ he said.—‘No. Hear me so!’—and as he spoke, he gently laid the head she had raised, again upon his shoulder. ‘I know why I have never heard this passage in the letter, until now. I know why no trace of it ever showed itself in any word or look of yours at that time. I know why Grace, although so true a friend to me, was hard to win to be my wife. And knowing it, my own! I know the priceless value of the heart I gird within my arms, and thankGodfor the rich possession!’
She wept, but not for sorrow, as he pressed her to his heart. After a brief space, he looked down at the child, who was sitting at their feet playing with a little basket of flowers, and bade her look how golden and how red the sun was.
‘Alfred,’ said Grace, raising her head quickly at these words. ‘The sun is going down. You have not forgotten what I am to know before it sets.’
‘You are to know the truth of Marion’s history, my love,’ he answered.
‘All the truth,’ she said, imploringly. ‘Nothing veiled from me, any more. That was the promise. Was it not?’
‘It was,’ he answered.
‘Before the sun went down on Marion’s birth-day. And you see it, Alfred? It is sinking fast.’
He put his arm about her waist, and, looking steadily into her eyes, rejoined:
‘That truth is not reserved so long for me to tell, dear Grace. It is to come from other lips.’
‘From other lips!’ she faintly echoed.
‘Yes. I know your constant heart, I know how brave you are, I know that to you a word of preparation is enough. You have said, truly, that the time is come. It is. Tell me that you have present fortitude to bear a trial—a surprise—a shock: and the messenger is waiting at the gate.’
‘What messenger?’ she said. ‘And what intelligence does he bring?’
‘I am pledged,’ he answered her, preserving his steady look, ‘to say no more. Do you think you understand me?’
‘I am afraid to think,’ she said.
There was that emotion in his face, despite its steady gaze, which frightened her. Again she hid her own face on his shoulder, trembling, and entreated him to pause—a moment.
‘Courage, my wife! When you have firmness to receive the messenger, the messenger is waiting at the gate. The sun is setting on Marion’s birth-day. Courage, courage, Grace!’
She raised her head, and, looking at him, told him she was ready. As she stood, and looked upon him going away, her face was so like Marion’s as it had been in her later days at home, that it was wonderful to see. He took the child with him. She called her back—she bore the lost girl’s name—and pressed her to her bosom. The little creature, being released again, sped after him, and Grace was left alone.
She knew not what she dreaded, or what hoped; but remained there, motionless, looking at the porch by which they had disappeared.
Ah! what was that, emerging from its shadow; standing on its threshold! That figure, with its white garments rustling in the evening air; its head laid down upon her father’s breast, and pressed against it to his loving heart! O God! was it a vision that came bursting from the old man’s arms, and with a cry, and with a waving of its hands, and with a wild precipitation of itself upon her in its boundless love, sank down in her embrace!
‘Oh, Marion, Marion! Oh, my sister! Oh, my heart’s dear love! Oh, joy and happiness unutterable, so to meet again!’
It was no dream, no phantom conjured up by hope and fear, but Marion, sweet Marion! So beautiful, so happy, so unalloyed by care and trial, so elevated and exalted in her loveliness, that as the setting sun shone brightly on her upturned face, she might have been a spirit visiting the earth upon some healing mission.
Clinging to her sister, who had dropped upon a seat and bent down over her—and smiling through her tears—and kneeling, close before her, with both arms twining round her, and never turning for an instant from her face—and with the glory of the setting sun upon her brow, and with the soft tranquillity of evening gathering around them—Marion at length broke silence; her voice, so calm, low, clear, and pleasant, well-tuned to the time.
‘When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now again—’
‘Stay, my sweet love! A moment! O Marion, to hear you speak again.’
She could not bear the voice she loved so well, at first.
‘When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now again, I loved him from my soul. I loved him most devotedly. I would have died for him, though I was so young. I never slighted his affection in my secret breast for one brief instant. It was far beyond all price to me. Although it is so long ago, and past, and gone, and everything is wholly changed, I could not bear to think that you, who love so well, should think I did not truly love him once. I never loved him better, Grace, than when he left this very scene upon this very day. I never loved him better, dear one, than I did that night when I left here.’
