John Halifax, Gentleman Part 93

"Yes, mother! Yes, father! I love her. I intend to marry her."

Guy said this with an air of quiet determination, very different from the usual impetuosity of his character. It was easy to perceive that a great change had come over him; that in this pa.s.sion, the silent growth of which no one had suspected, he was most thoroughly in earnest. From the boy he had suddenly started up into the man; and his parents saw it.

They looked at him, and then mournfully at one another. The father was the first to speak.

"All this is very sudden. You should have told us of it before."

"I did not know it myself till--till very lately," the youth answered more softly, lowering his head and blushing.

"Is Miss Silver--is the lady aware of it?"

"No."

"That is well," said the father, after a pause. "In this silence you have acted as an honourable lover should towards her; as a dutiful son should act towards his parents."

Guy looked pleased. He stole his hand nearer his mother's, but she neither took it nor repelled it; she seemed quite stunned.

At this point I noticed that Maud had crept into the room;--I sent her out again as quickly as I could. Alas! this was the first secret that needed to be kept from her; the first painful mystery in our happy, happy home!

In any such home the "first falling in love," whether of son or daughter, necessarily makes a great change. Greater if the former than the latter. There is often a pitiful truth--I know not why it should be so, but so it is--in the foolish rhyme which the mother had laughingly said over to me this morning!

"My son's my son till he gets him a wife, My daughter's my daughter all her life."

And when, as in this case, the son wishes to marry one whom his father may not wholly approve, whom his mother does not heartily love, surely the pain is deepened tenfold.

Those who in the dazzled vision of youth see only the beauty and splendour of love--first love, who deem it comprises the whole of life, beginning, aim, and end--may marvel that I, who have been young and now am old, see as I saw that night, not only the lover's but the parents'

side of the question. I felt overwhelmed with sadness, as, viewing the three, I counted up in all its bearings and consequences, near and remote, this attachment of poor Guy's.

"Well, father," he said at last, guessing by intuition that the father's heart would best understand his own.

"Well, my son," John answered, sadly.

"YOU were young once."

"So I was;" with a tender glance upon the lad's heated and excited countenance. "Do not suppose I cannot feel with you. Still, I wish you had been less precipitate."

"You were little older than I am when you married?"

"But my marriage was rather different from this projected one of yours.

I knew your mother well, and she knew me. Both of us had been tried--by trouble which we shared together, by absence, by many and various cares. We chose one another, not hastily or blindly, but with free will and open eyes. No, Guy," he added, speaking earnestly and softly, "mine was no sudden fancy, no frantic pa.s.sion. I honoured your mother above all women. I loved her as my own soul."

"So do I love Louise. I would die for her any day."

At the son's impetuosity the father smiled; not incredulously, only sadly.

All this while the mother had sat motionless, never uttering a sound.

Suddenly, hearing a footstep and a light knock at the door, she darted forward and locked it, crying, in a voice that one could hardly have recognized as hers--

"No admittance! Go away."

A note was pushed in under the door. Mrs. Halifax picked it up--opened it, read it mechanically, and sat down again; taking no notice, even when Guy, catching sight of the hand-writing, eagerly seized the paper.

It was merely a line, stating Miss Silver's wish to leave Beechwood immediately; signed, with her full name--her right name--"Louise Eugenie D'Argent."

A postscript added: "Your silence I shall take as permission to depart; and shall be gone early to-morrow."

"To-morrow! Gone to-morrow! And she does not even know that--that I love her. Mother, you have ruined my happiness. I will never forgive you--never!"

Never forgive his mother! His mother, who had borne him, nursed him, reared him; who had loved him with that love--like none other in the world--the love of a woman for her firstborn son, all these twenty-one years!

It was hard. I think the most pa.s.sionate lover, in reasonable moments, would allow that it was hard. No marvel that even her husband's clasp could not remove the look of heart-broken, speechless suffering which settled stonily down in Ursula's face, as she watched her boy--storming about, furious with uncontrollable pa.s.sion and pain.

At last, mother-like, she forgot the pa.s.sion in pity of the pain.

"He is not strong yet; he will do himself harm. Let me go to him!

John, let me!" Her husband released her.

Faintly, with a weak, uncertain walk, she went up to Guy and touched his arm.

"You must keep quiet, or you will be ill. I cannot have my son ill--not for any girl. Come, sit down--here, beside your mother."

She was obeyed. Looking into her eyes, and seeing no anger there, nothing but grief and love, the young man's right spirit came into him again.

"O mother, mother, forgive me! I am so miserable--so miserable."

He laid his head on her shoulder. She kissed and clasped him close--her boy who never could be wholly hers again, who had learned to love some one else dearer than his mother.

After a while she said, "Father, shake hands with Guy. Tell him that we forgive his being angry with us; that perhaps, some day--"

She stopped, uncertain as to the father's mind, or seeking strength for her own.

"Some day," John continued, "Guy will find out that we can have nothing in the world--except our children's good--so dear to us as their happiness."

Guy looked up, beaming with hope and joy. "O father! O mother! will you, indeed--"

"We will indeed say nothing," the father answered, smiling; "nothing, until to-morrow. Then we will all three talk the matter quietly over, and see what can be done."

Of course I knew to a certainty the conclusion they would come to.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

Late that night, as I sat up pondering over all that had happened, Mrs.

Halifax came into my room.

She looked round; asked me, according to her wont, if there was anything I wanted before she retired for the night?--(Ursula was as good to me as any sister)--then stood by my easy-chair. I would not meet her eyes, but I saw her hands fluttering in their restless way.