Clare Avery Part 38

"Good lack!" cried the worried Squire. "Wellnigh would I that every one of my childre had been a lad! These maidens be such changeable and chargeable gear, I verily wis not what to do withal."

"Bide a while, Tom, till Jack hath been in the Court a year or twain; maybe then I shall hear thee to wish that all had been maids."

Down to the parsonage trudged the puzzled and unhappy man, and found that Arthur was at home. He chatted for a short time with the family in general, and then told the ladies, as a piece of news which he expected to interest them, that his daughter Lucrece was about to be married.

Had he not intentionally kept his eyes from Arthur while he spoke, he would have seen that the young man went white to the lips.

"Eh, _ma foi_!" said Mrs Rose.

"With whom shall she wed?" asked Mrs Tremayne.

"Sir Thomas, is that true?" was the last remark--in hoa.r.s.e accents, from Arthur.

"It is true, my lad. Have I heard truly, that you would not have it so?"

Mrs Tremayne looked at her son in a mixture of astonishment and dismay.

It had never occurred to her guileless, unsuspicious mind that the object of his frequent visits to Enville Court could be any one but Clare.

"Sir, I cry you mercy," said Arthur with some dignity. "I do readily acknowledge that I ought not to have left you in the dark. But to speak truth, it was she, not I, that would not you should be told."

"That would not have me told what, Arthur?"

"That I loved her," said Arthur, his voice slightly tremulous. "And-- she _said_ she loved me."

"She told me that she had given thee no encouragement to speak to me."

"To speak with you--truth. Whene'er I did approach that matter, she alway deterred me from the same. But if she hath told you, Sir, that she gave me no encouragement to love and serve her, nor no hope of wedding with her in due time,--why, then, she hath played you false as well as me."

It was manifest that Arthur was not only much distressed, but also very angry.

"And thou never spakest word to me, my son!" came in gentle tones of rebuke from his mother.

"Ah, the young folks make not the confessor of the father nor the mother," said Mrs Rose smiling, and shaking her head. "It were the better that they did it, Arthur."

"Mother, it was not my fault," pleaded Arthur earnestly. "I would have spoken both to you and to Sir Thomas here, if she had suffered me. Only the very last time I urged it on her--and that no further back than this last week--she threatened me to have no further dealing with me, an' I spake to either of you."

"Often-times," observed Mrs Rose thoughtfully, "the maidens love not like the mothers, _mon cheri_."

"G.o.d have mercy!" groaned poor Sir Thomas, who was not least to be pitied of the group. "I am afeared Rachel hath the right. Lucrece hath not been true in this matter."

"There is no truth in her!" cried Arthur bitterly. "And for the matter of that, there is none in woman!"

"_Le beau compliment_!" said his grandmother, laughing.

His mother looked reproachfully at him, but did not speak.

"And Rachel saith there is none in man," returned Sir Thomas with grim humour. "Well-a-day! what will the world come to?"

These little pebbles in her path did not seem to trouble the easy smoothness of Lucrece's way. She prepared her trousseau with her customary placidity; debated measures and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs with her aunt as if entirely deaf to that lady's frequent interpolations of wrath; consulted Blanche on the style of her jewellery, and Clare on the embroidery of her ruffs, as calmly as if there were not a shadow on her conscience nor her heart. Perhaps there was not.

Sir Piers took Jack down to London, and settled him in his post of deputy gentleman usher to the Queen; and at the end of six months, he returned to Enville Court for his marriage. Everything went off with the most absolute propriety. Lucrece's costume was irreproachable; her manners, ditto. The festivities were prolonged over a week, and on their close, Sir Piers and Lady Feversham set out, for their home in Norfolk. No sign of annoyance was shown from the parsonage, except that Arthur was not at home when the wedding took place; and that Lysken, whom Lucrece graciously requested to be one of her bridesmaids, declined, with a quiet keenness of manner which any one but Lucrece would have felt.

"If it should like thee to have me for thy bridesmaid, Lucrece," she said, looking her calmly in the face, "it should not like me." [In modern phraseology,--I should not like it.]

The bride accepted the rebuke with unruffled suavity.

Of course there were the ceremonies then usual at weddings, and a shower of old slippers greeted bride and bridegroom as they rode away.

"Aunt Rachel, you hit her on the head!" cried Blanche, looking astonished.

"I took metely good aim," a.s.sented Rachel, with grim satisfaction. "A good riddance of--Blanche, child, if thou wouldst have those flowers to live, thou wert best put them in water."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

A GLIMPSE OF THE HOT GOSPELLER.

"In service which Thy love appoints There are no bonds for me; My secret heart has learned the truth Which makes Thy children free: A life of self-renouncing love Is a life of liberty."

_Anna L. Waring_.

"I hold not with you there, Parson!"

The suddenness of this appeal would have startled any one less calm and self-controlled than the Reverend Robert Tremayne, who was taking off his surplice in the vestry after morning prayers one Wednesday, when this unexpected announcement reached him through the partially open door. But it was not the Rector's habit to show much emotion of any kind, whatever he might feel.

"Pray you, come forward," he said quietly, in answer to the challenge.

The door, pushed wide open by the person without, revealed a handsome old man, lithe and upright still,--whose hair was pure white, and his brown eyes quick and radiant. He marched in and seated himself upon the settle, grasping a stout oaken stick in both hands, and gazing up into the Rector's face. His dress, no less than his manners, showed that notwithstanding the blunt and eccentric nature of his greeting, he was by birth a gentleman.

"And wherein hold you not with me, Sir, I pray you?" inquired Mr Tremayne with some amus.e.m.e.nt.

"In your tolerating of evil opinion."

"I cry you mercy. What evil opinion have I tolerated?"

"If you will tolerate men which hold evil opinions, you must needs tolerate evil opinion."

"I scantly see that."

"Maybe you see this?" demanded the stranger, pulling a well-worn Bible from a capacious pocket.

"My sight is sharp enough for so much," returned Mr Tremayne good-naturedly.

"Well, and I tell you," said the stranger, poising the open Bible between his hands, "there is no such word as toleration betwixt the two backs of this book!"

The two backs of the book were brought together, by way of emphasising the a.s.sertion, with a bang which might almost have been heard to the parsonage.

"There is no such _word_, I grant you."