EPILOGUE.
Mr. and Mrs. Treverton went back to Hazlehurst Manor, and there was much rejoicing among their friends at John Treverton’s escape from the critical position in which the hazards of life had placed him. The subject was a painful one, and people in their intercourse with John and Laura, touched upon it as lightly as possible. Those revelations about John Treverton’s first marriage, his Bohemian existence under an assumed name, his poverty, and so on, had created no small sensation among a community which rarely had anything more exciting to talk about than the state of the weather, or the appearance of the crops. People had talked their fill by the time Mr. and Mrs. Treverton came back, for they had spent a month at a Dorsetshire watering-place on their way home, for the benefit of Laura’s health, whereby the scandal was stale and almost worn threadbare when they arrived at the Manor House.
Only one event of any importance had happened during their absence. Edward Clare—the poet, the man who sauntered through life hand-in-hand with the muses, dwelling apart from common clay in a world of his own—had suddenly sickened of elegant leisure, and had started all at once for the Cape to learn ostrich farming, with the deliberate intention of settling for life in that distant land.
‘An adventurous career will suit me, and I shall make money,’ he told those few acquaintances to whom he condescended to explain his views. ‘My people are tired of seeing me lead an idle life. They have no faith in my future as a poet. Perhaps theyare right. The rarest and finest of poets have made very little money. It is only charlatanism in literature that really pays. A man who can write down to the level of the herd commands an easy success. Herrick, if he were alive to-day, would not make a living by his pen.’
So Edward Clare departed from the haunts of his youth, and there was no one save his mother to regret him. The Vicar knew too well that John Treverton’s arrest was his son’s work, and treachery so base was a sin his honest heart could not forgive. He was glad that Edward had gone, and his secret prayer was that the young man might learn honesty as well as industry in his self-imposed exile.
To the exile himself anything was better than to see the man he had impotently striven to injure, happy and secure from all future malice. Weighed against that mortification the possible difficulties and hardships of the life to which he was going were as nothing to him.
The year wore on, and brought a new and strange gladness and a deep sense of responsibility to John Treverton. One balmy May morning his first-born son opened his innocent blue eyes upon a bright young world, arrayed in all the glory of spring. The child was placed in his father’s arms by the good old Hazlehurst doctor, who had attended Jasper Treverton in his last illness.
‘How proud my old friend would have been to see his family name in a fair way of being continued in the land for many a long year to come,’ he said.
‘Thank God all things have worked round well for us, at last,’ answered John Treverton, gravely.
In the ripeness and splendour of August and harvest, when the heather was in bloom on the rolling moor, and the narrow streams were dried up by the fierceness of the sun, George Gerard came down to the Manor House to spend a brief holiday; and it happened, by a strangecoincidence, that Laura had invited Celia Clare to stay with her at the same time. They all had a pleasant time in the peerless summer weather. There were picnics and excursions across the moor, with much exciting adventure, and some risk of losing oneself altogether in that sparsely populated world; and in all these adventures George and Celia had a knack of finding themselves abandoned by the other two—or perhaps it was they who went astray, though they always protested that it was Mr. and Mrs. Treverton who deserted them.
‘I shouldn’t wonder if we came to a bad end, like the babes in the wood,’ protested Celia. ‘Imagine us existing on unripe blackberries for a week or so, and then lying resignedly down to die. I don’t believe a bit in the birds putting leaves over us.That’s a fable invented for the pantomime. Birds are a great deal too selfish. No one who had ever seen a pair of robins fight for a bit of bread would believe in those benevolent birds who buried the babes in the wood.’
Being occasionally lost on the moor gave Celia and Mr. Gerard great opportunities for conversation. They were obliged to find something to talk about; and in the end naturally told each other their inmost thoughts. And so it came about, in the most natural way in the world, that one blazing noontide Celia found herself standing before a Druidic table, gazing idly at the big gray stones half embedded in heather and bracken, with George Gerard’s arm round her waist, and with her head placidly resting against his shoulder.
He had been asking her if she would wait for him. That was all. He had not asked her if she loved him, having made up his own mind upon that question, unassisted.
‘Darling, will you wait for me?’ he asked, looking down at her, with eyes brimming over with love.
‘Yes, George,’ she answered, meekly, quite a transformed Celia, all her pertness and flippancy gone.
‘It may be a long while, dear,’ he said gravely; ‘almost as long as Rachel waited for Jacob.’
‘I don’t mind that, provided there is no Leah to come between us.’
‘There shall be no Leah.’
So they were engaged, and in the dim cloudland of the future, Celia saw a vision of Harley Street, a landau, and a pair of handsome grays.
‘Doctors generally have grays, don’t they, George?’ she asked, presently,aproposto nothing particular.
George’s thoughts had not travelled so far as the carriage and pair stage of his existence, and he did not understand the question.
‘Yes, dear, there is a Free Hospital in the Gray’s Inn Road,’ he answered, simply, ‘but I was at Bartlemy’s.’
‘Oh, you foolish George, I was thinking of horses, not hospitals. What colour shall you choose when you start your carriage?’
‘We’ll talk it over, dearest, when we are going to start the carriage.’
Mr. and Mrs. Treverton heard of the engagement with infinite pleasure, nor did the Vicar or his easy-tempered wife offer any objection.
Before the first year of Celia’s betrothal was over, John Treverton had persuaded the good old village doctor to retire, and to accept a handsome price for his comfortable practice, which covered a district of sixty miles circumference, and offered amplework for an energetic young man. This practice John Treverton gave to George Gerard as a free gift.
‘Don’t consider it a favour,’ he said, when the surgeon wanted it to be treated as a debt, to be paid out of his future earnings. ‘The obligation is all on my side. I want a clever young doctor, whom I know and esteem, instead of any charlatan who might happen to succeed our old friend. The advantage is all on my side. You will help me in all my sanitary improvements, and my nursery will be safe in the inevitable season of measles and scarlatina.’
Thus it came to pass that Celia, as well as John Treverton and his wife was able to say,
‘But in some wise all things wear round betimes,And wind up well.’
THE END.
LONDON: J. AND W. RIDER.