Volume Ii Part 3 (1/2)
”Margaret Naylor! Am I to believe my ears? Do you mean to say you have let that Hillyard girl cut you out?... You grown-up baby! When I was your age, no girl should have done that to me--whether I wanted the man or not. It's a disgrace to your womanhood, and your upbringing--that means me--and your looks, and your spirit--if you had any; but you have none, or you would not have allowed it. The way that man stuck to you yesterday, and trotted away with you on that blessed island!... And you to let another woman cut in and take him away from you!... And people call you a clever girl! Hm!”
”But what was I to do, mother? I could not go in for him myself. I could not make him propose to me.”
”Why not, pray? Is he not good enough for you? What do you expect? Is it a President of the United States you hope to captivate?”
”I do not understand. He could not have been persuaded to do anything so dreadful. And you, I am sure, whatever the surprise of this may have stupefied you into saying, you would not have me want to be my own aunt?”
”What do you mean? Whom are you talking about?”
”Uncle Joseph, to be sure. Whom else?”
”Joseph? You must be dreaming.”
”I really think, however, he has proposed to Rose Hillyard, and been accepted.”
”Impossible! Joseph marry! I never heard anything so preposterous.”
”Nevertheless, you will see now. I am sure he is in love I do not think he spoke twice to me all the time we were upon the island--only to Rose, and once or twice, when it was necessary, to Wa--W--to Mr Wilkie, I ought to say.”
Margaret started and grew pale as she spoke, but her mother was too intent upon the idea of Joseph's entanglement to observe the stumble.
”My dear, he was blighted some years before you were born. There was a time when I would have laughed at the notion of a blighted man. It seemed one only fit to exist in a novel. Even the novels, some of them, used to make fun of a blighted being. There was 'Mr Toots,' I remember. But in the case of your uncle Joseph, the thing positively occurred. His affections got a wrench some time very long ago,--I never heard the particulars,--and he has never got over it to this day. He might have had any woman in the country for the asking, any time these twenty years--till lately, at least, when he began to grow stout and grey, and, one would have thought, had given up all idea of that sort of thing. There never was as good and soft-hearted a fellow as Joseph, I do believe. You don't catch many of his fellow-men playing such games of constancy, I promise you. His heart must have been shattered. So different from other men's hearts, my dear, as you'll find out! They seem generally to be made of india-rubber--able to swell or contract any quant.i.ty, but there's no break in them. You may jump on them, if they will let you; but you will not crush or bruise them. Joseph is the exception to a universal rule--the best brother-in-law and friend that ever lived. But you will not persuade me that he would ask any one to marry him, after the dozen or more fine women I have seen throw themselves at his head; and he never knew it, I do believe. The idea of Joseph becoming entangled! There's no constancy in man, if it turns out that _he_ has succ.u.mbed to a woman's wiles. If what men call their heart has begun to sprout again with him, it is an unbreakable article for sure.... But I will not believe it: it would spoil my ideal of a perfect love.”
”Have you not noticed, mamma, how much he and Rose have been together?”
”Now you speak of it, he has certainly taken most unusual notice of her--for him, that is. But think of the disparity in age!”
”She saved him from drowning, remember.”
”That is enough to account for their striking up a fast friends.h.i.+p.
But _she_ is no forlorn damsel, and no pauper, evidently. She may choose where she likes. Why should she take up with a man old enough to be her father?”
”I do not think anybody need look on Uncle Joseph as old. There are very few young fellows to compare with him for activity or strength, or niceness every way. And he is so well off, besides.”
”That maybe it. Poor Joseph! To be saved from the sea only to fall into the hands of a designing fortune-hunter! But I hope you are mistaken. It would be too sad; it would be dreadful! And you and Lucy, my poor children, what a difference it will make in your prospects!
You will have to stand on your merits now, if this should chance to be true. No longer the heiresses of wealthy Joseph Naylor!”
”That is no reason why Uncle Joseph should not marry. We have lived very comfortably on what papa left us.”
”You do not understand yet. Wait till you go to Ottawa or Toronto. You will recognise the difference then.”
”I do not want to stand on anybody's merits but my own. I think I shall be fond of Rose, after the first queerness of her being Uncle Joseph's wife wears off.”
”You think so because you do not know the world. I know it, and I can tell you you are wrong.... If once that woman is married to your uncle, there will be no standing her.... And I won't!” And Mrs Naylor, flus.h.i.+ng an angry red, turned and left the room. The impending danger to her own consequence had driven every other idea from her mind, and she went without one word upon the subject she had come to discuss--to wit, Peter Wilkie's attentions to her daughter, and how they had been received.
On the stair she met Joseph coming up as she went down. It required an effort to pull herself together and meet him as usual, but she succeeded; or perhaps he was too preoccupied to observe the constraint of her manner as she wished him good-morning and proceeded on her way.
He turned in his course, and followed her into a parlour, empty like the other rooms at that hour, owing to the absence of every one at church.
She sat down in a large chair before the open window, with the shady gallery outside, and the fanning breeze blowing in from off the sea.