Her sister, bending over her, could look into her face, and hold her fast.
‘But he had gained, unconsciously,’ said Marion, with a gentle smile, ‘another heart, before I knew that I had one to give him. That heart—yours, my sister!—was so yielded up, in all its other tenderness, to me; was so devoted, and so noble; that it plucked its love away, and kept its secret from all eyes but mine—Ah! what other eyes were quickened by such tenderness and gratitude!—and was content to sacrifice itself to me. But, I knew something of its depths. I knew the struggle it had made. I knew its high, inestimable worth to him, and his appreciation of it, let him love me as he would. I knew the debt I owed it. I had its great example every day before me. What you had done for me, I knew that I could do, Grace, if I would, for you. I never laid my head down on my pillow, but I prayed with tears to do it. I never laid my head down on my pillow, but I thought of Alfred’s own words on the day of his departure, and how truly he had said (for I knew that, knowing you) that there were victories gained every day, in struggling hearts, to which these fields of battle were nothing. Thinking more and more upon the great endurance cheerfully sustained, and never known or cared for, that there must be, every day and hour, in that great strife of which he spoke, my trial seemed to grow light and easy. And He who knows our hearts, my dearest, at this moment, and who knows there is no drop of bitterness or grief—of anything but unmixed happiness—in mine, enabled me to make the resolution that I never would be Alfred’s wife. That he should be my brother, and your husband, if the course I took could bring that happy end to pass; but that I never would (Grace, I then loved him dearly, dearly!) be his wife!’
‘O Marion! O Marion!’
‘I had tried to seem indifferent to him;’ and she pressed her sister’s face against her own; ‘but that was hard, and you were always his true advocate. I had tried to tell you of my resolution, but you would never hear me; you would never understand me. The time was drawing near for his return. I felt that I must act, before the daily intercourse between us was renewed. I knew that one great pang, undergone at that time, would save a lengthened agony to all of us. I knew that if I went away then, that end must follow whichhasfollowed, and which has made us both so happy, Grace! I wrote to good Aunt Martha, for a refuge in her house: I did not then tell her all, but something of my story, and she freely promised it. While I was contesting that step with myself, and with my love of you, and home, Mr. Warden, brought here by an accident, became, for some time, our companion.’
‘I have sometimes feared of late years, that this might have been,’ exclaimed her sister; and her countenance was ashy-pale. ‘You never loved him—and you married him in your self-sacrifice to me!’
‘He was then,’ said Marion, drawing her sister closer to her, ‘on the eve of going secretly away for a long time. He wrote to me, after leaving here; told me what his condition and prospects really were; and offered me his hand. He told me he had seen I was not happy in the prospect of Alfred’s return. I believe he thought my heart had no part in that contract; perhaps thought I might have loved him once, and did not then; perhaps thought that when I tried to seem indifferent, I tried to hide indifference—I cannot tell. But I wished that you should feel me wholly lost to Alfred—hopeless to him—dead. Do you understand me, love?’
Her sister looked into her face, attentively. She seemed in doubt.
‘I saw Mr. Warden, and confided in his honour; charged him with my secret, on the eve of his and my departure. He kept it. Do you understand me, dear?’
Grace looked confusedly upon her. She scarcely seemed to hear.
‘My love, my sister!’ said Marion, ‘recall your thoughts a moment; listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. There are countries, dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would strive, against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it, retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the world against themselves and worldly loves and hopes for ever. When women do so, they assume that name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters. But, there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places, and among its busy life, and trying to assist and cheer it and to do some good,—learn the same lesson; and who, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all happiness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, the victory long won. And such a one am I! You understand me now?’
Still she looked fixedly upon her, and made no reply.
‘Oh Grace, dear Grace,’ said Marion, clinging yet more tenderly and fondly to that breast from which she had been so long exiled, ‘if you were not a happy wife and mother—if I had no little namesake here—if Alfred, my kind brother, were not your own fond husband—from whence could I derive the ecstasy I feel to-night! But, as I left here, so I have returned. My heart has known no other love, my hand has never been bestowed apart from it. I am still your maiden sister, unmarried, unbetrothed: your own loving old Marion, in whose affection you exist alone and have no partner, Grace!’
