Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 126

The approaching marriage of William Halliburton gave rise to a dispute.

A dispute of love, though, not bitterness. Frank and Gar contended which should have their mother. William no longer wanted her; he was going to a home of his own. Frank wished to take larger chambers where she would find sufficient accommodation; he urged a hundred reasons; his grievances with his laundress, and his b.u.t.tonless shirts. Gar, who was in priest's orders now, had remained in that same first curacy, at a hundred a year and the parsonage house to live in. He said he had been wanting his mother all along, and could not do without her.

Jane inclined to Gar. She said she had an idea that old ladies--how they would have rebelled at hearing her call herself old!--were out of place in a young barrister's chambers; and she had a further idea that chambers were comfortless quarters to live in. The question was to be decided when they met at William's wedding. Frank was getting on well; better than the ordinary run of aspirants; he had come through Helstonleigh two or three times on circuit, and had picked up odds and ends of briefs there.

Meanwhile William took possession of Mr. Ashley's old house, and the wedding day approached. Besides her boys, Jane had another visitor for the time; her brother Francis, who came down to marry them. Perhaps because the Vicar of Deoffam had recently died. He might have come all the same, had that gouty old gentleman been still alive.

All clear and cloudless rose the September sun on Deoffam; never a brighter sun shone on a wedding. It was a quiet wedding: only a few guests were invited to it. Mary, in her white lace robes and floating veil--flushed, timid, lovely--stood with her bridesmaids; not more lovely than one of those bridesmaids, for one was Anna Lynn.

Anna Lynn! Yes; Anna Lynn. To the lasting scandal of Patience, Anna stood in the open church, dressed in bridesmaid's attire. Mary, who had not been permitted the same intimacy with Anna since that marked and unhappy time, but who had loved her all along, had been allowed by Mrs.

Ashley to choose her for one of her bridesmaids. The invitation was proffered, and Samuel Lynn did not see reason to decline it. Patience was indignantly rebellious; Anna, wild with delight. Look at her, as she stands there! flowing robes of white around her, not made after the primitive fashion of _her_ robes, but in the fashion of the day. Her falling hair shades her carmine cheeks, and her blue eyes seek modestly the ground. A fair picture; and a dangerous one to Henry Ashley, had those old feelings of his remained in the ascendant. But he was cured; as he told William: and he told it in truth.

A short time, and Anna would want bridesmaids on her own account; though that may be speaking metaphorically of a Quakeress. Anna's pretty face had pierced the heart of one of their male body; and he had asked for Anna in marriage. A very desirable male was he, in a social point of view; and female Helstonleigh turned up its nose in envy at Anna's fortune. He was considerably older than Anna; a fine-looking man and a wealthy one, engaged in wholesale business. His name was Gurney; his residence, outside the city, was a handsome one, replete with every comfort; and he drove a carriage-and-pair. He had been for some time a visitor at Samuel Lynn's, and Anna had learned to like him. That his object in visiting there could only be Anna, every one had been sure of, his position being so superior to Samuel Lynn's. Every one but Anna.

Somehow, since that past escapade, Anna had not cast a thought to marrying, or to the probability of anyone asking her; and she did not suspect his intentions. If she had suspected them, she might have set herself against him; for there was a little spice of opposition in her, which she loved to indulge. However, before that suspicion came to her she had grown to care for him too much to play the coquette. Strange to say, there was something in his figure and in the outline of his face, which reminded people of Herbert Dare; but his features and their expression were quite different.

It was a most excellent match for Anna; there was no doubt of that; but it did not afford complete satisfaction to Patience. Patience felt a foreboding that he would be a good deal more indulgent to Anna than she considered was wholesomely good for her: Patience had a misgiving that Anna would be putting off her caps as she chose, then, and would not be reprimanded for it. Not unlikely; could that future bridegroom, Charles Gurney, catch sight of Anna as she stands now! for a more charming picture never was seen.

William, quiet and self-possessed, received Mary from the hands of her father, who gave her away. The Reverend Francis Tait read the service, and Gar, in his white canonicals, stood with him, after the new fashion of the day. Jane's tears dropped on her pearl-grey damask dress; Frank made himself very busy amongst the bridesmaids; and Henry Ashley was in his most mocking mood. Thus they were made man and wife; and Mr. Tait's voice rose high and echoed down the aisles of the little old church at Deoffam, as he spoke the solemn injunction--"THOSE WHOM G.o.d HATH JOINED TOGETHER, LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER."

Helstonleigh's streets were lined that day, and Helstonleigh's windows were alive with heads. It was known that the bride and bridegroom would pa.s.s through the town, on the first stage of their bridal tour, whose ultimate destination was to be the Continent. The whole crowd of the Ashley workpeople had gathered outside the manufactory, neglecting their afternoon's work; a neglect which Samuel Lynn not only winked at, but partic.i.p.ated in, for he stood with them. As the carriage, which was Mr.

Ashley's, came in sight, its four horses urged by the postillions to a sharp trot, one deafening cheer arose from the men. William laughed and nodded to them; but they did not get half a good view of the master's daughter beside him: nothing but a glimpse of a flushed cheek, and a piece of a white veil.

Slouching at the corner of a street, in a seedy coat, his eyes bloodshot, was Cyril Dare. Never did one look more of a _mauvais sujet_ than he, as he watched the chariot pa.s.s. The place now occupied by William might have been his, had he so willed it and worked for it. Not, perhaps, that of Mary's husband; he could not be sure of that, but as Mr. Ashley's partner. A bitter cloud of disappointment, of repentance, crossed his face as he looked at them. They both saw him standing there.

