Stella Fregelius Part 4

"Now, don't be sarcastic about Morris, uncle; I'd rather you went on abusing dad's window."

"Certainly not, my dear, if it displeases you. But may I ask why he is to be considered sacred?"

"Why?" she answered, and a genuine note crept into her bantering voice.

"Because he is one of the few men worth anything whom I ever chanced to meet--except dad there and----"

"Spare me," cut in the Colonel, with admirable skill, for well he knew that his name was not upon the lady's lips. "But would it be impertinent to inquire what it is that const.i.tutes Morris's preeminent excellence in your eyes?"

"Of course not; only it is three things, not one. First, he works harder than any man I know, and I think men who work adorable, because I am so lazy myself. Secondly, he thinks a great deal, and very few people do that to any purpose. Thirdly, I never feel inclined to go to sleep when he takes me in to dinner. Oh! you may laugh if you like, but ask dad what happened to me last month with that wretched old member of the Government, and before the sweets, too!"

"Please, please," put in Mr. Porson, turning pink under pressure of some painful recollection. "If you have finished sparring with your uncle, isn't there any tea, Mary?"

"I believe so," she said, relapsing into a state of bland indifference.

"I'll go and see. If I don't come back, you'll know it is there," and Mary pa.s.sed through the door with that indolent, graceful walk which no one could mistake who once had seen her.

Both her father and her uncle looked after her with admiration. Mr.

Porson admired her because the man or woman who dared to meet that domestic tyrant his brother-in-law in single combat, and could issue unconquered from the doubtful fray, was indeed worthy to be honoured.

Colonel Monk for his part hastened to do homage to a very pretty and charming young lady, one, moreover, who was not in the least afraid of him.

Mary had gone, and the air from the offending window, which was so constructed as to let in a maximum of draught, banged the door behind her. The two men looked at each other. A thought was in the mind of each; but the Colonel, trained by long experience, and wise in his generation, waited for Mr. Porson to speak. Many and many a time in the after days did he find reason to congratulate himself upon this superb reticence--for there are occasions when discretion can amount almost to the height of genius. Under their relative circ.u.mstances, if it had been he who first suggested this alliance, he and his family must have remained at the gravest disadvantage, and as for stipulations, well, he could have made none. But as it chanced it was from poor Porson's lips that the suggestion came.

Mr. Porson cleared this throat--once, twice, thrice. At the third rasp, the Colonel became very attentive. He remembered that his brother-in-law had done exactly the same thing at the very apex of a long-departed crisis; indeed, just before he offered spontaneously to take over the mortgages on the Abbey estate.

"You were talking, Colonel," he began, "when Mary came in," and he paused.

"I daresay," replied the Colonel indifferently, fixing a contemptuous glance upon some stone mullions of atrocious design.

"About Morris marrying?"

"Oh, yes, so I was! Well?"

"Well--she seems to like him. I know she does indeed. She never talks of any other young man."

"She? Who?"

"My daughter, Mary; and--so--why shouldn't they--you know?"

"Really, John, I must ask you to be a little more explicit. It's no good your addressing me in your business ciphers."

"Well--I mean--why shouldn't he marry her? Morris marry Mary? Is that plain enough?" he asked in desperation.

For a moment a mist gathered before the Colonel's eyes. Here was salvation indeed, if only it could be brought about. Oh! if only it could be brought about.

But the dark eyes never changed, nor did a muscle move upon that pale, commanding countenance.

"Morris marry Mary," he repeated, dwelling on the alliterative words as though to convince himself that he had heard them aright. "That is a very strange proposition, my dear John, and sudden, too. Why, they are first cousins, and for that reason, I suppose, the thing never occurred to me--till last night," he added to himself.

"Yes, I know, Colonel; but I am not certain that this first cousin business isn't a bit exaggerated. The returns of the asylums seem to show it, and I know my doctor, Sir Henry Andrews, says it's nonsense.

You'll admit that he is an authority. Also, it happened in my own family, my father and mother were cousins, and we are none the worse."

On another occasion the Colonel might have been inclined to comment on this statement--of course, most politely. Now, however, he let it pa.s.s.

"Well, John," he said, "putting aside the cousins.h.i.+p, let me hear what your idea is of the advantages of such a union, should the parties concerned change to consider it suitable."

"Quite so, quite so, that's business," said Mr. Porson, brightening up at once. "From my point of view, these would be the advantages. As you know, Colonel, so far as I am concerned my origin, for the time I have been able to trace it--that's four generations from old John Porson, the Quaker sugar merchant, who came from n.o.body knows where--although honest, is humble, and until my father's day all in the line of retail trade. But then my dear wife came in. She was a governess when I married her, as you may have heard, and of a very good Scotch family, one of the Camerons, so Mary isn't all of our cut--any more," he added with a smile, "than Morris is all of yours. Still for her to marry a Monk would be a lift up--a considerable lift up, and looked at from a business point of view, worth a deal of money.

