Part 88 (1/2)

Were he to go, should he be jovial before the wedding party or should he be sober and saturnine? Should he appear to have forgotten his love, or should he go about lovelorn among the wedding guests? It was impossible,--at any rate impossible as yet,--that he should fall into that state of almost brotherly regard which it was so natural that she should desire. But as he had determined to forgive her, he went across that afternoon to the house and was the bearer of his own answer. He asked Mrs. Hopkins who came to the door whether she were alone, and was then shown into an empty room where he waited for her. She came to him as quickly as she could, leaving Lady Ushant in the middle of the page she was reading, and feeling as she tripped downstairs that the colour was rus.h.i.+ng to her face. ”You will come, Larry,” she said.

”No, Miss Masters.”

”Let me be Mary till I am Mrs. Morton,” she said, trying to smile. ”I was always Mary.” And then she burst into tears. ”Why,--why won't you come?”

”I should only stalk about like a ghost. I couldn't be merry as a man should be at a wedding. I don't see how a man is to do such a thing.”

She looked up into his face imploring him,--not to come, for that she felt now to be impossible,--but imploring him to express in some way forgiveness of the sin she had committed against him. ”But I shall think of you and shall wish you well.”

”And after that we shall be friends?”

”By and bye,--if he pleases.”

”He will please;--he does please. Of course he saw what I wrote to you. And now, Larry, if I have ever treated you badly, say that you pardon me.”

”If I had known it--” he said.

”How could I tell you,--till he had spoken? And yet I knew it myself!

It has been so,--oh,--ever so long! What could I do? You will say that you will forgive me.”

”Yes;--I will say that.”

”And you will not go away from Chowton?”

”Oh, no! They tell me I ought to stay here, and I suppose I shall stay. I thought I'd just come over and say a word. I'm going away to-morrow for a month. There is a fellow has got some fis.h.i.+ng in Ireland. Good-bye.”

”Good-bye, Larry.”

”And I thought perhaps you'd take this now.” Then he brought out from his pocket a little ruby ring which he had carried often in his pocket to the attorney's house, thinking that perhaps then might come the happy hour in which he could get her to accept it. But the hour had never come as yet, and the ring had remained in the little drawer beneath his looking-gla.s.s. It need hardly be said that she now accepted the gift.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CONCLUSION.

The Senator for Mickewa,--whose name we have taken for a book which might perhaps have been better called ”The Chronicle of a Winter at Dillsborough”--did not stay long in London after the unfortunate close of his lecture. He was a man not very pervious to criticism, nor afraid of it, but he did not like the treatment he had received at St. James's Hall, nor the remarks which his lecture produced in the newspapers. He was angry because people were unreasonable with him, which was surely unreasonable in him who accused Englishmen generally of want of reason. One ought to take it as a matter of course that a bull should use his horns, and a wolf his teeth. The Senator read everything that was said of him, and then wrote numerous letters to the different journals which had condemned him. Had any one accused him of an untruth? Or had his inaccuracies been glaring?

Had he not always expressed his readiness to acknowledge his own mistake if convicted of ignorance? But when he was told that he had persistently trodden upon all the corns of his English cousins, he declared that corns were evil things which should be abolished, and that with corns such as these there was no mode of abolition so efficacious as treading on them.

”I am sorry that you should have encountered anything so unpleasant,”

Lord Drummond said to him when he went to bid adieu to his friend at the Foreign Office.

”And I am sorry too, my Lord;--for your sake rather than my own. A man is in a bad case who cannot endure to hear of his faults.”

”Perhaps you take our national sins a little too much for granted.”

”I don't think so, my Lord. If you knew me to be wrong you would not be so sore with me. Nevertheless I am under deep obligation for kind-hearted hospitality. If an American can make up his mind to crack up everything he sees here, there is no part of the world in which he can get along better.” He had already written a long letter home to his friend Mr. Josiah Scroome, and had impartially sent to that gentleman not only his own lecture, but also a large collection of the criticisms made on it. A few weeks afterwards he took his departure, and when we last heard of him was thundering in the Senate against certain practices on the part of his own country which he thought to be unjust to other nations. Don Quixote was not more just than the Senator, or more philanthropic,--nor perhaps more apt to wage war against the windmills.

Having in this our last chapter given the place of honour to the Senator, we must now say a parting word as to those countrymen of our own who have figured in our pages. Lord Rufford married Miss Penge of course, and used the lady's fortune in buying the property of Sir John Purefoy. We may probably be safe in saying that the acquisition added very little to his happiness. What difference can it make to a man whether he has forty or fifty thousand pounds a year,--or at any rate to such a man? Perhaps Miss Penge herself was an acquisition. He did not hunt so often or shoot so much, and was seen in church once at least on every Sunday. In a very short time his friends perceived that a very great change had come over him. He was growing fat, and soon disliked the trouble of getting up early to go to a distant meet;--and, before a year or two had pa.s.sed away, it had become an understood thing that in country houses he was not one of the men who went down at night into the smoking-room in a short dressing-coat and a picturesque cap. Miss Penge had done all this. He had had his period of pleasure, and no doubt the change was desirable;--but he sometimes thought with regret of the promise Arabella Trefoil had made him, that she would never interfere with his gratification.