She understood her now. Her face relaxed: sobs came to her relief; and falling on her neck, she wept and wept, and fondled her as if she were a child again.
When they were more composed, they found that the Doctor, and his sister good Aunt Martha, were standing near at hand, with Alfred.
‘This is a weary day for me,’ said good Aunt Martha, smiling through her tears, as she embraced her nieces; ‘for I lose my dear companion in making you all happy; and what can you give me, in return for my Marion?’
‘A converted brother,’ said the Doctor.
‘That’s something, to be sure,’ retorted Aunt Martha, ‘in such a farce as—’
‘No, pray don’t,’ said the doctor penitently.
‘Well, I won’t,’ replied Aunt Martha. ‘But, I consider myself ill used. I don’t know what’s to become of me without my Marion, after we have lived together half-a-dozen years.’
‘You must come and live here, I suppose,’ replied the Doctor. ‘We shan’t quarrel now, Martha.’
‘Or you must get married, Aunt,’ said Alfred.
‘Indeed,’ returned the old lady, ‘I think it might be a good speculation if I were to set my cap at Michael Warden, who, I hear, is come home much the better for his absence in all respects. But as I knew him when he was a boy, and I was not a very young woman then, perhaps he mightn’t respond. So I’ll make up my mind to go and live with Marion, when she marries, and until then (it will not be very long, I dare say) to live alone. What doyousay, Brother?’
‘I’ve a great mind to say it’s a ridiculous world altogether, and there’s nothing serious in it,’ observed the poor old Doctor.
‘You might take twenty affidavits of it if you chose, Anthony,’ said his sister; ‘but nobody would believe you with such eyes as those.’
‘It’s a world full of hearts,’ said the Doctor, hugging his youngest daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace—for he couldn’t separate the sisters; ‘and a serious world, with all its folly—even with mine, which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and it is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of His lightest image!’
You would not be the better pleased with my rude pen, if it dissected and laid open to your view the transports of this family, long severed and now reunited. Therefore, I will not follow the poor Doctor through his humbled recollection of the sorrow he had had, when Marion was lost to him; nor, will I tell how serious he had found that world to be, in which some love, deep-anchored, is the portion of all human creatures; nor, how such a trifle as the absence of one little unit in the great absurd account, had stricken him to the ground. Nor, how, in compassion for his distress, his sister had, long ago, revealed the truth to him by slow degrees, and brought him to the knowledge of the heart of his self-banished daughter, and to that daughter’s side.
Nor, how Alfred Heathfield had been told the truth, too, in the course of that then current year; and Marion had seen him, and had promised him, as her brother, that on her birth-day, in the evening, Grace should know it from her lips at last.
‘I beg your pardon, Doctor,’ said Mr. Snitchey, looking into the orchard, ‘but have I liberty to come in?’
Without waiting for permission, he came straight to Marion, and kissed her hand, quite joyfully.
‘If Mr. Craggs had been alive, my dear Miss Marion,’ said Mr. Snitchey, ‘he would have had great interest in this occasion. It might have suggested to him, Mr. Alfred, that our life is not too easy perhaps: that, taken altogether, it will bear any little smoothing we can give it; but Mr. Craggs was a man who could endure to be convinced, sir. He was always open to conviction. If he were open to conviction, now, I—this is weakness. Mrs. Snitchey, my dear,’—at his summons that lady appeared from behind the door, ‘you are among old friends.’
Mrs. Snitchey having delivered her congratulations, took her husband aside.
‘One moment, Mr. Snitchey,’ said that lady. ‘It is not in my nature to rake up the ashes of the departed.’
‘No, my dear,’ returned her husband.
‘Mr. Craggs is—’
‘Yes, my dear, he is deceased,’ said Snitchey.
‘But I ask you if you recollect,’ pursued his wife, ‘that evening of the ball? I only ask you that. If you do; and if your memory has not entirely failed you, Mr. Snitchey; and if you are not absolutely in your dotage; I ask you to connect this time with that—to remember how I begged and prayed you, on my knees—’
‘Upon your knees, my dear?’ said Mr. Snitchey.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Snitchey, confidently, ‘and you know it—to beware of that man—to observe his eye—and now to tell me whether I was right, and whether at that moment he knew secrets which he didn’t choose to tell.’