"Also, I like my nephew Morris, and I am sure that Mary likes him, and I'd wish the two of them to inherit what I have got. They wouldn't have very long to wait for it, Colonel, for those doctors may say what they will, but I tell you," he added, pathetically, tapping himself over the heart--"though you don't mention it to Mary--I know better. Oh! yes, I know better. That's about all, except, of course, that I should wish to see her settled before I'm gone. A man dies happier, you understand, if he is certain whom his only child is going to marry; for when he is dead I suppose that he will know nothing of what happens to her. Or, perhaps," he added, as though by an afterthought, "he may know too much, and not be able to help; which would be painful, very painful."

"Don't get into those speculations, John," said the Colonel, waving his hand. "They are unpleasant, and lead nowhere--sufficient to the day is the evil thereof."

"Quite so, quite so. Life is a queer game of blind-man's buff, isn't it; played in a mist on a mountain top, and the players keep dropping over the precipices. But n.o.body heeds, because there are always plenty more, and the game goes on forever. Well, that's my side of the case. Do you wish me to put yours?"

"I should like to hear your view of it."

"Very good, it is this. Here's a nice girl, no one can deny that, and a nice man, although he's odd--you will admit as much. He's got name, and he will have fame, or I am much mistaken. But, as it chances, through no fault of his, he wants money, or will want it, for without money the old place can't go on, and without a wife the old race can't go on. Now, Mary will have lots of money, for, to tell the truth, it keeps piling up until I am sick of it. I've been lucky in that way, Colonel, because I don't care much about it, I suppose. I don't think that I ever yet made a really bad investment. Just look. Two years ago, to oblige an old friend who was in the shop with me when I was young, I put 5,000 pounds into an Australian mine, never thinking to see it again. Yesterday I sold that stock for 50,000 pounds."

"Fifty thousand pounds!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Colonel, astonished into admiration.

"Yes, or to be accurate, 49,375 pounds, 3s., 10d., and--that's where the jar comes in--I don't care. I never thought of it again since I got the broker's note till this minute. I have been thinking all day about my heart, which is uneasy, and about what will happen to Mary when I am gone. What's the good of this dirty money to a dying man? I'd give it all to have my wife and the boy I lost back for a year or two; yes, I would go into a shop again and sell sugar like my grandfather, and live on the profits from the till and the counter. There's Mary calling. We must tell a fib, we must say that we thought she was to come to fetch us; don't you forget. Well, there it is, perhaps you'll think it over at your leisure."

"Yes, John," replied the Colonel, solemnly; "certainly I will think it over. Of course, there are pros and cons, but, on the whole, speaking offhand, I don't see why the young people should not make a match. Also you have always been a good relative, and, what is better, a good friend to me, so, of course, if possible I should like to fall in with your wishes."

Mr. Porson, who was advancing towards the door, wheeled round quickly.

"Thank you, Colonel," he said, "I appreciate your sentiments; but don't you make any mistake. It isn't my wishes that have to be fallen in with--or your wishes. It's the wishes of your son, Morris, and my daughter, Mary. If they are agreeable I'd like it well; if not, all the money in the world, nor all the families in the world, wouldn't make me have anything to do with the job, or you either. Whatever our failings, we are honest men--both of us, who would not sell our flesh and blood for such trash as that."

CHAPTER IV

MARY PREACHES AND THE COLONEL PREVAILS

A fortnight had gone by, and during this time Morris was a frequent visitor at Seaview. Also his Cousin Mary had come over twice or thrice to lunch, with her father or without him. Once, indeed, she had stopped all the afternoon, spending most of it in the workshop with Morris. This workshop, it may be remembered, was the old chapel of the Abbey, a very beautiful and still perfect building, finished in early Tudor times, in which, by good fortune, the rich stained gla.s.s of the east window still remained. It made a n.o.ble and s.p.a.cious laboratory, with its wide nave and lovely roof of chestnut wood, whereof the corbels were seraphs, white-robed and golden-winged.

"Are you not afraid to desecrate such a place with your horrid vices--I mean the iron things--and furnace and litter?" asked Mary. She had sunk down upon an anvil, on which lay a newspaper, the first seat that she could find, and thence surveyed the strange, incongruous scene.

"Well, if you ask, I don't like it," answered Morris. "But there is no other place that I can have, for my father is afraid of the forge in the house, and I can't afford to build a workshop outside."

"It ought to be restored," said Mary, "with a beautiful organ in a carved case and a lovely alabaster altar and one of those perpetual lamps of silver--the French call them 'veilleuses', don't they?--and the Stations of the Cross in carved oak, and all the rest of it."

Mary, it may be explained, had a tendency to admire the outward adornments of ritualism if not its doctrines.

"Quite so," answered Morris, smiling. "When I have from five to seven thousand to spare I will set about the job, and hire a high-church chaplain with a fine voice to come and say Ma.s.s for your benefit. By the way, would you like a confessional also? You omitted it from the list."

"I think not. Besides, what on earth should I confess, except being always late for prayers through oversleeping myself in the morning, and general uselessness?"

"Oh, I daresay you might find something if you tried," suggested Morris.

"Speak for yourself, please, Morris. To begin with your own account, there is the crime of sacrilege in using a chapel as a workshop. Look, those are all tombstones of abbots and other holy people, and under each tombstone one of them is asleep. Yet there you are, using strong language and whistling and making a horrible noise with hammers just above their heads. I wonder they don't haunt you; I would if I were they."