The Tenants of Malory Volume III Part 10

"Oh, yes--ever so much; I'm always well when you are here; and look, see our poor little darling."

"So he is."

"We have had such fun with him--haven't we, Anne? I'm sure he'll be so like you."

"Is this in his favour, cousin Anne?" asked Cleve, taking the old lady's hand.

"Why should it not?" said she gaily.

"A question--well, I take the benefit of the doubt," laughed Cleve.

"No, darling," he said to Margaret, "you mustn't sit on the gra.s.s; it is damp; you'll sit beside our Cousin Anne, and be prudent."

So he instead sat down on the gra.s.s, and talked with them, and prattled and romped with the baby by turns, until the nurse came out to convey him to the nursery, and he was handed round to say what pa.s.ses for "Good night," and give his tiny paw to each in turn.

"You look tired, Cleve, darling."

"So I am, my Guido; can we have a cup of tea?"

"Oh, yes. I'll get it in a moment," said active Anne Sheckleton.

"It's too bad disturbing you," said Cleve.

"No trouble in the world," said Anne, who wished to allow them a word together; "besides, I must kiss baby in his bed."

"Yes, darling, I _am_ tired," said Cleve, taking his place beside her, so soon as old Anne Sheckleton was gone. "That old man"----

"Lord Verney, do you mean?"

"Yes; he has begun plaguing me again."

"What is it about, darling?"

"Oh, fifty things; he thinks, among others, I ought to marry," said Cleve, with a dreary laugh.

"Oh, I thought he had given up that," she said, with a smile that was very pale.

"So he did for a time; but I think he's possessed. If he happens to take up an idea that's likely to annoy other people, he never lets it drop till he teases them half to death. He thinks I should marry _money_ and political connection, and I don't know what all, and I'm quite tired of the whole thing. What a vulgar little box this is--isn't it, darling? I almost wish you were back again in that place in France."

"But I can see you so much oftener here, Cleve," pleaded Margaret, softly, with a very sad look.

"And where's the good of seeing me here, dear Margaret? Just consider, I always come to you anxious; there's always a risk, besides, of discovery."

"Where you are is to me a paradise."

"Oh, darling, do _not_ talk rubbish. This vulgar, odious little place! No place can be _either_--_quite_, of course--where _you_ are.

But you must see what it is--a paradise"--and he laughed peevishly--"of red brick, and lilacs, and laburnums--a paradise for old Mr. Dowlas, the tallow-chandler."

There was a little tremor in Margaret's lip, and the water stood in her large eyes; her hand was, as it were, on the coffin-edge; she was looking in the face of a dead romance.

"Now, you really must not shed tears over _that_ speech. You are too much given to weeping, Margaret. What have I said to vex you? It merely amounts to this, that we live just now in the future; we can't well deny _that_, darling. But the time will come at last, and my queen enjoy her own."

And so saying he kissed her, and told her to be a good little girl; and from the window Miss Sheckleton handed them tea, and then she ran up to the nursery.

"You _do_ look very tired, Cleve," said Margaret, looking into his anxious face.

"I _am_ tired, darling," he said, with just a degree of impatience in his tone; "I said so--horribly tired."

"I wish so much you were liberated from that weary House of Commons."

"Now, my wise little woman is talking of what she doesn't understand--not the least; besides, what would you have me turn to? I should be totally without resource and pursuit--don't you see? We must be reasonable. No, it is not that in the least that tires me, but I'm really overwhelmed with anxieties, and worried by my uncle, who wants me to marry, and thinks I can marry whom I please--that's all."

"I sometimes think, Cleve, I've spoiled your fortunes," with a great sigh, said Margaret, watching his face.

"Now, where's the good of saying that, my little woman? I'm only talking of my uncle's teasing me, and wishing he'd let us both alone."

Here came a little pause.

"Is that the baby?" said Margaret, raising her head and listening.

"I don't hear our baby or any one else's," said Cleve.

"I fancied I heard it cry, but it wasn't."

"You must think of me more, and of that child less, darling--you must, indeed," said Cleve, a little sourly.

I think the poor heart was pleased, thinking this jealousy; but I fear it was rather a splenetic impulse of selfishness, and that the baby was, in his eyes, a bore pretty often.

"Does the House sit to-night, Cleve, darling?"

"Does it, indeed? Why it's sitting now. We are to have the second reading of the West India Bill on to-night, and I must be there--yes--in an hour"--he was glancing at his watch--"and heaven knows at what hour in the morning we shall get away."

And just at this moment old Anne Sheckleton joined them. "She's coming with more tea," she said, as the maid emerged with a little tray, "and we'll place our cups on the window-stone when we don't want them. Now, Mr. Verney, is not this a charming little spot just at this light?"

"I almost think it is," said Cleve, relenting. The golden light of evening was touching the formal poplars, and the other trees, and bringing out the wrinkles of the old bricks duskily in its flaming glow.

"Yes, just for about fifteen minutes in the twenty-four hours, when the weather is particularly favourable, it _has_ a sort of Dutch picturesqueness; but, on the whole, it is not the sort of cottage that I would choose for a permanent dove-cot. I should fear lest my pigeons should choke with dust."

"No, there's no dust here; it is the quietest, most sylvan little lane in the world."

"Which is a wide place," said Cleve. "Well, with smoke then."

"Nor smoke either."

"But I forgot, love does not die of smoke or of anything else," said Cleve.

"No, of course, love is eternal," said Margaret.

"Just so; the King never dies. Les roix meurent-ils? Quelquefois, madame. Alas, theory and fact conflict. Love is eternal in the abstract; but nothing is more mortal than a particular love," said Cleve.