‘Mrs. Snitchey,’ returned her husband, in her ear, ‘Madam. Did you ever observe anything inmyeye?’
‘No,’ said Mrs. Snitchey, sharply. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
‘Because, Madam, that night,’ he continued, twitching her by the sleeve, ‘it happens that we both knew secrets which we didn’t choose to tell, and both knew just the same professionally. And so the less you say about such things the better, Mrs. Snitchey; and take this as a warning to have wiser and more charitable eyes another time. Miss Marion, I brought a friend of yours along with me. Here! Mistress!’
Poor Clemency, with her apron to her eyes, came slowly in, escorted by her husband; the latter doleful with the presentiment, that if she abandoned herself to grief, the Nutmeg-Grater was done for.
‘Now, Mistress,’ said the lawyer, checking Marion as she ran towards her, and interposing himself between them, ‘what’s the matter withyou?’
‘The matter!’ cried poor Clemency.—When, looking up in wonder, and in indignant remonstrance, and in the added emotion of a great roar from Mr. Britain, and seeing that sweet face so well remembered close before her, she stared, sobbed, laughed, cried, screamed, embraced her, held her fast, released her, fell on Mr. Snitchey and embraced him (much to Mrs. Snitchey’s indignation), fell on the Doctor and embraced him, fell on Mr. Britain and embraced him, and concluded by embracing herself, throwing her apron over her head, and going into hysterics behind it.
A stranger had come into the orchard, after Mr. Snitchey, and had remained apart, near the gate, without being observed by any of the group; for they had little spare attention to bestow, and that had been monopolised by the ecstasies of Clemency. He did not appear to wish to be observed, but stood alone, with downcast eyes; and there was an air of dejection about him (though he was a gentleman of a gallant appearance) which the general happiness rendered more remarkable.
None but the quick eyes of Aunt Martha, however, remarked him at all; but, almost as soon as she espied him, she was in conversation with him. Presently, going to where Marion stood with Grace and her little namesake, she whispered something in Marion’s ear, at which she started, and appeared surprised; but soon recovering from her confusion, she timidly approached the stranger, in Aunt Martha’s company, and engaged in conversation with him too.
‘Mr. Britain,’ said the lawyer, putting his hand in his pocket, and bringing out a legal-looking document, while this was going on, ‘I congratulate you. You are now the whole and sole proprietor of that freehold tenement, at present occupied and held by yourself as a licensed tavern, or house of public entertainment, and commonly called or known by the sign of the Nutmeg-Grater. Your wife lost one house, through my client Mr. Michael Warden; and now gains another. I shall have the pleasure of canvassing you for the county, one of these fine mornings.’
‘Would it make any difference in the vote if the sign was altered, sir?’ asked Britain.
‘Not in the least,’ replied the lawyer.
‘Then,’ said Mr. Britain, handing him back the conveyance, ‘just clap in the words, “and Thimble,” will you be so good; and I’ll have the two mottoes painted up in the parlour instead of my wife’s portrait.’
‘And let me,’ said a voice behind them; it was the stranger’s—Michael Warden’s; ‘let me claim the benefit of those inscriptions. Mr. Heathfield and Dr. Jeddler, I might have deeply wronged you both. That I did not, is no virtue of my own. I will not say that I am six years wiser than I was, or better. But I have known, at any rate, that term of self-reproach. I can urge no reason why you should deal gently with me. I abused the hospitality of this house; and learnt by my own demerits, with a shame I never have forgotten, yet with some profit too, I would fain hope, from one,’ he glanced at Marion, ‘to whom I made my humble supplication for forgiveness, when I knew her merit and my deep unworthiness. In a few days I shall quit this place for ever. I entreat your pardon. Do as you would be done by! Forget and Forgive!’
Time—from whom I had the latter portion of this story, and with whom I have the pleasure of a personal acquaintance of some five-and-thirty years’ duration—informed me, leaning easily upon his scythe, that Michael Warden never went away again, and never sold his house, but opened it afresh, maintained a golden means of hospitality, and had a wife, the pride and honour of that countryside, whose name was Marion. But, as I have observed that Time confuses facts occasionally, I hardly know what weight to give to his authority.