Did Mary think what a promising husband he would have made her? Cyril flung a word after them; and it was not a blessing.

Dobbs had also flung something after them, and in point of time and precedence this ought to have been mentioned first. Patience, watching from her window, curious as every one else, had seen Dobbs come out with something under her ap.r.o.n, and take up her station at the gate, where she waited patiently for just an hour and a quarter. As the carriage had come into view, Dobbs sheltered herself behind the shrubs, nothing to be seen of her above them, but her cap and eyes. The moment the carriage was past, out flew Dobbs to the middle of the road. Bringing forth from their hiding-place a pair of shoes considerably the worse for wear, the one possessing no sole, and the other no upper leather, Dobbs dashed them with force after the chariot, very much discomposing the manservant in the rear, whose head they struck.

"Nothing like old shoes to bring 'em luck," grunted Dobbs to Patience, as she retired indoors. "I never knew good come of a wedding that didn't get 'em."

"_I_ wish them luck; the luck of a safe arrival home from those unpleasant foreign parts," emphatically remarked Patience, who had found her residence amongst the French nothing less than a species of terrestrial purgatory.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE BISHOP'S LETTER.

A day or two after the wedding, a letter was delivered at Mrs.

Halliburton's residence, addressed to Gar. Its seal, a mitre, prepared Gar to find that it came from the Bishop of Helstonleigh. Its contents proved to be a mandate, commanding his attendance the following morning at the palace at nine o'clock. Gar turned nervous. Had he fallen under his bishop's displeasure, and was about to be reprimanded? Mr. Tait had gone back to London; Gar was to leave on the following day, Sat.u.r.day; Frank meant to stay on for a week or two. It was his vacation.

"That's Gar all over!" cried Frank, who had perched himself on a side table. "Gar is sure to look to the dark side of things, instead of the bright. If the Lord Chancellor sent for me, I should set it down that my fortune was about to be made. His lordship's going to present you with a living, Gar."

"That's good!" retorted Gar. "What interest have I with the bishop?"

"He has known you long enough."

"As he has many others. If the bishop interested himself for all the clergymen who have been educated at Helstonleigh college school, he would have enough upon his hands. I expect it is to find fault with me for some unconscious offence."

"Go it, Gar! You'll get no sleep to-night."

"Frank, I must say the note appears a peremptory one," remarked Jane.

"Middling for that. It's short, if not sweet."

Whether Gar had any sleep or not that night, he did not say; but he started to keep the appointment punctually. His mother and Frank remained together, and Jane fell into a bit of quiet talk over the breakfast table.

"Frank," said she, "I am often uneasy about you."

"About me!" cried Frank in considerable wonderment.

"If you were to go wrong! I know what the temptations of a London life must be. Especially to a young man who has, so to say, no home."

"I steer clear of them. Mother darling, I am telling you the truth," he added earnestly. "Do you think we could ever fall away from such training as yours? No. Look at what William is; look at Gar; and for myself, though I don't like to boast, I a.s.sure you, the Anti-evil-doing Society--if you have ever heard of that respected body--might hoist me on a pedestal at Exeter Hall as their choicest model. You don't like my joking! Believe me, then, in all seriousness, that your sons will never fail you. We did not battle on in our duty as boys, to forget it as men.

You taught us the bravest lesson that a mother can teach, or a child learn, when you contrived to impress upon us the truth that G.o.d is our witness always, ever present."

Jane's eyes filled with tears: not of grief. She knew that Frank was speaking from his heart.

"And you are getting on well?"

"What with stray briefs that come to me, and my literary work, and the fellowship, I make six or seven hundred a year already."

"I hope you are not spending it all?"

"That I am not. I put by all I can. It is true that I don't live upon bread and potatoes six days in the week, as you know we have done; but I take care that my expenses are moderate. It is keeping hare-brained follies at arm's-length that enables me to save."

"And now, Frank, for another question. What made you send me that hundred-pound note?"

"I shall send you another soon," was all Frank's answer. "The idea of my gaining a superfluity of money, and sending none to my darling mother!"

"But indeed I don't know what to do with it, Frank. I do not require it."

"Then put it by to look at. As long as I have brains to work with, I shall think of my mother. Have you forgotten how she worked for us? I wish you would come and live with me?"

Jane entered into all her arguments for deeming that she should be better with Gar. Not the least of them was, that she should still be near Helstonleigh. Of all her sons, Jane, perhaps unconsciously to herself, most loved her eldest: and to go far away from him would have been another trouble.

By-and-by, they saw Gar coming back. And he did not look as if he had been receiving a reprimand: quite the contrary. He came in almost as impulsively as he used to do in his schoolboy days.

"Frank, you were right! The bishop is going to give me a living. Mother, it is true."

"Of course," said Frank. "I always am right."

"The bishop did not keep me waiting a minute, although I was there before my time. He was very kind, and----"

"But about the living?" cried impatient Frank.

"I am telling you, Frank. The bishop said he had watched us grow up--meaning you, as well--and he felt pleased to tell me that he had never seen anything but good in either of us. But I need not repeat all that. He went on to ask me whether I should be prepared to do my duty zealously in a living, were one given to me. I answered that I hoped I should--and the long and the short of it is, that I am going to be appointed to one."